I
Thus it had happened. Pleasant Trouble was drunk one day and a fly lit on his knee. He whipped his forty-four from its holster.
“I'll show ye who you air lightin' on!” he swore, and blazed away. Of course he killed the fly, but incidentally he shattered its lighting-place. Had he been in a trench anywhere in France, his leg would have been saved, but he was away out in the Kentucky hills. If he minded the loss of it, however, no one could see, for with chin up and steady, daredevil eyes he swung along about as well on his crutch as if it had been a good leg. Down the road, close to the river's brim, he was swinging now—his voice lifted in song. Ahead of him and just around the curve of the road, with the sun of Happy Valley raining its last gold on her golden bare head, walked the Marquise; but neither Pleasant nor she herself knew she was the Marquise. A few minutes later the girl heard the crunch of the crutch in the sandy road behind her, and she turned with a smile:
“How-dye, Pleaz!” The man caught the flapping brim of his slouch-hat and lifted it—an act of courtesy that he had learned only after Happy Valley was blessed by the advent of the Mission school: making it, he was always embarrassed no little.
“How-dye, Miss Mary!”
“Going down to the dance?”
“No'm,” he said with vigorous severity, and then with unctuous virtue—“I hain't nuver run a set or played a play in my life.”
The word “dance” is taboo among these Calvinists of the hills. They “run sets” and “play plays”—and these are against the sterner morals that prevail—but they do not dance. The Mission teacher smiled. This was a side-light on the complex character of Pleasant Trouble that she had not known before, and she knew it had nothing to do with his absent leg. A hundred yards ahead of them a boy and a girl emerged from a ravine—young King Camp and Polly Sizemore—and plainly they were quarrelling. The girl's head was high with indignation; the boy's was low with anger, and now and then he would viciously dig the toe of his boot in the sand as he strode along. Pleasant grinned.
“I won't holler to 'em,” he said; “I reckon they'd ruther be alone.”
“Pleasant,” said Miss Mary, “you drink moonshine, don't you?”