In the Tennessee mountains

by Charles Egbert Craddock

And it was clearly the opinion of the "mounting," expressed in the choice coteries assembled at the mill, the blacksmith's shop, the Settlement, and the still-house, that a "young gal like Cynthy" had transcended all the bounds of propriety in this "wild junketing after gov'nors an' sech through all the valley country, whar she warn't knowed from a gate-post, nor her dad nuther."

There were, however, doubters, who disparaged the whole account of the journey as a fable, and circulated a whisper that the petition had never been presented.

This increased to open incredulity as time wore on, to ridicule, to taunts, for no word came of the petition for pardon and no word of the prisoner.

The bleak winter wore away; spring budded and bloomed into summer; summer was ripening into autumn, and every day, as the corn yellowed and thickly swathed ears hung far from the stalk, and the drone of the locust was loud in the grass, and the deep, slumberous glow of the sunshine suffused every open spot, Cynthia, with the return of the season, was vividly reminded of her weary ploddings, with bleeding feet and aching head, between such fields along the lengthening valley roads. And the physical anguish she remembered seemed light—seemed naught—to the anguish of suspense which racked her now. Sometimes she felt impelled to a new endeavor. Then her strong common sense checked the useless impulse. She had done all that could be done. She had planted the seed. She had worked and watched, and beheld it spring up and put forth and grow into fair proportions; only time might bring its full fruition.

The autumn was waning; cold rains set in, and veined the rocky chasms with alien torrents; the birds had all flown, when suddenly the Indian summer, with its golden haze and its great red sun, its purple distances and its languorous joy, its balsamic perfumes and its vagrant day-dreams, slipped down upon the gorgeous crimson woods, and filled them with its glamour and its poetry.

One of these days—a perfect day—a great sensation pervaded Pine Mountain. Word went the rounds that a certain notorious horse thief, who had served out his term in the peni tentiary, had stopped at the blacksmith shop on his way home, glad enough of the prospect of being there once more; "an' ez pious in speech ez the rider, mighty nigh," said the dwellers about Pine Mountain, unfamiliar with his aspect as a penitent and discounting his repentance. It was a long story he had to tell about himself, and he enjoyed posing as the central figure in the curious crowd that had gathered about him. He seemed for the time less like a criminal than a great traveler, so strange and full of interest to the simple mountaineers were his experiences and the places he had seen. He stood leaning against the anvil, as he talked, looking out through the barn-like door upon the amplitude of the great landscape before him; its mountains so dimly, delicately blue in the distance, so deeply red and brown and yellow nearer at hand, and still closer shaded off by the dark plumy boughs of the pines on either side of the ravine above which the forge was perched. Deep in the valley, between them all, Lost Creek hied along, veining the purple haze with lines of palpitating silver. It was only when the material for personal narration was quite exhausted that he entered, though with less zest, on other themes.

"Waal,—now, 'Vander Price," he drawled, shifting his great cowhide boots one above another. "I war 'stonished when I hearn ez 'Vander war in fur receivin' of stolen goods. Shucks!"—his little black eyes twinkled beneath the drooping brim of a white wool hat, and his wide, flat face seemed wider and flatter for a contemptuous grin,—"I can't onderstand how a man kin git his own cornsent ter go cornsortin' with them ez breaks inter stores and dwellin's an' sech, an' hankerin' arter store-fixin's an' store-truck. Live-stock air a differ. The beastis air temptin', partic'lar ef they air young an' hev got toler'ble paces." Perhaps a change in the faces of his audience admonished him, for he qualified: "The beastis air temptin'—ter the ungodly. I hev gin over sech doin's myself, 'kase we hed a toler'ble chaplain yander in the valley" (he alluded thus equivocally to his late abode), "an' I sot under the preachin' a good while. But store-truck!—shucks! Waal, the gyards 'lowed ez 'Vander war a turrible feller ter take keer on, when they war a-fetchin' him down ter Nashvul. He jes' seemed desolated. One minit he'd fairly cry ez ef every sob would take his life; an' the nex' he'd be squarin' off ez savage, an' tryin' ter hit the gyards in the head. He war ironed, hand an' foot."

There was no murmur of sympathy. All listened with stolid curiosity, except Cynthia, who was leaning against the open door. The tears forced their way, and silently flowed, unheeded, down her cheeks. She fixed her brown eyes upon the man as he went on:—

"But when they struck the railroad, an' the critter seen the iron engine ez runs by steam, like I war a-tellin' ye about, he jes' stood rooted ter the spot in amaze; they could sca'cely git him budged away from thar. They 'lowed they hed never seen sech joy ez when he war travelin' on the steam-kyars a-hint it. When they went a-skeetin' along ez fast an' ez steady ez a tur-r-key-buzzard kin fly, 'Vander would jes' look fust at one o' the gyards an' then at the t'other, a-smilin' an' tickled nearly out 'n his senses. An' wunst he said, 'Ef this ain't the glory o' God revealed in the work o' man, what is?' The gyards 'lowed he acted so cur'ous they would hev b'lieved he war a plumb idjit, ef it hedn't a-been fur what happened arterward at the Pen."

"Waal, what war it ez happened at the Pen?" demanded Pete Blenkins. His red face, suffused with the glow of the smouldering forge-fire, was a little wistful, as if he grudged his quondam striker these unique sensations.