“It was men!” he managed to gasp at last. “It was men, Zalie. They was going to kill me, and I hadn’t done no manner of harm to them. I was walking up the trail—for I thought I might as well be here in time for breakfast, since Mrs. McBirney had asked me to spend the day—and I thought I’d take some short cuts. So plunk I went up the mountain, and the first thing I knowed, I had run plumb into a whole gang of men working like good fellows with a fire and coils of pipe and kettles, and I don’t know what all. Soon as my eyes lighted on to them I guessed it was a moonshiners’ still, and I tried to crawl away without anybody’s seeing me. But, sir, one fellow, he caught sight of me, and he grabbed his gun and started after me, and two others grabbed their guns, and I just hiked up the mountain and they after me. But laws, I couldn’t run with them fellows. Seems as if their legs was about three yards long. They got me in no time and they stood me up against a tree and backed off and pointed their guns at me and told me if I didn’t promise I’d never, never tell on them, they’d put so many holes into me my mother’d think I was a sieve. Well, I give my word I wouldn’t tell where their place was, nor anything about them, and they let me go, but they said if I wasn’t out of sight in two minutes they’d fire anyway. And they run after me a ways just to give me a start.”
He grinned up at Azalea, as if half ashamed of the whole affair, and she laughed back at him, reassuringly, though her face was rather white too.
“But you’ve told me, Hi,” she said. “And you’ve broken your promise.”
Hi frowned.
“Zalie,” he said sternly, “Don’t I tell you everything? Besides, you don’t know where their place is, and I ain’t going to tell, partly because I don’t want to, and partly because I don’t know. I don’t see how I ever found the way here at all, I was so mixed up. And what’s more, I don’t attach no importance to a promise that’s wrung out of a fellow like that. Of course I promised! I had to. But that’s a very different thing from a promise you give on your honor. I don’t want you to think I’d break a promise, Zalie—not a fair and square promise.”
“Oh, Hi! don’t I know you wouldn’t? I’m only teasing. I won’t say a word about it to anyone; but it shows ma was right. She said I must keep to the road and not go prowling off by myself. How are you getting on, Hi?”
“Oh, first-rate. I don’t like being shut up in the mill all day any too well, of course. You see, it comes hard on a fellow who’s been used to being out of doors early and late. But there’s little children there, Zalie—little, little children. It makes me feel dreadful to see them. I tell you, I’m not meaning to stay there long. I’m looking about all the time for some kind of an outdoor job. Mr. Carson, he’s got me to pulling weeds out of his brick walk. I have about half an hour after work and before it gets dark and that lets me do quite a lot at the Carsons; and then they give me my supper there.”
“But that makes such long hours, Hi,” Azalea protested. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
“No I won’t, Zalie. I’m made of cast iron. And then the working out of doors sort of rests me. It gives me an appetite too. And I tell you what, I want to please Mr. Carson. He’s a fine man to work for. He seems to kind of notice me, and I think maybe I can get took on there at his place.”
“The Carsons are like that. They notice everybody. They even noticed Jim and me.”
“Why, you goose, anybody would notice you!” cried Hi. “Don’t you know that yet? Jim’s a mighty pleasant-looking boy too. Looks as if he knew which end he was standing on, all right.”
But at that moment Ma McBirney’s voice, with a tone of impatience in it, came out to them.
“Azalea, child, where in the name of goodness have you gone? Don’t you know we’re waiting breakfast? Hurry up, child, do. Pa has just made up his mind to take us all to the Singing.”
“The Singing? What’s the Singing?” asked Azalea, as she and Hi ran toward the house with the butter and the milk in their hands.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know what a singing is,” said pa. Hi and Azalea shook their heads.
“Well, then,” said pa, “nobody is to tell you, and before long you’ll see for yourselves. Hustle now, we ought to have been on the road by this time. It slipped my mind this was the date, till the Groggings went by and reminded me.”
“My goodness,” sighed ma, “I’m glad our best dresses are fresh ironed, Azalea. Here, everybody pay strict attention to eating! We’ve got to get off if we’re to take any part in the doings!”
CHAPTER VII
THE SINGING
“Say,” said Hi as he and Jim washed their faces and gave an extra fine brushing to their hair, “ain’t I the lucky one though, going off like this with you-all? I don’t see how it comes your pa and ma are so good to me and Zalie.”
“Comes natural to them,” growled Jim, much embarrassed by this praise of the persons he loved best. “They’re even good to me.”
“Get out!” cried Hi, sprinkling some water on Jim’s clean waist.
“Here you, if you think so much of my ma, what are you spoiling all her work for?” shouted Jim. “You need a little learning, that’s what you need!”
The next moment the two boys had gripped and were rolling on the floor together. Mrs. McBirney heard the rumpus and came running, but her gentle voice could barely make itself heard as the two boys threshed around on the floor, and it took Thomas McBirney’s strong hand and firm voice to bring them to their feet again, half laughing and half angry, and red as turkey cocks.
“A likely way to begin the Sabbath,” pa reproved them. “Brush yourselves off now, and get calmed down before we start. It will be a pleasant sight, seeing you two standing up hymn-singing, after the way you’ve been carrying on.”
However, when fifteen minutes later the party started off down the mountain side, the two boys looked like perfect models. Hi was allowed to sit on the front seat with pa; Jim, Azalea and Mrs. McBirney sat behind. Ma wore her one white dress and her black bonnet with the green ribbon, and Azalea had on her new white dress with the cat stitching in blue; and her white hat with its blue ribbons was the very hat of hats for her to wear. Pa McBirney felt secretly proud of his family, but it wouldn’t have been his way to give them a notion of that. However, ma, who knew most of the things that pa thought, could tell that he was well pleased. He showed Hi all the landmarks—the little broken branches that looked like two birds sitting side by side on a gaunt live-oak limb that reached over their path; the “cannon,” a huge prone log which had once fallen across the road, and had been sawed in such a manner that it looked like a gigantic gun ready to be fired at them; the “haunted house” where a family of white-faced, queer folk lived, who ran in and drew down the shades when they saw anyone coming; and the “spy glass,” a curious opening through miles of woodland, through which a person could look down the mountain side and away across the valley, where the cotton and the corn grew in their rich fields and the silver streams wound in and out.
“I tell you, we that live in a place like this are likely to forget our blessings,” remarked Mr. McBirney. “Every way you turn, it’s sightly and a comfort to the eye. If I had to live where it was all dirt and noise and folks crowding on top of one another, seems like I’d want to die.”
“Wouldn’t you, just!” murmured ma sympathetically.
“But here we are, off pleasuring, on as pretty a day as God ever dropped down on his footstool.”
