104

LANCE'S LAUREL.

THE inheritance of Lance Cleaverage came to him from his maternal grandfather. Jesse Lance had felt it bitterly when his handsome high-spirited youngest daughter ran away with Kimbro Cleaverage, teacher of a little mountain school, a gentle, unworldly soul who would never get on in life. His small namesake was four years old when Grandfather Lance, himself a hawkfaced, up-headed man, undisputed master of his own household, keen on the hunting trail, and ready as ever for a fight or a frolic, came past and stopped at the Cleaverage farm on the way from his home in the Far Cove neighborhood down to the Settlement to buy mules, and, incidentally, to arrange about his will. He was not advanced in years, and he was in excellent health; but there were a number of married sons and daughters to portion, he had a considerable amount of property, and his wife was ailing. It had been suggested that both should make their wills; so the documents, duly written out, signed and attested, were being carried down to Jesse Lance's lawyer in Hepzibah.

He had seen almost nothing of his one-time favorite, Melissa, 105 since the marriage twelve years before with Cleaverage that so disappointed him; and he had not now expected to remain the night in her house. But the little Lance, a small splinter of manhood, at once caught his grandfather's eye. The child stirred Jesse Lance's curiosity perhaps—or it may have been some deeper feeling. The first collision between these two occurred as the visitor, having dismounted, approached the Cleaverage gate. He had his favorite hound with him, and four-year-old Lance, leading forth old Speaker, his chosen comrade, observed the hair rise on the neck of grandfather's follower, and listened with delight to the rumble of growls the dogs exchanged.

"Ye better look out. If Speaker jumps on yo' dog he'll thest about eat him up," the child warned.

The tall man swept his grandson with a dominating gaze that was used to see the people about Jesse Lance obey. But things that scared other children were apt to evoke little Lance's scornful laughter or stir up fight in him.

"You call off yo' hound," the newcomer said imperiously. "I don't let my dog fight with every cur he meets."

The small boy wheeled—hands in trouser pockets—and gazed with disappointed eyes to where the two canines were making friends.

"I wish they would jump on each other; I thest wish't they 106 would," he muttered. "I know Speaker could whip."

Grandfather Lance looked with interest at the child. Such a boy had he been. This was the spirit he had bequeathed to Lance's mother, and which she had wasted when she married a schoolteacher.

Melissa Cleaverage, come down in the world now, paid timid court to her father without much success; but in the middle of the afternoon, her four-year-old son settled the question of the visitor remaining for the night. Jesse Lance had been across the gulch to look at some wild land which belonged to him, up on the head waters of the creek called Lance's Laurel, a haggard, noble domain, its lawless acres still tossing an unbroken sea of green tree-tops towards the sky. As he returned to the Cleaverage place, he traversed a little woods-path without noticing the small jeans-clad boy who dragged a number of linked objects across the way.

"You gran'pap!" came the shrill challenge after him. "You quit a-breakin' up my train."

Jesse glanced toward the ground and saw a great oak chip dangling by a string against his boot. He turned an impassive countenance, and thrust with his foot to free it from its entanglement.

"Watch out—you'll break it!" cried the child, running up. Then, as a second jerk shook and rattled the dangling bit of wood, 107 "Ain't you got no sense?" he roared. "That's the injine to my train that you done stepped on and broke all up, and it cain't go a lick with you, big, lazy loafer, standin' right in the middle of it!"

For a moment the fierce baby eyes looked up into eyes as fierce above them. Such a glance should have sent any youngster weeping to its mother's skirts; but the tiny man on the woods-path stood his ground, ruffling like a game cock.

"Uh-huh!" jeered the grandfather, "and who might you be, young feller?"

"I'm cap'n of this train," Lance flung back at him, scarlet of face, his form rigid, his feet planted wide on the mold of the path.

Grim amusement showed itself in the elder countenance. Yet Jesse Lance was not used to permitting himself to be defied. Not since Melissa had run rough-shod over him and held his heart in her little grubby hands, had another been allowed such liberties.

"Oh, ye air, air ye? Well, that's mighty big talk for little breeches," he taunted, to see whether the spirit that looked out at him from his grandson's eyes went deep, or was mere surface bravado.

He got his answer. With a roar the baby charged him, gripped the big man around the knees and swung.

"Git off'n my injine!" he bellowed, contorting his small body to hammer with his toes the offending legs he clung to. "I told you once civil, and you didn't go. I'm cap'n of this train, and I 108 can throw rowdies off when they won't go."

