suddenly and went down close to the Di to wait and think. At Redbud the
river seemed fiercer than farther up-stream. One of the two skiffs that
rocked there usually was there now, swashing up and down in the current,
but the other was gone. There was a strong eddy in front of Redbud. The
bar, Singing Sand, and the Deerlick Rocks choked up the bed of the river
and made the water dash vehemently through a narrow channel. Logs went
by and branches of trees. Piney paced the bank in a rising fever of
impatience, calling, calling; but for a long time his call was without
avail, the wind roared so defeatingly in the trees. Close into Deerlick
Rocks drifted a great fleet of logs.
"Mist' Steerin'! Mist' Steerin'!" The sweet tenor broke again and again,
but again and again Piney pitched a vast effort into it. And, at last,
an answer:
"Halloo! That you, Uncle Bernique? I've been----" The voice was
wind-blown, and slipped weakly away.
"It's ME! Where are you?" No answer. "Where are you? Hi! Is that you by
the bar? Lif' your han' above the drif'-wood! Cayn't you lif' your
han'?"
A hand shot up from the back of a log that was well hidden by other
flotsam, then fell back weakly. "Ay, here I am! Dead-beat, Piney----" A
long roar of wind shut off the rest.
"Hold to your log. I'm a-comin'! comin'! comin'!" The tenor rang and
rang across the water as Piney loosed the skiff from its moorings, took
up the oars, and pushed out into the Di. With the force in that whirl of
black water he realised that there was danger; the skiff trembled and
leaped as though some wrathful AEgir caught and shook it. It was well for
Steering that Piney was strong, with the strength of the hills and the
woods and the quiet.
As he went on some sort of revulsion seized Piney. He stopped calling
and began to mutter blackly. "Wisht you'd draown! Wisht you uz dead!
Wish-to-hell, you never needa been!"
The log, with its one lamed passenger was drifting slowly in toward
Singing Sand, and Piney came on, hard after it. When he reached it at
last, Steering was quite speechless, but, with the boy's help,
scrambled into the skiff, where he slipped like water to the bottom, the
fight back being altogether Piney's.
When Steering could talk at all, he gasped out how it had happened. He
had gone much farther up than Madeira Place, and had not put his boat
about until two hours before; and then only because a great many logs
were coming down, and he decided that he did not want to be caught among
them when night should drop. He had got along all right until a log
smashed into his skiff and overturned him. He thought he must have
struck his head as he went over. At any rate, things were very mixed for
a good while. He knew that he had swum for what seemed to be hours, and
that then he had realised that he was numb, and had used what little
strength he had left to climb upon another log that passed him. He had
been on it ever since, flat out, an eternity.
Piney was getting the skiff inshore fast, as Steering talked, and once
Steering stopped to admire his youthful vigour. He was a strong man
himself, and it was a new sensation to lie weakly admiring strength in
somebody else. "Do you know, Piney, I'm dead-beat," he whispered.
"You've had a good deal to stan' in more ways than one to-day," replied
Piney.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Steering.
"We're a'most in."
It was only a few minutes later that Piney effected his landing, and,
river-lashed and dripping, both scrambled out and fell on the bank by
the Redbud shack. For a little while, even Piney was past any further
exertion, but when he could use himself again, he got up agilely, hunted
up dry wood and made a roaring fire. The twilight had closed into night
now; the rain had shifted with the wind and passed by Redbud. Piney
brought a blanket from the shack and wrapped Steering in it. Before the
fire, Steering lay with his eyes shut for a time, a smile on his face.
"You are precious good to stand by me like this, Piney," he said once.
"Where have you been for so long, you stingy nigger? Why have you cut me
lately?"
"Well, I--oh, I d'n know adzackly." Piney's voice was flat, his face
tragic. He was heaping wood on the fire, and in the yellow flare he
looked pale with the exhaustion of his work on the river and the
excitement under which he was labouring. During this last half hour that
he had been working hard to save Steering, taking care of him, helping
him, he had had another revulsion of feeling that had swung him up close
to his hero again. But crisis was still following crisis in his
emotions.
"Well, you turned up at just the right minute for me, Piney. How did you
happen along?"
"Oh, I wuz a-huntin' fer you, I reckon. I wuz sent aout to hunt fer you.
I gotta letter fer you,--f'm--f'm Miss Madeira."
Steering opened his drowsy eyes and regarded Piney.
"Yes, I have. I gotta letter fer you. Y'see, Miss Sally, she's found
aout sumpin--sumpin that you didn' want her to find aout." The fire
leaped and crackled; Bruce leaned away from its scorch, nearer to Piney.
