Produced by David Widger
THE RIDDLE OF THE ROCKS
By Charles Egbert Craddock
1895
Upon the steep slope of a certain “bald” among the Great Smoky Mountains
there lie, just at the verge of the strange stunted woods from which the
treeless dome emerges to touch the clouds, two great tilted blocks of
sandstone. They are of marked regularity of shape, as square as if hewn
with a chisel. Both are splintered and fissured; one is broken in twain.
No other rock is near. The earth in which they are embedded is the rich
black soil not unfrequently found upon the summits. Nevertheless
no great significance might seem to attach to their isolation--an
outcropping of ledges, perhaps; a fracture of the freeze; a trace of
ancient denudation by the waters of the spring in the gap, flowing now
down the trough of the gorge in a silvery braid of currents, and with a
murmur that is earnest of a song.
It may have been some distortion of the story heard only from the
lips of the circuit rider, some fantasy of tradition invested with the
urgency of fact, but Roger Purdee could not remember the time when he
did not believe that these were the stone tables of the Law that Moses
flung down from the mountain-top in his wrath. In the dense ignorance of
the mountaineer, and his secluded life, he knew of no foreign countries,
no land holier than the land of his home. There was no incongruity to
his mind that it should have been in the solemn silence and austere
solitude of the “bald,” in the magnificent ascendency of the Great
Smoky, that the law-giver had met the Lord and spoken with Him. Often
as he lay at length on the strange barren place, veiled with the clouds
that frequented it, a sudden sunburst in their midst would suggest anew
what supernal splendors had once been here vouchsafed to the faltering
eye of man. The illusion had come to be very dear to him; in this
insistent localization of his faith it was all very near. And so he
would go down to the slope below, among the weird, stunted trees, and
look once more upon the broken tables, and ponder upon the strange signs
written by time thereon. The insistent fall of the rain, the incisive
blasts of the wind, coming again and again, though the centuries went,
were registered here in mystic runes. The surface had weathered to a
whitish-gray, but still in tiny depressions its pristine dark color
showed in rugose characters. A splintered fissure held delicate fucoid
impressions in fine script full of meaning. A series of worm-holes
traced erratic hieroglyphics across a scaling corner; all the varied
texts were illuminated by quartzose particles glittering in the sun, and
here and there fine green grains of glauconite. He knew no names like
these, and naught of meteorological potency. He had studied no other
rock. His casual notice had been arrested nowhere by similar signs.
Under the influence of his ignorant superstition, his cherished
illusion, the lonely wilderness, what wonder that, as he pondered
upon the rocks, strange mysteries seemed revealed to him? He found
significance in these cabalistic scriptures--nay, he read inspired
words! With the ramrod of his gun he sought to follow the fine tracings
of the letters writ by the finger of the Lord on the stone tables that
Moses flung down from the mountain-top in his wrath.
With a devout thankfulness Purdee realized that he owned the land where
they lay. It was worth, perhaps, a few cents an acre; it was utterly
untillable, almost inaccessible, and his gratulation owed its fervor
only to its spiritual values. He was an idle and shiftless fellow,
and had known no glow of acquisition, no other pride of possession.
He herded cattle much of the time in the summer, and he hunted in the
winter--wolves chiefly, their hair being long and finer at this season,
and the smaller furry gentry; for he dealt in peltry. And so, despite
the vastness of the mountain wilds, he often came and knelt beside the
rocks with his rifle in his hand, and sought anew to decipher the mystic
legends. His face, bending over the tables of the Law with the earnest
research of a student, with the chastened subduement of devotion, with
all the calm sentiments of reverie, Jacked something of its normal
aspect. When a sudden stir of the leaves or the breaking of a twig
recalled him to the world, and he would lift his head, it might hardly
seem the same face, so heavy was the lower jaw, so insistent and
coercive his eye. But if he took off his hat to place therein his cotton
bandana handkerchief or (if he were in luck and burdened with game) the
scalp of a wild-cat--valuable for the bounty offered by the State--he
showed a broad, massive forehead that added the complement of
expression, and suggested a doubt if it were ferocity his countenance
bespoke or force. His long black hair hung to his shoulders, and he wore
a tangled black beard; his deep-set dark blue eyes were kindled with the
fires of imagination. He was tall, and of a commanding presence but for
his stoop and his slouch. His garments seemed a trifle less well ordered
than those of his class, and bore here and there the traces of the blood
of beasts; on his trousers were grass stains deeply grounded, for he
knelt often to get a shot, and in meditation beside the rocks. He spent
little time otherwise upon his knees, and perhaps it was some
intuition of this fact that roused the wrath of certain brethren of the
camp-meeting when he suddenly appeared among them, arrogating to himself
peculiar spiritual experiences, proclaiming that his mind had been
opened to strange lore, repeating thrilling, quickening words that
he declared he had read on the dead rocks whereon were graven the
commandments of the Lord. The tumultuous tide of his rude eloquence, his
wild imagery, his ecstasy of faith, rolled over the assembly and awoke
it anew to enthusiasms. Much that he said was accepted by the more
intelligent ministers who led the meeting as figurative, as the finer
fervors of truth, and they felt the responsive glow of emotion and
quiver of sympathy. He intended it in its simple, literal significance.
And to the more local members of the congregation the fact was patent.
“Sech a pack o' lies hev seldom been tole in the hearin' o' Almighty
Gawd,” said Job Grinnell, a few days after the breaking up of camp.
