CORNWALL MEETS A MOUNTAIN MAID.
After breakfast, at which the men were first served, Mr. Rogers,
Cornwall, Mr. Saylor and Caleb, mounting their horses rode over Saylor's
three hundred-acre survey and examined the two coal banks on the
property; which only a short distance from the house had been opened and
worked about twenty feet into the mountain, for home consumption. One
was thirty-eight and the other fifty-two inches; the thick vein cropped
out about twenty feet above the creek level, the other was at a higher
level.
After their examination they returned to the house and taking seats on
the wash bench near the well, talked about every thing but the land of
which Mr. Rogers and Saylor were thinking. Finally Mr. Rogers having
waited some time for Mr. Saylor to begin, said:
"If our company can buy the Brock and Helton surveys, we will give you
thirty thousand dollars for your three hundred acres, or twenty thousand
dollars for the mineral rights with timber and right-of-way privileges
necessary to mine and remove the coal and such other minerals, oils and
gas as may be found on the property."
"By heck! my survey is worth three times that. When your company planks
down fifty thousand in cold cash we will trade,--not before. Then I will
buy one of them blue grass farms in sight of the distant blue mountains
and an automobile and a pianny and give Caleb and little Susie a chance
to go to the University at Lexington whar Tom Asher and that Hall boy
goes. O Mandy! Mr. Rogers, hayr, just offered to gin me thirty thousand
dollars for our old mountain home which we bought two year ago from old
man Roberts for five thousand. I told him we would trade her off for
fifty thousand; not such bad intrust for a mountain yahoo and his old
woman, He! Mandy! When that trade goes through; and they are bound to
take her, you can have one of them silk dresses what shows black and
blue and red and green; and Mary all the books and pot flowers and
pictures she wants. What do you say to that, Mary?" just as Mary stepped
from the kitchen to fill the brass-hooped cedar bucket at the well.
Caleb lolled on the steps in such a way as to make it impossible for any
one to descend.
"Caleb, please let me pass!"
"Oh, go round Mary, or jump down. What do yer bother a feller for?"
"Miss Mary, let me fill your bucket?"
"Thanks, Mr. Cornwall." (Caleb laughs.)
Cornwall took the bucket and twice let it down and brought it up without
a quart in it, while Caleb looked on and laughed.
Finally Mary, smiling and blushing, took hold of the pole and helped to
dip and draw up the bucket full to the brim. Then they laugh too; and
the social ice is broken between Bear Grass and Straight Creek; between
the city-bred young lawyer and Mary, the mountain girl.
Cornwall carried the bucket into the kitchen; at which Caleb, in
surprise, called out: "Dad, look! That city feller is helping Mary get
dinner."
After dinner, which Cornwall did not help get, rushing out of the
kitchen as soon as he could let go of the bucket handle, having heard
Caleb's remark; they rode over the Brock and Helton two hundred-acre
surveys and called at their homes.
Mr. Rogers contracted to purchase their land at one hundred dollars an
acre, the vendors executing bonds to convey, each receiving one thousand
dollars on the purchase price; the balance to be paid after a survey and
examination of their titles.
As they were riding home, Saylor saw a drunken man staggering down the
mountain side. When he had gotten out of sight, he dismounted and began
trailing him back up the mountain. Mr. Rogers called out, "The man went
the other way."
"Oh, I know that! I want to find out where he came from."
Saylor returned in a few minutes, his face beaming with a ruddy,
contented smile.
Then, in his usually talkative mood, he expressed his opinion of his
neighbors and the transaction in reference to their land. "There are two
more dang fools, who will move down in the blue grass and buy a farm and
be as much at home as a hoot owl on a dead snag in the noon day sun with
a flock of crows cawing at him. In about two years they will sell out to
some sharper and move back to some mountain cove or crick bottom and
start all over again; or when they gits their money they will hop the
train cars for Kansas and settle on a government claim twenty miles from
a drap of water; then mosey back here in about five years with nothing
but their kids, the old woman, two bony horses, a prairie schooner and a
yaller dog."
As they came in the door, Mary was just completing preparation for
supper. The table was made more attractive by a red figured table cloth
instead of the brown and white oil cloth one. In the center was a pot of
delicate ferns. The regular fare of corn bread, hog meat, corn field
beans, potatoes, sorghum and coffee, had been supplemented by some
nicely browned chicken, a roll of butter, biscuits and a dish of yellow
apples and red plums.
