Books: The Heart Of The Hills
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Heart Of The Hills
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"Go git yo' gun! Git yo' gun!"
Gray turned very pale, but he showed no fear.
"I don't know what's the matter with you," he said steadily, "but
you must be drunk."
"Go git yo' gun!" was the furious answer. "Go git yo' gun!"
"Boys don't fight with guns in this country, but--"
"You're a d--d coward," yelled Jason.
Gray's fist shot through the mist of rage that suddenly blinded
him, catching Jason on the point of the chin, and as the mountain
boy spun half around in his saddle, Gray caught the pistol in both
hands and in the struggle both rolled, still clutching the weapon,
to the ground, Gray saying with quiet fury:
"Drop that pistol and I'll lick hell out of you!"
There was no answer but the twist of Jason's wrist, and the bullet
went harmlessly upward. Before he could pull the trigger again,
the sinewy fingers of a man's hand closed over the weapon and
pushed it flat with the earth, and Jason's upturned eyes looked
into the grave face of the school-master. That face was stern and
shamed Jason instantly. The two boys rose to their feet, and the
mountain boy turned away from the school-master and saw Marjorie
standing ten yards away white and terror-stricken, and her eyes
when he met them blazed at him with a light that no human eye had
ever turned on him before. The boy knew anger, rage, hate,
revenge, but contempt was new to him, and his soul was filled with
sudden shame that was no less strange, but the spirit in him was
undaunted, and like a challenged young buck his head went up as he
turned again to face his accuser.
"Were you going to shoot an unarmed boy?" asked John Burnham
gravely.
"He hit me."
"You called him a coward."
"He hit me."
"He offered to fight you fist and skull."
"He had the same chance to git the gun that I had."
"He wasn't trying to get it in order to shoot you."
Jason made no answer and the school-master repeated:
"He offered to fight you fist and skull."
"I was too mad--but I'll fight him now."
"Boys don't fight in the presence of young ladies."
Gray spoke up and in his tone was the contempt that was in
Marjorie's eyes, and it made the mountain boy writhe.
"I wouldn't soil my hands on you--now."
The school-master rebuked Gray with a gesture, but Jason was
confused and sick now and he held out his hand for his pistol.
"I better be goin' now--this ain't no place fer me."
The school-master gravely handed the weapon to him.
"I'm coming over to have a talk with you, Jason," he said.
The boy made no answer. He climbed on his horse slowly. His face
was very pale, and once only he swept the group with eyes that
were badgered but no longer angry, and as they rested on Marjorie,
there was a pitiful, lonely something in them that instantly
melted her and almost started her tears. Then he rode silently and
slowly away.
XIII
Slowly the lad rode westward, for the reason that he was not yet
quite ready to pass between those two big-pillared houses again,
and because just then whatever his way--no matter. His anger was
all gone now and his brain was clear, but he was bewildered.
Throughout the day he had done nothing that he thought was wrong,
and yet throughout the day he had done nothing that seemed to be
right. This land was not for him--he did not understand the ways
of it and the people, and they did not understand him. Even the
rock-pecker had gone back on him, and though that hurt him deeply,
the lad loyally knew that the school-master must have his own good
reasons. The memory of Marjorie's look still hurt, and somehow he
felt that even Mavis was vaguely on their side against him, and of
a sudden the pang of loneliness that Marjorie saw in his eyes so
pierced him that he pulled his old nag in and stood motionless in
the middle of the road. The sky was overcast and the air was
bitter and chill; through the gray curtain that hung to the rim of
the earth, the low sun swung like a cooling ball of fire and under
it the gray fields stretched with such desolation for him that he
dared ride no farther into them. And then as the lad looked across
the level stillness that encircled him, the mountains loomed
suddenly from it--big, still, peaceful, beckoning--and made him
faint with homesickness. Those mountains were behind him--his
mountains and his home that was his no longer--but, after all, any
home back there was his, and that thought so filled his heart with
a rush of gladness that with one long breath of exultation he
turned in his saddle to face those distant unseen hills, and the
old mare, following the movement of his body, turned too, as
though she, too, suddenly wanted to go home. The chill air
actually seemed to grow warmer as he trotted back, the fields
looked less desolate, and then across them he saw flashing toward
him the hostile fire of a scarlet tam-o'-shanter. He was nearing
the yard gate of the big house on the right, and from the other
big house on the left the spot of shaking crimson was galloping
toward the turnpike. He could wait until Marjorie crossed the road
ahead of him, or he could gallop ahead and pass before she could
reach the gate, but his sullen pride forbade either course, and so
he rode straight on, and his dogged eyes met hers as she swung the
gate to and turned her pony across the road. Marjorie flushed, her
lips half parted to speak, and Jason sullenly drew in, but as she
said nothing, he clucked and dug his heels viciously into the old
mare's sides.
