Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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"My, but you air wearin' mighty fine clothes," she croaked
enviously. "I ain't had a new dress fer more'n five year;" and
that was the welcome she got.
"No?" said June appeasingly. "Well, I'll get one for you myself."
"I'm much obleeged," she whined, "but I reckon I can git along."
A cough came from the bed in the other corner of the room.
"That's Dave," said the old woman, and June walked over to where
her cousin's black eyes shone hostile at her from the dark.
"I'm sorry, Dave," she said, but Dave answered nothing but a
sullen "howdye" and did not put out a hand--he only stared at her
in sulky bewilderment, and June went back to listen to the torrent
of the old woman's plaints until Bub came in. Then as she turned,
she noticed for the first time that a new door had been cut in one
side of the cabin, and Bub was following the direction of her
eyes.
"Why, haint nobody told ye?" he said delightedly.
"Told me what, Bub?"
With a whoop Bud leaped for the side of the door and, reaching up,
pulled a shining key from between the logs and thrust it into her
hands.
"Go ahead," he said. "Hit's yourn."
"Some more o' Jack Hale's fool doin's," said the old woman. "Go
on, gal, and see whut he's done."
With eager hands she put the key in the lock and when she pushed
open the door, she gasped. Another room had been added to the
cabin--and the fragrant smell of cedar made her nostrils dilate.
Bub pushed by her and threw open the shutters of a window to the
low sunlight, and June stood with both hands to her head. It was a
room for her--with a dresser, a long mirror, a modern bed in one
corner, a work-table with a student's lamp on it, a wash-stand and
a chest of drawers and a piano! On the walls were pictures and
over the mantel stood the one she had first learned to love--two
lovers clasped in each other's arms and under them the words
"Enfin Seul."
"Oh-oh," was all she could say, and choking, she motioned Bub from
the room. When the door closed, she threw herself sobbing across
the bed.
Over at the Gap that night Hale sat in his office with a piece of
white paper and a lump of black coal on the table in front of him.
His foreman had brought the coal to him that day at dusk. He
lifted the lump to the light of his lamp, and from the centre of
it a mocking evil eye leered back at him. The eye was a piece of
shining black flint and told him that his mine in Lonesome Cove
was but a pocket of cannel coal and worth no more than the
smouldering lumps in his grate. Then he lifted the piece of white
paper--it was his license to marry June.
XXIV
Very slowly June walked up the little creek to the old log where
she had lain so many happy hours. There was no change in leaf,
shrub or tree, and not a stone in the brook had been disturbed.
The sun dropped the same arrows down through the leaves--blunting
their shining points into tremulous circles on the ground, the
water sang the same happy tune under her dangling feet and a wood-
thrush piped the old lay overhead.
Wood-thrush! June smiled as she suddenly rechristened the bird for
herself now. That bird henceforth would be the Magic Flute to
musical June--and she leaned back with ears, eyes and soul awake
and her brain busy.
All the way over the mountain, on that second home-going, she had
thought of the first, and even memories of the memories aroused by
that first home-going came back to her--the place where Hale had
put his horse into a dead run and had given her that never-to-be-
forgotten thrill, and where she had slid from behind to the ground
and stormed with tears. When they dropped down into the green
gloom of shadow and green leaves toward Lonesome Cove, she had the
same feeling that her heart was being clutched by a human hand and
that black night had suddenly fallen about her, but this time she
knew what it meant. She thought then of the crowded sleeping-room,
the rough beds and coarse blankets at home; the oil-cloth, spotted
with drippings from a candle, that covered the table; the thick
plates and cups; the soggy bread and the thick bacon floating in
grease; the absence of napkins, the eating with knives and fingers
and the noise Bub and her father made drinking their coffee. But
then she knew all these things in advance, and the memories of
them on her way over had prepared her for Lonesome Cove. The
conditions were definite there: she knew what it would be to face
them again--she was facing them all the way, and to her surprise
the realities had hurt her less even than they had before. Then
had come the same thrill over the garden, and now with that garden
and her new room and her piano and her books, with Uncle Billy's
sister to help do the work, and with the little changes that June
was daily making in the household, she could live her own life
even over there as long as she pleased, and then she would go out
into the world again.
