“I wuz raised in Tennessee, an’ we-uns had a house for martins made out’n gourds, an’ it was pearty.” The pride with which she repeated this particular claim to honor in an alien land never diminished with repetition. As she advanced further through the dim perspective of years, the little mountain town in Tennessee became more and more the centre of cultivation and civic importance. The desolate cabin that she had left for the interminable journey westward was recalled flatteringly through the hallowing mists of time. The children, by reason of these chronicles, had grown to regard their mother as a sort of princess in exile.
“Mrs. Rodney”—Swift leaned towards her and whispered something in her ear. She regarded him tentatively, then grinned. At her time of life, why should she put faith in the promises of men? “You fix it up, an’ you get your bird-house,” was the conclusion of his sentence.
While this discussion had been in progress the viands had not been neglected except by such members of the company as had been bereft of appetite by loftier emotions—in consequence of which the table appeared to have sustained a visitation of seventeen-year locusts. Eudora, ever economic in the value she placed not only upon herself but her environment, proposed to her guests that they should wash the dishes, an art in which they were by no means deficient, being no exception to the majority of range bachelors in their skill in homely pursuits. And thus it came to pass that Eudora’s suitors, swathed in aprons, meekly washed dishes shoulder to shoulder, while their souls craved the performance of valorous deeds.
As this was the last stage station on the way to Lost Trail, Mary Carmichael was perforce obliged to content herself till Mrs. Yellett should call or send for her. After supper, Chugg, with fresh horses to the stage, left Rodney’s, apparently for some port in that seemingly pathless sea of foot-hills. That there should be trails and defined routes over this vast, unvaried stretch of space seemed more wonderful to Mary than the charted high-roads of the Atlantic. The foot-hills seemed to have grown during the long journey till they were foot-hills no longer; they had come to be the smaller peaks of the towering range that had formed the spine of the desert. The air, that seemed to have lost some of its crystalline quality on the flat stretches of the plains, was again sparkling and heady in the clean hill country. It stirred the pulses like some rare vintage, some subtle distillation of sun-warmed fruit that had been mellowing for centuries.
Very lonely seemed the Rodney home among the great company of mountains. A brooding desolation had settled on it at close of day, and all the laughter and light footsteps and gayly ringing voices of the young folk could not dispel the feeling of being adrift in a tiny shell on the black waters of some unknown sea; or thus it seemed to the stranger within their gate.
Mrs. Rodney retired within the flap of her sun-bonnet after the evening meal, settling herself in the rocking-chair as if it were some sort of conveyance. Her family, who might have told the hour of day or her passing mood by the action of the chair, knew by her pacific gait that she would lament the unbuilt bird-house no more that night. The snuff-brush, newly replenished from the tin box, kept perfect time to the motion of the chair. With the lady of the house it was one of the brief seasons of passing content vouchsafed by an ample meal and a good digestion.
Warren Rodney took down a gun from the wall and began to clean it. His hands had the fumbling, indefinite movements, the obscure action, directed by a brain already begun to crumble. His industry with the gun was of a part with the impotent dawdling in the garden. His eyes would seek for the rag or the bottle of oil in a dull, glazed way, and, having found them, he would forget the reason of his quest. Not once that evening had they rested on his wife or any member of his family. He had shown no interest in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora’s suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent intelligence was a revival of his wife’s plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house. That, and a certain furtive anxiety during supper lest his daughter Eudora should forget to keep his plate piled high, were the only signs of a participation in the life about him.
From one of the rooms that opened to the world like a stage to the audience, Mrs. Rodney kept her evening vigil. The last faint amethystine haze on the mountains was deepening. They towered about the valley where the house lay, with a challenging immensity, mocking the pitiful grasp of these pygmies on the thousand hills. The snow on the taller of the peaks still held the high lights. But all the valleys and the spaces between the mountains were wrapped in sombre shadows; the crazy house invading the great company of mountains, penetrating brazenly to the very threshold of their silent councils, seemed but a pitiful ant-hill at the mercy of some possible giant tread. The ill-adjusted family, disputing every inch of ground with the wilderness, became invested with a dignity quite out of keeping with its achievements. Their very weaknesses and vanities, old Sally still clinging to her sun-bonnet and her limp rose-colored skirts, an eternal requiem for the dead and gone complexion, lost the picturesqueness of the pioneer and ranked as universal qualities, admissible in the austerest setting. Perhaps in some far distant council of the Daughters of the Pioneers a prospective member of the house of Rodney would unctuously announce: “My great-great-grandmother was a Miss Tumlin of Tennessee; great-great-grandfather’s first wife had been a Sioux squaw. Isn’t it interesting and romantic?”
Eudora now came to her mother with great news. Hawks had taken the first opportunity of being alone with her to tell her of Jim’s release from jail and of his abortive encounter with Simpson in the eating-house. He had not deferred the telling from any feeling of reticence regarding the disclosure of family affairs before strangers. News travels in the desert by some unknown agency. Twenty-four hours after a thing happened it would be safe to assume that every cow and sheep outfit in a radius of three hundred miles would be discussing it over their camp-fires; and this long before there was an inch of telegraph wire or a railroad tire in the country. Hawks had merely reserved the news for Eudora’s private ear because he hoped thus to gain an advantage over his three rivals.
“Ai-yi!” said old Sally, sharply, and the chair came to an abrupt stand-still. “In the name o’ Heaven, how kem they to let him out?” Mrs. Rodney’s knowledge of the law was of the vaguest; and if incarceration would keep a prisoner out of more grievous trouble, she could not understand giving him his freedom. To her the case was analogous to releasing a child from the duress of a corner and turning him loose to play with matches. “How kem they to let him out?” she repeated, the still rocking-chair conveying the impersonal dignity of the pulpit or the justice-seat. “I ’ain’t hearn tell of so pearty a couple as the jail an’ Jim in years.”