He was rehearsing the proceedings at the meeting partly for the joy of
hearing himself talk, and partly at the instance of his wife, who had
been prevented from attending by the inopportune illness of one of the
children. “Ez I loant my ear ter the words o' that thar brazen buzzard I
eyed him constant. Fur I looked ter see the jedgmint o' the Lord descend
upon him like S'phira an' An'ias.”
“_Who!_” asked his wife, pausing in her task of picking up chips. He had
spoken of them so familiarly that one might imagine they lived close by
in the cove.
“An'ias an' S'phira--them in the Bible ez war streck by lightnin' fur
lyin',” he explained.
“I 'member _her_,” she said. “S'phia, I calls her.”
“Waal, A'gusta, _S'phira_ do me jes ez well,” he said, with the
momentary sulkiness of one corrected. “Thar war a man along, though. An'
'pears ter me thar war powerful leetle jestice in thar takin' off, ef
Roger Purdee be 'lowed ter stan' up thar in the face o' the meetin' an'
lie so ez no yearthly critter in the worl' could b'lieve him--'ceptin'
Brother Jacob Page, ez 'peared plumb out'n his head with religion, an'
got ter shoutin' when this Purdee tuk ter tellin' the law he read on
them rocks--Moses' tables, folks calls 'em--up yander in the mounting.”
He nodded upward toward the great looming range above them. His house
was on a spur of the mountain, overshadowed by it; shielded. It was to
him the Almoner of Fate. One by one it doled out the days, dawning from
its summit; and thence, too, came the darkness and the glooms of night.
One by one it liberated from the enmeshments of its tangled wooded
heights the constellations to gladden the eye and lure the fancy. Its
largess of silver torrents flung down its slopes made fertile the little
fields, and bestowed a lilting song on the silence, and took a turn at
the mill-wheel, and did not disdain the thirst of the humble cattle. It
gave pasturage in summer, and shelter from the winds of the winter. It
was the assertive feature of his life; he could hardly have imagined
existence without “the mounting.”
“Tole what he read on them rocks--yes, sir, ez glib ez swallerin' a
persimmon. 'Twarn't the reg'lar ten comman'ments--some cur'ous new
texts--jes a-rollin' 'em out ez sanctified ez ef he hed been called ter
preach the gospel! An' thar war Brother Eden Bates a-answerin' 'Amen'
ter every one. An' Brother Jacob Page: 'Glory, brother! Ye hev received
the outpourin' of the Sperit! Shake hands, brother!' An' sech ez that.
Ter hev hearn the commotion they raised about that thar derned lyin'
sinner ye'd hev 'lowed the meetin' war held ter glorify him stiddier the
Lord.”
Job Grinnell himself was a most notorious Christian. Renown, however,
with him could never be a superfluity, or even a sufficiency, and he
grudged the fame that these strange spiritual utterances were acquiring.
He had long enjoyed the distinction of being considered a miraculous
convert; his rescue from the wily enticements of Satan had been
celebrated with much shaking and clapping of hands, and cries of
“Glory,” and muscular ecstasy.
His religious experiences thenceforth, his vacillations of hope and
despair, had been often elaborated amongst the brethren. But his was a
conventional soul; its expression was in the formulae and platitudes of
the camp-meeting. They sank into oblivion in the excitement attendant
upon Purdee's wild utterances from the mystic script of the rocks.
As Grinnell talked, he often paused in his work to imitate the
gesticulatory enthusiasms of the saints at the camp-meeting. He was
a thickset fellow of only medium height, and was called, somewhat
invidiously, “a chunky man.” His face was broad, prosaic, good-natured,
incapable of any fine gradations of expression. It indicated an
elementary rage or a sluggish placidity. He had a ragged beard of a
reddish hue, and hair a shade lighter. He wore blue jeans trousers
and an unbleached cotton shirt, and the whole system depended on one
suspender. He was engaged in skimming a great kettle of boiling sorghum
with a perforated gourd, which caught the scum and strained the liquor.
The process was primitive; instead of the usual sorghum boiler and
furnace, the kettle was propped upon stones laid together so as to
concentrate the heat of the fire. His wife was continually feeding the
flames with chips which she brought in her apron from the wood-pile.
Her countenance was half hidden in her faded pink sun-bonnet, which,
however, did not obscure an expression responsive to that on the man's
face. She did not grudge Purdee the salvation he had found; she only
grudged him the prestige he had derived from its unique method.
“Why can't the critter elude Satan with less n'ise?” she asked,
acrimoniously.
“Edzackly,” her husband chimed in.
Now and then both turned a supervisory glance at the sorghum mill down
the slope at some little distance, and close to the river. It had been
a long day for the old white mare, still trudging round and round the
mill; perhaps a long day as well for the two half-grown boys, one of
whom fed the machine, thrusting into it a stalk at a time, while the
other brought in his arms fresh supplies from the great pile of sorghum
cane hard by.
All the door-yard of the little log cabin was bedaubed with the scum of
the sorghum which Job Grinnell flung from his perforated gourd upon the
ground. The idle dogs--and there were many--would find, when at last
disposed to move, a clog upon their nimble feet. They often sat
down with a wrinkling of brows and a puzzled expression of muzzle
to investigate their gelatinous paws with their tongues, not without
certain indications of pleasure, for the sorghum was very sweet; some
of them, that had acquired the taste for it from imitating the children,
openly begged.
