Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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XIII
Hale rode that night under a brilliant moon to the worm of a
railroad that had been creeping for many years toward the Gap. The
head of it was just protruding from the Natural Tunnel twenty
miles away. There he sent his horse back, slept in a shanty till
morning, and then the train crawled through a towering bench of
rock. The mouth of it on the other side opened into a mighty
amphitheatre with solid rock walls shooting vertically hundreds of
feet upward. Vertically, he thought--with the back of his head
between his shoulders as he looked up--they were more than
vertical--they were actually concave. The Almighty had not only
stored riches immeasurable in the hills behind him--He had driven
this passage Himself to help puny man to reach them, and yet the
wretched road was going toward them like a snail. On the fifth
night, thereafter he was back there at the tunnel again from New
York--with a grim mouth and a happy eye. He had brought success
with him this time and there was no sleep for him that night. He
had been delayed by a wreck, it was two o'clock in the morning,
and not a horse was available; so he started those twenty miles
afoot, and day was breaking when he looked down on the little
valley shrouded in mist and just wakening from sleep.
Things had been moving while he was away, as he quickly learned.
The English were buying lands right and left at the gap sixty
miles southwest. Two companies had purchased most of the town-site
where he was--HIS town-site--and were going to pool their holdings
and form an improvement company. But a good deal was left, and
straightway Hale got a map from his office and with it in his hand
walked down the curve of the river and over Poplar Hill and
beyond. Early breakfast was ready when he got back to the hotel.
He swallowed a cup of coffee so hastily that it burned him, and
June, when she passed his window on her way to school, saw him
busy over his desk. She started to shout to him, but he looked so
haggard and grim that she was afraid, and went on, vaguely hurt by
a preoccupation that seemed quite to have excluded her. For two
hours then, Hale haggled and bargained, and at ten o'clock he went
to the telegraph office. The operator who was speculating in a
small way himself smiled when he read the telegram.
"A thousand an acre?" he repeated with a whistle. "You could have
got that at twenty-five per--three months ago."
"I know," said Hale, "there's time enough yet." Then he went to
his room, pulled the blinds down and went to sleep, while rumour
played with his name through the town.
It was nearly the closing hour of school when, dressed and freshly
shaven, he stepped out into the pale afternoon and walked up
toward the schoolhouse. The children were pouring out of the
doors. At the gate there was a sudden commotion, he saw a crimson
figure flash into the group that had stopped there, and flash out,
and then June came swiftly toward him followed closely by a tall
boy with a cap on his head. That far away he could see that she
was angry and he hurried toward her. Her face was white with rage,
her mouth was tight and her dark eyes were aflame. Then from the
group another tall boy darted out and behind him ran a smaller
one, bellowing. Hale heard the boy with the cap call kindly:
"Hold on, little girl! I won't let 'em touch you." June stopped
with him and Hale ran to them.
"Here," he called, "what's the matter?"
June burst into crying when she saw him and leaned over the fence
sobbing. The tall lad with the cap had his back to Hale, and he
waited till the other two boys came up. Then he pointed to the
smaller one and spoke to Hale without looking around.
"Why, that little skate there was teasing this little girl and--"
"She slapped him," said Hale grimly. The lad with the cap turned.
His eyes were dancing and the shock of curly hair that stuck from
his absurd little cap shook with his laughter.
"Slapped him! She knocked him as flat as a pancake."
"Yes, an' you said you'd stand fer her," said the other tall boy
who was plainly a mountain lad. He was near bursting with rage.
"You bet I will," said the boy with the cap heartily, "right now!"
and he dropped his books to the ground.
"Hold on!" said Hale, jumping between them. "You ought to be
ashamed of yourself," he said to the mountain boy.
"I wasn't atter the gal," he said indignantly. "I was comin' fer
him."
The boy with the cap tried to get away from Hale's grasp.
"No use, sir," he said coolly. "You'd better let us settle it now.
We'll have to do it some time. I know the breed. He'll fight all
right and there's no use puttin' it off. It's got to come."
"You bet it's got to come," said the mountain lad. "You can't call
my brother names."
"Well, he IS a skate," said the boy with the cap, with no heat at
all in spite of his indignation, and Hale wondered at his aged
calm.
"Every one of you little tads," he went on coolly, waving his hand
at the gathered group, "is a skate who teases this little girl.
