The Devil's Dream Read Online Free PDF

yer head over, hear the wind blow . ” They didn’t have no way of knowing how good the sound carried up here, I reckon, since they hadn’t hardly ever ventured offen that place.
    Well, hit used to give Mamma the all-overs and Piney, too, that singing. “No good will come of this,” Mamma said. But Dummy loved it. He used to tap his foot and pat his knee in time.
    Winter come, and we didn’t hear no fiddling, and then spring come, with a big early thaw. Now Moses’ garden never done much, and the previous summer wasn’t no exception. So by spring they was about out of everything that Kate had put by to eat, they was living on apples and taters, so Moses he resolved to run a raft of logs down the river fer old man Higgins, and get him some cash money. Hit was a lot more water around here then. The Monongah was a big mighty river in them days.
    â€œHit might take me longern usual to get back up here,” Moses warned Kate. “I might have trouble crossing them little streams on the way back, fer some of them is all swole up now and busting over their banks. I’ll be aiming fer about six days,” Moses says. So then he kissed her, and set out afore the sunrise.
    Well, that day, don’t ye know, Kate and Jeremiah took the fiddle outen the hidey-hole in the corncrib where they’d been a-keeping it, and tuned it up, and that night they set out on the porch a-fiddling and a-singing. They sung and sung. They sung the moon up.
    They didn’t have no way of knowing that Moses’ raft had broke into smithereens right soon after he set out, when he come to a big curve with some sharp rocks over to the left of it, that he was aware of, but this year the Monongah was so high Moses couldn’t get his bearings. So he run right smack into them rocks and the raft busted all to pieces, throwing Moses into the river and the logs ever whichaway. Moses was lucky not to drown. In point of fact he liked to of drowned, but he managed to cling onto one of the logs fer dear life, and come around. He stopped at a house to dry hisself, and set out walking fer home.
    Now who knows what Moses was a-thinking on that long dark walk home? Fer his pretty wife and his children had nothing but taters to eat, and he was coming home with nothing in his pockets, and it must have seemed to him that God, who Moses had been looking fer all his days, was just a-mocking him. God had flung him in the river and left him fer dead. Is hit a sign? He must have wondered. Is hit a test? So Moses was a-walking through the dark dripping trees alongside of Paint Creek, and pondering on God and His ways, when all of a sudden he heerd the Devil’s laughter on the wind.
    Now what hit was, a course, was his own wife Kate, a-fiddling a frolic tune and singing, “ Good-bye, girls, I’m goin to Boston, ear-lye in the morning .”
    Moses hastened on.
    And when he come to the edge of the clearing he could see them as good as anything, in the light of the risen moon. They didn’t even need no lantern. Hit was Kate with Mary Magdaleen and Jeremiah gathered round her. Little Zeke had fell asleep on a pallet at her feet.
    Then Kate handed Jeremiah the fiddle.
    â€œSaddle up, girls, and let’s go with em, saddle up, girls, and let’s go with em . ” Jeremiah had a fine, light touch.
    Now who knows what went on in Moses’ head whilst he stood there a-listening? Who can say what drives a man to do the things he does? Fer what Moses done was awful. He come busting outen them woods like God Hisself, a-hollering, snatched that fiddle and broke it over the front porch rail, then beat all of them, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Mary and Kate, too, until the children run off in the woods to get away from him. At the last, he throwed hisself down on the floor and cried like a baby the rest of the whole night long, or so Kate told it to Mamma, who went over there the next day and larned the whole sorry