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Show mWJEGSNS El CHAPTER XVI 19 THROUGH the next weeks after Iteuben had gone Cynthia was much alone in and about the house. She would often stand by the well In the evening, the days visibly growing longer, watching the shadow shad-ow of the Pinnacle glide up the hillside and finally rest Its finger on the fresh graves of Sparrel and Julia, Ju-lia, sweeping them Into the eternal quiet of the dust In a year. One procession of the seasons, spring to spring. B'rom the garden behind the picket fence, from the steam-mill, steam-mill, to the profound silence of Cranesnest Shelf. As the days passed with their thought of Reuben Reu-ben and the life ahead, the finality of the procession began to seem Bupportable to her, so much grief tempering the heart to the sorrow Inherent in a precarious life. The way lay onward and not back and was filled with a degree of hope bravely dlsproportloned to the defeat de-feat of yesterday. The mountain laurel against the sun-warmed rocks of the Pinnacle would be flushing pink at the bud hearts, and the birds would be welcoming wel-coming the return of another spring. She would go there now to meet them and weave Reuben and her vision of life with him Into the memory of that place where she had through the years communed with herself. In the afternoon she went out through the barnyard, down Into he Just perceptible green mist In the orchard, across the creek, stepping step-ping through the low sound of the water playing among the rocks In the bed, and then the sharp climb up the steep contours of the path. It was good to feel again the muscle mus-cle pull In her calves and thighs, the thump of her heart, the sweet Intake of fresh breath, to see the valley begin to spread and drop away, to hear the cattle, the sheep, the chickens, recede below her. Step by climbing step she mounted upward up-ward out of the events that had assaulted the Wolfpen Hollows In a year. She felt her soul growing calmer, released from the sharp clutch of ever repeated broodlngs: Shellenberger, lumbering, Julia, Sparrel, the place; the place, Spar-rel, Spar-rel, lumbering, Abral, Julia ; Reuben Reu-ben and the vision of him taking possession of her. At the Pinnacle she passed her hand over her forehead, lifting her head, breathing mountain air into her mouth, feeling exalted by the triumph of glad animal life over the depression of spirit She wandered around the .rock ledges of the Pinnacle, Pin-nacle, peeping down the abrupt emptiness to the creek and mill below, be-low, examining the miracle of columbine col-umbine extracting sustenance from i a break in the rock, musing on the timeless heavy flopping of crows' wings, the effortless sailing on the wind up and down over Wolfpen and Gannon. There were cardinals In the boughs of the pine tree on , the edge of the precipice. She sat on the ledge with her feet resting on the last shelf and looked across the valley, yielding to her unword-ed unword-ed thoughts. "April and another spring rolling silently Into these hills and spilling Into Wolfpen. It's a queer gladness glad-ness all tangled up with a sorrow and longing in a body's heart when you see the spring coming green again. I reckon It Is the seed I urge pent up for a winter and breaking break-ing out of its shell. Wanting to feel the earth warm around It, and open Itself and say, 'Here I am, take me and I shall bear fruit' I wonder If the sweet-corn seeds are like me, thinking of Mother's garden as I do of Reuben? Would I dare even to thltik of it? Corn seed Into the warm ground, man seed . . . woman wom-an ... a planting. To bear his children. With Reuben, In the spring, in a few more days It will be. To be thinking of such things. Always before it seemed like a thought of shame to think of a man in that way. But not with Reuben Reu-ben and not now. Like it was a part of a body's life, beautiful, the best part Looking to tills time. Strong he Is and gentle in bis strength. "Last spring I sal here and had never seen him. Then Mother was making her garden. Then Daddy was excited about his mill, not thluking of selling land or lying on Citinesnest Shelf In a year. I will think of my father. Wolfpen without with-out him ; Jasper to carry on ; Jasper's Jas-per's new wife to have the house now. Ilow does a body go about -ginning to think about things? First you have a place where you feel alone with yourself. Like this. Where the lay of the land is like all the folds In our own soul. They fit fight over each other and then you haven't any body any more. The way the sky and the mountains come together in the blue. The stir of thoughts rises there in the heart of God. It comes with the airy waves of the mountaintops and the dark blue pockets over the hollows, surging to me, play of His thoughts forever beating on this Pinnacle. This cardinal feather fluttering out of the sky almost Into my lap, I guess it must be a blood drop from the head of God. The sudden bell note of the cardinal's call from the laural spray Is the music of His voice through these hills. It does not belong to the redblrd. Another one sounded It last year, still another an-other the year before. He lends it to each bird generation, blowing upon them with His breath as they come into the earth. The Indians heard it too, and they are dead. My grandfathers heard It and my father, fa-ther, and they are dead as the birds are. Now I hear it going on. The feathers flutter in the pine boughs and flit down Into the apple orchard In Wolfpen for a season or two and are brushed away. But the bell note sings on forever over these hills in the very breath of God. "Or could it be after all a sigh? A despairing sigh from a bleeding heart before the black plague on hawk's wings stifles the melody of the song? My father's voice stopped by a stone in the hands of wicked men. I will think of him. Yonder is the