But all the time when she was coming over from the Gap, the way
had bristled with accusing memories of Hale--even from the
chattering creeks, the turns in the road, the sun-dappled bushes
and trees and flowers; and when she passed the big Pine that rose
with such friendly solemnity above her, the pang of it all hurt
her heart and kept on hurting her. When she walked in the garden,
the flowers seemed not to have the same spirit of gladness. It had
been a dry season and they drooped for that reason, but the
melancholy of them had a sympathetic human quality that depressed
her. If she saw a bass shoot arrow-like into deep water, if she
heard a bird or saw a tree or a flower whose name she had to
recall, she thought of Hale. Do what she would, she could not
escape the ghost that stalked at her side everywhere, so like a
human presence that she felt sometimes a strange desire to turn
and speak to it. And in her room that presence was all-pervasive.
The piano, the furniture, the bits of bric-a-brac, the pictures
and books--all were eloquent with his thought of her--and every
night before she turned out her light she could not help lifting
her eyes to her once-favourite picture--even that Hale had
remembered--the lovers clasped in each other's arms--"At Last
Alone"--only to see it now as a mocking symbol of his beaten
hopes. She had written to thank him for it all, and not yet had he
answered her letter. He had said that he was coming over to
Lonesome Cove and he had not come--why should he, on her account?
Between them all was over--why should he? The question was absurd
in her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she
so WANTED him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true
that it raised her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran
her fingers over her forehead and down her dazed face until her
chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled eyes were
fixed unwaveringly on the running water and yet not seeing it at
all. A call--her step-mother's cry--rang up the ravine and she did
not hear it. She did not even hear Bub coming through the
underbrush a few minutes later, and when he half angrily shouted
her name at the end of the vista, down-stream, whence he could see
her, she lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her
senses had for the moment been wholly lost.
"Come on," he shouted.
She had forgotten--there was a "bean-stringing" at the house that
day--and she slipped slowly off the log and went down the path,
gathering herself together as she went, and making no answer to
the indignant Bub who turned and stalked ahead of her back to the
house. At the barnyard gate her father stopped her--he looked
worried.
"Jack Hale's jus' been over hyeh." June caught her breath sharply.
"Has he gone?" The old man was watching her and she felt it.
"Yes, he was in a hurry an' nobody knowed whar you was. He jus'
come over, he said, to tell me to tell you that you could go back
to New York and keep on with yo' singin' doin's whenever you
please. He knowed I didn't want you hyeh when this war starts fer
a finish as hit's goin' to, mighty soon now. He says he ain't
quite ready to git married yit. I'm afeerd he's in trouble."
"Trouble?"
"I tol' you t'other day--he's lost all his money; but he says
you've got enough to keep you goin' fer some time. I don't see why
you don't git married right now and live over at the Gap."
June coloured and was silent.
"Oh," said the old man quickly, "you ain't ready nuther,"--he
studied her with narrowing eyes and through a puzzled frown--"but
I reckon hit's all right, if you air goin' to git married some
time."
"What's all right, Dad?" The old man checked himself:
"Ever' thing," he said shortly, "but don't you make a fool of
yo'self with a good man like Jack Hale." And, wondering, June was
silent. The truth was that the old man had wormed out of Hale an
admission of the kindly duplicity the latter had practised on him
and on June, and he had given his word to Hale that he would not
tell June. He did not understand why Hale should have so insisted
on that promise, for it was all right that Hale should openly do
what he pleased for the girl he was going to marry--but he had
given his word: so he turned away, but his frown stayed where it
was.
June went on, puzzled, for she knew that her father was
withholding something, and she knew, too, that he would tell her
only in his own good time. But she could go away when she pleased-
-that was the comfort--and with the thought she stopped suddenly
at the corner of the garden. She could see Hale on his big black
horse climbing the spur. Once it had always been his custom to
stop on top of it to rest his horse and turn to look back at her,
and she always waited to wave him good-by. She wondered if he
would do it now, and while she looked and waited, the beating of
her heart quickened nervously; but he rode straight on, without
stopping or turning his head, and June felt strangely bereft and
resentful, and the comfort of the moment before was suddenly gone.
