They were, indeed, the great imprints of Joe Lorey's hob-nailed boots,
quite as she suspected. Long before the sun had risen the young
mountaineer, distressed by worries which had made his night an almost
sleepless one, had risen and wandered from his little cabin, lonelier in
its far solitude, even than the girl's. For a time he had crouched upon
a stump beneath the morning stars with lowering brows, sunk deep in
harsh, resentful thought, forgetful of the falling dew, the chill of the
keen mountain air, of everything, in fact, save the gnawing apprehension
that the "foreigner," who had invaded this far mountain solitude might,
with his better manners, infinitely better education and divers other
devilish wiles of the low country, snatch from him the prize which he
had grown up longing to possess.
The youthful mountaineer's distress was not without its pathos. He loved
the girl, had loved her since they had been toddling children playing in
the hills together. Never for an instant had his firm devotion to her
wandered to any other of the mountain girls; never for an instant had
he had any hope but that of, some day, winning her. That he recognized
the real superiority of Layson made his worry the more tragic, for it
made it the more hopeless.
A dull resentment thrilled him, not only against this man, but against
the whole tribe of his people, who were, in these uncomfortable days,
invading the rough country which, to that time, had been the undisputed
domain of the mountaineer. He thought with bitterness about the growing
valley towns, which he had sometimes visited on court days when some
mountain man had been haled there to trial for moonshining or for a feud
"killing." He did not understand those lowland people who assumed the
right to dictate to him and his kind as to the lives which they should
lead in their own country, and he hated them instinctively. Vaguely he
felt the greater power which education and a rubbing of their elbows
with the progress of the world had given them and definitely resented
it. Scotch highlander never felt a greater hatred and distrust of
lowland men than does the highlander of the old Cumberlands feel for the
people who have claimed the rich and fertile bottom lands, filled the
towns which have sprung up there, established the prosperity which has,
through them, advanced the state. The mountain men of Tennessee and of
Kentucky are almost as primitive, to-day, as were their forefathers,
who, early in the great transcontinental migration, dropped from its
path and spread among the hills a century ago, rather than continue with
the weary march to more fertile, fabled lands beyond.
It had not been, as Madge had feared, his definite hatred of Frank
Layson which had started him upon the road so early in the morning, but,
rather, an unrest born of the whole problem of the "foreigners'"
invasion of the mountains. His restless discontent with Layson's
presence had left him ready for excitement over wild tales told in store
and cabin of what the young man's fellows were doing in the valley. He
had determined to go thither for himself, to see with his own eyes the
wonder-workers, although he hated both the wonders and the men who were
accomplishing them.
What did the mountain-country want of railroads? What did it want of
towns? The railroads would but bring more interlopers and in the towns
they would foregather, arrogant in their firm determination to force
upon the men who had first claimed the country their artificial rules
and regulations. Timid in their fear of those they sought to furtively
dislodge and of the rough love these men showed of a liberty including
license, they would huddle in their storied buildings, crowd in their
trammelled streets, work and worry in their little offices absurdly,
harmfully to the rights of proper men. Like other mountaineers Joe had
small realization of the advantages of easy interchange of thought and
the quick commerce which come with aggregation. He thought the
concentration of the townsfolk was a sign of an unmanly dread of those
first settlers whom they wished to drive away unjustly, subjugate and
ruin.
Throughout the mountains blazed a fierce resentment of the railroad
builders' presence and their work; in no heart did it burn more fiercely
than in poor Joe Lorey's, for the fear obsessed him that a member of the
army of invaders had succeeded in depriving him of the last chance of
getting that which, among all things on earth, he longed for most--Madge
Brierly's love. He did not stop to think that before the "foreigner" had
come the girl had more than once refused to marry him, begging him to
remain her good, kind friend. Such episodes, in those days, had not in
the least disheartened him. He had always thought that in the end the
girl _would_ "have him." But now he was convinced his chance was gone,
his last hope vanished. The "foreigner" had fascinated Madge, made him
look cheap and coarse, uncouth and undesirable.
As he had walked along the roads which, later in the morning, Madge had
followed, he had frowned blackly at the sunrise and the waking birds,
kicked viciously at little sticks and stones which chanced along his
way. Never a smile had he for chattering squirrel or scampering
chipmunk; fierce, repellant was the brown brow of the mountaineer,
despite the glory of the morning, and black the heart within him with
sheer hatred of Frank Layson and the class he represented.
His journey was much longer than the girl's, for it did not end till he
had reached the rude construction camp of the advancing railroad
builders in the valley far below the little mountain-store. There he
gazed at what was going on with a child's wonder, which, at first,
almost made him lose his memory of what he thought his wrongs, but,
later, aggravated it by emphasizing in his mind his own great ignorance.
