Chapter 6

“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 their country as we please, when they have been running it as they please for more than a hundred years. You see, you mustn't judge them by the standards of to-day--you must go back to the standards of the Revolution. Practically, they are the pioneers of that day and hardly a bit have they advanced. They are our contemporary ancestors.” And then the Hon. Sam, having dropped his vernacular, lounged ponderously into what he was pleased to call his anthropological drool.

“You see, mountains isolate people and the effect of isolation on human life is to crystallize it. Those people over the line have had no navigable rivers, no lakes, no wagon roads, except often the beds of streams. They have been cut off from all communication with the outside world. They are a perfect example of an arrested civilization and they are the closest link we have with the Old World. They were Unionists because of the Revolution, as they were Americans in the beginning because of the spirit of the Covenanter. They live like the pioneers; the axe and the rifle are still their weapons and they still have the same fight with nature. This feud business is a matter of clan-loyalty that goes back to Scotland. They argue this way: You are my friend or my kinsman, your quarrel is my quarrel, and whoever hits you hits me. If you are in trouble, I must not testify against you. If you are an officer, you must not arrest me; you must send me a kindly request to come into court. If I'm innocent and it's perfectly convenient--why, maybe I'll come. Yes, we're the vanguard of civilization, all right, all right--but I opine we're goin' to have a hell of a merry time.”

Hale laughed, but he was to remember those words of the Hon. Samuel Budd. Other members of that vanguard began to drift in now by twos and threes from the bluegrass region of Kentucky and from the tide-water country of Virginia and from New England--strong, bold young men with the spirit of the pioneer and the birth, breeding and education of gentlemen, and the war between civilization and a lawlessness that was the result of isolation, and consequent ignorance and idleness started in earnest.

“A remarkable array,” murmured the Hon. Sam, when he took an inventory one night with Hale, “I'm proud to be among 'em.”

Many times Hale went over to Lonesome Cove and with every visit his interest grew steadily in the little girl and in the curious people over there, until he actually began to believe in the Hon. Sam Budd's anthropological theories. In the cabin on Lonesome Cove was a crane swinging in the big stone fireplace, and he saw the old step-mother and June putting the spinning wheel and the loom to actual use. Sometimes he found a cabin of unhewn logs with a puncheon floor, clapboards for shingles and wooden pin and auger holes for nails; a batten wooden shutter, the logs filled with mud and stones and holes in the roof for the wind and the rain. Over a pair of buck antlers sometimes lay the long heavy home-made rifle of the backwoodsman--sometimes even with a flintlock and called by some pet feminine name. Once he saw the hominy block that the mountaineers had borrowed from the Indians, and once a handmill like the one from which the one woman was taken and the other left in biblical days. He struck communities where the medium of exchange was still barter, and he found mountaineers drinking metheglin still as well as moonshine. Moreover, there were still log-rollings, house-warmings, corn-shuckings, and quilting parties, and sports were the same as in pioneer days--wrestling, racing, jumping, and lifting barrels. Often he saw a cradle of beegum, and old Judd had in his house a fox-horn made of hickory bark which even June could blow. He ran across old-world superstitions, too, and met one seventh son of a seventh son who cured children of rash by blowing into their mouths. And he got June to singing transatlantic songs, after old Judd said one day that she knowed the “miserablest song he'd ever heerd”--meaning the most sorrowful. And, thereupon, with quaint simplicity, June put her heels on the rung of her chair, and with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on both bent thumbs, sang him the oldest version of “Barbara Allen” in a voice that startled Hale by its power and sweetness. She knew lots more “song-ballets,” she said shyly, and the old man had her sing some songs that were rather rude, but were as innocent as hymns from her lips.

Everywhere he found unlimited hospitality.

“Take out, stranger,” said one old fellow, when there was nothing on the table but some bread and a few potatoes, “have a tater. Take two of 'em--take damn nigh ALL of 'em.”

Moreover, their pride was morbid, and they were very religious. Indeed, they used religion to cloak their deviltry, as honestly as it was ever used in history. He had heard old Judd say once, when he was speaking of the feud:

“Well, I've al'ays laid out my enemies. The Lord's been on my side an' I gits a better Christian every year.”

