 CHAPTER XXV. Thus fate did not wait until election day for the thing Hale most dreaded, the clash that would involve the guard in the tall refalent troubles over the hills. There had been simply a preliminary political gathering at the gap the day before, but it had been a crucial day for the guard, from a cloudy sunrise to a tragic sunset. Early that morning Makhabe, the town sergeant, had stepped into the street freshly shaven with polished boots and his best clothes for the eyes of his sweetheart, who was to come up that day to the gap from Lee. Before sunset he died with those boots on, while the sweetheart, unknowing, was bound on her happy way homeward, and Roof Tolliver, who had shot Makhabe, was clattering through the gap in flight for lonesome cold. As far as anybody knew there had been but one Tolliver and one Phelan in town that day, though many had noticed the tall western-looking stranger who early in the afternoon had ridden across the bridge over the North Fork, but he was quiet and well-behaved. He merged into the crowd and through the rest of the afternoon was in no way conspicuous, even when the one Tolliver and the one Phelan. Got into a fight in front of the Speeler stand, and the riot started which came near ending in a bloody battle. The Phelan was clearly blameless and was let go at once. This angered the many friends of the Tolliver and when he was arrested there was an attempt at rescue and the Tolliver was dragged to the Calaboose behind a slowly retiring line of policemen. Who were jabbing the rescuers back with the muscles of their cocked winchesters? It was just when it was all over and the Tolliver was safely jailed. That bad roof galloped up to the Calaboose shaking with rage, for he had just learned that the prisoner was a Tolliver. He saw how useless interference was, but he swung from his horse through the rains over its head after the western fashion and strode up to Hale. You'd a captain of this guard? Yes, said Hale, and you, Roof, shook his head with angry impatience, and Hale, thinking he had some communication to make, ignored his refusal to answer. I hear that a fellow can't blow a whistle or holler or shoot off his pistol in this town without getting arrested. That's true, why? Roof's black eyes gleamed vindictively. None, he said, and he turned to his horse ten minutes later as Machabe was passing down the dummy track. A whistle was blown on the river bank, a high yell was raised, a pistol shot quickly followed, and he started for the sound of him not a run. A few minutes later, three more pistol shots rang out, and Hale rushed to the river bank to find Machabe stretched out on the ground, dying, and a mountaineer loud, pointing after a man on horseback, who was making at a swift gallop for the mouth of the gap and the hills. He'd done it, said the lout, in a frightened way, but I don't know who he was. Within half an hour ten horsemen were clattering after a murderer. Headed by Hale, Logan and the infant of the guard, where the road forked a woman with a child in her arms, said she had seen a tall black-eyed man with a black mustache, gallop up the right fork. She no more knew who he was than any of the pursuers. Three miles up that fork they came up on a red-headed man, leading his horse from a mountaineer's yard. He went up the mountain, the red-haired man said, pointing to the trail of the lonesome pine. He's gone over the line. What's he done? Killed somebody? Yes, said Hale shortly. Starting up his horse, I wish I'd have known you was after him. I'm cheerful with our. Now they were without warrant or requisition, and Hale pulling in said sharply, We want that fellow. He killed a man at the gap. If we catch him over the line, we want you to hold him for us. Come along. The red-headed sheriff sprang on his horse and grinned eagerly. I'm your man. Who was that fellow? Ask Hale as they galloped. The sheriff denied knowledge with a shake of his head. What's your name? The sheriff looked sharply at him for the effect of his answer. Jim Fallon? And Hale looked sharply back at him. He was one of the Fallons who long, long ago. Had gone to the gap for young Dave Tollber, and now the Fallon grinned at Hale. I know you all right. No wonder the Fallon chuckled at his heaven-born chance to get a Tollber into trouble. At the lonesome pine the traces of the fugitive's horse swerved along the mountaintop. The shoe of the right forefoot being broken in half. The swerve was up blind, and the sheriff knew it. But he knew where Roof Tollber would go, and that there would be plenty of time to get him. Moreover, he had a purpose of his own, and a secret fear that it might be thwarted, so without a word he followed the trail till darkness hit it, and they had to wait until the moon rose. Then as they started again the sheriff said, wait a minute, and plunged down the mountainside on foot. A few minutes later he hallowed for Hale, and down there showed him the tracks doubling backward along a footpath. Regular rabbit, ain't he, chuckled the sheriff, and back they went to the trail again on which two hundred yards below the pine they saw the tracks pointing again to Lonesome Cove. On down the trail he went, and at the top of the spur that overlooked Lonesome Cove the Fallon sheriff pulled in subtly and got off his horse. There the tracks swerved again into the bushes. He'd gone to wait till daylight for fear somebody's followed him. He'd come back, old devil-judge. How do you know he's going to devil-judge, asked Hale. Where else would he go, asked the Fallon with the sweep of his arm toward the moonlit wilderness. There ain't but one house that way