Part 4

“Waal, I’m a-thinkin’ the lead wouldn’t be wasted on some of ’em,” said the acrid voice. “Piomingo Cove could make out mighty well ’thout some o’ them boys ez rip an’ rear aroun’ down thar ez a constancy. I dunno ez I’d feel called on ter mourn fur Mink Lorey enny. An’ I reckon the cove could spare him.”

Looking through the window close by the bench of the loom, Alethea could see the interior of the room, rudely furnished and with the perennial fire of the wide chimney-place slowly smouldering in a bed of ashes. A half-grown Shanghai pullet was pecking about the big flat stones of the hearth in a premature and unprescient proximity to the pot. There were two bedsteads of a lofty build, the thick feather beds draped with quilts of such astounding variety of color as might have abashed the designers of Joseph’s coat. The scrupulous cleanliness and orderliness of the place were as marked a characteristic as its poverty.

A sharp-featured woman of fifty sat in a low chair by the fire, wearing a blue-checked homespun dress, a pink calico sun-bonnet, and a cob-pipe,—the last was so constantly sported that it might be reckoned an article of attire. She was not so old as she seemed, but the loss of her teeth and her habit of crouching over the fire gave her a cronish aspect.

Alethea hesitated. Then, with a deprecatory manner, she said in her soft contralto drawl, “He ain’t down ’mongst the boys in Piomingo Cove none.”

Mrs. Sayles sneered. “Ye b’lieve that?”

“He be a-herdin’ cattle along o’ Ben Doaks on Piomingo Bald.”

Mrs. Sayles looked at her step-daughter and puffed a copious wreath of smoke for reply.

“Reuben tole me that hisself,—an’ so did Ben Doaks,” persisted Alethea.

“_Mink_, I calls him, an’ nuthin’ shorter,” said Mrs. Sayles, obdurately,—as if anything could be shorter. “But ef Ben Doaks gin the same word, it mus’ be a true one.”

Alethea flushed. “I know ye air sot agin Reuben, but I’d believe his word agin enny other critter’s in the mountings.”

“Set a heap o’ store on him, don’t ye?” said Mrs. Sayles, sarcastically. “An’ when he kem a-courtin’ ye, an’ ’peared crazy ’bout’n ye, an’ ye an’ him war promised ter marry, ye couldn’t quit jowin’ at him fur one minit. Ye plumb beset him ter do like _ye_ thought war right,—ez ef _he_ hed no mo’ conscience o’ his own ’n that pullet thar, an’ hedn’t never hearn on salvation. An’ ye’d beg an’ beg him ter quit consortin’ with the moonshiners; an’ a-drinkin’ o’ apple-jack an’ sech; an’ a-rollickin’ round the kentry; an’ layin’ folkses fences down on the groun’; an’ liftin’ thar gates off’n the hinges; an’ ketchin’ thar geese, an’ pickin’ ’em, an’ scatterin’ thar feathers in the wind, an’ sendin’ ’em squawkin’ home; an’ a-playin’ kyerds; an’ a-whoopin’, an’ ridin’, an’ racin’. An’ ye war always a-preachin’ at him, an’ tryin’ ter straighten him out, an’ make him suthin’ he war never born ter be.”

Her pipe was smoked out. She drew from her pocket a fragment of tobacco leaf, which was apparently not sufficiently cured for satisfactory smoking, for she laid it on the hot ashes on the hearth and watched it as it dried, her meditative eyes shaded by her pink calico sun-bonnet.

“Naw, sir!” she continued, as she crumpled the bit of leaf with her fingers and crowded it into the bowl of her pipe, “I hev never liked Mink. I ain’t denyin’ it, nuther. I ain’t gamesome enough ter git tuk up with sech ways ez his’n. Mighty few folks air! But I could see reason in the critter when he ’lowed one day, right hyar by this very chimbly-place,—he sez, sez he, ‘Lethe, ye don’t like nuthin’ I do or say, an’ I’m durned ef I kin see how ye like _me_!’”

