Pausing at the Pine to let his big black horse blow a while, Hale
mounted and rode slowly down the green-and-gold gloom of the ravine. In
his pocket was a quaint little letter from June to “John Hail”; thanking
him for the beautiful garden, saying she was lonely, and wanting him to
come soon. From the low flank of the mountain he stopped, looking down
on the cabin in Lonesome Cove. It was a dreaming summer day. Trees, air,
blue sky and white cloud were all in a dream, and even the smoke lazing
from the chimney seemed drifting away like the spirit of something human
that cared little whither it might be borne. Something crimson emerged
from the door and stopped in indecision on the steps of the porch. It
moved again, stopped at the corner of the house, and then, moving on
with a purpose, stopped once more and began to flicker slowly to and
fro like a flame. June was working in her garden. Hale thought he would
halloo to her, and then he decided to surprise her, and he went on down,
hitched his horse and stole up to the garden fence. On the way he
pulled up a bunch of weeds by the roots and with them in his arms he
noiselessly climbed the fence. June neither heard nor saw him. Her
underlip was clenched tight between her teeth, the little cross swung
violently at her throat and she was so savagely wielding the light hoe
he had given her that he thought at first she must be killing a snake;
but she was only fighting to death every weed that dared to show its
head. Her feet and her head were bare, her face was moist and flushed
and her hair was a tumbled heap of what was to him the rarest gold under
the sun. The wind was still, the leaves were heavy with the richness of
full growth, bees were busy about June's head and not another soul was
in sight.
“Good morning, little girl!” he called cheerily.
The hoe was arrested at the height of a vicious stroke and the little
girl whirled without a cry, but the blood from her pumping heart
crimsoned her face and made her eyes shine with gladness. Her eyes went
to her feet and her hands to her hair.
“You oughtn't to slip up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way,” she said with
grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. “Now you just set there and wait
till I come back.”
“No--no--I want you to stay just as you are.”
“Honest?”
Hale gravely crossed heart and body and June gave out a happy little
laugh--for he had caught that gesture--a favourite one--from her. Then
suddenly:
“How long?” She was thinking of what Dave said, but the subtle twist in
her meaning passed Hale by. He raised his eyes to the sun and June shook
her head.
“You got to go home 'fore sundown.”
She dropped her hoe and came over toward him.
“Whut you doin' with them--those weeds?”
“Going to plant 'em in our garden.” Hale had got a theory from a
garden-book that the humble burdock, pig-weed and other lowly plants
were good for ornamental effect, and he wanted to experiment, but June
gave a shrill whoop and fell to scornful laughter. Then she snatched the
weeds from him and threw them over the fence.
“Why, June!”
“Not in MY garden. Them's stagger-weeds--they kill cows,” and she went
off again.
“I reckon you better c-consult me 'bout weeds next time. I don't know
much 'bout flowers, but I've knowed all my life 'bout WEEDS.” She laid
so much emphasis on the word that Hale wondered for the moment if her
words had a deeper meaning--but she went on:
“Ever' spring I have to watch the cows fer two weeks to keep 'em from
eatin'--those weeds.” Her self-corrections were always made gravely now,
and Hale consciously ignored them except when he had something to tell
her that she ought to know. Everything, it seemed, she wanted to know.
“Do they really kill cows?”
June snapped her fingers: “Like that. But you just come on here,”
she added with pretty imperiousness. “I want to axe--ask you some
things--what's that?”
“Scarlet sage.”
“Scarlet sage,” repeated June. “An' that?”
“Nasturtium, and that's Oriental grass.”
“Nas-tur-tium, Oriental. An' what's that vine?”
“That comes from North Africa--they call it 'matrimonial vine.'”
“Whut fer?” asked June quickly.
“Because it clings so.” Hale smiled, but June saw none of his
humour--the married people she knew clung till the finger of death
unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking plants
with great spreading leaves and big green-white stalks.
“They're called Palmae Christi.”
“Whut?”
“That's Latin. It means 'Hands of Christ,'” said Hale with reverence.
“You see how the leaves are spread out--don't they look like hands?'
“Not much,” said June frankly. “What's Latin?”
“Oh, that's a dead language that some people used a long, long time
ago.”
“What do folks use it nowadays fer? Why don't they just say 'Hands o'
Christ'?”
“I don't know,” he said helplessly, “but maybe you'll study Latin some
of these days.” June shook her head.
“Gettin' YOUR language is a big enough job fer me,” she said with such
quaint seriousness that Hale could not laugh. She looked up suddenly.
“You been a long time git--gettin' over here.”
“Yes, and now you want to send me home before sundown.”
“I'm afeer--I'm afraid for you. Have you got a gun?” Hale tapped his
breast-pocket.
“Always. What are you afraid of?”
“The Falins.” She clenched her hands.
“I'd like to SEE one o' them Falins tech ye,” she added fiercely, and
then she gave a quick look at the sun.
