“Is—is Red King Camp—how long was his sentence?”
“Let's see—he's been in two years, and I heard he had three years more. Yes, I remember—he got five years.”
Once more the Bluegrass man thought he heard a groan, but the other was only clearing his throat. The New Englander asked no more questions, and about two hours by sun they rode over a ridge and down to the bed of Clover Fork.
“Well, stranger, we part here. You go up to the head of the creek, and anybody'll tell you where Red King lives. There's plenty of moonshining up that way, and if anybody asks your name and your business—tell 'em quick. They won't bother you. And if I were you I wouldn't criticise these people to anybody. They're morbidly sensitive, and you never know when you are giving mortal offense. And, by the way, most offenses are mortal in these hills.”
“Thank you. Good-by—and thank you.”
Everybody knew where old King Camp lived—“Fust house a leetle way down t'other side o' the mountain from the head of Clover.” And nobody asked him his name or his business. Near dusk he was at the head of Little Clover and looking down on Happy Valley. The rimming mountains were close overhung with motionless wet clouds. Above and through them lightning flashed, and thunder cracked and boomed like encircling artillery around the horizon. The wind came with the rush of mighty wings, and blackness dropped like a curtain. By one flash of lightning he saw a great field of corn, by another a big, comfortable barn, a garden, a trim picket-fence, a yard full of flowers, and a log house the like of which he had not seen in the hills—and a new light came—Juno's work! A torrent of rain swept after him as he stepped upon the porch and knocked on the door. A moment later he was looking at the kindest and most motherly face and into the kindest eyes he had ever seen.
“I'm Juno's husband,” he said simply. For a moment she blinked up at him bewilderedly through brass-rimmed spectacles, and then she put her arms around him and bent back to look up at him again. Then, still without a word, she led him on tiptoe to an open door and pointed.
“She's in thar.” And there she lay—his Juno—thin, white, unconscious, her beauty spiritualized, glorified. He sat simply looking at her—how long he did not know—until he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It was Juno's mother beckoning him to supper.
Going out he saw Juno's hand in everything—the hand-woven rag carpet, the curtains at the windows, the andirons at the log fire—for summer nights in those hills are always cool—saw it in the kitchen, the table-cloth, napkins, even though they were in rings, the dishes, the food, the neatness in everything. He could see the likeness of Juno to the gentle-voiced old woman who would talk of nothing but her daughter. In a moment she was calling him “Jim,” and few others than his dead mother had ever called him that. And when at bedtime she said, “Don't let her die, Jim,” he leaned down and kissed her—something her own sons when grown up had never done.
“No, mother,” he said, and the word did not come hard.