Ma agreed with him, and began to “tune up,” as pa put it, humming under her breath. She had her old song book in her hand—the book with the square notes, such as the mountain people always used at their “singings.” She explained to Azalea that the shape of the notes indicated their names. For example, no matter what key “do” might be in, it could be told for “do” by its shape. “Sol” would have another shape; “re” yet another. In this manner no one need be confused by four or even six sharps.
“And it’s a custom with us, Azalea,” she explained, “to sing the tune through by note first. After we’ve done that, and everybody has got the tune fixed in his head, so to speak, we go through and sing the words.”
“You’ll have to tell Hi about the singing,” said Azalea.
“It seems mighty queer to me how you-all don’t know about singings,” ma replied. “It ain’t nothing but all the folks getting together and singing. They do it once a year you know—come from all over the countryside. There now, look yonder! See them wagons coming from all parts? They’re all off for Rutherford Plain where the old Friendly Meeting House is. That was built before the war, all of great oak beams and boards, and it don’t belong to no one denomination, but folks of whatever belief meet there and give praise and worship.”
“Ain’t it nice?” sighed Azalea contentedly. It was very sweet to her to be riding along there, the daughter of people who were so much thought of as the McBirneys—she who had been a wanderer, and often a hungry, neglected child, in clothes she was ashamed of, and the companion of people she had been unable to respect. Everyone had a pleasant word for Ma and Pa McBirney, and almost everyone seemed to know about her and to ask if she was their new daughter. They said they were pleased to meet her, and when they knew about Hi—and the McBirneys were quick to tell—they said they were pleased to meet him too, and that they’d like mighty well to do him a good turn if the chance offered. There was so much talking of this kind to do, that after all, Hi did not get his description of the singing, and it was only when he had reached the grove around Friendly Church that he began to understand what a happy occasion it really was.
Wagons by the twenties stood about, their horses unhitched and tied beneath the trees. Men, women and children were gathered in groups, talking and laughing. The heavy barred doors of the old church were swung wide, and the ivy and crimson creeper peeped in at its open windows. The boys helped pa unhitch and were ready when the deep-toned bell sounded, to go with the others into the church.
The bare yet homely interior was stained a deep reddish brown by time, and the wide-swung casements let in the sky of the fair summer day. Elder Miles stood in the pulpit for a few minutes, to ask a blessing on the gathering, and then a hook-nosed, slender, restless old man with a voice like a silver trumpet got up and called for volunteers for the first singing. He said he thought it would be better to have the middle-aged folks at the first table, so to speak, and that the young folks could wait for second helping.
With that, men and women arose in various parts of the room and went forward. Their weather-colored, work-worn faces were lighted with smiles as they went down the aisle, nodding to acquaintances shyly, and taking their places in the seats which had been arranged just below the pulpit. There seemed to be no need to inquire which was soprano, alto, tenor or bass. They had met together for years, and knew each other’s voices well. There were only two who hesitated as if not quite sure where to go, and Azalea, seeing them, was surprised to see that it was Mrs. Carson and a tall handsome man, with a touch of gray in his hair, whom she took at once to be Carin’s father. The hook-nosed man came forward to inquire politely as to their voices, and after shaking hands with them, placed them among the sopranos and the tenors.
Then a fresh-faced young woman seated herself at the organ, and in a moment the chorus of voices broke on Azalea’s ear. It was not the way she had expected it to be—that music. It was sad, although full of worship and trust. The voices wavered curiously, and seemed to flutter on the notes something as a flag flutters in the wind. Perhaps the alto and the bass were a little too strong for the more musical parts; but at any rate, at first, the little girl was disappointed. Then, someway, she began to like it. She felt the tears come stinging to her eyes, though she could not have told why, and a lump gathered in her throat. She forgot the men and women and the haggard old meeting house, forgot the sound of the pines without and the humming of the bees; and she seemed for a moment—a wonderful moment—to be in mid-air like a bird, and to hear a strange, sad, holy song coming up to her from men and women who toiled, and hoped, and loved, and suffered, down on the earth.
Some one offered her a hymn book, and the strange moment passed, and she was able to follow the hymns. They had noble words to them, and her heart seemed to grow bigger as she read them. Such words suited her—fed something in her that was hungry and cried for food. She began to understand why it was that Pa and Ma McBirney were so good. They had been taught these words from the time that they were children. They had grown up with these beautiful thoughts in their hearts.
After a time the young people were called for, and the older ones took their seats. The young wives went and their brown-faced husbands, and the fresh-faced, wistful girls, and the boys with their bright eyes. Azalea loved to look at them, they seemed so strong and contented. She liked the bright frocks of the girls, and the way their hair was braided, and though she tried to think of other things, she fell to picturing a green lawn frock she would have some day when she made money for herself, and the figured sash—green leaves on a white ground—she would wear with it.
Just then, the man who was sitting next Azalea arose and went over by the window, and a moment later some one slipped down into the place he had left and gave Azalea’s hand a squeeze. Azalea turned her head as quick as a frightened bird, and there sat Carin Carson, smiling at her as if they were old friends.
“I was so glad when I saw you here,” she whispered. “Isn’t it a pity they don’t ask the children to sing? I just love to sing, don’t you?”
Azalea shook her head. She had sung many a time for the people who came to the show, but she had hated the silly songs she was made to sing, and as she thought of them now she blushed.
“I don’t believe I really can sing,” she whispered back. “I could once, but my voice is spoiled. I sang too loud, and now it’s all rough and horrid.”
“I don’t believe it,” returned her friend. “Your voice is so pleasant when you speak that I don’t see how it can be horrid when you sing. I’m to have a singing teacher come to the house twice a week, and I wish you’d come down some time and have her hear you. Perhaps you sing a great deal better than you think you do.”
“No, no,” whispered Azalea, shaking her head. “I do everything wrong!”
Carin laughed under her breath and gave her friend’s hand another squeeze. She was thinking that Azalea was the prettiest girl in the place, but she had been taught that it was not nice to pay people compliments, and so she said nothing of what was in her mind. But she decided that she would enjoy Azalea’s society for that day, and when the singing adjourned for the people to eat their lunch, Carin insisted that the McBirneys and her people should eat together. So, by dint of urging and introducing, she finally had the pleasure of seeing her father and mother and Mr. and Mrs. McBirney seated together beneath the shade of some glorious tulip trees, spreading their luncheons out on one table cloth.
Mr. and Mrs. Carson were people who had traveled in many foreign places, and had heard and seen much that was most beautiful and wonderful in the world, but their ways were so simple and hearty that neither Mary nor Thomas McBirney felt abashed with them. In fact, the Carsons were ignorant of many things in the country round about them, and they asked questions as if they were children. The McBirneys answered them politely, though they really couldn’t help wondering how it was that such learned people didn’t know ginseng when they saw it, or that they hadn’t heard about the asbestos mines in the neighborhood, or didn’t understand how to trap the rabbits that spoiled the gardens.
