The gray light of early dawn had taken on a faint tint of yellow, and
the profound stillness of the air, the vast quietude of the mountain
foliage and drooping corn-blades gave warning of the fierce heat that
was to follow.
Dixie Hart turned her head drowsily on her pillow and opened her eyes
and closed them again. "Oh, I could sleep, sleep, sleep till doomsday,"
she said to herself. "I wish I didn't have to get up. I'd like to take
one day off. I could lie here flat on my back till night. But, old girl,
you've got to be up an' doing."
She heard the clucking and scratching of her hens, the chirping of the
tiny chickens, and the lusty crowing of her roosters in their answering
calls to neighboring fowls, the neighing of her horse in the stable, the
mooing of her cow in the barn-yard.
"They are all begging me to hurry," she mused. "They don't want to
sleep; they've had their fill through the night, while I had to be up.
Well, repining don't make good dining, and here goes."
She dressed herself, went out on the little kitchen porch, bathed in
fresh, cool well-water, and, with a coarse towel which hung from a nail
on the door-jamb, she rubbed her face, arms, and neck till they glowed
like the reddening skies.
"My two women, as sound as they pretend to sleep, are crazy for their
coffee," she smiled, "but they've got to wait, like people at a circus
do, till the animals are fed. The older folks get, the earlier they go
to bed and the earlier they rise. Heaven only knows where it will end.
If mine could get their suppers early enough they would say good-night
at sundown and good-morning when it was so dark you couldn't see 'em in
their night-clothes."
"Dixie, is that you, darling?" It was Mrs. Hart's voice, and it came
from the open window of a tiny room with a sloping roof which jutted out
from the end of the kitchen.
"Yes'm. What is it, mother?"
"Nothing." A thin hand drew a white curtain aside, and a pale, wrinkled
face, surrounded by dishevelled iron-gray hair, appeared above the
window-sill. "I just wanted to know if you was up. I heard you through
the night. Your aunt was suffering, wasn't she?"
"Yes, she couldn't sleep," Dixie replied, as she spread the damp towel
out on the shelf where the coming sun's rays would dry it. "She says she
sat too long at the spring yesterday. I got up and rubbed her arms and
chest twice with the new liniment. It smells like it's got laudanum in
it; but it didn't deaden her pain."
"I'd 'a' got up myself," Mrs. Hart said, in her plaintive tone, "but I
can't see good enough to help."
"It's well you didn't," Dixie said, lightly, "for you'd just have made
double trouble. I'd have laid down my patient and let her grin and bear
her pain while I was trotting you back to bed and making you lie there.
Don't you ever get up and go stumbling about in the dark while I'm
attending to anything like that."
"I think I'll get up and make the coffee while you are feeding," Mrs.
Hart said. "Mandy nearly dies waiting for it to come after she wakes
up."
"That's right, lay it on her," Dixie laughed, impulsively. "You are
getting like a ripe old toper who is always begging whiskey for
somebody else. You let that coffee-pot alone. The last time you tried
your hand at it you put in a double quantity of corn-meal and couldn't
understand why it didn't have a familiar smell as it was boiling."
"I believe a body does become a slave to the habit," the old woman
agreed. "The other day you was over at Carlton, and left enough already
made for dinner, I accidentally spilled it, and me and Mandy went nearly
crazy. It was one of her bad days, and she couldn't get up, and I
couldn't find the coffee."
"I remember," Dixie answered, "and you both swigged so much at supper to
make up for it that you wanted to talk all night. Oh, you two are a
funny lot! But you've got to wait this time, sure. I'm going to feed
these things and stop their noise."
She had reference to half a hundred fowls, young and old, that were
squawking loudly and fluttering on the steps and even the porch floor.
She disappeared in the kitchen and returned in a moment with a dish-pan
half filled with corn-meal, and into this she poured a quantity of
water, and with her hand stirred the mass into a thick mush. This she
began to throw here and there over the yard like a sower of grain till
the voices of the fowls had ceased and they had fled from the porch.
Then she took up a pail of swill in the kitchen and bore it down to a
pen containing a couple of fat pigs and emptied it into their wooden
trough. Going into a little corn-crib adjoining the stable and
wagon-shed, she brought out a bucketful of wheat-bran and fed it to the
cow, which stood trying to lick the back of a sleek young calf over the
low fence in another lot. "I'll milk you after breakfast," she said, as
she stroked the cow's back. "The calf will have to wait; I can't attend
to all humanity and the brute creation at the same time. You'll feel
more like suckling the frisky thing, anyway, after you've filled your
insides."
