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Title: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

Author: John Fox, Jr.

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5122]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 4, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE

BY

JOHN FOX, JR.

ILLUSTRATED BY F. C. YOHN






To F. S.






THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE


I


She sat at the base of the big tree--her little sunbonnet pushed
back, her arms locked about her knees, her bare feet gathered
under her crimson gown and her deep eyes fixed on the smoke in the
valley below. Her breath was still coming fast between her parted
lips. There were tiny drops along the roots of her shining hair,
for the climb had been steep, and now the shadow of disappointment
darkened her eyes. The mountains ran in limitless blue waves
towards the mounting sun--but at birth her eyes had opened on them
as on the white mists trailing up the steeps below her. Beyond
them was a gap in the next mountain chain and down in the little
valley, just visible through it, were trailing blue mists as well,
and she knew that they were smoke. Where was the great glare of
yellow light that the "circuit rider" had told about--and the
leaping tongues of fire? Where was the shrieking monster that ran
without horses like the wind and tossed back rolling black plumes
all streaked with fire? For many days now she had heard stories of
the "furriners" who had come into those hills and were doing
strange things down there, and so at last she had climbed up
through the dewy morning from the cove on the other side to see
the wonders for herself. She had never been up there before. She
had no business there now, and, if she were found out when she got
back, she would get a scolding and maybe something worse from her
step-mother--and all that trouble and risk for nothing but smoke.
So, she lay back and rested--her little mouth tightening fiercely.
It was a big world, though, that was spread before her and a vague
awe of it seized her straightway and held her motionless and
dreaming. Beyond those white mists trailing up the hills, beyond
the blue smoke drifting in the valley, those limitless blue waves
must run under the sun on and on to the end of the world! Her dead
sister had gone into that far silence and had brought back
wonderful stories of that outer world: and she began to wonder
more than ever before whether she would ever go into it and see
for herself what was there. With the thought, she rose slowly to
her feet, moved slowly to the cliff that dropped sheer ten feet
aside from the trail, and stood there like a great scarlet flower
in still air. There was the way at her feet--that path that coiled
under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through majestic oak and
poplar and masses of rhododendron. She drew a long breath and
stirred uneasily--she'd better go home now--but the path had a
snake-like charm for her and still she stood, following it as far
down as she could with her eyes. Down it went, writhing this way
and that to a spur that had been swept bare by forest fires. Along
this spur it travelled straight for a while and, as her eyes
eagerly followed it to where it sank sharply into a covert of
maples, the little creature dropped of a sudden to the ground and,
like something wild, lay flat.

A human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the
trail and it was coming towards her. With a thumping heart she
pushed slowly forward through the brush until her face, fox-like
with cunning and screened by a blueberry bush, hung just over the
edge of the cliff, and there she lay, like a crouched panther-cub,
looking down. For a moment, all that was human seemed gone from
her eyes, but, as she watched, all that was lost came back to
them, and something more. She had seen that it was a man, but she
had dropped so quickly that she did not see the big, black horse
that, unled, was following him. Now both man and horse had
stopped. The stranger had taken off his gray slouched hat and he
was wiping his face with something white. Something blue was tied
loosely about his throat. She had never seen a man like that
before. His face was smooth and looked different, as did his
throat and his hands. His breeches were tight and on his feet were
strange boots that were the colour of his saddle, which was deep
in seat, high both in front and behind and had strange long-hooded
stirrups. Starting to mount, the man stopped with one foot in the
stirrup and raised his eyes towards her so suddenly that she
shrank back again with a quicker throbbing at her heart and
pressed closer to the earth. Still, seen or not seen, flight was
easy for her, so she could not forbear to look again. Apparently,
he had seen nothing--only that the next turn of the trail was too
steep to ride, and so he started walking again, and his walk, as
he strode along the path, was new to her, as was the erect way
with which he held his head and his shoulders.

In her wonder over him, she almost forgot herself, forgot to
wonder where he was going and why he was coming into those lonely
hills until, as his horse turned a bend of the trail, she saw
hanging from the other side of the saddle something that looked
like a gun. He was a "raider"--that man: so, cautiously and
swiftly then, she pushed herself back from the edge of the cliff,
sprang to her feet, dashed past the big tree and, winged with
fear, sped down the mountain--leaving in a spot of sunlight at the
base of the pine the print of one bare foot in the black earth.




II


He had seen the big pine when he first came to those hills--one
morning, at daybreak, when the valley was a sea of mist that threw
soft clinging spray to the very mountain tops: for even above the
mists, that morning, its mighty head arose--sole visible proof
that the earth still slept beneath. Straightway, he wondered how
it had ever got there, so far above the few of its kind that
haunted the green dark ravines far below. Some whirlwind,
doubtless, had sent a tiny cone circling heavenward and dropped it
there. It had sent others, too, no doubt, but how had this tree
faced wind and storm alone and alone lived to defy both so
proudly? Some day he would learn. Thereafter, he had seen it, at
noon--but little less majestic among the oaks that stood about it;
had seen it catching the last light at sunset, clean-cut against
the after-glow, and like a dark, silent, mysterious sentinel
guarding the mountain pass under the moon. He had seen it giving
place with sombre dignity to the passing burst of spring--had seen
it green among dying autumn leaves, green in the gray of winter
trees and still green in a shroud of snow--a changeless promise
that the earth must wake to life again. The Lonesome Pine, the
mountaineers called it, and the Lonesome Pine it always looked to
be. From the beginning it had a curious fascination for him, and
straightway within him--half exile that he was--there sprang up a
sympathy for it as for something that was human and a brother. And
now he was on the trail of it at last. From every point that
morning it had seemed almost to nod down to him as he climbed and,
when he reached the ledge that gave him sight of it from base to
crown, the winds murmured among its needles like a welcoming
voice. At once, he saw the secret of its life. On each side rose a
cliff that had sheltered it from storms until its trunk had shot
upwards so far and so straight and so strong that its green crown
could lift itself on and on and bend--blow what might--as proudly
and securely as a lily on its stalk in a morning breeze. Dropping
his bridle rein he put one hand against it as though on the
shoulder of a friend.

"Old Man," he said, "You must be pretty lonesome up here, and I'm
glad to meet you."

For a while he sat against it--resting. He had no particular
purpose that day--no particular destination. His saddle-bags were
across the cantle of his cow-boy saddle. His fishing rod was tied
under one flap. He was young and his own master. Time was hanging
heavy on his hands that day and he loved the woods and the nooks
and crannies of them where his own kind rarely made its way.
Beyond, the cove looked dark, forbidding, mysterious, and what was
beyond he did not know. So down there he would go. As he bent his
head forward to rise, his eye caught the spot of sunlight, and he
leaned over it with a smile. In the black earth was a human foot-
print--too small and slender for the foot of a man, a boy or a
woman. Beyond, the same prints were visible--wider apart--and he
smiled again. A girl had been there. She was the crimson flash
that he saw as he started up the steep and mistook for a flaming
bush of sumach. She had seen him coming and she had fled. Still
smiling, he rose to his feet.




III


On one side he had left the earth yellow with the coming noon, but
it was still morning as he went down on the other side. The laurel
and rhododendron still reeked with dew in the deep, ever-shaded
ravine. The ferns drenched his stirrups, as he brushed through
them, and each dripping tree-top broke the sunlight and let it
drop in tent-like beams through the shimmering undermist. A bird
flashed here and there through the green gloom, but there was no
sound in the air but the footfalls of his horse and the easy
creaking of leather under him, the drip of dew overhead and the
running of water below. Now and then he could see the same slender
foot-prints in the rich loam and he saw them in the sand where the
first tiny brook tinkled across the path from a gloomy ravine.
There the little creature had taken a flying leap across it and,
beyond, he could see the prints no more. He little guessed that
while he halted to let his horse drink, the girl lay on a rock
above him, looking down. She was nearer home now and was less
afraid; so she had slipped from the trail and climbed above it
there to watch him pass. As he went on, she slid from her perch
and with cat-footed quiet followed him. When he reached the river
she saw him pull in his horse and eagerly bend forward, looking
into a pool just below the crossing. There was a bass down there
in the clear water--a big one--and the man whistled cheerily and
dismounted, tying his horse to a sassafras bush and unbuckling a
tin bucket and a curious looking net from his saddle. With the net
in one hand and the bucket in the other, he turned back up the
creek and passed so close to where she had slipped aside into the
bushes that she came near shrieking, but his eyes were fixed on a
pool of the creek above and, to her wonder, he strolled straight
into the water, with his boots on, pushing the net in front of
him.

He was a "raider" sure, she thought now, and he was looking for a
"moonshine" still, and the wild little thing in the bushes smiled
cunningly--there was no still up that creek--and as he had left
his horse below and his gun, she waited for him to come back,
which he did, by and by, dripping and soaked to his knees. Then
she saw him untie the queer "gun" on his saddle, pull it out of a
case and--her eyes got big with wonder--take it to pieces and make
it into a long limber rod. In a moment he had cast a minnow into
the pool and waded out into the water up to his hips. She had
never seen so queer a fishing-pole--so queer a fisherman. How
could he get a fish out with that little switch, she thought
contemptuously? By and by something hummed queerly, the man gave a
slight jerk and a shining fish flopped two feet into the air. It
was surely very queer, for the man didn't put his rod over his
shoulder and walk ashore, as did the mountaineers, but stood
still, winding something with one hand, and again the fish would
flash into the air and then that humming would start again while
the fisherman would stand quiet and waiting for a while--and then
he would begin to wind again. In her wonder, she rose
unconsciously to her feet and a stone rolled down to the ledge
below her. The fisherman turned his head and she started to run,
but without a word he turned again to the fish he was playing.
Moreover, he was too far out in the water to catch her, so she
advanced slowly--even to the edge of the stream, watching the fish
cut half circles about the man. If he saw her, he gave no notice,
and it was well that he did not. He was pulling the bass to and
fro now through the water, tiring him out--drowning him--stepping
backward at the same time, and, a moment later, the fish slid
easily out of the edge of the water, gasping along the edge of a
low sand-bank, and the fisherman reaching down with one hand
caught him in the gills. Then he looked up and smiled--and she had
seen no smile like that before.

"Howdye, Little Girl?"

One bare toe went burrowing suddenly into the sand, one finger
went to her red mouth--and that was all. She merely stared him
straight in the eye and he smiled again.

"Cat got your tongue?"

Her eyes fell at the ancient banter, but she lifted them
straightway and stared again.

"You live around here?"

She stared on.

"Where?"

No answer.

"What's your name, little girl?"

And still she stared.

"Oh, well, of course, you can't talk, if the cat's got your
tongue."

The steady eyes leaped angrily, but there was still no answer, and
he bent to take the fish off his hook, put on a fresh minnow,
turned his back and tossed it into the pool.

"Hit hain't!"

He looked up again. She surely was a pretty little thing--and
more, now that she was angry.

"I should say not," he said teasingly. "What did you say your name
was?"

"What's YO' name?"

The fisherman laughed. He was just becoming accustomed to the
mountain etiquette that commands a stranger to divulge himself
first.

"My name's--Jack."

"An' mine's--Jill." She laughed now, and it was his time for
surprise--where could she have heard of Jack and Jill?

His line rang suddenly.

"Jack," she cried, "you got a bite!"

He pulled, missed the strike, and wound in. The minnow was all
right, so he tossed it back again.

"That isn't your name," he said.

"If 'tain't, then that ain't your'n?"

"Yes 'tis," he said, shaking his head affirmatively.

A long cry came down the ravine:

"J-u-n-e! eh--oh--J-u-n-e!" That was a queer name for the
mountains, and the fisherman wondered if he had heard aright--
June.

The little girl gave a shrill answering cry, but she did not move.

"Thar now!" she said.

"Who's that--your Mammy?"

"No, 'tain't--hit's my step-mammy. I'm a goin' to ketch hell now."
Her innocent eyes turned sullen and her baby mouth tightened.

"Good Lord!" said the fisherman, startled, and then he stopped--
the words were as innocent on her lips as a benediction.

"Have you got a father?" Like a flash, her whole face changed.

"I reckon I have."

"Where is he?"

"Hyeh he is!" drawled a voice from the bushes, and it had a tone
that made the fisherman whirl suddenly. A giant mountaineer stood
on the bank above him, with a Winchester in the hollow of his arm.

"How are you?" The giant's heavy eyes lifted quickly, but he spoke
to the girl.

"You go on home--what you doin' hyeh gassin' with furriners!"

The girl shrank to the bushes, but she cried sharply back:

"Don't you hurt him now, Dad. He ain't even got a pistol. He ain't
no--"

"Shet up!" The little creature vanished and the mountaineer turned
to the fisherman, who had just put on a fresh minnow and tossed it
into the river.

"Purty well, thank you," he said shortly. "How are you?"

"Fine!" was the nonchalant answer. For a moment there was silence
and a puzzled frown gathered on the mountaineer's face.

"That's a bright little girl of yours--What did she mean by
telling you not to hurt me?"

"You haven't been long in these mountains, have ye?"

"No--not in THESE mountains--why?" The fisherman looked around and
was almost startled by the fierce gaze of his questioner.

"Stop that, please," he said, with a humourous smile. "You make me
nervous."

The mountaineer's bushy brows came together across the bridge of
his nose and his voice rumbled like distant thunder.

"What's yo' name, stranger, an' what's yo' business over hyeh?"

"Dear me, there you go! You can see I'm fishing, but why does
everybody in these mountains want to know my name?"

"You heerd me!"

"Yes." The fisherman turned again and saw the giant's rugged face
stern and pale with open anger now, and he, too, grew suddenly
serious.

"Suppose I don't tell you," he said gravely. "What--"

"Git!" said the mountaineer, with a move of one huge hairy hand up
the mountain. "An' git quick!"

The fisherman never moved and there was the click of a shell
thrown into place in the Winchester and a guttural oath from the
mountaineer's beard.

"Damn ye," he said hoarsely, raising the rifle. "I'll give ye--"

"Don't, Dad!" shrieked a voice from the bushes. "I know his name,
hit's Jack--" the rest of the name was unintelligible. The
mountaineer dropped the butt of his gun to the ground and laughed.

"Oh, air YOU the engineer?"

The fisherman was angry now. He had not moved hand or foot and he
said nothing, but his mouth was set hard and his bewildered blue
eyes had a glint in them that the mountaineer did not at the
moment see. He was leaning with one arm on the muzzle of his
Winchester, his face had suddenly become suave and shrewd and now
he laughed again:

"So you're Jack Hale, air ye?"

The fisherman spoke. "JOHN Hale, except to my friends." He looked
hard at the old man.

"Do you know that's a pretty dangerous joke of yours, my friend--I
might have a gun myself sometimes. Did you think you could scare
me?" The mountaineer stared in genuine surprise.

"Twusn't no joke," he said shortly. "An' I don't waste time
skeering folks. I reckon you don't know who I be?"

"I don't care who you are." Again the mountaineer stared.

"No use gittin' mad, young feller," he said coolly. "I mistaken ye
fer somebody else an' I axe yer pardon. When you git through
fishin' come up to the house right up the creek thar an' I'll give
ye a dram."

"Thank you," said the fisherman stiffly, and the mountaineer
turned silently away. At the edge of the bushes, he looked back;
the stranger was still fishing, and the old man went on with a
shake of his head.

"He'll come," he said to himself. "Oh, he'll come!"

That very point Hale was debating with himself as he unavailingly
cast his minnow into the swift water and slowly wound it in again.
How did that old man know his name? And would the old savage
really have hurt him had he not found out who he was? The little
girl was a wonder: evidently she had muffled his last name on
purpose--not knowing it herself--and it was a quick and cunning
ruse. He owed her something for that--why did she try to protect
him? Wonderful eyes, too, the little thing had--deep and dark--and
how the flame did dart from them when she got angry! He smiled,
remembering--he liked that. And her hair--it was exactly like the
gold-bronze on the wing of a wild turkey that he had shot the day
before. Well, it was noon now, the fish had stopped biting after
the wayward fashion of bass, he was hungry and thirsty and he
would go up and see the little girl and the giant again and get
that promised dram. Once more, however, he let his minnow float
down into the shadow of a big rock, and while he was winding in,
he looked up to see in the road two people on a gray horse, a man
with a woman behind him--both old and spectacled--all three
motionless on the bank and looking at him: and he wondered if all
three had stopped to ask his name and his business. No, they had
just come down to the creek and both they must know already.

"Ketching any?" called out the old man, cheerily.

"Only one," answered Hale with equal cheer. The old woman pushed
back her bonnet as he waded through the water towards them and he
saw that she was puffing a clay pipe. She looked at the fisherman
and his tackle with the naive wonder of a child, and then she said
in a commanding undertone.

"Go on, Billy."

"Now, ole Hon, I wish ye'd jes' wait a minute." Hale smiled. He
loved old people, and two kinder faces he had never seen--two
gentler voices he had never heard.

"I reckon you got the only green pyerch up hyeh," said the old
man, chuckling, "but thar's a sight of 'em down thar below my old
mill." Quietly the old woman hit the horse with a stripped branch
of elm and the old gray, with a switch of his tail, started.

"Wait a minute, Hon," he said again, appealingly, "won't ye?" but
calmly she hit the horse again and the old man called back over
his shoulder:

"You come on down to the mill an' I'll show ye whar you can ketch
a mess."

"All right," shouted Hale, holding back his laughter, and on they
went, the old man remonstrating in the kindliest way--the old
woman silently puffing her pipe and making no answer except to
flay gently the rump of the lazy old gray.

Hesitating hardly a moment, Hale unjointed his pole, left his
minnow bucket where it was, mounted his horse and rode up the
path. About him, the beech leaves gave back the gold of the autumn
sunlight, and a little ravine, high under the crest of the mottled
mountain, was on fire with the scarlet of maple. Not even yet had
the morning chill left the densely shaded path. When he got to the
bare crest of a little rise, he could see up the creek a spiral of
blue rising swiftly from a stone chimney. Geese and ducks were
hunting crawfish in the little creek that ran from a milk-house of
logs, half hidden by willows at the edge of the forest, and a turn
in the path brought into view a log-cabin well chinked with stones
and plaster, and with a well-built porch. A fence ran around the
yard and there was a meat house near a little orchard of apple-
trees, under which were many hives of bee-gums. This man had
things "hung up" and was well-to-do. Down the rise and through a
thicket he went, and as he approached the creek that came down
past the cabin there was a shrill cry ahead of him.

"Whoa thar, Buck! Gee-haw, I tell ye!" An ox-wagon evidently was
coming on, and the road was so narrow that he turned his horse
into the bushes to let it pass.

"Whoa--Haw!--Gee--Gee--Buck, Gee, I tell ye! I'll knock yo' fool
head off the fust thing you know!"

Still there was no sound of ox or wagon and the voice sounded like
a child's. So he went on at a walk in the thick sand, and when he
turned the bushes he pulled up again with a low laugh. In the road
across the creek was a chubby, tow-haired boy with a long switch
in his right hand, and a pine dagger and a string in his left.
Attached to the string and tied by one hind leg was a frog. The
boy was using the switch as a goad and driving the frog as an ox,
and he was as earnest as though both were real.

"I give ye a little rest now, Buck," he said, shaking his head
earnestly. "Hit's a purty hard pull hyeh, but I know, by Gum, you
can make hit--if you hain't too durn lazy. Now, git up, Buck!" he
yelled suddenly, flaying the sand with his switch. "Git up--Whoa--
Haw--Gee, Gee!" The frog hopped several times.

"Whoa, now!" said the little fellow, panting in sympathy. "I
knowed you could do it." Then he looked up. For an instant he
seemed terrified but he did not run. Instead he stealthily shifted
the pine dagger over to his right hand and the string to his left.

"Here, boy," said the fisherman with affected sternness: "What are
you doing with that dagger?"

The boy's breast heaved and his dirty fingers clenched tight
around the whittled stick.

"Don't you talk to me that-a-way," he said with an ominous shake
of his head. "I'll gut ye!"

The fisherman threw back his head, and his peal of laughter did
what his sternness failed to do. The little fellow wheeled
suddenly, and his feet spurned the sand around the bushes for
home--the astonished frog dragged bumping after him. "Well!" said
the fisherman.




IV


Even the geese in the creek seemed to know that he was a stranger
and to distrust him, for they cackled and, spreading their wings,
fled cackling up the stream. As he neared the house, the little
girl ran around the stone chimney, stopped short, shaded her eyes
with one hand for a moment and ran excitedly into the house. A
moment later, the bearded giant slouched out, stooping his head as
he came through the door.

"Hitch that 'ar post to yo' hoss and come right in," he thundered
cheerily. "I'm waitin' fer ye."

The little girl came to the door, pushed one brown slender hand
through her tangled hair, caught one bare foot behind a deer-like
ankle and stood motionless. Behind her was the boy--his dagger
still in hand.

"Come right in!" said the old man, "we are purty pore folks, but
you're welcome to what we have."

The fisherman, too, had to stoop as he came in, for he, too, was
tall. The interior was dark, in spite of the wood fire in the big
stone fireplace. Strings of herbs and red-pepper pods and twisted
tobacco hung from the ceiling and down the wall on either side of
the fire; and in one corner, near the two beds in the room, hand-
made quilts of many colours were piled several feet high. On
wooden pegs above the door where ten years before would have been
buck antlers and an old-fashioned rifle, lay a Winchester; on
either side of the door were auger holes through the logs (he did
not understand that they were port-holes) and another Winchester
stood in the corner. From the mantel the butt of a big 44-Colt's
revolver protruded ominously. On one of the beds in the corner he
could see the outlines of a figure lying under a brilliantly
figured quilt, and at the foot of it the boy with the pine dagger
had retreated for refuge. From the moment he stooped at the door
something in the room had made him vaguely uneasy, and when his
eyes in swift survey came back to the fire, they passed the blaze
swiftly and met on the edge of the light another pair of eyes
burning on him.

"Howdye!" said Hale.

"Howdye!" was the low, unpropitiating answer.

The owner of the eyes was nothing but a boy, in spite of his
length: so much of a boy that a slight crack in his voice showed
that it was just past the throes of "changing," but those black
eyes burned on without swerving--except once when they flashed at
the little girl who, with her chin in her hand and one foot on the
top rung of her chair, was gazing at the stranger with equal
steadiness. She saw the boy's glance, she shifted her knees
impatiently and her little face grew sullen. Hale smiled inwardly,
for he thought he could already see the lay of the land, and he
wondered that, at such an age, such fierceness could be: so every
now and then he looked at the boy, and every time he looked, the
black eyes were on him. The mountain youth must have been almost
six feet tall, young as he was, and while he was lanky in limb he
was well knit. His jean trousers were stuffed in the top of his
boots and were tight over his knees which were well-moulded, and
that is rare with a mountaineer. A loop of black hair curved over
his forehead, down almost to his left eye. His nose was straight
and almost delicate and his mouth was small, but extraordinarily
resolute. Somewhere he had seen that face before, and he turned
suddenly, but he did not startle the lad with his abruptness, nor
make him turn his gaze.

"Why, haven't I--?" he said. And then he suddenly remembered. He
had seen that boy not long since on the other side of the
mountains, riding his horse at a gallop down the county road with
his reins in his teeth, and shooting a pistol alternately at the
sun and the earth with either hand. Perhaps it was as well not to
recall the incident. He turned to the old mountaineer.

"Do you mean to tell me that a man can't go through these
mountains without telling everybody who asks him what his name
is?"

The effect of his question was singular. The old man spat into the
fire and put his hand to his beard. The boy crossed his legs
suddenly and shoved his muscular fingers deep into his pockets.
The figure shifted position on the bed and the infant at the foot
of it seemed to clench his toy-dagger a little more tightly. Only
the little girl was motionless--she still looked at him,
unwinking. What sort of wild animals had he fallen among?

"No, he can't--an' keep healthy." The giant spoke shortly.

"Why not?"

"Well, if a man hain't up to some devilment, what reason's he got
fer not tellin' his name?"

"That's his business."

"Tain't over hyeh. Hit's mine. Ef a man don't want to tell his
name over hyeh, he's a spy or a raider or a officer looking fer
somebody or," he added carelessly, but with a quick covert look at
his visitor--"he's got some kind o' business that he don't want
nobody to know about."

"Well, I came over here--just to--well, I hardly know why I did
come."

"Jess so," said the old man dryly. "An' if ye ain't looking fer
trouble, you'd better tell your name in these mountains, whenever
you're axed. Ef enough people air backin' a custom anywhar hit
goes, don't hit?"

His logic was good--and Hale said nothing. Presently the old man
rose with a smile on his face that looked cynical, picked up a
black lump and threw it into the fire. It caught fire, crackled,
blazed, almost oozed with oil, and Hale leaned forward and leaned
back.

"Pretty good coal!"

"Hain't it, though?" The old man picked up a sliver that had flown
to the hearth and held a match to it. The piece blazed and burned
in his hand.

"I never seed no coal in these mountains like that--did you?"

"Not often--find it around here?"

"Right hyeh on this farm--about five feet thick!"

"What?"

"An' no partin'."

"No partin'"--it was not often that he found a mountaineer who
knew what a parting in a coal bed was.

"A friend o' mine on t'other side,"--a light dawned for the
engineer.

"Oh," he said quickly. "That's how you knew my name."

"Right you air, stranger. He tol' me you was a--expert."

The old man laughed loudly. "An' that's why you come over hyeh."

"No, it isn't."

"Co'se not,"--the old fellow laughed again. Hale shifted the talk.

"Well, now that you know my name, suppose you tell me what yours
is?"

"Tolliver--Judd Tolliver." Hale started.

"Not Devil Judd!"

"That's what some evil folks calls me." Again he spoke shortly.
The mountaineers do not like to talk about their feuds. Hale knew
this--and the subject was dropped. But he watched the huge
mountaineer with interest. There was no more famous character in
all those hills than the giant before him--yet his face was kind
and was good-humoured, but the nose and eyes were the beak and
eyes of some bird of prey. The little girl had disappeared for a
moment. She came back with a blue-backed spelling-book, a second
reader and a worn copy of "Mother Goose," and she opened first one
and then the other until the attention of the visitor was caught--
the black-haired youth watching her meanwhile with lowering brows.

"Where did you learn to read?" Hale asked. The old man answered:

"A preacher come by our house over on the Nawth Fork 'bout three
year ago, and afore I knowed it he made me promise to send her
sister Sally to some school up thar on the edge of the
settlements. And after she come home, Sal larned that little gal
to read and spell. Sal died 'bout a year ago."

Hale reached over and got the spelling-book, and the old man
grinned at the quick, unerring responses of the little girl, and
the engineer looked surprised. She read, too, with unusual
facility, and her pronunciation was very precise and not at all
like her speech.

"You ought to send her to the same place," he said, but the old
fellow shook his head.

"I couldn't git along without her."

The little girl's eyes began to dance suddenly, and, without
opening "Mother Goose," she began:

"Jack and Jill went up a hill," and then she broke into a laugh
and Hale laughed with her.

Abruptly, the boy opposite rose to his great length.

"I reckon I better be goin'." That was all he said as he caught up
a Winchester, which stood unseen by his side, and out he stalked.
There was not a word of good-by, not a glance at anybody. A few
minutes later Hale heard the creak of a barn door on wooden
hinges, a cursing command to a horse, and four feet going in a
gallop down the path, and he knew there went an enemy.

"That's a good-looking boy--who is he?"

The old man spat into the fire. It seemed that he was not going to
answer and the little girl broke in:

"Hit's my cousin Dave--he lives over on the Nawth Fork."

That was the seat of the Tolliver-Falin feud. Of that feud, too,
Hale had heard, and so no more along that line of inquiry. He,
too, soon rose to go.

"Why, ain't ye goin' to have something to eat?"

"Oh, no, I've got something in my saddlebags and I must be getting
back to the Gap."

"Well, I reckon you ain't. You're jes' goin' to take a snack right
here." Hale hesitated, but the little girl was looking at him with
such unconscious eagerness in her dark eyes that he sat down
again.

"All right, I will, thank you." At once she ran to the kitchen and
the old man rose and pulled a bottle of white liquid from under
the quilts.

"I reckon I can trust ye," he said. The liquor burned Hale like
fire, and the old man, with a laugh at the face the stranger made,
tossed off a tumblerful.

"Gracious!" said Hale, "can you do that often?"

"Afore breakfast, dinner and supper," said the old man--"but I
don't." Hale felt a plucking at his sleeve. It was the boy with
the dagger at his elbow.

"Less see you laugh that-a-way agin," said Bub with such deadly
seriousness that Hale unconsciously broke into the same peal.

"Now," said Bub, unwinking, "I ain't afeard o' you no more."




V


Awaiting dinner, the mountaineer and the "furriner" sat on the
porch while Bub carved away at another pine dagger on the stoop.
As Hale passed out the door, a querulous voice said "Howdye" from
the bed in the corner and he knew it was the step-mother from whom
the little girl expected some nether-world punishment for an
offence of which he was ignorant. He had heard of the feud that
had been going on between the red Falins and the black Tollivers
for a quarter of a century, and this was Devil Judd, who had
earned his nickname when he was the leader of his clan by his
terrible strength, his marksmanship, his cunning and his courage.
Some years since the old man had retired from the leadership,
because he was tired of fighting or because he had quarrelled with
his brother Dave and his foster-brother, Bad Rufe--known as the
terror of the Tollivers--or from some unknown reason, and in
consequence there had been peace for a long time--the Falins
fearing that Devil Judd would be led into the feud again, the
Tollivers wary of starting hostilities without his aid. After the
last trouble, Bad Rufe Tolliver had gone West and old Judd had
moved his family as far away as possible. Hale looked around him:
this, then, was the home of Devil Judd Tolliver; the little
creature inside was his daughter and her name was June. All around
the cabin the wooded mountains towered except where, straight
before his eyes, Lonesome Creek slipped through them to the river,
and the old man had certainly picked out the very heart of silence
for his home. There was no neighbour within two leagues, Judd
said, except old Squire Billy Beams, who ran a mill a mile down
the river. No wonder the spot was called Lonesome Cove.

"You must ha' seed Uncle Billy and ole Hon passin'," he said.

"I did." Devil Judd laughed and Hale made out that "Hon" was short
for Honey.

"Uncle Billy used to drink right smart. Ole Hon broke him. She
followed him down to the grocery one day and walked in. 'Come on,
boys--let's have a drink'; and she set 'em up an' set 'em up until
Uncle Billy most went crazy. He had hard work gittin' her home,
an' Uncle Billy hain't teched a drap since." And the old
mountaineer chuckled again.

All the time Hale could hear noises from the kitchen inside. The
old step-mother was abed, he had seen no other woman about the
house and he wondered if the child could be cooking dinner. Her
flushed face answered when she opened the kitchen door and called
them in. She had not only cooked but now she served as well, and
when he thanked her, as he did every time she passed something to
him, she would colour faintly. Once or twice her hand seemed to
tremble, and he never looked at her but her questioning dark eyes
were full upon him, and always she kept one hand busy pushing her
thick hair back from her forehead. He had not asked her if it was
her footprints he had seen coming down the mountain for fear that
he might betray her, but apparently she had told on herself, for
Bub, after a while, burst out suddenly:

"June, thar, thought you was a raider." The little girl flushed
and the old man laughed.

"So'd you, pap," she said quietly.

"That's right," he said. "So'd anybody. I reckon you're the first
man that ever come over hyeh jus' to go a-fishin'," and he laughed
again. The stress on the last words showed that he believed no man
had yet come just for that purpose, and Hale merely laughed with
him. The old fellow gulped his food, pushed his chair back, and
when Hale was through, he wasted no more time.

"Want to see that coal?"

"Yes, I do," said Hale.

"All right, I'll be ready in a minute."

The little girl followed Hale out on the porch and stood with her
back against the railing.

"Did you catch it?" he asked. She nodded, unsmiling.

"I'm sorry. What were you doing up there?" She showed no surprise
that he knew that she had been up there, and while she answered
his question, he could see that she was thinking of something
else.

"I'd heerd so much about what you furriners was a-doin' over
thar."

"You must have heard about a place farther over--but it's coming
over there, too, some day." And still she looked an unspoken
question.

The fish that Hale had caught was lying where he had left it on
the edge of the porch.

"That's for you, June," he said, pointing to it, and the name as
he spoke it was sweet to his ears.

"I'm much obleeged," she said, shyly. "I'd 'a' cooked hit fer ye
if I'd 'a' knowed you wasn't goin' to take hit home."

"That's the reason I didn't give it to you at first--I was afraid
you'd do that. I wanted you to have it."

"Much obleeged," she said again, still unsmiling, and then she
suddenly looked up at him--the deeps of her dark eyes troubled.

"Air ye ever comin' back agin, Jack?" Hale was not accustomed to
the familiar form of address common in the mountains, independent
of sex or age--and he would have been staggered had not her face
been so serious. And then few women had ever called him by his
first name, and this time his own name was good to his ears.

"Yes, June," he said soberly. "Not for some time, maybe--but I'm
coming back again, sure." She smiled then with both lips and eyes-
-radiantly.

"I'll be lookin' fer ye," she said simply.




VI


The old man went with him up the creek and, passing the milk
house, turned up a brush-bordered little branch in which the
engineer saw signs of coal. Up the creek the mountaineer led him
some thirty yards above the water level and stopped. An entry had
been driven through the rich earth and ten feet within was a
shining bed of coal. There was no parting except two inches of
mother-of-coal--midway, which would make it but easier to mine.
Who had taught that old man to open coal in such a way--to make
such a facing? It looked as though the old fellow were in some
scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, he
saw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the
coal, star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel
coal--it was "bird's-eye" cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly
he was the cautious man of business, alert, cold, uncommunicative.

"That looks like a pretty good--" he drawled the last two words--
"vein of coal. I'd like to take a sample over to the Gap and
analyze it." His hammer, which he always carried--was in his
saddle pockets, but he did not have to go down to his horse. There
were pieces on the ground that would suit his purpose, left there,
no doubt, by his predecessor.

"Now I reckon you know that I know why you came over hyeh."

Hale started to answer, but he saw it was no use.

"Yes--and I'm coming again--for the same reason."

"Shore--come agin and come often."

The little girl was standing on the porch as he rode past the milk
house. He waved his hand to her, but she did not move nor answer.
What a life for a child--for that keen-eyed, sweet-faced child!
But that coal, cannel, rich as oil, above water, five feet in
thickness, easy to mine, with a solid roof and perhaps self-
drainage, if he could judge from the dip of the vein: and a market
everywhere--England, Spain, Italy, Brazil. The coal, to be sure,
might not be persistent--thirty yards within it might change in
quality to ordinary bituminous coal, but he could settle that only
with a steam drill. A steam drill! He would as well ask for the
wagon that he had long ago hitched to a star; and then there might
be a fault in the formation. But why bother now? The coal would
stay there, and now he had other plans that made even that find
insignificant. And yet if he bought that coal now--what a bargain!
It was not that the ideals of his college days were tarnished, but
he was a man of business now, and if he would take the old man's
land for a song--it was because others of his kind would do the
same! But why bother, he asked himself again, when his brain was
in a ferment with a colossal scheme that would make dizzy the
magnates who would some day drive their roadways of steel into
those wild hills. So he shook himself free of the question, which
passed from his mind only with a transient wonder as to who it was
that had told of him to the old mountaineer, and had so paved his
way for an investigation--and then he wheeled suddenly in his
saddle. The bushes had rustled gently behind him and out from them
stepped an extraordinary human shape--wearing a coon-skin cap,
belted with two rows of big cartridges, carrying a big Winchester
over one shoulder and a circular tube of brass in his left hand.
With his right leg straight, his left thigh drawn into the hollow
of his saddle and his left hand on the rump of his horse, Hale
simply stared, his eyes dropping by and by from the pale-blue eyes
and stubbly red beard of the stranger, down past the cartridge-
belts to the man's feet, on which were moccasins--with the heels
forward! Into what sort of a world had he dropped!

"So nary a soul can tell which way I'm going," said the red-haired
stranger, with a grin that loosed a hollow chuckle far behind it.

"Would you mind telling me what difference it can make to me which
way you are going?" Every moment he was expecting the stranger to
ask his name, but again that chuckle came.

"It makes a mighty sight o' difference to some folks."

"But none to me."

"I hain't wearin' 'em fer you. I know YOU."

"Oh, you do." The stranger suddenly lowered his Winchester and
turned his face, with his ear cocked like an animal. There was
some noise on the spur above.

"Nothin' but a hickory nut," said the chuckle again. But Hale had
been studying that strange face. One side of it was calm, kindly,
philosophic, benevolent; but, when the other was turned, a curious
twitch of the muscles at the left side of the mouth showed the
teeth and made a snarl there that was wolfish.

"Yes, and I know you," he said slowly. Self-satisfaction,
straightway, was ardent in the face.

"I knowed you would git to know me in time, if you didn't now."

This was the Red Fox of the mountains, of whom he had heard so
much--"yarb" doctor and Swedenborgian preacher; revenue officer
and, some said, cold-blooded murderer. He would walk twenty miles
to preach, or would start at any hour of the day or night to
minister to the sick, and would charge for neither service. At
other hours he would be searching for moonshine stills, or
watching his enemies in the valley from some mountain top, with
that huge spy-glass--Hale could see now that the brass tube was a
telescope--that he might slip down and unawares take a pot-shot at
them. The Red Fox communicated with spirits, had visions and
superhuman powers of locomotion--stepping mysteriously from the
bushes, people said, to walk at the traveller's side and as
mysteriously disappearing into them again, to be heard of in a few
hours an incredible distance away.

"I've been watchin' ye from up thar," he said with a wave of his
hand. "I seed ye go up the creek, and then the bushes hid ye. I
know what you was after--but did you see any signs up thar of
anything you wasn't looking fer?"

Hale laughed.

"Well, I've been in these mountains long enough not to tell you,
if I had."

The Red Fox chuckled.

"I wasn't sure you had--" Hale coughed and spat to the other side
of his horse. When he looked around, the Red Fox was gone, and he
had heard no sound of his going.

"Well, I be--" Hale clucked to his horse and as he climbed the
last steep and drew near the Big Pine he again heard a noise out
in the woods and he knew this time it was the fall of a human foot
and not of a hickory nut. He was right, and, as he rode by the
Pine, saw again at its base the print of the little girl's foot--
wondering afresh at the reason that led her up there--and dropped
down through the afternoon shadows towards the smoke and steam and
bustle and greed of the Twentieth Century. A long, lean, black-
eyed boy, with a wave of black hair over his forehead, was pushing
his horse the other way along the Big Black and dropping down
through the dusk into the Middle Ages--both all but touching on
either side the outstretched hands of the wild little creature
left in the shadows of Lonesome Cove.




VII


Past the Big Pine, swerving with a smile his horse aside that he
might not obliterate the foot-print in the black earth, and down
the mountain, his brain busy with his big purpose, went John Hale,
by instinct, inheritance, blood and tradition--pioneer.

One of his forefathers had been with Washington on the Father's
first historic expedition into the wilds of Virginia. His great-
grandfather had accompanied Boone when that hunter first
penetrated the "Dark and Bloody Ground," had gone back to Virginia
and come again with a surveyor's chain and compass to help wrest
it from the red men, among whom there had been an immemorial
conflict for possession and a never-recognized claim of ownership.
That compass and that chain his grandfather had fallen heir to and
with that compass and chain his father had earned his livelihood
amid the wrecks of the Civil War. Hale went to the old
Transylvania University at Lexington, the first seat of learning
planted beyond the Alleghanies. He was fond of history, of the
sciences and literature, was unusually adept in Latin and Greek,
and had a passion for mathematics. He was graduated with honours,
he taught two years and got his degree of Master of Arts, but the
pioneer spirit in his blood would still out, and his polite
learning he then threw to the winds.

Other young Kentuckians had gone West in shoals, but he kept his
eye on his own State, and one autumn he added a pick to the old
compass and the ancestral chain, struck the Old Wilderness Trail
that his grandfather had travelled, to look for his own fortune in
a land which that old gentleman had passed over as worthless. At
the Cumberland River he took a canoe and drifted down the river
into the wild coal-swollen hills. Through the winter he froze,
starved and prospected, and a year later he was opening up a
region that became famous after his trust and inexperience had let
others worm out of him an interest that would have made him easy
for life.

With the vision of a seer, he was as innocent as Boone. Stripped
clean, he got out his map, such geological reports as he could
find and went into a studious trance for a month, emerging
mentally with the freshness of a snake that has shed its skin.
What had happened in Pennsylvania must happen all along the great
Alleghany chain in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee. Some day the avalanche must sweep
south, it must--it must. That he might be a quarter of a century
too soon in his calculations never crossed his mind. Some day it
must come.

Now there was not an ounce of coal immediately south-east of the
Cumberland Mountains--not an ounce of iron ore immediately north-
east; all the coal lay to the north-east; all of the iron ore to
the south-east. So said Geology. For three hundred miles there
were only four gaps through that mighty mountain chain--three at
water level, and one at historic Cumberland Gap which was not at
water level and would have to be tunnelled. So said Geography.

All railroads, to east and to west, would have to pass through
those gaps; through them the coal must be brought to the iron ore,
or the ore to the coal. Through three gaps water flowed between
ore and coal and the very hills between were limestone. Was there
any such juxtaposition of the four raw materials for the making of
iron in the known world? When he got that far in his logic, the
sweat broke from his brows; he felt dizzy and he got up and walked
into the open air. As the vastness and certainty of the scheme--
what fool could not see it?--rushed through him full force, he
could scarcely get his breath. There must be a town in one of
those gaps--but in which? No matter--he would buy all of them--all
of them, he repeated over and over again; for some day there must
be a town in one, and some day a town in all, and from all he
would reap his harvest. He optioned those four gaps at a low
purchase price that was absurd. He went back to the Bluegrass; he
went to New York; in some way he managed to get to England. It had
never crossed his mind that other eyes could not see what he so
clearly saw and yet everywhere he was pronounced crazy. He failed
and his options ran out, but he was undaunted. He picked his
choice of the four gaps and gave up the other three. This
favourite gap he had just finished optioning again, and now again
he meant to keep at his old quest. That gap he was entering now
from the north side and the North Fork of the river was hurrying
to enter too. On his left was a great gray rock, projecting
edgewise, covered with laurel and rhododendron, and under it was
the first big pool from which the stream poured faster still.
There had been a terrible convulsion in that gap when the earth
was young; the strata had been tossed upright and planted almost
vertical for all time, and, a little farther, one mighty ledge,
moss-grown, bush-covered, sentinelled with grim pines, their bases
unseen, seemed to be making a heavy flight toward the clouds.

Big bowlders began to pop up in the river-bed and against them the
water dashed and whirled and eddied backward in deep pools, while
above him the song of a cataract dropped down a tree-choked
ravine. Just there the drop came, and for a long space he could
see the river lashing rock and cliff with increasing fury as
though it were seeking shelter from some relentless pursuer in the
dark thicket where it disappeared. Straight in front of him
another ledge lifted itself. Beyond that loomed a mountain which
stopped in mid-air and dropped sheer to the eye. Its crown was
bare and Hale knew that up there was a mountain farm, the refuge
of a man who had been involved in that terrible feud beyond Black
Mountain behind him. Five minutes later he was at the yawning
mouth of the gap and there lay before him a beautiful valley shut
in tightly, for all the eye could see, with mighty hills. It was
the heaven-born site for the unborn city of his dreams, and his
eyes swept every curve of the valley lovingly. The two forks of
the river ran around it--he could follow their course by the trees
that lined the banks of each--curving within a stone's throw of
each other across the valley and then looping away as from the
neck of an ancient lute and, like its framework, coming together
again down the valley, where they surged together, slipped through
the hills and sped on with the song of a sweeping river. Up that
river could come the track of commerce, out the South Fork, too,
it could go, though it had to turn eastward: back through that gap
it could be traced north and west; and so none could come as
heralds into those hills but their footprints could be traced
through that wild, rocky, water-worn chasm. Hale drew breath and
raised in his stirrups.

"It's a cinch," he said aloud. "It's a shame to take the money."

Yet nothing was in sight now but a valley farmhouse above the ford
where he must cross the river and one log cabin on the hill
beyond. Still on the other river was the only woollen mill in
miles around; farther up was the only grist mill, and near by was
the only store, the only blacksmith shop and the only hotel. That
much of a start the gap had had for three-quarters of a century--
only from the south now a railroad was already coming; from the
east another was travelling like a wounded snake and from the
north still another creeped to meet them. Every road must run
through the gap and several had already run through it lines of
survey. The coal was at one end of the gap, and the iron ore at
the other, the cliffs between were limestone, and the other
elements to make it the iron centre of the world flowed through it
like a torrent.

"Selah! It's a shame to take the money."

He splashed into the creek and his big black horse thrust his nose
into the clear running water. Minnows were playing about him. A
hog-fish flew for shelter under a rock, and below the ripples a
two-pound bass shot like an arrow into deep water.

Above and below him the stream was arched with beech, poplar and
water maple, and the banks were thick with laurel and
rhododendron. His eye had never rested on a lovelier stream, and
on the other side of the town site, which nature had kindly lifted
twenty feet above the water level, the other fork was of equal
clearness, swiftness and beauty.

"Such a drainage," murmured his engineering instinct. "Such a
drainage!" It was Saturday. Even if he had forgotten he would have
known that it must be Saturday when he climbed the bank on the
other side. Many horses were hitched under the trees, and here and
there was a farm-wagon with fragments of paper, bits of food and
an empty bottle or two lying around. It was the hour when the
alcoholic spirits of the day were usually most high. Evidently
they were running quite high that day and something distinctly was
going on "up town." A few yells--the high, clear, penetrating yell
of a fox-hunter--rent the air, a chorus of pistol shots rang out,
and the thunder of horses' hoofs started beyond the little slope
he was climbing. When he reached the top, a merry youth, with a
red, hatless head was splitting the dirt road toward him, his
reins in his teeth, and a pistol in each hand, which he was
letting off alternately into the inoffensive earth and toward the
unrebuking heavens--that seemed a favourite way in those mountains
of defying God and the devil--and behind him galloped a dozen
horsemen to the music of throat, pistol and iron hoof.

The fiery-headed youth's horse swerved and shot by. Hale hardly
knew that the rider even saw him, but the coming ones saw him afar
and they seemed to be charging him in close array. Hale stopped
his horse a little to the right of the centre of the road, and
being equally helpless against an inherited passion for
maintaining his own rights and a similar disinclination to get out
of anybody's way--he sat motionless. Two of the coming horsemen,
side by side, were a little in advance.

"Git out o' the road!" they yelled. Had he made the motion of an
arm, they might have ridden or shot him down, but the simple
quietness of him as he sat with hands crossed on the pommel of his
saddle, face calm and set, eyes unwavering and fearless, had the
effect that nothing else he could have done would have brought
about--and they swerved on either side of him, while the rest
swerved, too, like sheep, one stirrup brushing his, as they swept
by. Hale rode slowly on. He could hear the mountaineers yelling on
top of the hill, but he did not look back. Several bullets sang
over his head. Most likely they were simply "bantering" him, but
no matter--he rode on.

The blacksmith, the storekeeper and one passing drummer were
coming in from the woods when he reached the hotel.

"A gang o' those Falins," said the storekeeper, "they come over
lookin' for young Dave Tolliver. They didn't find him, so they
thought they'd have some fun"; and he pointed to the hotel sign
which was punctuated with pistol-bullet periods. Hale's eyes
flashed once but he said nothing. He turned his horse over to a
stable boy and went across to the little frame cottage that served
as office and home for him. While he sat on the veranda that
almost hung over the mill-pond of the other stream three of the
Falins came riding back. One of them had left something at the
hotel, and while he was gone in for it, another put a bullet
through the sign, and seeing Hale rode over to him. Hale's blue
eye looked anything than friendly.

"Don't ye like it?" asked the horseman.

"I do not," said Hale calmly. The horseman seemed amused.

"Well, whut you goin' to do about it?"

"Nothing--at least not now."

"All right--whenever you git ready. You ain't ready now?"

"No," said Hale, "not now." The fellow laughed.

"Hit's a damned good thing for you that you ain't."

Hale looked long after the three as they galloped down the road.
"When I start to build this town," he thought gravely and without
humour, "I'll put a stop to all that."




VIII


On a spur of Black Mountain, beyond the Kentucky line, a lean
horse was tied to a sassafras bush, and in a clump of rhododendron
ten yards away, a lean black-haired boy sat with a Winchester
between his stomach and thighs--waiting for the dusk to drop. His
chin was in both hands, the brim of his slouch hat was curved
crescent-wise over his forehead, and his eyes were on the sweeping
bend of the river below him. That was the "Bad Bend" down there,
peopled with ancestral enemies and the head-quarters of their
leader for the last ten years. Though they had been at peace for
some time now, it had been Saturday in the county town ten miles
down the river as well, and nobody ever knew what a Saturday might
bring forth between his people and them. So he would not risk
riding through that bend by the light of day.

All the long way up spur after spur and along ridge after ridge,
all along the still, tree-crested top of the Big Black, he had
been thinking of the man--the "furriner" whom he had seen at his
uncle's cabin in Lonesome Cove. He was thinking of him still, as
he sat there waiting for darkness to come, and the two vertical
little lines in his forehead, that had hardly relaxed once during
his climb, got deeper and deeper, as his brain puzzled into the
problem that was worrying it: who the stranger was, what his
business was over in the Cove and his business with the Red Fox
with whom the boy had seen him talking.

He had heard of the coming of the "furriners" on the Virginia
side. He had seen some of them, he was suspicious of all of them,
he disliked them all--but this man he hated straightway. He hated
his boots and his clothes; the way he sat and talked, as though he
owned the earth, and the lad snorted contemptuously under his
breath:

"He called pants 'trousers.'" It was a fearful indictment, and he
snorted again: "Trousers!"

The "furriner" might be a spy or a revenue officer, but deep down
in the boy's heart the suspicion had been working that he had gone
over there to see his little cousin--the girl whom, boy that he
was, he had marked, when she was even more of a child than she was
now, for his own. His people understood it as did her father, and,
child though she was, she, too, understood it. The difference
between her and the "furriner"--difference in age, condition, way
of life, education--meant nothing to him, and as his suspicion
deepened, his hands dropped and gripped his Winchester, and
through his gritting teeth came vaguely:

"By God, if he does--if he just does!"

Away down at the lower end of the river's curving sweep, the dirt
road was visible for a hundred yards or more, and even while he
was cursing to himself, a group of horsemen rode into sight. All
seemed to be carrying something across their saddle bows, and as
the boy's eyes caught them, he sank sidewise out of sight and
stood upright, peering through a bush of rhododendron. Something
had happened in town that day--for the horsemen carried
Winchesters, and every foreign thought in his brain passed like
breath from a window pane, while his dark, thin face whitened a
little with anxiety and wonder. Swiftly he stepped backward,
keeping the bushes between him and his far-away enemies. Another
knot he gave the reins around the sassafras bush and then,
Winchester in hand, he dropped noiseless as an Indian, from rock
to rock, tree to tree, down the sheer spur on the other side.
Twenty minutes later, he lay behind a bush that was sheltered by
the top boulder of the rocky point under which the road ran. His
enemies were in their own country; they would probably be talking
over the happenings in town that day, and from them he would learn
what was going on.

So long he lay that he got tired and out of patience, and he was
about to creep around the boulder, when the clink of a horseshoe
against a stone told him they were coming, and he flattened to the
earth and closed his eyes that his ears might be more keen. The
Falins were riding silently, but as the first two passed under
him, one said:

"I'd like to know who the hell warned 'em!"

"Whar's the Red Fox?" was the significant answer.

The boy's heart leaped. There had been deviltry abroad, but his
kinsmen had escaped. No one uttered a word as they rode two by
two, under him, but one voice came back to him as they turned the
point.

"I wonder if the other boys ketched young Dave?" He could not
catch the answer to that--only the oath that was in it, and when
the sound of the horses' hoofs died away, he turned over on his
back and stared up at the sky. Some trouble had come and through
his own caution, and the mercy of Providence that had kept him
away from the Gap, he had had his escape from death that day. He
would tempt that Providence no more, even by climbing back to his
horse in the waning light, and it was not until dusk had fallen
that he was leading the beast down the spur and into a ravine that
sank to the road. There he waited an hour, and when another
horseman passed he still waited a while. Cautiously then, with
ears alert, eyes straining through the darkness and Winchester
ready, he went down the road at a slow walk. There was a light in
the first house, but the front door was closed and the road was
deep with sand, as he knew; so he passed noiselessly. At the
second house, light streamed through the open door; he could hear
talking on the porch and he halted. He could neither cross the
river nor get around the house by the rear--the ridge was too
steep--so he drew off into the bushes, where he had to wait
another hour before the talking ceased. There was only one more
house now between him and the mouth of the creek, where he would
be safe, and he made up his mind to dash by it. That house, too,
was lighted and the sound of fiddling struck his ears. He would
give them a surprise; so he gathered his reins and Winchester in
his left hand, drew his revolver with his right, and within thirty
yards started his horse into a run, yelling like an Indian and
firing his pistol in the air. As he swept by, two or three figures
dashed pell-mell indoors, and he shouted derisively:

"Run, damn ye, run!" They were running for their guns, he knew,
but the taunt would hurt and he was pleased. As he swept by the
edge of a cornfield, there was a flash of light from the base of a
cliff straight across, and a bullet sang over him, then another
and another, but he sped on, cursing and yelling and shooting his
own Winchester up in the air--all harmless, useless, but just to
hurl defiance and taunt them with his safety. His father's house
was not far away, there was no sound of pursuit, and when he
reached the river he drew down to a walk and stopped short in a
shadow. Something had clicked in the bushes above him and he bent
over his saddle and lay close to his horse's neck. The moon was
rising behind him and its light was creeping toward him through
the bushes. In a moment he would be full in its yellow light, and
he was slipping from his horse to dart aside into the bushes, when
a voice ahead of him called sharply:

"That you, Dave?"