Azalea was fascinated with the free ways all these Carsons had. They seemed to say whatever came into their heads, and they laughed outright in such a hearty and happy way that those who heard them had to laugh too. Mr. Carson kept running through the hymn tunes he had heard, though he did it in a quiet, charming way, not at all as if he wished to attract attention, but as if he felt himself among friends who would allow him to follow his impulses. He was, of course, different from all of the other men there, yet he had a way of making it seem as if they did him a favor when they were friendly with him, and Azalea heard him heartily thanking the hook-nosed man—Mr. Pickett, his name was—for having asked him and Mrs. Carson to sing.
“I never quite had a chance to sing as much as I wanted to,” he said laughingly. “I sing when I get up, and when I’m in my bath tub, and when I walk and when I ride. If my wife would let me I’d sing at the table, particularly when I see my favorite kind of custard pie coming on—but though I’ve done my best, I’ve not had my sing out yet.”
“Well, if you live down this way long enough, sir,” answered Mr. Pickett, “we’ll try to satisfy you yet.”
Mr. Pickett said there would be quite a long recess before the singing “took up” again, so Azalea and Carin wandered away in the woods together. Azalea couldn’t help feeling just a trifle awkward and shy with this graceful girl, whose clothes seem to move with a mysterious rustle, and who was like a flower, giving out faint odors of violet as she walked. Her laugh was gay, but soft, and every word she spoke seemed to have another accent than that to which Azalea was used. Azalea wondered how she could be so well pleased with a simple girl like herself, and with all these hard-working folk, and she tried to say something of the kind, but she could find no fit words. So they talked about the woods, and about the sort of picnics they liked, and about how afraid they were—or weren’t—of thunder storms.
As they went on, they came to a beautiful hollow in the woods. There was soft, very green grass in the bottom of this cup-shaped place, and ferns and delicate vines grew on the sides.
“What a lovely, lovely place!” cried Carin, clasping her hands. “Fit for the fairy queen, isn’t it, Azalea?”
“Do you believe in fairies?” asked Azalea almost indignantly.
“Believe in them?” repeated Carin. “I believe in whatever I want to believe in. Don’t you think it’s fun to believe in fairies?”
“What’s the use of believing in a thing that isn’t true?”
“Oh, well,” said Carin, sighing, as if she found it rather hard to bridge the distance between Azalea’s mind and her own, “some thoughts are for use and some are for fun. My shoes are for use, but my gold beads are for fun. Ideas are like that too. I know the earth turns over and makes day and night; I play there are fairies just to suit myself. It’s like trimming on a dress—thoughts of that kind. You like trimming on a dress, don’t you, Azalea?”
But Azalea’s answer was a low cry.
“Don’t move, Carin! Don’t move! Oh, Carin, the snake!”
Carin looked and saw. Before her, coiled and ready for its wicked spring, was a snake with a gleaming, splendid skin, green and brown and iridescent tints, in diamond shaped pattern, and on the summer air was a dry, curious rattle that told both the girls its alarming story. Carin said nothing for the second or two in which she realized her danger, and she seemed only to half hear Azalea’s sharp cry:
“Now, jump to one side, Oh, quick!”
But she had no time to obey, for at that instant, a shot rang on the air, and the wicked head of the serpent drooped.
“Oh, Oh!” screamed Azalea, more terrified now that the danger was over than she had been before. And “Oh,” sighed Carin softly, and slid down to the ground and sat there, very white, with one hand to her lips.
“It’s all right, honey bird, all right,” cried a voice near them. “That there sarpent can’t do you no manner of harm now. You jest sit still a minute or two and get over your scare, and then I’ll escort you back to your folks.”
Carin and Azalea both turned and looked into the eyes of a wonderful old man—looked into eyes, large, dark, and soft, half hidden beneath bushy eyebrows, and set beneath a beetling brow. His hair was iron-gray, curling and thick, and it stood up on his head in such a way as to make him look two or three inches taller than he really was, and that was quite unnecessary, for he stood, as he was quick to declare, six feet and four inches in his stocking feet. He was very thin, and when he walked he seemed on the point of falling to pieces, because he had what is known as double joints, so that his arms and legs swung about in almost any way he wished to have them, and his head turned about with wonderful ease on his long neck.
He stooped now and it was an amazing thing to see him do it—and picked up a fiddle which he had laid against the trunk of a tree.
“It certainly was a mighty convenient thing, having that gun along,” he said. “Old brother sarpent, he never would have waited for me to get after him with a stick. A bullet was the only thing that could put him out of business, and I wa’n’t sure I could hit him at that distance—couldn’t have, I reckon, if the case hadn’t been so pressing.”
Carin got up and ran toward him with her hands outstretched.
“Thank you! Thank you, sir!” she said, in that pretty eager way of hers. “I know what you’ve done for me, and I must take you to see my papa and mamma. Why, it was wonderful! I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
“Steady on, steady on,” said the man. “Knocking the head off a tarnation rascal like that is no new business with me. Glad, though, to have served you, little miss.”
He bowed low, and the girls watched him, fascinated.
“I didn’t hear you playing this morning, sir,” went on Carin. “Weren’t you in at the Singing? I should think they’d love to have you play.”
“My innings are coming, Miss Honey Bird,” replied the man smiling. “There ain’t been a singing at Friendly Church for thirty years that hain’t had old Haystack Thompson there, a fiddling. But I was late getting here to-day. I’ve been farming it away up on Rabbit Nose Mountain, and I had to hoof it down here. I started early enough, but I got lazy like and laid down and dozed off. When I woke, the sun was high overhead and I just piked along, but even then I found myself late.”
“You will play, though, won’t you, sir?”
“You bet I will, Miss Honey Bird. And I pray the Lord will keep a guard over my bow and hold it down to hymn tunes. If so be, that thar bow should get Old Nick in it, as I’ve known it to do afore now, I might have the whole kit and boodle footing the Highland fling or the Virginia reel right there on the floor of the meeting house.”
Carin laughed merrily.
“Oh, do come along quick and meet papa,” she said. “You’ll be such good friends.” She ran ahead in her eagerness, urging “Haystack Thompson” to follow.
It had not been necessary for her to ask why he had this curious name, for she knew very well that it had been given to him because of his wild crop of hair, which did indeed look like a stack of hay after a bad windstorm.
“I’d no idea that Azalea and I had come so far,” she said to her new friend. “We wandered on and on, talking, and when we came to that lovely hollow we couldn’t keep out of it.”
