supper, and crept away under his side of the Valley of the
Mississippi.
“He ain’t eatin’ as much as he’d ought to,” mused his grandfather as
he scraped the remnant of their meal upon the hearth for Dixie. “If
Missouri was alive she’d make somethin’ to tempt his appetite, but
I ’low I ain’t got the sleight o’ cookin’.” He went to the bed and
tucked the quilt closely about the child’s shoulders.
“He’ll lay quiet enough to-night; I never knowed him to get up two
nights runnin’. Seem like he gets scairt and keeps still a spell. I’m
mighty nigh beat out myself, bein’ up so late yesterday evenin’; I
reckon I can sleep without any rockin’,” and he went to bed.
He awoke after a three-hours’ nap. The room was cold and his first
thought was to see if the Valley of the Mississippi was doing its
duty by his grandson. It was not; and when he attempted to pull it
into place he found there was no grandson there; neither did there
appear to be a complement of the Valley of the Mississippi.
“Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland!” he shouted and the only answer
was a stampede of rats from the hearth. He got up, lighted his
candle, and held it low over the bed. The boy was surely gone. He
pulled the quilt toward him and as he did so the big old shears that
served them in their various household operations fell to the floor.
The quilt had been cut through from end to end; the side containing
the striped pieces had been left in its place but the blue had
disappeared!
He got into his clothes and hurrying out among the shadows of the
moonlight night took his direction with the certainty of prescience.
When he set foot upon the highroad, he began to follow by sight,
for, excepting where the shadows were heaviest, he could discern the
little trudging figure of Grover Cleveland, its outline marred by
something slung in man-like fashion across his shoulder and by the
dog following closely.
He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was
crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second.
Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some
spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false
step”; and, like Suly, he was awed.
As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but,
though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for
the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat
ready for a plunge if emergency called for it.
They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and
the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a
furlong or more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small
branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended
by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times
Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for
an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was
ordered into line again.
Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of
their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted
from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the
low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man
put aside with his hands.
At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the
moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin,
built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay
and stones that showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood.
Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the
blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten
step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.”
Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel
Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when
Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his
fists. Suddenly he shouted:
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! here’s the Valley of the Mississippi cut
plumb in half and your part’s here and”—he wriggled to the floor and
grabbed his gran’daddy by the shoulder—“where’s my half gone to,
gran’daddy?” Without waiting for an answer the child went back to the
bed and made a more thorough examination.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! don’t you reckon ’twas a mighty low-down
somebody to do that trick?”
“I ’low ’twas, Grover Cleveland—that is, if he knowed what he was
doin’, ’twas.”
The boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“Maybe you been a-performin’ in your sleep again, Grover Cleveland.”
“No I ain’t gran’daddy, no I ain’t,” the blue eyes were very earnest.
“I done been in bed close up to you all night.”
“Maybe you have, Grover Cleveland, but ’pears like you overslept
yourself a spell this morning. There’s the pone and some bacon
keeping warm for you by the fire.”
Puzzled that his grandfather didn’t take a more active interest in
the calamity that had befallen him, the boy ran half-dressed to the
door.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! what you got Bonaparte and Butterfly geared
up to the cart for?”
“I been down to Junaluska. And now you eat your breakfast quick, and
we’ll go hunt up your half of the Valley of the Mississippi; and you
put on them blue-top boots Grover Cleveland; them old shoes lets the
water in.”
“Why them boots is done gone!” he shook his grandfather as if to wake
him up, “don’t you ’member—oh-ee-ee,” he went diving under the bed
and, coming up again with the blue-tops hugged close to his breast
and another pair in his hand, stood before his grandfather dumb as to
the vocal organs but his eyes questioning wildly.
“Them red-tops is for Jakey.”
“You aim to carry them boots up to him, gran’daddy?”
“No, gran’son, I aim to bring Jakey down to the boots.”
In the Ledbetter home that afternoon Carolina dropped the broom as
two little boys came frolicking about her, and capturing the larger
one, she squeezed him rapturously!
“If you ever get out of this house at night again, Grover Cleveland,”
she said, “you’ll be smarter than I am; that’s what.”
IV
OLD-TIME RELIGION
Autumn in the Southern Appalachians.
