"Come on up to the house," he said to Hale, turning to lead the way, the little girl following him. The old step-mother was again a-bed; small Bub, the brother, still unafraid, sat down beside Hale and the old man brought out a bottle of moonshine.
"I reckon I can still trust ye," he said.
"I reckon you can," laughed Hale.
The liquor was as fiery as ever, but it was grateful, and again the old man took nearly a tumbler full plying Hale, meanwhile, about the happenings in town the day before--but Hale could tell him nothing that he seemed not already to know.
"It was quar," the old mountaineer said. "I"ve seed two men with the drap on each other and both afeerd to shoot, but I never heerd of sech a ring-around-the-rosy as eight fellers with bead on one another and not a shoot shot. I"m glad I wasn"t thar."
He frowned when Hale spoke of the Red Fox.
"You can"t never tell whether that ole devil is fer ye or agin ye, but I"ve been plum" sick o" these doin"s a long time now and sometimes I think I"ll just pull up stakes and go West and git out of hit--altogether."
"How did you learn so much about yesterday--so soon?"
"Oh, we hears things purty quick in these mountains. Little Dave Tolliver come over here last night."
"Yes," broke in Bub, "and he tol" us how you carried Loretty from town on a mule behind ye, and she jest a-sa.s.sin" you, an" as how she said she was a-goin" to git you fer HER sweetheart."
Hale glanced by chance at the little girl. Her face was scarlet, and a light dawned.
"An" sis, thar, said he was a-tellin" lies--an" when she growed up she said she was a-goin" to marry---"
Something snapped like a toy-pistol and Bub howled. A little brown hand had whacked him across the mouth, and the girl flashed indoors without a word. Bub got to his feet howling with pain and rage and started after her, but the old man caught him:
"Set down, boy! Sarved you right fer blabbin" things that hain"t yo"
business." He shook with laughter.
Jealousy! Great heavens--Hale thought--in that child, and for him!
"I knowed she was cryin" "bout something like that. She sets a great store by you, an" she"s studied them books you sent her plum" to pieces while you was away. She ain"t nothin" but a baby, but in sartain ways she"s as old as her mother was when she died." The amazing secret was out, and the little girl appeared no more until supper time, when she waited on the table, but at no time would she look at Hale or speak to him again. For a while the two men sat on the porch talking of the feud and the Gap and the coal on the old man"s place, and Hale had no trouble getting an option for a year on the old man"s land. Just as dusk was setting he got his horse.
"You"d better stay all night."
"No, I"ll have to get along."
The little girl did not appear to tell him goodby, and when he went to his horse at the gate, he called:
"Tell June to come down here. I"ve got something for her."
"Go on, baby," the old man said, and the little girl came shyly down to the gate. Hale took a brown-paper parcel from his saddle-bags, unwrapped it and betrayed the usual blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked doll.
Only June did not know the like of it was in all the world. And as she caught it to her breast there were tears once more in her uplifted eyes.
"How about going over to the Gap with me, little girl--some day?"
He never guessed it, but there were a child and a woman before him now and both answered:
"I"ll go with ye anywhar."
Hale stopped a while to rest his horse at the base of the big pine. He was practically alone in the world. The little girl back there was born for something else than slow death in that G.o.d-forsaken cove, and whatever it was--why not help her to it if he could? With this thought in his brain, he rode down from the luminous upper world of the moon and stars toward the nether world of drifting mists and black ravines. She belonged to just such a night--that little girl--she was a part of its mists, its lights and shadows, its fresh wild beauty and its mystery.
Only once did his mind shift from her to his great purpose, and that was when the roar of the water through the rocky chasm of the Gap made him think of the roar of iron wheels, that, rushing through, some day, would drown it into silence. At the mouth of the Gap he saw the white valley lying at peace in the moonlight and straightway from it sprang again, as always, his castle in the air; but before he fell asleep in his cottage on the edge of the millpond that night he heard quite plainly again:
"I"ll go with ye--anywhar."
XI
Spring was coming: and, meanwhile, that late autumn and short winter, things went merrily on at the gap in some ways, and in some ways--not.
