XVIII
She sat smoking.
Had I never heard of her before, had I opened my eyes as I did that day to see her sitting before me, I should have exclaimed, "It's John Shadrack's widder!"
So, with the crayon portrait, gilt-framed, that hung on the wall behind her, I should have cried, "And that is John Shadrack!"
This crayon "enlargement" presented John with very black skin and spotless white hair. His head was tilted back in a manner that made the great bushy beard seem to stick right out from the frame, and gave the impression that the old man was choking down a fit of uproarious laughter. I knew, of course, that he had been posed that way to better show his collar and cravat. Though Tip had described him to me as a rather gloomy, taciturn person, the impression gained in the long contemplation of his picture as I lay helpless on the bed never changed. To me he was the ideal citizen of Happy Valley, and the acquaintance I formed then and there with his wife served only to endear him to me.
She sat smoking. I contemplated her a very long while and she gazed calmly back. A score of times I tried to speak, but something failed me, and when I attempted to wave my hand in greeting to her I could not lift it from the bed.
At last strength came.
"This is John Shadrack's house?" I said.
"Yes," said she, "and I'm his widder."
[Illustration: "And I'm his widder.">[
She came to my side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual smile and a pipe that snuffled in a homely, comfortable way.
I smiled. You couldn't help smiling when Mrs. John Shadrack looked down at you.
"It's been such a treat to have you," she cried. "I've been enjoyin' every minute of your visit."
This was puzzling. How long Mrs. John Shadrack had been entertaining me, or I had been entertaining her, I had not the remotest idea. A very long while ago I had seen a spire of smoke curling through the trees in Happy Valley, and I had been told that it was from her hearth. Then we had gone plunging madly down the hill to it, Tip, the gray colt and I. We had turned a sharp bend, we had heard the swish of a mountain-stream. There my memory failed me. I had awakened to find myself helpless on a bed, strangely hard, but, oh, so restful! Then she had appeared, sitting there smoking.
"You are the first stranger as has been here since the tax collector last month," she said, beginning to clear away the mystery. "I love strangers."
"How long have I been here?" I asked.
"Since last Wednesday," she answered.
"And this is what?"
"The next Saturday. I've had you three days. You was a bit wrong here sometimes." She tapped her head solemnly. "But I powwowed."
"You powwowed me," I cried with all the spirit I could muster, for such treatment was not to my liking. I never had any faith in charms.
"Of course," she replied. "Does you think I'd let you die? Why, when me and Tip pulled you out of the creek you was a sight, you was, and you was wrong here." Again she tapped her head. "You needn't complain. Ain't you gittin' well agin? Didn't the powwow do it?"
Hardly, I thought. I must have recovered in spite of it. But the old woman spoke with pride of her skill, and if she had not saved me by her occult powers, she had at least helped to drag me from the creek. For that I was grateful, so I smiled to show my thanks.
"What did you powwow for?" I asked, after a long while.
She had seated herself on the edge of the bed and was contemplating me gravely.
"Everything," she answered. "I never had a case like yours. I never had a patient who was run away with, and kicked on the head, and drownded. So I says to Tip, I says, 'I'll do everything. I'll treat for asthmy, erysipelas and pneumony, rheumatism and snake-bite, for the yallers and——'"
"Hold on," I pleaded. "I haven't had all that."
"You mought have had any one of 'em," she said firmly. "You should 'a' seen yourself when we found you down there in the creek. Can't you feel that bandage?" She lifted my hand to my head gently. I seemed to have a great turban crowning me. "That's where you was kicked," she went on. "You otter 'a' seen that spot. I used my Modern Miracle Salve there. It's worked wonderful, it has. I was sorry you had no bones broken so I could 'a' tried it for them, too."
"I'm satisfied with what I have," said I quietly. "It was pretty lucky I got off as well as I did after a runaway, and the creek and the kick." Then, to myself, I added, "And the powwowing and the salve."
I tried to lift my head, but could not. At first I thought it was the turban, but a sharp pain told me that there was a spot there that might be well worth seeing. For a long time I lay with my eyes closed, trying not to care, and when I opened them again, John Shadrack's widow was still on the edge of the bed, smoking.
"Feel better now?" she asked calmly.
"Yes," I answered. "The ache has gone some."
"I was powwowin' agin!" she said. "Couldn't you hear me saying Dutch words? Them was the charm."
"I guess I was sleeping," I returned a bit irritably.
