Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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And now and then through the night old Judd would open his eyes
and stare at the ceiling, and at these times it was not the pain
in his face that distressed her as much as the drawn beaten look
that she had noticed growing in it for a long time. It was
terrible--that helpless look in the face of a man, so big in body,
so strong of mind, so iron-like in will; and whenever he did speak
she knew what he was going to say:
"It's all over, Juny. They've beat us on every turn. They've got
us one by one. Thar ain't but a few of us left now and when I git
up, if I ever do, I'm goin' to gether 'em all together, pull up
stakes and take 'em all West. You won't ever leave me, Juny?"
"No, Dad," she would say gently. He had asked the question at
first quite sanely, but as the night wore on and the fever grew
and his mind wandered, he would repeat the question over and over
like a child, and over and over, while Bub and Dave slept and the
rain poured, June would repeat her answer:
"I'll never leave you, Dad."
XXXI
Before dawn Hale and the doctor and the old miller had reached the
Pine, and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him,
he would go only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even
from any Falin who happened to be hanging around in the bushes,
for Hale was hated equally by both factions now.
"I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy," said Hale. "Ask her,
for God's sake, to come up here and see me."
"All right. I'll axe her, but--" the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate,
Hale waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes
some thirty yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he
would go to the tree and look down the path, and once he slipped
far down the trail and aside to a spur whence he could see the
cabin in the cove. Once his hungry eyes caught sight of a woman's
figure walking through the little garden, and for an hour after it
disappeared into the house he watched for it to come out again.
But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the trail to
see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope. Hale waited and
ran down to meet him, his face and eyes eager and his lips
trembling, but again Uncle Billy was shaking his head.
"No use, John," he said sadly. "I got her out on the porch and
axed her, but she won't come."
"She won't come at all?"
"John, when one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an'
thar eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET--they're plumb out
o' reach o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't
blame her jes' now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched
Rufe and hung him, and she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done
that, her old daddy wouldn't be in thar on his back nigh to death.
You mustn't blame her, John--she's most out o' her head now."
"All right, Uncle Billy. Good-by." Hale turned, climbed sadly back
to his horse and sadly dropped down the other side of the mountain
and on through the rocky gap-home.
A week later he learned from the doctor that the chances were even
that old Judd would get well, but the days went by with no word of
June. Through those days June wrestled with her love for Hale and
her loyalty to her father, who, sick as he was, seemed to have a
vague sense of the trouble within her and shrewdly fought it by
making her daily promise that she would never leave him. For as
old Judd got better, June's fierceness against Hale melted and her
love came out the stronger, because of the passing injustice that
she had done him. Many times she was on the point of sending him
word that she would meet him at the Pine, but she was afraid of
her own strength if she should see him face to face, and she
feared she would be risking his life if she allowed him to come.
There were times when she would have gone to him herself, had her
father been well and strong, but he was old, beaten and helpless,
and she had given her sacred word that she would never leave him.
So once more she grew calmer, gentler still, and more determined
to follow her own way with her own kin, though that way led
through a breaking heart. She never mentioned Hale's name, she
never spoke of going West, and in time Dave began to wonder not
only if she had not gotten over her feeling for Hale, but if that
feeling had not turned into permanent hate. To him, June was
kinder than ever, because she understood him better and because
she was sorry for the hunted, hounded life he led, not knowing,
when on his trips to see her or to do some service for her father,
he might be picked off by some Falin from the bushes. So Dave
stopped his sneering remarks against Hale and began to dream his
old dreams, though he never opened his lips to June, and she was
unconscious of what was going on within him. By and by, as old
Judd began to mend, overtures of peace came, singularly enough,
from the Falins, and while the old man snorted with contemptuous
disbelief at them as a pretence to throw him off his guard, Dave
began actually to believe that they were sincere, and straightway
forged a plan of his own, even if the Tollivers did persist in
going West. So one morning as he mounted his horse at old Judd's
gate, he called to June in the garden:
"I'm a-goin' over to the Gap." June paled, but Dave was not
looking at her.
"What for?" she asked, steadying her voice.
"Business," he answered, and he laughed curiously and, still
without looking at her, rode away.