It was his father, and the boy's answer was a loud laugh. Several
men stepped from the bushes--they had heard firing and, fearing
that young Dave was the cause of it, they had run to his help.

"What the hell you mean, boy, kickin' up such a racket?"

"Oh, I knowed somethin'd happened an' I wanted to skeer 'em a
leetle."

"Yes, an' you never thought o' the trouble you might be causin'
us."

"Don't you bother about me. I can take keer o' myself."

Old Dave Tolliver grunted--though at heart he was deeply pleased.

"Well, you come on home!"

All went silently--the boy getting meagre monosyllabic answers to
his eager questions but, by the time they reached home, he had
gathered the story of what had happened in town that day. There
were more men in the porch of the house and all were armed. The
women of the house moved about noiselessly and with drawn faces.
There were no lights lit, and nobody stood long even in the light
of the fire where he could be seen through a window; and doors
were opened and passed through quickly. The Falins had opened the
feud that day, for the boy's foster-uncle, Bad Rufe Tolliver,
contrary to the terms of the last truce, had come home from the
West, and one of his kinsmen had been wounded. The boy told what
he had heard while he lay over the road along which some of his
enemies had passed and his father nodded. The Falins had learned
in some way that the lad was going to the Gap that day and had
sent men after him. Who was the spy?

"You TOLD me you was a-goin' to the Gap," said old Dave. "Whar was
ye?"

"I didn't git that far," said the boy.

The old man and Loretta, young Dave's sister, laughed, and quiet
smiles passed between the others.

"Well, you'd better be keerful 'bout gittin' even as far as you
did git--wharever that was--from now on."

"I ain't afeered," the boy said sullenly, and he turned into the
kitchen. Still sullen, he ate his supper in silence and his mother
asked him no questions. He was worried that Bad Rufe had come back
to the mountains, for Rufe was always teasing June and there was
something in his bold, black eyes that made the lad furious, even
when the foster-uncle was looking at Loretta or the little girl in
Lonesome Cove. And yet that was nothing to his new trouble, for
his mind hung persistently to the stranger and to the way June had
behaved in the cabin in Lonesome Cove. Before he went to bed, he
slipped out to the old well behind the house and sat on the water-
trough in gloomy unrest, looking now and then at the stars that
hung over the Cove and over the Gap beyond, where the stranger was
bound. It would have pleased him a good deal could he have known
that the stranger was pushing his big black horse on his way,
under those stars, toward the outer world.




IX


It was court day at the county seat across the Kentucky line. Hale
had risen early, as everyone must if he would get his breakfast in
the mountains, even in the hotels in the county seats, and he sat
with his feet on the railing of the hotel porch which fronted the
main street of the town. He had had his heart-breaking failures
since the autumn before, but he was in good cheer now, for his
feverish enthusiasm had at last clutched a man who would take up
not only his options on the great Gap beyond Black Mountain but on
the cannel-coal lands of Devil Judd Tolliver as well. He was
riding across from the Bluegrass to meet this man at the railroad
in Virginia, nearly two hundred miles away; he had stopped to
examine some titles at the county seat and he meant to go on that
day by way of Lonesome Cove. Opposite was the brick Court House--
every window lacking at least one pane, the steps yellow with dirt
and tobacco juice, the doorway and the bricks about the upper
windows bullet-dented and eloquent with memories of the feud which
had long embroiled the whole county. Not that everybody took part
in it but, on the matter, everybody, as an old woman told him,
"had feelin's." It had begun, so he learned, just after the war.
Two boys were playing marbles in the road along the Cumberland
River, and one had a patch on the seat of his trousers. The other
boy made fun of it and the boy with the patch went home and told
his father. As a result there had already been thirty years of
local war. In the last race for legislature, political issues were
submerged and the feud was the sole issue. And a Tolliver had
carried that boy's trouser-patch like a flag to victory and was
sitting in the lower House at that time helping to make laws for
the rest of the State. Now Bad Rufe Tolliver was in the hills
again and the end was not yet. Already people were pouring in,
men, women and children--the men slouch-hatted and stalking
through the mud in the rain, or filing in on horseback--riding
double sometimes--two men or two women, or a man with his wife or
daughter behind him, or a woman with a baby in her lap and two
more children behind--all dressed in homespun or store-clothes,
and the paint from artificial flowers on her hat streaking the
face of every girl who had unwisely scanned the heavens that
morning. Soon the square was filled with hitched horses, and an
auctioneer was bidding off cattle, sheep, hogs and horses to the
crowd of mountaineers about him, while the women sold eggs and
butter and bought things for use at home. Now and then, an open
feudsman with a Winchester passed and many a man was belted with
cartridges for the big pistol dangling at his hip. When court
opened, the rain ceased, the sun came out and Hale made his way
through the crowd to the battered temple of justice. On one corner
of the square he could see the chief store of the town marked
"Buck Falin--General Merchandise," and the big man in the door
with the bushy redhead, he guessed, was the leader of the Falin
clan. Outside the door stood a smaller replica of the same figure,
whom he recognized as the leader of the band that had nearly
ridden him down at the Gap when they were looking for young Dave
Tolliver, the autumn before. That, doubtless, was young Buck. For
a moment he stood at the door of the court-room. A Falin was on
trial and the grizzled judge was speaking angrily:

"This is the third time you've had this trial postponed because
you hain't got no lawyer. I ain't goin' to put it off. Have you
got you a lawyer now?"

"Yes, jedge," said the defendant.

"Well, whar is he?"

"Over thar on the jury."

The judge looked at the man on the jury.

"Well, I reckon you better leave him whar he is. He'll do you more
good thar than any whar else."

Hale laughed aloud--the judge glared at him and he turned quickly
upstairs to his work in the deed-room. Till noon he worked and yet
there was no trouble. After dinner he went back and in two hours
his work was done. An atmospheric difference he felt as soon as he
reached the door. The crowd had melted from the square. There were
no women in sight, but eight armed men were in front of the door
and two of them, a red Falin and a black Tolliver--Bad Rufe it
was--were quarrelling. In every doorway stood a man cautiously
looking on, and in a hotel window he saw a woman's frightened
face. It was so still that it seemed impossible that a tragedy
could be imminent, and yet, while he was trying to take the
conditions in, one of the quarrelling men--Bad Rufe Tolliver--
whipped out his revolver and before he could level it, a Falin
struck the muzzle of a pistol into his back. Another Tolliver
flashed his weapon on the Falin. This Tolliver was covered by
another Falin and in so many flashes of lightning the eight men in
front of him were covering each other--every man afraid to be the
first to shoot, since he knew that the flash of his own pistol
meant instantaneous death for him. As Hale shrank back, he pushed
against somebody who thrust him aside. It was the judge:

"Why don't somebody shoot?" he asked sarcastically. "You're a
purty set o' fools, ain't you? I want you all to stop this damned
foolishness. Now when I give the word I want you, Jim Falin and
Rufe Tolliver thar, to drap yer guns."

Already Rufe was grinning like a devil over the absurdity of the
situation.

"Now!" said the judge, and the two guns were dropped.

"Put 'em in yo' pockets."

They did.

"Drap!" All dropped and, with those two, all put up their guns--
each man, however, watching now the man who had just been covering
him. It is not wise for the stranger to show too much interest in
the personal affairs of mountain men, and Hale left the judge
berating them and went to the hotel to get ready for the Gap,
little dreaming how fixed the faces of some of those men were in
his brain and how, later, they were to rise in his memory again.
His horse was lame--but he must go on: so he hired a "yaller" mule
from the landlord, and when the beast was brought around, he
overheard two men talking at the end of the porch.

"You don't mean to say they've made peace?"

"Yes, Rufe's going away agin and they shuk hands--all of 'em." The
other laughed.

"Rufe ain't gone yit!"

The Cumberland River was rain-swollen. The home-going people were
helping each other across it and, as Hale approached the ford of a
creek half a mile beyond the river, a black-haired girl was
standing on a boulder looking helplessly at the yellow water, and
two boys were on the ground below her. One of them looked up at
Hale:

"I wish ye'd help this lady 'cross."

"Certainly," said Hale, and the girl giggled when he laboriously
turned his old mule up to the boulder. Not accustomed to have
ladies ride behind him, Hale had turned the wrong side. Again he
laboriously wheeled about and then into the yellow torrent he went
with the girl behind him, the old beast stumbling over the stones,
whereat the girl, unafraid, made sounds of much merriment. Across,
Hale stopped and said courteously:

"If you are going up this way, you are quite welcome to ride on."

"Well, I wasn't crossin' that crick jes' exactly fer fun," said
the girl demurely, and then she murmured something about her
cousins and looked back. They had gone down to a shallower ford,
and when they, too, had waded across, they said nothing and the
girl said nothing--so Hale started on, the two boys following. The
mule was slow and, being in a hurry, Hale urged him with his whip.
Every time he struck, the beast would kick up and once the girl
came near going off.

"You must watch out, when I hit him," said Hale.

"I don't know when you're goin' to hit him," she drawled
unconcernedly.

"Well, I'll let you know," said Hale laughing. "Now!" And, as he
whacked the beast again, the girl laughed and they were better
acquainted. Presently they passed two boys. Hale was wearing
riding-boots and tight breeches, and one of the boys ran his eyes
up boot and leg and if they were lifted higher, Hale could not
tell.

"Whar'd you git him?" he squeaked.

The girl turned her head as the mule broke into a trot.

"Ain't got time to tell. They are my cousins," explained the girl.

"What is your name?" asked Hale.

"Loretty Tolliver." Hale turned in his saddle.

"Are you the daughter of Dave Tolliver?"

"Yes."

"Then you've got a brother named Dave?"

"Yes." This, then, was the sister of the black-haired boy he had
seen in the Lonesome Cove.

"Haven't you got some kinfolks over the mountain?"

"Yes, I got an uncle livin' over thar. Devil Judd, folks calls
him," said the girl simply. This girl was cousin to little June in
Lonesome Cove. Every now and then she would look behind them, and
when Hale turned again inquiringly she explained:

"I'm worried about my cousins back thar. I'm afeered somethin'
mought happen to 'em."

"Shall we wait for them?"

"Oh, no--I reckon not."

Soon they overtook two men on horseback, and after they passed and
were fifty yards ahead of them, one of the men lifted his voice
jestingly:

"Is that your woman, stranger, or have you just borrowed her?"
Hale shouted back:

"No, I'm sorry to say, I've just borrowed her," and he turned to
see how she would take this answering pleasantry. She was looking
down shyly and she did not seem much pleased.

"They are kinfolks o' mine, too," she said, and whether it was in
explanation or as a rebuke, Hale could not determine.

"You must be kin to everybody around here?"

"Most everybody," she said simply.

By and by they came to a creek.

"I have to turn up here," said Hale.

"So do I," she said, smiling now directly at him.

"Good!" he said, and they went on--Hale asking more questions. She
was going to school at the county seat the coming winter and she
was fifteen years old.

"That's right. The trouble in the mountains is that you girls
marry so early that you don't have time to get an education." She
wasn't going to marry early, she said, but Hale learned now that
she had a sweetheart who had been in town that day and apparently
the two had had a quarrel. Who it was, she would not tell, and
Hale would have been amazed had he known the sweetheart was none
other than young Buck Falin and that the quarrel between the
lovers had sprung from the opening quarrel that day between the
clans. Once again she came near going off the mule, and Hale
observed that she was holding to the cantel of his saddle.

"Look here," he said suddenly, "hadn't you better catch hold of
me?" She shook her head vigorously and made two not-to-be-rendered
sounds that meant:

"No, indeed."

"Well, if this were your sweetheart you'd take hold of him,
wouldn't you?"

Again she gave a vigorous shake of the head.

"Well, if he saw you riding behind me, he wouldn't like it, would
he?"

"She didn't keer," she said, but Hale did; and when he heard the
galloping of horses behind him, saw two men coming, and heard one
of them shouting--"Hyeh, you man on that yaller mule, stop thar"--
he shifted his revolver, pulled in and waited with some
uneasiness. They came up, reeling in their saddles--neither one
the girl's sweetheart, as he saw at once from her face--and began
to ask what the girl characterized afterward as "unnecessary
questions": who he was, who she was, and where they were going.
Hale answered so shortly that the girl thought there was going to
be a fight, and she was on the point of slipping from the mule.

"Sit still," said Hale, quietly. "There's not going to be a fight
so long as you are here."

"Thar hain't!" said one of the men. "Well"--then he looked sharply
at the girl and turned his horse--"Come on, Bill--that's ole Dave
Tolliver's gal." The girl's face was on fire.

"Them mean Falins!" she said contemptuously, and somehow the mere
fact that Hale had been even for the moment antagonistic to the
other faction seemed to put him in the girl's mind at once on her
side, and straightway she talked freely of the feud. Devil Judd
had taken no active part in it for a long time, she said, except
to keep it down--especially since he and her father had had a
"fallin' out" and the two families did not visit much--though she
and her cousin June sometimes spent the night with each other.

"You won't be able to git over thar till long atter dark," she
said, and she caught her breath so suddenly and so sharply that
Hale turned to see what the matter was. She searched his face with
her black eyes, which were like June's without the depths of
June's.

"I was just a-wonderin' if mebbe you wasn't the same feller that
was over in Lonesome last fall."

"Maybe I am--my name's Hale." The girl laughed. "Well, if this
ain't the beatenest! I've heerd June talk about you. My brother
Dave don't like you overmuch," she added frankly. "I reckon we'll
see Dave purty soon. If this ain't the beatenest!" she repeated,
and she laughed again, as she always did laugh, it seemed to Hale,
when there was any prospect of getting him into trouble.

"You can't git over thar till long atter dark," she said again
presently.

"Is there any place on the way where I can get to stay all night?"

"You can stay all night with the Red Fox on top of the mountain."

"The Red Fox," repeated Hale.

"Yes, he lives right on top of the mountain. You can't miss his
house."

"Oh, yes, I remember him. I saw him talking to one of the Falins
in town to-day, behind the barn, when I went to get my horse."

"You--seed--him--a-talkin'--to a Falin AFORE the trouble come up?"
the girl asked slowly and with such significance that Hale turned
to look at her. He felt straightway that he ought not to have said
that, and the day was to come when he would remember it to his
cost. He knew how foolish it was for the stranger to show sympathy
with, or interest in, one faction or another in a mountain feud,
but to give any kind of information of one to the other--that was
unwise indeed. Ahead of them now, a little stream ran from a
ravine across the road. Beyond was a cabin; in the doorway were
several faces, and sitting on a horse at the gate was young Dave
Tolliver.

"Well, I git down here," said the girl, and before his mule
stopped she slid from behind him and made for the gate without a
word of thanks or good-by.

"Howdye!" said Hale, taking in the group with his glance, but
leaving his eyes on young Dave. The rest nodded, but the boy was
too surprised for speech, and the spirit of deviltry took the girl
when she saw her brother's face, and at the gate she turned:

"Much obleeged," she said. "Tell June I'm a-comin' over to see her
next Sunday."

"I will," said Hale, and he rode on. To his surprise, when he had
gone a hundred yards, he heard the boy spurring after him and he
looked around inquiringly as young Dave drew alongside; but the
boy said nothing and Hale, amused, kept still, wondering when the
lad would open speech. At the mouth of another little creek the
boy stopped his horse as though he was to turn up that way.
"You've come back agin," he said, searching Hale's face with his
black eyes.

"Yes," said Hale, "I've come back again."

"You goin' over to Lonesome Cove?"

"Yes."

The boy hesitated, and a sudden change of mind was plain to Hale
in his face. "I wish you'd tell Uncle Judd about the trouble in
town to-day," he said, still looking fixedly at Hale.

"Certainly."

"Did you tell the Red Fox that day you seed him when you was goin'
over to the Gap last fall that you seed me at Uncle Judd's?"

"No," said Hale. "But how did you know that I saw the Red Fox that
day?" The boy laughed unpleasantly.

"So long," he said. "See you agin some day." The way was steep and
the sun was down and darkness gathering before Hale reached the
top of the mountain--so he hallooed at the yard fence of the Red
Fox, who peered cautiously out of the door and asked his name
before he came to the gate. And there, with a grin on his curious
mismatched face, he repeated young Dave's words:

"You've come back agin." And Hale repeated his:

"Yes, I've come back again."

"You goin' over to Lonesome Cove?"

"Yes," said Hale impatiently, "I'm going over to Lonesome Cove.
Can I stay here all night?"

"Shore!" said the old man hospitably. "That's a fine hoss you got
thar," he added with a chuckle. "Been swappin'?" Hale had to laugh
as he climbed down from the bony ear-flopping beast.

"I left my horse in town--he's lame."

"Yes, I seed you thar." Hale could not resist: "Yes, and I seed
you." The old man almost turned.

"Whar?" Again the temptation was too great.

"Talking to the Falin who started the row." This time the Red Fox
wheeled sharply and his pale-blue eyes filled with suspicion.

"I keeps friends with both sides," he said. "Ain't many folks can
do that."

"I reckon not," said Hale calmly, but in the pale eyes he still
saw suspicion.

When they entered the cabin, a little old woman in black, dumb and
noiseless, was cooking supper. The children of the two, he
learned, had scattered, and they lived there alone. On the mantel
were two pistols and in one corner was the big Winchester he
remembered and behind it was the big brass telescope. On the table
was a Bible and a volume of Swedenborg, and among the usual
strings of pepper-pods and beans and twisted long green tobacco
were drying herbs and roots of all kinds, and about the fireplace
were bottles of liquids that had been stewed from them. The little
old woman served, and opened her lips not at all. Supper was eaten
with no further reference to the doings in town that day, and no
word was said about their meeting when Hale first went to Lonesome
Cove until they were smoking on the porch.

"I heerd you found some mighty fine coal over in Lonesome Cove."

"Yes."

"Young Dave Tolliver thinks you found somethin' else thar, too,"
chuckled the Red Fox.

"I did," said Hale coolly, and the old man chuckled again.

"She's a purty leetle gal--shore."

"Who is?" asked Hale, looking calmly at his questioner, and the
Red Fox lapsed into baffled silence.

The moon was brilliant and the night was still. Suddenly the Red
Fox cocked his ear like a hound, and without a word slipped
swiftly within the cabin. A moment later Hale heard the galloping
of a horse and from out the dark woods loped a horseman with a
Winchester across his saddle bow. He pulled in at the gate, but
before he could shout "Hello" the Red Fox had stepped from the
porch into the moonlight and was going to meet him. Hale had never
seen a more easy, graceful, daring figure on horseback, and in the
bright light he could make out the reckless face of the man who
had been the first to flash his pistol in town that day--Bad Rufe
Tolliver. For ten minutes the two talked in whispers--Rufe bent
forward with one elbow on the withers of his horse but lifting his
eyes every now and then to the stranger seated in the porch--and
then the horseman turned with an oath and galloped into the
darkness whence he came, while the Red Fox slouched back to the
porch and dropped silently into his seat.

"Who was that?" asked Hale.

"Bad Rufe Tolliver."

"I've heard of him."

"Most everybody in these mountains has. He's the feller that's
always causin' trouble. Him and Joe Falin agreed to go West last
fall to end the war. Joe was killed out thar, and now Rufe claims
Joe don't count now an' he's got the right to come back. Soon's he
comes back, things git frolicksome agin. He swore he wouldn't go
back unless another Falin goes too. Wirt Falin agreed, and that's
how they made peace to-day. Now Rufe says he won't go at all--
truce or no truce. My wife in thar is a Tolliver, but both sides
comes to me and I keeps peace with both of 'em."

No doubt he did, Hale thought, keep peace or mischief with or
against anybody with that face of his. That was a common type of
the bad man, that horseman who had galloped away from the gate--
but this old man with his dual face, who preached the Word on
Sundays and on other days was a walking arsenal; who dreamed
dreams and had visions and slipped through the hills in his
mysterious moccasins on errands of mercy or chasing men from
vanity, personal enmity or for fun, and still appeared so sane--he
was a type that confounded. No wonder for these reasons and as a
tribute to his infernal shrewdness he was known far and wide as
the Red Fox of the Mountains. But Hale was too tired for further
speculation and presently he yawned.

"Want to lay down?" asked the old man quickly.

"I think I do," said Hale, and they went inside. The little old
woman had her face to the wall in a bed in one corner and the Red
Fox pointed to a bed in the other:

"Thar's yo' bed." Again Hale's eyes fell on the big Winchester.

"I reckon thar hain't more'n two others like it in all these
mountains."

"What's the calibre?"

"Biggest made," was the answer, "a 50 x 75."

"Centre fire?"

"Rim," said the Red Fox.

"Gracious," laughed Hale, "what do you want such a big one for?"

"Man cannot live by bread alone--in these mountains," said the Red
Fox grimly.

When Hale lay down he could hear the old man quavering out a hymn
or two on the porch outside: and when, worn out with the day, he
went to sleep, the Red Fox was reading his Bible by the light of a
tallow dip. It is fatefully strange when people, whose lives
tragically intersect, look back to their first meetings with one
another, and Hale never forgot that night in the cabin of the Red
Fox. For had Bad Rufe Tolliver, while he whispered at the gate,
known the part the quiet young man silently seated in the porch
would play in his life, he would have shot him where he sat: and
could the Red Fox have known the part his sleeping guest was to
play in his, the old man would have knifed him where he lay.




X


Hale opened his eyes next morning on the little old woman in
black, moving ghost-like through the dim interior to the kitchen.
A wood-thrush was singing when he stepped out on the porch and its
cool notes had the liquid freshness of the morning. Breakfast
over, he concluded to leave the yellow mule with the Red Fox to be
taken back to the county town, and to walk down the mountain, but
before he got away the landlord's son turned up with his own
horse, still lame, but well enough to limp along without doing
himself harm. So, leading the black horse, Hale started down.

The sun was rising over still seas of white mist and wave after
wave of blue Virginia hills. In the shadows below, it smote the
mists into tatters; leaf and bush glittered as though after a
heavy rain, and down Hale went under a trembling dew-drenched
world and along a tumbling series of water-falls that flashed
through tall ferns, blossoming laurel and shining leaves of
rhododendron. Once he heard something move below him and then the
crackling of brush sounded far to one side of the road. He knew it
was a man who would be watching him from a covert and,
straightway, to prove his innocence of any hostile or secret
purpose, he began to whistle. Farther below, two men with
Winchesters rose from the bushes and asked his name and his
business. He told both readily. Everybody, it seemed, was prepared
for hostilities and, though the news of the patched-up peace had
spread, it was plain that the factions were still suspicious and
on guard. Then the loneliness almost of Lonesome Cove itself set
in. For miles he saw nothing alive but an occasional bird and
heard no sound but of running water or rustling leaf. At the mouth
of the creek his horse's lameness had grown so much better that he
mounted him and rode slowly up the river. Within an hour he could
see the still crest of the Lonesome Pine. At the mouth of a creek
a mile farther on was an old gristmill with its water-wheel
asleep, and whittling at the door outside was the old miller,
Uncle Billy Beams, who, when he heard the coming of the black
horse's feet, looked up and showed no surprise at all when he saw
Hale.

"I heard you was comin'," he shouted, hailing him cheerily by
name. "Ain't fishin' this time!"

"No," said Hale, "not this time."

"Well, git down and rest a spell. June'll be here in a minute an'
you can ride back with her. I reckon you air goin' that a-way."

"June!"

"Shore! My, but she'll be glad to see ye! She's always talkin'
about ye. You told her you was comin' back an' ever'body told her
you wasn't: but that leetle gal al'ays said she KNOWED you was,
because you SAID you was. She's growed some--an' if she ain't
purty, well I'd tell a man! You jes' tie yo' hoss up thar behind
the mill so she can't see it, an' git inside the mill when she
comes round that bend thar. My, but hit'll be a surprise fer her."

The old man chuckled so cheerily that Hale, to humour him, hitched
his horse to a sapling, came back and sat in the door of the mill.
The old man knew all about the trouble in town the day before.

"I want to give ye a leetle advice. Keep yo' mouth plum' shut
about this here war. I'm Jestice of the Peace, but that's the only
way I've kept outen of it fer thirty years; an' hit's the only way
you can keep outen it."

"Thank you, I mean to keep my mouth shut, but would you mind--"

"Git in!" interrupted the old man eagerly. "Hyeh she comes." His
kind old face creased into a welcoming smile, and between the logs
of the mill Hale, inside, could see an old sorrel horse slowly
coming through the lights and shadows down the road. On its back
was a sack of corn and perched on the sack was a little girl with
her bare feet in the hollows behind the old nag's withers. She was
looking sidewise, quite hidden by a scarlet poke-bonnet, and at
the old man's shout she turned the smiling face of little June.
With an answering cry, she struck the old nag with a switch and
before the old man could rise to help her down, slipped lightly to
the ground.

"Why, honey," he said, "I don't know whut I'm goin' to do 'bout
yo' corn. Shaft's broke an' I can't do no grindin' till to-
morrow."

"Well, Uncle Billy, we ain't got a pint o' meal in the house," she
said. "You jes' got to LEND me some."

"All right, honey," said the old man, and he cleared his throat as
a signal for Hale.

The little girl was pushing her bonnet back when Hale stepped into
sight and, unstartled, unsmiling, unspeaking, she looked steadily
at him--one hand motionless for a moment on her bronze heap of
hair and then slipping down past her cheek to clench the other
tightly. Uncle Billy was bewildered.

"Why, June, hit's Mr. Hale--why---"

"Howdye, June!" said Hale, who was no less puzzled--and still she
gave no sign that she had ever seen him before except reluctantly
to give him her hand. Then she turned sullenly away and sat down
in the door of the mill with her elbows on her knees and her chin
in her hands.

Dumfounded, the old miller pulled the sack of corn from the horse
and leaned it against the mill. Then he took out his pipe, filled
and lighted it slowly and turned his perplexed eyes to the sun.

"Well, honey," he said, as though he were doing the best he could
with a difficult situation, "I'll have to git you that meal at the
house. 'Bout dinner time now. You an' Mr. Hale thar come on and
git somethin' to eat afore ye go back."

"I got to get on back home," said June, rising.

"No you ain't--I bet you got dinner fer yo" step-mammy afore you
left, an' I jes' know you was aimin' to take a snack with me an'
ole Hon." The little girl hesitated--she had no denial--and the
old fellow smiled kindly.

"Come on, now."

Little June walked on the other side of the miller from Hale back
to the old man's cabin, two hundred yards up the road, answering
his questions but not Hale's and never meeting the latter's eyes
with her own. "ole Hon," the portly old woman whom Hale
remembered, with brass-rimmed spectacles and a clay pipe in her
mouth, came out on the porch and welcomed them heartily under the
honeysuckle vines. Her mouth and face were alive with humour when
she saw Hale, and her eyes took in both him and the little girl
keenly. The miller and Hale leaned chairs against the wall while
the girl sat at the entrance of the porch. Suddenly Hale went out
to his horse and took out a package from his saddle-pockets.

"I've got some candy in here for you," he said smiling.

"I don't want no candy," she said, still not looking at him and
with a little movement of her knees away from him.

"Why, honey," said Uncle Billy again, "whut IS the matter with ye?
I thought ye was great friends." The little girl rose hastily.

"No, we ain't, nuther," she said, and she whisked herself indoors.
Hale put the package back with some embarrassment and the old
miller laughed.

"Well, well--she's a quar little critter; mebbe she's mad because
you stayed away so long."

At the table June wanted to help ole Hon and wait to eat with her,
but Uncle Billy made her sit down with him and Hale, and so shy
was she that she hardly ate anything. Once only did she look up
from her plate and that was when Uncle Billy, with a shake of his
head, said:

"He's a bad un." He was speaking of Rufe Tolliver, and at the
mention of his name there was a frightened look in the little
girl's eyes, when she quickly raised them, that made Hale wonder.

An hour later they were riding side by side--Hale and June--on
through the lights and shadows toward Lonesome Cove. Uncle Billy
turned back from the gate to the porch.

"He ain't come back hyeh jes' fer coal," said ole Hon.

"Shucks!" said Uncle Billy; "you women-folks can't think 'bout
nothin' 'cept one thing. He's too old fer her."

"She'll git ole enough fer HIM--an' you menfolks don't think less-
-you jes' talk less." And she went back into the kitchen, and on
the porch the old miller puffed on a new idea in his pipe.

For a few minutes the two rode in silence and not yet had June
lifted her eyes to him.

"You've forgotten me, June."

"No, I hain't, nuther."

"You said you'd be waiting for me." June's lashes went lower
still.

"I was."

"Well, what's the matter? I'm mighty sorry I couldn't get back
sooner."

"Huh!" said June scornfully, and he knew Uncle Billy in his guess
as to the trouble was far afield, and so he tried another tack.

"I've been over to the county seat and I saw lots of your kinfolks
over there." She showed no curiosity, no surprise, and still she
did not look up at him.

"I met your cousin, Loretta, over there and I carried her home
behind me on an old mule"--Hale paused, smiling at the
remembrance--and still she betrayed no interest.

"She's a mighty pretty girl, and whenever I'd hit that old---"

"She hain't!"--the words were so shrieked out that Hale was
bewildered, and then he guessed that the falling out between the
fathers was more serious than he had supposed.

"But she isn't as nice as you are," he added quickly, and the
girl's quivering mouth steadied, the tears stopped in her vexed
dark eyes and she lifted them to him at last.

"She ain't?"

"No, indeed, she ain't."

For a while they rode along again in silence. June no longer
avoided his eyes now, and the unspoken question in her own
presently came out:

"You won't let Uncle Rufe bother me no more, will ye?"

"No, indeed, I won't," said Hale heartily. "What does he do to
you?"

"Nothin'--'cept he's always a-teasin' me, an'--an' I'm afeered o'
him."

"Well, I'll take care of Uncle Rufe."

"I knowed YOU'D say that," she said. "Pap and Dave always laughs
at me," and she shook her head as though she were already
threatening her bad uncle with what Hale would do to him, and she
was so serious and trustful that Hale was curiously touched. By
and by he lifted one flap of his saddle-pockets again.

"I've got some candy here for a nice little girl," he said, as
though the subject had not been mentioned before. "It's for you.
Won't you have some?"

"I reckon I will," she said with a happy smile.

Hale watched her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint.
Her crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight
down from it to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just
darkening with dried blood, a sculptor would have loved the
rounded slenderness in the curving long lines that shaped her
brown throat, her arms and her hands, which were prettily shaped
but so very dirty as to the nails, and her dangling bare leg. Her
teeth were even and white, and most of them flashed when her red
lips smiled. Her lashes were long and gave a touching softness to
her eyes even when she was looking quietly at him, but there were
times, as he had noticed already, when a brooding look stole over
them, and then they were the lair for the mysterious loneliness
that was the very spirit of Lonesome Cove. Some day that little
nose would be long enough, and some day, he thought, she would be
very beautiful.

"Your cousin, Loretta, said she was coming over to see you."

June's teeth snapped viciously through the stick of candy and then
she turned on him and behind the long lashes and deep down in the
depth of those wonderful eyes he saw an ageless something that
bewildered him more than her words.

"I hate her," she said fiercely.

"Why, little girl?" he said gently.

"I don't know--" she said--and then the tears came in earnest and
she turned her head, sobbing. Hale helplessly reached over and
patted her on the shoulder, but she shrank away from him.

"Go away!" she said, digging her fist into her eyes until her face
was calm again.

They had reached the spot on the river where he had seen her
first, and beyond, the smoke of the cabin was rising above the
undergrowth.

"Lordy!" she said, "but I do git lonesome over hyeh."

"Wouldn't you like to go over to the Gap with me sometimes?"

Straightway her face was a ray of sunlight.

"Would--I like--to--go--over--"

She stopped suddenly and pulled in her horse, but Hale had heard
nothing.

"Hello!" shouted a voice from the bushes, and Devil Judd Tolliver
issued from them with an axe on his shoulder. "I heerd you'd come
back an' I'm glad to see ye." He came down to the road and shook
Hale's hand heartily.

"Whut you been cryin' about?" he added, turning his hawk-like eyes
on the little girl.

"Nothin'," she said sullenly.

"Did she git mad with ye 'bout somethin'?" said the old man to
Hale. "She never cries 'cept when she's mad." Hale laughed.

"You jes' hush up--both of ye," said the girl with a sharp kick of
her right foot.

"I reckon you can't stamp the ground that fer away from it," said
the old man dryly. "If you don't git the better of that all-fired
temper o' yourn hit's goin' to git the better of you, an' then
I'll have to spank you agin."

"I reckon you ain't goin' to whoop me no more, pap. I'm a-gittin'
too big."

The old man opened eyes and mouth with an indulgent roar of
laughter.

"Come on up to the house," he said to Hale, turning to lead the
way, the little girl following him. The old step-mother was again
a-bed; small Bub, the brother, still unafraid, sat down beside
Hale and the old man brought out a bottle of moonshine.

"I reckon I can still trust ye," he said.

"I reckon you can," laughed Hale.

The liquor was as fiery as ever, but it was grateful, and again
the old man took nearly a tumbler full plying Hale, meanwhile,
about the happenings in town the day before--but Hale could tell
him nothing that he seemed not already to know.

"It was quar," the old mountaineer said. "I've seed two men with
the drap on each other and both afeerd to shoot, but I never heerd
of sech a ring-around-the-rosy as eight fellers with bead on one
another and not a shoot shot. I'm glad I wasn't thar."

He frowned when Hale spoke of the Red Fox.

"You can't never tell whether that ole devil is fer ye or agin ye,
but I've been plum' sick o' these doin's a long time now and
sometimes I think I'll just pull up stakes and go West and git out
of hit--altogether."

"How did you learn so much about yesterday--so soon?"

"Oh, we hears things purty quick in these mountains. Little Dave
Tolliver come over here last night."

"Yes," broke in Bub, "and he tol' us how you carried Loretty from
town on a mule behind ye, and she jest a-sassin' you, an' as how
she said she was a-goin' to git you fer HER sweetheart."

Hale glanced by chance at the little girl. Her face was scarlet,
and a light dawned.

"An' sis, thar, said he was a-tellin' lies--an' when she growed up
she said she was a-goin' to marry---"

Something snapped like a toy-pistol and Bub howled. A little brown
hand had whacked him across the mouth, and the girl flashed
indoors without a word. Bub got to his feet howling with pain and
rage and started after her, but the old man caught him:

"Set down, boy! Sarved you right fer blabbin' things that hain't
yo' business." He shook with laughter.

Jealousy! Great heavens--Hale thought--in that child, and for him!

"I knowed she was cryin' 'bout something like that. She sets a
great store by you, an' she's studied them books you sent her
plum' to pieces while you was away. She ain't nothin' but a baby,
but in sartain ways she's as old as her mother was when she died."
The amazing secret was out, and the little girl appeared no more
until supper time, when she waited on the table, but at no time
would she look at Hale or speak to him again. For a while the two
men sat on the porch talking of the feud and the Gap and the coal
on the old man's place, and Hale had no trouble getting an option
for a year on the old man's land. Just as dusk was setting he got
his horse.

"You'd better stay all night."

"No, I'll have to get along."

The little girl did not appear to tell him goodby, and when he
went to his horse at the gate, he called:

"Tell June to come down here. I've got something for her."

"Go on, baby," the old man said, and the little girl came shyly
down to the gate. Hale took a brown-paper parcel from his saddle-
bags, unwrapped it and betrayed the usual blue-eyed, flaxen-
haired, rosy-cheeked doll. Only June did not know the like of it
was in all the world. And as she caught it to her breast there
were tears once more in her uplifted eyes.

"How about going over to the Gap with me, little girl--some day?"

He never guessed it, but there were a child and a woman before him
now and both answered:

"I'll go with ye anywhar."

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Hale stopped a while to rest his horse at the base of the big
pine. He was practically alone in the world. The little girl back
there was born for something else than slow death in that God-
forsaken cove, and whatever it was--why not help her to it if he
could? With this thought in his brain, he rode down from the
luminous upper world of the moon and stars toward the nether world
of drifting mists and black ravines. She belonged to just such a
night--that little girl--she was a part of its mists, its lights
and shadows, its fresh wild beauty and its mystery. Only once did
his mind shift from her to his great purpose, and that was when
the roar of the water through the rocky chasm of the Gap made him
think of the roar of iron wheels, that, rushing through, some day,
would drown it into silence. At the mouth of the Gap he saw the
white valley lying at peace in the moonlight and straightway from
it sprang again, as always, his castle in the air; but before he
fell asleep in his cottage on the edge of the millpond that night
he heard quite plainly again:

"I'll go with ye--anywhar."




XI


Spring was coming: and, meanwhile, that late autumn and short
winter, things went merrily on at the gap in some ways, and in
some ways--not.

Within eight miles of the place, for instance, the man fell ill--
the man who was to take up Hale's options--and he had to be taken
home. Still Hale was undaunted: here he was and here he would
stay--and he would try again. Two other young men, Bluegrass
Kentuckians, Logan and Macfarlan, had settled at the gap--both
lawyers and both of pioneer, Indian-fighting blood. The report of
the State geologist had been spread broadcast. A famous magazine
writer had come through on horseback and had gone home and given a
fervid account of the riches and the beauty of the region.
Helmeted Englishmen began to prowl prospectively around the gap
sixty miles to the southwest. New surveying parties were directing
lines for the rocky gateway between the iron ore and the coal.
Engineers and coal experts passed in and out. There were rumours
of a furnace and a steel plant when the railroad should reach the
place. Capital had flowed in from the East, and already a
Pennsylvanian was starting a main entry into a ten-foot vein of
coal up through the gap and was coking it. His report was that his
own was better than the Connellsville coke, which was the
standard: it was higher in carbon and lower in ash. The Ludlow
brothers, from Eastern Virginia, had started a general store. Two
of the Berkley brothers had come over from Bluegrass Kentucky and
their family was coming in the spring. The bearded Senator up the
valley, who was also a preacher, had got his Methodist brethren
interested--and the community was further enriched by the coming
of the Hon. Samuel Budd, lawyer and budding statesman. As a
recreation, the Hon. Sam was an anthropologist: he knew the
mountaineers from Virginia to Alabama and they were his pet
illustrations of his pet theories of the effect of a mountain
environment on human life and character. Hale took a great fancy
to him from the first moment he saw his smooth, ageless, kindly
face, surmounted by a huge pair of spectacles that were hooked
behind two large ears, above which his pale yellow hair, parted in
the middle, was drawn back with plaster-like precision. A mayor
and a constable had been appointed, and the Hon. Sam had just
finished his first case--Squire Morton and the Widow Crane, who
ran a boarding-house, each having laid claim to three pigs that
obstructed traffic in the town. The Hon. Sam was sitting by the
stove, deep in thought, when Hale came into the hotel and he
lifted his great glaring lenses and waited for no introduction:

"Brother," he said, "do you know twelve reliable witnesses come on
the stand and SWORE them pigs belonged to the squire's sow, and
twelve equally reliable witnesses SWORE them pigs belonged to the
Widow Crane's sow? I shorely was a heap perplexed."

"That was curious." The Hon. Sam laughed:

"Well, sir, them intelligent pigs used both them sows as mothers,
and may be they had another mother somewhere else. They would
breakfast with the Widow Crane's sow and take supper with the
squire's sow. And so them witnesses, too, was naturally
perplexed."

Hale waited while the Hon. Sam puffed his pipe into a glow:

"Believin', as I do, that the most important principle in law is
mutually forgivin' and a square division o' spoils, I suggested a
compromise. The widow said the squire was an old rascal an' thief
and he'd never sink a tooth into one of them shoats, but that her
lawyer was a gentleman--meanin' me--and the squire said the widow
had been blackguardin' him all over town and he'd see her in
heaven before she got one, but that HIS lawyer was a prince of the
realm: so the other lawyer took one and I got the other."

"What became of the third?"

The Hon. Sam was an ardent disciple of Sir Walter Scott:

"Well, just now the mayor is a-playin' Gurth to that little runt
for costs."

Outside, the wheels of the stage rattled, and as half a dozen
strangers trooped in, the Hon. Sam waved his hand: "Things is
comin'."

Things were coming. The following week "the booming editor"
brought in a printing-press and started a paper. An enterprising
Hoosier soon established a brick-plant. A geologist--Hale's
predecessor in Lonesome Cove--made the Gap his headquarters, and
one by one the vanguard of engineers, surveyors, speculators and
coalmen drifted in. The wings of progress began to sprout, but the
new town-constable soon tendered his resignation with informality
and violence. He had arrested a Falin, whose companions
straightway took him from custody and set him free. Straightway
the constable threw his pistol and badge of office to the ground.

"I've fit an' I've hollered fer help," he shouted, almost crying
with rage, "an' I've fit agin. Now this town can go to hell": and
he picked up his pistol but left his symbol of law and order in
the dust. Next morning there was a new constable, and only that
afternoon when Hale stepped into the Ludlow Brothers' store he
found the constable already busy. A line of men with revolver or
knife in sight was drawn up inside with their backs to Hale, and
beyond them he could see the new constable with a man under
arrest. Hale had not forgotten his promise to himself and he began
now:

"Come on," he called quietly, and when the men turned at the sound
of his voice, the constable, who was of sterner stuff than his
predecessor, pushed through them, dragging his man after him.

"Look here, boys," said Hale calmly. "Let's not have any row. Let
him go to the mayor's office. If he isn't guilty, the mayor will
let him go. If he is, the mayor will give him bond. I'll go on it
myself. But let's not have a row."

Now, to the mountain eye, Hale appeared no more than the ordinary
man, and even a close observer would have seen no more than that
his face was clean-cut and thoughtful, that his eye was blue and
singularly clear and fearless, and that he was calm with a
calmness that might come from anything else than stolidity of
temperament--and that, by the way, is the self-control which
counts most against the unruly passions of other men--but anybody
near Hale, at a time when excitement was high and a crisis was
imminent, would have felt the resultant of forces emanating from
him that were beyond analysis. And so it was now--the curious
power he instinctively had over rough men had its way.

"Go on," he continued quietly, and the constable went on with his
prisoner, his friends following, still swearing and with their
weapons in their hands. When constable and prisoner passed into
the mayor's office, Hale stepped quickly after them and turned on
the threshold with his arm across the door.

"Hold on, boys," he said, still good-naturedly. "The mayor can
attend to this. If you boys want to fight anybody, fight me. I'm
unarmed and you can whip me easily enough," he added with a laugh,
"but you mustn't come in here," he concluded, as though the matter
was settled beyond further discussion. For one instant--the
crucial one, of course--the men hesitated, for the reason that so
often makes superior numbers of no avail among the lawless--the
lack of a leader of nerve--and without another word Hale held the
door. But the frightened mayor inside let the prisoner out at once
on bond and Hale, combining law and diplomacy, went on the bond.

Only a day or two later the mountaineers, who worked at the brick-
plant with pistols buckled around them, went on a strike and, that
night, shot out the lights and punctured the chromos in their
boarding-house. Then, armed with sticks, knives, clubs and
pistols, they took a triumphant march through town. That night two
knives and two pistols were whipped out by two of them in the same
store. One of the Ludlows promptly blew out the light and astutely
got under the counter. When the combatants scrambled outside, he
locked the door and crawled out the back window. Next morning the
brick-yard malcontents marched triumphantly again and Hale called
for volunteers to arrest them. To his disgust only Logan,
Macfarlan, the Hon. Sam Budd, and two or three others seemed
willing to go, but when the few who would go started, Hale,
leading them, looked back and the whole town seemed to be strung
out after him. Below the hill, he saw the mountaineers drawn up in
two bodies for battle and, as he led his followers towards them,
the Hoosier owner of the plant rode out at a gallop, waving his
hands and apparently beside himself with anxiety and terror.

"Don't," he shouted; "somebody'll get killed. Wait--they'll give
up." So Hale halted and the Hoosier rode back. After a short
parley he came back to Hale to say that the strikers would give
up, but when Logan started again, they broke and ran, and only
three or four were captured. The Hoosier was delirious over his
troubles and straightway closed his plant.

"See," said Hale in disgust. "We've got to do something now."

"We have," said the lawyers, and that night on Hale's porch, the
three, with the Hon. Sam Budd, pondered the problem. They could
not build a town without law and order--they could not have law
and order without taking part themselves, and even then they
plainly would have their hands full. And so, that night, on the
tiny porch of the little cottage that was Hale's sleeping-room and
office, with the creaking of the one wheel of their one industry--
the old grist-mill--making patient music through the rhododendron-
darkness that hid the steep bank of the stream, the three pioneers
forged their plan. There had been gentlemen-regulators a plenty,
vigilance committees of gentlemen, and the Ku-Klux clan had been
originally composed of gentlemen, as they all knew, but they meant
to hew to the strict line of town-ordinance and common law and do
the rough everyday work of the common policeman. So volunteer
policemen they would be and, in order to extend their authority as
much as possible, as county policemen they would be enrolled. Each
man would purchase his own Winchester, pistol, billy, badge and a
whistle--to call for help--and they would begin drilling and
target-shooting at once. The Hon. Sam shook his head dubiously:

"The natives won't understand."

"We can't help that," said Hale.

"I know--I'm with you."

Hale was made captain, Logan first lieutenant, Macfarlan second,
and the Hon. Sam third. Two rules, Logan, who, too, knew the
mountaineer well, suggested as inflexible. One was never to draw a
pistol at all unless necessary, never to pretend to draw as a
threat or to intimidate, and never to draw unless one meant to
shoot, if need be.

"And the other," added Logan, "always go in force to make an
arrest--never alone unless necessary." The Hon. Sam moved his head
up and down in hearty approval.

"Why is that?" asked Hale.

"To save bloodshed," he said. "These fellows we will have to deal
with have a pride that is morbid. A mountaineer doesn't like to go
home and have to say that one man put him in the calaboose--but he
doesn't mind telling that it took several to arrest him. Moreover,
he will give in to two or three men, when he would look on the
coming of one man as a personal issue and to be met as such."

Hale nodded.

"Oh, there'll be plenty of chances," Logan added with a smile,
"for everyone to go it alone." Again the Hon. Sam nodded grimly.
It was plain to him that they would have all they could do, but no
one of them dreamed of the far-reaching effect that night's work
would bring.

They were the vanguard of civilization--"crusaders of the
nineteenth century against the benighted of the Middle Ages," said
the Hon. Sam, and when Logan and Macfarlan left, he lingered and
lit his pipe.

"The trouble will be," he said slowly, "that they won't understand
our purpose or our methods. They will look on us as a lot of
meddlesome 'furriners' who have come in to run their country as we
please, when they have been running it as they please for more
than a hundred years. You see, you mustn't judge them by the
standards of to-day--you must go back to the standards of the
Revolution. Practically, they are the pioneers of that day and
hardly a bit have they advanced. They are our contemporary
ancestors." And then the Hon. Sam, having dropped his vernacular,
lounged ponderously into what he was pleased to call his
anthropological drool.

"You see, mountains isolate people and the effect of isolation on
human life is to crystallize it. Those people over the line have
had no navigable rivers, no lakes, no wagon roads, except often
the beds of streams. They have been cut off from all communication
with the outside world. They are a perfect example of an arrested
civilization and they are the closest link we have with the Old
World. They were Unionists because of the Revolution, as they were
Americans in the beginning because of the spirit of the
Covenanter. They live like the pioneers; the axe and the rifle are
still their weapons and they still have the same fight with
nature. This feud business is a matter of clan-loyalty that goes
back to Scotland. They argue this way: You are my friend or my
kinsman, your quarrel is my quarrel, and whoever hits you hits me.
If you are in trouble, I must not testify against you. If you are
an officer, you must not arrest me; you must send me a kindly
request to come into court. If I'm innocent and it's perfectly
convenient--why, maybe I'll come. Yes, we're the vanguard of
civilization, all right, all right--but I opine we're goin' to
have a hell of a merry time."

Hale laughed, but he was to remember those words of the Hon.
Samuel Budd. Other members of that vanguard began to drift in now
by twos and threes from the bluegrass region of Kentucky and from
the tide-water country of Virginia and from New England--strong,
bold young men with the spirit of the pioneer and the birth,
breeding and education of gentlemen, and the war between
civilization and a lawlessness that was the result of isolation,
and consequent ignorance and idleness started in earnest.

"A remarkable array," murmured the Hon. Sam, when he took an
inventory one night with Hale, "I'm proud to be among 'em."

Many times Hale went over to Lonesome Cove and with every visit
his interest grew steadily in the little girl and in the curious
people over there, until he actually began to believe in the Hon.
Sam Budd's anthropological theories. In the cabin on Lonesome Cove
was a crane swinging in the big stone fireplace, and he saw the
old step-mother and June putting the spinning wheel and the loom
to actual use. Sometimes he found a cabin of unhewn logs with a
puncheon floor, clapboards for shingles and wooden pin and auger
holes for nails; a batten wooden shutter, the logs filled with mud
and stones and holes in the roof for the wind and the rain. Over a
pair of buck antlers sometimes lay the long heavy home-made rifle
of the backwoodsman--sometimes even with a flintlock and called by
some pet feminine name. Once he saw the hominy block that the
mountaineers had borrowed from the Indians, and once a handmill
like the one from which the one woman was taken and the other left
in biblical days. He struck communities where the medium of
exchange was still barter, and he found mountaineers drinking
metheglin still as well as moonshine. Moreover, there were still
log-rollings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, and quilting
parties, and sports were the same as in pioneer days--wrestling,
racing, jumping, and lifting barrels. Often he saw a cradle of
beegum, and old Judd had in his house a fox-horn made of hickory
bark which even June could blow. He ran across old-world
superstitions, too, and met one seventh son of a seventh son who
cured children of rash by blowing into their mouths. And he got
June to singing transatlantic songs, after old Judd said one day
that she knowed the "miserablest song he'd ever heerd"--meaning
the most sorrowful. And, thereupon, with quaint simplicity, June
put her heels on the rung of her chair, and with her elbows on her
knees, and her chin on both bent thumbs, sang him the oldest
version of "Barbara Allen" in a voice that startled Hale by its
power and sweetness. She knew lots more "song-ballets," she said
shyly, and the old man had her sing some songs that were rather
rude, but were as innocent as hymns from her lips.

Everywhere he found unlimited hospitality.

"Take out, stranger," said one old fellow, when there was nothing
on the table but some bread and a few potatoes, "have a tater.
Take two of 'em--take damn nigh ALL of 'em."

Moreover, their pride was morbid, and they were very religious.
Indeed, they used religion to cloak their deviltry, as honestly as
it was ever used in history. He had heard old Judd say once, when
he was speaking of the feud:

"Well, I've al'ays laid out my enemies. The Lord's been on my side
an' I gits a better Christian every year."

Always Hale took some children's book for June when he went to
Lonesome Cove, and she rarely failed to know it almost by heart
when he went again. She was so intelligent that he began to wonder
if, in her case, at least, another of the Hon. Sam's theories
might not be true--that the mountaineers were of the same class as
the other westward-sweeping emigrants of more than a century
before, that they had simply lain dormant in the hills and--a
century counting for nothing in the matter of inheritance--that
their possibilities were little changed, and that the children of
that day would, if given the chance, wipe out the handicap of a
century in one generation and take their place abreast with
children of the outside world. The Tollivers were of good blood;
they had come from Eastern Virginia, and the original Tolliver had
been a slave-owner. The very name was, undoubtedly, a corruption
of Tagliaferro. So, when the Widow Crane began to build a brick
house for her boarders that winter, and the foundations of a
school-house were laid at the Gap, Hale began to plead with old
Judd to allow June to go over to the Gap and go to school, but the
old man was firm in refusal:

"He couldn't git along without her," he said; "he was afeerd he'd
lose her, an' he reckoned June was a-larnin' enough without goin'
to school--she was a-studyin' them leetle books o' hers so hard."
But as his confidence in Hale grew and as Hale stated his
intention to take an option on the old man's coal lands, he could
see that Devil Judd, though his answer never varied, was
considering the question seriously.

Through the winter, then, Hale made occasional trips to Lonesome
Cove and bided his time. Often he met young Dave Tolliver there,
but the boy usually left when Hale came, and if Hale was already
there, he kept outside the house, until the engineer was gone.

Knowing nothing of the ethics of courtship in the mountains--how,
when two men meet at the same girl's house, "they makes the gal
say which one she likes best and t'other one gits"--Hale little
dreamed that the first time Dave stalked out of the room, he threw
his hat in the grass behind the big chimney and executed a war-
dance on it, cursing the blankety-blank "furriner" within from Dan
to Beersheba.

