Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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"Don't ye understand, boy?" repeated the old man kindly. "They've
run away!"
Jason turned his head quickly and started for the gate.
"Now, don't, Jason," called the old woman in a broken voice.
"Don't take on that way. I want ye both to come an' live with us,"
she pleaded. "Come on back now."
The little fellow neither made answer nor looked back, and the old
people watched him turn up the creek, trudging toward Mavis's
home.
The boy's tears once more started when he caught sight of Steve
Hawn's cabin, but he forced them back. A helpless little figure
was sitting in the open doorway with head buried in her arms. She
did not hear him coming even when he was quite near, for the lad
stepped softly and gently put one hand on her shoulder. She looked
up with a frightened start, and at sight of his face she quit her
sobbing and with one hand over her quivering mouth turned her head
away.
"Come on, Mavie," he said quietly.
Again she looked up, wonderingly this time, and seeing some steady
purpose in his eyes rose without a question.
With no word he turned and she followed him back down the creek.
And the old couple, sitting in the porch, saw them coming, the boy
striding resolutely ahead, the little girl behind, and the faces
of both deadly serious--the one with purpose and the other with
blind trust. They did not call to the boy, for they saw him swerve
across the road toward the gate. He did not lift his head until he
reached the gate, and he did not wait for Mavis. He had no need,
for she had hurried to his side when he halted at the steps of the
porch.
"Uncle Lige," he said, "me an' Mavis hyeh want to git married."
Not the faintest surprise showed in Mavis's face, little as she
knew what his purpose was, for what the master did was right; but
the old woman and the old man were stunned into silence and
neither could smile.
"Have you got yo' license?" the old man asked gravely.
"Whut's a license?"
"You got to git a license from the county clerk afore you can git
married, an' hit costs two dollars."
The boy flinched, but only for a moment.
"I kin borrer the money," he said stoutly.
"But you can't git a license--you ain't a man."
"I ain't!" cried the boy hotly; "I GOT to be!"
"Come in hyeh, Jason," said the old man, for it was time to leave
off evasion, and he led the lad into the house while Mavis, with
the old woman's arm around her, waited in the porch. Jason came
out baffled and pale.
"Hit ain't no use, Mavis," he said; "the law's agin us an' we got
to wait. They've run away an' they've both sold out an' yo' daddy
left word that he was goin' to send fer ye whenever he got
whatever he was goin'."
Jason waited and he did not have to wait long.
"I hain't goin' to leave ye," she flashed.
VIII
St. Hilda sat on the vine-covered porch of her little log cabin,
high on the hill-side, with a look of peace in her big dreaming
eyes. From the frame house a few rods below her, mountain
children--boys and girls--were darting in and out, busy as bees,
and, unlike the dumb, pathetic little people out in the hills,
alert, keen-eyed, cheerful, and happy. Under the log foot-bridge
the shining creek ran down past the mountain village below, where
the cupola of the court-house rose above the hot dirt streets, the
ramshackle hotel, and the dingy stores and frame dwellings of the
town. Across the bridge her eyes rested on another neat, well-
built log cabin with a grass plot around it, and, running
alongside and covered with honeysuckle--a pergola! That was her
hospital down there--empty, thank God. With a little turn of her
strong white chin, her eyes rested on the charred foundation of
her school-house, to which some mean hand had applied the torch a
month ago, and were lifted up to the mountain-side, where mountain
men were chopping down trees and mountain oxen yanking them down
the steep slopes to the bank of the creek, and then the peace of
them went deeper still, for they could look back on her work and
find it good. Nun-like in renunciation, she had given up her
beloved Blue-grass land, she had left home and kindred, and she
had settled, two days' journey from a railroad, in the hills. She
had gone back to the physical life of the pioneers, she had
encountered the customs and sentiments of mediaeval days, and no
abbess of those days, carrying light into dark places, needed more
courage and devotion to meet the hardships, sacrifice, and
prejudice that she had overcome. She brought in the first wagon-
load of window-panes for darkened homes before she even tapped on
the window of a darkened mind; but when she did, no plants ever
turned more eagerly toward the light than did the youthful souls
of those Kentucky hills. She started with five pupils in a log
cabin. She built a homely frame house with five rooms, only to
find more candidates clamoring at her door. She taught the girls
to cook, sew, wash and iron, clean house, and make baskets, and
the boys to use tools, to farm, make garden, and take care of
animals; and she taught them all to keep clean. Out in the hills
she found good old names, English and Scotch-Irish. She found men
who "made their mark" boasting of grandfathers who were
"scholards." In one household she came upon a time-worn set of the
"British Poets" up to the nineteenth century, and such was the
sturdy character of the hillsmen that she tossed the theory aside
that they were the descendants of the riffraff of the Old World,
tossed it as a miserable slander and looked upon them as the same
blood as the people of the Blue-grass, the valleys, and the plains
beyond. On the westward march they had simply dropped behind, and
their isolation had left them in a long sleep that had given them
a long rest, but had done them no real harm. Always in their eyes,
however, she was a woman, and no woman was "fitten" to teach
school. She was more--a "fotched-on" woman, a distrusted
"furriner," and she was carrying on a "slavery school." Sometimes
she despaired of ever winning their unreserved confidence, but out
of the very depth of that despair to which the firebrand of some
miscreant had plunged her, rose her star of hope, for then the
Indian-like stoicism of her neighbors melted and she learned the
place in their hearts that was really hers. Other neighborhoods
asked for her to come to them, but her own would not let her go.
