The Young Mountaineers

C >> Charles Egbert Craddock >> The Young Mountaineers

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He glanced back again before the dense vapor shut the house from view.
His mother was standing in the door, with her baby in her arms, looking
after him with a frightened, beseeching face. But his heart was hardened
and he kept on,--kept on, with that deft, even tread of the mountaineer,
who seems never to hurry, almost to loiter, but gets over the ground
with surprising rapidity.

He left the mists and desolation of Poor Valley far behind, but not that
frightened, beseeching face. He thought of it more often when he lay
down under the shelter of a great rock to sleep than he did of the howl
of the wolf which he had heard the night before, not far from here.

Late the next afternoon he came upon the outskirts of a village. He
entered it doubtfully, for it seemed metropolitan to him, unaccustomed
as he was to anything more imposing than the cross-roads store. But the
first sound he heard reassured him. It was the clear, metallic resonance
of an anvil, the clanking of a sledge, and the clinking of a
hand-hammer.

Here, at the forge, he found work. It had been said in Poor Valley that
he was already as good a blacksmith even as Pearce Tallam. He had great
natural aptitude for the work, and considerable experience. But his
wages only sufficed to pay for his food and lodging. Still, there was a
prospect for more, and he was content.

In his leisure he made friends among those of his own age, who took him
about the town and enjoyed his amazement. He examined everything wrought
in metal with such eager interest, and was so outspoken about his
ambition, that they dubbed him Tubal-cain.

He was struck dumb with amazement when, for the first time in his life,
he saw a locomotive gliding along the rails, with a glaring headlight
and a cloud of flying sparks. Once, when it was motionless on the track,
they talked to the engineer, who explained "the workings of the
critter," as Ike called it.

The boy understood so readily that the engineer said, after a time,
"You're a likely feller, for such a derned ignoramus! Where have you
been hid out, all this time?"

"Way down in Pore Valley," said Ike very humbly.

"He's concluded to be a great inventor," said one of his young friends,
with a merry wink.

"He's a mighty artificer in iron," said the wit who had named him
Tubal-cain.

The engineer looked gravely at Ike. "Why, boy," he admonished him, "the
world has got a hundred years the start of you!"

"I kin ketch up," Ike declared sturdily.

"There's something in grit, I reckon," said the engineer. Then his
wonderful locomotive glided away, leaving Ike staring after it in silent
ecstasy, and his companions dying with laughter.

He started out to overtake the world at a night-school, where his mental
quickness contrasted oddly with his slow, stolid demeanor. He worked
hard at the forge all day; but everybody was kind.

Outside of Poor Valley life seemed joyous and hopeful; progress and
activity were on every hand; and the time he spent here was the happiest
he had ever known,--except for the recollection of that frightened,
beseeching face which had looked out after him through the closing
mists.

He wished he had turned back for a word. He wished his mother might know
he was well and happy. He began to feel that he could go no further
without making his peace with her. So one day he left his employer with
the promise to return the following week, "ef the Lord spares me an'
nuthin' happens," as the cautious rural formula has it, and set out for
his home.

The mists had lifted from it, but the snow had fallen deep. Poor Valley
lay white and drear--it seemed to him that he had never before known how
drear--between the grim mountain with its great black crags, its chasms,
its gaunt, naked trees, and the long line of flinty hills, whose stunted
pines bent with the weight of the snow.

There was no smoke from the chimney of the blacksmith's shop. There were
no footprints about the door. An atmosphere charged with calamity seemed
to hang over the dwelling. Somehow he knew that a dreadful thing had
happened even before he opened the door and saw his mother's mournful
white face.

She sprang up at the sight of him with a wild, sobbing cry that was half
grief, half joy. He had only a glimpse of the interior,--of Jube,
looking anxious and unnaturally grave; of the listless children, grouped
about the fire; of the big, burly blacksmith, with a strange, deep
pallor upon his face, and as he shifted his position--why, how was that?

The boy's mother had thrust him out of the door, and closed it behind
her. The jar brought down from the low eaves a few feathery flakes of
snow, which fell upon her hair as she stood there with him.

"Don't say nuthin' 'bout'n it," she implored. "He can't abide ter hear
it spoke of."

"What ails dad's hand?" he asked, bewildered.

"It's gone!" she sobbed. "He war over ter the sawmill the day ye
lef'--somehow 'nuther the saw cotched it--the doctor tuk it off."

"His right hand!" cried Ike, appalled.

