Читать книгу Goose Creek Folks. A Story of the Kentucky Mountains онлайн

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“I ’lowed ’twas you and agin I ’lowed ’twas furriners. I never seen young-uns change so in sech a few months. You’d better let me go ahead and tell your mammy thar’s comp’ny comin’ fer supper.” The man slipped from his horse with a chuckle. “If you’ve walked from the Gap, hit’s been a purty stiff climb. Crawl up on the beastie, Tally, I’ll keep Mart comp’ny.”

After much demurring the girl mounted the sorrel and soon both were lost to sight around the bend.

The sun, a huge, fiery ball, was poised on the bare summit of a peak in the west, when Talitha reached the edge of a cove on the mountain-side. Curling indolently upward, the smoke from a cabin chimney was lost among the trees crowding the slope beyond. In spite of her haste, she halted the not unwilling sorrel and sat for a few moments gazing at the place she called home. The picture in her memory supplied all invisible details.

The cabin was small, one-roomed, with a loft above, the rough, unbarked logs brown as a beech nut. The mud and stick chimney at one end looked ready to collapse at the first brisk wind. There was no glass in the two shuttered openings which served as windows. The interior of the cabin was scarcely more attractive. Wide cracks showed in the puncheon floor, the walls were smoke-stained. In a corner near the fireplace,—there was no stove,—were several rude shelves filled with coarse, nicked dishes. The loom, warping bars, spinning wheel, a deal table, with three or four chairs and a couple of benches, nearly filled the room. A row of last year’s pepper pods and a bunch of herbs still hung from the dingy ceiling.