the trail again on which two hundred yards below the Pine they saw the
tracks pointing again to Lonesome Cove.

On down the trail they went, and at the top of the spur that overlooked
Lonesome Cove, the Falin sheriff pulled in suddenly and got off his
horse. There the tracks swerved again into the bushes.

"He's goin' to wait till daylight, fer fear somebody's follered him.
He'll come in back o' Devil Judd's."

"How do you know he's going to Devil Judd's?" asked Hale.

"Whar else would he go?" asked the Falin with a sweep of his arm toward
the moonlit wilderness. "Thar ain't but one house that way fer ten
miles--and nobody lives thar."

"How do you know that he's going to any house?" asked Hale impatiently.
"He may be getting out of the mountains."

"D'you ever know a feller to leave these mountains jus' because he'd
killed a man? How'd you foller him at night? How'd you ever ketch him
with his start? What'd he turn that way fer, if he wasn't goin' to
Judd's--why d'n't he keep on down the river? If he's gone, he's gone. If
he ain't, he'll be at Devil Judd's at daybreak if he ain't thar now."

"What do you want to do?"

"Go on down with the hosses, hide 'em in the bushes an' wait."

"Maybe he's already heard us coming down the mountain."

"That's the only thing I'm afeerd of," said the Falin calmly. "But whut
I'm tellin' you's our only chance."

"How do you know he won't hear us going down? Why not leave the horses?"

"We might need the hosses, and hit's mud and sand all the way--you ought
to know that."

Hale did know that; so on they went quietly and hid their horses aside
from the road near the place where Hale had fished when he first went to
Lonesome Cove. There the Falin disappeared on foot.

"Do you trust him?" asked Hale, turning to Budd, and Budd laughed.

"I reckon you can trust a Falin against a friend of a Tolliver, or
t'other way round--any time." Within half an hour the Falin came back
with the news that there were no signs that the fugitive had yet come
in.

"No use surrounding the house now," he said, "he might see one of us
first when he comes in an' git away. We'll do that atter daylight."

And at daylight they saw the fugitive ride out of the woods at the back
of the house and boldly around to the front of the house, where he left
his horse in the yard and disappeared.

"Now send three men to ketch him if he runs out the back way--quick!"
said the Falin. "Hit'll take 'em twenty minutes to git thar through the
woods. Soon's they git thar, let one of 'em shoot his pistol off an'
that'll be the signal fer us."

The three men started swiftly, but the pistol shot came before they had
gone a hundred yards, for one of the three--a new man and unaccustomed
to the use of fire-arms, stumbled over a root while he was seeing that
his pistol was in order and let it go off accidentally.

"No time to waste now," the Falin called sharply. "Git on yo' hosses
and git!" Then the rush was made and when they gave up the chase at noon
that day, the sheriff looked Hale squarely in the eye when Hale sharply
asked him a question:

"Why didn't you tell me who that man was?"

"Because I was afeerd you wouldn't go to Devil Judd's atter him. I know
better now," and he shook his head, for he did not understand. And so
Hale at the head of the disappointed Guard went back to the Gap, and
when, next day, they laid Mockaby away in the thinly populated little
graveyard that rested in the hollow of the river's arm, the spirit of
law and order in the heart of every guard gave way to the spirit of
revenge, and the grass would grow under the feet of none until Rufe
Tolliver was caught and the death-debt of the law was paid with death.

That purpose was no less firm in the heart of Hale, and he turned
away from the grave, sick with the trick that Fate had lost no time in
playing him; for he was a Falin now in the eyes of both factions and an
enemy--even to June.

The weeks dragged slowly along, and June sank slowly toward the depths
with every fresh realization of the trap of circumstance into which she
had fallen. She had dim memories of just such a state of affairs when
she was a child, for the feud was on now and the three things that
governed the life of the cabin in Lonesome Cove were hate, caution, and
fear.

Bub and her father worked in the fields with their Winchesters close
at hand, and June was never easy if they were outside the house. If
somebody shouted "hello"--that universal hail of friend or enemy in the
mountains--from the gate after dark, one or the other would go out
the back door and answer from the shelter of the corner of the house.
Neither sat by the light of the fire where he could be seen through the
window nor carried a candle from one room to the other. And when either
rode down the river, June must ride behind him to prevent ambush from
the bushes, for no Kentucky mountaineer, even to kill his worst enemy,
will risk harming a woman. Sometimes Loretta would come and spend
the day, and she seemed little less distressed than June. Dave was
constantly in and out, and several times June had seen the Red Fox
hanging around. Always the talk was of the feud. The killing of this
Tolliver and of that long ago was rehearsed over and over; all the
wrongs the family had suffered at the hands of the Falins were retold,
and in spite of herself June felt the old hatred of her childhood
reawakening against them so fiercely that she was startled: and she knew
that if she were a man she would be as ready now to take up a Winchester
against the Falins as though she had known no other life.

Loretta got no comfort from her in her tentative efforts to talk of Buck
Falin, and once, indeed, June gave her a scathing rebuke. With every day
her feeling for her father and Bub was knit a little more closely, and
toward Dave grew a little more kindly. She had her moods even against
Hale, but they always ended in a storm of helpless tears. Her father
said little of Hale, but that little was enough. Young Dave was openly
exultant when he heard of the favouritism shown a Falin by the Guard
at the Gap, the effort Hale had made to catch Rufe Tolliver and his
well-known purpose yet to capture him; for the Guard maintained a fund
for the arrest and prosecution of criminals, and the reward it offered
for Rufe, dead or alive, was known by everybody on both sides of the
State line. For nearly a week no word was heard of the fugitive, and
then one night, after supper, while June was sitting at the fire, the
back door was opened, Rufe slid like a snake within, and when June
sprang to her feet with a sharp cry of terror, he gave his brutal laugh:

"Don't take much to skeer you--does it?" Shuddering she felt his evil
eyes sweep her from head to foot, for the beast within was always
unleashed and ever ready to spring, and she dropped back into her seat,
speechless. Young Dave, entering from the kitchen, saw Rufe's look and
the hostile lightning of his own eyes flashed at his foster-uncle, who
knew straightway that he must not for his own safety strain the boy's
jealousy too far.

"You oughtn't to 'a' done it, Rufe," said old Judd a little later, and
he shook his head. Again Rufe laughed:

"No--" he said with a quick pacificatory look to young Dave, "not to
HIM!" The swift gritting of Dave's teeth showed that he knew what was
meant, and without warning the instinct of a protecting tigress leaped
within June. She had seen and had been grateful for the look Dave gave
the outlaw, but without a word she rose new and went to her own room.
While she sat at her window, her step-mother came out the back door and
left it open for a moment. Through it June could hear the talk:

"No," said her father, "she ain't goin' to marry him." Dave grunted and
Rufe's voice came again:

"Ain't no danger, I reckon, of her tellin' on me?"

"No," said her father gruffly, and the door banged.

No, thought June, she wouldn't, even without her father's trust, though
she loathed the man, and he was the only thing on earth of which she was
afraid--that was the miracle of it and June wondered. She was a Tolliver
and the clan loyalty of a century forbade--that was all. As she rose she
saw a figure skulking past the edge of the woods. She called Bub in and
told him about it, and Rufe stayed at the cabin all night, but June did
not see him next morning, and she kept out of his way whenever he came
again. A few nights later the Red Fox slouched up to the cabin with some
herbs for the step-mother. Old Judd eyed him askance.

"Lookin' fer that reward, Red?" The old man had no time for the meek
reply that was on his lips, for the old woman spoke up sharply:

"You let Red alone, Judd--I tol' him to come." And the Red Fox stayed
to supper, and when Rufe left the cabin that night, a bent figure with a
big rifle and in moccasins sneaked after him.

The next night there was a tap on Hale's window just at his bedside, and
when he looked out he saw the Red Fox's big rifle, telescope, moccasins
and all in the moonlight. The Red Fox had discovered the whereabouts of
Rufe Tolliver, and that very night he guided Hale and six of the
guard to the edge of a little clearing where the Red Fox pointed to a
one-roomed cabin, quiet in the moonlight. Hale had his requisition now.

"Ain't no trouble ketchin' Rufe, if you bait him with a woman," he
snarled. "There mought be several Tollivers in thar. Wait till daybreak
and git the drap on him, when he comes out." And then he disappeared.

Surrounding the cabin, Hale waited, and on top of the mountain, above
Lonesome Cove, the Red Fox sat waiting and watching through his big
telescope. Through it he saw Bad Rufe step outside the door at daybreak
and stretch his arms with a yawn, and he saw three men spring with
levelled Winchesters from behind a clump of bushes. The woman shot from
the door behind Rufe with a pistol in each hand, but Rufe kept his hands
in the air and turned his head to the woman who lowered the half-raised
weapons slowly. When he saw the cavalcade start for the county seat
with Rufe manacled in the midst of them, he dropped swiftly down into
Lonesome Cove to tell Judd that Rufe was a prisoner and to retake him
on the way to jail. And, as the Red Fox well knew would happen, old Judd
and young Dave and two other Tollivers who were at the cabin galloped
into the county seat to find Rufe in jail, and that jail guarded by
seven grim young men armed with Winchesters and shot-guns.

Hale faced the old man quietly--eye to eye.

"It's no use, Judd," he said, "you'd better let the law take its
course." The old man was scornful.

