Title: The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage
Author: MacGowan, Alice
Language: English
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The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

By

Alice MacGowan

Author of
"Judith of the Cumberlands," "The Last Word," "Huldah,"
"Return," etc.

With Illustrations in Colour by Robert Edwards

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1909

Copyright, 1909

ALICE MacGOWAN

The Knickerbocker Press, New York


To

Emma Bell Miles

WHO COULD WITHOUT DOUBT HAVE WRITTEN

MUCH BETTER THIS STORY OF HER OWN HOME COUNTRY

THE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

BY

The Author



CONTENTS

I. A Pair of Haggards 1

II. The Up-Sitting 19

III. The Burying 39

IV. A Dance and a Serenade 50

V. The Asking 70

VI. The Wedding 88

VII. Lance's Laurel 104

VIII. The Infare 124

IX. The Interloper 140

X. Poverty Pride 154

XI. "Long Sweetenin'" 168

XII. "What Shall He Have Who Killed the Deer?" 182

XIII. Broken Chords 193

XIV. Roxy Griever's Guest 211

XV. A Stubborn Heart 223

XVI. Lance Cleaverage's Son 237

XVII. The Coasts of the Island 247

XVIII. The Hegira 266

XIX. Callista Cleaverage Goes Home 277

XX. Drawn Blank 293

XXI. Flenton Hands 300

XXII. The Speech of People 309

XXIII. Buck Fuson's Idea 321

XXIV. Silenced 330

XXV. The Flight 340

XXVI. Roxy Griever 345

XXVII. In Hiding 357

XXVIII. The Sheriff Scores 371

XXIX. The Island at Last 377


Illustrations

"I was just a-studyin' on the matter." Frontispiece

"A Face, Passion-Pale, was Raised to him, and Eager, Tremulous
Lips Met his." 66

"You'll Marry us now--or not at all." 98

"He Placed the Instrument in Ola's Grasp." 202

"He Gazed long at Callista's Face on the Pillow." 246

"He Broke off, Staring with Open Mouth." 336



The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage



CHAPTER I.

A PAIR OF HAGGARDS.



NOON of summer in the highlands of Tennessee; the Cumberlands,
robed in the mid-season's green, flashed here and there with
banding and gemming of waters. The two Turkey Track Mountains,
Big and Little, lying side by side and one running so evenly
from the other that only the dweller upon them knew where to
differentiate, basked in the full glow of a Sabbath morning
radiance.

A young fellow of twenty-three, crossing the crown of a higher
hill, tonsured years ago by the axe of some settler, but offering
half way up its side resistance of undergrowth and saplings,
paused a moment in the open to look down. Below him the first
church bell had just rung in the little gray structure across
the creek. Shining above the ocean of woods and the cabin homes
that, like islets, dotted the forest at wide intervals, the Sabbath
sun caught and lightened upon something [2] bright, swung upon the
newcomer's back. Himself as yet unseen, he gazed down upon this
his world, spread map-like below him. He could pick out everybody's
home. Each one of those cabins wore to-day, from porch floors
hollowed with much scouring to inner cupboard niche, an air of
Sunday expectancy that lacked little of being sanctimonious. Only
the house-mother remained in charge of each, preparing the Sunday
company dinner with even more outlay of energy than the preceding
six had required. The men had, by common consent, adjourned to
spring, barn, the shelter of big trees in the yard; he caught
glimpses of the young folks below him on the woods-paths, attired
in their brightest frocks and shirts, and whatever finery they
could command, sauntering by twos and threes toward preaching.
His smiling, impersonal gaze was aware of Callista Gentry sitting
on a rock above the spring, holding a sort of woodland state like
a rustic queen. The time of roses was past in this southern land,
but every dooryard in the Turkey Tracks was painted gay with
hollyhocks, while in ravine and thicket flamed the late azaleas,
ranging from clear pale yellow, through buff and orange, to crimson.
These lay piled in a sheaf beside the big gray rock, and the girl
who sat there was showing her mates how to trim their hats with
them, while several boys looked on and presumably admired. [3]

The curious feature of Callista Gentry's following was, that it
included as many young women as young men, and the chariot
wheels of her mates looked robbed always, because, inferentially,
the man who courted any other would rather have Callista Gentry
if he might.

Coached and forwarded, exploited and made the most of ever since
she could remember; a bright, pretty child, and a dutiful student,
during her brief days of country schooling; her mother had from
infancy enforced all the rural arts of beauty culture to make
her what she was. Long home-knitted yarn gloves were worn to
protect the shapely hands and whiten them. The grand big mane of
ashen-blond hair was washed in fresh-caught rainwater, clipped
in the dark of the moon, combed and tended and kept as no one
else's hair was. Her sunbonnets were never the long-caped ungainly
affairs commonly seen; they took on, whether by accident or design
one could hardly say, the coquetry of a wood violet half-blown;
and when these were not in use, a broad hat shaded the exquisite
fairness of the oval cheek. Callista had grown up a delicate court
lady, smooth and fine to look upon, pink and white and golden, like
one of those rare orchids, marvelously veined and featured, known
only to the bees of the wood, whose loveliness is always ashiver
with peculiar vitality. This Sunday morning the lepidopteral
flutter of gay calicoes, and the bee-like murmur [4] of young male
voices in her court of youths and maidens, carried out well the
figure of the rare, moth-bewitching blossom.

"I wish't Lance Cleaverage'd come--then we'd see fun!" cried
Buck Fuson, rising to his knees and gazing across the slope.
"I'd ruther hear him and Callista fuss as to eat my dinner.
Them two has the masterest arguments I ever heared outside
of a law-court."

Brown little Ola Derf, sitting slightly apart from the others
braiding pine needles into a ring, looked up suddenly. A woman
at the spring below scooping a drink for a fat child, lifted a long
drab face and sighted in the same direction. This was the Widow
Griever, elder sister of Lance Cleaverage. Sour censor of public
morals that she was, Roxy Griever considered eighteen-year-old
Callista the young woman perfect, and found her own brother quite
unworthy of the paragon. Only the central figure of the group
appeared to take no notice, while the girls about her, at the
mere mention of Lance, all fluttered and resettled themselves
with a certain vague air of expectancy.

"You boys ought to be ashamed of yo'se'fs," Roxy Griever
reproved. Then apart to young Fuson, "Callista's got more sense
than to pay any attention to such a light-headed somebody as
that fool brother o' mine. Let me tell you, Callista Gentry has
more sense than any of you [5] men persons give her credit for.
She's a serious-minded gal. You Mary Ann Marthy, you quit
treadin' over yo' Sunday shoes." And she raised her small daughter
a bit from the pathway and set her down sharply, as though to
indicate the correct manner of walking in Sunday foot-gear.

The infant of the triple name--her Uncle Lance said she sounded
like twins if she didn't look it--put up a mutinous red mouth
and lowered from under flaxen brows.

"Me wants to hear 'em fuss," she muttered as she progressed
reluctantly toward the little church on the hill-side.

"Well, you ain't goin' to hear 'em fuss, and they ain't goin' to
fuss, and you couldn't hear 'em if they did," admonished her
mother lucidly, accelerating the infant's pace from the rear.
"The big spring ain't no place for chillen like you, and old
women like me. Let the light-minded and the ungodly do about in
such ef they will. You and me is goin' into the church house and
set thar till preachin'."

Fathers and mothers were herding their broods of lesser children
in, but boys and girls of older growth, young men and women of
an age to be thinking of mating, strolled by twos or sat on the
bank above the big spring that supplied the baptismal pool of
Brush Arbor church. Callista Gentry was wearing a new print
frock--and looking quite unconscious of the fact. [6]

"That ain't no five cent lawn," whispered Ola Derf enviously,
as she eyed it from afar. The Derf girl was an outsider at most
gatherings, and particularly so at church affairs. Everybody
knew she came to Brush Arbor only on a chance of seeing Lance
Cleaverage.

"Thar comes Lance now!" announced Fuson, and then winked at his
companions.

Callista never raised her glance, nor did the even tenor of her
speech falter, though something told the onlooker that she was
aware. A swift slight contraction of plumage like that of a hawk
suddenly on the alert, a richer glow on the softly oval cheek, a
light in the down-dropped eyes which she jealously hid, a
rearrangement, subtle and minute, of her attitude toward the
world, showed that she needed no sight nor hearing to advise her
of the coming of the lithe young fellow who approached from the
ragged second growth of the abandoned hillside clearing. He came
straight through, paying no attention to paths--that was Lance
Cleaverage. His step was light and sure, yet it rent and crushed
what was in his way. On his back swung the banjo; his soft felt
hat was off in his hand; as he moved, the sleeves of his blue
hickory shirt fluttered in the breeze that stirred his hair, and
he sang to himself as he came. What he sang was not a hymn. His
hazel eyes were almost as golden as the tan of his cheek, and
there was a spark [7] in the depths of them that matched the
audacious carriage of his head. At his advent the Widow Griever
turned and let the fat child find her way alone.

"You Lance," she began in a scandalized tone, "don't you bring
that sinful and ungodly thing into the house of the Lord. You
know mighty well and good the preacher is about to name you out
in meetin'; and here you go on seekin' the ways of the Evil One.
Pack that banjo straight back home this minute."

She evidently had as little expectation of Lance obeying her as
he had of doing so. Her words were plainly intended merely to
set forth her own position--to clear her skirts of reproach. The
young folks about her giggled and looked with open admiration at
the youth who dared to bring such a worldly object to Sunday
preaching.

"Banjo'll let the preacher alone, if the preacher'll let it
alone," smiled Lance, unconcernedly pulling the instrument
around to get at the strings, and touching them lightly. "You go
'long into the church and get your soul saved for Heaven, Sis'
Roxy. I reckon they need representatives of the Cleaverage
family in both places."

"Well, that's whar you're a-goin'--er more so," asserted the
widow with dignity, as she turned her back once more on the
young folks and moved away. [8]

Lance took the ribbon of his banjo from his neck and flung it
over a blossoming azalea bush.

     "I'll hang my harp on a willer tree,
      And away to the wars again,"

he hummed softly just above his breath.

"I don't aim to hurt the preacher's feelings. I won't take my
banjo into his church--sech doctrine as Drumright's is apt to be
mighty hard on banjo strings. Don't you-all want to have a
little dance after the meeting's out--on the Threshin'-floor
Rock up the branch?"

The girls looked duly horrified, all but Ola Derf, who spoke up
promptly,

"Yes--or come a-past our house. Pap don't mind a Sunday dance.
You will come, won't you, Lance?" pleadingly.

Callista Gentry did not dance. She had always, in the nature of
things, belonged to the class of young people in the mountains
who might be expected at any time to "profess" and join the
church. The musician laughed teasingly.

"I reckon we'd better not," he said finally. "Callista's scared.
She begged me into bringing my banjo to-day (you don't any of
you know the gal like I do), and now she's scared to listen to
it."

Callista barely raised her eyes at this speech, and spared to
make any denial.

"You-all that wants to dance on a Sunday [9] better go 'long
there," she said indifferently. "It's mighty near time for
preaching to begin, and you've got a right smart walk over to
the Derf place." Dismissing them thus coolly from her world, she
addressed herself once more to pinning a bunch of ochre and
crimson azaleas into the trimming of her broad hat.

"Lance," drawled Buck Fuson, "I hear you' cuttin' timber on yo'
land. Aimin' to put up a cabin--fixin' to wed?"

The newcomer shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply.

"When I heared it, I 'lowed Callista had named the day,"
persisted Fuson.

"Have ye, Callista?" Rilly Trigg put in daringly, as neither of
the principals seemed disposed to speak.

"The names that the days have already got suits me well enough,"
Callista observed drily. "I don't know why I should go namin'
ary one of 'em over again."

There was a great laugh at this, of which Cleaverage appeared
entirely oblivious.

"Yes," he began quietly, when it had subsided, "I'm about to put
me up a house--I like to be a-buildin'--a man might as well
improve his property. There's one gal that wants me mighty bad,
and has wanted me for a long while; sometimes I'm scared she'll
get me. Reckon I might as well be ready." [10]


"Ye hear that, Callisty?" crowed little Rilly Trigg. "Ye hear
that! Have ye told him adzackly the kind of house ye want? I
'low ye ort."

"Put a little yellow side o' that red," advised Callista
composedly, busying herself wholly with the hat Rilly was
trimming. "There--don't you think that looks better?"

Rilly made a face at Fuson and Cleaverage, and laughed.

"No need to ask her which nor whether," said Lance nonchalantly.
"Any place I am is bound to suit Callista. I intend that my
house shall be the best in the Turkey Tracks; but if it wasn't
she'd never find it out, long as _I_ was there."

Again there was a chorus of appreciative laughter.

"How's that, Callista--is it so for a fact?" inquired Fuson,
eager to see the game go on.

Callista opened her beautiful eyes wide, and smiled with lazy
scorn.

"Truly, I'm suited with whatever Lance Cleaverage builds, and
wherever and whenever he builds. Let it be what it may, it's
nothing to me."

"You Rilly!" called a shrill feminine voice from the direction
of the church. "Bring the basket."

"Help me with it, Buck," said Aurilla, and the two started down
the slope together.

"Now," suggested Lance, with an affectation of reluctance, "if
the rest of you-all don't mind giving us the place here, I
reckon Callista's got [11] a heap that she wants to say to me,
and she's ashamed to speak out before folks."

The mad project of a Sunday dance, which nobody but Ola Derf had
entertained for a moment, was thus tacitly dropped. There was a
general snickering at Lance's impudent assumption. Again
Callista seemed too placidly contemptuous to care to make
denial. Boys got up from their lounging positions on the grass,
girls shook out their skirts, and two and two the young folks
began to straggle toward the gray little church.

"You're a mighty accommodatin' somebody," observed Lance,
dropping lightly on the grass at Callista's feet. "I have been
told by some that you'd make a contentious wife; but looks to me
like you're settin' out to be powerful easy goin'. Ain't got a
word to say about how many rooms in the house, nor whar the
shelves is to be, nor nothin'--eh?"

Reckless of time or place he reached up, put a finger under her
chin, and turned her face toward him, puckering his lips
meditatively as though he meant to kiss her--or to whistle. He
got a swift, stinging slap for his pains, and Callista faced
around on the rock where she sat to put herself as far from him
as might be.

"Who said anything about wives and husbands?" she demanded. "I
was talking about you building on yo' land. Hit's nothin' to me.
I never expect to live in the houses you build, [12] nor so much
as set foot in 'em. When you named that girl that was tryin' to
wed you, I shorely thought you must have been meanin' Ola Derf.
As for me, if you heard me talkin' of the house I expected to
_live_ in, you'd hear a plenty--because I'm particular. I ain't
a-going to put up with no puncheon floor in my best room. Hit's
got to be boards, and planed at that. I ain't a-goin' to break
my back scouring puncheons for no man."

Lance nodded, with half closed eyes. It was plain he got her
message. One guessed that the house would be made to please her,
and, too, that he liked her the better for being fastidious.

The two were apparently alone together; but neither Ola Derf nor
Flenton Hands was among the young people moving away down the
further slope. Lance gazed after their retreating friends and
heaved a lugubrious sigh.

"Well, looks like they've all started off and left me for you
and you for me," he commented sadly.

"Have they?" inquired Callista without interest. "They show
mighty poor judgment."

"Same sort of judgment I'm showing, settin' here talking to you,
when I might as well spend my time with a good-lookin' gal,"
retorted Lance promptly.

"The Lord knows you waste yo' time talking to me," Callista sent
back to him with a musing, [13] unruffled smile on her finely
cut lips. "Your settin' up to me would sure be foolishness."

"Settin' up to you?"--Lance took his knees into an embrace and
looked quizzically at her as she reclined above him, milk-white
and pink, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, a creature to cuddle and
kiss one would have said, yet with a gall-bag under her tongue
for him always. "Me settin' up to you?" He repeated the words
with a bubble of apparently unsubduable amusement in his tone.
"I reckon you're a-doin' the settin' up; everybody seems to
understand it so. I just mentioned that the rest of the folks
had left you and me alone together, and I was goin' on to say
that I began to suffer in the prospect of offerin' you my
company up to the church-house. Lord, some gals will make
courtin' out of anything!"

A subdued snicker sounded from the screen of leafage behind the
spring. Several young people lingered there for the fun of
hearing Lance Cleaverage and Callista Gentry fuss. The red began
to show itself in the girl's smooth, fair cheeks. She caught her
wide hat by its strings and got suddenly to her feet.

"Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Lance Cleaverage," she said
coldly, "I never took enough notice of you to see was you
courtin' me or some other girl; and I'll thank you now to step
yourself out of my way and let me get on to the church-house.
I've got to lead the tribble, come service time. I [14] can't
stand fooling here with you, nor werry my-self to notice are
you courting me or somebody else."

She held her graceful head very high. If she swung the hat by
its strings a thought too rapidly, it was the only sign she gave
of any excitement as she gained the path.

Cleaverage ranged himself beside her, leaving the banjo in the
bushes. "All right--all right," he remarked in a pacifying tone.
"I'm willin' to walk up to the door with you, if that's what's
troublin' you so greatly; but I don't want to go in and sit
alongside of you on the middle seats. You take your place on the
women's side, like a good gal, and let me have some peace,
settin' over with the men."

For a moment she was dumb. Half a dozen had pushed into view,
and were listening to them now. They all understood that Lance
knew well enough she must sit with the singers, yet his open
refusal to accompany her to the middle seats, where the courting
couples generally found place, was not the less galling.

"Tell him you won't never step yo' foot in church beside him,
Callista," prompted a man's voice, and Flenton Hands stepped out
on the path, twisting a bit of sassafras in his fingers and
looking from one to the other with quick shiftings of his gray
eyes.

Lance laughed radiantly but soundlessly, his [15] face and eyes
shining with mirthful defiance. The girl looked down and trifled
with her hat ribbons.

"Why don't you say it?" inquired Cleaverage at length. Hands
leaned forward and stared eagerly at her, his mouth a little
open and his breath coming quick. He had always been the most
pertinacious of Callista's followers; an older man than any of
the others, he brought to bear on his wooing the persistence and
determination of his years.

Callista just glanced at the younger man, and let her gaze rest
on Hands.

"What's the use of telling him what he already knows mighty well
and good?" she said finally.

"Give me the pleasure of walking up with you this morning,
then," Hands encroached eagerly.

With negligent composure Callista looked about her. She was not
willing to walk with Lance--she doubted if he would ask her
again. She was not willing to discredit him and go with Hands.
She was determined that Cleaverage should not walk with another
girl.

"Come on, Ola," she coolly addressed the figure plainly to be
seen behind Hands. "Let's you and me hurry over and see what
hymns Brother Drumright is going to use. You sing mighty good
counter, and I'd like to have you next to me."

Ola Derf could not refuse. It was almost equal to social
rehabilitation to be allowed to walk with Callista Gentry from
the spring to the church, to [16] sit beside her in the singing
seats; yet the brown girl cast uneasy glances backward till she
saw Lance, whistling melodiously, turn to the blooming azalea
bush and catch up his banjo from it. She stopped in her tracks,
holding Callista back.

"Whar--whar ye gwine, Lance?" she inquired anxiously. If
Cleaverage was not coming to church it would scarcely be worth
while for her to torture herself with an hour of old Preacher
Drumright's holding forth. "Whar ye gwine?" she reiterated, as
the other girl pulled her sleeve and attempted to hurry on.

"Whar you and Callista ca'n't come," returned Lance, speaking
over his shoulder unceremoniously.

"Ain't ye gwine to stay to preachin'?" persisted the brown girl.
"I--I thought ye was, or I--ain't ye gwine to stay?"

"No," drawled Cleaverage. "I just brought the banjo to please
Callista--because I promised her I would, when she begged me to.
I had no notion of staying to listen to Drumright."

"Come on--if you're a-coming," Callista admonished the Derf
girl with a little flash of temper which Lance did not fail to
observe, any more than she missed the chuckle with which he
received it.

"Well, I'm a-goin' with ye," announced Ola. She let go
Callista's arm, and turned back to where Lance was taking a
shadowy path into the forest.

"I told you, gals couldn't come," Cleaverage bantered her. But
Ola persisted. [17]

"I can go wherever you can go. Lance--wait! Wait for me--I'm
a-comin'."

"Callista'll be mad," objected Cleaverage. "She begged and
begged me, and I wouldn't leave her come along of me; now if I
take you, she'll be mad."

"Like I cared where you went or who went with you!" Callista
retorted, eyes shining blue fire, head crested. "Come on, Mr.
Hands, it's time we were stepping, if we want to get in to go
through the hymns."

"And you will sit alongside of me?" Hands's voice pleaded close
to her ear.

Ola and Lance were of the same age; the blond girl, lingering
half indignant, could remember how hardy, free little Ola Derf
used to play with the boys, always singling Lance Cleaverage out
as the companion for her truant expeditions. Now in mute denial
of Hands's petition, Callista shook her head, and in doing so
managed to glance round and get a tormenting glimpse of Ola and
Lance disappearing together between the trees. Under the green
domes of oak and liriodendron, the latter starred all over now
with orange-tawny tulips, she saw them pass. Wine of summer was
in the veins of the forest. Even the sober oaks, wreathed like
bacchanals, overflowed with sweetness from their wrappings of
wild grape. The two with the banjo took their way down a steep
path toward a jade-green pool, a still reach [18] of water arched
over by fantastic tangles of laurel and rhododendron, black
as the tents of Kedar, lighted only by the flash of a water-fall
that caught the sun. This was the baptismal place.

The daughter of the house of Gentry turned her face resolutely
toward respectability and the church, albeit there was no joy in
the countenance. Strung out over a quarter of a mile were
courting couples bent toward the same destination. To these
young hearts it seemed well worth while to have lain under the
heel of winter to attain this marvelous summer morning with its
green-clothed forest, its wreathing of blossoms where they
passed. Clean and cool as a bell's note, the song of a thrush
deep in the wood spilled jeweled drops of sound through the
trembling branches overhead. A catbird's sonata rippled boldly
out upon the very path. A canopy of bloom was woven and flung
over the spring by the black, knotty fingers of the laurel. Bees
tumbled happily in the bosom of the fairest drooping clusters,
their hum nearly drowned by the heavy gurgle of the creek water.

Callista drew in her breath sharply. Summer and sun and light
and love everywhere--and she was walking up to the church-house
with Flenton Hands, while back on some forest by-path, with
music at his finger ends and Ola Derf beside him, Lance
Cleaverage forgot her with a laugh.



CHAPTER II.

THE UP-SITTING.



GRANNY YEARWOOD--the grandmother of Flenton Hands and his
sisters--was dead. The work-hardened old body had parted with
its flame of life reluctantly; for nearly a year she had been
declining toward the end; and during the last months the family
had cared for her almost day and night. They were worn out with
the toil of it before she herself wore out. But now it was all
over. The first outburst of noisy lamentation, which is fairly
conventional in the Southern mountains, was past. The corpse had
been decently composed on a rude plank scaffold, while Octavia
Gentry and Roxy Griever took charge of the household and began
to order things in that curious half-ecclesiastical fashion
which follows the footsteps of death.

It was near noon, and Octavia dished up the dinner, while Roxy
paid more attention to the impending funeral arrangements. Before
the meal was over, young people began to come in, though none
could quite say how they had received word. The girls made proffer
of assistance, and swiftly the table was cleared away, the dishes
washed, and the house and surroundings put in immaculate  [20] order.
Work in the fields was stopped, that messengers might be sent, one
on horseback to notify distant-dwelling kin, another with a wagon
to buy the coffin down in Hepzibah, a third afoot to arrange with
the strong young men of the family connection about helping to dig
the grave. All the flowers in the dooryard were gathered and laid
round the corpse. The withered old face was covered with a damp
cloth, and then a borrowed sheet was drawn smoothly over the whole
mound. The Widow Griever was so deeply versed in the etiquette of
such occasions, and so satisfyingly exacting on all points, as to
make an undertaker even more highly superfluous than he would
usually have been among those simple folk. What with garments and
accessories she had brought from her own scant widow's wardrobe,
and articles hastily borrowed from the nearer neighbors, she
managed inside of two hours to have Little Liza and her two
sisters--the mother of the family was dead some years ago--clad
in black and seated in state inferior only to that of the dead.

More flowers were brought by girls and small boys from the
neighbors' yards--yellow and purple and red were the colors
mostly in bloom now, and those which would have been favored for
this occasion. Roxy gravely arranged them and set them in place.
She had veiled the looking-glass and stopped the clock as soon
as she came into the house. [21]

"A body cain't be too careful about all these here things," she
said with a solemn sniff. "Hit's easy at a time like this for
something to be did that crosses the luck."

Women came and went through the open doors, silent almost as
the little breeze that played between. Everybody wore the same
expression of mournful acquiescence in the natural order of things.
Greetings were exchanged in low tones. Callista, carrying a basket
of garden asters, came up the front walk, looking openly for her
mother, guarding a little warily against Flenton Hands's approach.
Some girls hurrying out to seek ferns in the low places of the wood
met her, and she turned back with them, joining her activities to
theirs and making a wreath of the flowers she had brought.

Flenton Hands was thirty years old. To have arrived at this age
unmarried is, in the mountains, in some measure a reproach.
True, he aligned himself sharply with the religious element of
the community, and this, when youthful masculinity is ever apt
to choose the broad way where there is more company, bespoke for
him a certain indulgence or toleration that would have been
denied a typical old bachelor.

He was cantankerous old Preacher Drumright's right hand at all
times, and Drumright was safe always to approve him. He was the
kind of man who seeks the acquaintance and company of those [22]
well-to-do and older than himself, paying a sober court to
respectability and money, and thus coming eventually to be rated
as one of the elders, while he yet held the dubious position of
an unmarried male who shilly-shallied in the matter of wedding.

No actual scandal ever attached to Flenton Hands. If there were
improprieties to be debited against him, he kept such matters
out of the sight of Turkey Track people, and only a vague rumor
of something discreditable associated itself with his Valley
connections to warrant young girls in pouting their lips and
referring to him as "that old Flenton Hands"; while their mothers
reproved and told them that he was one of the best young men, as
well as one of the best matches, in the neighborhood.

So far as personal appearance went, he was well enough, yet with
a curious suggestion of solidity as though his flesh might have
been of oak or iron. The countenance, too, with its round, high
cheek-bones, had an unpleasing immobility, resting always in a
somewhat slyish cast of expression which the odd slant of the
light gray eyes gave to it. For the rest, he was thin-lipped,
with thick, straight, dark hair, and an almost urban air of
gentlemanliness, an effort at gentility which, in a shorter and
more cheerful individual, would have been smug.

"Flenton's gone for the coffin," Sallie Blevins [23] said. "He
always tends to it when there's anything to do that calls for
money to be spent."

"I reckon he's got a plenty," supplied little Rilly Trigg; "but
someway I never could like his looks greatly. There, I oughtn't
to have said that--and his granny laying dead in the house
that-a-way."

Callista did not add her opinion to this discussion, but finding
that she was in no danger of meeting Flenton, hurried the others
promptly up to the house. As soon as she came in sight, Little
Liza, six feet tall, with a jimber-jaw and bass voice, came and
fell upon her neck and wept. Little Liza Hands got her
descriptive adjective from being the third of the name. To-day
she was especially prominent, because Granny Yearwood, the first
Eliza, ninety pounds of fiery energy and ambition, had at last
laid down the burden of her days. Her daughter, Eliza the
second, had lain beside her husband, Eliphalet Hands, in
churchyard mold these twenty years; and _her_ big daughter, with
the bovine profile, the great voice, and the timid, fluttered
soul of a small child, remained in the world, the only Eliza
Hands--yet still Little Liza to those about her. And for her
name's sake, Little Liza was chief mourner.

The Hands girls all had a sort of adoring attitude toward
Callista Gentry. Flenton wanted her, and they had been trying to
get Flenton everything he wanted since he was small enough to
[24] cry for the moon, and strike at the hand which failed to
pluck it down for him. Callista had not intended to stay. She
was to be over later in the day--or the same night, rather--with
the young people who sat up. But Little Liza managed to detain
her on one pretext or another until the coffin arrived and
Granny was finally placed therein.

"Just look at them thar shiny trimmin's on that thar coffin,"
admired Little Liza, jogging Callista's elbow. "That's Flent.
That's my brother Flent. They ain't a thing he grudges to them
he loves."

Callista uttered a soothing and satisfactory reply, and was
making her escape, when Hands himself overtook her at the door.
His features were drawn to an expression of great solemnity, one
which suited them ill, for he had the upslanting brow, the
pointed face and the narrow eye that, lightened by mirth, may be
antic, but without the touch of humor is forbidding and even
sinister.

"You're not going to leave us, air you?" he inquired in a
carefully muffled tone, as though indeed Granny was sleeping
lightly and might be easily wakened.

"Mother's going to stay now, and I'm coming back to-night,"
Callista hastened to say.

"I'm mighty glad you air," returned Flenton, with a heavy sigh.
"In these times of affliction, [25] hit's a powerful comfort to
me to have you in sight."

Callista edged closer to the others. She was not unwilling to be
seen standing whispering with Flenton. He was a good match, a
creditable captive of any girl's bow and spear; yet she did not
enjoy his love-making, least of all now that it was mingled with
this ill-sorted solemnity.

"Flenton, have they sent word to your Uncle Billy's folks?"
asked Octavia Gentry, making her appearance in the doorway
behind the two.

"Yes'm," returned Flenton, not pleased to be interrupted, yet
necessarily civil to the woman whom he hoped to have for a
mother-in-law.

"And does the Bushareses and Adam Venable and his wife know hit?
Is Mary a-comin'?" she pursued the catalog. "What about the
Aspel Yearwoods out in Big Buck Gap--has anyone went out there?
And Faithful Yearwood, that married Preacher Crowley--ain't they
livin' down in the Tatum neighborhood?"

"Yes'm, they air," confirmed Flenton. "Cousin Ladd 'lowed to
send one o' his chaps on a nag to Faithful Crowley's folks; and
Ab Straley was to let them at Big Buck Gap know." Though
impatient, he made a decent end. When he looked around, Callista
had quietly moved away.

The day's work was over; men and boys began to arrive at the
Hands place, some carrying lanterns. [26] From early candle
lighting till near the turn of the night the house would be
full; then the elders, men and women on whose day labor a family
must depend, would begin to slip away, except a few old widowers
and bachelors who might remain smoking on the steps outside; and
a circle of young folks who would be left sitting in the lamplight
and fireshine of the main room. Flenton knew of old experience just
how the night would go. He longed inexpressibly to be one of those
up-sitting young people that he might push his chair close to
Callista Gentry's and whisper to her in the privilege of the hour.
Yet he was held back by a consideration for his dignity as one of
the bereaved.

"Miz. Gentry," said Roxy Griever, "will you stay and he'p with
the supper--they aim to have a reg'lar meal put on the table at
about midnight--settin' up with the dead is mighty wearin'."

"I 'low the gals would rather tend to that theirselves,"
deprecated Octavia, mildly. "I mind how it was when I was a gal.
I never did want some old women pesterin' around at sech a
time."

She cast a swift glance to where Callista sat, her fair head
bent, the lamplight upon its bright burden of corn-colored
braids, Lance Cleaverage, his hands in his pockets, standing
before the girl regarding her, and evidently about to say
something. [27]

The Widow Griever's look followed Octavia's to the front room in
which half-a-dozen couples had paired off, whispering, giggling
a bit if the truth must be told, with an occasional undernote of
hysteria in the giggles.

"That's jest the reason," she announced, straightening up from
the hearth where she had been stirring a vast boiler full of
very strong coffee. "The gals that lets tham men have their way
is foolish. They'll rue the day they done so. Men persons would
always have the old folks leave, and the young folks run things
to suit theirselves; but I don't believe in sech."

On the mental horizon of the Widow Griever there hovered ever a
vast, dun, evil-promising cloud known as "tham men." She never
alluded to the opposite sex in any way other than collectively,
and named them in this manner, which held in it all of reproach.
Her father--gentle soul--presented himself to her under the name
of Poppy, as somewhat set apart from the raging mass of predatory
males addressed more or less openly and directly to destruction.
Poppy and a young brother, Sylvanus, though belonging to the
vicious sex and thereby under suspicion, were possible; but Lance,
the lawless and debonair, was not only one of the enemy--he was
Roxy Griever's horrible example. The church-house where "tham
men" were kept on the one side so that the gentler half of creation
might sit peacefully [28] on the other, was to her thinking the
only safe and proper place of public gathering.

"I tell you, Miz. Gentry," she now pursued, her reprehending eye
going past the person she answered to fasten itself on Lance's
lounging figure and note the careless, upward fling of his head,
"I tell you that I ain't never been back to the Settlement sence
I left it a widder. What would I be doin' down thar amongst all
tham men? But Lance, he goes down, and every time he goes, I
think he gits more of the Old Boy in him, 'caze evil is a-walkin'
around at noonday down in tham settlements, and you cain't be
safe anywhars."

"Might just as well quit being scared then," drawled Lance's
soft voice. He had stepped noiselessly to the door, at Callista's
suggestion to see if the coffee were ready.

"You Lance Cleaverage!" returned his sister in a carefully
suppressed tone that was sufficiently acid to make up for its
lack of volume, "I ain't a-goin' to quit bein' scared for yo'
say-so. You ought to be ashamed to name such--in the house with
the dead this a-way. No, the coffee'll not be ready for
somewhile yet. When hit is, you'ns can fetch cheers and he'p
yourselves to it. I'm a-goin' to show Miz. Gentry my gospel
quilt that I brung with me to lay over Granny."

Roxanna Cleaverage had married rather late in life. Girlhood had
been but an unsatisfactory season to her; young women in a primitive
society [29] are not given much prominence, and Roxy had neither
beauty nor charm to command what was to be had. Lacking these,
she made a great point of religion, which led incidentally to her
marriage with John Griever, an itinerant preacher, and brought her
two blissful years and Mary Ann Martha. As the wife of a preacher
she had been able to assume some dignity, to instruct, to lay down
the law, to keep herself measurably in the public eye.

When she was widowed, it was bitter to her to go back to Kimbro
Cleaverage's poor home and drop once more into obscurity. She
yearned desperately to wear some mark of distinction, to have at
least some semblance of social power. And in direct response to
this longing, there came a vision in the night, and Roxy rose up
and took her bits of quilt pieces and began to fashion a new
thing. Other women might have the Rising Sun, the Log Cabin, the
Piney-blow, the Basket of Posies; she had conceived and would
execute a master work in the way of quilts, quite outside the
line of these. Roxy lacked entirely that crude art sense which
finds its expression in the mountain woman's beautifully pieced
quilt; she only burned to startle admiration, to command respectful
attention by some means. The big square of muslin was bought at
the expense of considerable pinching and saving, and she began to
set upon it those figures which had occupied her [30] mind, her
time and her fingers through the years since. Clumsily done, with
no feeling whatever for form, proportion, or color, she poured into
it a passion of desirous energy which yet produced its effect. The
quilt was always at hand for such occasions as this, or when the
Presiding Elder came on one of his rare visits. And it was useful
to bring out if there were trouble, if someone needed to be overawed
or to be threeped down. But that member of the Cleaverage Clan who
in her eyes most needed threeping was proof against the gospel
quilt. She had never put it forth for Lance's confusion since the
day he took such an expressive interest in the undertaking, and
advised--in the presence of Preacher Drumright--the adding of a
sightly little border of devils around the semi-sacred square.

"A fine row o' davils would help the looks of it mightily, Sis'
Roxy," he had argued. "They're named frequent in the Bible, and
I'd cut 'em out for you. I would sure enough," he laughed, as
she looked heavy reproach at him. "You give me a sharp pair o'
shears and I can cut out as fine a lookin' davil as you or
anybody need wish for!"

After that she let him alone, aware that his more gifted eye
criticized her failures, even when he did not seek the circle
about the exhibited quilt and wilfully mistake her angels for
turkey buzzards.

The two older women now passed into that [31] cool, shaded little
chamber where lay the dead. The windows were open, and the white
curtains blew gustily in the night breeze, making the candle Roxy
carried flicker. She set it on a high shelf, and got out a thick
roll of stuff, unwrapping and spreading forth her contribution to
the solemnity of the occasion.

"Hit's jest the top on it," she communicated in a hoarse
whisper. "I hain't got the heart to put it in frames and quilt
it, 'caze I keep thinkin' of something else that ort to go on
it, time I say I'm done. Cur'us that I ain't never showed it to
you before." (This was a common formula with the widow, and
nobody ever disputed it). "See, that's Adam and Eve, to begin
on," and she indicated a pair of small, archaic figures cut from
blue checked gingham, their edges turned neatly in and whipped
to the white domestic background--when one thinks of it, a
domestic background is fairly proper for Adam and Eve. "That
ginghams they' cut out'n was a piece o' John's shirt--the last
one I made him."

"Tut, tut," responded Octavia, making that little clicking sound
with the tongue which does duty variously to express sympathy,
reprehension, surprise, or deprecation. She regarded the artistic
achievement before her with attention and respect. One could
readily distinguish Eve from Adam, because Eve was endowed with
petticoats, while Adam rejoiced in legs. Of course Eve had [32]
feet; but it would have taken someone less well acquainted with
the moral character of the Widow Griever than was Octavia Gentry
to deduce legs from those feet.

"What's that thar?" she made the customary inquiry, putting her
finger on a twisty bit of polka-dotted calico. "That must be the
sarpent."

"Hit air." Roxy returned the expected answer solemnly.

The Ancient Evil was represented as standing sociably on his
tail, facing the tempted pair.

"My! Don't he look feisty?" commented Octavia, with courteous
admiration. "Watch him jest a-lickin' out his tongue in Eve's
face. Lord," she sighed conventionally, "how prone women air to
sin!"

"Women? Huh!" snorted Mrs. Griever. "Not nigh so prone as tham
men. Look-a-here," turning the quilt to get at the Tree of Good
and Evil; "look at them thar apples. Now I made some of 'em out
of red calico, and some out of yellow. Do you think I ort to
have a few green, Miz. Gentry? Look like green apples is mighty
sinful and trouble makin'."

"I don't know," Octavia debated, as she ran her fingers over a
brave attempt at one of the Beasts of Revelation. "You might add
a few green ones. Hit does stand to reason that the Old Boy is
in green apples more than in ripe ones; but ef them that Eve
tempted Adam [33] with had been green--do you reckon he'd 'a' bit?"

The scandal was such an old one, that Roxy was evidently a little
irritated at its revival.

"Well, o' course," she said with some asperity, "a body cain't
gainsay what's in the Bible; but I have my doubts about that
thar apple fuss. Hit's men that prints the Good Book, and does
about with it--not women; an' I've always had a feelin' that mo'
likely hit was Adam got into that apple business first."

"Well, I don't know," repeated Octavia doubtfully. "I always
'lowed the Bible was the Bible. But what's a-goin' to be here?"
pointing to a sizable blank space.

"Why, that's a part that I ain't got to finish yet," explained
Roxy. "Miz. Abner Dowst given me the prettiest piece o' goods
last time I was at her house, and I been studyin' whether to use
hit a-depicturin' the Queen of Sheba or Phar'oh's daughter; and
then I thought I'd do better to show up Joseph a-dreamin', and
the sun and the moon and eleven stars jist over his head--see,
they'd set around sorter biassin' this-a-way, betwixt Adam-an'-Eve
and this golden harp. Hit's a piece of that dress her gals all
had on a-Sunday--you know Dows the always gits a bolt, and time
her and the gals all has a dress out of hit, and him a shirt and
the boys a shirt apiece, why the bolt's about gone. Well, this
time that [34] The'dory May, she axed for something bright, and
he was bent on pleasin' her, so he picked for the brightest thing
in the store. Hit looked sort o' gay a-comin' into church, one
behind another; but now hit'll do fine for Joseph's coat. Ah, law,
Miz. Gentry, hit'll be right here in my quilt long after their
dresses is wore out and forgot about."

"Yes, indeed, hit will that, Sister Griever," her listener
assented, a good deal impressed. "Is these sorter round things---"

"Them's the loaves an' fishes," Roxy hastened to elucidate.
"They ain't so very well done, ye see. I was a-workin' on them
when I hearn that Granny Yearwood was about to go, an' I hurried
'em up, 'caze I'd promised her that I'd spread the quilt over
her when she was laid out. You he'p me with it now, Miz. Gentry,
and we'll fold it back this-a-way so as not to show the part
that ain't done."

"Laws, Miz. Griever," said Octavia, as the great square, with
its many small, gaily colored figures, whipped laboriously into
place, was spread out between their hands, "I don't see how you
ever did think of all them things."

"I reckon it comes from havin' a preacher for a mate," returned
Roxy. "Mr. Griever, he was always a cotin' scriptur' round the
house, and now he's gone I remember his words--and put 'em down
on the quilt, as a body may say. I love to have it by me to work
on in time of trouble, [35] an' I love to put it on the bed if a
preacher sleeps the night at our house. Looks like a body ought
to have good dreams un'neath the gospel that-a-way. Thar, ain't
that fixed all right now? Cain't we leave here? I 'low them
young folks out in the other room might need attention."

Octavia glanced through the slightly open door and saw that
Lance and Callista had gone into the kitchen alone to look after
the supper. They were talking together, and the mother noted
hopefully that neither of them was laughing, and that the girl's
color had risen, while her eyes looked troubled.

"Law honey," she said smiling, "sho'ly they can manage for
theirselves one while. I'm plumb tired, an' I know good an' well
you air. Le's sit here a spell whar it's cool an' quiet, an'
have a little visit."

This was a sort of invitation which Roxy Griever could not
refuse, and the courting couples were spared her surveillance
for a little longer.

"Callista," Lance began abruptly, when they were out of earshot
of those in the front room, "I raised the roof-beams of my cabin
to-day--two big rooms and a porch between, with a cooking place
for summer. Ain't that about right?"

Callista looked toward the other room uneasily. She had no audience
now--how should she act, how demean herself so as to seem
indifferent? Lance's undecipherable, clear hazel eyes were on [36]
her; they rested carelessly in what seemed a passing glance;
yet at the back of that regard looked out a demand which she
could scarcely comprehend.

"I--I don't know," she faltered. "Lance, won't you please lift
that there coffee off o' the fire? It's boiled enough."

Lance bent lithely to the hearth and did her bidding.

"I've got me two horses now," he said in the same even undertone.
"I matched Satan with a little black filly that Derf brought over
from the Far Cove neighborhood. They're jest of a size, and they
step together like a couple of gals with their arms around each
other's waists. Derf said the filly was named Cindy; but I call
her Sin--how do you like that?--Satan and Sin?"

"Well, I think it sounds right wicked, if you ask me," Callista
plucked up courage to say. "But I don't reckon you care whether
I like it or not."

Lance shook his head and smiled.

"Nope," he agreed easily. Then he added, "Havin' two horses helps
out a good deal. I've been doing haulin' on Derf's contract. I'll
have a right smart of money left, even after my house is all done.
There'll be a-plenty laid up by next spring; and I'm goin' to put
in the winter clearing land. I reckon we'll be good ready by April."

By April! A sweet perturbation took possession [37] of Callista's
breast. She dared not raise her eyes lest he should read in them
what she yet jealously sought to conceal. He was not like the
other boys; with all the raillery and badinage that went on between
them--famous in their circle; with all the unusual parade, in the
open play of courtship, he had never really approached her as a
lover, never laid his hand on her in tenderness, nor offered her
a caress, save as a public, saucy threat. Nor had he asked for
her, as the mountain phrase goes; but surely now he meant her to
understand that he expected to be married in the spring. If only
he would ask her--if only! She had always meant--if she dared--to
refuse him--at least the first time; to reluctantly give in under
repeated importunities--but that was past. With her heart beating
in her throat, she made shift to say,

"I hope you'll be better to your horses than most of the men
that hauls. I do love a good horse."

"You goin' to ride with me to the buryin' tomorrow?" Lance
inquired casually. "If you want to, we could leave the buryin'
ground after the funeral's over and go up Lance's Laurel, to my
place, and on round to your home the long way. I could show you
whether I was good to my horses or not."

The color glowed softly in Callista's cheeks and her veiled eyes
were bright. But before she could say yes or no, the Widow Griever
came in. [38]

"Good land, Lance Cleaverage!" she began on her usual formula.
"Why hain't you bidden out all them folks in thar? This here
coffee's done, an' a-gittin' cold. The biscuits ain't no better.
They got to eat now, 'caze I want 'em to sing a good wake of
hymns--I promised Granny I'd tend to pickin' 'em out."

With a grimace of good-natured acquiescence, Lance went to
execute his sister's orders. Out on the porch a half-dozen young
boys had succumbed to drowsiness, one by one, stretched on the
boards, taking elbow or saddle for a pillow. The crickets and
katydids were loud in the grove. Lance passed through the front
rooms, speaking to the couples there, and called in those outside.
The supper of good warm food, and hot, strong coffee was eaten
gratefully. Then all went into the front room and the hymns were
sung. Finally the up-sitting was over, and Callista had made no
opportunity for further speech with Lance. He had not sought one,
and chance had not offered it. She regretted a little that she
really wanted so much to ride at his side to-morrow. If she did
not, she would quite enjoy treating that cavalier invitation as
though she had never heard it. But the very thought brought a
quick apprehension of failure, and she resolved to be ready and
waiting, so that she might seem to be carelessly picked up at
the last moment, lest Lance himself anticipate her in this game
of indifference. [39]



CHAPTER III.

THE BURYING.



DAWN was gray in the sky, a livid light beginning to make itself
felt rather than seen above the mountains, while vast gulfs of
shadows lingered in their folds, when Callista climbed the
stairs to a loft room, set apart for the Hands girls, and,
partially undressing, lay down for a few hours of sleep. Her
mother and Roxy Griever had gone home shortly after midnight.
Coming and going increased with the rising day. Roxy Griever had
now returned, bringing with her a hastily ruffled cap of cheap
lace.

"Sylvane," she called, coming out to the porch where the men
were standing about conversing in undertones, "you got to ride
over to Miz. Gentry's and git a black veil and a belt for Jane.
Little Liza ain't a-goin' to be able to go to the buryin' at
all, and Jane has obliged to have a veil and belt, her bein' a
mourner that-a-way."

Already, along the fence there was a string of dingy, unkempt
teams and wagons; while in the horse lot were more, those who
had come earlier having unhitched. Granny Yearwood was near
ninety--Eliza Hands had been her youngest--and she was known to
the whole region around. [40] Roxy stood in the door shading her
eyes, picking out this one and that among those in attendance.
The gathering looked much like any other, except that one missed
the shouts of hail and farewell, the effusive welcoming and
hearty speeding of guests.

The stir outside waxed. By some subjective movement, Callista,
sleeping in the loft room, was aware of it, wakened, rose,
dressed and made ready herself.

"I don't know what we-all ever would a' done without you,
honey," Little Liza told her, gazing across from the bed on
which she lay. "Looks like to me some folks is born comforters."

The pale eyes of the big woman took in Callista's sweet,
significant beauty, with an appreciation that was hardly
vicarious. She did love Callista for her brother's sake; and
much, too, for her own.

"You come up and tell me jest how Granny looked before you-all
go, won't you?" she urged. "I want to see you before you start,
anyhow."

Callista promised and hurried downstairs. Those who had remained
over night were standing about a table, eating a hasty
breakfast. By eight o'clock the gathering was ready, and the
hitching up began. After a great deal of consultation and
argument as to where each one should ride, the procession began
to arrange itself. There were to be no services at the house,
but it was hoped that Preacher Drumright would be able to [41]
meet the funeral party at the burying ground and conduct the
ceremonies there--the funeral sermon would be at the church on
some later Sunday.

"Who you goin' to ride with, Callista?" inquired the Widow
Griever, a weighty frown on her brow. "We got to git this thing
all straightenened out so the family an' friends won't be
scrouged from they' places, like is mighty apt to happen at a
funeral. There is them that's bound to have a ride, whoever gits
to go."

Roxy's quilt had been removed from the coffin and draped over a
near-by stand. Six bronzed, heavy-breathing, embarrassed looking
men were marshalled in by the widow, and instructed how to lift
the black-painted pine box, carry it to the waiting buckboard,
and place it safely there with one end wedged under the seat.
Then Roxy turned to Flenton.

"Go git Ellen and Jane," she prompted.

He hastened to the house and up stairs, and soon returned with a
sister on each arm, black-draped and wailing, clinging to him. He
helped them into their seats in his own vehicle. But when Ellen made
room for him, he drew back and motioned Kimbro Cleaverage forward.

"Couldn't you drive, Mr. Cleaverage?" he said in an undertone.
"Sylvane can take yo' team, with Miz. Griever and the chillen;
and I've got to go in--" he reddened with embarrassment--"in
another place." [42]

The crowd was pretty much all in the yard now, clambering into
ox-carts and board-seated wagons. Roxy Griever, with Mary Ann
Martha and Sylvane, were waiting in Kimbro Cleaverage's small wagon
drawn by an old mule, while half-a-dozen undesired additions were
offered to their party. Callista looked about her vainly for Lance.
She had already defended herself two or three times from being
thrust into some vehicle and carried away from the possibility of
riding with him, when she finally saw him approaching down the
road. He was on one black horse and leading another. She could
not know that he had been over to Derf's that morning to get the
filly.

"Callista," said Flenton Hands's voice at her shoulder, "Little
Liza sent me down to see would you come up to her right quick.
She's mighty bad off."

With one last, furtive glance toward the black horse and his
rider, Callista turned and hurried up to Liza.

"Air they gittin' off," inquired the ailing woman, eagerly lifting
her head with its camphor-drenched cloths. "Did Ellen and Jane cry
much? Looks to me like they wasn't much takin' on--I never heared
much. There wasn't nigh the fuss that they was at old Enoch Dease's
buryin'. I wish't to the land I could have been down there--the
Lord knows I'd 'a' cried. Granny ought to be [43] wept for. Think o'
livin' to be ninety years old--and then havin' to die at last! Oh,
ain't it awful, Callista? How did she look, honey? Was Vander
Blackshears here? Set right down there on my bed and tell me."

One might almost have guessed that the lengthened inquiries were
dictated by someone who wanted Callista detained. The girl answered
them hastily, with her heart galloping, her ears alert for sounds
from below.

"Don't you be uneasy," Little Liza soothed her. "Flenton said
he'd wait and take you in his new buggy that he bought when he
got the coffin a-yesterday. You'll be the first one to ride in
it--ain't that fine? Flent's jest that-a-way. He don't grudge
anything to them he loves. You hadn't promised somebody else to
ride with 'em, had ye, Callisty?"

She brought the point-blank question out after a little halt,
reddening a bit at the boldness of it. Plainly this was at
another's dictation. Callista shook her head. Words were beyond
her at the moment; for, looking down from the tiny window of the
loft room, she saw the procession getting underway, one clumsy
vehicle after another falling into line behind the buckboard
that was now slowly disappearing beyond the bend of the road.
And at the fence. Lance Cleaverage was helping awkward little
Ola Derf to mount the black filly! [44]

"I said Granny deserved to be wept for," Little Liza intoned, as
she saw the tears that slipped down Callista's pink cheeks. "I
didn't know you cared so much about her, honey, but I know you've
got a mighty tender heart."

"Is that all, now, Liza? Are you all right till the folks get back?"
questioned Callista. "Well, then I'll leave you--they're a-going,"
and with an effort for composure, she turned and made her way down
to Flenton Hands and the new buggy. Her mother was staying to get
dinner for everybody--a piece of genuine self-sacrifice, this--and
as Callista passed her in the kitchen, she made a half-hearted offer
to change places.

"No, honey," said Octavia, resolutely. "You go right along. I
don't mind this. I"--she lowered her tone to a whisper of
furtive pleasure--"I seen Lance bringing up the prettiest little
black mare for you to ride." With unwonted demonstrativeness she
bent forward and kissed the young, smooth, oval cheek. "We ain't
got each other for always," she said gently. "Let's be kind and
lovin' while we have. Go 'long, honey, an' ride with Lance.
Granny Yearwood wouldn't begrudge it to ye."

Flenton met the girl at the door, and walked with her down to
the gate. It was an almost shocking breach of etiquette for him
to let the entire procession get away without him, yet neither
mentioned it. Callista's eyes were on two [45] mounted figures that
closed the train, and she scarcely spoke as she seated herself
in the new vehicle.

The graveyard was a stony, briery patch of ground, as desolate a
spot as could well be found. In a country where the houses were
so scattered that the word "neighborhood" had scarcely any
meaning, there was no public sentiment concerning the care of
the abandoned God's acre; but each, when a grave was dug in it
for one of his clan, resolved on making some effort toward its
improvement, and, in the struggle for existence, promptly
forgot. It was guarded partly by a rail fence that Derf's Old
Piedy, a notorious rogue, could lay down with practised horns
any time she liked; and partly by a crooked, crumbling wall of
stones, picked up off the land itself and laid there by hands
which had long been dust. A wide place it was, for its scanty
tenantry, with hollows hidden in liana-woven thickets and
straggling knolls yellowed with sedge-grass. As is usual where a
hard-wood forest has been cleared, young pines were springing up
all over the waste; one could see, between their dark points,
the blue rim of the world; for this land lay high, on a sort of
divide or shed, where nothing would grow.

The unmended road was full of vehicles, the graveyard filling
with people, as Callista and Flenton came up. The ride had been
one of [46] discomfort to the girl. She liked to have her conquests
to display before others; but she always shrank from being alone
with Flenton Hands, and to-day his insistent love-making had
filled her with cold distaste.

"And you are certainly the sweetest comforter ever a man had in
time of affliction," he told her over and over again, with
sanctimonious inflections. "If I had you always by my side,
looks like to me the world's sorrows wouldn't have no power on
me."

It was a relief to her when they reached the fence, and he
stepped out to help her down and tie his horse. There had been
some uncertainty up to the last as to whether Preacher Drumright
could be got for the occasion, but the sound of his voice from
the press of calico-clad and jeans-covered shoulders and backs,
reassured Flenton.

"I'm mighty glad Drumright's thar," he said to Callista, as he
lifted her down. "He'll preach Granny's funeral come Sunday, he
said; but thar ain't anyone can pray like he can. I do love a
good servigorous prayer."

Callista's anxious eyes were searching the animals tethered
about for sight of the two black horses that stepped together
"like a couple of gals with their arms around each other's
waists." At last she found them in the grove, and hastily turned
with her escort to go through the gap in the fence to where the
preacher was, where yawned [47] the open grave, and stood the coffin.
A tangle of dewberry vines, with withering fruit on them, here
and there, and beginning even in their mid-summer greenness to
show russet and reddened leaves, scrambled all over the poor
soil. Most of the graves were unmarked, some had a slab or block
of wood; only here and there gleamed a small stone.