Through a tiny temporary town of corrugated iron shanties, crude
log-and-brush and rough-plank sheds, white canvas tents, ran the raw,
heaped earth of the embankment. About it swarmed a thousand swarthy
laborers, chattering in a tongue less easy to his ears than the harsh
scoldings of the squirrels he had seen while on his way. Back behind
them stretched two lines of shining rails, which, even as he watched,
advanced, advanced on the embankment, being firmly spiked upon their
cross-ties so as to form a highway for the cars which brought more dirt,
more dirt, more dirt to send the raw embankment on ahead of them.
At first the puffing, steam-spitting, fire-spouting locomotive with its
deafening exhaust and strident whistle, clanging bell and glowing
fire-box actually frightened him. As he stood close by the track and it
came on threateningly, he backed away, his rifle held in his crooked
arm, ready for some great emergency, he knew not what. A laborer laughed
at him, and his hands instinctively took firmer grip upon the rifle. The
laborer stopped laughing.
Some lessons of the temper of the mountaineers already had been learned
along the line of that new railroad, and, driven from his wrath by the
appearance of new marvels, Joe, at greater distance, sat upon a stump
and watched, wide-eyed, and undisturbed, unridiculed.
For a long time his resentment wholly drowned itself in wonder at the
puzzle of the engines, the mechanism of the dump-cars, the wondrous
working of the small steam crane which lifted rails from flat-cars, and,
as a strong man guided them, dropped them with precision at the time and
place decided on beforehand. He noted how the men worked in great gangs,
subject to the orders of one "boss," a phenomenon of organization he had
never seen before, with unwilling admiration.
But presently, from a point well in advance of that where rails already
had been laid and upon which his attention had been concentrated because
of the machinery there, there came a mighty boom of dynamite. It
startled him so greatly that he sprang up, bewildered, ready for
whatever might be coming, but wholly at a loss as to just what the
threatening danger might be. His fright gave rise to jeering laughter
from the men who had been watching with a covert eye the rough,
determined looking mountaineer, squatting on the stump with rifle on
his arm. He turned on them so fiercely that they shrank back, terrified
by the look they saw in his grey eyes.
Then, noting that the noise had not appalled them in the least and
assuming that what was surely safe for them was safe enough for him, he
sauntered down the line, attempting to seem careless in his walk, until
he reached the gang which was busy at destruction of a high, obstructive
cropping of grey granite.
For hours he sat there watching them with curiosity. He saw them pierce
the rocks with hammered drills; he saw them then put in a small, round,
harmless looking paper cylinder which, of course, he knew held something
like gunpowder; he saw them tamp it down with infinite care, leaving
only a protruding fuse; he saw them light the fuse and scamper off to a
safe distance while he watched the sputtering sparks run down the fuse,
pause at the tamping, then, having pierced it, disappear. The great
explosions which succeeded were, at first, a little hard upon his
nerves, but he saw that those who compassed them did not flinch when
they came, and, after he had dodged ridiculously at the first, received
the second with a greater calm, keyed himself to almost motionless
reception of the third, and managed to sit listening to the fourth with
self-possession quite as great as theirs, his face impassive and his
frame immovable.
He noted with amazement the great force of the infernal power the
burning fuses loosed, and knew, instinctively, that the explosive was a
stronger one than that with which he had been thoroughly familiar since
his earliest childhood--gunpowder. He wondered mightily what it could
be, and, finally, summoned courage to inquire of one of the swart
laborers.
These were the first words he had spoken that day, and, although the man
was courteous enough in answering, "Dynamite," he thought he saw a smile
upon his face of veiled derision, and resented it so fiercely that
instead of thanking him he gave him a black look and sauntered off. But
he had learned what the explosive was; before he went away he had seen
it used in half-a-dozen ways and had a visual demonstration of the
necessity for caution in its handling. One of the young and cocky
engineers, whom he so hated, dropped by dread mischance a heavy hammer
on a stick of it, and the resulting turmoil left him lying torn and
mangled on the rocks.
Lorey felt small sympathy for the man's suffering, although he never had
seen any human being mutilated thus before. Many a man he had seen lying
with a clean hole through his forehead, the neat work of a definitely
aimed bullet; assassination and the spectacles it carried with it could
not worry him: his childhood and young manhood had been passed where
"killings" were too frequent; the man, like all the others there at
work, was his enemy, and he sorrowed for him not at all; but this
tearing, mangling laceration of human flesh and bone was horrifying to
him.
