Backwoods Girl -- A Romance by Peggy Gaddis by Rick Jackson

BACKWOODS GIRL

PEGGY GADDIS

©1954 Peggy Gaddis Published by Wonder Publishing Group Books, a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC Northville, MI 48167 ©2011 Wonder Publishing Group, a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC ISBN: 978-1-61013-090-5 All rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 .

. 7

CHAPTER 4 .

CHAPTER 2 . CHAPTER 3 . CHAPTER 5 .

. . .

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CHAPTER 1

Big Jim McCurdy had been lost for twenty-four hours, and he was weak from hunger and exhaustion. January on this exposed mountain was bitterly cold, and he had spent all of the previous night huddled in a small cave. He had kept from freezing by the small fire he had been able to kindle, despite the dampness of the dead branches he had used. When, in the first dusk of his second day on Old Hungry, he saw the tiny log cabin, ancient and weather-beaten, tucked under an overhang of the mountain, he knew the happiest moment of his life. He stumbled, slid and fell down the last of the slope to the dooryard of the cabin, and went to his knees. As he tried to pull himself erect, the door of the cabin swung open, and the biggest, fiercest-looking dog he had ever seen crouched a few feet from him, an ugly growl deep in its throat. Above Jim and the dog, a girl’s sharp voice cried out. He saw her standing in the doorway of the cabin, tense and straight, a shotgun held menacingly in her hands and aimed directly at him. “Who’re you—and whut do you want?” demanded the girl. “Call off this dog!” Jim said. “Seth won’t hurt you, less’n I tell him to,” said the girl. “Whut do you want?” Jim grinned weakly. “A little of that famed southern hospitality would be nice,” he answered. “I’ve been lost on the mountain since yesterday, and I’m damned near starved and half-frozen. How about letting me in long enough to get 7

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warm?” The dog crouched and growled, and cast a glance over his shoulder at the girl, who was studying Jim sharply. “Well—I reckon you can come in to the fire, effen you’ll behave yourself,” she said. Then she spoke to the dog, her tone warm and soothing. “Let him be, Seth, boy. Reckon he’s all right.” “Thanks,” said Jim, and managed to pull his tall body erect and walk without falling, to the door, where the girl stood aside, the gun held ready, the dog pacing at his heels. The cabin had a huge fireplace, and big logs were blazing in it. Jim winced as the warmth set his half-frozen body to tingling painfully. He bent above the fire, removing his thick woolen gloves to chafe his hands that were stiff and aching. The girl and the dog followed him in. The dog stood watching him, alert, ready at a word from the girl to leap upon the intruder. Jim kept glancing nervously at the dog. The girl pushed the heavy door shut, dropped the thick bar into place across it, and went quickly out of the room into a lean-to kitchen where Jim could see an old, wood-burning stove which glowed with a supper fire. In a moment, the girl came back, carrying a thick white mug which she thrust at Jim. “That’ll warm you up,” she said curtly, standing carefully out of reach of him. As Jim put out his hand for the mug, the dog growled softly and stood between him and the girl. Anticipating that the mug would contain some of the corn whiskey so well-known in the mountain country, Jim drank deeply, before the fiery stuff, with its bitter, acrid taste made

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itself known. He gasped, as the roof of his mouth exploded, and the fiery, bitter liquid burned its way down his throat. Tears sprang to his eyes and he pushed the mug away from him on the fieldstone hearth, eyeing it with horror. “The Borgias couldn’t do better!” he gasped when speech was possible again. He was infuriated to discern a glint of amusement in her coal-black eyes. “I dunno who the Borgias are. Reckon they ain’t livin’ on this mountain, or I’d know ‘em,” she said gently, and now her deep-red mouth was touched by an impish smile. “That there’s yarb-medicine. Do you a sight o’ good. Keeps you from havin’ the lung fever.” “I don’t doubt it. No self-respecting germ could stand up to a concoction like that,” Jim assured her. “Better get the rest of it down,” counseled the girl. “Like I said, it’ll keep you from havin’ the lung fever.” “Thanks, but no!” said Jim firmly, and eyed the halfemptied mug with hostility. “I’m feeling much better already. Besides, I’d rather have lung fever than third-degree burns.” “Whut’re you doin’ on the mountain this time of year?” she demanded sharply, suspicion clouding her snapping black eyes, erasing the twinkle. “I’m on a hiking trip,” Jim told her. “In January? Mister, you sure are simple. Don’t nobody, not even the mountain folks, go strayin’ round Ole Hungry in January,” she protested, and her suspicion was obviously deepening. “City folks, sure. Summertimes, the mountains is plumb infested with gals wearin’ britches an’ them little drawers they calls shorts—and fellas all got up in funnylookin’ clothes. ‘Sakes! It’s a scandal how they get done up to

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go swimmin’. Sometimes I reckon the fish mus’ be blushin’ to swim in the same lake with them. There’s a heap o’ that in the summertime, but in January? I ain’t believin’ you!” “That’s too bad, but that’s usually the way it goes when a fellow tells the absolute truth,” Jim said. His tone was serious now, almost bitter. “It just happens that I had a yen to go exploring. I got lost. And now, if by any chance you could spare a bite to eat—for which, of course, I’ll be very glad to pay you generously—I’ll be on my way.” “Ain’t no sense you gettin’ all high-and-mighty ‘cause I don’t believe you,” said the girl at last. “Reckon you got a right to go foolin’ around if you ain’t got no better sense. It’s just I don’t trust menfolks. I don’t trust wimmenfolks neither. I live here with just Seth, an’ we ain’t fond o’ prowlers.” Jim was startled. “You live here alone?” “I said with Seth,” she reminded him, and she patted the barrel of the old gun affectionately. “And I got Black Billy here, an’ I’m a right good shot. I got to be. Can’t afford to miss.” “Well, you’re perfectly safe with me, I assure you,” Jim told her, and eyed the dog who had never stopped staring at him with a cold hostility that made the hair stand up on the back of Jim’s neck. “I’d say with Seth and Black Billy you were perfectly safe, no matter how many prowlers hung around. As soon as I’ve had something to eat, I’ll relieve you of my presence, though.” The girl nodded slowly, somewhat reluctantly and turned once more to the door into the kitchen. Before she reached the door, she paused to say curtly to the dog, “Seth, watch him!” The hound eased himself to the floor, flat on his belly, his front paws stretched out, his hind legs gathered under him for

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extra leverage in case he needed to spring. His eyes clung to Jim’s face. “Long as you jest set there and mind your own business, Mister, you’re all right,” the girl told Jim. “You make one move to the kitchen, an’ Seth’ll tear you to pieces.” “I can well believe it,” Jim said. He met the dog’s look and tried not to shiver. “I have no intention of moving, I assure you.” For close to half an hour, Jim’s nostrils were filled with the appetizing odors that wafted in from the kitchen. He trembled with hunger, but he scarcely dared turn his eyes away from the dog’s unrelenting stare. The girl came back at last and began placing food on the round table in the center of the room. When she had adjusted the lighted lamp in the center of the table, she said to Jim, “You can set up, now. Vittles is ready.” Jim rose and so did the dog. The girl spoke to the dog, and Seth eased back into his crouching position, but still watched Jim with an unwinking, inimical regard. Jim looked hungrily at the food before him—a platter of fried ham, a big bowl of hominy, fried eggs, biscuits and a bowl of jam. A round dish held sweet country butter, and Jim, who was well-accustomed to epicurean feasts, thought he had never seen anything more deliciously appetizing in his life. Forgetting for the time being the dog’s watchful eyes and the girl’s suspicion, he ate heartily, and when at last he had topped off the meal with several hot, buttered biscuits and generous helpings of the jam, which he discovered was wild strawberry, he sat back sighing happily and smiled warmly at the girl.

