NASHVILLE is the merest scrambling huddle of log houses. The most
imposing edifice is a blockhouse, built of logs squared by the broadaxe.
It is the home of the widow Donelson; and, since it is all her husband
left her when the Indians shot him down at the plow-stilts, and because
she must live, the widow Donelson has turned the blockhouse into a
boarding house.
With the widow Donelson dwells her daughter Rachel, a beautiful brunette
of twenty, and the belle of the Cumberland. Rachel is vivacious and
bright; and, while there is much confusion among her nouns, pronouns,
verbs and adverbs in the matters of case, number, and tense, she shines
forth an indomitable conversationist. With frontier freedom she
laughs with everybody, jests with everybody, delights in everybody's
admiration; and this does not please her husband, Lewis Robards, who is
ignorant, suspicious, narrow, lazy, shiftless, jealous, and generally
drunk. One time and another he has accused Rachel of a tenderness for
every man in the settlement, and their quarrels have been frequent and
fierce.
It is evening; the widow Donelson is preparing supper for the half
dozen boarders, assisted by the blooming Rachel. The moody Robards, half
soaked in corn whisky, sits by the open door, ear on the conversation,
eye on the not-over-distant woods. If the worthless Robards will not
work, at least he may maintain a halfbright lookout for murderous
Indians; and he does.
The widow Donelson glances across from the corn bread she is mixing.
“The runner who came on ahead,” she says, addressing the blooming
Rachel, “reports the party as being due to-morrow. Mr. Jackson, the new
State's Attorney, who will come with it, is to board and lodge with us.”
The blooming Rachel looks brightly up. The drunken Robards likewise
looks up; but his face is gloomy with incipient jealousy.
“A Mr. Jackson, eh?” he sneers. Then, to the blooming Rachel: “It's
mighty likely you'll find in him a new lover to try your wiles on.”
The blooming Rachel colors and her black eyes snap, but she holds her
tongue. The widow Donelson is also silent. The mother and daughter have
found wordlessness the best return to those insults, which it is the
habit of the jealous drunkard to hurl at his pretty wife.
The runner made true report, and the party in which travels the
horse-faced Andy makes its appearance next day. Tall, slender, elegant,
self-possessed, and with a manner which marks him above the common, he
is disliked by the drunken Robards on sight. When he declines to drink
with that sot, the dislike crystallizes into hatred. The outrageous
jealousy of Robards has found a new reason for its green-eyed existence,
and he already goes drunkenly pondering the slaughter of the horse-faced
Andy. Since he will never advance beyond the pondering stage, for
certain reasons called “craven” among men of clean courage, his
homicidal lucubrations are the less important.
Andy the horse-faced does not notice Robards. He does, however, notice
with a thrill of pleasure the beautiful Rachel, and is glad to find his
lines are down in such pleasant places.
He is vastly taken with the boarding house of the widow Donelson, and
incautiously says as much. He praises her corn pone and fried squirrel,
and vehemently avers that her hog and hominy are the best he ever ate.
Rachel the blooming does not allow her husband's jealousy to interrupt
hospitality, and piles high the young State's Attorney's plate with
these delicacies. She even brings out a store of wild honey and
cream--dainties sparse and few and far between in these rude regions.
She calls this “hospitality”; her jealous drunkard of a husband calls
it “making advances.” He says that in the course of a long, and he might
have added misspent, life, he has observed that a coquette, with designs
on a man's heart, never fails to begin by making an ally of his stomach.
“Hence,” says the drunken deductionist, “that honey and cream.”
That night, after Rachel the blooming and her drunken husband retire, a
bitter quarrel breaks out between them. It rages with such fury that
the bicker arouses one Overton, who occupies the adjoining chamber.
Mr. Overton is a severe character, firm and clear as to his rights. He
objects to having his rest disturbed, alleging that he has troubles
of his own. Taking final offense at the language of the brute Robards,
which is more emphatic than nice, he gets his pistols. Rapping on the
intervening wall to invoke attention, he informs that vituperative
drunkard of his intention to instantly put him (Robards) to death,
should he so much as raise his voice above a whisper for the balance of
the night.
Rachel seeks her mother, and the jealous drunkard quiets down. He is not
unacquainted with Mr. Overton, who is reputed to possess as restless
a brace of hair triggers as ever owned flint and pan. Altogether he is
precisely the one whose word would carry weight with such as Robards,
and, on the back of his interference in the domestic affairs of that
inebriate, a great peace settles upon the blockhouse of the widow
Donelson which abides throughout the night.
As for the horse-faced State's Attorney, he knows nothing of the
differences between Rachel and the jealous Robards. He does not sleep
in the blockhouse, having been appointed to a blanket couch in the
“Bunk House,” a separate dormitory structure which stands at a little
distance.
During breakfast, the blooming Rachel again freights daintily deep the
plate of the young State's Attorney. Thereupon the favored one beams his
thanks, while behind his back as though to soothe his hate, the
malevolent Rob-ards sits cleaning a rifle, casting upon him the while an
occasional midnight look. Just across is the taciturn Overton,
proprietor of those restless hair triggers, wondering over his bacon and
eggs where this drama of love and threatened murder is to end.