CHAPTER II

NEW FRIENDS

How does news spread on the mountain side? Who carried the word to the little lonely cabins on the wide sides of old Tennyson mountain that there were “things going on” at the McBirney’s? Did the buzzards wing the message—or the bald-headed eagle that kept eyrie in the blasted Norway pine above the ginseng lot? Or the martins that made their home in the dried gourds that had been swung for them on the high crosstrees before the McBirney’s door?

However that may be, by noon the people began to arrive. Some of them rode their mules or horses; some drove in their carts or wagons; but the greater number came on foot, slipping along the steep paths on the pine needles, or leaping among the rocks, sure of foot, long of limb, and caring nothing for distance.

They were quiet folk with soft voices and with their hearts in the right place. So, though they wanted as much as if they had been children, to see the merry-go-round and all the rest of the show, they would not so much as hint at it because of the dead woman who lay all clean and decent on the ironing board laid across two sawhorses, there in the open room between the bedroom and the kitchen, in Mary McBirney’s house. Over her a fresh sheet fell. On her bosom lay branches of wild azalea, for her name, too, had been Azalea.

The mistress of the house went about with a strange look on her face. She listened to all that was said to her, but she seemed not really to hear.

“Your ma hadn’t ought to be seeing all these folks and going through this experience,” Thomas McBirney said to his boy Jim. “It’s getting on her mind.”

“It’s that there girl,” Jim whispered. “I heard her asking her if she didn’t want to live here with us.”

“Sho!” said pa. “That’s how the land lays! And what did the little girl say?”

“We might go for some fresh water to the spring,” said Jim, “and then we can talk.”

So these two good friends set off together, and Jim told his father all that he had heard his mother and Azalea say to each other.

“There’s a good deal of whiskey being passed around on the quiet among them show folks,” said pa. “It ain’t only the men that’s taking it neither. I hold with your ma that we’ve got a call to see to that girl. What if our Molly had been left like that and she’d fallen to the care of them that was evil in their ways, and been let go to destruction by Christians that might have saved her and wouldn’t on account of blind self-seeking?”

On their way back from the spring they saw old Elder Mills coming along on his tall mule. Some one had summoned him to preach the funeral sermon. Jim knew just how he would do, shouting out in his wild singsong till the mountains echoed, and filling the people with fear. He looked like a giant as he rode toward them, his thick, curling iron-gray hair standing out all over his head and his dark eyes burning like fires in their deep sockets.

“Look a-here, Elder,” Pa McBirney said; “before we get up where the folks is, I’ve a request to make of you. You size up them there show people. You’ve had experience and you know the good from the bad.”

“Judge not that ye be not judged!” roared the elder. “It is the Lord’s business to divide the sheep from the goats.”

“Maybe, maybe, Elder,” said pa soothingly. “But you’re something of a hand at it yourself. And I’m asking you to see my wife in private. She’s got something on her mind, Elder, and she needs your help.”

“All right, brother McBirney,” the elder agreed. “Anything I can do for sister McBirney, it gives me pleasure to do, sir, for a better woman I never did know, and I’ve known a power of good ones in my time.”

Half an hour after they had got back to the clearing, Jimmy, who was standing around waiting for a chance to get acquainted with the boy who had come with the show people, heard his father and mother and Elder Mills bidding the show people to come into the kitchen. He knew well enough what they were going to talk about. His pa and ma were going to ask that poor girl of them. The mountain people who had gathered, and who were making themselves at home there in the clearing, seemed to guess what was in the wind. Jim heard his mother’s friend, Mrs. Leiter saying: “It would be the best thing that could come to the child. Mrs. McBirney would be a real mother to her; and like as not the child would put heart into Mrs. McBirney. She ain’t never been herself a minute since Molly was took. To my seeing, them show folks ain’t the kind to have charge of a child—particularly not a nice little girl like that one.”

By and by all of those who had been in the kitchen came out, and Jim could see from the way they looked that they hadn’t been able to agree. His mother’s face was whiter and more strained than ever; and the light in the old elder’s eyes was really fierce. The show people seemed out of humor and they went off by themselves and began cooking their dinner, having nothing to do with the mountain folks. Jim had to help his mother with her dinner then. She was asking the neighbors to share with her, and the women all turned in to pare potatoes and mix up corn bread and beat up eggs. There was a busy hour or two, and then after all had eaten, a sort of quiet settled on the gathering. They were waiting for the sun to slide a little further over the mountain, for the day was a very hot one for May. It gave Jim a chance to slip around from place to place, silent as a lizard and saying nothing. He wanted to get acquainted with the show boy, and after what seemed a long time, he found a chance to speak to him.