The blacksmith would never lift a hammer again. And there the forge
stood, silent and smokeless.

What this portended, Ike realized as he sat with them around the fire.
Their sterile fields in Poor Valley had only served to eke out their
subsistence. This year the corn-crop had failed, and the wheat was
hardly better. The winter had found them without special provision, but
without special anxiety, for the anvil had always amply supplied their
simple needs.

Now that this misfortune had befallen them, who could say what was
before them unless Ike would remain and take his stepfather's place at
the forge? Ike knew that this contingency must have occurred to them as
well as to him. He divined it from the anxious, furtive glances which
they one and all cast upon him from time to time,--even Pearce Tallam,
whose turn it was now to feel that greatest anguish of calamity,
helplessness.

But must he relinquish his hopes, his chance of an education, that
plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a
hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless
clod in Poor Valley?

His mother had the son she had chosen. And surely he owed no duty to
Pearce Tallam. The hand that was gone had been a hard hand to him.

He rose at length. He put on his leather apron. "Waal--I mought ez well
g' long ter the shop, I reckon," he remarked calmly. "'Pears like thar's
time yit fur a toler'ble spot o' work afore dark."

It was a hard-won victory. Even then he experienced a sort of
satisfaction in knowing that Pearce Tallam must feel humiliated and of
small account to be thus utterly dependent for his bread upon the boy
whom he had so persistently maltreated. In his pale face Ike saw
something of the bitterness he had endured, of his broken spirit, of his
humbled pride.

The look smote upon the boy's heart. There was another inward struggle.
Then he said, as if it were a result of deep cogitation,--

"Ye'll hev ter kem over ter the shop, dad, wunst in a while, ter advise
'bout what's doin'. 'Pears ter me like mos' folks would 'low ez a boy
no older 'n me couldn't do reg'lar blacksmithin' 'thout some sperienced
body along fur sense an' showin'."

The man visibly plucked up a little. Was he, indeed, so useless? "That's
a fac', Ike," he said gently. "I reckon ye kin make out
toler'ble--cornsiderin'. But I'll be along ter holp."

After this Ike realized that he had been working with something tougher
than iron, harder than steel,--his own unsubdued nature. He traced an
analogy from the forge; and he saw that those strong forces, the fires
of conscience and the coercion of duty, had wrought the stubborn metal
of his character to a kindly use.

Gradually the relinquishment of his wild, vague ambition began to seem
less bitter to him; for it might be that these were the few things over
which he should be faithful,--his own forge-fire and his own fiery
heart. And so he labors to fulfill his trust.

The spring never comes to Poor Valley. The summer is a cloud of dust.
The autumn shrouds itself in mist. And the winter is snow. But poverty
of soil need not imply poverty of soul. And a noble manhood may nobly
exist "'Way Down in Poor Valley."

A MOUNTAIN STORM

"Ef the filly war bridle-wise"--

"The filly _air_ bridle-wise."

A sullen pause ensued, and the two brothers looked angrily at each
other.

The woods were still; the sunshine was faint and flickering; the low,
guttural notes of a rain-crow broke suddenly on the silence.

Presently Thad, mechanically examining a bridle which he held in his
hand, began again in an appealing tone: "'Pears like ter me ez the filly
air toler'ble well bruk ter the saddle, an' she would holp me powerful
ter git thar quicker ter tell dad 'bout'n that thar word ez war fotched
up the mounting. They 'lowed ez 'twar jes' las' night ez them revenue
men raided a still-house, somewhar down thar in the valley, an' busted
the tubs, an' sp'iled the coppers, an' arrested all the moonshiners ez
war thar. An' ef they war ter find out 'bout'n this hyar still-house
over yander in the gorge, they'd raid it, too. An' thar be dad," he
continued despairingly, "jes' sodden with whiskey an' ez drunk ez a
fraish b'iled ow_el_, an' he wouldn't hev the sense nor the showin' ter
make them off'cers onderstand ez he never hed nothin' ter do with the
moonshiners--'ceptin' ter go ter thar still-house, an' git drunk along
o' them. An' I dunno whether the off'cers would set much store by that
sayin' ennyhow, an' I want ter git dad away from thar afore they kem."

"I don't believe that thar word ez them men air a-raidin' round the
mountings no more 'n _that_!" and Ben kicked away a pebble
contemptuously.

Thad was in a quiver of anxiety. While Ben indulged his doubts, the
paternal "B'iled Ow_el_" might at any moment be arrested on a charge of
aiding and abetting in illicit distilling.

