Chapter 21

“I reckon that's my business.”

“So it is--excuse me.” Hale lighted his pipe and the mountaineer waited--he was a little sullen now.

“Well, the company has parted with the land.” Dave started.

“Sold it?”

“In a way--yes.”

“Well, would you mind tellin' me who bought it--maybe I can git it from him.”

“It's mine now,” said Hale quietly.

“YOURN!” The mountaineer looked incredulous and then he let loose a scornful laugh.

“YOU goin' to live thar?”

“Maybe.”

“Alone?”

“That's my business.” The mountaineer's face darkened and his fingers began to twitch.

“Well, if you're talkin' 'bout June, hit's MY business. Hit always has been and hit always will be.”

“Well, if I was talking about June, I wouldn't consult you.”

“No, but I'd consult you like hell.”

“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 went backward suddenly.

“You went over thar in Lonesome with your high notions an' your slick tongue, an' you took June away from me. But she wusn't good enough fer you THEN--so you filled her up with yo' fool notions an' sent her away to git her po' little head filled with furrin' ways, so she could be fitten to marry you. You took her away from her daddy, her family, her kinfolks and her home, an' you took her away from me; an' now she's been over thar eatin' her heart out just as she et it out over here when she fust left home. An' in the end she got so highfalutin that SHE wouldn't marry YOU.” He laughed again and Hale winced under the laugh and the lashing words. “An' I know you air eatin' yo' heart out, too, because you can't git June, an' I'm hopin' you'll suffer the torment o' hell as long as you live. God, she hates ye now! To think o' your knowin' the world and women and books”--he spoke with vindictive and insulting slowness--“You bein' such a--fool!”

“That may all be true, but I think you can talk better outside that gate.” The mountaineer, deceived by Hale's calm voice, sprang to his feet in a fury, but he was too late. Hale's hand was on the butt of his revolver, his blue eyes were glittering and a dangerous smile was at his lips. Silently he sat and silently he pointed his other hand at the gate. Dave laughed:

“D'ye think I'd fight you hyeh? If you killed me, you'd be elected County Jedge; if I killed you, what chance would I have o' gittin' away? I'd swing fer it.” He was outside the gate now and unhitching his horse. He started to turn the beasts but Hale stopped him.

“Get on from this side, please.”

With one foot in the stirrup, Dave turned savagely: “Why don't you go up in the Gap with me now an' fight it out like a man?”

“I don't trust you.”

“I'll git ye over in the mountains some day.”

“I've no doubt you will, if you have the chance from the bush.” Hale was getting roused now.

“Look here,” he said suddenly, “you've been threatening me for a long time now. I've never had any feeling against you. I've never done anything to you that I hadn't to do. But you've gone a little too far now and I'm tired. If you can't get over your grudge against me, suppose we go across the river outside the town-limits, put our guns down and fight it out--fist and skull.”

“I'm your man,” said Dave eagerly. Looking across the street Hale saw two men on the porch.

“Come on!” he said. The two men were Budd and the new town-sergeant. “Sam,” he said “this gentleman and I are going across the river to have a little friendly bout, and I wish you'd come along--and you, too, Bill, to see that Dave here gets fair play.”

The sergeant spoke to Dave. “You don't need nobody to see that you git fair play with them two--but I'll go 'long just the same.” Hardly a word was said as the four walked across the bridge and toward a thicket to the right. Neither Budd nor the sergeant asked the nature of the trouble, for either could have guessed what it was. Dave tied his horse and, like Hale, stripped off his coat. The sergeant took charge of Dave's pistol and Budd of Hale's.

“All you've got to do is to keep him away from you,” said Budd. “If he gets his hands on you--you're gone. You know how they fight rough-and-tumble.”

Hale nodded--he knew all that himself, and when he looked at Dave's sturdy neck, and gigantic shoulders, he knew further that if the mountaineer got him in his grasp he would have to gasp “enough” in a hurry, or be saved by Budd from being throttled to death.

