On they trudged, the boy plodding sturdily ahead, the little girl
slipping mountain-fashion behind. Not once did she come abreast with
him, and not one word did either say, but the mind and heart of both
were busy. All the way the frown over-casting the boy's face stayed
like a shadow, for he had left trouble at home, he had met trouble, and
to trouble he was going back. The old was definite enough and he knew
how to handle it, but the new bothered him sorely. That stranger boy
was a fighter, and Jason's honest soul told him that if interference
had not come he would have been whipped, and his pride was still
smarting with every step. The new boy had not tried to bite, or gouge,
or to hit him when he was on top--facts that puzzled the mountain boy;
he hadn't whimpered and he hadn't blabbed--not even the insult Jason
had hurled with eye and tongue at his girl-clad legs. He had said that
he didn't know what they were fighting about, and just why they were
Jason himself couldn't quite make out now; but he knew that even now,
in spite of the hand-shaking truce, he would at the snap of a finger go
at the stranger again. And little Mavis knew now that it was not fear
that made the stranger girl scream--and she, too, was puzzled. She even
felt that the scorn in Marjorie's face was not personal, but she had
shrunk from it as from the sudden lash of a whip. The stranger girl,
too, had not blabbed but had even seemed to smile her forgiveness when
Mavis turned, with no good-by, to follow Jason. Hand in hand the two
little mountaineers had crossed the threshold of a new world that day.
Together they were going back into their own, but the clutch of the new
was tight on both, and while neither could have explained, there was
the same thought in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in
each heart, and both were in the throes of the same new birth.
The sun was sinking when they started up the spur, and unconsciously
Jason hurried his steps and the girl followed hard. The twin spirals of
smoke were visible now, and where the path forked the boy stopped and
turned, jerking his thumb toward her cabin and his.
"Ef anything happens"--he paused, and the girl nodded her
understanding--"you an' me air goin' to stay hyeh in the mountains an'
git married."
"Yes, Jasie," she said.
His tone was matter-of-fact and so was hers, nor did she show any
surprise at the suddenness of what he said, and Jason, not looking at
her, failed to see a faint flush come to her cheek. He turned to go,
but she stood still, looking down into the gloomy, darkening ravine
below her. A bear's tracks had been found in that ravine only the day
before. "Air ye afeerd?" he asked tolerantly, and she nodded mutely.
"I'll take ye down," he said with sudden gentleness.
The tall mountaineer was standing on the porch of the cabin, and with
assurance and dignity Jason strode ahead with a protecting air to the
gate.
"Whar you two been?" he called sharply.
"I went fishin'," said the boy unperturbed, "an' tuk Mavis with me."
"You air gittin' a leetle too peart, boy. I don't want that gal
a-runnin' around in the woods all day."
Jason met his angry eyes with a new spirit.
"I reckon you hain't been hyeh long."
The shot went home and the mountaineer glared helpless for an answer.
"Come on in hyeh an' git supper," he called harshly to the girl, and as
the boy went back up the spur, he could hear the scolding going on
below, with no answer from Mavis, and he made up his mind to put an end
to that some day himself. He knew what was waiting for him on the other
side of the spur, and when he reached the top, he sat down for a moment
on a long-fallen, moss-grown log. Above him beetled the top of his
world. His great blue misty hills washed their turbulent waves to the
yellow shore of the dropping sun. Those waves of forests primeval were
his, and the green spray of them was tossed into cloudland to catch the
blessed rain. In every little fold of them drops were trickling down
now to water the earth and give back the sea its own. The dreamy-eyed
man of science had told him that. And it was unchanged, all unchanged
since wild beasts were the only tenants, since wild Indians slipped
through the wilderness aisles, since the half-wild white man, hot on
the chase, planted his feet in the footsteps of both and inexorably
pushed them on. The boy's first Kentucky ancestor had been one of those
who had stopped in the hills. His rifle had fed him and his family; his
axe had put a roof over their heads, and the loom and spinning-wheel
had clothed their bodies. Day by day they had fought back the
wilderness, had husbanded the soil, and as far as his eagle eye could
reach, that first Hawn had claimed mountain, river, and tree for his
own, and there was none to dispute the claim for the passing of half a
century. Now those who had passed on were coming back again--the first
trespasser long, long ago with a yellow document that he called a
"blanket-patent" and which was all but the bringer's funeral shroud,
for the old hunter started at once for his gun and the stranger with
his patent took to flight. Years later a band of young men with chain
and compass had appeared in the hills and disappeared as suddenly, and
later still another band, running a line for a railroad up the river,
found old Jason at the foot of a certain oak with his rifle in the
hollow of his arm and marking a dead-line which none dared to cross.
