Judith of the Cumberlands Part 2

On the porch of the cabin sat a tall, lean, black-eyed old man smoking his pipe, Jephthah Turrentine himself. Nancy Card, a dry, brown little sparrow of a woman, occupied a chair opposite him, and negotiated a pipe quite as elderly and evil-smelling as his own.

The kerchief folded about her neck was notably white; her clean check-ap.r.o.n rustled with starch; but the half-grey hair crinkling rebelliously from its loose coil was never confined by anything more rigorous than a tucking comb. In moments of stress this always slipped down, and had to be vigorously replaced, so that stray strands were apt to be tossing about her eyes--fearless, direct blue eyes, that looked out of her square, wrinkled, weather-beaten little face with the sincere gaze of an urchin. Back of her chair lay a bundle of white-oak splits for use in her by-trade of basket-weaver; above them hung bundles of drying herbs, for Nancy was a sick-nurse and a bit of an herb-doctor. She had made a hard and a more or less losing fight against poverty--the men folk of these hardy, valiant little women seem predestined to be s.h.i.+ftless.

It came back to Judith dimly as she looked at them--she was in a mood to remember such things--that her uncle had courted Nancy Card when these two were young people, that they had quarrelled, both had married, reared families, and been widowed; and they were quarrelling still! Acrimonious debate with Nancy was evidently such sweet pain that old Jephthah sought every opportunity for it, and the sudden shower in the vicinity of her cabin had offered him an excuse to-day.

Nancy did not confine her practice to what she would have called humans, but doctored a horse or a cow with equal success. One cold spring a little chicken had its feet frozen in the wet barnyard so badly that it lost one of them, and Nancy, who had taken the poor mite into the house and nursed it till she loved it, constructed for it a wooden leg consisting of a small, light peg strapped to the stump. And thereafter Nicodemus, a rooster who must now belie the name since he could not cling to a perch with his single foot, became an inst.i.tution in the Card household.

Jephthah Turrentine was a natural bone-setter, and was sent for far and near to reduce a dislocation or bandage a broken limb. In the pursuit of this which came to be almost a profession, he acquired a good knowledge of tending upon the sick, and the bitterness of rival pract.i.tioners was added to the score between him and Nancy. The case of Nicodemus furnished the man with a chance to call the woman a chicken doctor, and the name appealing to the humorous side of mountain character stuck to her, greatly to her disgust.

Aunt Nancy's dooryard was famous for its flowers, being a riot of pied bloom from March till December. Even now fire-in-the-bush and bridal wreath made gay the borders.

"Good land, Jude Barrier!" called Nancy herself. "You're as wet as a drownded rat. 'Light and come in."

Old Turrentine permitted his niece to clamber from Selim, and secure him and both mules.

"Whar's the boys?" he inquired in a great, sonorous ba.s.s, the deep, true-pitched voice promised by the contours of strong bony arches under heavy brows and the strong nose-bridge.

"In jail," responded Judith laconically, turning to enter the gate. Then, as she walked up the hard-trodden clay path between the tossing, dripping heads of daffodils, "Uncle Jep, did you know Creed Bonbright's daddy?"

"In jail!" echoed Nancy Card, making a pretence of trying to suppress a t.i.tter, and thereby rendering it more offensive. "Ain't they beginnin'

ruther young?"

Tall old Jephthah got to his feet, knocked the ashes from his pipe and put it in his pocket.

"Who tuck 'em?" he inquired briefly, but with a fierce undernote in his tones. "What was they tuck fer?"

"I never noticed," said Judith, standing on the step before them, wringing the wet from her black calico riding skirt. "n.o.body named it to me what they was tuck fer. I was talkin' to Creed Bonbright, and he 'lowed to find out. He said that was his business."

"Creed Bonbright," echoed her uncle; "what's he got to do with it? He's been livin' down in Hepzibah studyin' to be a lawyer--did he have Jeff and Andy jailed?"

Judith shook her head. "He didn't have nothing to do with it," she answered. "He 'lowed they would be held for witnesses against some men Haley had arrested. But he's goin' to come back and live on Turkey Track," she added, as though that were the only thing of importance in the world. "He says we-all need law in the mountings, and he's a-goin' to bring it to us."

"Well, he'd better let my boys alone if he don't want trouble," growled old Jephthah but half appeased.

"I reckon a little touch of law now an' agin won't hurt yo' boys," put in Nancy Card smoothly. "My chaps always tuck to law like a duck to water. I reckon I ain't got the right sympathy fer them that has lawless young 'uns."

"Yo' Pony was arrested afore Andy and Jeff," Judith remarked suddenly, without any apparent malice. "He was the first one I seen comin' down the road, and Dan Haley behind him a-shootin' at him."

Jephthah Turrentine forebore to laugh. But he deliberately drew out his old pipe again, filled it and stepped inside for a coal with which to light it.

"Mebbe yo' sympathies will be more tenderer for me in my afflictions of lawless sons after this, Nancy," he called derisively over his shoulder.

"Hit's bound to be a mistake 'bout Pony," declared the little old woman in a bewildered tone. "Pone ain't but risin' sixteen, and he's the peacefullest child----"

"Jest what I would have said about my twin lambs," interrupted old Jephthah with twinkling eye, as he appeared in the doorway drawing mightily upon the newly lighted pipe, tossing his great beard from side to side of his mighty chest. "My chaps is all as peaceful as kittens; but some old woman gits to talkin' and gives 'em a bad name, and it goes from lip to lip that the Turrentine boys is lawless. Hit's a sad thing when a woman's tongue is too long and limber, and hung in the middle so it works at both ends; the reppytations. .h.i.t can destroy is a sight."

