Part 11

She turned from the door and limped smilingly toward the waiting officer.

“Ef brother wakes,” she said, “I hope you won’t git mad at nothin’ he says. Fer the last two days he has been clean out ’n his head. Once he declared to us that he was actu’ly President Jeff Davis. Thar’s no tellin’ what idea may strike ’im next.”

“I ’ll try not to wake him,” said the captain. “I ’ll merely step inside very carefully. I wouldn’t do that if--if my men were not watching. You see they’d wonder--”

“Come on, then.” The rigidity of a crisis held her features. She entered first, and pushed the great cumbersome door open before her. The old man regarded them with sleepy looks and began to nod again.

The officer stood over the form in blue a moment, then peered under the bed, and even up the funnel-shaped chimney.

“It’s all right,” he whispered to Sally.

Ericson opened his eyes and smiled faintly.

The girl comprehended his frame of mind; he had not noticed that his clothes had been changed.

“You’ve run me in a hole,” he said to the captain. “I’m ready to go, but I don’t want you to think that these folks are a-harborin’ of me. I come heer uninvited. The truth is, that young lady ordered me off, an’ I’d ‘a’ gone, but I keeled over in the door.”

He put a hand on either side of him, and with a strenuous effort managed to sit up. Then he noticed his change of uniform, and as he plucked distastefully at his coat-sleeve, he stared first at the girl and then at the captain.

“Why, who’s done this heer?” he asked. “I ain’t no Yankee soldier. I’m a rebel dyed in the wool.”

The girl laid her hand on the officer’s arm.

“Come on, please, sir; he’s gittin’ excited. Ef we dispute with ‘im he ’ll git to rantin’ awful.”

Without a word the officer followed her from the cabin and down toward where his men stood. She walked rapidly, her steps quickened by the rising tones of Ericson’s voice behind her. She put her handkerchief to her dry eyes, and said, plaintively:

“I hardly know what to do. We’ve had no end of trouble. First the news come that pa had fell, an’ then brother come home like he is now.”

“He looks like a very sick man,” said the officer, with a bluntness peculiar to times of war. “Perhaps I ought to ask our surgeon to run over and take a look at him.”

She started, her face fell.

“Old Doctor Stone, nigh us, is a-lookin’ after ‘im,” was the hasty product of her bewildered invention. “He ’ll do all that can be done--an’--an’ I want to keep brother from thinkin’ about army folks as much as I can. Will you-uns camp nigh us long?”

“We leave inside of an hour.” He raised his cap, saluted his men, gave an order, and they whirled and tramped away.

She went back into the cabin and sat down by the side of Ericson’s pallet. There was something in his dumb glance and subdued air that quenched the warmth of her recent success. As he looked at her steadily his eyes became moist and his powder-stained lips began to quiver.

“I didn’t ’low you’d play sech a dog-mean trick on me, Sally,” he muttered. “I’d ruther a thousand times ‘a’ been shot like a soldier than to hide in Yankee clothes.” Under her warm rush of love and pity for him she completely lost the touch of hauteur that had clung to her since his return. She took his hand in hers and bent her body down till his fingers lay against her cheek. He could feel that she was deeply moved.

“I couldn’t stand to see ’em take you off,” she sobbed. “Because you are all I got on earth to keer fer. It would ‘a’ killed you, an’ me, too.” Her voice took on the gentle cadences of a mother consoling a sick child. “Grandpa will take off the mean old blue suit an’ put you up in the big bed, and I ’ll make you some good chicken soup with boiled rice in it.”

He pressed her hand.

“Do you raily want me heer, Sally?”

Her reply was a moment’s hesitation, a convulsive motion of the vocal cords, a failure of speech, and a final pressure of her lips on his fingers.

“Beca’se ef I ‘lowed you did, Sally, I wouldn’t keer much which side beat. I wouldn’t be able to think about any livin’ thing but you.”

“Well, you can, then,” she said; and she rose quickly. “Grandpa, I’m goin’ in t’other room to fix ’im some chicken soup. Undress ’im an’ put ‘im to bed, an’ then go fetch Doctor Stone.”

An hour later the old physician arrived and examined the patient.

“A flesh wound only,” he said. “But he has lost mighty nigh every bit o’ blood in ‘im. Nuss ’im good, Sally, an’ he ’ll be able to make plenty o’ corn and taters fer you the rest o’ yore life--that is, if the war ever ends.’’ Ericson was convalescing when the news of Lee’s surrender came floating over the devastated land.

