CHAPTER III

IN HIDING

“It’s only a little way farther now, dear. I’m sure it’s only a little way.”

“A little way to where, please ma’am?” Azalea gasped the question. She was spent with hard climbing, and her heart pounded in her side. The steep path before her was dark and rough. There was only the stars and a small crescent moon to give them light.

“I wouldn’t dare to carry a lantern—not to-night,” Ma McBirney had explained. “We’ll have to find our way in the dark this time.”

It seemed to Azalea that it was hours since they began “finding their way.” They had slipped out of the back door of the cabin when the people were at their supper, had crouched and crept along the path past the spring house and taken a trail that ran up to the pine grove. From there on they had been winding this way and that, always climbing and climbing till the pain in the girl’s side was almost more than she could stand. Ma McBirney seemed about ready to drop too. Azalea could hear her breath coming almost in sobs. Yet she pushed on, and when Azalea begged her to rest she would only say: “In a little while, my dear. In just a little while.”

It began to thunder far off, and sheets of lightning threw a strange pinkish glow over their path now and then.

“Don’t you worry none about that there lightning,” Ma McBirney said to the girl whose hand she held so tight in her own that it hurt. “It will swing off around the mountain, like as not. Anyway we’ll be there before it comes.”

“Where, please ma’am?” asked Azalea again. And again Ma McBirney did not answer, but pressed on along the path.

She seemed now to be walking on the very rim of a great bench, and Azalea couldn’t help feeling that if the people were looking for them, they could see them standing out against the sky when the lightning flashed over the mountain. Perhaps Ma McBirney feared the same thing. At any rate, she stooped over almost double as she walked. She could not hold Azalea’s hand as they crept along this narrow path, but she told the little girl to hold tight to her skirt. So they went on in the rising of the wind, their way lightened by the increasing flashes of lightning. Fortunately, though, they were walking on ground that was almost level, and it gave their pounding hearts a chance to quiet a little.

Then, suddenly, Azalea saw looming up before her a great mass of rock.

“Here we are!” cried Mrs. McBirney. She began feeling around in the dark, and then, a great flash of lightning showed something on the rock that was blacker than either the night or the stone.

“Here it is!” she cried. “Here’s the way in!” And the girl, still holding onto that motherly skirt, crept after Mary McBirney through an opening in the rock, down three rude stairs, along a dark, damp place and through another narrower opening. Ma McBirney struck a match and lit a little lantern.

“Well,” she said. “Here we are!”

Azalea looked about her. Their feet rested on bare earth, and on every side of them arose stone walls. From them hung queer, mouse-like creatures and horrid spiders and long beetles. Two benches of stone ran along the side, and a sort of fireplace had been made of broken pieces of rock, above which a little crack in the roof served as chimney.

“We ain’t the first that has hid here,” said Mrs. McBirney looking around. “And likely we won’t be the last. No one but mountain folk knows about this place, and they ain’t telling. Make yourself to home Azalea, for this is where we’re going to stay till them friends of yours is tired of looking for us.”

Azalea drew up nearer to the woman and hid her face against her bosom.

“Why, what’s the matter, you little poor thing?” cried Mrs. McBirney. “You’re not minding a few little bats and spiders, be you? I’ll get them out in no time.”

“No, no!” almost shrieked the girl. “Don’t touch them, please! They’ll fall down on us!”

“Why, what’s this I hear?” demanded ma. “A girl that’s been plumb up against all kinds of trouble, getting scared at a few little beasties! You ain’t seeming no ways brave to me.”

“But thousands of yellow spiders, ma’am! And hundreds of bats! All above our heads, too. I hate it! I just hate it.”

“If it wasn’t for the storm, dear, we’d lie on the ground outside,” said Mrs. McBirney. “But there, there! It’s come, you see. We’ve got to stay here.”