The little boy sat on the prize pumpkin that his grandfather had put
in front of the house to challenge the comment of passers-by. He was
chewing sorghum-cane and singing in snatches:
“Give me that old-time aligion,
Give me that old-time aligion,
It is good enough for me.
It was good for Paul and Silas,
It is good enough for me——”
His Aunt Carolina stood on the porch spinning stocking yarn, while
near her sat his grandfather, cobbling shoes as diligently and
contentedly as if born and bred to that lowly occupation instead of
being a forehanded farmer holding county and township offices.
“Grover Cleveland certainly is a good singer,” said Carolina. “He can
carry the tune of every last hymn he hears ’em sing down to church
and he can carry the words too, clean up to twenty verses I reckon,
and what he can’t remember he can make up.”
The old man laid down his implements, bowed himself to his “studyin’”
attitude, and looked fondly and proudly at his grandson. Carolina let
her eyes range the highroad.
“Here comes old man Sumter a-drivin’ that ar’ Sal he bought over to
Nantahala. She was round and plump as ary one of our mules when he
brought her here, but now I declare she’s the gauntedest mule that
travels the road. I reckon he’s jerked and jawed the flesh right off
her bones.”
“You say Cap’n Sumter’s a-comin’?” asked her father, and he got up
and went out to the road side. At his signal his neighbour twitched
Sal to a stand and stared at him without a relaxing line in his hard
old face or a gleam of friendliness in his eyes.
Colonel Ledbetter had pleasant information to impart. He lifted
one foot to the hub of the clumsy fore wheel, rested an arm across
his knees and looked hard into the sandy road lest his eyes should
forestall his tongue as the bearer of good news.
“You sold me them ’leven wa’nut trees on Sundown Hill for thirty
dollars apiece, Cap’n Sumter?”
“I reckon that’s ’bout how the case stands,” the grim face looked
steadily at the smiling one and not a line softened.
“Well, sir,” the pleasant eyes looked up with a lively sparkle that
might have been borrowed from Grover Cleveland’s own, “I hadn’t
examined them trees as close as I ought to, and ’pears like you
hadn’t either; there’s a little mistake about one of ’em and I
expected we’d better rectify it right now——”
“G’long!” old man Sumter hit the mule a “lick,” saying viciously as
she sprang forward, “You got the timber and I got the money and I
don’t rectify no mistakes now; you’re old enough to have knowed what
you was gittin’ ’fore you paid for it.”
“Jes’ as you please Sam Sumter, jes’ as you please”; the indignant
old gentleman made a gesture as one who gladly washes his hands of a
responsibility and yielding to curiosity Sumter turned toward him.
Colonel Ledbetter didn’t pause in his slow walk toward the house but
he said in a tone of supreme indifference:
“I’ve had my men up there a-fellin’ them trees and the biggest of
’em, the one furthest up the hill, is a curly walnut. Five years
ago I sold one like it for twelve hundred dollars and I could have
give you points ’bout sellin’ yours; but seein’ you don’t rectify no
mistakes, why that’s all there is about it and we’ll stick to the
bargain.”
Again Sal was jerked to a stand and twisting round on a pivotal hand
pressed to the seat, old man Sumter regarded his interlocutor with
intense concern. But Colonel Ledbetter proceeded to the house without
looking right or left and, disappointed and ireful, his neighbour
went on his way.
Colonel Ledbetter resumed his seat and his grandson came and leaned
against him:
“Looks like he’s plumb mad, gran’daddy.”
“Yes he is, Grover Cleveland, he’s plumb mad and he’s been so ever
since I’ve knowed him and that’s mighty nigh sixty years. He’s so
rarin’ mad that when the Lord throws a good thing in his way he’s too
mad to see it. Now like that ar wa’nut; any man that was a-lookin’
out for virtues instid of _de_fects would have discovered that ’twas
a curly. But old man Sumter’s mad at every thing under the sun
whether it’s human or beast or tree or stone; and he’s mad at ’em all
the time and he’s so mad that he won’t take no notice to ’em. Jes’
like he wouldn’t take notice to me jes’ now, when I was goin’ to put
more than a thousand dollars right into his hand; it would mighty
nigh paid off that ar mortgage that he’s been skinnin’ himself to
pay int’rest on these twenty years—for he jes’ keeps a-goin’ behind
and a-goin’ behind for no airthly reason that I can see but jes’
’cause he’s so mad all the time that he can’t study any of the arts
of peace. Why his very crops fails because he hates ’em so. Grover
Cleveland, don’t you never go to bein’ mad at every body all the
time. Tain’t Christian, an’ more’n that it kind o’ spiles your aim so
that you don’t bring down no game.”
