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.”