On the other side, too, a similar branch ran down into another creek
which looped around the long slanting side of the spur and emptied,
too, into the Cumberland. At the mouth of each creek the river made a
great bend, and in the sweep of each were rich bottom lands. A century
before, a Hawn had settled in one bottom, the lower one, and a
Honeycutt in the other. As each family multiplied, more land was
cleared up each creek by sons and grandsons until in each cove a clan
was formed. No one knew when and for what reason an individual Hawn and
a Honeycutt had first clashed, but the clash was of course inevitable.
Equally inevitable was it, too, that the two clans should take the
quarrel up, and for half a century the two families had, with
intermittent times of truce, been traditional enemies. The boy's
father, Jason Hawn, had married a Honeycutt in a time of peace, and,
when the war opened again, was regarded as a deserter, and had been
forced to move over the spur to the Honeycutt side. The girl's father,
Steve Hawn, a ne'erdo-well and the son of a ne'er-do-well, had for his
inheritance wild lands, steep, supposedly worthless, and near the head
of the Honeycutt cove. Little Jason's father, when he quarrelled with
his kin, could afford to buy only cheap land on the Honeycutt side, and
thus the homes of the two were close to the high heart of the mountain,
and separated only by the bristling crest of the spur. In time the
boy's father was slain from ambush, and it was a Hawn, the Honeycutts
claimed, who had made him pay the death price of treachery to his own
kin. But when peace came, this fact did not save the lad from taunt and
suspicion from the children of the Honeycutt tribe, and being a
favorite with his Grandfather Hawn down on the river, and harshly
treated by his Honeycutt mother, his life on the other side in the
other cove was a hard one; so his heart had gone back to his own people
and, having no companions, he had made a playmate of his little cousin,
Mavis, over the spur. In time her mother had died, and in time her
father, Steve, had begun slouching over the spur to court the
widow--his cousin's widow, Martha Hawn. Straightway the fact had caused
no little gossip up and down both creeks, good-natured gossip at first,
but, now that the relations between the two clans were once more
strained, there was open censure, and on that day when all the men of
both factions had gone to the county-seat, the boy knew that Steve Hawn
had stayed at home for no other reason than to make his visit that day
secret; and the lad's brain, as he strode ahead of his silent little
companion, was busy with the significance of what was sure to come.
At the mouth of the branch, the two came upon a road that also ran down
to the river, but they kept on close to the bank of the stream which
widened as they travelled--the boy striding ahead without looking back,
the girl following like a shadow. Still again they crossed the road,
where it ran over the foot of the spur and turned down into a deep bowl
filled to the brim with bush and tree, and there, where a wide pool lay
asleep in thick shadow, the lad pulled forth the ball of earth and
worms from his pocket, dropped them with the fishing-pole to the
ground, and turned ungallantly to his bow and arrow. By the time he had
strung it, and had tied one end of the string to the shaft of the arrow
and the other about his wrist, the girl had unwound the coarse
fishing-line, had baited her own hook, and, squatted on her heels, was
watching her cork with eager eyes; but when the primitive little hunter
crept to the lower end of the pool, and was peering with Indian caution
into the depths, her eyes turned to him.
"Watch out thar!" he called, sharply.
Her cork bobbed, sank, and when, with closed eyes, she jerked with all
her might, a big shining chub rose from the water and landed on the
bank beside her. She gave a subdued squeal of joy, but the boy's face
was calm as a star. Minnows like that were all right for a girl to
catch and even for him to eat, but he was after game for a man. A
moment later he heard another jerk and another fish was flopping on the
bank, and this time she made no sound, but only flashed her triumphant
eyes upon him. At the third fish, she turned her eyes for approval--and
got none; and at the fourth, she did not look up at all, for he was
walking toward her.
"You air skeerin' the big uns," he said shortly, and as he passed he
pulled his Barlow knife from his pocket and dropped it at her feet. She
rose obediently, and with no sign of protest began gathering an
apronful of twigs and piling them for a fire. Then she began scraping
one of the fish, and when it was cleaned she lighted the fire. The
blaze crackled merrily, the blue smoke rose like some joyous spirit
loosed for upward flight, and by the time the fourth fish was cleaned,
a little bed of winking coals was ready and soon a gentle sizzling
assailed the boy's ears, and a scent made his nostrils quiver and set
his stomach a-hungering. But still he gave no sign of interest--even
when the little girl spoke at last:
"Dinner's ready."