The lines of the man's face puckered curiously as he looked down at the small assailant. Without another word he freed his foot from the chip-and-string "train," moving circumspectly and with due regard to flimsy couplings. Without another word he stepped slowly on, looking across his shoulder once, to note that Lance instantly joined his train into shape and, turning his back on his big adversary, promptly forgot all about him. Where the woods-path struck the big road, the grandfather stood a long moment and studied his grandson; then he made his way to the house where eleven year-old Roxy sat sorting wild greens on the porch edge.

"How old is that chap back thar?" he inquired of her brusquely.

"Brother Lance? W'y, he ain't but fo' year old," Roxana returned sanctimoniously. "Gran'pap, you mustn't hold it agin' him that he's so mean—he's but fo' year old. An' Poppy won't never whip him like he ort. If Poppy would jest give him a good dosin' of hickory tea, I 'low he'd come of his meanness mighty quick."

Jesse Lance merely grunted in reply to these pious observations, and in his mind there framed itself a codicil to be added to that will. Melissa—Melissa who married Kimbro Cleaverage—had been left out of both testaments so far; but she was his 109 favorite child, and it had been in her father's mind to bequeath to her the wild land up in the Gap. Yet of what use would such a piece of timber be to a woman? And it would be of less account to a man like Kimbro Cleaverage. They would but sell it for the meagre price someone might offer their necessities now. No, the dauntless captain of the train back there on the path was the one to own the Gap hundred. Such a man as he promised to become, would subdue that bit of savage nature, and live with and upon it. The lawyer in Hepzibah should fix the will that way.

Susan Lance died in her husband's absence; and the pair of mules Jesse had bought in the Settlement ran away with him on his journey home, pitching themselves, the wagon and driver, all over a cliff and breaking his neck. So it was that the codicil to the will left "to my namesake Lance Cleaverage, the Gap hundred on Lance's Laurel," not then of as much value as it had now become. High on the side of the slope it lay, as befitted the heritage of a free hunter. The timber on it was straight, tall and clean, mostly good hardwood. Here was the head of Lance's Laurel, a bold spring of pure freestone water bursting out from under a bluff—a naked mass of sandstone which fronted the sky near his boundary-line—in sufficient volume to form with its own waters the upper creek. A mile down, this stream 110 joined itself to Burnt Cabin Laurel, and the two formed Big Laurel. This water supply, unusually fine even in that well-watered country, added greatly to the value of the tract as a homestead. Coal had been found on the other side of the ridge, and Lance, who believed in his star, thought it reasonable to expect that coal would be discovered on his own land.

Meantime, though he had cleared none of it for crops—not even the necessary truck-patch—he made a little opening on a fine, sightly rise, with a more lofty eminence behind it, and set to work building his cabin. Scorning the boards from the portable sawmill which would have offered him a flimsy shanty at best, hot in the brief, vivid summer and cold in winter, he marked the best timber for the purpose, and planned a big, two-penned log house, with an open porch between. Lance, his father and Sylvane, spent more than ten days getting out the trees. It took forty boles to build a single pen ten logs high; and as Lance had decided to have the rooms measure fourteen feet inside, each must be cut to fifteen foot length. Then, since he was fastidious in the matter of a straight wall, Lance himself measured and lined each one and scored it to line, his father coming behind him with a broad-axe and hewing it flat on the two sides, leaving the log perhaps about five inches through, whatever its height might be, and thus securing a flat wall of 111 even thickness. For the kitchen at the back, it was thought good enough to snake the logs up in the round, with the bark all on, and merely skelp them roughly as they were put up one by one.

It took only a day to raise the walls of the cabin on Lance's Laurel, for the owner was tremendously popular, and there was help enough offered in friendly country fashion that day to have raised another pen, had the logs been ready. Roxy Griever and little Polly came across the gulch with dinner for the men; but the best things the laughing jovial party had, Lance cooked for them on an open camp-fire.

The roof was of hand-rived clapboards which Lance and Sylvane got out; but all the flooring was of tongued and grooved boards, brought from the Hepzibah planing mill, narrow, smooth, well-fitted, well-laid.

There were not in all the Turkey Track neighborhoods such door-and window-frames, nor doors of such quality, all hauled up from the planing mill.

