With this as a concluding thought, and having caught the delicious odor of spring chicken roasting on the hearth, she hurried down to supper.
As she entered the cabin, Mrs. McAlpin, who was a famous cook, lifted the lid of the small cast-iron oven that had been buried beneath the hearth coals for an hour. At once the room was filled with such delectable fragrance as only can come from such an oven.
Since the cabin had been purchased by its present owner, it had not been disfigured by a stove. An immense stone fireplace graced the corner of each of the four rooms. The cooking was done on the hearth of the room used as kitchen and dining room.
“Isn’t it wonderful!” Marion exclaimed as she hung her sweater on the deer’s antlers which served as a coat rack. “Just to live like this! To be primitive as our ancestors were! I shall never forget it, not as long as I live!”
Supper was over. Darkness had fallen “from the wings of night” when Marion slipped alone out of the whipsawed cabin.
As she entered the shadows that lay across the path that led away from the cabin, she caught sound of a movement off to the right.
Her heart skipped a beat, but she did not pause. The message she had to send could not be longer delayed. And yet, as she hurried on, she could not help wondering who might have been behind the bushes. Was it the prowler, he of the beady black eyes and hooked nose, who had peered in at the cabin window? If it were, what did he want? What did he mean by that strange exclamation: “Hit’s her?” Had he seen Hallie? Did he know her? Would he attempt to carry her away? She hoped not. The little girl had become a spot of sunshine in that brown old cabin.
Two hours later the proceedings of the previous night were being re-enacted. Marion’s beacon fire appeared on the mountain’s crest. Florence caught it at once and flashed back her answer. There followed a half hour of signaling. At the end of this half hour Florence found herself sitting breathless among the husks in the cabin loft.
“Oh!” she breathed. “What news! The railroad is to be built. I wonder if the land is still for sale?”
“And I,” she exclaimed, squaring her shoulders, “I must be afraid no longer. Somehow I must find my way down this slope to Caleb Powell’s home. I must buy that land.”
She patted the crinkly bills, five hundred dollars, still pinned to the inside of her blouse. Then, slipping quickly down the ladder, she stepped into the cool, damp air of night.
Yet, even as she turned to go down the mountain, courage failed her.
Above her, not so far away but that she could reach it in an hour, hung the mountain’s crest. Dim, dark, looming in the misty moonlight, it seemed somehow to beckon. Beyond it, down the trail, lay home, her mountain home, and loving friends.
She had experienced thus far only distrust, captivity without apparent cause, the great fear of worse things to come.
“No,” she said, “I can’t go back.” Her feet moved slowly up the trail.
“And yet I must!” She faced the other way. “I can’t go back and say to them, ‘I have no money for the school. I went on a mission and failed because I was afraid.’ No, No! I can’t do that.”
Then, lest this last resolve should fail her, she fairly ran down the trail.
She had hurried on for fully fifteen minutes when again she paused, paused this time to consider. What plan had she? What was she to do? She did not know the way to the home of her friend, nor to the home of Caleb Powell. Indeed, she did not so much as know where she was. How, then, was she to find Caleb Powell?
“Only one way,” she told herself. “I must risk it. At some cabin I must inquire my way.”
Fifteen minutes later she found herself near a cabin. A dim light shone in the window. For a moment she hesitated beside the footpath that led to its door.
“No,” she said at last, starting on, “I won’t try that one.”
She passed three others before her courage rose to the sticking point. At last, realizing that the evening was well spent and that all would soon be in bed, she forced herself to walk boldly toward a cabin. A great bellowing hound rushed out at her and sent her heart to her mouth. The welcome sound of a man’s voice silenced him.
“Who’s thar?” the voice rang out.
“It’s—it’s I, Florence Huyler.” The girl’s voice trembled in spite of her effort to control it.
“Let’s see.” The man held a candle to her face. “Step inside, Miss.”
“It—I—I can’t stop,” she stammered, “I—I only wanted to ask where Caleb Powell lives.”
“Hey, Bill,” the man turned to someone within the cabin. “Here’s that girl we was lookin’ for this evenin’.”
