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CLASSIC
‘‘She'm mine,” broke in Casper’s sullen voice ; he turned to Jerry, and his lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl. “You-all aint our kind. What d'you want o’ we-all’s women ?” April’s mine, I tell you — mine!” “What do I want of her?” said Jerry, quietly. “I want to love her and protect her and make her happy. I want to take her home with me to my people. I want her to marry me.
April, will you — will you marry me, dear?”
“Y e s, said April, gladly
across the wet grass to the two by the tent.
“Ef you-all want to get married, 'pears like I'm the man to do hit,” he said. "Reckon a justice o’ the peace will do well as a minister. Jine hands, you two, an’, Tim Fagan, put down yore gun an’ hold yore peace.”
“two hours ago. That war why I came to find you. She done told me. whar you’d gone.”
He was fumbling in a pocket of his old homespun coat, drawing out a tiny bundle of soft, yellowed baby-clothes, richly embroidered, incongruous to a mountain-hand.
“Afore she died, April,” he said, “she told me a queer thing. She told
THE PICTURE OF THE CHILD CALLED UP POIGNANT, DEATHLESS MEMORIES
“Yes, Daddy-Doc — I want to marry him.”
The old man bent his head to hide the pain in his eyes from her joyous gaze. April was his sun and moon and stars — the light of his lonely life ; and April wanted to go away. Yet she was young, and young things must follow the mating call wherever it leads them, even if it be into the valleys beyond the sight of an old man’s eyes. Stiffly he climbed down from his saddle and went slowlv
It was a strange wedding under the morning sky, with only the two sullen mountaineers as witnesses. At the end, Doc Jenkins kist April and put her gently into Jerry’s outstretched arms.
“Take keer on her,” he said sadly, “f’r she’s all alone in the world now.”
Something in the words drew the girl’s eyes to his face in terror.
“Doctor !” she cried sharply — “not mammy?”
“Yes, honey,” he told her gently —
me that you-all warn’t her child at all. ’Pears like her little April died while Tim yonder war off a-huntin’, an’ some one left you thar in the cabin afore he came back. She never knowed who, an’ it ’peared to her then moughty like ’twas God. She knowed Tim would turn you-all out ef she told him, so she let him think
you war they own ’’
April was sobbing desolately, face buried in the tiny garments. “Mammy ! Oh, mammy — ef I’d only loved youall a little harder — ef I’d only told
you-all how I loved you ”
Over her bent, golden head the doctor spoke very low to Jerry.
“I reckon she maybe never had a pappy,” he said sadly. “Hit are thataway in the mountains often — some pore, frightened gal — God pity um ! But ill borned or well borned, she’m April, an’ you-all has promised God to love her till death parts you, sir — not
(Twcnty-tliree)