By A. Lytle Peterman.
“Boys, is there a hotel in this place?” the traveler asked of two
youngsters lounging near, as he stood, suit-case in hand, on the cinder
path by the track, looking inquiringly about him, while the train pulled
off down the road.
“What place?” putting answer and inquiry into one. It aroused their
interest and surprise to hear Montvale called a “place.”
“This village, or hamlet, or station, or whatever you call it—is there a
hotel hereabout?” he replied, a little impatient and determined to make
himself understood.
“A hotel? Yes, _sir_,” answered the larger of the boys.
“Then I’ll thank you and pay you to show me to it,” the stranger said, as
he brightened up, throwing off the lost look that had struck his face at
the same moment his foot had struck the cinders, when he stepped from the
train.
“All right; up this a-way,” the larger boy answered, as he turned into
the path, and the smaller fell in behind him. The traveler and his
suit-case, side by side, brought up the rear. The boys were agreeable,
but not over-polite, neither thinking to say, “I’ll take the baggage.”
When they had gone perhaps a hundred yards, the traveler’s eyes all the
while seeking sight of a hotel and finding none, the leader stopped
suddenly, raised his arm, pointed his finger back down the railway, and
remarked, “The _finest_ hotel is ’way down hyander.”
“Very well,” said the stranger, an experienced traveler, therefore past
the “kicking” stage; “take me to the finest.”
The procession faced about, headed down the track, retraced its steps,
passed the depot, and continued on its way.
But we are not yet to “the finest hotel.” In fact, there is time to “view
the landscape o’er” before we arrive, especially as the boys are quiet,
remarkably quiet for Kentucky boys—“mighty say-nothin’ shavers,” as the
landlady afterwards described them to her guest.
It was dusk, on a Sunday evening in September. The rain had just begun
falling gently—the prelude to the first cool snap of the autumn. The
stranger had left the train to spend the night, preparatory to his
cross-country trip on the following day.
Montvale is a station on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, in the mountains
of Kentucky, seventy-five or a hundred miles east of Lexington. It is
of consequence chiefly because it is on the road to somewhere else—the
point of departure from the railway to the country lying beyond. Contrary
to the rule, its inhabitants seemed to realize its urban limitations,
especially the meagerness of its population. The two boys, unprepared for
such compliment, were surprised to hear it called a “place.”
At that time, less than a decade ago—and doubtless ever since,—Montvale
straggled around over a wide expanse of flat woods and weedy fields,
between ranges. Space to spare was the most striking thing about it. The
land, too swampy for tillage, except after elaborate artificial drainage,
was “good to fill a hole in the ground and hold the world together.”
The houses, after the “boxed” style of carpentry, seemed not to have
been built, but to have grown up, like the weeds. They had never peeped
into a paint-bucket; their complexion was that of the crawfish land on
which they stood. Most of the doors, off the hinges, whether they ever
had any or not, stood leaning against the inside wall, ready in case a
storm or other emergency arose.
There was little direct communication between the homes, partly because
the weeds overhung the pig-trails of travel; partly because it was about
a Sabbath-day’s journey from each house to its nearest neighbor; partly
because all paths led to or through the depot yard, as the literal
and figurative center of the hamlet. The railway station was at once
the market, the park, the amusement hall, the shipping center, the
business section, the social resort, the lounging place, the nursery and
playground of all Montvale. The railway track, with the path beside it,
was the main and only street of the “place.”
Just as the traveler was wondering if they were going to tramp down to
the next station, the leader said, “Out this hyer way,” turning off
to the right, through a sea of white-topped weeds. The rain was still
falling, and night had come on. A few pale rays of the moon, struggling
through the clouds, showed the boys’ heads now and then bobbing above the
watery weeds, like porpoises at play on the surface of the ocean.
At last, the little procession reached a plank fence with a gap in it.
The boys stopped, confronted the traveler, and the leader said, “_This_
is the finest hotel anywhar about hyer.”