They were getting to the clearing, and they could see the people moving toward the church. Mr. Thompson caught a glimpse of Mr. Pickett, and the two musicians greeted each other like long-lost brothers, and walked toward the meeting house in great enthusiasm, making an odd pair, for Mr. Pickett, for all of his air of importance, reached no higher than Mr. Thompson’s shoulder. Carin found her father just as he was going in the door and dragged him back to meet her new acquaintance; and a moment later, everyone had seen “Old Haystack” and was clamoring for his music. Mr. Thompson was given the post of honor, and there he stood, towering up toward the pointed roof, his faded fiddle in his hand, tears in his eyes, smiling at his old friends.
He tuned up carefully, and ran his bow lovingly across the string a few times, then gave a shake to the “haystack” and began to play “Old Hundred.” At first it was as if a deep voice, full of love of God and life were singing; then as if a chorus of children’s voices sang it in joy; then as if the wind called it to the sea and the sea answered; then as if the hills shouted it and the voices of all living things joined in.
Carin found herself on her feet—found herself, indeed, wishing that she could fly. For a moment it seemed as if she were flying, but when she looked about her, she saw that she was not, but was standing singing at the top of her lungs with all the others. And then for an hour, while the tall, gaunt fiddler drew his music from his instrument, and the people followed him as if they had one voice, Carin forgot everything in the world except the music. But suddenly it ended. The fiddler played some minor theme which no one knew, and which was born in his brain that moment. All the people took it for the note of parting and filed out of the church. And once out, they seemed in little mood to talk. They had been too deeply moved for that. They preferred to get in their vehicles and drive off into the silence of the lonely mountain roads. Carin, certainly, was glad that she could snuggle in the back seat of their surrey with her mother, and sit there in quiet. She was strangely tired, and wanted nothing in the world except to rest, and she thought, in the back of her mind, that probably Azalea was feeling the same way. That made her wonder how it was that she had not seen Azalea after they all went back into the church, and she was just going to speak to her mother about it, when Mrs. McBirney came running toward them with a white face.
“We can’t find Azalea anywhere,” she cried. “We’ve looked everywhere—pa and Jim and Hi, and Mr. Pickett and lots of others. We can’t find her anywhere!”
CHAPTER VIII
THE KIDNAPPING
“Why, she can’t be far away,” cried Carin, trembling in spite of herself. “I’m sure I can find her, Mrs. McBirney. Where’s Mr. Thompson? He’ll go with me back to the place where we were together. She came after us for a way, I know. I thought she followed the whole way, but the singing was just beginning, and I ran in the church, not noticing.”
“Of course we’ll find her, Mrs. McBirney,” Mr. Carson declared stoutly. “The child couldn’t get lost in a clearing like this.”
“Perhaps she lit out,” drawled a mountain woman who was standing near. “You can’t tell what a girl brought up to lead a wandering life might do. Tramps like that ain’t to be depended on to keep to roof and hearth.”
Mary McBirney turned toward the woman with flashing eyes.
“My Azalea wouldn’t do anything to make me trouble, ma’am,” she said. “She’s got a heart of gold. Something has happened—that’s the whole of it—something has happened.”
Carin had sped in search of Mr. Thompson, and having found him, the two set off in the woods in search of the dell. “Haystack’s” hair seemed to tower higher than ever, and his green felt cover was half off his violin, and dangled among the bushes as the two hastened through the wood. In Carin’s heart was the terrible thought of the rattlesnake. What if the mate to the one Mr. Thompson had killed had stung Azalea! But why, then, had she not cried out? It was past imagining. Mr. Thompson took Carin’s hand in his that they might go faster, and the two hastened on through the sun-flecked wood till they came to the beautiful hollow with the soft green grass. But they could see nothing of Azalea, and their calls and halloos brought no answer.
“We must try another tack,” said Mr. Thompson. “Something queer about this—something mighty queer.”
So all the neighbors seemed to think. The news that Azalea was missing had spread rapidly. It had overtaken the departing wagon-loads of neighbors, who returned to lend their assistance to their distressed neighbors. Parties ran out in all directions, scouring the woods, calling, peeping into the old well, and visiting the near-by houses. No one had seen or heard anything of the girl.
“You don’t think she’d go into hiding, sister McBirney,” inquired good old Elder Mills, with sympathy in his eye. “She didn’t seem like that sort of a girl, but she might have taken offense at something when no offense was meant. Young folks are like that, sometimes. I ran away from a good home twice when I was a boy, because my feelings were so precious tender. Great fools young folks are! And the worst of it is, they don’t all grow out of their folly when they get older.”
Mrs. McBirney stood there among her neighbors and cast her eye first on this group and then on that.
“I must say it clear and plain,” she said in her pleasant voice; “I trust that girl like I would my own son here. She loves me and I love her, and we’re heart to heart. She’s in some kind of trouble, and I reckon I know what it is.”
“What?” demanded twenty voices.
“Them show people has stole her. They said they would, and they waited till we was off the watch, and took their chance.”
“Why, ma,” said Thomas McBirney, “they’ve been gone weeks and weeks. They had about all they wanted of this community.”
“They must have come back then,” answered Mrs. McBirney with gentle obstinacy, “for they’ve gone and took my girl.”
The words faltered in her throat, and Jimmy, who was watching her, ran to her and slipped his arms about her. It was the first time that his mother had realized that he was not a little boy. She found in that moment of sorrow that by bowing her head, she could weep on his sturdy young shoulder, and that he seemed strong to comfort her.
Hi Kitchell drew near, his eyes shining in a face that was white beneath all his tan.
“Zalie didn’t run away,” he said in his rather gruff voice, which was changing from a boy’s to a man’s, and was now in his throat and now in his head. “You can’t make me think Zalie ran away. She wouldn’t do such a mean thing.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t, Hi,” broke in the soft tones of Mrs. Carson. “She was too kind and too happy. I think we’d better drive home, each going our proper way, watching out on every side for her, and get the sheriff to send word to all the towns round about. If the show people have taken her, it ought to be an easy matter to find her, for the show is bound to go to the towns.”
“Yes, yes,” broke in her husband. “Let’s do something! I can’t stand this waiting around, not knowing what may be happening to the poor child. Mr. Pickett tells me he’ll have every inch of woods for a radius of two miles around, searched by some of these young men. So we may leave that quite in his hands. But he thinks, and I think, that the child has been carried away. He said he heard the show people kept making their threats. They heard of the Singing, and judged that Azalea would be here and that it was their chance.”
“We ought to have cared for her better,” moaned Ma McBirney. “Thomas, I blame myself for not looking after her better.”
“Well, Mary, you’ll have to do all the blaming yourself then, for nobody else will do it. We’ve set ourselves to war against the children of Satan, and they’ve been more wily than we took them to be. That’s all there is to it.”
A light rain had begun to fall and the glory of the day was quite gone as the people turned from the grove around Friendly Church and moved off along the six roads that debouched from that gathering place.