“Naw ’t’ain’t. Don’t stand to reason.” The man’s feet came to the floor with a crash. The girl’s heart sank. She recognized the voices of the men. They were the men who had visited the deserted cabin. The hollyhock sentinel had done their bit, but all to no purpose. She was once more virtually a prisoner.
“Guess you come to the wrong cabin, Miss. We are plumb sorry, but hit are our bond an’ duty to sort of ask you to come in and rest with we-all a spell. Reckon you ain’t et none. Hey, Mandy! Set on a cold snack for this here young lady.”
Florence walked slowly into the cabin and sank wearily into a chair. Her head, which seemed suddenly to grow heavy, sank down upon her breast. She had meant so well, and this was what fate had dealt her.
Suddenly, as she sat there filled with gloomy thoughts, came one gloomier than the rest—a thought as melancholy as a late autumn storm.
“Why did we not think of that?” she almost groaned aloud.
She recalled it well enough now. Mrs. McAlpin had once told her of the queer mixing of titles to land which existed all over the mountains. In the early days, when land was all but worthless, a man might trade a thousand acres of land for a yoke of oxen and no deed given or recorded. “Why,” Mrs. McAlpin had said, “when I purchased the little tract on which this cabin stands I was obliged to wait an entire year before my lawyer was able to assure me of a deed that would hold.”
“A year!” Florence repeated to herself. “A year for a small tract! And here we are hoping to purchase a tract containing thousands of acres which was once composed of numerous small tracts. And we hope to get a deed day after to-morrow, and our commission a day later.” She laughed in spite of herself.
“If we succeed in making the purchase, which doesn’t seem at all likely, Mr. Dobson may be two years getting a clear title to the land. Will he pay our commission before that? No one would expect it. And if we don’t get it before that time what good will it do our school?”
“No,” she told herself, facing the problem squarely, “there must be some other way; though I’ll still go through with this if opportunity offers.”
In her mental search for “some other way” her thoughts returned to the ancient whipsawed house on Laurel Branch. She had heard old preacher Gibson’s story of Jeff Middleton’s return from the Civil War with a great sack of strange gold pieces.
“Hit’s hid som’ers about that ar whipsawed cabin,” the tottering old mountain preacher had declared, “though whar it might be I don’t rightly know. Been a huntin’ of it right smart o’ times and ain’t never lit onto narry one of them coins yet.”
“If only we could find that gold,” Florence told herself, “all would be well. That is, if we win the election—if we elect our trustee.”
She smiled a little at this last thought; yet it was no joking matter, this electing a trustee back here in the Cumberlands. Many a grave on the sun kissed hillsides, where the dogwood blooms in springtime and ripe chestnuts come rattling down in the autumn, marks the spot where some lusty mountaineer lies buried. And it might be written on his tombstone, “He tried to elect a trustee and failed because the other man’s pistol gun found its mark.” Elections are hard fought in the Cumberlands. Many a bitter feud fight has been started over a school election.
Surely, as she sat there once more a prisoner, held by these mysterious mountaineers, there was enough to disturb her.
Morning came at last. Florence stirred beneath the home woven covers of her bed in the mountain cabin. Then she woke to the full realization of her position.
“A prisoner in a cabin,” she groaned. “And yet they do not treat me badly. For my supper they set on the table the best they had. It meant a real sacrifice for them to give up this entire room to me, yet they did it. I can’t understand it.”
“But I must not let them defeat me!” She brought her feet down with a slap upon the clean scrubbed and sanded floor. “Somehow, by some means or another, I must make my way to Caleb Powell’s home to-day.”
Her eyes lighted upon an object that hung above the fireplace—a long barreled squirrel rifle with a shiny new cap resting beneath the hammer. “Loaded,” she thought. “Cap wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t. They left it hanging there because I am a girl and they were certain I couldn’t shoot. Hump! I can shoot as straight as any of them.”
For a moment a wild vision whirled before her—a vision of a girl bursting from a room, yelling like a wild Indian and brandishing the long rifle above her head.
“No,” she smiled. “’Twouldn’t do. It would be very dramatic, but it would probably end in tragedy, and I have no desire to act a part in such a tragedy.”
