Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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"Look here," he said suddenly, "hadn't you better catch hold of
me?" She shook her head vigorously and made two not-to-be-rendered
sounds that meant:
"No, indeed."
"Well, if this were your sweetheart you'd take hold of him,
wouldn't you?"
Again she gave a vigorous shake of the head.
"Well, if he saw you riding behind me, he wouldn't like it, would
he?"
"She didn't keer," she said, but Hale did; and when he heard the
galloping of horses behind him, saw two men coming, and heard one
of them shouting--"Hyeh, you man on that yaller mule, stop thar"--
he shifted his revolver, pulled in and waited with some
uneasiness. They came up, reeling in their saddles--neither one
the girl's sweetheart, as he saw at once from her face--and began
to ask what the girl characterized afterward as "unnecessary
questions": who he was, who she was, and where they were going.
Hale answered so shortly that the girl thought there was going to
be a fight, and she was on the point of slipping from the mule.
"Sit still," said Hale, quietly. "There's not going to be a fight
so long as you are here."
"Thar hain't!" said one of the men. "Well"--then he looked sharply
at the girl and turned his horse--"Come on, Bill--that's ole Dave
Tolliver's gal." The girl's face was on fire.
"Them mean Falins!" she said contemptuously, and somehow the mere
fact that Hale had been even for the moment antagonistic to the
other faction seemed to put him in the girl's mind at once on her
side, and straightway she talked freely of the feud. Devil Judd
had taken no active part in it for a long time, she said, except
to keep it down--especially since he and her father had had a
"fallin' out" and the two families did not visit much--though she
and her cousin June sometimes spent the night with each other.
"You won't be able to git over thar till long atter dark," she
said, and she caught her breath so suddenly and so sharply that
Hale turned to see what the matter was. She searched his face with
her black eyes, which were like June's without the depths of
June's.
"I was just a-wonderin' if mebbe you wasn't the same feller that
was over in Lonesome last fall."
"Maybe I am--my name's Hale." The girl laughed. "Well, if this
ain't the beatenest! I've heerd June talk about you. My brother
Dave don't like you overmuch," she added frankly. "I reckon we'll
see Dave purty soon. If this ain't the beatenest!" she repeated,
and she laughed again, as she always did laugh, it seemed to Hale,
when there was any prospect of getting him into trouble.
"You can't git over thar till long atter dark," she said again
presently.
"Is there any place on the way where I can get to stay all night?"
"You can stay all night with the Red Fox on top of the mountain."
"The Red Fox," repeated Hale.
"Yes, he lives right on top of the mountain. You can't miss his
house."
"Oh, yes, I remember him. I saw him talking to one of the Falins
in town to-day, behind the barn, when I went to get my horse."
"You--seed--him--a-talkin'--to a Falin AFORE the trouble come up?"
the girl asked slowly and with such significance that Hale turned
to look at her. He felt straightway that he ought not to have said
that, and the day was to come when he would remember it to his
cost. He knew how foolish it was for the stranger to show sympathy
with, or interest in, one faction or another in a mountain feud,
but to give any kind of information of one to the other--that was
unwise indeed. Ahead of them now, a little stream ran from a
ravine across the road. Beyond was a cabin; in the doorway were
several faces, and sitting on a horse at the gate was young Dave
Tolliver.
"Well, I git down here," said the girl, and before his mule
stopped she slid from behind him and made for the gate without a
word of thanks or good-by.
"Howdye!" said Hale, taking in the group with his glance, but
leaving his eyes on young Dave. The rest nodded, but the boy was
too surprised for speech, and the spirit of deviltry took the girl
when she saw her brother's face, and at the gate she turned:
"Much obleeged," she said. "Tell June I'm a-comin' over to see her
next Sunday."
"I will," said Hale, and he rode on. To his surprise, when he had
gone a hundred yards, he heard the boy spurring after him and he
looked around inquiringly as young Dave drew alongside; but the
boy said nothing and Hale, amused, kept still, wondering when the
lad would open speech. At the mouth of another little creek the
boy stopped his horse as though he was to turn up that way.
"You've come back agin," he said, searching Hale's face with his
black eyes.
"Yes," said Hale, "I've come back again."
"You goin' over to Lonesome Cove?"
"Yes."
The boy hesitated, and a sudden change of mind was plain to Hale
in his face. "I wish you'd tell Uncle Judd about the trouble in
town to-day," he said, still looking fixedly at Hale.
"Certainly."
"Did you tell the Red Fox that day you seed him when you was goin'
over to the Gap last fall that you seed me at Uncle Judd's?"