Always Hale took some children's book for June when he went to Lonesome Cove, and she rarely failed to know it almost by heart when he went again. She was so intelligent that he began to wonder if, in her case, at least, another of the Hon. Sam's theories might not be true--that the mountaineers were of the same class as the other westward-sweeping emigrants of more than a century before, that they had simply lain dormant in the hills and--a century counting for nothing in the matter of inheritance--that their possibilities were little changed, and that the children of that day would, if given the chance, wipe out the handicap of a century in one generation and take their place abreast with children of the outside world. The Tollivers were of good blood; they had come from Eastern Virginia, and the original Tolliver had been a slave-owner. The very name was, undoubtedly, a corruption of Tagliaferro. So, when the Widow Crane began to build a brick house for her boarders that winter, and the foundations of a school-house were laid at the Gap, Hale began to plead with old Judd to allow June to go over to the Gap and go to school, but the old man was firm in refusal:

“He couldn't git along without her,” he said; “he was afeerd he'd lose her, an' he reckoned June was a-larnin' enough without goin' to school--she was a-studyin' them leetle books o' hers so hard.” But as his confidence in Hale grew and as Hale stated his intention to take an option on the old man's coal lands, he could see that Devil Judd, though his answer never varied, was considering the question seriously.

Through the winter, then, Hale made occasional trips to Lonesome Cove and bided his time. Often he met young Dave Tolliver there, but the boy usually left when Hale came, and if Hale was already there, he kept outside the house, until the engineer was gone.

Knowing nothing of the ethics of courtship in the mountains--how, when two men meet at the same girl's house, “they makes the gal say which one she likes best and t'other one gits”--Hale little dreamed that the first time Dave stalked out of the room, he threw his hat in the grass behind the big chimney and executed a war-dance on it, cursing the blankety-blank “furriner” within from Dan to Beersheba.

Indeed, he never suspected the fierce depths of the boy's jealousy at all, and he would have laughed incredulously, if he had been told how, time after time as he climbed the mountain homeward, the boy's black eyes burned from the bushes on him, while his hand twitched at his pistol-butt and his lips worked with noiseless threats. For Dave had to keep his heart-burnings to himself or he would have been laughed at through all the mountains, and not only by his own family, but by June's; so he, too, bided his time.

In late February, old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver shot each other down in the road and the Red Fox, who hated both and whom each thought was his friend, dressed the wounds of both with equal care. The temporary lull of peace that Bad Rufe's absence in the West had brought about, gave way to a threatening storm then, and then it was that old Judd gave his consent: when the roads got better, June could go to the Gap to school. A month later the old man sent word that he did not want June in the mountains while the trouble was going on, and that Hale could come over for her when he pleased: and Hale sent word back that within three days he would meet the father and the little girl at the big Pine. That last day at home June passed in a dream. She went through her daily tasks in a dream and she hardly noticed young Dave when he came in at mid-day, and Dave, when he heard the news, left in sullen silence. In the afternoon she went down to the mill to tell Uncle Billy and ole Hon good-by and the three sat in the porch a long time and with few words. Ole Hon had been to the Gap once, but there was “so much bustle over thar it made her head ache.” Uncle Billy shook his head doubtfully over June's going, and the two old people stood at the gate looking long after the little girl when she went homeward up the road. Before supper June slipped up to her little hiding-place at the pool and sat on the old log saying good-by to the comforting spirit that always brooded for her there, and, when she stood on the porch at sunset, a new spirit was coming on the wings of the South wind. Hale felt it as he stepped into the soft night air; he heard it in the piping of frogs--“Marsh-birds,” as he always called them; he could almost see it in the flying clouds and the moonlight and even the bare trees seemed tremulously expectant. An indefinable happiness seemed to pervade the whole earth and Hale stretched his arms lazily. Over in Lonesome Cove little June felt it more keenly than ever in her life before. She did not want to go to bed that night, and when the others were asleep she slipped out to the porch and sat on the steps, her eyes luminous and her face wistful--looking towards the big Pine which pointed the way towards the far silence into which she was going at last.

