Part 4
“You go home,” he said, “and you sew the tuck back into that ar frock you wore to Missouri’s quiltin’ and you wear it and be a little gal again till you’re smart enough not to handle no such talk as that in my house. Carliny, she made her own bed and thar she must lie. I told her when she married that ar no-’count that she shouldn’t never put foot into house of mine again; and you go ask your daddy if he ever knowed a Ledbetter to go back on his word. And I’m bringin’ up Grover Cleveland the same way; he believes like I do; he thinks Carliny’d ought to go her own gait now.”
Arsula went out of the house with her hand to her eyes.
“I ’low you mean right,” he said softening a little, “and I’m a heap o’ times obliged to you for bringin’ him home, but you ain’t no call to go to interferin’ in _my_ family affairs.”
All the next day Grover Cleveland hunted for his boots. “I sot ’em right here,” he said, “and I ain’t touched ’em since.” In the house he had turned every thing over and over again, had gone through the barn and out-houses in the same way and at sundown was searching the woods when Arsula a-mule-back rode up to the house. Colonel Ledbetter was chopping wood but he put down his axe and went to her.
“I’ve come from Carliny’s,” she said, “and here’s them blue-top boots. Carliny found ’em outside her door this morning and she’d no more notion than the dead whose they was or how they got there, till I told her ’bout last night.”
The old man turned them in his hands confusedly. “If Grover Cleveland took these boots up thar last night,” he said, “his sleepin’ opinion is a heap different from his wakin’ opinion. When he’s awake he ’grees with me; he thinks if she was so set on goin’ her own gait, now she’d ought to keep on goin it.”
Arsula rode off and he went into the house and tucked the boots out of sight.
By the by his grandson came in dispirited and weary, ate a little supper, and crept away under his side of the Valley of the Mississippi.
“He ain’t eatin’ as much as he’d ought to,” mused his grandfather as he scraped the remnant of their meal upon the hearth for Dixie. “If Missouri was alive she’d make somethin’ to tempt his appetite, but I ’low I ain’t got the sleight o’ cookin’.” He went to the bed and tucked the quilt closely about the child’s shoulders.
“He’ll lay quiet enough to-night; I never knowed him to get up two nights runnin’. Seem like he gets scairt and keeps still a spell. I’m mighty nigh beat out myself, bein’ up so late yesterday evenin’; I reckon I can sleep without any rockin’,” and he went to bed.
He awoke after a three-hours’ nap. The room was cold and his first thought was to see if the Valley of the Mississippi was doing its duty by his grandson. It was not; and when he attempted to pull it into place he found there was no grandson there; neither did there appear to be a complement of the Valley of the Mississippi.
“Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland!” he shouted and the only answer was a stampede of rats from the hearth. He got up, lighted his candle, and held it low over the bed. The boy was surely gone. He pulled the quilt toward him and as he did so the big old shears that served them in their various household operations fell to the floor. The quilt had been cut through from end to end; the side containing the striped pieces had been left in its place but the blue had disappeared!
He got into his clothes and hurrying out among the shadows of the moonlight night took his direction with the certainty of prescience. When he set foot upon the highroad, he began to follow by sight, for, excepting where the shadows were heaviest, he could discern the little trudging figure of Grover Cleveland, its outline marred by something slung in man-like fashion across his shoulder and by the dog following closely.
He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second. Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false step”; and, like Suly, he was awed.
As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but, though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat ready for a plunge if emergency called for it.
They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a furlong or more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was ordered into line again.
Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man put aside with his hands.
At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin, built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay and stones that showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood.
Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.”
Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his fists. Suddenly he shouted:
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! here’s the Valley of the Mississippi cut plumb in half and your part’s here and”—he wriggled to the floor and grabbed his gran’daddy by the shoulder—“where’s my half gone to, gran’daddy?” Without waiting for an answer the child went back to the bed and made a more thorough examination.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! don’t you reckon ’twas a mighty low-down somebody to do that trick?”
“I ’low ’twas, Grover Cleveland—that is, if he knowed what he was doin’, ’twas.”
The boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.
“Maybe you been a-performin’ in your sleep again, Grover Cleveland.”
“No I ain’t gran’daddy, no I ain’t,” the blue eyes were very earnest. “I done been in bed close up to you all night.”
“Maybe you have, Grover Cleveland, but ’pears like you overslept yourself a spell this morning. There’s the pone and some bacon keeping warm for you by the fire.”
Puzzled that his grandfather didn’t take a more active interest in the calamity that had befallen him, the boy ran half-dressed to the door.
“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! what you got Bonaparte and Butterfly geared up to the cart for?”
“I been down to Junaluska. And now you eat your breakfast quick, and we’ll go hunt up your half of the Valley of the Mississippi; and you put on them blue-top boots Grover Cleveland; them old shoes lets the water in.”
