Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
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"Is there a back door?"
"I don't know," Hale said rather shortly. "You obey orders. I'm
not your brother, but I'm your captain."
"I beg your pardon, sir. Shall I go now?"
"Yes, you'll hear me at the front door. They won't make any
resistance." The lad stepped away with nimble caution high above
the cabin, and he even took his shoes off before he slid lightly
down to his place behind the pine. There was no back door, only a
window, and his disappointment was bitter. Still, when he heard
Hale at the front door, he meant to make a break for that window,
and he waited in the still gloom. He could hear the rough talk and
laughter within and now and then the clink of a tin cup. By and by
there was a faint noise in front of the cabin, and he steadied his
nerves and his beating heart. Then he heard the door pushed
violently in and Hale's cry:
"Surrender!"
Hale stood on the threshold with his pistol outstretched in his
right hand. The door had struck something soft and he said sharply
again:
"Come out from behind that door--hands up!"
At the same moment, the back window flew open with a bang and
Bob's pistol covered the edge of the opened door. "Caliban" had
rolled from his box like a stupid animal. Two of his patrons sat
dazed and staring from Hale to the boy's face at the window. A
mountaineer stood in one corner with twitching fingers and
shifting eyes like a caged wild thing and forth issued from behind
the door, quivering with anger--young Dave Tolliver. Hale stared
at him amazed, and when Dave saw Hale, such a wave of fury surged
over his face that Bob thought it best to attract his attention
again; which he did by gently motioning at him with the barrel of
his pistol.
"Hold on, there," he said quietly, and young Dave stood still.
"Climb through that window, Bob, and collect the batteries," said
Hale.
"Sure, sir," said the lad, and with his pistol still prominently
in the foreground he threw his left leg over the sill and as he
climbed in he quoted with a grunt: "Always go in force to make an
arrest." Grim and serious as it was, with June's cousin glowering
at him, Hale could not help smiling.
"You didn't go home, after all," said Hale to young Dave, who
clenched his hands and his lips but answered nothing; "or, if you
did, you got back pretty quick. "And still Dave was silent.
"Get 'em all, Bob?" In answer the boy went the rounds--feeling the
pocket of each man's right hip and his left breast.
"Yes, sir."
"Unload 'em!"
The lad "broke" each of the four pistols, picked up a piece of
twine and strung them together through each trigger-guard.
"Close that window and stand here at the door."
With the boy at the door, Hale rolled the hand-barrel to the
threshold and the white liquor gurgled joyously on the steps.
"All right, come along," he said to the captives, and at last
young Dave spoke:
"Whut you takin' me fer?"
Hale pointed to the empty hand-barrel and Dave's answer was a look
of scorn.
"I nuvver brought that hyeh."
"You were drinking illegal liquor in a blind tiger, and if you
didn't bring it you can prove that later. Anyhow, we'll want you
as a witness," and Hale looked at the other mountaineer, who had
turned his eyes quickly to Dave. Caliban led the way with young
Dave, and Hale walked side by side with them while Bob was escort
for the other two. The road ran along a high bank, and as Bob was
adjusting the jangling weapons on his left arm, the strange
mountaineer darted behind him and leaped headlong into the tops of
thick rhododendron. Before Hale knew what had happened the lad's
pistol flashed.
"Stop, boy!" he cried, horrified. "Don't shoot!" and he had to
catch the lad to keep him from leaping after the runaway. The shot
had missed; they heard the runaway splash into the river and go
stumbling across it and then there was silence. Young Dave
laughed:
"Uncle Judd'll be over hyeh to-morrow to see about this." Hale
said nothing and they went on. At the door of the calaboose Dave
balked and had to be pushed in by main force. They left him
weeping and cursing with rage.
"Go to bed, Bob," said Hale.
"Yes, sir," said Bob; "just as soon as I get my lessons."
