THE WOUNDED MOUNTAINEER
She was no longer fearful for his life. Saner deductions had recalled
how he was fighting up to the moment Tusk threw him off, and this
precluded the probability of a broken neck. The small abrasion over his
temple, where it must have struck a desk, could alone be responsible for
the unconsciousness which, she now felt assured, would soon be passing.
Had Jane been dressed as a nun, the picture she made with the young
mountaineer's head upon her lap would have startled the world. None of
those discerning critics who stalk the galleries on varnishing day could
have passed a canvas such as this without bending their rusty knees at
least one creak in humble reverence. For God had carefully blessed her
with a Madonna-like loveliness, a matchless purity, which held
enthralled all who came suddenly upon that look. Perhaps it was not
known in Heaven where she got her smile. It was this, when rippling from
eyes to mouth, and lingering about the ovals of her cheeks, that could
have swayed Faith upon its base or chained it thrice firmly to the Rock.
She had first acquired a pleasant suspicion of this years before in the
convent up the valley, where the good sisters had given her shelter.
Early one morning on mischief bent, at the very peep of dawn, she had
filched the garb of old sister Methtune and, supporting its bulky skirt,
demurely walked into the Mother Superior's sanctified chamber. What that
good woman thought as she raised herself up from her couch is not
recorded even in her conscience, but Jane was sent in haste to replace
the nun's attire. While passing a glass door in a dimly lit hall she
saw, for the first time in her life, her own face. For five, ten minutes
she continued to look back into this heretofore undiscovered and sinful
reflector, sometimes laughing, sometimes making grimaces. Then for
another ten minutes she simply stared. Sister Methune was late getting
to her devotions that morning.
But this incident had occurred eight years ago, when she was scarcely
thirteen. Until then she had literally grown up like a weed--or a wild
rose--a half-savage little creature of the Cumberlands, loving
passionately, hating blindly, doing all things with the full intensity
of a vivid, whole-souled temperament. She lived in a cabin many miles
from the more civilized country where the convent lay, under the
questionable protection of a noted feudist father, who was usually
making moonshine when not stalking his enemies. Her cherished glimpses
of civilization came during one month each year--July--when she picked
especially fat and luscious blackberries in remote spots known only to
her, and sold them in the valley to Colonel John May, whose white
columned house might be seen on clear days from the convent tower.
One of her visits happened upon a day when the place was enlivened by
his daughter's approaching wedding. A distinguished house-party had
assembled, among whom a city-bred young fellow had been attracted by her
wild beauty. Safe from the eyes of his friends he followed her through
the woodland pasture, and talked to her; and it had seemed a very
natural thing. Mountain girls mature early, and she was a woman for all
her tender years; a twelve and a half year old woman, partly savage,
masquerading in the guise of a girl. He was dazzling to her and
pleasing. But suddenly he kissed her and, infuriated, she flung the
empty bucket in his face and fled. The gods may know where she learned
the difference between right and wrong.
In a passion of shame and bitter hatred, she hurled back at him every
oath her father, in his most prolific moments, had ever used. It was a
wondrous collection. Her only idea was to reach home and return with the
rifle, and so insistent was this that she ran most of the twelve
intervening miles. Reaching at last the cabin clearing, she panted up
its steep side, through burnt stumps and sparsely growing corn, to the
door; but there across the sill her father lay face down and motionless.
He might have been drunk, and so at first she thought, until her
approach revealed a little hole in the back of his head. She stared at
him like an image of wood, then sank upon the floor, putting her lips
close to his ear.
"Pappy," she said, in a quick whisper, "Pappy, tell me who done hit! I
know ye air daid--but can't ye tell me jest that?"
Her first impulse was of revenge, but slowly the love--unmerited as it
may have been--and the sense of loss, of loneliness, came over her like
a great wave, and with her face on his still shoulder she wailed her
wretched grief to the silent wilderness. When she looked up it was
sundown. She realized that whoever had killed him might come back for
her--might now, indeed, be "layin' out" for her; and yet she could not
leave him unburied! Her hands grasped his shirt and she frantically
tugged, bracing her heels against the roughly hewn log door-step, in a
vague way hoping that she might drag him to a spot where the ground
would be soft enough to dig. A few minutes of this fruitless effort
compelled her to give it up.
"Pappy, can't ye help me, jest a leetle?" she had whispered in despair.
