 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
The Birth of Love
Every day little Jemina worked the still on her side of
the stream, and Boscoe Doldrum worked the still on his
side.
Sometimes, with automatic inherited hatred, the
feudists would throw whiskey at each other, and Jemina
would come home smelling like a French table d'hôte.
But now Jemina was too thoughtful to look across
the stream.
How wonderful the stranger had been and how oddly
he was dressed! In her innocent way she had never
believed that there were any civilized settlements at
all, and she had put the belief in them down to the
credulity of the mountain people.
She turned to go up to the cabin, and, as she turned
something struck her in the neck. It was a sponge,
thrown by Boscoe Doldrum—a sponge soaked in whiskey
from his still on the other side of the stream.
"Hi, thar, Boscoe Doldrum," she shouted in her deep
bass voice.
"Yo! Jemina Tantrum. Gosh ding yo'!" he returned.
She continued her way to the cabin.
The stranger was talking to her father. Gold had
been discovered on the Tantrum land, and the stranger,
Edgar Edison, was trying to buy the land for a song.
He was considering what song to offer.
She sat upon her hands and watched him.
He was wonderful. When he talked his lips moved.
She sat upon the stove and watched him.
Suddenly there came a blood-curdling scream. The
Tantrums rushed to the windows.
It was the Doldrums.
They had hitched their steers to trees and concealed
perfect rattle of stones and bricks beat against the windows,
bending them inward.
"Father! father!" shrieked Jemina.
Her father took down his slingshot from his slingshot
rack on the wall and ran his hand lovingly over the elastic
band. He stepped to a loophole. Old Mappy Tantrum
stepped to the coalhole.
| Tales of the jazz age | |