Ann Boyd Part 3

"I thought of you while I was gathering them," she nodded. "I'm going to try to make them just as you like them, with red, candied bars criss-crossing."

"Nothing in the pie-line can hold a candle to the dewberry unless it's the cherry," he chuckled. "The stones of the cherries sorter hold a fellow back, but I manage to make out. I et a pie once over at Darley without a stone in it, and you bet your life it was a daisy."

He went into his room for his tobacco, and Virginia sat down to stem her berries. He returned in a moment, leaning in the doorway, drawing lazily at his pipe. The widow glanced up at him, and rested her dasher on the bottom of the churn.

"I reckon folks are still talking about Ann Boyd and her flouncing out of meeting like she did," the widow remarked. "Well, that _was_ funny, but what was the old thing to do? It would take a more brazen-faced woman than she is, if such a thing exists, to sit still and hear all he said."

"Yes, they are still hammering at the poor creature's back," said Sam, "and that's one thing I can't understand, nuther. She's got dead loads of money-in fact, she's independent of the whole capoodle of you women.

Now, why don't she kick the dust o' this spot off of her heels an' go away whar she can be respected, an', by gos.h.!.+ be let alone _one_ minute 'fore she dies. They say she's the smartest woman in the state, but that don't show it-living on here whar you women kin throw a rock at her every time she raises her head above low ground."

"I've wondered why she don't go off, too," the widow said, as she peered down at the floating lumps of yellow b.u.t.ter in the snowy depths of her vessel, and deftly twirled her dasher in her fingers to make them "gather"; "but, Sam, haven't you heard that persons always want to be on the spot where they went wrong? I think she's that way. And when the facts leaked out on her, and her husband repudiated her and took the child away, she determined to stay here and live it down. But instead of calling humility and submission to her aid, she turned in to stinting and starving to make money, and now she flaunts her prosperity in our faces, as if _that_ is going to make folks believe any more in her.

Money's too easily made in evil ways for Christian people to bow before it, and possessions ain't going to keep such men as Brother Bazemore from calling her down whenever she puts on her gaudy finery and struts out to meeting. It was a bold thing for her to do, anyway, after berating him as she did when he went to her to get the use of her grove for the picnic."

"They say she didn't know Bazemore was to preach that day," said Sam.

"She'd heard that the presiding elder was due here, and I'm of the opinion that she took that opportunity to show you all she wasn't afraid to appear in public."

Virginia Hemingway threw a handful of berry-stems out into the suns.h.i.+ne in the yard. "She's a queer woman," she said, innocently, "like a character in a novel, and, somehow, I don't believe she is as bad as people make her out. I never told either of you, but I met her yesterday down on the road."

"_You_ met her!" cried Mrs. Hemingway, aghast.

"Yes, she was going home from her sugar-mill with her ap.r.o.n full of fresh eggs that she'd found down at her hay-stacks, and just as she got close to me her dress got caught on a snag and she couldn't get it loose. I stopped and unfastened it, and she actually thanked me, though, since I was born, I've never seen such a queer expression on a human face. She was white and red and dark as a thunder-cloud all at once. It looked like she hated me, but was trying to be polite for what I'd done."

"You had no business touching her dirty skirt," the widow flared up.

"The next thing you know it will go out that you and her are thick. It would literally ruin a young girl to be a.s.sociated with a woman of that stamp. What on earth could have possessed you to-"

"Oh, come off!" Sam laughed. "Why, you know you've always taught Virgie to be considerate of old folks, and she was just doing what she ought to have done for any old n.i.g.g.e.r mammy."

"I looked at it that way," said the girl, "and I'm not sorry, for I don't want her to think I hate her, for I don't. I think she has had a hard life, and I wish it were in my power to help her out of her trouble."

"Virginia, what are you talking about?" cried Mrs. Hemingway. "The idea of your standing up for that woman, when-"

"Well, Luke King used to defend her," Virginia broke in, impulsively, "and before he went away you used to admit he was the finest young man in the county. I've seen him almost shed tears when he'd tell about what she'd done for him, and how tender-hearted and kind she was."

"Tender-hearted nothing!" snapped Mrs. Hemingway, under a deep frown.

"Luke King was the only person that went about her, and she tried to work on his sympathies for some purpose or other. Besides, n.o.body knows what ever become of him; he may have gone to the dogs by this time; it looks like somebody would have heard of him if he had come to any good in the five years he's been away."

"Somehow, I think she knows where he is," Virginia said, thoughtfully, as she rose to put her berries away.

