In the Tennessee mountains

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"That'll be a powerful cur'ous tale ter go the rounds o' the mounting," remarked one of the disaffected by-standers. "Ye hev done all ye kin ter torment yer own folks up hyar on Big Injun Mounting what elected ye afore; an' then ye comes up hyar agin, an' the fust man that says he won't vote fur ye must be flunged off'n the bluff."

"'Pears ter me," said Isaac Boker, surlily, and still shaking his fist, "ez thar ain't all yit in the pen'tiary that desarves ter go thar. Better men than ye air, Rufe Chadd, hev been locked up, an' hung too, sence ye war elected ter office."

There was a sudden change in the lawyer's attitude; a strong tension of the muscles, as of a wild-cat ready to spring; the quickening of his blood showed in his scarlet face; there was a fiery spark in his darkening eyes.

"Oh, come now, Rufe," said one of the lookers-on hastily. "Ye oughtn't ter git ter fightin' with a drunken man. Jes' walk yerself off fur a while."

"Oh, he can say what he likes while he's drunk," replied Chadd, with a short, scornful laugh. "But I tell you, now, he had better keep his fists for his wife."

The others gathered about the great, massive fellow, who was violently gesticulating and incoherently asserting his offended dignity. Chadd strolled away toward the gloomy woods, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes bent upon the ground. Glances of undisguised aversion followed him,—from the group about the store, from the figures in the windows and doors of the poor dwellings, even from the half-clad children who paused in their spiritless play to gaze after him. He was vaguely conscious of these pursuing looks of hatred, but only once he saw the universal sentiment expressed in a face. As the long shadows of the forest fell upon his path, he chanced to raise his eyes, and encountered those of a woman, standing in Boker's cabin. He went on, feeling like a martyr. The thick foliage closed upon him; the sound of his languid footsteps died in the distance, and the figures on the cliff stood in the sunset glow, watching the spot where he had disappeared, as silent and as motionless as if they had fallen under some strange, uncanny spell.

The calm of the woodland, the refreshing aromatic odors, the rising wind after the heat of the sultry day, exerted a revivifying influence upon the lawyer's spirits, as he walked on into the illimitable solitudes of the forest. Night was falling before he turned to retrace his way; above the opaque, colorless leaves there was the lambent glinting of a star; the fitful plaint of a whip-poor-will jarred the dark stillness; grotesque black shadows had mustered strong among the huge boles of the trees. But he took no note of the gathering gloom; somehow, his heart had grown suddenly light. He had forgotten the drunken wrangler and all the fretting turmoils of the canvass; once he caught himself in making plans, with his almost impossible success in the election as a basis. And yet, inconsistently enough, he felt a dismayed astonishment at his unaccountable elation. The workings of his own mind and their unexpected developments were always to him strange phenomena. He was introspective enough to take heed of this inward tumult, and he had a shrewd suspicion that more activity was there than in all the mental exercitations of the combined bench and bar of the circuit. But he harbored a vague distrust of this uncontrollable power within, so much stronger than the untutored creature to whom it appertained. A harassing sense of doubleness often possessed him, and he was torn by conflicting counsels,—the inherent inertia and conservatism of the mountaineer, who would fain follow forever the traditional customs of his ancestry, and an alien overwhelming impetus, which carried him on in spite of himself, and bewildered him with his own exploits. He was helpless under this unreasonable expectation of success, and regarded the mental gymnastic of joyous anticipation with perplexed surprise. "I'm fixing a powerful disappointment for myself," he said.

He could now see, through the long vista of the road, the open space where the Settlement was perched upon the crag. The black, jagged outline of the rock serrated the horizon, and was cut sharply into the delicate, indefinable tints of the sky. Above it a great red moon was rising. There was the gleam of the waterfall; how did it give the sense of its emerald green in the darkness? The red, rising moon showed, but did not illumine, the humble cluster of log huts upon the great cliff. Here and there a dim yet genial flare of firelight came broadly flickering out into the night. It was darker still in the dense woods from which the road showed this nocturnal picture framed in the oak leaves above his head. But was a sudden flash of lightning shooting across that clear, tenderly-tinted sky? He felt his warm blood gushing down his face; he had a dizzying sense of falling heavily; and he heard, strangely dulled, a hoarse, terrified cry, which he knew he did not utter. It echoed far through the quiet woods, startling the apathetic inhabitants of the Settlement, and waking all the weird spirits of the rocks. The men sitting in the store took their pipes from their mouths, and looked at each other in surprise.

"What's that?" asked one of the newly-arrived candidates, an Ephesus man, who held that the mountains were not over and above safe for civilized people, and was fain to investigate unaccustomed sounds.

"Jes' somebody a-hollerin' fur thar cow, mebbe," said the store-keeper. "Or mebbe it air Isaac Boker, ez gits dancin'-drunk wunst in a while."