"But a body's own child--they' son! They' bound to stan' up for him, whether he's in the right or the wrong," maintained Nancy stoutly.

"Huh," grunted Jephthah, "offspring is cur'ous. Sometimes. .h.i.t 'pears like you air kin to them, and they ain't kin to you. That Pony boy of your'n is son to a full mealsack; he's plumb filial and devoted thataway to a dollar, if so be he thinks you've got one in yo' pocket. The facts in the business air, Nancy, that you've done sp'iled him tell he's plumb rotten, and a few of the jailings that you so kindly ricommend for my pair won't do him no harm."

Nancy tossed up her head to reply; but at the moment a small boy, followed by a smaller girl, coming around the corner of the house, created a diversion. The girl, a little dancing imp with a frazzle of flying red hair and red-brown eyes, catching sight of Judith ran to her and flung herself head foremost in the visitor's lap, where Judith cooed over her and cuddled her, rumpling the bright hair, rubbing her crimson cheek against the child's peachy bloom.

"Little Buck and Beezy," said Nancy Card, addressing them both, "Yo' unc'

Pony's in jail. What you-all goin' to do about it?"

The small brown man of six stopped, his feet planted wide on the sward, his freckled face grave and stern as became his s.e.x.

"Ef the boys goes down for to git him out, I'm goin' along," Little Buck announced seriously. "Is they goin', granny?"

"I'll set my old rooster on the jail man, an' hit'll claw 'im," announced Beezy, reckless of distance and likelihood. "My old rooster can claw dest awful, ef he ain't got but one leg."

Nancy chuckled. These grandchildren were the delight of her heart.

The rain had ceased for the moment; the old man moved to the porch edge, sighting at the sky.

"I don't know whar Blatch is a-keepin' hisself," he observed. "Mebbe I better be a-steppin'."

But even as he spoke a tall young mountaineer swung into view down the road, dripping from the recent rain, and with that resentful air the best of us get from aggressions of the weather. Blatchley Turrentine, old Jephthah's nephew, was as brown as an Indian, and his narrow, glinting, steel-grey eyes looked out oddly cold and alien from under level black brows, and a fell of stiff black hair.

When the orphaned Judith, living in her Uncle Jephthah's family, was fourteen, the household had removed from the old Turrentine place--which was rented to Blatchley Turrentine--to her better farm, whose tenant had proved unsatisfactory. Well hidden in a gulch on the Turrentine acres there was an illicit still, what the mountain people call a blockade still; and it had been in pretty constant operation in earlier years.

When Jephthah abandoned those stony fields for Judith's more productive acres, he definitely turned his own back upon this feature, but Blatch Turrentine revived the illegal activities and enlisted the old man's boys in them. Jeff and Andy had a tobacco patch in one corner where the ground suited, and in another field Jim Cal raised a little corn. Aside from these small ventures, the place was given over entirely to the secret still. The father held scornfully aloof; his att.i.tude was characteristic.

"Ef I pay no tax I'll make no whiskey," he declared. "You-all boys will find yourselves behind bars many a time when you'd ruther be out squirrel-huntin'. Ef you make blockade whiskey every fool that gits mad at you has got a stick to hold over you. You are good-Lord-good-devil to everybody, for fear they'll lead to yo' still; or else you mix up with folks about the business and kill somebody an' git a bad name. These here blockaded stills calls every worthless feller in the district; most o'

the foolishness in this country goes on around 'em when the boys gits filled up. I let every man choose his callin', but I don't choose to be no moons.h.i.+ner, and ef you boys is wise you'll say the same."

As Blatchley came up now and caught sight of the animals tethered at the fence he began irritably:

"What in the name of common sense did Andy and Jeff leave they' mules here for? I can't haul any corn till I get the team and the waggon together."

"Looks like you've hauled too many loads of corn that n.o.body knows the use of," broke out the irrepressible Nancy. "Andy and Jeff's in jail, and some fool has tuck my little Pone along with the others."

Blatch flung a swift look at his uncle; but whatever his private conviction, to dishonour a member of his tribe in the face of the enemy, on the heels of defeat, was not what Jephthah Turrentine would do.

"The boys is likely held for witnesses, Jude allows," the elder explained briefly. "You take one mule and I'll ride 'tother," he added. "I'll he'p ye with the corn."

This was a great concession, and as such Blatchley accepted it.

"All right," he returned. "Much obliged."

Then he glanced unconcernedly at Judith, and, instead of making that haste toward the corn-hauling activities which his manner had suggested, moved loungingly up the steps. Beezy, from her sanctuary in Judith's lap, viewed him with contemptuous disfavour. Her brother, not so safely situated, made to pa.s.s the intruder, going wide like a shying colt.

With a sudden movement Blatchley caught the child by the shoulders. There was a pantherlike quickness in the pounce that was somehow daunting from an individual of this man's size and impa.s.sivity.

"Hold on thar, young feller," the newcomer remarked. "Whar you a-goin'

to, all in sech haste?"

"You turn me a-loose," panted the child. "I'm a-goin' over to my Jude."

"Oh, she's yo' Jude, is she? Well they's some other folks around here thinks she's their Jude--what you goin' to do about it?"