Hale did not go to the boarding-house that night--he feared to
face June. Instead he went to the hotel to scraps of a late supper
and then to bed. He had hardly touched the pillow, it seemed, when
somebody shook him by the shoulder. It was Macfarlan, and daylight
was streaming through the window.
"A gang of those Falins are here," Macfarlan said, "and they're
after young Dave Tolliver--about a dozen of 'em. Young Buck is
with them, and the sheriff. They say he shot a man over the
mountains yesterday."
Hale sprang for his clothes--here was a quandary.
"If we turn him over to them--they'll kill him." Macfarlan nodded.
"Of course, and if we leave him in that weak old calaboose,
they'll get more help and take him out to-night."
"Then we'll take him to the county jail."
"They'll take him away from us."
"No, they won't. You go out and get as many shotguns as you can
find and load them with buckshot."
Macfarlan nodded approvingly and disappeared. Hale plunged his
face in a basin of cold water, soaked his hair and, as he was
mopping his face with a towel, there was a ponderous tread on the
porch, the door opened without the formality of a knock, and Devil
Judd Tolliver, with his hat on and belted with two huge pistols,
stepped stooping within. His eyes, red with anger and loss of
sleep, were glaring, and his heavy moustache and beard showed the
twitching of his mouth.
"Whar's Dave?" he said shortly.
"In the calaboose."
"Did you put him in?"
"Yes," said Hale calmly.
"Well, by God," the old man said with repressed fury, "you can't
git him out too soon if you want to save trouble."
"Look here, Judd," said Hale seriously. "You are one of the last
men in the world I want to have trouble with for many reasons; but
I'm an officer over here and I'm no more afraid of you"--Hale
paused to let that fact sink in and it did--"than you are of me.
Dave's been selling liquor."
"He hain't," interrupted the old mountaineer. "He didn't bring
that liquor over hyeh. I know who done it."
"All right," said Hale; "I'll take your word for it and I'll let
him out, if you say so, but---"
"Right now," thundered old Judd.
"Do you know that young Buck Falin and a dozen of his gang are
over here after him?" The old man looked stunned.
"Whut--now?"
"They're over there in the woods across the river NOW and they
want me to give him up to them. They say they have the sheriff
with them and they want him for shooting a man on Leatherwood
Creek, day before yesterday."
"It's all a lie," burst out old Judd. "They want to kill him."
"Of course--and I was going to take him up to the county jail
right away for safe-keeping."
"D'ye mean to say you'd throw that boy into jail and then fight
them Falins to pertect him?" the old man asked slowly and
incredulously. Hale pointed to a two-store building through his
window.
"If you get in the back part of that store at a window, you can
see whether I will or not. I can summon you to help, and if a
fight comes up you can do your share from the window."
The old man's eyes lighted up like a leaping flame.
"Will you let Dave out and give him a Winchester and help us fight
'em?" he said eagerly. "We three can whip 'em all."
"No," said Hale shortly. "I'd try to keep both sides from
fighting, and I'd arrest Dave or you as quickly as I would a
Falin."
The average mountaineer has little conception of duty in the
abstract, but old Judd belonged to the better class--and there are
many of them--that does. He looked into Hale's eyes long and
steadily.
"All right."
Macfarlan came in hurriedly and stopped short--seeing the hatted,
bearded giant.
"This is Mr. Tolliver--an uncle of Dave's--Judd Tolliver," said
Hale. "Go ahead."
"I've got everything fixed--but I couldn't get but five of the
fellows--two of the Berkley boys. They wouldn't let me tell Bob."
"All right. Can I summon Mr. Tolliver here?"
"Yes," said Macfarlan doubtfully, "but you know---"
"He won't be seen," interrupted Hale, understandingly. "He'll be
at a window in the back of that store and he won't take part
unless a fight begins, and if it does, we'll need him."
