Adventure, August 1917 — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

I0O toward a small, green cedar that stood in the cabin yard of old Johnse Flowers, at the head of a little cove a quarter of a mile to the eastward. For half an hour his gaze alternated between the playing loggers and the green cedar, then he became impatient, took up an old brown fiddle from his nearby bed and thumbed the strings to see whether they were in tune. But another glance through the window showed him that a white cloth had been placed on the cedar. He smiled and put the instrument down, rose and,went down-stairs still smiling. The white cloth was the signal of his sweetheart. By it he knew that Sadie was on her way to their meeting-place on the creek below the camp. Sadie was to give him an answer that afternoon. Hanson did not mean to let his eagerness betray anything, so he moved very leisurely when he had set foot on the ground. He was not permitted to cross the clearing un- molested—‘‘Rush”” Gudridge, bully and champion-fighter of every logging-camp for miles and miles around, caught him by an arm and bantered him for a boxing-bout. “Go off,” growled Hanson. “You know I don’t box with you, Rush.”’ For Gudridge was too big and too heavy, and Gudridge was the invincible, the un- conquerable. He was a Goliath, and in his prime—he could throw a horse or a bull— with his bare hands he could twist the bark from a sapling, or tie iron rods in knots. Hanson himself was a well-nigh perfect physical man, and anything but a coward, but—well, Gudridge had proved over and over that he was the invincible, the uncon- querable. “T won’t hit you hard,” grinned the cham- pion. There had never been any manner of friendship between these two men, and Sadie Flowers, belle of her section, was one reason for that. Hanson jerked his arm roughly out of Gudridge’s strong grip. “Vou’d better not hit me at all,” he warned. ‘““Mammyboy!”’ sneered Gudridge. The other said nothing and went on across the clearing. The bully faced his brother, who stood watching, winked and inclined his great head toward his rival. Bill Gud- ridge understood. Five minutes later, he was stealthily following Hanson through the sea of white and waxen laurel bloom. When Hanson reached the meeting-place Adventure in the woodland, the girl was there waiting for him. She was bare-footed, and her brown hair hung down her back in one thick plait. Her face was both pretty and sad, and a poorly-made and much-faded dress of calico could not altogether hide the graceful lines of her slender and roundish figure. Hanson walked up to her, took both her hands in his, and looked straight into her soft, deep brown eyes. She shrank a little, and at that Hanson’s cheeks paled some- what. “Tell it, Sadie,”’ he blurted. “For the present, it—it must be ‘no’ Wardlaw,” said Sadie, turning her gaze toward her bare feet. Close association with those who had been closely associated with Yankee lumber- men, logging-camp superintendents and woods foremen had taken away the broad- est of her hill dialect. Hanson noted absently that one of her big-toes was burrowing difhidently into the black leaf mold. After a moment, she went on: “My daddy said if I was to marry one of you fiddlin’ Hansons, he’d never even speak to me any more, Wardlaw. I couldn’t bear that. You understand, Wardlaw, I’ve got only my daddy, and my daddy’s got only me. I couldn’t be separated from him for all the time.” “That old feud,’ clipped Hanson. ‘“‘Sadie, do you know that the rest o’ the world laughs at us mountain people for feudin’? And it is foolish. I’d sure been thinkin’ the old feelin’ was dead, Sadie.” “No,” replied the girl, ‘it ain’t dead. It won’t be dead as long as pap lives. Your folks, maybe, has forgot it; but pap still remembers. And _ there’s my _ cousin Nathan—‘he remembers too. He hates you, Wardlaw. But that’s mostly because he wants to marry me. Rush Gudridge wants to marry me too—and pap wants me to marry Rush. But—we’ll wait and hope, and see what the future’s got for us. I reckon you’d better go, Wardlaw. I’m sorry.” Hanson pressed her hands gently and dropped them, turned and went back to the camp. And the eaves-dropper, stealing after him, went to Rush Gudridge and told. Once in the big upstairs-room of the boarding-house, Hanson took up his fiddle and began to play as he rarely played. Comiclsoo CO 5}