One, a gaunt hound, hardly seemed so idle; he had a purpose in life,
if it might not be called a profession. He lay at length, his paws
stretched out before him, his head upon them; his big brown eyes were
closed only at intervals; ever and again they opened watchfully at the
movement of a small child, ten months old, perhaps, dressed in pink
calico, who sat in the shadow formed by the protruding clay and stick
chimney, and played by bouncing up and down and waving her fat hands,
which seemed a perpetual joy and delight of possession to her. Take her
altogether, she was a person of prepossessing appearance, despite her
frank display of toothless gums, and around her wide mouth the unseemly
traces of sorghum. She had the plumpest graces of dimples in every
direction, big blue eyes with long lashes, the whitest possible skin,
and an extraordinary pair of pink feet, which she rubbed together in
moments of joy as if she had mistaken them for her hands. Although she
sputtered a good deal, she had a charming, unaffected laugh, with the
giggle attachment natural to the young of her sex.
Suddenly there sounded an echo of it, as it were--a shrill, nervous
little whinny; the boys whirled round to see whence it came. The
persistent rasping noise of the sorghum mill and the bubbling of the
caldron had prevented them from hearing an approach. There, quite close
at hand, peering through the rails of the fence, was a little girl of
seven or eight years of age.
“I wanter kem in an' see you-uns's baby!” she exclaimed, in a high,
shrill voice. “I want to pat it on the head.”
She was a forlorn little specimen, very thin and sharp-featured. Her
homespun dress was short enough to show how fragile were the long
lean legs that supported her. The curtain of her sun-bonnet, which was
evidently made for a much larger person, hung down nearly to the hem of
her skirt; as she turned and glanced anxiously down the road, evidently
suspecting a pursuer, she looked like an erratic sun-bonnet out for a
stroll on a pair of borrowed legs.
[Illustration: She smiled upon the baby 331]
She turned again suddenly and applied her thin, freckled little face
to the crack between the rails. She smiled upon the baby, who smiled in
response, and gave a little bounce that might be accounted a courtesy.
The younger of the boys left the cane pile and ran up to his brother
at the mill, which was close to the fence. “Don't ye let her do it,”
he said, venomously. “That thar gal is one of the Purdee fambly. I know
her. Don't let her in.” And he ran back to the cane.
Grinnell had seemed pleased by this homage at the shrine of the family
idol; but at the very mention of the “Purdee fambly” his face hardened,
an angry light sprang into his eyes, and his gesture in skimming with
the perforated gourd the scum from the boiling sorghum was as energetic
as if with the action he were dashing the “Purdee fambly” from off the
face of the earth. It was an ancient feud; his grandfather and some
contemporary Purdee had fallen out about the ownership of certain
vagrant cattle; there had been blows and bloodshed; other members of the
connection had been dragged into the controversy; summary reprisals were
followed by counter-reprisals. Barns were mysteriously fired, hen-roosts
robbed, horses unaccountably lamed, sheep feloniously sheared by unknown
parties; the feeling widened and deepened, and had been handed down to
the present generation with now and then a fresh provocation, on
the part of one or the other, to renew and continue the rankling old
grudges.
And here stood the hereditary enemy, wanting to pat their baby on the
head.
“Naw, sir, ye won't!” exclaimed the boy at the mill, greatly incensed at
the boldness of this proposition, glaring at the lean, tender, wistful
little face between the rails of the fence.
But the baby, who had not sense enough to know anything about hereditary
enemies, bounced and laughed and gurgled and sputtered with glee, and
waved her hands, and had never looked fatter or more beguiling.
“I jes wanter pat it wunst,” sighed the hereditary enemy, with a lithe
writhing of her thin little anatomy in the anguish of denial--“_jes
wunst!_
“Naw, sir!” exclaimed the youthful Grinnell, more insistently than
before. He did not continue, for suddenly there came running down the
road a boy of his own size, out of breath, and red and angry--the
pursuer, evidently, that the hereditary enemy had feared, for she
crouched up against the fence with a whimper.
“Kem along away from thar, ye miser'ble little stack o' bones!” he
cried, seizing his sister by one hand and giving her a jerk--“a-foolin'
round them Grinnells' fence an' a-hankerin' arter thar old baby!”
He felt that the pride of the Purdee family was involved in this
admission of envy.
“I jes wanter pat it on the head _wunst_,” she sighed.
“Waal, ye won't now,” said the Grinnell boys in chorus.
The Purdee grasp was gentler on the little girl's arm. This was due not
to fraternal feeling so much as to loyalty to the clan; “stack o' bones”
though she was, they were Purdee bones.
“Kem along,” Ab Purdee exhorted her. “A baby ain't nuthin' extry,
nohow”--he glanced scoffingly at the infantile Grinnell. “The mountings
air fairly a-roamin' with 'em.”
“We-uns 'ain't got none at our house,” whined the sun-bonnet,
droopingly, moving off slowly on its legs, which, indeed, seemed
borrowed, so unsteady, and loath to go they were.
The Grinnell boys laughed aloud, jeeringly and ostentatiously, and the
Purdee blood was moved to retort: “We-uns don't want none sech ez that.
Nary tooth in her head!”
And indeed the widely stretched babbling lips displayed a vast vacuity
of gum.
Job Grinnell, who had listened with an attentive ear to the talk of the
children, had nevertheless continued his constant skimming of the scum.
Now he rose from his bent posture, tossed the scum upon the ground, and
with the perforated gourd in his hand turned and looked at his wife.
Augusta had dropped her apron and chips, and stood with folded arms
across her breast, her face wearing an expression of exasperated
expectancy.
The Grinnell boys were humbled and abashed. The wicked scion of the
Purdee house, joying to note how true his shaft had sped, was again
fitting his bow.
“An' ez bald-headed ez the mounting.”