“You better go now, Jack. I'm afraid fer you. Where's your horse?” Hale
waved his hand.
“Down there. All right, little girl,” he said. “I ought to go, anyway.”
And, to humour her, he started for the gate. There he bent to kiss her,
but she drew back.
“I'm afraid of Dave,” she said, but she leaned on the gate and looked
long at him with wistful eyes.
“Jack,” she said, and her eyes swam suddenly, “it'll most kill me--but I
reckon you better not come over here much.” Hale made light of it all.
“Nonsense, I'm coming just as often as I can.” June smiled then.
“All right. I'll watch out fer ye.”
He went down the path, her eyes following him, and when he looked back
from the spur he saw her sitting in the porch and watching that she
might wave him farewell.
Hale could not go over to Lonesome Cove much that summer, for he was
away from the mountains a good part of the time, and it was a weary,
racking summer for June when he was not there. The step-mother was a
stern taskmistress, and the girl worked hard, but no night passed that
she did not spend an hour or more on her books, and by degrees she
bribed and stormed Bub into learning his A, B, C's and digging at a
blue-back spelling book. But all through the day there were times when
she could play with the boy in the garden, and every afternoon, when
it was not raining, she would slip away to a little ravine behind the
cabin, where a log had fallen across a little brook, and there in the
cool, sun-pierced shadows she would study, read and dream--with the
water bubbling underneath and wood-thrushes singing overhead. For Hale
kept her well supplied with books. He had given her children's books
at first, but she outgrew them when the first love-story fell into her
hands, and then he gave her novels--good, old ones and the best of the
new ones, and they were to her what water is to a thing athirst. But the
happy days were when Hale was there. She had a thousand questions for
him to answer, whenever he came, about birds, trees and flowers and the
things she read in her books. The words she could not understand in them
she marked, so that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how
her vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the
new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of
vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words. Happening once to
have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of it to her, and
while she could not understand, the music of the lines fascinated her
and she had him leave that with her, too. She never tired hearing him
tell of the places where he had been and the people he knew and the
music and plays he had heard and seen. And when he told her that she,
too, should see all those wonderful things some day, her deep eyes took
fire and she dropped her head far back between her shoulders and looked
long at the stars that held but little more wonder for her than the
world of which he told. But each time he was there she grew noticeably
shyer with him and never once was the love-theme between them taken up
in open words. Hale was reluctant, if only because she was still such a
child, and if he took her hand or put his own on her wonderful head or
his arm around her as they stood in the garden under the stars--he did
it as to a child, though the leap in her eyes and the quickening of his
own heart told him the lie that he was acting, rightly, to her and to
himself. And no more now were there any breaking-downs within her--there
was only a calm faith that staggered him and gave him an ever-mounting
sense of his responsibility for whatever might, through the part he had
taken in moulding her life, be in store for her.
When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time,
because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and Hale's
kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and the blessed
force of habit. For as time went on, she got consciously used to the
rough life, the coarse food and the rude ways of her own people and
her own home. And though she relaxed not a bit in her own dainty
cleanliness, the shrinking that she felt when she first arrived home,
came to her at longer and longer intervals. Once a week she went down
to Uncle Billy's, where she watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels
into the sluice, the kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey,
and listening to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old
mill--and stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under
the honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew
vaguely uneasy about her--she dreamed so much, she was at times so
restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she
failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw that
while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it all haunted
him with a vague sense that he was losing her. But old Hon laughed at
him and told him he was an old fool and to “git another pair o' specs”
and maybe he could see that the “little gal” was in love. This startled
Uncle Billy, for he was so like a father to June that he was as slow
as a father in recognizing that his child has grown to such absurd
maturity. But looking back to the beginning--how the little girl had
talked of the “furriner” who had come into Lonesome Cove all during
the six months he was gone; how gladly she had gone away to the Gap
to school, how anxious she was to go still farther away again, and,
remembering all the strange questions she asked him about things in the
outside world of which he knew nothing--Uncle Billy shook his head in
confirmation of his own conclusion, and with all his soul he wondered
about Hale--what kind of a man he was and what his purpose was with
June--and of every man who passed his mill he never failed to ask if he
knew “that ar man Hale” and what he knew. All he had heard had been in
Hale's favour, except from young Dave Tolliver, the Red Fox or from any
Falin of the crowd, which Hale had prevented from capturing Dave.
Their statements bothered him--especially the Red Fox's evil hints
and insinuations about Hale's purposes one day at the mill. The miller
thought of them all the afternoon and all the way home, and when he
sat down at his fire his eyes very naturally and simply rose to his old
rifle over the door--and then he laughed to himself so loudly that old
Hon heard him.
“Air you goin' crazy, Billy?” she asked. “Whut you studyin' 'bout?”
“Nothin'; I was jest a-thinkin' Devil Judd wouldn't leave a grease-spot
of him.”
“You AIR goin' crazy--who's him?”
