Spring on the mountain. Over the eastern rim of sand hills the sturdy
sun of May flared up. The neutral gray pooled in the valleys woke to a
rustling flame of green; the wind whipped from the crest the last shred
of clinging cloud, and dried the wet kiss of the mist upon cottage and
bungalow, rumpling the summit as far as eye could cover.
The sibilant buzz of motor trucks, returning to the distant dairies
beyond the second mountain, died eastward. Lawn mowers clicked
rhythmically, school tardy bells rang, chatting nursemaids chose the
stone benches under the deepest shade of the parked roadways. Jays
flickered noisily through the ringed oaks still rising from the sparse
areas of fenced outcrop.
A gray limousine disturbed the sunny height with its alien
whirr--turning from Logan Avenue to reach the great flowery green on the
crest left of the gap. Two men climbed out, stretching cramped limbs;
the first with firm carefulness, testing each footing before he rested
upon it, the second with deferential assistance.
The elder man walked over to a curved bench facing the spread of the
city below. From old habit he pulled out a cigar, twisted the silver
wrapper into a ball, and spun it deftly into smooth grass covering a
healed scar caused by the old mining. His teeth crunched into the
well-packed leaves; his tongue rolled the unlit Havana around the rim of
his mouth.
The other stopped a step or two behind. "It's rough on you, Paul....
You're all alone in the new Hillcrest Cottage now, aren't you?"
"Yes, Governor...."
He pondered soberly, and spoke again with a deprecating cough. "Your
wife was an exceptional woman."
"Death makes no exceptions," the other mused aloud; there was small
feeling within him that this was anything else than a philosophic excuse
for weakness in others. After a few minutes silence, he took up the
thread again. "You know, Kane, Mary hadn't been strong for some years.
Life on the mountain was hard on a woman. She took the strike very much
to heart; her house was burnt then.... That was why I declined the
Senatorship ... then." His squinting gaze took in the panorama before
and to the rear. "It's changed.... Not a mine within ten miles now;
nothing nearer than those wonderful new openings this side of
Coalstock.... Houses, houses, houses...." His eyes looked from the ample
homes along the crest estate, to the cheap frame houses crowding the
foot of the hill, on the side toward Adamsville; and then to the negro
settlement of Lilydale behind, which a pushing real estate firm had
continued to the very border of the Hillcrest lands.
"It's a pity the land fringing yours hadn't your development. When the
riff-raff once move into a neighborhood----"
"I know, I know. The mountain's held out, so far."
Paul achieved a moment's isolation by walking to the edge of the summit.
The children would return soon to their scattered homes; he was the last
Judson living in Adamsville.... He--and the mountain. He had risen to
the crest of his ambition--he asked no more.
The mountain soil was still iron-stained; but much of its strength had
passed to him--had given him this iron grip upon things and people.
Power, iron power ... wherever men were, the iron sinews of the mountain
had carried the name of Paul Judson.
"Have we time for that trip to North Adamsville?" Kane at last
interrupted.
"Get in. Something's wrong out there; dissatisfaction, that should have
been squelched. I'm going to make a change."
Following the northward trail of robin and flicker, the gray limousine
whirred away from the smoothed crags and their reddened memories.
The children dawdled back from school. The homing older people returned
from office and club, from mill and furnace and store. The artificial
lights by night made golden wounds on the darkness. One by one these
blended with the black, except for the street-globes reared below the
damp green of the leaves.
The sprinkled glitter of city lights below cast a quiet shimmer over the
drowsy hillside. Far away, in a giant semicircle, an intermittent surf
of furnace glare and coke-oven glow mottled with dusky crimson the low
haze of the sky.
Following the sun trail, the silver glitter of the Lyre climbed from the
east, the northern cross spread its ungainly form, the soft brightness
of Vega poised like a fleck of white light above the somber fringe of
Shadow Mountain. The soft glamor of the May night reaffirmed its
immemorial sway over the sleeping hulk of the mountain.
Two screech-owls sent their shivery call through the dark. Shreds of
cloud drifted lower and lower, until they rested lightly on the foliage
above the healed scars of ramp and gulley. The stars sagged westward;
after them the clouds, and all the trespassers by night, were quietly
driven by a faint breeze rustling its promise of dawn.