by John Fox
XXVII
The miracle had happened. The Tollivers, following the Red Fox's adviceto make no attempt at rescue just then, had waited, expecting the oldimmunity from the law and getting instead the swift sentence that RufeTolliver should be hanged by the neck until he was dead. Astounding andconvincing though the news was, no mountaineer believed he would everhang, and Rufe himself faced the sentence defiant. He laughed when hewas led back to his cell:
"I'll never hang," he said scornfully. They were the first words thatcame from his lips, and the first words that came from old Judd's whenthe news reached him in Lonesome Cove, and that night old Judd gatheredhis clan for the rescue--to learn next morning that during the nightRufe had been spirited away to the capital for safekeeping until thefatal day. And so there was quiet for a while--old Judd making ready forthe day when Rufe should be brought back, and trying to find out who itwas that had slain his brother Dave. The Falins denied the deed, but oldJudd never questioned that one of them was the murderer, and he came outopenly 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 theFalins, who were lying low and waiting to fulfil a deadly purpose oftheir own. They well knew that old Judd would not open hostilities onthem until Rufe Tolliver was dead or at liberty. They knew that theold man meant to try to rescue Rufe when he was brought back to jail ortaken from it to the scaffold, and when either day came they themselveswould take a hand, thus giving the Tollivers at one and the same timetwo sets of foes. And so through the golden September days the two clanswaited, and June Tolliver went with dull determination back to her oldlife, for Uncle Billy's sister had left the house in fear and shecould get no help--milking cows at cold dawns, helping in the kitchen,spinning flax and wool, and weaving them into rough garments for herfather and step-mother and Bub, and in time, she thought grimly--forherself: for not another cent for her maintenance could now come fromJohn Hale, even though he claimed it was hers--even though it was intruth her own. Never, but once, had Hale's name been mentioned in thecabin--never, but once, had her father referred to the testimony thatshe had given against Rufe Tolliver, for the old man put upon Hale thefact that the sheriff had sneaked into his house when he was away andhad taken June to Court, and that was the crowning touch of bitternessin his growing hatred for the captain of the guard of whom he had oncebeen so fond.
"Course you had to tell the truth, baby, when they got you there," hesaid kindly; "but kidnappin' you that-a-way--" He shook his great bushyhead from side to side and dropped it into his hands.
"I reckon that damn Hale was the man who found out that you heard Rufesay that. I'd like to know how--I'd like to git my hands on the felleras told him."
June opened her lips in simple justice to clear Hale of that charge, butshe saw such a terrified appeal in her step-mother's face that shekept her peace, let Hale suffer for that, too, and walked out into hergarden. 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 notat work, she was brooding in her room, or she would walk down to UncleBilly's and sit at the mill with him while the old man would talk intender helplessness, or under the honeysuckle vines with old Hon, whosebrusque kindness was of as little avail. And then, still silent, shewould get wearily up and as quietly go away while the two old friends,worried to the heart, followed her sadly with their eyes. At other timesshe was brooding in her room or sitting in her garden, where she wasnow, and where she found most comfort--the garden that Hale had plantedfor her--where purple asters leaned against lilac shrubs that wouldflower for the first time the coming spring; where a late rosebloomed, and marigolds drooped, and great sunflowers nodded and giantcastor-plants stretched out their hands of Christ, And while June thuswaited the passing of the days, many things became clear to her: for thegrim finger of reality had torn the veil from her eyes and let her seeherself but little changed, at the depths, by contact with John Hale'sworld, as she now saw him but little changed, at the depths, by contactwith hers. Slowly she came to see, too, that it was his presence in theCourt Room that made her tell the truth, reckless of the consequences,and she came to realize that she was not leaving the mountains becauseshe would go to no place where she could not know of any danger that, inthe present crisis, might threaten John Hale.
And Hale saw only that in the Court Room she had drawn her skirts aside,that she had looked at him once and then had brushed past his helpinghand. 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 herfather in the crisis that was at hand, and after it was all over--whatthen? His hands would still be tied and he would be even more helplessthan he had ever dreamed possible. To be sure, an old land deal had cometo life, just after the discovery of the worthlessness of the minein Lonesome Cove, and was holding out another hope. But if that, too,should fail--or if it should succeed--what then? Old Judd had sent back,with a curt refusal, the last "allowance" he forwarded to June andhe knew the old man was himself in straits. So June must stay in themountains, and what would become of her? She had gone back to hermountain garb--would she lapse into her old life and ever again becontent? Yes, she would lapse, but never enough to keep her from beingunhappy all her life, and at that thought he groaned. Thus far he wasresponsible and the paramount duty with him had been that she shouldhave the means to follow the career she had planned for herself outsideof those hills. And now if he had the means, he was helpless. There wasnothing for him to do now but to see that the law had its way with RufeTolliver, and meanwhile he let the reawakened land deal go hang and sethimself the task of finding out who it was that had ambushed old DaveTolliver. So even when he was thinking of June his brain was busy onthat mystery, and one night, as he sat brooding, a suspicion flashedthat made him grip his chair with both hands and rise to pace the porch.Old Dave had been shot at dawn, and the night before the Red Fox hadbeen absent from the guard and had not turned up until nearly noon nextday. He had told Hale that he was going home. Two days later, Hale heardby accident that the old man had been seen near the place of the ambushabout sunset of the day before the tragedy, which was on his way home,and he now learned straightway for himself that the Red Fox had notbeen home for a month--which was only one of his ways of mistreating thepatient little old woman in black.
