Matt Crim (Martha Jane Crim) - In Beaver Cove and Elsewhere (Matt Crim) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

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They were having a dance over in Beaver Cove, at the Woods'. All the young people of the settlement were there, and many from adjoining settlements. The main room of the cabin had been almost cleared of its meager furniture, and the pine-plank floor creaked under the tread of shuffling feet, while dust and lamp-smoke made the atmosphere thick and close.

But little did the dancers care for that. Bill Eldridge sat by the hearth, playing his fiddle with tireless energy, while a boy added the thumping of two straws to the much-tried fiddle-strings. A party of shy girls huddled in a corner of the room, and the bashful boys hung about the door, and talked loudly.

"Hey, there! git yer partners!" Bill cried to them tauntingly from time to time.

Armindy Hudgins and Elisha Cole were pre-eminently the leaders in the party. They danced together again and again; they sat on the bench in the dooryard; they walked to the spring for a fresh draught of water. Armindy was the coquette of the settlement. In beauty, in spirit, and in daring, no other girl in Beaver Cove could compare with her. She could plow all day and dance half the night without losing her peachy bloom, and it was generally admitted that she could take her choice of the marriageable young men of the settlement. But she laughed at all of them by turns, until her lovers dwindled down to two—Elisha Cole and Ephraim Hurd. They were both desperately in earnest, and their rivalry had almost broken their lifelong friendship. She favored first one and then the other, but to-night she showed such decided preference for Cole that Hurd felt hatred filling his heart. He did not dance at all, but hung about the door, or walked moodily up and down the yard, savage with jealousy. Armindy cast many mocking glances at him, but seemed to feel no pity for his suffering.

In the middle of the evening, while they were yet fresh, she and Elisha danced the "hoe-down." All the others crowded back against the walls, leaving the middle of the room clear, and she and her partner took their places. They were the best dancers in the settlement, and Beaver Cove could boast of some as good as any in all north Georgia. The music struck up, and the two young people began slowly to shuffle their feet, advancing toward each other, then retreating. They moved at first without enthusiasm, gravely and coolly. The music quickened, and their steps with it. Now together, now separate, up and down the room, face to face, advancing, receding, always in that sliding, shuffling step. The girl's face flushed; her lithe figure, clothed in the most primitively fashioned blue print gown, swayed and curved in a thousand graceful movements; her feet, shod in clumsy brogans, moved so swiftly one could scarcely follow them; her yellow hair slipped from its fastenings and fell about her neck and shoulders; her bosom heaved and palpitated. Panting and breathless, Elisha dropped into a seat, his defeat greeted with jeering laughter by the crowd, while Armindy kept the floor. It was a wild, half-savage dance, and my pen refuses to describe it. Nowhere, except in the mountains of north Georgia, have I ever witnessed such a strange performance.

Armindy would not stop until, half-blind and reeling with exhaustion, she darted toward the door, amid the applause of the crowd. Elisha Cole started up to follow her, but Ephraim Hurd reached her side first, and went out into the yard with her.

"You've nearly killed yourself," he said, half-roughly, half-tenderly.

"No such a thing!" she retorted.

"You're out o' breath now."

"I want some water."

"Better sit down on this bench and rest a minute first," he said, attempting to lead her to a seat placed under an apple-tree; but she broke away from him, running swiftly toward the spring bubbling up from a thicket of laurel just beyond the dooryard fence.

"I ain't no baby, Eph'um Hurd!" she cried, gathering up her hair and winding it about her head again, the breeze fanning her flushed cheeks.

The moon was clear and full over Brandreth's Peak, and Ephraim looked up at it, then down on the girl, softened, etherealized by its magic beams.

"What makes you act so, Armindy?"

She broke a spray of laurel bloom and thrust it through the coil of her hair.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about, Eph'um; but I do know I'm waitin' for you to give me that gourd o' water."

He sighed, stooped, and filled the gourd to the brim, and gave it to her. She drank deeply, then threw the remainder out in a glittering shower, and dropped the gourd into the spring.

"Don't go to the house yet," he pleaded, as she turned away.

"I'm tired."

"An' I—I am—you don't keer anything for 'Lishy, do you? Armindy, do you recollect what you said the last time we went to the singin' at Rock Creek?"

She looked at him from under her lashes, half smiled, then said:

"I don't recollect anything perticular."

"I do," he muttered softly, and stepped across the spring-run to her side. "You said—"

"Oh, don't tell me!—I don't mean anything I say!" she hastily cried.

His face clouded with jealous anger again; he laid his hand on her shoulder.

"You'll—make me do somethin' turrible, Armindy, if you don't mind. I love you; don't—don't—treat me like a dog, flingin' crumbs to me one day, an' whippin' me off the next."

She pushed away his hand, for, with all her coquetries, no man dared take any liberties with her, and stepped beyond his reach.

"I ain't done nuthin' to you, Eph'um Hurd. I—"

"You have!" he cried, stamping his feet; "you've made me love you, tell I don't feel as I could live without you; you let me think that you loved—"

"Law! what's the use o' listenin' to a girl's foolishness? Maybe I love you; an', ag'in, maybe I love 'Lishy Cole an' a dozen others. You're too set on havin' your own way," she exclaimed with a loud laugh.

Somebody called to her from the fence.

"That's 'Lishy, now."

"An' you're goin' to him?" said Ephraim with a pale face.

"Yes, I'm goin' to him. He don't bemean me," with a pretense of being aggrieved, but with mocking laughter in her eyes.

She ran up to the fence, and he heard her talking to Elisha about the flowers in her hair.

The party was over. Ephraim Hurd could scarcely contain the violence of his rage when Armindy refused his company home to accept Elisha Cole's. And how hurt he felt, as well as angry! The slight cut to his soul. He watched them as they went away with a party of the neighbors; he listened to their conversation and loud laughter, until the maddening sound of it was lost in the distance; then he mounted his mule and rode swiftly through the Cove down toward the town on the banks of the Cartecay River, where revenue-officers were stationed. A fierce, irresistible temptation had assailed—had conquered him. If he could not have love, he could have revenge. The revenue-men would be glad to know where Elisha Cole concealed his distillery; they would be better pleased to get Elisha himself. Just a hint, scrawled and unsigned, would be sufficient for them, and no one need know who had furnished the information.