BELLE-ANN BENSON
Beneath Eagle Crown the four-room cabin reposed in a shelter of
spruce-pine, hemlock and cedar. Its plot was covered with countless
quaint flowers and its rock-hemmed path to the horse-block in front was
lined with pink wild roses and forget-me-nots. Here the creeping ivy and
honeysuckle ran wild.
Although the mound of Maw Lutts, in the scrub orchard behind the log
barn, was green again for the third time, her beloved flowers had come
back to earth each year with reassuring, tender messages for Belle-Ann
Benson, who had adopted them and had nourished and tended and cherished
them with a pathetic devotion.
Belle-Ann knew their language well. And when they died--more than at any
other season--the kindly, smiling face of old Maw Lutts followed the
girl all through the chilly fall days.
It was Belle-Ann who had folded Maw Lutts's two hands, one upon the
other, back on that terrible day. It was Belle-Ann whom the men found
after the battle, crouching in despair over the dear, still form lying
in the yard, and crying out to God for Him to make the mute lips speak
back to her.
Belle-Ann had never known her own mother, but she had found a mother in
Maw Lutts. So it was Belle-Ann who fed the martins, and encouraged the
wild birds, and the tame squirrels Maw Lutts had loved.
The Lutts family now consisted of the old man, two boys, the adopted
girl and an old negro who had fled from Lexington when a boy, in the
first days of the Rebellion, and who subsequently had found sanctuary at
the Lutts abode. He had been permitted to remain because no form of
persuasion could induce him to leave the premises, once fed, and had the
distinction of being the only negro on Hellsfork.
Belle-Ann was a daughter by proxy, since her own mother had died in her
babyhood and Maw Lutts had opened her heart and home to the child.
Belle-Ann was now some months past sixteen and her unusual physical
beauty was noted throughout the mountain community and wondered at by
the few strangers who chanced to reach the isolated cabin on Moon
mountain.
To-night the girl dropped a wooden bucket and gourd after watering the
plants, and walked briskly over the carpet of shadows, stepped out under
the radiant moon and stood gazing intently up to Eagle Crown, where she
saw the magnified outlines of Cap Lutts against the sky.
Near by a huge witch-elm butt, sawed into three steps, shaped a
horse-block. Upon the topmost step of the block she seated herself. Her
brow puckered slightly and she waited with an expectant air. Even the
pale moonlight revealed her marked loveliness.
Her form was tall for sixteen, with that subtle grace wholly
undefinable. Clinging about her head and mantling her shoulders, a mass
of natural curls clustered in riotous abundance, shimmering like
polished ebony in the moon's rays.
Her features were chiseled with a delicate, hellenic touch, and sweetly
oval. Her thin nose was straight and short and small; and her red mouth
told of unfathomable depths of emotion. Her wide, limpid eyes were like
two blue patches of early June sky.
Her sleeves were short of her dimpled elbows, and her skirt reached
scarce below her knees. Her graceful legs were bare, but her little feet
were incased in neat, cow-hide moccasins with the hair on, laced and
thonged about her round ankles.
A great measure of the girl's physical beauty had been transmitted by
her mother, who had been a gentle blue-grass woman, of noted beauty and
lineage, and who had in a fit of pique, married the picturesque trapper
of the Cumberlands and buried herself in her unloved husband's
wilderness existence.
Many pathetic tales were told of the great-hearted Tom-John Benson's
patient struggle to make his wife happy; but the most beautiful woman
the mountain people had ever seen had pined away and had gone to an
early end.
Belle-Ann's father now worked for a lumber company, down on the Big
Sandy. It was only now that he had saved sufficient money to send
Belle-Ann to the mission school at Proctor, and so fulfil his wife's
last request.
Belle-Ann had heard the news only three hours ago.
Jutt Orlick, returning from one of his mysterious, periodical visits
abroad, had stopped to say that her father had sent word that he would
come for her the following week and take her to the school at Proctor.
And Orlick, whom the girl distrusted, had not departed without the usual
flattery she always half resented.
As Belle-Ann sat on the horse-block her little heart was prey to many
emotions, and she was well-nigh reduced to tears.
Impatient to tell the tidings, she was waiting for the boys, who had
been away since early morning, and for the old man to come down from his
lofty station. From the cabin door a vague, lank shape came toward her
through the shadows.
"Yo', Slab!" she called.
"Heah me!" responded an old treble voice from the dappled path.
When Slab reached the horse-block, although he said nothing to the girl,
he took a posture that indicated pointedly that he expected something of
her; and she slipped from the horse-block and sat down on the big
grapevine family bench a few feet distant.
Here a blind hound appeared and, feeling his way slowly and uncertainly,
laid his old muzzle in the girl's lap and raised his sightless eyes to
where he knew her face must be.
Then Slab took Belle-Ann's place on the witch-elm block and produced his
beloved instrument--a cross between guitar and banjo, self-made of gut
and a gourd. Just as he had done every fair night for years, he was
ready to sing his favorite song.
He maintained vigorously that if he sat elsewhere than on the
horse-block the banjo fell bewitched and refused to answer its master's
fingers.
Tentatively, he plucked the strings; then launched abruptly into the
song he had rendered for years--a sad and stirring melody, telling the
early love-story that had been his before the days of emancipation:
"You ask what makes this darky weep,
Why he, like others, is not gay?