“Where?” the stranger asked.
“Right yander—go through this gate,” tapping with his hand a piece of
frame-work standing across the path.
The boys took the proffered pay, dropped it into their pockets, thrust
their hands down to keep it from getting out, and plunged again into the
depths of the weedy sea.
The traveler peered through the rain and fog into the yard, where the
weeds had lost so much of their stature that he thought he must be
nearing the shore. He picked up the gate leaning across the path, from
panel to panel of the fence, and set it out of the way, remarking,
“Everything about here is off its hinges—I’m nearly off myself.”
He approached the “hotel,” consisting mostly of “boxed” lean-to, and
rested one foot upon the sill of the shed—by courtesy known as the
“porch.” He paused; in the language of eastern railway danger signs, he
thought he would “Stop, Look and Listen.” Silence and the clouds reigned.
No sound but the patter of the drops on the roof. No light gleamed from
the skimpy window, nor crept through the generous cracks in the wall.
He rapped at the door; no answer. He rapped again—louder; still no
answer. There must be nobody at home in “the finest hotel.” So he
hammered the rickety, raky, crazy shutter just because there wasn’t, till
it shook, rattled and shivered, and the boards on the rear wall creaked
and groaned in sympathy.
A cracked, rasping, whining voice from the inner depths called out,
“Well!”
“Madam”—for that voice could belong to none but a crone—“I want to get to
stay over night.”
“This is a purty time o’ night to be a-prowlin’ ’round, a-draggin’ uv
honest, hard-workin’ folks out’n the bed ter wait on ye,” the landlady
replied. The reprimand came mixed with the rattle of straw-ticks and the
rustle of bedclothing.
“I am sorry,” the traveler answered, “but I came as early as I could.
Really, I am neither the conductor, engineer, nor superintendent of that
train. Don’t you keep hotel?”
“Yes, sorter, a leetle, sometimes, when I feel like it. But can’t ye wait
tell a body gits on her cloze; ur will ye jist come in anyhow, whether ur
no?”
“Oh, certainly, I’ll gladly wait,” the traveler said; “take your own
time—mine, too.”
“Whar air you frum?” asked the voice from within, somewhat muffled as it
poked its head up through a calico dress.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it, but I came directly from
Lexington.”
“Yes, I ’lowed so;” she answered. “I jist thought it ’uz some o’ them
Bluegrass fellers what sets up all night and sleeps all day—what hain’t
nothin’ to do but keep awake them that has to work.”
After taking time enough to have arrayed herself for presentation to the
queen, Madame Calico now approached the door, holding a little sputtering
brass lamp—apparently the model of the first invention—in one hand, while
she vainly tried to tie her apron strings with the other. She knocked
up the wooden latch with her elbow and a clatter, and the door swung
open. Holding high her lamp—a rustic model for “Liberty Enlightening the
World”—she waited for the stranger to speak.
“Madame, I’m very sorry—,” he began.
“Yes, I know it,” she snapped, cutting him off from the remainder of his
sentence. “’Bout ever’ thing ’at comes frum Lex’n’ton’s sorry, mighty
sorry. Guess they’s some good people down thar, but I hain’t never seed
’em. They don’t never come up hyer. I _reckin_ you kin stay, but I can’t
give ye no bed all to yerself; an’ I tell ye now, ye needn’t to ax it.”
Meanwhile, Madame Calico had admitted him and led the way through a
side door into an adjoining room which served as a lounging hall for
guests, whether “by the day” or “by the week.” Having learned how to make
allowances for the moods of hotels, landlords and landladies, he had
followed meekly, without invitation.
By “the dim and flaring lamp,” he now caught the outlines of a
half-finished stairway winding up to the garret. There was no railing to
this gangway; safety consisted in keeping away from the brink. Madame
Calico stood on the third step, her countenance and kerosene jet beaming
contemptuously down upon the upturned face of the hesitating guest at the
bottom.
