The two-storied house of Aaron McGivins stood on a hill-side
overlooking a stretch of cleared acreage. It was a dwelling place of
unusual pretentiousness for that land of "Do-without," where inexorable
meagerness is the rule of life. Just now in a room whose hearth was
wide, upon a four-poster bed, lay the master of the place gazing
upwards at the rafters with eyes harassed, yet uncomplaining.
Aaron McGivins had just cause for troubled meditation as he stretched
there under the faded coverlet and under the impending threat of death,
as well. His life had been one of scant ease and of unmitigated
warfare with the hostile forces of Nature. Yet he had built up a
modest competency after a life time of struggle. With a few more years
of industry he might have claimed material victory. In the homely
parlance of his kind he had things "hung-up," which signified such
prosperity had come to him as came to the pioneer woodsmen who faced
the famine times of winter with smoked hams hanging from their nails,
and tobacco and pepper and herbs strung along the ceiling rafters.
Aaron McGivins had not progressed to this modestly enviable estate
without the driving of shrewd bargains and the taking of bold chances.
It followed that men called him hard, though few men called him other
than just. To his door came disputants who preferred his arbitration
on tangled issues to the dubious chances of litigation, for he was also
accounted wise.
His repute among his neighbors was that of a man devoted to peace, but
one upon whom it was unsafe to impose. Those few who had stirred his
slow anger into eruption, had found him one as distinctly to be feared
as trusted.
Had political aspiration been in the pattern of Aaron's thought he
might have gone down to the world below to sit in the state assembly.
From there in due time he might have gained promotion to the augmented
dignities of Congress, but he had persistently waved aside the whispers
of such temptation. "He hain't a wishful feller nohow," the stranger
was always told, "despite thet he knows hist'ry an' sich like lore in
an' out an' back'ards an' forrards."
Now Aaron lay wounded with a pistol ball, and many problems of vital
interest to himself remained unsolved. Whether he would live or die
was guess work--a gamble. Whether the timber which he had felled would
free him from his last debt and leave his two children independent, or
be ravished from him by the insatiable appetite of the flood was a
question likewise unanswered. Whether or not the daughter, who was the
man of the family after himself, would return in time to comfort his
last moments was a doubt which troubled him most of all. He had sent
her away as unequivocally as a stricken captain sends his first officer
to the bridge, but he wanted her as a man, shipwrecked and starving,
wants the sight of a sail or of a smoke-stack on an empty horizon.
And his boy--the boy who had given him small strength upon which to
lean, was absent. He had gone idly and thoughtlessly before the
emergency arose, and the man lying on the four-poster bed tried to
argue for him, in extenuation, that he would have returned had he known
the need. But in his bruised and doubting heart he knew that had it
been Alexander, she would have read the warning in the first brook that
she saw creeping into an augmented stream, and would have hastened home.
About the room moved the self-taught doctor, who was also the local
Evangelist. Two neighbor women were there too, called from adjacent
cabins to take the place of the daughter he had sent away. They were
ignorant women, hollow-chested and wrinkled like witches because they
had spent lives against dun-colored backgrounds, but they were wise in
the matter of "yarbs" and simple nursing.
All night Aaron McGivins had lain there, restive and unable to sleep.
With him had been those matters which obtrude themselves, with
confusing multiplicity, upon the mind of a man who was yesterday strong
and unthreatened and who to-day faces the requirement of readjusting
all his scheme from the clear and lighted ways of life to the gathering
mists of death. He had seen through a high-placed window the gray of
dawn grow into a clearer light, making visible rag-like streamers of
wet and scudding clouds. He had a glimpse of mountain-sides sodden
with thaw--the thaw to which he owed his whole sum of sudden
perplexities.
Then the door swung open.
