THE RESCUE
“There ain’t many men as inquisitive as I be,” remarked Haystack Thompson
as he sat at Aunt Zillah’s supper table that evening. “’Tain’t the kind
of inquisitiveness that takes men to big towns, nor the kind that takes
men to sea. It’s jest the kind that has to know what’s going on in the
neighborhood.”
“But you must admit,” said Carin teasingly, “that your neighborhood is
rather a large one.”
“So it is, so it is,” confessed Mr. Thompson. “It includes these yere
mountains in all their outcroppings in the two Carolinas. I make it my
business to know what’s going on in them whenever possible. Earthquakes,
funerals, singings, weddings, corn huskings—anything out of the
usual—demand my attention.”
“Well, I’m glad _we_ received it, at any rate,” said Azalea. “Did you
think we were getting into mischief? The truth is, all had been
perfectly quiet till you arrived on the scene.”
“But it was a dishonorable peace,” roared Mr. Thompson. “The enemy had
you. You were in league with the powers of darkness. Now, freedom and
honor sit upon your banners.”
“So they do,” said Miss Zillah. “I declare, whenever I thought of that
poor little boy who honed to come to school and wasn’t allowed, it seemed
to me I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to go out and do something about it,
but I didn’t know how.”
“I picked him up down the road a piece,” explained Mr. Thompson. “He was
playing with a little snake—both of ’em having a nice pleasant time—and I
up and said: ‘Why are you playing with snakes instead of studying up at
Ravenel School with the young misses?’ And what do you think the little
cuss said? ‘It ain’t as dangerous,’ said he. ‘Not as dangerous?’ said
I. ‘How is that?’ So he up and told me the whole story.”
“There’s a story whichever way you turn here,” said Azalea. “Just
listen, Mr. Thompson, while I tell you the story of Paralee Panther.”
So she told the tale of Paralee, of how her name was no name, of her
father, paralyzed, in need of every comfort, and far from all physicians’
aid and all neighborly service. Mr. Thompson listened with deep
interest.
“Troubles,” he said, “is divided into two kinds. There’s the kind you
can’t help and that you’d best forget; and there’s the kind you can help
and that you want to get after. It looks to me as if this is something
to get after.”
“We all think so,” said Azalea. “And we propose going to-morrow to see.
There’s a nice boy up here named Keefe O’Connor, an artist—he helps us in
our school, too, almost every day—and he’s going with us.”
“You-all don’t have no call to go,” said Mr. Thompson. “Not now, at any
rate. Here I be, a lazy old coot, with nothing else to do. Just let me
go and investigate these here Panthers.”
But Azalea shook a finger at him.
“Mr. Thompson, Mr. Thompson,” she said. “Do you think we’re the kind
that can come up into the mountains and just sit and look off at the
view? You know we aren’t. We mean to go to that poor man. That’s our
adventure, don’t you see? Rescuing the helpless is the greatest fun
there is. Why, the knights of old found that out. After you’ve tried
all sorts of things, being rich and gay and all that, you come back to
that old idea. So we’re setting out to rescue somebody, and we simply
can’t be interfered with. But you may come along if you like. It will
make it twice as interesting.”
“About this ‘nice boy,’” said Haystack, ever the watchful protector of
Azalea. “Who is he? Where does he come from? Who are his folks? What
kind of a job does he look to have—or is he a shiftless good-for-nothing
like me?”
Carin, who felt the inquiries to be justified, flushed slightly and
Azalea distinctly frowned. It was Azalea who spoke.
“We don’t know a thing about him, and that’s a fact,” she confessed. “We
thought that perhaps some day he’d be telling us about himself, but he
never says a word. I think there’s something he doesn’t want to tell.”
“Like as not,” said Haystack, dryly.
“Oh, not anything that he’s ashamed of,” put in Azalea quickly, “but
something that it would make him sad to tell. You know, Mr. Thompson,
dear, that it’s just that way with me. There are things in my life I
don’t want to speak of, ever, but nothing that I’m ashamed of. If it’s
that way with me, why shouldn’t it be the same with others?”
“Why not, indeed, honey-bird?” said Mr. Thompson contritely. “Well,
we’ll see this ‘nice boy,’ and pass judgment on him. Though, honor
bright, Zalie, I think your judgment ain’t the worst in the state. For a
young-un you’ve had a good deal of experience in life and I reckon you
have your own way of sizing up folks.”
As a result of all this, the next morning, early, in the best of moods
and with a spirit for kindly adventure burning within them, a party of
five started for Soco Mountain.
The “sun ball,” as the mountain folk call it, was just showing a burning
rim above the purple horizon when they set out, with food in their saddle
bags, matches in their pockets and canteens of pure spring water on their
backs. Food for the horses and raincoats were buckled to the saddles.
