“June! June!” he said brokenly. “You mustn't, little girl. I'mproud—proud—why little sweetheart—” She was clinging to him andlooking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips met andthe man was startled. He knew now it was no child that answered him.Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and aroundImboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks,past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out theircrooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under whichthe valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountainrose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was achild, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knewshe was no child among her own people, and that mountain girls were evenwives who were younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt—howcould she?—and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab ofa doubt—would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder heconfessed 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 firststep—no matter what happened. June must go out into the world toschool. He would have plenty of money. Her father would not object, andJune need never know. He could include for her an interest in her ownfather's coal lands that he meant to buy, and she could think that itwas her own money that she was using. So, with a sudden rush of gladnessfrom his brain to his heart, he recklessly yoked himself, then andthere, 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.
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.
Several times Devil Judd stopped to let his horse rest, and each time, of course, the wooded slopes of the mountains stretched downward in longer sweeps of summer green, and across the widening valley the tops of the mountains beyond dropped nearer to the straight level of her eyes, while beyond them vaster blue bulks became visible and ran on and on, as they always seemed, to the farthest limits of the world. Even out there, Hale had told her, she would go some day. The last curving up-sweep came finally, and there stood the big Pine, majestic, unchanged and murmuring in the wind like the undertone of a far-off sea. As they passed the base of it, she reached out her hand and let the tips of her fingers brush caressingly across its trunk, turned quickly for a last look at the sunlit valley and the hills of the outer world and then the two passed into a green gloom of shadow and thick leaves that shut her heart in as suddenly as though some human hand had clutched it. She was going home—to see Bub and Loretta and Uncle Billy and “old Hon” and her step-mother and Dave, and yet she felt vaguely troubled. The valley on the other side was in dazzling sunshine—she had seen that. The sun must still be shining over there—it must be shining above her over here, for here and there shot a sunbeam message from that outer world down through the leaves, and yet it seemed that black night had suddenly fallen about her, and helplessly she wondered about it all, with her hands gripped tight and her eyes wide. But the mood was gone when they emerged at the “deadening” on the last spur and she saw Lonesome Cove and the roof of her little home peacefully asleep in the same sun that shone on the valley over the mountain. Colour came to her face and her heart beat faster. At the foot of the spur the road had been widened and showed signs of heavy hauling. There was sawdust in the mouth of the creek and, from coal-dust, the water was black. The ring of axes and the shouts of ox-drivers came from the mountain side. Up the creek above her father's cabin three or four houses were being built of fresh boards, and there in front of her was a new store. To a fence one side of it two horses were hitched and on one horse was a side-saddle. Before the door stood the Red Fox and Uncle Billy, the miller, who peered at her for a moment through his big spectacles and gave her a wondering shout of welcome that brought her cousin Loretta to the door, where she stopped a moment, anchored with surprise. Over her shoulder peered her cousin Dave, and June saw his face darken while she looked.
“Why, Honey,” said the old miller, “have ye really come home agin?” While Loretta simply said:
“My Lord!” and came out and stood with her hands on her hips looking at June.
“Why, ye ain't a bit changed! I knowed ye wasn't goin' to put on no airs like Dave thar said “—she turned on Dave, who, with a surly shrug, wheeled and went back into the store. Uncle Billy was going home.
“Come down to see us right away now,” he called back. “Ole Hon's might nigh crazy to git her eyes on ye.”
“All right, Uncle Billy,” said June, “early termorrer.” The Red Fox did not open his lips, but his pale eyes searched the girl from head to foot.
“Git down, June,” said Loretta, “and I'll walk up to the house with ye.”
June slid down, Devil Judd started the old horse, and as the two girls, with their arms about each other's waists, followed, the wolfish side of the Red Fox's face lifted in an ironical snarl. Bub was standing at the gate, and when he saw his father riding home alone, his wistful eyes filled and his cry of disappointment brought the step-mother to the door.
