Mountains” (his voice had a defiant twang as if he challenged
contradiction), “and how old Preacher Carr wrastles a livin’ out of
that place he’s settled on, is more’n I can study out.”
“It’s Preacher Carr I want to speak to you about. You-all know that
Brother Carr can get a crop out of a piece of ground if any one can.
Next to men’s souls he loves the soil, and, my friends, whether we
work with things physical or spiritual, it’s the loving touch that
coaxes on the harvest. You-all know that, with late spring frosts
and summer droughts, this has been a hard year for our farmers—your
own cribs are only half full of corn and your fodder stacks are few
and small; and yet your valley is a Land of Promise compared to
Harriman’s Bald. Preacher Carr and his wife are facing a winter of
want. They gave me the mountaineer’s welcome, but when she prepared
the supper, I heard her gourd-scoop scrape the bottom of the meal
bin, and this morning a creditor led away their staggering, starving
cow. And yet Brother Carr is not decrepit; he is still hale and
hearty but—God pity the old when their work is taken out of their
hands before their graves are ready for them.
“He asked after his people in Junaluska (you will be ‘_his_ people’
as long as his loyal old soul harbours a sentiment) and, when I told
him I should pass through here this evening, he said, ‘Tell them a
God-bless you, for me.’ Some one has told him that his old church
is well-nigh gone to ruin and he asked me to take notice of it as I
passed by and to shut the door if it stood open.
“So I have come back to ask you to add to your Christmas list the
name of your old neighbour, friend, and pastor, this needy servant of
God. He has not forgotten you and I know you will not forget him.”
He turned and walked out of the cabin and the group sat in silence
till the sound of his horse’s hoofs grew faint.
“Them was good old times,” reiterated the deacon’s wife.
“I was some to blame when Preacher Carr was sent away,” said Colonel
Ledbetter, “I own up to it but——”
“You hadn’t a mite more to say about it than the rest of us had——”
“I hadn’t a thing in the world agin him,” the old man went on
without noticing the interruption; “’twas only that two other
churches was a-runnin’ opposition to us and their preachers were
young men and were drawing off our young people; I thought if we had
a young man to preach for us we might get ’em all back again. ’Twas
zeal that made me do it, misguided zeal; you see I hadn’t studied it
out about religious secks then as I have since.”
But we need not give a full report of that meeting. It was not
conducted by parliamentary rules, but its enactments went into effect
next day.
Grover Cleveland and gran’daddy, side by side in the old farm wagon,
took the road while it was still so dark that they must needs give
the mules the rein. But there were other early risers in that
community, for by sunrise Campbell and Greenlee and Brevard and
others were playing away with hammer and trowel upon the Ledbetter
cabin. They repaired the roof, they cemented into place the loose
stones of the fireplace, and topped out the fallen chimney; between
the logs they spatted clay—taken from the road in front but good as
imperial Cæsar’s—and stopped the cracks “to keep the wind away.” They
propped the leaning cow shed and before noon an occupant, “mighty
nigh all Jersey,” was chewing her cud, while over her head was stored
fodder sufficient to keep her chewing till pastures were green.
Her neighbour on the other side of a partition was a Kentucky-bred
roan mare, which but a few hours ago had been the property of
Captain Campbell; he had appeared upon the scene riding a gray and
leading the roan all saddled and ready for the road and had made her
comfortable in this new home.
In durance a heterogeneous collection of chickens were making one
another’s acquaintance over a collation of corn, the only unsociable
one among them being Aunt Dicey’s old black hen; her powers were all
employed in an effort to rid herself of a streamer of red flannel
which the old lady had tied to her tail to discourage her sitting
propensities.
Within doors the Christmas tree with its unshed mask still
monopolized one room, but in the other cheerful hands worked a
metamorphosis. Cobwebs, litter, and soil disappeared, and furniture,
country made but adapted to its purpose, took its place. Upon the
tough and rough old chestnut floor they levelled a bed of hay and,
so that it was soft as pillows to the tread, what matter that each
breadth of the rag carpet they spread upon it showed different tones
of homemade dyes and the weave of a different loom? In one corner
they corded together a bedstead in the good old fashion of their
great-grandparents, and the bed they reared upon it was a marvel.