The baby had a big precedent, but although no peculiar shame attaches to
the bare pinnacle of the summit, she--despite the difference in size and
age--was expected to show up more fully furnished, and in keeping with
the rule of humanity and the gentilities of life.
No teeth, no hair, no sign of any: the fact that she was so backward
was a sore point with all the family. Job Grinnell suddenly dropped the
perforated gourd, and started down toward the fence. The acrimony of the
old feud was as a trait bred in the bone. Such hatred as was inherent in
him was evoked by his religious jealousies, and the pious sense that
he was following the traditions of his elders and upholding the family
honor blended in gentlest satisfaction with his personal animosity
toward Roger Purdee as he noticed the boy edging off from the fence to a
safe distance. He eyed him derisively for a moment.
“Kin ye kerry a message straight?” The boy looked up with an expression
of sullen acquiescence, but said nothing. “Ax yer dad--an'ye kin tell
him the word kems from me--whether he hev read sech ez this on the
lawgiver's stone tables yander in the mounting: 'An' ye shall claim
sech ez be yourn, an' yer neighbor's belongings shall ye in no wise
boastfully medjure fur yourn, nor look upon it fur covet-iousness, nor
yit git up a big name in the kentry fur ownin' sech ez be another's.'”
He laughed silently--a twinkling, wrinkling demonstration over all
his broad face--a laugh that was younger than the man, and would have
befitted a square-faced boy.
The youthful Purdee, expectant of a cuffing, stood his ground more
doubtfully still under the insidious thrusts of this strange weapon,
sarcasm. He knew that they were intended to hurt; he was wounded
primarily in the intention, but the exact lesion he could not locate. He
could meet a threat with a bold face, and return a blow with the best.
But he was mortified in this failure of understanding, and perplexity
cowed him as contention could not. He hung his head with its sullen
questioning eyes, and he found great solace in a jagged bit of cloth
on the torn bosom of his shirt, which he could turn in his embarrassed
fingers.
“Whar be yer dad?” Grinnell asked.
“Up yander in the mounting,” replied the subdued Purdee.
“A-readin' of mighty s'prisin' matter writ on the rocks o' the yearth!”
exclaimed Grinnell, with a laugh. “Waal, jes keep that sayin' o' mine in
yer head, an' tell him when he kems home. An' look a-hyar, ef enny mo'
o' his stray shoats kem about hyar, I'll snip thar ears an' gin 'em my
mark.”
The youth of the Purdee clan meditated on this for a moment. He could
not remember that they had missed any shoats. Then the full meaning of
the phrase dawned upon him--it was he and the wiry little sister thus
demeaned with a porcine appellation, and whose ears were threatened.
He looked up at the fence, the little low house, the barn close by,
the sorghum mill, the drying leaves of tobacco on the scaffold, the
saltatory baby; his eyes filled with helpless tears, that could not
conceal the burning hatred he was born to bear them all. He was hot and
cold by turns; he stood staring, silent and defiant, motionless, sullen.
He heard the melodic measure of the river, with its crystalline,
keen vibrations against the rocks; the munching teeth of the old
mare--allowed to come to a stand-still that the noise of the sorghum
mill might not impinge upon the privileges of the quarrel; and the high,
ecstatic whinny of the little sister waiting on the opposite bank of
the river, having crossed the foot-bridge. There the Grinnell baby had
chanced to spy her, and had bounced and grinned and sputtered affably.
It was she who had made all the trouble yearning after the Grinnell
baby.
He would not stay, however, to be ignominiously beaten, for Grinnell had
turned away, and was looking about the ground as if in search of a thick
stick. He accounted himself no craven, thus numerically at a
disadvantage, to turn shortly about, take his way down the rocky slope,
cross the footbridge, jerk the little girl by one hand and lead her
whimpering off, while the round-eyed Grinnell baby stared gravely after
her with inconceivable emotions. These presently resulted in rendering
her cross; she whined a little and rubbed her eyes, and, smarting from
her own ill-treatment of them, gave a sharp yelp of dismay. The old dog
arose and went and sat close by her, eying her solemnly and wagging his
tail, as if begging her to observe how content he was. His dignity was
somewhat impaired by sudden abrupt snaps at flies, which caused her to
wink, stare, and be silent in astonishment.
“Waal, Job Grinnell,” exclaimed Augusta, as her husband came back and
took the perforated gourd from her hand--for she had been skimming
the sorghum in his absence--“ye air the longest-tongued man, ter be so
short-legged, I ever see!”
He looked a trifle discomfited. He had deported himself with unwonted
decision, conscious that Augusta was looking on, and in truth somewhat
supported by the expectation of her approval.
“What ails ye ter say words ye can't abide by--ye 'low ye 'pear so
graceful on the back track?” she asked.
He bent over the sorghum, silently skimming. His composure was somewhat
ruffled, and in throwing away the scum his gesture was of negligent and
discursive aim; the boiling fluid bespattered the foot of one of the
omnipresent dogs, whose shrieks rent the sky and whose activity on
three legs amazed the earth. He ran yelping to Mrs. Grinnell, nearly
overturning her in his turbulent demand for sympathy; then scampered
across to the boys, who readily enough stopped their work to examine the
wounded member and condole with its wheezing proprietor.
“What ye mean, A'gusta?” Grinnell said at length. “Kase I 'lowed I'd cut
thar ears? I ain't foolin', Kem meddlin' about remarkin' on our chill'n
agin, I'll show 'em.”
Augusta looked at him in exasperation. “I ain't keerin' ef all the
Purdees war deef,” she remarked, inhumanly, “but what war them words ye
sent fur a message ter Purdee?--'bout pridin' on what ain't theirn.”
