Chapter 22

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 torn away, the old wheel was gone and a caved-in roof and supporting walls, drunkenly aslant, were the only remnants left. A red-haired child stood at the gate before the red-brick house and Hale asked her a question. The little girl had never heard of the Widow Crane. Then he walked toward his old office and bedroom. There was a voice inside his old office when he approached, a tall figure filled the doorway, a pair of great goggles beamed on him like beacon lights in a storm, and the Hon. Sam Budd's hand and his were clasped over the gate.

“It's all over, Sam.”

“Don't you worry--come on in.”

The two sat on the porch. Below it the dimpled river shone through the rhododendrons and with his eyes fixed on it, the Hon. Sam slowly approached the thought of each.

“The old cabin in Lonesome Cove is just as the Tollivers left it.”

“None of them ever come back?” Budd shook his head.

“No, but one's comin'--Dave.”

“Dave!”

“Yes, an' you know what for.”

“I suppose so,” said Hale carelessly. “Did you send old Judd the deed?”

“Sure--along with that fool condition of yours that June shouldn't know until he was dead or she married. I've never heard a word.”

“Do you suppose he'll stick to the condition?”

“He has stuck,” said the Hon. Sam shortly; “otherwise you would have heard from June.”

“I'm not going to be here long,” said Hale.

“Where you goin'?”

“I don't know.” Budd puffed his pipe.

“Well, while you are here, you want to keep your eye peeled for Dave Tolliver. I told you that the mountaineer hates as long as he remembers, and that he never forgets. Do you know that Dave sent his horse back to the stable here to be hired out for his keep, and told it right and left that when you came back he was comin', too, and he was goin' to straddle that horse until he found you, and then one of you had to die? How he found out you were comin' about this time I don't know, but he has sent word that he'll be here. Looks like he hasn't made much headway with June.”

“I'm not worried.”

“Well, you better be,” said Budd sharply.

“Did Uncle Billy plant the garden?”

“Flowers and all, just as June always had 'em. He's always had the idea that June would come back.”

“Maybe she will.”

“Not on your life. She might if you went out there for her.”

Hale looked up quickly and slowly shook his head.

“Look here, Jack, you're seein' things wrong. You can't blame that girl for losing her head after you spoiled and pampered her the way you did. And with all her sense it was mighty hard for her to understand your being arrayed against her flesh and blood--law or no law. That's mountain nature pure and simple, and it comes mighty near bein' human nature the world over. You never gave her a square chance.”

“You know what Uncle Billy said?”

“Yes, an' I know Uncle Billy changed his mind. Go after her.”

“No,” said Hale firmly. “It'll take me ten years to get out of debt. I wouldn't now if I could--on her account.”

“Nonsense.” Hale rose.

“I'm going over to take a look around and get some things I left at Uncle Billy's and then--me for the wide, wide world again.”

The Hon. Sam took off his spectacles to wipe them, but when Hale's back was turned, his handkerchief went to his eyes:

“Don't you worry, Jack.”

“All right, Sam.”

An hour later Hale was at the livery stable for a horse to ride to Lonesome Cove, for he had sold his big black to help out expenses for the trip to England. Old Dan Harris, the stableman, stood in the door and silently he pointed to a gray horse in the barn-yard.

“You know that hoss?”

“Yes.”

“You know whut's he here fer?”

“I've heard.”

“Well, I'm lookin' fer Dave every day now.”

“Well, maybe I'd better ride Dave's horse now,” said Hale jestingly.

“I wish you would,” said old Dan.

“No,” said Hale, “if he's coming, I'll leave the horse so that he can get to me as quickly as possible. You might send me word, Uncle Dan, ahead, so that he can't waylay me.”

“I'll do that very thing,” said the old man seriously.

“I was joking, Uncle Dan.”

“But I ain't.”

The matter was out of Hale's head before he got through the great Gap. How the memories thronged of June--June--June!

“YOU DIDN'T GIVE HER A CHANCE.”