She could hear the voices of the guests in the porch around the
corner of the house--there was an ordeal for her around there, and
she went on. Loretta and Loretta's mother were there, and old Hon
and several wives and daughters of Tolliver adherents from up
Deadwood Creek and below Uncle Billy's mill. June knew that the
"bean-stringing" was simply an excuse for them to be there, for
she could not remember that so many had ever gathered there
before--at that function in the spring, at corn-cutting in the
autumn, or sorghum-making time or at log-raisings or quilting
parties, and she well knew the motive of these many and the
curiosity of all save, perhaps, Loretta and the old miller's wife:
and June was prepared for them. She had borrowed a gown from her
step-mother--a purple creation of home-spun--she had shaken down
her beautiful hair and drawn it low over her brows, and arranged
it behind after the fashion of mountain women, and when she went
up the steps of the porch she was outwardly to the eye one of them
except for the leathern belt about her slenderly full waist, her
black silk stockings and the little "furrin" shoes on her dainty
feet. She smiled inwardly when she saw the same old wave of
disappointment sweep across the faces of them all. It was not
necessary to shake hands, but unthinkingly she did, and the women
sat in their chairs as she went from one to the other and each
gave her a limp hand and a grave "howdye," though each paid an
unconscious tribute to a vague something about her, by wiping that
hand on an apron first. Very quietly and naturally she took a low
chair, piled beans in her lap and, as one of them, went to work.
Nobody looked at her at first until old Hon broke the silence.
"You haint lost a spec o' yo' good looks, Juny."
June laughed without a flush--she would have reddened to the roots
of her hair two years before.
"I'm feelin' right peart, thank ye," she said, dropping
consciously into the vernacular; but there was a something in her
voice that was vaguely felt by all as a part of the universal
strangeness that was in her erect bearing, her proud head, her
deep eyes that looked so straight into their own--a strangeness
that was in that belt and those stockings and those shoes,
inconspicuous as they were, to which she saw every eye in time
covertly wandering as to tangible symbols of a mystery that was
beyond their ken. Old Hon and the step-mother alone talked at
first, and the others, even Loretta, said never a word.
"Jack Hale must have been in a mighty big hurry," quavered the old
step-mother. "June ain't goin' to be with us long, I'm afeerd:"
and, without looking up, June knew the wireless significance of
the speech was going around from eye to eye, but calmly she pulled
her thread through a green pod and said calmly, with a little
enigmatical shake of her head:
"I--don't know--I don't know."
Young Dave's mother was encouraged and all her efforts at good-
humour could not quite draw the sting of a spiteful plaint from
her voice.
"I reckon she'd never git away, if my boy Dave had the sayin' of
it." There was a subdued titter at this, but Bub had come in from
the stable and had dropped on the edge of the porch. He broke in
hotly:
"You jest let June alone, Aunt Tilly, you'll have yo' hands full
if you keep yo' eye on Loretty thar."
Already when somebody was saying something about the feud, as June
came around the corner, her quick eye had seen Loretta bend her
head swiftly over her work to hide the flush of her face. Now
Loretta turned scarlet as the step-mother spoke severely:
"You hush, Bub," and Bub rose and stalked into the house. Aunt
Tilly was leaning back in her chair--gasping--and consternation
smote the group. June rose suddenly with her string of dangling
beans.
"I haven't shown you my room, Loretty. Don't you want to see it?
Come on, all of you," she added to the girls, and they and Loretta
with one swift look of gratitude rose shyly and trooped shyly
within where they looked in wide-mouthed wonder at the marvellous
things that room contained. The older women followed to share
sight of the miracle, and all stood looking from one thing to
another, some with their hands behind them as though to thwart the
temptation to touch, and all saying merely:
"My! My!"
None of them had ever seen a piano before and June must play the
"shiny contraption" and sing a song. It was only curiosity and
astonishment that she evoked when her swift fingers began running
over the keys from one end of the board to the other, astonishment
at the gymnastic quality of the performance, and only astonishment
when her lovely voice set the very walls of the little room to
vibrating with a dramatic love song that was about as intelligible
to them as a problem in calculus, and June flushed and then smiled
with quick understanding at the dry comment that rose from Aunt
Tilly behind:
"She shorely can holler some!"
She couldn't play "Sourwood Mountain" on the piano--nor "Jinny git
Aroun'," nor "Soapsuds over the Fence," but with a sudden
inspiration she went back to an old hymn that they all knew, and
at the end she won the tribute of an awed silence that made them
file back to the beans on the porch. Loretta lingered a moment and
when June closed the piano and the two girls went into the main
room, a tall figure, entering, stopped in the door and stared at
June without speaking:
"Why, howdye, Uncle Rufe," said Loretta. "This is June. You didn't
know her, did ye?" The man laughed. Something in June's bearing
made him take off his hat; he came forward to shake hands, and
June looked up into a pair of bold black eyes that stirred within
her again the vague fears of her childhood. She had been afraid of
him when she was a child, and it was the old fear aroused that
made her recall him by his eyes now. His beard was gone and he was
much changed. She trembled when she shook hands with him and she
did not call him by his name Old Judd came in, and a moment later
the two men and Bub sat on the porch while the women worked, and
when June rose again to go indoors, she felt the newcomer's bold
eyes take her slowly in from head to foot and she turned crimson.