When it came to the chimney, Lance was the master hand, a mason by trade, and sent for far and near to build chimneys or doctor one which refused to draw. He had chosen the stones from the creek-bed, water-washed, clean, offering traceries of white here and there on their steely, blue-gray surfaces. He debated long over the question of a rounded arch with keystone for the front 112 of his fireplace, as is the manner of all the older chimneys in the mountains; but finally he and Sylvane found one day a single straight arch rock so long that it could be laid across the jambs, and this he shaped a bit and hauled up for the purpose. The day he set in the chimney-throat the iron bar from which to hang the kettles, Sylvane lay watching him.

"Now, that's what Sis' Roxy's been a-wantin' ever sence I can remember," the younger brother commented, as Lance manipulated the mortar and set stone upon stone with nice skill.

"Uh-huh," assented the proprieter of Lance's Laurel lightly. "She wants it too bad. If she'd just want it easier, maybe she'd get it, one of these days."

He laughed drolly down at the boy lying on the grass, and both remembered the long dreary tirades by which poor Roxy had tried to get her brother to so amend the home hearth that cooking should be rendered less laborious for her.

And it was to this home that Lance Cleaverage brought his bride. Here it was that he hoped to build that true abiding place which such spirits as Lance seek, and crave, and seldom find. The hearthstone he had himself laid, the skilfully built chimney, with its dream of Callista sitting on one side of the hearth and himself on the other—these were gropings after the answers such as he always asked of life.

"This ain't what Pap calls a sojourning place—this here's going 113 to be a real home, Callista," he said eagerly, as the two young creatures went about it examining their new habitation the next morning. "It'll be cool in the summer, and good and warm in the winter. That chimney'll draw—just look at the fire. I never have built a chimney that smoked."

"Did you build the chimney, Lance?" Callista asked him, leaning on his arm.

"I did that," he told her. "They're always after me to build other folks' chimneys and lay other people's hearthstones, and I ain't so very keen to do it—and it don't pay much—up here. But my own—one for you and me to sit by—"

He broke off and stared down at her, his eyes suddenly full of dreams. Oh, the long winter evenings; they two together beside the leaping hearth-fire. They would be as one. Surely into this citadel he had builded for his life, the enemy—the olden lonesomeness—could never come.

They had their bit of breakfast, and Lance was about to go down to the Settlement to purchase the wherewithal for the impromptu infare. It was hard to leave her. He went out and fed the black horses and came back to say good-bye once more. His team was his hope of a subsistence, seeing that there was no cleared land to farm. He and they together could earn a living for two or three 114 months yet. After that, there would be small opportunity throughout the winter for teaming. Through the summer he had been hauling tan-bark on the contract for old man Derf. Nearly all of this money he had spent upon the house; and he felt he had now to draw upon what remained—though it was not yet quite due—for the expenses of the infare. Callista was down at the hearth as he entered, the tiny blaze in its center warming the whiteness of her throat and chin where she bent to hang a pot on the bar his skill and forethought had placed there for her. Something mighty and primal and terribly sweet shook the soul of Lance Cleaverage as he looked at her kneeling there. She was his—his mate. He would never be alone again. He ran to her and dropped his arm about her. She turned up to him that flushing, tender, responsive countenance which was new to both of them.

"Hadn't I better buy you a pair of slippers?" he asked her, just for the pleasure of having her answer.

"I reckon I don't need 'em, Lance," she said soberly, getting to her feet and moving with him toward the door. "If I could dance—or if I ever did dance—I might have need of such."

"Dance!" echoed her husband with quick tenderness, looking down at her as they paused on the doorstone. "If you was to dance, Callista, there wouldn't any of the other gals want to stand up on the floor beside you. I'm goin' to get the slippers."

He rode away on his black horse, her fond eyes following him; 115 and the sight of her standing in the door waving her hand was his last vision of home.

At the gate, far down the slope, he stopped for some imaginary investigation of his accoutrements, but really to have an excuse to turn and wave to Callista, cupping his hands and calling back, "I'm going to bring you the finest pair of slippers I can buy."

For in his pocket was one of her shoes, and in his mind the firm intention of getting so light and flexible a pair of slippers that his girl should be coaxed into learning to dance. Callista not dance—it was unthinkable! Of course she would dance. Vaguely his mind formed the picture of her swaying to the rhythm of music. His eyes half closed, he let black Satan choose his own gait, as his arms felt somehow the light pressure of her form within them, and he was dancing with Callista. On—on—on through the years with Callista. She should not grow old and faded and workworn, nor he hardened, commonplace, indifferent. There should be love and tenderness—beauty and music and movement—in their lives. And she should dance for him—with him—Callista, who had never yet danced with anyone.