“I’m awfully glad it’s all over,” he said. “I’m satisfied. I was shot by a Yankee ball an’ nussed back to life by a Union gal, so I reckon my account is even.”

THE HERESY OF ABNER CALIHAN

|Neil Filmore’s store was at the crossing of the Big Cabin and Rock Valley roads. Before the advent of Sherman into the South it had been a grist-mill, to which the hardy mountaineers had regularly brought their grain to be ground, in wagons, on horseback, or on their shoulders, according to their conditions. But the Northern soldiers had appropriated the miller’s little stock of toll, had torn down the long wooden sluice which had conveyed the water from the race to the mill, had burnt the great wheel and crude wooden machinery, and rolled the massive grinding-stones into the deepest part of the creek.

After the war nobody saw any need for a mill at that point, and Neil Filmore had bought the property from its impoverished owner and turned the building into a store. It proved to be a fair location, for there was considerable travel along the two main roads, and as Filmore was postmaster his store became the general meeting-point for everybody living within ten miles of the spot. He kept for sale, as he expressed it, “a little of everything, from shoe-eyes to a sack of guano.” Indeed, a sight of his rough shelves and unplaned counters, filled with cakes of tallow, beeswax and butter, bolts of calico, sheeting and ginghams, and the floor and porch heaped with piles of skins, cases of eggs, coops of chickens, and cans of lard, was enough to make an orderly housewife shudder with horror.

But Mrs. Filmore had grown accustomed to this state of affairs in the front part of the house, for she confined her domestic business, and whatever neatness and order were possible, to the room in the rear, where, as she often phrased it, she did the “eatin’ an’ cookin’, an’ never interfeer with pap’s part except to lend ’im my cheers when thar is more ’n common waitin’ fer the mail-carrier.”

And her chairs were often in demand, for Filmore was a deacon in Big Cabin Church, which stood at the foot of the green-clad mountain a mile down the road, and it was at the store that his brother deacons frequently met to transact church business.

One summer afternoon they held an important meeting. Abner Calihan, a member of the church and a good, industrious citizen, was to be tried for heresy.

“It has worried me more ’n anything that has happened sence them two Dutchmen over at Cove Spring swapped wives an’ couldn’t be convinced of the’r error,” said long, lean Bill Odell, after he had come in and borrowed a candle-box to feed his mule in, and had given the animal eight ears of corn from the pockets of his long-tailed coat, and left the mule haltered at a hitching-post in front of the store.

“Ur sence the widder Dill swore she was gwine to sue Hank Dobb’s wife fer witchcraft,” replied Filmore, in a hospitable tone. “Take a cheer; it must be as hot as a bake-oven out thar in the sun.”

Bill Odell took off his coat and folded it carefully and laid it across the beam of the scales, and unbuttoned his vest and sat down, and proceeded to mop his perspiring face with a red bandanna. Toot Bailey came in next, a quiet little man of about fifty, with a dark face, straggling gray hair, and small, penetrating eyes. His blue jean trousers were carelessly stuck into the tops of his clay-stained boots, and he wore a sack-coat, a “hickory” shirt, and a leather belt. Mrs. Filmore put her red head and broad, freckled face out of the door of her apartment to see who had arrived, and the next moment came out dusting a “split-bottomed” chair with her apron.

“How are ye, Toot?” was her greeting as she placed the chair for him between a jar of fresh honey and a barrel of sorghum molasses. “How is the sore eyes over yore way?”

“Toler’ble,” he answered, as he leaned back against the counter and fanned himself with his slouch hat. “Mine is about through it, but the Tye childern is a sight. Pizen-oak hain’t a circumstance.”

“What did ye use?”

“Copperas an’ sweet milk. It is the best thing I’ve struck. I don’t want any o’ that peppery eye-wash ’bout my place. It’d take the hide off ’n a mule’s hind leg.”

“Now yore a-talkin’,” and Bill Odell went to the water-bucket on the end of the counter. He threw his tobacco-quid away, noisily washed out his mouth, and took a long drink from the gourd dipper. Then Bart Callaway and Amos Sanders, who had arrived half an hour before and had walked down to take a look at Filmore’s fish-pond, came in together. Both were whittling sticks and looking cool and comfortable.

“We are all heer,” said Odell, and he added his hat to his coat and the pile of weights on the scale-beam, and put his right foot on the rung of his chair. “I reckon we mought as well proceed.” At these words the men who had arrived last carefully stowed their hats away under their chairs and leaned forward expectantly. Mrs. Filmore glided noiselessly to a corner behind the counter, and with folded arms stood ready to hear all that was to be said.

