In Happy Valley | Page 5

Jay's head snapped up and back violently, his feet left the ground, and
his big body thudded the road.
[Illustration]
"My God, he's knocked him down! My God, he's knocked him down!"
muttered the amazed girl. "You got him down!" she cried. "Jump on
him an' stomp him!" He turned one startled look toward her and--it is
incredible--the look even at that moment was shy; but he stood still, for

Ira had picked up the ethics as well as the skill of the art, of which
nothing was known in Happy Valley or elsewhere in the hills. So he
stood still, his hands open, and waited. For a while Jay did not move,
and his eyes, when they did open, looked dazed. He rose slowly, and as
things came back to him his face became suddenly distorted. Nothing
alive could humiliate him that way and still live; he meant to kill now.
"Look out!" screamed the girl. Jay rushed for the gun and Ira darted
after him; but there was a quicker flash from the bushes, and Jay found
his own gun pointed at his own breast and behind it Allaphair's black
eyes searing him.
"Huh!" she grunted contemptuously, and the silence was absolute while
she broke the pistol, emptied the cartridges into her hand, and threw
them far over into the bushes.
"Less go on home, Iry," she said, and a few steps away she turned and
tossed the gun at Jay's feet. He stooped, picked it up, and, twirling it in
his hand, looked foolishly after them. Presently he grinned, for at
bottom Jay was a man. And two hours later, amid much wonder and
many guffaws, he was telling the tale:
"The damned leetle spindle-shank licked me--licked me! An' I'll back
him agin anybody in Happy Valley or anywhar else--ef you leave out
bitin', gougin', and wrasslin'."
"Did ye lose yo' gal, too?" asked Pleasant Trouble.
"Huh!" said Jay, "I reckon not--she knows her boss."
The two walked home slowly and in silence--Ira in front and Allaphair,
as does the woman in the hills, following close behind, in a spirit quite
foreign to her hitherto. The little school-teacher had turned shy again
and said never a word, but, as he opened the gate to let her pass through,
she saw the old, old telltale look in his sombre eyes. Her mother was
crooning in the porch.
"No ploughin' termorrer, mammy. Me an' Iry want the ole nag to go

down to the Couht House in the mornin'. Iry's axed me to marry him."
Perhaps every woman does not love a master--perhaps Allaphair had
found hers.

THE COMPACT OF CHRISTOPHER
The boy had come home for Sunday and must go back now to the
Mission school. He picked up his battered hat and there was no
good-by.
"I reckon I better be goin'," he said, and out he walked. The mother
barely raised her eyes, but after he was gone she rose and from the low
doorway looked after his sturdy figure trudging up the road. His whistle,
as clear as the call of a quail, filled her ears for a while and then was
buried beyond the hill. A smaller lad clutched her black skirt,
whimpering:
"Wisht I c'd go to the Mission school."
"Thar hain't room," she said shortly.
"The teacher says thar hain't room. I wish to God thar was."
Still whistling, the boy trudged on. Now and then he would lift his
shrill voice and the snatch of an old hymn or a folk-song would float
through the forest and echo among the crags above him. It was a good
three hours' walk whither he was bound, but in less than an hour he
stopped where a brook tumbled noisily from a steep ravine and across
the road--stopped and looked up the thick shadows whence it came.
Hesitant, he stood on one foot and then on the other, with a wary look
down the road and up the ravine.
"I said I'd try to git back," he said aloud. "I said I'd try."
And with this self-excusing sophistry he darted up the brook. The
banks were steep and thickly meshed with rhododendron, from which

hemlock shot like black arrows upward, but the boy threaded through
them like a snake. His breast was hardly heaving when he reached a
small plateau hundreds of feet above the road, where two branches of
the stream met from narrower ravines right and left. To the right he
climbed, not up the bed of the stream, but to the top of a little spur,
along which he went slowly and noiselessly, stooping low. A little
farther on he dropped on his knees and crawled to the edge of a cliff,
where he lay flat on his belly and peeked over. Below