Before dawn Hale and the doctor and the old miller had reached the Pine,
and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him, he would go
only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even from any Falin
who happened to be hanging around in the bushes, for Hale was hated
equally by both factions now.
“I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy,” said Hale. “Ask her, for
God's sake, to come up here and see me.”
“All right. I'll axe her, but--” the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate, Hale
waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes some thirty
yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he would go to the tree
and look down the path, and once he slipped far down the trail and aside
to a spur whence he could see the cabin in the cove. Once his hungry
eyes caught sight of a woman's figure walking through the little garden,
and for an hour after it disappeared into the house he watched for it to
come out again. But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the
trail to see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope. Hale
waited and ran down to meet him, his face and eyes eager and his lips
trembling, but again Uncle Billy was shaking his head.
“No use, John,” he said sadly. “I got her out on the porch and axed her,
but she won't come.”
“She won't come at all?”
“John, when one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an' thar
eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET--they're plumb out o' reach
o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't blame her jes'
now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched Rufe and hung him, and
she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done that, her old daddy wouldn't
be in thar on his back nigh to death. You mustn't blame her, John--she's
most out o' her head now.”
“All right, Uncle Billy. Good-by.” Hale turned, climbed sadly back to
his horse and sadly dropped down the other side of the mountain and on
through the rocky gap-home.
A week later he learned from the doctor that the chances were even that
old Judd would get well, but the days went by with no word of June.
Through those days June wrestled with her love for Hale and her loyalty
to her father, who, sick as he was, seemed to have a vague sense of the
trouble within her and shrewdly fought it by making her daily promise
that she would never leave him. For as old Judd got better, June's
fierceness against Hale melted and her love came out the stronger,
because of the passing injustice that she had done him. Many times she
was on the point of sending him word that she would meet him at the
Pine, but she was afraid of her own strength if she should see him face
to face, and she feared she would be risking his life if she allowed him
to come. There were times when she would have gone to him herself, had
her father been well and strong, but he was old, beaten and helpless,
and she had given her sacred word that she would never leave him. So
once more she grew calmer, gentler still, and more determined to follow
her own way with her own kin, though that way led through a breaking
heart. She never mentioned Hale's name, she never spoke of going West,
and in time Dave began to wonder not only if she had not gotten over
her feeling for Hale, but if that feeling had not turned into permanent
hate. To him, June was kinder than ever, because she understood him
better and because she was sorry for the hunted, hounded life he led,
not knowing, when on his trips to see her or to do some service for her
father, he might be picked off by some Falin from the bushes. So Dave
stopped his sneering remarks against Hale and began to dream his old
dreams, though he never opened his lips to June, and she was unconscious
of what was going on within him. By and by, as old Judd began to mend,
overtures of peace came, singularly enough, from the Falins, and while
the old man snorted with contemptuous disbelief at them as a pretence to
throw him off his guard, Dave began actually to believe that they were
sincere, and straightway forged a plan of his own, even if the Tollivers
did persist in going West. So one morning as he mounted his horse at old
Judd's gate, he called to June in the garden:
“I'm a-goin' over to the Gap.” June paled, but Dave was not looking at
her.
“What for?” she asked, steadying her voice.
“Business,” he answered, and he laughed curiously and, still without
looking at her, rode away.
* * * * * * *
Hale sat in the porch of his little office that morning, and the Hon.
Sam Budd, who had risen to leave, stood with his hands deep in his
pockets, his hat tilted far over his big goggles, looking down at the
dead leaves that floated like lost hopes on the placid mill-pond. Hale
had agreed to go to England once more on the sole chance left him before
he went back to chain and compass--the old land deal that had come to
life--and between them they had about enough money for the trip.
“You'll keep an eye on things over there?” said Hale with a backward
motion of his head toward Lonesome Cove, and the Hon. Sam nodded his
head:
“All I can.”
“Those big trunks of hers are still here.” The Hon. Sam smiled. “She
won't need 'em. I'll keep an eye on 'em and she can come over and get
what she wants--every year or two,” he added grimly, and Hale groaned.
“Stop it, Sam.”
“All right. You ain't goin' to try to see her before you leave?” And
then at the look on Hale's face he said hurriedly: “All right--all
right,” and with a toss of his hands turned away, while Hale sat
thinking where he was.
