In the semblance of the cumulus-cloud from which it takes its name,
charged with the portent of the storm, the massive peak of Thunderhead
towers preëminent among the summits of the Great Smoky Mountains, unique,
impressive, most subtly significant.
What strange attraction of the earth laid hold on this vagrant
cloud-form? What unexplained permanence of destiny solidified it and
fixed it forever in the foundations of the range?
Kindred thunderheads of the air lift above the horizon, lure, loiter,
lean on its shoulder with similitudes and contrasts. Then with all the
buoyant liberties of cloudage they rise,—rise!
Alas! the earth clasps its knees; the mountains twine their arms about
it; hoarded ores of specious values weigh it down. It cannot soar! Only
the cumbrous image of an ethereal thing! Only the ineffective wish vainly
fashioned like the winged aspiration!
It may have said naught of this to Ben Doaks, but it exerted strenuous
fascinations on the sense alert to them. Always he turned his eyes toward
Thunderhead, as he came and went among his cattle on the neighboring
heights of Piomingo Bald, a few miles distant to the northeast. Often he
left the herder’s cabin in the woods below, and sat for hours on a rock
on the summit, smoking his pipe and idly watching the varying aspects of
the great peak. Sometimes it was purple against the azure heavens; or
gray and sharp of outline on faint green spaces of the sky; or misty,
immaterial, beset with clouds, as if the clans had gathered to claim the
changeling.
“’Pears-like ter me ez I couldn’t herd cattle along of a mo’
low-sperited, say-nuthin’ critter’n ye be, Ben,” his partner remarked
one day, sauntering up the slope and joining him on the summit. “Ye
jes’ set up hyar on the bald an’ gape at Thunderhead like ez ef
ye war bereft. Now, down in the cove ye always air toler’ble good
company,—nimble-tongued ez ennybody.”
He thrust his cob-pipe into his mouth and pulled away silently at
it, gazing at the smoke as it curled up with delicate sinuosity and
transparently blue.
Ben Doaks did not reply at once. There was no need of haste on Piomingo
Bald.
“Waal, I dunno but it air a sorter lonesome place, an’ a-body don’t feel
much like talkin’ no-ways,” he drawled at last. “But ye’ll git used ter
it, Mink,” he added, in leisurely encouragement. “Ye’ll git used ter it,
arter a while.”
Mink looked down disconsolately at the vast array of mountains below him
on every side. The nearest were all tinged with a dusky purple, except
for the occasional bare, garnet-colored stretches of the “fire-scalds,”
relics of the desolation when the woods were burned; the varying tints
were sublimated to blue in the distance; then through every charmed
gradation of ethereal azure the ranges faded into the invisible spaces
that we wot not of. There was something strangely overwhelming in the
stupendous expanse of the landscape. It abashed the widest liberties
of fancy. Somehow it disconcerted all past experience, all previous
prejudice, all credence in other conditions of life. The fact was visibly
presented to the eye that the world is made of mountains.
That finite quality of the mind, aptly expressing itself in mensuration,
might find a certain relief in taking note of the curious “bald”
itself,—seeming some three or four hundred bare acres on the summit. Wild
grass grows upon its gradual slope; clumps of huckleberry bushes appear
here and there; occasional ledges of rock crop out. A hardy flower will
turn a smiling face responsive to the measured patronage of the chilly
sunshine in this rare air. The solemnity of the silence is broken only by
the occasional tinkling of cow-bells from the herds of cattle among the
woods lower down on the mountain side.
“I never kin git used ter it,” said Mink, desperately. “I never kin git
used ter hevin’ sech dumbness about me, an’ seein’ the time go so slow.
’Pears ter me some fower or five hunderd year sence we eat brekfus’,—an’
I ain’t hongry, nuther.”
He was a tall, singularly lithe man of twenty-four or five, clad in
a suit of brown jeans. He wore his coat closely buttoned over his
blue-checked cotton shirt, for the August days are chilly on Piomingo
Bald. His broad-brimmed white wool hat was thrust back on his head,
showing his tousled auburn hair that hung down upon his collar, curling
like a cavalier’s. He had a keen, clear profile, a quickly glancing, dark
eye, and his complexion was tanned to a rich tint that comported well
with the out-door suggestions of his powder-horn and belt and shot-pouch,
which he wore, although his rifle was at the cabin. He maintained the
stolid gravity characteristic of the mountaineer, but there was a covert
alertness about him, a certain sharpness of attention almost inimical,
and slow and dawdling as he was he gave the impression of being endowed
with many an agile unclassified mental faculty.
His eyes followed the flight of a bird soaring in great circles high
above the “bald,” sometimes balanced motionless in mid-air,—a pose of
ineffable strength and buoyancy,—then majestically circling as before.
“That thar buzzard ’pears ter be a-loungin’ around in the sky, a-waitin’
fur we-uns ter die,” he said, lugubriously.
Doaks broke with an effort from his reverie, and turned his languid gaze
on the malcontent herder.
“In the name o’ heaven, Mink Lorey,” he said solemnly, “what is it ye
_do_ like ter do?”
Despite the spark of irritation in his eye, he seemed colorless,
especially as contrasted with his comrade. He had a shock of fair hair
and a light brown beard; the complexion which is the complement of this
type had freckled in its exposure to the sun instead of tanning, and
added its original pallor to the negative effect. He had good features,
but insignificant in their lack of any marked peculiarity except for the
honest, candid look in the serious gray eye. He too wore a broad white
wool hat and a suit of brown jeans.
