Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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Hale knew how serious a thing a blow was in that part of the
world, and what excitement it would create, and he was uneasy at
Jack's trial, for fear that the saloon-keeper's friends would take
the matter up; but they didn't, and, to the surprise of everybody,
Jack quietly paid his fine, and thereafter the Guard had little
active trouble from the town itself, for it was quite plain there,
at least, that the Guard meant business.

Across Black Mountain old Dave Tolliver and old Buck Falin had got
well of their wounds by this time, and though each swore to have
vengeance against the other as soon as he was able to handle a
Winchester, both factions seemed waiting for that time to come.
Moreover, the Falins, because of a rumour that Bad Rufe Tolliver
might come back, and because of Devil Judd's anger at their
attempt to capture young Dave, grew wary and rather pacificatory:
and so, beyond a little quarrelling, a little threatening and the
exchange of a harmless shot or two, sometimes in banter, sometimes
in earnest, nothing had been done. Sternly, however, though the
Falins did not know the fact, Devil Judd continued to hold aloof
in spite of the pleadings of young Dave, and so confident was the
old man in the balance of power that lay with him that he sent
June word that he was coming to take her home. And, in truth, with
Hale going away again on a business trip and Bob, too, gone back
home to the Bluegrass, and school closed, the little girl was glad
to go, and she waited for her father's coming eagerly. Miss Anne
was still there, to be sure, and if she, too, had gone, June would
have been more content. The quiet smile of that astute young woman
had told Hale plainly, and somewhat to his embarrassment, that she
knew something had happened between the two, but that smile she
never gave to June. Indeed, she never encountered aught else than
the same silent searching gaze from the strangely mature little
creature's eyes, and when those eyes met the teacher's, always
June's hand would wander unconsciously to the little cross at her
throat as though to invoke its aid against anything that could
come between her and its giver.

The purple rhododendrons on Bee Rock had come and gone and the
pink-flecked laurels were in bloom when June fared forth one sunny
morning of her own birth-month behind old Judd Tolliver--home.
Back up through the wild Gap they rode in silence, past Bee Rock,
out of the chasm and up the little valley toward the Trail of the
Lonesome Pine, into which the father's old sorrel nag, with a
switch of her sunburnt tail, turned leftward. June leaned forward
a little, and there was the crest of the big tree motionless in
the blue high above, and sheltered by one big white cloud. It was
the first time she had seen the pine since she had first left it,
and little tremblings went through her from her bare feet to her
bonneted head. Thus was she unclad, for Hale had told her that, to
avoid criticism, she must go home clothed just as she was when she
left Lonesome Cove. She did not quite understand that, and she
carried her new clothes in a bundle in her lap, but she took
Hale's word unquestioned. So she wore her crimson homespun and her
bonnet, with her bronze-gold hair gathered under it in the same
old Psyche knot. She must wear her shoes, she told Hale, until she
got out of town, else someone might see her, but Hale had said she
would be leaving too early for that: and so she had gone from the
Gap as she had come into it, with unmittened hands and bare feet.
The soft wind was very good to those dangling feet, and she itched
to have them on the green grass or in the cool waters through
which the old horse splashed. Yes, she was going home again, the
same June as far as mountain eyes could see, though she had grown
perceptibly, and her little face had blossomed from her heart
almost into a woman's, but she knew that while her clothes were
the same, they covered quite another girl. Time wings slowly for
the young, and when the sensations are many and the experiences
are new, slowly even for all--and thus there was a double reason
why it seemed an age to June since her eyes had last rested on the
big Pine.

Here was the place where Hale had put his big black horse into a
dead run, and as vivid a thrill of it came back to her now as had
been the thrill of the race. Then they began to climb laboriously
up the rocky creek--the water singing a joyous welcome to her
along the path, ferns and flowers nodding to her from dead leaves
and rich mould and peeping at her from crevices between the rocks
on the creek-banks as high up as the level of her eyes--up under
bending branches full-leafed, with the warm sunshine darting down
through them upon her as she passed, and making a playfellow of
her sunny hair. Here was the place where she had got angry with
Hale, had slid from his horse and stormed with tears. What a
little fool she had been when Hale had meant only to be kind! He
was never anything but kind--Jack was--dear, dear Jack! That
wouldn't happen NO more, she thought, and straightway she
corrected that thought.

