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