An hour later Devil Judd Tolliver was in the store Hale pointed
out and peering cautiously around the edge of an open window at
the wooden gate of the ramshackle calaboose. Several Falins were
there--led by young Buck, whom Hale recognized as the red-headed
youth at the head of the tearing horsemen who had swept by him
that late afternoon when he was coming back from his first trip to
Lonesome Cove. The old man gritted his teeth as he looked and he
put one of his huge pistols on a table within easy reach and kept
the other clenched in his right fist. From down the street came
five horsemen, led by John Hale. Every man carried a double-
barrelled shotgun, and the old man smiled and his respect for Hale
rose higher, high as it already was, for nobody--mountaineer or
not--has love for a hostile shotgun. The Falins, armed only with
pistols, drew near.
"Keep back!" he heard Hale say calmly, and they stopped--young
Buck alone going on.
"We want that feller," said young Buck.
"Well, you don't get him," said Hale quietly. "He's our prisoner.
Keep back!" he repeated, motioning with the barrel of his shotgun-
-and young Buck moved backward to his own men, The old man saw
Hale and another man--the sergeant--go inside the heavy gate of
the stockade. He saw a boy in a cap, with a pistol in one hand and
a strapped set of books in the other, come running up to the men
with the shotguns and he heard one of them say angrily:
"I told you not to come."
"I know you did," said the boy imperturbably.
"You go on to school," said another of the men, but the boy with
the cap shook his head and dropped his books to the ground. The
big gate opened just then and out came Hale and the sergeant, and
between them young Dave--his eyes blinking in the sunlight.
"Damn ye," he heard Dave say to Hale. "I'll get even with you fer
this some day"--and then the prisoner's eyes caught the horses and
shotguns and turned to the group of Falins and he shrank back
utterly dazed. There was a movement among the Falins and Devil
Judd caught up his other pistol and with a grim smile got ready.
Young Buck had turned to his crowd:
"Men," he said, "you know I never back down"--Devil Judd knew
that, too, and he was amazed by the words that followed-"an' if
you say so, we'll have him or die; but we ain't in our own state
now. They've got the law and the shotguns on us, an' I reckon we'd
better go slow."
The rest seemed quite willing to go slow, and, as they put their
pistols up, Devil Judd laughed in his beard. Hale put young Dave
on a horse and the little shotgun cavalcade quietly moved away
toward the county-seat.
The crestfallen Falins dispersed the other way after they had
taken a parting shot at the Hon. Samuel Budd, who, too, had a
pistol in his hand. Young Buck looked long at him--and then he
laughed:
"You, too, Sam Budd," he said. "We folks'll rickollect this on
election day." The Hon. Sam deigned no answer.
And up in the store Devil Judd lighted his pipe and sat down to
think out the strange code of ethics that governed that police-
guard. Hale had told him to wait there, and it was almost noon
before the boy with the cap came to tell him that the Falins had
all left town. The old man looked at him kindly.
"Air you the little feller whut fit fer June?"
"Not yet," said Bob; "but it's coming."
"Well, you'll whoop him."
"I'll do my best."
"Whar is she?"
"She's waiting for you over at the boarding-house."
"Does she know about this trouble?"
"Not a thing; she thinks you've come to take her home." The old
man made no answer, and Bob led him back toward Hale's office.
June was waiting at the gate, and the boy, lifting his cap, passed
on. June's eyes were dark with anxiety.
"You come to take me home, dad?"
"I been thinkin' 'bout it," he said, with a doubtful shake of his
head.
June took him upstairs to her room and pointed out the old water-
wheel through the window and her new clothes (she had put on her
old homespun again when she heard he was in town), and the old man
shook his head.
"I'm afeerd 'bout all these fixin's--you won't never be satisfied
agin in Lonesome Cove."
"Why, dad," she said reprovingly. "Jack says I can go over
whenever I please, as soon as the weather gits warmer and the
roads gits good."
"I don't know," said the old man, still shaking his head.
