Part 9

"No," said Isabel; "I simply overheard someone say how you had changed to Lethie; and then, of course, I was distressed to death over being a possible cause of suffering to her. It is really best, perhaps, that you and I should have this talk, and understand each other plainly. I want you to know that I won't permit this feeling you say you have for me to go on, or be spoken about, or even thought of. You must put it instantly out of your mind, unless you want me to leave for home to-morrow; for I'll never stay here and be the cause of suffering to that beautiful child, who already carries so many burdens. Of course she is the one you truly love, deep down in your heart; you have loved her truly, haven't you?"

"I loved her all right, or thought I did, till you come in; then she seemed to me just like you said,--a child,--and I knowed you was the woman for me, the one I had allus heared tell of in song-ballats, and had drempt about all my life. I knowed hit the minute I seed you setting there in the wagon in the middle of Troublesome, with the sunlight sifting down on your hair."

"It was because I was something new and strange," said Isabel. "People have these infatuations, but they don't amount to anything, they don't last. You'll get over it and wonder how you ever could have looked at me. I'm a most ordinary everyday person, but Lethie is beautiful, body and soul."

"Your looks suit me all right," said Fult, shortly. "You said a minute back you liked me immensely. Did you mean hit?"

"I meant just what I said, and no more: like, not love," said Isabel, firmly.

"Well," demanded Fult, tensely, "is there anybody else you _do_ love?"

An unexpected thought of Thomas Vance crossed Isabel's mind, only to be carelessly dismissed. "I can answer you truly, I am not in love with any man; I don't think I am the falling-in-love kind."

Fult veiled a triumphant gleam in his eyes. "Hit's all I want to know," he said. "If you don't already love nobody else, you can learn to love me."

Isabel answered sharply: "Of one thing you may be sure--I'd never let myself love a man who changes so easily as you do, and can be willing to treat a girl as you would treat Lethie."

Fult laughed, as if highly amused. "I'd never change to _you_," he said, with conviction; "I'd never treat _you_ no way but right." Then, leaning toward her with pleading eyes, he said: "I hain't so hard to love, am I?"

Isabel rose. "I have told you what I shall do if you persist in this," she said.

Fult smiled. "I'd foller you down to the level land if you went," he declared. "Hit wouldn't make any difference to me where you was. I don't know but what I'd like hit better down there, without so many people around all the time."

"There would be my father and mother," said Isabel; "and I can tell you they would be very far from approving of you."

"Why?" demanded Fult, in a tone of surprise.

"Because of the wild and reckless things you have done."

Fult threw back his head and laughed aloud.

"Do you allow that would make any difference to me?" he asked. "I wouldn't ax nobody for my wife--if she liked me, I'd take her in the teeth of all the devils of hell! You mind how Earl Brand, and the Elf Knight, and all them other old-time fellows in the ballats done? Well, that's my way. I don't know but what I'd enjoy hit better if I did have to steal you!"

"Mr. Fallon," said Isabel, with dignity, "I see it is useless for us to talk further. Finish the girth and put the saddle on for me, please, and I'll ride on, and get my things together to start home to-morrow."

Fult reached up and gripped her wrist till it hurt.

"Do you think you can get away from me that way?" he said fiercely. "Don't you know I allus have what I want before I finish? That nothing can't stop me?"

The next instant, however, he was another man, calm, gentle, smiling. He released her hand, with the words: "I don't want to bother you none, though, or make you go home. Stay another week, and try me. I'll do like you say--be just friends. I got a lot to do this week, getting out timber, and maybe I can kindly work you off my mind."

"I don't doubt you can if you try," said Isabel; "I'll give you the chance, anyhow. You see, I know I am very much needed in the work here, and really don't want to leave."

He helped her into the saddle, and they rode on as rapidly as possible, in the effort to catch up with the crowd.

VIII

MOONSHINE

The night of the women's return from the funeral occasion, there was again some shooting down in the village, as there had been the night previous; and the women feared that Billy Lee was one of the culprits, as Lethie came up in his place to milk their cow next morning.

