Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE

BY

JOHN FOX, JR.

ILLUSTRATED BY F. C. YOHN

To F. S.

THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE

I

She sat at the base of the big tree--her little sunbonnet pushed
back, her arms locked about her knees, her bare feet gathered
under her crimson gown and her deep eyes fixed on the smoke in the
valley below. Her breath was still coming fast between her parted
lips. There were tiny drops along the roots of her shining hair,
for the climb had been steep, and now the shadow of disappointment
darkened her eyes. The mountains ran in limitless blue waves
towards the mounting sun--but at birth her eyes had opened on them
as on the white mists trailing up the steeps below her. Beyond
them was a gap in the next mountain chain and down in the little
valley, just visible through it, were trailing blue mists as well,
and she knew that they were smoke. Where was the great glare of
yellow light that the "circuit rider" had told about--and the
leaping tongues of fire? Where was the shrieking monster that ran
without horses like the wind and tossed back rolling black plumes
all streaked with fire? For many days now she had heard stories of
the "furriners" who had come into those hills and were doing
strange things down there, and so at last she had climbed up
through the dewy morning from the cove on the other side to see
the wonders for herself. She had never been up there before. She
had no business there now, and, if she were found out when she got
back, she would get a scolding and maybe something worse from her
step-mother--and all that trouble and risk for nothing but smoke.
So, she lay back and rested--her little mouth tightening fiercely.
It was a big world, though, that was spread before her and a vague
awe of it seized her straightway and held her motionless and
dreaming. Beyond those white mists trailing up the hills, beyond
the blue smoke drifting in the valley, those limitless blue waves
must run under the sun on and on to the end of the world! Her dead
sister had gone into that far silence and had brought back
wonderful stories of that outer world: and she began to wonder
more than ever before whether she would ever go into it and see
for herself what was there. With the thought, she rose slowly to
her feet, moved slowly to the cliff that dropped sheer ten feet
aside from the trail, and stood there like a great scarlet flower
in still air. There was the way at her feet--that path that coiled
under the cliff and ran down loop by loop through majestic oak and
poplar and masses of rhododendron. She drew a long breath and
stirred uneasily--she'd better go home now--but the path had a
snake-like charm for her and still she stood, following it as far
down as she could with her eyes. Down it went, writhing this way
and that to a spur that had been swept bare by forest fires. Along
this spur it travelled straight for a while and, as her eyes
eagerly followed it to where it sank sharply into a covert of
maples, the little creature dropped of a sudden to the ground and,
like something wild, lay flat.

A human figure had filled the leafy mouth that swallowed up the
trail and it was coming towards her. With a thumping heart she
pushed slowly forward through the brush until her face, fox-like
with cunning and screened by a blueberry bush, hung just over the
edge of the cliff, and there she lay, like a crouched panther-cub,
looking down. For a moment, all that was human seemed gone from
her eyes, but, as she watched, all that was lost came back to
them, and something more. She had seen that it was a man, but she
had dropped so quickly that she did not see the big, black horse
that, unled, was following him. Now both man and horse had
stopped. The stranger had taken off his gray slouched hat and he
was wiping his face with something white. Something blue was tied
loosely about his throat. She had never seen a man like that
before. His face was smooth and looked different, as did his
throat and his hands. His breeches were tight and on his feet were
strange boots that were the colour of his saddle, which was deep
in seat, high both in front and behind and had strange long-hooded
stirrups. Starting to mount, the man stopped with one foot in the
stirrup and raised his eyes towards her so suddenly that she
shrank back again with a quicker throbbing at her heart and
pressed closer to the earth. Still, seen or not seen, flight was
easy for her, so she could not forbear to look again. Apparently,
he had seen nothing--only that the next turn of the trail was too
steep to ride, and so he started walking again, and his walk, as
he strode along the path, was new to her, as was the erect way
with which he held his head and his shoulders.

In her wonder over him, she almost forgot herself, forgot to
wonder where he was going and why he was coming into those lonely
hills until, as his horse turned a bend of the trail, she saw
hanging from the other side of the saddle something that looked
like a gun. He was a "raider"--that man: so, cautiously and
swiftly then, she pushed herself back from the edge of the cliff,
sprang to her feet, dashed past the big tree and, winged with
fear, sped down the mountain--leaving in a spot of sunlight at the
base of the pine the print of one bare foot in the black earth.