for ten miles. Nobody lived there. How do you know that he's going to any house, asked Hale impatiently. He may be getting out of the mountains. Do you ever know a feller to leave these mountains just because he killed a man? How'd you follow him at night? How'd you ever catch him with his dart? What did he turn that way for, if he wasn't going to judge? Why don't he keep on down the river? If he's gone, he's gone. If he ain't, he'll be a devil-judge at daybreak, if he ain't there now. What do you want to do? Go on down with the horses, hide him in the bushes, and wait. Maybe he's already heard us coming down the mountain. That's the only thing I'm afraid of, said the Fallon family. But what I'm telling you is your only chance. How do you know he won't hear us going down? Why not leave the horses? We might need the horses in its 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 Fallon disappeared on foot. Do you trust him? Ask Hale, turning to Bud and Bud left. I reckon you can trust the Fallon against a friend of a Tolver or the other way round any time. Within half an hour the Fallon came back, with the news that there was no sign that the fugitive had come in. No use surrounding the house now, he said. He might see one of us first when he comes in and get away. We'll do that after daylight. And at daylight they saw the fugitive right 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 catch him if he runs out the back way quick, said the Fallon. It'll take them 20 minutes to get there through the woods. Soon as they get there, let one of them shoot off his pistol, and that'll be the signal for us. The three men started swiftly, but the pistol shot came before they had gone in a hundred yards. For one of the three, a new man, and unaccustomed to the use of firearms, stumbled over a route while he was seeing that his pistol was in order, and let it go off accidentally. No time to waste now, the Fallon called sharply. Get on your horses and get. Then the rush was made, and when they gave up the chase at noon that day the sheriff looked hailed squarely in the eye when Hale sharply asked him a question. Why didn't you tell me who that man was? Because I feared you wouldn't go to devil-judge's after 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 Maga B. 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. The grass would grow under the feet of none, until Roof Toliver was caught, and the death-debt of 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 on him. For he was a Fallon now in the eyes of both factions and an enemy, even to June. The weeks dragged slowly along, and June sank slowly toward the depth with every precious realization of the trap of circumstances into which she had fallen. She had dim memories of just such a state of affairs, and she was a child. But the feud was on now, and the three things that governed the life of the cabin in lonesome cove were hate, caution, and fear. Bob and her father worked in the fields with their Winchester's close at hand, and June was never easy if they were outside the house. If someone 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 shelterer 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 them 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 a 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 that long ago was rehearsed over and over. All the wrongs the family had suffered at the hands of the Fallons 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 Fallons as though she had known no other life. Loretta got no comfort from her in her tentative efforts to talk to Buck Fallon, and once indeed June gave her a scathing rebuke, with every day her feeling for her father-in-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 exalted. When he heard of the favoritism shown of Fallon by the guard at the gap, the effort Hale had made to catch Roof Tolliver and his well-known purpose yet to capture him. The guard maintained a fund for the rest and prosecution of criminals, and the reward it offered for Roof 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 open. Roof 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 scare you, does it? Shuddering, she felt his evil eyes sweep her from head to foot, for the beast was in and was always unleashed and ever ready to spring. And she dropped back into her seat, speechless. Young Dave entering from the kitchen saw Roof's look, and the hostile lightning of his eyes flashed at his foster uncle, who knew straight away that he must not, for his own safety, strain the boy's jealousy too far. He hadn't done it, Roof, said old Judd a little later, and he shook his head, again Roof laughed. Nope, he said, with a quick, pacificatory look to young Dave. Not to him. The swift gridding 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 the Outlaw, but without a word she rose now and went to her own room. While she sat at her window her stepmother 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 going to marry the him. Dave grunted and Roof's voice came again. Ain't no danger, I reckon, of her telling 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'd 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 toliver, and the clan loyalty of a sentry for Bade, that was all. As she rose she saw a figure sulking past the edge of the woods. She called Bub in and told him about it, and Roof 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 steppment. Old Judd eyed him as scans. Looking for 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 told him to come. And the Red Fox stayed to supper, and when Roof 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 