Pap told his story. Driving across the flank of Yellow Old Bald, beyond
Lost Cabin, he had passed a woman with five children sitting beside the
road in Big Buck Gap.
“Cornely, she looked like a picture out of a book,” whispered Pap. “This
chap's the livin' image of her. Portugee blood--touch o' that melungeon
tribe from over in the Fur Cove. She had a little smooth face shaped like a
aig; that curly hair hangin' clean to her waist, dark like this baby's, but
with the sun all through it; these eyebrows o' his'n that's lifted in the
middle o' his forred, like he cain't see why some onkindness was did him;
and little slim hands and feet; all mighty furrin to the mountains. I give
'er a lift--she was goin' to Hepzibah, huntin' fer some kind o' charity
she'd heard could be got there; and this little trick he tuck to me right
then.”
The woman bent over and looked long at the small olive face, so delicately
cut, the damp rings of hair on his forehead, the tragic lift of the brows
above the nose bridge, the thin-lipped scarlet mouth. “My baby,” she
murmured; then lifted her glance with the question: “An' how come ye to
have him? Did she--did that womern--”
“No, no. 'Twas this-a-way,” Pap interrupted her. “When I came back from Big
Turkey Track, I went down through Hepzibah--I couldn't git this chap's
eyes--ner his little hands--out o' my head; I found myse'f a-studyin' on
'em the hull enjurin' time. She was dead when I got thar. She'd died to
Squire Cannon's, and they was a-passellin' out the chillen 'mongst the
neighbors. No sooner I put foot on the po'ch 'n this little soul come
a-runnin' to me, an' says: W'y, here's my pappy, now. I tole you-all I did
have a pappy. Now look--see--here he is.' Then he peeked up at me, and he
put up his little arms, an' he says, jest as petted, and yit a little
skeered, he says, 'Take me, pappy.' When I tuck him up, he grabbed me round
the neck and dug his little face into mine. Then he looked around at all
the folks, and sort o' shivered, and put his face back in my neck--still ez
a little possum when you've killed the old ones an' split up the tree an'
drug out the nest.”
Both faces were wet with tears now. Pap went on: “I had the papers made
right out--I knowed you'd say yes, Cornely. He's Samuel Ephraim Overholt.
A-comin' home, the little weenty chap looks up at me suddent an' axes, 'Is
they a mammy to we-all's house whar we goin' now?' Lord! Lord!” Pap shook
his head gently, as signifying the utter inadequacy of mere words.
Little Sammy grew and thrived in the Overholt home. The tiny rootlets of
his avid, unconscious baby life he thrust out in all directions through
that kind soil, sucking, sucking, grasping, laying hold, drawing to him and
his great little needs sustenance material and spiritual. More keen and
capable to penetrate were those thready little fibres than the irresistible
water-seeking tap-root of the cottonwood or the mesquite of the plains;
more powerful to clasp and to hold than the cablelike roots of the
rock-embracing cedar. The little new member was so much living sunshine,
gay, witching, brilliant, erratic in disposition as he was singular and
beautiful in his form and coloring, but always irresistibly endearing,
dangerously winning. When he had been Sammy Overholt only two weeks, he sat
at table with his parents one day and scornfully rejected the little plate
that was put before him.
“No!” he cried, sharply. “No, no! I won't have it--ole nassy plate!”
“W'y, baby! W'y, Sammy,” deprecated Cornelia, “that's yo' own little plate
that mammy washed for you. You mustn't call it naisty.”
“Hit air nassy,” insisted young Samuel. “Hit got 'pecks--see!” and the
small finger pointed to some minute flaw in the ware which showed as little
dots on the white surface.
Cornelia, who, though mild and serene, was possessed of firmness and a
sense of justice, would have had the matter fairly settled. “He ort not to
cut up this-away, John,” she urged. “He ort to take his little plate and
behave hisse'f; 'r else he ort to be spanked,--he really ort, John, in
jestice to the child.”
But John was of another mould. “Law, Cornely! Hit's jest baby-doin's. The
idee o' him a-settin' up 'at yo' dishes ain't clean! That shore do beat
all!” And he had executed an exchange of plates under Cornelia's
deprecating eyes. And so the matter went.
Again, upon a June day, Sammy was at play with the scion of the only negro
family which had ever been known in all the Turkey Track regions. The
Southern mountaineers have little affinity, socially or politically, with
the people of the settlements. There were never any slaveholders among
them, and the few isolated negroes were treated with almost perfect
equality by the simple-minded mountain dwellers.