“Short of breaking a nag’s leg,” said Haystack Thompson, complacently,
“we’re safe.”
The first business of the day was to go for Paralee, who was of course to
be their guide. Living as she did a mile or two back of Rowantree Hall,
Azalea begged that they might pass through the Rowantree estate, giving
her a chance to speak a word with Mary Cecily, whose haunting story
stayed with her almost constantly—all the more, perhaps, because she had
been forbidden to speak of it to anyone. The detour made for the purpose
was not great, and presently they were pounding up the “approach” which
Mr. Rowantree so prized. But on this occasion the master of the house
was not sitting upon his gallery. Instead, they found him in the
“drawing-room,” clad in a snuff-covered silk dressing gown, reading from
an old red-bound copy of “The Lady of the Lake” to the twins, Moira and
Michael, while little Mrs. Rowantree got the breakfast.
“The vocation I should have chosen,” he said to his guests after they
were seated, “is teaching the young mind to expand. It is, I may say,
one of the few things which really interest me.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Rowantree, bustling about to serve her guests
with hot coffee, “I can’t tell you what a help it is to me, having Mr.
Rowantree amuse the children the way he does.”
“Wouldn’t ‘instruct’ be a better word than ‘amuse,’ my dear?” asked her
husband.
“Oh, indeed, you do instruct as well as amuse them,” she cried loyally.
“You instruct us all.”
“He didn’t amuse nor instruct me none,” said Haystack Thompson when they
were on their way again. “A great hulk of a man a-setting around while
his little wife lugs in the firewood!”
“It would be horrible, the way she works and the way he loafs,” said
Keefe, “if it weren’t that she is happy. She likes to be doing things
for him and the children.”
“He sure is a loafer,” mused Haystack. “I know, because I’m a loafer
myself and I can recognize one when I see him. But he puts on airs with
his loafing, and I swan, I don’t like that. But say, he’s got cute
children, ain’t he? That there little Constance said if I’d stay she’d
call me ‘uncle.’” He laughed in a flattered way at the remembrance of
it.
They were soon at the little cabin where Paralee lived with her
grandmother and her brother. The brother they learned, was already off
at the sawmill, but the grandmother, bent double with age, with two sharp
teeth protruding from otherwise toothless jaws, and with her face brown
and furrowed, came out to see her granddaughter’s guests. Her gimlet
eyes seemed to bore through them. She looked as if she knew many things
which she would not tell, and which, indeed, she ought not to tell.
Carin had brought her sketch book, and was eager to make a drawing of old
granny Panther, but she was given no time, for Paralee was awaiting them,
ready and impatient to lead them on. She had no horse, but she said she
wanted none.
“I can keep up with your horses,” she told Azalea.
Keefe wanted to lend her his mount, but at his offer she frowned with
vexation.
“I don’t want to be plagued,” she said sullenly, and set off down the
road. Her strong, short body moved over the ground with astonishing
swiftness; and as she took advantage of every cut-off, leaving the riders
to go around by the road, she soon proved that they would not be obliged
to waste time by waiting for her. The Gap was quickly crossed and she
turned up a shoulder of Dundee Mountain, where for an hour the blowing
horses had a hard climb. Then came a canter along the almost level
table-top of the mountain, till, having reached the end of the plateau,
the road began to descend. The great mountain reached out many arms,
each of which bore a name; and it was along one of these wooded reaches
that Paralee led them. By noon, a narrow valley was reached; and here,
beside a pleasant stream, the green solitude all about them, they
dismounted for their luncheon and to rest themselves and their horses.
Paralee would not eat with them, though she accepted the luncheon Azalea
offered her. She walked away to a shady spot, turned her back upon her
companions and munched her food alone.
“Why does she do it?” Carin asked. It was Haystack who knew the answer.
“She does it because she’s as proud as Lucifer,” he said sympathetically.
“She does it,” echoed Azalea, “because she’s afraid her manners won’t be
like ours.”
“She does it because she is unhappy,” said Keefe. “I have been unhappy,
and I know.”
It was the first time he had made a reference to his past life.
But now there was another mountain to climb. It was low, long, and
dull-looking, and so heavily wooded that there was little outlook.
Azalea said she believed that it was the only mountain she ever had seen
which she did not care for. The road was so bad that it was impossible
for a wagon to pass over it; and even the horses had trouble making their
way. Only Paralee, grown up in that tangle, knew how to thread it with
ease. It was one of the few things which she did know well, and as she
went on, showing no sign of weariness, her awkwardness and shyness began
to drop from her. She was on her own ground—the ground where she and her
people had fought their lonely fight for life; and she was carrying help
to those whose sorrows had been a savage grief to her.