"Y'see, she knows abaout the Tigmores naow," went on Piney steadily.
"Unc' Bernique didn' tell her. I told her."
"Piney!" Steering, warm with wrath, turned upon Piney savagely, "You
little fool! You brutal little fool!" he cried fiercely. "It's a good
thing that you're just a boy, Piney--and you, _you_! profess to
love----"
"Mist' Steerin'." Piney had a man's dignity all in a minute. "I didn'
ast you fer no leave to tell her, an' I don't ast you fer nothin' naow.
But she had to know. I hearn Unc' Bernique tellin' you abaout that
Grierson letter. I hearn you read the letter. I hearn you an' Unc'
Bernique swear. Then I swore, too. Then I went an' told her. And then
she saw her father, an' she leffen it to her father to make things
right, an' he's made things right. She told me I wuz to tell you that.
She showed him that he was safe to keep the Tigmores if he wanted to
keep 'em, but he didn't want to keep 'em. She told me to tell you that.
An' she told me to give you this letter." Piney's young body rocked now
with a hushed, sobbing fervour; he lifted his peaked hat from his head,
took the letter from the inner band, and pushed it into Bruce's hand.
"This letter kim to her father a long time ago, and she ast me to ast
you to think of her father abaout it gentle as you can--an' I'm a-astin'
you to think of him gentle," the lad's voice suddenly rose shrilly, and
he jumped to his feet, "an' I'm _a-bustin'_ to have you say you won't
think of him gentle, er sumpin 'at I cayn't stan' an 'll hit you fer!
I'm jesta boy, Mist' Steerin', but good God!"
Bruce got to his feet, too. When he caught Piney's flaming eye at last,
they stood and faced each other a great moment, then Bruce put his hand
out.
"Piney," he said, "I wish I were half the man that you are."
"Oh, Mist' Steerin'! Mist' Steerin'!" On Bruce's shoulder, he sobbed
like a child until the terrific strain that he had been on for hours
slackened, and he could talk again.
"She's waitin' fer you," he said at last. "She's up yonder in the
garden, waitin'. She loves you, Mist' Steerin'. Don't you go fergit
that, with y'all's pride an' all. She loves you."
"What? What's that you are saying, Piney?"
"She loves you. I know it, Mist' Steerin'. An' I'm a-tellin' ev' durn
thing I know!" declared Piney vehemently, with a high-toned, stubborn
self-justification in his voice.
"Dog-on you, old man," Bruce said, turning to grip Piney's hand again.
He had it in mind to say a great many other things, in the way of
appreciation, thanks, enthusiasms, but all he said was "dog-on you, old
man, dog-on you," gripping Piney's hand as he said it. "You make
yourself comfortable here in the shack to-night, will you, old man, and
I'll go on up there. They are in a little trouble over this up there,
Piney." Steering tore the Grierson letter to bits as he spoke, and,
then, his eyes wet and shining, he found Piney's pony and went to her in
the garden.
Piney lay back on the ground beside the fire. The glow fell squarely
over his features, relaxed and softened now. He looked very hopefully
and comfortingly young. There was a big, shy gratification on his face.
"'Old _man_,'" he muttered once or twice. "'Old _man_.'" A little sob
shivered through him. He got up quickly and went into the shack bunk,
where he fell asleep at once--because he was so young--and dreamed fine
dreams of Italy--because he, too, was fine.
_Chapter Eighteen_
A PRETTY PRECARIOUSNESS
As Bruce galloped up the river road toward Madeira Place, he found
himself so weak with excitement and physical exhaustion, that he had to
bow over the saddle-horn and cling there, like an old man. It was a ride
to remember. Once he raised his head and looked out into the night. The
storm had broken, and high in the quivering heavens the moon shone with
a wild, palpitant glory. In the north and east the clouds had gathered
with a mighty up-piling, from which the eye sank back affrighted, it
towered so near heaven. The trees along the river, the shaking,
shimmering river itself, were all shot with light. It was a grand scene,
but removed, turbulent, unreal. Steering's strength failed him again,
and he fell back over the saddle and hung on. There come times in a
man's life, good times as well as bad times, when he can do nothing but
hang on. On these dizzying peaks of happiness, Steering scarcely dared
let himself look beyond the pony's nose. He was so high up, so near the
consummation of--oh--of everything. It would be ridiculously easy to set
matters straight now, in one way or another. She loved him! If that were
true, it would make everything else come right. And that was true. Piney
had been sure of it, and Piney had just left her. Everything else, all
life, could be made to close around that salient, delicate fact like the
rose-leaves close around the heart of the rose. Let her father keep the
hills; he did not care, if he could have the girl. He did not care about
anything, if he could have the girl. And he could have the girl. Thank
God for that.
