CHAPTER IX

HAYSTACK THOMPSON

Haystack Thompson lay in bed making uncomplimentary remarks about the rain.

“It’s just took away the last chanct we had of following up that poor little mountain lass,” said he to his old clock. “If it hadn’t been for this tarnation storm I’d ’a’ tramped back to that there dell where I come on them two lasses making eyes at that rattler, and it would have been mighty funny if I couldn’t have found out something about what happened there.”

He reached out for his bag of tobacco, and filling his pipe and lighting it, tried to bring some cheer into his damp cabin by smoking very hard.

“I’d have gone over the whole ground,” he mused. “I’d ’a’ pretended I was walking on with that nice little Miss Carin, talking and smiling; I’d thought out how the other lass hung behind, looking at the trees and flowers, and I’d never have give up till I made out why she didn’t reach that church. But here we are, everything swept smooth as sandpaper with the storm!”

He fell to wishing that for once in his life there was some one to build the fire for him and get the breakfast.

“It’s lonesome business,” said he aloud, “being pa and ma and all the children just by yourself. Looks hoggish, now, don’t it? I wish I’d divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it. Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have nothing but a fiddle that he cares for!”

He flung out of bed in disgust, whipped into his old clothes, lighted the fire—which proceeded to smoke badly—and got out his bacon and his bag of meal.

“I’m just plumb tired of cooking alone,” he announced to a squirrel that paused for a moment before his door, sitting erect on his haunches and casting a wistful glance from his bright eyes. Haystack tossed him some ground nuts which he kept in a bag for that purpose, and then turned angrily to his own meal. Halfway through it, he laid down his knife and fork, and a light broke over his face.

“I know what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll go find that little lass. I’ll make myself of some use, that’s what I’ll do. See here, Betsy,” he went on, turning to his violin and speaking to it as if it were a little sister, “you and me’ll start out and find that there poor lass, you hear? We’ve been playing stick-in-the-mud about long enough. What we need is to get a move on us and to go out and see something of the world. What you say, Bet?”

Just then a log fell on the hearth, and from Betsy’s answering strings came forth a delicate wail. Haystack took it to mean that they should go, and when he had made his cabin tidy—and he took much more pains with it than usual—he put on clean homespun, packed a change of clothing in a square of blue denim, fastened this to a stick which he threw over his shoulder, and taking Betsy under the other arm, started out on a quest.

At about the same time the sheriff at Lee and Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson and Elder Mills and Mr. Pickett and a great many other persons were bestirring themselves to the same end. They telegraphed here and they telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the lost child to keep her from harm.

“Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.”

And that was just about the time that Azalea, aroused from her thin and worried sleep by the first streaks of the dawn that streamed to her over the level low country, drew the dirty bedclothes closer about her chin, and tried to make out whether or not it was all a bad dream. Tige, the bulldog, crouching there at the tent door, and snarling if she but moved, certainly seemed like a nightmare. Betty Bowen with her frowsy head and her horrid red flannel bed-gown, sleeping with her mouth open on the shake-down next to Azalea, and the miserable old show wagon outside, with lumbering Rafe Bowen, the son of Betty, snoring in rivalry to the robins—not that his opera in any way resembled theirs—was something worse than ordinary nightmare.

“It isn’t a dream,” sighed Azalea, with deep, terrible conviction. “It’s true.”

She went over the sharp little drama of all that had happened the day before; remembered the sweet hollow in the woods where she and Carin had gone, the fright they had had at the snake, the appearance of that queer, kind old Haystack Thompson; she remembered how she had followed them a little way, and then had stopped for some wake robins which were growing in a sunny little spot and which she had thought would look lovely at Ma McBirneys’ belt; and then had come the strange whimpering of an animal in pain. She had thought it a dog caught in a rabbit trap, and she had gone toward it, and as she went on, the sound seemed to move too, and it grew more agonizing as if the animal were being tortured beyond anything it could stand. And then, suddenly, from among the great trees, had come Sisson, the “showman,” her old enemy. He had his huge hand over her mouth in a minute, and had pushed her before him, making her run against her will, and presently they were among all the old companions of her wandering years. Rafe Bowen, who had run away three years before, was back too. He was a big fellow with broad shoulders and a sullen face. And there was a new woman—to take her mother’s place, Azalea thought. They had laughed at her and told Sisson not to be too rough with her.