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“Thanks for saving my life,” he said pleasantly. “I’d do as much for a starvin’ dog,” she answered him, and rose to clear the table, refusing any help from him. “And now I’d better get started,” he said and stood up. The dog growled, and he sat hastily down again. “Where was you aimin’ to go?” asked the girl. “I’m staying at Marshallville.” The girl’s eyes showed surprise. “Why, that’s clear over on t’other side of the mountain,” she protested. He nodded wryly. “I found that out the hard way, by getting lost,” he admitted. “And you’re aimin’ to try to get back there tonight?” She marveled at such incredible stupidity. “Why, Mister, that’s ten, fifteen miles, and it’s darker outside than a black cat standing against a pile o’coal. You’d never make it, not even if you was just aimin’ to get to Ghost Creek, an that ain’t more’n four, five miles.” Jim waited, and she shrugged at last and said reluctantly, “Well, reckon you’ll just have to stay here tonight.” “Maybe you’ve got a barn or a shed I could sleep in?” he suggested. The cabin was a one-room affair with a little kitchen partitioned off the side. It had only one bed in it.“You’d freeze to death in the barn,” she said. “I got Bessie bedded down out there, but cows is tougher’n humans. You’ll have to sleep up ‘loft.” She gestured towards the narrow, ladder-like stairs beside the huge old fieldstone fireplace, and at the top, Jim saw the square trap door. “Sure you don’t mind?” he asked. “Ain’t doin’ me no good mindin’,” she said. “I wouldn’t turn a lop-eared houn’ dog out a night like this.”

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“I’m deeply touched.” Jim’s voice was sarcastic. The girl eyed him coolly, without answering, and after a moment he said, “My name is Jim McCurdy.” “Howdy,” said the girl politely. “Mine’s Cindy Grady.” “I’m delighted to meet you.” She made no answer, as she went on with her task of clearing the table, and a little later he heard the clink of the heavy crockery and the thick tumblers as she washed and dried the dishes. When she came back into the main room, he rose politely, and she looked puzzled, as she motioned the dog to silence and sat down across from him, her hands busy with a small weaving frame. “It must be very lonely for you up here alone,” he said after a moment, his curiosity unable to contain itself any longer. “How did you happen to settle away off up here?” The firelight was glinting on her thick, lustrous black hair that was wound in a knot at the back of her small head. She was really beautiful he could see now. The perfect oval shape of her face, from which the suntan had not fully faded gave her the look of an Old World Madonna. It was enhanced by the way her hair was parted in the middle and brushed, straight and sleek and shining, into that snug knot. Her eyes were velvety black, and her mouth was beautifully shaped. Its color was a warm, natural pink that had never known the touch of lipstick, nor needed it. “I was born and raised here,” she told him curtly, when he had decided she was not going to speak at all. Her attention appeared to be centered on the weaving. “My great-grand-sir built this here cabin when folks round these parts was sick

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with the gold fever. He never believed there was ‘nough gold here for folks to git so excited about it. He was friendly with the Indians, an’ he never got over hatin’ what the whites done to ‘em soon as they found the gold here. “The Indians had knowed the gold was here all along. But they was kind of different folk. They figgered there was enough gold for everybody. Reckon they learned, when they was pushed off out west an’ had to foot it ever’ step, an’ most of ‘em died on the way, that there ain’t never enough of anything good to satisfy some white folks.” “Oh, yes, I remember now.” Jim’s interest was caught. “They were the Cherokees, and they were supposed to be the most civilized of all the early primitive tribes. One of them wrote an alphabet, and they had a newspaper and sent their girls up to New England to be educated. Then, when gold was discovered here, the whites forced them off the land and to the west. Historians called it ‘The Trail of Tears’. “ The girl nodded and threaded a warm bright scarlet through the hand loom, working it deftly and smoothly into the pattern that was growing beneath her flashing fingers. “Granny used to tell me tales her grandfather had told her,” she answered, and it seemed to Jim that some of her hostility had gone. “He come here long about the first of the white people. Him and the Indians was real friendly. They was honest, an’ gentle an’ kindhearted, an’ he sure was mad when they got drove off. He was an old man then, but he sure did raise Cain about it. Didn’t do him no good, ‘course. By then, they was whites comin’ in from all over the country, near ‘bout, all of ‘em hollering gold, gold, gold, like there wasn’t nothing in the world better nor more worth havin’. “

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There was such superb contempt in her tone that Jim eyed her curiously. “Apparently you don’t think money is very important.” “Reckon maybe that’s ‘cause I ain’t never had much,” she answered, reasonably enough. “Way I look at it, a body can

get just about ever thing they really need outen the ground. I don’t see no call fer folks to go ravin’ wild just to get their paws on a little more money than the next feller’s got. Nobody needs no more’n he can eat at one time, er wear at one time. You can’t live in but one house at a time, so what’s the use o’ havin’ a whole lot more than that?” “You’re very wise, Cindy,” he said quietly. She looked at him sharply, suspiciously, but there was genuine friendliness and warmth in his voice, and he saw a faint color rise in her cheeks. “I’m the world’s worst fool, an’ I done proved that so I ain’t got to prove it no- more,” she said with a totally unexpected harshness. She was undoubtedly referring to some terrible mistake she had made, and it was clear that the memory pained her. “You spoke of getting everything a person needs out of the ground,” Jim said quickly, hoping to erase that ugly memory. “But that includes gold.” “Gold didn’t come outen the ground up here, leastways not when the whites first found it and started shovin’ the Indians west,” she told him. “They washed it outen the creek beds an’ the little mountain streams. Then when that give out, then bigrich folks from way up north, come down and started digging in the ground, an’ gettin’ out a whole lot o’ money. “My Granny remembered about them days,” she mused.

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“She said the biggest and richest mine of all was on lands that the Cherokees owned. The big-rich took two-three million dollars worth out—an’ then the good Lord took a hand and to punish the whites for drivin’ the Indians off, he caused a cavein, an’ then the big river run right through what had been the mine. “The big-rich spent a whole lot o’ money tryin’ to get the river to go somewheres else, but they couldn’t, an’ by then they’d found gold in Californy, an’ the people that had gold fever so bad they’d forgot man and the good Lord an’ ever’ decent thing folks could ever know, lit out fer Californy. But it was too late fer the Indians. They’d done been drove off, an’ a heap of ‘em had died in the marchin’, and the starvin’ and the heartbreak. My great-grand-mam was a Indian girl, an’ my great-grand-sir jest about fit the whole tarnation crowd o’ white settlers ‘fore they’d let her alone to stay with him. But she just grieved an’ grieved, an’ finally she sickened and died.” Jim said, startled, “Oh, then you are part Indian.” “An’ I’m sure proud of it!” She flung up her head, and her eyes dared him to doubt it. “I should think you would be, Cindy” he said quietly. “It’s an amazing story. Oh, of course, I’ve heard vaguely about the early settlers here, and the finding of gold and the Indians ‘Trail of Tears,’ but I hadn’t realized it was around here that it happened.” “Andora, down to the settlement, is what’s left of a town that was built during the Indian days,” Cindy told him. “Used to be, Granny said, a sight o’ people livin’ down there, fightin’, killin’, cussin’ each other fer gold. Ain’t much left of it now. Jest Storekeeper an’ his wife an’ two-three li’l old cabins they

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rent out to flatland furriners that come up in the summer and strip off and go pannin’ fer gold. It’d make Seth laugh to see how excited some of ‘em git, whey they find a li’l ole bitty nugget ‘bout the size of a pinhead. ‘Course, now and then somebody finds a right smart big piece.” She smiled, and Jim was startled at the change it made in her. She looked younger, and now he was convinced she could not be more than eighteeen or nineteen, though previously he had believed her in her late twenties. “You know what I think?” Her tone was amused, conspiratorial. “I bet Storekeeper sneaks outen the house o’ nights and sticks them nuggets where folks’ll find ‘em come daylight. They get all excited-like and spread the word around-their friends and folks keep a-comin’ to Ghost Creek, and Storekeeper makes him a pile o’ money rentin’ ‘em shacks to live in, whilst they’re washin’ for more o’ them nuggets.” Jim’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what they call salting a mine out West,” he agreed. “Does this storekeeper make enough off of his summer visitors to justify sprinkling nuggets around?” “Oh, sure. Nobody never finds more’n one or two durin’ a whole summer. Lots o’ folks think Storekeeper’s got him a mess o’ them nuggets squirrelled away, like maybe he stole ‘em from the Indians. Folks think the Indians buried a lot o’ gold ‘fore they was shoved off to the West, thinkin’, maybe, the pore fools, somebody might let ‘em come back some day and dig ‘em up.”