“Whar's June?” he cried, and June heard him, and loosening herself from Loretta, she ran round the horse and had Bub in her arms. Then she looked up into the eyes of her step-mother. The old woman's face looked kind—so kind that for the first time in her life June did what her father could never get her to do: she called her “Mammy,” and then she gave that old woman the surprise of her life—she kissed her. Right away she must see everything, and Bub, in ecstasy, wanted to pilot her around to see the new calf and the new pigs and the new chickens, but dumbly June looked to a miracle that had come to pass to the left of the cabin—a flower-garden, the like of which she had seen only in her dreams.
Twice her lips opened soundlessly and, dazed, she could only point dumbly. The old step-mother laughed:
“Jack Hale done that. He pestered yo' pap to let him do it fer ye, an' anything Jack Hale wants from yo' pap, he gits. I thought hit was plum' foolishness, but he's got things to eat planted thar, too, an' I declar hit's right purty.”
That wonderful garden! June started for it on a run. There was a broad grass-walk down through the middle of it and there were narrow grass-walks running sidewise, just as they did in the gardens which Hale told her he had seen in the outer world. The flowers were planted in raised beds, and all the ones that she had learned to know and love at the Gap were there, and many more besides. The hollyhocks, bachelor's buttons and marigolds she had known all her life. The lilacs, touch-me-nots, tulips and narcissus she had learned to know in gardens at the Gap. Two rose-bushes were in bloom, and there were strange grasses and plants and flowers that Jack would tell her about when he came. One side was sentinelled by sun-flowers and another side by transplanted laurel and rhododendron shrubs, and hidden in the plant-and-flower-bordered squares were the vegetables that won her step-mother's tolerance of Hale's plan. Through and through June walked, her dark eyes flashing joyously here and there when they were not a little dimmed with tears, with Loretta following her, unsympathetic in appreciation, wondering that June should be making such a fuss about a lot of flowers, but envious withal when she half guessed the reason, and impatient Bub eager to show her other births and changes. And, over and over all the while, June was whispering to herself:
“My garden—MY garden!”
When she came back to the porch, after a tour through all that was new or had changed, Dave had brought his horse and Loretta's to the gate. No, he wouldn't come in and “rest a spell”—“they must be gittin' along home,” he said shortly. But old Judd Tolliver insisted that he should stay to dinner, and Dave tied the horses to the fence and walked to the porch, not lifting his eyes to June. Straightway the girl went into the house co help her step-mother with dinner, but the old woman told her she “reckoned she needn't start in yit”—adding in the querulous tone June knew so well:
“I've been mighty po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do now.” So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl hesitated. The old woman looked at her closely.
“Ye ain't a bit changed,” she said.
They were the words Loretta had used, and in the voice of each was the same strange tone of disappointment. June wondered: were they sorry she had not come back putting on airs and fussed up with ribbons and feathers that they might hear her picked to pieces and perhaps do some of the picking themselves? Not Loretta, surely—but the old step-mother! June left the kitchen and sat down just inside the door. The Red Fox and two other men had sauntered up from the store and all were listening to his quavering chat:
“I seed a vision last night, and thar's trouble a-comin' in these mountains. The Lord told me so straight from the clouds. These railroads and coal-mines is a-goin' to raise taxes, so that a pore man'll have to sell his hogs and his corn to pay 'em an' have nothin' left to keep him from starvin' to death. Them police-fellers over thar at the Gap is a-stirrin' up strife and a-runnin' things over thar as though the earth was made fer 'em, an' the citizens ain't goin' to stand it. An' this war's a-comin' on an' thar'll be shootin' an' killin' over thar an' over hyeh. I seed all this devilment in a vision last night, as shore as I'm settin' hyeh.”
Old Judd grunted, shifted his huge shoulders, parted his mustache and beard with two fingers and spat through them.
“Well, I reckon you didn't see no devilment. Red, that you won't take a hand in, if it comes.”
The other men laughed, but the Red Fox looked meek and lowly.
