Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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At the capital the arsenal was under a picked guard and the
autocrat was said to be preparing for a resort to arms. A few
mountaineers were seen drifting about the streets, and the State
offices--"just a-lookin' aroun' to see if their votes was a-goin'
to be counted in or not."
At the end of the fortnight the autocrat claimed the fight by one
vote, but three days before Thanksgiving Day two of the State
triumvirate declared for the Republican from the Pennyroyal--and
resigned.
"Great Caesar!" shouted Colonel Pendleton. "Can the one that's
left appoint his OWN board?"
Being for the autocrat, he not only could but did--for the
autocrat's work was only begun. The contest was yet to come.
Meanwhile the great game was at hand. The fight for the
championship lay now between the State University and old
Transylvania, and, amid a forest of waving flags and a frenzied
storm from human throats, was fought out desperately on the day
that the nation sets aside for peace, prayer, and thanksgiving.
Every atom of resentment, indignation, rebellion, ambition that
was stored up in Jason went into that fight. It seemed to John
Burnham and to Mavis and Marjorie that their team was made up of
just one black head and one yellow one, for everywhere over the
field and all the time, like a ball of fire and its shadow, those
two heads darted, and, when they came together, they were the last
to go down in the crowd of writhing bodies and the first to leap
into view again--and always with the ball nearer the enemy's goal.
Behind that goal each head darted once, and by just those two
goals was the game won. Gray was the hero he always was; Jason was
the coming idol, and both were borne off the field on the
shoulders of a crowd that was hoarse with shouting triumph and
weeping tears of joy. And on that triumphal way Jason swerved his
eyes from Marjorie and Mavis swerved hers from Gray. There was no
sleep for Jason that night, but the next night the fierce tension
of mind and muscle relaxed and he slept long and hard; and Sunday
morning found him out in the warm sunlight of the autumn fields,
seated on a fence rail--alone.
He had left the smoke cloud of the town behind him and walked
aimlessly afield, except to take the turnpike that led the
opposite way from Mavis and Marjorie and John Burnham and Gray,
for he wanted to be alone. Now, perched in the crotch of a stake-
and-ridered fence, he was calmly, searchingly, unsparingly taking
stock with himself.
In the first place the training-table was no more, and he must go
back to delivering morning papers. With foot-ball, with diversions
in college and in the country, he had lost much time and he must
make that up. The political turmoil had kept his mind from his
books and for a while Marjorie had taken it away from them
altogether. He had come to college none too well prepared, and
already John Burnham had given him one kindly warning; but so
supreme was his self-confidence that he had smiled at the
geologist and to himself. Now he frowningly wondered if he had not
lost his head and made a fool of himself; and a host of worries
and suspicions attacked him so sharply and suddenly that, before
he knew what he was doing, he had leaped panic-stricken from the
fence and at a half-trot was striking back across the fields in a
bee-line for his room and his books. And night and day thereafter
he stuck to them.
Meanwhile the struggle was going on at the capital, and by the
light of every dawn the boy drank in every detail of it from the
morning paper that was literally his daily bread. Two weeks after
the big game, the man from the Pennyroyal was installed as
governor. The picked guard at the arsenal was reinforced. The
contesting autocrat was said to have stored arms in the
penitentiary, a gray, high-walled fortress within a stone's throw
of the governor's mansion, for the Democratic warden thereof was
his loyal henchman. The first rumor of the coming of the
mountaineers spread, and the capital began to fill with the ward
heelers and bad men of the autocrat.
A week passed, there was no filing of a protest, a pall of
suspense hung over the land like a black cloud, and under it there
was no more restless spirit than Jason, who had retreated into his
own soul as though it were a fortress of his hills. No more was he
seen at any social gathering--not even at the gymnasium, for the
delivery of his morning papers gave him all the exercise that he
needed and more. His hard work and short hours of sleep began to
tell on him. Sometimes the printed page of his book would swim
before his eyes and his brain go panic-stricken. He grew pale,
thin, haggard, and worn, and Marjorie saw him only when he was
silently, swiftly striding from dormitory to class-room and back
again--grim, reticent, and non-approachable. When Christmas
approached he would not promise to go to Gray's nor to John
Burnham's, and he rarely went now even to his mother. In Mavis
Hawn, Gray found the same mystifying change, for when the morbidly
sensitive spirit of the mountaineer is wounded, healing is slow
and cure difficult. One day, however, each pair met. Passing the
mouth of the lane, Gray saw Mavis walking slowly along it homeward
and he rode after her. She turned when she heard his horse behind
her, her chin lifted, and her dark sullen eyes looked into his
with a stark, direct simplicity that left him with his lips half
open--confused and speechless. And gently, at last:
"What's the matter, Mavis?"