"No," said Hale. "But how did you know that I saw the Red Fox that
day?" The boy laughed unpleasantly.
"So long," he said. "See you agin some day." The way was steep and
the sun was down and darkness gathering before Hale reached the
top of the mountain--so he hallooed at the yard fence of the Red
Fox, who peered cautiously out of the door and asked his name
before he came to the gate. And there, with a grin on his curious
mismatched face, he repeated young Dave's words:
"You've come back agin." And Hale repeated his:
"Yes, I've come back again."
"You goin' over to Lonesome Cove?"
"Yes," said Hale impatiently, "I'm going over to Lonesome Cove.
Can I stay here all night?"
"Shore!" said the old man hospitably. "That's a fine hoss you got
thar," he added with a chuckle. "Been swappin'?" Hale had to laugh
as he climbed down from the bony ear-flopping beast.
"I left my horse in town--he's lame."
"Yes, I seed you thar." Hale could not resist: "Yes, and I seed
you." The old man almost turned.
"Whar?" Again the temptation was too great.
"Talking to the Falin who started the row." This time the Red Fox
wheeled sharply and his pale-blue eyes filled with suspicion.
"I keeps friends with both sides," he said. "Ain't many folks can
do that."
"I reckon not," said Hale calmly, but in the pale eyes he still
saw suspicion.
When they entered the cabin, a little old woman in black, dumb and
noiseless, was cooking supper. The children of the two, he
learned, had scattered, and they lived there alone. On the mantel
were two pistols and in one corner was the big Winchester he
remembered and behind it was the big brass telescope. On the table
was a Bible and a volume of Swedenborg, and among the usual
strings of pepper-pods and beans and twisted long green tobacco
were drying herbs and roots of all kinds, and about the fireplace
were bottles of liquids that had been stewed from them. The little
old woman served, and opened her lips not at all. Supper was eaten
with no further reference to the doings in town that day, and no
word was said about their meeting when Hale first went to Lonesome
Cove until they were smoking on the porch.
"I heerd you found some mighty fine coal over in Lonesome Cove."
"Yes."
"Young Dave Tolliver thinks you found somethin' else thar, too,"
chuckled the Red Fox.
"I did," said Hale coolly, and the old man chuckled again.
"She's a purty leetle gal--shore."
"Who is?" asked Hale, looking calmly at his questioner, and the
Red Fox lapsed into baffled silence.
The moon was brilliant and the night was still. Suddenly the Red
Fox cocked his ear like a hound, and without a word slipped
swiftly within the cabin. A moment later Hale heard the galloping
of a horse and from out the dark woods loped a horseman with a
Winchester across his saddle bow. He pulled in at the gate, but
before he could shout "Hello" the Red Fox had stepped from the
porch into the moonlight and was going to meet him. Hale had never
seen a more easy, graceful, daring figure on horseback, and in the
bright light he could make out the reckless face of the man who
had been the first to flash his pistol in town that day--Bad Rufe
Tolliver. For ten minutes the two talked in whispers--Rufe bent
forward with one elbow on the withers of his horse but lifting his
eyes every now and then to the stranger seated in the porch--and
then the horseman turned with an oath and galloped into the
darkness whence he came, while the Red Fox slouched back to the
porch and dropped silently into his seat.
"Who was that?" asked Hale.
"Bad Rufe Tolliver."
"I've heard of him."
"Most everybody in these mountains has. He's the feller that's
always causin' trouble. Him and Joe Falin agreed to go West last
fall to end the war. Joe was killed out thar, and now Rufe claims
Joe don't count now an' he's got the right to come back. Soon's he
comes back, things git frolicksome agin. He swore he wouldn't go
back unless another Falin goes too. Wirt Falin agreed, and that's
how they made peace to-day. Now Rufe says he won't go at all--
truce or no truce. My wife in thar is a Tolliver, but both sides
comes to me and I keeps peace with both of 'em."
No doubt he did, Hale thought, keep peace or mischief with or
against anybody with that face of his. That was a common type of
the bad man, that horseman who had galloped away from the gate--
but this old man with his dual face, who preached the Word on
Sundays and on other days was a walking arsenal; who dreamed
dreams and had visions and slipped through the hills in his
mysterious moccasins on errands of mercy or chasing men from
vanity, personal enmity or for fun, and still appeared so sane--he
was a type that confounded. No wonder for these reasons and as a
tribute to his infernal shrewdness he was known far and wide as
the Red Fox of the Mountains. But Hale was too tired for further
speculation and presently he yawned.
"Want to lay down?" asked the old man quickly.