upper ford and the big rocks where a great evil hawk battered the song from my father's mouth. There floats over Ferguson's meadow mea-dow the black shadow from the only cloud In the sky. It seems to lie now at rest on the rocks at the very spot where they struck him down. And still no trace of them that did it Why did It have to happen? Or Doug broken up and blinded by a worthless log? There Is no way, no reckoning with destruction and death. Hurrying on somewhere else to strike again, but giving no answer an-swer to a body's why. Where in the heart of God does death dwell? I guess there is also no answer to a body's where. "I keep thinking of death, i will not think of death. I will think of Daddy.of Sparrel Pattern. Every eye between here and Pikeville turned upon him when he rode. Jasper tries to sit a horse like him but he can't Jesse seems to be dreaming when be rides. Abral is fidgety. Daddy rode upright and easy and men looked at him. And women. I can't keep going straight with a thought I steal up on one to catch it in band like it was a moth on a grapevine, and when I reach out my fingers it flutters away. "Reuben marrying me. Married? It Is a strange word. Wife. From Cynthia Pattern who always lived and her mother and father and brothers as a girl sister, to wife and the love of a man, married and in a house with him, together in the same bed. With Reuben. Husband, he will be. Children . . . Julia or Sparrel, or ougl.: he to be called Reuben? To leave Wolfpen and go away with him the way Mother left 'Scioto and came here with Sparrel Pattern, and Granny Louverna from Virginia with Saul. His eyes when he told of the house In the orchard on the hill above the river. I could live forever In the look In his eyes. Maybe I could marry In Mother's dress, with a little lit-tle making over, for she was taller than I and prettier. Reuben says no, but she really was. How the days go since he went away. Planning Plan-ning all the time, fixing out clothes and quilts and blankets, too, good to use, to keep for keepsakes, no, not too good for Reuben to use. "That day Jesse went away and I cried, and Doug came and grabbed me and said Reuben wouldn't get me. I wonder what he aimed to 6V then, and if he would have done It if It hadn't happened to him. He Is a fine boy and I could nearly love him for the proud way he went Into himself and never said another word to me. I hope he marries Judy and has a good family. I couldn't ever have, Doug. "I will think of my father. 1 never heard him lift his tongue on anybody. Not even on the bad men coming into these hills and giving them a bad name. Why do bnd men kill the good men? Because they snenk behind a rock from behind. They wouldn't, none of them, staud up to him eye to eye like a man straight and fair. Abral calls them dirty devils, and keeps saying to Jasper they ought to catch and hang them. Jesse thinks Sheriff Hatler'll got them because he has some clues? It might load to more feuds. There's boon too much feuding and fighting In those hills. Daddy always al-ways said about those Harrisons and McCIurgs. Patterns have kept out of any trouble ever since they have boon here. The law's tot to keep this valley an orderly place for a man and his family,' lie said that evening before he went away. I guess that meant Jasper and his family. Jesse is wrapped up In the law and won't want to live here. Abral is right now getting ready to go on a raft I hope he takes it around the curves without running into the bank. Or would it be better bet-ter If he grounded? No. It wouldn't He's so confident He ought to keep it. He'll go on down to Cincinnati or np to Pittsburgh, I'm sure, hearing hear-ing Shellenberger talk of the world. Shellenberger. He owes me for his board. He'll never offer to pay it. He owes Daddy a thousand dollars on a note and a payment on the place. Jesse says it ought to have been a mortgage Instead of a note because it's hard to collect a note. I don't know. Neither did Jesse last fall. Jesse says he'll look after all that now. He says there Is enough money for me to have twelve hundred dollars when I go with Reuben. Is that an awful lot of money? And Reuben had some saved. Maybe It would be enough to buy the orchard so we could start off In our own place. Reuben will be surprised. What did they use to call It? A dowry? Reuben, I bring a dowry of twelve hundred dollars cash and a chest of linen made on the loom in Wolfpen Mother had a chest, too, but no money. Only she was a beautiful girl, more than I am. I reckon if Shellenberger Shel-lenberger gets his other debts paid it won't hurt me any to give him his victuals and his bed. Even if he did want two sheets all the time. "The house looks so little- down-there down-there in the trees, but it appears happy again, like it understood It was about to start all over again with Jasper and Jane Burden. Saul and Louverna, then Barton and Mima, then Tivis and Adah, then Sparrell and Julia, and now Jasper and Jane, the people ending but the house going on and the things In it Jane is a good girl. She's been at town a right smart but she Is a good girl. She can't weave as well as Mother or me, but maybe she'll Cynthia Wat Finishing the Dishes. learn better. And she won't have the garden Mother made, with every ev-ery clod out no bigger than a robin's rob-in's egg, and the flowers all around the fence. But she can do all right and I don't begrudge ber the place much only I'm right glad I'm going go-ing down to a cottage in on orchard looking over two rivers and three states to live with Reuben. I'd rather rath-er be away and let Jane and Jasper Jas-per have it the way they want It. She'll want things changed some, and right she should, but I would not want anything different from the way Mother left It. And Jasper Jas-per will ask her about things and not me. It Is the costom and custom cus-tom is a good thing. Mother