That was what Budd said. Well, had he given her a chance? Why shouldn't he go to her and give her the chance now? He shook his shoulders at the thought and laughed with some bitterness. He hadn't the car-fare for half-way across the continent--and even if he had, he was a promising candidate for matrimony!--and again he shook his shoulders and settled his soul for his purpose. He would get his things together and leave those hills forever.

How lonely had been his trip--how lonely was the God-forsaken little town behind him! How lonely the road and hills and the little white clouds in the zenith straight above him--and how unspeakably lonely the green dome of the great Pine that shot into view from the north as he turned a clump of rhododendron with uplifted eyes. Not a breath of air moved. The green expanse about him swept upward like a wave--but unflecked, motionless, except for the big Pine which, that far away, looked like a bit of green spray, spouting on its very crest.

“Old man,” he muttered, “you know--you know.” And as to a brother he climbed toward it.

“No wonder they call you Lonesome,” he said as he went upward into the bright stillness, and when he dropped into the dark stillness of shadow and forest gloom on the other side he said again:

“My God, no wonder they call you Lonesome.”

And still the memories of June thronged--at the brook--at the river--and when he saw the smokeless chimney of the old cabin, he all but groaned aloud. But he turned away from it, unable to look again, and went down the river toward Uncle Billy's mill.

* * * * * * *

Old Hon threw her arms around him and kissed him.

“John,” said Uncle Billy, “I've got three hundred dollars in a old yarn sock under one of them hearthstones and its yourn. Ole Hon says so too.”

Hale choked.

“I want ye to go to June. Dave'll worry her down and git her if you don't go, and if he don't worry her down, he'll come back an' try to kill ye. I've always thought one of ye would have to die fer that gal, an' I want it to be Dave. You two have got to fight it out some day, and you mought as well meet him out thar as here. You didn't give that little gal a fair chance, John, an' I want you to go to June.”

“No, I can't take your money, Uncle Billy--God bless you and old Hon--I'm going--I don't know where--and I'm going now.”

XXXIII

Clouds were gathering as Hale rode up the river after telling old Hon and Uncle Billy good-by. He had meant not to go to the cabin in Lonesome Cove, but when he reached the forks of the road, he stopped his horse and sat in indecision with his hands folded on the pommel of his saddle and his eyes on the smokeless chimney. The memories tugging at his heart drew him irresistibly on, for it was the last time. At a slow walk he went noiselessly through the deep sand around the clump of rhododendron. The creek was clear as crystal once more, but no geese cackled and no dog barked. The door of the spring-house gaped wide, the barn-door sagged on its hinges, the yard-fence swayed drunkenly, and the cabin was still as a gravestone. But the garden was alive, and he swung from his horse at the gate, and with his hands clasped behind his back walked slowly through it. June's garden! The garden he had planned and planted for June--that they had tended together and apart and that, thanks to the old miller's care, was the one thing, save the sky above, left in spirit unchanged. The periwinkles, pink and white, were almost gone. The flags were at half-mast and sinking fast. The annunciation lilies were bending their white foreheads to the near kiss of death, but the pinks were fragrant, the poppies were poised on slender stalks like brilliant butterflies at rest, the hollyhocks shook soundless pink bells to the wind, roses as scarlet as June's lips bloomed everywhere and the richness of mid-summer was at hand.