Roof Toliver, and that very night he guided Hale in six of the guard to the edge of a little clearing, where the Red Fox pointed to a one-room cabin, quiet in the moonlight. Hale had his requisition now. Ain't no trouble catching Roof if you bait him with a woman, he snarled. There might be several Tolivers in there. Wait till daybreak and get to drop 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 a bad Roof step outside a door daybreak and stretch his arms with a yawn, and he saw three men spring with leveled Winchester from behind a clump of bushes. The woman shot from the door behind Roof with a pistol in each hand, but Roof kept his hands in the air and turned his head to the woman who lowered the half-raised weapon slowly. When he saw the cavalcade start for the county seat with Roof, manacled in the midst of them, he dropped slowly down into Lonesome Cove to tell Judd that Roof 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 Tolivers, who were at the cabin, galloped into the county seat to find Roof in jail, and that jail guarded by seven grim young men armed with Winchester's and Shotgun's. Hale faced the old man quietly eye to eye. It's no use, Judd, he said. He'd better let the law take its course. The old man was scornful. There's never been a Toliver convicted of killing nobody, much less hanging than there ain't going to be. 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 cards now, but my deal is coming. All right, Judd, you're getting a square one from me. Back row of the Tolivers and double Judd never opened his lips again until he was at home in Lonesome Cove. June was sitting on the porch when he walked heavy-handed through the gate. They've catched Roof. He said, and after a moment he added gruffly, there's going to be sure enough trouble now. The Fallons think all them Bleesfellers are on their side now. There's ain't no place for you. You must get away. June shook her head, and her eyes turned to the flowers at the edge of the garden. I'm not going away, Dad, she said. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 of the Trail of the Lonesome Pine. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox, Jr. Chapter 26 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 Toliver had ever been sentenced, and no jury of mountain men, as well knew, could be found who would convict Toliver, for there were no twelve men in the mountains who would dare. And so the Tolivers decided to wait the outcome of the trial and rest easy. But they did not count on the metal and intelligence of the grim young ferners who were a gaping wedge of civilization at the gap. Straightway they gave up the practice of law and banking and trading and store keeping and kept portholes in the brick walls of the courthouse 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 of 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. An old Judd was almost stifled by the volcanic rage that daily grew within him as the toils daily tightened about roof Toliver. Every happening the old man learned through the Red Fox, who, with his huge pistols, was one of the men who escorted roof to and from courthouse and jail. A volunteer, he all supposed, because he hated roof. And as the tolivers suppose, so that he could keep them advised of everything that went on, which he did with secrecy and his own peculiar faith. And suddenly, and to the growing uneasiness of the tolivers, the law went its way. Roof had proved that he was at the gap all day and had taken no part in the trouble. He reduced a witness, the mountain out, who hail 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 roof, and finally numbled, for fun. But it was plain from the questions that roof had put to hail only a few minutes before the shooting, and from the hesitation of the witness that roof had used him for a tool. So the testimony of Makabe, without even summoning roof to surrender, had fired first, carried no conviction. And yet roof 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 the word reached the ear of the prosecuting attorney of the only testimony that could establish a motive and make the crime a hanging offense. And court was adjourned for a day, while he sent for the witness who could give it. That afternoon, one of the phalons, who had grown bolder, and in twos and threes were always at the trial, shot out of Tolliver on the edge town, and there was an immediate turmoil between the factions that the red fox had been waiting for, and that suited his dark purpose well. That very night, with his big rifle, he slipped through the woods to a turn in 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 sweet and borgen dreams. And when a wagon came through the turn, driven by a boy, and with the gaunt frame of old Dave Tolliver lying in straw on the bed of it, his big rifle thundered and frightened horses dashed on with the red fox's last enemy, lifeless. Coolie he slipped back to the woods, through the shell from his gun, tirelessly he went by shortcuts through the hills, and at noon, benevolent and smiling, he was on guard again. The little courtroom was crowded for the afternoon session, inside the railing sat Roof 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 portholes, and on each side of the door stood a guard with a winchester, and around the railing outside were several more. In spite of the window and porthole, the air was closed and heavy with the smell of tobacco and the sweat of men. Here and there in the crowd was a red fallen, but Nallah Tolliver was in sight, and Roof 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 honor, and as the clerk got to