coming com-ing up here, me going down there. I guess it is about the same, always al-ways new things for a body to get used to. I reckon It's life." In a series of pictures and with few words formed she let her mind play over the things that touched her life. Sitting there on the rocks, high above the valley, each mountain moun-tain ridge shouldering its blue-green blue-green mist above the one before it, stretching on Into the purple fusion with the sky on the horizon. The graves on Cranesnest Shelf were wrapped in peace. The mill was idle and the abandoned wheel at rest. Behind her in Dry Creek she heard the shouts of the men. She had not for a long time looked into that hollow. Now she felt released from It and detached. She would turn and confront It from this high place. She arose from the ledge and climbed across the back of the Pinnacle. Pin-nacle. The brown pine needles were thick on the thin soil under the clump of trees. Emerging, she stood on the Jagged rock on the west, the sun in her face, and looked down into Dry Creek. It was a changed place. The mountainsides ere desolate and almost al-most bald now as far as she could see. Brush piles were scattered on the slopes. The round gray splotches of wood - ashes from the burned heaps spotted the hills like the after-marks of a disease. a few-scrubs, few-scrubs, worthless and unprofimliie trees, scorched and scared by the brush fires, withered among the dead stumps. Already a hundred in-! trlcately lace.1 girlies were outlined on tlie naked hills where the eiar.t poplars stood, cut by ti e muddy wa:e as it rushed duwn into Dry ; Creek. The men were gathered about the mountains of logs at the splash dam and in Gannon creek linking rafts with tie-poles. "Death here also and destruction. Well, that's what that man has done to the woods. I reckon there's nothing one poor body can do abou; it only watch the wind come over from Wolfpen to wake up the trees when the night's over, and then hurry sad away because they're dead, like Grandfather Barton. Still I guess you needn't weep over it. only Just wait, and maybe all the little under trees will grow up to meet the wind and hide the scars of Dry Creek. The earth Is very old, and to her a season Is only an evening and a morning. And death is no older and no stronger than is life." For the third time In the year, Reuben came to Wolfpen. He rode over with Jesse from Pikeville near the end of April in the evening before be-fore the wedding. Cynthia was finishing fin-ishing the dishes and gazing out of the window when he came into view. She was enraptured to see him, watching him as he came through the yard, observed the neat black suit, the Gladstone collar, the wide black silk cravat with small white dots that covered the bosom of his shirt. "He's a handsome man, and as fine a figure as Sparrel Pattern off a horse. And Jesse begins to look professional, but he's still a little self-conscious about it." People came and the house was full. Lucy and her family from Pattern Landing, Jenny and her family from Horsepen Branch, all came bearing baskets of food for the wedding. Cynthia gave them welcome trying as usual to convince con-vince herself that these were her sisters, born of Sparrel and Julia in this house, and married here as she herself was about to be. But they with their silent men remained strange to her, even' though they took possession of the house and acted as if it were their own wedding. wed-ding. The children were irrepressible, irrepressi-ble, climbing about the barn and sheds, watching the sheep and the newborn lambs, feeding the horses and mules: they were her nephews and nieces more than her sisters were sisters. She liked them around her. "They will grow up in their turn, I reckon, to carry on the place. Unless they're like Abral and Jesse. What, 1 wonder, will my children grow up to be like, not born on Wolfpen but down at the mouth of Sandy?" People from Gannon Creek came all morning to be at the wedding of Cynthia Pattern. It was also their third Journey within a year ; "I'm sure glad to go there to a wedding, wed-ding, after all the trouble they've had in that house." The womenfolk took over the big kitchen, the men the barn, the yard and the barn-lot. They were impressed, as always, by the ingenuity of the Pattern men in Inventing Improvements around the house. They commended Jasper Jas-per on the place he had to start out with, they asked Jesse about the law, and Reuben about the business busi-ness boom In the Ohio Valley. Shellenberger, Shel-lenberger, returning from Pittsburgh Pitts-burgh and the river towns, condescendingly conde-scendingly Joined them. The biggest business in history was sweeping to the West now. He might consider leasing and buying up Gannon Creek land in reach of the creek for lumbering. Sheriff Hariei and his deputies came, pleased with the law. They thought they had captured the man who murdered Sparrel. They had him In Jail over at Williamson. The sheriff was going over there In person per-son after this wedding of Cynthia Pattern, the daughter of Sparrel. He talked a great deal. "A good match this Is. That young Warren feller has a head on him. A fine surveyor, too, they say. Doing big things down the river. Getting the finest girl in this valley, if you ask my opinion. A fine couple they make. Yes, she give up Doug Mason long before he got smashed. Sparrel told me. Yes, sure, Doug's a good boy all right, but not the one for that girl, much less now. But I tell you, boys, I'd rather put a rope around the neck of the dirty devil that waylaid way-laid Sparrel Pattern than put an arm around the purtlest girl in these hills, 'pon my honor I would. Have a drink to It." Amos Barnes came over with the Fergusons, having stopped' with them the night before. He had set aside this day ever since he had married Jasper and Jane Burden at Pikeville. (TO BE CONTINUED) |