“Was he borned that-a-way, gran’daddy?”
“I expect he was, Grover Cleveland, I expect he was.”
“I’m mighty sorry for him”; the little fellow twisted his hands
together and looked afar; “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with
ways that you can’t help.”
The old man’s attention and sympathy were his in an instant. “Don’t
you go to takin’ on about sleep walkin’, Grover Cleveland,” he said
drawing his arm tightly about the child; “you’re bound to outgrow
that before long.”
“I paid him,” the old man went on addressing his daughter, “I paid
him more for them trees than ary other somebody had offered him, jes’
because I was willin’ to help make up to him the loss of his barn
that burnt down; but he didn’ thank me for it.”
“What’s curly wa’nuts good for, gran’daddy?”
“They’re good for veneerin’, Grover Cleveland. You see this is how
’tis: they don’t saw the logs through like they do down to Campbell’s
saw-mill but they saw ’em, round and round, into sheets mighty nigh
as thin as writin’-paper. There hadn’t ought to be any cuts or holes
in the log, so that they can make big smooth sheets of it, and
they’ll saw that log up till there ain’t a core left that’s as thick
as my arm.”
“What can they make out of timber as thin as writin’-paper,
gran’daddy?”
Then to the extent of his own imperfect knowledge of the veneering
process, the old man explained it to the child.
“So far as I know, there’s only three veneering mills in the country.
When I sold my tree I wrote a letter to all three of ’em and told
’em what I had to sell and they wrote back and made me a offer—only
that Kentucky fellow, he’s the nearest by and he made out like he had
business in this direction and he stopped round to see it; and ’twas
him I sold the tree to.
“And I aimed to work it jes’ that-a-way for Cap’n Sumter; I aimed
to write the letters for him—for he ain’t a mite handy with a pen,
Sam Sumter ain’t (a education is a mighty handy thing to get hold of
Grover Cleveland), and get in the three bids for the tree and let
him take up with ary one he see fit.”
“You’ve sure done your duty by him now, daddy,” said Carolina, “and
that tree is yours anyway you can fix it.”
“_Is_ it yours, gran’daddy?”
“It’s mine by rule o’ law, Grover Cleveland, but I don’t know as it’s
mine by that ar golden rule that you and Preacher Carr let on to know
so much about.”
His doting grandparent considered the child a prodigy of ethical
understanding, or “jedgment,” as he would have expressed it, and,
although he was continually plying him with information and advice on
all sorts of subjects, it was no uncommon thing for him to consult
the little fellow even in matters of moment. It was as if he stored
his maxims and admonitions into the laboratory of the child’s mind
and then requisitioned it for them in convenient form for practical
use.
“What’s your opinion, Grover Cleveland?’”
The child hesitated, his bright face raised earnestly to the grizzled
one:
“Me and you, gran’daddy, me and you, we don’t want anything that
ain’t sure ’nough ours; do we?”
“_No-o sir-ee!_ That settles it, Carliny; Grover Cleveland and me we
want a golden rule title to every thing we claim.”
So Colonel Ledbetter got his ink bottle and pen off the shelf, a
sheet and a half of writing-paper out of the front of the Bible, and
three envelopes out of the back, and laboriously indited the letters
to the veneering mills, while out in the shadow of the prize pumpkin
his grandson cracked butternuts for the tame gray squirrels. But all
the while new ideas were whirling through the little boy’s head, and
they concentred in that curly walnut.