Indeed, he never suspected the fierce depths of the boy's jealousy
at all, and he would have laughed incredulously, if he had been
told how, time after time as he climbed the mountain homeward, the
boy's black eyes burned from the bushes on him, while his hand
twitched at his pistol-butt and his lips worked with noiseless
threats. For Dave had to keep his heart-burnings to himself or he
would have been laughed at through all the mountains, and not only
by his own family, but by June's; so he, too, bided his time.

In late February, old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver shot each
other down in the road and the Red Fox, who hated both and whom
each thought was his friend, dressed the wounds of both with equal
care. The temporary lull of peace that Bad Rufe's absence in the
West had brought about, gave way to a threatening storm then, and
then it was that old Judd gave his consent: when the roads got
better, June could go to the Gap to school. A month later the old
man sent word that he did not want June in the mountains while the
trouble was going on, and that Hale could come over for her when
he pleased: and Hale sent word back that within three days he
would meet the father and the little girl at the big Pine. That
last day at home June passed in a dream. She went through her
daily tasks in a dream and she hardly noticed young Dave when he
came in at mid-day, and Dave, when he heard the news, left in
sullen silence. In the afternoon she went down to the mill to tell
Uncle Billy and ole Hon good-by and the three sat in the porch a
long time and with few words. Ole Hon had been to the Gap once,
but there was "so much bustle over thar it made her head ache."
Uncle Billy shook his head doubtfully over June's going, and the
two old people stood at the gate looking long after the little
girl when she went homeward up the road. Before supper June
slipped up to her little hiding-place at the pool and sat on the
old log saying good-by to the comforting spirit that always
brooded for her there, and, when she stood on the porch at sunset,
a new spirit was coming on the wings of the South wind. Hale felt
it as he stepped into the soft night air; he heard it in the
piping of frogs--"Marsh-birds," as he always called them; he could
almost see it in the flying clouds and the moonlight and even the
bare trees seemed tremulously expectant. An indefinable happiness
seemed to pervade the whole earth and Hale stretched his arms
lazily. Over in Lonesome Cove little June felt it more keenly than
ever in her life before. She did not want to go to bed that night,
and when the others were asleep she slipped out to the porch and
sat on the steps, her eyes luminous and her face wistful--looking
towards the big Pine which pointed the way towards the far silence
into which she was going at last.




XII


June did not have to be awakened that morning. At the first
clarion call of the old rooster behind the cabin, her eyes opened
wide and a happy thrill tingled her from head to foot--why, she
didn't at first quite realize--and then she stretched her slender
round arms to full length above her head and with a little squeal
of joy bounded out of the bed, dressed as she was when she went
into it, and with no changes to make except to push back her
tangled hair. Her father was out feeding the stock and she could
hear her step-mother in the kitchen. Bub still slept soundly, and
she shook him by the shoulder.

"Git up, Bub."

"Go 'way," said Bub fretfully. Again she started to shake him but
stopped--Bub wasn't going to the Gap, so she let him sleep. For a
little while she looked down at him--at his round rosy face and
his frowsy hair from under which protruded one dirty fist. She was
going to leave him, and a fresh tenderness for him made her breast
heave, but she did not kiss him, for sisterly kisses are hardly
known in the hills. Then she went out into the kitchen to help her
step-mother.

"Gittin' mighty busy, all of a sudden, ain't ye," said the sour
old woman, "now that ye air goin' away."

"'Tain't costin' you nothin'," answered June quietly, and she
picked up a pail and went out into the frosty, shivering daybreak
to the old well. The chain froze her fingers, the cold water
splashed her feet, and when she had tugged her heavy burden back
to the kitchen, she held her red, chapped hands to the fire.

"I reckon you'll be mighty glad to git shet o' me." The old woman
sniffled, and June looked around with a start.

"Pears like I'm goin' to miss ye right smart," she quavered, and
June's face coloured with a new feeling towards her step-mother.

"I'm goin' ter have a hard time doin' all the work and me so
poorly."

"Lorrety is a-comin' over to he'p ye, if ye git sick," said June,
hardening again. "Or, I'll come back myself." She got out the
dishes and set them on the table.

"You an' me don't git along very well together," she went on
placidly. "I never heerd o' no step-mother and children as did,
an' I reckon you'll be might glad to git shet o' me."

"Pears like I'm going to miss ye a right smart," repeated the old
woman weakly.

June went out to the stable with the milking pail. Her father had
spread fodder for the cow and she could hear the rasping of the
ears of corn against each other as he tumbled them into the trough
for the old sorrel. She put her head against the cow's soft flank
and under her sinewy fingers two streams of milk struck the bottom
of the tin pail with such thumping loudness that she did not hear
her father's step; but when she rose to make the beast put back
her right leg, she saw him looking at her.

"Who's goin' ter milk, pap, atter I'm gone?"

"This the fust time you thought o' that?" June put her flushed
cheek back to the flank of the cow. It was not the first time she
had thought of that--her step-mother would milk and if she were
ill, her father or Loretta. She had not meant to ask that
question--she was wondering when they would start. That was what
she meant to ask and she was glad that she had swerved. Breakfast
was eaten in the usual silence by the boy and the man--June and
the step-mother serving it, and waiting on the lord that was and
the lord that was to be--and then the two females sat down.

"Hurry up, June," said the old man, wiping his mouth and beard
with the back of his hand. "Clear away the dishes an' git ready.
Hale said he would meet us at the Pine an' hour by sun, fer I told
him I had to git back to work. Hurry up, now!"

June hurried up. She was too excited to eat anything, so she began
to wash the dishes while her step-mother ate. Then she went into
the living-room to pack her things and it didn't take long. She
wrapped the doll Hale had given her in an extra petticoat, wound
one pair of yarn stockings around a pair of coarse shoes, tied
them up into one bundle and she was ready. Her father appeared
with the sorrel horse, caught up his saddle from the porch, threw
it on and stretched the blanket behind it as a pillion for June to
ride on.

"Let's go!" he said. There is little or no demonstrativeness in
the domestic relations of mountaineers. The kiss of courtship is
the only one known. There were no good-bys--only that short "Let's
go!"

June sprang behind her father from the porch. The step-mother
handed her the bundle which she clutched in her lap, and they
simply rode away, the step-mother and Bub silently gazing after
them. But June saw the boy's mouth working, and when she turned
the thicket at the creek, she looked back at the two quiet
figures, and a keen pain cut her heart. She shut her mouth
closely, gripped her bundle more tightly and the tears streamed
down her face, but the man did not know. They climbed in silence.
Sometimes her father dismounted where the path was steep, but June
sat on the horse to hold the bundle and thus they mounted through
the mist and chill of the morning. A shout greeted them from the
top of the little spur whence the big Pine was visible, and up
there they found Hale waiting. He had reached the Pine earlier
than they and was coming down to meet them.

"Hello, little girl," called Hale cheerily, "you didn't fail me,
did you?"

June shook her head and smiled. Her face was blue and her little
legs, dangling under the bundle, were shrinking from the cold. Her
bonnet had fallen to the back of her neck, and he saw that her
hair was parted and gathered in a Psyche knot at the back of her
head, giving her a quaint old look when she stood on the ground in
her crimson gown. Hale had not forgotten a pillion and there the
transfer was made. Hale lifted her behind his saddle and handed up
her bundle.

"I'll take good care of her," he said.

"All right," said the old man.

"And I'm coming over soon to fix up that coal matter, and I'll let
you know how she's getting on."

"All right."

"Good-by," said Hale.

"I wish ye well," said the mountaineer. "Be a good girl, Juny, and
do what Mr. Hale thar tells ye."

"All right, pap." And thus they parted. June felt the power of
Hale's big black horse with exultation the moment he started.

"Now we're off," said Hale gayly, and he patted the little hand
that was about his waist. "Give me that bundle."

"I can carry it."

"No, you can't--not with me," and when he reached around for it
and put it on the cantle of his saddle, June thrust her left hand
into his overcoat pocket and Hale laughed.

"Loretta wouldn't ride with me this way."

"Loretty ain't got much sense," drawled June complacently.
"'Tain't no harm. But don't you tell me! I don't want to hear
nothin' 'bout Loretty noway." Again Hale laughed and June laughed,
too. Imp that she was, she was just pretending to be jealous now.
She could see the big Pine over his shoulder.

"I've knowed that tree since I was a little girl--since I was a
baby," she said, and the tone of her voice was new to Hale.
"Sister Sally uster tell me lots about that ole tree." Hale
waited, but she stopped again.

"What did she tell you?"

"She used to say hit was curious that hit should be 'way up here
all alone--that she reckollected it ever since SHE was a baby, and
she used to come up here and talk to it, and she said sometimes
she could hear it jus' a whisperin' to her when she was down home
in the cove."

"What did she say it said?"

"She said it was always a-whisperin' 'come--come--come!'" June
crooned the words, "an' atter she died, I heerd the folks sayin'
as how she riz up in bed with her eyes right wide an' sayin' "I
hears it! It's a-whisperin'--I hears it--come--come--come'!" And
still Hale kept quiet when she stopped again.

"The Red Fox said hit was the sperits, but I knowed when they told
me that she was a thinkin' o' that ole tree thar. But I never let
on. I reckon that's ONE reason made me come here that day." They
were close to the big tree now and Hale dismounted to fix his
girth for the descent.

"Well, I'm mighty glad you came, little girl. I might never have
seen you."

"That's so," said June. "I saw the print of your foot in the mud
right there."

"Did ye?"

"And if I hadn't, I might never have gone down into Lonesome
Cove." June laughed.

"You ran from me," Hale went on.

"Yes, I did: an' that's why you follered me." Hale looked up
quickly. Her face was demure, but her eyes danced. She was an aged
little thing.

"Why did you run?"

"I thought yo' fishin' pole was a rifle-gun an' that you was a
raider." Hale laughed--"I see."

"'Member when you let yo' horse drink?" Hale nodded. "Well, I was
on a rock above the creek, lookin' down at ye. An' I seed ye
catchin' minners an' thought you was goin' up the crick lookin'
fer a still."

"Weren't you afraid of me then?"

"Huh!" she said contemptuously. "I wasn't afeared of you at all,
'cept fer what you mought find out. You couldn't do no harm to
nobody without a gun, and I knowed thar wasn't no still up that
crick. I know--I knowed whar it was." Hale noticed the quick
change of tense.

"Won't you take me to see it some time?"

"No!" she said shortly, and Hale knew he had made a mistake. It
was too steep for both to ride now, so he tied the bundle to the
cantle with leathern strings and started leading the horse. June
pointed to the edge of the cliff.

"I was a-layin' flat right thar and I seed you comin' down thar.
My, but you looked funny to me! You don't now," she added hastily.
"You look mighty nice to me now--!"

"You're a little rascal," said Hale, "that's what you are." The
little girl bubbled with laughter and then she grew mock-serious.

"No, I ain't."

"Yes, you are," he repeated, shaking his head, and both were
silent for a while. June was going to begin her education now and
it was just as well for him to begin with it now. So he started
vaguely when he was mounted again:

"June, you thought my clothes were funny when you first saw them--
didn't you?"

"Uh, huh!" said June.

"But you like them now?"

"Uh, huh!" she crooned again.

"Well, some people who weren't used to clothes that people wear
over in the mountains might think THEM funny for the same reason--
mightn't they?" June was silent for a moment.

"Well, mebbe, I like your clothes better, because I like you
better," she said, and Hale laughed.

"Well, it's just the same--the way people in the mountains dress
and talk is different from the way people outside dress and talk.
It doesn't make much difference about clothes, though, I guess you
will want to be as much like people over here as you can--"

"I don't know," interrupted the little girl shortly, "I ain't seed
'em yit."

"Well," laughed Hale, "you will want to talk like them anyhow,
because everybody who is learning tries to talk the same way."
June was silent, and Hale plunged unconsciously on.

"Up at the Pine now you said, 'I SEED you when I was A-LAYIN on
the edge of the cliff'; now you ought to have said, 'I SAW you
when I was LYING--'"

"I wasn't," she said sharply, "I don't tell lies--" her hand shot
from his waist and she slid suddenly to the ground. He pulled in
his horse and turned a bewildered face. She had lighted on her
feet and was poised back above him like an enraged eaglet--her
thin nostrils quivering, her mouth as tight as a bow-string, and
her eyes two points of fire.

"Why--June!"

"Ef you don't like my clothes an' the way I talk, I reckon I'd
better go back home." With a groan Hale tumbled from his horse.
Fool that he was, he had forgotten the sensitive pride of the
mountaineer, even while he was thinking of that pride. He knew
that fun might be made of her speech and her garb by her
schoolmates over at the Gap, and he was trying to prepare her--to
save her mortification, to make her understand.

"Why, June, little girl, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You
don't understand--you can't now, but you will. Trust me, won't
you? _I_ like you just as you are. I LOVE the way you talk. But
other people--forgive me, won't you?" he pleaded. "I'm sorry. I
wouldn't hurt you for the world."

She didn't understand--she hardly heard what he said, but she did
know his distress was genuine and his sorrow: and his voice melted
her fierce little heart. The tears began to come, while she
looked, and when he put his arms about her, she put her face on
his breast and sobbed.

"There now!" he said soothingly. "It's all right now. I'm so
sorry--so very sorry," and he patted her on the shoulder and laid
his hand across her temple and hair, and pressed her head tight to
his breast. Almost as suddenly she stopped sobbing and loosening
herself turned away from him.

"I'm a fool--that's what I am," she said hotly.

"No, you aren't! Come on, little girl! We're friends again, aren't
we?" June was digging at her eyes with both hands.

"Aren't we?"

"Yes," she said with an angry little catch of her breath, and she
turned submissively to let him lift her to her seat. Then she
looked down into his face.

"Jack," she said, and he started again at the frank address, "I
ain't NEVER GOIN' TO DO THAT NO MORE."

"Yes, you are, little girl," he said soberly but cheerily. "You're
goin' to do it whenever I'm wrong or whenever you think I'm
wrong." She shook her head seriously.

"No, Jack."

In a few minutes they were at the foot of the mountain and on a
level road.

"Hold tight!" Hale shouted, "I'm going to let him out now." At the
touch of his spur, the big black horse sprang into a gallop,
faster and faster, until he was pounding the hard road in a swift
run like thunder. At the creek Hale pulled in and looked around.
June's bonnet was down, her hair was tossed, her eyes were
sparkling fearlessly, and her face was flushed with joy.

"Like it, June?"

"I never did know nothing like it."

"You weren't scared?"

"Skeered o' what?" she asked, and Hale wondered if there was
anything of which she would be afraid.

They were entering the Gap now and June's eyes got big with wonder
over the mighty up-shooting peaks and the rushing torrent.

"See that big rock yonder, June?" June craned her neck to follow
with her eyes his outstretched finger.

"Uh, huh."

"Well, that's called Bee Rock, because it's covered with flowers--
purple rhododendrons and laurel--and bears used to go there for
wild honey. They say that once on a time folks around here put
whiskey in the honey and the bears got so drunk that people came
and knocked 'em in the head with clubs."

"Well, what do you think o' that!" said June wonderingly.

Before them a big mountain loomed, and a few minutes later, at the
mouth of the Gap, Hale stopped and turned his horse sidewise.

"There we are, June," he said.

June saw the lovely little valley rimmed with big mountains. She
could follow the course of the two rivers that encircled it by the
trees that fringed their banks, and she saw smoke rising here and
there and that was all. She was a little disappointed.

"It's mighty purty," she said, "I never seed"--she paused, but
went on without correcting herself--"so much level land in all my
life."

The morning mail had just come in as they rode by the post-office
and several men hailed her escort, and all stared with some wonder
at her. Hale smiled to himself, drew up for none and put on a face
of utter unconsciousness that he was doing anything unusual. June
felt vaguely uncomfortable. Ahead of them, when they turned the
corner of the street, her eyes fell on a strange tall red house
with yellow trimmings, that was not built of wood and had two sets
of windows one above the other, and before that Hale drew up.

"Here we are. Get down, little girl."

"Good-morning!" said a voice. Hale looked around and flushed, and
June looked around and stared--transfixed as by a vision from
another world--at the dainty figure behind them in a walking suit,
a short skirt that showed two little feet in laced tan boots and a
cap with a plume, under which was a pair of wide blue eyes with
long lashes, and a mouth that suggested active mischief and gentle
mockery.

"Oh, good-morning," said Hale, and he added gently, "Get down,
June!"

The little girl slipped to the ground and began pulling her bonnet
on with both hands--but the newcomer had caught sight of the
Psyche knot that made June look like a little old woman strangely
young, and the mockery at her lips was gently accentuated by a
smile. Hale swung from his saddle.

"This is the little girl I told you about, Miss Anne," he said.
"She's come over to go to school." Instantly, almost, Miss Anne
had been melted by the forlorn looking little creature who stood
before her, shy for the moment and dumb, and she came forward with
her gloved hand outstretched. But June had seen that smile. She
gave her hand, and Miss Anne straightway was no little surprised;
there was no more shyness in the dark eyes that blazed from the
recesses of the sun-bonnet, and Miss Anne was so startled when she
looked into them that all she could say was: "Dear me!" A portly
woman with a kind face appeared at the door of the red brick house
and came to the gate.

"Here she is, Mrs. Crane," called Hale.

"Howdye, June!" said the Widow Crane kindly. "Come right in!" In
her June knew straightway she had a friend and she picked up her
bundle and followed upstairs--the first real stairs she had ever
seen--and into a room on the floor of which was a rag carpet.
There was a bed in one corner with a white counterpane and a
washstand with a bowl and pitcher, which, too, she had never seen
before.

"Make yourself at home right now," said the Widow Crane, pulling
open a drawer under a big looking-glass--"and put your things
here. That's your bed," and out she went.

How clean it was! There were some flowers in a glass vase on the
mantel. There were white curtains at the big window and a bed to
herself--her own bed. She went over to the window. There was a
steep bank, lined with rhododendrons, right under it. There was a
mill-dam below and down the stream she could hear the creaking of
a water-wheel, and she could see it dripping and shining in the
sun--a gristmill! She thought of Uncle Billy and ole Hon, and in
spite of a little pang of home-sickness she felt no loneliness at
all.

"I KNEW she would be pretty," said Miss Anne at the gate outside.

"I TOLD you she was pretty," said Hale.

"But not so pretty as THAT," said Miss Anne. "We will be great
friends."

"I hope so--for her sake," said Hale.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Hale waited till noon-recess was nearly over, and then he went to
take June to the school-house. He was told that she was in her
room and he went up and knocked at the door. There was no answer--
for one does not knock on doors for entrance in the mountains,
and, thinking he had made a mistake, he was about to try another
room, when June opened the door to see what the matter was. She
gave him a glad smile.

"Come on," he said, and when she went for her bonnet, he stepped
into the room.

"How do you like it?" June nodded toward the window and Hale went
to it.

"That's Uncle Billy's mill out thar."

"Why, so it is," said Hale smiling. "That's fine."

The school-house, to June's wonder, had shingles on the OUTSIDE
around all the walls from roof to foundation, and a big bell hung
on top of it under a little shingled roof of its own. A pale
little man with spectacles and pale blue eyes met them at the door
and he gave June a pale, slender hand and cleared his throat
before he spoke to her.

"She's never been to school," said Hale; "she can read and spell,
but she's not very strong on arithmetic."

"Very well, I'll turn her over to the primary." The school-bell
sounded; Hale left with a parting prophecy--"You'll be proud of
her some day"--at which June blushed and then, with a beating
heart, she followed the little man into his office. A few minutes
later, the assistant came in, and she was none other than the
wonderful young woman whom Hale had called Miss Anne. There were a
few instructions in a halting voice and with much clearing of the
throat from the pale little man; and a moment later June walked
the gauntlet of the eyes of her schoolmates, every one of whom
looked up from his book or hers to watch her as she went to her
seat. Miss Anne pointed out the arithmetic lesson and, without
lifting her eyes, June bent with a flushed face to her task. It
reddened with shame when she was called to the class, for she sat
on the bench, taller by a head and more than any of the boys and
girls thereon, except one awkward youth who caught her eye and
grinned with unashamed companionship. The teacher noticed her look
and understood with a sudden keen sympathy, and naturally she was
struck by the fact that the new pupil was the only one who never
missed an answer.

"She won't be there long," Miss Anne thought, and she gave June a
smile for which the little girl was almost grateful. June spoke to
no one, but walked through her schoolmates homeward, when school
was over, like a haughty young queen. Miss Anne had gone ahead and
was standing at the gate talking with Mrs. Crane, and the young
woman spoke to June most kindly.

"Mr. Hale has been called away on business," she said, and June's
heart sank--"and I'm going to take care of you until he comes
back."

"I'm much obleeged," she said, and while she was not ungracious,
her manner indicated her belief that she could take care of
herself. And Miss Anne felt uncomfortably that this extraordinary
young person was steadily measuring her from head to foot. June
saw the smart close-fitting gown, the dainty little boots, and the
carefully brushed hair. She noticed how white her teeth were and
her hands, and she saw that the nails looked polished and that the
tips of them were like little white crescents; and she could still
see every detail when she sat at her window, looting down at the
old mill. She SAW Mr. Hale when he left, the young lady had said;
and she had a headache now and was going home to LIE down. She
understood now what Hale meant, on the mountainside when she was
so angry with him. She was learning fast, and most from the two
persons who were not conscious what they were teaching her. And
she would learn in the school, too, for the slumbering ambition in
her suddenly became passionately definite now. She went to the
mirror and looked at her hair--she would learn how to plait that
in two braids down her back, as the other school-girls did. She
looked at her hands and straightway she fell to scrubbing them
with soap as she had never scrubbed them before. As she worked,
she heard her name called and she opened the door.

"Yes, mam!" she answered, for already she had picked that up in
the school-room.

"Come on, June, and go down the street with me."

"Yes, mam," she repeated, and she wiped her hands and hurried
down. Mrs. Crane had looked through the girl's pathetic wardrobe,
while she was at school that afternoon, had told Hale before he
left and she had a surprise for little June. Together they went
down the street and into the chief store in town and, to June's
amazement, Mrs. Crane began ordering things for "this little
girl."

"Who's a-goin' to pay fer all these things?" whispered June,
aghast.

"Don't you bother, honey. Mr. Hale said he would fix all that with
your pappy. It's some coal deal or something--don't you bother!"
And June in a quiver of happiness didn't bother. Stockings,
petticoats, some soft stuff for a new dress and TAN shoes that
looked like the ones that wonderful young woman wore and then some
long white things.

"What's them fer?" she whispered, but the clerk heard her and
laughed, whereat Mrs. Crane gave him such a glance that he retired
quickly.

"Night-gowns, honey."

"You SLEEP in 'em?" said June in an awed voice.

"That's just what you do," said the good old woman, hardly less
pleased than June.

"My, but you've got pretty feet."

"I wish they were half as purty as--"

"Well, they are," interrupted Mrs. Crane a little snappishly;
apparently she did not like Miss Anne.

"Wrap 'em up and Mr. Hale will attend to the bill."

"All right," said the clerk looking much mystified.

Outside the door, June looked up into the beaming goggles of the
Hon. Samuel Budd.

"Is THIS the little girl? Howdye, June," he said, and June put her
hand in the Hon. Sam's with a sudden trust in his voice.

"I'm going to help take care of you, too," said Mr. Budd, and June
smiled at him with shy gratitude. How kind everybody was!

"I'm much obleeged," she said, and she and Mrs. Crane went on back
with their bundles.

June's hands so trembled when she found herself alone with her
treasures that she could hardly unpack them. When she had folded
and laid them away, she had to unfold them to look at them again.
She hurried to bed that night merely that she might put on one of
those wonderful night-gowns, and again she had to look all her
treasures over. She was glad that she had brought the doll because
HE had given it to her, but she said to herself "I'm a-gittin' too
big now fer dolls!" and she put it away. Then she set the lamp on
the mantel-piece so that she could see herself in her wonderful
night-gown. She let her shining hair fall like molten gold around
her shoulders, and she wondered whether she could ever look like
the dainty creature that just now was the model she so
passionately wanted to be like. Then she blew out the lamp and sat
a while by the window, looking down through the rhododendrons, at
the shining water and at the old water-wheel sleepily at rest in
the moonlight. She knelt down then at her bedside to say her
prayers--as her dead sister had taught her to do--and she asked
God to bless Jack--wondering as she prayed that she had heard
nobody else call him Jack--and then she lay down with her breast
heaving. She had told him she would never do that again, but she
couldn't help it now--the tears came and from happiness she cried
herself softly to sleep.




XIII


Hale rode that night under a brilliant moon to the worm of a
railroad that had been creeping for many years toward the Gap. The
head of it was just protruding from the Natural Tunnel twenty
miles away. There he sent his horse back, slept in a shanty till
morning, and then the train crawled through a towering bench of
rock. The mouth of it on the other side opened into a mighty
amphitheatre with solid rock walls shooting vertically hundreds of
feet upward. Vertically, he thought--with the back of his head
between his shoulders as he looked up--they were more than
vertical--they were actually concave. The Almighty had not only
stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him--He had driven
this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them, and yet the
wretched road was going toward them like a snail. On the fifth
night, thereafter he was back there at the tunnel again from New
York--with a grim mouth and a happy eye. He had brought success
with him this time and there was no sleep for him that night. He
had been delayed by a wreck, it was two o'clock in the morning,
and not a horse was available; so he started those twenty miles
afoot, and day was breaking when he looked down on the little
valley shrouded in mist and just wakening from sleep.

Things had been moving while he was away, as he quickly learned.
The English were buying lands right and left at the gap sixty
miles southwest. Two companies had purchased most of the town-site
where he was--HIS town-site--and were going to pool their holdings
and form an improvement company. But a good deal was left, and
straightway Hale got a map from his office and with it in his hand
walked down the curve of the river and over Poplar Hill and
beyond. Early breakfast was ready when he got back to the hotel.
He swallowed a cup of coffee so hastily that it burned him, and
June, when she passed his window on her way to school, saw him
busy over his desk. She started to shout to him, but he looked so
haggard and grim that she was afraid, and went on, vaguely hurt by
a preoccupation that seemed quite to have excluded her. For two
hours then, Hale haggled and bargained, and at ten o'clock he went
to the telegraph office. The operator who was speculating in a
small way himself smiled when he read the telegram.

"A thousand an acre?" he repeated with a whistle. "You could have
got that at twenty-five per--three months ago."

"I know," said Hale, "there's time enough yet." Then he went to
his room, pulled the blinds down and went to sleep, while rumour
played with his name through the town.

It was nearly the closing hour of school when, dressed and freshly
shaven, he stepped out into the pale afternoon and walked up
toward the schoolhouse. The children were pouring out of the
doors. At the gate there was a sudden commotion, he saw a crimson
figure flash into the group that had stopped there, and flash out,
and then June came swiftly toward him followed closely by a tall
boy with a cap on his head. That far away he could see that she
was angry and he hurried toward her. Her face was white with rage,
her mouth was tight and her dark eyes were aflame. Then from the
group another tall boy darted out and behind him ran a smaller
one, bellowing. Hale heard the boy with the cap call kindly:

"Hold on, little girl! I won't let 'em touch you." June stopped
with him and Hale ran to them.

"Here," he called, "what's the matter?"

June burst into crying when she saw him and leaned over the fence
sobbing. The tall lad with the cap had his back to Hale, and he
waited till the other two boys came up. Then he pointed to the
smaller one and spoke to Hale without looking around.

"Why, that little skate there was teasing this little girl and--"

"She slapped him," said Hale grimly. The lad with the cap turned.
His eyes were dancing and the shock of curly hair that stuck from
his absurd little cap shook with his laughter.

"Slapped him! She knocked him as flat as a pancake."

"Yes, an' you said you'd stand fer her," said the other tall boy
who was plainly a mountain lad. He was near bursting with rage.

"You bet I will," said the boy with the cap heartily, "right now!"
and he dropped his books to the ground.

"Hold on!" said Hale, jumping between them. "You ought to be
ashamed of yourself," he said to the mountain boy.

"I wasn't atter the gal," he said indignantly. "I was comin' fer
him."

The boy with the cap tried to get away from Hale's grasp.

"No use, sir," he said coolly. "You'd better let us settle it now.
We'll have to do it some time. I know the breed. He'll fight all
right and there's no use puttin' it off. It's got to come."

"You bet it's got to come," said the mountain lad. "You can't call
my brother names."

"Well, he IS a skate," said the boy with the cap, with no heat at
all in spite of his indignation, and Hale wondered at his aged
calm.

"Every one of you little tads," he went on coolly, waving his hand
at the gathered group, "is a skate who teases this little girl.
And you older boys are skates for letting the little ones do it,
the whole pack of you--and I'm going to spank any little tadpole
who does it hereafter, and I'm going to punch the head off any big
one who allows it. It's got to stop NOW!" And as Hale dragged him
off he added to the mountain boy, "and I'm going to begin with you
whenever you say the word." Hale was laughing now.

"You don't seem to understand," he said, "this is my affair."

"I beg your pardon, sir, I don't understand."

"Why, I'm taking care of this little girl."

"Oh, well, you see I didn't know that. I've only been here two
days. But"--his frank, generous face broke into a winning smile--
"you don't go to school. You'll let me watch out for her there?"

"Sure! I'll be very grateful."

"Not at all, sir--not at all. It was a great pleasure and I think
I'll have lots of fun." He looked at June, whose grateful eyes had
hardly left his face.

"So don't you soil your little fist any more with any of 'em, but
just tell me--er--er--"

"June," she said, and a shy smile came through her tears.

"June," he finished with a boyish laugh. "Good-by sir."

"You haven't told me your name."

"I suppose you know my brothers, sir, the Berkleys."

"I should say so," and Hale held out his hand. "You're Bob?"

"Yes, sir."

"I knew you were coming, and I'm mighty glad to see you. I hope
you and June will be good friends and I'll be very glad to have
you watch over her when I'm away."

"I'd like nothing better, sir," he said cheerfully, and quite
impersonally as far as June was concerned. Then his eyes lighted
up.

"My brothers don't seem to want me to join the Police Guard. Won't
you say a word for me?"

"I certainly will."

"Thank you, sir."

That "sir" no longer bothered Hale. At first he had thought it a
mark of respect to his superior age, and he was not particularly
pleased, but when he knew now that the lad was another son of the
old gentleman whom he saw riding up the valley every morning on a
gray horse, with several dogs trailing after him--he knew the word
was merely a family characteristic of old-fashioned courtesy.

"Isn't he nice, June?"

"Yes," she said.

"Have you missed me, June?"

June slid her hand into his. "I'm so glad you come back." They
were approaching the gate now.

"June, you said you weren't going to cry any more." June's head
drooped.

"I know, but I jes' can't help it when I git mad," she said
seriously. "I'd bust if I didn't."

"All right," said Hale kindly.

"I've cried twice," she said.

"What were you mad about the other time?"

"I wasn't mad."

"Then why did you cry, June?"

Her dark eyes looked full at him a moment and then her long lashes
hid them.

"Cause you was so good to me."

Hale choked suddenly and patted her on the shoulder.

"Go in, now, little girl, and study. Then you must take a walk.
I've got some work to do. I'll see you at supper time."

"All right," said June. She turned at the gate to watch Hale enter
the hotel, and as she started indoors, she heard a horse coming at
a gallop and she turned again to see her cousin, Dave Tolliver,
pull up in front of the house. She ran back to the gate and then
she saw that he was swaying in his saddle.

"Hello, June!" he called thickly.

Her face grew hard and she made no answer.

"I've come over to take ye back home."

She only stared at him rebukingly, and he straightened in his
saddle with an effort at self-control--but his eyes got darker and
he looked ugly.

"D'you hear me? I've come over to take ye home."

"You oughter be ashamed o' yourself," she said hotly, and she
turned to go back into the house.

"Oh, you ain't ready now. Well, git ready an' we'll start in the
mornin'. I'll be aroun' fer ye 'bout the break o' day."

He whirled his horse with an oath--June was gone. She saw him ride
swaying down the street and she ran across to the hotel and found
Hale sitting in the office with another man. Hale saw her entering
the door swiftly, he knew something was wrong and he rose to meet
her.

"Dave's here," she whispered hurriedly, "an' he says he's come to
take me home."

"Well," said Hale, "he won't do it, will he?" June shook her head
and then she said significantly:

"Dave's drinkin'."

Hale's brow clouded. Straightway he foresaw trouble--but he said
cheerily:

"All right. You go back and keep in the house and I'll be over by
and by and we'll talk it over." And, without another word, she
went. She had meant to put on her new dress and her new shoes and
stockings that night that Hale might see her--but she was in doubt
about doing it when she got to her room. She tried to study her
lessons for the next day, but she couldn't fix her mind on them.
She wondered if Dave might not get into a fight or, perhaps, he
would get so drunk that he would go to sleep somewhere--she knew
that men did that after drinking very much--and, anyhow, he would
not bother her until next morning, and then he would be sober and
would go quietly back home. She was so comforted that she got to
thinking about the hair of the girl who sat in front of her at
school. It was plaited and she had studied just how it was done
and she began to wonder whether she could fix her own that way. So
she got in front of the mirror and loosened hers in a mass about
her shoulders--the mass that was to Hale like the golden bronze of
a wild turkey's wing. The other girl's plaits were the same size,
so that the hair had to be equally divided--thus she argued to
herself--but how did that girl manage to plait it behind her back?
She did it in front, of course, so June divided the bronze heap
behind her and pulled one half of it in front of her and then for
a moment she was helpless. Then she laughed--it must be done like
the grass-blades and strings she had plaited for Bub, of course,
so, dividing that half into three parts, she did the plaiting
swiftly and easily. When it was finished she looked at the braid,
much pleased--for it hung below her waist and was much longer than
any of the other girls' at school. The transition was easy now, so
interested had she become. She got out her tan shoes and stockings
and the pretty white dress and put them on. The millpond was dark
with shadows now, and she went down the stairs and out to the gate
just as Dave again pulled up in front of it. He stared at the
vision wonderingly and long, and then he began to laugh with the
scorn of soberness and the silliness of drink.

"YOU ain't June, air ye?" The girl never moved. As if by a
preconcerted signal three men moved toward the boy, and one of
them said sternly:

"Drop that pistol. You are under arrest.' The boy glared like a
wild thing trapped, from one to another of the three--a pistol
gleamed in the hand of each--and slowly thrust his own weapon into
his pocket.

"Get off that horse," added the stern voice. Just then Hale rushed
across the street and the mountain youth saw him.

"Ketch his pistol," cried June, in terror for Hale--for she knew
what was coming, and one of the men caught with both hands the
wrist of Dave's arm as it shot behind him.

"Take him to the calaboose!"

At that June opened the gate--that disgrace she could never stand-
-but Hale spoke.

"I know him, boys. He doesn't mean any harm. He doesn't know the
regulations yet. Suppose we let him go home."

"All right," said Logan. "The calaboose or home. Will you go
home?"

In the moment, the mountain boy had apparently forgotten his
captors--he was staring at June with wonder, amazement,
incredulity struggling through the fumes in his brain to his
flushed face. She--a Tolliver--had warned a stranger against her
own blood-cousin.

"Will you go home?" repeated Logan sternly.

The boy looked around at the words, as though he were half dazed,
and his baffled face turned sick and white.

"Lemme loose!" he said sullenly. "I'll go home." And he rode
silently away, after giving Hale a vindictive look that told him
plainer than words that more was yet to come. Hale had heard
June's warning cry, but now when he looked for her she was gone.
He went in to supper and sat down at the table and still she did
not come.

"She's got a surprise for you," said Mrs. Crane, smiling
mysteriously. "She's been fixing for you for an hour. My! but
she's pretty in them new clothes--why, June!"

June was coming in--she wore her homespun, her scarlet homespun
and the Psyche knot. She did not seem to have heard Mrs. Crane's
note of wonder, and she sat quietly down in her seat. Her face was
pale and she did not look at Hale. Nothing was said of Dave--in
fact, June said nothing at all, and Hale, too, vaguely
understanding, kept quiet. Only when he went out, Hale called her
to the gate and put one hand on her head.

"I'm sorry, little girl."

The girl lifted her great troubled eyes to him, but no word passed
her lips, and Hale helplessly left her.

June did not cry that night. She sat by the window--wretched and
tearless. She had taken sides with "furriners" against her own
people. That was why, instinctively, she had put on her old
homespun with a vague purpose of reparation to them. She knew the
story Dave would take back home--the bitter anger that his people
and hers would feel at the outrage done him--anger against the
town, the Guard, against Hale because he was a part of both and
even against her. Dave was merely drunk, he had simply shot off
his pistol--that was no harm in the hills. And yet everybody had
dashed toward him as though he had stolen something--even Hale.
Yes, even that boy with the cap who had stood up for her at school
that afternoon--he had rushed up, his face aflame with excitement,
eager to take part should Dave resist. She had cried out
impulsively to save Hale, but Dave would not understand. No, in
his eyes she had been false to family and friends--to the clan--
she had sided with "furriners." What would her father say? Perhaps
she'd better go home next day--perhaps for good--for there was a
deep unrest within her that she could not fathom, a premonition
that she was at the parting of the ways, a vague fear of the
shadows that hung about the strange new path on which her feet
were set. The old mill creaked in the moonlight below her.
Sometimes, when the wind blew up Lonesome Cove, she could hear
Uncle Billy's wheel creaking just that way. A sudden pang of
homesickness choked her, but she did not cry. Yes, she would go
home next day. She blew out the light and undressed in the dark as
she did at home and went to bed. And that night the little night-
gown lay apart from her in the drawer--unfolded and untouched.




XIV


But June did not go home. Hale anticipated that resolution of hers
and forestalled it by being on hand for breakfast and taking June
over to the porch of his little office. There he tried to explain
to her that they were trying to build a town and must have law and
order; that they must have no personal feeling for or against
anybody and must treat everybody exactly alike--no other course
was fair--and though June could not quite understand, she trusted
him and she said she would keep on at school until her father came
for her.

"Do you think he will come, June?"

The little girl hesitated.

"I'm afeerd he will," she said, and Hale smiled.

"Well, I'll try to persuade him to let you stay, if he does come."

June was quite right. She had seen the matter the night before
just as it was. For just at that hour young Dave, sobered, but
still on the verge of tears from anger and humiliation, was
telling the story of the day in her father's cabin. The old man's
brows drew together and his eyes grew fierce and sullen, both at
the insult to a Tolliver and at the thought of a certain moonshine
still up a ravine not far away and the indirect danger to it in
any finicky growth of law and order. Still he had a keen sense of
justice, and he knew that Dave had not told all the story, and
from him Dave, to his wonder, got scant comfort--for another
reason as well: with a deal pending for the sale of his lands, the
shrewd old man would not risk giving offence to Hale--not until
that matter was settled, anyway. And so June was safer from
interference just then than she knew. But Dave carried the story
far and wide, and it spread as a story can only in the hills. So
that the two people most talked about among the Tollivers and,
through Loretta, among the Falins as well, were June and Hale, and
at the Gap similar talk would come. Already Hale's name was on
every tongue in the town, and there, because of his recent
purchases of town-site land, he was already, aside from his
personal influence, a man of mysterious power.

Meanwhile, the prescient shadow of the coming "boom" had stolen
over the hills and the work of the Guard had grown rapidly.

Every Saturday there had been local lawlessness to deal with. The
spirit of personal liberty that characterized the spot was
traditional. Here for half a century the people of Wise County and
of Lee, whose border was but a few miles down the river, came to
get their wool carded, their grist ground and farming utensils
mended. Here, too, elections were held viva voce under the
beeches, at the foot of the wooded spur now known as Imboden Hill.
Here were the muster-days of wartime. Here on Saturdays the people
had come together during half a century for sport and horse-
trading and to talk politics. Here they drank apple-jack and hard
cider, chaffed and quarrelled and fought fist and skull. Here the
bullies of the two counties would come together to decide who was
the "best man." Here was naturally engendered the hostility
between the hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley people of Lee,
and here was fought a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise
and a famous bully of Lee. On election days the country people
would bring in gingercakes made of cane-molasses, bread homemade
of Burr flour and moonshine and apple-jack which the candidates
would buy and distribute through the crowd. And always during the
afternoon there were men who would try to prove themselves the
best Democrats in the State of Virginia by resort to tooth, fist
and eye-gouging thumb. Then to these elections sometimes would
come the Kentuckians from over the border to stir up the hostility
between state and state, which makes that border bristle with
enmity to this day. For half a century, then, all wild oats from
elsewhere usually sprouted at the Gap. And thus the Gap had been
the shrine of personal freedom--the place where any one individual
had the right to do his pleasure with bottle and cards and
politics and any other the right to prove him wrong if he were
strong enough. Very soon, as the Hon. Sam Budd predicted, they had
the hostility of Lee concentrated on them as siding with the
county of Wise, and they would gain, in addition now, the general
hostility of the Kentuckians, because as a crowd of meddlesome
"furriners" they would be siding with the Virginians in the
general enmity already alive. Moreover, now that the feud
threatened activity over in Kentucky, more trouble must come, too,
from that source, as the talk that came through the Gap, after
young Dave Tolliver's arrest, plainly indicated.

Town ordinances had been passed. The wild centaurs were no longer
allowed to ride up and down the plank walks of Saturdays with
their reins in their teeth and firing a pistol into the ground
with either hand; they could punctuate the hotel sign no more;
they could not ride at a fast gallop through the streets of the
town, and, Lost Spirit of American Liberty!--they could not even
yell. But the lawlessness of the town itself and its close
environment was naturally the first objective point, and the first
problem involved was moonshine and its faithful ally "the blind
tiger." The "tiger" is a little shanty with an ever-open mouth--a
hole in the door like a post-office window. You place your money
on the sill and, at the ring of the coin, a mysterious arm emerges
from the hole, sweeps the money away and leaves a bottle of white
whiskey. Thus you see nobody's face; the owner of the beast is
safe, and so are you--which you might not be, if you saw and told.
In every little hollow about the Gap a tiger had his lair, and
these were all bearded at once by a petition to the county judge
for high license saloons, which was granted. This measure drove
the tigers out of business, and concentrated moonshine in the
heart of the town, where its devotees were under easy guard. One
"tiger" only indeed was left, run by a round-shouldered crouching
creature whom Bob Berkley--now at Hale's solicitation a policeman
and known as the Infant of the Guard--dubbed Caliban. His shanty
stood midway in the Gap, high from the road, set against a dark
clump of pines and roared at by the river beneath. Everybody knew
he sold whiskey, but he was too shrewd to be caught, until, late
one afternoon, two days after young Dave's arrest, Hale coming
through the Gap into town glimpsed a skulking figure with a hand-
barrel as it slipped from the dark pines into Caliban's cabin. He
pulled in his horse, dismounted and deliberated. If he went on
down the road now, they would see him and suspect. Moreover, the
patrons of the tiger would not appear until after dark, and he
wanted a prisoner or two. So Hale led his horse up into the bushes
and came back to a covert by

H3 the roadside to watch and wait. As he sat there, a merry
whistle sounded down the road, and Hale smiled. Soon the Infant of
the Guard came along, his hands in his pockets, his cap on the
back of his head, his pistol bumping his hip in manly fashion and
making the ravines echo with his pursed lips. He stopped in front
of Hale, looked toward the river, drew his revolver and aimed it
at a floating piece of wood. The revolver cracked, the piece of
wood skidded on the surface of the water and there was no splash.

"That was a pretty good shot," said Hale in a low voice. The boy
whirled and saw him.

"Well-what are you--?"

"Easy--easy!" cautioned Hale. "Listen! I've just seen a moonshiner
go into Caliban's cabin." The boy's eager eyes sparkled.

"Let's go after him."

"No, you go on back. If you don't, they'll be suspicious. Get
another man"--Hale almost laughed at the disappointment in the
lad's face at his first words, and the joy that came after it--
"and climb high above the shanty and come back here to me. Then
after dark we'll dash in and cinch Caliban and his customers."

"Yes, sir," said the lad. "Shall I whistle going back?" Hale
nodded approval.

"Just the same." And off Bob went, whistling like a calliope and
not even turning his head to look at the cabin. In half an hour
Hale thought he heard something crashing through the bushes high
on the mountain side, and, a little while afterward, the boy
crawled through the bushes to him alone. His cap was gone, there
was a bloody scratch across his face and he was streaming with
perspiration.

"You'll have to excuse me, sir," he panted, "I didn't see anybody
but one of my brothers, and if I had told him, he wouldn't have
let ME come. And I hurried back for fear--for fear something would
happen."

"Well, suppose I don't let you go."

"Excuse me, sir, but I don't see how you can very well help. You
aren't my brother and you can't go alone."

"I was," said Hale.

"Yes, sir, but not now."

Hale was worried, but there was nothing else to be done.

"All right. I'll let you go if you stop saying 'sir' to me. It
makes me feel so old."

"Certainly, sir," said the lad quite unconsciously, and when Hale
smothered a laugh, he looked around to see what had amused him.
Darkness fell quickly, and in the gathering gloom they saw two
more figures skulk into the cabin.

"We'll go now--for we want the fellow who's selling the
moonshine."

Again Hale was beset with doubts about the boy and his own
responsibility to the boy's brothers. The lad's eyes were shining,
but his face was more eager than excited and his hand was as
steady as Hale's own.

"You slip around and station yourself behind that pine-tree just
behind the cabin"--the boy looked crestfallen--"and if anybody
tries to get out of the back door--you halt him."

"Is there a back door?"

"I don't know," Hale said rather shortly. "You obey orders. I'm
not your brother, but I'm your captain."

"I beg your pardon, sir. Shall I go now?"

"Yes, you'll hear me at the front door. They won't make any
resistance." The lad stepped away with nimble caution high above
the cabin, and he even took his shoes off before he slid lightly
down to his place behind the pine. There was no back door, only a
window, and his disappointment was bitter. Still, when he heard
Hale at the front door, he meant to make a break for that window,
and he waited in the still gloom. He could hear the rough talk and
laughter within and now and then the clink of a tin cup. By and by
there was a faint noise in front of the cabin, and he steadied his
nerves and his beating heart. Then he heard the door pushed
violently in and Hale's cry:

"Surrender!"

Hale stood on the threshold with his pistol outstretched in his
right hand. The door had struck something soft and he said sharply
again:

"Come out from behind that door--hands up!"

At the same moment, the back window flew open with a bang and
Bob's pistol covered the edge of the opened door. "Caliban" had
rolled from his box like a stupid animal. Two of his patrons sat
dazed and staring from Hale to the boy's face at the window. A
mountaineer stood in one corner with twitching fingers and
shifting eyes like a caged wild thing and forth issued from behind
the door, quivering with anger--young Dave Tolliver. Hale stared
at him amazed, and when Dave saw Hale, such a wave of fury surged
over his face that Bob thought it best to attract his attention
again; which he did by gently motioning at him with the barrel of
his pistol.

"Hold on, there," he said quietly, and young Dave stood still.

"Climb through that window, Bob, and collect the batteries," said
Hale.

"Sure, sir," said the lad, and with his pistol still prominently
in the foreground he threw his left leg over the sill and as he
climbed in he quoted with a grunt: "Always go in force to make an
arrest." Grim and serious as it was, with June's cousin glowering
at him, Hale could not help smiling.

"You didn't go home, after all," said Hale to young Dave, who
clenched his hands and his lips but answered nothing; "or, if you
did, you got back pretty quick. "And still Dave was silent.

"Get 'em all, Bob?" In answer the boy went the rounds--feeling the
pocket of each man's right hip and his left breast.

"Yes, sir."

"Unload 'em!"

The lad "broke" each of the four pistols, picked up a piece of
twine and strung them together through each trigger-guard.

"Close that window and stand here at the door."

With the boy at the door, Hale rolled the hand-barrel to the
threshold and the white liquor gurgled joyously on the steps.

"All right, come along," he said to the captives, and at last
young Dave spoke:

"Whut you takin' me fer?"

Hale pointed to the empty hand-barrel and Dave's answer was a look
of scorn.

"I nuvver brought that hyeh."

"You were drinking illegal liquor in a blind tiger, and if you
didn't bring it you can prove that later. Anyhow, we'll want you
as a witness," and Hale looked at the other mountaineer, who had
turned his eyes quickly to Dave. Caliban led the way with young
Dave, and Hale walked side by side with them while Bob was escort
for the other two. The road ran along a high bank, and as Bob was
adjusting the jangling weapons on his left arm, the strange
mountaineer darted behind him and leaped headlong into the tops of
thick rhododendron. Before Hale knew what had happened the lad's
pistol flashed.

"Stop, boy!" he cried, horrified. "Don't shoot!" and he had to
catch the lad to keep him from leaping after the runaway. The shot
had missed; they heard the runaway splash into the river and go
stumbling across it and then there was silence. Young Dave
laughed:

"Uncle Judd'll be over hyeh to-morrow to see about this." Hale
said nothing and they went on. At the door of the calaboose Dave
balked and had to be pushed in by main force. They left him
weeping and cursing with rage.

"Go to bed, Bob," said Hale.

"Yes, sir," said Bob; "just as soon as I get my lessons."

Hale did not go to the boarding-house that night--he feared to
face June. Instead he went to the hotel to scraps of a late supper
and then to bed. He had hardly touched the pillow, it seemed, when
somebody shook him by the shoulder. It was Macfarlan, and daylight
was streaming through the window.

"A gang of those Falins are here," Macfarlan said, "and they're
after young Dave Tolliver--about a dozen of 'em. Young Buck is
with them, and the sheriff. They say he shot a man over the
mountains yesterday."

Hale sprang for his clothes--here was a quandary.

"If we turn him over to them--they'll kill him." Macfarlan nodded.

"Of course, and if we leave him in that weak old calaboose,
they'll get more help and take him out to-night."

"Then we'll take him to the county jail."

"They'll take him away from us."

"No, they won't. You go out and get as many shotguns as you can
find and load them with buckshot."

Macfarlan nodded approvingly and disappeared. Hale plunged his
face in a basin of cold water, soaked his hair and, as he was
mopping his face with a towel, there was a ponderous tread on the
porch, the door opened without the formality of a knock, and Devil
Judd Tolliver, with his hat on and belted with two huge pistols,
stepped stooping within. His eyes, red with anger and loss of
sleep, were glaring, and his heavy moustache and beard showed the
twitching of his mouth.

"Whar's Dave?" he said shortly.

"In the calaboose."

"Did you put him in?"

"Yes," said Hale calmly.

"Well, by God," the old man said with repressed fury, "you can't
git him out too soon if you want to save trouble."

"Look here, Judd," said Hale seriously. "You are one of the last
men in the world I want to have trouble with for many reasons; but
I'm an officer over here and I'm no more afraid of you"--Hale
paused to let that fact sink in and it did--"than you are of me.
Dave's been selling liquor."

"He hain't," interrupted the old mountaineer. "He didn't bring
that liquor over hyeh. I know who done it."

"All right," said Hale; "I'll take your word for it and I'll let
him out, if you say so, but---"

"Right now," thundered old Judd.

"Do you know that young Buck Falin and a dozen of his gang are
over here after him?" The old man looked stunned.

"Whut--now?"

"They're over there in the woods across the river NOW and they
want me to give him up to them. They say they have the sheriff
with them and they want him for shooting a man on Leatherwood
Creek, day before yesterday."

"It's all a lie," burst out old Judd. "They want to kill him."

"Of course--and I was going to take him up to the county jail
right away for safe-keeping."

"D'ye mean to say you'd throw that boy into jail and then fight
them Falins to pertect him?" the old man asked slowly and
incredulously. Hale pointed to a two-store building through his
window.

"If you get in the back part of that store at a window, you can
see whether I will or not. I can summon you to help, and if a
fight comes up you can do your share from the window."

The old man's eyes lighted up like a leaping flame.

"Will you let Dave out and give him a Winchester and help us fight
'em?" he said eagerly. "We three can whip 'em all."

"No," said Hale shortly. "I'd try to keep both sides from
fighting, and I'd arrest Dave or you as quickly as I would a
Falin."

The average mountaineer has little conception of duty in the
abstract, but old Judd belonged to the better class--and there are
many of them--that does. He looked into Hale's eyes long and
steadily.

"All right."

Macfarlan came in hurriedly and stopped short--seeing the hatted,
bearded giant.

"This is Mr. Tolliver--an uncle of Dave's--Judd Tolliver," said
Hale. "Go ahead."

"I've got everything fixed--but I couldn't get but five of the
fellows--two of the Berkley boys. They wouldn't let me tell Bob."

"All right. Can I summon Mr. Tolliver here?"

"Yes," said Macfarlan doubtfully, "but you know---"

"He won't be seen," interrupted Hale, understandingly. "He'll be
at a window in the back of that store and he won't take part
unless a fight begins, and if it does, we'll need him."

An hour later Devil Judd Tolliver was in the store Hale pointed
out and peering cautiously around the edge of an open window at
the wooden gate of the ramshackle calaboose. Several Falins were
there--led by young Buck, whom Hale recognized as the red-headed
youth at the head of the tearing horsemen who had swept by him
that late afternoon when he was coming back from his first trip to
Lonesome Cove. The old man gritted his teeth as he looked and he
put one of his huge pistols on a table within easy reach and kept
the other clenched in his right fist. From down the street came
five horsemen, led by John Hale. Every man carried a double-
barrelled shotgun, and the old man smiled and his respect for Hale
rose higher, high as it already was, for nobody--mountaineer or
not--has love for a hostile shotgun. The Falins, armed only with
pistols, drew near.