“Sammy honey, you an' Jimmy mus' cl'ar up yo' litter here. Don't leave it
on mammy's nice flo'. Hit's mighty nigh supper-time. Cl'ar up now, 'fo'
Pappy comes.”
Sammy stiffened his little figure to a startling rigidity. “I ain't a-goin'
to work!” he flung out. “Let him do it; _he's a nigger_!” And this was the
last word of the argument.
This was Sammy--handsome, graceful, exceedingly winning, sudden and
passionate, disdaining like a young zebra the yoke of labor, and, when
crossed, absolutely beyond all reason or bounds; the life of every
gathering of young people as he grew up; much made of, deferred to, sought
after, yet everywhere blamed as undutiful and ungrateful.
“Oh, I do p'intedly wish the neighbors would leave us alone,” sighed Pap
Overholt, when these reports came to him. “As ef I didn't know what I
wanted--as ef I couldn't raise my own chile;” and as he said this he ever
avoided Aunt Cornelia's honest eye.
It was when Sammy was eighteen, the best dressed, the best horsed--and the
idlest--to be found from Little Turkey Track to the Fur Cove, from Tatum's
to Big Buck Gap--that he went one day, riding his sorrel filly, down to
Hepzibah, ostensibly to do some errands for Aunt Cornelia, but in fact
simply in search of a good time. The next day Blev Straly, a rifle over his
shoulder and a couple of hounds at heel, stopped a moment at the
chopping-block where Pap was splitting some kindling.
“I was a-passin',” he explained--“I was jest a-passin', an' I 'lowed I'd
drap in an' tell ye 'bout Sammy. Hit better be me than somebody 'at likes
to carry mean tales and wants to watch folks suffer.” Aunt Cornelia was
beside her husband now.
“No, no,” Blev answered the look on the two faces; “nothin' ain't the
matter of Sammy. He's jest married--that little Huldy Frew 'at's been
waitin' on table at Aunt Randy Card's _ho_-tel. You know, Aunt Cornely, she
is a mighty pretty little trick--and there ain't nothin' bad about the gal.
I jest knowed you and Pap 'ud feel mighty hurt over Sammy doin' you-all
like you was cruel to him--like he had to run away to git married; and I
'lowed I better come and tell you fust.”
The “little Huldy gal” was, as Blev Straly had described her, a mighty
pretty little trick, and nothing bad about her. The orphan child of poor
mountaineers, bound out since the death of her parents when she was ten
years old, she had been two years now working for Aunt Randy Card, who kept
the primitive hotel at Hepzibah. Even in this remote region Huldy showed
that wonderful--that irrepressible--upward impulse of young feminine
America, that instinctive affinity for the finer things of life, that
marvellous understanding of graces and refinements, and that pathetic and
persistent groping after them which is the marked characteristic of
America's daughters. The child was not yet sixteen, a fair little thing
with soft ashen hair and honest gray eyes, the pink upon her cheek like
that of a New England girl.
At first this marriage--which had been so unkindly conducted by Sammy, used
by him apparently as a weapon of affront--seemed to bring with it only
good, only happiness. The boy was more contented at home, less wayward, and
the feeling of apprehension that had dwelt continually in the hearts of Pap
and Aunt Cornelia ever since his adolescence now slept. The little
Huldy--her own small cup apparently full of happiness--was all affectionate
gratitude and docility. She healed the bruises Sammy made, poured balm in
the wounds he inflicted; she was sunny, obedient, grateful enough for two.
But a new trait was developed in Sammy's nature--perversity. Life was made
smooth to his feet; the things he needed--even the things which he merely
desired--were procured and brought to him. Love brooded above and around
him--timid, chidden, but absolute, adoring. Nothing was left him--no
occupation was offered for his energies--but to resent these things, to
quarrel with his benefits. And now the quarrel began.
Its outcome was this: Toward the end of the first year of the marriage,
upon a bleak, forbidding March day--a day of bitter wind and icy
sleet,--there rode one to the Overholt door who called upon Pap and Aunt
Cornelia to hitch up and come with all possible haste to old Eph'm
Blackshears, Cornelia's father--a man who had lived to fourscore, and who
now lay at his last, asking for his daughter, his baby chile, Cornely.
For days Sammy had been in a very ill-promising mood; but he brightened as
the foster-parents drove away in the bleak, gray, hostile forenoon, Huldy
helping Aunt Cornelia to dress and make ready, tucking her lovingly into
the wagon and beneath the thick old quilt.