“Did anybody inform Ab of the object of this meeting?” asked Odell.

They all looked at Filmore, and he transferred their glances to his wife. She flushed under their scrutiny and awkwardly twisted her fat arms together.

“Sister Calihan wuz in here this mornin’,” she deposed in an uneven tone. “I ‘lowed somebody amongst ’em ort to know what you-uns wuz up to, so I up an’ told ‘er.”

“What did she have to say?” asked Odell, bending over the scales to spit at a crack in the floor, but not removing his eyes from the witness.

“Law, I hardly know what she didn’t say! I never seed a woman take on so. Ef the last bit o’ kin she had on earth wuz suddenly wiped from the face o’ creation, she couldn’t ‘a’ tuk it more to heart. Sally wuz with ‘er, an’ went on wuss ‘an her mammy.”

“What ailed Sally?”

Mrs. Filmore smiled irrepressibly. “I reckon you ort to know, Brother Odell,” she said, under the hand she had raised to hide her smile. “Do you reckon she hain’t heerd o’ yore declaration that Eph cayn’t marry in no heretic family while yo ‘re above ground? It wuz goin’ the round at singin’-school two weeks ago, and thar hain’t been a thing talked sence.”

“I hain’t got a ioty to retract,” replied Odell, looking down into the upturned faces for approval. “I’d as soon see a son o’ mine in his box. Misfortune an’ plague is boun’ to foller them that winks at infidelity in any disguise ur gyarb.”

“Oh, shucks! don’t fetch the young folks into it, Brother Odell,” gently protested Bart Callaway. “Them two has been a-settin’ up to each other ever sence they wuz knee-high to a duck. They hain’t responsible fer the doin’s o’ the old folks.”

“I hain’t got nothin’ to take back, an’ Eph knows it,” thundered the tall deacon, and his face flushed angrily. “Ef the membership sees fit to excommunicate Ab Calihan, none o’ his stock ’ll ever come into my family. But this is dilly-dallyin’ over nothin’. You fellers ’ll set thar cocked up, an’ chaw an’ spit, an’ look knowin’, an’ let the day pass ‘thout doin’ a single thing. Ab Calihan is either fitten or unfitten, one ur t’other. Brother Filmore, you’ve seed ’im the most, now what’s he let fall that’s undoctrinal?”

Filmore got up and laid his clay pipe on the counter and kicked back his chair with his foot.

“The fust indications I noticed,” he began, in a raised voice, as if he were speaking to some one outside, “wuz the day Liz Wambush died. Bud Thorn come in while I wuz weighing up a side o’ bacon fur Ab, an’ ‘lowed that Liz couldn’t live through the night. I axed ’im ef she had made her peace, and he ‘lowed she had, entirely, that she wuz jest a-lyin’ thar shoutin’ Glory ever’ breath she drawed, an’ that they all wuz glad to see her reconciled, fer you know she wuz a hard case speritually. Well, it wuz right back thar at the fireplace while Ab wuz warmin’ hisse’f to start home that he ‘lowed that he hadn’t a word to say agin Liz’s marvelous faith, nur her sudden speritual spurt, but that in his opinion the doctrine o’ salvation through faith without actual deeds of the flesh to give it backbone wuz all shucks, an’ a dangerous doctrine to teach to a risin’ gineration. Them wuz his words as well as I can remember, an’ he cited a good many cases to demonstrate that the members o’ Big Cabin wuzn’t any more ready to help a needy neighbor than a equal number outside the church. He wuz mad kase last summer when his wheat wuz spilin’ everybody that come to he’p wuz uv some other denomination, an’ the whole lot o’ Big Cabin folks made some excuse ur other. He ‘lowed that you--”

Filmore hesitated, and the tall man opposite him changed countenance.

“Neil, hain’t you got a bit o’ sense?” put in Mrs. Filmore, sharply.

“What did he say ag’in’ me--the scamp?” asked Odell, firing up.

Filmore turned his back to his scowling wife, and took an egg from a basket on the counter and looked at it closely, as he rolled it over and over in his fingers.

“Lots that he ortn’t to, I reckon,” he said, evasively.

“Well, what wuz _some_ of it? I hain’t a-keerin’ what he says about me.”

