She was an old-seeming woman, albeit perhaps once comely. Her dark hair, not fully grayed, fell about a face once small-featured, large-eyed. What charm she once had had was past or passing; yet something of her philosophy of life remained, enabling her to sing at this hour in the morning.
“Howdy, stranger,” she said, looking at him with a direct and easy familiarity singular enough in the circumstances, for the mountain women are shy and silent with men. “Whar ye bound?”
“Howdy,” said David Joslin. “I’m a-goin’ down the creek a ways.”
“If ye air, I wish ye’d see if my darter is along in the field below. Tell her to come on back home. She’s got her little girl along with her—ye’ll know ‘em if ye see ‘em.”
“Home?” said David Joslin rather vaguely, looking at the blackened roof of the cavern. The woman laughed.
“All the home we got, my darter an’ me. We’ve lived here off an’ on many a year. They call me Annie. They call her Min. Hit’s no difference about the rest of the name.”
“I know ye hain’t born in these parts or ye’d know about us two,” she continued. “This has been my home—all I’ve ever had in my life—I kain’t say how many years. I move up an’ down. Sometimes I’m up on Big Creek—sometimes on the Kaintucky. I follow the rafts. I’ve even been Outside. Min, she nuvver has. Some of my other girls has, maybe.”
“Yore other girls?” began Joslin.
“I’ve had seven children—four girls,” said she quietly, unemotionally.