“Uh--nobody,” said Uncle Billy, and old Hon turned with a shrug of her
shoulders--she was tired of all this talk about the feud.
All that summer young Dave Tolliver hung around Lonesome Cove. He would
sit for hours in Devil Judd's cabin, rarely saying anything to June or
to anybody, though the girl felt that she hardly made a move that he did
not see, and while he disappeared when Hale came, after a surly grunt
of acknowledgment to Hale's cheerful greeting, his perpetual espionage
began to anger June. Never, however, did he put himself into words until
Hale's last visit, when the summer had waned and it was nearly time for
June to go away again to school. As usual, Dave had left the house when
Hale came, and an hour after Hale was gone she went to the little ravine
with a book in her hand, and there the boy was sitting on her log, his
elbows dug into his legs midway between thigh and knee, his chin in his
hands, his slouched hat over his black eyes--every line of him picturing
angry, sullen dejection. She would have slipped away, but he heard her
and lifted his head and stared at her without speaking. Then he slowly
got off the log and sat down on a moss-covered stone.
“'Scuse me,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “This bein' yo'
school-house over hyeh, an' me not bein' a scholar, I reckon I'm in your
way.”
“How do you happen to know hit's my school-house?” asked June quietly.
“I've seed you hyeh.”
“Jus' as I s'posed.”
“You an' HIM.”
“Jus' as I s'posed,” she repeated, and a spot of red came into each
cheek. “But we didn't see YOU.” Young Dave laughed.
“Well, everybody don't always see me when I'm seein' them.”
“No,” she said unsteadily. “So, you've been sneakin' around through the
woods a-spyin' on me--SNEAKIN' AN' SPYIN',” she repeated so searingly
that Dave looked at the ground suddenly, picked up a pebble confusedly
and shot it in the water.
“I had a mighty good reason,” he said doggedly. “Ef he'd been up to some
of his furrin' tricks---” June stamped the ground.
“Don't you think I kin take keer o' myself?”
“No, I don't. I never seed a gal that could--with one o' them
furriners.”
“Huh!” she said scornfully. “You seem to set a mighty big store by the
decency of yo' own kin.” Dave was silent. “He ain't up to no tricks. An'
whut do you reckon Dad 'ud be doin' while you was pertecting me?”
“Air ye goin' away to school?” he asked suddenly. June hesitated.
“Well, seein' as hit's none o' yo' business--I am.”
“Air ye goin' to marry him?”
“He ain't axed me.” The boy's face turned red as a flame.
“Ye air honest with me, an' now I'm goin' to be honest with you. You
hain't never goin' to marry him.”
[Illustration: You hain't never goin' to marry him.”, 0242]
“Mebbe you think I'm goin' to marry YOU.” A mist of rage swept before
the lad's eyes so that he could hardly see, but he repeated steadily:
“You hain't goin' to marry HIM.” June looked at the boy long and
steadily, but his black eyes never wavered--she knew what he meant.
“An' he kept the Falins from killin' you,” she said, quivering with
indignation at the shame of him, but Dave went on unheeding:
“You pore little fool! Do ye reckon as how he's EVER goin' to axe ye
to marry him? Whut's he sendin' you away fer? Because you hain't good
enough fer him! Whar's yo' pride? You hain't good enough fer him,” he
repeated scathingly. June had grown calm now.
“I know it,” she said quietly, “but I'm goin' to try to be.”
Dave rose then in impotent fury and pointed one finger at her. His black
eyes gleamed like a demon's and his voice was hoarse with resolution and
rage, but it was Tolliver against Tolliver now, and June answered him
with contemptuous fearlessness.
“YOU HAIN'T NEVER GOIN' TO MARRY HIM.”
“An' he kept the Falins from killin' ye.”
“Yes,” he retorted savagely at last, “an' I kept the Falins from killin'
HIM,” and he stalked away, leaving June blanched and wondering.
It was true. Only an hour before, as Hale turned up the mountain that
very afternoon at the mouth of Lonesome Cove, young Dave had called to
him from the bushes and stepped into the road.
“You air goin' to court Monday?” he said.
“Yes,” said Hale.
“Well, you better take another road this time,” he said quietly. “Three
o' the Falins will be waitin' in the lorrel somewhar on the road to
lay-way ye.”
Hale was dumfounded, but he knew the boy spoke the truth.
“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I've got nothing against you, and
I hope you've got nothing against me. I'm much obliged--let's shake
hands!”
The boy turned sullenly away with a dogged shake of his head.
“I was beholden to you,” he said with dignity, “an' I warned you 'bout
them Falins to git even with you. We're quits now.”
Hale started to speak--to say that the lad was not beholden to him--that
he would as quickly have protected a Falin, but it would have only made
matters worse. Moreover, he knew precisely what Dave had against him,
and that, too, was no matter for discussion. So he said simply and
sincerely:
“I'm sorry we can't be friends.”
“No,” Dave gritted out, “not this side o' Heaven--or Hell.”