“He ‘lowed, fer one thing, that yore strict adheerance to doctrine had hardened you some, wharas religious conviction, ef thar wuz any divine intention in it, ort, in reason, to have a contrary effect. He ‘lowed you wuz money-lovin’ an’ uncharitable an’ unfergivin’ an’, a heap o’ times, un-Christian in yore persecution o’ the weak an’ helpless--them that has no food an’ raiment--when yore crib an’ smokehouse is always full. Ab is a powerful talker, an’--”

“It’s the devil in ’im a-talkin’,” interrupted Odell, angrily, “an’ it’s plain enough that he ort to be churched. Brother Sanders, you intimated that you’d have a word to say; let us have it.”

Sanders, a heavy-set man, bald-headed and red-bearded, rose. He took a prodigious quid of tobacco from his mouth and dropped it on the floor at the side of his chair. His remarks were crisp and to the point.

“My opinion is that Ab Calihan hain’t a bit more right in our church than Bob Inglesel. He’s got plumb crooked.”

“What have you heerd ’im say? That’s what we want to git at,” said Odell, his leathery face brightening.

“More ’n I keered to listen at. He has been readin’ stuff he ortn’t to. He give up takin’ the _Advocate_, an’ wouldn’t go in Mary Bank’s club when they’ve been takin’ it in his family fer the last five year, an’ has been subscribin’ fer the _True Light_ sence Christmas. The last time I met ’im at Big Cabin, I think it wuz the second Sunday, he couldn’t talk o’ nothin’ else but what this great man an’ t’other had writ somewhar up in Yankeedom, an’ that ef we all keep along in our little rut we ’ll soon be the laughin’-stock of all the rest of the enlightened world. Ab is a slippery sort of a feller, an’ it’s mighty hard to ketch ‘im, but I nailed ’im on one vital p’int.” Sanders paused for a moment, stroked his beard, and then continued: “He got excited sorter, an’ ‘lowed that he had come to the conclusion that hell warn’t no literal, burnin’ one nohow, that he had too high a regyard fer the Almighty to believe that He would amuse Hisse’f roastin’ an’ feedin’ melted lead to His creatures jest to see ’em squirm.”

“He disputes the Bible, then,” said Odell, conclusively, looking first into one face and then another. “He sets his puny self up ag’in’ the Almighty. The Book that has softened the pillers o’ thousands; the Word that has been the consolation o’ millions an’ quintillions o’ mortals of sense an’ judgment in all ages an’ countries is a pack o’ lies from kiver to kiver. I don’t see a bit o’ use goin’ furder with this investigation.”

Just then Mrs. Filmore stepped out from her corner.

“I hain’t been axed to put in,” she said, warmly; “but ef I wuz you-uns I’d go slow with Abner Calihan. He’s nobody’s fool. He’s too good a citizen to be hauled an’ drug about like a dog with a rope round his neck. He fit on the right side in the war, an’ to my certain knowledge has done more to ‘ds keepin’ peace an’ harmony in this community than any other three men in it. He has set up with the sick an’ toted medicine to ‘em, an’ fed the pore an’ housed the homeless. Here only last week he got hisse’f stung all over the face an’ neck helpin’ that lazy Joe Sebastian hive his bees, an’ Joe an’ his triflin’ gang didn’t git a scratch. You may see the day you ’ll regret it ef you run dry shod over that man.”

“We simply intend to do our duty, Sister Filmore,” said Odell, slightly taken aback; “but you kin see that church rules must be obeyed. I move we go up thar in a body an’ lay the case squar before ‘im. Ef he is willin’ to take back his wild assertions an’ go’long quietly without tryin’ to play smash with the religious order of the whole community, he may stay in on probation. What do you-uns say?”

“It’s all we kin do now,” said Sanders; and they all rose and reached for their hats.

“You’d better stay an’ look atter the store,” Filmore called back to his wife from the outside; “somebody mought happen along.” With a reluctant nod of her head she acquiesced, and came out on the little porch and looked after them as they trudged along the hot road toward Abner Calihan’s farm. When they were out of sight she turned back into the store. “Well,” she muttered, “Abner Calihan _may_ put up with that triflin’ layout a-interfeerin’ with ’im when he is busy a-savin’ his hay, but ef he don’t set his dogs on ’em he is a better Christian ‘an I think he is’ an’ he’s a good un. They are a purty-lookin’ set to be a-dictatin’ to a man like him.”

A little wagon-way, which was not used enough to kill the stubbly grass that grew on it, ran from the main road out to Calihan’s house. The woods through which the little road had been cut were so thick and the foliage so dense that the overlapping branches often hid the sky.

