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The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

by Alice MacGowan · English · Gutenberg #48937 · 531,458 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

Author: Alice MacGowan

Illustrator: Robert Edwards


        
Release date: May 12, 2015 [eBook #48937]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIVING OF LANCE CLEAVERAGE ***

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
i

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