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JUDITH OF THE CUMBERLANDS
by
ALICE MACGOWAN
Author of
"The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage,"
"The Last Word," "Huldah," "Return," Etc.
With Illustrations in Colour by George Wright
[Illustration: "The moonlight flickered on the blade in his hand
as he reeled backward over the bluff" (page 145).]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers, New York
Copyright, 1908
by
Alice MacGowan
This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London
DEDICATION
To my mountain friends, dwellers in lonely cabins, on winding horseback
trails and steep, precarious roads; or in the tiny settlements that
nestle in the high-hung inner valleys; lean brown hunters on remote paths
in the green shadowed depths of the free forest, light-stepping,
keen-eyed, humorous-lipped, hitting the point as aptly with an instance
as with the old squirrel gun they carry; wielders of the axe by many a
chip pile, where the swinging blade rests readily to answer query or
offer advice; tanned, lithely moving lads following the plough, turning
over the shoulder a countenance of dark beauty; grave, shy girls, pail in
hand, at the milking-bars in dawn or dusk; young mothers in the doorway,
looking out, babe on hip; big-eyed, bare-footed mountain children
clinging hand in hand by the roadside, or clustered like startled little
partridges in the shelter of the dooryard; knitters in the sun and
grandams by the hearth; tellers and treasurers all of tales and legends
couched in racy old Elizabethan English; I dedicate this--their book and
mine.
FOREWORD
I have been so frequently asked how I, a woman, came by my intimate
acquaintance with life in the more remote districts of the southern
Appalachians, particularly in the matter of illicit distilling, that I
think it not amiss to here set down a few words as to my sources of
knowledge.
I have always lived in a small city in the heart of the Cumberlands, and
a portion of each year was spent in the mountains themselves. The speech
of Judith and her friends and kin has been familiar to me from childhood;
their point of view, their customs and possessions as well known to me as
my own. Then when I began to write, I was one summer at Roan Mountain, on
the North Carolina-Tennessee line, probably less than two hundred miles
from Chattanooga by the railway, and Gen. John T. Wilder, who had
campaigned all through the fastnesses of that inaccessible region,
suggested to me that I buy a mountain-bred saddle horse, and ride such a
route as he would give me, bringing up, after about a thousand miles of
it, at my home. To follow the itinerary that the old soldier marked out
on the map for me was to leave railroads and modern civilisation as we
know it, penetrate the wild heart of the region, and, depending on the
wayside dwellers for hospitality and lodging from night to night, be
forcibly thrust into an intimate comprehension of a phase of American
life which is perhaps the most primitive our country affords.
I was more than eight weeks making this trip, carrying with me all
necessary baggage on my capacious, cowgirl saddle with its long and
numerous buckskin tie-strings. At first I shrank very much from riding up
to a cabin--a young woman, alone, with garments and outfit that must
challenge the attention and curiosity of these people--in the dusk of
evening or in a heavy rain-storm, and asking in set terms for lodging.
But it took only a few days for me to find that here I was never to be
stared at, wondered at, nor questioned; and that, proffering my request
under such conditions, I was met by instant hospitality, and a grave,
uninquiring courtesy unsurpassed and not always equalled in the best
society, and I seemed to evoke a swift tenderness that was almost
compassion.
During this journey I became acquainted with some features of mountain
life which I might never have known otherwise. My best friends in the
mountains in the neighbourhood of my own home had always been a little
shy of discussing moonshine whiskey and moonshiners; but here I earned a
dividend upon my misfortunes, being more than once taken for a revenue
spy; and in the apologetic amenities of those who had misjudged me, which
followed my explanations and proofs of innocence, I have been shown in a
spirit of atonement, illicit still and "hideout." I have heard old
Jephthah Turrentine make his protest against the government's attitude
toward the mountain man and his "blockaded still." I have foregathered
with the revenuers in the settlements at the foot of the circling purple
ranges, and been shown the specially made axes and hooks they carry with
them for breaking up and destroying the simple appurtenances of the
illicit manufacture. Knowing that Blatch Turrentine's still must have
cost him three hundred dollars, I cannot wonder that a mountain man, a
thrifty fellow like Blatch, should have lingered, even in great danger,
over the project of carrying it with him.
These dwellers in the southern mountain region, the purest American
strain left to us, hold the interest and appeal of a changing, vanishing
type. The tide of enlightenment and commercial prosperity must presently
sweep in and absorb them. And so I might hope that a faithful picture of
the life and manners I have sought to represent in _Judith of the
Cumberlands_ would be the better worth while.