As she spoke the wild downpour of the rain could be heard, sweeping along over the mountain, and the next instant it was roaring about them. They could feel the spray of it dashing in from the outer chamber and here and there through crevices in the rock above them. They seemed terribly alone there on that mountain top in their resounding cavern, and Ma McBirney was not surprised that the girl who had gone through such fearful experiences that day should throw herself into her arms and weep. Mary McBirney held her close and soothed her with soft pattings and caresses. She couldn’t make her voice heard above the storm, but she knew there were other things besides words with which she could comfort the poor child. They were both very tired. Their limbs trembled from the long, hard climb and from the dread of the storm, and when Ma McBirney spread her great circular cape on the ground they were glad enough to lie down on it. They covered themselves with it too—even their heads, and after a little while, with the storm still bellowing without, they fell asleep.

Jim and his father heard the uproar and turned in their beds and shivered. In fact, Jim couldn’t stand it in bed alone, but crept into his father’s room.

“You reckon ma’s hid somewhere out of this?” Jim asked.

“Sure!” cried pa, drawing Jim into bed beside him. “Sure she is. Her and that there girl is as dry as a bone somewhere, sitting laughing at all this fuss of rain.” But when Jim had fallen asleep, soothed by these words, Pa McBirney got up and walked the floor until morning. Then he cooked Jim’s breakfast and his own, and packed a basket with food.

“We-all will be taking a little stroll,” he said. “Just hand me down my rifle, sonny. Maybe we might see something we’d like for dinner on the way.”

He went out of the back door, bidding Jim keep close beside him, and looked around for quite a while before starting on the up trail; and then he kept away from the wood trail and took the one that led up the face of the rocks—one which no one but a mountaineer could find or follow. His footsteps appeared on the freshly-washed earth only as far as the spring. From there on, there was no trace of him and his boy, and anyone who came looking for them would indeed have hard work to follow.

“There was talk of them show folks setting up the merry-go-round and all the rest of the contraptions down there at Lee to-day,” said pa. “I only hope they’ll do it and not go turning their attention to things that don’t concern them.”

Once or twice as Jim and his father came out upon some rocky ledge of the mountain the boy peered down into the valley to see if he could catch sight of tents or wagons, but all below them was wrapped in a wonderful lilac mist. And anyway, he had not much time to give to these matters. He was thinking of where his mother would be found, and wondering how it was that his father kept such a sure course. Not an idea of where his mother could be entered the boy’s head, but he knew there were secret hiding places on the mountains, of which children were not told, and he was right in thinking that his mother had gone to one of these.

After a long time he said:

“Where you heading for, pa?”

“Well,” said pa, “your ma thought best not to tell me where she was going. She wanted me to speak up truthful and say I didn’t know her whereabouts. But it wouldn’t take many guesses for me to locate her in Conscript Den.”

“What’s that?” asked Jim, staring at his father with open eyes and mouth.

“Well, that’s a place that all the old folks about here knows of very well. It’s been used by a good many one time and another, but the first time I know of its being used was when old Colonel Atherton tried to conscript a lot of young men down there in Lee, to force ’em to join the Southern army in 1862. Some of these here men was for the Union and they didn’t take to the idea of fighting with the South. Anyway, I don’t think they was much interested either way. They just wanted to be left alone to work their little farms and be let mind their own business. But they didn’t believe in slavery. It wasn’t in ’em to do that. They was liberty loving people, and if anything, a little too independent in their ways for their own good, maybe.”

“Think so?” said Jim. He had his own ideas about independence.

“So twenty young men that was conscripted run up here and hid, and slipped down the mountain nights and got food; and they picked berries and stoned rabbits and I don’t know what all. But even so they didn’t have much and they was almost skin and bone when the searchin’ party found them.”

“And when they found ’em, what did they do?”

Pa seemed not to have heard and walked on even faster than he had been walking, which was quite unnecessary, for though Jim could run along like a squirrel, he was almost out of breath trying to keep up with his father. Now, however, he made a dash and caught at his father’s suspender.