And you older boys are skates for letting the little ones do it,
the whole pack of you--and I'm going to spank any little tadpole
who does it hereafter, and I'm going to punch the head off any big
one who allows it. It's got to stop NOW!" And as Hale dragged him
off he added to the mountain boy, "and I'm going to begin with you
whenever you say the word." Hale was laughing now.
"You don't seem to understand," he said, "this is my affair."
"I beg your pardon, sir, I don't understand."
"Why, I'm taking care of this little girl."
"Oh, well, you see I didn't know that. I've only been here two
days. But"--his frank, generous face broke into a winning smile--
"you don't go to school. You'll let me watch out for her there?"
"Sure! I'll be very grateful."
"Not at all, sir--not at all. It was a great pleasure and I think
I'll have lots of fun." He looked at June, whose grateful eyes had
hardly left his face.
"So don't you soil your little fist any more with any of 'em, but
just tell me--er--er--"
"June," she said, and a shy smile came through her tears.
"June," he finished with a boyish laugh. "Good-by sir."
"You haven't told me your name."
"I suppose you know my brothers, sir, the Berkleys."
"I should say so," and Hale held out his hand. "You're Bob?"
"Yes, sir."
"I knew you were coming, and I'm mighty glad to see you. I hope
you and June will be good friends and I'll be very glad to have
you watch over her when I'm away."
"I'd like nothing better, sir," he said cheerfully, and quite
impersonally as far as June was concerned. Then his eyes lighted
up.
"My brothers don't seem to want me to join the Police Guard. Won't
you say a word for me?"
"I certainly will."
"Thank you, sir."
That "sir" no longer bothered Hale. At first he had thought it a
mark of respect to his superior age, and he was not particularly
pleased, but when he knew now that the lad was another son of the
old gentleman whom he saw riding up the valley every morning on a
gray horse, with several dogs trailing after him--he knew the word
was merely a family characteristic of old-fashioned courtesy.
"Isn't he nice, June?"
"Yes," she said.
"Have you missed me, June?"
June slid her hand into his. "I'm so glad you come back." They
were approaching the gate now.
"June, you said you weren't going to cry any more." June's head
drooped.
"I know, but I jes' can't help it when I git mad," she said
seriously. "I'd bust if I didn't."
"All right," said Hale kindly.
"I've cried twice," she said.
"What were you mad about the other time?"
"I wasn't mad."
"Then why did you cry, June?"
Her dark eyes looked full at him a moment and then her long lashes
hid them.
"Cause you was so good to me."
Hale choked suddenly and patted her on the shoulder.
"Go in, now, little girl, and study. Then you must take a walk.
I've got some work to do. I'll see you at supper time."
"All right," said June. She turned at the gate to watch Hale enter
the hotel, and as she started indoors, she heard a horse coming at
a gallop and she turned again to see her cousin, Dave Tolliver,
pull up in front of the house. She ran back to the gate and then
she saw that he was swaying in his saddle.
"Hello, June!" he called thickly.
Her face grew hard and she made no answer.
"I've come over to take ye back home."
She only stared at him rebukingly, and he straightened in his
saddle with an effort at self-control--but his eyes got darker and
he looked ugly.
"D'you hear me? I've come over to take ye home."
"You oughter be ashamed o' yourself," she said hotly, and she
turned to go back into the house.
"Oh, you ain't ready now. Well, git ready an' we'll start in the
mornin'. I'll be aroun' fer ye 'bout the break o' day."
He whirled his horse with an oath--June was gone. She saw him ride
swaying down the street and she ran across to the hotel and found
Hale sitting in the office with another man. Hale saw her entering
the door swiftly, he knew something was wrong and he rose to meet
her.
"Dave's here," she whispered hurriedly, "an' he says he's come to
take me home."
"Well," said Hale, "he won't do it, will he?" June shook her head
and then she said significantly:
"Dave's drinkin'."
Hale's brow clouded. Straightway he foresaw trouble--but he said
cheerily:
"All right. You go back and keep in the house and I'll be over by
and by and we'll talk it over." And, without another word, she
went. She had meant to put on her new dress and her new shoes and
stockings that night that Hale might see her--but she was in doubt
about doing it when she got to her room. She tried to study her
lessons for the next day, but she couldn't fix her mind on them.