The sun was above the horizon when she had breakfast on the table in the
little kitchen. She stood in the space between the cooking-stove and the
table and attended to the wants of the half-blind woman and the all but
helpless aunt. The biscuits she had baked were light and brown as
autumnal leaves, the eggs fried with bacon in thin lean-and-fat slices
would have tempted the palate of a confirmed invalid. The aroma of the
coffee floated like a delectable substance through the still air.
"It's going to be awfully hot to-day," Mrs. Wartrace, the widowed aunt,
remarked. "I hope you are not going to hoe in the sun this morning."
"Huh!" Dixie sniffed, as she sat down at the end of the table and began
to butter a hot biscuit, "and let the crab-grass and pussley weeds
literally choke out the best stand of cotton I ever laid my eyes on. No,
siree, not me. I'd hire hands, but all the niggers have gone to town
where there are more back-doors to live at; no, there is nothing for me
to do but to look out for number one. See here, you two women don't seem
to be able to look ahead. I've paid for half of this farm in the last
three years, and in two more I'll own it. It is a good thing as it
stands, but when I'm plumb out of debt we'll take it easy and set back
in the shade once in a while. Alf Henley is a keen trader and knows what
values are, and he told me not long ago that he believed a railroad
would head for Chester some day, and, if it comes, my land would sell
for town lots. Let's let well enough alone and be thankful for the
blessings we've got. That's right, Aunt Mandy, drain it to the dregs and
I'll fill it again. I knew I'd hit it exactly right this morning by the
color of it."
Breakfast was over, and Dixie, aided by the fumbling hands of her
mother, was washing and drying the few dishes and putting them away in
the safe with perforated tin doors, which was the chief piece of
furniture in the room, when the front gate opened and closed with a
metallic click of the latch, and a visitor hurried along the little
gravelled walk to the front porch.
"It is that meddlesome Carrie Wade," Mrs. Wartrace looked into the
kitchen to say. "She's got on a new muslin, and has come over to show
it, even as early as this."
"I'm not going to stand at the door and knock like a stranger," the
visitor cried out, as she entered the little front hallway and rustled
back to the kitchen. "Hello, Dix; Martha Sims and me are invited to
spend the day over at Treadwell's. You know the new lumber-camp is
there, and there's some dandy fellows working at it. They are going to
give a dance, an' told us to send Ned Jones over with his fiddle. Oh, we
are going to have a rattling time. We agreed to get up early. It seems
funny, don't it? It's been many a day since I saw the sun rise."
The speaker was a tall blonde about Dixie's age. She was thin, inclined
to paleness, and had a nervous look.
Dixie was drying her hands on a dishcloth, and she turned upon the
visitor, surveying her carefully from her rather worn shoes to the newer
dress and gaudily flowered hat with its tinsel ornaments and flowing
pink ribbons. She knew full well that her neighbor had come for the sole
purpose of showing her finery, and was secretly gloating over her
misfortune in having to remain behind, and yet she allowed this
knowledge in no way to affect her demeanor.
"You'll have a glorious time," Dixie said. "It's going to be a fine day
for a picnic and dance."
"How do you like my dress?" Miss Wade asked, turning round for the
inspection.
"It's very pretty, and pink suits you," Dixie answered, touching one of
the folds of the skirt.
"It's entirely too long in front," Mrs. Hart said, as she bent forward
and squinted sidewise with quite a visible sneer. "You'd look powerful
funny walking along kicking up the skirt behind. With a veil on nobody
could tell whether you was going or coming. Take my word for it--that
stuff'll fade, even in the sun. You won't get more than one or two
wearings out of it."
"Oh, do you think so?" The blond face fell. "I was a little afraid of
that myself, and maybe you are right about the fit behind, too."
"Mother doesn't know what she's talking about," Dixie said, with a
reproachful glance at her parent, who frowningly hovered on the verge of
another criticism. "It is the way you've put the flounce on, Carrie,
that makes it look that way in front. Wait, let me pin it up."
"Pin it up, I say!" Mrs. Hart sniffed. "You'll never get it to look
decent that way. Nothing but making the whole thing plumb over will do
any good. You ought to have got you a new sash to go with the muslin;
weak-eyed as I am, I can see the dirty, faded edges agin the new cloth.
The two don't go together. In war-times it was considered excusable to
botch things that way, but not in this day and time when all
_industrious_ folks can get what's needed."
Dixie looked up regretfully, and a flush of embarrassment climbed into
her fine face as her mother, accompanied by her silent sister, swept
stiffly from the room.
When Carrie Wade had left, after her by no means triumphant call, Dixie
went to her mother, who stood in the yard under an apple-tree, still
with a frown on her really gentle face.
