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 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.”