Alethea’s serious, lustrous eyes, looking in at the window, saw not the uncouth interior of her home,—no! As in a vision, irradiated by some enchantment, she beheld the glamours of the idyllic past, fluctuating, waning.

Even to herself it sometimes seemed that she might have been content more lightly. Her imbuement with those practical ideas of right and wrong, the religion of deeds rather than the futilely pious fervors of the ignorant mountaineers in which creed and act were often widely at variance, was as mysterious an endowment as the polarity of the loadstone. She was not introspective, however; she never even wondered that she should speak openly, without fear or favor, as she felt impelled. Had she lived in an age when every inward monition was esteemed the voice of the Lord, she might have fancied that she was called to warn the world of the errors of its ways. Her sedulous conscience, the austere gravity of her spirit, her courage, her steadfastness, her fine intelligence, even her obdurate self-will, might all have had assertive values in those long bygone days. As an historic woman, she might have founded an order, or juggled with state-craft, or perished a martyr, or rode, enthusiast, in the ranks of battle. By centuries belated in Wild-Cat Hollow, she was known as a “perverted, cross-grained gal” and “a meddlin’ body,” and the “widder Jessup” had much sympathy for having in a misguided moment married Alethea’s father. Sometimes the Hollow, distorted though its conscience was, experienced a sort of affright to recognize its misdeeds in her curt phrase. It could only ask in retort who set her up to judge of her elders, and regain its wonted self-complacency as best it might. Even her own ascetic rectitude lacked some quality to commend it.

“I can’t find no regular fault with Lethe,” her step-mother was wont to say, “’ceptin’ she’s jes’—Lethe.”

Mrs. Sayles’s voice, pursuing the subject, recalled the girl’s attention:—

“An’ ye tired his patience out,—the critter hed mo’ ’n I gin him credit fur,—an’ druv him off at last through wantin’ him ter be otherwise. An’ now folks ’low ez him an’ Elviry Crosby air a-goin’ ter marry. I’ll be bound she don’t harry him none ’bout’n his ways, ’kase her mother tole me ez she air mighty nigh a idjit ’bout’n him, an’ hev turned off Peter Rood, who she hed promised ter marry, though the weddin’ day hed been set, an’ Pete air wuth forty sech ez Mink.”

Alethea turned away abruptly to her work, and as she lightly tossed the shuttle to and fro she heard, amidst the creaking of the treadle and the thumping of the batten, her step-mother’s persistent voice droning on:—

“An’ so ye hed yer say, an’ done yer preachin’, an’ he profited by it. I reckon he ’lowed ef ye jawed that-a-way afore ye war married, thar war no yearthly tellin’ what ye _could_ say arterward. An’ now,” rising to the dramatic, “hyar kems along Ben Doaks, powerful peart an’ good enough ter satisfy ennybody; perlite, an’ saaft-spoken, an’ good-lookin’, an’ respected by all, an’ ready ter marry ye ter-morrer, ef ye’ll say the word. He owns cattle-critters”—

“An’ sheep,” put in an unexpected voice. A dawdling young woman, with a shallow blue eye and a pretty, inane soft face, had stepped into the back door, and heard the last words of the monologue which apparently had been often enough repeated to admit of no doubt as to its tenor. She had a slatternly, ill-adjusted look, and a snuff-brush in the corner of her mouth.

“An’ herds cattle in the summer season,” said Mrs. Sayles.

“He hev a good name ’mongst the cattle-owners,” observed the young woman, her daughter-in-law.

“An’ hev bought him right smart land,” added Mrs. Sayles.

“Down in Piomingo Cove! not h’isted up on the side o’ the mounting, like we-uns!” exclaimed the young woman, with more enthusiasm than one would have believed possible from the flaccid indifference of her manner.

“An’ he put in all the fair weather las’ winter a-raisin’ him a house,” Mrs. Sayles pursued.

“An’ he ’lowed ter me ez every log war hefted, an’ every pat o’ clay war daubed on the chinkin’, with the thought o’ Lethe!” cried the other.