"Keep back!" he heard Hale say calmly, and they stopped--young
Buck alone going on.

"We want that feller," said young Buck.

"Well, you don't get him," said Hale quietly. "He's our prisoner.
Keep back!" he repeated, motioning with the barrel of his shotgun-
-and young Buck moved backward to his own men, The old man saw
Hale and another man--the sergeant--go inside the heavy gate of
the stockade. He saw a boy in a cap, with a pistol in one hand and
a strapped set of books in the other, come running up to the men
with the shotguns and he heard one of them say angrily:

"I told you not to come."

"I know you did," said the boy imperturbably.

"You go on to school," said another of the men, but the boy with
the cap shook his head and dropped his books to the ground. The
big gate opened just then and out came Hale and the sergeant, and
between them young Dave--his eyes blinking in the sunlight.

"Damn ye," he heard Dave say to Hale. "I'll get even with you fer
this some day"--and then the prisoner's eyes caught the horses and
shotguns and turned to the group of Falins and he shrank back
utterly dazed. There was a movement among the Falins and Devil
Judd caught up his other pistol and with a grim smile got ready.
Young Buck had turned to his crowd:

"Men," he said, "you know I never back down"--Devil Judd knew
that, too, and he was amazed by the words that followed-"an' if
you say so, we'll have him or die; but we ain't in our own state
now. They've got the law and the shotguns on us, an' I reckon we'd
better go slow."

The rest seemed quite willing to go slow, and, as they put their
pistols up, Devil Judd laughed in his beard. Hale put young Dave
on a horse and the little shotgun cavalcade quietly moved away
toward the county-seat.

The crestfallen Falins dispersed the other way after they had
taken a parting shot at the Hon. Samuel Budd, who, too, had a
pistol in his hand. Young Buck looked long at him--and then he
laughed:

"You, too, Sam Budd," he said. "We folks'll rickollect this on
election day." The Hon. Sam deigned no answer.

And up in the store Devil Judd lighted his pipe and sat down to
think out the strange code of ethics that governed that police-
guard. Hale had told him to wait there, and it was almost noon
before the boy with the cap came to tell him that the Falins had
all left town. The old man looked at him kindly.

"Air you the little feller whut fit fer June?"

"Not yet," said Bob; "but it's coming."

"Well, you'll whoop him."

"I'll do my best."

"Whar is she?"

"She's waiting for you over at the boarding-house."

"Does she know about this trouble?"

"Not a thing; she thinks you've come to take her home." The old
man made no answer, and Bob led him back toward Hale's office.
June was waiting at the gate, and the boy, lifting his cap, passed
on. June's eyes were dark with anxiety.

"You come to take me home, dad?"

"I been thinkin' 'bout it," he said, with a doubtful shake of his
head.

June took him upstairs to her room and pointed out the old water-
wheel through the window and her new clothes (she had put on her
old homespun again when she heard he was in town), and the old man
shook his head.

"I'm afeerd 'bout all these fixin's--you won't never be satisfied
agin in Lonesome Cove."

"Why, dad," she said reprovingly. "Jack says I can go over
whenever I please, as soon as the weather gits warmer and the
roads gits good."

"I don't know," said the old man, still shaking his head.

All through dinner she was worried. Devil Judd hardly ate
anything, so embarrassed was he by the presence of so many
"furriners" and by the white cloth and table-ware, and so fearful
was he that he would be guilty of some breach of manners.
Resolutely he refused butter, and at the third urging by Mrs.
Crane he said firmly, but with a shrewd twinkle in his eye:

"No, thank ye. I never eats butter in town. I've kept store
myself," and he was no little pleased with the laugh that went
around the table. The fact was he was generally pleased with
June's environment and, after dinner, he stopped teasing June.

"No, honey, I ain't goin' to take you away. I want ye to stay
right where ye air. Be a good girl now and do whatever Jack Hale
tells ye and tell that boy with all that hair to come over and see
me." June grew almost tearful with gratitude, for never had he
called her "honey" before that she could remember, and never had
he talked so much to her, nor with so much kindness.

"Air ye comin' over soon?"

"Mighty soon, dad."

"Well, take keer o' yourself."

"I will, dad," she said, and tenderly she watched his great figure
slouch out of sight.

An hour after dark, as old Judd sat on the porch of the cabin in
Lonesome Cove, young Dave Tolliver rode up to the gate on a
strange horse. He was in a surly mood.

"He lemme go at the head of the valley and give me this hoss to
git here," the boy grudgingly explained. "I'm goin' over to git
mine termorrer."

"Seems like you'd better keep away from that Gap," said the old
man dryly, and Dave reddened angrily.

"Yes, and fust thing you know he'll be over hyeh atter YOU." The
old man turned on him sternly

"Jack Hale knows that liquer was mine. He knows I've got a still
over hyeh as well as you do--an' he's never axed a question nor
peeped an eye. I reckon he would come if he thought he oughter--
but I'm on this side of the state-line. If I was on his side,
mebbe I'd stop."

Young Dave stared, for things were surely coming to a pretty pass
in Lonesome Cove.

"An' I reckon," the old man went on, "hit 'ud be better grace in
you to stop sayin' things agin' him; fer if it hadn't been fer
him, you'd be laid out by them Falins by this time."

It was true, and Dave, silenced, was forced into another channel.

"I wonder," he said presently, "how them Falins always know when I
go over thar."

"I've been studyin' about that myself," said Devil Judd. Inside,
the old step-mother had heard Dave's query.

"I seed the Red Fox this afternoon," she quavered at the door.

"Whut was he doin' over hyeh?" asked Dave.

"Nothin'," she said, "jus' a-sneakin' aroun' the way he's al'ays
a-doin'. Seemed like he was mighty pertickuler to find out when
you was comin' back."

Both men started slightly.

 "We're all Tollivers now all right," said the Hon. Samuel Budd
that night while he sat with Hale on the porch overlooking the
mill-pond--and then he groaned a little.

"Them Falins have got kinsfolks to burn on the Virginia side and
they'd fight me tooth and toenail for this a hundred years hence!"

He puffed his pipe, but Hale said nothing.

"Yes, sir," he added cheerily, "we're in for a hell of a merry
time NOW. The mountaineer hates as long as he remembers and--he
never forgets."




XV


Hand in hand, Hale and June followed the footsteps of spring from
the time June met him at the school-house gate for their first
walk into the woods. Hale pointed to some boys playing marbles.

"That's the first sign," he said, and with quick understanding
June smiled.

The birdlike piping of hylas came from a marshy strip of woodland
that ran through the centre of the town and a toad was croaking at
the foot of Imboden Hill.

"And they come next."

They crossed the swinging foot-bridge, which was a miracle to
June, and took the foot-path along the clear stream of South Fork,
under the laurel which June called "ivy," and the rhododendron
which was "laurel" in her speech, and Hale pointed out catkins
greening on alders in one swampy place and willows just blushing
into life along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside
from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the
pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing
arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening,
and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by
were turkey peas, which she had hunted and eaten many times.

"You can't put that arbutus in a garden," said Hale, "it's as wild
as a hawk."

Presently he had the little girl listen to a pewee twittering in a
thorn-bush and the lusty call of a robin from an apple-tree. A
bluebird flew over-head with a merry chirp--its wistful note of
autumn long since forgotten. These were the first birds and
flowers, he said, and June, knowing them only by sight, must know
the name of each and the reason for that name. So that Hale found
himself walking the woods with an interrogation point, and that he
might not be confounded he had, later, to dip up much forgotten
lore. For every walk became a lesson in botany for June, such a
passion did she betray at once for flowers, and he rarely had to
tell her the same thing twice, since her memory was like a vise--
for everything, as he learned in time.

Her eyes were quicker than his, too, and now she pointed to a
snowy blossom with a deeply lobed leaf.

"Whut's that?"

"Bloodroot," said Hale, and he scratched the stem and forth issued
scarlet drops. "The Indians used to put it on their faces and
tomahawks"--she knew that word and nodded--"and I used to make red
ink of it when I was a little boy."

"No!" said June. With the next look she found a tiny bunch of
fuzzy hepaticas.

"Liver-leaf."

"Whut's liver?"

Hale, looking at her glowing face and eyes and her perfect little
body, imagined that she would never know unless told that she had
one, and so he waved one hand vaguely at his chest:

"It's an organ--and that herb is supposed to be good for it."

"Organ? Whut's that?"

"Oh, something inside of you."

June made the same gesture that Hale had.

"Me?"

"Yes," and then helplessly, "but not there exactly."

June's eyes had caught something else now and she ran for it:

"Oh! Oh!" It was a bunch of delicate anemones of intermediate
shades between white and red-yellow, pink and purple-blue.

"Those are anemones."

"A-nem-o-nes," repeated June.

"Wind-flowers--because the wind is supposed to open them." And,
almost unconsciously, Hale lapsed into a quotation:

"'And where a tear has dropped, a wind-flower blows.'"

"Whut's that?" said June quickly.

"That's poetry."

"Whut's po-e-try?" Hale threw up both hands.

"I don't know, but I'll read you some--some day."

By that time she was gurgling with delight over a bunch of spring
beauties that came up, root, stalk and all, when she reached for
them.

"Well, ain't they purty?" While they lay in her hand and she
looked, the rose-veined petals began to close, the leaves to droop
and the stem got limp.

"Ah-h!" crooned June. "I won't pull up no more o' THEM."

'"These little dream-flowers found in the spring.' More poetry,
June."

A little later he heard her repeating that line to herself. It was
an easy step to poetry from flowers, and evidently June was
groping for it.

A few days later the service-berry swung out white stars on the
low hill-sides, but Hale could tell her nothing that she did not
know about the "sarvice-berry." Soon, the dogwood swept in snowy
gusts along the mountains, and from a bank of it one morning a
red-bird flamed and sang: "What cheer! What cheer! What cheer!"
And like its scarlet coat the red-bud had burst into bloom. June
knew the red-bud, but she had never heard it called the Judas
tree.

"You see, the red-bud was supposed to be poisonous. It shakes in
the wind and says to the bees, 'Come on, little fellows--here's
your nice fresh honey, and when they come, it betrays and poisons
them."

"Well, what do you think o' that!" said June indignantly, and Hale
had to hedge a bit.

"Well, I don't know whether it REALLY does, but that's what they
SAY." A little farther on the white stars of the trillium gleamed
at them from the border of the woods and near by June stooped over
some lovely sky-blue blossoms with yellow eyes.

"Forget-me-nots," said Hale. June stooped to gather them with a
radiant face.

"Oh," she said, "is that what you call 'em?"

"They aren't the real ones--they're false forget-me-nots."

"Then I don't want 'em," said June. But they were beautiful and
fragrant and she added gently:

"'Tain't their fault. I'm agoin' to call 'em jus' forget-me-nots,
an' I'm givin' 'em to you," she said--"so that you won't."

"Thank you," said Hale gravely. "I won't."

They found larkspur, too--

"'Blue as the heaven it gazes at,'" quoted Hale.

"Whut's 'gazes'?"

"Looks." June looked up at the sky and down at the flower.

"Tain't," she said, "hit's bluer."

When they discovered something Hale did not know he would say that
it was one of those--

"'Wan flowers without a name.'"

"My!" said June at last, "seems like them wan flowers is a mighty
big fambly."

"They are," laughed Hale, "for a bachelor like me."

"Huh!" said June.

Later, they ran upon yellow adder's tongues in a hollow, each
blossom guarded by a pair of ear-like leaves, Dutchman's breeches
and wild bleeding hearts--a name that appealed greatly to the
fancy of the romantic little lady, and thus together they followed
the footsteps of that spring. And while she studied the flowers
Hale was studying the loveliest flower of them all--little June.
About ferns, plants and trees as well, he told her all he knew,
and there seemed nothing in the skies, the green world of the
leaves or the under world at her feet to which she was not
magically responsive. Indeed, Hale had never seen a man, woman or
child so eager to learn, and one day, when she had apparently
reached the limit of inquiry, she grew very thoughtful and he
watched her in silence a long while.

"What's the matter, June?" he asked finally.

"I'm just wonderin' why I'm always axin' why," said little June.

She was learning in school, too, and she was happier there now,
for there had been no more open teasing of the new pupil. Bob's
championship saved her from that, and, thereafter, school changed
straightway for June. Before that day she had kept apart from her
school-fellows at recess-times as well as in the school-room. Two
or three of the girls had made friendly advances to her, but she
had shyly repelled them--why she hardly knew--and it was her
lonely custom at recess-times to build a play-house at the foot of
a great beech with moss, broken bits of bottles and stones. Once
she found it torn to pieces and from the look on the face of the
tall mountain boy, Cal Heaton, who had grinned at her when she
went up for her first lesson, and who was now Bob's arch-enemy,
she knew that he was the guilty one. Again a day or two later it
was destroyed, and when she came down from the woods almost in
tears, Bob happened to meet her in the road and made her tell the
trouble she was in. Straightway he charged the trespasser with the
deed and was lied to for his pains. So after school that day he
slipped up on the hill with the little girl and helped her rebuild
again.

"Now I'll lay for him," said Bob, "and catch him at it."

"All right," said June, and she looked both her worry and her
gratitude so that Bob understood both; and he answered both with a
nonchalant wave of one hand.

"Never you mind--and don't you tell Mr. Hale," and June in dumb
acquiescence crossed heart and body. But the mountain boy was
wary, and for two or three days the play-house was undisturbed and
so Bob himself laid a trap. He mounted his horse immediately after
school, rode past the mountain lad, who was on his way home,
crossed the river, made a wide detour at a gallop and, hitching
his horse in the woods, came to the play-house from the other side
of the hill. And half an hour later, when the pale little teacher
came out of the school-house, he heard grunts and blows and
scuffling up in the woods, and when he ran toward the sounds, the
bodies of two of his pupils rolled into sight clenched fiercely,
with torn clothes and bleeding faces--Bob on top with the mountain
boy's thumb in his mouth and his own fingers gripped about his
antagonist's throat. Neither paid any attention to the school-
master, who pulled at Bob's coat unavailingly and with horror at
his ferocity. Bob turned his head, shook it as well as the thumb
in his mouth would let him, and went on gripping the throat under
him and pushing the head that belonged to it into the ground. The
mountain boy's tongue showed and his eyes bulged.

"'Nough!" he yelled. Bob rose then and told his story and the
school-master from New England gave them a short lecture on
gentleness and Christian charity and fixed on each the awful
penalty of "staying in" after school for an hour every day for a
week. Bob grinned:

"All right, professor--it was worth it," he said, but the mountain
lad shuffled silently away.

An hour later Hale saw the boy with a swollen lip, one eye black
and the other as merry as ever--but after that there was no more
trouble for June. Bob had made his promise good and gradually she
came into the games with her fellows there-after, while Bob stood
or sat aside, encouraging but taking no part--for was he not a
member of the Police Force? Indeed he was already known far and
wide as the Infant of the Guard, and always he carried a whistle
and usually, outside the school-house, a pistol bumped his hip,
while a Winchester stood in one corner of his room and a billy
dangled by his mantel-piece.

The games were new to June, and often Hale would stroll up to the
school-house to watch them--Prisoner's Base, Skipping the Rope,
Antny Over, Cracking the Whip and Lifting the Gate; and it pleased
him to see how lithe and active his little protege was and more
than a match in strength even for the boys who were near her size.
June had to take the penalty of her greenness, too, when she was
"introduced to the King and Queen" and bumped the ground between
the make-believe sovereigns, or got a cup of water in her face
when she was trying to see stars through a pipe. And the boys
pinned her dress to the bench through a crack and once she walked
into school with a placard on her back which read:

"June-Bug." But she was so good-natured that she fast became a
favourite. Indeed it was noticeable to Hale as well as Bob that
Cal Heaton, the mountain boy, seemed always to get next to June in
the Tugs of War, and one morning June found an apple on her desk.
She swept the room with a glance and met Cal's guilty flush, and
though she ate the apple, she gave him no thanks--in word, look or
manner. It was curious to Hale, moreover, to observe how June's
instinct deftly led her to avoid the mistakes in dress that
characterized the gropings of other girls who, like her, were in a
stage of transition. They wore gaudy combs and green skirts with
red waists, their clothes bunched at the hips, and to their shoes
and hands they paid no attention at all. None of these things for
June--and Hale did not know that the little girl had leaped her
fellows with one bound, had taken Miss Anne Saunders as her model
and was climbing upon the pedestal where that lady justly stood.
The two had not become friends as Hale hoped. June was always
silent and reserved when the older girl was around, but there was
never a move of the latter's hand or foot or lip or eye that the
new pupil failed to see. Miss Anne rallied Hale no little about
her, but he laughed good-naturedly, and asked why SHE could not
make friends with June.

"She's jealous," said Miss Saunders, and Hale ridiculed the idea,
for not one sign since she came to the Gap had she shown him. It
was the jealousy of a child she had once betrayed and that she had
outgrown, he thought; but he never knew how June stood behind the
curtains of her window, with a hungry suffering in her face and
eyes, to watch Hale and Miss Anne ride by and he never guessed
that concealment was but a sign of the dawn of womanhood that was
breaking within her. And she gave no hint of that breaking dawn
until one day early in May, when she heard a woodthrush for the
first time with Hale: for it was the bird she loved best, and
always its silver fluting would stop her in her tracks and send
her into dreamland. Hale had just broken a crimson flower from its
stem and held it out to her.

"Here's another of the 'wan ones,' June. Do you know what that
is?"

"Hit's"--she paused for correction with her lips drawn severely in
for precision--"IT'S a mountain poppy. Pap says it kills
goslings"--her eyes danced, for she was in a merry mood that day,
and she put both hands behind her--"if you air any kin to a goose,
you better drap it."

"That's a good one," laughed Hale, "but it's so lovely I'll take
the risk. I won't drop it."

"Drop it," caught June with a quick upward look, and then to fix
the word in her memory she repeated--"drop it, drop it, DROP it!"

"Got it now, June?"

"Uh-huh."

It was then that a woodthrush voiced the crowning joy of spring,
and with slowly filling eyes she asked its name.

"That bird," she said slowly and with a breaking voice, "sung just
that-a-way the mornin' my sister died."

She turned to him with a wondering smile.

"Somehow it don't make me so miserable, like it useter." Her smile
passed while she looked, she caught both hands to her heaving
breast and a wild intensity burned suddenly in her eyes.

"Why, June!"

"'Tain't nothin'," she choked out, and she turned hurriedly ahead
of him down the path. Startled, Hale had dropped the crimson
flower to his feet. He saw it and he let it lie.

Meanwhile, rumours were brought in that the Falins were coming
over from Kentucky to wipe out the Guard, and so straight were
they sometimes that the Guard was kept perpetually on watch. Once
while the members were at target practice, the shout arose:

"The Kentuckians are coming! The Kentuckians are coming!" And, at
double quick, the Guard rushed back to find it a false alarm and
to see men laughing at them in the street. The truth was that,
while the Falins had a general hostility against the Guard, their
particular enmity was concentrated on John Hale, as he discovered
when June was to take her first trip home one Friday afternoon.
Hale meant to carry her over, but the morning they were to leave,
old Judd Tolliver came to the Gap himself. He did not want June to
come home at that time, and he didn't think it was safe over there
for Hale just then. Some of the Falins had been seen hanging
around Lonesome Cove for the purpose, Judd believed, of getting a
shot at the man who had kept young Dave from falling into their
hands, and Hale saw that by that act he had, as Budd said, arrayed
himself with the Tollivers in the feud. In other words, he was a
Tolliver himself now, and as such the Falins meant to treat him.
Hale rebelled against the restriction, for he had started some
work in Lonesome Cove and was preparing a surprise over there for
June, but old Judd said:

"Just wait a while," and he said it so seriously that Hale for a
while took his advice.

So June stayed on at the Gap--with little disappointment,
apparently, that she could not visit home. And as spring passed
and the summer came on, the little girl budded and opened like a
rose. To the pretty school-teacher she was a source of endless
interest and wonder, for while the little girl was reticent and
aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself watched and studied in and out
of school, and Hale often had to smile at June's unconscious
imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and dress. And all the
time her hero-worship of Hale went on, fed by the talk of the
boardinghouse, her fellow pupils and of the town at large--and it
fairly thrilled her to know that to the Falins he was now a
Tolliver himself.

Sometimes Hale would get her a saddle, and then June would usurp
Miss Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see
the first blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to
Morris's farm on Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they
could see the Lonesome Pine. And all the time she worked at her
studies tirelessly--and when she was done with her lessons, she
read the fairy books that Hale got for her--read them until "Paul
and Virginia" fell into her hands, and then there were no more
fairy stories for little June. Often, late at night, Hale, from
the porch of his cottage, could see the light of her lamp sending
its beam across the dark water of the mill-pond, and finally he
got worried by the paleness of her face and sent her to the
doctor. She went unwillingly, and when she came back she reported
placidly that "organatically she was all right, the doctor said,"
but Hale was glad that vacation would soon come. At the beginning
of the last week of school he brought a little present for her
from New York--a slender necklace of gold with a little reddish
stone-pendant that was the shape of a cross. Hale pulled the
trinket from his pocket as they were walking down the river-bank
at sunset and the little girl quivered like an aspen-leaf in a
sudden puff of wind.

"Hit's a fairy-stone," she cried excitedly.

"Why, where on earth did you--"

"Why, sister Sally told me about 'em. She said folks found 'em
somewhere over here in Virginny, an' all her life she was a-
wishin' fer one an' she never could git it"--her eyes filled--
"seems like ever'thing she wanted is a-comin' to me."

"Do you know the story of it, too?" asked Hale.

June shook her head. "Sister Sally said it was a luck-piece.
Nothin' could happen to ye when ye was carryin' it, but it was
awful bad luck if you lost it." Hale put it around her neck and
fastened the clasp and June kept hold of the little cross with one
hand.

"Well, you mustn't lose it," he said.

"No--no--no," she repeated breathlessly, and Hale told her the
pretty story of the stone as they strolled back to supper. The
little crosses were to be found only in a certain valley in
Virginia, so perfect in shape that they seemed to have been
chiselled by hand, and they were a great mystery to the men who
knew all about rocks--the geologists.

"The ge-ol-o-gists," repeated June.

These men said there was no crystallization--nothing like them,
amended Hale--elsewhere in the world, and that just as crosses
were of different shapes--Roman, Maltese and St. Andrew's--so,
too, these crosses were found in all these different shapes. And
the myth--the story--was that this little valley was once
inhabited by fairies--June's eyes lighted, for it was a fairy
story after all--and that when a strange messenger brought them
the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and their tears, as
they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses of stone.
Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for a
long, long time people who found them had used them as charms to
bring good luck and ward off harm.

"And that's for you," he said, "because you've been such a good
little girl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I
reckon you'll be right glad to get home again."

June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at
him.

"Have you got one, too?" she asked, and she seemed much disturbed
when Hale shook his head.

"Well, I'LL git--GET--you one--some day."

"All right," laughed Hale.

There was again something strange in her manner as she turned
suddenly from him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was
the last week of school and Hale had just come down from the woods
behind the school-house at "little recess-time" in the afternoon.
The children were playing games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss
Anne and the little Professor were leaning on the fence watching
them. The little man raised his hand to halt Hale on the plank
sidewalk.

"I've been wanting to see you," he said in his dreamy, abstracted
way. "You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your
little protege some day, and I am indeed. She is the most
remarkable pupil I've yet seen here, and I have about come to the
conclusion that there is no quicker native intelligence in our
country than you shall find in the children of these mountaineers
and--"

Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that
turned Hale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his
harangue. Something had happened. They had been playing "Ring
Around the Rosy" and June had been caught. She stood scarlet and
tense and the cry was:

"Who's your beau--who's your beau?"

And still she stood with tight lips--flushing.

"You got to tell--you got to tell!"

The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous
consciousness, and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took
on an uneasy smile.

"Who's your beau?" came the chorus again.

The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:

"Jack!"

"Jack who?" But June looked around and saw the four at the gate.
Almost staggering, she broke from the crowd and, with one forearm
across her scarlet face, rushed past them into the school-house.
Miss Anne looked at Male's amazed face and she did not smile. Bob
turned respectfully away, ignoring it all, and the little
Professor, whose life-purpose was psychology, murmured in his
ignorance:

"Very remarkable--very remarkable!"

Through that afternoon June kept her hot face close to her books.
Bob never so much as glanced her way--little gentleman that he
was--but the one time she lifted her eyes, she met the mountain
lad's bent in a stupor-like gaze upon her. In spite of her
apparent studiousness, however, she missed her lesson and,
automatically, the little Professor told her to stay in after
school and recite to Miss Saunders. And so June and Miss Anne sat
in the school-room alone--the teacher reading a book, and the
pupil--her tears unshed--with her sullen face bent over her
lesson. In a few moments the door opened and the little Professor
thrust in his head. The girl had looked so hurt and tired when he
spoke to her that some strange sympathy moved him, mystified
though he was, to say gently now and with a smile that was rare
with him:

"You might excuse June, I think, Miss Saunders, and let her recite
some time to-morrow," and gently he closed the door. Miss Anne
rose:

"Very well, June," she said quietly.

June rose, too, gathering up her books, and as she passed the
teacher's platform she stopped and looked her full in the face.
She said not a word, and the tragedy between the woman and the
girl was played in silence, for the woman knew from the searching
gaze of the girl and the black defiance in her eyes, as she
stalked out of the room, that her own flush had betrayed her
secret as plainly as the girl's words had told hers.

Through his office window, a few minutes later, Hale saw June pass
swiftly into the house. In a few minutes she came swiftly out
again and went back swiftly toward the school-house. He was so
worried by the tense look in her face that he could work no more,
and in a few minutes he threw his papers down and followed her.
When he turned the corner, Bob was coming down the street with his
cap on the back of his head and swinging his books by a strap, and
the boy looked a little conscious when he saw Hale coming.

"Have you seen June?" Hale asked.

"No, sir," said Bob, immensely relieved.

"Did she come up this way?"

"I don't know, but--" Bob turned and pointed to the green dome of
a big beech.

"I think you'll find her at the foot of that tree," he said.
"That's where her play-house is and that's where she goes when
she's--that's where she usually goes."

"Oh, yes," said Hale--"her play-house. Thank you."

"Not at all, sir."

Hale went on, turned from the path and climbed noiselessly. When
he caught sight of the beech he stopped still. June stood against
it like a wood-nymph just emerged from its sun-dappled trunk--
stood stretched to her full height, her hands behind her, her hair
tossed, her throat tense under the dangling little cross, her face
uplifted. At her feet, the play-house was scattered to pieces. She
seemed listening to the love-calls of a woodthrush that came
faintly through the still woods, and then he saw that she heard
nothing, saw nothing--that she was in a dream as deep as sleep.
Hale's heart throbbed as he looked.

"June!" he called softly. She did not hear him, and when he called
again, she turned her face--unstartled--and moving her posture not
at all. Hale pointed to the scattered play-house.

"I done it!" she said fiercely--"I done it myself." Her eyes
burned steadily into his, even while she lifted her hands to her
hair as though she were only vaguely conscious that it was all
undone.

"YOU heerd me?" she cried, and before he could answer--"SHE heerd
me," and again, not waiting for a word from him, she cried still
more fiercely:

"I don't keer! I don't keer WHO knows."

Her hands were trembling, she was biting her quivering lip to keep
back the starting tears, and Hale rushed toward her and took her
in his arms.

"June! June!" he said brokenly. "You mustn't, little girl. I'm
proud--proud--why little sweetheart--" She was clinging to him and
looking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips
met and the man was startled. He knew now it was no child that
answered him.

 Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around
Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-
trunks, past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees
tossed out their crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of
the ridge under which the valley slept and above which the dark
bulk of Powell's Mountain rose. It was absurd, but he found
himself strangely stirred. She was a child, he kept repeating to
himself, in spite of the fact that he knew she was no child among
her own people, and that mountain girls were even wives who were
younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt--how could
she?--and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab of a
doubt--would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder
he confessed to himself that he did not know--he did not know. But
again, why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was
the first step--no matter what happened. June must go out into the
world to school. He would have plenty of money. Her father would
not object, and June need never know. He could include for her an
interest in her own father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and
she could think that it was her own money that she was using. So,
with a sudden rush of gladness from his brain to his heart, he
recklessly yoked himself, then and there, under all responsibility
for that young life and the eager, sensitive soul that already
lighted it so radiantly.

And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower
that spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as
impartially as she had touched them with fairy wand, and as
unconsciously the little girl had answered as a young dove to any
cooing mate. With this Hale did not reckon, and this June could
not know. For a while, that night, she lay in a delicious tremor,
listening to the bird-like chorus of the little frogs in the
marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the water
pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had all
the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to
happy sleep.




XVI


The in-sweep of the outside world was broadening its current now.
The improvement company had been formed to encourage the growth of
the town. A safe was put in the back part of a furniture store
behind a wooden partition and a bank was started. Up through the
Gap and toward Kentucky, more entries were driven into the coal,
and on the Virginia side were signs of stripping for iron ore. A
furnace was coming in just as soon as the railroad could bring it
in, and the railroad was pushing ahead with genuine vigor.
Speculators were trooping in and the town had been divided off
into lots--a few of which had already changed hands. One agent had
brought in a big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands
right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the
compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of
nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a
definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope
was in every man's eye.

And the Guard went to its work in earnest. Every man now had his
Winchester, his revolver, his billy and his whistle. Drilling and
target-shooting became a daily practice. Bob, who had been a year
in a military school, was drill-master for the recruits, and very
gravely he performed his duties and put them through the
skirmishers' drill--advancing in rushes, throwing themselves in
the new grass, and very gravely he commended one enthusiast--none
other than the Hon. Samuel Budd--who, rather than lose his
position in line, threw himself into a pool of water: all to the
surprise, scorn and anger of the mountain onlookers, who dwelled
about the town. Many were the comments the members of the Guard
heard from them, even while they were at drill.

"I'd like to see one o' them fellers hit me with one of them
locust posts."

"Huh! I could take two good men an' run the whole batch out o' the
county."

"Look at them dudes and furriners. They come into our country and
air tryin' to larn us how to run it."

"Our boys air only tryin' to have their little fun. They don't
mean nothin', but someday some fool young guard'll hurt somebody
and then thar'll be hell to pay."

Hale could not help feeling considerable sympathy for their point
of view--particularly when he saw the mountaineers watching the
Guard at target-practice--each volunteer policeman with his back
to the target, and at the word of command wheeling and firing six
shots in rapid succession--and he did not wonder at their snorts
of scorn at such bad shooting and their open anger that the Guard
was practising for THEM. But sometimes he got an unexpected
recruit. One bully, who had been conspicuous in the brickyard
trouble, after watching a drill went up to him with a grin:

"Hell," he said cheerily, "I believe you fellers air goin' to have
more fun than we air, an' danged if I don't jine you, if you'll
let me."

"Sure," said Hale. And others, who might have been bad men, became
members and, thus getting a vent for their energies, were as
enthusiastic for the law as they might have been against it.

Of course, the antagonistic element in the town lost no
opportunity to plague and harass the Guard, and after the
destruction of the "blind tigers," mischief was naturally
concentrated in the high-license saloons--particularly in the one
run by Jack Woods, whose local power for evil and cackling laugh
seemed to mean nothing else than close personal communion with old
Nick himself. Passing the door of his saloon one day, Bob saw one
of Jack's customers trying to play pool with a Winchester in one
hand and an open knife between his teeth, and the boy stepped in
and halted. The man had no weapon concealed and was making no
disturbance, and Bob did not know whether or not he had the legal
right to arrest him, so he turned, and, while he was standing in
the door, Jack winked at his customer, who, with a grin, put the
back of his knife-blade between Bob's shoulders and, pushing,
closed it. The boy looked over his shoulder without moving a
muscle, but the Hon. Samuel Budd, who came in at that moment,
pinioned the fellow's arms from behind and Bob took his weapon
away.

"Hell," said the mountaineer, "I didn't aim to hurt the little
feller. I jes' wanted to see if I could skeer him."

"Well, brother, 'tis scarce a merry jest," quoth the Hon. Sam, and
he looked sharply at Jack through his big spectacles as the two
led the man off to the calaboose: for he suspected that the
saloon-keeper was at the bottom of the trick. Jack's time came
only the next day. He had regarded it as the limit of indignity
when an ordinance was up that nobody should blow a whistle except
a member of the Guard, and it was great fun for him to have some
drunken customer blow a whistle and then stand in his door and
laugh at the policemen running in from all directions. That day
Jack tried the whistle himself and Hale ran down.

"Who did that?" he asked. Jack felt bold that morning.

"I blowed it."

Hale thought for a moment. The ordinance against blowing a whistle
had not yet been passed, but he made up his mind that, under the
circumstances, Jack's blowing was a breach of the peace, since the
Guard had adopted that signal. So he said:

"You mustn't do that again."

Jack had doubtless been going through precisely the same mental
process, and, on the nice legal point involved, he seemed to
differ.

"I'll blow it when I damn please," he said.

"Blow it again and I'll arrest you," said Hale.

Jack blew. He had his right shoulder against the corner of his
door at the time, and, when he raised the whistle to his lips,
Hale drew and covered him before he could make another move. Woods
backed slowly into his saloon to get behind his counter. Hale saw
his purpose, and he closed in, taking great risk, as he always
did, to avoid bloodshed, and there was a struggle. Jack managed to
get his pistol out; but Hale caught him by the wrist and held the
weapon away so that it was harmless as far as he was concerned;
but a crowd was gathering at the door toward which the saloon-
keeper's pistol was pointed, and he feared that somebody out there
might be shot; so he called out:

"Drop that pistol!"

The order was not obeyed, and Hale raised his right hand high
above Jack's head and dropped the butt of his weapon on Jack's
skull--hard. Jack's head dropped back between his shoulders, his
eyes closed and his pistol clicked on the floor.

Hale knew how serious a thing a blow was in that part of the
world, and what excitement it would create, and he was uneasy at
Jack's trial, for fear that the saloon-keeper's friends would take
the matter up; but they didn't, and, to the surprise of everybody,
Jack quietly paid his fine, and thereafter the Guard had little
active trouble from the town itself, for it was quite plain there,
at least, that the Guard meant business.

Across Black Mountain old Dave Tolliver and old Buck Falin had got
well of their wounds by this time, and though each swore to have
vengeance against the other as soon as he was able to handle a
Winchester, both factions seemed waiting for that time to come.
Moreover, the Falins, because of a rumour that Bad Rufe Tolliver
might come back, and because of Devil Judd's anger at their
attempt to capture young Dave, grew wary and rather pacificatory:
and so, beyond a little quarrelling, a little threatening and the
exchange of a harmless shot or two, sometimes in banter, sometimes
in earnest, nothing had been done. Sternly, however, though the
Falins did not know the fact, Devil Judd continued to hold aloof
in spite of the pleadings of young Dave, and so confident was the
old man in the balance of power that lay with him that he sent
June word that he was coming to take her home. And, in truth, with
Hale going away again on a business trip and Bob, too, gone back
home to the Bluegrass, and school closed, the little girl was glad
to go, and she waited for her father's coming eagerly. Miss Anne
was still there, to be sure, and if she, too, had gone, June would
have been more content. The quiet smile of that astute young woman
had told Hale plainly, and somewhat to his embarrassment, that she
knew something had happened between the two, but that smile she
never gave to June. Indeed, she never encountered aught else than
the same silent searching gaze from the strangely mature little
creature's eyes, and when those eyes met the teacher's, always
June's hand would wander unconsciously to the little cross at her
throat as though to invoke its aid against anything that could
come between her and its giver.

The purple rhododendrons on Bee Rock had come and gone and the
pink-flecked laurels were in bloom when June fared forth one sunny
morning of her own birth-month behind old Judd Tolliver--home.
Back up through the wild Gap they rode in silence, past Bee Rock,
out of the chasm and up the little valley toward the Trail of the
Lonesome Pine, into which the father's old sorrel nag, with a
switch of her sunburnt tail, turned leftward. June leaned forward
a little, and there was the crest of the big tree motionless in
the blue high above, and sheltered by one big white cloud. It was
the first time she had seen the pine since she had first left it,
and little tremblings went through her from her bare feet to her
bonneted head. Thus was she unclad, for Hale had told her that, to
avoid criticism, she must go home clothed just as she was when she
left Lonesome Cove. She did not quite understand that, and she
carried her new clothes in a bundle in her lap, but she took
Hale's word unquestioned. So she wore her crimson homespun and her
bonnet, with her bronze-gold hair gathered under it in the same
old Psyche knot. She must wear her shoes, she told Hale, until she
got out of town, else someone might see her, but Hale had said she
would be leaving too early for that: and so she had gone from the
Gap as she had come into it, with unmittened hands and bare feet.
The soft wind was very good to those dangling feet, and she itched
to have them on the green grass or in the cool waters through
which the old horse splashed. Yes, she was going home again, the
same June as far as mountain eyes could see, though she had grown
perceptibly, and her little face had blossomed from her heart
almost into a woman's, but she knew that while her clothes were
the same, they covered quite another girl. Time wings slowly for
the young, and when the sensations are many and the experiences
are new, slowly even for all--and thus there was a double reason
why it seemed an age to June since her eyes had last rested on the
big Pine.

Here was the place where Hale had put his big black horse into a
dead run, and as vivid a thrill of it came back to her now as had
been the thrill of the race. Then they began to climb laboriously
up the rocky creek--the water singing a joyous welcome to her
along the path, ferns and flowers nodding to her from dead leaves
and rich mould and peeping at her from crevices between the rocks
on the creek-banks as high up as the level of her eyes--up under
bending branches full-leafed, with the warm sunshine darting down
through them upon her as she passed, and making a playfellow of
her sunny hair. Here was the place where she had got angry with
Hale, had slid from his horse and stormed with tears. What a
little fool she had been when Hale had meant only to be kind! He
was never anything but kind--Jack was--dear, dear Jack! That
wouldn't happen NO more, she thought, and straightway she
corrected that thought.

"It won't happen ANY more," she said aloud.

"Whut'd you say, June?"

The old man lifted his bushy beard from his chest and turned his
head.

"Nothin', dad," she said, and old Judd, himself in a deep study,
dropped back into it again. How often she had said that to
herself--that it would happen no more--she had stopped saying it
to Hale, because he laughed and forgave her, and seemed to love
her mood, whether she cried from joy or anger--and yet she kept on
doing both just the same.

Several times Devil Judd stopped to let his horse rest, and each
time, of course, the wooded slopes of the mountains stretched
downward in longer sweeps of summer green, and across the widening
valley the tops of the mountains beyond dropped nearer to the
straight level of her eyes, while beyond them vaster blue bulks
became visible and ran on and on, as they always seemed, to the
farthest limits of the world. Even out there, Hale had told her,
she would go some day. The last curving up-sweep came finally, and
there stood the big Pine, majestic, unchanged and murmuring in the
wind like the undertone of a far-off sea. As they passed the base
of it, she reached out her hand and let the tips of her fingers
brush caressingly across its trunk, turned quickly for a last look
at the sunlit valley and the hills of the outer world and then the
two passed into a green gloom of shadow and thick leaves that shut
her heart in as suddenly as though some human hand had clutched
it. She was going home--to see Bub and Loretta and Uncle Billy and
"old Hon" and her step-mother and Dave, and yet she felt vaguely
troubled. The valley on the other side was in dazzling sunshine--
she had seen that. The sun must still be shining over there--it
must be shining above her over here, for here and there shot a
sunbeam message from that outer world down through the leaves, and
yet it seemed that black night had suddenly fallen about her, and
helplessly she wondered about it all, with her hands gripped tight
and her eyes wide. But the mood was gone when they emerged at the
"deadening" on the last spur and she saw Lonesome Cove and the
roof of her little home peacefully asleep in the same sun that
shone on the valley over the mountain. Colour came to her face and
her heart beat faster. At the foot of the spur the road had been
widened and showed signs of heavy hauling. There was sawdust in
the mouth of the creek and, from coal-dust, the water was black.
The ring of axes and the shouts of ox-drivers came from the
mountain side. Up the creek above her father's cabin three or four
houses were being built of fresh boards, and there in front of her
was a new store. To a fence one side of it two horses were hitched
and on one horse was a side-saddle. Before the door stood the Red
Fox and Uncle Billy, the miller, who peered at her for a moment
through his big spectacles and gave her a wondering shout of
welcome that brought her cousin Loretta to the door, where she
stopped a moment, anchored with surprise. Over her shoulder peered
her cousin Dave, and June saw his face darken while she looked.

"Why, Honey," said the old miller, "have ye really come home
agin?" While Loretta simply said:

"My Lord!" and came out and stood with her hands on her hips
looking at June.

"Why, ye ain't a bit changed! I knowed ye wasn't goin' to put on
no airs like Dave thar said "--she turned on Dave, who, with a
surly shrug, wheeled and went back into the store. Uncle Billy was
going home.

"Come down to see us right away now," he called back. "Ole Hon's
might nigh crazy to gic her eyes on ye."

"All right, Uncle Billy," said June, "early termorrer." The Red
Fox did not open his lips, but his pale eyes searched the girl
from head to foot.

"Git down, June," said Loretta, "and I'll walk up to the house
with ye."

June slid down, Devil Judd started the old horse, and as the two
girls, with their arms about each other's waists, followed, the
wolfish side of the Red Fox's face lifted in an ironical snarl.
Bub was standing at the gate, and when he saw his father riding
home alone, his wistful eyes filled and his cry of disappointment
brought the step-mother to the door.

"Whar's June?" he cried, and June heard him, and loosening herself
from Loretta, she ran round the horse and had Bub in her arms.
Then she looked up into the eyes of her step-mother. The old
woman's face looked kind--so kind that for the first time in her
life June did what her father could never get her to do: she
called her "Mammy," and then she gave that old woman the surprise
of her life--she kissed her. Right away she must see everything,
and Bub, in ecstasy, wanted to pilot her around to see the new
calf and the new pigs and the new chickens, but dumbly June looked
to a miracle that had come to pass to the left of the cabin--a
flower-garden, the like of which she had seen only in her dreams.




XVII


Twice her lips opened soundlessly and, dazed, she could only point
dumbly. The old step-mother laughed:

"Jack Hale done that. He pestered yo' pap to let him do it fer ye,
an' anything Jack Hale wants from yo' pap, he gits. I thought hit
was plum' foolishness, but he's got things to eat planted thar,
too, an' I declar hit's right purty."

That wonderful garden! June started for it on a run. There was a
broad grass-walk down through the middle of it and there were
narrow grass-walks running sidewise, just as they did in the
gardens which Hale told her he had seen in the outer world. The
flowers were planted in raised beds, and all the ones that she had
learned to know and love at the Gap were there, and many more
besides. The hollyhocks, bachelor's buttons and marigolds she had
known all her life. The lilacs, touch-me-nots, tulips and
narcissus she had learned to know in gardens at the Gap. Two rose-
bushes were in bloom, and there were strange grasses and plants
and flowers that Jack would tell her about when he came. One side
was sentinelled by sun-flowers and another side by transplanted
laurel and rhododendron shrubs, and hidden in the plant-and-
flower-bordered squares were the vegetables that won her step-
mother's tolerance of Hale's plan. Through and through June
walked, her dark eyes flashing joyously here and there when they
were not a little dimmed with tears, with Loretta following her,
unsympathetic in appreciation, wondering that June should be
making such a fuss about a lot of flowers, but envious withal when
she half guessed the reason, and impatient Bub eager to show her
other births and changes. And, over and over all the while, June
was whispering to herself:

"My garden--MY garden!"

When she came back to the porch, after a tour through all that was
new or had changed, Dave had brought his horse and Loretta's to
the gate. No, he wouldn't come in and "rest a spell"--"they must
be gittin' along home," he said shortly. But old Judd Tolliver
insisted that he should stay to dinner, and Dave tied the horses
to the fence and walked to the porch, not lifting his eyes to
June. Straightway the girl went into the house co help her step-
mother with dinner, but the old woman told her she "reckoned she
needn't start in yit"--adding in the querulous tone June knew so
well:

"I've been mighty po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do
now." So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl
hesitated. The old woman looked at her closely.

"Ye ain't a bit changed," she said.

They were the words Loretta had used, and in the voice of each was
the same strange tone of disappointment. June wondered: were they
sorry she had not come back putting on airs and fussed up with
ribbons and feathers that they might hear her picked to pieces and
perhaps do some of the picking themselves? Not Loretta, surely--
but the old step-mother! June left the kitchen and sat down just
inside the door. The Red Fox and two other men had sauntered up
from the store and all were listening to his quavering chat:

"I seed a vision last night, and thar's trouble a-comin' in these
mountains. The Lord told me so straight from the clouds. These
railroads and coal-mines is a-goin' to raise taxes, so that a pore
man'll have to sell his hogs and his corn to pay 'em an' have
nothin' left to keep him from starvin' to death. Them police-
fellers over thar at the Gap is a-stirrin' up strife and a-runnin'
things over thar as though the earth was made fer 'em, an' the
citizens ain't goin' to stand it. An' this war's a-comin' on an'
thar'll be shootin' an' killin' over thar an' over hyeh. I seed
all this devilment in a vision last night, as shore as I'm settin'
hyeh."

Old Judd grunted, shifted his huge shoulders, parted his mustache
and beard with two fingers and spat through them.

"Well, I reckon you didn't see no devilment. Red, that you won't
take a hand in, if it comes."

The other men laughed, but the Red Fox looked meek and lowly.

"I'm a servant of the Lord. He says do this, an' I does it the
best I know how. I goes about a-preachin' the word in the
wilderness an' a-healin' the sick with soothin' yarbs and sech."

"An' a-makin' compacts with the devil," said old Judd shortly,
"when the eye of man is a-lookin' t'other way." The left side of
the Red Fox's face twitched into the faintest shadow of a snarl,
but, shaking his head, he kept still.

"Well," said Sam Barth, who was thin and long and sandy, "I don't
keer what them fellers do on t'other side o' the mountain, but
what air they a-comin' over here fer?"

Old Judd spoke again.

"To give you a job, if you wasn't too durned lazy to work."

"Yes," said the other man, who was dark, swarthy and whose black
eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose--"and that damned Hale,
who's a-tearin' up Hellfire here in the cove." The old man lifted
his eyes. Young Dave's face wore a sudden malignant sympathy which
made June clench her hands a little more tightly.

"What about him? You must have been over to the Gap lately--like
Dave thar--did you git board in the calaboose?" It was a random
thrust, but it was accurate and it went home, and there was
silence for a while. Presently old Judd went on:

"Taxes hain't goin' to be raised, and if they are, folks will be
better able to pay 'em. Them police-fellers at the Gap don't
bother nobody if he behaves himself. This war will start when it
does start, an' as for Hale, he's as square an' clever a feller as
I've ever seed. His word is just as good as his bond. I'm a-goin'
to sell him this land. It'll be his'n, an' he can do what he wants
to with it. I'm his friend, and I'm goin' to stay his friend as
long as he goes on as he's goin' now, an' I'm not goin' to see him
bothered as long as he tends to his own business."

The words fell slowly and the weight of them rested heavily on all
except on June. Her fingers loosened and she smiled.

The Red Fox rose, shaking his head.

"All right, Judd Tolliver," he said warningly.

"Come in and git something to eat, Red."

"No," he said, "I'll be gittin' along"--and he went, still shaking
his head.

The table was covered with an oil-cloth spotted with drippings
from a candle. The plates and cups were thick and the spoons were
of pewter. The bread was soggy and the bacon was thick and
floating in grease. The men ate and the women served, as in
ancient days. They gobbled their food like wolves, and when they
drank their coffee, the noise they made was painful to June's
ears. There were no napkins and when her father pushed his chair
back, he wiped his dripping mouth with the back of his sleeve. And
Loretta and the step-mother--they, too, ate with their knives and
used their fingers. Poor June quivered with a vague newborn
disgust. Ah, had she not changed--in ways they could not see!

June helped clear away the dishes--the old woman did not object to
that--listening to the gossip of the mountains--courtships,
marriages, births, deaths, the growing hostility in the feud, the
random killing of this man or that--Hale's doings in Lonesome
Cove.

"He's comin' over hyeh agin next Saturday," said the old woman.

"Is he?" said Loretta in a way that made June turn sharply from
her dishes toward her. She knew Hale was not coming, but she said
nothing. The old woman was lighting her pipe.

"Yes--you better be over hyeh in yo' best bib and tucker."

"Pshaw," said Loretta, but June saw two bright spots come into her
pretty cheeks, and she herself burned inwardly. The old woman was
looking at her.

"'Pears like you air mighty quiet, June."

"That's so," said Loretta, looking at her, too.

June, still silent, turned back to her dishes. They were beginning
to take notice after all, for the girl hardly knew that she had
not opened her lips.

Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she
must go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved
garden, and hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in
the eyes. She saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat,
and a faint sneer appeared at his set mouth--a sneer for June's
folly and what he thought was uppishness in "furriners" like Hale.

"So you ain't good enough fer him jest as ye air--air ye?" he said
slowly. "He's got to make ye all over agin--so's you'll be fitten
fer him."

He turned away without looking to see how deep his barbed shaft
went and, startled, June flushed to her hair. In a few minutes
they were gone--Dave without the exchange of another word with
June, and Loretta with a parting cry that she would come back on
Saturday. The old man went to the cornfield high above the cabin,
the old woman, groaning with pains real and fancied, lay down on a
creaking bed, and June, with Dave's wound rankling, went out with
Bub to see the new doings in Lonesome Cove. The geese cackled
before her, the hog-fish darted like submarine arrows from rock to
rock and the willows bent in the same wistful way toward their
shadows in the little stream, but its crystal depths were there no
longer--floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the surface and the
water was black as soot. Here and there the white belly of a fish
lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work of
civilization had already begun. Farther up the creek was a buzzing
monster that, creaking and snorting, sent a flashing disk, rimmed
with sharp teeth, biting a savage way through a log, that screamed
with pain as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up
its life each time with a ghost-like cry of agony. Farther on
little houses were being built of fresh boards, and farther on the
water of the creek got blacker still. June suddenly clutched Bud's
arms. Two demons had appeared on a pile of fresh dirt above them--
sooty, begrimed, with black faces and black hands, and in the cap
of each was a smoking little lamp.

"Huh," said Bub, "that ain't nothin'! Hello, Bill," he called
bravely.

"Hello, Bub," answered one of the two demons, and both stared at
the lovely little apparition who was staring with such naive
horror at them. It was all very wonderful, though, and it was all
happening in Lonesome Cove, but Jack Hale was doing it all and,
therefore, it was all right, thought June--no matter what Dave
said. Moreover, the ugly spot on the great, beautiful breast of
the Mother was such a little one after all and June had no idea
how it must spread. Above the opening for the mines, the creek was
crystal-clear as ever, the great hills were the same, and the sky
and the clouds, and the cabin and the fields of corn. Nothing
could happen to them, but if even they were wiped out by Hale's
hand she would have made no complaint. A wood-thrush flitted from
a ravine as she and Bub went back down the creek--and she stopped
with uplifted face to listen. All her life she had loved its song,
and this was the first time she had heard it in Lonesome Cove
since she had learned its name from Hale. She had never heard it
thereafter without thinking of him, and she thought of him now
while it was breathing out the very spirit of the hills, and she
drew a long sigh for already she was lonely and hungering for him.
The song ceased and a long wavering cry came from the cabin.

"So-o-o-cow! S-o-o-kee! S-o-o-kee!"

The old mother was calling the cows. It was near milking-time, and
with a vague uneasiness she hurried Bub home. She saw her father
coming down from the cornfield. She saw the two cows come from the
woods into the path that led to the barn, switching their tails
and snatching mouthfuls from the bushes as they swung down the
hill and, when she reached the gate, her step-mother was standing
on the porch with one hand on her hip and the other shading her
eyes from the slanting sun--waiting for her. Already kindness and
consideration were gone.

"Whar you been, June? Hurry up, now. You've had a long restin'-
spell while I've been a-workin' myself to death."

It was the old tone, and the old fierce rebellion rose within
June, but Hale had told her to be patient. She could not check the
flash from her eyes, but she shut her lips tight on the answer
that sprang to them, and without a word she went to the kitchen
for the milking-pails. The cows had forgotten her. They eyed her
with suspicion and were restive. The first one kicked at her when
she put her beautiful head against its soft flank. Her muscles had
been in disuse and her hands were cramped and her forearms ached
before she was through--but she kept doggedly at her task. When
she finished, her father had fed the horses and was standing
behind her.

"Hit's mighty good to have you back agin, little gal."

