Una of the Hill Country | Page 3

cry broke from the startled group below the tree that the
squirrel, with a sudden, alert, about-face movement, turned and swiftly
ran along the bough and up the bole. It paused once and looked back to

cry out again in distinct iteration, "Quit yer foolin'! Quit yer foolin'!"
But none had stayed to listen. A general frantic rout ensued. The
possibility of ventriloquism was unknown to their limited experience.
All had heard the voice and those who had distinguished the words and
their seeming source needed no argument. In either case the result was
the same. Within ten minutes the grounds of the famous barbecue and
bran dance were deserted. The cumbrous wagons, all too slow, were
wending with such speed as their drivers could coerce the ox-teams to
make along the woodland road homeward, while happier wights on
horseback galloped past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a
grewsome premonition of being hindmost in a flight that to the simple
minds of the mountaineers had a pursuer of direful reality.
The state of a candidate is rarely enviable until the event is cast and the
postulant is merged into the elect, but on the day signalized by the
barbecue, the bran dance, and the rout the unfortunate aspirants for
public favor felt that they had experienced the extremest spite of fate;
for although they realized in their superior education and sophistication
that the panic-stricken rural crowd had been tricked by some clever
ventriloquist, the political orators were left with only the winds and
waters and wilderness on which to waste their eloquence, and the
wisdom of their exclusive method of saving the country.
*****
Brent Kayle's talent for eluding the common doom of man to eat his
bread in the sweat of his face was peculiarly marked. He was the eldest
of seven sons, ranging in age from eleven to twenty years, including
one pair of twins. The parents had been greatly pitied for the exorbitant
exactions of rearing this large family during its immaturity, but now,
the labor of farm, barnyard and woodpile, distributed among so many
stalwart fellows of the same home and interest was light and the result
ample. Perhaps none of them realized how little of this abundance was
compassed by Brent's exertions--how many days he spent dawdling on
the river bank idly experimenting with the echoes--how often, even
when he affected to work, he left the plow in the furrow while he
followed till sunset the flight of successive birds through the adjacent

pastures, imitating as he went the fresh mid-air cry, whistling in so
vibrant a bird-voice, so signally clear and dulcet, yet so keen despite its
sweetness, that his brothers at the plow-handles sought in vain to
distinguish between the calls of the earth-ling and the winged voyager
of the empyreal air. None of them had ever heard of ventriloquism, so
limited had been their education and experience, so sequestered was
their home amidst the wilderness of the mountains. Only very gradually
to Brent himself came the consciousness of his unique gift, as from
imitation he progressed to causing a silent bird to seem to sing. The
strangeness of the experience frightened him at first, but with each
experiment he had grown more confident, more skilled, until at length
he found that he could throw a singularly articulate voice into the jaws
of the old plow-horse, while his brothers, accustomed to his queer
vocal tricks, were convulsed with laughter at the bizarre quadrupedal
views of life thus elicited. This development of proficiency, however,
was recent, and until the incident at the bran dance it had not been
exercised beyond the limits of their secluded home. It had revealed new
possibilities to the young ventriloquist and he looked at once agitated,
excited, and triumphant when late that afternoon he appeared suddenly
at the rail fence about the door-yard of Valeria Clee's home on one of
the spurs of Chilhowee Mountain. It was no such home as his--lacking
all the evidence of rude comfort and coarse plenty that reigned
there--and in its tumbledown disrepair it had an aspect of dispirited
helplessness. Here Valeria, an orphan from her infancy, dwelt with her
father's parents, who always of small means had become yearly a more
precarious support. The ancient grandmother was sunken in many
infirmities, and the household tasks had all fallen to the lot of Valeria.
Latterly a stroke of paralysis had given old man Clee an awful
annotation on the chapter of age and poverty upon which he was
entering, and his little farm was fast growing up in brambles.
"But 't ain't no differ, gran Mad," Valeria often sought to reassure him.
"I'll work some way out."
And when he would irritably flout the possibility that she could do
aught to materially avert