Books: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

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"'Nough!" he yelled. Bob rose then and told his story and the
school-master from New England gave them a short lecture on
gentleness and Christian charity and fixed on each the awful
penalty of "staying in" after school for an hour every day for a
week. Bob grinned:

"All right, professor--it was worth it," he said, but the mountain
lad shuffled silently away.

An hour later Hale saw the boy with a swollen lip, one eye black
and the other as merry as ever--but after that there was no more
trouble for June. Bob had made his promise good and gradually she
came into the games with her fellows there-after, while Bob stood
or sat aside, encouraging but taking no part--for was he not a
member of the Police Force? Indeed he was already known far and
wide as the Infant of the Guard, and always he carried a whistle
and usually, outside the school-house, a pistol bumped his hip,
while a Winchester stood in one corner of his room and a billy
dangled by his mantel-piece.

The games were new to June, and often Hale would stroll up to the
school-house to watch them--Prisoner's Base, Skipping the Rope,
Antny Over, Cracking the Whip and Lifting the Gate; and it pleased
him to see how lithe and active his little protege was and more
than a match in strength even for the boys who were near her size.
June had to take the penalty of her greenness, too, when she was
"introduced to the King and Queen" and bumped the ground between
the make-believe sovereigns, or got a cup of water in her face
when she was trying to see stars through a pipe. And the boys
pinned her dress to the bench through a crack and once she walked
into school with a placard on her back which read:

"June-Bug." But she was so good-natured that she fast became a
favourite. Indeed it was noticeable to Hale as well as Bob that
Cal Heaton, the mountain boy, seemed always to get next to June in
the Tugs of War, and one morning June found an apple on her desk.
She swept the room with a glance and met Cal's guilty flush, and
though she ate the apple, she gave him no thanks--in word, look or
manner. It was curious to Hale, moreover, to observe how June's
instinct deftly led her to avoid the mistakes in dress that
characterized the gropings of other girls who, like her, were in a
stage of transition. They wore gaudy combs and green skirts with
red waists, their clothes bunched at the hips, and to their shoes
and hands they paid no attention at all. None of these things for
June--and Hale did not know that the little girl had leaped her
fellows with one bound, had taken Miss Anne Saunders as her model
and was climbing upon the pedestal where that lady justly stood.
The two had not become friends as Hale hoped. June was always
silent and reserved when the older girl was around, but there was
never a move of the latter's hand or foot or lip or eye that the
new pupil failed to see. Miss Anne rallied Hale no little about
her, but he laughed good-naturedly, and asked why SHE could not
make friends with June.

"She's jealous," said Miss Saunders, and Hale ridiculed the idea,
for not one sign since she came to the Gap had she shown him. It
was the jealousy of a child she had once betrayed and that she had
outgrown, he thought; but he never knew how June stood behind the
curtains of her window, with a hungry suffering in her face and
eyes, to watch Hale and Miss Anne ride by and he never guessed
that concealment was but a sign of the dawn of womanhood that was
breaking within her. And she gave no hint of that breaking dawn
until one day early in May, when she heard a woodthrush for the
first time with Hale: for it was the bird she loved best, and
always its silver fluting would stop her in her tracks and send
her into dreamland. Hale had just broken a crimson flower from its
stem and held it out to her.

"Here's another of the 'wan ones,' June. Do you know what that
is?"

"Hit's"--she paused for correction with her lips drawn severely in
for precision--"IT'S a mountain poppy. Pap says it kills
goslings"--her eyes danced, for she was in a merry mood that day,
and she put both hands behind her--"if you air any kin to a goose,
you better drap it."

"That's a good one," laughed Hale, "but it's so lovely I'll take
the risk. I won't drop it."

"Drop it," caught June with a quick upward look, and then to fix
the word in her memory she repeated--"drop it, drop it, DROP it!"

"Got it now, June?"

"Uh-huh."

It was then that a woodthrush voiced the crowning joy of spring,
and with slowly filling eyes she asked its name.

"That bird," she said slowly and with a breaking voice, "sung just
that-a-way the mornin' my sister died."

She turned to him with a wondering smile.