Callista passed that of her father, good-looking, ne'er-do-well
Race Gentry, whom the romantic young Octavia Luster had run away
to marry. A honeysuckle vine covered it with a tangle of green,
offering now its bunches of fawn and white, heavy-scented
blossoms from a closely compacted mound.

"I'm a-goin' to have a real monument put up for Granny," Flenton
whispered to her as they went forward together. "I wish't she'd
lived to be a hundred, so I could have put that on the stone;
but we're mighty proud of her holdin' out to ninety."

Quite against her will, Callista found herself taken up to the
front of the gathering, placed between Ellen and Flenton Hands
beside the coffin. Preacher Drumright was speaking with closed
eyes; he had embarked on one of those servigorous prayers which
Hands admired. The two girls, Ellen and Jane, were sobbing in
long, dry gasps. After the prayer came a hymn, the lulls in the
service being filled in by the sobs of the Hands [48] girls, little
responsive moans from some woman in the assembly, and the purr
of the wind in the young pines, where scared rabbits were hiding;
and by the far, melodious jangle of Old Piedy's bell--Old Piedy,
dispossessed and driven away.

With the appearance of Callista and her escort on the scene, a
young fellow who had been lying full length on the top of the
ruining stone wall tilted his hat quite over his eyes and
relaxed a certain watchfulness of demeanor which had till then
been apparent in him. When the girl was finally ensconced in the
middle of the lamenting Hands family, this person leaned down
and whispered to Ola Derf, whose square little back was resting
against the wall close beside him,

"Come on, let's go. Haven't you had about enough of this?"

"Uh-huh," agreed Ola in a whisper, "but we mustn't git our
horses till the preacher quits prayin'. Hit'll make too much
noise."

Again Lance relaxed into his quiescent attitude, and had to be
roused when the hymn began, with,

"He's done finished, Lance. Do you want to go now?"

The wind soothed its world-old, sighing monody in the young
pines overhead; beneath the waxing warmth of the morning sun
faint whiffs, resinous, pungent, came down from their boughs, to
mingle with the perfume from the vagrant honeysuckle that flung
a long green arm toward [49] the trunk of one of them. Suddenly a
woman's tenor, wild and sweet, rose like a winged thing and led
all the other voices.

"Huh-uh," grunted Lance, from his sun-warmed couch. "Let's wait
awhile now."

After the hymn, Drumright read from the Scripture. Even his
rasping voice could not disguise the immemorial beauty of the
sombre Hebrew imagery, "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or
the golden bowl be broken."

Lance drew a long quivering breath. Something in the sounds, the
hour and the occasion, had appealed to that real Lance
Cleaverage, of which the man Ola Derf knew was only custodian,
to whose imperious needs the obvious Lance must always bend.

Yet, long before poor Callista could be released and allowed to
ride home, by her own earnest petition, in the buckboard with
Jane and Ellen, the two by the stone wall had found their way
across to the black horses in the grove, and were scurrying down
the dusty summer road, racing as soon as they were out of sight
of the graveyard. [50]



CHAPTER IV.

A DANCE AND A SERENADE.



THE Derfs occupied a peculiar position among their Turkey Track
neighbors. They had a considerable tincture of Cherokee Indian
blood, no discredit in the Tennessee mountains, or elsewhere for
that matter. One branch of the family had received money
compensation for their holdings from the Government. Leola's
father had at that time taken possession of an allotment of land
in the Indian Territory. The eldest daughter, Iley, married out
there, and brought back her Indian husband when Granny Derf,
pining for her native mountains, had to be carried home to Big
Turkey Track.

It was not the blood of another race that set the Derfs apart;
but it may have been traits which came with the wild strain.
There was a good deal of money going among the clan. Old man
Derf was a general trader; also he engaged in tanbark hauling in
the season, and some other contracting enterprises such as
required the use of ready cash. In the back room of the main
house there was quite a miscellaneous stock of provisions,
goods, and oddments for sale. Derf was more than suspected of
being a moonshiner or [51] of dealing with moonshiners. He gave
dances or frolics of some sort at his house very frequently, and
there was always plenty of whisky. At one time or another the
family had lived in the Settlement a good deal, and come off
rather smudged from their residence in that place. Indeed, your
true mountaineer believes that sin is of the valley, and looks
for no good thing to come out of the low ground. In a simple
society, like that of the mountains, the line is drawn with such
savage sharpness that the censors hesitate to draw it at all.
Yet a palpable cloud hung over the Derfs. While not completely
outcast, they were of so little standing that their house was
scarcely a respectable place for a young, unmarried woman to be
seen frequently. Ola, Garrett Derf's second daughter, a girl of
twenty, and a homely, high-couraged, hard muscled little
creature, was permitted in the neighborhood circle of young
girls rather on sufferance; but she did not trouble them greatly
with her presence, preferring as a rule her own enterprises.

Lance Cleaverage, a free, unfettered spirit, trammeled by no
social prejudices, came often to the frolics at Derf's. He
seldom danced himself, whisky he never touched; but he loved to
play for the others, and he got all the stimulation which his
temperament and his mood asked out of the crowd, the lights, the
music, and some indefinable element into which these fused for him. [52]

It was nearly two months after the incident at the church and
the funeral of Granny Yearwood, that Ola was redding up and
putting to rights for a dance. She had hurried through an early
supper; the house was cleared, like the deck of a ship for
action, of all furniture that could not be sat upon. What
remained--a few chairs and boxes, and the long benches on which,
between table and wall, the small fry of the family crowded at
meal time--were arranged along the sides of the room out of the
way. The girl herself was wearing a deep pink calico dress and a
string of imitation coral beads. Generally, she gave little
thought to her appearance; but everybody believed now that the
time was set for the marriage of Lance Cleaverage and Callista
Gentry; neither of the young people denied it, Callista only
laughing scornfully, and Lance lightly admitting that there was
a mighty poor chance for a fellow to get away when a girl like
Callista made up her mind to wed him. In the face of these
things, the little brown girl clad her carefully, laboring with
the conscienceless assiduity of Nature's self to do her utmost
to get her chosen man away from the other woman--to get him for
herself. She went out past the wood-pile to view the evening sky
anxiously, and seeing only a few cloud-roses blooming in the
late light over the hills, came back with satisfaction to
attempt once more putting her small brothers and sisters out of
the way. [53]

A little after dark her guests began to arrive, coming in by
ones and twos and threes, some of the boys in mud-splashed
working clothes, some in more holiday attire. About moonrise
Lance strolled down the road, and by way of defending himself
from the importunities of Ola's conversation, if one might
guess, kept his banjo twanging persistently. There was a certain
solemnity over the early comers, although Derf roared a hearty
greeting from his door of the cabin, and occasionally some of
the men adjourned to his special room and came out wiping their
mouths.

"Ain't nobody never goin' to dance?" inquired Ola impatiently.
"Here's Lance a-playin' and a-playin', and nobody makin' any
manner of use of the music."

There was nearly ten minutes of hitching and halting, proposals
and counter propositions, before a quadrille was started. It was
gone through rather perfunctorily, then they all sat down on the
boxes and benches and stared into the empty middle of the room.

"Good land!" cried Ola, coming from the other side of the house,
"play 'Greenbacks', Lance--let's dance 'Stealing partners'."

The new amusement--half dance, half play--proved, as she had
guessed, a leaven to the heaviness of the occasion. People began
to laugh a little, and speak above their breath. Two awkward
boys, trying to "shoot dominickers" [54] at the same moment, collided
under the arch and went sprawling to the floor. The mishap was
greeted with a roar of mirth in which all chill and diffidence
were drowned.

And now the arrivals from the far cabins were on hand. Small
children who had been allowed to sit up and look on nodded in
corners, or stretched themselves across their fathers' knees and
were tumbled just as they were upon a pallet in the loft. The
usual contingent of bad little boys collected outside the door
and began to shout at the dancers by name, calling out comments
on personal peculiarities, or throwing small chips and stones
under foot to trip up the unwary. These were finally put down by
the strong hand.

Clapping and stamping increased as the dancers moved more
rapidly; calls were shouted; the laughter was continuous. Lance
Cleaverage leaned forward in his place, striking the humming
strings with sure, tense fingers, his eyes aglow, and on his
mouth a half smile. The fun waxed furious; the figures whirled
faster and faster, gathering, disparting, interweaving, swinging
and eddying before his eyes. Coats were thrown off, the feet
thudded out the measure heavily. This was his dissipation, the
draught that the mirth of others brewed for him. Its fumes were
beginning to mount to his brain, when Ola's hard brown little
hand came down across his strings and stopped [55] the music. There
was an instant and indignant outcry and protest.

"Consarn yo' time, Ola! What did you want to do that for?"
demanded a tall young fellow who had broken down in the midst of
a pigeon wing, as though he drew his inspiration from the banjo
and could not move without its sound.

"I want to hear Buck play on his accordion--and I want Lance to
dance with me," Ola said petulantly. "What's the use of him
settin' here all the time playin' for you-all to have fun, and
him never gettin' any? Come on, Lance."

Ola Derf was not used to the consideration generally accorded
young women. When she made a request, she deemed it well to see
that her requirements were complied with. Deftly she lifted the
banjo from Lance's lap and passed it to someone behind her, who
put it on the fireboard. Then laying hold of the young man
himself, she pulled him out into the middle of the room.

"Play, Buck, play," she admonished Fuson, who had his accordion.
"You made yo' brags about what fine music you could get out of
that thar box,--now give us a sample."

Buck played. When a dance has swung so far as this one had,
nothing can check its rhythmic movement. The notes dragged
wheezily from the old accordion answered as well to the
gathering's warm, free, fluent mood as the truer harmonies of [56]
Lance's banjo. Hand clasping hand, Ola and Lance whirled among
the others, essaying a simple sort of polka. She was a tireless
dancer, and he as light footed as a panther. The two of them
began to feel that intoxication of swift movement timed to music
which nothing else in life can quite furnish, intensified in the
girl by a gripping conviction that this was her hour, and she
must make the most of it. She was aflame with it. When Buck
broke down she instantly proposed a game of Thimble. Boldly,
almost openly, she let herself forfeit a kiss to Lance.

There was a babble of tongues and laughter, a hubbub of mirth, a
crossfiring and confusion of sound and movement which wrought
upon the nerves like broken chords, subtle dissonances, in
music. Buck was trying to play again, some of the boys were
patting and stamping, others remonstrating, jeering, making
ironic suggestions, when Lance, a bit flushed and bright of eye,
dropped his arm around the brown girl's waist to take his
forfeit. As in duty bound she pulled away from him. He sprang
after, caught her by the shoulders, turned her broad little face
up to his and kissed her full on the laughing, red mouth.

Then a miracle! Kissing Ola Derf was not a serious matter; indeed
common gossip hinted that it was a thing all too easily accomplished.
But tonight the girl was wrought beyond herself--a [57] magnet. And
Lance's sleeping spirit felt the shock of that kiss. But alas for
Ola, it was for her rival's behoof the miracle was worked; it was
in her rival's cause she had labored, enlisting all her primitive
arts, all her ingenuity and resolution! The lights, the music, the
movement, the gayety of others, these had, so far, pleased and
stimulated Lance as they always did. But the unaccustomed warmth
and contact of the dance; the daring and abandon of the kissing
game afterward; finally the sudden ravisher's clasp and snatched
kiss--these set free in him an impulse which had slumbered till
now. To this bold, aggressive, wilful nature it was always the
high mountain, the long dubious road, the deep waters--never the
easy way, the thing at hand; it was ever his own trail--not the
path suggested to his feet. And so, in this sudden awakening, he
took no account of Ola Derf, and his whole soul turned toward
Callista--Callista the scornful, whose profile, or the side of whose
cheek, he was always seeing; Callista who refused to lift her lashes
to look at him, and who was ever saying coolly exasperating things
in a tone of gentle weariness. If Callista would look at him as Ola
Derf had done--if he might catch her thus in his arms--if those lips
of hers were offered to his kiss--!

Without a word of excuse or explanation he dropped the girl's
hand as he stood in the ring of [58] players, caught his banjo down
from the shelf, and leaving open mouths and staring eyes behind him,
strode through the door. A moment later he was footing it out in
the moonlight road, walking straight and fast toward the church
where protracted meeting was going on, and where he guessed Callista
would be with her family. A javelin, flame-tipped, had touched
him. Something new and fiery danced in his veins. He would see her
home. They would walk together, far behind the family group, in
this wonderful white moonlight.

When he reached Brush Arbor church he avoided the young fellows
lounging about the entrance waiting to beau the girls. He moved
lightly to a window at the back of the building and looked in.
There sat Octavia Gentry on the women's side, and old Ajax, her
father-in-law, on the men's. Callista he could not find from his
coign of vantage. An itinerant exhorter was on his feet,
preaching loud, pounding the pulpit, addressing himself now and
again to the mourners who knelt about the front bench. Lance
cautiously put his head in and looked further. Somehow he knew,
all in a moment, that this was what he had expected--what he had
hoped for; Callista was at home waiting for him. Yet none the
less he carefully examined the middle seats where might be found
the courting couples. He would not put it beyond his Callista to
go to church with some [59] other swain and sit there publicly
advertising her favor to the interloper.

When he was at last satisfied that she was not in the building,
he turned as he had turned from Ola Derf, and made a straight
path for himself from Brush Arbor to the Gentry place. Scorning
the beaten highway of other men's feet, he struck directly into
the forest, and through a little grove of second-growth
chestnut, with its bunches of silver-gray stems rising slim and
white in the light of the moon. Moonshine sifting through the
leaves changed his work-a-day clothing to the garb of a
troubadour. The banjo hung within easy reach of his fingers; he
took off his old hat and tucked it under his arm, striking now
and again as he went a twanging chord.

It was an old story to him, this walking the moonlit wild with his
banjo for company. Many a time in the year's release, the cool,
fragrant, summer-deep forest had called him by its delicate silver
nocturnes, its caverns of shadow and milky pools of light, bidden
him to a wild spring-running. On such nights his heart could not
sleep for song. Sometimes, intoxicated with the rhythm, he had
swung on and on, crashing through the dew-drenched huckleberry
tangles, rocking a little, with eyes half closed, and interspersing
the barbaric jangle of his banjo with quaint jodeling and long,
falsetto-broken whoops, the heritage that the Cherokee left behind
him in this land. But [60] now it was no mere physical elation of
youth and summer and moonlight. It was the supreme urge of his
nature that sent his feet forward steadily, swiftly, as toward a
purpose that might not be let or stayed. Speed--to Callista--that
was all. He fell into silence, even the banjo's thrumming hushed
to an intense quivering call of broken chords, hardly to be
distinguished from the insect cries of love that filled the summer
wood about him.

All the fathomless gulf of the sky was poured full of the
blue-green splendors that flooded the night world of the mountains.
Drops of dew spilled from leaf to leaf; down in the spring
hollow he was spattered to the knees by the thousand soft,
reaching fronds of cinnamon fern. Wild fragrances splashed him
with great waves of sweetness. So the lords of the wild, under
pelt and antler, have ever been wont to rove to their wooing; so
restless are the wings that flutter among summer branches and
under summer moons.

Between the banjo's murmuring chords, as he neared the Gentry
clearing, once more a melody began to stray, like smoke which
smoulders fitfully and must presently burst into flame.--Thrum-dum,
thrum-dum, and then the tune's low call. It was a gypsy music, that
lured with vistas of unknown road, the glint of water, and the
sparkle of the hunter's fire; a wildly sweet note that asked, "How
many miles?"--and [61] again, out of colorless drumming, "How many
years? . . . how many miles?" . . . a song shadow-like in its
come-and-go, rising at intervals to the cry of a passion no
mortality has power to tame, and then, ere the ear had fairly
caught its message, falling again into dim harmonies as of rain
blown through the dark;--a question, and the wordless, haunting
refrain for all answer. Just above his breath Lance voiced the
words:

   "How many years, how many miles,
   Far from the door where my darling smiles?
   How many miles, how many years.
   Divide our hearts by pain and fears?"

The melody sank and trailed, drowned in a cadence of minors that
sobbed like the rush of storm. Out of this, wild, as the wind's
pleading, it rose again;

   "It may be far, it may be near,
   The water's wide and the forest drear,
   But somewhere awaiting, surely I
   Shall find my true love by and bye."

The lithe limbs threshed through the dew-drenched, scented
undergrowth. The trees grew more openly now; clearing was at
hand.

   "--My true love--by and bye,"

hummed the light, sweet baritone.

Callista had petulantly refused to go to church with her mother
and grandfather. For no reason which she could assign, she
wanted to be alone. [62] Then when they were all gone, she wished she
had accompanied them. An indefinable disquiet possessed her. She
could not stay in the house. Candle in hand she sought an
outside cabin where stood the loom. Climbing to the loft room of
this she set her light down and began to search out some quilt
pieces, which she figured to herself as the object of her
present excursion. Though she would have denied it with scorn,
the idea of Lance Cleaverage filled her completely; Lance, the
man who was preparing to marry her, yet upon whom--of all those
who had come near her, in the free, fortuitous commerce of
marriageable youth in the mountains--she had, it seemed to her,
been able to lay no charm, to exert no influence. He met her; he
exchanged cut and thrust with her, and he went his ways after
their encounters, neither more nor less than he had been before.
He came back seemingly at the dictates of time and chance only,
and never hotter nor colder, never hastening to nor avoiding
her. A bitterness tinged all her thought... She wondered if she
would have seen him had she gone to meeting . . . She reflected
jealously that he was much more likely to be at the frolic at
Derf's. . . . She wished she knew how to dance.

All at once, on the vague introspection of her mood, she became
aware of the recurrent stroke of a soft musical note--the
humming of Lance's banjo. Crouching rigidly by the little chest
that [63] held her quilt scraps, she listened. It was a trick of the
imagination--she had thought so much about him that she fancied
him near. Then, with a sudden heavy beating of the heart, she
realized that if he had been at the dance and gone home early he
might be passing now on the big road. She smiled at her own
folly; this tremulous low call could never be heard across two
fields and the door-yard.

And it was a banjo . . . it was Lance's banjo . . . he was
playing whisperingly, too, as he loved to do.

Then the strings ceased to whisper. Clearer came their voice and
louder. Without thinking to extinguish her candle, she ran to
the window and knelt hearkening. She looked down on the moonlit
yard. All was silent and homely . . . but that was Lance's
banjo. Even as she came to this decision. Lance himself broke
through the greenery at the edge of the near field, vaulted a
low fence, and emerged into the open. He came on in the soft
light, singing a little, apparently to himself.

Spellbound she listened, gripping the window ledge hard, holding
her breath, choking, wondering what this new thing was that had
come to her. Above him she was set like a saint enshrined, with
the moonlight to silver her rapt, shining face, and the glow of
the candle behind making a nimbus of her fair hair. Yet never at
all (or she [64] thought so) did Lance look up. Light footed,
careless of mien, he circled the house once, still humming under
his breath, and striking those odd, tentative chords on the
banjo. Then, abruptly, when she had realized her position and
would have hidden herself, or put out the candle which betrayed
her, he stopped under her window and with upflung head was
smiling straight into her eyes. She rallied her forces and
prepared for the duel which always ensued when she and Lance met.
She would give him as good as he sent. She would tell him that she
had stayed away from church for fear she should see him. If he
hinted that she had expected this visit, she would--she would say--

But this was a new Lance Cleaverage looking into her eyes--a man
Callista had never seen before. Subtly she knew it, yet scarcely
dared trust the knowledge. The young fellow below in the
moonlight sent up no challenge to a trial of wits; he offered
her no opportunity for sarcastic retort. Tossing aside his hat,
making ready his banjo, he lifted his head so that the lean,
dark young face with its luminous eyes was raised fully to her
in the soft radiance, and struck some chords--strange,
thrilling, importunate chords--then began to sing.

The serenade is a cherished courtship custom of primitive
societies. Lance Cleaverage, the best banjo player in the Turkey
Tracks, with a flexible, [65] vibrant, colorful baritone voice, had
often gone serenading with the other boys; but this--tonight--was
different. He felt like singing, and singing to Callista; for the
moment it was his form of expression. What he sang was his own
version of an old-world ballad, with his love's name in place of
the Scottish girl's to whom it was addressed three hundred years ago
in the highlands of another hemisphere. Unashamed, unafraid--would
anything ever make Lance either ashamed or afraid?--he stood in the
white moonlight and sent forth his passionate, masterful call of
love on the wings of song.

Callista's heart beat wildly against her arms where she rested
on the window sill. Her lips were apart, and the breath came
through them quick and uneven. Despite herself, she leaned
forward and looked back into the eyes that gazed up at her. Was
this Lance, the indifferent, taunting, insouciant, here under
her window alone, looking up so at her--playing, singing, to
her? Oh, yes, it was Lance. He wanted her, said the swift
importunate notes of the banjo, the pleading tones of his voice,
the bold yet loverlike attitude of the man. He wanted her. Well--a
flood of tender warmth rose in her--she wanted him! For the first
time probably in her life--misshapen, twisted to the expression
of the coquette, the high and mighty, scornful miss who finds no
lover to her taste--Callista was all a woman. The fires [66] of
her nature flamed to answer the kindred fire of his. The last,
teasing note of the banjo quavered into silence. Lance pulled
the ribbon over his head, laid the instrument by--without ever
taking his eyes from her face--and said, hardly above a whisper,

"Callista, honey, come down."

No retort was ready for him.

"I--oh, I can't, Lance," was all Callista could utter.

With a "Well, I'm a-comin' up there, then," he sprang into the
muscadine vine whose rope-like trunks ran up around the doorway
below her. She only caught her breath and watched in desperate
anxiety the reckless venture. And when he reached the level of
her window, when, swinging insecurely in a loop of the vine, he
stretched his arms to her, ready arms answered him and went
round his neck. A face passion pale was raised to him, and
eager, tremulous lips met his.

They drew apart an instant, then Callista--overwhelmed,
frightened at herself--with a swift movement hid her face on his
breast. He bent over her, and laid his dark cheek against hers,
that was like a pearl. His arms drew her closer, closer; the two
young hearts beat plungingly against each other. The arms that
strained Callista so hard to Lance's breast trembled, and her
slender body trembled within them. Lance's shining eyes closed. [67]

[Illustration: "A face passion-pale was raised to him and eager
tremulous lips met his."]

"Callista--honey--darlin'," he whispered brokenly, "you do love me."

"Oh, Lance--Oh, Lance!" she breathed back.

And then his lips went seeking hers once more. She lifted
them to him, and the lovers clung long so. The world swung
meaninglessly on in space. The two clasped close in each other's
arms were so newly, so intensely, blindingly, electrically
awake to themselves and to each other, that they were utterly
insensible to all else.

Finally Lance raised his head a bit. He drew a long, sobbing
breath, and laying his face once more against the girl's
murmured with tender fierceness,

"An' we ain't going to wait for no spring, neither. You'll wed
me to-morrow--well, next week, anyway"--as he felt her start and
struggle feebly.

"Oh, Lance--honey--no," she began. But he cut her short with
vehement protestations and demands. He covered her face, her
hair, her neck with kisses, and then declared again and again,
in a voice broken with feeling, that they would be wedded the
next week--they wouldn't wait--they wouldn't wait.

Shaken, amazed by her own emotions, terrified at the rush of
his, Callista began to plead with him; and when that availed
nothing, save to inflame his ardor, her cry was,

"Yes, Lance. Yes--all right--we [68] will. We will, Lance--whenever
you say. But go now, honey, won't you--please? Oh, Lance!
They'll be coming home any minute now. If they was to find you
here. Lance--Won't you go now, please, honey? Lance, darlin',
please. I'll do just like you say--next week--any time, Lance.
Only go now."

There was no sense of denying, or drawing herself back, in
Callista's utterance. It was only the pleading of maiden terror.
When Lance acquiesced, when he crushed her to him in farewell,
her arms went round him once more, almost convulsively; with an
equal ardor, her lips met the fierce, dominating kiss of his.

He got down from the window, his head whirling. Mechanically he
found his banjo, flung the ribbon over his neck and turned the
instrument around so that it hung across his shoulders. Thus,
and with his hat again tucked under his arm, without ever
looking back toward the house, he walked swiftly and unsteadily
away, once more through the young chestnut wood, with its
dapplings of shadow and moonlight. He dipped into the hollow
where the spring branch talked to itself all night long in
the silence and the darkness under the twisted laurel and
rhododendrons; once more he stood on the little tonsured hill
above the church. The lights were out; they had all gone home.

Below him was spread his world; the practised [69] eye of this free
night rover could have located every farm and cabin, as it all
lay swimming in this wonderful, bewitched half-light. Those were
his kindred and his people; but he had always been a lonely soul
among them. The outposts of levity which he had set about the
citadel of his heart had never been passed by any. Tonight, with
an upheaval like birth or death, he had broken down the barriers
and swept another soul in beside him; close--close. He would
never be alone again--never again. There would always be
Callista. In the intoxication, the ravishment of the moment, he
made no reckoning with the Callista he had heretofore known, the
Lance that had been; they should be always as now on this night
of magic. [70]



CHAPTER V.

THE ASKING.



ON the comb of a tall ridge back of the Cleaverage place, Ola
Derf caught up with Lance at last.

"I got to set down awhile till I can ketch my breath," the girl
said jerkily. "I reckon I run half a mile hollerin' yo' name
every step. Lance Cleaverage--and you never turned yo' head. I
believe in my soul you heared me the first time I called."

Cleaverage did not take the trouble to affirm or deny. He flung
himself back on the fern and pine needles with his hat over his
face, and remarking, "Wake me up when you get your breath,"
affected to go to sleep. Ola Derf was as comfortable a companion
as a dog, in that you could talk to her or let her alone, as the
humor ran.

A cicada's whir overhead swelled to a pulsating screech and died
away. The woods here opened into calm and lofty spaces which at a
little distance began to be dimmed as with vaporized sapphire--the
blue that melted the hills into the sky. His eyes were caught by
an indigo-bird in the branches--a [71] drop of color apparently
precipitated by this marvel of azure held in solution by the summer
air.

It was the morning after Lance had sung to Callista under her
window, and his mind was yet swimming in dreams of her. He was
roused from these by Ola's voice.

"Lance," she began and broke off. "Oh, Lance, I want to talk to
you about--about--" Again her voice lapsed. She could see
nothing of his face. His chest rose and fell rhythmically.
"Lance--air you asleep?"

"Huh-uh. But if you keep on talkin' right good maybe I'll get to
sleep."

She paid no attention to the snub, but addressed herself once
more to what seemed a difficult bit of conversational tactics.

"Lance," came the plaint for the third time, "I wanted to name
Callista Gentry to you. I--I--that thar gal don't care the
rappin' o' her finger about you, nor any man."

Cleaverage, with the memory of last night warm at his heart,
smiled under his hat brim and made no answer, save a little
derisive sound which might have meant denial, indifference, or
mere good-humored contempt of Ola herself.

"Oh, yes, I know," Ola nodded to her own thought, "they's a heap
of 'em lets on not to like the boys; but with Callista Gentry hit
goes to the bone. She don't care for nary soul in this round world
but her own pretty self. She 'minds me [72] of a snake--a white
snake, if ever there was such a thing. You look at her. You ain't
never seen her change color, whatever came or went."

The picture evoked of Callista's flushed, tender face lying upon
his breast made the pulses of the man on the warm pine needles
leap.

"Well," he prompted finally, "what's the trouble? Are you a true
friend, that doesn't want me to get snake bit?"

Ola laughed out a short laugh.

"No," she said, drearily, "I'm just a fool that's got yo' good
at heart, and don't like to see you get a wife that cares
nothin' for you. Thar--I've said my say. Thar's no love in her,
and thar's no heart in her. But if a pretty face and high and
mighty ways is what takes you, of course you can follow yo'
ruthers."

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance, pushing his hat back and sitting up. He
cast a laughing, sidelong glance in her direction. "Ola," he
said softly, "I'm a goin' to let you into a secret. The gals has
pestered me all my life long with too much lovin', and my great
reason for bein' willin' to have Callista Gentry is that she
seems like you say, sorter offish."

To his intense surprise (he had been wont to jest much more
hardily with her than this), Ola's face flushed suddenly a dark,
burning red. She jumped to her feet like a boy.

"All right," she said in a throaty tone, her [73] countenance turned
away from him. "If that's so, I'm sorry I spoke. Tell Miz.
Cleaverage all about it--and all about me and the other gals
that run after you so turrible. I don't care."

But half way down the ridge her swift, angry, steps began to
lag, and a little further on Lance overtook her.

"They's a-goin' to be a dance at our house a-Wednesday," she
said in a penitent voice. "You're a-comin', ain't you, Lance?"

"Nope," returned the invited guest briefly.

He volunteered no excuse or explanation; and so, when the
parting of their ways was reached, she demanded with imploring
eyes on his face,

"Ye ain't mad with me, air ye. Lance? Why won't you come to my
party?"

"Got somethin' else to do," Cleaverage returned nonchalantly.
"Callista and me is goin' to be married a-Wednesday night."

Ola fell back a step, and clutched the sunbonnet which she
carried rolled in her hands.

"You're a--w'y, Lance--you're jest a foolin'," she faltered.

Lance shook his head lightly, without a word.

"But--why, I was over at Gentry's this morning," she exclaimed
finally. "Nobody thar said anything about it." She still watched
his face incredulously. "They shorely would have said somethin',
if Callista had named the day." [74]

"She never named it," said Lance easily. "I named it myself,
back there on the ridge whilst you was catchin' your breath--or
wastin' it. We had allowed that a week from yesterday would do
us, but it sort of come over me that Wednesday was the right
time, and I'm goin' along by there right now to settle it all.
Reckon if you folks are givin' a dance you won't heed a invite?
Good-bye," and he turned away on his own trail.

Swift, unsmiling, preoccupied as a wild thing on its foreordained
errand--the hart to the spring, the homing bird--Cleaverage made
his way to the Gentry place. Callista felt him coming before he
turned into the big road; she saw him while yet the leafage of the
door maples would have confused any view less keen. She longed
to flee. Then in a blissful tremor she could do nothing but remain.
Octavia Gentry, carrying hanks of carpet chain to the dye-pot in
the yard, caught sight of him and called out a greeting.

"Is Mr. Gentry about the place?" Lance asked her, as he lingered
a moment with Callista's eyes on him from the doorway.

"Yes, Pappy's makin' ready to go down to the Settlement, and he
ain't been to the field to-day. He's in the house somewhar's.
Did you want to see him special, Lance?"

Cleaverage made no direct reply; and the widow added,

"Thar he is, right now," as Ajax Gentry stepped [75] out into the
open passage with a bit of harness in his hand which he was
mending. A certain gravity fell on her manner as the two walked
toward the house. It went through her mind that Cleaverage had
never formally asked for Callista, and that now he was about to
do so. She lifted her head proudly and glanced round at him.
Lance Cleaverage was not only the best match in the whole Turkey
Track region, but he had been the least oncoming of all "Sis's
love-yers." You never could be sure whether Lance wanted the
girl or was merely amusing himself; and Octavia had always been
strongly set upon the match. When they came to the porch edge,
Lance seated himself upon it and looked past the old man to
where Callista's flower face was dimly discernible in the entry
beyond.

"Good morning," he said impersonally. "I'm glad to find you at
home, Mr. Gentry. I stopped a-past to name it to you-all that
Callista and me has made up our minds to be wed a-Wednesday
evening."

There was a soft exclamation from within; but mother and
grandfather remained dumb with astonishment. Cleaverage glanced
round at them with a slight impatience in his hazel eyes that
held always the fiery, tawny glint in their depths. He detested
having people receive his announcements as though they were
astonishing--that is, unless it was his humor to astonish. [76]

"Well," Grandfather Gentry began after a time, "ain't this
ruther sudden?"

"Marryin' has to be done all of a sudden," Lance remarked
without rancor. "I never yet have heard of gettin' married
gradual."

"Why, Lance, honey," said the widow in a coaxing tone, "you
ain't rightly ready for a wife, air ye? Ef you two young folks
had named this to me--well, six months ago--I'd 'a' had
Callista's settin' out in good order. Looks like Pappy's right,
and it is sorter suddent."

"What do you say, Callista?" inquired the postulant bridegroom
without looking up.

In the soft dusk of the interior the girl's face was crimson.
Here came the time when she could no longer pretend to be urged
into the marriage by her mother, her grandfather, the course of
events; but must say "yes" or "no" openly of her own motion.
Last night's startling accost yet shook her young heart; the
glamour of that hour came back upon her senses.

"I say whatever you say, Lance," she uttered, scarcely above a
whisper.

Ajax Gentry laughed out.

"Well--I reckon that settles it," he said, jingling his harness
and turning to leave.

"No--it don't settle nothin'," broke in Octavia anxiously.
"Lance ain't got any land cleared to speak of over on his place,
and he ain't put in any crop; how air the both of 'em to live? [77]
They'll just about have obliged to stay here with us. You can
find work for Lance on the farm, cain't ye, Pappy?"

Old Ajax measured his prospective grand-son-in-law with a steady
eye, and assured himself that there was not room on the farm nor
in the house for two masters. He read mastery in every line of
face and figure. Lance got to his feet so suddenly that he might
have been said to leap up.

"I've built me a good cabin, and it's all ready. Callista and me
are goin' into no house but our own," he said brusquely. "Ain't
that so, Callista?"

Again the girl within the doorway answered in that hushed,
almost reluctant voice,

"Just as you say. Lance."

And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and
even scolded, that ended the argument.

"I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told
them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to
bid, mother?"

That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to
the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to
anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled,
realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton
Hands.

As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost
indignantly, [78]

"Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I
don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when
you've just been promised."

Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then
at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed
departure a moment, and then he delivered himself.

"I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage
Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been
axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All
I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of
logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two
families."

"Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone.
"This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love
Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to
live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to
that talk."

"I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did,"
observed Gentry; "for I would--and do. Lance Cleaverage has took
up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got
no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you
right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you
cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."

A coquette according to mountain ideals, carrying [79] her head high
with the boys, famous for her bickerings with Lance, Callista
Gentry had always been a model at home, quiet, tractable,
obedient. But the face she now turned upon her grandfather was
that of a young fury. All her cold pride was up in arms. That
secret, still spirit of hers, haughty, unbent, unbroken, reared
itself to give the old man to understand that she wanted nothing
of him from this on. She--Lance's wife--the idea of her begging
food from Grandfather Gentry!

"If you two'll hush and let me speak," she said in an even tone,
"I reckon I'll be able to set grandpappy's mind at rest. You can
give me the wedding--I reckon you want to do so much as that for
your own good name. But bite or sup I'll never take afterwards
in this house. No, I won't. So far from carryin' victuals out of
it, you'll see when I come in I'll have somethin' in my hand,
grandpap. I invite you and mother right now to take yo' Sunday
dinners with me when you want to ride as far as the Blue Spring
church. But,"--she went back to it bitterly--"bite or sup in
this house neither me nor Lance will ever take." Then, her eyes
bright, her usually pale cheeks flaming, she turned and ran up
the steep little stairs to her own room. Octavia looked reproach
at her father-in-law; but Ajax Gentry spat scornfully toward the
vacant fireplace, and demanded, [80]

"Now she's a pretty somebody for a man to wed and carry to his
home, ain't she? I say, Sunday dinners with her! Can she mix a
decent pone o' corn bread, and bake it without burnin' half her
fingers off? She cain't. Can she cut out a hickory shirt and
make it? She cain't. Could she kill a chicken and pick and clean
it and cook it--could she do it ef she was a starvin'? She could
not. She cain't so much as bile water without burnin' it. She
don't know nothin'--nothin' but the road. She's shore a fine
bargain for a man to git. To have a passel o' fool boys
follerin' after her and co'tin' her, that's all Callisty's ever
studied about, or all you ever studied about for her."

"Well, pappy," Octavia bridled, considerably stung, "I don't
think you' got much room to talk. In yo' young days, from all I
ever heared--either from you or from others--you was about as
flighty with the gals, and had about as many of 'em follerin'
after you, as Sis is with the boys."

She looked up at her father-in-law where he lounged against the
fire-board. Grandly tall was old Ajax Gentry, carrying his
seventy years and his crown of silver like an added grace. His
blue eye had the cold fire of Callista's, and his lean sinewy
body, like hers, showed the long, flowing curves of running
water.

"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened
circumflex on the vowel that lent it [81] a world of meaning.
"O-o-o-oh! . . . a man! Well--that's mighty different. If a feller's
got the looks--and the ways--he can fly 'round amongst the gals
for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no
harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when
he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But
when a man marries a gal, he wants a _womern_--a womern that'll
keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right.
The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't
worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow,
I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full
o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time.
Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort--yo' mighty right she
wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and
raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, Big
_and_ Little. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated.
"Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their
victuals with 'em."

Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the
door.

"All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the
gal best I knowed how. I reckon _you_ think the fault--sence you
see so much fault in her--comes from my raisin'; but I know
mighty well an' good that the only trouble _I_ ever had with
Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. [82] How you can expect the
cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal
that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her,
is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her
father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to
expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away
toward the log stable to begin his harnessing.

Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone
with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he
had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous,
semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental,
examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty
surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out
all the world and find once more that island of delight where they
should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon
with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought.

It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her
light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure
on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously
soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and
charm.

"Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of
the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her sisters that
[83] his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively
disrespectful.

Lance barely returned her greeting, then he broached his errand.

"Jane! Ellen! Oh, Flent!" she called distressfully, when she had
his news, "Come on out. Lance Cleaverage is here, waitin' to
invite you to his weddin'."

The two sisters came out on the porch, but Flenton did not make
his appearance.

"Howdy, Lance. Who is it?" inquired Ellen Hands. "Callista
Gentry hasn't took you, has she?"

"Well," drawled Lance, lifting a laughing eye to the line of
big, gray-faced women on the rude, puncheon-floored gallery,
"you can make it out best way you find. The weddin' is to be
held at the Gentry place. If it ain't Callista, it's somebody
mighty like her."

Little Liza's lip trembled.

"You Lance Cleaverage," she said huskily, "you're a-gettin' the
sweetest prettiest thing that ever walked this earth. I do know
that there ain't the man livin' that's fit for Callisty. I hope
to the Lord you'll be good to her."

Again Lance regarded the doleful visages before him and laughed.

"You-all look like I'd bid you to a funeral rather than to a
weddin'," he said, lingering a bit to see if Flenton would show
himself. [84]

Hands was just inside the window. He knew well what had been
said. Nothing could have been less to his taste than the going
out to receive such an invitation.

"Thar--you see now, Flent," said Little Liza tragically, as she
encountered her brother when they turned from watching Lance
away. "You've lost her. Oh, law! I always thought if I could
call Callisty Gentry sister, it would make me the happiest
critter in the world."

"You may have a chance so to call her yet," said Hands, who
showed any emotion the announcement may have roused in him only
by an added tightening of lip and eye. "Wednesday ain't come
yet--and hit ain't gone."

"Well, hit'll come and hit'll go," said Ellen heavily. "Lance
Cleaverage gits what he starts after, and that's the fact."

"Yes," agreed Little Liza, "he shore does. I don't reckon I
could have said no to him myself."

"Lance Cleaverage!" echoed her brother. "Well, he's born--but he
ain't buried. I never did yet give up a thing that I'd set my
mind on. I ain't said I've given up Callista Gentry."

The three looked at him rather wildly. Talk of this sort is
unknown among the mountain people. Yet they could but feel the
woman's admiration for his masculine high-handedness of speech.

At the Cleaverage place they were making ready for the noonday
meal when Lance brought [85] his news home. The table, with its
cloth of six flour-sacks sewed end to end, was set in the cool
entry. The Dutch oven, half buried in ashes, was full of
buttermilk-dodgers, keeping hot. At the other side of the broad
hearthstone, Roxy Griever bent above a dinner-pot dishing up
white beans and dumplings. Beside her Mary Ann Martha held a
small yellow bowl and made futile dabs with a spoon she had
herself whittled from a bit of shingle, trying to get beans into
it. Her mother's reproofs dropped upon her tousled and
incorrigible head with the regularity of clockwork.

"You, Mary Ann Marthy, I do know in my soul you' the worst child
the Lord ever made: Where do you expect to go to when you die?
Look at that thar good victuals all splattered out in the ashes.
That's yo' doin'. You' jest adzackly like yo' uncle Lance."

Then Sylvane, who was shaping an axe-helve in the doorway,
looked up and said, "Here comes Lance himself." And Kimbro
Cleaverage pushed another chair towards the table.

"Well," said the bridegroom expectant, looking about on the
shadowed interior of the cabin, dim to his eyes after the glare
outside, "I've got a invite for you-all to a weddin'."

"Not you and Callista?" exclaimed Sylvane, his boyish face
glowing. "Oh, Lance--she ain't said yes, has she?" [86]

"No, Buddy," Lance flung over his shoulder, and you saw by his
smile the strong affection there was between them, "she ain't
said yes--but I have. I've set the time for Wednesday, and the
Gentry place is all uptore right now getting ready for it. I
reckon"--his eye gleamed with the mischievous afterthought--"I
reckon they'll clear the big barn for dancing."

As though the word had been a catch released in her mechanism,
Roxy Griever straightened up, spoon in hand, with a snort.

"You Lance Cleaverage--you sinful soul!" she began, pointing her
bean spoon at him and thus shedding delightful dribblings of
the stew which Mary Ann Martha instantly scraped up, "you air
a-gettin' the best girl in the two Turkey Tracks--and here you
take the name of dancin' on yo' sinful lips at the same time!"

"I reckon you'll not come if there's goin' to be dancin',"
remarked Lance, hanging up his hat and seating himself at the
table. "I hadn't thought of that. Well--we'll have to get along
without you."

Roxy snorted inarticulate reprobation. Suddenly she demanded.

"Sylvane, whar's that branch of leaves I sent you after?"

With the words, Mary Ann Martha, unnoticed by her mother,
abruptly dropped her shingle spoon, scrambled across Sylvane's
long legs, and [87] galloped wildly out into the bit of orchard
beside the house, her mass of almost white curling hair flying
comically about her bobbing head, a picture of energetic terror.
Her young uncle looked after her, smiling tolerantly, and said
nothing.

"The flies'll git more of this dinner than we'uns, if we don't
have something. Why'n't you git me that branch o' leaves,
Sylvane?" persisted his sister.

"Well, Sis' Roxy, I wanted to finish my axe-helve, so I
sub-contracted that order o' yourn," answered Sylvane,
deprecatingly. "Sent Ma'-An'-Marth' out to git a small limb."

"For the land's sake! An' her not taller than--" began Roxy
querulously. But her father put in, with pacific intention,

"Here's the chap now with her peach-tree branch. Come on,
Pretty; let Gran'pappy put it up 'side o' him at the table. Now
sons, now daughter, air ye ready? This is a bountiful meal; and
Roxy's cooked it fine as the best; we're mightily favored. We'll
ax God's blessing on the food." [88]



CHAPTER VI.

THE WEDDING.



WEDNESDAY came, a glamorous day in early September. A breath of
autumn had blown upon the mountains in the night, leaving the air
inspiring--tingling cool in the shade, tingling hot in the sun. The
white clouds were vagabonds of May time, though the birds were
already getting together in flocks, chattering, restless for
migration. Now at night instead of the bright come-and-go of
fireflies there was a mild and steady lamping of glowworms in the
evening grass. The katydids' chorus had dwindled, giving place to
the soft chirr of ground and tree-crickets. There was a pleasant,
high-pitched rustle in the stiffening leaves; the dew was heavy in
the hollows, gray under the moon.

All day the woods were silent, except for the mocking whirr of
grasshoppers rising into the sunshine, and an occasional
squabble of crows in pursuit of a hawk.

Wild grapes were ripe--delicious, tart, keen-flavored things. In
the pasture hollow a fleece of goldenrod, painted on the purple
distance along with the scarlet globes of orchard fruit, was
stripped by laughing girls for Callista's wedding [89] decorations.
Yes, summer was definitely departed; a new presence was here, an
autumn wind in the treetops, an autumn light on the meadow, an
autumn haze on the hills--a fine luminous purple, flecked with
lights of rose and gold.

The Gentry place, with its central house of some pretensions and its
numerous outlying cabins, presented on Wednesday afternoon something
the appearance of a village undergoing sack. Open doors and windows,
heaps of stuff, or bundles of household gear, or sheaves of garments
being carried from place to place, suggested this impression, which
seemed further warranted by the female figures emerging suddenly
now and again from one cabin or another and fleeing with disheveled
hair, wild gestures and incoherent babblings as of terror, to some
other refuge. The girls had not come in yet from the pasture with
their armloads of goldenrod and wild aster; but all three of the
Hands sisters--good, faithful souls, neighborhood dependences for
extra help at weddings and funerals--were hard at work in the very
heart of the turmoil.

"Liza, have you seed Callista anywhar's?" panted Octavia Gentry,
appearing in the main house, laden with a promiscuous assortment
of clothing.

"Yes, I did," rumbled Little Liza from the chair on which she
stood adjusting the top of a window curtain. [90]

"I thought I heared Lance's banjo awhile ago," added the widow
as she folded and disposed of the garments she had brought in,
"and then I didn't hear it any more. I have obliged to get hold
of Callista to tell me whar she wants these things put at."

"Yes, and you did hear Lance Cleaverage's banjo," confirmed
Little Liza sadly. "Callisty heared it, too. She come a-steppin'
down from her room like as if he'd called her, and she's walked
herself out of the front door and up the road alongside o' him,
and that's why you don't hear the banjo no more."

"Good land!" cried the mother-in-law that was to be. "I don't
know what young folks is thinkin' of--no, I don't. It ain't
respectable for a bride and groom to walk side by side on their
weddin' day. Everybody knows that much. And I've got to have
Callista here. Roxy Griever's sent word that she cain't come to
the weddin' because its been given out to each and every that
they'd be dancin'. I want Callista to see Lance and have that
stopped. Hit's jest some o' Lance's foolishness. You know in
reason its got to be stopped. Oh, Sylvane!" as a boyish figure
appeared in the doorway. "Won't you go hunt up Callista and tell
her I want her? And you tell yo' sister Roxy when you go home
that there ain't goin' to be any dancin' here tonight. And just
carry these here pans out to the springhouse [91] whilst you're
about it, Sylvane. And if you find Ellen Hands there tell her to
come on in to me, please. I vow, nobody's been for the cows!
Sylvane, whilst you're out you go up to the milk gap and see are
they waitin' thar. Let down the draw-bars for 'em if they are."

Fifteen-year-old Sylvalnus Cleaverage laughed and turned
quickly, lest further directions be given him.

"All right," he called back. "I'll 'tend to most of those
things--as many of 'em as I can remember."

A privileged character, especially among the women, Sylvane made
willing haste to do Octavia's errands. The boy was like his
brother Lance with the wild tang left out, and feminine eyes
followed his young figure as he hurried from spring-house to
pasture lot. When he found Lance and Callista walking hand in
hand at the meadow's edge he gave them warning, so that the girl
might slip in through the back door, innocently unconscious of
any offence against the etiquette of the occasion, and the
bridegroom pass on down the big road, undiscovered.

"I reckon it's jest as well as 'tis," commented old Ajax from
the security of the front door-yard, to which he had been swept
out and cleaned out in the course of the preparations. "Ef
Octavy had been give a year's warnin', she would have [92] been
jest about tearin' up Jack this-a-way for the whole time."

As evening fell, teams began to arrive, and the nearer neighbors
came in on foot, with a bustle of talk and a settling of the
children. Old Kimbro Cleaverage brought his daughter, Roxy
Griever, with little Polly Griever, a relative of Roxy's
deceased husband, and Mary Ann Martha.

"I knowed in reason you wouldn't have dancin' on yo' place," the
widow shrilled, as she approached. Then as she climbed out over
the wheel, she added in a lower tone to Little Liza Hands, who
had come out to help her down, "But that thar sinful Lance is so
pestered by the davil that you never know whar he'll come up
next, and I sont Miz. Gentry the word I did as a warnin'. Tham
men has to be watched."

Callista was ready, dressed in a certain white lawn frock--not
for worlds would she have admitted that she had made it with
secret hopes of this occasion. The helpers were still rushing to
and fro, getting the wedding supper on the long tables,
contrived by boards over trestles, on the porch and in the big
kitchen, when Preacher Drumright rode sourly up.

It was Octavia Gentry who had been instrumental in bespeaking
Drumright's services for the marriage, and indeed he was the only
preacher in the Turkey Track neighborhoods at the moment or
anywhere nearer than the Settlement itself. [93] The church-going
element of the region stood before this somewhat cantankerous
old man in the attitude of confessed offenders. He was famous for
raking the young people over the coals, and he arrogated to himself
always the patriarch's privilege of scolding, admonishing, or
denouncing, whenever the occasion might seem to him fit. For ten
years Drumright had longed to get a fair chance at Lance Cleaverage.
Ever since the boy--and he was the youngest in the crowd--joined
with a half dozen others to break up a brush meeting which Drumright
was holding, the preacher's grudge had grown. And it did not thrive
without food; Lance was active in the matter of providing sustenance
for the ill opinion of the church party, and he had capped his
iniquities by taking his banjo as near the church as the big spring
on that Sunday in mid-July. Drumright had prepared the castigating
he meant to administer to Lance almost as carefully as he would
have gotten ready a sermon.

With the advent of the preacher the last frantic preparations
were dropped, and it was suddenly discovered that they were not
absolutely necessary for the occasion. The guests gathered into
the big front room, where the marriage was to be. Drumright took
his stand behind a small table at its further end; Callista came
down the stairs, joined Lance in the entry, and the two stepped
into the room hand in hand. [94]

That was a daunting front to address with reproof. People said
that they were the handsomest couple that ever stood up together
in the two Turkey Tracks. But after all, it was something more
than physical beauty that arrested the eye in that countenance.
Lance's face was lifted, and his eyes apparently saw not the
room, the preacher, nor even the girl whose hand he held. He
moved a thing apart, his light, swift step timed to unheard
rhythms, a creature swayed by springs which those about him knew
not of, addressed to some end which they could not understand.
And Callista seemed to look only to him, to live only in him.
Her fair face reflected the strange radiance that was on his
dark, intense young visage.

It was Drumright's custom to make a little talk when about to
perform the marriage ceremony, so there was neither surprise nor
apprehension as he began to speak.

"Befo' I can say the words that shall make this here man and
this here woman one flesh, I've got a matter to bring up that I
think needs namin'."

The old voice rasped aggressively, and a little flutter of
concern passed over Drumright's hearers.

"The Gentry family air religious, church-goin' people. Why
Callista Gentry ain't a perfessin' member in the church this day
is more than I can tell you-all here and now. Like enough some
will say hit is the influence of the man a-standin' [95] beside her;
and supposin' this to be so, hit cain't be too soon named out to
'em."

If Lance heard any word of Drumright's harangue, he gave no
sign; but Callista stirred uneasily, her nostrils flickered, and
she glanced from the preacher to her bridegroom.

"I wonder in my soul," Drumright went on, "that any God-fearin'
family would give they' child to a man that has been from his
cradle up, as a body may say, the scoffer that you air, Lance
Cleaverage."

Thus pointedly addressed, a slight start passed through the
bridegroom's taut body, and Cleaverage turned a half-awakened
eye upon the preacher.

"Are you aimin' to get 'em to stop the marriage?" he inquired
bluntly. As he spoke, he dropped Callista's hand, caught it once
more in the grasp of his other, and put his freed arm strongly
about her waist. Thus holding her, he turned a little to face
her mother and grandfather as well as the preacher.

A shock went through, the crowded room; pious horror and amaze
on the part of the older people; among the younger folk a
twittering tremor not unmixed with delight at the spirit of the
bridegroom. You might wince beneath the preacher's castigations;
you might privately grumble about them, and even refuse to pay
anything toward his up-keep, thereby helping to starve [96] his
wife and children; but that you should presume to answer a preacher
in the pulpit or elsewhere in the performance of his special
office, was a thing inconceivable.

The bridegroom's family drew together at one side of the room,
Kimbro Cleaverage, in his decent best, looking half affrightedly
at the man who was miscalling his son; Roxy Griever, divided
between her allegiance to the caste of preachers, all and
singular, and tribal pride; Sylvane clutching his hands into
fists, and hoping that Buddy would get the better of the
argument; while Mary Ann Martha, in the grasp of Polly Griever,
glowered and wondered.

"Lance Cleaverage," returned Drumright ponderously, "I respect
yo' father, for he's a good man. I respect yo' sister--she's one
too; for their sake I come here to perform this marriage,
greatly agin my grain."

He was taking a long breath, having barely got under way, when
Lance stopped him with a curt,

"Well,--are you goin' to do it--or are you not?"

People gazed with open mouths and protruding eyes. Where were
the lightnings of Heaven, set apart for the destruction of the
impious? Drumright himself was momentarily staggered.

"Er, yes--I am," he said finally, wagging his head in an
obstinate, bovine shake. "After I've said my say, I aim to marry
ye." [97]

The little points of light that always danced deep down in Lance
Cleaverage's eyes, flamed up like clear lamps at this statement.

"No, you'll not," he said promptly. "You'll marry us now--or not
at all. If I wanted any of your talk, I'd come to your church
and get it. I don't want any."

All this time his arm had been round Callista, the hand closed
on her slim waist gently, but with a grip of steel. Had she
wished to stir from his side, she could scarcely have done so.
Now he turned toward the door and moved quietly away from the
astonished preacher, taking her with him.

"Whar--whar you goin'?" faltered Drumright, dumbfounded.

"Down to Sourwood Gap to be wedded," the bridegroom flung back
in his face. "Squire Ashe is up there from Hepzibah--he'll marry
us without haulin' us over the coals first." And he made his way
through the roomful of mute, dazed, unprotesting people. At the
door he paused, and, with the air of a man alone with his
beloved in desert spaces, bent and murmured something in the ear
of his bride, then ran lightly down the steps and out into the
dark to where the horses were tethered. He returned quickly,
leading his two black ponies.