Little by little he began to allow himself a meagre consciousness that
he was drawing nearer, nearer! Now, just below the grounds of Madeira
Place! Now, up along the bridle-path! Now, at the garden gate!
He leaned over the pony's head, slipped the gate latch, and passed into
the garden. Dismounting, he tied the pony, and turned toward the house.
Dark, in the shadow of the trees behind it, the house lay very quiet,
unlighted, infinitely peaceful. In front of the negro cabin at the side
of the house, Bruce could see Samson, his chair tilted against the cabin
wall, his pipe in his mouth, his bare feet swinging contentedly. From
inside the cabin came the low croon of Samson's fat black wife. Some
hens clucked sleepily in the hen-house. With the moonlight disintegrated
and softened by the trees, everything up toward the house breathed
peace. Out here in the garden, however, where the gold light beat down
straightly, there was a sense of waiting, unrest, sweet and tumultuous.
Out here in the garden it was glorious, but it was not peaceful. What
was it that was responsible for that misty halation of incompleteness,
longing? the shaking breath of the wide-lipped roses? the secrets within
the bowed slender lilies? the tortured joy of the whole garden life of
fragrance and beauty?
Over by the old vine-covered stump there was a gleam of white, swaying a
little, breathing a little, it seemed, and Steering went toward it,
strength coming back into his limbs, his head lifting as he came, his
arms outheld.
"I hoped that you would come, Mr. Steering. I have been waiting a long
time for you," she said, not moving, her eyes meeting his, something in
her face, her rigidity, stopping him. Her hands were pale and still on
the grey-green of the vines; her face had caught the wild, gold gleam of
the moon. "I wanted to tell you myself about that letter, Mr. Steering.
I wanted to tell you myself about the Tigmores being yours. I have grown
afraid, out here in the dark, that Piney might not have been able to
make you understand, might have misled you in some way about--what I
said. I was very much excited when I talked to Piney, Mr. Steering, and
I am not sure that I made it clear to him that I am very glad indeed
that the hills are yours at last; glad because we are--or have
been--such good friends, Mr. Steering, glad for that reason--for
friendship's sake, and for nothing," her voice wandered, and the beat of
her low broad breast was girlishly pitiful, "else, but friend----" she
could not go on.
"Ship," suggested Bruce, with a great desire to help her, but very much
at sea. Was it to be failure, after all? Had Piney made a vast mistake?
This proud, pale woman here--suddenly an awful timidity seized him, but
he shook himself out of that brusquely and came on. "_She loves you,
don't you go fergit that!_" Piney's admonition piped up to him on a high
and tuneful memory. He realised that he was walking a path through the
flower-tangled, pretty precariousness of romance as he came on toward
her--potential lovers' quarrels, separation, the irate parent, a girl's
pride, her foolish, solemn effort to fight him back for fear that she
had led him on too far, a man's uneasy timidity, the complication of
their circumstances--the memory of them all made little snares for his
feet, as he came on toward her. But he came on, growing bolder as he
came, deciding what to do as he came. It was a crisis for romance as he
faced her across the old vine-covered stump. He put his hands down on
the stump near her hands, and his face caught the gleam of the light
overhead, as hers did.
"Piney has just pulled me out of the river," he said in a wan voice,
"and it was all I could do to get here. I--I am as shaky as a kitten."
She looked up at him, betrayed into it by his careful conservation of
that weakness in his voice, and, seeing how pale he was, her hands stole
in under his. "Oh, but I am weak, _and_ sick!" he went on, pursuing his
advantage mercilessly, his hands closing over hers, while her face
leaned toward him, all lit and trembling, "I am weak, but I love you
so!"
"Ah--h!" she cried, a shaking, joyful cry, "you ought to have said that
long ago, Bruce! Tying my hands all winter! _Now_, it doesn't matter
which of us owns the old hills, does it?"
It was there, under the pale, wild light of the moon, with the
wide-lipped roses, the slender-bowed lilies, the tremulous fragrance,
the delicate unrest, the tortured joy of the garden's life of beauty all
around them, that she crept into his arms shyly and radiantly. The trees
rustled with low glad music, and the night air seemed full of mystic
influences, blessings, happinesses.