"Thar's never been a Tolliver convicted of killin' nobody, much less
hung--an' thar ain't goin' to be."

"I'm glad you warned me," said Hale still quietly, "though it wasn't
necessary. But if he's convicted, he'll hang."

The giant's face worked in convulsive helplessness and he turned away.

"You hold the cyards now, but my deal is comin'."

"All right, Judd--you're getting a square one from me."

Back rode the Tollivers and Devil Judd never opened his lips again until
he was at home in Lonesome Cove. June was sitting on the porch when he
walked heavy-headed through the gate.

"They've ketched Rufe," he said, and after a moment he added gruffly:

"Thar's goin' to be sure enough trouble now. The Falins'll think all
them police fellers air on their side now. This ain't no place fer
you--you must git away."

June shook her head and her eyes turned to the flowers at the edge of
the garden:

"I'm not goin' away, Dad," she said.

XXVI

Back to the passing of Boone and the landing of Columbus no man, in that
region, had ever been hanged. And as old Judd said, no Tolliver had ever
been sentenced and no jury of mountain men, he well knew, could be
found who would convict a Tolliver, for there were no twelve men in
the mountains who would dare. And so the Tollivers decided to await the
outcome of the trial and rest easy. But they did not count on the mettle
and intelligence of the grim young "furriners" who were a flying wedge
of civilization at the Gap. Straightway, they gave up the practice of
law and banking and trading and store-keeping and cut port-holes in the
brick walls of the Court House and guarded town and jail night and day.
They brought their own fearless judge, their own fearless jury and
their own fearless guard. Such an abstract regard for law and order the
mountaineer finds a hard thing to understand. It looked as though the
motive of the Guard was vindictive and personal, and old Judd was almost
stifled by the volcanic rage that daily grew within him as the toils
daily tightened about Rufe Tolliver.

Every happening the old man learned through the Red Fox, who, with his
huge pistols, was one of the men who escorted Rufe to and from Court
House and jail--a volunteer, Hale supposed, because he hated Rufe;
and, as the Tollivers supposed, so that he could keep them advised of
everything that went on, which he did with secrecy and his own peculiar
faith. And steadily and to the growing uneasiness of the Tollivers, the
law went its way. Rufe had proven that he was at the Gap all day and had
taken no part in the trouble. He produced a witness--the mountain lout
whom Hale remembered--who admitted that he had blown the whistle, given
the yell, and fired the pistol shot. When asked his reason, the witness,
who was stupid, had none ready, looked helplessly at Rufe and finally
mumbled--"fer fun." But it was plain from the questions that Rufe
had put to Hale only a few minutes before the shooting, and from the
hesitation of the witness, that Rufe had used him for a tool. So the
testimony of the latter that Mockaby without even summoning Rufe to
surrender had fired first, carried no conviction. And yet Rufe had
no trouble making it almost sure that he had never seen the dead man
before--so what was his motive? It was then that word reached the ear
of the prosecuting attorney of the only testimony that could establish a
motive and make the crime a hanging offence, and Court was adjourned for
a day, while he sent for the witness who could give it. That afternoon
one of the Falins, who had grown bolder, and in twos and threes were
always at the trial, shot at a Tolliver on the edge of town and there
was an immediate turmoil between the factions that the Red Fox had been
waiting for and that suited his dark purposes well.

That very night, with his big rifle, he slipped through the woods to a
turn of the road, over which old Dave Tolliver was to pass next morning,
and built a "blind" behind some rocks and lay there smoking peacefully
and dreaming his Swedenborgian dreams. And when a wagon came round the
turn, driven by a boy, and with the gaunt frame of old Dave Tolliver
lying on straw in the bed of it, his big rifle thundered and the
frightened horses dashed on with the Red Fox's last enemy, lifeless.
Coolly he slipped back to the woods, threw the shell from his gun,
tirelessly he went by short cuts through the hills, and at noon,
benevolent and smiling, he was on guard again.

The little Court Room was crowded for the afternoon session. Inside the
railing sat Rufe Tolliver, white and defiant--manacled. Leaning on the
railing, to one side, was the Red Fox with his big pistols, his good
profile calm, dreamy, kind--to the other, similarly armed, was Hale.
At each of the gaping port-holes, and on each side of the door, stood
a guard with a Winchester, and around the railing outside were several
more. In spite of window and port-hole the air was close and heavy with
the smell of tobacco and the sweat of men. Here and there in the crowd
was a red Falin, but not a Tolliver was in sight, and Rufe Tolliver sat
alone. The clerk called the Court to order after the fashion since the
days before Edward the Confessor--except that he asked God to save a
commonwealth instead of a king--and the prosecuting attorney rose:

"Next witness, may it please your Honour": and as the clerk got to
his feet with a slip of paper in his hand and bawled out a name, Hale
wheeled with a thumping heart. The crowd vibrated, turned heads, gave
way, and through the human aisle walked June Tolliver with the sheriff
following meekly behind. At the railing-gate she stopped, head uplifted,
face pale and indignant; and her eyes swept past Hale as if he were
no more than a wooden image, and were fixed with proud inquiry on the
Judge's face. She was bare-headed, her bronze hair was drawn low over
her white brow, her gown was of purple home-spun, and her right hand was
clenched tight about the chased silver handle of a riding whip, and
in eyes, mouth, and in every line of her tense figure was the mute
question: "Why have you brought _me_ here?"

[Illustration: "Why have you brought me here?", 0342]

"Here, please," said the Judge gently, as though he were about to answer
that question, and as she passed Hale she seemed to swerve her skirts
aside that they might not touch him.

"Swear her."

June lifted her right hand, put her lips to the soiled, old, black Bible
and faced the jury and Hale and Bad Rufe Tolliver whose black eyes never
left her face.

"What is your name?" asked a deep voice that struck her ears as
familiar, and before she answered she swiftly recalled that she had
heard that voice speaking when she entered the door.

"June Tolliver."

"Your age?"

"Eighteen."

"You live--"

"In Lonesome Cove."

"You are the daughter of--"

"Judd Tolliver."

"Do you know the prisoner?"

"He is my foster-uncle."

"Were you at home on the night of August the tenth?"

"I was."

"Have you ever heard the prisoner express any enmity against this
volunteer Police Guard?" He waved his hand toward the men at the
portholes and about the railing--unconsciously leaving his hand directly
pointed at Hale. June hesitated and Rufe leaned one elbow on the table,
and the light in his eyes beat with fierce intensity into the girl's
eyes into which came a curious frightened look that Hale remembered--the
same look she had shown long ago when Rufe's name was mentioned in the
old miller's cabin, and when going up the river road she had put her
childish trust in him to see that her bad uncle bothered her no more.
Hale had never forgot that, and if it had not been absurd he would have
stopped the prisoner from staring at her now. An anxious look had come
into Rufe's eyes--would she lie for him?

"Never," said June. Ah, she would--she was a Tolliver and Rufe took a
breath of deep content.

"You never heard him express any enmity toward the Police Guard--before
that night?"

"I have answered that question," said June with dignity and Rufe's
lawyer was on his feet.

"Your Honour, I object," he said indignantly.

"I apologize," said the deep voice--"sincerely," and he bowed to June.
Then very quietly:

"What was the last thing you heard the prisoner say that afternoon when
he left your father's house?"

It had come--how well she remembered just what he had said and how, that
night, even when she was asleep, Rufe's words had clanged like a bell in
her brain--what her awakening terror was when she knew that the deed was
done and the stifling fear that the victim might be Hale. Swiftly her
mind worked--somebody had blabbed, her step-mother, perhaps, and what
Rufe had said had reached a Falin ear and come to the relentless man in
front of her. She remembered, too, now, what the deep voice was saying
as she came into the door:

"There must be deliberation, a malicious purpose proven to make the
prisoner's crime a capital offence--I admit that, of course, your
Honour. Very well, we propose to prove that now," and then she had
heard her name called. The proof that was to send Rufe Tolliver to the
scaffold was to come from her--that was why she was there. Her lips
opened and Rufe's eyes, like a snake's, caught her own again and held
them.

"He said he was going over to the Gap--"

There was a commotion at the door, again the crowd parted, and in
towered giant Judd Tolliver, pushing people aside as though they were
straws, his bushy hair wild and his great frame shaking from head to
foot with rage.

"You went to my house," he rumbled hoarsely--glaring at Hale--"an' took
my gal thar when I wasn't at home--you--"

"Order in the Court," said the Judge sternly, but already at a signal
from Hale several guards were pushing through the crowd and old Judd
saw them coming and saw the Falins about him and the Winchesters at the
port-holes, and he stopped with a hard gulp and stood looking at June.

"Repeat his exact words," said the deep voice again as calmly as though
nothing had happened.

"He said, 'I'm goin' over to the Gap--'" and still Rufe's black eyes
held her with mesmeric power--would she lie for him--would she lie for
him?

It was a terrible struggle for June. Her father was there, her uncle
Dave was dead, her foster-uncle's life hung on her next words and she
was a Tolliver. Yet she had given her oath, she had kissed the sacred
Book in which she believed from cover to cover with her whole heart,
and she could feel upon her the blue eyes of a man for whom a lie was
impossible and to whom she had never stained her white soul with a word
of untruth.

"Yes," encouraged the deep voice kindly.

Not a soul in the room knew where the struggle lay--not even the
girl--for it lay between the black eyes of Rufe Tolliver and the blue
eyes of John Hale.