Eagerly the bed-ridden man turned his eyes towards it; eagerly, too,
the doctor's gaze went that way, but the two women, glancing sidewise,
sniffed dubiously and stiffened a little. To them the anxiously
awaited daughter was an unsexed creature whom they could neither
understand nor approve. They had lived hard and intolerent lives,
accepting drudgery and perennial child-bearing as unquestioned mandates
of destiny. Accustomed to the curt word and to servile obedience they
had no understanding for a woman who asserted herself in positive terms
of personality. To them a "he-woman" who "wore pants" and admitted no
sex inferiority was at best a "hussy without shame." If such a woman
chanced also to be beautiful beyond comparison with her less favored
sisters, the conclusion was inescapable. They could read in her
self-claimed emancipation only the wildness of a filly turned out to
pasture without halter or hobble; the wildness of one who scorns
respectability; for primitive morality is pathetically narrow. It may
sing piously about the pyre of a burning witch, but it can hardly grasp
the pagan chastity of a Diana.
And it was a Diana both chaste and vital who stood in this wide-flung
door. Behind her far radiant background was the full light of a young
day. For an instant the scowl of storm-laden skies broke into a smile
of sunlight as though she had brought the brightness with her. But she
stood poised in an attitude of arrested action--halted by the curb of
anxiety. The whole vitality and clean vigor of her seemed breathless
and questioning. Fear had spurred her into fleetness as she had
crossed the hills, yet now she hesitated on the threshold. At first
her eyes could make little of the inner murk, where both lamp and fire
had guttered low and gray shadows held dominance.
But she herself stood illumined by that transitory flash of morning
sun. It played in an aura about the coppery coils of her hair and
kindled into vivid color the lips parted in suspense.
After a moment her eyes had reaccommodated themselves to the
dispiriting darkness and her bosom heaved to a sigh of relief; of
thanksgiving. Under the heaped coverlets of the bed she had seen the
movement of feeble hand stirred in a gesture of welcome.
The neighbor women, bent on a mission of charity, yet unable to lay
aside their hard convictions, gazed non-committally on, as though they
would draw aside their skirts from contamination, yet sought to do so
with the least possible measure of ostentation or offense.
That attitude Alexander did not fail to comprehend but she ignored it,
giving back to the smouldering eyes of disapproval level look for look.
Then she said quietly: "Brother Sanders, kin I hev speech with him--or
must he lay plum quiet?"
The man of healing passed a bewildered hand across his tousled
forehead, and with thin fingers combed his long beard.
"He ought, properly speakin', ter stay quiet--but yit--he's frettin'
fer ye so thet hit mought harm him wuss ter deny him."
"I'll aim ter keep him es placid es I kin," said the girl, and in
obedience to her gesture the others left the room.
Then Alexander dropped to her knees and her hands closed tightly over
the thin one that the wounded man thrust weakly up to her. Even now
there was no woman-surrender to tears; only wide eyes agonized with
apprehension while her shoulders shook as a man's may shake with inward
sobs that leave the eyes dry.
In a low voice she made her report. "Ther dam's finished. Without
ther flood overtops ther highest mark on record, them logs is saved."
Old Aaron nodded gratefully and gazed in silence at the rafters
overhead, realizing that he must conserve his slender strength and that
there was much to say. The girl, too, waited until at length he made a
fresh beginning.
"Afore ye came, Alexander, me an' yore maw hed done prayed mighty
fervent fer a man child."
"I knows thet," she interrupted. "I knows hit full well, an' I've
sought deespite how I was borned ter be a man."
"Ye hain't only tried--ye've done succeeded," he assured her, then
after a long drawn breath he went on. "Most folks 'lowed hit was like
faultin' ther Almighty ter feel thet-a-way. They said hit war plum
rebellious."
The girl whose cheeks had gone pallid and whose lips were tight drawn
spoke defiantly. "I reckon we hain't keerin' overly much what other
folks thinks."
"An' yit," the father made slow answer, "what folks agrees ter think
makes ther laws of life whether hit be right or wrong--I'd hev been
willin' ter raise ye up like a gal ef hit hadn't been thet Joe----"
He faltered there with Love's unwillingness to criticise his son and
the girl only nodded, saying nothing.
"Joe's a good boy, with a sweet nature," went on the father at last.
"He favors his maw--an' she was always gentle. Yes, he's a good
boy--an' in a country whar a feller kin live without fightin', I reckon
he'd be accounted smart beyond ther commonality."
Again the mountaineer's face was contorted into a spasm of pain and his
labored breathing demanded a respite of silence. Then slowly he
declared with the unvarnished candor of the backwoods: "Joe's got all a
man needs--but--jest--guts!"