his feet with a slip of paper in his hand, and bawled out a name, Hale wheeled from a thumping heart. The crowd vibrated, turned heads, gave way, and threw the human aisle, walked June Tolliver with the sheriff falling 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 a 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 homespun, and her right hand was clenched tight about the chaste silver handle of a riding web, and her eyes, mouth, and in every line of her tense figure, was the mute question, why have you brought me here? Here, please, said the judge gently as though he was about to answer that question, and as she passed Hale, she seemed to swear of 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 in bad roof, Tolliver, whose black eye has 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, 18, you live in Lonesome Cove. You are the daughter of Jed Tolliver. Do you know the prisoner? He is my foster uncle. Were you at home the night of August the 10th? I was. Have you ever heard the prisoner express any enmity against the volunteer police guard? He waved his hand toward the men in the port holes and about the railing, unconsciously leaving his hand directly pointed at Hale. June hesitated and roof leaned one elbow on the table, and the light of his eyes beat with fierce intensity into the girl's eyes, into which came a curiously frightened look that Hale remembered. The same look she had shown long ago when Roof'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 observed, he would have stopped the prisoner from staring at her now, and the anxious look had come into Roof's eyes. Would she lie for him? Never, said June. Ah, she would. She was a toliver, and Roof 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 Roof's lawyer was on his feet. Your Honor, 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, Roof's words had clang like a bell in her brain. What her awakening terror was when she knew that the deed was done, and the stiffling fear that the victim might be hail. Swiftly, her mind worked. Somebody had blabbed. Her stepmother, perhaps, what Roof had said had reached a fallen year 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 proved to make the prisoners cry in the capital offense. I admit that, of course, Your Honor. Very well, we propose to prove that now. And then she had heard her name called. The proof that was to send Roof Tolliver to the scaffold was to come from her. That was why she was here. Her lips opened in Roof's eyes like a snake's, caught her own, and held them. He said he was going over to the gap. There was a commotion at the door, again the crowd parted, and entoured 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, horsely, glaring at Hale, and took my gal there when I wasn't at home. You, order in the court, said the Judd sternly, but already had a signal from Hale. Several guards were pushing through the crowd. An old Judd saw them coming and saw the felons about him and the Winchester's at the portholes, and he stopped with a hard gulp and stood looking at June. Repeat his last words, said the deep voice again, as calmly as though nothing had happened. He said, I'm going over to the gap, and still Roof's black eyes held her with mesmeric power. 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 in her next words, and she was a tolerer. 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 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 Roof Tolliver and the blue eyes of John Hale. Yes, repeated the deep voice again. Again with her eyes on Roof, she repeated, I'm going over to the gap. Her face turned deadly white. She shivered. Her dark eyes were suddenly full on Hale, and she said slowly and distinctly, yet hardly above a whisper, to kill of 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, and her mouth steadied. She rose, and without looking at him, passed by his outstretched hand and walked slowly out of the courtroom. End of chapter 26. Recording by Ray Smith, Phoenix, Arizona. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr. Chapter 27 of The Lonesome Pine. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti, mikevendetti.com. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr. Chapter 27. 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 Ruth 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 Ruth 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 Judds, 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 Ruth 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 Ruth should be brought back and trying to find out who it was that had slain his brother Dave. The Fallons 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 Fallons, who were lying low and waiting to fulfill a deadly purpose of their own. They well knew that old Judd would not open hostilities on them until Ruth Tolliver was dead or at liberty. They knew that the old man meant to try to rescue Ruth 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, just 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. Veronica Billy's sister had left the house in fear, and she could get no help. Milking cows at cold dawn, helping with the kitchen, spinning facks and wool, and weaving them into rough garments for her father and stepmother and Bob. Within time she thought grimly for herself. For not another scent 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 John Hale's name been mentioned in the cabin. Never but once had her father referred to the testimony that she had given against Ruth Tolliver. For the old man put up on Hale the fact that the sheriff had sneaked into his house when he was away in 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. Of course you had to tell the truth, baby. When they got you there, he said kindly, but kidnapping you that away? 