They were much troubled; and as Uncle Ephraim Kent, on account of rheumatism, was unable to come to his reading lesson Monday morning, Amy and Virginia, accompanied by Isabel, went across Troublesome after dinner, to consult with him on the subject. The Kent lands extended for a mile or two along the far side of the creek, and Uncle Ephraim's home was in a hollow opposite the village. They crossed on a long footlog, which was chained to a great water-elm on Uncle Ephraim's bank, so that it should not be entirely carried away by "tides."

The old man was sitting just inside the doorway of his ancient log house, trousers rolled up, and his legs, from the knee down, bound in red flannel. His wife placed chairs. It was Isabel's first visit to his home, and her eyes flew at once to the long old muzzle-loading rifle and the strange musical instrument that hung over his "fireboard," and as soon as possible she asked him about them.

The rifle, it appeared, had been the one used by his "grandsir," the old Cap'n, when he "fit under Washington"; the dulcimer he himself had made when a young man courting his first wife (the present one was his second).

"Dulcimores," he said, "used to be the onliest music in this country; the knowledge how to make 'em and pick on 'em was fotched in by our forebears. But banjos and fiddles has nigh run 'em out now."

At Isabel's urging, he picked a tune on the old dulcimer, laying it across his knees and using two quills, one to "note" with, and one to pick with. The music was like the droning of a million mosquitoes.

He said that the old musket was still in use in his young days--that he had killed many a deer with it. "Allus in them days I follered wearing red, because hit makes the deer stand at gaze. And"--pointing to the crimson linsey hunting-jacket that hung on a peg by the door--"I'm still a-wearing hit, though there hain't been a deer seed in these parts for allus. In them early days I never bothered with no shoes, or even moccasins--the soles of my feet was so thick I could easy crush chestnut-burrs with 'em. And many's the time I have laid out all night in the pouring rain and never kotched ary cold. Present-day young folks hain't no account--they have tendered theirselves too much."

He also had his wife get out from a chest his greatest treasure--his grandsir's old yellow, crumbling Bible, "fotched out in his saddlebags when he come acrost from Old Virginny. And which now," he said triumphantly, "I can read myself, nigh as good as him."

So saying, he opened the faded pages at the Twenty-third Psalm, and, with some prompting from Amy at the hard words, read it through proudly.

The women then broached the subject of their visit--the shooting in the village the past two nights.

"I heared hit all," said the old man. "Hit hain't Fult and his crowd, or Darcy and his'n, thank God! but just some of the sprouting-age boys that has got hold of liquor some way, and tuck too much."

"But where do they get the liquor?"

Uncle Ephraim shook his head. "No deeficulty about that," he said. "Stilling most gen'ally starts up pretty prompt atter the crap is laid by. You see, the folks in this country mostly feels they have got a fair right to do what pleases 'em with their corn they have raised, law or no law, and that the Gover'ment hain't got no business meddling. And I don't know but what they got right and jestice on their side, so fur as right and jestice goes. But what I look at is, the devilish harm the liquor does. Casting an eye back over a long lifetime, and the awful wickedness of men, and the general meanness of their manœuvres, I can't hardly ricollect a wrong that didn't have whiskey behind hit or mixed up in hit. The infamious stuff!" he cried, leaning forward in his chair with clenched hands, "hit ought to be buried face downward, unfathomed deep, and writ over the grave, 'No reesurrection'!"

Settling back in his chair after a moment, he continued, in a different voice: "Folks is allus a-counseling me, 'Take a leetle corn-liquor for your rheumatiz'; hit's the holpingest medicine ever was made.' And so hit may be. But I'd sooner stand the pain as to pour that devil's potion down my neck. Now don't you get tore up in your minds over them boys, women. I'll ax around and try to get on the track of where they're getting that liquor."

In the evening, just before the "sing," the women spoke to Fult about the trouble.

