THE BLIGHT IN THE HILLS
High noon of a crisp October day, sunshine flooding the earth with the
warmth and light of old wine and, going single-file up through the jagged
gap that the dripping of water has worn down through the Cumberland
Mountains from crest to valley-level, a gray horse and two big mules, a
man and two young girls. On the gray horse, I led the tortuous way. After
me came my small sister--and after her and like her, mule- back, rode the
Blight--dressed as she would be for a gallop in Central Park or to ride a
hunter in a horse show.
I was taking them, according to promise, where the feet of other
women than mountaineers had never trod--beyond the crest of the Big
Black--to the waters of the Cumberland--the lair of moonshiner and
feudsman, where is yet pocketed a civilization that, elsewhere, is long ago
gone. This had been a pet dream of the Blight\'s for a long time, and now
the dream was coming true. The Blight was in the hills.
Nobody ever went to her mother\'s house without asking to see her
even when she was a little thing with black hair, merry face and black eyes.
Both men and women, with children of their own, have told me that she
was, perhaps, the most fascinating child that ever lived. There be some
who claim that she has never changed--and I am among them. She began
early, regardless of age, sex or previous condition of servitude--she
continues recklessly as she began--and none makes complaint. Thus was it
in her own world--thus it was when she came to mine. On the way down
from the North, the conductor\'s voice changed from a command to a
request when he asked for her ticket. The jacketed lord of the dining-car
saw her from afar and advanced to show her to a seat--that she might ride
forward, sit next to a shaded window and be free from the glare of the sun
on the other side. Two porters made a rush for her bag when she got off
the car, and the proprietor of the little hotel in the little town where we had
to wait several hours for the train into the mountains gave her the bridal
chamber for an afternoon nap. From this little town to ``The Gap