"Ye never b'lieve nothin' till ye see it--ye sateful dunce!" he
exclaimed excitedly.

Thus began a fraternal quarrel which neither forgot for years.

Ben turned scarlet. "Waal, then, jes' leave my filly in the barn whar
she be now; ye kin travel on Shank's mare!"

Thad started off up the steep slope. "Ef ye ain't a-hankerin' fur me ter
ride that thar filly, ez air ez bridle-wise ez ye be, jes' let's see ye
kem on, an'--hender!"

"I hopes she'll fling ye, an' ye'll git yer neck bruk," Ben called out
after him.

"I wish ennything 'ud happen, jes' so be I mought never lay eyes on ye
agin," Thad declared.

As he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that his brother was not
following, and when he reached the flimsy little barn, there was nothing
to prevent him from carrying out his resolution.

Nevertheless, he hesitated as he stood with the door in his hand. A
clay-bank filly came instantly to it, but with a sudden impulse he
closed it abruptly, and set out on foot along a narrow, brambly path
that wound down the mountain side.

He had descended almost to its base before the threatening appearance of
the sky caught his attention. A dense black cloud had climbed up from
over the opposite hills, and stretched from their jagged summits to the
zenith. There it hung in mid-air, its sombre shadow falling across the
valley, and reaching high up the craggy slope, where the boy's home was
perched. The whole landscape wore that strange, still, expectant aspect
which precedes the bursting of a storm.

Suddenly a vivid white flash quivered through the sky. The hills,
suffused with its ghastly light, started up in bold relief against the
black clouds; even the faint outlines of distant ranges that had
disappeared with the strong sunlight reasserted themselves in a pale,
illusive fashion, flickering like the unreal mountains of a dream about
the vague horizon. A ball of fire had coursed through the air, striking
with dazzling coruscations the top of a towering oak, and he heard,
amidst the thunder and its clamorous echo, the sharp crash of riving
timber.

All at once he had a sense of falling, a sudden pain shot through him,
darkness descended, and he knew no more.

When he gradually regained consciousness, it seemed that a long time had
elapsed since he was trudging down the mountain side. He could not
imagine where he was now. He put out his hand in the intense darkness
that enveloped him, and felt the damp mould beside him,--above--below.

For one horrible instant he recalled a sickening story of a man who was
negligently buried alive. He had always believed that this was only a
fireside fiction invented in the security of the chimney corner; but was
it to have a strange confirmation in his own fate? He was pierced with
pity for himself, as he heard the despair in his voice when he sent
forth a wild, hoarse cry. What a cavernous echo it had!

Again and again, after his lips were closed, that voice of anguish rang
out, and then was silent, then fitfully sounded once more on another
key. He strove to rise, but the earth on his breast resisted. With a
great effort he finally burst through it; he felt the clods tumbling
about him; he sat upright; he rose to his full height; and still all was
merged in the densest darkness, and, when he stretched up his arms as
high as he could reach, he again felt the damp mould.

The truth had begun vaguely to enter his mind even before, in shifting
his position, he caught sight of a rift in the deep gloom, some fifteen
feet above his head. Then he realized that at the moment of the flash of
lightning, unmindful of his footing, he had strayed aside from the path,
stumbled, fallen, and, as it chanced, was received into one of those
unsuspected apertures in the ground which are common in all cavernous
countries, being sometimes the entrance to extensive caves, and which
are here denominated "sink-holes."

These cavities were exceedingly frequent in the valley, on the boundary
of which Thad lived, and his familiarity with them did away for the
moment with all appreciation of the perplexity and difficulty of the
situation. He laughed aloud triumphantly.

Instantly these underground chambers broke forth with wild, elfish
voices that mimicked his merriment till it died on his lips. He
preferred utter loneliness to the vague sense of companionship given by
these weird echoes. Somehow the strangeness of all that had happened to
him had stirred his imagination, and he could not rid himself of the
idea that there were grimacing creatures here with him, whom he could
not see, who would only speak when he spoke, and scoffingly iterate his
tones.

He was faint, bruised, and exhausted. He had been badly stunned by his
fall; but for the soft, shelving earth through which he had crashed, it
might have been still worse. He could scarcely move as he began to
investigate his precarious plight. Even if he could climb the
perpendicular wall above his head, he could not thence gain the
aperture, for, as his eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, he
discovered that the shape of the roof was like the interior of a roughly
defined dome, about the centre of which was this small opening.