XII

June did not have to be awakened that morning. At the first clarion call of the old rooster behind the cabin, her eyes opened wide and a happy thrill tingled her from head to foot--why, she didn't at first quite realize--and then she stretched her slender round arms to full length above her head and with a little squeal of joy bounded out of the bed, dressed as she was when she went into it, and with no changes to make except to push back her tangled hair. Her father was out feeding the stock and she could hear her step-mother in the kitchen. Bub still slept soundly, and she shook him by the shoulder.

“Git up, Bub.”

“Go 'way,” said Bub fretfully. Again she started to shake him but stopped--Bub wasn't going to the Gap, so she let him sleep. For a little while she looked down at him--at his round rosy face and his frowsy hair from under which protruded one dirty fist. She was going to leave him, and a fresh tenderness for him made her breast heave, but she did not kiss him, for sisterly kisses are hardly known in the hills. Then she went out into the kitchen to help her step-mother.

“Gittin' mighty busy, all of a sudden, ain't ye,” said the sour old woman, “now that ye air goin' away.”

“'Tain't costin' you nothin',” answered June quietly, and she picked up a pail and went out into the frosty, shivering daybreak to the old well. The chain froze her fingers, the cold water splashed her feet, and when she had tugged her heavy burden back to the kitchen, she held her red, chapped hands to the fire.

“I reckon you'll be mighty glad to git shet o' me.” The old woman sniffled, and June looked around with a start.

“Pears like I'm goin' to miss ye right smart,” she quavered, and June's face coloured with a new feeling towards her step-mother.

“I'm goin' ter have a hard time doin' all the work and me so poorly.”

“Lorrety is a-comin' over to he'p ye, if ye git sick,” said June, hardening again. “Or, I'll come back myself.” She got out the dishes and set them on the table.

“You an' me don't git along very well together,” she went on placidly. “I never heerd o' no step-mother and children as did, an' I reckon you'll be might glad to git shet o' me.”

“Pears like I'm going to miss ye a right smart,” repeated the old woman weakly.

June went out to the stable with the milking pail. Her father had spread fodder for the cow and she could hear the rasping of the ears of corn against each other as he tumbled them into the trough for the old sorrel. She put her head against the cow's soft flank and under her sinewy fingers two streams of milk struck the bottom of the tin pail with such thumping loudness that she did not hear her father's step; but when she rose to make the beast put back her right leg, she saw him looking at her.

“Who's goin' ter milk, pap, atter I'm gone?”

“This the fust time you thought o' that?” June put her flushed cheek back to the flank of the cow. It was not the first time she had thought of that--her step-mother would milk and if she were ill, her father or Loretta. She had not meant to ask that question--she was wondering when they would start. That was what she meant to ask and she was glad that she had swerved. Breakfast was eaten in the usual silence by the boy and the man--June and the step-mother serving it, and waiting on the lord that was and the lord that was to be--and then the two females sat down.

“Hurry up, June,” said the old man, wiping his mouth and beard with the back of his hand. “Clear away the dishes an' git ready. Hale said he would meet us at the Pine an' hour by sun, fer I told him I had to git back to work. Hurry up, now!”

June hurried up. She was too excited to eat anything, so she began to wash the dishes while her step-mother ate. Then she went into the living-room to pack her things and it didn't take long. She wrapped the doll Hale had given her in an extra petticoat, wound one pair of yarn stockings around a pair of coarse shoes, tied them up into one bundle and she was ready. Her father appeared with the sorrel horse, caught up his saddle from the porch, threw it on and stretched the blanket behind it as a pillion for June to ride on.

“Let's go!” he said. There is little or no demonstrativeness in the domestic relations of mountaineers. The kiss of courtship is the only one known. There were no good-bys--only that short “Let's go!”