How the store would have smiled could it have seen me there on the bed, in that bare little room in John Shadrack's widow's clutches! Many a night, around the stove, Isaac Bolum, and Henry Holmes and I had had it tooth and nail over the power of the powwow. In the store there was not always an outspoken belief in the efficacy of the charm, but there was an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of the supernatural. Against this I had fought. Perhaps it was merely for the joy of the argument that so often I had turned a fire of ridicule on the dearest traditions of the valley. Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at midnight, in the full of the moon, just to convince Ira Spoonholler that his grandfather was keeping close to his proper plot. And here I was, prone and helpless, being powwowed not for one ailment, but for all the diseases known in Happy Valley. How I blessed Tip! When we started he should have told me of the powers of our hostess. I would rather have undergone a hundred runaways than one week with that old woman muttering her Dutch over my senseless form. But I liked the good soul. Her intentions were so excellent. She was so cheery. Even now she was offering me a piece of gingerbread.
I ate it ravenously.
Then I asked, "Where is Tip?"
"He's gone down the walley to my brother-in-law, Harmon Shadrack's. He's tryin' to borry a me-yule."
"A what?"
"A me-yule. The colt was dead beside you in the creek. Him and me fixed up the buggy agin, and he's gone to borry Harmon's me-yule so as you uns can git back to Black Log."
"Tip's left Black Log forever," I said firmly.
Then John Shadrack's widow laughed. She laughed so hard that she blew the ashes out of her pipe, and they showered down over my face, and made me wink and sputter.
"There—there," she said solicitously, dusting them away with her hand. "But it tickled me so to hear you say Tip wasn't goin' back. Why, he's been most crazy since you come. He's afraid his wife'll marry agin before he gits home. I've been tellin' him how nice it was to have you both, and that jest makes him roar. He's never been away so long before."
"He thinks maybe Nanny will give him up this time?"
"Exact."
The old woman smoked in silence a long while. Then she said suddenly, "She must be a lovely woman."
"Who?" I asked.
"Tip's wife."
"Who told you?" I demanded.
"Tip."
This was strange in a fugitive husband, one who had fled across the mountains to escape a perpetual yammering.
"Tip!" I said.
"Yes, Tip," she answered. "Him and me was settin' there in the kitchen last night, and you was sleepin' away in here, and he told me all about Black Log. It must be a lovely place—Black Log—so different from Happy Walley. There's no folks here, that's the trouble. There's Harmonses a mile down the walley, and below him there's the Spinks a mile, and up the walley across the run there's my brother, Joe Smith, and his family—but we don't often have strangers here. The tax collector, he was up last month, and then you come. You have been a treat. I ain't enjoyed anything so much for a long time. There's nothin' like company."
"Even when it can't talk?" I said.
"But I could powwow," she answered cheerily. "Between fixin' up the buggy, and cookin' and makin' you and Tip comfortable and powwowin' you, I ain't had a minute's time to think—it's lovely."
"What has Tip been doing all this while?"
"Talkin' about his wife. She must be nice. Did you ever hear her sing?"
"I should say I had," I answered.
The whining strains of "Jordan's Strand" came wandering out of the past, out of the kitchen, joining with the sizzle of the cooking and the clatter of the pans.
"I should say I had," I said again.
"She must be a splendid singer," John Shadrack's widow exclaimed with much enthusiasm. "Tip says she has one of the best tenor voices they is. He says sometimes he can hear her clean from his clearin' down to your barn."
"Farther," said I. "All the way to the school-house."
"Indeed! Now that's nice. I allow she must be very handsome."
"Handsome?" said I, a bit incredulous.
"Why, Tip says she's the best-lookin' woman in the walley, and that she's a terrible tasty dresser."
"Terrible," I muttered.
"Indeed! Now that's nice. And is she spare or fleshy?"
"Medium," I said. "Just right."
"That's nice. But what'll she run to? It makes a heap of difference to a woman what she runs to. Now I naterally take on."
"I should say Nanny Pulsifer would naturally lose weight," I answered.
"That's nice. It's so much better to run to that—it's easier gittin' around. Tip says she has a be-yutiful figger. There's nothin' like figger. If there's anythin' I hate to see it's a first-class gingham fittin' a woman like it was hung there to air. But about Tip's wife agin—she must have a lovely disposition?"
"Splendid," I said.
"That's what Tip says. He told me that oncet in a while when he was kind of low-down she'd git het-up and spited like, but ordinarily, he says, she's jest a-singin' and a-singin' and makin' him comf'table and helpin' the children. And them children! I'm jest longin' to see 'em. They must be lovely."
"From what Tip says," I interjected.
"From what Tip says," she went on. "He was tellin' me about Earl and Alice Eliza, and Pearl and Cevery and the rest of 'em. He says it's jest a pickter to see 'em all in bed together—a perfect pickter."