“He hev been plantin’ round thar some, a’ready,” said the old woman.

“Corn, pumpkins, wheat, an’ terbacco,” supplemented the daughter-in-law.

“An’ he hev got him some bee-gums,—I never hearn how many bees,” said Mrs. Sayles.

“Down in Piomingo Cove!” the climax of worldly prosperity.

“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles, with a freshened realization of despair. “Lethe ain’t never goin’ ter live in that house! I dunno what ails the gal! She takes a notion ez she likes a man with sech ways ez she can’t abide, an’ she quar’ls with him mornin’ an’ evenin’. An’ then when a feller kems along, with all sort’n good ways ez she likes, she don’t like _him_! Gals never acted similar whenst I war young. I ’low it mus’ be the wiles o’ Satan on the onruly generation.”

“Lethe ’pears ter think the Lord hev app’inted the rocky way,” said the other. “She be always a-doin’ of what’s the hardest. An’ she can’t quit nowhar this side o’ nuthin’! Ef ever she’s condemned ter Torment she’ll kerry a leetle kindlin’ along, fur fear the fire won’t be het up hot enough ter burn her fur her sins.”

She was silent during a momentary activity of the snuff-brush.

“But ef _I_ war you-uns, Lethe, an’ hed the chance o’ livin’ in my own house all ter myself”—she began anew.

“Plenty o’ elbow-room,” interrupted Mrs. Sayles; “not all jammed tergether, like we-uns hyar.”

Alethea, aware of her lack of logic, made an effort to effect a diversion.

“I never hearn o’ folks a-grudgin’ a gal house-room, an’ wantin’ her ter go off an’ marry fur a place ter bide,” she said, pausing in her weaving.

Mrs. Sayles, who piqued herself, not without some reason, on her kindness to her step-daughter, having her prosaic welfare, at least, at heart, retorted in righteous wrath. “An’ nobody ain’t never said no sech word,” she declared, with amplest negation. “Grudgin’ ye house-room,—shucks!”

“One less wouldn’t be no improve_mint_ ter we-uns, Lethe,” said the daughter-in-law. “We air jes’ like a hen settin’ on forty aigs: she kin kiver ’em ez well ez thirty-nine.”

“But I ain’t got no medjure o’ patience with this latter-day foolishness!” said Mrs. Sayles, tartly. “Whenst I war young, gals married thar fust chance,—mought hev been afeard they’d never git another,” she added, impersonally, that others might profit by this contingency. “An’ I don’t keer much nohow fur these hyar lonesome single wimmen. Ye never kin git folks ter b’lieve ez they ever _hed_ enny chance.”

“Laws-a-massy, Lethe,” the daughter-in-law reassured her, still vaguely serene, “I ain’t wantin’ ter git shet o’ ye, nohow. Ye hev tuk mo’ keer o’ my chill’n than I hev, an’ holped me powerful. It’s well ye done it, too, fur Jacob Jessup ain’t sech ez kin content me with Wild-Cat Hollow. I war raised in the cove!”

“Thar’s L’onidas now, axin’ fur suthin’ ter eat,” said the uncompromising Alethea, whose voice was the slogan of duty.

The loom occupied a full third of the space on the little porch; two or three rickety chairs stood there, besides; a yoke hung against the wall; the spinning-wheel was shadowed by the jack-bean vines, whose delicate lilac blooms embellished the little cabin, clambering to its roof; on the floor were several splint baskets. A man was languidly filling them with peaches, which he brought in a wheel-barrow from the trees farther down on the slope. He was tall and stalwart, but his beard was gray, and he had assumed the manner and all the exemptions of extreme age; occasionally he did a little job like this with an air of laborious precision. He was accompanied both in going and coming by his step-son’s daughter, a tow-headed, six-year-old girl, and a gaunt yellow dog. The little girl’s voice, dictatorial and shrill, was on the air continuously, broken only by the low, acquiescent refrain of the old man’s replies, carefully adjusted to meet her propositions. The dog paced silently and discreetly along, his appreciation of the placid pleasure of the occasion plainly manifested in his quiet demeanor and his slightly wagging tail. His decorum suffered a lapse when, as they came close to the porch, he observed Leonidas issue from the door,—a small boy of four, a plump little caricature of a man, in blue cotton trousers, an unbleached cotton shirt, and a laughably small pair of knitted suspenders. He held in his hand a piece of fat meat several inches square, considered in the mountains peculiarly wholesome for small boys, and a reliable assistant in “gittin’ yer growth.”

