THE WANDERING WOMEN

WHEN Joslin finally rose and set his face away from the sight of the hearth fire he had known, with staff and scrip to start out into the world, he followed along the winding height of land below the summit leading towards Hell-fer-Sartin—the objective of his father’s last circuit riding. Here he crossed the Bull Skin Valley, fording the shallow stream, and made directly into the harder going of the divide between that stream and the Redbird. Feeding himself as best he might, he lay out yet another night in the hills; but by this time the seasoned vigor of his own frame began to reassert itself. He grew stronger in spite of the pain of his wound, in spite of his long abstention from wholesome food. He evaded all sounds of life at the little farms scattered here and there among the mountains. A rail fence caused him to turn aside; the sight of a smoke drove him deeper back into the hills.

It was perhaps ten o’clock of the second morning, when he found himself on the river trail of a fork of the Kentucky River, that he paused at the sound of a human voice. It seemed not to be approaching, but stationary—a woman’s voice, now raised in some sort of old ballad tune. It seemed to him he might go forward.

She sat on a pallet of leaves at the side of the road, a little above its level, in a sort of natural cave or opening in the cliff face. A shelf of limestone extended out perhaps twenty feet, and left under it a sort of open-faced cavern. The roof was black with many smokes—it always had been black with smoke since the memory of white men in that region; for here, tradition told, had dwelt the last two Indians of the Cumberlands, when the whites rallied and slew them both. This white woman had taken up the ancient lair of men scarce more wild than she herself seemed now.

She was an old-seeming woman, albeit perhaps once comely. Her dark hair, not fully grayed, fell about a face once small-featured, large-eyed. What charm she once had had was past or passing; yet something of her philosophy of life remained, enabling her to sing at this hour in the morning.

“Howdy, stranger,” she said, looking at him with a direct and easy familiarity singular enough in the circumstances, for the mountain women are shy and silent with men. “Whar ye bound?”

“Howdy,” said David Joslin. “I’m a-goin’ down the creek a ways.”

“If ye air, I wish ye’d see if my darter is along in the field below. Tell her to come on back home. She’s got her little girl along with her—ye’ll know ‘em if ye see ‘em.”

“Home?” said David Joslin rather vaguely, looking at the blackened roof of the cavern. The woman laughed.

“All the home we got, my darter an’ me. We’ve lived here off an’ on many a year. They call me Annie. They call her Min. Hit’s no difference about the rest of the name.”

“I know ye hain’t born in these parts or ye’d know about us two,” she continued. “This has been my home—all I’ve ever had in my life—I kain’t say how many years. I move up an’ down. Sometimes I’m up on Big Creek—sometimes on the Kaintucky. I follow the rafts. I’ve even been Outside. Min, she nuvver has. Some of my other girls has, maybe.”

“Yore other girls?” began Joslin.

“I’ve had seven children—four girls,” said she quietly, unemotionally.

“I don’t know yore fam’ly,” said David Joslin, hesitating still.

“I hain’t got no fam’ly, I told ye, an’ I don’t come o’ no fam’ly. Us two lives here together—we’re the wanderin’ wimmern—that’s what they call us in this country. Don’t ye know about us?

“Well, now”—and she turned her once bold eyes upon him with renewed defiance, as he did not reply—“I told ye I’d had seven children. Ye want to know who’s the father of Min? I kain’t tell ye rightly. She couldn’t tell ye rightly who’s the father of her girl she’s got along with her now. I’ve had seven children. Who’s their fathers?—I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t keer. What’s the difference? Who air we, back in the hills? What chancet have we got?”

Joslin stood leaning on his staff, pale, hollow-eyed, gaunt. In his eyes was a vast pity, a terrible understanding.

“Kin I wait here for a minute or so?” said he. “I’m right tired.”

“Ye’ve been hurt,” said she, pointing to his bandaged head, for which he had made such care as he might. “Well, I don’t ask ye no questions. I’ve seen plenty of men hurt, in the raftin’ times.”

“We’re stoppin’ here now,” she went on explaining. “Because, mought come a tide any time, an’ then the rafts’ll come. They tie up yander at the big tree thar—the men come acrosst. Well, here’s home for Min an’ me. She’s young. I’m gittin’ pretty old. Few cares fer such as me.”

Then she went on. “That’s our life, stranger. Ye kin guess the rest. We’re the wanderin’ wimmern. There’s no hope fer us. We never had no chancet.”

“Kin ye read?” asked David Joslin quietly. “Kin ye write? Kin yore darter?”

She shook her head.

“I kin read jest a little bit,” said he himself slowly. “I kin write jest a little bit. Ye say ye’ve had no chancet. That’s true. What chancet have ary of us here? Whar can we learn anything? I’m a-goin’ Outside. I’m a-goin’ on a journey.”

“Set down an’ eat,” said she, with the unfailing hospitality of the mountains. “We hain’t got much. I kin parch ye some corn, maybe. Min’s down below trying to find some hickernuts an’ some corn. Folks don’t mind our foragin’ around. Why, even sometimes I’ve slept in a cabin now an’ then. They don’t mind if we sleep in the corn cribs sometimes when the weather’s cold. The husks is right warm—warmer’n leaves, I kin tell ye that.”

