Chapter I

Thus it had happened. Pleasant Trouble was drunk one day and a fly lit on his knee. He whipped his forty-four from its holster.

"I'll show ye who _you_ air lightin' on!" he swore, and blazed away. Of course he killed the fly, but incidentally he shattered its lighting-place. Had he been in a trench anywhere in France, his leg would have been saved, but he was away out in the Kentucky hills. If he minded the loss of it, however, no one could see, for with chin up and steady, daredevil eyes he swung along about as well on his crutch as if it had been a good leg. Down the road, close to the river's brim, he was swinging now--his voice lifted in song. Ahead of him and just around the curve of the road, with the sun of Happy Valley raining its last gold on her golden bare head, walked the Marquise; but neither Pleasant nor she herself knew she was the Marquise. A few minutes later the girl heard the crunch of the crutch in the sandy road behind her, and she turned with a smile:

"How-dye, Pleaz!" The man caught the flapping brim of his slouch-hat and lifted it--an act of courtesy that he had learned only after Happy Valley was blessed by the advent of the Mission school: making it, he was always embarrassed no little.

"How-dye, Miss Mary!"

"Going down to the dance?"

"No'm," he said with vigorous severity, and then with unctuous virtue--"I hain't nuver run a set or played a play in my life."

The word "dance" is taboo among these Calvinists of the hills. They "run sets" and "play plays"--and these are against the sterner morals that prevail--but they do not _dance_. The Mission teacher smiled. This was a side-light on the complex character of Pleasant Trouble that she had not known before, and she knew it had nothing to do with his absent leg. A hundred yards ahead of them a boy and a girl emerged from a ravine--young King Camp and Polly Sizemore--and plainly they were quarrelling. The girl's head was high with indignation; the boy's was low with anger, and now and then he would viciously dig the toe of his boot in the sand as he strode along. Pleasant grinned.

"I won't holler to 'em," he said; "I reckon they'd ruther be alone."

"Pleasant," said Miss Mary, "you drink moonshine, don't you?"

"Yes'm."

"You sometimes _make_ it, don't you?"

"I've been s'picioned."

"You were turned out of church once, weren't you, for shooting up a meeting?"

"Yes," was the indignant defense, "but I proved to 'em that I was drunk, an' they tuk me back." The girl had to laugh.

"And yet you think dancing wrong?"

"Yes'm."

The girl gave it up--so perfunctory and final was is reply. Indeed, he seemed to have lost interest. Twice he had looked back, and now he turned again. She saw the fulfilment of some prophecy in his face as he grunted and frowned.

"Thar comes Ham Cage," he said. Turning, the girl saw an awkward youth stepping into the road from the same ravine whence Polly and young King had come, but she did not, as did Pleasant, see Ham shifting a revolver from his hip to an inside pocket.

"Those two boys worry the life out of me," she said, and again Pleasant grunted. They were the two biggest boys in the school, and in running, jumping, lifting weights, shooting at marks, and even in working--in everything, indeed, except in books--they were tireless rivals. And now they were bitter contestants for the favor of Polly Sizemore--a fact that Pleasant knew better than the Mission girl.

Flirts are rare in the hills. "If two boys meets at the same house," Pleasant once had told her, "they jes makes the gal say which one she likes best, and t'other one gits!" But with the growth of the Mission school had come a certain tolerance which Polly had used to the limit. Indeed, St. Hilda had discovered a queer reason for a sudden quickening of interest on Polly's part in her studies. Polly had to have the letters she got read for her, and the letters she sent written for her, and thus St. Hilda found that at least three young men, who had gone into the army and had learned to write, thought--each of them--that he was first in her heart. Polly now wanted to learn to read and write so that she could keep such secrets to herself. She had been "settin' up" with Ham Cage for a long time, and now she was "talkin' to" young King Camp. King was taking her to the dance, and it was plain to Pleasant that trouble was near. He looked worried.

"Well," he said, "I reckon thar hain't so much harm the way you school folks run sets because you don't 'low drinkin' or totin' pistols, an' you make 'em go home early. I heerd Miss Hildy is away--do you think you can manage the bad uns?"

"I think so," smiled Miss Mary.

"Well, mebbe I will come around to-night."

"Come right along now," said the girl heartily, but Pleasant had left his own gun at home, so he shook his head and started up the mountain.