He found that in the few moments of his absence the company had
awakened to the enormity [98] of what was going on. There were a
half-dozen people round Callista, most of them talking. Little
Liza, who evidently believed that the finger of the Lord was in
it, and that her brother Flenton was at last going to get the
girl of his choice, clung to Callista's hand and wept. Flenton
himself stood squarely in the bride's path, speaking low and
eagerly. At the upper end of the room Octavia Gentry was almost
in hysterics as she labored with the preacher, trying to get him
to say that he would marry the pair at once if they would come
back. Old Ajax had retired to his corner by the big fireplace,
where he stood smiling furtively, and slowly rubbing a lean,
shaven jaw, as he glanced from his daughter-in-law to his
granddaughter in leisurely enjoyment. After all, there was much
he liked well in Callista's chosen.

Roxana Griever had flown to supplement Octavia's entreaties with
the preacher. Kimbro made his way toward the door, evidently
with some half-hearted intention of remonstrating with his son.
Sylvane had slipped out to help Lance with the horses--he
guessed that his brother never meant to ride away from the
Gentry place alone.

"He ain't fitten for you, Callisty," Hands was whispering over and
over. "He ain't fitten for you. A man that will do you this-a-way
on yo' wedding day, what sort o' husband is he goin' to make? Here's
me, honey, that's loved you all your life, an' been a member o' the
church in [99] good standin' sence I was twelve years old. Callisty,
I'd be plumb proud to lay down for you to walk over. You take me,
and we'll have a weddin' here sure enough."

[Illustration: "You'll marry us now--or not at all."]
The words were breathed low into the bride's ear; yet attitude
and air were eloquent, and Hands's position and intentions were
so notorious, that the proposition might as well have been
shouted aloud.

"Lance--you Lance! Callista, honey!" implored the mother's voice
distressfully above the moving heads of the crowd. "You chillen
wait till I can get thar. Preacher says he'll wed you now. Come
on back in here."

"Yes, and when you git that feller back in here a-standin'
before Preacher Drumright to be wedded, you'll toll a wild buck
up to a tainted spring," chuckled old Ajax Gentry.

Lance only smiled. The lover, all aglow, rejected with contempt
this maimed thing they would thrust upon him for a marriage. He
was leading Callista's horse to the porch edge that she might
mount, when he glanced up and found how strongly the pressure
was being put upon his girl. The sight arrested his hurrying
steps, and turned him instantly into the semblance of an
indifferent bystander.

"Honey, they say a good brother makes a good husband," Little
Liza was booming on in what she fondly believed was a tone
audible only to Callista. [100] "I tell you Flenton is the best
brother any gals ever had."

Cleaverage stood gazing at them with eyes indecipherable,
then--turned his back.

"And look at Lance Cleaverage," exhorted Little Liza, "a
drinkin', coon-huntin', banjo playin' feller that don't darken
the doors of a church--his own sister cain't never name him
without tellin' how wicked he is. Let him go, honey--you let him
go, an' take Flent."

Lance, standing with his back to them, holding his horses, had
begun to whistle. At first the sound was scarcely to be heard
above the babel of voices in the lighted room--but it came clearly
to Callista's ears. Flenton's hand reached hers; Ellen joined her
entreaties to those of Little Liza. Callista, while not a church
member, had always aligned herself with the ultra-religious
element; she had been the companion and peer of those eminently
fitted and ever ready to sit in judgment on the unworthy. Now she
heard all these joining to condemn Lance.

The tune outside went seeking softly among the turns and
roulades with which Lance always embellished a melody. It was
the song he had sung under her window. Her heart remembered the
words.

   "How many years, how many miles,
   Far from the door where my darling smiles?
   How many miles, how many years . . . ?"

His musing, eyes were on the far line of mountains, velvety
black against the luminous blackness of the sky; his gaze rested
thoughtfully on a great star that hung shining in the dusk over
the horizon's edge. He seemed deaf to the clatter and squabble,
blind to the movement in the room behind him. Softly he
whistled, like a man wandering pensive beside a lonely sea, or
in some remote, solitary forest, a man untouched by the more
immediate and human things of life. The two horses after
snorting and pulling back at first sight of the unaccustomed
lights and the noisy voices, put down their noses toward the
long, lush dooryard grass.

"He ain't lookin' at you. He ain't a-carin'," Flenton whispered
to her.

For the first time Callista glanced directly to where her
bridegroom stood. His back was to her--yes, his back was to her.
And though the little whistle went questing on with its "How
many miles--how many years?" even as her eye rested on him he
made a leisurely movement toward one of the horses, like a man
who might be about to mount. Swift as a shadow she slipped
through the hands of those around her and down the steps.

"Lance," she breathed. "Lance." Then she was in his arms. He had
lifted her to the saddle.

"Good land!" wailed Octavia Gentry, "if you've [102] got to go, Sis,
they's no use ruinin' yo' frock. Here's your ridin' skirt," and
she flourished the long calico garment and struggled to get down
to the mounted pair.

Lance was on the other horse now. He paid no attention to any of
them, but let his smiling gaze rove for the last time over the
lighted windows, the noisy people, the long tables.

"What time will you-all be back?" called the still secretly
chuckling old Ajax from the doorway, as he saw them depart.

"Never," answered Lance's clear hail.

"Oh, Lance--ain't you a-goin' to come back and have the
weddin'?" began Octavia.

At this the bridegroom turned in his saddle, reining in
thoughtfully. He would not accept this mutilated ceremony, yet
the wedding of Lance Cleaverage should not be shorn in the eyes
of his neighbors. Slowly he wheeled his horse and faced them all
once more.

"Callista and me ain't coming back here," he assured them,
without heat, yet with decision. "But I bid you-all to an infare
at my house tomorrow night."

Then once more he wheeled his pony, caught at Callista's bridle,
and sweeping into the big road, started the two forward at a
gallop. His arm was round Callista's waist. Her head drooped in
the relief of a decision arrived at, and a final abandonment to her
real feeling that was almost [103] swoon-like, on the conqueror's
shoulder. The horses sprang forward as one.

"Callista--sweetheart," he whispered with his lips against her
hair, "we don't want nothin' of them folks back there, do we? We
don't want nothin' of anybody in the world. Just you and me--you
and me." [104]



CHAPTER VII.

LANCE'S LAUREL.



THE inheritance of Lance Cleaverage came to him from his
maternal grandfather. Jesse Lance had felt it bitterly when his
handsome high-spirited youngest daughter ran away with Kimbro
Cleaverage, teacher of a little mountain school, a gentle,
unworldly soul who would never get on in life. His small
namesake was four years old when Grandfather Lance, himself a
hawkfaced, up-headed man, undisputed master of his own
household, keen on the hunting trail, and ready as ever for a
fight or a frolic, came past and stopped at the Cleaverage farm
on the way from his home in the Far Cove neighborhood down to
the Settlement to buy mules, and, incidentally, to arrange about
his will. He was not advanced in years, and he was in excellent
health; but there were a number of married sons and daughters to
portion, he had a considerable amount of property, and his wife
was ailing. It had been suggested that both should make their
wills; so the documents, duly written out, signed and attested,
were being carried down to Jesse Lance's lawyer in Hepzibah. [105]

He had seen almost nothing of his one-time favorite, Melissa,
since the marriage twelve years before with Cleaverage that so
disappointed him; and he had not now expected to remain the
night in her house. But the little Lance, a small splinter of
manhood, at once caught his grandfather's eye. The child stirred
Jesse Lance's curiosity perhaps--or it may have been some deeper
feeling. The first collision between these two occurred as the
visitor, having dismounted, approached the Cleaverage gate. He
had his favorite hound with him, and four-year-old Lance,
leading forth old Speaker, his chosen comrade, observed the hair
rise on the neck of grandfather's follower, and listened with
delight to the rumble of growls the dogs exchanged.

"Ye better look out. If Speaker jumps on yo' dog he'll thest
about eat him up," the child warned.

The tall man swept his grandson with a dominating gaze that was
used to see the people about Jesse Lance obey. But things that
scared other children were apt to evoke little Lance's scornful
laughter or stir up fight in him.

"You call off yo' hound," the newcomer said imperiously. "I
don't let my dog fight with every cur he meets."

The small boy wheeled--hands in trouser pockets--and gazed with
disappointed eyes to where the two canines were making friends.

"I wish they would jump on each other; I thest [106] wish't they
would," he muttered. "I know Speaker could whip."

Grandfather Lance looked with interest at the child. Such a boy
had he been. This was the spirit he had bequeathed to Lance's
mother, and which she had wasted when she married a schoolteacher.

Melissa Cleaverage, come down in the world now, paid timid court
to her father without much success; but in the middle of the
afternoon, her four-year-old son settled the question of the
visitor remaining for the night. Jesse Lance had been across the
gulch to look at some wild land which belonged to him, up on the
head waters of the creek called Lance's Laurel, a haggard, noble
domain, its lawless acres still tossing an unbroken sea of green
tree-tops towards the sky. As he returned to the Cleaverage
place, he traversed a little woods-path without noticing the
small jeans-clad boy who dragged a number of linked objects
across the way.

"You gran'pap!" came the shrill challenge after him. "You quit
a-breakin' up my train."

Jesse glanced toward the ground and saw a great oak chip dangling
by a string against his boot. He turned an impassive countenance,
and thrust with his foot to free it from its entanglement.

"Watch out--you'll break it!" cried the child, running up. Then,
as a second jerk shook and rattled the dangling bit of wood,
"Ain't you got [107] no sense?" he roared. "That's the injine to my
train that you done stepped on and broke all up, and it cain't
go a lick with you, big, lazy loafer, standin' right in the
middle of it!"

For a moment the fierce baby eyes looked up into eyes as fierce
above them. Such a glance should have sent any youngster weeping
to its mother's skirts; but the tiny man on the woods-path stood
his ground, ruffling like a game cock.

"Uh-huh!" jeered the grandfather, "and who might you be, young
feller?"

"I'm cap'n of this train," Lance flung back at him, scarlet of
face, his form rigid, his feet planted wide on the mold of the
path.

Grim amusement showed itself in the elder countenance. Yet Jesse
Lance was not used to permitting himself to be defied. Not since
Melissa had run rough-shod over him and held his heart in her
little grubby hands, had another been allowed such liberties.

"Oh, ye air, air ye? Well, that's mighty big talk for little
breeches," he taunted, to see whether the spirit that looked out
at him from his grandson's eyes went deep, or was mere surface
bravado.

He got his answer. With a roar the baby charged him, gripped the
big man around the knees and swung.

"Git off'n my injine!" he bellowed, contorting his small body to
hammer with his toes the offending legs he clung to. "I told you
once civil, and [108] you didn't go. I'm cap'n of this train, and I
can throw rowdies off when they won't go."

The lines of the man's face puckered curiously as he looked down
at the small assailant. Without another word he freed his foot
from the chip-and-string "train," moving circumspectly and with
due regard to flimsy couplings. Without another word he stepped
slowly on, looking across his shoulder once, to note that Lance
instantly joined his train into shape and, turning his back on
his big adversary, promptly forgot all about him. Where the
woods-path struck the big road, the grandfather stood a long
moment and studied his grandson; then he made his way to the
house where eleven year-old Roxy sat sorting wild greens on the
porch edge.

"How old is that chap back thar?" he inquired of her brusquely.

"Brother Lance? W'y, he ain't but fo' year old," Roxana returned
sanctimoniously. "Gran'pap, you mustn't hold it agin' him that
he's so mean--he's but fo' year old. An' Poppy won't never whip
him like he ort. If Poppy would jest give him a good dosin' of
hickory tea, I 'low he'd come of his meanness mighty quick."

Jesse Lance merely grunted in reply to these pious observations,
and in his mind there framed itself a codicil to be added to
that will. Melissa--Melissa who married Kimbro Cleaverage--had
been left out of both testaments so far; but she [109] was his
favorite child, and it had been in her father's mind to bequeath
to her the wild land up in the Gap. Yet of what use would such a
piece of timber be to a woman? And it would be of less account
to a man like Kimbro Cleaverage. They would but sell it for the
meagre price someone might offer their necessities now. No, the
dauntless captain of the train back there on the path was the
one to own the Gap hundred. Such a man as he promised to become,
would subdue that bit of savage nature, and live with and upon
it. The lawyer in Hepzibah should fix the will that way.

Susan Lance died in her husband's absence; and the pair of mules
Jesse had bought in the Settlement ran away with him on his
journey home, pitching themselves, the wagon and driver, all
over a cliff and breaking his neck. So it was that the codicil
to the will left "to my namesake Lance Cleaverage, the Gap
hundred on Lance's Laurel," not then of as much value as it had
now become. High on the side of the slope it lay, as befitted
the heritage of a free hunter. The timber on it was straight,
tall and clean, mostly good hardwood. Here was the head of Lance's
Laurel, a bold spring of pure freestone water bursting out from
under a bluff--a naked mass of sandstone which fronted the sky near
his boundary-line--in sufficient volume to form with its own waters
the upper creek. A mile down, this [110] stream joined itself to
Burnt Cabin Laurel, and the two formed Big Laurel. This water
supply, unusually fine even in that well-watered country, added
greatly to the value of the tract as a homestead. Coal had been
found on the other side of the ridge, and Lance, who believed
in his star, thought it reasonable to expect that coal would be
discovered on his own land.

Meantime, though he had cleared none of it for crops--not even
the necessary truck-patch--he made a little opening on a fine,
sightly rise, with a more lofty eminence behind it, and set to
work building his cabin. Scorning the boards from the portable
sawmill which would have offered him a flimsy shanty at best,
hot in the brief, vivid summer and cold in winter, he marked the
best timber for the purpose, and planned a big, two-penned log
house, with an open porch between. Lance, his father and
Sylvane, spent more than ten days getting out the trees. It took
forty boles to build a single pen ten logs high; and as Lance
had decided to have the rooms measure fourteen feet inside, each
must be cut to fifteen foot length. Then, since he was
fastidious in the matter of a straight wall, Lance himself
measured and lined each one and scored it to line, his father
coming behind him with a broad-axe and hewing it flat on the two
sides, leaving the log perhaps about five inches through,
whatever its height might be, and thus securing a flat [111] wall
of even thickness. For the kitchen at the back, it was thought good
enough to snake the logs up in the round, with the bark all on,
and merely skelp them roughly as they were put up one by one.

It took only a day to raise the walls of the cabin on Lance's
Laurel, for the owner was tremendously popular, and there was
help enough offered in friendly country fashion that day to have
raised another pen, had the logs been ready. Roxy Griever and
little Polly came across the gulch with dinner for the men; but
the best things the laughing jovial party had, Lance cooked for
them on an open camp-fire.

The roof was of hand-rived clapboards which Lance and Sylvane got
out; but all the flooring was of tongued and grooved boards, brought
from the Hepzibah planing mill, narrow, smooth, well-fitted,
well-laid.

There were not in all the Turkey Track neighborhoods such door-and
window-frames, nor doors of such quality, all hauled up from the
planing mill.

When it came to the chimney, Lance was the master hand, a mason
by trade, and sent for far and near to build chimneys or doctor
one which refused to draw. He had chosen the stones from the
creek-bed, water-washed, clean, offering traceries of white here
and there on their steely, blue-gray surfaces. He debated long
over the question of a rounded arch with keystone for the front
of [112] his fireplace, as is the manner of all the older chimneys
in the mountains; but finally he and Sylvane found one day a single
straight arch rock so long that it could be laid across the
jambs, and this he shaped a bit and hauled up for the purpose.
The day he set in the chimney-throat the iron bar from which to
hang the kettles, Sylvane lay watching him.

"Now, that's what Sis' Roxy's been a-wantin' ever sence I can
remember," the younger brother commented, as Lance manipulated
the mortar and set stone upon stone with nice skill.

"Uh-huh," assented the proprieter of Lance's Laurel lightly.
"She wants it too bad. If she'd just want it easier, maybe she'd
get it, one of these days."

He laughed drolly down at the boy lying on the grass, and both
remembered the long dreary tirades by which poor Roxy had tried
to get her brother to so amend the home hearth that cooking
should be rendered less laborious for her.

And it was to this home that Lance Cleaverage brought his bride.
Here it was that he hoped to build that true abiding place which
such spirits as Lance seek, and crave, and seldom find. The
hearthstone he had himself laid, the skilfully built chimney,
with its dream of Callista sitting on one side of the hearth and
himself on the other--these were gropings after the answers such
as he always asked of life. [113]

"This ain't what Pap calls a sojourning place--this here's going
to be a real home, Callista," he said eagerly, as the two young
creatures went about it examining their new habitation the next
morning. "It'll be cool in the summer, and good and warm in the
winter. That chimney'll draw--just look at the fire. I never
have built a chimney that smoked."

"Did you build the chimney, Lance?" Callista asked him, leaning
on his arm.

"I did that," he told her. "They're always after me to build
other folks' chimneys and lay other people's hearthstones, and I
ain't so very keen to do it--and it don't pay much--up here. But
my own--one for you and me to sit by--"

He broke off and stared down at her, his eyes suddenly full of
dreams. Oh, the long winter evenings; they two together beside
the leaping hearth-fire. They would be as one. Surely into this
citadel he had builded for his life, the enemy--the olden
lonesomeness--could never come.

They had their bit of breakfast, and Lance was about to go down
to the Settlement to purchase the wherewithal for the impromptu
infare. It was hard to leave her. He went out and fed the black
horses and came back to say good-bye once more. His team was his
hope of a subsistence, seeing that there was no cleared land to
farm. He and they together could earn a living for two or three
months yet. After that, there would [114] be small opportunity
throughout the winter for teaming. Through the summer he had
been hauling tan-bark on the contract for old man Derf. Nearly
all of this money he had spent upon the house; and he felt he
had now to draw upon what remained--though it was not yet quite
due--for the expenses of the infare. Callista was down at the
hearth as he entered, the tiny blaze in its center warming the
whiteness of her throat and chin where she bent to hang a pot on
the bar his skill and forethought had placed there for her.
Something mighty and primal and terribly sweet shook the soul of
Lance Cleaverage as he looked at her kneeling there. She was
his--his mate. He would never be alone again. He ran to her and
dropped his arm about her. She turned up to him that flushing,
tender, responsive countenance which was new to both of them.

"Hadn't I better buy you a pair of slippers?" he asked her, just
for the pleasure of having her answer.

"I reckon I don't need 'em, Lance," she said soberly, getting to her
feet and moving with him toward the door. "If I could dance--or
if I ever did dance--I might have need of such."

"Dance!" echoed her husband with quick tenderness, looking down
at her as they paused on the doorstone. "If you was to dance,
Callista, there wouldn't any of the other gals want to stand up
on the floor beside you. I'm goin' to get the slippers." [115]

He rode away on his black horse, her fond eyes following him;
and the sight of her standing in the door waving her hand was
his last vision of home.

At the gate, far down the slope, he stopped for some imaginary
investigation of his accoutrements, but really to have an excuse
to turn and wave to Callista, cupping his hands and calling
back, "I'm going to bring you the finest pair of slippers I can
buy."

For in his pocket was one of her shoes, and in his mind the firm
intention of getting so light and flexible a pair of slippers
that his girl should be coaxed into learning to dance. Callista
not dance--it was unthinkable! Of course she would dance. Vaguely
his mind formed the picture of her swaying to the rhythm of music.
His eyes half closed, he let black Satan choose his own gait, as
his arms felt somehow the light pressure of her form within them,
and he was dancing with Callista. On--on--on through the years
with Callista. She should not grow old and faded and workworn,
nor he hardened, commonplace, indifferent. There should be love
and tenderness--beauty and music and movement--in their lives.
And she should dance for him--with him--Callista, who had never
yet danced with anyone.

Early morning shadows lay cool across the road; ground-squirrels
frisked among the boulders by [116] the way. The far mountains were
of a wonderful morning color, not blue, but a blend of the tint of
the golden sun-warmed slopes with that of the air; a color of
dream, of high romance--a color of ideals.

At one time he was roused from his thoughts by a bee-like drone
of voices, accompanied by jangling cowbells. Around the turn
ahead of him came a herd of spotted yearlings, their shaggy
hides clustered with the valley's wayside burrs. They took the
road, crowding stupidly against his horse, and shuffled by; then
followed two riders, driving the bunch to mountain pastures to
find their own living until winter should set in--an old man in
a faded hat and shawl, gaunt, humped over his saddle-bow; and
his son beside him on a better horse, but colorless of feature
as himself.

"Howdy," said Lance, smiling, and they answered him, "Howdy."

But he was moved to a new pity for these men, whom he did not
know, and for all their kind who are born and live, God knew
why, without the eagle power of soaring into blue gulfs of
dream. He rode with his head high, eye bright, his cheek
glowing, his whole body tingling in the exquisite flow of the
frost-sweetened morning air upon it. The horse, too, felt the
touch of last night's frost, and fretted against the bit until
Lance, with a shout, let him go. Then the road underfoot rushed
past with the wind as the two splendid, [117] exultant creatures
flew over it, for the moment so far in sympathy that they seemed
one. They found themselves reluctantly slowing down at the front
fence of the Derf place. The pack of hounds burst from under the
porch, and ran baying out to meet Lance. Iley Derf's Indian
husband crouched at the corner of the cabin picking up something,
and moved noiselessly away with an armful of wood. The clamor of
the hounds brought Derf himself out, and Lance had a glimpse of
women moving about at household work in the cabin.

"Light--light and come in," Garrett Derf greeted him. "I hear
you and old Jeff Drumright had it up an' down last night, and
that you beat the old hypocrite out."

"Much obliged, I ain't got time to get down," Lance answered,
ignoring the rest of Derf's speech. "I just stopped as I was
passing to get some money."

Derf's eyes narrowed to slits. He lounged forward, bent and
secured a bit of wood from the chip pile and commenced to
whittle. Such rapid and abrupt negotiations are quite foreign to
mountain business ethics, where it takes a half a day to collect
a day's wages.

"Want some money," Derf repeated contemplatively. "You mean that
thar money for the haulin', I reckon."

"Yes," returned Lance impatiently, "I couldn't very well mean
any other." [118]

"Well, Lance, you shorely ain't forgettin' that that thar money
ain't due till next month," Derf said, setting a foot on the
chopping block and proceeding to pick his teeth with the
toothpick he had shaped. "The haulin' ain't all done yet."

"No, I ain't forgot that; but I knew you had money by you, and I
didn't reckon you'd object to paying some of it ahead of time."

Cleaverage forced himself to speak civilly, though his temper
was rising. Derf chuckled.

"Now see here," he shifted the raised foot, and set forth
evidently on a long argument. "Thar ain't no man livin' that
likes to pay money afore hit's due. Ef I've got the cash by me,
that's my good fortune. Ef you want payment ahead of time, it's
worth somethin'. What do you aim to take for the debt as it
stands, me to pay you today? Of course I'm good for it; but this
here business is the same as discountin' a note, and that calls
for money. What'll you take, Lance?"

"Whatever you'll give me, I reckon," Lance came back quickly,
with light scorn. "Looks like you've got it your own way. What
are you offering?"

"Oh, I ain't offerin' nothin'," Derf receded from his
proposition. A shrewd enjoyment was evident beneath the surface
stupidity and reluctance. "It's you that wants the money. Looks
like you must want it pretty bad."

Nothing but the fact that he conceived it [119] necessary to have
the funds, kept Lance from breaking out wrathfully and leaving his
tormentor.

"See here, Garrett Derf," he said at last, divided between scorn
and angry dignity, "I made you one offer--and I'd think the
meanest man would call it good enough--I'll take what money you
choose to give me. Now you can say the rest."

"See here, Lance," echoed Derf, grinning, and glancing toward
the cabin, "you ort not to trade so careless these days and
times. Yo're a married man now; you've got to look out for yo'
spare cash, or yo' ol' woman'll be in yo' hair. What you needin'
all this here money for, anyway?"

The day before, Derf durst not for his life inquire so closely
into Lance Cleaverage's affairs. Now he felt that he held the
boy in a cleft stick. Something of this Lance understood; also,
the allusion to Callista's right to vise his bargains stung him
beyond reason. No doubt he knew at bottom that what he was now
engaged on was unfair to her.

"If you're going to pay, you'd better be about it," he said to
Derf. "I've got some buying to do when I get my money, and
Frazee's store is a right smart ways from here."

Derf came through the fence and laid a detaining hand on Satan's
mane, getting nipped at for his pains.

"You ain't got the time to go down to the store and buy, and git
back home by night," he argued. [120] "Better trade with me, Lance.
I brung up a wagon load of goods last time I was down. I aim to
put in shelving and set up regular next month."

A quick change went over Lance's face.

"Have you got any women's slippers--that size?" the bridegroom
asked eagerly, drawing Callista's shoe from his pocket.

Derf took the shoe in his hand and fingered it, bending so his
countenance was concealed. Lance became aware of a heaving of
the man's shoulders, a gurgling, choking sound that at length
resolved itself into a fierily offensive chuckle.

"Buyin' shoes for her the fust day!" snickered Garrett Derf.

The young fellow bent from his saddle and swooped the bit of
foot-gear out of the other's fingers--it looked so much as
though he would clout Garrett Derf on the side of the head with
it that the latter dodged hastily.

"Are you going to trade, or are you not?" he asked with blazing
eyes. "I got something else to do besides stand here talking."

"I'll give you half," bantered Derf, still holding discreetly
out of range, but wiping the tears of delicious mirth from the
corners of his eyes.

"I'll take it," returned Lance sharply, thrusting forth his
hand. "Have you got it with you?"

The chance was too good to lose. Derf [121] instantly ceased
chuckling, reached down in a capacious pocket and hauled up a
great wallet, out of which he began to count the money, looking up
furtively every moment to see if Lance had been only jesting, or if
his temper and that reckless spirit of his were sufficiently roused
to carry through the outrageous trade. But when the few bills and
the bit of silver were ready, Lance took them, put them carelessly
into his pocket without the usual careful fingering and counting,
and wheeled Satan toward the road.

"Ain't you goin' to tell a body 'howdy'?" came a treble hail
from the cabin as he did so, and Ola Derf's small face, still
disfigured from her tears of last night, presented itself at the
doorway. "Lance, wait a minute--I want to speak with you," the
girl called; and then she came running down to the fence and out
into the road. "Was you and Pap a-fussin'? Ye ain't goin' to be
mad with us becaze Callista and her folks never was friendly
with us, air ye?" she inquired doubtfully, looking up at him
with drowned eyes.

Pity stirred Lance's heart. Poor little thing, she had always been
a friendly soul, since the two were tow-headed tykes of six playing
hookey together from the bit of summer school, as devoted as a dog,
observant of his mood and careful of all his preferences. It was
rare for her to thrust upon him her own distress, or to let him see
her other than cheerful, eagerly willing to [122] forward his plans.
And he remembered with resentment that both at his own home and
Callista's after some heated discussion of his proposition to invite
the Derfs, he had said they could have it their own way, and no
invitation had been given.

"Well, you and me ain't going to fuss, anyhow, are we, Ola?" he
said heartily. "I bid you to the infare at my house to-night. I
was just gettin' the money from your father to buy some things
that Callista'll need for it."

Square, stubbed, the little brown girl stood at the roadside
shading her gaze with one small, rough hand, looking up at the
mounted man with open, unchanged adoration. Her eyes--the eyes
of an ignorant little half savage--enlightened by love, valued
accurately the perfect carriage of his shapely head on the brown
throat, the long, tapering line from waist to toe, as he sat at
ease in the saddle. Who of them all was the least bit like
Lance, her man of men, with his quizzical smile, his blithe,
easy mastery of any situation?

"Hit's too late now for you to go away down yon to the store,
ain't it. Lance?" the girl asked him timidly. "Don't you want to
come in and see the new things Pappy brung up from the
Settlement? I believe in my soul he's got the prettiest dancin'
shoes I ever laid my eyes on--but Callista don't dance," she
amended. [123]

Lance sighted at the sun. He was entirely too late for a trip to
Hepzibah--he knew that. The shoe in his pocket nudged him in the
side and suggested that this was the place for buying Callista's
slippers. Without more ado he sprang from Satan's back, flung
the reins over a fence post, and followed Ola into the big shed
where the goods for the new store were piled heterogeneously on
the floor. [124]



CHAPTER VIII.

THE INFARE.



WHEN Callista's gaze could no longer distinguish Lance on Satan,
when the thick woods had swallowed up his moving figure at last,
she turned to make ready the house for the evening. He had lived
in the place, off and on, for several weeks, during the long
period of finishing up work. Every evidence of his occupancy
showed him a clever, neat-handed creature. Callista was
continually finding proof of his daintiness and tidiness. She
admired the bits of extra shelving--a little cupboard here or
there--a tiny table that let down from the wall by means of a
leathern hinge, to rest on its one stout leg--all sorts of
receptacles contrived from most unlikely material. Throughout
the forenoon, the girl worked, using the implements and utensils
that his hands had made ready for her, drawing upon the store of
girlish possessions which had come over in her trunk the day
before, for wherewithal to grace and beautify the place for the
evening's festivities.

Early in the afternoon Lance himself came riding slowly in. She had
not expected him much before dark, and she ran to meet him with eager
welcome. She watched him while he [125] unsaddled and fed his horse,
and then the two went gaily into their new home, their arms full of
the carefully wrapped purchases he had bought. The pretty slippers
were got out, displayed and tried on; the curtains for the front
windows were spread forth, and the bright table cover for the little
stand; the lamp with its wonderful gay shade was cautiously unpacked
and set up, the silverplated spoons counted, almost awesomely.
Lance had had no dinner, and Callista had been so engrossed in
her work about the cabin that she had cooked none for herself,
stopping only to snatch a bite of the cold food left from
breakfast. So now when all had been gone over again and again,
admired and delighted in, he put her in a chair and peremptorily
bade her, "rest right there whilst I make you some coffee and
cook some dinner for the both of us."

Lance cooked just as he played the banjo, or danced, or hunted
possums. Callista watched him with joy in the sure lightness of
his movements, the satisfactoriness and precision of his
results.

It was after three o'clock, and they were just finishing their
coffee and cornbread, when little Polly Griever came running in
at the door and announced,

"Cousin Lance, A' Roxy says tell you ef they's a-goin' to be
dancin' here to-night, ne'er a one of us shain't step foot in
the house." [126]

"You go tell yo' Aunt Roxy that they's sure goin' to be dancin'
in my place this night," Lance instructed her, throwing his head
back to laugh. "Say Polly, you tell her I aim to have her do the
callin' off--you hear? Don't you forget, now. Tell her I'm
dependin' on her to do the callin' off, and--"

"Now, Lance!" remonstrated Callista. Her face relaxed into lines
of amusement in spite of herself. Yet she resolutely assumed a
wifely air of reproof that Lance found irresistible. "You ought
to be ashamed of yourse'f. If you ain't, why, I'm ashamed _for_
you. Polly, you go tell Miz. Griever that they won't be a thing
in the world here in my house that she'd object to."

"Huh! _yo_' house!" interpolated Lance, and he made as though he
would have kissed her right before Polly, whereat her color
flamed beautifully and she hastily moved back a bit, in alarm.

"You tell yo' Aunt Roxy, please come on, Polly, and to come
early," she continued with native tact. "Tell her I'll expect
her to help me out. Why, I don't know how I'd get along without
Sis' Roxy and Pappy Cleaverage and Brother Sylvane."

Polly stood near the door, like a little hardy woods-creature,
and rolled her gaze slowly about the interior, noting all the
preparations that were on foot. She observed Lance shove back a
little from the table and reach for his banjo. While [127] Callista
lingered over her cup of coffee, Polly saw, with the tail of her
eye, that Lance drew a little parcel from his pocket and began
to put a new string on the instrument. That settled it; he had
spoken the truth: he was going to have dancing there that night.
The thin-shanked wiry little thing watched him continually till
she caught his eye. Then with the freemasonry there always was
between Lance and youngsters, she raised her brows in an
interrogatory grimace while Callista's eyes were in her cup.
Lance grinned and nodded his head vigorously. Still Polly looked
doubtful. Lance moved his foot wickedly to emphasize his
meaning. Polly was convinced. There would be no legitimate
coming to the infare--not if she took that word home to Aunt
Roxy.

But instead of turning to leave with her message, Polly slowly
edged into the room. Presently Lance and Callista together
cleared the table, making play of it like a pair of children.
Together they set out the provisions that Lance had brought, and
began to prepare the supper for the infare. And all the time
Polly's eyes were upon the good things to eat, the marvelous
lamp with its gay shade, the new curtains which they tacked up
at the windows, all the wonders and delights that were to be
exploited that evening. She had enjoyed herself hugely at the
wedding, in spite of the fact that the bridegroom, whom she [128]
especially delighted in and admired, left in so unceremonious
and theatric a manner early in the evening. If a wedding without
Lance was like that, what would the infare be in Lance's own
house? She grappled with the problem of how to escape Aunt Roxy
and get to this festivity. She could only think of one possible
method--that was to stay at Lance's now she was there. She looked
down covertly at her old homespun dress, soiled and torn, her whole
person unkempt and untidy. Well--she gulped a bit--better this
than nothing at all. She would rather appear thus among the guests
of the infare than not to be able to appear in any guise; but
when she considered her bare feet, she gave up in despair. If she
only had her shoes and stockings out of Aunt Roxy's house, the
joys of the infare were as good as hers--let come after what must.

Gaily Lance and Callista went forward with their preparations.
To their minds, they were the first who had ever felt that
pristine rapture of anticipation when two make ready a home.
Dear children! Did not Adam, when Eve called him to help her
with fresh roses for the bower she was decking, know the same?
It is as old as Paradise, that joy, and as legitimate an asset
of happiness to humanity as any left us. Suddenly, upon the quiet
murmur of their talk, came the sharp slam of the door, and they
heard [129] little Polly's bare feet go spatting down the trail.

"Well, hit's time she left," commented Callista gently, "if
she's goin' to take word to Sister Roxy."

But Polly had been stricken with an inspiration. Down the steep
cut-off which crossed the ravine with Lance's Laurel brawling in
its depth, and led to the Cleaverage place, she ran full pelt.
It was two miles by the wagon road around the bend; but it was
little over a mile down across the gulch, and Polly made quick
work of the descent, scarcely slacking on the steep climb up
again. She galloped like a frightened filly over that bit of
path on which the original owner of the Gap hundred had met
young Lance with his chip train nineteen years ago, and burst
headlong in upon Roxy Griever.

"A' Roxy!" she gasped, "Callisty's a-goin' to have preachers at
the infare--an'--an'--she wants yo' gospel quilt. Pleas'm git it
for me quick--Callisty's in a bi-i-g hurry."

Polly's instinct carried true; and the Widow Griever was borne
by the mere wind of her fictitious haste. Before she had stopped
to consider, Roxy found herself taking the gospel quilt out of
the chest where it was kept. Back in the room where she had been
sitting, little Polly dived under the bed and secured her shoes,
a convenient stocking thrust in the throat of each. With [130] the
swiftness and deftness of a squirrel or a possum, she concealed
these in her scanty skirts and stood apparently waiting when the
widow returned, bundle in hand. But now Roxy Griever's slow wits
had begun to stir.

"What preachers is a-comin'?" she inquired sharply. "Brother
Drumright, he's out preachin' on the White Oak Circuit--an' he
wouldn't be thar nohow--a body knows in reason. Young Shalliday,
he--What preachers did Callisty say was a-comin'?"

"I never hearn rightly jest what ones," stammered Polly, making
a grab for the quilt and missing it. "But thar's more'n a dozen
comin'," she gulped, as she saw her aunt's face darken with
incredulity.

"You Polly Griever," began the widow sternly, "you know mighty
well-an'-good thar ain't no twelve preachers in this whole
deestrick. I'll vow, I cain't think of a single one this side of
Hepzibah. I believe you're a-lyin' to me. Preachers at Lance
Cleaverage's house, and him apt to break out and dance anytime!
What did he say--you ain't never told me that yit--what did
Lance say 'bout the dancin' anyhow?"

Keen-visaged, alert Polly had possessed herself of the precious
bundle, and now she hopped discreetly backward, shaking the
ragged mane out of her eyes like a wild colt. [131]

"W'y, Lance, he says he's a-goin' to have dancin', and a plenty
of it," she announced with impish gusto--there would never be
any hanging for a lamb with Polly; she was somewhat of Lance's
kidney. She backed a pace or two outside the door, stepping as
warily as a wildcat might, before she concluded, "An' he 'lowed
to have you do the callin' off, A' Roxy! He said be shore an'
come--that he was a-dependin' on you to call off for 'em to
dance!"

The Widow Griever made a dive for the bundle gripped in Polly's
stringy little arm. But the girl, far too quick for her, backed
half way to the gate. She must make a virtue of necessity.

"Well, you can take that thar quilt over to Callisty," she
harangued. "I won't deny it to her, and I hope it may do good.
If tham men is a-goin' to git up a dance, you tell her she
needn't expect to see me nor mine; but the quilt I'll send. You
give it to her, and come right straight back to this house. You
hear me, you Polly Griever?--straight back!"

The last adjuration was shouted after Polly's thudding bare feet
as they went flying once more down the short cut into the gulch.

"Yes'm," came back the faint hail. "I will, A' Roxy."

Deep in the hollow where the waters of Laurel gurgled about
the roots of the black twisted bushes that gave it its name,
where ordinarily a body [132] would be fearfully afraid at such
a time--blind man's holiday, and neither dark nor light in the open,
while here the shadows lay like pools of ink--Polly Griever sat
herself down in great content to put on her shoes and stockings.
She was puffing a little, but the success of her enterprise had
so fired her that all thoughts of ha'nts and such-like were
banished. She hauled up the home-knit hose over her slim shanks
and knobby knees, girding them in place with a gingham string,
and hastily laced on her cowhide shoes. Being then in full
evening dress, she made a more leisurely way up the steep to
Lance's cabin, prepared to take in and enjoy all the festivities
of the occasion.

She found the house alight and humming. Octavia Gentry and old
Ajax had arrived, and the latter was throned in state as usual
by the chimney-side--the evening was cool for September, and the
flickering blaze that danced up the broad throat was welcome for
its heat as well as for light. The mother-in-law was everywhere,
looking at the contrivances for housekeeping, full of fond pride
in what she saw, anxious to convince the young people that she
did not resent their unceremonious behavior of the night before.
She pinched the new window curtains between her fingers, and
advised Callista to pin newspapers behind them in ordinary times
lest the sun fade their colors. She helped at the lighting of
the [133] new lamp, and finally settled down in the kitchen among
the supper preparations.

"Looks right funny to be here to an infare this night, when we-all
helt the weddin' without you last night," Octavia commented
amiably. "I did wish the both o' you could have been thar to see
the fun. The gals and boys got to playin' games, and sorter
turned it into a play-party. Look like they hardly could stop
theirselves for supper. Big as our house is, hit ain't so suited
to sech as yourn." Again she looked commendingly about her. "I
tell you, Callista," she said over and over again, "I think yo'
Lance has showed the most good sense in his building and fixing
up of any young man I ever knew."

But she need not have troubled greatly; Lance had no
consciousness of offense in him; and he was busy welcoming
guests, going out to help the men unhitch, showing those who had
ridden where they might tether their horses; or, if they liked,
unsaddle and turn them loose in his brush-fenced horse lot,
which was later to be a truck-patch; greeting his father and
Sylvane, and grinning over the fact that Roxy was not with them,
while Mary Ann Martha was.

"Roxana had got it into her head someway that you-all aimed to
dance, and come she would not," Kimbro said plaintively.

"She was bound an' determined that Ma'-Ann-Marth' shouldn't
neither," Sylvane took up the [134] story. "But the chap helt her
breath--didn't ye, Pretty?--an' looked like she'd never ketch it
again; so Sis' Roxy give in."

"Hey, Unc' Lance's gal!" the bridegroom hailed her, as the fat
little bundle was passed down to him from the old buckboard, and
instantly caught around his neck, hugging hard, and rooting a
delighted face against his cheek.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Ola Derf rode up alone and came
in. Mountain people are so courteous to each other as to make
those who do not understand call them deceitful. Ola was
received as amiably as such an invader might have been in the
best of urban society. She looked with round, avid eyes at
everything about her, and finally at the bride, her hostess.

"An' you a-wearin' them slippers," she commented. "I told Lance
I knowed in reason you would." The remark was made in the
further room, where the girls were laying off their things and
putting them down on that bed where Callista, a little
bewildered by the unsolicited loan, had spread forth the
wonderful gospel quilt.

"Did you he'p Lance to choose Callisty's slippers?" asked Ellen
Hands.

Rilly Trigg and Little Liza stopped in the door to listen.
Octavia Gentry turned from the shelves she was examining. Even
Polly ceased to stare across the open entry into the other room
where most of the men were. [135]

"Yes," said Ola, composedly, seating herself on the floor to
adjust her own footwear. "He was at our house a-wantin' to buy
dancin' slippers for Callisty, and 'course he knowed I would
understand what was needed. I reckon Callisty couldn't tell him,
so he brought one of her shoes in his pocket, and axed me. Do
they fit ye, Callisty?"

A curious change had come over the bride's face, yet it was calm
and even fairly smiling, as she answered indifferently,

"No. I wasn't aimin' to wear 'em. I just tried them on. They' too
big for me." And she closed the door and went resolutely to a
chest in the corner, from which she took her heavy, country-made
shoes to replace the slippers Lance's love had provided.

The Derf girl regarded her askance.

"Ain't you afeared you'll make him mad ef you take 'em off?" she
asked finally. "I know he aims to have you dance befo' he's done
with it, and you cain't noways dance in them thar things,"
looking with disfavor at the clumsy shoes.

"Callista doesn't dance, and she ain't a-goin' to," Octavia
Gentry was beginning with some heat, when her daughter
interrupted.

"Never mind, Mother," she said with dignity. "I ain't aimin' to
dance, and I reckon you're not. Maybe Ola's mistaken in regards
to Lance." [136]

The Derf girl laughed shortly, deep in her throat. Before she
could speak, the closed door jarred open, revealing Roxy
Griever, with a stout switch in her hand.

"Whar's Polly," the newcomer inquired wrathfully.

"Mighty glad to see you, Sis' Roxy," cried Callista, welcoming
the diversion, but looking with surprise at her sister-in-law's
draggled gingham on which the night dews of Laurel Gulch lay
thick, her grim visage, and her switch. "Polly--she was here a
minute ago."

But Polly, wise with the wisdom of her sex, had flown to Lance,
and now she hid behind him, clinging like a limpet.

"Come in, Sis' Roxy. We're proud to see you here," shouted
Lance, with an impudent disregard of anything amiss, and a new
householder's enthusiastic hospitality.

"Did you send me word that you was a-goin' to have me call off
the dances?" the widow demanded in an awful voice.

Her scrapegrace brother laughed in her face.

"That was jest a mighty pore joke, Sis' Roxy," he explained.
"We-all was goin' to play some games, and I know you' a powerful
good hand to get us started. Come on; fix the boys and gals like
they ought to be for that"--he hesitated a little, frowning--"that
play we used to have sometimes where they all stand up in couples,
and--Wait, [137] I'll get my banjo and play a tune and you'll
see what I mean."

Lance had not lived his twenty-three years with his sister Roxy
to fail now in finding her weak side. She loved lights, a crowd,
as he did. True, she wished to harangue the crowd, and the
lights must be to reveal her, playing the pictorially pious
part; yet a Virginia Reel, disguised as a game, answered well to
give her executive powers scope and swing, and they were in the
thick of the fun when the women came from the other room.

In the moments of her detention in that room, Ola had begun to
find whether being bidden to a festivity really made one a
guest. Rilly Trigg whispered apart to Callista, and looked out
of the corners of her eyes at the newcomer. Lance's wife
evidently reproved her for doing so, but a smile went with the
words. Octavia Gentry spoke solemnly to the Derf girl, asking
after the health of her parents in a tone so chilly that the
outsider felt herself indefinitely accused.

"I don't keer," she muttered to herself rebelliously, "hit's
Lance's house. Lance ain't a-goin to th'ow off on old friends
just becaze he's wedded."

On the instant she entered the other room, and had sight of her
host, flushed, laughing-eyed, his brown curls rumpled, the banjo
in his lap, swaying to the rhythm of "Greenbacks," as Roxy
Griever struggled to keep the boys and girls in an orderly [138]
line while she showed them how to "Shake hands acrost-like."

The dull little face lighted up. Here was something at which Ola
felt she could help, a ground upon which she was equal to the
best of them.

"Hit's a reel!" she exclaimed joyously. "I'll call off for ye,
Lance."

As though her words had been some sort of evil incantation, the
pretty group dissolved instantly. The girls fled giggling and
exclaiming; the boys shouldered sheepishly away; only the Widow
Griever remained to confront the spoil-sport with acid visage
and swift reproof. Roxy wound up the hostilities that ensued by
declaring,

"You can dance, and Brother Lance kin, ef them's yo' ruthers;
but ye cain't mix me in. That thar was a game I played when I
went to the old field hollerin' school. Call hit a reel ef ye
want to--oh, call hit a reel--shore! But ye cain't put yo'
wickedness on me."

"Yes," returned Ola hardily, "I played it at school, too. But
it's the Virginia Reel, and Lance said he was goin' to have
dancin' here to-night. Ain't ye. Lance? I brung my slippers."

Roxy Griever turned and flounced out. Lance smiled indulgently
at Ola. His sister's warlike demonstrations amused him mightily
and put him in a good humor.

"Sure," he agreed largely. "You and me will have 'em all dancin'
before we're done. I [139] wish't we had Preacher Drumright here to
pat for us."

The sedate guests, though they laughed a little, fell away from
these two, leaving them standing alone in the centre of the
floor, while some of the boys and girls lingered, staring and
giggling, wondering what they would do or say next.

"'Pears like they ain't nobody but you and me to do the
dancin'," Ola began doubtfully, "an' if you have to play--"

She broke off. In the doorway that led to the little back room
appeared the solemn countenance of the Widow Griever. This
worthy woman fixed a cold eye upon her brother and beckoned him
silently with ghostly finger.

"I'll be back in a minute, Ola," he told his unwelcome addition
to the company, the wedge he had driven into their ranks, and
which seemed about to split them asunder. [140]



CHAPTER IX.

THE INTERLOPER.



LANCE found his father and Octavia Gentry awaiting him in the
lean-to kitchen, Kimbro Cleaverage anxious and deprecating. Old
Ajax had dodged the issue, and Sylvane was out in the other room
trying to get the boys and girls to playing again. But Callista
was there--not beside her mother--she stood near the door, a
little pale and looking anywhere but at her bridegroom. Lance
Cleaverage's eye, half scornful, swept the scattered group and
read their attitude aright.

"Anything the matter with you-all?" he inquired suavely.

"Yes, they's a-plenty the matter with us, and with all decent
and respectable persons here in this house gathered this night,"
the Widow Griever began in a high, shaking, unnatural voice.

"I reckon all that means Ola Derf, for short," cut in Lance, not
choosing to be bored with a lengthy harangue.

"Yes, it does," Roxy told him. "That thar gal would never have
been bidden to Miz. Gentry's house. Callisty would never have
been called on to even herself with sech, long as she staid [141]
under her gran'pappy's roof. And when it comes to what it did
out in 'tother room, it's more than Callisty that suffers."

"Suffers!" echoed her brother with a contemptuous grin. "Well,
if that don't beat my time! I reckon Ola Derf cain't eat any of
you-all. She's just a little old gal, and you're a good-sized
crowd of able-bodied folks--what harm can she do you?"

"Well, Lance," began his mother-in-law, with studied moderation,
though she was plainly incensed, "I do not think, hit's any way
for you to do--evening Callista with such folks. She ain't used
to it."

Lance looked to where Callista yet held aloof near the door,
pale and silent, avoiding his eye.

"A man and his wife are one," he said, with less confidence than
would have been his earlier in the day. "What's good enough for
me is good enough for Callista."

He got no sign of agreement from his bride--and he had expected
it.

"Son, I think you made a mistake to bid that Derf gal here,"
spoke old Kimbro mildly. "But don't you let her start up any
foolishness, and we'll all get through without further trouble."

"Yes," broke in the Widow Griever's most rasping tones. "She
called the game I was a-showin' the boys and gals a Virginia
Reel, an' 'lowed she'd call off for us. Call off!" Roxy snorted.
[142] "A lot of perfessin' Christians to dance--dance to Ola Derf's
callin' off!"

Once more Lance's eye swept the circle of hostile, alien faces.
His sense of fair play was touched. Also, he felt himself pushed
outside and set to defending his solitary camp, with the whole
front of respectability arrayed against him. This, so far as the
others were concerned, was the usual thing; it daunted him not
at all. But when he looked to Callista, and saw that at the
first call she had left him--left him alone--arrayed herself
with the enemy--a new, strange, stinging pain went through his
spirit. He smiled, while odd lights began to bicker in his eyes.

"O-oo-oh," he said in a soft, careless voice, "didn't you-all
know that I aim to have dancin'? Why, of course I do." And he
walked away with head aslant, leaving them dumb.

It was but a retort, the usual quick defiance from the Lance
Cleaverage who would not be catechized, reproved; yet when he
entered the outer room and found Ola drawn over at one side,
unfriended, while a knot of whispering girls, quite across the
floor from her, cast glances athwart shoulders in her direction,
the good will of old comradeship, the anger of the host who sees
his guest mistreated, pushed forward his resolution.

"I reckon I'd better be goin' home," Ola said to the pale Callista,
who followed her husband [143] from the back room. "Looks
like I'm in the way here; and mebbe Lance ort not to have bid
me--hit's yo' house."

The bride looked from her bridegroom to the brown girl
strangely. In her own fashion, she was as unwilling to be
outdone as Lance himself. "This here is Lance's house," she said
coldly. "He bids them that he chooses to it. But I reckon he
don't aim to have any dancin'."

Roxy Griever paused in the doorway and peered in.

"I reckon the trouble is that none of the folks here know how to
dance," Ola was saying doubtfully. "Let's you and me show 'em,
Lance. Come on."

Wildly, the sister cast about her for aid. Old Ajax regarded the
scene with the same covert enjoyment he had given another
domestic embroglio. Her father had slipped through a back door
under pretense of seeing to the horse. Her glance fell on
Flenton Hands. This was the man for her need.

Earlier in the evening, when Flenton made his appearance in
Lance Cleaverage's house, accompanying his sisters, Octavia had
murmured, "Well, I vow! Ef I'd 'a' been him, ox chains and plow
lines couldn't have drug me here, after what was said an' done
last night." Even Roxana had wondered at the cold obtuseness
that could prompt the acceptance on Flent's part of that general
[144] invitation Lance had flung back over his shoulder to the
deserted wedding guests, and looked in vain to see what it was
that Hands expected to gain by his attitude. There was some
whispering and staring among the other guests, but Flenton Hands
was admitted to be "quare," and his connection with the
Settlement offered a ready means of accounting for his not doing
things like other people. Now the Widow Griever felt that
Providence--it is wonderful how people of her sort find
Providence ever retained on their own side of the case--had
dictated the attendance of this exemplary and godly person,
second only in authority concerning church matters to Brother
Drumright. She hastily dragged him aside, pouring out the whole
matter, in voluble, hissing whispers, with many backward jerks
of the head or thumb toward where Ola and Lance, in the midst of
a group of boys and girls, still laughed and joked.

"I don't know as I ort to mix into this here business," Hands
began cautiously--the man was not altogether a fool. "The way
things has turned out, looks like I ain't got no call to
interfere."

"'Course you have," Roxy Griever told him. "Preacher Drumright
ain't here--ef he was, I'd not even have to name it to him; he'd
walk right up to Lance Cleaverage in a minute--spite o' the way
Lance done him last night--an' tell [145] him what he ort an' ort not
to do. An' yo' the next after Preacher Drumright. Go 'long,
Flenton. Speak to him. Mr. Gentry won't, an' Poppy's done left
to git out of hit. Poppy never would do what he ort where Lance
was consarned. He wouldn't give that boy discipline when he
could have kivvered him with one hand--an' now look at the
fruits of it!"

Thus urged, Flenton made a somewhat laborious progress toward
the middle of the room. Deep in that curious, indirect, unsound
nature of his was the hankering to brave Lance Cleaverage in his
own house, to insult and overcome him there before Callista; but
the pluck required to undertake the enterprise was not
altogether moral courage; in spite of the laws of hospitality,
there might be some physical demand in the matter, and this
Flenton was scarcely prepared to answer.

He halted long at his host's shoulder, seeking an opportunity to
enter the conversation. Ola paid no attention to him; Callista
stood a little apart from the two, looking down, playing with a
fold of her skirt. Finally, most of the people in the room noted
something strained and peculiar in the situation of affairs, and
began to stare and listen. Flenton cleared his throat.

"Brother Cleaverage," he essayed in a rather husky voice.

Lance wheeled upon him with eyes alight. [146] Thrusting his hands
far down in his pockets, he stared at Flenton Hands from head to
foot. Then his glance traveled to the widow behind Flenton's
shoulder.

"We-e-ell, well," he drawled, with a lazy laugh in his voice,
"have you and Sis' Roxy made a match of it? That's the only way
you'll ever get to be kin to me, and name me brother, Flenton
Hands."

Roxy's long drab face crimsoned darkly, and she fluttered in
wild embarrassment. Hands laughed gratingly, but there was no
amusement in the sound.

"No," he returned in his best pulpit manner--he was sometimes
called upon to officiate at small gatherings when the preacher
could not be present--"no, yo' worthy sister an' me hain't had
our minds on any such. But we have been talking of a ser'ous
matter, Brother Cleaverage."

The form of address slipped out inadvertently, and Hands looked
uncomfortable. Lance shook his head.

"I ain't yo' brother," he demurred, with exaggerated patience.
"You' gettin' the families all mixed up. Hit was Callista I
married."

The boys and girls listening were convulsed with silent mirth.
Rilly Trigg snickered aloud, and little Polly ventured to follow
along the same line. Flenton's pale face reddened faintly.

"I know mighty well-an'-good you ain't brother of mine, [147] Lance
Cleaverage," he said doggedly. "Ef you was, I'd--I'd--"

"Say it," prompted Lance, standing at ease and surveying his
adversary with amusement. "Speak out what's in you. You got me
right here in my own house where I'd be ashamed to give you yo'
dues. Now's the time to free yo' mind. I ain't fit to have
Callista, is that it? She could a' done better--that's what you
want to tell me, ain't it?"

There was a perfect chorus of approving giggles at this,
extending even to the male portion of the company. The tinge of
color left Flenton's sallow cheeks, and they were paler than
usual; but he hung to his purpose.