All through dinner she was worried. Devil Judd hardly ate
anything, so embarrassed was he by the presence of so many
"furriners" and by the white cloth and table-ware, and so fearful
was he that he would be guilty of some breach of manners.
Resolutely he refused butter, and at the third urging by Mrs.
Crane he said firmly, but with a shrewd twinkle in his eye:
"No, thank ye. I never eats butter in town. I've kept store
myself," and he was no little pleased with the laugh that went
around the table. The fact was he was generally pleased with
June's environment and, after dinner, he stopped teasing June.
"No, honey, I ain't goin' to take you away. I want ye to stay
right where ye air. Be a good girl now and do whatever Jack Hale
tells ye and tell that boy with all that hair to come over and see
me." June grew almost tearful with gratitude, for never had he
called her "honey" before that she could remember, and never had
he talked so much to her, nor with so much kindness.
"Air ye comin' over soon?"
"Mighty soon, dad."
"Well, take keer o' yourself."
"I will, dad," she said, and tenderly she watched his great figure
slouch out of sight.
An hour after dark, as old Judd sat on the porch of the cabin in
Lonesome Cove, young Dave Tolliver rode up to the gate on a
strange horse. He was in a surly mood.
"He lemme go at the head of the valley and give me this hoss to
git here," the boy grudgingly explained. "I'm goin' over to git
mine termorrer."
"Seems like you'd better keep away from that Gap," said the old
man dryly, and Dave reddened angrily.
"Yes, and fust thing you know he'll be over hyeh atter YOU." The
old man turned on him sternly
"Jack Hale knows that liquer was mine. He knows I've got a still
over hyeh as well as you do--an' he's never axed a question nor
peeped an eye. I reckon he would come if he thought he oughter--
but I'm on this side of the state-line. If I was on his side,
mebbe I'd stop."
Young Dave stared, for things were surely coming to a pretty pass
in Lonesome Cove.
"An' I reckon," the old man went on, "hit 'ud be better grace in
you to stop sayin' things agin' him; fer if it hadn't been fer
him, you'd be laid out by them Falins by this time."
It was true, and Dave, silenced, was forced into another channel.
"I wonder," he said presently, "how them Falins always know when I
go over thar."
"I've been studyin' about that myself," said Devil Judd. Inside,
the old step-mother had heard Dave's query.
"I seed the Red Fox this afternoon," she quavered at the door.
"Whut was he doin' over hyeh?" asked Dave.
"Nothin'," she said, "jus' a-sneakin' aroun' the way he's al'ays
a-doin'. Seemed like he was mighty pertickuler to find out when
you was comin' back."
Both men started slightly.
"We're all Tollivers now all right," said the Hon. Samuel Budd
that night while he sat with Hale on the porch overlooking the
mill-pond--and then he groaned a little.
"Them Falins have got kinsfolks to burn on the Virginia side and
they'd fight me tooth and toenail for this a hundred years hence!"
He puffed his pipe, but Hale said nothing.
"Yes, sir," he added cheerily, "we're in for a hell of a merry
time NOW. The mountaineer hates as long as he remembers and--he
never forgets."
XV
Hand in hand, Hale and June followed the footsteps of spring from
the time June met him at the school-house gate for their first
walk into the woods. Hale pointed to some boys playing marbles.
"That's the first sign," he said, and with quick understanding
June smiled.
The birdlike piping of hylas came from a marshy strip of woodland
that ran through the centre of the town and a toad was croaking at
the foot of Imboden Hill.
"And they come next."
They crossed the swinging foot-bridge, which was a miracle to
June, and took the foot-path along the clear stream of South Fork,
under the laurel which June called "ivy," and the rhododendron
which was "laurel" in her speech, and Hale pointed out catkins
greening on alders in one swampy place and willows just blushing
into life along the banks of a little creek. A few yards aside
from the path he found, under a patch of snow and dead leaves, the
pink-and-white blossoms and the waxy green leaves of the trailing
arbutus, that fragrant harbinger of the old Mother's awakening,
and June breathed in from it the very breath of spring. Near by
were turkey peas, which she had hunted and eaten many times.
