was "that thar Mandy Tyler," of Wilkins settlement renown; the young
men had rigidly adhered to their resolution to ignore her in their
invitations to dance, and she had been sitting since the beginning of
the festivities, quite neglected, among the married people, looking on
at the amusement which she had been debarred sharing by that unpopular
bit of coquetry at Wilkins settlement. Nothing of disappointment or
mortification was expressed in her countenance; she felt the slight
of course,--even a "mounting" woman is susceptible of the sting of
wounded pride; all her long-anticipated enjoyment had come to naught
by this infliction of penance for her ill-timed jest at the expense of
those five young fellows dancing with their triumphant partners and
bestowing upon her not even a glance; but she looked the express image
of immobility as she sat in her clean pink calico, so carefully gotten
up for the occasion, her short black hair curling about her ears, and
watched the unending reel with slow, dark eyes. Rick's glance fell
upon her, and without further hesitation he strode over to where she
was sitting and proffered his hand for the dance. She did not reply
immediately, but looked timidly about her at the shocked pious ones on
either side, who were ready but for mortal fear to aver that "dancin'
ennyhow air bad enough, the Lord knows, but dancin' with a horse thief
air jest scandalous!" Then, for there is something of defiance to
established law and prejudice in the born flirt everywhere, with a
sudden daring spirit shining in her brightening eyes, she responded,
"Don't keer ef I do," with a dimpling half-laugh; and the next minute
the two outlaws were flying down the middle together.
While Rick was according grave attention to the intricacies of the mazy
dance and keeping punctilious time to the scraping of the old fiddle,
finding it all a much more difficult feat than galloping from the
Cross Roads to the "Snake's Mouth" on some other man's horse with the
sheriff hard at his heels, the solitary figure of a tall gaunt man had
followed the long winding path leading deep into the woods, and now
began the steep descent to Harrison's Cove. Of what was old Mr. Kenyon
thinking, as he walked on in the mingled shadow and sheen? Of St.
Augustin and his Forty Monks, probably, and what they found in Britain.
The young men of his acquaintance would gladly have laid you any odds
that he could think of nothing but his antique hobby, the ancient
church. Mr. Kenyon was the most prominent man in St. Martin's church
in the city of B----, not excepting the rector. He was a lay-reader,
and officiated upon occasions of "clerical sore-throat," as the profane
denominate the ministerial summer exodus from heated cities. This
summer, however, Mr. Kenyon's own health had succumbed, and he was
having a little "sore-throat" in the mountains on his own account. Very
devout was Mr. Kenyon. Many people wondered that he had never taken
orders. Many people warmly congratulated themselves that he never had;
for drier sermons than those he selected were surely never heard, and
a shuddering imagination shrinks appalled from the problematic mental
drought of his ideal original discourse. But he was an integrant part
of St. Martin's; much of his piety, materialized into contributions,
was built up in its walls and shone before men in the costliness of
its decorations. Indeed, the ancient name had been conferred upon the
building as a sort of tribute to Mr. Kenyon's well-known enthusiasm
concerning apostolic succession and kindred doctrines.
Dull and dismal was Mr. Kenyon, and therefore it may be considered a
little strange that he should be a notable favorite with men. They were
of many different types, but with one invariable bond of union: they
had all at one time served as soldiers; for the war, now ten years
passed by, its bitterness almost forgotten, had left some traces that
time can never obliterate. What a friend was the droning old churchman
in those days of battle and blood-shed and suffering and death! Not
a man sat within the walls of St. Martin's who had not received some
signal benefit from the hand stretched forth to impress the claims of
certain ante-Augustin British clergy to consideration and credibility;
not a man who did not remember stricken fields where a good Samaritan
went about under shot and shell, succoring the wounded and comforting
the dying; not a man who did not applaud the indomitable spirit and
courage that cut his way from surrender and safety, through solid
barriers of enemies, to deliver the orders on which the fate of
an army depended; not a man whose memory did not harbor fatiguing
recollections of long, dull sermons read for the souls' health of the
soldiery. And through it all,--by the camp-fires at night, on the long
white country-roads in the sunshiny mornings; in the mountains and
the morasses; in hilarious advance and in cheerless retreat; in the
heats of summer and by the side of frozen rivers, the ancient British
clergy went through it all. And, whether the old churchman's premises
and reasoning were false, whether his tracings of the succession were
faulty, whether he dropped a link here or took in one there, he had
caught the spirit of those staunch old martyrs, if not their falling
churchly mantle.
The mountaineers about the New Helvetia Springs supposed that Mr.
