An hour later the old physician arrived and examined the patient.
“A flesh wound only,” he said. “But he has lost mighty nigh every bit o’ blood in ‘im. Nuss ’im good, Sally, an’ he ’ll be able to make plenty o’ corn and taters fer you the rest o’ yore life—that is, if the war ever ends.‘’ Ericson was convalescing when the news of Lee’s surrender came floating over the devastated land.
“I’m awfully glad it’s all over,” he said. “I’m satisfied. I was shot by a Yankee ball an’ nussed back to life by a Union gal, so I reckon my account is even.”
THE HERESY OF ABNER CALIHAN
Neil Filmore’s store was at the crossing of the Big Cabin and Rock Valley roads. Before the advent of Sherman into the South it had been a grist-mill, to which the hardy mountaineers had regularly brought their grain to be ground, in wagons, on horseback, or on their shoulders, according to their conditions. But the Northern soldiers had appropriated the miller’s little stock of toll, had torn down the long wooden sluice which had conveyed the water from the race to the mill, had burnt the great wheel and crude wooden machinery, and rolled the massive grinding-stones into the deepest part of the creek.
After the war nobody saw any need for a mill at that point, and Neil Filmore had bought the property from its impoverished owner and turned the building into a store. It proved to be a fair location, for there was considerable travel along the two main roads, and as Filmore was postmaster his store became the general meeting-point for everybody living within ten miles of the spot. He kept for sale, as he expressed it, “a little of everything, from shoe-eyes to a sack of guano.” Indeed, a sight of his rough shelves and unplaned counters, filled with cakes of tallow, beeswax and butter, bolts of calico, sheeting and ginghams, and the floor and porch heaped with piles of skins, cases of eggs, coops of chickens, and cans of lard, was enough to make an orderly housewife shudder with horror.
But Mrs. Filmore had grown accustomed to this state of affairs in the front part of the house, for she confined her domestic business, and whatever neatness and order were possible, to the room in the rear, where, as she often phrased it, she did the “eatin’ an’ cookin’, an’ never interfeer with pap’s part except to lend ’im my cheers when thar is more ’n common waitin’ fer the mail-carrier.”
And her chairs were often in demand, for Filmore was a deacon in Big Cabin Church, which stood at the foot of the green-clad mountain a mile down the road, and it was at the store that his brother deacons frequently met to transact church business.