Still she looked, unquestioning, uncompromising, and turned
without answer and went slowly on home while the boy sat his horse
and looked after her until she climbed the porch of her cottage
and, without once turning her head, disappeared within. But Jason
at his meeting with Marjorie broke his grim reticence in spite of
himself. She had come upon him at sunset under the snowy willows
by the edge of the ice-locked pond. He had let the floodgates down
and she had been shaken and terrified by the torrent that rushed
from him. The girl shrank from his bitter denunciation of himself.
He had been a fool. The mid-year examinations would be a tragedy
for him, and he must go to the "kitchen" or leave college with
pride broken and in just disgrace. Fate had trapped him like a
rat. A grewsome oath had been put on him as a child and from it he
could never escape. He had been robbed of his birthright by his
own mother and the people of the Blue-grass, and Marjorie's people
were now robbing his of their national birthrights as well. The
boy did not say her people, but she knew that was what he meant,
and she looked so hurt that Jason spoke quickly his gratitude for
all the kindness that had been shown him. And when he started with
his gratitude to her, his memories got the better of him and he
stopped for a moment with hungry eyes, but seeing her
consternation over what might be coming next, he had ended with a
bitter smile at the further bitter proof she was giving him.
"But I understand--now," he said sternly to himself and sadly to
her, and he turned away without seeing the quiver of her mouth and
the starting of her tears.
Going to his mother's that afternoon, Jason found Mavis standing
by the fence, hardly less pale than the snow under her feet, and
looking into the sunset. She started when she heard the crunch of
his feet, and from the look of her face he knew that she thought
he might be some one else.
He saw that she had been crying, and as quickly she knew that the
boy was in a like agony of mind. There was only one swift look--a
mutual recognition of a mutual betrayal--but no word passed then
nor when they walked together back to the house, for race and
relationship made no word possible. Within the house Jason noticed
his mother's eyes fixed anxiously on him, and when Mavis was
clearing up in the kitchen after supper, she subtly shifted her
solicitude to the girl in order to draw some confession from her
son.
"Mavis wants to go back to the mountains."
The ruse worked, for Jason looked up quickly and then into the
fire while the mother waited.
"Sometimes I want to go back myself," he said wearily; "it's
gittin' too much for me here."
Martha Hawn looked at her husband stretched on the bed in a
drunken sleep and began to cry softly.
"It's al'ays been too much fer me," she sobbed. "I've al'ays
wanted to go back."
For the first time Jason began to think how lonely her life must
be, and, perhaps as the result of his own suffering, his heart
suddenly began to ache for her.
"Don't worry, mammy--I'll take ye back some day."
Mavis came back from the kitchen. Again she had been crying. Again
the same keen look passed between them and with only that look
Jason climbed the stairs to her room. As his eyes wandered about
the familiar touches the hand of civilization had added to the
bare little chamber it once was, he saw on the dresser of
varnished pine one touch of that hand that he had never noticed
before--the picture of Gray Pendleton. Evidently Mavis had
forgotten to put it away, and Jason looked at it curiously a
moment--the frank face, strong mouth, and winning smile--but he
never noticed that it was placed where she could see it when she
kneeled at her bedside, and never guessed that it was the last
earthly thing her eyes rested on before darkness closed about her,
and that the girl took its image upward with her even in her
prayers.
XXIV
The red dawn of the twentieth century was stealing over the frost-
white fields, and in the alien house of his fathers John Burnham
was watching it through his bedroom window. There had been little
sleep for him that New Year's night, and even now, when he went
back to bed, sleep would not come.
The first contest in the life of the State was going on at the
little capital. That capital was now an armed camp. The law-makers
there themselves were armed, divided, and men of each party were
marked by men of the other for the first shot when the crisis
should come. There was a Democratic conspiracy to defraud--a
Republican conspiracy to resist by force to the death. Even in the
placing of the ballots in the box for the drawing of the contest
board, fraud was openly charged, and even then pistols almost
leaped from their holsters. Republicans whose seats were contested
would be unseated and the autocrat's triumph would thus be sure--
that was the plan wrought out by his inflexible will and iron
hand. The governor from the Pennyroyal swore he would leave his
post only on a stretcher. Disfranchisement was on the very eve of
taking place, liberty was at stake, and Kentuckians unless aroused
to action would be a free people no longer. The Republican cry was
that the autocrat had created his election triumvirate, had stolen
his nomination, tried to steal his election, and was now trying to
steal the governorship. There was even a meeting in the big town
of the State to determine openly whether there should be
resistance to him by force. Two men from the mountains had met in
the lobby of the Capitol Hotel and a few moments later, under the
drifting powder smoke, two men lay wounded and three lay dead. The
quarrel was personal, it was said, but the dial-hand of the times
was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come.