“You treat her like she was a mad steer, Hank,” Betty Bowen had said. “Don’t scare the young un like that.”

Sisson let go of her and pushing her a little way from him broke into a roar of laughter. It made cold chills run over the girl. She knew that when Sisson laughed it was when some one else was in trouble. Nearly the only thing he really enjoyed was tormenting some one.

“She ran out to meet me,” he cried, roaring with that cruel laughter, his eyes full of evil pleasure. “Just toddled out to meet me, she did. You never saw anything like it. Couldn’t stay away from her old friend, Zalie couldn’t. Once a show girl always a show girl, eh?”

Azalea had been learning lessons of self-control since she had been with Mary McBirney, but now her old-time temper flamed up in her. She felt the familiar wave of fire sweeping across her brain and she screamed out angry things at Sisson.

“I’m no show girl!” she protested. “I never wanted to be a show girl. I think you are wicked, wicked, Hank Sisson! You’ve taken me away from the best people I ever knew and they’ll be so frightened! Oh, please, Mrs. Bowen, make him let me go. Oh, Hank Sisson I hate you! I hate you! Oh, why isn’t my mamma alive? You wouldn’t dare treat me like this if she was alive. You bad, bad man!”

“You can see for yourself, what a fine performer she is,” Sisson sneered. “High tragedy, that’s her line.”

“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” wailed the girl, “mamma was good to you. Won’t you help me?”

“Turning on the tear taps now,” grinned Sisson.

“Oh, shut up,” snapped the new woman. “What did you expect the girl to do? Didn’t think she’d rejoice, did you? Leave her be, you Sisson. You’ve got her, that’s the main thing; now give her a chance to cool down a little. I’m sorry for the young un, that’s what I am—taking her away from a good home to tag along with a lot like us!”

Sisson raised his heavy fist and made as if to strike the woman.

“You take your choice,” he growled. “Shut up or be shut up.”

“While we’re rowing around here, Hank,” broke in Betty Bowen, “the folks will be after us. Do we carry out our plan, or don’t we?”

“We carry it out and we do it quick,” announced Sisson. Nor was Azalea long in finding out what the plan was. Taking it for granted that as soon as Azalea was missed, the Sisson All Star Combination would be under suspicion, it was the intention of Sisson and his troupe to go on up into the mountains; but Betty Bowen and her son Rafe were to take the best team of horses, and the wagon with its load of conveniences, hide by night in the woods, and then make their way before dawn into South Carolina. The state line was not more than twelve miles from where they then were, and once across that, they were comparatively safe.

This program had been carried out rapidly—more rapidly, in fact, than was at first intended. Azalea was compelled to go in the old covered wagon and to lie down there under a pile of odds and ends. Betty sat beside her son Rafe and directed their course. They had struck an old wood-road, and wound along through the heart of a silent forest, meeting no one. So much more solitary was the road than they had supposed it would be that Betty urged her son to press on. The horses were young and strong—a new team which Azalea had not before seen—and the result was that by twelve o’clock that night they had camped in an out-of-the-way grove across the line dividing the two Carolinas. The mountains were left behind, and an almost level plain stretched around them. But the underbrush in this grove of poor trees was thick, and as Betty intended to do her cooking at night and to show no smoke from her camp fire to curious strangers during the day, they felt that there was little danger of their being found.

The rain that had drenched the valley of Lee had thrown out no more than a light shower over the spot where the Bowens kept Azalea prisoner, and while the girl lay on her rickety bed wondering what had happened back at home, she did not dream of the wild experiences through which her friends Jim and Hi had been passing. It was not of them that she thought chiefly—though she knew how they would be fuming about her and putting plans on foot for her recovery—but of Ma McBirney and her anxiety.

“I’m so used to having bad times,” thought the little girl wrapping her arms tight about her body as if for company, “that I can stand them. But Ma McBirney isn’t used to them. She’ll just fret herself crazy.”

