“I can’t do nothing else,” she said in her deep voice. “I hain’t got but one hand.”
“She lost the other,” said Azalea in her even, pleasant voice, “when she was trying to shoot rabbits for the family to eat. She and her grandmother have come down with her brother while he works at the sawmill Mrs. Rowantree has set up on the Ravenel Branch.”
“He wouldn’t come ’less I did, too,” explained Paralee. “He didn’t like to leave home.”
What could the home be that the brother of this girl would hate to leave, Carin wondered. It seemed as if Paralee must have come out of a cave rather than a house.
“We Panthers has always lived by ourselves,” the girl said in half angry explanation. “Jake hain’t used to talking to strange folks. And he didn’t have no proper clothes for leaving home.”
“Panther is a strange name, isn’t it?” asked Carin. “Are there many families of your name in these mountains, Paralee?”
“It hain’t our name,” returned the girl. “Our name’s Marr. My granddad was a fighter, he was. He kilt six men. It was a war. They called him the Panther of Soco River. Then they called us all Panthers. We don’t care!” she added defiantly. “One name suits us as well as t’other.”
“Her father,” explained Azalea, “is paralyzed from a tree having fallen on him. His home is away out on the tongue of the Soco mountain—so far away it can only be reached by ‘nag travel.’ Paralee says no doctor ever goes to see him.”
“Once,” said Paralee, “for two years nobody come up the road, and we didn’t go nowhere. For two whole years!”
The girls let the words rest on the air for a moment, taking in their meaning.