by John Fox
XXX
The longest of her life was that day to June. The anxiety in times ofwar for the women who wait at home is vague because they are mercifullyignorant of the dangers their loved ones run, but a specific issue thatinvolves death to those loved ones has a special and poignant terror ofits own. June knew her father's plan, the precise time the fight wouldtake place, and the especial danger that was Hale's, for she knew thatyoung Dave Tolliver had marked him with the first shot fired. Dry-eyedand white and dumb, she watched them make ready for the start thatmorning while it was yet dark; dully she heard the horses snorting fromthe cold, the low curt orders of her father, and the exciting mutteringsof Bub and young Dave; dully she watched the saddles thrown on, thepistols buckled, the Winchesters caught up, and dully she watched themfile out the gate and ride away, single file, into the cold, damp mistlike ghostly figures in a dream. Once only did she open her lips andthat was to plead with her father to leave Bub at home, but her fathergave her no answer and Bub snorted his indignation--he was a man now,and his now was the privilege of a man. For a while she stood listeningto the ring of metal against stone that came to her more and morefaintly out of the mist, and she wondered if it was really June Tolliverstanding there, while father and brother and cousin were on their way tofight the law--how differently she saw these things now--for a man whodeserved death, and to fight a man who was ready to die for his duty tothat law--the law that guarded them and her and might not perhaps guardhim: the man who had planted for her the dew-drenched garden that waswaiting for the sun, and had built the little room behind her forher comfort and seclusion; who had sent her to school, had never beenanything but kind and just to her and to everybody--who had taught herlife and, thank God, love. Was she really the June Tolliver who had goneout into the world and had held her place there; who had conquered birthand speech and customs and environment so that none could tell whatthey all once were; who had become the lady, the woman of the world, inmanner, dress, and education: who had a gift of music and a voice thatmight enrich her life beyond any dream that had ever sprung from her ownbrain or any that she had ever caught from Hale's? Was she June Tolliverwho had been and done all that, and now had come back and was slowlysinking back into the narrow grave from which Hale had lifted her? Itwas all too strange and bitter, but if she wanted proof there was herstep-mother's voice now--the same old, querulous, nerve-racking voicethat had embittered all her childhood--calling her down into the oldmean round of drudgery that had bound forever the horizon of her narrowlife just as now it was shutting down like a sky of brass around herown. And when the voice came, instead of bursting into tears as she wasabout to do, she gave a hard little laugh and she lifted a defiantface to the rising sun. There was a limit to the sacrifice for kindred,brother, father, home, and that limit was the eternal sacrifice--theeternal undoing of herself: when this wretched terrible business wasover she would set her feet where that sun could rise on her, busy withthe work that she could do in that world for which she felt she wasborn. Swiftly she did the morning chores and then she sat on the porchthinking and waiting. Spinning wheel, loom, and darning needle wereto lie idle that day. The old step-mother had gotten from bed and wasdressing herself--miraculously cured of a sudden, miraculously active.She began to talk of what she needed in town, and June said nothing. Shewent out to the stable and led out the old sorrel-mare. She was going tothe hanging.
"Don't you want to go to town, June?"
"No," said June fiercely.
"Well, you needn't git mad about it--I got to go some day this week,and I reckon I might as well go ter-day." June answered nothing, but insilence watched her get ready and in silence watched her ride away. Shewas glad to be left alone. The sun had flooded Lonesome Cove now with alight as rich and yellow as though it were late afternoon, and she couldyet tell every tree by the different colour of the banner that each yetdefiantly flung into the face of death. The yard fence was festoonedwith dewy cobwebs, and every weed in the field was hung with them aswith flashing jewels of exquisitely delicate design: Hale had once toldher that they meant rain. Far away the mountains were overhung withpurple so deep that the very air looked like mist, and a peacethat seemed motherlike in tenderness brooded over the earth. Peace!Peace--with a man on his way to a scaffold only a few miles away, andtwo bodies of men, one led by her father, the other by the man sheloved, ready to fly at each other's throats--the one to get thecondemned man alive, the other to see that he died. She got up witha groan. She walked into the garden. The grass was tall, tangled, andwithering, and in it dead leaves lay everywhere, stems up, stems down,in reckless confusion. The scarlet sage-pods were brown and seeds weredropping from their tiny gaping mouths. The marigolds were frost-nippedand one lonely black-winged butterfly was vainly searching them oneby one for the lost sweets of summer. The gorgeous crowns of thesun-flowers were nothing but grotesque black mummy-heads set on lean,dead bodies, and the clump of big castor-plants, buffeted by the wind,leaned this way and that like giants in a drunken orgy trying to