There was a mattress of oat straw and one of corn-husks, a bed of
stripped hens’ feathers and one of geese feathers, and bolsters and
pillows in numbers sufficient to accommodate a family of hydras. Aunt
Dicey furnished blankets spun and woven by her own hands from wool of
her own shearing, and among a collection of quilts was a wonderful
one of old Mis’ Jimson’s piecing. It contained, by actual count,
three thousand one hundred and seventy-nine pieces and she called
it “The Foundation of the Great Deep.” When at last that bed was
made up, the turkey red cherubs on the pillow-shams (almost the only
shams that modernity had introduced among those artless people) lay
very close to the rafters. Its makers viewed it with admiration and
complacency, but Deacon Higgins looked dubious:
“They’re a tollable spry old couple,” he said, “but”—and he wheeled a
barrel of potatoes alongside as a suggestion of means of getting into
bed.
It would take a readier pen than mine to enumerate and describe all
the gifts that were brought to that plenishing. The cupboard door
refused to close upon the array of ham, hominy, and honey (the three
h’s of the mountaineer), the salt-rising bread, and the soda biscuit.
Major Greenlee was a carpenter. For half a day he planed, sawed,
and hammered in a corner and when his work took form it was a
capacious meal bin. When bagfuls of corn meal had been emptied into
it till it was “plumb full” they all surveyed it with satisfaction
and “reckoned the gourd wouldn’t scrape the bottom of that before
spring.”
All day long pedestrians and vehicles had been coming and going
before the old house as never before in its history and yet when the
sun had set the sky on fire behind the Bald, the gathered people were
still awaiting an arrival.
They scanned a mountain road above them, visible only in short
lengths where it emerged from the forests into the clearings.
“I see ’em!” a far-sighted old man shouted with a boy’s enthusiasm,
“I see Colonel Ledbetter’s white mules! Now they’re behind May’s
Peak, you’ll see ’em come out on t’other side.”
And so they watched them from point to point and every time they came
into view a squad ran in to re-inspect the cabin and see that every
thing was in order.
At last the white mules stood before the door. Colonel Ledbetter and
Grover Cleveland sat on the front seat of the wagon, and on chairs
behind them sat Preacher Carr and his wife.
Strong hands assisted the wife to alight, but the preacher sprang
over the wheel to greet his people. They crowded round him and the
young cried, “Merry Christmas,” and the old said, “Welcome Home.”
They seated the pair beside their old beloved fireside. They were
eight years older than when they had left it. The preacher had “held
his own,” but when they took off the good wife’s bonnet her hair
showed very white. A tender hand smoothed it.
“We are growing old,” said the preacher, but they told him that the
gospel that he preached and lived would never grow old. They told him
too of repairs to be made in the old church; it would look just as
it used to look but over the door there would be the inscription:
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbour as thyself.
The tree was stripped; the white mules were headed homeward; old man
Ledbetter gathered up his reins and a tired little lad nestled close
to his side.
“Wake up, Grover Cleveland, wake up! Don’t you hear ’em singing! Jine
in, Grover Cleveland, jine in!”
Within the cabin a chorus swelled; without, one thin little voice
piped free and clear:
“Crown Him, crown Him, crown Him, Lord of all.”
III
UNCONSCIOUS MENTALITY
What their acquaintances called an “understanding,” existed between
Arsula Jordan and Thaddeus Garrett and he had taken her with him up
on the mountain to consult Dan Cutter about hauling the timber for a
new house. Their horse, Beauregard, having taken the road leisurely,
eleven o’clock found them winding along the downhill road but still
two miles from their homes in the village.
On their right the Junaluska swirled between its wooded banks. The
moon was on their right too, throwing shadows across their road,
dense or skeleton, as evergreen or deciduous trees obstructed its
radiance.
“I think I see things a-skulkin’ ’cross the road,” said Arsula,
crowding Thad more closely; “do you reckon any wild-cats could have
come down off the Bald?”
“It’s only the shadders a-shiftin’ theirselves when the wind bends
the trees; I didn’t reckon you was that scary, Suly; why there’s
nothin’ to be scairt of; _I’m_ here Suly! And _I_ ain’t scairt of
anything that travels these yer mountings—leastwise not of anything
in flesh and blood.”
“Well I ain’t scart of anything that _isn’t_ flesh and blood.”
“_You say you ain’t?_”
“La, no; I don’t b’lieve in ha’nts.”
“_You say you don’t?_”
“No I don’t; I b’lieve that when a body’s once plumb dead and buried
in the ground, he ain’t goin’ to show hisself on the top side of the
earth again till judgment day.
“Oh lawdy!” the ejaculation was only aspirated, and Thad brought
Beauregard to a stand without speaking to him. They were at a bend of
the road where it crossed the river. Above the ford, dark hemlocks
arched the stream and the foot log lay in their dense shadow. Upon
it something moved like a pale gray cloud, not outlined against the
blackness, but softly blending with it.
