LITMIR.BIZ

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the dance on Lonesome her people had watched her suspiciously. The thing she had done had been a violation of the hill code and old Clay Clanton had thrashed her with a cowhide till she begged for mercy. Jimmie had come home from the still to find her writhing in passionate revolt. The boy had been furious at his father; yet had admitted the substantial justice of the punishment. Its wisdom he doubted. For he knew his sister to be stubborn as old Clay himself, and he feared lest they drive her to the arms of Bad Dave Roush.

      “I reckon you was talkin’ to yo’self, mebbe,” he suggested.

      “I reckon.”

      They walked home together along a path through the rhododendrons. The long, slender legs of the girl moved rhythmically and her arms swung like pendulums. Life in the open had given her the litheness and the grace of a woodland creature. The mountain woman is cheated of her youth almost before she has learned to enjoy it. But ’Lindy was still under eighteen. Her warm vitality still denied the coming of a day when she would be a sallow, angular snuff-chewer.

      Within sight of the log cabin the girl lingered for a moment by the sassafras bushes near the spring. Some deep craving for sympathy moved her to alien speech. She turned upon him with an imperious, fierce tenderness in her eyes.

      “You’ll never forgit me, Bud? No matter what happens, you’ll—you’ll not hate me?”

      Her unusual emotion embarrassed and a little alarmed him. “Oh, shucks! They ain’t anything goin’ to happen, sis. What’s ailin’ you?”

      “But if anything does. You’ll not hate me—you’ll remember I allus thought a heap of you, Jimmie?” she insisted.

      “Doggone it, if you’re still thinkin’ of that scalawag Dave Roush—” He broke off, moved by some touch of prescient tragedy in her young face. “ ’Course I ain’t ever a-goin’ to forgit you none, sis. Hit ain’t likely, is it?”

      It was a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her impulsive caress without any visible irritability.

      ’Lindy busied herself preparing supper for her father and brother. Ever since her mother died when the child was eleven she had been the family housekeeper.

      At dusk Clay Clanton came in and stood his rifle in a corner of the room. His daughter recognized ill-humor in the grim eyes of the old man. He was a tall, gaunt figure, strongly built, a notable fighter with his fists in the brawling days before he “got religion” at a camp meeting. Now his Calvinism was of the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil. Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been buried next day and a third had kept his bed for months.

      He ate for a time in dour silence before he turned harshly on ’Lindy.

      “You ain’t havin’ no truck with Dave Roush are you? Not meetin’ up with him on the sly?” he demanded, his deep-set eyes full of menace under the heavy, grizzled brows.

      “No, I ain’t,” retorted the girl, and her voice was sullen and defiant.

      “See you don’t, lessen yo’ want me to tickle yore back with the bud again. I don’t allow to put up with no foolishness.” He turned in explanation to the boy. “Brad Nickson seen him this side of the river to-day. He says this ain’t the fustest time Roush has been seen hangin’ ’round the cove.”

      The boy’s wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister. But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.

      ’Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things that made life tolerable?

      She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of these. Instead, her father’s inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to which she was moving blindfold.

      Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap best. She had no joy in the thing she was going to do. Of her love she was not sure and of her lover very unsure. A bell of warning rang faintly in her heart as she waited for the hours to slip away.

      A very little would have turned the tide. But she nursed her anger against her father, fed her resentment with the memory of all his wrongs to her. When at last she crept through the window to the dark porch trellised with wild cucumbers, she persuaded herself that she was going only to tell Dave Roush that she would not join him.

      Her heart beat fast with excitement and dread. Poor, undisciplined daughter of the hills though she was, a rumor of the future whispered in her ears and weighted her bosom.

      Quietly she stole past the sassafras brake to the big laurel. Her lover took her instantly into his arms and kissed the soft mouth again and again. She tried to put him from her, to protest that she was not going with him. But before his ardor her resolution melted. As always, when he was with her, his influence was paramount.

      “The boat is under that clump of bushes,” he whispered.

      “Oh, Dave, I’m not goin’,” she murmured.

      “Then I’ll go straight to the house an’ have it out with the old man,” he answered.

      His voice rang gay with the triumph of victory. He did not intend to let her hesitations rob him of it.

      “Some other night,” she promised. “Not now—I don’t want to go now. I—I’m not ready.”

      “There’s no time like to-night, honey. My brother came with me in the boat. We’ve got horses waitin’—an’ the preacher came ten miles to do the job.”

      Then, with the wisdom born of many flirtations, he dropped argument and wooed her ardently. The anchors that held the girl to safety dragged. The tug of sex, her desire of love and ignorance of life, his eager and passionate demand that she trust him: all these swelled the tide that beat against her prudence.

      She caught his coat lapels tightly in her clenched fists.

      “If I go I’ll be givin’ up everything in the world for you, Dave Roush. My folks ’ll hate me. They’d never speak to me again. You’ll be good to me. You won’t cast it up to me that I ran away with you. You’ll—you’ll—” Her voice broke and she gulped down a little sob.

      He laughed. She could not see his face in the darkness, but the sound of his laughter was not reassuring. He should have met her appeal seriously.

      The girl drew back.

      He sensed at once his mistake. “Good to you!” he cried. “ ’Lindy, I’m a-goin’ to be the best ever.”

      “I ain’t got ary mother, Dave.” Again she choked in her throat. “You wouldn’t take advantage of me, would you?”

      He protested hotly. Desiring only to be convinced, ’Lindy took one last precaution.

      “Swear you’ll do right by me always.”

      He swore it.

      She put her hand in his and he led her to the boat.

      Ranse Roush was at the oars. Before he had taken a dozen strokes a wave of terror swept over her. She was leaving behind forever that quiet, sunny cove where she had been brought up. The girl began to shiver against the arm of her lover. She heard again the sound of his low, triumphant laughter.

      It was too

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