"Yes," repeated the deep voice again. Again, with her eyes on Rufe, she
repeated:

"'I'm goin' over to the Gap--'" her face turned deadly white, she
shivered, her dark eyes swerved suddenly full on Hale and she said
slowly and distinctly, yet hardly above a whisper:

"'TO KILL ME A POLICEMAN.'"

"That will do," said the deep voice gently, and Hale started toward
her--she looked so deadly sick and she trembled so when she tried to
rise; but she saw him, her mouth steadied, she rose, and without looking
at him, passed by his outstretched hand and walked slowly out of the
Court Room.

XXVII

The miracle had happened. The Tollivers, following the Red Fox's advice
to make no attempt at rescue just then, had waited, expecting the old
immunity from the law and getting instead the swift sentence that Rufe
Tolliver should be hanged by the neck until he was dead. Astounding and
convincing though the news was, no mountaineer believed he would ever
hang, and Rufe himself faced the sentence defiant. He laughed when he
was led back to his cell:

"I'll never hang," he said scornfully. They were the first words that
came from his lips, and the first words that came from old Judd's when
the news reached him in Lonesome Cove, and that night old Judd gathered
his clan for the rescue--to learn next morning that during the night
Rufe had been spirited away to the capital for safekeeping until the
fatal day. And so there was quiet for a while--old Judd making ready for
the day when Rufe should be brought back, and trying to find out who it
was that had slain his brother Dave. The Falins denied the deed, but old
Judd never questioned that one of them was the murderer, and he came out
openly now and made no secret of the fact that he meant to have revenge.
And so the two factions went armed, watchful and wary--especially the
Falins, who were lying low and waiting to fulfil a deadly purpose of
their own. They well knew that old Judd would not open hostilities on
them until Rufe Tolliver was dead or at liberty. They knew that the
old man meant to try to rescue Rufe when he was brought back to jail or
taken from it to the scaffold, and when either day came they themselves
would take a hand, thus giving the Tollivers at one and the same time
two sets of foes. And so through the golden September days the two clans
waited, and June Tolliver went with dull determination back to her old
life, for Uncle Billy's sister had left the house in fear and she
could get no help--milking cows at cold dawns, helping in the kitchen,
spinning flax and wool, and weaving them into rough garments for her
father and step-mother and Bub, and in time, she thought grimly--for
herself: for not another cent for her maintenance could now come from
John Hale, even though he claimed it was hers--even though it was in
truth her own. Never, but once, had Hale's name been mentioned in the
cabin--never, but once, had her father referred to the testimony that
she had given against Rufe Tolliver, for the old man put upon Hale the
fact that the sheriff had sneaked into his house when he was away and
had taken June to Court, and that was the crowning touch of bitterness
in his growing hatred for the captain of the guard of whom he had once
been so fond.

"Course you had to tell the truth, baby, when they got you there," he
said kindly; "but kidnappin' you that-a-way--" He shook his great bushy
head from side to side and dropped it into his hands.

"I reckon that damn Hale was the man who found out that you heard Rufe
say that. I'd like to know how--I'd like to git my hands on the feller
as told him."

June opened her lips in simple justice to clear Hale of that charge, but
she saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's face that she
kept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and walked out into her
garden. Never once had her piano been opened, her books had lain unread,
and from her lips, during those days, came no song. When she was not
at work, she was brooding in her room, or she would walk down to Uncle
Billy's and sit at the mill with him while the old man would talk in
tender helplessness, or under the honeysuckle vines with old Hon, whose
brusque kindness was of as little avail. And then, still silent, she
would get wearily up and as quietly go away while the two old friends,
worried to the heart, followed her sadly with their eyes. At other times
she was brooding in her room or sitting in her garden, where she was
now, and where she found most comfort--the garden that Hale had planted
for her--where purple asters leaned against lilac shrubs that would
flower for the first time the coming spring; where a late rose
bloomed, and marigolds drooped, and great sunflowers nodded and giant
castor-plants stretched out their hands of Christ, And while June thus
waited the passing of the days, many things became clear to her: for the
grim finger of reality had torn the veil from her eyes and let her see
herself but little changed, at the depths, by contact with John Hale's
world, as she now saw him but little changed, at the depths, by contact
with hers. Slowly she came to see, too, that it was his presence in the
Court Room that made her tell the truth, reckless of the consequences,
and she came to realize that she was not leaving the mountains because
she would go to no place where she could not know of any danger that, in
the present crisis, might threaten John Hale.

And Hale saw only that in the Court Room she had drawn her skirts aside,
that she had looked at him once and then had brushed past his helping
hand. It put him in torment to think of what her life must be now,
and of how she must be suffering. He knew that she would not leave her
father in the crisis that was at hand, and after it was all over--what
then? His hands would still be tied and he would be even more helpless
than he had ever dreamed possible. To be sure, an old land deal had come
to life, just after the discovery of the worthlessness of the mine
in Lonesome Cove, and was holding out another hope. But if that, too,
should fail--or if it should succeed--what then? Old Judd had sent back,
with a curt refusal, the last "allowance" he forwarded to June and
he knew the old man was himself in straits. So June must stay in the
mountains, and what would become of her? She had gone back to her
mountain garb--would she lapse into her old life and ever again be
content? Yes, she would lapse, but never enough to keep her from being
unhappy all her life, and at that thought he groaned. Thus far he was
responsible and the paramount duty with him had been that she should
have the means to follow the career she had planned for herself outside
of those hills. And now if he had the means, he was helpless. There was
nothing for him to do now but to see that the law had its way with Rufe
Tolliver, and meanwhile he let the reawakened land deal go hang and set
himself the task of finding out who it was that had ambushed old Dave
Tolliver. So even when he was thinking of June his brain was busy on
that mystery, and one night, as he sat brooding, a suspicion flashed
that made him grip his chair with both hands and rise to pace the porch.
Old Dave had been shot at dawn, and the night before the Red Fox had
been absent from the guard and had not turned up until nearly noon next
day. He had told Hale that he was going home. Two days later, Hale heard
by accident that the old man had been seen near the place of the ambush
about sunset of the day before the tragedy, which was on his way home,
and he now learned straightway for himself that the Red Fox had not
been home for a month--which was only one of his ways of mistreating the
patient little old woman in black.

A little later, the Red Fox gave it out that he was trying to ferret out
the murderer himself, and several times he was seen near the place of
ambush, looking, as he said, for evidence. But this did not halt Hale's
suspicions, for he recalled that the night he had spent with the Red
Fox, long ago, the old man had burst out against old Dave and had
quickly covered up his indiscretion with a pious characterization of
himself as a man that kept peace with both factions. And then why had he
been so suspicious and fearful when Hale told him that night that he had
seen him talking with a Falin in town the Court day before, and had he
disclosed the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver and guided the guard to his
hiding-place simply for the reward? He had not yet come to claim it, and
his indifference to money was notorious through the hills. Apparently
there was some general enmity in the old man toward the whole Tolliver
clan, and maybe he had used the reward to fool Hale as to his real
motive. And then Hale quietly learned that long ago the Tollivers
bitterly opposed the Red Fox's marriage to a Tolliver--that Rufe, when a
boy, was always teasing the Red Fox and had once made him dance in his
moccasins to the tune of bullets spitting about his feet, and that the
Red Fox had been heard to say that old Dave had cheated his wife out of
her just inheritance of wild land; but all that was long, long ago, and
apparently had been mutually forgiven and forgotten. But it was enough
for Hale, and one night he mounted his horse, and at dawn he was at the
place of ambush with his horse hidden in the bushes. The rocks for
the ambush were waist high, and the twigs that had been thrust in the
crevices between them were withered. And there, on the hypothesis that
the Red Fox was the assassin, Hale tried to put himself, after the deed,
into the Red Fox's shoes. The old man had turned up on guard before
noon--then he must have gone somewhere first or have killed considerable
time in the woods. He would not have crossed the road, for there were
two houses on the other side; there would have been no object in going
on over the mountain unless he meant to escape, and if he had gone over
there for another reason he would hardly have had time to get to the
Court House before noon: nor would he have gone back along the road
on that side, for on that side, too, was a cabin not far away. So Hale
turned and walked straight away from the road where the walking was
easiest--down a ravine, and pushing this way and that through the bushes
where the way looked easiest. Half a mile down the ravine he came to
a little brook, and there in the black earth was the faint print of a
man's left foot and in the hard crust across was the deeper print of his
right, where his weight in leaping had come down hard. But the prints
were made by a shoe and not by a moccasin, and then Hale recalled
exultantly that the Red Fox did not have his moccasins on the morning
he turned up on guard. All the while he kept a sharp lookout, right and
left, on the ground--the Red Fox must have thrown his cartridge shell
somewhere, and for that Hale was looking. Across the brook he could see
the tracks no farther, for he was too little of a woodsman to follow so
old a trail, but as he stood behind a clump of rhododendron, wondering
what he could do, he heard the crack of a dead stick down the stream,
and noiselessly he moved farther into the bushes. His heart thumped in
the silence--the long silence that followed--for it might be a hostile
Tolliver that was coming, so he pulled his pistol from his holster, made
ready, and then, noiseless as a shadow, the Red Fox slipped past him
along the path, in his moccasins now, and with his big Winchester in his
left hand. The Red Fox, too, was looking for that cartridge shell, for
only the night before had he heard for the first time of the whispered
suspicions against him. He was making for the blind and Hale trembled
at his luck. There was no path on the other side of the stream, and Hale
could barely hear him moving through the bushes. So he pulled off his
boots and, carrying them in one hand, slipped after him, watching for
dead twigs, stooping under the branches, or sliding sidewise through
them when he had to brush between their extremities, and pausing every
now and then to listen for an occasional faint sound from the Red Fox
ahead. Up the ravine the old man went to a little ledge of rocks, beyond
which was the blind, and when Hale saw his stooped figure slip over that
and disappear, he ran noiselessly toward it, crept noiselessly to the
top and peeped carefully over to see the Red Fox with his back to him
and peering into a clump of bushes--hardly ten yards away. While
Hale looked, the old man thrust his hand into the bushes and drew out
something that twinkled in the sun. At the moment Hale's horse nickered
from the bushes, and the Red Fox slipped his hand into his pocket,
crouched listening a moment, and then, step by step, backed toward the
ledge. Hale rose:

"I want you, Red!"