Straightway there was nothing to eat, smoke, chew, nor wear that
grew or was made in those hills that did not pour toward her. Land
was given her, even money was contributed for rebuilding, and when
money was not possible, this man and that gave his axe, his horse,
his wagon, and his services as a laborer for thirty and sixty
days. So that those axes gleaming in the sun on the hillside,
those straining muscles, and those sweating brows meant a labor of
love going on for her. No wonder the peace of her eyes was deep.
And yet St. Hilda, as one forsaken lover in the Blue-grass had
christened her, opened the little roll-book in her lap and sighed
deeply, for in there on her waiting-list were the names of a
hundred children for whom, with all the rebuilding, she would have
no place. Only the day before, a mountaineer had brought in nine
boys and girls, his stepdaughter's and his own, and she had sadly
turned them away. Still they were coming in name and in person, on
horseback, in wagon and afoot, and among them was Jason Hawn, who
was starting toward her that morning from far away over the hills.
Over there the twin spirals of smoke no longer rose on either side
of the ridge and drifted upward, for both cabins were closed.
Jason's sale was just over--the sale of one cow, two pigs, a dozen
chickens, one stove, and a few pots and pans--the neighbors were
gone, and Jason sat alone on the porch with more money in his
pocket than he had ever seen at one time in his life. His bow and
arrow were in one hand, his father's rifle was over his shoulder,
and his old nag was hitched to the fence. The time had come. He
had taken a farewell look at the black column of coal he had
unearthed for others, the circuit rider would tend his little
field of corn on shares, Mavis would live with the circuit rider's
wife, and his grandfather had sternly forbidden the boy to take
any hand in the feud. The geologist had told him to go away and
get an education, his Uncle Arch had offered to pay his way if he
would go to the Bluegrass to school--an offer that the boy curtly
declined--and now he was starting to the settlement school of
which he had heard so much, in the county-seat of an adjoining
county. For, even though run by women, it must be better than
nothing, better than being beholden to his Uncle Arch, better than
a place where people and country were strange. So, Jason mounted
his horse, rode down to the forks of the creek and drew up at the
circuit rider's house, where Mavis and the old woman came out to
the gate to say good-by. The boy had not thought much about the
little girl and the loneliness of her life after he was gone, for
he was the man, he was the one to go forth and do; and it was for
Mavis to wait for him to come back. But when he handed her the bow
and arrow and told her they were hers, the sight of her face
worried him deeply.
"I'm a-goin' over thar an' if I like it an' thar's a place fer
you, I'll send the nag back fer you, too."
He spoke with manly condescension only to comfort her, but the
eager gladness that leaped pitifully from her eyes so melted him
that he added impulsively: "S'pose you git up behind me an' go
with me right now."
"Mavis ain't goin' now," said the old woman sharply. "You go on
whar you're goin' an' come back fer her."
"All right," said Jason, greatly relieved. "Take keer o'
yourselves."
With a kick he started the old nag and again pulled in.
"An' if you leave afore I git back, Mavis, I'm a-goin' to come
atter you, no matter whar you air--some day."
"Good-by," faltered the little girl, and she watched him ride down
the creek and disappear, and her tears came only when she felt the
old woman's arms around her.
