CHAPTER XVIII.
DOWN THE ROAD.
With his old pistol useless in his hand the ruffian walked away, shaking his head and muttering that a time was coming soon. "And with help from off yander," Jasper heard him shout from the road. "I have cut down the tree whar that bullet lodged and burnt it with a slow fire, and the fire that's to burn another tree, a scrub oak, may be slow but it is a comin'. Do you hear me over thar?"
"A man has to be mighty deaf not to hear a wolf howl," Jasper replied, and took his way back to the mill where Laz and Margaret were waiting for him.
"Was it Peters you saw goin' into the yard?" Margaret inquired, and the old fellow answered: "Looked mighty like him—fur a time I thought it was, but my eyes ain't as good as they was."
In the meantime Jim was fighting his way through the briars and over the rough ground of the short cut from the little county town. And when he reached the road he saw Mrs. Mayfield coming to meet him. "The preacher wasn't at home," he said, as he came near to her, "but I left word for him and he will be here soon. Do the folks know anything about it yet?"
"I told your uncle, but he seemed already to know." She gave a tender account of the scene in the yard, of Tom and Lou, and he said that like his uncle he had already known. "Fate got out of the wagon when you drove up to the gate, ma'm—honey," he said; "and I am thankful to the Lord that in no wise was it cruel onesidedness. I couldn't tell that Tom loved Lou, but I knew she loved him."
"There is no need now of walking so fast," she playfully remarked, and he checked his haste. "No, for I am not walking toward you, but with you. I left time back yonder where I met you and after this there can't be any time, just a rising and a setting of the sun with time in a sweet dream between."
"Jim, I ought to tell you something about my married life; and when I have told you the truth, you may not hold me so blameless."
"Mary, I don't date you back beyond the time when you drove up to the gate. I don't want to know anything about your past. It didn't include me."
"Your faith is simple and beautiful now, Jim, but may there not come a time when it will begin to inquire—when perhaps I might fret you? Weariness is a close critic, Jim."
"You may teach me many things, Mary, but not to find fault. Look back to your home in the town and think of what you are giving up for me—for a life of toil among the hills."
She took hold of his arm and drew him close to her. "I am giving up cold glitter for warm glow."
They turned aside to sit in the cool shade at the water-fall, and there they found Tom and Lou, dreaming with their heads together. High above there had been a heavy rain and the falls were pouring with such a roar that there was no talk; but the four of them sat there on a great rock, gazing at the rainbow hanging above the yellowish water. But when they withdrew to a cove where it was quiet, Tom told Jim that he had put a boy on a horse and sent him after a marriage license.
"When we come to think," said Mrs. Mayfield, "it is all very hasty. It might look better to wait."
"That's what I wanted to say," Lou replied. "I always thought that folks had to make up some new clothes when they were married—or befo'. But here I am with hardly any clothes at all."
"You can make clothes afterward just as well as before," said Tom. "I feel that as long as I'm not married I belong to the Governor—I mean my father," he explained to Lou; "but as soon as I am married I'll be my own—well, I might say my own boss." Archly Lou looked at him and he added: "Unless you are to be my boss. And you can, I tell you that."
"I have devised a charming plan," said Mrs. Mayfield. "We'll all be married up there on the top of the hill among the vines. Won't that be romantic? No church, no hot house flowers, but blossoms still alive, with humming birds sipping their honey. We'll make of it a marriage May day, to be lived over in after years; and we'll have a picture painted of the scene, nature's altar; and in the twilight of many a summer's day we'll muse over it, growing old."
"Auntie, I accept your romance now," Tom replied. "You have infected us all and make us almost unnatural with happiness."
"But now we'd better go to the house," Jim suggested. "It is about time for the preacher to come and we don't want to keep him waiting. Ma'm, I—"
"Are you calling me ma'm, again?"
"It was to remind myself of a time when I wasn't so happy and to make myself doubly happy now by the reminder."
Coupling off and hand in hand they walked toward the house, ceremonious beyond naturalness in acting out the spirit summoned by a woman steeped in the essences of high-flown books. "The trumpet," she said when they heard Margaret's dinner horn, and not even Tom, who could have recalled many a rakish bout of a Saturday night and many an unholy laugh in church of a Sunday, dared to smile at her. "You've caught me all right, auntie, and I'm strutting like a bantam cock in the spring of the year."
"But don't destroy it all by saying so," she replied, pressing close to Jim and peering round into his face.
Jasper and Margaret were waiting for them, at the table; and again Margaret was never so surprised as when she heard that they were at that moment expecting the arrival of the preacher. She did not quite approve of the hill-top marriage plan. Better would it have suited her purpose to parade the double wedding at Dry Fork, to shine in the presence of neighbors. But Jasper, expecting trouble, was in favor of the speediest method. "Miz Mayfield is the manager of the whole affair," said he. "Ma'm, have some of these here snap beans, b'iled with as brown a piece of bacon as you ever seed. What, Margaret, ain't a cryin'?"