keepone another from falling down. The blight that was on the garden was theblight that was in her heart, and two bits of cheer only she found--oneyellow nasturtium, scarlet-flecked, whose fragrance was a memory of thespring that was long gone, and one little cedar tree that had caughtsome dead leaves in its green arms and was firmly holding them as thoughto promise that another spring would surely come. With the flower inher hand, she started up the ravine to her dreaming place, but it was solonely up there and she turned back. She went into her room and triedto read. Mechanically, she half opened the lid of the piano and shutit, horrified by her own act. As she passed out on the porch again shenoticed that it was only nine o'clock. She turned and watched the longhand--how long a minute was! Three hours more! She shivered and wentinside 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 shackshe had built up the creek were deserted and gone to ruin, and she beganto wonder in the light of what her father had said how much of a tragedythat meant to him. Here was the spot where he was fishing that day, whenshe had slipped down behind him and he had turned and seen her for thefirst time. She could recall his smile and the very tone of his kindvoice:
"Howdye, little girl!" And the cat had got her tongue. She rememberedwhen she had written her name, after she had first kissed him at thefoot of the beech--"June HAIL," and by a grotesque mental leap thebeating of his name in her brain now made her think of the beating ofhailstones on her father's roof one night when as a child she had lainand listened to them. Then she noticed that the autumn shadows seemed tomake the river darker than the shadows of spring--or was it alreadythe stain of dead leaves? Hale could have told her. Those leaves werefloating through the shadows and when the wind moved, others zig-zaggedsoftly down to join them. The wind was helping them on the water, too,and along came one brown leaf that was shaped like a tiny trireme--itsstem acting like a rudder and keeping it straight before the breeze--sothat it swept past the rest as a yacht that she was once on had sweptpast a fleet of fishing sloops. She was not unlike that swift littleship and thirty yards ahead were rocks and shallows where it and thewhole fleet would turn topsy-turvy--would her own triumph be as shortand the same fate be hers? There was no question as to that, unless shetook the wheel of her fate in her own hands and with them steered theship. Thinking hard, she walked on slowly, with her hands behind herand her eyes bent on the road. What should she do? She had no money, herfather had none to spare, and she could accept no more from Hale. Onceshe stopped and stared with unseeing eyes at the blue sky, and onceunder the heavy helplessness of it all she dropped on the side of theroad and sat with her head buried in her arms--sat so long that she rosewith a start and, with an apprehensive look at the mounting sun, hurriedon. She would go to the Gap and teach; and then she knew that if shewent there it would be on Hale's account. Very well, she would not blindherself to that fact; she would go and perhaps al
l would be made upbetween them, and then she knew that if that but happened, nothing elsecould matter...
When she reached the miller's cabin, she went to the porch withoutnoticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she turnedlistlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock beginningto strike, and with one hand on her breast she breathlessly listened,counting--"eight, nine, ten, eleven"--and her heart seemed to stop inthe fraction of time that she waited for it to strike once more. But itwas only eleven, and she went on down the road slowly, still thinkinghard. The old miller was leaning back in a chair against the log sideof the mill, with his dusty slouched hat down over his eyes. He did nothear her coming and she thought he must be asleep, but he looked up witha start when she spoke and she knew of what he, too, had been thinking.Keenly his old eyes searched her white face and without a word he got upand reached for another chair within the mill.
"You set right down now, baby," he said, and he made a pretence ofhaving something to do inside the mill, while June watched the creakingold 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 satdown and neither spoke a word. Once June saw him covertly looking at hiswatch 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 didget the question out, her voice was only a broken whisper.
"Five minutes to twelve, baby," said the old man, and his voice had agulp in it that broke June down. She sprang to her feet wringing herhands:
"I can't stand it, Uncle Billy," she cried madly, and with a sob thatalmost 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 cavalcadeof Tollivers, with Rufe's body, made its slow way to the Kentucky linewhere Judd and Dave and Bub left them to go home for the night and beon hand for the funeral next day. But Uncle Billy led her back to hiscabin, and on the porch the two, with old Hon, waited while the threehours dragged along. It was June who was first to hear the gallopingof horses' hoofs up the road and she ran to the gate, followed by UncleBilly and old Hon to see young Dave Tolliver coming in a run. At thegate he threw himself from his horse:
"Git up thar, June, and go home," he panted sharply. June flashed outthe gate.
"Have you done it?" she asked with deadly quiet.
"Hurry up an' go home, I tell ye! Uncle Judd wants ye!"