Grinnell in his turn looked at her--but dubiously, However much a man
is under the domination of his wife, he is seldom wholly frank. It is in
this wise that his individuality is preserved to him. “I war jes
wantin' ter know ef them words war on the rocks,” he said with a
disingenuousness worthy of a higher culture.
She received this with distrust. “I kin tell ye now--they ain't,” she
said, discriminatingly; “Pur-dee's words don't sound like _them_.”
“Waal, now, what's the differ?” he demanded, with an indignation natural
enough to aspiring humanity detecting a slur upon one's literary style.
“Waal--” she paused as she knelt down to feed the fire, holding-the
fragrant chips in her hand; the flame flickered out and lighted up her
reflective eyes while she endeavored to express the distinction she
felt: “Purdee's words don't sound ter me like the words of a man sech ez
men be.”
Grinnell wrinkled his brows, trying to follow her here.
“They sound ter me like the words spoke in a dream--the pernouncings
of a vision.” Mrs. Grinnell fancied that she too had a gift of Biblical
phraseology. “They sound ter me like things I hearn whenst I war
a-hungered arter righteousness an' seekin' religion, an' bided alone in
the wilderness a-waitin' o' the Sperit.”
“'Gusta!” suddenly exclaimed her husband, with the cadence of amazed
conviction, “ye b'lieve the lie o' that critter, an' that he reads the
words o' the Lord on the rock!”
She looked up a little startled. She had been unconscious of the
circuitous approaches of credence, and shared his astonishment in the
conclusion.
“Waal, sir!” he said, more hurt and cast down than one would have deemed
possible. “I'm willin' ter hev it so. I'm jes nuthin' but a sinner an' a
fool, ripenin' fur damnation, an' he air a saint o' the yearth!”
Now such sayings as this were frequent upon Job Grinnell's tongue.
He did not believe them; their utility was in their challenge to
contradiction. Thus they often promoted an increased cordiality of the
domestic relations and an accession of self-esteem.
Augusta, however, was tired; the boiling sorghum and the September sun
were debilitating in their effects. There was something in the
scene with the youthful Purdee that grated upon her half-developed
sensibilities. The baby was whimpering outright, and the cow was lowing
at the bars. She gave her irritation the luxury of withholding the salve
to Grinnell's wounded vanity. She said nothing. The tribute to Purdee
went for what it was worth, and he was forced to swallow the humble-pie
he had taken into his mouth, albeit it stuck in his throat.
A shadow seemed to have fallen into the moral atmosphere as the gentle
dusk came early on. One had a sense as if bereft, remembering that
so short a time ago at this hour the sun was still high, and that the
full-pulsed summer day throbbed to a climax of color and bloom and
redundant life. Now, the scent of harvests was on the air; in the
stubble of the sorghum patch she saw a quail's brood more than
half-grown, now afoot, and again taking to wing with a loud whirring
sound. The perfume of ripening muscadines came from the bank of the
river. The papaws hung globular among the leaves of the bushes, and the
persimmons were reddening.
The vermilion sun was low in the sky above the purpling mountains; the
stream had changed from a crystalline brown to red, to gold, and now it
was beginning to be purple and silver. And this reminded her that the
full-moon was up, and she turned to look at it--so pearly and luminous
above the jagged ridge-pole of the dark little house on the rise.
The sky about it was blue, refining into an exquisitely delicate and
ethereal neutrality near the horizon. The baby had fallen asleep, with
its bald head on the old dog's shoulder.
After the supper was over, the sorghum fire still burned beneath the
great kettle, for the syrup was not yet made, and sorghum-boiling is an
industry that cannot be intermitted. The fire in the midst of the gentle
shadow and sheen of the night had a certain profane, discordant effect.
Pete's ill-defined figure slouching over it while he skimmed the syrup
was grimly suggestive of the distillations of strange elixirs and
unhallowed liquors, and his simple face, lighted by a sudden darting red
flame, had unrecognizable significance and was of sinister intent. For
Pete was detailed to attend to the boiling; the grinding was done, and
the old white mare stood still in the midst of the sorghum stubble and
the moonlight, as motionless and white as if she were carved in marble.
Job Grinnell sat and smoked on the porch.
Presently he got up suddenly, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
looked at it carefully before he stuck it into his pocket. He went,
without a word, down the rocky slope, past the old drowsing mare, and
across the foot-bridge. Two or three of the dogs, watching him as he
reappeared on the opposite bank, affected a mistake in identity. They
growled, then barked outright, and at last ran down and climbed the
fence and bounded about it, baying the vista where he had vanished,
until the sleepy old mare turned her head and gazed in mild surprise at
them.
Augusta sat alone on the step of the porch.
She had various regrets in her mind, incipient even before he had quite
gone, and now defining themselves momently with added poignancy. A woman
who, in her retirement at home, charges herself with the control of a
man's conduct abroad, is never likely to be devoid of speculation upon
probable disasters to ensue upon any abatement of the activities of her
discretion. She was sorry that she had allowed so trifling a matter to
mar the serenity of the family; her conscience upbraided her that she
had not besought him to avoid the blacksmith's shop, where certain
men of the neighborhood were wont to congregate and drink deep into the
night. Above all, her mind went back to the enigmatical message, and she
wondered that she could have been so forgetful as to fail to urge him
to forbear angering Purdee, for this would have a cumulative effect upon
all the rancors of the old quarrels, and inaugurate perhaps a new series
of reprisals.