"I think I do," said Hale, and they went inside. The little old
woman had her face to the wall in a bed in one corner and the Red
Fox pointed to a bed in the other:
"Thar's yo' bed." Again Hale's eyes fell on the big Winchester.
"I reckon thar hain't more'n two others like it in all these
mountains."
"What's the calibre?"
"Biggest made," was the answer, "a 50 x 75."
"Centre fire?"
"Rim," said the Red Fox.
"Gracious," laughed Hale, "what do you want such a big one for?"
"Man cannot live by bread alone--in these mountains," said the Red
Fox grimly.
When Hale lay down he could hear the old man quavering out a hymn
or two on the porch outside: and when, worn out with the day, he
went to sleep, the Red Fox was reading his Bible by the light of a
tallow dip. It is fatefully strange when people, whose lives
tragically intersect, look back to their first meetings with one
another, and Hale never forgot that night in the cabin of the Red
Fox. For had Bad Rufe Tolliver, while he whispered at the gate,
known the part the quiet young man silently seated in the porch
would play in his life, he would have shot him where he sat: and
could the Red Fox have known the part his sleeping guest was to
play in his, the old man would have knifed him where he lay.
X
Hale opened his eyes next morning on the little old woman in
black, moving ghost-like through the dim interior to the kitchen.
A wood-thrush was singing when he stepped out on the porch and its
cool notes had the liquid freshness of the morning. Breakfast
over, he concluded to leave the yellow mule with the Red Fox to be
taken back to the county town, and to walk down the mountain, but
before he got away the landlord's son turned up with his own
horse, still lame, but well enough to limp along without doing
himself harm. So, leading the black horse, Hale started down.
The sun was rising over still seas of white mist and wave after
wave of blue Virginia hills. In the shadows below, it smote the
mists into tatters; leaf and bush glittered as though after a
heavy rain, and down Hale went under a trembling dew-drenched
world and along a tumbling series of water-falls that flashed
through tall ferns, blossoming laurel and shining leaves of
rhododendron. Once he heard something move below him and then the
crackling of brush sounded far to one side of the road. He knew it
was a man who would be watching him from a covert and,
straightway, to prove his innocence of any hostile or secret
purpose, he began to whistle. Farther below, two men with
Winchesters rose from the bushes and asked his name and his
business. He told both readily. Everybody, it seemed, was prepared
for hostilities and, though the news of the patched-up peace had
spread, it was plain that the factions were still suspicious and
on guard. Then the loneliness almost of Lonesome Cove itself set
in. For miles he saw nothing alive but an occasional bird and
heard no sound but of running water or rustling leaf. At the mouth
of the creek his horse's lameness had grown so much better that he
mounted him and rode slowly up the river. Within an hour he could
see the still crest of the Lonesome Pine. At the mouth of a creek
a mile farther on was an old gristmill with its water-wheel
asleep, and whittling at the door outside was the old miller,
Uncle Billy Beams, who, when he heard the coming of the black
horse's feet, looked up and showed no surprise at all when he saw
Hale.
"I heard you was comin'," he shouted, hailing him cheerily by
name. "Ain't fishin' this time!"
"No," said Hale, "not this time."
"Well, git down and rest a spell. June'll be here in a minute an'
you can ride back with her. I reckon you air goin' that a-way."
"June!"
"Shore! My, but she'll be glad to see ye! She's always talkin'
about ye. You told her you was comin' back an' ever'body told her
you wasn't: but that leetle gal al'ays said she KNOWED you was,
because you SAID you was. She's growed some--an' if she ain't
purty, well I'd tell a man! You jes' tie yo' hoss up thar behind
the mill so she can't see it, an' git inside the mill when she
comes round that bend thar. My, but hit'll be a surprise fer her."
The old man chuckled so cheerily that Hale, to humour him, hitched
his horse to a sapling, came back and sat in the door of the mill.
The old man knew all about the trouble in town the day before.
"I want to give ye a leetle advice. Keep yo' mouth plum' shut
about this here war. I'm Jestice of the Peace, but that's the only
way I've kept outen of it fer thirty years; an' hit's the only way
you can keep outen it."
"Thank you, I mean to keep my mouth shut, but would you mind--"
"Git in!" interrupted the old man eagerly. "Hyeh she comes." His
kind old face creased into a welcoming smile, and between the logs
of the mill Hale, inside, could see an old sorrel horse slowly
coming through the lights and shadows down the road. On its back
was a sack of corn and perched on the sack was a little girl with
her bare feet in the hollows behind the old nag's withers. She was
looking sidewise, quite hidden by a scarlet poke-bonnet, and at
the old man's shout she turned the smiling face of little June.