"A perfect picture," said I sleepily.
"Tip must have a lovely home. Why, he tells me they have a sewin'-machine."
"Lovely," said I. "And a spring-bed."
"And a double-heater stove," said she.
"And an accordion," said I.
"And a washin'-machine," said she.
"And two hogs."
"And he tells me he's going to git her a melodium."
"Indeed," said I. "Why, I thought he was never going back."
"To sech a lovely home?" The old woman held up her hands. "He's goin' jest as soon as he gets that me-yule and you're able." She laid her hand on my forehead. "There," she cried, "it's painin' you again, poor thing—that terrible spot."
It was hurting, despite the Modern Miracle, and I closed my eyes to bear it better. Over me, away off, as if from the heavens, I heard a sonorous rumble of mystery words. I felt a hand softly stroking my brow. But I didn't care. It was only Dutch, a foolish charm, a heritage of barbarity and ignorance, but I was too weary to protest. It entertained John Shadrack's widow, and I was going to sleep.
Tip was waiting for me to awake.
"I've got the mule," he said, when I opened my eyes, "and I thought you was never goin' to quit sleepin'; I thought the widder was joshin' me when she said you was all right; I thought mebbe she had drumpt it, she sees so much in dreams."
"What day is this?" I asked.
"Sunday," Tip answered. "I 'low we'll start at daybreak to-morrow, and by sundown we'll be in Six Stars."
"In Six Stars!" said I. "I thought you'd left Six Stars forever."
"That ain't here nor there," he snapped. "I've got to git you back."
"Then you won't go to-morrow," said I. "Look here—I can just lift my hands to my head—that's all. It'll take a whole week's powwowing to get me to sit up even."
"What did I tell you, Tip?" cried John Shadrack's widow. She handed me a piece of gingerbread just to chew on till she got some breakfast for me, and while I munched it, Tip and I argued it out.
"Nanny'll think I've left her," Tip said.
"You did, Tip," said I. "You ran away forever."
"She'll be gittin' married agin," pleaded Tip.
"Serves you right," said I. Then, to myself, "Not unless the other man's an utter stranger."
"She hasn't enough wood chopped to last a week," said Tip.
"She chopped the last wood-pile herself," said I.
"There's Cevery," pleaded Tip. "Cevery never done me no harm, and who'll dandle him?"
"The same good soul that dandled him the day you rode over the mountain," I answered.
"But it's a good half mile from our house to the spring," Tip said, "and who'll carry the water?"
"Earl and Pearl and Alice Eliza," I replied. "They've always done it; why worry now?"
"Well, I don't care nohow," Tip cried, stamping the floor. "I want to go back to Black Log."
"So do I, Tip," I said; "but—there's that bad spot on my head again."
"Now see what you've done with your argyin', Tip Pulsifer," cried the old woman, running to me. "Poor thing—ain't the Miracle workin'?"
"I guess it is, but that's an awful bad spot—that's right, Widow, powwow it."
For ten long days more Mrs. Tip Pulsifer chopped her own wood, Cevery went undandled, and Earl and Pearl and Alice Eliza carried the water that half mile from the spring. For nine long days more John Shadrack's widow entertained the two strangers who had sought a refuge in Happy Valley, and found it. Rare pleasure did John Shadrack's widow have from our visit. There seemed no way she could repay us. It did her old heart good to have someone to whom she could recount the manifold virtues of her John—and a wonderful man John was, I judge. Had I not come, she might have lost the Heaven-given gift of powwowing, for there is no sickness in Happy Valley—the people die without it. It was a pleasure to have Mark settin' around the kitchen; it was elevatin' to hear Tip tell of his home and his wife and children; and as for cooking, it was no pleasure to cook for just one.
"You must come agin," she cried, on the morning of that ninth day, as she stood in the doorway of her little log-house and waved her apron at us. "It's been a treat to have you."
So we went away, Tip and I, with Harmon Shadrack's mule and the battered buggy. Our backs were turned to the Sunset Land. Our faces were toward the East and the red glow of the early morning. When we saw Thunder Knob again, Happy Valley was far below us, and only the thin spire of smoke drifting through the pines marked the Shadrack clearing. I kissed my hand in farewell salute to it. Perhaps John's widow saw me—she sees so much in her dreams.
"There's no place like Black Log," said Tip, as we turned the crest of Thunder Knob. "Mind how pretty it is—mind the shadders on the ridge yon—and them white barns. Mind the big creek—there by the kivered bridge—ain't it gleamin' cheerful? There's no place like our walley."