"I've been axed by them that thinks you ought to be dealt with,
to reason with you." He finally got well under way. "Callista
Gentry belongs to a perfessin' family--she's all but a church
member. You fussed with the preacher last night and tuck her
away from in front of him, an' married her before a ongodly
Justice of the Peace, an' now you air makin' motions like you
was a-goin' to dance here in her house. Yo' sister said that yo'
father wouldn't do nothin', and she axed me would I name these
things out to you; and I said I would. Thar. I've spoke as I was
axed. Looks like the man that's got Callista Gentry could afford
to behave hisself." [148]

With each new accusation, Lance's lids had dropped a bit lower
over the bright eyes, till now a mere line of fire showed
between the lashes, and followed the movement of Flenton's
heavily-swung shoulders, as he emphasized his words with uncouth
shruggings. Yet when all was said, only the conclusion seemed to
stay in Lance's mind. He was asked to do and be much because he
had Callista. But what of the bride? Was not something due from
Callista because she had him?

"'Pears to me like you're in a mighty curious place, Flenton
Hands," he began in a silky, musing voice. "Ef you was wedded to
anybody--jest anybody--I'd shorely keep out o' your way and let
you alone. Is this yo' business? Have I asked yo' ruthers? Has
Callista? I got just the one word to say to you--an' it can't be
said here in my house. But it shall be spoken when and where we
meet next--you mind that!"

A sudden, tense hush fell on the room. Did this mean the
declaration of war which amounts to a one-man feud in the
mountains, and which finally reaches the point where it is kill
or be killed on sight? Flenton dropped back with a blanched,
twisted countenance. He had not bargained for so much.

The young host looked around. His company had separated itself
swiftly into sheep and goats, the elders and the primmer portion
of the young [149] people whispering together apart, while the
bolder youthful spirits gathered in a ring about himself and Ola
Derf. One of these, Rilly Trigg perhaps, took up the banjo and
commenced laboriously to pick chords on it.

"Now, if Callisty could only dance, we'd shore see fun," Ola
Derf suggested.

Lance looked to where his bride stood, aloof, mute, with bitten
lip, listening to what her mother whispered in her ear. Yes, he
was alone once more; she was with the enemy. His glance took the
girl in from head to foot. He saw that she had removed his first
gift, the slippers.

"Callista can dance about as much as you can play, Rill," he
said mockingly.

The bride lowered white lids over scornful eyes and turned her
back. Rilly laid down the banjo. A couple of the boys began to
pat.

"Come on, Lance," whispered Ola defiantly. "I dare ye to dance.
I bet yo' scared to."

A dare--it was Lance Cleaverage's boast that he would never take
a dare from the Lord Almighty. He flung himself lightly into
position. "Pat for us. Buck, cain't you?" he suggested half
derisively. Then, with a swift, graceful bending of the lithe
body, he saluted his partner and began.

The Derf girl was a muscular little creature; she moved with the
tirelessness of a swaying branch in the wind; and Lance himself
was a [150] wonder, when he felt like dancing. The circle of young
people mended itself and grew closer. The two in the middle of
the floor advanced toward each other, caught hands, whirled,
retreated, and improvised steps to the time of Fuson's spatting
palms.

It was a pretty enough sight, and innocent, except for what had
gone before. Roxy Griever had retired in some disarray, upon
Lance's sarcastic coupling of her name with that of Flenton
Hands. Now, coming into the room with the supposition in her
mind that everything was settled in a proper way, she caught
sight of the two and stiffened into rigidity. For a moment she
stared; then, as the full meaning of the scene burst upon her,
she made three long steps to where the youthful Polly stood,
taking in everything with big, enjoying eyes, seized her by the
scant, soiled homespun frock, and hauled her backward from the
room, Polly clawing, scrabbling, hanging to the door frame as
she was snatched through.

"Poppy," shrilled the widow, in the direction of peaceful old
Kimbro, using the tone of one who cries fire, "you kin stay
ef yo're a mind--an' Sylvane can do the same. The best men I
ever knowed--'ceptin' preachers--has a hankerin' for sin.
Ma'y-Ann-Marth', she's asleep, an' what she don't see cain't
hurt her. But as for me, I'm a-goin' to take this here child home
[151] where she won't have the likes of that to look at. I feel
jest as if it was some ketchin' disease, and the fu'ther you git
away from it, the safer you air."

The last of these words trailed back from the dark, into which
the Widow Griever and her small, reluctant charge were rapidly
receding.

Kimbro and his son remained, intending to remonstrate with Lance
when he should have finished his dancing. Octavia Gentry came and
made hasty farewells, hoping thus to stop the performance. Callista
stood looking quietly past the dancers to some air-drawn point on
the wall, and her expression of quiet composure was held by all
observers to be remarkable.

"Oh, no, Mother," she said quietly. "You and Gran'pappy are
never goin' out of my house before you have eat. Come taste the
coffee for me and see have I got it about right. When I was
gettin' my supper for to-night, I found out that there was many
a thing you hadn't learned me at home; so you'll have to show me
now."

With a dignity irreproachable, apparently quite oblivious to the
dancers, the patting, the laughing, shouting onlookers,
Callista smilingly marshalled her forces and put forward her
really excellent supper. Here her pride matched Lance's--and
overmatched it. He might dance, he might fling the doing of it
in her face and the faces of her kindred; she would show herself
[152] unmoved, and mistress of any situation which he could
contrive.

And the supper was a strong argument. People in all walks of
life love to eat; those who danced and those who held dancing
sinful, were alike in their appreciation of good victual. It was
only a few moments before this counter movement broke up the
saltations in the front room and the infare appeared, from an
observer's point of view, a great success, as the happy,
laughing crowd circled about the long tables, those who had
joined to forward the dance coming out looking half sheepish,
altogether apologetic and conciliatory.

"I'm mighty sorry Sis' Roxy had to go home," Callista said
composedly, as she served her father-in-law with a steaming cup
of coffee. "I'm goin' to make a little packet of this here cake
and the preserves Mammy brought over, and send them by you. I
want her to taste them."

The host was the gayest of the gay. But unobserved, his eye
often followed the movements of the bride, and dwelt with a warm
glow upon the graceful form in its womanly attitude of serving
her guests. She had fairly beaten him on his own ground. A
secret pride in her, that she could do it, swelled his breast
and ran tingling along his veins.

So much for the company at large, for what Callista would have
called "the speech of people." When the last guest was gone the
bride faced the [153] bridegroom alone in the house which had
seemed to her so fine. Cold, expectant of some apology, offended,
bewildered, yet ready to be placated.

Lance offered no excuses, but plenty of kisses, praise, and an
ardor that, while it did not convince, melted and subdued her.
The breach was covered temporarily, rather than healed. [154]



CHAPTER X.

POVERTY PRIDE.



IT was inevitable that Callista should find promptly how
impossible is the attitude of scornful miss to the married wife,
particularly when her husband's daily labor must provide the
house whose keeping depends upon herself. Lance, too, though he
continued to give no evidence whatever of penitence, was full of
the masterful tenderness whose touch had brought his bride to
his arms. The girl was not of a jealous temper; she was not
deeply offended at the reckless behavior which had disturbed the
infare, any more than she had been at his conduct on the wedding
evening. Indeed, there was that in Callista Cleaverage which
could take pride in being wife to the man who, challenged, would
fling a laughing defiance in the face of all his world. It
remained for a very practical question--what might almost be
termed an economic one--to wear hard on the bond between them.

They had married all in haste while September was still green
over the land. The commodious new cabin at the head of Lance's
Laurel was well plenished and its food supplies sufficient
during the first few weeks of life there; in fact, Lance [155] gave
without question whatever Callista asked of him--a thing unheard
of in their world--and Callista's ideas of asking were not small
nor was she timid about putting them into practice. The pair of
haggards might have seemed, to the casual onlooker, safely
settled to calm domestic happiness.

Day by day the gold and blue of September inclined toward the
October purple and scarlet. The air was invigorated by frost.
The forest green, reflected in creek-pools, was full of russet
and olive, against whose shadowy background here and there a gum
or sourwood, earliest to turn of all the trees, blazed like a
deep red plume. Occasional banners of crimson began to show in
the maples and plum colored boughs in sweet-gums. The perfect
days of all the year were come.

Mid-October was wonderfully clear arid sweet up at the head of
Lance's Laurel; the color key became richer, more royal; the
sunset rays along the hill-tops a more opulent yellow.

It was not till the leaves were sifting down red and yellow
over her dooryard, that Callista got from Lance the full story
concerning their resources, and the havoc he had made of them to
get ready money from Derf. He had been hauling tanbark all this
time to pay the unjust debt. When she knew, even her inexperience
was staggered--dismayed. So far, she had not gone home, and she
shut her lips tight over the [156] resolution not now to do so
with a request for that aid which her grandfather had refused
in advance.

"We'll make out, I reckon," she said to her husband dubiously.

"Oh, we'll get along all right," returned that hardy adventurer,
easily. "We'll scrabble through the winter somehow. In the
summer I can always make a-plenty at haulin' or at my trade. I'm
goin' to put in the prettiest truck-patch anybody ever saw for
you; and then we'll live fat, Callista." He added suddenly,
"Come summer we'll go camping over on the East Fork of Caney.
There's a place over on that East Fork that I believe in my soul
nobody's been since the Indians, till I found it. There's a
little rock house and a spring--I'm not going to tell you too
much about it till you see it."

Callista hearkened with vague alarm, and a sort of impatience.

"But you'll clear enough ground for a good truck-patch before we
go," she put in jealously.

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance without apparently noting what her words
were. "I never in my life did see as fine huckleberries as
grows down in that little holler," he pursued. "We'll go in
huckleberry time."

"And maybe I can put some up," said Callista, the practical,
beginning to take interest in the scheme. [157]

"Shore," was Lance's prompt assent. "I can put up fruit myself--I'll
help you."

He laughed as he said it; those changeful hazel eyes of his
glowed, and he dropped an arm around her in that caressing
fashion not common in the mountains, and which ever touched
Callista's cooler nature like a finger of fire, so that now,
almost against her will, she smiled back at him, and returned
his kiss fondly. Yet she thought he took the situation too
lightly. It was not he that would suffer. He was used to living
hard and going without. She would be willing to do the same for
his sake; but she wanted to have him know it--to have him speak
of it and praise her for it.

The season wore on with thinning boughs and a thickening carpet
beneath. The grass was gone. Men riding after valley stock, sent
up to fatten on the highlands, searched the mountains all day
with dogs and resonant calls. They stopped outside Callista's
fence to make careful inquiries concerning the welfare or
whereabouts of shoats and heifers.

"Yes, and they've run so much stock up here this year," Lance
said resentfully when she mentioned it to him, "that there ain't
scarcely an acorn or a blade of grass left to help out our'n
through the winter. I'm afraid I'm goin' to have to let Dan
Bayliss down in the Settlement take Sate and Sin in his livery
stable for their [158] keep. The time's about over for haulin'. I
can't afford to have them come up to spring all ga'nted and
poorly."

Days born in rose drifts, buried themselves in gold; groundhogs
and all wild creatures of the woods were happy with a plentitude
of fare; partridges were calling, "wifey--wifey!" under wayside
bushes; the last leaves had their own song of renunuciation as
they let go the boughs and floated softly down to join their
companions on the earth. One evening, gray and white cirri
swirled as if dashed in by a great, careless brush, and the next
morning, a dawn strewn with flamingo feathers foretold a rainy
time. All that day the weather thickened slowly, the sky became
deeply overspread. At first this minor-color key was a relief, a
rest, after the blaze of foliage and sun. A rain set in at
nightfall, and a wind sprang up in whooping gusts; and on every
hearth in the Turkey Tracks a blaze leaped gloriously, roaring
in the chimney's throat, licking lovingly around the kettle.
These fires are the courage of the mountain soldier and hunter.
Only Callista, warming her feet by the blaze in the chimney
Lance had built, thought apprehensively of the time when she
should have no horse to ride, so that when she went to meeting,
or to her own home, she must foot it through the mud.

It was an austere region's brief season of plenty. Not yet cold
enough to kill hogs, all crops were [159] garnered and stored;
there was new sorghum, there were new sweet potatoes, plenty of
whippoor-will peas--but Callista's cupboard was getting very bare
indeed. She looked with dismay toward the months ahead of her.

It was in this mood that she welcomed one morning the sight of
Ellen Hands and Little Liza going past on the road below.

"Howdy," called Ellen, as the bride showed a disposition to come
down and talk to them. Each woman carried a big, heavy basket
woven of white oak splints. Little Liza held up hers and shook
it. "We're on our way to pick peas," she shouted. "Don't you
want to come and go 'long? Bring yo' basket. They' mighty good
eating when they' fresh this-a-way."

Callista would have said no, but she remembered the empty
cupboard, and turned back seeking a proper receptacle. At home,
they considered field-peas poor food, but beggars must not be
choosers. She joined the two at the gate in a moment with a
sack tucked under her arm. It was a delightful morning after the
rain. She was glad she could come. The peas were better than
nothing, and she would get one of the girls to show her about
cooking them.

"Whose field are you going to?" she asked them, carelessly.

"Why, yo' gran'-pappy's. Didn't you know it, Callisty?" asked
Little Liza in surprise. "He [160] said he was going to plow under
next week, and we was welcome to pick what we could."

Callista drew back with a burning face.

"I--I cain't--" she began faintly. "You-all girls go on. I
cain't leave this morning. They's something back home that I
have obliged to tend to."

She turned and fairly ran from the astonished women. But when
her own door was shut behind her, she broke down in tears. A
vast, unformulated resentment surged in her heart against her
young husband. She would not have forgone anything of that charm
in Lance which had tamed her proud heart and fired her cold
fancy; but she bitterly resented the lack of any practical
virtue a more phlegmatic man might have possessed.

She shut herself in her own house, half sullenly. Not from her should
anyone know the poor provider her man was. She had said that she
would not go home without a gift in her hand, she had bidden mother
and grandfather to take dinner with her--and it appeared horrifyingly
likely that there might hardly be dinner for themselves, much less
that to offer a guest. Well, Lance was to blame; let him look to
it. It was a man's place to provide; a woman could only serve
what was provided. With that she would set to work and clean all
the cabin over in furious zeal--forgetting to cook the scanty
supper [161] till it was so late that Lance, coming home, had to
help her with it.

Things looked their worst when, one morning, little Polly
Griever came running up from the gulch, panting out her good
news.

"Oh, Callisty, don't you-all want to come over to our house? The
sawgrum-makers is thar, an' Poppy Cleaverage has got the furnace
all finished up, and Sylvane and him was a-haulin' in sawgrum
from the field yiste'dy all day."

Sorghum-making is a frolic in the southern mountains, somewhat
as the making of cider is further north.

"Sure we'll come, Polly," Callista agreed promptly, with visions
of the jug of "long sweetening" which she should bring home with
her from Father Cleaverage's and the good dinner they should get
that day.

"Whose outfit did Pappy hire?" asked Lance from the doorstep
where he was working over a bit of rude carpentry.

"Flenton Hands's," returned the child. "A' Roxy says Flenton
drove a awful hard bargain with Poppy Cleaverage. She says
Flenton Hands is a hard man if he is a perfesser."

Callista laid down the sunbonnet she had taken up.

"I reckon we cain't go," she said in a voice of keen disappointment.
Anger swelled within, her at Kimbro for having dealings with the
man against whom Lance's challenge was out. [162]

"I couldn't 'a' gone anyhow, Callista," Lance told her. "I have
obliged to take Sate and Sin down to the Settlement and see what
kind of a trade I can make to winter 'em; but there's no need of
your staying home on my accounts."

Callista looked down at his tousled head and intent face as he
worked skilfully. Was he so willing to send her where she would
meet Flenton Hands? For a moment she was hurt--then angry.

"Come on, Polly," she said, catching up sunbonnet and basket,
and stepping past Lance, sweeping his tools all into a heap with
her skirts.

"I don't know what Father Cleaverage was thinking of to have
Flenton on the place after all that's been," Callista said more
to herself than the child, when they had passed through the
gate. Her breakfast had been a failure, and she was reflecting
with great satisfaction on how good a cook Roxy Griever was; yet
she would have been glad to forbear going to any place where the
man her husband had threatened was to be met.

Polly came close and thrust a brown claw into Callista's hand,
galloping unevenly and making rather a difficult walking
partner, but showing her good will.

"Hit don't make no differ so long as Cousin Lance won't be thar,"
she announced wisely. "Cousin Lance always did make game of Flent.
He said that when Flent took up a collection in [163] church, he
hollered 'amen' awful loud to keep folks from noticin' that he
didn't put nothin' in the hat hisse'f. I wish't Lance was comin'
'long of us."

With this the two of them dipped into the gay, rustling gloom of
the autumn-tinted gulch, with Lance's Laurel reduced to a tiny
trickle between clear little pools, gurgling faintly in the
bottom.

Before they came to the Cleaverage place they heard the noise of
the sorghum making. A team was coming in from the field with a
belated load of the stalks, which should have been piled in
place yesterday; Ellen Hands and Little Liza appeared down the
lane carrying between them a jug swung from a stick--everybody
that comes to help takes toll.

When Callista arrived, half-a-dozen were busy over the work;
Hands feeding the crusher, Sylvane waiting on him with bundles
of the heavy, rich green stalks, and Buck Fuson driving the
solemn old horse his jogging round, followed by fat little Mary
Ann Martha, capering along with a stick in her hand, imitating
his every movement and shout.

The rollers set on end which crushed the jade-green stalks were
simply two peeled hardwood logs. Flenton had threatened for years
to bring in a steel crusher; but, up to the present, the machine his
grandfather made had been found profitable. The absinthe-colored
juice ran down its little trough into a barrel, whence it was
dipped [164] to the evaporating pan, about which centered the
hottest of the fray. In the stone furnace under this great, shallow
pan--as long and broad, almost, as a wagon-bed--old Kimbro himself
was keeping a judgmatic fire going. Roxy Griever, qualified by
experience with soap and apple-butter, circled the fire and kept
up a continual skimming of froth from the bubbling juice, while
she did not lack for advice to her father concerning his management
of the fire.

Flenton handed over to Fuson his work at the crusher, calling
Polly to mind the horse, and came straight to Callista.

"I'm mighty proud to see that you don't feel obliged to stay
away from a place becaze I'm thar," he said in a lowered tone,
and she fancied a flicker of fear in his eyes, as though he
questioned whether her husband might be expected to follow.

"Lance was a-goin' down to the Settlement to-day," she said
bluntly, "and I'd have been all alone anyhow; so I 'lowed I
might as well come over."

Hands looked relieved.

"I hope you ain't a-goin' to hold it against me, Callisty," he
went on in a hurried half whisper, "that Lance is namin' it all
around that this here scope o' country ain't big enough to hold
him and me."

Callista shook her fair head in a proud negative.

"I've got my doubts of Lance ever having said [165] any such," she
returned quietly. "Yo' name has never been mentioned between us,
Flent; but if Lance has a quarrel, he's mighty apt to go to the
person he quarrels with, and not make threats behind they' back.
I think little of them that brought you such word as that."

"That's just what I say," Hands pursued eagerly. "Why can't we-all
be friends, like we used to be. Here's Mr. Cleaverage that don't
hold with no sech," and he turned to include Kimbro, who now came
up to greet his daughter-in-law. Again Callista shook her head.

"You men'll have to settle them things betwixt yourselves," she
said, sure of her ground as a mountain woman. "But, Flent, I
reckon you'll have to keep in mind that a man and his wife are
one."

"Oh," said Hands dropping back a step, "so if Lance won't be
friendly with me, you won't neither--is that it?"

"I should think yo' good sense would show you that that would
have to be it," said Callista doggedly. She had no wish to
appear as one submitting to authority, and yet Flenton's evident
intention of seeking to find some breach between herself and
Lance was too offensive to be borne with.

"Now then, why need we talk of such this morning?" pacified
Kimbro. "My son Lance is a good boy when you take him right.
He's got a [166] tender heart. If he ever quarrels too easy, he
gets over it easy, as well. Flenton, you'll have to tend to the
crusher; I got to keep the fire goin' for Roxy.

"Hit 'minds me of that thar lake that it names in the Bible,
Callisty," the Widow Griever said meditatively, looking at the
seething surface as she wielded her long-handled spoon. "And
then sometimes I study about that thar fiery furnace and Ham,
Sham _and_ Abednego. Poppy, looks like to me you ain't got fire
enough under this eend."

"I've just made it up there," said Kimbro mildly. "I go from one
end to the other, steady, and that keeps it as near even as
human hands air able to."

"Flenton, he was mighty overreachin' with Poppy," the widow
lamented. "He's a mighty hard-hearted somebody to deal with, if
he is a perfesser, and one that walks the straight an' narrer
way. Poppy has to furnish all the labor, 'ceptin' Flent and Buck
Fuson, and we've got to feed them men and their team, and then
they git one third of the molasses. With three meals a day, an'
snacks between times to keep up they' stren'th, looks like I
never see nobody eat what them two can."

The gray little cabin crouched in a corner of the big yard; a
shed roof, running down at one side of it, looking comically
like a hand raised to shut out [167] the clamor. Everybody shouted
his opinion at the top of his voice. Nobody thought anybody else
was doing just what he ought. Roxana hurried from group to group of
the workers, advising, admonishing, trying to bring some order
out of the confusion. And in the midst of it, Callista watched
the bubbling juice enviously. It seemed everybody had something
to harvest, care for and put away, except herself. [168]



CHAPTER XI.

LONG SWEETENIN'.



MARY ANN MARTHA GRIEVER was notorious all over the Big and
Little Turkey Track neighborhoods, as "the worst chap the Lord
A'mighty ever made and the old davil himself wouldn't have." The
mildest dictum pronounced upon her was "Spiled rotten." Her energy,
her unsleeping industry, would have been things to admire and
wonder at, had they not been always applied to the futherance of
iniquitous ends. To-day she pervaded the sorghum-making, not
like a gnat, but like a whole swarm of gnats. Providing herself
with a weak-backed switch, she followed the movements of Fuson,
or Polly, or Sylvane, whichever chanced to be told off to tend
the old horse. She pursued the beast with a falsetto screech of
peculiar malignance, and tickled his heels with her switch whenever
the exigencies of the work forced his stoppage. To the infinite
surprise of everybody, notably his owner, the gaunt sorrel, after
looking around and twitching his ears and hide as though a
particularly troublesome flock of flies were on him, finally
heaved up the whole after portion of his anatomy in one elephantine
kick, which very [169] nearly cost his small tormentor the entire
top of her head.

Chased away from the horse and the crusher, Mary Ann Martha
turned her attention to the furnace, with its more seductive and
saccharine activities. The skimming hole on this occasion was
not the small, ordinary excavation made for the purpose, but a
sizable pit, dug at some previous time for a forgotten use.
Brush had been thrown into it, vines had grown and tangled over
the brush, till it was a miniature jungle or bear-pit. Tin cans
hid among the leafage, and the steady drip-drip of the skimmings
pattered on one of these hollowly. This spot had a peculiar
fascination for the child. Perched on its edge she thrust
forward her face and attempted to lick a branch over which the
skimmings had trickled deliciously. The distance was considerable.
Mary Ann Martha's tongue was limber and amazingly extensible; her
balance excellent; but also she was in unseemly haste for the syrup
that stood in great drops just beyond reach. In her contortions,
she overbalanced herself and fell shrieking in, going promptly to
the bottom, where quite a pool of sticky sour-sweetness had already
collected.

"The good land!" shouted Roxy, passing the ladle of office to
Callista and reaching down to grab for her offspring. "If they's
anything you ort not to be in, of course you're in it. Now look
at you!" she ejaculated, as she hauled the squalling [170] child
out dripping. "You ain't got another frock to yo' name', an' what
am I a-goin' to do with you?"

Mary Ann Martha showed a blissful indifference to what might be
done with her. Her howls ceased abruptly. She found her state
that agreeable one wherein she was able to lick almost any
portion of her anatomy or her costume with satisfaction.

"Don't want no other frock," she announced briefly, as she sat
down in the dust to begin clearing her hands of skimmings, very
like a puppy or a kitten.

"Well, I'm a-goin' to put boy clothes on you," declared the
mother. "You act as bad as a boy." And she hustled the
protesting delinquent away to execute her threat.

Five minutes after, burning with wrongs, Mary Ann Martha came
stormily forth to rejoin her kind, pent in a tight little jeans
suit which had belonged to the babyhood of Sylvane, and from
which her solid limbs and fat, tubby body seemed fairly
exploding. Humiliated, alienated, and with her hand against
every man, she lowered upon them all from under flaxen brows,
with Lance's own hazel eyes, darkened almost to black.

"You Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," admonished Fuson, as the small marauder
raided the cooling pans and licked the spoons and testing sticks
so soon as they were laid down, "you got to walk mighty keerful
[171] around where I'm at, at least in sawgrum-makin' time."

Mary Ann Martha held down her head, and muttered. She was
ashamed of her trousers as only a mountain-born girl child could
be ashamed.

"You let them spoons alone, or I'll fling you plumb into the
bilin'-pan, whar you'll git a-plenty o' sawgrum," Fuson
threatened. "You hear now? The last man I he'ped Hands make
sawgrum for had ten chillen when we begun. They set in to pester
me an' old Baldy jest like yo' adoin', and when we got done thar
was ten kaigs of sawgrum and nary chap on the place. Yes, that's
right. Ef thar wasn't a chap bar'lled up in every kaig we turned
out, I don't know sawgrum from good red liquor."

Inside the house, Ellen Hands and Little Liza were delaying over
an errand. They had brought a piece of turkey red calico as an
offering for the gospel quilt.

"Don't you trouble to git it out," Little Liza said, rather
wistfully. "I know in reason you've got all on yo' hands you
want this mornin'; but when you come to workin' it in, Ellen an'
me we talked considerable consarning of it, and mebbe we could
he'p ye."

"Callisty's a-skimmin'," announced the widow, running for a
hasty glance toward the sorghum-making activities. "Hit won't
take me mo'n a minute to spread the thing here on the bed, and
[172] try this agin it. Land! ain't that pretty? Red--I always did
love red."

The cherished square was lifted from its chest, unrolled, and
spread upon the four-poster bed in the corner of the living
room.

"You been a-workin' on it some sence last I seed it," Ellen Hands
remarked with interest. "This here thing with birds a-roostin'
on it--I ain't never seed this before."

"That thar's Jacob's Ladder, Ellen--don't you see the postes, and
the pieces a-goin' acrost?" Roxy explained rather hastily. "Lord,
the trouble I had with them angels. I don't wonder you took 'em
for birds. Time and again I had a mind to turn 'em into birds. I
done fine with Noey's dove; see, here 'tis; an' a ark--well, hit
ain't no more than a house with a boat un'neath."

She pulled the folds about, to get at the period of the deluge.

"'Course I see now jest what it was intentioned for," Ellen
professed eagerly. "If I'd looked right good I could 'a' made
out the angels goin' up an' down. How"--she hesitated, but the
resolve to retrieve herself overcame all timidity--"how nateral
them loaves an' fishes does look!"

"That thar's the ark," explained the widow, putting her finger
on the supposed loaf. There was a moment of depressed silence;
then Roxy, willing to let bygones be bygones, observed,

"Over here is the whale and Joney." These [173] twin objects were
undoubtedly what Ellen had taken for the fishes.

"Ye see I had to make the whale some littler than life," the
artist deprecated. "I sort o' drawed him in, as a body may say,
'caze 'course I couldn't git him all on my quilt without. I
didn't aim to git Joney quite so big, but that thar sprigged
percale that he's made outen was so pretty, and the piece I had
was just that length, an' I hated to throw away what wouldn't be
good for anything, an' I'd already got my whale, so I sort o'
len'thened the beast's tail with a few stitches. Would you call
a whale a beast or a fish?"

"Well, I should sure call anything that could swaller a man a
beast," opined Little Liza.

"An' yit he's sorter built like a fish," suggested Ellen.

"That's true; an' he lives in the water," admitted her sister.

"Here's a right good big open place," observed Ellen. "Ef you
was a-goin' to make--whatever--out of that turkey red, hit could
come in here."

"It could that," said the widow thoughtfully. "Did you-all have
any idee as to what it would suit best for?"

The two looked at each other in embarrassment. As unmarried
women, the subject that they had discussed was in some degree
questionable. [174]

"Well, hit's in the Bible," Ellen began defensively. "An' yit--Sis'
an' me didn't know whether you'd care to--to give room to sech
as the Scarlet Woman."

It was out. The idea evidently fascinated Roxy.

"That turkey red shore fits the case," she agreed with gusto.
"As you say, hit's in the Bible. An' yit, anything that's what
a body might call ondecent that-a-way--don't ye reckon a
person'd be sort o' 'shamed to--I vow! I'll do it."

"Oh, Miz. Griever!" exclaimed Little Liza of comical dismay at
the prompt acceptance in their idea. "I believe I wouldn't.
There's the crossin' o' the Red Sea; you could use the turkey
red for that jest as easy."

But the widow shook her head.

"Good lands!" she cried, "what you studyin' about, Liza? I say,
the crossin' o' the Red Sea! I ain't a-goin' to do no sech a
thing. Hit'd take me forever to cut out all them Chillen of
Is'rul. And I never in the world would git done makin'
Egyptians! No, that turkey red goes into a scarlet woman--to
reprove sin."

"Laws, Miz. Griever," began Ellen Hands, solemnly, "looks like
yo' family ort to be perfectly happy with that thar quilt in the
house. I'm mighty shore I would be. I tell you, sech a work as
that is worth a woman's while."

"There's them that thinks different," responded [175] Roxy, with a
sort of gloomy yet relishing resentment. "There has been folks
lived in this house from the time I started work on it, an' made
game of my gospel quilt--made game of it!"

"I reckon I know who you mean," nodded Ellen. And Little Liza
added, "_She's_ here to-day, ain't she?--God love her sweet soul!
But yo' pappy wouldn't bid Lance, with Buddy here an' all--we
know that. They'd be shore to fuss. Man persons is that-a-way."

"Well," Ellen Hands summed the case up, "ef anybody made game o'
that quilt to my face, I'd never forgive 'em."

"I never will," agreed Roxy. "Them that would make game of sech
is blasphemious. Mebbe hit ain't adzactly the Bible, but hit's--"

"Hit's mo' so," put in Ellen swiftly. "The Bible is pertected
like, but yo' gospel quilt is standin' up alone, as a body may
say, and you've got to speak for it. No, ef I was you, and
anybody made game of that thar quilt, I never would forgive
'em."

Outside, Callista stood and skimmed and skimmed, from time to
time emptying her pan into the skimming-hole, the bland October
breeze lifting her fair hair. Everything was sour-sweet and
sticky from the juice. Heaps of pomace were already beginning to
pile tall beside the crusher, reeking, odorous, tempting to the
old cow, who went protestingly past, and had the bars put up [176]
after her. Kimbro looked up from his task and spoke to his
daughter-in-law.

"You look sort o' peaked, Callista," he said gently. "Air you
right well?"

"Oh yes, Father Cleaverage," she returned, absently, her eyes on
Mrs. Griever and the Hands girls approaching from the house.

The unsexed and hostile Mary Ann Martha turned upon the world at
large a look of mute defiance, and completed an enterprise which
she had set up of laying fresh sorghum stalks side-by-side,
pavement-wise, over the skimming-hole.

Women and children were settling like flies about the pan and
its attendant bowls, ladles and testing plates, hoping for a
taste of the finished product. The Hands girls greeted Callista
and joined the others. Fuson's poor little seventeen-year-old
sister-in-law was there with her six months baby, and a child of
two. Roxy took the skimmer from Callista and set to work.
Sylvane relieved his father at the firing. Mary Ann Martha
sidled into the house, whence, a moment later, came a shrill cry
in Polly's thin little pipe.

"Aunt Roxy! Mary Ann Marthy's in here puttin' molasses all _over_
yo' gospel quilt!"

"Good land!" snorted Roxy, straightening up from her task of
skimming. "Take the spoon, Sylvane." She cast the ladle toward
him without much care as to whether the handle or the bowl [177]
went first. "Looks like I do have the hardest time o' anybody I
know," she ejaculated.

"You better git here quick, A' Roxy," Polly urged. "She's just a
_wipin_' her spoon on em'."

"Ain't," protested the infant, appearing suddenly in the doorway,
a "trying spoon" in her hand, over which she was running her
tongue with gusto. "I thest give a lick o' long-sweetnin' to
Eads," thus she named the first of womankind. "Po' old Eads
looked so-o-o hongry."

"She's done a heap more'n that," Polly maintained. Mary Ann
Martha's mouth began to work piteously.

"Give Eads some," she pursued in a husky, explanatory voice.
"An'--th'--ol' snake licked out his tongue, and I must put a
teenchy-weenchy bit on it. 'Nen Adams, he's mad 'caze he don't
git none; an'--Mammy," with a burst of tears, "is I thest like
my uncle Lance?"

She had heard this formula of reproof so often; she knew so well
that it befitted the gravest crimes.

"You air that!" said Roxy wrathfully. "You little dickens! I
don't know of anybody in this world that would have done sech a
trick--but you or Lance Cleaverage."

She wheeled from the furnace toward the house, and set a swift foot
in the middle of the sorghum-stalk pavement Mary Ann Martha had
laid over the skimming pit. The stalks gave. [178] She attempted
to recover herself and have back the foot, but her momentum was
too great. On she plunged, pitching and rolling, descending by
degrees and with ejaculatory whoops among the sticky sweetness,
part of which was still uncomfortably warm.

There was a treble chorus of dismay from the women. Sylvane
leaped to his feet, and ran to the pit's edge. Buck Fuson held
his sides and roared with mirth, and Flenton Hands stopped the
crusher by tying up his horse so that he too, might go to their
assistance.

"Oh land!" gasped the widow, coming to the surface, yellow and
gummy of countenance, smudged and smeared, crowned with a tipsy
wreath of greenery, like a sorghumnal bacchante. "I believe in
my soul that little sinner aimed to do this. She's jest adzactly
like her Uncle Lance--that's what she is! I mind--ow!" The
rotten branch under her foot had snapped, letting her down into
a squelching pool of skimmings.

"Take hold of my hand, Sis' Roxy," cried Sylvane. "No, I don't
reckon the baby aimed to make trouble; chaps is always doin'
things like this, an' meanin' no harm. There--now I've got you."

But Roxy was a big woman, and the first pull nearly dragged him in.

"Let me ketch ye round the waist, Sylvane!" roared Little Liza
in her fog-horn bass. "Ellen, [179] you hold to my coats, and let
the others hang on to you, if they have to. Thar, now, pull,
Sylvane; try it agin--now, all of you--pull!" And with a
tremendous scrabbling and scrambling, the Widow Griever "came,"
hurtling up from her sweet retreat and spattering molasses on
her rescuers.

Over went Sylvane and Little Liza; Ellen and slim Lula Fuson
were nearly dragged down by their fall. Roxy Griever landed on
top of the first two, and liberally besmeared them all with
sorghum juice before they could be got to their feet.

"You let me lay hand on that young 'un," she panted, "and I'll
not leave her fitten to do such as this."

"Never mind, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," Little Liza admonished. "You git
in and git yo'se'f washed up. For the good land's sake--ef thar
don't come Miz. Gentry an' her pa down the road! Mak' 'as'e!"
And the sorghum bespattered women hurried toward the house, the
widow still fulminating threats, the Hands girls giggling a bit.
Callista, trying to carry forward their part of the work, saw
that a team stopped out in front. She was aware of her
grandfather on the driver's seat, and her mother climbing down
over the wheel.

"Well, Callista," complained the matron, making straight for the
side yard and her daughter, "I reckon if I want to see my own
child, I can go to [180] the neighbors and see her there. Why ain't
you been home, honey? Pappy axes every morning air you comin',
and every night I have to tell him, 'Well, mebbe to-morrow.'"

Callista looked over her mother's shoulder, and fancied that she
caught a gleam of grim amusement in old Ajax's eye.

"I've been mighty busy," she said evasively. "Looks like I don't
finish one thing before another needs doing. I'm a-comin' one of
these days."

"So's Christmas," jeered her grandfather from the wagon.

Callista remembered the last time her homecoming had been
discussed with him. Her color deepened and her eye brightened.

"Yes, and I'm comin' same as Christmas with both hands full of
gifts," she called out to him gaily. How dared he look like
that--as though he knew all her straits--the shifts to which she
was now reduced?

There had sounded from the house, on Roxy's arrival there, wails
of lamentation in Mary Ann Martha's voice--wails so strident and
so offensively prolonged as to convince the least discriminating
hearer that their author was not being hurt, but was only
incensed. Now, Roxy Griever, hastily washed, made her appearance.

"I'm mighty proud to have you here to-day, Miz. Gentry," she
said hospitably. "Won't you come into the house? Have you-all
fixed for pumpkin [181] cutting? I just as soon as not come over
and he'p you, oncet I git this mis'able sawgrum out of the way."

"Thank you, Miz. Griever, I won't go in for a spell yet,"
Octavia said, seating herself on a bench. "No, we ain't had a
chance to think o' pumpkin cuttin'. I been dryin' fruit. And
Pappy 's had everybody on the place busy pickin' field peas."

Callista harkened restively to this talk of the harvest
activities, the season's plenty--she who had nothing to garner,
nothing to prepare and put away. She heard her mother's voice
running plaintively on.

"Looks like I got to have somebody with me, since Sis is gone.
I've been aimin' to git over to the Far Cove neighborhood where
my cousin Filson Luster lives. I know in reason Fil could spare
one of his gals, an' I'd do well by her."

The words were softly, drawlingly, spoken, yet Callista,
mechanically working still about the furnace, heard in them the
slam of a door. Her girlhood home was closed to her. The
daughter's place there, which she had held so lightly, would be
filled. [182]



CHAPTER XII.

WHAT SHALL HE HAVE WHO KILLED THE DEER?



WINTER was upon the cabin in the Gap. Through the long months
much bitter knowledge had come to Callista. She found that she
knew nothing a mountain wife ought to know. Finically clean
about her housekeeping, she spent days scouring, rubbing,
putting to rights and rearranging that which none used, nobody
came to see; but she could not cook acceptably, and their scant
fare suffered in her inept hands till she nearly starved them
both.

Here, with some show of reason, she blamed her mother. Having
never seen the time when she could go back to the Gentry place
with a gift in her hand, she had not been there at all since her
marriage. And here she blamed Lance. Between her incapacity and
his earlier recklessness, they were desperately pinched. The
season for hauling closed even sooner than he had feared. After
it was past, he got a bit of work now and again, often walking
long distances to it, since he had been obliged, as he had
foreseen, to leave Satan and Cindy in the Settlement; and when
the black horses came no more to the log stable behind the [183]
cabin, Callista accepted it as the first open confession of
defeat.

Lance was one who sought a medicine for his spiritual hurts with
as sure an instinct as that by which the animals medicate their
bodies, creeping away like them to have the pain and wounding
out alone. With the first cold weather he was afoot, his long
brown rifle in the hollow of his arm, tramping the ridges for
game. The wide, silent spaces spoke restfully to his spirit.
Half the time he left the cabin ill provided with firewood and
other necessities, but he brought back rabbits, quail, an
occasional possum--which latter Callista despised and refused to
cook, even when Lance had carefully prepared it, so that the
dogs got it for their share. The undercurrent of the material
struggle to make a living was always the pitiful duel between
these two, who really loved well, and who were striving as much
each for the mastery of self, as for the mastery of the other,
could they but have realized it.

In late November, the days began to break with a thin, piercing
sleet in the air, under an even gray sky. On the brown sedge,
dry as paper, it whispered, whispered through the clinging
white-oak leaves, with a sharp sibilance, as of one who draws
breath at the end of a pageant; for the last flickerings of the
gold and glory of Autumn were gone; the radiance and warmth and
beauty of life all circled now around a hearth-stone. [184]

"If we get much more weather like this, I'll go out and bring ye
in a deer," Lance told his Callista; "then we'll have fresh meat
a-plenty."

"Well, see that there's firewood enough to cook your deer after
you've killed it," Callista retorted, resentfully mindful of
Lance's having forgotten to provide her with sufficient fuel the
last time he went on an unsuccessful hunting trip.

"You don't roast a deer whole," Lance told her tolerantly.
"We'll dry some of the meat, and some we'll salt."

To Callista's exacting, practical nature, this figuring on the
disposal of a deer one had not yet killed was exasperating. She
wanted Lance to know that she lacked many things which she
should have had. She wished him plainly to admit that he ought
to furnish those things, and that he was sorry he could not. She
had a blind feeling that, if he did so, it would in a measure
atone.

"Well, it wouldn't take much wood to cook all the deer you brought
home last time," she said with a little bitter half-smile.

Taunt of taunts--to reproach the unsuccessful hunter with his
empty bag! Lance was not one to give reasons for his failure, to
tell of the long, hard miles he had tramped on an unsuccessful
quest. He merely picked up his gun and walked out of the house
without looking to right or left, leaving his young wife
breathing a little short, but sure of herself. [185]

So far as he was concerned, he could find good counsel in the
wild to which, he fled. This morning there was come over
everything a blind fog, which was gradually thinning a little
with the dawn, showing to his eyes, where it lifted, hundreds of
little ripples fleeing across the pond from icy verge to verge,
with a mist smoking to leeward. The forest swam about him in a
milky haze; the trees stood, huge silver feathers, soft gray
against the paler sky, their coating not glassy, like real
sleet, but a white fringe, a narrow strip of wool, composed of
the finest pointed crystals, along every twig. The yard grass,
as he crossed it, was a fleece; the weeds by the garden fence,
where he vaulted over, a cloud.

Dulling one sense, the obscuring fog seemed to muffle all
others. Lance was shut in a little white world of his own, that
moved and shifted about him as he went forward. In his heart was
the beginning of self-distrust; a very small beginning, which he
cried down and would none of; yet the mood sent him seeking a
spot he had not seen for months. Straight as an arrow he went
through the forest, guiding himself by his sense of direction
alone, since he could neither see far nor recognize any familiar
landmark in its changed guise.

An hour after he and Callista had parted in the kitchen of his
own home, he was before that outside cabin of the Gentry place,
at whose casement he had first held her in his arms, looking up
at the [186] blank square of closed panes. It was so early that
none of the household was yet astir. The dogs knew him, and made
no clamorous outcry. Shut in by the wavering walls of mist which
clung and chilled, he stood long beneath her window, staring
fixedly up at it. Something ominous and symbolic in the change
which had come upon the spot since he last stood there, checked
the beating of his heart, strive as he might to reject its
message. The yard grass, green and lush on that September night,
stood stark, dry, white wool; the bullace vine, whose trunk had
borne his eager love up to her kiss, gleamed steel-like along its
twisted stems; the sill itself was a bar of humid ice. All looked
bleak, inhospitable, forbidding; the place was winter-smitten,
like--like--

Some blind rage at the power which makes us other than we would be,
which gives us stones for bread, stirred within him. He shivered.
She was not there now--she was at home in his house--his wife.
What had he come here for? This was a gun in the hollow of his
arm--not a banjo; he was out trying to find some wild meat to
keep them alive. She was waiting at home to--no, not in the
gropings of his own mind, would he complain too bitterly of his
bride. Heaven knows what the disillusioning was when Lance found for
the first time that he and Callista could seriously quarrel--their
old days of what might be termed histrionic bickerings for the
amusement of an audience, he had put aside, as of no portent.
When he discovered that Callista could look at him with actually
alien eyes, and say stinging things in an even tone, the boundaries
of his island drew in till there was barely room for his own feet
amid the wash of estranging waters. But he turned resolutely from
the thought. His concern should be all with his own conduct, his
own failings. Callista must do what she would do--and he would play
up to the situation as best he might.

Somebody moved in the house and called one of the hounds. He
laughed at himself a bit drearily, and struck off across the
hill, assured in his own mind that he had merely taken this as a
short cut to the glen at the head of the gulch, where he hoped
to find his deer. The clean winds of Heaven soothed the pain
that throbbed under his careless bearing. He had not been five
hours afoot, he was but just preparing to make his noon halt and
eat the bit of cold pone in his pocket, when he was ready to
smile whimsically at the ill-made, ill-flavored thing and decide
that it would be "just as fillin'," even though Callista had not
yet learned the bread-maker's art.

He must needs consider it rare good luck that he found a deer at
all; but it was five miles from home, in the breaks of Chestnut
Creek, that he finally made his kill. He had no horse to carry
the bulk of wild meat; and, in his pride refusing to leave a [188]
part swung up out of harm's way, he undertook to pack the whole
deer home on his shoulder--a piece of exhausting, heart-breaking
toil, though the buck was but a half-grown one. He was not
willing to risk the loss of a pound. There were no antlers; but
he would make Callista a pair of moccasins out of the soft-tanned
skin. Sunday he was due at old man Fuson's for a couple of days,
to repair a chimney; but, come Tuesday or Wednesday, he would
return and be ready to look after the venison. It ought to keep
so long in this cold.

Callista, pent indoors all day, chained to distasteful tasks for
which she was incompetent, had not won to as serene a temper as
her mate. She saw him approaching, laden, through the grove, and
hurried into the cold, closed far room to be busy about some
task so that she need not meet him as he entered. When she
emerged, he had skinned the deer and hung up the meat safely
between two trees, and was already washed and sitting in the
chimney-corner. His clear eyes went swiftly to her face with its
coldly down-dropped lids. The man who can bring home a deer and
not boast of it has self-control; but when Lance noted the line
of his wife's lips, he reached for his banjo without a word, and
began to hold his communications with it.

She knelt at the hearth to continue her supper preparations. For
the first time since they had [189] quarreled, she wished that she
could make some advance toward a reconciliation. Yet there was
Lance; look at him! Head thrown back a little, chin atilt, his
eyes almost closed, showing a bright line under the shadowing
lash, the firelight played on her husband's face and painted the
ghost of a flickering smile about his mouth as he strummed
lightly on the strings. Was that a countenance asking sympathy,
begging for quarter? And listen to the banjo; it was no wistful,
questing melody of "How many miles, how many years?" now; a
light, jigging dance-tune rippled under his finger ends.
Callista wondered angrily if he wished he were at Derf's. No
doubt they would be dancing there to-night, as commonly on
Saturday.

Lance, the man who wouldn't take a dare from the Lord A'mighty
Himself, answered her silence with silence, and her unconcern
with a forgetfulness so vast as to make her attitude seem
actually resentful.

By and by she called him to supper, and when he came she refused
to eat, dwelling angrily on the thought that he should have
regarded her bidding as an overture to peace, and have made some
answering movement himself.

In short, she was not yet done interrogating this nature,
fascinating, complex, inscrutable, to know what was the ultimate
point, the place where he would cry "Enough!"

The next morning saw him leaving early for [190] Fuson's, and he
went before Callista was out of bed. When she rose, she looked
remorsefully at the tidy, small preparations for breakfast which
he had made. It suddenly came home to her that, for a man in
Lance's situation, the marrying of a wholly inept wife was daily
tragedy. She decided that she would learn, that she would try to
do better; and, as a first peace-offering, she hurried out to
the grove and possessed herself of Lance's venison, that she
might cure and prepare it.

After she had dragged the big, raw, bloody thing into her
immaculate kitchen, she felt a little sense of repulsion at it,
yet her good intentions held while she hacked and hewed and
salted and pickled, on some vague remembrance of what she had
heard her grandfather say concerning the curing of wild meat. It
was noon when she went into the other room, leaving the outer
door open so that the hound carried away the only portion of the
meat which she had left fresh for immediate use. Tired, ready to
cry, she consoled herself with the reflection that there was
plenty remaining; she could freshen a piece of that which she
had salted, for Lance's supper when he should return. For
herself, she felt that she should never want to taste venison
again.

Under her handling the meat deteriorated rapidly, and was in
danger of becoming an uneatable mess. At last she turned a weary
and disgusted back upon it, and left it soaking in weak [191] brine.
Ever since Saturday night the weather had been softening; it was
almost warm when Lance came hurrying home Tuesday evening,
meaning to take care of his prize at once. He arrived at supper
time, ate some of Callista's bread and drank his coffee eagerly,
turning in mute distaste from the hunk of ill-prepared meat upon
the table. Supper over he hastened out to where he had hung the
deer. His wife had a wild impulse to stop him; he might have
guessed from the venison she had cooked that the meat was
attended to. She resented the dismay in his face when he came
back asking:

"Do you know what's come of that deer? I got Jasper Fuson to let
me off sooner, so's I could make haste and tend to it."

The sense of failure closed in on Callista intolerably.

"I fixed it," she returned without looking up.

"All of it?" inquired Lance sharply. "Fixed it like that, do you
mean?" indicating the untouched piece on the platter.

"Yes," returned Callista with secret despair; "all but what the
dogs got."

"The dogs!" echoed Lance.

"Yes," repeated Callista with a sort of stubborn composure. "I
[192] left about a third of it fresh whilst I was putting the rest
in the brine, and that old hound of yours came in and stole the
fresh piece." She looked at his face and then at the meat. "I
reckon you think that even a dog wouldn't eat this--the way I've
got it."

The two young people confronted each other across the ruined food
which his skill and labor had provided, her bungling destroyed.
The subject for quarrel was a very real one, terrifyingly concrete
and pressing. They were afraid of it; nor did they at that moment
fail to realize the mighty bond of love which still was strong
between them. Both would have been glad to make some advance toward
peace, some movement of reconciliation; neither knew how to do it.
In Lance, the torture of the thing expressed itself only in a fiery
glance turned upon his wife's handiwork. To Callista, this was so
intolerable that she laid about her for an adequate retort.

"Well," she said, affecting a judicial coolness, "it's true I
don't know much about taking care of wild meat. We never had
such in my home. There was always plenty of chickens and
turkeys; and if we put up meat, it was our own shoats and beef."

Deer are growing scarce in the Cumberlands; not in half a dozen
cabins throughout the Turkey Tracks would venison be eaten that
season. But Lance adduced nothing of this.

"I think you might as well let the dogs have the rest of it," he
said finally, with a singular gentleness in his tone. Then he
added with a sudden upswelling of resentment, "Give it to 'em if
they'll eat it--which I misdoubt they'll never do." [193]



CHAPTER XIII.

BROKEN CHORDS.



AFTER the episode of the ruined venison, Callista tried
sulking--refusing to speak. But she found in Lance a power of
silence that so far overmatched her own as to leave her daunted.
He returned now from his long expeditions, to hang up his wild meat
in the grove, and thereafter to sit bright-eyed and silent
across the hearth from her, whistling, under his breath, or
strumming lightly on his banjo.

Callista was a concrete, objective individual, yet she grew to
recognize the resources of one who had for his familiars dreams
that he could bid to stand at his knee and beguile his leisure
or his loneliness. But dreams, so treated, have a trick of
strengthening themselves against times of depression, changing
their nature, and wringing with cruel fingers the heart which
entertains them; so that those who feed the imagination must be
willing to endure the strength of its chastisements.

Yet if Lance Cleaverage suffered, he kept always a brave front,
and took his suffering away from under the eye of his young
wife. To do him justice, he had little understanding of his own
offences. An ardent huntsman, he had by choice [194] lived hard
much of his life, sleeping in the open in all weathers, eating what
came to hand. Callista's needs he was unfitted to gauge, and she
maintained a haughty silence concerning them. Since she would
not inquire, he told her nothing of having been offered money to
play at dances, but began to be sometimes from home at nights,
taking his banjo, leaving her alone.

An equable tempered, practical woman might have trained him
readily to the duties of masculine provider in the primitive
household. But beautiful, spoiled Callista, burning with wrongs
which she was too proud and too angry to voice, eaten with
jealousy of those thoughts which comforted him when she refused
to speak, always in terror that people would find out how at
hap-hazard they lived, how poor and ill-provided they were, and
laugh at her choice--Callista had her own ideas of discipline.
If Lance went away and left no firewood cut, she considered it
proper to retort by getting no supper and letting him come into
a house stone cold. This was a serious matter where a chunk of
fire may be sent from neighbor to neighbor to take the place of
matches.

In this sort the winter wore away. In April there came one of the
spring storms that southern mountaineers call "blackberry winter."
All the little growing things were checked or killed. A fine, cold
rain beat throughout the day around [195] the eaves of the cabin.
The wind laid wet, sobbing lips to chink and cranny, and cried to
her that she was alone--alone--alone; she, Callista, was neglected,
deserted, shunned! For Lance had a day's work at re-lining
fireplaces at Squire Ashe's place. Busy with the truck-patch he
had at this late day set about, and which he must both clear and
fence, he had somewhat overlooked the wood-pile; and before noon
the fuel was exhausted. Instead of gathering chips and trash, or
raiding the dry spaces under the great pines for cones and crackling
twigs,--as any one of her hardy mountain sisters would have done,
and then greeted her man at night with a laugh, and a hot
supper--Callista let the fire go out, and sat brooding. Without
fire she could cook herself no dinner, and she ate a bit of cold
corn-pone, fancying Lance at somebody's table--he never told her
now where he was going, nor for how long--eating the warm,
appetizing food that would be provided.

As evening drew on the rain slacked, and a cloud drove down on
the mountain-top, forcing an icy, penetrating chill through the
very substance of the walls, sending Callista to bed to get
warm. She wrapped herself in quilts and shivered. It was dark
when she heard Lance come stumbling in, cross the room, and,
without a word, search on the fire-board for matches.

"There ain't any," she told him, not moving [196] to get up. "It
wouldn't do you any good if there was--there's no wood."

He did not answer, but, feeling his way, passed on into the
little lean-to kitchen, and Callista harkened eagerly, believing
that sight of the bowl of meal and the pan of uncooked turnips
on the table by the window would bring home to her husband the
enormity of her wrongs and his offences. Leaning forward she
could discern a vaguely illuminated silhouette of him against
this window. He appeared to be eating. She guessed that he had
peeled a turnip and was making a lunch of that.

"Would you rather have your victuals raw?" she demanded finally,
desperate at his silence. "I reckon I'd better learn your
ruthers in the matter."

"I'd rather have 'em raw as to have 'em cooked the way you
mostly get 'em," came the swift reply in a perfectly colorless
tone. "I ain't particularly petted on having my victuals burnt
on one side and raw on the other, and I'd rather do my own
seasoning--some folks salt things till the devil himself
couldn't eat 'em, or leave the salt out, and then wonder that
there's complaints."

Her day of brooding had come to a crisis of choking rage.
Callista sat up on the edge of the bed and put her thick hair
back from her face.

"I cook what I'm provided," she said in a cold, [197] even voice.
"That is, I cook it when I'm supplied with wood. And I fix your
meals the best I know how; but it would take one of the sort you
named just then to cook without fire."