II

He had seen the big pine when he first came to those hills--one
morning, at daybreak, when the valley was a sea of mist that threw
soft clinging spray to the very mountain tops: for even above the
mists, that morning, its mighty head arose--sole visible proof
that the earth still slept beneath. Straightway, he wondered how
it had ever got there, so far above the few of its kind that
haunted the green dark ravines far below. Some whirlwind,
doubtless, had sent a tiny cone circling heavenward and dropped it
there. It had sent others, too, no doubt, but how had this tree
faced wind and storm alone and alone lived to defy both so
proudly? Some day he would learn. Thereafter, he had seen it, at
noon--but little less majestic among the oaks that stood about it;
had seen it catching the last light at sunset, clean-cut against
the after-glow, and like a dark, silent, mysterious sentinel
guarding the mountain pass under the moon. He had seen it giving
place with sombre dignity to the passing burst of spring--had seen
it green among dying autumn leaves, green in the gray of winter
trees and still green in a shroud of snow--a changeless promise
that the earth must wake to life again. The Lonesome Pine, the
mountaineers called it, and the Lonesome Pine it always looked to
be. From the beginning it had a curious fascination for him, and
straightway within him--half exile that he was--there sprang up a
sympathy for it as for something that was human and a brother. And
now he was on the trail of it at last. From every point that
morning it had seemed almost to nod down to him as he climbed and,
when he reached the ledge that gave him sight of it from base to
crown, the winds murmured among its needles like a welcoming
voice. At once, he saw the secret of its life. On each side rose a
cliff that had sheltered it from storms until its trunk had shot
upwards so far and so straight and so strong that its green crown
could lift itself on and on and bend--blow what might--as proudly
and securely as a lily on its stalk in a morning breeze. Dropping
his bridle rein he put one hand against it as though on the
shoulder of a friend.

"Old Man," he said, "You must be pretty lonesome up here, and I'm
glad to meet you."

For a while he sat against it--resting. He had no particular
purpose that day--no particular destination. His saddle-bags were
across the cantle of his cow-boy saddle. His fishing rod was tied
under one flap. He was young and his own master. Time was hanging
heavy on his hands that day and he loved the woods and the nooks
and crannies of them where his own kind rarely made its way.
Beyond, the cove looked dark, forbidding, mysterious, and what was
beyond he did not know. So down there he would go. As he bent his
head forward to rise, his eye caught the spot of sunlight, and he
leaned over it with a smile. In the black earth was a human foot-
print--too small and slender for the foot of a man, a boy or a
woman. Beyond, the same prints were visible--wider apart--and he
smiled again. A girl had been there. She was the crimson flash
that he saw as he started up the steep and mistook for a flaming
bush of sumach. She had seen him coming and she had fled. Still
smiling, he rose to his feet.

III

On one side he had left the earth yellow with the coming noon, but
it was still morning as he went down on the other side. The laurel
and rhododendron still reeked with dew in the deep, ever-shaded
ravine. The ferns drenched his stirrups, as he brushed through
them, and each dripping tree-top broke the sunlight and let it
drop in tent-like beams through the shimmering undermist. A bird
flashed here and there through the green gloom, but there was no
sound in the air but the footfalls of his horse and the easy
creaking of leather under him, the drip of dew overhead and the
running of water below. Now and then he could see the same slender
foot-prints in the rich loam and he saw them in the sand where the
first tiny brook tinkled across the path from a gloomy ravine.
There the little creature had taken a flying leap across it and,
beyond, he could see the prints no more. He little guessed that
while he halted to let his horse drink, the girl lay on a rock
above him, looking down. She was nearer home now and was less
afraid; so she had slipped from the trail and climbed above it
there to watch him pass. As he went on, she slid from her perch
and with cat-footed quiet followed him. When he reached the river
she saw him pull in his horse and eagerly bend forward, looking
into a pool just below the crossing. There was a bass down there
in the clear water--a big one--and the man whistled cheerily and
dismounted, tying his horse to a sassafras bush and unbuckling a
tin bucket and a curious looking net from his saddle. With the net
in one hand and the bucket in the other, he turned back up the
creek and passed so close to where she had slipped aside into the
bushes that she came near shrieking, but his eyes were fixed on a
pool of the creek above and, to her wonder, he strolled straight
into the water, with his boots on, pushing the net in front of
him.