"Them boys need to have their necks broke for drinking too much and disturbing your peace that way," he said; "they ought to know when to stop. If I'd a-been in town, I'd a learnt 'em. Hit won't happen no more; I'll put fear in 'em before I leave."

Sure enough, it did not happen again that week, and the women's fears were laid to rest.

So, also, were Isabel's. Fult's behavior toward her during the week was perfect. When he and his crowd rode in from the farm for the late afternoon play-parties, he was friendly and pleasant, chose Lethie and herself impartially for his partners, made no effort whatever to see her alone, either then or after the evening "sings," and did not permit himself so much as a glance that would trouble her. Occasionally he and his friends would be absent at one or the other time; but usually they were on hand, as were also Darcy and his crowd; and the women congratulated themselves that the young men, the dangerous element, were keeping entirely out of trouble.

Every afternoon the heads of the work, Virginia and Amy, continued their walks, visiting the homes up all the creeks and branches within a radius of five or six miles, often not returning until nearly dark. On account of helping with the play-parties in the afternoon and conducting the sings in the evening, Isabel could not join these expeditions, much as she longed to. But when she learned that they proposed going up Noah's Run Saturday afternoon, she declared she would for once desert duty and go along. The previous Saturday a woman from the head of that branch had visited the hill, with a tiny, withered baby in a black calico dress with white polka dots, and the appearance of the poor little creature had so wrought upon Isabel that she determined to follow it up.

Saturday morning she hastily made a little dress and cap from one of her own pretty petticoats, bought the remainder of a very primitive baby outfit down in the village, and was ready to start with the other two women after dinner.

They followed Troublesome for a couple of miles, then turned up the winding branch that bore the name, Noah's Run. Less than a mile from its mouth was a small store, with nags tied to limbs outside, and men sitting on the puncheon benches in front. The storekeeper's home, a neat, weatherboarded house, was the first visited. The wife welcomed the women as old friends, having visited them on the hill, and her nine children also having attended the classes pretty regularly. They asked her, among other things, if typhoid had as yet appeared up her branch; there were already two or three cases of it in the village, where it seemed to be expected as confidently as the coming of summer. She said it had not yet begun on Noah's Run, though everybody was looking for it any day.

"Everybody on the branch is a-trying to stave hit off by dosting up on corn-liquor. A dram all around is what me and my man and all our young-uns takes of a morning and of a night."

To their suggestions that drinking-water be boiled and flies be kept away from food, she was impervious. "Corn-liquor's the shorest way," she said.

Hers was the only house on the branch which had a window, the others being all windowless log cabins.

At the first of these, the mother, fat, flabby, and dirty, claimed to have been unable to visit the hill because of poor health. "I got the breast complaint--some calls hit the galloping consumpt'," she informed them, proudly.

She sat complacently on the small, rotting porch, fanning herself with a turkey-wing, while a dozen tow-headed children (boys wearing a single garment,--a cotton shirt,--girls in ragged cotton dresses) gathered around to stare with steady, unblinking eyes at the strangers; and numerous chickens and ducks, and a large litter of young pigs wandered at will through porch and house.

"I have heared a sight about you quare women, and have longed to lay eyes on you," the invalid said. "The quarest thing I heared was that not nary one of you had a man."

They admitted the truth of this rumor, and she gave them another searching inspection, remarking afterward: "Don't none of you appear to be pining, though--I allow you have got past hit. I've heared old maids has a mighty happy time when they git through strugglin'."

What did she do for her "breast complaint"? Well, a nip of corn-liquor was the "clearingest" thing known for breast and neck. Was it hard to get? Oh, not now, since the crap was laid by.

Were her children in school? No, indeed, there wasn't any school to go to on Noah's Run--never had been. She would like to see her boys get larning--hit holped a man along; but as for gals, she herself had got on without any, and she allowed women were in general better off without it. "Not meaning no disrespect to you that have got hit," she hastened to add. "But you see yourself how hit is--a woman that sets out to ketch larning is mighty apt not to ketch her a man."