It was not often that he smiled or showed tenderness, much less
spoke it thus openly, and June was doubly glad that she had held
her tongue. Then she helped her step-mother get supper. The fire
scorched her face, that had grown unaccustomed to such heat, and
she burned one hand, but she did not let her step-mother see even
that. Again she noticed with aversion the heavy thick dishes and
the pewter spoons and the candle-grease on the oil-cloth, and she
put the dishes down and, while the old woman was out of the room,
attacked the spots viciously. Again she saw her father and Bub
ravenously gobbling their coarse food while she and her step-
mother served and waited, and she began to wonder. The women sat
at the table with the men over in the Gap--why not here? Then her
father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the
kitten at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with
never a word. Something began to stifle her, but she choked it
down. There were the dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the
pans and kettles to be cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were
tired to the shoulders and her burned hand quivered with pain when
all was done. The old woman had left her to do the last few little
things alone and had gone to her pipe. Both she and her father
were sitting in silence on the porch when June went out there.
Neither spoke to each other, nor to her, and both seemed to be
part of the awful stillness that engulfed the world. Bub fell
asleep in the soft air, and June sat and sat and sat. That was all
except for the stars that came out over the mountains and were
slowly being sprayed over the sky, and the pipings of frogs from
the little creek. Once the wind came with a sudden sweep up the
river and she thought she could hear the creak of Uncle Billy's
water-wheel. It smote her with sudden gladness, not so much
because it was a relief and because she loved the old miller, but-
-such is the power of association--because she now loved the mill
more, loved it because the mill over in the Gap had made her think
more of the mill at the mouth of Lonesome Cove. A tapping vibrated
through the railing of the porch on which her cheek lay. Her
father was knocking the ashes from his pipe. A similar tapping
sounded inside at the fireplace. The old woman had gone and Bub
was in bed, and she had heard neither move. The old man rose with
a yawn.

"Time to lay down, June."

The girl rose. They all slept in one room. She did not dare to put
on her night-gown--her mother would see it in the morning. So she
slipped off her dress, as she had done all her life, and crawled
into bed with Bub, who lay in the middle of it and who grunted
peevishly when she pushed him with some difficulty over to his
side. There were no sheets--not even one--and the coarse blankets,
which had a close acrid odour that she had never noticed before,
seemed almost to scratch her flesh. She had hardly been to bed
that early since she had left home, and she lay sleepless,
watching the firelight play hide and seek with the shadows among
the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried
things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father
and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a
nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night-tired and
aching as she was. So, quietly, by and by, she slipped out of bed
and out the door to the porch. The moon was rising and the radiant
sheen of it had dropped down over the mountain side like a golden
veil and was lighting up the white rising mists that trailed the
curves of the river. It sank below the still crests of the pines
beyond the garden and dropped on until it illumined, one by one,
the dewy heads of the flowers. She rose and walked down the grassy
path in her bare feet through the silent fragrant emblems of the
planter's thought of her--touching this flower and that with the
tips of her fingers. And when she went back, she bent to kiss one
lovely rose and, as she lifted her head with a start of fear, the
dew from it shining on her lips made her red mouth as flower-like
and no less beautiful. A yell had shattered the quiet of the
world--not the high fox-hunting yell of the mountains, but
something new and strange. Up the creek were strange lights. A
loud laugh shattered the succeeding stillness--a laugh she had
never heard before in Lonesome Cove. Swiftly she ran back to the
porch. Surely strange things were happening there. A strange
spirit pervaded the Cove and the very air throbbed with
premonitions. What was the matter with everything--what was the
matter with her? She knew that she was lonely and that she wanted
Hale--but what else was it? She shivered--and not alone from the
chill night-air--and puzzled and wondering and stricken at heart,
she crept back to bed.




XVIII


Pausing at the Pine to let his big black horse blow a while, Hale
mounted and rode slowly down the green-and-gold gloom of the
ravine. In his pocket was a quaint little letter from June to
"John Hail"; thanking him for the beautiful garden, saying she was
lonely, and wanting him to come soon. From the low flank of the
mountain he stopped, looking down on the cabin in Lonesome Cove.
It was a dreaming summer day. Trees, air, blue sky and white cloud
were all in a dream, and even the smoke lazing from the chimney
seemed drifting away like the spirit of something human that cared
little whither it might be borne. Something crimson emerged from
the door and stopped in indecision on the steps of the porch. It
moved again, stopped at the corner of the house, and then, moving
on with a purpose, stopped once more and began to flicker slowly
to and fro like a flame. June was working in her garden. Hale
thought he would halloo to her, and then he decided to surprise
her, and he went on down, hitched his horse and stole up to the
garden fence. On the way he pulled up a bunch of weeds by the
roots and with them in his arms he noiselessly climbed the fence.
June neither heard nor saw him. Her underlip was clenched tight
between her teeth, the little cross swung violently at her throat
and she was so savagely wielding the light hoe he had given her
that he thought at first she must be killing a snake; but she was
only fighting to death every weed that dared to show its head. Her
feet and her head were bare, her face was moist and flushed and
her hair was a tumbled heap of what was to him the rarest gold
under the sun. The wind was still, the leaves were heavy with the
richness of full growth, bees were busy about June's head and not
another soul was in sight

"Good morning, little girl!" he called cheerily.

The hoe was arrested at the height of a vicious stroke and the
little girl whirled without a cry, but the blood from her pumping
heart crimsoned her face and made her eyes shine with gladness.
Her eyes went to her feet and her hands to her hair.

"You oughtn't to slip up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way," she
said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. "Now you just set
there and wait till I come back."

"No--no--I want you to stay just as you are."

"Honest?"

Hale gravely crossed heart and body and June gave out a happy
little laugh--for he had caught that gesture--a favourite one--
from her. Then suddenly:

"How long?" She was thinking of what Dave said, but the subtle
twist in her meaning passed Hale by. He raised his eyes to the sun
and June shook her head.

"You got to go home 'fore sundown."

She dropped her hoe and came over toward him.

"Whut you doin' with them--those weeds?"

"Going to plant 'em in our garden." Hale had got a theory from a
garden-book that the humble burdock, pig-weed and other lowly
plants were good for ornamental effect, and he wanted to
experiment, but June gave a shrill whoop and fell to scornful
laughter. Then she snatched the weeds from him and threw them over
the fence.

"Why, June!"

"Not in MY garden. Them's stagger-weeds--they kill cows," and she
went off again.

"I reckon you better c-consult me 'bout weeds next time. I don't
know much 'bout flowers, but I've knowed all my life 'bout WEEDS."
She laid so much emphasis on the word that Hale wondered for the
moment if her words had a deeper meaning--but she went on:

"Ever' spring I have to watch the cows fer two weeks to keep 'em
from eatin'--those weeds." Her self-corrections were always made
gravely now, and Hale consciously ignored them except when he had
something to tell her that she ought to know. Everything, it
seemed, she wanted to know.

"Do they really kill cows?"

June snapped her fingers: "Like that. But you just come on here,"
she added with pretty imperiousness. "I want to axe--ask you some
things--what's that?"

"Scarlet sage."

"Scarlet sage," repeated June. "An' that?"

"Nasturtium, and that's Oriental grass."

"Nas-tur-tium, Oriental. An' what's that vine?"

"That comes from North Africa--they call it 'matrimonial vine.'"

"Whut fer?" asked June quickly.

"Because it clings so." Hale smiled, but June saw none of his
humour--the married people she knew clung till the finger of death
unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking
plants with great spreading leaves and big green-white stalks.

"They're called Palmae Christi."

"Whut?"

"That's Latin. It means 'Hands of Christ,'" said Hale with
reverence. "You see how the leaves are spread out--don't they look
like hands?'

"Not much," said June frankly. "What's Latin?"

"Oh, that's a dead language that some people used a long, long
time ago."

"What do folks use it nowadays fer? Why don't they just say 'Hands
o' Christ'?"

"I don't know," he said helplessly, "but maybe you'll study Latin
some of these days." June shook her head.

"Gettin' YOUR language is a big enough job fer me," she said with
such quaint seriousness that Hale could not laugh. She looked up
suddenly. "You been a long time git--gettin' over here."

"Yes, and now you want to send me home before sundown."

"I'm afeer--I'm afraid for you. Have you got a gun?" Hale tapped
his breast-pocket.

"Always. What are you afraid of?"

"The Falins." She clenched her hands.

"I'd like to SEE one o' them Falins tech ye," she added fiercely,
and then she gave a quick look at the sun.

"You better go now, Jack. I'm afraid fer you. Where's your horse?"
Hale waved his hand.

"Down there. All right, little girl," he said. "I ought to go,
anyway." And, to humour her, he started for the gate. There he
bent to kiss her, but she drew back.

"I'm afraid of Dave," she said, but she leaned on the gate and
looked long at him with wistful eyes.

"Jack," she said, and her eyes swam suddenly, "it'll most kill me-
-but I reckon you better not come over here much." Hale made light
of it all.

"Nonsense, I'm coming just as often as I can." June smiled then.

"All right. I'll watch out fer ye."

He went down the path, her eyes following him, and when he looked
back from the spur he saw her sitting in the porch and watching
that she might wave him farewell.

Hale could not go over to Lonesome Cove much that summer, for he
was away from the mountains a good part of the time, and it was a
weary, racking summer for June when he was not there. The step-
mother was a stern taskmistress, and the girl worked hard, but no
night passed that she did not spend an hour or more on her books,
and by degrees she bribed and stormed Bub into learning his A, B,
C's and digging at a blue-back spelling book. But all through the
day there were times when she could play with the boy in the
garden, and every afternoon, when it was not raining, she would
slip away to a little ravine behind the cabin, where a log had
fallen across a little brook, and there in the cool, sun-pierced
shadows she would study, read and dream--with the water bubbling
underneath and wood-thrushes singing overhead. For Hale kept her
well supplied with books. He had given her children's books at
first, but she outgrew them when the first love-story fell into
her hands, and then he gave her novels--good, old ones and the
best of the new ones, and they were to her what water is to a
thing athirst. But the happy days were when Hale was there. She
had a thousand questions for him to answer, whenever he came,
about birds, trees and flowers and the things she read in her
books. The words she could not understand in them she marked, so
that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how her
vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the
new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of
vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words. Happening once
to have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of it to
her, and while she could not understand, the music of the lines
fascinated her and she had him leave that with her, too. She never
tired hearing him tell of the places where he had been and the
people he knew and the music and plays he had heard and seen. And
when he told her that she, too, should see all those wonderful
things some day, her deep eyes took fire and she dropped her head
far back between her shoulders and looked long at the stars that
held but little more wonder for her than the world of which he
told. But each time he was there she grew noticeably shyer with
him and never once was the love-theme between them taken up in
open words. Hale was reluctant, if only because she was still such
a child, and if he took her hand or put his own on her wonderful
head or his arm around her as they stood in the garden under the
stars--he did it as to a child, though the leap in her eyes and
the quickening of his own heart told him the lie that he was
acting, rightly, to her and to himself. And no more now were there
any breaking-downs within her--there was only a calm faith that
staggered him and gave him an ever-mounting sense of his
responsibility for whatever might, through the part he had taken
in moulding her life, be in store for her.

When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time,
because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and
Hale's kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and
the blessed force of habit. For as time went on, she got
consciously used to the rough life, the coarse food and the rude
ways of her own people and her own home. And though she relaxed
not a bit in her own dainty cleanliness, the shrinking that she
felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer
intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she
watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the
kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening
to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill--and
stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the
honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew
vaguely uneasy about her--she dreamed so much, she was at times so
restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she
failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw
that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it
all haunted him with a vague sense that he was losing her. But old
Hon laughed at him and told him he was an old fool and to "git
another pair o' specs" and maybe he could see that the "little
gal" was in love. This startled Uncle Billy, for he was so like a
father to June that he was as slow as a father in recognizing that
his child has grown to such absurd maturity. But looking back to
the beginning--how the little girl had talked of the "furriner"
who had come into Lonesome Cove all during the six months he was
gone; how gladly she had gone away to the Gap to school, how
anxious she was to go still farther away again, and, remembering
all the strange questions she asked him about things in the
outside world of which he knew nothing--Uncle Billy shook his head
in confirmation of his own conclusion, and with all his soul he
wondered about Hale--what kind of a man he was and what his
purpose was with June--and of every man who passed his mill he
never failed to ask if he knew "that ar man Hale" and what he
knew. All he had heard had been in Hale's favour, except from
young Dave Tolliver, the Red Fox or from any Falin of the crowd,
which Hale had prevented from capturing Dave. Their statements
bothered him--especially the Red Fox's evil hints and insinuations
about Hale's purposes one day at the mill. The miller thought of
them all the afternoon and all the way home, and when he sat down
at his fire his eyes very naturally and simply rose to his old
rifle over the door--and then he laughed to himself so loudly that
old Hon heard him.

"Air you goin' crazy, Billy?" she asked. "Whut you studyin'
'bout?"

"Nothin'; I was jest a-thinkin' Devil Judd wouldn't leave a
grease-spot of him."

"You AIR goin' crazy--who's him?"

"Uh--nobody," said Uncle Billy, and old Hon turned with a shrug of
her shoulders--she was tired of all this talk about the feud.

All that summer young Dave Tolliver hung around Lonesome Cove. He
would sit for hours in Devil Judd's cabin, rarely saying anything
to June or to anybody, though the girl felt that she hardly made a
move that he did not see, and while he disappeared when Hale came,
after a surly grunt of acknowledgment to Hale's cheerful greeting,
his perpetual espionage began to anger June. Never, however, did
he put himself into words until Hale's last visit, when the summer
had waned and it was nearly time for June to go away again to
school. As usual, Dave had left the house when Hale came, and an
hour after Hale was gone she went to the little ravine with a book
in her hand, and there the boy was sitting on her log, his elbows
dug into his legs midway between thigh and knee, his chin in his
hands, his slouched hat over his black eyes--every line of him
picturing angry, sullen dejection. She would have slipped away,
but he heard her and lifted his head and stared at her without
speaking. Then he slowly got off the log and sat down on a moss-
covered stone.

"'Scuse me," he said with elaborate sarcasm. "This bein' yo'
school-house over hyeh, an' me not bein' a scholar, I reckon I'm
in your way."

"How do you happen to know hit's my school-house?" asked June
quietly.

"I've seed you hyeh."

"Jus' as I s'posed."

"You an' HIM."

"Jus' as I s'posed," she repeated, and a spot of red came into
each cheek. "But we didn't see YOU." Young Dave laughed.

"Well, everybody don't always see me when I'm seein' them."

"No," she said unsteadily. "So, you've been sneakin' around
through the woods a-spyin' on me--SNEAKIN' AN' SPYIN'," she
repeated so searingly that Dave looked at the ground suddenly,
picked up a pebble confusedly and shot it in the water.

"I had a mighty good reason," he said doggedly. "Ef he'd been up
to some of his furrin' tricks---" June stamped the ground.

"Don't you think I kin take keer o' myself?"

"No, I don't. I never seed a gal that could--with one o' them
furriners."

"Huh!" she said scornfully. "You seem to set a mighty big store by
the decency of yo' own kin." Dave was silent." He ain't up to no
tricks. An' whut do you reckon Dad 'ud be doin' while you was
pertecting me?"

"Air ye goin' away to school?" he asked suddenly. June hesitated.

"Well, seein' as hit's none o' yo' business--I am."

"Air ye goin' to marry him?"

"He ain't axed me." The boy's face turned red as a flame.

"Ye air honest with me, an' now I'm goin' to be honest with you.
You hain't never goin' to marry him."

"Mebbe you think I'm goin' to marry YOU." A mist of rage swept
before the lad's eyes so that he could hardly see, but he repeated
steadily:

"You hain't goin' to marry HIM." June looked at the boy long and
steadily, but his black eyes never wavered--she knew what he
meant.

"An' he kept the Falins from killin' you," she said, quivering
with indignation at the shame of him, but Dave went on unheeding:

"You pore little fool! Do ye reckon as how he's EVER goin' to axe
ye to marry him? Whut's he sendin' you away fer? Because you
hain't good enough fer him! Whar's yo' pride? You hain't good
enough fer him," he repeated scathingly. June had grown calm now.

"I know it," she said quietly, "but I'm goin' to try to be."

Dave rose then in impotent fury and pointed one finger at her. His
black eyes gleamed like a demon's and his voice was hoarse with
resolution and rage, but it was Tolliver against Tolliver now, and
June answered him with contemptuous fearlessness.

"YOU HAIN'T NEVER GOIN' TO MARRY HIM."

"An' he kept the Falins from killin' ye."

"Yes," he retorted savagely at last, "an' I kept the Falins from
killin' HIM," and he stalked away, leaving June blanched and
wondering.

It was true. Only an hour before, as Hale turned up the mountain
that very afternoon at the mouth of Lonesome Cove, young Dave had
called to him from the bushes and stepped into the road.

"You air goin' to court Monday?" he said.

"Yes," said Hale.

"Well, you better take another road this time," he said quietly.
"Three o' the Falins will be waitin' in the lorrel somewhar on the
road to lay-way ye."

Hale was dumfounded, but he knew the boy spoke the truth.

"Look here," he said impulsively, "I've got nothing against you,
and I hope you've got nothing against me. I'm much obliged--let's
shake hands!"

The boy turned sullenly away with a dogged shake of his head.

"I was beholden to you," he said with dignity, "an' I warned you
'bout them Falins to git even with you. We're quits now."

Hale started to speak--to say that the lad was not beholden to
him--that he would as quickly have protected a Falin, but it would
have only made matters worse. Moreover, he knew precisely what
Dave had against him, and that, too, was no matter for discussion.
So he said simply and sincerely:

"I'm sorry we can't be friends."

"No," Dave gritted out, "not this side o' Heaven--or Hell."




XIX


And still farther into that far silence about which she used to
dream at the base of the big Pine, went little June. At dusk,
weary and travel-stained, she sat in the parlours of a hotel--a
great gray columned structure of stone. She was confused and
bewildered and her head ached. The journey had been long and
tiresome. The swift motion of the train had made her dizzy and
faint. The dust and smoke had almost stifled her, and even now the
dismal parlours, rich and wonderful as they were to her
unaccustomed eyes, oppressed her deeply. If she could have one
more breath of mountain air!

The day had been too full of wonders. Impressions had crowded on
her sensitive brain so thick and fast that the recollection of
them was as through a haze. She had never been on a train before
and when, as it crashed ahead, she clutched Hale's arm in fear and
asked how they stopped it, Hale hearing the whistle blow for a
station, said:

"I'll show you," and he waved one hand out the window. And he
repeated this trick twice before she saw that it was a joke. All
day he had soothed her uneasiness in some such way and all day he
watched her with an amused smile that was puzzling to her. She
remembered sadly watching the mountains dwindle and disappear, and
when several of her own people who were on the train were left at
way-stations, it seemed as though all links that bound her to her
home were broken. The face of the country changed, the people
changed in looks, manners and dress, and she shrank closer to Hale
with an increasing sense of painful loneliness. These level fields
and these farm-houses so strangely built, so varied in colour were
the "settlemints," and these people so nicely dressed, so clean
and fresh-looking were "furriners." At one station a crowd of
school-girls had got on board and she had watched them with keen
interest, mystified by their incessant chatter and gayety. And at
last had come the big city, with more smoke, more dust, more
noise, more confusion--and she was in HIS world. That was the
thought that comforted her--it was his world, and now she sat
alone in the dismal parlours while Hale was gone to find his
sister--waiting and trembling at the ordeal, close upon her, of
meeting Helen Hale.

Below, Hale found his sister and her maid registered, and a few
minutes later he led Miss Hale into the parlour. As they entered
June rose without advancing, and for a moment the two stood facing
each other--the still roughly clad, primitive mountain girl and
the exquisite modern woman--in an embarrassment equally painful to
both.

"June, this is my sister."

At a loss what to do, Helen Hale simply stretched out her hand,
but drawn by June's timidity and the quick admiration and fear in
her eyes, she leaned suddenly forward and kissed her. A grateful
flush overspread the little girl's features and the pallor that
instantly succeeded went straight-way to the sister's heart.

"You are not well," she said quickly and kindly. "You must go to
your room at once. I am going to take care of you--you are MY
little sister now."

June lost the subtlety in Miss Hale's emphasis, but she fell with
instant submission under such gentle authority, and though she
could say nothing, her eyes glistened and her lips quivered, and
without looking to Hale, she followed his sister out of the room.
Hale stood still. He had watched the meeting with apprehension and
now, surprised and grateful, he went to Helen's parlour and waited
with a hopeful heart. When his sister entered, he rose eagerly:

"Well--" he said, stopping suddenly, for there were tears of
vexation, dismay and genuine distress on his sister's face.

"Oh, Jack," she cried, "how could you! How could you!"

Hale bit his lips, turned and paced the room. He had hoped too
much and yet what else could he have expected? His sister and June
knew as little about each other and each other's lives as though
they had occupied different planets. He had forgotten that Helen
must be shocked by June's inaccuracies of speech and in a hundred
other ways to which he had become accustomed. With him, moreover,
the process had been gradual and, moreover, he had seen beneath it
all. And yet he had foolishly expected Helen to understand
everything at once. He was unjust, so very wisely he held himself
in silence.

"Where is her baggage, Jack?" Helen had opened her trunk and was
lifting out the lid. "She ought to change those dusty clothes at
once. You'd better ring and have it sent right up."

"No," said Hale, "I will go down and see about it myself."

He returned presently--his face aflame--with June's carpet-bag.

"I believe this is all she has," he said quietly.

In spite of herself Helen's grief changed to a fit of helpless
laughter and, afraid to trust himself further, Hale rose to leave
the room. At the door he was met by the negro maid.

"Miss Helen," she said with an open smile, "Miss June say she
don't want NUTTIN'." Hale gave her a fiery look and hurried out.
June was seated at a window when he went into her room with her
face buried in her arms. She lifted her head, dropped it, and he
saw that her eyes were red with weeping. "Are you sick, little
girl?" he asked anxiously. June shook her head helplessly.

"You aren't homesick, are you?"

"No." The answer came very faintly.

"Don't you like my sister?" The head bowed an emphatic "Yes--yes."

"Then what is the matter?"

"Oh," she said despairingly, between her sobs, "she--won't--like--
me. I never--can--be--like HER."

Hale smiled, but her grief was so sincere that he leaned over her
and with a tender hand soothed her into quiet. Then he went to
Helen again and he found her overhauling dresses.

"I brought along several things of different sizes and I am going
to try at any rate. Oh," she added hastily, "only of course until
she can get some clothes of her own."

"Sure," said Hale, "but--" His sister waved one hand and again
Hale kept still.

June had bathed her eyes and was lying down when Helen entered,
and she made not the slightest objection to anything the latter
proposed. Straightway she fell under as complete subjection to her
as she had done to Hale. Without a moment's hesitation she drew
off her rudely fashioned dress and stood before Helen with the
utmost simplicity--her beautiful arms and throat bare and her hair
falling about them with the rich gold of a cloud at an autumn
sunset. Dressed, she could hardly breathe, but when she looked at
herself in the mirror, she trembled. Magic transformation!
Apparently the chasm between the two had been bridged in a single
instant. Helen herself was astonished and again her heart warmed
toward the girl, when a little later, she stood timidly under
Hale's scrutiny, eagerly watching his face and flushing rosy with
happiness under his brightening look. Her brother had not
exaggerated--the little girl was really beautiful. When they went
down to the dining-room, there was another surprise for Helen
Hale, for June's timidity was gone and to the wonder of the woman,
she was clothed with an impassive reserve that in herself would
have been little less than haughtiness and was astounding in a
child. She saw, too, that the change in the girl's bearing was
unconscious and that the presence of strangers had caused it. It
was plain that June's timidity sprang from her love of Hale--her
fear of not pleasing him and not pleasing her, his sister, and
plain, too, that remarkable self-poise was little June's to
command. At the table June kept her eyes fastened on Helen Hale.
Not a movement escaped her and she did nothing that was not done
by one of the others first. She said nothing, but if she had to
answer a question, she spoke with such care and precision that she
almost seemed to be using a foreign language. Miss Hale smiled but
with inward approval, and that night she was in better spirits.

"Jack," she said, when he came to bid her good-night, "I think
we'd better stay here a few days. I thought of course you were
exaggerating, but she is very, very lovely. And that manner of
hers--well, it passes my understanding. Just leave everything to
me."

Hale was very willing to do that. He had all trust in his sister's
judgment, he knew her dislike of interference, her love of
autocratic supervision, so he asked no questions, but in grateful
relief kissed her good-night.

The sister sat for a long time at her window after he was gone.
Her brother had been long away from civilization; he had become
infatuated, the girl loved him, he was honourable and in his heart
he meant to marry her--that was to her the whole story. She had
been mortified by the misstep, but the misstep made, only one
thought had occurred to her--to help him all she could. She had
been appalled when she first saw the dusty shrinking mountain
girl, but the helplessness and the loneliness of the tired little
face touched her, and she was straightway responsive to the mute
appeal in the dark eyes that were lifted to her own with such
modest fear and wonder. Now her surprise at her brother's
infatuation was abating rapidly. The girl's adoration of him, her
wild beauty, her strange winning personality--as rare and as
independent of birth and circumstances as genius--had soon made
that phenomenon plain. And now what was to be done? The girl was
quick, observant, imitative, docile, and in the presence of
strangers, her gravity of manner gave the impression of uncanny
self-possession. It really seemed as though anything might be
possible. At Helen's suggestion, then, the three stayed where they
were for a week, for June's wardrobe was sadly in need of
attention. So the week was spent in shopping, driving, and
walking, and rapidly as it passed for Helen and Hale it was to
June the longest of her life, so filled was it with a thousand
sensations unfelt by them. The city had been stirred by the spirit
of the new South, but the charm of the old was distinct
everywhere. Architectural eccentricities had startled the sleepy
maple-shaded rows of comfortable uniform dwellings here and there,
and in some streets the life was brisk; but it was still possible
to see pedestrians strolling with unconscious good-humour around
piles of goods on the sidewalk, business men stopping for a social
chat on the streets, street-cars moving independent of time, men
invariably giving up their seats to women, and, strangers or not,
depositing their fare for them; the drivers at the courteous
personal service of each patron of the road--now holding a car and
placidly whistling while some lady who had signalled from her
doorway went back indoors for some forgotten article, now twisting
the reins around the brakes and leaving a parcel in some yard--and
no one grumbling! But what was to Hale an atmosphere of amusing
leisure was to June bewildering confusion. To her his amusement
was unintelligible, but though in constant wonder at everything
she saw, no one would ever have suspected that she was making her
first acquaintance with city scenes. At first the calm unconcern
of her companions had puzzled her. She could not understand how
they could walk along, heedless of the wonderful visions that
beckoned to her from the shop-windows; fearless of the strange
noises about them and scarcely noticing the great crowds of
people, or the strange shining vehicles that thronged the streets.
But she had quickly concluded that it was one of the demands of
that new life to see little and be astonished at nothing, and
Helen and Hale surprised in turn at her unconcern, little
suspected the effort her self-suppression cost her. And when over
some wonder she did lose herself, Hale would say:

"Just wait till you see New York!" and June would turn her dark
eyes to Helen for confirmation and to see if Hale could be joking
with her.

"It's all true, June," Helen would say. "You must go there some
day. It's true." But that town was enough and too much for June.
Her head buzzed continuously and she could hardly sleep, and she
was glad when one afternoon they took her into the country again--
the Bluegrass country--and to the little town near which Hale had
been born, and which was a dream-city to June, and to a school of
which an old friend of his mother was principal, and in which
Helen herself was a temporary teacher. And Rumour had gone ahead
of June. Hale had found her dashing about the mountains on the
back of a wild bull, said rumour. She was as beautiful as Europa,
was of pure English descent and spoke the language of Shakespeare-
-the Hon. Sam Budd's hand was patent in this. She had saved Hale's
life from moonshiners and while he was really in love with her, he
was pretending to educate her out of gratitude--and here doubtless
was the faint tracery of Miss Anne Saunder's natural suspicions.
And there Hale left her under the eye of his sister--left her to
absorb another new life like a thirsty plant and come back to the
mountains to make his head swim with new witcheries.




XX


The boom started after its shadow through the hills now, and Hale
watched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the
fulfilment of his own prophecy and with disgust that, by the
irony of fate, it should come from the very quarters where years
before he had played the maddening part of lunatic at large. The
avalanche was sweeping southward; Pennsylvania was creeping down
the Alleghanies, emissaries of New York capital were pouring into
the hills, the tide-water of Virginia and the Bluegrass region of
Kentucky were sending in their best blood and youth, and friends
of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over the seas. Eastern
companies were taking up principalities, and at Cumberland Gap,
those helmeted Englishmen had acquired a kingdom. They were
building a town there, too, with huge steel plants, broad avenues
and business blocks that would have graced Broadway; and they
were pouring out a million for every thousand that it would have
cost Hale to acquire the land on which the work was going on.
Moreover they were doing it there, as Hale heard, because they
were too late to get control of his gap through the Cumberland.
At his gap, too, the same movement was starting. In stage and
wagon, on mule and horse, "riding and tying" sometimes, and even
afoot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules were drowned in
the mud holes along the road, such was the traffic and such were
the floods. The incomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at one
dollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand
Central Hotel was a humming Real-Estate Exchange, and, night and
day, the occupants of any room could hear, through the thin
partitions, lots booming to right, left, behind and in front of
them. The labour and capital question was instantly solved, for
everybody became a capitalist—carpenter, brick-layer, blacksmith,
singing teacher and preacher. There is no difference between
the   shrewdest business man and a fool in a boom, for the boom
levels all grades of intelligence and produces as distinct a form
of insanity as you can find within the walls of an asylum.
Lots took wings sky-ward. Hale bought one for June for thirty
dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone,
he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence and, when
spring came, he had the world in a sling and, if he wished, he
could toss it playfully at the sun and have it drop back into his
hand again. And the boom spread down the valley and into the
hills. The police guard had little to do and, over in the
mountains, the feud miraculously came to a sudden close.

So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon.
Sam Budd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign
a truce, agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he
carried through a land deal in which both were interested. And
after that was concluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for
deviltry and private vengeance--so busy was everybody picking up
the manna which was dropping straight from the clouds. Hale bought
all of old Judd's land, formed a stock company and in the trade
gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was plentiful as grains of
sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back of the furniture
store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he locked
the wooden door on the day before the great land sale:

"Capital stock paid in--thirteen thousand dollars;

"Deposits--three hundred thousand;

"Loans--two hundred and sixty thousand--interest from eight to
twelve per cent." And, beardless though those directors were, that
statement made them reel.

A club was formed and the like of it was not below Mason and
Dixon's line in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors and
cigars. Poker ceased--it was too tame in competition with this new
game of town-lots. On the top of High Knob a kingdom was bought.
The young bloods of the town would build a lake up there, run a
road up and build a Swiss chalet on the very top for a country
club. The "booming" editor was discharged. A new paper was
started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was got to run it.
If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where, nor at
what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected. One man, who was
proud of his voice, thought he would like to take singing lessons.
An emissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he
could find. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by
trying to say "Come!" at the base of the nose and between the
eyes. This was with the lips closed. He charged two dollars per
half hour for this effort, he had each pupil try it twice for half
an hour each day, and for six weeks the town was humming like a
beehive. At the end of that period, the teacher fell ill and went
his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the
chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody.
Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a
roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even
yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the
Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it,
competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times
the sum asked for by the company for the land. So the buyers spent
the night organizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing
lots for the privilege of bidding. For fairness, the sale was an
auction, and one old farmer who had sold some of the land
originally for a hundred dollars an acre, bought back some of that
land at a thousand dollars a lot.

That sale was the climax and, that early, Hale got a warning word
from England, but he paid no heed even though, after the sale, the
boom slackened, poised and stayed still; for optimism was
unquenchable and another tide would come with another sale in May,
and so the spring passed in the same joyous recklessness and the
same perfect hope.

In April, the first railroad reached the Gap at last, and families
came in rapidly. Money was still plentiful and right royally was
it spent, for was not just as much more coming when the second
road arrived in May? Life was easier, too--supplies came from New
York, eight o'clock dinners were in vogue and everybody was happy.
Every man had two or three good horses and nothing to do. The
place was full of visiting girls. They rode in parties to High
Knob, and the ring of hoof and the laughter of youth and maid made
every dusk resonant with joy. On Poplar Hill houses sprang up like
magic and weddings came. The passing stranger was stunned to find
out in the wilderness such a spot; gayety, prodigal hospitality, a
police force of gentlemen--nearly all of whom were college
graduates--and a club, where poker flourished in the smoke of
Havana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a
faucet waiting for the turn of any hand. And still the foundation
of the new hotel was not started and the coming of the new
railroad in May did not make a marked change. For some reason the
May sale was postponed by the Improvement Company, but what did it
matter? Perhaps it was better to wait for the fall, and so the
summer went on unchanged. Every man still had a bank account and
in the autumn, the boom would come again. At such a time June came
home for her vacation, and Bob Berkley came back from college for
his. All through the school year Hale had got the best reports of
June. His sister's letters were steadily encouraging. June had
been very homesick for the mountains and for Hale at first, but
the homesickness had quickly worn off--apparently for both. She
had studied hard, had become a favourite among the girls, and had
held her own among them in a surprising way. But it was on June's
musical talent that Hale's sister always laid most stress, and on
her voice which, she said, was really unusual. June wrote, too, at
longer and longer intervals and in her letters, Hale could see the
progress she was making--the change in her handwriting, the
increasing formality of expression, and the increasing shrewdness
of her comments on her fellow-pupils, her teachers and the life
about her. She did not write home for a reason Hale knew, though
June never mentioned it--because there was no one at home who
could read her letters--but she always sent messages to her father
and Bub and to the old miller and old Hon, and Hale faithfully
delivered them when he could.

From her people, as Hale learned from his sister, only one
messenger had come during the year to June, and he came but once.
One morning, a tall, black-haired, uncouth young man, in a slouch
hat and a Prince Albert coat, had strode up to the school with a
big paper box under his arm and asked for June. As he handed the
box to the maid at the door, it broke and red apples burst from it
and rolled down the steps. There was a shriek of laughter from the
girls, and the young man, flushing red as the apples, turned,
without giving his name, and strode back with no little majesty,
looking neither to right nor left. Hale knew and June knew that
the visitor was her cousin Dave, but she never mentioned the
incident to him, though as the end of the session drew nigh, her
letters became more frequent and more full of messages to the
people in Lonesome Cove, and she seemed eager to get back home.
Over there about this time, old Judd concluded suddenly to go
West, taking Bud with him, and when Hale wrote the fact, an answer
came from June that showed the blot of tears. However, she seemed
none the less in a hurry to get back, and when Hale met her at the
station, he was startled; for she came back in dresses that were
below her shoe-tops, with her wonderful hair massed in a golden
glory on the top of her head and the little fairy-cross dangling
at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice had
softened. She held herself as straight as a young poplar and she
walked the earth as though she had come straight from Olympus. And
still, in spite of her new feathers and airs and graces, there was
in her eye and in her laugh and in her moods all the subtle wild
charm of the child in Lonesome Cove. It was fairy-time for June
that summer, though her father and Bud had gone West, for her
step-mother was living with a sister, the cabin in Lonesome Cove
was closed and June stayed at the Gap, not at the Widow Crane's
boarding-house, but with one of Hale's married friends on Poplar
Hill. And always was she, young as she was, one of the merry
parties of that happy summer--even at the dances, for the dance,
too, June had learned. Moreover she had picked up the guitar, and
many times when Hale had been out in the hills, he would hear her
silver-clear voice floating out into the moonlight as he made his
way toward Poplar Hill, and he would stop under the beeches and
listen with ears of growing love to the wonder of it all. For it
was he who was the ardent one of the two now.

June was no longer the frank, impulsive child who stood at the
foot of the beech, doggedly reckless if all the world knew her
love for him. She had taken flight to some inner recess where it
was difficult for Hale to follow, and right puzzled he was to
discover that he must now win again what, unasked, she had once so
freely given.

Bob Berkley, too, had developed amazingly. He no longer said "Sir"
to Hale--that was bad form at Harvard--he called him by his first
name and looked him in the eye as man to man: just as June--Hale
observed--no longer seemed in any awe of Miss Anne Saunders and to
have lost all jealousy of her, or of anybody else--so swiftly had
her instinct taught her she now had nothing to fear. And Bob and
June seemed mightily pleased with each other, and sometimes Hale,
watching them as they galloped past him on horseback laughing and
bantering, felt foolish to think of their perfect fitness--the one
for the other--and the incongruity of himself in a relationship
that would so naturally be theirs. At one thing he wondered: she
had made an extraordinary record at school and it seemed to him
that it was partly through the consciousness that her brain would
take care of itself that she could pay such heed to what hitherto
she had had no chance to learn--dress, manners, deportment and
speech. Indeed, it was curious that she seemed to lay most stress
on the very things to which he, because of his long rough life in
the mountains, was growing more and more indifferent. It was quite
plain that Bob, with his extreme gallantry of manner, his smart
clothes, his high ways and his unconquerable gayety, had
supplanted him on the pedestal where he had been the year before,
just as somebody, somewhere--his sister, perhaps--had supplanted
Miss Anne. Several times indeed June had corrected Hale's slips of
tongue with mischievous triumph, and once when he came back late
from a long trip in the mountains and walked in to dinner without
changing his clothes, Hale saw her look from himself to the
immaculate Bob with an unconscious comparison that half amused,
half worried him. The truth was he was building a lovely
Frankenstein and from wondering what he was going to do with it,
he was beginning to wonder now what it might some day do with him.
And though he sometimes joked with Miss Anne, who had withdrawn
now to the level plane of friendship with him, about the
transformation that was going on, he worried in a way that did
neither his heart nor his brain good. Still he fought both to
little purpose all that summer, and it was not till the time was
nigh when June must go away again, that he spoke both. For Hale's
sister was going to marry, and it was her advice that he should
take June to New York if only for the sake of her music and her
voice. That very day June had for the first time seen her cousin
Dave. He was on horseback, he had been drinking and he pulled in
and, without an answer to her greeting, stared her over from head
to foot. Colouring angrily, she started on and then he spoke
thickly and with a sneer:

"'Bout fryin' size, now, ain't ye? I reckon maybe, if you keep on,
you'll be good enough fer him in a year or two more."

"I'm much obliged for those apples, Dave," said June quietly--and
Dave flushed a darker red and sat still, forgetting to renew the
old threat that was on his tongue.

But his taunt rankled in the girl--rankled more now than when Dave
first made it, for she better saw the truth of it and the hurt was
the greater to her unconquerable pride that kept her from
betraying the hurt to Dave long ago, and now, when he was making
an old wound bleed afresh. But the pain was with her at dinner
that night and through the evening. She avoided Hale's eyes though
she knew that he was watching her all the time, and her instinct
told her that something was going to happen that night and what
that something was. Hale was the last to go and when he called to
her from the porch, she went out trembling and stood at the head
of the steps in the moonlight.

"I love you, little girl," he said simply, "and I want you to
marry me some day--will you, June?" She was unsurprised but she
flushed under his hungry eyes, and the little cross throbbed at
her throat.

"SOME day-not NOW," she thought, and then with equal simplicity:
"Yes, Jack."

"And if you should love somebody else more, you'll tell me right
away--won't you, June?" She shrank a little and her eyes fell, but
straight-way she raised them steadily:

"Yes, Jack."

"Thank you, little girl--good-night."

"Good-night, Jack."

Hale saw the little shrinking movement she made, and, as he went
down the hill, he thought she seemed to be in a hurry to be alone,
and that she had caught her breath sharply as she turned away. And
brooding he walked the woods long that night.

Only a few days later, they started for New York and, with all her
dreaming, June had never dreamed that the world could be so large.
Mountains and vast stretches of rolling hills and level land
melted away from her wondering eyes; towns and cities sank behind
them, swift streams swollen by freshets were outstripped and left
behind, darkness came on and, through it, they still sped on. Once
during the night she woke from a troubled dream in her berth and
for a moment she thought she was at home again. They were running
through mountains again and there they lay in the moonlight, the
great calm dark faces that she knew and loved, and she seemed to
catch the odour of the earth and feel the cool air on her face,
but there was no pang of homesickness now--she was too eager for
the world into which she was going. Next morning the air was
cooler, the skies lower and grayer--the big city was close at
hand. Then came the water, shaking and sparkling in the early
light like a great cauldron of quicksilver, and the wonderful
Brooklyn Bridge--a ribbon of twinkling lights tossed out through
the mist from the mighty city that rose from that mist as from a
fantastic dream; then the picking of a way through screeching
little boats and noiseless big ones and white bird-like floating
things and then they disappeared like two tiny grains in a
shifting human tide of sand. But Hale was happy now, for on that
trip June had come back to herself, and to him, once more--and
now, awed but unafraid, eager, bubbling, uplooking, full of quaint
questions about everything she saw, she was once more sitting with
affectionate reverence at his feet. When he left her in a great
low house that fronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him
with tears and of her own accord kissed him for the first time
since she had torn her little playhouse to pieces at the foot of
the beech down in the mountains far away. And Hale went back with
peace in his heart, but to trouble in the hills.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Not suddenly did the boom drop down there, not like a falling
star, but on the wings of hope--wings that ever fluttering upward,
yet sank inexorably and slowly closed. The first crash came over
the waters when certain big men over there went to pieces--men on
whose shoulders rested the colossal figure of progress that the
English were carving from the hills at Cumberland Gap. Still
nobody saw why a hurt to the Lion should make the Eagle sore and
so the American spirit at the other gaps and all up the Virginia
valleys that skirt the Cumberland held faithful and dauntless--for
a while. But in time as the huge steel plants grew noiseless, and
the flaming throats of the furnaces were throttled, a sympathetic
fire of dissolution spread slowly North and South and it was plain
only to the wise outsider as merely a matter of time until, all up
and down the Cumberland, the fox and the coon and the quail could
come back to their old homes on corner lots, marked each by a
pathetic little whitewashed post--a tombstone over the graves of a
myriad of buried human hopes. But it was the gap where Hale was
that died last and hardest--and of the brave spirits there, his
was the last and hardest to die.

In the autumn, while June was in New York, the signs were sure but
every soul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed
question of labour and capital was born again, for slowly each
local capitalist went slowly back to his own trade: the blacksmith
to his forge, but the carpenter not to his plane nor the mason to
his brick--there was no more building going on. The engineer took
up his transit, the preacher-politician was oftener in his pulpit,
and the singing teacher started on his round of raucous do-mi-sol-
dos through the mountains again. It was curious to see how each
man slowly, reluctantly and perforce sank back again to his old
occupation--and the town, with the luxuries of electricity, water-
works, bath-tubs and a street railway, was having a hard fight for
the plain necessities of life. The following spring, notes for the
second payment on the lots that had been bought at the great land
sale fell due, and but very few were paid. As no suits were
brought by the company, however, hope did not quite die. June did
not come home for the summer, and Hale did not encourage her to
come--she visited some of her school-mates in the North and took a
trip West to see her father who had gone out there again and
bought a farm. In the early autumn, Devil Judd came back to the
mountains and announced his intention to leave them for good. But
that autumn, the effects of the dead boom became perceptible in
the hills. There were no more coal lands bought, logging ceased,
the factions were idle once more, moonshine stills flourished,
quarrelling started, and at the county seat, one Court day, Devil
Judd whipped three Falins with his bare fists. In the early spring
a Tolliver was shot from ambush and old Judd was so furious at the
outrage that he openly announced that he would stay at home until
he had settled the old scores for good. So that, as the summer
came on, matters between the Falins and the Tollivers were worse
than they had been for years and everybody knew that, with old
Judd at the head of his clan again, the fight would be fought to
the finish. At the Gap, one institution only had suffered in
spirit not at all and that was the Volunteer Police Guard. Indeed,
as the excitement of the boom had died down, the members of that
force, as a vent for their energies, went with more enthusiasm
than ever into their work. Local lawlessness had been subdued by
this time, the Guard had been extending its work into the hills,
and it was only a question of time until it must take a part in
the Falin-Tolliver troubles. Indeed, that time, Hale believed, was
not far away, for Election Day was at hand, and always on that day
the feudists came to the Gap in a search for trouble. Meanwhile,
not long afterward, there was a pitched battle between the
factions at the county seat, and several of each would fight no
more. Next day a Falin whistled a bullet through Devil Judd's
beard from ambush, and it was at such a crisis of all the warring
elements in her mountain life that June's school-days were coming
to a close. Hale had had a frank talk with old Judd and the old
man agreed that the two had best be married at once and live at
the Gap until things were quieter in the mountains, though the old
man still clung to his resolution to go West for good when he was
done with the Falins. At such a time, then, June was coming home.




XXI


Hale was beyond Black Mountain when her letter reached him. His
work over there had to be finished and so he kept in his saddle
the greater part of two days and nights and on the third day rode
his big black horse forty miles in little more than half a day
that he might meet her at the train. The last two years had
wrought their change in him. Deterioration is easy in the hills--
superficial deterioration in habits, manners, personal appearance
and the practices of all the little niceties of life. The morning
bath is impossible because of the crowded domestic conditions of a
mountain cabin and, if possible, might if practised, excite wonder
and comment, if not vague suspicion. Sleeping garments are
practically barred for the same reason. Shaving becomes a rare
luxury. A lost tooth-brush may not be replaced for a month. In
time one may bring himself to eat with a knife for the reason that
it is hard for a hungry man to feed himself with a fork that has
but two tines. The finger tips cease to be the culminating
standard of the gentleman. It is hard to keep a supply of fresh
linen when one is constantly in the saddle, and a constant
weariness of body and a ravenous appetite make a man indifferent
to things like a bad bed and worse food, particularly as he must
philosophically put up with them, anyhow. Of all these things the
man himself may be quite unconscious and yet they affect him more
deeply than he knows and show to a woman even in his voice, his
walk, his mouth--everywhere save in his eyes, which change only in
severity, or in kindliness or when there has been some serious
break-down of soul or character within. And the woman will not
look to his eyes for the truth--which makes its way slowly--
particularly when the woman has striven for the very things that
the man has so recklessly let go. She would never suffer herself
to let down in such a way and she does not understand how a man
can.

Hale's life, since his college doors had closed behind him, had
always been a rough one. He had dropped from civilization and had
gone back into it many times. And each time he had dropped, he
dropped the deeper, and for that reason had come back into his own
life each time with more difficulty and with more indifference.
The last had been his roughest year and he had sunk a little more
deeply just at the time when June had been pluming herself for
flight from such depths forever. Moreover, Hale had been dominant
in every matter that his hand or his brain had touched. His habit
had been to say "do this" and it was done. Though he was no longer
acting captain of the Police Guard, he always acted as captain
whenever he was on hand, and always he was the undisputed leader
in all questions of business, politics or the maintenance of order
and law. The success he had forged had hardened and strengthened
his mouth, steeled his eyes and made him more masterful in manner,
speech and point of view, and naturally had added nothing to his
gentleness, his unselfishness, his refinement or the nice
consideration of little things on which women lay such stress. It
was an hour by sun when he clattered through the gap and pushed
his tired black horse into a gallop across the valley toward the
town. He saw the smoke of the little dummy and, as he thundered
over the bridge of the North Fork, he saw that it was just about
to pull out and he waved his hat and shouted imperiously for it to
wait. With his hand on the bell-rope, the conductor, autocrat that
he, too, was, did wait and Hale threw his reins to the man who was
nearest, hardly seeing who he was, and climbed aboard. He wore a
slouched hat spotted by contact with the roof of the mines which
he had hastily visited on his way through Lonesome Cove. The
growth of three days' beard was on his face. He wore a gray
woollen shirt, and a blue handkerchief--none too clean--was
loosely tied about his sun-scorched column of a throat; he was
spotted with mud from his waist to the soles of his rough riding
boots and his hands were rough and grimy. But his eye was bright
and keen and his heart thumped eagerly. Again it was the middle of
June and the town was a naked island in a sea of leaves whose
breakers literally had run mountain high and stopped for all time
motionless. Purple lights thick as mist veiled Powell's Mountain.
Below, the valley was still flooded with yellow sunlight which lay
along the mountain sides and was streaked here and there with the
long shadow of a deep ravine. The beech trunks on Imboden Hill
gleamed in it like white bodies scantily draped with green, and
the yawning Gap held the yellow light as a bowl holds wine. He had
long ago come to look upon the hills merely as storehouses for
iron and coal, put there for his special purpose, but now the long
submerged sense of the beauty of it all stirred within him again,
for June was the incarnate spirit of it all and June was coming
back to those mountains and--to him.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

And June--June had seen the change in Hale. The first year he had
come often to New York to see her and they had gone to the theatre
and the opera, and June was pleased to play the part of heroine in
what was such a real romance to the other girls in school and she
was proud of Hale. But each time he came, he seemed less
interested in the diversions that meant so much to her, more
absorbed in his affairs in the mountains and less particular about
his looks. His visits came at longer intervals, with each visit he
stayed less long, and each time he seemed more eager to get away.
She had been shy about appearing before him for the first time in
evening dress, and when he entered the drawing-room she stood
under a chandelier in blushing and resplendent confusion, but he
seemed not to recognize that he had never seen her that way
before, and for another reason June remained confused,
disappointed and hurt, for he was not only unobserving, and
seemingly unappreciative, but he was more silent than ever that
night and he looked gloomy. But if he had grown accustomed to her
beauty, there were others who had not, and smart, dapper college
youths gathered about her like bees around a flower--a triumphant
fact to which he also seemed indifferent. Moreover, he was not in
evening clothes that night and she did not know whether he had
forgotten or was indifferent to them, and the contrast that he was
made her that night almost ashamed for him. She never guessed what
the matter was, for Hale kept his troubles to himself. He was
always gentle and kind, he was as lavish with her as though he
were a king, and she was as lavish and prodigally generous as
though she were a princess. There seemed no limit to the wizard
income from the investments that Hale had made for her when, as he
said, he sold a part of her stock in the Lonesome Cove mine, and
what she wanted Hale always sent her without question. Only, as
the end was coming on at the Gap, he wrote once to know if a
certain amount would carry her through until she was ready to come
home, but even that question aroused no suspicion in thoughtless
June. And then that last year he had come no more--always, always
he was too busy. Not even on her triumphal night at the end of the
session was he there, when she had stood before the guests and
patrons of the school like a goddess, and had thrilled them into
startling applause, her teachers into open glowing pride, the
other girls into bright-eyed envy and herself into still another
new world. Now she was going home and she was glad to go.

She had awakened that morning with the keen air of the mountains
in her nostrils--the air she had breathed in when she was born,
and her eyes shone happily when she saw through her window the
loved blue hills along which raced the train. They were only a
little way from the town where she must change, the porter said;
she had overslept and she had no time even to wash her face and
hands, and that worried her a good deal. The porter nearly lost
his equilibrium when she gave him half a dollar--for women are not
profuse in the way of tipping--and instead of putting her bag down
on the station platform, he held it in his hand waiting to do her
further service. At the head of the steps she searched about for
Hale and her lovely face looked vexed and a little hurt when she
did not see him.

"Hotel, Miss?" said the porter.

"Yes, please, Harvey!" she called.

An astonished darky sprang from the line of calling hotel-porters
and took her bag. Then every tooth in his head flashed.

"Lordy, Miss June--I never knowed you at all."

June smiled--it was the tribute she was looking for.

"Have you seen Mr. Hale?"

"No'm. Mr. Hale ain't been here for mos' six months. I reckon he
aint in this country now. I aint heard nothin' 'bout him for a
long time."

June knew better than that--but she said nothing. She would rather
have had even Harvey think that he was away. So she hurried to the
hotel--she would have four hours to wait--and asked for the one
room that had a bath attached--the room to which Hale had sent her
when she had passed through on her way to New York. She almost
winced when she looked in the mirror and saw the smoke stains
about her pretty throat and ears, and she wondered if anybody
could have noticed them on her way from the train. Her hands, too,
were dreadful to look at and she hurried to take off her things.

In an hour she emerged freshened, immaculate from her crown of
lovely hair to her smartly booted feet, and at once she went
downstairs. She heard the man, whom she passed, stop at the head
of them and turn to look down at her, and she saw necks craned
within the hotel office when she passed the door. On the street
not a man and hardly a woman failed to look at her with wonder and
open admiration, for she was an apparition in that little town and
it all pleased her so much that she became flushed and conscious
and felt like a queen who, unknown, moved among her subjects and
blessed them just with her gracious presence. For she was unknown
even by several people whom she knew and that, too, pleased her--
to have bloomed so quite beyond their ken. She was like a meteor
coming back to dazzle the very world from which it had flown for a
while into space. When she went into the dining-room for the
midday dinner, there was a movement in almost every part of the
room as though there were many there who were on the lookout for
her entrance. The head waiter, a portly darky, lost his
imperturbable majesty for a moment in surprise at the vision and
then with a lordly yet obsequious wave of his hand, led her to a
table over in a corner where no one was sitting. Four young men
came in rather boisterously and made for her table. She lifted her
calm eyes at them so haughtily that the one in front halted with
sudden embarrassment and they all swerved to another table from
which they stared at her surreptitiously. Perhaps she was mistaken
for the comic-opera star whose brilliant picture she had seen on a
bill board in front of the "opera house." Well, she had the voice
and she might have been and she might yet be--and if she were,
this would be the distinction that would be shown her. And, still
as it was she was greatly pleased.

