The Blue Ridge

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2. Satisfaction Sought



The first of the false-fronted store buildings showed to be empty. Upon its steps a negro lay sunning himself, mouth agape, eyelids tight-shut in a doze. As a source of information he had value chiefly In being the one human visible along the stretch of street. Calvin Parker turned in and prodded him considerately with the toe of his shoe.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mose, but "

"Howdy, cap'n!" was the return, not spoken until the black had achieved his feet. "I 'spect you're suffering from mistook identification. My name ain't never been Mose, noway."

"Not Mose? That is singular. What then?"

"I'm a Lee nigger, cap'n. Cotton Eye in the course of personification."

As if to verify the claim, he pointed a stubbed forefinger to the corner of one eye, the iris of which showed white, at once giving him a most sinister look and explaining his sobriquet. The other eye was unflecked, round, small, dull as soot.

"Cotton Eye Lee" - Parker took a fresh start - "Fm a stranger In a strange land and very much in need of advice which you can give."

Leaning, he murmured a question close to one of the assertive black ears.

A time or two the negro batted his flecked eye, over what proved to be the form of the question rather than its substance.

"Prodigious - prodigious," he repeated, evidently intent on adding to his vocabulary. "That is easy, cap'n," he replied at last. "I prodigious that youall can quench it at the spring which is transfixed behind the post-office up yon."

Impatience controlled Parker's expression. His heavy lids drooped over the searching look of his eyes. Simultaneously his right hand slunk Into a pocket of his knickers.

"Water is very well in a tub," he said. "What I am asking you, as man to man, is where to get a drink."

A dollar bill was drawn from the checked depths, to be smoothed out between the interlocutor's palms.

"I reckon you ben't referencing to bust-head, now, be you, cap'n?" asked the negro In an unctuous voice.

"We'll christen It what you like, if you'll lead me to it."

The mismated eyes remained on the green-back, the thick lips pouched well over their ivories, the black brow puckered in a cartoon of despair as Cotton Eye replied: "In consideration of all the circumstantials, I 'spect we can't have the christening, noway."

"What circumstances? Why can't we?"

"Cap'n, don't you-uns know that Nor' Carolina is dry as the dust of a shank-bone?"

To Parker the reluctant admission was the whine of his destiny, the wail of doom. It was true, then even as Spencer Pope had declared? The prescription for his own case, which he himself had suggested that Spence and Sylvia dictate, had been correctly filled. He would have to gulp down the dose.

In that moment he realized that all along he had been expecting to find some oasis in the Southern Sahara to which he had been exiled. Yet he might have known that Spencer, through his long service in the Internal Revenue Department, with a best friend's interests at heart, would make no error in the geography of drought.

"Land sakes," insisted the little black, "them tarnal drys has done closed up even the 'spensary! Leastwise "

Something in the suspension of the last word, in the cling of the batting eyes to his hand, in the listening turn of the outstanding ears gave Parker hope. Deliberately he crumpled the dollar bill and made a movement toward its retirement.

The stubbed hand twitched after it.

"I was about to say, cap'n, that if you meander yourself, just casual-like, up to the post-office and make known your hankerings to General Asa Simms, him being mogul of the wets yerabouts, he might - although yet again he mightn't - like the looks of you-uns' personal appearance enough to ''

"He's got the red-eye on tap?"

The informant, having deposited the bill where It might not easily be dislodged, leered humorously.

"Now youVe sayed it! He's sure enough got the red-eye."

The post-office proved to be combined with a general store. On entering, Parker was annoyed to see the girl who, In a way, had ushered him Into Dismal Gap. Probably she had missed the "meetin' " she was to have kept - and on account of washing out his ears. In view of the urgency of his errand and his Increased sense of obligation toward her, her presence was most unfortunate.

She was seated on a stationary stool before the counter, fingering a cluttered array of dry-goods. The tall, gaunt-featured Individual leaning toward her from behind the counter he assumed to be "General" SImms, the master mogul who just might, and yet again, might not embrace him in brotherly love.

Neither looked up as he started across the floor, a fact which seemed studied, if not more unpleasantly significant. Assuming what he hoped would look an easy, waiting posture against the shelf before the mall wicket, he framed In his Intentions perfunctory words calculated to express gratitude to her who had unbogged him. His debt to her must be canceled.

While leaning and waiting, he began to notice other things than the hair of her so Inappropriately named for a mountain. Next to color, lines - so read his litany.

And she had lines, other than those excellent ones of white-stockinged leg. Her body, while slender to thinness and crudely clad, showed not an offensive angle. It had, rather, the sinuous yield of youth. Her profile, as outlined against the gloom of the store's Interior, was cut like a cameo - forehead massed low with that marvelous hair, nose quite straight and well sized, mouth short-lipped and generous, chin strong, yet saved by the gracious, long sweep of her throat.

