For Boone the approaching summer was no longer a period of zestful
anticipation. During that whole term he had looked eagerly ahead to
those coming months back in the hills, when with the guidance of his
wise friend he should plunge into the wholesome excitement of canvassing
his district.
Now McCalloway was gone. And just before commencement a letter from Anne
brought news that made his heart sink.
"Father is going home to England for the summer," she said,
"and that means that I won't get to the hills. I'm heartbroken
over it, and it isn't just that 'I always miss the hills,'
either. I do miss them. Every dogwood that I see blooming alone
in somebody's front yard, every violet in the grass, makes me
homesick for the places where beauty isn't only sampled but
runs riot--but there's a more personal note than that."
"You must climb old Slag-face for me, Boone, and write me all
about it. If a single tree has blown down, don't fail to tell
me, dear."
There was also another thing which would cloud his return to Marlin
County. He could, in decency, no longer defer a painful confession to
Happy. So far, chance had fended it off, but now she was back from the
settlement school for good, and he was through college. In justice to
her further silence could not be maintained.
Then May brought the Battle of the Yalu.
First there were only meagre newspaper reports--all that Boone saw
before commencement--and later when the filtration of time brought the
fuller discussions in the magazines, and the world had discovered
General Kuroki, he was in the hills where magazines rarely came.
Upon the wall of General Prince's law office hung a map of the
Manchurian terrain, and each day that devotee of military affairs took
it down, and, with black ink and red ink, marked and remarked its
surface.
On one occasion, when Colonel Wallifarro found him so employed, the two
leaned over, with their heads close, in study of the situation.
"This Kuroki seems to be a man of mystery, General," began Wallifarro.
"And it has set me to speculating. The correspondents hint that he's not
a native Japanese. They tell us that he towers in physical as well as
mental stature above his colleagues."
"I can guess your thought, Tom," smiled General Prince. "And the same
idea occurred to me. You are thinking of the two Japanese agents who
came to the hills--and of McCalloway's sudden departure on a secret
journey. But it's only a romantic assumption. I followed the
Chinese-Japanese War with a close fidelity of detail--and Kuroki, though
less conspicuous than nowadays, was even then prominent."
Tom Wallifarro bit the end from a cigar and lighted it.
"It is none the less to be assumed that McCalloway is over there," he
observed. "Emperors don't send personal messengers half way round the
world to call unimportant men to the colours."
"My own guess is this, Tom," admitted the cavalryman. "McCalloway is on
Kuroki's staff. Presumably he learned all he knew under Dinwiddie--and
this campaign shows the earmarks of a similar scheme of generalship.
Kuropatkin sought to delay the issue of combat, until over the
restricted artery of the Siberian Railway he could augment his numbers
and assume the offensive with a superior force."
"And at the Yalu, Kuroki struck and forced the fight."
"Precisely. He had three divisions lying about Wiju. It was necessary
to cross the Yalu under the guns of Makau, and there we see the first
manifestation of such an audacious stroke as Dinwiddie himself might
have attempted."
Prince was pacing the floor now, talking rapidly, as he had done that
night when, with McCalloway, he discussed Dinwiddie, his military idol.
"Kuroki--I say Kuroki, whether he was the actual impulse or the
figurehead using the genius of a subordinate--threw the Twelfth Division
forward a day in advance of his full force. The feint of a mock attack
was aimed at Antung--and the enemy rose to the bait. One week in advance
the command was given that at daybreak on the first of May the attack
should develop. At many points, shifting currents had altered the
channel and wiped out former possible fords. Pontoons and bridges had to
be built on the spot--anchors even must be forged from scrap-iron--yet
at the precise moment designated in the orders, the Mikado's forces
struck their blow. But wait just a moment, Tom."
General Prince opened a drawer and took out a magazine.
"Let me read you what one correspondent writes: 'At ten-thirty on the
morning of April thirtieth, the duel of the opposing heights began, with
roaring skies and smoking hills. The slopes north of Chinlien-Cheng were
generously timbered that morning. Night found them shrapnel-torn and
naked of verdure.
"'To visualize the field, one must picture a tawny river, island-dotted
and sweeping through a broken country which lifts gradually to the
Manchurian ridges. Behind Tiger Hill and Conical Hill, quiet and chill
in the morning mists, lay the Czar's Third Army.
"'Then were the judgments loosened.' The attack is on now, and the thin
brown lines are moving forward--slowly at first, as they approach the
shallows of the river beyond the bridges and the islands. Those wreaths
of smoke are Zassolich's welcome--from studiously emplaced pieces
raking the challengers--but the challengers are closing their gaps and
gaining momentum--carrying their wounded with them, as they wade
forward. There are those, of course, whom it is impossible to
assist--those who stumble in the shallow water to be snuffed out,
candle-fashion.'"
The General paused to readjust his glasses, and Colonel Wallifarro mused
with eyes fixed on the violet spirals of smoke twisting up from his
cigar end. "Our friend would seem to be playing a man's game, after his
long hermitage."
Prince took up the magazine again.
"'The farther shore is reached under a withering fire. Annihilation
threatens the yellow men--they waver--then comes the order to charge.
For an instant the brown lines shiver and hang hesitant under the sting
of the death-hail--but after that moment they leap forward and sweep
upward. Their momentum gathers to an irresistible onrush, and under it
the defence breaks down. The noises that have raved from earth to
heaven, from horizon to horizon, are dropping from crescendo to
diminuendo. The field pieces of the Czar are being choked into the
muffled growl of despair. Doggedly the Russian is giving back.'"
