The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the open
door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the strings of
things hanging from the smoke-browned rafters--beans, red pepper-pods,
and twists of homegrown tobacco, the girl's eyes taking in the old
spinning-wheel in the corner, the piles of brilliantly figured quilts
between the foot-boards of the two beds ranged along one side of the
room, and the boy's, catching eagerly the butt of a big revolver
projecting from the mantel-piece, a Winchester standing in one corner,
a long, old-fashioned squirrel rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers
over the front door, and a bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall
of the back porch. Presently a slim, drenched figure slipped quietly
in, then another, and Mavis stood on one side of the fire-place and
little Jason on the other. The two girls exchanged a swift glance and
Mavis's eyes fell; abashed, she knotted her hands shyly behind her and
with the hollow of one bare foot rubbed the slender arch of the other.
The stranger boy looked up at Jason with a pleasant glance of
recognition, got for his courtesy a sullen glare that travelled from
his broad white collar down to his stockinged legs, and his face
flushed; he would have trouble with that mountain boy. Before the fire
old Jason Hawn stood, and through a smoke cloud from his corn-cob pipe
looked kindly at his two little guests.
"So that's yo' boy an' gal?"
"That's my son Gray," said Colonel Pendleton.
"And that's my cousin Marjorie," said the lad, and Mavis looked quickly
to little Jason for recognition of this similar relationship and got no
answering glance, for little did he care at that moment of hostility
how those two were akin.
"She's my cousin, too," laughed the colonel, "but she always calls me
uncle."
Old Jason turned to him.
"Well, we're a purty rough people down here, but you're welcome to all
we got."
"I've found that out," laughed Colonel Pendleton pleasantly,
"everywhere."
"I wish you both could stay a long time with us," said the old man to
the little strangers. "Jason here would take Gray fishin' an' huntin',
an' Mavis would git on my old mare an' you two could jus' go flyin' up
an' down the road. You could have a mighty good time if hit wasn't too
rough fer ye."
"Oh, no," said the boy politely, and the girl said:
"I'd just love to."
The Blue-grass man's attention was caught by the names.
"Jason," he repeated; "why, Jason was a mighty hunter, and Mavis--that
means 'the songthrush.' How in the world did they get those names?"
"Well, my granddaddy was a powerful b'arhunter in his day," said the
old man, "an' I heerd as how a school-teacher nicknamed him Jason, an'
that name come down to me an' him. I've heerd o' Mavis as long as I can
rickellect. Hit was my grandmammy's name."
Colonel Pendleton looked at the sturdy mountain lad, his compact
figure, square shoulders, well-set head with its shock of hair and
bold, steady eyes, and at the slim, wild little creature shrinking
against the mantel-piece, and then he turned to his own son Gray and
his little cousin Marjorie. Four better types of the Blue-grass and of
the mountains it would be hard to find. For a moment he saw them in his
mind's eye transposed in dress and environment, and he was surprised at
the little change that eye could see, and when he thought of the four
living together in these wilds, or at home in the Blue-grass, his
wonder at what the result might be almost startled him. The mountain
lad had shown no surprise at the talk about him and his cousin, but
when the stranger man caught his eye, little Jason's lips opened.
"I knowed all about that," he said abruptly.
"About what?"
"Why, that mighty hunter--and Mavis."
"Why, who told you?"
"The jologist."
"The what?" Old Jason laughed.
"He means ge-ol-o-gist," said the old man, who had no little trouble
with the right word himself. "A feller come in here three year ago with
a hammer an' went to peckin' aroun' in the rocks here, an' that boy was
with him all the time. Thar don't seem to be much the feller didn't
tell Jason an' nothin' that Jason don't seem to remember. He's al'ays
a-puzzlin' me by comin' out with somethin' or other that rock-pecker
tol' him an'--" he stopped, for the boy was shaking his head from side
to side.
"Don't you say nothin' agin him, now," he said, and old Jason laughed.
"He's a powerful hand to take up fer his friends, Jason is."
"He was a friend o' all us mountain folks," said the boy stoutly, and
then he looked Colonel Pendleton in the face--fearlessly, but with no
impertinence.
"He said as how you folks from the big settlemints was a-comin' down
here to buy up our wild lands fer nothin' because we all was a lot o'
fools an' didn't know how much they was worth, an' that ever'body'd
have to move out o' here an' you'd get rich diggin' our coal an'
cuttin' our timber an' raisin' hell ginerally."
