But even as she spoke the words, the “procession” appeared, though it was almost above the McBirney’s heads. Both men and animals were moving along very slowly, as if—as pa put it—they were “dead beat.”
“It looks,” said ma softly, “like a funeral.”
“No, it don’t nuther, ma,” pa answered sharply. “It don’t look nothing like a funeral. It looks like a family moving.”
“It’s a mighty large family then, Thomas.”
“Maybe it’s folks going down to work in the cotton mill at Lee,” Jim suggested. “I heard Rath Rutherford saying there was agents going all through the mountains, asking folks to go down and work.”
“Yes, folks with children,” snapped Pa McBirney. “That’s the kind they want, and that’s the kind that’ll go—folks that can get their boys and girls in the mill and make ’em work for ’em. I’d see myself lying down and letting my children put food in my mouth!”
“Well, as near as I can make out,” said Mary McBirney, “there’s only two children in that company. All the rest is grown folks.”
The three wagons with their sagging cloth tops, swung around the next curve and turned toward the McBirney cabin. The horses walked with drooping heads; the people dragged their feet. Pa went forward to meet them, and close behind him, trying hard to see and not to be seen, went Jim. Ma McBirney went back and sat on a chair in the doorway, something as a queen might go back and sit on her throne.
“Howdy,” said pa.
“Howdy,” responded the man who led the first pair of horses.