She had expected that he would go out in the dark and cut
firewood for her. As for the matches, starting a flame without
them was an easy trick for a hunter like Lance. She remembered
with a sudden strange pang his once showing her how he could
prepare his pile of shredded tinder, fire a blank charge into
it, and have a blaze promptly. She heard him fumbling for
something on the wall--his gun, of course. But the next instant
there came the whine of the banjo; it hummed softly as it struck
against the lintel. That was what he was getting--not the gun to
light a fire--he was leaving her alone in the cabin! She guessed
that he was going over to Derf's to play for a dance; and for a
strenuous moment she was near to springing after him and begging
him to stay with her.

But habit prevailed. She huddled, shivering, under her covers and
went back to the sullen canker of her own wrongs. She might have
had the pick of the countryside, and she had taken up with Lance
Cleaverage. She had married him when and how he said--that was
where she made her mistake. She should have told him then--she
should have--but, in the midst of all this rush of accusation,
she knew well that she [198] took Lance when and how she could
get him, and at this moment her heart was clamoring to know
where he was and what doing.

So she lay shivering, cold to the knees, her hands like ice, her
teeth locked in a rigor that was as much spiritual as physical,
till she could bear it no longer. Then she got hesitatingly up
from the bed and stood long in the middle of the darkened room,
turning her head about as though she could see. She knew where
each article of furniture stood. It was her room, her home,
hers and Lance's. Lance had built it; she had somehow failed
pitiably, utterly, to make it hers; and she was well aware that
she had failed to make it home for him--yet it was all either
of them had. Back over her mind came memory of their wedding
morning, when, his arm about her waist, her head half the time
on his shoulder, they had visited every nook of the place and
discussed between tender words and kisses all its scant
furnishings. Then suddenly, without having come to any decision
whatever, she found herself out in the cold rain, running
through the woods toward the big road and the Derf place.

Down the long slope from the Gap she fled, then past the old
quarry, past Spellman's clearing, and around the Spring hollow.
She had never set foot on Derf land before. Through the fine
rain Callista--spent, gasping, wet and disheveled--at last saw
the windows, a luminous haze; [199] caught the sound of stamping,
thudding feet, and heard the twang of Lance's banjo. She had
approached through the grove, and stood at the side fence. The
place was so public that its dogs paid little attention to
comers and goers. When Callista came to herself fully, she
realized that it was the bars of the milking place she leaned
upon. Slowly she withdrew the upper one from its socket, stepped
over, then turned and replaced it. With ever-increasing
hesitation she faltered toward the house, avoiding the front and
approaching the light at the side, where she hoped to be
unobserved.

Shivering, shrinking, her loosened wet hair dragging in against
her neck, she stared through the window into the lighted room.
They were dancing in there. The sounds she had heard were from
Lance's banjo indeed, but held in other hands, while Lance
himself sat at a little table near the hearth, a steaming supper
before him, Ola Derf waiting on him hand and foot, stooping to
the coals for fresh supplies of good hot coffee, or smoking,
crisp pones.

"Now you just hush!" she shrilled in response to somebody's
importunities, as Callista hung listening. "Lance cain't play
for no dancin' till he gits through his supper. And he's a-goin'
to have time to eat, too. You Jim, put that banjo down--you
cain't play hit. Pat for 'em if they're in such a hurry to
dance."

The Aleshine girls from Big Buck Gap, a young [200] widow
who lived half way down the Side, two cousins of the Derf's
themselves--these were the women in the room. Callista was
desperately afraid lest one of the loud-talking, half-intoxicated
men in there should come out and discover her; yet she could not
drag herself away from sight of Lance sitting housed, warm,
comforted and fed--a home made for him. Something knocked at the
door of her heart with a message that this scene carried; but
fiercely she barred that door, and set herself to defend her own
position.

Grasping a trunk of muscadine vine, which, when she shivered,
shook down icy drops upon her, Callista rested long, regarding
the scene before her. What should she do? To return to her home
and leave her husband there seemed a physical impossibility. To
go in and play the high-and-mighty, as she had been wont to do
in her free girlhood, to glance over her shoulder with dropped
eyelids and inform Lance Cleaverage that she cared not at all
what he did or where he went--this were mere farce; her time for
that sort of mumming was past.

Lance had finished his supper now, and turned from the board. It
seemed to Callista that he looked well pleased with himself,
satisfied, even gay. The sight set her teeth rattling in fresh
shivers. Still he did not play for the dancers, who continued to
make what headway they might to the time of Jim's patting. [201]

Callista saw Ola bring the banjo and lay it in Lance's lap. Then
the little brown girl seated herself close beside him. He bent
and placed the instrument properly in Ola's grasp, disposing the
short, stubbed fingers on the strings. In the positive throe of
jealousy that this sight brought, Callista must needs, for her
own self-respect, recall that Lance had offered more than once
to teach her to play, and that she had refused--and pretty
shortly, too--to learn, or to touch the banjo, which she had
come to hate with an unreasoning hatred. Now the dancers grew
tired of Jim and his patting, and the call was for music.

"See here, Lance Cleaverage," said Buck Fuson, "we-all throwed
in to get you to play; but we ain't a-goin' to pay the money and
have you fool away yo' time with Ola."

This was the first that Callista knew of Lance earning money by
his banjo-playing.

"All right," said Cleaverage laconically, not looking up from
his instructions. "I've had me a good supper, and I've got a
warm place to stay, and that's all I want. Go on and dance."

He addressed himself singly to Ola and her chords, moving her
fingers patiently, taking the banjo himself to show her just how
the thing was done. She was a dull pupil, but a humbly grateful
one; and after a while it seemed to Callista that she could no
longer bear the sight. She was debating starkly between the
desperate course of [202] returning home alone and the yet more
desperate enterprise of going in, when a deeper shadow crossed
the darkness behind her, and she turned with a smothered scream
to find Iley Derf's Indian husband moving impassively through
the glow from the window and making his way to the back door.

At the sight she wheeled and fled across the yard toward the
front gate and the road. She gained that doubtful refuge just as
a man on a horse came splattering up out of the muddy little
hollow below the Derf place. With another cry she flung about
and ran from him, stepped on a round stone, and fell.

For a moment she crouched, shivering, wet, bruised, trying to
get to her feet, the breath sobbing through her parted lips;
then somebody set a not-too-gentle grasp on her shoulder, and
she looked up to divine in the dimness Flenton Hands's face
above her. There was sufficient light from the noisy cabin
behind to allow him to recognize her.

"Lord God--Callista!" he whispered, lifting her to her feet and
supporting her with an arm under hers. "What in the world--"

"I--I--something scared me," she faltered. "It was that old
Indian that Iley Derf married. He came right a-past where I was
and, and--he scared me."

"Whar was you at?" inquired Hands blankly. [203]

[Illustration: "He placed the instrument in Ola's grasp."]

"In there," returned Callista, pointing toward the Derf yard,
beginning to cry like a child. "I was looking through the window
at them dance, and--and that old Indian scared me."

Twang--twang--twang, across the gusty blackness of the night
came the jeer of Lance's banjo. There was no whisper now of "How
many miles--how many years?" but the sharp staccato of "Cripple
Creek," punctuated by the thudding of dancers' feet as they
pounded out the time. Callista felt her face grow hot in the
darkness. She knew that Flenton was listening, and that he must
guess why she should hang outside the window looking in.

"Come on," said Hands suddenly, almost roughly. "This ain't no
fit place for you,--a woman like you,--my God! Callista, I'll
put you on my horse and take you home."

There was a new note in his voice, a new authority in his
movements, as he lifted her to the saddle and, plodding beside
her in the dark, wet road, made no further offer of question or
conversation.

In spite of herself, Callista felt comforted. She reached up and
gathered her hair together, wringing the rain from it and
redding it with the great shell comb which always held its
abundant coils in place. She could not in reason tell Flenton to
leave her--she needed him too much. When they turned in at the
ill-kept lane which led to Lance's cabin. Lance's wife caught
her breath [204] a little, but said nothing. Flenton lifted her
gently down at her own door-stone, and, opening the door for her,
followed her in and, with a match from his pocket, lit a candle.
He looked at the cold ash-heap on the fireless hearth, whistled
a bit, and went out. She heard him striking matches somewhere
about the wood-pile, and directly after came the sound of an
axe. It was not long before he returned, his arms piled high
with such bits of dry wood as he could find, split to kindling
size.

"It looks like it's a shame for me to have you waitin' on me
this-a-way," Callista began half-heartedly. She had taken
counsel with herself, during his absence, and resolved to make
some effort to keep up appearances.

"Hit don't look like anything of the sort," protested Flenton
Hands. "You needed me, and that's all I want to know."

He had laid his fire skilfully, and now the blaze began to roar
up the big chimney.

"My feet ain't been warm this whole blessed day," Callista said,
almost involuntarily, as she drew nearer the fascinating source
of both warmth and light. "My, but that does feel good!"

"You pore child!" Flent muttered huskily, turning toward her
from the hearth where he knelt. "You're e'en about perished."

He went out then, only to come hurriedly back, reporting, [205]

"I cain't find any wood--whar does Lance keep it?"

Lance's wife hung her head, lips pressed tight together,
striving for resolution to answer this with a smooth lie.

"He don't go off and leave you in this kind of weather without
any wood?" inquired Hands hoarsely.

"Yes--he does," Callista choked. And, having opened the bottle a
bit, out poured the hot wine of her wrath. All the things that
she might have said to her mother had she been on good terms
with that lady; the taunts that occurred to her in Lance's
absence and which she failed to utter to him when he came; these
rushed pell-mell into speech. She was white and shaking when she
made an end.

"There," she said tragically, getting to her feet. "I reckon I
had no business to name one word of this to you, Flenton; but
I'm the most miserable creature that ever lived, I do think; and
I ain't got a soul on this earth that cares whether or not about
me. And--and--"

She broke off, locking her hands tightly and staring down at
them.

Flenton had the sense and the self-control not to approach her,
not to introduce too promptly the personal note.

"Callista," he began cautiously, assuming as nearly as possible
the tone of an unbiased friend to [206] both parties, "you ort to
quit Lance. He ain't doin' you right. There's more than you know of
in this business; and whether you stay thar or not, you ort to
quit him oncet and go home to yo' folks."

Callista made an inarticulate sound of denial.

"I never will--never in this world!" she burst out. "I might
quit Lance, but home I'll never go."

Flenton's pale gray eyes lit up at the suggestion of her words,
but she put aside the hand he stretched out toward her.

"I've been studying about it all day, and for a good many days
before this one," she said with slow bitterness. "Lance
Cleaverage gives me plenty of time to study. If I leave this
house, I'm goin' straight to Father Cleaverage."

Hands looked disappointed, but he did not fail to press the
minor advantage.

"If you want to go to-night, Callista," he suggested, "I'd be
proud to carry you right along on my horse. Lance needs a lesson
powerful bad. You go with me--"

"Hush," Callista warned him. "I thought I heard somebody coming.
Thank you, Flent. You've been mighty good to me this night. I'll
never forget you for it--but I reckon you better go now. When a
woman's wedded, she has to be careful about the speech of
people; and--I reckon you better go now, Flent." [207]

The rain had ceased. A wan moon looked out in the western sky
and made the wet branches shine with a dim luster. Callista
stood in the doorway against the broken leap and shine of the
firelight. Hands went to his horse, and then turned back to look
at her.

"And you won't go with me?" he repeated once more. "Callista,
you'd be as safe with me as with your own brother. I've got that
respect for you that it don't seem like you're the same as other
women. I wish't you'd go, if for nothin' but to learn Lance a
lesson."

The girl in the doorway knew that there was no wood for any more
fire than that which now blazed on the hearth behind her; she
was aware that there was scarcely food in the house for three
days' eating; yet she found courage to shake her head.

"Thank you kindly, Flent," she said with a note of finality in
her tone. "I know you mean well, but I cain't go."

Then she closed the door as though to shut out the temptation,
and, dressed as she was, lay down upon the bed and pulled the
quilts over her.

She listened to the retreating hoofs of Flenton's horse, dreading
always to hear Lance's voice hailing him, telling herself that his
presence there at that hour alone with her was all Lance's fault,
and she had no reason for the shame and fear which possessed her
at thought of it. But the [208] hoofs passed quite away, and still
Lance did not make his appearance. She could not sleep. She judged
it was near midnight. Pictures of Lance teaching Ola Derf her
chords on the banjo flickered before her eyes. Pictures of Lance
dancing with Ola as he had at the infare followed. She had a kind
of wonder at herself that she was not angrier, that she was only
spent and numbed and cowed. Then all at once came a light step she
knew well, the sudden little harmonious outcry of the banjo as
Lance set it down to open the door, and Lance himself was in the
room.

She thought she would have spoken to him. She did not know that
the Indian had gone in and announced her presence outside the
window at the Derfs. As she raised her head she got his haughty,
lifted profile between herself and the light of the now dying
fire. She knew that he was aware of her presence; but he looked
neither to the right nor to the left; he made no comment on her
fire, but strode swiftly through the room, across the open
passage, and into the far room. She heard him moving about for a
few moments, then everything was silent.

All that numbing inertia fell away from her. She sat up on the
edge of the bed as she had once before that evening, and her
eyes went from side to side of the room, picking out what she
wanted to take with her. A few swift movements secured her shawl
and sunbonnet. Without stealth, yet [209] without noise, she opened
the door and stepped forth.

She stood in the open threshing-floor porch between the two
rooms, a very gulf of shadow, into which watery moonlight
struggled from the world outside. A long while she stood so,
looking toward the far room, her hands clenched and pressed hard
against her breast. Those hands were empty. She had shut the
door of her girlhood home against herself unless she returned, a
gift in them. No--she would not go back there.

All at once she became aware of a rhythmic sound, which made
itself heard in the utter stillness of the forest night--Lance's
deep breathing. He slept then; he could go to sleep like that,
when she--. Callista faltered forward toward the front step; and
as she did so, another sound overbore the slighter noise; it was
the hoofs of an approaching horse.

She checked, turned, flung the sunbonnet from her and dropped the
shawl upon it, then, with a quick, light step, crossed the porch
and noiselessly pushed open the door of the room in which Lance lay.
The little pale moon made faint radiance in the room, and by its
light she saw her husband lying on that monster spare bed which is
the pride of every country housewife. He had folded and put aside
the ruffled covers of her contriving, and lay dressed as he was,
with only his shoes removed. On tiptoe she drew near and [210] stood
looking down at him. They said if you held a looking-glass over a
sleeping person's face and asked him a question, he'd tell you the
truth. What was it she wanted to know of Lance? Not whether he
loved her or no, though she said to herself a dozen times a day
that he cared nothing about her, and had never really cared.

The sleeper stirred and turned on his pillow, offering her a
broader view of that strangely disconcerting countenance of
slumber, as ambiguous well-nigh as the face of death itself.

She wheeled and fled noiselessly, as she had come in. The light,
approaching horse's hoofs had ceased to sound some moments now.
At the gate a mounted figure stood motionless within the shadow
of the big pine. She ran down the path to find Flenton Hands.

"I--Callista," he faltered in a low voice, "don't be mad. I--looks
like I couldn't leave you this-a-way. I was plumb to the corner
of our big field, and--I come back."

He glanced with uncertainty and apprehension toward the house;
then, as he noted her shawl and bonnet, got quickly from the
saddle, saying hurriedly, eagerly,

"I 'lowed maybe you might change your mind--and I--I come back."

"Yes," said Callista, not looking at him. "I'm ready to go now,
Flent." [211]



CHAPTER XIV.

ROXY GRIEVER'S GUEST.



IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her
father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning,
debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the
corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew.
The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale
of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while
somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek
that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving.
The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered
of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to
and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a
trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a
crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now
moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and
questioned incoherently.

The household at Kimbro Cleaverage's rose by candle-light.
Sylvane, strolling out to the water bucket, barely well awake,
caught sight of his sister-in-law at the gate, gave one swift
glance at her face as it showed gray through the dim light, [212]
wheeled silently and hurried ahead of her into the kitchen to
warn his sister not to betray surprise. So she was received with
that marvelous, fine courtesy of the mountaineer, which proffers
only an unquestioning welcome, demanding no explanations of the
strangest coming or of the most unexpected comer. She answered
their greeting in a curious, lifeless tone, said only that she
was tired, not sick at all, and would like to lie down; and when
Roxy hastened with her to the bed in the far room and saw her
safely bestowed there, the girl sank into almost instant slumber
so soon as she had stretched herself out.

"She's went to sleep already," whispered Roxy to Sylvane,
stepping back into the kitchen, and, while she quietly carried
forward the breakfast preparations, the boy crept up to the loft
where Mary Ann Martha and Polly slept and whence the little
one's boisterous tones began to be heard. Later he came down
with the two, holding the five-year-old by the hand, imposing
quiet upon them both by look and word; maintaining it by
constant watchfulness.

They ate their breakfast, speaking in subdued voices, mostly of
indifferent matters. Roxy, who, woman fashion, would have made
some comment, inquiry or suggestion, was checked whenever she
looked at the faces of her men folk. The meal over, Sylvane and
her father went out to the day's work. Roxy cleared away the dishes
and [213] set the house in order, returning every little while
to hover doubtfully above that slim form lying so silent and
motionless in the bed. She was frightened at the way the girl
slept, unaware that Callista had not closed her eyes the night
before, and that she was worn out, mind and body, with weeks of
fretting emotions.

The morning came on still, warm and cloudy. There was silence in
the forest, the softened loam making no sound under any foot,
last year's old leaves too damp to rustle on the oak boughs. It
was a day so soundless, stirless, colorless, as to seem unreal,
with a haunting sadness in the air like an undefined memory of
past existences, a drowsiness of forgotten lands. Even the
hearth fire faded faint in that toneless day, which had neither
sun nor moon nor wind, neither heat nor cold indoors or out.
Again and again, as the hours wore on, the Widow Griever stole
in and looked upon her sleeping guest with a sort of terror. She
sent Polly away with Mary Ann Martha to look for posies in the
far woods that the house might be quiet. Quiet--it was as if the
vast emptiness which surrounds the universe had penetrated into
the heart of that day, making all objects transparent,
weightless, meaningless, without power of motion. She would
stand beside the bed, noting the even breathing of the sleeper,
then go softly to the door and look out. The trees rose into the
stillness and emptiness and [214] spread their branches there,
themselves thin shadows of a one-time growth and life. The water
of the pond below lay wan and glassy, unstirred by any ripple.
The very rocks on its edges appeared devoid of substance. From
ten o'clock on seemed one standstill afternoon, lacking sign of
life or the passage of time, until the imperceptible approach of
dusk and the slow deepening of a night which might to all
appearances be the shadow of eternal sleep.

Kimbro and his son had taken their bit of dinner with them to
their work of clearing and brush-burning in a distant field. At
dusk they came quietly in to find the supper ready, Polly still
herding Mary Ann Martha to keep her quiet, Roxy Griever putting
the meal on the table, worried, but saying nothing. On their
part, they asked no questions, but each stole an anxious glance
at the shut door behind which was the spare bed. As they sat
down to eat, Roxy said to her father:

"I don't hardly know, Poppy--She's a-sleepin' yit--been a-sleepin'
like that ever sence she laid down thar. Do you reckon I ort--"

"I'd jest let her sleep, daughter," put in the old man gently.
"I reckon hit's the best medicine she can get. The pore child
must be sort of wore out."

After supper, while Roxy, with Polly's help, was washing the
dishes, Kimbro and his younger son held a brief consultation out
by the gate, [215] following which the boy moved swiftly off,
going up Lance's Laurel.

A little later Callista waked briefly. She sat listlessly upon
the side of the bed, declining Roxy's eager proffer of good warm
supper at the table, and took--almost perforce--from the elder
woman's hand the cup of coffee and bit of food which Roxy
brought her.

"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily,
almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry--just sort o'
tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once
more, and sank back into sleep.

The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy
had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room,
Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them
at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling
a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows
of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the
boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister
that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in
the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at
Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods,
out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood
were employed.

"That's the reason Callista come over here," [216] old Kimbro said
mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's
likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure
glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to
herself."

"Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously.

Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl,
except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to
stay--and don't say too much about that--she knows it."

"Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can
get what she wants from the store--Derf's place," put in
Sylvane.

An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face.
The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the
admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources
would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of
such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it
would simplify matters greatly.

"Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister
prompted Sylvane.

He nodded.

"I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said,
boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come,
Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and
forth all the time whilst he's workin' there." [217]

But when this easy method of communication was brought to the
notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.

It was mid-afternoon of the day following her arrival. The rain was
intermitted, not definitely ceased; there would be more of it; but
just now the air was warm and the sun brilliant. Mountain fashion,
the door of the cabin stood wide. Mary Ann Martha had a corn pone,
and she took occasional bites from it as she circled the visitor,
staring at her with avid, hazel eyes, that troubled Callista's calm
whenever she caught the fire of them, so like Lance's. Marauding
chickens came across the door-stone and ventured far on the child's
trail of crumbs; the light cackle of their whispered duckings,
the scratch of their claws on the puncheons, alone broke the
stillness. Callista sat by the doorway, a dead weight at her heart.
The pallor, the weariness of it, were plain in her face.

"Good land, Polly--cain't you take this chap over yon in the
woods and lose her?" demanded the widow in final exasperation,
as Mary Ann Martha turned suddenly on the chicken that was
stalking her, and shooed it, squalling, from the door. "I want
to get out my quilt and work on it."

All unconscious that these things were done on her behalf,
Callista saw the unwilling Mary Ann Martha marched away. She
beheld the gospel quilt brought out and spread on the widow's
knees [218] quite as some chatelaine of old might have produced
her tapestry for the diversion of the guest. Over the gulf of pain
and regret and apprehension--this well of struggling, seething
emotion--lightly rippled the surface sounds of life, material
talk, bits of gossip, that Callista roused herself to harken to
and answer.

Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she
would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house.
She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had
she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered
with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she
had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him
unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of
being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in
her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out
through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.

"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too
fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting
attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your
eyes is younger than mine."

Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a
sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous
gaze, then fell to the quilt.

"You--you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis'
Roxy?" she asked gently. [219]

The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added.

"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random,
but producing a kindly show of interest.

Roxy brightened.

"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly.
Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for
a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one
standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a
jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck
with angels."

Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged
calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly
host.

"Them Jacob's-ladder angels--you hain't never seen them,
Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to
me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these--I vow, I don't know
what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar
stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be
the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow--without spot or, stain--'
that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and
figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might
'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is,
'Chastised with many stripes'--that'd never be angels, no how."
[220]

Once more Callista made an effort to bring her mind to the
problem in hand.

"The sky is blue," Roxy adduced somewhat lamely. "Do you reckon
blue angels would be more better?"

"Maybe purple," hesitated the visitor. "The Bible names purple a
heap in regards to Heaven--purple and gold. I've got a piece of
purple calico at--at home." Her voice trailed and faltered
huskily over the words. Then she set her lips hard, crested her
head in the old fashion, and went on evenly. "I've got a piece
of mighty pretty purple, and one as near gold as ever goods was,
that you're welcome to, Sis' Roxy, if--if you or Polly would go
over and get 'em."

Again thought of where those treasured rolls of calico were to
be found lowered the clear, calm, defiant voice. Roxy noted it;
but the magnum opus, brought out to cheer and divert Callista,
had laid its unfailing spell upon the widow; the lust for quilt
pieces, rampant in all mountain women, wakened in her,
aggravated in her case by the peculiar needs, the more exacting
demands of her own superior artistry.

"Yes--shore, honey; I'll be glad to go any time," she said, "ef
you'll jest tell me where to look."

So life went on at the Kimbro Cleaverage place, a curious
interlude, and still no word was said to [221] Callista of the
strangeness of her advent, and no explanation vouchsafed, till
on the evening of the third day the girl herself sought her
father-in-law and opened the matter haltingly, timidly. They
were out at the chip-pile where Kimbro was cutting the next
day's wood for Roxy's use. He dropped his axe to the chopping
log and stood leaning on it, peering at her with mild, faded,
near-sighted eyes.

"Well now, Callisty," he began gently, "I'm glad you named this
to me, becaze I've got a message for you from Lance, and I
didn't want to speak of it for fear it would seem like hurrying
you away, or criticising any of your actions. I want you to
know, daughter, that I don't do that. Lance is a wild boy, and
he's got wild ways. But he has a true heart, honey, and one of
these days you'll find it. Now, I reckon, you might be having
some trouble with him."

"A message," repeated Callista in a low tone. "Is he gone away?"

"Well, he's out on North Caney," old Kimbro told her, "a-workin'
at Thatch Daggett's sawmill. Lance can make good money whenever
he'll work at his own trade, and I doubt not he'll do right well
at this sawmill business, too. He hain't got the land cleared
over where you-all was livin' that he ought to have, an' I think
it's better for you to stay on with us a while--we're sure proud
to have you."

Callista's eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. [222] Kimbro
did not explain to her that Sylvane had gone to see his brother.
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a little roll of money.

"Lance sent you this," he said. "He never had time to write any
letter. My son Lance is a mighty poor correspondent at the best;
but he sent you this, and he bade Sylvane to tell you that you
was to buy what you needed at Derf's store, an' that he'd hope
to send you money from time to time as you should have use for
it."

Callista looked on the ground and said nothing. And so it was
settled. The comfortable, new, well-fitted home at the head of
Lance's Laurel was closed, and Callista lived in the shabby,
ruinous dwelling of her father-in-law. The help that she could
offer in the way of provisions was welcome. To Roxy Griever, she
had always been an ideal, a pattern of perfection, and now they
made a sort of queen of her. The widow begrudged her nothing and
waited on her hand and foot. Polly followed her around and
served her eagerly, admiringly; but most astonishing of all,
Mary Ann Martha would be good for her, and was ready to do
anything to attract her notice. Sometimes Callista seemed to
want the child with her; and sometimes when the little girl
looked at her with Lance's eyes, and spoke out suddenly in his
defiant fashion, Callista would wince as though she had been
struck at, and send Mary Ann Martha away almost harshly. [223]



CHAPTER XV.

THE STUBBORN HEART.



CALLISTA never referred to what Kimbro Cleaverage had told her;
but she presently began, of necessity, to buy some things at the
store for her own use, where she had formerly purchased only
that which would make good her stay with her father-in-law.

The wild, cool, shower-dashed, sun-dappled, sweet-scented,
growing days of spring followed each other, passing into weeks,
months, until midsummer, with its pause in rural life, was come.
Octavia Gentry, who was a little out of health, had sent word
again and again that she wanted Callista to come home. It was a
Sunday morning in the deep calm of July when she finally came
over herself to the Cleaverage place to try to fetch her
daughter.

The thrush's song that waked Callista that morning at sunrise,
rang as keenly cool as ever; but the frogs were silenced, and
the whirr of the "dry-fly" was heard everywhere instead. Gloss
of honey-dew was on the oak and hickory leaves, and the blue air
veiling the forest shadows spoke of late summer. The morning was
languid with heat; the breakfast smoke had risen straight into
[224] the dawn, and the day burnt its way forward without dew or
breeze; hills velvet-blue, clouds motionless over the motionless
tree-tops, toned with mellow atmospheric tints that were yet not
the haze that would follow in autumn. One or two neighbors had
strolled in, and about mid-forenoon Ajax Gentry and his
daughter-in-law drove up in the buckboard and old Kimbro and
Sylvane went out trying to pretend surprise, yet Callista knew
all the time that the meeting had been arranged--that her people
were expected.

"Honey!" Her mother took her into a reproachful embrace, and then
held her back and looked at her, tears streaming down her face,
"honey--I've come for you. Me and gran'pappy is a-goin' to take
you right home with us when we go this evenin'. Git your things
a-ready. Me with but one child on this earth, and her a-lookin'
forward to what you air, and to stay with--well, of course, not
strangers--but with other folks!"

But Octavia Gentry's pleadings were hushed in her throat--the
preacher's tall old gray mule and dilapidated wagon was seen
stopping at the gate. He had not been expected, and his arrival
brought a sense of apprehension--almost of dismay. Every one
dreaded lest the dour old man comment openly and bitterly upon
the pitiful state of Callista's affairs. Not often had he been
known to spare the "I told you so." Drumright had brought his
wife and brood of younger children, and from [225] the moment of
their advent the house was vocal with them from end to end. Elvira
Drumright inevitably reminded one of a small clucking hen with a
train of piping chickens after her. The deep male note was
missing in the whiffle of sound that fretted Callista's ear;
after unhitching the preacher's mule and turning him in the lot,
the men had loitered--no doubt because of a lingering dread of
the women's activities in the house--to lean against trees and
the fences, talking of neighborhood matters. Some of the elders
sauntered over to inspect a wrongly dished wheel on a new wagon,
and talked for twenty minutes of this phenomenon alone. They
were joined here by Flenton Hands, who came riding down the
road, and went so wistfully slow as he passed the place that
Kimbro could not forbear to hail him and bid him light and come
in.

It was a typical summer Sunday at Kimbro Cleaverage's, and did
its part at explaining the always cruelly straitened means of
the household. Boys were pitching horseshoes in the open space
beyond the barn, uncertain whether or not to quit on account of
the preacher. The hot, white dust lay in the road; the hot,
clear air brooded above the tree-tops.

Inside the house, the women in the kitchen compared quilt
patterns and talked chickens, combining much gossip with the
dinner getting.

Finally it became unbearable to Callista to feel that her affairs
were being more or less covertly [226] inspected from all the
different angles and points of view possible to the visitors.
Passing through the kitchen, she possessed herself of the water
bucket and slipped off down to the far spring. People did not
often bring water from this place. Its clear, cool trickle had a
medicinal tang, and there was red iron-rust around the edges of
its basin. She sat down in the spring hollow on the cool moss
with big ferns coming up about her. Remembrance was strong
within her of that black, raw morning in April when she had
lingered desperately here, and she looked long at the Judas tree
beneath which she had stood.

The alders raised a tent over the basin, a tenderly shadowed
dome, through the midst of which the little-used spring-path
made a bright green vista like a pleached alley. And down this
way she was presently aware of Sylvane walking, his head thrown
back, his clear whistle coming to her before she got the sound
of his feet. She shivered a little. The tune he whistled had in
it reminiscences of Lance's "How many years, how many miles?"

"You here, Callisty?" asked the boy, parting the branches, and
finally coming shyly closer to seat himself on the bank below
her.

"I wanted to get shut of all the folks," she said, her brooding
eyes on the ground at her feet. "Oh, not you, Sylvane--the rest
of them talk so much."

The boy smiled uncertainly. [227]

"Well, I--reckon I was aimin' to sorter talk, too, Callisty," he
began timidly. "I 'lowed to tell you about that place where
Lance is a-workin'. Hit's been some time now, an' I ain't never
said nothin' to ye--I didn't want to pester ye."

Poor Sylvane was trying, in the mountain phrase, "to make fine
weather, an' hit a-rainin'." She made no movement to hush him,
and he even thought she listened with some eagerness.

"They," he began with hesitation, watching her face, "they're
a-gettin' out railroad ties now. That makes the work mighty heavy.
It takes Lance and Bob and Andy to run the mill--and sometimes
they have to have help. They've got generally as many as eight
or ten loggers and woodsmen. They just get the logs up any way
they can. Last week Lance got his foot hurt in a log bunk that
he fixed up on the running gears of two wagons. They wanted me
to come and drive. They do a lot of snaking out the logs without
any wagon at all. Reelfoot Dawson is the best teamster they've
got. That yoke of steers he has can snake logs out of places
where a team of mules or horses couldn't so much as get in."

Callista sighed and turned impatiently towards her young
brother-in-law.

"Where do the men live?" she asked finally, very low, as though
half-unwilling to do so.

"Well, Daggett ain't makin' what he expected to, and first they had
to camp and cook and do for [228] theirselves. Now they've built
shacks--out'n the flawed boards, you know--and all of 'em fetched
a quilt or a blanket or such from home, so they can roll up at
night on the floor. Fletch Daggett's wife is cooking for 'em. The
day I was there they had white beans and corn bread--and a little
coffee. She's a mighty pore cook, and she's got three mighty small
chaps under foot."

Callista's mind went to the new, clean, well-arranged little
home on Lance's Laurel. Did old Fletch Daggett's slovenly,
overworked young wife cook any worse than she, Callista, had
been able to?

"It's hot in them board shacks," Sylvane went on reflectively;
"the hottest place I ever was in. Somebody stole Lance's comb.
There ain't but one wash pan--he goes down to the branch--and he
hid his comb. It's a rough place. They fight a good deal."

And this was what Lance had preferred to her and to the home he
had built for her. She fell into such a study over it that
Sylvane's voice quite startled her when he said,

"I--I aimed to ask ye, Callisty--did you want me to take word
for Lance to come home?"

"No," she answered him very low. "It ain't my business to bid
Lance Cleaverage come to his own home. Don't name it to me
again, Sylvane, please."

The lad regarded her anxiously. More than once [229] he opened his
lips to speak, only to close them, again. Slowly the red surged
up over his tanned young face, until it burned dark crimson to
the roots of his brown hair.

"I--you--w'y, Callisty," he faltered in a choked, husky whisper,
his eyes beseeching forgiveness for such an offense against
mountaineer reserve and delicacy.

Her own pale cheeks flushed faintly as she began to see what was
in the poor boy's mind; but her eyes did not flinch, while in an
agony of sympathy and burning embarrassment he whispered,

"After a while--Sis' Callie--you'll have obliged--after a while
you'll surely send such word."

There was silence between them for a long minute, then,

"I never will," said Callista, in a low, dreary, implacable
voice. "You can fill my bucket and carry it up for me if you're
a mind, Sylvane, I'll set here a spell."

Callista appeared only briefly at the dinner table, where she
said little and ate less, soon slipping away again to her
retreat by the far spring.

After the meal, the dark court-like vista of the entry invited
the guests; from thence a murmur of conversation sounded through
all the drowsy afternoon,--the slow desultory conversation of
mountaineers. Even the play of the children was hushed. [230] It
was one of the few hot days of the mountain season. All the forest
drowsed in a vast sun-dream. The Cleaverage place itself, for
all its swarming life, seemed asleep too. Chickens picked and
wallowed in the dust; there were no birds, except a cardinal
whistling from the hill. The loosed plow-horses drooped in the
stable shadow, listless and _ennuye_, looking as if they would
rather be at work. Only wandering shotes seemed undisturbed by
the broad white glare of the sunlight.

Octavia Gentry went home that day from the Cleaverage cabin in
tears. She waited long and patiently an opportunity to speak alone
with her daughter; but when, toward evening, enormous flowers of
cumuli blossomed slowly, augustly, in the west, flushed petal on
petal opening, to be pushed back by the next above it, and rolling
gently away into shadows delicately gray, she went uneasily out
into the yard and called to old Ajax. While they were talking a
heavier cloud, crowding darkly against the western sun, began to
send forth long diapason tones of thunder. Drumright got suddenly
to his feet and hurried to "ketch out" his mule, while his wife
rounded up the children. At noon the heat had been palpitant. Now a
shadow bore relief over all the land; a breeze flew across the wood,
turning up the whitish under sides of the leaves; and before they
could get started there was a quick thrill of [231] rain--tepid,
perpendicular--and then the sun looking out again within twenty
minutes.

The shower brought them all indoors. Callista came reluctantly
from the thicket by the far spring-branch where she had been
lingering. Octavia made her last appeal publicly, since it might
not otherwise be spoken--and was denied. As old Ajax helped her
into the buckboard, something in her tear-disfigured face seemed
to anger him.

"Well, ye spiled the gal rotten!" he said testily, without
introduction or preface, climbing meanwhile to his seat beside
her. "Ye spiled Callisty rotten, that's what ye did! And then
ye give her to one of the cussedest highheaded fellers I ever
seen--a man that'd as soon take a charge o' buckshot as a dare--a
man that'd die before he'd own he's beat. Lance Cleaverage ain't
the meanest man in the world, and Callisty would do very well if
she could be made to behave; but the two of 'em--"

He sighed impatiently, shook his head, and flogged the old horse
gently and steadily without in the least affecting its gait.
Suddenly he spoke out again with a curious air of unwillingness
and at much more length than Grandfather Gentry usually did.

"Them two was borned and made for each other. Ef they can ever
fight it out and git to agree, hit'll be one o' the finest matches
anybody ever seed. But [232] _whilst_ they're a fightin' it
out--huh-uh,"--his face drew into a look of wincing sympathy--"I
don't know as I want ary one of 'em under my roof. I used to raise
a good deal of Cain o' my own--yes, I played the davil a-plenty.
I got through with that as best I might. I'm a old man now. I like
to see some peace. I did tell you that you could bid Callisty come
home with us; but she's done told you no--an' I ain't sorry. She's
the onliest gran'child I've got left, an'--I think a heap of her.
If she was to come on her own motions--that would be different.
But having spiled her as you have did, Octavy, best is that you
should let her and Lance alone for a spell."

His daughter-in-law looked at him mutely out of her reddened
eyes, and the balance of the drive was made in silence.

And so the slow summer drew forward, Callista in her father-in-law's
house, never going back to the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel,
sending Polly or the Widow Griever to get things which she now
and again needed from the place; Lance over in the sawmill camp,
working brutally hard, faring wretchedly, and eating his heart out
with what he hoped was a brave face.

Sylvane brought him almost weekly news. He understood that
Callista's foot never crossed the threshold of the home he had
built for her. Ola Derf hinted that the young wife bought
recklessly at the store--and got snubbed for her pains. [233] She
rode out once or twice to try to get him to come and play for a
dance; but he shunned the neighborhood as though pestilence were
in it, and gave her short answers. No one else importuned him.
Lance, the loath, the desired and always invited, found that in
his present mood people fell away from him. He was good company
for nobody, not even for the rough and ready crowd amongst which
he found himself. True, he had lived hard, and been a famous
hunter, able to care for himself in any environment; but the
squalid surroundings of the sawmill camp were almost as foreign
to his fastidious man's way of doing things, as they would have
been to a neat woman.

So he grew to avoid and to be avoided; to sit at a little
distance from his mates in the evening; to drop out of their
crude attempts at merrymaking, to hold aloof even from the
fighting. He was neither quarrelsome nor gay, but sat brooding,
inert yet restless, interrogating the future with an ever
sinking heart. Here was come a thing into his life at which he
could not shrug the shoulder. He could not fling this off
lightly with a toss of the head or a defiant, "Have it as
you please." What was he to do? Was he not man enough to rule
his domestic affairs? Could he not command the events and
individuals of his own household by simply being himself? To go
to Callista and exert authority in words, by overt actions, by
use [234] of force--this was not his ideal. It was impossible to
him. Well, what then? Must his child be born under the roof of
another?

Summer wore to autumn with all its solemn grandeur of coloring,
all its majestic hush and blue silences over great slopes of
tapestried mountains, and still the question was unanswered.
Callista herself was in the mood when she found it hard to think
of anything beyond her own body, the little garment she was
fashioning, the day which rounded itself from morning into night
again.

And now came a new complication. Daggett asserted that he had no
money to pay. "I'm a-dickerin' with the company," he told his
men. "I've got good hopes of sellin' out to 'em. Them that stays
by me, will get all that's due an' comin'; but I hain't got a cent
now; an' a feller that quits me when I cain't he'p myse'f--I'll
never trouble to try to pay him."

Now what to do. Credit at the store was all very well for
Callista's present needs; but Lance Cleaverage's wife must have
a sum of money put at her disposal for the time which was
approaching. Lance walked from North Caney to Hepzibah one
Saturday night to offer Satan for sale, and found the black
horse lame. The man who had agreed to buy him expressed a
willingness to take Cindy in his place--the black filly which he
had, in the first days of their marriage, given to Callista for her
own use--presented with sweet [235] words of praise of his bride's
beauty and her charming appearance on the horse--a lover's gift,
a bridegroom's. Yet the money must be had, and the next time
Sylvane came across to the lumber camp, he carried back with him
and put into his young sister-in-law's listless hand the poor
price of the little filly.

Nothing roused Callista these days, not even when Flenton Hands
went down to the Settlement and bought Cindy from the man who
had purchased her. That was his account of the transaction, but
Sylvane said indignantly to his father that he believed Flenton
Hands got that feller to buy Lance's filly. Flenton rode up on
his own rawboned sorrel, leading the little black mare who
whinnied and put forward her ears to Callista's caresses.

"Yes, I did--I bought her," he repeated. "I hadn't nary bit of
use for such a animal, but I couldn't see yo' horse--yo's,
Callista--in the hands of a man like Snavely."

Callista held a late apple to the velvety, nuzzling mouth that
came searching in her palms for largess. She made no inquiry,
and Flenton Hands went on.

"Snavely's the meanest man to stock that I ever did see. He
overworks and he underfeeds, and he makes up the lack of oats
with a hickory--that's what he does. He'd nigh about 'a' killed
this little critter, come spring." [236]

And still Callista had nothing to offer.

"How's all your folks, Flent?" she said finally.

"Tol'able--jest tol'able," Hands repeated the formula absently.
"Callisty, ef you'll take the little mare from me as a gift,
she's yourn."

Lance's wife drew back with a burning blush.

"Take Cindy--from you?" she echoed sharply. There rushed over
her heart, like an air from a kinder world, memory of that
exquisite hour when Lance had given Cindy to her--Lance whose
words of tenderness and praise, his kiss, the kindling look of
his eye, could so crown and sceptre her he loved. Her lips set
hard.

"I'd be proud to have ye take her," Flenton repeated.

"Thank you--no," returned Callista, briefly, haughtily.

Her small head was crested with the movement that always
fascinated the man before her. That unbending pride of hers, to
him who had in fact no real self-respect, was inordinately
compelling. He had felt sure she would not take the horse, and
he was the freer in offering the gift.

"Well, ef ye won't, ye won't" he said resignedly. "But ef you
ever change yo' mind, Callisty--remember that Cindy and me is
both a-waitin' for ye." And with this daring and enigmatic
speech, he wheeled the sorrel and rode away, the little black's
light feet pattering after the clumsier animal. [237]



CHAPTER XVI.

LANCE CLEAVERAGE'S SON.



SUMMER lasted far into fall that year, its procession of long,
fair, dreamful days like a strand of sumptuous beads. At the
last of November came a dash of rain, frost, and again long,
warm days, with the mist hanging blue in the valleys as though
the camp-fires of autumn smoked in their blaze of scarlet and
gold, their shadows of ochre and umber.

"But we're goin' to ketch it for this here," Roxy Griever kept
saying pessimistically. "Bound to git about so much cold in
every year, and ef you have summer time mighty nigh on up to
Christmas, hit'll freeze yo' toes when it does come."

Callista held to her resolution to send no message to the
sawmill on North Caney. But the family had debated the matter,
consulting with Lance himself, and agreeing to summon him home,
if possible, in ample season. At his sister's gloomy weather
predictions, Sylvane grew uneasy lest the time arrive and Lance
be storm-stayed in Dagget's camp. He almost resolved to go and
fetch him at once, and run the chance of good coming from it.
But the spell of pleasant weather and a press of work put it out
of his mind. Then came a [235] day when the sun rose over low-lying
clouds into a fleece of cirri that caught aflame with his
mounting. The atmosphere thickened slowly hour by hour into a
chill mist that, toward evening, became a drizzle.

"This here's only the beginning of worse," said Kimbro at the
supper table. "Looks to me like we're done with Fall. To-morrow
is the first day o' winter--and you'll see it will be winter
sure enough."

At dawn next morning the wind rose, threshing the woods with
whips of stringing rain. Stock about the lean little farms began
to huddle into shelter. Belated workers at tasks which should
have been laid by, found it hard to make head against the wild
weather. The men at the sawmill kindled a wonderful radiance of
hickory fire in the great chimney which Lance had built more to
relieve his own restlessness than with any thought of their
comfort.

"Why, consarn yo' time!" Blev Straley deprecated as he edged
toward it. "A man cain't set clost enough to that thar fire to
spit in hit!"

Sylvane knew when this day came, that he must go for his
brother. About noon the rain ceased, and, with its passing, the
wind began to blow harder. At first it leaped in over the hills
like a freed spirit, glad and wild, tossing the wet leaves to
the flying clouds, laughing in the round face of the hunter's
moon which rose that evening full and red. But it grew and grew
like the bottle genii drunken [239] with strength; its laughter
became a rudeness, its pranks malicious; it was a dancing satyr,
roughly-riotous, but still full of living warmth and glee. It
shouted down the chimney; it clattered the dry vines by the
porch, and wrenched at everything left loose-ended about the
place; it whooped and swung through the straining forest. But by
night it sank to a whisper, as Sylvane finally made his way into
the camp. The next morning dawn walked in peace like a
conquering spirit across the whiteness of snow, wind-woven
overnight into great laps and folds of sculpture. As the day
lengthened the cold strengthened. Again the wind wakened and now
it was a wild sword song in the tree tops. Ice glittered under
the rays of a sun which warmed nothing. It was a day of silver
and steel. The frost bit deep; under the crisping snow the
ground rang hard as iron. Wagons on the big road could be heard
for a mile. As the two brothers passed Daggett's cow lot on
setting forth, with its one lean heifer standing humped and
shivering in the angle of the wall, Sylvane spoke.

"Reckon we'll have pretty hard work gettin' crost the gulch." He
glanced at Lance's shoes. "This here snow is right wet, too--but
hit's a freezin'. Maybe we'd better go back an' wait till
to-morrow--hit'll be solid by then."

"I aimed to go to-day," said Lance, quite as if Sylvane had not
come for him. "I'll stop a-past Derf's and get me a pair of
shoes, Buddy." [240]

No more was said, and they fared on. There was no cheerful sound
of baying dogs as they passed the wayside cabins. The woods were
ghostly still. The birds, the small furry wild creatures crept
into burrow and inner fastness, under the impish architecture of
the ice and snow. Going up past Taylor Peavey's board shanty,
they found that feckless householder outside, grabbling about in
the snow for firewood.

"My wife, she's down sick in the bed," he told them; "an' I
never 'lowed it would come on to be as chilly as what it is; an'
her a-lyin' there like she is, she's got both her feet froze
tol'able bad."

The Cleaverage brothers paused in their desperate climb to help
haul down a leaning pine tree near the flimsy shack. They left
the slack Peavy making headway with a dull axe whose strokes
followed them hollowly as they once more entered the white
mystery and wonder of the forest.

Arrival at Derf's place was almost like finding warmer weather.
The half dozen buildings were thick and well tightened, and the
piles of firewood heaped handy were like structures themselves.

"It's sin that prospers in this world," jeered the gentle
Sylvane, blue with cold, heartsick as he looked at his brother's
set face, poor clothing and broken shoes. Lance stepped ahead of
the boy, silent but unsubdued, bankrupt of all but the audacious
spirit within him.

Garrett Derf admitted them to the store, which [241] was closed
on account of the bitter weather that kept everybody housed. But
there was a roaring fire in the barrel stove in its midst, and
after a time the silent Lance approached it warily, putting out
first one foot and then the other. Derf, in an overcoat, stood
across by the rude desk, fiddling somewhat uneasily.

"I hain't figured out your account, Cleaverage," he observed at
last; "but I reckon you hain't much overdrawn. Likely you'll be
able to even it up befo' spring--ef Miz. Cleaverage don't buy
quite so free as what she has been a-doin'."

There was a long, significant silence, the wind crying at the
eaves, and bringing down a fine rattle of dry snow to drum on
the hollow roof above their heads. At first, neither of the
half-perished men looked up, but Sylvane instinctively drew a
little nearer to his brother.

"W'y--w'y, Mr. Derf," he began, with an indignant tremble in his
boyish voice, "I've fetched every order for Sis' Callie, and
packed home every dollar's worth she bought. Hit don't look to
me like they could amount to as much as Lance's wages. Lance is
obliged to have a pair of shoes."

Lance cast a fiery, silencing glance at his brother.

"I ain't obliged to have anything that ain't comin' to me," he
said sharply. "Callisty's bought nothin' that wasn't proper. Ef
she needed what was here--that's all right with me," and he
turned and walked steadily from the room. [242]

"Hey--hold on, you Lance Cleaverage!" Derf called after him.
"Thar you go--like somebody wasn't a-doin' ye right. I'll trust
you for a pair of shoes."

In the wide-flung doorway, Lance wheeled and looked back at him,
a gallant figure against the flash of snow outside--gallant in
spite of his broken shoes and the tattered coat on his back.

"Go on. Buddy," he said gently, pointing Sylvane past him. Then
he turned to Derf.

"You will?" he inquired of the man who, he knew, was trying to
rob him. "You'll trust me? Well, Garrett Derf, it'll be a colder
day than this when I come to you and ask for trust." And without
another word he stepped out into the snow and set his face
toward his father's house. He even passed the boy with a kind of
smile, and something of the old light squaring of the shoulder.

"It ain't so very far now. Buddy," he said.

Sylvane followed doggedly. The last few miles were merely a
matter of endurance, the rapid motion serving to keep the warmth
of life in their two bodies.

Octavia Gentry, coming to the back door of the Cleaverage home,
found Lance sitting on a little platform there, rubbing his feet
with snow, while Sylvane crouched on the steps, getting off his
own shoes.

"I thought I'd be on the safe side," Lance said in an unshaken
voice. "They might be frost-bit [243] and then they might not. No
need to go to the fire with 'em till I can get some feeling in 'em.
How"--and now the tones faltered a little--"how is she?"

Octavia's horrified eyes went from the feet his busy hands were
chafing with snow, to his lean, brown, young face, where the
skin seemed to cling to the bone, and the eyes were quite too
large.

"She's doin' well," choked the mother. "The doctor's been gone
five hours past. It's a boy, honey. They're both asleep now. Oh,
my poor Lance--my poor Lance!"

A sudden glow shone in the hazel eyes. Lance turned and smiled
at her so that the tears ran over her face. He set down the lump
of snow he had just taken up in his hand, and rising began to
stamp softly.

"It's all right, mother," he said, in a tone that was almost
gay. "I'm 'feared Sylvane's worse off."

But it appeared on inquiry that Sylvane's shoes had proved
almost water tight, and that a brief run in the snow was all he
wanted to send him in the house tingling with warmth. Roxy
Griever, hearing the voices, had hurried out. Her troubled gaze
went over Lance's half perished face and body, the whole worn,
poor, indomitable aspect of him, even while she greeted him.
With an almost frightened look, she turned and ran into the
house, crying hastily, [244]

"I'll have some hot coffee for you-all boys mighty quick." And
when he came limping in, a few minutes later, there was an
appetizing steam from the hearth where Polly crouched beside
Mary Ann Martha, whispering over a tale.

Dry foot-wear was found for the newcomers, and when they were
finally seated in comfort at their food, both women gazed
furtively at Lance's thin cheeks, the long unshorn curls of his
hair, and Octavia wept quietly. When he had eaten and sat for a
little time by the fire, he caught at his mother-in-law's dress
as she went past, and asked with an upward glance that melted
her heart,

"How soon may I go in thar?"

They both glanced toward the door of the spare room.

"I reckon you could go in right now, ef you'd be mighty quiet,"
Octavia debated, full of sympathy. "What do you say, Miz.
Griever?"

"Well, we might take him in for a spell, I reckon," Roxy allowed
dubiously, more sensible to the importance of the occasion, when
men are apt to be hustled about and treated with a lack of
consideration they endure at no other time.

Lance rose instantly; his hand was on the knob of the door before
Roxy and Octavia reached him. When they did so, he turned sharply
and cast one swift look across his shoulder. Without a word his
mother-in-law drew the Widow Griever back. [245] Lance Cleaverage
entered alone the chamber that contained his wife and son.

Closing the door softly behind him, he came across the floor,
stepping very gently, lest he waken the sleepers in the big
four-poster bed. When he stood at last beside the couch and
looked down at them, something that had lived strong in him up
to this moment died out, and its place was taken by something
else, which he had never till then known.

He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow. She was very
thin, his poor Callista; her temples showed the blue veins, the
long oval of her cheek was without any bloom. Beside her, in the
curve of her arm, lay the little bundle of new life. By bending
forward, he could get a glimpse of the tiny face, and a sort of
shock went through him at the sight. This was his son--Lance
Cleaverage's son!

With deft fingers he rolled the sheet away from the baby's
countenance, so that he had a view of both, then sinking quietly
to his knees, he studied them. Here was wife and child.
Confronting him whose boyish folly had broken up the home on
Lance's Laurel, was the immortal problem of the race. A son--and
Lance had it in him, when life had sufficiently disciplined that
wayward pride of his, to make a good father for a son. Long and
silently he knelt there, communing with himself concerning this
new element thrust into his plan, this candidate for citizenship on
that island where [246] he had once figured the bliss of dwelling
alone with Callista. Gropingly he searched for the clue to what
his own attitude should now be. He had lived hard and gone
footsore for the two of them. That was right, wasn't it? A man
must do his part in the world. His own ruthers came after that.

He recognized this as the test. Before, it had been the girl to
be won; the bride, still to be wooed. In outward form these two
were already his; could he make and hold them truly his own?
Could he take them with him to that remote place where his
spirit abode so often in loneliness?

Callista's eyes, wide and clear, opened and fixed themselves on
his. For some time she lay looking. She seemed to be adjusting
the present situation. Then with a little whispered, childish
cry, "Lance--oh, Lance!" she put out feeble arms to him, and he
bent his face, tear-wet, to hers. [247]

[Illustration: "He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow."]



CHAPTER XVII.

THE COASTS OF THE ISLAND.



LANCE Cleaverage remained at his father's house for a week,
saying little, assisting deftly and adequately in the care of
Callista, wondering always at the marvelous newcomer, and so
rulable, so helpful and void of offense, that Roxy had her rod
broken in her hand, and was forced to an unwilling admiration of
him.

"Looks like Sis' Callie is about to be the makin' o' Lance," she
told her father. "I believe in my soul if she was a church
member she'd have him convicted of sin at the next quarterly."

Conviction of sin was always sadly lacking in Lance; he was
aware that the cards sometimes went against him in the game of
life, but to hint that he could himself be blamed with it was to
instantly rouse the defiant devil that counseled his soul ill.
At the end of the week, there was a little family conference,
very sweet and harmonious, with Callista lying propped in her
bed, the baby beside her, and old Kimbro sitting by the fire,
while Octavia and Roxy worked at a little garment which the
former had made and brought over, and which did not quite fit
the boy. Mary Ann Martha, absolutely good because absolutely [248]
happy, lolled luxuriously in her Uncle Lance's lap, and took the
warmth of the fire on her fat legs, while she occasionally
rolled a blissful eye toward the face above her, or suddenly
shot up a chubby hand to flap against his cheek or chin in a
random caress. Uncle Lance had in her eyes no flaw. Others might
criticise him, to Mary Ann Martha it was given to see only his
perfections.

