While she was yet puzzling over the strange mood of absorbed brooding into which Jim had fallen, his face suddenly lighted, and he changed with such rapidity that her uneasiness was doubled.
They had reached the stretches of deep forest at the foot of the Black Mountain ranges. The Swannanoa had become a silver thread of laughing, foaming spray and deep, still pools beneath the rocks. The fields were few and small. The little clearings made scarcely an impression in the towering virgin forests.
“Great guns, Kiddo!” he exclaimed, “this is some country! By George, I had no idea there was such a place so close to New York!”
She looked at him with uneasy surprise. What could be in his mind? The solemn gorge through which they were passing gave no entrancing views of clouds or sky or towering peaks. Its wooded cliffs hung ominously overhead in threatening shadows. The scene had depressed her after the vast sunlit spaces of sky, of shining valleys and cloud-capped, sapphire peaks on which they had turned their backs.
“You like this, Jim?” she asked.
“It's great—great!”
“I thought that waterfall we just passed was very beautiful.”
“I didn't see it. But this is something like it. You're clean out of the world here—and there ain't a railroad in twenty miles!”
The deeper the shadows of tree and threatening crag, the higher Jim's strange spirit seemed to rise.
She watched him with increasing fear. How little she knew the real man! Could it be possible that this lonely, unlettered boy of the streets of lower New York, starved and stunted in childhood, had within him the soul of a great poet? How else could she explain the sudden rapture over the threatening silences and shadows of these mountain gorges which had depressed her? And yet his utter indifference to the glories of beautiful waters, his blindness at noon before the most wonderful panorama of mountains and skies on which she had ever gazed, contradicted the theory of the poetic soul. A poet must see beauty where she had seen it—and a thousand wonders her eyes had not found.
His elation was uncanny. What could it mean?
He was driving now with a skill that was remarkable, a curious smile playing about his drooping, Oriental eyelids. A wave of fierce resentment swept her heart. She was a mere plaything in this man's life. The real man she had never seen. What was he thinking about? What grim secret lay behind the mysterious smile that flickered about the corners of those eyes? He was not thinking of her. The mood was new and cold and cynical, for all the laughter he might put in it.
She asked herself the question of his past, his people, his real life-history. The only answer was his baffling, mysterious smile.
A frown suddenly clouded his face.
“Hello! Ye're running right into a man's yard!”
Mary lifted her head with quick surprise.
“Why yes, it's the stopping place for the parties that climb Mount Mitchell. I remember it. We stayed all night here, left our rig, and started next morning at sunrise on horseback to climb the trail.”
“Pretty near the jumping-off place, then,” he remarked. “We'll ask the way to Cat-tail Peak.”
He stopped the car in front of the low-pitched, weather-stained frame house and blew the horn.
A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent children came slowly to meet them.
She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant drawl:
“Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?”
The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter. The woman blushed and laughed with him. She couldn't understand what was the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple greeting in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?
Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks feel at home—so she laughed again with Jim.
“You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car,” he cried at last. “We fly in these things sometimes. And when you said, `Won't you 'light,'”—he paused and turned to his wife—“I could just feel myself up in the air on that big old racer's back.”
“Won't you-all stay all night with us?” the soft voice drawled again.
“Thank you, not tonight,” Mary answered.
She waited for Jim to ask the way.
“No—not tonight,” he repeated. “You happen to know an old woman by the name of Owens who lives up here?”
“Nance Owens?”
“That's her name.”
“Lord, everybody knows old Nance!” was the smiling answer.
“She ain't got good sense!” the tow-headed boy spoke up.
“Sh!” the mother warned, boxing his ears.
“She's a little queer, that's all. Everybody knows her in Buncombe and Yancey counties. Her house is built across the county line. She eats in Yancey and sleeps in Buncombe——”
“Yes,” broke in the boy joyously, “an' when the Sheriff o' Yancey comes, she moves back into Buncombe. She's some punkin's on a green gourd vine, she is—if she ain't got good sense.”
His mother struck at him again, but he dodged the blow and finished his speech without losing a word.
“Could you tell us the way to her house?”
“Keep right on this road, and you can't miss it.”
“How far is it?”
“Oh, not far.”
“No; right at the bottom o' the Cat's-tail,” the boy joyfully explained.
