The Devil's Dream Read Online Free

Moses Bailey. Well, he was handsome, I’ll grant him that, curly black hair and blue eyes and well set up, a stout strapping young man. He come out on the porch and I said who I was, Ira Keen from over on Crow Hill, and he made some manners, but I could tell he weren’t studying me atall in that moment. His eyes never left her face. He had eyes kindly like his daddy, sharp as the point of a knife. Kate sung on, a-rocking.
    â€œHit won’t be long and I’ll give you a baby doll sure enough,” Moses said, and Kate laughed her merry laugh at him, but it was true.
    Come next August, they had them a little baby girl, and Kate thought the world of her. She thought the sun rose and set on that child, which was all to the good since by then hit was clear that everything was not sweetness and light in that cabin in Cold Spring Holler.
    Fer Moses was one of them that will not be satisfied, one of them that is always hankering after something that is just around the next bend. He couldn’t never settle down, seemed like. He’d farm a leetle bit, but not serious like, not enough to do no good, and then he’d be running a raft of logs down the Mononagh fer somebody, or trading some horses fer somebody else. But most times he was off at a preaching someplace, or traipsing the woods alone. See, Moses wanted to make a preacher the worst in the world, just like his daddy had done. But God wouldn’t give him no sign. So Moses, he kept on a-looking fer one. He used to go to meetings all around, and offer up the prayer. Other times he’d go off in the woods by hisself, hankering after his sign.
    Kate and the children was jest living hand to mouth whilst he was gone. For they’d been two more babes since that first one, which was Mary Magdaleen, they was now Jeremiah and little Ezekiel besides. It like to worried my mamma to death, I couldn’t count you the number of times she sent me over there with a turn of meal, or a sack of taters, fer Kate and them little children.
    One time when I was carrying them a mess of beans, I axed Kate pint-blank, I said, “Whar is yer old man, anyway?”
    And Kate jest smiled her sunny smile, a-taking the cookpot from me, and said, “Well, Ira, he is off wrassling with the angel.”
    Come to find out this was the truth, and the whole truth, of it. Now iffen hit’s a woman yer old man is gone off after, at least you’ve got a shape to set yerself up against, and somebody to get mad at.
    But iffen hit’s God, well, yer hands is plumb tied, ain’t they?
    Pretty Kate was stymied fer sure. And Moses being as muleheaded as ever his daddy was, he wouldn’t give it up fer nothing. The more God denied him a sign, the more determined Moses was to git one. He figgered that the more he prayed, and run the woods a-looking, the more likely he was to find his sign. Moses went from being a big husky feller to a scarecrow, and the bones in his face stuck out in a way that called old Sid to mind.
    But Moses had got to where nobody could beat him a-praying, that’s fer damn sure, he give out the prayer in meeting oncet a month, which is however often they helt it then, and he prayed everbody else under the table. That leetle old mealy-mouth circuit rider that was a-coming over here then, that leetle Mister Graves I think it was, could not hold a candle to Moses Bailey. He had a voice like the Bible, Moses had.
    Why, we could hear him plumb over here sometimes of a evening, iffen the wind was right, praying over their supper till you know hit had growed stone cold.
    Now hit would of been hard on anybody, a course, to have their old man git turned thataway, but hit was particular hard on Kate Malone. Fer she was nought but a gal, and she had come from the fun-lovingest family you ever seed. They lived on the other side of Lone Bald Mountain there, at Cana. As Kate was the only gal left at home, they all doted on her, and waited on her hand and foot.