CHAPTER VI CONFEDERATE GOLD
"So you're thinking of going into politics?"
Ralph Cawood, a frank-faced college boy of the mountains, who had becomea friend of the two girls, brushed the tangled locks from his eyes andlaughed a merry laugh as he repeated, "Going into politics! You twogirls!"
"I didn't say that," said Marion with a frown and an involuntary stamp ofher foot. "Teaching school isn't going into politics, is it?"
"You just better believe it is! Anyway, it is if you're to teach here inthe mountains and draw your pay from the State. You'll have to elect youa trustee, that's what you'll have to do. It's always done. And believeme, that calls for a right smart of a scrap!"
"But Ralph!" Marion exclaimed. "Don't you know we've nearly finishedcollege, that we are better qualified than most of the teachers in theMountain Academy at Middlesburg, and that the teachers they've had beforescarcely knew how to read and write?"
"Yes," said Ralph, his face suddenly growing sober, "they know all that,and more. But think of the money! This school at the mouth of LaurelBranch pays over seven hundred dollars. Last year Al Finley was headteacher. He paid his assistant twenty dollars a month. School lasts sixmonths. That left him nearly six hundred for six months work, and hedidn't work half the time at that. If he'd worked at freighting, loggingor getting out barrel staves, he couldn't have earned that much in twoyears."
"But the children!"
"Yes, I know," said Ralph still more soberly, "but nobody thinks of them;at least not enough. I never got much good out of country school. Nobodyexpects to. My brother, who'd been outside to school, taught me."
"But why shouldn't they get good out of it? What do they think the schoolis for?" Marion's brow was knit in a puzzled frown.
"For drawing the State's money, I guess. Anyway, that's what it's alwaysbeen for. But you just go ahead," he added cheerfully. "Try it out. Seeif you can elect you a trustee. Ransom Turner is for you from the start,and he counts for a lot. A good many folks believe in him."
"We'll do it!" said Marion. Her lips were set in straight lines ofdetermination. "If we must go into politics in order to do the rightthing, we will!"
It was a daring resolve. Life surely is strange at times. Very often thething we did not want yesterday becomes the one thing we most desireto-day. It was so with Marion and the winter school. There had been atime when it took a hard fight to bring her mind to the sticking pointwhere she could say: "I'll stay." Now she suddenly resolved that nothingbut defeat could drive her away.
And yet, as she sat quietly talking to Florence a half hour later, thewhole situation seemed incredible. It seemed beyond belief that men couldbe so selfish as to draw the money that rightfully belonged to theirchildren and to their neighbors' children, with no notion of giving anyservice in return for it.
If the girls lacked proof that there would be a fight, they were not longin finding it.
"We'll go down to Ransom Turner's store, and ask him about it," saidFlorence.
"Yes, he'll tell us straight."
Before they reached Ransom's store they learned much. News travels fastin the mountains. This was mill day. All the mountain folks were at themouth of the creek with their grist of corn to be ground into meal forcorn bread. Some on horse back, some on foot, and one or two drivingyoung bullocks hitched to sleds, they came in crowds. One and all talkedof the coming school election and how Al Finley and his political backer,Black Blevens, were likely to have a race worthy of the name. Ralph hadtold someone of his talk with Marion. That person had told two others;these others had carried the news to the mill. Now all knew and alreadythey were lining up, on this side or that, for the coming battle.
As the girls passed through group after group, they felt that the veryatmosphere about them had changed. It was as if a threatening storm hungover the mountain top. Everyone smiled and spoke, but there was adifference. One could scarcely tell what it was; perhaps an inflection ofthe voice, perhaps the tightening of the muscles about the mouth.Whatever it was, Marion, who was a keen student of human nature, feltthat she could say almost to certainty: "That one is for us; this oneagainst us."
There were few doubtful ones. Mountain folks are quick to make decisionsand slow to change them.
A little lump came to Marion's throat as she realized that the peoplethey passed were about evenly divided.
"And to think," she whispered with a little choke down deep in herthroat, "only yesterday they were all so cordial. They praised us for theeducation we were giving their children. They've all asked us out todinner many times. 'Come and stay a week'--that's what they said."
