Una of the Hill Country | Page 2

Endymion.
His long brown hair hung in heavy curls to the collar of his butternut
jeans coat; his eyes were blue and large and finely set; his face was fair
and bespoke none of the midday toil at the plow-handles that had
tanned the complexion of his compeers, for Brent Kayle had little
affinity for labor of any sort. He danced with a light firm step, every

muscle supplely responsive to the strongly marked pulse of the music,
and he had a lithe, erect carriage which imparted a certain picturesque
effect to his presence, despite his much creased boots, drawn over his
trousers to the knee, and his big black hat which he wore on the back of
his head. The face of his partner had a more subtle appeal, and so light
and willowy was her figure as she danced that it suggested a degree of
slenderness that bordered on attenuation. Her unbonneted hair of a rich
blonde hue had a golden lustre in the sun; her complexion was of an
exquisite whiteness and with a delicate flush; the chiseling of her
features was peculiarly fine, in clear, sharp lines--she was called
"hatchet-faced" by her undiscriminating friends. She wore a coarse,
flimsy, pink muslin dress which showed a repetitious pattern of vague
green leaves, and as she flitted, lissome and swaying, through the
throng, with the wind a-flutter in her full draperies, she might have
suggested to a spectator the semblance of a pink flower--of the humbler
varieties, perhaps, but still a wild rose is a rose.
Even the longest dance must have an end; even the stanchest mountain
fiddler will reach at last his limit of endurance and must needs be
refreshed and fed. There was a sudden significant flourish of frisky
bowing, now up and again down, enlisting every resonant capacity of
horsehair and catgut; the violins quavered to a final long-drawn scrape
and silence descended. Dullness ensued; the flavor of the day seemed
to pall; the dancers scattered and were presently following the crowd
that began to slowly gather about the vacated stand of the musicians,
from which elevation the speakers of the occasion were about to
address their fellow-citizens. One of the disaffected old farmers, gruff
and averse, could not refrain from administering a rebuke to Brent
Kayle as crossing the expanse of saw-dust on his way to join the
audience he encountered the youth in company with Valeria Clee, his
recent partner.
"Ai-yi, Brent," the old man said, "the last time I seen you uns I
remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench." For there
had been a great religious revival the previous year and many had been
pricked in conscience. "Ye ain't so tuk up now in contemplatin' the
goodness o' God an' yer sins agin same," he pursued caustically.

Brent retorted with obvious acrimony. "I don't see no 'casion ter doubt
the goodness o' God--I never war so ongrateful nohow as that comes
to." He resented being thus publicly reproached, as if he were
individually responsible for the iniquity of the bran dance--the
scape-goat for the sins of all this merry company. Many of the whilom
dancers had pressed forward, crowding up behind the old mountaineer
and facing the flushed Brent and the flowerlike Valeria, the faint green
leaves of her muslin dress fluttering about her as her skirts swayed in
the wind.
"Ye ain't so powerful afeard of the devil now ez ye uster was on the
mourner's bench," the old man argued.
"I never war so mighty afeard of the devil," the goaded Brent broke
forth angrily, for the crowd was laughing in great relish of his
predicament--they, who had shared all the enormity of "shaking a foot"
on this festive day. Brent flinched from the obvious injustice of their
ridicule. He felt an eager impulse for reprisal. "I know ez sech dancin'
ez I hev done ain't no sin," he blustered. "I ain't afeared o' the devil fur
sech ez that. I wouldn't be skeered a mite ef he war ter--ter--ter speak
right out now agin it, an' I'll be bound ez all o' you uns would. I--I--look
yander--look!"
He had thrown himself into a posture of amazed intentness and was
pointing upward at the overhanging boughs of a tree above their heads.
A squirrel was poised thereon, gazing down motionless. Then,
suddenly--a frightful thing happened. The creature seemed to speak. A
strange falsetto voice, such as might befit so eerie a chance, sounded on
the air--loud, distinct, heard far up the slope, and electrifying the
assemblage near at hand that was gathering about the stand and
awaiting the political candidates.
"Quit yer foolin'--quit yer fooling" the strange voice iterated. "I'll larn
ye ter be afeared o' the devil. Long legs now is special grace."
So wild a