And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy
hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of
the twentieth century of the Christian era that Burnham watched,
the dawn of the one hundred and twenty-fifth year of the nation's
life--of the one hundred and seventh year of statehood for
Kentucky. And thinking of the onward sweep of the world, of the
nation, North, East, West, and South, the backward staggering of
his own loved State tugged sorely at his heart.
In chapel next morning John Burnham made another little talk--
chiefly to the young men of the Blue-grass among whom this tragedy
was taking place. No inheritance in American life was better than
theirs, he told them--no better ideals in the relations of family,
State, and nation. But the State was sick now with many ills and
it was coming to trial now before the judgment of the watching
world. If it stood the crucial fire, it would be the part of all
the youth before him to maintain and even better the manhood that
should come through unscathed. And if it failed, God forbid, it
would be for them to heal, to mend, to upbuild, and, undaunted,
push on and upward again. And as at the opening of the session he
saw again, lifted to him with peculiar intenseness, the faces of
Marjorie and Gray Pendleton, and of Mavis and Jason Hawn--only now
Gray looked deeply serious and Jason sullen and defiant. And at
Mavis, Marjorie did not turn this time to smile. Nor was there any
furtive look from any one of the four to any other, when the
students rose, though each pair of cousins drifted together on the
way out, and in pairs went on their separate ways.
The truth was that Marjorie and Gray were none too happy over the
recent turn of affairs. Both were too fine, too generous, to hurt
the feelings of others except with pain to themselves. They knew
Mavis and Jason were hurt but, hardly realizing that between the
four the frank democracy of childhood was gone, they hardly knew
how and how deeply. Both were mystified, greatly disturbed, drawn
more than ever by the proud withdrawal of the mountain boy and
girl, and both were anxious to make amends. More than once Gray
came near riding over to Steve Hawn's and trying once more to
understand and if possible to explain and restore good feeling,
but the memory of his rebuff from Mavis and the unapproachable
quality in Jason made him hesitate. Naturally with Marjorie this
state of mind was worse, because of the brink of Jason's
confession for which she knew she was much to blame, and because
of the closer past between them. Once only she saw him striding
the fields, and though she pulled in her horse to watch him, Jason
did not know; and once he came to her when he did not know that
she knew. It was the night before the mid-year examinations and
Marjorie, in spite of that fact, had gone to a dance and, because
of it, was spending the night in town with a friend. The two girls
had got home a little before three in the morning, and Marjorie
had put out her light and gone to bed but, being sleepless, had
risen and sat dreaming before the fire. The extraordinary
whiteness of the moonlight had drawn her to the window when she
rose again, and she stood there like a tall lily, looking silent
sympathy to the sufferers in the bitter cold outside. She put one
bare arm on the sill of the closed window and looked down at the
snow-crystals hardly less brilliant under the moon than they would
be under the first sun-rays next morning, looked through the snow-
laden branches of the trees, over the white house-tops, and out to
the still white fields--the white world within her answering the
white world without as in a dream. She was thinking of Jason, as
she had been thinking for days, for she could not get the boy out
of her mind. All night at the dance she had been thinking of him,
and when between the stone pillars of the gateway a figure
appeared without overcoat, hands in pockets and a bundle of
something under one arm, the hand on the window-sill dropped till
it clutched her heart at the strangeness of it, for her watching
eyes saw plain in the moonlight the drawn white face of Jason
Hawn. He tossed something on the porch and her tears came when she
realized what it meant. Then he drew a letter out of his pocket,
hesitated, turned, turned again, tossed it too upon the porch, and
wearily crunched out through the gate. The girl whirled for her
dressing-gown and slippers, and slipped downstairs to the door,
for her instinct told her the letter was for her, and a few
minutes later she was reading it by the light of the fire.
"I know where you are," the boy had written. "Don't worry, but I
want to tell you that I take back that promise I made in the road
that day."
