Part 2

So they made out their itinerary at once and, though they were subject to some delays and gran’daddy remarked as he groped for his gloves in the wood box among dish towels, frying pans, broken dishes, and wearing apparel, “It’s quare what a way things has of skulking out of sight when they’re wanted,” and the little boy replied as he tore a strip from a window curtain and gartered his stocking, “It’s ’cause we ain’t got no woman here to keep ’em in their place,” by sunrise the oxen were hitched up and the premature Christmas tree started on its journey.

It was a day of gentle, insinuative, persistent sunshine, such as in these mountains December is not chary of. The frost-sheathed trees of the highest ridges lay like a long fluff of white ostrich feathers against the azure; light snows and partial thaws had converted the nearer mountain sides into a darkly crayoned network of lines and angles upon a dappled ground; all around them clustered the innumerable beauties of the winter landscape, and only the roads were vile.

The old man looked a veritable Santa Claus. Recognizing the churchly significance of the occasion, he had unbraided his beard and it fell before him a rippling, silver shield; beneath his gray slouch hat his kind eyes twinkled in their coverts of shaggy beetle-brows and, unconsciously completing the picture, he had discarded his tobacco for a corn-cob pipe.

Beside him, his little heart a-flutter but his face held resolutely serious, sat his grandson and between them sat Dixie for, in recognition of his services of the night, he too had been advanced to the position of a Santa Claus and in a far corner of the wagon, where the benefactor would not be tempted to test for himself the comparative blessedness of giving and receiving, was a stack of bones (there had been a “killing” the day before) for Dixie to bestow upon his canine acquaintances.

To old Mis’ Jimson the tree was carried in pristine completeness. From the well where she was trying to persuade her cow that a handful of meal in two gallons of water is mush, she espied its green top coming up behind the hill. For a moment she watched it grow, but before the oxen came into sight she hobbled away in terror to her cabin.

“I knowed it,” she said. “I knowed that ar owl a-hootin’ ’fore the door all night, meant some kind of meanness. ‘Trees as men walkin’”—she paraphrased unwittingly, and she didn’t know whether the text was history or prophecy. But she grabbed her testament from off the shelf and a rabbit’s foot from out the button box, reassuring herself by a swift glance that it was the left hind one (no other “keeps a man from harm”), pressed the two together, and ventured to take another look. She recognized the oxen, the wagon, and its occupants. Her terror fled, but she stood transfixed with amazement.

“Mis’ Jimson, this ’ere’s a sure ’nough Chrisamas tree,” called Grover Cleveland.

She hobbled down to the gate. “What upon airth, Jakey Ledbetter?” she asked.

Her old neighbour’s answer was an impressive silence while his unsteady hands plucked from the tree a roll of blue calico. “We reckoned, Grover Cleveland and me did, that this yer sprigged pattern would be becomin’ to your build,” he said presenting it.

“You ain’t tellin’ me that this yer’s for me!”—she smoothed out a fold with a quivering motion of her rheumatic old hand—“Colonel Ledbetter, I never _did_ have a store frock before and it’s more’n I ever expected to own in this world.”

“Moo-o,” complained the cow and overturned the bucket, whereupon an avalanche of “roughness” descended upon her head.

“La me,” exclaimed Mis’ Jimson, “is Christmas trees for the dumb critters too?”

“That’s the view Grover Cleveland ’pears to take of it. Thar’s enough for one fodderin’ gran’son; we’ll drive round and put the rest in the shed.”

Shielding her eyes with her hand the old woman watched them out of sight. “I ain’t been carin’ lately whether I was livin’ or not,” she mused, “but if Christmas trees is beginnin’ to circolate in these yer mountings, I aim to perk up and live long enough to git my share.”

Most of the old people who were young when gran’daddy was a boy still occupied their fathers’ holdings in clefts and coves up in the higher mountains and to them the tree was carried while the sunshine still slanted and the roads were unthawed. Time flies or I would tell of its triumphant journey; how faded eyes grew bright and wrinkles wreathed themselves into smiles; how salutations and jokes fresh fifty years ago tripped upon the tongue as nimbly as in their early days. Only one failed to respond to the Christmas spirit of the occasion. That was old Captain Sumter. They came upon him leaning over his remnant of front fence viciously fletcherizing tobacco of his own unskillful curing.