She dressed quickly, then stepped into the other room of the cabin where she found crisp, brown biscuits, wild honey and fried eggs awaiting her.
She ate a hearty breakfast. “Who knows what strength I may need for this day?” she thought to herself as she spread honey on her third biscuit.
After that, knowing from past experiences what her limitations would be, she did not attempt to go many steps from the cabin but contented herself with sitting outside the cabin door in the sun.
“Such a lovely scene,” she sighed as she looked away and away to where the peaks of Pine Mountain blended with the bluer peaks of Big Black Mountain, and all at last were lost in the hazy mists of the morning.
“So peaceful,” she thought, “you’d think there had never been a bit of trouble since the world began. And yet, right down here in the mountains there is more trouble than anywhere else in the country. Some men say that Nature, God’s open book, will make men good and kind. It takes more than that. It takes—it must take God inside their hearts to accomplish that.” So she mused, and half the morning slipped away.
From time to time her eyes left the mountain tops to follow the winding stream that, some fifty feet down a gentle slope, went rushing and tumbling over its rocky bed. Above and beyond this creek bed, at the other side of the gorge, ran a trail. Down that trail from time to time people passed. Now a woman, leading a lean pack horse laden with corn, shambled along on her way to mill. Now a pair of active, shouting boys urged on a team of young bullocks hitched to a sled, and now a bearded mountaineer, with rifle slung across his saddle horn, rode at a dog trot down the dusty trail.
The girl watched all this with dreamy eyes. They meant nothing to her; were, in fact, but a part of the scenery.
Still she watched the trail, taking little interest in the people passing there until suddenly she came to life with surprising interest. A person of evident importance was passing up the trail. He sat upon a blooded sorrel horse, and across the pommel of his saddle was a rifle.
“Who is that?” Florence asked, interested in the way this man sat his horse.
“That? Why, that are Caleb Powell.” Her guard, who sat not far from her, had also spoken without thinking.
“Caleb Powell!” The girl sprang to her feet. In an instant her two hands were cupped into a trumpet and she had sent out a loud call.
“Whoo-hoo!”
Caught by rocky walls, the call came echoing back. The man on the blooded horse turned his gaze toward the cabin.
“Here, you can’t do that away!” The guard put a rough hand on her shoulder.
“I can, and I will!” The girl’s tone was low and fierce. “You take your hands away from me, and keep them off!” She jerked away. “I came back here to see him. He’s a man, a real man, and he—he’s got a rifle.”
Cowering, the man fell back a step.
Again the girl’s hands were cupped.
“Mr. Powell! Come over!” she called. “I have something important to tell you.”
The man reined in his horse, stared across the gorge in apparent surprise, then directed his horse down a narrow path that led down one side of the gorge and up the other.
Standing there, leaning against the doorpost, the girl watched him with all the fascination that a condemned man must feel as he sees a man approaching with a message commuting his sentence.
The man who, a few minutes later, came riding up the steep trail to the cabin, was quite as different from the average mountaineer as Florence had, at a distance, judged him to be. His face was smooth shaven and his gray suit, his tie, his leggings, his riding boots, all were in good order. When at last he spoke it was not in the vernacular of the mountains, but of the wide world outside.
“You—you have some coal land?” she hesitated as he asked what he might do for her.
“Why, yes, little girl,” he smiled as he spoke. “My brothers and I have several acres up these slopes.”
Florence stiffened at his “little girl.” She realized that he had used the term in kindness, but he must not think of her as a little girl. She was for a moment a business woman with an important transaction to carry through.
“You want to sell it?” she said briskly.
“We have offered to sell.”
“For twenty-one thousand?”
“About that.” He was staring at her now. He stared harder when she said: “I am authorized to buy it at that price.”
For a moment he did not speak; just kept his keen grey eyes upon her.
“I am waiting,” he said at last in a droll drawl, “for the smile.”
“The—the smile?”
“Of course, you are joking.”
“I am not joking.” She was tempted to be angry now. “Here—here’s the proof. It’s the—Mr. Dobson called it the earnest money.” She dragged the five hundred dollars in bank notes from her blouse.