Then the little girl raised one hand to check him and spoke
hurriedly:
"Jason, we've been talking about you, and my Uncle Bob says you
kept me from getting killed."
Jason stared.
"And the school-teacher says we don't understand you--you people
down in the mountains--and that we mustn't blame you for--" she
paused in helpless embarrassment, for still the mountain boy
stared.
"You know," she went on finally, "boys here don't do things that
you boys do down there--"
She stopped again, the tears started suddenly in her earnest eyes,
and a miracle happened to little Jason. Something quite new surged
within him, his own eyes swam suddenly, and he cleared his throat
huskily.
"I hain't a-goin' to bother you folks no more," he said, and he
tried to be surly, but couldn't. "I'm a-goin' away." The little
girl's tears ceased.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I wish you'd stay here and go to school.
The school-teacher said he wanted you to do that, and he says such
nice things about you, and so does my Uncle Bob, and Gray is
sorry, and he says he is coming over to see you to-morrow."
"I'm a-goin' home," repeated Jason stubbornly.
"Home?" repeated the girl, and her tone did what her look had done
a moment before, for she knew he had no home, and again the lad
was filled with a throbbing uneasiness. Her eyes dropped to her
pony's mane, and in a moment more she looked up with shy
earnestness.
"Will you do something for me?"
Again Jason started and of its own accord his tongue spoke words
that to his own ears were very strange.
"Thar hain't nothin' I won't do fer ye," he said, and his sturdy
sincerity curiously disturbed Marjorie in turn, so that her flush
came back, and she went on with slow hesitation and with her eyes
again fixed on her pony's neck.
"I want you to promise me not--not to shoot anybody--unless you
HAVE to in self-defence--and never to take another drink until--
until you see me again."
She could not have bewildered the boy more had she asked him never
to go barefoot again, but his eyes were solemn when she looked up
and solemnly he nodded assent.
"I give ye my hand."
The words were not literal, but merely the way the mountaineer
phrases the giving of a promise, but the little girl took them
literally and she rode up to him with slim fingers outstretched
and a warm friendly smile on her little red mouth. Awkwardly the
lad thrust out his dirty, strong little hand.
"Good-by, Jason," she said.
"Good-by--" he faltered, and, still smiling, she finished the
words for him.
"Marjorie," she said, and unsmilingly he repeated:
"Marjorie."
While she passed through the gate he sat still and watched her,
and he kept on watching her as she galloped toward home, twisting
in his saddle to follow her course around the winding road. He saw
a negro boy come out to the stile to take her pony, and there
Marjorie, dismounting, saw in turn the lad still motionless where
she had left him, and looking after her. She waved her whip to
him, went on toward the house, and when she reached the top of the
steps, she turned and waved to him again, but he made no answering
gesture, and only when the front door closed behind her, did the
boy waken from his trance and jog slowly up the road. Only the rim
of the red fire-ball was arched over the horizon behind him now.
Winter dusk was engulfing the fields and through it belated crows
were scurrying silently for protecting woods. For a little while
Jason rode with his hands folded man-wise on the pommel of his
saddle and with manlike emotions in his heart, for, while the
mountains still beckoned, this land had somehow grown more
friendly and there was a curious something after all that he would
leave behind. What it was he hardly knew; but a pair of blue eyes,
misty with mysterious tears, had sown memories in his confused
brain that he would not soon lose. He did not forget the contempt
that had blazed from those eyes, but he wondered now at the reason
for that contempt. Was there something that ruled this land--
something better than the code that ruled his hills? He had
remembered every word the geologist had ever said, for he loved
the man, but it had remained for a strange girl--a girl--to revive
them, to give them actual life and plant within him a sudden
resolve to learn for himself what it all meant, and to practise
it, if he found it good. A cold wind sprang up now and cutting
through his thin clothes drove him in a lope toward his mother's
home.
Apparently Mavis was watching for him through the window of the
cottage, for she ran out on the porch to meet him, but something
in the boy's manner checked her, and she neither spoke nor asked a
question while the boy took off his saddle and tossed it on the
steps. Nor did Jason give her but one glance, for the eagerness of
her face and the trust and tenderness in her eyes were an
unconscious reproach and made him feel guilty and faithless, so
that he changed his mind about turning the old mare out in the
yard and led her to the stable, merely to get away from the little
girl.