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 Ruth say that. I'd like to know how. I'd like to get my hands on the filler, 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 stepmother'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 Hunt, whose braced kindness was of little avail. And then, still silent, she would get warily 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 knotted in giant caster 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 depth by contact with John Hale's world, as she now saw him but little changed, at the depth by contact with hers. Slowly she came to see, too, that it was his presence in a courtroom 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 courtroom. 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 that 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, it 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, which she laps 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 Roof 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 flushed that made him grip his chair, with both hands in rise to pace the porch. Those Dave had been shot at dawn, and a night before the Red Fox had been absent from the guard and had not turned up until nearly noon the 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 straight away, 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 while 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, for the 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 Fallon in town the court day before? And had he disclosed the whereabouts of Ruf Tolber 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 heels. Apparently there was some general enmity in the old man toward the whole Tolber clan, and maybe he had used the reward to fool Hale as his real motive. And then Hale quietly learned that, long ago the Tolibers bitterly opposed the Red Fox's marriage to a Toliber that Ruf, 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 monitored his horse and a 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 the 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 horses on the other side. There would have been no objecting 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 courthouse 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. What they 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 the cross 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 look out 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 further, 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 further into the bushes. His heart thumped in the silence, the long silence that followed. For it might be a hostile tolliber 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, with his big winchester in his left hand. The red fox too was looking for that cartridge shell, for only the night before he had 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 sideways 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 box ahead. Up the ravine the old man went to a little ledge of rocks, beyond which he was the blind, and when Hale saw his stoop figure slip over that and disappear. He ran noiselessly towards 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 stepped by step, back 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 pocket and fished out an empty country 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 that 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 Roof 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 Roof was spirited back to the 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. Roof stopped in amazement. Then he burst out laughing. He struck then at the pallid face to the bars with his manacles and cursed the old man bitterly. Then he laughed again horribly. The two slept in the joining cells of the same cage that night. One waiting for the scaffold, and the other waiting for the trial with 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. CHAPTER XXVIII. And so while Bad Roof 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 courthouse, giving shrewd answers to questions, or none at all, with the benevolent half of his mask, turned to the jurist 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 Roof worried his enemy with the malicious humor of Satan. Now he would say, Oh, there ain't nothing betwixt old red and me, nothing at all, except his iron wall. And he would drum a vicious tattoo on the thin wall with the heel of his boot. Or when he heard the creek of the Red Fox's hammock, as he droned his Bible aloud, he would say to his guard outside, Of course, I don't read the Bible and preach the word nor talk with spirits. But there's worse men than me in the world, old red in there, 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 power 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 his chief witness against Roof Toliver. John Hale sat his 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 this 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 center. But not quite on the center. And Hale asked where the rifle in and examined it closely. Been tampered with, he said quietly. And he handed it to the prosecuting attorney. The fact was plain. It was a bungleding 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 brainstorms had not come then. There were no eminent alienness to prove insanity for the prisoner. Apparently, he had no friends, none say 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 courtroom, the judge solemnly put