"Somehow it don't make me so miserable, like it useter." Her smile
passed while she looked, she caught both hands to her heaving
breast and a wild intensity burned suddenly in her eyes.

"Why, June!"

"'Tain't nothin'," she choked out, and she turned hurriedly ahead
of him down the path. Startled, Hale had dropped the crimson
flower to his feet. He saw it and he let it lie.

Meanwhile, rumours were brought in that the Falins were coming
over from Kentucky to wipe out the Guard, and so straight were
they sometimes that the Guard was kept perpetually on watch. Once
while the members were at target practice, the shout arose:

"The Kentuckians are coming! The Kentuckians are coming!" And, at
double quick, the Guard rushed back to find it a false alarm and
to see men laughing at them in the street. The truth was that,
while the Falins had a general hostility against the Guard, their
particular enmity was concentrated on John Hale, as he discovered
when June was to take her first trip home one Friday afternoon.
Hale meant to carry her over, but the morning they were to leave,
old Judd Tolliver came to the Gap himself. He did not want June to
come home at that time, and he didn't think it was safe over there
for Hale just then. Some of the Falins had been seen hanging
around Lonesome Cove for the purpose, Judd believed, of getting a
shot at the man who had kept young Dave from falling into their
hands, and Hale saw that by that act he had, as Budd said, arrayed
himself with the Tollivers in the feud. In other words, he was a
Tolliver himself now, and as such the Falins meant to treat him.
Hale rebelled against the restriction, for he had started some
work in Lonesome Cove and was preparing a surprise over there for
June, but old Judd said:

"Just wait a while," and he said it so seriously that Hale for a
while took his advice.

So June stayed on at the Gap--with little disappointment,
apparently, that she could not visit home. And as spring passed
and the summer came on, the little girl budded and opened like a
rose. To the pretty school-teacher she was a source of endless
interest and wonder, for while the little girl was reticent and
aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself watched and studied in and out
of school, and Hale often had to smile at June's unconscious
imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and dress. And all the
time her hero-worship of Hale went on, fed by the talk of the
boardinghouse, her fellow pupils and of the town at large--and it
fairly thrilled her to know that to the Falins he was now a
Tolliver himself.

Sometimes Hale would get her a saddle, and then June would usurp
Miss Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see
the first blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to
Morris's farm on Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they
could see the Lonesome Pine. And all the time she worked at her
studies tirelessly--and when she was done with her lessons, she
read the fairy books that Hale got for her--read them until "Paul
and Virginia" fell into her hands, and then there were no more
fairy stories for little June. Often, late at night, Hale, from
the porch of his cottage, could see the light of her lamp sending
its beam across the dark water of the mill-pond, and finally he
got worried by the paleness of her face and sent her to the
doctor. She went unwillingly, and when she came back she reported
placidly that "organatically she was all right, the doctor said,"
but Hale was glad that vacation would soon come. At the beginning
of the last week of school he brought a little present for her
from New York--a slender necklace of gold with a little reddish
stone-pendant that was the shape of a cross. Hale pulled the
trinket from his pocket as they were walking down the river-bank
at sunset and the little girl quivered like an aspen-leaf in a
sudden puff of wind.

"Hit's a fairy-stone," she cried excitedly.

"Why, where on earth did you--"

"Why, sister Sally told me about 'em. She said folks found 'em
somewhere over here in Virginny, an' all her life she was a-
wishin' fer one an' she never could git it"--her eyes filled--
"seems like ever'thing she wanted is a-comin' to me."

"Do you know the story of it, too?" asked Hale.

June shook her head. "Sister Sally said it was a luck-piece.
Nothin' could happen to ye when ye was carryin' it, but it was
awful bad luck if you lost it." Hale put it around her neck and
fastened the clasp and June kept hold of the little cross with one
hand.

"Well, you mustn't lose it," he said.

"No--no--no," she repeated breathlessly, and Hale told her the
pretty story of the stone as they strolled back to supper. The
little crosses were to be found only in a certain valley in
Virginia, so perfect in shape that they seemed to have been
chiselled by hand, and they were a great mystery to the men who
knew all about rocks--the geologists.