With an answering cry, she struck the old nag with a switch and
before the old man could rise to help her down, slipped lightly to
the ground.
"Why, honey," he said, "I don't know whut I'm goin' to do 'bout
yo' corn. Shaft's broke an' I can't do no grindin' till to-
morrow."
"Well, Uncle Billy, we ain't got a pint o' meal in the house," she
said. "You jes' got to LEND me some."
"All right, honey," said the old man, and he cleared his throat as
a signal for Hale.
The little girl was pushing her bonnet back when Hale stepped into
sight and, unstartled, unsmiling, unspeaking, she looked steadily
at him--one hand motionless for a moment on her bronze heap of
hair and then slipping down past her cheek to clench the other
tightly. Uncle Billy was bewildered.
"Why, June, hit's Mr. Hale--why---"
"Howdye, June!" said Hale, who was no less puzzled--and still she
gave no sign that she had ever seen him before except reluctantly
to give him her hand. Then she turned sullenly away and sat down
in the door of the mill with her elbows on her knees and her chin
in her hands.
Dumfounded, the old miller pulled the sack of corn from the horse
and leaned it against the mill. Then he took out his pipe, filled
and lighted it slowly and turned his perplexed eyes to the sun.
"Well, honey," he said, as though he were doing the best he could
with a difficult situation, "I'll have to git you that meal at the
house. 'Bout dinner time now. You an' Mr. Hale thar come on and
git somethin' to eat afore ye go back."
"I got to get on back home," said June, rising.
"No you ain't--I bet you got dinner fer yo" step-mammy afore you
left, an' I jes' know you was aimin' to take a snack with me an'
ole Hon." The little girl hesitated--she had no denial--and the
old fellow smiled kindly.
"Come on, now."
Little June walked on the other side of the miller from Hale back
to the old man's cabin, two hundred yards up the road, answering
his questions but not Hale's and never meeting the latter's eyes
with her own. "ole Hon," the portly old woman whom Hale
remembered, with brass-rimmed spectacles and a clay pipe in her
mouth, came out on the porch and welcomed them heartily under the
honeysuckle vines. Her mouth and face were alive with humour when
she saw Hale, and her eyes took in both him and the little girl
keenly. The miller and Hale leaned chairs against the wall while
the girl sat at the entrance of the porch. Suddenly Hale went out
to his horse and took out a package from his saddle-pockets.
"I've got some candy in here for you," he said smiling.
"I don't want no candy," she said, still not looking at him and
with a little movement of her knees away from him.
"Why, honey," said Uncle Billy again, "whut IS the matter with ye?
I thought ye was great friends." The little girl rose hastily.
"No, we ain't, nuther," she said, and she whisked herself indoors.
Hale put the package back with some embarrassment and the old
miller laughed.
"Well, well--she's a quar little critter; mebbe she's mad because
you stayed away so long."
At the table June wanted to help ole Hon and wait to eat with her,
but Uncle Billy made her sit down with him and Hale, and so shy
was she that she hardly ate anything. Once only did she look up
from her plate and that was when Uncle Billy, with a shake of his
head, said:
"He's a bad un." He was speaking of Rufe Tolliver, and at the
mention of his name there was a frightened look in the little
girl's eyes, when she quickly raised them, that made Hale wonder.
An hour later they were riding side by side--Hale and June--on
through the lights and shadows toward Lonesome Cove. Uncle Billy
turned back from the gate to the porch.
"He ain't come back hyeh jes' fer coal," said ole Hon.
"Shucks!" said Uncle Billy; "you women-folks can't think 'bout
nothin' 'cept one thing. He's too old fer her."
"She'll git ole enough fer HIM--an' you menfolks don't think less-
-you jes' talk less." And she went back into the kitchen, and on
the porch the old miller puffed on a new idea in his pipe.
For a few minutes the two rode in silence and not yet had June
lifted her eyes to him.
"You've forgotten me, June."
"No, I hain't, nuther."
"You said you'd be waiting for me." June's lashes went lower
still.
"I was."
"Well, what's the matter? I'm mighty sorry I couldn't get back
sooner."
"Huh!" said June scornfully, and he knew Uncle Billy in his guess
as to the trouble was far afield, and so he tried another tack.
"I've been over to the county seat and I saw lots of your kinfolks
over there." She showed no curiosity, no surprise, and still she
did not look up at him.
"I met your cousin, Loretta, over there and I carried her home
behind me on an old mule"--Hale paused, smiling at the
remembrance--and still she betrayed no interest.