"It won't happen ANY more," she said aloud.

"Whut'd you say, June?"

The old man lifted his bushy beard from his chest and turned his
head.

"Nothin', dad," she said, and old Judd, himself in a deep study,
dropped back into it again. How often she had said that to
herself--that it would happen no more--she had stopped saying it
to Hale, because he laughed and forgave her, and seemed to love
her mood, whether she cried from joy or anger--and yet she kept on
doing both just the same.

Several times Devil Judd stopped to let his horse rest, and each
time, of course, the wooded slopes of the mountains stretched
downward in longer sweeps of summer green, and across the widening
valley the tops of the mountains beyond dropped nearer to the
straight level of her eyes, while beyond them vaster blue bulks
became visible and ran on and on, as they always seemed, to the
farthest limits of the world. Even out there, Hale had told her,
she would go some day. The last curving up-sweep came finally, and
there stood the big Pine, majestic, unchanged and murmuring in the
wind like the undertone of a far-off sea. As they passed the base
of it, she reached out her hand and let the tips of her fingers
brush caressingly across its trunk, turned quickly for a last look
at the sunlit valley and the hills of the outer world and then the
two passed into a green gloom of shadow and thick leaves that shut
her heart in as suddenly as though some human hand had clutched
it. She was going home--to see Bub and Loretta and Uncle Billy and
"old Hon" and her step-mother and Dave, and yet she felt vaguely
troubled. The valley on the other side was in dazzling sunshine--
she had seen that. The sun must still be shining over there--it
must be shining above her over here, for here and there shot a
sunbeam message from that outer world down through the leaves, and
yet it seemed that black night had suddenly fallen about her, and
helplessly she wondered about it all, with her hands gripped tight
and her eyes wide. But the mood was gone when they emerged at the
"deadening" on the last spur and she saw Lonesome Cove and the
roof of her little home peacefully asleep in the same sun that
shone on the valley over the mountain. Colour came to her face and
her heart beat faster. At the foot of the spur the road had been
widened and showed signs of heavy hauling. There was sawdust in
the mouth of the creek and, from coal-dust, the water was black.
The ring of axes and the shouts of ox-drivers came from the
mountain side. Up the creek above her father's cabin three or four
houses were being built of fresh boards, and there in front of her
was a new store. To a fence one side of it two horses were hitched
and on one horse was a side-saddle. Before the door stood the Red
Fox and Uncle Billy, the miller, who peered at her for a moment
through his big spectacles and gave her a wondering shout of
welcome that brought her cousin Loretta to the door, where she
stopped a moment, anchored with surprise. Over her shoulder peered
her cousin Dave, and June saw his face darken while she looked.

"Why, Honey," said the old miller, "have ye really come home
agin?" While Loretta simply said:

"My Lord!" and came out and stood with her hands on her hips
looking at June.

"Why, ye ain't a bit changed! I knowed ye wasn't goin' to put on
no airs like Dave thar said "--she turned on Dave, who, with a
surly shrug, wheeled and went back into the store. Uncle Billy was
going home.

"Come down to see us right away now," he called back. "Ole Hon's
might nigh crazy to gic her eyes on ye."

"All right, Uncle Billy," said June, "early termorrer." The Red
Fox did not open his lips, but his pale eyes searched the girl
from head to foot.

"Git down, June," said Loretta, "and I'll walk up to the house
with ye."

June slid down, Devil Judd started the old horse, and as the two
girls, with their arms about each other's waists, followed, the
wolfish side of the Red Fox's face lifted in an ironical snarl.
Bub was standing at the gate, and when he saw his father riding
home alone, his wistful eyes filled and his cry of disappointment
brought the step-mother to the door.

"Whar's June?" he cried, and June heard him, and loosening herself
from Loretta, she ran round the horse and had Bub in her arms.
Then she looked up into the eyes of her step-mother. The old
woman's face looked kind--so kind that for the first time in her
life June did what her father could never get her to do: she
called her "Mammy," and then she gave that old woman the surprise
of her life--she kissed her. Right away she must see everything,
and Bub, in ecstasy, wanted to pilot her around to see the new
calf and the new pigs and the new chickens, but dumbly June looked
to a miracle that had come to pass to the left of the cabin--a
flower-garden, the like of which she had seen only in her dreams.

