The Blue Ridge

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18. Spring Is Here



The day was new-born, fragrant of breath, dewyeyed. From the Metcalf clearing rode a colorful maid upon a white, red-legged steed - Vernaluska and Solomon, starting betimes to a full day's work.

They did not, however, turn into a certain wellworn path on the homestead side of Roaring Fork. Tucking up her green "habit" around her lifted feet, the rider put the little beast to the stream. With only a waggle of the longest ears in captivity did Solomon protest her guidance. Then he dipped his slim legs into the flood, felt with care for loose or slippery stones, gallantly convoyed across the mistress who could decide no wrong. Into the woodsy trail on the other side he padded with a noiseless, swinging gait.

From the first Vernaluska had fulfilled with system and good-cheer the duties of the office which she had won against such odds. Any inherent repugnance for the act of spying had been promptly allayed by a thought of still more repugnant possibilities, had not the mercurial Sandyred, Rex Currie and her father been overcome in discussion. So now she leaned forward to tickle Solomon's forehead in the spot of keenest mule delight, and adjured him to enjoy, as she tried to do, their service to the family.

"Pretend like we're taking a pleasure voyage. The woods are an ocean of perfume. You-uns, Sol, are my boat."

She breathed deeply the salt, crisp tonic of green in the shrubbery that already surged over the ridgeside - the dogwood blossoms that gleamed like phosphorescence on southern seas; the vari-tinted azaleas that flamed atop, wave after wave, as of burning oil on the surface of gently swelling billows.

Making a considerable detour into a sunlit meadow, where thrived a patch of tall, black-hearted yellow flowers, she consulted the popular necromancer known as "Susan" on love. After reaching down for a flower, she began to tear ofl its yellow rays.

"Does - don't. Me - another. Does - don't. Me another. Does - don't." Thus she chanted as she pulled.

The destruction of the daisy, excusable for sake of its purpose, continued until but one ray clung to the black heart of wizardry. This she withdrew tenderly and pressed to her lips.

"He loves me !" she cried in so triumphant a voice that a near-by pine warbler performed a spiral, and the beast under obligation of his name to be so wise cut quite a caper.

When Solomon was hidden at the mouth of Scapecat Run, Vernaluska approached the cabin on the Rim with the usual caution of her matutinal watch. She found a lapsing silence that had not been the rule of other mornings. Fear clutched her - a fear which the presence of the pinto stamping in his shed could not reassure.

Had the out-Norther for once slipped away before her arrival? Had he suspected that other reason behind her presentation of the jug? Under condonation of his official duty, had he broken his word to her by starting at dawn to run down the family still? She stepped into the open, crossed the small clearing, entered the cabin's back door.

After the brilliant sunlight without, the windowless interior seemed dark. The girl peered along the side of the room which came first into focus. The bunk was included in her glance - an empty bunk. Her face showed self-reproach over her dllatoriness. What sort of a one-man guard was she who risked so much on an assumption, even though since yesterday it had strengthened into hope?

Was he, after all, what they said he was? If so, of course he wouldn't wait around for her to outslick him!

Taking a forward step, she noted the long-cold ashes of the hearth and the table in the center of the room, untidy with glasses and greased over by small hillocks of burned candles. Gingerly she stepped among the chairs which surrounded the table, one still on all fours, two on their sides. Perplexity caught her that a man so immaculate should live in such disorder.

Then something really disturbing caught her eye. From the far side of the room a girl creature in none too many clothes seemed speeding directly toward her. "Spring is here," she read In golden letters at the elfin creature's feet. In a flash she grasped the vitality of the conception, stepped closer to admire. The flesh-tones gleaming through the veil of green; the long, yet rounded limb-lines; the young busts; the outstretched hands - all held her in a breathless sensation of something precious to her and familiar.

The face - It was hers ! Idealized, strange from Its look of commingled fear and promise, whitened to a dazzling purity - yet hers beyond a doubt. And the hair - none could mistake her hair !

Vernaluska's admiration died In a flare of resentment. How dared he paint her In this shameless garb, the out-North spy? What had she said, what done to give his Imagination license? Well was it that she had come to his empty shack to discover this desecration of her modesty!

