Judith of the Cumberlands. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ thinks you’ve got one in yo’ pocket. The facts in the business air, Nancy, that you’ve done sp’iled him tell he’s plumb rotten, and a few of the jailings that you so kindly ricommend for my pair won’t do him no harm.”

      Nancy tossed up her head to reply; but at the moment a small boy, followed by a smaller girl, coming around the corner of the house, created a diversion. The girl, a little dancing imp with a frazzle of flying red hair and red-brown eyes, catching sight of Judith ran to her and flung herself head foremost in the visitor’s lap, where Judith cooed over her and cuddled her, rumpling the bright hair, rubbing her crimson cheek against the child’s peachy bloom.

      “Little Buck and Beezy,” said Nancy Card, addressing them both, “Yo’ unc’ Pony’s in jail. What you-all goin’ to do about it?”

      The small brown man of six stopped, his feet planted wide on the sward, his freckled face grave and stern as became his sex.

      “Ef the boys goes down for to git him out, I’m goin’ along,” Little Buck announced seriously. “Is they goin’, granny?”

      “I’ll set my old rooster on the jail man, an’ hit’ll claw ’im,” announced Beezy, reckless of distance and likelihood. “My old rooster can claw dest awful, ef he ain’t got but one leg.”

      Nancy chuckled. These grandchildren were the delight of her heart.

      The rain had ceased for the moment; the old man moved to the porch edge, sighting at the sky.

      “I don’t know whar Blatch is a-keepin’ hisself,” he observed. “Mebbe I better be a-steppin’.”

      But even as he spoke a tall young mountaineer swung into view down the road, dripping from the recent rain, and with that resentful air the best of us get from aggressions of the weather. Blatchley Turrentine, old Jephthah’s nephew, was as brown as an Indian, and his narrow, glinting, steel-grey eyes looked out oddly cold and alien from under level black brows, and a fell of stiff black hair.

      When the orphaned Judith, living in her Uncle Jephthah’s family, was fourteen, the household had removed from the old Turrentine place—which was rented to Blatchley Turrentine—to her better farm, whose tenant had proved unsatisfactory. Well hidden in a gulch on the Turrentine acres there was an illicit still, what the mountain people call a blockade still; and it had been in pretty constant operation in earlier years. When Jephthah abandoned those stony fields for Judith’s more productive acres, he definitely turned his own back upon this feature, but Blatch Turrentine revived the illegal activities and enlisted the old man’s boys in them. Jeff and Andy had a tobacco patch in one corner where the ground suited, and in another field Jim Cal raised a little corn. Aside from these small ventures, the place was given over entirely to the secret still. The father held scornfully aloof; his attitude was characteristic.

      “Ef I pay no tax I’ll make no whiskey,” he declared. “You-all boys will find yourselves behind bars many a time when you’d ruther be out squirrel-huntin’. Ef you make blockade whiskey every fool that gits mad at you has got a stick to hold over you. You are good-Lord-good-devil to everybody, for fear they’ll lead to yo’ still; or else you mix up with folks about the business and kill somebody an’ git a bad name. These here blockaded stills calls every worthless feller in the district; most o’ the foolishness in this country goes on around ’em when the boys gits filled up. I let every man choose his callin’, but I don’t choose to be no moonshiner, and ef you boys is wise you’ll say the same.”

      As Blatchley came up now and caught sight of the animals tethered at the fence he began irritably:

      “What in the name of common sense did Andy and Jeff leave they’ mules here for? I can’t haul any corn till I get the team and the waggon together.”

      “Looks like you’ve hauled too many loads of corn that nobody knows the use of,” broke out the irrepressible Nancy. “Andy and Jeff’s in jail, and some fool has tuck my little Pone along with the others.”

      Blatch flung a swift look at his uncle; but whatever his private conviction, to dishonour a member of his tribe in the face of the enemy, on the heels of defeat, was not what Jephthah Turrentine would do.

      “The boys is likely held for witnesses, Jude allows,” the elder explained briefly. “You take one mule and I’ll ride ’tother,” he added. “I’ll he’p ye with the corn.”

      This was a great concession, and as such Blatchley accepted it.

      “All right,” he returned. “Much obliged.”

      Then he glanced unconcernedly at Judith, and, instead of making that haste toward the corn-hauling activities which his manner had suggested, moved loungingly up the steps. Beezy, from her sanctuary in Judith’s lap, viewed him with contemptuous disfavour. Her brother, not so safely situated, made to pass the intruder, going wide like a shying colt.

      With a sudden movement Blatchley caught the child by the shoulders. There was a pantherlike quickness in the pounce that was somehow daunting from an individual of this man’s size and impassivity.

      “Hold on thar, young feller,” the newcomer remarked. “Whar you a-goin’ to, all in sech haste?”

      “You turn me a-loose,” panted the child. “I’m a-goin’ over to my Jude.”

      “Oh, she’s yo’ Jude, is she? Well they’s some other folks around here thinks she’s their Jude—what you goin’ to do about it?”

      All this time he held the small, dignified atom of humanity in a merciless grip that made Little Buck ridiculous before his beloved, and fired his childish soul to a very ecstasy of helpless rage.

      “I’ll—kill—you when I git to be a man!” the child gasped, between tears and terror. “I’ll thest kill you—and I’ll wed Jude. You turn me a-loose—that’s what you do.”

      Blatch laughed tauntingly and raised the little fellow high in air.

      “Ef I was to turn you a-loose now hit’d bust ye,” he drawled.

      “I don’t keer. I——”

      Around the corner of the cabin drifted Nicodemus, the wooden-legged rooster, stumping gravely with his dot-and-carry-one gait.

      “Lord, Nancy, thar comes the one patient ye ever cured!” chuckled old Jephthah. “I don’t wonder yo’re proud enough of him to roof him and affectionate him for the balance of his life.”

      “I reckon you’d do the same, ef so be ye should ever cure one,” snapped Nancy, rising instantly to the bait, and turning her back on the others. “As ’t is, ef they hilt the buryin’ from the house of the feller that killed the patient I reckon Jude wouldn’t have nothin’ to do but git up funeral dinners.”

      Little Buck, despairing of granny’s interference, began to cry. At the sound Judith came suddenly out of a revery to spring up and catch him away from the hateful restraining hands.

      “I don’t know what the Lord’s a-thinkin’ about to let sech men as you live, Blatch Turrentine!” she said almost mechanically. “Ef I was a-tendin’ to matters I’d ’a’ had you dead long ago. Ef you’re good for anything on this earth I don’t know what it is.”

      “Oh, yes you do,” СКАЧАТЬ