"Yes," Florence smiled without bitterness, "but this summer we have beenteaching their children for nothing. We are about to ask them to lettheir State pay us the money coming to them for teaching their winterschool. Black Blevens has always controlled that. He's unprincipled, buthe's rich and powerful as mountain folks go. He's given work to many ofthese people when they needed it badly. Many of them are kin tohim--belong to his clan. As they would say, they are 'beholden' to him.Whatever his battle is, they must fight it. They're living back in thefeudal days. And that," said this big strong girl, swinging her arms onhigh, "is what makes me love it. I'd like to have been born a knight inthose good old days.
"'Scotts wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scotts wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to victory!'"
She threw back her head and laughed. "I'm going to get out my 'Lady ofthe Lake' and my 'Lays of the Last Minstrels' to-night. And in the fightthat lies before us I'm going to live over those days of old."
"'What! Warder Ho! Let the portcullis fall'," Marion murmured with asmile. "Here's Ransom Turner's store. 'Dismount, and let's within'!"
The low board shack which they entered did little to carry forward theillusion of castles, moats and drawbridges. From within, instead of theclang of armor, there came the sound of a hammer bursting in the head ofa barrel of salt pork.
The man who stepped forward to greet them carried little resemblance to aknight of old. Ransom Turner was a small man, with close cropped hair andgrimy hands. And yet, who can judge the strength and grandeur of a soul?There was a steady, piercing fire in the little man's eyes that was likethe even flow of an electrical current through a white hot wire.
"Heard what you said to Ralph this mornin'," he said quietly. "Reckonthat means right smart of a scrap, but I ca'culate we'll lick BlackBlevens and his crowd this time. Leastwise, it looks thataway. Folks havetook to believin' in Mrs. McAlpin, an' in you two--took to it a heap.
"But looka here," he drew them off into a corner. "Don't you think hit'sgoin' to be easy! Talk about Brimstone Corner! Hit'll be worse 'an thatafore hit's finished! Gun play, like as not, and people drove off intothe hills. Mortgages foreclosed on 'em as don't aim to vote to suit oldBlack Blevens. But you'll stay? You ain't afeared, be y'?" The fireseemed to fairly shoot from his pale blue eyes.
"No," Florence said quietly, "we're not afraid."
"That's right. You needn't be. You don't never need to be. There'smounting folks, an' heaps of em', as would leave their firesides an'fight for them that comes here to help their children out of theignorance we're all in. You believe that, don't you?"
"We do," said Florence. The sound of her voice was as solemn as it hadbeen the day she joined the church.
As the two girls left the store they felt exactly as they might have donehad they been living hundreds of years ago, and had come from aconference with their feudal lords.
"Do you know," whispered Florence as they passed around the corner andout of sight, "I believe I'm going to like it. Fighting just becauseyou're naturally quarrelsome is disgraceful. But fighting for a cause,that you may help those who are weaker than yourself, that's glorious."She flung her arms wide, "That--"
She stopped short. Only by a narrow margin had she escaped enfolding inthose outflung arms a curious little old man who had just eme
rged from abypath.
Dressed in loose-fitting homespun jacket and trousers, with shoes thatwere two sizes too large and hard enough to stand alone either side up,and with a home tanned squirrel skin cap that had shrunken to half itssize in the first rain it encountered, this man formed a ludicrousfigure.
The girls did not laugh. This was Preacher Gibson. "Uncle Billie" manycalled him. He it was who had told them of old Jeff Middleton.
"Ho-Ho! Here you are!" he exclaimed. "I been lookin' for you all. I got anotion about that ar gold. Hit war Confederate gold that old Jeff broughtback from the war. Reg'lar old Confederate gold hit war fer sure."
"But Uncle Billie, how do you know the Confederates coined any goldmoney?"
"Pshaw, child!" Uncle Billie looked at her in shocked surprise. "Didn'tJeff Davis take the mint at New Orleans? An' waren't there a power ofgold in that there mint? Hain't there powers of hit in all them mints? Incourse of reason there are. Hit's what mints are for."
"But Uncle Billie, Jeff Middleton wasn't a Confederate soldier, was he?"
"Never hearn that he were," Uncle Billie's face fell for a moment. Thenhis countenance brightened. "But you can't never tell 'bout folks, kinyou? Jeff came home dressed in brown homespun and drivin' a mule hitchedto a sled, the all-firedest kickin' mule you ever seed, and on that arsled war that sack of quare gold. Jeff was plum quare hisself. Who knowsbut he fit the Union arter all, and got that ar gold fer his pay?"
