Hapsburg Liebe

“ The clostest witnesses would be at the Satan’s Kitchen mission.”
“But I can stand it! Buckmaster, please help me to do—this one good thing afore I go. The’s blankets—two blankets—over there in a cawner. Wrap ’em around me. I’m not heavy; ye could tote me easy. Ef I die without clearin’ ye, Buckmaster—I won’t die right. I’ve lived a low-down life, but I want to die right!”
Buckmaster lifted a stone from the hearth, took out a canvas bag nearly full of money and thrust it inside his blue shirt. ”

“ It might’ nigh killed me and pap. Pap, he never got over it; nor me, neither. Last week pap died too. He’s free. But me, I got to go on and on wi’ the load. We didn’t have no kin and we didn’t have no money. Afore pap went out he told me this here: ‘Son,’ he says, ‘ef ye can git to the mission school in Satan’s Kitchen,’ he says, ‘fo’ God’s sake go. Them Presbyterians,’ he says, ‘they’ll take good keer o’ ye. They thinks more o’ their own kind o’ folks,’ says pap, ‘than they thinks o’ them coffee-colored heathens in other countries.’
“And so I’m on my way to Satan’s Kitchen. ”

“ She was a lowland woman who married a dashing Buckmaster, to regret it soon afterward. The angel in Lon and the devil in Lon were forever disputing the possession of him; sometimes the devil lost but more frequently the devil won. Had it not been for Little Billy Bly and ’Liz’beth Elderidge——
They called him “Bear Creek” in the Army of the Philippines, just as they had done at home. The sins of a man’s fathers are apt to find him out, you know, even on the other side of the world. He went to the Army to be rid of his environment ”

“ Then he changed his name and went to work with a logging outfit on Little Pigeon River. A few months and they discovered his identity; he was suspected of having held up and robbed a pay-roll messenger, and he was discharged forthwith. He went to other camps with exactly the same result—he was a Bear Creek Buckmaster, and he could not escape for long the sins of his fathers. That he was the best logger and the hardest and cleanest fighter in any of those camps availed him nothing. He had to go when they found him out. Always, always, the moths ate the ermine. ”

“ I ain’t never lonesome there. Ye see, Bear Creek, they’ve got lots o’ young uns and hound dawgs. Me and ’Liz’beth, we’ve got us two little beds in the cabin loft and we studies our books up there at night—when it ain’t too cold and when Tom can afford to let us burn a lamp. ”

“ They ain’t nothin’ on earth as good as to have friends. Everything else is pore truck without friends. And I know jest what it is to be without ’em, ’Liz’beth.”
“I think I do unnerstand,” said Tom Elderidge’s daughter. “I’ve heerd a lot about ye, Lon, and I’ve sifted it. I—I’ve axed a lot about ye, lately. Even pap, he says ye ain’t half as bad as folks tells. Ye tried to be straight and they wouldn’t have it that way. They put them pay-roll rob'ries at yore door ’cause ye happened to be a Bear Creek Buckmaster, Lon, and fo’ no other reason.” ”

“ Well, listen here. I know the way to Satan’s Kitchen and I’ll take ye over. It’s about a half a day’s walk. But fust we must have somethin’ to eat. Light in and foller this here creek a mile up and ye’ll come to a logging’-camp; ax fo’ the sup’rintendent and tell him I said to gi’ ye all the cawned beef and crackers ye can carry and charge the same to my account—Bear Creek Lon Buckmaster’s account. Eh?”
If the name had any effect upon Little Billy Bly he showed no sign of it, a thing for which Buckmaster was grateful. ”

“ Billy Bly corrected gently. “Yeuh, I’m plum’ sartain—I mean certain! Hope to die right here in my tracks ef she don’t. Say, they’ve got a new organ in the mission chapel and every dang soul—‘dang soul,’ that’s what Tom said—every dang soul in the valley goes to meetin’ on Sundays to hear it. Mis’ Hardin’ and the ’fessor, they sings to it. See these here new clo’es I’ve got on? The ’fessor, he bought ’em fo’ me. Hain’t they purty? Tom said they was as purty as a speckled pup wi’ a ring around its neck. Satan’s Kitchen is on a boom, Tom says. ”

“ Then his countenance became serious, even troubled. He began to back off into the snowy laurels. In another minute he had disappeared and ’Liz’beth Elderidge stood alone there in the white-carpeted trail. His voice came from somewhere out in the forest:
“I didn’t have a right to tell ye that, ’Liz’beth. I hope ye’ll fo’give me, ef ye can.”
“They’s nothin’ to fo’give, Lon,” she called back. Once had been enough for her, too. “I believe in ye, Lon. Mebbe I oughtn’t to, but I do, jest the same. And ef ever ye ax me—that what ye said ye’d ax me—I’ll tell ye, ‘yes’ ef I die fo’ it!” ”

“ Mebbe somebody has been a-trailin’ ye around, a-robbin’ pay messengers and a-usin’ you fo’ a scapegoat!”
“Mebbe,” Buckmaster replied absently. He was thinking of something else. “Listen, ’Liz’beth,” he blurted, “I heerd about—about you a-rememberin’ me thataway, in the loft at night. I won’t never fo’git that, and ef I’m ever pulled out o’ the hole I’m in I’m a-goin’ to ax ye to marry me the next minute!” ”