Mavis was in the kitchen when he entered the house, and while they
all were eating supper, the lad could feel his little cousin's
eyes on him all the time--watching and wondering and troubled and
hurt. And when the four were seated about the fire, he did not
look at her when he announced that he was going back home, but he
saw her body start and shrink. His step-father yawned and said
nothing, and his mother looked on into the fire.
"When you goin', Jasie?" she asked at last.
"Daylight," he answered shortly.
There was a long silence.
"Whut you goin' to do down thar?"
The lad lifted his head fiercely and looked from the woman to the
man and back again.
"I'm a-goin' to git that land back," he snapped; and as there was
no question, no comment, he settled back brooding in his chair.
"Hit wasn't right--hit COULDN'T 'a' been right," he muttered, and
then as though he were answering his mother's unspoken question:
"I don't know HOW I'm goin' to git it back, but if it wasn't
right, thar must be some way, an' I'm a-goin' to find out if hit
takes me all my life."
His mother was still silent, though she had lifted a comer of her
apron to her eyes, and the lad rose and without a word of good-
night climbed the stairs to go to bed. Then the mother spoke to
her husband angrily.
"You oughtn't to let the boy put all the blame on me, Steve--you
made me sell that land."
Steve's answer was another yawn, and he rose to get ready for bed,
and Mavis, too, turned indignant eyes on him, for she had heard
enough from the two to know that her step-mother spoke the truth.
Her father opened the door and she heard the creak of his heavy
footsteps across the freezing porch. Her step-mother went into the
kitchen and Mavis climbed the stairs softly and opened Jason's
door.
"Jasie!" she called.
"Whut you want?"
"Jasie, take me back home with ye, won't you?"
A rough denial was on his lips, but her voice broke into a little
sob and the boy lay for a moment without answering.
"Whut on earth would you do down thar, Mavis?"
And then he remembered how he had told her that he would come for
her some day, and he remembered the Hawn boast that a Hawn's word
was as good as his bond and he added kindly: "Wait till mornin',
Mavis. I'll take ye if ye want to go."
The door closed instantly and she was gone. When the lad came down
before day next morning Mavis had finished tying a few things in a
bundle and was pushing it out of sight under a bed, and Jason knew
what that meant.
"You hain't told 'em?"
Mavis shook her head.
"Mebbe yo' pap won't let ye."
"He ain't hyeh," said the little girl.
"Whar is he?"
"I don't know."
"Mavis," said the boy seriously, "I'm a boy an' hit don't make no
difference whar I go, but you're a gal an' hit looks like you
ought to stay with yo' daddy."
The girl shook her head stubbornly, but he paid no attention.
"I tell ye, I'm a-goin' back to that new-fangled school when I git
to grandpap's, an' whut'll you do?"
"I'll go with ye."
"I've thought o' that," said the boy patiently, "but they mought
not have room fer neither one of us--an' I can take keer o' myself
anywhar."
"Yes," said the little girl proudly, "an' I'll trust ye to take
keer o' me--anywhar."
The boy looked at her long and hard, but there was no feminine
cunning in her eyes--nothing but simple trust--and his silence was
a despairing assent. From the kitchen his mother called them to
breakfast.
"Whar's Steve?" asked the boy.
The mother gave the same answer as had Mavis, but she looked
anxious and worried.
"Mavis is a-goin' back to the mountains with me," said the boy,
and the girl looked up in defiant expectation, but the mother did
not even look around from the stove.
"Mebbe yo' pap won't let ye," she said quietly.
"How's he goin' to help hisself," asked the girl, "when he ain't
hyeh?"
"He'll blame me fer it, but I ain't a-blamin' you."
The words surprised and puzzled both and touched both with
sympathy and a little shame. The mother looked at her son, opened
her lips again, but closed them with a glance at Mavis that made
her go out and leave them alone.
"Jasie," she said then, "I reckon when Babe was a-playin' 'possum
in the bushes that day, he could 'a' shot ye when you run down the
hill."
She took his silence for assent and went on:
"That shows he don't hold no grudge agin you fer shootin' at him."
Still Jason was silent, and a line of stern justice straightened
the woman's lips.
"I hain't got no right to say a word, just because Babe air my own
brother. Mebbe Babe knows who the man was, but I don't believe
Babe done it. Hit hain't enough that he was jes' SEED a-comin'
outen the bushes, an' afore you go a-layin' fer Babe, all I axe ye
is to make PLUMB DEAD SHORE."