“Madam,” he asked, hearing, as he thought, a chorus of snores winding
down the gangway, “does anybody else sleep up there?”
“No, they hain’t nobody hardly now, sence the mill ’uz shot down.” Rather
an evasive answer.
“How many?” he inquired.
“The mill is shot down, an’ most uv the hands has quit work, an’ they
hain’t many stays hyer now.”
The guest, growing insistent, asked the third time, as he took a single,
hesitating step upward, “Well, who are they—can’t you say just how many?”
Madame Calico, now on the defensive, grew more amiable—rather, less
hostile—, but again took refuge in “the mill” and its shutting down:
“Sence the mill wuz shot down, the’ve mos’ly all went away; they’s hardly
any ub ’em left now.”
The guest was growing impatient, as she could readily see. Not liking the
outlook, he stopped, turned as if to descend, and once more demanded,
“Well, Madam, will you tell me just how many or not?”
She was loath to lose her guest and his pay, “after a-bein’ drug out’n”
her bed. So she at last came to the point, but in her own roundabout
way: “Sence the mill ’uz shot down they hain’t nobody sca’cely sleeps
up hyer—nobody but Sam Thompson, an’ Tim Turney, an’ Joe Alley, an’ Bob
Redford, an’ Jack Johnson, an’ Bill Ed Jeckley—I b’lieve them’s all—oh,
yes, an’ Less Wilson. You kin sleep with Bill Ed, but he won’t sleep
nowhar exceptin’ the fore side uv the bed.”
“Well,” the traveler muttered to himself, “in an adventure, even a
formidable certainty is better than a gloomy doubt.”
They had now reached the landing at the angle in the wall. Madame Calico
handed the little lamp to the guest, and turned to go, saying, “You kin
bunk up with Bill Ed.”
“But how shall I know Bill Ed from the others?” he asked.
“W’y, he’s in the empty bed by hisself; t’others is a-sleepin’ three an’
four tergether. Bill Ed won’t sleep ’ith none uv ’em, ’caze, he says,
he ruther sleep ’ith a meal-sack uv augers an’ hammers then ’ith a man.
Sometimes I jist have to slip a stranger like you in terhin’ him, an’
Bill Ed don’t know nothin’ about it tell mornin’.”
As she clambered down the gangway, hugging the wall, and the new guest
crept up into the garret, he called out, “What time do we rise in the
morning?”
“Oh, most any time,” she answered. “Sence the mill ’uz shot down, ever’
feller jist suits hisself about crawlin’ out.”
“About what hour?” he asked.
“Well, when the mill ’uz a-runnin’ we used to git up purty soon, but
sence hit ’uz shot down we’re all sorter lazy-like, so we purty giner’ly
al’ays have late eatin’.”
“But, Madam, please name the hour for breakfast,” he insisted.
“Well, you kin do purty much to suit yerself sence the mill ’uz shot
down. Jest sleep ez late as yer please. We al’ays eat late when comp’ny’s
hyer, sence the mill ’uz shot down. So you git yer hands an’ face washed
an’ ready by four o’clock’ll do.”
No wonder the mill hands went to bed before nightfall! They had to, in
order to get in in time to get out.
Till now, the sounds coming down from the garret had blended into
something like harmony. When the new guest neared the top of the gangway,
it seemed to him like poking his head into a den of infuriated wild
beasts. The roaring, growling and groaning made “confusion dire and
dreadful din.”
A glance around caused him to wonder how many slept in that one room
before “the mill ’uz shot down.”
The bedsteads were made from pieces of undressed scantling, nailed
together; not one of them had ever felt a plane or seen a chisel. The
little forest of posts and frames looked like a railway trestle; and
the groans and sighs issuing from it sounded as if an express train had
just plunged over, mangling passengers and crew. The mill “hands” lay
uncovered in that stifling atmosphere, tumbled and tangled into all
shapes and attitudes, looking like a band of contortionists struck dead,
each in the midst of his favorite trick. There lay Bill Ed—two hundred
fifty pounds of mountaineer—spread along the front railing, his arm
thrown out and hanging over, to keep him from rolling back and wedging
himself under the rafters of the roof. His was the “empty bed”—fairly on
the way to occupancy!