CHAPTER 2

To Jim, it was a scene that might have been lifted straight out of fantasy—the snug, thick-walled cabin; the huge fieldstone fireplace that filled one end of it and took logs five feet long and the thickness of a man’s body; the scrubbed, spotless cleanliness of it, and the girl, like one of her own pioneer women ancestors. The limp calico dress, with its full, long skirt that nearly reached her ankles, the clumsilymade, snugly-fitted bodice that enhanced the round firmness of exquisitely molded breasts was dark-red with small white flowers scattered over it. Her hands, as they moved swiftly and expertly across the loom, were brown and deft, the hands of a woman who worked hard and without sparing herself. “It must be terribly lonely for you up here, Cindy,” he said at last. “There’s a heap o’ things-worse than bein’ lonesome,” she told him. “Well, of course, being born and brought up here, I can see that you’d be fond of the place,” he admitted. “But you’re young, and lovely. Don’t you ever want to see the city? Movies, and shop windows and pretty clothes and dates—all the things pretty young girls like?” Her busy hands slowed on the loom, and her dark, velvety eyes were on the leaping flames. He saw her draw a deep, anguished breath that made her lush, full bosom strain hard against the calico of her bodice. 18

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“I been to the city,” she told him. “I seen movies, an’ shop windows. I had me some dates. I had me some pretty clothes.” Her voice broke, and he saw her hands clench tightly. “I don’ never want to see none o’ them things again,” she burst out, her voice so rough, shaking so that the dog lifted his head and growled uneasily. “I don’t never want to live nowhere but right here, and I don’t never want nobody with me. Just Seth, an’ Bessie, an’ Sadie-May an’ Black Billy.” “That sounds like quite a family,” Jim said, puzzled by her agitation. “Seth and Black Billy I know. Who’s Bessie and Sadie-May?” “Bessie’s the cow and Sadie-May’s the mule. They’re all the fambly I want. An’ this is the only home,” she told him, tightlipped, and went back to her weaving, her hands less sure and steady than they had been. Obviously her memories were plaguing her again, and Jim turned his eyes away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” “I hate folks that come pryin’ and askin’ questions that ain’t none o’ their business,” she told him. Jim flushed beneath the sting of her voice, but smiled wryly. “I didn’t mean to pry, Cindy. It’s just that I can’t imagine a girl like you living such a lonely life, ‘way up here by yourself.” She bent her head over her weaving, and when she spoke, she had herself under better control. “’Long as we’re askin’ questions, maybe I got a right to ask you some,” she said. “Like what you’re doin’ ‘way off up here this time o’ the year.” “A perfectly fair question.” He smiled tautly at her. “I’m running away.” Startled, she turned swiftly. “You mean you done somethin’

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wrong?” she gasped. “The law’s after you?” “Nothing like that,” he reassured her swiftly. “What I did was wrong, terribly wrong, but the law can’t touch me for it. I helped kill a man, Cindy.” Her hands were once more idle, once more clenched tightly in her lap, and her eyes were enormous in her oval face. “And the law can’t touch you for that? How’d you do that?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. “I’m a lawyer, Cindy,” he said slowly, his eyes on the fire, speaking as to himself alone, as if he had forgotten that she was listening. “I was appointed by the court to defend a man charged with murder. He was broke; had a wife and two small children, and he had been out of work. Had no money for an attorney, so I was appointed to defend him. I wasn’t sure in my own mind that he was innocent, but I put up as stiff a fight for him as I could. But—I lost, and he went to the electric chair.” “But that warn’t your fault,” she said, and added, “Was it?” “A month or more after he was executed, the police arrested a man who had tried to shoot it out with them, and had been fatally wounded. On his death bed, this man confessed the hold-up murder for which my client had already died,” Jim said harshly. Cindy nodded slowly. “And now you think maybe, just because you didn’t think the fellow was innocent you didn’t fight hard enough for him.” She read his unhappy thought. Jim nodded, his hands locked tightly together between his knees, his jaw set so hard that his face was without expression. “That’s it,” he said, grateful for her unexpected understanding. “He had no alibi. He had been out of work, and his wife and children were in a bad way. I could understand

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why a man in such a position would be desperate enough to try to hold up a small grocery store, lose his head and shoot the grocer who tried to defend himself. You see, though I was doing everything my law books had taught me, everything I could think of to try to get him off, in my mind I doubted

his innocence, and that may have weakened my fight, slowed down my defense.” “That’s a bad thing to have to live with,” said Cindy. “I keep remembering how, when the trial was over, he thanked me for putting up such a good fight, and the way that poor little wife, holding a child by each hand, wept and told me what a good man I was to try to help them. I keep remembering how he went to the electric chair, and how his last words were that he was innocent. I remember how even then I had the feeling that he wasn’t, and that he was getting what was coming to him, his just punishment. The grocer had a wife, too, and children.” He pounded one clenched fist into the palm of his other hand, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “So can you imagine, Cindy, how I felt when this dying crook with a police record as long as your arm, told of coming into the grocery just as my client had been denied any further credit and was walking out. The fellow told of how he had waited, pretending to order groceries, until my client was out of earshot and then shot the grocer.” Jim was reliving that unutterable horror, visualizing the scene when he had opened the morning paper and had read the story. “That’s awful,” said Cindy softly. “The understatement of the century,” Jim said. “I think if my client’s widow had reproached me, had screamed at me,

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accusing me, I might have felt better.” “She come to see you?” asked Cindy. “I went to her,” Jim said. “I tried to tell her how sorry I was—but how can you find words to say things like that? She just stood there, looking at me, and saying, ‘You did all you could, Mr. McCurdy. The children and I are grateful, and now that his name has been cleared and everybody knows he was innocent, we can learn to live again.’ “ “She’s got guts,” Cindy said, and her tone made it the highest accolade one woman could offer another. Jim nodded. “She’s got compassion, too. She let me make what amends I could, because she knew I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t. She let me make over to her as a trust for the children everything I owned. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that they won’t go hungry. It’ll keep them in some degree of comfort, and give the children an education, and she can be at home with them.” Cindy nodded soberly. “An’ then you took to the mountains.” “I tried running away from myself,” he answered. “I find it doesn’t work—but I can never practice law again as long as I live.” “I reckon you would feel like that,” she said. “Havin’ folks’ lives right in your hand must be a scaresome sort o’ thing. Like bein’ a doctor, maybe.” Her hands had gone back to her weaving, but long practice made it possible for her to work without even looking at the frame. “You got any plans now?” she asked at last. He grinned at her ruefully, a grin that was without mirth, little more than a contraction of his facial muscles. “Just to hibernate like a bear here in the mountains until I get myself

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adjusted. I’ll find work somewhere. Maybe I’ll go down to Ghost Creek and try washing gold,” he said. “What do you do for money, Cindy?” She touched the weaving. “Winters, I weave,” she told him. “Springs an’ summers an’ falls, I gather yarbs for the drug men that come through Ghost Creek two-three times a year. I make me a garden and can up the stuff I can’t eat. I got me a smokehouse full of good hawg meat, an’ I’m a good hunter. I make out.” Jim studied her curiously. “If a kid like you can ‘make out,’ I guess I can too,” he said. The air of hostility, of suspicion that had gripped her since he had first set eyes on her had faded with their growing understanding of each other, but now as they sat in silence, studying each other, he saw the flicker of uneasiness in her eyes as she thrust the frame away from her and stood up. “It’s gittin’ on fer bedtime,” she said. “Reckon you better stay here by the fire whilst I fix your bed.” He stood up, too, knocking the ashes out of his pipe into the fireplace. “Let me—,” he began and put out his hand in a friendly, unconscious gesture. He was startled to see her draw sharply away from him and fear dawn in her eyes again. “Cindy, for Pete’s sake, you’re not afraid of me?” he protested. “The man I got to be afraid of ain’t been born yet,” she said. “I ain’t afraid o’ nobody, an’ I don’t trust nobody, neither. You stay here and mind your own business.” Jim’s jaw tightened, but he stood well away from her. His eyes narrowed as she slid past him, carefully avoiding any contact with him. She went up the steep ladder to the hayloft and lifted the trap door at the top. She disappeared from

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his sight, and Jim stood watching until the big dog growled uneasily. Jim looked swiftly at him. The dog was propped halfway up, his front paws rigid, his unblinking yellow eyes fastened to Jim’s face. “Oh, go to hell!” Jim growled at the dog and dropped back into his chair, as the dog once more relaxed, but without removing his unblinking gaze. Jim listened to the sound of Cindy moving briskly about overhead, and then she was back down the ladder, standing well out of reach of him, her dark eyes watchful, as hostile as those of the dog. Now Seth stood with his body pressed against her legs, between her and Jim. “Your bed’s ready,” she said. “Thanks,” Jim answered and moved towards the foot of the ladder. “Reckon maybe you better stay up there till I call you in the mornin’,” she told him. “Any idee you got ‘bout wanderin’ ‘round, don’t fergit Seth sleeps mighty light, an’ he’ll be right here all night.” “You’re a very nasty-minded female, Cindy, my girl,” he told her. “I really believe you when you say you trust nobody at any time.” “You better believe it, ‘cause it’s so!” Jim mounted the ladder without looking back and once inside the loft, he dropped the trap door in place with an angry thump. An oil lamp stood on the floor. There were no furnishings whatever except for a thick, straw-filled mattress that lay near the chimney, which gave off a pleasant warmth up here. The mattress was covered with thick, dark-wool blankets and several gaily-colored patchwork quilts. There were no sheets; but the fat pillow of goose feathers was neatly

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enclosed in a clean flour-sacking slip. He took off his shoes and his coat, decided against undressing any further, and slid between the ample covers. Before he could think much about the girl and her dog who stood guard below, the exhaustion of his body had blotted out all thought in deep sleep.

