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SUNLIGHT PATCH
by
CREDO HARRIS
Author of "Toby: A Novel of Kentucky,"
"Motor Rambles in Italy," etc.
[Illustration: Without warning he sprang like a panther at the
offender's throat
_See page 12_]
[Illustration]
Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1915
by Small, Maynard & Company
(Incorporated)
To
MAUD BLANC HARRIS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I OUT OF THE WILDERNESS 1
II AN UNEXPECTED RESCUE 6
III THE WOUNDED MOUNTAINEER 18
IV A HUMAN ENIGMA 29
V AN INTERRUPTED BREAKFAST 37
VI THE BURNED CABIN 45
VII DALE DAWSON'S PHILOSOPHY 55
VIII THE INCONSEQUENT ENGINEER 66
IX AT THE UNPAINTED HOUSE 75
X THE SPIRIT OF SUNLIGHT PATCH 82
XI ON THE THRESHOLD 95
XII A LIGHT ABOVE THE MOUNTAIN 105
XIII IN THE CIRCLE OF CEDARS 111
XIV A MEETING OF RASCALS 131
XV TRYING TO PLAY FAIR 141
XVI A SPRINGTIME SANTA CLAUS 155
XVII AT TOP SPEED 167
XVIII A DINNER OF SILENCES 179
XIX THE MERITS OF HORSEFLESH 192
XX A STARTLING CONFESSION 203
XXI A VOICE AND A TAPER FLAME 216
XXII TWO PLANS 226
XXIII THE SECOND PLAN 236
XXIV THE CALL THAT MEANS SURRENDER 245
XXV ALMOST A RESOLUTION 256
XXVI "WHAT EYES HAVE YOU?" 266
XXVII A QUICK FUSE 286
XXVIII AUNT TIMMIE HEARS A SECRET 296
XXIX A PARALYSING DISCOVERY 306
XXX "I'LL PAY THE DEBT!" 316
XXXI OUT OF THE DYING DAY 329
XXXII THE SHERIFF FORGETS HIS PRISONER 336
XXXIII THE MYSTIC GARDENER SHOWS HIS WORK 341
XXXIV A GIRL'S NOBILITY 355
XXXV THE PRODUCT OF SUNLIGHT PATCH 363
XXXVI A TIN CYLINDER 372
XXXVII TUSK 380
XXXVIII A LANE AT TWILIGHT 386
XXXIX TRIUMPH 390
SUNLIGHT PATCH
CHAPTER I
OUT OF THE WILDERNESS
He appeared an odd figure, sitting loosely on an old white mare which
held her nose to the ground and cautiously single-footed over the uneven
road. Unconcerned, perhaps unconscious that he bestrode a horse, his
head was thrown back and his gaze penetrated the lace-work of branches
to a sky exquisite blue where a few white, puffy clouds were aimlessly
suspended. And, like these clouds, his thoughts hovered between
unrealized hopes and the realistic mountains he was leaving; thoughts
interwoven with ambitions which had obsessed his waking hours and
glorified his dreams--dreams, desires, ambitions, always before his eyes
but out of reach. His hair fell to the opened collar of a homespun
shirt, and homespun were his trousers, tucked into a pair of homemade
boots. His saddle bore an obscure brand of the United States army, for
it had carried one of his people through the War of the States fifty
years before, and across its pummel balanced a long, ungainly rifle of
an earlier period.
It was an afternoon of that month when the spirit of Kentucky arises
from the loamy soil after a recreating sleep of winter. The fragrance of
the earth was everywhere. Overhead the trees met in great, silent
arches--Nature's Gothic, re-frescoed now in the delicate tints of spring
by the brush of Nature's Master--beneath which all life seemed
breathlessly poised as though in this dim-lit, sun-dappled cathedral of
the forest a mute service were in progress. But the man--he did not seem
to see, or feel, or be. Thus, without a sound except for the muffled
shuffle of the old mare's unshod hoofs, he rode.
They were coming down the mountain, he and the old white mare; coming
down into the valley, into the "settlements"; and to-day marked the last
stage of his journey from the center of those wild giants which had
bounded the territory of his twenty-two years' existence. To-day he
would emerge from the foothills into the open country; into the smiling
country of his imagination, from somewhere in whose expanding fields now
came the call of a toiling plowboy. It was this which finally brought
him from his reverie in the sky, from his lofty dreams to the smell of
earth.