For ten seconds after that her heart fluttered wildly. What if this whole affair were a game played by these men at her expense? What if this man was not Caleb Powell at all? The thought of the consequences made her head whirl.
But no, the guard of a half hour before was staring, popeyed, at the sheaf of bills.
“That looks like business,” said Caleb Powell. “Your Mr. Dobson—I know him well. So he made you his agent? Well, well! That’s singular. But men do strange things. I suppose he sent a contract?”
“Yes, yes.” She was eager now. “Here it is.”
“Well,” he said quietly.
Then turning to the former guard, he said; “You’ll not be wanting anything further of the girl, Jim?”
“Reckon not,” the man drawled.
“Then, Miss—er—”
“Ormsby,” she volunteered.
“Then, Miss Ormsby, if you’ll be so kind as to mount behind me, I’ll take you down to the house. We’ll fix up the papers. After that we’ll have a bite to eat and I’ll send you over the mountain.”
The hours that followed were long-to-be-remembered. The signing of the papers, the talk on the cool veranda, a perfect dinner, then the long, long ride home over the mountains on a perfect horse with a guide and guard at her side, and all this crowned by the consciousness of a wonderful success after days of perils and threatened failure; all these seemed a dream indeed.
One thing Florence remembered distinctly. She had said to Caleb Powell:
“Mr. Powell, why did those men wish to hold me prisoner?”
“Miss Ormsby,” he said, and there was no smile upon his lips, “some of our people are what you might call ‘plumb quare’.”
That was all he had said, and for some time to come that was all she was destined to know about the reason for her mysterious captivity.
Only one thought troubled her as she neared the whipsawed cabin, and that, she told herself, was only a bad dream.
That it was more than a dream she was soon to learn. Two days later Mr. Dobson, having dismounted at their cabin, smiled with pleasure when he was told of the successful purchase of Caleb Powell’s coal land. Then for a moment a frown darkened his face.
“I—I hate to tell you,” he hesitated.
“You don’t have to,” said Florence quickly. “Please allow me to guess. You were about to tell us that it is necessary to spend a great deal of time looking up records and getting papers signed before you have a clear title to this mountain land, and that we can’t have our money until you have your title.”
“That puts it a little strongly,” said Mr. Dobson, smiling a little strangely. “As fast as we can clear up the titles to certain tracts my company has authorized me to pay that portion of the commission. I should say you ought to have your first installment within four months. It may be six, however. Matters move slowly here in the mountains.”
“Four months!” exclaimed Marion.
“Not sooner, I fear.”
“Four—” Marion began, but Florence squeezed her arm as she whispered; “It’s no use. We can’t help it and neither can they? There must be some other way. Besides, we haven’t yet elected our trustee.”
That night, for the first time in many days, Florence found herself ready to creep beneath the hand woven blankets beside her pal. Ah, it was good to feel the touch of comfort and the air of security to be found there. What did it matter that after all the struggle and danger she had found her efforts crowned only by partial success? Time would reveal some other way. New problems beckoned. Let them come. Life was full of problems, and solving them is life itself.
The whipsawed house in which the girls lived had been built more than sixty years before. The heavy beams of its frame and the broad thick boards of its sheeting inside and out had been sawed by hand from massive poplar logs.
The walls of the room in which the girls slept were as frankly free of paint or paper as when the boards were first laid in place. But time and sixty summers of Kentucky mountain sunshine had imparted to every massive beam and every broad board such a coat of deep, mellow, old gold as any millionaire might covet for his palace.
Heavy, hand-cut sandstone formed the fireplace. Before this fireplace, on a black bearskin, in dream-robes and dressing gowns, sat the two girls curled up for a chat before retiring.
Then it was that Marion told of the mysterious stranger who had peered in at the window at dusk.
“That’s strange,” said Florence as a puzzled look knotted her brow. “Who could he have meant when he said, ‘Hit’s her’? Could he have meant Mrs. McAlpin?”
