BOOKS BY “Charles Egbert Craddock.”

(Mary N. Murfree.)

IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.

DOWN THE RAVINE. A Story for Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.

THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York.

IN THE CLOUDS

BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK, AUTHOR OF “IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS,” “DOWN THE RAVINE,” “THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1887

Copyright, 1886, By MARY N. MURFREE.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

[1]

IN THE CLOUDS.

I.

In the semblance of the cumulus-cloud from which it takes its name, charged with the portent of the storm, the massive peak of Thunderhead towers preëminent among the summits of the Great Smoky Mountains, unique, impressive, most subtly significant.

What strange attraction of the earth laid hold on this vagrant cloud-form? What unexplained permanence of destiny solidified it and fixed it forever in the foundations of the range?

Kindred thunderheads of the air lift above the horizon, lure, loiter, lean on its shoulder with similitudes and contrasts. Then with all the buoyant liberties of cloudage they rise,—rise!

Alas! the earth clasps its knees; the mountains twine their arms about it; hoarded ores of specious values weigh it down. It cannot soar! Only the cumbrous image of an ethereal thing! Only the ineffective wish vainly fashioned like the winged aspiration!

It may have said naught of this to Ben Doaks, but it exerted strenuous fascinations on the sense alert to them. Always he turned his eyes toward Thunderhead, as he came and went among his cattle on the neighboring heights of Piomingo Bald, a few miles distant to the northeast. Often he left the herder’s cabin in the woods below, and sat for hours on a rock on the summit, smoking his pipe and idly watching the varying aspects of the great peak. Sometimes it was purple against the azure heavens; or gray and sharp of outline on faint green[2] spaces of the sky; or misty, immaterial, beset with clouds, as if the clans had gathered to claim the changeling.

“’Pears-like ter me ez I couldn’t herd cattle along of a mo’ low-sperited, say-nuthin’ critter’n ye be, Ben,” his partner remarked one day, sauntering up the slope and joining him on the summit. “Ye jes’ set up hyar on the bald an’ gape at Thunderhead like ez ef ye war bereft. Now, down in the cove ye always air toler’ble good company,—nimble-tongued ez ennybody.”

He thrust his cob-pipe into his mouth and pulled away silently at it, gazing at the smoke as it curled up with delicate sinuosity and transparently blue.

Ben Doaks did not reply at once. There was no need of haste on Piomingo Bald.

“Waal, I dunno but it air a sorter lonesome place, an’ a-body don’t feel much like talkin’ no-ways,” he drawled at last. “But ye’ll git used ter it, Mink,” he added, in leisurely encouragement. “Ye’ll git used ter it, arter a while.”

Mink looked down disconsolately at the vast array of mountains below him on every side. The nearest were all tinged with a dusky purple, except for the occasional bare, garnet-colored stretches of the “fire-scalds,” relics of the desolation when the woods were burned; the varying tints were sublimated to blue in the distance; then through every charmed gradation of ethereal azure the ranges faded into the invisible spaces that we wot not of. There was something strangely overwhelming in the stupendous expanse of the landscape. It abashed the widest liberties of fancy. Somehow it disconcerted all past experience, all previous prejudice, all credence in other conditions of life. The fact was visibly presented to the eye that the world is made of mountains.

That finite quality of the mind, aptly expressing itself in mensuration, might find a certain relief in taking note of the curious “bald” itself,—seeming some three or four hundred bare acres on the summit. Wild grass grows[3] upon its gradual slope; clumps of huckleberry bushes appear here and there; occasional ledges of rock crop out. A hardy flower will turn a smiling face responsive to the measured patronage of the chilly sunshine in this rare air. The solemnity of the silence is broken only by the occasional tinkling of cow-bells from the herds of cattle among the woods lower down on the mountain side.

“I never kin git used ter it,” said Mink, desperately. “I never kin git used ter hevin’ sech dumbness about me, an’ seein’ the time go so slow. ’Pears ter me some fower or five hunderd year sence we eat brekfus’,—an’ I ain’t hongry, nuther.”

He was a tall, singularly lithe man of twenty-four or five, clad in a suit of brown jeans. He wore his coat closely buttoned over his blue-checked cotton shirt, for the August days are chilly on Piomingo Bald. His broad-brimmed white wool hat was thrust back on his head, showing his tousled auburn hair that hung down upon his collar, curling like a cavalier’s. He had a keen, clear profile, a quickly glancing, dark eye, and his complexion was tanned to a rich tint that comported well with the out-door suggestions of his powder-horn and belt and shot-pouch, which he wore, although his rifle was at the cabin. He maintained the stolid gravity characteristic of the mountaineer, but there was a covert alertness about him, a certain sharpness of attention almost inimical, and slow and dawdling as he was he gave the impression of being endowed with many an agile unclassified mental faculty.

