Flenton handed over to Fuson his work at the crusher, calling Polly to mind the horse, and came straight to Callista.
"I'm mighty proud to see that you don't feel obliged to stay away from a place becaze I'm thar," he said in a lowered tone, and she fancied a flicker of fear in his eyes, as though he questioned whether her husband might be expected to follow.
"Lance was a-goin' down to the Settlement to-day," she said bluntly, "and I'd have been all alone anyhow; so I 'lowed I might as well come over."
Hands looked relieved.
"I hope you ain't a-goin' to hold it against me, Callisty," he went on in a hurried half whisper, "that Lance is namin' it all around that this here scope o' country ain't big enough to hold him and me."
Callista shook her fair head in a proud negative.
"I've got my doubts of Lance ever having said any such," she returned quietly. "Yo' name has never been mentioned between us, Flent; but if Lance has a quarrel, he's mighty apt to go to the person he quarrels with, and not make threats behind they' back. I think little of them that brought you such word as that."
"That's just what I say," Hands pursued eagerly. "Why can't we-all be friends, like we used to be. Here's Mr. Cleaverage that don't hold with no sech," and he turned to include Kimbro, who now came up to greet his daughter-in-law. Again Callista shook her head.
"You men'll have to settle them things betwixt yourselves," she said, sure of her ground as a mountain woman. "But, Flent, I reckon you'll have to keep in mind that a man and his wife are one."
"Oh," said Hands dropping back a step, "so if Lance won't be friendly with me, you won't neither – is that it?"
"I should think yo' good sense would show you that that would have to be it," said Callista doggedly. She had no wish to appear as one submitting to authority, and yet Flenton's evident intention of seeking to find some breach between herself and Lance was too offensive to be borne with.
"Now then, why need we talk of such this morning?" pacified Kimbro. "My son Lance is a good boy when you take him right. He's got a tender heart. If he ever quarrels too easy, he gets over it easy, as well. Flenton, you'll have to tend to the crusher; I got to keep the fire goin' for Roxy.
"Hit 'minds me of that thar lake that it names in the Bible, Callisty," the Widow Griever said meditatively, looking at the seething surface as she wielded her long-handled spoon. "And then sometimes I study about that thar fiery furnace and Ham, Sham and Abednego. Poppy, looks like to me you ain't got fire enough under this eend."
"I've just made it up there," said Kimbro mildly. "I go from one end to the other, steady, and that keeps it as near even as human hands air able to."
"Flenton, he was mighty overreachin' with Poppy," the widow lamented. "He's a mighty hard-hearted somebody to deal with, if he is a perfesser, and one that walks the straight an' narrer way. Poppy has to furnish all the labor, 'ceptin' Flent and Buck Fuson, and we've got to feed them men and their team, and then they git one third of the molasses. With three meals a day, an' snacks between times to keep up they' stren'th, looks like I never see nobody eat what them two can."
The gray little cabin crouched in a corner of the big yard; a shed roof, running down at one side of it, looking comically like a hand raised to shut out the clamor. Everybody shouted his opinion at the top of his voice. Nobody thought anybody else was doing just what he ought. Roxana hurried from group to group of the workers, advising, admonishing, trying to bring some order out of the confusion. And in the midst of it, Callista watched the bubbling juice enviously. It seemed everybody had something to harvest, care for and put away, except herself.
CHAPTER XI.
LONG SWEETENIN'
MARY ANN MARTHA GRIEVER was notorious all over the Big and Little Turkey Track neighborhoods, as "the worst chap the Lord A'mighty ever made and the old davil himself wouldn't have." The mildest dictum pronounced upon her was "Spiled rotten." Her energy, her unsleeping industry, would have been things to admire and wonder at, had they not been always applied to the futherance of iniquitous ends. To-day she pervaded the sorghum-making, not like a gnat, but like a whole swarm of gnats. Providing herself with a weak-backed switch, she followed the movements of Fuson, or Polly, or Sylvane, whichever chanced to be told off to tend the old horse. She pursued the beast with a falsetto screech of peculiar malignance, and tickled his heels with her switch whenever the exigencies of the work forced his stoppage. To the infinite surprise of everybody, notably his owner, the gaunt sorrel, after looking around and twitching his ears and hide as though a particularly troublesome flock of flies were on him, finally heaved up the whole after portion of his anatomy in one elephantine kick, which very nearly cost his small tormentor the entire top of her head.
