Hapsburg Liebe

“ ANY hillman can find a good hiding-place convenient to his friends and relatives. Bub Harrison, when he left Old Johnny’s house, went straight to a rotting, mildewed cabin that stood at the head of a hemlock-filled cove a mile from the settlement. It wasn’t long until he was sleeping and dreaming, as he so often dreamed, of Hattie Barlow. ”

“ Henry Rumley shrank back against one of the log walls. He bent over, lifted out one of the worn floor-boards and called his dogs to him for company. Even the dogs seemed to feel the presence of some ghastly thing.
Once more there came that terrible, nasal-toned cry, and this time Rumley knew it was nearer, for it was so loud that it was like thunder
“Henry!”
“O Lord!” chattered Henry Rumley, and he sank to his knees on the floor among his dogs, friends who could not offer solace now in this his extremity. “O Lord! O Lord!” ”

“ We hillfolk and near-hillfolk, we love that old, old song. After we’ve become rich, some of us, in coal or in iron or in timberlands, we profess, perhaps, a greater liking for “Ah, I Have Sighed to Rest Me,” but—we prick up our ears like young mules on circus day when we hear the banjo and “Ella Ree.”
“D’ye reckon it wouldn’t gi’ me away?” asked Bub. “Shuriff Connard he’s some’eres in this section, Hattie, honey.” ”

“ For an hour they planned, and at the end of that time Hattie kissed her sweetheart and went homeward.
WHEN Henry Rumley, the superstitious, went to his dilapidated hut from his daily ginseng hunt, late that afternoon, he found a great smear of blood across his door. It was the blood of a squirrel, but Henry Rumley didn’t know it. All blood is red.
The fishy eyes widened, and the face that reminded one so much of a weasel’s went deathly white. He shrank back from the red smear, and his dogs, afraid, cowered and slunk under the floor, leaving him alone ”

“ And having spoken, the Law crept back into the riotously blooming laurels and disappeared without even the sound of a breaking twig; and the three mountaineers it had halted and spoken to continued on their way homeward, and as they went they said nothing to one another.
They knew that it were far better to obey without question. Other men had dared to disobey, and some of them had been horse-whipped ”

“ To go for men to surround the Barlow home was out of the question for several reasons. Those mountaineers who were friendly toward Bub could not be driven to assist in Bub’s capture, and those mountaineers who were not friendly toward Bub would be afraid—for Bub might escape. And then the cessation of the song showed that Harrison was alarmed, and Connard did not dare to leave the cabin for fear that Harrison would get away. ”