When she had gone, Sam laughed softly. "It's a wonder to me that Virgie don't know whar Luke is, _herself_," he said. "I 'lowed once that the fellow liked her powerful; but I reckon he thought she was too young, or didn't want to take the matter further when he was as poor as Job's turkey and had no sort of outlook ahead."

"I sort o' thought that, too," the widow admitted, "but I didn't want Virginia to encourage him when he was accepting so much from that woman."

Sam laughed again as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and cleaned the bowl with the tip of his finger. "Well, '_that woman_,' as you call her, is a power in the land that hates her," he said. "She knows how to hit back from her fortress in that old farm-house. George Wilson knows what it means not to stand by her in public, so does Abe Longley, that has to drive his cattle to gra.s.s two miles over the mountains. Jim Johnston, who was dead sure of renting her northeast field again next year, has been served with a notice to vacate, and now, if the latest news can be depended on, she's. .h.i.t a broad lick at half the farmers in the valley, and, while I'm a sufferer with the balance, I don't blame her one bit.

I'd 'a' done the same pine-blank thing years ago if I'd stood in her shoes."

"What's she done _now_?" asked the woman at the churn, leaning forward eagerly.

"Done? Why, she says she's tired o' footing almost the entire wheat-thres.h.i.+ng bill for twenty measly little farmers. You know she's been standing her part of the expenses to get the Empire Company to send their steam thresher here, and her contribution amounted to more than half. She's decided, by hunky, to plant corn and cotton exclusively next year, and so notified the Empire Company. They can't afford to come unless she sows wheat, and they sent a man clean from Atlanta to argue the matter with her, but she says she's her own boss, an' us farmers who has land fittin' for nothing but wheat is going to get badly left in the lurch. Oh, Bazemore opened the battle agin her, and you-uns echoed the war-cry, an' the battle is good on. I'll go without flour biscuits and pie-crust, but the fight will be interesting. The Confed' soldiers made a purty good out along about '61, an' they done it barefooted an' on hard-tack an' water. If you folks are bent on devilling the hide off of the most influential woman in our midst, just because her foot got caught in the hem of her skirt an' tripped her up when she was a thoughtless young girl, I reckon us men will have to look on an' say nothing."

"She _did_ slip up, as you say," remarked the widow, "and she's been a raging devil ever since."

"Ay! an' who made her one? Tell me that." Sam laughed. "You may not want to hear it, Jane, but some folks hint that you was at the bottom of it-some think lazy Joe Boyd would have stayed on in that comfortable boat, with a firm hand like hern at the rudder, if you hadn't ding-donged at him and told tales to him till he had to pull out."

"Huh! They say that, do they?" The widow frowned as she turned and looked straight at him. "Well, let 'em. What do I care? I didn't want to see as good-hearted a man as he was hoodwinked."

"I reckon not," Sam said, significantly, and he walked out of the pa.s.sage down towards the barn. "Huh!" he mused, as he strode along crumbling leaf-tobacco of his own growing and filling his pipe. "I come as nigh as pease tellin' the old woman some'n' else folks say, an' that is that she was purty nigh daft about Joe Boyd, once upon a time, and that das.h.i.+ng Ann cut her out as clean as a whistle. I'll bet that 'ud make my sister-in-law so dern hot she'd blister from head to foot."

V

That afternoon Jane Hemingway went out to the barn-yard. For years she had cultivated a habit of going thither, obviously to look after certain hens that nested there, but in reality, though she would not have admitted it even to herself, she went because from that coign of vantage she could look across her enemy's fertile acres right into the lone woman's doorway and sometimes catch a glimpse of Ann at work. There was one unpleasant contingency that she sometimes allowed her mind to dwell upon, and that was that Joe Boyd and his now grown daughter might, inasmuch as Ann's wealth and power were increasing in direct ratio to the diminution of their own, eventually sue for pardon and return. That had become Jane's nightmare, riding her night and day, and she was not going to let any living soul know the malicious things she had done and said to thwart it. Vaguely she regarded the possible coming-back of the father and daughter as her own undoing. She knew the pulse of the community well enough to understand that nothing could happen which would so soon end the war against Ann Boyd as such a reconciliation.

Yes, it would amount to her own undoing, for people were like sheep, and the moment one ran to Ann Boyd's side in approval, all would flock around her, and it would only be natural for them to turn against the one woman who had been the primal cause of the separation.