The old man wheeled, the wolf's snarl came, but the big rifle was too
slow--Hale's pistol had flashed in his face.

"Drop your gun!" Paralyzed, but the picture of white fury, the old man
hesitated.

"Drop--your--gun!" Slowly the big rifle was loosed and fell to the
ground.

"Back away--turn around and hands up!"

With his foot on the Winchester, Hale felt in the old man's pockets and
fished out an empty cartridge shell. Then he picked up the rifle and
threw the slide.

"It fits all right. March--toward that horse!"

Without a word the old man slouched ahead to where the big black horse
was restlessly waiting in the bushes.

"Climb up," said Hale. "We won't 'ride and tie' back to town--but I'll
take turns with you on the horse."

The Red Fox was making ready to leave the mountains, for he had been
falsely informed that Rufe was to be brought back to the county seat
next day, and he was searching again for the sole bit of evidence that
was out against him. And when Rufe was spirited back to jail and was on
his way to his cell, an old freckled hand was thrust between the bars of
an iron door to greet him and a voice called him by name. Rufe stopped
in amazement; then he burst out laughing; he struck then at the pallid
face through the bars with his manacles and cursed the old man bitterly;
then he laughed again horribly. The two slept in adjoining cells of the
same cage that night--the one waiting for the scaffold and the other
waiting for the trial that was to send him there. And away over the blue
mountains a little old woman in black sat on the porch of her cabin
as she had sat patiently many and many a long day. It was time, she
thought, that the Red Fox was coming home.

XXVIII

And so while Bad Rufe Tolliver was waiting for death, the trial of the
Red Fox went on, and when he was not swinging in a hammock, reading his
Bible, telling his visions to his guards and singing hymns, he was in
the Court House giving shrewd answers to questions, or none at all, with
the benevolent half of his mask turned to the jury and the wolfish snarl
of the other half showing only now and then to some hostile witness for
whom his hate was stronger than his fear for his own life. And in jail
Bad Rufe worried his enemy with the malicious humour of Satan. Now he
would say:

"Oh, there ain't nothin' betwixt old Red and me, nothin' at all--'cept
this iron wall," and he would drum a vicious tattoo on the thin wall
with the heel of his boot. Or when he heard the creak of the Red Fox's
hammock as he droned his Bible aloud, he would say to his guard outside:

"Course I don't read the Bible an' preach the word, nor talk with
sperits, but thar's worse men than me in the world--old Red in thar' for
instance"; and then he would cackle like a fiend and the Red Fox would
writhe in torment and beg to be sent to another cell. And always he
would daily ask the Red Fox about his trial and ask him questions in the
night, and his devilish instinct told him the day that the Red Fox, too,
was sentenced to death--he saw it in the gray pallour of the old man's
face, and he cackled his glee like a demon. For the evidence against
the Red Fox was too strong. Where June sat as chief witness against Rufe
Tolliver--John Hale sat as chief witness against the Red Fox. He could
not swear it was a cartridge shell that he saw the old man pick up, but
it was something that glistened in the sun, and a moment later he
had found the shell in the old man's pocket--and if it had been fired
innocently, why was it there and why was the old man searching for it?
He was looking, he said, for evidence of the murderer himself. That
claim made, the Red Fox's lawyer picked up the big rifle and the shell.

"You say, Mr. Hale, the prisoner told you the night you spent at his
home that this rifle was rim-fire?"

"He did." The lawyer held up the shell.

"You see this was exploded in such a rifle." That was plain, and the
lawyer shoved the shell into the rifle, pulled the trigger, took it out,
and held it up again. The plunger had struck below the rim and near the
centre, but not quite on the centre, and Hale asked for the rifle and
examined it closely.

"It's been tampered with," he said quietly, and he handed it to the
prosecuting attorney. The fact was plain; it was a bungling job and
better proved the Red Fox's guilt. Moreover, there were only two such
big rifles in all the hills, and it was proven that the man who
owned the other was at the time of the murder far away. The days of
brain-storms had not come then. There were no eminent Alienists to prove
insanity for the prisoner. Apparently, he had no friends--none save the
little old woman in black who sat by his side, hour by hour and day by
day.

And the Red Fox was doomed.

In the hush of the Court Room the Judge solemnly put to the gray face
before him the usual question:

"Have you anything to say whereby sentence of death should not be
pronounced on you?"

The Red Fox rose:

"No," he said in a shaking voice; "but I have a friend here who I would
like to speak for me." The Judge bent his head a moment over his bench
and lifted it:

"It is unusual," he said; "but under the circumstances I will grant
your request. Who is your friend?" And the Red Fox made the souls of his
listeners leap.

"Jesus Christ," he said.

The Judge reverently bowed his head and the hush of the Court Room grew
deeper when the old man fished his Bible from his pocket and calmly read
such passages as might be interpreted as sure damnation for his enemies
and sure glory for himself--read them until the Judge lifted his hand
for a halt.

And so another sensation spread through the hills and a superstitious
awe of this strange new power that had come into the hills went with it
hand in hand. Only while the doubting ones knew that nothing could save
the Red Fox they would wait to see if that power could really avail
against the Tolliver clan. The day set for Rufe's execution was the
following Monday, and for the Red Fox the Friday following--for it was
well to have the whole wretched business over while the guard was there.
Old Judd Tolliver, so Hale learned, had come himself to offer the little
old woman in black the refuge of his roof as long as she lived, and had
tried to get her to go back with him to Lonesome Cove; but it pleased
the Red Fox that he should stand on the scaffold in a suit of white--cap
and all--as emblems of the purple and fine linen he was to put on above,
and the little old woman stayed where she was, silently and without
question, cutting the garments, as Hale pityingly learned, from a white
table-cloth and measuring them piece by piece with the clothes the old
man wore in jail. It pleased him, too, that his body should be kept
unburied three days--saying that he would then arise and go about
preaching, and that duty, too, she would as silently and with as little
question perform. Moreover, he would preach his own funeral sermon on
the Sunday before Rufe's day, and a curious crowd gathered to hear him.
The Red Fox was led from jail. He stood on the porch of the jailer's
house with a little table in front of him. On it lay a Bible, on the
other side of the table sat a little pale-faced old woman in black with
a black sun-bonnet drawn close to her face. By the side of the Bible lay
a few pieces of bread. It was the Red Fox's last communion--a communion
which he administered to himself and in which there was no other soul
on earth to join save that little old woman in black. And when the old
fellow lifted the bread and asked the crowd to come forward to partake
with him in the last sacrament, not a soul moved. Only the old woman who
had been ill-treated by the Red Fox for so many years--only she, of
all the crowd, gave any answer, and she for one instant turned her face
toward him. With a churlish gesture the old man pushed the bread over
toward her and with hesitating, trembling fingers she reached for it.

Bob Berkley was on the death-watch that night, and as he passed Rufe's
cell a wiry hand shot through the grating of his door, and as the boy
sprang away the condemned man's fingers tipped the butt of the big
pistol that dangled on the lad's hip.

"Not this time," said Bob with a cool little laugh, and Rufe laughed,
too.

"I was only foolin'," he said, "I ain't goin' to hang. You hear that,
Red? I ain't goin' to hang--but you are, Red--sure. Nobody'd risk his
little finger for your old carcass, 'cept maybe that little old woman o'
yours who you've treated like a hound--but my folks ain't goin' to see
me hang."

Rufe spoke with some reason. That night the Tollivers climbed the
mountain, and before daybreak were waiting in the woods a mile on the
north side of the town. And the Falins climbed, too, farther along the
mountains, and at the same hour were waiting in the woods a mile to the
south.

Back in Lonesome Cove June Tolliver sat alone--her soul shaken and
terror-stricken to the depths--and the misery that matched hers was in
the heart of Hale as he paced to and fro at the county seat, on guard
and forging out his plans for that day under the morning stars.

XXIX

Day broke on the old Court House with its black port-holes, on the
graystone jail, and on a tall topless wooden box to one side, from
which projected a cross-beam of green oak. From the centre of this beam
dangled a rope that swung gently to and fro when the wind moved.
And with the day a flock of little birds lighted on the bars of the
condemned man's cell window, chirping through them, and when the jailer
brought breakfast he found Bad Rufe cowering in the corner of his cell
and wet with the sweat of fear.

