A Knight of the Cumberland by Jr. John Fox (speld decodable readers .TXT) 📕

It was a day to make glad the heart of slave or freeman. The earth was cool from a night-long rain, and a gentle breeze fanned coolness from the north all day long. The clouds were snow-white, tumbling, ever-moving, and between them the sky showed blue and deep. Grass, leaf, weed and flower were in the richness that comes to the green things of the earth just before that full tide of summer whose foam is drifting thistle down. The air was clear and the mountains seemed to have brushed the haze from their faces and drawn nearer that they, too, might better see the doings of that day.

From the four winds of heaven, that morning, came the brave and the free. Up from Lee, down from Little Stone Gap, and from over in Scott, came the valley-farmers—horseback, in buggies, hacks, two-horse wagons, with wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, in white dresses, flowered hats, and many ribbons, and with dinner-baskets stuffed with good things to eat—old ham, young chicken, angel-cake and blackberry wine—to be spread in the sunless shade of great poplar and oak. From Bum Hollow and Wildcat Valley and from up the slopes that lead to Cracker’s Neck came smaller tillers of the soil—as yet but faintly marked by the gewgaw trappings of the outer world; while from beyond High Knob, whose crown is in cloud-land, and through the Gap, came the mountaineer in the primitive simplicity of home spun and cowhide, wide-brimmed hat and poke-bonnet, quaint speech, and slouching gait. Through the Gap he came in two streams—the Virginians from Crab Orchard and Wise and Dickinson, the Kentuckians from Letcher and feudal Harlan, beyond the Big Black—and not a man carried a weapon in sight, for the stern spirit of that Police Guard at the Gap was respected wide and far. Into the town, which sits on a plateau some twenty feet above the level of the two rivers that all but encircle it, they poured, hitching their horses in the strip of woods that runs through the heart of the place, and broad ens into a primeval park that, fan-like, opens on the oval level field where all things happen on the Fourth of July. About the street they loitered—lovers hand in hand—eating fruit and candy and drinking soda-water, or sat on the curb-stone, mothers with babies at their breasts and toddling children clinging close—all waiting for the celebration to begin.

It was a great day for the Hon. Samuel Budd. With a cheery smile and beaming goggles, he moved among his constituents, joking with yokels, saying nice things to mothers, paying gallantries to girls, and chucking babies under the chin. He felt popular and he was—so popular that he had begun to see himself with prophetic eye in a congressional seat at no distant day; and yet, withal, he was not wholly happy.

“Do you know,” he said, “them fellers I made bets with in the tournament got together this morning and decided, all of ‘em, that they wouldn’t let me off? Jerusalem, it’s most five hundred dollars!” And, looking the picture of dismay, he told me his dilemma. It seems that his “dark horse” was none other than the Wild Dog, who had been practising at home for this tournament for nearly a year; and now that the Wild Dog was an outlaw, he, of course, wouldn’t and couldn’t come to the Gap. And said the Hon. Sam Budd:

“Them fellers says I bet I’d BRING IN a dark horse who would win this tournament, and if I don’t BRING him in, I lose just the same as though I had brought him in and he hadn’t won. An’ I reckon they’ve got me.”

“I guess they have.”

“It would have been like pickin’ money off a blackberry-bush, for I was goin’ to let the Wild Dog have that black horse o’ mine—the steadiest and fastest runner in this country—and my, how that fellow can pick off the rings! He’s been a-practising for a year, and I believe he could run the point o’ that spear of his through a lady’s finger-ring.”

“You’d better get somebody else.”

“Ah—that’s it. The Wild Dog sent word he’d send over another feller, named Dave Branham, who has been practising with him, who’s just as good, he says, as he is. I’m looking for him at twelve o’clock, an’ I’m goin’ to take him down an’ see what he can do on that black horse o’ mine. But if he’s no good, I lose five hundred, all right,” and he sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was to give the “Charge” to the assembled knights before the tournament.

At ten o’clock the games began—and I took the Blight and the little sister down to the “grandstand”—several tiers of backless benches with leaves for a canopy and the river singing through rhododendrons behind. There was jumping broad and high, and a 100-yard dash and hurdling and throwing the hammer, which the Blight said were not interesting—they were too much like college sports—and she wanted to see the base-ball game and the tournament. And yet Marston was in them all—dogged and resistless—his teeth set and his eyes anywhere but lifted toward the Blight, who secretly proud, as I believed, but openly defiant, mentioned not his name even when he lost, which was twice only.

“Pretty good, isn’t he?” I said.