On the porch of the next cabin stood a great loom and two spinning wheels. The woman of the house was out in the middle of the branch, washing wool by treading it in a loose basket. She let down her skirts, dried her hands on her apron, and hurried toward the guests, taking them through a clean-swept yard into a clean-swept cabin. Everything was clean--the floor, the chairs, the three fat beds in the room, the broad hearth, her own gnarled hands and striped homespun dress and apron, the shirts of her boys, the faded dresses of her girls. She said she had only seven children at home now, her "main oldest" boy having died a few years back, and her three oldest girls having married. She said this oldest boy had been a "pure scholar"; that although he had never "sot in a schoolhouse" a day in his life, he had in some way got hold of a speller, and taught himself his letters, and before he was through, could spell every word in the book, backwards or forwards, and knew all the reading the same way. If he had lived, it was "ontelling" what heights he would have climbed to.

"Davy there, my thirteen-year-old, he has the like ambition," she said, pointing to a boy whose fine, intelligent face flushed under their gaze. "He'll larn, someway or 'nother, though I don't know how; for, though there's a big mess of young-uns on this branch, there hain't a sign of a school, nor likely to be, 'pears like."

One of the younger boys lay across the foot of one of the beds, with his throat tied up. "He follers having the quinzy," said his mother.

To the question, "What do you do for him?" she replied: "We make him set and rest frequent at corn-hoeing time, and I give him a little corn-liquor to kindly holp him up when hit's handy. He's a smart-turned child, too--all my young-uns is, if they could jest get a chanst."

The next cabin was that of a young pair only three years married, but in this time they had done their utmost in the way of replenishing the earth, as three "least ones" attested. The home following was that of a pair of grandparents, who, having raised one large family, had now started again with eight orphan grandchildren. They and the mother of thirteen in the next cabin expressed fervent wishes that their young should have a chance at learning; and in reply to the question as to what they were doing to prevent typhoid, responded, as others had done, that a little grain of corn-liquor was the best preventive known.

So far, the women had counted fifty-two children on the branch. In the next house there were eleven; and the home of the black calico baby, at the head of the branch, four miles from its mouth, remained to be visited.

Arriving there, they saw the mother beside the branch, "battling" the clothes she had just washed and boiled in a big iron kettle. She would lift them out of the kettle, lay them on a smooth stump, and then beat, or "battle," them with a flat stick. Evidently washboards were an unknown luxury up Noah's Run.

She came forward with joy when she saw the visitors. The wizened baby, still in the black calico dress and a very dirty cap, lay on a pallet beneath a big apple tree, with a swarm of flies hovering over it, which an old, old woman who sat by, smoking a pipe, dispersed every now and then with a leafy switch. She took the pipe from her mouth to gaze at the strangers with all her might.

"Is them the quare women, Phronie?" she asked.

"Hit is," replied Phronie.

"That hain't got ary man amongst 'em?"

"The same," replied Phronie; then, to the visitors, "This here is my maw's old granny that lives with me; she's terrible old--I allow nigh a hunderd. She don't like to live with none of her grands but me."

"Stop talking and set cheers for 'em, Phronie," commanded the old lady, sharply.

Whereupon Phronie went into the house and fetched out two chairs, which, with the one the grandmother sat upon, appeared to be the entire stock. When the other two visitors were seated, Isabel, picking up the poor little baby, from whose eyes the experience and suffering of ages looked out, took her seat on a convenient tree-root, whither the other children, who had scattered like rabbits on the appearance of the women, slowly gathered--nine besides the baby.

Here the old lady, with the remark, "I was about to forgit my manners," made a sudden dive into her pocket and brought forth a cob pipe similar to the one she was smoking, and a twist of tobacco, handing them to Virginia, with the invitation, "Take a smoke."

"Thank you," said Virginia, "but I don't smoke."

"Don't you now? Well, that's quare--I'd larn hit if I was you. My ole granny used to look so pretty a-smoking, I kotched hit from her, same as I kotched my trade."