Tige paused not for reflection. He sprang upon the porch, capering gleefully about, and uttering shrill yelps of discovery with much his triumphant manner in treeing a coon. Leonidas shared the common human weakness of overestimating one’s own size. He thought to hold the booty out of Tige’s reach, and extended his arm at full length, whereupon the dog, with an elastic bound and extreme nicety of aim, caught it and swallowed it at a single gulp. Leonidas winked very fast; then, realizing his bereavement, burst into noisy tears. Tige’s facetiousness had a discordantly sudden contrast in the serious howl he emitted as he was kicked off the porch by the child’s father. This was an unkempt young fellow just emerging from the shed-room. He had a red face and swollen eyes, and there were various drowsy intimations in his manner that he was just roused from sleep. No natural slumber, one might have judged; the odor of whiskey still hung about him, and he walked with an unsteady gait to the end of the porch and sat down on the edge of the floor, his feet dangling over the ground. Tige, who had sought refuge beneath the house, and was giving vent to sundry sobbing wheezes, thrust his head out to lick his master’s boots. Upon this mollifying demonstration, the man looked down with the lenient expression of one who loves dogs. “What ails ye, then,” he reasoned, “ter be sech a fool as ter ’low ye kin be let ter rob a child the size o’ L’onidas thar?”

And forthwith the mercurial Tige came out, cheerful as before.

In the limited interval when Leonidas—who had been supplied with another piece of meat, but still wept aloud with callow persistence because of the affronts offered by Tige—was fain to pause for breath, and between the alternate creaking of the treadle of the loom and the thumping of the batten, the man’s ear caught that unwonted stir in the air, the sound of consecutive rifle-shots.

“Look-a-hyar,” he cried, springing to his feet, “what’s that a-goin’ on down in the cove? Lethe, stop trompin’ on that thar n’isy treadle, so ez I kin listen! Quit yellin’, ye catamount!” with a vengeful glance at the small boy.

But the grief of Leonidas was imperative, and he abated nothing.

Jacob Jessup stood for an instant baffled. Then suddenly he put both hands to his mouth, and roused all the echoes of Wild-Cat Hollow with a ringing halloo.

“Who be ye a-hollerin’ at?” asked his mother from her nook in the chimney corner.

“I ’lowed I viewed a man up yander ’mongst them woods,—mought be one o’ the herders.”

Alethea’s foot paused on the treadle. Her uplifted hand stayed the batten, the other held the shuttle motionless. She turned her head and with a sudden rich flush on her cheek and a deep light in her lifted eyes looked up toward the forests that rose in vast array upon the steep slopes of the ridge until they touched the sky. Accustomed to the dusky shadows of their long avenues, she discerned a mounted figure in their midst. There was a tense moment of suspense. The man had wheeled his horse on hearing the halloo. He seemed to hesitate; then in lieu of response he took his way down the hill toward the cabin. The trees were fewer on the edge of the clearing. Before he drew rein by the rail fence she had turned back to the loom, and once more the shuttle winged its short, clumsy flights, like a fledgeling bird, from one side to the other, and the treadle creaked, and the batten thumped, and she spared not an instant from her work.

For it was only Ben Doaks dismounting, glad of a pretext, throwing the reins over a projecting rail of the fence, and tramping up to the house.

“Howdy,” he observed comprehensively. And the family, meditatively eying him, responded, “Howdy.”