“I'm a servant of the Lord. He says do this, an' I does it the best I know how. I goes about a-preachin' the word in the wilderness an' a-healin' the sick with soothin' yarbs and sech.”
“An' a-makin' compacts with the devil,” said old Judd shortly, “when the eye of man is a-lookin' t'other way.” The left side of the Red Fox's face twitched into the faintest shadow of a snarl, but, shaking his head, he kept still.
“Well,” said Sam Barth, who was thin and long and sandy, “I don't keer what them fellers do on t'other side o' the mountain, but what air they a-comin' over here fer?”
Old Judd spoke again.
“To give you a job, if you wasn't too durned lazy to work.”
“Yes,” said the other man, who was dark, swarthy and whose black eyebrows met across the bridge of his nose—“and that damned Hale, who's a-tearin' up Hellfire here in the cove.” The old man lifted his eyes. Young Dave's face wore a sudden malignant sympathy which made June clench her hands a little more tightly.
“What about him? You must have been over to the Gap lately—like Dave thar—did you git board in the calaboose?” It was a random thrust, but it was accurate and it went home, and there was silence for a while. Presently old Judd went on:
“Taxes hain't goin' to be raised, and if they are, folks will be better able to pay 'em. Them police-fellers at the Gap don't bother nobody if he behaves himself. This war will start when it does start, an' as for Hale, he's as square an' clever a feller as I've ever seed. His word is just as good as his bond. I'm a-goin' to sell him this land. It'll be his'n, an' he can do what he wants to with it. I'm his friend, and I'm goin' to stay his friend as long as he goes on as he's goin' now, an' I'm not goin' to see him bothered as long as he tends to his own business.”
The words fell slowly and the weight of them rested heavily on all except on June. Her fingers loosened and she smiled.
The Red Fox rose, shaking his head.
“All right, Judd Tolliver,” he said warningly.
“Come in and git something to eat, Red.”
“No,” he said, “I'll be gittin' along”—and he went, still shaking his head.
The table was covered with an oil-cloth spotted with drippings from a candle. The plates and cups were thick and the spoons were of pewter. The bread was soggy and the bacon was thick and floating in grease. The men ate and the women served, as in ancient days. They gobbled their food like wolves, and when they drank their coffee, the noise they made was painful to June's ears. There were no napkins and when her father pushed his chair back, he wiped his dripping mouth with the back of his sleeve. And Loretta and the step-mother—they, too, ate with their knives and used their fingers. Poor June quivered with a vague newborn disgust. Ah, had she not changed—in ways they could not see!
June helped clear away the dishes—the old woman did not object to that—listening to the gossip of the mountains—courtships, marriages, births, deaths, the growing hostility in the feud, the random killing of this man or that—Hale's doings in Lonesome Cove.
“He's comin' over hyeh agin next Saturday,” said the old woman.
“Is he?” said Loretta in a way that made June turn sharply from her dishes toward her. She knew Hale was not coming, but she said nothing. The old woman was lighting her pipe.
“Yes—you better be over hyeh in yo' best bib and tucker.”
“Pshaw,” said Loretta, but June saw two bright spots come into her pretty cheeks, and she herself burned inwardly. The old woman was looking at her.
“'Pears like you air mighty quiet, June.”
“That's so,” said Loretta, looking at her, too.
June, still silent, turned back to her dishes. They were beginning to take notice after all, for the girl hardly knew that she had not opened her lips.
Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she must go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved garden, and hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in the eyes. She saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat, and a faint sneer appeared at his set mouth—a sneer for June's folly and what he thought was uppishness in “furriners” like Hale.
“So you ain't good enough fer him jest as ye air—air ye?” he said slowly. “He's got to make ye all over agin—so's you'll be fitten fer him.”