Carin looked sadly from the little window in the curtains of their surrey, and wondered what strange thing could be happening to her friend. Though several hours had passed since she was lost, and though at least two hundred persons had joined in the search for her, and she had not been found, still, Carin found it impossible to realize that anything could have happened to the laughing girl who had run with her through the woods to the green dell.
Usually Carin liked to ride in the rain. It was fun to cuddle down beneath the robes, in the dusk of the curtained carriage, and “play.” Carin knew how to play much more delightful things without toys than with them. She had only to begin pretending that she was a princess who was being stolen and carried into the desert; or that she was a missionary traveling over the Himalayas; or a pirate’s daughter, going to hide treasure; or any other of a hundred things, to have a beautiful time. One of her favorite “pretends” had been that about the stolen princess. But the story had come true in a way, and Carin found it was not nearly so amusing as she had thought it would be.
The rain grew heavier and the sky sulkier, and when they reached home, it was chilly and almost dark. To be sure the great house was lighted up, and a fire was burning in the living room, and a delicious supper was spread. But these things did not bring as much comfort as usual. Mrs. Carson had insisted that the McBirneys should not climb the mountain that night.
“You’ll only have to come down in the morning,” she said. “Spend the night with us. We’ll telephone the sheriff and get him up here; and we’ll telegraph all the surrounding towns, and you’ll be right here to help and advise.”
“But there’s the stock,” objected Thomas McBirney. “I can’t leave the poor dumb beasts hungering and thirsting.”
“Hi and me’ll look after them, pa,” said Jim. “You just let us take the horses, and we’ll ride up there and ’tend to things.”
“’Deed we will,” agreed Hi. “The only trouble is, I ought to be at the mill in the morning. They’ll be looking for me.”
Hi spoke as if the mill would shut down if he didn’t get there on time, and Mr. Carson couldn’t conceal a smile. He liked Hi’s important businesslike ways and his fashion of taking responsibility. So he answered gravely:
“Allow me to call up the manager of the mill the first thing in the morning, Hi, and apprise him of the situation. I may be able to get him at breakfast, so that he’ll know just what to expect before he reaches the office.”
It seemed a reasonable arrangement to Hi, and he hadn’t the faintest notion of the smiles of his elders. So, mounted on the bare backs of the McBirney horses, the boys set out to ride up the mountain in the rain. Each wore an old raincoat which Mr. Carson had fished up from somewhere about the house, and each carried a lantern.
“It certainly looks mighty lonely to me for them boys to start off up that mountain alone,” sighed Pa McBirney. “But I couldn’t endure it to think of the stock going unfed.”
“You don’t suppose those dreadful people will get after Hi, too, do you?” Carin whispered to her mother. Mrs. Carson started and looked troubled.
“I declare Carin, I don’t know. I’m all at sea. I’ve read of things like this, but nothing of the sort ever came into my life before, and I can’t more than half believe it.”
“That’s just the way I feel, mamma. There’s a ring at the doorbell. Perhaps it’s the sheriff.”
It was the sheriff, Mr. James Coulter, a heavy man with small eyes and a square jaw, and with him was Haystack Thompson.
“You’ll have to excuse me for coming along,” Haystack apologized. “But I’m in this hunt to stay. Life’s been lagging along pretty slow with me lately and now here something comes that looks to me like a man’s work, and I’ll be plumbasted, if I don’t want a hand in it.”
Thomas McBirney held out his hand.
“You always was one for adventures, Mr. Thompson,” he said, with emotion in his voice. “We’re grateful for your help.”
So they sat together, planning and scheming, till Carin fell asleep on the sofa, and the oil burned out of the lamps. The rain fell heavier and heavier and blew in gusts against the pane. And when Carin staggered up to bed with the help of Mammy Thula, it seemed to her as if all the pleasant things had stopped happening and only trouble was at hand.
Very much the same sort of an idea was lying in the bottom of Ma McBirney’s mind, though she tried to answer cheerfully when her Thomas spoke to her, and she said her prayers as if she had perfect faith that they were to be answered. But the truth was, she was too worried just then to have much faith. She imagined the frightful things that might be happening to her poor Azalea, and she realized more than ever how dear the child had become to her, and how she loved her merry ways and her odd turns of mind, and her way of acting as if the world was hers. But, more than that—Oh, much more than that just at that particular moment, was her anxiety for her own James Stuart. What was her boy doing just then, she wondered. The rain was simply threshing against the pane, and she knew in what torrents it would pour down the mountain side, ripping new gulleys for itself and deepening the old ones. It was black as only night and cloud can make the world, and the horses would be wearied and fretted.
“I doubt we were right in letting those poor boys go up the mountain to-night, Thomas,” she said, just as the good Pa McBirney was sinking into slumber. “We might better have let the creatures go hungry for a while than to risk the lives of those boys.”
“Go to sleep, Mary,” commanded Mr. McBirney in a sleepy voice. “I’ve got to have my night’s rest.” And indeed, he seemed to be beginning it before he had finished his sentence, for the next moment above all the clamor and uproar of the gale, ma could hear his steady and wholesome snore.
But she lay awake, turning this way and that, creeping out of bed to look from the window, where nothing could be seen but this latter deluge, and then huddling in again, praying for the three wandering children.
And as a matter of fact, prayers could not come amiss for any of them that night. And really, her own freckled Jim needed them rather more than the two she had taken under her motherly wing. For James Stuart McBirney encountered that night one of the greatest dangers of his short but interesting career. The two drenched boys had urged their horses up the slippery mountain road, and the horses had plunged on, half blinded by the storm. The way had been difficult, but all had gone well enough till they came to the falls where Jim had, several weeks before, shown Hi his mill and dam. The fall was roaring down the mountain side, and the boys had no choice but to cross the swollen torrent as it foamed and writhed across the roadway. In fair weather this was a safe enough crossing, and Jim loved it beyond any words of his to say. He would pause here while his horse drank, and he himself would sit staring at the dream-like valley, thinking vague and happy thoughts. But to-night, as he was to learn, the great boulders that had been placed at the outer edge of the road had been carried away, and the black water was an enemy—the water which had so often been his playmate. Midstream, he felt his horse slipping.
“Mac!” he called sharply, slapping the animal encouragingly, “Mac! Pull up!”