The new guest, lifting his lamp and peering over huge Bill Ed to the
sleeping place beyond, observed to himself, “In the language of the sweet
girl graduate, ‘Beyond the Alps lies Italy.’ The ‘valley’ is all right,
if I can ever scale the mountain.”
But he found an easier way. He undressed, sneaked into the “valley” from
the foot of the bed, and taking care not to thrust his nose against the
roof, he stretched himself out, but not to sleep—to listen! His entrance
had not disturbed the snorers. In fact, it had seemed to give them a new
inspiration, for the expiration grew louder. They might have supplied
steam enough to keep the mill from shutting down. They made up a whole
band of wind instruments, each blowing a different horn. The listener now
had time to analyze and classify them.
One sounded like a March gust whistling through the splinters on the
end of a hickory rail. Another had the hiss of the air-brake under a
passenger coach, when the train is about to start. There was one gasp
like the continued tearing of brown domestic, and another that made you
look around for a stream of broken stones pouring into a tin bucket. One
long-winded horn, out of tune with all others, hissed like a jet of steam
escaping from the steam-chest when a heavy freight engine is beginning
to move. Bill Ed, evidently the sawyer of the mill, had a long-drawn
snort like the sound of a circular saw ripping through a seasoned oak,
closing with the confused ring of the steel as it clears the end of the
log, combined with the clatter of the “carriage” rushing back for a fresh
start.
To sleep amid such a din was a problem. By and by the traveler dozed
off, but not out of reach of that roar—it lingered in the distance. At
last it ceased—the snorers had risen and gone!
Just when well asleep—so it seemed to him—, a bell—it must have been
first cousin to the little lamp—tinkled on the gangway. The traveler
withdrew from the crevice between rafter and railing—where he had
literally lodged,—and turned over.
By and by a cow-bell bellowed, not rang, in the lounging hall below. The
traveler turned over once more, yawned, slumbered again.
After a time—the clock knew how long—, a conch-shell thrust up the
gangway roared; and the sleeper, thinking it a through freight, pushed
on, making for the next station.
Another silence. At last, behold, Madame Calico stood at the foot of the
gangway, and shouted: “Air you a-gona git up to-day? Ur do ye want me to
git yer breakfas’ and then drag ye out’n the bed, an’ put yer cloze on
ye, an’ wash ye, an’ chaw yer victuals fur ye?”
“I’ll be down in a moment, Madam,” the traveler answered.
“Ever’body but you has eat an’ gone, an’ done furgot hit, by this time,”
she replied. “You’ll fin’ the wash-pan a-settin’ on the porch.”
He arose, dressed hurriedly, made his way down, and by raking around on
the “porch,” finally stumbled against the wash-pan. The morning was still
dark, but a gray spot was in the eastern sky—daylight was on its way to
“the finest hotel.”
Toilet finished, with the aid of his handkerchief in place of a towel,
he began wondering where the dining-room could be. He heard no footsteps
about the “hotel,” and search revealed neither kitchen nor fire. Peering
around, he at last caught sight of smoke curling up from a stick-and-clay
chimney some hundred yards away, beyond a bay of the weedy sea he had
crossed the evening before. Parting the weeds overhanging the path was
much like swimming across.
Breakfast—varied, wholesome, well-cooked—was on the table—had been for
an hour or more. Madame Calico, first seeing him seated and busy, then
remarked, “You’ll jist have to wait on yerself, but I reckin ye ain’t
noways bashful. I’ll have to go back to the hotel to clean up atter ye.
It’s a blessed thing the mill’s shot down, fur we couldn’t a-had no sich
layin’ up in the bed a-soakin’ an’ a-sobbin’ this time o’ day, ’way hyer
might’ nigh dinner.” He was not sorry to make his meal in silence, peace
and the landlady’s absence.