"Yes, son," old Kimbro concluded what he had been saying, "I
surely would go back to Daggett's and work out my time. Derf
can't hold to what he said. I had Sylvane bring me every one of
those orders before he carried them to the store, and I copied
them off in a book. Garrett Derf will have obliged to back down
from that talk he had the day you was there--likely he'll say he
was jest a-funnin'. As for Thatch Daggett, the Company is behind
him now, and he'll have obliged to pay, come Spring. You need
the money. You can't do nothin' on your place now. I'd go back
and work it out at Daggett's."

Like many another man with the reputation of being impractical, old
Kimbro's advice on financial matters was always particularly sound.
From his warm place by the fire. Lance flashed a swift glance
across at his wife and child. Callista was so absorbed in the baby
that she had paid small attention to what her father-in-law was
saying. Well--and the color deepened on Lance's brown cheek--if it
was a matter of indifference to her, he [249] would not urge it
upon her attention. But Sylvane, watching, came to the rescue.

"What do you think about it, Sis' Callie?" he suggested gently.

"About what?" inquired Callista; and then when she was
enlightened, "Oh, I reckon Father Cleaverage knows best. I
shouldn't want to move the baby in cold weather. If you're a
mind to go over and finish out, Lance, I'll be in the house and
ready for you, come Spring," and she looked kindly at her
husband.

And so it was settled. Lance went back to the gross hardships of
the sawmill camp, the ill-cooked food, the overworked little
woman in the dingy cabin with the fretting children under foot,
the uncongenial companionship of the quarreling men.

In early spring he came home, still thin and worn, and even more
silent than was his wont. Callista had kept her word; she was
domiciled in the cabin on Lance's Laurel, and she had Sylvane
get her truck patch almost ready. In the well nigh feverish
activity of first motherhood, she had learned in these few
months to be a really superior housewife, and a master hand at
all that a mountain housekeeper should know. Roxy Griever was
but too willing to teach, and Callista had needed only to have
her energies and attention enlisted. She had a sound, noble
physique; maternity had but developed her; and she was very
obviously mistress of herself as well as of the [250] house when
Lance came over from the sawmill cabin to find her there with his
son, awaiting him.

He stopped a moment on the threshold. His appreciative glance
traveled over the neat interior, and he sniffed the odors of a
supper preparing. This was a homecoming indeed. Here, surely,
were the coasts of his island; and Callista, bending over his
child, drawing the cover around the baby before she turned to
greet Lance, a figure to comfort a man's heart.

"You look fine here," he told her, entering, hanging up his hat,
and disposing of the bundles he had been carrying.

Callista advanced smiling to him and lifted her face to be kissed.
Self-absorbed, wholly pleased with her house and her baby, and her
newly discovered gift for work, and for administration, she never
noted the quick, wild question of his eyes, which was as swiftly
veiled.

"The baby's asleep already," she announced softly. "We got to be
right quiet."

Nodding silently. Lance picked up some of the things he had
brought, and carried them out to the shed, whence Callista,
later, summoned him to supper.

Old Kimbro proved to be right. Lance, having held by his
contract till Spring, was able to collect the poor little
balance of his wages, and on this they proposed to live while he
got the place in the Gap in some shape to support them. Satan [251]
was well now, but it fretted Lance unreasonably that he could
not buy Cindy back from Flenton Hands.

With characteristic insouciance and unusual energy, he set to
work on the gigantic task of subduing his large tract of steep,
wild, mountain land. No doubt he worked too hard that summer;
people of Lance's temperament are always working too hard--or
not working at all. As for Callista, the first eagerness of her
mere passion for Lance was satisfied. She was no more the warm,
tender, young girl, almost pathetically in love,--even though
proud and wilful and somewhat spoiled--but the composed,
dignified mother of a son and mistress of a home. She had once
been too little of a house-mother for her man, and now she was
rather too much.

Yet Lance went no more abroad for consolation. After his settlement
with Derf, he had refused to put foot on their place again. This
was not the season for hunting. He comforted himself with his
banjo, and enjoyed too, in its own measure, the well-kept home,
the excellently prepared food, the placid, calm, good-will of
his mate.

And the child was Callista over again; big blue eyes, a fuzz of
pale gold down, and an air of great wisdom and dignity. As he
grew able to sit up alone on the floor and manage his own
playthings, one saw laughably enough his mother's slant glance
of scorn, that which had been considered her affectation of
indifference, reproduced in the [252] baby's manner. Between mother
and son, Lance sometimes felt himself reduced to his lowest terms.

Yet they thrived, for the welfare of a primitive; household
still depends more upon the woman than on the man. If Lance's
restless fancy--that questioning, eager heart of his--lacked
something of full satisfaction, his body was well fed, his
household comfort was complete, and his material work laid out
plainly before him. And Lance could work so well and to such
good purpose that at midsummer his clearing had assumed very
respectable size, and the small crop he had made was laid by.
Even Callista agreed that they might now make the trip Lance had
proposed more than a year ago, over to the East Fork of Caney.

That camping trip was well thought of. It instantly reversed the
family balance, and sent Lance's end swinging higher. If
Callista dominated the house, and her spirit was coming to
pervade the farm as well. Lance was supreme in this matter of
the gipsying excursion.

"You needn't bother your head about what to pack," he told her.
"I reckon I'll know better than you do what we'll need,
exceptin' the things for that young man you make so much of."

So Callista concerned herself with the baby's outfit and her
own, with assurance that her jars were in order, and that she
had enough sugar to put up jam. The other berries could be [253]
canned without sugar, and sweetened when they came to use them.
A joyous bustle of preparation pervaded the place; that play
spirit which was necessary to Lance Cleaverage, and which
Callista would quite innocently and unconsciously have crushed
out of him if she could, was all alert and dancing at the
prospect. He came into his wife's kitchen and packed flour and
meal, frying pan and Dutch oven, with various other small
matters necessary, observing as the bacon went in,

"We won't need much of that, excepting to fry fish and help out
with wild meat. The law's off of pa'tridges in the Valley next
month, and it's sure off of 'em up here now."

Callista, sitting on the table, swinging a foot to keep the baby
trotted on her knee, looked on smilingly.

"When Blev Straley and his wife camped out and canned
blackberries, they hadn't any nag," she commented. "He had to
take the things in a wheelbarrow, and it looked like some places
he couldn't hardly get acrost; but Miranda said she had the best
time she ever had in her life."

Kimbro Cleaverage was teaching school over in the Far Cove. For
fifteen years he had taught this little summer school; his
pupils now were the children of the first boys and girls who
came under his rule. His neighbors held toward the gentle soul a
patronizing, almost tolerant attitude. True, he managed the
winter school nearer home, having [254] little trouble with the
big boys, the bullies, the incorrigibles; while it was well
understood that the peaceful, who wanted to learn, could get on
powerful fast under his tuition. Yet there were those who
deprecated the mildness of his sway, and allowed that he was
really better suited to the small children, the anxious-faced
little boys, too young yet to follow the plow, the small girls
who had just finished dropping corn or "suckering the crop."
That these dearly loved the master was held to be an unimportant
detail, and his aversion to plying the hickory was always cited
in regard to Lance's misdoings.

When his father was away teaching, the management, and all the
labor of the wornout little farm fell on Sylvane's young
shoulders. Lance had promised his brother the use of Satan for
the week when they should be in camp. The boy came over to help
them pack.

It was a July morning without flaw, blue and green and golden,
and brooded upon by the full-hearted peace of ripe summer.
Bedding and kitchen supplies were put in two big bundles
arranged pannier fashion on the black horse, and firmly lashed
in place by a pair of plow lines.

"Why don't you put it up on his back?" Callista asked them,
coming out with her eight month's old baby, all in order for the
journey.

"That's to leave place for you to ride part of the time," Lance
told her. "It's a right smart ways [255] we're going, and that son
of yours is tol'able heavy, and half the time you won't let me tote
him."

So they set off, Sylvane walking ahead at Satan's bridle,
whistling and singing by turns, Lance with his banjo on his
back, Callista at first carrying the boy because he wanted her
to, and afterward relinquishing him to Lance or Sylvane. The
route lay over springy leaf-mold, under great trees for the most
part, leaving the main road, and taking merely an occasional
cattle-path, while always it wound upward. After a time, the
timber became more scattered, and from going forward under a
leafage that shut out the rising sun, there were patches of
open, meadow-like grasses, called by the mountain dweller,
balds, interspersed with groups of cedars and oaks. The last
mile was up the dry bed of Caney, and it consisted of a scramble
over great boulders, where only a mountain-bred horse might keep
his footing. Turning suddenly and scaling a bank that was like a
precipice, one came on Lance's find, a cup-like hollow between
the cleft portions of a mountain peak, where the great gray
rocks lay strewn thick, the ferns grew waist high, and the
trickling spring-branch was so blue-cold that it made your teeth
ache to drink of it even on a summer's day.

The three stood for a moment silent, on the edge of the miniature
valley, studying its perfections with loving eyes; the mountaineer
leads all others [256] in passionate admiration for the beauty of
his native highlands.

"Oh, Lance!" Callista said at length, very softly. "You never
told me it was as sightly as all this."

"Couldn't," murmured Lance, pleased to the soul. "I ain't got
the words by me."

Sylvane helped them unpack, waited for a hasty dinner for
himself and Satan; then having agreed to return for them at the
end of a week, he went back, leading his black horse, looking
with boyish envy over his shoulder at the happy little group in
the hidden pocket of the hills. When he was out of sight of
them, he could still see the blue smoke of their camp fire
rising clear and high, and stopping to mount Satan, when the
trail became fit for it, he hearkened a moment, and thought he
heard the sound of the banjo.

It was Lance who made the camp, deftly, swiftly; Callista looked
after her baby and explored their new domain, moving about,
girlish, light-footed, singing to herself, so that the eyes of
the man bending over his task followed her eagerly. Two great
boulders leaning together made them a rock house. Lance soon
had a chimney up, of loose stones to be sure, but drawing
sufficiently to keep the smoke out of your eyes unless the wind
was more perverse than a summer breeze is apt to be. That
evening they ate a supper of the cooked food they had brought and
rested as the first pair [257] might have done in Eden, sleeping
soundly on their light, springy couch of tender hemlock tips.
But next day Lance fished in the little stream and came up with
a wonderful catch of tiny silver-sided, rainbow trout, cleaned
and laid in a great leaf-cup ready for the frying pan.

"Lance, oh Lance!--ain't it too bad?" Callista greeted him from
the fire where she had her cornbread nearly ready to accompany
his fish. "I believe in my soul we've come clean over here and
forgot the salt--the salt! I put some in my meal, or the bread
wouldn't be fit to eat. Do you reckon the meat fryings will make
your fish taste all right? No--of course it won't. I'm mighty
sorry. Looks like that is certainly the prettiest fish I ever
saw in my life, and they're so good right fresh from the water."

"It is too bad," agreed Lance, with a very sober countenance,
going ahead however with his preparations. "'Pears as if
somebody in this crowd is a pore manager."

"It's me. Lance," Callista hastened to avow, kneeling by their
primitive hearthstone to tend her bread. "It was my business to
see that the salt was in; but I got so took up with the baby
that I left everything to you; and a body can't expect a man--"

She broke off; Lance, kneeling beside her, engaged in his own
enterprise of fish-frying had suddenly turned and kissed her
flushed [258] cheek. There was always a sort of embarrassment in
this unusual demonstrativeness of her husband's; and yet it subdued
her heart as nothing else could, as nothing had ever done. That
heart beat swiftly and the long fair lashes lay almost on the
glowing cheek above where Lance had kissed.

A few moments later, when the primitive meal was spread under
the open sky, Callista tasted her fish.

"Lance!" she looked at him reproachfully. "You rogue! You had
salt along with you all the time! Why didn't you tell me, and
put my mind at rest?"

"I'm not so terrible sure that a restful mind is what's needed
in your case," Lance teased her. "I thought you looked mighty
sweet and sounded mighty sweet, too, when you was a blamin'
yourse'f."

Lance had spoken truly when he praised the huckleberries that
grew in the little valley where nobody came to pick them. They
stood thick all over its steep, shelving sides, taller bushes
than those of the lowland, with great blue berries, tender of
skin, sun sweetened, bursting with juice. Callista was almost
wearisome in her triumph over the fruit. Forest fires and
drought had made the berry crop nearer home a failure this year;
she would be the only woman in the neighborhood with such canned
huckleberries to boast of. She picked them tirelessly, making
work of her play, Callista [259] fashion, spreading her apron under
the bush and raking down green ones, leaves and all, into it,
then afterward harrying Lance into helping her look them over
while the baby played near by or slept. This gipsying was not
her plan; she had come along in mere complaisance; yet in the
simple outdoor life she throve beautifully; her cheeks rounded
out, and her temples lost their bleached look; she was the old
delicious Callista, with an added glow and bloom and softness.

It was in the early days of their stay, that Lance, with the air
of a boy disclosing to some chosen companion a long-cherished
treasure, took her by a circuitous way up the steep wall of
their little valley, and helping her around a big boulder and
through a thicket of laurel, showed her the opening of a cave.
Man-high the entrance was, with a tiny cup of a spring in its
lap; but six or eight feet in there was an abrupt turning so
that the cave's extent was entirely hidden. He stood smilingly
by, enjoying her astonishment.

"Why, Lance!" she cried. "Well, I vow! Why, no one in the world
would ever suspicion there was a cave here!"

The two turned to look back at their camp, only to find
themselves wholly screened by the oblique side of the great
boulder and the laurel bushes, cut off from sight and sound of
all that went on in the little valley.

"They sure never would," Lance assented. [260] "And I've never
told a soul--_but_ Sylvane--about the place. I was even kind o'
duberous about showing you," and he laughed teasingly. "Might
need a hide-out some time, that nobody didn't know where to find."

There was a Phoebe-bird's nest just at the opening of the cave.
Lance drew Callista back, both of them standing half crouched,
while the mother, returning home, flitted past them and fed her
babies.

"Mighty late for that business," whispered Lance.

"Second brood, I reckon," Callista murmured back.

"Or maybe got broke up with the first brood," Lance added.

The little dell was so remote that the birds were less shy than
where they have been intruded upon by man and civilization, and
the mother betrayed little uneasiness when the two visitors
crept closer.

"My, ain't it scairy!" Callista said, peering beyond into the
cave. Then, as they descended the bank once more, "Hit looked
like there might be wildcats in it."

"I aimed to explore it this time and get to the end if I could,"
Lance replied. "I was fifteen year old when I found that place,
and I used to scheme it out, like a boy will, that if I'd ever go
with the Jesse James gang, or kill a man, or anything [261] to get
the law out after me, I'd hide there; and then, oncet Caney was
up, all the world couldn't find me."

"What'd you eat?" objected practical Callista.

Lance smiled. "I could take care of myself in the woods about as
well as any of the critters," he told her.

"I reckon I'd have to come and bring you a pone," bantered
Callista. And they turned and smiled happily into each other's
eyes, all in the blue, unclouded summer, with the baby asleep
back in the rock house, and the two of them climbing down to him
and their gipsy home hand in hand.

And now perfect day followed perfect day. The work of the camp
was frolic to Lance; he did it laughing, as he would have gone
through a game, and then tolerantly helped Callista with the
play of which she made work. The high noon of summer brooded
over the mountains, with a wonderful blue haze and a silence
that was almost palpable. In their little cup of the hills,
there was a hoarded wine of coolness. The drowsy tinkle of the
tiny branch that ran from their spring backgrounded the rare
sound of their voices. And Lance would lie full length on the
earth as he loved to do, strumming sometimes on his banjo,
drowsing a little, amusing and being amused by the baby.
Callista, her head bent, her face intent above the work, would
be picking over her [262] berries. The boy was intensely, solemnly
interested in the banjo; but when its music ceased, he would
roll away from his father's arm and creep to his mother's
skirts, there to cuddle down and sleep, a dimpled picture of
infantile perfection.

Lance would regard them both from under his lashes. Beauty-worshipper
that he was, they satisfied every whim and caprice of longing, so
far as the eyes spoke. And they were his. Callista was his own,
she had come with him to the place he found for her; she was an
amiable, complying companion. And yet--and yet--

The birds were all silent now, except for an occasional chirp or
twitter in among the leafage. The little breeze that seemed to
live only in their high eyrie went by softly, making its own
music. "How many miles, how many years?" But there were no
longer miles and years between him and his beloved. No, she was
within hand-reach. He could stretch forth his fingers and touch
the hem of her skirts. With an impatient sigh he would turn over
and take up his banjo.

"Don't play now, Lance--you'll wake the baby," Callista would
murmur half mechanically, in that hushed tone mothers learn so
soon.

One day Lance snared a couple of partridges, and, cleaning and
salting them, roasted them with the feathers on, by daubing each
with the stiff, tough blue clay of the region, and burying the
balls in the embers. They came out delicious. When [263] the clay
coating was broken off, feathers and skin went with it, leaving
all the delicate juices of the meat steaming, His helpmate
praised his skill generously.

"Ola Derf showed me that trick," Lance said, in fairness,
clearing a dainty little drumstick with his teeth. "We was
fishing over on Laurel one day, and we didn't get no fish. So
she caught a couple of chickens, and cooked them that-a-way.
Good, ain't they?"

Callista nodded.

"Whose chickens were they--them you and Ola Derf caught?" she
asked, after a moment's silence.

Lance laughed long and uproariously.

"Whose chickens?" he repeated. "Our'n, I reckon, oncet we'd
cooked 'em and et 'em. I never axed 'em their names. They tasted
all right. I ain't got no objections to strangers--in chickens
that-a-way."

"I don't think that was right," Callista-told him with great
finality. "It's likely some poor old woman had her mouth all
fixed for chicken dinner, or was going to have the preacher at
her house, and then you and Ola stole her chickens and she never
knew what became of them. I think it was right mean."

"So do I," agreed Lance lightly. "That's the reason I enjoyed
it. I get mighty tired of bein' good." [264]

"You do?" inquired his wife with gay scorn. "I didn't know you'd
ever had the chance."

Yet of this conversation remained the knowledge that such
gipsying meals as this had been eaten with Ola Derf before she
and Lance cooked for each other. Had he found Ola an entirely
satisfactory companion? Evidently not, for he could have had
her for the asking. Did she, Callista, compare in any way
unfavorably with the Derf girl? Such questionings were new to
Callista, and they were decidedly uncomfortable. She resented
them; yet she could not quite put them by.

Lance was used to sleeping the deep and dreamless slumber of
those who labor much in the open air; but on the last night of
their stay in the little hollow by the spring, he lay long
awake.

"Callista, air you asleep?" he inquired with caution.

"N--no," murmured Callista drowsily.

"Well, somehow I cain't git to sleep," said Lance. "I feel like
this rock house was goin' to fall down on me. I believe I'd like
to take my blanket out there on the grass if you won't be scared
to be alone. You could call to me."

Callista assented, only half awake. Once sprawled at ease under
the stars, sleep seemed definitely to have forsaken him. He lay
and stared up into the velvety blue-black spaces above him. His
mind went dreamily over the past few days. How good it had been.
And yet--he [265] broke off and ruminated for awhile on whether or
no a body should ever cherish a plan for years as he had cherished
this plan of camping out some time in the rock house with
Callista. It seemed to him that if a man had planned a thing for
so long, it was better not to bring it to pass, for the reality
could never compare favorably with the dream. He sighed
impatiently, and turned his face resolutely down against the
grass, dew-wet and cool. But there was no sleep for him in the
earth, as there had been none in the heavens. Before his eyes,
quite as real as daylight seeing, came the vision of Callista
and his boy. There was not such a woman nor such a child in all
his knowledge. He had chosen well. Idle dreams of Callista as a
girl among her mates; of Callista lying spent and white in her
bed with his child, new born, on her arm; of Callista kneeling
flushed and housewifely by this outdoor hearth to prepare his
meal--these strung themselves into an endless, tantalizing line,
a shadowy gallery of pictures, a visioned processional, each
face in some sort a stranger's. What was it he had thought to
compass by coming here with her? Why was the realization not
enough?

Through dreams and waking this question followed him, giving him
no deep rest; and dawn found him already afoot and busy with the
preparations for their return home. [266]



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HEGIRA.



CALLISTA roused that morning, to see Lance moving, light-footed,
a shadow between her and the first struggling blaze of the fire
he had kindled. With sleepy surprise she noted his activities.
When she observed that he was packing her canned fruit, with
quick, deft fingers, she inquired,

"What you doin' there. Lance? No use fixin' them up now. Sylvane
won't be here till in the morning."

Lance broke off the low whistling which had wakened her, and
turned to regard his wife for a moment before he spoke.

"I thought I'd get this packing done," he said non-committally.
"If we was to go home to-day I could tote whatever we needed,
and Buddy could fetch over the heaviest stuff to-morrow."

Callista dozed a little luxuriously, and woke to a smell of
boiling coffee and frying pork.

"You've got breakfast enough there for three people," she
commented, when she finally drew near the fire.

"Uh-huh," assented Lance. "I 'lowed Sylvane might come to-day,
place of Saturday. Anyhow, [267] we'll need something for a bite
on the way." And Callista realized that her husband was indeed
making the final preparations for their return.

As they sat down either side the frying pan, and Callista lifted
the lid from the Dutch oven to take the bread out, they became
aware of the sound of scrambling hoofs and parting branches.
Whenever there was high water in Caney, this little valley was
cut off, it was a retreat unknown, unvisited; the newcomer could
be nobody but Sylvane. A moment later the boy made his
appearance, clambering over the rocks, leading Satan by a long
line.

"I 'lowed you-all wouldn't mind coming back a day sooner," he
apologized, as he gratefully seated himself for an addition to
his hastily snatched breakfast eaten by candle-light. "They's a
feller that the Company has sent up to look over lands, and he's
a-buyin' mineral rights--or ruther, gettin' options--on
everybody's farms. They'll pay big prices, and Sis' Roxy said I
ought to come and tell Lance of it."

The man listened indifferently, but the woman was all aglow. The
touch of practical life had dissolved whatever of the gipsy mood
Lance's nature had been able to lend hers. She questioned the
boy minutely. Lance listening with ill-concealed impatience; and
when the subject was exhausted, began to ask him with great
particularity concerning her truck patch at home and [268] whether
Spotty, the young cow Lance had traded with Squire Ashe for, was
doing well in her milk.

In spite of Lance's packing, there was much to do before camp
could be struck, and on account of the canned fruit they moved
so slowly that noon saw them still in the wilderness, dropping
down by the stream's side to eat the snack they had brought with
them. They went around by Father Cleaverage's this time, and
stopped there, since Callista intended to present a few of her
cherished huckleberries to Roxy, and they reached the cabin at
the head of Lance's Laurel late in the afternoon.

For some reason which he could not himself have told you, Lance
felt strangely wearied and dissatisfied. He looked back to the
week past, and admitted that all had gone well; days of fishing
and dreaming, evenings under the open sky with the banjo
humming, the not unwelcome fire leaping up, and the baby asleep
on Callista's lap. Could a man have asked more?

The son of the house had thriven amazingly on it, and this
evening he was assuming airs so domineering that his father
professed fear of him.

"Look a here, young feller," Lance said, as the big eight-months-old
came creeping across the floor and hammered on his knee to be taken
up, "you're about to run me out o' the house." He lifted his son
on his arm, and, carrying the banjo in the other hand, beyond
reach of the clutching, [269] fat fingers, went to the doorstone
with them. "Oh, you're your mammy over again," he admonished the
baby. "You don't own up to me at all. I wisht I had me a nice
gal o' your size, that would admit I was her daddy."

Callista had her supper nearly ready. Growing now, with
motherhood, intensely material,--or, as Lance had more than once
jokingly declared, a trifle grasping,--the selling of the land
to the Company for a big price occupied all her thoughts.

"You'll go over to Squire Ashe's soon in the morning, won't you
Lance and see about the land?" she questioned. "Sylvane said the
man was stayin' at Ashe's."

"I don't know as I want to sell," the owner of Jesse Lance's Gap
hundred observed indifferently, running random little chords on
his banjo. "I ain't rightly studied about it."

"Well, I wish you would study about it," urged Callista. "I
think it's your duty to."

  "I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"

hummed Lance to a twanging accompaniment from the strings.
"Looks like I've heard them words before somewheres. I'll be
blessed if that ain't Sis' Roxy's tune you've took up,
Callista!"

"Your sister does her duty in this world," asserted Callista
tartly. "It's nothing but the mineral rights, they'll want. All
that talk you had this mornin' about the land coming from your
[270] gran'pappy, and your not wanting to leave it, is just to--to
have your own way."

Lance raised his eyebrows.

"Would you say so?" he debated, his voice quiet, but the spark
shining deep in his hazel eye. "Well now, I'd have said--if
you'd axed me--that I've had my own way most generally without
resorting to such. I'm ruther expectin' to have my own way from
this time out, and take no curious methods of gettin' it."

"Well, what are you going to do about selling the land?" she
persisted.

Lance lifted the baby's fat hand and pretended to pick the banjo
strings with the pointed, inadequate fingers, to the young man's
serious enjoyment. Callista waited for what she considered a
reasonable time, and then prompted.

"Lance. Lance, did you hear me?"

"Oh, yes, I heared you well enough," Lance told her composedly.
"I was just a-studyin' on the matter."

Again silence, punctuated by the aimless twanging of the banjo
strings, the little sounds from the summer world without, the
quick, light tapping of Callista's feet and the little whisper
of her skirts as she moved about her task.

"Well--have you studied?" she inquired abruptly at length.

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance negligently, curling himself down on the
doorstone a little further, [271] "an' I'm studyin' yet. Ye see
that there feller they sent out for an agent met me on the big
road one day about a month ago and bantered me to trade. I told
him I'd let him know, time I got back."

"And you never named it to me!" Callista said sharply, pausing,
dish in hand by the table side, and staring at her husband with
reprehending eyes. "You never said a word to me about it; and
you went off on that foolish camping trip! For the good
gracious, I don't know what men are made of!"

"Some are made of one thing, and some of another," allowed Lance
easily, leaning his head back against the door jamb and half
closing his eyes.

"Before we went away," repeated Callista reproachfully. "Maybe
you've lost your chance."

The spur to Lance Cleaverage, the goad, was ever the hint to go
slower; applied recklessly, it was quite sufficient to make him
dig heels and toes into the track and refuse to go at all. At
Callista's suggestion that he had missed his chance, he balked
entirely.

"Well, I don't know as I want to sell," he reiterated. "That's
what I told the man--and that's the truth."

"Of course you want to sell," asserted Callista in exasperation,
"and you want to sell terrible bad--we all do. Nobody in the
Turkey Tracks [272] has got any money. We just live from hand to
mouth, and dig what we get out of the ground mighty hard. Oh, I
wish't I was a man. I'd go straight down to the Settlement and
sell this land before I came back."

A faint color showed itself in her husband's brown cheeks. His
lips parted slightly and remained so for a moment before he
spoke.

"Not unless the man you was chanced to be me, you wouldn't sell
my land," he said at length, speaking softly, almost dreamily.

Callista's temper was slow, but it was implacable. She eyed her
husband for a moment and turned to begin dishing up her supper.
Lance lifted his son back once more out of reach of the
instrument, set him comfortably against the propped open door,
took up the banjo and commenced to play a lively air for the
boy's diversion.

"Flenton Hands has sold," Callista flung out the words as she
bent over the hearth to a pot that stood there. She had the news
from Roxy Griever.

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance indefinitely, and offered no question as
to what the lands had brought or whether the deal was actually
closed.

"Sylvane said Gran'pappy met him in the big road, and he said that
them that didn't sell now, or that just give options, would be
sorry afterwards. He thinks the Company's mistaken [273] about the
coal being on this side o' the ridge, and that they'll soon find
it out and quit buying."

"That so?" laughed Lance. "Well, in that case, I sha'n't make no
efforts. I'd hate to get anything off the Company that wasn't
coming to me, and I reckon--"

He broke off suddenly. Callista had turned to face him, white,
angry as he had never seen her before. Her blue eyes rounded
meaningly to the downy poll of the baby sitting on the floor
between them. This was how much he cared for the up-bringing and
the future of the child.

"Lance Cleaverage," she said in a low, even tone, "a woman
that's married to a man, and lived with him for two years, and
got his child to raise, ought to quit him for such a speech as
that."

This was the ultimate challenge. Here was the gage thrown down.
She dared him. He leaned forward to lift back the boy, who was
clambering once more for the banjo. Then he straightened up and
looked his Callista full in the eye, breathing light and evenly,
half smiling, his face strangely luminous.

"All right," he said, and his voice rang keen-edged and vibrant.
"If them's your ruthers--walk out. What's a'keepin' you? Shain't
be said I ever hendered a woman that wanted to quit me."

Very softly, Callista set down the plate of bread she held.
Gazing straight ahead of her, she stood a [274] moment rigid, in
a waiting, listening attitude. Out of her mood of cold displeasure,
of nagging resentment, flamed, at her husband's words, that sudden
fire of relentless rage of which Callista was capable. Her sight
cleared, and she became aware of what she was staring at--the wall,
with its well-planned shelves of Lance's contriving; the beautifully
whittled utensils and small, dainty implements of cedar which he
had made for her use. Slowly her glance swept the circle of the
room. Evidences of Lance's skill and cleverness were everywhere;
proofs that he had persistently tamed both to the service of wife
and home. Yet, at this moment, these things made no appeal.
Mechanically she inspected her supper table, then turned and
moved swiftly across the open passage to the room beyond. Promptly,
unerringly, she gathered together a bundle of needments for herself
and the child, thrust them in a clean flour sack, and swung it
across her arm. Going back, she found her husband still sprawled
in the doorway, his side face held to the darkening interior of
the room behind him. Banjo on knee, he leaned against the lintel,
whistling beneath his breath, his eyes on the far primrose band of
light dying down in the west.

Callista gave no further glance at the home which had been much
to her. She averted her gaze stonily from the husband who had
once been all. Bending, with a single motion she swept [275] the
baby up in her arm, raised him to her shoulder and stepped to the
open doorway. Lance never turned his head or seemed to note her.
He made room for her passage without appearing to move a muscle.
Out she went and down to the gate--a real gate, that swung true
and did not drag; Lance's planning and handiwork. She unlatched
it, passed through, and drew it shut behind her, never looking
back.

And with scarcely a change of attitude and expression, except
that his fingers twitched a bit and the smile on his lean,
brown, young face became set and unnatural, he watched her
evenly swaying figure pass on down the road. Head defiantly
erect, eyes strangely bright. Lance stared meaninglessly, like a
man shot through but not yet crumpling to his fall. The baby
fluttered a fat, white, little starfish of a hand over his
mother's shoulder and called "Bye-by," the sum of all his
attainments in the matter of language.

The man did not look up. His head was bent now, his gaze had
forsaken the slender new moon swinging like a boat in the
greenish haze of the western sky, where some smoldering coals of
sunset yet sent up gray twilight smoke.

Callista vanished between the trees. It was dusk, and deeply still.
Down in the alders, beside the spring branch, the whippoorwills
were calling. In the intervals of their far, plaintive importunity,
the silence was punctuated lightly [276] by the tiny, summer-evening
chirpings in the grass.

The moon sank lower, the sunset coals burned into swart cinders;
the hosts of the dark marched in upon the still figure on the
doorstone where Lance crouched motionless, his face drooped
almost to the threshold, his arms flung forward till they
touched the nodding weeds by the path. So an hour counted itself
out, and there was no change in his posture, no lifting of the
head. The little moon finally dropped down behind the hills; dew
lay thick on the curls beside the great limestone slab. About
ten o'clock a cloud blew in through the Gap, bearing a tiny
shower of summer rain. Under the cool pattering that drenched
his hair and garments. Lance stirred not at all; but all the
noises of the July night were hushed by it, and in the chill
which followed, he shivered. Deep in the night's silent heart, a
bird cried out; Lance started and raised his face to the
darkness with a sort of groan.

"And this time she won't come back," he whispered. [277]



CHAPTER XIX.

CALLISTA CLEAVERAGE GOES HOME.



CALLISTA reached her grandfather's gate when the old man was
just finishing that last pipe he loved to smoke in his big
hickory arm chair on the porch before he lay down for his
night's rest. In the soft, summer night, beginning to be thick
with stars, he was aware that whoever the newcomer was, it was
someone well known to the dogs, for the chorus of greetings was
distinctly friendly. Yet his keen old hunter's ears noticed the
surprised yap of a younger hound born since Callista left the
farm; and when his granddaughter emerged into the light of the
doorway, he was scarcely surprised.

"Good evenin', Gran'pappy. Where's Mother?" Callista greeted
him.

Before Ajax could answer her, his daughter-in-law came hurrying
out crying,

"Lord love yo' soul, honey! Did you git home at last to see yo'
mammy that's--"

Callista silenced her with a raised hand.

"W'y, Callisty honey," ejaculated Mrs. Gentry, examining her
anxiously, "is anything the matter with Lance?"

A slight contraction passed across the visitor's [278] face, as
they watched it, but she answered coldly, evenly,

"I reckon there's nothing more the matter of Lance Cleaverage
than there always has been. I've come home."

Dead silence followed this statement. Then old Ajax knocked the
ashes out of his pipe and slowly put it in his pocket.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, "you've come home--and I always knowed you
would."

Octavia turned on him crying in a voice more tremulous with tears
than anger,

"Now, Pap Gentry--"

But Callista interposed, with the faintest flicker of her old
fire,

"Let him have his say. I told you-all once, standin' right here
on this porch, that I'd never come home to this house with empty
hands--that I'd bring something. Well, I have. I've brought this
child."

Octavia was striving to take the baby from his mother's arms, to
draw Callista into the house. At this she began to cry,

"Make her hush, Pap Gentry," she pleaded. "Don't set there and
let my gal talk that-a-way!"

But old Ajax, remembering the turbulent days of his youth,
knowing from his own wild heart in those long past days the
anger that burned in Callista, and must have way, wisely offered
no interference. [279]

"I've come home to stay," Callista pursued bitterly, "and I've
brought my boy. But ye needn't be afraid of seein' us come.
Sence I lived here I've learned how to work. I can earn my way,
and his, too."

"Callista," sobbed the mother, clinging to her daughter, still
seeking to draw her forward, "you're welcome here; and, if
anything, the boy is welcomer. We ain't got nobody but you.
Pappy, make her welcome; tell her that we're proud to have her
as long as she's willin' to stay, and--and--" she hesitated
desperately--"we'd be proud to have Lance, too."

She instantly saw her mistake. Callista drew herself sharply
from her mother's detaining arms and sat down on the porch edge,
hushing the child whom their talk had disturbed. Presently she
said--and her voice sounded low, and cold, and clear,

"I have quit Lance Cleaverage. You needn't name his being
anywhere that I'm at."

Gentry snorted, and heaved himself up in his chair as though to
go into the house.

"I consider that I had good cause to quit him," Callista went
on; "but I'm not a-goin' to--"

"I don't want to know yo' reasons!" broke in old Ajax fiercely.
"I say, reason! Reason and you ort not to be named in the same
day. Yo' mammy spiled you rotten--I told her so, a-many's the
time--and now them that wishes [280] you well has to look on and
see you hit out and smash things."

The deep, rumbling old voice sank and quavered toward the end.

"I wasn't going to give you any reasons," returned Callista
contemptuously. "Them that I've got are betwixt me and
Lance--and there they'll always be. I would rather live at home;
but I can earn my keep and the chap's anywhere. Shall I go--or
stay?"

The old man put down a shaking hand and laid it on her shoulder--a
tremendous demonstration for Ajax Gentry.

"You'll stay, gal," he said in a broken tone. "You'll stay, and
welcome. But I want you to know right here and now that I think
Lance Cleaverage is a mighty fine man. You' my gran'child--my
onliest one--I set some considerable store by ye myse'f. But
there's nothing you've said or done that gives me cause to
change my mind about Lance."

Callista rose, still hushing her boy in her arms.

"If I'm to live with you-all," she said in a tone of authority
which had never been hers in the days of her petted, spoiled
girlhood, "I may as well speak out plain and say that I never
want to hear the name of Cleaverage if I can help it. If you
don't agree to that--without any why or wherefore--I'd rather
not stay."

"Oh, honey--oh, honey!" protested Octavia [281] tearfully.
"Gran'pappy and me will do just whatever you say. Fetch the baby
in the house. God love his little soul, hit's the first time he's
ever been inside of these doors--and to think he should come
this-a-way!"

Callista drew back and eyed her mother.

"If you're going to go on like that," she said, "I reckon it
would be just as well for me to live somewheres else. You won't
see me shed a tear. I don't know what there is to cry for.
Gran'pappy is an old man--he ought to have some peace about him.
I won't come in unless you hush."

And having laid her will upon them both, Callista Cleaverage
re-entered the dwelling of her girlhood and disposed her sleeping
boy on the bed in the fore room.

To the mind of man, which looks always to find noise and
displacement commensurate with size, there is something
appalling about the way in which the great events of life slip
smoothly into position, fitting themselves between our days with
such nicety as to seem always to have been there. Little
calamities jar and fret and refuse to be adjusted, but matters
of life and death and eternity flow as smoothly as water.

Callista might have dropped easily into her old place in the
home, but the woman who had returned to the Gentry roof could
never have contented herself in that narrow sphere. Strong, [282]
efficient, driven to tireless activity by memories which one
might guess stung and hurt the mind at leisure, she cleared out
the long unused weaving room and set the loom to work.

"Aunt Faithful Bushares learned me to weave whilst I was stayin'
at Miz. Griever's, after the baby was born," she told her
mother. "I'll finish this rag carpet you've got in the loom, and
then I'll be able to earn some ready money. I can weave mighty
pretty carpet, and a body can get a plenty of it to do from down
in the Settlement. They's things I need from the store now and
agin, and this boy's got to have something laid by for him, to
take care of him as he grows."

Thus boldly, at the outset--though without mentioning the
forbidden name--she made it known to them that she would accept
nothing from her husband. Octavia Gentry was always on the edge
of tears when she talked to Callista about her plans; at other
times, the daughter's presence in the house was cheerful and
sustaining. If Callista brooded on the shipwreck of her affairs,
she asked no sympathy from anyone. Indeed, so far from seeking
it, she resented bitterly any suggestion of the sort.

Lance's own family blamed him more than did Callista's people.
Roxy Griever, of course, was loud in her denunciations.

"Hit's jest the trick a body might expect from one of tham men,"
she commented. "He never [283] was fitten for Callisty; and when
a feller plumb outmarries hisself, looks like hit makes a fool of
him, and he cain't noways behave."

Old Kimbro gazed upon the floor.

"I reckon it's my fault, Roxana," he said gently. "Lance has a
strong nature, and he needed better discipline than what I was
able to give him. I had my hopes that he'd get it in his
marriage, for daughter Callista is sure a fine woman; but--well,
maybe time'll mend it. I don't give up all hope yet."

"Miz. Gentry sent word that she wanted me to help them through
fodder-pullin'," Sylvane announced. "If I do, I'm a-goin' to
watch my chance to talk to Sis' Callie. She's always the
sweetest thing to me. I'll bet I can get in a good word for
Buddy."

But it was Roxy Griever who saw Callista before Sylvane did.
Octavia, desperately anxious and perturbed, sent word to the
widow to drop in as though by accident and spend the day.
Callista came into the room without knowing who was present. The
two women were fluttering about over her baby, exclaiming and
admiring. The young mother greeted the visitor with an ordinary
manner, which yet was a trifle cold.

"The boy's mighty peart," the Widow Griever said eagerly. "But,"
examining Callista with a somewhat timid eye, "you' lookin' a
little puny yo'self. Sis' Callie." [284]

"Oh, I'm perfectly well," returned Callista sharply.

There fell a silence, upon which Roxy's voice broke, husky and
uncertain.

"Well, I hope you won't harbor no hard feelin's toward any of
Lance's kin-folks, for we don't none of us uphold him."

At the name a quiver went through Callista's frame, the blue
eyes fixed on Roxy's face flickered a bit in their steady,
almost fierce regard. Then she bent and picked up her child.

"I reckon Mother hasn't said anything to you," she explained
evenly; "but I have asked each and every in this house not to
say--You spoke a name that I won't hear from anybody if I can
help it. If you and me are to sit down at the same table, you'll
have to promise not to mention that--that person again."

Then she walked out, leaving the two older women staring at each
other, aghast, both of them with tears in their eyes.

"But I cain't blame her," Roxana hastened to declare. "I know in
my soul that everything that's chanced is Lance's fault. He
always was the meanest little boy, and the worst big boy, and
the sinfulest young man, that ever a God-fearin' father had! He
never was half way fitten for Callista--and I always said so."

"Oh, Miz. Griever--hush!" protested Octavia. [285] "She'll hear
you--Sis' ain't but gone in the next room."

"Well, I hope she may," the widow pursued piously, in a slightly
raised tone. "I'd hate mightily to have my sweet Sis' Callie
think that I held with any sech; or that I didn't know what her
troubles had been, or didn't feel that she was plumb jestified
and adzactly right in all points and in all ways whatever."

"M--maybe she is," sniffed soft-hearted Octavia; "but I love
Lance mighty well. Right now I could jest break down and bawl
when I think o' him there in the cabin all alone by himself,
and--"

The closing words were lost in the apron she raised to her eyes.
If Callista heard the controversy, it had an odd effect; for she
treated the Widow Griever with considerable resentment, and,
laying a gentle hand on her mother's shoulder, said to her
apart:

"I don't want to be a torment to you, Mammy; but I believe when
any of those folks are about I'd better just take the baby and
stay in my own house."

"But, honey," her mother remonstrated, "Pappy Gentry's aimin' to
have Sylvanus here all through fodder-pullin' time. Is that a-goin'
to trouble you? Do you just despise all them that's kin to--would
you ruther we didn't have the boy?"

Callista shook her head. [286]

"It ain't for me to say," she repeated stubbornly Then, with a
sudden rush of tears in her hard eyes, "I do love Sylvane. I
always did. I couldn't have an own brother I'd think more of.
But--well, let him come over here if you want him. I can keep
out of his way."

The "house" to which Callista proposed to retire was the outside
cabin, where the loom stood. This she had fitted up for the use
of herself and child, as well as a weaving room, saying that the
noise might disturb Gran'pappy if the baby were in the house all
the time. And it was at the threshold of that outside cabin
that, only a few days later, Sylvane caught his sister-in-law
and detained her, the baby on her arm. Little Ajax reared
himself in his mother's hold and plunged at his youthful uncle,
so that she had no choice but to turn and speak.

"How you come on, Sis' Callie?" Sylvane inquired, after he had
tossed the heavy boy up a time or two and finally set him on his
shoulder.

"Tol'able," Callista returned briefly. "I've got a lot of
weavin' to do and it keeps me in the house pretty steady."

"I--was you leavin' in thar becaze I come?" inquired Sylvane
with a boy's directness.

Callista shook her head.

"Didn't I tell you I was mighty busy?" she asked evasively. "You
an' me always have been [287] good friends, Sylvane, and I aim
that we always shall be, if it lies in my power."

The young fellow looked up at her where she stood above him in
the doorway.

"You ain't never a-goin' to fuss with me," he told her bluntly.
"Besides, me and this chap is so petted on each other that you
couldn't keep us apart," and he turned to root a laughing face
into the baby's side, greatly to that serious-minded young man's
enjoyment.

Callista smiled down at both of them, and Sylvane found
something wintry and desolate in the smile.

"Weavin' is mighty hard work," he broke out impatiently. "Even
Sis' Roxy says that, and the Lord knows she's ready to kill
herself and everybody else around her with workin'. What makes
you do so much of it, Sis' Callie?"

Callista looked past the two and answered:

"Sylvane, a woman with a child to support has to work hard here
in the Turkey Tracks. If it wasn't for Mommie and Gran'pappy I'd
go down in the Settlement, where I could earn more and earn it
easier."

"Callista--honey," Sylvane bent forward and caught her arm. "You
ain't got no call to talk that-a-way. Lance shore has a right to
support his own son--even if you won't take nothin' from him for
yo'self."

Callista removed her gaze from the far sky line [288] and brought
it down to her young brother-in-law. Now indeed her smile was
wintry, even bitter.

"The man you named, Sylvane," she said explicitly, "has no
notion of carin' what becomes of this child. Now that you've
brought this up, I'll say to you what I haven't said to any
other: it was this that caused me to quit Lance. You' right,
I did leave the house in there for fear you should speak to
me--and speak of him. If I could be sure that I'd never hear his
name again, I'd be better suited. I reckon you'll have to
promise not to bring this up again, or they'll sure get to be
hard feelings between you and me."

Sylvane dropped back with a face of consternation, his hand fell
away from her arm. He reached up and drew the boy down, so that
the small, fair face was against his breast.

"Sis' Callie," he began incredulously, "I cain't believe it.
Buddy's got quare ways, but them that loves him can understand.
His own son--! Why, ef the chap was mine--" He broke off, and
stood a moment in silence. "The meanest man there is, looks like
to me, ort to be glad to do for his own child."

The words were not so strange on the lips of the tall
seventeen-year-old boy with the child's eyes, since in mountain
communities youths little older are often husbands and fathers.

"Well, air you going to promise me never to name it again?"
demanded Callista, an almost [289] querulous edge to her voice.
Sylvane's resemblance to his brother, some gnawing knowledge of
injustice toward the absent Lance, wrought upon her mood
intolerably.

"No, I'll never name Buddy to you again," said Sylvane soberly.
"If you and me ever talks of him, you'll have to mention it
first. But if there is anything I can do for you, Sis' Callie,
you know you have but to ask."

"I know that, Sylvane," Callista assured him, with a certain
eagerness in her tone. "And they is something--something that I
reckon nobody could do as well as you could. I need--I just have
obliged to get my things from--from up yon in the Gap. Would you
go fetch 'em for me, Brother?"

Sylvane, after all, was kin to Lance. He could not keep down a
little thrill of pride, that his brother had thus far forced
Callista's hand. But he answered gravely--almost sadly,

"I'll go this day, if you say so."

Securing permission from Ajax to absent himself, the boy hitched
his old mule to the buckboard and hurried off to the home at the
head of Lance's Laurel. Whether or not he found all of
Callista's belongings packed and ready, what was said between
the two men, no one knew. He returned near nightfall with
Callista's trunk and one or two sizable bundles, while Spotty
meekly led roped to the rear axle of the buckboard. Callista [290]
helped him into her cabin with the bundles; but when he would
have untied Spotty she remonstrated.

"I surely thought you were fixing to take the cow over to yo'
house," she said shortly. "It doesn't belong here."

"It was said to be yours," Sylvane told her, true to his promise
not to mention his brother's name, even inferentially. "I 'lowed
that the baby and--and all--would need the milk. Reckon you best
leave her stay."

"No," said Callista positively. "The cow's nothing I have any
concerns with. Maybe Sis' Roxy could make use of the milk. Take
her along home, Sylvane, or drive her back where she came from--or
turn her loose, for all of me."

And then Sylvane knew whether his brother had failed in care for
the child.

When Callista came in from disposing of this question of the
cow, she found her mother standing, inclined, as usual, to be
tearful, over the boxes and bundles. Coming on one of these
latter with a peculiar knot which Lance always used, and which
he had once taught her the secret of, Callista experienced a
sick revulsion of feeling.

"I wish you'd undo 'em and put 'em away for me. Mammy," she said
with unusual gentleness. "I think I hear the baby."

"All right, honey, go 'long and 'tend to him. I'll see to
these," agreed Octavia patiently.

Callista hurried over to the big house where [291] young Ajax lay
asleep, and, as chance would have it, found indeed that he had
wakened. She was hushing him on her knee a few minutes later,
when her mother appeared in the doorway, a little money held in
her trembling hands, and her eyes now openly overflowing.

"That pore boy!" Octavia burst out. "Look what he sent you. Sis!
Now, he hain't sold anything of his crop--not yet. The good Lord
only knows whar he come by this; but what he could get his hands
on, he's sent you."

Callista leaped to her feet and ran to the door, pushing her
mother aside none too gently, offending Ajax greatly by her
rough handling of him.

"Sylvane!" she cried in the direction of the horse lot where
Sylvane had gone to exchange the harness for a saddle on the
mule. "Whoo-ee--Sylvane!"

"I'm a-comin'," Sylvane's voice answered, and she turned swiftly
to the bed and laid the baby down.

"Give me that money!" she demanded.

"What for?" asked Octavia with unexpected spirit, tucking the
bills in against her arm and refusing them.

"I want to send it back by Sylvane."

"You ain't a-goin' to do any such thing," Octavia declared. "The
good Lord! To think that I ever raised such a gal as you air!"

"Give it to me!" Callista laid hands upon her [292] mother's arm,
wrenching at it. "Here's Sylvane. Give it to me now!"

The thud of the mule's hoofs approaching the door came clearly
to both of them. Callista could even distinguish the little
cow's light feet following.

The two wrestled and swayed a moment, Callista pushing a strong,
capable hand into the elbow where the bills and the few coins
were held.

"Take it, then. Oh, my Lord!" moaned Octavia. "I think you're
the hard-heartedest somebody I ever knew of. Pore Lance--pore
Lance!"

Sylvane, riding to the door with the rejected cow, received with
something of Lance's stoic grace the despised money. A
thankfulness that his "Buddy" was rehabilitated in his eyes made
him say, as he stuffed the small wad down in his pocket:

"An' I don't take back my word. Sis' Callie. You wouldn't have
these; but whatever I can do is ready and waitin', you know
that."

And somehow, in the hour of her victory, Callista tasted defeat.
[293]



CHAPTER XX.

DRAWN BLANK.



FOR a region of dwellers so scattered as those of the Turkey
Tracks, the word neighborhood is a misnomer. Where the distances
are so great from house to house, where there is no telephone,
no milkman on regular rounds, no gossiping servants, one would
have said that Callista might go home to her grandfather's and
live a month without anyone suggesting that there had been a
serious rupture between herself and Lance. But news of this sort
travels in a mysterious way through the singularly intimate life
of these thinly settled, isolated highlands. The first comers
who saw Callista and her baby at the Gentry place knew in some
curious fashion that she had forsaken Lance. Perhaps it was her
air of permanence in the new home which was her old one; perhaps
it was the fact that she had established her little household of
two in that outside cabin. However it may be, Buck Fuson rode
straight from the Gentry place to Derf's with the information--and
found it there before him.

"Iley's man seen her jest at the aidge o' the evenin', streakin'
through the woods 'crost the holler with the chap on her hip,
and a bundle over [294] her shoulder," Garrett Derf explained.
"Them Injuns is smart about some things. He said to Iley when he
come home that Lance's squaw had done shook him. Well!"

Gossip is generally personified as an old woman, but the men of
a region like the Turkey Tracks are much thrown back upon it for
an interest.

"Looks like Callisty never had been greatly petted on Lance,"
Fuson put forward, flinging a leg around the pommel of his
saddle and sitting at ease.

Derf shook his head.

"I reckon she's like any other womern," he deprecated, with a
sort of passive scorn. "You can spile the best of 'em. When
Lance come over here the day after him and Callisty was wed and
sot up housekeepin', and he showed hisse'f plumb crazy to spend
money on her, I says to myse'f, says I, 'Yes, an' there'll be
trouble in that fambly befo' snow flies.'"

He nodded with an air of one who utters the final wisdom, and
Fuson could but agree.

"That's a fact," assented Buck, as one who knew something of the
matter himself. "Man can pay out all he's worth, and still not
satisfy a woman."

"Satisfy her!" echoed Derf. "Don't I tell you that it's the
ruination of the best of 'em? They'll ax ye for anything, and
then when they git it they'll quit ye, or turn ye out and pop
the do' [295] in yo' face. Lance was jest that-a-way. He wouldn't
take a dare. Ef Callisty said she wanted the moon, and let on like
she thought he was able to git it, he'd say nothin' and try to
grab it for her."

"Ain't that Flent Hands's hawse?" asked Fuson suddenly, as Cindy
trotted across the small home pasture and came to the fence.

"Uh-huh," agreed Derf, and the two men steadily avoided looking
at each other. "Flent, he put the nag here with us so as to be
handy. Him and me's got a trade up for openin' a store in the
Settlement, him to run that end o' the business and me to run
this end. Don't know how it'll turn out. He's been a-comin' and
a-goin' considerable, and he left the filly with us. Says he
aims to take her away to-morrow."

"Alf Dease 'lowed to me that Lance was sort o' pestered 'count
of Flent havin' the filly," Fuson murmured abstractedly. "Said
Lance wanted him to see could he buy her back. I reckon he
couldn't go to Hands himself--Lance couldn't--way things air;
but it seems he axed Dease to do it."

Derf was silent a moment, then,

"Some says that Lance Cleaverage is fixin' to sell and go to
Texas," he opened out categorically. "I've always been good
friends with the feller, but I tell you right here and now, I'd
be glad to see the last of him. He's got his word out agin [296]
Flenton Hands, and, whenever them two meets, there's liable to
be interruptions. I'm a peaceful man, and I aim to keep a
peaceful place, and I ain't got any use for sech. I wish't Lance
would see it that-a-way and move out--I do for a fact."

Slowly Fuson straightened his foot down, sought and found his
stirrup; meditatively he switched the mule's withers with the
twig he carried, and spoke to the animal, digging a negligent
heel into its side, to start it.

"Well, I must be movin'," he said.

Derf stood long, leaning on the rail fence, looking absently
after the slow pacing mule in the dusty highway. He turned at
the sound of Ola's steps behind him. She had a halter in her
hand and was making for the horse lot.

"I hearn what you and Buck was talkin' about," she said
defiantly. "I'm goin' to ketch me out Cindy and ride over to
Lance's."

"Oh, ye air, air ye?" demanded her father. "Well," with free
contempt, "much good may it do ye!"

But Ola was impervious to his scorn. A stone wall was the only
barrier her direct methods recognized. She caught and saddled
the filly, brought out her black calico riding skirt, hooked it
on over her workaday frock, clambered to Cindy's back, and
turned her into the little frequented woodsroad down which Lance
used to come with his banjo to play for the dances. Cindy put
forward [297] her ears and nickered softly as they neared her old
home, and Satan, running free in a field of stubble from which
Lance had gathered the corn, came galloping to the boundary to
stretch a friendly nose across to his old companion. Ola looked
with relief at the black horse. Here was assurance that Lance
was at home. Yet, when she got off, tied the filly, and made her
way to the cabin, she found it all closed, silent, apparently
deserted.