“I ain't afeard o' no Purdee ez ever stepped,” she said to herself,
defining her position. “But I'm fur peace. An' ef the Purdees will leave
we-uns be, I ain't a-goin' ter meddle along o' them.”
She remembered an old barn-burning, in the days when she and her husband
were newly married, at his father's house. She looked up at the barn
hard by, on a line with the dwelling, with that tenderness which
one feels for a thing, not because of its value, but for the sake of
possession, for the kinship with the objects that belong to the home.
A cat was sitting high in a crevice in the logs where the daubing had
fallen out; the moon glittered in its great yellow eyes. A frog was
leaping along the open space about the rude step at Augusta's feet. A
clump of mullein leaves, silvered by the light, spangled by the dew, hid
him presently. What an elusive glistening gauze hung over the valley
far below, where the sense of distance was limited by the sense of
sight!--for it was here only that the night, though so brilliant,
must attest the incomparable lucidity of daylight. She could not even
distinguish, amidst those soft sheens of the moon and the dew, the
Lombardy poplar that grew above the door of old Squire Grove's house
down in the cove; in the daytime it was visible like a tiny finger
pointing upward. How drowsy was the sound of the katydid, now loudening,
now falling, now fainting away! And the tree-toad shrilled in the
dog-wood tree. The frogs, too, by the river in iterative fugue sent
forth a song as suggestive of the margins as the scent of the fern, and
the mint, and the fragrant weeds.
A convulsive start! She did not know that she slept until she was again
awake. The moon had travelled many a mile along the highways of the
skies. It hung over the purple mountains, over the farthest valley. The
cicada had grown dumb. The stars were few and faint. The air was chill.
She started to her feet; her garments were heavy with dew. The fire
beneath the sorghum kettle had died to a coal, flaring or fading as the
faint fluctuations of the wind might will. Near it Pete slumbered where
he too had sat down to rest. And Job--Job had never returned.
*****
[Illustration: The Blacksmith's Shop 345]
He had found it a lightsome enough scene at the blacksmith's shop, where
it was understood that the neighboring politicians collogued at times,
or brethren in the church discussed matters of discipline or more
spiritual affairs. In which of these interests a certain corpulent jug
was most active it would be difficult perhaps to accurately judge. The
great barn-like doors were flung wide open, and there was a group of men
half within the shelter and half without; the shoeing-stool, a broken
plough, an empty keg, a log, and a rickety chair sufficed to seat the
company. The moonlight falling into the door showed the great slouching,
darkling figures, the anvil, the fire of the forge (a dim ashy coal),
and the shadowy hood merging indistinguishably into the deep duskiness
of the interior. In contrast, the scene glimpsed through the low window
at the back of the shop had a certain vivid illuminated effect. A spider
web, revealing its geometric perfection, hung half across one corner
of the rude casement; the moonbeams without were individualized in fine
filar delicacy, like the ravellings of a silver skein. The boughs of a
tree which grew on a slope close below almost touched the lintel; the
leaves seemed a translucent green; a bird slept on a twig, its head
beneath its wing.
Back of the cabin, which was situated on a limited terrace, the great
altitudes of the mountain rose into the infinity of the night.
The drawling conversation was beset, as it were, by faint fleckings of
sound, lightly drawn from a crazy old fiddle under the chin of a gaunt,
yellow-haired young giant, one Ephraim Blinks, who lolled on a log,
and who by these vague harmonies unconsciously gave to the talk of his
comrades a certain theatrical effect.
Grinnell slouched up and sat down among them, responding with a nod to
the unceremonious “Hy're, Job?” of the blacksmith, who seemed thus to do
the abbreviated honors of the occasion. The others did not so formally
notice his coming.
The subject of conversation was the same that had pervaded his own
thoughts. He was irritated to observe how Purdee had usurped public
attention, and yet he himself listened with keenest interest.
“Waal,” said the ponderous blacksmith, “I kin onderstan' mighty well ez
Moses would hev been mighty mad ter see them folks a-worshippin' o' a
calf--senseless critters they be! 'Twarn't no use flingin' down them
rocks, though, an' gittin' 'em bruk. Sandstone ain't like metal; ye
can't heat it an' draw it down an' weld it agin.”
His round black head shone in the moonlight, glistening because of his
habit of plunging it, by way of making his toilet, into the barrel of
water where he tempered his steel. He crossed his huge folded bare arms
over his breast, and leaned back against the door on two legs of the
rickety chair.
“Naw, sir,” another chimed in. “He mought hev knowed he'd jes hev ter go
ter quarryin' agin.”
“They air always a-crackin' up them folks in the Bible ez sech powerful
wise men,” said another, whose untrained mind evidently held the germs
of advanced thinking. “'Pears ter me ez some of 'em conducted tharselves
ez foolish ez enny folks I know--this hyar very Moses one o' 'em.
Throwin' down them rocks 'minds me o' old man Pinner's tantrums. Sher'ff
kem ter his house 'bout a jedgmint debt, an' levied on his craps. An'
arter he war gone old man tuk a axe an' gashed bodaciously inter the
loom an' hacked it up. Ez ef that war goin' ter do enny good! His wife
war the mos' outed woman I ever see. They 'ain't got nare nother loom
nuther, an' hain't hearn no advices from the Lord.”
The violinist paused in his playing. “They 'lowed Moses war a meek man
too,” he said. “He killed a man with a brick-badge an' buried him in the
sand. Mighty meek ways”--with a satirical grimace.
The others, divining that this was urged in justification and precedent
for devious modern ways that were not meek, did not pursue this branch
of the subject.