She wondered if Dave might not get into a fight or, perhaps, he
would get so drunk that he would go to sleep somewhere--she knew
that men did that after drinking very much--and, anyhow, he would
not bother her until next morning, and then he would be sober and
would go quietly back home. She was so comforted that she got to
thinking about the hair of the girl who sat in front of her at
school. It was plaited and she had studied just how it was done
and she began to wonder whether she could fix her own that way. So
she got in front of the mirror and loosened hers in a mass about
her shoulders--the mass that was to Hale like the golden bronze of
a wild turkey's wing. The other girl's plaits were the same size,
so that the hair had to be equally divided--thus she argued to
herself--but how did that girl manage to plait it behind her back?
She did it in front, of course, so June divided the bronze heap
behind her and pulled one half of it in front of her and then for
a moment she was helpless. Then she laughed--it must be done like
the grass-blades and strings she had plaited for Bub, of course,
so, dividing that half into three parts, she did the plaiting
swiftly and easily. When it was finished she looked at the braid,
much pleased--for it hung below her waist and was much longer than
any of the other girls' at school. The transition was easy now, so
interested had she become. She got out her tan shoes and stockings
and the pretty white dress and put them on. The millpond was dark
with shadows now, and she went down the stairs and out to the gate
just as Dave again pulled up in front of it. He stared at the
vision wonderingly and long, and then he began to laugh with the
scorn of soberness and the silliness of drink.
"YOU ain't June, air ye?" The girl never moved. As if by a
preconcerted signal three men moved toward the boy, and one of
them said sternly:
"Drop that pistol. You are under arrest.' The boy glared like a
wild thing trapped, from one to another of the three--a pistol
gleamed in the hand of each--and slowly thrust his own weapon into
his pocket.
"Get off that horse," added the stern voice. Just then Hale rushed
across the street and the mountain youth saw him.
"Ketch his pistol," cried June, in terror for Hale--for she knew
what was coming, and one of the men caught with both hands the
wrist of Dave's arm as it shot behind him.
"Take him to the calaboose!"
At that June opened the gate--that disgrace she could never stand-
-but Hale spoke.
"I know him, boys. He doesn't mean any harm. He doesn't know the
regulations yet. Suppose we let him go home."
"All right," said Logan. "The calaboose or home. Will you go
home?"
In the moment, the mountain boy had apparently forgotten his
captors--he was staring at June with wonder, amazement,
incredulity struggling through the fumes in his brain to his
flushed face. She--a Tolliver--had warned a stranger against her
own blood-cousin.
"Will you go home?" repeated Logan sternly.
The boy looked around at the words, as though he were half dazed,
and his baffled face turned sick and white.
"Lemme loose!" he said sullenly. "I'll go home." And he rode
silently away, after giving Hale a vindictive look that told him
plainer than words that more was yet to come. Hale had heard
June's warning cry, but now when he looked for her she was gone.
He went in to supper and sat down at the table and still she did
not come.
"She's got a surprise for you," said Mrs. Crane, smiling
mysteriously. "She's been fixing for you for an hour. My! but
she's pretty in them new clothes--why, June!"
June was coming in--she wore her homespun, her scarlet homespun
and the Psyche knot. She did not seem to have heard Mrs. Crane's
note of wonder, and she sat quietly down in her seat. Her face was
pale and she did not look at Hale. Nothing was said of Dave--in
fact, June said nothing at all, and Hale, too, vaguely
understanding, kept quiet. Only when he went out, Hale called her
to the gate and put one hand on her head.
"I'm sorry, little girl."
The girl lifted her great troubled eyes to him, but no word passed
her lips, and Hale helplessly left her.
June did not cry that night. She sat by the window--wretched and
tearless. She had taken sides with "furriners" against her own
people. That was why, instinctively, she had put on her old
homespun with a vague purpose of reparation to them. She knew the
story Dave would take back home--the bitter anger that his people
and hers would feel at the outrage done him--anger against the
town, the Guard, against Hale because he was a part of both and
even against her. Dave was merely drunk, he had simply shot off
his pistol--that was no harm in the hills. And yet everybody had
dashed toward him as though he had stolen something--even Hale.
Yes, even that boy with the cap who had stood up for her at school
that afternoon--he had rushed up, his face aflame with excitement,
eager to take part should Dave resist. She had cried out
impulsively to save Hale, but Dave would not understand. No, in
his eyes she had been false to family and friends--to the clan--
she had sided with "furriners." What would her father say? Perhaps
she'd better go home next day--perhaps for good--for there was a
deep unrest within her that she could not fathom, a premonition
that she was at the parting of the ways, a vague fear of the
shadows that hung about the strange new path on which her feet
were set. The old mill creaked in the moonlight below her.
