Books: The Heart Of The Hills

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills

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"Whut you doin' out hyeh?"

"I'm goin' to see Gray through his troubles," said Jason quietly.

"I kind o' thought you had troubles enough o' yo' own," sneered
the man.

Jason did not answer. His mother was seated within with her back
to the door, and when she turned Jason saw that she had been
weeping, and, catching sight of a red welt on her temple, he
walked over to her.

"How'd that happen, mammy?"

She hesitated and Jason whirled with such fury that his mother
caught him with both arms, and Steve lost no time reaching for his
gun.

"I jammed it agin the kitchen door, Jasie."

He looked at her, knew that she was lying, and when he turned to
go, halted at the door.

"If you ever touch my mother again," he said with terrifying
quiet, "I'll kill you as sure as there is a God in heaven to
forgive me."

Across the midsummer fields Jason went swiftly. On his right, half
of a magnificent woodland was being laid low--on his left, another
was all gone--and with Colonel Pendleton both, he knew, had been
heart-breaking deeds of necessity, for his first duty, that
gentleman claimed, was to his family and to his creditors, and
nobody could rob him of his right to do what he pleased, much less
what he ought, with his own land. And so the colonel still stood
out against friend and neighbor, and open and secret foes. His
tobacco beds had been raided, one of his barns had been burned,
his cattle had been poisoned, and, sick as he was, threats were
yet coming in that the night riders would burn his house and take
his life. Across the turnpike were the fields and untouched
woodlands of Marjorie, and it looked as though the hand of
Providence had blessed one side of the road and withered the other
with a curse. On top of the orchard fence, to the western side of
the house, Jason sat a while. The curse was descending on Gray's
innocent head and he had had the weakness and the folly to lift
his eyes to the blessing across the way. As Mavis had pointed out
the way to Gray, so Marjorie, without knowing it, had pointed. the
way for him. When long ago he had been helpless before her by the
snow-fringed willows at the edge of the pond in the old college
yard, she had been frightened and had shrunk away. When he gained
his self-control, she had lost hers, and in her loneliness had
come trailing toward him almost like a broken-winged young bird
looking for mother help--and he had not misunderstood, though his
heart ached for her suffering as it ached for her. And Marjorie
had been quite right--he had never come back after that one
quarrel, and he would never come. The old colonel had gone to him,
but he had hardly more than opened his lips when he had both hands
on the boy's shoulders with broken words of sympathy and then had
turned away--so quickly had he seen that Jason fully understood
the situation and had disposed of it firmly, proudly, and finally-
-for himself. The mountains were for Jason--there were his duty
and the work of his life. Under June apples turning golden, and
amid the buzzing of bees, the boy went across the orchard, and at
the fence he paused again. Marjorie and her mother were coming out
of the house with Gray, and Jason watched them walk to the stile.
Gray was tanned, and even his blonde head had been turned copper
by the mountain sun, while the girl looked like a great golden-
hearted lily. But it was Gray's face as he looked at her that
caught the boy's eyes and held them fast, for the face was tense,
eager, and worshipping.

He saw Marjorie and her mother drive away, saw Gray wave to them
and turn back to the house, and then he was so shocked at the
quick change to haggard worry that draped his friend like a cloak
from head to foot that he could hardly call to him. And so Jason
waited till Gray had passed within, and then he leaped the fence
and made for the portico. Gray himself answered his ring and with
a flashing smile hurried forward when he saw Jason in the doorway.
The two clasped hands and for one swift instant searched each
other's eyes with questions too deep and delicate to be put into
words--each wondering how much the other might know, each silent
if the other did not know. For Gray had learned from his father
about Steve Hawn, and Jason's suspicions of Steve he had kept to
himself.

"My father would like to have you as our guest, Jason, while I am
here," Gray said with some embarrassment, "but he doesn't feel
like letting you take the risk."

Jason threw back the lapel of his coat that covered his badge as
deputy.

"That's what I'm here for," he said with a smile, "but I think I'd
better stay at home. I'll be on hand when the trouble comes."

Gray, too, smiled.

"You don't have to tell me that."

"How is the colonel?"

"He's pretty bad. He wants to see you."

Jason lowered his voice when they entered the hallway. "The
soldiers have reached town to-day. If there's anything going to be
done, it will probably be done to-night."

"I know."

"We won't tell the colonel."

"No."