In the mountains, nobody raps on a door. Ola gave the customary
hail, her voice wavering on the "hello!"

There was no answer.

Again she tried, drawing nearer, circling the house, forbearing
to touch either of the doors or step on the porch.

"Hello, Lance! Hoo-ee--Lance!" she ventured finally. "It's Ola.
I got somethin' to say to you."

She stood long after that effort. A wind went by in the oak
leaves, whispering to itself derisively. The shabby, stubbed
little figure in the dooryard, halting with rusty calico riding
skirt dragged about her, choked and shivered.

"I know he's in thar," she muttered to herself resentfully, and
then marched straight up the steps and shook the door. The
rattling of the latch gave her to understand that the bar was
dropped. People cannot go outside and bar a door.

"Lance," she reiterated, "I got somethin' to tell you about
Cindy." [298]

The hound who had accompanied Lance and Ola on many a stolen
hunting trip or fishing excursion roused from his slumbers in
the barn and came baying down to greet her. She paid no
attention to the dog.

"Flent he's had the filly at our house for two weeks," she said,
addressing the closed and barred door. "He--he's a-aimin' to
take her away to-morrow. Do you want me to buy her back for you?
Lance--aw, say, Lance--do you? I could."

Outside were the usual summer sounds, the rattle of the dog's
feet on the porch floor as he capered about her. Within, hearken
as she might, the silence was unbroken, till suddenly across it
cut, with a sharp pang of melody, the twanging of banjo strings.

Ola began to cry. Springing forward, she beat fiercely on the
door with her palms, then laid hold of its knob once more to
rattle it.

Under her touch it swung wide, revealing an empty room,
spotlessly clean, in perfect order, with Lance's banjo, yet
humming, lying on the floor where it had fallen from its nail.

"I know you' in thar," she sobbed, speaking now to the four
walls that mocked her with a semblance of welcome. "This here is
jest like you. Lance Cleaverage. This is the way you always
treat a friend. You ain't a-lookin', you ain't a-carin'!"

Her voice broke shrilly on the last words, and, [299] whirling,
she sat down on the step, flinging her forehead upon her knees,
sobbing, catching her breath, and still accusing.

"I don't know why I come here this-a-way, a-hangin' around after
you!" she stormed. "Hit's jest like it's always been--I cain't he'p
myself. The good Lord! What's Callisty Gentry thinkin' of?--her
that had you, and wouldn't keep you!"

Silence. The hound curled down at her feet. Cindy, pulling loose
from her tether, cropped the roadside grass with steady, even
bites. Callista's hollyhocks nodded by the doorstone. In the
room there Callista's hand showed everywhere. The Derf girl
sobbed herself quiet.

"Lance," she said heavily at length, getting to her feet, "I'm
a-goin' to leave the Turkey Tracks. You won't see me no more.
I"--she stood and listened long--"well, good-bye. Lance."

She halted down the steps, her glance over her shoulder in the
vacant room, so like the empty expressionless face Lance used to
turn to her and her blandishments. She got to Cindy and prepared
to mount. Again she waited, with her hand caught in the filly's
mane; but there came no answer from the doorway, no sound nor
movement in the house. She climbed droopingly to the saddle, and
took the homeward trail. [300]



CHAPTER XXI.

FLENTON HANDS.



LANCE CLEAVERAGE'S wife had been many weeks in the home of her
grandfather when it was noticed that Flenton Hands made occasion
to come very frequently to the Gentry place. Ajax was well off,
for the mountains, and they had always been hospitable; there
was much coming and going about the farm; yet the presence of
this visitor could not but be noted.

"I reckon you'll have to speak to him. Pappy," Octavia said
finally. "I had it on the end of my tongue to name it to him the
other day that hit don't look well for him to come back here
a-hangin' around the wife of a man that has threatened him. I know
in my soul that Lance Cleaverage would not want more than a fair
excuse to--Well, an' I couldn't blame him, neither."

It was evident to all that Octavia Gentry, though now as ever
she loved her daughter above everything, could not find it in
her soft heart to censure Lance. Indeed that heart bled for him
and the sufferings she felt sure were his.

It chanced that Ajax spoke to his frequent guest the next day
and in the presence of his daughter-in-law. Flenton had come on
one of his aimless visits; [301] he was sitting on the porch edge,
and Callista had gathered up her baby and retreated to the weaving
room, whence the steady "thump-a-chug! thump-a-chug!" of the
loom came across to them. Flenton's slaty gray eyes began to
wander in the direction of the sounds, and Ajax, prompted by
anxious looks from Octavia, finally addressed him.

"Flenton," he began, removing his pipe from his lips, and
examining its filling as he spoke, "you've come here right smart
of late."

The visitor looked doubtfully from one to the other.

"Y-yes, Mr. Gentry," he allowed uneasily, "I have."

"Uh-huh," Ajax pursued in deep, even tones. "Yo're welcome in
this house, like any other neighbor, and they ain't a man on top
o' the Turkey Track mountings that can say I ever shut my door
in the face of a friend. But--I'll ax you fa'r and open--do you
think hit's wise?"

Again Flenton's eyes went rapidly, almost stealthily, from one
face to the other.

"Do I think what's wise?" he finally managed to inquire, with
fair composure.

"Well," said the elder man slowly, "in the first place we'll say
that Lance Cleaverage ain't a feller to fool with. We'll say
that, and we'll lay it by and not name him again.".

He paused a moment, then went on:

"Like some several other o' the boys hereabouts, [302] you used to
think a heap o' Sis before she was wedded. She's quit her man;
and do you think hit's wise to visit so much at the house where
she's stayin'? This matter consarns me and the girl's mother,
too. I take notice all the rest o' the boys lets Sis alone. How
about you?"

This time Flent did not turn his head. He stared out over the
hills and made no answer for so long that Octavia spoke up, a
tremor of impatience, or of resentment, in her voice.

"Now, Flent, they's no use o' talkin'; of all of Sis's lovyers,
you hung on the longest. Look like you wouldn't take 'no' for an
answer. Why, the very night her and Lance was married, you done
yo' best to step betwixt 'em. And worst is, you don't quit it
now that they air wedded."

"Octavy," demurred old Ajax, chafed at seeing a man so bearded
by one of the weaker sex, "Flenton may have something to say--let
him speak for hisself."

Thus encouraged, Hands faced about toward them.

"No, I ain't never give up Callisty," he said doggedly, "and I
ain't never a-goin' to. She's quit her husband." Even in his
eagerness he did not find it possible to take Lance's name on
his lips. "She's left that thar feller that never done her
right, and never was fit for her, to consarn himself with his
own evil works and ways; and she's come home here to you-all;
and I don't [303] see what should interfere now between her an'
me."

Octavia's comely face crimsoned angrily.

"A married woman--a wife--" she broke out with vehemence. But her
father-in-law checked her by a motion of the hand.

"Yes, Callisty's quit Lance Cleaverage," agreed Ajax dryly. "An'
she's come home. But I reckon she'll behave herself. Leastways,
she will while she's in my house."

At the seeming implication, Octavia's fingers trembled in her
lap, and she turned a wounded look upon Ajax.

"Well, Pappy! You' no call--" she was beginning, when Flenton,
with a manner almost fawning, interrupted her.

"You don't rightly git my meaning, Mr. Gentry--nor you, neither,
Miz. Gentry," he said humbly. "I've lived considerable in the
Settlement. Down thar, when married people cain't git along, and
quits each other, there's--there's ways--Down in the Settlement--"

He broke off under the disconcerting fire of Ajax's eye.

"Oh--one o' them thar _di_-vo'ces, you mean?" the old man said,
strong distaste giving an edge to his deep voice.

"Well, they ain't a-goin' to be none sech between Lance and
Callisty," Octavia protested indignantly. "If that's what you'
hangin' around for, you'll [304] have yo' trouble for yo' pains,
Flenton Hands." She got up sharply, went into the house, and
shut the door, leaving the two men together.

Yet when she reviewed her daughter's conduct, her mind, ever
alert to the interests of the erring Lance, misgave her.
Callista seemed hard enough and cold enough for anything.
Octavia heard the two masculine voices, questioning, replying,
arguing. She had put herself beyond understanding the words they
uttered, but presently feminine curiosity overcame her, and she
was stealing back to listen, when, through the small window, she
saw Flenton Hands get heavily to his feet. A moment he stood so,
looking down, then, her head close to the sash, she heard him
ask,

"I've got yo' permission, have I, Mr. Gentry, to go over thar
and name this all out to Callisty?"

"I don't know as you've got my permission, and I don't forbid
ye," Ajax Gentry said haughtily. "I hold with lettin' every
feller go to destruction his own way. He gits thar sooner; and
that's whar most of 'em ort to be."

"Well, you don't say I shain't go and speak to her of it," Hands
persisted. "I'm a honest man, a perfesser and a church member,
and what I do is did open and above-boards. I thank ye kindly
for yo' good word."

Old Ajax, who certainly had given no good word, merely grunted
as Hands made his way swiftly across the grass to the cabin
where the loom stood. [305]

"Don't werry, Octavy," he said, not unkindly, as his daughter-in-law's
distressed face showed at the window. "Shorely Sis has got the
sense to settle him."

Callista, hard at work, was aware of her visitor by the darkening
of the doorway. She looked up and frowned slightly, but gave no
other sign of noting his coming. The baby sat on the floor, playing
gravely with a feather which stuck first to one plump little finger
end and then another. Had Flenton Hands possessed tact, he might
have made an oblique opening toward the mother through the child.
As it was, he began in a choked, husky voice,

"Callisty, honey--"

He broke off. The concluding word was said so low that Callista
could pretend not to have heard it, and she did so.

"Callisty," he repeated, coming in and leaning tremulously
forward on the loom, "I want to have speech with you."

"I'm not saying anything against your speakin', am I?" inquired
Callista. "But I'm right busy now, Flenton. It isn't likely that
you could have anything important to say to me, and I reckon
it'll keep."

"You know mighty well and good that what I have to say to you is
plenty important," Flenton told her, shaken out of his usual
half-cringing caution. "Callisty, yo' husband has quit ye; [306]
he's down in the Settlement, and is givin' it out to each and every
that he's aimin' to sell to the Company and go to Texas."

He would have continued, but a glance at her face showed him
such white rage that he was startled.

"I didn't aim to make you mad," he pleaded. "I know you quit
Lance first--good for nothin' as he was, he'd never have given
you up, I reckon, till you shook him."

Callista set a hand against her bosom as though she forcibly
stilled some emotion that forbade speech. Finally she managed to
say with tolerable composure,

"Flenton Hands, you've named a name to me that I won't hear from
anybody's lips if I can help it--least of all from yours. If
that's the speech you came to have with me, you better go--you
cain't take yourself off too soon."

"No," Hands clung to his point, "no, Callisty, that ain't all I
come to say. I want to speak for myse'f."

He studied her covertly. He did not dare to mention the divorce
which he had assured her grandfather he was ready and anxious to
secure for her.

"I,"--he was breathing short, and he moistened his lips before
he could go on--"I just wanted to say to you, Callisty, that
thar's them that loves you, and respects and admires you, and
thinks the sun rises and sets in you." [307]

Lance's wife looked down with bitten lip. Her full glance
studied the cooing child playing on the floor near her feet.

"Well--and if _that's_ all you came to say, you might have been in
better business," she told him coldly. "I reckon I've got a few
friends."

She chose to ignore the attitude of lover which he had assumed.
After a moment's silence Flenton began desperately,

"Yo' grandfather named to me that I ought not to visit at the
house like I do without my intentions towards and concerning you
was made clear," twisting Grandfather Gentry's words to a
significance that would certainly have amazed the original
speaker. "I told him that I was a honest man and a member in
good standin' of Brush Arbor church, and that what I wanted of
you was--"

He caught the eye of the girl at the loom and broke off. The red
was rising in her pale face till she looked like the Callista of
old.

"Don't you never say it!" she choked. "Don't you come here to
me, a wedded wife, doin' for my child, and talk like I was a
girl lookin' for a husband. I've got one man. Him and me will
settle our affairs without help from you. I may not let you nor
nobody else, name him to me--but I'll take no such words as this
from your mouth."

"An' you won't let me come about any more--you won't speak to
me?" demanded Hands, in alarm. [308]

"What is it to me where you come or where you stay?" Callista
flung back scornfully. "This ain't house of mine---I'm not the
one to bid you go or come."

And with this very unsatisfactory permission, Flenton was
obliged to content himself. Thereafter he went to the Gentry's
as often as he dared. He sent Little Liza when he was afraid to
go; and if Callista put her foot off the place, she found
herself dogged and followed by her unwelcome suitor. [309]



CHAPTER XXII.

THE SPEECH OF PEOPLE.



AND now gossip began to weave a confusing veil of myth around
the deserted man, such as time and idle conjecture spread about
a deserted house. One day, visitors to the cabin in the Gap
would find the place apparently forsaken and untenanted; the
next, Lance would be seen plodding with bent shoulders at the
plow, making ready a patch to plant with turf oats for winter
pasture, lifting his head to answer nobody's hail, barely
returning a greeting. It was evident that in his times of
activity he worked with a fury of energy at the carrying forward
of the farm labor, the improvements he and Callista had planned
in the home. Plainly these were dropped as suddenly as entered
upon when his mood veered, and he shut himself up in the cabin,
or was out with his rifle on the distant peaks of White Oak, in
the ravines of Possum Mountain, or beating the breaks of West
Caney. He made more than one trip to the Settlement, too, where
he was known to be trying to get Dan Bayliss to buy back Cindy
for him. Always a neat creature, careful of his personal
appearance, a certain indefinite forlornness came to show itself
upon him now--a touch of [310] the wild. He was thin, often
unshaven, and his hair straggled long on his coat collar. But the
soul that looked out of Lance's eyes, a bayed, tormented thing,
was yet unsubdued. No doubt he was aghast at the whole situation;
but willing to abase himself or cry "enough," he was not.

Ola Derf, true to her word, left the Turkey Tracks the day after
her unsuccessful attempt at an interview with Lance. When it
came to be said that he had sold to the coal company, not only
the mineral rights of his land but the acres themselves, and
that he was going West, rumor of course coupled the two names in
that prospective hegira. There were those who would fain have
brought this word to Callista, hoping thereby to have something
to report; but the blue fire of Callista's eye, the cutting edge
of her quiet voice, the carriage of that fair head of hers,
warned such in time, and they came away without having opened
the subject.

It was Preacher Drumright who officially took the matter up, and
set out, as he himself stated, "to have the rights of it." His
advent at the Gentry place greatly fluttered Octavia, who knew
well what to expect, and had grown to dread her daughter's
inflexible temper. The inevitable chickens were chased and
caught; Callista set to work preparing the usual preacher's
dinner. Ajax was fence mending in a far field; Octavia
entertained the guest in the open porch, since, [311] though it
was now mid-October, the day was sunny, and your mountaineer cares
little for chill in the air. Drumright's sharp old eyes followed
the graceful figure in its journeyings from table to hearth-stone;
they stared thoughtfully at the bright, bent head, relieved against
the darkness of the cavernous black chimney. Finally he spoke out,
cutting across some mild commonplace of Octavia's.

"Callisty, come here," he ordered brusquely.

The young woman put a last shovelful of coals back on the lid of
the Dutch oven whose browning contents she had just been
inspecting, and then came composedly out, wiping her hands on
her apron, to stand before the preacher quite as she used when a
little girl.

"I hear you've quit yo' husband--is that so?" Drumright demanded
baldly.

Callista kept her profile to him and looked absently away toward
the distant round of yellow Old Bald, just visible against an
unclouded sky. The color never varied on the fair cheek, and the
breath which stirred her blue cotton bodice was light and even.
When she did not reply, the old man ruffled a bit, and prompted
her.

"I ax you, is it true?"

She drew up her shoulders in the very faintest possible shrug,
as of one who releases a subject scarce worth consideration.

"You said you'd heard," she returned indifferently. [312] "I reckon
you can follow your ruthers about believing."

Drumright's long, rugged face crimsoned with rising rage. His
lean, knotted hands twitched as he started forward in his seat.
He could have slapped the delicate, unmoved, disdainful face
before him.

"To yo' preacher, that's nothin' less than a insult," he stated,
looking from one woman to the other.

"Well, Sis won't let nobody name this to her," Octavia broke in
hurriedly. "An' I ort to have warned you--"

"Warned me!" snorted the preacher. "Callisty won't let this and
that be named! Well, if she was my gal, she'd git some things
named to her good and plenty."

Callista bent to pick up, from the porch floor, an acorn that
had fallen with a sharp rap from the great oak over their heads;
she tossed it lightly out into the grass, then she made as
though to return to her cooking.

"Hold on!" Drumright admonished her. "I ain't through with you
yet. This here mammy o' yourn sp'iled you till them that ort to
give you good advice is scared to come within reach. But I ain't
scared. I've got a word to say. This man Cleaverage has got
property--and a right smart. Hit's been told all around that
he's sold out to the coal company and is goin' West with--well,
[313]  they say he's goin' West. Now, havin' a livin' wife and a
infant child, he cain't make no good deed without you sign; and
what I want to know is, has he axed you to sign sech? Ef he has,
I hope you had the sense to refuse. Ef he comes to you with any
sech, I want you to send for me to deal with him--you hear? Send
for me."

The rasping voice paused. Drumright was by no means through with
his harangue, but he stopped a moment to arrange his ideas. He
dwelt with genuine comfort on the thought of being called in to
have it out once for all with Lance Cleaverage. Then Callista's
voice sounded, clear and quiet.

"Mr. Drumright," she said, "if you're never sent for till I do
the sending, you'll stay away from this house the rest of yo'
days. I'm a servant here, a-workin' for my livin' and the livin'
of my child. Them that my grandfather and my mother bids to this
house, I cook for and wait on; but speak to you again I never
will. Mammy, the dinner's ready; if you don't mind putting it on
the table, I'll go out and see is the baby waked up."

With this she stepped lightly down and walked across to her own
cabin.

Drumright turned furiously upon Octavia. She, at least, was a
member of his church, and bound to take his tongue-lashings
meekly. What he found to say was not new to her, and she
accepted [314] it with tears of humiliation; but when he wound
up with declaring that she had brought all this about by giving her
daughter to an abandoned character, even she plucked up spirit
to reply.

"You may be adzactly right in all you say," she told the harsh,
meddlesome old man; "but I've got the first thing to see about
Lance Cleaverage that I couldn't forgive. What him and Sis fell
out about I don't know, and she won't tell me; but as to blamin'
it all on Lance, that I'll never do."

Then she dished up and set before her irate guest a dinner which
might have soothed a more perverse temper. Ajax Gentry came in from
his fence mending, and, with the advent of the man, Drumright's
tone and manner softened. He made no further reference to Callista's
personal affairs, nor to the castigation she ought to receive. The
two old men sat eating and talking--the slow grave talk of the
mountaineer--about crops and elections and religion. Callista
did not come back from the little cabin, whence presently the
sound of her loom made itself heard. At this point Drumright
ventured a guarded suggestion to his host, in the matter of her
affairs. He was met with a civil but comprehensive negative.

"No, sir, I shall not make nor meddle," Grandfather Gentry told
the preacher, as he stood finally at the roadside, looking up at
that worthy mounted on his mule for departure. "Callista is [315]
my only grandchild, and I've always thought a heap of her. She is
welcome in my house. If she had done worse, I should still be
willing to roof her; but I reckon it's best to tell you here and
now, Mr. Drumright, that I have no quarrel with Lance Cleaverage,
and no cause to meddle in his affairs. I take him to be a good deal
like I was at his age--sort o' uneasy when folks come pesterin'
around asking questions--and I don't choose to be one of them that
goes to him that-a-way."

The season wore on toward winter. There was frost, and after it
a time of exquisite, mist-haunted Indian summer, the clean,
wooded Cumberland highlands swimming in a dream of purple haze,
that sense of waiting and listening brooding over all. Then
again the days were cold enough to make the fire welcome, even
at noon, and Callista piled the hearth in her outside cabin room
and set the baby to play before it. She had run down to the chip
pile for an apronful of trash to build the blaze higher (the
vigorous, capable young creature made light work, these days, of
getting her own fuel), when she was aware of two people mounted
on one mule stopping at the gate. She paused a moment, shading
her eyes with her hand, while Rilly Trigg slid down and Buck
Fuson swung himself leisurely to earth.

Above the irregular line of the brown-gold trees, beginning to
be dingy with the late storms, the [316] sky was high, cloudless,
purple-blue. The sweet, keen air lifted Callista's bright hair
and tossed it about her face.

"Howdy, Callisty. Me and Buck jest stopped apast to say good-bye,"
Rilly announced, joining her beside the chopping block, and
bending to fill her own hands with the great hickory chips.

"And where was you and Buck a-goin'?" smiled Callista, after she
had greeted the young fellow, who tied his mule and came
following the girl over to her.

"Buck and me was wedded this morning." Rilly made her
announcement with a mantling color, as they all turned in at the
cabin door. "We're goin' down to Hepzibah for a spell. Looks
like a man cain't git nothin' to do here, and Buck's found work
in the Settlement."

Callista looked at them with a steady smile.

"I hope you-all will be mighty happy," she said in a low tone.

Rilly, suddenly overtaken by the embarrassment of making such an
announcement to Callista in her present situation, sat down on
the floor beside the baby and began to hug him ecstatically.

"Ain't he the sweetest thing?" she cried over and over again.
"He ain't forgot me. He ain't a bit afraid of me. Last time him
an' me was together I had to make up with him mighty careful. I
reckon he sees more strangers and more comin' and goin' over
here." [317]

Callista's beautiful mouth set itself in firm lines as she took
her chair beside the hearth, motioning Buck to one opposite.
Rilly glanced nervously from one to the other, and again looked
embarrassed.

"Derf, he's opened his store down in the Settlement," she
returned hastily to her own affairs, for the sake of saying
something, "and he offered Buck a job with him; but I jest
cain't stand that old Flent Hands, and so I told Buck."'

"What has Flenton got to do with it?" inquired Callista in a
perfunctory tone.

"Why, him an' Derf's went partners," Buck explained. "Didn't you
know about it? Flent's to run the town store, an' Derf this'n up
here."

Rumor in the Turkey Tracks now declared with a fair degree of
boldness that Flenton Hands was getting, or was to get, for
Callista a divorce from her husband, and that then they would be
married and live in the Settlement. Lance's wife looked her
visitor very coolly in the face as she answered,

"I certainly know nothing of Flenton Hands's comings or goings.
The man made himself mighty unpleasant here. Hit's not my house,
and not for me to say who shall be bidden into it; but I did
finally ax Gran'pappy would he speak to Flent Hands and tell him
please not to visit us any more. I hate to do an old neighbor
that-a-way," she added, "but looks like there are some things
that cain't be passed over." [318]

A swift glance of satisfaction flashed between the newly wedded
pair. Rilly rose and went timidly to Callista, putting a
hesitant arm about the other's neck.

"We come a-past yo' house this morning, Callisty, honey," she
whispered, her cheek against the older girl's. "I--Buck an' me
wanted to see him; and we hoped--we thort--"

Not unkindly Callista pushed the clinging arm away and looked
straight into Rilly's eyes, overflowing with tears.

"You're not thinkin' what you say, Rilly," she told the girl,
almost sharply. "You never come a-past no house of mine. You are
in the only house I've got on earth right now, and this belongs
to Grandfather Gentry. I stay here on sufferance, and work for
what I get. I've got no home but this."

"Oh, Callisty--you're so hard-hearted!" Rilly protested. "We
come a-past, and he was thar, an' he never hid from us, like he
does from most, nor shet the do' in our faces. He let us set on
the porch a spell. Oh, honey, he looks mighty porely. Ain't you
never scared about what he might do? Heap o' folks tells tales
about him now; but he came out jest as kind--jest like he used
to be--Oh, Callisty!"

Callista's face was very pale; it looked pinched; she sat
staring straight ahead of her, with the air of one who endures
the babble of a forward child. [319]

"Rilly," she said finally, when the other had made an end,
"you've named something that I don't allow anybody to name in my
hearing. If you and me are going to be friends, you've said your
last word about it to me."

"Well,--I have, then," returned the visitor half angrily. She
searched in a small bag she carried hung on her arm and brought
out something. "I've said my last word, then," she repeated.
"But--I brung you this."

"This" proved to be a late rose marked by frost, its crimson
petals smitten almost to black at their edges. Callista knew
where it had grown, she recalled the day that she and her
bridegroom had planted it. The root came from Father Cleaverage's
place; Lance had brought it to her; and he had helped her well,
and watered the little bush afterward.

Rilly cast the blossom toward her with a gesture half despair,
half reproach. It lodged in her clasped hands a moment, and she
looked down at it there. Memory of that October day, the tossing
wind that blew her hair in her eyes, the familiar little details
of the dooryard, Lance with his mattock and spade, the laughter
and simple speech, the bits of foolish jest and words of
tenderness--these took her by the throat and made her dumb. She
knew that now the cabin which fronted that dooryard was
desolate. She could not refuse to see Lance's solitary figure
moving from house to [320] fence to greet these two. Somehow she
guessed that it was he who had plucked the rose and given it to
the girl--that would be like Lance.

The blossom slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor.
Young Ajax, cruising about seeking loot, discovered it with a
crow of rapture, seized upon it and began, baby fashion, to pull
it to pieces.

The three watched with fascinated eyes as the fat little fingers
rent away crimson petal after petal, till all the floor was
strewn with their half withered brightness.

"Well," said Rilly, discouraged, getting to her feet, "I reckon
you an' me may as well be goin', Buck." [321]



CHAPTER XXIII.

BUCK FUSON'S IDEA.



DOWN in Hepzibah, Flenton Hands and Derf had rented a store
building close under the shadow of the Court House. Furtive
grins were exchanged among those who knew; since it was expected
that, the Derf store on Little Turkey Track Mountain being a
depot for wildcat whiskey, the Derf Hands store in the
Settlement would be a station along the line of that underground
railway always necessary for the distribution of the illicit
product. At last Flenton Hands seemed about to give some shape
to that cloud of detraction which, with certain of his
neighbors, had always hung over his name. As the separation
between Lance Cleaverage and his wife continued, and appeared
likely to be permanent; as Hands felt himself in so far
justified in his hopes concerning Callista, his terror of the
man whose word was out against him increased and became fairly
morbid. This it was which drove him to Hepzibah, where the
strong arm of the law could reach, where there were such things
as peace warrants, and where fortunately, just at present, Lott
Beason, the newly elected sheriff, was his distant cousin and [322]
an old business partner, who still owed him money.

To Sheriff Beason, then, Hands went, with the statement that he
would like to be a constable, so that, as an officer of the law,
any attack Lance made on him might appear at its gravest.

"Constable," debated Beason. "That ain't so everlastin' easy;
but I can swear you in as one of my deputies, and a deputy
sheriff can pack a gun--you git you a good pistol, Flent, and
don't be ketched without it. Yes, you might as well have a peace
warrant out against the feller, too. I tell you, down in the
Settlement here we don't put up with such. You stay pretty close
to town for a spell, Flent. Hit's the safest place."

Hands got out his peace warrant, he armed himself with a pistol,
as is right and proper for an officer of the law. He followed
Beason's final suggestion as well, and stayed pretty close to
town. Lance Cleaverage was far away on Little Turkey Track
Mountain. The sense of security which Hands drew from all these
precautions loosened his tongue. Wincing at remembrance of his
former terror, he boasted of the favor with which Cleaverage's
wife regarded him; he let pass uncontradicted the statement that
he had broken up that family, and added the information that he
was going to get a divorce for Callista and marry her. [323]

Buck Fuson, working in the woolen mill, had rented a tiny shack
where the newly married pair were keeping house. One evening
when he came home, Orilla met him with a rather startling story.
She had been down to Derf's store to buy molasses and bacon for
supper.

"They was all in the back end of the room behind the boxes and
the piles of things, Buck," she told her husband. "The old
Injun, he waited on me; and when he went back with my bucket,
Injun-like, he never give them the word as to who nor what was
a-listenin', and they just kept on talkin' re-dic'lous. Flenton
was a-braggin', an' after what Callista's said to me and you, I
knowed good an' well that every word he spoke was a lie. Emmet
Provine bantered him to sell him that Cindy filly that Lance
used to own, an' give to Callista. An' Flent said no, he
wouldn't sell her for nothin'; he was a-goin' to keep the filly
an' git the woman, too. He let on like he was shore goin' to
marry Callista--talked like they wasn't sech a man as Lance
Cleaverage in the world. Then Derf peeked around and ketched
sight of me, and they all hushed. But I heard what I heard."

Buck ate awhile in silence and with a somewhat troubled
countenance.

"I reckon I've got to send word to Lance," he said finally,
looking up. "Lance Cleaverage never was one of the loud-talkin',
quarrelin' [324] kind; but he sure don't know what it is to be
scared; and I'm sartain he would take it kindly to be told of
this."

"An' yit I don't know," Rilly debated timidly from across the
table. "Looks like you men are always killin' each other up for
nothin' at all. 'Course, ef I thought Flent would be the one to
git hurt--but like as not it would be Lance. No, honey, I
wouldn't send him no word."

"You don't need to," smiled Buck rather grimly. "I have my
doubts whether he'd take the word from a gal o' yo' size; but
I'm sure a-goin' to lay for him or Sylvane and tell 'em what I
know. I'd thank anybody to do the same by me."

During the rest of the meal Buck seemed to be in deep thought;
Rilly watched him anxiously.

It was the next Saturday afternoon that Lance was down doing
some trading. About dusk Fuson, coming home from his work, found
him on the street corner preparing to get his wagon from the
public yard and make a night ride up the mountain. In these days
Lance made most of his journeyings after dark, shunning the
faces of his neighbors.

"I was sorter watchin' for ye, Lance," said his friend. "I
wanted to talk to ye--to tell ye somethin'."

Lance shot a swift glance at Fuson; but he answered promptly,
and with seeming indifference: [325]

"All right, Buck; come on down to Dowst's with me."

They walked side by side down to the tiny, dingy, deserted
office of the wagon yard. Here a small stove, crammed with the
soft coal of the region till the molten, smoky stuff dripped
from the sagging corners of the gaping door to its firebox, made
the room so intolerably warm that the window was left open. On a
high desk rudely constructed of plank, an ill-tended kerosene
lamp flared and generated evil odors. From nails upon the wall
hung harness and whips, horse blankets, and one or two articles
of male wearing-apparel. A dog-eared calendar over the desk gave
the day of the month to the blacksmith when he was forced at
long last to make out bills.

Alone together, safe from interruptions, the two young fellows
faced each other for a moment in constrained silence. Then,
hastily, awkwardly, halting and hesitating for a word now and
again. Buck gave the information which he thought was due.

"Now, that's what was said," he finally made an end when he had
repeated all that Rilly heard, and all that he himself had since
gathered from various sources, of Flenton Hands's boasting
concerning Callista Cleaverage.

Something agonized in Lance's gaze, something which looked out
desperately interrogating, brought Buck to himself with a gasp.
[326]

"Rilly and me knowed every word was lies," he hastened to add.
"We come a-past the Gentry place to see Callisty as we was on
our way down here--you remember, Lance, that day we was at yo'
house. Flenton Hands was named betwixt us, and Callisty she said
that she didn't know nothing about the man nor his doings. She
said she'd went to her gran'pappy and axed him to warn Flent off
the place, becaze she wouldn't have the sort of talk be held."

Noting the sudden relief which showed in Lance's countenance,
Fuson added, half doubtfully,

"'Course you might pay no attention to it, seein' it's all
lies."

The quiet Lance flashed a sword-like look at him that was a
revelation.

"Oh, no," he said. "The thing has got to be stopped. The only
question is, how soon and how best can I get at Flenton Hands
and stop it?"

"Lance," began the other with some hesitation, "I'm a-livin'
right here in the Settlement, and aim so to do from this on. If
you can git through without bringin' my name in, I'd be obliged
to you. If you need me, I'm ready. If you don't need me, it'll
save hard feelin's with the man that keeps the store I trade at,
and with all his kin and followin'."

"All right," agreed Lance briefly. "I won't give any names--there's
no need to." [327]

"Well, I been a studyin' on this thing right smart, and I had
sorter worked it out in my mind for you to hear the talk
yo'self--just happen in and hear Mr. Hands. Don't you reckon
that'd be the best way?" suggested Fuson.

"Yes--good as any," assented Lance. "I'm not lookin' for much
trouble with Flent Hands. Here, Jimmy," he called to the sleepy
boy who came yawning in, "you take my black horse out of the
wagon, and put a saddle on him--you've got one here, haven't
you? Put a saddle and a riding bridle on him, and tie him in the
vacant lot across from Derf & Hands's store about half-past
eight o'clock. I'll bring the saddle back when I'm through with
it."

"All right," Jimmy roused himself to assure Lance. "I'll have
Sate thar on time. Pap's got a saddle an' bridle o' yo' brother
Taylor's here, Fuson. Lance can take 'em back."

As the two friends came out shoulder to shoulder, Buck said
quietly,

"Derf, he's got it in for you, too."

Lance nodded.

"Derf ain't never forgive me because he robbed me of money," he
added, well aware that his indifference to Ola had given the
father perhaps greater offence.

They walked for a little time in silence; then Fuson said a
little wistfully,

"I 'lowed I ort to tell you." [328]

"Hit was what a friend should do," Lance agreed with him,
putting out a hand.

Presently the other spoke again, out of the dark.

"I wish't thar was time to git word to Sylvane and your father,"
he hesitated. "Looks like we've got too few on our side."

"Huh-uh, Buck," came back Lance's quiet, positive tones. "This
thing is between me and Flent. There it'll stay, and there we'll
settle it. I'm not saying that I don't think Pappy and Sylvane
would stand by me. They would. My father is one of the best men
that God ever made, and he's a religious man; but I know how
he'd feel about such as this--I don't need to go ask him. The
most I hate in it is that it's bound to bring sorrow to him,
whichever way it turns. He's mighty tender hearted."

Fuson debated a moment, but finally forbore to mention having
sent word to Sylvane, and being in hourly expectation of the
lad's coming. They went to Fuson's home for a belated supper.
Rilly found them preoccupied and unusually silent. With big,
frightened eyes she waited on them, serving her best, noting
that they paid little attention to anything saving the strong
cups of coffee provided. The young host glanced from time to
time uneasily through the window, and when the meal was over got
up, and, telling his wife that they were going down town for a
[329] spell, followed his guest out into the dark. Rilly ran after
them to the door of the little shanty, and stood breathing
unevenly and staring in the direction of their retreating
footsteps.

"I hope to the Lord they don't nothing awful happen," she
muttered over and over with chattering teeth. "I wonder will
Buck be keerful. I wish't they was something I could do. I
wish't I could go along. Oh, women do shore have a hard time in
this world!" and she retired, shivering, to her bright little
kitchen, where the lamp flared and the disordered table mutely
suggested her clearing and washing the dishes. [330]



CHAPTER XXIV. SILENCED.



UP the street tramped the two young fellows, Lance silent,
pulling his hat down over his face, Fuson whistling in an
absent, tuneless fashion. When they came to the store, Buck
paused and gave the instructions.

"I'll go in. You walk a-past two or three times, and when you
see me standin' with my back to you and my hands behind me,
that'll mean that Flenton's thar and the talk started. Hit'll be
yo' time to come in."

Lance nodded without a word. He passed the lighted doorway.
Beyond it was a butcher shop--for days after he could remember
the odor of raw meat from the place, the sight of the carcasses
hung up in the frosty winter air. At the corner he turned and
walked back. There was no sign of Fuson as he glanced swiftly
into the store. On the other side of the way was the vacant lot
where he had instructed the boy from the wagon-yard to tie
Satan. Lance took the precaution to go down in the shadows and
see if the black horse had arrived. He found his mount, the
bridle rein looped over a bit of scrubby bush. He examined the
saddle and [331] equipments, and found all as it should be. When
he came back to the store door and once more glanced in, he
descried Fuson's figure, standing, hands behind the back, in the
aisle between the counters.

Quietly, neither hiding nor displaying himself, Lance entered
and made his way down the long room toward the far lighted end.
After dark, trade in the main portion of the store was practically
dead, and only one smoky lamp on the counter illuminated the
entrance. In the rear, half-a-dozen men were grouped around a big,
rust-red barrel stove, talking. The whole place back there reeked
with the odors of whiskey, of the fiery, colorless applejack that
comes down from the mountains, kerosene and molasses, with a
softening blend from the calico, jeans and unbleached cottons
heaped on the counters, narrowing in the approach to this retreat.
He paused beside a tall pile of outing flannel, putting up one
hand against the rounded edges of their bolts. Fuson, glancing
over his shoulder, was aware of the figure in the shadow, and at
once spoke in a slightly raised voice.

"Flent, I hear you've sold yo' filly."

"Well, then, you hearn a lie," returned Flenton Hands's tones
drawlingly. "I hain't sold that filly, and I'm not aimin' to.
That thar nag belongs to my wife."

He laughed uproariously at his own jest, and [332] some of the
other men laughed too. Greene Stribling, down from Big Turkey Track
to do a bit of trading, had sold a shoat. Instead of getting the
coffee and calico and long sweetening it should have purchased,
and carrying them, with the remaining money, up to his toil-worn
mother and younger brothers and sisters, he had bought a jug of
the Derf & Hands wildcat whiskey; and having borrowed the small
tin cup from beside the water bucket, he was standing treat to
the crowd.

"Fust time I ever heared you had an old woman," Derf said,
accepting the cup from the assiduous Stribling.

It was evident, now that Lance had a view of the faces, that
this was a Flenton Hands nobody on Turkey Track Mountain ever
met. He had, as it were, come out into the open. Certainly he
was not drunk; it would have taken a very considerable amount of
stimulant to intoxicate that heavy, dense spirit and mentality;
but there was color in his cheek, a glint of courage in his pale
eye, a warming and freeing of the whole personality, that bore
witness to what he had been drinking.

"I reckon you mean the wife that you're a-_goin_' to have," put in
Fuson. "Hit's a good thing to git the pesky old stags like you
married off. They have the name of breakin' up families. Bein' a
settled man myself in these days, I ain't got no use for such."
[333]

Hands turned on him eagerly.

"Well, I have shore broke up one family," he declared. "I am a
church member and a man that keeps the law; but that thar is a
thing I'm not ashamed of."

"Yet I reckon you ain't a-braggin' about it," suggested Buck.

"I don't know as I'm braggin' about it, but I shore ain't
denyin' it," maintained Hands. "I'm ready to tell any person
that will listen at me that me an' Callista Gentry aims--"

"I'm a-listenin'," said a quiet voice from the shadows, and
Lance stepped into the circle, clear-eyed, alert, but without
any air of having come to quarrel.

For a moment Flenton quailed. Then he looked about him. This was
not the wild Turkey Tracks. He was down in the Settlement. There
was law and order here. He had a peace warrant out against this
man Cleaverage. He glanced across at his cousin, the sheriff.
Beason would back him. Why, he was a deputy sheriff himself, and
the feeling of the gun in his pocket reassured him. Lance stood
at ease, composed, but definitely changed from the light-footed
Lance who had come swinging buoyantly down over the little hill
that Sunday morning two years ago. Something told Hands that the
other was unarmed.

"Now see here, Cleaverage," he began, wagging [334] his head and
backing off a little, "I don't want to hurt your feelin's. I may
have said to friends, and it may have got round to you, that the
part you had did by--that the part you had did was not to your
credit. She--"

He hesitated. There was silence, and no one stirred. He went on.

"She's a-workin' for her livin', and a-workin' mighty hard.
She's a-supportin' the child. Divo'ces can be had for such as
that--you know they can."

"That isn't what I heard you say--what you said you would tell
anyone that'd listen," argued Lance, his eyes fixed unwaveringly
upon the other. "You've got to take back all that other talk,
here before them you said it to. Hit's a pack o' lies. I'm goin'
to make you take it back, and beg pardon for it on your knees,
Flenton Hands--on your knees, do you hear me?"

The circle of men widened, each retiring inconspicuously, with
apprehensive glance toward a clear exit for himself. The two
opponents were left in the center of the floor, confronted,
their faces glared upon by lamp-shine and the light from the
open door of the stove; drawn by passionate hate, and with a
creeping terror much more dangerous beginning to show itself in
the countenance of the older man.

"You wasn't never fitten for her," Hands [335] cried out finally,
his voice rising almost to falsetto with excitement. "She's glad to
be shut of you." Then like a fellow making a desperate leap,
half in fright, half in bravado, "When her and me is wedded--"

He broke off, staring with open mouth. Lance had scarcely moved
at all, yet the crouching posture of his figure had something
deadly in it. Flenton's clumsy right hand went back toward the
pocket where that gun lay. With the motion, Lance left the floor
like a missile, springing at his adversary and pinning his arms
down to his sides. It was done in silence.

"Hold on thar!" cried Derf in alarm. "You-all boys better not
git to fightin' in my store. Sheriff!--hey, you, Beason!--Why
don't you arrest that feller?"

The two wrestled mutely in that constricted place. Hands
struggling to get his pistol out, Lance merely restraining him.
Beason came forward, watching his chance and grabbing for
Cleaverage. He finally caught Lance's arm, and his jerk tore
loose the young fellow's grip on Flenton Hands. Swiftly Lance
turned, and with a swinging blow freed himself, sending the
unprepared sheriff to the floor. As he flung his head up again,
he had sight of Hands with a half-drawn weapon. Flenton backed
away and stumbled against the stove. The great iron barrel
trembled--toppled--heaved, crashing over, sending [336] forth
an outgush of incandescent coals, its pipe coming down with a
mighty, hollow rattle and a profuse peppering of soot. The
strangling smoke was everywhere.

"Name o' God, boys!" yelled Derf, climbing to the counter, to
get at a bunch of great shovels that hung on the wall above;
"you'll set this place afire! Flent, you fool, we ain't got a
dollar of insurance!"

At the moment Lance closed with his man, locked him in a grip
like a vise, went down with him, and rolled among the glowing
cinders, conscious of a sudden burning pang along the left arm
which was under him.

Fuson, watching Hands strain and writhe to draw the pistol, and
Lance's effort to prevent him, saw that it was going against his
friend. He thrust the haft of a knife into Lance's right hand.

The men were jumping about ineffectually, coughing and choking
with the sulphurous fumes, divided between the fascination of
that struggle on the floor, and the half-hearted effort to upend
the stove by means of a piece of plank. The corner of a cracker
box began to blaze.

"Lord God A'mighty!" Derf was protesting, threshing at the
burning goods, "We'll be plumb ruined!" Fuson ran for the water
bucket. Some fool dashed a cup of whiskey on the coals, and in
the ghastly light of the blue blaze. Lance Cleaverage,
staggering up, saw a dead man at his feet. [337]

[Illustration: "He broke off, staring with open mouth."]

He was not conscious that he had struck at all with the knife,
yet there it was in his hand, red. The sleeve was half burned
off his left arm, and still smoking. It was dark away from the
fire. Beason, stunned, was getting to his feet and hallooing,

"Hold Cleaverage! Somebody hold Cleaverage! He's killed Flent."

And then Lance felt the shoving of a palm against his shoulder.
Buck was pushing him quietly away, down between the lines of
piled commodities. They were running together toward Satan. Back
in the room they could hear the sheriff yelling for lights.

"I thought I might just as well knock them lamps over for good
measure," Fuson muttered as they ran. "Here's your horse--my
pistol's in that holster, Lance. Air ye hurt?"

"No," Lance returned. "Nothin' but my arm. I reckon I burnt it a
little. It's only the left one. Thank you. Buck. You've been a
true friend to me this night."

And he was away, down the bit of lamplit street that ran so
quickly into country road, past outlying cabins already dark,
till he struck the first rise of Turkey Track and slacked rein.
A moment he turned, looking over his shoulder at the lights.

Upon the instant the Court House bell back there broke out in
loud, frightened clamor. [338]

"Clang! Clang! Clang!" Somebody was pulling wildly on the rope
to call out the little volunteer fire company. He heard cries,
shouts, and then the long wavering halloo that shakes the heart
of the village dweller.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Derf's store must be blazing. He wondered dully if they had
dragged Flenton's body away from the flames. Hearkening, he
suffered Satan to breathe a bit on the rise that would take him
to the great boulder where the roads branched, one going up
Little Turkey Track, the other leading aside direct to the Big
Turkey Track neighborhood.

Suddenly he stiffened in his saddle, cut short a groan wrenched
from him by his injury, and listened strainingly. Above the now
diminishing noise from the village, he distinguished the sound of
hoofs that galloped hard, growing louder with each moment,--the
feet of one who pursued him. Looping the bridle rein over the
pommel of his saddle horn, he got at the pistol Buck had provided,
and thereafter rode warily but as rapidly as he dared, looking
back to catch the first glimpse of the shape or shapes which
might be following.

He had just rounded the turn at the fork of the way, when
somebody burst into it close at hand, coming through the short
cut by Cawthorne's Gulch, and he thought he heard his name
called. [339]

To be taken now, to be dragged back to the jail, and, if not set
upon and lynched by the Beason-Hands following, to rot there
till such time as they chose to try him, and possibly pay for
his act of wild justice with his own life, this was a vista
intolerable to Lance Cleaverage. Raising the weapon he fired at
his pursuer.

"Oh, don't!" wailed the unseen; and the next moment Sylvane
leaped from the mule he rode, ran forward and caught at Satan's
mane, panting, "Lance--Lance! I was a-goin' to you as fast as I
could. I struck down thar 'bout the time you must have left. I
come Dry Valley way. Is it--have you--"

At the sound of Sylvane's voice, the heritage of Cain came home
to Lance Cleaverage. A great upwelling black horror of himself
flowed in on the fugitive. To what had he sunk! A murderer
fleeing for his life, in his panic terror of pursuit menacing
his own brother who came to help and succor!

"Oh, Buddy--Buddy--Buddy!" he cried, doubling forward over the
pommel of his saddle, clutching Sylvane's shoulder, and closing
his eyes to shut out the face of the dead man which swam before
them in that quivering blue light. [340]



CHAPTER XXV.

THE FLIGHT.



THE dark hours of that January night saw the two brothers riding
hard up into the mountains toward that tiny cleft in the peaks
above East Caney where Lance now remembered the cave that he had
once said should shelter him in case he ever killed a man.
Sylvane had much of Lance's pride and courage, with little of
his dash and perversity. Had the peril been his own, one might
have guessed that he would meet it with the gentle stoicism old
Kimbro showed. But that Buddy should be in peril, fleeing for
his life! The boy's universe reeled around him, confusion
reigned where he should have been efficient and orderly; and
when they stopped at the cabin in the Gap for supplies, what
with the agony of Lance's burn and the disarray of his brother's
whole mentality, they made sad work of it. Something to eat,
something to keep warm with, something to dress the hurt--these
were the things the boy tried to remember, and forgot, and could
not find, when he fancied the galloping hoofs of pursuers with
every gust that shook the big trees in the dooryard.

He got for the dressing of the arm only a roll [341] of new cloth,
rough and unsuitable; while a few extra garments, a blanket,
meat, meal, salt, a cooking vessel and some white beans made up
the rest of his packet. He came out at the last carrying Lance's
banjo and put it on top of the supplies.

"'Way up yon they'll be nobody to hear you, and I reckon it
might take off the edge of the lonesomeness," he half apologized
when Lance looked curiously at it in the light of the lantern
his brother held.

The owner of the banjo made no movement to take it and swing it
upon his back, neither did he decline it; but indifferently
Sylvane was allowed to bring the once cherished possession
along.

Through the cold, naked woods, they pushed to East Caney. The
creek was up. It was three o'clock, nearly four hours before the
wintry dawn might be expected; yet a late moon had risen
sufficiently to show them the swollen torrent. These mountain
streams, fed by the snows of the higher ranges, clear, cold,
boulder checked and fretted, sometimes rise in a night to a fury
of destruction, scouring away whole areas from one bank or
another. To-night Caney, great with the snows from both of the
twin peaks above it which a January thaw had sent down, made
traveling in its bed a matter of life and death. Yet the boys
must attempt it. Once [342] behind that barrier of roaring water,
Lance would be safe. True, mountain streams often subside as
abruptly as they rise, so that no one could tell how long this
particular safety would last.

"I reckon we can git through better 'n the nags," Sylvane said
dubiously, as they divided the pack between them, and started
out on the desperate enterprise of leaping from boulder to
boulder through the swirling waters. They lost one bundle in the
struggle, and they came through fearfully exhausted. Lance with
that left arm one surface of exquisite torture, his countenance
pinched and his jaw set, his eyes burning in the white face that
his brother could dimly discern. But they did get through, and
came drenched, dripping, shuddering with cold, into the little
valley.

The last time Lance had seen the place it was brimmed with the wine
of summer, green, full of elusive forest scents, bird-haunted,
drowsing under July sides, and the most beautiful creatures it
held in its sweet shelter were Callista and her child. Now his
desolate gaze searched its dim obscurity for the black loom of
the rock house that had given its roof to their happy gipsying.
The blanket and clothing had gone down roaring Caney; but the
banjo, carried carefully on Sylvane's shoulders, whined against
the bare twigs of the Judas tree he was passing under, whimpered
something in its twanging undertone that [343] demanded awfully
of Lance, "How many miles--how many years?"

Without waiting for his brother, and the lantern which the boy
was relighting, he dashed down the slope, past the stark, empty
rock house--swerving a little like a man going wide of an open
grave--and gained the steep pathway to the cave, where Sylvane,
panting after, overtook him.

"I'm obliged to get a fire for you, and see can I tie up that
there arm," the boy declared pitifully. "Lance, I'm that sorry I
lost your blanket and clothes that I don't know what to do!" And
his voice trembled.

"It don't make any difference about me," Lance said wearily.
"I'd like for you to be dry and warm before you start back--but
there's no time. You got to get away from here as quick as you
can. If we leave the horses tied down there, and anybody sees
'em--you've got to get away quick, Buddy."

"Where'd I better take Sate?" asked Sylvane, as he had asked
before.

"I've been studyin' about that," Lance told him. "They're bound
to know I'm in the mountains. We can't get rid of the nag, and
if he goes to our house it will seem no more than natural. Best
just take him home and put him in the stable."

Sylvane had gathered pitch pine for light and [344] heat. He made
a roaring fire and then attempted an awkward dressing of the
injured arm. The rough cloths hurt. There was no liniment, not
even flour to lay on the burn. Lance locked his teeth in agony
and bore it till time seemed to press.

"Go on, Buddy," he urged. "When you can get to me with anything,
do it. When you can't--I'll make out, somehow."

"The good God knows I hate to leave you like this," the lad
repeated, as he made his final preparations for departure.
"Pappy or me will be here inside of two days and bring you news,
and something to keep warm with, and something to eat. Lance,
please lemme leave ye my coat--"

"No, no, Sylvane, you'd nigh about freeze without it a-ridin'
home. It's not cold in the cave here. You go on now, Buddy--that's
a good boy." And blindly the younger lad turned and crept down the
bank. [345]



CHAPTER XXVI.

ROXY GRIEVER.



IT was nearly noon when Sylvane, reaching home by an obscure,
roundabout trail, half perished from the cold, scouting the
place long and fearfully before he dared enter, found that
Sheriff Beason with a posse had been at his father's house,
searched it, and gone. At the door his sister Roxy met him,
clutching his arm, staring over his shoulder with fear-dilated
eyes, and whispering huskily,

"Whar is he? Whar's Lance?"

The boy shook his head, pulling the drenched hat from his curls,
and moving toward the hearth-stone where his father sat bowed
over.

"He's safe," the words came finally in a half-reluctant tone.
New lines of resolution and manhood's bitter knowledge had been
graving themselves on Sylvane's face the past twenty-four hours.
"I helped him to whar they cain't find him nor take him. Let
that be enough."

"No--but it ain't enough," his sister rebelled. "Here's Beason
has swore him in a posse of six, and he's out a-rakin' the
mountings after Lance. Six men." Roxy's face was gray.

"They've started, have they?" said Sylvane in [346] the voice of
exhaustion. "Well, what you don't know they cain't find out from
you, Sis' Roxy. And I best not tell you whar Lance is hid."

"Sylvane!" The woman's tone was sharp with suffering, rather
than anger. "Do you think I'd tell on my own brother? Tham men
might cut me into inch pieces and get nothin' from me. You don't
know me, boy. I'd think little of puttin' one of 'em out of the
way! Thar was women in the Bible done sech--and was praised for
hit. I want to know whar Lance is at," she choked, "and whether
he's hurt, and what he's got for to comfort him--pore soul!"

"Hush, daughter," counselled Kimbro gently. "Sylvanus is right.
People do sometimes betray what they aim to cover up. If I can
guess whar my son is--and I reckon I could--that's one thing;
but for any of us to be told, ain't safe."

Silently, almost sullenly, Roxy hunted out dry clothes for
Sylvane, the boy sitting near his father, telling Kimbro in a
few brief sentences Lance's version of the night's happenings,
the old man nodding his head without a word of comment. She set
food on the table and Sylvane drew up to eat.

"I want to go whar my Unc' Lance is at," whispered Mary Ann
Martha, suddenly pushing a tow head up under Sylvane's arm and
nearly causing him to overturn his coffee. "I'm a-goin' to he'p
him fight." [347]

Sylvane lifted the child into his lap, and began to feed her
with bits from his plate.

"Its Unc' Lance is all right, Pretty," he said absently. "Unc'
Sylvane and Gran'pappy'll look after him. That's men's work. It
help its Mammy to keep the house, and soon Unc' Lance is goin'
to be back and play the banjo for it."

All day, that strange, brief, silent Sunday in February, Roxy
strove to have the secret of Lance's hiding place from her
younger brother. Again and again she turned from what she was
doing to demand it of him; more than once she quit abruptly her
labors about the house, to go and hunt him up, to ask him
sometimes half-angrily, sometimes cajolingly, pleadingly, almost
with tears. The boy withstood the fire of her importunities as
best he could. He answered her in as few words as might be.
Without harshness, but only doggedly, he still responded in the
negative, and always with mildness and a sort of regret.

As it drew toward dusk, Roxy's face began to harden into grim
lines, and she went about her preparations for supper with a
gleaming eye. Her father, who had walked to a far pasture to
salt cattle, came in, and sat with Mary Ann Martha on his knee
by the fireplace. Roxy looked in at the door. Mutely, with only
a backward jerk of the head, she called them to their [348] meal.
As the child was following, her mother detained her and, giving no
explanation, went with her into the far room. A moment later she
came to the men sitting at the table.