She came quite close to him now.
"You said you'd do it--I know what you've done--you--" she looked as ifshe would fly at his throat, and Dave, amazed, shrank back a step.
"Go home, I tell ye--Uncle Judd's shot. Git on the hoss!"
"No, no, NO! I wouldn't TOUCH anything that was yours"--she put herhands to her head as though she were crazed, and then she turned andbroke into a swift run up the road.
Panting, June reached the gate. The front door was closed and there shegave a tremulous cry for Bub. The door opened a few inches and throughit Bub shouted for her to come on. The back door, too, was closed, andnot a ray of daylight entered the room except at the port-hole whereBub, with a Winchester, had been standing on guard. By the light of thefire she saw her father's giant frame stretched out on the bed and sheheard his laboured breathing. Swiftly she went to the bed and dropped onher knees beside it.
"Dad!" she said. The old man's eyes opened and turned heavily towardher.
"All right, Juny. They shot me from the laurel and they might nigh gotBub. I reckon they've got me this time."
"No--no!" He saw her eyes fixed on the matted blood on his chest.
"Hit's stopped. I'm afeared hit's bleedin' inside." His voice haddropped to a whisper and his eyes closed again. There was anothercautious "Hello" outside, and when Bub again opened the door Dave ranswiftly within. He paid no attention to June.
"I follered June back an' left my hoss in the bushes. There was three of'em." He showed Bub a bullet hole through one sleeve and then he turnedhalf contemptuously to June:
"I hain't done it"--adding grimly--"not yit. He's as safe as you air. Ihope you're satisfied that hit hain't him 'stid o' yo' daddy thar."
"Are you going to the Gap for a doctor?"
"I reckon I can't leave Bub here alone agin all the Falins--not even togit a doctor or to carry a love-message fer you."
"Then I'll go myself."
A thick protest came from the bed, and then an appeal that might havecome from a child.
"Don't leave me, Juny." Without a word June went into the kitchen andgot the old bark horn.
"Uncle Billy will go," she said, and she stepped out on the porch. ButUncle Billy was already on his way and she heard him coming just as shewas raising the horn to her lips. She met him at the gate, and withouteven taking the time to come into the house the old miller hurriedupward toward the Lonesome Pine. The rain came then--the rain that thetiny cobwebs had heralded at dawn that morning. The old step-mother hadnot come home, and June told Bub she had gone over the mountain to seeher sister, and when, as darkness fell, she did not appear they knewthat she must have been caught by the rain and would spend the nightwith a neighbour. June asked no question, but from the low talk of Buband Dave she made out what had happened in town that day and a wildelation settled in her heart that John Hale was alive and unhurt--thoughRufe was dead, her father wounded, and Bub and Dave both had butnarrowly escaped the Falin assassins that afternoon. Bub took the firstturn at watching while Dave slept, and when it was Dave's turn she sawhim drop quickly asleep in his chair, and she was left alone with thebreathing of the wounded man and the beating of rain on the roof. Andthrough the long night June thought her brain weary over herself, herlife, her people, and Hale. They were not to blame--her people, they butdid as their fathers had done before them. They had their own code andthey lived up to it as best they could, and they had had no chance tolearn another. She felt the vindictive hatred that had prolonged thefeud. Had she been a man, she could not have rested until she had slainthe 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 toblame for loving her--he had always done that. For that reason he couldnot help hating Hale, and how great a reason he had now, for he couldnot understand as she could the absence of any personal motive that hadgoverned him in the prosecution of the law, no matter if he hurt friendor foe. But for Hale, she would have loved Dave and now be married tohim 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 gentleand determined to stick to her people and do the best she could with herlife.
And now and then through the night old Judd would open his eyes andstare at the ceiling, and at these times it was not the pain in hisface that distressed her as much as the drawn beaten look that she hadnoticed growing in it for a long time. It was terrible--that helplesslook in the face of a man, so big in body, so strong of mind, soiron-like in will; and whenever he did speak she knew what he was goingto say:
"It's all over, Juny. They've beat us on every turn. They've got us oneby one. Thar ain't but a few of us left now and when I git up, if I everdo, I'm goin' to gether 'em all together, pull up stakes and take 'emall West. You won't ever leave me, Juny?"
"No, Dad," she would say gently. He had asked the question at firstquite sanely, but as the night wore on and the fever grew and his mindwandered, he would repeat the question over and over like a child, andover and over, while Bub and Dave slept and the rain poured, June wouldrepeat her answer:
"I'll never leave you, Dad."