"That doesn't seem very likely," said Marion. "The Confederate soldiersweren't paid when the war ended. But the gold might have been plunder.Jeff may have been a Union soldier with Sherman on his march to the sea.There was plenty of plunder then."
"So he might. So he might," agreed Uncle Billie.
He sat down upon a flat rock and appeared to lose himself in deepthought.
"Do you know," he exclaimed, leaping to his feet, "if you all had thatgold right now you could do a power of good!"
"Sure we could," agreed Florence. "We could have the schoolhouse windowsand doors put in."
"Yes," Uncle Billie said, with a scratch of his wooly head, "but't'wouldn't be no use unless you come out on top in that ar schoolelection. I'll tell you," he moved close and whispered in the girl's ear."There's some no 'count folks livin' up on Shader Branch that's mightynigh got no sense. Them folks allus sells their vote to the one that pays'em most. If'n we had that ar gold we'd put a piece whar they all couldfind it and they'd come down an' vote fer our trustee."
"Oh no, we wouldn't!" said Florence emphatically. "That's bribery. It'sunlawful."
"Why, so it is," agreed Uncle Billie, "but so's a heap more of things."
"Anyway, we wouldn't buy a vote," said Florence. "Not if we had all thegold in the world. Our trustee will have to win fair and square, or notat all."
"Most likely hit'll be not at all," grumbled Uncle Billie as he wentstamping away. It was plain enough that he did not understand that finepoint of ethics.
Above the whipsawed cabin, a few hundred paces up the side of LittleBlack Mountain, a brook emerged from the dark shadows of its closelythatched roof of rhododendrons. Coming in shadows from ice cold springsabove, the waters of this brook were always chilled. As they rusheddownward toward the river they spread about them a refreshing coolnessthat defied the hottest summer sun.
Beside this brook, Marion loved to sit and think. The feel of the cool,damp air was like the touch of a calm personality, the murmur of thebrook was like the voice of a calm, counselling friend.
On the evening of the day into which so much surprise and excitement hadbeen crowded, she took little Hallie by the hand and together theyscrambled up the steep mountain side until, flushed and quite out ofbreath, they threw themselves down on a bed of moss beside the coolstream.
Hallie did not remain long in repose. Restless as a bee, she was soon upand away. First she chased a chipmunk to his rocky lair, then she busiedherself in the engrossing task of hunting the peculiar "sang" leaf whichmight mark the hiding place of a treasure of ginsing roots. Dressed asshe was in a bright yellow dress, she reminded Marion of a yellowbutterfly flitting from leaf to leaf, from blossom to blossom.
All too soon she was quite forgotten, for as the shadows lengthenedMarion thought of the problems and possibilities that lay before them.They had decided to help elect a school trustee. Ransom Turner would run.Many people believed in him. Were there enough to elect him? She hopedso, yet she doubted. Florence had said they would not buy votes, and theywould not. But how about Black Blevens? He would force men to vote forhim as trustee. He would use every means, fair or foul, to win. "And whatof the free school we are teaching now?" she thought. "Will he try tointerfere with that?" She decided it would be well to be on guard.
"Surely," she thought to herself, "there are thrills and adventuresenough to be had down here in the Cumberlands. Yes, and mystery aswell--even the mystery of Confederate gold."
She was thinking of Uncle Billie Gibson and what he had said about thegold that haunted the whipsawed house. She found it hard to believe thatthe Confederate States had coined gold, and harder still to think thatthere might be a quantity of it hidden away in the old house.
"But if there should be," she caught her breath, "if we should find it!Each coin would be worth a fabulous sum. Every museum in the countrywould want one, and every private collector. If it were only true," shewhispered low, and the brook seemed to murmur, "true, true, true."
Then of a sudden, rudely awakened from her dreams, she sprang to herfeet. A piercing scream had struck her ears. This was followed by anotherand yet another.
"Hallie!" she exclaimed, too frightened to move. "Hallie! What can havehappened to her?"
At that instant there flashed before her mind a picture of a face in asquare of light, an ugly face with bushy eyebrows, unshaven cheeks andbeady eyes--the face of the strange man she had seen at the cabin window.