“Maybe. She’s been around doctoring people a great deal. He might have seen her somewhere; might even have needed her services for his family and been too timid to ask for it. You know how these mountain folks are. But—” Marion paused.
“But you don’t believe it was Mrs. McAlpin,” prompted Florence, leaning toward the fire. “Neither do I. I believe it was little Hallie, and I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” said Marion with a sudden dab at the fire that sent the sparks flying. “I—I suppose we ought to want her identity to be discovered, want her returned to her people, but she’s come to mean so much to us. She’s a dashing little bit of sunshine. This place,” her eyes swept the bare brown walls, “this place would seem dreary without her.”
“Marion,” said Florence, “will we be able to elect our trustee?”
“I don’t know.”
“Al Finley and Moze Berkhart taught the school last year. They taught a month or two; then when it got cold they discouraged the children all they could, and when finally no one came they rode up and looked in every day, then rode home again, and drew their pay just the same.”
“We wouldn’t do that.”
“No, we wouldn’t. We’d manage somehow.”
“Marion,” said Florence after they had sat in silence for some time, their arms around each other, “this building belongs to Mrs. McAlpin, doesn’t it?”
“Surely. She bought it.”
“And everything inside belongs to her?”
“I suppose so.”
“Old Jeff Middleton’s gold—if it’s here?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then, if we found the gold we could use it to buy repairs for the schoolhouse, couldn’t we?”
“Yes,” laughed Marion, “and if the moon is really made of green cheese, and we could get a slice of it, we might ripen it and have it for to-morrow’s dinner.”
“But preacher Gibson thinks it’s hidden somewhere about here. He saw it, over sixty years ago. When Jeff Middleton came home from the war he came from Georgia driving a white mule hitched to a kind of sled with a box on it, and on the sled, along with some other things, was a bag of gold. Not real coins, Preacher Gibson said, but just like them; ‘sort of queer-like coins,’ that’s just the way he said it. There wasn’t anything to spend gold for back here in the mountains in those days. He built this house, so he must have hidden the gold here. He lived here until he was killed. The gold must still be here.”
“Sounds all right,” said Marion with a merry little laugh, “but I imagine the schoolhouse windows will have to be patched with something other than that gold. And besides—” she rose, yawning, “we haven’t even got the positions yet.”
“You don’t think they’d refuse to hire us? Just think! Those boys who tried to teach last year couldn’t even do fractions, and there wasn’t a history nor a geography in the place!”
“You never can tell,” said Marion.
In this she was more right than she knew.
A moment later Florence crept beneath the homewoven blankets. A little while longer Marion sat dreamily gazing at the darkening coals. Then, drawing her dressing gown tightly about her, she stepped to the door and slipped out. Like most mountain homes, the door of every room in the cabin opened onto the porch.
Stepping to the edge of the porch, she stood there, bathed in moonlight. The night was glorious. Big Black Mountain, laying away in the distance, seemed the dark tower of some clan of the giants. Below, and nearer, she caught the reflection of the moon in a placid pool on Laurel Branch, while close at hand the rhododendrons wove a fancy border of shadows along the trail that led away to the bottom lands.
As the girl stood drinking in the splendor of it all, she gave a sudden start, then shrank back into the shadows. Had she caught the sound of shuffled footsteps, of a pebble rolling down the steep trail? She thought so. With a shudder she stepped through the door, closed it quickly, and let the heavy bar fall silently into place. Then, without a word, she crept beneath the covers. As an involuntary shudder seized her she felt her companion’s strong arms about her. So, soothed and reassured, she rested there for a moment. She and Florence had been pals for many long months. Strange and thrilling were the mysteries they had solved, the adventures they had experienced. What would the morrow bring? More mystery, greater adventures? At any rate, they would face them together, and with these thoughts her eyes closed in dreamless sleep.
“So you’re thinking of going into politics?”
Ralph Cawood, a frank-faced college boy of the mountains, who had become a friend of the two girls, brushed the tangled locks from his eyes and laughed a merry laugh as he repeated, “Going into politics! You two girls!”
“I didn’t say that,” said Marion with a frown and an involuntary stamp of her foot. “Teaching school isn’t going into politics, is it?”