“Keep yer health, Ben?” the old woman demanded. She had come to the door, and took a gourd of water from a pail which was on a shelf without. She drank leisurely, and tossed the surplus water from the gourd across the porch, where it spattered the half-grown pullet, which shunted off suddenly with a loud, shocked exclamation, as if it sported half a score of ruffled petticoats.

“Yes’m,” drawled Ben, seating himself on the edge of the porch, near Jacob, “I keeps toler’ble well.”

“I dunno how ye do it,—livin’ off’n what ye cooks yerse’f.” She manifested a truly mundane interest in the eligible young man. She did not return to her chair by the fireside, but sat down on the doorstep. “I’d look ter be p’isoned ef I hed ter live on yer cookin’.”

“Waal, I reckon _ye_ couldn’t put up with it right handy, seem’ the sorter table ye set out hyar.”

Was the old woman more than human, to be untouched by this sincere tribute?

“Ye oughter kem down hyar oftener ye do, Ben, an’ bide ter meals,” she said, her spectacles turned upon him with a certain grave luminosity. “We’ll make ye powerful welcome ter sech vittles ez we hev got. Ye ain’t been hyar fur a right smart time.”

“I know that, but somehows I never kin feel right welcome comin’ so often,” said Ben. He had leaned back against the post of the porch. He could look, without moving, into Alethea’s grave, absorbed face as she worked.

“’Count o’ Lethe? Shucks! thar ain’t but one fool hyar. Mought kem ter see the rest o’ we-uns.”

Alethea’s face flushed. Ben Doaks, dismayed to be the indirect occasion of her anger, and secretly affronted by the breach of decorum which he considered involved in this open mention of his bootless suit, hastened to change the subject. “Did ye hev a word ter say ter me, Jacob?” he asked. “Ye ’lowed, day ’fore yestiddy, ye wanted ter sell yer steer.”

There was now no sound from the cove. The burnished glisters of the sunshine hung above it, holding in suspension a gauzy haze, through which the purple mountains were glamourous and darkly vague. Jacob, his senses yet in thrall, could hardly recall the question he had desired to ask concerning the rifle-shots that had trivially jarred its perfect serenity.

“Yes, yes,” he said hastily. “Buck, ye know,” with the manner of introduction. “Yander he be.” He pointed to a gaunt dun-colored ox with long horns and a joyless mien, standing within a few feet of a rude trough which the spring branch kept supplied.

“Jacob,” said Alethea, turning her head with a knitted brow, “ef ye sell Buck, how air we goin’ ter plough our craps? How air we goin’ ter live along?”

“Laws-a-massy!” exclaimed Mrs. Sayles. “I ain’t s’prised none ef the man ez marries Lethe at last will find out he hev got a turrible meddler. She jes’ ups an’ puts inter her elders’ affairs ez brash ez ef hern war the only brains in the fambly. Jacob’s a-savin’ ter buy a horse, child. Yer dad ’lowed Jacob mought use his jedgmint ’bout all the crappin’, bein’ ez yer dad’s old an’ ain’t long fur this worl’. So Jacob hev determinated ter buy a horse. Who wants ter work a steer when they ken hev a horse?”

Doaks looked intently at Alethea, loyally eager to range himself on her side. She was oblivious of his presence now; every faculty was on the alert in her single-handed contest against the family.

“Whar’s the money he hev saved?” she demanded.

Her step-brother seemed frowzier than ever, as he lifted his eyebrows in vain cogitation for an answer.

“Ye shet up,” he said, in triumphant substitution; “ye ain’t no kin ter me.”

Alethea, all lacking in the bland and mollifying feminine influences that subtly work their ends in seeming submission, bluntly spoke her inmost thought:

“Ez long ez thar’s a moonshine still a-runnin’ somewhar round Piomingo Cove, Jacob ain’t goin’ ter save no money.”

“Thar ain’t no still round hyar ez I knows on,” said Doaks, in surprise. “Over yander in Eskaqua Cove thar air a bonded still, I know.”