Then Gray led the way to the sick-room and softly opened the door.
In a great canopied bed lay Colonel Pendleton with his face turned
toward the window, through which came the sun and air, the odors
and bird-songs of spring-time, and when that face turned, Jason
was shocked by its waste and whiteness and by the thinness of the
hand that was weakly thrust out to him. But the fire of the
brilliant eyes burned as ever; there was with him, prone in bed,
still the same demeanor of stately courtesy; and Jason felt his
heart melt and then fill as always with admiration for the man,
the gentleman, who unconsciously had played such a part in the
moulding of his own life, and as always with the recognition of
the unbridgable chasm between them--between even him and Gray. The
bitter resentment he had first felt against this chasm was gone
now, for now he understood and accepted. As men the three were
equal, but father and son had three generations the start of him.
He could see in them what he lacked himself, and what they were
without thought he could only consciously try to be--and he would
keep on trying. The sick man turned his face again to the window
and the morning air. When he turned again he was smiling faintly
and his voice was friendly and affectionate:

"Jason, I know why you are here. I'm not going to thank you, but
I--Gray"--he paused ever so little, and Jason sadly knew what it
meant--"will never forget it. I want you two boys to be friends as
long as you live. I'm sorry, but it looks as though you would both
have to give up yourselves to business--particularly sorry about
Gray, for that is my fault. For the good of our State I wish you
both were going to sit side by side at Frankfort, in Congress, and
the Senate, and fight it out"--he smiled whimsically--"some day
for the nomination for the Presidency. The poor old commonwealth
is in a bad way, and it needs just such boys as you two are. The
war started us downhill, but we might have done better--I know I
might. The earth was too rich--it made life too easy. The horse,
the bottle of whiskey, and the plug of tobacco were all too easily
the best--and the pistol always too ready. We've been cartooned
through the world with a fearsome, half-contemptuous slap on the
back. Our living has been made out of luxuries. Agriculturally,
socially, politically, we have gone wrong, and but for the
American sense of humor the State would be in a just, nation-wide
contempt. The Ku-Klux, the burning of toll-gates, the Goebel
troubles, and the night rider are all links in the same chain of
lawlessness, and but for the first the others might not have been.
But we are, in spite of all this, a law-abiding people, and the
old manhood of the State is still here. Don't forget that--THE OLD
MANHOOD IS HERE."

Jason had sat eager-eyed and listening hard. Bewildered Gray felt
his tears welling, for never had he heard in all his life his
father talk this way. Again Colonel Pendleton turned his face to
the window and went on as though to the world outside.

"I wouldn't let anybody out there say this about us, nor would
you, and maybe if I thought I was going to live many years longer
I might not be saying it now, for some Kentuckian might yet make
me eat my words."

At this the eyes of the two boys crossed and both smiled faintly,
for though the sick man had been a generous liver, his palate
could never have known the taste of one of his own words.

"I don't know--but our ambition is either dying or sinking to a
lower plane, and what a pity, for the capacity is still here to
keep the old giants still alive if the young men could only see,
feel, and try. And if I were as young as one of you two boys, I'd
try to find and make the appeal."

He turned his brilliant eyes to Jason and looked for a moment
silently.

"The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like
Gray here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills
is only dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your
pauper counties are going to be the richest in the State. The
Easterners are buying up our farms as they would buy a yacht or a
motor-car, the tobacco tenants are getting their mites of land
here and there, and even you mountaineers, when you sell your coal
lands, are taking up Blue-grass acres. Don't let the Easterner
swallow you, too. Go home, and, while you are getting rich, enrich
your citizenship, and you and Gray help land-locked, primitive old
Kentucky take her place among the modern sisterhood that is making
the nation. To use a phrase of your own--get busy, boys, get busy
after I am gone."

And then Colonel Pendleton laughed.

"I am hardly the one to say all this, or rather I am just the one
because I am a--failure."

"Father."

The word came like a sob from Gray.

"Oh, yes, I am--but I have never lied except for others, and I
have not been afraid."

Again his face went toward the window.

"Even now," he added in a solemn whisper that was all to himself,
"I believe, and am not afraid."

Presently he lifted himself on one elbow and with Gray's
assistance got to a sitting posture. Then he pulled a paper from
beneath his pillow.

"I want to tell you something, Jason. That was all true, every
word you said the first time Gray and I saw you at your
grandfather's house, and I want you to know now that your land was
bought over my protest and without my knowledge. My own interest
in the general purchase was in the form of stock, and here it is."

