CHAPTER TWENTY
The men slept fully clothed on a wide bunk bed on a big straw mattress. Tim stirred in his sleep, opened his eyes and propped up on one elbow. The big, brown room was warm. The woman still sat in her high-backed rocker, her sewing in her lap and her revolver glinting in her hand. She was looking straight at Tim.
She had nursed them like a mother since yesterday morning, cooking for them and mending their clothes, and making them rest to get back their strength.
She had spent most of the time making overcoats from blankets. She had cut and sewn as if the devil were after her, working with unbelievable speed.
Tim swung his feet to the floor and pulled his boots on. He stood on the rough plank floor. Red still slept. Tim walked to the hearth, put on a couple of logs and stirred up the embers. He stood with his back to the fire. His eyes rested on the revolver in her hand. “You won’t be needing the pistol to keep us in line.”
The woman raised her eyes. “Are all Yankee soldiers like you and Redbeard, good mannered and kind?”
“I guess not, ma’am. You told me your husband and some other men from these parts had joined with the Yankees in the West. We aren’t the only Yanks you’ve seen.”
She almost spat. “Why they’re not Yankees like you at all. They’re mountainmen.” She threw back her head and laughed. “You and Redbeard are men, don’t get me wrong. Just a different breed, that’s all.”
She put her revolver deliberately on the table by her chair. “All right,” she said. She looked into the fire, seeming softer and more womanly now.
Late that afternoon she brought in some rabbits to butcher for stew. Red went out with Tim to cut and carry firewood. They went to a tree that had fallen close to the little privy. Tim took the first turn with the ax. The blade bit the bark and Red said, “Funny how she settled on our names right away, Redbeard and Slim. That’s pretty close. But she’s not much of a one for names. Just Missus Flint. We were lucky to find out what name she went by at all.”
Tim severed the trunk with a final blow and started another cut.
“What did you talk about this morning, Mr. Slim? She’s been like sunshine today.”
Tim smiled. “Now she knows we’re gentlemen.”
“I see.”
“What a life the woman has,” Tim said, looking at the empty shed. “No husband, no horse; cow died last spring and her hound died just a week ago, she said.”
“Nancy’s a sturdy little thing, but I can’t imagine her living like this.”
They swung through the door and stumped across the sagging floor to watch the woman work. There were two pots swinging over the blazing fire and she was cuttingchunks of rabbit and potato into one. The other held corn mush. Tim could tell by the smell.
“Ma’am,” Red said, “we shouldn’t eat up all your food this way.”
The woman finished cutting and threw the last of the bones and waste into a cracked china bowl on the hearth. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat in her rocker. “That’s foolish talk. I can shoot a rabbit as good as any man, with a pistol even. This summer I grew enough corn to feed a regiment and vegetables too. Then there’s Old Buck in the village in the valley. He heads up a bunch o’ Union men, part of a band they call True Heroes of America. They hide men out so they won’t have to fight with the Rebel Army. Well, Old Buck has a store, and if I need a thing, Old Buck gives it to me. ‘Nate Flint’ll pay when he comes home,’ he says. I look at him straight last time an’ says, ‘Maybe Nate Flint will never get home.’ And Old Buck purrs jus’ like a hooty owl and says, ‘Mebbie I’ll fall outa bed tonight and break my neck.’”
The men settled on a bench across from the rocker and all three were quiet, just sniffing the strong aroma of stew.
The woman stirred the pots with a hand-cut wooden spoon. She tasted the stew and sat down, leaning forward toward the men. “Tonight I will finish the coats,” she said. “By morning it will be two nights of sleep and plenty of food to give you strength. You better go.”
Tim said, “We have to go, ma’am, much as we might like to stay. About the coats, have you used all your blankets to make them?”
The woman’s brows went up. “I never did see such men as you. I got two left, and one’s aplenty. I mean to cut the other one into strips and roll them for carrying. Youcan wrap your feet and legs when the snow gets deep enough that the cloth won’t wear right through.”
“But, ma’am.”
“It’s windy hell you boys are lookin’ for. Take my word. Don’t be soft in your heart toward me.”
After supper the woman leaned over the rough plank table that stood at the side of the room, near a pallet she had made herself to sleep on. She pulled the lamp close and blew out the flame. “I’ll have to be beggin’ some oil from Buck the next time I go down. I can pay him with animal skins.”
Red scratched his beard. “Why don’t you spend the winters in the village, ma’am? Slim and I are worried about you being alone up here.”
The wind whistled at the corner of the cabin and the fire blazed up, filling the room with pumpkin light and jagged shadows. “I spent last winter in the village,” she said, “but I figured to spend this winter here. Nate and I, we made this place with our own two hands and a few odd tools. We lived in the village once and Nate used to hunt. But everyone else was a hunter, too, so we couldn’t make out that way. One day he says, ‘We’re cuttin’ loose from this village, little girl. We’ll build a cabin in the mountains where no man can tie a string on me.’” She faltered. “But you may be right.”