to the gray face before him the usual question. Have you anything to say whereby sentence of death would not be pronounced on you? No, he said in a shaking voice. But I have a friend here who I would like to speak for me. The judgment he's had for a moment over his bench and lifted it. It is unusual, he said. But under the circumstances, I will grant your request. Wish a 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 courtroom 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 Tolver Clan. The day set for Roof'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 Tolver, 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 pedigedly learned from a white tablecloth and measuring them piece by piece with the clothes the old man wore in jail. It pleased him too that his body would 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 to perform. Moreover, he would preach his own funeral sermon on the Sunday before Roof'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 the black son 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 Berkeley was on a death watch that night, and as he passed Roof'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 Roof laughed, too. I was only fooling, he said. I ain't going to hang. You hear that Red? I ain't going to hang, but you are, Red. Sure. Nobody'd at risk this little finger for your ol' carcass, except maybe that little old woman of yours who you've treated like a hound, but my folks ain't going to see me hang. Roof spoke with some reason. That night the Tollibers climbed the mountain, and before daybreak were waiting in the woods a mile on the north side of town, and the Fallons climbed, too, further along the mountains, and at the same hour were waiting in the woods a mile to the south. Back in Lonesome Cove, June Tollibers 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. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr. Chapter 29 Day broke on the old courthouse with its black portholes on the Greystone Jail, and on a tall topless wooden box to one side from which projected a cross-beam of green oak. From the center of this beam dangled a rope that swung gently toon-pro when the wind moved, and with the day a flock of little burrs lighted on the bars of the condemned man's cell-window, tripping through them, and when the jailer brought breakfast he found a bad roof, cowering in the corner to be celled, and wet with a swat of fear. Them damn birds again, he growled sullenly. Don't lose your nerve, Ruth, 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 their turnkey went away shaking his head. Ruth had told the jailer his one friend through whom he had kept in constant communication with the tollefers. How on the night after the shooting of Machabe, when he laid down to sleep high on the mountainside and under some rotadendrum 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 know this time my name was Dennis. The 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 thorn-oath old Judd had sent him that he would never hang. With the day through the mountains and valley came in converging winds mountain humanity, men and women, boys and girls, children and babes in arms. All in their Sunday best the men and jeans slouched hats in high boots, women and gay ribbons, and brilliant homespun. In wagons, on foot, on horses and mules, carrying man and 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, through the straggling little mountain town, a stranger would have thought that a county fair, a camp meeting, or circus, was their goal. But they were on their way to look upon the courthouse, with its black portholes, the gray stone 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 roof was led to the scaffold, and he knew that neither fowls nor tollivers would come in a band. So the incoming tide flowed on the outskirts of the town and along every road boys' 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 shotguns, and the wondering people saw at the back windows of the courthouse and at the threatening portholes 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 neighboring hills were black with people waiting. The house tops were black with men and boys waiting. The trees in the streets were bending under the weight of human bodies, and the jailyard fence was three feet deep with people hanging on it, and hanging about one another's necks. All waiting. All morning they waited, silently and patiently. Now the fatal noon was hardly an hour away and not a fallen nor a tolliver had been seen. Every fallen had been disarmed of his winchester as he came in, and as yet no tolliver had entered the town, for while the 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 his load of anxiety was beginning to lighten that there was a little commotion at the edge of the courthouse. And a great red-headed figure pushed through the crowd, followed by another of like-billed, and as the people rapidly gave way and fell back, a line of fallen slipped through the wall, and stood under the courthouse, quiet, watchful, and determined. Almost at the same time the crowd fell back the other way up the street. There was the hurried trampling of feet, and on came the tollivers, headed by giant Judd, all armed with Winchester's. For old Judd had sent his guns in ahead, and as the crowd swept like water into any channel or a valley or doorway that was open to it, Hale saw the yard emptied of everybody but the line of fallen 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 portholes of the courthouse, the windows of the jailer's house, the line of guards about to jail, and then they dropped to the line of