"You didn't go to the funeral?"
"Ah ain't got no time to waste on no funerals, Miss' Mary, 'less dey's closer'n Coalstock."
Jim, the second boy, joined Ed in work upon the mountain; Will and Babe continued at school, although Stella grumbled about a sixteen-year-old negro bothering with books, when a job was handy.
Diana arrived home the last of May. The whole family surrounded her admiringly, as she hung the framed diploma on the sitting-room wall.
"Hit's beautiful," Stella said simply, as the daughter pointed out the school buildings in the half-tone oval in the center.
There was no opening, however, for a negro milliner in Adamsville. Tired with the futile search for work prepared for by her education, she replaced Stella in the Judson kitchen, to allow the elder woman the greater freedom which "washin'" permitted. With the coming of the clearing gangs, Will joined his two brothers at the work, leaving only fourteen-year-old Babe at school. Even he longed for the jingle of pay-day wealth in his overalls. One day he announced at home that Mr. Hewin had taken him on as a helper. "Three dollars a week, maw. What good is school, anyway?"
Then began a new period in the life of the Cole boys. The mountain had taken them to its red bosom; the lesson of isolated self-reliance which it had taught to Pelham Judson came in parallel form to them. They were a gang, four strong, which could cope with any equal number of Lilydale negroes, or Scratch Ankle or Buzzard Roost rock-throwers. If a larger number got after them, there was the mountain they could retreat to; its rocky reinforcement and refuge furnished safety.
Stella scolded them sharply on the night when they had fought the Harlan Avenue white boys. "Let them Lilydale niggers fool wid white trash, ef dey wants to. De Judsons is quality, don't you fergit; you let dat white trash be. Fight wid you' own kind. Ef a white man gin you any trouble, you let Marster Judson fix 'im."
The lesson sank in. They were quality negroes, lords of the mountain domain. Stocky Jim was the champion rough-and-tumble fighter of the Zion Church. "Ah kin lick any three Neboes wid mah toes an' teeth," he would boast in religious snobbery. Tom had had one of Mr. Judson's shotguns, to warn off marauders; the care of this descended to Ed, as the oldest, and the boys took turns in potting rabbits, flickers, and an occasional partridge, with shells borrowed from the big house. First choice of the game went to the Judson table; but there was enough left to fill out the scanty Cole menu of corn-pone, sow-belly, molasses, and a seasonal mess of greens.
The boys practiced hurling outcrop boulders at the big-trunked oaks until they could skin the bark four times out of five at fifty feet. The outdoor life, the clearing work, the continual "toting" of water from the icy spring in balanced buckets, toughened them into exuberant manhood. They did not marry, although Stella constantly scolded the older pair for "hangin' 'roun' dem Avenoo C skirts"; and their wider rambles added grass-ripened watermelons and plump chickens to the fare.