"She follers doctoring women when their time comes," explained Phronie.

"Me and my ole granny together has brung very nigh all the babes that come to this country for a hunderd year," boasted the old woman. "But, women, if you don't smoke, take a chaw."

"No, thanks, I believe not."

The old soul looked crestfallen. "I allow you foller chawing manufact', and this here hain't nothing but home-made," she apologized.

"No, I should prefer this to manufactured if I took it at all," Virginia assured her; and to Phronie she said: "Tell us more about your baby. How old is it?"

"Well, women," said Phronie, in a surprised tone, "I don't rightly know. Hit were borned quite a spell before corn-crapping time--about three or four week, weren't hit, granny?"

"Nigher five," granny replied. "I ricollect hit by the dark of the moon."

"Then it's around four months old?"

"I reckon. But hit hain't growed none sence the day hit come."

"Has it been sick?"

"No, hit don't appear to be--never hollers or cries none; I never seed a civiler baby. Hit jest lays and pines and pindles."

"Do you nurse it yourself?"

"Give hit suck, you mean? Yes, I allus have a plenty for two young-uns. And hit'll mostly take the teat all right, but will jest kindly mouth hit, and not suck hearty like t'other young-uns."

"What do you do for it?"

"Nary thing on earth but give hit good corn-liquor reg'lar. I seed from the start hit was puny-like, and commenced right off dosting hit generous, four or five times a day, to holp up its stren'th and wake up hit's appetite."

"To holp up hit's stren'th and wake up hit's appetite," echoed the old granny, in her high, cracked voice; "hain't nothing like good corn-liquor, for young or old."

"And hit was hard to get, too, at corn-crapping time," complained Phronie; "but," virtuously, "I alius managed to get some."

"If I were you, I would not give it any more," said Amy. "Doctors nowadays say it is very bad for babies, and stunts their growth and poisons them badly. Suppose you try for a couple of weeks not giving it any."

Phronie and granny looked at her in open-mouthed amazement.

"Phronie," said the old lady at last, "these here quare women has got a sight of book-larning, and if they was to spend their opinions on books, I'd listen at 'em. But what does a passel of old maids, that hain't got a baby to their names, know about babies?"

Phronie's objection was on a different ground. "Hit would look too mean," she said, "for me to drink hit myself and not give none to my child."

"Try leaving it off yourself, and see if your milk won't agree better with the baby," suggested Virginia.

But the old lady spoke authoritatively: "Hain't nothing like liquor for nursing mothers."

The women were silenced. But Isabel opened her bundle and exhibited the things she had brought for the baby, and asked if she might give it a warm bath and dress it up.

Phronie immediately set things going. Two of the boys were ordered to chop wood and make up again the fire under the big kettle, another to draw water from the well; one of the little girls ran for the family towel, another for the soft soap, another for the dishpan. And there, under the apple tree, in the dishpan, Isabel gave the poor little skeleton baby the first comfortable bath it had ever had in its life, drying it afterward, not with the soiled, stiff family towel, but with one of the soft rags she had brought. She bathed it, all but its head--for on this point granny and Phronie were adamant. To wash a babe's head, or leave off its cap, under a year, was certain death. "And I love my child too good to run ary risk," said Phronie. The best Isabel could do was to put the clean cap on the dirty little head.

The small creature looked up at her gratefully out of its age-old eyes, and rewarded her by going to sleep in her arms.

Phronie insisted that the women should stay to supper, the afternoon being about gone. They had brought sandwiches with them in case of a late return, but accepted her invitation.

Four or five of the children then ran down a chicken, which Phronie killed and fried. She also warmed up a pot of string beans, and made biscuits and coffee, and the visitors sat down to a plentiful supper, occupying the three chairs, while Ben, Phronie's husband, sat on the churn, and the nine children, not greedy and grabbing as most would have been, but always quiet and "civil," stood and ate. The women felt it to be a shame that such well-behaved and apparently bright children should be six miles away from a schoolhouse, and entirely cut off from opportunity.