He turned away without looking to see how deep his barbed shaft went and, startled, June flushed to her hair. In a few minutes they were gone—Dave without the exchange of another word with June, and Loretta with a parting cry that she would come back on Saturday. The old man went to the cornfield high above the cabin, the old woman, groaning with pains real and fancied, lay down on a creaking bed, and June, with Dave's wound rankling, went out with Bub to see the new doings in Lonesome Cove. The geese cackled before her, the hog-fish darted like submarine arrows from rock to rock and the willows bent in the same wistful way toward their shadows in the little stream, but its crystal depths were there no longer—floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the surface and the water was black as soot. Here and there the white belly of a fish lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work of civilization had already begun. Farther up the creek was a buzzing monster that, creaking and snorting, sent a flashing disk, rimmed with sharp teeth, biting a savage way through a log, that screamed with pain as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up its life each time with a ghost-like cry of agony. Farther on little houses were being built of fresh boards, and farther on the water of the creek got blacker still. June suddenly clutched Bud's arms. Two demons had appeared on a pile of fresh dirt above them—sooty, begrimed, with black faces and black hands, and in the cap of each was a smoking little lamp.
“Huh,” said Bub, “that ain't nothin'! Hello, Bill,” he called bravely.
“Hello, Bub,” answered one of the two demons, and both stared at the lovely little apparition who was staring with such naive horror at them. It was all very wonderful, though, and it was all happening in Lonesome Cove, but Jack Hale was doing it all and, therefore, it was all right, thought June—no matter what Dave said. Moreover, the ugly spot on the great, beautiful breast of the Mother was such a little one after all and June had no idea how it must spread. Above the opening for the mines, the creek was crystal-clear as ever, the great hills were the same, and the sky and the clouds, and the cabin and the fields of corn. Nothing could happen to them, but if even they were wiped out by Hale's hand she would have made no complaint. A wood-thrush flitted from a ravine as she and Bub went back down the creek—and she stopped with uplifted face to listen. All her life she had loved its song, and this was the first time she had heard it in Lonesome Cove since she had learned its name from Hale. She had never heard it thereafter without thinking of him, and she thought of him now while it was breathing out the very spirit of the hills, and she drew a long sigh for already she was lonely and hungering for him. The song ceased and a long wavering cry came from the cabin.
“So-o-o-cow! S-o-o-kee! S-o-o-kee!”
The old mother was calling the cows. It was near milking-time, and with a vague uneasiness she hurried Bub home. She saw her father coming down from the cornfield. She saw the two cows come from the woods into the path that led to the barn, switching their tails and snatching mouthfuls from the bushes as they swung down the hill and, when she reached the gate, her step-mother was standing on the porch with one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes from the slanting sun—waiting for her. Already kindness and consideration were gone.
“Whar you been, June? Hurry up, now. You've had a long restin'-spell while I've been a-workin' myself to death.”
It was the old tone, and the old fierce rebellion rose within June, but Hale had told her to be patient. She could not check the flash from her eyes, but she shut her lips tight on the answer that sprang to them, and without a word she went to the kitchen for the milking-pails. The cows had forgotten her. They eyed her with suspicion and were restive. The first one kicked at her when she put her beautiful head against its soft flank. Her muscles had been in disuse and her hands were cramped and her forearms ached before she was through—but she kept doggedly at her task. When she finished, her father had fed the horses and was standing behind her.
“Hit's mighty good to have you back agin, little gal.”