This was the terror among the Tollivers--Bad Rufe, come back from
the West to take part in the feud. HE saw the belt and the
stockings and the shoes, the white column of her throat and the
proud set of her gold-crowned head; HE knew what they meant, he
made her feel that he knew, and later he managed to catch her eyes
once with an amused, half-contemptuous glance at the simple
untravelled folk about them, that said plainly how well he knew
they two were set apart from them, and she shrank fearfully from
the comradeship that the glance implied and would look at him no
more. He knew everything that was going on in the mountains. He
had come back "ready for business," he said. When he made ready to
go, June went to her room and stayed there, but she heard him say
to her father that he was going over to the Gap, and with a laugh
that chilled her soul:
"I'm goin' over to kill me a policeman." And her father warned
gruffly:
"You better keep away from thar. You don't understand them
fellers." And she heard Rufe's brutal laugh again, and as he rode
into the creek his horse stumbled and she saw him cut cruelly at
the poor beast's ears with the rawhide quirt that he carried. She
was glad when all went home, and the only ray of sunlight in the
day for her radiated from Uncle Billy's face when, at sunset, he
came to take old Hon home. The old miller was the one unchanged
soul to her in that he was the one soul that could see no change
in June. He called her "baby" in the old way, and he talked to her
now as he had talked to her as a child. He took her aside to ask
her if she knew that Hale had got his license to marry, and when
she shook her head, his round, red face lighted up with the
benediction of a rising sun:
"Well, that's what he's done, baby, an' he's axed me to marry ye,"
he added, with boyish pride, "he's axed ME."
And June choked, her eyes filled, and she was dumb, but Uncle
Billy could not see that it meant distress and not joy. He just
put his arm around her and whispered:
"I ain't told a soul, baby--not a soul."
She went to bed and to sleep with Hale's face in the dream-mist of
her brain, and Uncle Billy's, and the bold, black eyes of Bad Rufe
Tolliver--all fused, blurred, indistinguishable. Then suddenly
Rufe's words struck that brain, word by word, like the clanging
terror of a frightened bell.
"I'm goin' to kill me a policeman." And with the last word, it
seemed, she sprang upright in bed, clutching the coverlid
convulsively. Daylight was showing gray through her window. She
heard a swift step up the steps, across the porch, the rattle of
the door-chain, her father's quick call, then the rumble of two
men's voices, and she knew as well what had happened as though she
had heard every word they uttered. Rufe had killed him a
policeman--perhaps John Hale--and with terror clutching her heart
she sprang to the floor, and as she dropped the old purple gown
over her shoulders, she heard the scurry of feet across the back
porch--feet that ran swiftly but cautiously, and left the sound of
them at the edge of the woods. She heard the back door close
softly, the creaking of the bed as her father lay down again, and
then a sudden splashing in the creek. Kneeling at the window, she
saw strange horsemen pushing toward the gate where one threw
himself from his saddle, strode swiftly toward the steps, and her
lips unconsciously made soft, little, inarticulate cries of joy--
for the stern, gray face under the hat of the man was the face of
John Hale. After him pushed other men--fully armed--whom he
motioned to either side of the cabin to the rear. By his side was
Bob Berkley, and behind him was a red-headed Falin whom she well
remembered. Within twenty feet, she was looking into that gray
face, when the set lips of it opened in a loud command: "Hello!"
She heard her father's bed creak again, again the rattle of the
door-chain, and then old Judd stepped on the porch with a revolver
in each hand.
"Hello!" he answered sternly.
"Judd," said Hale sharply--and June had never heard that tone from
him before--"a man with a black moustache killed one of our men
over in the Gap yesterday and we've tracked him over here. There's
his horse--and we saw him go into that door. We want him."
"Do you know who the feller is?" asked old Judd calmly.
"No," said Hale quickly. And then, with equal calm:
"Hit was my brother," and the old man's mouth closed like a vise.