Kenyon was a regularly ordained preacher, and that the sermons which
they had heard him read were, to use the vernacular, out of his own
head. For many of them were accustomed on Sunday mornings to occupy
humble back benches in the ball-room, where on week-day evenings the
butterflies sojourning at New Helvetia danced, and on the Sabbath
metaphorically beat their breasts, and literally avowed that they were
"miserable sinners," following Mr. Kenyon's lugubrious lead.
The conclusion of the mountaineers was not unnatural, therefore, and
when the door of Mr. Harrison's house opened and another uninvited
guest entered, the music suddenly ceased. The half-closed eyes of the
fiddler had fallen upon Mr. Kenyon at the threshold, and, supposing him
a clergyman, he immediately imagined that the man of God had come all
the way from New Helvetia Springs to stop the dancing and snatch the
revelers from the jaws of hell. The rapturous bow paused shuddering on
the string, the dancing feet were palsied, the pious about the walls
were racking their slow brains to excuse their apparent conniving at
sin and bargaining with Satan, and Mr. Harrison felt that this was
indeed an unlucky party and it would undoubtedly be dispersed by the
direct interposition of Providence before the shed-room was opened and
the supper eaten. As to his soul--poor man! these constantly recurring
social anxieties were making him callous to immortality; this life was
about to prove too much for him, for the fortitude and tact even of
a father of four marriageable young ladies has a limit. Mr. Kenyon,
too, seemed dumb as he hesitated in the door-way, but when the host,
partially recovering himself, came forward and offered a chair, he
said with one of his dismal smiles that he hoped Mr. Harrison had no
objection to his coming in and looking at the dancing for a while.
"Don't let me interrupt the young people, I beg," he added, as he
seated himself. The astounded silence was unbroken for a few moments.
To be sure he was not a circuit-rider, but even the sophistication of
Cheatham's Cross-Roads had never heard of a preacher who did not object
to dancing. Mr. Harrison could not believe his ears, and asked for a
more explicit expression of opinion.
"Ye say ye don't keer ef the boys an' gals dance?" he inquired. "Ye
don't think it's sinful?"
And after Mr. Kenyon's reply, in which the astonished "mounting folks"
caught only the surprising statement that dancing if properly conducted
was an innocent, cheerful, and healthful amusement, supplemented by
something about dancing in the fear of the Lord, and that in all
charity he was disposed to consider objections to such harmless
recreations a tithing of mint and anise and cummin, whereby might ensue
a neglect of weightier matters of the law; that clean hands and clean
hearts--hands clean of blood and ill-gotten goods, and hearts free from
falsehood and cruel intention--these were the things well-pleasing
to God,--after his somewhat prolix reply, the gayety recommenced.
The fiddle quavered tremulously at first, but soon resounded with its
former vigorous tones, and the joy of the dance was again exemplified
in the grave joggling back and forth.
Meanwhile Mr. Harrison sat beside this strange new guest and asked
him questions concerning his church, being instantly, it is needless
to say, informed of its great antiquity, of the journeying of St.
Augustin and his Forty Monks to Britain, of the church they found
already planted there, of its retreat to the hills of Wales under its
oppressors' tyranny, of many cognate themes, side issues of the main
branch of the subject, into which the talk naturally drifted, the
like of which Mr. Harrison had never heard in all his days. And as he
watched the figures dancing to the violin's strains, and beheld as in
a mental vision the solemn gyrations of those renowned Forty Monks to
the monotone of old Mr. Kenyon's voice, he abstractedly hoped that the
double dance would continue without interference till a peaceable dawn.
His hopes were vain. It so chanced that Kossuth Johns, who had by no
means relinquished all idea of dancing at Harrison's Cove and defying
Rick Pearson, had hitherto been detained by his mother's persistent
entreaties, some necessary attentions to his father, and the many
trials which beset a man dressing for a party who has very few clothes,
and those very old and worn. Jule, his sister-in-law, had been most
kind and complaisant, putting on a button here, sewing up a slit there,
darning a refractory elbow, and lending him the one bright ribbon she
possessed as a neck-tie. But all these things take time, and the moon
did not light Kossuth down the gorge until she was shining almost
vertically from the sky, and the Harrison Cove people and the Forty
Monks were dancing together in high feather. The ecclesiastic dance
halted suddenly, and a watchful light gleamed in old Mr. Kenyon's eyes
as he became silent and the boy stepped into the room. The moonlight
and the lamp-light fell mingled on the calm, inexpressive features
and tall, slender form of the young mountaineer. "Hy're, Kossute!" A
cheerful greeting from many voices met him. The next moment the music
ceased once again, and the dancing came to a stand-still, for as the
name fell on Pearson's ear he turned, glanced sharply toward the door,
and drawing one of his pistols from his belt advanced to the middle
of the room. The men fell back; so did the frightened women, without
screaming, however, for that indication of feminine sensibility had
not yet penetrated to Cheatham's Cross-Roads, to say nothing of the
mountains.
