TREGARVON turned out early in the morning of a Saturday, to be known afterward as a day of fateful happenings, largely from force of habit—since there was no mule cavalcade to be led to the Pisgah heights. As on the three previous mornings, he breakfasted alone. In reply to his inquiry, Uncle William told him that the motor-car was not in its shed, and the inference was that Carfax had spent the night as the guest of the Caswells.
“Summa dem po’ white men out yondeh on de po’ch a-waitin’ faw you-all, Mistoo Tregarbin,” the old negro announced, after the solitary meal was despatched. “Look lak dey’s mighty grumptious erbout somepin, dey does.”
Tregarvon went to the front of the building, where he had established a rude excuse for an office, and opened the door. The farmers were there, waiting for their pay, and the settlement was made without waste of words on either side. But after the money had been handed out, Daggett was moved to make peaceful overtures, natural kindliness having gotten the better of resentment. They—the farmers—had been talking it over among themselves, and Daggett “allowed” that they might have been hasty. Without prejudice to the fact that they objected to being sworn at, they would come back Monday or Tuesday of the following week and finish the hauling job, if the boss so desired.
At this, as was most natural after a night of worry and disappointment, Tregarvon’s temper flew into shards.
“Not in a hundred years, you won’t!” he exploded wrathfully. “If I can’t move that machinery without your help, it may stand right where it is until it rots! You’ve got your money, and I’ve learned my lesson. We’re quits.” And with that he shouldered his way through the group and went to rally Tryon and the track gang, marshalling the handful of laborers for the ascent of the mountain in the tram-car.
Some half-hour beyond this, the handful having taken a short-cut through the summit forest from the tramhead, Tregarvon found a sharp surprise awaiting him at the point on the pike where the truck load had been halted for the night. Scattered along the road or drawn up under the trees were a dozen or more teams of all sorts and descriptions—raw-boned mules in mismatched pairs, spans in which an ancient horse was harnessed with a mule or with another horse to the full as venerable, animals with back-bones like ridge-poles, others posturing as the halt, the lame, and the blind, and, completing the makeshifts, a wagon drawn by a pair of diminutive bulls. The drivers of this new levy were harmoniously in keeping with their outworn stock, decrepit wagons, and rope-patched harnesses; lank, sallow-faced mountain men of the McNabb type, with a toothless patriarch of the McNabb name to act as their spokesman.
“We-uns done heerd you-uns wuz a-needin’ holp fer to pull thish-yer load thoo the woods,” said the aged spokesman, shrilling in a high, cracked voice at Tregarvon. “Me an’ th’ boys ’lowed we’d drap erlong an’ gin ye a h’ist. How-all does ye hitch on ter that thar kintraption?” with a thumb-jerk over his shoulder toward the loaded truck.
Tregarvon recovered from his surprise in a rebound of heartfelt thankfulness. Here was manna from the skies, indeed. He asked no questions; made no ungrateful effort to pry into the whys and wherefores of the miracle. It was enough that the gods had relented. Treading softly among the adjectives, he proceeded to set his curiously assorted helpers, man and beast, in order, and the advance was begun.
Oddly enough, the task ran smoothly, despite the makeshift pulling beasts and the prodigious inexperience of the drivers with any load so formidable as the engine-mounted truck. To offset the inexperience, there was a quiet and resolute willingness that was heart-warming after the exacerbating sullenness of the valley farmers. Tregarvon found that his normal good-nature had not been slain; it had only been pushed aside; discovered also that hard words may make hard work. Turning the new leaf handsomely, he let the agile old patriarch do the bossing, and thus, rod by rod, the sandy half-mile was traversed and the goal in the old burying-ground was reached.
Just before noon, when the truck load had been pushed and pulled and inched into place in the glade, Carfax turned up, walking across from the school. His congratulations were profuse, but if he knew anything about the manner of the miracle-working, he betrayed neither himself nor the secret.