"An' a human can't walk on a ceilin' like a fly," he said
discontentedly.

"Can't!" cried an echo close at hand.

"Fly!" suggested a distant mocker.

Thad closed his mouth and sat down.

He had moved very cautiously, for he knew that these sink-holes are
often the entrance of extensive caverns, and that there might be a deep
abyss on any side. He could do nothing but wait and call out now and
then, and hope that somebody might soon take the short cut through the
woods, and, hearing his voice, come to his relief.

His courage gave way when he reflected that the river would rise with
the heavy rain which he could hear steadily splashing through the
sink-hole, and for a time all prudent men would go by the beaten road
and the ford. No one would care to take the short cut and save three
miles' travel at the risk of swimming his horse, for the river was
particularly deep just here and spanned only by a footbridge, except,
perhaps, some fugitive from justice, or the revenue officers on their
hurried, reckless raids. This reminded him of the still-house and of
"dad" there yet, imbibing whiskey, and sharing the danger of his chosen
cronies, the moonshiners.

Ben, at home, would not have his anxiety roused till midnight, at least,
by his brother's failure to return from the complicated feat of decoying
the drunkard from the distillery. Thad trembled to think what might
happen to himself in the interval. If the volume of water pouring down
through the sink-hole should increase to any considerable extent, he
would be drowned here like a rat. Was he to have his wish, and see his
brother never again?

And poor Ben! How his own cruel, wicked parting words would scourge him
throughout his life,--even when he should grow old!

Thad's eyes filled with tears of prescient pity for his brother's
remorse.

"Ef ennything war ter happen hyar, sure enough, I wish he mought always
know ez I don't keer nothin' now 'bout'n that thar sayin' o' his'n," he
thought wistfully.

He still heard the persistent rain splashing outside. The hollow,
unnatural murmur of a subterranean stream rose drearily. Once he sighed
heavily, and all the cavernous voices echoed his grief.

When that terrible flash of lightning came, Ben was still on the slope
of the mountain where his brother had left him. The next moment he heard
the wild whirl of the gusts as they came surging up the valley. He saw
the frantic commotion of the woods on distant spurs as the wind
advanced, preceded by swirling columns of dust which carried myriads of
leaves, twigs, and even great branches rent from the trees, as evidence
of its force.

Ben turned, and ran like a deer up the steep ascent. "It'll blow
that thar barn spang off'n the bluff, I'm thinkin'--an' the
filly--Cobe--Cobe!" he cried out to her as he neared the shanty.

He stopped short, his eyes distended. The door was open. There was no
hair nor hoof of the filly within. He could have no doubt that his
brother had actually taken his property for this errand against his
will.

"That thar boy air no better 'n a low-down horse-thief!" he declared
bitterly.

The gusts struck the little barn. It careened this way and that, and
finally the flimsy structure came down with a crash, one of the boards
narrowly missing Ben's head as it fell. He had a hard time getting to
the house in the teeth of the wind, but its violence only continued a
few minutes, and when he was safe within doors he looked out of the
window at the silent mists, beginning to steal about the coves and
ravines, and at the rain as it fell in serried columns. Long after dark
it still beat with unabated persistence on the roof of the log cabin,
and splashed and dripped with a chilly, cheerless sound from the low
eaves. Sometimes a drop fell down the wide chimney, and hissed upon the
red-hot coals, for Ben had piled on the logs and made a famous fire. He
could see that his mother now and then paused to listen in the midst of
her preparations for supper. Once as she knelt on the hearth, and
deftly inserted a knife between the edges of a baking corn-cake and the
hoe, she looked up suddenly at Ben without turning the cake. "I hearn
the beastis's huff!" she said.

Ben listened. The fire roared. The rain went moaning down the valley.

"Ye never hearn nothin'," he rejoined.

Nevertheless, she rose and opened the door. The cold air streamed in.
The firelight showed the mists, pressing close in the porch,
shivering, and seeming to jostle and nudge each other as they peered in,
curiously, upon the warm home-scene, and the smoking supper, and the
hilarious children, as if asking of one another how they would like to
be human creatures, instead of a part of inanimate nature, or at best
the elusive spirits of the mountains.

There was nothing to be seen without but the mists.

"Thad tuk the filly, ye say fur true?" she asked, recurring to the
subject when supper was over.

Ben nodded. "I hopes ter conscience she'll break his neck," he declared
cruelly.