Later still, when he understood, the old man let them pass, but so far
nobody had surveyed his land, and now, instead of trying to take, they
were trying to purchase. From all points of the compass the "furriners"
were coming now, the rock-pecker's prophecy was falling true, and at
that moment the boy's hot words were having an effect on every soul who
had heard them. Old Jason's suspicions were alive again; he was short
of speech when his nephew, Arch Hawn, brought up the sale of his lands,
and Arch warned the colonel to drop the subject for the night. The
colonel's mind had gone back to a beautiful woodland at home that he
thought of clearing off for tobacco--he would put that desecration off
a while. The stranger boy, too, was wondering vaguely at the fierce
arraignment he had heard; the stranger girl was curiously haunted by
memories of the queer little mountaineer, while Mavis now had a new awe
of her cousin that was but another rod with which he could go on ruling
her.
Jason's mother was standing in the door when he walked through the yard
gate. She went back into the cabin when she saw him coming, and met him
at the door with a switch in her hand. Very coolly the lad caught it
from her, broke it in two, threw it away, and picking up a piggin went
out without a word to milk, leaving her aghast and outdone. When he
came back, he asked like a man if supper was ready, and as to a man she
answered. For an hour he pottered around the barn, and for a long while
he sat on the porch under the stars. And, as always at that hour, the
same scene obsessed his memory, when the last glance of his father's
eye and the last words of his father's tongue went not to his wife, but
to the white-faced little son across the foot of the death-bed:
"You'll git him fer me--some day."
"I'll git him, pap."
Those were the words that passed, and in them was neither the asking
nor the giving of a promise, but a simple statement and a simple
acceptance of a simple trust, and the father passed with a grim smile
of content. Like every Hawn the boy believed that a Honeycutt was the
assassin, and in the solemn little fellow one purpose hitherto had been
supreme--to discover the man and avenge the deed; and though, young as
he was, he was yet too cunning to let the fact be known, there was no
male of the name old enough to pull the trigger, not even his mother's
brother, Babe, who did not fall under the ban of the boy's deathless
hate and suspicion. And always his mother, though herself a Honeycutt,
had steadily fed his purpose, but for a long while now she had kept
disloyally still, and the boy had bitterly learned the reason.
It was bedtime now, and little Jason rose and went within. As he
climbed the steps leading to his loft, he spoke at last, nodding his
head toward the cabin over the spur:
"I reckon I know whut you two are up to, and, furhermore, you are
aimin' to sell this land. I can't keep you from doin' it, I reckon, but
I do ask you not to sell without lettin' me know. I know somet'n' 'bout
it that nobody else knows. An' if you don't tell me--" he shook his
head slowly, and the mother looked at her boy as though she were dazed
by some spell.
"I'll tell ye, Jasie," she said.
V
Down the river road loped Arch Hawn the next morning, his square chin
low with thought, his shrewd eyes almost closed, and his straight lips
closed hard on the cane stem of an unlighted pipe. Of all the Hawns he
had been born the poorest in goods and chattels and the richest in
shrewd resource, restless energy, and keen foresight. He had gone to
the settlements when he was a lad, he had always been coming and going
ever since, and the word was that he had been to far-away cities in the
outer world that were as unfamiliar to his fellows and kindred as the
Holy Land. He had worked as teamster and had bought and sold anything
to anybody right and left. Resolutely he had kept himself from all part
in the feud--his kinship with the Hawns protecting him on one side and
the many trades with old Aaron Honeycutt in cattle and lands saving him
from trouble on the other. He carried no tales from one faction to the
other, condemned neither one nor the other, and made the same comment
to both--that it was foolish to fight when there was so much else so
much more profitable to do. Once an armed band of mounted Honeycutts
had met him in the road and demanded news of a similar band of Hawns up
a creek. "Did you ever hear o' my tellin' the Hawns anything about you
Honeycutts?" he asked quietly, and old Aaron had to shake his head.
