The Play-Party
Long lanes of light crossed the grass from window and door of the
Turrentine house; Judith's play-party was in full swing. They were
dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich
broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous
black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those altitudes,
had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its
illumination became necessary, for all the lamps and candles available
were in use out where the tables were spread.
Old Jephthah held state in his own quarters, a detached log cabin
standing about thirty feet from the main structure, and once used
probably to house the loom or for some such extra domestic purpose. Here
too a fire smoldered on the hearthstone, for the head of the Turrentine
clan was tormented by rheumatism, that plague of otherwise healthy
primitive man. He lounged now on the doorstep, smoking, ready to
intercept and entertain any of the older men who might come with their
women folk. Occasionally somebody rode up, or came tramping down the
trail or through the woods--a belated merrymaker hurrying in to ask who
had arrived and who was expected.
To the father's intense disgust Jim Cal had elected to sit with the
elders that night, and obstinately held his place before the hearthstone
in the cabin room. Jephthah Turrentine's sons were none of them
particularly satisfactory to their progenitor. A man of brains, a
creature to whom an argument was ever more than the mere material thing
argued about, these male offspring, who took their traits naturally after
the spindle side, vexed him with resemblance to their handsome,
high-tempered, brainless mother. But Jim Cal was worse than a bore to his
father; the old fellow regarded a son who weighed above two hundred
pounds as a disgrace. And to-night the fact that the door of his room
commanded a sidelong view of the tables which were being spread, and
about which Iley circled and scolded, furnished so fair a reason for
James Calhoun's selection of it as an anchorage that his father was the
more offended.
"You thar, Unc' Jep?" sounded Blatchley Turrentine's careless voice from
the dark.
"I make out to be," returned his uncle lazily.
Blatchley came into the circle of dim light about the door, Andy and Jeff
at his shoulder. Wade followed a moment later.
"Why ain't you-all boys down thar whar the gals is at, playin'?" inquired
Jim Cal fretfully. "Looks like to me ef I was a young feller an' not
wedded I wouldn't hang around whar the old men was."
"Is Creed Bonbright comin' over here to-night?" inquired Andy abruptly,
in obedience apparently to a nudge from Blatch.
"I reckon he is," observed the old man dispassionately. "Jude has purty
well bidden the whole top of the mountain."
"Is Pone Cyard comin'?" put in Jeff. The twins usually spoke alternately,
the sum of their conversation counting thus for one.
"That I can't say," returned the old man with mildly ironic emphasis.
"Mebbe him and the chaps and the lame rooster--_and_ Nancy--will come
along at the tail of the procession."
"Well," persisted Andy, breaking a somewhat lengthened silence in which
all the newcomers stood, and through which their breathing could be
distinctly heard, "well I think Creed Bonbright has got the impudence! He
come to the jail, whar me and Jeff was at, an' he had some talk with us,
an' I let him know my mind. He stood in with that marshal--I know it--and
so does Jeff. Pone Cyard got out quicker becaze Bonbright tipped the
marshal the wink; but I don't hold with him nor his doin's."
The parent of the twins regarded them both with sardonic black eyes half
shut. "_You_ don't? And who-all might you be, young fellers?" he asked.
"This here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at
law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here
mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law
and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say,
Blatch?" turning suddenly to his nephew.
The big swart mountaineer drew up his shoulders with a sort of shrug.
"Ef you stand in with Bonbright, Unc' Jep," he said, bluntly, "we might
as well all go down to Hepzibah and give ourselves up. You've done rented
me the land, and yo' boys is in the still with me--air ye a-goin' to
stand from under, and have the marshal forever keepin' us on the jump?"
Old Jephthah looked wordless contempt at the nephew who knew little
enough to impute such a course to him.
"That's what I say," put in Jim Cal's thin, querulous tones from the back
of the room--the voice of a fat man in trouble; can anyone say why the
sorrows of the obese are always comic to the rest of the world? "A body
cain't sleep nights for thinkin' what may chance."