“Are you ready?” Again Hale nodded.

“Go ahead, Dave,” growled the sergeant, for the job was not to his liking. Dave did not plunge toward Hale, as the three others expected. On the contrary, he assumed the conventional attitude of the boxer and advanced warily, using his head as a diagnostician for Hale's points--and Hale remembered suddenly that Dave had been away at school for a year. Dave knew something of the game and the Hon. Sam straightway was anxious, when the mountaineer ducked and swung his left Budd's heart thumped and he almost shrank himself from the terrific sweep of the big fist.

“God!” he muttered, for had the fist caught Hale's head it must, it seemed, have crushed it like an egg-shell. Hale coolly withdrew his head not more than an inch, it seemed to Budd's practised eye, and jabbed his right with a lightning uppercut into Dave's jaw, that made the mountaineer reel backward with a grunt of rage and pain, and when he followed it up with a swing of his left on Dave's right eye and another terrific jolt with his right on the left jaw, and Budd saw the crazy rage in the mountaineer's face, he felt easy. In that rage Dave forgot his science as the Hon. Sam expected, and with a bellow he started at Hale like a cave-dweller to bite, tear, and throttle, but the lithe figure before him swayed this way and that like a shadow, and with every side-step a fist crushed on the mountaineer's nose, chin or jaw, until, blinded with blood and fury, Dave staggered aside toward the sergeant with the cry of a madman:

“Gimme my gun! I'll kill him! Gimme my gun!” And when the sergeant sprang forward and caught the mountaineer, he dropped weeping with rage and shame to the ground.

“You two just go back to town,” said the sergeant. “I'll take keer of him. Quick!” and he shook his head as Hale advanced. “He ain't goin' to shake hands with you.”

The two turned back across the bridge and Hale went on to Budd's office to do what he was setting out to do when young Dave came. There he had the lawyer make out a deed in which the cabin in Lonesome Cove and the acres about it were conveyed in fee simple to June--her heirs and assigns forever; but the girl must not know until, Hale said, “her father dies, or I die, or she marries.” When he came out the sergeant was passing the door.

“Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway,” he said, shaking his head. “If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as long as he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust chance he gets. You'll have to watch that feller as long as you live--'specially when he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin' and want revenge fer it till the grave. One of you has got to die some day--shore.”

And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his cries and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine. All the way up the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice of the big Pine he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped, his heart was beating curses as he dropped down the other side of the mountain.

When he reached the river, he got off his horse and bathed his mouth and his eyes again, and he cursed afresh when the blood started afresh at his lips again. For a while he sat there in his black mood, undecided whether he should go to his uncle's cabin or go on home. But he had seen a woman's figure in the garden as he came down the spur, and the thought of June drew him to the cabin in spite of his shame and the questions that were sure to be asked. When he passed around the clump of rhododendrons at the creek, June was in the garden still. She was pruning a rose-bush with Bub's penknife, and when she heard him coming she wheeled, quivering. She had been waiting for him all day, and, like an angry goddess, she swept fiercely toward him. Dave pretended not to see her, but when he swung from his horse and lifted his sullen eyes, he shrank as though she had lashed him across them with a whip. Her eyes blazed with murderous fire from her white face, the penknife in her hand was clenched as though for a deadly purpose, and on her trembling lips was the same question that she had asked him at the mill:

“Have you done it this time?” she whispered, and then she saw his swollen mouth and his battered eye. Her fingers relaxed about the handle of the knife, the fire in her eyes went swiftly down, and with a smile that was half pity, half contempt, she turned away. She could not have told the whole truth better in words, even to Dave, and as he looked after her his every pulse-beat was a new curse, and if at that minute he could have had Hale's heart he would have eaten it like a savage--raw. For a minute he hesitated with reins in hand as to whether he should turn now and go back to the Gap to settle with Hale, and then he threw the reins over a post. He could bide his time yet a little longer, for a crafty purpose suddenly entered his brain. Bub met him at the door of the cabin and his eyes opened.