Later, though, a certain comfort came to him from it. The whole scene
had impressed him and depressed him. He remembered what Madge Brierly
had said about the engineers with their blue paper plans and their
ability to read from them and work by them. He saw them at their work,
and the spectacle made him feel inferior, which had never happened in
his free, untrammeled life of mountain independence before. There were a
dozen men about the work of the same type as Layson's, and their calm
cocksureness as they directed all these mysteries amazed him,
overwhelmed him, made him feel a sense of littleness and unimportance
which was maddening. Why should they know all these things when he, Joe
Lorey, who had lived a decent life according to his lights, had labored
with his muscles as theirs could not labor if they tried to force them
to, had lived upon rough fare and in rough places while they had had
such "fancinesses" as he saw spread before them at their mess-tent
dinner (and crude fare enough it seemed to them, no doubt) knew none of
them? He could see no justice in such matters and resented them with
bitter heart. If their own infernal powder had killed one of them he
would not mourn. He tried to look back at the accident with
satisfaction.
Had he gone down to that crude construction camp without the jealousy
of Layson in his heart, he might, possibly, have merely gazed in wonder
at the cleverness of all this work, despite his mountaineer's resentment
of the coming of the interlopers; but, with that resentment in his heart
to nag and worry him, he achieved, before the day was over, a real
hatred of the class and of each individual in it. Layson had come up
there to his country to rob him of the girl he loved; now these men were
coming with their railroad to change the aspect of the land he had been
born to and grown up in, making it a strange place, unfamiliar,
unwelcoming and crowded. He hated every one of them, he hated the new
railroad they were building, he hated their new-fangled and mysterious
machinery which puzzled him with intricate devices and appalled him with
its power of fire and steam.
By the time the afternoon was two hours old he was in a state of sullen
fury, silent, morose, miserable on the stump which he had chosen as his
vantage point for observation. More than once an engineer looked at him
with plain admiration of his mammoth stature in his eyes; many a
town-girl, seeing him, like a statue of The Pioneer upon a fitting
pedestal, made furtive eyes at him, for he was handsome and attractive
in his rough ensemble; but he paid no heed to any of them. He was giving
his mind over to consideration of his grievance against these men who
came, with steam and pick and shovel, dynamite and railroad iron,
invading his domain.
He thought about his secret still, hidden in its mountain fastness, and
realized that this new stage of settlement's inexorable march meant
danger to it; he thought about the game which roamed the hills and
realized that with the coming of the crowd it would soon scatter, never
to return; he thought about the girl up there, his companion in
adversity, his fellow sufferer from mutual wrong, the one thing which he
had had to love, the shining prize which it had been his sole ambition
to possess for life; he thought of her and then about the man, who
(product of the same advantages which made these men before him clever
with their blue-prints and their puffling monsters) had come there
searching profit from the land which he had never loved or lived on,
and, seeing Madge, had, Joe thoroughly believed, exerted every wile of a
superior experience to win her from him by fair means or foul. He
thought of them and hated all of them!
He was a most unhappy mountaineer who sat there on the stump, impassive
and morose as the sun progressed upon its journey toward the western
horizon. All the organized activity in the scene about him filled him
with resentment and despair. In the hills he ever felt his strength:
they had presented in his whole lifetime few problems which he could not
cope with, conquer; but here in that construction camp he felt weak,
incompetent, saw full many a puzzling matter which he could not
understand. He watched the scene with bitter but with almost hopeless
eyes. These new forces working here at railroad building, working in the
hills to rob him of the girl he loved, seemed pitilessly strong and
terribly mysterious. He never had felt helpless in all his life, before.
It made him grind his teeth with rage.
But, though it angered him, the tense activity of the construction camp
was fascinating, too. Especially was his attention held spellbound by
the ruthless work of the advancing blasting gangs. What power lay hidden
in those tiny sticks of dynamite! How lightly one of them had tossed
that poor unfortunate in air and left him lying mangled, broken,
helpless on the ground when it had spent its fury! _What a weapon one of
them would make, upon occasion_!
This thought grew rapidly in his depressed and agitated mind. What a
weapon, what a weapon! Presently the blasting gangs and what they did
absorbed his whole attention. He no longer paid the slightest heed to
the puffing locomotives, busy with their dump-cars, to the mysterious
steam-shovel, to the hand cars with their pumping, flying passengers.
The dynamite was greater than the greatest of them. One stick of it, if
properly applied, would blow a locomotive into junk, would tear a
dump-car, with its massive iron-work and grinding wheels, apart and
leave mere splinters!
His thoughts roamed back to his home mountains and pondered on the
probable effect of this incursion on his personal affairs. Not satisfied
with tearing up the placid valley, these foreigners would, presently,
invade the very mountains in their turn. He saw the doom of that small,
hidden still which had been his father's secret, years ago, was now his
secret from the prying eyes of law and progress. That the "revenuers,"
soon or late, would get it, now that their allies were building steel
highways to swarm on, was inevitable. His heart beat fast with a new
anger, anticipatory of their coming to his fastness.