Presently they reached a ragged clearing, stumbled past it to an ill-kept
garden, passed a number of pig pens and a large chicken yard, and came
upon the place that Paralee Panther called home. It had been rather a
pleasant cabin, once, perhaps, in the old days when Thomas Panther had
brought his bride there and had “aimed” to be a farmer and woodsman. But
the roof now hardly gave shelter from the storms, the shutters sagged
from the unglassed windows, the steps had rotted away, and one mounted to
the floor by means of ill-chosen stones which had been placed before the
door, and which rocked when they were stepped upon.
Paralee plunged ahead to carry word to that desolated house that visitors
were at hand.
Visitors!
The word means little enough to most people, thought Azalea, but to these
strange, stricken people, these people who, as Paralee said, had “almost
forgot how to talk,” it must be as the sight of a sail to one upon a
desert island. Perhaps they would fear as much as they would welcome it;
yet there was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door.
“Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” begged the girl, using the
mountaineers’ old phrase of hospitality.
[Picture: There was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the door. “Tell
’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” she begged]
“We will, ma’am,” cried Haystack Thompson, just as if Mrs. Panther
herself has spoken. “We’ll be glad to.”
He left Keefe to help the ladies from their mounts, and himself went
forward to shake this ghostlike woman by the hand. She was tall and
sunburned, thin past belief, and so smitten by the silence and deadness
of the days that she looked like a person who had lost some of her
faculties. Yet now, with a visible effort, she summoned back her
knowledge of what should be done when guests came.
The first glance in the cabin was enough. Its two beds, its rickety
chairs and uncovered table, were the whole of the tale so far as
furniture went, and a pathetic tale it was. But the tragedy began with
the man who lay in one of the beds. His wandering, wild glance fell upon
the visitors with something like terror. His yellow skin clung to his
bones, and only one side of his body was alive. The other was immovable
in the curious half-death of paralysis.
It was Keefe who first went to him, for Mr. Thompson had paused a moment,
aghast at the sight.
“You must pardon us for coming to your home, sir,” he said in such a
gentle and winning way that no one could have resisted his plea. “It is
taking a liberty, we know, but we heard how ill you were and how no
doctor could get to you. We are not doctors, but we mean to get you to
one if it will do any good.”
Panther, it appeared, could talk but little. He shook his head
despairingly at Keefe’s speech, and made a strange, inarticulate sound in
his throat.
“Nothing won’t help him,” said his wife. “A tree fell on him and he’s
got the paraletics. He ain’t going to git well.” She made the statement
calmly. She was used to the idea; it was her house-companion and always
with her.
“Where’s Pete?” asked Paralee. “Ain’t he ’round?”
“He’s done lit out,” said Mrs. Panther, still in that dead voice.
“Lit out?” cried Paralee. “You don’t mean he’s gone and run away?”
Mrs. Panther nodded again; and again the eyes of her husband rolled
wildly.
“Did he leave you all alone, ma?” persisted Paralee. “’Th’out anybody to
do for you?”
“My childer has all done that,” said the woman. “Thar ain’t nary one
left.”
“Oh, but Paralee didn’t mean to desert you, ma’am,” cried Azalea, unable
to endure the spiritual bleakness of that home another minute. “It was
only that she might find some way to help you that she left. She’s going
to be a teacher; she—”
Mrs. Panther lifted her sun-faded eyes and looked at Azalea with
unspeakable scorn.
“Her! A teacher!” she said.
Azalea saw Paralee cower at this speech, and she knew then why the girl
was so sullen, so heavily sad. She had been “put down” all her life, and
she had grown to be like a hateful, chained beast under it.
Then Miss Zillah spoke. She was occupying one of the three chairs in the
room, and in that bare and bitter place, she looked—with her kind face
and seemly garments—like a being from another world than that in which
poor Mrs. Panther lived and had her aimless being.
“She has the wish to be a teacher, Mrs. Panther,” she said in her soft
tones, “and she has the brains for it as well, so these young ladies tell
me. In fact, I hear that she understands book-studying better than most.
We all hope to help her, ma’am, and to see you and your husband in a
different home from this. Wouldn’t you like to have neighbors and to be
where a doctor could visit your husband?”
But Mrs. Panther could not face Miss Pace as she replied. There was too
much she could not tell. How could she leave the only spot on earth that
belonged to her? How could they make any sort of a living elsewhere?
Dare she, who had no more clothes than the poorest beggar, go out into
the world?
Miss Zillah looked at her with her soft yet penetrating gaze.
“I know all you’re thinking, Mrs. Panther,” she said in tones that
carried conviction to the heart, “but I’ll just ask you to trust in us
and we’ll see you through.”