He was a "raider" sure, she thought now, and he was looking for a
"moonshine" still, and the wild little thing in the bushes smiled
cunningly--there was no still up that creek--and as he had left
his horse below and his gun, she waited for him to come back,
which he did, by and by, dripping and soaked to his knees. Then
she saw him untie the queer "gun" on his saddle, pull it out of a
case and--her eyes got big with wonder--take it to pieces and make
it into a long limber rod. In a moment he had cast a minnow into
the pool and waded out into the water up to his hips. She had
never seen so queer a fishing-pole--so queer a fisherman. How
could he get a fish out with that little switch, she thought
contemptuously? By and by something hummed queerly, the man gave a
slight jerk and a shining fish flopped two feet into the air. It
was surely very queer, for the man didn't put his rod over his
shoulder and walk ashore, as did the mountaineers, but stood
still, winding something with one hand, and again the fish would
flash into the air and then that humming would start again while
the fisherman would stand quiet and waiting for a while--and then
he would begin to wind again. In her wonder, she rose
unconsciously to her feet and a stone rolled down to the ledge
below her. The fisherman turned his head and she started to run,
but without a word he turned again to the fish he was playing.
Moreover, he was too far out in the water to catch her, so she
advanced slowly--even to the edge of the stream, watching the fish
cut half circles about the man. If he saw her, he gave no notice,
and it was well that he did not. He was pulling the bass to and
fro now through the water, tiring him out--drowning him--stepping
backward at the same time, and, a moment later, the fish slid
easily out of the edge of the water, gasping along the edge of a
low sand-bank, and the fisherman reaching down with one hand
caught him in the gills. Then he looked up and smiled--and she had
seen no smile like that before.

"Howdye, Little Girl?"

One bare toe went burrowing suddenly into the sand, one finger
went to her red mouth--and that was all. She merely stared him
straight in the eye and he smiled again.

"Cat got your tongue?"

Her eyes fell at the ancient banter, but she lifted them
straightway and stared again.

"You live around here?"

She stared on.

"Where?"

No answer.

"What's your name, little girl?"

And still she stared.

"Oh, well, of course, you can't talk, if the cat's got your
tongue."

The steady eyes leaped angrily, but there was still no answer, and
he bent to take the fish off his hook, put on a fresh minnow,
turned his back and tossed it into the pool.

"Hit hain't!"

He looked up again. She surely was a pretty little thing--and
more, now that she was angry.

"I should say not," he said teasingly. "What did you say your name
was?"

"What's YO' name?"

The fisherman laughed. He was just becoming accustomed to the
mountain etiquette that commands a stranger to divulge himself
first.

"My name's--Jack."

"An' mine's--Jill." She laughed now, and it was his time for
surprise--where could she have heard of Jack and Jill?

His line rang suddenly.

"Jack," she cried, "you got a bite!"

He pulled, missed the strike, and wound in. The minnow was all
right, so he tossed it back again.

"That isn't your name," he said.

"If 'tain't, then that ain't your'n?"

"Yes 'tis," he said, shaking his head affirmatively.

A long cry came down the ravine:

"J-u-n-e! eh--oh--J-u-n-e!" That was a queer name for the
mountains, and the fisherman wondered if he had heard aright--
June.

The little girl gave a shrill answering cry, but she did not move.

"Thar now!" she said.

"Who's that--your Mammy?"

"No, 'tain't--hit's my step-mammy. I'm a goin' to ketch hell now."
Her innocent eyes turned sullen and her baby mouth tightened.

"Good Lord!" said the fisherman, startled, and then he stopped--
the words were as innocent on her lips as a benediction.

"Have you got a father?" Like a flash, her whole face changed.

"I reckon I have."

"Where is he?"

"Hyeh he is!" drawled a voice from the bushes, and it had a tone
that made the fisherman whirl suddenly. A giant mountaineer stood
on the bank above him, with a Winchester in the hollow of his arm.

"How are you?" The giant's heavy eyes lifted quickly, but he spoke
to the girl.

"You go on home--what you doin' hyeh gassin' with furriners!"

The girl shrank to the bushes, but she cried sharply back:

"Don't you hurt him now, Dad. He ain't even got a pistol. He ain't
no--"

"Shet up!" The little creature vanished and the mountaineer turned
to the fisherman, who had just put on a fresh minnow and tossed it
into the river.

"Purty well, thank you," he said shortly. "How are you?"

"Fine!" was the nonchalant answer. For a moment there was silence
and a puzzled frown gathered on the mountaineer's face.

"That's a bright little girl of yours--What did she mean by
telling you not to hurt me?"

"You haven't been long in these mountains, have ye?"

"No--not in THESE mountains--why?" The fisherman looked around and
was almost startled by the fierce gaze of his questioner.

"Stop that, please," he said, with a humourous smile. "You make me
nervous."