His eyes followed the flight of a bird soaring in great circles high above the “bald,” sometimes balanced motionless in mid-air,—a pose of ineffable strength and buoyancy,—then majestically circling as before.

“That thar buzzard ’pears ter be a-loungin’ around in the sky, a-waitin’ fur we-uns ter die,” he said, lugubriously.

Doaks broke with an effort from his reverie, and turned his languid gaze on the malcontent herder.

“In the name o’ heaven, Mink Lorey,” he said solemnly, “what is it ye do like ter do?”

[4]

Despite the spark of irritation in his eye, he seemed colorless, especially as contrasted with his comrade. He had a shock of fair hair and a light brown beard; the complexion which is the complement of this type had freckled in its exposure to the sun instead of tanning, and added its original pallor to the negative effect. He had good features, but insignificant in their lack of any marked peculiarity except for the honest, candid look in the serious gray eye. He too wore a broad white wool hat and a suit of brown jeans.

Mink gazed at his companion with an expression of brightening interest. He found himself and his own idiosyncrasies, even when berated, more agreeable to contemplate than the mountains. He did not reply, perhaps appreciating that no answer was expected.

“Ye don’t like ter herd up hyar, an’ the Lord knows I ain’t keerin’ ter hev ye. Ye hev gin me ez much trouble ez all the cattle an’ thar owners besides. When ye wanted ter kem so bad, an’ sorter go partners with me, I ’lowed ye’d be lively, an’ a toler’ble good critter ter hev along. An’ ye hev been ez lonesome an’ ez onconsiderate an’ ez ill-convenient ez a weanin’ baby,” he declared, rising to hyperbole. “What do ye like ter do?”

Once more Mink refrained from reply. He looked absently at an isolated drift of mist, gigantic of outline, reaching from the zenith to the depths of Piomingo Cove, and slowly passing down the valley between the Great Smoky and the sun-flooded Chilhowee Mountain, obscuring for the moment the red clay banks of the Scolacutta River, whose current seemed a mere silver thread twining in and out of the landscape.

“Look a-hyar at the way ye go on,” said Doaks, warming to the subject, for there are few exercises so entertaining as to preach with no sense of participation in sin. “Ye went ter work at that thar silver mine in North Car’liny, an’ thar ye stayed sorter stiddy an’ peaceful till ye seen yer chance. An’ Pete Rood, he kem an’ stayed too, an’ he war sorter skeered o’ the ways,—not[5] bein’ used ter minin’. An’ then yer minkish tricks began. Fust, when that thar feller war let down inter the shaft an’ ye hed a-holt o’ the windlass, ye drapped a few clods o’ clay in on him, an’ then a leetle gravel, an’ then mo’ clay. Then he bellered that the shaft war cavin’ in on him, an’ plead an’ prayed with ye ter wind him up quick. An’ ye wouldn’t pull. An’ when the t’other fellers run thar an’ drawed that man out he war weak enough ter drap.”

“I ’member!” cried Mink, with a burst of unregenerate laughter. “He said, ‘Lemme git out’n this spindlin’ hell o’ a well!’”

He sprang up, grotesquely imitating the gesture of exhaustion with which the man had stepped out of the bucket to firm ground.

“Waal, it mought hev turned out a heap wus,” said Doaks, “’kase they ’lowed down yander ’bout Big Injun Mounting, whar Rood hails from, ez he hev got some sort’n heart-disease. An’ a suddint skeer mought hev killed him.”

“Shucks!” said Mink, incredulously. He looked disconcerted, however, and then sat down on the rock as before. Ben Doaks went on:—

“An’ that warn’t enough fur ye. When they hed Rood thar a-pumpin’ out water, all by himself all night, nuthin’ would do ye but ye must hide up thar in the Lost-Time mine in the dark o’ the midnight an’ the rain, an’ explode a lot o’ gunpowder, an’ kem a-bustin’ out at him from the mouth o’ the tunnel, wropped in a sheet an’ howlin’ like a catamount. He run mighty nigh a mile.”

“Waal,” said Mink, in sturdy argument, “I ain’t ’sponsible ’kase Peter Rood air toler’ble easy skeered.”

“They never hired ye ter work thar no mo’, bein’ ez that war ’bout all the use ye put yerse’f ter in the silver mine in North Car’liny.”