The elder woman yearned over the girl with a mother's compassionate
tenderness. Both Aunt Cornelia and Pap John looked with a passionate,
delighted anticipation to when they would have their own child's baby upon
their hearth. It was the more notable marks of this tenderness, of this
joyous anticipation, which Sammy had begun to resent--the gifts and the
labors showered upon the young wife in relation to her coming importance,
which he had barely come short of refusing and repelling. “Whose wife is
she, I'd like to know? Looks like I cain't do nothin' for my own
woman--a-givin' an' a-givin' to Huldy, like she was some po' white trash,
some beggar!” But he had only “sulled,” as his mother called it, never
quite able to reach the point he desired of actually flinging the care, the
gifts, and the loving labors back in the foster-parents' faces.
Pappy Blackshears passed away quietly in the evening; and when he had been
made ready for his grave by Cornelia's hands, her anxiety for the little
daughter at home would not let her remain longer.
“I'm jest 'bleeged to go to Huldy,” she explained to the relatives and
neighbors gathered at the old Blackshears place. “I p'intedly dassent to
leave her over one night--and not a soul with her but Sammy, and he nothin'
but a chile--and not a neighbor within a mild of our place--and sech a
night! Pap and me we'll hitch up an' mak' 'as'e back to Huldy. We'll be
here to the funeral a Sunday--but I dassent to stay away from Huldy nair
another hour now.” And so, at ten o'clock that bitter night, Pap and Aunt
Cornelia came hurrying home.
As the wagon drove up the mountain trail to the house, the hounds came
belling joyously to meet them; but no light gleamed cheerfully from the
windows; no door was flung gayly open; no little Huldy cried out her glad
greeting. Filled with formless apprehensions, Pap climbed over the wheel,
lifted Cornelia down, and dreading they knew not what, the two
went,--holding by each other's hand,--opened the door, and entered,
shrinking and reluctant. They blew the smouldering coals to a little flame,
piled on light-wood till the broad blaze rolled up the chimney, then looked
about. No living soul was in any room. Finally Cornelia caught sight of a
bit of paper stuck upon the high mantel. She tore it down, and the two read
slowly and laboriously together the few lines written in Sammy's hand:
“I ain't going to allow my wife to live off any man's charity. I ain't
going to be made to look like nothing in the eyes of people any longer.
I've taken my wife to my own place, where I can support her myself. I had
to borrow your ox-cart and steers to move with, and Huldy made me bring
some things she said mother had give her, but I'll pay all this back, and
more, for I intend to be independent and not live on any man's bounty.
“Respectfully, your son,
“SAMUEL”
The two old faces, pallid and grief-struck, confronted each other in the
shaken radiance of the pine fire.
“Oh, my po' chile, my po' little Huldy! Whar? His own place! My law!--whar?
Whar has he drug that little soul?”
An intuition flashed into Pap Overholt's mind. He grasped his wife's arm.
“W'y, Cornely,” he cried, “hit's that cabin on The Bench! Don't ye know,
honey? I give him that land when he was sixteen year old,--time he brung
the prize home from the school down in the settlemint.”
“The Bench! Oh, Lord--The Bench! W'y, hit 'll be the death of her. John, we
cain't git to her too quick.” And she ran from cupboard to press, from
press to chest, from chest to bureau drawer, piling into John's arms the
flask of brandy, the homely medicines, the warm garments, such bits of food
as she could catch up that were palatable and portable. Pap, with more
vulnerable emotions and less resolute nature, was incapable of speech; he
could only suffer dumbly.
Arrived at the abandoned cabin on The Bench, the picture that greeted them
crushed Pap's soft heart to powder, but roused in Aunt Cornelia a rage that
would have resulted in a sharp settlement with Sammy, had it not been that,
now as always, to reach the offender a blow must go through that same
pitiful heart of John's. The young people had not long been at the cabin
when the parents arrived. The little Huldy, moaning piteously, with a
stricken, terrified look in her big, childish eyes, was crouched upon the
floor beside a rickety chair. Sammy, sullen and defiant, was at the
desolate hearth, fumbling with unskilled hands at the sodden chunks of wood
he had there gathered.
The situation was past words. Pap, after one look at Huldy, went about the
fire-building, the slow tears rolling down his cheeks. While Aunt Cornelia
brought the bedding, the warm blankets and wrappings, and made the little
suffering creature a comfortable couch, Pap wrought at the forlorn, gaping
fireplace like a suffering giant. When the leaping flames danced and
shouted up the chimney till the whole cabin was filled with the physical
joy of their light and warmth, when steaming coffee and the hastily fetched
food had been served to the others, and the little wife lay quietly for the
moment, the two elders talked together outside where a corner of the cabin
cut off the driving sleet. Then Sammy was included, and another council was
held, this time of three.