fallons and glared with contemptuous hate into the leaping blue eyes of old Buck Fallon, and for that moment there was silence. And that silence and as silently as the silence itself issued swiftly from the line of guards twelve youngsters with Winchester's, repeating shotguns, and in a minute six were facing the fallons and six facing the tollivers, each with his shotgun and 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 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 drop 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 beatling eyebrows and angry working beard of old Judd now. The fallons are here to get revenge on you tollivers. If you attack us, I know that. But he wheeled on the fallons, understand? We don't want your help. If the tollivers try to take that man in there and one of you fallons draws a pistol, those guns there, waving his hands toward the jail windows, will be turned loose on you. We'll fight you both. The last word shot like bullets through his good at teeth, and 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 goodbye. 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 fallen. Made of 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 within an insulting certainty that not a shot would be fired. Not a fallen 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 the last resort. For ignorance faced now, belching shotguns, and was commanded by rifles on every side. Old Judd was trapped and the Fallon first stunned. Old Buck Fallon 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 the look of baffled, malignant, hatred, and bud-dyes 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 portholes 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 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 sacheless window as by a picture frame and blinking in the strong light stood a man with black hair, dropped close, face pale and worn, and hands that looked white and thin stood, bad-roofed caliber. He was going to confess. That was the rumor. 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 roof 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 killed one Fallon 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 Fallon out of the courthouse window and broken his neck? The Fallon was drunk, roof always said, and fell out. Why then he was constable. He had killed another because, roof said, he resisted arrest. How and where he had killed Redneck 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. Little squads of youngsters, back to back, with their repeating shotguns, the line of Fallons along the wall toward whom protruded six shining barrels, the huddle crowd of tolovers 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. The flashing understood, and in that flash his face looked as though he had been suddenly struck, a heavy blow, by someone 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 old Judds 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 moment, Roof 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, settling into defiant calm. And then he did one kind of thing. He turned in his seat, and motioned Bob Berkeley, who was just behind him, away from the window, and the boy to humor him, stepped aside. Then he rose to his feet and stretched his arms wide. Simultaneously came with a faraway crack of a rifle, and as a jet of smoke spurred above a clump of bushes on a little hill three hundred yards away, bad Roof wheeled halfway round and fell back out of sight, under the sheriff's arms. Every fallen made a nervous reach for his pistol, the line of gun-muzzles covering them wavered slightly, but the taller stood still and unsurprised. And when hail dashed from the door again, there was a grim smile of triumph on old Judd's face. He had kept his promise that Roof should never hang. Steadider, said hail quietly, his pistol on his hip now into Winchester was in his health-tand. Stand where you are, everybody. There was a 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, dolly, 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 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. Gone now, said the red fox. Outside hail still waited, and his eyes turned from the tollebbers to the phalons. 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 Roof Tollber. He held out his watch. Keep those men there, he said, pointing to the phalons, and he turned to the bewildered tollbers. Come on, Judd. He said kindly, all of you. Dazed and mystified, they followed him in a body around the corner of the jail, wearing a coffin that old Judd had sent to the blind to his real purpose lay the remains of bad Roof Tollber. With a harmless bullet hole through one shoulder, nearby was a wagon and hitch to it were two mules that hail himself had provided. Hail pointed to it. Done all I could, Judd, take him away. I'll keep the phalons under guard until he reach the Kentucky line, so that they can't wail at 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 hail spoke. I'm sorry for all this. I'm even sorry that your man was not a better shot. Still man straightened. Then, with a gesture, he motioned young Dave to the foot of the coffin and stooped himself at the head. Passed the wagon they went, the crowd giving way before them, and with the dead tollber on the shoulders. Old Judd, young Dave, passed with their followers out of sight. The longest of her life was that day to June. The anxiety and 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 special danger that was hails, 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. Dolly, she heard the horses snorting from the cold, the low court orders of