Enter Big Jerry

As Donald stopped, uncertain, there came the sound of measured, heavy
footfalls on the beaten dirt path outside the cabin. The girl's face
lighted up joyfully; she hopped to the door, flung it open, and a
slightly stooping, but gigantic, form stepped in out of the darkness,
caught her up in his huge arms and submitted with a quizzical smile
while she pulled his face toward hers by tugging at his long beard, and
kissed him.

Across the tumbled masses of her hair the newcomer's still piercing dark
eyes, blinking a little under their shaggy brows as the fire leaped in
the draft from the open door, caught sight of Donald as he stood back
among the shadows. He straightened up suddenly, and his brows drew
together in a suspicious scowl.

The city man knew enough of the primitive code of the mountain people to
understand that the presence of a man,--especially a strange man,--alone
in the house with a young woman, was fraught with unpleasant
possibilities. But, before he could speak, the child-woman had launched
into a vivacious, if ungrammatical, explanation and story of what had
occurred. In substantiation she now raised her short skirt and lifted
the bandaged foot, with utter freedom from embarrassment, and laughed
deliciously until an answering smile crept slowly into the eyes of the
old mountaineer.

With a simple courtesy, which seemed to hold something of innate
majesty, he stepped forward, and extended a weatherbeaten hand, several
sizes larger than Donald's, and boomed out in a deep voice that matched
his physical proportions, "Yo're suttinly welcome, stranger. What
happened warn't no fault o' yourn, and I'm plumb obleeged ter ye fer
fixin' up my granddarter's hurt. Draw up a cheer fer the stranger,
Smiles, he'll jine us in a bite er supper. The fare's simple, but I war
raised on't, and 'pears ter me thet I top ye some."