"The ge-ol-o-gists," repeated June.

These men said there was no crystallization--nothing like them,
amended Hale--elsewhere in the world, and that just as crosses
were of different shapes--Roman, Maltese and St. Andrew's--so,
too, these crosses were found in all these different shapes. And
the myth--the story--was that this little valley was once
inhabited by fairies--June's eyes lighted, for it was a fairy
story after all--and that when a strange messenger brought them
the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and their tears, as
they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses of stone.
Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for a
long, long time people who found them had used them as charms to
bring good luck and ward off harm.

"And that's for you," he said, "because you've been such a good
little girl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I
reckon you'll be right glad to get home again."

June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at
him.

"Have you got one, too?" she asked, and she seemed much disturbed
when Hale shook his head.

"Well, I'LL git--GET--you one--some day."

"All right," laughed Hale.

There was again something strange in her manner as she turned
suddenly from him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was
the last week of school and Hale had just come down from the woods
behind the school-house at "little recess-time" in the afternoon.
The children were playing games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss
Anne and the little Professor were leaning on the fence watching
them. The little man raised his hand to halt Hale on the plank
sidewalk.

"I've been wanting to see you," he said in his dreamy, abstracted
way. "You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your
little protege some day, and I am indeed. She is the most
remarkable pupil I've yet seen here, and I have about come to the
conclusion that there is no quicker native intelligence in our
country than you shall find in the children of these mountaineers
and--"

Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that
turned Hale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his
harangue. Something had happened. They had been playing "Ring
Around the Rosy" and June had been caught. She stood scarlet and
tense and the cry was:

"Who's your beau--who's your beau?"

And still she stood with tight lips--flushing.

"You got to tell--you got to tell!"

The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous
consciousness, and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took
on an uneasy smile.

"Who's your beau?" came the chorus again.

The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:

"Jack!"

"Jack who?" But June looked around and saw the four at the gate.
Almost staggering, she broke from the crowd and, with one forearm
across her scarlet face, rushed past them into the school-house.
Miss Anne looked at Male's amazed face and she did not smile. Bob
turned respectfully away, ignoring it all, and the little
Professor, whose life-purpose was psychology, murmured in his
ignorance:

"Very remarkable--very remarkable!"

Through that afternoon June kept her hot face close to her books.
Bob never so much as glanced her way--little gentleman that he
was--but the one time she lifted her eyes, she met the mountain
lad's bent in a stupor-like gaze upon her. In spite of her
apparent studiousness, however, she missed her lesson and,
automatically, the little Professor told her to stay in after
school and recite to Miss Saunders. And so June and Miss Anne sat
in the school-room alone--the teacher reading a book, and the
pupil--her tears unshed--with her sullen face bent over her
lesson. In a few moments the door opened and the little Professor
thrust in his head. The girl had looked so hurt and tired when he
spoke to her that some strange sympathy moved him, mystified
though he was, to say gently now and with a smile that was rare
with him:

"You might excuse June, I think, Miss Saunders, and let her recite
some time to-morrow," and gently he closed the door. Miss Anne
rose:

"Very well, June," she said quietly.

June rose, too, gathering up her books, and as she passed the
teacher's platform she stopped and looked her full in the face.
She said not a word, and the tragedy between the woman and the
girl was played in silence, for the woman knew from the searching
gaze of the girl and the black defiance in her eyes, as she
stalked out of the room, that her own flush had betrayed her
secret as plainly as the girl's words had told hers.

Through his office window, a few minutes later, Hale saw June pass
swiftly into the house. In a few minutes she came swiftly out
again and went back swiftly toward the school-house. He was so
worried by the tense look in her face that he could work no more,
and in a few minutes he threw his papers down and followed her.
When he turned the corner, Bob was coming down the street with his
cap on the back of his head and swinging his books by a strap, and
the boy looked a little conscious when he saw Hale coming.

"Have you seen June?" Hale asked.

"No, sir," said Bob, immensely relieved.

"Did she come up this way?"

"I don't know, but--" Bob turned and pointed to the green dome of
a big beech.