“Why them boots is done gone!” he shook his grandfather as if to wake him up, “don’t you ’member—oh-ee-ee,” he went diving under the bed and, coming up again with the blue-tops hugged close to his breast and another pair in his hand, stood before his grandfather dumb as to the vocal organs but his eyes questioning wildly.
“Them red-tops is for Jakey.”
“You aim to carry them boots up to him, gran’daddy?”
“No, gran’son, I aim to bring Jakey down to the boots.”
In the Ledbetter home that afternoon Carolina dropped the broom as two little boys came frolicking about her, and capturing the larger one, she squeezed him rapturously!
“If you ever get out of this house at night again, Grover Cleveland,” she said, “you’ll be smarter than I am; that’s what.”
IV
OLD-TIME RELIGION
Autumn in the Southern Appalachians.
The little boy sat on the prize pumpkin that his grandfather had put in front of the house to challenge the comment of passers-by. He was chewing sorghum-cane and singing in snatches:
“Give me that old-time aligion, Give me that old-time aligion, It is good enough for me. It was good for Paul and Silas, It is good enough for me——”
His Aunt Carolina stood on the porch spinning stocking yarn, while near her sat his grandfather, cobbling shoes as diligently and contentedly as if born and bred to that lowly occupation instead of being a forehanded farmer holding county and township offices.
“Grover Cleveland certainly is a good singer,” said Carolina. “He can carry the tune of every last hymn he hears ’em sing down to church and he can carry the words too, clean up to twenty verses I reckon, and what he can’t remember he can make up.”
The old man laid down his implements, bowed himself to his “studyin’” attitude, and looked fondly and proudly at his grandson. Carolina let her eyes range the highroad.
“Here comes old man Sumter a-drivin’ that ar’ Sal he bought over to Nantahala. She was round and plump as ary one of our mules when he brought her here, but now I declare she’s the gauntedest mule that travels the road. I reckon he’s jerked and jawed the flesh right off her bones.”
“You say Cap’n Sumter’s a-comin’?” asked her father, and he got up and went out to the road side. At his signal his neighbour twitched Sal to a stand and stared at him without a relaxing line in his hard old face or a gleam of friendliness in his eyes.
Colonel Ledbetter had pleasant information to impart. He lifted one foot to the hub of the clumsy fore wheel, rested an arm across his knees and looked hard into the sandy road lest his eyes should forestall his tongue as the bearer of good news.
“You sold me them ’leven wa’nut trees on Sundown Hill for thirty dollars apiece, Cap’n Sumter?”
“I reckon that’s ’bout how the case stands,” the grim face looked steadily at the smiling one and not a line softened.
“Well, sir,” the pleasant eyes looked up with a lively sparkle that might have been borrowed from Grover Cleveland’s own, “I hadn’t examined them trees as close as I ought to, and ’pears like you hadn’t either; there’s a little mistake about one of ’em and I expected we’d better rectify it right now——”
“G’long!” old man Sumter hit the mule a “lick,” saying viciously as she sprang forward, “You got the timber and I got the money and I don’t rectify no mistakes now; you’re old enough to have knowed what you was gittin’ ’fore you paid for it.”
“Jes’ as you please Sam Sumter, jes’ as you please”; the indignant old gentleman made a gesture as one who gladly washes his hands of a responsibility and yielding to curiosity Sumter turned toward him.
Colonel Ledbetter didn’t pause in his slow walk toward the house but he said in a tone of supreme indifference:
“I’ve had my men up there a-fellin’ them trees and the biggest of ’em, the one furthest up the hill, is a curly walnut. Five years ago I sold one like it for twelve hundred dollars and I could have give you points ’bout sellin’ yours; but seein’ you don’t rectify no mistakes, why that’s all there is about it and we’ll stick to the bargain.”
Again Sal was jerked to a stand and twisting round on a pivotal hand pressed to the seat, old man Sumter regarded his interlocutor with intense concern. But Colonel Ledbetter proceeded to the house without looking right or left and, disappointed and ireful, his neighbour went on his way.
Colonel Ledbetter resumed his seat and his grandson came and leaned against him:
“Looks like he’s plumb mad, gran’daddy.”
