and through vast stretches of the “Wet Woods,” forests so dense that even the Indians turned aside from them. There grew numerous ash-trees and the larger forest monarchs, and all were so thickly set together that the white man did not force his way through them for a century. Beyond then lay the hills, huge shoulders and boulders; and here Pop Baker was born, and here he lived in 1902.
Over seventy years old was he, very tall and very straight and broad-shouldered, and slightly silvered of hair and chin-beard. Also he was rosy-faced and merry-eyed. Fate had found him a hard nut to crack, and left him at the end of the span of man’s life unscathed and wholesome. He had been married twice at least. He had several children, of whom “Doc” and “Jimpsey” remained on this mundane sphere, shiftless hill-billies, with none of the old man’s grit or philosophy. Another, a daughter, Mahale by name, had achieved notoriety by the accumulation of nine children in a dozen years. She departed this life “’thout doin’ no more dammidge,” Pop said, “than ter leave seven livin’.” The “seven livin‘” proved for half a dozen years the old man’s burden. He mothered them, and he allowed the father, Pete Mason, to live under his own roof. But when “leetle Pop” was six yeas old, his grandsire decided on a course of action, and was prompt indeed about it. He caught Pete at the rail fence one morning when the latter was mounting a mule to ride off to Pausch’s Corners for an early bracer-up.
“Petey, I hear ye air goin’ reg’lar-like up ter Kuykendall’s. Thet air all right, but ye mought ez well be narratin’, over yan, thet ye’ve the seven livin’ ter pervide fer yit. I’m a-gittin’ ter thet time o’ life when I wanter hev a leetle freedom ’n’ enj’yment. Ye mought ez well let on ter whichever one of them gels ye‘re shinin’ up ter thet, ef she air bent on marryin’, she must tek the hull bunch ‘long wid ye.”
Peter narrowed his eyes.
“Ye mought mek a sheer-up,” he debated; “thar’s a hull lot o’ ’em.”
Pop Baker shook his head decidedly.
“I’m too old ter be raisin’ famblies,” he said, “an’ ye’ll hev ter rustle a leetle more yerself from this hyah time on, Petey. They air all on their feetses now, an’ rale fat an’ sassy. Ef one of them Kuykendall gels hain’t willin’, consort elsewhar. I calkilate ter give ye a mule, a bar’l o’ sorghum, an’ three feather beds fer the childern. Ye must do fer yerself with yer settin’ out from wharever ye marry any one.”
As Peter Mason was still a strapping, swaggering fellow, he had little difficulty in persuading Georgella Kuykendall to assume the position of stepmother to the “seven livin’” and wife to himself. The family removed themselves in the springtime clear over Mitchell’s Hill, and, under Georgella’s thrifty and energetic reign, got on fairly well.
For the first time in his life Pop Baker enjoyed the sweets of entire freedom. He fought off Jimpsey’s vehement offers to “keep house” and Doc’s inclination to make his home a half-way tavern between his own cabin and Pausch’s Corners. He had thirty acres to farm, two mules, and a cow. His house was part stone and part log, with a noble chimney of rough stone. He had wood and water and a garden.
All summer he reveled. He worked when he chose, he hitched up and rode around In a buckboard behind his best mule, whose name was Bully Boy. All his meat came from the woods—birds, rabbits, squirrels, racoons, and even a fat opossum now and then.
“Look at thet muscle, wull ye?” he would say to the young men pitching quoits at the picnics. “Thet thar muscle hev been made tough on work an’ wild meat. Tame meat never made a man like I be.”
He had his own ideas of sport.
“D’ ye s’pose I’d ever kill fer the pleasure o’ hearin’ a noise an’ seein’ a creatur’ die?” he said. “I live like the birds an’ the varmints. I kill ter eat—the Almighty’s way.”
In front of him, across the rough road and over a half-cleared and enchanting woodland of old trees, rose the wildest of hills to the west; and behind him, half a mile to the east and south, were other cones and shoulders, strangely formed and freakishly upheaved, with narrow hollows between them and meandering streams tearing down, and falling down, and laughing over jagged rocks. Over the rarely trodden forests and on these hills tramped Pop Baker at will. He gave his whole soul to the delight of solitude, of falling in with nature’s moods. His heart grew more tender as the days went by. He gathered a great hoard of nuts for the children. He halved the crop from his patch of pop-corn, and he traded corn for a barrel of red apples. Something was working in him that, in earlier years, had never bothered him. The “seven livin’” had brought in Christmas and “Sandy Claws” to the cabin with them, and the idea would not be swept out with their going.
All along through the fall Pop Baker was the maddest of merrymakers at the dances, the weddings, infares, and quiltings. He never heard of any social event, far or near, but he greased up his boots, tied his red comforter round his neck, and racked Bully Boy over the hills to it. He never waited for an invitation, and he was always expected. There was sure to be some congenial spirit there, either a young widow or a mischievous girl willing to spite a bashful swain, or, at the worst, one or two uproarious young blades to slap him on the shoulder.
Nothing daunted him, nothing stayed him. The cold only made his cheeks rosier; his eyes sparkled. They called him “Old Christmas hisself”; they applauded him, and egged him on to dance and flip speech. So the days and nights passed, and Christmas was at hand.
Bully Boy and The Other—for Pop Baker disdained, in his partiality, to name his less intelligent mule—pulled up over Jefferson Hill and down into Bullitt County with Pop’s Christmas for Mahale’s young ones in the wagon. There were the apples and the nuts, the molasses, and a big green ham. Mrs. Peter gave him a welcome, a good meal, and started him home early. To her he was only an old man who ought to be in his chimney-corner at night. The seven swarmed lovingly over him as he mounted the seat. “Leetle Pop” smeared him with molasses as he murmured:
“Wanter buss ye one, gran’dad. Ye’re so dern goody, ye air!”
Then came a splendid ride homeward under the frosty starlight. Pop Baker sat on an old skin robe and rode with a bed-comfort and a horse-blanket around his legs. Straw heaped the wagon-bed in front of the empty barrel. The wagon wheels creaked over the road, broke into the forming ice on Knob Creek, and rattled down the steep slope of Mitchell’s Hill. Then along the deep shadowy ways he passed through interminable woods, where sometimes there were hollows hundreds of feet below him, and sometimes there was a narrow cut under a rocky cliff where dry branches broke and crackled down. Sometimes there appeared below him, like fireflies or sparkling human eyes, half-frozen streams that ran and crossed, and reflected back the stars. Bully Boy had his master’s own spirit, and literally dragged The Other up and down hill right sturdily. Pop Baker did not have to drive, Bully Boy would have resented any imputation of being driven. He knew every step of the way, and he pulled—that was his duty, Christmas or Fourth of July—without shirking. Pop took it easy, and watched the processional of the stars across the cathedral of the heavens. Now he was on the highest point of the county, on Jefferson Hill. Far, far away in the wide valley he saw glows of light. He knew that there lay the distant city, with its hundreds of shop-windows lighted up and Christmas-gay, draped with tinsels and bright colors, and full of what in his sterner moments he called “trash,” in his softer moods “purties.” The thick carpet of fallen leaves on the road deadened the sound of the wheels and the mules’ feet. Pop Baker looked at the stars with a new awe and joy.
“Might’ fine, them! Sorter hail a man ter notice. Seen ’em walkin’ over thet big space many a night, but, dern it all! they never war so bright. Might’ good comp’ny—the bestes’ o’ comp’ny fer an