“What fool consarn’s that, Jake Ledbetter?” he growled as the turnout stopped before him.

“It’s a Chrisamus tree,” called Grover Cleveland, scrambling to the ground and presenting him with a package of choice Durham.

The old man pocketed it but his thanks were of a fashion peculiarly his own:

“Jake Ledbetter, you always was the durndest fool in Junaluska.”

Only one took exception to her gift. That was Aunt Sally Long, the “queer old stick.”

“Now Jakey Ledbetter,” she whined, “I can’t put that caliker to no use in the world. I wove this frock myself mighty nigh five year ago”—she held out her narrow skirt for his inspection—“and I ain’t snagged it yet. I reckon it’s goin’ to last as long’s I do, at any rate I don’t want another frock added unto me. I’d a heap ruther you’d a brung me a pound of snuff.”

“Aunt Sally” (the accommodating Santa Claus took the roll from her and restored it to the tree), “it’s my intention for you to have whatever you can get the most fun out of; I can barter that thar frock for snuff enough to last you all your life, and there’ll be a balance comin’ to you besides; what’ll you have for that?”

“I don’ know, Jakey,” she drawled, and she pleated the hem of her apron while she pondered, “I don’ know; I reckon you might as well bring me a little more snuff.”

The roads were heavy with mud when Bonaparte and Butterfly toiled down into the little straggling town. “This is a Chrisamus tree,” announced the little Santa Claus, and there was no need to tarry there for delivery, for all the foot-free denizens, young, old, and middle-aged, thronged it when it stopped and followed when it moved on, and the tree shed its fruit as if a gale had struck it.

The old Santa Claus held his whip with a fine show of nonchalance while the little one worked among the holly branches, disdainful of the thorns, his eyes afire, his cheeks red hot, and his aureole of yellow hair tossing and tumbling with every motion of his little body. Williebelle, her ears tied up with a red woollen stocking and redolent of turpentine, was there and upon her he bestowed three sticks of peppermint, “two for herself and one for her earache.” He waited in person upon Aunt Polly, bedridden for a dozen years, and the procession was brought to a stand before her door that she might look out upon the first Christmas tree she had ever seen.

“I ’low this is a Methdis’ Christmas tree,” cried an Episcopalian (the only cynical one), “you-all aimed to get ahead of us.”

“No, siree,” answered the old man, “this yer tree’s built according to Grover Cleveland’s plan and he don’t b’lieve in secks. We-all ain’t aimin’ to git ahead of anybody but the bears.”

“Merry Christmas,” shouted a peace-making Episcopalian and the crowd took up the greeting, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” till the hills gave back the echo.

The tired oxen drew the dismantled tree out of the village. The tired little Santa Claus cuddled sleepily within the encircling arm of the old one but they left behind them the spirit of the Christmas-tide. In the village “Merry Christmas!” still sounded from house to house and along the streets. The sticky children shouted it to one another; the women from their door-ways told it to passers-by; old men, nodding and smiling as they fumbled with jack-knife and tobacco and young men lounging on the corners, all told it to one another. Red Baptists told it to Yellow Baptists and Presbyterians to Methodists, and some unthinkingly told it to persons they were not on speaking terms with, then looked ashamed but repeated it. By and by the shadows came down into the valley, crept to the summits of the eastern ridge, slipped over and the village lay in darkness and in peace.

But high up on the mountain side, in a lonely hut that had not been visited by the Christmas tree, Carolina cuddled her little boy to sleep, crooning softly and sadly:

“While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground.”

II

CREEDS AND DEEDS

The Episcopalians met next morning to trim the tree. They had the candles and candies and tinsel decorations sent them by the foreign Santa Claus whom Grover Cleveland had tried to track, and for every member of their congregation they had made little stockings of net. These they proceeded to fill with candy and to hang upon the tree, discussing meanwhile the perambulating tree of the previous day.

“There was nary somebody passed by,” said one, restoring with a bit of lemon stick the equilibrium of a tilted stocking, “the babies got something, every last one of ’em, and the niggers too, so fur as I know.”

“Every one was free to go to the first Christmas celebration,” said the young girl who taught the two-months-a-year free-school. “The shepherds came from the fields, and the angels came from heaven, and I have read that the wise men who came were from so far removed parts of the earth that they didn’t even speak the same language.”