"Well, if I tol' you anything about them to-day, don't you know I'd be
tellin' them something about you to-morrow?"
Old Aaron scratched his head.
"By Gawd, boys--that's so. Let him pass!"
Thus it was that only Arch Hawn could have brought about an agreement
that was the ninth wonder of the mountain world, and was no less than a
temporary truce in the feud between old Aaron Honeycutt and old Jason
Hawn until the land deal in which both leaders shared a heavy interest
could come to a consummation. Arch had interested Colonel Pendleton in
his "wild lands" at a horse sale in the Blue-grass. The mountaineer's
shrewd knowledge of horses had caught the attention of the colonel, his
drawling speech, odd phrasing, and quaint humor had amused the
Blue-grass man, and his exposition of the wealth of the hills and the
vast holdings that he had in the hollow of his hand, through options
far and wide, had done the rest--for the matter was timely to the
colonel's needs and to his accidental hour of opportunity. Only a short
while before old Morton Sanders, an Eastern capitalist of Kentucky
birth, had been making inquiry of him that the mountaineer's talk
answered precisely, and soon the colonel found himself an intermediary
between buried coal and open millions, and such a quick unlooked-for
chance of exchange made Arch Hawn's brain reel. Only a few days before
the colonel started for the mountains, Babe Honeycutt had broken the
truce by shooting Shade Hawn, but as Shade was going to get well,
Arch's oily tongue had licked the wound to the pride of every Honeycutt
except Shade, and he calculated that the latter would be so long in bed
that his interference would never count. But things were going wrong.
Arch had had a hard time with old Jason the night before. Again he had
to go over the same weary argument that he had so often travelled
before: the mountain people could do nothing with the mineral wealth of
their hills; the coal was of no value to them where it was; they could
not dig it, they had no market for it; and they could never get it into
the markets of the outside world. It was the boy's talk that had halted
the old man, and to Arch's amazement the colonel's sense of fairness
seemed to have been touched and his enthusiasm seemed to have waned a
little. That morning, too, Arch had heard that Shade Hawn was getting
well a little too fast, and he was on his way to see about it. Shade
was getting well fast, and with troubled eyes Arch saw him sitting up
in a chair and cleaning his Winchester.
"What's yo' hurry?"
"I ain't never agreed to no truce," said Shade truculently.
"Don't you think you might save a little time--waitin' fer Babe to git
tame? He's hidin' out. You can't find him now."
"I can look fer him."
"Shade!"--wily Arch purposely spoke loud enough for Shade's wife to
hear, and he saw her thin, worn, shrewish face turn eagerly--"I'll give
ye just fifty dollars to stay here in the house an' git well fer two
more weeks. You know why, an' you know hit's wuth it to me. What you
say?"
Shade rubbed his stubbled chin ruminatively and his wife Mandy broke in
sharply:
"Take it, you fool!"
Apparently Shade paid no heed to the advice nor the epithet, which was
not meant to be offensive, but he knew that Mandy wanted a cow of just
that price and a cow she would have; while he needed cartridges and
other little "fixin's," and he owed for moonshine up a certain creek,
and wanted more just then and badly. But mental calculation was
laborious and he made a plunge:
"Not a cent less'n seventy-five, an' I ain't goin' to argue with ye."
Arch scowled.
"Split the difference!" he commanded.
"All right."
A few minutes later Arch was loping back up the river road. Within an
hour he had won old Jason to a non-committal silence and straight-way
volunteered to show the colonel the outcroppings of his coal. And old
Jason mounted his sorrel mare and rode with the party up the creek.