At four o'clock she started for the hills. In half an hour she was
dropping down a winding ravine along a rock-lashing stream with
those hills so close to the car on either side that only now and
then could she see the tops of them. Through the window the keen
air came from the very lungs of them, freighted with the coolness
of shadows, the scent of damp earth and the faint fragrance of
wild flowers, and her soul leaped to meet them. The mountain sides
were showered with pink and white laurel (she used to call it
"ivy") and the rhododendrons (she used to call them "laurel") were
just beginning to blossom--they were her old and fast friends--
mountain, shadow, the wet earth and its pure breath, and tree,
plant and flower; she had not forgotten them, and it was good to
come back to them. Once she saw an overshot water-wheel on the
bank of the rushing little stream and she thought of Uncle Billy;
she smiled and the smile stopped short--she was going back to
other things as well. The train had creaked by a log-cabin set in
the hillside and then past another and another; and always there
were two or three ragged children in the door and a haggard
unkempt woman peering over their shoulders. How lonely those
cabins looked and how desolate the life they suggested to her now-
-NOW! The first station she came to after the train had wound down
the long ravine to the valley level again was crowded with
mountaineers. There a wedding party got aboard with a great deal
of laughter, chaffing and noise, and all three went on within and
without the train while it was waiting. A sudden thought stunned
her like a lightning stroke. They were HER people out there on the
platform and inside the car ahead--those rough men in slouch hats,
jeans and cowhide boots, their mouths stained with tobacco juice,
their cheeks and eyes on fire with moonshine, and those women in
poke-bonnets with their sad, worn, patient faces on which the
sympathetic good cheer and joy of the moment sat so strangely. She
noticed their rough shoes and their homespun gowns that made their
figures all alike and shapeless, with a vivid awakening of early
memories. She might have been one of those narrow-lived girls
outside, or that bride within had it not been for Jack--Hale. She
finished the name in her own mind and she was conscious that she
had. Ah, well, that was a long time ago and she was nothing but a
child and she had thrown herself at his head. Perhaps it was
different with him now and if it was, she would give him the
chance to withdraw from everything. It would be right and fair and
then life was so full for her now. She was dependent on nobody--on
nothing. A rainbow spanned the heaven above her and the other end
of it was not in the hills. But one end was and to that end she
was on her way. She was going to just such people as she had seen
at the station. Her father and her kinsmen were just such men--her
step-mother and kinswomen were just such women. Her home was
little more than just such a cabin as the desolate ones that
stirred her pity when she swept by them. She thought of how she
felt when she had first gone to Lonesome Cove after a few months
at the Gap, and she shuddered to think how she would feel now. She
was getting restless by this time and aimlessly she got up and
walked to the front of the car and back again to her seat, hardly
noticing that the other occupants were staring at her with some
wonder. She sat down for a few minutes and then she went to the
rear and stood outside on the platform, clutching a brass rod of
the railing and looking back on the dropping darkness in which the
hills seemed to be rushing together far behind as the train
crashed on with its wake of spark-lit rolling smoke. A cinder
stung her face, and when she lifted her hand to the spot, she saw
that her glove was black with grime. With a little shiver of
disgust she went back to her seat and with her face to the
blackness rushing past her window she sat brooding--brooding. Why
had Hale not met her? He had said he would and she had written him
when she was coming and had telegraphed him at the station in New
York when she started. Perhaps he HAD changed. She recalled that
even his letters had grown less frequent, shorter, more hurried
the past year--well, he should have his chance. Always, however,
her mind kept going back to the people at the station and to her
people in the mountains. They were the same, she kept repeating to
herself--the very same and she was one of them. And always she
kept thinking of her first trip to Lonesome Cove after her
awakening and of what her next would be. That first time Hale had
made her go back as she had left, in home-spun, sun-bonnet and
brogans. There was the same reason why she should go back that way
now as then--would Hale insist that she should now? She almost
laughed aloud at the thought. She knew that she would refuse and
she knew that his reason would not appeal to her now--she no
longer cared what her neighbours and kinspeople might think and
say. The porter paused at her seat.

"How much longer is it?" she asked.

"Half an hour, Miss."

June went to wash her face and hands, and when she came back to
her seat a great glare shone through the windows on the other side
of the car. It was the furnace, a "run" was on and she could see
the streams of white molten metal racing down the narrow channels
of sand to their narrow beds on either side. The whistle shrieked
ahead for the Gap and she nerved herself with a prophetic sense of
vague trouble at hand.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

At the station Hale had paced the platform. He looked at his watch
to see whether he might have time to run up to the furnace, half a
mile away, and board the train there. He thought he had and he was
about to start when the shriek of the coming engine rose beyond
the low hills in Wild Cat Valley, echoed along Powell's Mountain
and broke against the wrinkled breast of the Cumberland. On it
came, and in plain sight it stopped suddenly to take water, and
Hale cursed it silently and recalled viciously that when he was in
a hurry to arrive anywhere, the water-tower was always on the
wrong side of the station. He got so restless that he started for
it on a run and he had gone hardly fifty yards before the train
came on again and he had to run back to beat it to the station--
where he sprang to the steps of the Pullman before it stopped--
pushing the porter aside to find himself checked by the crowded
passengers at the door. June was not among them and straightway he
ran for the rear of the car.

June had risen. The other occupants of the car had crowded forward
and she was the last of them. She had stood, during an irritating
wait, at the water-tower, and now as she moved slowly forward
again she heard the hurry of feet behind her and she turned to
look into the eager, wondering eyes of John Hale.

"June!" he cried in amazement, but his face lighted with joy and
he impulsively stretched out his arms as though he meant to take
her in them, but as suddenly he dropped them before the startled
look in her eyes, which, with one swift glance, searched him from
head to foot. They shook hands almost gravely.




XXII


June sat in the little dummy, the focus of curious eyes, while
Hale was busy seeing that her baggage was got aboard. The checks
that she gave him jingled in his hands like a bunch of keys, and
he could hardly help grinning when he saw the huge trunks and the
smart bags that were tumbled from the baggage car--all marked with
her initials. There had been days when he had laid considerable
emphasis on pieces like those, and when he thought of them
overwhelming with opulent suggestions that debt-stricken little
town, and, later, piled incongruously on the porch of the cabin on
Lonesome Cove, he could have laughed aloud but for a nameless
something that was gnawing savagely at his heart.

He felt almost shy when he went back into the car, and though June
greeted him with a smile, her immaculate daintiness made him
unconsciously sit quite far away from her. The little fairy-cross
was still at her throat, but a tiny diamond gleamed from each end
of it and from the centre, as from a tiny heart, pulsated the
light of a little blood-red ruby. To him it meant the loss of
June's simplicity and was the symbol of her new estate, but he
smiled and forced himself into hearty cheerfulness of manner and
asked her questions about her trip. But June answered in halting
monosyllables, and talk was not easy between them. All the while
he was watching her closely and not a movement of her eye, ear,
mouth or hand--not an inflection of her voice--escaped him. He saw
her sweep the car and its occupants with a glance, and he saw the
results of that glance in her face and the down-dropping of her
eyes to the dainty point of one boot. He saw her beautiful mouth
close suddenly tight and her thin nostrils quiver disdainfully
when a swirl of black smoke, heavy with cinders, came in with an
entering passenger through the front door of the car. Two half-
drunken men were laughing boisterously near that door and even her
ears seemed trying to shut out their half-smothered rough talk.
The car started with a bump that swayed her toward him, and when
she caught the seat with one hand, it checked as suddenly,
throwing her the other way, and then with a leap it sprang ahead
again, giving a nagging snap to her head. Her whole face grew red
with vexation and shrinking distaste, and all the while, when the
little train steadied into its creaking, puffing, jostling way,
one gloved hand on the chased silver handle of her smart little
umbrella kept nervously swaying it to and fro on its steel-shod
point, until she saw that the point was in a tiny pool of tobacco
juice, and then she laid it across her lap with shuddering
swiftness.

At first Hale thought that she had shrunk from kissing him in the
car because other people were around. He knew better now. At that
moment he was as rough and dirty as the chain-carrier opposite
him, who was just in from a surveying expedition in the mountains,
as the sooty brakeman who came through to gather up the fares--as
one of those good-natured, profane inebriates up in the corner.
No, it was not publicity--she had shrunk from him as she was
shrinking now from black smoke, rough men, the shaking of the
train--the little pool of tobacco juice at her feet. The truth
began to glimmer through his brain. He understood, even when she
leaned forward suddenly to look into the mouth of the gap, that
was now dark with shadows. Through that gap lay her way and she
thought him now more a part of what was beyond than she who had
been born of it was, and dazed by the thought, he wondered if he
might not really be. At once he straightened in his seat, and his
mind made up, as he always made it up--swiftly. He had not
explained why he had not met her that morning, nor had he
apologized for his rough garb, because he was so glad to see her
and because there were so many other things he wanted to say; and
when he saw her, conscious and resentful, perhaps, that he had not
done these things at once--he deliberately declined to do them
now. He became silent, but he grew more courteous, more
thoughtful--watchful. She was very tired, poor child; there were
deep shadows under her eyes which looked weary and almost
mournful. So, when with a clanging of the engine bell they stopped
at the brilliantly lit hotel, he led her at once upstairs to the
parlour, and from there sent her up to her room, which was ready
for her.

"You must get a good sleep," he said kindly, and with his usual
firmness that was wont to preclude argument. "You are worn to
death. I'll have your supper sent to your room." The girl felt the
subtle change in his manner and her lip quivered for a vague
reason that neither knew, but, without a word, she obeyed him like
a child. He did not try again to kiss her. He merely took her
hand, placed his left over it, and with a gentle pressure, said:

"Good-night, little girl."

"Good-night," she faltered.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Resolutely, relentlessly, first, Hale cast up his accounts,
liabilities, resources, that night, to see what, under the least
favourable outcome, the balance left to him would be. Nearly all
was gone. His securities were already sold. His lots would not
bring at public sale one-half of the deferred payments yet to be
made on them, and if the company brought suit, as it was
threatening to do, he would be left fathoms deep in debt. The
branch railroad had not come up the river toward Lonesome Cove,
and now he meant to build barges and float his cannel coal down to
the main line, for his sole hope was in the mine in Lonesome Cove.
The means that he could command were meagre, but they would carry
his purpose with June for a year at least and then--who knew?--he
might, through that mine, be on his feet again.

The little town was dark and asleep when he stepped into the cool
night-air and made his way past the old school-house and up
Imboden Hill. He could see--all shining silver in the moonlight--
the still crest of the big beech at the blessed roots of which his
lips had met June's in the first kiss that had passed between
them. On he went through the shadowy aisle that the path made
between other beech-trunks, harnessed by the moonlight with silver
armour and motionless as sentinels on watch till dawn, out past
the amphitheatre of darkness from which the dead trees tossed out
their crooked arms as though voicing silently now his own soul's
torment, and then on to the point of the spur of foot-hills where,
with the mighty mountains encircling him and the world, a
dreamland lighted only by stars, he stripped his soul before the
Maker of it and of him and fought his fight out alone.

His was the responsibility for all--his alone. No one else was to
blame--June not at all. He had taken her from her own life--had
swerved her from the way to which God pointed when she was born.
He had given her everything she wanted, had allowed her to do what
she pleased and had let her think that, through his miraculous
handling of her resources, she was doing it all herself. And the
result was natural. For the past two years he had been harassed
with debt, racked with worries, writhing this way and that,
concerned only with the soul-tormenting catastrophe that had
overtaken him. About all else he had grown careless. He had not
been to see her the last year, he had written seldom, and it
appalled him to look back now on his own self-absorption and to
think how he must have appeared to June. And he had gone on in
that self-absorption to the very end. He had got his license to
marry, had asked Uncle Billy, who was magistrate as well as
miller, to marry them, and, a rough mountaineer himself to the
outward eye, he had appeared to lead a child like a lamb to the
sacrifice and had found a woman with a mind, heart and purpose of
her own. It was all his work. He had sent her away to fit her for
his station in life--to make her fit to marry him. She had risen
above and now HE WAS NOT FIT TO MARRY HER. That was the brutal
truth--a truth that was enough to make a wise man laugh or a fool
weep, and Hale did neither. He simply went on working to make out
how he could best discharge the obligations that he had
voluntarily, willingly, gladly, selfishly even, assumed. In his
mind he treated conditions only as he saw and felt them and
believed them at that moment true: and into the problem he went no
deeper than to find his simple duty, and that, while the morning
stars were sinking, he found. And it was a duty the harder to find
because everything had reawakened within him, and the starting-
point of that awakening was the proud glow in Uncle Billy's kind
old face, when he knew the part he was to play in the happiness of
Hale and June. All the way over the mountain that day his heart
had gathered fuel from memories at the big Pine, and down the
mountain and through the gap, to be set aflame by the yellow
sunlight in the valley and the throbbing life in everything that
was alive, for the month was June and the spirit of that month was
on her way to him. So when he rose now, with back-thrown head, he
stretched his arms suddenly out toward those far-seeing stars, and
as suddenly dropped them with an angry shake of his head and one
quick gritting of his teeth that such a thought should have
mastered him even for one swift second--the thought of how
lonesome would be the trail that would be his to follow after that
day.




XXIII


June, tired though she was, tossed restlessly that night. The one
look she had seen in Hale's face when she met him in the car, told
her the truth as far as he was concerned. He was unchanged, she
could give him no chance to withdraw from their long
understanding, for it was plain to her quick instinct that he
wanted none. And so she had asked him no question about his
failure to meet her, for she knew now that his reason, no matter
what, was good. He had startled her in the car, for her mind was
heavy with memories of the poor little cabins she had passed on
the train, of the mountain men and women in the wedding-party, and
Hale himself was to the eye so much like one of them--had so
startled her that, though she knew that his instinct, too, was at
work, she could not gather herself together to combat her own
feelings, for every little happening in the dummy but drew her
back to her previous train of painful thought. And in that
helplessness she had told Hale good-night. She remembered now how
she had looked upon Lonesome Cove after she went to the Gap; how
she had looked upon the Gap after her year in the Bluegrass, and
how she had looked back even on the first big city she had seen
there from the lofty vantage ground of New York. What was the use
of it all? Why laboriously climb a hill merely to see and yearn
for things that you cannot have, if you must go back and live in
the hollow again? Well, she thought rebelliously, she would not go
back to the hollow again--that was all. She knew what was coming
and her cousin Dave's perpetual sneer sprang suddenly from the
past to cut through her again and the old pride rose within her
once more. She was good enough now for Hale, oh, yes, she thought
bitterly, good enough NOW; and then, remembering his life-long
kindness and thinking what she might have been but for him, she
burst into tears at the unworthiness of her own thought. Ah, what
should she do--what should she do? Repeating that question over
and over again, she fell toward morning into troubled sleep. She
did not wake until nearly noon, for already she had formed the
habit of sleeping late--late at least, for that part of the world-
-and she was glad when the negro boy brought her word that Mr.
Hale had been called up the valley and would not be back until the
afternoon. She dreaded to meet him, for she knew that he had seen
the trouble within her and she knew he was not the kind of man to
let matters drag vaguely, if they could be cleared up and settled
by open frankness of discussion, no matter how blunt he must be.
She had to wait until mid-day dinner time for something to eat, so
she lay abed, picked a breakfast from the menu, which was spotted,
dirty and meagre in offerings, and had it brought to her room.
Early in the afternoon she issued forth into the sunlight, and
started toward Imboden Hill. It was very beautiful and soul-
comforting--the warm air, the luxuriantly wooded hills, with their
shades of green that told her where poplar and oak and beech and
maple grew, the delicate haze of blue that overlay them and
deepened as her eyes followed the still mountain piles north-
eastward to meet the big range that shut her in from the outer
world. The changes had been many. One part of the town had been
wiped out by fire and a few buildings of stone had risen up. On
the street she saw strange faces, but now and then she stopped to
shake hands with somebody whom she knew, and who recognized her
always with surprise and spoke but few words, and then, as she
thought, with some embarrassment. Half unconsciously she turned
toward the old mill. There it was, dusty and gray, and the
dripping old wheel creaked with its weight of shining water, and
the muffled roar of the unseen dam started an answering stream of
memories surging within her. She could see the window of her room
in the old brick boarding-house, and as she passed the gate, she
almost stopped to go in, but the face of a strange man who stood
in the door with a proprietary air deterred her. There was Hale's
little frame cottage and his name, half washed out, was over the
wing that was still his office. Past that she went, with a passing
temptation to look within, and toward the old school-house. A
massive new one was half built, of gray stone, to the left, but
the old one, with its shingles on the outside that had once caused
her such wonder, still lay warm in the sun, but closed and
deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in
"Ring around the Rosy," and Hale and that girl teacher had heard
her confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day,
but the flush was now for another reason. Over the roof of the
schoolhouse she could see the beech tree where she had built her
playhouse, and memory led her from the path toward it. She had not
climbed a hill for a long time and she was panting when she
reached it. There was the scattered playhouse--it might have lain
there untouched for a quarter of a century--just as her angry feet
had kicked it to pieces. On a root of the beech she sat down and
the broad rim of her hat scratched the trunk of it and annoyed
her, so she took it off and leaned her head against the tree,
looking up into the underworld of leaves through which a sunbeam
filtered here and there--one striking her hair which had darkened
to a duller gold--striking it eagerly, unerringly, as though it
had started for just such a shining mark. Below her was outspread
the little town--the straggling, wretched little town--crude,
lonely, lifeless! She could not be happy in Lonesome Cove after
she had known the Gap, and now her horizon had so broadened that
she felt now toward the Gap and its people as she had then felt
toward the mountaineers: for the standards of living in the Cove--
so it seemed--were no farther below the standards in the Gap than
they in turn were lower than the new standards to which she had
adapted herself while away. Indeed, even that Bluegrass world
where she had spent a year was too narrow now for her vaulting
ambition, and with that thought she looked down again on the
little town, a lonely island in a sea of mountains and as far from
the world for which she had been training herself as though it
were in mid-ocean. Live down there? She shuddered at the thought
and straightway was very miserable. The clear piping of a wood-
thrush rose far away, a tear started between her half-closed
lashes and she might have gone to weeping silently, had her ear
not caught the sound of something moving below her. Some one was
coming that way, so she brushed her eyes swiftly with her
handkerchief and stood upright against the tree. And there again
Hale found her, tense, upright, bareheaded again and her hands
behind her; only her face was not uplifted and dreaming--it was
turned toward him, unstartled and expectant. He stopped below her
and leaned one shoulder against a tree.

"I saw you pass the office," he said, "and I thought I should find
you here."

His eyes dropped to the scattered playhouse of long ago--and a
faint smile that was full of submerged sadness passed over his
face. It was his playhouse, after all, that she had kicked to
pieces. But he did not mention it--nor her attitude--nor did he
try, in any way, to arouse her memories of that other time at this
same place.

"I want to talk with you, June--and I want to talk now."

"Yes, Jack," she said tremulously.

For a moment he stood in silence, his face half-turned, his teeth
hard on his indrawn lip--thinking. There was nothing of the
mountaineer about him now. He was clean-shaven and dressed with
care--June saw that--but he looked quite old, his face seemed
harried with worries and ravaged by suffering, and June had
suddenly to swallow a quick surging of pity for him. He spoke
slowly and without looking at her:

"June, if it hadn't been for me, you would be over in Lonesome
Cove and happily married by this time, or at least contented with
your life, for you wouldn't have known any other."

"I don't know, Jack."

"I took you out--and it rests with you whether I shall be sorry I
did--sorry wholly on your account, I mean," he added hastily.

She knew what he meant and she said nothing--she only turned her
head away slightly, with her eyes upturned a little toward the
leaves that were shaking like her own heart.

"I think I see it all very clearly," he went on, in a low and
perfectly even voice. "You can't be happy over there now--you
can't be happy over here now. You've got other wishes, ambitions,
dreams, now, and I want you to realize them, and I want to help
you to realize them all I can--that's all."

"Jack!--" she helplessly, protestingly spoke his name in a
whisper, but that was all she could do, and he went on:

"It isn't so strange. What is strange is that I--that I didn't
foresee it all. But if I had," he added firmly, "I'd have done it
just the same--unless by doing it I've really done you more harm
than good."

"No--no--Jack!"

"I came into your world--you went into mine. What I had grown
indifferent about--you grew to care about. You grew sensitive
while I was growing callous to certain--" he was about to say
"surface things," but he checked himself--" certain things in life
that mean more to a woman than to a man. I would not have married
you as you were--I've got to be honest now--at least I thought it
necessary that you should be otherwise--and now you have gone
beyond me, and now you do not want to marry me as I am. And it is
all very natural and very just." Very slowly her head had dropped
until her chin rested hard above the little jewelled cross on her
breast.

"You must tell me if I am wrong. You don't love me now--well
enough to be happy with me here"--he waved one hand toward the
straggling little town below them and then toward the lonely
mountains--"I did not know that we would have to live here--but I
know it now--" he checked himself, and afterward she recalled the
tone of those last words, but then they had no especial
significance.

"Am I wrong?" he repeated, and then he said hurriedly, for her
face was so piteous--"No, you needn't give yourself the pain of
saying it in words. I want you to know that I understand that
there is nothing in the world I blame you for--nothing--nothing.
If there is any blame at all, it rests on me alone." She broke
toward him with a cry then.

"No--no, Jack," she said brokenly, and she caught his hand in both
her own and tried to raise it to her lips, but he held her back
and she put her face on his breast and sobbed heart-brokenly. He
waited for the paroxysm to pass, stroking her hair gently.

"You mustn't feel that way, little girl. You can't help it--I
can't help it--and these things happen all the time, everywhere.
You don't have to stay here. You can go away and study, and when I
can, I'll come to see you and cheer you up; and when you are a
great singer, I'll send you flowers and be so proud of you, and
I'll say to myself, 'I helped do that.' Dry your eyes, now. You
must go back to the hotel. Your father will be there by this time
and you'll have to be starting home pretty soon."

Like a child she obeyed him, but she was so weak and trembling
that he put his arm about her to help her down the hill. At the
edge of the woods she stopped and turned full toward him.

"You are so good," she said tremulously, "so GOOD. Why, you
haven't even asked me if there was another--"

Hale interrupted her, shaking his head.

"If there is, I don't want to know."

"But there isn't, there isn't!" she cried, "I don't know what is
the matter with me. I hate--" the tears started again, and again
she was on the point of breaking down, but Hale checked her.

"Now, now," he said soothingly, "you mustn't, now--that's all
right. You mustn't." Her anger at herself helped now.

"Why, I stood like a silly fool, tongue-tied, and I wanted to say
so much. I--"

"You don't need to," Hale said gently, "I understand it all. I
understand."

"I believe you do," she said with a sob, "better than I do."

"Well, it's all right, little girl. Come on."

They issued forth into the sunlight and Hale walked rapidly. The
strain was getting too much for him and he was anxious to be
alone. Without a word more they passed the old school-house, the
massive new one, and went on, in silence, down the street. Hitched
to a post, near the hotel, were two gaunt horses with drooping
heads, and on one of them was a side-saddle. Sitting on the steps
of the hotel, with a pipe in his mouth, was the mighty figure of
Devil Judd Tolliver. He saw them coming--at least he saw Hale
coming, and that far away Hale saw his bushy eyebrows lift in
wonder at June. A moment later he rose to his great height without
a word.

"Dad," said June in a trembling voice, "don't you know me?" The
old man stared at her silently and a doubtful smile played about
his bearded lips.

"Hardly, but I reckon hit's June."

She knew that the world to which Hale belonged would expect her to
kiss him, and she made a movement as though she would, but the
habit of a lifetime is not broken so easily. She held out her
hand, and with the other patted him on the arm as she looked up
into his face.

"Time to be goin', June, if we want to get home afore dark!"

"All right, Dad."

The old man turned to his horse.

"Hurry up, little gal."

In a few minutes they were ready, and the girl looked long into
Hale's face when he took her hand.

"You are coming over soon?"

"Just as soon as I can." Her lips trembled.

"Good-by," she faltered.

"Good-by, June," said Hale.

From the steps he watched them--the giant father slouching in his
saddle and the trim figure of the now sadly misplaced girl, erect
on the awkward-pacing mountain beast--as incongruous, the two, as
a fairy on some prehistoric monster. A horseman was coming up the
street behind him and a voice called:

"Who's that?" Hale turned--it was the Honourable Samuel Budd,
coming home from Court.

"June Tolliver."

"June Taliaferro," corrected the Hon. Sam with emphasis.

"The same." The Hon. Sam silently followed the pair for a moment
through his big goggles.

"What do you think of my theory of the latent possibilities of the
mountaineer--now?"

"I think I know how true it is better than you do," said Hale
calmly, and with a grunt the Hon. Sam rode on. Hale watched them
as they rode across the plateau--watched them until the Gap
swallowed them up and his heart ached for June. Then he went to
his room and there, stretched out on his bed and with his hands
clenched behind his head, he lay staring upward.

Devil Judd Tolliver had lost none of his taciturnity. Stolidly,
silently, he went ahead, as is the custom of lordly man in the
mountains--horseback or afoot--asking no questions, answering
June's in the fewest words possible. Uncle Billy, the miller, had
been complaining a good deal that spring, and old Hon had
rheumatism. Uncle Billy's old-maid sister, who lived on Devil's
Fork, had been cooking for him at home since the last taking to
bed of June's step-mother. Bub had "growed up" like a hickory
sapling. Her cousin Loretta hadn't married, and some folks allowed
she'd run away some day yet with young Buck Falin. Her cousin Dave
had gone off to school that year, had come back a month before,
and been shot through the shoulder. He was in Lonesome Cove now.

This fact was mentioned in the same matter-of-fact way as the
other happenings. Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove--"A-
cuttin' things down an' tearin' 'em up an' playin' hell
ginerally."

The feud had broken out again and maybe June couldn't stay at home
long. He didn't want her there with the fighting going on--whereat
June's heart gave a start of gladness that the way would be easy
for her to leave when she wished to leave. Things over at the Gap
"was agoin' to perdition," the old man had been told, while he was
waiting for June and Hale that day, and Hale had not only lost a
lot of money, but if things didn't take a rise, he would be left
head over heels in debt, if that mine over in Lonesome Cove didn't
pull him out.

They were approaching the big Pine now, and June was beginning to
ache and get sore from the climb. So Hale was in trouble--that was
what he meant when he said that, though she could leave the
mountains when she pleased, he must stay there, perhaps for good.

"I'm mighty glad you come home, gal," said the old man, "an' that
ye air goin' to put an end to all this spendin' o' so much money.
Jack says you got some money left, but I don't understand it. He
says he made a 'investment' fer ye and tribbled the money. I haint
never axed him no questions. Hit was betwixt you an' him, an'
'twant none o' my business long as you an' him air goin' to marry.
He said you was goin' to marry this summer an' I wish you'd git
tied up right away whilst I'm livin', fer I don't know when a
Winchester might take me off an' I'd die a sight easier if I
knowed you was tied up with a good man like him."

"Yes, Dad," was all she said, for she had not the heart to tell
him the truth, and she knew that Hale never would until the last
moment he must, when he learned that she had failed.

Half an hour later, she could see the stone chimney of the little
cabin in Lonesome Cove. A little farther down several spirals of
smoke were visible--rising from unseen houses which were more
miners' shacks, her father said, that Hale had put up while she
was gone. The water of the creek was jet black now. A row of rough
wooden houses ran along its edge. The geese cackled a doubtful
welcome. A new dog leaped barking from the porch and a tall boy
sprang after him--both running for the gate.

"Why, Bub," cried June, sliding from her horse and kissing him,
and then holding him off at arms' length to look into his steady
gray eyes and his blushing face.

"Take the horses, Bub," said old Judd, and June entered the gate
while Bub stood with the reins in his hand, still speechlessly
staring her over from head to foot. There was her garden, thank
God--with all her flowers planted, a new bed of pansies and one of
violets and the border of laurel in bloom--unchanged and weedless.

"One o' Jack Hale's men takes keer of it," explained old Judd, and
again, with shame, June felt the hurt of her lover's
thoughtfulness. When she entered the cabin, the same old rasping
petulant voice called her from a bed in one corner, and when June
took the shrivelled old hand that was limply thrust from the bed-
clothes, the old hag's keen eyes swept her from head to foot with
disapproval.

"My, but you air wearin' mighty fine clothes," she croaked
enviously. "I ain't had a new dress fer more'n five year;" and
that was the welcome she got.

"No?" said June appeasingly. "Well, I'll get one for you myself."

"I'm much obleeged," she whined, "but I reckon I can git along."

A cough came from the bed in the other corner of the room.

"That's Dave," said the old woman, and June walked over to where
her cousin's black eyes shone hostile at her from the dark.

"I'm sorry, Dave," she said, but Dave answered nothing but a
sullen "howdye" and did not put out a hand--he only stared at her
in sulky bewilderment, and June went back to listen to the torrent
of the old woman's plaints until Bub came in. Then as she turned,
she noticed for the first time that a new door had been cut in one
side of the cabin, and Bub was following the direction of her
eyes.

"Why, haint nobody told ye?" he said delightedly.

"Told me what, Bub?"

With a whoop Bud leaped for the side of the door and, reaching up,
pulled a shining key from between the logs and thrust it into her
hands.

"Go ahead," he said. "Hit's yourn."

"Some more o' Jack Hale's fool doin's," said the old woman. "Go
on, gal, and see whut he's done."

With eager hands she put the key in the lock and when she pushed
open the door, she gasped. Another room had been added to the
cabin--and the fragrant smell of cedar made her nostrils dilate.
Bub pushed by her and threw open the shutters of a window to the
low sunlight, and June stood with both hands to her head. It was a
room for her--with a dresser, a long mirror, a modern bed in one
corner, a work-table with a student's lamp on it, a wash-stand and
a chest of drawers and a piano! On the walls were pictures and
over the mantel stood the one she had first learned to love--two
lovers clasped in each other's arms and under them the words
"Enfin Seul."

"Oh-oh," was all she could say, and choking, she motioned Bub from
the room. When the door closed, she threw herself sobbing across
the bed.

Over at the Gap that night Hale sat in his office with a piece of
white paper and a lump of black coal on the table in front of him.
His foreman had brought the coal to him that day at dusk. He
lifted the lump to the light of his lamp, and from the centre of
it a mocking evil eye leered back at him. The eye was a piece of
shining black flint and told him that his mine in Lonesome Cove
was but a pocket of cannel coal and worth no more than the
smouldering lumps in his grate. Then he lifted the piece of white
paper--it was his license to marry June.




XXIV


Very slowly June walked up the little creek to the old log where
she had lain so many happy hours. There was no change in leaf,
shrub or tree, and not a stone in the brook had been disturbed.
The sun dropped the same arrows down through the leaves--blunting
their shining points into tremulous circles on the ground, the
water sang the same happy tune under her dangling feet and a wood-
thrush piped the old lay overhead.

Wood-thrush! June smiled as she suddenly rechristened the bird for
herself now. That bird henceforth would be the Magic Flute to
musical June--and she leaned back with ears, eyes and soul awake
and her brain busy.

All the way over the mountain, on that second home-going, she had
thought of the first, and even memories of the memories aroused by
that first home-going came back to her--the place where Hale had
put his horse into a dead run and had given her that never-to-be-
forgotten thrill, and where she had slid from behind to the ground
and stormed with tears. When they dropped down into the green
gloom of shadow and green leaves toward Lonesome Cove, she had the
same feeling that her heart was being clutched by a human hand and
that black night had suddenly fallen about her, but this time she
knew what it meant. She thought then of the crowded sleeping-room,
the rough beds and coarse blankets at home; the oil-cloth, spotted
with drippings from a candle, that covered the table; the thick
plates and cups; the soggy bread and the thick bacon floating in
grease; the absence of napkins, the eating with knives and fingers
and the noise Bub and her father made drinking their coffee. But
then she knew all these things in advance, and the memories of
them on her way over had prepared her for Lonesome Cove. The
conditions were definite there: she knew what it would be to face
them again--she was facing them all the way, and to her surprise
the realities had hurt her less even than they had before. Then
had come the same thrill over the garden, and now with that garden
and her new room and her piano and her books, with Uncle Billy's
sister to help do the work, and with the little changes that June
was daily making in the household, she could live her own life
even over there as long as she pleased, and then she would go out
into the world again.

But all the time when she was coming over from the Gap, the way
had bristled with accusing memories of Hale--even from the
chattering creeks, the turns in the road, the sun-dappled bushes
and trees and flowers; and when she passed the big Pine that rose
with such friendly solemnity above her, the pang of it all hurt
her heart and kept on hurting her. When she walked in the garden,
the flowers seemed not to have the same spirit of gladness. It had
been a dry season and they drooped for that reason, but the
melancholy of them had a sympathetic human quality that depressed
her. If she saw a bass shoot arrow-like into deep water, if she
heard a bird or saw a tree or a flower whose name she had to
recall, she thought of Hale. Do what she would, she could not
escape the ghost that stalked at her side everywhere, so like a
human presence that she felt sometimes a strange desire to turn
and speak to it. And in her room that presence was all-pervasive.
The piano, the furniture, the bits of bric-a-brac, the pictures
and books--all were eloquent with his thought of her--and every
night before she turned out her light she could not help lifting
her eyes to her once-favourite picture--even that Hale had
remembered--the lovers clasped in each other's arms--"At Last
Alone"--only to see it now as a mocking symbol of his beaten
hopes. She had written to thank him for it all, and not yet had he
answered her letter. He had said that he was coming over to
Lonesome Cove and he had not come--why should he, on her account?
Between them all was over--why should he? The question was absurd
in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she
so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true
that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran
her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her
chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled eyes were
fixed unwaveringly on the running water and yet not seeing it at
all. A call--her step-mother's cry--rang up the ravine and she did
not hear it. She did not even hear Bub coming through the
underbrush a few minutes later, and when he half angrily shouted
her name at the end of the vista, down-stream, whence he could see
her, she lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her
senses had for the moment been wholly lost.

"Come on," he shouted.

She had forgotten--there was a "bean-stringing" at the house that
day--and she slipped slowly off the log and went down the path,
gathering herself together as she went, and making no answer to
the indignant Bub who turned and stalked ahead of her back to the
house. At the barnyard gate her father stopped her--he looked
worried.

"Jack Hale's jus' been over hyeh." June caught her breath sharply.

"Has he gone?" The old man was watching her and she felt it.

"Yes, he was in a hurry an' nobody knowed whar you was. He jus'
come over, he said, to tell me to tell you that you could go back
to New York and keep on with yo' singin' doin's whenever you
please. He knowed I didn't want you hyeh when this war starts fer
a finish as hit's goin' to, mighty soon now. He says he ain't
quite ready to git married yit. I'm afeerd he's in trouble."

"Trouble?"

"I tol' you t'other day--he's lost all his money; but he says
you've got enough to keep you goin' fer some time. I don't see why
you don't git married right now and live over at the Gap."

June coloured and was silent.

"Oh," said the old man quickly, "you ain't ready nuther,"--he
studied her with narrowing eyes and through a puzzled frown--"but
I reckon hit's all right, if you air goin' to git married some
time."

"What's all right, Dad?" The old man checked himself:

"Ever' thing," he said shortly, "but don't you make a fool of
yo'self with a good man like Jack Hale." And, wondering, June was
silent. The truth was that the old man had wormed out of Hale an
admission of the kindly duplicity the latter had practised on him
and on June, and he had given his word to Hale that he would not
tell June. He did not understand why Hale should have so insisted
on that promise, for it was all right that Hale should openly do
what he pleased for the girl he was going to marry--but he had
given his word: so he turned away, but his frown stayed where it
was.

June went on, puzzled, for she knew that her father was
withholding something, and she knew, too, that he would tell her
only in his own good time. But she could go away when she pleased-
-that was the comfort--and with the thought she stopped suddenly
at the corner of the garden. She could see Hale on his big black
horse climbing the spur. Once it had always been his custom to
stop on top of it to rest his horse and turn to look back at her,
and she always waited to wave him good-by. She wondered if he
would do it now, and while she looked and waited, the beating of
her heart quickened nervously; but he rode straight on, without
stopping or turning his head, and June felt strangely bereft and
resentful, and the comfort of the moment before was suddenly gone.
She could hear the voices of the guests in the porch around the
corner of the house--there was an ordeal for her around there, and
she went on. Loretta and Loretta's mother were there, and old Hon
and several wives and daughters of Tolliver adherents from up
Deadwood Creek and below Uncle Billy's mill. June knew that the
"bean-stringing" was simply an excuse for them to be there, for
she could not remember that so many had ever gathered there
before--at that function in the spring, at corn-cutting in the
autumn, or sorghum-making time or at log-raisings or quilting
parties, and she well knew the motive of these many and the
curiosity of all save, perhaps, Loretta and the old miller's wife:
and June was prepared for them. She had borrowed a gown from her
step-mother--a purple creation of home-spun--she had shaken down
her beautiful hair and drawn it low over her brows, and arranged
it behind after the fashion of mountain women, and when she went
up the steps of the porch she was outwardly to the eye one of them
except for the leathern belt about her slenderly full waist, her
black silk stockings and the little "furrin" shoes on her dainty
feet. She smiled inwardly when she saw the same old wave of
disappointment sweep across the faces of them all. It was not
necessary to shake hands, but unthinkingly she did, and the women
sat in their chairs as she went from one to the other and each
gave her a limp hand and a grave "howdye," though each paid an
unconscious tribute to a vague something about her, by wiping that
hand on an apron first. Very quietly and naturally she took a low
chair, piled beans in her lap and, as one of them, went to work.
Nobody looked at her at first until old Hon broke the silence.

"You haint lost a spec o' yo' good looks, Juny."

June laughed without a flush--she would have reddened to the roots
of her hair two years before.

"I'm feelin' right peart, thank ye," she said, dropping
consciously into the vernacular; but there was a something in her
voice that was vaguely felt by all as a part of the universal
strangeness that was in her erect bearing, her proud head, her
deep eyes that looked so straight into their own--a strangeness
that was in that belt and those stockings and those shoes,
inconspicuous as they were, to which she saw every eye in time
covertly wandering as to tangible symbols of a mystery that was
beyond their ken. Old Hon and the step-mother alone talked at
first, and the others, even Loretta, said never a word.

"Jack Hale must have been in a mighty big hurry," quavered the old
step-mother. "June ain't goin' to be with us long, I'm afeerd:"
and, without looking up, June knew the wireless significance of
the speech was going around from eye to eye, but calmly she pulled
her thread through a green pod and said calmly, with a little
enigmatical shake of her head:

"I--don't know--I don't know."

Young Dave's mother was encouraged and all her efforts at good-
humour could not quite draw the sting of a spiteful plaint from
her voice.

"I reckon she'd never git away, if my boy Dave had the sayin' of
it." There was a subdued titter at this, but Bub had come in from
the stable and had dropped on the edge of the porch. He broke in
hotly:

"You jest let June alone, Aunt Tilly, you'll have yo' hands full
if you keep yo' eye on Loretty thar."

Already when somebody was saying something about the feud, as June
came around the corner, her quick eye had seen Loretta bend her
head swiftly over her work to hide the flush of her face. Now
Loretta turned scarlet as the step-mother spoke severely:

"You hush, Bub," and Bub rose and stalked into the house. Aunt
Tilly was leaning back in her chair--gasping--and consternation
smote the group. June rose suddenly with her string of dangling
beans.

"I haven't shown you my room, Loretty. Don't you want to see it?
Come on, all of you," she added to the girls, and they and Loretta
with one swift look of gratitude rose shyly and trooped shyly
within where they looked in wide-mouthed wonder at the marvellous
things that room contained. The older women followed to share
sight of the miracle, and all stood looking from one thing to
another, some with their hands behind them as though to thwart the
temptation to touch, and all saying merely:

"My! My!"

None of them had ever seen a piano before and June must play the
"shiny contraption" and sing a song. It was only curiosity and
astonishment that she evoked when her swift fingers began running
over the keys from one end of the board to the other, astonishment
at the gymnastic quality of the performance, and only astonishment
when her lovely voice set the very walls of the little room to
vibrating with a dramatic love song that was about as intelligible
to them as a problem in calculus, and June flushed and then smiled
with quick understanding at the dry comment that rose from Aunt
Tilly behind:

"She shorely can holler some!"

She couldn't play "Sourwood Mountain" on the piano--nor "Jinny git
Aroun'," nor "Soapsuds over the Fence," but with a sudden
inspiration she went back to an old hymn that they all knew, and
at the end she won the tribute of an awed silence that made them
file back to the beans on the porch. Loretta lingered a moment and
when June closed the piano and the two girls went into the main
room, a tall figure, entering, stopped in the door and stared at
June without speaking:

"Why, howdye, Uncle Rufe," said Loretta. "This is June. You didn't
know her, did ye?" The man laughed. Something in June's bearing
made him take off his hat; he came forward to shake hands, and
June looked up into a pair of bold black eyes that stirred within
her again the vague fears of her childhood. She had been afraid of
him when she was a child, and it was the old fear aroused that
made her recall him by his eyes now. His beard was gone and he was
much changed. She trembled when she shook hands with him and she
did not call him by his name Old Judd came in, and a moment later
the two men and Bub sat on the porch while the women worked, and
when June rose again to go indoors, she felt the newcomer's bold
eyes take her slowly in from head to foot and she turned crimson.
This was the terror among the Tollivers--Bad Rufe, come back from
the West to take part in the feud. HE saw the belt and the
stockings and the shoes, the white column of her throat and the
proud set of her gold-crowned head; HE knew what they meant, he
made her feel that he knew, and later he managed to catch her eyes
once with an amused, half-contemptuous glance at the simple
untravelled folk about them, that said plainly how well he knew
they two were set apart from them, and she shrank fearfully from
the comradeship that the glance implied and would look at him no
more. He knew everything that was going on in the mountains. He
had come back "ready for business," he said. When he made ready to
go, June went to her room and stayed there, but she heard him say
to her father that he was going over to the Gap, and with a laugh
that chilled her soul:

"I'm goin' over to kill me a policeman." And her father warned
gruffly:

"You better keep away from thar. You don't understand them
fellers." And she heard Rufe's brutal laugh again, and as he rode
into the creek his horse stumbled and she saw him cut cruelly at
the poor beast's ears with the rawhide quirt that he carried. She
was glad when all went home, and the only ray of sunlight in the
day for her radiated from Uncle Billy's face when, at sunset, he
came to take old Hon home. The old miller was the one unchanged
soul to her in that he was the one soul that could see no change
in June. He called her "baby" in the old way, and he talked to her
now as he had talked to her as a child. He took her aside to ask
her if she knew that Hale had got his license to marry, and when
she shook her head, his round, red face lighted up with the
benediction of a rising sun:

"Well, that's what he's done, baby, an' he's axed me to marry ye,"
he added, with boyish pride, "he's axed ME."

And June choked, her eyes filled, and she was dumb, but Uncle
Billy could not see that it meant distress and not joy. He just
put his arm around her and whispered:

"I ain't told a soul, baby--not a soul."

She went to bed and to sleep with Hale's face in the dream-mist of
her brain, and Uncle Billy's, and the bold, black eyes of Bad Rufe
Tolliver--all fused, blurred, indistinguishable. Then suddenly
Rufe's words struck that brain, word by word, like the clanging
terror of a frightened bell.

"I'm goin' to kill me a policeman." And with the last word, it
seemed, she sprang upright in bed, clutching the coverlid
convulsively. Daylight was showing gray through her window. She
heard a swift step up the steps, across the porch, the rattle of
the door-chain, her father's quick call, then the rumble of two
men's voices, and she knew as well what had happened as though she
had heard every word they uttered. Rufe had killed him a
policeman--perhaps John Hale--and with terror clutching her heart
she sprang to the floor, and as she dropped the old purple gown
over her shoulders, she heard the scurry of feet across the back
porch--feet that ran swiftly but cautiously, and left the sound of
them at the edge of the woods. She heard the back door close
softly, the creaking of the bed as her father lay down again, and
then a sudden splashing in the creek. Kneeling at the window, she
saw strange horsemen pushing toward the gate where one threw
himself from his saddle, strode swiftly toward the steps, and her
lips unconsciously made soft, little, inarticulate cries of joy--
for the stern, gray face under the hat of the man was the face of
John Hale. After him pushed other men--fully armed--whom he
motioned to either side of the cabin to the rear. By his side was
Bob Berkley, and behind him was a red-headed Falin whom she well
remembered. Within twenty feet, she was looking into that gray
face, when the set lips of it opened in a loud command: "Hello!"
She heard her father's bed creak again, again the rattle of the
door-chain, and then old Judd stepped on the porch with a revolver
in each hand.

"Hello!" he answered sternly.

"Judd," said Hale sharply--and June had never heard that tone from
him before--"a man with a black moustache killed one of our men
over in the Gap yesterday and we've tracked him over here. There's
his horse--and we saw him go into that door. We want him."

"Do you know who the feller is?" asked old Judd calmly.

"No," said Hale quickly. And then, with equal calm:

"Hit was my brother," and the old man's mouth closed like a vise.
Had the last word been a stone striking his ear, Hale could hardly
have been more stunned. Again he called and almost gently:

"Watch the rear, there," and then gently he turned to Devil Judd.

"Judd, your brother shot a man at the Gap--without excuse or
warning. He was an officer and a friend of mine, but if he were a
stranger--we want him just the same. Is he here?"

Judd looked at the red-headed man behind Hale.

"So you're turned on the Falin side now, have ye?" he said
contemptuously.

"Is he here?" repeated Hale.

"Yes, an' you can't have him." Without a move toward his pistol
Hale stepped forward, and June saw her father's big right hand
tighten on his huge pistol, and with a low cry she sprang to her
feet.

"I'm an officer of the law," Hale said, "stand aside, Judd!" Bub
leaped to the door with a Winchester--his eyes wild and his face
white.

"Watch out, men!" Hale called, and as the men raised their guns
there was a shriek inside the cabin and June stood at Bub's side,
barefooted, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, and her hand
clutching the little cross at her throat.

"Stop!" she shrieked. "He isn't here. He's--he's gone!" For a
moment a sudden sickness smote Hale's face, then Devil Judd's ruse
flashed to him and, wheeling, he sprang to the ground.

"Quick!" he shouted, with a sweep of his hand right and left. "Up
those hollows! Lead those horses up to the Pine and wait. Quick!"

Already the men were running as he directed and Hale, followed by
Bob and the Falin, rushed around the corner of the house. Old
Judd's nostrils were quivering, and with his pistols dangling in
his hands he walked to the gate, listening to the sounds of the
pursuit.

"They'll never ketch him," he said, coming back, and then he
dropped into a chair and sat in silence a long time. June
reappeared, her face still white and her temples throbbing, for
the sun was rising on days of darkness for her. Devil Judd did not
even look at her.

"I reckon you ain't goin' to marry John Hale."

"No, Dad," said June.




XXV


Thus Fate did not wait until Election Day for the thing Hale most
dreaded--a clash that would involve the guard in the Tolliver-
Falin troubles over the hills. There had been simply a preliminary
political gathering at the Gap the day before, but it had been a
crucial day for the guard from a cloudy sunrise to a tragic
sunset. Early that morning, Mockaby, the town-sergeant, had
stepped into the street freshly shaven, with polished boots, and
in his best clothes for the eyes of his sweetheart, who was to
come up that day to the Gap from Lee. Before sunset he died with
those boots on, while the sweetheart, unknowing, was bound on her
happy way homeward, and Rufe Tolliver, who had shot Mockaby, was
clattering through the Gap in flight for Lonesome Cove.

As far as anybody knew, there had been but one Tolliver and one
Falin in town that day, though many had noticed the tall Western-
looking stranger who, early in the afternoon, had ridden across
the bridge over the North Fork, but he was quiet and well-behaved,
he merged into the crowd and through the rest of the afternoon was
in no way conspicuous, even when the one Tolliver and the one
Falin got into a fight in front of the speaker's stand and the
riot started which came near ending in a bloody battle. The Falin
was clearly blameless and was let go at once. This angered the
many friends of the Tolliver, and when he was arrested there was
an attempt at rescue, and the Tolliver was dragged to the
calaboose behind a slowly retiring line of policemen, who were
jabbing the rescuers back with the muzzles of cocked Winchesters.
It was just when it was all over, and the Tolliver was safely
jailed, that Bad Rufe galloped up to the calaboose, shaking with
rage, for he had just learned that the prisoner was a Tolliver. He
saw how useless interference was, but he swung from his horse,
threw the reins over its head after the Western fashion and strode
up to Hale.

"You the captain of this guard?"

"Yes," said Hale; "and you?" Rufe shook his head with angry
impatience, and Hale, thinking he had some communication to make,
ignored his refusal to answer.

"I hear that a fellow can't blow a whistle or holler, or shoot off
his pistol in this town without gittin' arrested."

"That's true--why?" Rufe's black eyes gleamed vindictively.

"Nothin'," he said, and he turned to his horse.

Ten minutes later, as Mockaby was passing down the dummy track, a
whistle was blown on the river bank, a high yell was raised, a
pistol shot quickly followed and he started for the sound of them
on a run. A few minutes later three more pistol shots rang out,
and Hale rushed to the river bank to find Mockaby stretched out on
the ground, dying, and a mountaineer lout pointing after a man on
horseback, who was making at a swift gallop for the mouth of the
gap and the hills.

"He done it," said the lout in a frightened way; "but I don't know
who he was."

Within half an hour ten horsemen were clattering after the
murderer, headed by Hale, Logan, and the Infant of the Guard.
Where the road forked, a woman with a child in her arms said she
had seen a tall, black-eyed man with a black moustache gallop up
the right fork. She no more knew who he was than any of the
pursuers. Three miles up that fork they came upon a red-headed man
leading his horse from a mountaineer's yard,

"He went up the mountain," the red-haired man said, pointing to
the trail of the Lonesome Pine. "He's gone over the line. Whut's
he done--killed somebody?"

"Yes," said Hale shortly, starting up his horse.

"I wish I'd a-knowed you was atter him. I'm sheriff over thar."

Now they were without warrant or requisition, and Hale, pulling
in, said sharply:

"We want that fellow. He killed a man at the Gap. If we catch him
over the line, we want you to hold him for us. Come along!" The
red-headed sheriff sprang on his horse and grinned eagerly:

"I'm your man."

"Who was that fellow?" asked Hale as they galloped. The sheriff
denied knowledge with a shake of his head.

"What's your name?" The sheriff looked sharply at him for the
effect of his answer.

"Jim Falin." And Hale looked sharply back at him. He was one of
the Falins who long, long ago had gone to the Gap for young Dave
Tolliver, and now the Falin grinned at Hale.

"I know you--all right." No wonder the Falin chuckled at this
Heaven-born chance to get a Tolliver into trouble.

At the Lonesome Pine the traces of the fugitive's horse swerved
along the mountain top--the shoe of the right forefoot being
broken in half. That swerve was a blind and the sheriff knew it,
but he knew where Rufe Tolliver would go and that there would be
plenty of time to get him. Moreover, he had a purpose of his own
and a secret fear that it might be thwarted, so, without a word,
he followed the trail till darkness hid it and they had to wait
until the moon rose. Then as they started again, the sheriff said:

"Wait a minute," and plunged down the mountain side on foot. A few
minutes later he hallooed for Hale, and down there showed him the
tracks doubling backward along a foot-path.

"Regular rabbit, ain't he?" chuckled the sheriff, and back they
went to the trail again on which two hundred yards below the Pine
they saw the tracks pointing again to Lonesome Cove.

On down the trail they went, and at the top of the spur that
overlooked Lonesome Cove, the Falin sheriff pulled in suddenly and
got off his horse. There the tracks swerved again into the bushes.

"He's goin' to wait till daylight, fer fear somebody's follered
him. He'll come in back o' Devil Judd's."

"How do you know he's going to Devil Judd's?" asked Hale.

"Whar else would he go?" asked the Falin with a sweep of his arm
toward the moonlit wilderness. "Thar ain't but one house that way
fer ten miles--and nobody lives thar."

"How do you know that he's going to any house?" asked Hale
impatiently. "He may be getting out of the mountains."

"D'you ever know a feller to leave these mountains jus' because
he'd killed a man? How'd you foller him at night? How'd you ever
ketch him with his start? What'd he turn that way fer, if he
wasn't goin' to Judd's--why d'n't he keep on down the river? If
he's gone, he's gone. If he ain't, he'll be at Devil Judd's at
daybreak if he ain't thar now."

"What do you want to do?"

"Go on down with the hosses, hide 'em in the bushes an' wait."

"Maybe he's already heard us coming down the mountain."

"That's the only thing I'm afeerd of," said the Falin calmly. "But
whut I'm tellin' you's our only chance."

"How do you know he won't hear us going down? Why not leave the
horses?"

"We might need the hosses, and hit's mud and sand all the way--you
ought to know that."

Hale did know that; so on they went quietly and hid their horses
aside from the road near the place where Hale had fished when he
first went to Lonesome Cove. There the Falin disappeared on foot.

"Do you trust him?" asked Hale, turning to Budd, and Budd laughed.

"I reckon you can trust a Falin against a friend of a Tolliver, or
t'other way round--any time." Within half an hour the Falin came
back with the news that there were no signs that the fugitive had
yet come in.

"No use surrounding the house now," he said, "he might see one of
us first when he comes in an' git away. We'll do that atter
daylight."

And at daylight they saw the fugitive ride out of the woods at the
back of the house and boldly around to the front of the house,
where he left his horse in the yard and disappeared.

"Now send three men to ketch him if he runs out the back way--
quick!" said the Falin. "Hit'll take 'em twenty minutes to git
thar through the woods. Soon's they git thar, let one of 'em shoot
his pistol off an' that'll be the signal fer us."