Beauregard saw it too and pricked up his ears. Thad wound the reins
round his right hand and even brought his left into action though
with a soft apology to Suly:
“Looks like I might want all the hands I’ve got to hold him. You
take a tight holt of me,” he counselled under his breath and, as the
spectre neared the farther side, proceeded chidingly: “It’s powerful
triflin’, Suly, to go to talkin’ ’bout ha’nts when you’re out in the
woods at night—it’s tollable sure to call ’em up”—a rustling among
the dry leaves under the bushes changed the course of his remarks.
“If the durn thing ’ud move a little faster, I’d drive into the water
and stand a spell; witches and ha’nts and all them things is shy of
water.” There was a closer scurry among the leaves and at a twitch
of the reins Beauregard drew them into the ford and stopped there in
obedience to another silent signal.
Above the rustling they heard a panting breath, and another ghost, a
nimbler one, was on the log, a light, flying shadow against the dark,
stationary ones.
“Sho,” said Suly, “it’s only a dog.” She started to whistle but Thad
clapped his hand over her mouth:
“For gracious sake, Suly, don’t do that—it’s awful darin’.”
She was gurgling and spurting in an effort to regain her right of
free speech when together the apparitions seemed to slip off the log
upon the other side.
“I tell you it’s Colonel Ledbetter’s Dixie,” she cried as a dog
frisked out into the moonlight; “and sure’s you’re born that’s little
Grover Cleveland! and he’s walkin’ in his sleep again—poor little
soul! Git up Beau!” She clutched at the reins, but Thad caught her
hand.
“Poor little soul!” she repeated. “His gran’daddy’d go plumb
distracted if he knowed that little soul was out on the mountings
this time o’ night; nothin’ on him either, I reckon, but just his
little shirt! Thad, if you don’t drive on right now, I’ll jump into
the crick, I vow I will! I want to get my hands on him—poor little
soul!”
When Beauregard trailed out upon the other side Suly leaped to the
ground. “I want to see how he looks when he’s took this-a-way.”
The boy was several rods ahead trudging abstractedly along, his
little, faded, blue-checked shirt playing about his knees, his bare
feet taking the road unhesitatingly, his half-closed eyes looking
neither right nor left nor seemingly before him. Curious, pitiful,
Arsula walked beside him for a few steps in silence. He didn’t hear
her nor the creak of the wagon behind her. His physical senses were
in suspension. He was intently acting out some dream that dominated
his little brain.
Head and tail adroop, Dixie was following so closely that now and
again his muzzle touched the little loosely hanging hand. He seemed
to take no more notice of Arsula as she came abreast than did his
child master; but _he_ was not walking in his sleep, for, though
his dejected head never swerved, his eyes turned sidewise in their
sockets and his lips wrinkled in very unbecoming folds above his
teeth.
“Grover Cleveland,” Suly spoke softly, for, despite her brave common
sense, she felt awed in this presence of a ruling, supernatural
mentality; besides she wanted to spare the little favourite the shock
of a too sudden awakening. But the boy walked on.
“Grover Cleveland, oh, Grover Cleveland!” she said more emphatically
and gently put out her hand to take him by the shoulder.
“Gr-r-r-r-r-r!” said Dixie.
“Now look here Dixie Ledbetter,” she scolded severely, “you needn’t
go to putting on any such airs as that when I’m around. I wouldn’t do
Grover Cleveland mean a mite sooner’n you would, and you know it.
And more than that, if I’d been in your place I’d have found some way
to wake him up before he’d tramped this far in the cold. And more
than that, t’other side the ford you went tearin’ off after a rabbit
or a ’possum or a coon, and left him to find his way all by hisself.
Now you get over there and don’t you say no more to _me_!”
Ashamed of his shortcomings or awed by her gestures, which were
imperious, Dixie slunk to the other side of his master who, partially
recovered by the unusual tones, came to a stand dazed and trembling.
“Poor little soul!” she said dropping to her knees and putting her
arms about him. “Wake up, dear, and don’t you be scairt a mite, for
it’s only Suly; you know Suly, don’t you?” her voice broke and a tear
or two ran over her cheeks.
The child, coming slowly back to consciousness, gazed blankly into
her face, then turned and peered into the woods, drawing his breath
in hard, dry sobs. Then he recognized Dixie and felt of his tattered
ears with a weakly caressing motion.
“Yes, Dixie’s here,” coaxed Suly, “and I’m here and Thad’s here with
the wagon and we’re goin’ to carry you right home to your gran’daddy.”