“You just better believe it is! Anyway, it is if you’re to teach here in the mountains and draw your pay from the State. You’ll have to elect you a trustee, that’s what you’ll have to do. It’s always done. And believe me, that calls for a right smart of a scrap!”
“But Ralph!” Marion exclaimed. “Don’t you know we’ve nearly finished college, that we are better qualified than most of the teachers in the Mountain Academy at Middlesburg, and that the teachers they’ve had before scarcely knew how to read and write?”
“Yes,” said Ralph, his face suddenly growing sober, “they know all that, and more. But think of the money! This school at the mouth of Laurel Branch pays over seven hundred dollars. Last year Al Finley was head teacher. He paid his assistant twenty dollars a month. School lasts six months. That left him nearly six hundred for six months work, and he didn’t work half the time at that. If he’d worked at freighting, logging or getting out barrel staves, he couldn’t have earned that much in two years.”
“But the children!”
“Yes, I know,” said Ralph still more soberly, “but nobody thinks of them; at least not enough. I never got much good out of country school. Nobody expects to. My brother, who’d been outside to school, taught me.”
“But why shouldn’t they get good out of it? What do they think the school is for?” Marion’s brow was knit in a puzzled frown.
“For drawing the State’s money, I guess. Anyway, that’s what it’s always been for. But you just go ahead,” he added cheerfully. “Try it out. See if you can elect you a trustee. Ransom Turner is for you from the start, and he counts for a lot. A good many folks believe in him.”
“We’ll do it!” said Marion. Her lips were set in straight lines of determination. “If we must go into politics in order to do the right thing, we will!”
It was a daring resolve. Life surely is strange at times. Very often the thing we did not want yesterday becomes the one thing we most desire to-day. It was so with Marion and the winter school. There had been a time when it took a hard fight to bring her mind to the sticking point where she could say: “I’ll stay.” Now she suddenly resolved that nothing but defeat could drive her away.
And yet, as she sat quietly talking to Florence a half hour later, the whole situation seemed incredible. It seemed beyond belief that men could be so selfish as to draw the money that rightfully belonged to their children and to their neighbors’ children, with no notion of giving any service in return for it.
If the girls lacked proof that there would be a fight, they were not long in finding it.
“We’ll go down to Ransom Turner’s store, and ask him about it,” said Florence.
“Yes, he’ll tell us straight.”
Before they reached Ransom’s store they learned much. News travels fast in the mountains. This was mill day. All the mountain folks were at the mouth of the creek with their grist of corn to be ground into meal for corn bread. Some on horse back, some on foot, and one or two driving young bullocks hitched to sleds, they came in crowds. One and all talked of the coming school election and how Al Finley and his political backer, Black Blevens, were likely to have a race worthy of the name. Ralph had told someone of his talk with Marion. That person had told two others; these others had carried the news to the mill. Now all knew and already they were lining up, on this side or that, for the coming battle.
As the girls passed through group after group, they felt that the very atmosphere about them had changed. It was as if a threatening storm hung over the mountain top. Everyone smiled and spoke, but there was a difference. One could scarcely tell what it was; perhaps an inflection of the voice, perhaps the tightening of the muscles about the mouth. Whatever it was, Marion, who was a keen student of human nature, felt that she could say almost to certainty: “That one is for us; this one against us.”
There were few doubtful ones. Mountain folks are quick to make decisions and slow to change them.
A little lump came to Marion’s throat as she realized that the people they passed were about evenly divided.
“And to think,” she whispered with a little choke down deep in her throat, “only yesterday they were all so cordial. They praised us for the education we were giving their children. They’ve all asked us out to dinner many times. ‘Come and stay a week’—that’s what they said.”
“Yes,” Florence smiled without bitterness, “but this summer we have been teaching their children for nothing. We are about to ask them to let their State pay us the money coming to them for teaching their winter school. Black Blevens has always controlled that. He’s unprincipled, but he’s rich and powerful as mountain folks go. He’s given work to many of these people when they needed it badly. Many of them are kin to him—belong to his clan. As they would say, they are ‘beholden’ to him. Whatever his battle is, they must fight it. They’re living back in the feudal days. And that,” said this big strong girl, swinging her arms on high, “is what makes me love it. I’d like to have been born a knight in those good old days.
