Chapter 10

“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 Hale'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.

Hale knew how serious a thing a blow was in that part of the world, and what excitement it would create, and he was uneasy at Jack's trial, for fear that the saloon-keeper's friends would take the matter up; but they didn't, and, to the surprise of everybody, Jack quietly paid his fine, and thereafter the Guard had little active trouble from the town itself, for it was quite plain there, at least, that the Guard meant business.

Across Black Mountain old Dave Tolliver and old Buck Falin had got well of their wounds by this time, and though each swore to have vengeance against the other as soon as he was able to handle a Winchester, both factions seemed waiting for that time to come. Moreover, the Falins, because of a rumour that Bad Rufe Tolliver might come back, and because of Devil Judd's anger at their attempt to capture young Dave, grew wary and rather pacificatory: and so, beyond a little quarrelling, a little threatening and the exchange of a harmless shot or two, sometimes in banter, sometimes in earnest, nothing had been done. Sternly, however, though the Falins did not know the fact, Devil Judd continued to hold aloof in spite of the pleadings of young Dave, and so confident was the old man in the balance of power that lay with him that he sent June word that he was coming to take her home. And, in truth, with Hale going away again on a business trip and Bob, too, gone back home to the Bluegrass, and school closed, the little girl was glad to go, and she waited for her father's coming eagerly. Miss Anne was still there, to be sure, and if she, too, had gone, June would have been more content. The quiet smile of that astute young woman had told Hale plainly, and somewhat to his embarrassment, that she knew something had happened between the two, but that smile she never gave to June. Indeed, she never encountered aught else than the same silent searching gaze from the strangely mature little creature's eyes, and when those eyes met the teacher's, always June's hand would wander unconsciously to the little cross at her throat as though to invoke its aid against anything that could come between her and its giver.

The purple rhododendrons on Bee Rock had come and gone and the pink-flecked laurels were in bloom when June fared forth one sunny morning of her own birth-month behind old Judd Tolliver--home. Back up through the wild Gap they rode in silence, past Bee Rock, out of the chasm and up the little valley toward the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, into which the father's old sorrel nag, with a switch of her sunburnt tail, turned leftward. June leaned forward a little, and there was the crest of the big tree motionless in the blue high above, and sheltered by one big white cloud. It was the first time she had seen the pine since she had first left it, and little tremblings went through her from her bare feet to her bonneted head. Thus was she unclad, for Hale had told her that, to avoid criticism, she must go home clothed just as she was when she left Lonesome Cove. She did not quite understand that, and she carried her new clothes in a bundle in her lap, but she took Hale's word unquestioned. So she wore her crimson homespun and her bonnet, with her bronze-gold hair gathered under it in the same old Psyche knot. She must wear her shoes, she told Hale, until she got out of town, else someone might see her, but Hale had said she would be leaving too early for that: and so she had gone from the Gap as she had come into it, with unmittened hands and bare feet. The soft wind was very good to those dangling feet, and she itched to have them on the green grass or in the cool waters through which the old horse splashed. Yes, she was going home again, the same June as far as mountain eyes could see, though she had grown perceptibly, and her little face had blossomed from her heart almost into a woman's, but she knew that while her clothes were the same, they covered quite another girl. Time wings slowly for the young, and when the sensations are many and the experiences are new, slowly even for all--and thus there was a double reason why it seemed an age to June since her eyes had last rested on the big Pine.

Here was the place where Hale had put his big black horse into a dead run, and as vivid a thrill of it came back to her now as had been the thrill of the race. Then they began to climb laboriously up the rocky creek--the water singing a joyous welcome to her along the path, ferns and flowers nodding to her from dead leaves and rich mould and peeping at her from crevices between the rocks on the creek-banks as high up as the level of her eyes--up under bending branches full-leafed, with the warm sunshine darting down through them upon her as she passed, and making a playfellow of her sunny hair. Here was the place where she had got angry with Hale, had slid from his horse and stormed with tears. What a little fool she had been when Hale had meant only to be kind! He was never anything but kind--Jack was--dear, dear Jack! That wouldn't happen NO more, she thought, and straightway she corrected that thought.

“It won't happen ANY more,” she said aloud.

“Whut'd you say, June?”

The old man lifted his bushy beard from his chest and turned his head.

“Nothin', dad,” she said, and old Judd, himself in a deep study, dropped back into it again. How often she had said that to herself--that it would happen no more--she had stopped saying it to Hale, because he laughed and forgave her, and seemed to love her mood, whether she cried from joy or anger--and yet she kept on doing both just the same.