: In Old Kentucky by Dazey Charles Turner Marshall Edward Rowe Clarence H Clarence Herbert Illustrator - Kentucky Fiction

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

IN OLD KENTUCKY

A Story of the Bluegrass and the Mountains Founded on Charles T. Dazey's Play

EDWARD MARSHALL and CHARLES T. DAZEY

She saw the stranger break through the undergrowth about the pool.

A mighty leap had carried them beyond the blazing barrier.

"No man can cross this bridge, unless--unless--"

"Back! back! I'm a-comin' with Queen Bess!"

"I'm standin' face to face with my own father's murderer--Lem Lindsay."

She was coming, singing, down the side of Nebo Mountain--"Old Nebo"--mounted on an ox. Sun-kissed and rich her coloring; her flowing hair was like spun light; her arms, bare to the elbows and above, might have been the models to drive a sculptor to despair, as their muscles played like pulsing liquid beneath the tinted, velvet skin of wrists and forearms; her short skirt bared her shapely legs above the ankles half-way to the knees; her feet, never pinched by shoes and now quite bare, slender, graceful, patrician in their modelling, in strong contrast to the linsey-woolsey of her gown and rough surroundings, were as dainty as a dancing girl's in ancient Athens.

The ox, less stolid than is common with his kind, doubtless because of ease of life, swung down the rocky path at a good gait, now and then swaying his head from side to side to nip the tender shoots of freshly leaving laurel. She sang:

"Woodpecker pecked as a woodpecker will, Jim thought 'twas a knock on the door of the still, He grabbed up his gun, and he went for to see, The woodpecker laughed as he said: 'Jest me!'"

She laughed, now, not at the song, which was purely automatic, but in sheer joy of living on that wonderful June day in those marvellous Kentucky mountains. Their loneliness did not depress her; indeed, to her, they were not lonely, but peopled by a host of lifelong friends who had greeted her at birth, and would, she had every reason to suppose, speed her when her end came. Their majesty did not overwhelm her, although she felt it keenly, and respected it and loved it with a certain dear, familiar awe. And everywhere about her was the Spring. Laurel blossomed at the trail's sides, filling the whole air with fragrance; the tardier blueberry bushes crowding low about it had begun to show the light green of their bursting buds; young ferns were pushing through the coverlet of last autumn's leaves which had kept them snug against the winter's cold, and were beginning to uncurl their delicate and wondrous spirals; maple and beech were showing their new leaves. The air was full of bird-notes--the plaintively pleading or exultantly triumphant cries of the mating season's joy and passion. Filmy clouds, like scattered, snowy ostrich plumes, floated, far, far up above her on a sea of richest blue; a fainter blue of springtime haze dimmed the depths of the great valley which a wide pass gave her vision of off to the left--and she was rather glad of this, for the haze, while, certainly, it hid from her much beauty, also hid the ugly scars which man was making there on nature's face, the cuts and gashes with which the builders of the new railway were marring the rich pasture lands.

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!