“‘Scotts wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,Scotts wham Bruce has aften led,Welcome to your gory bed,Or to victory!’”
“‘Scotts wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scotts wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!’”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I’m going to get out my ‘Lady of the Lake’ and my ‘Lays of the Last Minstrels’ to-night. And in the fight that lies before us I’m going to live over those days of old.”
“‘What! Warder Ho! Let the portcullis fall’,” Marion murmured with a smile. “Here’s Ransom Turner’s store. ‘Dismount, and let’s within’!”
The low board shack which they entered did little to carry forward the illusion of castles, moats and drawbridges. From within, instead of the clang of armor, there came the sound of a hammer bursting in the head of a barrel of salt pork.
The man who stepped forward to greet them carried little resemblance to a knight of old. Ransom Turner was a small man, with close cropped hair and grimy hands. And yet, who can judge the strength and grandeur of a soul? There was a steady, piercing fire in the little man’s eyes that was like the even flow of an electrical current through a white hot wire.
“Heard what you said to Ralph this mornin’,” he said quietly. “Reckon that means right smart of a scrap, but I ca’culate we’ll lick Black Blevens and his crowd this time. Leastwise, it looks thataway. Folks have took to believin’ in Mrs. McAlpin, an’ in you two—took to it a heap.
“But looka here,” he drew them off into a corner. “Don’t you think hit’s goin’ to be easy! Talk about Brimstone Corner! Hit’ll be worse ’an that afore hit’s finished! Gun play, like as not, and people drove off into the hills. Mortgages foreclosed on ’em as don’t aim to vote to suit old Black Blevens. But you’ll stay? You ain’t afeared, be y’?” The fire seemed to fairly shoot from his pale blue eyes.
“No,” Florence said quietly, “we’re not afraid.”
“That’s right. You needn’t be. You don’t never need to be. There’s mounting folks, an’ heaps of em’, as would leave their firesides an’ fight for them that comes here to help their children out of the ignorance we’re all in. You believe that, don’t you?”
“We do,” said Florence. The sound of her voice was as solemn as it had been the day she joined the church.
As the two girls left the store they felt exactly as they might have done had they been living hundreds of years ago, and had come from a conference with their feudal lords.
“Do you know,” whispered Florence as they passed around the corner and out of sight, “I believe I’m going to like it. Fighting just because you’re naturally quarrelsome is disgraceful. But fighting for a cause, that you may help those who are weaker than yourself, that’s glorious.” She flung her arms wide, “That—”
She stopped short. Only by a narrow margin had she escaped enfolding in those outflung arms a curious little old man who had just emerged from a bypath.
Dressed in loose-fitting homespun jacket and trousers, with shoes that were two sizes too large and hard enough to stand alone either side up, and with a home tanned squirrel skin cap that had shrunken to half its size in the first rain it encountered, this man formed a ludicrous figure.
The girls did not laugh. This was Preacher Gibson. “Uncle Billie” many called him. He it was who had told them of old Jeff Middleton.
“Ho-Ho! Here you are!” he exclaimed. “I been lookin’ for you all. I got a notion about that ar gold. Hit war Confederate gold that old Jeff brought back from the war. Reg’lar old Confederate gold hit war fer sure.”
“But Uncle Billie, how do you know the Confederates coined any gold money?”
“Pshaw, child!” Uncle Billie looked at her in shocked surprise. “Didn’t Jeff Davis take the mint at New Orleans? An’ waren’t there a power of gold in that there mint? Hain’t there powers of hit in all them mints? In course of reason there are. Hit’s what mints are for.”
“But Uncle Billie, Jeff Middleton wasn’t a Confederate soldier, was he?”
“Never hearn that he were,” Uncle Billie’s face fell for a moment. Then his countenance brightened. “But you can’t never tell ’bout folks, kin you? Jeff came home dressed in brown homespun and drivin’ a mule hitched to a sled, the all-firedest kickin’ mule you ever seed, and on that ar sled war that sack of quare gold. Jeff was plum quare hisself. Who knows but he fit the Union arter all, and got that ar gold fer his pay?”