Chased away from the horse and the crusher, Mary Ann Martha turned her attention to the furnace, with its more seductive and saccharine activities. The skimming hole on this occasion was not the small, ordinary excavation made for the purpose, but a sizable pit, dug at some previous time for a forgotten use. Brush had been thrown into it, vines had grown and tangled over the brush, till it was a miniature jungle or bear-pit. Tin cans hid among the leafage, and the steady drip-drip of the skimmings pattered on one of these hollowly. This spot had a peculiar fascination for the child. Perched on its edge she thrust forward her face and attempted to lick a branch over which the skimmings had trickled deliciously. The distance was considerable. Mary Ann Martha's tongue was limber and amazingly extensible; her balance excellent; but also she was in unseemly haste for the syrup that stood in great drops just beyond reach. In her contortions, she overbalanced herself and fell shrieking in, going promptly to the bottom, where quite a pool of sticky sour-sweetness had already collected.
"The good land!" shouted Roxy, passing the ladle of office to Callista and reaching down to grab for her offspring. "If they's anything you ort not to be in, of course you're in it. Now look at you!" she ejaculated, as she hauled the squalling child out dripping. "You ain't got another frock to yo' name', an' what am I a-goin' to do with you?"
Mary Ann Martha showed a blissful indifference to what might be done with her. Her howls ceased abruptly. She found her state that agreeable one wherein she was able to lick almost any portion of her anatomy or her costume with satisfaction.
"Don't want no other frock," she announced briefly, as she sat down in the dust to begin clearing her hands of skimmings, very like a puppy or a kitten.
"Well, I'm a-goin' to put boy clothes on you," declared the mother. "You act as bad as a boy." And she hustled the protesting delinquent away to execute her threat.
Five minutes after, burning with wrongs, Mary Ann Martha came stormily forth to rejoin her kind, pent in a tight little jeans suit which had belonged to the babyhood of Sylvane, and from which her solid limbs and fat, tubby body seemed fairly exploding. Humiliated, alienated, and with her hand against every man, she lowered upon them all from under flaxen brows, with Lance's own hazel eyes, darkened almost to black.
"You Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," admonished Fuson, as the small marauder raided the cooling pans and licked the spoons and testing sticks so soon as they were laid down, "you got to walk mighty keerful around where I'm at, at least in sawgrum-makin' time."
Mary Ann Martha held down her head, and muttered. She was ashamed of her trousers as only a mountain-born girl child could be ashamed.
"You let them spoons alone, or I'll fling you plumb into the bilin'-pan, whar you'll git a-plenty o' sawgrum," Fuson threatened. "You hear now? The last man I he'ped Hands make sawgrum for had ten chillen when we begun. They set in to pester me an' old Baldy jest like yo' adoin', and when we got done thar was ten kaigs of sawgrum and nary chap on the place. Yes, that's right. Ef thar wasn't a chap bar'lled up in every kaig we turned out, I don't know sawgrum from good red liquor."
Inside the house, Ellen Hands and Little Liza were delaying over an errand. They had brought a piece of turkey red calico as an offering for the gospel quilt.
"Don't you trouble to git it out," Little Liza said, rather wistfully. "I know in reason you've got all on yo' hands you want this mornin'; but when you come to workin' it in, Ellen an' me we talked considerable consarning of it, and mebbe we could he'p ye."
"Callisty's a-skimmin'," announced the widow, running for a hasty glance toward the sorghum-making activities. "Hit won't take me mo'n a minute to spread the thing here on the bed, and try this agin it. Land! ain't that pretty? Red – I always did love red."