The kneeling figure reluctantly nodded her assent. These admissions as
to one's nearest and dearest must at times be made between men who face
facts.
"Ef I passes out, I wants ye ter kinderly look atter him like he ought
ter look atter you."
A stray lock of heavy hair had fallen across the girl's violet eyes,
and with an impatient gesture at the reminder of her sex, Alexander
tossed it back. "I gives ye my pledge," she said simply.
Then she rose from her knees and stood looking off through the window
with a fixity that argued a deep dedication of purpose. "An' I pledges
ye somethin' else too," she broke out in a voice suddenly savage. "Ef
ye dies Bud Sellers belongs ter me ter kill--an' I won't nowise fail."
But at that the wounded man raised a deter rent hand shaken with
palsied anxiety.
"No--no!" he gasped. "Thet's ther sperit I've done sought ter combat
all my life--ther shot from ther la'rel--ther lay-wayin' of enemies. I
couldn't rest easy ef ye denied me that pledge."
Alexander's hands clenched themselves, and her lips were compressed.
"I don't aim ter lay-way him," she declared with an ominous quiet. "I
aims ter reckon with him es man ter man."
"Alexander." He spoke with slow difficulty but she knew that the words
came earnestly from his heart. "I hain't skeercely got ther strength
ter argyfy with ye, but without ye seeks ter hinder me from layin'
peaceful in my last sleep ye'll bide by my command. Ther boy wasn't
hisself when he harmed me. He war plum crazed. No man loves me better
than what he does when he's in his right mind. No man wucked harder
down thar. I fergives him full free. I wants ye ter act ther same an'
ter make Joe do likewise."
The girl covered her face with her hands and turned from the bed. She
went for a moment to the door and flung it open. There was no longer
any sunshine--only a dome of leaden heaviness and the wail of dismal
wind through the timber. To the father's eyes, despite her masculine
attire she was all feminine as she stood there and his face grew tender
as he watched the curls stirring at her temples.
Finally she wheeled and with a military stiffness marched back. Slowly
she nodded her head. "I gives ye thet pledge too;" she said, "since ye
wants hit--but I gives hit with a right heavy sperit."
He reached up and took her hand, drawing her down to the bed by his
side.
"Alexander," he said softly, "mebby I hain't played quite fa'r with ye
my own self. I've done tried ter raise ye up like a man because I
could always kinderly lean on ye--but ye've done been both a son an' a
daughter ter me. Maybe though when I'm gone ther woman in ye'll come
uppermost an' ye'll think hardly of me fer what I did."
"Think hard of ye fer tryin' ter make a man of me!" Her voice was as
full of scornful protest as though a soldier had said, "Think hard of
you because you taught me valor!"
He smiled before he spoke again. "I've done warned young men off from
co'tin' ye on pain of harm an' death--an' when I'm dead they'll come in
lavish numbers seekin' ter make up fer lost time."
"I reckon I kin warn 'em off too," she protested, "an' by ther same
means."
Once more a smile flickered in the wearied eyes that looked up from the
pillow. "Thet's fer ye ter decide yore own self, but ef ther day ever
comes when ye'd ruther welcome a lover then ter drive him off, I don't
want ye ter feel thet my memory's standin' in ther way of your
happiness."
"Thet day won't never come," she vehemently declared, and her father
nodded indulgently.
"Let thet matter lay over fer ther future ter decide," he suggested.
"Only ef ye does sometime alter yore way of thinkin' I wants thet men
children shell come atter me, bearin' my own name. Joe's children are
apt ter take atter him. I don't see how ye kin compass hit, but I
wishes thet ef ye ever did wed, yore babies could still be McGivinses."
Despite her announcement of a masculinity which should not mantle into
a flooding of the temples and cheeks with blushes of modesty, Alexander
turned pink to the roots of her hair. Her voice was a little strained.
"A feller kain't promise thet he won't go crazy," she declared. "But
ef ever I does go so crazy es ter wed with a man, thet man'll tek my
surname an' our children 'll tek hit too, an' w'ar hit 'twell they
dies."