The Blue Ridge

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32. Extra !



Calvin Parker had become sufficiently of the family to be trusted with the secret of the springwagon bed. Otherwise he would have been puzzled by the super-nervousness of Miss Emmy as she bade Godspeed to her brother, to Vernaluska, and to Sandyred one torrid morning two weeks after the futile visit of the Dismal Gap law-bringers.

On the face of it there was nothing about a jaunt over the mountains to the nearest county town in Tennessee to awaken such apprehension. The roads were said to be rough, It is true, but a broken axle or wheel could be mended at the roadside with no other price than delay. Since the little party of three intended to keep to the highroad, there was no danger of getting lost, even had they not made the journey many times before. And, by way of a "swapping" medium for the household necessities which they meant to bring back, what could have been more innocent than the sacks of ginseng root dug by the black hand of Cotton Eye Lee?

"What you want us to tote back for you, Emmy?''

Parker heard Old Tom put the question cheerfully, after wedging himself into the seat between Vernaluska and his son, who was to handle the grays.

"Your own selves, Tom - just tote your own selves back to me," came the good soul's reply in a subdued sort of wail, her omnipresent apron held in readiness to cooperate with her emotions.

The next call was aimed at the window of the room which had served Parker through convalescence. "You'd calculate that we-all was going funeralin\ eh, Cal? You-uns will look out for everything and keep her mind offen us? Miss Emmy can worry a power once she gets started. Seeing all goes well, we'll be back as long as to-morrow-day noon."

In the light of Parker's understanding, he accepted this commission. When, however, he realized later from her rejoinders that he could not keep her mind "offen" the secret of their vehicle, he invited her attention "onto" it.

What could be more clever than that false bottom built into the spring-wagon, he argued; what more deceptive than the green paint which, with his facility at colors, he had helped Sandyred mix to match the original bed, lately rebuilt? Were not the seams of the Inner vat so carefully calked with yarn that not a telltale drop of the many gallons of "blockade" being escorted to market could trickle through?

&ut Miss Emmy's mood continued morose. She "suffered under powerful intuitions" that day, she told him.

That the three had gone armed augured a fear of trouble along the way. That Tom had pressed a revolver upon Parker, by way of home defense, suggested unnamed possibHitles. Rex Currie's defection in the report of the shooting continued to oppress her mind - Rex, whom she had "handed victuals" for so many years. His Immediate knowledge of the workings of the still and the probable date of completion of this last batch hung like a pall over her.

Vainly did the out-Norther assume for her benefit a confidence which he did not feel. Vainly did he point that the process had been rushed to completion hours ahead of time. The intense humidity, presaging a downpour which threatened the comfort of her loved ones, he called a good omen. Was it not to outspeed the storm and avoid the later delay of muddy roads that the expedition had started two whole days earlier than at first considered possible?

The work of clearing away all traces of recent activity at the mountain still might safely be entrusted to Cotton Eye. She must not suspect that everyone was a traitor just because Currie had been. The black man, he assured her, was partisan to the last volt of the quart of "electricity," which was to be his bonus for a faithful discharge of the commission.

Not a sound or hoof-track of surveillance had been detected through the active past week, he reminded her, either by Sandy or Verne, who had ridden guard over the finishing process. The sacks of roots should satisfy the curiosity of any one met on the road as to the object of the trip. Once across the State line, adequate protection would be supplied by the "blind pigs" whose store was to be replenished. This wholesale, wagon-bed traffic into Tennessee, rather than the retail bootlegging of the past, was assuredly a master policy. The wagon itself was a triumph, the departure from precedent a stroke to upset any preparedness of the Dismal Gap drys.

Miss Emmy tried - he could see that - but she did not cheer. Through the open door in the livingroom, he could hear her muttering fragments reminiscent of the hymnal and prayer-book as she undertook the task upon whose completion she had set her faithful heart by way of surprising the family on their home return.

The finishing touch to their great annual cleaning, perhaps the most terrible joy of mountain housewives, had been postponed in favor of the greater issue. Half re-papered, the living-room had been left In a state of negligee by the younger pair, to whom was usually entrusted the fine art of its decoration. The spinster's devout utterances were now and then profaned by the vocal perusal of headlines from this or that newspaper or pictorial, a supply of which Sandy had procured for the wall-covering process on his last visit to the Gap.