“And what did they do with ’em dad?”

“They took ’em down to Lee, Jim, and stood ’em up in the public square—them twenty young chaps, some of ’em not more than eighteen—and their old neighbors faced up there in double file and shot ’em down.”

“What!” cried Jim.

“Had to, boy. _Had to_! Military law. The old colonel made ’em.”

“Oh!”

“But that finished him. He lived down there in that big shut-up place they call The Shoals. You know it. It ain’t been opened in your day, but it’s a grand old house. Well, after the old colonel had made the people do the thing I told you about, the countryside was up and buzzing like a nest of hornets, and old colonel, he had to black his face and put on women’s clothes and hike out. And his wife went back to Alabama where she come from, and nobody heard of the Athertons any more.”

“And are there any folks living at Lee now that did the shooting?”

Pa McBirney stopped to get his breath, and he looked about him at the lovely day, at the shining woods and the down-plunging stream. Then he dropped on a convenient rock and motioned Jim to sit beside him.

“I’m a-going to tell you something, Jim,” he said, “that I want you to remember. Us mountain folks has got a bad name in some ways. Folks say we’re shiftless—some of us—and revengeful. But do you know what the people down at Lee done after old Colonel Atherton was run out? They got together and they took an oath never, no matter what come, to carry on the story of that dreadful thing. They said they wouldn’t speak of it nor hand it on to their children, nor wage war nor nurse hard feelings. So who done the shooting and who was shot is something I don’t know and don’t want to know. My father knew, and what he knew turned him old before his time. And I remember hearing about an older brother, and never was I told about his end. So maybe your own uncle was one of them poor martyrs. But it don’t matter now. It’s all healed up, like the hole the fire burned in that there chestnut. It’s healed up in brotherly love, and if you was to go to Lee and ask any questions about that there rumpus, you’d get your trouble for your pains. They’d pretend they didn’t know what you was talking about. And the young people, they don’t know any more about it than just that it happened, and they’ve married and intermarried, till them that was forced to be slayers and them that was slain have their names passed on in the same family. And I’m proud of it, Jim, and want you to know it, and to say to folks, when they hold out that we’re a quarrelsome people, that we’re a forgiving people too.”

Jim didn’t answer. He sat close beside his father for a while, listening to the gentle sounds of the forest and the falling water. And then the two got up and went on.

At length, amid a fine grove of chestnuts, Jim beheld the same pile of rocks that had loomed up before the tired eyes of Azalea the night before, and he followed his father around into a cranny of them and saw the same doorway she had seen.

“Mary,” called pa softly. “Mary! Be you there!”

For a moment there was no answer, and then, as he called again, a frightened voice replied:

“Is it you, Tom? Have you got a light? My, it’s dark here, and we’ve been sleeping till now.”

Jim could hardly keep from whooping with delight, and the next moment he and his father had crept through the first half-open chamber, into the dark inner one, where ma and Azalea sat up on the big coat, rubbing their eyes and blinking at the light from the lantern which ma had blown out as they lay down to rest the night before, and which pa had just relighted.

Jim never forgot the strange look of everything—of the cave with its rough walls, of the bats and spiders and beetles, of his mother, sitting there on the ground, all bewildered and strange-looking, and of the girl who clung to her and shuddered.

“Get out of here! Get out of here!” called Pa McBirney cheerily. “It’s a fine day outside.” And he helped his wife and Azalea to their feet and led them outside.

“Best not build a fire,” he said. “We’ll have to lie low a day or two till them show folks get out of the way. I cooked the bacon before I come, and I brought the coffee in a pail. It was hot when I started, but I reckon it’s cold enough now. But here’s plenty of biscuit, and a jar of gooseberry jam, and some of them star cookies and some hard-boiled eggs and a few radishes and some cold potatoes—”

“My goodness, Thomas!” cried his wife. “Did you think we had turned into wolves because we was living in a den?”