“S'prised me some,” remarked the advanced thinker, “ter hear ez them
tables o' stone war up on the bald o' the mounting thar. I hed drawed
the idee ez 'twar in some other kentry somewhar--I dunno--” He stopped
blankly. He could not formulate his geographical ignorance. “An' I never
knowed,” he resumed, presently, “ez thar war enough gold in Tennessee
ter make a gold calf; they fund gold hyar, but 'twar mighty leetle.”
“Mebbe 'twar a mighty leetle calf,” suggested the blacksmith.
“Mebbe so,” assented the other.
“Mebbe 'twar a silver one,” speculated a third; “plenty o' silver they
'low thar air in the mountings.”
The violinist spoke up suddenly. “Git one o' them Injuns over yander ter
Quallatown right seasonable drunk, an' he'll tell ye a power o' places
whar the old folks said thar war silver.” He bowed his chin once more
upon the instrument, and again the slow drawling conversation proceeded
to soft music.
“Ef ye'll b'lieve me,” said the advanced thinker, “I never war so
conflusticated in my life ez I war when he stood up in meetin' an' told
'bout'n the tables of the law bein' on the bald! I 'lowed 'twar somewhar
'mongst some sort'n people named 'Gyptians.”
“Mebbe some o' them Injuns air named 'Gyptians',” suggested Spears, the
blacksmith.
“Naw, sir,” spoke up the fiddler, who had been to Quallatown, and was
the ethnographic authority of the meeting. “Tennessee Injuns be named
Cher'-kee, an' Chick'saw, an' Creeks.”
There was a silence. The moonlight sifted through the dark little shanty
of a shop; the fretting and foaming of a mountain stream arose from
far down the steep slope, where there was a series of cascades, a fine
water-power, utilized by a mill. The sudden raucous note of a night-hawk
jarred upon the air, and a shadow on silent wings sped past. The road
was dusty in front of the shop, and for a space there was no shade. Into
the full radiance of the moonlight a rabbit bounded along, rising erect
with a most human look of affright in its great shining eyes as it
tremulously gazed at the motionless figures. It too was motionless for
a moment. The young musician made a lunge at it with his bow; it sprang
away with a violent start--its elongated grotesque shadow bounding
kangaroo-like beside it--into the soft gloom of the bushes. There was no
other traveller along the road, and the talk was renewed without further
interruption. “Waal, sir, ef'twarn't fur the testimony o' the words
he reads ez air graven on them rocks, I couldn't-git my cornsent ter
b'lieve ez Moses ever war in Tennessee,” said the advanced thinker.
“I ain't onder-takin' ter say what State he settled in, but I 'lowed
'twarn't hyar. It mus' hev been, though, 'count o' the scripture on them
broken tables.”
“I never knowed a meetin' woke ter sech a pint o' holiness. The saints
jes rampaged around till it fairly sounded like the cavortin's o' the
ungodly,” a retrospective voice chimed in.
“I raised thirty-two hyme chunes,” said the musician, who had a great
gift in quiring, and was the famed possessor of a robust tenor voice. “A
leetle mo' gloryin' aroun' an' I'd hev kem ter the eend o' my row, an'
hev hed ter begin over agin.” He spoke with acrimony, reviewing the
jeopardy in which his _repertoire_ had been placed.
“Waal,” said the blacksmith, passing his hand over his black head, as
sleek and shining as a beaver's, “I'm a-goin' up ter the bald o' the
mounting some day soon, ef so be I kin make out ter shoe that mare o'
mine”--for the blacksmith's mount was always barefoot--“I'm afeard ter
trest her unshod on them slippery slopes; I want ter read some o' them
sayin's on the stone tables myself. I likes ter git a tex' or the eend
o' a hyme set a-goin' in my head--seems somehow ter teach itself ter the
anvil, an' then it jes says it back an' forth all day. Yestiddy I never
seen its beat--'Christ--war--born--in--Bethlehem.' The anvil jes rang
with that ez ef the actial metal hed the gift o' prayer an' praise.”
“Waal, sir,” exclaimed Job Grinnell, who had been having frequent
colloquies aside with the companionable jug, “ye mought jes ez well save
yer shoes an' let yer mare go barefoot. Thar ain't nare sign o' a word
writ on them rocks.”
They all sat staring at him. Even the singing, long-drawn vibrations of
the violin were still.
“By Hokey!” exclaimed the young musician, “I'll take Purdee's word ez
soon ez yourn.”
The whiskey which Grinnell had drunk had rendered him more plastic still
to jealousy. The day was not so long past when Purdee's oath would have
been esteemed a poor dependence against the word of so zealous a brother
as he--a pillar in the church, a shining light of the congregation. He
noted the significant fact that it behooved him to justify himself; it
irked him that this was exacted as a tribute to Purdee's newly acquired
sanctity.
“Purdee's jes a-lyin' an' a-foolin' ye,” he declared. “Ever been up on
the bald?”
They had lived in its shadow all their lives.
Even by the circuitous mountain ways it was not more than five miles
from where they sat. But none had chanced to have a call to go, and it
was to them as a foreign land to be explored.
“Waal, I hev, time an' agin,” said Grinnell. “I dunno who gin them rocks
the name of Moses' tables o' the Law. Moses must hev hed a powerful
block an' tackle ter lift sech tremenjious rocks. I hev known 'em named
sech fur many a year. But I seen 'em not three weeks ago, an' thar ain't
nare word writ on 'em. Thar's the mounting; thar's the rocks; ye kin go
an' stare-gaze 'em an' sati'fy yerse'fs.”