But Mac, it seemed, could not pull up, though he tried desperately. His feet went out from under him, and he lay on his side, with the waters raging about him and bearing him toward that desperate edge. Once over that, they would drop sheer one hundred and fifty feet upon jagged rocks where the waters twisted and hissed like angry serpents. Fortunately, Mac had not gone down quickly, but after a struggle, and Jim had had time to free himself from the stirrups. He stood there in the flood now, with the frantic horse between him and that deadly fall. The bridle reins were still in his hands, and he held to them with the instinct of the born horseman, though what a slender boy could do with a frightened horse in a raging torrent, it is not easy to imagine. Jim felt both of them going, and said to himself: “One second more and I’ll let old Mac go and get out of this—if I can!” when suddenly the great body of the horse caught and held. Jim felt that the animal was bracing himself against something strong and firm, and he let go the reins to escape the plunging hoofs. But the next moment, freed from the horse’s sustaining back, he found himself swept from his feet and caught in the terrible swirl of the waters. Then, for the first time, he screamed “Hi! Hi!” though he knew there was small chance that Hi could hear him. And at that instant, a terrible thought flashed over his mind. What if Hi had not been able to cross the ford! What if he, too, had gone down!
“Hi! Hi!” shouted Jim in his throat. A thousand wicked voices of the storm answered him; the cruel hands of the flood clutched him. He swept on, closed his eyes, and in his terrified, dry little mind thought:
“I reckon that’s about all of me!”
And then, somehow, miraculously, he too was caught and held. True, the waters were pounding him, he was smothering with the spray, but at least he was not being tossed over the brink. He thrust out desperate hands and clutched the obstruction. It was a tree in full leaf, which had been swept from the upper fall and had somehow snarled there on the rocks. It was what had saved Mac, and at the end of a frightened, determined struggle, Jim, standing ankle deep, in the red mud of the road, knew that it had saved him too. And there, at his hand, trembling, but safe, was good old Mac.
It seemed strange to Jim that his throat could be so dry when his very skin was soaking and the heavens were emptying torrents all about him, but it was all he could do to shriek out: “Hi! Oh, Hi!”
No voice answered. “He’s gone,” sobbed Jim. “He’s gone over the fall! Oh, what shall I do?”
But just then above the road came a sharp voice in his ears.
“Shut up there, ninny! I’m here all right.”
“Where? Where?”
“Where you’ll step on me if you don’t watch out. I guess my arm’s broke, Jim. Nannie went down at the ford, but she got out and ran away from me. Piked for home, I guess. I hit something, and crawled out, and then I sort o’ went to sleep. One arm’s acting funny—it won’t work.”
“Oh, Hi,” cried Jim, “never mind if your arm is broke; that can be mended. But if you’d gone over—”
“No glue would mend me then,” answered Hi. He struggled to his feet, and the two boys went on in the darkness. They left Mac to plunge up the road as best suited him. Both had cast away their lanterns after the rain and wind had put out the light, and they tramped on in the blur of mist which told them that they were in the very heart of a cloud. Sometimes Hi could not keep back a groan, though he tried manfully.
“You just brace up, Hi, you hear?” said Jim with affectionate roughness. “You’re in luck to only break one bone. My goodness, what’s one bone when you’ve hundreds of ’em in your body?”
Hi set his strong white teeth together and trudged on. The way seemed like an endless bad dream. But finally he heard Jim say: “We’re here.” And they were. They were in the good dry cabin, and Hi had sunk on the settle while Jim lighted the lamps and lit the fire. That done, he went out to the horse shed and came back with the cheering news that both horses were in their stalls.
“And now,” he said, “let’s see what we can do about your arm. I know there’s arnica in the house.”
“Arnica!” cried Hi in anguished contempt. “Do you think rubbing will do that any good?” He dangled the limp lower arm before Jim’s horrified gaze.
“No,” said a gruff voice, “rubbing won’t help it none, but setting will, and I’m the man to do it for you.”
The boys turned as quick as owls, and there, standing in the doorway was a tall, dripping man in homespun mountain clothes.
“Why, Buck Bab!” cried Jim, “Where did you come from?”
Hi’s eyes started from his head.
“Ain’t you the man that chased me with a gun the other night?” he asked.
Bab wrung the rain out of his hair and grinned at Hi.
“Maybe I am,” he said, “and maybe I ain’t. But one thing’s certain: I’m going to set that there arm of yours, son.” To Jim he said, “You go find me a shingle. Rip one off the house if you can’t do any other way, and I’ll take the liberty of tearing up one of your ma’s old sheets.” He bustled about the cabin getting everything in readiness, and then he came over to Hi, smiling curiously.
“’Twon’t be very bad,” he said almost tenderly. He stooped over him and seemed to tap him gently on the jaw somewhere below the ear. Jim couldn’t make out what was going on. Suddenly Hi seemed to be asleep, and he was making no objection at all as Buck Bab’s great hands busied themselves with drawing the broken arm from the coat and shirt that hampered them.
“What have you done, Buck Bab!” demanded Jim, thoroughly frightened. “What’s the matter with Hi?”
“Now, don’t worry, McBirney,” answered Bab gruffly. “I just fixed your friend so he wouldn’t be inconvenienced by what I’m about to do. He’s just taking a little nap to order. He’ll be all right in a minute or two, and by that time I’ll have his arm set as tight as a trap. You didn’t want to hear his hollering and crying, did you?”
“No—o,” said Jim doubtfully. He drew nearer to his friend and stood there ready to give any help that Bab should need.
In ten minutes it was all over. The arm was in place and held there safely with bandages and splints. Hi’s wet clothes had been dragged from him and he had been wrapped in a warm blanket. His eyes began to flutter and a sick look to come into his white face.
“Lie still,” growled Bab to him, “and think of nothing. And you, McBirney, I suppose you come up here to look after the stock. Well, get out that lantern and find the milk pails, and I’ll help you. After we’ve fixed up the animals, we’ll get some supper.”
“Well,” thought Jim to himself, as he obeyed the man, “who would believe it? I know pa wouldn’t, and I don’t believe ma would, though she always says there’s some good in everybody. Buck Bab a moonshiner, and not denying it! And yet here he is, helping me out! It seems like a night with a lot of queer dreams in it. Oh, my! Poor Zalie! Oh, Zalie, where can you be!”
CHAPTER IX
HAYSTACK THOMPSON
Haystack Thompson lay in bed making uncomplimentary remarks about the rain.
“It’s just took away the last chanct we had of following up that poor little mountain lass,” said he to his old clock. “If it hadn’t been for this tarnation storm I’d ’a’ tramped back to that there dell where I come on them two lasses making eyes at that rattler, and it would have been mighty funny if I couldn’t have found out something about what happened there.”
He reached out for his bag of tobacco, and filling his pipe and lighting it, tried to bring some cheer into his damp cabin by smoking very hard.
“I’d have gone over the whole ground,” he mused. “I’d ’a’ pretended I was walking on with that nice little Miss Carin, talking and smiling; I’d thought out how the other lass hung behind, looking at the trees and flowers, and I’d never have give up till I made out why she didn’t reach that church. But here we are, everything swept smooth as sandpaper with the storm!”
He fell to wishing that for once in his life there was some one to build the fire for him and get the breakfast.