CHAPTER 3

Dawn was flooding the loft, brilliant sunshine stealing through the narrow window, when he awoke, to realize that Cindy was calling to him from downstairs. He answered her call and slid out of the makeshift bed. Pulling on his stout boots, carrying his thick windbreaker in his hands, he descended the stairs, to find Cindy placing food on the table, which was laid for one. As she came from the kitchen, carrying a large, ancient coffee pot, he gestured towards the one place. “Aren’t you having breakfast, Cindy?” he asked. Her smile was young, and gay and charming. “Law me, Mister. I et breakfast two-three hours ago,” she drawled. “I been up since four-thirty. I already fed the chickens, an’ the pig, an’ done the milkin’ an’ churned. The day’s half gone.” Jim glanced at the ancient clock, ticking solemnly away on the mantel that was a roughly-split log above the huge fireplace, and saw that the hands marked a quarter after nine. He merely shrugged and offered no comment as he sat down to an enormous platter where fried bacon, crisp and brown, accompanied two fried eggs, with slices of the cold hominy, from last night, that had been browned in bacon drippings. There were hot biscuits and another bowl of the wild strawberry jam. “Usually, I’m an orange juice, toast and coffee man,” he said with a grin, “but somehow I seem to have discovered an 26

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appetite.” “Eat your fill, Mister. They’s plenty more where that come from,” she assured him, using a phrase with which he was to become quite familiar as he lingered in this out-of-theway mountain place. It typified the hospitality with which

a mountaineer assured the stranger under his roof that the supply of provisions was ample, even though it might well be that the family larder had been scraped to the bone to supply what was on the table. Cindy was at her weaving as he ate, and he watched her, seeing in the morning sunlight that she was even more beautiful than last night’s firelight and shadows had revealed. He was not conscious of the tenseness of his scrutiny, until he saw the color creep into her cheeks, and she turned to him, her head held high, her eyes cold. “You see somethin’ funnylookin’, Mister, the way you’re settin’ there, lookin’ at me like you hadn’t never set eyes on a gal before?” she demanded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,” he apologized. “It’s just that I hadn’t realized how lovely you really are—.” “You shet up! An’ you stop lookin’ at me like that! I don’t want menfolks lookin’ at me like I was somethin’ good to eat!” she burst out, her voice shaking. Jim put down his knife and fork, and brought out his pipe. “Cindy, you are really an amazing creature,” he said soberly. “You’ve told me over and over that you trust nobody, and I believe it. But what could have happened to you, living up here like this, to make you distrust every living human being? I can assure you, Cindy, that I wouldn’t harm you for anything in the world. You’re only a child!” Her lovely, soft mouth thinned to an ugly bitterness. “Don’t

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kid yourself, Mister.” Her voice was thin with contempt. “I’m a woman, full-growed, an’ I ain’t never been allowed to forget it, not even when I was just a gal-young-’un, runnin’ barefoot around here. An’ I got me some mighty good reason why I don’t trust nobody.” She looked at the platter which he had emptied, and then she stood up, her head held high, her bottomless black eyes frosty. “Reckon if you’ve et, Mister, time you was pullin’ your freight,” she told him. “There’s a smell o’ snow in the air, an’ if it ketches you here on Ole Hungry, you ain’t never goin’ to git to Ghost Creek, ner no place else.” Jim stood up immediately and, tight-lipped, donned his thick windbreaker and slipped his arms into the straps of the shoulder pack that held all his baggage. “Sorry I’ve been such a nuisance,” he told her and dropped a five-dollar bill on the table. The girl drew back as though he had struck her, and her wide, blazing eyes clung to the money in utter revulsion. “What’s that for?” she demanded. “For food and a night’s lodging.” “I ain’t chargin’ nothin’ for you sleepin’ an’ eatin’,” she told him. “I don’ want no money frum you, ner no other man.” Jim stared at her, puzzled and resentful. “You really have had a bad time of it, haven’t you?” he asked slowly. She caught her breath, and her lovely face went white as she pulled herself erect, her eyes blazing. She turned to the door, swung it open to a draft of icy air, and said through her teeth, “Git!” Jim shrugged the shoulder pack into position, caught up the money and thrust it into his pocket. As he passed her, she

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drew her lithe, slender body back, fearful that he might touch her. As he walked through the door, it slammed hard behind him, and he heard the stout bar drop into place. He stood for a moment, frowning. Then he stalked across the narrow porch and gasped as the icy wind swept down

upon him, almost throwing him off his feet. He crossed the dooryard, bleak now beneath its icy wintering, and saw a faint trail that led downward, a narrow, winding trail that he followed slowly and carefully, his mind busy with the problem of the lonely girl and her bitter isolation. Life was rugged, he knew, here in these half-hidden pockets in the mountains. People lived close to the bare edge of starvation and despair, grim and stern-visaged as the acres that so meagerly fed them. But even that and the fact that she was living alone since her grandmother died could not explain the savage bitterness and fear in a girl so young and beautiful as Cindy. She was like some small wild creature that must hunt for its food, yet sensed within inches the murderous jaws of a death-dealing trap. Occupied with such thoughts, he was making slow, careful progress down the trail that was so faint it vanished now and then, and he had to seek for it to avoid getting lost. There were places where the trail crept along the very face of the mountain, and a careless step would plunge him headlong into the valley that looked miles away. Along the valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s floor here and there he caught glimpses of a thin trickle of silver dancing in the yellow, cold sunlight and judged that this must be Ghost Creek. There was, according to Cindy, some sort of settlement down there, and he was hoping to find it before he fell and broke his neck, or before darkness overcame him.

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He had little relish for the prospect of being lost again in this wilderness. It was nearly noon when he came at last around one of those perilously narrow ledges above the faraway valley and into one of the pocket-like cuts between the mountain shoulders that was large enough to accept a rough log cabin. Smoke came up, thin and blue, from the ancient stick-and-dirt chimney, and a distinctly rickety fence of split rails enclosed a small dooryard. Jim had been visible on the trail for some time before he had come in sight of the cabin. As he approached it, the door swung open, and a tall, witch-like woman, wearing a man’s ancient overcoat and with a brilliantly-colored shawl tied tightly over her head, came down the walk. Her eyes were small and bright as an animal’s, and her long, slightly-hooked nose seemed to be trying hard to meet the pointed chin, below toothless gums. “Howdy, stranger,” she greeted him in a harsh, rasping voice thick with suspicion. “Whar’ ye headed fur?” The suspicion in her voice and the baldness of her question was so hostile that Jim’s eyes chilled, though he checked his temper. “Ghost Creek,” he told her. “Do tell! Whar’d ye come from?” she demanded, her suspicion deepening. “Marshallville,” said Jim and moved to proceed on his way. “Marshallville? You’re lyin’, stranger. That’s plumb t’other side o’ the mountain. Ye couldn’t ‘a’ traveled that fur since sun-up.” “I really can’t see that it concerns you,” he began. “Stranger, you mind yore’manners,” she snapped at him. “Anybody wanderin’ ‘round these hyer parts is a concern o’ all

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of us.” “I’m not a revenue agent, nor am I interested in illegal stills,” he told her, a sardonic gleam in his eyes. “Where’d ye spen’ the night?” she demanded. “On the mountain.”

