CHAPTER VI CONFEDERATE GOLD

"So you're thinking of going into politics?"

Ralph Cawood, a frank-faced college boy of the mountains, who had become a friend of the two girls, brushed the tangled locks from his eyes and laughed a merry laugh as he repeated, "Going into politics! You two girls!"

"I didn't say that," said Marion with a frown and an involuntary stamp of her 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 in the mountains and draw your pay from the State. You'll have to elect you a trustee, that's what you'll have to do. It's always done. And believe me, that calls for a right smart of a sc.r.a.p!"

"But Ralph!" Marion exclaimed. "Don't you know we've nearly finished college, that we are better qualified than most of the teachers in the Mountain Academy at Middlesburg, and that the teachers they've had before scarcely 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 Laurel Branch pays over seven hundred dollars. Last year Al Finley was head teacher. He paid his a.s.sistant twenty dollars a month. School lasts six months. That left him nearly six hundred for six months work, and he didn't work half the time at that. If he'd worked at freighting, logging or getting out barrel staves, he couldn't have earned that much in two years."

"But the children!"

"Yes, I know," said Ralph still more soberly, "but n.o.body thinks of them; at least not enough. I never got much good out of country school. n.o.body expects 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 school is for?" Marion's brow was knit in a puzzled frown.

"For drawing the State's money, I guess. Anyway, that's what it's always been for. But you just go ahead," he added cheerfully. "Try it out. See if 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 of determination. "If we must go into politics in order to do the right thing, we will!"

It was a daring resolve. Life surely is strange at times. Very often the thing we did not want yesterday becomes the one thing we most desire to-day. It was so with Marion and the winter school. There had been a time when it took a hard fight to bring her mind to the sticking point where she could say: "I'll stay." Now she suddenly resolved that nothing but defeat could drive her away.

And yet, as she sat quietly talking to Florence a half hour later, the whole situation seemed incredible. It seemed beyond belief that men could be so selfish as to draw the money that rightfully belonged to their children and to their neighbors' children, with no notion of giving any service in return for it.

If the girls lacked proof that there would be a fight, they were not long in finding it.

"We'll go down to Ransom Turner's store, and ask him about it," said Florence.

"Yes, he'll tell us straight."

Before they reached Ransom's store they learned much. News travels fast in the mountains. This was mill day. All the mountain folks were at the mouth of the creek with their grist of corn to be ground into meal for corn bread. Some on horse back, some on foot, and one or two driving young bullocks. .h.i.tched to sleds, they came in crowds. One and all talked of 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 had told 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 already they were lining up, on this side or that, for the coming battle.

As the girls pa.s.sed through group after group, they felt that the very atmosphere about them had changed. It was as if a threatening storm hung over the mountain top. Everyone smiled and spoke, but there was a difference. One could scarcely tell what it was; perhaps an inflection of the voice, perhaps the tightening of the muscles about the mouth.

Whatever it was, Marion, who was a keen student of human nature, felt that she could say almost to certainty: "That one is for us; this one against us."

There were few doubtful ones. Mountain folks are quick to make decisions and slow to change them.

A little lump came to Marion's throat as she realized that the people they pa.s.sed were about evenly divided.

"And to think," she whispered with a little choke down deep in her throat, "only yesterday they were all so cordial. They praised us for the education we were giving their children. They've all asked us out to dinner many times. 'Come and stay a week'-that's what they said."

"Yes," Florence smiled without bitterness, "but this summer we have been teaching their children for nothing. We are about to ask them to let their State pay us the money coming to them for teaching their winter school. Black Blevens has always controlled that. He's unprincipled, but he's rich and powerful as mountain folks go. He's given work to many of these people when they needed it badly. Many of them are kin to him-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 the feudal days. And that," said this big strong girl, swinging her arms on high, "is what makes me love it. I'd like to have been born a knight in those 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 of the Lake' and my 'Lays of the Last Minstrels' to-night. And in the fight that lies before us I'm going to live over those days of old."

"'What! Warder Ho! Let the portcullis fall'," Marion murmured with a smile. "Here's Ransom Turner's store. 'Dismount, and let's within'!"

The low board shack which they entered did little to carry forward the illusion of castles, moats and drawbridges. From within, instead of the clang of armor, there came the sound of a hammer bursting in the head of a barrel of salt pork.

The man who stepped forward to greet them carried little resemblance to a knight of old. Ransom Turner was a small man, with close cropped hair and grimy 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 like the even flow of an electrical current through a white hot wire.

"Heard what you said to Ralph this mornin'," he said quietly. "Reckon that means right smart of a sc.r.a.p, but I ca'culate we'll lick Black Blevens and his crowd this time. Leastwise, it looks thataway. Folks have took 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's goin' to be easy! Talk about Brimstone Corner! Hit'll be worse 'an that afore hit's finished! Gun play, like as not, and people drove off into the hills. Mortgages foreclosed on 'em as don't aim to vote to suit old Black Blevens. But you'll stay? You ain't afeared, be y'?" The fire seemed 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's mounting folks, an' heaps of em', as would leave their firesides an'

fight for them that comes here to help their children out of the ignorance we're all in. You believe that, don't you?"

"We do," said Florence. The sound of her voice was as solemn as it had been the day she joined the church.

As the two girls left the store they felt exactly as they might have done had they been living hundreds of years ago, and had come from a conference with their feudal lords.

"Do you know," whispered Florence as they pa.s.sed around the corner and out of sight, "I believe I'm going to like it. Fighting just because you'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 in those outflung arms a curious little old man who had just emerged from a bypath.

Dressed in loose-fitting homespun jacket and trousers, with shoes that were 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 its size in the first rain it encountered, this man formed a ludicrous figure.

The girls did not laugh. This was Preacher Gibson. "Uncle Billie" many called 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 a notion about that ar gold. Hit war Confederate gold that old Jeff brought back from the war. Reg'lar old Confederate gold hit war fer sure."

"But Uncle Billie, how do you know the Confederates coined any gold money?"

"Pshaw, child!" Uncle Billie looked at her in shocked surprise. "Didn't Jeff Davis take the mint at New Orleans? An' waren't there a power of gold in that there mint? Hain't there powers of hit in all them mints? In course 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. Then his countenance brightened. "But you can't never tell 'bout folks, kin you? Jeff came home dressed in brown homespun and drivin' a mule hitched to a sled, the all-firedest kickin' mule you ever seed, and on that ar sled war that sack of quare gold. Jeff was plum quare hisself. Who knows but he fit the Union arter all, and got that ar gold fer his pay?"

"That doesn't seem very likely," said Marion. "The Confederate soldiers weren'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 deep thought.