Jason's heart began to beat violently.

"Whatever happens to me, this farm will have to be sold, but there
will be something left for Gray. This stock is in Gray's name, and
it is worth now just about what would have been a fair price for
your land five years after it was bought. It is Gray's, and I am
going to give it to him." He handed the paper to bewildered Gray,
who looked at it dazedly, went with it to the window, and stood
there looking out--his father watching him closely.

"You might win in a suit, Jason, I know, but I also know that you
could never collect even damages."

At these words Gray wheeled.

"Then this belongs to you, Jason."

The father smiled and nodded approval and assent.

That night there was a fusillade of shots, and Jason and Gray
rushed out with a Winchester in hand to see one barn in flames and
a tall figure with a firebrand sneaking toward the other. Both
fired and the man dropped, rose to his feet, limped back to the
edge of the woods, and they let him disappear. But all the night,
fighting the fire and on guard against another attack, Jason was
possessed with apprehension and fear--that limping figure looked
like Steve Hawn. So at the first streak of dawn he started for his
mother's home, and when that early he saw her from afar standing
on the porch and apparently looking for him, he went toward her on
a run. She looked wild-eyed, white, and sleepless, but she showed
no signs of tears.

"Where's Steve, mammy?" called Jason in a panting whisper, and
when she nodded back through the open door his throat eased and he
gulped his relief.

"Is he all right?"

She looked at him queerly, tried to speak, and began to tremble so
violently that he stepped quickly past her and stopped on the
threshold--shuddering. A human shape lay hidden under a
brilliantly colored quilt on his mother's bed, and the rigidity of
death had moulded its every outline.

"I reckon you've done it at last, Jasie," said a dead, mechanical
voice behind him.

"Good God, mammy--it must have been Gray or me."

"One of you, shore. He said he saw you shoot at the same time, and
only one of you hit him. I hope hit was you."

Jason turned--horrified, but she was calm and steady now.

"Hit was fitten fer you to be the one. Babe never killed yo'
daddy, Jasie--hit was Steve."

XLII

Gray Pendleton, hearing from a house-servant of the death of Steve
Hawn, hurried over to offer his help and sympathy, and Martha
Hawn, too quick for Jason's protest, let loose the fact that the
responsibility for that death lay between the two. To her simple
faith it was Jason's aim that the intervening hand of God had
directed, but she did not know what the law of this land might do
to her boy, and perhaps her motive was to shield him if possible.
While she spoke, one of her hands was hanging loosely at her side
and the other was clenched tightly at her breast.

"What have you got there, mammy?" said Jason gently. She
hesitated, and at last held out her hand--in the palm lay a
misshapen bullet.

"Steve give me this--hit was the one that got him, he said. He
said mebbe you boys could tell whichever one's gun hit come from."

Both looked at the piece of battered, blood-stained lead with
fascinated horror until Gray, with a queer little smile, took it
from her hand, for he knew, what Jason did not, that the night
before they had used guns of a different calibre, and now his
heart and brain worked swiftly and to a better purpose than he
meant, or would ever know.

"Come on, Jason, you and I will settle the question right now."

And, followed by mystified Jason, he turned from the porch and
started across the yard. Standing in the porch, the mother saw the
two youths stop at the fence, saw Gray raise his right hand high,
and then the piece of lead whizzed through the air and dropped
with hardly more than the splash of a raindrop in the centre of
the pond. The mother understood and she gulped hard. For a moment
the two talked and she saw them clasp hands. Then Gray turned
toward home and Jason came slowly back to the house. The boy said
nothing, the stony calm of the mother's face was unchanged--their
eyes met and that was all.

An hour later, John Burnham came over, told Jason to stay with his
mother, and went forthwith to town. Within a few hours all was
quickly, quietly done, and that night Jason started with his
mother and the body of Mavis's father back to the hills. The
railroad had almost reached the county-seat now, and at the end of
it old Jason Hawn and Mavis were waiting in the misty dawn with
two saddled horses and a spring wagon. The four met with a
handshake, a grave "how-dye," and no further speech. And thus old
Jason and Martha Hawn jolted silently ahead, and little Jason and
Mavis followed silently behind. Once or twice Jason turned to look
at her. She was in black, and the whiteness of her face, unstained
with tears, lent depth and darkness to her eyes, but the eyes were
never turned toward him.