* * * * * * *
Hale sat in the porch of his little office that morning, and the
Hon. Sam Budd, who had risen to leave, stood with his hands deep
in his pockets, his hat tilted far over his big goggles, looking
down at the dead leaves that floated like lost hopes on the placid
mill-pond. Hale had agreed to go to England once more on the sole
chance left him before he went back to chain and compass--the old
land deal that had come to life--and between them they had about
enough money for the trip.
"You'll keep an eye on things over there?" said Hale with a
backward motion of his head toward Lonesome Cove, and the Hon. Sam
nodded his head:
"All I can."
"Those big trunks of hers are still here." The Hon. Sam smiled.
"She won't need 'em. I'll keep an eye on 'em and she can come over
and get what she wants--every year or two," he added grimly, and
Hale groaned.
"Stop it, Sam."
"All right. You ain't goin' to try to see her before you leave?"
And then at the look on Hale's face he said hurriedly: "All right-
-all right," and with a toss of his hands turned away, while Hale
sat thinking where he was.
Rufe Tolliver had been quite right as to the Red Fox. Nobody would
risk his life for him--there was no one to attempt a rescue, and
but a few of the guards were on hand this time to carry out the
law. On the last day he had appeared in his white suit of
tablecloth. The little old woman in black had made even the cap
that was to be drawn over his face, and that, too, she had made of
white. Moreover, she would have his body kept unburied for three
days, because the Red Fox said that on the third day he would
arise and go about preaching. So that even in death the Red Fox
was consistently inconsistent, and how he reconciled such a dual
life at one and the same time over and under the stars was, except
to his twisted brain, never known. He walked firmly up the
scaffold steps and stood there blinking in the sunlight. With one
hand he tested the rope. For a moment he looked at the sky and the
trees with a face that was white and absolutely expressionless.
Then he sang one hymn of two verses and quietly dropped into that
world in which he believed so firmly and toward which he had trod
so strange a way on earth. As he wished, the little old woman in
black had the body kept unburied for the three days--but the Red
Fox never rose. With his passing, law and order had become
supreme. Neither Tolliver nor Falin came on the Virginia side for
mischief, and the desperadoes of two sister States, whose skirts
are stitched together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the
Cumberland, confined their deviltries with great care to places
long distant from the Gap. John Hale had done a great work, but
the limit of his activities was that State line and the Falins,
ever threatening that they would not leave a Tolliver alive, could
carry out those threats and Hale not be able to lift a hand. It
was his helplessness that was making him writhe now.
Old Judd had often said he meant to leave the mountains--why
didn't he go now and take June for whose safety his heart was
always in his mouth? As an officer, he was now helpless where he
was; and if he went away he could give no personal aid--he would
not even know what was happening--and he had promised Budd to go.
An open letter was clutched in his hand, and again he read it. His
coal company had accepted his last proposition. They would take
his stock--worthless as they thought it--and surrender the cabin
and two hundred acres of field and woodland in Lonesome Cove. That
much at least would be intact, but if he failed in his last
project now, it would be subject to judgments against him that
were sure to come. So there was one thing more to do for June
before he left for the final effort in England--to give back her
home to her--and as he rose to do it now, somebody shouted at his
gate:
"Hello!" Hale stopped short at the head of the steps, his right
hand shot like a shaft of light to the butt of his pistol, stayed
there--and he stood astounded. It was Dave Tolliver on horseback,
and Dave's right hand had kept hold of his bridle-reins.
"Hold on!" he said, lifting the other with a wide gesture of
peace. "I want to talk with you a bit." Still Hale watched him
closely as he swung from his horse.
"Come in--won't you?" The mountaineer hitched his horse and
slouched within the gate.
"Have a seat." Dave dropped to the steps.
"I'll set here," he said, and there was an embarrassed silence for
a while between the two. Hale studied young Dave's face from
narrowed eyes. He knew all the threats the Tolliver had made
against him, the bitter enmity that he felt, and that it would
last until one or the other was dead. This was a queer move. The
mountaineer took off his slouched hat and ran one hand through his
thick black hair.
"I reckon you've heard as how all our folks air sellin' out over
the mountains."
"No," said Hale quickly.
"Well, they air, an' all of 'em are going West--Uncle Judd,
Loretty and June, and all our kinfolks. You didn't know that?"
"No," repeated Hale.