“Yes he is, Grover Cleveland, he’s plumb mad and he’s been so ever since I’ve knowed him and that’s mighty nigh sixty years. He’s so rarin’ mad that when the Lord throws a good thing in his way he’s too mad to see it. Now like that ar wa’nut; any man that was a-lookin’ out for virtues instid of _de_fects would have discovered that ’twas a curly. But old man Sumter’s mad at every thing under the sun whether it’s human or beast or tree or stone; and he’s mad at ’em all the time and he’s so mad that he won’t take no notice to ’em. Jes’ like he wouldn’t take notice to me jes’ now, when I was goin’ to put more than a thousand dollars right into his hand; it would mighty nigh paid off that ar mortgage that he’s been skinnin’ himself to pay int’rest on these twenty years—for he jes’ keeps a-goin’ behind and a-goin’ behind for no airthly reason that I can see but jes’ ’cause he’s so mad all the time that he can’t study any of the arts of peace. Why his very crops fails because he hates ’em so. Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to bein’ mad at every body all the time. Tain’t Christian, an’ more’n that it kind o’ spiles your aim so that you don’t bring down no game.”
“Was he borned that-a-way, gran’daddy?”
“I expect he was, Grover Cleveland, I expect he was.”
“I’m mighty sorry for him”; the little fellow twisted his hands together and looked afar; “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”
The old man’s attention and sympathy were his in an instant. “Don’t you go to takin’ on about sleep walkin’, Grover Cleveland,” he said drawing his arm tightly about the child; “you’re bound to outgrow that before long.”
“I paid him,” the old man went on addressing his daughter, “I paid him more for them trees than ary other somebody had offered him, jes’ because I was willin’ to help make up to him the loss of his barn that burnt down; but he didn’ thank me for it.”
“What’s curly wa’nuts good for, gran’daddy?”
“They’re good for veneerin’, Grover Cleveland. You see this is how ’tis: they don’t saw the logs through like they do down to Campbell’s saw-mill but they saw ’em, round and round, into sheets mighty nigh as thin as writin’-paper. There hadn’t ought to be any cuts or holes in the log, so that they can make big smooth sheets of it, and they’ll saw that log up till there ain’t a core left that’s as thick as my arm.”
“What can they make out of timber as thin as writin’-paper, gran’daddy?”
Then to the extent of his own imperfect knowledge of the veneering process, the old man explained it to the child.
“So far as I know, there’s only three veneering mills in the country. When I sold my tree I wrote a letter to all three of ’em and told ’em what I had to sell and they wrote back and made me a offer—only that Kentucky fellow, he’s the nearest by and he made out like he had business in this direction and he stopped round to see it; and ’twas him I sold the tree to.
“And I aimed to work it jes’ that-a-way for Cap’n Sumter; I aimed to write the letters for him—for he ain’t a mite handy with a pen, Sam Sumter ain’t (a education is a mighty handy thing to get hold of Grover Cleveland), and get in the three bids for the tree and let him take up with ary one he see fit.”
“You’ve sure done your duty by him now, daddy,” said Carolina, “and that tree is yours anyway you can fix it.”
“_Is_ it yours, gran’daddy?”
“It’s mine by rule o’ law, Grover Cleveland, but I don’t know as it’s mine by that ar golden rule that you and Preacher Carr let on to know so much about.”
His doting grandparent considered the child a prodigy of ethical understanding, or “jedgment,” as he would have expressed it, and, although he was continually plying him with information and advice on all sorts of subjects, it was no uncommon thing for him to consult the little fellow even in matters of moment. It was as if he stored his maxims and admonitions into the laboratory of the child’s mind and then requisitioned it for them in convenient form for practical use.
“What’s your opinion, Grover Cleveland?’”
The child hesitated, his bright face raised earnestly to the grizzled one:
“Me and you, gran’daddy, me and you, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; do we?”
“_No-o sir-ee!_ That settles it, Carliny; Grover Cleveland and me we want a golden rule title to every thing we claim.”
So Colonel Ledbetter got his ink bottle and pen off the shelf, a sheet and a half of writing-paper out of the front of the Bible, and three envelopes out of the back, and laboriously indited the letters to the veneering mills, while out in the shadow of the prize pumpkin his grandson cracked butternuts for the tame gray squirrels. But all the while new ideas were whirling through the little boy’s head, and they concentred in that curly walnut.
That night “when there was naught but starre light” a little human figure, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad in a single, loosely hanging garment came out of the Ledbetter house. It proceeded noiselessly, though without stealth, for it kept in the open, taking the middle of the road with a free and fearless tread. Though the eyes were partly shut and the night was dark, it made no false or stumbling step; some intuition or spiritual sight or maybe an angelic presence was guiding it. Dixie came yawning and stretching to the edge of the porch, settled meditatively upon his haunches, watched it to the first bend in the road, then followed boundingly until he came abreast when, demurely dropping head and tail, he fell behind but kept so close that the little wind-blown shirt fluttered in his face.