That night “when there was naught but starre light” a little human
figure, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad in a single, loosely hanging
garment came out of the Ledbetter house. It proceeded noiselessly,
though without stealth, for it kept in the open, taking the middle of
the road with a free and fearless tread. Though the eyes were partly
shut and the night was dark, it made no false or stumbling step; some
intuition or spiritual sight or maybe an angelic presence was guiding
it. Dixie came yawning and stretching to the edge of the porch,
settled meditatively upon his haunches, watched it to the first bend
in the road, then followed boundingly until he came abreast when,
demurely dropping head and tail, he fell behind but kept so close
that the little wind-blown shirt fluttered in his face.
When half a mile had been travelled a branching wagon track,
scarcely discernible even in the daytime, led up to some bars in the
worm-fence that outlined the road. The little dreamer climbed over
and took the rough road beyond without a sign of doubt or hesitation.
It zigzagged through the woods but steadily upward to where those
walnut trees, with a goodly company of peers, oak, chestnut, and
whitewood had crowned a summit. He had followed it a few times
before, but wide-awake beside his grandfather in the ox wagon, with
Butterfly and Bonaparte for motive power. It was overgrown with grass
and weeds that shed their dew upon his little feet and perfumed them
with pennyroyal and dittany, while overhead interweaving branches hid
even the stars from sight.
Though tempted from duty’s path by many a springing cotton tail,
Dixie kept close behind his master until the sound of an axe came
thudding through the forest, at which he cocked his remnant for ears,
stood for a second on the _qui vive_, then shot away in the direction
of the sound.
He returned panting and, planting himself in front of the little
sleepwalker, tried to head him in a different direction, but the
child only swerved and continued his upward course. Again the dog
headed him off, again and again until he had turned him quite out
of the road way, but the boy threaded his way through undergrowth
and over rocks and hummocks as easily as if he had been of spiritual
rather than material substance.
Finally Dixie grabbed in his teeth the border of the little shirt and
tugged so lustily that his master could not advance a single step
farther, and as he tugged he whined in thorough frenzy; and if his
language could have been rendered into the vernacular it would have
been:
“There’s danger ahead, Grover Cleveland! There’s a bad old man up
there, a man that never sees me without making a lick at me with
his stick, and if he does you mean and there’s only I left to tell
the tale, who’ll I tell it to, I’d like to know? for there’s not
a human that’s smart enough to understand _my_ language, though
I’ve understood English ever since I was a pup. Come back, Grover
Cleveland! _come back, I say, come back!_” and with that last “come
back,” Dixie gave such a sudden and powerful jerk that Grover
Cleveland came tumbling backward into a bed of galax.
He righted himself and sat there with a hand on either side pressing
the leaves down into the turf, the dog crouched close with his paws
across the little bare knees and his tongue spasmodically licking the
bewildered face.
The child heaved a slow, sobbing sigh or two and became his conscious
self, a little boy alone at night in the dark, silent woods,
frightened, not by darkness or silence or apprehension of danger,
but by the thought of that mysterious power that could convey him
so far from home and gran’daddy, and Aunt Carliny without any of
their knowledge or consent. So he laid his head upon Dixie’s neck
and cried it out and then got upon his feet, once more a practical
little mountaineer with a mind curious to see and to understand, a
loving heart and willing, eager little hands and feet to wait upon
its promptings.
He knew that downward must be homeward and cautiously (less confident
now than when guided by that unconscious mentality) he began to
grope for his footing. Then again the sound of that axe came cleaving
the silence and this time Grover Cleveland heard it as plainly as
Dixie did.
He turned to investigate the phenomenon, Dixie following contentedly
now that his master was himself again. The undergrowth had become
thinner as they had ascended and soon they came out where great trees
rose in stately exclusiveness unintruded upon by lesser growths.
Here the darkness was less dense, stars looked down through rifts in
the leafy canopy, and a little farther up the hill one fixed star
gleamed scarcely eight feet from the ground as if intercepted upon
an earthward trip and impaled upon a bough. It dispensed only a dim
circle of light, but in it the boy could discern the figure of the
wood chopper, could even catch an occasional glint reflected from
the blade of the swinging axe. He had come up against a fallen tree
and he climbed up and sat upon the trunk, hugging his knees while he
peered into the gloom.
All at once a suspicion of his whereabouts entered his head and to
confirm it he got off the log and made his way to its larger end.
