II
ON THE WILD DOG'S TRAIL A Knight of the Cumberland | ||
2. II
ON THE WILD DOG'S TRAIL
SO up we went past Bee Rock, Preacher's Creek and Little Looney, past the mines where high on a “tipple” stood the young engineer looking down at us, and looking after the Blight as we passed on into a dim rocky avenue walled on each side with rhododendrons. I waved at him and shook my head—we would see him coming back. Beyond a deserted log-cabin we turned up a spur of the mountain. Around a clump of bushes we came on a gray-bearded mountaineer holding his horse by the bridle and from a covert high above two more men appeared with
“Are they moonshiners?”
I nodded sagely, “Most likely,” and the Blight was thrilled. They might have been squirrel-hunters most innocent, but the Blight had heard much talk of moonshine stills and mountain feuds and the men who run them and I took the risk of denying her nothing. Up and up we went, those two mules swaying from side to side with a motion little short of elephantine and, by and by, the Blight called out:
“You ride ahead and don't you dare look back.”
Accustomed to obeying the Blight's orders, I rode ahead with eyes to the front. Presently, a shriek made me turn suddenly. It was nothing—my little sister's mule had gone near a steep cliff—perilously near, as
“Let us know if anybody comes,” they cried. A mountaineer descended into sight around a loop of the path above.
“Change cars,” I shouted.
They changed and, passing, were grave, demure—then they changed again, and thus we climbed.
Such a glory as was below, around and above us; the air like champagne; the sunlight rich and pouring like a flood on the gold that the beeches had strewn in the path, on the gold that the poplars still shook high above and shimmering on the royal scarlet of the maple and the sombre russet of the oak. From far below us to far
An hour by sun we were near the top, which was bared of trees and turned into rich farm-land covered with blue-grass. Along these upland pastures, dotted with grazing cattle, and across them we rode toward the mountain wildernesses on the other side, down into which a zigzag path wriggles along the steep front of Benham's spur. At the edge of the steep was a cabin and a bushy-bearded mountaineer,
“Oh, yes, you can git thar afore dark.”
Now I knew that the mountaineer's idea of distance is vague—but he knows how long it takes to get from one place to another. So we started down—dropping at once into thick dark woods, and as we went looping down, the deeper was the gloom. That sun had suddenly severed all connection with the laws of gravity and sunk, and it was all the darker because the stars were not out. The path was
“Hello!”
You enter no mountaineer's yard without that announcing cry. It was mediæval, the Blight said, positively—two lorn damsels, a benighted knight partially stripped of his armor by bush and sharp-edged rock, a gray palfrey (she didn't mention the impatient asses that had turned homeward) and she wished I had a horn to wind. I wanted a “horn” badly enough —but it was not the kind men wind. By and by we got a response:
“Hello!” was the answer, as an opened door let out into the yard a broad band of light. Could we stay all night? The voice replied that the owner would see “Pap.” “Pap” seemed willing, and the boy opened the gate and into the house
There, all in one room, lighted by a huge wood-fire, rafters above, puncheon floor beneath—cane-bottomed chairs and two beds the only furniture-“pap,” barefooted, the old mother in the chimney-corner with a pipe, strings of red pepper-pods, beans and herbs hanging around and above, a married daughter with a child at her breast, two or three children with yellow hair and bare feet all looking with all their eyes at the two visitors who had dropped upon them from another world. The Blight's eyes were brighter than usual—that was the only sign she gave that she was not in her own drawing-room. Apparently she saw nothing strange or unusual even, but there was really nothing that she did not see or hear
Straightway, the old woman knocked the ashes out of her pipe.
“I reckon you hain't had nothin' to eat,” she said and disappeared. The old man asked questions, the young mother rocked her baby on her knees, the children got less shy and drew near the fireplace, the Blight and the little sister exchanged a furtive smile and the contrast of the extremes in American civilization, as shown in that little cabin, interested me mightily.
“Yer snack's ready,” said the old woman. The old man carried the chairs into the kitchen, and when I followed the girls were seated. The chairs were so low that their chins came barely over their plates, and demure and serious as they were they surely looked most comical. There
After supper I joined the old man and the old woman with a pipe—exchanging my tobacco for their long green with more satisfaction probably to me than to them, for the long green was good, and strong and fragrant.
The old woman asked the Blight and the little sister many questions and they, in turn, showed great interest in the baby in arms, whereat the eighteen-year-old mother blushed and looked greatly pleased.
“You got mighty purty black eyes,” said the old woman to the Blight, and not to slight the little sister she added, “ An' you got mighty purty teeth.”
The Blight showed hers in a radiant smile and the old woman turned back to her.
“Oh, you've got both,” she said and she shook her head, as though she were thinking of the damage they had done. It was my time now—to ask questions.
They didn't have many amusements on that creek, I discovered—and no dances. Sometimes the boys went coon-hunting and there were corn-shuckings, house-raisings and quilting-parties.
“Does anybody round here play the banjo?”
“None o' my boys,” said the old woman, “but Tom Green's son down the creek —he follers pickin' the banjo a leetle.” “Follows pickin' ”—the Blight did not miss that phrase.
“What do you foller fer a livin'?” the old man asked me suddenly.
“I write for a living.” He thought a while.
“Well, it must be purty fine to have a good handwrite.” This nearly dissolved the Blight and the little sister, but they held on heroically.
“Is there much fighting around here?” I asked presently.
“Not much 'cept when one young feller up the river gets to tearin' up things. I heerd as how he was over to the Gap last week—raisin' hell. He comes by here on his way home.” The Blight's eyes opened wide—apparently we were on his trail. It is not wise for a member of the police guard at the Gap to show too much curiosity about the lawless ones of the hills, and I asked no questions.
“They calls him the Wild Dog over here,” he added, and then he yawned cavernously.
I looked around with divining eye for
“furriners” who are unable to grasp at once the primitive unconsciousness of the mountaineers and, in consequence, accept a point of view natural to them because enforced by architectural limitations and a hospitality that turns no one seeking shelter from any door. They were, however, better prepared than I had hoped for. They had a spare room on the porch and just outside the door, and when the old woman led the two girls to it, I followed with their saddle-bags. The room was about seven feet by six and was windowless.
“You'd better leave your door open a little,” I said, “or you'll smother in there.”
“Well,” said the old woman, “ hit's all
Literally, that night, I was a member of the family. I had a bed to myself (the following night I was not so fortunate)— in one corner; behind the head of mine the old woman, the daughter-in-law and the baby had another in the other corner, and the old man with the two boys spread a pallet on the floor. That is the invariable rule of courtesy with the mountaineer, to give his bed to the stranger and take to the floor himself, and, in passing,
It must have been near daybreak that I was aroused by the old man leaving the cabin and I heard voices and the sound of horses' feet outside. When he came back he was grinning.
“Hit's your mules.”
“Who found them?”
“The Wild Dog had 'em,” he said.
II
ON THE WILD DOG'S TRAIL A Knight of the Cumberland | ||