The Trail of the Lonesome Pine Part 38

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ddess, 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." n.o.body 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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. Pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Keep it Safe Old Pine, Frontispiece]

"Keep it safe, old Pine." Then she lifted her face--looking upward along its trunk to the blue sky. "And bless him, dear G.o.d, and guard him evermore." She clutched her heart as she turned, and she was clutching it when she pa.s.sed into the shadows below, leaving the old Pine to whisper, when he pa.s.sed, 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.

x.x.xII

All winter the cabin in Lonesome Cove slept through rain and sleet and snow, and no foot pa.s.sed its threshold. Winter broke, floods came and warm suns.h.i.+ne. 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.rs 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 G.o.d--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 gla.s.ses 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 n.o.ble 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 c.o.ke-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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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?"