Whether it were by reason of the cumulative influences of the continual
references to the jug, or of that sense of reviviscence, that more alert
energy, which the cool Southern nights always impart after the sultry
summer days, the suggestion that they should go now and solve the
mystery, and meet the dawn upon the summit of the bald, found instant
acceptance, which it might not have secured in the stolid daylight.
The moon, splendid, a lustrous white encircled by a great halo of
translucent green, swung high above the duskily purple mountains. Below
in the valleys its progress was followed by an opalescent gossamer
presence that was like the overflowing fulness, the surplusage, of light
rather than mist. The shadows of the great trees were interlaced with
dazzling silver gleams. The night was almost as bright as the day,
but cool and dank, full of sylvan fragrance and restful silence and a
romantic liberty.
The blacksmith carried his rifle, for wolves were often abroad in the
wilderness. Two or three others were similarly armed; the advanced
thinker had a hunting-knife, Job Grinnell a pistol that went by the name
of “shootin'-iron.” The musician carried no weapon. “I ain't 'feared o'
no wolf,” he said; “I'll play 'em a chune.” He went on in the vanguard,
his tousled yellow hair idealized with many a shimmer in the moonlight
as it hung curling down on his blue jeans coat, his cheek laid softly on
the violin, the bow glancing back and forth as if strung with moonbeams
as he played. The men woke the solemn silences with their loud mirthful
voices; they startled precipitate echoes; they fell into disputes and
wrangled loudly, and would have turned back if sure of the way home, but
Job Grinnell led steadily on, and they were fain to follow. They lagged
to look at a spot where some man, unheeded even by tradition, had dug
his heart's grave in a vain search for precious metal. A deep excavation
in the midst of the wilderness told the story; how long ago it was might
be guessed from the age of a stalwart oak that had sunk roots into its
depths; the shadows were heavy about it; a sense of despair brooded in
the loneliness. And so up and up the endless ascent; sometimes great
chasms were at one side, stretching further and further, and crowding
the narrow path--the herder's trail--against the sheer ascent, till it
seemed that the treacherous mountains were yawning to engulf them. The
air was growing colder, but was exquisitely clear and exhilarating;
the great dewy ferns flung silvery fronds athwart the way; vines in
stupendous lengths swung from the tops of gigantic trees to the roots.
Hark! among them birds chirp; a matutinal impulse seems astir in
the woods; the moon is undimmed; the stars faint only because of her
splendors; but one can feel that the earth has roused itself to a sense
of a new day. And there, with such feathery flashes of white foam, such
brilliant straight lengths of translucent water, such a leaping grace of
impetuous motion, the currents of the mountain stream, like the arrows
of Diana, shoot down the slopes. And now a vague mist is among the
trees, and when it clears away they seem shrunken, as under a spell, to
half their size. They grow smaller and smaller still, oak and chestnut
and beech, but dwarfed and gnarled like some old orchard. And suddenly
they cease, and the vast grassy dome uprises against the sky, in which
the moon is paling into a dull similitude of itself; no longer wondrous,
transcendent, but like some lily of opaque whiteness, fair and fading.
Beneath is a purple, deeply serious, and sombre earth, to which mists
minister, silent and solemn; myriads of mountains loom on every hand;
the half-seen mysteries of the river, which, charged with the red clay
of its banks, is of a tawny color, gleams as it winds in and out among
the white vapors that reach in fantastic forms from heaven above to
the valley below. There is a certain relief in the mist--it veils the
infinities of the scene, on which the mind can lay but a trembling hold.
“Folks tell all sort'n cur'ous tales 'bout'n this hyar spot,” said Job
Grinnell, his square face, his red hair hanging about his ears, and his
ragged red beard visible in the dull light of the coming day.
“I hev hearn folks 'low ez a pa'tridge up hyar will look ez big ez a
Dominicky rooster. An' ef ye listens ye kin hear words from somewhar.
An' sometimes in the cattle-herdin' season the beastises will kem an'
crowd tergether, an' stan' on the bald in the moonlight all night.”
“I dunno,” said the advanced thinker, “ez I be s'prised enny ef Purdee,
ez be huntin' up hyar so constant, hev got sorter teched in the head,
ter take up sech a cur'ous notion 'bout'n them rocks.”
He glanced along the slope at the spot, visible now, where Moses flung
the stone tables and they broke in twain. And there, standing
beside them, was a man of great height, dressed in blue jeans, his
broad-brimmed hat pushed from his brow, and his meditative dark eyes
fixed upon the rocks; a deer, all gray and antlered, lay dead at his
feet, and his rifle rested on the ground as he leaned on the muzzle.
A glance was interchanged between the others. Their intention, the
promptings of curiosity, had flagged during the long tramp and the
gradual waning of the influence of the jug. The coincidence of meeting
Purdee here revived their interest. Grinnell, remembering the ancient
feud, held back, being unlikely to elicit Purdee's views in the face of
their contradiction. The blacksmith and the young fiddler took their way
down toward him.
He looked up with a start, seeing them at some little distance. His
full, contemplative eyes rested upon them for a moment almost devoid of
questioning. It was not the face of a man who finds himself confronted
with the discovery of his duplicity and his hypocrisy. There was a
strange doubt stirring in the blacksmith's heart As he approached he
looked upon the storied cocks with a sort of solemn awe, as if they had
indeed been given by the hand of the Lord to his servant, who broke them
here in his wrath. He knew that the step of the musician slackened as he
followed. What holy mysteries were they not rushing in upon? He spoke in
a bated voice.