Rufe Tolliver had been quite right as to the Red Fox. Nobody would risk
his life for him--there was no one to attempt a rescue, and but a few of
the guards were on hand this time to carry out the law. On the last day
he had appeared in his white suit of tablecloth. The little old woman
in black had made even the cap that was to be drawn over his face, and
that, too, she had made of white. Moreover, she would have his body kept
unburied for three days, because the Red Fox said that on the third day
he would arise and go about preaching. So that even in death the Red Fox
was consistently inconsistent, and how he reconciled such a dual life
at one and the same time over and under the stars was, except to his
twisted brain, never known. He walked firmly up the scaffold steps and
stood there blinking in the sunlight. With one hand he tested the rope.
For a moment he looked at the sky and the trees with a face that was
white and absolutely expressionless. Then he sang one hymn of two verses
and quietly dropped into that world in which he believed so firmly and
toward which he had trod so strange a way on earth. As he wished, the
little old woman in black had the body kept unburied for the three
days--but the Red Fox never rose. With his passing, law and order had
become supreme. Neither Tolliver nor Falin came on the Virginia side
for mischief, and the desperadoes of two sister States, whose skirts
are stitched together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the
Cumberland, confined their deviltries with great care to places long
distant from the Gap. John Hale had done a great work, but the limit of
his activities was that State line and the Falins, ever threatening that
they would not leave a Tolliver alive, could carry out those threats and
Hale not be able to lift a hand. It was his helplessness that was making
him writhe now.
Old Judd had often said he meant to leave the mountains--why didn't he
go now and take June for whose safety his heart was always in his mouth?
As an officer, he was now helpless where he was; and if he went away
he could give no personal aid--he would not even know what was
happening--and he had promised Budd to go. An open letter was clutched
in his hand, and again he read it. His coal company had accepted his
last proposition. They would take his stock--worthless as they thought
it--and surrender the cabin and two hundred acres of field and woodland
in Lonesome Cove. That much at least would be intact, but if he failed
in his last project now, it would be subject to judgments against him
that were sure to come. So there was one thing more to do for June
before he left for the final effort in England--to give back her home to
her--and as he rose to do it now, somebody shouted at his gate:
“Hello!” Hale stopped short at the head of the steps, his right hand
shot like a shaft of light to the butt of his pistol, stayed there--and
he stood astounded. It was Dave Tolliver on horseback, and Dave's right
hand had kept hold of his bridle-reins.
“Hold on!” he said, lifting the other with a wide gesture of peace. “I
want to talk with you a bit.” Still Hale watched him closely as he swung
from his horse.
“Come in--won't you?” The mountaineer hitched his horse and slouched
within the gate.
“Have a seat.” Dave dropped to the steps.
“I'll set here,” he said, and there was an embarrassed silence for a
while between the two. Hale studied young Dave's face from narrowed
eyes. He knew all the threats the Tolliver had made against him, the
bitter enmity that he felt, and that it would last until one or the
other was dead. This was a queer move. The mountaineer took off his
slouched hat and ran one hand through his thick black hair.
“I reckon you've heard as how all our folks air sellin' out over the
mountains.”
“No,” said Hale quickly.
“Well, they air, an' all of 'em are going West--Uncle Judd, Loretty and
June, and all our kinfolks. You didn't know that?”
“No,” repeated Hale.
“Well, they hain't closed all the trades yit,” he said, “an' they mought
not go mebbe afore spring. The Falins say they air done now. Uncle Judd
don't believe 'em, but I do, an' I'm thinkin' I won't go. I've got a
leetle money, an' I want to know if I can't buy back Uncle Judd's house
an' a leetle ground around it. Our folks is tired o' fightin' and I
couldn't live on t'other side of the mountain, after they air gone, an'
keep as healthy as on this side--so I thought I'd see if I couldn't buy
back June's old home, mebbe, an' live thar.”
Hale watched him keenly, wondering what his game was--and he went on:
“I know the house an' land ain't wuth much to your company, an' as the
coal-vein has petered out, I reckon they might not axe much fer it.” It
was all out now, and he stopped without looking at Hale. “I ain't axin'
any favours, leastwise not o' you, an' I thought my share o' Mam's farm
mought be enough to git me the house an' some o' the land.”
“You mean to live there, yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?” Dave frowned.
“I reckon that's my business.”
“So it is--excuse me.” Hale lighted his pipe and the mountaineer
waited--he was a little sullen now.
“Well, the company has parted with the land.” Dave started.
“Sold it?”
“In a way--yes.”
“Well, would you mind tellin' me who bought it--maybe I can git it from
him.”
“It's mine now,” said Hale quietly.
“YOURN!” The mountaineer looked incredulous and then he let loose a
scornful laugh.
“YOU goin' to live thar?”