"Well, they hain't closed all the trades yit," he said, "an' they
mought not go mebbe afore spring. The Falins say they air done
now. Uncle Judd don't believe 'em, but I do, an' I'm thinkin' I
won't go. I've got a leetle money, an' I want to know if I can't
buy back Uncle Judd's house an' a leetle ground around it. Our
folks is tired o' fightin' and I couldn't live on t'other side of
the mountain, after they air gone, an' keep as healthy as on this
side--so I thought I'd see if I couldn't buy back June's old home,
mebbe, an' live thar."
Hale watched him keenly, wondering what his game was--and he went
on: "I know the house an' land ain't wuth much to your company,
an' as the coal-vein has petered out, I reckon they might not axe
much fer it." It was all out now, and he stopped without looking
at Hale. "I ain't axin' any favours, leastwise not o' you, an' I
thought my share o' Mam's farm mought be enough to git me the
house an' some o' the land."
"You mean to live there, yourself?"
"Yes."
"Alone?" Dave frowned.
"I reckon that's my business."
"So it is--excuse me." Hale lighted his pipe and the mountaineer
waited--he was a little sullen now.
"Well, the company has parted with the land." Dave started.
"Sold it?"
"In a way--yes."
"Well, would you mind tellin' me who bought it--maybe I can git it
from him."
"It's mine now," said Hale quietly.
"YOURN!" The mountaineer looked incredulous and then he let loose
a scornful laugh.
"YOU goin' to live thar?"
"Maybe."
"Alone?"
"That's my business." The mountaineer's face darkened and his
fingers began to twitch.
"Well, if you're talkin' 'bout June, hit's MY business. Hit always
has been and hit always will be."
"Well, if I was talking about June, I wouldn't consult you."
"No, but I'd consult you like hell."
"I wish you had the chance," said Hale coolly; "but I wasn't
talking about June." Again Dave laughed harshly, and for a moment
his angry eyes rested on the quiet mill-pond. He went backward
suddenly.
"You went over thar in Lonesome with your high notions an' your
slick tongue, an' you took June away from me. But she wusn't good
enough fer you THEN--so you filled her up with yo' fool notions
an' sent her away to git her po' little head filled with furrin'
ways, so she could be fitten to marry you. You took her away from
her daddy, her family, her kinfolks and her home, an' you took her
away from me; an' now she's been over thar eatin' her heart out
just as she et it out over here when she fust left home. An' in
the end she got so highfalutin that SHE wouldn't marry YOU." He
laughed again and Hale winced under the laugh and the lashing
words. "An' I know you air eatin' yo' heart out, too, because you
can't git June, an' I'm hopin' you'll suffer the torment o' hell
as long as you live. God, she hates ye now! To think o' your
knowin' the world and women and books"--he spoke with vindictive
and insulting slowness--"You bein' such a--fool!"
"That may all be true, but I think you can talk better outside
that gate." The mountaineer, deceived by Hale's calm voice, sprang
to his feet in a fury, but he was too late. Hale's hand was on the
butt of his revolver, his blue eyes were glittering and a
dangerous smile was at his lips. Silently he sat and silently he
pointed his other hand at the gate. Dave laughed:
"D'ye think I'd fight you hyeh? If you killed me, you'd be elected
County Jedge; if I killed you, what chance would I have o' gittin'
away? I'd swing fer it." He was outside the gate now and
unhitching his horse. He started to turn the beasts but Hale
stopped him.
"Get on from this side, please."
With one foot in the stirrup, Dave turned savagely: "Why don't you
go up in the Gap with me now an' fight it out like a man?"
"I don't trust you."
"I'll git ye over in the mountains some day."
"I've no doubt you will, if you have the chance from the bush."
Hale was getting roused now.
"Look here," he said suddenly, "you've been threatening me for a
long time now. I've never had any feeling against you. I've never
done anything to you that I hadn't to do. But you've gone a little
too far now and I'm tired. If you can't get over your grudge
against me, suppose we go across the river outside the town-
limits, put our guns down and fight it out--fist and skull."
"I'm your man," said Dave eagerly. Looking across the street Hale
saw two men on the porch.
"Come on!" he said. The two men were Budd and the new town-
sergeant. "Sam," he said "this gentleman and I are going across
the river to have a little friendly bout, and I wish you'd come
along--and you, too, Bill, to see that Dave here gets fair play."
The sergeant spoke to Dave. "You don't need nobody to see that you
git fair play with them two--but I'll go 'long just the same."