His mother took instant alarm. She turned and looked at him with a face
expressive of the keenest anxiety. "'Pears like to me ez the only reason
Thad kin be so late a-gittin' back air jes' 'kase it air a toler'ble
aggervatin' job a-fotchin' of dad home," she said, striving to reassure
herself.

"That air a true word 'bout'n dad, ennyhow," Ben assented bitterly.

His old grandfather suddenly lifted up his voice.

"This night," said the graybeard from out the chimney corner,--"this
night, forty years ago, my brother, Ephraim Grimes, fell dead on this
cabin floor, an' no man sence kin mark the cause."

A pause ensued. The rain fell. The pallid, shuddering mists looked in at
the window.

"Ye ain't a-thinkin'," cried the woman tremulously, "ez the night air
one app'inted fur evil?"

The old man did not answer.

"This night," he croaked, leaning over the glowing fire, and kindling
his long-stemmed cob-pipe by dexterously scooping up with its bowl a
live coal,--"this night, twenty-six years ago, thar war eleven sheep o'
mine--ez war teched in the head, or somehows disabled from good
sense--an' they jumped off'n the bluff, one arter the other, an' fell
haffen way down the mounting, an' bruk thar fool necks 'mongst the
boulders. They war dead. Thar shearin's never kem ter much account
nuther. 'Twar powerful cur'ous, fust an' last."

The woman made a gesture of indifference. "I ain't a-settin' of store by
critters when humans is--is--whar they ain't hearn from."

But Ben was susceptible of a "critter" scare.

"I hope, now," he exclaimed, alarmed, "ez that thar triflin' no-'count
Thad Grimes ain't a-goin' ter let my filly lame herself, nor nothin',
a-travelin' with her this dark night, ez seems ter be a night fur things
ter happen on ennyhow. Oh, shucks! shucks!" he continued impatiently,
"I jes' feels like thar ain't no use o' my tryin' ter live along."

Three of the children who habitually slept in the shed-room had started
off to go to bed. As they opened the connecting door, there suddenly
resounded a wild commotion within. They shrieked with fright, and banged
the door against a strong force which was beginning to push from the
other side.

The old grandfather rose, pale and agitated, his pipe falling from his
nerveless clasp.

"This night," he said, with white lips and mechanical utterance,--"this
night"--

"Satan is in the shed-room!" shouted the three small boys, as they held
fast to the door with a strength far beyond their age and weight.
Nevertheless, they were hardly able to cope with the strength on the
other side of the door, and it was alternately forced slightly ajar, and
then closed with a resounding slam. Once, as the firelight flickered
into the dark shed-room, the ignorant, superstitious mountaineers had a
fleeting glimpse of an object there which convinced them: they beheld
great gleaming, blazing eyes, a burnished hoof, and--yes--a flirting
tail.

"I believe it is Satan himself!" cried Ben, with awe in his voice.

In the wild confusion and bewilderment, Ben was somehow vaguely aware
that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,--in the antechamber
of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and
hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts
which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under
the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of
evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the
inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to wiser people than
poor Ben.

In the midst of the general despair and fright, something suddenly
whinnied. At the sound the three small boys fell in a limp, exhausted
heap on the floor, and, as the door no longer offered resistance, the
unknown visitor pranced in: it was the filly, snorting and tossing her
mane, and once more whinnying shrilly for her supper.

In a moment Ben understood the whole phenomenon. Thad had left the barn
door unfastened, and, when that terrible flash of lightning came and the
wind arose, the frightened animal had instantly fled to the house for
safety. She had doubtless pushed open the back door of the shed-room
easily enough, but it had closed behind her, and she had remained there
a supperless prisoner.

The small boys picked themselves up from among the filly's hoofs, with
disconnected exclamations of "Wa-a-a-l, sir!" while Ben led the animal
out, with a growing impression that he would try to "live along" for a
while, at all events.

He had led Satan out of the moral shed-room, as well. The reappearance
of the filly without Thad had raised a great anxiety about his brother's
continued absence. All at once he began to feel as if those brutal
wishes of his were prophetic,--as if they were endowed with a malignant
power, and could actually pursue poor Thad to some violent end. He did
not understand now how he could have framed the words.

When a fellow really likes his brother,--and most fellows do,--there is
scant use or grace or common-sense in keeping up, from mere
carelessness, or through an irritable habit, a continual bickering, for
these germs of evil are possessed of a marvelous faculty for growth, and
some day their gigantic deformities will confront you in deeds of which
you once believed yourself incapable.

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