“Maybe.”
“Alone?”
“That's my business.” The mountaineer's face darkened and his fingers
began to twitch.
“Well, if you're talkin' 'bout June, hit's MY business. Hit always has
been and hit always will be.”
“Well, if I was talking about June, I wouldn't consult you.”
“No, but I'd consult you like hell.”
“I wish you had the chance,” said Hale coolly; “but I wasn't talking
about June.” Again Dave laughed harshly, and for a moment his angry eyes
rested on the quiet mill-pond. He went backward suddenly.
“You went over thar in Lonesome with your high notions an' your slick
tongue, an' you took June away from me. But she wusn't good enough fer
you THEN--so you filled her up with yo' fool notions an' sent her away
to git her po' little head filled with furrin' ways, so she could be
fitten to marry you. You took her away from her daddy, her family, her
kinfolks and her home, an' you took her away from me; an' now she's been
over thar eatin' her heart out just as she et it out over here when she
fust left home. An' in the end she got so highfalutin that SHE wouldn't
marry YOU.” He laughed again and Hale winced under the laugh and the
lashing words. “An' I know you air eatin' yo' heart out, too, because
you can't git June, an' I'm hopin' you'll suffer the torment o' hell as
long as you live. God, she hates ye now! To think o' your knowin' the
world and women and books”--he spoke with vindictive and insulting
slowness--“You bein' such a--fool!”
“That may all be true, but I think you can talk better outside that
gate.” The mountaineer, deceived by Hale's calm voice, sprang to his
feet in a fury, but he was too late. Hale's hand was on the butt of his
revolver, his blue eyes were glittering and a dangerous smile was at
his lips. Silently he sat and silently he pointed his other hand at the
gate. Dave laughed:
“D'ye think I'd fight you hyeh? If you killed me, you'd be elected
County Jedge; if I killed you, what chance would I have o' gittin' away?
I'd swing fer it.” He was outside the gate now and unhitching his horse.
He started to turn the beasts but Hale stopped him.
“Get on from this side, please.”
With one foot in the stirrup, Dave turned savagely: “Why don't you go up
in the Gap with me now an' fight it out like a man?”
“I don't trust you.”
“I'll git ye over in the mountains some day.”
“I've no doubt you will, if you have the chance from the bush.” Hale was
getting roused now.
“Look here,” he said suddenly, “you've been threatening me for a long
time now. I've never had any feeling against you. I've never done
anything to you that I hadn't to do. But you've gone a little too far
now and I'm tired. If you can't get over your grudge against me, suppose
we go across the river outside the town-limits, put our guns down and
fight it out--fist and skull.”
“I'm your man,” said Dave eagerly. Looking across the street Hale saw
two men on the porch.
“Come on!” he said. The two men were Budd and the new town-sergeant.
“Sam,” he said “this gentleman and I are going across the river to have
a little friendly bout, and I wish you'd come along--and you, too, Bill,
to see that Dave here gets fair play.”
The sergeant spoke to Dave. “You don't need nobody to see that you git
fair play with them two--but I'll go 'long just the same.” Hardly a word
was said as the four walked across the bridge and toward a thicket
to the right. Neither Budd nor the sergeant asked the nature of the
trouble, for either could have guessed what it was. Dave tied his horse
and, like Hale, stripped off his coat. The sergeant took charge of
Dave's pistol and Budd of Hale's.
“All you've got to do is to keep him away from you,” said Budd. “If
he gets his hands on you--you're gone. You know how they fight
rough-and-tumble.”
Hale nodded--he knew all that himself, and when he looked at Dave's
sturdy neck, and gigantic shoulders, he knew further that if the
mountaineer got him in his grasp he would have to gasp “enough” in a
hurry, or be saved by Budd from being throttled to death.
“Are you ready?” Again Hale nodded.
“Go ahead, Dave,” growled the sergeant, for the job was not to his
liking. Dave did not plunge toward Hale, as the three others expected.
On the contrary, he assumed the conventional attitude of the boxer
and advanced warily, using his head as a diagnostician for Hale's
points--and Hale remembered suddenly that Dave had been away at school
for a year. Dave knew something of the game and the Hon. Sam straightway
was anxious, when the mountaineer ducked and swung his left Budd's heart
thumped and he almost shrank himself from the terrific sweep of the big
fist.