Hardly a word was said as the four walked across the bridge and
toward a thicket to the right. Neither Budd nor the sergeant asked
the nature of the trouble, for either could have guessed what it
was. Dave tied his horse and, like Hale, stripped off his coat.
The sergeant took charge of Dave's pistol and Budd of Hale's.
"All you've got to do is to keep him away from you," said Budd.
"If he gets his hands on you--you're gone. You know how they fight
rough-and-tumble."
Hale nodded--he knew all that himself, and when he looked at
Dave's sturdy neck, and gigantic shoulders, he knew further that
if the mountaineer got him in his grasp he would have to gasp
"enough" in a hurry, or be saved by Budd from being throttled to
death.
"Are you ready?" Again Hale nodded.
"Go ahead, Dave," growled the sergeant, for the job was not to his
liking. Dave did not plunge toward Hale, as the three others
expected. On the contrary, he assumed the conventional attitude of
the boxer and advanced warily, using his head as a diagnostician
for Hale's points--and Hale remembered suddenly that Dave had been
away at school for a year. Dave knew something of the game and the
Hon. Sam straightway was anxious, when the mountaineer ducked and
swung his left Budd's heart thumped and he almost shrank himself
from the terrific sweep of the big fist.
"God!" he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must,
it seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew
his head not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye,
and jabbed his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw,
that made the mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and
pain, and when he followed it up with a swing of his left on
Dave's right eye and another terrific jolt with his right on the
left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy rage in the mountaineer's face,
he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot his science as the Hon. Sam
expected, and with a bellow he started at Hale like a cave-dweller
to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe figure before him
swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every side-step a
fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until,
blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the
sergeant with the cry of a madman:
"Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!" And when the sergeant
sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with
rage and shame to the ground.
"You two just go back to town," said the sergeant. "I'll take keer
of him. Quick!" and he shook his head as Hale advanced. "He ain't
goin' to shake hands with you."
The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's
office to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came.
There he had the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in
Lonesome Cove and the acres about it were conveyed in fee simple
to June--her heirs and assigns forever; but the girl must not know
until, Hale said, "her father dies, or I die, or she marries."
When he came out the sergeant was passing the door.
"Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway," he
said, shaking his head. "If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as
long as he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust
chance he gets. You'll have to watch that feller as long as you
live--'specially when he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin'
and want revenge fer it till the grave. One of you has got to die
some day--shore."
And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that
moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and
shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his
cries and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine.
All the way up the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice
of the big Pine he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped,
his heart was beating curses as he dropped down the other side of
the mountain.
When he reached the river, he got off his horse and bathed his
mouth and his eyes again, and he cursed afresh when the blood
started afresh at his lips again. For a while he sat there in his
black mood, undecided whether he should go to his uncle's cabin or
go on home. But he had seen a woman's figure in the garden as he
came down the spur, and the thought of June drew him to the cabin
in spite of his shame and the questions that were sure to be
asked. When he passed around the clump of rhododendrons at the
creek, June was in the garden still. She was pruning a rose-bush
with Bub's penknife, and when she heard him coming she wheeled,
quivering. She had been waiting for him all day, and, like an
angry goddess, she swept fiercely toward him. Dave pretended not
to see her, but when he swung from his horse and lifted his sullen
eyes, he shrank as though she had lashed him across them with a
whip. Her eyes blazed with murderous fire from her white face, the
penknife in her hand was clenched as though for a deadly purpose,
and on her trembling lips was the same question that she had asked
him at the mill:
"Have you done it this time?" she whispered, and then she saw his
swollen mouth and his battered eye. Her fingers relaxed about the
handle of the knife, the fire in her eyes went swiftly down, and
with a smile that was half pity, half contempt, she turned away.
She could not have told the whole truth better in words, even to
Dave, and as he looked after her his every pulse-beat was a new
curse, and if at that minute he could have had Hale's heart he
would have eaten it like a savage--raw. For a minute he hesitated
with reins in hand as to whether he should turn now and go back to
the Gap to settle with Hale, and then he threw the reins over a
post. He could bide his time yet a little longer, for a crafty
purpose suddenly entered his brain. Bub met him at the door of the
cabin and his eyes opened.
"What's the matter, Dave?"
"Oh, nothin'," he said carelessly. "My hoss stumbled comin' down
the mountain an' I went clean over his head." He raised one hand
to his mouth and still Bub was suspicious.