Evidently feeling the responsibility of supervision over the night-readings of those advanced youthful minds, she puttered about among stacks of "llterature"; created, at last, a selected pile; clipped and muttered, muttered and clipped this into convenient strips. In the kitchen she prepared a "wash-hand bowl" of flour paste, sopped into it with the hearth brush of wild sedge; puffed from floor to bench and back again in her neat applications.

The convalescent found relief rather than offense In her preference for being alone with her anxieties, her prayers and her work. It gave him a chance to think out certain personal issues which had been pushed aside by the one great question of the week.

In the first place, why had Verne driven with her menfolk over the line that day?

He knew she had not intended to go, also that her company was not desired by them for reasons of her own comfort and safety. Several times he had heard them planning the rest she should have, once the "bumblings" were started on their way.

Parker had noted her exhaustion from the physical and mental overstrain when she had ridden in from a long-hour day of scouting in the saddle. Vigorously he had cursed the contretemps which incapacitated him from shouldering her task himself. He had begrudged every hour to the time when she might relax, had anticipated the departure of the two men as creating opportunity for a semi-explanation which had come to seem the most important event on his calendar.

And last night, during the brief general gathering In his room, which had come to be habitual, the end of his near-Arcadia had come so suddenly that he could scarce realize he was now without the gates.

Verne had announced and defended her intention to go along. She needed things, she declared - a dress, hat, some books - what not. Did they think a girl was satisfied to stay shut-in forever? She wanted her share of the fun as well as the work. She had made up her mind to go; they ought to know what that meant. She was going to go.

This, as a climax, had followed an announcement of his own, dropped like a bomb Into Sandy's repinings that they were so soon to be changed from afiluent outlaws into impecunious tar-heels - these varied by Old Tom's sly Insistence that they wouldn't "tar-heel It long" after he got his flames a-burning. Once the matter of that last distillation had been brought to a satisfactory close, Parker had said, he must leave them for a trip of his own - a trip to New York. At the protest of his most devoted admirer, the recalled Sandyred, he had assured them that they were far from seeing the last of him. He would be back, and that shortly.

From the perspective of to-day he could see the cause back of Verne's sudden determination. Her suppression of any comment, her avoidance of his eyes, the slow flush that had shown through her tan, then as slowly receded, her refusal to enter his room alone when, early this morning, he had called her - all filled him with pain only endurable from the joy that throbbed through it. He had so hoped that her fleeings had ceased. And this morning, dressed in the organdie frock with lavender sash which she once had boasted, its splendors protected by a demure gray cape, she had run away - from him!

There could be no doubt about it. Not one goodby smile had she directed through the window from under the wide straw hat, trimmed with roses which had made her look so unusually lovely.

Verne distrusted him again - and this time on a subject which she would not discuss. Whether she realized or not, she must care something for him, else why that pumping upward of her heart's blood at mention of his plan to go away?

Doubtless she had heard gossip from Dismal Gap anent his engagement to the recent fair visitor - a tidbit of news circulated by that medium more comprehensive than the press. Mistress Hootie Plott. She would connect this with her memory of Sylvia's photograph and with his assurance that she of the childlike expression was a ''woman grown," that her he respected above all women, except for what she would consider the sake of his "manners" - herself.

He could see it all now. In those first few hours of his recovery, before Miss Emmy had been pressed into the post of substitute nurse and Verne freed for more taxing duties outside, she probably had noticed the words in his eyes, In the touch of his hand - the words he did not speak. She had waited until last night, in the supposition that something real, something definite was to come of his suppressed feeling for her. But since his statement that he was about to leave the region, she had concluded herself the victim of illusion, him a predatory male.

If Verne had her way, he told himself, he prob" ably would not have one private word with her bee fore he left. Well, he would not go without it-* that was all I There was not much he could say without getting the whole host of dead-and-gone Parkers and Calvins down on him. But just one little reassuring word, one last plea for the benefit of doubt which before she had granted, one look from his craving soul when they were quite alone - these he would have, even though he broke the letter of the inherited law. It crucified him to have Verne doubt him again.

Fortunate, he thought, that he had formed the habit early in life of having his own way ! He grinned every time he remembered how he had started out in the early morn of that last eventful day abroad, driven by the determination to "insist" himself into the Metcalf household. Well, he had done it, hadn't he?