“God!” he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must, it
seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew his head
not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye, and jabbed
his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw, that made the
mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and pain, and when he
followed it up with a swing of his left on Dave's right eye and another
terrific jolt with his right on the left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy
rage in the mountaineer's face, he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot
his science as the Hon. Sam expected, and with a bellow he started at
Hale like a cave-dweller to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe
figure before him swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every
side-step a fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until,
blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the sergeant
with the cry of a madman:
“Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!” And when the sergeant
sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with rage
and shame to the ground.
“You two just go back to town,” said the sergeant. “I'll take keer of
him. Quick!” and he shook his head as Hale advanced. “He ain't goin' to
shake hands with you.”
The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's office
to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came. There he had
the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in Lonesome Cove and
the acres about it were conveyed in fee simple to June--her heirs and
assigns forever; but the girl must not know until, Hale said, “her
father dies, or I die, or she marries.” When he came out the sergeant
was passing the door.
“Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway,” he said,
shaking his head. “If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as long as
he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust chance he gets.
You'll have to watch that feller as long as you live--'specially when
he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin' and want revenge fer it till
the grave. One of you has got to die some day--shore.”
And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that
moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and
shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his cries
and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine. All the way up
the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice of the big Pine
he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped, his heart was beating
curses as he dropped down the other side of the mountain.
When he reached the river, he got off his horse and bathed his mouth and
his eyes again, and he cursed afresh when the blood started afresh at
his lips again. For a while he sat there in his black mood, undecided
whether he should go to his uncle's cabin or go on home. But he had seen
a woman's figure in the garden as he came down the spur, and the thought
of June drew him to the cabin in spite of his shame and the questions
that were sure to be asked. When he passed around the clump of
rhododendrons at the creek, June was in the garden still. She was
pruning a rose-bush with Bub's penknife, and when she heard him coming
she wheeled, quivering. She had been waiting for him all day, and, like
an angry goddess, she swept fiercely toward him. Dave pretended not to
see her, but when he swung from his horse and lifted his sullen eyes,
he shrank as though she had lashed him across them with a whip. Her eyes
blazed with murderous fire from her white face, the penknife in her hand
was clenched as though for a deadly purpose, and on her trembling lips
was the same question that she had asked him at the mill:
“Have you done it this time?” she whispered, and then she saw his
swollen mouth and his battered eye. Her fingers relaxed about the handle
of the knife, the fire in her eyes went swiftly down, and with a smile
that was half pity, half contempt, she turned away. She could not have
told the whole truth better in words, even to Dave, and as he looked
after her his every pulse-beat was a new curse, and if at that minute he
could have had Hale's heart he would have eaten it like a savage--raw.
For a minute he hesitated with reins in hand as to whether he should
turn now and go back to the Gap to settle with Hale, and then he threw
the reins over a post. He could bide his time yet a little longer, for
a crafty purpose suddenly entered his brain. Bub met him at the door of
the cabin and his eyes opened.
“What's the matter, Dave?”
“Oh, nothin',” he said carelessly. “My hoss stumbled comin' down the
mountain an' I went clean over his head.” He raised one hand to his
mouth and still Bub was suspicious.
“Looks like you been in a fight.” The boy began to laugh, but Dave
ignored him and went on into the cabin. Within, he sat where he could
see through the open door.
“Whar you been, Dave?” asked old Judd from the corner. Just then he saw
June coming and, pretending to draw on his pipe, he waited until she had
sat down within ear-shot on the edge of the porch.
“Who do you reckon owns this house and two hundred acres o' land
roundabouts?”
The girl's heart waited apprehensively and she heard her father's deep
voice.
“The company owns it.” Dave laughed harshly.
“Not much--John Hale.” The heart out on the porch leaped with gladness
now.
“He bought it from the company. It's just as well you're goin' away,
Uncle Judd. He'd put you out.”
“I reckon not. I got writin' from the company which 'lows me to stay
here two year or more--if I want to.”
“I don't know. He's a slick one.”
“I heerd him say,” put in Bub stoutly, “that he'd see that we stayed
here jus' as long as we pleased.”
“Well,” said old Judd shortly, “ef we stay here by his favour, we won't
stay long.”
There was silence for a while. Then Dave spoke again for the listening
ears outside--maliciously:
“I went over to the Gap to see if I couldn't git the place myself from
the company. I believe the Falins ain't goin' to bother us an' I ain't
hankerin' to go West. But I told him that you-all was goin' to leave the
mountains and goin' out thar fer good.” There was another silence.
“He never said a word.” Nobody had asked the question, but he was
answering the unspoken one in the heart of June, and that heart sank
like a stone.
“He's goin' away hisself-goin' ter-morrow--goin' to that same place he
went before--England, some feller called it.”
