Read Ebook: A Knight of the Cumberland by Fox John Jr

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Ebook has 413 lines and 23092 words, and 9 pages

"Hello!"

"Hello!" was the answer, as an opened door let out into the yard a broad band of light. Could we stay all night? The voice replied that the owner would see "Pap." "Pap" seemed willing, and the boy opened the gate and into the house went the Blight and the little sister. Shortly, I followed.

There, all in one room, lighted by a huge wood-fire, rafters above, puncheon floor beneath--cane-bottomed chairs and two beds the only furniture-"pap," barefooted, the old mother in the chimney-corner with a pipe, strings of red pepper-pods, beans and herbs hanging around and above, a married daughter with a child at her breast, two or three children with yellow hair and bare feet all looking with all their eyes at the two visitors who had dropped upon them from another world. The Blight's eyes were brighter than usual--that was the only sign she gave that she was not in her own drawing-room. Apparently she saw nothing strange or unusual even, but there was really nothing that she did not see or hear and absorb, as few others than the Blight can.

Straightway, the old woman knocked the ashes out of her pipe.

"I reckon you hain't had nothin' to eat," she said and disappeared. The old man asked questions, the young mother rocked her baby on her knees, the children got less shy and drew near the fireplace, the Blight and the little sister exchanged a furtive smile and the contrast of the extremes in American civilization, as shown in that little cabin, interested me mightily.

"Yer snack's ready," said the old woman. The old man carried the chairs into the kitchen, and when I followed the girls were seated. The chairs were so low that their chins came barely over their plates, and demure and serious as they were they surely looked most comical. There was the usual bacon and corn-bread and potatoes and sour milk, and the two girls struggled with the rude fare nobly.

After supper I joined the old man and the old woman with a pipe--exchanging my tobacco for their long green with more satisfaction probably to me than to them, for the long green was good, and strong and fragrant.

The old woman asked the Blight and the little sister many questions and they, in turn, showed great interest in the baby in arms, whereat the eighteen-year-old mother blushed and looked greatly pleased.

"You got mighty purty black eyes," said the old woman to the Blight, and not to slight the little sister she added, "An' you got mighty purty teeth."

The Blight showed hers in a radiant smile and the old woman turned back to her.

"Oh, you've got both," she said and she shook her head, as though she were thinking of the damage they had done. It was my time now--to ask questions.

They didn't have many amusements on that creek, I discovered--and no dances. Sometimes the boys went coon-hunting and there were corn-shuckings, house-raisings and quilting-parties.

"Does anybody round here play the banjo?"

"None o' my boys," said the old woman, "but Tom Green's son down the creek--he follers pickin' the banjo a leetle." "Follows pickin' "--the Blight did not miss that phrase.

"What do you foller fer a livin'?" the old man asked me suddenly.

"I write for a living." He thought a while.

"Well, it must be purty fine to have a good handwrite." This nearly dissolved the Blight and the little sister, but they held on heroically.

"Is there much fighting around here?" I asked presently.

"Not much 'cept when one young feller up the river gets to tearin' up things. I heerd as how he was over to the Gap last week--raisin' hell. He comes by here on his way home." The Blight's eyes opened wide--apparently we were on his trail. It is not wise for a member of the police guard at the Gap to show too much curiosity about the lawless ones of the hills, and I asked no questions.

"They calls him the Wild Dog over here," he added, and then he yawned cavernously.

I looked around with divining eye for the sleeping arrangements soon to come, which sometimes are embarrassing to "furriners" who are unable to grasp at once the primitive unconsciousness of the mountaineers and, in consequence, accept a point of view natural to them because enforced by architectural limitations and a hospitality that turns no one seeking shelter from any door. They were, however, better prepared than I had hoped for. They had a spare room on the porch and just outside the door, and when the old woman led the two girls to it, I followed with their saddle-bags. The room was about seven feet by six and was windowless.

"You'd better leave your door open a little," I said, "or you'll smother in there."

"Well," said the old woman, "hit's all right to leave the door open. Nothin's goin' ter bother ye, but one o' my sons is out a coon-huntin' and he mought come in, not knowin' you're thar. But you jes' holler an' he'll move on." She meant precisely what she said and saw no humor at all in such a possibility--but when the door closed, I could hear those girls stifling shrieks of laughter.