Joslin looked about him. A ragged gunny sack or so, a quilt or two, were heaped into one corner over a pile of leaves—there was no other sign of couch. In another corner of the cavern a blackened spot showed where they built their fire. With flint and steel the old woman now began her fire anew. There was a broken bit of iron, once a skillet. In this she managed to parch some grains of corn for the traveler.

“Eat, stranger,” said she. “Hit’s from Annie, the wanderin’ womern, that never had a chancet.”

He ate, and drank from a broken gourd of water which she gave to him. For a time he sat looking across the pageant of the hills, still radiant in their autumn finery.

At length he placed a hand in his pocket. “Take this,” said he. “I’ve got just thirty-five cents. I’ll keep the dime, fer I mought need it. I know the people in the mountings don’t take pay fer what they give to eat, but won’t ye please take this?”

“What do ye mean, man?” said she looking at him curiously, but refusing the money which he offered. “Ye seem like a quare feller to me. Air ye outen yore haid?”

“Maybe I got some good sense knocked into my haid, I don’t know. All I know is I’m a-goin’ Outside.”

“Outside?” The voice of the old woman was low. “I’ve got some girls—Outside, somewhar. Ye mustn’t say they wasn’t my children, for they was. They nuvver only had no chancet.”

“I know that,” said David Joslin. “That’s why I’m a-goin’ out. I’m a-goin’ to try some time, somehow, to make a school, er a church, er something, in these hills. We’ve got to learn how to read an’ write. I’ve got a callin’ that that’s what we’d orter do. I never seen ye before—maybe I never will again—but listen now. Some time, if I ever build a school, I’m a-goin’ to build another one right in here.” His eyes were streaming tears.

“I’ll tell ye the place,” said she eagerly. “Down below, about hafe a mile, thar’s a place whar two stones come together—great big ones. Thar’s a level floor under that, wider’n the floor of this here place, an’ it’s covered in from the rain. Thar’s leaves thar—ye could fetch in pine needles a-plenty if ye wanted to, fer thar’s pine about. Rain or shine ye could hold school down thar. Hit would be sich a purty place.”

“Good luck, stranger,” said she. “Ye may be crazy—I reckon ye air—but God knows thar orter be more crazy people like that in these hills.”

Her guest turned and followed on down the winding stream in the muddy pathway. A quarter or a half-mile below, he paused and looked across the vine-covered remnant of what once had been a rail fence. He had heard a rustling in the corn, and saw now the figure of a young woman who stood looking at him; at her side, clinging to her tattered skirt, a young child, perhaps four or five years old. This child had in her little apron a store of nuts, gathered in the wood beyond. Her mother carried half an armful of ears of corn.

“Howdy,” called David Joslin across the fence, in customary salutation of the hills.

“Howdy,” she replied, but still stood motionless.

“Won’t ye come up a little closeter?” he resumed. “Yore mammy up yander——”

The young woman slowly advanced, the child clinging still to her skirt. She was a wild-looking creature, but quite comely, with a sort of Indian cast to her features, her skin dark, whether with sun or with other blood none might tell. Her eyes were black as night, and her figure lean and slender, not quite so angular as that of the average mountain woman. Young enough she was, and goodly enough she might have been if ever she “had had her chance.”

The child at her skirt, an elfin youngster, had much of her mother’s darkness of hair and eyes, her mother’s wide mouth of white, even teeth, a thing unusual thereabouts. She now stood staring straight at the stranger, motionless and silent.

“Ye’re Min, I reckon,” began David Joslin. “Yore mammy—she told me to find ye an’ tell ye to go on home now, that it’s nearly time fer breakfast.”

“Who air ye, stranger?” asked the young woman. “Which way ye bound?”

“My name is David Joslin,” he replied. “I live, or useter live, over on the Bull Skin, near the mouth of Coal Creek.”

“What’s yore business? Air ye lookin’ fer logs?”

“No, I hain’t. I’m a-goin’ Outside.”

She stood staring at him, uncertain, silent, awkward. David Joslin returned her gaze with his own frank, gray eyes. “Ye’ve lived jest the way ye could,” said he. “Ye needn’t tell me nothin’. I know about the raftsmen. I’ve been a raftsman myself. I’ve been Outside many times. I run down the other fork, don’t ye see? I’m yore own sort of people. I hain’t no better’n ye, God knows.

“I’ve got to be goin’ now,” he added. “I hope to see ye agin some time in here. I’m jest a-goin’ Outside fer a little while, ontel I can learn to read an’ write.”

“I reckon ye don’t know all about us—my mammy and me,” she began, a slow flush now upon her face. This was a different sort of man—a preacher, perhaps?

“Oh, yes, I do. I know all I need to know or want to know. I know ye nuvver had no chancet.”

“I’ll say good-by now,” he added, extending a hand, which wandered to the tangled crown of the little girl.

And so he turned and left her standing there, the child at her side, the wild forage of the mountains to be their sustenance no one might say yet how long. When the raftsmen came——