第23章 IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE(1)

Polly Ann lived alone with her grandfather, her father and mother having been killed by Indians some years before.There was that bond between us, had we needed one.Her father had built the cabin, a large one with a loft and a ladder climbing to it, and a sleeping room and a kitchen.The cabin stood on a terrace that nature had levelled, looking across a swift and shallow stream towards the mountains.There was the truck patch, with its yellow squashes and melons, and cabbages and beans, where Polly Ann and I worked through the hot mornings; and the corn patch, with the great stumps of the primeval trees standing in it.All around us the silent forest threw its encircling arms, spreading up the slopes, higher and higher, to crown the crests with the little pines and hemlocks and balsam fir.

There had been no meat save bacon since the McChesneys had left, for of late game had become scarce, and old Mr.Ripley was too feeble to go on the long hunts.So one day, when Polly Ann was gone across the ridge, I took down the long rifle from the buckhorns over the hearth, and the hunting knife and powder-horn and pouch beside it, and trudged up the slope to a game trail I discovered.

All day I waited, until the forest light grew gray, when a buck came and stood over the water, raising his head and stamping from time to time.I took aim in the notch of a sapling, brought him down, cleaned and skinned and dragged him into the water, and triumphantly hauled one of his hams down the trail.Polly Ann gave a cry of joy when she saw me.

``Davy,'' she exclaimed, ``little Davy, I reckoned you was gone away from us.Gran'pa, here is Davy back, and he has shot a deer.''

``You don't say?'' replied Mr.Ripley, surveying me and my booty with a grim smile.

``How could you, Gran'pa?'' said Polly Ann, reproachfully.

``Wal,'' said Mr.Ripley, ``the gun was gone, an' Davy.

I reckon he ain't sich a little rascal after all.''

Polly Ann and I went up the next day, and brought the rest of the buck merrily homeward.After that Ibecame the hunter of the family; but oftener than not Ireturned tired and empty-handed, and ravenously hungry.

Indeed, our chief game was rattlesnakes, which we killed by the dozens in the corn and truck patches.

As Polly Ann and I went about our daily chores, we would talk of Tom McChesney.Often she would sit idle at the hand-mill, a light in her eyes that I would have given kingdoms for.One ever memorable morning, early in the crisp autumn, a grizzled man strode up the trail, and Polly Ann dropped the ear of corn she was husking and stood still, her bosom heaving.It was Mr.

McChesney, Tom's father--alone.

``No, Polly Ann,'' he cried, ``there ain't nuthin'

happened.We've laid out the hill towns.But the Virginna men wanted a guide, and Tom volunteered, and so he ain't come back with Rutherford's boys.''

Polly Ann seized him by the shoulders, and looked him in the face.

``Be you tellin' the truth, Warner McChesney?'' she said in a hard voice.

``As God hears me,'' said Warner McChesney, solemnly.

``He sent ye this.''

He drew from the bosom of his hunting shirt a soiled piece of birch bark, scrawled over with rude writing.

Polly seized it, and flew into the house.

The hickories turned a flaunting yellow, the oaks a copper-red, the leaves crackled on the Catawba vines, and still Tom McChesney did not come.The Cherokees were homeless and houseless and subdued,--their hill towns burned, their corn destroyed, their squaws and children wanderers.One by one the men of the Grape Vine settlement returned to save what they might of their crops, and plough for the next year--Burrs, O'Haras, Williamsons, and Winns.Yes, Tom had gone to guide the Virginia boys.All had tales to tell of his prowess, and how he had saved Rutherford's men from ambush at the risk of his life.To all of which Polly Ann listened with conscious pride, and replied with sallies.

``I reckon I don't care if he never comes back,'' she would cry.``If he likes the Virginny boys more than me, there be others here I fancy more than him.''

Whereupon the informant, if he were not bound in matrimony, would begin to make eyes at Polly Ann.Or, if he were bolder, and went at the wooing in the more demonstrative fashion of the backwoods--Polly Ann had a way of hitting him behind the ear with most surprising effect.

One windy morning when the leaves were kiting over the valley we were getting ready for pounding hominy, when a figure appeared on the trail.Steadying the hood of her sunbonnet with her hand, the girl gazed long and earnestly, and a lump came into my throat at the thought that the comer might be Tom McChesney.Polly Ann sat down at the block again in disgust.

``It's only Chauncey Dike,'' she said.

``Who's Chauncey Dike?'' I asked.

``He reckons he's a buck,'' was all that Polly Ann vouchsafed.

Chauncey drew near with a strut.He had very long black hair, a new coonskin cap with a long tassel, and a new blue-fringed hunting shirt.What first caught my eye was a couple of withered Indian scalps that hung by their long locks from his girdle.Chauncey Dike was certainly handsome.

``Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?''

he cried, when a dozen paces away.

``I wouldn't be if you was the only one left ter choose,''

Polly Ann retorted.

Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter.But I could see that he was not very much pleased.

``Wal,'' said he, ``I 'low ye won't see Tom very soon.

He's gone to Kaintuckee.''

``Has he?'' said Polly Ann, with brave indifference.

``He met a gal on the trail--a blazin' fine gal,'' said Chauncey Dike.``She was goin' to Kaintuckee.And Tom--he 'lowed he'd go 'long.''

Polly Ann laughed, and fingered the withered pieces of skin at Chauncey's girdle.

``Did Tom give you them sculps?'' she asked innocently.

Chauncey drew up stiffly.