It was a strange new note to come from his mother's voice, and it
kept the boy still silent from helplessness and shame. She had
spoken calmly, but now there was a little break in her voice.
"I want ye to go back, an' I'd go blind fer the rest o' my days if
that land was yours an' was a-waitin' down thar fer ye."
From the next room came the sound of Mavis's restless feet, and
the boy rose.
"I hain't a-goin' to lay fer Babe, mammy," he said huskily; "I
hain't a-goin' to lay fer nobody--now. An' don't you worry no more
about that land."
Half an hour later, just when day was breaking, Mavis sat behind
Jason with her bundle in her lap, and the mother looked up at
them.
"I wish I was a-goin' with ye," she said.
And when they had passed out of sight down the lane, she turned
back into the house--weeping.
XIV
Little Mavis did not reach the hills. At sunrise a few miles down
the road, the two met Steve Hawn on a borrowed horse, his pistol
buckled around him and his face pale and sleepless.
"Whar you two goin'?" he asked roughly.
"Home," was Jason's short answer, and he felt Mavis's arm about
his waist begin to tremble.
"Git off, Mavis, an' git up hyeh behind me. Yo' home's with me."
Jason valiantly reached for his gun, but Mavis caught his hand
and, holding it, slipped to the ground. "Don't, Jasie--I'll come,
pap, I'll come." Whereat Steve laughed and Jason, raging, saw her
ride away behind her step-father, clutching him about the waist
with one arm and with the other bent over her eyes to shield her
tears.
A few miles farther, Jason came on the smoking, charred remains of
a toll-gate, and he paused a moment wondering if Steve might not
have had a hand in that, and rode on toward the hills. Two hours
later the school-master's horse shied from those black ruins, and
John Burnham kept on toward school with a troubled face. To him
the ruins meant the first touch of the writhing tentacles of the
modern trust and the Blue-grass Kentuckian's characteristic way of
throwing them off, for turnpikes of white limestone, like the one
he travelled, thread the Blue-grass country like strands of a
spider's web. The spinning of them started away back in the
beginning of the last century. That far back, the strand he
followed pierced the heart of the region from its chief town to
the Ohio and was graded for steam-wagons that were expected to
roll out from the land of dreams. Every few miles on each of these
roads sat a little house, its porch touching the very edge of the
turnpike, and there a long pole, heavily weighted at one end and
pulled down and tied fast to the porch, blocked the way. Every
traveller, except he was on foot, every drover of cattle, sheep,
hogs, or mules, must pay his toll before the pole was lifted and
he could go on his way. And Burnham could remember the big fat man
who once a month, in a broad, low buggy, drawn by two swift black
horses, would travel hither and thither, stopping at each little
house to gather in the deposits of small coins. As time went on,
this man and a few friends began to gather in as well certain bits
of scattered paper that put the turnpike webs like reins into a
few pairs of hands, with the natural, inevitable result: fewer men
had personal need of good roads, the man who parted with his bit
of paper lost his power of protest, and while the traveller paid
the small toll, the path that he travelled got steadily worse. A
mild effort to arouse a sentiment for county control was made, and
this failing, the Kentuckian had straightway gone for firebrand
and gun. The dormant spirit of Ku-Klux awakened, the night-rider
was born again, and one by one the toll-gates were going up in
flame and settling back in ashes to the mother earth. The school-
master smiled when he thought of the result of one investigation
in the county by law. A sturdy farmer was haled before the grand
jury.
"Do you know the perpetrators of the unlawful burning of the toll-
gate on the Cave Hill Pike?" asked the august body. The farmer ran
his fearless eyes down the twelve of his peers and slowly walked
the length of them, pointing his finger at this juror and that.
"Yes, I do," he said quietly, "and so do you--and you and YOU.
Your son was in it--and yours--and mine; and you were in it
yourself. Now, what are you going to do about it?" And, unrebuked
and unrestrained, he turned and walked out of the room, leaving
the august body, startled, grimly smiling and reduced to a
helpless pulp of inactivity.