“You reckon they was all Episcopals?”

“No, but when they went away they were all Christians.”

The rest of the decorators were a little awed by such erudition and no further remarks were made till the last gift was tied in its place and the candles, firmly fixed and pointing rafterward, were ready for the lighting. Then they stood off and surveyed the work of their hands.

“It’s powerful pretty,” said one.

“Yes, but seem like it’s narrow-contracted ’long side of Grover Cleveland’s tree. ’Course we’ve got six ten-cent dolls and he didn’t have nary one and he didn’t have nary candle but——”

“It’s not leavin’ out ary somebody that I’m studyin’ about. Why even our Nick got a shinbone, and I declare if he ain’t fit Grover Cleveland’s dog till he’s mighty nigh chawed his ears plumb off his head.”

“Old man Higgins told me ‘Merry Christmas’ yesterday evening. It’s the first word he’s spoke to me since I left the Methdis’ meetin’-house, and I wish there was something on this yer tree for him, just to show him that we-all ain’t holdin’ a grudge,” and further discussion revealed the fact that every one there had a neighbour or friend belonging to one of the other churches whom, for one reason or another, he or she would like to invite to the Christmas-tree.

The school teacher took a pencil from her pocket and they gathered round her. “We’ll begin at the first house towards sun-up,” they said; “there’s three somebodies there, there’s two in the next house and——” they counted every person in the neighbourhood and then the school teacher “done a sum.” “Nine pounds more will treat them all to candy,” she said and in a body they proceeded to the store to see if they could buy nine pounds at the wholesale rate.

“I declare, ’tain’t my fault,” pleaded the storekeeper. “I laid in ten pounds extra for Christmas but old man Ledbetter come in yer and he let Grover Cleveland clean me out. You can gen’rally, most always trust Colonel Ledbetter not to do no low down tricks but you-all know how’tis; if Grover Cleveland was a-hankerin’ after the whole top side of the airth his gran’daddy’d git it for him if he could. I’ve ordered some more, but it won’t be here till to-morrow.”

“That’s all right,” said the school teacher, “we’ll meet again this evening to make some more stockings, and we’ll trim the tree all over again and we’ll have a Christmas tree for all Junaluska.”

Some rustic beaux had been hanging about the group listening to the colloquy. They looked at one another and they looked at a row of fresh-faced, luxuriant-haired mountain girls at another counter bartering eggs which they had “toted” from their homes five or six miles away.

“Make it a general spree this evening,” they pleaded, “let us come to the tree-trimming and bring our girls.”

“We will,” said the teacher, “if you-all will spread the news that it’s to be an un-de-nom-i-na-tional tree and that all the grown-ups are invited to come to-night to the trimming and to bring for the tree whatever gifts they have for their families and their friends, and that young and old are invited to the exercises to-morrow night.”

“Captain Boyce won’t come nor Judge Brevard, ary one; they took a oath never to set foot in that thar meetin’-house.”

“Then we’ll move the tree somewhere else.”

Such was the series of events that transferred the tree and the trimmers to Colonel Ledbetter’s two-room cabin that overlooked the village from a highroad. The log fire blazing wide and high in the chimney place put to shame the candles that swaled and sputtered in turnip candelabra, but could not dim the light that shone from merry eyes as the happy people helped or hindered with equally good intentions. Long before dispersion could be thought of the tree stood full fruited and ready for the morrow’s harvesting.

Suddenly the barking of a dog roused the gully behind the cabin.

“That’s my Cæsar; he’s struck a ’possum trail,” exclaimed a swain and with one rush young men and maidens made for the moonlit out-of-doors and joined in a ’possum hunt. Only the serious minded remained, fewer than a score of people and yet they were the metaphorical pillars of five different denominations of Christian churches, each struggling independently to establish the same gospel in that little mountain town. They drew up some benches before the fire and gave themselves to rest and reminiscence. On the road, in the fields, or at his fireside the Junaluskan may address his neighbour as Bill or Jeff or Jack, but in assembly every elderly man is accorded a title, military, civil, or ecclesiastic.

“Gettin’ ’long in years, Colonel Ledbetter,” observed a grizzled mountaineer running his eyes along the blackened rafters of the cabin; “a hundred year old ain’t it?”

