The Devil's Dream Read Online Free Page A

She was not raised to bear the life that she fell into, Kate was not. Her daddy, Pink Malone, was the bestest fiddler around those parts, and every one of them boys fiddled, too. Hit was always music and laughing and frolics over at Cana. They’d run a set at the drop of a hat, they’d still be a-dancing when the sun come up. So you couldn’t of found two families more different-like than the Baileys and the Malones.
    Moses didn’t make no bones about it. When he axed old Pink fer to marry Kate, he said right out that they was to be no music at the wedding. Then Pink looked over at Kate, and she cried and said, “Oh please, Daddy, this is the man I want with all my heart,” so they wasn’t nothing that Pink could say or do to stop them. They was married indeed, though it is said that Kate’s mamma took to her bed the day of the wedding, she was that upset about it, and hit is further said that all Kate’s brothers fell on the ground a-crying when Moses took her away.
    Moses wouldn’t hardly let her go back over there to visit, neither. He said that the Devil walked in that house, and that fiddle music was the voice of the Devil laughing.
    Well, time passed and I growed up to be about as sorry and wild as any young buck in the county, but when it come to Missus Kate Malone, I would of laid down at her feet and died if she’d of axed me to. I was keeping company with first one gal and then the other, but couldn’t none of them lay a glove on Kate Malone, to my way of thinking. Sometimes I’d get all hot and bothered thinking about her over there in that holler, and how Moses Bailey done her, and one day I determined to speak up about it. I believe I must of been about eighteen year old at the time, so ye can reckon about how much I knowed! Kate, she would of been in her early twenties by then, and she was already losing her bloom like so many gals does around here, wore out by work and children. I swear, hit’s a sight what all a woman puts up with. I tell you this now , but I never give it a thought back then when I was as heedless and unthoughtless as any critter in the forest, back when hit might of done somebody some good.
    No, Kate was not as pretty as she was when she come over the mountain from her daddy’s house at Cana, but she did not appear to have lost all her spirit, neither, despite of her sad lot. “Do ye reckon Kate knows that she is ill used?” I mused to myself, a-crossing Paint Creek on my horse. For iffen a body don’t know something, hit won’t worry them atall, a course. Hit’s knowledge that is the root of all evil, as the feller said.
    Hit was late November when I rode over there this time.
    Daddy and me had killed two hogs three or four days previous. I was taking Kate some hog meat and cracklings. That was jest my excuse , don’t ye know. Fer I had determined to see how things set with her. I had been sparking a girl over at Hanging Rock, and somehow I felt I could not do no real business over there afore I ascertained the state of things with Kate.
    From the creek I seed smoke rising, and when I rode into the Baileys’ clearing I seed Kate herself out there in a man’s black coat a-stirring something in a big black kettle over the cookfire.
    â€œIra!” she said. She allus said my name like she was glad to see me. “I am just stirring up some apple butter,” she said, “Hitch and light,” she said. “Hit is nearabout done, and I will send some home to yer mamma, who has been so kind to me. How is yer mamma?” she said, and I said that Mamma was tolerable, all the time studying Kate real close-like. Her cheeks was red from the heat of the fire, and her hair had tumbled down. She kept it tied back all the time. She tried to put it back now, but she couldn’t afford to quit stirring the apple butter.
    â€œJest set down and wait a minute,” she said, and I hunkered down right