"Oh,--air you thar, podner?" inquired Blatch, with a sort of ferocious
banter in his tone which he frequently used toward his fleshy associate.
"I thort ye was down in the bed sick."
"I was," said Jim Cal sulkily; "but Iley she said--Iley 'lowed----"
Blatch burst into a great horse laugh, which the others joined.
"I know'd in reason ye'd be down when they came any trouble at the
still," he commented. "Hit always affects yo' health thataway; but I
didn't know Iley had seed reason to dig ye out. What you goin' to do
about Bonbright, Unc' Jep--stand in with him?"
"Well--you _air_ a fool," observed the old man meditatively. "Who named
standin' in with Bonbright, or standin' out agin' him? When I rented you
my farm for five year I had no thought of yo' starting up that pesky ol'
still on it. But I never was knowed to rue a trade. My daddy taught me
when I made a bad bargain to freeze the tighter to it, and I've no mind
to do other."
"They'd been a still thar," said Blatch defensively.
The old man nodded.
"Oh, yes," he agreed. "Hit had been,--I put it thar. I've made many a run
of whiskey in my young days--and I've seed the folly of it. I reckon you
fool boys'll have to see the folly of it too befo' yo've got yo' satisfy.
As for Creed Bonbright, he 'pears to think that if we have plenty of law
in the Turkey Tracks we'll all go to heaven in a hand-basket. Mebbe he's
right, and then agin mebbe he's wrong; but this I know, ain't anybody
goin' to jump on him in my house, and he gets a fair show when fightin'
time comes."
"Well, if he ain't standin' in with the marshal, what does he--" began
Andy's high-pitched boyish voice, when somebody called, "Good evening,"
in pleasant tones, and Bonbright himself got off a light-stepping mule,
tethered him to the fence, and came toward the cabin.
He had just returned from a meeting of the County Court at Hepzibah,
where he did good service in representing the needs of his district,
fighting hard for more money for schools--the plan heretofore had been to
let them have only their own pro rata of the school tax.
"It'll pay you a heap better to educate the mountain people than to hire
their keep in jail," he said to his fellow justices of the valley. "The
blue-backed speller is the best cure for crime in the mountains that I
know of."
He failed to get this; but he succeeded in another matter, one less near
his heart, but calculated to appeal perhaps more strongly to his
constituents; he secured the opening of a highway for which the people in
the two Turkey Tracks had struggled and prayed more than twenty years. It
was with the pride of this victory strong in him that he had set out for
Judith's play-party. The young fellow might have been pardoned a half
wistful belief that this first success was the entering wedge and would
lead swiftly to that standing with his neighbours lacking which he was
helpless. Yet the sons of the house replied but gruffly to his greeting,
and, as though his coming had been a signal, the younger group promptly
disappeared in the direction of the main cabin.
At the old man's hearty invitation, Creed seated himself on the doorstep,
while his host went in for a coal from the smouldering hearth to light
his pipe, and joined the guest a moment later.
"Well sir, and how's the law coming on these days?" inquired old Jephthah
somewhat humorously.
"I reckon it's doing pretty well," allowed Creed. "The law's all right,
Mr. Turrentine; it's what our people need; and if there comes any failure
it's bound to be in me, not in the law."
"That's right," old Jephthah commended him. "Stand up for yo' principles.
Ef you go into a thing, back it. I never could get on with these here
good-Lord-good-devil folks. I like to know whar a man's at--cain't hit
him unless 'n you do."
"That's what I say," piped Jim Cal's reedy voice from the interior. "Is
it true that you've done made up the Shalliday fuss over that thar cow,
Creed? I thort a jestice of the peace was to he'p folks have fusses,
place o' settlin' 'em up."
"That's what everybody seems to think," replied Creed rather dolefully.
"I can't say I'm very proud of my part in the Shalliday matter. It seemed
to be mighty hard on the widow; but the law was on her brother-in-law's
side; so I gave my decision in favour of Bill Shalliday, and paid the
woman for the cow. And now they're both mad at me."
Old Jephthah narrowed his eyes and chuckled in luxurious enjoyment of the
situation.
