The iterative echoes of the shooting-match, sharply jarring from mountain
to mountain, from crag to crag, evoked a faint reverberation even in the
distant recesses of Wild-Cat Hollow. Alethea Sayles, sitting at her loom
on the porch of the little log cabin, paused, the shuttle motionless in
her deft hand, to listen.
All aloof from the world was Wild-Cat Hollow, a limited depression, high
up on the vast slope of the Great Smoky. It might have seemed some secret
nook, some guarded fastness, so closely did the primeval wilderness
encompass it, so jealously did the ridgy steeps rise about it on every
hand. It was invisible from the valley below, perhaps too from the
heights above. And only a glimpse was vouchsafed to it of the world from
which it was sequestered: beyond a field, in a gap of the minor ridges
superimposed upon the mountain, where the dead and girdled trees stood in
spectral ranks among the waving corn, might be seen a strip of woods in
the cove below, a glint of water, a stately file of lofty peaks vanishing
along the narrow skyey vista. Sunrise and sunset,—the Hollow knew them
not: a distant mountain might flare with a fantasy of color, a star of
abnormal glister might palpitate with some fine supernal thrill of dawn;
but for all else, it only knew that the night came early and the day
broke late, and in many ways it had meagre part in the common lot.
The little log cabin, set among its scanty fields, its weed-grown
“gyarden spot,” and its few fruit-trees, was poor of its kind. The
clapboards of its roof were held in place by poles laid athwart them,
with large stones piled between to weight them down. The chimney was
of clay and sticks, and leaned away from the wall. In a corner of the
rickety rail fence a gaunt, razor-backed hog lay grunting drowsily.
Upon a rude scaffold tobacco leaves were suspended to dry. Even the
martin-house was humble and primitive: merely a post with a cross-bar,
from which hung a few large gourds with a cavity in each, whence the
birds were continually fluttering. Behind it all, the woods of the steep
ascent seemed to touch the sky. The place might give a new meaning to
exile, a new sentiment to loneliness.
Seldom it heard from the world,—so seldom that when the faint rifle-shots
sounded in the distance a voice from within demanded eagerly, “What on
yearth be that, Lethe?”
“Shootin’ fur beef, down in the cove, I reckon, from thar firin’ so
constant,” drawled Alethea.
“Ye dunno,” said the unseen, unexpectedly, derisive of this conjecture.
“They mought be a-firin’ thar bullets inter each other. Nobody kin
count on a man by hisself, but a man in company with a rifle air jes’ a
outdacious, jubious critter.”
Alethea looked speculatively down at the limited section of the cove
visible from the Hollow above. Her hazel eyes were bright, but singularly
grave. The soft sheen of her yellow hair served to definitely outline
the shape of her head against the brown logs of the wall. The locks lay
not in ripples, but in massive undulations, densely growing above her
forehead, and drawn in heavy folds into a knot at the back of her head.
She had the delicate complexion and the straight, refined lineaments so
incongruous with the poverty-stricken mountaineer, so commonly seen among
the class. Her homespun dress was of a dull brown. About her throat, of
exquisite whiteness, was knotted a kerchief of the deepest saffron tint.
Her hands and arms—for her sleeves were rolled back—were shapely, but
rough and sun-embrowned. She had a deliberate, serious manner that very
nearly approached dignity.
“I hopes they ain’t,” she said, still listening. “I hopes they ain’t
a-shootin’ of one another.”
“Waal, I’m a-thinkin’ the lead wouldn’t be wasted on some of ’em,” said
the acrid voice. “Piomingo Cove could make out mighty well ’thout some o’
them boys ez rip an’ rear aroun’ down thar ez a constancy. I dunno ez I’d
feel called on ter mourn fur Mink Lorey enny. An’ I reckon the cove could
spare him.”
Looking through the window close by the bench of the loom, Alethea could
see the interior of the room, rudely furnished and with the perennial
fire of the wide chimney-place slowly smouldering in a bed of ashes. A
half-grown Shanghai pullet was pecking about the big flat stones of the
hearth in a premature and unprescient proximity to the pot. There were
two bedsteads of a lofty build, the thick feather beds draped with quilts
of such astounding variety of color as might have abashed the designers
of Joseph’s coat. The scrupulous cleanliness and orderliness of the place
were as marked a characteristic as its poverty.
A sharp-featured woman of fifty sat in a low chair by the fire,
wearing a blue-checked homespun dress, a pink calico sun-bonnet, and a
cob-pipe,—the last was so constantly sported that it might be reckoned an
article of attire. She was not so old as she seemed, but the loss of her
teeth and her habit of crouching over the fire gave her a cronish aspect.
