A Knight of the Cumberland by Jr. John Fox (free ebook reader .TXT) đ
- Author: Jr. John Fox
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âYes, sheâd fell down a year agoâand had sort oâ hurt herselfâdidnât do nothinâ, though, âcept break one hip,â she added, in her kind, patient old voice. Did many people stop there? Oh, yes, sometimes fifteen at a timeâthey ânever turned nobody away.â And she had a big family, little Cindy and the two big girls and Buck and Martâwho was out somewhereâand the hired man, and yesââThar was another boy, but he was fitified,â said one of the big sisters.
âI beg your pardon,â said the wondering Blight, but she knew that phrase wouldnât do, so she added politely:
âWhat did you say?â
âFitifiedâTom has fits. Heâs in a asylum in the settlements.â
âTom come back once anâ he was all right,â said the old mother; âbut he worried so much over them gals workinâ so hard that it plumâ throwed him off agâin, and we had to send him back.â
âDo you work pretty hard?â I asked presently. Then a story came that was full of unconscious pathos, because there was no hint of complaintâsimply a plain statement of daily life. They got up before the men, in order to get breakfast ready; then they went with the men into the fields âthose two girlsâand worked like men. At dark they got supper ready, and after the men went to bed they worked onâ washing dishes and clearing up the kitchen. They took it turn about getting supper, and sometimes, one said, she was âso plumb tuckered out that sheâd drap on the bed and go to sleep ruther than eat her own supper.â No wonder poor Tom had to go back to the asylum. All the while the two girls stood by the fire looking, politely but minutely, at the two strange girls and their curious clothes and their boots, and the way they dressed their hair. Their hard life seemed to have hurt them noneâfor both were the pictures of healthâwhatever that phrase means.
After supper âpapâ came in, perfectly sober, with a big ruddy face, giant frame, and twinkling gray eyes. He was the man who had risen to speak his faith in the Hon. Samuel Budd that day on the size of the Hon. Samuelâs ears. He, too, was unashamed and, as he explained his plight again, he did it with little apology.
âI seed ye at the speakinâ to-day. That man Budd is a good man. He done somethinâ fer a boy oâ mine over at the Gap.â Like little Buck, he, too, stopped short. âHeâs a good man anâ Iâm a-goinâ to help him.â
Yes, he repeated, quite irrelevantly, it was hunting hogs all day with nothing to eat and only mean whiskey to drink. Mart had not come in yetâhe was âworkinâ outâ now.
âHeâs the best worker in these mountains,â said the old woman; âMart works too hard.â
The hired man appeared and joined us at the fire. Bedtime came, and I whispered jokingly to the Blight:
âI believe Iâll ask that good-looking one to `set upâ with me.â âSettinâ upâ is what courting is called in the hills. The couple sit up in front of the fire after everybody else has gone to bed. The man puts his arm around the girlâs neck and whispers; then she puts her arm around his neck and whispersâso that the rest may not hear. This I had related to the Blight, and now she withered me.
âYou just do, now!â
I turned to the girl in question, whose name was Mollie. âBuck told me to ask you who Dave Branham was.â Mollie wheeled, blushing and angry, but Buck had darted cackling out the door. âOh,â I said, and I changed the subject. âWhat time do you get up?â
âOh, âbout crack oâ day.â I was tired, and that was discouraging.
âDo you get up that early every morning?â
âNo,â was the quick answer; âa morninâ later.â
A morning later, Mollie got up, each morning. The Blight laughed.
Pretty soon the two girls were taken into the next room, which was a long one, with one bed in one dark corner, one in the other, and a third bed in the middle. The feminine members of the family all followed them out on the porch and watched them brush their teeth, for they had never seen tooth-brushes before. They watched them prepare for bedâand I could hear much giggling and comment and many questions, all of which culminated, by and by, in a chorus of shrieking laughter. That climax, as I learned next morning, was over the Blightâs hot-water bag. Never had their eyes rested on an article of more wonder and humor than that water bag.
By and by, the feminine members came back and we sat around the fire. Still Mart did not appear, though somebody stepped into the kitchen, and from the warning glance that Mollie gave Buck when she left the room I guessed that the newcomer was her lover Dave. Pretty soon the old man yawned.
âWell, mammy, I reckon this strangerâs about ready to lay down, if youâve got a place fer him.â
âGit a light, Buck,â said the old woman. Buck got a lightâa chimneyless, smoking oil-lampâand led me into the same room where the Blight and my little sister were. Their heads were covered up, but the bed in the gloom of one corner was shaking with their smothered laughter. Buck pointed to the middle bed.