And then the tears would flow again.
She went stealthily to the edge of the corn patch and listened. A
lingering afterglow touched the broken rows of skyward-pointing tassels,
but the valley below her lay shrouded in gloom. Night was creeping up
the mountain side; she could see it, feel it in the horrible silence.
All alone in that stark vastness of crags, disregarding those who might
be "layin' out" for her, she put her hands to her mouth and called; then
leaned forward, holding her breath and listening. There was not even an
echo. So she turned wearily back to the cabin and tenderly covered that
which she was leaving with a quilt from her own bed, whispering:
"Gawd, nor nobody, don't seem ter heah me tonight--ye poh, ole Pappy!"
The only cabin where she might hope for help was three miles away; the
home of a partial friend--at least no enemy. Reaching it after a
perilous walk through a roadless, bridgeless wilderness, she stood
outside the crooked gate and called "Hallo." Again and again she called
till, in desperation scoffing at the risk--for it is never wise to
approach the Kentucky mountaineer's home nearer than his front gate
without an invitation--she walked boldly to the door. It was open, and
she peered into the darkness. No fire had been lighted for supper. She
kneeled on the sill and felt around with her hand. First she touched an
overturned chair, then a piece of broken lamp chimney, then a man's
foot; but the man was not standing, the toes were up. Her heart turned
to ice, yet the need of help was too imperative to turn away from any
hope, so again she reached for the clumsy boot and fearfully moved it to
see if he might be merely asleep, or drunk. The leg was stiff, and, with
another shudder, she turned and fled.
By early morning she had dragged herself down from the mountains and
staggered through the convent gate. Here, at least, in one of those
modest retreats, which generations ago slipped into the remoter valleys
of young Kentucky for their voluntary exile, she would find help! Many
an afternoon when the world was blithe she had been wont to stop and
listen to the mellow peal of its bell floating across her mountains on
an easterly evening breeze, and in all of this torturing night of
wandering she imagined it was calling. The good sisters gathered her in
as though she were that more treasured lamb than the ninety and nine,
nor would they hearken to her leaving. The sheriff soon came to their
call, and in his honest, gruff voice promised reverently to perform the
last services at her cabin. Then she began to find peace.
But after three years here, when she had absorbed all that their patient
teaching could impart, her mind grew disturbed with a new restlessness.
It may have been that life was becoming monotonous; or that pictures of
the great world, of which she had only had a glimpse, whetted her
curiosity to go forth and see; or, more than these, it may have been her
innate love for those mountains, and those mountain people--after all,
her people. For she had come to learn that the blow she suffered had
been struck through simple ignorance, and from this knowledge gradually
developed a resolution, inspiring her with courage to approach the
Mother Superior for permission to go back into the world and teach. She
reminded the good woman that she had taken no vows, and horrified her by
admitting that she had accepted no creed, save that of help to fellow
man. After an hour of tearful, never-to-be-forgotten argument, the
Mother gave signs of yielding.
It happened that upon this same afternoon Colonel May arrived, bringing
some of his guests to see the convent. He was held in very high esteem
by these nuns, although differing from their religious views, and if he
did not quite atone for this by the frequent intervals with which the
bounties of his farm added to their modest comfort, he did, at least,
merit their impersonal affection. So it followed that the good Mother,
being perplexed and sore in mind over her duty to the girl, led him
aside.
He was deeply affected by her story, and recalled the child who
suggested faint memories of toothsome berries. Conscious of the pressing
need for more schools in the rural districts of his State--especially in
the neighborhood of his own home--and spontaneously in sympathy with her
ambition, he so earnestly espoused her cause with promises to keep her
under his protection, that the last doubt vanished from the good woman's
eyes.
What the sisters had been unable to do for her, the generous Colonel
fully accomplished. She was taken away to a most excellent school and,
after five years, returned to him a thoroughly proficient young lady.
Graceful, possessing a finish and magnetism which her wild origin made
more peculiarly attractive, sympathetic, frank, normal, and exceedingly
good to look upon, she excelled even those hopes which he had built
during her absence. A fortnight later the quail and whip-poor-wills,
near the thicket where the wounded mountaineer's mare now stood, had
been startled by the rat-tat of hammers and the song of saws; and that
September she found herself, at nearly twenty-one, in possession of a
well equipped schoolhouse, whose fame spread far during this, its first
year of existence. But while her own years of study and acquiring
culture had charmingly toned the surface of her nature, the earlier
intensity, the freedom of thought and behavior which are the natural
heritage of those born in wild places, still simmered like a resting
volcano.