Alethea hesitated. Then, with a deprecatory manner, she said in her soft
contralto drawl, “He ain’t down ’mongst the boys in Piomingo Cove none.”
Mrs. Sayles sneered. “Ye b’lieve that?”
“He be a-herdin’ cattle along o’ Ben Doaks on Piomingo Bald.”
Mrs. Sayles looked at her step-daughter and puffed a copious wreath of
smoke for reply.
“Reuben tole me that hisself,—an’ so did Ben Doaks,” persisted Alethea.
“_Mink_, I calls him, an’ nuthin’ shorter,” said Mrs. Sayles,
obdurately,—as if anything could be shorter. “But ef Ben Doaks gin the
same word, it mus’ be a true one.”
Alethea flushed. “I know ye air sot agin Reuben, but I’d believe his word
agin enny other critter’s in the mountings.”
“Set a heap o’ store on him, don’t ye?” said Mrs. Sayles, sarcastically.
“An’ when he kem a-courtin’ ye, an’ ’peared crazy ’bout’n ye, an’ ye
an’ him war promised ter marry, ye couldn’t quit jowin’ at him fur one
minit. Ye plumb beset him ter do like _ye_ thought war right,—ez ef _he_
hed no mo’ conscience o’ his own ’n that pullet thar, an’ hedn’t never
hearn on salvation. An’ ye’d beg an’ beg him ter quit consortin’ with
the moonshiners; an’ a-drinkin’ o’ apple-jack an’ sech; an’ a-rollickin’
round the kentry; an’ layin’ folkses fences down on the groun’; an’
liftin’ thar gates off’n the hinges; an’ ketchin’ thar geese, an’ pickin’
’em, an’ scatterin’ thar feathers in the wind, an’ sendin’ ’em squawkin’
home; an’ a-playin’ kyerds; an’ a-whoopin’, an’ ridin’, an’ racin’. An’
ye war always a-preachin’ at him, an’ tryin’ ter straighten him out, an’
make him suthin’ he war never born ter be.”
Her pipe was smoked out. She drew from her pocket a fragment of tobacco
leaf, which was apparently not sufficiently cured for satisfactory
smoking, for she laid it on the hot ashes on the hearth and watched it as
it dried, her meditative eyes shaded by her pink calico sun-bonnet.
“Naw, sir!” she continued, as she crumpled the bit of leaf with her
fingers and crowded it into the bowl of her pipe, “I hev never liked
Mink. I ain’t denyin’ it, nuther. I ain’t gamesome enough ter git tuk
up with sech ways ez his’n. Mighty few folks air! But I could see
reason in the critter when he ’lowed one day, right hyar by this very
chimbly-place,—he sez, sez he, ‘Lethe, ye don’t like nuthin’ I do or say,
an’ I’m durned ef I kin see how ye like _me_!’”
Alethea’s serious, lustrous eyes, looking in at the window, saw not the
uncouth interior of her home,—no! As in a vision, irradiated by some
enchantment, she beheld the glamours of the idyllic past, fluctuating,
waning.
Even to herself it sometimes seemed that she might have been content more
lightly. Her imbuement with those practical ideas of right and wrong, the
religion of deeds rather than the futilely pious fervors of the ignorant
mountaineers in which creed and act were often widely at variance, was
as mysterious an endowment as the polarity of the loadstone. She was not
introspective, however; she never even wondered that she should speak
openly, without fear or favor, as she felt impelled. Had she lived in an
age when every inward monition was esteemed the voice of the Lord, she
might have fancied that she was called to warn the world of the errors
of its ways. Her sedulous conscience, the austere gravity of her spirit,
her courage, her steadfastness, her fine intelligence, even her obdurate
self-will, might all have had assertive values in those long bygone days.
As an historic woman, she might have founded an order, or juggled with
state-craft, or perished a martyr, or rode, enthusiast, in the ranks
of battle. By centuries belated in Wild-Cat Hollow, she was known as a
“perverted, cross-grained gal” and “a meddlin’ body,” and the “widder
Jessup” had much sympathy for having in a misguided moment married
Alethea’s father. Sometimes the Hollow, distorted though its conscience
was, experienced a sort of affright to recognize its misdeeds in her
curt phrase. It could only ask in retort who set her up to judge of her
elders, and regain its wonted self-complacency as best it might. Even her
own ascetic rectitude lacked some quality to commend it.
“I can’t find no regular fault with Lethe,” her step-mother was wont to
say, “’ceptin’ she’s jes’—Lethe.”