The Call of the Cumberlands

At the far edge lay a pair of saddlebags, such as form the only

practical equipment for mountain travelers. They were ordinary

saddlebags, made from the undressed hide of a brindle cow, and they

were fat with tight packing. A pair of saddlebags lying unclaimed at

the roadside would in themselves challenge curiosity. But in this

instance they gave only the prefatory note to a stranger story. Near

them lay a tin box, littered with small and unfamiliar-looking tubes of

soft metal, all grotesquely twisted and stained, and beside the box was

a strangely shaped plaque of wood, smeared with a dozen hues. That this

plaque was a painter's sketching palette was a thing which she could

not know, since the ways of artists had to do with a world as remote

from her own as the life of the moon or stars. It was one of those

vague mysteries that made up the wonderful life of "down below." Even

the names of such towns as Louisville and Lexington meant nothing

definite to this girl who could barely spell out, "The cat caught the

rat," in the primer. Yet here beside the box and palette stood a

strange jointed tripod, and upon it was some sort of sheet. What it all

meant, and what was on the other side of the sheet became a matter of

keenly alluring interest. Why had these things been left here in such

confusion? If there was a man about who owned them he would doubtless

return to claim them. Possibly he was wandering about the broken bed of

the creek, searching for a spring, and that would not take long. No one

drank creek water. At any moment he might return and discover her. Such

a contingency held untold terrors for her shyness, and yet to turn her

back on so interesting a mystery would be insupportable. Accordingly,

she crept over, eyes and ears alert, and slipped around to the front of

the queer tripod, with all her muscles poised in readiness for flight.

A half-rapturous and utterly astonished cry broke from her lips. She

stared a moment, then dropped to the moss-covered rock, leaning back on

her brown hands and gazing intently. She sat there forgetful of

everything except the sketch which stood on the collapsible easel.

"Hit's purty!" she approved, in a low, musical murmur. "Hit's plumb

dead beautiful!" Her eyes were glowing with delighted approval.

She had never before seen a picture more worthy than the chromos of

advertising calendars and the few crude prints that find their way into

the roughest places, and she was a passionate, though totally

unconscious, devotée of beauty. Now she was sitting before a sketch,

its paint still moist, which more severe critics would have pronounced

worthy of accolade. Of course, it was not a finished picture--merely a

study of what lay before her--but the hand that had placed these

brushstrokes on the academy board was the sure, deft hand of a master

of landscape, who had caught the splendid spirit of the thing, and

fixed it immutably in true and glowing appreciation. Who he was; where

he had gone; why his work stood there unfinished and abandoned, were

details which for the moment this half-savage child-woman forgot to

question. She was conscious only of a sense of revelation and awe. Then

she saw other boards, like the one upon the easel, piled near the paint

-box. These were dry, and represented the work of other days; but they

were all pictures of her own mountains, and in each of them, as in this

one, was something that made her heart leap.