Call of the Cumberlands | Page 5

offended her. Perhaps his form of speech struck her as affected.
"Why, I mean who are you?" he laughed.
"I hain't nobody much. I jest lives over yon."
"But," insisted the man, "surely you have a name."
She nodded.
"Hit's Sally."
"Then, Miss Sally, I want to thank you."
Once more she nodded, and, for the first time, let her eyes drop, while
she sat nursing her knees. Finally, she glanced up, and asked with
plucked-up courage:

"Stranger, what mout yore name be?"
"Lescott--George Lescott."
"How'd ye git hurt?"
He shook his head.
"I was painting--up there," he said; "and I guess I got too absorbed in
the work. I stepped backward to look at the canvas, and forgot where
the edge was. I stepped too far."
"Hit don't hardly pay a man ter walk backward in these hyar
mountings," she told him. The painter looked covertly up to see if at
last he had discovered a flash of humor. He had the idea that her lips
would shape themselves rather fascinatingly in a smile, but her pupils
mirrored no mirth. She had spoken in perfect seriousness.
The man rose to his feet, but he tottered and reeled against the wall of
ragged stone. The blow on his head had left him faint and dizzy. He sat
down again.
"I'm afraid," he ruefully admitted, "that I'm not quite ready for
discharge from your hospital."
"You jest set where yer at." The girl rose, and pointed up the
mountainside. "I'll light out across the hill, and fotch Samson an' his
mule."
"Who and where is Samson?" he inquired. He realized that the bottom
of the valley would shortly thicken into darkness, and that the way out,
unguided, would become impossible. "It sounds like the name of a
strong man."
"I means Samson South," she enlightened, as though further description
of one so celebrated would be redundant. "He's over thar 'bout three
quarters."
"Three quarters of a mile?"

She nodded. What else could three quarters mean?
"How long will it take you?" he asked.
She deliberated. "Samson's hoein' corn in the fur-hill field. He'll hev ter
cotch his mule. Hit mout tek a half-hour."
Lescott had been riding the tortuous labyrinths that twisted through
creek bottoms and over ridges for several days. In places two miles an
hour had been his rate of speed, though mounted and following
so-called roads. She must climb a mountain through the woods. He
thought it "mout" take longer, and his scepticism found utterance.
"You can't do it in a half-hour, can you?"
"I'll jest take my foot in my hand, an' light out." She turned, and with a
nod was gone. The man rose, and made his way carefully over to a
mossy bank, where he sat down with his back against a century-old tree
to wait.
The beauty of this forest interior had first lured him to pause, and then
to begin painting. The place had not treated him kindly, as the pain in
his wrist reminded.
No, but the beauty was undeniable. A clump of rhododendron, a little
higher up, dashed its pale clusters against a background of evergreen
thicket, and a catalpa tree loaned the perfume of its white blossoms
with their wild little splashes of crimson and purple and orange to the
incense which the elder bushes were contributing.
Climbing fleetly up through steep and tangled slopes, and running as
fleetly down; crossing a brawling little stream on a slender trunk of
fallen poplar; the girl hastened on her mission. Her lungs drank the
clear air in regular tireless draughts. Once only, she stopped and drew
back. There was a sinister rustle in the grass, and something glided into
her path and lay coiled there, challenging her with an ominous rattle,
and with wicked, beady eyes glittering out of a swaying, arrow -shaped
head. Her own eyes instinctively hardened, and she glanced quickly

about for a heavy piece of loose timber. But that was only for an instant,
then she took a circuitous course, and left her enemy in undisputed
possession of the path.
"I hain't got no time ter fool with ye now, old rattlesnake," she called
back, as she went. "Ef I wasn't in sech a hurry, I'd shore bust yer neck."
At last, she came to a point where a clearing rose on the mountainside
above her. The forest blanket was stripped off to make way for a
fenced- in and crazily tilting field of young corn. High up and beyond,
close to the bald shoulders of sandstone which threw themselves
against the sky, was the figure of a man. As the girl halted at the foot of
the field, at last panting from her exertions, he was sitting on the rail
fence, looking absently down on the outstretched panorama below him.