Early morning shadows lay cool across the road; ground-squirrels frisked among the boulders by the way. The far mountains were of 116 a wonderful morning color, not blue, but a blend of the tint of the golden sun-warmed slopes with that of the air; a color of dream, of high romance—a color of ideals.

At one time he was roused from his thoughts by a bee-like drone of voices, accompanied by jangling cowbells. Around the turn ahead of him came a herd of spotted yearlings, their shaggy hides clustered with the valley's wayside burrs. They took the road, crowding stupidly against his horse, and shuffled by; then followed two riders, driving the bunch to mountain pastures to find their own living until winter should set in—an old man in a faded hat and shawl, gaunt, humped over his saddle-bow; and his son beside him on a better horse, but colorless of feature as himself.

"Howdy," said Lance, smiling, and they answered him, "Howdy."

But he was moved to a new pity for these men, whom he did not know, and for all their kind who are born and live, God knew why, without the eagle power of soaring into blue gulfs of dream. He rode with his head high, eye bright, his cheek glowing, his whole body tingling in the exquisite flow of the frost-sweetened morning air upon it. The horse, too, felt the touch of last night's frost, and fretted against the bit until Lance, with a shout, let him go. Then the road underfoot rushed past with the wind as the two splendid, exultant creatures flew 117 over it, for the moment so far in sympathy that they seemed one. They found themselves reluctantly slowing down at the front fence of the Derf place. The pack of hounds burst from under the porch, and ran baying out to meet Lance. Iley Derf's Indian husband crouched at the corner of the cabin picking up something, and moved noiselessly away with an armful of wood. The clamor of the hounds brought Derf himself out, and Lance had a glimpse of women moving about at household work in the cabin.

"Light—light and come in," Garrett Derf greeted him. "I hear you and old Jeff Drumright had it up an' down last night, and that you beat the old hypocrite out."

"Much obliged, I ain't got time to get down," Lance answered, ignoring the rest of Derf's speech. "I just stopped as I was passing to get some money."

Derf's eyes narrowed to slits. He lounged forward, bent and secured a bit of wood from the chip pile and commenced to whittle. Such rapid and abrupt negotiations are quite foreign to mountain business ethics, where it takes a half a day to collect a day's wages.

"Want some money," Derf repeated contemplatively. "You mean that thar money for the haulin', I reckon."

"Yes," returned Lance impatiently, "I couldn't very well mean any other."

"Well, Lance, you shorely ain't forgettin' that that thar money 118 ain't due till next month," Derf said, setting a foot on the chopping block and proceeding to pick his teeth with the toothpick he had shaped. "The haulin' ain't all done yet."

"No, I ain't forgot that; but I knew you had money by you, and I didn't reckon you'd object to paying some of it ahead of time."

Cleaverage forced himself to speak civilly, though his temper was rising. Derf chuckled.

"Now see here," he shifted the raised foot, and set forth evidently on a long argument. "Thar ain't no man livin' that likes to pay money afore hit's due. Ef I've got the cash by me, that's my good fortune. Ef you want payment ahead of time, it's worth somethin'. What do you aim to take for the debt as it stands, me to pay you today? Of course I'm good for it; but this here business is the same as discountin' a note, and that calls for money. What'll you take, Lance?"

"Whatever you'll give me, I reckon," Lance came back quickly, with light scorn. "Looks like you've got it your own way. What are you offering?"

"Oh, I ain't offerin' nothin'," Derf receded from his proposition. A shrewd enjoyment was evident beneath the surface stupidity and reluctance. "It's you that wants the money. Looks like you must want it pretty bad."

Nothing but the fact that he conceived it necessary to have the 119 funds, kept Lance from breaking out wrathfully and leaving his tormentor.

"See here, Garrett Derf," he said at last, divided between scorn and angry dignity, "I made you one offer—and I'd think the meanest man would call it good enough—I'll take what money you choose to give me. Now you can say the rest."

"See here, Lance," echoed Derf, grinning, and glancing toward the cabin, "you ort not to trade so careless these days and times. Yo're a married man now; you've got to look out for yo' spare cash, or yo' ol' woman'll be in yo' hair. What you needin' all this here money for, anyway?"