“That’s another lie! Ye’d ‘a’ froze to death. It was tarnation cold las’ night,” The woman countered, and suddenly there was an ugly twist to her thin-lipped mouth. “Reckon that Injun slut kep’ you warm, though.” The taunt was so ugly and so unexpected that Jim took a single step towards her, his fists clenched. The woman jumped back and screeched at the top of her voice, “You, Enoch! You come hyer!” Her eyes were bright with malice and her thin ugly mouth was twisted, as a tall, broad-shouldered young man who could not have been more than twenty-two or three came around the corner of the house, and approached them. He was almost spectacularly handsome with the sunlight on his corn-colored hair and his square-jawed brown face. “Howdy, stranger,” he greeted Jim courteously, his voice soft and mild. “This hyer fellow’s been spendin’ the night with that nogood wuthless somebody up-mountain,” announced the old woman with evil relish. “Thought mebbe you’d ought to meet him.” Jim’s face was set in white fury, his eyes blazing. “I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about,” he said through his teeth. “Ain’t no use you lyin’, stranger.” The old woman’s voice wigs spitefully triumphant. “Folks hereabouts has knowed fer

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a long time that bitclh’s bed and board was open to any likely lookin’ feller had a coupla dollars to spend.” Jim’s look was one that made the old woman step backward. He looked once at the tall, yellow-haired man, and then because he could not trust himself to speak, he turned and went on down the trail that was wider now and more clearly marked. His ears rang with the woman’s vicious lies. Of course, they were lies. Cindy was a fine, decent girl, and his pity went out to her. Understanding her fear and hostility became clearer now. No wonder, living alone within the stinging reach of such a savage tongue, she had withdrawn into herself and kept her door barred and her dog and her gun handy. No doubt he was not the first person to whom the old crone had slandered Cindy. Jim had a picture of some man, his imagination inflamed by the old woman’s words, sneaking to the lonely cabin in the dark hours of the night, and he was glad Cindy had her gun. He hoped she would not hesitate to use it, and was glad she had that huge, powerful dog. Between the dog and the gull, the girl should be safe, but what a hell of a way for a girl to have to live! It was in that moment that a thought came into Jim’s mind, the thought that perhaps he could win Cindy’s confidence and friendship, and then persuade her to leave this place before some terrible thing happened. Suddenly a thin shower of stones and gravel spilled on the trail ahead of him, and Jim stopped swiftly, looking up, fearful of a landslide. Instead, the tall, brown, yellow-haired young man slipped and slid down into the trail and stood before Jim, brushing dirt and gravel absently from his worn blue-jeans.

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“Reckon I startled ye- some, Mister,” said Enoch in his slow, soft-spoken drawl. “I had to overtake ye by the shortcut so’s I could tell you not to pay no mind to what Maw was sayin’ ‘bout Cindy. It’s not so. Not any bit of it.” “Certainly it isn’t,” Jim snapped.

“Reckin Maw’s jealous, mostly. She don’t want me to marry-up with Cindy, an’ she keeps tellin’ tales on her,” said Enoch awkwardly. Jim stared at him, frowning. “You’re in love with Cindy, yet you stand by and let that old harridan tonguelash her?” he demanded. Dark color crept under Enoch’s sun-bronze. “Well, she’s my Maw,” he answered defensively. “And she don’t mean fer true no more’n half she says.” “That half would be twice too much for me,” said Jim grimly. “How old are you, Enoch?” “Twenty-two, goin’ on twenty-three,” he answered, like a child. “Then what the hell do you mean letting your mother interfere in your affairs? If you’re in love with Cindy, then why don’t you marry her—if she’ll have you? And tell your mother to go to hell. She’d be right at home there with the other witches.” Enoch’s miserable eyes would not meet Jim’s, -and his hands big and ham-like, rough and calloused, clenched into huge fists. “She’s my Maw,” he said again. “An’ she dearly hates Cindy. Claims Cindy ain’t no good. Claims when Cindy went down to the flatlands two-three years ago to work, somethin’ happened. Don’t nobody know whut. But when Cindy come

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back, she just stayed right in the cabin with her grand-mam and didn’t nobody even see her fer months after she come back. Maw said—“ Jim cut in ‘sharply, “I can imagine what Maw said! And you let her! Hell, Enoch, you’re legally a man. What’s stopping you from marrying Cindy and telling your mother to go to hell?” Enoch said tautly, “Maw said effen I married-up with Cindy she’d kill herself.” Jim snorted with contempt. “And you believe she would?” Enoch looked up, his eyes very blue and dark. “I know it,” he said simply. “Maw don’t go makin’ threats she ain’t gonna keep. She said I’d find her pore, wore-out ole body down in the crick, and Mister, I know that’s whut would happen.” Jim studied Enoch curiously. The man looked strong as an ox. He was a big, powerfully-built fellow who could no doubt whip any man in the mountains, but beneath the tyrannical thumb of his mother he was as defenseless as a child. Jim’s contempt for him was touched by an unwilling pity. “Mister,” Enoch was looking straight at him out of tormented eyes, “wuz Maw tellin’ the truth?” “I doubt that she’s capable of it,” Jim snapped. “Did you—stay with Cindy las’ night?” Startled, Jim frowned at him, and Enoch went on slowly. “Las’ night was a powahful cold -night, an’ you’d a’froze effen you’d been outta doors, an’ they ain’t no other shelter, so you musta been with Cindy.” Jim said violently, “I slept in the loft at Cindy’s place, yes, but with that man-eating dog and that damned shotgun between us, I couldn’t have laid a finger on the girl even if I had wanted to—which I didn’t!”

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Enoch nodded slowly, his face clearing. “Yeah, I trained Seth myself,” he said, and now there was relief in his eyes. “And I learned Cindy to shoot when she warn’t no more’n knee-high to a duck. I allus figgered she’d be safe, lessen some varipint sneaked up on her in the daytime when she warn’t studyin’ ‘bout nobody bein’ ‘round.” Jim said grimly, “That should be a great comfort to you, though I’m damned if I can see how any man who loved Cindy could bear to see her living off up there by herself, and not want to do something to help her.” “Reckon you’re right, Mister. Reckon I ain’t much good. But I owe Maw an awful lot,” Enoch said unhappily. “Paw was kilt by revenooers afore I was born. Maw raised me herself all by herself, an’ it was a mighty hard struggle. Her plowin’ and makin’ a crop, workin’ from fore-sun to second-dark— ain’t much I can do to show her I ‘predate it, ‘cept to do whut she wants me to do. She ain’t gonna live fo’ever, she says, an’ they’ll be plenty o’ time fer me to have my own way when she’s gone.” “Don’t you worry about her, Enoch! Women like that outlive the devil himself,” Jim said. Then he shouldered his pack into a more comfortable position. “I’ve got to get moving.” With that he started down the trail. At a bend in the road, Jim looked back, saw the lonely, powerful figure of the mountain boy still standing there against the wintry sky. Enoch was a man in strength and vigor, but a child in character, Jim told himself as he went out of sight around the bend in the narrow trail, leaving Enoch to his lonely vigil.

CHAPTER 4

It was mid-afternoon when Jim McCurdy came at last to the huddle of buildings that lay in the valley, beside the rushing creek. He paused and looked about him. Down here on the valley’s floor, the bitter wind was blunted. Though it was early, dusk was already filming the scene before him. The biggest building was two-storied, a gaunt, unlovely frame building, with a wide porch along its front, and an ancient, weather-beaten sign announcing it as “J. Holden: Gen’l Mdse., Feed, Grain, Gas, Oil.” Beyond the store, there were two or three rough, rustic cabins, obviously designed for summer occupancy. That was all. Jim grinned wryly as he walked up the steps of the store and opened the door. He was tired and cold, and his stomach was reminding him he had eaten nothing since breakfast at Cindy’s place. The opened door let out a blast of heat, laden with a thousand different smells, some of them pleasant, others less so and all made more pungent by the warmth cast from a big stove in the center of the large barn-like room. “Shet that door, dern ye!” shouted a voice from somewhere beyond the room, and then a man appeared from a door there and stood peering at Jim in bewilderment. “Howdy, stranger. Come in and set a spell.” The man’s tone had altered, and as he came forward to where Jim could 36

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see him, Jim’s eyes widened, for the man was enormous. He was at least several inches taller than Jim’s six feet and weighing surely close to three hundred. He was as bald as a pumpkin, and his round face with its several chins was ruddy and weatherbeaten. “I’m Storekeeper. Whut kin I do fer you, stranger?” Jim said pleasantly, “I thought perhaps you might put me up for the night, if you have room—and I’d like something to eat if that can be managed.” The man’s vast face took on a wary look. “Well, now, reckin we got plenty o’ room,” he said. “But I dunno ‘bout the vittles. I’ll have to ask the old woman ‘bout that.” His eyes still on Jim, the man yelled, “Marthy! You got any vittles fer a wayfarin’ man?” Behind the storekeeper, the door into what was the living quarters swung open, and a tall, gaunt, homely woman in a soiled dress and apron stood there, peering at Jim with the suspicion to which he was wearily becoming resigned. “Whut’s a man don’t’ wayfarin’ ‘round these parts this time o’ year?” she demanded, and her voice was thin and rasping, reminiscent of Enoch’s mother’s. Jim was tired, cold and hungry, and he had had more than enough of this line of inquiry today. He spoke roughly. “I’ve heard a lot of talk about the unquestioning, warm-hearted hospitality one finds in the mountains, but it looks like this isn’t the day for it,” he said. “I’m staying at Marshallville. I went on a walking trip, and I got lost. I’m trying to find food and shelter until I can make the way back to Marshallville. I’m neither a thief, a murderer nor a revenue agent. I’m a lawyer from Atlanta, and I’m on a vacation.”