He did not notice Marjorie's flush, but went on fierily: "He said that
our trees caught the rain an' our gullies gethered it together an'
troughed it down the mountains an' made the river which would water all
yo' lands. That you was a lot o' damn fools cuttin' down yo' trees an'
a-plantin' terbaccer an' a-spittin' out yo' birthright in
terbaccer-juice, an' that by an' by you'd come up here an' cut down our
trees so that there wouldn't be nothin' left to ketch the rain when it
fell, so that yo' rivers would git to be cricks an' yo' cricks branches
an' yo' land would die o' thirst an' the same thing 'ud happen here.
Co'se we'd all be gone when all this tuk place, but he said as how I'd
live to see the day when you furriners would be damaged by wash-outs
down thar in the settlements an' would be a-pilin' up stacks an' stacks
o' gold out o' the lands you robbed me an' my kinfolks out of."
"Shet up," said Arch Hawn sharply, and the boy wheeled on him.
"Yes, an' you air a-helpin' the furriners to rob yo' own kin; you air
a-doin' hit yo'self."
"Jason!"
The old man spoke sternly and the boy stopped, flushed and angry, and a
moment later slipped from the room.
"Well!" said the colonel, and he laughed good-humoredly to relieve the
strain that his host might feel on his account; but he was amazed just
the same--the bud of a socialist blooming in those wilds! Arch Hawn's
shrewd face looked a little concerned, for he saw that the old man's
rebuke had been for the discourtesy to strangers, and from the sudden
frown that ridged the old man's brow, that the boy's words had gone
deep enough to stir distrust, and this was a poor start in the
fulfilment of the purpose he had in view. He would have liked to give
the boy a cuff on the ear. As for Mavis, she was almost frightened by
the outburst of her playmate, and Marjorie was horrified by his
profanity; but the dawning of something in Gray's brain worried him,
and presently he, too, rose and went to the back porch. The rain had
stopped, the wet earth was fragrant with freshened odors, wood-thrushes
were singing, and the upper air was drenched with liquid gold that was
darkening fast. The boy Jason was seated on the yard fence with his
chin in his hands, his back to the house, and his face toward home. He
heard the stranger's step, turned his head, and mistaking a puzzled
sympathy for a challenge, dropped to the ground and came toward him,
gathering fury as he came. Like lightning the Blue-grass lad's face
changed, whitening a little as he sprang forward to meet him, but
Jason, motioning with his thumb, swerved behind the chimney, where the
stranger swiftly threw off his coat, the mountain boy spat on his
hands, and like two diminutive demons they went at each other fiercely
and silently. A few minutes later the two little girls rounding the
chimney corner saw them--Gray on top and Jason writhing and biting
under him like a tortured snake. A moment more Mavis's strong little
hand had the stranger boy by his thick hair and Mavis, feeling her own
arm clutched by the stranger-girl, let go and turned on her like a
fury. There was a piercing scream from Marjorie, hurried footsteps
answered on the porch, and old Jason and the colonel looked with
bewildered eyes on the little Blue-grass girl amazed, indignant, white
with horror; Mavis shrinking away from her as though she were the one
who had been threatened with a blow; the stranger lad with a bitten
thumb clinched in the hollow of one hand, his face already reddening
with contrition and shame; and savage little Jason biting a bloody lip
and with the lust of battle still shaking him from head to foot.
"Jason," said the old man sternly, "whut's the matter out hyeh?"
Marjorie pointed one finger at Mavis, started to speak, and stopped.
Jason's eyes fell.
"Nothin'," he said sullenly, and Colonel Pendleton looked to his son
with astonished inquiry, and the lad's fine face turned bewildered and
foolish.
"I don't know, sir," he said at last.
"Don't know?" echoed the colonel. "Well--"
The old man broke in:
"Jason, if you have lost yo' manners an' don't know how to behave when
thar's strangers around, I reckon you'd better go on home."
The boy did not lift his eyes.
"I was a-goin' home anyhow," he said, still sullen, and he turned.
"Oh, no!" said the colonel quickly; "this won't do. Come now--you two
boys shake hands."
At once the stranger lad walked forward to his enemy, and confused
Jason gave him a limp hand. The old man laughed. "Come on in,
Jason--you an' Mavis--an' stay to supper."
The boy shook his head.
"I got to be gittin' back home," he said, and without a word more he
turned again. Marjorie looked toward the little girl, but she, too, was
starting.
"I better be gittin' back too," she said shyly, and off she ran. Old
Jason laughed again.
"Jes' like two young roosters out thar in my barnyard," and he turned
with the colonel toward the house. But Marjorie and her cousin stood in
the porch and watched the two little mountaineers until, without once
looking back, they passed over the sunlit hill.