Calihan’s house was a four-roomed log building which had been weather-boarded on the outside with upright unpainted planks. On the right side of the house was an orchard, and beneath some apple-trees near the door stood an old-fashioned cider-press, a pile of acid-stained rocks which had been used as weights in the press, and numerous tubs, barrels, jugs, and jars, and piles of sour-smelling refuse, over which buzzed a dense swarm of honey-bees, wasps, and yellow-jackets. On the other side of the house, in a chip-strewn yard, stood cords upon cords of wood, and several piles of rich pine-knots and charred pine-logs, which the industrious farmer had on rainy days hauled down from the mountains for kindling-wood. Behind the house was a great log barn and a stable-yard, and beyond them lay the cornfields and the lush green meadow, where a sinuous line of willows and slender cane-brakes marked the course of a little creek.

The approach of the five visitors was announced to Mrs. Calihan and her daughter by a yelping rush toward the gate of half a dozen dogs which had been napping and snapping at flies on the porch. Mrs. Calihan ran out into the yard and vociferously called the dogs off, and with awed hospitality invited the men into the little sitting-room.

Those of them who cared to inspect their surroundings saw a rag carpet, walls of bare, hewn logs, the cracks of which had been filled with yellow mud, a little table in the center of the room, and a cottage organ against the wall near the small window. On the mantel stood a new clock and a glass lamp, the globe of which held a piece of red flannel and some oil. The flannel was to give the lamp color. Indeed, lamps with flannel in them were very much in vogue in that part of the country.

“Me an’ Sally wuz sorter expectin’ ye,” said Mrs. Calihan, as she gave them seats and went around and took their hats from their knees and laid them on a bed in the next room. “I don’t know what to make of Mr. Calihan,” she continued, plaintively. “He never wuz this away before. When we wuz married he could offer up the best prayer of any young man in the settlement. The Mount Zion meetin’-house couldn’t hold protracted meetin’ without ‘im. He fed more preachers an’ the’r hosses than anybody else, an’ some ‘lowed that he wuz jest too natcherly good to pass away like common folks, an’ that when his time come he’d jest disappear body an’ all.” She was now wiping her eyes on her apron, and her voice had the suggestion of withheld emotions. “I never calculated on him bringin’ sech disgrace as this on his family.”

“Whar is he now?” asked Odell, preliminarily.

“Down thar stackin’ hay. Sally begun on ’im ag’in at dinner about yore orders to Eph, an’ he went away ‘thout finishin’ his dinner. She’s been a-cryin’ an’ a-poutin’ an’ takin’ on fer a week, an’ won’t tech a bite to eat. I never seed a gal so bound up in anybody as she is in Eph. It has mighty nigh driv her pa distracted, kase he likes Eph, an’ Sally’s his pet.” Mrs. Calihan turned her head toward the adjoining room: “Sally, oh, Sally! are ye listenin’? Come heer a minute!”

There was silence for a moment, then a sound of heavy shoes on the floor of the next room, and a tall rather good-looking girl entered. Her eyes and cheeks were red, and she hung her head awkwardly, and did not look at any one but her mother.

“Did you call me, ma?”

“Yes, honey; run an’ tell yore pa they are all heer,--the last one of ‘em, an’ fer him to hurry right on to the house an’ not keep ‘em a-waitin’.”

“Yes-sum!” And without any covering for her head the visitors saw her dart across the back yard toward the meadow.

With his pitchfork on his shoulder, a few minutes later Abner Calihan came up to the back door of his house. He wore no coat, and but one frayed suspender supported his patched and baggy trousers. His broad, hairy breast showed through the opening in his shirt. His tanned cheeks and neck were corrugated, his hair and beard long and reddish brown. His brow was high and broad, and a pair of blue eyes shone serenely beneath his shaggy brows.

“Good evenin’,” he said, leaning his pitchfork against the door-jamb outside and entering. Without removing his hat he went around and gave a damp hand to each visitor. “It is hard work savin’ hay sech weather as this.”

No one replied to this remark, though they all nodded and looked as if they wanted to give utterance to something struggling within them. Calihan swung a chair over near the door, and sat down and leaned back against the wall, and looked out at the chickens in the yard and the gorgeous peacock strutting about in the sun. No one seemed quite ready to speak, so, to cover his embarrassment, he looked farther over in the yard to his potato-bank and pig-pens, and then up into the clear sky for indications of rain.

“I reckon you know our business, Brother Calihan,” began Odell, in a voice that broke the silence harshly.

“I reckon I could make a purty good guess,” and Calihan spit over his left shoulder into the yard. “I hain’t heerd nothin’ else fer a week. From all the talk, a body’d ’low I’d stole somebody’s hawgs.”