On Kingdom Mountain

by Howard Frank Mosher

  “Ten thousand years ago,” Miss Jane repeated, “the place that we now call Kingdom County would have been scarcely recognizable to us. The mountains were thrice their current height. The forests were uninhabited, even by my mother’s Memphremagog ancestors. Now enter the great ice sheet—”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Eben Kinneson Esquire interrupted. “We all appreciate the fact that my cousin is an able lecturer. But what bearing does the glaciation of northern New England have upon the town’s very generous offer to pay her three times the value of the land appropriated for the right of way and to reroute the Connector around her beloved spawning pool?”

  “Jane?” Judge Allen said.

  “A gang of Frenchmen in the pay of the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company waltzed onto my property without my permission and destroyed the last tract of original forest on Kingdom Mountain. They wantonly despoiled a stretch of river where the descendants of the unique blue-backed char that came south with the glacier have spawned for thousands of years.”

  “Judge Allen,” Eben said, “we must protest. Miss Kinneson’s reputation as a venerable fixture of Kingdom County notwithstanding, even she was not here to witness those fish spawning thousands of years ago, and so cannot speak with authority on how long the spawning beds have—”

  Crack. Before Eben Kinneson Esquire could finish his sentence, Miss Jane reached across the aisle and brought her wooden pointer smartly down on his knuckles. The astonished attorney gave a yelp and half rose.

  “That, sir, is how I dealt with impudence in my schoolroom,” Miss Jane said. “It is how I deal with your impudence. Sit down and curb your impertinent tongue.”

  Eben Kinneson Esquire rubbed his knuckles. A smile played at the corners of Henry Satterfield’s mouth, and his dark eyes gleamed. But Judge Allen brought down his gavel with a bang. “Jane, there will be no more corporal punishment meted out in this courtroom. As for you, Eben, stop your whining. There will be no more unchivalrous references to the plaintiff’s longevity, either. Hear me well, my friends. This is not Kingdom Mountain nor yet the august headquarters of the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company, Incorporated. It is my courtroom. In it we will conduct ourselves with a measure of civility. Jane, you may proceed with your opening statement. Please do us the kindness of making it shorter rather than longer.”

  “Kingdom Mountain has always been regarded as a gore,” she said quite defiantly, “one of the last in Vermont. In other words, an unincorporated township unto itself. No Kingdom Mountain Kinneson has ever paid a penny of local, state, or federal taxes. The mountain belongs to me and to me alone. I am requesting one thousand dollars as reparation for my timber and an injunction to prevent the high road from crossing my property. Case closed.”

  Jane sat down at the plaintiff’s table beside Henry.

  “That’s all?” Eben said.

  “How long does it take to chronicle a grievous wrong and propose away to right it? The truth, cousin, need never be long in the telling. The floor belongs to you.”

  Eben Kinneson Esquire smiled thinly and stood up. Continuing to rub his reddened left knuckles with his right hand, he said, with a superior air, “Your honor, the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company and the township of Kingdom Common acknowledge that one of their subcontractors cut a few hundred dollars’ worth of timber on Miss Kinneson’s property. No doubt some minor alterations were made to the riverine terrain. No documented injury was suffered by the fish. Have any dead fish been exhibited before the court? No. Has the defense produced any witnesses? No again. The Great North Woods Company, however, will produce witnesses. We will follow proper courtroom protocol. But why waste the time of the court at all? The town of Kingdom Common has already offered Miss Jane one thousand dollars for the right of way over Kingdom Mountain. Also, the town is willing to route the Connector around my cousin’s spawning pool. Indeed, the original right of way map provided to the cutting crew circumvented the pool in question. But instead of referring the matter to me or to the town fathers, Jane Kinneson assaulted my loggers with a deadly weapon.”

  Judge Allen did not seem much impressed by the last allegation. “Are you ready to call your first witness, Eben?”

  Eben’s first witness was the Canadian crew chief. With some difficulty, because of Monsieur Thibideau’s heavy accent, Eben established that Thibideau had been given a topographical map with the right of way and the condemned property outlined on its contours. The map was produced, and in her cross-examination Miss Jane asked Thibideau to read the legend at its bottom.