The cherished square was lifted from its chest, unrolled, and spread upon the four-poster bed in the corner of the living room.
"You been a-workin' on it some sence last I seed it," Ellen Hands remarked with interest. "This here thing with birds a-roostin' on it – I ain't never seed this before."
"That thar's Jacob's Ladder, Ellen – don't you see the postes, and the pieces a-goin' acrost?" Roxy explained rather hastily. "Lord, the trouble I had with them angels. I don't wonder you took 'em for birds. Time and again I had a mind to turn 'em into birds. I done fine with Noey's dove; see, here 'tis; an' a ark – well, hit ain't no more than a house with a boat un'neath."
She pulled the folds about, to get at the period of the deluge.
"'Course I see now jest what it was intentioned for," Ellen professed eagerly. "If I'd looked right good I could 'a' made out the angels goin' up an' down. How" – she hesitated, but the resolve to retrieve herself overcame all timidity – "how nateral them loaves an' fishes does look!"
"That thar's the ark," explained the widow, putting her finger on the supposed loaf. There was a moment of depressed silence; then Roxy, willing to let bygones be bygones, observed,
"Over here is the whale and Joney." These twin objects were undoubtedly what Ellen had taken for the fishes.
"Ye see I had to make the whale some littler than life," the artist deprecated. "I sort o' drawed him in, as a body may say, 'caze 'course I couldn't git him all on my quilt without. I didn't aim to git Joney quite so big, but that thar sprigged percale that he's made outen was so pretty, and the piece I had was just that length, an' I hated to throw away what wouldn't be good for anything, an' I'd already got my whale, so I sort o' len'thened the beast's tail with a few stitches. Would you call a whale a beast or a fish?"
"Well, I should sure call anything that could swaller a man a beast," opined Little Liza.
"An' yit he's sorter built like a fish," suggested Ellen.
"That's true; an' he lives in the water," admitted her sister.
"Here's a right good big open place," observed Ellen. "Ef you was a-goin' to make – whatever – out of that turkey red, hit could come in here."
"It could that," said the widow thoughtfully. "Did you-all have any idee as to what it would suit best for?"
The two looked at each other in embarrassment. As unmarried women, the subject that they had discussed was in some degree questionable.
"Well, hit's in the Bible," Ellen began defensively. "An' yit – Sis' an' me didn't know whether you'd care to – to give room to sech as the Scarlet Woman."
It was out. The idea evidently fascinated Roxy.
"That turkey red shore fits the case," she agreed with gusto. "As you say, hit's in the Bible. An' yit, anything that's what a body might call ondecent that-a-way – don't ye reckon a person'd be sort o' 'shamed to – I vow! I'll do it."
"Oh, Miz. Griever!" exclaimed Little Liza of comical dismay at the prompt acceptance in their idea. "I believe I wouldn't. There's the crossin' o' the Red Sea; you could use the turkey red for that jest as easy."
But the widow shook her head.
"Good lands!" she cried, "what you studyin' about, Liza? I say, the crossin' o' the Red Sea! I ain't a-goin' to do no sech a thing. Hit'd take me forever to cut out all them Chillen of Is'rul. And I never in the world would git done makin' Egyptians! No, that turkey red goes into a scarlet woman – to reprove sin."
"Laws, Miz. Griever," began Ellen Hands, solemnly, "looks like yo' family ort to be perfectly happy with that thar quilt in the house. I'm mighty shore I would be. I tell you, sech a work as that is worth a woman's while."
"There's them that thinks different," responded Roxy, with a sort of gloomy yet relishing resentment. "There has been folks lived in this house from the time I started work on it, an' made game of my gospel quilt – made game of it!"
"I reckon I know who you mean," nodded Ellen. And Little Liza added, "She's here to-day, ain't she? – God love her sweet soul! But yo' pappy wouldn't bid Lance, with Buddy here an' all – we know that. They'd be shore to fuss. Man persons is that-a-way."
