Call of the Cumberlands | Page 2

had no hat, but the same spirit of childlike
whimsey that caused her eyes to dance as she answered the partridge's

call had led her to fashion for her own crowning a headgear of laurel
leaves and wild roses. As she stood with the toes of one bare foot
twisting in the gratefully cool moss, she laughed with the sheer
exhilaration of life and youth, and started out on the table top of the
huge rock. But there she halted suddenly with a startled exclamation,
and drew instinctively back. What she saw might well have astonished
her, for it was a thing she had never seen before and of which she had
never heard. Now she paused in indecision between going forward
toward exploration and retreating from new and unexplained
phenomena. In her quick instinctive movements was something like the
irresolution of the fawn whose nostrils have dilated to a sense of
possible danger. Finally, reassured by the silence, she slipped across
the broad face of the flat rock for a distance of twenty-five feet, and
paused again to listen.
At the far edge lay a pair of saddlebags, such as form the only practical
equipment for mountain travelers. They were ordinary saddlebags,
made from the undressed hide of a brindle cow, and they were fat with
tight packing. A pair of saddlebags lying unclaimed at the roadside
would in themselves challenge curiosity. But in this instance they gave
only the prefatory note to a stranger story. Near them lay a tin box,
littered with small and unfamiliar-looking tubes of soft metal, all
grotesquely twisted and stained, and beside the box was a strangely
shaped plaque of wood, smeared with a dozen hues. That this plaque
was a painter's sketching palette was a thing which she could not know,
since the ways of artists had to do with a world as remote from her own
as the life of the moon or stars. It was one of those vague mysteries that
made up the wonderful life of "down below." Even the names of such
towns as Louisville and Lexington meant nothing definite to this girl
who could barely spell out, "The cat caught the rat," in the primer. Yet
here beside the box and palette stood a strange jointed tripod, and upon
it was some sort of sheet. What it all meant, and what was on the other
side of the sheet became a matter of keenly alluring interest. Why had
these things been left here in such confusion? If there was a man about
who owned them he would doubtless return to claim them. Possibly he
was wandering about the broken bed of the creek, searching for a
spring, and that would not take long. No one drank creek water. At any

moment he might return and discover her. Such a contingency held
untold terrors for her shyness, and yet to turn her back on so interesting
a mystery would be insupportable. Accordingly, she crept over, eyes
and ears alert, and slipped around to the front of the queer tripod, with
all her muscles poised in readiness for flight.
A half-rapturous and utterly astonished cry broke from her lips. She
stared a moment, then dropped to the moss-covered rock, leaning back
on her brown hands and gazing intently. She sat there forgetful of
everything except the sketch which stood on the collapsible easel.
"Hit's purty!" she approved, in a low, musical murmur. "Hit's plumb
dead beautiful!" Her eyes were glowing with delighted approval.
She had never before seen a picture more worthy than the chromos of
advertising calendars and the few crude prints that find their way into
the roughest places, and she was a passionate, though totally
unconscious, devotée of beauty. Now she was sitting before a sketch,
its paint still moist, which more severe critics would have pronounced
worthy of accolade. Of course, it was not a finished picture--merely a
study of what lay before her--but the hand that had placed these
brushstrokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand of a master
of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing, and fixed
it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where he
had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were
details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to
question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe.
Then she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the
paint -box. These were dry, and represented the work of other days; but
they were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in
this one, was something that made her heart leap.
To her own people, these steep hillsides and "coves" and valleys were a
matter of