"Them damn birds ag'in," he growled sullenly.

"Don't lose yo' nerve, Rufe," said the jailer, and the old laugh of
defiance came, but from lips that were dry.

"Not much," he answered grimly, but the jailer noticed that while he
ate, his eyes kept turning again and again to the bars; and the turnkey
went away shaking his head. Rufe had told the jailer, his one friend
through whom he had kept in constant communication with the Tollivers,
how on the night after the shooting of Mockaby, when he lay down to
sleep high on the mountain side and under some rhododendron bushes, a
flock of little birds flew in on him like a gust of rain and perched
over and around him, twittering at him until he had to get up and pace
the woods, and how, throughout the next day, when he sat in the sun
planning his escape, those birds would sweep chattering over his head
and sweep chattering back again, and in that mood of despair he had said
once, and only once: "Somehow I knowed this time my name was Dennis"--a
phrase of evil prophecy he had picked up outside the hills. And now
those same birds of evil omen had come again, he believed, right on the
heels of the last sworn oath old Judd had sent him that he would never
hang.

With the day, through mountain and valley, came in converging lines
mountain humanity--men and women, boys and girls, children and babes
in arms; all in their Sunday best--the men in jeans, slouched hats, and
high boots, the women in gay ribbons and brilliant home-spun; in wagons,
on foot and on horses and mules, carrying man and man, man and boy,
lover and sweetheart, or husband and wife and child--all moving through
the crisp autumn air, past woods of russet and crimson and along brown
dirt roads, to the straggling little mountain town. A stranger would
have thought that a county fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus was their
goal, but they were on their way to look upon the Court House with
its black port-holes, the graystone jail, the tall wooden box, the
projecting beam, and that dangling rope which, when the wind moved,
swayed gently to and fro. And Hale had forged his plan. He knew that
there would be no attempt at rescue until Rufe was led to the scaffold,
and he knew that neither Falins nor Tollivers would come in a band, so
the incoming tide found on the outskirts of the town and along every
road boyish policemen who halted and disarmed every man who carried a
weapon in sight, for thus John Hale would have against the pistols
of the factions his own Winchesters and repeating shot-guns. And the
wondering people saw at the back windows of the Court House and at the
threatening port-holes more youngsters manning Winchesters, more at the
windows of the jailer's frame house, which joined and fronted the jail,
and more still--a line of them--running all around the jail; and the
old men wagged their heads in amazement and wondered if, after all, a
Tolliver was not really going to be hanged.

So they waited--the neighbouring hills were black with people waiting;
the housetops were black with men and boys waiting; the trees in the
streets were bending under the weight of human bodies; and the jail-yard
fence was three feet deep with people hanging to it and hanging about
one another's necks--all waiting. All morning they waited silently and
patiently, and now the fatal noon was hardly an hour away and not a
Falin nor a Tolliver had been seen. Every Falin had been disarmed of his
Winchester as he came in, and as yet no Tolliver had entered the town,
for wily old Judd had learned of Hale's tactics and had stayed outside
the town for his own keen purpose. As the minutes passed, Hale was
beginning to wonder whether, after all, old Judd had come to believe
that the odds against him were too great, and had told the truth when he
set afoot the rumour that the law should have its way; and it was just
when his load of anxiety was beginning to lighten that there was a
little commotion at the edge of the Court House and a great red-headed
figure pushed through the crowd, followed by another of like build, and
as the people rapidly gave way and fell back, a line of Falins slipped
along the wall and stood under the port-holes-quiet, watchful, and
determined. Almost at the same time the crowd fell back the other way
up the street, there was the hurried tramping of feet and on came the
Tollivers, headed by giant Judd, all armed with Winchesters--for old
Judd had sent his guns in ahead--and as the crowd swept like water into
any channel of alley or doorway that was open to it, Hale saw the yard
emptied of everybody but the line of Falins against the wall and the
Tollivers in a body but ten yards in front of them. The people on the
roofs and in the trees had not moved at all, for they were out of range.
For a moment old Judd's eyes swept the windows and port-holes of the
Court House, the windows of the jailer's house, the line of guards about
the jail, and then they dropped to the line of Falins and glared with
contemptuous hate into the leaping blue eyes of old Buck Falin, and for
that moment there was silence. In that silence and as silently as the
silence itself issued swiftly from the line of guards twelve youngsters
with Winchesters, repeating shot-guns, and in a minute six were facing
the Falins and six facing the Tollivers, each with his shot-gun at his
hip. At the head of them stood Hale, his face a pale image, as hard
as though cut from stone, his head bare, and his hand and his hip
weaponless. In all that crowd there was not a man or a woman who had not
seen or heard of him, for the power of the guard that was at his back
had radiated through that wild region like ripples of water from a
dropped stone and, unarmed even, he had a personal power that belonged
to no other man in all those hills, though armed to the teeth. His voice
rose clear, steady, commanding:

"The law has come here and it has come to stay." He faced the beetling
eyebrows and angrily working beard of old Judd now:

[Illustration: "We'll fight you both!", 0370]

"The Falins are here to get revenge on you Tollivers, if you attack us.
I know that. But"--he wheeled on the Falins--"understand! We don't want
your help! If the Tollivers try to take that man in there, and one of
you Falins draws a pistol, those guns there"--waving his hand toward the
jail windows--"will be turned loose on YOU, WE'LL FIGHT YOU BOTH!" The
last words shot like bullets through his gritted teeth, then the flash
of his eyes was gone, his face was calm, and as though the whole matter
had been settled beyond possible interruption, he finished quietly:

"The condemned man wishes to make a confession and to say good-by.
In five minutes he will be at that window to say what he pleases. Ten
minutes later he will be hanged." And he turned and walked calmly into
the jailer's door. Not a Tolliver nor a Falin made a movement or a
sound. Young Dave's eyes had glared savagely when he first saw Hale, for
he had marked Hale for his own and he knew that the fact was known to
Hale. Had the battle begun then and there, Hale's death was sure,
and Dave knew that Hale must know that as well as he: and yet with
magnificent audacity, there he was--unarmed, personally helpless, and
invested with an insulting certainty that not a shot would be fired. Not
a Falin or a Tolliver even reached for a weapon, and the fact was the
subtle tribute that ignorance pays intelligence when the latter is
forced to deadly weapons as a last resort; for ignorance faced now
belching shot-guns and was commanded by rifles on every side. Old Judd
was trapped and the Falins were stunned. Old Buck Falin turned his eyes
down the line of his men with one warning glance. Old Judd whispered
something to a Tolliver behind him and a moment later the man slipped
from the band and disappeared. Young Dave followed Hale's figure with a
look of baffled malignant hatred and Bub's eyes were filled with angry
tears. Between the factions, the grim young men stood with their guns
like statues.

At once a big man with a red face appeared at one of the jailer's
windows and then came the sheriff, who began to take out the sash.
Already the frightened crowd had gathered closer again and now a hush
came over it, followed by a rustling and a murmur. Something was going
to happen. Faces and gun-muzzles thickened at the port-holes and at the
windows; the line of guards turned their faces sidewise and upward;
the crowd on the fence scuffled for better positions; the people in the
trees craned their necks from the branches or climbed higher, and there
was a great scraping on all the roofs. Even the black crowd out on the
hills seemed to catch the excitement and to sway, while spots of intense
blue and vivid crimson came out here and there from the blackness when
the women rose from their seats on the ground. Then--sharply--there was
silence. The sheriff disappeared, and shut in by the sashless window as
by a picture frame and blinking in the strong light, stood a man with
black hair, cropped close, face pale and worn, and hands that looked
white and thin--stood bad Rufe Tolliver.

He was going to confess--that was the rumour. His lawyers wanted him to
confess; the preacher who had been singing hymns with him all morning
wanted him to confess; the man himself said he wanted to confess; and
now he was going to confess. What deadly mysteries he might clear up if
he would! No wonder the crowd was eager, for there was no soul there but
knew his record--and what a record! His best friends put his victims no
lower than thirteen, and there looking up at him were three women whom
he had widowed or orphaned, while at one corner of the jail-yard stood
a girl in black--the sweetheart of Mockaby, for whose death Rufe was
standing where he stood now. But his lips did not open. Instead he
took hold of the side of the window and looked behind him. The sheriff
brought him a chair and he sat down. Apparently he was weak and he was
going to wait a while. Would he tell how he had killed one Falin in the
presence of the latter's wife at a wild bee tree; how he had killed a
sheriff by dropping to the ground when the sheriff fired, in this way
dodging the bullet and then shooting the officer from where he lay
supposedly dead; how he had thrown another Falin out of the Court House
window and broken his neck--the Falin was drunk, Rufe always said, and
fell out; why, when he was constable, he had killed another--because,
Rufe said, he resisted arrest; how and where he had killed Red-necked
Johnson, who was found out in the woods? Would he tell all that and
more? If he meant to tell there was no sign. His lips kept closed and
his bright black eyes were studying the situation; the little squad of
youngsters, back to back, with their repeating shot-guns, the line of
Falins along the wall toward whom protruded six shining barrels, the
huddled crowd of Tollivers toward whom protruded six more--old Judd
towering in front with young Dave on one side, tense as a leopard about
to spring, and on the other Bub, with tears streaming down his face. In
a flash he understood, and in that flash his face looked as though he
had been suddenly struck a heavy blow by some one from behind, and then
his elbows dropped on the sill of the window, his chin dropped into
his hands and a murmur arose. Maybe he was too weak to stand and
talk--perhaps he was going to talk from his chair. Yes, he was leaning
forward and his lips were opening, but no sound came. Slowly his eyes
wandered around at the waiting people--in the trees, on the roofs and
the fence--and then they dropped to old Judd's and blazed their appeal
for a sign. With one heave of his mighty chest old Judd took off his
slouch hat, pressed one big hand to the back of his head and, despite
that blazing appeal, kept it there. At that movement Rufe threw his
head up as though his breath had suddenly failed him, his face turned
sickening white, and slowly again his chin dropped into his trembling
hands, and still unbelieving he stared his appeal, but old Judd dropped
his big hand and turned his head away. The condemned man's mouth
twitched once, settled into defiant calm, and then he did one kindly
thing. He turned in his seat and motioned Bob Berkley, who was just
behind him, away from the window, and the boy, to humour him,
stepped aside. Then he rose to his feet and stretched his arms wide.
Simultaneously came the far-away crack of a rifle, and as a jet of smoke
spurted above a clump of bushes on a little hill, three hundred yards
away, Bad Rufe wheeled half-way round and fell back out of sight into
the sheriff's arms. Every Falin made a nervous reach for his pistol, the
line of gun-muzzles covering them wavered slightly, but the Tollivers
stood still and unsurprised, and when Hale dashed from the door again,
there was a grim smile of triumph on old Judd's face. He had kept his
promise that Rufe should never hang.