And now, as her handkerchief went mechanically from the pail to the
forehead of the wounded man, a shadowy procession of these thoughts
glided by in a fantastic panorama. In the stillness of the place ghosts
of the old life reached out and clasped hands with actualities of the
new; clasped hands, and danced, and arabesqued before her fancy until it
seemed as if her entire life were performing there upon the dusky floor.
If only her future could perform! She pressed the handkerchief more
firmly to the wound, and waited.
Some distance along the road two men were hurriedly driving. The breeze
carried this sound to her quick ears and, gently lowering the
mountaineer's head, she went to the door. The whip-poor-wills abruptly
hushed, for they, too, had caught the sound; and amidst that strained
expectancy of woods life, which grows so tense as daylight fails, she
waited.
When the approaching buggy came out of the dusk she saw what she had
been expecting, Colonel May driving a powerful chestnut, and, with him,
Bob Hart; not so great in stature, but resembling the older man in grace
and manner as though he might in fact have been his son, instead of his
daughter's husband.
A groan from the room made her hesitate on the point of rushing out to
meet them, so she halloed between her hands while they alighted. A smile
of extreme relief crossed her face as they came up.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're here," she cried, with pretended lightness.
"And you, my dear," the Colonel panted in his eagerness to reach her,
"are more welcome still to us! What has happened that kept you?"
"Don't be alarmed," she answered, touched by the anxiety in his voice.
"There's a man hurt in here. He's been unconscious for an hour--but just
groaned!"
"Stabbed or shot?" Bob asked, pushing in and lighting the kerosene
ceiling lamp. Its flame rose stupidly, but soon cast a luminous circle
that framed the man, the bucket, the sodden handkerchief and splashes of
blood-stained water on the floor, in a tragic, still-life picture.
"Stabbed or shot?" the Colonel repeated after Bob.
"Neither," she murmured. "He fought Tusk Potter, but I'm sure it's no
worse than a blow on the head as he fell."
"My word! My word!" the old gentleman exploded. "I've always been
concerned about your permitting that half-witted outlaw to come here!
Where is he now?" He glared into the dark corners with the light of
battle in his eyes.
The unconscious man mumbled and stirred, moving as one asleep will
sometimes shift to a more comfortable position. Bob, already by him on
the floor, looked up, saying:
"He's coming about all right. What shall we do, Colonel?"
"Leave him down the road," the Colonel snapped. "Tom Hewlet's house'll
be good enough, and I'll pay the rascal's niece to nurse him, if he
requires it. Why did they fight?" He turned abruptly to Jane.
"He--he resented something Tusk said."
"Something Tusk said to _you_?" The old warrior looked more ferocious
than ever.
She nodded.
The Colonel's jaws came together with a snap. "By God, sir," he
exclaimed to Bob, "we'll take him home, sir! He shall have the best room
in Arden, sir, and all the doctors in the county! No gentleman can
defend you, my dear," he took her hand, "and be left at run-down hovels
on the roadside. The very suggestion, sir," he turned his frowning brows
again on Bob, "is unworthy, sir!"
The young planter burst into a spontaneous laugh.
"It was certainly careless of me," he admitted, "and when our friend
here perks up I'll apologise. I say, old chap," taking one of the inert
wrists, "can't you come to for awhile?"
There was a slight twitching about the mouth, then the eyes opened,
wearily at first, but the next moment wide with surprise. The Colonel
bent over him.
"You have met with a mishap, sir," he said most gently. "If you've no
friends hereabouts I offer you the hospitality of my home, which I trust
you will honor me by accepting."
The mountaineer slowly raised himself to a sitting position, passed a
hand over his forehead, and asked:
"What's hospitality?"
The question, the drawling quality of his voice which sounded as mellow
as though someone had struck a chord upon a harp, surprised them out of
an answer. Rousing further, he continued:
"I hain't got no friends 'round hyar--lest, as Ruth says, all things is
friends."
"Must be a Shaker," Bob whispered, and the Colonel, with an indulgent
smile, remarked:
"I bow to the charity of Miss Ruth's opinion, though I should scarcely
expect so prompt an indorsement from one in your present position. But
come, sir, and we'll help you to our buggy."