Literally, that night, I was a member of the family. I had a bed to myself --in one corner; behind the head of mine the old woman, the daughter-in-law and the baby had another in the other corner, and the old man with the two boys spread a pallet on the floor. That is the invariable rule of courtesy with the mountaineer, to give his bed to the stranger and take to the floor himself, and, in passing, let me say that never, in a long experience, have I seen the slightest consciousness--much less immodesty--in a mountain cabin in my life. The same attitude on the part of the visitors is taken for granted--any other indeed holds mortal possibilities of offence--so that if the visitor has common sense, all embarrassment passes at once. The door was closed, the fire blazed on uncovered, the smothered talk and laughter of the two girls ceased, the coon-hunter came not and the night passed in peace.

It must have been near daybreak that I was aroused by the old man leaving the cabin and I heard voices and the sound of horses' feet outside. When he came back he was grinning.

"Hit's your mules."

"Who found them?"

"The Wild Dog had 'em," he said.

Behind us came the Hon. Samuel Budd. Just when the sun was slitting the east with a long streak of fire, the Hon. Samuel was, with the jocund day, standing tiptoe in his stirrups on the misty mountain top and peering into the ravine down which we had slid the night before, and he grumbled no little when he saw that he, too, must get off his horse and slide down. The Hon. Samuel was ambitious, Southern, and a lawyer. Without saying, it goes that he was also a politician. He was not a native of the mountains, but he had cast his fortunes in the highlands, and he was taking the first step that he hoped would, before many years, land him in the National Capitol. He really knew little about the mountaineers, even now, and he had never been among his constituents on Devil's Fork, where he was bound now. The campaign had so far been full of humor and full of trials--not the least of which sprang from the fact that it was sorghum time. Everybody through the mountains was making sorghum, and every mountain child was eating molasses.

Now, as the world knows, the straightest way to the heart of the honest voter is through the women of the land, and the straightest way to the heart of the women is through the children of the land; and one method of winning both, with rural politicians, is to kiss the babies wide and far. So as each infant, at sorghum time, has a circle of green-brown stickiness about his chubby lips, and as the Hon. Sam was averse to "long sweetenin'" even in his coffee, this particular political device just now was no small trial to the Hon. Samuel Budd. But in the language of one of his firmest supporters Uncle Tommie Hendricks:

"The Hon. Sam done his duty, and he done it damn well."

The issue at stake was the site of the new Court-House--two localities claiming the right undisputed, because they were the only two places in the county where there was enough level land for the Court-House to stand on. Let no man think this a trivial issue. There had been a similar one over on the Virginia side once, and the opposing factions agreed to decide the question by the ancient wager of battle, fist and skull--two hundred men on each side--and the women of the county with difficulty prevented the fight. Just now, Mr. Budd was on his way to "The Pocket"--the voting place of one faction--where he had never been, where the hostility against him was most bitter, and, that day, he knew he was "up against" Waterloo, the crossing of the Rubicon, holding the pass at Thermopylae, or any other historical crisis in the history of man. I was saddling the mules when the cackling of geese in the creek announced the coming of the Hon. Samuel Budd, coming with his chin on his breast-deep in thought. Still his eyes beamed cheerily, he lifted his slouched hat gallantly to the Blight and the little sister, and he would wait for us to jog along with him. I told him of our troubles, meanwhile. The Wild Dog had restored our mules and the Hon. Sam beamed:

"He's a wonder--where is he?"

"He never waited--even for thanks."

Again the Hon. Sam beamed:

"Ah! just like him. He's gone ahead to help me."

"Well, how did he happen to be here?" I asked.

"He's everywhere," said the Hon. Sam.

"How did he know the mules were ours?"

"Easy. That boy knows everything."

"Well, why did he bring them back and then leave so mysteriously?"

The Hon. Sam silently pointed a finger at the laughing Blight ahead, and I looked incredulous.

"Just the same, that's another reason I told you to warn Marston. He's already got it in his head that Marston is his rival."

"Pshaw!" I said--for it was too ridiculous.

"All right," said the Hon. Sam placidly.

"Then why doesn't he want to see her?" "How do you know he ain't watchin' her now, for all we know? Mark me," he added, "you won't see him at the speakin', but I'll bet fruit cake agin gingerbread he'll be somewhere around."

So we went on, the two girls leading the way and the Hon. Sam now telling his political troubles to me. Half a mile down the road, a solitary horseman stood waiting, and Mr. Budd gave a low whistle.

"One o' my rivals," he said, from the corner of his mouth.

"Mornin'," said the horseman; "lemme see you a minute."

He made a movement to draw aside, but the Hon. Samuel made a counter-gesture of dissent.

"This gentleman is a friend of mine," he said firmly, but with great courtesy, "and he can hear what you have to say to me."

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