In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Bold as Shattuck's policy had been, he quaked to witness his own suggestion of political enmity, malicious denial of medical attendance, and the possibility of prosecution, introduced as a threat into Zack Pettingill's honest and hospitable consciousness. And yet he could but laugh at the manner of it. In order to capture and speak apart to his parent, the bridegroom had drawn the old man almost behind the door. In fact, while the son stood visible, with earnest and urgent gestures and grave and deprecatory countenance, the effect of his communication upon the unseen Pettingill was only intimated by the agitation which beset the door, as the old man floundered behind it in the activities of his anger, and his contemptuous floutings of the suggested implication in crime. Now the door quivered on its hinges; now it received a blow that would have sent it flaunting wide had not the young man's hand restrained it; and finally, when it became quiet, Shattuck divined the success of his effort before the bridegroom turned away and the liberated father emerged from behind it. He was not prepared, however, for the glower of deep-seated hatred which Zack Pettingill cast upon him through the open window before he turned toward the stairs. Shattuck felt suddenly wounded; the blood mounted to his face as if he had received a blow; and if he had for the moment forgotten that in these mountains the poorest honest man holds his dignity as safe from the imputation of crime as if he were a magnate and millionaire, and resents it as dearly, what other course could he have pursued with the interests he had at stake—his own conscience and his friend's life? As he paced to and fro the short limits of the porch, there sounded almost immediately the quick thud of galloping hoofs down the rocky hill, surging through the river, becoming fainter on the opposite bank, and so dying away. In his preoccupation he attached no importance to this, as the guests were now beginning to take leave. Only when young Pettingill reappeared, a trifle breathless and with an excited eye, and the comment, "We sent fur Doctor Ganey—seventeen mile—Steve Yates rid fur him," did Shattuck connect the swift departure that he had unconsciously remarked with the success of his mission. He did not triumph in it as he had expected. His sensitiveness, with which he was well enough endowed to keep him amply supplied with unhappiness, was all astir within him; the knowledge of the wounds that he had dealt—deep, bitter, and intentional—had developed a double edge and a sharp retroaction. He doubted if in all Zack Pettingill's hard, limited, and most respectable life he had ever been brought face to face with the ignominy of such suspicions and such threats. Not that the taking of life on a grievous provocation and an implacable quarrel was held, in the mountain ethics, reprehensible; the deep turpitude lay in the suggested circumstances—a conspiracy, a political grudge, and the victim a guest. It would have been far indeed from his own roof-tree could Zack Pettingill, the very soul of hospitality, have contemplated the infamy of which Shattuck had affected to suspect him. He wondered a trifle that so ignorant, so coarse, so violent, so lawless a man should be so vulnerable in the more æsthetic sensibilities, forgetting that traits of character are as the solid wood, indigenous; and that cultivation is, after all, only surface polish and veneer, and can never give to common deal the rich heart, the weight, and the value of the walnut or the oak.

"My wife an' all her folks air a-goin' now, an' I reckon I'll hev ter hustle along an' jine 'em," drawled the bridegroom, presently. "I reckon they hev hed enough o' dancin' an' fiddlin' an' sech. Thar ain't been ez much dancin' in the cove afore I got married sence the Big Smoky war built—'thout," he qualified, meditatively, for he was a man of speculation—"'thout 'twar the Injuns. Some 'low ez Injuns war plumb gin over ter dancin' in the old times"—with the sufficient air of an ethnological authority—"war dances an' scalp dances." He smiled in slow ridicule. "Folks didn't dance none in the war ez we hed hyarabouts—Fed and Cornfed—'thout ye call some o' them quicksteps on the back track dancin'—they war lively enough for ennything! But"—with the manner of resuming the subject—"they danced at the weddin' t'other night at Mr. Gossam's, an' they hev danced at the infair, an' now I hope nobody ain't goin' ter gin no mo' dances; leastwise not in complimint ter Malviny an' me. They air toler'ble tiresome ter me," he protested, with a blasé air. "An' I ain't s'prised none ef they air devices o' the devil ennyhow, ez ennybody mought know from the eend this one hev kem ter. Malviny ain't no dancer, an' air mighty religious, an' all this hyar fiddlin' an' glorifyin' hev been sorter terrifyin' ter her. I ain't pious myse'f," he concluded, with an air which to Shattuck's discerning observation sufficiently identified his type as the incipient man of the world. "I expec' ter go ter heav'n in partnership with Malviny—she's good enough fur two."