June sprang behind her father from the porch. The step-mother handed her the bundle which she clutched in her lap, and they simply rode away, the step-mother and Bub silently gazing after them. But June saw the boy's mouth working, and when she turned the thicket at the creek, she looked back at the two quiet figures, and a keen pain cut her heart. She shut her mouth closely, gripped her bundle more tightly and the tears streamed down her face, but the man did not know. They climbed in silence. Sometimes her father dismounted where the path was steep, but June sat on the horse to hold the bundle and thus they mounted through the mist and chill of the morning. A shout greeted them from the top of the little spur whence the big Pine was visible, and up there they found Hale waiting. He had reached the Pine earlier than they and was coming down to meet them.

“Hello, little girl,” called Hale cheerily, “you didn't fail me, did you?”

June shook her head and smiled. Her face was blue and her little legs, dangling under the bundle, were shrinking from the cold. Her bonnet had fallen to the back of her neck, and he saw that her hair was parted and gathered in a Psyche knot at the back of her head, giving her a quaint old look when she stood on the ground in her crimson gown. Hale had not forgotten a pillion and there the transfer was made. Hale lifted her behind his saddle and handed up her bundle.

“I'll take good care of her,” he said.

“All right,” said the old man.

“And I'm coming over soon to fix up that coal matter, and I'll let you know how she's getting on.”

“All right.”

“Good-by,” said Hale.

“I wish ye well,” said the mountaineer. “Be a good girl, Juny, and do what Mr. Hale thar tells ye.”

“All right, pap.” And thus they parted. June felt the power of Hale's big black horse with exultation the moment he started.

“Now we're off,” said Hale gayly, and he patted the little hand that was about his waist. “Give me that bundle.”

“I can carry it.”

“No, you can't--not with me,” and when he reached around for it and put it on the cantle of his saddle, June thrust her left hand into his overcoat pocket and Hale laughed.

“Loretta wouldn't ride with me this way.”

“Loretty ain't got much sense,” drawled June complacently. “'Tain't no harm. But don't you tell me! I don't want to hear nothin' 'bout Loretty noway.” Again Hale laughed and June laughed, too. Imp that she was, she was just pretending to be jealous now. She could see the big Pine over his shoulder.

“I've knowed that tree since I was a little girl--since I was a baby,” she said, and the tone of her voice was new to Hale. “Sister Sally uster tell me lots about that ole tree.” Hale waited, but she stopped again.

“What did she tell you?”

“She used to say hit was curious that hit should be 'way up here all alone--that she reckollected it ever since SHE was a baby, and she used to come up here and talk to it, and she said sometimes she could hear it jus' a whisperin' to her when she was down home in the cove.”

“What did she say it said?”

“She said it was always a-whisperin' 'come--come--come!'” June crooned the words, “an' atter she died, I heerd the folks sayin' as how she riz up in bed with her eyes right wide an' sayin' “I hears it! It's a-whisperin'--I hears it--come--come--come'!” And still Hale kept quiet when she stopped again.

“The Red Fox said hit was the sperits, but I knowed when they told me that she was a thinkin' o' that ole tree thar. But I never let on. I reckon that's ONE reason made me come here that day.” They were close to the big tree now and Hale dismounted to fix his girth for the descent.

“Well, I'm mighty glad you came, little girl. I might never have seen you.”

“That's so,” said June. “I saw the print of your foot in the mud right there.”

“Did ye?”

“And if I hadn't, I might never have gone down into Lonesome Cove.” June laughed.

“You ran from me,” Hale went on.

“Yes, I did: an' that's why you follered me.” Hale looked up quickly. Her face was demure, but her eyes danced. She was an aged little thing.

“Why did you run?”

“I thought yo' fishin' pole was a rifle-gun an' that you was a raider.” Hale laughed--“I see.”

“'Member when you let yo' horse drink?” Hale nodded. “Well, I was on a rock above the creek, lookin' down at ye. An' I seed ye catchin' minners an' thought you was goin' up the crick lookin' fer a still.”

“Weren't you afraid of me then?”

“Huh!” she said contemptuously. “I wasn't afeared of you at all, 'cept fer what you mought find out. You couldn't do no harm to nobody without a gun, and I knowed thar wasn't no still up that crick. I know--I knowed whar it was.” Hale noticed the quick change of tense.

“Won't you take me to see it some time?”