“He means the foot o' Cat-tail Peak!” the mother apologized.
“How many miles?”
“Just a little ways—ye can't miss it; the third house you come to on this road.”
“You'll be there in three shakes of a sheep's tail—in that thing!” the boy declared.
Jim waved his thanks, threw in his gear, and the car shot forward on the level stretch of road beyond the house. He slowed down when out of sight.
“Gee! I'd love to have that kid in a wood-shed with a nice shingle all by ourselves for just ten minutes.”
“The people spoil him,” Mary laughed. “The people who stop there for the Mount Mitchell climb. He was a baby when I was there six years ago”—she paused and a rapt look crept into her eyes—“a beautiful little baby, her first-born, and she was the happiest thing I ever saw in my life.”
Her voice sank to a whisper.
A vision suddenly illumined her own soul, and she forgot her anxiety over Jim's queer moods.
Deeper and deeper grew the shadows of crag, gorge, and primeval forest. The speedometer on the foot-board registered five miles from the Mount Mitchell house. They had passed two cabins by the way, and still no sign of the third.
“Why couldn't she tell us how many miles, I'd like to know?” Jim grumbled.
“It's the way of the mountain folk. They're noncommittal on distances.”
He stopped the car and lighted the lamps.
“Going to be dark in a minute,” he said. “But I like this place,” he added.
He picked his way with care over the narrow road. They crossed the little stream they were trailing, and the car crawled over the rocks along the banks at a snail's pace.
An owl called from a dead tree-top silhouetted against an open space of sky ahead.
“Must be a clearing there,” Jim muttered.
He stopped the car and listened for the sounds of life about a house.
A vast, brooding silence filled the world. A wolf howled from the edge of a distant crag somewhere overhead.
“For God's sake!” Jim shivered. “What was that?”
“Only a mountain wolf crying for company.”
“Wolves up here?” he asked in surprise.
“A few—harmless, timid, lonesome fellows. It makes me sorry for them when I hear one.”
“Great country! I like it!” Jim responded.
Again she wondered why. What a queer mixture of strength and mystery—this man she had married!
He started the car, turned a bend in the road, and squarely in front, not more than a hundred yards away, gleamed a light in a cabin window—four tiny panes of glass.
“By Geeminy, we come near stopping in the front yard without knowing it!” he exclaimed. “Didn't we?”
“I'm glad she's at home!” Mary exclaimed. “The light shines with a friendly glow in these deep shadows.”
“Afraid, Kiddo?” he asked lightly.
“I don't like these dark places.”
“All right when you get used to 'em—safer than daylight.”
Again her heart beat at his queer speech. She shivered at the thought of this uncanny trait of character so suddenly developed today. She made an effort to throw off her depression. It would vanish with the sun tomorrow morning.
He picked his way carefully among the trees and stopped in front of the cabin door. The little house sat back from the road a hundred feet or more.
He blew his horn twice and waited.
A sudden crash inside, and the light went out. He waited a moment for it to come back.
Only darkness and dead silence.
“Suppose she dropped dead and kicked over the lamp?” Jim laughed.
“She probably took the lamp into another room.”
“No; it went out too quick—and it went out with a crash.”
He blew his horn again.
Still no answer.
“Hello! Hello!” he called loudly.
Someone stirred at the door. Jim's keen ear was turned toward the house.
“I heard her bar the door, I'll swear it.”
“How foolish, Jim!” Mary whispered. “You couldn't have heard it.”
“All the same I did. Here's a pretty kettle of fish! The old hellion's not even going to let us in.”
He seized the lever of his horn and blew one terrific blast after another, in weird, uncanny sobs and wails, ending in a shriek like the last cry of a lost soul.
“Don't, Jim!” Mary cried, shivering. “You'll frighten her to death.”
“I hope so.”
“Go up and speak to her—and knock on the door.”
He waited again in silence, scrambled out of the car, and fumbled his way through the shadows to the dark outlines of the cabin. He found the porch on which the front door opened.
His light foot touched the log with sure step, and he walked softly to the cabin wall. The door was not yet visible in the pitch darkness. His auto lights were turned the other way and threw their concentrated rays far down into the deep woods.
He listened intently for a moment and caught the cat-like tread of the old woman inside.
“I say—hello, in there!” he called.