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“Ain’t no call to git uppity, way I see it,” snapped the woman. “We ain’t used to company here in wintertime.” Jim eyed her dourly, and then looked back at the man, who was ‘ watching him shrewdly, with the ghost of a twinkle in his eyes, half-hidden in the fat of his moon-like face. “I see you have several cabins out there, and I take it that some of them are vacant,” Jim said. “I’d be glad to rent one of them for tonight, and I guess I can manage a meal out of some of your provisions here. Then I’ll be happy to get myself back on the road in the morning.” “Well, now, shore, you can have-one o’ the cabins, stranger, and welcome to it—,” Storekeeper began, but his wife’s ugly voice rasped across his words. “Cost you fifty cents, stranger,” she snapped. “Now, Marthy, you know them cabins ain’t fitten fer humans, cold as it gits this time o’ year,” Storekeeper protested mildly. “If he’s fool enough to go traipsin’ round these parts this time o’ year, they’re good ‘nough fer him,” snapped the woman. “’Tain’t right,” Storekeeper grumbled. “That’s very kind of you, and I’ll take it,” Jim said, and ceremoniously fished a fifty-cent piece from his pocket. He held it out to the woman who closed her work-roughened hand greedily over it. Jim expected to see her bite it, to test its genuineness but she dropped it into her apron pocket and flounced out of the store. Jim turned back to the counter behind which canned food was ranged, but before he could begin making his selection the door swung open and a young woman came in, a woman as out of place in this dim-lit, odorous place as a peacock would

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have been in a country farmyard. Her hair was ash-blonde, and her eyes were green, frankly and undeniably green. Though she was dressed roughly, it was the roughness of smart tailoring. Her green-plaid windbreaker and the matching green suede jodhpurs had been tailored by someone who knew his business. Her complexion was delicate, and her make-up was deft and knowing. The woman’s casual greeting to Storekeeper died as she saw Jim. Her eyes widened; and then she blinked, as though to assure herself he was still there. She smiled, a smile slow, provocative, as she put her lovely head on one side and eyed him mockingly. “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” Her voice was warm, husky, seductive. “I’m Stanley, of course.” Jim laughed as she put her hand in his, and Storekeeper hastened to clear up what he felt was confusion. “She’s foolin’, stranger. Her name ain’t Stanley. Anyways, lemme make you acquainted. This hyer’s Miss Blake, stranger. Don’t reckin I know your name?” “I’m Jim McCurdy, and making your acquaintance is a privilege, Miss Blake.” Jim grinned at the woman who was studying him with frank interest. “Likewise, I’m sure,” she murmured, her tone mocking and then her eyes narrowed and she said musingly, “Jim McCurdy. That seems to ring a bell somewhere. We haven’t met before, have we?” “I’m positive we haven’t, because I couldn’t possibly have forgotten,” he assured her. “Atlanta?” she asked. “Atlanta,” he answered and watched, his jaw hardening as

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he saw the expression that touched her face. “I see that you do remember,” he said. “Of course. It was the Collier case, wasn’t it? Rough on you, solicitor,” said the woman quietly. “But just ginger-peachy for the widow and children.” Bitterness and self-loathing rang so harshly in Jim’s voice that Storekeeper stared at him uneasily. The woman nodded, and then she turned briskly to Storekeeper giving Jim time to recover his composure. . “I’d like a pound of that rat-trap cheese, Storekeeper,” she said lightly. “And do you suppose your charming wife could possibly spare me a pint of cream? I’m planning an oyster stew for dinner, and I’d love some cream—and if she has it, half a pound of sweet butter.” “Well, now, we wasn’t ‘spectin’ you this week, Miss Blake,” said Storekeeper, “but I’ll go see whut she’s got that can be spared.” The woman nodded and as Storekeeper went out, she turned to Jim, and her eyes were mockingly mirthful. “They’ll spare anything and everything that can be counted on to raise an extra buck,” she whispered. “That skin-flint of a wife is the kind the mountain people say would skin a flea for its hide and tallow. Or have you already discovered that?” “I came here just a few minutes before you, but I’m beginning to believe you’re right,” said Jim and added, “Don’t tell me you live around here.” She laughed. “I have a cabin about a quarter of a mile up the creek,” she told him. “Just for weekends and summer vacations. It’s lovely here in the summer, and I happen to be that zany type that likes the mountains even in the winter.

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And now, to prove I’m at least a part-time mountaineer, I’ll reveal my curiosity about you. What are you doing here this time of year?” “Promise not to laugh? Or call me a liar?” “Don’t be absurd. I don’t know you well enough to call you a liar.” “I’m on a walking trip, and I got lost,” he told her. She nodded, smiling. “That’s good enough for me.” Storekeeper came back in triumph, bearing a pint bottle, a half-pound of butter and a paper sack in which were six eggs. ‘”Marthy’s mighty pleased to let you have these, Miss Blake, and says she’d come and speak to you herself, only she’s got to fix vittles for Mr. McCurdy here.” “That’s very kind of her, Storekeeper. Thank her for me, will you?” said Miss Blake and laid a bill on the counter, as she turned to Jim with an air of having a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t you come and have dinner with me tonight, Mr. McCurdy? There’s going to be enough stew for two—maybe even second helpings.” “Thanks, I’d love it,” said Jim happily. “You’re very kind, Miss Blake.” “The name is Lorna, Jim,” she said. “Shall we get started?” Jim picked up her purchases, and Storekeeper asked politely, “Will you be back t’night, Mister?” Before Jim could digest the implications of that, Lorna said sweetly, “Don’t wait up for him, Jake.” “I wasn’t aimin’ to,” said Storekeeper. “I’ll be back, of course,” Jim said stiffly. “Then I’ll build ye a fire in the stove over to the second cabin out there, and Marthy’ll make up your bed with enough

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kivers,” said Storekeeper, his little eyes derisive, though his tone was polite enough. Lorna led the way out into the thick dusk, and Jim followed her, still seething at the man’s look. “All my life,” he said, “I’ve been told that up in the backwoods country people were kind, and hospitable and really knew what it meant to ‘love thy neighbor.’ Well, one more illusion has bit the dust.” “I know just what you mean,” Lorna agreed. “In the eyes of the dozen or so people who make up this charming little settlement, I’m a completely abandoned woman, whose every word and action is searched and probed to find an evil meaning to it. But I made up my mind when I first came here and ran head on into their narrow, curious way of thinking, that it was of no importance to me what anybody thought about me so long as I, myself, was satisfied with my own behavior.” “Lucky you, that you can be!” Jim said. She was walking ahead of him along a trail so narrow that they could not walk side by side, and in the thickening dusk she turned her head and laughed. “Oh, I have a conscience that’s well taught to behave itself and play dead when it’s ordered to,” she assured him. “You ought to try it sometimes, Jim. It’s a damned sight more comfortable than having one that’s always sitting back on its haunches and yapping at you.” “Sounds like a good idea,” Jim agreed. “Maybe a little tough to do, though.” Her laugh floated back to him. “Oh, it’s easy, once you learn the trick.” She turned, a shadow dimly seen against the dusk, away from the trail that had edged its way beside the creek, towards

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a light that glowed from a dark huddle of a cabin. She guided him up the steps; and across the veranda, and opened the door. Just inside the room, Jim paused and looked about him, startled, while Lorna watched him, smiling. “Hi, this is a little bit of all right!” he said swiftly. “Electricity, comforts, civilization in the heart of the wilderness!” “Aren’t you sweet?” laughed Lorna. “I like my rusticity with modern improvements. I’m as fond of my creature comforts as a cat. I have a small light plant that provides not only light but running water as well. And if you think the natives can be nuisances, you should have heard their comments on that thar crazy woman from the flatlands, while the cabin was being fitted up. I’m sure they thought my family should have me clapped in the loony bin and marked dangerous.” Jim was looking around at the pleasantly-furnished place, the bright calico curtains at the windows, the native-craft rugs on the waxed wide boards, the two couches that at night were beds but that now wore their daytime covers. At the two or three electric lamps well-placed about the room, and beyond at the half-partition that separated the cooking and dining area from the living-room. Lorna, watching him, chuckled. “Go ahead and say it,” she drawled. “It must have cost a fortune.” “I had no intention of saying such a thing,” he protested. “Then that makes you unique,” she drawled. “It’s what everybody else says. It was a bit expensive, but I earned the money myself. It was not paid for by some money-proud guy in return for the surrender of my beautiful body.” Jim said swiftly, “I had no such thought.”

