Round Anvil Rock. Nancy Huston Banks
Table of Contents
THE GIRL AND THE BOY
The Beautiful River grows very wide in making its great bend around western Kentucky. On the other side, its shores are low for many miles, but well guarded by giant cottonwoods. These spectral trees stand close to its brink and stretch their phantom arms far over its broad waters, as if perpetually warding off the vast floods that rush down from the North.
But the floods are to be feared only in the winter or spring, never in the summer or autumn. And nearly a hundred years ago, when the river's shores were bound throughout their great length by primeval forests, there was less reason to fear at any season. So that on a day of October in the year eighteen hundred and eleven, the mighty stream lay safely within its deep bounds flowing quietly on its way to join the Father of Waters.
So gently it went that there was scarcely a ripple to break its silvery surface. It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by the breath of the approaching dusk. Out in the current beyond the shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the afterglow's pale gold. But the red glory of the west was dying behind the whitening cottonwoods and beyond the dense dark forest—reaching on and on to the seeming end of the earth—a billowing sea of ever deepening green. The last bright gleam of golden light was passing away on the white sail of a little ship which was just turning the distant bend, where the darkening sky bent low to meet the darkened wilderness.
The night was creeping from the woods to the waters as softly as the wild creatures crept to the river's brim to drink before sleeping. The still air was lightly stirred now and then by rushing wings, as the myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches. The soft murmuring of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the waterfowl had already found resting-places. The swaying of the cane-brakes—near and far—signalled the secret movements of the wingless wild things which had only stealth to guard them against the cruelty of nature and against one another. The heaviest waves of cane near the great Shawnee Crossing might have followed a timid red deer. For the Shawnees had vanished from their town on the other side of the Ohio. Warriors and women and children—all were suddenly and strangely gone; there was not even a canoe left to rock among the rushes. The swifter, rougher waving of the cane farther off may have been in the wake of a bold gray wolf. The howling of wolves came from the distance with the occasional gusts of wind, and as often as the wolves howled, a mysterious, melancholy booming sounded from the deeper shadows along the shores. It was an uneasy response from the trumpeter swans, resting like some wonderful silver-white lilies on the quiet bosom of the dark river.
A great river has all the sea's charm and much of its mystery and sadness. The boy standing on the Kentucky shore was under this spell as he listened to these sounds of nature at nightfall on the Ohio, and watched the majestic sweep of its waters—unfettered and unsullied—through the boundless and unbroken forests. Yet he turned eagerly to listen to another sound that came from human-kind. It was the wild music of the boatman's horn winding its way back from the little ship, now far away and rounding the dusky bend. Partly flying and partly floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody echoed from the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging trees, rambled through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the murmuring rushes—thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder, as it came. He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn always touched him so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not have told why his eyes grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a strange tightening came around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of the woods. It was not for him to know that these few notes—so few, so simple, so artlessly blown by a rude boatman—touched the deep fountain of the soul, loosing the mighty torrent pent up in every human breast. Pity, tenderness, yearning, the struggle and the triumph of life—the boy felt everything and all unknowingly, but with quivering sensibility. For he was not merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of those who are set apart throughout their lives to feel many things which they are never permitted to comprehend.
When the last echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the darkling hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the east and drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing faintly from the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden among the trees. The faith which it betokened was not his own faith, nor the faith of those with whom he lived, but the beauty and sweetness of the token appealed to him none the less. How beautiful, how sweet it was! As it thus came drifting down with the river's deepening shadows, he thought of the little band of Sisters—angels of charity—kneeling under that rough roof; those brave gentlewomen of high birth and delicate breeding who were come with the very first to take an heroic part in the making of Kentucky and, so doing, in the winning of the whole West. As the boy thought of them with a swelling heart—for they had been kind to him—it seemed that they were braver than the hunters, more courageous than the soldiers. Listening to the appeal of the Angelus stealing so tenderly through the twilight, with the strain of poetry that was in him thrilling in response, he felt that the prayers then going up must fill the cruel wilderness with holy incense; that the coming of these gentle Sisters must subdue the very wild beasts, as the presence of the lovely martyrs subdued the lions of old.
"Ah, David! David!" cried a gay young voice behind him. "Dreaming again—with your eyes wide open. And seeing visions, too, no doubt."
He turned with a guilty start and looked up at Ruth. She was standing near by but higher on the river bank, and her slender white form was half concealed by the drooping foliage of a young willow tree. There was something about Ruth herself that always made him think of a young willow with every graceful wand in bloom. And now—as nearly always—there was a flutter of soft whiteness about her, for the day was as warm as mid-summer. He could not have told what it was that she wore, but her fluttering white garments might have been woven of the mists training over the hills, so ethereal they looked, seen through the golden green of the delicate willow leaves that were still gilded by the afterglow which had vanished from the shadowed river. Her smiling face could not have been more radiant had the sunlight shone full upon it. The dusk of evening seemed always lingering under the long curling lashes that made her blue eyes so dark, and her hair was as black at midday as at midnight. So that now—when she shook her head at the boy—a wonderful long, thick, silky lock escaped its fastenings, and the wind caught it and spun it like silk into the finest blue-black floss.
"Yes, sir, you've been dreaming again! You needn't pretend you were thinking—you don't know how to think. Thinking is not romantic enough. I have been here watching you for a long time, and I know just how romantic the dreams are that you have been dreaming. I could tell by the way you turned—this way and that—looking up and down the river. It always bewitches you when the sun goes and the shadows come. I knew I should find you here, just like this; and I came on purpose to wake and scold you."
She pretended to draw her pretty brow into a frown, but she could not help smiling.
"Seriously, dear, you must stop dreaming. It is a dreadful thing to be a dreamer in a new country. State makers should all be wide-awake workers. You are out of place here; as Uncle Philip Alston says—"
"Then why did he put me here?" the boy burst out bitterly.
"David!" she cried in wounded reproach, "how can you? It hurts me to hear you say things like that. I can't bear to hear any one say anything against him—I love him so. And from you—who owe him almost as much as I do—"
The tears were very near. But she was a little angry, too, and her blue eyes flashed.
"No; no one owes him so much—as myself. He couldn't have been so good—no one ever could be so good to any one else as he has always been to me. Still"—softening suddenly, for she was fond of the boy, and something in his sensitive face went to her tender heart—"think, David, dear, we owe him everything we have—our names, our home, our clothes, our education, our very lives. We must never for a moment forget that it was he who found us all alone—you in a cabin on the Wilderness Road and me in a boat at Duff's Fort—and brought