Yes, there stood the stump from which it had been cut but recently
and green chips littered the ground. He explored farther. Nearby lay
another log, just over there another—why they were all about him! He
knew perfectly well where he was. On old man Sumter’s hill and these
were his grandfather’s walnut trees!
But that man! Why was he here in the dark, dark night chopping away
with might and main? The boy made his way toward him, Dixie quiet but
alert and as full of curiosity as his master.
That star was a lantern pendant from a chestnut limb; its light
shone upon the man’s face. Why it was old man Sumter himself! and
that log was the curly walnut, for it was the one highest on the
hillside, and he was gashing it all along its length! And he was
right mad at that curly too (just like gran’daddy said he was always
mad at everything), for he kept talking right ugly to it!
“Hi!” the child sprang forward shouting to the full capacity of his
sturdy lungs and caught the old man by the coat tails. “Wake up! oh,
wake up! Don’t you see what you’re a-doin’!”
Grover Cleveland tugged and shouted, Dixie barked and leaped and
growled and the echoes multiplied the tumult. Stunned by the
suddenness of the attack the old man let the axe slip from his hand
and backed round against the log. He was feeble, he had been exerting
himself beyond his strength and he was frightened too—had it not
been for Dixie’s very earthly performance he would have been sure he
had met up with a ha’nt.
“What be you anyway?” he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon
the log.
“Why I’m Grover Cleveland, gran’daddy’s grandson.”
The boy looked the man over with a face full of compassion. Here was
a big man afflicted just as he was, and that fellow-feeling that
makes us all so wondrous kind enthralled him.
“Are you sure you’re broad awake now?” he asked coming very close
and laying his hand upon the old man’s knee. “It’s awful to walk in
your sleep; I feel mighty sorry for you.” He scrambled up on the
log, wriggled himself as close to the night-walker as he could get,
took a coarse, limp old hand in his, and patted it. “I certainly am
sorry for you ’cause I know jes’ how it feels to be woked up in
the dark, away off from home and not know how you got there. I walk
in my sleep too—that’s how I come out yer to-night—but you’ve got it
worse than me, you have; for I don’t do mischief when I’m took, but
you—why-e-e-e!” twisting himself about and surveying the log—“you’ve
done hacked your tree all to pieces and ’twon’t be no more good for
veneerin’! Gran’daddy says they don’t want nary snag in it.
[Illustration: “‘What be you anyway?’ he asked quaveringly, sinking
to a seat upon the log.”]
“But maybe this ain’t the curly,” he peered eagerly into the woods;
“it ain’t ’less it’s the furtherest one up.”
“This is the curly wa’nut all right,” growled Sumter with a
malevolent twang unintelligible to the child.
“I certainly am sorry for you. Gran’daddy wrote three letters ’bout
this yer tree and he was goin’ to turn the answers over to you so’t
you could take up with ary one you’d a mind to—that’s what he said——”
“You say he did? Didn’t he ’low he’d bought the tree fair ’nough?”
“That ain’t the way he thought about it—and me and gran’daddy, you
know, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; he said you
could sell it for enough money to pay all you owed. He was plumb glad
of it and now he’ll be mighty nigh as sorry as you and me is.”
For a moment sad, silent thought held sway.
“There’s one good thing about it though,” the child tucked his
garment tightly under his knees, “you don’t get out without dressin’
yourself, the way I do; you ought to be glad about that. Gran’daddy
says there’s always some good even in the baddest things if we watch
out for it.”
His companion made no response and the boy resumed his role of
sympathizer.
“I reckon you was borned that-a-way, jes’ like me, and it’s powerful
mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; and you ain’t
got any Dixie to watch out for you. And Aunt Carliny, she makes me
sleep with her and Jakey, so’s she can catch me at it, but I don’t
guess you’ve got any Aunt Carliny either.”
“Naw,” old man Sumter got up and reached for his lantern, “I ain’t
got nary somebody that cares what becomes of me.”
The boy got down off the log and pityingly took his hand.
“Le’s go home,” he said, “I know where I be now an’ if you’re kind
o’ mixed up yet, why I can show you the trail,” and he led away as
shamefaced an old sinner as ever trod the mountains.
(Seeing the pair on friendly terms, Dixie indulged in a brief
interview with a ’possum.)