“Who?” she said indifferently.

“Oh, nobody,” I said, turning to smile, but not turning quickly enough.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the Blight sharply.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” I said, and straightway the Blight thought she wanted to go home. The thunder of the Declaration was still rumbling in the poplar grove.

“That’s the Hon. Sam Budd,” I said.

“Don’t you want to hear him?”

“I don’t care who it is and I don’t want to hear him and I think you are hateful.”

Ah, dear me, it was more serious than I thought. There were tears in her eyes, and I led the Blight and the little sister home— conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I would find that young jackanapes of an engineer and let him know that anybody who made the Blight unhappy must deal with me. I would take him by the neck and pound some sense into him. I found him lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien to any consciousness that I could have any knowledge of what was going or any right to poke my nose into anybody’s business— and I did nothing except go back to lunch —to find the Blight upstairs and the little sister indignant with me.

“You just let them alone,” she said severely.

“Let who alone?” I said, lapsing into the speech of childhood.

“You—just—let—them—alone,” she repeated.

“I’ve already made up my mind to that.”

“Well, then!” she said, with an air of satisfaction, but why I don’t know.

I went back to the poplar grove. The Declaration was over and the crowd was gone, but there was the Hon. Samuel Budd, mopping his brow with one hand, slapping his thigh with the other, and all but executing a pigeon-wing on the turf. He turned goggles on me that literally shone triumph.

“He’s come—Dave Branham’s come!” he said. “He’s better than the Wild Dog. I’ve been trying him on the black horse and, Lord, how he can take them rings off! Ha, won’t I get into them fellows who wouldn’t let me off this morning! Oh, yes, I agreed to bring in a dark horse, and I’ll bring him in all right. That five hundred is in my clothes now. You see that point yonder? Well, there’s a hollow there and bushes all around. That’s where I’m going to dress him. I’ve got his clothes all right and a name for him. This thing is a-goin’ to come off accordin’ to Hoyle, Ivanhoe, Four-Quarters-of-Beef, and all them mediaeval fellows. Just watch me!”

I began to get newly interested, for that knight’s name I suddenly recalled. Little Buck, the Wild Dog’s brother, had mentioned him, when we were over in the Kentucky hills, as practising with the Wild Dog—as being “mighty good, but nowhar ‘longside o’ Mart.” So the Hon. Sam might have a good substitute, after all, and being a devoted disciple of Sir Walter, I knew his knight would rival, in splendor, at least, any that rode with King Arthur in days of old.

The Blight was very quiet at lunch, as was the little sister, and my effort to be jocose was a lamentable failure. So I gave news.

“The Hon. Sam has a substitute.” No curiosity and no question.

“Who—did you say? Why, Dave Branham, a friend of the Wild Dog. Don’t you remember Buck telling us about him?” No answer. “Well, I do—and, by the way, I saw Buck and one of the big sisters just a while ago. Her name is Mollie. Dave Branham, you will recall, is her sweetheart. The other big sister had to stay at home with her mother and little Cindy, who’s sick. Of course, I didn’t ask them about Mart—the Wild Dog. They knew I knew and they wouldn’t have liked it. The Wild Dog’s around, I understand, but he won’t dare show his face. Every policeman in town is on the lookout for him.” I thought the Blight’s face showed a signal of relief.

“I’m going to play short-stop,” I added.

“Oh!” said the Blight, with a smile, but the little sister said with some scorn:

“You!”

“I’ll show you,” I said, and I told the Blight about base-ball at the Gap. We had introduced base-ball into the region and the valley boys and mountain boys, being swift runners, throwing like a rifle shot from constant practice with stones, and being hard as nails, caught the game quickly and with great ease. We beat them all the time at first, but now they were beginning to beat us. We had a league now, and this was the championship game for the pennant.

“It was right funny the first time we beat a native team. Of course, we got together and cheered ‘em. They thought we were cheering ourselves, so they got red in the face, rushed together and whooped it up for themselves for about half an hour.”

The Blight almost laughed.

“We used to have to carry our guns around with us at first when we went to other places, and we came near having several fights.”

“Oh!” said the Blight excitedly. “Do you think there might be a fight this afternoon?”

“Don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s pretty hard for eighteen people to fight when nine of them are policemen and there are forty more around. Still the crowd might take a hand.”

This, I saw, quite thrilled the Blight and she was in good spirits when we started out.

“Marston doesn’t pitch this afternoon,” I said to the little sister. “He plays first base. He’s saving himself for the tournament. He’s done