XVII

Twice her lips opened soundlessly and, dazed, she could only point
dumbly. The old step-mother laughed:

"Jack Hale done that. He pestered yo' pap to let him do it fer ye,
an' anything Jack Hale wants from yo' pap, he gits. I thought hit
was plum' foolishness, but he's got things to eat planted thar,
too, an' I declar hit's right purty."

That wonderful garden! June started for it on a run. There was a
broad grass-walk down through the middle of it and there were
narrow grass-walks running sidewise, just as they did in the
gardens which Hale told her he had seen in the outer world. The
flowers were planted in raised beds, and all the ones that she had
learned to know and love at the Gap were there, and many more
besides. The hollyhocks, bachelor's buttons and marigolds she had
known all her life. The lilacs, touch-me-nots, tulips and
narcissus she had learned to know in gardens at the Gap. Two rose-
bushes were in bloom, and there were strange grasses and plants
and flowers that Jack would tell her about when he came. One side
was sentinelled by sun-flowers and another side by transplanted
laurel and rhododendron shrubs, and hidden in the plant-and-
flower-bordered squares were the vegetables that won her step-
mother's tolerance of Hale's plan. Through and through June
walked, her dark eyes flashing joyously here and there when they
were not a little dimmed with tears, with Loretta following her,
unsympathetic in appreciation, wondering that June should be
making such a fuss about a lot of flowers, but envious withal when
she half guessed the reason, and impatient Bub eager to show her
other births and changes. And, over and over all the while, June
was whispering to herself:

"My garden--MY garden!"

When she came back to the porch, after a tour through all that was
new or had changed, Dave had brought his horse and Loretta's to
the gate. No, he wouldn't come in and "rest a spell"--"they must
be gittin' along home," he said shortly. But old Judd Tolliver
insisted that he should stay to dinner, and Dave tied the horses
to the fence and walked to the porch, not lifting his eyes to
June. Straightway the girl went into the house co help her step-
mother with dinner, but the old woman told her she "reckoned she
needn't start in yit"--adding in the querulous tone June knew so
well:

"I've been mighty po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do
now." So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl
hesitated. The old woman looked at her closely.

"Ye ain't a bit changed," she said.

They were the words Loretta had used, and in the voice of each was
the same strange tone of disappointment. June wondered: were they
sorry she had not come back putting on airs and fussed up with
ribbons and feathers that they might hear her picked to pieces and
perhaps do some of the picking themselves? Not Loretta, surely--
but the old step-mother! June left the kitchen and sat down just
inside the door. The Red Fox and two other men had sauntered up
from the store and all were listening to his quavering chat:

"I seed a vision last night, and thar's trouble a-comin' in these
mountains. The Lord told me so straight from the clouds. These
railroads and coal-mines is a-goin' to raise taxes, so that a pore
man'll have to sell his hogs and his corn to pay 'em an' have
nothin' left to keep him from starvin' to death. Them police-
fellers over thar at the Gap is a-stirrin' up strife and a-runnin'
things over thar as though the earth was made fer 'em, an' the
citizens ain't goin' to stand it. An' this war's a-comin' on an'
thar'll be shootin' an' killin' over thar an' over hyeh. I seed
all this devilment in a vision last night, as shore as I'm settin'
hyeh."

Old Judd grunted, shifted his huge shoulders, parted his mustache
and beard with two fingers and spat through them.

"Well, I reckon you didn't see no devilment. Red, that you won't
take a hand in, if it comes."

The other men laughed, but the Red Fox looked meek and lowly.

"I'm a servant of the Lord. He says do this, an' I does it the
best I know how. I goes about a-preachin' the word in the
wilderness an' a-healin' the sick with soothin' yarbs and sech."

"An' a-makin' compacts with the devil," said old Judd shortly,
"when the eye of man is a-lookin' t'other way." The left side of
the Red Fox's face twitched into the faintest shadow of a snarl,
but, shaking his head, he kept still.

"Well," said Sam Barth, who was thin and long and sandy, "I don't
keer what them fellers do on t'other side o' the mountain, but
what air they a-comin' over here fer?"

Old Judd spoke again.

"To give you a job, if you wasn't too durned lazy to work."