"I told ye that ye warn't ter come hyar," said Rick Pearson
imperiously, "and ye've got ter go home ter yer mammy, right off, or
ye'll never git thar no more, youngster."
"I've come hyar ter put _you_ out, ye cussed red-headed horse thief!"
retorted Kossuth, angrily; "ye hed better tell me whar that thar bay
filly is, or light out, one."
It is not the habit in the mountains to parley long on these occasions.
Kossuth had raised his gun to his shoulder as Rick, with his pistol
cocked, advanced a step nearer. The outlaw's weapon was struck upward
by a quick, strong hand, the little log cabin was filled with flash,
roar, and smoke, and the stars looked in through a hole in the roof
from which Rick's bullet had sent the shingles flying. He turned in
mortal terror and caught the hand that had struck his pistol,--in
mortal terror, for Kossuth was the crack shot of the mountains and he
felt he was a dead man. The room was somewhat obscured by smoke, but as
he turned upon the man who had disarmed him, for the force of the blow
had thrown the pistol to the floor, he saw that the other hand was over
the muzzle of young Johns's gun, and Kossuth was swearing loudly that
by the Lord Almighty if he didn't take it off he would shoot it off.
"My young friend," Mr. Kenyon began, with the calmness appropriate to
a devout member of the one catholic and apostolic church; but then,
the old Adam suddenly getting the upper-hand, he shouted out in irate
tones, "If you don't stop that noise, I'll break your head! Well, Mr.
Pearson," he continued, as he stood between the combatants, one hand
still over the muzzle of young Johns's gun, the other, lean and sinewy,
holding Pearson's powerful right arm with a vise-like grip, "well, Mr.
Pearson, you are not so good a soldier as you used to be; you didn't
fight boys in the old times."
Rick Pearson's enraged expression suddenly gave way to a surprised
recognition. "Ye may drag me through hell an' beat me with a soot-bag
ef hyar ain't the old fightin' preacher agin!" he cried.
"I have only one thing to say to you," said Mr. Kenyon. "You must go. I
will not have you here shooting boys and breaking up a party."
Rick demurred. "See hyar, now," he said, "ye've got no business
meddlin'."
"You must go," Mr. Kenyon reiterated.
"Preachin's yer business," Rick continued; "pears like ye don't 'tend
to it, though."
"You must go."
"S'pose I say I won't," said Rick, good-humoredly; "I s'pose ye'd say
ye'd make me."
"You must go," repeated Mr. Kenyon. "I am going to take the boy home
with me, but I intend to see you off first."
Mr. Kenyon had prevented the hot-headed Kossuth from firing by keeping
his hand persistently over the muzzle of the gun; and young Johns had
feared to try to wrench it away lest it should discharge in the effort.
Had it done so, Mr. Kenyon would have been in sweet converse with the
Forty Monks in about a minute and a quarter. Kossuth had finally let
go the gun, and made frantic attempts to borrow a weapon from some of
his friends, but the stern authoritative mandate of the belligerent
peace-maker had prevented them from gratifying him, and he now stood
empty-handed beside Mr. Kenyon, who had shouldered the old rifle in an
absent-minded manner, although still retaining his powerful grasp on
the arm of the outlaw.
"Waal, parson," said Rick at length, "I'll go, jest ter pleasure
you-uns. Ye see, I ain't forgot Shiloh."
"I am not talking about Shiloh now," said the old man. "You must get
off at once,--all of you," indicating the gang, who had been so
whelmed in astonishment that they had not lifted a finger to aid their
chief.
"Ye say ye'll take that--that"--Rick looked hard at Kossuth while he
racked his brains for an injurious epithet--"that sassy child home ter
his mammy?"
"Come, I am tired of this talk," said Mr. Kenyon; "you must go."