“What's the matter, Dave?”

“Oh, nothin',” he said carelessly. “My hoss stumbled comin' down the mountain an' I went clean over his head.” He raised one hand to his mouth and still Bub was suspicious.

“Looks like you been in a fight.” The boy began to laugh, but Dave ignored him and went on into the cabin. Within, he sat where he could see through the open door.

“Whar you been, Dave?” asked old Judd from the corner. Just then he saw June coming and, pretending to draw on his pipe, he waited until she had sat down within ear-shot on the edge of the porch.

“Who do you reckon owns this house and two hundred acres o' land roundabouts?”

The girl's heart waited apprehensively and she heard her father's deep voice.

“The company owns it.” Dave laughed harshly.

“Not much--John Hale.” The heart out on the porch leaped with gladness now.

“He bought it from the company. It's just as well you're goin' away, Uncle Judd. He'd put you out.”

“I reckon not. I got writin' from the company which 'lows me to stay here two year or more--if I want to.”

“I don't know. He's a slick one.”

“I heerd him say,” put in Bub stoutly, “that he'd see that we stayed here jus' as long as we pleased.”

“Well,” said old Judd shortly, “ef we stay here by his favour, we won't stay long.”

There was silence for a while. Then Dave spoke again for the listening ears outside--maliciously:

“I went over to the Gap to see if I couldn't git the place myself from the company. I believe the Falins ain't goin' to bother us an' I ain't hankerin' to go West. But I told him that you-all was goin' to leave the mountains and goin' out thar fer good.” There was another silence.

“He never said a word.” Nobody had asked the question, but he was answering the unspoken one in the heart of June, and that heart sank like a stone.

“He's goin' away hisself-goin' ter-morrow--goin' to that same place he went before--England, some feller called it.”

Dave had done his work well. June rose unsteadily, and with one hand on her heart and the other clutching the railing of the porch, she crept noiselessly along it, staggered like a wounded thing around the chimney, through the garden and on, still clutching her heart, to the woods--there to sob it out on the breast of the only mother she had ever known.

Dave was gone when she came back from the woods--calm, dry-eyed, pale. Her step-mother had kept her dinner for her, and when she said she wanted nothing to eat, the old woman answered something querulous to which June made no answer, but went quietly to cleaning away the dishes. For a while she sat on the porch, and presently she went into her room and for a few moments she rocked quietly at her window. Hale was going away next day, and when he came back she would be gone and she would never see him again. A dry sob shook her body of a sudden, she put both hands to her head and with wild eyes she sprang to her feet and, catching up her bonnet, slipped noiselessly out the back door. With hands clenched tight she forced herself to walk slowly across the foot-bridge, but when the bushes hid her, she broke into a run as though she were crazed and escaping a madhouse. At the foot of the spur she turned swiftly up the mountain and climbed madly, with one hand tight against the little cross at her throat. He was going away and she must tell him--she must tell him--what? Behind her a voice was calling, the voice that pleaded all one night for her not to leave him, that had made that plea a daily prayer, and it had come from an old man--wounded, broken in health and heart, and her father. Hale's face was before her, but that voice was behind, and as she climbed, the face that she was nearing grew fainter, the voice she was leaving sounded the louder in her ears, and when she reached the big Pine she dropped helplessly at the base of it, sobbing. With her tears the madness slowly left her, the old determination came back again and at last the old sad peace. The sunlight was slanting at a low angle when she rose to her feet and stood on the cliff overlooking the valley--her lips parted as when she stood there first, and the tiny drops drying along the roots of her dull gold hair. And being there for the last time she thought of that time when she was first there--ages ago. The great glare of light that she looked for then had come and gone. There was the smoking monster rushing into the valley and sending echoing shrieks through the hills--but there was no booted stranger and no horse issuing from the covert of maple where the path disappeared. A long time she stood there, with a wandering look of farewell to every familiar thing before her, but not a tear came now. Only as she turned away at last her breast heaved and fell with one long breath--that was all. Passing the Pine slowly, she stopped and turned back to it, unclasping the necklace from her throat. With trembling fingers she detached from it the little luck-piece that Hale had given her--the tear of a fairy that had turned into a tiny cross of stone when a strange messenger brought to the Virginia valley the story of the crucifixion. The penknife was still in her pocket, and, opening it, she went behind the Pine and dug a niche as high and as deep as she could toward its soft old heart. In there she thrust the tiny symbol, whispering:

“I want all the luck you could ever give me, little cross--for HIM.” Then she pulled the fibres down to cover it from sight and, crossing her hands over the opening, she put her forehead against them and touched her lips to the tree.

“Keep it safe, old Pine.” Then she lifted her face--looking upward along its trunk to the blue sky. “And bless him, dear God, and guard him evermore.” She clutched her heart as she turned, and she was clutching it when she passed into the shadows below, leaving the old Pine to whisper, when he passed, her love.

* * * * * * *

Next day the word went round to the clan that the Tollivers would start in a body one week later for the West. At daybreak, that morning, Uncle Billy and his wife mounted the old gray horse and rode up the river to say good-by. They found the cabin in Lonesome Cove deserted. Many things were left piled in the porch; the Tollivers had left apparently in a great hurry and the two old people were much mystified. Not until noon did they learn what the matter was. Only the night before a Tolliver had shot a Falin and the Falins had gathered to get revenge on Judd that night. The warning word had been brought to Lonesome Cove by Loretta Tolliver, and it had come straight from young Buck Falin himself. So June and old Judd and Bub had fled in the night. At that hour they were on their way to the railroad--old Judd at the head of his clan--his right arm still bound to his side, his bushy beard low on his breast, June and Bub on horseback behind him, the rest strung out behind them, and in a wagon at the end, with all her household effects, the little old woman in black who would wait no longer for the Red Fox to arise from the dead. Loretta alone was missing. She was on her way with young Buck Falin to the railroad on the other side of the mountains. Between them not a living soul disturbed the dead stillness of Lonesome Cove.

XXXII

All winter the cabin in Lonesome Cove slept through rain and sleet and snow, and no foot passed its threshold. Winter broke, floods came and warm sunshine. A pale green light stole through the trees, shy, ethereal and so like a mist that it seemed at any moment on the point of floating upward. Colour came with the wild flowers and song with the wood-thrush. Squirrels played on the tree-trunks like mischievous children, the brooks sang like happy human voices through the tremulous underworld and woodpeckers hammered out the joy of spring, but the awakening only made the desolate cabin lonelier still. After three warm days in March, Uncle Billy, the miller, rode up the creek with a hoe over his shoulder--he had promised this to Hale--for his labour of love in June's garden. Weeping April passed, May came with rosy face uplifted, and with the birth of June the laurel emptied its pink-flecked cups and the rhododendron blazed the way for the summer's coming with white stars.

Back to the hills came Hale then, and with all their rich beauty they were as desolate as when he left them bare with winter, for his mission had miserably failed. His train creaked and twisted around the benches of the mountains, and up and down ravines into the hills. The smoke rolled in as usual through the windows and doors. There was the same crowd of children, slatternly women and tobacco-spitting men in the dirty day-coaches, and Hale sat among them--for a Pullman was no longer attached to the train that ran to the Gap. As he neared the bulk of Powell's mountain and ran along its mighty flank, he passed the ore-mines. At each one the commissary was closed, the cheap, dingy little houses stood empty on the hillsides, and every now and then he would see a tipple and an empty car, left as it was after dumping its last load of red ore. On the right, as he approached the station, the big furnace stood like a dead giant, still and smokeless, and the piles of pig iron were red with rust. The same little dummy wheezed him into the dead little town. Even the face of the Gap was a little changed by the gray scar that man had slashed across its mouth, getting limestone for the groaning monster of a furnace that was now at peace. The streets were deserted. A new face fronted him at the desk of the hotel and the eyes of the clerk showed no knowledge of him when he wrote his name. His supper was coarse, greasy and miserable, his room was cold (steam heat, it seemed, had been given up), the sheets were ill-smelling, the mouth of the pitcher was broken, and the one towel had seen much previous use. But the water was the same, as was the cool, pungent night-air--both blessed of God--and they were the sole comforts that were his that night.