Drawing down his gaze, he saw that here, indeed, was the open threshold
of a new world, and his eyes distended with a veritable glory of sight.
They had seen distance, but not like this. They had ranged from mountain
peak to mountain peak, or across the scarred tops of intervening peaks
to a skyline untamed even by the coaxing tints of rose and purple
sunsets; but before him now lay distance of another kind: hills upon
hills, 'twas true, yet low; and whose once rough lines were mellowed by
the patient surgery of a hundred years of plowshares. Gentle slopes, and
shallow valleys, and slopes again--not standing like his graven monsters
of the Cumberlands, but lolling in peace and lazy unconcern, melting
into the azure west so artfully that he could not be definitely sure
where earth left off and sky began. And between these softly molded
forms was no towering harshness at whose contemplation his eyes would
intuitively have narrowed, but a subdued carpet of many fields, with
here and there a nestling home. A grand, sweeping canvas, it might have
been, whose browns of new-turned soil, whose light green tints of reborn
orchards and sprouting wheat, were gracefully interrupted by the deeper
tones of clustered trees--those remnants of primeval forest which the
unintentional landscape gardeners of pioneer days had chanced to leave
standing in this picturesque Kentucky valley.
A welcome seemed to rise from it like soothing fingers laid upon his
brow and his frame drooped in extreme contentment; for it portrayed the
country he had come to seek from his home back in that wilderness where
bridle-paths are boulevards and primitive log cabins the mansions of his
people. So he continued to sit spellbound, held between the
satisfaction of lingering and the impulse to ride down into it, and to
rest there as everything seemed to be resting in a soft growth of
plenty. This was decided by the mare which, of her own accord, turned
and started on.
He did not again draw rein for many miles. The needle of his nature
urged him forward, straight along a narrow valley lane that ambled
between mildewed fences and their inclosed fields; between untouched
walls of wild-grape, red-bud and blossoming dog-wood; and he knew that
his intuition was not sending him astray. This sweet-smelling road was
now making another turn which ushered him directly upon a frame
schoolhouse, set slightly back in a grove of trees. Quickly, he brought
the old mare to a stop.
That it was a schoolhouse--the very schoolhouse which had been the
reliquary of his dreams--he never doubted, so accurately did it fit the
description given by a mountain preacher; and to be actually facing it
in the material form filled him with a nameless fascination. Sitting
rigid, in an attitude bent forward, his tense stare directed on its
partly open door, he suggested a Marathon runner crouched for the start
of that great trial; and somewhere in his subconsciousness a voice
whispered that this day, this hour, marked the beginning of his mortal
race. He comprehended a certain vague significance to which analysis was
denied.
Then slowly dismounting he led the mare deep into an opposite thicket.
There was no necessity for doing this, no reason, except the latent
sense of caution a wild creature feels in strange places; and, having
concealed his rifle beneath a fallen log, he turned back to the road.
But now he hesitated, putting one hand against a tree for support. A
close observer might have seen that his body was swaying slightly from
side to side with a curious movement, not unlike the restive motion of a
caged beast; and a glance at his face would have confirmed the
existence of some overwhelming emotion. In a deep, drawling voice, he
spoke:
"Wall, Ruth, I reckon hyar hit air, 'cause hit looks jest like the
preacher said! Now help my arms ter keep hit with me, 'n' pray the Lawd
ter make my haid larn all the larnin' hit's got shet up in thar! 'N'
tell Him ter give my eyes the fu'st sight of ary danged skunk that'll
try ter crowd me outen hit, so's I kin kill 'im till he rots in hell;
'n' I'll be the Christian ye asked me ter!"
A gentle, almost a childish smile of satisfaction played across his
mouth, and the next moment he was walking forward, carefully and
reverently, as though the little schoolhouse were on holy ground.
The afternoon was waning, and the declining sun cast a genial glow upon
the weatherboarded front; gilding, too, the near side of a crooked
flag-pole set jauntily in the yard. Except for evidences of recent life
the place seemed utterly deserted, and emboldened, even though
disappointed by this, he went up to the door. Here again he hesitated,
for some one within was speaking. It was a woman's voice, raised in
command and fear.