Goose Creek Folks: A Story of the Kentucky MountainsBush, Isabel Graham
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Goose Creek Folks: A Story of the Kentucky Mountains
Bush, Isabel Graham
Kentucky -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Fiction
Kid looked at everything with eager eyes. How could he ever see it all
in a day! So far there were no familiar faces. Nick plodded along in
the jam of teams quite subdued. There were lean, spiritless nags drawing
“sorry” buggies, jolt wagons and oxen, mules and more mules. Kid watched
them all—the black sunbonnets, the over-trimmed hats, the attractive
young faces and those lacking purpose. Where were Martin, and Abner, and
the rest? He looked up at the big boarding hall set back in a yard full
of trees. A throng was pouring out of the side entrance. They were
singing a rollicking class song which appealed to Kid’s music-loving
heart. As they came toward him he saw Martin and Isaac leading the
crowd.
Almost at the same instant they discovered him and made a rush forward.
“Hello, Kid, you’re just in time; we’re going over to the Tabernacle this
minute!” exclaimed Isaac.
“Didn’t any one else come?” asked Martin.
“You’ll see later,” Kid assured him with a grin, “but what’ll I do with
Nick?”
They led him into a long, roped driveway which crossed a little rustic
bridge. There, in the wooded part of the campus, were hundreds of teams
hitched to the trees or eating from the backs of wagons. In a bag thrown
across the saddle, Kid had brought feed for the mule. “Here’s a good
place, it’s near the road and shady, too,” said Isaac. “We’ll come back
after a while and find the rest of the folks. Now let’s hurry.”
The three boys started toward a huge, unpainted building with a large
sign across the front, “The Tabernacle,” it read. People were standing
near the two large entrances which were closed. “We’ll go around; I know
the way,” said Martin. There were several doors securely locked, but one
was ajar. The three slipped in. The room was full of piney odours from
the banked-up platform. High up behind the seats for the graduates a
dozen or more boys and girls were fastening festoons of flowers above a
solid wall of green. Kid had never seen anything of the kind before. He
stared at the sawdust on the floor which muffled their footsteps, at the
semi-circle of raised seats which were soon to be filled with mountain
people, then back again to the hurrying boys and girls in front.
“If there isn’t Kid Shockley!” It was Abner’s voice.
“Why, hello!” called Pete, turning suddenly. “Where are the rest of the
folks?”
“Come up here, Kid,” called out Talitha. “Here’s Gincy and Mallie and
all of the girls.”
In a moment Kid felt as though he had been in Bentville a week. He was
hailed cordially by all of the Goose Creek people and immediately set to
work breaking branches for trimming, and hanging banners under the
direction of Lalla. “We’ve got to be awfully quiet,” she whispered.
“It’s only a half-hour before the doors are opened and two of the
graduates have to rehearse yet.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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