"Don't you mind, honey."
Over ridge and mountain and up and down the rocky beds of streams
jogged Jason's old nag for two days until she carried him to the
top of the wooded ridge whence he looked down on the little
mountain town and the queer buildings of the settlement school.
Half an hour later St. Hilda saw him cross the creek below the
bridge, ride up to the foot-path gate, hitch his old mare, and
come straight to her where she sat--in a sturdy way that fixed her
interest instantly and keenly.
"I've come over hyeh to stay with ye," he said simply.
St. Hilda hesitated and distress kept her silent.
"My name's Jason Hawn. I come from t'other side o' the mountain
an' I hain't got no home."
"I'm sorry, little man," she said gently, "but we have no place
for you."
The boy's eyes darted to one side and the other.
"Shucks! I can sleep out thar in that woodshed. I hain't axin' no
favors. I got a leetle money an' I can work like a man."
Now, while St. Hilda's face was strong, her heart was divinely
weak and Jason saw it. Unhesitatingly he climbed the steps, handed
his rifle to her, sat down, and at once began taking stock of
everything about him--the boy swinging an axe at the wood-pile,
the boy feeding the hogs and chickens; another starting off on an
old horse with a bag of corn for the mill, another ploughing the
hill-side. Others were digging ditches, working in a garden,
mending a fence, and making cinder paths. But in all this his
interest was plainly casual until his eyes caught sight of a pile
of lumber at the door of the workshop below, and through the
windows the occasional gleam of some shining tool. Instantly one
eager finger shot out.
"I want to go down thar."
Good-humoredly St. Hilda took him, and when Jason looked upon boys
of his own age chipping, hewing, planing lumber, and making
furniture, so busy that they scarcely gave him a glance, St, Hilda
saw his eyes light and his fingers twitch.
"Gee!" he whispered with a catch of his breath, "this is the place
fer me."
But when they went back and Jason put his head into the big house,
St. Hilda saw his face darken, for in there boys were washing
dishes and scrubbing floors.
"Does all the boys have to do that?" he asked with great disgust.
"Oh, yes," she said.
Jason turned abruptly away from the door, and when he passed a
window of the cottage on the way back to her cabin and saw two
boys within making up beds, he gave a grunt of scorn and derision
and he did not follow her up the steps.
"Gimme back my gun," he said.
"Why, what's the matter, Jason?"
"This is a gals' school--hit hain't no place fer me."
It was no use for her to tell him that soldiers made their own
beds and washed their own dishes, for his short answer was:
"Mebbe they had to, 'cause thar wasn't no women folks around, but
he didn't," and his face was so hopelessly set and stubborn that
she handed him the old gun without another word. For a moment he
hesitated, lifting his solemn eyes to hers. "I want you to know
I'm much obleeged," he said. Then he turned away, and St. Hilda
saw him mount his old nag, climb the ridge opposite without
looking back, and pass over the summit.
Old Jason Hawn was sitting up in a chair when two days later
disgusted little Jason rode up to his gate.
"They wanted me to do a gal's work over thar," he explained
shortly, and the old man nodded grimly with sympathy and
understanding.
"I was lookin' fer ye to come back."
Old Aaron Honeycutt had been winged through the shoulder while the
lad was away and the feud score had been exactly evened by the
ambushing of another of the tribe. On this argument Arch Hawn was
urging a resumption of the truce, but both clans were armed and
watchful and everybody was looking for a general clash on the next
county-court day. The boy soon rose restlessly.
"Whar you goin'?"
"I'm a-goin' to look atter my corn."
At the forks of the creek the old circuit rider hailed Jason
gladly, and he, too, nodded with approval when he heard the reason
the boy had come back.
"I'll make ye a present o' the work I've done in yo' corn--bein'
as I must 'a' worked might' nigh an hour up thar yestiddy an' got
plumb tuckered out. I come might' nigh fallin' out, hit was so
steep, an' if I had, I reckon I'd 'a' broke my neck."
The old woman appeared on the porch and she, too, hailed the boy
with a bantering tone and a quizzical smile.
"One o' them fotched-on women whoop ye fer missin' yo' a-b-abs?"
she asked. Jason scowled.
"Whar's Mavis?" The old woman laughed teasingly.