She had perfect confidence in the ability of her friends to find her. She had thought all that out in that strange, dangerous drive at night through the old wood-road. People like Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson weren’t the kind to give up hunting for her.

“I’ve just got to lie low,” thought this child who had seen too much of the ways of a prowling company of folk, “and take care of myself the best way I can, and I’ll be found. I’ll be back in Ma McBirney’s house all right and tight in a little while. I’m going to believe that and say it over and over. I’m not going to be scared, nor sorry, nor anything. Jim and Hi will think I’m a silly thing to let myself be picked up and carried away like that, anyway. They’ll think I haven’t a bit of grit. But I’ll show them I’m not such a stupid goose after all.”

She made up her mind, too, that she would try not to think too much about Ma McBirney. If she did she would get to crying again, and she didn’t want to cry. She wanted to think, and to watch, and to be wise and act at the right moment. And having reached that conclusion, she sat up in bed with something almost like brightness on her face. And at that Tige, the bulldog, sat up too and showed all of his teeth as he gave a low growl. Tige was a good dog according to his lights; and his lights told him that when his master, Rafe Bowen—according to Tige, the most wonderful master in the world—told him to “watch,” why then, he was to watch; nay he was to sleep with one eye open and both ears alert.

“For goodness sake, Tige,” whispered Azalea, leaning forward and putting out her hand toward the dog, “be sensible, can’t you? I’ve got to move sometimes, haven’t I?”

Betty Bowen threw her brown arms up over her frowsy head.

“Keep still, you, Zalie,” she snarled sleepily. “Don’t you see I’m dead beat?”

So for two hours longer the restless girl had to lie still in her bed, though it became almost an agony to do so, while the tired show woman slept on and on. After a time, however, the little camp came to life. Rafe got up and demanded breakfast. Betty straggled out, heavy-eyed and slatternly, and set forth some cold food which Azalea could not swallow. The horses were fed, the wagon greased, and all was got in readiness for a hasty flight if necessary. Azalea helped as they directed her, and she managed to find a chance to wash carefully as Ma McBirney had taught her, and she combed her hair with a little side comb, and made herself look as well as she could.

“You’ve got mighty fine ways since you’ve been living out,” remarked Betty Bowen teasingly. Azalea looked at her as candidly as she would have looked at Ma McBirney, for someway, in spite of all her anger, she was feeling sorry for Bet Bowen this morning.

“Yes, Mrs. Bowen,” she said. “I have been taught some nice ways. Mrs. McBirney is the neatest woman you ever saw. Of course my own mamma tried to teach me things, but what was the use, when we didn’t have any way to keep nice? You can’t keep clean and fresh on the road, can you?”

Betty looked at the girl in sullen surprise. She had not expected to be met in this neighborly fashion. She thought to herself that if she were being held a prisoner, no one could get her to “chirk up” like that.

“No, you bet you can’t,” she said in answer to the girl’s question. “Now me, I used to wash my hair and brush it, and keep my hands pretty. I wasn’t always a battered old ship of the desert like I be now.” Bet could be rather picturesque in her speech when she had a mind. “Fact is, I reckon I had too much good looks and too little sense once on a time. Both the sense and the looks have been knocked out of me now. I guess you or anybody can see that.”

“Whatever made you take up with this show life, Mrs. Bowen?” the girl asked. They were sitting together then on the ground, their little odd tasks being all done. Azalea was playing idly with some pine needles, braiding them together after a fashion she had, and weaving them into a little mat. In the old days she would have sat idle, but Ma McBirney had got her into the way of occupying herself with one thing and another.

“What made me take to it?” demanded Bet, turning her haggard eyes on her companion, “Why, the same thing that made your mother take to it.”

There was something threatening and angry in the way she spoke, and Azalea looked at her with fear in her eyes. She could feel her heartbeats fairly strangling her, but she had the courage to seize at the remark. Ever since she was old enough to think at all, she had been puzzled and bewildered by the things about her. And now it seemed she might be told something of all she wished to know.

“And why was that, Betty?” she asked softly. “Why did my mamma have to wander around and act in a show?”