It was not often that he smiled or showed tenderness, much less spoke it thus openly, and June was doubly glad that she had held her tongue. Then she helped her step-mother get supper. The fire scorched her face, that had grown unaccustomed to such heat, and she burned one hand, but she did not let her step-mother see even that. Again she noticed with aversion the heavy thick dishes and the pewter spoons and the candle-grease on the oil-cloth, and she put the dishes down and, while the old woman was out of the room, attacked the spots viciously. Again she saw her father and Bub ravenously gobbling their coarse food while she and her step-mother served and waited, and she began to wonder. The women sat at the table with the men over in the Gap—why not here? Then her father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the kitten at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with never a word. Something began to stifle her, but she choked it down. There were the dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the pans and kettles to be cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were tired to the shoulders and her burned hand quivered with pain when all was done. The old woman had left her to do the last few little things alone and had gone to her pipe. Both she and her father were sitting in silence on the porch when June went out there. Neither spoke to each other, nor to her, and both seemed to be part of the awful stillness that engulfed the world. Bub fell asleep in the soft air, and June sat and sat and sat. That was all except for the stars that came out over the mountains and were slowly being sprayed over the sky, and the pipings of frogs from the little creek. Once the wind came with a sudden sweep up the river and she thought she could hear the creak of Uncle Billy's water-wheel. It smote her with sudden gladness, not so much because it was a relief and because she loved the old miller, but—such is the power of association—because she now loved the mill more, loved it because the mill over in the Gap had made her think more of the mill at the mouth of Lonesome Cove. A tapping vibrated through the railing of the porch on which her cheek lay. Her father was knocking the ashes from his pipe. A similar tapping sounded inside at the fireplace. The old woman had gone and Bub was in bed, and she had heard neither move. The old man rose with a yawn.
“Time to lay down, June.”
The girl rose. They all slept in one room. She did not dare to put on her night-gown—her mother would see it in the morning. So she slipped off her dress, as she had done all her life, and crawled into bed with Bub, who lay in the middle of it and who grunted peevishly when she pushed him with some difficulty over to his side. There were no sheets—not even one—and the coarse blankets, which had a close acrid odour that she had never noticed before, seemed almost to scratch her flesh. She had hardly been to bed that early since she had left home, and she lay sleepless, watching the firelight play hide and seek with the shadows among the aged, smoky rafters and flicker over the strings of dried things that hung from the ceiling. In the other corner her father and stepmother snored heartily, and Bub, beside her, was in a nerveless slumber that would not come to her that night—tired and aching as she was. So, quietly, by and by, she slipped out of bed and out the door to the porch. The moon was rising and the radiant sheen of it had dropped down over the mountain side like a golden veil and was lighting up the white rising mists that trailed the curves of the river. It sank below the still crests of the pines beyond the garden and dropped on until it illumined, one by one, the dewy heads of the flowers. She rose and walked down the grassy path in her bare feet through the silent fragrant emblems of the planter's thought of her—touching this flower and that with the tips of her fingers. And when she went back, she bent to kiss one lovely rose and, as she lifted her head with a start of fear, the dew from it shining on her lips made her red mouth as flower-like and no less beautiful. A yell had shattered the quiet of the world—not the high fox-hunting yell of the mountains, but something new and strange. Up the creek were strange lights. A loud laugh shattered the succeeding stillness—a laugh she had never heard before in Lonesome Cove. Swiftly she ran back to the porch. Surely strange things were happening there. A strange spirit pervaded the Cove and the very air throbbed with premonitions. What was the matter with everything—what was the matter with her? She knew that she was lonely and that she wanted Hale—but what else was it? She shivered—and not alone from the chill night-air—and puzzled and wondering and stricken at heart, she crept back to bed.
Pausing at the Pine to let his big black horse blow a while, Hale mounted and rode slowly down the green-and-gold gloom of the ravine. In his pocket was a quaint little letter from June to “John Hail”; thanking him for the beautiful garden, saying she was lonely, and wanting him to come soon. From the low flank of the mountain he stopped, looking down on the cabin in Lonesome Cove. It was a dreaming summer day. Trees, air, blue sky and white cloud were all in a dream, and even the smoke lazing from the chimney seemed drifting away like the spirit of something human that cared little whither it might be borne. Something crimson emerged from the door and stopped in indecision on the steps of the porch. It moved again, stopped at the corner of the house, and then, moving on with a purpose, stopped once more and began to flicker slowly to and fro like a flame. June was working in her garden. Hale thought he would halloo to her, and then he decided to surprise her, and he went on down, hitched his horse and stole up to the garden fence. On the way he pulled up a bunch of weeds by the roots and with them in his arms he noiselessly climbed the fence. June neither heard nor saw him. Her underlip was clenched tight between her teeth, the little cross swung violently at her throat and she was so savagely wielding the light hoe he had given her that he thought at first she must be killing a snake; but she was only fighting to death every weed that dared to show its head. Her feet and her head were bare, her face was moist and flushed and her hair was a tumbled heap of what was to him the rarest gold under the sun. The wind was still, the leaves were heavy with the richness of full growth, bees were busy about June's head and not another soul was in sight.
