Twice her lips opened soundlessly and, dazed, she could only point
dumbly. The old step-mother laughed:
“Jack Hale done that. He pestered yo' pap to let him do it fer ye, an'
anything Jack Hale wants from yo' pap, he gits. I thought hit was plum'
foolishness, but he's got things to eat planted thar, too, an' I declar
hit's right purty.”
That wonderful garden! June started for it on a run. There was a
broad grass-walk down through the middle of it and there were narrow
grass-walks running sidewise, just as they did in the gardens which Hale
told her he had seen in the outer world. The flowers were planted in
raised beds, and all the ones that she had learned to know and love at
the Gap were there, and many more besides. The hollyhocks, bachelor's
buttons and marigolds she had known all her life. The lilacs,
touch-me-nots, tulips and narcissus she had learned to know in gardens
at the Gap. Two rose-bushes were in bloom, and there were strange
grasses and plants and flowers that Jack would tell her about when
he came. One side was sentinelled by sun-flowers and another side
by transplanted laurel and rhododendron shrubs, and hidden in the
plant-and-flower-bordered squares were the vegetables that won her
step-mother's tolerance of Hale's plan. Through and through June walked,
her dark eyes flashing joyously here and there when they were not a
little dimmed with tears, with Loretta following her, unsympathetic in
appreciation, wondering that June should be making such a fuss about a
lot of flowers, but envious withal when she half guessed the reason, and
impatient Bub eager to show her other births and changes. And, over and
over all the while, June was whispering to herself:
“My garden--MY garden!”
When she came back to the porch, after a tour through all that was new
or had changed, Dave had brought his horse and Loretta's to the gate.
No, he wouldn't come in and “rest a spell”--“they must be gittin' along
home,” he said shortly. But old Judd Tolliver insisted that he should
stay to dinner, and Dave tied the horses to the fence and walked to the
porch, not lifting his eyes to June. Straightway the girl went into the
house co help her step-mother with dinner, but the old woman told her
she “reckoned she needn't start in yit”--adding in the querulous tone
June knew so well:
“I've been mighty po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do now.”
So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl hesitated. The old
woman looked at her closely.
“Ye ain't a bit changed,” she said.
They were the words Loretta had used, and in the voice of each was the
same strange tone of disappointment. June wondered: were they sorry
she had not come back putting on airs and fussed up with ribbons and
feathers that they might hear her picked to pieces and perhaps do some
of the picking themselves? Not Loretta, surely--but the old step-mother!
June left the kitchen and sat down just inside the door. The Red Fox and
two other men had sauntered up from the store and all were listening to
his quavering chat:
“I seed a vision last night, and thar's trouble a-comin' in these
mountains. The Lord told me so straight from the clouds. These railroads
and coal-mines is a-goin' to raise taxes, so that a pore man'll have to
sell his hogs and his corn to pay 'em an' have nothin' left to keep
him from starvin' to death. Them police-fellers over thar at the Gap is
a-stirrin' up strife and a-runnin' things over thar as though the earth
was made fer 'em, an' the citizens ain't goin' to stand it. An' this
war's a-comin' on an' thar'll be shootin' an' killin' over thar an' over
hyeh. I seed all this devilment in a vision last night, as shore as I'm
settin' hyeh.”
Old Judd grunted, shifted his huge shoulders, parted his mustache and
beard with two fingers and spat through them.
“Well, I reckon you didn't see no devilment. Red, that you won't take a
hand in, if it comes.”
The other men laughed, but the Red Fox looked meek and lowly.
“I'm a servant of the Lord. He says do this, an' I does it the best
I know how. I goes about a-preachin' the word in the wilderness an'
a-healin' the sick with soothin' yarbs and sech.”
“An' a-makin' compacts with the devil,” said old Judd shortly, “when
the eye of man is a-lookin' t'other way.” The left side of the Red Fox's
face twitched into the faintest shadow of a snarl, but, shaking his
head, he kept still.
“Well,” said Sam Barth, who was thin and long and sandy, “I don't keer
what them fellers do on t'other side o' the mountain, but what air they
a-comin' over here fer?”
Old Judd spoke again.
“To give you a job, if you wasn't too durned lazy to work.”
“Yes,” said the other man, who was dark, swarthy and whose black
eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose--“and that damned Hale, who's
a-tearin' up Hellfire here in the cove.” The old man lifted his eyes.
Young Dave's face wore a sudden malignant sympathy which made June
clench her hands a little more tightly.
“What about him? You must have been over to the Gap lately--like Dave
thar--did you git board in the calaboose?” It was a random thrust, but
it was accurate and it went home, and there was silence for a while.