“No!” she said shortly, and Hale knew he had made a mistake. It was too steep for both to ride now, so he tied the bundle to the cantle with leathern strings and started leading the horse. June pointed to the edge of the cliff.

“I was a-layin' flat right thar and I seed you comin' down thar. My, but you looked funny to me! You don't now,” she added hastily. “You look mighty nice to me now--!”

“You're a little rascal,” said Hale, “that's what you are.” The little girl bubbled with laughter and then she grew mock-serious.

“No, I ain't.”

“Yes, you are,” he repeated, shaking his head, and both were silent for a while. June was going to begin her education now and it was just as well for him to begin with it now. So he started vaguely when he was mounted again:

“June, you thought my clothes were funny when you first saw them--didn't you?”

“Uh, huh!” said June.

“But you like them now?”

“Uh, huh!” she crooned again.

“Well, some people who weren't used to clothes that people wear over in the mountains might think THEM funny for the same reason--mightn't they?” June was silent for a moment.

“Well, mebbe, I like your clothes better, because I like you better,” she said, and Hale laughed.

“Well, it's just the same--the way people in the mountains dress and talk is different from the way people outside dress and talk. It doesn't make much difference about clothes, though, I guess you will want to be as much like people over here as you can--”

“I don't know,” interrupted the little girl shortly, “I ain't seed 'em yit.”

“Well,” laughed Hale, “you will want to talk like them anyhow, because everybody who is learning tries to talk the same way.” June was silent, and Hale plunged unconsciously on.

“Up at the Pine now you said, 'I SEED you when I was A-LAYIN on the edge of the cliff'; now you ought to have said, 'I SAW you when I was LYING--'”

“I wasn't,” she said sharply, “I don't tell lies--” her hand shot from his waist and she slid suddenly to the ground. He pulled in his horse and turned a bewildered face. She had lighted on her feet and was poised back above him like an enraged eaglet--her thin nostrils quivering, her mouth as tight as a bow-string, and her eyes two points of fire.

“Why--June!”

“Ef you don't like my clothes an' the way I talk, I reckon I'd better go back home.” With a groan Hale tumbled from his horse. Fool that he was, he had forgotten the sensitive pride of the mountaineer, even while he was thinking of that pride. He knew that fun might be made of her speech and her garb by her schoolmates over at the Gap, and he was trying to prepare her--to save her mortification, to make her understand.

“Why, June, little girl, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You don't understand--you can't now, but you will. Trust me, won't you? _I_ like you just as you are. I LOVE the way you talk. But other people--forgive me, won't you?” he pleaded. “I'm sorry. I wouldn't hurt you for the world.”

She didn't understand--she hardly heard what he said, but she did know his distress was genuine and his sorrow: and his voice melted her fierce little heart. The tears began to come, while she looked, and when he put his arms about her, she put her face on his breast and sobbed.

“There now!” he said soothingly. “It's all right now. I'm so sorry--so very sorry,” and he patted her on the shoulder and laid his hand across her temple and hair, and pressed her head tight to his breast. Almost as suddenly she stopped sobbing and loosening herself turned away from him.

“I'm a fool--that's what I am,” she said hotly.

“No, you aren't! Come on, little girl! We're friends again, aren't we?” June was digging at her eyes with both hands.

“Aren't we?”

“Yes,” she said with an angry little catch of her breath, and she turned submissively to let him lift her to her seat. Then she looked down into his face.

“Jack,” she said, and he started again at the frank address, “I ain't NEVER GOIN' TO DO THAT NO MORE.”

“Yes, you are, little girl,” he said soberly but cheerily. “You're goin' to do it whenever I'm wrong or whenever you think I'm wrong.” She shook her head seriously.

“No, Jack.”

In a few minutes they were at the foot of the mountain and on a level road.

“Hold tight!” Hale shouted, “I'm going to let him out now.” At the touch of his spur, the big black horse sprang into a gallop, faster and faster, until he was pounding the hard road in a swift run like thunder. At the creek Hale pulled in and looked around. June's bonnet was down, her hair was tossed, her eyes were sparkling fearlessly, and her face was flushed with joy.

“Like it, June?”