A. Mac G.
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Spring 1
II. At "The Edge" 20
III. Suitors 47
IV. Building 64
V. The Red Rose and the Briar 83
VI. The Play-Party 99
VII. Kisses 112
VIII. On the Doorstone 124
IX. Foeman's Bluff 135
X. A Spy 152
XI. The Warning 161
XII. In the Lion's Den 181
XIII. In the Night 199
XIV. The Raid 207
XV. Council of War 221
XVI. A Message 235
XVII. The Old Cherokee Trail 244
XVIII. Bitter Parting 261
XIX. Cast Out 273
XX. A Conversion 282
XXI. The Baptising 302
XXII. Ebb-Tide 315
XXIII. The Dumb Supper 326
XXIV. A Case of Walking Typhoid 340
XXV. A Perilous Passage 360
XXVI. His Own Trap 371
XXVII. Love's Guerdon 382
XXVIII. A Prophecy 393
Judith of the Cumberlands
Chapter I
Spring
"Won't you be jest dressed to kill an' cripple when you get that on!
Don't it set her off, Jeffy Ann?"
The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and
regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated
ecstasy.
"I don't know," debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a
looking-glass by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. "'Pears to me
this one's too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn't
come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly."
Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and
in her own hands.
"This is a powerful pretty red bow," she assented promptly. "I can take
it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I
believe you're right; and red certainly does go with yo' hair and eyes."
Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer.
And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned,
deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true
mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a massive,
sculptural line; her dark eyes--the large, heavily fringed eyes of a
dryad--glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining
which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to
the ripe red of the full lips.
In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big,
coarse country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled
in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without
ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned
the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, "Far over
to one side, honey--jest the way they're a-wearin' them in New York this
minute."
The buyer once more studied her mirror, and its dumb honesty told her
that she was beautiful. Then she looked about for some human eyes to make
the same communication.
"What's a-goin' on over yon at the Co't House?" she inquired with languid
interest, looking across the open square.
"They's a political speakin'," explained the other. "Creed Bonbright he
wants to be elected jestice of the peace and go back to the Turkey Tracks
and set up a office. Fool boy! You know mighty well an' good they'll run
him out o' thar--or kill him, one."
Although the girl had herself ridden down from Turkey Track Mountain that
morning, and the old Bonbright farm adjoined her own, the news held no
interest for her. She wished the gathering might have been something more
to her purpose; but she solemnly paid for the hat, and with the cheap
finery on her stately young head, which had been more appropriately
crowned with a chaplet of vine leaves, moved to the door. She hoped that
standing there, waiting for the boys to bring her horse, she might
attract some attention by her recently acquired splendour.
She looked up at the Court House steps. The building was humbly in the
Greek manner, as are so many of the public structures in the South.
Between its great white pillars, flaking paint and half-heartedly
confessing their woodland genesis, stood a tall young man, bareheaded.
The doubtful sunlight of a March day glinted on his uncovered yellow
hair. He was speaking rapidly in a fervid fashion that seemed beyond the
occasion; in his blue eyes shone something of the fanatic's passion; his
bearing was that of a man who conceives himself to have a mission and a
message.
Judith looked at him. She heard no word of what he was saying--but him
she heard. She heard the high, vibrant voice, saw the fair hair on the
upflung head, the rapt look in the blue eyes with their quick-expanding
pupils. Suddenly her world turned over. In a smother of strange,
uncomprehended emotions, she was gropingly glad she had the new hat--glad
she had it on now, and that Mrs. Staggart herself had adjusted it. On
blind impulse she edged around into plainer view, pushing freely in
amongst the fringe of men and boys, an unheard-of thing for a well taught
mountain girl to do, but Judith was for the moment absolutely unconscious
of their humanity.
"You never go a-nigh my people," cried Bonbright in that clear thrilling
tenor that is like a trumpet call, "you never go a-nigh them with the
statute--with government--except when the United States marshal takes a
posse up and raids the stills and brings down his prisoners. That's all
the valley knows of the mountain folks. The law's never carried to
anybody up there except the offenders and criminals. The Turkey Track
neighbourhoods, Big and Little, have got a mighty bad name with you-all.
But you ought to understand that violence must come when every man is
obliged to take the law into his own hands. I admit that it's an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth with us now--what else could it be? And
yet we are as faithful to each other, as virtuous, and as God-fearing a
race as those in the valley. I am a mountain man, born and bred in the
Turkey Tracks; and I ask you to send me back to my neighbours with the
law, that they may learn to be good citizens, as they are already good
men and women."