It was Sunday and a holiday for little Jason from toil in the rocky
corn-field. He was stirring busily before the break of dawn. While the
light was still gray, he had milked, cut wood for his mother, and eaten
his breakfast of greasy bacon and corn-bread. On that day it had been
his habit for months to disappear early, come back for his dinner, slip
quietly away again and return worn out and tired at milking-time.
Invariably for a long time his mother had asked:
"Whut you been a-doin', Jason?" And invariably his answer was:
"Nothin' much."
But, by and by, as the long dark mountaineer, Steve Hawn, got in the
daily habit of swinging over the ridge, she was glad to be free from
the boy's sullen watchfulness, and particularly that morning she was
glad to see him start as usual up the path his own feet had worn
through the steep field of corn, and disappear in the edge of the
woods. She would have a long day for courtship and for talk of plans
which she was keeping secret from little Jason. She was a Honeycutt and
she had married one Hawn, and there had been much trouble. Now she was
going to marry another of the tribe, there would be more trouble, and
Steve Hawn over the ridge meant to evade it by straightway putting
forth from those hills. Hurriedly she washed the dishes, tidied up her
poor shack of a home, and within an hour she was seated in the porch,
in her best dress, with her knitting in her lap and, even that early,
lifting expectant and shining eyes now and then to the tree-crowned
crest of the ridge.
Up little Jason went through breaking mist and flashing dew. A
wood-thrush sang, and he knew the song came from the bird of which
little Mavis was the human counterpart. Woodpeckers were hammering and,
when a crested cock of the woods took billowy flight across a blue
ravine, he knew him for a big cousin of the little red-heads, just as
Mavis was a little cousin of his. Once he had known birds only by
sight, but now he knew every calling, twittering, winging soul of them
by name. Once he used to draw bead on one and all heartlessly and
indiscriminately with his old rifle, but now only the whistle of a
bob-white, the darting of a hawk, or the whir of a pheasant's wings
made him whirl the old weapon from his shoulder. He knew flower, plant,
bush, and weed, the bark and leaf of every tree, and even In winter he
could pick them out in the gray etching of a mountain-side--dog-wood,
red-bud, "sarvice" berry, hickory, and walnut, the oaks--white, black,
and chestnut--the majestic poplar, prized by the outer world, and the
black-gum that defied the lightning. All this the dreamy stranger had
taught him, and much more. And nobody, native born to those hills,
except his uncle Arch, knew as much about their hidden treasures as
little Jason. He had trailed after the man of science along the benches
of the mountains where coal beds lie. With him he had sought the roots
of upturned trees and the beds of little creeks and the gray faces of
"rock-houses" for signs of the black diamonds. He had learned to watch
the beds of little creeks for the shining tell-tale black bits, and
even the tiny mouths of crawfish holes, on the lips of which they
sometimes lay. And the biggest treasure in the hills little Jason had
found himself; for only on the last day before the rock-pecker had gone
away, the two had found signs of another vein, and the geologist had
given his own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone,
for himself. And Jason had dug. He was slipping now up the tiny branch,
and where the stream trickled down the face of a water-worn
perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against a tree,
and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he reappeared with a
small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and
loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of
a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall
black column solidly wedged in the narrow passage, at the base of which
was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the
foot of the column and above the floor of the ditch. There had been
mighty operations going on in that secret passage; the toil for one boy
and one tool had been prodigious and his work was not yet quite done.
Lifting the pick above his head, the boy sank it into that yellow
pedestal with savage energy, raking the loose earth behind him with
hands and feet. The sunlight caught the top of the black column above
his head and dropped shining inch by inch, but on he worked tirelessly.
The yellow bench disappeared and the heap of dirt behind him was piled
high as his head, but the black column bored on downward as though
bound for the very bowels of the earth, and only when the bench
vanished to the level of the ditch's floor did the lad send his pick
deep into a new layer and lean back to rest even for a moment. A few
deep breaths, the brushing of one forearm and then the other across his
forehead and cheeks, and again he grasped the tool. This time it came
out hard, bringing out with its point particles of grayish-black earth,
and the boy gave a low, shrill yell. It was a bed of clay that he had
struck--the bed on which, as the geologist had told him, the massive
layers of coal had slept so long. In a few minutes he had skimmed a
yellow inch or two more to the dingy floor of the clay bed, and had
driven his pick under the very edge of the black bulk towering above
him.
