The Heart of the Hills | Page 4

other
hand, and still she waited until he spoke.

"Take out, Mavie," he said with great gravity and condescension, and
then his knife with a generous mouthful on its point stopped in the air,
his startled eyes widened, and the little girl shrank cowering behind
him. A heavy footfall had crunched on the quiet air, the bushes had
parted, and a huge mountaineer towered above them with a Winchester
over his shoulder and a kindly smile under his heavy beard. The boy
was startled--not frightened.
"Hello, Babe!" he said coolly. "Whut devilmint you up to now?"
The giant smiled uneasily:
"I'm keepin' out o' the sun an' a-takin' keer o' my health," he said, and
his eyes dropped hungrily to the corn pone and fried fish, but the boy
shook his head sturdily.
"You can't git nothin' to eat from me, Babe Honeycutt."
"Now, looky hyeh, Jason--"
"Not a durn bite," said the boy firmly, "even if you air my mammy's
brother. I'm a Hawn now, I want ye to know, an' I ain't goin' to have my
folks say I was feedin' an' harborin' a Honeycutt--'specially you."
It would have been humorous to either Hawn or Honeycutt to hear the
big man plead, but not to the girl, though he was an enemy, and had but
recently wounded a cousin of hers, and was hiding from her own
people, for her warm little heart was touched, and big Babe saw it and
left his mournful eyes on hers.
"An' I'm a-goin' to tell whar I've seed ye," went on the boy savagely,
but the girl grabbed up two fish and a corn pone and thrust them out to
the huge hairy hand eagerly stretched out.
"Now, git away," she said breathlessly, "git away--quick!"
"Mavis!" yelled the boy.
"Shet up!" she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in sheer

amazement, for never before had she made the slightest question of his
tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at the big Honeycutt and
she stamped her foot.
"I'd give 'em to the meanest dog in these mountains."
The big man turned to the boy.
"Is he dead yit?"
"No, he ain't dead yit," said the boy roughly.
"Son," said the mountaineer quietly, "you tell whutever you please
about me."
The curiously gentle smile had never left the bearded lips, but in his
voice a slight proud change was perceptible.
"An' you can take back yo' corn pone, honey."
Then dropping the food in his hand back to the ground, he noiselessly
melted into the bushes again.
At once the boy went to work on his neglected corn-bread and fish, but
the girl left hers untouched where they lay. He ate silently, staring at
the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her eyes his way, for in
the last few minutes some subtle change in their relations had taken
place, and both were equally surprised and mystified. Finally, the lad
ventured a sidewise glance at her beneath the brim of his hat and met a
shy, appealing glance once more. At once he felt aggrieved and
resentful and turned sullen.
"He throwed it back in yo' face," he said. "You oughtn't to 'a' done it."
Little Mavis made no answer.
"You're nothin' but a gal, an' nobody'll hold nothin' agin you, but with
my mammy a Honeycutt an' me a-livin' on the Honeycutt side, you
mought 'a' got me into trouble with my own folks." The girl knew how

Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made miserable up and
down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew wistful and her
chin quivered.
"I jes' couldn't he'p it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little man threw
up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness over her sex in
general, and at the same time an ungracious acceptance of the terrible
calamity she had perhaps left dangling over his head. He clicked the
blade of his Barlow knife and rose.
"We better be movin' now," he said, with a resumption of his old
authority, and pulling in the line and winding it about the cane pole, he
handed it to her and started back up the spur with Mavis trailing after,
his obedient shadow once more.
On top of the spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with the
slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which, fold after
fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above the green crests
billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more could happen to
them if they went home two hours later than would surely happen if
they went home now, the boy thought, and he did not want to go home
now. For a moment he stood irresolute, and