Despite the reproof, Doaks was looking kindly at him, for the wayward Mink had evidently endeared himself in some sort to the elder herder, who was weakly conscious of not regarding his enormities with the aversion they merited.

[6]

The young man’s countenance fell. His mischief differed from that of his namesake in all the sequelæ of an accusing conscience. But stay! What do we know of the mink’s midday meditations, his sober, ex post facto regrets?

“An’ what do ye do then,—’kase they turned ye off? Ye go thar of a night, when nobody’s at the windlass, an’ ye busts it down an’ flings the bucket an’ rope an’ all down the shaft.”

Mink was embarrassed. “How d’ ye know?” he retorted, with acrid futility. “How d’ ye know ’twar me?”

“’Kase it air fairly kin ter yer actions,—know it by the family favor,” said Doaks. “Ax ennybody ennywhar round the Big Smoky who did sech an’ sech, an’ they’d all say, Mink. Ye know the word they hev gin ye, ‘Mink by name an’ Mink by natur.’”

Lorey made no further feint of denial. He seemed a trifle out of countenance. He glanced over his shoulder at the rugged horizontal summit line of Chilhowee, rising high above the intervenient mountains, and sharply imposed upon the mosaic of delicate tints known as the valley of East Tennessee, which stretches so far that, despite its sharp inequalities, it seems to have the level monotony of the sea till Walden’s Ridge, the great outpost of the Cumberland Mountains, meets the concave sky.

Then, as his wandering attention returned to those sterner heights close at hand, their inexpressible gravity, their significant solemnity, which he could not apprehend, which baffled every instinct of his limited nature, smote upon him.

He broke out irritably:—

“What do ye jes’ set thar a-jowin’ at me fur, Ben, like a long-tongued woman, ’bout what I done an’ what I hain’t done, in this hyar lonesome place whar I hev been tolled ter by you-uns? I never begged ter be ’lowed ter herd along of ye, nohow. When I kem an’ axed ye ’bout’n it, ye ’lowed ye’d be powerful glad. An’ ye said ez so many o’ the farmers in the flat woods hed promised[7] ter bunch thar cattle an’ send ’em up ter ye fur the summer season, that ye war plumb skeered ’bout thar bein’ too many fur one man ter keer fur, an’ ye didn’t see how ye’d git along ’thout a partner. An’ ye ’lowed ye’d already rented Piomingo Bald right reasonable, an’ the owners o’ the cattle would pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar a head; an’ ye’d gin me a sheer ef I’d kem along an’ holp ye,—an’ all sech ez that. An’ I kem up in the spring, an’ I hev been on this hyar durned pinnacle o’ perdition ever sence. It ’minds me all the time o’ that thar high mounting in the Bible whar the Tempter

showed off all the kingdoms o’ the yearth. What ails ye ter git arter me? I hain’t tried no minkish tricks on you-uns.”

“Ye hev, Mink. Yes, ye hev.”

Mink looked bewildered for a moment. Then a shade of consciousness settled on his face. He lifted one foot over his knee, and affected to examine the sole of his boot. The light zephyr was tossing his long, tangled locks, the sun shone through their filaments. No vanity was expressed in wearing them thus,—only some vague preference, some prosaic prejudice against shears. Their fineness and lustre did nothing to commend them, and they had been contemptuously called a “sandy bresh-heap.” His bright eyes had a fringe of the same unique tint that softened their expression. He dropped his boot presently, and fixed his gaze upon a flitting yellow butterfly, lured by some unexplained fascination of fragrance to these skyey heights.

“Ye can’t make out ez I stand in yer way, enny,” he said at last, enigmatically.

Doaks’s face flushed suddenly. “Naw, I ain’t claimin’ ez I hev enny chance. Ef I hed, an’ ye war in my way,” he continued, abruptly, with a sudden flare of spirit, “I’d choke the life out’n ye, an’ fling yer wu’thless carcass ter the wolves. I’d crush yer skull with the heel o’ my boot!”

He stood up for a moment; then turned suddenly, and sat down again. Mink looked at him curiously, with narrowing lids.

[8]

Doaks’s hands were trembling. His eyes were alert, alight. The blood was pulsing fast through his veins. So revivified was he by the bare contemplation of the contingency that he seemed hardly recognizable as the honest, patient, taciturn comrade of Piomingo Bald.

“Waal,” Mink said presently, “that war one reason I wanted ter herd along o’ you-uns this year. I ’lowed I’d make right smart money through the summer season, an’ then me an’ Lethe would git married nex’ fall, mebbe. My folks air so pore an’ shiftless,—an’ I’d ez lief live along of a catamount ez Lethe’s step-mother,—an’ so I ’lowed we’d try ter git a leetle ahead an’ set up for ourselves.”