“Good morning, little girl!” he called cheerily.
The hoe was arrested at the height of a vicious stroke and the little girl whirled without a cry, but the blood from her pumping heart crimsoned her face and made her eyes shine with gladness. Her eyes went to her feet and her hands to her hair.
“You oughtn't to slip up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way,” she said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. “Now you just set there and wait till I come back.”
“No—no—I want you to stay just as you are.”
“Honest?”
Hale gravely crossed heart and body and June gave out a happy little laugh—for he had caught that gesture—a favourite one—from her. Then suddenly:
“How long?” She was thinking of what Dave said, but the subtle twist in her meaning passed Hale by. He raised his eyes to the sun and June shook her head.
“You got to go home 'fore sundown.”
She dropped her hoe and came over toward him.
“Whut you doin' with them—those weeds?”
“Going to plant 'em in our garden.” Hale had got a theory from a garden-book that the humble burdock, pig-weed and other lowly plants were good for ornamental effect, and he wanted to experiment, but June gave a shrill whoop and fell to scornful laughter. Then she snatched the weeds from him and threw them over the fence.
“Why, June!”
“Not in MY garden. Them's stagger-weeds—they kill cows,” and she went off again.
“I reckon you better c-consult me 'bout weeds next time. I don't know much 'bout flowers, but I've knowed all my life 'bout WEEDS.” She laid so much emphasis on the word that Hale wondered for the moment if her words had a deeper meaning—but she went on:
“Ever' spring I have to watch the cows fer two weeks to keep 'em from eatin'—those weeds.” Her self-corrections were always made gravely now, and Hale consciously ignored them except when he had something to tell her that she ought to know. Everything, it seemed, she wanted to know.
“Do they really kill cows?”
June snapped her fingers: “Like that. But you just come on here,” she added with pretty imperiousness. “I want to axe—ask you some things—what's that?”
“Scarlet sage.”
“Scarlet sage,” repeated June. “An' that?”
“Nasturtium, and that's Oriental grass.”
“Nas-tur-tium, Oriental. An' what's that vine?”
“That comes from North Africa—they call it 'matrimonial vine.'”
“Whut fer?” asked June quickly.
“Because it clings so.” Hale smiled, but June saw none of his humour—the married people she knew clung till the finger of death unclasped them. She pointed to a bunch of tall tropical-looking plants with great spreading leaves and big green-white stalks.
“They're called Palmae Christi.”
“Whut?”
“That's Latin. It means 'Hands of Christ,'” said Hale with reverence. “You see how the leaves are spread out—don't they look like hands?'
“Not much,” said June frankly. “What's Latin?”
“Oh, that's a dead language that some people used a long, long time ago.”
“What do folks use it nowadays fer? Why don't they just say 'Hands o' Christ'?”
“I don't know,” he said helplessly, “but maybe you'll study Latin some of these days.” June shook her head.
“Gettin' YOUR language is a big enough job fer me,” she said with such quaint seriousness that Hale could not laugh. She looked up suddenly. “You been a long time git—gettin' over here.”
“Yes, and now you want to send me home before sundown.”
“I'm afeer—I'm afraid for you. Have you got a gun?” Hale tapped his breast-pocket.
“Always. What are you afraid of?”
“The Falins.” She clenched her hands.
“I'd like to SEE one o' them Falins tech ye,” she added fiercely, and then she gave a quick look at the sun.