"I think you'll find her at the foot of that tree," he said.
"That's where her play-house is and that's where she goes when
she's--that's where she usually goes."

"Oh, yes," said Hale--"her play-house. Thank you."

"Not at all, sir."

Hale went on, turned from the path and climbed noiselessly. When
he caught sight of the beech he stopped still. June stood against
it like a wood-nymph just emerged from its sun-dappled trunk--
stood stretched to her full height, her hands behind her, her hair
tossed, her throat tense under the dangling little cross, her face
uplifted. At her feet, the play-house was scattered to pieces. She
seemed listening to the love-calls of a woodthrush that came
faintly through the still woods, and then he saw that she heard
nothing, saw nothing--that she was in a dream as deep as sleep.
Hale's heart throbbed as he looked.

"June!" he called softly. She did not hear him, and when he called
again, she turned her face--unstartled--and moving her posture not
at all. Hale pointed to the scattered play-house.

"I done it!" she said fiercely--"I done it myself." Her eyes
burned steadily into his, even while she lifted her hands to her
hair as though she were only vaguely conscious that it was all
undone.

"YOU heerd me?" she cried, and before he could answer--"SHE heerd
me," and again, not waiting for a word from him, she cried still
more fiercely:

"I don't keer! I don't keer WHO knows."

Her hands were trembling, she was biting her quivering lip to keep
back the starting tears, and Hale rushed toward her and took her
in his arms.

"June! June!" he said brokenly. "You mustn't, little girl. I'm
proud--proud--why little sweetheart--" She was clinging to him and
looking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips
met and the man was startled. He knew now it was no child that
answered him.

Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around
Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-
trunks, past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees
tossed out their crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of
the ridge under which the valley slept and above which the dark
bulk of Powell's Mountain rose. It was absurd, but he found
himself strangely stirred. She was a child, he kept repeating to
himself, in spite of the fact that he knew she was no child among
her own people, and that mountain girls were even wives who were
younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt--how could
she?--and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab of a
doubt--would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder
he confessed to himself that he did not know--he did not know. But
again, why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was
the first step--no matter what happened. June must go out into the
world to school. He would have plenty of money. Her father would
not object, and June need never know. He could include for her an
interest in her own father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and
she could think that it was her own money that she was using. So,
with a sudden rush of gladness from his brain to his heart, he
recklessly yoked himself, then and there, under all responsibility
for that young life and the eager, sensitive soul that already
lighted it so radiantly.

And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower
that spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as
impartially as she had touched them with fairy wand, and as
unconsciously the little girl had answered as a young dove to any
cooing mate. With this Hale did not reckon, and this June could
not know. For a while, that night, she lay in a delicious tremor,
listening to the bird-like chorus of the little frogs in the
marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the water
pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had all
the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to
happy sleep.

XVI

The in-sweep of the outside world was broadening its current now.
The improvement company had been formed to encourage the growth of
the town. A safe was put in the back part of a furniture store
behind a wooden partition and a bank was started. Up through the
Gap and toward Kentucky, more entries were driven into the coal,
and on the Virginia side were signs of stripping for iron ore. A
furnace was coming in just as soon as the railroad could bring it
in, and the railroad was pushing ahead with genuine vigor.
Speculators were trooping in and the town had been divided off
into lots--a few of which had already changed hands. One agent had
brought in a big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands
right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the
compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of
nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a
definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope
was in every man's eye.

And the Guard went to its work in earnest. Every man now had his
Winchester, his revolver, his billy and his whistle. Drilling and
target-shooting became a daily practice. Bob, who had been a year
in a military school, was drill-master for the recruits, and very
gravely he performed his duties and put them through the
skirmishers' drill--advancing in rushes, throwing themselves in
the new grass, and very gravely he commended one enthusiast--none
other than the Hon. Samuel Budd--who, rather than lose his
position in line, threw himself into a pool of water: all to the
surprise, scorn and anger of the mountain onlookers, who dwelled
about the town. Many were the comments the members of the Guard
heard from them, even while they were at drill.