When they entered town there were Hawns in front of one store and
one hotel on one side of the street. There were Honeycutts in
front of one store and one hotel on the other side, and Jason saw
the lowering face of little Aaron, and towering in one group the
huge frame of Babe Honeycutt. Silently the Hawns fell in behind on
horseback, and on foot, and gravely the Honeycutts watched the
procession move through the town and up the winding road.

The pink-flecked cups of the laurel were dropping to the ground,
the woods were starred with great white clusters of rhododendron,
wood-thrushes, unseen, poured golden rills of music from every
cool ravine, air and sunlight were heavy with the richness of
June, and every odor was a whisper, every sound a voice, and every
shaking leaf a friendly little beckoning hand--all giving him
welcome home. The boy began to choke with memories, but Mavis
still gave no sign. Once she turned her head when they passed her
little log school-house where was a little group of her pupils who
had not known they were to have a holiday that day, and whose
faces turned awe-stricken when they saw the reason, and
sympathetic when Mavis gave them a kindly little smile. Up the
creek there and over the sloping green plain of the tree-tops hung
a cloud of smoke from the mines. A few moments more and they
emerged from an arched opening of trees. The lightning-rod of old
Jason's house gleamed high ahead, and on the sunny crest of a bare
little knoll above it were visible the tiny homes built over the
dead in the graveyard of the Hawns. And up there, above the
murmuring sweep of the river, and with many of his kin who had
died in a similar way, they laid "slick Steve" Hawn. The old
circuit rider preached a short funeral sermon, while Mavis and her
mother stood together, the woman dry-eyed, much to the wonder of
the clan, the girl weeping silently at last, and Jason behind
them--solemn, watchful, and with his secret working painfully in
his heart. He had forbade his mother to tell Mavis, and perhaps he
would never tell her himself; for it might be best for her never
to know that her father had raised the little mound under which
his father slept but a few yards away, and that in turn his hands,
perhaps, were lowering Steve Hawn into his grave.

From the graveyard all went to old Jason's house, for the old man
insisted that Martha Hawn must make her home with him until young
Jason came back to the mountains for good. Until then Mavis, too,
would stay there with Jason's mother, and with deep relief the boy
saw that the two women seemed drawn to each other closer than ever
now. In the early afternoon old Jason limped ahead of him to the
barn to show his stock, and for the first time Jason noticed how
feeble his grandfather was and how he had aged during his last
sick spell. His magnificent old shoulders had drooped, his walk
was shuffling, and even the leonine spirit of his bushy brows and
deep-set eyes seemed to have lost something of its old fire. But
that old fire blazed anew when the old man told him about the
threats and insults of little Aaron Honeycutt, and the story of
Mavis and Gray.

"Mavis in thar," he rumbled, "stood up fer him agin me--agin ME.
She 'lowed thar wasn't a Hawn fitten to be kinfolks o' his even by
marriage, less'n 'twas you."

"ME?"

"An' she told me--ME--to mind my own business. Is that boy Gray
comin' back hyeh?"

"Yes, sir, if his father gets well, and maybe he'll come anyhow."

"Well, that gal in thar is plum' foolish about him, but I'm goin'
to let you take keer o' all that now."

Jason answered nothing, for the memory of Gray's worshipping face,
when he went down the walk with Marjorie at Gray's own home, came
suddenly back to him, and the fact that Mavis was yet in love with
Gray began to lie with sudden heaviness on his mind and not
lightly on his heart.

"An' as fer little Aaron Honeycutt--"

Over the barn-yard gate loomed just then the huge shoulders of
Babe Honeycutt coming from the house where he had gone to see his
sister Martha. Jason heard the shuffling of big feet and he turned
to see Babe coming toward him fearlessly, his good-natured face in
a wide smile and his hand outstretched. Old Jason peered through
his spectacles with some surprise, and then grunted with much
satisfaction when they shook hands.

"Well, Jason, I'm glad you air beginnin' to show some signs o'
good sense. This feud business has got to stop--an' now that you
two air shakin' hands, hit all lays betwixt you and little Aaron."

Babe colored and hesitated.

"That's jus' whut I wanted to say to Jason hyeh. Aaron's drinkin'
a good deal now. I hears as how he's a-threatenin' some, but if
Jason kind o' keeps outen his way an' they git together when he's
sober, hit'll be easy."