Sometimes, when the wind blew up Lonesome Cove, she could hear
Uncle Billy's wheel creaking just that way. A sudden pang of
homesickness choked her, but she did not cry. Yes, she would go
home next day. She blew out the light and undressed in the dark as
she did at home and went to bed. And that night the little night-
gown lay apart from her in the drawer--unfolded and untouched.
XIV
But June did not go home. Hale anticipated that resolution of hers
and forestalled it by being on hand for breakfast and taking June
over to the porch of his little office. There he tried to explain
to her that they were trying to build a town and must have law and
order; that they must have no personal feeling for or against
anybody and must treat everybody exactly alike--no other course
was fair--and though June could not quite understand, she trusted
him and she said she would keep on at school until her father came
for her.
"Do you think he will come, June?"
The little girl hesitated.
"I'm afeerd he will," she said, and Hale smiled.
"Well, I'll try to persuade him to let you stay, if he does come."
June was quite right. She had seen the matter the night before
just as it was. For just at that hour young Dave, sobered, but
still on the verge of tears from anger and humiliation, was
telling the story of the day in her father's cabin. The old man's
brows drew together and his eyes grew fierce and sullen, both at
the insult to a Tolliver and at the thought of a certain moonshine
still up a ravine not far away and the indirect danger to it in
any finicky growth of law and order. Still he had a keen sense of
justice, and he knew that Dave had not told all the story, and
from him Dave, to his wonder, got scant comfort--for another
reason as well: with a deal pending for the sale of his lands, the
shrewd old man would not risk giving offence to Hale--not until
that matter was settled, anyway. And so June was safer from
interference just then than she knew. But Dave carried the story
far and wide, and it spread as a story can only in the hills. So
that the two people most talked about among the Tollivers and,
through Loretta, among the Falins as well, were June and Hale, and
at the Gap similar talk would come. Already Hale's name was on
every tongue in the town, and there, because of his recent
purchases of town-site land, he was already, aside from his
personal influence, a man of mysterious power.
Meanwhile, the prescient shadow of the coming "boom" had stolen
over the hills and the work of the Guard had grown rapidly.
Every Saturday there had been local lawlessness to deal with. The
spirit of personal liberty that characterized the spot was
traditional. Here for half a century the people of Wise County and
of Lee, whose border was but a few miles down the river, came to
get their wool carded, their grist ground and farming utensils
mended. Here, too, elections were held viva voce under the
beeches, at the foot of the wooded spur now known as Imboden Hill.
Here were the muster-days of wartime. Here on Saturdays the people
had come together during half a century for sport and horse-
trading and to talk politics. Here they drank apple-jack and hard
cider, chaffed and quarrelled and fought fist and skull. Here the
bullies of the two counties would come together to decide who was
the "best man." Here was naturally engendered the hostility
between the hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley people of Lee,
and here was fought a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise
and a famous bully of Lee. On election days the country people
would bring in gingercakes made of cane-molasses, bread homemade
of Burr flour and moonshine and apple-jack which the candidates
would buy and distribute through the crowd. And always during the
afternoon there were men who would try to prove themselves the
best Democrats in the State of Virginia by resort to tooth, fist
and eye-gouging thumb. Then to these elections sometimes would
come the Kentuckians from over the border to stir up the hostility
between state and state, which makes that border bristle with
enmity to this day. For half a century, then, all wild oats from
elsewhere usually sprouted at the Gap. And thus the Gap had been
the shrine of personal freedom--the place where any one individual
had the right to do his pleasure with bottle and cards and
politics and any other the right to prove him wrong if he were
strong enough. Very soon, as the Hon. Sam Budd predicted, they had
the hostility of Lee concentrated on them as siding with the
county of Wise, and they would gain, in addition now, the general
hostility of the Kentuckians, because as a crowd of meddlesome
"furriners" they would be siding with the Virginians in the
general enmity already alive. Moreover, now that the feud
threatened activity over in Kentucky, more trouble must come, too,
from that source, as the talk that came through the Gap, after
young Dave Tolliver's arrest, plainly indicated.