“You better go now, Jack. I'm afraid fer you. Where's your horse?” Hale waved his hand.
“Down there. All right, little girl,” he said. “I ought to go, anyway.” And, to humour her, he started for the gate. There he bent to kiss her, but she drew back.
“I'm afraid of Dave,” she said, but she leaned on the gate and looked long at him with wistful eyes.
“Jack,” she said, and her eyes swam suddenly, “it'll most kill me—but I reckon you better not come over here much.” Hale made light of it all.
“Nonsense, I'm coming just as often as I can.” June smiled then.
“All right. I'll watch out fer ye.”
He went down the path, her eyes following him, and when he looked back from the spur he saw her sitting in the porch and watching that she might wave him farewell.
Hale could not go over to Lonesome Cove much that summer, for he was away from the mountains a good part of the time, and it was a weary, racking summer for June when he was not there. The step-mother was a stern taskmistress, and the girl worked hard, but no night passed that she did not spend an hour or more on her books, and by degrees she bribed and stormed Bub into learning his A, B, C's and digging at a blue-back spelling book. But all through the day there were times when she could play with the boy in the garden, and every afternoon, when it was not raining, she would slip away to a little ravine behind the cabin, where a log had fallen across a little brook, and there in the cool, sun-pierced shadows she would study, read and dream—with the water bubbling underneath and wood-thrushes singing overhead. For Hale kept her well supplied with books. He had given her children's books at first, but she outgrew them when the first love-story fell into her hands, and then he gave her novels—good, old ones and the best of the new ones, and they were to her what water is to a thing athirst. But the happy days were when Hale was there. She had a thousand questions for him to answer, whenever he came, about birds, trees and flowers and the things she read in her books. The words she could not understand in them she marked, so that she could ask their meaning, and it was amazing how her vocabulary increased. Moreover, she was always trying to use the new words she learned, and her speech was thus a quaint mixture of vernacular, self-corrections and unexpected words. Happening once to have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of it to her, and while she could not understand, the music of the lines fascinated her and she had him leave that with her, too. She never tired hearing him tell of the places where he had been and the people he knew and the music and plays he had heard and seen. And when he told her that she, too, should see all those wonderful things some day, her deep eyes took fire and she dropped her head far back between her shoulders and looked long at the stars that held but little more wonder for her than the world of which he told. But each time he was there she grew noticeably shyer with him and never once was the love-theme between them taken up in open words. Hale was reluctant, if only because she was still such a child, and if he took her hand or put his own on her wonderful head or his arm around her as they stood in the garden under the stars—he did it as to a child, though the leap in her eyes and the quickening of his own heart told him the lie that he was acting, rightly, to her and to himself. And no more now were there any breaking-downs within her—there was only a calm faith that staggered him and gave him an ever-mounting sense of his responsibility for whatever might, through the part he had taken in moulding her life, be in store for her.