Within eight miles of the place, for instance, the man fell ill--the man who was to take up Hale"s options--and he had to be taken home. Still Hale was undaunted: here he was and here he would stay--and he would try again. Two other young men, Bluegra.s.s Kentuckians, Logan and Macfarlan, had settled at the gap--both lawyers and both of pioneer, Indian-fighting blood. The report of the State geologist had been spread broadcast. A famous magazine writer had come through on horseback and had gone home and given a fervid account of the riches and the beauty of the region. Helmeted Englishmen began to prowl prospectively around the gap sixty miles to the southwest. New surveying parties were directing lines for the rocky gateway between the iron ore and the coal. Engineers and coal experts pa.s.sed in and out. There were rumours of a furnace and a steel plant when the railroad should reach the place. Capital had flowed in from the East, and already a Pennsylvanian was starting a main entry into a ten-foot vein of coal up through the gap and was c.o.king it. His report was that his own was better than the Connellsville c.o.ke, which was the standard: it was higher in carbon and lower in ash. The Ludlow brothers, from Eastern Virginia, had started a general store. Two of the Berkley brothers had come over from Bluegra.s.s Kentucky and their family was coming in the spring. The bearded Senator up the valley, who was also a preacher, had got his Methodist brethren interested--and the community was further enriched by the coming of the Hon. Samuel Budd, lawyer and budding statesman. As a recreation, the Hon. Sam was an anthropologist: he knew the mountaineers from Virginia to Alabama and they were his pet ill.u.s.trations of his pet theories of the effect of a mountain environment on human life and character. Hale took a great fancy to him from the first moment he saw his smooth, ageless, kindly face, surmounted by a huge pair of spectacles that were hooked behind two large ears, above which his pale yellow hair, parted in the middle, was drawn back with plaster-like precision. A mayor and a constable had been appointed, and the Hon. Sam had just finished his first case--Squire Morton and the Widow Crane, who ran a boarding-house, each having laid claim to three pigs that obstructed traffic in the town. The Hon. Sam was sitting by the stove, deep in thought, when Hale came into the hotel and he lifted his great glaring lenses and waited for no introduction:
"Brother," he said, "do you know twelve reliable witnesses come on the stand and SWORE them pigs belonged to the squire"s sow, and twelve equally reliable witnesses SWORE them pigs belonged to the Widow Crane"s sow? I sh.o.r.ely was a heap perplexed."
"That was curious." The Hon. Sam laughed:
"Well, sir, them intelligent pigs used both them sows as mothers, and may be they had another mother somewhere else. They would breakfast with the Widow Crane"s sow and take supper with the squire"s sow. And so them witnesses, too, was naturally perplexed."
Hale waited while the Hon. Sam puffed his pipe into a glow:
"Believin", as I do, that the most important principle in law is mutually forgivin" and a square division o" spoils, I suggested a compromise. The widow said the squire was an old rascal an" thief and he"d never sink a tooth into one of them shoats, but that her lawyer was a gentleman--meanin" me--and the squire said the widow had been blackguardin" him all over town and he"d see her in heaven before she got one, but that HIS lawyer was a prince of the realm: so the other lawyer took one and I got the other."
"What became of the third?"
The Hon. Sam was an ardent disciple of Sir Walter Scott:
"Well, just now the mayor is a-playin" Gurth to that little runt for costs."
Outside, the wheels of the stage rattled, and as half a dozen strangers trooped in, the Hon. Sam waved his hand: "Things is comin"."
Things were coming. The following week "the booming editor" brought in a printing-press and started a paper. An enterprising Hoosier soon established a brick-plant. A geologist--Hale"s predecessor in Lonesome Cove--made the Gap his headquarters, and one by one the vanguard of engineers, surveyors, speculators and coalmen drifted in. The wings of progress began to sprout, but the new town-constable soon tendered his resignation with informality and violence. He had arrested a Falin, whose companions straightway took him from custody and set him free.
Straightway the constable threw his pistol and badge of office to the ground.
"I"ve fit an" I"ve hollered fer help," he shouted, almost crying with rage, "an" I"ve fit agin. Now this town can go to h.e.l.l": and he picked up his pistol but left his symbol of law and order in the dust. Next morning there was a new constable, and only that afternoon when Hale stepped into the Ludlow Brothers" store he found the constable already busy. A line of men with revolver or knife in sight was drawn up inside with their backs to Hale, and beyond them he could see the new constable with a man under arrest. Hale had not forgotten his promise to himself and he began now:
"Come on," he called quietly, and when the men turned at the sound of his voice, the constable, who was of sterner stuff than his predecessor, pushed through them, dragging his man after him.
"Look here, boys," said Hale calmly. "Let"s not have any row. Let him go to the mayor"s office. If he isn"t guilty, the mayor will let him go. If he is, the mayor will give him bond. I"ll go on it myself. But let"s not have a row."
Now, to the mountain eye, Hale appeared no more than the ordinary man, and even a close observer would have seen no more than that his face was clean-cut and thoughtful, that his eye was blue and singularly clear and fearless, and that he was calm with a calmness that might come from anything else than stolidity of temperament--and that, by the way, is the self-control which counts most against the unruly pa.s.sions of other men--but anybody near Hale, at a time when excitement was high and a crisis was imminent, would have felt the resultant of forces emanating from him that were beyond a.n.a.lysis. And so it was now--the curious power he instinctively had over rough men had its way.
"Go on," he continued quietly, and the constable went on with his prisoner, his friends following, still swearing and with their weapons in their hands. When constable and prisoner pa.s.sed into the mayor"s office, Hale stepped quickly after them and turned on the threshold with his arm across the door.
"Hold on, boys," he said, still good-naturedly. "The mayor can attend to this. If you boys want to fight anybody, fight me. I"m unarmed and you can whip me easily enough," he added with a laugh, "but you mustn"t come in here," he concluded, as though the matter was settled beyond further discussion. For one instant--the crucial one, of course--the men hesitated, for the reason that so often makes superior numbers of no avail among the lawless--the lack of a leader of nerve--and without another word Hale held the door. But the frightened mayor inside let the prisoner out at once on bond and Hale, combining law and diplomacy, went on the bond.