Over Paradise Ridge Read online

and growl.

  Now, when I stalked into the room and asked about the Crittenden home,daddy reared his head from his evening paper and immediately took noticeof whatever it was in my voice that sounded as if something had hurt me.

  "Daddy," I asked him, with a little gulp, "did Sam--Sam sell hisancestral home even to the third and fourth generation and go to farmingjust for sheer wickedness?"

  "No, madam, he did not," he answered, looking at me over his glasses,and I could see a pain straighten out the corners of his mouth under hisfierce white mustache. "The judge's debts made a mortgage that nicelyblanketed the place, and Sam had only to turn it over to the creditorsand walk out to that little two-hundred-acre brier-patch the judge hadforgot to mortgage."

  "Then Sam can sell it for enough to go out and take his place in theworld," I said, with the greatest relief in my voice.

  "He could, but he won't," answered daddy, looking at me with keensympathy. "I tried that out on him. Just because that brier-patch hasnever had a deed against it since the grant from Virginia to old SamuelFoster Crittenden of 1793 he thinks it is his sacred duty to go out anddig a hole in a hollow log for Byrd and himself and get in it tosentimentalize and starve."

  "Oh, I think that is a beautiful thought about the land, and I wish Ihad known it earlier! But could they be really hungry--hungry, daddy?" Isaid, with a sudden vacant feeling just under my own ribs in the regionbetween my heart and my stomach.

  "Oh no," answered daddy, comfortably. "They both looked fat enough thelast time I saw Sam coming to town in a wagon with Byrd, leading aremarkably fine Jersey calf. We'll go out in that new flying-machine youbrought home with you and pull them out of their burrow some day whenyou get the time. Fine boy, that; and, mother, when is thattwo-hundred-pound black beauty in your kitchen going to have supper?"

  I didn't tell daddy I had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt for Samin less than thirty-six hours after I had landed in Hayesboro, but Iwent up to my room to slip into something clean and springy, walkingbehind a thin mist of tears of pure sentiment. That was the third timein about seven hours I had been crying over Sam Crittenden, and then Ihad to eat a supper of fried chicken and waffles that would have beendelicious if it hadn't been flavored by restrained sobs in my throat. Iwas so mad at my disloyal thoughts about a beautiful character, whichSam's reverence for his ancestral land proves his to be, and so afraidof what I had done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see him, thatby the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have tobe fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put alovely dab of thick cream right on top of my saucer:

  "Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had been sick and that hehas lost his two finest calves?"

  I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on howwarm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the oldpurple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had alwayskept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of animaginary marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a good father ofa hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and providedliberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.

  "And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble andpoor and alone," I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that Ishivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate andlooked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, atthe foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log.

  "Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?" laughed acrisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough handruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake tomy left shoulder. "How do you find all our children after a three-yearforeign sojourn?"

  "I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffingmy hair, Sam Crittenden; and did you find that cow?" I answered, withboth defiance and anxiety in my voice.

  "I did," answered Sam, cheerfully, "but how did I lose you in theshuffle? I tied her up in the shack with a rope and then beat it in allthese five miles, partly by foot and partly by a neighbor's buggy, tofind and--er--rope you in. I am glad to see you are standing quietly atthe bars waiting for me, and as soon as I've greeted your mother and DadHayes and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the fatted calfthey killed for your prodigal return, I'll foot it the five miles backin a relieved and contented frame of mind."

  "How did you happen to let your cows get sick, Sam?" I demanded,sternly, instead of putting my arms around his neck to tell him hownoble I had found out he was, and how glad I was that he had come allthat way to see me, and not to be mad at me because I didn't obey himout in the lane.

  "I don't know, Betty, I just don't know," answered Sam, as he lit acorn-cob pipe and leaned closer to me in a thoughtful manner. "Cows aresuch feminine things and so contrary. I don't know what I will do if Ilose any more. I--I may get discouraged."

  "Have you had a doctor?" I asked, briskly and unfeelingly, though I didtake his big rough hand in my own and hold on to it with a sympathy thatwas not in my voice.

  "No, I've sorter doctored them by a book I have. The only goodveterinary doctor about here lives way over by Spring Hill, and it wouldtake him a day to drive over and back, besides costing me about tendollars. Still, I ought to get him. Buttercup is pretty sick," answeredSam, and I could see that his broad shoulders under his well-cut blueserge coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight of his animalresponsibilities.

  "I can take my car over to Spring Hill in less than an hour, get thedoctor, and have you and the doctor out to those animals by ten. Thismoon will last all night; and you go get the apple-float from motherwhile I make Eph run out the car and jump into my corduroys. Come on,quick!" And as I talked I opened the gate, drew him in, and startedleading him up the front walk by the sleeve of his coat.

  "Not if I know myself, Betty, will I let you undertake such a red-crossexpedition as that. They'll have to wait. I came in to call on you andwhisper sweet nothings to you in the parlor while you tell me--"

  "Eat the float in a hurry if you want it," I interrupted him, as Ideposited him beside mother, who was still sipping a last cup of coffeewith her jelly-cake, and went for my room and my motor clothes.

  And it was one grand dash that Redwheels and I made out Providence Roadand over Paradise Ridge down to Spring Hill in less than thirty-fiveminutes. In the moonlight the road was like a lovely silver ribbon thatwe wound up on a spool under the machine, and a Southern spring breezeseemed to be helping the gasoline to waft us on more rapidly in ourflight as it stung our faces with its coolness, which was scented withthe sap that was just beginning to rise against bark and bud in themeadows and woods past which we sped.

  "It will be great to die together, won't it, Betty?" said Sam once asRedwheels ran a few yards on two wheels, then tried the opposite twobefore it settled back to the prosaic though comfortable use of four aswe took a flying leap across a little creek ditch.

  "We can't die sentimentally; we've got to get back to those sufferingcows," I answered him, firmly, as I whirled into Spring Hill and stoppedRedwheels, panting and hot, in front of the dry-goods, feed, and drugstore. There I knew we could find out anything we wanted to know aboutthe whereabouts or profession of any of the fifteen hundred inhabitantsof the little old hamlet which has nestled under the hills for a hundredyears or more. "Ask where the cow physician lives. Quick!"

  And at my urge Sam sprang out and across the old, uneven brick pavementthat lay between us and the store door. Then in less than two minutes heappeared with a round, red-faced, white-headed old man who wheezedchuckles as he talked.

  His fear of the car was only equaled by his fascination at the idea ofthe long ride in it, which would be the first motor-driven sortie he hadever made out into life.

  "Air ye sure, little missie, that you can drive the contraption so asnot to run away with us? Old folks is tetchy, like a basket of pulleteggs
," he said, as Sam seated him in the back seat and sprang to myside.

  "I wish I had a rope to tie him in," he muttered, as he sank into hisseat. "If you run as you did coming, we'll sure lose him. He'll bouncelike a butter-ball."

  "I'm not taking any risks," I answered, and it was with greatestmildness that we sauntered up Paradise Ridge and started down the otherside. And as I drove along carefully my mind began to work out into thebyways of the situation. I don't see how my athletic and executivegeneration is going to do its appointed work in its day if we are goingto go on using the same set of social conventions that tied up ourmothers. As we neared the cross-road that turned