“It’s lonesome business,” said he aloud, “being pa and ma and all the children just by yourself. Looks hoggish, now, don’t it? I wish I’d divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it. Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have nothing but a fiddle that he cares for!”
He flung out of bed in disgust, whipped into his old clothes, lighted the fire—which proceeded to smoke badly—and got out his bacon and his bag of meal.
“I’m just plumb tired of cooking alone,” he announced to a squirrel that paused for a moment before his door, sitting erect on his haunches and casting a wistful glance from his bright eyes. Haystack tossed him some ground nuts which he kept in a bag for that purpose, and then turned angrily to his own meal. Halfway through it, he laid down his knife and fork, and a light broke over his face.
“I know what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll go find that little lass. I’ll make myself of some use, that’s what I’ll do. See here, Betsy,” he went on, turning to his violin and speaking to it as if it were a little sister, “you and me’ll start out and find that there poor lass, you hear? We’ve been playing stick-in-the-mud about long enough. What we need is to get a move on us and to go out and see something of the world. What you say, Bet?”
Just then a log fell on the hearth, and from Betsy’s answering strings came forth a delicate wail. Haystack took it to mean that they should go, and when he had made his cabin tidy—and he took much more pains with it than usual—he put on clean homespun, packed a change of clothing in a square of blue denim, fastened this to a stick which he threw over his shoulder, and taking Betsy under the other arm, started out on a quest.
At about the same time the sheriff at Lee and Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson and Elder Mills and Mr. Pickett and a great many other persons were bestirring themselves to the same end. They telegraphed here and they telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the lost child to keep her from harm.
“Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.”
And that was just about the time that Azalea, aroused from her thin and worried sleep by the first streaks of the dawn that streamed to her over the level low country, drew the dirty bedclothes closer about her chin, and tried to make out whether or not it was all a bad dream. Tige, the bulldog, crouching there at the tent door, and snarling if she but moved, certainly seemed like a nightmare. Betty Bowen with her frowsy head and her horrid red flannel bed-gown, sleeping with her mouth open on the shake-down next to Azalea, and the miserable old show wagon outside, with lumbering Rafe Bowen, the son of Betty, snoring in rivalry to the robins—not that his opera in any way resembled theirs—was something worse than ordinary nightmare.
“It isn’t a dream,” sighed Azalea, with deep, terrible conviction. “It’s true.”
She went over the sharp little drama of all that had happened the day before; remembered the sweet hollow in the woods where she and Carin had gone, the fright they had had at the snake, the appearance of that queer, kind old Haystack Thompson; she remembered how she had followed them a little way, and then had stopped for some wake robins which were growing in a sunny little spot and which she had thought would look lovely at Ma McBirneys’ belt; and then had come the strange whimpering of an animal in pain. She had thought it a dog caught in a rabbit trap, and she had gone toward it, and as she went on, the sound seemed to move too, and it grew more agonizing as if the animal were being tortured beyond anything it could stand. And then, suddenly, from among the great trees, had come Sisson, the “showman,” her old enemy. He had his huge hand over her mouth in a minute, and had pushed her before him, making her run against her will, and presently they were among all the old companions of her wandering years. Rafe Bowen, who had run away three years before, was back too. He was a big fellow with broad shoulders and a sullen face. And there was a new woman—to take her mother’s place, Azalea thought. They had laughed at her and told Sisson not to be too rough with her.
“You treat her like she was a mad steer, Hank,” Betty Bowen had said. “Don’t scare the young un like that.”
Sisson let go of her and pushing her a little way from him broke into a roar of laughter. It made cold chills run over the girl. She knew that when Sisson laughed it was when some one else was in trouble. Nearly the only thing he really enjoyed was tormenting some one.
“She ran out to meet me,” he cried, roaring with that cruel laughter, his eyes full of evil pleasure. “Just toddled out to meet me, she did. You never saw anything like it. Couldn’t stay away from her old friend, Zalie couldn’t. Once a show girl always a show girl, eh?”
Azalea had been learning lessons of self-control since she had been with Mary McBirney, but now her old-time temper flamed up in her. She felt the familiar wave of fire sweeping across her brain and she screamed out angry things at Sisson.
“I’m no show girl!” she protested. “I never wanted to be a show girl. I think you are wicked, wicked, Hank Sisson! You’ve taken me away from the best people I ever knew and they’ll be so frightened! Oh, please, Mrs. Bowen, make him let me go. Oh, Hank Sisson I hate you! I hate you! Oh, why isn’t my mamma alive? You wouldn’t dare treat me like this if she was alive. You bad, bad man!”
“You can see for yourself, what a fine performer she is,” Sisson sneered. “High tragedy, that’s her line.”
“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” wailed the girl, “mamma was good to you. Won’t you help me?”
“Turning on the tear taps now,” grinned Sisson.
“Oh, shut up,” snapped the new woman. “What did you expect the girl to do? Didn’t think she’d rejoice, did you? Leave her be, you Sisson. You’ve got her, that’s the main thing; now give her a chance to cool down a little. I’m sorry for the young un, that’s what I am—taking her away from a good home to tag along with a lot like us!”
Sisson raised his heavy fist and made as if to strike the woman.
“You take your choice,” he growled. “Shut up or be shut up.”
“While we’re rowing around here, Hank,” broke in Betty Bowen, “the folks will be after us. Do we carry out our plan, or don’t we?”
“We carry it out and we do it quick,” announced Sisson. Nor was Azalea long in finding out what the plan was. Taking it for granted that as soon as Azalea was missed, the Sisson All Star Combination would be under suspicion, it was the intention of Sisson and his troupe to go on up into the mountains; but Betty Bowen and her son Rafe were to take the best team of horses, and the wagon with its load of conveniences, hide by night in the woods, and then make their way before dawn into South Carolina. The state line was not more than twelve miles from where they then were, and once across that, they were comparatively safe.
This program had been carried out rapidly—more rapidly, in fact, than was at first intended. Azalea was compelled to go in the old covered wagon and to lie down there under a pile of odds and ends. Betty sat beside her son Rafe and directed their course. They had struck an old wood-road, and wound along through the heart of a silent forest, meeting no one. So much more solitary was the road than they had supposed it would be that Betty urged her son to press on. The horses were young and strong—a new team which Azalea had not before seen—and the result was that by twelve o’clock that night they had camped in an out-of-the-way grove across the line dividing the two Carolinas. The mountains were left behind, and an almost level plain stretched around them. But the underbrush in this grove of poor trees was thick, and as Betty intended to do her cooking at night and to show no smoke from her camp fire to curious strangers during the day, they felt that there was little danger of their being found.
The rain that had drenched the valley of Lee had thrown out no more than a light shower over the spot where the Bowens kept Azalea prisoner, and while the girl lay on her rickety bed wondering what had happened back at home, she did not dream of the wild experiences through which her friends Jim and Hi had been passing. It was not of them that she thought chiefly—though she knew how they would be fuming about her and putting plans on foot for her recovery—but of Ma McBirney and her anxiety.