Town ordinances had been passed. The wild centaurs were no longer
allowed to ride up and down the plank walks of Saturdays with
their reins in their teeth and firing a pistol into the ground
with either hand; they could punctuate the hotel sign no more;
they could not ride at a fast gallop through the streets of the
town, and, Lost Spirit of American Liberty!--they could not even
yell. But the lawlessness of the town itself and its close
environment was naturally the first objective point, and the first
problem involved was moonshine and its faithful ally "the blind
tiger." The "tiger" is a little shanty with an ever-open mouth--a
hole in the door like a post-office window. You place your money
on the sill and, at the ring of the coin, a mysterious arm emerges
from the hole, sweeps the money away and leaves a bottle of white
whiskey. Thus you see nobody's face; the owner of the beast is
safe, and so are you--which you might not be, if you saw and told.
In every little hollow about the Gap a tiger had his lair, and
these were all bearded at once by a petition to the county judge
for high license saloons, which was granted. This measure drove
the tigers out of business, and concentrated moonshine in the
heart of the town, where its devotees were under easy guard. One
"tiger" only indeed was left, run by a round-shouldered crouching
creature whom Bob Berkley--now at Hale's solicitation a policeman
and known as the Infant of the Guard--dubbed Caliban. His shanty
stood midway in the Gap, high from the road, set against a dark
clump of pines and roared at by the river beneath. Everybody knew
he sold whiskey, but he was too shrewd to be caught, until, late
one afternoon, two days after young Dave's arrest, Hale coming
through the Gap into town glimpsed a skulking figure with a hand-
barrel as it slipped from the dark pines into Caliban's cabin. He
pulled in his horse, dismounted and deliberated. If he went on
down the road now, they would see him and suspect. Moreover, the
patrons of the tiger would not appear until after dark, and he
wanted a prisoner or two. So Hale led his horse up into the bushes
and came back to a covert by
H3 the roadside to watch and wait. As he sat there, a merry
whistle sounded down the road, and Hale smiled. Soon the Infant of
the Guard came along, his hands in his pockets, his cap on the
back of his head, his pistol bumping his hip in manly fashion and
making the ravines echo with his pursed lips. He stopped in front
of Hale, looked toward the river, drew his revolver and aimed it
at a floating piece of wood. The revolver cracked, the piece of
wood skidded on the surface of the water and there was no splash.
"That was a pretty good shot," said Hale in a low voice. The boy
whirled and saw him.
"Well-what are you--?"
"Easy--easy!" cautioned Hale. "Listen! I've just seen a moonshiner
go into Caliban's cabin." The boy's eager eyes sparkled.
"Let's go after him."
"No, you go on back. If you don't, they'll be suspicious. Get
another man"--Hale almost laughed at the disappointment in the
lad's face at his first words, and the joy that came after it--
"and climb high above the shanty and come back here to me. Then
after dark we'll dash in and cinch Caliban and his customers."
"Yes, sir," said the lad. "Shall I whistle going back?" Hale
nodded approval.
"Just the same." And off Bob went, whistling like a calliope and
not even turning his head to look at the cabin. In half an hour
Hale thought he heard something crashing through the bushes high
on the mountain side, and, a little while afterward, the boy
crawled through the bushes to him alone. His cap was gone, there
was a bloody scratch across his face and he was streaming with
perspiration.
"You'll have to excuse me, sir," he panted, "I didn't see anybody
but one of my brothers, and if I had told him, he wouldn't have
let ME come. And I hurried back for fear--for fear something would
happen."
"Well, suppose I don't let you go."
"Excuse me, sir, but I don't see how you can very well help. You
aren't my brother and you can't go alone."
"I was," said Hale.
"Yes, sir, but not now."
Hale was worried, but there was nothing else to be done.
"All right. I'll let you go if you stop saying 'sir' to me. It
makes me feel so old."
"Certainly, sir," said the lad quite unconsciously, and when Hale
smothered a laugh, he looked around to see what had amused him.
Darkness fell quickly, and in the gathering gloom they saw two
more figures skulk into the cabin.
"We'll go now--for we want the fellow who's selling the
moonshine."
Again Hale was beset with doubts about the boy and his own
responsibility to the boy's brothers. The lad's eyes were shining,
but his face was more eager than excited and his hand was as
steady as Hale's own.
"You slip around and station yourself behind that pine-tree just
behind the cabin"--the boy looked crestfallen--"and if anybody
tries to get out of the back door--you halt him."
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