Had the last word been a stone striking his ear, Hale could hardly
have been more stunned. Again he called and almost gently:
"Watch the rear, there," and then gently he turned to Devil Judd.
"Judd, your brother shot a man at the Gap--without excuse or
warning. He was an officer and a friend of mine, but if he were a
stranger--we want him just the same. Is he here?"
Judd looked at the red-headed man behind Hale.
"So you're turned on the Falin side now, have ye?" he said
contemptuously.
"Is he here?" repeated Hale.
"Yes, an' you can't have him." Without a move toward his pistol
Hale stepped forward, and June saw her father's big right hand
tighten on his huge pistol, and with a low cry she sprang to her
feet.
"I'm an officer of the law," Hale said, "stand aside, Judd!" Bub
leaped to the door with a Winchester--his eyes wild and his face
white.
"Watch out, men!" Hale called, and as the men raised their guns
there was a shriek inside the cabin and June stood at Bub's side,
barefooted, her hair tumbled about her shoulders, and her hand
clutching the little cross at her throat.
"Stop!" she shrieked. "He isn't here. He's--he's gone!" For a
moment a sudden sickness smote Hale's face, then Devil Judd's ruse
flashed to him and, wheeling, he sprang to the ground.
"Quick!" he shouted, with a sweep of his hand right and left. "Up
those hollows! Lead those horses up to the Pine and wait. Quick!"
Already the men were running as he directed and Hale, followed by
Bob and the Falin, rushed around the corner of the house. Old
Judd's nostrils were quivering, and with his pistols dangling in
his hands he walked to the gate, listening to the sounds of the
pursuit.
"They'll never ketch him," he said, coming back, and then he
dropped into a chair and sat in silence a long time. June
reappeared, her face still white and her temples throbbing, for
the sun was rising on days of darkness for her. Devil Judd did not
even look at her.
"I reckon you ain't goin' to marry John Hale."
"No, Dad," said June.
XXV
Thus Fate did not wait until Election Day for the thing Hale most
dreaded--a clash that would involve the guard in the Tolliver-
Falin troubles over the hills. There had been simply a preliminary
political gathering at the Gap the day before, but it had been a
crucial day for the guard from a cloudy sunrise to a tragic
sunset. Early that morning, Mockaby, the town-sergeant, had
stepped into the street freshly shaven, with polished boots, and
in his best clothes for the eyes of his sweetheart, who was to
come up that day to the Gap from Lee. Before sunset he died with
those boots on, while the sweetheart, unknowing, was bound on her
happy way homeward, and Rufe Tolliver, who had shot Mockaby, was
clattering through the Gap in flight for Lonesome Cove.
As far as anybody knew, there had been but one Tolliver and one
Falin in town that day, though many had noticed the tall Western-
looking stranger who, early in the afternoon, had ridden across
the bridge over the North Fork, but he was quiet and well-behaved,
he merged into the crowd and through the rest of the afternoon was
in no way conspicuous, even when the one Tolliver and the one
Falin got into a fight in front of the speaker's stand and the
riot started which came near ending in a bloody battle. The Falin
was clearly blameless and was let go at once. This angered the
many friends of the Tolliver, and when he was arrested there was
an attempt at rescue, and the Tolliver was dragged to the
calaboose behind a slowly retiring line of policemen, who were
jabbing the rescuers back with the muzzles of cocked Winchesters.
It was just when it was all over, and the Tolliver was safely
jailed, that Bad Rufe galloped up to the calaboose, shaking with
rage, for he had just learned that the prisoner was a Tolliver. He
saw how useless interference was, but he swung from his horse,
threw the reins over its head after the Western fashion and strode
up to Hale.
"You the captain of this guard?"
"Yes," said Hale; "and you?" Rufe shook his head with angry
impatience, and Hale, thinking he had some communication to make,
ignored his refusal to answer.
"I hear that a fellow can't blow a whistle or holler, or shoot off
his pistol in this town without gittin' arrested."
"That's true--why?" Rufe's black eyes gleamed vindictively.
"Nothin'," he said, and he turned to his horse.
Ten minutes later, as Mockaby was passing down the dummy track, a
whistle was blown on the river bank, a high yell was raised, a
pistol shot quickly followed and he started for the sound of them
on a run. A few minutes later three more pistol shots rang out,
and Hale rushed to the river bank to find Mockaby stretched out on
the ground, dying, and a mountaineer lout pointing after a man on
horseback, who was making at a swift gallop for the mouth of the
gap and the hills.
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