Again the sound of her quick, furtive step told him that she was on the alert and determined to defend her castle against all comers. What if she should slip an old rifle through a crack and blow his head off?
She might do it, too!
He must make her open the door.
“Say, what's the matter in there?” he asked persuasively.
A moment's silence, and then a gruff voice slowly answered:
“They ain't nobody at home!”
“The hell they ain't!” Jim laughed.
“No!”
“Who are you?”
She hesitated and then growled back:
“None o' your business. Who are you?”
“We're strangers up here—lost our way. It's cold—we got to stop for the night.”
“Ye can't—they's nobody home, I tell ye!” she repeated with sullen emphasis.
Jim broke into a genial laugh.
“Ah! Come on, old girl! Open up and be sociable. We're not revenue officers or sheriffs. If you've got any good mountain whiskey, I'll help you drink it.”
“Who are ye?” she repeated savagely.
“Ah, just a couple o' gentle, cooing turtle-doves—a bride and groom. Loosen up, old girl; it's Christmas Eve—and we're just a couple o' gentle cooin' doves——”
Jim kept up his persuasive eloquence until the light of the candle flashed through the window, and he heard her slip the heavy bar from the door.
He lost no time in pushing his way inside.
Nance threw a startled look at his enormous, shaggy fur coat—at the shining aluminum goggles almost completely masking his face. She gave a low, breathless scream, hurled the door-bar crashing to the floor and stared at him like a wild, hunted animal at bay, her thin hands trembling, the iron-gray hair tumbling over her forehead.
“Oh, my God!” she wailed, crouching back.
Jim gazed at her in amazement. He had forgotten his goggles and fur coat.
“What's the matter?” he asked in high-keyed tones of surprise.
Nance made no answer but crouched lower and attempted to put the table between them.
“What t'ell Bill ails you—will you tell me?” he asked with rising wrath.
“I THOUGHT you wuz the devil,” the old woman panted. “Now I KNOW it!”
Jim suddenly remembered his goggles and coat, and broke into a laugh.
“Oh!”
He removed his goggles and cap, threw back his big coat and squared his shoulders with a smile.
“How's that?”
Nance glowered at him with ill-concealed rage, looked him over from head to foot, and answered with a snarl:
“'Tain't much better—ef ye ax ME!”
“Gee! But you're a sociable old wild-cat!” he exclaimed, starting back as if she had struck him a blow.
His eye caught the dried skin of a young wildcat hanging on the log wall.
“No wonder you skinned your neighbor and hung her up to dry,” he added moodily.
He took in the room with deliberate insolence while the old woman stood awkwardly watching him, shifting her position uneasily from one foot to the other.
In all his miserable life in New York he could not recall a room more bare of comforts. The rough logs were chinked with pieces of wood and daubed with red clay. The door was made of rough boards, the ceiling of hewn logs with split slabs laid across them. An old-fashioned, tall spinning wheel, dirty and unused, sat in the corner. A rough pine table was in the middle of the floor and a smaller one against the wall. On this side table sat two rusty flat-irons, and against it leaned an ironing board. A dirty piece of turkey-red calico hung on a string for a portiere at the opening which evidently led into a sort of kitchen somewhere in the darkness beyond.
The walls were decorated at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on a wooden peg beside the wild-cat skin. Over the window was slung an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket. The sling which held it was made of a pair of ancient home-made suspenders fastened to the logs with nails. Beneath the gun hung a cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with it a dirty game-bag. Strings of red peppers were strung along each of the walls, with here and there bunches of popcorn in the ears. A pile of black walnuts lay in one corner of the cabin and a pile of hickory nuts in another.
A three-legged wooden stool and a split-bottom chair stood beside the table, and a haircloth couch, which looked as if it had been saved from the Ark, was pushed near the wall beside the door.
Across this couch was thrown a ragged patchwork quilt, and a pillow covered with calico rested on one end, with the mark of a head dented deep in the center.
Jim shrugged his shoulders with a look of disgust, stepped quickly to the door and called:
“Come on in, Kid!”
Nance fumbled her thin hands nervously and spoke with the faintest suggestion of a sob in her voice.
“I ain't got nothin' for ye to eat——”
“We've had dinner,” he answered carelessly.
He stepped to the door and called:
“Bring that little bag from under the seat, Kiddo.”