âI can get along without that light, Buck,â I said, and I must have been rather haughty and abrupt, for a stifled shriek came from under the bedclothes in the corner and Buck disappeared swiftly. Preparations for bed are simple in the mountainsâthey were primitively simple for me that night. Being in knickerbockers, I merely took off my coat and shoes. Presently somebody else stepped into the room and the bed in the other corner creaked. Silence for a while. Then the door opened, and the head of the old woman was thrust in.
âMart!â she said coaxingly; âgit up thar now anâ climb over inter bed with that ar stranger.â
That was Mart at last, over in the corner. Mart turned, grumbled, and, to my great pleasure, swore that he wouldnât. The old woman waited a moment.
âMart,â she said again with gentle imperiousness, â git up thar now, I tell ye âyouâve got to sleep with that thar stranger.â
She closed the door and with a snort Mart piled into bed with me. I gave him plenty of room and did not introduce myself. A little more dark silenceâthe shaking of the bed under the hilarity of those astonished, bethrilled, but thoroughly unfrightened young women in the dark corner on my left ceased, and again the door opened. This time it was the hired man, and I saw that the trouble was either that neither Mart nor Buck wanted to sleep with the hired man or that neither wanted to sleep with me. A long silence and then the boy Buck slipped in. The hired man delivered himself with the intonation somewhat of a circuit rider.
âIâve been a-watchinâ that star thar, through the winder. Sometimes hit moves, then hit stands plumâ still, anâ agâin hit gits to pitchinâ.â The hired man must have been touching up mean whiskey himself. Meanwhile, Mart seemed to be having spells of troubled slumber. He would snore gently, accentuate said snore with a sudden quiver of his body and then wake up with a climacteric snort and start that would shake the bed. This was repeated several times, and I began to think of the unfortunate Tom who was âfitified.â Mart seemed on the verge of a fit himself, and I waited apprehensively for each snorting climax to see if fits were a family failing. They were not. Peace overcame Mart and he slept deeply, but not I. The hired man began to show symptoms. He would roll and groan, dreaming of feuds, quorum pars magna fuit, it seemed, and of religious conversion, in which he feared he was not so great. Twice he said aloud:
âAnâ I tell you thar wouldnât a one of âem have said a word if Iâd been killed stone-dead.â Twice he said it almost weepingly, and now and then he would groan appealingly:
âO Lawd, have mercy on my pore soul!â
Fortunately those two tired girls sleptâ I could hear their breathingâbut sleep there was little for me. Once the troubled soul with the hoe got up and stumbled out to the water-bucket on the porch to soothe the fever or whatever it was that was burning him, and after that he was quiet. I awoke before day. The dim light at the window showed an empty bedâBuck and the hired man were gone. Mart was slipping out of the side of my bed, but the girls still slept on. I watched Mart, for I guessed I might now see what, perhaps, is the distinguishing trait of American civilization down to its bed-rock, as you find it through the West and in the Southern hillsâa chivalrous respect for women. Mart thought I was asleep. Over in the corner were two creatures the like of which I supposed he had never seen and would not see, since he came in too late the night before, and was going away too early now âand two angels straight from heaven could not have stirred my curiosity any more than they already must have stirred his. But not once did Mart turn his eyes, much less his face, toward the corner where they wereânot once, for I watched him closely. And when he went out he sent his little sister back for his shoes, which the night-walking hired man had accidentally kicked toward the foot of the strangersâ bed. In a minute I was out after him, but he was gone. Behind me the two girls opened their eyes on a room that was empty save for them. Then the Blight spoke (this I was told later).
âDear,â she said, âhave our room-mates gone?â
Breakfast at dawn. The mountain girls were ready to go to work. All looked sorry to have us leave. They asked us to come back again, and they meant it. We said we would like to come backâand we meant itâto see themâthe kind old mother, the pioneer-like old man, sturdy little Buck, shy little Cindy, the elusive, hard-working, unconsciously shivery Mart, and the two big sisters. As we started back up the river the sisters started for the fields, and I thought of their stricken brother in the settlements, who must have been much like Mart.
Back up the Big Black Mountain we toiled, and late in the afternoon we were on the State line that runs the crest of the Big Black. Right on top and bisected by that State line sat a dingy little shack, and there, with one leg thrown over the pommel of his saddle, sat Marston, drinking water from a gourd.
âI was coming over to meet you,â he said, smiling at the Blight, who, greatly pleased, smiled back at him. The shack was a âblind Tigerâ where whiskey could be sold to Kentuckians on the Virginia side and to Virginians on the Kentucky side. Hanging around were the slouching figures of several moonshiners and the villainous fellow who ran it.
âThey are real ones all right,â said Marston. âOne of them killed a revenue officer at that front door last week, and was killed by the posse as he was trying to escape out of the back window. That house will be in ashes soon,â he added. And it was.
As we rode down the mountain we told him about our trip and the people with whom we had spent the nightâand all the time he was smiling curiously.
âBuck,â he said. âOh, yes, I know that
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