The Trail of the Lonesome Pine

“Well, you needn't git mad about it--I got to go some day this week, and I reckon I might as well go ter-day.” June answered nothing, but in silence watched her get ready and in...

This fact was mentioned in the same matter-of-fact way as the other happenings. Hale had been raising Cain in Lonesome Cove--“A-cuttin' things down an' tearin' 'em up an' playin...

Beyond the post-office he turned toward the red-brick house that sat above the mill-pond. Eagerly he looked for the old mill, and he stopped in physical pain. The dam had been t...

“Well, that's called Bee Rock, because it's covered with flowers--purple rhododendrons and laurel--and bears used to go there for wild honey. They say that once on a time folks...

“The trouble will be,” he said slowly, “that they won't understand our purpose or our methods. They will look on us as a lot of meddlesome 'furriners' who have come in to run th...

He felt almost shy when he went back into the car, and though June greeted him with a smile, her immaculate daintiness made him unconsciously sit quite far away from her. The li...

“Judd, your brother shot a man at the Gap--without excuse or warning. He was an officer and a friend of mine, but if he were a stranger--we want him just the same. Is he here?”

Several times Devil Judd stopped to let his horse rest, and each time, of course, the wooded slopes of the mountains stretched downward in longer sweeps of summer green, and acr...

She sat at the base of the big tree--her little sunbonnet pushed back, her arms locked about her knees, her bare feet gathered under her crimson gown and her deep eyes fixed on...

Even the geese in the creek seemed to know that he was a stranger and to distrust him, for they cackled and, spreading their wings, fled cackling up the stream. As he neared the...

“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.

With the vision of a seer, he was as innocent as Boone. Stripped clean, he got out his map, such geological reports as he could find and went into a studious trance for a month,...

“I wish you had the chance,” said Hale coolly; “but I wasn't talking about June.” Again Dave laughed harshly, and for a moment his angry eyes rested on the quiet mill-pond. He w...

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 qui...

Hale laughed aloud--the judge glared at him and he turned quickly upstairs to his work in the deed-room. Till noon he worked and yet there was no trouble. After dinner he went b...

And so another sensation spread through the hills and a superstitious awe of this strange new power that had come into the hills went with it hand in hand. Only while the doubti...

June lifted her right hand, put her lips to the soiled, old, black Bible and faced the jury and Hale and Bad Rufe Tolliver whose black eyes never left her face.

The sister sat for a long time at her window after he was gone. Her brother had been long away from civilization; he had become infatuated, the girl loved him, he was honourable...

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...

“You oughtn't to slip up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way,” she said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. “Now you just set there and wait till I come back.”

In the autumn, while June was in New York, the signs were sure but every soul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed question of labour and capital was born again, for...

“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 v...

“Oh, I might--I might! and think if I had come too late--think if I hadn't come _now!_” Again her voice broke and still holding Hale's arm, she moved to her own door. She had to...