"Well, there's yo' supper," she said resentfully to Sylvane,
"sence you 'low that's all I'm fitten to do. Ye can put the
things away yo'selves, I reckon. I'm a-goin' on a arrant."

And with the chubby Mary Ann Martha bundled heavily in shawls,
silent as a small mummy, and plainly under the hypnotism of
impressive instructions from her mother, she turned and went
from the room, and they heard the front door close softly after
her.

The men looked at each other uneasily, but there seemed nothing
to be done.

Outside, Roxy stooped and spoke again to the child. She
straightened up and peered long about her, listening intently,
then moved obliquely among the yard shrubbery down to the gate.
Crossing the road in the deep shade of cedar trees, she struck
direct for the Gentry place, going by woods-paths that had so
often known Lance's feet. When the short, fat little legs that
trotted beside her in silence grew weary, she carried Mary Ann
Martha pick-a-back, and always she was whispering to her.

"We're Injuns now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'. Mammy's a squaw, and you' a
little papoose, out a-scoutin' to see can we find Unc' Lance; or
head [349] off them that's a-aimin' to do him mischief. Don't it
make no noise."

When, in turn, Roxy herself was too tired to carry her daughter
longer, she broke a thick willow switch beside a spring branch,
and encouraged the little girl to ride a stick horse.

"But remember we' Injuns, honey," she whispered. "Injuns don't
make no noise nor let they' nags make none."

In this wise they came to the edge of the timber and surveyed
the opening where lay the Gentry farm. Here Roxy left the
child, motionless as a little image in her swaddling of
thick shawls--stationing her in the grove of young chestnuts from
which Lance had emerged the night he came singing to Callista's
window--while she scouted with infinite pains the entire circuit
of the clearing. She encountered nobody, and heard nothing; yet
surely the house where Lance Cleaverage's wife and child were
would be subject to espionage. The clear stars hung above the
bleak treetops, and by their dim light she could just make out
the various buildings, trees and bushes. Once more carrying Mary
Ann Martha, she moved down to the corner of a small out-building.
Here she gave her last instructions to the child.

"Now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth', you go right up that line of bushes, on
the shady side, to yo' Aunt Callisty's house; and don't you
speak a word [350] to anybody but her. You say to her that they's
somebody--mind, honey, _somebody_, don't you name who--that wants
speech with her, a-waitin' out here by the chicken-house. Tell
her to slip down here longside o' them same bushes. Can Mammy's
gal say all that and say it right?" And she looked anxiously
into Mary Ann Martha's solemn little face.

The child nodded her head vigorously, and a moment later the
shapeless small figure started worming its way up along the
obscuring row of bushes. Finally she stopped on the doorstone of
that cabin where she could hear the "thump-a-chug" of Callista's
loom. She well remembered that the last time she was over here
her Aunt Callie had entertained her in that building, refusing
to come out and see her mother. Unacquainted with any such
ceremonial as knocking, incapable of achieving the customary
"hello," she planted herself on the doorstep and remarked
gruffly,

"Huh!"

The sound did not amount to much as a hail or an alarum, yet it
reached the ear of the woman who sat at the loom inside working,
with what strange thoughts as her companions it were hard to
guess. Somehow, it was now known all over both Turkey Track
neighborhoods that Lance had killed his man and fled, and that
the sheriff and posse were out after him. The face that [351] bent
over the web of rag carpet was sharpened and bleached by this
knowledge. The blue eyes gleamed bright with it. When that
curious, gruff little "huh" came to her ears, Callista stopped
her work like a shot and stood long hearkening.

"Hit was nothing," she told herself, half-scornfully. "I'm just
scared, and listenin' for something."

She started the treadle again, and the noise of the batten once
more checked the silence into a rhythmic measure. But the dogs
had become aware of an intruder. Rousing from their snug
quarters under the porch of the big log house, they came baying
across the frozen ground. At their outburst of clamor, almost
with one motion, Callista stopped the loom a second time, turned
out her lamp, and was at the door, drawing it open with a swift,
yet cautious movement. There in the vague starlight was Mary Ann
Martha backed up against it, shaking a small and inadequate
stick at the approaching pack. Swiftly Callista caught the
little thing and pulled her inside, closed the door and dropped
the bar across. She stooped to the child in the uncertain shine
of the fire, questioning in amazement,

"Why, Mary Ann Martha! How on earth did you get here--all alone--at
night this-a-way?"

"Thest walked," returned the ambassador briefly. "Aunt Callie,"
she embarked promptly [352] and sturdily upon her narrative,
"they's somebody down at the corner of the chicken-house that wants
to have speech with you. Don't you tell nobody, and you thest come
along o' me and be Injuns, and don't make no noise, an' slip
down thar in the shadder o' the bubby bushes, like I done, so
nobody cain't see."

Faithful to her trust, Mary Ann Martha the outrageous, the
terror of Little Turkey Track, had delivered the entire message
without an error. Callista's mind was a turmoil of wild surmise.
Who could the "somebody" waiting for her out there be--somebody
who arranged all these precautions with such care and exactness?
She gave but one glance at the sleeping baby on her bed, caught
a heavy shawl from its peg, and, winding it about her head and
shoulders, slipped soundlessly from the door, holding Mary Ann
Martha's hand. Not a word was spoken between them. When they
finally entered the area darkened by the chicken-house, Callista
started and her eyes widened mutely at the touch of a hand on
her arm.

"H-ssh--Callisty!" came Roxy Griever's thin, scared tones, just
above a whisper. "God knows who might be a-watchin' and a-listenin'."

Callista faced about on the older woman staring with sharp
inquiry at her in the gloom. Lance's wife found it hard to guess
what attitude would be her sister-in-law's now. [353]

"Callisty, honey," began the Griever woman with a sort of
wheedling, "I ain't a-goin' to ax one thing of you. Hit's but
natural that you don't want to hear mention of my brother's name
at this time; but, honey. Pappy and Sylvane has got him hid out
somewhars, and they won't tell me whar. I know in reason it's
the place you and him camped last summer. Couldn't you lead to
it?"

It seemed for a moment as though Callista would spring at her
sister-in-law; then she said in a low, distinct voice,

"Well, Roxy Griever, what sort of woman are you, anyhow?"

Roxy studied the horrified countenance turned toward her as well
as she could in the half light. She was thick-witted, but
eventually she understood.

"You Callisty Gentry!" she ejaculated with a note of passive
savagery. "Do you think I'd lead the law to Buddy? What I want
to know is whar he's at and how bad hurt is he? Tham men won't
trust me, but I 'lowed you'd think enough of the father of yo'
child to give me the directions so I could git to him. He's got
to have good vittles, and someone to--he's got to have care.
L--L"--her mouth quivered so that she could scarce go on--"Lance
ain't like some folks--he could jest die for want of somebody to
tend on him. Don't I know?" A tremor shook [354] her. "I mind
after Ma was gone, and Sylvane was a baby, an' Lance he cried
bekaze I--oh, my God, Callisty! tell me whar he's at. I got to
git to him. Don't be so hard-hearted, honey. I know hit seemed
like Lance was a sinner--oftentimes; but the good God Hisself
did love sinners when He was here on earth. Hit says so in the
Book. He used to git out an' hunt 'em up. Oh! oh! oh!"

Flinging an arm against the trunk of a sapling, Roxy Griever hid
her face upon it and began to weep. Mary Ann Martha stood the
sight and sound as long as she could, and then added her shrill
pipe of woe.

"Sssh! Hush; both of you, for mercy's sake!" besought Callista.
"Stay here just a minute, Roxy. I'm going back to the house to
get--well, I know about what he'll need. Then I have to tell
Mother to look after the baby."

"Air you goin' with me? Oh, Callisty, air you goin' with me
now?" the widow quavered.

"No," answered Callista. "I'm going alone. Grandfather can let
me have a horse, or not, as he's a mind. If I can't get it from
him, I'll slip back with you and see what Sylvane and Father
Cleaverage can do for me. I'm the one to go and look after
Lance."

Roxy and the child waited in stoic silence while Callista
returned cautiously to the main house. There was some quiet
moving about from one [355] building to another, a stir over at
the log stable, and in an incredibly brief time Callista came to
them riding on her grandfather's horse and leading the mule,
saddled, for the other two.

"We'll go a-past yo' house--hit's as near as any way," was all
she said.

Once at the Cleaverage place, Lance's wife was persuaded to
accept Sylvane's company for the night journey, though she
peremptorily--almost impatiently--refused any addition to her
ample provision for Lance's comfort. But when the two, all ready
to leave, stood reconnoitering in the dark outside the house to
see that the coast was clear before starting, Roxy came
trembling out with a package which she thrust into her brother's
hand.

"Thar," she whispered, "take it to him. I only wish't I'd 'a'
got it in the frames and quilted it, so that it might have been
some use keepin' him warm."

"It--it ain't yo' gospel quilt, Sis' Roxy, is it?" Sylvane
inquired, fumbling with doubtful inquiry at the roll in his
hands.

"Hit air," returned his sister, the dignity of a high resolve in
her brief response.

"Why, daughter, I think I wouldn't send that," Kimbro deprecated,
drawing close in the obscurity. "Of course it's a mighty improvin'
thing, but I doubt if Lance has the opportunities to take care of
it that a body ought to have to [356] handle such. Don't send it,
Roxana. Without doubt it would do him good, if he was whar he could
make use of it."

Roxy did not move to receive the bundle which her brother
hesitatingly offered back to her.

"I know hit ain't much account," she said disconsolately. "But I
'lowed hit might make him--maybe he'd laugh at it, and hit would
cheer him up a leetle. He used to laugh powerful at some of 'em.
I've put in my good shears and that Turkey-red calicker, and you
tell him, Sylvane, that I want him to cut me out them little
davils he was a-talkin' about, as many of 'em as hit'll make."

She looked pathetically from one to the other.

"There ain't nothin' like gittin' a man person that's in trouble
intrusted in something. You git him intrusted in cuttin' out
davils for my gospel quilt, won't you, Sylvane, honey?--or you
do it, Sis' Callie. Maybe hit might make him laugh--po' Buddy,
away off to hisself in some old hideout, an' nary soul to--to--an'
the sheriff chasin' him like he's a wolf!"

And Callista, wiser than the men, knowing that the gospel quilt
would take its own message to Lance, stretched out a hand for
the package. [357]



CHAPTER XXVII.

IN HIDING.



IN the skull-shaped pocket--which was the inner chamber of the
cave where Lance lay, was neither light nor life. They were the
bare ribs of the mountain that arched above him in that place,
blackish, misshapen, grisly in an unchanging chill. The
continual dripping which would have seemed music if he had come
upon it in a summer's noon, vexed him now, and took on tones
that he wished to forget. Sylvane had provided him pitch pine to
burn, because it would give more light, and there was a crevice
which would lead the smoke away; but he fretfully told himself
that the resinous sticks made the place smell like a tar kiln,
and put out his fire rather than endure it.

Then in the blank darkness his burned arm pained him
intolerably, and presently he crept forth into the entrance
which held the tiny spring to steep the cloths in water, hoping
to assuage the hurt.

Day filled this outer chamber with a blue twilight, while round
the turn was always black obscurity. Summer spread upon it each
year a carpet of the finest ferns; now the delicate fronds [358]
lay shriveled and yellow on the inky mold; only a few tiny
bladderworts remained in the shelter of the remote crevices. In
spite of the raw cold he lingered by the little basin, his
lifted eye encountering the bird's nest he and Callista had
found there in July, full then of warmth and young life and
faithful love. It was beneath a breadth never penetrated by the
drip. He studied the little abandoned home of the phoebe, built
there of moss and leaves plastered together against the rock
with clay. He noted absently how beside it remained a portion
from the building of the previous year; and by looking closer in
the half light he made out at least five rims of mud, from which
the nests of five preceding spring-times had crumbled away.

Then, a caged, fevered animal, he went back into the cave and
lay down. It was not freezing cold there--such a place is much
like a cellar, warmer than the outside air in winter, as it is
cooler in summer--but the sensation of being buried came to wear
upon the spirit of the fugitive, and he was fain to creep nearer
to glimpses of the sky, out once more into the vestibule of his
prison. There were bits of life here, too, humble, and--as
his own had come to be--furtive. Plastered upon the limestone
walls were the homes of countless mud wasps, and the bell-shaped
tents of the rock spiders. Around the edges the dry sand of its
floor was pitted with the [359] insect traps of the ant-lion,
that creature at the mouth of whose tiny burrow a prehistoric
Lance Cleaverage--a Lance whose tousled head would scarce have
reached above this man's knee--used to call long and patiently,
"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, come up and get some bread!" As though
recalling the childhood of another, he could see that valiant
small man, masterfully at home in his world, arrogantly sure of
himself, coming to--this. The rock vole, whitish-gray, rat-like,
most distinctive of all the small, subterranean life of the
cave, peered out at him and reminded him where he lay, and for
what reason.

In suffering, half delirious, those earlier hours went by. He
had never contemplated killing Flenton Hands. There was none of
the bully in Lance Cleaverage, iron as his nerves were, high as
his courage. He had gone purposely unarmed to the quarrel,
regarding Flenton contemptuously as a coward; believing that he
could make the man publicly eat his words and apologize for
them. But this open humiliation was as far as his intentions
went. The poet in him, the Lance of the island, recoiled
desperately from memory of that dead face, the eyes closed, the
mouth crookedly a-gape, the ghastly light from the flaming
alcohol wavering upon it.

So greatly was he wrought upon by his situation and his hurts,
that by the second night his [360] anguish of mind and body had
only sunk from that first fierce clamor to a dull ache, which was
almost harder to bear, and which kept sleep from him quite as
effectually. He scarcely ate at all of the food Sylvane had
left; but drank thirstily at the little spring every hour of the
twenty-four. In this sort the time had passed, and now Sunday
and Sunday night were gone; the morning of the second day was
here.

The thought of Callista haunted him continually. What, at such a
juncture, would be her attitude? One of reprehension, certainly;
but if he knew that mind of hers at all, there would be no
hostility. Her pride would lead her to offer, perhaps, some
assistance to the man whose name she bore. And then suddenly he
was aware of a figure in the mouth of the cave, and Callista's
voice whispering,

"Lance--Lance!"

He stumbled to his feet and went gropingly forward, encountering
with his right hand--held out as a sort of shield to the
burned arm--the bundle she carried,--the great hunter's quilt,
wool-padded and well-nigh waterproof, the pair of homespun
blankets, and, riding upon them, a basket of cooked food,--while
from the other hand swung a tin pail. She was laden like a strong
man.

"Who's with you--who packed all this?"--he made his first inquiry
quite as though he had [361] expected her. There was no word of
surprise or gratitude.

"Sylvane," she answered in the same hushed tone. "I aimed to
come alone, but he wouldn't let me. We made it since midnight.
He left me yon side the creek, so as to make haste home. He'll
be burning brush in the nigh field on the big road where
everybody can see him all day. Come night, he'll be back for me.
What you got it all dark here for, Lance? I'll make ye a fire
that won't smoke."

She felt the earth, to be sure that it was dry, and then, with
brusque kindness, refusing all aid from him, flung down her
burden. She carried quilt and blankets in and spread a
comfortable pallet of them.

"You go back inside where it's not so cold," she commanded
briefly. "I'll bring some chestnut chunks and make you a good
fire. Go back. Lance."

He turned obediently. Did memory come to either of the chill,
inhospitable hearth she had once refused to tend? She was swift
and efficient in her preparations, breaking an armful of dry
chestnut limbs and twigs for a clean, smokeless fire; and when
that was sending forth its flood of clear, hot radiance, she
knelt down and dressed his hurt with the liniment and soft old
cloths she had provided.

"Brother Sylvane said he'd be at the creek [362] about nine o'clock
to-night for me," she told Lance, as she deftly arranged a sling
by means of a bandana. "We got to be right careful about comin'
here, now that Caney's goin' down. Wish't it had stayed up, like
Sylvane said it was when you-all came."

Lance stared at her with the ghost of a laugh in his eyes.

"You never could have got through it in this world, Callista,"
he said softly. "It was all Buddy and me could do. We was wet to
the skin and nigh drowned."

"Oh, yes I could," Callista assured him with that new, womanly
authoritativeness which seemed now to make him her own, rather
than set him outside her caring, as it had once done. "I'd 'a'
found a way to get through to you. If you have to hide out long,
I'm goin' to fix it so that I can be nearer you and do for you.
Does that arm feel better now?"

There was a large, maternal tenderness about her which appealed
powerfully to Lance, upon whose boyhood fretful, chiding Roxy
had tended. She seemed a refuge, a comforter indeed.

His haggard gaze still on her face, he answered in a half-voice
that the arm did feel better. The food she warmed for him, the
coffee that was heated and served steaming, these gave him
courage as nothing yet had. He fairly choked, and a mist swam
before his eyes, when she [363] suddenly held the fragrant,
inspiring beverage to his lips. Her voice drove away at once the
haunting noises of the wind howling up the breaks of the creek, the
insistent drip-drip of the water; her presence shut out the
vast, oppressive loneliness of the place; her bright warm color
shone in that dark against which the mere blaze of the pine
knots had been so feeble; sounds of her living presence
vanquished the silence that had weighed heavier on his spirit
than all the rocks in the bluff. The dome of that stone skull at
once became a round, cozy cup of sheltered warmth and kindly
human cheer; as much a home, there in the heart of the
wilderness, as the phoebe's nest had ever been. For the first
time the grim fact that had sent him into hiding, the horrid
tragedy, seemed to blur a bit in its outlines. Callista made a
trip down the bank to the floor of the valley, and brought up
from where she had left them a small kettle and a frying pan.

"I'll cook you a fine dinner," she said in a cheery, practical
tone, speaking as though she were in her own kitchen. She
maintained an absolutely commonplace note. Neither of them
mentioned Flenton Hands nor the reason for Lance's present
predicament. "That stuff I brought ready cooked made a pretty
good breakfast snack; but when I get me plenty of clean coals
here, we'll have some good hot sweet potatoes and bacon. I'm
right hungry myself." [364]

Lance sighed.

"I reckon I'm as much perished for sleep as for victuals," he
told her heavily. "After Buddy left me, I tried to get dry; but
we'd missed out most of the things we ought to have got when
we come a-past the place, and lost the rest in the creek; I
hadn't scarcely anything to change with. Look like I couldn't
get to sleep. Then all day yesterday I thought I'd catch a nap;
but my arm sort o' bothered me some, and--well, the water
drip-drip-drippin' out there pestered me. It seemed I must sleep
when night come again; but I don't think I had to exceed two hours
of rest."

Callista glanced keenly sidewise at him where he lay inert. The
weeks of their separation were now running into months. What
these had done to Lance grieved her generosity and flattered her
pride. Always lean and bright eyed, there was now a painful
appearance about the extreme fleshlessness of jaw and temple,
the over-brilliance of the eye in its deeply hollowed orbit.
Sight of what he had suffered for her and by her softened
Callista's voice to tenderness when she spoke.

"We'll fix it for you to rest after dinner," she told him
positively. "I can set out at the mouth of the cave, so you will
be easy in your mind; then you'll get some good sleep."

Lance accepted this as indicating that she was [365] very willing
to be rid of him and his talk. It was what might be expected. He
asked her a question or two and relapsed into silence.
Presently, noticing that his eyes were not closed, she gave him
some additional news.

"The baby's about to walk," she said. "He's a-pullin' up by the
chairs all the time, and he can go from one person to another,
if they'll hold out they' hands."

A swift contraction passed over Lance's features at the picture
her words called up.

"Haven't got him named yet?" he suggested huskily.

The color flared warm on Callista's face as she bent to the
fire.

"I--why--Gran'pappy's an old man, and I'm the onliest grandchild
he's got. He always was powerful kind to me; and the baby--why,
he just--"

"You've called the boy Ajax," supplied Lance, in that tired
voice which now was his. "That's a good name."

While she cooked the "fine dinner" their talk blew idly across
the surface of deeps which both dreaded.

"Pore Roxy!" Lance said musingly. "Hit was mighty kind of her to
send me her gospel quilt."

From her work at the fire Callista answered him. [366]

"Your sister Roxy thinks a heap o' you, Lance; you needn't never
to doubt it. Course she does, or she wouldn't always have been
pickin' at you."

Lance lay tensely quiescent a moment, then he questioned softly,

"Is that a sign?"

Callista glanced at him a bit startled; but the long lashes
veiled his eyes, and the face was indecipherable.

"Roxy was bound and determined to come here in my place," she
observed. "I reckon I'd never 'a' got the word where you was hid
out if it hadn't 'a' been for her. Sylvane wouldn't tell her,
and she come to me about it. Sis' Roxy has a kind heart under
her sharp speech."

From beneath those shadowing lashes Lance looked long and
curiously at her, but made no response. After the meal was
served and eaten with a sort of subdued enjoyment, they continued
silent, glancing furtively at each other, Callista a bit uneasy,
and most urgent that he should try to rest.

When she rose and went lightly about little homely tasks, her
husband's eyes followed her every movement. Something he wanted
to say--the sum of all those days of black loneliness and nights
of brooding in the Gap cabin after she left him there--stuck in
his throat and held him silent. A tiny creature, probably the
rock vole, [367] nosing about in the obscurity which hid the rear
of the cave, dislodged something which fell with a sudden pang of
musical sound across the aching silence, to be followed by tiny
squeakings and scuttlings. Callista turned, her hand raised to
her lip, and stared into the darkness whence the airy chord
spoke to her. Lance looked up and caught the shine of the
firelight on her white cheek, her bright hair, lighting a spark
in the eye which was averted from him.

"It's my old banjo," he said nervelessly. "Go get it, Callista,
and break it up and put it on the fire."

She seemed to hear only the opening words of his command, and
moved quietly into the shadows behind them, groped for the
instrument, found and brought it forward in her hand.

"Break it 'crost your knee, and then burn it," Lance prompted
her.

She looked at him with a curious round of the eye, a swift
surprise that was almost terror. The banjo, lacking a string and
with the remaining four sagging woefully, yet spoke its
querulous little protest in her fingers. This was the voice that
had cried under her window. Here was the singer of "How many
miles, how many years?" and she was bidden to break it and cast
it to the flames. This had been Lance's joy of life, the
expression of moods outside her understanding and sympathy. She
caught the shining [368] thing to her as though she defended it
from some menace, cherishing it in a kindly grasp.

"Oh, no," she answered softly. "No, Lance. I couldn't burn it
up. It's--the banjo is the most harmless thing in the world. Why
should I be mad at it?"

"You used to be," said Lance simply. "I--" he hesitated, then
finished with a sort of haste--"I always was a fool about it. I
think you'd better put it in the fire."

Reverently she touched the strings, struggling with something
too big for expression.

"I'll never harm it," she told him. "If I thought you would, I'd
take it back with me and keep it till--till you could come and
play it again. You just don't feel like yourself now."

His arm dropped to the rock beside him. His face, turned away
from her, was laid sidewise upon it. She guessed that he feigned
sleep.

She had forgiven the banjo. She spoke of his homecoming. She
would accept him. She would hold nothing against him! . . . Yet,
somehow, he could not find in his sore heart the joy and
gratitude which should have answered to this state of affairs.
He ought to be thankful. It was more than he deserved. Yet--to
be forgiven, to be accepted--when had Lance Cleaverage ever
desired such boons?

When all was cleared away with efficient, skillful swiftness,
Callista left her patient lying [369] quiescent, and went to the
cave, wrapping herself in one of the homespun blankets and sitting
where she could look out and see the valley. After a time
inaction became irksome, and she went down to gather more
chestnut wood for his fire. This she piled in the vestibule,
laying it down lightly for fear of disturbing the sleeper. The
afternoon wore on. Once she looked around the turn, but the fire
had declined, and she could make out nothing save a bulk of
shadow where Lance lay. Stealing in, she laid on more wood. The
next time she went out the sun was sunk behind the western
ranges, and twilight, coming fast, warned her that she must
presently get back to her tryst with Sylvane. Returning with the
last load of fuel, she found the inner chamber of the cave full
of the broken brightness that came from a branch of pine she had
ventured to put in place, seeing that the smoke so completely
took care of itself. Her husband still lay with his head on his
arm. She would not wake him. Doubtfully she regarded the
prostrate figure, then knelt a moment at his side and whispered,

"Lance. Lance, I have obliged to go now. Either Sylvane or me--or
both of us--will be here a-Wednesday night about moonrise. If
anything happens that we can't come Wednesday, we'll be here the
next night."

She waited a moment. Getting no response, she murmured, [370]

"Good-by, Lance."

The tone was kind, even tender. Yet the man, whose closed lids
covered waking eyes, felt no impulse to let her know that he
heard, no desire to respond to her farewell. [371]



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SHERIFF SCORES.



LANCE CLEAVERAGE lay in the cavern above the East Fork of Caney
for nearly two weeks. The search for him was persistent, even
savage, the reason given being that he had attempted the life of
an officer of the law. Flenton Hands had been taken to the house
of his kinsman the sheriff, and the bulletins sent out from his
bedside were not encouraging; yet Lance's people clung to such
hope as they might from the fact that the man was not yet dead.

"No, Flent ain't gone yet," Beason would rumble out when
questioned on the subject, "but he's mighty low--mighty low.
He's liable to drop off any time; and who'd take Lance
Cleaverage then, I'd like to know? Not me. No, nor not any man
I've met, so far. The thing for us to do is to git that thar
wild hawk of a feller while they's nothing agin him more than
assault with intent to kill, or some such. When he smells hemp
in the business, he's goin' to make it too dangerous for anybody
to go after him, and his folks'll git him out o' them mountains
and plumb away to Texas, or Californy."

This it was which, urging haste, gave the hunt [372] its flavor of
savagery. The empty cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel had been
ransacked again and again; it was known to be watched day and
night; the espionage on the house of Kimbro Cleaverage and that
of the Gentrys was almost as close. But Callista and Sylvane
continually evaded it at night, and kept the fugitive in his
cave well provided. In spite of their care, Lance pined visibly.
His arm was almost healed; he suffered from no definite bodily
ailment, save a low, fretting fever; but his manner was one of
heavy languor, broken by random breaths of surface irritability.

Then came a Saturday night when Beason's men, watching a trail,
surprised and took Sylvane laden with food and necessaries
plainly intended for the man in hiding. They rose up from behind
some rocks by the roadside and had the boy in their clutches
almost before he knew to be alarmed. It was a raw, gray February
evening, drawing in sullenly to night, with a spit of rain in
the air, freezing as it fell, stinging the cheek like a whip-lash,
numbing toes and fingers. The boy looked desolately up the long
road which he had intended to forsake for a safer trail at the
next turning. He glanced at his laden mule, and answered at random
the volleyed questions flung at him. Finally Beason, heavy,
black-bearded, saturnine, silenced them all and opened out, with
the dignity of his office, [373]

"Now see here, Sylvanus Cleaverage, these gentlemen with me is
sworn officers of the law. We know whar you're a-goin' at, and
who you're a-goin' to. They's no use to dodge."

"I ain't a-dodgin'," retorted Sylvane, and in the tilt of his
head against the weak light of the western sky one got his full
resemblance to Lance. "If you know so mighty well and good right
where I was a-goin' at, go thar yo'self," he concluded,
desperate, at the end of everything. "What you pesterin' me
about it for? With your kind leave I'll turn around and walk
myself back home."

"No you won't," Beason countered. "Ain't I told you that we're
all officers of the law, and I'm sheriff of this here county,
and I aim to do my duty as sworn to perform it? What you got to
do is to jest move along in the--in the direction you was a-goin',
and lead us to Lance Cleaver-age. You do that, or you'll wish
you had."

It was a lack of tact to threaten even this younger one of the
Cleaverage boys.

"I'll never do yo' biddin'," Sylvane told him with positiveness,
"not this side of the grave. As for makin' me wish I had, you
can kill me, but that won't get Buddy for you. He's whar you
can't take him. You'll never find him; an' if you did, no ten
men could take him whar he's at. An' if I was killed and put out
of the way, there's them that would still feed him and carry him
the news." [374]

"The good God A'mighty! Who wants to kill you, you fool boy?"
demanded Beason testily. "There's been too much killin' did;
that's the trouble."

"Oh--Flent's dead then?" inquired Sylvane on a falling note,
searching the faces before him in the dusk.

"Will you lead us to whar Lance is at, or will you not?"
demanded Beason monotonously, dropping the flimsy pretense that
they had any knowledge of the fugitive's hiding place.

"I'll go with you to Pappy," Sylvane compromised. "Whatever Pappy
says will be right."

So they all turned and went together to the old Cleaverage
place, the boy on his laden mule riding in their midst. They
found Kimbro at home sick. He got up, trembling, from his bed
and dressed himself.

"Gentlemen," he said to them, appearing in their midst, humbled,
broken, but still self-respecting, "I wish my son Lance would
surrender himself up to the law--yes, I do. His health is giving
way under what he has to endure. But lead you to him I will not,
without I first get his consent to do so. If you have a mind to
stay here--and if you will give me yo' word of honor not to
foller nor watch me, Sheriff Beason--I will go myself and see
what he has to say; and I'll come back and tell you."

Beason held a prolonged whispered consultation [375] with his three
men. At the end of it he turned and said to the father half
surlily,

"Go ahead, I give you my word to neither foller nor watch."

The men sprawled themselves about Roxy Griever's hearthstone,
warming luxuriously, dreading to go forth again into the raw
February weather. Roxy followed her father to the door.

"Pappy," she pleaded, clinging to his arm. "Hit'll be the death
of you to go abroad this-a-way, sick like you air, and all."

"No, Roxana--no, daughter," Kimbro replied, drawing her gently
out to the porch, whence they could see Sylvane getting a saddle
on to Satan. "I feel as though I might be greatly benefited if
only this matter of Lance's can be fixed up. I consider that
they trust me more than another when they consent to let me go
this way."

Roxy's eye rolled toward the doorway and dwelt upon the officers
of the law who were to remain her guests till her father's
return. Across her mind came dim visions of heroic biblical
women who had offered deadly hospitality to such. Step by step
she followed Kimbro to the gate, whispering,

"Don't you git Lance to give himself up, Pappy--don't do it. You
tell him Sylvane is a-goin' to fetch extra ammunition from
Hepzibah, and if he can hold out till Spring, these fellers [376]
is bound to git tired and turn loose the job. He can slip away
then; or they'll be wore out, an' ready to make some sort o'
terms with the boy."

"Daughter," said the old man, softly, "your brother would be
dead before Spring."

"Well, he'll shore die," cried the poor woman, in a sort of
piercing whisper, "ef they take him down to jail in the
settlement. Pappy, you know Lance ain't never goin' to live--_in
the jail!_"

And Kimbro left her sobbing at the gate, as he rode away on the
black horse, his frail, drooping figure a pathetic contrast to
the young animal's mettlesome eagerness. [377]



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ISLAND AT LAST.



After his father left him, Lance slept, the sleep of a condemned
and shriven man, long and deep and dreamless, the first sound
rest his tortured nerves and flagging powers had known since the
night in Hepzibah.

Kimbro Cleaverage--following Sylvane's directions--had come
without difficulty to his son's cave hide-out, arriving at about
eleven o'clock. He found Lance sitting wakeful by the fire, the gay
folds of the gospel quilt over his knees, played upon by the shimmer
and shine of the leaping blaze. The young man's fever-bright gaze
was directed with absorbed attention toward his work. He was
delicately snipping loose ends with the shears, while a threaded
needle was stuck in the lapel of his coat. He had taken the scarlet
calico and cut from it a series of tiny Greek crosses, beautifully
exact and deftly grouped and related so as to form a border around
the entire square. With that sense of decorative effect which was
denied his sister, he had set these so that the interplay of red and
white pleased the eye, and almost redeemed the archaic absurdities
of the quilt itself. Skilled with the needle as a woman, he had
[378] basted the last cross in place when his father entered.

The talk which followed, there in that subterranean atmosphere
that is neither out-nor in-door, neither dark nor light, was
long and earnest. Kimbro spoke freely, and there was always that
in his father which took Lance by the throat. Perhaps it was the
entire lack of accusation; perhaps something in the old man's
personality that appealed with its tale of struggle and failure,
its frank revelation of patiently borne defeat.

"I'll go right back with you, Pappy, if you say so," Lance
murmured huskily at the last, looking up into the gray old face
above him like the child he had used to be. "As well now as any
time."

"No, son," said Kimbro slowly. His heart ached with the cry,
"The Lord knows there ain't no such hurry--there'll be time
enough afterward!" But his habit of gentle stoicism prevailed,
and he only paused a little, then added, "I reckon we better not
do that--I reckon we couldn't very well. I rode the black nag
pretty hard coming up. The going's heavy. He couldn't carry us
both back, not in any sort of time; and nary one of us is fit to
make it afoot. No, I'll take the word to Beason, and him and his
men will likely stay at our house till in the morning--poor
Roxy! Sylvane'll ride the mule up here tol'able early, and lead
your horse. You go straight home. [379] Beason and his men can
come for you to your house. Will that suit?"

"Hit'll suit" Lance answered.

There was along silence between the two. Then the old man moved
to the cave's mouth. "Farewell," he said, and stood hesitating,
his back to his son.

Lance followed his father a few halting paces, carrying a chunk
of fire, lighting the old man down the bank.

"Farewell, Pappy," he echoed.

"All right, son," came back the faint hail, then after a
moment's silence Kimbro's voice added, "Thank you for sending
this word by me. Farewell," and there was the sound of his
footsteps moving on down the little valley.

Probably six hours later, Lance wakened and lay looking at the
embers; he reached out a languid hand to push a brand in place.
Presently he rose and built up the smoldering fire, and
thereafter sat beside it, head on hand, his hollow eyes studying
the coals. His father was gone back to notify the sheriff. Well,
that was right--a man must answer for the thing he did; and they
said that Flenton Hands was dead. He was not consciously glad of
this--nor regretful; he was only very weary, spent and at the
end of everything. How could he have done otherwise than he had
done? And yet--and yet--

His mind went back the long way to his wooing [380] of Callista.
What a flowery path it was to lead to such a bleak conclusion! Then
once more his thought veered, like the light shifting smoke above
the fire, to Hands. They'd hardly hang him for the killing. It was
not a murder. There were those who would testify as to what his
provocation had been. But it would mean his days shut away from
the sun; a disgraced name to hand down to his boy.

For no reason which he could have given, the sound of a banjo
whispered in his memory, "How many miles, how many years?" Ah,
the miles and the years then! Callista would be free--and that
would be right, too. He had no call to cling to her and claim
her. She had never been his, never--never--never! An inconsequent
vision of her face lying on his breast the night he had climbed
the wild grapevine to her window came mockingly back to tantalize
him. He stirred uneasily, and reached to lay another chunk in place,
mutely answering the recollection back again--she had never been his.

Then suddenly his head lifted with a start; there was the noise
of a rolling stone outside, a thrashing of the bushes, a rush of
hurrying feet, and even before he could spring up Callista was
in the cave.

But not any Callista Lance had ever known; not the scornful
beauty who throned herself among her mates and accepted the
homage of mankind as her due; not the flushed, tremulous Callista
of that [381] never-to-be-forgotten night at the window. This
was not the young wife of the earlier married days--least of all
the mother of his son, or the kindly friend, the stanch partner,
who had tended on and served him here in the cave. This was a
strange, fierce, half-distraught, shining-eyed Callista, a fit
adventurer, if she list, to put forth toward his island. A
little dark shawl was tied over her bright head; but from under
its confining edges the fair locks, usually so ordered and
placid, streamed loosely around the face which looked out white
and fearful. Her dress was soaked about the edges and all up one
side. It was stained with earth, there, too, ripped loose from
the waist, and torn till it hung in long, streaming shreads. A
deep scratch across her cheek bled unheeded, and a flying strand
of hair had glued fast in it. Her shaking hands were bleeding
too, and grimed with woods mold, her finger nails were packed
with it, where she had fallen again and again and scrambled up.
She walked staggeringly and breathed in gasps.

"They--" she panted, then took two or three laboring breaths
before she could go on. "They told me at Father Cleaverage's
that they was goin' to send here and fetch you in--is that so?"

"I reckon they are," the man beside the fire assented
nervelessly.

A wild look lightened over her face. She came stumblingly up to
him.

"Lance!" she choked. "Did you sure enough [382] _send_ that word by
your father to the sheriff?--Did you _say_ you'd give up and go
in--did you?"

"Yes," he returned somberly. "I did, Callista. That's all that
was left me."

"My God!" she breathed. "And I couldn't believe it--not a word
of it. But I just slipped out and come. I've got Gran'pappy's
horse Maje and the Mandy mule tied down in the bushes below
there, and--"

Cleaverage glanced about him and, rising, began to roll together
the blankets of his bed.

"Yes," he repeated, in a sort of automatic fashion. "Pappy left
me before midnight, and he was riding Satan. I reckon I ought to
be moving right soon now. It must be sun-up outside, ain't it?"

She looked at him with desperate doubt.

"Lance!" she demanded, clutching his arm with her trembling
hand. "What made you send Father Cleaverage with such word as
that?--and never let me know!--Oh, Lance, what did you do it
for? Bring them things and come on down quick. There may be time
yet."

He stared at her dumbly questioning for a moment. Long misery
had made his wits slow. He plainly hesitated between thinking
her the emissary sent from home for him and the understanding
that she wanted him to escape.

"Time?" he repeated. "Do you mean--?" [383]

Her lips shaped "yes," her eyes fastened upon his face.

He took it very quietly. Slowly he shook his head.

"I ain't got any right to do that," he said. "I've given my word
to Pappy. They'd hold him for it. And if I did go, I'd be
running and hiding the balance o' my days. You and the boy would
be lost to me--same as you will be as it is. And--and you
wouldn't be free. I done the thing. Let me take my punishment
like a man, Callista. Oh, for God's sake," he cried out with a
sudden sharp cry, "let me do something like a man! I've played
the fool boy long enough."

He dropped back into a sitting posture beside the fire. Callista
had never released his arm. It was plain that his attitude
frightened her more terribly than any violence of resistance
would have done. She bent over him now in the tremulous
intensity of her purpose, whispering, the low pleading of her
voice still interrupted with little gasps.

"You're broke down living this-a-way. Lance. You don't know your
own mind--you ain't fit to speak for yourself."

"Oh, Callista," said Lance's quiet tones, "I'm a sight fitter to
speak for myself now than I ever was before in my life. I've got
it to do."

Up to this time, the trouble between these two had continued to
be a lovers' quarrel. Leaving [384] Lance alone in the house he
had builded for her, throwing back into his face such help as he
would have followed her with, Callista had but triumphed as she
used to when they bickered before an audience of their mates.
Angry as she actually was when she broke with him, there could
not fail, also, to be a cruel satisfaction in the knowledge of
how she put him from his ordinary, how she changed the course of
his life, and knew him her pining lover, the man who could not
sleep o' nights for thought of her. Perhaps, when his pride was
broken, and he came suing to her, personally, she would go home
with him and patch the matter up with patronage and forgiveness.
From the first this expected consummation had been vaguely
shadowed in her mind back of all she did or refused to do. Here
and now was the matter sharply taken out of her hands. Lance
turned his back on her. He reckoned without her. He promised to
others that which would set him at once and permanently beyond
her recall. With an impassioned gesture, she flung herself down
on her knees before him where he sat. Her arms went around him,
her face was pressed against him.

"No, no. Lance," she implored. "You might speak for yourself--but
who's to speak for me? What'll I do when they take you from me?
I'd sooner hide like a wild varmint all my days. I'd sooner--oh,
come on and go with me, Lance. I'll run with you as long as
we both live." [385]

"That wouldn't be a fit life for you and the baby," Lance told
her.

"The baby!" replied Callista, almost scornfully. "I didn't aim
to take him along. It's you and me, Lance--you and me."

Gazing up at him, she saw the look in her husband's face; she
saw that his thoughts were clearing, and that the resolute,
formulated negative was coming.

"Oh, don't say it, Lance!" she cried, her arms tightening
convulsively around his body, the tears streaming down her
lifted face, washing away the blood. A great coughing sob shook
her from head to foot. "Oh, Lance, don't--don't do it! I know--"
she hastened pitifully--"I know I haven't got any rights. I know
I've wore out your love. But oh, please, honey, come with me and
let's run."

Through the man's dazed senses the truth had made its way at
last. He sat wonder-smitten. The weeping woman on her knees
before him looking up into his face, with eyes from which the
veil of pride and indifference was rent away, eyes out of which
the sheer, hungry, unashamed adoration gazed.

"Lance," she began at last, in a voice that was scarce more than
a breath, a mere shadow of sound, "I've never told you. Look
like I always waited for you to say. But since--long ago--ever
since you and me was boy and girl--and [386] girl together--They
was never anybody for me but you--you, dear. They's nothing you
could do or be that would make it different. I--my heart--If
they take you away from me, Lance, darlin', they might just as
well kill me."

Lance reached around and got the two hands that were clinging to
him so frantically. He held them, one over the other, in his own
and, bending his head, kissed them again and again. He touched
the loose hair about her forehead, then mutely laid his lips
against its fairness. He lifted his head and looked long into
her eyes with a look which she could not understand.

"You--you're a-comin', Lance?" she breathed.

He shook his head ever so little.

"Callista," he said very softly, and the name was a caress,--
"mine--my girl--my Callista, you're a-goin' to help me do the
right thing."

She started back a little; she caught her breath, and her blue
eyes dilated upon him.

"The right thing," her husband repeated, with something that was
almost a smile on his lips. "And that's to ride over home and
give myself up. God bless you, dear, I can do it now with a
quiet mind. Oh, Callista--Callista--I'm happier this minute than
I ever was before in my life! Whatever comes, I can face it
now."

Callista crouched with parted lips and desperate eyes. About
them there was silence, broken only by the tiny sibilations of
the fire, the hushed voice [387] of the night wind muttering in
the outer chamber of the cave, as the air sighs through the open
lips of a sea-shell. Her ear was against his breast; with a sort
of creeping terror she heard the even beating of his heart. He
could say such words quietly! An awful sense of powerlessness
gripped her. Lance was arbiter of his own fate. If he chose, he
could do this thing. She was like one who waits, the flood at
her lips, while the inevitable death rises slowly to engulf.
Then it was as if the waters closed above her. With a whispered
cry she settled forward against him, and rested so, held close
in his embrace. Little shivers went over her lax body. She
uttered brief, broken murmurs. Down and down she sank in the
arms that clasped her. Lance bent his head to hear.

"Well--if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with
you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll
suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine--oh, the fault was
mine!"

"We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said
to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting
the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that
demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no
initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my
girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on,
darlin', I've got to make good my word." [388]

Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved
silently about the cave and, without any further word of
remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make
them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has
dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their
farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks.

When they stepped forth, they found the sun fully risen upon a
morning fair and promising. Callista looked long at the rock-house
as, carrying their bundles, they passed it on the way to their
mounts.

"And I had you for my own--all my own--and nobody to hinder--while
we lived there," she said, speaking in a slow, wondering tone.
"Oh, Lord! Foolish people have to learn hard when 'tis that
they're blessed."

Lance's free arm went around her slight body and drew her close
to his side as they walked. When they reached the animals, he
loaded the bedding and other things carefully upon them, then
turned to her.

"Sweetheart," he said, with that strange deep glow in his eyes,
"folks that love each other like we do are blessed all the time,
whether they're free and together--or separated--or in jail.
They're blessed whether they're above ground or below it." He
kissed her and lifted her lightly to Maje's back and they rode
away.

As they followed down Caney and struck [389] eastward toward the
Cleaverage place, the morning drew on, sweet and towardly. For
all the cold, there was an under-note of Spring in the air.
February felt the stirring of the year which had turned in its
sleep. They rode together, hand in hand, where the trail
permitted, both remembering--Lance with an added light in his eyes
and a meaning smile, Callista with a sudden burst of tears--that
other ride they had taken together. Lance's arm around her,
her head on his shoulder, when they went down to Squire Ashe's
to be married.

They traveled thus, in silence or with few words spoken, for
nearly two hours. Their best road home would take them past the
old Cleaverage place, and within a mile of the house. As they
drew near this point something stirred down deep under Lance's
quiet. His breath quickened, his face set in sharp lines. He
suddenly strained Callista to him in a grasp that hurt, then
released her, touched the patient Maje with his heel and pushed
ahead at a good gait. Callista, watching him, followed drooping
and mute. Moving so, swiftly and in single file they reached the
place whence they could see the chimney of the Kimbro Cleaverage
house through the trees, and were aware of a woman on a black
horse, a child carried carefully in her arms, coming toward
them. Callista lifted her hanging head and looked wonderingly
around her husband. [390]

"Why, I do believe that's Ola Derf on Cindy!" she said heavily.
"Is it? No, I reckon not."

Since the day on which Ola had bidden her strange reproachful
adieu to Lance's empty room, no one had seen her on Turkey
Track, though it was reported that she was staying with kin no
further away than Hepzibah.

"It is Ola," said Callista, as the rider of the black filly came
nearer. "And she--she's got my baby! O Lord! What now?"

For a moment the astonishment of it dulled the agony of
rebellion which once more surged in Callista's soul as she
looked at that chimney through the trees and knew that there by
its hearthstone were the sheriff and his men ready to take Lance
from her.

"I come a-past the Gentry place and stopped to git the boy," Ola
called, as soon as she could make them hear.

It occurred to Callista that this girl, too, supposed that Lance
would try to escape, and that they would wish to take the baby
with them.

"Sheriff Beason and his men are in yon," Lance told Ola,
glancing in the direction of his father's house. "I'm going to
my own place to give myself up--they're coming up there for me."

Ola nodded, without making any immediate reply. She looked with
curious questioning from husband to wife, shifting the baby to
her hip. [391]

"My, but he's solid," she said enviously, the aboriginal mother-woman
showing strong in her ugly little brown face.

"I'll take him," Callista murmured, putting out her arms almost
mechanically.

But Ola made no movement to hand over the baby. She yet sat her
horse, glancing from one countenance to the other.

"I've been a-stayin' down in Hepzibah," she observed abruptly.
"My man, he's about to be out of the pen, and him and Flent
Hands had dealings that--well, that's what Charlie was sent up
for."

"Your man?" echoed Callista; and Lance smiled as she had not
seen him for long.

"Yes, Charlie Massengale, my man," Ola repeated. "Heap o' folks
around here didn't know I had one. We was wedded in the
Territory when I was fo'teen, and he got into trouble in the
Settlement--this here trouble that Flent was mixed up in--and
Pappy 'lowed that as long as 'yo' old man was in the pen you
better not name anything about him.'"

She was smoothing the baby's garments, making ready, with
evident reluctance, to surrender him to them. Ajax the Second
shouted inarticulately at his mother, but kept a fairly
apprehensive eye upon the man who rode beside her.

"Well, young feller," said Ola finally, lifting the baby and
holding him toward his parents, "I [392] reckon I've got to give
you up, jest like I had to give up yo' pappy afore ye."

She laughed a little hardily, and looked with a sort of dubious
defiance at Callista, who paid no attention, but pushed her mule
close in beside Cindy.

"They say that Flenton Hands is--is--Did you go to Flenton's
funeral, Ola?" asked Callista fearfully, as the women negotiated
the exchange of the baby.

Ola laughed again, and more loudly.

"I say funeral!" she exclaimed. "Flenton Hands has got a
powerful lot more davilment to do in this world before they put
him un'neath the ground. I--Pappy--they--well, you know I was
down there when this all happened, and somehow, I thest got the
notion in my head that Flent wasn't so mighty awful bad hurt;
and when I heared how Beason was a-carryin' on, I went to their
house to see Flent. I named to him that Charlie's time was 'bout
to be up an' he'd be out, and that what Charlie had stood for
him was a plenty. I axed him didn't he want to send a writin' up
to Beason and stop this foolishness up here on Turkey Track, and
after I'd talked to him for a little spell he 'lowed he did."

Callista, hearkening in silence, caught the child in so strained
a grasp that he made a little outcry, half scared, half offended.
Ola pulled from the bosom of her dress a letter which she flung
over to [393] Lance with the uncouth yet generous gesture of a
savage.

"'Course Flent could hang on and make you a little trouble--but
he ain't a-goin' to," she said sturdily. "I reckon he's called
off his dogs in that writin'. Hit's to Dan Beason."

With the words she wheeled her horse and would have gone, but
Callista, at the imminent risk of dropping Ajax, caught at
Cindy's bridle rein.

"I've got a heap to thank you for, Ola Derf," she said in a
voice shaken with deep feeling.

"You ain't got a thing in the world to thank me for, Callista
Gentry," declared the little brown girl, and drew her black
brows at Lance's wife. But Callista's whole nature melted into
grateful love.

"Where you goin' now?" she asked wistfully. "Looks like you and
me ought to be better friends than we ever have been."

Ola considered the proposition, and shook her head.

"I reckon not," she said finally. "I'm a-goin' down to Nashville
right soon. Charlie will want me to be right thar when he gits
out. He's not the worst man in the world, ef he ain't--"

She turned a sudden swimming look on the pair with their child.

"Good-by," she ended abruptly, and signaling Cindy with her heel,
loped off down the road.

The hounds at the Kimbro Cleaverage place [394] were evidently away
on hunting enterprises of their own. Lance and his wife rode to the
gate without challenge, dismounted, tethered the animals, and
omitting the customary halloo, opened the door upon the family
seated at a late breakfast.

For a moment nobody in the room stirred or spoke. The sheriff
paused with a morsel checked on its way to his open mouth. Roxy
Griever, coffee-pot in hand, stopped between fireplace and table.
Sylvane, who had half risen at the sound of steps, remained as he
was, staring, while old Kimbro's eyes reached the newcomer with
pathetic entreaty in their depths. Ma'y-Ann-Marth' broke the spell
by rushing at her Uncle Lance and butting into his knees, shouting
welcome. Then Sylvane hastily leaped up and ran to his brother's
side, as though to share as nearly as might be that which must now
befall. The men on Beason's either hand nudged him and whispered.

"Do it quick," Roxy heard one mutter.

"Better get the handcuffs on him," admonished the other. "He's a
slippery cuss."

Roxy cast a look of helpless fury at the officers of the law,
and mechanically advanced to fill their cups once more--gladly
would she have poured to them henbane, plague, the venom of
adders. Beason jammed into his mouth the bite he had started to
take, and speaking around it in a voice of somewhat impaired
dignity, began his solemn recitative, [395]

"Lance Cleaverage, I arrest you in the name of the law--"

"Hold on a minute," suggested Lance, mildly, bending to pick up
Ma'y-Ann-Marth' (both of the deputies ducked as his head went
down); "I've got a letter for you, Daniel Beason." He tossed the
envelope to the sheriff across the little girl's flaxen head.
"Read it before you make your arrest. Read it out, or to yourself."

"Flent ain't dead!" cried Roxy, with a woman's instinctive
piercing to the heart of the matter. They all remained gazing at
Beason while he tore open and laboriously deciphered the
communication. His face fell almost comically.

"No, he ain't dead--an' he ain't a-goin' to die," blustered the
sheriff, trying to cover his own pre-knowledge of the fact.
"Well, he's made a fool of me one time too many. When I go back
to Hepzibah, I'll settle this here business with Mr. Flenton
Hands, that thinks he can sick the law on people and call it
off, same as you would a hound dog. Ouch! The good Lord, woman!
you needn't scald a body."

For in her blissful relief, Roxy had swung the spout of the
coffee-pot a wide circle, which sprayed the boiling fluid
liberally over the sheriff's thumb. He regarded her frowningly,
the member in his mouth, as she set the pot down ruthlessly on
her cherished tablecloth of floursacks and ran to add herself to
the group about her returned brother. [396]

The deputies got to their feet and came over to shake hands,
muttering broken phrases concerning the law, and always having
entertained the utmost good will toward their quarry. Even
Beason, nursing his painful thumb, finally offered a surly paw.
Only old Kimbro wheeled from the table and sat with bent head,
his working face turned toward the hearthstone, tears running
unchecked, unheeded, down the cheeks that had never been thus
wet in the days of his most poignant sorrow.

"No, thank you kindly. Sis' Roxy," Lance refused his sister's
invitation when she would have forced him and Callista into
places at the table. "We'll be movin' along home." His tones
dwelt fondly on the word. "Neither Callista nor me is rightly
hungry yet; we'll take our first meal at our own place to-day."

It was bare branches they rode under going home to the cabin in
the Gap; but the sap had started at the roots. Winter had done
his worst; his bolt was sped; Spring was on the way.

Fire was kindled once more on the cold hearth, a splendid banner
of flame wrapping the hickory logs, and Lance sat before it with
his son on his knees, warming the small rosy feet chilled from
the long ride. For a moment he caught and held both restless,
dimpled little members in one sinewy brown hand, marveling at
them, thrilling to the touch of their velvet softness.

Outside, a cardinal's note came persistently [397] from the stream's
edge, a gallant call. High over the Cumberlands arched the blue,
dappled with white cloud. It was a rarely beautiful day, such as
nearly every February brings a few of in that region. On every
rocky hillside farm of the mountain country harness and implements
were being dragged forth and inspected against the beginning of
the year's work. Winter's prisoners were everywhere rejoicing in
the prospect of release. Doors were left open; girls called from
outside announcing finds of early blossoms; the piping voices of
children at play came shrill and keen on the cool, sunlit air.

Within Callista's dusk kitchen, the firelight set moving ruddy
shine and shadow on the brown walls. Midway one of these she had
hung up the banjo, having carried it home across her shoulders.
Its sheepskin round showed a misty moon within the gleam of
metal band where the blaze struck out a sparkling crescent to
rim one side. It made no question now of "How many miles, how
many years?" for the answer was come. Later Lance would take it
down and string it afresh, and the little feet that kicked their
pink heels against his knee, their fat toes curling ecstatically
in the heat of the fire, would dance to its strumming. Even
Callista would learn the delight of measuring her step by its
music. But now it was mute. There was no need of its voice in
the harmony that was here. And when Callista, in the pauses of
her [398] homely task of dinner making, knelt beside the pair at
the fire and encircled them both with her arms, Lance knew that he
had at last brought home his own to his island. An island! It
stretched away before the eye of his spirit, a continent, a
world, a universe! The confines of that airy domain where he had
dwelt alone and uncompanioned, were suddenly wide enough to take
in all mankind, though they held just now only the trinity of
home--father, mother, and child.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage" ***

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