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She looked up at him, mocking. “Weren’t you?” she asked. Then she said, “Suppose you put those things down in the kitchen and fix us a drink while I get into something comfortable.” “I think that’s a wonderful idea.” She opened a door at the end of one of the couches, and he caught a glimpse of a small, compact bedroom with a bed and a dressing table. The door closed behind Lorna before he could see more, and he went through to the kitchen and dining area from the living-room. He had been tired, cold, hungry, and his spirits had been low when he had reached Ghost Creek and walked into the store. But meeting this attractive, sophisticated woman from his own world had given him a lift. He was whistling and his thoughts were quite busy as he opened the cupboard above the sink, found a surprisingly amply supply of liquors, and began mixing highballs. He turned at the sound behind him and saw his hostess in a crisp calico dress, patterned in tiny yellow rosebuds on silver-grey. The skirt of the dress was very full and wide, the bodice snugly fitted above breasts that were generously and beautifully molded. Lorna put her head a little on one side and studied him, her green eyes brimming with mocking amusement. “Well, what did you expect?” she teased him. “I said something comfortable—but I didn’t mean black chiffon and lace with my rose-ivory body temptingly outlined beneath the frail black stuff.” Her voice made mockery of the phrases, and he could sense the quotation marks about them. “I wasn’t expecting anything of the kind,” he protested

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halfheartedly and offered her a drink. “Besides, you needn’t apologize for how you look at all.” She took the drink, sipped, nodded her approval and went on studying him. “Liar—,” she drawled provocatively. “But you mustn’t anticipate, darling. We’ve got the night before us, you know.” Jim lifted his drink in a silent salute to her, and, his eyes holding hers, he said softly, “What a lovely thought. Shall we dwell on it?” Lorna laughed and led the way back to the living room, and dropped into a cushioned rattan chair, motioning him to one across from her. “We’ll have our drinks, and then I’ll get busy with food,” she said. “Want to tell me how you happened to stumble into this forgotten ghost town? Or am I being nosey?” Jim laughed and briefly sketched his trip. He told her about being lost and spending the night in the cabin on the mountain top, and was puzzled as he mentioned Cindy at the sudden eagerness in Lorna’s green eyes. “So you’ve met our legendary Indian maiden!” she said. “Legendary? She’s a very real girl, and a very lovely one, and I’m sorry as hell for her,” Jim said. “So?” Lorna was watching him intently. “Why?” “Why? Can you imagine anything more ghastly than living alone up there in that beat-up place, with no company except her dog and her gun?” Lorna lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug that did interesting things to a beautifully-shaped bosom. “Oh, the popular legend is that she doesn’t get too lonely,” she drawled, but her eyes on him were sharp.

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“Then the popular legend is a damned lie!” Jim said. “I’d bet anything that she’s a decent, honest, respectable girl. That old witch—I don’t know her name, but she has a huge, hulking brute of a son she calls Enoch—.” Lorna grinned and sipped her drink. “That couldn’t possibly be anyone but Jennie Haney,” she told him. “Lovely soul, isn’t she? If the Devil really holds black masses up here, as some people claim, I’ll wager Jennie and Marthy are his two most devoted assistants.” “That figures,” Jim assured her. “That Haney woman met me off the trail with loud outcries of filth against poor Cindy. I wanted to push the old girl’s teeth in, except she didn’t have any.” “That’s Jennie,” said Lorna, and her eyes were curious. “What’s this girl like, Jim? I’ve heard a lot about her, but I’ve never seen her. Mighty few folks have, in fact. Sort of a female hermit, except twice a year when she brings her mountaincraft weaving down to Storekeeper for him to sell for her, and the herbs she gathers in the spring and summer. What few residents there are in these parts turn out en masse to see her, but I’ve never happened to be here when she came down out of that eyrie of hers.” “She’s a poor little devil who’s had a rough deal from life, and I’d like to do something for her,” said Jim. Lorna’s eyebrows went up slightly. “For or to, darling?” she cooed, and before he could answer she was on her feet, putting down her empty glass, saying, “I’ll get some food ready before those drinks start kicking up trouble.” Jim forgot about Cindy as he followed the intriguing movements of her smoothly-rounded hips.

CHAPTER 5

Dinner was ample and delicious, and when Lorna and Jim had cleared away the dishes and were once more seated before the cheerful open fire, she lay relaxed and at ease. Jim was reminded of her saying that she was like a cat in her love of creature comforts. There was something feline in her grace, and in the complete relaxation of her mood, as she lay watching the fire. “Aside from the Jennie Haneys, and the Marthys, the snoopy Storekeeper, the razzle-dazzle of the summer visitors from the flatlands, this is a most marvelous spot for a gal like me,” she said slowly. It was as if she was talking to herself aloud. “It’s a lifesaver, a career saver. I shiver when I think what might have happened to me if I hadn’t come up here three summers ago, because of a story I read in the Sunday magazine of one of the Atlanta newspapers. The moment I saw the place, I knew it answered my problem. “I bought this cabin for a song. Marthy thought she’d stuck me, and she was chortling wickedly that she had found a woman fool enough to pay three hundred dollars for a beat-up old summer cabin. But, as I began to build on to it, adding the bedroom and bath, and when I put in the light and water plant, and all the rest of it, she felt sure she had been the sucker, and she’s hated me ever since. Of course, her hatred worries me so much I scarcely sleep more than ten or twelve hours a day for grieving about it.” 47

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Jim grinned, studying Lorna, puzzled to find anyone so sleek, so smoothly sophisticated in such a setting. “I’ll have to admit that it’s a surprise, a delightful one, to find a woman like you in a place like Ghost Creek,” he said. Lorna nursed her drink, cupping the glass between her two hands, her eyes on the amber-gold contents. She looked up at him at last, when the silence had grown long, and her eyes were wary, curious. “I wonder if I can trust you,” she said at last. Color touched his face, and his eyes were frank. “About that I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’d say you might trust me about as far as you care to—no further.” She moved one hand in a slight gesture of dismissal. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about sex.” She disdained the word. “We’ll come to that later—I think. You’re damned attractive, you know.” “Thanks,” said Jim. “So are you.” “I’d show you the way to go home if you didn’t say that. No, I meant whether or not I could trust you with the real reason why this place is a life saver to me. There are really two reasons. One, I’m damned sure I’m not going to trust you with. The other one, perhaps.” “That’s up to you, of course.” “We might begin by your telling me what you’re doing up here—aside from starting out on a walking trip this time of the year and winding up in the Indian maiden’s cabin,” she drawled. “Nice winding up, by the way. But what are you doing away from the courtrooms and such?” Briefly, succintly he told her, and when he had finished, she stared at him, puzzled and curious. “But Jim, suppose every lawyer who ever lost a case, or a client, just said the hell

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with it and lit out for the wide open spaces?” she protested. “Would that be bad?” “Well, I’ve always heard lawyers are pretty necessary in the modern scheme of things,” she pointed out, and was immediately serious as she went on, “Surely you’re not planning to throw away all the years of preparation any man makes before he’s admitted to the bar, and the career you planned, just because you lost one case and your client went to the chair? Jim, that’s idiotic.” Stubbornly, Jim’s hands clenched about his glass, and his bitter eyes were on the fire. “I haven’t had time to do much thinking about it,” he admitted. “The execution took place in November. The day after Thanksgiving. Nice touch, don’t you think? Gave the wife and children something to remember next time that joyful day rolls around. And in time to spare them the bother of getting ready for Christmas.” There was such savage bitterness in his voice that Lorna sat erect and put down her glass and leaned towards him. “That’s hellish, of course, Jim and I can understand how you feel. But it’s a thing that could have happened to any lawyer. You’re being silly to let it wreck your whole life. Why not make amends, since you feel that’s what you have to do, by going back and taking up your job again and setting yourself more determinedly than ever to seeing that justice is done for your other clients?” He shook his head and gulped his drink. “Maybe some day, though now I think not,” he told her, his voice grating, harsh. “I never want the responsibility of a man’s life on my conscience again.” Lorna’s mouth twisted slightly. “Remember what I told