No. He would not budge. That was _his_ wife. A fellow that was man enough
to have a wife ought to be man enough to take keer of her. He wasn't going
to have his child born in the house of charity. There was no thoroughfare.
Sammy was allowed to withdraw, and the council of two was resumed. As a
result of its deliberations, Pap John drove away through the darkness and
the sleet. By midnight two trips had been made between the big double log
house at the Overholt place and the wretched cabin on The Bench, and all
that Sammy would suffer to be brought to them or done for them had been
brought and done. The cabin was, in a very humble way, inhabitable. There
was food and a small provision for the immediate present. And here, upon
that wild March night of screaming wind and sleet, and with only Aunt
Cornelia as doctor and nurse, Huldy's child was born.
And now a new order of things began.
Sammy's energies appeared to be devoted to the thwarting of Pap Overholt's
care and benefits. There should be no cow brought to the cabin; and so Pap
John, who was getting on in years now, and had long since given up hard,
active work, hastened from his bed at four o'clock in the morning, milked a
cow, and carried the pail of fresh milk to Huldy and the baby, furtively,
apologetically. The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into
the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The
Bench was rich alluvial soil. Sammy, in his first burst of independence,
ploughed it (borrowing mule and plough from a neighbor--the one neighbor
ever known to be on ill terms with Pap Overholt), and planted it to corn.
He put in a little garden, too; while Pap had achieved the establishment of
a small colony of hens (every one of whom, it appeared, laid two or three
eggs each day--at least that was the way the count came out).
The baby thrived, unconscious of all the grief, the perverse cruelty, the
baffled, defeated tenderness about her, and was the light of Pap Overholt's
doting eyes, the delight of Aunt Cornelia's heart. When she was eighteen
months old, and could toddle about and run to meet them, and chattered that
wonderful language which these two hearts of love had all their lives
yearned to hear--the dialect of babyhood,--the twin boys came to the cabin
on The Bench. And Pap Overholt's lines were harder than ever. Cornelia had
sterner stuff in her. She would have called a halt.
“Oh, John!” she expostulated finally, when she saw her husband come home
crestfallen one day, with a ham which Sammy had detected him smuggling into
the cabin and ordered back,--“John honey, ef you was to stop toting things
to the cabin and let it all alone--not pester with it another--”
“Cornely, Cornely!” cried Pap John, “you know Sammy cain't no mo' keep a
wife and chillen than a peckerwood kin. W'y, they'd starve! Huldy and the
chaps would jest p'intedly starve.”
“No, they won't, John. Ef you could master yo' own soft heart--ef you could
stay away (like he's tole ye a minny a time to do, knowin' 'at you was safe
not to mind him)--Sammy would stop this here foolishness. He'd come to his
senses and be thankful for what the Lord sent, like other people. W'y,
John--”
“Cornely honey--don't. Don't ye say another word. I tell ye, this last year
there's a feelin' in my throat and in my breast--hyer,”--he laid his hand
pathetically over his heart,--“a cur'us, gone, flutterin' feelin'. And when
Sammy r'ars up and threatens he'll take Huldy and the chaps--you know,”--he
finished with a gesture of the hand and a glance of unspeakable
pain,--“when he does that 'ar way, or something comes at me sudden like
that--that we may lose 'em, hit seems like--right hyer,”--and his hand went
again to his heart,--“that I can't bear it--that hit 'll take my life.”
This was the last time Cornelia ever remonstrated with Pap John. She had a
little talk with the new doctor from Hepzibah who bad succeeded old Dr.
Pastergood; and after that John was added to the list of her anxieties. He
might carry the milk to the cabin on The Bench; he might slip in, when he
deemed Sammy away--or asleep--and plough the corn; she saw the tragic folly
of it, but must be silent. And so on that particular June morning, when Pap
had put up the mule, clambered down the short-cut footway from The Bench to
the old house, stopping several times to shake his head again and murmur to
himself--“Whut you gwine do? There's them chaps; there's Huldy. Mustn't
plough his co'n; mustn't take over air cow. Whut you gwine do?”--Aunt
Cornelia's seeing eye noted his perturbation the moment he came in at the
door. With tender guile she built up a considerable argument in the matter
of a quarterly meeting which was approaching--the grove quarterly, in which
Pap John was unfailingly interested, and during which there were always
from two to half a dozen preachers, old and young, staying with them. So
she led him away--ever so little away--from his ever-present grief.
It was the next day that he said to her, “Cornely, I p'intedly ain't gwine
to suffer this hyer filchin' o' co'n them Fusons is a-keepin' up on me.”
“Is the Fusons a-stealin' yo' co'n, John?” she responded, in surprise.