The three men started swiftly, but the pistol shot came before
they had gone a hundred yards, for one of the three--a new man and
unaccustomed to the use of fire-arms, stumbled over a root while
he was seeing that his pistol was in order and let it go off
accidentally.

"No time to waste now," the Falin called sharply. "Git on yo'
hosses and git!" Then the rush was made and when they gave up the
chase at noon that day, the sheriff looked Hale squarely in the
eye when Hale sharply asked him a question:

"Why didn't you tell me who that man was?"

"Because I was afeerd you wouldn't go to Devil Judd's atter him. I
know better now," and he shook his head, for he did not
understand. And so Hale at the head of the disappointed Guard went
back to the Gap, and when, next day, they laid Mockaby away in the
thinly populated little graveyard that rested in the hollow of the
river's arm, the spirit of law and order in the heart of every
guard gave way to the spirit of revenge, and the grass would grow
under the feet of none until Rufe Tolliver was caught and the
death-debt of the law was paid with death.

That purpose was no less firm in the heart of Hale, and he turned
away from the grave, sick with the trick that Fate had lost no
time in playing him; for he was a Falin now in the eyes of both
factions and an enemy--even to June.

The weeks dragged slowly along, and June sank slowly toward the
depths with every fresh realization of the trap of circumstance
into which she had fallen. She had dim memories of just such a
state of affairs when she was a child, for the feud was on now and
the three things that governed the life of the cabin in Lonesome
Cove were hate, caution, and fear.

Bub and her father worked in the fields with their Winchesters
close at hand, and June was never easy if they were outside the
house. If somebody shouted "hello"--that universal hail of friend
or enemy in the mountains--from the gate after dark, one or the
other would go out the back door and answer from the shelter of
the corner of the house. Neither sat by the light of the fire
where he could be seen through the window nor carried a candle
from one room to the other. And when either rode down the river,
June must ride behind him to prevent ambush from the bushes, for
no Kentucky mountaineer, even to kill his worst enemy, will risk
harming a woman. Sometimes Loretta would come and spend the day,
and she seemed little less distressed than June. Dave was
constantly in and out, and several times June had seen the Red Fox
hanging around. Always the talk was of the feud. The killing of
this Tolliver and of that long ago was rehearsed over and over;
all the wrongs the family had suffered at the hands of the Falins
were retold, and in spite of herself June felt the old hatred of
her childhood reawakening against them so fiercely that she was
startled: and she knew that if she were a man she would be as
ready now to take up a Winchester against the Falins as though she
had known no other life.

Loretta got no comfort from her in her tentative efforts to talk
of Buck Falin, and once, indeed, June gave her a scathing rebuke.
With every day her feeling for her father and Bub was knit a
little more closely, and toward Dave grew a little more kindly.
She had her moods even against Hale, but they always ended in a
storm of helpless tears. Her father said little of Hale, but that
little was enough. Young Dave was openly exultant when he heard of
the favouritism shown a Falin by the Guard at the Gap, the effort
Hale had made to catch Rufe Tolliver and his well-known purpose
yet to capture him; for the Guard maintained a fund for the arrest
and prosecution of criminals, and the reward it offered for Rufe,
dead or alive, was known by everybody on both sides of the State
line. For nearly a week no word was heard of the fugitive, and
then one night, after supper, while June was sitting at the fire,
the back door was opened, Rufe slid like a snake within, and when
June sprang to her feet with a sharp cry of terror, he gave his
brutal laugh:

"Don't take much to skeer you--does it?" Shuddering she felt his
evil eyes sweep her from head to foot, for the beast within was
always unleashed and ever ready to spring, and she dropped back
into her seat, speechless. Young Dave, entering from the kitchen,
saw Rufe's look and the hostile lightning of his own eyes flashed
at his foster-uncle, who knew straightway that he must not for his
own safety strain the boy's jealousy too far.

"You oughtn't to 'a' done it, Rufe," said old Judd a little later,
and he shook his head. Again Rufe laughed:

"No--" he said with a quick pacificatory look to young Dave, "not
to HIM!" The swift gritting of Dave's teeth showed that he knew
what was meant, and without warning the instinct of a protecting
tigress leaped within June. She had seen and had been grateful for
the look Dave gave the outlaw, but without a word she rose new and
went to her own room. While she sat at her window, her step-mother
came out the back door and left it open for a moment. Through it
June could hear the talk:

"No," said her father, "she ain't goin' to marry him." Dave
grunted and Rufe's voice came again:

"Ain't no danger, I reckon, of her tellin' on me?"

"No," said her father gruffly, and the door banged.

No, thought June, she wouldn't, even without her father's trust,
though she loathed the man, and he was the only thing on earth of
which she was afraid--that was the miracle of it and June
wondered. She was a Tolliver and the clan loyalty of a century
forbade--that was all. As she rose she saw a figure skulking past
the edge of the woods. She called Bub in and told him about it,
and Rufe stayed at the cabin all night, but June did not see him
next morning, and she kept out of his way whenever he came again.
A few nights later the Red Fox slouched up to the cabin with some
herbs for the step-mother. Old Judd eyed him askance.

"Lookin' fer that reward, Red?" The old man had no time for the
meek reply that was on his lips, for the old woman spoke up
sharply:

"You let Red alone, Judd--I tol' him to come." And the Red Fox
stayed to supper, and when Rufe left the cabin that night, a bent
figure with a big rifle and in moccasins sneaked after him.

The next night there was a tap on Hale's window just at his
bedside, and when he looked out he saw the Red Fox's big rifle,
telescope, moccasins and all in the moonlight. The Red Fox had
discovered the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver, and that very night
he guided Hale and six of the guard to the edge of a little
clearing where the Red Fox pointed to a one-roomed cabin, quiet in
the moonlight. Hale had his requisition now.

"Ain't no trouble ketchin' Rufe, if you bait him with a woman," he
snarled. "There mought be several Tollivers in thar. Wait till
daybreak and git the drap on him, when he comes out." And then he
disappeared.

Surrounding the cabin, Hale waited, and on top of the mountain,
above Lonesome Cove, the Red Fox sat waiting and watching through
his big telescope. Through it he saw Bad Rufe step outside the
door at daybreak and stretch his arms with a yawn, and he saw
three men spring with levelled Winchesters from behind a clump of
bushes. The woman shot from the door behind Rufe with a pistol in
each hand, but Rufe kept his hands in the air and turned his head
to the woman who lowered the half-raised weapons slowly. When he
saw the cavalcade start for the county seat with Rufe manacled in
the midst of them, he dropped swiftly down into Lonesome Cove to
tell Judd that Rufe was a prisoner and to retake him on the way to
jail. And, as the Red Fox well knew would happen, old Judd and
young Dave and two other Tollivers who were at the cabin galloped
into the county seat to find Rufe in jail, and that jail guarded
by seven grim young men armed with Winchesters and shot-guns.

Hale faced the old man quietly--eye to eye.

"It's no use, Judd," he said, "you'd better let the law take its
course." The old man was scornful.

"Thar's never been a Tolliver convicted of killin' nobody, much
less hung--an' thar ain't goin' to be."

"I'm glad you warned me," said Hale still quietly, "though it
wasn't necessary. But if he's convicted, he'll hang."

The giant's face worked in convulsive helplessness and he turned
away.

"You hold the cyards now, but my deal is comin'."

"All right, Judd--you're getting a square one from me."

Back rode the Tollivers and Devil Judd never opened his lips again
until he was at home in Lonesome Cove. June was sitting on the
porch when he walked heavy-headed through the gate.

"They've ketched Rufe," he said, and after a moment he added
gruffly:

"Thar's goin' to be sure enough trouble now. The Falins'll think
all them police fellers air on their side now. This ain't no place
fer you--you must git away."

June shook her head and her eyes turned to the flowers at the edge
of the garden:

"I'm not goin' away, Dad," she said.




XXVI


Back to the passing of Boone and the landing of Columbus no man,
in that region, had ever been hanged. And as old Judd said, no
Tolliver had ever been sentenced and no jury of mountain men, he
well knew, could be found who would convict a Tolliver, for there
were no twelve men in the mountains who would dare. And so the
Tollivers decided to await the outcome of the trial and rest easy.
But they did not count on the mettle and intelligence of the grim
young "furriners" who were a flying wedge of civilization at the
Gap. Straightway, they gave up the practice of law and banking and
trading and store-keeping and cut port-holes in the brick walls of
the Court House and guarded town and jail night and day. They
brought their own fearless judge, their own fearless jury and
their own fearless guard. Such an abstract regard for law and
order the mountaineer finds a hard thing to understand. It looked
as though the motive of the Guard was vindictive and personal, and
old Judd was almost stifled by the volcanic rage that daily grew
within him as the toils daily tightened about Rufe Tolliver.

Every happening the old man learned through the Red Fox, who, with
his huge pistols, was one of the men who escorted Rufe to and from
Court House and jail--a volunteer, Hale supposed, because he hated
Rufe; and, as the Tollivers supposed, so that he could keep them
advised of everything that went on, which he did with secrecy and
his own peculiar faith. And steadily and to the growing uneasiness
of the Tollivers, the law went its way. Rufe had proven that he
was at the Gap all day and had taken no part in the trouble. He
produced a witness--the mountain lout whom Hale remembered--who
admitted that he had blown the whistle, given the yell, and fired
the pistol shot. When asked his reason, the witness, who was
stupid, had none ready, looked helplessly at Rufe and finally
mumbled--"fer fun." But it was plain from the questions that Rufe
had put to Hale only a few minutes before the shooting, and from
the hesitation of the witness, that Rufe had used him for a tool.
So the testimony of the latter that Mockaby without even summoning
Rufe to surrender had fired first, carried no conviction. And yet
Rufe had no trouble making it almost sure that he had never seen
the dead man before--so what was his motive? It was then that word
reached the ear of the prosecuting attorney of the only testimony
that could establish a motive and make the crime a hanging
offence, and Court was adjourned for a day, while he sent for the
witness who could give it. That afternoon one of the Falins, who
had grown bolder, and in twos and threes were always at the trial,
shot at a Tolliver on the edge of town and there was an immediate
turmoil between the factions that the Red Fox had been waiting for
and that suited his dark purposes well.

That very night, with his big rifle, he slipped through the woods
to a turn of the road, over which old Dave Tolliver was to pass
next morning, and built a "blind" behind some rocks and lay there
smoking peacefully and dreaming his Swedenborgian dreams. And when
a wagon came round the turn, driven by a boy, and with the gaunt
frame of old Dave Tolliver lying on straw in the bed of it, his
big rifle thundered and the frightened horses dashed on with the
Red Fox's last enemy, lifeless. Coolly he slipped back to the
woods, threw the shell from his gun, tirelessly he went by short
cuts through the hills, and at noon, benevolent and smiling, he
was on guard again.

The little Court Room was crowded for the afternoon session.
Inside the railing sat Rufe Tolliver, white and defiant--manacled.
Leaning on the railing, to one side, was the Red Fox with his big
pistols, his good profile calm, dreamy, kind--to the other,
similarly armed, was Hale. At each of the gaping port-holes, and
on each side of the door, stood a guard with a Winchester, and
around the railing outside were several more. In spite of window
and port-hole the air was close and heavy with the smell of
tobacco and the sweat of men. Here and there in the crowd was a
red Falin, but not a Tolliver was in sight, and Rufe Tolliver sat
alone. The clerk called the Court to order after the fashion since
the days before Edward the Confessor--except that he asked God to
save a commonwealth instead of a king--and the prosecuting
attorney rose:

"Next witness, may it please your Honour": and as the clerk got to
his feet with a slip of paper in his hand and bawled out a name,
Hale wheeled with a thumping heart. The crowd vibrated, turned
heads, gave way, and through the human aisle walked June Tolliver
with the sheriff following meekly behind. At the railing-gate she
stopped, head uplifted, face pale and indignant; and her eyes
swept past Hale as if he were no more than a wooden image, and
were fixed with proud inquiry on the Judge's face. She was bare-
headed, her bronze hair was drawn low over her white brow, her
gown was of purple home-spun, and her right hand was clenched
tight about the chased silver handle of a riding whip, and in
eyes, mouth, and in every line of her tense figure was the mute
question: "Why have you brought ME here?"

"Here, please," said the Judge gently, as though he were about to
answer that question, and as she passed Hale she seemed to swerve
her skirts aside that they might not touch him.

"Swear her."

June lifted her right hand, put her lips to the soiled, old, black
Bible and faced the jury and Hale and Bad Rufe Tolliver whose
black eyes never left her face.

"What is your name?" asked a deep voice that struck her ears as
familiar, and before she answered she swiftly recalled that she
had heard that voice speaking when she entered the door.

"June Tolliver."

"Your age?"

"Eighteen."

"You live--"

"In Lonesome Cove."

"You are the daughter of--"

"Judd Tolliver."

"Do you know the prisoner?"

"He is my foster-uncle."

"Were you at home on the night of August the tenth?"

"I was."

"Have you ever heard the prisoner express any enmity against this
volunteer Police Guard?" He waved his hand toward the men at the
portholes and about the railing--unconsciously leaving his hand
directly pointed at Hale. June hesitated and Rufe leaned one elbow
on the table, and the light in his eyes beat with fierce intensity
into the girl's eyes into which came a curious frightened look
that Hale remembered--the same look she had shown long ago when
Rufe's name was mentioned in the old miller's cabin, and when
going up the river road she had put her childish trust in him to
see that her bad uncle bothered her no more. Hale had never forgot
that, and if it had not been absurd he would have stopped the
prisoner from staring at her now. An anxious look had come into
Rufe's eyes--would she lie for him?

"Never," said June. Ah, she would--she was a Tolliver and Rufe
took a breath of deep content.

"You never heard him express any enmity toward the Police Guard--
before that night?"

"I have answered that question," said June with dignity and Rufe's
lawyer was on his feet.

"Your Honour, I object," he said indignantly.

"I apologize," said the deep voice--"sincerely," and he bowed to
June. Then very quietly:

"What was the last thing you heard the prisoner say that afternoon
when he left your father's house?"

It had come--how well she remembered just what he had said and
how, that night, even when she was asleep, Rufe's words had
clanged like a bell in her brain--what her awakening terror was
when she knew that the deed was done and the stifling fear that
the victim might be Hale. Swiftly her mind worked--somebody had
blabbed, her step-mother, perhaps, and what Rufe had said had
reached a Falin ear and come to the relentless man in front of
her. She remembered, too, now, what the deep voice was saying as
she came into the door:

"There must be deliberation, a malicious purpose proven to make
the prisoner's crime a capital offence--I admit that, of course,
your Honour. Very well, we propose to prove that now," and then
she had heard her name called. The proof that was to send Rufe
Tolliver to the scaffold was to come from her--that was why she
was there. Her lips opened and Rufe's eyes, like a snake's, caught
her own again and held them.

"He said he was going over to the Gap--"

There was a commotion at the door, again the crowd parted, and in
towered giant Judd Tolliver, pushing people aside as though they
were straws, his bushy hair wild and his great frame shaking from
head to foot with rage.

"You went to my house," he rumbled hoarsely--glaring at Hale--"an'
took my gal thar when I wasn't at home--you--"

"Order in the Court," said the Judge sternly, but already at a
signal from Hale several guards were pushing through the crowd and
old Judd saw them coming and saw the Falins about him and the
Winchesters at the port-holes, and he stopped with a hard gulp and
stood looking at June.

"Repeat his exact words," said the deep voice again as calmly as
though nothing had happened.

"He said, 'I'm goin' over to the Gap--'" and still Rufe's black
eyes held her with mesmeric power--would she lie for him--would
she lie for him?

It was a terrible struggle for June. Her father was there, her
uncle Dave was dead, her foster-uncle's life hung on her next
words and she was a Tolliver. Yet she had given her oath, she had
kissed the sacred Book in which she believed from cover to cover
with her whole heart, and she could feel upon her the blue eyes of
a man for whom a lie was impossible and to whom she had never
stained her white soul with a word of untruth.

"Yes," encouraged the deep voice kindly.

Not a soul in the room knew where the struggle lay--not even the
girl--for it lay between the black eyes of Rufe Tolliver and the
blue eyes of John Hale.

"Yes," repeated the deep voice again. Again, with her eyes on
Rufe, she repeated:

"'I'm goin' over to the Gap--'" her face turned deadly white, she
shivered, her dark eyes swerved suddenly full on Hale and she said
slowly and distinctly, yet hardly above a whisper:

"'TO KILL ME A POLICEMAN.'"

"That will do," said the deep voice gently, and Hale started
toward her--she looked so deadly sick and she trembled so when she
tried to rise; but she saw him, her mouth steadied, she rose, and
without looking at him, passed by his outstretched hand and walked
slowly out of the Court Room.




XXVII


The miracle had happened. The Tollivers, following the Red Fox's
advice to make no attempt at rescue just then, had waited,
expecting the old immunity from the law and getting instead the
swift sentence that Rufe Tolliver should be hanged by the neck
until he was dead. Astounding and convincing though the news was,
no mountaineer believed he would ever hang, and Rufe himself faced
the sentence defiant. He laughed when he was led back to his cell:

"I'll never hang," he said scornfully. They were the first words
that came from his lips, and the first words that came from old
Judd's when the news reached him in Lonesome Cove, and that night
old Judd gathered his clan for the rescue--to learn next morning
that during the night Rufe had been spirited away to the capital
for safekeeping until the fatal day. And so there was quiet for a
while--old Judd making ready for the day when Rufe should be
brought back, and trying to find out who it was that had slain his
brother Dave. The Falins denied the deed, but old Judd never
questioned that one of them was the murderer, and he came out
openly now and made no secret of the fact that he meant to have
revenge. And so the two factions went armed, watchful and wary--
especially the Falins, who were lying low and waiting to fulfil a
deadly purpose of their own. They well knew that old Judd would
not open hostilities on them until Rufe Tolliver was dead or at
liberty. They knew that the old man meant to try to rescue Rufe
when he was brought back to jail or taken from it to the scaffold,
and when either day came they themselves would take a hand, thus
giving the Tollivers at one and the same time two sets of foes.
And so through the golden September days the two clans waited, and
June Tolliver went with dull determination back to her old life,
for Uncle Billy's sister had left the house in fear and she could
get no help--milking cows at cold dawns, helping in the kitchen,
spinning flax and wool, and weaving them into rough garments for
her father and step-mother and Bub, and in time, she thought
grimly--for herself: for not another cent for her maintenance
could now come from John Hale, even though he claimed it was hers-
-even though it was in truth her own. Never, but once, had Hale's
name been mentioned in the cabin--never, but once, had her father
referred to the testimony that she had given against Rufe
Tolliver, for the old man put upon Hale the fact that the sheriff
had sneaked into his house when he was away and had taken June to
Court, and that was the crowning touch of bitterness in his
growing hatred for the captain of the guard of whom he had once
been so fond.

"Course you had to tell the truth, baby, when they got you there,"
he said kindly; "but kidnappin' you that-a-way--" He shook his
great bushy head from side to side and dropped it into his hands.

"I reckon that damn Hale was the man who found out that you heard
Rufe say that. I'd like to know how--I'd like to git my hands on
the feller as told him."

June opened her lips in simple justice to clear Hale of that
charge, but she saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's
face that she kept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and
walked out into her garden. Never once had her piano been opened,
her books had lain unread, and from her lips, during those days,
came no song. When she was not at work, she was brooding in her
room, or she would walk down to Uncle Billy's and sit at the mill
with him while the old man would talk in tender helplessness, or
under the honeysuckle vines with old Hon, whose brusque kindness
was of as little avail. And then, still silent, she would get
wearily up and as quietly go away while the two old friends,
worried to the heart, followed her sadly with their eyes. At other
times she was brooding in her room or sitting in her garden, where
she was now, and where she found most comfort--the garden that
Hale had planted for her-where purple asters leaned against lilac
shrubs that would flower for the first time the coming spring;
where a late rose bloomed, and marigolds drooped, and great
sunflowers nodded and giant castor-plants stretched out their
hands of Christ, And while June thus waited the passing of the
days, many things became clear to her: for the grim finger of
reality had torn the veil from her eyes and let her see herself
but little changed, at the depths, by contact with John Male's
world, as she now saw him but little changed, at the depths, by
contact with hers. Slowly she came to see, too, that it was his
presence in the Court Room that made her tell the truth, reckless
of the consequences, and she came to realize that she was not
leaving the mountains because she would go to no place where she
could not know of any danger that, in the present crisis, might
threaten John Hale.

And Hale saw only that in the Court Room she had drawn her skirts
aside, that she had looked at him once and then had brushed past
his helping hand. It put him in torment to think of what her life
must be now, and of how she must be suffering. He knew that she
would not leave her father in the crisis that was at hand, and
after it was all over--what then? His hands would still be tied
and he would be even more helpless than he had ever dreamed
possible. To be sure, an old land deal had come to life, just
after the discovery of the worthlessness of the mine in Lonesome
Cove, and was holding out another hope. But if that, too, should
fail--or if it should succeed--what then? Old Judd had sent back,
with a curt refusal, the last "allowance" he forwarded to June and
he knew the old man was himself in straits. So June must stay in
the mountains, and what would become of her? She had gone back to
her mountain garb--would she lapse into her old life and ever
again be content? Yes, she would lapse, but never enough to keep
her from being unhappy all her life, and at that thought he
groaned. Thus far he was responsible and the paramount duty with
him had been that she should have the means to follow the career
she had planned for herself outside of those hills. And now if he
had the means, he was helpless. There was nothing for him to do
now but to see that the law had its way with Rufe Tolliver, and
meanwhile he let the reawakened land deal go hang and set himself
the task of finding out who it was that had ambushed old Dave
Tolliver. So even when he was thinking of June his brain was busy
on that mystery, and one night, as he sat brooding, a suspicion
flashed that made him grip his chair with both hands and rise to
pace the porch. Old Dave had been shot at dawn, and the night
before the Red Fox had been absent from the guard and had not
turned up until nearly noon next day. He had told Hale that he was
going home. Two days later, Hale heard by accident that the old
man had been seen near the place of the ambush about sunset of the
day before the tragedy, which was on his way home, and he now
learned straightway for himself that the Red Fox had not been home
for a month--which was only one of his ways of mistreating the
patient little old woman in black.

A little later, the Red Fox gave it out that he was trying to
ferret out the murderer himself, and several times he was seen
near the place of ambush, looking, as he said, for evidence. But
this did not halt Hale's suspicions, for he recalled that the
night he had spent with the Red Fox, long ago, the old man had
burst out against old Dave and had quickly covered up his
indiscretion with a pious characterization of himself as a man
that kept peace with both factions. And then why had he been so
suspicious and fearful when Hale told him that night that he had
seen him talking with a Falin in town the Court day before, and
had he disclosed the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver and guided the
guard to his hiding-place simply for the reward? He had not yet
come to claim it, and his indifference to money was notorious
through the hills. Apparently there was some general enmity in the
old man toward the whole Tolliver clan, and maybe he had used the
reward to fool Hale as to his real motive. And then Hale quietly
learned that long ago the Tollivers bitterly opposed the Red Fox's
marriage to a Tolliver-that Rufe, when a boy, was always teasing
the Red Fox and had once made him dance in his moccasins to the
tune of bullets spitting about his feet, and that the Red Fox had
been heard to say that old Dave had cheated his wife out of her
just inheritance of wild land; but all that was long, long ago,
and apparently had been mutually forgiven and forgotten. But it
was enough for Hale, and one night he mounted his horse, and at
dawn he was at the place of ambush with his horse hidden in the
bushes. The rocks for the ambush were waist high, and the twigs
that had been thrust in the crevices between them were withered.
And there, on the hypothesis that the Red Fox was the assassin,
Hale tried to put himself, after the deed, into the Red Fox's
shoes. The old man had turned up on guard before noon--then he
must have gone somewhere first or have killed considerable time in
the woods. He would not have crossed the road, for there were two
houses on the other side; there would have been no object in going
on over the mountain unless he meant to escape, and if he had gone
over there for another reason he would hardly have had time to get
to the Court House before noon: nor would he have gone back along
the road on that side, for on that side, too, was a cabin not far
away. So Hale turned and walked straight away from the road where
the walking was easiest--down a ravine, and pushing this way and
that through the bushes where the way looked easiest. Half a mile
down the ravine he came to a little brook, and there in the black
earth was the faint print of a man's left foot and in the hard
crust across was the deeper print of his right, where his weight
in leaping had come down hard. But the prints were made by a shoe
and not by a moccasin, and then Hale recalled exultantly that the
Red Fox did not have his moccasins on the morning he turned up on
guard. All the while he kept a sharp lookout, right and left, on
the ground--the Red Fox must have thrown his cartridge shell
somewhere, and for that Hale was looking. Across the brook he
could see the tracks no farther, for he was too little of a
woodsman to follow so old a trail, but as he stood behind a clump
of rhododendron, wondering what he could do, he heard the crack of
a dead stick down the stream, and noiselessly he moved farther
into the bushes. His heart thumped in the silence--the long
silence that followed--for it might be a hostile Tolliver that was
coming, so he pulled his pistol from his holster, made ready, and
then, noiseless as a shadow, the Red Fox slipped past him along
the path, in his moccasins now, and with his big Winchester in his
left hand. The Red Fox, too, was looking for that cartridge shell,
for only the night before had he heard for the first time of the
whispered suspicions against him. He was making for the blind and
Hale trembled at his luck. There was no path on the other side of
the stream, and Hale could barely hear him moving through the
bushes. So he pulled off his boots and, carrying them in one hand,
slipped after him, watching for dead twigs, stooping under the
branches, or sliding sidewise through them when he had to brush
between their extremities, and pausing every now and then to
listen for an occasional faint sound from the Red Fox ahead. Up
the ravine the old man went to a little ledge of rocks, beyond
which was the blind, and when Hale saw his stooped figure slip
over that and disappear, he ran noiselessly toward it, crept
noiselessly to the top and peeped carefully over to see the Red
Fox with his back to him and peering into a clump of bushes--
hardly ten yards away. While Hale looked, the old man thrust his
hand into the bushes and drew out something that twinkled in the
sun. At the moment Hale's horse nickered from the bushes, and the
Red Fox slipped his hand into his pocket, crouched listening a
moment, and then, step by step, backed toward the ledge. Hale
rose:

"I want you, Red!"

The old man wheeled, the wolf's snarl came, but the big rifle was
too slow--Hale's pistol had flashed in his face.

"Drop your gun!" Paralyzed, but the picture of white fury, the old
man hesitated.

"Drop--your--gun!" Slowly the big rifle was loosed and fell to the
ground.

"Back away--turn around and hands up!"

With his foot on the Winchester, Hale felt in the old man's
pockets and fished out an empty cartridge shell. Then he picked up
the rifle and threw the slide.

"It fits all right. March--toward that horse!"

Without a word the old man slouched ahead to where the big black
horse was restlessly waiting in the bushes.

"Climb up," said Hale. "We won't 'ride and tie' back to town--but
I'll take turns with you on the horse."

The Red Fox was making ready to leave the mountains, for he had
been falsely informed that Rufe was to be brought back to the
county seat next day, and he was searching again for the sole bit
of evidence that was out against him. And when Rufe was spirited
back to jail and was on his way to his cell, an old freckled hand
was thrust between the bars of an iron door to greet him and a
voice called him by name. Rufe stopped in amazement; then he burst
out laughing; he struck then at the pallid face through the bars
with his manacles and cursed the old man bitterly; then he laughed
again horribly. The two slept in adjoining cells of the same cage
that night--the one waiting for the scaffold and the other waiting
for the trial that was to send him there. And away over the blue
mountains a little old woman in black sat on the porch of her
cabin as she had sat patiently many and many a long day. It was
time, she thought, that the Red Fox was coming home.




XXVIII


And so while Bad Rufe Tolliver was waiting for death, the trial of
the Red Fox went on, and when he was not swinging in a hammock,
reading his Bible, telling his visions to his guards and singing
hymns, he was in the Court House giving shrewd answers to
questions, or none at all, with the benevolent half of his mask
turned to the jury and the wolfish snarl of the other half showing
only now and then to some hostile witness for whom his hate was
stronger than his fear for his own life. And in jail Bad Rufe
worried his enemy with the malicious humour of Satan. Now he would
say:

"Oh, there ain't nothin' betwixt old Red and me, nothin' at all--
'cept this iron wall," and he would drum a vicious tattoo on the
thin wall with the heel of his boot. Or when he heard the creak of
the Red Fox's hammock as he droned his Bible aloud, he would say
to his guard outside:

"Course I don't read the Bible an' preach the word, nor talk with
sperits, but thar's worse men than me in the world--old Red in
thar' for instance"; and then he would cackle like a fiend and the
Red Fox would writhe in torment and beg to be sent to another
cell. And always he would daily ask the Red Fox about his trial
and ask him questions in the night, and his devilish instinct told
him the day that the Red Fox, too, was sentenced to death-he saw
it in the gray pallour of the old man's face, and he cackled his
glee like a demon. For the evidence against the Red Fox was too
strong. Where June sat as chief witness against Rufe Tolliver--
John Hale sat as chief witness against the Red Fox. He could not
swear it was a cartridge shell that he saw the old man pick up,
but it was something that glistened in the sun, and a moment later
he had found the shell in the old man's pocket--and if it had been
fired innocently, why was it there and why was the old man
searching for it? He was looking, he said, for evidence of the
murderer himself. That claim made, the Red Fox's lawyer picked up
the big rifle and the shell.

"You say, Mr. Hale, the prisoner told you the night you spent at
his home that this rifle was rim-fire?"

"He did." The lawyer held up the shell.

"You see this was exploded in such a rifle." That was plain, and
the lawyer shoved the shell into the rifle, pulled the trigger,
took it out, and held it up again. The plunger had struck below
the rim and near the centre, but not quite on the centre, and Hale
asked for the rifle and examined it closely.

"It's been tampered with," he said quietly, arid he handed it to
the prosecuting attorney. The fact was plain; it was a bungling
job and better proved the Red Fox's guilt. Moreover, there were
only two such big rifles in all the hills, and it was proven that
the man who owned the other was at the time of the murder far
away. The days of brain-storms had not come then. There were no
eminent Alienists to prove insanity for the prisoner. Apparently,
he had no friends--none save the little old woman in black who sat
by his side, hour by hour and day by day.

And the Red Fox was doomed.

In the hush of the Court Room the Judge solemnly put to the gray
face before him the usual question:

"Have you anything to say whereby sentence of death should not be
pronounced on you?"

The Red Fox rose:

"No," he said in a shaking voice; "but I have a friend here who I
would like to speak for me." The Judge bent his head a moment over
his bench and lifted it:

"It is unusual," he said; "but under the circumstances I will
grant your request. Who is your friend?" And the Red Fox made the
souls of his listeners leap.

"Jesus Christ," he said.

The Judge reverently bowed his head and the hush of the Court Room
grew deeper when the old man fished his Bible from his pocket and
calmly read such passages as might be interpreted as sure
damnation for his enemies and sure glory for himself--read them
until the Judge lifted his hand for a halt.

And so another sensation spread through the hills and a
superstitious awe of this strange new power that had come into the
hills went with it hand in hand. Only while the doubting ones knew
that nothing could save the Red Fox they would wait to see if that
power could really avail against the Tolliver clan. The day set
for Rufe's execution was the following Monday, and for the Red Fox
the Friday following--for it was well to have the whole wretched
business over while the guard was there. Old Judd Tolliver, so
Hale learned, had come himself to offer the little old woman in
black the refuge of his roof as long as she lived, and had tried
to get her to go back with him to Lonesome Cove; but it pleased
the Red Fox that he should stand on the scaffold in a suit of
white--cap and all--as emblems of the purple and fine linen he was
to put on above, and the little old woman stayed where she was,
silently and without question, cutting the garments, as Hale
pityingly learned, from a white table-cloth and measuring them
piece by piece with the clothes the old man wore in jail. It
pleased him, too, that his body should be kept unburied three
days--saying that he would then arise and go about preaching, and
that duty, too, she would as silently and with as little question
perform. Moreover, he would preach his own funeral sermon on the
Sunday before Rufe's day, and a curious crowd gathered to hear
him. The Red Fox was led from jail. He stood on the porch of the
jailer's house with a little table in front of him. On it lay a
Bible, on the other side of the table sat a little pale-faced old
woman in black with a black sun-bonnet drawn close to her face. By
the side of the Bible lay a few pieces of bread. It was the Red
Fox's last communion--a communion which he administered to himself
and in which there was no other soul on earth to join save that
little old woman in black. And when the old fellow lifted the
bread and asked the crowd to come forward to partake with him in
the last sacrament, not a soul moved. Only the old woman who had
been ill-treated by the Red Fox for so many years--only she, of
all the crowd, gave any answer, and she for one instant turned her
face toward him. With a churlish gesture the old man pushed the
bread over toward her and with hesitating, trembling fingers she
reached for it.

Bob Berkley was on the death-watch that night, and as he passed
Rufe's cell a wiry hand shot through the grating of his door, and
as the boy sprang away the condemned man's fingers tipped the butt
of the big pistol that dangled on the lad's hip.

"Not this time," said Bob with a cool little laugh, and Rufe
laughed, too.

"I was only foolin'," he said, "I ain't goin' to hang. You hear
that, Red? I ain't goin' to hang--but you are, Red--sure. Nobody'd
risk his little finger for your old carcass, 'cept maybe that
little old woman o' yours who you've treated like a hound--but my
folks ain't goin' to see me hang."

Rufe spoke with some reason. That night the Tollivers climbed the
mountain, and before daybreak were waiting in the woods a mile on
the north side of the town. And the Falins climbed, too, farther
along the mountains, and at the same hour were waiting in the
woods a mile to the south.

Back in Lonesome Cove June Tolliver sat alone--her soul shaken and
terror-stricken to the depths--and the misery that matched hers
was in the heart of Hale as he paced to and fro at the county
seat, on guard and forging out his plans for that day under the
morning stars.




XXIX


Day broke on the old Court House with its black port-holes, on the
graystone jail, and on a tall topless wooden box to one side, from
which projected a cross-beam of green oak. From the centre of this
beam dangled a rope that swung gently to and fro when the wind
moved. And with the day a flock of little birds lighted on the
bars of the condemned man's cell window, chirping through them,
and when the jailer brought breakfast he found Bad Rufe cowering
in the corner of his cell and wet with the sweat of fear.

"Them damn birds ag'in," he growled sullenly.

"Don't lose yo' nerve, Rufe," said the jailer, and the old laugh
of defiance came, but from lips that were dry.

"Not much," he answered grimly, but the jailer noticed that while
he ate, his eyes kept turning again and again to the bars; and the
turnkey went away shaking his head. Rufe had told the jailer, his
one friend through whom he had kept in constant communication with
the Tollivers, how on the night after the shooting of Mockaby,
when he lay down to sleep high on the mountain side and under some
rhododendron bushes, a flock of little birds flew in on him like a
gust of rain and perched over and around him, twittering at him
until he had to get up and pace the woods, and how, throughout the
next day, when he sat in the sun planning his escape, those birds
would sweep chattering over his head and sweep chattering back
again, and in that mood of despair he had said once, and only
once: "Somehow I knowed this time my name was Dennis"--a phrase of
evil prophecy he had picked up outside the hills. And now those
same birds of evil omen had come again, he believed, right on the
heels of the last sworn oath old Judd had sent him that he would
never hang.

With the day, through mountain and valley, came in converging
lines mountain humanity--men and women, boys and girls, children
and babes in arms; all in their Sunday best--the men in jeans,
slouched hats, and high boots, the women in gay ribbons and
brilliant home-spun; in wagons, on foot and on horses and mules,
carrying man and man, man and boy, lover and sweetheart, or
husband and wife and child--all moving through the crisp autumn
air, past woods of russet and crimson and along brown dirt roads,
to the straggling little mountain town. A stranger would have
thought that a county fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus was their
goal, but they were on their way to look upon the Court House with
its black port-holes, the graystone jail, the tall wooden box, the
projecting beam, and that dangling rope which, when the wind
moved, swayed gently to and fro. And Hale had forged his plan. He
knew that there would be no attempt at rescue until Rufe was led
to the scaffold, and he knew that neither Falins nor Tollivers
would come in a band, so the incoming tide found on the outskirts
of the town and along every road boyish policemen who halted and
disarmed every man who carried a weapon in sight, for thus John
Hale would have against the pistols of the factions his own
Winchesters and repeating shot-guns. And the wondering people saw
at the back windows of the Court House and at the threatening
port-holes more youngsters manning Winchesters, more at the
windows of the jailer's frame house, which joined and fronted the
jail, and more still--a line of them--running all around the jail;
and the old men wagged their heads in amazement and wondered if,
after all, a Tolliver was not really going to be hanged.

So they waited--the neighbouring hills were black with people
waiting; the housetops were black with men and boys waiting; the
trees in the streets were bending under the weight of human
bodies; and the jail-yard fence was three feet deep with people
hanging to it and hanging about one another's necks--all waiting.
All morning they waited silently and patiently, and now the fatal
noon was hardly an hour away and not a Falin nor a Tolliver had
been seen. Every Falin had been disarmed of his Winchester as he
came in, and as yet no Tolliver had entered the town, for wily old
Judd had learned of Hale's tactics and had stayed outside the town
for his own keen purpose. As the minutes passed, Hale was
beginning to wonder whether, after all, old Judd had come to
believe that the odds against him were too great, and had told the
truth when he set afoot the rumour that the law should have its
way; and it was just when his load of anxiety was beginning to
lighten that there was a little commotion at the edge of the Court
House and a great red-headed figure pushed through the crowd,
followed by another of like build, and as the people rapidly gave
way and fell back, a line of Falins slipped along the wall and
stood under the port-holes-quiet, watchful, and determined. Almost
at the same time the crowd fell back the other way up the street,
there was the hurried tramping of feet and on came the Tollivers,
headed by giant Judd, all armed with Winchesters--for old Judd had
sent his guns in ahead--and as the crowd swept like water into any
channel of alley or doorway that was open to it, Hale saw the yard
emptied of everybody but the line of Falins against the wall and
the Tollivers in a body but ten yards in front of them. The people
on the roofs and in the trees had not moved at all, for they were
out of range. For a moment old Judd's eyes swept the windows and
port-holes of the Court House, the windows of the jailer's house,
the line of guards about the jail, and then they dropped to the
line of Falins and glared with contemptuous hate into the leaping
blue eyes of old Buck Falin, and for that moment there was
silence. In that silence and as silently as the silence itself
issued swiftly from the line of guards twelve youngsters with
Winchesters, repeating shot-guns, and in a minute six were facing
the Falins and six facing the Tollivers, each with his shot-gun at
his hip. At the head of them stood Hale, his face a pale image, as
hard as though cut from stone, his head bare, and his hand and his
hip weaponless. In all that crowd there was not a man or a woman
who had not seen or heard of him, for the power of the guard that
was at his back had radiated through that wild region like ripples
of water from a dropped stone and, unarmed even, he had a personal
power that belonged to no other man in all those hills, though
armed to the teeth. His voice rose clear, steady, commanding:

"The law has come here and it has come to stay." He faced the
beetling eyebrows and angrily working beard of old Judd now:

"The Falins are here to get revenge on you Tollivers, if you
attack us. I know that. But"--he wheeled on the Falins--
"understand! We don't want your help! If the Tollivers try to take
that man in there, and one of you Falins draws a pistol, those
guns there"--waving his hand toward the jail windows--"will be
turned loose on YOU, WE'LL FIGHT YOU BOTH!" The last words shot
like bullets through his gritted teeth, then the flash of his eyes
was gone, his face was calm, and as though the whole matter had
been settled beyond possible interruption, he finished quietly:

"The condemned man wishes to make a confession and to say good-by.
In five minutes he will be at that window to say what he pleases.
Ten minutes later he will be hanged." And he turned and walked
calmly into the jailer's door. Not a Tolliver nor a Falin made a
movement or a sound. Young Dave's eyes had glared savagely when he
first saw Hale, for he had marked Hale for his own and he knew
that the fact was known to Hale. Had the battle begun then and
there, Hale's death was sure, and Dave knew that Hale must know
that as well as he: and yet with magnificent audacity, there he
was--unarmed, personally helpless, and invested with an insulting
certainty that not a shot would be fired. Not a Falin or a
Tolliver even reached for a weapon, and the fact was the subtle
tribute that ignorance pays intelligence when the latter is forced
to deadly weapons as a last resort; for ignorance faced now
belching shot-guns and was commanded by rifles on every side. Old
Judd was trapped and the Falins were stunned. Old Buck Falin
turned his eyes down the line of his men with one warning glance.
Old Judd whispered something to a Tolliver behind him and a moment
later the man slipped from the band and disappeared. Young Dave
followed Hale's figure with a look of baffled malignant hatred and
Bub's eyes were filled with angry tears. Between the factions, the
grim young men stood with their guns like statues.

At once a big man with a red face appeared at one of the jailer's
windows and then came the sheriff, who began to take out the sash.
Already the frightened crowd had gathered closer again and now a
hush came over it, followed by a rustling and a murmur. Something
was going to happen. Faces and gun-muzzles thickened at the port-
holes and at the windows; the line of guards turned their faces
sidewise and upward; the crowd on the fence scuffled for better
positions; the people in the trees craned their necks from the
branches or climbed higher, and there was a great scraping on all
the roofs. Even the black crowd out on the hills seemed to catch
the excitement and to sway, while spots of intense blue and vivid
crimson came out here and there from the blackness when the women
rose from their seats on the ground. Then--sharply--there was
silence. The sheriff disappeared, and shut in by the sashless
window as by a picture frame and blinking in the strong light,
stood a man with black hair, cropped close, face pale and worn,
and hands that looked white and thin--stood bad Rufe Tolliver.

He was going to confess--that was the rumour. His lawyers wanted
him to confess; the preacher who had been singing hymns with him
all morning wanted him to confess; the man himself said he wanted
to confess; and now he was going to confess. What deadly mysteries
he might clear up if he would! No wonder the crowd was eager, for
there was no soul there but knew his record--and what a record!
His best friends put his victims no lower than thirteen, and there
looking up at him were three women whom he had widowed or
orphaned, while at one corner of the jail-yard stood a girl in
black--the sweetheart of Mockaby, for whose death Rufe was
standing where he stood now. But his lips did not open. Instead he
took hold of the side of the window and looked behind him. The
sheriff brought him a chair and he sat down. Apparently he was
weak and he was going to wait a while. Would he tell how he had
killed one Falin in the presence of the latter's wife at a wild
bee tree; how he had killed a sheriff by dropping to the ground
when the sheriff fired, in this way dodging the bullet and then
shooting the officer from where he lay supposedly dead; how he had
thrown another Falin out of the Court House window and broken his
neck--the Falin was drunk, Rufe always said, and fell out; why,
when he was constable, he had killed another--because, Rufe said,
he resisted arrest; how and where he had killed Red-necked
Johnson, who was found out in the woods? Would he tell all that
and more? If he meant to tell there was no sign. His lips kept
closed and his bright black eyes were studying the situation; the
little squad of youngsters, back to back, with their repeating
shot-guns, the line of Falins along the wall toward whom protruded
six shining barrels, the huddled crowd of Tollivers toward whom
protruded six more--old Judd towering in front with young Dave on
one side, tense as a leopard about to spring, and on the other
Bub, with tears streaming down his face. In a flash he understood,
and in that flash his face looked as though he had been suddenly
struck a heavy blow by some one from behind, and then his elbows
dropped on the sill of the window, his chin dropped into his hands
and a murmur arose. Maybe he was too weak to stand and talk--
perhaps he was going to talk from his chair. Yes, he was leaning
forward and his lips were opening, but no sound came. Slowly his
eyes wandered around at the waiting people--in the trees, on the
roofs and the fence--and then they dropped to old Judd's and
blazed their appeal for a sign. With one heave of his mighty chest
old Judd took off his slouch hat, pressed one big hand to the back
of his head and, despite that blazing appeal, kept it there. At
that movement Rufe threw his head up as though his breath had
suddenly failed him, his face turned sickening white, and slowly
again his chin dropped into his trembling hands, and still
unbelieving he stared his appeal, but old Judd dropped his big
hand and turned his head away. The condemned man's mouth twitched
once, settled into defiant calm, and then he did one kindly thing.
He turned in his seat and motioned Bob Berkley, who was just
behind him, away from the window, and the boy, to humour him,
stepped aside. Then he rose to his feet and stretched his arms
wide. Simultaneously came the far-away crack of a rifle, and as a
jet of smoke spurted above a clump of bushes on a little hill,
three hundred yards away, Bad Rufe wheeled half-way round and fell
back out of sight into the sheriff's arms. Every Falin made a
nervous reach for his pistol, the line of gun-muzzles covering
them wavered slightly, but the Tollivers stood still and
unsurprised, and when Hale dashed from the door again, there was a
grim smile of triumph on old Judd's face. He had kept his promise
that Rufe should never hang.

"Steady there," said Hale quietly. His pistol was on his hip now
and a Winchester was in his left hand.

"Stand where you are--everybody!"

There was the sound of hurrying feet within the jail. There was
the clang of an iron door, the bang of a wooden one, and in five
minutes from within the tall wooden box came the sharp click of a
hatchet and then--dully:

"T-H-O-O-MP!" The dangling rope had tightened with a snap and the
wind swayed it no more.

At his cell door the Red Fox stood with his watch in his hand and
his eyes glued to the second-hand. When it had gone three times
around its circuit, he snapped the lid with a sigh of relief and
turned to his hammock and his Bible.

"He's gone now," said the Red Fox.

Outside Hale still waited, and as his eyes turned from the
Tollivers to the Falins, seven of the faces among them came back
to him with startling distinctness, and his mind went back to the
opening trouble in the county-seat over the Kentucky line, years
before--when eight men held one another at the points of their
pistols. One face was missing, and that face belonged to Rufe
Tolliver. Hale pulled out his watch.

"Keep those men there," he said, pointing to the Falins, and he
turned to the bewildered Tollivers.

"Come on, Judd," he said kindly--"all of you."

Dazed and mystified, they followed him in a body around the corner
of the jail, where in a coffin, that old Jadd had sent as a blind
to his real purpose, lay the remains of Bad Rufe Tolliver with a
harmless bullet hole through one shoulder. Near by was a wagon and
hitched to it were two mules that Hale himself had provided. Hale
pointed to it:

"I've done all I could, Judd. Take him away. I'll keep the Falins
under guard until you reach the Kentucky line, so that they can't
waylay you."

If old Judd heard, he gave no sign. He was looking down at the
face of his foster-brother--his shoulder drooped, his great frame
shrunken, and his iron face beaten and helpless. Again Hale spoke:

"I'm sorry for all this. I'm even sorry that your man was not a
better shot."

The old man straightened then and with a gesture he motioned young
Dave to the foot of the coffin and stooped himself at the head.
Past the wagon they went, the crowd giving way before them, and
with the dead Tolliver on their shoulders, old Judd and young Dave
passed with their followers out of sight.




XXX


The longest of her life was that day to June. The anxiety in times
of war for the women who wait at home is vague because they are
mercifully ignorant of the dangers their loved ones run, but a
specific issue that involves death to those loved ones has a
special and poignant terror of its own. June knew her father's
plan, the precise time the fight would take place, and the
especial danger that was Hale's, for she knew that young Dave
Tolliver had marked him with the first shot fired. Dry-eyed and
white and dumb, she watched them make ready for the start that
morning while it was yet dark; dully she heard the horses snorting
from the cold, the low curt orders of her father, and the exciting
mutterings of Bub and young Dave; dully she watched the saddles
thrown on, the pistols buckled, the Winchesters caught up, and
dully she watched them file out the gate and ride away, single
file, into the cold, damp mist like ghostly figures in a dream.
Once only did she open her lips and that was to plead with her
father to leave Bub at home, but her father gave her no answer and
Bub snorted his indignation--he was a man now, and his now was the
privilege of a man. For a while she stood listening to the ring of
metal against stone that came to her more and more faintly out of
the mist, and she wondered if it was really June Tolliver standing
there, while father and brother and cousin were on their way to
fight the law--how differently she saw these things now--for a man
who deserved death, and to fight a man who was ready to die for
his duty to that law--the law that guarded them and her and might
not perhaps guard him: the man who had planted for her the dew-
drenched garden that was waiting for the sun, and had built the
little room behind her for her comfort and seclusion; who had sent
her to school, had never been anything but kind and just to her
and to everybody--who had taught her life and, thank God, love.
Was she really the June Tolliver who had gone out into the world
and had held her place there; who had conquered birth and speech
and customs and environment so that none could tell what they all
once were; who had become the lady, the woman of the world, in
manner, dress, and education: who had a gift of music and a voice
that might enrich her life beyond any dream that had ever sprung
from her own brain or any that she had ever caught from Hale's?
Was she June Tolliver who had been and done all that, and now had
come back and was slowly sinking back into the narrow grave from
which Hale had lifted her? It was all too strange and bitter, but
if she wanted proof there was her step-mother's voice now--the
same old, querulous, nerve-racking voice that had embittered all
her childhood--calling her down into the old mean round of
drudgery that had bound forever the horizon of her narrow life
just as now it was shutting down like a sky of brass around her
own. And when the voice came, instead of bursting into tears as
she was about to do, she gave a hard little laugh and she lifted a
defiant face to the rising sun. There was a limit to the sacrifice
for kindred, brother, father, home, and that limit was the eternal
sacrifice--the eternal undoing of herself: when this wretched
terrible business was over she would set her feet where that sun
could rise on her, busy with the work that she could do in that
world for which she felt she was born. Swiftly she did the morning
chores and then she sat on the porch thinking and waiting.
Spinning wheel, loom, and darning needle were to lie idle that
day. The old step-mother had gotten from bed and was dressing
herself--miraculously cured of a sudden, miraculously active. She
began to talk of what she needed in town, and June said nothing.
She went out to the stable and led out the old sorrel-mare. She
was going to the hanging.

"Don't you want to go to town, June?"

"No," said June fiercely.

"Well, you needn't git mad about it--I got to go some day this
week, and I reckon I might as well go ter-day." June answered
nothing, but in silence watched her get ready and in silence
watched her ride away. She was glad to be left alone. The sun had
flooded Lonesome Cove now with a light as rich and yellow as
though it were late afternoon, and she could yet tell every tree
by the different colour of the banner that each yet defiantly
flung into the face of death. The yard fence was festooned with
dewy cobwebs, and every weed in the field was hung with them as
with flashing jewels of exquisitely delicate design: Hale had once
told her that they meant rain. Far away the mountains were
overhung with purple so deep that the very air looked like mist,
and a peace that seemed motherlike in tenderness brooded over the
earth. Peace! Peace--with a man on his way to a scaffold only a
few miles away, and two bodies of men, one led by her father, the
other by the man she loved, ready to fly at each other's throats--
the one to get the condemned man alive, the other to see that he
died. She got up with a groan. She walked into the garden. The
grass was tall, tangled, and withering, and in it dead leaves lay
everywhere, stems up, stems down, in reckless confusion. The
scarlet sage-pods were brown and seeds were dropping from their
tiny gaping mouths. The marigolds were frost-nipped and one lonely
black-winged butterfly was vainly searching them one by one for
the lost sweets of summer. The gorgeous crowns of the sun-flowers
were nothing but grotesque black mummy-heads set on lean, dead
bodies, and the clump of big castor-plants, buffeted by the wind,
leaned this way and that like giants in a drunken orgy trying to
keep one another from falling down. The blight that was on the
garden was the blight that was in her heart, and two bits of cheer
only she found--one yellow nasturtium, scarlet-flecked, whose
fragrance was a memory of the spring that was long gone, and one
little cedar tree that had caught some dead leaves in its green
arms and was firmly holding them as though to promise that another
spring would surely come. With the flower in her hand, she started
up the ravine to her dreaming place, but it was so lonely up there
and she turned back. She went into her room and tried to read.
Mechanically, she half opened the lid of the piano and shut it,
horrified by her own act. As she passed out on the porch again she
noticed that it was only nine o'clock. She turned and watched the
long hand--how long a minute was! Three hours more! She shivered
and went inside and got her bonnet--she could not be alone when
the hour came, and she started down the road toward Uncle Billy's
mill. Hale! Hale! Hale!--the name began to ring in her ears like a
bell. The little shacks he had built up the creek were deserted
and gone to ruin, and she began to wonder in the light of what her
father had said how much of a tragedy that meant to him. Here was
the spot where he was fishing that day, when she had slipped down
behind him and he had turned and seen her for the first time. She
could recall his smile and the very tone of his kind voice:

"Howdye, little girl!" And the cat had got her tongue. She
remembered when she had written her name, after she had first
kissed him at the foot of the beech--"June HAIL," and by a
grotesque mental leap the beating of his name in her brain now
made her think of the beating of hailstones on her father's roof
one night when as a child she had lain and listened to them. Then
she noticed that the autumn shadows seemed to make the river
darker than the shadows of spring--or was it already the stain of
dead leaves? Hale could have told her. Those leaves were floating
through the shadows and when the wind moved, others zig-zagged
softly down to join them. The wind was helping them on the water,
too, and along came one brown leaf that was shaped like a tiny
trireme--its stem acting like a rudder and keeping it straight
before the breeze--so that it swept past the rest as a yacht that
she was once on had swept past a fleet of fishing sloops. She was
not unlike that swift little ship and thirty yards ahead were
rocks and shallows where it and the whole fleet would turn topsy-
turvy--would her own triumph be as short and the same fate be
hers? There was no question as to that, unless she took the wheel
of her fate in her own hands and with them steered the ship.
Thinking hard, she walked on slowly, with her hands behind her and
her eyes bent on the road. What should she do? She had no money,
her father had none to spare, and she could accept no more from
Hale. Once she stopped and stared with unseeing eyes at the blue
sky, and once under the heavy helplessness of it all she dropped
on the side of the road and sat with her head buried in her arms--
sat so long that she rose with a start and, with an apprehensive
look at the mounting sun, hurried on. She would go to the Gap and
teach; and then she knew that if she went there it would be on
Hale's account. Very well, she would not blind herself to that
fact; she would go and perhaps all would be made up between them,
and then she knew that if that but happened, nothing else could
matter...