For a moment or two no one spoke. Mr. Thompson was leaving matters for
the present in Miss Zillah’s hands. Keefe and the girls were silent with
pity. Never had they imagined anything so hopeless as the look on the
faces of that man and woman.
“You’ll think of a dozen reasons why you can’t do this or that,” went on
Miss Zillah, “but I feel that every one of them can be overcome.”
Paralee had drawn nearer to her mother, and her dark eyes shone like
points of fire there in the gloom of the cabin.
“Say yes, ma,” she whispered. “Say yes! We’ll all die here like snakes
in our holes, if you don’t.”
Mrs. Panther turned on her.
“What you talking to me for?” she demanded. “Didn’t you turn your back
on me? Didn’t you make Jake leave? Didn’t you take Granny? Much you
care!”
Then Haystack Thompson arose. He towered till he almost touched the roof
of the cabin.
“Mrs. Panther, ma’am,” he said, “you ain’t seeing things right, but I
don’t blame you none. I’m a mountain man and I know how you feel.
You’re proud. But this ain’t a question of pride. This is a question of
saving lives. Now, ma’am, does it hurt your husband to move him?”
“Oh, awful,” she said. “One side don’t feel, but to touch him hurts the
other side awful.”
“Does it, now?” said the fiddler, his voice quivering with sympathy. “I
wonder why? Ladies, if you’ll be so good as to step outside, I’ll see if
I can find out. I’m something of a bone-setter in my way. O’Connor,
will you lend a hand?”
Half an hour later Mr. Thompson came to consult with the ladies.
“I believe,” he said earnestly, “that the man can be cured. There’s a
broken collar bone—broken in two places as I make out, and never set—and
it’s pressing on nerves and muscles in such a way as to make him
helpless. That’s the way it looks to me. Now, Miss Carin told me coming
over, that she’d pay for his keep in a hospital at Asheville if only we
could get him there. It would be the death of him to take him in a
wagon; and he couldn’t sit on a nag. So O’Connor and I have fixed it up
that we’ll carry him out.”
“But you can’t do that, Mr. Thompson,” objected Miss Zillah. “You’re not
so vigorous as you used to be, sir—”
“Never tell me that, Miss Pace! Never tell me that! Old Haystack’s got
muscle and he’s got grit. You’ll see. You’ve set me on doing it more
than ever, Miss Pace.”
“It might be all very well to carry him for a mile,” said the practical
Azalea, “but just think of doing it for miles and miles—for twenty
miles.”
“We won’t have to carry him that far. Say we rig up a hammock and carry
him ten miles. Then we’ll reach a wagon road. Meantime, you-all ride
ahead, and have a wagon waiting for us. Put a mattress on it with plenty
of pillows and comfortables.”
“And we’ll bring along something to sustain him,” added Aunt Zillah,
forgetting all about her objections, “and some refreshments for you and
Keefe—”
“And the first thing you know we’ll have him at Bee Tree.”
“Then,” put in Carin, “we could get the drawing room on a Pullman for
him, and you and Keefe could go with him to Asheville.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Thompson. “Sure we can do it!”
“And is Mrs. Panther willing?” asked Miss Zillah.
“You can’t tell whether she is or whether she ain’t,” said Mr. Thompson.
“She’s fierce as a tiger. But then she’s lived like a tiger—only the
hunting ain’t been good. Say, ladies, are you with us?”
“Oh, we are,” said Miss Zillah fervently. “It will be like taking a man
from a living tomb. Of course I can see there are many difficulties, but
probably it is best not to think too much about them.”
“That’s the idee exackly,” agreed Mr. Thompson. “If you want to do
anything, don’t waste your time thinking about the difficulties.”
“For example,” went on Miss Zillah, “you’ll never reach the main road
before sundown.”
“We’ve thought of that,” said Mr. Thompson, “and what we propose is that
we shall stay right here to-night.”
“Oh, I couldn’t sleep in that house,” whispered Carin. “Honestly, I
couldn’t.”
“No call to,” said Mr. Thompson, flushing a little, however, in spite of
himself, out of loyalty to his fellow mountain folk. “You-all will sleep
out in the open. You can have the stars for your candles and the
sun-ball for your alarm clock. O’Connor and I will scrape up pine leaves
for your beds. You can put your raincoats around you, and maybe I can
find an extra blanket to help you out. We’ll build a fire and you can
sleep with your feet to it. Now, what’s the matter with that?”
“Nothing, nothing,” cried Azalea. “Oh, Mr. Thompson, how sweet of you to
think of it.”
Haystack Thompson grinned mockingly at his young friend.
“Me, ‘sweet’?” he asked derisively. “Jest about as sweet as a green
persimmon.”