Part 32

"Lord God Almighty!" Talithie cried, dropping the lighted pine to the floor. "Our babe is blind, Jasper! Blind, I tell you! Stone blind!"

Jasper leaped to his feet. The wooden bowl, the knife, clattered to the floor. The pine stick still burning lay where it had fallen.

"Our babe can't be blind," he moaned, falling to his knees. "Our helpless babe that's done no harm to any living soul, our spotless pure babe can't be so afflicted!" he sobbed bitterly, putting his arms about the two he loved best in all the world.

The pine stick where Talithie dropped it burned deep into the puncheon floor leaving a scar that never wore away.

Again old Granny Withers hobbled over the mountain as fast as she had the night she bore the news to Sabrina about the bat that flew over the fair bride's head. "Talithie's babe is blind--stone blind, Sabrina Ashby! Do you hear that?"

This time Widow Ashby's Sabrina did not cry out in glee. She did not clap her hands above her head and laugh wildly. The forsaken girl sank into a chair. Her face turned deathly white, she stared ahead, unseeing.

It was a long time before she spoke. Then there was no one there to hear. Granny Withers had scurried off in the dark and Widow Ashby--she was long since dead and gone.

"A toad in a bottle," the frightened Sabrina whispered and her voice echoed in the barren room, "a toad in a bottle works a conjure. Ma's gone and now Talithie's babe and Jasper's is plum stone blind." She swayed to and fro, crying hysterically. Then she buried her face in the vise of her hands, moaning, "Little Margie Tipton, your pretty blue eyes won't never 'tice no false true love away from no fair maid. And you, Mistress Jasper Tipton, you'll have many a long year for to ruminate such things through your own troubled mind."

* * * * *

Some shake their heads sympathetically, finger to brow, when they speak of Widow Ashby's Sabrina living alone in her ramshackle house far up at the head of Crockett's Hollow. "A forsaken girl that holds grudge and works conjure comes to be a sorry, sorry woman," they say.

Should you pass along that lonely creek and venture to call a cheery "Hallo!" only a weird, cackling laugh, a harsh "Begone" will echo in answer.

THE SILVER TOMAHAWK

In Carter County, Kentucky, there is a legend which had its beginning long ago when Indian princesses roamed the Blue Ridge, and pioneers' hopes were high of finding a lost silver mine said to be in caves close by.

Morg Tompert loved to tell the story. As long as he lived the old fellow could be found on a warm spring day sitting in the doorway of his little shack nearly hidden by a clump of dogwoods. A shack of rough planks that clung tenaciously to the mountain side facing Saltpeter, or as it was sometimes called--Swindle Cave. The former name came from the deposit of that mineral, the latter from the counterfeiters who carried on their nefarious trade within the security of the dark cavern.

As he talked, Morg plucked a dogwood blossom that peeped around the corner of his shack like a gossipy old woman. "See that bloom?" He held it toward the visitor. "Some say that a Indian princess who was slain by a jealous chieftain sopped up her heart's blood with it and that's how come the stains on the tip of the white flower. There have been Indian princesses right here on this very ground." Morg nodded slowly. "There's the empty tomb of one--yes, and there's a silver mine way back yonder in that cave. They were there long before them scalawags were counterfeiting inside that cave. Did ever you hear of Huraken?" he asked with childish eagerness. Morg needed no urging. He went on to tell how this Indian warrior of the Cherokee tribe loved a beautiful Indian princess named Manuita:

"Men are all alike no matter what their color may be. They want to show out before the maiden they love best. Huraken did. He roved far away to find a pretty for her. That is to say a pretty he could give the chieftain, her father, in exchange for Manuita's hand. He must have been gone a right smart spell for the princess got plum out of heart, allowed he was never coming back and, bless you, she leapt off a cliff. Killed herself! And all this time her own true love was unaware of what she had done. He, himself, was give up to be dead. But what kept him away so long was he had come upon a silver mine. He dug the silver out of the earth, melted it, and made a beautiful tomahawk. He beat it out on the anvil and fashioned a peace pipe on its handle. He must have been proud as a peacock strutting in the sun preening its feathers. Huraken was hurrying along, fleet as a deer through the forest, his shiny tomahawk glistening in his strong right hand. The gift for the chieftain in exchange for the princess bride. All of a sudden he halted right off yon a little way. There where the stony cliff hangs over. Right there before Huraken's eyes at his feet lay the corpse of an Indian lass, face downward. When he turned the face upwards, it was the princess. Princess Manuita, his own true love. His sorryful cry raised up as high as the heavens. Huraken was plum beside himself with grief. He gathered up the princess in his arms and packed her off into the cave. Her tomb is right in there yet--empty."

