“Safe?” roared the Reverend Absalom, who had been a mountain man himself and to whom the honor of the mountaineers was dear. “Safe, Mr. Carson! Do you mean to insinuate that those girls wouldn’t be as safe on Dundee Mountain as here in the town of Lee? Are you not aware that women are honored and protected in the remotest regions of our mountains?”
Mr. Carson enjoyed the outbreaks of his friend and was not at all put out at having provoked one. His smile led Mr. Summers to suppose that his eloquence had not been vigorous enough, so he resumed in a louder tone of voice:
“We may do a good many things up on the mountain that aren’t generally approved of by people living in the valleys; we may quarrel among ourselves, and we may forget to pay the government the tax on our whiskey; we may be lazy—we are lazy, if you like; we may have different ideas of enjoyment from those you have, but if you think there is any human panther among us who—”
Mr. Carson roared with laughter.
“No, Summers,” he cried, waving his hands to stop the stream of protest, “I don’t think so—I don’t think anything. But you know yourself that if the girls go up to Sunset Gap, they’ve got to have a reliable, sensible, agreeable woman along with them. Now where shall we find anyone like that? She must like roughing it, yet she’ll have to be a refined, companionable woman. She must know how to keep the pantry stocked, do the cooking, and yet be a restraint to our impulsive young people. Such a person is hard to find.”
Mr. Summers had to admit that it was. His little wife, Barbara, who wanted terribly to go with the girls but who was unwilling to leave her preacher-man, had to admit it also, though she usually was the first to think of the answer to any puzzle. Finally, Mr. Carson put it this way:
“McBirney and his wife are willing Azalea should go, providing the proper protectress is found. Mrs. Carson and I feel the same way. Now, Summers, I ask you, isn’t it up to the girls to find the right chaperon? Why not leave it in their hands? Let them produce a woman of good sense, refinement, courage, love of adventure mixed with judgment, well-educated, accustomed to killing snakes, friendly to the mountain people, with a religious nature and a perfect disposition—no objection to a little knowledge of medicine thrown in—and they can go.”
The Rev. Absalom threw back his head and laughed, and his laugh was entirely out of proportion to the size of the little house in which he and his wife and his yellow-headed son lived and had their being, and in which they were now entertaining their friends the Carsons and the McBirneys.
But Carin and Azalea arose to the situation.
“It’s an hour before father and mother are to start up the mountain for home,” said Azalea, taking the dare gayly; “so we’ve time to go out and look around.”