“W'y, they got a-plenty, ain't they?”
“Well, no, not adzactly, that is to say, Buck Fuson ain't got a-plenty. He
too lazy and shif'less to make co'n of his own; and he like too well to
filch co'n from them he puts his spite on. Buck Fuson he tuck a spite at
me, last time the raiders was up atter that Fuson hideout; jes set up an'
swore 'at I'd gin the word to 'em. You see, honey, he makes him up a spite
that-a-way--jes out o' nothin'--'cause hit's sech a handy thing to have
around when he comes to want co'n. Thar's some one already purvided to
steal from--some one 'at's done him a injury.”
“Pappy! W'y, Johnny honey, sakes alive! What air ye ever a-gwine to do
'long o' that there thing?” For the old man had laboriously fetched out a
rusty wolf-trap, and was now earnestly inspecting and overhauling it.
“Whut am I a-gwine to do 'long o' this hyer, Cornely? W'y, I am jes
p'intedly a-gwine to set it in my grain-room. Buck Fuson air a bad man,
honey. There's two men's blood to his count. They cain't nothin' be done to
him for nair a one of 'em--you know, same's I do--'ca'se hit cain't be
proved in a co't o' law. But I kin ketch him in this meanness with this
hyer little jigger, and I'm a-gwine to do hit, jest ez sure ez my name's
John Overholt!”
“Oh, Pappy! A leetle bit o' co'n fer a man's chillen--”
“Now, Cornely honey, that's a womern! Buck Fuson is the wrong kind o' man
to have round. He's ben a stealin' my co'n now fer two weeks and mo'. Ef I
kin ketch him right out, and give him a fa'r shamin', he'll quit the Turkey
Tracks fer good. So fer as Elmiry and the chaps is consarned, they'll be
better off without Buck 'n what they is with him.”
At this moment Aunt Cornelia cried out joyously, “Oh, thar's my chile!” and
ran to meet her daughter-in-law. The little girl--Cornelia the
second--could navigate bravely by herself now, and Huldy was carrying the
lusty twin boys. In the flutter of delight over this stolen visit, the ugly
wolf-trap threat was forgotten. It had been a month and more since Sammy
had set foot in his parents' house. It had gone all over both Turkey Tracks
that Sam Overholt declared he would never darken Pap Overholt's door
again--Pap Overholt, who had tried to make a pauper of him, loading him
with gifts and benefits, like he was shif'less, no-'count white trash! The
little Huldy reported him gone to Far Canaan, over beyond Big Turkey Track,
in the matter of some employment, which he had not deigned to make clearer
to his wife. He would not be back until the day after to-morrow; and
meantime she might stay with the old folks two whole days and nights! In
the severe school to which life had put her, the little Huldy had developed
an astonishing amount of character, of shrewdness, and perception, and a
very fair philosophy of her own. To the elder woman's sad observation that
it was mighty strange what made Sammy so “onthankful” and so “ha'sh” to his
pappy, who had done so much for him, Huldy responded,
“No, Aunt Cornely, hit ain't strange, not a bit.”
“Ain't strange? Huldy child, what do you mean?”
“W'y, don't you know, Aunt Cornely, ef he do Pappy that-a-way, when Pappy
do so much fer him, then he don't have to be thankful. When everybody's
a-tellin' him, 'Yo' pap's so kind, yo' pap does everything for you; look
like you cain't be good enough to him,' he 'bleeged to find some way to
shake off all that thankfulness 'at's sech a burden to him. And so when
Pappy come a-totin' milk, an' a-totin' pork, an' a-ploughin' his co'n outen
the weeds, w'y, Sammy jest draw down his face an' look black at Pappy, and
make like he mad at him--like he don't want none o' them things--like Pappy
jest pesterin' round him fer nothin'. but meanness. Now mind, Aunt Cornely,
I ain't say Sammy knows this his own se'f. But I studied Sammy mighty well,
an' _I_ know. Sammy gittin' tell he do me the same way. I wait on him hand
and foot; I cook his bacon jest like he tol' me you did it fer him. I fix
everything the best I kin (and mebby all three of the chillen a-cryin'
after me); and when he come in and see it all ready, and see how hard I got
it, and seem like there's a call fer him to be thankful, then Sammy jest
turns on hit all. He draw down his face at me and he say, black like: 'I
don't want no bacon--what did you fix that shirt for that-a-way? Take away
that turnip sallet--I cain't git nothin' like I want it.' Then, you know,”
with a little smile up into the other's face, half pitiful, half
saucy,--“Then you know, Sammy don't have to be thankful. Hit was all done
wrong.”