Una Of The Hill Country

by Mary Noailles Murfree

Even the longest dance must have an end; even the stanchest mountain fiddler will reach at last his limit of endurance and must needs be refreshed and fed. There was a sudden significant flourish of frisky bowing, now up and again down, enlisting every resonant capacity of horsehair and catgut; the violins quavered to a final long-drawn scrape and silence descended. Dullness ensued; the flavor of the day seemed to pall; the dancers scattered and were presently following the crowd that began to slowly gather about the vacated stand of the musicians, from which elevation the speakers of the occasion were about to address their fellow-citizens. One of the disaffected old farmers, gruff and averse, could not refrain from administering a rebuke to Brent Kayle as crossing the expanse of saw-dust on his way to join the audience he encountered the youth in company with Valeria Clee, his recent partner.

“Ai-yi, Brent,” the old man said, “the last time I seen you uns I remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench.” For there had been a great religious revival the previous year and many had been pricked in conscience. “Ye ain't so tuk up now in contemplatin' the goodness o' God an' yer sins agin same,” he pursued caustically.

Brent retorted with obvious acrimony. “I don't see no 'casion ter doubt the goodness o' God—I never war so ongrateful nohow as that comes to.” He resented being thus publicly reproached, as if he were individually responsible for the iniquity of the bran dance—the scape-goat for the sins of all this merry company. Many of the whilom dancers had pressed forward, crowding up behind the old mountaineer and facing the flushed Brent and the flowerlike Valeria, the faint green leaves of her muslin dress fluttering about her as her skirts swayed in the wind.

“Ye ain't so powerful afeard of the devil now ez ye uster was on the mourner's bench,” the old man argued.

“I never war so mighty afeard of the devil,” the goaded Brent broke forth angrily, for the crowd was laughing in great relish of his predicament—they, who had shared all the enormity of “shaking a foot” on this festive day. Brent flinched from the obvious injustice of their ridicule. He felt an eager impulse for reprisal. “I know ez sech dancin' ez I hev done ain't no sin,” he blustered. “I ain't afeared o' the devil fur sech ez that. I wouldn't be skeered a mite ef he war ter—ter—ter speak right out now agin it, an' I'll be bound ez all o' you uns would. I—I—look yander— look! ”

He had thrown himself into a posture of amazed intentness and was pointing upward at the overhanging boughs of a tree above their heads. A squirrel was poised thereon, gazing down motionless. Then, suddenly—a frightful thing happened. The creature seemed to speak. A strange falsetto voice, such as might befit so eerie a chance, sounded on the air—loud, distinct, heard far up the slope, and electrifying the assemblage near at hand that was gathering about the stand and awaiting the political candidates.

“Quit yer foolin'—quit yer fooling” the strange voice iterated. “I'll larn ye ter be afeared o' the devil. Long legs now is special grace.”

So wild a cry broke from the startled group below the tree that the squirrel, with a sudden, alert, about-face movement, turned and swiftly ran along the bough and up the bole. It paused once and looked back to cry out again in distinct iteration, “Quit yer foolin'! Quit yer foolin'!”

But none had stayed to listen. A general frantic rout ensued. The possibility of ventriloquism was unknown to their limited experience. All had heard the voice and those who had distinguished the words and their seeming source needed no argument. In either case the result was the same. Within ten minutes the grounds of the famous barbecue and bran dance were deserted. The cumbrous wagons, all too slow, were wending with such speed as their drivers could coerce the ox-teams to make along the woodland road homeward, while happier wights on horseback galloped past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a grewsome premonition of being hindmost in a flight that to the simple minds of the mountaineers had a pursuer of direful reality.

The state of a candidate is rarely enviable until the event is cast and the postulant is merged into the elect, but on the day signalized by the barbecue, the bran dance, and the rout the unfortunate aspirants for public favor felt that they had experienced the extremest spite of fate; for although they realized in their superior education and sophistication that the panic-stricken rural crowd had been tricked by some clever ventriloquist, the political orators were left with only the winds and waters and wilderness on which to waste their eloquence, and the wisdom of their exclusive method of saving the country.