He did not look around, for he had crouched, his body taut from head to
foot, and he might have been turned suddenly to stone for all the sign
of life he gave, and the little girl too was just as motionless. Then
she saw the little statue come slowly back to quivering life. She saw
the bow bend, the shaft of the arrow drawing close to the boy's paling
cheek, there was a rushing hiss through the air, a burning hiss in the
water, a mighty bass leaped from the convulsed surface and shot to the
depths again, leaving the headless arrow afloat. The boy gave one sharp
cry and lapsed into his stolid calm again.
The little girl said nothing, for there is no balm for the tragedy of
the big fish that gets away. Slowly he untied the string from his
reddened wrist and pulled the arrow in. Slowly he turned and gazed
indifferently at the four crisp fish on four dry twigs with four pieces
of corn pone lying on the grass near them, and the little girl
squatting meekly and waiting, as the woman should for her working lord.
With his Barlow knife he slowly speared a corn pone, picking up a fish
with the other hand, and still she waited until he spoke.
"Take out, Mavie," he said with great gravity and condescension, and
then his knife with a generous mouthful on its point stopped in the
air, his startled eyes widened, and the little girl shrank cowering
behind him. A heavy footfall had crunched on the quiet air, the bushes
had parted, and a huge mountaineer towered above them with a Winchester
over his shoulder and a kindly smile under his heavy beard. The boy was
startled--not frightened.
"Hello, Babe!" he said coolly. "Whut devilmint you up to now?"
The giant smiled uneasily:
"I'm keepin' out o' the sun an' a-takin' keer o' my health," he said,
and his eyes dropped hungrily to the corn pone and fried fish, but the
boy shook his head sturdily.
"You can't git nothin' to eat from me, Babe Honeycutt."
"Now, looky hyeh, Jason--"
"Not a durn bite," said the boy firmly, "even if you air my mammy's
brother. I'm a Hawn now, I want ye to know, an' I ain't goin' to have
my folks say I was feedin' an' harborin' a Honeycutt--'specially you."
It would have been humorous to either Hawn or Honeycutt to hear the big
man plead, but not to the girl, though he was an enemy, and had but
recently wounded a cousin of hers, and was hiding from her own people,
for her warm little heart was touched, and big Babe saw it and left his
mournful eyes on hers.
"An' I'm a-goin' to tell whar I've seed ye," went on the boy savagely,
but the girl grabbed up two fish and a corn pone and thrust them out to
the huge hairy hand eagerly stretched out.
"Now, git away," she said breathlessly, "git away--quick!"
"Mavis!" yelled the boy.
"Shet up!" she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in
sheer amazement, for never before had she made the slightest question
of his tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at the big
Honeycutt and she stamped her foot.
"I'd give 'em to the meanest dog in these mountains."
The big man turned to the boy.
"Is he dead yit?"
"No, he ain't dead yit," said the boy roughly.
"Son," said the mountaineer quietly, "you tell whutever you please
about me."
The curiously gentle smile had never left the bearded lips, but in his
voice a slight proud change was perceptible.
"An' you can take back yo' corn pone, honey."
Then dropping the food in his hand back to the ground, he noiselessly
melted into the bushes again.
At once the boy went to work on his neglected corn-bread and fish, but
the girl left hers untouched where they lay. He ate silently, staring
at the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her eyes his way,
for in the last few minutes some subtle change in their relations had
taken place, and both were equally surprised and mystified. Finally,
the lad ventured a sidewise glance at her beneath the brim of his hat
and met a shy, appealing glance once more. At once he felt aggrieved
and resentful and turned sullen.
"He throwed it back in yo' face," he said. "You oughtn't to 'a' done
it."
Little Mavis made no answer.
"You're nothin' but a gal, an' nobody'll hold nothin' agin you, but
with my mammy a Honeycutt an' me a-livin' on the Honeycutt side, you
mought 'a' got me into trouble with my own folks." The girl knew how
Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made miserable up and
down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew wistful and her chin
quivered.
"I jes' couldn't he'p it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little man
threw up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness over her
sex in general, and at the same time an ungracious acceptance of the
terrible calamity she had perhaps left dangling over his head. He
clicked the blade of his Barlow knife and rose.
"We better be movin' now," he said, with a resumption of his old
authority, and pulling in the line and winding it about the cane pole,
he handed it to her and started back up the spur with Mavis trailing
after, his obedient shadow once more.
