Call of the Cumberlands | Page 4

she drenched the cloth for bathing and bandaging the wound. It
required several trips through the littered cleft, for the puddles between
the rocks were stale and brackish; but these journeys she made with
easy and untrammeled swiftness. When she had done what she could
by way of first aid, she stood looking down at the man, and shook her
head dubiously.
"Now ef I jest had a little licker," she mused. "Thet air what he needs--a
little licker!"
A sudden inspiration turned her eyes to the crest of the rock. She did
not go round by the path, but pulled herself up the sheer face by
hanging roots and slippery projections, as easily as a young squirrel.
On the flat surface, she began unstrapping the saddlebags, and, after a
few moments of rummaging among their contents, she smiled with
satisfaction. Her hand brought out a leather-covered flask with a silver
bottom. She held the thing up curiously, and looked at it. For a little
time, the screw top puzzled her. So, she sat down cross-legged, and
experimented until she had solved its method of opening.
Then, she slid over the side again, and at the bottom held the flask up to
the light. Through the side slits in the alligator-skin covering, she saw
the deep color of the contents; and, as she lifted the nozzle, she sniffed
contemptuously. Then, she took a sample draught herself--to make
certain that it was whiskey.
She brushed her lips scornfully with the back of her hand.
"Huh!" she exclaimed. "Hit hain't nothin' but red licker, but maybe hit
mout be better'n nuthin'." She was accustomed to seeing whiskey freely
drunk, but the whiskey she knew was colorless as water, and sweetish
to the palate.
She knew the "mountain dew" which paid no revenue tax, and which,
as her people were fond of saying, "mout make a man drunk, but
couldn't git him wrong." After tasting the "fotched-on" substitute, she
gravely, in accordance with the fixed etiquette of the hills, wiped the

mouth of the bottle on the palm of her hand, then, kneeling once more
on the stones, she lifted the stranger's head in her supporting arm, and
pressed the flask to his lips. After that, she chafed the wrist which was
not hurt, and once more administered the tonic. Finally, the man's lids
fluttered, and his lips moved. Then, he opened his eyes. He opened
them waveringly, and seemed on the point of closing them again, when
he became conscious of a curved cheek, suddenly coloring to a deep
flush, a few inches from his own. He saw in the same glance a pair of
wide blue eyes, a cloud of brown-red hair that fell down and brushed
his face, and he felt a slender young arm about his neck and shoulders.
"Hello!" said the stranger, vaguely. "I seem to have----" He broke off,
and his lips smiled. It was a friendly, understanding smile, and the girl,
fighting hard the shy impulse to drop his shoulders, and flee into the
kind masking of the bushes, was in a measure reassured.
"You must hev fell offen the rock," she enlightened.
"I think I might have fallen into worse circumstances," replied the
unknown.
"I reckon you kin set up after a little."
"Yes, of course." The man suddenly realized that although he was quite
comfortable as he was, he could scarcely expect to remain permanently
in the support of her bent arm. He attempted to prop himself on his hurt
hand, and relaxed with a twinge of extreme pain. The color, which had
begun to creep back into his cheeks, left them again, and his lips
compressed themselves tightly to bite off an exclamation of suffering.
"Thet thar left arm air busted," announced the young woman, quietly.
"Ye've got ter be heedful."
Had one of her own men hurt himself, and behaved stoically, it would
have been mere matter of course; but her eyes mirrored a pleased
surprise at the stranger's good-natured nod and his quiet refusal to give
expression to pain. It relieved her of the necessity for contempt.

"I'm afraid," apologized the painter, "that I've been a great deal of
trouble to you."
Her lips and eyes were sober as she replied.
"I reckon thet's all right."
"And what's worse, I've got to be more trouble. Did you see anything of
a brown mule?"
She shook her head.
"He must have wandered off. May I ask to whom I'm indebted for this
first aid to the injured?"
"I don't know what ye means."
She had propped him against the rocks, and sat near-by, looking into
his face with almost disconcerting steadiness; her solemn-pupiled eyes
were unblinking, unsmiling. Unaccustomed to the gravity of the
mountaineer in the presence of strangers, he feared that he had