"Well," Ellen Hands summed the case up, "ef anybody made game o' that quilt to my face, I'd never forgive 'em."
"I never will," agreed Roxy. "Them that would make game of sech is blasphemious. Mebbe hit ain't adzactly the Bible, but hit's – "
"Hit's mo' so," put in Ellen swiftly. "The Bible is pertected like, but yo' gospel quilt is standin' up alone, as a body may say, and you've got to speak for it. No, ef I was you, and anybody made game of that thar quilt, I never would forgive 'em."
Outside, Callista stood and skimmed and skimmed, from time to time emptying her pan into the skimming-hole, the bland October breeze lifting her fair hair. Everything was sour-sweet and sticky from the juice. Heaps of pomace were already beginning to pile tall beside the crusher, reeking, odorous, tempting to the old cow, who went protestingly past, and had the bars put up after her. Kimbro looked up from his task and spoke to his daughter-in-law.
"You look sort o' peaked, Callista," he said gently. "Air you right well?"
"Oh yes, Father Cleaverage," she returned, absently, her eyes on Mrs. Griever and the Hands girls approaching from the house.
The unsexed and hostile Mary Ann Martha turned upon the world at large a look of mute defiance, and completed an enterprise which she had set up of laying fresh sorghum stalks side-by-side, pavement-wise, over the skimming-hole.
Women and children were settling like flies about the pan and its attendant bowls, ladles and testing plates, hoping for a taste of the finished product. The Hands girls greeted Callista and joined the others. Fuson's poor little seventeen-year-old sister-in-law was there with her six months baby, and a child of two. Roxy took the skimmer from Callista and set to work. Sylvane relieved his father at the firing. Mary Ann Martha sidled into the house, whence, a moment later, came a shrill cry in Polly's thin little pipe.
"Aunt Roxy! Mary Ann Marthy's in here puttin' molasses all over yo' gospel quilt!"
"Good land!" snorted Roxy, straightening up from her task of skimming. "Take the spoon, Sylvane." She cast the ladle toward him without much care as to whether the handle or the bowl went first. "Looks like I do have the hardest time o' anybody I know," she ejaculated.
"You better git here quick, A' Roxy," Polly urged. "She's just a wipin' her spoon on em'."
"Ain't," protested the infant, appearing suddenly in the doorway, a "trying spoon" in her hand, over which she was running her tongue with gusto. "I thest give a lick o' long-sweetnin' to Eads," thus she named the first of womankind. "Po' old Eads looked so-o-o hongry."
"She's done a heap more'n that," Polly maintained. Mary Ann Martha's mouth began to work piteously.
"Give Eads some," she pursued in a husky, explanatory voice. "An' – th' – ol' snake licked out his tongue, and I must put a teenchy-weenchy bit on it. 'Nen Adams, he's mad 'caze he don't git none; an' – Mammy," with a burst of tears, "is I thest like my uncle Lance?"
She had heard this formula of reproof so often; she knew so well that it befitted the gravest crimes.
"You air that!" said Roxy wrathfully. "You little dickens! I don't know of anybody in this world that would have done sech a trick – but you or Lance Cleaverage."
She wheeled from the furnace toward the house, and set a swift foot in the middle of the sorghum-stalk pavement Mary Ann Martha had laid over the skimming pit. The stalks gave. She attempted to recover herself and have back the foot, but her momentum was too great. On she plunged, pitching and rolling, descending by degrees and with ejaculatory whoops among the sticky sweetness, part of which was still uncomfortably warm.
There was a treble chorus of dismay from the women. Sylvane leaped to his feet, and ran to the pit's edge. Buck Fuson held his sides and roared with mirth, and Flenton Hands stopped the crusher by tying up his horse so that he too, might go to their assistance.