"Yes," said the other man, who was dark, swarthy and whose black
eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose--"and that damned Hale,
who's a-tearin' up Hellfire here in the cove." The old man lifted
his eyes. Young Dave's face wore a sudden malignant sympathy which
made June clench her hands a little more tightly.

"What about him? You must have been over to the Gap lately--like
Dave thar--did you git board in the calaboose?" It was a random
thrust, but it was accurate and it went home, and there was
silence for a while. Presently old Judd went on:

"Taxes hain't goin' to be raised, and if they are, folks will be
better able to pay 'em. Them police-fellers at the Gap don't
bother nobody if he behaves himself. This war will start when it
does start, an' as for Hale, he's as square an' clever a feller as
I've ever seed. His word is just as good as his bond. I'm a-goin'
to sell him this land. It'll be his'n, an' he can do what he wants
to with it. I'm his friend, and I'm goin' to stay his friend as
long as he goes on as he's goin' now, an' I'm not goin' to see him
bothered as long as he tends to his own business."

The words fell slowly and the weight of them rested heavily on all
except on June. Her fingers loosened and she smiled.

The Red Fox rose, shaking his head.

"All right, Judd Tolliver," he said warningly.

"Come in and git something to eat, Red."

"No," he said, "I'll be gittin' along"--and he went, still shaking
his head.

The table was covered with an oil-cloth spotted with drippings
from a candle. The plates and cups were thick and the spoons were
of pewter. The bread was soggy and the bacon was thick and
floating in grease. The men ate and the women served, as in
ancient days. They gobbled their food like wolves, and when they
drank their coffee, the noise they made was painful to June's
ears. There were no napkins and when her father pushed his chair
back, he wiped his dripping mouth with the back of his sleeve. And
Loretta and the step-mother--they, too, ate with their knives and
used their fingers. Poor June quivered with a vague newborn
disgust. Ah, had she not changed--in ways they could not see!

June helped clear away the dishes--the old woman did not object to
that--listening to the gossip of the mountains--courtships,
marriages, births, deaths, the growing hostility in the feud, the
random killing of this man or that--Hale's doings in Lonesome
Cove.

"He's comin' over hyeh agin next Saturday," said the old woman.

"Is he?" said Loretta in a way that made June turn sharply from
her dishes toward her. She knew Hale was not coming, but she said
nothing. The old woman was lighting her pipe.

"Yes--you better be over hyeh in yo' best bib and tucker."

"Pshaw," said Loretta, but June saw two bright spots come into her
pretty cheeks, and she herself burned inwardly. The old woman was
looking at her.

"'Pears like you air mighty quiet, June."

"That's so," said Loretta, looking at her, too.

June, still silent, turned back to her dishes. They were beginning
to take notice after all, for the girl hardly knew that she had
not opened her lips.

Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she
must go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved
garden, and hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in
the eyes. She saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat,
and a faint sneer appeared at his set mouth--a sneer for June's
folly and what he thought was uppishness in "furriners" like Hale.

"So you ain't good enough fer him jest as ye air--air ye?" he said
slowly. "He's got to make ye all over agin--so's you'll be fitten
fer him."

He turned away without looking to see how deep his barbed shaft
went and, startled, June flushed to her hair. In a few minutes
they were gone--Dave without the exchange of another word with
June, and Loretta with a parting cry that she would come back on
Saturday. The old man went to the cornfield high above the cabin,
the old woman, groaning with pains real and fancied, lay down on a
creaking bed, and June, with Dave's wound rankling, went out with
Bub to see the new doings in Lonesome Cove. The geese cackled
before her, the hog-fish darted like submarine arrows from rock to
rock and the willows bent in the same wistful way toward their
shadows in the little stream, but its crystal depths were there no
longer--floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the surface and the
water was black as soot. Here and there the white belly of a fish
lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work of
civilization had already begun. Farther up the creek was a buzzing
monster that, creaking and snorting, sent a flashing disk, rimmed
with sharp teeth, biting a savage way through a log, that screamed
with pain as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up
its life each time with a ghost-like cry of agony. Farther on
little houses were being built of fresh boards, and farther on the
water of the creek got blacker still. June suddenly clutched Bud's
arms. Two demons had appeared on a pile of fresh dirt above them--
sooty, begrimed, with black faces and black hands, and in the cap
of each was a smoking little lamp.