He must get things settled, he now adjured himself impatiently; must get Verne and himself started on the long, radiant together-path, he to help her, she him. There need be no delay about going to Fallaway Rim to pack, since, several days before, in pretended anxiety lest his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Boomer, need food, and in real anxiety over his masterpiece portrait of Verne, he had sent Cotton Eye Lee on a carting expedition. Best of all, he was jbeginning to feel fit physically, although that "drill'' of Sandyred's had come mighty close to the heart. His convalescence had been rapid beyond all calculation. He took satisfaction In his rallying capacity, made possible by his natural endowment of strength and stamina, to a large measure restored by his comparatively abstemious weeks at the cabin. Then, too, a man with hope In every pulse-beat had every recuperative chance In his favor.

The wound had proved to be a clean one, although the variation of a fraction of an inch In Its placement would have closed his life account wath the entry "instantly killed." Once the shock of It and of the subsequent probing operation was over, once his fever was spent, there had been nothing to Interfere with Its speedy closing. Now he resolved to call upon the reserve battalions of his will to hurry him toward recovery.

"Miss Emmy!''

Several minutes later, the summons brought the spinster to the spare-room door and something of a shock. Her charge, no longer bath-robe garbed, but fully dressed, was trying his strength back and forth across the room.

"After our-all care over you, that's no way to be doing," she protested, advancing toward him, a goodly bulk of Indignation. "Now, you'd best lie down in bed awhile and rest up after "

"Never not!"

He grinned down at her, always diverted over helping himself to the dialect which had come to sing all the music of the spheres to him.

"I'm through," he continued, "with all unseasonable use of beds and bedding - they weren't intended for daytime. The air's stifling in here around noon. I'm going to sit a while In the living-room."

"Tom allowed you-uns were a right tame person," she deplored, "else he'd never have left you in the hands of one weak woman."

"But a woman who is sensible and Is going to help me get well in the quickest way. I don't want to take any unfair advantage of you, dear Miss Emmy, but you mustn't take advantage of me, and It Is doing just that to make me stay In here playing invalid. Come, I'll enjoy my trip from this room into that so much more if you'll agree with me ! Don't you think It will do me good to have a nottoo-decided change of climate If I'm quiet and blatty and lamblike?"

"Will you Bible-oath It?"

"Cross my heart and hope to "

"Sh! Best not hope that when we-all have just done raised you."

"Hope to live, I was about to say."

The Parker persuasiveness proved too much for a lady who had spent the greater part of her life accommodating herself to the superior will of two young Insurgents of her own.

"You-uns have got such common ways!" she exclaimed, as she bustled about the living-room, to miss none of the balsam and goose-feather cushions in her collection.

Parker took no offense at her expression; he recognized it as a compliment - her way of declaring him one of them.

Tom's huge chair she tugged to a place beside the window. The cushions she prodded around her charge as he settled into it. She stood off to regard him, by some mental process seeming to have mixed the origination of the moving idea.

"So la, you do look a whole heap better already, just like I claimed you would! Sit your hunkers there and talk to me while I finish up this pasting job. I must say it's as sticky and slow as molass' in the winter-time, but it will be right smart of a surprise to Verney to find it finished."

With pride and anxiety struggling for precedence on her comely face, she gestured over the wall lately decorated.

"A11 of it I got right end up," she continued, "leaving out the picture of yon lady with the outlandish hat. She has got a right upset look. The fine reading that was printed around her, I pasted nigh against the window. You-uns can read it easy there, the light comes in so strong."

She paused, noting that her audience of one seemed to be distracted. After giving that "upset" picture a glance, he had leaned to read the fine print indicated as "nigh against" the window before which he sat.

"Likely you would enjoy the news, being an outsider!" she apologized for his inattention, more as if to herself than him. "One thing, it ain't never stale, seeing as we-all house-clean twice a year. Sandy In partic'lar ain't got no patience reading last year's papers when we might just as well "

Snatching the very word with which she stopped, Parker reentered the conversation.

''Well, I'm damned!"

Her righteous stare rebuked him.

"I mean I- I'm blest!"

His succeeding utterances were intense as, with hands reached out to push aside the curtains of pinecones, he leaned down to read toward the baseboard.

"It's from the Herald. No doubt it's true. Say, Miss Emmy, that intuition you were suffering from is right - something is going to happen! Can't you stop them?"

He got to his feet and strode toward her excitedly.

"Stop them? Stop who?"

"Verne, Sandy - your brother! But of course you can't. There Isn't a telephone or - or anything. I suppose there's nothing to do but wait. My God, I shall stifle from this combination of heat and Inactivity!"

Although not exactly relieved, he was diverted by the sound of footsteps shuffling across the porch.