His work was done, and no buccaneer ever gloated more over hidden
treasure than Jason over the prize discovered by him and known of
nobody else in the world. He raised his head and looked up the
shimmering black face of his find. He took up his pick again and
notched foot-holes in each side of the yellow ditch. He marked his own
height on the face of the column, and, climbing up along it, measured
his full length again, and yet with outstretched arm he could barely
touch the top of the vein with the tips of his fingers. No vein half
that thick had the rock-pecker with all his searching found, and the
lad gave a long, low whistle of happy amazement. A moment later he
dropped his pick, climbed over the pile of new dirt, emerged at the
mouth of the passage, and sat down as if on guard in the grateful
coolness of the little ravine. Drawing one long breath, he looked
proudly back once more and began shaking his head wisely. They couldn't
fool him. He knew what that mighty vein of coal was worth. Other
people--fools--might sell their land for a dollar or two an acre, even
old Jason, his grandfather, but not the Jason Hawn who had dug that
black giant out of the side of the mountain.
"Go away, boy," the rock-pecker had said, "Get an education. Leave this
farm alone--it won't run away. By the time you are twenty-one, an acre
of it will be worth as much as all of it is now."
No, they couldn't fool him. He would keep his find a secret from every
soul on earth--even from his grandfather and Mavis, both of whom he had
already been tempted to tell. He rose to his feet with the resolution
and crouched suddenly, listening hard. Something was coming swiftly
toward him through the undergrowth on the other side of the creek, and
he reached stealthily for his rifle, sank behind the bowlder with his
thumb on the hammer just as the bushes parted on the opposite cliff,
and Mavis stood above him, peering for him and calling his name in an
excited whisper. He rose glowering and angry.
"Whut you doin' up here?" he asked roughly, and the girl shrank, and
her message stopped at her lips.
"They're comin' up here," she faltered.
The boy's eyes accused her mercilessly and he seemed not to hear her.
"You've been spyin'!"
The dignity of his manhood was outraged, and humbly and helplessly she
nodded in utter abasement, faltering again:
"They're comin' up here!"
"Who's comin' up here?"
"Them strangers an' grandpap an' Uncle Arch--an' another rock-pecker."
"Did you tell'em?"
The girl crossed her heart and body swiftly.
"I hain't told a soul," she gasped". I come up to tell you."
"When they comin'?"
The sound of voices below answered for her.
The boy wheeled, alert as a wild-cat, the girl slid noiselessly down
the cliff and crept noiselessly after him down the bed of the creek,
until they could both peer through the bushes down on the next bend of
the stream below. There they were--all of them, and down there they had
halted.
"Ain't no use goin' up any furder," said the voice of Arch Hawn; "I've
looked all up this crick an' thar ain't nary a blessed sign o' coal."
"All right," said the colonel, who was puffing with the climb. "That
suits me--I've had enough."
At Jason's side, Mavis echoed his own swift breath of relief, but as
the party turned, the rock-pecker stooped and rose with a black lump in
his hand.
"Hello!" he said, "where did this come from?"
The boy's heart began to throb, for once he had started to carry that
very lump to his grandfather, had changed his mind, and thoughtlessly
dropped it there. The geologist was looking at it closely and then
began to weigh it with his hand.
"This is pretty good-looking coal," he said, and he laughed. "I guess
we'd better go up a little farther--this didn't come out all by itself."
The boy dug Mavis sharply in the shoulder.
"Git back into the bushes--quick!" he whispered.
The girl shrank away and the boy dropped down into the bed of the creek
and slipped down to where the stream poured between two bowlders over
which ascent was slippery and difficult. And when the party turned up
the bend of the creek, Arch Hawn saw the boy, tense and erect, on the
wet black summit of one bowlder, with his old rifle in the hollow of
his arm.