"You can't put that arbutus in a garden," said Hale, "it's as wild
as a hawk."
Presently he had the little girl listen to a pewee twittering in a
thorn-bush and the lusty call of a robin from an apple-tree. A
bluebird flew over-head with a merry chirp--its wistful note of
autumn long since forgotten. These were the first birds and
flowers, he said, and June, knowing them only by sight, must know
the name of each and the reason for that name. So that Hale found
himself walking the woods with an interrogation point, and that he
might not be confounded he had, later, to dip up much forgotten
lore. For every walk became a lesson in botany for June, such a
passion did she betray at once for flowers, and he rarely had to
tell her the same thing twice, since her memory was like a vise--
for everything, as he learned in time.
Her eyes were quicker than his, too, and now she pointed to a
snowy blossom with a deeply lobed leaf.
"Whut's that?"
"Bloodroot," said Hale, and he scratched the stem and forth issued
scarlet drops. "The Indians used to put it on their faces and
tomahawks"--she knew that word and nodded--"and I used to make red
ink of it when I was a little boy."
"No!" said June. With the next look she found a tiny bunch of
fuzzy hepaticas.
"Liver-leaf."
"Whut's liver?"
Hale, looking at her glowing face and eyes and her perfect little
body, imagined that she would never know unless told that she had
one, and so he waved one hand vaguely at his chest:
"It's an organ--and that herb is supposed to be good for it."
"Organ? Whut's that?"
"Oh, something inside of you."
June made the same gesture that Hale had.
"Me?"
"Yes," and then helplessly, "but not there exactly."
June's eyes had caught something else now and she ran for it:
"Oh! Oh!" It was a bunch of delicate anemones of intermediate
shades between white and red-yellow, pink and purple-blue.
"Those are anemones."
"A-nem-o-nes," repeated June.
"Wind-flowers--because the wind is supposed to open them." And,
almost unconsciously, Hale lapsed into a quotation:
"'And where a tear has dropped, a wind-flower blows.'"
"Whut's that?" said June quickly.
"That's poetry."
"Whut's po-e-try?" Hale threw up both hands.
"I don't know, but I'll read you some--some day."
By that time she was gurgling with delight over a bunch of spring
beauties that came up, root, stalk and all, when she reached for
them.
"Well, ain't they purty?" While they lay in her hand and she
looked, the rose-veined petals began to close, the leaves to droop
and the stem got limp.
"Ah-h!" crooned June. "I won't pull up no more o' THEM."
'"These little dream-flowers found in the spring.' More poetry,
June."
A little later he heard her repeating that line to herself. It was
an easy step to poetry from flowers, and evidently June was
groping for it.
A few days later the service-berry swung out white stars on the
low hill-sides, but Hale could tell her nothing that she did not
know about the "sarvice-berry." Soon, the dogwood swept in snowy
gusts along the mountains, and from a bank of it one morning a
red-bird flamed and sang: "What cheer! What cheer! What cheer!"
And like its scarlet coat the red-bud had burst into bloom. June
knew the red-bud, but she had never heard it called the Judas
tree.
"You see, the red-bud was supposed to be poisonous. It shakes in
the wind and says to the bees, 'Come on, little fellows--here's
your nice fresh honey, and when they come, it betrays and poisons
them."
"Well, what do you think o' that!" said June indignantly, and Hale
had to hedge a bit.
"Well, I don't know whether it REALLY does, but that's what they
SAY." A little farther on the white stars of the trillium gleamed
at them from the border of the woods and near by June stooped over
some lovely sky-blue blossoms with yellow eyes.
"Forget-me-nots," said Hale. June stooped to gather them with a
radiant face.
"Oh," she said, "is that what you call 'em?"