"Looks like you been in a fight." The boy began to laugh, but Dave
ignored him and went on into the cabin. Within, he sat where he
could see through the open door.
"Whar you been, Dave?" asked old Judd from the corner. Just then
he saw June coming and, pretending to draw on his pipe, he waited
until she had sat down within ear-shot on the edge of the porch.
"Who do you reckon owns this house and two hundred acres o' land
roundabouts?"
The girl's heart waited apprehensively and she heard her father's
deep voice.
"The company owns it." Dave laughed harshly.
"Not much--John Hale." The heart out on the porch leaped with
gladness now
"He bought it from the company. It's just as well you're goin'
away, Uncle Judd. He'd put you out."
"I reckon not. I got writin' from the company which 'lows me to
stay here two year or more--if I want to."
"I don't know. He's a slick one."
"I heerd him say," put in Bub stoutly, "that he'd see that we
stayed here jus' as long as we pleased."
"Well," said old Judd shortly, "ef we stay here by his favour, we
won't stay long."
There was silence for a while. Then Dave spoke again for the
listening ears outside--maliciously:
"I went over to the Gap to see if I couldn't git the place myself
from the company. I believe the Falins ain't goin' to bother us
an' I ain't hankerin' to go West. But I told him that you-all was
goin' to leave the mountains and goin' out thar fer good." There
was another silence.
"He never said a word." Nobody had asked the question, but he was
answering the unspoken one in the heart of June, and that heart
sank like a stone.
"He's goin' away hisself-goin' ter-morrow--goin' to that same
place he went before--England, some feller called it."
Dave had done his work well. June rose unsteadily, and with one
hand on her heart and the other clutching the railing of the
porch, she crept noiselessly along it, staggered like a wounded
thing around the chimney, through the garden and on, still
clutching her heart, to the woods--there to sob it out on the
breast of the only mother she had ever known.
Dave was gone when she came back from the woods--calm, dry-eyed,
pale. Her step-mother had kept her dinner for her, and when she
said she wanted nothing to eat, the old woman answered something
querulous to which June made no answer, but went quietly to
cleaning away the dishes. For a while she sat on the porch, and
presently she went into her room and for a few moments she rocked
quietly at her window. Hale was going away next day, and when he
came back she would be gone and she would never see him again. A
dry sob shook her body of a sudden, she put both hands to her head
and with wild eyes she sprang to her feet and, catching up her
bonnet, slipped noiselessly out the back door. With hands clenched
tight she forced herself to walk slowly across the foot-bridge,
but when the bushes hid her, she broke into a run as though she
were crazed and escaping a madhouse. At the foot of the spur she
turned swiftly up the mountain and climbed madly, with one hand
tight against the little cross at her throat. He was going away
and she must tell him--she must tell him--what? Behind her a voice
was calling, the voice that pleaded all one night for her not to
leave him, that had made that plea a daily prayer, and it had come
from an old man--wounded, broken in health and heart, and her
father. Hale's face was before her, but that voice was behind, and
as she climbed, the face that she was nearing grew fainter, the
voice she was leaving sounded the louder in her ears, and when she
reached the big Pine she dropped helplessly at the base of it,
sobbing. With her tears the madness slowly left her, the old
determination came back again and at last the old sad peace. The
sunlight was slanting at a low angle when she rose to her feet and
stood on the cliff overlooking the valley--her lips parted as when
she stood there first, and the tiny drops drying along the roots
of her dull gold hair. And being there for the last time she
thought of that time when she was first there--ages ago. The great
glare of light that she looked for then had come and gone. There
was the smoking monster rushing into the valley and sending
echoing shrieks through the hills--but there was no booted
stranger and no horse issuing from the covert of maple where the
path disappeared. A long time she stood there, with a wandering
look of farewell to every familiar thing before her, but not a
tear came now. Only as she turned away at last her breast heaved
and fell with one long breath--that was all. Passing the Pine
slowly, she stopped and turned back to it, unclasping the necklace
from her throat. With trembling fingers she detached from it the
little luck-piece that Hale had given her--the tear of a fairy
that had turned into a tiny cross of stone when a strange
messenger brought to the Virginia valley the story of the
crucifixion. The penknife was still in her pocket, and, opening
it, she went behind the Pine and dug a niche as high and as deep
as she could toward its soft old heart. In there she thrust the
tiny symbol, whispering:
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