Lying not six feet from him as he sat there thinking bitterly of all
these things, the foreman of the blasting gang had gingerly deposited a
dozen sticks of dynamite upon a soft cushion of grey blankets. Joe
looked at them as they lay there, innocent and unimpressive. If he had
some of them in the hills and the revenuers came to raid his still--
The thought sprang into being in his mind with lightning quickness and
grew there with mushroom growth. Never in his life had Lorey stolen
anything, although the government would have classed him as a criminal
because he owned that hidden still. His standards, in some things, were
different from yours and mine, but he had never stolen anything and
scorned as low beyond the power of words to tell a man who would. But
now temptation came to him. He wanted some of that explosive. Should he
buy it, its purchase by a mountaineer would certainly attract attention
and might thus precipitate the very thing he wished to ward away--a
watch of him, and, through that espionage, discovery of his secret place
among the hills. And were not the railroad and the men who owned it
robbing him by their progression into his own country? They were robbing
him of peace and quiet, of the possibility of living on the life he had
been born to and had learned to love! One of the class which fostered
him was robbing him, he feared with a great fear, of the sweet girl whom
he loved better than he loved his life. Surely it would be no sin, no
act of real dishonesty for him to slip down from his stump when none was
looking and secure a stick or two of the explosive!
Speciously he argued this out in his mind and reached the wrong
conclusion which he wished to reach.
If he could but get one of those sticks of dynamite! When progress came,
as, now, he felt convinced it would, to drive him from his mountains and
the still which made life possible to him, he could meet it, at the
start, with one of its own weapons. That, even though he had a hundred
such, he could fight the fight successfully, could, in the end, find
triumph, he did not for an instant think. The might of the encroaching
army had impressed him, and he knew that, soon or late, he would be
forced to yield to it; but he coveted those sticks of dynamite. One of
them would give him some slight power, at least. He acknowledged to
himself that he would steal one if he got the chance, despite his innate
hatred of all pilferers. Such theft would merely be the taking of an
unimportant tribute from the power which would, eventually, claim much,
indeed, from him.
From the distance came the screaming whistle of a locomotive pulling in
along the newly built roadway to eastward. It was followed by a flurry
of excitement among all the men at work around about him.
"There comes the mail," he heard one handsome young chap shout.
He wore a suit like that which Joe had learned to hate because Frank
Layson wore it.
This youth started running down the track, bright-eyed, expectant, and a
dozen others ran to follow him, leaving blue-prints, their surveyors'
instruments and other tokens of their mysterious might of education,
lying unheeded on the ground behind them. There was much excitement.
Even the rough laborers stopped delving at their tasks for a few
minutes, to straighten from their work and stand, with curious eyes
agaze down-track.
In the distance Joe saw smoke arise above the tops of the invaded
forest-trees. Then he heard the growing clangor of a locomotive's bell,
then other whistling and the approaching rumble of steel wheels upon
steel rails, the groan of brake shoes gripping, the rattle of contracted
couplings, the impact of car-bumpers.
The excitement grew among the working gangs. Even the laborers left
their tasks and started down the rough surface of the new embankment
toward the place, a quarter-of-a-mile away, where the train would stop
at the end of the crude ballasting.
Lorey sat there on his stump, apparently impassive, watching all this
flurry with resentful, discontented eyes. He himself was infinitely
curious about the coming train; but he could not bring himself to go to
see it. He had never seen a railway train, but it somehow seemed to him
that if he hurried with the rest to meet this one it would mean a
certain sacrifice of dignity in the face of the invading conqueror. He
sat there, grimly wondering what it might be like, what the people whom
it brought were like, until, suddenly, he discovered that he was alone.
The last workman yielding to temptation, free from supervision for the
moment, had run down the bank to meet the train, get mail, see who had
come. Lying not a dozen feet away from Joe on their grey blanket were
the sticks of dynamite.
Lithe, quick and silent as one of the mountain wild-cats he had so often
trailed through his domain, he slipped down from his stump, caught up a
stick of the explosive, tucked it carefully into his game-bag, took his
place again upon the stump, impassive, calm, apparently quite unexcited.
When the men came trooping back, opening letters, tearing wrappers from
their newspapers, gossipping, he still sat on the stump as they had left
him. Not one of them suspected that he once had left it.
"Bright and lively as a cigar-store Indian," he heard one care-free
youth exclaim as he went by him.
He did not know what the man meant; he had never seen a cigar-store
Indian; but he knew a jibe was meant. It did not anger him, as it would
have done, a few moments earlier. Now he had exacted his small tribute.
They could stare at him and jibe, if they were so inclined. Hidden
carefully there in his game-bag was one of their own weapons for their
fight against the wilderness, which, in course of time, might be a
weapon of the wilderness in fighting against some of them.
Presently he climbed down from the stump and strolled back along the raw
embankment toward the little group still standing near the train which
had arrived.