her father, and the exciting mutterings of Bub and young Dave. Dolly, she watched the saddles thrown on, the pistols buckled, the Winchester's caught up. And Dolly, 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 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 Toliver 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 might not perhaps guard him. The man who had planted for her the due drenched garden that was waiting for the son, and had built the little room behind her for her comfort and exclusion, 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 Toliver 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 a lady, the woman of the world, in manner, dress, and education, who had a gift of music and 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 Toliver 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 stepmother's voice now, the same old quarrelous nerve-wracking voice that had embedded her, 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 it now 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 the 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 kneel were to lie idle that day. The old stepmother 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 let 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 get mad about it. I got to go someday this week and I reckon I might as well go to-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 the light as rich and yellow as though it were late afternoon, and she could yet tell every tree by the different color of the banner that each yet definitely 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 and tenderness brooded over the earth. Peace! Peace with a man on his way to the 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 drooping 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 sunflowers were nothing but grotesque black mummy heads set on lean, dead bodies, and the clump of big caster 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, Nassastrum 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 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 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. Howdy, 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 beach, June Hale, and by a grotesque mental leap the beating of his name in her brain now made her think of the beating of Hale Stone 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 zigzag 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 tri-ream. It 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 mountain 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 breath 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 long 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 eye 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 pretense of having something to do inside the mill. Will June watch 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 Tolliverse, with Roof's body, made it slow way to the Kentucky line where Judd, and Dave, and Bud left them to go home for the night, and be on hand for the funeral the next day. But Uncle Billy led her back to his cabin, and on the porch the two, with Old Hun, waited while the three hours dragged along. It was June who first heard the galloping of horses hoofs up the road, and she ran to the gate, followed by Uncle Billy, an old Hun, to see Dave Tolliver coming in a run. At the gate he threw himself from his horse. Get up there, June, and go home, he panted sharply. June flashed out the gate. Have you done it? She asked with deadly quiet. Hurry up and go home, I tell you. Uncle Judd wants you. She came quite close to him now. You said, you 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 you. Uncle Judd shot. Get on the horse. No. No. No. I won'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 porthole 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 labored 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, June, they shot me from the laurel, and then 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. His stop. I'm afraid he's bleeding 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 followed June back and left my horse in the bushes. There was three of them. He showed Bub a bullet hole through one sleeve, and then he turned half-contemptuously to June. I ain't done it, adding grimly, not yet. He's as safe as you are. I hope you're satisfied that hit ain't him. Stay your daddy there. Are you going to the Gap for a doctor? I reckon I can't leave Bub here alone again, all that valence, not even to get a doctor or care love message for 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, Juneie. 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 towards the lonesome pine. The rain came then, the rain that the tiny cobwebs had heralded at dawn that morning. The old stepmother 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 neighbor. 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 Roof was dead. Her father wounded, and Bub and Dave both had but narrowly escaped the Fallen 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 the 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 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 been 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, Junie. They've beat us on every turn. They've got us one by one. There ain't but a few of us left now. And when I get up, if I ever do, I'm going to gather them all together, pull up stakes and take them all west. You won't ever leave me, Junie. 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 will Bub and Dave slept and the rain poured. Junie would repeat her answer. I'll never leave you, Dad.