This time Widow Ashby’s Sabrina did not cry out in glee. She did not clap her hands above her head and laugh wildly. The forsaken girl sank into a chair. Her face turned deathly white, she stared ahead, unseeing.
It was a long time before she spoke. Then there was no one there to hear. Granny Withers had scurried off in the dark and Widow Ashby—she was long since dead and gone.
“A toad in a bottle,” the frightened Sabrina whispered and her voice echoed in the barren room, “a toad in a bottle works a conjure. Ma’s gone and now Talithie’s babe and Jasper’s is plum stone blind.” She swayed to and fro, crying hysterically. Then she buried her face in the vise of her hands, moaning, “Little Margie Tipton, your pretty blue eyes won’t never ’tice no false true love away from no fair maid. And you, Mistress Jasper Tipton, you’ll have many a long year for to ruminate such things through your own troubled mind.”
Some shake their heads sympathetically, finger to brow, when they speak of Widow Ashby’s Sabrina living alone in her ramshackle house far up at the head of Crockett’s Hollow. “A forsaken girl that holds grudge and works conjure comes to be a sorry, sorry woman,” they say.
Should you pass along that lonely creek and venture to call a cheery “Hallo!” only a weird, cackling laugh, a harsh “Begone” will echo in answer.
The Silver Tomahawk
In Carter County, Kentucky, there is a legend which had its beginning long ago when Indian princesses roamed the Blue Ridge, and pioneers’ hopes were high of finding a lost silver mine said to be in caves close by.
Morg Tompert loved to tell the story. As long as he lived the old fellow could be found on a warm spring day sitting in the doorway of his little shack nearly hidden by a clump of dogwoods. A shack of rough planks that clung tenaciously to the mountain side facing Saltpeter, or as it was sometimes called—Swindle Cave. The former name came from the deposit of that mineral, the latter from the counterfeiters who carried on their nefarious trade within the security of the dark cavern.