Quietly Hale walked the paths, taking a last farewell of plant and flower, and only the sudden patter of raindrops made him lift his eyes to the angry sky. The storm was coming now in earnest and he had hardly time to lead his horse to the barn and dash to the porch when the very heavens, with a crash of thunder, broke loose. Sheet after sheet swept down the mountains like wind-driven clouds of mist thickening into water as they came. The shingles rattled as though with the heavy slapping of hands, the pines creaked and the sudden dusk outside made the cabin, when he pushed the door open, as dark as night. Kindling a fire, he lit his pipe and waited. The room was damp and musty, but the presence of June almost smothered him. Once he turned his face. June's door was ajar and the key was in the lock. He rose to go to it and look within and then dropped heavily back into his chair. He was anxious to get away now--to get to work. Several times he rose restlessly and looked out the window. Once he went outside and crept along the wall of the cabin to the east and the west, but there was no break of light in the murky sky and he went back to pipe and fire. By and by the wind died and the rain steadied into a dogged downpour. He knew what that meant--there would be no letting up now in the storm, and for another night he was a prisoner. So he went to his saddle-pockets and pulled out a cake of chocolate, a can of potted ham and some crackers, munched his supper, went to bed, and lay there with sleepless eyes, while the lights and shadows from the wind-swayed fire flicked about him. After a while his body dozed but his racked brain went seething on in an endless march of fantastic dreams in which June was the central figure always, until of a sudden young Dave leaped into the centre of the stage in the dream-tragedy forming in his brain. They were meeting face to face at last--and the place was the big Pine. Dave's pistol flashed and his own stuck in the holster as he tried to draw. There was a crashing report and he sprang upright in bed--but it was a crash of thunder that wakened him and that in that swift instant perhaps had caused his dream. The wind had come again and was driving the rain like soft bullets against the wall of the cabin next which he lay. He got up, threw another stick of wood on the fire and sat before the leaping blaze, curiously disturbed but not by the dream. Somehow he was again in doubt--was he going to stick it out in the mountains after all, and if he should, was not the reason, deep down in his soul, the foolish hope that June would come back again. No, he thought, searching himself fiercely, that was not the reason. He honestly did not know what his duty to her was--what even was his inmost wish, and almost with a groan he paced the floor to and fro. Meantime the storm raged. A tree crashed on the mountainside and the lightning that smote it winked into the cabin so like a mocking, malignant eye that he stopped in his tracks, threw open the door and stepped outside as though to face an enemy. The storm was majestic and his soul went into the mighty conflict of earth and air, whose beginning and end were in eternity. The very mountain tops were rimmed with zigzag fire, which shot upward, splitting a sky that was as black as a nether world, and under it the great trees swayed like willows under rolling clouds of gray rain. One fiery streak lit up for an instant the big Pine and seemed to dart straight down upon its proud, tossing crest. For a moment the beat of the watcher's heart and the flight of his soul stopped still. A thunderous crash came slowly to his waiting ears, another flash came, and Hale stumbled, with a sob, back into the cabin. God's finger was pointing the way now--the big Pine was no more.

XXXIV

The big Pine was gone. He had seen it first, one morning at daybreak, when the valley on the other side was a sea of mist that threw soft, clinging spray to the very mountain tops--for even above the mists, that morning, its mighty head arose, sole visible proof that the earth still slept beneath. He had seen it at noon--but little less majestic, among the oaks that stood about it; had seen it catching the last light at sunset, clean-cut against the after-glow, and like a dark, silent, mysterious sentinel guarding the mountain pass under the moon. He had seen it giving place with sombre dignity to the passing burst of spring, had seen it green among dying autumn leaves, green in the gray of winter trees and still green in a shroud of snow--a changeless promise that the earth must wake to life again. It had been the beacon that led him into Lonesome Cove--the beacon that led June into the outer world. From it her flying feet had carried her into his life--past it, the same feet had carried her out again. It had been their trysting place--had kept their secrets like a faithful friend and had stood to him as the changeless symbol of their love. It had stood a mute but sympathetic witness of his hopes, his despairs and the struggles that lay between them. In dark hours it had been a silent comforter, and in the last year it had almost come to symbolize his better self as to that self he came slowly back. And in the darkest hour it was the last friend to whom he had meant to say good-by. Now it was gone. Always he had lifted his eyes to it every morning when he rose, but now, next morning, he hung back consciously as one might shrink from looking at the face of a dead friend, and when at last he raised his head to look upward to it, an impenetrable shroud of mist lay between them--and he was glad.