Jane was at the bars looking out on a little, seldom-used road which ran between her land and Ann's, when her attention was caught by a man with a leather hand-bag strapped on his shoulders trudging towards her. He was a stranger, and his dusty boots and trousers showed that he had walked a long distance. As he drew near he took off his straw hat and bowed very humbly, allowing his burden to swing round in front of him till he had eased it down on the turf at his feet.

"Good-evening, madam," he said. "I'd like to show you something if you've got the time to spare. I've made so many mountain folks happy, and at such a small outlay, that I tell you they are glad to have me come around again. This is a new beat to me, but I felt it my duty to widen out some in the cause of human suffering."

"What is it you've got?" Jane asked, smiling at his manner of speaking, as he deftly unlocked his valise and opened it out before her.

"It's a G.o.dsend, and that's no joke," said the peddler. "I've got a household liniment here at a quarter for a four-ounce flask that no family can afford to be without. You may think I'm just talking because it's my business, but, madam, do you know that the regular druggists all about over this country are in a combine not to sell stuff that will keep people in good trim? And why? you may ask me. Why? Because, I say, that it would kill the'r business. Go to one, I dare you, or to a doctor in regular practice, and they will mix up chalk and sweetened water and tell you you've got a serious internal complaint, and to keep coming day after day till your pile is exhausted, and then they may tell you the truth and ask you to let 'em alone. I couldn't begin, madam-I don't know your name-I say I couldn't begin to tell you the wonderful cures this liniment has worked all over this part of the state."

"What is it good for?" Jane Hemingway's face had grown suddenly serious.

The conversation had caused her thoughts to revert to a certain secret fear she had entertained for several months.

"Huh-good for?-excuse me, but you make me laugh," the peddler said, as he held a bottle of the dark fluid up before her; "it's good for so many things that I could hardly get through telling you between now and sundown. It's good for anything that harms the blood, skin, or muscles.

It's even good for the stomach, although I don't advise it taken internally, for when it's rubbed on the outside of folks they have perfect digestions; but what it is best for is sprains, lameness, or any skin or blood eruption. Do you know, madam, that you'd never hear of so many cancers and tumors, that are dragging weary folks to early graves hereabouts, if this medicine had been used in time?"

"Cancer?" The widow's voice had fallen, and she looked towards Ann Boyd's house, and then more furtively over her shoulder towards her own, as if to be sure of not being observed. "That's what I've always wondered at, how is anybody to know whether a-a thing is a cancer or not without going to a doctor, and, as you say, even _then_ they may not tell you the truth? Mrs. Twiggs, over the mountain, was never let know she had her cancer till a few months before it carried her off. The family and the doctor never told her the truth. The doctor said it couldn't be cured, and to know would only make the poor thing brood over it and be miserable."

"That's it, now," said the medicine-vender; "but if it had been taken at the start and rubbed vigorously night and morning, it would have melted away under this fluid like dirt under lye-soap and warm water. Madam, a cancer is nothing more nor less than bad circulation at a certain point where blood stands till it becomes foul and putrefies. I can-excuse me if I seem bold, but long experience in handling men and women has learnt me to understand human nature. Most people who are afraid they've got cancers generally show it on their faces, an' I'll bet my hat and walk bareheaded to the nighest store to get another that you are troubled on that line-a little bit, anyway."

Jane made no denial, though her thin face worked as she strove adequately to meet his blunt a.s.sertion. "As I said just now"-she swallowed, and avoided his covetous glance-"how is a person really to _know_?"

"It's a mighty easy matter for _me_ to tell," said the peddler, and he spoke most rea.s.suringly. "Just you let me take a look at the spot, if it's no trouble to you, and I may save you a good many sleepless nights.

You are a nervous, broody sort of a woman yourself, and I can see by your face that you've let this matter bother you a lots."

"You think you could tell if you-you looked at it?" Jane asked, tremulously.

"Well, if I didn't it would be the first case I ever diagnosed improperly. Couldn't we go in the house?"

Jane hesitated. "I think I'd rather my folks didn't know-that is, of course, if it _is_ one. My brother-in-law is a great hand to talk, and I'd rather it wasn't noised about. If there's one thing in the world I don't like it's the pity and the curiosity of other folks as to just about how long I'm going to hold out."

"I've seed a lots o' folks like you." The peddler smiled. "But, if you don't mind tellin', where's the thing located?"

"It's on my breast," Jane gulped, undecidedly, and then, the first bridge having been crossed, she unb.u.t.toned her dress at the neck with fumbling fingers and pulled it down. "Maybe you can see as well here as anywhere."