Dave had done his work well. June rose unsteadily, and with one hand on
her heart and the other clutching the railing of the porch, she crept
noiselessly along it, staggered like a wounded thing around the
chimney, through the garden and on, still clutching her heart, to the
woods--there to sob it out on the breast of the only mother she had ever
known.
Dave was gone when she came back from the woods--calm, dry-eyed, pale.
Her step-mother had kept her dinner for her, and when she said she
wanted nothing to eat, the old woman answered something querulous to
which June made no answer, but went quietly to cleaning away the dishes.
For a while she sat on the porch, and presently she went into her room
and for a few moments she rocked quietly at her window. Hale was going
away next day, and when he came back she would be gone and she would
never see him again. A dry sob shook her body of a sudden, she put
both hands to her head and with wild eyes she sprang to her feet and,
catching up her bonnet, slipped noiselessly out the back door. With
hands clenched tight she forced herself to walk slowly across the
foot-bridge, but when the bushes hid her, she broke into a run as though
she were crazed and escaping a madhouse. At the foot of the spur she
turned swiftly up the mountain and climbed madly, with one hand tight
against the little cross at her throat. He was going away and she must
tell him--she must tell him--what? Behind her a voice was calling, the
voice that pleaded all one night for her not to leave him, that had
made that plea a daily prayer, and it had come from an old man--wounded,
broken in health and heart, and her father. Hale's face was before her,
but that voice was behind, and as she climbed, the face that she was
nearing grew fainter, the voice she was leaving sounded the louder in
her ears, and when she reached the big Pine she dropped helplessly at
the base of it, sobbing. With her tears the madness slowly left her,
the old determination came back again and at last the old sad peace. The
sunlight was slanting at a low angle when she rose to her feet and stood
on the cliff overlooking the valley--her lips parted as when she stood
there first, and the tiny drops drying along the roots of her dull gold
hair. And being there for the last time she thought of that time when
she was first there--ages ago. The great glare of light that she looked
for then had come and gone. There was the smoking monster rushing into
the valley and sending echoing shrieks through the hills--but there was
no booted stranger and no horse issuing from the covert of maple where
the path disappeared. A long time she stood there, with a wandering look
of farewell to every familiar thing before her, but not a tear came now.
Only as she turned away at last her breast heaved and fell with one long
breath--that was all. Passing the Pine slowly, she stopped and turned
back to it, unclasping the necklace from her throat. With trembling
fingers she detached from it the little luck-piece that Hale had given
her--the tear of a fairy that had turned into a tiny cross of stone
when a strange messenger brought to the Virginia valley the story of the
crucifixion. The penknife was still in her pocket, and, opening it, she
went behind the Pine and dug a niche as high and as deep as she
could toward its soft old heart. In there she thrust the tiny symbol,
whispering:
“I want all the luck you could ever give me, little cross--for HIM.”
Then she pulled the fibres down to cover it from sight and, crossing her
hands over the opening, she put her forehead against them and touched
her lips to the tree.
[Illustration: Keep it Safe Old Pine, Frontispiece]
“Keep it safe, old Pine.” Then she lifted her face--looking upward
along its trunk to the blue sky. “And bless him, dear God, and guard him
evermore.” She clutched her heart as she turned, and she was clutching
it when she passed into the shadows below, leaving the old Pine to
whisper, when he passed, her love.
* * * * * * *
Next day the word went round to the clan that the Tollivers would start
in a body one week later for the West. At daybreak, that morning, Uncle
Billy and his wife mounted the old gray horse and rode up the river to
say good-by. They found the cabin in Lonesome Cove deserted. Many things
were left piled in the porch; the Tollivers had left apparently in a
great hurry and the two old people were much mystified. Not until noon
did they learn what the matter was. Only the night before a Tolliver
had shot a Falin and the Falins had gathered to get revenge on Judd that
night. The warning word had been brought to Lonesome Cove by Loretta
Tolliver, and it had come straight from young Buck Falin himself. So
June and old Judd and Bub had fled in the night. At that hour they were
on their way to the railroad--old Judd at the head of his clan--his
right arm still bound to his side, his bushy beard low on his breast,
June and Bub on horseback behind him, the rest strung out behind them,
and in a wagon at the end, with all her household effects, the little
old woman in black who would wait no longer for the Red Fox to arise
from the dead. Loretta alone was missing. She was on her way with young
Buck Falin to the railroad on the other side of the mountains. Between
them not a living soul disturbed the dead stillness of Lonesome Cove.