“Whad' I owe ye?” he asked.
“Nothin',” said Lum gruffly.
The next day the old man brought down a broken plough on his shoulder, and to the same question he got the same answer:
“Nothin'.” So he went back and teased Martha, who blushed when she next passed the door of the shop, and this time Lum did not go out to watch her down the road.
Sunday following, Parson Small, the circuit-rider, preached in the open-air “meetin'-house,” that had the sky for a roof and blossoming rhododendron for walls, and—wonder of wonders—Lum Chapman was there. In the rear he sat, and everybody turned to look at Lum. So simple was he that the reason of his presence was soon plain, for he could no more keep his eyes from the back of Martha Mullins's yellow head than a needle could keep its point from the North Pole. The circuit-rider on his next circuit would preach the funeral services of Uncle Billy Hall, who had been dead ten years, and Uncle Billy would be draped with all the virtues that so few men have when alive and that so few lack when dead. He would marry such couples as might to marriage be inclined. There were peculiar customs in Happy Valley, due to the “rider's” long absences, so that sometimes a baby might without shame be present at the wedding of its own parents. To be sure, Lum's eyes did swerve once when the preacher spoke of marriage—swerved from where the women sat to where sat the men—to young Jake Kilburn, called Devil Jake, a name of which he was rather proud; for Martha's eyes had swerved to him too, and Jake shot back a killing glance and began twisting his black mustache.
And then the preacher told about the woman whom folks once stoned.
Lum listened dully and waited helplessly around at the end of the meeting until he saw Martha and Jake go down the road together, Martha shy and conscious and Jake the conquering daredevil that he was known to be among women. Lum went back to his cabin, cooked his dinner, and sat down in his doorway to whittle and dream.
Lum went to church no more. When Martha passed his shop, the same “how-dye” passed between them and no more. Twice the circuit-rider came and went and Martha and Devil Jake did not ask his services. A man who knew Jake's record in another county started a dark rumor which finally reached Lum and sent him after the daredevil. But Jake had fled and Lum followed him almost to the edge of the bluegrass country, to find that Jake had a wife and child. He had meant to bring Jake back to his duty, but he merely beat him up, kicked him to one side of the road like a dog, and came back to his shop.
Old Jeb Mullins came by thereafter with the old nag and the sack of corn, and Lum went on doing little jobs for him for nothing, for Jeb was a skinflint, a moonshiner, and a mean old man. He did not turn Martha out of his hut, because he was callous and because he needed her to cook and to save him work in the garden and corn-field. Martha stayed closely at home, but she was treated so kindly by some of the neighbors that once she ventured to go to church. Then she knew from the glances, whispers, and gigglings of the other girls just where she stood, and she was not seen again very far from her own door. It was a long time before Lum saw her again, so long, indeed, that when at last he saw her coming down Wolf Run on a sack of corn she carried a baby in her arms. She did not look up as she approached, and when she passed she turned her head and did not speak to him. So Lum sat where he was and waited for her to come back, and she knew he had been waiting as soon as she saw him. She felt him staring at her even when she turned her head, and she did not look up until the old nag stopped. Lum was barring the way.
“Yo' hoss needs shoein',” he said gravely, and from her lap he took the baby unafraid. Indeed, the child dimpled and smiled at him, and the little arm around his neck gave him a curious shiver that ran up the back of his head and down his spine. The shoeing was quickly done, and in absolute silence, but when they started up Wolf Run Lum went with them.