Christmas was approaching and no greater wonder had ever dawned on the
lives of Mavis and Jason than the way these people in the settlements
made ready for it. In the mountains many had never heard of Christmas
and few of Christmas stockings, Santa Claus, and catching Christmas
gifts--not even the Hawns, But Mavis and Jason had known of Christmas,
had celebrated it after the mountain way, and knew, moreover, what the
Blue-grass children did not know, of old Christmas as well, which came
just twelve days after the new. At midnight of old Christmas, so the
old folks in the mountains said, the elders bloomed and the beasts of
the field and the cattle in the barn kneeled lowing and moaning, and
once the two children had slipped out of their grandfather's house to
the barn and waited to watch the cattle and to listen to them, but they
suffered from the cold, and when they told what they had done next
morning, their grandfather said they had not waited long enough, for it
happened just at midnight; so when Mavis and Jason told Marjorie and
Gray of old Christmas they all agreed they would wait up this time till
midnight sure.
As for new Christmas in the hills, the women paid little attention to
it, and to the men it meant "a jug of liquor, a pistol in each hand,
and a galloping nag." Always, indeed, it meant drinking, and
target-shooting to see "who should drink and who should smell," for the
man who made a bad shot got nothing but a smell from the jug until he
had redeemed himself. So, Steve Hawn and Jason got ready in their own
way and Mavis and Martha Hawn accepted their rude preparations as a
matter of course.
At four o'clock in the afternoon before Christmas Eve darkies began
springing around the corners of the twin houses, and from closets and
from behind doors, upon the white folks and shouting "Christmas gift,"
for to the one who said the greeting first the gift came, and it is
safe to say that no darky in the Blue-grass was caught that day. And
the Pendleton clan made ready to make merry. Kinspeople gathered at the
old general's ancient home and at the twin houses on either side of the
road. Stockings were hung up and eager-eyed children went to restless
dreams of their holiday king. Steve Hawn, too, had made ready with
boxes of cartridges and two jugs of red liquor, and he and Jason did
not wait for the morrow to make merry. And Uncle Arch Hawn happened to
come in that night, but he was chary of the cup, and he frowned with
displeasure at Jason, who was taking his dram with Steve like a man,
and he showed displeasure before he rode away that night by planting a
thorn in the very heart of Jason's sensitive soul. When he had climbed
on his horse he turned to Jason.
"Jason," he drawled, "you can come back home now when you git good an'
ready. Thar ain't no trouble down thar just now, an' Babe Honeycutt
ain't lookin' fer you."
Jason gasped. He had not dared to ask a single question about the one
thing that had been torturing his curiosity and his soul, and Arch was
bringing it out before them all as though it were the most casual and
unimportant matter in the world. Steve and his wife looked amazed and
Mavis's heart quickened.
"Babe ain't lookin' fer ye," Arch drawled on, "he's laughin' at ye. I
reckon you thought you'd killed him, but he stumbled over a root an'
fell down just as you shot. He says you missed him a mile. He says you
couldn't hit a barn in plain daylight." And he started away.
A furious oath broke from Jason's gaping mouth, Steve laughed, and if
the boy's pistol had been in his hand, he might in his rage have shown
Arch as he rode away what his marksmanship could be even in the dark,
but even with his uncle's laugh, too, coming back to him he had to turn
quickly into the house and let his wrath bite silently inward.
But Mavis's eyes were like moist stars.
"Oh, Jasie, I'm so glad," she said, but he only stared and turned
roughly on toward the jug in the corner.
Before day next morning the children in the big houses were making the
walls ring with laughter and shouts of joy. Rockets whizzed against the
dawn, fire-crackers popped unceasingly, and now and then a loaded anvil
boomed through the crackling air, but there was no happy awakening for
little Jason. All night his pride had smarted like a hornet sting, his
sleep was restless and bitter with dreams of revenge, and the hot
current in his veins surged back and forth in the old channel of hate
for the slayer of his father. Next morning his blood-shot eyes opened
fierce and sullen and he started the day with a visit to the whiskey
jug: then he filled his belt and pockets with cartridges.
Early in the afternoon Marjorie and Gray drove over with Christmas
greetings and little presents. Mavis went out to meet them, and when
Jason half-staggered out to the gate, the visitors called to him
merrily and became instantly grave and still. Mavis flushed, Marjorie
paled with horror and disgust, Gray flamed with wonder and contempt and
quickly whipped up his horse--the mountain boy was drunk.
Jason stared after them, knowing something had suddenly gone wrong, and
while he said nothing, his face got all the angrier, he rushed in for
his belt and pistol, and shaking his head from side to side, swaggered
out to the stable and began saddling his old mare. Mavis stood in the
doorway frightened and ashamed, the boy's mother pleaded with him to
come into the house and lie down, but without a word to either he
mounted with difficulty and rode down the road. Steve Hawn, who had
been silently watching him, laughed.
"Let him alone--he ain't goin' to do nothin'." Down the road the boy
rode with more drunken swagger than his years in the wake of Marjorie
and Gray--unconsciously in the wake of anything that was even critical,
much less hostile, and in front of Gray's house he pulled up and gazed
long at the pillars and the broad open door, but not a soul was in
sight and he paced slowly on. A few hundred yards down the turnpike he
pulled up again and long and critically surveyed a woodland. His eye
caught one lone tree in the centre of an amphitheatrical hollow just
visible over the slope of a hill. The look of the tree interested him,
for its growth was strange, and he opened the gate and rode across the
thick turf toward it. The bark was smooth, the tree was the size of a
man's body, and he dismounted, nodding his head up and down with much
satisfaction. Standing close to the tree, he pulled out his knife, cut
out a square of the bark as high as the first button of his coat and
moving around the trunk cut out several more squares at the same level.
"I reckon," he muttered, "that's whar his heart is yit, if _I_ ain't
growed too much."
Then he led the old mare to higher ground, came back, levelled his
pistol, and moving in a circle around the tree, pulled the trigger
opposite each square, and with every shot he grunted:
"Can't hit a barn, can't I, by Heck!"
In each square a bullet went home. Then he reloaded and walked rapidly
around the tree, still firing.
"An' I reckon that's a-makin' some nail-holes fer his galluses!"
And reloading again he ran around the tree, firing.
"An' mebbe I couldn't still git him if I was hikin' fer the corner of a
house an' was in a LEETLE grain of a hurry to git out o' HIS range."
Examining results at a close range, the boy was quite satisfied--hardly
a shot had struck without a band three inches in width around the tree.
There was one further test that he had not yet made; but he felt sober
now and he drew a bottle from his hip-pocket and pulled at it hard and
long. The old nag grazing above him had paid no more attention to the
fusillade than to the buzzing of flies. He mounted her, and Gray,
riding at a gallop to make out what the unearthly racket going on in
the hollow was, saw the boy going at full speed in a circle about the
tree, firing and yelling, and as Gray himself in a moment more would be
in range, he shouted a warning. Jason stopped and waited with
belligerent eyes as Gray rode toward him.
"I say, Jason," Gray smiled, "I'm afraid my father wouldn't like
that--you've pretty near killed that tree."