Obe Morelock, Hero

By Hapsburg Liebe

E was seventeen, freckled, jeans-clad, barefoot, and he faced the problem with the front of a fighter. Chestnuts had failed; the hogs had been lost because of the sweeping mountain fires; drought had killed the little corn they had planted in the clearing; even game was scarce that year. And they were out of everything, almost!

Granny Davis, his maternal grandmother, talked on, the gist of it being that the Lord would provide for them in their present emergency. But Obe didn’t hear; he was looking absently and with drawn brows toward the long-eared hound. that lay sleeping in the fading sunlight in the cabin doorway, and dreaming dog dreams. Suppose granny’s faith in the Divinity were broken!

“No,” the old woman said again, noting that Obe had not been listening, “I hain’t a bit skeered. I tell you, the Lord will provide. We hain’t got more’n enough meal and bacon for supper, but I hain’t skeered. You'll see if somethin’ don’t happen afore mornin?!’

The lad rose so suddenly that he jammed a splinter from the rough board floor into his bare foot. With a muttered imprecation, he stooped and savagely drew the particle of wood from the flesh—and it was forgotten.

“Why, whar can you be a-goin’, boy?” asked Granny Davis, limping two paces toward the youth.

“Possum huntin’,” answered Obe readily. “Dark enough, time I git acrost the railroad and over to the Honeycomb Clifts. Good place for possums thar; pokeberries and persimmons grows below. Gimme that thar lantern thar. “By, granny! Come on here, Rock!” The latter to the hound.

The apparent snappishness in his conversation was but his manner, for he itched his grandmother; in all the world she was all he had to love and all that loved him.

He had started. But the old woman was uneasy about his going into the Honeycomb Cliff section, beyond the railroad; there were moonshiners there, and she feared that Obe might meet up with a rifle bullet intended for a revenue spy, as the lad was not well known among them. She hobbled to the doorway.

“But looky here, Obe”

Obe threw back over his shoulder, the one that bore the weight of the long rifle that had been his father’s:

“Hain’t nothin’ a-goin’ to hurt me, granny. If the possums has done been provided, shorely I'd orter have spunk enough to go after ’em. ’By, granny!”

He closed the hingeless gate, pushed his powderhorn farther back on his hip, and set out across the flattened crest of the mountain, the hound leaping and whining with joy. For half a mile he followed a laurel-bordered path; then he turned out to his left, through rattle-weed and withered ferns, picking his way carefully in order to avoid stepping on the prickly chestnut burs. He was cutting off a long bend in the trail.

An hour later night had fallen, and the crisp air of autumn and the mountains caused him to shiver. He shivered from something besides the air, too.

Just below a sharp curve in the railroad, and lying midway between the rails, on one of the heaviest grades east of the Rockies, the light of his lantern fell upon a bowlder the size of a barrel, which had tumbled down from the cliff above—and the downcoming express was due within thirty minutes!

Obe had a vision of a crashing of splintering wood. and twisting steel as the coaches, laden to their capacity with tourists on their way to Florida, rolled down the precipitous mountainside below the curve. In another minute he was rushing up the tracks, his rifle in one hand, his lantern in the other, toward the first safety switch, which was a quarter of a mile above.

He told the switchman of the bowlder, breathlessly. The man seized a red-globed lantern and some long objects that spewed and threw bright, crimson glares, and hurried to meet the train, planting the red warning here and there as he ran. Soon the mountainsides were glowing in the vivid light.

As the headlight of the mammoth engine came into view, both Obe and the switchman waved their lanterns, in addition to the danger signals that hissed like maddened serpents behind them. There was a shrill whistling for brakes, and the pilot of the great iron horse came to a standstill within ten feet of the man and the boy. Two greasy men leaped from the cab and rushed down upon Obe and the switchman, asking what had happened.

“Big rock on track,” explained Obe, pointing down the grade.

Carefully the train was let down to a point within a hundred feet of the bowlder. The train’s crew and the switchman soon rolled the big stone across the outside rail, and another moment saw it plunging with a roar down the steep mountainside. Then followed a taking of the boy’s name by the conductor, while others of the crew pressed sundry coins into his brown hands.

Obe accepted the money greedily, because he knew that he needed it for Granny Davis, who was all that he loved, and all that loved him, in the whole world. And then came scores of passengers in a rush, both men and women, who had heard what had occurred. They crowded about Obe Morelock and wrung his hands, with tears in their eyes; they tendered him a goodly percentage of the contents of their purses; one man gave his watch, and a woman followed up the example by the donation of her own little gold timepiece.