Breakfast finished, the guest made his way back toward his lodging place.
Turning the corner and confronting the entrance, he read, on a board
over the shed, the name of “the finest hotel,” “Traveler’s Rest;” and
immediately, by the law of contrast, his memory reverted to the garret,
the snoring, Bill Ed and the “empty bed,”—to the hand-bell, the cow-bell
and the conch-shell.
Just before he paid his bill and left, in quest of a turnout for the
day’s drive, Madame Calico, still in the act of cleaning up, favored him
with her views on affairs in and about Montvale, and divers and sundry
bits of information—some of a startling kind. “No,” she said, “the hotel
business don’t amount to nothin’ much sence the mill ’uz shot down. Wunst
in a while some feller comes stragglin’ along way hyander in the night,
when all honest white folks is asleep, but the trouble o’ waitin’ on ’im
an’ cleanin’ up atter ’im’s more’n the pay.
“Them revenue men an’ marshals an’ sich rakin’s an’ scrapin’s uv the
yearth has might nigh ruint Montvale. A passel uv ’em comes here t’other
day—jist week afore last—an’ axes me ’bout Sam Ben Jeckley’s ’stillery,
whar it wuz. Sam Ben is Bill Ed’s brother. An’ I up an’ tells ’em I don’t
know nothin’ about it—hain’t never seed it, nur smelt it, nur tasted it,
nur been about it, nur had nothin’ to do with it, in no shape, size,
form, nur fashion.
“They said they knowed it ’uz around hyer somewhar. An’ sir, they
rummaged over this lan’ an’ country a-s’archin’ fur that ’stillery—hit uz
the mill the hands worked at. Atter cavortin’ aroun’ two ur three days,
like a lot o’ male-cows a-tarrin’ up a paster, they afinally finds the
mill—’stillery, as they called it—about two miles frum hyer.
“An’ they taken axes an’ smashed the whole thing tell they wuz nuther
ha’r nur hide uv it left. An’ they spilt out three tanks o’ sour-mash
byer, an’ we hain’t had none fur the table sence. It beats all uv yer
sasafac tea, yer spicewood tea, an’ yer Californy byer.
“They poured out five barl’s uv the best whisky—’cordin’ to what’s said
uv it—that ever went to town on ’lection day. They say jist one drink
’ould run a man wil’ enough fur the ’sylum, an’ one drap ’ould make a
rabbit pick a qua’rl with a bull-dog, ef he had to spit in his face to do
it.
“It’s all sech ez that has ruint the country—stark-nater’ly wiped
business out’n Montvale. The dirty, low-flunged, lazy good-fur-nothin’
imps uv the devil, prowlin’ aroun’, ’stroyin’ what other people’s sweat
has earnt!
“But still they wuzn’t satisfied! Then they went up above the
mill—’stillery, as they called it—, an’ drawed the’r Winchesters an’
Smith & Westerns, an’ farred bullets all through the ruff, an’ poked
the door ez full o’ holes ez a sifter. They jest blowed the whole thing
bodyaciously all to flugens an’ flinderations, with the’r guns an’
pistols.
“An’ that’s how the mill come to be shot down,” she added, as her parting
guest once more lifted the gate aside.
“Good day, Madam,” he said, as he lifted it back.
“Wush ye well,” she answered. “Ef ye’re ever hyer agin, come to see us—I
_reckin_ we kin stand ye, an’ Bill Ed won’t know nothin’ about it tell
he’s up an’ out. He may be gone by that time any way, fur he’s speenied
to Feder’l Court up at Louisville purty soon, fur a witness ’gin the
government, to swar Sam Ben an’ tother ’shiners out’n trouble.”
“Yes,” said the traveler to himself, “when I put up again at ‘the finest
hotel,’ Bill Ed will be gone—to Federal Court, or some lower or higher
tribunal.”
[Illustration]