"I'd like to see one o' them fellers hit me with one of them
locust posts."

"Huh! I could take two good men an' run the whole batch out o' the
county."

"Look at them dudes and furriners. They come into our country and
air tryin' to larn us how to run it."

"Our boys air only tryin' to have their little fun. They don't
mean nothin', but someday some fool young guard'll hurt somebody
and then thar'll be hell to pay."

Hale could not help feeling considerable sympathy for their point
of view--particularly when he saw the mountaineers watching the
Guard at target-practice--each volunteer policeman with his back
to the target, and at the word of command wheeling and firing six
shots in rapid succession--and he did not wonder at their snorts
of scorn at such bad shooting and their open anger that the Guard
was practising for THEM. But sometimes he got an unexpected
recruit. One bully, who had been conspicuous in the brickyard
trouble, after watching a drill went up to him with a grin:

"Hell," he said cheerily, "I believe you fellers air goin' to have
more fun than we air, an' danged if I don't jine you, if you'll
let me."

"Sure," said Hale. And others, who might have been bad men, became
members and, thus getting a vent for their energies, were as
enthusiastic for the law as they might have been against it.

Of course, the antagonistic element in the town lost no
opportunity to plague and harass the Guard, and after the
destruction of the "blind tigers," mischief was naturally
concentrated in the high-license saloons--particularly in the one
run by Jack Woods, whose local power for evil and cackling laugh
seemed to mean nothing else than close personal communion with old
Nick himself. Passing the door of his saloon one day, Bob saw one
of Jack's customers trying to play pool with a Winchester in one
hand and an open knife between his teeth, and the boy stepped in
and halted. The man had no weapon concealed and was making no
disturbance, and Bob did not know whether or not he had the legal
right to arrest him, so he turned, and, while he was standing in
the door, Jack winked at his customer, who, with a grin, put the
back of his knife-blade between Bob's shoulders and, pushing,
closed it. The boy looked over his shoulder without moving a
muscle, but the Hon. Samuel Budd, who came in at that moment,
pinioned the fellow's arms from behind and Bob took his weapon
away.

"Hell," said the mountaineer, "I didn't aim to hurt the little
feller. I jes' wanted to see if I could skeer him."

"Well, brother, 'tis scarce a merry jest," quoth the Hon. Sam, and
he looked sharply at Jack through his big spectacles as the two
led the man off to the calaboose: for he suspected that the
saloon-keeper was at the bottom of the trick. Jack's time came
only the next day. He had regarded it as the limit of indignity
when an ordinance was up that nobody should blow a whistle except
a member of the Guard, and it was great fun for him to have some
drunken customer blow a whistle and then stand in his door and
laugh at the policemen running in from all directions. That day
Jack tried the whistle himself and Hale ran down.

"Who did that?" he asked. Jack felt bold that morning.

"I blowed it."

Hale thought for a moment. The ordinance against blowing a whistle
had not yet been passed, but he made up his mind that, under the
circumstances, Jack's blowing was a breach of the peace, since the
Guard had adopted that signal. So he said:

"You mustn't do that again."

Jack had doubtless been going through precisely the same mental
process, and, on the nice legal point involved, he seemed to
differ.

"I'll blow it when I damn please," he said.

"Blow it again and I'll arrest you," said Hale.

Jack blew. He had his right shoulder against the corner of his
door at the time, and, when he raised the whistle to his lips,
Hale drew and covered him before he could make another move. Woods
backed slowly into his saloon to get behind his counter. Hale saw
his purpose, and he closed in, taking great risk, as he always
did, to avoid bloodshed, and there was a struggle. Jack managed to
get his pistol out; but Hale caught him by the wrist and held the
weapon away so that it was harmless as far as he was concerned;
but a crowd was gathering at the door toward which the saloon-
keeper's pistol was pointed, and he feared that somebody out there
might be shot; so he called out:

"Drop that pistol!"

The order was not obeyed, and Hale raised his right hand high
above Jack's head and dropped the butt of his weapon on Jack's
skull--hard. Jack's head dropped back between his shoulders, his
eyes closed and his pistol clicked on the floor.

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