Presently old Judd went on:
“Taxes hain't goin' to be raised, and if they are, folks will be better
able to pay 'em. Them police-fellers at the Gap don't bother nobody if
he behaves himself. This war will start when it does start, an' as for
Hale, he's as square an' clever a feller as I've ever seed. His word is
just as good as his bond. I'm a-goin' to sell him this land. It'll be
his'n, an' he can do what he wants to with it. I'm his friend, and I'm
goin' to stay his friend as long as he goes on as he's goin' now,
an' I'm not goin' to see him bothered as long as he tends to his own
business.”
The words fell slowly and the weight of them rested heavily on all
except on June. Her fingers loosened and she smiled.
The Red Fox rose, shaking his head.
“All right, Judd Tolliver,” he said warningly.
“Come in and git something to eat, Red.”
“No,” he said, “I'll be gittin' along”--and he went, still shaking his
head.
The table was covered with an oil-cloth spotted with drippings from a
candle. The plates and cups were thick and the spoons were of pewter.
The bread was soggy and the bacon was thick and floating in grease. The
men ate and the women served, as in ancient days. They gobbled their
food like wolves, and when they drank their coffee, the noise they made
was painful to June's ears. There were no napkins and when her father
pushed his chair back, he wiped his dripping mouth with the back of
his sleeve. And Loretta and the step-mother--they, too, ate with their
knives and used their fingers. Poor June quivered with a vague newborn
disgust. Ah, had she not changed--in ways they could not see!
June helped clear away the dishes--the old woman did not object to
that--listening to the gossip of the mountains--courtships, marriages,
births, deaths, the growing hostility in the feud, the random killing of
this man or that--Hale's doings in Lonesome Cove.
“He's comin' over hyeh agin next Saturday,” said the old woman.
“Is he?” said Loretta in a way that made June turn sharply from her
dishes toward her. She knew Hale was not coming, but she said nothing.
The old woman was lighting her pipe.
“Yes--you better be over hyeh in yo' best bib and tucker.”
“Pshaw,” said Loretta, but June saw two bright spots come into her
pretty cheeks, and she herself burned inwardly. The old woman was
looking at her.
“'Pears like you air mighty quiet, June.”
“That's so,” said Loretta, looking at her, too.
June, still silent, turned back to her dishes. They were beginning to
take notice after all, for the girl hardly knew that she had not opened
her lips.
Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she must
go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved garden, and
hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in the eyes. She
saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat, and a faint sneer
appeared at his set mouth--a sneer for June's folly and what he thought
was uppishness in “furriners” like Hale.
“So you ain't good enough fer him jest as ye air--air ye?” he said
slowly. “He's got to make ye all over agin--so's you'll be fitten fer
him.”
He turned away without looking to see how deep his barbed shaft went
and, startled, June flushed to her hair. In a few minutes they were
gone--Dave without the exchange of another word with June, and Loretta
with a parting cry that she would come back on Saturday. The old man
went to the cornfield high above the cabin, the old woman, groaning
with pains real and fancied, lay down on a creaking bed, and June,
with Dave's wound rankling, went out with Bub to see the new doings in
Lonesome Cove. The geese cackled before her, the hog-fish darted like
submarine arrows from rock to rock and the willows bent in the same
wistful way toward their shadows in the little stream, but its crystal
depths were there no longer--floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the
surface and the water was black as soot. Here and there the white
belly of a fish lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work
of civilization had already begun. Farther up the creek was a buzzing
monster that, creaking and snorting, sent a flashing disk, rimmed with
sharp teeth, biting a savage way through a log, that screamed with pain
as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up its life each
time with a ghost-like cry of agony. Farther on little houses were being
built of fresh boards, and farther on the water of the creek got blacker
still. June suddenly clutched Bud's arms. Two demons had appeared on
a pile of fresh dirt above them--sooty, begrimed, with black faces and
black hands, and in the cap of each was a smoking little lamp.
“Huh,” said Bub, “that ain't nothin'! Hello, Bill,” he called bravely.
“Hello, Bub,” answered one of the two demons, and both stared at the
lovely little apparition who was staring with such naive horror at them.
It was all very wonderful, though, and it was all happening in Lonesome
Cove, but Jack Hale was doing it all and, therefore, it was all right,
thought June--no matter what Dave said. Moreover, the ugly spot on the
great, beautiful breast of the Mother was such a little one after all
and June had no idea how it must spread. Above the opening for the
mines, the creek was crystal-clear as ever, the great hills were the
same, and the sky and the clouds, and the cabin and the fields of corn.
Nothing could happen to them, but if even they were wiped out by Hale's
hand she would have made no complaint. A wood-thrush flitted from a
ravine as she and Bub went back down the creek--and she stopped with
uplifted face to listen. All her life she had loved its song, and this
was the first time she had heard it in Lonesome Cove since she had
learned its name from Hale. She had never heard it thereafter without
thinking of him, and she thought of him now while it was breathing out
the very spirit of the hills, and she drew a long sigh for already she
was lonely and hungering for him. The song ceased and a long wavering
cry came from the cabin.
“So-o-o-cow! S-o-o-kee! S-o-o-kee!”