“If you want to come with me,” he said in his drawling, pleasant mountain voice, “I’ll show you my mill wheel.”

“Did you make it?” demanded the boy. He was a queer, black little creature, who looked as if he had been carved out of a nut. His arms were too long for his body, but they were so strong that he could “chin” himself on the low doorcasing of the shed without any trouble whatever. Jim had already discovered that. He had seen the boy hanging out on a long tree limb and dropping like a cat. All of his ways were quick and sharp, and he had a sly look like that of a half-fed hound. Jim never had seen a boy like this and he felt shy with him. But for all of that, he was determined to know him.

“’Deed and I made the wheel,” he said to the boy. “It runs right smart, too.”

“How far away is it?”

“Just down by the second waterfall. We don’t need to go ’round by the road. We can drop right down the face of the rocks.”

“All right,” said the boy.

So they slid down the sheer drop of the rocks till they came to a place where the mountain stream widened out into a tiny pool, and then, forced once more into a trough-like gorge, poured on over the face of the rocks. Here Jim had made a mill wheel on which he had worked many a day. The show boy looked at it admiringly.

“It’s a right smart wheel,” he admitted. He stopped it with one of his dark, slender fingers, and then started it again, and Jim’s tongue loosened, and he told him about all the other wheels he had made, and why this was better than any of the others.

After a time they stuck their hot, dusty toes in the pool and sat there watching the world. The sun and shadow raced over the valley below; a hawk wheeled above their heads; little creatures danced over the face of the pool.

“What’s your name, please?” asked Jim.

“Hi Kitchell.”

“Mine’s Jim McBirney.”

“I know that already.”

“Are your folks with the show.”

“Sisson, he’s my uncle. He runs the show.”

“Do you do tricks.”

“Yes, lots of ’em. And I do chores—do more chores than tricks.”

“Do you get paid?”

“Not regular. I get my board and keep. I wish I could stay home with ma, and get some work to do in town. There’s four of us, and pa’s dead, so my uncle, he said he’d take me off ma’s hands.”

“I’d like to go with a show.”

“Would you?” cried the other. His nutlike face seemed to grow old, and he looked at Jim from under his long lashes. “Would you like sleeping out in the rain, picking up meals here and there, and going on day after day, no matter how you feel? If the old folks take the notion, that’s what happens to a fella. And then the being funny, that’s the worst. I hate to be funny just because folks have paid to see me that a-way.”

“That girl, is she funny?”

“Funny?” The dark boy puzzled over this quite a while. “I don’t know about funny. She’s queer! Her ma was queer too. Not a bit like the other women. She was good to me, and taught me out of books and talked to me about my manners. And she could make the people listen when she sang or danced, you bet!”

“Does that girl like the show?”

“No, I reckon not. It’s no place for a nice girl to be. But they’ll keep her. The people just clap and clap when she does things, she’s so ’cute, someway. Those other women, they’re no good. It would make you sick to see them trying to be funny. And they’re always wanting everybody to wait on ’em. I tell you I’m tired of ’em, and so’s Zalie, I expect. She’ll just be a slave to them, that’s what she’ll be, and she’ll never get a good word out of ’em neither. I wisht she could stay here with your ma. If she could, then I’d clear out—run away and get a place in a mill or somewhere. I tell you, I don’t like drinking and roaming. It’s too much like being a tramp. Good folks like your pa and ma don’t think nothing of us, I can see that. And I—I don’t like it neither.”

He wrinkled up his narrow forehead in a heavy frown, and Jim frowned back as he tried to see things the way the boy was seeing them. He thought the boy very clever, and he knew that what he said was true about the difference between people like his father and mother, and the people like Sisson and his companions.

His mind seemed to go on sudden little journeys, and to show him pictures of the wandering life Hi described, and of his own safe home life. Then the faces and the language of those men and women with the show helped him to understand. He began to feel very sorry for Hi.

“I know a man—Rath Rutherford his name is—who’s going around the mountain getting folks to go down and work in the cotton mills at Lee,” he said after a time. “He’d take me if my folks would let me go, and I reckon he’d take you if you wanted.”