Old Morg paused for breath. "Huraken kept it secret where he had buried his true love. He meant to watch over her tomb all the rest of his life. Then the chieftain, Manuita's father, got word of it somehow. He vowed to his tribe that Huraken had murdered his daughter in cold blood. So the chieftain and his tribe set out and captured Huraken. They bound him hand and foot with strips of buckskin out in the forest so that wild varmints could come and devour his flesh and he couldn't help himself. He'd concealed his tomahawk next to his hide under his heavy deerskin hunting coat. But the spirit of the dead princess pitied her helpless lover. Come a big rain that night that pelted him and soaked him plum to the skin. The princess had prayed of the Rain God to send that downpour. It soaked the buckskin through and through that bound Huraken's hands and feet and he wriggled loose. Many a long day and night he wandered away off in strange forests, but all the time the spirit of his true love, the princess, haunted him. He got no peace till he came back and give himself up to the chieftain. Only one thing the prisoner asked. Would they let him go to the cave before they put him to death? Now the Cherokees are fearful of evil spirits. When they took Huraken to the mouth of the cave they would go no farther. 'Evil spirits are inside!' the chieftain said, and the rest of his tribe nodded and frowned. So Huraken went into the dark cave alone. From that to this he's never been seen. And the corpse of the Princess Manuita, it's gone too. Her empty tomb is in yonder's cave. Not even a crumb of her bones can be found."

Old Morg Tompert reflected a long moment. "I reckon when Huraken packed the princess off somewhere else her corpse come to be a heavy load. He dropped his silver tomahawk that he had aimed to give the chieftain for his daughter's hand. It lay for a hundred year or more--I reckon it's been that long--right where it was dropped. Off yonder in Smoky Valley under a high cliff some of Pa's kinfolks found it. A silver tomahawk with a peace pipe carved on its handle. Pa's own blood kin, by name, Ben Henderson, found that silver tomahawk but no living soul has ever found the lost silver mine. There's bound to have been a mine, else Huraken could never have made that silver tomahawk. Only one lorn white man knew where it was. His name was Swift. But when he died, he taken the secret of the silver mine to the grave with him. Swift ought to a-told some of the womenfolks," declared old Morg, still vexed at the man Swift's laxity though his demise had occurred ages ago. "Swift ought to a-told some of the womenfolks," old Morg repeated with finality.

BLACK CAT

From where old Pol Gentry lived on Rocky Fork of Webb's Creek she could see far down into the valley of Pigeon River and across the ridge on all sides. Her house stood at the very top of Hawks Nest, the highest peak in all the country around. Pol didn't have a tight house like several down near the sawmill. She said it wasn't healthy. Even when the owner of the portable mill offered her leftover planks to cover her log house where the daubin had fallen out, Pol refused. "The holes let the wind in and the cat out," she'd say, "and a body can't do without either."

There was a long sleek cat, with green eyes and fur as black as a crow, to be seen skulking in and out of Pol Gentry's place. If it met a person as it prowled through the woods, the cat darted off swift as a weasel into the bush to hide away. Young folks on Rocky Fork of Webb's Creek learned early to snatch off hat or bonnet if the cat crossed their path, spit into it, and put it quickly on again--to break the witch of old Pol Gentry's black cat. But never were the two, Pol and the cat, seen together.

Truth to tell there were some among the old folks on Rocky Fork who long had vowed that Pol and the cat were one and the same. They declared Pol was a witch in league with the Devil and that she could change herself from woman to cat when the spell was strong enough within her, when the evil spirits took a good strong hold upon her. Moreover, Pol Gentry had but one tooth. One sharp fang in the very front of her upper jaw. "A woman is bound to be a witch if she has just one tooth," folks said and believed.

Pol Gentry was a frightful creature to look upon. She had a heavy growth of hair, coal black hair all around her mouth and particularly upon her upper lip. Her beard was plain to be seen even when she turned in at a neighbor's lane, long before she reached the door. Little children at first sight of her ran screaming to hide their faces in their mother's skirts.

There wasn't a child old enough to give ear to a tale who hadn't heard of Pol Gentry's powers. How she had bewitched Dan Eskew's little girl Flossie. It wouldn't have happened, some said, if Flossie had spit in her bonnet when the black cat crossed her path as she trooped through the woods one day gathering wild flowers. That very evening when she got back home Flossie sank on the doorstep, the bonnet filled with wild flowers dropped from her arm. She moaned pitifully, holding her head between her hands and swaying to and fro. Right away her head began to swell and by the time they got word to Seth Eeling, the wizard doctor who lived in Mossy Bottom, Flossie's head was twice its size. Indeed, Flossie Eskew's head was as big as a full-grown pumpkin. The minute the wizard clapped eyes on the child he spoke out.

"Beat up eggshells as fine as you can and give them to this child in a cup of water. If she is bewitched this mixture will pass through her clear."

Orders were promptly obeyed. Flossie drained the cup but no sooner had Flossie passed the powdered egg shells than the witch left her. Her head went back to its natural size. Nevertheless Flossie Eskew died that night.

"Didn't send for the wizard soon enough," Seth Eeling said.

Some believed in the powers of both, though neither witch nor wizard would give the other a friendly look, much less a word.