Doaks trembled with half-repressed excitement.

“Ye tole me ez ye an’ she hed quar’led,” he said. “Ye never dreampt o’ sech a thing ez savin’ fur a house an’ sech till this minit. Ye ain’t been ter see her sence ye hev been on the Big Smoky till ye fund out ez I went down thar wunst in a while, an’ the old folks favored me.”

“Waal,” retorted Mink, hardily, “I know she’d make it up with me enny minit I axed her.”

Doaks said nothing for a time. Then suddenly, “Waal, then, ef ye air layin’ off ter marry Lethe Sayles, whyn’t ye quit hangin’ round Elviry Crosby, an’ terrifyin’ Peter Rood out’n his boots? They’d hev been married afore now, ef ye hed lef’ ’em be.”

“Whyn’t she quit hangin’ round me, ye’d better say!” exclaimed Mink, with the flattered laugh of the lady-killer. “Laws-a-massy, I don’t want ter interfere with nobody. Let the gals go ’long an’ marry who they please,— an’ leave me alone!”

His manner implied, if they can! And he laughed once more.

Doaks glanced at him impatiently, and then turned his eyes away upon the landscape. Fascinations invisible to the casual gaze revealed themselves to him day by day. He had made discoveries. In some seeming indefiniteness of the horizon he had found the added[9] beauty of distant heights, as if, while he looked, the softened outline of blue peaks, given to the sight of no other creature, were sketched into the picture. Once a sudden elusive silver glinting, imperceptible to eyes less trained to the minutiæ of these long distances, told him the secret source of some stream, unexplored to its head-waters in a dark and bosky ravine. Sometimes he distinguished a stump which he had never seen before in a collection of dead trees, girdled long ago, and standing among the corn upon so high and steep a slope that the slant justified the descriptive gibe of the region, “fields hung up to dry.” The sky too was his familiar; he noted the vague, silent shapes of the mist that came and went their unimagined ways. He watched the Olympian games of the clouds and the wind. He marked

the lithe lengths of a meteor glance across the August heavens, like the elastic springing of a shining sword from its sheath. The moon looked to meet him, waiting at his tryst on the bald.

He had become peculiarly sensitive to the electric conditions of the atmosphere, and was forewarned of the terrible storms that are wont to break on the crest of the great mountain.

Often Mink appealed to him as he did now, imputing a certain responsibility.

“Enny thunder in that thar cloud?” he demanded, with the surly distrust which accompanies the query, “Does your dog bite?”

“Naw; no thunder, nor rain nuther.”

“I’m powerful glad ter hear it, ’kase I don’t ’sociate with this hyar bald when thar’s enny lightning around.”

He had heard the many legends of “lightning balls” that are represented as ploughing the ground on Piomingo, and he spoke his fears with the frankness of one possessed of unimpeachable courage.

“That’s what makes me despise this hyar spot,” he said, irritably. “Things ’pear so cur’ous. I feel like I hev accidentally stepped off’n the face o’ the yearth. An’ I hev ter go mighty nigh spang down ter the foot o’ the mounting ’fore I feel like folks agin.”

[10]

He glanced downward toward the nearest trees that asserted the right of growth about this strange and barren place. “Ye can’t git used ter nothin’, nuther. Them cur’ous leetle woods air enough ter make a man ’low he hev got the jim-jams ez a constancy. I dunno what’s in ’em! My flesh creeps whenever I go through ’em. I always feel like ef I look right quick I’ll see suthin’ awful,—witches, or harnts, or—I dunno!”

He looked down at them again, quickly; but he was sure not quickly enough.

And the woods were of a strange aspect, chiefly of oaks with gnarled limbs, full-leaved, bulky of bole, but all uniformly stunted, not one reaching a height greater than fifteen feet. This characteristic gave a weird, unnatural effect to the long avenues beneath their low-spreading boughs. The dwarfed forest encircled Piomingo Bald, and stretched along the summit of the range, unbroken save where other domes—Silar’s Bald, Gregory’s Bald, and Parsons’ Bald—rose bare and gaunt against the sky.

“Ez ter witches an’ harnts an’ them, I ain’t never seen none hyar on Piomingo Bald,” said Doaks. “It ain’t never hed the name o’ sech, like Thunderhead.”

Mink placed his elbows on his knees, and held his chin in his hand. His roving dark eyes were meditative now; some spell of imagination lay bright in their depths.

“Hev he been viewed lately?” he asked.

“Who?” demanded Doaks, rousing himself.