John Burnham's examination was first for Jason that morning, and
when the boy came into the recitation-room the school-master was
shocked by the tumult in his face. He saw the lad bend listlessly
over his papers and look helplessly up and around--worn, brain-
fagged, and half wild--saw him rise suddenly and hurriedly, and
nodded him an excuse before he could ask for it, thinking the boy
had suddenly gone ill. When he did not come back Burnham got
uneasy, and after an hour he called another member of the faculty
to take his place and hurried out. As he went down the corridor a
figure detached itself from a group of girls and flew after him.
He felt his arm caught tightly and he turned to find Marjorie,
white, with trembling lips, but struggling to be calm:
"Where is Jason?" Burnham recovered quickly.
"Why, I don't believe he is very well," he said with gentle
carelessness. "I'm going over now to see him. I'll be back in a
minute." Wondering and more than ever uneasy, Burnham went on,
while the girl unconsciously followed him to the door, looking
after him and almost on the point of wringing her hands. In the
boy's room Burnham found an old dress-suit case packed and placed
on the study table. On it was a pencil-scribbled note to one of
his room-mates:
"I'll send for this later," it read, and that was all.
Jason was gone.
XXV
The little capital sits at the feet of hills on the edge of the
Blue-grass, for the Kentucky River that sweeps past it has brought
down those hills from the majestic highlands of the Cumberland.
The great railroad of the State had to bore through rock to reach
the place and clangs impudently through it along the main street.
For many years other sections of the State fought to wrest this
fountain-head of law and government from its moorings and
transplant it to the heart of the Blue-grass, or to the big town
on the Ohio, because, as one claimant said:
"You had to climb a mountain, swim a river, or go through a hole
to get to it."
This geographical witticism cost the claimant his eternal
political life, and the capital clung to its water, its wooded
heaps of earth, and its hole in the gray wall. Not only hills did
the river bring down but birds, trees, and even mountain mists,
and from out the black mouth of that hole in the wall and into
those morning mists stole one day a long train and stopped before
the six great gray pillars of the historic old State-house. Out of
this train climbed a thousand men, with a thousand guns, and the
mists might have been the breath of the universal whisper:
"The mountaineers are here!"
Of their coming Jason had known for some time from Arch Hawn, and
just when they were to come he had learned from Steve. The boy had
not enough carfare even for the short ride of less than thirty
miles to the capital, so he rode as far as his money would carry
him and an hour before noon found him striding along on foot, his
revolver bulging at his hip, his dogged eyes on the frozen
turnpike. It was all over for him, he thought with the passionate
finality of youth--his college career with its ambitions and
dreams. He was sorry to disappoint Saint Hilda and John Burnham,
but his pride was broken and he was going back now to the people
and the life that he never should have left. He would find his
friends and kinsmen down there at the capital, and he would play
his part first in whatever they meant to do. Babe Honeycutt would
be there, and about Babe he had not forgotten his mother's
caution. He had taken his promise back from Marjorie merely to be
free to act in a double emergency, but Babe would be safe until he
himself was sure. Then he would tell his mother what he meant to
do, or after it was done, and as to what she would then say the
boy had hardly a passing wonder, so thin yet was the coating with
which civilization had veneered him. And yet the boy almost smiled
to himself to think how submerged that childhood oath was now in
the big new hatred that had grown within him for the man who was
threatening the political life of his people and his State--had
grown steadily since the morning before he had taken the train in
the mountains for college in the Blue-grass. On the way he had
stayed all night in a little mountain town in the foot-hills. He
had got up at dawn, but already, to escape the hot rays of an
August sun, mountaineers were coming in on horseback from miles
and miles around to hear the opening blast of the trumpet that was
to herald forth their wrongs. Under the trees and along the fences
they picketed their horses, thousands of them, and they played
simple games patiently, or patiently sat in the shade of pine and
cedar waiting, while now and then a band made havoc with the lazy
summer air. And there, that morning, Jason had learned from a red-
headed orator that "a vicious body of deformed Democrats and
degenerate Americans" had passed a law at the capital that would
rob the mountaineers of the rights that had been bought with the
blood of their forefathers in 1776, 1812, 1849, and 1865. Every
ear caught the emphasis on "rob" and "rights," the patient eye of
the throng grew instantly alert and keen and began to burn with a
sinister fire, while the ear of it heard further how, through that
law, their ancient Democratic enemies would throw THEIR votes out
of the ballot-box or count them as they pleased--even for
THEMSELVES. If there were three Democrats in a mountain county--
and the speaker had heard that in one county there was only one--
that county could under that law run every State and national
election to suit itself. Would the men of the mountains stand
that?--No! HE knew them--that orator did. HE knew that if the
spirit of liberty, that at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock started
blazing its way over a continent, lived unchanged anywhere, it
dwelt, however unenlightened and unenlightening, in a heart that
for an enemy was black with hate, red with revenge, though for the
stranger, white and kind; that in an eagle's isolation had kept
strung hard and fast to God, country, home; that ticking clock-
like for a century without hurry or pause was beginning to quicken
at last to the march-rhythm of the world--the heart of the
Southern hills. Now the prophecy from the flaming tongue of that
red-headed orator was coming to pass, and the heart of the
Kentucky hills was making answer.