"She's a mighty pretty girl, and whenever I'd hit that old---"
"She hain't!"--the words were so shrieked out that Hale was
bewildered, and then he guessed that the falling out between the
fathers was more serious than he had supposed.
"But she isn't as nice as you are," he added quickly, and the
girl's quivering mouth steadied, the tears stopped in her vexed
dark eyes and she lifted them to him at last.
"She ain't?"
"No, indeed, she ain't."
For a while they rode along again in silence. June no longer
avoided his eyes now, and the unspoken question in her own
presently came out:
"You won't let Uncle Rufe bother me no more, will ye?"
"No, indeed, I won't," said Hale heartily. "What does he do to
you?"
"Nothin'--'cept he's always a-teasin' me, an'--an' I'm afeered o'
him."
"Well, I'll take care of Uncle Rufe."
"I knowed YOU'D say that," she said. "Pap and Dave always laughs
at me," and she shook her head as though she were already
threatening her bad uncle with what Hale would do to him, and she
was so serious and trustful that Hale was curiously touched. By
and by he lifted one flap of his saddle-pockets again.
"I've got some candy here for a nice little girl," he said, as
though the subject had not been mentioned before. "It's for you.
Won't you have some?"
"I reckon I will," she said with a happy smile.
Hale watched her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint.
Her crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight
down from it to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just
darkening with dried blood, a sculptor would have loved the
rounded slenderness in the curving long lines that shaped her
brown throat, her arms and her hands, which were prettily shaped
but so very dirty as to the nails, and her dangling bare leg. Her
teeth were even and white, and most of them flashed when her red
lips smiled. Her lashes were long and gave a touching softness to
her eyes even when she was looking quietly at him, but there were
times, as he had noticed already, when a brooding look stole over
them, and then they were the lair for the mysterious loneliness
that was the very spirit of Lonesome Cove. Some day that little
nose would be long enough, and some day, he thought, she would be
very beautiful.
"Your cousin, Loretta, said she was coming over to see you."
June's teeth snapped viciously through the stick of candy and then
she turned on him and behind the long lashes and deep down in the
depth of those wonderful eyes he saw an ageless something that
bewildered him more than her words.
"I hate her," she said fiercely.
"Why, little girl?" he said gently.
"I don't know--" she said--and then the tears came in earnest and
she turned her head, sobbing. Hale helplessly reached over and
patted her on the shoulder, but she shrank away from him.
"Go away!" she said, digging her fist into her eyes until her face
was calm again.
They had reached the spot on the river where he had seen her
first, and beyond, the smoke of the cabin was rising above the
undergrowth.
"Lordy!" she said, "but I do git lonesome over hyeh."
"Wouldn't you like to go over to the Gap with me sometimes?"
Straightway her face was a ray of sunlight.
"Would--I like--to--go--over--"
She stopped suddenly and pulled in her horse, but Hale had heard
nothing.
"Hello!" shouted a voice from the bushes, and Devil Judd Tolliver
issued from them with an axe on his shoulder. "I heerd you'd come
back an' I'm glad to see ye." He came down to the road and shook
Hale's hand heartily.
"Whut you been cryin' about?" he added, turning his hawk-like eyes
on the little girl.
"Nothin'," she said sullenly.
"Did she git mad with ye 'bout somethin'?" said the old man to
Hale. "She never cries 'cept when she's mad." Hale laughed.
"You jes' hush up--both of ye," said the girl with a sharp kick of
her right foot.
"I reckon you can't stamp the ground that fer away from it," said
the old man dryly. "If you don't git the better of that all-fired
temper o' yourn hit's goin' to git the better of you, an' then
I'll have to spank you agin."
"I reckon you ain't goin' to whoop me no more, pap. I'm a-gittin'
too big."
The old man opened eyes and mouth with an indulgent roar of
laughter.
"Come on up to the house," he said to Hale, turning to lead the
way, the little girl following him. The old step-mother was again
a-bed; small Bub, the brother, still unafraid, sat down beside
Hale and the old man brought out a bottle of moonshine.
"I reckon I can still trust ye," he said.
"I reckon you can," laughed Hale.
The liquor was as fiery as ever, but it was grateful, and again
the old man took nearly a tumbler full plying Hale, meanwhile,
about the happenings in town the day before--but Hale could tell
him nothing that he seemed not already to know.
"It was quar," the old mountaineer said. "I've seed two men with
the drap on each other and both afeerd to shoot, but I never heerd
of sech a ring-around-the-rosy as eight fellers with bead on one
another and not a shoot shot. I'm glad I wasn't thar."
He frowned when Hale spoke of the Red Fox.
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