“Well you see, Mary, this here will have to last you all of to-day and perhaps a part of to-morrow. There’s no telling just what will happen. I might be penned up down there, with men watching me, and then you’d want a little stock of stuff laid by.”

Jim had moved over toward Azalea, and now the two stood side by side staring at the older people. Pa might be penned up, and ma, who was hiding in a den, might go hungry! Did such things really happen? Jim turned and gazed at the girl, and he couldn’t help thinking how pretty she was, with her oval face and her great gray eyes and her long braids of brown hair. She looked as if she could run as well as a boy and ride a horse as well, or maybe better. Suddenly an idea came to him.

“Say!” he burst out. “You’re glad you’re with us, ain’t you? You don’t wish you’d gone on with them other folks?”

“Glad!” said the girl. “Of course I’m glad. I never want to see them again—never, never!” Her gray eyes turned almost black, and she straightened her thin little figure till, in Jim’s words, she was like a ramrod.

“Peter!” thought Jim. “I wouldn’t like to get her mad at me.” She wouldn’t be a good one to tease, Jim made up his mind. Jim saw that his mother was watching the girl, too, and he knew how his mother hated anything like bad temper and he wondered if she would like Azalea as well when she saw that she could be “peppery.” But all she said was:

“Azalea, I know a place where there’s a spring of water. Pa’s brought us a towel and some soap and a comb. We’ll go down to the spring and make ready for breakfast.” So the two went off together, and Jim and his father spread the breakfast out on a sort of table-rock.

Then they sat down to their breakfast, and whether it was the strangeness of the night and the wildness of the place and the beauty of the morning, or whether it was fun in its way, being outlaws and in hiding, who can say? But as the meal went on they began to laugh and talk as they seldom did even when there was company; and Azalea couldn’t keep from laughing either. There was something hushed and sad about her face, and when she spoke, her voice had a break in it, for her terrible sorrow lay heavily upon her heart. Yet, as she had said to Ma McBirney the night before, she had known for a long time that her mother could not live, and she had thought how, after her mother was gone, she herself must go on, taking the rough treatment the show men had given her, and riding bareback on those poor thin horses, and doing tricks for people who called out horrible things to her. Now she felt safe, and even there in that wild place, more at home perhaps than she ever had felt before in her life.

After a time Jim and his father went away, but not before they had gone in the cave and killed or driven out every creature in it. They made a sort of broom right on the spot before Azalea’s astonished eyes, and brushed the place and cleaned it; and pa pried back a big stone on top and let the sunlight in. And then he asked ma how she was going to put in her time.

“Just sitting still,” said ma.

“I never saw you sit still yet, Mary,” said pa. “I don’t believe you can do it.”

“Yes I can, Thomas. Don’t you worry. I can sit and sit and I’m going to. It’s years since I’ve had a quiet spell and it looks like this was my time to take it.”

“Seeing’s believing,” said pa. And laughing and telling ma not to worry about anything, he and Jim turned down the trail.

“Let’s get nearer the waterfall,” said ma to Azalea. So they went to a place where a great flat rock ran out into the mountain stream, and here they sat with the water tossing and leaping past them and hurling itself over the side of the mountain. Ma lay down and put her hands under her head and looked straight up through the branches of an overhanging beech, into the soft blue sky. And Azalea pillowed her head on her arm and lay there too. A long time passed and neither spoke. It was enough to listen to the voices of the mountain, to watch the sailing of the clouds and the winging of the birds. But after a time ma reached out and touched Azalea gently.

“Little girl,” she said, “little daughter!”

“Ma’am?”

“I’ve been a-thinking and a-thinking, and it seems to me it’s a queer world.”

“Yes’m, it is,” said Azalea as if she too had settled that fact in her mind.

“Some things that seem wrong is right, and some that everybody—or almost everybody—says is right, is really, when you come down to it, plumb wrong.”

“I reckon that’s so, ma’am.”

