The Call of the Cumberlands Part 43

When she and her two companions came out to the hotel porch to start, they found a guide waiting, who said he was instructed to take them as far as the ridge, where the Sheriff himself would be waiting, and the cavalcade struck into the hills. Men at whose houses they paused to ask a dipper of water, or to make an inquiry, gravely advised that they "had better light, and stay all night." In the coloring forests, squirrels scampered and scurried out of sight, and here and there on the tall slopes they saw shy-looking children regarding them with inquisitive eyes.

The guide led them silently, gazing in frank amazement, though deferential politeness, at this girl in corduroys, who rode cross- saddle, and rode so well. Yet, it was evident that he would have preferred talking had not diffidence restrained him. He was a young man and rather handsome in a s.h.a.ggy, unkempt way. Across one cheek ran a long scar still red, and the girl, looking into his clear, intelligent eyes, wondered what that scar stood for. Adrienne had the power of melting masculine diffidence, and her smile as she rode at his side, and asked, "What is your name?" brought an answering smile to his grim lips.

"Joe Hollman, ma'am," he answered; and the girl gave an involuntary start. The two men who caught the name closed up the gap between the horses, with suddenly piqued interest.

"Hollman!" exclaimed the girl. "Then, you--" She stopped and flushed.

"I beg your pardon," she said, quickly.

"That's all right," rea.s.sured the man. "I know what ye're a-thinkin', but I hain't takin' no offense. The High Sheriff sent me over. I'm one of his deputies."

"Were you"--she paused, and added rather timidly--"were you in the court-house?"

He nodded, and with a brown forefinger traced the scar on his cheek.

"Samson South done that thar with his rifle-gun," he enlightened.

"He's a funny sort of feller, is Samson South."

"How?" she asked.

"Wall, he licked us, an' he licked us so plumb d.a.m.n hard we was skeered ter fight ag'in, an' then, 'stid of tramplin' on us, he turned right 'round, an' made me a deputy. My brother's a corporal in this hyar newfangled milishy. I reckon this time the peace is goin' ter last. Hit's a mighty funny way ter act, but 'pears like it works all right."

Then, at the ridge, the girl's heart gave a sudden bound, for there at the highest point, where the road went up and dipped again, waited the mounted figure of Samson South, and, as they came into sight, he waved his felt hat, and rode down to meet them.

"Greetings!" he shouted. Then, as he leaned over and took Adrienne's hand, he added: "The Goops send you their welcome." His smile was unchanged, but the girl noted that his hair had again grown long.

Finally, as the sun was setting, they reached a roadside cabin, and the mountaineer said briefly to the other men:

"You fellows ride on. I want Drennie to stop with me a moment. We'll join you later."

Lescott nodded. He remembered the cabin of the Widow Miller, and Horton rode with him, albeit grudgingly.

Adrienne sprang lightly to the ground, laughingly rejecting Samson's a.s.sistance, and came with him to the top of a stile, from which he pointed to the log cabin, set back in its small yard, wherein geese and chickens picked industriously about in the sandy earth.

A huge poplar and a great oak nodded to each other at either side of the door, and over the walls a clambering profusion of honeysuckle vine contended with a ma.s.s of wild grape, in joint effort to hide the white c.h.i.n.king between the dark logs. From the crude milk-benches to the sweep of the well, every note was one of neatness and rustic charm.

Slowly, he said, looking straight into her eyes:

"This is Sally's cabin, Drennie."

He watched her expression, and her lips curved up in the same sweetness of smile that had first captivated and helped to mold him.

"It's lovely!" she cried, with frank delight. "It's a picture."

"Wait!" he commanded. Then, turning toward the house, he sent out the long, peculiarly mournful call of the whippoorwill, and, at the signal, the door opened, and on the threshold Adrienne saw a slender figure.

She had called the cabin with its shaded dooryard a picture, but now she knew she had been wrong. It was only a background. It was the girl herself who made and completed the picture. She stood there in the wild simplicity that artists seek vainly to reproduce in posed figures. Her red calico dress was patched, but fell in graceful lines to her slim bare ankles, though the first faint frosts had already fallen.

Her red-brown hair hung loose and in ma.s.ses about the oval of a face in which the half-parted lips were dashes of scarlet, and the eyes large violet pools. She stood with her little chin tilted in a half- wild att.i.tude of reconnoiter, as a fawn might have stood. One brown arm and hand rested on the door frame, and, as she saw the other woman, she colored adorably.

Adrienne thought she had never seen so instinctively and unaffectedly lovely a face or figure. Then the girl came down the steps and ran toward them.

"Drennie," said the man, "this is Sally. I want you two to love each other." For an instant, Adrienne Lescott stood looking at the mountain girl, and then she opened both her arms.

"Sally," she cried, "you adorable child, I do love you!"

The girl in the calico dress raised her face, and her eyes were glistening.

"I'm obleeged ter ye," she faltered. Then, with open and wondering admiration she stood gazing at the first "fine lady" upon whom her glance had ever fallen.

Samson went over and took Sally's hand.

"Drennie," he said, softly, "is there anything the matter with her?"

Adrienne Lescott shook her head.

"I understand," she said.

"I sent the others on," he went on quietly, "because I wanted that first we three should meet alone. George and Wilfred are going to stop at my uncle's house, but, unless you'd rather have it otherwise, Sally wants you here."

"Do I stop now?" the girl asked.

But the man shook his head.

"I want you to meet my other people first."

As they rode at a walk along the little shred of road left to them, the man turned gravely.

"Drennie," he began, "she waited for me, all those years. What I was helped to do by such splendid friends as you and your brother and Wilfred, she was back here trying to do for herself. I told you back there the night before I left that I was afraid to let myself question my feelings toward you. Do you remember?"

She met his eyes, and her own eyes were frankly smiling.

"You were very complimentary, Samson," she told him. "I warned you then that it was the moon talking."

"No," he said firmly, "it was not the moon. I have since then met that fear, and a.n.a.lyzed it. My feeling for you is the best that a man can have, the honest wors.h.i.+p of friends.h.i.+p. And," he added, "I have a.n.a.lyzed your feeling for me, too, and, thank G.o.d! I have that same friends.h.i.+p from you. Haven't I?"

For a moment, she only nodded; but her eyes were bent on the road ahead of her. The man waited in tense silence. Then, she raised her face, and it was a face that smiled with the serenity of one who has wakened out of a troubled dream.

"You will always have that, Samson, dear," she a.s.sured him.

"Have I enough of it, to ask you to do for her what you did for me? To take her and teach her the things she has the right to know?"

"I'd love it," she cried. And then she smiled, as she added: "She will be much easier to teach. She won't be so stupid, and one of the things I shall teach her"--she paused, and added whimsically--"will be to make you cut your hair again."

But, just before they drew up at the house of old Spicer South, she said:

"I might as well make a clean breast of it, Samson, and give my vanity the punishment it deserves. You had me in deep doubt."

"About what?"

"About--well, about us. I wasn't quite sure that I wanted Sally to have you--that I didn't need you myself. I've been a shameful little cat to Wilfred."