And still he could not leave. The little creek was a lashing yellow torrent, and his horse, heavily laden as he must be, could hardly swim with his weight, too, across so swift a stream. But mountain streams were like June's temper--up quickly and quickly down--so it was noon before he plunged into the tide with his saddle-pockets over one shoulder and his heavy transit under one arm. Even then his snorting horse had to swim a few yards, and he reached the other bank soaked to his waist line. But the warm sun came out just as he entered the woods, and as he climbed, the mists broke about him and scudded upward like white sails before a driving wind. Once he looked back from a “fire-scald” in the woods at the lonely cabin in the cove, but it gave him so keen a pain that he would not look again. The trail was slippery and several times he had to stop to let his horse rest and to slow the beating of his own heart. But the sunlight leaped gladly from wet leaf to wet leaf until the trees looked decked out for unseen fairies, and the birds sang as though there was nothing on earth but joy for all its creatures, and the blue sky smiled above as though it had never bred a lightning flash or a storm. Hale dreaded the last spur before the little Gap was visible, but he hurried up the steep, and when he lifted his apprehensive eyes, the gladness of the earth was as nothing to the sudden joy in his own heart. The big Pine stood majestic, still unscathed, as full of divinity and hope to him as a rainbow in an eastern sky. Hale dropped his reins, lifted one hand to his dizzy head, let his transit to the ground, and started for it on a run. Across the path lay a great oak with a white wound running the length of its mighty body, from crest to shattered trunk, and over it he leaped, and like a child caught his old friend in both arms. After all, he was not alone. One friend would be with him till death, on that border-line between the world in which he was born and the world he had tried to make his own, and he could face now the old one again with a stouter heart. There it lay before him with its smoke and fire and noise and slumbering activities just awakening to life again. He lifted his clenched fist toward it:

“You got ME once,” he muttered, “but this time I'll get YOU.” He turned quickly and decisively--there would be no more delay. And he went back and climbed over the big oak that, instead of his friend, had fallen victim to the lightning's kindly whim and led his horse out into the underbrush. As he approached within ten yards of the path, a metallic note rang faintly on the still air the other side of the Pine and down the mountain. Something was coming up the path, so he swiftly knotted his bridle-reins around a sapling, stepped noiselessly into the path and noiselessly slipped past the big tree where he dropped to his knees, crawled forward and lay flat, peering over the cliff and down the winding trail. He had not long to wait. A riderless horse filled the opening in the covert of leaves that swallowed up the path. It was gray and he knew it as he knew the saddle as his old enemy's--Dave. Dave had kept his promise--he had come back. The dream was coming true, and they were to meet at last face to face. One of them was to strike a trail more lonesome than the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, and that man would not be John Hale. One detail of the dream was going to be left out, he thought grimly, and very quietly he drew his pistol, cocked it, sighted it on the opening--it was an easy shot--and waited. He would give that enemy no more chance than he would a mad dog--or would he? The horse stopped to browse. He waited so long that he began to suspect a trap. He withdrew his head and looked about him on either side and behind--listening intently for the cracking of a twig or a footfall. He was about to push backward to avoid possible attack from the rear, when a shadow shot from the opening. His face paled and looked sick of a sudden, his clenched fingers relaxed about the handle of his pistol and he drew it back, still cocked, turned on his knees, walked past the Pine, and by the fallen oak stood upright, waiting. He heard a low whistle calling to the horse below and a shudder ran through him. He heard the horse coming up the path, he clenched his pistol convulsively, and his eyes, lit by an unearthly fire and fixed on the edge of the bowlder around which they must come, burned an instant later on--June. At the cry she gave, he flashed a hunted look right and left, stepped swiftly to one side and stared past her-still at the bowlder. She had dropped the reins and started toward him, but at the Pine she stopped short.

“Where is he?”

Her lips opened to answer, but no sound came. Hale pointed at the horse behind her.

“That's his. He sent me word. He left that horse in the valley, to ride over here, when he came back, to kill me. Are you with him?” For a moment she thought from his wild face that he had gone crazy and she stared silently. Then she seemed to understand, and with a moan she covered her face with her hands and sank weeping in a heap at the foot of the Pine.

The forgotten pistol dropped, full cocked to the soft earth, and Hale with bewildered eyes went slowly to her.

“Don't cry,”--he said gently, starting to call her name. “Don't cry,” he repeated, and he waited helplessly.

