About eight o'clock Wednesday morning, the two started down the branch—Uncle Lot, a tall, grizzled figure in dark homespun and black slouch hat, leading, on Tom-mule; Aunt Ailsie following on old fat flea-bitten Darb. Profiting by the quare women's example, she had discarded the hot brown-linsey dress in favor of an everyday one of blue cotton; but she still clung to the black sunbonnet and light-print apron—inevitable badges of the respectable married woman.
When they arrived at The Forks, the one street was lined with nags,—they could scarcely find two palings to which to tie Tom and Darb,—and a stream of people was zigzagging up the steep hill behind the court house. Uncle Lot went on up, while Aunt Ailsie stopped at the hotel for her daughter, Cynthy Fallon, whom she found in the kitchen frying chicken, while three or four of the girls packed baskets. Cynthy was complaining:—
"Fulty, he allus has so many to feed, jest pine-blank like his paw—all them boys that runs with him, and then a big gang more he's sartain to ax to eat. I allow to feed anyhow fifty."
"You go wash and dress and I'll fry what's left," insisted Aunt Ailsie.
Half an hour later, the two started up with their heavy baskets. Cynthy, too, wore a black sunbonnet and print apron; and from their appearance it would have been impossible to say which was mother, which daughter. If anything, Aunt Ailsie looked the younger, Cynthy's face being so lined and drawn from the troubles she had had as Fighting Fult's wife and widow.
The first thing they saw, as they toiled up past the deserted tents, was a tall pole, with the great flag which usually hung in the large tent flying before the breeze. It was set beside the flat rock, just at the top of the ascent, which the women had named Pulpit Rock. Beyond, on the level top of the spur, were numbers of seats made by laying saplings across logs; and here elderly folk and mothers with babies were tightly packed, while hundreds wandered about, or sat under the trees, or against the small, latticed grave-houses; for the spur-top was also a burying-ground.
The two women, Virginia and Amy, who sat on a puncheon-bench beside the rock, with Uncle Ephraim Kent between them, beckoned for Aunt Ailsie and Cynthy to join them. A phalanx of young people, whom Aunt Ailsie recognized as the singing class, stood beneath the flag, all wearing sashes of red, white, and blue across shoulders and breasts. Fult was in the front line, beside Lethie.
Aunt Ailsie leaned forward and said anxiously: "Lot, he's sartain there'll be trouble; he says some of the boys will get liquor, shore, and then—"
"I'm not very much afraid," replied Amy. She turned to little John Wes, Cynthy's four-year-old, who was perched on the rock behind her. "Tell Fult to step here," she said.
He came forward, looking very handsome, his dark beauty set off by the bright colors of his sash.