He held the door open, and the light streamed across the yard to the car. He watched her steadily while she raised the cushion of the rear seat, lifted the bag and sprang from the car. His keen eye never left her for an instant until she placed it in his hands.
“Mercy, but it's heavy!” she panted, as she gave it to him.
He took it without a word and placed it on the table in the center of the room.
Nance glared at him sullenly.
“There's no place for ye, I tell ye——”
Jim faced her with mock politeness.
“For them kind words—thanks!”
He bowed low and swept the room with a mocking gesture.
“There ain't no room for ye,” the old woman persisted.
Jim raised his voice to a squeaking falsetto with deliberate purpose to torment her.
“I got ye the first time, darlin'!” he exclaimed, lifting his hands above her as if to hold her down. “We must linger awhile for your name—anyhow, we mustn't forget that. This is Mrs. Nance Owens?”
The old woman started and watched him from beneath her heavy eyebrows, answering with sullen emphasis:
“Yes.”
Again Jim lifted his hands above his head and waved her to earth.
“Well! Don't blame me! I can't help it, you know——”
He turned to his wife and spoke with jolly good humor.
“It's the place, all right. Set down, Kiddo—take off your hat and things. Make yourself at home.”
Nance flew at him in a sudden frenzy at his assumption of insolent ownership of her cabin.
“There's no place for ye to sleep!” she fairly shrieked in his face.
Again Jim's arms were over her head, waving her down.
“All right, sweetheart! We're from New York. We don't sleep. We've come all the way down here to the mountains of North Carolina just to see you. And we're goin' to sit up all night and look at ye——”
He sat down deliberately, and Nance fumbled her hands with a nervous movement.
Mary's heart went out in sympathy to the forlorn old creature in her embarrassment. Her dress was dirty and ragged, an ill-fitting gingham, the elbows out and her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was too short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled cloth beneath which she kept trying to stuff it.
Mary caught her restless eye at last and held it in a friendly look.
“Please let us stay!” she pleaded. “We can sleep on the floor—anywhere.”
“You bet!” Jim joined in. “Married two weeks—and I don't care whether it rains or whether it pours or how long I have to stand outdoors—if I can be with you, Kid.”
The old woman hesitated until Mary's smile melted its way into her heart.
Her lips trembled, and her watery blue eyes blinked.
“Well,” she began grumblingly, “thar's a little single bed in that shed-room thar for you—ef he'll sleep in here on the sofy.”
Jim leaped to his feet.
“What do ye think of that? Bully for the old gal! Kinder slow at first. As the poet sings of the little bed-bug, she ain't got no wings—but she gets there just the same!”
He drew the electric torch from his pocket and advanced on Nance.
“By Golly—I'll have another look at you.”
Nance backed in terror at the sight of the revolver-like instrument.
“What's that?” she gasped.
“Just a little Gatlin' gun!” he cried jokingly. He pressed the button, and the light flashed squarely in the old woman's eyes.
“God 'lmighty—don't shoot!” she screamed.
Jim doubled with laughter.
“For the love o' Mike!”
Nance leaned against the side table and wiped the perspiration from her brow.
“Lord! I thought you'd kilt me!” she panted, still trembling.
“Ah, don't be foolish!” Jim said persuasively. “It can't hurt you. Here, take it in your hand—I'll show you how to work it. It's to nose round dark places under the buzz-wagon.”
He held it out to Nance.
“Here, take it and press the button.”
The old woman drew back.
“No—no—I'm skeered! No——”
Jim thrust the torch into her hand and forced her to hold it.
“Oh, come on, it's easy. Push your finger right down on the button.”
Nance tried it gingerly at first, and then laughed at the ease with which it could be done. She flashed it on the floor again and again.
“Why, it's like a big lightnin' bug, ain't it?”
She turned the end of it up to examine more closely, pushed the button unconsciously, and the light flashed in her eyes. She jumped and handed it quickly to Jim.
“Or a jack o' lantern—here, take it,” she cried, still trembling.
Jim threw his hands up with a laugh.
“Can you beat it!”
Backing quickly to the door, Nance called nervously to Mary:
“I'll get your room ready in a minute, ma'am.” She paused and glanced at Jim.
“And thar's a shed out thar you can put your devil wagon in——”
She slipped through the dirty calico curtains, and Mary saw her go with wondering pity in her heart.
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