On top of the spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with the
slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which, fold after
fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above the green crests
billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more could happen to them
if they went home two hours later than would surely happen if they went
home now, the boy thought, and he did not want to go home now. For a
moment he stood irresolute, and then, far down the river, he saw two
figures on horseback come into sight from a strip of woods, move slowly
around a curve of the road, and disappear into the woods again.
One rode sidewise, both looked absurdly small, and even that far away
the boy knew them for strangers. He did not call Mavis's attention to
them--he had no need--for when he turned, her face showed that she too
had seen them, and she was already moving forward to go with him down
the spur. Once or twice, as they went down, each glimpsed the coming
"furriners" dimly through the trees; they hurried that they might not
miss the passing, and on a high bank above the river road they stopped,
standing side by side, the eyes of both fixed on the arched opening of
the trees through which the strangers must first come into sight. A
ringing laugh from the green depths heralded their coming, and then in
the archway were framed a boy and a girl and two ponies--all from
another world. The two watchers stared silently--the boy noting that
the other boy wore a cap and long stockings, the girl that a strange
hat hung down the back of the other girl's head--stared with widening
eyes at a sight that was never for them before. And then the strangers
saw them--the boy with his bow and arrow, the girl with a
fishing-pole--and simultaneously pulled their ponies in before the
halting gaze that was levelled at them from the grassy bank. Then they
all looked at one another until boy's eyes rested on boy's eyes for
question and answer, and the stranger lad's face flashed with quick
humor.
"Were you looking for us?" he asked, for just so it seemed to him, and
the little mountaineer nodded.
"Yes," he said gravely.
The stranger boy laughed.
"What can we do for you?"
Now, little Jason had answered honestly and literally, and he saw now
that he was being trifled with.
"A feller what wears gal's stockings can't do nothin' fer me," he said
coolly.
Instantly the other lad made as though he would jump from his pony, but
a cry of protest stopped him, and for a moment he glared his hot
resentment of the insult; then he dug his heels into his pony's sides.
"Come on, Marjorie," he said, and with dignity the two little
"furriners" rode on, never looking back even when they passed over the
hill.
"He didn't mean nothin'," said Mavis, "an' you oughtn't--"
Jason turned on her in a fury.
"I seed you a-lookin' at him!"
"'Tain't so! I seed you a-lookin' at HER!" she retorted, but her eyes
fell before his accusing gaze, and she began worming a bare toe into
the sand.
"Air ye goin' home now?" she asked, presently.
"No," he said shortly, "I'm a-goin' atter him. You go on home."
The boy started up the hill, and in a moment the girl was trotting
after him. He turned when he heard the patter of her feet.
"Huh!" he grunted contemptuously, and kept on. At the top of the hill
he saw several men on horseback in the bend of the road below, and he
turned into the bushes.
"They mought tell on us," explained Jason, and hiding bow and arrow and
fishing-pole, they slipped along the flank of the spur until they stood
on a point that commanded the broad river-bottom at the mouth of the
creek.
By the roadside down there, was the ancestral home of the Hawns with an
orchard about it, a big garden, a stable huge for that part of the
world, and a meat-house where for three-quarters of a century there had
always been things "hung up." The old log house in which Jason and
Mavis's great-great-grandfather had spent his pioneer days had been
weather-boarded and was invisible somewhere in the big frame house
that, trimmed with green and porticoed with startling colors, glared
white in the afternoon sun. They could see the two ponies hitched at
the front gate. Two horsemen were hurrying along the river road beneath
them, and Jason recognized one as his uncle, Arch Hawn, who lived in
the county-seat, who bought "wild" lands and was always bringing in
"furriners," to whom he sold them again. The man with him was a
stranger, and Jason understood better now what was going on. Arch Hawn
was responsible for the presence of the man and of the girl and that
boy in the "gal's stockings," and all of them would probably spend the
night at his grandfather's house. A farm-hand was leading the ponies to
the barn now, and Jason and Mavis saw Arch and the man with him throw
themselves hurriedly from their horses, for the sun had disappeared in
a black cloud and a mist of heavy rain was sweeping up the river. It
was coming fast, and the boy sprang through the bushes and, followed by
Mavis, flew down the road. The storm caught them, and in a few moments
the stranger boy and girl looking through the front door at the
sweeping gusts, saw two drenched and bedraggled figures slip shyly
through the front gate and around the corner to the back of the house.