"Why, hain't ye heerd the news? How long d'ye reckon a purty gal
like Mavis was a-goin' to wait fer you? 'Member that good-lookin'
little furrin feller who was down here from the settlemints? Well,
he come back an' tuk her away."
Jason knew the old woman was teasing him, and instead of being
angry, as she expected, he looked so worried and distressed that
she was sorry, and her rasping old voice became gentle with
affection.
"Mavis's gone to the settlemints, honey. Her daddy sent fer her
an' I made her go. She's whar she belongs--up thar with him an'
yo' mammy. Go put yo' hoss in the stable an' come an' live right
here with us."
Jason shook his head and without answer turned his horse down the
creek again. A little way down he saw three Honeycutts coming, all
armed, and he knew that to avoid passing his grandfather's house
they were going to cross the ridge and strike the head of their
own creek. One of them was a boy--"little Aaron"--less than two
years older than himself, and little Aaron not only had a pistol
buckled around him, but carried a Winchester across his saddle-
bow. The two men grinned and nodded good-naturedly to him, but the
boy Aaron pulled his horse across the road and stopped Jason, who
had stood many a taunt from him.
"Which side air you on NOW?" asked Aaron contemptuously.
"You git out o' my road!"
"Hit's my road now," said Aaron, tapping his Winchester, "an' I've
got a great notion o' makin' you git offen that ole bag o' bones
an' dance fer me." One of the Honeycutts turned in his saddle.
"Come on," he shouted angrily, "an' let that boy alone."
"All right," he shouted back, and then to his white, quivering,
helpless quarry:
"I'll let ye off this time, but next time--"
"I'll be ready fer ye," broke in Jason.
The lad's mind was made up now. He put the old nag in a lope down
the rocky creek. He did not even go to his grandfather's for
dinner, but turned at the river in a gallop for town. The rock-
pecker, and even Mavis, were gone from his mind, and the money in
his pocket was going, not for love or learning, but for pistol and
cartridge now.
IX
September in the Blue-grass. The earth cooling from the summer's
heat, the nights vigorous and chill, the fields greening with a
second spring. Skies long, low, hazy, and gently arched over
rolling field and meadow and woodland. The trees gray with the
dust that had sifted all summer long from the limestone turnpikes.
The streams shrunken to rivulets that trickled through crevices
between broad flat stones and oozed through beds of water-cress
and crow-foot, horse-mint and pickerel-weed, the wells low,
cisterns empty, and recourse for water to barrels and the sunken
ponds. The farmers cutting corn, still green, for stock, and
ploughing ragweed strongholds for the sowing of wheat. The hemp an
Indian village of gray wigwams. And a time of weeds--indeed the
heyday of weeds of every kind, and the harvest time for the king
weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to
poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering
war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was
devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and
yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at
the sight of his banner to the open sunny spaces as though to make
their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see. Even the
proud woodlands looked ragged and drooping, for here and there the
ruthless marauder had flanked one and driven a battalion into its
very heart, and here and there charred stumps told plainly how he
had overrun, destroyed, and ravished the virgin soil beneath. A
fuzzy little parasite was throttling the life of the Kentuckians'
hemp. A bewhiskered moralist in a far northern State would one day
try to drive the kings of his racing-stable to the plough. A
meddling band of fanatical teetotalers would overthrow his merry
monarch, King Barleycorn, and the harassed son of the Blue-grass,
whether he would or not, must turn to the new pretender who was in
the Kentuckians' midst, uninvited and self-throned.
And with King Tobacco were coming his own human vassals that were
to prove a new social discord in the land--up from the river-
bottoms of the Ohio and down from the foot-hills of the
Cumberland--to plant, worm, tend, and fit those yellow robes to be
stuffed into the mouth of the world and spat back again into the
helpless face of the earth. And these vassals were supplanting
native humanity as the plant was supplanting the native products
of the soil. And with them and the new king were due in time a
train of evils to that native humanity, creating disaffection,
dividing households against themselves, and threatening with ruin
the lordly social structure itself.
But, for all this, the land that early September morning was a
land of peace and plenty, and in field, meadow, and woodland the
most foreign note of the landscape was a spot of crimson in the
crotch of a high staked and ridered fence on the summit of a
little hill, and that spot was a little girl. She had on an old-
fashioned poke-bonnet of deep pink, her red dress was of old-
fashioned homespun, her stockings were of yarn, and her rough
shoes should have been on the feet of a boy. Had the vanished
forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the
land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had
the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the
wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the
scene, as a little daughter of Daniel Boone. As it was, she felt
no less foreign than she looked, for the strangeness of the land
and of the people still possessed her so that her native shyness
had sunk to depths that were painful. She had a new ordeal before
her now, for in her sinewy little hands were a paper bag, a first
reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school.
Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into
a little hollow, and on the crest of the next low hill was a
little frame house with a belfry on top. Even while she sat there
with parted lips, her face in a tense dream and her eyes dark with
dread and indecision, the bell from the little school-house
clanged through the still air with a sudden, sharp summons that
was so peremptory and personal that she was almost startled from
her perch. Not daring to loiter any longer, she leaped lightly to
the ground and started in breathless haste up and over the hill.
As she went down it, she could see horses hitched to the fence
around the yard and school-children crowding upon the porch and
filing into the door. The last one had gone in before she reached
the school-house gate, and she stopped with a thumping heart that
quite failed her then and there, for she retreated backward
through the gate, to be sure that no one saw her, crept along the
stone wall, turned into a lane, and climbed a worm fence into the
woods behind the school-house. There she sat down on a log,
miserably alone, and over the sunny strange slopes of this new
world, on over the foothills, her mind flashed to the big far-away
mountains and, dropping her face into her hands, she began to sob
out her loneliness and sorrow. The cry did her good, and by and by
she lifted her head, rubbed her reddened eyes with the back of one
hand, half rose to go to the school-house, and sank helplessly
down on the thick grass by the side of the log. The sun beat
warmly and soothingly down on her. The grass and even the log
against her shoulders were warm and comforting, and the hum of
insects about her was so drowsy that she yawned and settled deeper
into the grass, and presently she passed into sleep and dreams of
Jason. Jason was in the feud. She could see him crouched in some
bushes and peering through them on the lookout evidently for some
Honeycutt; and slipping up the other side of the hill was a
Honeycutt looking for Jason. Somehow she knew it was the Honeycutt
who had slain the boy's father, and she saw the man creep through
the brush and worm his way on his belly to a stump above where
Jason sat. She saw him thrust his Winchester through the leaves,
she tried to shriek a warning to Jason, and she awoke so weak with
terror that she could hardly scramble to her feet. Just then the
air was rent with shrill cries, she saw school-boys piling over a
fence and rushing toward her hiding-place, and, her wits yet
ungathered, she turned and fled in terror down the hill, nor did
she stop until the cries behind her grew faint; and then she was
much ashamed of herself. Nobody was in pursuit of her--it was the
dream that had frightened her. She could almost step on the head
of her own shadow now, and that fact and a pang of hunger told her
it was noon. It was noon recess back at the school and those
school-boys were on their way to a playground. She had left her
lunch at the log where she slept, and so she made her way back to
it, just in time to see two boys pounce on the little paper bag
lying in the grass. There was no shyness about her then--that bag
was hers--and she flashed forward.
"Gimme that poke!"
The wrestling stopped and, startled by the cry and the apparition,
the two boys fell apart.
"What?" said the one with the bag in his hand, while the other
stared at Mavis with puzzled amazement.
"Gimme that poke!" blazed the girl, and the boy laughed, for the
word has almost passed from the vocabulary of the Blue-grass. He
held it high.
"Jump for it!" he teased.
"I hain't goin' to jump fer it--hit's mine."
Her hands clenched and she started slowly toward him.
"Give her the bag," said the other boy so imperatively that the
little girl stopped with a quick and trustful shift of her own
burden to him.
"She's got to jump for it!"
The other boy smiled, and it strangely seemed to Mavis that she
had seen that smile before.
"Oh, I reckon not," he said quietly, and in a trice the two boys
in a close, fierce grapple were rocking before her and the boy
with the bag went to the earth first.
"Gouge him!" shrieked the mountain girl, and she rushed to them
while they were struggling, snatched the bag from the loosened
fingers, and, seeing the other boys on a run for the scene, fled
for the lane. From the other side of the fence she saw the two
lads rise, one still smiling, the other crying with anger; the
school-bell clanged and she was again alone. Hurriedly she ate the
bacon and corn-bread in the bag and then she made her way back
along the lane, by the stone wall, through the school-house gate,
and gathering her courage with one deep breath, she climbed the
steps resolutely and stood before the open door.
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