“I never could get away from my uncle—unless I ran away.”

“And hid,” suggested Jim.

“There ain’t nobody to stand by me.”

“Yes there is too! I’ll stand by you—sure I will.”

“I ran away once and got caught and lambasted for it.”

“You wouldn’t get caught if I hid you,” declared Jim. “Besides, you and me could fight.”

They fell to planning what they would do if they were hidden and the people came to get them, and they had to fight; or what would happen if they came across a wildcat or a rattlesnake. They got very well acquainted, and were almost ready to start off together to “take care of themselves,” as Hi put it, when a horn was blown from somewhere far above their heads.

“That’s for me,” cried Jim. “Come, we must go,” and forgetting all about his plan for running away, he began scrambling up the rocks toward home.

He was really astonished to find that the afternoon had passed and that the people were cooking supper within and without the house, and he learned that Elder Mills had preached the funeral sermon for “poor Mis’ Knox” and that there was a fresh mound of earth beside Molly’s little grave.

A wonderful golden light lay across the higher reaches of the mountains, and below, the valley rested in deep purple shadow. The martins were snug in their hanging gourds in the crosstrees, and Jim could hear them making little sleepy noises. It seemed so sweet there at home that he couldn’t bear to think of Hi going on, and when he heard the boy’s uncle swearing at him because he had left some chores undone, Jim hated Sisson. He thought what fun he and Hi could have if they were allowed to prowl about and cook their supper together. Jim knew how to build a fire, and how to put it out. His father had taught him to take care of the woods and to keep them from catching fire. Now he came to think of it, he knew a great many things that he would like to teach Hi. But he had to go in the house to his supper, and he saw Hi being jerked along roughly by the arm and heard the angry words his uncle said to him.

Within the house, Azalea was lying on the settle in his mother’s clean kitchen. She looked small and white-faced, and her large eyes, which followed Ma McBirney everywhere, were more than ever like “Job’s tears.” She came to the table when Ma McBirney called her, but she could eat nothing—only drink a little of the warm milk, and her hand trembled so that she could hardly hold the cup to her lips.

And neither was Ma McBirney eating. Her face was white, too, and her eyes full of trouble. Jim knew very well what the matter was. She couldn’t bear to have this nice little girl go away in the company of “bad folks”—for that was how Mary McBirney would call the show people. Almost nothing was said while they were at the table, but when supper was over Pa McBirney remarked:

“Me and you’ll wash up the dishes to-night, Jim.”

“Ain’t ma well?” Jim asked.

“Ma’s well enough, but she’s got something better to do,” was all the answer he got. Pa began washing the dishes, and Jim wondered why it was that he made such a noise about it. Jim was told to build up more fire, too, which seemed strange, for the room was quite warm enough. But he did as he was told. The door stood open onto the porch-like room, but no one could see in unless he came up on the porch, for the solid wooden window shutters had been closed. The fire set up a great crackling, and that and the rattling of the dishes made it seem as if a great deal was going on there in the room. But, really, not very much was going on, for Ma McBirney and Azalea had slipped out of the back door and had not come back again. Outside, the voices of the men and the stamping of the horses could be heard, and by and by some one called:

“Hulloa there! Hulloa, I say!”

“Hulloa!” answered Jim’s father.

“We’re ready to go,” called the other voice.

“All right,” answered Pa McBirney. “I wish you luck.”

One of the show women came up on the porch and looked in the door.

“We’ll take that girl off your hands now,” she said, “and thank you for your trouble.”

“No trouble at all, ma’am,” said pa politely. “A pleasure, ma’am.”

“If you’ll just tell me where she is,” Betty Bowen went on, looking into the room and seeing no one there but Jim and his father, “I’ll go for her.”

“It’s my impression,” said pa slowly, “that my wife and the girl walked on down the mountain a piece. If you’ll follow the road maybe you’ll catch up with ’em. Maybe.”

“See here!” said Mrs. Bowen angrily. “I want that there girl and I want her quick.”

“It don’t seem as if we did anything very quick up here,” said pa gently. “It’s our way to take our time about things.”

The woman looked at pa and her face turned red. Then she said some things that Jim wondered at, and after that she went for the men. They came storming back, and Sisson wedged himself in the doorway.

“Where’s that girl, McBirney?” he demanded.

“I don’t seem to rightly know,” said pa, with his slowest drawl.