"You oughtn't to have said all that, mother," Dixie said, as she leaned
on the smooth handle of the hoe she was going to take to the field.
"After all, she was in _our_ house."
"And come in it like a yellow-fanged snake with its forked tongue fairly
dripping with poison," was the ready retort. "She come to gloat over
you as she always has since the day you cut her out of that young man.
She knowed you were going to work at home to-day, and she had the
littleness to traipse over here to try to make you feel like you was
missing something awful grand. If I hadn't left the kitchen I wouldn't
have stopped with what I said about her flimsy dress. I'd have told her
that if she'd stay at home more, and keep the holes in her stockings
darned, and her underclothes cleaner, she'd stand a better chance roping
in some fool man. I'm plain and outspoken, and I resent sneaking hints
and false grins as quick as I do slaps. I'm tired o' you doing the way
you are, anyhow. I want you to be like the rest of the girls. What do we
care about owning this farm. Her daddy can't buy a knitting-needle on
time, and yet they live as well as anybody else, and she thinks she is a
grade higher than the rest of us."
"Don't you let it bother you, Muttie," Dixie said, tenderly; indeed, she
was always moved by a demonstration of her mother's love, and her eyes
were moist as she put a caressing hand on the gray locks of the little
woman. "We are going to see it through. When the farm is plumb paid for
we'll make Carrie so sick with our fine doings she'll wish she was
dead."
"It is mighty hard," the old lips quivered, and the gaunt, blue-veined
hand was raised to the dim eyes. "I can't stand to see that girl going
to places you can't go to. I simply can't, that's all."
"I could have gone, mother," Dixie remarked. "I didn't tell her, for I
knew exactly what she would say, but Hank Bradley met me on the way home
yesterday and offered to drive me over there. He says he knows all the
lumber crowd well."
"Hank Bradley--did he want to take you?" cried Mrs. Hart, "and you
wouldn't go?"
"I couldn't, mother. You know every girl that has ever kept company
with him has been talked about. I don't like him. I can't stand him.
He's a bad man, mother--a gambler, a drunkard, and an idler. He doesn't
care for the characters he has ruined. He's fast running through the
money his mother left him; he's no good."
"I don't know that you did exactly right," Mrs. Hart said, with the
indecision and bad logic into which her ill-fortune sometimes drew her.
"I know what he is well enough, but you are able to take care of
yourself, and you lose so many chances by being so particular. He knows
your true worth, and I've knowed men even as bad as he is to be reformed
by loving a good girl."
"I ain't in the reforming business," Dixie laughed. "I'd rather fight
crab-grass and pussley weeds, and I'm off now. You go back in the house
and set down and don't talk about the picnic. I sha'n't even think about
it. I never bother about anything when I get warmed up."
Without a word further the two parted. Mrs. Hart stood on the little
porch, and Dixie crossed the stretch of green meadow-land and climbed
over the rail-fence of her cotton-field. The long rows of succulent
plants, as high as the girl's knees, seemed breathing, conscious things
to which she was giving relief as she smoothly cut away the tenaciously
encroaching weeds and deep-rooted grass, the heaviest bunches of which
she took up and threshed against the hoe-handle and left in the sun to
die lest they be revived by some shower which would beat their roots
into the mellow soil again. The sun rose higher and higher till it was
poised almost directly over her head, and its rays beat more fiercely
down upon her. The almost breathless air was as hot as a gust from the
open door of a furnace. Her hands, in her heavy, knitted yarn gloves,
were moist and red.
In the distance, and nearer to the village, rose the white, pretentious
house of old Silas Welborne, the money-lender and the uncle of Hank
Bradley, to whom she owed the remaining payment on her land. Almost day
and night it stood before her as a mute reminder of her difficult
undertaking. This morning, in the golden light, against the mountain
background, it seemed an inspiration, as a flag of peace might appear to
a tired soldier. Hank Bradley was the orphaned son of old Welborne's
sister, and he lived in his uncle's home in lieu of any other that was
available. He had made trips to the West and had remained away for
indefinite periods, the last being the time he had come home with the
carelessly announced death of his companion, Dick Wrinkle. The uncle and
nephew were an incongruous pair: old Welborne, with his miserly grasp on
the vitals of half the county, and the devil-may-care Bradley, whose
wild ways made him the constant talk of the community. Old Silas gave no
thought to the fellow's reform. As the administrator of his sister's
estate, he doled out honestly enough the various sums in rents,
dividends, and interest to which the young man was entitled after his
liberal fees as administrator had been deducted, and even smiled when
told of Bradley's reckless and almost criminal escapades. Henley had
once remarked in his keenly observant way that Welborne, being the next
of kin, would be glad to hear that his nephew had died with his boots on
in some one of the lynching affairs to which Bradley was suspected of
being a party.