"To be shore they air. To be shore they air," he repeated with unction.
"Ain't you done a favour to the both of 'em? Is they anything a man will
hate you worse for than a favour? If they is I ain't met up with it
yet."
"That's what I say," iterated Jim Cal. "What's the use o' tryin' to he'p
folks to law and order when they don't want it, and you've got to buy 'em
to behave? When you git to be a married man with chaps, like me, you'll
keep yo' money in yo' breeches pocket and let other folks fix it up
amongst themselves about their cows an' sech."
"I had hoped to get a chance to do something that amounted to more than
settling small family fusses," Creed said in a discouraged tone. "I hoped
to have the opportunity to talk to many a gathering of our folks about
the desirability of good citizenship in a general way. This thing of
blockaded stills keeps us forever torn up with a bad name in the valley
and the settlement."
Old Jephthah stirred not a hair; Jim Cal sat just as he had; yet the two
were indefinably changed the moment the words "blockaded still" were
uttered.
"Do you know of any sech? Air ye aimin' to find out about em?" quavered
the fat man finally, and his father looked scornfully at him, and the
revelation of his terror.
"No. I don't mean it in that personal way," Creed answered impatiently.
"Mr. Turrentine, I wish you'd tell me what you think about it. You've
lived all your life in the mountains; you're a man of judgment--is there
any way to show our people the folly as well as the crime of illicit
distilling?"
Jephthah surveyed with amusement the youth who came to an old moonshiner
for an opinion as to the advisability of the traffic. He liked the
audacity of it. It tickled his fancy.
"Well sir," he said finally, "the guv'ment sets off thar in Washington
and names a-many a thing that I shall do and that I shan't do.
Howsomever, they is but one thing hit will come here and watch out to see
ef I keep rules on--and that's the matter o' moonshine whiskey.
Guv'ment," he repeated meditatively but with rising rancour, "what has
the guv'ment ever done fer me, that I should be asked to do so much for
hit? I put the case thisaway. That man raises corn and grinds it to meal
and makes it into bread. I raise corn and grind hit to meal and make
clean, honest whiskey. The man that makes the bread pays no tax; guv'ment
says I shall pay a tax--an' I say I will not, by God!"
The big voice had risen to a good deal of feeling before old Jephthah
made an end.
"Nor I wouldn't neither," bleated Jim Cal in comical antiphon.
In the light from the open doorway Creed's face looked uneasy.
"But you don't think--you wouldn't--" he began and then broke off.
Old Jephthah shook his head.
"I ain't got no blockade still," he asserted sweepingly. "I made my last
run of moonshine whiskey many a year ago. I reckon two wrongs don't make
a right."
Creed's dismay increased. Inexperienced boy, he had not expected to
encounter such feeling in the discussion of this the one topic upon which
your true mountaineer of the remote districts can never be anything but
passionate, embittered, at bay.
"You name the crime of makin' wildcat whiskey," the old man's deep,
accusing voice went on, after a little silence. "It ain't no crime--an'
you know it--an' no guv'ment o' mortal men can make a crime out'n it. As
for the foolishness of it," he dropped his chin on his breast, his black
eyes looked out broodingly, his great beard rose against his lips and
muffled his tones, "I reckon the foolishness of a thing is what each
feller has to find out for hisself," he said. "Daddies has been tryin'
since the time of Adam to let their knowin' it sarve for their sons; but
ef one of 'em has made the plan work yit, I ain't heard on it. Nor the
guv'ment can't neither. A man'll take his punishment for a meanness an'
l'arn by it; but to be jailed for what's his right makes an outlaw of
him, an' always will. Good Lord, Creed! What set you an' me off on this
tune? Young feller, you ort to be down yon dancin' with the gals, instead
of here talking foolishness to a old man like me."
Creed arose to his tall young height and glanced uncertainly from his
host to the lighted room from which came the sounds of fiddle and
stamping feet. It was a little hard for a prophet on his own mountain-top
to be sent to play with the children; yet he went.