The old mother was calling the cows. It was near milking-time, and with
a vague uneasiness she hurried Bub home. She saw her father coming down
from the cornfield. She saw the two cows come from the woods into the
path that led to the barn, switching their tails and snatching mouthfuls
from the bushes as they swung down the hill and, when she reached the
gate, her step-mother was standing on the porch with one hand on her hip
and the other shading her eyes from the slanting sun--waiting for her.
Already kindness and consideration were gone.
“Whar you been, June? Hurry up, now. You've had a long restin'-spell
while I've been a-workin' myself to death.”
It was the old tone, and the old fierce rebellion rose within June, but
Hale had told her to be patient. She could not check the flash from her
eyes, but she shut her lips tight on the answer that sprang to them, and
without a word she went to the kitchen for the milking-pails. The cows
had forgotten her. They eyed her with suspicion and were restive. The
first one kicked at her when she put her beautiful head against its soft
flank. Her muscles had been in disuse and her hands were cramped and
her forearms ached before she was through--but she kept doggedly at her
task. When she finished, her father had fed the horses and was standing
behind her.
“Hit's mighty good to have you back agin, little gal.”
It was not often that he smiled or showed tenderness, much less spoke it
thus openly, and June was doubly glad that she had held her tongue. Then
she helped her step-mother get supper. The fire scorched her face, that
had grown unaccustomed to such heat, and she burned one hand, but
she did not let her step-mother see even that. Again she noticed
with aversion the heavy thick dishes and the pewter spoons and the
candle-grease on the oil-cloth, and she put the dishes down and, while
the old woman was out of the room, attacked the spots viciously. Again
she saw her father and Bub ravenously gobbling their coarse food while
she and her step-mother served and waited, and she began to wonder. The
women sat at the table with the men over in the Gap--why not here? Then
her father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the kitten
at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with never a word.
Something began to stifle her, but she choked it down. There were the
dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the pans and kettles to be
cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were tired to the shoulders and her
burned hand quivered with pain when all was done. The old woman had left
her to do the last few little things alone and had gone to her pipe.
Both she and her father were sitting in silence on the porch when June
went out there. Neither spoke to each other, nor to her, and both seemed
to be part of the awful stillness that engulfed the world. Bub fell
asleep in the soft air, and June sat and sat and sat. That was all
except for the stars that came out over the mountains and were slowly
being sprayed over the sky, and the pipings of frogs from the little
creek. Once the wind came with a sudden sweep up the river and she
thought she could hear the creak of Uncle Billy's water-wheel. It
smote her with sudden gladness, not so much because it was a relief
and because she loved the old miller, but--such is the power of
association--because she now loved the mill more, loved it because the
mill over in the Gap had made her think more of the mill at the mouth
of Lonesome Cove. A tapping vibrated through the railing of the porch on
which her cheek lay. Her father was knocking the ashes from his pipe. A
similar tapping sounded inside at the fireplace. The old woman had gone
and Bub was in bed, and she had heard neither move. The old man rose
with a yawn.
“Time to lay down, June.”
The girl rose. They all slept in one room. She did not dare to put on
her night-gown--her mother would see it in the morning. So she slipped
off her dress, as she had done all her life, and crawled into bed with
Bub, who lay in the middle of it and who grunted peevishly when
she pushed him with some difficulty over to his side. There were no
sheets--not even one--and the coarse blankets, which had a close acrid
odour that she had never noticed before, seemed almost to scratch her
flesh. She had hardly been to bed that early since she had left home,
and she lay sleepless, watching the firelight play hide and seek with
the shadows among the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings
of dried things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her
father and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a
nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night--tired and aching
as she was. So, quietly, by and by, she slipped out of bed and out the
door to the porch. The moon was rising and the radiant sheen of it had
dropped down over the mountain side like a golden veil and was lighting
up the white rising mists that trailed the curves of the river. It sank
below the still crests of the pines beyond the garden and dropped on
until it illumined, one by one, the dewy heads of the flowers. She rose
and walked down the grassy path in her bare feet through the silent
fragrant emblems of the planter's thought of her--touching this flower
and that with the tips of her fingers. And when she went back, she bent
to kiss one lovely rose and, as she lifted her head with a start
of fear, the dew from it shining on her lips made her red mouth as
flower-like and no less beautiful. A yell had shattered the quiet of the
world--not the high fox-hunting yell of the mountains, but something new
and strange. Up the creek were strange lights. A loud laugh shattered
the succeeding stillness--a laugh she had never heard before in Lonesome
Cove. Swiftly she ran back to the porch. Surely strange things were
happening there. A strange spirit pervaded the Cove and the very air
throbbed with premonitions. What was the matter with everything--what
was the matter with her? She knew that she was lonely and that she
wanted Hale--but what else was it? She shivered--and not alone from the
chill night-air--and puzzled and wondering and stricken at heart, she
crept back to bed.