Part 14 (2/2)
”Talkin' putty! W'y, Margaret, the feller was a tellin' of a lie. I didn't want to fight him an' break up the meetin', an' I was showin'
that by settin' thar so quiet. But when he begun to lie, it was my duty to remind him of it.”
”Wall,” she replied, after a moment's silence, ”if that preacher out thar at Dry Fork' to-day begins to say things that you think ain't true, jest set thar an' say nuthin', fur it ain't none o' yo' business.”
”That's right, Margaret. I don't kere what a man says when he's a preachin', jest so he don't p'int at me. He kin say that Moses drunk up the Red Sea ef he wants to--but he mustn't p'int as if he could prove it by me.”
”Oh, it would do you a world of good ef he did p'int at you. Nuthin' on the yeth would please you so much.”
Down into the lowlands lying along a blue river the wagon rolled. Here the vegetation was rank, and the tops of the hickory trees were dim in the dazzling blue above. Great birds with long legs stretched out far behind, flew past, ancient war-bolts they seemed; and a flying squirrel looped his flight from one tree to another. The tall rattle weed, in bloom, nodded a yellow salute as they pa.s.sed.
”We are the guests of honor,” said Mrs. Mayfield. ”They have marshalled a gay army of soldiers to meet us.”
”The roots of them weeds is pizen,” Jasper spoke up, cutting off a yellow plume with his whip. ”They look suthin' like the stalk of angelica an' sometimes they air dug up by mistake fur sich. See that squirrel. Look how he rattles up that hickory bark. Wall, down yan we turn to the right an' go up a little rise, dip down ag'in, then go up an' keep on a goin' up fur about a mile an' thar's the church. Who preaches to-day, Margaret?”
”Brother Fetterson.”
”Ah, hah, good man; an' I want to say that he's got mighty fine jedgment when it comes to a hoss. He fust rid in here on a hoss that had about fo' j'ints to the squar foot. Some of our fellers told him he was so thin he oughtn't be rid in the day--ought to keep him fur the dark; called him a sort of night mare. But he tuck it good natured an' jest kep' on a chawin' o' his tobacker. Then atter a while he lows that mebby some good brother mout like to swap with him, an' ever'body laughed fitten to kill. Then he said mebby they mout like to swop saddles. Wall, they done that an' right thar was the rise of that preacher in the good opinion of this here community, fur it wan't long till he swopped off his hoss, a givin' the saddle to boot, an' he kept on a swoppin' till the fust thing we knowed he had the finest hoss in the whole neighborhood, an' the fust feller he swopped with was a walkin' an' a totin' his saddle. That's the sort of a preacher the folks likes to hear, fur they've got confidence in his jedgment.”
The log meeting-house was on a hill in the midst of a walnut grove. Its roof was green with moss and its sides gray and yellow. Many a storm had swept over this old pile of wood. In it the ordinance of secession had been read. Knives flashed, pistols barked, and blood was poured out upon the floor. Old Oliver's horses ate their oats at the marble altar of an ancient cathedral; and within these log walls, and at this long slab, this mourners' bench, tear-stained by a generation long since in the grave, the horses of the guerrillas ate their corn. Descendants of the same men, carrying on what might have seemed a continuation of the same family quarrel, first one side and then another occupied Dry Fork as a fort; and when the rain was pouring as if to wash away the blood, Buell slept on a bench in this old house, and two days later Bragg's orders were issued from its pulpit.
Numerous horses were tied about and the mule colt was blowing his treble horn. Maidens in their finery and young fellows rigged out from the pack of the nomadic Hebrew walked about, glancing shyly at one another. On the gra.s.s beneath the trees, lying, squatting, sitting, old men talked of early frosts and late snows, of strange and wonderful things that had happened away back in the days of misty tradition; one man's father had seen a ghost, and another man's grandfather, while leading to the altar a beautiful girl, was suddenly horrified to see her turn into a hideous witch. When Jasper's ”haul” had got out of the wagon, and while the women were shaking out their skirts, Laz Spencer came along in jacket and shrunken trousers.
”Laz,” said Jasper, ”you ought to sue that peddler. Yo' britches hain't shrunk the same. One leg's shorter than tuther.”
”So I hearn,” Laz replied, looking first at one leg and then at the other. ”But britches ain't whut's a troublin' me at the present writin'.
Miss lady's duds is what's a ailin' of me. Mag Bailey 'lowed she'd meet me over here, but she didn't come. I'd ruther be deceived by ten men than one woman. You kin whup a man, but it won't do to whup a woman till you marry her, an' even then it's sorter dangersome.”
”She's your fiance, I suppose,” Tom remarked, winking at his aunt.
”I don't know whut you mean, but she ain't my nuthin' it don't seem like.”
”I mean you are engaged to her.”
”Don't look much like it. Told her ef she'd meet me over here we mout be. Reckon her not comin' is a hint that she ain't agreeable to the p'int. How air you an' Lou a gittin' along?”
Margaret began to cough and Jasper ducked down behind the wagon. Lou blushed until her cheeks were as red as the ribbon on her hat. ”I git along well with ever'body,” she said.
”You embarra.s.s us, Mr. Spencer,” Tom spoke up, red as the breast of a robin.
”That so?” replied Laz. ”Wall, Mister, ef you don't want to be jolted don't try to jolt me.”
”I beg your pardon, sir, if--”
”Oh, no harm done, Mister. Wait a minit,” he added, squatting and peering down the hill among the trees. ”I'm a billy goat with only one ho'n ef yander don't come Mag with Sim Mason. Him an' her as sho's I'm a foot high. Say, Jasper, they calls the sakermint the blood o' the lamb, don't they? Wall, ef they want it to-day they kin have the blood of a calf.”
”Oh, Mr. Spencer,” cried Mrs. Mayfield, going to him in alarm, ”I do hope you'll have no trouble.”
”Hope so, too, ma'm, but I ain't a signin' no notes of hand. Look, he's a hitchin' her hoss fur her an' you see ef he don't walk with her up to the church do'. An' ef he do, thar's--whut did I tell you?”
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