“That bonded still hev ter sell wholesale, hevin’ no license otherwise,” she retorted, “an’ Jacob hain’t saved enough yit ter buy by the five gallon. An’ though he may ’pear sober ter you-uns, he don’t ter me.”

Jacob bore her scathing glance with an admirable equanimity.

“Ye shet up, Lethe; ye dunno nuthin’ ’bout stills, bonded or no. Look-a-hyar, Ben, don’t ye want ter buy Buck? See him thar?”

“I don’t want him,” said Ben.

Jacob turned fiercely on Alethea. “Whyn’t ye hold yer jaw, ef ye know how; ye have done spiled my trade. Look-a-hyar, Ben,” he said alluringly, “it’s this hyar steer,”—there was but one,—“this hyar steer; he’s wuth money. I tell ye,” he vociferated, with a drunken wag of his head, “Buck’s a good steer. I dunno ef I kin git my cornsent ter trade Buck off, no-ways. Buck’s plumb like a member o’ the fambly. I tell ye we-uns fairly dote on Buck.”

“Waal, I don’t want him. Older ’n enny of ye, ain’t he?” drawled Ben. He was not a dull fellow, and he had taken his cue. He would decry the ox and forego his bargain, a consciously hopeless sacrifice to his affection.

Jacob straightened himself with an effort, and stared at his interlocutor.

“Who? Buck? Why, Buck ain’t much older than L’onidas thar.” He waved his hand toward the boy, who had perched on the bench of the loom beside Alethea. Now and then she patted his shoulder, which effort at consolation he received with a distinct crescendo; he had begun to relish the sound of his vocal performance, evidently attempting new and bizarre effects.

“L’onidas air about four year old, ain’t he, Mis’ Jessup?” Doaks asked of the young matron, who seemed placidly regardless how the negotiation should terminate.

“I b’lieve he’s ’bout four,” she said, without animation.

“Waal, he be toler’ble bouncin’ fur that,” said Doaks, looking with the eye of speculation at the boy, as if he were about to offer a bid for Leonidas, “but I kin see a heap o’ diff’unce ’twixt his size an’ Buck’s.”

The drunken man turned and stared at the diminutive person on the bench. “Waal,” he said in a low-spirited way, as if he must yield the point, “I never knowed ye wanted a steer o’ that size. Wouldn’t be much use ter ye. Our’n ain’t.”

“He ’pears sorter jubious in his temper. Does he hook?”

“Who? Buck?”—with an air of infinite amazement. “Why, Buck’s ez saaft ez L’onidas thar.”

As Leonidas was just now extremely loud, the comparison was hardly felicitous.

“I don’t want no work-ox, nohow,” said Doaks. “I want cattle ter fatten.”

“Jes’ try Buck. He’ll lay on fat fur ev’y ear o’ corn fedded him. Ye dunno Buck. He hain’t laid on much yit, ’kase, ye see,”—Jessup’s voice took a confidential intonation, although it was not lowered because of the roaring Leonidas,—“we-uns ain’t hed much corn ter feed ter Buck, bein’ back’ard las’ year. The drought cotched our late corn, an’ so Buck, though he worked it, he never got none sca’cely. An’ that’s why he ain’t no fatter ’n he be.”

Logical of Buck, but it availed him as little as the logic of misfortunes profits the rest of the world.

Alethea had risen and turned half round, leaning against the great clumsy frame of the loom. Her posture displayed her fine height; her supple figure was slight, as became her age, but with a suggestion of latent strength in every curve. There was something strangely inconsistent in the searching, serious expression of her grave brown eyes and the lavish endowment of her beauty, which seemed as a thing apart from her. Perhaps only Ben Doaks noted, or rather felt in a vague, unconscious way, the fascination of its detail: the lustre of her dense yellow hair showing against the brown wall, where a string of red peppers hung, heightening the effect; the glimpse of her white throat under the saffron kerchief; the lithe grace of her figure, about which her sober-hued dress fell in straight folds. To the home-folks she gave other subjects to contemplate.