When she reached the miller's cabin, she went to the porch without
noticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she
turned listlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock
beginning to strike, and with one hand on her breast she
breathlessly listened, counting--"eight, nine, ten, eleven"--and
her heart seemed to stop in the fraction of time that she waited
for it to strike once more. But it was only eleven, and she went
on down the road slowly, still thinking hard. The old miller was
leaning back in a chair against the log side of the mill, with his
dusty slouched hat down over his eyes. He did not hear her coming
and she thought he must be asleep, but he looked up with a start
when she spoke and she knew of what he, too, had been thinking.
Keenly his old eyes searched her white face and without a word he
got up and reached for another chair within the mill.

"You set right down now, baby," he said, and he made a pretence of
having something to do inside the mill, while June watched the
creaking old wheel dropping the sun-shot sparkling water into the
swift sluice, but hardly seeing it at all. By and by Uncle Billy
came outside and sat down and neither spoke a word. Once June saw
him covertly looking at his watch and she put both hands to her
throat--stifled.

"What time is it, Uncle Billy?" She tried to ask the question
calmly, but she had to try twice before she could speak at all and
when she did get the question out, her voice was only a broken
whisper.

"Five minutes to twelve, baby," said the old man, and his voice
had a gulp in it that broke June down. She sprang to her feet
wringing her hands:

"I can't stand it, Uncle Billy," she cried madly, and with a sob
that almost broke the old man's heart. "I tell you I can't stand
it."

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

And yet for three hours more she had to stand it, while the
cavalcade of Tollivers, with Rufe's body, made its slow way to the
Kentucky line where Judd and Dave and Bub left them to go home for
the night and be on hand for the funeral next day. But Uncle Billy
led her back to his cabin, and on the porch the two, with old Hon,
waited while the three hours dragged along. It was June who was
first to hear the galloping of horses' hoofs up the road and she
ran to the gate, followed by Uncle Billy and old Hon to see young
Dave Tolliver coming in a run. At the gate he threw himself from
his horse:

"Git up thar, June, and go home," he panted sharply. June flashed
out the gate.

"Have you done it?" she asked with deadly quiet.

"Hurry up an' go home, I tell ye! Uncle Judd wants ye!"

She came quite close to him now.

"You said you'd do it--I know what you've done--you--" she looked
as if she would fly at his throat, and Dave, amazed, shrank back a
step.

"Go home, I tell ye--Uncle Judd's shot. Git on the hoss!"

"No, no, NO! I wouldn't TOUCH anything that was yours"--she put
her hands to her head as though she were crazed, and then she
turned and broke into a swift run up the road.

Panting, June reached the gate. The front door was closed and
there she gave a tremulous cry for Bub. The door opened a few
inches and through it Bub shouted for her to come on. The back
door, too, was closed, and not a ray of daylight entered the room
except at the port-hole where Bub, with a Winchester, had been
standing on guard. By the light of the fire she saw her father's
giant frame stretched out on the bed and she heard his laboured
breathing. Swiftly she went to the bed and dropped on her knees
beside it.

"Dad!" she said. The old man's eyes opened and turned heavily
toward her.

"All right, Juny. They shot me from the laurel and they might nigh
got Bub. I reckon they've got me this time."

"No--no!" He saw her eyes fixed on the matted blood on his chest.

"Hit's stopped. I'm afeared hit's bleedin' inside." His voice had
dropped to a whisper and his eyes closed again. There was another
cautious "Hello" outside, and when Bub again opened the door Dave
ran swiftly within. He paid no attention to June.

"I follered June back an' left my hoss in the bushes. There was
three of 'em." He showed Bub a bullet hole through one sleeve and
then he turned half contemptuously to June:

"I hain't done it"--adding grimly--"not yit. He's as safe as you
air. I hope you're satisfied that hit hain't him 'stid o' yo'
daddy thar."

"Are you going to the Gap for a doctor?"

"I reckon I can't leave Bub here alone agin all the Falins--not
even to git a doctor or to carry a love-message fer you."

"Then I'll go myself."

A thick protest came from the bed, and then an appeal that might
have come from a child.

"Don't leave me, Juny." Without a word June went into the kitchen
and got the old bark horn.

"Uncle Billy will go," she said, and she stepped out on the porch.
But Uncle Billy was already on his way and she heard him coming
just as she was raising the horn to her lips. She met him at the
gate, and without even taking the time to come into the house the
old miller hurried upward toward the Lonesome Pine. The rain came
then--the rain that the tiny cobwebs had heralded at dawn that
morning. The old step-mother had not come home, and June told Bub
she had gone over the mountain to see her sister, and when, as
darkness fell, she did not appear they knew that she must have
been caught by the rain and would spend the night with a
neighbour. June asked no question, but from the low talk of Bub
and Dave she made out what had happened in town that day and a
wild elation settled in her heart that John Hale was alive and
unhurt--though Rufe was dead, her father wounded, and Bub and Dave
both had but narrowly escaped the Falin assassins that afternoon.
Bub took the first turn at watching while Dave slept, and when it
was Dave's turn she saw him drop quickly asleep in his chair, and
she was left alone with the breathing of the wounded man and the
beating of rain on the roof. And through the long night June
thought her brain weary over herself, her life, her people, and
Hale. They were not to blame--her people, they but did as their
fathers had done before them. They had their own code and they
lived up to it as best they could, and they had had no chance to
learn another. She felt the vindictive hatred that had prolonged
the feud. Had she been a man, she could not have rested until she
had slain the man who had ambushed her father. She expected Bub to
do that now, and if the spirit was so strong in her with the
training she had had, how helpless they must be against it. Even
Dave was not to blame--not to blame for loving her--he had always
done that. For that reason he could not help hating Hale, and how
great a reason he had now, for he could not understand as she
could the absence of any personal motive that had governed him in
the prosecution of the law, no matter if he hurt friend or foe.
But for Hale, she would have loved Dave and now be married to him
and happier than she was. Dave saw that--no wonder he hated Hale.
And as she slowly realized all these things, she grew calm and
gentle and determined to stick to her people and do the best she
could with her life.

And now and then through the night old Judd would open his eyes
and stare at the ceiling, and at these times it was not the pain
in his face that distressed her as much as the drawn beaten look
that she had noticed growing in it for a long time. It was
terrible--that helpless look in the face of a man, so big in body,
so strong of mind, so iron-like in will; and whenever he did speak
she knew what he was going to say:

"It's all over, Juny. They've beat us on every turn. They've got
us one by one. Thar ain't but a few of us left now and when I git
up, if I ever do, I'm goin' to gether 'em all together, pull up
stakes and take 'em all West. You won't ever leave me, Juny?"

"No, Dad," she would say gently. He had asked the question at
first quite sanely, but as the night wore on and the fever grew
and his mind wandered, he would repeat the question over and over
like a child, and over and over, while Bub and Dave slept and the
rain poured, June would repeat her answer:

"I'll never leave you, Dad."




XXXI


Before dawn Hale and the doctor and the old miller had reached the
Pine, and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him,
he would go only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even
from any Falin who happened to be hanging around in the bushes,
for Hale was hated equally by both factions now.

"I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy," said Hale. "Ask her,
for God's sake, to come up here and see me."

"All right. I'll axe her, but--" the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate,
Hale waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes
some thirty yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he
would go to the tree and look down the path, and once he slipped
far down the trail and aside to a spur whence he could see the
cabin in the cove. Once his hungry eyes caught sight of a woman's
figure walking through the little garden, and for an hour after it
disappeared into the house he watched for it to come out again.
But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the trail to
see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope. Hale waited and
ran down to meet him, his face and eyes eager and his lips
trembling, but again Uncle Billy was shaking his head.

"No use, John," he said sadly. "I got her out on the porch and
axed her, but she won't come."

"She won't come at all?"

"John, when one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an'
thar eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET--they're plumb out
o' reach o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't
blame her jes' now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched
Rufe and hung him, and she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done
that, her old daddy wouldn't be in thar on his back nigh to death.
You mustn't blame her, John--she's most out o' her head now."

"All right, Uncle Billy. Good-by." Hale turned, climbed sadly back
to his horse and sadly dropped down the other side of the mountain
and on through the rocky gap-home.

A week later he learned from the doctor that the chances were even
that old Judd would get well, but the days went by with no word of
June. Through those days June wrestled with her love for Hale and
her loyalty to her father, who, sick as he was, seemed to have a
vague sense of the trouble within her and shrewdly fought it by
making her daily promise that she would never leave him. For as
old Judd got better, June's fierceness against Hale melted and her
love came out the stronger, because of the passing injustice that
she had done him. Many times she was on the point of sending him
word that she would meet him at the Pine, but she was afraid of
her own strength if she should see him face to face, and she
feared she would be risking his life if she allowed him to come.
There were times when she would have gone to him herself, had her
father been well and strong, but he was old, beaten and helpless,
and she had given her sacred word that she would never leave him.
So once more she grew calmer, gentler still, and more determined
to follow her own way with her own kin, though that way led
through a breaking heart. She never mentioned Hale's name, she
never spoke of going West, and in time Dave began to wonder not
only if she had not gotten over her feeling for Hale, but if that
feeling had not turned into permanent hate. To him, June was
kinder than ever, because she understood him better and because
she was sorry for the hunted, hounded life he led, not knowing,
when on his trips to see her or to do some service for her father,
he might be picked off by some Falin from the bushes. So Dave
stopped his sneering remarks against Hale and began to dream his
old dreams, though he never opened his lips to June, and she was
unconscious of what was going on within him. By and by, as old
Judd began to mend, overtures of peace came, singularly enough,
from the Falins, and while the old man snorted with contemptuous
disbelief at them as a pretence to throw him off his guard, Dave
began actually to believe that they were sincere, and straightway
forged a plan of his own, even if the Tollivers did persist in
going West. So one morning as he mounted his horse at old Judd's
gate, he called to June in the garden:

"I'm a-goin' over to the Gap." June paled, but Dave was not
looking at her.

"What for?" she asked, steadying her voice.

"Business," he answered, and he laughed curiously and, still
without looking at her, rode away.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Hale sat in the porch of his little office that morning, and the
Hon. Sam Budd, who had risen to leave, stood with his hands deep
in his pockets, his hat tilted far over his big goggles, looking
down at the dead leaves that floated like lost hopes on the placid
mill-pond. Hale had agreed to go to England once more on the sole
chance left him before he went back to chain and compass--the old
land deal that had come to life--and between them they had about
enough money for the trip.

"You'll keep an eye on things over there?" said Hale with a
backward motion of his head toward Lonesome Cove, and the Hon. Sam
nodded his head:

"All I can."

"Those big trunks of hers are still here." The Hon. Sam smiled.
"She won't need 'em. I'll keep an eye on 'em and she can come over
and get what she wants--every year or two," he added grimly, and
Hale groaned.

"Stop it, Sam."

"All right. You ain't goin' to try to see her before you leave?"
And then at the look on Hale's face he said hurriedly: "All right-
-all right," and with a toss of his hands turned away, while Hale
sat thinking where he was.

Rufe Tolliver had been quite right as to the Red Fox. Nobody would
risk his life for him--there was no one to attempt a rescue, and
but a few of the guards were on hand this time to carry out the
law. On the last day he had appeared in his white suit of
tablecloth. The little old woman in black had made even the cap
that was to be drawn over his face, and that, too, she had made of
white. Moreover, she would have his body kept unburied for three
days, because the Red Fox said that on the third day he would
arise and go about preaching. So that even in death the Red Fox
was consistently inconsistent, and how he reconciled such a dual
life at one and the same time over and under the stars was, except
to his twisted brain, never known. He walked firmly up the
scaffold steps and stood there blinking in the sunlight. With one
hand he tested the rope. For a moment he looked at the sky and the
trees with a face that was white and absolutely expressionless.
Then he sang one hymn of two verses and quietly dropped into that
world in which he believed so firmly and toward which he had trod
so strange a way on earth. As he wished, the little old woman in
black had the body kept unburied for the three days--but the Red
Fox never rose. With his passing, law and order had become
supreme. Neither Tolliver nor Falin came on the Virginia side for
mischief, and the desperadoes of two sister States, whose skirts
are stitched together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the
Cumberland, confined their deviltries with great care to places
long distant from the Gap. John Hale had done a great work, but
the limit of his activities was that State line and the Falins,
ever threatening that they would not leave a Tolliver alive, could
carry out those threats and Hale not be able to lift a hand. It
was his helplessness that was making him writhe now.

Old Judd had often said he meant to leave the mountains--why
didn't he go now and take June for whose safety his heart was
always in his mouth? As an officer, he was now helpless where he
was; and if he went away he could give no personal aid--he would
not even know what was happening--and he had promised Budd to go.
An open letter was clutched in his hand, and again he read it. His
coal company had accepted his last proposition. They would take
his stock--worthless as they thought it--and surrender the cabin
and two hundred acres of field and woodland in Lonesome Cove. That
much at least would be intact, but if he failed in his last
project now, it would be subject to judgments against him that
were sure to come. So there was one thing more to do for June
before he left for the final effort in England--to give back her
home to her--and as he rose to do it now, somebody shouted at his
gate:

"Hello!" Hale stopped short at the head of the steps, his right
hand shot like a shaft of light to the butt of his pistol, stayed
there--and he stood astounded. It was Dave Tolliver on horseback,
and Dave's right hand had kept hold of his bridle-reins.

"Hold on!" he said, lifting the other with a wide gesture of
peace. "I want to talk with you a bit." Still Hale watched him
closely as he swung from his horse.

"Come in--won't you?" The mountaineer hitched his horse and
slouched within the gate.

"Have a seat." Dave dropped to the steps.

"I'll set here," he said, and there was an embarrassed silence for
a while between the two. Hale studied young Dave's face from
narrowed eyes. He knew all the threats the Tolliver had made
against him, the bitter enmity that he felt, and that it would
last until one or the other was dead. This was a queer move. The
mountaineer took off his slouched hat and ran one hand through his
thick black hair.

"I reckon you've heard as how all our folks air sellin' out over
the mountains."

"No," said Hale quickly.

"Well, they air, an' all of 'em are going West--Uncle Judd,
Loretty and June, and all our kinfolks. You didn't know that?"

"No," repeated Hale.

"Well, they hain't closed all the trades yit," he said, "an' they
mought not go mebbe afore spring. The Falins say they air done
now. Uncle Judd don't believe 'em, but I do, an' I'm thinkin' I
won't go. I've got a leetle money, an' I want to know if I can't
buy back Uncle Judd's house an' a leetle ground around it. Our
folks is tired o' fightin' and I couldn't live on t'other side of
the mountain, after they air gone, an' keep as healthy as on this
side--so I thought I'd see if I couldn't buy back June's old home,
mebbe, an' live thar."

Hale watched him keenly, wondering what his game was--and he went
on: "I know the house an' land ain't wuth much to your company,
an' as the coal-vein has petered out, I reckon they might not axe
much fer it." It was all out now, and he stopped without looking
at Hale. "I ain't axin' any favours, leastwise not o' you, an' I
thought my share o' Mam's farm mought be enough to git me the
house an' some o' the land."

"You mean to live there, yourself?"

"Yes."

"Alone?" Dave frowned.

"I reckon that's my business."

"So it is--excuse me." Hale lighted his pipe and the mountaineer
waited--he was a little sullen now.

"Well, the company has parted with the land." Dave started.

"Sold it?"

"In a way--yes."

"Well, would you mind tellin' me who bought it--maybe I can git it
from him."

"It's mine now," said Hale quietly.

"YOURN!" The mountaineer looked incredulous and then he let loose
a scornful laugh.

"YOU goin' to live thar?"

"Maybe."

"Alone?"

"That's my business." The mountaineer's face darkened and his
fingers began to twitch.

"Well, if you're talkin' 'bout June, hit's MY business. Hit always
has been and hit always will be."

"Well, if I was talking about June, I wouldn't consult you."

"No, but I'd consult you like hell."

"I wish you had the chance," said Hale coolly; "but I wasn't
talking about June." Again Dave laughed harshly, and for a moment
his angry eyes rested on the quiet mill-pond. He went backward
suddenly.

"You went over thar in Lonesome with your high notions an' your
slick tongue, an' you took June away from me. But she wusn't good
enough fer you THEN--so you filled her up with yo' fool notions
an' sent her away to git her po' little head filled with furrin'
ways, so she could be fitten to marry you. You took her away from
her daddy, her family, her kinfolks and her home, an' you took her
away from me; an' now she's been over thar eatin' her heart out
just as she et it out over here when she fust left home. An' in
the end she got so highfalutin that SHE wouldn't marry YOU." He
laughed again and Hale winced under the laugh and the lashing
words. "An' I know you air eatin' yo' heart out, too, because you
can't git June, an' I'm hopin' you'll suffer the torment o' hell
as long as you live. God, she hates ye now! To think o' your
knowin' the world and women and books"--he spoke with vindictive
and insulting slowness--"You bein' such a--fool!"

"That may all be true, but I think you can talk better outside
that gate." The mountaineer, deceived by Hale's calm voice, sprang
to his feet in a fury, but he was too late. Hale's hand was on the
butt of his revolver, his blue eyes were glittering and a
dangerous smile was at his lips. Silently he sat and silently he
pointed his other hand at the gate. Dave laughed:

"D'ye think I'd fight you hyeh? If you killed me, you'd be elected
County Jedge; if I killed you, what chance would I have o' gittin'
away? I'd swing fer it." He was outside the gate now and
unhitching his horse. He started to turn the beasts but Hale
stopped him.

"Get on from this side, please."

With one foot in the stirrup, Dave turned savagely: "Why don't you
go up in the Gap with me now an' fight it out like a man?"

"I don't trust you."

"I'll git ye over in the mountains some day."

"I've no doubt you will, if you have the chance from the bush."
Hale was getting roused now.

"Look here," he said suddenly, "you've been threatening me for a
long time now. I've never had any feeling against you. I've never
done anything to you that I hadn't to do. But you've gone a little
too far now and I'm tired. If you can't get over your grudge
against me, suppose we go across the river outside the town-
limits, put our guns down and fight it out--fist and skull."

"I'm your man," said Dave eagerly. Looking across the street Hale
saw two men on the porch.

"Come on!" he said. The two men were Budd and the new town-
sergeant. "Sam," he said "this gentleman and I are going across
the river to have a little friendly bout, and I wish you'd come
along--and you, too, Bill, to see that Dave here gets fair play."

The sergeant spoke to Dave. "You don't need nobody to see that you
git fair play with them two--but I'll go 'long just the same."
Hardly a word was said as the four walked across the bridge and
toward a thicket to the right. Neither Budd nor the sergeant asked
the nature of the trouble, for either could have guessed what it
was. Dave tied his horse and, like Hale, stripped off his coat.
The sergeant took charge of Dave's pistol and Budd of Hale's.

"All you've got to do is to keep him away from you," said Budd.
"If he gets his hands on you--you're gone. You know how they fight
rough-and-tumble."

Hale nodded--he knew all that himself, and when he looked at
Dave's sturdy neck, and gigantic shoulders, he knew further that
if the mountaineer got him in his grasp he would have to gasp
"enough" in a hurry, or be saved by Budd from being throttled to
death.

"Are you ready?" Again Hale nodded.

"Go ahead, Dave," growled the sergeant, for the job was not to his
liking. Dave did not plunge toward Hale, as the three others
expected. On the contrary, he assumed the conventional attitude of
the boxer and advanced warily, using his head as a diagnostician
for Hale's points--and Hale remembered suddenly that Dave had been
away at school for a year. Dave knew something of the game and the
Hon. Sam straightway was anxious, when the mountaineer ducked and
swung his left Budd's heart thumped and he almost shrank himself
from the terrific sweep of the big fist.

"God!" he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must,
it seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew
his head not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye,
and jabbed his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw,
that made the mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and
pain, and when he followed it up with a swing of his left on
Dave's right eye and another terrific jolt with his right on the
left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy rage in the mountaineer's face,
he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot his science as the Hon. Sam
expected, and with a bellow he started at Hale like a cave-dweller
to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe figure before him
swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every side-step a
fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until,
blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the
sergeant with the cry of a madman:

"Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!" And when the sergeant
sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with
rage and shame to the ground.

"You two just go back to town," said the sergeant. "I'll take keer
of him. Quick!" and he shook his head as Hale advanced. "He ain't
goin' to shake hands with you."

The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's
office to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came.
There he had the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in
Lonesome Cove and the acres about it were conveyed in fee simple
to June--her heirs and assigns forever; but the girl must not know
until, Hale said, "her father dies, or I die, or she marries."
When he came out the sergeant was passing the door.

"Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway," he
said, shaking his head. "If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as
long as he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust
chance he gets. You'll have to watch that feller as long as you
live--'specially when he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin'
and want revenge fer it till the grave. One of you has got to die
some day--shore."

And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that
moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and
shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his
cries and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine.
All the way up the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice
of the big Pine he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped,
his heart was beating curses as he dropped down the other side of
the mountain.

When he reached the river, he got off his horse and bathed his
mouth and his eyes again, and he cursed afresh when the blood
started afresh at his lips again. For a while he sat there in his
black mood, undecided whether he should go to his uncle's cabin or
go on home. But he had seen a woman's figure in the garden as he
came down the spur, and the thought of June drew him to the cabin
in spite of his shame and the questions that were sure to be
asked. When he passed around the clump of rhododendrons at the
creek, June was in the garden still. She was pruning a rose-bush
with Bub's penknife, and when she heard him coming she wheeled,
quivering. She had been waiting for him all day, and, like an
angry goddess, she swept fiercely toward him. Dave pretended not
to see her, but when he swung from his horse and lifted his sullen
eyes, he shrank as though she had lashed him across them with a
whip. Her eyes blazed with murderous fire from her white face, the
penknife in her hand was clenched as though for a deadly purpose,
and on her trembling lips was the same question that she had asked
him at the mill:

"Have you done it this time?" she whispered, and then she saw his
swollen mouth and his battered eye. Her fingers relaxed about the
handle of the knife, the fire in her eyes went swiftly down, and
with a smile that was half pity, half contempt, she turned away.
She could not have told the whole truth better in words, even to
Dave, and as he looked after her his every pulse-beat was a new
curse, and if at that minute he could have had Hale's heart he
would have eaten it like a savage--raw. For a minute he hesitated
with reins in hand as to whether he should turn now and go back to
the Gap to settle with Hale, and then he threw the reins over a
post. He could bide his time yet a little longer, for a crafty
purpose suddenly entered his brain. Bub met him at the door of the
cabin and his eyes opened.

"What's the matter, Dave?"

"Oh, nothin'," he said carelessly. "My hoss stumbled comin' down
the mountain an' I went clean over his head." He raised one hand
to his mouth and still Bub was suspicious.

"Looks like you been in a fight." The boy began to laugh, but Dave
ignored him and went on into the cabin. Within, he sat where he
could see through the open door.

"Whar you been, Dave?" asked old Judd from the corner. Just then
he saw June coming and, pretending to draw on his pipe, he waited
until she had sat down within ear-shot on the edge of the porch.

"Who do you reckon owns this house and two hundred acres o' land
roundabouts?"

The girl's heart waited apprehensively and she heard her father's
deep voice.

"The company owns it." Dave laughed harshly.

"Not much--John Hale." The heart out on the porch leaped with
gladness now

"He bought it from the company. It's just as well you're goin'
away, Uncle Judd. He'd put you out."

"I reckon not. I got writin' from the company which 'lows me to
stay here two year or more--if I want to."

"I don't know. He's a slick one."

"I heerd him say," put in Bub stoutly, "that he'd see that we
stayed here jus' as long as we pleased."

"Well," said old Judd shortly, "ef we stay here by his favour, we
won't stay long."

There was silence for a while. Then Dave spoke again for the
listening ears outside--maliciously:

"I went over to the Gap to see if I couldn't git the place myself
from the company. I believe the Falins ain't goin' to bother us
an' I ain't hankerin' to go West. But I told him that you-all was
goin' to leave the mountains and goin' out thar fer good." There
was another silence.

"He never said a word." Nobody had asked the question, but he was
answering the unspoken one in the heart of June, and that heart
sank like a stone.

"He's goin' away hisself-goin' ter-morrow--goin' to that same
place he went before--England, some feller called it."

Dave had done his work well. June rose unsteadily, and with one
hand on her heart and the other clutching the railing of the
porch, she crept noiselessly along it, staggered like a wounded
thing around the chimney, through the garden and on, still
clutching her heart, to the woods--there to sob it out on the
breast of the only mother she had ever known.

Dave was gone when she came back from the woods--calm, dry-eyed,
pale. Her step-mother had kept her dinner for her, and when she
said she wanted nothing to eat, the old woman answered something
querulous to which June made no answer, but went quietly to
cleaning away the dishes. For a while she sat on the porch, and
presently she went into her room and for a few moments she rocked
quietly at her window. Hale was going away next day, and when he
came back she would be gone and she would never see him again. A
dry sob shook her body of a sudden, she put both hands to her head
and with wild eyes she sprang to her feet and, catching up her
bonnet, slipped noiselessly out the back door. With hands clenched
tight she forced herself to walk slowly across the foot-bridge,
but when the bushes hid her, she broke into a run as though she
were crazed and escaping a madhouse. At the foot of the spur she
turned swiftly up the mountain and climbed madly, with one hand
tight against the little cross at her throat. He was going away
and she must tell him--she must tell him--what? Behind her a voice
was calling, the voice that pleaded all one night for her not to
leave him, that had made that plea a daily prayer, and it had come
from an old man--wounded, broken in health and heart, and her
father. Hale's face was before her, but that voice was behind, and
as she climbed, the face that she was nearing grew fainter, the
voice she was leaving sounded the louder in her ears, and when she
reached the big Pine she dropped helplessly at the base of it,
sobbing. With her tears the madness slowly left her, the old
determination came back again and at last the old sad peace. The
sunlight was slanting at a low angle when she rose to her feet and
stood on the cliff overlooking the valley--her lips parted as when
she stood there first, and the tiny drops drying along the roots
of her dull gold hair. And being there for the last time she
thought of that time when she was first there--ages ago. The great
glare of light that she looked for then had come and gone. There
was the smoking monster rushing into the valley and sending
echoing shrieks through the hills--but there was no booted
stranger and no horse issuing from the covert of maple where the
path disappeared. A long time she stood there, with a wandering
look of farewell to every familiar thing before her, but not a
tear came now. Only as she turned away at last her breast heaved
and fell with one long breath--that was all. Passing the Pine
slowly, she stopped and turned back to it, unclasping the necklace
from her throat. With trembling fingers she detached from it the
little luck-piece that Hale had given her--the tear of a fairy
that had turned into a tiny cross of stone when a strange
messenger brought to the Virginia valley the story of the
crucifixion. The penknife was still in her pocket, and, opening
it, she went behind the Pine and dug a niche as high and as deep
as she could toward its soft old heart. In there she thrust the
tiny symbol, whispering:

"I want all the luck you could ever give me, little cross--for
HIM." Then she pulled the fibres down to cover it from sight and,
crossing her hands over the opening, she put her forehead against
them and touched her lips to the tree.

"Keep it safe, old Pine." Then she lifted her face--looking upward
along its trunk to the blue sky. "And bless him, dear God, and
guard him evermore." She clutched her heart as she turned, and she
was clutching it when she passed into the shadows below, leaving
the old Pine to whisper, when he passed, her love.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Next day the word went round to the clan that the Tollivers would
start in a body one week later for the West. At daybreak, that
morning, Uncle Billy and his wife mounted the old gray horse and
rode up the river to say good-by. They found the cabin in Lonesome
Cove deserted. Many things were left piled in the porch; the
Tollivers had left apparently in a great hurry and the two old
people were much mystified. Not until noon did they learn what the
matter was. Only the night before a Tolliver had shot a Falin and
the Falins had gathered to get revenge on Judd that night. The
warning word had been brought to Lonesome Cove by Loretta
Tolliver, and it had come straight from young Buck Falin himself.
So June and old Judd and Bub had fled in the night. At that hour
they were on their way to the railroad--old Judd at the head of
his clan--his right arm still bound to his side, his bushy beard
low on his breast, June and Bub on horseback behind him, the rest
strung out behind them, and in a wagon at the end, with all her
household effects, the little old woman in black who would wait no
longer for the Red Fox to arise from the dead. Loretta alone was
missing. She was on her way with young Buck Falin to the railroad
on the other side of the mountains. Between them not a living soul
disturbed the dead stillness of Lonesome Cove.




XXXII


All winter the cabin in Lonesome Cove slept through rain and sleet
and snow, and no foot passed its threshold. Winter broke, floods
came and warm sunshine. A pale green light stole through the
trees, shy, ethereal and so like a mist that it seemed at any
moment on the point of floating upward. Colour came with the wild
flowers and song with the wood-thrush. Squirrels played on the
tree-trunks like mischievous children, the brooks sang like happy
human voices through the tremulous underworld and woodpeckers
hammered out the joy of spring, but the awakening only made the
desolate cabin lonelier still. After three warm days in March,
Uncle Billy, the miller, rode up the creek with a hoe over his
shoulder--he had promised this to Hale--for his labour of love in
June's garden. Weeping April passed, May came with rosy face
uplifted, and with the birth of June the laurel emptied its pink-
flecked cups and the rhododendron blazed the way for the summer's
coming with white stars.

Back to the hills came Hale then, and with all their rich beauty
they were as desolate as when he left them bare with winter, for
his mission had miserably failed. His train creaked and twisted
around the benches of the mountains, and up and down ravines into
the hills. The smoke rolled in as usual through the windows and
doors. There was the same crowd of children, slatternly women and
tobacco-spitting men in the dirty day-coaches, and Hale sat among
them--for a Pullman was no longer attached to the train that ran
to the Gap. As he neared the bulk of Powell's mountain and ran
along its mighty flank, he passed the ore-mines. At each one the
commissary was closed, the cheap, dingy little houses stood empty
on the hillsides, and every now and then he would see a tipple and
an empty car, left as it was after dumping its last load of red
ore. On the right, as he approached the station, the big furnace
stood like a dead giant, still and smokeless, and the piles of pig
iron were red with rust. The same little dummy wheezed him into
the dead little town. Even the face of the Gap was a little
changed by the gray scar that man had slashed across its mouth,
getting limestone for the groaning monster of a furnace that was
now at peace. The streets were deserted. A new face fronted him at
the desk of the hotel and the eyes of the clerk showed no
knowledge of him when he wrote his name. His supper was coarse,
greasy and miserable, his room was cold (steam heat, it seemed,
had been given up), the sheets were ill-smelling, the mouth of the
pitcher was broken, and the one towel had seen much previous use.
But the water was the same, as was the cool, pungent night-air--
both blessed of God--and they were the sole comforts that were his
that night.

The next day it was as though he were arranging his own funeral,
with but little hope of a resurrection. The tax-collector met him
when he came downstairs--having seen his name on the register.

"You know," he said, "I'll have to add 5 per cent. next month."
Hale smiled.

"That won't be much more," he said, and the collector, a new one,
laughed good-naturedly and with understanding turned away.
Mechanically he walked to the Club, but there was no club--then on
to the office of The Progress--the paper that was the boast of the
town. The Progress was defunct and the brilliant editor had left
the hills. A boy with an ink-smeared face was setting type and a
pallid gentleman with glasses was languidly working a hand-press.
A pile of fresh-smelling papers lay on a table, and after a
question or two he picked up one. Two of its four pages were
covered with announcements of suits and sales to satisfy
judgments--the printing of which was the raison d'etre of the
noble sheet. Down the column his eye caught John Hale et al. John
Hale et al., and he wondered why "the others" should be so
persistently anonymous. There was a cloud of them--thicker than
the smoke of coke-ovens. He had breathed that thickness for a long
time, but he got a fresh sense of suffocation now. Toward the
post-office he moved. Around the corner he came upon one of two
brothers whom he remembered as carpenters. He recalled his
inability once to get that gentleman to hang a door for him. He
was a carpenter again now and he carried a saw and a plane. There
was grim humour in the situation. The carpenter's brother had
gone--and he himself could hardly get enough work, he said, to
support his family.

"Goin' to start that house of yours?"

"I think not," said Hale.

"Well, I'd like to get a contract for a chicken-coop just to keep
my hand in."

There was more. A two-horse wagon was coming with two cottage-
organs aboard. In the mouth of the slouch-hatted, unshaven driver
was a corn-cob pipe. He pulled in when he saw Hale.

"Hello!" he shouted grinning. Good Heavens, was that uncouth
figure the voluble, buoyant, flashy magnate of the old days? It
was.

"Sellin' organs agin," he said briefly.

"And teaching singing-school?"

The dethroned king of finance grinned.

"Sure! What you doin'?"

"Nothing."

"Goin' to stay long?"

"No."

"Well, see you again. So long. Git up!"

Wheel-spokes whirred in the air and he saw a buggy, with the top
down, rattling down another street in a cloud of dust. It was the
same buggy in which he had first seen the black-bearded Senator
seven years before. It was the same horse, too, and the Arab-like
face and the bushy black whiskers, save for streaks of gray, were
the same. This was the man who used to buy watches and pianos by
the dozen, who one Xmas gave a present to every living man, woman
and child in the town, and under whose colossal schemes the
pillars of the church throughout the State stood as supports. That
far away the eagle-nosed face looked haggard, haunted and all but
spent, and even now he struck Hale as being driven downward like a
madman by the same relentless energy that once had driven him
upward. It was the same story everywhere. Nearly everybody who
could get away was gone. Some of these were young enough to profit
by the lesson and take surer root elsewhere--others were too old
for transplanting, and of them would be heard no more. Others
stayed for the reason that getting away was impossible. These were
living, visible tragedies--still hopeful, pathetically unaware of
the leading parts they were playing, and still weakly waiting for
a better day or sinking, as by gravity, back to the old trades
they had practised before the boom. A few sturdy souls, the
fittest, survived--undismayed. Logan was there--lawyer for the
railroad and the coal-company. MacFarlan was a judge, and two or
three others, too, had come through unscathed in spirit and
undaunted in resolution--but gone were the young Bluegrass
Kentuckians, the young Tide-water Virginians, the New England
school-teachers, the bankers, real-estate agents, engineers; gone
the gamblers, the wily Jews and the vagrant women that fringe the
incoming tide of a new prosperity--gone--all gone!

Beyond the post-office he turned toward the red-brick house that
sat above the mill-pond. Eagerly he looked for the old mill, and
he stopped in physical pain. The dam had been torn away, the old
wheel was gone and a caved-in roof and supporting walls, drunkenly
aslant, were the only remnants left. A red-haired child stood at
the gate before the red-brick house and Hale asked her a question.
The little girl had never heard of the Widow Crane. Then he walked
toward his old office and bedroom. There was a voice inside his
old office when he approached, a tall figure filled the doorway, a
pair of great goggles beamed on him like beacon lights in a storm,
and the Hon. Sam Budd's hand and his were clasped over the gate.

"It's all over, Sam."

"Don't you worry--come on in."

The two sat on the porch. Below it the dimpled river shone through
the rhododendrons and with his eyes fixed on it, the Hon. Sam
slowly approached the thought of each.

"The old cabin in Lonesome Cove is just as the Tollivers left it."

"None of them ever come back?" Budd shook his head.

"No, but one's comin'--Dave."

"Dave!"

"Yes, an' you know what for."

"I suppose so," said Hale carelessly. "Did you send old Judd the
deed?"

"Sure--along with that fool condition of yours that June shouldn't
know until he was dead or she married. I've never heard a word."

"Do you suppose he'll stick to the condition?"

"He has stuck," said the Hon. Sam shortly; "otherwise you would
have heard from June."

"I'm not going to be here long," said Hale.

"Where you goin'?"

"I don't know." Budd puffed his pipe.

"Well, while you are here, you want to keep your eye peeled for
Dave Tolliver. I told you that the mountaineer hates as long as he
remembers, and that he never forgets. Do you know that Dave sent
his horse back to the stable here to be hired out for his keep,
and told it right and left that when you came back he was comin',
too, and he was goin' to straddle that horse until he found you,
and then one of you had to die? How he found out you were comin'
about this time I don't know, but he has sent word that he'll be
here. Looks like he hasn't made much headway with June."

"I'm not worried."

"Well, you better be," said Budd sharply.

"Did Uncle Billy plant the garden?"

"Flowers and all, just as June always had 'em. He's always had the
idea that June would come back."

"Maybe she will."

"Not on your life. She might if you went out there for her."

Hale looked up quickly and slowly shook his head.

"Look here, Jack, you're seein' things wrong. You can't blame that
girl for losing her head after you spoiled and pampered her the
way you did. And with all her sense it was mighty hard for her to
understand your being arrayed against her flesh and blood--law or
no law. That's mountain nature pure and simple, and it comes
mighty near bein' human nature the world over. You never gave her
a square chance."

"You know what Uncle Billy said?"

"Yes, an' I know Uncle Billy changed his mind. Go after her."

"No," said Hale firmly. "It'll take me ten years to get out of
debt. I wouldn't now if I could--on her account."

"Nonsense." Hale rose.

"I'm going over to take a look around and get some things I left
at Uncle Billy's and then--me for the wide, wide world again."

The Hon. Sam took off his spectacles to wipe them, but when Bale's
back was turned, his handkerchief went to his eyes:

"Don't you worry, Jack."

"All right, Sam."

An hour later Hale was at the livery stable for a horse to ride to
Lonesome Cove, for he had sold his big black to help out expenses
for the trip to England. Old Dan Harris, the stableman, stood in
the door and silently he pointed to a gray horse in the barn-yard.

"You know that hoss?"

"Yes."

"You know whut's he here fer?"

"I've heard."

"Well, I'm lookin' fer Dave every day now."

"Well, maybe I'd better ride Dave's horse now," said Hale
jestingly.

"I wish you would," said old Dan.

"No," said Hale, "if he's coming, I'll leave the horse so that he
can get to me as quickly as possible. You might send me word,
Uncle Dan, ahead, so that he can't waylay me."

"I'll do that very thing," said the old man seriously.

"I was joking, Uncle Dan."

"But I ain't."

The matter was out of Hale's head before he got through the great
Gap. How the memories thronged of June--June--June!

"YOU DIDN'T GIVE HER A CHANCE."

That was what Budd said. Well, had he given her a chance? Why
shouldn't he go to her and give her the chance now? He shook his
shoulders at the thought and laughed with some bitterness. He
hadn't the car-fare for half-way across the continent--and even if
he had, he was a promising candidate for matrimony!--and again he
shook his shoulders and settled his soul for his purpose. He would
get his things together and leave those hills forever.

How lonely had been his trip--how lonely was the God-forsaken
little town behind him! How lonely the road and hills and the
little white clouds in the zenith straight above him--and how
unspeakably lonely the green dome of the great Pine that shot into
view from the north as he turned a clump of rhododendron with
uplifted eyes. Not a breath of air moved. The green expanse about
him swept upward like a wave--but unflecked, motionless, except
for the big Pine which, that far away, looked like a bit of green
spray, spouting on its very crest.

"Old man," he muttered, "you know--you know." And as to a brother
he climbed toward it.

"No wonder they call you Lonesome," he said as he went upward into
the bright stillness, and when he dropped into the dark stillness
of shadow and forest gloom on the other side he said again:

"My God, no wonder they call you Lonesome."

And still the memories of June thronged--at the brook--at the
river--and when he saw the smokeless chimney of the old cabin, he
all but groaned aloud. But he turned away from it, unable to look
again, and went down the river toward Uncle Billy's mill.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Old Hon threw her arms around him and kissed him.

"John," said Uncle Billy, "I've got three hundred dollars in a old
yarn sock under one of them hearthstones and its yourn. Ole Hon
says so too."

Hale choked.

"I want ye to go to June. Dave'll worry her down and git her if
you don't go, and if he don't worry her down, he'll come back an'
try to kill ye. I've always thought one of ye would have to die
fer that gal, an' I want it to be Dave. You two have got to fight
it out some day, and you mought as well meet him out thar as here.
You didn't give that little gal a fair chance, John, an' I want
you to go to June."

"No, I can't take your money, Uncle Billy--God bless you and old
Hon--I'm going--I don't know where--and I'm going now."




XXXIII


Clouds were gathering as Hale rode up the river after telling old
Hon and Uncle Billy good-by. He had meant not to go to the cabin
in Lonesome Cove, but when he reached the forks of the road, he
stopped his horse and sat in indecision with his hands folded on
the pommel of his saddle and his eyes on the smokeless chimney.
The memories tugging at his heart drew him irresistibly on, for it
was the last time. At a slow walk he went noiselessly through the
deep sand around the clump of rhododendron. The creek was clear as
crystal once more, but no geese cackled and no dog barked. The
door of the spring-house gaped wide, the barn-door sagged on its
hinges, the yard-fence swayed drunkenly, and the cabin was still
as a gravestone. But the garden was alive, and he swung from his
horse at the gate, and with his hands clasped behind his back
walked slowly through it. June's garden! The garden he had planned
and planted for June--that they had tended together and apart and
that, thanks to the old miller's care, was the one thing, save the
sky above, left in spirit unchanged. The periwinkles, pink and
white, were almost gone. The flags were at half-mast and sinking
fast. The annunciation lilies were bending their white foreheads
to the near kiss of death, but the pinks were fragrant, the
poppies were poised on slender stalks like brilliant butterflies
at rest, the hollyhocks shook soundless pink bells to the wind,
roses as scarlet as June's lips bloomed everywhere and the
richness of mid-summer was at hand.

Quietly Hale walked the paths, taking a last farewell of plant and
flower, and only the sudden patter of raindrops made him lift his
eyes to the angry sky. The storm was coming now in earnest and he
had hardly time to lead his horse to the barn and dash to the
porch when the very heavens, with a crash of thunder, broke loose.
Sheet after sheet swept down the mountains like wind-driven clouds
of mist thickening into water as they came. The shingles rattled
as though with the heavy slapping of hands, the pines creaked and
the sudden dusk outside made the cabin, when he pushed the door
open, as dark as night. Kindling a fire, he lit his pipe and
waited. The room was damp and musty, but the presence of June
almost smothered him. Once he turned his face. June's door was
ajar and the key was in the lock. He rose to go to it and look
within and then dropped heavily back into his chair. He was
anxious to get away now--to get to work. Several times he rose
restlessly and looked out the window. Once he went outside and
crept along the wall of the cabin to the east and the west, but
there was no break of light in the murky sky and he went back to
pipe and fire. By and by the wind died and the rain steadied into
a dogged downpour. He knew what that meant--there would be no
letting up now in the storm, and for another night he was a
prisoner. So he went to his saddle-pockets and pulled out a cake
of chocolate, a can of potted ham and some crackers, munched his
supper, went to bed, and lay there with sleepless eyes, while the
lights and shadows from the wind-swayed fire flicked about him.
After a while his body dozed but his racked brain went seething on
in an endless march of fantastic dreams in which June was the
central figure always, until of a sudden young Dave leaped into
the centre of the stage in the dream-tragedy forming in his brain.
They were meeting face to face at last--and the place was the big
Pine. Dave's pistol flashed and his own stuck in the holster as he
tried to draw. There was a crashing report and he sprang upright
in bed--but it was a crash of thunder that wakened him and that in
that swift instant perhaps had caused his dream. The wind had come
again and was driving the rain like soft bullets against the wall
of the cabin next which he lay. He got up, threw another stick of
wood on the fire and sat before the leaping blaze, curiously
disturbed but not by the dream. Somehow he was again in doubt--was
he going to stick it out in the mountains after all, and if he
should, was not the reason, deep down in his soul, the foolish
hope that June would come back again. No, he thought, searching
himself fiercely, that was not the reason. He honestly did not
know what his duty to her was--what even was his inmost wish, and
almost with a groan he paced the floor to and fro. Meantime the
storm raged. A tree crashed on the mountainside and the lightning
that smote it winked into the cabin so like a mocking, malignant
eye that he stopped in his tracks, threw open the door and stepped
outside as though to face an enemy. The storm was majestic and his
soul went into the mighty conflict of earth and air, whose
beginning and end were in eternity. The very mountain tops were
rimmed with zigzag fire, which shot upward, splitting a sky that
was as black as a nether world, and under it the great trees
swayed like willows under rolling clouds of gray rain. One fiery
streak lit up for an instant the big Pine and seemed to dart
straight down upon its proud, tossing crest. For a moment the beat
of the watcher's heart and the flight of his soul stopped still. A
thunderous crash came slowly to his waiting ears, another flash
came, and Hale stumbled, with a sob, back into the cabin. God's
finger was pointing the way now--the big Pine was no more.




XXXIV


The big Pine was gone. He had seen it first, one morning at
daybreak, when the valley on the other side was a sea of mist that
threw soft, clinging spray to the very mountain tops--for even
above the mists, that morning, its mighty head arose, sole visible
proof that the earth still slept beneath. He had seen it at noon--
but little less majestic, among the oaks that stood about it; had
seen it catching the last light at sunset, clean-cut against the
after-glow, and like a dark, silent, mysterious sentinel guarding
the mountain pass under the moon. He had seen it giving place with
sombre dignity to the passing burst of spring, had seen it green
among dying autumn leaves, green in the gray of winter trees and
still green in a shroud of snow--a changeless promise that the
earth must wake to life again. It had been the beacon that led him
into Lonesome Cove--the beacon that led June into the outer world.
From it her flying feet had carried her into his life--past it,
the same feet had carried her out again. It had been their
trysting place--had kept their secrets like a faithful friend and
had stood to him as the changeless symbol of their love. It had
stood a mute but sympathetic witness of his hopes, his despairs
and the struggles that lay between them. In dark hours it had been
a silent comforter, and in the last year it had almost come to
symbolize his better self as to that self he came slowly back. And
in the darkest hour it was the last friend to whom he had meant to
say good-by. Now it was gone. Always he had lifted his eyes to it
every morning when he rose, but now, next morning, he hung back
consciously as one might shrink from looking at the face of a dead
friend, and when at last he raised his head to look upward to it,
an impenetrable shroud of mist lay between them--and he was glad.

And still he could not leave. The little creek was a lashing
yellow torrent, and his horse, heavily laden as he must be, could
hardly swim with his weight, too, across so swift a stream. But
mountain streams were like June's temper--up quickly and quickly
down--so it was noon before he plunged into the tide with his
saddle-pockets over one shoulder and his heavy transit under one
arm. Even then his snorting horse had to swim a few yards, and he
reached the other bank soaked to his waist line. But the warm sun
came out just as he entered the woods, and as he climbed, the
mists broke about him and scudded upward like white sails before a
driving wind. Once he looked back from a "fire-scald" in the woods
at the lonely cabin in the cove, but it gave him so keen a pain
that he would not look again. The trail was slippery and several
times he had to stop to let his horse rest and to slow the beating
of his own heart. But the sunlight leaped gladly from wet leaf to
wet leaf until the trees looked decked out for unseen fairies, and
the birds sang as though there was nothing on earth but joy for
all its creatures, and the blue sky smiled above as though it had
never bred a lightning flash or a storm. Hale dreaded the last
spur before the little Gap was visible, but he hurried up the
steep, and when he lifted his apprehensive eyes, the gladness of
the earth was as nothing to the sudden joy in his own heart. The
big Pine stood majestic, still unscathed, as full of divinity and
hope to him as a rainbow in an eastern sky. Hale dropped his
reins, lifted one hand to his dizzy head, let his transit to the
ground, and started for it on a run. Across the path lay a great
oak with a white wound running the length of its mighty body, from
crest to shattered trunk, and over it he leaped, and like a child
caught his old friend in both arms. After all, he was not alone.
One friend would be with him till death, on that border-line
between the world in which he was born and the world he had tried
to make his own, and he could face now the old one again with a
stouter heart. There it lay before him with its smoke and fire and
noise and slumbering activities just awakening to life again. He
lifted his clenched fist toward it:

"You got ME once," he muttered, "but this time I'll get YOU." He
turned quickly and decisively--there would be no more delay. And
he went back and climbed over the big oak that, instead of his
friend, had fallen victim to the lightning's kindly whim and led
his horse out into the underbrush. As he approached within ten
yards of the path, a metallic note rang faintly on the still air
the other side of the Pine and down the mountain. Something was
coming up the path, so he swiftly knotted his bridle-reins around
a sapling, stepped noiselessly into the path and noiselessly
slipped past the big tree where he dropped to his knees, crawled
forward and lay flat, peering over the cliff and down the winding
trail. He had not long to wait. A riderless horse filled the
opening in the covert of leaves that swallowed up the path. It was
gray and he knew it as he knew the saddle as his old enemy's--
Dave. Dave had kept his promise--he had come back. The dream was
coming true, and they were to meet at last face to face. One of
them was to strike a trail more lonesome than the Trail of the
Lonesome Pine, and that man would not be John Hale. One detail of
the dream was going to be left out, he thought grimly, and very
quietly he drew his pistol, cocked it, sighted it on the opening--
it was an easy shot--and waited. He would give that enemy no more
chance than he would a mad dog--or would he? The horse stopped to
browse. He waited so long that he began to suspect a trap. He
withdrew his head and looked about him on either side and behind--
listening intently for the cracking of a twig or a footfall. He
was about to push backward to avoid possible attack from the rear,
when a shadow shot from the opening. His face paled and looked
sick of a sudden, his clenched fingers relaxed about the handle of
his pistol and he drew it back, still cocked, turned on his knees,
walked past the Pine, and by the fallen oak stood upright,
waiting. He heard a low whistle calling to the horse below and a
shudder ran through him. He heard the horse coming up the path, he
clenched his pistol convulsively, and his eyes, lit by an
unearthly fire and fixed on the edge of the bowlder around which
they must come, burned an instant later on--June. At the cry she
gave, he flashed a hunted look right and left, stepped swiftly to
one side and stared past her-still at the bowlder. She had dropped
the reins and started toward him, but at the Pine she stopped
short.

"Where is he?"

Her lips opened to answer, but no sound came. Hale pointed at the
horse behind her.

"That's his. He sent me word. He left that horse in the valley, to
ride over here, when he came back, to kill me. Are you with him?"
For a moment she thought from his wild face that he had gone crazy
and she stared silently. Then she seemed to understand, and with a
moan she covered her face with her hands and sank weeping in a
heap at the foot of the Pine.

The forgotten pistol dropped, full cocked to the soft earth, and
Hale with bewildered eyes went slowly to her.

"Don't cry,"--he said gently, starting to call her name. "Don't
cry," he repeated, and he waited helplessly.

"He's dead. Dave was shot--out--West," she sobbed. "I told him I
was coming back. He gave me his horse. Oh, how could you?"

"Why did you come back?" he asked, and she shrank as though he had
struck her--but her sobs stopped and she rose to her feet.

"Wait," she said, and she turned from him to wipe her eyes with
her handerchief. Then she faced him.

"When dad died, I learned everything. You made him swear never to
tell me and he kept his word until he was on his death-bed. YOU
did everything for me. It was YOUR money. YOU gave me back the old
cabin in the Cove. It was always you, you, YOU, and there was
never anybody else but you." She stopped for Hale's face was as
though graven from stone.

"And you came back to tell me that?"

"Yes."

"You could have written that."

"Yes," she faltered, "but I had to tell you face to face."

"Is that all?"

Again the tears were in her eyes.

"No," she said tremulously.

"Then I'll say the rest for you. You wanted to come to tell me of
the shame you felt when you knew," she nodded violently--"but you
could have written that, too, and I could have written that you
mustn't feel that way--that" he spoke slowly--"you mustn't rob me
of the dearest happiness I ever knew in my whole life."

"I knew you would say that," she said like a submissive child. The
sternness left his face and he was smiling now.

"And you wanted to say that the only return you could make was to
come back and be my wife."

"Yes," she faltered again, "I did feel that--I did."

"You could have written that, too, but you thought you had to
PROVE it by coming back yourself."

This time she nodded no assent and her eyes were streaming. He
turned away--stretching out his arms to the woods.

"God! Not that--no--no!"

"Listen, Jack!" As suddenly his arms dropped. She had controlled
her tears but her lips were quivering.

"No, Jack, not that--thank God. I came because I wanted to come,"
she said steadily. "I loved you when I went away. I've loved you
every minute since--"her arms were stealing about his neck, her
face was upturned to his and her eyes, moist with gladness, were
looking into his wondering eyes--"and I love you now--Jack."

"June!" The leaves about them caught his cry and quivered with the
joy of it, and above their heads the old Pine breathed its
blessing with the name--June--June--June.





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