Rick walked heavily to the door and out into the moonlight. "Them was
good old times," he said to Mr. Kenyon, with a regretful cadence in
his peculiar drawl; "good old times, them War days. I wish they was
back agin,--I wish they was back agin. I ain't forgot Shiloh yit,
though, and I ain't a-goin' ter. But I'll tell ye one thing, parson,"
he added, his mind reverting from ten years ago to the scene just past,
as he unhitched his horse and carefully examined the saddle-girth and
stirrups, "ye're a mighty queer preacher, ye air, a-sittin' up an'
lookin' at sinners dance an' then gittin' in a fight that don't consarn
ye,--ye're a mighty queer preacher! Ye ought ter be in my gang, that's
whar _ye_ ought ter be," he exclaimed with a guffaw, as he put his foot
in the stirrup; "ye've got a damned deal too much grit fur a preacher.
But I ain't forgot Shiloh yit, an' I don't mean ter, nuther."
A shout of laughter from the gang, an oath or two, the quick tread
of horses' hoofs pressing into a gallop, and the outlaw's troop were
speeding along the narrow paths that led deep into the vistas of the
moonlit summer woods.
As the old churchman, with the boy at his side and the gun still on his
shoulder, ascended the rocky, precipitous slope on the opposite side
of the ravine above the foaming waters of the wild mountain stream, he
said but little of admonition to his companion; with the disappearance
of the flame and smoke and the dangerous ruffian his martial spirit had
cooled; the last words of the outlaw, the highest praise Rick Pearson
could accord to the highest qualities Rick Pearson could imagine--he
had grit enough to belong to the gang--had smitten a tender conscience.
He, at his age, using none of the means rightfully at his command, the
gentle suasion of religion, must needs rush between armed men, wrench
their weapons from their hands, threatening with such violence that an
outlaw and desperado, recognizing a parallel of his own belligerent and
lawless spirit, should say that he ought to belong to the gang! And the
heaviest scourge of the sin-laden conscience was the perception that,
so far as the unsubdued old Adam went, he ought indeed.
He was not so tortured, though, that he did not think of others. He
paused on reaching the summit of the ascent, and looked back at the
little house nestling in the ravine, the lamp-light streaming through
its open doors and windows across the path among the laurel bushes,
where Rick's gang had hitched their horses.
"I wonder," said the old man, "if they are quiet and peaceable again;
can you hear the music and dancing?"
"Not now," said Kossuth. Then, after a moment, "Now, I kin," he added,
as the wind brought to their ears the oft-told tale of the rabbit's
gallopade in the pea-patch. "They're a-dancin' now, and all right agin."
As they walked along, Mr. Kenyon's racked conscience might have been
in a slight degree comforted had he known that he was in some sort a
revelation to the impressible lad at his side, that Kossuth had begun
dimly to comprehend that a Christian may be a man of spirit also, and
that bravado does not constitute bravery. Now that the heat of anger
was over, the young fellow was glad that the fearless interposition of
the warlike peace-maker had prevented any killing, "'kase ef the old
man hedn't hung on ter my gun like he done, I'd have been a murderer
like he said, an' Rick would hev been dead. An' the bay filly ain't
sech a killin' matter nohow; ef it war the roan three-year-old now,
'twould be different."
OVER ON THE T'OTHER MOUNTING.
Stretching out laterally from a long oblique line of the Southern
Alleghanies are two parallel ranges, following the same course through
several leagues, and separated by a narrow strip of valley hardly half
a mile in width. As they fare along arm in arm, so to speak, sundry
differences between the close companions are distinctly apparent. One
is much the higher, and leads the way; it strikes out all the bold
curves and angles of the course, meekly attended by the lesser ridge;
its shadowy coves and sharp ravines are repeated in miniature as its
comrade falls into the line of march; it seems to have its companion
in charge, and to conduct it away from the majestic procession of
mountains that traverses the State.
But, despite its more imposing appearance, all the tangible advantages
are possessed by its humble neighbor. When Old Rocky-Top, as the lower
range is called, is fresh and green with the tender verdure of spring,
the snow still lies on the summit of the T'other Mounting, and drifts
deep into treacherous rifts and chasms, and muffles the voice of the
singing pines; and all the crags are hung with gigantic glittering
icicles, and the woods are gloomy and bleak. When the sun shines bright
on Old Rocky-Top, clouds often hover about the loftier mountain, and
storms brew in that higher atmosphere; the all-pervading winter winds
surge wildly among the groaning forests, and wrench the limbs from
the trees, and dash huge fragments of cliffs down deep gorges, and
spend their fury before they reach the sheltered lower spur. When the
kindly shades of evening slip softly down on drowsy Rocky-Top, and the
work is laid by in the rough little houses, and the simple home-folks
draw around the hearth, day still lingers in a weird, paralytic life
among the tree-tops of the T'other Mounting; and the only remnant of
the world visible is that stark black line of its summit, stiff and
hard against the faint green and saffron tints of the sky. Before the
birds are well awake on Old Rocky-Top, and while the shadows are still
thick, the T'other Mounting has been called up to a new day. Lonely
dawns these: the pale gleam strikes along the October woods, bringing
first into uncertain twilight the dead yellow and red of the foliage,
presently heightened into royal gold and crimson by the first ray of
sunshine; it rouses the timid wild-fowl; it drives home the plundering
fox; it meets, perhaps, some lumbering bear or skulking mountain wolf;
it flecks with light and shade the deer, all gray and antlered; it
falls upon no human habitation, for the few settlers of the region
have a persistent predilection for Old Rocky-Top. Somehow, the T'other
Mounting is vaguely in ill repute among its neighbors,--it has a bad
name.