When he was not there, life grew a little easier for her in time, because of her dreams, the patience that was built from them and Hale's kindly words, the comfort of her garden and her books, and the blessed force of habit. For as time went on, she got consciously used to the rough life, the coarse food and the rude ways of her own people and her own home. And though she relaxed not a bit in her own dainty cleanliness, the shrinking that she felt when she first arrived home, came to her at longer and longer intervals. Once a week she went down to Uncle Billy's, where she watched the water-wheel dripping sun-jewels into the sluice, the kingfisher darting like a blue bolt upon his prey, and listening to the lullaby that the water played to the sleepy old mill—and stopping, both ways, to gossip with old Hon in her porch under the honeysuckle vines. Uncle Billy saw the change in her and he grew vaguely uneasy about her—she dreamed so much, she was at times so restless, she asked so many questions he could not answer, and she failed to ask so many that were on the tip of her tongue. He saw that while her body was at home, her thoughts rarely were; and it all haunted him with a vague sense that he was losing her. But old Hon laughed at him and told him he was an old fool and to “git another pair o' specs” and maybe he could see that the “little gal” was in love. This startled Uncle Billy, for he was so like a father to June that he was as slow as a father in recognizing that his child has grown to such absurd maturity. But looking back to the beginning—how the little girl had talked of the “furriner” who had come into Lonesome Cove all during the six months he was gone; how gladly she had gone away to the Gap to school, how anxious she was to go still farther away again, and, remembering all the strange questions she asked him about things in the outside world of which he knew nothing—Uncle Billy shook his head in confirmation of his own conclusion, and with all his soul he wondered about Hale—what kind of a man he was and what his purpose was with June—and of every man who passed his mill he never failed to ask if he knew “that ar man Hale” and what he knew. All he had heard had been in Hale's favour, except from young Dave Tolliver, the Red Fox or from any Falin of the crowd, which Hale had prevented from capturing Dave. Their statements bothered him—especially the Red Fox's evil hints and insinuations about Hale's purposes one day at the mill. The miller thought of them all the afternoon and all the way home, and when he sat down at his fire his eyes very naturally and simply rose to his old rifle over the door—and then he laughed to himself so loudly that old Hon heard him.
“Air you goin' crazy, Billy?” she asked. “Whut you studyin' 'bout?”
“Nothin'; I was jest a-thinkin' Devil Judd wouldn't leave a grease-spot of him.”
“You AIR goin' crazy—who's him?”
“Uh—nobody,” said Uncle Billy, and old Hon turned with a shrug of her shoulders—she was tired of all this talk about the feud.
All that summer young Dave Tolliver hung around Lonesome Cove. He would sit for hours in Devil Judd's cabin, rarely saying anything to June or to anybody, though the girl felt that she hardly made a move that he did not see, and while he disappeared when Hale came, after a surly grunt of acknowledgment to Hale's cheerful greeting, his perpetual espionage began to anger June. Never, however, did he put himself into words until Hale's last visit, when the summer had waned and it was nearly time for June to go away again to school. As usual, Dave had left the house when Hale came, and an hour after Hale was gone she went to the little ravine with a book in her hand, and there the boy was sitting on her log, his elbows dug into his legs midway between thigh and knee, his chin in his hands, his slouched hat over his black eyes—every line of him picturing angry, sullen dejection. She would have slipped away, but he heard her and lifted his head and stared at her without speaking. Then he slowly got off the log and sat down on a moss-covered stone.
“'Scuse me,” he said with elaborate sarcasm. “This bein' yo' school-house over hyeh, an' me not bein' a scholar, I reckon I'm in your way.”
“How do you happen to know hit's my school-house?” asked June quietly.
“I've seed you hyeh.”
“Jus' as I s'posed.”
“You an' HIM.”
“Jus' as I s'posed,” she repeated, and a spot of red came into each cheek. “But we didn't see YOU.” Young Dave laughed.
“Well, everybody don't always see me when I'm seein' them.”
“No,” she said unsteadily. “So, you've been sneakin' around through the woods a-spyin' on me—SNEAKIN' AN' SPYIN',” she repeated so searingly that Dave looked at the ground suddenly, picked up a pebble confusedly and shot it in the water.
“I had a mighty good reason,” he said doggedly. “Ef he'd been up to some of his furrin' tricks—-” June stamped the ground.
“Don't you think I kin take keer o' myself?”
“No, I don't. I never seed a gal that could—with one o' them furriners.”
“Huh!” she said scornfully. “You seem to set a mighty big store by the decency of yo' own kin.” Dave was silent. “He ain't up to no tricks. An' whut do you reckon Dad 'ud be doin' while you was pertecting me?”
“Air ye goin' away to school?” he asked suddenly. June hesitated.
“Well, seein' as hit's none o' yo' business—I am.”
“Air ye goin' to marry him?”
“He ain't axed me.” The boy's face turned red as a flame.
“Ye air honest with me, an' now I'm goin' to be honest with you. You hain't never goin' to marry him.”