It was just before noon when the boy reached the hill overlooking
the capital. He saw the gleam of the river that came down from the
mountains, and the home-thrill of it warmed him from head to foot.
Past the cemetery he went, with a glimpse of the statue of Daniel
Boone rising above the lesser dead. A little farther down was the
castle-like arsenal guarded by soldiers, and he looked at them
curiously, for they were the first his had ever seen. Below him
was the gray, gloomy bulk of the penitentiary, which was the State
building that he used to hear most of in the mountains. About the
railway station he saw men slouching whom he knew to belong to his
people, but no guns were now in sight, for the mountaineers had
checked them at the adjutant-general's office, and each wore a tag
for safe-keeping in his button-hole. Around the Greek portico of
the capitol building he saw more soldiers lounging, and near a big
fountain in the State-house yard was a Gatling-gun which looked
too little to do much harm. Everywhere were the stern, determined
faces of mountain men, walking the streets staring at things,
shuffling in and out of the buildings; and, through the iron
pickets of the yard fence, Jason saw one group cooking around a
camp-fire. A newspaper man was setting his camera for them and the
boy saw a big bearded fellow reach under his blanket. The
photographer grasped his instrument and came flying through the
iron gate, crying humorously, "Excuse ME!"
And then Jason ran into Steve Hawn, who looked at him with mild
wonder and, without a question, drawled simply:
"I kind o' thought you'd be along."
"Is grandpap here?" asked the boy, and Steve shook his head.
"He was too po'ly--but thar's more Hawns and Honeycutts in town
than you kin shake a stick at, an' they're walkin' round hyeh jes
like brothers. Hello, hyeh's one now!"
Jason turned to see big Babe Honeycutt, who, seeing him, paled a
little, smiled sheepishly, and, without speaking, moved uneasily
away. Whereat Steve laughed.
"Looks like Babe is kind o' skeered o' you fer SOME reason--Hello,
they're comin'!"
A group had gathered on the brick flagging between the frozen
fountain and the Greek portico of the old capitol, and every
slouching figure was moving toward it. Among them Jason saw Hawns
and Honeycutts--saw even his old enemy, "little Aaron" Honeycutt,
and he was not even surprised, for in a foot-ball game with one
college on the edge of the Blue-grass, he had met a pair of
envious, hostile eyes from the side-lines and he knew then that
little Aaron, too, had gone away to school. From the habit of long
hostility now, Jason swerved to the other edge of the crowd. From
the streets, the boarding-houses, the ancient Capitol Hotel, gray,
too, as a prison, from the State buildings in the yard,
mountaineers were surging forth and massing before the capitol
steps and around the big fountain. Already the Democrats had grown
hoarse with protest and epithet. It was an outrage for the
Republicans to bring down this "mountain army of
intimidationists"--and only God knew what they meant to do or
might do. The autocrat might justly and legally unseat a few
Republicans, to be sure, but one open belief was that these
"unkempt feudsmen and outlaws" would rush the legislative halls,
shoot down enough Democrats to turn the Republican minority, no
matter how small, into a majority big enough to enforce the
ballot-proven will of the people. Wild, pale, horrified faces
began to appear in the windows of the houses that bordered the
square and in the buildings within the yard--perhaps they were
going to do it now. Every soldier stiffened where he stood and
caught his gun tightly, and once more the militia colonel looked
yearningly at the Gatling-gun as helpless as a firecracker in the
midst of the crowd, and then imploringly to the adjutant-general,
who once again smiled and shook his head. If sinister in purpose,
that mountain army was certainly well drilled and under the
dominant spirit of some amazing leadership, for no sound, no
gesture, no movement came from it. And then Jason saw a pale, dark
young man, the secretary of state, himself a mountain man, rise
above the heads of the crowd and begin to speak.
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