“I’m so used to having bad times,” thought the little girl wrapping her arms tight about her body as if for company, “that I can stand them. But Ma McBirney isn’t used to them. She’ll just fret herself crazy.”
She had perfect confidence in the ability of her friends to find her. She had thought all that out in that strange, dangerous drive at night through the old wood-road. People like Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson weren’t the kind to give up hunting for her.
“I’ve just got to lie low,” thought this child who had seen too much of the ways of a prowling company of folk, “and take care of myself the best way I can, and I’ll be found. I’ll be back in Ma McBirney’s house all right and tight in a little while. I’m going to believe that and say it over and over. I’m not going to be scared, nor sorry, nor anything. Jim and Hi will think I’m a silly thing to let myself be picked up and carried away like that, anyway. They’ll think I haven’t a bit of grit. But I’ll show them I’m not such a stupid goose after all.”
She made up her mind, too, that she would try not to think too much about Ma McBirney. If she did she would get to crying again, and she didn’t want to cry. She wanted to think, and to watch, and to be wise and act at the right moment. And having reached that conclusion, she sat up in bed with something almost like brightness on her face. And at that Tige, the bulldog, sat up too and showed all of his teeth as he gave a low growl. Tige was a good dog according to his lights; and his lights told him that when his master, Rafe Bowen—according to Tige, the most wonderful master in the world—told him to “watch,” why then, he was to watch; nay he was to sleep with one eye open and both ears alert.
“For goodness sake, Tige,” whispered Azalea, leaning forward and putting out her hand toward the dog, “be sensible, can’t you? I’ve got to move sometimes, haven’t I?”
Betty Bowen threw her brown arms up over her frowsy head.
“Keep still, you, Zalie,” she snarled sleepily. “Don’t you see I’m dead beat?”
So for two hours longer the restless girl had to lie still in her bed, though it became almost an agony to do so, while the tired show woman slept on and on. After a time, however, the little camp came to life. Rafe got up and demanded breakfast. Betty straggled out, heavy-eyed and slatternly, and set forth some cold food which Azalea could not swallow. The horses were fed, the wagon greased, and all was got in readiness for a hasty flight if necessary. Azalea helped as they directed her, and she managed to find a chance to wash carefully as Ma McBirney had taught her, and she combed her hair with a little side comb, and made herself look as well as she could.
“You’ve got mighty fine ways since you’ve been living out,” remarked Betty Bowen teasingly. Azalea looked at her as candidly as she would have looked at Ma McBirney, for someway, in spite of all her anger, she was feeling sorry for Bet Bowen this morning.
“Yes, Mrs. Bowen,” she said. “I have been taught some nice ways. Mrs. McBirney is the neatest woman you ever saw. Of course my own mamma tried to teach me things, but what was the use, when we didn’t have any way to keep nice? You can’t keep clean and fresh on the road, can you?”
Betty looked at the girl in sullen surprise. She had not expected to be met in this neighborly fashion. She thought to herself that if she were being held a prisoner, no one could get her to “chirk up” like that.
“No, you bet you can’t,” she said in answer to the girl’s question. “Now me, I used to wash my hair and brush it, and keep my hands pretty. I wasn’t always a battered old ship of the desert like I be now.” Bet could be rather picturesque in her speech when she had a mind. “Fact is, I reckon I had too much good looks and too little sense once on a time. Both the sense and the looks have been knocked out of me now. I guess you or anybody can see that.”
“Whatever made you take up with this show life, Mrs. Bowen?” the girl asked. They were sitting together then on the ground, their little odd tasks being all done. Azalea was playing idly with some pine needles, braiding them together after a fashion she had, and weaving them into a little mat. In the old days she would have sat idle, but Ma McBirney had got her into the way of occupying herself with one thing and another.
“What made me take to it?” demanded Bet, turning her haggard eyes on her companion, “Why, the same thing that made your mother take to it.”
There was something threatening and angry in the way she spoke, and Azalea looked at her with fear in her eyes. She could feel her heartbeats fairly strangling her, but she had the courage to seize at the remark. Ever since she was old enough to think at all, she had been puzzled and bewildered by the things about her. And now it seemed she might be told something of all she wished to know.
“And why was that, Betty?” she asked softly. “Why did my mamma have to wander around and act in a show?”
Mrs. Bowen drew an old rag of a shawl about her shoulders and leaned back against a tree. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind whether to tell this child the truth or not. But finally she gave a little nod.
“I’m just going to up and tell you why,” she said. “I think it’s coming to you to know. She did it because she married a poor shiftless coot of a man, the black sheep of a way-up family, and she done it against the wishes of all her folks. She ran away from home with him, and she took care of him while he lazed around and wouldn’t do nothing, and she looked after him like he was the best man in the world, and stuck to him when he gambled away all she earned. And then you was born, and she had to run away from him to get money enough to care for you.”
“Oh,” gasped Azalea, her hand at her heart and a sick feeling stealing over her.
“And I will say,” went on Bet, “that she cared for you as tender as if you was respectable folks living in the finest house in town. She just done the best she could; and she went along with us because we didn’t object to having a baby in the troupe. We began training you like a little puppy as soon as you had any mimicry in you, and the folks that came to the show liked it. Her and you was drawing cards, I can tell you. And for all of her broken heart she was nice and cheerful except when we’d go to the towns near by where she used to live. Then she was afraid she’d meet some of them that used to know her in the old days. But at last, when she found she was going to die, she seemed glad we was edging along toward her home.”
“And where was that,” breathed rather than asked Azalea. “Where was her old home?”
“Law, child, don’t you know that? Why, her old home was at Lee. That’s where your grandfather Atherton come from—from Lee.”
“My grandfather Atherton?”
“Sure, Zalie. Didn’t your ma tell you that? Well, she was a close one. I don’t know as she told us all, either, but we got hold of the story one way and another. When her father skipped out to parts unknown, owing to some trouble he got into at the time of the war, his wife—she was his second wife, and only a young thing—went back to her folks in Alabama for a while. And then they was made so poor by the war that she took shame to be dependent on them. So she came back to this part of the country, somewhere, and taught school, and took care of her little girl. And that little girl was your ma. She was a pretty little thing, made to live in luxury, I allow. I suppose she sort of honed for grand ways and grand clothes. Anyway, when your pa, Jack Knox, who come of an old family and was handsome and taking in his ways, came along, she married him. She didn’t know the drinking and the shiftlessness had come down to him as well as the fine manners and the handsome face. I heard your grandmother fought and fought against them two marrying, but they would have their way. So that’s your story, missy, and I do think it was coming to you to know it.”