As they came to supper, a gentle rain began falling which continued long
into the night.
Cornwall, standing by his chair and noticing again that places were
prepared for the men only, said; "Mrs. Saylor, the rain makes it so cozy
and home-like, you, Miss Mary and Susie fix places and eat with us; I am
sure we will all have a better time."
Saylor stopped eating long enough to add;--"Do, it will seem like a
Christmas dinner in the summertime."
While Caleb remarked;--"He's coming along right peart."
Mary, with a laugh and blush and an appreciative smile at Mr. Cornwall,
added a place for her mother and Susie, while she served the supper.
Cornwall, who had paid little attention to the girl, furtively watching
her, was impressed by her competence and winsomeness. She was a healthy
sun-browned brunette of eighteen; had attended the Pineville graded
school for three years and the summer before passed the examination and
qualified as a teacher. She had been given the school at the forks of
the creek and was paid a salary of thirty-five dollars a month, most of
which went to pay her father's taxes and for books.
The children of her school were of divers ages and sizes. There were
lank boys taller than Mary and little girls that needed to be cuddled
and mothered. The native children, mostly a tow-headed lot, were easily
distinguished from the children of the families at the mines, whose
parents were from Naples or Palermo.
Not even the girls from Southern Italy had blacker hair or more dreamy
eyes than Mary's. Hers was a seeming nature and appearance made of a
composite of the girls of her school; natives of the hills and the
aliens of the blue Mediterranean.
Some of the foreign boys who knew little English were carefully grounded
in mathematics and certain physical sciences. Their proficiency made it
a difficult task for their immature teacher. She was aware of her
limitations and struggled faithfully to overcome them, spending many
hours to qualify herself in mathematics and as a grammarian.
That night, as the others were grouped about the door, talking or
listening to the rain, she sat near a table on which burned a small
unshaded oil lamp, studying out some grievous problems to her, in the
third arithmetic.
Cornwall, noting her worried expression and how persistently she applied
a slate rag, asked Susie, who sat near the table, to change places with
him, and moving the chair near Mary's took the slate and by a few
suggestions gave just the needed assistance; and in such a concise way
that the quick though untrained mind of the girl found no further
difficulties in solving the other problems of the lesson.
"Thanks, Mr. Cornwall, for helping me. At least tomorrow I will have the
best of those big boys. It is surprising how easy the seemingly hard
things are after you have learned to do them."
Shortly after sunrise the following morning, Mr. Rogers and Cornwall
said good-bye to their host and his family and rode off down the creek.
They had gone but a short distance when they overtook Mary and Susie on
their way to school. They rode slowly keeping pace with the walking
girls.
"Mr. Cornwall and I feel we should make our excuses for the additional
labor our visit has caused you."
"We are glad you stopped over at our home. The life is lonely at times
and the face and talk of a stranger break the monotony. Besides Mr.
Cornwall helped me with my studies. I hope when you pass this way you
will find time to stop again."
"I doubt if I shall come, but Mr. Cornwall, who is to be our local
attorney at Harlan, must return in a week or so to supervise the Brock
and Helton surveys and will be making occasional trips to Pineville.
After he becomes a better horseman you may see him occasionally riding
on his own saddle horse, comfortably seated on a hard saddle and
carrying his clothing and papers in a pair of saddle bags. Now he finds
the trip tiresome, later he will find the ride exhilarating and your
house a convenient resting place; am I right Cornwall?"
"I desire to express my thanks and shall be glad of any opportunity to
stop and see you again."
"Here we are at the Salt Trace road; you follow it over the mountain to
the river, then up the river valley to Poor Fork which you cross almost
within sight of the town. Goodbye to both and good luck to Judge
Cornwall; come again."
Their road after crossing the mountains was up the Cumberland Valley,
hemmed in on the north by the gracefully sloping spurs of Pine Mountain
and flanked on the south by the more rugged and closely encroaching
Cumberland mountains.
The river gurgles and murmurs and surges along over a bottom of boulders
or lies restfully placid over a bottom of sand. In these pool-like
reaches many large rocks, shaken from the mountain tops in ages past,
lift their gray heads high above the water and give to the scene a touch
of rugged grandeur.
The water is so clear that the natives climb into the overhanging elms
or sycamores, or lie peering down from a jutting rock and do their
fishing with a Winchester.
About ten o'clock the travelers crossed the Poor Fork and fifteen
minutes later rode into Harlan Town; and to the office of the company; a
three-story red brick building fronting the court house square.