The day before, Derf durst not for his life inquire so closely into Lance Cleaverage's affairs. Now he felt that he held the boy in a cleft stick. Something of this Lance understood; also, the allusion to Callista's right to vise his bargains stung him beyond reason. No doubt he knew at bottom that what he was now engaged on was unfair to her.

"If you're going to pay, you'd better be about it," he said to Derf. "I've got some buying to do when I get my money, and Frazee's store is a right smart ways from here."

Derf came through the fence and laid a detaining hand on Satan's mane, getting nipped at for his pains.

"You ain't got the time to go down to the store and buy, and git back home by night," he argued. "Better trade with me, Lance. I 120 brung up a wagon load of goods last time I was down. I aim to put in shelving and set up regular next month."

A quick change went over Lance's face.

"Have you got any women's slippers—that size?" the bridegroom asked eagerly, drawing Callista's shoe from his pocket.

Derf took the shoe in his hand and fingered it, bending so his countenance was concealed. Lance became aware of a heaving of the man's shoulders, a gurgling, choking sound that at length resolved itself into a fierily offensive chuckle.

"Buyin' shoes for her the fust day!" snickered Garrett Derf.

The young fellow bent from his saddle and swooped the bit of foot-gear out of the other's fingers—it looked so much as though he would clout Garrett Derf on the side of the head with it that the latter dodged hastily.

"Are you going to trade, or are you not?" he asked with blazing eyes. "I got something else to do besides stand here talking."

"I'll give you half," bantered Derf, still holding discreetly out of range, but wiping the tears of delicious mirth from the corners of his eyes.

"I'll take it," returned Lance sharply, thrusting forth his hand. "Have you got it with you?"

The chance was too good to lose. Derf instantly ceased 121 chuckling, reached down in a capacious pocket and hauled up a great wallet, out of which he began to count the money, looking up furtively every moment to see if Lance had been only jesting, or if his temper and that reckless spirit of his were sufficiently roused to carry through the outrageous trade. But when the few bills and the bit of silver were ready, Lance took them, put them carelessly into his pocket without the usual careful fingering and counting, and wheeled Satan toward the road.

"Ain't you goin' to tell a body 'howdy'?" came a treble hail from the cabin as he did so, and Ola Derf's small face, still disfigured from her tears of last night, presented itself at the doorway. "Lance, wait a minute—I want to speak with you," the girl called; and then she came running down to the fence and out into the road. "Was you and Pap a-fussin'? Ye ain't goin' to be mad with us becaze Callista and her folks never was friendly with us, air ye?" she inquired doubtfully, looking up at him with drowned eyes.

Pity stirred Lance's heart. Poor little thing, she had always been a friendly soul, since the two were tow-headed tykes of six playing hookey together from the bit of summer school, as devoted as a dog, observant of his mood and careful of all his preferences. It was rare for her to thrust upon him her own distress, or to let him see her other than cheerful, eagerly 122 willing to forward his plans. And he remembered with resentment that both at his own home and Callista's after some heated discussion of his proposition to invite the Derfs, he had said they could have it their own way, and no invitation had been given.

"Well, you and me ain't going to fuss, anyhow, are we, Ola?" he said heartily. "I bid you to the infare at my house to-night. I was just gettin' the money from your father to buy some things that Callista'll need for it."

Square, stubbed, the little brown girl stood at the roadside shading her gaze with one small, rough hand, looking up at the mounted man with open, unchanged adoration. Her eyes—the eyes of an ignorant little half savage—enlightened by love, valued accurately the perfect carriage of his shapely head on the brown throat, the long, tapering line from waist to toe, as he sat at ease in the saddle. Who of them all was the least bit like Lance, her man of men, with his quizzical smile, his blithe, easy mastery of any situation?

"Hit's too late now for you to go away down yon to the store, ain't it. Lance?" the girl asked him timidly. "Don't you want to come in and see the new things Pappy brung up from the Settlement? I believe in my soul he's got the prettiest dancin' shoes I ever laid my eyes on—but Callista don't dance," she amended.

Lance sighted at the sun. He was entirely too late for a trip to 123 Hepzibah—he knew that. The shoe in his pocket nudged him in the side and suggested that this was the place for buying Callista's slippers. Without more ado he sprang from Satan's back, flung the reins over a fence post, and followed Ola into the big shed where the goods for the new store were piled heterogeneously on the floor.