Azalea: The Story of a Little Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains

by Elia Wilkinson Peattie

Thomas McBirney held out his hand.

“You always was one for adventures, Mr. Thompson,” he said, with emotion in his voice. “We’re grateful for your help.”

So they sat together, planning and scheming, till Carin fell asleep on the sofa, and the oil burned out of the lamps. The rain fell heavier and heavier and blew in gusts against the pane. And when Carin staggered up to bed with the help of Mammy Thula, it seemed to her as if all the pleasant things had stopped happening and only trouble was at hand.

Very much the same sort of an idea was lying in the bottom of Ma McBirney’s mind, though she tried to answer cheerfully when her Thomas spoke to her, and she said her prayers as if she had perfect faith that they were to be answered. But the truth was, she was too worried just then to have much faith. She imagined the frightful things that might be happening to her poor Azalea, and she realized more than ever how dear the child had become to her, and how she loved her merry ways and her odd turns of mind, and her way of acting as if the world was hers. But, more than that—Oh, much more than that just at that particular moment, was her anxiety for her own James Stuart. What was her boy doing just then, she wondered. The rain was simply threshing against the pane, and she knew in what torrents it would pour down the mountain side, ripping new gulleys for itself and deepening the old ones. It was black as only night and cloud can make the world, and the horses would be wearied and fretted.

“I doubt we were right in letting those poor boys go up the mountain to-night, Thomas,” she said, just as the good Pa McBirney was sinking into slumber. “We might better have let the creatures go hungry for a while than to risk the lives of those boys.”

“Go to sleep, Mary,” commanded Mr. McBirney in a sleepy voice. “I’ve got to have my night’s rest.” And indeed, he seemed to be beginning it before he had finished his sentence, for the next moment above all the clamor and uproar of the gale, ma could hear his steady and wholesome snore.

But she lay awake, turning this way and that, creeping out of bed to look from the window, where nothing could be seen but this latter deluge, and then huddling in again, praying for the three wandering children.

And as a matter of fact, prayers could not come amiss for any of them that night. And really, her own freckled Jim needed them rather more than the two she had taken under her motherly wing. For James Stuart McBirney encountered that night one of the greatest dangers of his short but interesting career. The two drenched boys had urged their horses up the slippery mountain road, and the horses had plunged on, half blinded by the storm. The way had been difficult, but all had gone well enough till they came to the falls where Jim had, several weeks before, shown Hi his mill and dam. The fall was roaring down the mountain side, and the boys had no choice but to cross the swollen torrent as it foamed and writhed across the roadway. In fair weather this was a safe enough crossing, and Jim loved it beyond any words of his to say. He would pause here while his horse drank, and he himself would sit staring at the dream-like valley, thinking vague and happy thoughts. But to-night, as he was to learn, the great boulders that had been placed at the outer edge of the road had been carried away, and the black water was an enemy—the water which had so often been his playmate. Midstream, he felt his horse slipping.

“Mac!” he called sharply, slapping the animal encouragingly, “Mac! Pull up!”

But Mac, it seemed, could not pull up, though he tried desperately. His feet went out from under him, and he lay on his side, with the waters raging about him and bearing him toward that desperate edge. Once over that, they would drop sheer one hundred and fifty feet upon jagged rocks where the waters twisted and hissed like angry serpents. Fortunately, Mac had not gone down quickly, but after a struggle, and Jim had had time to free himself from the stirrups. He stood there in the flood now, with the frantic horse between him and that deadly fall. The bridle reins were still in his hands, and he held to them with the instinct of the born horseman, though what a slender boy could do with a frightened horse in a raging torrent, it is not easy to imagine. Jim felt both of them going, and said to himself: “One second more and I’ll let old Mac go and get out of this—if I can!” when suddenly the great body of the horse caught and held. Jim felt that the animal was bracing himself against something strong and firm, and he let go the reins to escape the plunging hoofs. But the next moment, freed from the horse’s sustaining back, he found himself swept from his feet and caught in the terrible swirl of the waters. Then, for the first time, he screamed “Hi! Hi!” though he knew there was small chance that Hi could hear him. And at that instant, a terrible thought flashed over his mind. What if Hi had not been able to cross the ford! What if he, too, had gone down!