Upon the word, there broke out at the farthest corner of the square an
abrupt splatter of sound, oaths, cries, punctuated by the swift staccato
of running feet. The ringing voice came to a sudden halt. Out of a little
side street which descended from the mountain, a young fellow burst into
view, running in long leaping bounds, his hands up. Behind him lumbered
Dan Haley the United States marshal, a somewhat heavy-set man, puffing
and panting, yelling, "Halt! halt! halt!" and finally turning loose a
fusillade of shots aimed high over the fleeing lad's head. There was a
drawing back and a scattering in every direction.
"Hey, Bonbright!" vociferated a man leaping up from the last step where
he had been sitting, pointing to where the marshal's deputy followed
behind herding five or six prisoners from the mountains, "Hey, Bonbright!
There's some of your constituency--some God-fearing Turkey-Trackers--now,
but I reckon you won't own 'em."
"I will!" shouted Bonbright, whirling upon him, and one got suddenly the
blue fire of his hawk-like eye with the slant brow above. "They _are_ my
people, and the way they're treated is what I've been trying to talk to
you-all about."
"Well, you better go and take them fellers some law right now," jeered
his interlocutor. "Looks like to me they need it mighty bad."
"That's just what I'm about," answered Bonbright. "God knows they'll get
no justice unless I do. That's my job," and without another word or a
look behind him he made his way bareheaded through the group on the steps
and down the street.
Meantime the pursued had turned desperately and dodged into the millinery
store whence Judith Barrier had emerged a little earlier. Instantly there
came out to the listeners the noise of falling articles and breaking
glass, and the squeals and scufflings of the women. The red-faced marshal
dived in after his quarry, and emerged a moment later holding him by one
elbow, swearing angrily. Creed Bonbright came up at the instant, and
Haley, needing some one to whom he could express himself, explained in
voluble anger:
"The damned little shoat! Said if I'd let him walk a-loose he'd give me
information. You can't trust none of them."
Bonbright laid a reassuring touch on the fugitive's shoulder as Haley
fumbled after the handcuffs.
"I ain't been into no stillin', Creed!" panted the squirming boy.
"Well, don't run then," admonished Bonbright. "You've got no call to.
I'll see that you get justice."
While he spoke there wheeled into the square, from a nearby waggon-yard,
two young mountaineers on mules, one leading by the bridle-rein a sorrel
horse with a side-saddle on it. At sight of the marshal and those with
him, an almost imperceptible tremor went through the pair. There was a
flicker of nostril, a rounding of eye, as their glance ran swiftly from
one to another of Haley's prisoners. They were like wild game that winds
the hunter.
"St! You Pony Card, is that them?" whispered Haley, sharply nudging the
prisoner he held. "Turn him a-loose, Bonbright; I've got him handcuffed
now."
The boy--he was not more than sixteen--choked, reddened, held down his
head, studying the marshal's face anxiously from beneath lowered
flax-coloured brows.
"Yes, them's Andy and Jeff Turrentine," Bonbright heard the husky,
reluctant whisper. "Now cain't I go?"
The newcomers were beyond earshot, but the by-play was ominous to them.
The lean young bodies stiffened in their saddles, the reins came up in
their hands. For a moment it seemed as if they would turn and run for it.
But it was too late. Without making any reply Haley shoved his prisoner
into the hands of the deputy and with prompt action intercepted the two
and placed them under arrest. Bonbright observed one of the boys beckon
across the heads of the gathering crowd before he dismounted, and noted
that some one approached from the direction of the Court House steps and
received the three riding animals. In the confusion he did not see who
this was. Haley spoke to his deputy, and then drew their party sharply
off toward the jail, which could be used temporarily for the detention of
United States prisoners. To the last the young Turrentines muttered
together and sent baleful glances toward Bonbright, whom they plainly
conceived to be the author of their troubles. Poor Pony Card plodded with
bent head mutely behind them, a furtive hand travelling now and again to
his eyes.
Such crowd as the little village had collected was following, Bonbright
with the rest, when he encountered the girl who had come from the
milliner's shop. She stood now alone by the sorrel horse with the
side-saddle on it, holding the bridle-reins of the two mules, and there
was a bewildered look in her dark eyes as the noisy throng swept past her
which brought him--led in the hand of destiny--instantly to her side.
"What's the matter?" he asked her. "Can I help you?" And Judith who, in
her perturbation, had not seen him before, started violently at the words
and tone.