"Steady there," said Hale quietly. His pistol was on his hip now and a
Winchester was in his left hand.

"Stand where you are--everybody!"

There was the sound of hurrying feet within the jail. There was the
clang of an iron door, the bang of a wooden one, and in five minutes
from within the tall wooden box came the sharp click of a hatchet and
then--dully:

"T-H-O-O-MP!" The dangling rope had tightened with a snap and the wind
swayed it no more.

At his cell door the Red Fox stood with his watch in his hand and his
eyes glued to the second-hand. When it had gone three times around its
circuit, he snapped the lid with a sigh of relief and turned to his
hammock and his Bible.

"He's gone now," said the Red Fox.

Outside Hale still waited, and as his eyes turned from the Tollivers
to the Falins, seven of the faces among them came back to him with
startling distinctness, and his mind went back to the opening trouble
in the county-seat over the Kentucky line, years before--when eight men
held one another at the points of their pistols. One face was missing,
and that face belonged to Rufe Tolliver. Hale pulled out his watch.

"Keep those men there," he said, pointing to the Falins, and he turned
to the bewildered Tollivers.

"Come on, Judd," he said kindly--"all of you."

Dazed and mystified, they followed him in a body around the corner of
the jail, where in a coffin, that old Jadd had sent as a blind to his
real purpose, lay the remains of Bad Rufe Tolliver with a harmless
bullet hole through one shoulder. Near by was a wagon and hitched to it
were two mules that Hale himself had provided. Hale pointed to it:

"I've done all I could, Judd. Take him away. I'll keep the Falins under
guard until you reach the Kentucky line, so that they can't waylay you."

If old Judd heard, he gave no sign. He was looking down at the face of
his foster-brother--his shoulder drooped, his great frame shrunken, and
his iron face beaten and helpless. Again Hale spoke:

"I'm sorry for all this. I'm even sorry that your man was not a better
shot."

The old man straightened then and with a gesture he motioned young Dave
to the foot of the coffin and stooped himself at the head. Past the
wagon they went, the crowd giving way before them, and with the dead
Tolliver on their shoulders, old Judd and young Dave passed with their
followers out of sight.

XXX

The longest of her life was that day to June. The anxiety in times of
war for the women who wait at home is vague because they are mercifully
ignorant of the dangers their loved ones run, but a specific issue that
involves death to those loved ones has a special and poignant terror of
its own. June knew her father's plan, the precise time the fight would
take place, and the especial danger that was Hale's, for she knew that
young Dave Tolliver had marked him with the first shot fired. Dry-eyed
and white and dumb, she watched them make ready for the start that
morning while it was yet dark; dully she heard the horses snorting from
the cold, the low curt orders of her father, and the exciting mutterings
of Bub and young Dave; dully she watched the saddles thrown on, the
pistols buckled, the Winchesters caught up, and dully she watched them
file out the gate and ride away, single file, into the cold, damp mist
like ghostly figures in a dream. Once only did she open her lips and
that was to plead with her father to leave Bub at home, but her father
gave her no answer and Bub snorted his indignation--he was a man now,
and his now was the privilege of a man. For a while she stood listening
to the ring of metal against stone that came to her more and more
faintly out of the mist, and she wondered if it was really June Tolliver
standing there, while father and brother and cousin were on their way to
fight the law--how differently she saw these things now--for a man who
deserved death, and to fight a man who was ready to die for his duty to
that law--the law that guarded them and her and might not perhaps guard
him: the man who had planted for her the dew-drenched garden that was
waiting for the sun, and had built the little room behind her for
her comfort and seclusion; who had sent her to school, had never been
anything but kind and just to her and to everybody--who had taught her
life and, thank God, love. Was she really the June Tolliver who had gone
out into the world and had held her place there; who had conquered birth
and speech and customs and environment so that none could tell what
they all once were; who had become the lady, the woman of the world, in
manner, dress, and education: who had a gift of music and a voice that
might enrich her life beyond any dream that had ever sprung from her own
brain or any that she had ever caught from Hale's? Was she June Tolliver
who had been and done all that, and now had come back and was slowly
sinking back into the narrow grave from which Hale had lifted her? It
was all too strange and bitter, but if she wanted proof there was her
step-mother's voice now--the same old, querulous, nerve-racking voice
that had embittered all her childhood--calling her down into the old
mean round of drudgery that had bound forever the horizon of her narrow
life just as now it was shutting down like a sky of brass around her
own. And when the voice came, instead of bursting into tears as she was
about to do, she gave a hard little laugh and she lifted a defiant
face to the rising sun. There was a limit to the sacrifice for kindred,
brother, father, home, and that limit was the eternal sacrifice--the
eternal undoing of herself: when this wretched terrible business was
over she would set her feet where that sun could rise on her, busy with
the work that she could do in that world for which she felt she was
born. Swiftly she did the morning chores and then she sat on the porch
thinking and waiting. Spinning wheel, loom, and darning needle were
to lie idle that day. The old step-mother had gotten from bed and was
dressing herself--miraculously cured of a sudden, miraculously active.
She began to talk of what she needed in town, and June said nothing. She
went out to the stable and led out the old sorrel-mare. She was going to
the hanging.

"Don't you want to go to town, June?"

"No," said June fiercely.

"Well, you needn't git mad about it--I got to go some day this week,
and I reckon I might as well go ter-day." June answered nothing, but in
silence watched her get ready and in silence watched her ride away. She
was glad to be left alone. The sun had flooded Lonesome Cove now with a
light as rich and yellow as though it were late afternoon, and she could
yet tell every tree by the different colour of the banner that each yet
defiantly flung into the face of death. The yard fence was festooned
with dewy cobwebs, and every weed in the field was hung with them as
with flashing jewels of exquisitely delicate design: Hale had once told
her that they meant rain. Far away the mountains were overhung with
purple so deep that the very air looked like mist, and a peace
that seemed motherlike in tenderness brooded over the earth. Peace!
Peace--with a man on his way to a scaffold only a few miles away, and
two bodies of men, one led by her father, the other by the man she
loved, ready to fly at each other's throats--the one to get the
condemned man alive, the other to see that he died. She got up with
a groan. She walked into the garden. The grass was tall, tangled, and
withering, and in it dead leaves lay everywhere, stems up, stems down,
in reckless confusion. The scarlet sage-pods were brown and seeds were
dropping from their tiny gaping mouths. The marigolds were frost-nipped
and one lonely black-winged butterfly was vainly searching them one
by one for the lost sweets of summer. The gorgeous crowns of the
sun-flowers were nothing but grotesque black mummy-heads set on lean,
dead bodies, and the clump of big castor-plants, buffeted by the wind,
leaned this way and that like giants in a drunken orgy trying to keep
one another from falling down. The blight that was on the garden was the
blight that was in her heart, and two bits of cheer only she found--one
yellow nasturtium, scarlet-flecked, whose fragrance was a memory of the
spring that was long gone, and one little cedar tree that had caught
some dead leaves in its green arms and was firmly holding them as though
to promise that another spring would surely come. With the flower in
her hand, she started up the ravine to her dreaming place, but it was so
lonely up there and she turned back. She went into her room and tried
to read. Mechanically, she half opened the lid of the piano and shut
it, horrified by her own act. As she passed out on the porch again she
noticed that it was only nine o'clock. She turned and watched the long
hand--how long a minute was! Three hours more! She shivered and went
inside and got her bonnet--she could not be alone when the hour came,
and she started down the road toward Uncle Billy's mill. Hale! Hale!
Hale!--the name began to ring in her ears like a bell. The little shacks
he had built up the creek were deserted and gone to ruin, and she began
to wonder in the light of what her father had said how much of a tragedy
that meant to him. Here was the spot where he was fishing that day, when
she had slipped down behind him and he had turned and seen her for the
first time. She could recall his smile and the very tone of his kind
voice:

"Howdye, little girl!" And the cat had got her tongue. She remembered
when she had written her name, after she had first kissed him at the
foot of the beech--"June HAIL," and by a grotesque mental leap the
beating of his name in her brain now made her think of the beating of
hailstones on her father's roof one night when as a child she had lain
and listened to them. Then she noticed that the autumn shadows seemed to
make the river darker than the shadows of spring--or was it already
the stain of dead leaves? Hale could have told her. Those leaves were
floating through the shadows and when the wind moved, others zig-zagged
softly down to join them. The wind was helping them on the water, too,
and along came one brown leaf that was shaped like a tiny trireme--its
stem acting like a rudder and keeping it straight before the breeze--so
that it swept past the rest as a yacht that she was once on had swept
past a fleet of fishing sloops. She was not unlike that swift little
ship and thirty yards ahead were rocks and shallows where it and the
whole fleet would turn topsy-turvy--would her own triumph be as short
and the same fate be hers? There was no question as to that, unless she
took the wheel of her fate in her own hands and with them steered the
ship. Thinking hard, she walked on slowly, with her hands behind her
and her eyes bent on the road. What should she do? She had no money, her
father had none to spare, and she could accept no more from Hale. Once
she stopped and stared with unseeing eyes at the blue sky, and once
under the heavy helplessness of it all she dropped on the side of the
road and sat with her head buried in her arms--sat so long that she rose
with a start and, with an apprehensive look at the mounting sun, hurried
on. She would go to the Gap and teach; and then she knew that if she
went there it would be on Hale's account. Very well, she would not blind
herself to that fact; she would go and perhaps all would be made up
between them, and then she knew that if that but happened, nothing else
could matter...

When she reached the miller's cabin, she went to the porch without
noticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she turned
listlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock beginning
to strike, and with one hand on her breast she breathlessly listened,
counting--"eight, nine, ten, eleven"--and her heart seemed to stop in
the fraction of time that she waited for it to strike once more. But it
was only eleven, and she went on down the road slowly, still thinking
hard. The old miller was leaning back in a chair against the log side
of the mill, with his dusty slouched hat down over his eyes. He did not
hear her coming and she thought he must be asleep, but he looked up with
a start when she spoke and she knew of what he, too, had been thinking.
Keenly his old eyes searched her white face and without a word he got up
and reached for another chair within the mill.

"You set right down now, baby," he said, and he made a pretence of
having something to do inside the mill, while June watched the creaking
old wheel dropping the sun-shot sparkling water into the swift sluice,
but hardly seeing it at all. By and by Uncle Billy came outside and sat
down and neither spoke a word. Once June saw him covertly looking at his
watch and she put both hands to her throat--stifled.

"What time is it, Uncle Billy?" She tried to ask the question calmly,
but she had to try twice before she could speak at all and when she did
get the question out, her voice was only a broken whisper.

"Five minutes to twelve, baby," said the old man, and his voice had a
gulp in it that broke June down. She sprang to her feet wringing her
hands:

"I can't stand it, Uncle Billy," she cried madly, and with a sob that
almost broke the old man's heart. "I tell you I can't stand it."

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

And yet for three hours more she had to stand it, while the cavalcade
of Tollivers, with Rufe's body, made its slow way to the Kentucky line
where Judd and Dave and Bub left them to go home for the night and be
on hand for the funeral next day. But Uncle Billy led her back to his
cabin, and on the porch the two, with old Hon, waited while the three
hours dragged along. It was June who was first to hear the galloping
of horses' hoofs up the road and she ran to the gate, followed by Uncle
Billy and old Hon to see young Dave Tolliver coming in a run. At the
gate he threw himself from his horse:

"Git up thar, June, and go home," he panted sharply. June flashed out
the gate.

"Have you done it?" she asked with deadly quiet.

"Hurry up an' go home, I tell ye! Uncle Judd wants ye!"

She came quite close to him now.

"You said you'd do it--I know what you've done--you--" she looked as if
she would fly at his throat, and Dave, amazed, shrank back a step.

"Go home, I tell ye--Uncle Judd's shot. Git on the hoss!"

"No, no, NO! I wouldn't TOUCH anything that was yours"--she put her
hands to her head as though she were crazed, and then she turned and
broke into a swift run up the road.

Panting, June reached the gate. The front door was closed and there she
gave a tremulous cry for Bub. The door opened a few inches and through
it Bub shouted for her to come on. The back door, too, was closed, and
not a ray of daylight entered the room except at the port-hole where
Bub, with a Winchester, had been standing on guard. By the light of the
fire she saw her father's giant frame stretched out on the bed and she
heard his laboured breathing. Swiftly she went to the bed and dropped on
her knees beside it.

"Dad!" she said. The old man's eyes opened and turned heavily toward
her.

"All right, Juny. They shot me from the laurel and they might nigh got
Bub. I reckon they've got me this time."

"No--no!" He saw her eyes fixed on the matted blood on his chest.

"Hit's stopped. I'm afeared hit's bleedin' inside." His voice had
dropped to a whisper and his eyes closed again. There was another
cautious "Hello" outside, and when Bub again opened the door Dave ran
swiftly within. He paid no attention to June.

"I follered June back an' left my hoss in the bushes. There was three of
'em." He showed Bub a bullet hole through one sleeve and then he turned
half contemptuously to June:

"I hain't done it"--adding grimly--"not yit. He's as safe as you air. I
hope you're satisfied that hit hain't him 'stid o' yo' daddy thar."

"Are you going to the Gap for a doctor?"

"I reckon I can't leave Bub here alone agin all the Falins--not even to
git a doctor or to carry a love-message fer you."

"Then I'll go myself."

A thick protest came from the bed, and then an appeal that might have
come from a child.

"Don't leave me, Juny." Without a word June went into the kitchen and
got the old bark horn.

"Uncle Billy will go," she said, and she stepped out on the porch. But
Uncle Billy was already on his way and she heard him coming just as she
was raising the horn to her lips. She met him at the gate, and without
even taking the time to come into the house the old miller hurried
upward toward the Lonesome Pine. The rain came then--the rain that the
tiny cobwebs had heralded at dawn that morning. The old step-mother had
not come home, and June told Bub she had gone over the mountain to see
her sister, and when, as darkness fell, she did not appear they knew
that she must have been caught by the rain and would spend the night
with a neighbour. June asked no question, but from the low talk of Bub
and Dave she made out what had happened in town that day and a wild
elation settled in her heart that John Hale was alive and unhurt--though
Rufe was dead, her father wounded, and Bub and Dave both had but
narrowly escaped the Falin assassins that afternoon. Bub took the first
turn at watching while Dave slept, and when it was Dave's turn she saw
him drop quickly asleep in his chair, and she was left alone with the
breathing of the wounded man and the beating of rain on the roof. And
through the long night June thought her brain weary over herself, her
life, her people, and Hale. They were not to blame--her people, they but
did as their fathers had done before them. They had their own code and
they lived up to it as best they could, and they had had no chance to
learn another. She felt the vindictive hatred that had prolonged the
feud. Had she been a man, she could not have rested until she had slain
the man who had ambushed her father. She expected Bub to do that now,
and if the spirit was so strong in her with the training she had had,
how helpless they must be against it. Even Dave was not to blame--not to
blame for loving her--he had always done that. For that reason he could
not help hating Hale, and how great a reason he had now, for he could
not understand as she could the absence of any personal motive that had
governed him in the prosecution of the law, no matter if he hurt friend
or foe. But for Hale, she would have loved Dave and now be married to
him and happier than she was. Dave saw that--no wonder he hated Hale.
And as she slowly realized all these things, she grew calm and gentle
and determined to stick to her people and do the best she could with her
life.

And now and then through the night old Judd would open his eyes and
stare at the ceiling, and at these times it was not the pain in his
face that distressed her as much as the drawn beaten look that she had
noticed growing in it for a long time. It was terrible--that helpless
look in the face of a man, so big in body, so strong of mind, so
iron-like in will; and whenever he did speak she knew what he was going
to say:

"It's all over, Juny. They've beat us on every turn. They've got us one
by one. Thar ain't but a few of us left now and when I git up, if I ever
do, I'm goin' to gether 'em all together, pull up stakes and take 'em
all West. You won't ever leave me, Juny?"

"No, Dad," she would say gently. He had asked the question at first
quite sanely, but as the night wore on and the fever grew and his mind
wandered, he would repeat the question over and over like a child, and
over and over, while Bub and Dave slept and the rain poured, June would
repeat her answer:

"I'll never leave you, Dad."

XXXI

Before dawn Hale and the doctor and the old miller had reached the Pine,
and there Hale stopped. Any farther, the old man told him, he would go
only at the risk of his life from Dave or Bub, or even from any Falin
who happened to be hanging around in the bushes, for Hale was hated
equally by both factions now.

"I'll wait up here until noon, Uncle Billy," said Hale. "Ask her, for
God's sake, to come up here and see me."

"All right. I'll axe her, but--" the old miller shook his head.
Breakfastless, except for the munching of a piece of chocolate, Hale
waited all the morning with his black horse in the bushes some thirty
yards from the Lonesome Pine. Every now and then he would go to the tree
and look down the path, and once he slipped far down the trail and aside
to a spur whence he could see the cabin in the cove. Once his hungry
eyes caught sight of a woman's figure walking through the little garden,
and for an hour after it disappeared into the house he watched for it to
come out again. But nothing more was visible, and he turned back to the
trail to see Uncle Billy laboriously climbing up the slope. Hale
waited and ran down to meet him, his face and eyes eager and his lips
trembling, but again Uncle Billy was shaking his head.