From the quiet house beyond, there drifted toward them the sense of
late-come, profound peace.
_Chapter Nineteen_
WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE
There was a vast turmoil in Canaan. For the matter of that, there was a
vast turmoil far out the road toward Poetical, and away across Big Wheat
Valley, and all over We-all Prairie. The very air was a-tremble. In
Canaan all the stores were closed or closing. Court House Square was
full of vehicles that seemed poised at the very moment of departure;
people were laughing or talking excitedly, with foolish good-humour, as
though they did not know what they were saying, but realised that it
made precious little difference whether they knew or not. Children were
being lifted into waggons, surreys, buggies. Great hampers were being
stowed and re-arranged under the seats of the vehicles, sometimes tied
to the single-trees to swing there with solemn, heavy gaiety. Young men,
very alert, in red neckties and unbuttoned kid gloves, wheeled and
turned recklessly through the streets in light road sulkies, drawn by
high-stepping trotters. Dogs trotted about with their tails in the air,
sniffing, quivering; there was a warm, cutting smell of harness,
axle-grease, horse-flesh. The sun beat down upon it all and into it till
the whole scene hung electrified, etched out in light, a supreme moment
on the very top of Canaan's history.
Then a young boy, with a red sash strapped over his right shoulder and
under his left arm, cantered up on a pony, pony and boy both
tremendously important.
"Piney's marshal er the day," said a big man, laughing indulgently.
"D'you know the Steerin's air sendin' that tramp-scamp to Italy?" called
another man with a bewildered, incredulous inflection in his voice.
"Well he cand go fer all me. You couldn' pull me aouter Mizzourah with
pothooks these days," declared the big man earnestly. "What's that the
tramp-boy's sayin' naow?"
The tramp-boy was making a trumpet of his hands. "All ready!" he
shouted, with one of his high, musical yodels, "Le's start!"
The lesser activities of stowing away hampers, locking store doors,
wiping children's noses, broadened quickly into a wide concerted
movement. Everybody was picking up his reins. Everybody was clucking to
his horse. Every horse was starting. Everybody was gone. Canaan was
deserted.
A long irregular cavalcade crept out across the country toward Razor
Ridge. And as it went it was constantly augmented at the cross-roads by
farmers from We-all and Big Wheat and Pewee, until waggons and surreys
and buckboards and buggies and horseback riders stretched out endlessly,
the balloons of the children, the red neckties of the young men, the
gaily flowered hats of the girls making the spectacle joyous. Then, too,
everybody was laughing, everybody was glad about something.
When the cavalcade began to defile past Madeira Place, wild cheers rang
out. Samson at the side of the big house, inspanning the Kentucky
blacks, took the demonstration to himself with hysterical joy, bowing
and gesticulating, doubling over and holding his stomach, while he
danced up and down, his white teeth showing, his eyes rolling.
"Hurrah furrum! Hurrah furrum!" came in a great rollicking volume of
sound from the road.
"Thass all ri'. Yesseh! Thanky! Thass all ri'. Yasseh! You bet!" yelled
Samson up by the house.
A girl in a gauzy black gown and a drooping black hat came out on the
front porch of the house and waved to the passing people.
"We'll be along! Yes, we are coming! Yes, we'll hurry!" There were
bright tears in the girl's eyes. A man came out of the house and stood
behind her, his arm on the door post, his face smiling. She turned to
him, the tears in her eyes, the smile on her lips.
"Aren't they pretty splendid?" she cried, a fine enthusiasm on her face
as she watched the people, "Look at them! There's something in them!
There's the best of all America in them! And they will have their chance
now."
For answer the man put his arm about her. "Greatest State in the Union,
this Missouri," he said with tremendous conviction. "Where's Uncle
Bernique?"
"Gone an hour ago."
"Well then, can't we start, too?"
The same tingle of impatience seemed to reach both at once. They ran
back into the house.
The cavalcade wound on up Ridge Road toward the Tigmores. At its
far-away end now trotted the Kentucky blacks, drawing a light trap. The
man on the box-seat was a big, deep-chested man, long and powerful of
forearm. He held the exuberant, snorting blacks easily with one hand.
The woman beside him was a good mate for him, firmly knit, strong in her
movements. Under her black hat the burnish of her hair and skin made her
look gold-dusted.