“Mighty nigh,” answered the Colonel shooting tobacco juice at a fallen ember before kicking it back into the fire.

“Looks like with a little fixin’ up ’twas good for another hundred. You ain’t let it lately?”

“No, Deacon Higgins, I ain’t.” The speaker doubled into his studying attitude with unperceiving eyes upon the hearth; “the last tenant made a barnyard of the road out yer in front, fed his cattle and hogs there reg’lar so’t women folks couldn’t git by to go to meetin’ without silin’ their Sunday clothes and he let the ragweed run clean up to the eaves. It hurt my feelin’s to look at the place, ’twas such a contrast to what ’twas when Preacher Carr had it, so I turned him loose and locked the door and I don’t guess I’ll ever rent it again.”

“Preacher Carr certainly did keep it mighty snug,” said Captain Campbell, “and he was powerful proud of it too. He’d point out to every stranger the part the Injins built and the part your father added on to it; and he was proud of all outdoors besides. He ’lowed there wasn’t another tree in the country so handsome to look at as this yer postoak out in front.”

“And if he and his old gray mare was on the homeward road any whar near sundown, she’d break into a trot of her own free will and accord, knowin’ she’d got to git him here in time to see the sun slip down behind the Bald.”

“And he done made a sermon onct ’bout that ar cliff t’other side the road. His tex’ was somethin’ ’bout ‘The shadow of a Great Rock,’ and mighty nigh all the women in the meetin’-house had to unfold their pocket handkerchiefs ’fore he got through.”

“And he done kep’ his tater-patch as clean of weeds as my wife keeps her posy beds.”

“And he worked jes’ as hard to weed the sin out of Junaluska as he did to weed the pusly and cockles out of his roas’n’-ear patch.”

“Amen!” shouted Deacon Higgins.

“And he was always yer when he was needed”—the voice was unsteady and the speaker sat in the shadow. “I tell ye it cuts me powerful that when my wife died last spring there was nary a preacher to take her last test’mony, and she a-askin’ for him all the time. The neighbours done what they could when we laid her away; they sung a hymn and Judge Brevard read a chapter, but there was nary a sermon preached or a lesson of her life said over her, and she a Meth’dis’ in good and reg’lar standin’. I ain’t a-blamin’ our young preacher; the branches was swelled at the fords and the bridges was swept away. He couldn’t git yer nohow. But seem like something’s wrong when we’ve got five meetin’-houses and nary preacher living yer.”

“We don’t have Pres’terian preachin’ but once a month, because our preacher’s got three other charges besides Junaluska. He rides seventeen miles to git yer; but he ain’t Samson and he’s mighty nigh wore out ’fore he begins, and he has to gallop through the sarvice and ride off to after-dark preachin’ somewheres else.”

“Jes’ the same way ’tis with our preacher”—the women were speaking now—“he shakes hands friendly like but I don’t guess, if all the folks in the diff’rent places where he preaches was stood up together, he’d know me and my children from the lot.”

“Them was good old times”—the deacon’s wife took off her sunbonnet and straightened up its crown as she spoke—“when we had one meetin’-house and preachin’ every Sunday and Preacher Carr was right here on the ground ready for marryin’ or buryin’ or any sich like.”

“And Mis’ Carr—she was a mother to all of us.”

“_Our_ preacher’s got a right big family and they do say that he don’t make enough to keep ’em all comf’table; but I don’t know how ’tis. Our church agreed to give him thirty dollars this year and we done raised fo’teen of it cash down and we reckoned we’d about make up the balance of it in apples and potatoes; there was some corn give besides. To be sure there was no way for him to haul it home, for he don’t own a wagon; but seem like, if his other churches done as well by him as we do, he wouldn’t be so peaked looking. They say he ain’t nary top coat to wear, but we-all give him nine pair of mittens and five pair of wristers, and Callerstown give him seven pair of mittens and four comforters for his neck and some wristers besides, and it do seem like his other churches ought to give him a overcoat.”

A few minutes of thoughtful silence ensued; then a philosopher spoke.

“It’s a heap easier to ’stablish churches than ’tis to support ’em after they’re sot goin’.”

With a deeply drawn breath Colonel Ledbetter stretched out his legs, set his soles upright before the fire, folded his arms and squared himself. He waited respectfully for the old bench to complete its squeaking preface, then, singling out one fork of a blazing log, addressed it earnestly.