The mountaineer's bushy brows came together across the bridge of
his nose and his voice rumbled like distant thunder.

"What's yo' name, stranger, an' what's yo' business over hyeh?"

"Dear me, there you go! You can see I'm fishing, but why does
everybody in these mountains want to know my name?"

"You heerd me!"

"Yes." The fisherman turned again and saw the giant's rugged face
stern and pale with open anger now, and he, too, grew suddenly
serious.

"Suppose I don't tell you," he said gravely. "What--"

"Git!" said the mountaineer, with a move of one huge hairy hand up
the mountain. "An' git quick!"

The fisherman never moved and there was the click of a shell
thrown into place in the Winchester and a guttural oath from the
mountaineer's beard.

"Damn ye," he said hoarsely, raising the rifle. "I'll give ye--"

"Don't, Dad!" shrieked a voice from the bushes. "I know his name,
hit's Jack--" the rest of the name was unintelligible. The
mountaineer dropped the butt of his gun to the ground and laughed.

"Oh, air YOU the engineer?"

The fisherman was angry now. He had not moved hand or foot and he
said nothing, but his mouth was set hard and his bewildered blue
eyes had a glint in them that the mountaineer did not at the
moment see. He was leaning with one arm on the muzzle of his
Winchester, his face had suddenly become suave and shrewd and now
he laughed again:

"So you're Jack Hale, air ye?"

The fisherman spoke. "JOHN Hale, except to my friends." He looked
hard at the old man.

"Do you know that's a pretty dangerous joke of yours, my friend--I
might have a gun myself sometimes. Did you think you could scare
me?" The mountaineer stared in genuine surprise.

"Twusn't no joke," he said shortly. "An' I don't waste time
skeering folks. I reckon you don't know who I be?"

"I don't care who you are." Again the mountaineer stared.

"No use gittin' mad, young feller," he said coolly. "I mistaken ye
fer somebody else an' I axe yer pardon. When you git through
fishin' come up to the house right up the creek thar an' I'll give
ye a dram."

"Thank you," said the fisherman stiffly, and the mountaineer
turned silently away. At the edge of the bushes, he looked back;
the stranger was still fishing, and the old man went on with a
shake of his head.

"He'll come," he said to himself. "Oh, he'll come!"

That very point Hale was debating with himself as he unavailingly
cast his minnow into the swift water and slowly wound it in again.
How did that old man know his name? And would the old savage
really have hurt him had he not found out who he was? The little
girl was a wonder: evidently she had muffled his last name on
purpose--not knowing it herself--and it was a quick and cunning
ruse. He owed her something for that--why did she try to protect
him? Wonderful eyes, too, the little thing had--deep and dark--and
how the flame did dart from them when she got angry! He smiled,
remembering--he liked that. And her hair--it was exactly like the
gold-bronze on the wing of a wild turkey that he had shot the day
before. Well, it was noon now, the fish had stopped biting after
the wayward fashion of bass, he was hungry and thirsty and he
would go up and see the little girl and the giant again and get
that promised dram. Once more, however, he let his minnow float
down into the shadow of a big rock, and while he was winding in,
he looked up to see in the road two people on a gray horse, a man
with a woman behind him--both old and spectacled--all three
motionless on the bank and looking at him: and he wondered if all
three had stopped to ask his name and his business. No, they had
just come down to the creek and both they must know already.

"Ketching any?" called out the old man, cheerily.

"Only one," answered Hale with equal cheer. The old woman pushed
back her bonnet as he waded through the water towards them and he
saw that she was puffing a clay pipe. She looked at the fisherman
and his tackle with the naive wonder of a child, and then she said
in a commanding undertone.

"Go on, Billy."

"Now, ole Hon, I wish ye'd jes' wait a minute." Hale smiled. He
loved old people, and two kinder faces he had never seen--two
gentler voices he had never heard.

"I reckon you got the only green pyerch up hyeh," said the old
man, chuckling, "but thar's a sight of 'em down thar below my old
mill." Quietly the old woman hit the horse with a stripped branch
of elm and the old gray, with a switch of his tail, started.

"Wait a minute, Hon," he said again, appealingly, "won't ye?" but
calmly she hit the horse again and the old man called back over
his shoulder:

"You come on down to the mill an' I'll show ye whar you can ketch
a mess."

"All right," shouted Hale, holding back his laughter, and on they
went, the old man remonstrating in the kindliest way--the old
woman silently puffing her pipe and making no answer except to
flay gently the rump of the lazy old gray.