“He's dead. Dave was shot--out--West,” she sobbed. “I told him I was coming back. He gave me his horse. Oh, how could you?”

“Why did you come back?” he asked, and she shrank as though he had struck her--but her sobs stopped and she rose to her feet.

“Wait,” she said, and she turned from him to wipe her eyes with her handerchief. Then she faced him.

“When dad died, I learned everything. You made him swear never to tell me and he kept his word until he was on his death-bed. YOU did everything for me. It was YOUR money. YOU gave me back the old cabin in the Cove. It was always you, you, YOU, and there was never anybody else but you.” She stopped for Hale's face was as though graven from stone.

“And you came back to tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“You could have written that.”

“Yes,” she faltered, “but I had to tell you face to face.”

“Is that all?”

Again the tears were in her eyes.

“No,” she said tremulously.

“Then I'll say the rest for you. You wanted to come to tell me of the shame you felt when you knew,” she nodded violently--“but you could have written that, too, and I could have written that you mustn't feel that way--that” he spoke slowly--“you mustn't rob me of the dearest happiness I ever knew in my whole life.”

“I knew you would say that,” she said like a submissive child. The sternness left his face and he was smiling now.

“And you wanted to say that the only return you could make was to come back and be my wife.”

“Yes,” she faltered again, “I did feel that--I did.”

“You could have written that, too, but you thought you had to PROVE it by coming back yourself.”

This time she nodded no assent and her eyes were streaming. He turned away--stretching out his arms to the woods.

“God! Not that--no--no!”

“Listen, Jack!” As suddenly his arms dropped. She had controlled her tears but her lips were quivering.

“No, Jack, not that--thank God. I came because I wanted to come,” she said steadily. “I loved you when I went away. I've loved you every minute since--” her arms were stealing about his neck, her face was upturned to his and her eyes, moist with gladness, were looking into his wondering eyes--“and I love you now--Jack.”

“June!” The leaves about them caught his cry and quivered with the joy of it, and above their heads the old Pine breathed its blessing with the name--June--June--June.

XXXV

With a mystified smile but with no question, Hale silently handed his penknife to June and when, smiling but without a word, she walked behind the old Pine, he followed her. There he saw her reach up and dig the point of the knife into the trunk, and when, as he wonderingly watched her, she gave a sudden cry, Hale sprang toward her. In the hole she was digging he saw the gleam of gold and then her trembling fingers brought out before his astonished eyes the little fairy stone that he had given her long ago. She had left it there for him, she said, through tears, and through his own tears Hale pointed to the stricken oak:

“It saved the Pine,” he said.

“And you,” said June.

“And you,” repeated Hale solemnly, and while he looked long at her, her arms dropped slowly to her sides and he said simply:

“Come!”

Leading the horses, they walked noiselessly through the deep sand around the clump of rhododendron, and there sat the little cabin of Lonesome Cove. The holy hush of a cathedral seemed to shut it in from the world, so still it was below the great trees that stood like sentinels on eternal guard. Both stopped, and June laid her head on Hale's shoulder and they simply looked in silence.

“Dear old home,” she said, with a little sob, and Hale, still silent, drew her to him.

“You were _never_ coming back again?”

“I was never coming back again.” She clutched his arm fiercely as though even now something might spirit him away, and she clung to him, while he hitched the horses and while they walked up the path.

“Why, the garden is just as I left it! The very same flowers in the very same places!” Hale smiled.

“Why not? I had Uncle Billy do that.”

“Oh, you dear--you dear!”

Her little room was shuttered tight as it always had been when she was away, and, as usual, the front door was simply chained on the outside. The girl turned with a happy sigh and looked about at the nodding flowers and the woods and the gleaming pool of the river below and up the shimmering mountain to the big Pine topping it with sombre majesty.

“Dear old Pine,” she murmured, and almost unconsciously she unchained the door as she had so often done before, stepped into the dark room, pulling Hale with one hand after her, and almost unconsciously reaching upward with the other to the right of the door. Then she cried aloud:

“My key--my key is there!”