Again, upon a June day, Sammy was at play with the scion of the only negro family which had ever been known in all the Turkey Track regions. The Southern mountaineers have little affinity, socially or politically, with the people of the settlements. There were never any slaveholders among them, and the few isolated negroes were treated with almost perfect equality by the simple-minded mountain dwellers.
“Sammy honey, you an' Jimmy mus' cl'ar up yo' litter here. Don't leave it on mammy's nice flo'. Hit's mighty nigh supper-time. Cl'ar up now, 'fo' Pappy comes.”
Sammy stiffened his little figure to a startling rigidity. “I ain't a-goin' to work!” he flung out. “Let him do it; he's a nigger!” And this was the last word of the argument.
This was Sammy—handsome, graceful, exceedingly winning, sudden and passionate, disdaining like a young zebra the yoke of labor, and, when crossed, absolutely beyond all reason or bounds; the life of every gathering of young people as he grew up; much made of, deferred to, sought after, yet everywhere blamed as undutiful and ungrateful.
“Oh, I do p'intedly wish the neighbors would leave us alone,” sighed Pap Overholt, when these reports came to him. “As ef I didn't know what I wanted—as ef I couldn't raise my own chile;” and as he said this he ever avoided Aunt Cornelia's honest eye.
It was when Sammy was eighteen, the best dressed, the best horsed—and the idlest—to be found from Little Turkey Track to the Fur Cove, from Tatum's to Big Buck Gap—that he went one day, riding his sorrel filly, down to Hepzibah, ostensibly to do some errands for Aunt Cornelia, but in fact simply in search of a good time. The next day Blev Straly, a rifle over his shoulder and a couple of hounds at heel, stopped a moment at the chopping-block where Pap was splitting some kindling.
“I was a-passin',” he explained—“I was jest a-passin', an' I 'lowed I'd drap in an' tell ye 'bout Sammy. Hit better be me than somebody 'at likes to carry mean tales and wants to watch folks suffer.” Aunt Cornelia was beside her husband now.
“No, no,” Blev answered the look on the two faces; “nothin' ain't the matter of Sammy. He's jest married—that little Huldy Frew 'at's been waitin' on table at Aunt Randy Card's ho-tel. You know, Aunt Cornely, she is a mighty pretty little trick—and there ain't nothin' bad about the gal. I jest knowed you and Pap 'ud feel mighty hurt over Sammy doin' you-all like you was cruel to him—like he had to run away to git married; and I 'lowed I better come and tell you fust.”
The “little Huldy gal” was, as Blev Straly had described her, a mighty pretty little trick, and nothing bad about her. The orphan child of poor mountaineers, bound out since the death of her parents when she was ten years old, she had been two years now working for Aunt Randy Card, who kept the primitive hotel at Hepzibah. Even in this remote region Huldy showed that wonderful—that irrepressible—upward impulse of young feminine America, that instinctive affinity for the finer things of life, that marvellous understanding of graces and refinements, and that pathetic and persistent groping after them which is the marked characteristic of America's daughters. The child was not yet sixteen, a fair little thing with soft ashen hair and honest gray eyes, the pink upon her cheek like that of a New England girl.
At first this marriage—which had been so unkindly conducted by Sammy, used by him apparently as a weapon of affront—seemed to bring with it only good, only happiness. The boy was more contented at home, less wayward, and the feeling of apprehension that had dwelt continually in the hearts of Pap and Aunt Cornelia ever since his adolescence now slept. The little Huldy—her own small cup apparently full of happiness—was all affectionate gratitude and docility. She healed the bruises Sammy made, poured balm in the wounds he inflicted; she was sunny, obedient, grateful enough for two.