"They aren't the real ones--they're false forget-me-nots."
"Then I don't want 'em," said June. But they were beautiful and
fragrant and she added gently:
"'Tain't their fault. I'm agoin' to call 'em jus' forget-me-nots,
an' I'm givin' 'em to you," she said--"so that you won't."
"Thank you," said Hale gravely. "I won't."
They found larkspur, too--
"'Blue as the heaven it gazes at,'" quoted Hale.
"Whut's 'gazes'?"
"Looks." June looked up at the sky and down at the flower.
"Tain't," she said, "hit's bluer."
When they discovered something Hale did not know he would say that
it was one of those--
"'Wan flowers without a name.'"
"My!" said June at last, "seems like them wan flowers is a mighty
big fambly."
"They are," laughed Hale, "for a bachelor like me."
"Huh!" said June.
Later, they ran upon yellow adder's tongues in a hollow, each
blossom guarded by a pair of ear-like leaves, Dutchman's breeches
and wild bleeding hearts--a name that appealed greatly to the
fancy of the romantic little lady, and thus together they followed
the footsteps of that spring. And while she studied the flowers
Hale was studying the loveliest flower of them all--little June.
About ferns, plants and trees as well, he told her all he knew,
and there seemed nothing in the skies, the green world of the
leaves or the under world at her feet to which she was not
magically responsive. Indeed, Hale had never seen a man, woman or
child so eager to learn, and one day, when she had apparently
reached the limit of inquiry, she grew very thoughtful and he
watched her in silence a long while.
"What's the matter, June?" he asked finally.
"I'm just wonderin' why I'm always axin' why," said little June.
She was learning in school, too, and she was happier there now,
for there had been no more open teasing of the new pupil. Bob's
championship saved her from that, and, thereafter, school changed
straightway for June. Before that day she had kept apart from her
school-fellows at recess-times as well as in the school-room. Two
or three of the girls had made friendly advances to her, but she
had shyly repelled them--why she hardly knew--and it was her
lonely custom at recess-times to build a play-house at the foot of
a great beech with moss, broken bits of bottles and stones. Once
she found it torn to pieces and from the look on the face of the
tall mountain boy, Cal Heaton, who had grinned at her when she
went up for her first lesson, and who was now Bob's arch-enemy,
she knew that he was the guilty one. Again a day or two later it
was destroyed, and when she came down from the woods almost in
tears, Bob happened to meet her in the road and made her tell the
trouble she was in. Straightway he charged the trespasser with the
deed and was lied to for his pains. So after school that day he
slipped up on the hill with the little girl and helped her rebuild
again.
"Now I'll lay for him," said Bob, "and catch him at it."
"All right," said June, and she looked both her worry and her
gratitude so that Bob understood both; and he answered both with a
nonchalant wave of one hand.
"Never you mind--and don't you tell Mr. Hale," and June in dumb
acquiescence crossed heart and body. But the mountain boy was
wary, and for two or three days the play-house was undisturbed and
so Bob himself laid a trap. He mounted his horse immediately after
school, rode past the mountain lad, who was on his way home,
crossed the river, made a wide detour at a gallop and, hitching
his horse in the woods, came to the play-house from the other side
of the hill. And half an hour later, when the pale little teacher
came out of the school-house, he heard grunts and blows and
scuffling up in the woods, and when he ran toward the sounds, the
bodies of two of his pupils rolled into sight clenched fiercely,
with torn clothes and bleeding faces--Bob on top with the mountain
boy's thumb in his mouth and his own fingers gripped about his
antagonist's throat. Neither paid any attention to the school-
master, who pulled at Bob's coat unavailingly and with horror at
his ferocity. Bob turned his head, shook it as well as the thumb
in his mouth would let him, and went on gripping the throat under
him and pushing the head that belonged to it into the ground. The
mountain boy's tongue showed and his eyes bulged.
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