Dixie had reached the farthest end of one of her longest cotton-rows,
and was turning to work homeward on another, when the branches of the
bushes of a near-by coppice parted and Bradley, with a fowling-piece on
his arm, appeared.
"Good gracious, you _are_ a queer girl!" he laughed, as he advanced to
the low fence and climbed to a seat upon it. "Working here like a
corn-field nigger in sun hot enough to bake a potato, when you could
have been gliding through the shade behind my horse--to say nothing of
the picnic and dance when we got there."
She pushed back the hood of her bonnet and smiled faintly.
"Driving and dancing ain't paying debts," she said, "and there is no
other time to do this work. You know your uncle well enough to
understand what he expects of folks unlucky enough to be on his books."
"That's another thing I can't understand," the young man said, bracing
his heels on one of the rails, and, with his gun across his lap, he
began to twist his stiff brown mustache, while his dark eyes rested with
growing warmth on her trim figure. "What in the name of common-sense do
you want to own land for?"
"What does a body want to _breathe_ for?" Dixie asked him, sharply, "or
own the duds on your back, or the grub you eat? Why, it is simply to be
independent. I wouldn't quake and shiver every time that old man meets
me if I wasn't in his clutch. I ain't afraid of anybody else, but I am
of him, and why? Because he's got me where he can do as he likes with
me. The last time I went to explain why I couldn't meet the payments
exactly to the day, he growled like a bear, and said if I didn't look
sharp he'd sell the roof over my head."
"Well, we needn't talk about him," the handsome daredevil said. "What I
want to know is why you'd rather hoe cotton in weather like this than go
with me to a jolly picnic. Why, Dixie, you don't begin to know your
power; you could do as you like in this world, if you only would. You
are the best-looking girl in the county, and you grow prettier every
day. The blood of life is in your veins; you haven't got the sickly,
palish look that the girls have who stay indoors half the time. You've
got a clear eye, a good figure, and a complexion that society women
would give big money for."
"You needn't begin all that again." The girl lowered her head and half
raised her hoe to strike at a weed near a stalk of cotton. "I know what
I am well enough. I was born with a load on me, and I'm going to tote it
till I get to a dumping-place. My good looks won't set the world on
fire."
"Well, they have set _me_ on fire," Bradley laughed, significantly. He
lowered his feet to the ground on her side of the fence and leaned his
gun against it. "Say, this sun will actually blister us; let's go down
to the spring."
"No spring for me to-day," she said, grimly. "I see Aunt Mandy on the
back porch now. She'll hang out a towel in a minute. That's the signal
that it is half-past eleven by the clock. I've got to go cook dinner."
"Well, I'll walk over with you."
"No, you mustn't."
"Why?"
"Because I'd rather you wouldn't--that's all."
"I declare I believe you mean that, and I won't push myself on you,
Dixie. You know how I feel about you, and you oughtn't to be so
dadblasted rough with a fellow. I think about you night and day. I
didn't come out to shoot anything this morning. I simply couldn't get
over the way you turned me down yesterday. I lay awake last night
thinking about it, and so I waited for you this morning. I stayed in the
bushes over there watching till you hoed up here. I don't believe I'll
ever get over feeling that way, and I am not going to give up. I'm going
to keep hoping."
"There goes my towel!" Dixie said, as she laid her hoe across her
shoulder. "I must go. Don't follow me, Hank. I don't want her, or
anybody else, to see me out here with you."
"Then come out to the fence this evening, after supper, won't you, just
a minute?"
"No, I can't--I never leave the house after dark. They need me at home."
"Blast them, what have they got to do with you? You are already a slave
to them. Well, good-bye. You'll change your mind some day."
He held out his hand with a smile, but she refused to take it.
"You won't even shake hands. Why, what is the matter with you? I can see
that you are mad at me by the twitching of--Do you know, Dixie, you have
the most maddening mouth and lips that a woman ever owned? Say, shake
just once to show that we are friends."
"I won't. I did it once and you held me and tried to kiss me. I'll tell
you now in dead earnest, Hank, you must never try that sort of a thing
again. I mean it, as God is my judge, I do."
"I never will while you hold a hoe in your grip," he jested, with a
thwarted smile, as she turned from him.
He stepped back to his gun and stood watching her as she plodded
homeward. "I can't help it," he said, a dark, desperate look on his
face. "I simply can't quit thinking about her. I've got staying
qualities, and no man ever gained his point that paid the slightest
attention to a woman's moods. Right now she may be wishing she'd gone to
the picnic."