"Do you suppose, General," inquired Colonel Wallifarro suddenly, "that
McCalloway confided the purpose of his journey to the boy?"
Prince shook his head positively. "I am quite sure that he has confided
it to no one--but I am equally sure that Boone has guessed it by now."
"In that event I think it would tremendously interest him to read that
article."
In the log house, where he had now no companionship, Boone received the
narrative.
The place was very empty. Twilight had come on with its dispiriting
shadows, and Boone lighted a lamp, and since the night was cool he had
also kindled a few logs on the hearth.
For a long while he sat there after reading and rereading the
description of the fight along the Manchurian River. His hands rested on
his knees, and his fingers held the clipping.
On the table a forgotten law book lay open at a chapter on torts, but
the young man's eyes were fixed on the blaze, in whose fitful leapings
he was picturing, "the thunders through the foothills; tufts of fleecy
shrapnel spread along the empty plain"--and in the picture he always saw
one face, dominated by a pair of eyes that could be granite-stern or
soft as mossy waters.
Finally he rose and unlocked a closet from which he reverently took out
a scabbarded sword. Dinwiddie had entrusted that blade to McCalloway,
and McCalloway had in turn entrusted it to him. Out there he was using a
less ornate sabre!
The young mountaineer slipped the blade out of the sheath and once more
read the engraved inscription.
Something rose in his throat, and he gulped it down. He spoke aloud, and
his words sounded unnatural in the empty room.
"The Emperor of China sent for him--and he wouldn't go," said the boy.
"The Emperor of Japan sent for him--and he couldn't refuse. That's the
character of gentleman that's spent years trying to make a man of me."
Suddenly Boone laid the sword on the table and dropped on his knees
beside it, with his hands clasped over the hilt.
"Almighty God," he prayed, "give me the strength to make good--and not
disappoint him."
* * * * *
It was a heavy hearted young man who presented himself the next night at
the house of Cyrus Spradling, and one who went as a penitent to the
confessional.
Once more the father sat on the porch alone with his twilight pipe, and
once more the skies behind the ridges were high curtains of pale amber.
"Ye're a sight fer sore eyes, boy," declared the old mountaineer
heartily. "An' folks 'lows thet ye aims ter run fer office, too. Wa'al,
I reckon betwixt me an' you, we kin contrive ter make shore of yore
gettin' two votes anyhow. I pledges ye mine fer sartain."
Boone laughed though tears would better have fitted his mood, and the
old fellow chuckled at his own pleasantry.
"I reckon my gal will be out presently," Cyrus went on. "I've done
concluded thet ye war p'int-blank right in arguing that schoolin'
wouldn't harm her none."
But when the girl came out, the man went in and left them, as he always
did, and though the plucking of banjos within told of the family full
gathered, none of the other members interrupted the presumed courtship
which was so cordially approved.
Happy stood for a moment in the doorway against a lamplit background,
and Boone acknowledged to himself that she had an undeniable beauty and
that she carried herself with the simple grace of a slender poplar. She
was, he told himself with unsparing self-accusation, in every way
worthier than he, for she had fought her battles without aid, and now
she stood there smiling on him confidently out of dark eyes that made no
effort to render their welcome coy with provocative concealment.
"Howdy, Boone," she said in a voice of soft and musical cadences. "It's
been a long time since I've seen you."
"Yes," he answered with a painful sort of slowness, "but now that we're
both through school and back home to stay, I reckon we'll see each other
oftener. Are you glad to come back, Happy?"
For a few moments the girl looked at him in the faint glow that came
through the door, without response. It was as though her answer must
depend on what she read in his face, and there was not light enough for
its reading.
"I don't quite know, myself, Boone," she said hesitantly at last. "I've
sort of been studying over it. How about you?"
When she had settled into a chair, he took a seat at her feet with his
back against one of the posts of the porch, and replied with an
assumption of certainty that he did not feel, "A feller's bound to be
glad to get back to his own folks."
"After I'd been down there the first time and came back here again, _I_
wasn't glad," was her candid rejoinder. "I felt like I just couldn't
bear it. Over there things were all clean, and folks paid some attention
to qualities--only they didn't call 'em that. They say 'manners' at the
school. Here it seemed like I'd come home to a human pig-sty--and I was
plumb ashamed of my own folks. When I looked ahead and saw a lifetime of
that--it seemed to me that I'd rather kill myself than go on with it."
"You say"--Boone made the inquiry gravely--"that you felt like that at
first. How do you feel now?"
"Later on I got to feelin' ashamed of myself, instead of my people," she
replied. "I got to seein' that I was faultin' them for not having had
the chance they were slavin' to give me."
Boone bent attentively forward but he said nothing, and she went on.
"You know as well as I do that, so far, there aren't many people here
that have much use for changes, but there are some few. The ground that
the school sets on was given by an old man that didn't have much else to
give. I remember right well what he said in the letter he wrote. It's
printed in their catalogue: 'I don't look after wealth for them, but I
want all young-uns taught to live right. I have heart and cravin' that
our people may grow better, and I deed my land to a school as long as
the Constitution of the United States stands.' I reckon that's the right
spirit, Boone."