"Of course a man would never cry on an occasion of this here sort," she whimpered. "You don't stop to think that our daughter is a goin' to leave us—it don't seem to make no diffunce to you."
"Wall, not as much diffunce as if she had loved him an' he hadn't loved her. Jim, I reckon here's about as fine a piece of co'n bread as you ever smacked yo' mouth on, white meal ground slow."
Margaret's keen ears heard a halloa at the gate. "Thar's the preacher," she said. "An' goodness me, we ain't got a bite fitten for a preacher to eat." Jasper got up to meet the minister. "Fetch him in anyhow, Jasper. 'Pears like we ain't never fixed for nuthin'."
Jasper went out and into the dining-room conducted the horse-trading preacher. He shook hands with everyone, sat down, and, hungry from his ride, began to help himself. "Just married a couple over in the Spice Bush neighborhood," said he, receiving from Jasper a slab of the brown bacon. "Yes, the widow Doxey and old John Towson. This is good meat, brother Starbuck—smoked with hickory wood, I reckon."
"Yes, hick'ry an' sass'frass. I reckon you pick up a good many weddin's along about this time of the year."
"Well, a pretty fair sprinkling."
"So Miz Doxey finally cotch old John," said Jasper and his wife declared she wouldn't make light of it. "Light of it? She weighs two forty if she weighs a ounce. Oh, I knowd John would git her as soon as I seed him a puttin' them green blinds on his house. Ma'm, nothin' round here ketches a widow woman like green blinds. Swoppin' any hosses lately, Brother Fetterson?"
"Traded off a nag yesterday. Didn't know but I might strike a swop with you to-day."
"Why," Margaret spoke up, knowing that in the combat of a horse trade, time would sail like a summer's cloud over the heads of the two men, "you haven't come to trade stock, but to marry these folks."
"Oh, that won't take long," Brother Fetterson replied. "Have you got that sorrel yet, Brother Starbuck?"
"She's out thar in the lot now, as slick as a mole."
"This is to be a double wedding," said Mrs. Mayfield, "and on the hill-top, among the vines."
"A right pretty idea, Miss. Now this hoss I'm a riding, Brother Starbuck, is a single footer, in fine condition and can run a quarter with the best of them."
"I hearn that you swopped tuther day with Dave Somer's an' the hoss died durin' of the night," said Jasper. "Is that so?"
"Brother Starbuck," the preacher replied, looking grave, "life is just as uncertain among hosses as among men. We know not the day nor the hour when the healthiest hoss may be called, as it were; and I could not of course foresee the death of the hoss I swopped to Dave. I regretted his—I might say demise, but it was no fault of mine."
Mrs. Mayfield, feeling that the preacher was not attaching enough importance to the coming marriages, ventured to remark that her brother, who was a United States Judge at Nashville, had ever been regarded as a keen appraiser of a horse. But the fact that she was the sister of so distinguished a man did not at all startle the preacher. "Glad to know it, Miss. I'll go out and look at your hoss, Jasper."
"After the wedding," Margaret suggested.
"And then you can swop hosses all day," said Jim.
"A good idea no doubt, Brother Jim Starbuck. And how are the people over in your highland district?"
"In need of the gospel as they are here," Jim replied.
"Yes, here and everywhere, Brother Jim Starbuck. Your breed of hosses up there are very sure-footed. I had one that could climb a hill-side like a goat. Many professions resultant from the revivals last fall, Brother Jim Starbuck?"
"Yes, and a number of additions to the church."
"That is indeed encouraging. I preached just beyond there one conference year, and aside from the death of a very valuable hoss, I was quite successful. Do you know a good brother named Adsit, big double log house on the left bank of the creek?"
"Yes, I am acquainted with him."
"A fair minded man, is he, Brother Jim. Let me have a colt very reasonable once."
"Shall we now go to the hill-top," Jim suggested.
"Yes, Brother Jim. But I should think that the ceremony could as well be performed here in the house."
"That was not our plan," said Mrs. Mayfield. "We are going to be married among the vines, and if such a temple is distasteful to you, sir—"
"Oh, not at all, Miss, I assure you."
"And we are going dressed just as we are," she continued.
"Oh, the dressing, Miss, makes no difference to me. Well, if everything's ready we might as well go on."
Among the vines they stood. In the leaves above them the birds were twittering. The sweet air came cool from up the creek. In the short grass, stirred by a breeze, a harebell seemed tinily ringing. And down the hill they went, brides and bridegrooms, all wound about with a rope of white clover.