Hell Fer Sartain | Page 6

that night, and in a ``shack'' of
one room and a low loft a man was dead, a woman was sick to death,
and four children were barely alive; and nobody even knew. For they
were hill people, who sicken, suffer, and sometimes die, like animals,
and make no noise.
Grayson, the Virginian, coming down from the woods that morning,
saw the big-hearted little doctor outside the door of the shack, walking

up and down, with his hands in his pockets. He was whistling softly
when Grayson got near, and, without stopping, pointed with his thumb
within. The oldest boy sat stolidly on the one chair in the room, his
little brother was on the floor hard by, and both were hugging a greasy
stove. The little girl was with her mother in the bed, both almost out of
sight under a heap of quilts. The baby was in a cradle, with its face
uncovered, whether dead or asleep Grayson could not tell. A pine
coffin was behind the door. It would not have been possible to add to
the disorder of the room, and the atmosphere made Grayson gasp. He
came out looking white. The first man to arrive thereafter took away
the eldest boy, a woman picked the baby girl from the bed, and a
childless young couple took up the pallid little fellow on the floor.
These were step-children. The baby boy that was left was the woman's
own. Nobody came for that, and Grayson went in again and looked at it
a long while. So little, so old a human face he had never seen. The
brow was wrinkled as with centuries of pain, and the little drawn mouth
looked as though the spirit within had fought its inheritance without a
murmur, and would fight on that way to the end. It was the pluck of the
face that drew Grayson. ``I'll take it,'' he said. The doctor was not
without his sense of humor even then, but he nodded. ``Cradle and all,''
he said, gravely. And Grayson put both on one shoulder and walked
away. He had lost the power of giving further surprise in that town, and
had he met every man he knew, not one of them would have felt at
liberty to ask him what he was doing. An hour later the doctor found
the child in Grayson's room, and Grayson still looking at it.
``Is it going to live, doctor?''
The doctor shook his head. ``Doubtful. Look at the color. It's starved.
There's nothing to do but to watch it and feed it. You can do that.''
So Grayson watched it, with a fascination of which he was hardly
conscious. Never for one instant did its look change--the quiet,
unyielding endurance that no faith and no philosophy could ever bring
to him. It was ideal courage, that look, to accept the inevitable but to
fight it just that way. Half the little mountain town was talking next
day--that such a tragedy was possible by the public road-side, with

relief within sound of the baby's cry. The oldest boy was least starved.
Might made right in an extremity like his, and the boy had taken care of
himself. The young couple who had the second lad in charge said they
had been wakened at daylight the next morning by some noise in the
room. Looking up, they saw the little fellow at the fireplace breaking an
egg. He had built a fire, had got eggs from the kitchen, and was
cooking his breakfast. The little girl was mischievous and cheery in
spite of her bad plight, and nobody knew of the baby except Grayson
and the doctor. Grayson would let nobody else in. As soon as it was
well enough to be peevish and to cry, he took it back to its mother, who
was still abed. A long, dark mountaineer was there, of whom the
woman seemed half afraid. He followed Grayson outside.
``Say, podner,'' he said, with an unpleasant smile, ``ye don't go up to
Cracker's Neck fer nothin', do ye?''
The woman had lived at Cracker's Neck before she appeared at the Gap,
and it did not come to Grayson what the man meant until he was
half-way to his room. Then he flushed hot and wheeled back to the
cabin, but the mountaineer was gone.
``Tell that fellow he had better keep out of my way,'' he said to the
woman, who understood, and wanted to say something, but not
knowing how, nodded simply. In a few days the other children went
back to the cabin, and day and night Grayson went to see the child,
until it was out of danger, and afterwards. It was not long before the
women in town complained that the mother was ungrateful. When