“That doesn’t seem very likely,” said Marion. “The Confederate soldiers weren’t paid when the war ended. But the gold might have been plunder. Jeff may have been a Union soldier with Sherman on his march to the sea. There was plenty of plunder then.”
“So he might. So he might,” agreed Uncle Billie.
He sat down upon a flat rock and appeared to lose himself in deep thought.
“Do you know,” he exclaimed, leaping to his feet, “if you all had that gold right now you could do a power of good!”
“Sure we could,” agreed Florence. “We could have the schoolhouse windows and doors put in.”
“Yes,” Uncle Billie said, with a scratch of his wooly head, “but ’t’wouldn’t be no use unless you come out on top in that ar school election. I’ll tell you,” he moved close and whispered in the girl’s ear. “There’s some no ’count folks livin’ up on Shader Branch that’s mighty nigh got no sense. Them folks allus sells their vote to the one that pays ’em most. If’n we had that ar gold we’d put a piece whar they all could find it and they’d come down an’ vote fer our trustee.”
“Oh no, we wouldn’t!” said Florence emphatically. “That’s bribery. It’s unlawful.”
“Why, so it is,” agreed Uncle Billie, “but so’s a heap more of things.”
“Anyway, we wouldn’t buy a vote,” said Florence. “Not if we had all the gold in the world. Our trustee will have to win fair and square, or not at all.”
“Most likely hit’ll be not at all,” grumbled Uncle Billie as he went stamping away. It was plain enough that he did not understand that fine point of ethics.
Above the whipsawed cabin, a few hundred paces up the side of Little Black Mountain, a brook emerged from the dark shadows of its closely thatched roof of rhododendrons. Coming in shadows from ice cold springs above, the waters of this brook were always chilled. As they rushed downward toward the river they spread about them a refreshing coolness that defied the hottest summer sun.
Beside this brook, Marion loved to sit and think. The feel of the cool, damp air was like the touch of a calm personality, the murmur of the brook was like the voice of a calm, counselling friend.
On the evening of the day into which so much surprise and excitement had been crowded, she took little Hallie by the hand and together they scrambled up the steep mountain side until, flushed and quite out of breath, they threw themselves down on a bed of moss beside the cool stream.
Hallie did not remain long in repose. Restless as a bee, she was soon up and away. First she chased a chipmunk to his rocky lair, then she busied herself in the engrossing task of hunting the peculiar “sang” leaf which might mark the hiding place of a treasure of ginsing roots. Dressed as she was in a bright yellow dress, she reminded Marion of a yellow butterfly flitting from leaf to leaf, from blossom to blossom.
All too soon she was quite forgotten, for as the shadows lengthened Marion thought of the problems and possibilities that lay before them. They had decided to help elect a school trustee. Ransom Turner would run. Many people believed in him. Were there enough to elect him? She hoped so, yet she doubted. Florence had said they would not buy votes, and they would not. But how about Black Blevens? He would force men to vote for him as trustee. He would use every means, fair or foul, to win. “And what of the free school we are teaching now?” she thought. “Will he try to interfere with that?” She decided it would be well to be on guard.
“Surely,” she thought to herself, “there are thrills and adventures enough to be had down here in the Cumberlands. Yes, and mystery as well—even the mystery of Confederate gold.”
She was thinking of Uncle Billie Gibson and what he had said about the gold that haunted the whipsawed house. She found it hard to believe that the Confederate States had coined gold, and harder still to think that there might be a quantity of it hidden away in the old house.
“But if there should be,” she caught her breath, “if we should find it! Each coin would be worth a fabulous sum. Every museum in the country would want one, and every private collector. If it were only true,” she whispered low, and the brook seemed to murmur, “true, true, true.”
Then of a sudden, rudely awakened from her dreams, she sprang to her feet. A piercing scream had struck her ears. This was followed by another and yet another.
“Hallie!” she exclaimed, too frightened to move. “Hallie! What can have happened to her?”