In Old Kentucky

by Edward Marshall; Charles Turner Dazey

These were the first words he had spoken that day, and, although the man was courteous enough in answering, "Dynamite," he thought he saw a smile upon his face of veiled derision, and resented it so fiercely that instead of thanking him he gave him a black look and sauntered off. But he had learned what the explosive was; before he went away he had seen it used in half-a-dozen ways and had a visual demonstration of the necessity for caution in its handling. One of the young and cocky engineers, whom he so hated, dropped by dread mischance a heavy hammer on a stick of it, and the resulting turmoil left him lying torn and mangled on the rocks.

Lorey felt small sympathy for the man's suffering, although he never had seen any human being mutilated thus before. Many a man he had seen lying with a clean hole through his forehead, the neat work of a definitely aimed bullet; assassination and the spectacles it carried with it could not worry him: his childhood and young manhood had been passed where "killings" were too frequent; the man, like all the others there at work, was his enemy, and he sorrowed for him not at all; but this tearing, mangling laceration of human flesh and bone was horrifying to him.

Later, though, a certain comfort came to him from it. The whole scene had impressed him and depressed him. He remembered what Madge Brierly had said about the engineers with their blue paper plans and their ability to read from them and work by them. He saw them at their work, and the spectacle made him feel inferior, which had never happened in his free, untrammeled life of mountain independence before. There were a dozen men about the work of the same type as Layson's, and their calm cocksureness as they directed all these mysteries amazed him, overwhelmed him, made him feel a sense of littleness and unimportance which was maddening. Why should they know all these things when he, Joe Lorey, who had lived a decent life according to his lights, had labored with his muscles as theirs could not labor if they tried to force them to, had lived upon rough fare and in rough places while they had had such "fancinesses" as he saw spread before them at their mess-tent dinner (and crude fare enough it seemed to them, no doubt) knew none of them? He could see no justice in such matters and resented them with bitter heart. If their own infernal powder had killed one of them he would not mourn. He tried to look back at the accident with satisfaction.

Had he gone down to that crude construction camp without the jealousy of Layson in his heart, he might, possibly, have merely gazed in wonder at the cleverness of all this work, despite his mountaineer's resentment of the coming of the interlopers; but, with that resentment in his heart to nag and worry him, he achieved, before the day was over, a real hatred of the class and of each individual in it. Layson had come up there to his country to rob him of the girl he loved; now these men were coming with their railroad to change the aspect of the land he had been born to and grown up in, making it a strange place, unfamiliar, unwelcoming and crowded. He hated every one of them, he hated the new railroad they were building, he hated their new-fangled and mysterious machinery which puzzled him with intricate devices and appalled him with its power of fire and steam.

By the time the afternoon was two hours old he was in a state of sullen fury, silent, morose, miserable on the stump which he had chosen as his vantage point for observation. More than once an engineer looked at him with plain admiration of his mammoth stature in his eyes; many a town-girl, seeing him, like a statue of The Pioneer upon a fitting pedestal, made furtive eyes at him, for he was handsome and attractive in his rough ensemble; but he paid no heed to any of them. He was giving his mind over to consideration of his grievance against these men who came, with steam and pick and shovel, dynamite and railroad iron, invading his domain.

He thought about his secret still, hidden in its mountain fastness, and realized that this new stage of settlement's inexorable march meant danger to it; he thought about the game which roamed the hills and realized that with the coming of the crowd it would soon scatter, never to return; he thought about the girl up there, his companion in adversity, his fellow sufferer from mutual wrong, the one thing which he had had to love, the shining prize which it had been his sole ambition to possess for life; he thought of her and then about the man, who (product of the same advantages which made these men before him clever with their blue-prints and their puffling monsters) had come there searching profit from the land which he had never loved or lived on, and, seeing Madge, had, Joe thoroughly believed, exerted every wile of a superior experience to win her from him by fair means or foul. He thought of them and hated all of them!

He was a most unhappy mountaineer who sat there on the stump, impassive and morose as the sun progressed upon its journey toward the western horizon. All the organized activity in the scene about him filled him with resentment and despair. In the hills he ever felt his strength: they had presented in his whole lifetime few problems which he could not cope with, conquer; but here in that construction camp he felt weak, incompetent, saw full many a puzzling matter which he could not understand. He watched the scene with bitter but with almost hopeless eyes. These new forces working here at railroad building, working in the hills to rob him of the girl he loved, seemed pitilessly strong and terribly mysterious. He never had felt helpless in all his life, before. It made him grind his teeth with rage.

But, though it angered him, the tense activity of the construction camp was fascinating, too. Especially was his attention held spellbound by the ruthless work of the advancing blasting gangs. What power lay hidden in those tiny sticks of dynamite! How lightly one of them had tossed that poor unfortunate in air and left him lying mangled, broken, helpless on the ground when it had spent its fury! What a weapon one of them would make, upon occasion!

This thought grew rapidly in his depressed and agitated mind. What a weapon, what a weapon! Presently the blasting gangs and what they did absorbed his whole attention. He no longer paid the slightest heed to the puffing locomotives, busy with their dump-cars, to the mysterious steam-shovel, to the hand cars with their pumping, flying passengers. The dynamite was greater than the greatest of them. One stick of it, if properly applied, would blow a locomotive into junk, would tear a dump-car, with its massive iron-work and grinding wheels, apart and leave mere splinters!

His thoughts roamed back to his home mountains and pondered on the probable effect of this incursion on his personal affairs. Not satisfied with tearing up the placid valley, these foreigners would, presently, invade the very mountains in their turn. He saw the doom of that small, hidden still which had been his father's secret, years ago, was now his secret from the prying eyes of law and progress. That the "revenuers," soon or late, would get it, now that their allies were building steel highways to swarm on, was inevitable. His heart beat fast with a new anger, anticipatory of their coming to his fastness.