“Now, me taking you in the way I did—grabbing you away from the folks you’d known and been with—that might look wrong. But it ain’t, Azalea, it ain’t! You want to know how I know it ain’t wrong?”

“If you please, ma’am.”

“Well, first of all I reasoned it out. You was better in a house than on the road. You was better living where you could go to school than where you’d slave for people who’d give you no education. You was better with people who’d take you to church and read the Scriptures to you than with people who’d swear and curse and drink and gamble. And most of all, you was better with them that would love and cherish you than with them that would just use you, and perhaps bring you to some harm and turn you off when they got through with you.”

“Oh, yes’m! I know, ma’am. I’m thankful—”

“I don’t want you bothering to be thankful, Azalea. I just want you to be loving. But I haven’t said what I wanted to say. It ain’t reason that tells me I’ve done right. It’s something else.”

There was a little pause, and then she went on:

“It’s something I wouldn’t like to speak of to everyone, Azalea. But you see, you’re going to take Molly’s place with me, and I’m going to begin right away treating you as if you was her.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Well, now this thing—its like a little bird singing in my heart. Ever since I was a little girl, times would come when that little bird would begin singing. Maybe ’twould be a pretty day and me down washing clothes at the spring; maybe ’twould be something preacher said in church; maybe ’twould be Jimmy shouting and hollering out in the woods, or his pa coming up the trail and letting out a yell to tell me he was on the way. But when the bird sang best, dear, was when I’d done something that I knew I ought to do and that it was hard to do. Now it was hard for me to take you away from those folks, for I don’t like to run counter to no one. I like friends and I hate foes, and I had to make foes of them people. But they wouldn’t listen to what was right and reasonable, and I had to do the way I done. But all last night when we was climbing the trail in the dark, and when the storm got us, and when we lay in that filthy den, and most of all this morning when I woke up and found you there beside me, the bird was singing in my heart. It sings sweeter than any of these here birds round about, though they sing sweet enough, goodness knows. But it’s just as if something new was come into the world—it’s just as it was the day Jimmy was born and lay on my arm and I knew I had a little son of my own. Why, it’s just the way it was the day I found I had a Saviour, and learned that the love of my Heavenly Father was round about me, and that I could walk in it and fear nothing. Did you ever feel like that, Azalea?”

The girl turned her great eyes on her. “No’m, I don’t think I ever did.”

“Well, you will, Azalea, you will! I’m going to tell you all about that. I’m going to tell you every good thing I know. And you must tell me all you know, too, for I’m an unschooled woman, who’s worked hard and not seen much. But anyway, even for me, I can see that life has trails that lead up the mountain. Don’t you like to be here on the mountain top, child?”

“Oh, I do, ma’am. I think it’s the most beautiful place I ever did see!”

“Well, and I was studying about your poor ma. Just think, to-day whatever there is to know over beyond life, she’s knowing. She was brave, wasn’t she, and kind?”

“Yes’m, Oh, yes’m—good to folks and animals and everything.”

“And it will be counted to her. It’s just got to be. She’s happy and safe to-day; but maybe she wouldn’t have been happy if she couldn’t have known you was safe, too, Azalea.”

“Do you think she knows, ma’am?”

“I think she knows! I can’t sit here on this mountain top and see them birds winging along and hear the wind blowing and the water singing and have the little bird singing away in my heart and not think she knows. Someway, it’s like two and two. When you add them they make four. I can’t explain what I mean, but I’m trusting, Azalea, and I’m happy.”

Her thin face shone with a beautiful light, and the eyes she turned on Azalea were full of lovely tears. The girl crept a little closer to her on the broad rock. The long day passed in silence, to the humming of bees, to the shifting of shadows, to the call of birds. They watched the sun set and the stars rise. They felt the dew fall on their hands, and saw the blackness drop like soft veils. Again they crept into their den, this time quite without fear, and slept in each other’s arms.