"They've tuck the boys," she hesitated, in a rich, broken contralto, that
voice which beyond all others moves the hearts of hearers, "I--I don't
know how I'm a-goin' to get these here mules home. Pete he won't lead so
very well."
"Oh, were you with the men Haley arrested?" ejaculated Bonbright.
"Yes, they're my cousins. I don't know what he tuck 'em for," the young,
high-couraged head turned jailward; the dark eyes flashed a resentful
look after the retiring posse.
"It looks like to me, from what Haley said, that there's nothing against
them," Bonbright reassured her. "But they're likely to be held as
witnesses--that's the worst about this business.
"I was going over there right now to see what can be done about it--being
a sort of lawyer. But let me help you first. I'm Creed Bonbright--reckon
you know the name--born and raised on Big Turkey Track."
Judith's heart beat to suffocation, the while she answered in commonplace
phrase, "I shorely do. My name is Judith Barrier; I live with Uncle
Jephthah Turrentine, on my farm. Hit's right next to the old Bonbright
place. We've been livin' thar more'n four years. I hate to go back and
tell Uncle Jep of the boys bein' tuck; and that big mule, Pete, I don't
know how I'm a-goin' to git him out o' the settlement, he's that mean and
feisty about town streets."
"I reckon I can manage him," Bonbright suggested, looking about. "Oh,
Givens!" he called to a man hurrying past. "When you get over there ask
Haley not to take any definite action--I reckon he wouldn't anyhow. I'm
going to represent the prisoners, and I'll be there inside of half an
hour. Now let me put you on your horse, Miss Judith, and I'll lead the
mules up the road a piece for you."
And so it came about that Judith sprang to the back of the sorrel nag
from Creed Bonbright's hand. Creed, still bareheaded, and wholly
unconscious of the fact, walked beside her leading the mules. They passed
slowly up the street towards the mountainward edge of Hepzibah, talking
as they went in the soft, low, desultory fashion of their people.
The noises of the village, aroused from its usual dozing calm, died away
behind them. Beyond the last cabin they entered a sylvan world all their
own. While he talked, questioning and replying gravely and at leisure,
the man was revolving in his mind just what action would be best for the
prisoners whose cause he had espoused. As for Judith, she had forgotten
that such persons existed, that such trivial mischance as their arrest
had just been; she was concerned wholly with the immediate necessity to
charm, to subjugate the man.
[Illustration: "Creed walked beside her leading the mules."]
A rustic belle and beauty, used to success in such enterprises, in the
limited time at her command she brought out for Creed's subduing her
little store of primitive arts. She would know, Pete suggesting the
topic, if he didn't despise a mule, adding encouragingly that she did.
The ash, it seemed, was the tree of her preference; didn't he think it
mighty sightly now when it was just coming into bloom? His favourite
season of the year, his favoured colour, of such points she made inquiry,
giving him, in an elusive feminine fashion, ample opportunity to relate
himself to her. And always he answered. When all was spoken, and at the
first sharp rise she drew rein for the inevitable separation, she could
not have said that she had failed; but she knew that she had not
succeeded.
"Ye can jest turn Pete a-loose now," she told him gently. "He'll foller
from here on."
Bonbright, on his part, was not quite aware why he paused here, yet it
seemed cold and unfriendly to say good-bye at once, Again he assured her
that he would go immediately to the jail and find what could be done for
her cousins. There was no more to be said now--yet they lingered.
It was a blowy, showery March day, its lips puckered for weeping or
laughter at any moment, the air full of the dainty pungencies of new
life. Winged ants, enjoying their little hour of glory, swarmed from
their holes and turned stone or stump to a flickering, moving grey. About
them where they stood was the awakening world of nature. Great, pale blue
bird-foot violets were blooming on favoured slopes, and in protected
hollows patches of eyebright made fairy forests on the moss, while under
tatters of dead leaves by the brookside arbutus blushed. Above their
heads the tracery of branches was a lace-work overlaid with fanlike
budding green leaves, except where the maples showed scarlet tassels, or
the Judas tree flaunted its bold, lying, purple-pink promise of fruitage
never to be fulfilled.
Could two young creatures be wiser than nature's self? It was the new
time; all the gauzy-winged ephemerae in the moist March woods were
throbbing with it, buzzing or flashing about seeking mates and nectar.
The earth had wakened from her winter sleep and set her face toward her
ancient, ardent lover, the sun. In the soul of Judith Barrier--Judith the
nature woman--all this surged strongly. As for the man, he had sent forth
his spirit in so general a fashion, he conceived himself to have a
mission so impersonal, that he scarce remembered what should or should
not please or attract Creed Bonbright.