"It's the onluckiest place ennywhar nigh about," said Nathan White, as
he sat one afternoon upon the porch of his log-cabin, on the summit
of Old Rocky-Top, and gazed up at the heights of the T'other Mounting
across the narrow valley. "I hev hearn tell all my days ez how, ef ye
go up thar on the T'other Mounting, suthin' will happen ter ye afore
ye kin git away. An' I knows myself ez how--'twar ten year ago an'
better--I went up thar, one Jan'ry day, a-lookin' fur my cow, ez hed
strayed off through not hevin' enny calf ter our house; an' I fund the
cow, but jes' tuk an' slipped on a icy rock, an' bruk my ankle-bone.
'Twar sech a job a-gittin' off'n that thar T'other Mounting an' back
over hyar, it hev l'arned me ter stay away from thar."
"Thar war a man," piped out a shrill, quavering voice from within the
door,--the voice of Nathan White's father, the oldest inhabitant of
Rocky-Top,--"thar war a man hyar, nigh on ter fifty year ago,--he
war mightily gin ter thievin' horses; an' one time, while he war
a-runnin' away with Pete Dilks's dapple-gray mare,--they called her
Luce, five year old she war,--Pete, he war a-ridin' a-hint him on his
old sorrel mare,--_her_ name 'twar Jane, an'--the Jeemes boys, they
war a-ridin' arter the horse-thief too. Thar, now! I clar forgits what
horses them Jeemes boys war a-ridin' of." He paused for an instant in
anxious reflection. "Waal, sir! it do beat all that I can't remember
them Jeemes boys' horses! Anyways, they got ter that thar tricky ford
through Wild-Duck River, thar on the side o' the T'other Mounting, an'
the horse-thief war ahead, an' he hed ter take it fust. An' that thar
river,--it rises yander in them pines, nigh about," pointing with a
shaking fore-finger,--"an' that thar river jes' spun him out 'n the
saddle like a top, an' he warn't seen no more till he hed floated
nigh ter Colbury, ez dead ez a door-nail, nor Pete's dapple-gray mare
nuther; she bruk her knees agin them high stone banks. But he war a
good swimmer, an' he war drowned. He war witched with the place, ez
sure ez ye air born."
A long silence ensued. Then Nathan White raised his pondering eyes
with a look of slow curiosity. "What did Tony Britt say he war a-doin'
of, when ye kem on him suddint in the woods on the T'other Mounting?"
he asked, addressing his son, a stalwart youth, who was sitting upon
the step, his hat on the back of his head, and his hands in the pockets
of his jeans trousers.
"He said he war a-huntin', but he hedn't hed no sort'n luck. It 'pears
ter me ez all the game thar is witched somehow, an' ye can't git no
good shot at nuthin'. Tony tole me to-day that he got up three deer,
an' hed toler'ble aim; an' he missed two, an' the t'other jes' trotted
off with a rifle-ball in his flank, ez onconsarned ez ef he hed hit him
with an acorn."
"I hev always hearn ez everything that belongs on that thar T'other
Mounting air witched, an' ef ye brings away so much ez a leaf, or a
stone, or a stick, ye fotches a curse with it," chimed in the old man,
"'kase thar hev been sech a many folks killed on the T'other Mounting."
"I tole Tony Britt that thar word," said the young fellow, "an' 'lowed
ter him ez how he hed tuk a mighty bad spot ter go a-huntin'."
"What did he say?" demanded Nathan White.
"He say he never knowed ez thar war murders commit on T'other
Mounting, an' ef that war he 'spects 'twar nuthin' but Injuns, long
time ago. But he 'lowed the place war powerful onlucky, an' he believed
the mounting war witched."