On the floor just below the canvas lay a palette, still thick with paint. Upon the table were brushes. Stooping, she gathered them up. No artist In oils was she, yet she must fashion a dress to cover the lovely body. She would leave a sign of her visit calculated to show this man from lewd civilization the decency to be learned In the hills !

Her brush was dipped, her arm forward stretched, describing the line with which to begin her reconstruction, when a sound startled her. Turning, she saw what she had not seen before in the far corner of the room.

A gasp escaped her lips. The palette and brush she dropped to stifle other outcry with her hands. She sprang back, tlien turned to face the Thing upon the floor.

He looked to have been suddenly stricken, his arms outflung, his fists clenched as though for mortal combat. The sound which had startled her must have been the boomers scampering over him.

Terror palsied the girl's limbs, but not her mind - terror sprung from a grim suspicion which concerned not him, not herself, but those closest to her. Had they regretted entrusting the spying to her, and decided to settle the stranger's fate in a quicker way? Had one of them shot him down - her father, Sandyred, Rex? Or had the Dismal Gap wets thus flagrantly defied her father's orders?

There must have been a struggle, to judge by the disorder of the room. And those broken pieces of crockery scattered on the floor? They were, yes, the remains of her earthen jug. The shot must have been in the back, since no wound or stain showed on the trespasser's wan, upturned face or garments. Stepping closer, she leaned over him. What was that grasped in one of his hands?

The first doubt of her fears came with the discovery that his fingers would not loosen, rather gripped the harder on what they held - the body of a flying squirrel, one of the sad little rascals which waft their way into Blue Ridge cabins at night to gnaw everything except food that attracts them. This specimen had been viciously crushed.

Contemplation of the broken jug electrified her with hope. Gripping those extra-broad shoulders, she upraised the young man far enough to see that no wound showed in his back. Before returning him to the floor, she shook him with all her might. He shuddered, then slumped from her grasp and subsided into observable breathing.

She now saw that his face was an unlovely sight; that his lips were thick, his closed eyelids red and pouched beneath; that a considerable bump marred his forehead. Kneeling on the puncheon, she favvored Parker dead-to-the-world with a kinder look than ever she had bent upon him quick.

"Drunk!" she sighed, her hands clasped prayerfully. ''God dear, I thank Thee. Thou and I have done got him dead drunk!"

A goodly piece of the jug she seized and lifted to her lips.

"I have cussed you a-plenty, popskull," was the thought she beamed upon it, "but to-day I could almost take a sip of you. You've given me a right smart sign of what I want to know. Is it likely, now, that any revenuer of the slick sort Cal Parker would be If he was one - Is it likely, I ask you, that he'd put himself at our-all's mercy like this?"

She tried to make his position easier and, in the gentle turning of him, discovered a hole burned through the sleeves of both coat and shirt to an angry-looking wound in his flesh. Gratitude over his condition moved her to save him what pain she could after sleep had quenched the liquid fire which was scorching his consciousness.

With his knife she ripped the armhole seams of his clothing and removed the sleeves. In the larder she searched for the box of baking soda which should have been there, but was not. Denied this likeliest first-aid, she looked about for a substitute.

Although Vernaluska knew nothing of Leech's ambrine treatment, that most modern method of dressing burns, she had glassed jelly. Inspiration came to her from the profusion of candle stubs. Examination proved them made of paraflEn. If a wax coating could keep germs from spoiling her fruit preserves, she argued. It should serve as effectively to shut out the air from a flesh-burn.

Several of the stubs she shredded Into a skillet, eliminating such bits of wick as remained in them.

After firing some kindling on the hearth, she melted them. While still hot, but not hot enough to cause further irritation, she poured the liquid over the wound, an air-tight covering.

To complete this rude surgery, she ripped a white towel into strips and bound the member with some skill. The placement of one of the bunk pillows beneath her patient's head, the smoothing backward of his disheveled, silky hair, the shaking of a reproachful forefinger before his face, completed her ministrations.

His unresponsiveness was broken by a deeper, shuddering breath, by an inarticulate murmur as of gratitude. Then suddenly, before she could rise from her solicitous position, his lids flashed up, his dark eyes peered, as if from far away, into hers.

"Verne," he murmured in a revealing voice, "you are here?"