Judith dreaded lest he make his farewells before she had from him some
earnest of a future meeting. He could not say good-bye and let her leave
him so! It seemed to her that if he did she should die before she reached
the mountain-top. Dark, rich, earth-born, earth-fast, material, she
looked down at Creed where he stood beside her, his hand on the sorrel's
neck, his calm blue eyes raised to hers. Her gaze lingered on the fair
hair flying in the March breeze, above a face selfless as that of some
young prophet. Her eager, undisciplined nature found here what it craved.
Coquetry had not availed her; it had fallen off him unrecognised--this
man who answered it absently, and thought his own thoughts. And with the
divine pertinacity of life itself she delved in the ancient wisdom of her
sex for a lure to make him rise and follow her. It was not bright eyes
nor red lips that could move or please him? But she had seen him moved,
aroused. The hint was plain. Instantly abandoning her personal siege, she
espoused the cause of her bodiless rival.
"I--I heard you a-speakin' back there," she said with a little catch in
her breath.
Bonbright's eyes returned from the far distances to which they had
travelled after giving her--Judith Barrier, so worthy of a blue-eyed
youth's respectful attention--a passing glance. She replied to his gaze
with one full of a meaning to him at that time indecipherable;
nevertheless it was an ardent, compelling look which he must needs answer
with some confession of himself.
"You wouldn't understand what I was trying to tell about," he began
gently. "Since I've been living in the valley, where folks get rich and
see a heap of what they call pleasure, I've had many a hard thought about
the lives of our people up yonder in the mountains. I want to go back to
my people with--I want to tell them--"
The girl leaned forward in her saddle, burning eyes fixed on his intent
face, red lips apart.
"Yes--what?" she breathed. "What is it you want to say to the folks back
home? You ort to come and say it. We need it bad."
"Do you think so?" asked Bonbright doubtfully. "Do you reckon they would
listen to me? I don't know. Sometimes I allow maybe I'd better stay here
where the Judge wants me to till I'm an older man and more experienced."
He studied the beautiful, down-bent face greedily now, but it was not the
eye of a man looking at a maid. His thoughts were with the work he hoped
to do. Judith's heart contracted with fear, and then set off beating
heavily. Wait till he was an old man? Would love wait? Somebody else
would claim him--some town girl would find the way to charm him. In sheer
terror she put down her hand and laid it upon his.
"Don't you never think it," she protested. "You're needed right now.
After a while will be too late. Why, I come a-past your old home in the
rain last Wednesday, and I could 'a' cried to see the winders dark, and
the grass all grown up to the front door. You come back whar you
belong--" she had almost said "honey"--"and you'll find there is need
a-plenty for folks like you."
"Well, they all allow that I'll be elected next Thursday," Creed
assented, busying himself over the lengthening of Beck's bridle, that she
might lead the mule the more handily. "And if I am I'll be in the Turkey
Tracks along in April and find me a place to set up an office. If I'm
elected----"
"Elected! An' ef yo'r not?" she cried, filled with scorn of such a paltry
condition. What difference could it make whether or not he were elected?
Wouldn't his hair be just as yellow, his eyes as blue? Would his voice be
any less the call to love?
He smiled at her tolerantly, handing up the lengthened strap.
"Well, I don't just rightly know what I will do, then," he debated.
"But you're a-comin' up to the Turkey Tracks anyhow, to--to see yo'
folks," persisted Judith with a rising triumph in her tone.
"Yes," acquiesced Bonbright, "I'll come up in April anyhow."
And with this assurance the girl rode slowly away, leading Beck, the now
resigned Pete following behind. All the sounds from the valley were
gathered as in a vast bowl and flung upward, refined by distance. A
moment she halted listening, then breasted the first rise and entered
that deep silence which waits the mountain dweller. The great forest
closed about her.
Creed Bonbright stood for a moment in the open road looking after her.
Something she had conveyed to him, some call sent forth, which had not
quite reached the ear of his spirit, and yet which troubled his calm. He
lifted his gaze toward the bulk of the big mountain looming above him. He
passed his hand absently through his fair hair, then tossed his head back
with a characteristic motion. It was good to know he was needed up there.
It was good to know he would be welcomed. So far the girl had made her
point. After this the mountains and Judith Barrier would mean one thing
in the young man's mind. As the shortest way to them both, he turned and
walked swiftly down toward the settlement and to the undertaking which
there awaited him.