“Where’s your old woman, then?”

“Well, I don’t know that, neither.”

“Where one is, the other is,” cried the woman. “She’s stole that girl, that’s what she’s done.”

“She’d have hard work a-stealing her,” objected Pa McBirney, “when she don’t belong to no one.”

“You’ll find out whether she belongs to anyone or not,” Sisson cried, shaking his fist at pa. “You can’t come it over us that way. We told you that you couldn’t have the girl and we mean it.”

“Well,” said pa in his most reasonable voice, “I hain’t took the girl.”

“Your wife has, and that’s the same thing. And you’ll have to give her up or there’ll be trouble.”

“What my wife does and what I do are two different things,” pa went on teasingly. “I’m telling you the truth when I say I don’t know where them women folks has gone.”

Sisson strode into the room at that, trembling with rage, and as he did so, in at the rear door of the room lounged William Sabin, one of the mountaineers, and behind him Tom Williams and after him Dick Bab. Jim thought he saw other forms looming up in the darkness without.

“See here, sonny,” whispered Jim’s father to him, “you just kind o’ slip out of that there window above the bench till we get this little affair settled one way or t’other.” And Jim, seeing that his father meant to be obeyed, jumped on the wooden bench, loosed the catch of the board shutter, and crawled out onto the pile of saplings that was stacked against the outer wall. He could hear his heart beating, and he tried not to think what might happen in the next few minutes. He had heard of quarrels in mountain cabins that ended in a terrible way. He wished in the bottom of his heart that those show people had never come near them, and that his mother had never seen that girl. He could hear his father’s voice going on in its pleasant singsong way.

“These here friends of mine,” he was saying, “thought to do a little shooting to-night. We’ve been put about by some spit cats hollering at night, and we thought to get after ’em. But you mustn’t hurry away on that account. There’s lots of time—all the time there is—and we’ll see you down the mountain a piece if you like.”

Jim heard Betty Bowen call:

“Come along, boys. It ain’t worth it,” and then he saw Sisson and the others backing out of the room. They got on their wagons, grumbling and swearing among themselves, while the mountaineers came out and stood watching them, the fire gleaming through the door upon the guns they had brought to hunt the “spit cats.”

“Did I understand you to say that you’d like our company for a piece?” drawled Pa McBirney as the show people swung their lanterns beside their wagons and called to their horses to move on.

“You think you’re mighty smart,” yelled Sisson. “But you wait! Just you wait!”

“Kidnapper!” sneered one of the women. “And your woman—looked too good to believe, she did.”

“There’s some mighty sharp turns on the road,” said pa politely. “And maybe me and my friends had best see you on the way. We’ve got some neighbors ’waiting for us a piece on. I’d best whistle for ’em, I reckon.”

But if he whistled, it was not heard for the noise as the wagons went rattling down the road. For a long time Jim could hear the sound of the hoofs and the squeak of the brakes and the angry voices of the show people.

Meantime, the mountain men had gone back into the kitchen and lighted their pipes. They seemed to have but little to say to each other, and Jim, peeping in at the door, was startled to see each man lift his gun. But his father roared at them and they dropped them with smiles.

“I’ve got to know where ma is,” cried Jim, running to his father. “There ain’t any harm coming to ma, is there?”

“Not as I know of, son. Your ma’s a smart woman and a set one. When she wants to do a thing she most generally does it.”

“But where is she, dad?”

“That’s what I can’t pre-cisely say, son. All I know is she didn’t mean for to let that purty little girl go off with them wildcats. She’s set her heart on keeping her in Molly’s place, and we’ve set our hearts on having her. That’s all.”

That was quite all. The mountaineers sat so that they faced the two open doors and the one open window. They appeared to be enjoying themselves after their fashion. Jim looked out at the dark mountain side and the dense forest, from which a strange whispering as of a thousand voices seemed to come. He knew that wild creatures lived on that mountain, and that terrible, sudden storms sometimes arose and raged over it. He knew, too, how the trails crossed and recrossed each other, and how unfamiliar they looked in the night. It would be very easy for his mother to lose her way, for she kept to the house much more than most of the women on the mountain. He kept saying to himself over and over: “I hope she’s safe; I hope she’s safe.” And aloud he said:

“While we was about it, I wisht we’d a-taken that there boy. He was a awful smart boy.”

“Sho!” said pa. “I wisht we had, too.”