The next day it was as though he were arranging his own funeral, with but little hope of a resurrection. The tax-collector met him when he came downstairs--having seen his name on the register.

“You know,” he said, “I'll have to add 5 per cent. next month.” Hale smiled.

“That won't be much more,” he said, and the collector, a new one, laughed good-naturedly and with understanding turned away. Mechanically he walked to the Club, but there was no club--then on to the office of The Progress--the paper that was the boast of the town. The Progress was defunct and the brilliant editor had left the hills. A boy with an ink-smeared face was setting type and a pallid gentleman with glasses was languidly working a hand-press. A pile of fresh-smelling papers lay on a table, and after a question or two he picked up one. Two of its four pages were covered with announcements of suits and sales to satisfy judgments--the printing of which was the raison d'etre of the noble sheet. Down the column his eye caught John Hale et al. John Hale et al., and he wondered why “the others” should be so persistently anonymous. There was a cloud of them--thicker than the smoke of coke-ovens. He had breathed that thickness for a long time, but he got a fresh sense of suffocation now. Toward the post-office he moved. Around the corner he came upon one of two brothers whom he remembered as carpenters. He recalled his inability once to get that gentleman to hang a door for him. He was a carpenter again now and he carried a saw and a plane. There was grim humour in the situation. The carpenter's brother had gone--and he himself could hardly get enough work, he said, to support his family.

“Goin' to start that house of yours?”

“I think not,” said Hale.

“Well, I'd like to get a contract for a chicken-coop just to keep my hand in.”

There was more. A two-horse wagon was coming with two cottage-organs aboard. In the mouth of the slouch-hatted, unshaven driver was a corn-cob pipe. He pulled in when he saw Hale.

“Hello!” he shouted grinning. Good Heavens, was that uncouth figure the voluble, buoyant, flashy magnate of the old days? It was.

“Sellin' organs agin,” he said briefly.

“And teaching singing-school?”

The dethroned king of finance grinned.

“Sure! What you doin'?”

“Nothing.”

“Goin' to stay long?”

“No.”

“Well, see you again. So long. Git up!”

Wheel-spokes whirred in the air and he saw a buggy, with the top down, rattling down another street in a cloud of dust. It was the same buggy in which he had first seen the black-bearded Senator seven years before. It was the same horse, too, and the Arab-like face and the bushy black whiskers, save for streaks of gray, were the same. This was the man who used to buy watches and pianos by the dozen, who one Xmas gave a present to every living man, woman and child in the town, and under whose colossal schemes the pillars of the church throughout the State stood as supports. That far away the eagle-nosed face looked haggard, haunted and all but spent, and even now he struck Hale as being driven downward like a madman by the same relentless energy that once had driven him upward. It was the same story everywhere. Nearly everybody who could get away was gone. Some of these were young enough to profit by the lesson and take surer root elsewhere--others were too old for transplanting, and of them would be heard no more. Others stayed for the reason that getting away was impossible. These were living, visible tragedies--still hopeful, pathetically unaware of the leading parts they were playing, and still weakly waiting for a better day or sinking, as by gravity, back to the old trades they had practised before the boom. A few sturdy souls, the fittest, survived--undismayed. Logan was there--lawyer for the railroad and the coal-company. MacFarlan was a judge, and two or three others, too, had come through unscathed in spirit and undaunted in resolution--but gone were the young Bluegrass Kentuckians, the young Tide-water Virginians, the New England school-teachers, the bankers, real-estate agents, engineers; gone the gamblers, the wily Jews and the vagrant women that fringe the incoming tide of a new prosperity--gone--all gone!