By now Thaddeus was beside them. “Well, what about it!” was all he
could say, but he acted promptly upon Suly’s bidding and lifted the
boy into the wagon.
Suly wrapped him in a time-worn blanket of confederate gray that had
been doing duty as a cushion and set him between them.
“Now where was you a-goin’ to?” interrogated the amazed Thaddeus,
taking up the reins and driving slowly on.
“I—don’t—know,” sobbed the child.
“Why he was going home,” kindly assisted Suly.
“Where have you been at?” persisted Thaddeus.
“I—don’t—know.”
“Well how’d you _git_ here, anyway?”
“Now Thad, you quit pesterin’ him,” commanded Suly.
By now the boy was quite himself and making desperate efforts to
breathe without sobbing. “It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with
ways that you can’t help,” he faltered, and the girl essayed to
change the current of his thoughts.
“You knowed your Aunt Carliny and little Jakey had come back here to
live, didn’t you, Grover Cleveland?”
“She done gran’daddy mean,” answered the boy and added after a long,
tremulous breath, “Jakey’s shoes is wore out.”
They drove on in silence. When the boy had become quiet and too
sleepy, Arsula believed, to take notice of what she was saying, she
ventured to relieve her mind of some of its distracting emotions.
“If Carliny was where she’d ought to be, a-keepin’ house for her
father, this little soul’d never get out of the house at night
without her knowin’ it—I’m plumb sure of that. To think of her livin’
away off up there in that gully where nary somebody passes, month
in and month out, in a ole hut with nothin’ but a dirt floor and no
window; and chinks between the logs that you can put your hand into
and her father the best-off man round yer! What you reckon he’d say
if they was found froze plumb to death? And he such a powerful pious
man and a-standin’ way up high in the church! Free-handed too—where
he takes a notion—givin’ the preacher his rent free and all the wood
he’s a mind to cut and haul and all the apples and corn and potatoes
he’s a mind to harvest; and a-pilin’ up fodder stacks close to ole
Mis’ Jimson’s fence and a-pullin’ out a rail with his own hands so’s
her ole cow can get her head through and help herself.
“Carliny told me with her own lips that after she and her boy had
come all the way from Yancey County—mighty nigh every step afoot
too—her father wouldn’t let her in. She wouldn’t have come—for she’s
got along tollable since she’s been a widow—only but she heard
that he and Grover Cleveland wasn’t doin’ any good a housekeepin’
by theirselves; and it hurt her powerful to think that her sister
Missouri’s little boy wasn’t gettin’ the right kind of care.
“Everybody’s clean done out about it. The preacher, he set out to
labour with him, but Colonel Ledbetter he give him to understand that
he was oversteppin’ his authority and since then nary neighbour darst
speak up. But I’d give a pretty to tell Colonel Ledbetter what _I_
think of him, and I aim to do it this very night.”
“Don’t you, Suly; ole man Ledbetter ain’t pleasant to talk to when
he’s riled.”
There came the sound of some one tearing through the woods, and Thad
brought Beauregard to a sudden stand. “Here we are,” he shouted.
“You-all got him!” called a quavering voice out of the darkness.
“Got him sure-’nough, Colonel Ledbetter. Captured him way off down by
the ford!”
“I been trampin’ the woods for a hour lookin’ for him and I’m hoarse
as a crow callin’ for him. Is he dressed up much?”
“Not much. Some durn fools would have took him for a ha’nt but I
don’t never run from nothin’ and Suly here, she’s some spunky too.”
They drove slowly to the house the old man keeping abreast. The door
stood open and from within shone the light of a flickering hearth
fire.
Grover Cleveland shed his blanket, sprang over the wheel while it was
yet in motion, and fled into the house and out of sight.
The old man chuckled. “The little feller’s right much ashamed of
hisself when he’s found out in one of his spells. I reckon he cried
some when you-all woke him up—he gen’ally does.
“Them that’s had nothin’ to cry for’s the ones that’s done the
cryin’,” teased Thad.
“I don’t care if I did,” said Suly preparing to accept the invitation
to “stop in by a spell.” “It must be a mighty nasty feelin’ to wake
up in the woods at night and not know how you got there.”
“So it is, so it is,” said Colonel Ledbetter leading the way into the
house. “I ain’t no mind to be stern with him, for he comes true and
honest by the trick. I done it myself when I was a boy.”
He replenished the fire and lit a candle.
“He sleeps right there betwixt me and the wall,” he pointed to a
bed in the corner, “and I can’t contrive how he manages to give me
the slip so often; he’s got some sort of sleepin’ slyness that he
ain’t no more notion of when he’s awake, than a angel. Barricadin’
the door ain’t no good. One night I tied him fast to my wrist so’s
he couldn’t move without wakin’ me up, but that seemed to hurt the
little fellow’s feelin’s powerful an’ I didn’t try it again.”