"Why, hello, Jason!" he cried, with a start of surprise; "found
anything to shoot?"
"Not yit!" said Jason shortly.
The geologist stepped around Arch and started to climb toward the foot
of the bowlder.
"You stop thar!"
The ring of the boy's fiery command stopped the man as though a
rattlesnake had given the order at his very feet, and he looked up
bewildered; but the boy had not moved.
"Whut you mean, boy?" shouted Arch. "We're lookin' for a vein o' coal."
"Well, you hain't a-goin' to find hit up this way."
"Whut you want to keep us from goin' up here fer?" asked the uncle with
sarcastic suspicion. "Got a still up here?"
"That's my business," said little Jason.
"Well," shouted Arch angrily again, "this ain't yo' land an' I've got a
option on it an' hit's my business to go up here, an' I'm goin'!"
As he pushed ahead of the geologist the boy flashed his old rifle to
his shoulder.
"I'll let ye come just two steps more," he said quietly, and old Jason
Hawn began to grin and stepped aside as though to get out of range.
"Hol' on thar, Arch," he said; "he'll shoot, shore!" And Arch held on,
bursting with rage and glaring up at the boy.
"I've a notion to git me a switch an' whoop the life out o' you." The
boy laughed derisively.
"My whoopin' days air over." The amazed and amused geologist put his
hand on Arch's shoulder.
"Never mind," he said, and with a significant wink he pulled a
barometer out of his pocket and carefully noted the altitude.
"We'll manage it later."
The party turned, old Jason still smiling grimly, the colonel
chuckling, the geologist busy with speculation, and Arch sore and
angry, but wondering what on earth it was that the boy had found up
that ravine. Presently with the geologist he dropped behind the other
two and the latter's frowning brow cleared into a smile at his lips. He
stopped, looking still at the black lump and weighing it once more in
his hand.
"I think I know this coal," he said in a low voice, "and if I'm right
you've got the best and thickest vein of coking coal in these
mountains. It's the Culloden seam. Nobody ever has found it on this
side of the mountain, and it is supposed to have petered out on the way
through. That boy has found the Culloden seam. The altitude is right,
the coal looks and weighs like it, and we can find it somewhere else
under that bench along the mountain. So you better let the boy alone."
Little Jason stood motionless looking after them. Little Mavis crept
from her hiding-place. Her face showed no pride in Jason's triumph and
few traces of excitement, for she was already schooled to the quiet
acquiescence of mountain women in the rough deeds of the men. She had
seen Jason going up that ravine, she could simply not help going
herself to learn why, she was mystified by what he had done up there,
but she had kept his secret faithfully. Now she was beginning to
understand that the matter was serious, and for that reason the boy's
charge of spying lay heavier on her mind. So she came slowly and shyly
and stood behind him, her eyes dark with penitence.
The boy heard her, but he did not turn around.
"You better go home, Mavie," he said, and at his very tone her face
flashed with joy. "They mought come back agin. I'm goin' to stay up
here till dark. They can't see nothin' then."
There was not a word of rebuke for her; it was his secret and hers now,
and pride and gratitude filled her heart and her eyes.
"All right, Jasie," she said obediently, and down the bowlder she
stepped lightly, and slipping down the bed of the creek, disappeared.
And not once did she look around.
The shadows lengthened, the ravines filled with misty blue, the steep
westward spur threw its bulky shadow on the sunlit flank of the
opposite hill, and the lonely spirit of night came with the gloom that
gathered fast about him in the defile where he lay. A slow wind was
blowing up from the river toward him, and on it came faintly the long
mellow blast of a horn. It was no hunter's call, and he sprang to his
feet. Again the winding came and his tense muscles relaxed--nor was it
a warning that "revenues" were coming--and he sank back to his lonely
useless vigil again. The sun dipped, the sky darkened, the black wings
of the night rushed upward and downward and from all around the
horizon, but only when they were locked above him did he slip like a
creature of the gloom down the bed of the stream.