Backwoods Girl

by Peggy Gaddis

  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 valley’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. 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 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 no-good 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 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.

  “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 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!”

  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 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.”

  “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 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 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.