"Yes," said old Jason, grimly, "but I reckon you Honeycutts had
better keep Aaron outen his way a leetle, too."

"I'm a-doin' all I can," said Babe earnestly, and he slouched
away.

"Got yo' gun, Jason?"

"No."

"Well, you kin have mine till you git away again. I want all this
feud business stopped, but I hain't goin' to have you shot down
like a turkey at Christmas by a fool boy who won't hardly know
whut he's doin'."

Jason started for the house, but the old man stayed at the stable
to give directions to a neighbor who had come to feed his stock.
It sickened the boy to think that he must perhaps be drawn into
the feud again, but he would not be foolish enough not to take all
precaution against young Aaron. At the yard fence he stopped,
seeing Mavis under an apple-tree with one hand clutching a low
bough and her tense face lifted to the west. He could see that the
hand was clenched tightly, for even the naked forearm was taut as
a bowstring. The sun was going down in the little gap, above it
already one pale star was swung, and upon it her eyes seemed to be
fixed. She heard his step and he knew it, for he saw her face
flush, but without looking around she turned into the house. That
night she seemed to avoid the chance that he might speak to her
alone, and the boy found himself watching her covertly and
closely, for he recalled what Gray had said about her. Indeed,
some change had taken place that was subtle and extraordinary. He
saw his mother deferring to her--leaning on her unconsciously. And
old Jason, to the boy's amazement, was less imperious when she was
around, moderated his sweeping judgments, looked to her from under
his heavy brows, apparently for approval or to see that at least
he gave no offence--deferred to her more than to any man or woman
within the boy's memory. And Jason himself felt the emanation from
her of some new power that was beginning to chain his thoughts to
her. All that night Mavis was on his mind, and when he woke next
morning it was Mavis, Mavis still. She was clear-eyed, calm,
reserved when she told him good-by, and once only she smiled. Old
Jason had brought out one of his huge pistols, but Mavis took it
from his unresisting hands and Jason rode away unarmed. It was
just as well, for as his train started, a horse and a wild youth
came plunging down the riverbank, splashed across, and with a yell
charged up to the station. Through the car window Jason saw that
it was little Aaron, flushed of face and with a pistol in his
hand, looking for him. A sudden storm of old instincts burst
suddenly within him, and had he been armed he would have swung
from the train and settled accounts then and there. As it was, he
sat still and was borne away shaken with rage from head to foot.

XLIII

Commencement day was over, Jason Hawn had made his last speech in
college, and his theme was "Kentucky." In all seriousness and
innocence he had lashed the commonwealth for lawlessness from
mountain-top to river-brim, and his own hills he had flayed
mercilessly. In all seriousness and innocence, when he was packing
his bag three hours later in "Heaven," he placed his big pistol on
top of his clothes so that when the lid was raised, the butt of it
would be within an inch of his right hand. On his way home he
might meet little Aaron on the train, and he did not propose to be
at Aaron's mercy again.

While the band played, ushers with canes wrapped with red, white,
and blue ribbons had carried him up notes of congratulation, and
among them was a card from Marjorie and a bouquet from her own
garden. John Burnham's eyes sought his with pride and affection.
The old president, handing him his diploma, said words that
covered him with happy confusion and brought a cheer from his
fellow-students. When he descended from the platform, Gray grasped
his hand, and Marjorie with lips and eyes gave him ingenuous
congratulations, as though the things that were between them had
never been.

An hour later he drove with John Burnham through soldiers in the
streets and past the Gatling-gun out into the country, and was
deposited at the mouth of the lane. For the last time he went to
the little cottage that had been his mother's home and walked
slowly around garden and barn, taking farewell of everything
except memories that he could never lose. Across the fields he
went once more to Colonel Pendleton's, and there he found Gray
radiant, for his father was better, and the doctor, who was just
leaving, said that he might yet get well. And there was little
danger now from the night riders, for the county judge had
arranged a system of signals by bonfires through all the country
around the town. He had watchers on top of the court-house,
soldiers always ready, and motor-cars waiting below to take them
to any place of disturbance if a bonfire blazed. So Gray said it
was not good-by for them for long, for when his father was well
enough he was coming back to the hills. Again the old colonel
wished Jason well and patted him on the arm affectionately when
they shook hands, and then Jason started for the twin house on the
hill across the turnpike to tell Marjorie and her mother good-by.

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