Hesitating hardly a moment, Hale unjointed his pole, left his
minnow bucket where it was, mounted his horse and rode up the
path. About him, the beech leaves gave back the gold of the autumn
sunlight, and a little ravine, high under the crest of the mottled
mountain, was on fire with the scarlet of maple. Not even yet had
the morning chill left the densely shaded path. When he got to the
bare crest of a little rise, he could see up the creek a spiral of
blue rising swiftly from a stone chimney. Geese and ducks were
hunting crawfish in the little creek that ran from a milk-house of
logs, half hidden by willows at the edge of the forest, and a turn
in the path brought into view a log-cabin well chinked with stones
and plaster, and with a well-built porch. A fence ran around the
yard and there was a meat house near a little orchard of apple-
trees, under which were many hives of bee-gums. This man had
things "hung up" and was well-to-do. Down the rise and through a
thicket he went, and as he approached the creek that came down
past the cabin there was a shrill cry ahead of him.

"Whoa thar, Buck! Gee-haw, I tell ye!" An ox-wagon evidently was
coming on, and the road was so narrow that he turned his horse
into the bushes to let it pass.

"Whoa--Haw!--Gee--Gee--Buck, Gee, I tell ye! I'll knock yo' fool
head off the fust thing you know!"

Still there was no sound of ox or wagon and the voice sounded like
a child's. So he went on at a walk in the thick sand, and when he
turned the bushes he pulled up again with a low laugh. In the road
across the creek was a chubby, tow-haired boy with a long switch
in his right hand, and a pine dagger and a string in his left.
Attached to the string and tied by one hind leg was a frog. The
boy was using the switch as a goad and driving the frog as an ox,
and he was as earnest as though both were real.

"I give ye a little rest now, Buck," he said, shaking his head
earnestly. "Hit's a purty hard pull hyeh, but I know, by Gum, you
can make hit--if you hain't too durn lazy. Now, git up, Buck!" he
yelled suddenly, flaying the sand with his switch. "Git up--Whoa--
Haw--Gee, Gee!" The frog hopped several times.

"Whoa, now!" said the little fellow, panting in sympathy. "I
knowed you could do it." Then he looked up. For an instant he
seemed terrified but he did not run. Instead he stealthily shifted
the pine dagger over to his right hand and the string to his left.

"Here, boy," said the fisherman with affected sternness: "What are
you doing with that dagger?"

The boy's breast heaved and his dirty fingers clenched tight
around the whittled stick.

"Don't you talk to me that-a-way," he said with an ominous shake
of his head. "I'll gut ye!"

The fisherman threw back his head, and his peal of laughter did
what his sternness failed to do. The little fellow wheeled
suddenly, and his feet spurned the sand around the bushes for
home--the astonished frog dragged bumping after him. "Well!" said
the fisherman.

IV

Even the geese in the creek seemed to know that he was a stranger
and to distrust him, for they cackled and, spreading their wings,
fled cackling up the stream. As he neared the house, the little
girl ran around the stone chimney, stopped short, shaded her eyes
with one hand for a moment and ran excitedly into the house. A
moment later, the bearded giant slouched out, stooping his head as
he came through the door.

"Hitch that 'ar post to yo' hoss and come right in," he thundered
cheerily. "I'm waitin' fer ye."

The little girl came to the door, pushed one brown slender hand
through her tangled hair, caught one bare foot behind a deer-like
ankle and stood motionless. Behind her was the boy--his dagger
still in hand.

"Come right in!" said the old man, "we are purty pore folks, but
you're welcome to what we have."

The fisherman, too, had to stoop as he came in, for he, too, was
tall. The interior was dark, in spite of the wood fire in the big
stone fireplace. Strings of herbs and red-pepper pods and twisted
tobacco hung from the ceiling and down the wall on either side of
the fire; and in one corner, near the two beds in the room, hand-
made quilts of many colours were piled several feet high. On
wooden pegs above the door where ten years before would have been
buck antlers and an old-fashioned rifle, lay a Winchester; on
either side of the door were auger holes through the logs (he did
not understand that they were port-holes) and another Winchester
stood in the corner. From the mantel the butt of a big 44-Colt's
revolver protruded ominously. On one of the beds in the corner he
could see the outlines of a figure lying under a brilliantly
figured quilt, and at the foot of it the boy with the pine dagger
had retreated for refuge. From the moment he stooped at the door
something in the room had made him vaguely uneasy, and when his
eyes in swift survey came back to the fire, they passed the blaze
swiftly and met on the edge of the light another pair of eyes
burning on him.

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