“Grover Cleveland, he don’t believe in beliefs and I’ve been a-studyin’ whether he ain’t right. I reason this a-way:

“You-all know how ’tis with the gris’-mills round yer; some of ’em is run by a turbine wheel and some by a overshot wheel and Captain Campbell he’s jes’ sot up a undershot wheel. But if the day of meracles wasn’t past and some of us should stop on our way home from the mill and leave ole Mis’ Jimson a bag of meal, it would keep her and her ole cow from starvin’ plumb to death and she’d never ask which mill ground that ar grist. And in my opinion that’s the way ’tis with these yer diff’rent religious secks we’ve got in Junaluska; they each turn their crank in their own way but there ain’t much choice in the grist they turn out; that is to say, neighbours, if you judge a man from his outgoin’s and his incomin’s it would take more than human jedgment to tell whether he’s been ground by the Piscopals or the Methdises or the Presaterians or the Baptises.

“When we git riled, Presaterian cussin’ don’t sound noways diff’rent from Methdis’ cussin’ and a wayfarin’ man in Junaluska could never tell by lookin’ at the children’s frocks and faces whether their mothers believe that sprinklin’ or duckin’ is the tellin’est means of grace; and Baptis’ hogs and cattle left out on the mountings all winter without fodder and shelter looks jes’ as gaunted-up when spring comes as the Piscopals’ does. I’m beginnin’ to think, neighbours, that there’s right much more religion in _doin’_ then there is in fussin’ about beliefs.”

“Amen!” shouted a Methodist brother and the speaker gained courage.

“I’d like,” he went on, “to jine hands and pull together again, and don’t meddle with each others’ beliefs, till some one’s deeds shows that his creed is the best. I’d like not to worship any longer in meetin’-houses that ain’t as snug as a barn ought to be. All of us together can keep one building painted and the roof tight and the windows sashed. I’d like not to have a hand in starvin’ or freezin’ any more preachers, but to make one preacher comf’table right here in Junaluska—we done it once and we done it without any outside help too—and we can do it ag’in. I’d like to have him always right yer on the ground to christen our children, to bury our dead, and to marry our young folks. For myself, I ain’t carin’ what college turned him out so’s he’s a sure-’nough Christian and cares more about right livin’ than he does about beliefs.”

By the wall, the only occupant of a bench with legs of assorted lengths and easily tilted, sat Deacon Higgins who here put in a demurrer. Jolting back and forth, bringing the bench legs and his feet resoundingly upon the floor to mark his time, he sang, his eyes fixed upon a rafter and his heart upon opposition:

“‘I’m Meth’dis born an Pres’terian bred, But Meth’dis will I die!’

“I’m a shoutin’ Meth’dis.”

“Well, you could continue on a shouting Meth’dis!”

“La, yes;” Colonel Ledbetter’s plan had won some enthusiastic supporters among the women. “Deacon Higgins you could take an amen corner for you and your folks and we-all wouldn’t object to your shoutin’ in once in a while.”

“And if the Piscopals wants to stand up and stretch their legs and try a readin’ match with the preacher now and then, why we could accommodate ’em with some Bible-readin’ ‘long with the singin’ and preachin’; the Bible makes good readin’ for any ’casion.”

“I’m tired,” said a weary-eyed woman. “I’m tired of the everlastin’ scratchin’ round to git ahead of some one else; I’m tired of runnin’ our church with one eye onto four other churches to see that they don’t come out a step ahead.”

Here a horse’s hoofs clattered upon the frozen road in front. Two or three women went to the window. “It’s Preacher Freeman,” they announced. “He’s on his way to Mills’s Ford to see that man that’s been hurt.”

“He’s got nine miles further to ride and it’s mighty cold.”

The door opened and a tall man, dark and spare, entered. He might have been thirty years old, but he smiled at the tree with boyish appreciation as he made his way past it and gave the assembly a general “Howdy.” Then he drew off his mittens and went from one to another shaking hands though he didn’t call them all by name. His own church people were there, but it is needless to name their denominational conformity—he was an honour to any church. They gave him a seat before the fire and he stretched out his shabbily shod feet toward it with a tired sigh, but an involuntary one, for he checked it.

“I stopped at your house Judge Brevard,” he said, “and learned that you were here.”