When half a mile had been travelled a branching wagon track, scarcely discernible even in the daytime, led up to some bars in the worm-fence that outlined the road. The little dreamer climbed over and took the rough road beyond without a sign of doubt or hesitation. It zigzagged through the woods but steadily upward to where those walnut trees, with a goodly company of peers, oak, chestnut, and whitewood had crowned a summit. He had followed it a few times before, but wide-awake beside his grandfather in the ox wagon, with Butterfly and Bonaparte for motive power. It was overgrown with grass and weeds that shed their dew upon his little feet and perfumed them with pennyroyal and dittany, while overhead interweaving branches hid even the stars from sight.
Though tempted from duty’s path by many a springing cotton tail, Dixie kept close behind his master until the sound of an axe came thudding through the forest, at which he cocked his remnant for ears, stood for a second on the _qui vive_, then shot away in the direction of the sound.
He returned panting and, planting himself in front of the little sleepwalker, tried to head him in a different direction, but the child only swerved and continued his upward course. Again the dog headed him off, again and again until he had turned him quite out of the road way, but the boy threaded his way through undergrowth and over rocks and hummocks as easily as if he had been of spiritual rather than material substance.
Finally Dixie grabbed in his teeth the border of the little shirt and tugged so lustily that his master could not advance a single step farther, and as he tugged he whined in thorough frenzy; and if his language could have been rendered into the vernacular it would have been:
“There’s danger ahead, Grover Cleveland! There’s a bad old man up there, a man that never sees me without making a lick at me with his stick, and if he does you mean and there’s only I left to tell the tale, who’ll I tell it to, I’d like to know? for there’s not a human that’s smart enough to understand _my_ language, though I’ve understood English ever since I was a pup. Come back, Grover Cleveland! _come back, I say, come back!_” and with that last “come back,” Dixie gave such a sudden and powerful jerk that Grover Cleveland came tumbling backward into a bed of galax.
He righted himself and sat there with a hand on either side pressing the leaves down into the turf, the dog crouched close with his paws across the little bare knees and his tongue spasmodically licking the bewildered face.
The child heaved a slow, sobbing sigh or two and became his conscious self, a little boy alone at night in the dark, silent woods, frightened, not by darkness or silence or apprehension of danger, but by the thought of that mysterious power that could convey him so far from home and gran’daddy, and Aunt Carliny without any of their knowledge or consent. So he laid his head upon Dixie’s neck and cried it out and then got upon his feet, once more a practical little mountaineer with a mind curious to see and to understand, a loving heart and willing, eager little hands and feet to wait upon its promptings.
He knew that downward must be homeward and cautiously (less confident now than when guided by that unconscious mentality) he began to grope for his footing. Then again the sound of that axe came cleaving the silence and this time Grover Cleveland heard it as plainly as Dixie did.
He turned to investigate the phenomenon, Dixie following contentedly now that his master was himself again. The undergrowth had become thinner as they had ascended and soon they came out where great trees rose in stately exclusiveness unintruded upon by lesser growths. Here the darkness was less dense, stars looked down through rifts in the leafy canopy, and a little farther up the hill one fixed star gleamed scarcely eight feet from the ground as if intercepted upon an earthward trip and impaled upon a bough. It dispensed only a dim circle of light, but in it the boy could discern the figure of the wood chopper, could even catch an occasional glint reflected from the blade of the swinging axe. He had come up against a fallen tree and he climbed up and sat upon the trunk, hugging his knees while he peered into the gloom.
All at once a suspicion of his whereabouts entered his head and to confirm it he got off the log and made his way to its larger end. Yes, there stood the stump from which it had been cut but recently and green chips littered the ground. He explored farther. Nearby lay another log, just over there another—why they were all about him! He knew perfectly well where he was. On old man Sumter’s hill and these were his grandfather’s walnut trees!
But that man! Why was he here in the dark, dark night chopping away with might and main? The boy made his way toward him, Dixie quiet but alert and as full of curiosity as his master.
That star was a lantern pendant from a chestnut limb; its light shone upon the man’s face. Why it was old man Sumter himself! and that log was the curly walnut, for it was the one highest on the hillside, and he was gashing it all along its length! And he was right mad at that curly too (just like gran’daddy said he was always mad at everything), for he kept talking right ugly to it!
“Hi!” the child sprang forward shouting to the full capacity of his sturdy lungs and caught the old man by the coat tails. “Wake up! oh, wake up! Don’t you see what you’re a-doin’!”
Grover Cleveland tugged and shouted, Dixie barked and leaped and growled and the echoes multiplied the tumult. Stunned by the suddenness of the attack the old man let the axe slip from his hand and backed round against the log. He was feeble, he had been exerting himself beyond his strength and he was frightened too—had it not been for Dixie’s very earthly performance he would have been sure he had met up with a ha’nt.
“What be you anyway?” he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.
“Why I’m Grover Cleveland, gran’daddy’s grandson.”
The boy looked the man over with a face full of compassion. Here was a big man afflicted just as he was, and that fellow-feeling that makes us all so wondrous kind enthralled him.