Cold Mountain: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Back in the town of Black Cove, Ada and Ruby have reached an agreement: Ruby will teach Ada how to run a farm, and in return, Ada will pay her money and feed her. Ada and Ruby spend their first days together making a list of everything that they’ll need to do at the farm. They’ll need to plant seeds, harvest crops that have been in the ground for too long, and dozens of other tasks. Ruby also has plans to make the farm profitable: she and Ada will make hard cider, which is highly valuable and popular at the time. They go into town to buy cloth, needles, and other necessities. Ada notes that paper money has become so unpredictable that nobody seems to want it anymore.

Ada surprises herself by selling her piano. As she prepares to part with it, she remembers receiving piano lessons from Tip Benson, a young man who tried and failed to seduce her—as soon as he was indiscrete, Ada informed her father. Ruby uses Ada’s piano to make good deals with neighbors—she’s using Ada’s “useless” possessions to purchase useful ones.

As Ada parts with her piano and other possessions, she can’t help but think about Monroe, and the Christmas party he gave four years ago—just before the war began. At this party, the men debated about the South’s right to secede and predicted that the South would easily defeat the North if it ever came to war. Some of the younger men, such as Mars, drank from flasks. There were also women of mixed race present, though nobody seemed to pay them much attention.

At the Christmas party, Ada had a little too much to drink. Sally Swanger, also drunk, told Ada that she should marry Inman as soon as she could. Ada was embarrassed by this suggestion. But when she got up to leave the room, she found Inman sitting outside, wearing a black suit. Inman greeted Ada and pointed out that she looked flushed. Shyly, Ada sat in Inman’s lap for a while, while Inman smiled quietly. Afterwards, Ada got up and returned to the party.

As Ada remembers her experienced with Inman, she looks through the basement of her house, searching for coffee. She and Ruby drink the coffee and talk about Ada’s love of books—including Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Over the course of the next few days, they trade the extra coffee for bacon, potatoes, baking powder, chickens, salt, and beans—all necessities for life on a farm.

Ada is struck by how busily she and Ruby have to work in order to survive on their farm. Ruby is a harsh coach and teacher—she makes Ada work in the fields, dirtying her clothes, even when Ada doesn’t want to. Ada learns that Ruby is the child of a “ne’er-do-well” farmer named Stobrod Thewes. Ruby grew up in squalor, and learned all sorts of tricks for taking care of herself. As a child, Ruby was always frightened of being eaten by a wild animal prowling around Cold Mountain. Cherokee women talked about evil spirits and monsters, and she was always afraid one of them would kill her. In spite of her fears, Ruby grew up quickly. She learned how to pull a plow and cook food, because her father couldn’t do either.

When Ruby was older, she began to wonder about her mother—the kind of woman who would marry a man like Stobrod. She never succeeded in learning anything about her mother, because Stobrod enlisted in the army before she could ask him. Ruby hasn’t heard anything from her father since he went off to fight, so she’s sure he was killed in battle. In her father’s absence, Ruby learned how to run a farm, and how to fight off enemies with her bare hands. She’s 21 years old at the moment, at least so she thinks—she was never totally sure.