Following this, two very large men, who were perfectly dressed, and wore blazing things in their shirt fronts and in rings on their fingers, took the barefoot mountain lad upon their shoulders and paraded him up and down the track, finally bringing up before the engine, and there facing the crowd in the light of the crew’s lanterns.

“Three cheers!” called one of them.

The mountains took up the cries and echoed them, multiplying them again and again. More than one woman dabbed at her eyes, tried to talk, and couldn’t; several more increased their original contribution to the fund for the reward of bravery.

“Three cheers!” ordered a very old woman, too deaf to have heard the others, too feeble to have reached the scene any earlier.

Again they went up, and again the mountains, in the words of a tender-hearted young woman, “took up the cries and echoed them because they knew they were for a son of theirs.”

The old man swelled the fund by the addition of a ten-dollar note. Then, after another round of handshaking, well-wishing, and taking of Obe Morelock’s name, the passengers and the crew boarded the train.

“I wouldn’t ’a’ took these here things,” Obe said to himself, and to the silence, his heart very full, “if granny didn’t need ’em. Granny always said thar’d be a way provided, and I be durned if she wasn’t right about it.”

He shouldered the rifle that had been his father’s, called the hound, and set out across the mountains, bound homeward. For there was no necessity for going to the Honeycomb Cliffs now; his pockets were stuffed with money—and money would buy things to eat and things to wear for Granny Davis far quicker than would possum hides.

Obe drew up at the rickety gate with a breath of relief. The cries of the owls and the pressure of the darkness had been mighty lonesome. The hound, disappointed, slipped between his legs and went to the cabin ahead of him, creeping sullenly under the floor.

Granny Davis knew his knock, even though it was somewhat different from his usual summons. She came to the door, opened it, and threw it wide.

“Why, you hain’t been to the Honeycomb Clifts shorely!” was her surprised greeting.

“I hain’t, I shore hain’t,” agreed Obe, striding past his grandmother, and setting the lantern on the little, oilcloth-covered table. “I did't have to go to the Honeycomb Clifts. Set down over thar, granny, and lemme show you a little somethin’—somethin’ that'll shore make yore eyes look like a skeered coon’s.”

The old woman hobbled around the table and dropped wearily into a creaking chair.

When she was seated, Obe drew from his pocket a handful of silver and placed it, with a loud and musical jingle, in a convenient dinner plate.

“What you got to say to that, granny?” he grinned.

“Why, Obe!” cried Granny Davis, her eyes as wide as he had said they would be.

The boy added another handful of coins to the pile.

“And that!” he said joyously.

“Why, Obe!” as a few other pieces of silver and several bank notes found their way to the dinner plate.

“Obe Morelock”

“And these here!” He held out the two watches, his eyes shining, his throat pulsating with gladness.

But the old woman’s face had fallen at sight of the timepieces. She looked her grandson straight in the eyes, and shook one wrinkled, tremulous finger toward him.

“Obe Morelock, what have you done went and done! Oh, my God, you’ve done robbed somebody! What would yore pore pap and mother say if they knowed it? Why, Obe Morelock, they’d turn over in their graves! Obe, in the name o’ goodness, who was it you robbed?”

“Stiddy, now, granny—stiddy thar!” smiled Obe. “As I crossed the railroad I seen a big rock on the track; I got the evenin’ train stopped in time to save everybody’s life, and they give me these here things here.”

“Why, Obe!” Her face brightened.

“Shore did, wisht I may die if they didn’t!” said the lad. “‘Now, jest maybe I won’t git you a new dress, and somethin’ good to eat, and some new dishes, and—everythin’ you want, you old darlin’ of a gran’maw, you!”

Granny Davis hugged him, kissed him, patted him on the back, and said he was the best boy in the world.

“And I told you, Obe, honey,” she reminded, with her old eyes like jewels, “that somethin’ would turn up afore mornin’,”

Obadiah Morelock slept little that night. For long he lay in his narrow bed in the cabin loft, and watched the silvery stars pass as in review before him through a knot hole in one of the boards of the roof. His mind was satisfied when he had thought it all over, however; Granny Davis was old and childish, and faith broken in the Master, at a time when she had but little longer to live, might have been faith broken forever. Yes, it had been virtually a holdup; but he had done it for her—because, of all the people in the world, she was all that he loved, and all that loved him.

For the Lord had provided only the bowlder; Obe himself had provided the sapling handspike that had dislodged it from the cliff above the tracks.