  The crew chief grinned. “I can’t, me.”

  “Why not? Surely you can read?”

  “Oui. In French.”

  Next a college-trained forester, billed as an expert witness for the defense, testified that he had examined the stream in question a few days earlier and found no dead fish.

  “A query, forester,” Miss Jane said. “Did you secure permission to check the fish in my spawning pool?”

  “Certainly. From Mr. Kinneson.”

  “Let me understand this. My cousin gave you permission to come onto my land to manufacture evidence to use against me in court?”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Eben Kinneson Esquire said. “Because of the way that question is—”

  “I withdraw the query,” Miss Jane said. To the forester she said, “If I see you again on Kingdom Mountain, I won’t answer for the consequences.”

  “Your Honor,” Eben said, “the sectors of Kingdom Mountain that lie south of the forty-fifth parallel of latitude, designated as the international border between Vermont and Quebec, clearly belong in the township of Kingdom Common. The township is well within its rights to drive a road over the mountain, connecting the county to the Eastern Townships of Quebec and thence to Montreal. Indeed, the so-called Canada Pike Road running over the mountain has never been officially abandoned by the township. If necessary, my clients can simply route the right of way along the pike road. Miss Jane may own Kingdom Mountain. She does not own the road connecting it to Canada.”

  “Jane, do you wish to make a closing statement?” Judge Allen said.

  “I do,” she said. “The woodland splendors of the Gate to Canada have been destroyed. I ask for one thousand dollars as reparation for the cut timber. As for the Canada Pike Road, it’s been all but impassable for decades. Neither the township of Kingdom Common nor the state of Vermont nor the United States of America nor the Dominion of Canada owns one square inch of Kingdom Mountain. It belongs to me and me alone.

  “There will be no high road,” she continued. “I end with a gloss of the famous words of old Cato, who concluded each of his speeches to the Roman Senate, no matter the topic, with the urgent reminder Carthage delendo est. Carthage must be destroyed.” Miss Jane paused. Then, in a stentorian voice worthy of old Cato himself, she roared out, “Via alta delendo est, my good people. The high road must be destroyed.”

  Judge Allen sighed and retired to his chambers to deliberate. Miss Jane remained sitting at the plaintiff’s table with Henry. From time to time she tapped her pointer on the edge of the table and glared meaningfully at Eben Kinneson Esquire, the knuckles of whose left hand were now visibly swollen.

  “Well, well,” said the judge, returning to the courtroom sooner than expected. “The Canada Pike Road reminded me of a story, folks. You’ve all heard it said that we Kingdomers don’t need to travel the world because everyone worth knowing will eventually come to the Kingdom? Were you aware that in 1904 President Teddy Roosevelt came to Kingdom County?”

  “Everyone knows that tale, Ira,” Miss Jane said. “Render your verdict.”

  Unperturbed, Judge Allen continued his anecdote. “Teddy traveled here to testify in person, in a libel suit that he was bringing against the Kingdom County Monitor. Old editor James Kinneson had called Teddy a ‘porky flatlander’ in the pages of the Monitor and somehow Teddy caught wind of it and came rampaging up to the Kingdom to join combat. The courtroom was packe
d. The president said he’d plead guilty to being a bit on the rotund side, but by jingo, he was no flatlander. T.R. pounded the plaintiff’s table with his fist and said he’d hunted mountain lions in the Rockies with Zane Grey and written books on the Adirondacks and that he was a country boy and a mountain boy born and bred, and no man jack in the universe could prove differently. Everybody liked T.R. and was highly indignant that Editor K had calumniated him. The jury wasn’t out five minutes. In they paraded, finding for the president. There was no doubt, they said, that he’d been libeled.” Judge Allen glanced around to be sure everyone was listening. “Then they fined Editor Kinneson five cents. The price, at the time, of a copy of the Monitor.”

  The judge continued, “In the case of Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson versus Eben Kinneson and the Town of Kingdom Common, I find the town liable for damages to Miss Kinneson’s hillside amounting to five hundred dollars’ worth of timber.”