They were high up Razor Ridge. Below the Ridge, Big Wheat Valley and
We-all Prairie stretched away from the Tigmore foot-hills in broad
strips of harvest gold. The sky was brilliantly blue; even Choke Gulch's
glooms were flecked with light. The scrub-oak, the dog-wood, the
chinca-pin, the walnut, the hickory, sumach and sassafras trailed over
the Tigmores like a giant green veil. On beyond the Tigmores the pale
wide Di ran slowly, goldenly, a molten river.
As the procession went on up the hill the people called from one waggon
to another, their tongues set going by the passing of Madeira Place and
the advent of the Kentucky blacks into the procession.
"They say Miss Sally, Miz Steerin', that is, feels mighty broke up
because her paw didn' live to see all that's a-goin' on this day."
"Yass, reckin's haow that's true."
"Howdy, Miz Dade, haow you come on?"
"Huccome you to come, Asa?"
"They say the Steerin's air goin' away to-night. Goin' back East on a
visit."
"Yass, that's true. The tramp-boy is goin' along. D'you know that? Yass,
goin' to N'York, on his way to Italy. The Steerin's air sendin' him."
"Well, they cand all go whur they please, I wouldn' leave Mizzourah
these days, not me. Wy, ev' farm in the Tigmores is liable to turn into
a zinc mine any night. Say, do you know air the Steerin's to be long
gone?"
"Nope, not so long. Unc' Bernique's to run things while they away."
"Oh, well, then."
The cavalcade's forerunners had now reached the top of the Tigmore
Uplift. They began to deploy into the woods overhanging Choke Gulch. A
trail had been cut, the trees were down until it was possible to get
through with the vehicles, though it was rough going. At the end of the
newly made road a great clearing opened up to the on-coming people. The
teams were driven over to a thicket and the people spilled out of the
vehicles and swarmed over the clearing. One by one, then two by two, in
their hurry, the teams came in, until everybody had arrived. The
Kentucky blacks came last. Then there was a waiting, a restraint, the
people looked at one another. Finally their uneasiness and unspoken
question were answered by an edict from the mouth of a small upright
Frenchman, who mounted a stump and declaimed with a great flourish of
graceful pomposity:
"'Tis the wish of Mistaire and Meez Steering that none go to the mill
until that the bar-r-becue shall be end." He was generously applauded
and his fine shoulders stiffened responsively. This was the sort of
thing that Francois Placide DeLassus Bernique liked.
The people contented themselves within the clearing the little time
that remained of the morning. At one side of the clearing, fenced off by
ropes, was a long trench, across which stretched poles of tough green
hickory. On top of these poles lay great quarters of beeves, whole hogs,
slit through the belly and spread wide till the dressed flesh wrinkled
into the back-bone in thick layers, sheep, tongues, venison, an army's
rations. Down in the trench glowed the red-hot coals of a vast Vulcan
fire, set going the night before and fed and beaten all night into its
present perfect equability. Up and down the sides of the trench walked
men in great aprons, long-handled brushes, like white-wash brushes, in
their hands. These brushes they dipped into buckets of salt and pepper,
strung along the trench at regular intervals, and smeared the sizzling
meat, a sort of Titanic seasoning process.
Rough pine boards, supported on tree stumps, formed long lines of tables
on which loaves of bread were piled two feet high. Beside the bread
were great buckets of pickles, preserves, jams, whole churns of butter,
cheeses, cakes, pies, hundreds and hundreds of them, as though the whole
world had become one enormous maw with an enormous clamour for food.
The rich aroma of the sizzling meat and the slow sweet scorch of the
green hickory poles drifted up into the trees and hung there, a visible
odour, tantalising, insistent. The men who had got into their wives'
aprons and had begun to cut sandwiches at the long tables were invited
to hurry up. The men who were varnishing the meat with salt and pepper
were told that they were too slow. The boys who had begun cracking
ice were applauded. The girls who had begun to squeeze lemons
were offered help. The women who had begun to set out knives
and forks and plates were interrupted and set back by hoots of
encouragement. Children were stepped on and soothed, a continuous
performance. The committee-on-cooking got in the way of the
committee-on-washing-the-dishes; the committee-on-waiting-on-the-table
almost came to blows with the committee-on-slicing-the-bread. Toward
noon the scramble for places began. Then the people began to gorge.
There was a constant reaching and grabbing. The clearing resounded with
phrases of intricate politeness:
"Thank you to trouble you fer one them pickles, Si."
"Please'm gi' me a little your tongue, Miz Dade."
"Reach me some more bread, if you don't care whut you do, Quin."
Beyond the long tables little private parties sat here and there, ranged
around red table-cloths, flat on the ground, stuffing, greasy-fingered,
hospitable, happy.