Her eyes grew fierce in the flickering light and her hand went pale where it gripped the table. “Jus’ last fall I was out by the shed when two wild men came hoopin’ and hollerin’ out of the mountain, Rebel guerillas they was. They wanted more than food and drink, it didn’t take much to see. I had my musket and I yelled loud and clear for them to turn away but they jus’ kep comin’, laughin’ and hollerin’, so I picked them off, the one behind andthen the other. I buried them in the ravine over yonder.”
The woman gave Red and Tim a desperate look. “Did I do right? I never told another soul.”
Red nodded. “You gave them their chance to turn away.”
“I didn’t want to keep their horses, and I buried their rifles with them. I slapped the horses off down the trail toward the village.” She turned to the fire. “I’m a one-man woman. There’s no changin’ that.”
Tim said quietly, “Spend the winter in the village. Don’t be too proud for that.”
Next morning all three woke just after dawn. They went about their chores as if they might have lived together in the cabin for a month or two. Tim fetched wood and built a fire. Red pumped up water and set a kettle on the hearth, hung the covered pot of mush on the crane, put on logs and stirred the fire to life. The woman put on her doeskin jacket and went outside. When she came back she said, “Laws, it’s nippy outside.”
Tim went to the window in the front of the cabin. The frame had been made to hold a sash that must have been used before. A few flakes of paint still clung to the wood. Tim studied the frost that had formed inside the glass at the bottom. The crystals had made an intricate pattern, like ghostly seaweed frozen in place. The morning light made the crystals sparkle like crushed diamonds. Tim turned away and fetched his toothbrush. He and Red took a cup of water and a pinch of salt and went outside.
After breakfast, when Tim looked at the window, the pattern of frost had disappeared, dissolved by the heat of the fire. The woman had mended their haversacks and finished the overcoats. They were great, heavy garments,the color of natural wool. “They’ll blend with the snow,” the woman said.
She packed the haversacks with meat and cornmeal. They could make corncakes. She tied a long coil of blanket wool to each sack. After breakfast she got up from the table and went to a corner and brought out a can. “I almost forgot the cookin’ pot,” she said. “Can’t cook without a pot.”
The men got up and put on the coats, admiring the woman’s handiwork while she helped them on with the haversacks. “I reckon the coats make the straps set different than before,” she said.
She rolled the blankets and the poncho and secured them over the packs with lengths of thong.
Tim said, “You’re spoiling us, ma’am.”
“Old Smoky won’t spoil you none, that’s sure.”
She looked them over and turned away. She put on her jacket and boots, took some mittens and a couple of mufflers from a backless old chair in a corner by the fire. “Take the mufflers,” she said. “Nate went larkin’ off when it was warm. He said the Yanks would fix him up with clothes.”
She hung a pair of stoppered gourds around her shoulder and a pouch and a little sack of meal. She picked up her musket and took the pistol from the table. “Redbeard, you take first turn with the pistol.”
Red said, “No, ma’am, you keep the Colt.”
“I got the musket. It’s notched already and I’ll notch it agin if I must. Take the pistol. It’s loaded and there’s a flask of powder and some extra balls at the top of Slim’s pack.”
Red put out his hand and took the revolver.
“I decided to spend the winter in town.” She lookedup at Tim. “It was what you said about bein’ too proud that changed my mind. Nate used to say I was foolish proud sometimes.”
All three went outside, the woman carrying the musket. When the men turned to say good-bye she said, “I’m goin’ too.”
Red said, “But, ma’am....”
It was the first time they had seen her smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t foller you to camp. I jus’ want to set your feet in the right direction.”
The ground rose slowly, dipped to a shallow valley, then climbed again to the ridge that stood against the sky like a shoulder of God.
Tim said, “Go back if you want. You can point out the way from here.”
Her tanned cheeks had a ruddy glow. She ran her hand through her hair and tossed her head. She looked up at the ridge, then down at the frozen ground. “I was goin’ huntin’, anyway. I’ll walk with you a while. I don’t know Knoxville, never been there, but I know which way it is, all right.”
They were toughened by the walking of the past few weeks and rested now and well fed, so that the climbing wasn’t bad at all. The slopes abounded in mountain laurel and ginseng. Tim thought how the place must look in spring with the shrubs and nut trees in bloom.
They traversed a half mile of loose rock, deep and uncertain on a steep slope.
They stopped at the top and rested a minute. Red grabbed at a sapling for support and the woman said, “Don’t trust yourself to little trees. If the roots give way they take you with them down the mountain.” She sniffed the air. “Snow soon.”
Red said, “That ridge must be six miles from here, or more.”
The woman looked back. Her bright eyes swept the valley once and she picked up her musket and moved forward.