Mrs. Bowen drew an old rag of a shawl about her shoulders and leaned back against a tree. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind whether to tell this child the truth or not. But finally she gave a little nod.

“I’m just going to up and tell you why,” she said. “I think it’s coming to you to know. She did it because she married a poor shiftless coot of a man, the black sheep of a way-up family, and she done it against the wishes of all her folks. She ran away from home with him, and she took care of him while he lazed around and wouldn’t do nothing, and she looked after him like he was the best man in the world, and stuck to him when he gambled away all she earned. And then you was born, and she had to run away from him to get money enough to care for you.”

“Oh,” gasped Azalea, her hand at her heart and a sick feeling stealing over her.

“And I will say,” went on Bet, “that she cared for you as tender as if you was respectable folks living in the finest house in town. She just done the best she could; and she went along with us because we didn’t object to having a baby in the troupe. We began training you like a little puppy as soon as you had any mimicry in you, and the folks that came to the show liked it. Her and you was drawing cards, I can tell you. And for all of her broken heart she was nice and cheerful except when we’d go to the towns near by where she used to live. Then she was afraid she’d meet some of them that used to know her in the old days. But at last, when she found she was going to die, she seemed glad we was edging along toward her home.”

“And where was that,” breathed rather than asked Azalea. “Where was her old home?”

“Law, child, don’t you know that? Why, her old home was at Lee. That’s where your grandfather Atherton come from—from Lee.”

“My grandfather Atherton?”

“Sure, Zalie. Didn’t your ma tell you that? Well, she was a close one. I don’t know as she told us all, either, but we got hold of the story one way and another. When her father skipped out to parts unknown, owing to some trouble he got into at the time of the war, his wife—she was his second wife, and only a young thing—went back to her folks in Alabama for a while. And then they was made so poor by the war that she took shame to be dependent on them. So she came back to this part of the country, somewhere, and taught school, and took care of her little girl. And that little girl was your ma. She was a pretty little thing, made to live in luxury, I allow. I suppose she sort of honed for grand ways and grand clothes. Anyway, when your pa, Jack Knox, who come of an old family and was handsome and taking in his ways, came along, she married him. She didn’t know the drinking and the shiftlessness had come down to him as well as the fine manners and the handsome face. I heard your grandmother fought and fought against them two marrying, but they would have their way. So that’s your story, missy, and I do think it was coming to you to know it.”

Azalea stared into the woman’s face with wide-stretched eyes.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Bowen. I am glad to know; I do think I had a right to be told. But just think, I was in that old house the other day—that beautiful old house that belonged to my grandfather. ‘The Shoals’ it is called. And it’s very, very queer, but I felt all the time as if I had been in it before. But of course I never had. You can’t inherit memories, can you Mrs. Bowen, the way you do the features of your face, or—or habits?”

[Picture: “So that’s your story, missy.”]

But at that moment, Betty Bowen’s great hulk of a son came sauntering back from what he called a “spying.”

“There ain’t nobody in sight so far as I can make out,” he announced sullenly. “And now suppose you two quiet down a little. I want to sleep.”

He whistled his dog to him and pointed with a big forefinger at Azalea.

“Watch, Tige,” he commanded. And he and the dog stretched themselves side by side, the man to sleep, and the dog to keep guard.

Azalea felt a wave of trembling creeping over her, and she turned her eyes once more to Bet.

“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” she whispered, “what have I done that you should treat me like this?”

But Mrs. Bowen lifted her finger in warning.

“Just keep still, Zalie,” she answered, also under her breath, “and you won’t be hurt. Sisson’s a man that hits back when he’s hit. He was all-fired mad at your being took from him and he swore he’d have you back. He seemed to have to do it to keep up his pride. So now he’s got you, and I’m to keep you, that’s all.”

“But how can you, Betty? How can you? I wouldn’t do anything mean to you.”

Betty Bowen looked at her darkly.

“Sisson is kin of mine,” she said, as if that settled the question. “There ain’t nobody else in the world for me to turn to as I know of.”

A lump came into Azalea’s throat as she looked at Betty. To think of having no friend but Sisson! Something warm began to stir in Azalea’s heart. She did not know that the name of it was pity.