"freewill savages"

Another short chapter, and I didn't notice the title phrase in it anywhere.

The main focus is the re-introduction of Ruby's father, Stobrod, into the narrative and two key stories that he tells.  One is about how he created his fiddle with its unusual characteristics, and the other is about how he came to learn how to truly play the instrument.

The fiddle, Frazier writes, "was of novel design, for where the scroll would normally be was instead the whittled head of a great serpent curled back against the neck." The first tale is about how he came to put "the tailpiece to a rattlesnake inside the instrument," deciding that it would "work a vast improvement on the sound, would give it a sizz and knell like no other." The story is in the form of a mountain tall tale, and Stobrod believes that the "musical improvement he was seeking would come as likely from the mystic discipline of getting the rattles as from their actual function within the fiddle."

The second story is more realistic but still has elements of a folk tale.  It is about a young girl of fifteen who was dying from a severe burn to her face when a stove lid "had been blown with great force into her head, and the beam of fire that had come out of the opening had charred her flesh near to the bone." When she is asked what might "ease her passing," she answered that fiddle music would do fine."

Although at the time Stobord only knew six fiddles tunes, he is the only fiddler in the army camp.  When he runs out of tunes, the girl says, "Make me up a tune." Stobord is surprised at his ability to do it and becomes obsessed with music.

One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held more for him than just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen.

The "argument" that "things just happen" is the same one Inman is struggling with.

Having told his stories, Stobord plays his fiddle and is quite impressive.  Despite being impressed, however, "Ruby's face said it would take more than a tale and a fiddle tune to soften her heart toward him."  Ada, on the other hand, is more sympathetic and sees Stobord's new attachment to music "as proof positive that no matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial."

This just reinforces our sense that Inman's journey back to Ada and Cold Mountain is a "path to redemption" and the "shadow of the crow" is acknowledge by the qualifying phrase "however partial." Having done what he has done, seen what he has seen, is "full" redemption even possible for Inman?