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you about consciences? They’re damned hard to live with, until you beat them insensible,” she reminded him. “The way you did with yours?” Color touched her face, and her eyes were bright. “The way I did with mine,” she told him harshly. He looked at her sharply. “And it worked?” he asked. Her chin came up and her eyes were cool. “For me it did,” she assured him. “Now I can fight just as hard, kick, gouge, beat my way up and not give a damn whose neck I step on. In my business, you have to be tough to survive, and I intend to survive.” Jim watched her, the question he was reluctant to frame, in his eyes. “I’m in advertising, so get that gleam out of your eyes,” she ordered him. “I’m not a flesh-peddler in any sense of the word. I hold my job by being a damned good copywriter. I’m well up towards the top, and the higher you go, the more slippery it gets. You have to keep one eye on the fellow ahead of you whose job you want, and the other eye on the one behind you, who wants your job. It sounds a bit screwy, but you also have to keep on your toes—to be ready to kick the guy ahead of you out of his job so you can get it, the other one to kick back at the one who’s after your job. It’s a lovely, lovely profession.” “It sounds like it.” “But I love it. All right, so that makes me out a louse. I’m ambitious, and I’m going to get to the top, regardless of who I have to hurt while I’m doing it,” she told him. “That’s why the cabin here is so valuable to me. When I get all tensed up, with nerves screaming, I come up here, lock the door, drink myself into a coma and sleep twenty-four hours. I take the train back

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to Atlanta from Marshallville late Sunday night, and Monday morning I’m back at my desk, clear-eyed, ready to stand toeto-toe with anyone who gets in my way, and slug it out.” Jim was studying her curiously, and as though she found his gaze more than she wanted to endure, she rose swiftly,

moved into the kitchen, mixed two fresh drinks, and came back to hand him one. She lifted the other in a silent salute and drank deeply. “So now you know the secret of the cabin,” she told him. “Marthy would give her store-bought teeth to know it. She snooped and pried and prowled like crazy when I first came here, because she was sure I was meeting some man here. I’m sure the dipsomanic thing never occurred to her, though Storekeeper tries now and then to sell me some of his famous corn-squeezin’s. I always draw myself up haughtily and say, ‘But, Jake, you know I don’t drink.’ “ She drank thirstily and Jim watched her. Suddenly he smiled at her. “You’re quite a girl,” he said quietly. “Oh, sure, a fine, upstanding young American gal and such,” she drawled, and her eyes were hot upon him. “D’you know something? If there were men like you around these parts, Marthy might have a point.” “Well, thanks!” She put down her glass on the table with a little thud and faced him, head erect, eyes straight. “Well, are you going home?” she demanded. Jim got quickly to his feet, flushing at the brutality of the dismissal. “Sorry, I hadn’t realized I’d been such a bore,” he said and reached for his windbreaker. “Because if you’re not,” Lorna said, “I won’t need any more

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of this liquor. It’s only when I sleep alone that I need to drink myself to sleep.” She met his eyes coolly for the startled instant it took Jim to realize what she was saying. Then he laughed, put down his glass and pulled her up into his arms, holding her tightly, his mouth seeking and bruising her own with the intensity of his kiss. After a long moment she drew a little away from him and looked up at him, her eyes green fire, her face white beneath its deft makeup. “Then I take it you’re staying?” Her tone was thick with passion, but there was a mocking glint in her eyes. “You couldn’t drive me away with a double-barreled shotgun,” he told her, his voice far from steady. “Then what are we waiting for?” demanded Lorna, and holding his hand, she drew him with her into the tiny bedroom, where there was scarcely room for them to walk between the bed and the dressing table. Her arms went about him, drawing him down to her, and she gave herself fully. She took his ardor with a wild abandon that was delightful but startling in its violence. She was, as he had known instinctively that she would be, a deft and expert lover. Experienced was the word that came to him, but in the mad enchantment of the moment, he thrust it from him. He had known women before, of course, but never one who gave herself to the ardent demands of a blazing desire with such stormy passion. Time and everything else, except this tumultuous giving and taking of desire and its fulfillment, ceased to be. When at last their transports had lifted them to the peak

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of fulfillment and their mutual crisis ebbed, they lay still, clutched in each other’s arms. Then she slid away from him, and lay relaxed in the breathless limpness of the aftermath. He propped himself on his elbow and looked down at her, his eyes delighting in the beauty his body had so completely possessed. She looked like a gorgeous cat, sunk in a delicious languor. She opened her eyes at last, sea-green and sleepy, and grinned at him. “Boy, will I give the office hell on Monday!” she murmured and seemed to fall instantly asleep. Jim lay beside her, too emotionally aroused to find sleep easy, and for some crazy reason, his mind went to that girl on the mountain in whose cabin he had found shelter last night, the girl who had barred him from her side by a vicious dog and a shotgun. He wondered what it would be like to possess her young, exquisite body as he had possessed Lorna’s fully mature charms. That was a thought that he put aside, ashamed that he could think of Cindy in that light. After what that old bitch, the Haney woman had said about her, knowing the suspicion and contempt in which she and Marthy held Cindy he felt that he, too, had betrayed her by even holding such thoughts about her. By the time he had reached that point in his thoughts, sleep swept over him. In the coldest, darkest hour before the wintry dawn, Lorna awoke him. “Time you were stirring your bones, my fine friend, and hiking it down to the cabin Storekeeper’s got all fixed up for you,” she told him. Jim stared at her in the pale-yellow light from the shaded bedlamp. “Hey, you’re not going to throw me out of this snug, warm bed into the cold? Want me to catch pneumonia?” he

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protested and reached for her with eager arms. Lorna evaded him, slipping away from him as she slid to the foot of the bed and stepped out, reaching for a robe to wrap about herself. “The man doesn’t live who’s going to see me in the cold grey dawn of the morning after, Jimmy darlin’,” she assured him, and though her voice was light and mocking, he sensed that she meant it. “I look like death warmed over after one of these little sessions. You can come back for breakfast, not before twelve o’clock, when I’ve managed to pull myself together and got my face on. Scoot, now!” “You look beautiful—,” he protested. “Beat it, lad—or I won’t even let you come back for breakfast,” she threatened and went out into the living room. Swearing, he pulled on his clothes, and when he went into the living room, he found her waiting for him. Though she smiled at his angry scowl, there was no hint of relenting in her manner. “With Marthy so damned sure I’m an abandoned woman, and a first-rate hussy, I can’t afford to have them know you spent the night here,” she pointed out. “They’ll have the cabin ready for you, and the first thing the old bitch will do when she gets up is to go out and see if you’re there. See?” Reluctantly, Jim nodded and erased the scowl. “Sure,” he agreed. “It’s just that I was sleeping so warm and snug and in such wonderful company. You’re right, of course.” “There can be lots of other nights, if you like,” she told him, studying him through the smoke of her cigarette. “If I like!” Jim reached for her, but she laughed, stepped back and swung open the front door, drawing her robe about

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her, shivering in the icy blast of air that swept in. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Breakfast at twelve sharp, and it might be waffles,â&#x20AC;? she promised him, and as he stepped through the door, it swung shut behind him. Then he heard the click of the key in the lock. He stood on the steps, shivering in the bitter cold, until his eyes had adjusted themselves to the darkness, and he could see the pale glimmer of the creek, and could feel his way beside it on the trail. A feeble light shone through a window of the cabin Storekeeper had said would be his. Jim managed to reach it, and to creep silently up the steps, knowing that sounds would carry a long way in that still, cold night. He was most anxious not to rouse Marthy and her husband and be seen coming in at this hour. A kerosene lamp burned dimly on a rickety table, and the fire in the small sheet-iron stove had died down to glowing embers. There was a wood box full of short, thick, well-dried logs. Jim carefully fed the embers until the stove once more glowed with a gratifying warmth. He blew out the lamp, and looked through the one small window at a thin greying in the sky. Not so much the coming of light as of the fading of thick darkness. Then he tumbled into bed, and as he once more grew warm, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

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