Nothing was to be seen of Grover Cleveland. Suly went to the bed.
“I should think he’d smother to death,” she said, “he’s drawed the
Valley of the Mississippi clean over his head and he’s fast asleep.”
She arranged a little breathing place for him.
The old man came and stood beside her.
“I helped quilt this quilt,” she went on, carefully folding it away
from the face of the child, “it was the first quiltin’ party I ever
went to and I took the tuck out of my frock to go. This was the first
Valley of the Mississippi ever seen round yer and Missouri was mighty
proud of it; she had the pattern sent from Georgy.”
“Them blue pieces over there,” said the old man, “is pieces of her
frock; it was a store frock; and these yer streaked pieces on this
side” (he traced them with an unsteady finger), “was my wife’s.
Grover Cleveland, he calls that side his, because it’s pieces of his
mother’s frock, and this side mine and he won’t never get into bed
till his half’s on his side.”
Suly lifted a corner of the quilt into the light; “Here’s some of
Carliny’s frock,” she led, but he would not follow.
“I bought Grover Cleveland a pair of boots this mornin’ and he was
the proudest little somebody you ever looked at. Now where is them
boots at?”—he was looking under the bed—“he set ’em up right here
as careful as if they was glass and they was there after he went to
sleep.”
This owner in fee-simple of eleven hundred acres of land, more
or less, was living in one room and dishes, cooking utensils,
clothing, shovels, rakes and various paraphernalia of his farming
and housekeeping operations were littered about in bewildering
confusion. He moved everything in his search for the boots, Arsula
assisting.
“Carliny’s a mighty good housekeeper,” she remarked as she shook out
and hung up some wearing apparel that had been piled in a corner.
“She’d make things look a heap different if she was here.”
“Was he barefoot when you come acrost him?”
“Yes. Carliny, she’d manage it so that poor little soul wouldn’t go
caperin’ about at night.”
“Them boots has taken to theirselves wings.”
“I’m afraid Carliny’s goin’ to freeze to death up there this
winter—or starve—one.”
“Them boots had blue tops; they was Grover Cleveland’s own choice;
blue always takes his eye.”
“It’s time we was movin’ on, Suly,” said Thad going to the door.
The girl had to stop beating the bush. “Carliny and Jakey ain’t
a-doin’ any good up there, Colonel Ledbetter; they’re both a-lookin’
puny. She wants you and you want her, and Grover Cleveland, he wants
her powerful, poor little soul! ’Tain’t right, nor Christian, nor
human, nor common sense, nor horse sense, nor nonsense, nor any kind
of sense for you to be so set. She’s your own flesh”—she stopped,
awed by his steady stare at her.
“You go home,” he said, “and you sew the tuck back into that ar frock
you wore to Missouri’s quiltin’ and you wear it and be a little gal
again till you’re smart enough not to handle no such talk as that in
my house. Carliny, she made her own bed and thar she must lie. I told
her when she married that ar no-’count that she shouldn’t never put
foot into house of mine again; and you go ask your daddy if he ever
knowed a Ledbetter to go back on his word. And I’m bringin’ up Grover
Cleveland the same way; he believes like I do; he thinks Carliny’d
ought to go her own gait now.”
Arsula went out of the house with her hand to her eyes.
“I ’low you mean right,” he said softening a little, “and I’m a heap
o’ times obliged to you for bringin’ him home, but you ain’t no call
to go to interferin’ in _my_ family affairs.”
All the next day Grover Cleveland hunted for his boots. “I sot ’em
right here,” he said, “and I ain’t touched ’em since.” In the house
he had turned every thing over and over again, had gone through the
barn and out-houses in the same way and at sundown was searching the
woods when Arsula a-mule-back rode up to the house. Colonel Ledbetter
was chopping wood but he put down his axe and went to her.
“I’ve come from Carliny’s,” she said, “and here’s them blue-top
boots. Carliny found ’em outside her door this morning and she’d no
more notion than the dead whose they was or how they got there, till
I told her ’bout last night.”
The old man turned them in his hands confusedly. “If Grover Cleveland
took these boots up thar last night,” he said, “his sleepin’ opinion
is a heap different from his wakin’ opinion. When he’s awake he
’grees with me; he thinks if she was so set on goin’ her own gait,
now she’d ought to keep on goin it.”
Arsula rode off and he went into the house and tucked the boots out
of sight.