What makes the tears roll down his cheek,
From early morn till close of day?
My story, darkies, you shall hear,
For in my memory fresh it dwells,
'Twill cause you then to drop a tear
On the grave of my sweet Kitty Wells."
When the notes had died away Belle-Ann spoke up:
"Slab, ef pap er th' boys don't cum short now, I'll blow th' horn, I
reckon."
"No--no, honey; doan yo' blow dat horn. Yo' let dat horn blow itse'f if
it's got t' blow; but doan you blow it, honey. Yo' jist let pap
be--he'll cum heah soon. 'Sides, ain't Slab heah wif yo', honey--ain't
Slab heah?"
The old negro picked the strings with a preface to the second verse of
"Kitty Wells," his condolence being entirely lost on Belle-Ann.
As he gathered a solemn breath to begin, the disconsolate girl, sitting
on the vine-bench in the moonlight, raised a protesting hand and stopped
him.
"Slab, ef I don't blow th' horn I jest got t' cry."
Slab settled the banjo jerkily between his long, thin legs and rolled
indulgent eyes upon her.
"Now, looky heah, honey; yo' ain't gwine t' take on so, is you? Yo'
oughter be tickled inter a keniption fit, yo' ought, 'stead of actin'
up. Why, honey, jist give praise to de good Lord dat yo' at las' got de
chanst! Yo'll cum back home powerful smart an' edicated, like my missus
wus 'fore de war.
"An' when a li'le gal gits edication, she naturally gits purttier; an'
if yo' gits purttier dan yo' is now--why, honey, yo'll shore cum back er
angel! Now, doan be pesticatin'. Smile up, smile up! Gwine t' school
ain't gwine t' kill nobudy."
As Slab concluded these cheering words, he poised his banjo again and as
his lips parted the girl stopped him with a gesture.
"Slab, air thes my heart heah--right heah?" she queried, pressing a hand
upon her breast.
"Sho', honey!" Slab assured her testily, striving to disguise his own
impatience. "Now, tell me why yo' ax dat--jist tell Slab what fer yo' ax
sich er sorry question noways?"
"Slab, I 'low my heart'll burst in two when I got t' go 'way!" she
returned unsteadily, her black-fringed lids blinking bravely to keep
back the mist that would creep across the violet of her eyes.
Slab gazed at her speechless, and heaved a hopeless sigh.
Tenderly, Belle-Ann lifted the blind hound's reluctant head from her
lap, stepped nearer to the old negro, and held a profound, exacting
finger close to his face.
"Slab, will yo' promise me somethin'? I kin trust yo'-all, Slab, ef yo'
promise ag'inst the witch. Will yo' promise Belle-Ann somethin', Slab?"
urged the girl, and her sweet bell-voice fell subdued and imploring.
Slab's mouth opened slowly and he hesitated. He would have died for
Belle-Ann; but he was much opposed to dragging in the witch, because he
feared to make his sacred witch a party to any contract that carried the
slightest chance of rupture, and thereby hold him to eternal reprisal.
"Will yo' promise thes, Slab?" the girl urged solemnly.
"Air yo' sho' I kin do it, honey?" he probed, loose-lipped and with eyes
that rolled wider.
"Sho' yo' kin!"
"Ez yo' say I kin do it, me promises," he assented dubiously.
"Cross yo' heart on th' witch-block!" she demanded.
He solemnized the pledge with a gnarled and bony hand, and the girl's
eyes welled full and her throat pained.
"Slab, yo' must promise to be good to ol' Ben heah--feed em an' bed em
reg'lar, but don't give em no cracklin's. An', Slab, yo' must promise to
pick the flowers every Sabbath, jest like I alers do--yo' knows the ones
well's I do--pertic'lar th' for-get-me-nots over yon by th' grind-stone.
Yo' must pick 'em in th' mornin' early, Slab--every Sabbath--an' put 'em
on Maw Lutts's grave. Will yo' fergit?"
A deep breath relieved Slab's tenseness as he agreed effusively.
"Lord, goodness! Yo' jist leave it t' Slab, honey! He do dat ebry single
Sabbaf!"
"An', Slab, when hit gits cold an' th' leaves air gone an' th' flowers
air all daid, yo' must pick th' geraniums outer th' boxes inside an' put
'em on Maw's grave--an' when hit gits powerful cold an' snows hard an'
th' snow gits piled up on Maw's grave--would yo' care--would yo' go,
Slab, an'--an'--an'--push hit off--an'----"
Her petitions thickened, tumbled together in her aching throat, and
refused to cross her trembling lips.
She turned away quickly. At the log bench she sank slowly down with her
black head in her arm. The heavy curls clustered around her face and
caressed her neck. She sobbed in soft, whimpering outbursts.
The blind hound thrust his nose questioningly into her lap, licking her
free hand, and caught the tears from her young heart warm upon his gray
face. He whined aloud and reached for her wet cheek.
The old negro fumbled at random and did not speak.
Turning, he looked upward to where Cap Lutts sat in the flood of
moonlight on the palm of rock; as silent and motionless as the inanimate
pillar of granite under him. Slab's eyes wandered down to the trail and
he spoke hastily to the distressed girl.
"Honey, heah cum de boys!"