  For a moment it appeared to Henry as though Miss Jane had adjudicated herself right out of five hundred dollars. But the judge wasn’t finished.

  “Also,” he said, “I find the Town of Kingdom Common and the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company liable for causing significant damage to Kingdom Mountain Burn and the Upper East Branch of the Kingdom River, and especially to the spawning bed of Miss Jane’s char. Therefore, I rule that under the personal supervision of Eben Kinneson and the selectmen of Kingdom Common, the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper Company will fully restore the stream and river to their previous condition and reforest the Gate to Canada. As for the right of way for the Connector, it’s the ruling of this court that the Connector can go out around Kingdom Mountain, as sensible people who wish to travel to Canada have been doing for the past two hundred years. That road is not to impinge on Miss Jane’s property.”

  “Objection!” Eben Kinneson Esquire cried out. “Objection, Your Honor. We will pay for the timber and have a crew replant the hillside. But this court has no legal authority to impose any personal conditions on me or on the town fathers. Or to rule on the right of way.”

  Down came Judge Allen’s gavel. “Oh, yes it does, in both cases,” the judge said. “I hereby stipulate that the reforestation and the stocking will be conducted under the direct supervision of the owner of the Great North Woods Pulp and Paper, Inc., Eben Kinneson. Moreover, I intend to be there to volunteer my own services. Other volunteers will apply directly to Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson of Kingdom Mountain. The work will begin tomorrow at eight A.M., with a one-hundred-dollar-a-day fine for every day of delay. As for the right of way, and the prerogatives of the court, this is the district court of Kingdom County. It has complete jurisdiction over any and all monkey-shines and shenanigans of questionable legality in the county. You’re entitled to appeal the decision, Eben, if you and your clients don’t like it. I, for one, don’t want that highway anywhere near those blue-backed char or Miss Jane’s mountain. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, gentlemen. Sharp.”

  12

  HALF the population of the village traipsed out to Kingdom Mountain the next day to participate in the reforestation project, and for once the weather on the mountain cooperated. It was warm and clear, a perfect day in early May.

  The reseeding crew was there by eight, along with Eben Kinneson Esquire. Judge Ira Allen, in his hiking boots and a lumber jacket, worked as hard as anyone. The crew pulled the evergreen slash out of the brook, dumped several wagonloads of clean gravel into the river, filled in the ruts on the cutover hillside, seeded it down with wild grass seed, and planted new fir and spruce seedlings. Eben worked side by side with Miss Jane, Judge Allen, and numerous Commoners. Henry Satterfield, in his gleaming white suit, watched the entire proceedings with a bemused expression. At noon Miss Jane fed everyone baked beans, fried chicken, pickles, homemade bread, and her famous no-egg chocolate wonder cake. The day had the gala air of a barn-raising bee.

  That evening, after everyone else had gone home, Judge Allen showed up on Miss Jane’s porch with an old bitters bottle he’d found near the Gate to Canada. In it he’d arranged a few yellow woods violets and white and pink spring beauties. Henry saw the judge coming as he was headed out to the barn to inventory the parts he would need to repair his biplane. The aviator slipped inside the woodshed, leaving the door ajar, while Miss Jane and Ira met on the porch near Jane’s Virginia creeper.

  “Jane,” the judge said, “I want you to know that I expect nothing. Nor did I expect anything when I was considering your case or helping replant your trees. But if you’re ever inclined to look down at the village from my home on Anderson Hill, I’d be the happiest man in Kingdom County.”

  “Why,” Miss Jane said after a slight hesitation, “you’re a dear old fool, Ira Allen, and come to think of it, I’m no better. What, pray, would a hardscrabble hill farmer like me do with a home in the village? These days I scarcely know what to do with my own home. Still, I thank you kindly for the offer.”

  There was a lingering moment of silence. Henry peered around the corner of the shed door, but Miss Jane and the judge had stepped out of his line of view behind the creeper.

  That night, however, after they had retired for the evening, Miss Jane called up to Henry in his upstairs room through a hole in the ceiling of her bedchamber, “I have an admission to make to you, Mr. Satterfield.”