That morning Mavis was late to school, and the school-master and
Gray and Marjorie all saw that she had been weeping. Only Marjorie
suspected the cause, but at little recess John Burnham went to her
to ask where Jason was, and Gray was behind him with the same
question on his lips. And when Mavis burst into tears, Marjorie
answered for her and sat down beside her and put her arms around
the mountain girl. After school she even took Mavis home behind
her, and Gray rode along with them on his pony. Steve Hawn was
sitting on his little porch smoking when they rode up, and he came
down and hospitably asked them to "light and hitch their beastes,"
and the black-haired step-mother called from the doorway for them
to "come in an' rest a spell." Gray and Marjorie concealed with
some difficulty their amusement at such queer phrases of welcome,
and a wonder at the democratic ease of the two and their utter
unconsciousness of any social difference between the lords and
ladies of the Blue-grass and poor people from the mountains, for
the other tobacco tenants were not like these. And there was no
surprise on the part of the man, the woman, or the little girl
when a sudden warm impulse to relieve loneliness led Marjorie to
ask Mavis to go to her own home and stay all night with her.
"Course," said the woman.
"Go right along, Mavis," said the man, and Marjorie turned to
Gray.
"You can carry her things," she said, and she turned to Mavis and
met puzzled, unabashed eyes.
"Whut things?" asked little Mavis, whereat Marjorie blushed,
looked quickly to Gray, whose face was courteously unsmiling, and
started her pony abruptly.
It was a wonderful night for the mountaineer girl in the big-
pillared house on the hill. When they got home, Marjorie drove her
in a little pony-cart over the big farm, while Gray trotted
alongside--through pastures filled with cattle so fat they could
hardly walk, past big barns bursting with hay and tobacco and
stables full of slender, beautiful horses. Even the pigs had
little red houses of refuge from the weather and flocks of sheep
dotted the hill-side like unmelted patches of snow. The mountain
girl's eyes grew big with wonder when she entered the great hall
with its lofty ceiling, its winding stairway, and its polished
floor, so slippery that she came near falling down, and they
stayed big when she saw the rows of books, the pictures on the
walls, the padded couches and chairs, the noiseless carpets, the
polished andirons that gleamed like gold before the blazing fires,
and when she glimpsed through an open door the long dining-table
with its glistening glass and silver. When she mounted that
winding stairway and entered Marjorie's room she was stricken dumb
by its pink curtains, pink wall-paper, and gleaming brass bedstead
with pink coverlid and pink pillow-facings. And she nearly gasped
when Marjorie led her on into another room of blue.
"This is your room," she said smiling, "right next to mine. I'll
be back in a minute."
Mavis stood a moment in the middle of the room when she was alone,
hardly daring to sit down. A coal fire crackled behind a wire
screen--coal from her mountains. A door opened into a queer little
room, glistening white, and she peeped, wondering, within.
"There's the bath-room," Marjorie had said. She had not known what
was meant, and she did not now, looking at the long white tub and
the white tiling floor and walls until she saw the multitudinous
towels, and she marvelled at the new mystery. She went back and
walked to the window and looked out on the endless rolling winter
fields over which she had driven that afternoon--all, Gray had
told her, to be Marjorie's some day, just as all across the
turnpike, Marjorie had told her, was some day to be Gray's. She
thought of herself and of Jason, and her tears started, not for
herself, but for him. Then she heard Marjorie coming in and she
brushed her eyes swiftly.
"Whar can I git some water to wash?" she asked.
Marjorie laughed delightedly and led her back to that wonderful
little white room, turned a gleaming silver star, and the water
spurted joyously into the bowl.
"Well, I do declare!"
Soon they went down to supper, and Mavis put out a shy hand to
Marjorie's mother, a kind-eyed, smiling woman in black. And Gray,
too, was there, watching the little mountain girl and smiling
encouragement whenever he met her eyes. And Mavis passed muster
well, for the mountaineer's sensitiveness makes him wary of his
manners when he is among strange people, and he will go hungry
rather than be guilty unknowingly of a possible breach. Marjorie's
mother was much interested and pleased with Mavis, and she made up
her mind at once to discuss with her daughter how they could best
help along the little stranger. After supper Marjorie played on
the piano, and she and Gray sang duets, but the music was foreign
to Mavis, and she did not like it very much. When the two went
upstairs, there was a dainty long garment spread on Mavis's bed,
which Mavis fingered carefully with much interest and much
curiosity until she recalled suddenly what Marjorie had said about
Gray carrying her "things." This was one of these things, and
Mavis put it on wondering what the other things might be. Then she
saw that a silver-backed comb and brush had appeared on the bureau
along with a tiny pair of scissors and a little ivory stick, the
use of which she could not make out at all. But she asked no
questions, and when Marjorie came in with a new toothbrush and a
little tin box and put them in the bath-room, Mavis still showed
no surprise, but ran her eyes down the nightgown with its dainty
ribbons.
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