"Oh land!" gasped the widow, coming to the surface, yellow and gummy of countenance, smudged and smeared, crowned with a tipsy wreath of greenery, like a sorghumnal bacchante. "I believe in my soul that little sinner aimed to do this. She's jest adzactly like her Uncle Lance – that's what she is! I mind – ow!" The rotten branch under her foot had snapped, letting her down into a squelching pool of skimmings.
"Take hold of my hand, Sis' Roxy," cried Sylvane. "No, I don't reckon the baby aimed to make trouble; chaps is always doin' things like this, an' meanin' no harm. There – now I've got you."
But Roxy was a big woman, and the first pull nearly dragged him in.
"Let me ketch ye round the waist, Sylvane!" roared Little Liza in her fog-horn bass. "Ellen, you hold to my coats, and let the others hang on to you, if they have to. Thar, now, pull, Sylvane; try it agin – now, all of you – pull!" And with a tremendous scrabbling and scrambling, the Widow Griever "came," hurtling up from her sweet retreat and spattering molasses on her rescuers.
Over went Sylvane and Little Liza; Ellen and slim Lula Fuson were nearly dragged down by their fall. Roxy Griever landed on top of the first two, and liberally besmeared them all with sorghum juice before they could be got to their feet.
"You let me lay hand on that young 'un," she panted, "and I'll not leave her fitten to do such as this."
"Never mind, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'," Little Liza admonished. "You git in and git yo'se'f washed up. For the good land's sake – ef thar don't come Miz. Gentry an' her pa down the road! Mak' 'as'e!" And the sorghum bespattered women hurried toward the house, the widow still fulminating threats, the Hands girls giggling a bit. Callista, trying to carry forward their part of the work, saw that a team stopped out in front. She was aware of her grandfather on the driver's seat, and her mother climbing down over the wheel.
"Well, Callista," complained the matron, making straight for the side yard and her daughter, "I reckon if I want to see my own child, I can go to the neighbors and see her there. Why ain't you been home, honey? Pappy axes every morning air you comin', and every night I have to tell him, 'Well, mebbe to-morrow.'"
Callista looked over her mother's shoulder, and fancied that she caught a gleam of grim amusement in old Ajax's eye.
"I've been mighty busy," she said evasively. "Looks like I don't finish one thing before another needs doing. I'm a-comin' one of these days."
"So's Christmas," jeered her grandfather from the wagon.
Callista remembered the last time her homecoming had been discussed with him. Her color deepened and her eye brightened.
"Yes, and I'm comin' same as Christmas with both hands full of gifts," she called out to him gaily. How dared he look like that – as though he knew all her straits – the shifts to which she was now reduced?
There had sounded from the house, on Roxy's arrival there, wails of lamentation in Mary Ann Martha's voice – wails so strident and so offensively prolonged as to convince the least discriminating hearer that their author was not being hurt, but was only incensed. Now, Roxy Griever, hastily washed, made her appearance.
"I'm mighty proud to have you here to-day, Miz. Gentry," she said hospitably. "Won't you come into the house? Have you-all fixed for pumpkin cutting? I just as soon as not come over and he'p you, oncet I git this mis'able sawgrum out of the way."
"Thank you, Miz. Griever, I won't go in for a spell yet," Octavia said, seating herself on a bench. "No, we ain't had a chance to think o' pumpkin cuttin'. I been dryin' fruit. And Pappy's had everybody on the place busy pickin' field peas."
Callista harkened restively to this talk of the harvest activities, the season's plenty – she who had nothing to garner, nothing to prepare and put away. She heard her mother's voice running plaintively on.
"Looks like I got to have somebody with me, since Sis is gone. I've been aimin' to git over to the Far Cove neighborhood where my cousin Filson Luster lives. I know in reason Fil could spare one of his gals, an' I'd do well by her."
The words were softly, drawlingly, spoken, yet Callista, mechanically working still about the furnace, heard in them the slam of a door. Her girlhood home was closed to her. The daughter's place there, which she had held so lightly, would be filled.