He strolled off to join a group whose departure was impeded by much hospitable insistence to remain longer, and by the presentation of bundles of the supper wrapped in paper; for, alack! the disaster had preceded the opening of the supper-room, and its triumphs were and would ever be only a matter of conjecture. The disappointment was stamped into the lines of Mrs. Pettingill's worn countenance. It seemed a perversely withheld opportunity of joy in her restricted life, since it was deemed unmeet that the formal feasting should proceed while Leonard Rhodes lay up-stairs at the point of death. She could only cut great slices of cake, and press them upon her guests, with the wheezing adjuration, "Take it home, and jedge what luck we hed with the bakin'!"

She had been altogether despoiled of the fine show that the table in full array would have made, but the apple-brandy that had constituted Mr. Pettingill's share of the preparations, in circulation since the first arrival, had by no means been in vain. He was disposed to offer his example as one that might with profit be adopted. "I always b'lieved in a handed supper," he remarked. "Then, ef—ef—an accident war ter happen' 'fore 'twar all over, folks wouldn't go away hongry from yer house, nohow. But the wimmin-folks air so gin over ter pride an' fixin's that they air obleeged ter set out a table all tricked up an' finified off."

The violinist, however, was esteemed in some sort exempt from the rule of etiquette which necessitated the immediate dispersing of the company without the formal supper. A curious eye might have discovered him under the staircase which led to the wounded man's room. He sat with the "lap-board"—usually used in cutting out the men's clothes—across his knee, and here was ranged a liberal choice of the viands which the shed-room had contained. Most of the household dogs—there were twenty odd—were underfoot in the shed-room, presiding with a speechless frenzy of interest in the partition of the good things; but two of the younger ones sat at the fiddler's feet, and watched, with heads canted askew and the glistening eyes of admiration, the prodigies of his execution. The stiff tail of one of them—a pointer—sweeping the floor, now and again came in contact with the violin that stood on end in the corner, eliciting a discordant twanging of the strings, and a low, hollow, resonant murmur; whereupon the dog would rise with a knitted, puzzled brow and an air of irritated interruption, only to seat himself anew, and with a bland and freshened interest resume his earnest watch upon the violinist's movements. Again he would wag his tail in the joy of his heart, again strike inadvertently the strings of the instrument, and once more arise to vainly investigate the mystery of "this music in the air."

Occasionally the closed door hard by opened suddenly to disclose Mrs. Pettingill's anxious face and gray head, as she cast a searching glance to discern what havoc the fiddler had succeeded in making in the good things set before him. She added to the normal drawl of the mountaineers an individual wheeze of singular propitiations, and implying cordial and confidential relations. There may be more beautiful sounds, but none of more suave and soothing effect than that husky, "Jack, jes' try a glass o' this hyar cherry-bounce along with a bite o' pound-cake"—as she extended the "bite," which, in point of size, might have discouraged the jaws of the giant Cormoran, but never Jack Brace's. "It'll rest ye mightily, arter all the fiddlin' ye hev done." And again, "Jack, hev ye ever tasted my sweet-spiced peach pickles?"

Jack had, indeed. But Jack said he never had, in order that he might renew the gustatory delights that he remembered.

Now and then less friendly eyes gazed in upon the nook. A gigantic mountaineer, slowly strolling through the half-deserted scene, came to a full halt hard by, leaned peeringly forward, took a step closer, and, with his shaggy-bearded face inclined pharisaically over the well-filled lap-board, demanded, in a tone of gruff reproof:

"What air ye a-doin' of hyar, gormandizing like ye hedn't hed nuthin' ter eat fur a week an' better, an' a man dyin' up-steers?"

"Ye talk like I war a-nibblin' on Len Rhodes," cried Jack Brace, angered by the mere suggestion that etiquette required that he should desist. "My goin' hongry ain't a-goin' ter holp him, an' my eatin' arter fiddlin' all night ain't a-goin' ter hender. Ef he can't go ter heaven 'count o' me an' this leetle brandy peach"—as he held up the appetizing morsel both the dogs rose up on their nimble hind-legs in pathetic misapprehension of his intention, their eyes widening with dismay as he withdrew the dainty effectually from view—"why, he ain't got enough religion ter git thar, that's all!"