Mink gazed at his companion with an expression of brightening interest.
He found himself and his own idiosyncrasies, even when berated, more
agreeable to contemplate than the mountains. He did not reply, perhaps
appreciating that no answer was expected.
“Ye don’t like ter herd up hyar, an’ the Lord knows I ain’t keerin’ ter
hev ye. Ye hev gin me ez much trouble ez all the cattle an’ thar owners
besides. When ye wanted ter kem so bad, an’ sorter go partners with me,
I ’lowed ye’d be lively, an’ a toler’ble good critter ter hev along. An’
ye hev been ez lonesome an’ ez onconsiderate an’ ez ill-convenient ez a
weanin’ baby,” he declared, rising to hyperbole. “What _do_ ye like ter
do?”
Once more Mink refrained from reply. He looked absently at an isolated
drift of mist, gigantic of outline, reaching from the zenith to the
depths of Piomingo Cove, and slowly passing down the valley between the
Great Smoky and the sun-flooded Chilhowee Mountain, obscuring for the
moment the red clay banks of the Scolacutta River, whose current seemed a
mere silver thread twining in and out of the landscape.
“Look a-hyar at the way ye go on,” said Doaks, warming to the subject,
for there are few exercises so entertaining as to preach with no sense of
participation in sin. “Ye went ter work at that thar silver mine in North
Car’liny, an’ thar ye stayed sorter stiddy an’ peaceful till ye seen yer
chance. An’ Pete Rood, he kem an’ stayed too, an’ he war sorter skeered
o’ the ways,—not bein’ used ter minin’. An’ then yer minkish tricks
began. Fust, when that thar feller war let down inter the shaft an’ ye
hed a-holt o’ the windlass, ye drapped a few clods o’ clay in on him, an’
then a leetle gravel, an’ then mo’ clay. Then he bellered that the shaft
war cavin’ in on him, an’ plead an’ prayed with ye ter wind him up quick.
An’ ye wouldn’t pull. An’ when the t’other fellers run thar an’ drawed
that man out he war weak enough ter drap.”
“I ’member!” cried Mink, with a burst of unregenerate laughter. “He said,
‘Lemme git out’n this spindlin’ hell o’ a well!’”
He sprang up, grotesquely imitating the gesture of exhaustion with which
the man had stepped out of the bucket to firm ground.
“Waal, it mought hev turned out a heap wus,” said Doaks, “’kase they
’lowed down yander ’bout Big Injun Mounting, whar Rood hails from, ez he
hev got some sort’n heart-disease. An’ a suddint skeer mought hev killed
him.”
“Shucks!” said Mink, incredulously. He looked disconcerted, however, and
then sat down on the rock as before. Ben Doaks went on:—
“An’ that warn’t enough fur ye. When they hed Rood thar a-pumpin’ out
water, all by himself all night, nuthin’ would do ye but ye must hide up
thar in the Lost-Time mine in the dark o’ the midnight an’ the rain, an’
explode a lot o’ gunpowder, an’ kem a-bustin’ out at him from the mouth
o’ the tunnel, wropped in a sheet an’ howlin’ like a catamount. He run
mighty nigh a mile.”
“Waal,” said Mink, in sturdy argument, “I ain’t ’sponsible ’kase Peter
Rood air toler’ble easy skeered.”
“They never hired ye ter work thar no mo’, bein’ ez that war ’bout all
the use ye put yerse’f ter in the silver mine in North Car’liny.”
Despite the reproof, Doaks was looking kindly at him, for the wayward
Mink had evidently endeared himself in some sort to the elder herder, who
was weakly conscious of not regarding his enormities with the aversion
they merited.
The young man’s countenance fell. His mischief differed from that of his
namesake in all the sequelæ of an accusing conscience. But stay! What
do we know of the mink’s midday meditations, his sober, _ex post facto_
regrets?
“An’ what do ye do then,—’kase they turned ye off? Ye go thar of a night,
when nobody’s at the windlass, an’ ye busts it down an’ flings the bucket
an’ rope an’ all down the shaft.”
Mink was embarrassed. “How d’ ye know?” he retorted, with acrid futility.
“How d’ ye know ’twar me?”
“’Kase it air fairly kin ter yer actions,—know it by the family favor,”
said Doaks. “Ax ennybody ennywhar round the Big Smoky who did sech an’
sech, an’ they’d all say, Mink. Ye know the word they hev gin ye, ‘Mink
by name an’ Mink by natur.’”
Lorey made no further feint of denial. He seemed a trifle out of
countenance. He glanced over his shoulder at the rugged horizontal
summit line of Chilhowee, rising high above the intervenient mountains,
and sharply imposed upon the mosaic of delicate tints known as the
valley of East Tennessee, which stretches so far that, despite its
sharp inequalities, it seems to have the level monotony of the sea till
Walden’s Ridge, the great outpost of the Cumberland Mountains, meets the
concave sky.
Then, as his wandering attention returned to those sterner heights close
at hand, their inexpressible gravity, their significant solemnity, which
he could not apprehend, which baffled every instinct of his limited
nature, smote upon him.