  The hole, fitted with an iron grating that could be opened from Henry’s room to admit heat rising from the chamber below, seemed to amplify their voices.

  “An admission, Miss Jane?”

  “Yes. Some time ago, I mentioned to you that Judge Allen and I were school chums.”

  “You did. No one who didn’t know would ever guess it, though. You look, if I may say so, twenty years younger than the judge.”

  “Pshaw. But it is time for me to ’fess up. Judge Allen and I were not merely school chums. He was, for a time, my admirer.”

  “I can easily believe that, ma’am.”

  “One of several.”

  “I believe that, as well.”

  “I was too proud, however, to encourage them. In the case of young Ira, who was a fine lad and has certainly turned into a fine man, I was half again too proud to declare myself to him. He married someone else and, though she died recently, I think they were happy together. I also think that he never entirely forgot me.”

  “I think so, too, Miss Jane,” Henry said gallantly. “I do think so, too.”

  “Thank you again, sir. But why, then, didn’t I accept Judge Allen’s offer tonight? Don’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping. I know better. I would have been eavesdropping had the situation been reversed.”

  “I don’t know why, Miss Jane.”

  “Well, I don’t, either,” Jane said, perhaps a bit ruefully. “Henry?”

  It was the first time she had called the pilot by his given name.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “When next you fall in love with a beautiful young woman, like the beautiful and ill-fated Lola Beauregard Beauclerk of Lake Charles, Louisiana, you must declare yourself to her. Her answer may be yea, it may be nay. But you must declare yourself. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Miss Jane.”

  “No, you do not,” she said fiercely. “After your great tragedy, you cannot suppose that you will ever again fall in love. But you will, for that is the way of the world. Strife is the way of the world. So is falling in love. In the meantime, one of us is going to receive an important letter soon.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can’t say. Any more than I can say how I know that you must declare yourself to the person you love. Second sight is a strange creature. Neither fish nor fowl nor beast of the held nor bird of the air. It’s like love.”

  “How is that, Miss Jane?”

  “You must simply trust it. Good night, Mr. Satterfield.”

  “Good night, Miss Jane.”

  13

  THE IMPORTANT LETTER did not come the following day or the day after that, but Miss Jane r
emained serenely confident. Sooner rather than later, she assured Henry, the message would arrive. The Texas rainmaker was rather skeptical concerning second sight. But he was far too much of a gentleman to argue the matter with Miss Jane or to point out that if one waited long enough, an important letter or, for that matter, a stranger would almost always arrive.

  Henry continued to spend a few hours each day working on his plane. Yet he seemed in no particular hurry to get back aloft and move along. He had no scheduled engagements, he said, until fall, when he was slated to launch a barnstorming air tour in Atlantic City. Miss Jane believed that he had decided to take the summer off to recover from the tragic loss of his wing-walker and intended, Miss Lola Beauregard Beauclerk. And it crossed her mind that perhaps, after his accident on the frozen lake, he needed a breathing space from flying.

  The pilot had some music in him. Some evenings he played the fiddle, running through a repertoire of old mountain songs handed down from his grandfather’s ancestors in North Carolina, while Miss Jane picked out the chords of “Turkey in the Straw” and “The Devil’s Dream” on her mother’s upright piano in On Kingdom Mountain, as her dear people looked on with what seemed like grave approval. Jane prided herself on not being able to sing a note, but she hummed along tunelessly.

  Henry could spin a yarn, too. He recounted to Miss Jane how, while trying to become the first aviator to fly around the world, he had crashed in Siberia and subsisted on meat hacked off a frozen mammoth in a cave, dined on nocturnal serpents in Mongolia, and glimpsed a naked, six-armed woman wearing a crown set with rubies and sapphires and riding a tiger in the forests of India. He did not tell her that since his crash landing on the frozen lake and the resulting temporary memory loss, he had sometimes heard his granddaddy, Captain Cantrell Satterfield, talking to him in his head. What is the delay, boy? the old man said to him at least once a day. Are you going to make your run at her or not? Some other jackass could stumble onto the boodle, you know, whilst you’re playing the gentleman with the woman.