Truly, even though in her "ornery" nature she might emulate the austerity of Mt. Vernaluska, the namesake was pleasant enough to see ! Despite the resentment of his inner man at her delay of his present plans, he acknowledged that, as a creditor, she might have been worse.

Although beyond the range of their lowered voices, he could not help suspecting from the storekeeper's indirect glances toward the door that himself and not the bolts of print-goods had become the subject under discussion. This impression was strengthened when the girl, without waiting to complete any purchase, arose and started toward the rear of the store, where an open door promised egress.

Parker started after her.

"I beg pardon. Miss - Miss " he began.

She turned with an expression so surprised that he could not be sure whether it was real or assumed.

"You seem always to be going away" - when he had bridged the space between them. "Down the road you didn't give me time to express "

"What goes without expressing." Her interruption was put in that same modulated voice he had appreciated even in his confused, earlier state. "Don't you-all feel in my debt; the look of you had done paid me in advance."

The look of him - had he, then, looked so ridi-' culous before she had cleaned him up? Even so, she needn't have reminded him. Why was she making it so uncommonly hard to thank her? They usually wanted to be thanked, women.

''Nevertheless, as an entire stranger and one not addicted to mud baths so much as "

"As you seem to be afflicted with loss of words," she again made breezy interruption. "I know it ain't good manners to mention such things, but I've missed one meetin' on your account, and there'll be a second if I don't shuffle along."

"So Tobe Riker steam.ed over a drop of truth for once!"

Both turned at the entrance of a nev/ voice into the parley. Just outside the door stood a young man splendidly built and of more sophisticated appearance than any Parker had so far met in the region.

The exclamation itself was enough to identify him. Evidently the stage-driver had met up with the formidable Currie, about whom any stranger was due to find out who tried "setting" up to his lady of scorn. To judge by his looks, the man in the door had heard the reason why Miss Metcalf had failed to keep her appointment with him, and felt "disgusted some."

At once the girl seemed to forget the beneficiary of her accidental lapse, in obligation to him who had lost thereby.

"Why didn't you wait. Rex? I wasn't such an awful stretch late. Your temper's too quick. I might have delayed leaving home; Solomon might have taken a lay-me-down streak; a dozen things might have been to blame."

The newcomer had removed his hat from a carefully-brushed shock of dark brown hair and stepped into the room. Parker noticed that he wore his "store" clothes well, that his cheerful-hued tie was not of the ready-knotted variety, that his short mustache was properly trimmed. He was, on the whole, rather exceptionally handsome, with bold, but wellcut features, gray eyes of a fiery, restless expression and sensitive mouth. Amusing that the leathernskinned little whip should hope for a chance against this young Adonis !

"A dozen regular things might have been to blame for sure, Verney, only they weren't," he was saying. "rm a right fair waiter where you're concerned, but I've got my limits."

"Sorry to have been the cause of deranging the plans of you good folks," Parker spoke up pleasantly. "Quite - quite inadvertant, I assure you."

Currle met this overture in good part. "No particular harm has been done - "jet!"

In the pause which doubly emphasized the threelettered suggestion, his glance returned to the girl, whose face now showed a faint flush, perhaps in resentment of what he had implied, rather than said. The smile with which she favored Parker took his breath.

"I trust you don't suffer none - not even headache - from your spill?"

The eyes of the camouflaged hillbilly, which had moved from one to the other, seemed to take fire, although he still maintained his tolerant manner.

"And now, hon, if you've said enough pretties to the stranger, let's be moving if I'm to ride home with you. Glad to have met you, stranger, and good-by."

"Why say good-by?"

Parker's question went unanswered and not because put in such banal form. He saw that some other question was at issue, one in which he had no voice. Currie had laid a persuasive hand upon the girl's arm, only to have it vigorously shaken off.

"Hon?" she repeated, her voice whittled to the edge with which she had nipped Tobe Riker. "Since when "

But she seemed to think better of a public rebuke. With a shrug, she continued her interrupted progress toward the rear door. On the sill she paused, turned and, in very face of her splendid looking suitor's resentment, sent Parker another of those pulse-stirring smiles.

Not until after she had passed into the yard, after he had nodded automatically to Currie and seen the last of the powerful back disappearing in her wake, did Parker move. He was absorbed in thoughts about that smile of hers, in conjecture over just what combinations of form and color made it so radiant, in deliberate effort to store the first impression of it in a brain-cell from which it might be taken out later at will. Such life, youth, tenderness was in it - could it be reproduced in oils?

His appreciation was in no way spoiled by knowing that it had not been meant for him, really. Although focused directly upon him, her eyes had been as elusive as seemed her disposition, their expression as impersonal as might have been those of a model posing for that especial effect. She had smiled on him, he knew, to punish her admirer for assumption of an authority over her which evidently she had not given him - yet.

And it was a good thing she had not meant it for him - that would have Increased his obligation. But what if he hadn't deposited it safe in that memory cell?

Already the vitality of It was slipping from him, now that she had gone. Just possibly Well, he might need to see that smile again.