"No use, John," he said sadly. "I got her out on the porch and axed her,
but she won't come."

"She won't come at all?"

"John, when one o' them Tollivers gits white about the mouth, an' thar
eyes gits to blazin' and they KEEPS QUIET--they're plumb out o' reach
o' the Almighty hisself. June skeered me. But you mustn't blame her jes'
now. You see, you got up that guard. You ketched Rufe and hung him, and
she can't help thinkin' if you hadn't done that, her old daddy wouldn't
be in thar on his back nigh to death. You mustn't blame her, John--she's
most out o' her head now."

"All right, Uncle Billy. Good-by." Hale turned, climbed sadly back to
his horse and sadly dropped down the other side of the mountain and on
through the rocky gap-home.

A week later he learned from the doctor that the chances were even that
old Judd would get well, but the days went by with no word of June.
Through those days June wrestled with her love for Hale and her loyalty
to her father, who, sick as he was, seemed to have a vague sense of the
trouble within her and shrewdly fought it by making her daily promise
that she would never leave him. For as old Judd got better, June's
fierceness against Hale melted and her love came out the stronger,
because of the passing injustice that she had done him. Many times she
was on the point of sending him word that she would meet him at the
Pine, but she was afraid of her own strength if she should see him face
to face, and she feared she would be risking his life if she allowed him
to come. There were times when she would have gone to him herself, had
her father been well and strong, but he was old, beaten and helpless,
and she had given her sacred word that she would never leave him. So
once more she grew calmer, gentler still, and more determined to follow
her own way with her own kin, though that way led through a breaking
heart. She never mentioned Hale's name, she never spoke of going West,
and in time Dave began to wonder not only if she had not gotten over
her feeling for Hale, but if that feeling had not turned into permanent
hate. To him, June was kinder than ever, because she understood him
better and because she was sorry for the hunted, hounded life he led,
not knowing, when on his trips to see her or to do some service for her
father, he might be picked off by some Falin from the bushes. So Dave
stopped his sneering remarks against Hale and began to dream his old
dreams, though he never opened his lips to June, and she was unconscious
of what was going on within him. By and by, as old Judd began to mend,
overtures of peace came, singularly enough, from the Falins, and while
the old man snorted with contemptuous disbelief at them as a pretence to
throw him off his guard, Dave began actually to believe that they were
sincere, and straightway forged a plan of his own, even if the Tollivers
did persist in going West. So one morning as he mounted his horse at old
Judd's gate, he called to June in the garden:

"I'm a-goin' over to the Gap." June paled, but Dave was not looking at
her.

"What for?" she asked, steadying her voice.

"Business," he answered, and he laughed curiously and, still without
looking at her, rode away.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Hale sat in the porch of his little office that morning, and the Hon.
Sam Budd, who had risen to leave, stood with his hands deep in his
pockets, his hat tilted far over his big goggles, looking down at the
dead leaves that floated like lost hopes on the placid mill-pond. Hale
had agreed to go to England once more on the sole chance left him before
he went back to chain and compass--the old land deal that had come to
life--and between them they had about enough money for the trip.

"You'll keep an eye on things over there?" said Hale with a backward
motion of his head toward Lonesome Cove, and the Hon. Sam nodded his
head:

"All I can."

"Those big trunks of hers are still here." The Hon. Sam smiled. "She
won't need 'em. I'll keep an eye on 'em and she can come over and get
what she wants--every year or two," he added grimly, and Hale groaned.

"Stop it, Sam."

"All right. You ain't goin' to try to see her before you leave?" And
then at the look on Hale's face he said hurriedly: "All right--all
right," and with a toss of his hands turned away, while Hale sat
thinking where he was.

Rufe Tolliver had been quite right as to the Red Fox. Nobody would risk
his life for him--there was no one to attempt a rescue, and but a few of
the guards were on hand this time to carry out the law. On the last day
he had appeared in his white suit of tablecloth. The little old woman
in black had made even the cap that was to be drawn over his face, and
that, too, she had made of white. Moreover, she would have his body kept
unburied for three days, because the Red Fox said that on the third day
he would arise and go about preaching. So that even in death the Red Fox
was consistently inconsistent, and how he reconciled such a dual life
at one and the same time over and under the stars was, except to his
twisted brain, never known. He walked firmly up the scaffold steps and
stood there blinking in the sunlight. With one hand he tested the rope.
For a moment he looked at the sky and the trees with a face that was
white and absolutely expressionless. Then he sang one hymn of two verses
and quietly dropped into that world in which he believed so firmly and
toward which he had trod so strange a way on earth. As he wished, the
little old woman in black had the body kept unburied for the three
days--but the Red Fox never rose. With his passing, law and order had
become supreme. Neither Tolliver nor Falin came on the Virginia side
for mischief, and the desperadoes of two sister States, whose skirts
are stitched together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the
Cumberland, confined their deviltries with great care to places long
distant from the Gap. John Hale had done a great work, but the limit of
his activities was that State line and the Falins, ever threatening that
they would not leave a Tolliver alive, could carry out those threats and
Hale not be able to lift a hand. It was his helplessness that was making
him writhe now.

Old Judd had often said he meant to leave the mountains--why didn't he
go now and take June for whose safety his heart was always in his mouth?
As an officer, he was now helpless where he was; and if he went away
he could give no personal aid--he would not even know what was
happening--and he had promised Budd to go. An open letter was clutched
in his hand, and again he read it. His coal company had accepted his
last proposition. They would take his stock--worthless as they thought
it--and surrender the cabin and two hundred acres of field and woodland
in Lonesome Cove. That much at least would be intact, but if he failed
in his last project now, it would be subject to judgments against him
that were sure to come. So there was one thing more to do for June
before he left for the final effort in England--to give back her home to
her--and as he rose to do it now, somebody shouted at his gate:

"Hello!" Hale stopped short at the head of the steps, his right hand
shot like a shaft of light to the butt of his pistol, stayed there--and
he stood astounded. It was Dave Tolliver on horseback, and Dave's right
hand had kept hold of his bridle-reins.

"Hold on!" he said, lifting the other with a wide gesture of peace. "I
want to talk with you a bit." Still Hale watched him closely as he swung
from his horse.

"Come in--won't you?" The mountaineer hitched his horse and slouched
within the gate.

"Have a seat." Dave dropped to the steps.

"I'll set here," he said, and there was an embarrassed silence for a
while between the two. Hale studied young Dave's face from narrowed
eyes. He knew all the threats the Tolliver had made against him, the
bitter enmity that he felt, and that it would last until one or the
other was dead. This was a queer move. The mountaineer took off his
slouched hat and ran one hand through his thick black hair.

"I reckon you've heard as how all our folks air sellin' out over the
mountains."

"No," said Hale quickly.

"Well, they air, an' all of 'em are going West--Uncle Judd, Loretty and
June, and all our kinfolks. You didn't know that?"

"No," repeated Hale.

"Well, they hain't closed all the trades yit," he said, "an' they mought
not go mebbe afore spring. The Falins say they air done now. Uncle Judd
don't believe 'em, but I do, an' I'm thinkin' I won't go. I've got a
leetle money, an' I want to know if I can't buy back Uncle Judd's house
an' a leetle ground around it. Our folks is tired o' fightin' and I
couldn't live on t'other side of the mountain, after they air gone, an'
keep as healthy as on this side--so I thought I'd see if I couldn't buy
back June's old home, mebbe, an' live thar."

Hale watched him keenly, wondering what his game was--and he went on:
"I know the house an' land ain't wuth much to your company, an' as the
coal-vein has petered out, I reckon they might not axe much fer it." It
was all out now, and he stopped without looking at Hale. "I ain't axin'
any favours, leastwise not o' you, an' I thought my share o' Mam's farm
mought be enough to git me the house an' some o' the land."

"You mean to live there, yourself?"

"Yes."

"Alone?" Dave frowned.

"I reckon that's my business."

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

"Well, the company has parted with the land." Dave started.

"Sold it?"

"In a way--yes."

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

"It's mine now," said Hale quietly.

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

"YOU goin' to live thar?"

"Maybe."

"Alone?"

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

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

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

"No, but I'd consult you like hell."

"I wish you had the chance," said Hale coolly; "but I wasn't talking
about June." Again Dave laughed harshly, and for a moment his angry eyes
rested on the quiet mill-pond. He went backward suddenly.

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

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

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

"Get on from this side, please."

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

"I don't trust you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you ready?" Again Hale nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's the matter, Dave?"

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

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

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

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

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

"The company owns it." Dave laughed harshly.

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

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

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

"I don't know. He's a slick one."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: 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 God, and guard him
evermore." She clutched her heart as she turned, and she was clutching
it when she passed into the shadows below, leaving the old Pine to
whisper, when he passed, her love.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

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

XXXII

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

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

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

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

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

"Goin' to start that house of yours?"

"I think not," said Hale.

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

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

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

"Sellin' organs agin," he said briefly.

"And teaching singing-school?"

The dethroned king of finance grinned.

"Sure! What you doin'?"

"Nothing."

"Goin' to stay long?"

"No."

"Well, see you again. So long. Git up!"

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

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