"Huh," said Bub, "that ain't nothin'! Hello, Bill," he called
bravely.

"Hello, Bub," answered one of the two demons, and both stared at
the lovely little apparition who was staring with such naive
horror at them. It was all very wonderful, though, and it was all
happening in Lonesome Cove, but Jack Hale was doing it all and,
therefore, it was all right, thought June--no matter what Dave
said. Moreover, the ugly spot on the great, beautiful breast of
the Mother was such a little one after all and June had no idea
how it must spread. Above the opening for the mines, the creek was
crystal-clear as ever, the great hills were the same, and the sky
and the clouds, and the cabin and the fields of corn. Nothing
could happen to them, but if even they were wiped out by Hale's
hand she would have made no complaint. A wood-thrush flitted from
a ravine as she and Bub went back down the creek--and she stopped
with uplifted face to listen. All her life she had loved its song,
and this was the first time she had heard it in Lonesome Cove
since she had learned its name from Hale. She had never heard it
thereafter without thinking of him, and she thought of him now
while it was breathing out the very spirit of the hills, and she
drew a long sigh for already she was lonely and hungering for him.
The song ceased and a long wavering cry came from the cabin.

"So-o-o-cow! S-o-o-kee! S-o-o-kee!"

The old mother was calling the cows. It was near milking-time, and
with a vague uneasiness she hurried Bub home. She saw her father
coming down from the cornfield. She saw the two cows come from the
woods into the path that led to the barn, switching their tails
and snatching mouthfuls from the bushes as they swung down the
hill and, when she reached the gate, her step-mother was standing
on the porch with one hand on her hip and the other shading her
eyes from the slanting sun--waiting for her. Already kindness and
consideration were gone.

"Whar you been, June? Hurry up, now. You've had a long restin'-
spell while I've been a-workin' myself to death."

It was the old tone, and the old fierce rebellion rose within
June, but Hale had told her to be patient. She could not check the
flash from her eyes, but she shut her lips tight on the answer
that sprang to them, and without a word she went to the kitchen
for the milking-pails. The cows had forgotten her. They eyed her
with suspicion and were restive. The first one kicked at her when
she put her beautiful head against its soft flank. Her muscles had
been in disuse and her hands were cramped and her forearms ached
before she was through--but she kept doggedly at her task. When
she finished, her father had fed the horses and was standing
behind her.

"Hit's mighty good to have you back agin, little gal."

It was not often that he smiled or showed tenderness, much less
spoke it thus openly, and June was doubly glad that she had held
her tongue. Then she helped her step-mother get supper. The fire
scorched her face, that had grown unaccustomed to such heat, and
she burned one hand, but she did not let her step-mother see even
that. Again she noticed with aversion the heavy thick dishes and
the pewter spoons and the candle-grease on the oil-cloth, and she
put the dishes down and, while the old woman was out of the room,
attacked the spots viciously. Again she saw her father and Bub
ravenously gobbling their coarse food while she and her step-
mother served and waited, and she began to wonder. The women sat
at the table with the men over in the Gap--why not here? Then her
father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the
kitten at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with
never a word. Something began to stifle her, but she choked it
down. There were the dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the
pans and kettles to be cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were
tired to the shoulders and her burned hand quivered with pain when
all was done. The old woman had left her to do the last few little
things alone and had gone to her pipe. Both she and her father
were sitting in silence on the porch when June went out there.
Neither spoke to each other, nor to her, and both seemed to be
part of the awful stillness that engulfed the world. Bub fell
asleep in the soft air, and June sat and sat and sat. That was all
except for the stars that came out over the mountains and were
slowly being sprayed over the sky, and the pipings of frogs from
the little creek. Once the wind came with a sudden sweep up the
river and she thought she could hear the creak of Uncle Billy's
water-wheel. It smote her with sudden gladness, not so much
because it was a relief and because she loved the old miller, but-
-such is the power of association--because she now loved the mill
more, loved it because the mill over in the Gap had made her think
more of the mill at the mouth of Lonesome Cove. A tapping vibrated
through the railing of the porch on which her cheek lay. Her
father was knocking the ashes from his pipe. A similar tapping
sounded inside at the fireplace. The old woman had gone and Bub
was in bed, and she had heard neither move. The old man rose with
a yawn.

"Time to lay down, June."

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