A little later, the Red Fox gave it out that he was trying to ferret outthe murderer himself, and several times he was seen near the place ofambush, looking, as he said, for evidence. But this did not halt Hale'ssuspicions, for he recalled that the night he had spent with the RedFox, long ago, the old man had burst out against old Dave and hadquickly covered up his indiscretion with a pious characterization ofhimself as a man that kept peace with both factions. And then why had hebeen so suspicious and fearful when Hale told him that night that he hadseen him talking with a Falin in town the Court day before, and had hedisclosed the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver and guided the guard to hishiding-place simply for the reward? He had not yet come to claim it, andhis indifference to money was notorious through the hills. Apparentlythere was some general enmity in the old man toward the whole Tolliverclan, and maybe he had used the reward to fool Hale as to his realmotive. And then Hale quietly learned that long ago the Tolliversbitterly opposed the Red Fox's marriage to a Tolliver--that Rufe, when aboy, was always teasing the Red Fox and had once made him dance in hismoccasins to the tune of bullets spitting about his feet, and that theRed Fox had been heard to say that old Dave had cheated his wife out ofher just inheritance of wild land; but all that was long, long ago, andapparently had been mutually forgiven and forgotten. But it was enoughfor Hale, and one night he mounted his horse, and at dawn he was at theplace of ambush with his horse hidden in the bushes. The rocks forthe ambush were waist high, and the twigs that had been thrust in thecrevices between them were withered. And there, on the hypothesis thatthe Red Fox was the assassin, Hale tried to put himself, after the deed,into the Red Fox's shoes.
The old man had turned up on guard beforenoon--then he must have gone somewhere first or have killed considerabletime in the woods. He would not have crossed the road, for there weretwo houses on the other side; there would have been no object in goingon over the mountain unless he meant to escape, and if he had gone overthere for another reason he would hardly have had time to get to theCourt House before noon: nor would he have gone back along the roadon that side, for on that side, too, was a cabin not far away. So Haleturned and walked straight away from the road where the walking waseasiest--down a ravine, and pushing this way and that through the busheswhere the way looked easiest. Half a mile down the ravine he came toa little brook, and there in the black earth was the faint print of aman's left foot and in the hard crust across was the deeper print of hisright, where his weight in leaping had come down hard. But the printswere made by a shoe and not by a moccasin, and then Hale recalledexultantly that the Red Fox did not have his moccasins on the morninghe turned up on guard. All the while he kept a sharp lookout, right andleft, on the ground--the Red Fox must have thrown his cartridge shellsomewhere, and for that Hale was looking. Across the brook he could seethe tracks no farther, for he was too little of a woodsman to follow soold a trail, but as he stood behind a clump of rhododendron, wonderingwhat he could do, he heard the crack of a dead stick down the stream,and noiselessly he moved farther into the bushes. His heart thumped inthe silence--the long silence that followed--for it might be a hostileTolliver that was coming, so he pulled his pistol from his holster, madeready, and then, noiseless as a shadow, the Red Fox slipped past himalong the path, in his moccasins now, and with his big Winchester in hisleft hand. The Red Fox, too, was looking for that cartridge shell, foronly the night before had he heard for the first time of the whisperedsuspicions against him. He was making for the blind and Hale trembledat his luck. There was no path on the other side of the stream, and Halecould barely hear him moving through the bushes. So he pulled off hisboots and, carrying them in one hand, slipped after him, watching fordead twigs, stooping under the branches, or sliding sidewise throughthem when he had to brush between their extremities, and pausing everynow and then to listen for an occasional faint sound from the Red Foxahead. Up the ravine the old man went to a little ledge of rocks, beyondwhich was the blind, and when Hale saw his stooped figure slip over thatand disappear, he ran noiselessly toward it, crept noiselessly to thetop and peeped carefully over to see the Red Fox with his back to himand peering into a clump of bushes--hardly ten yards away. WhileHale looked, the old man thrust his hand into the bushes and drew outsomething that twinkled in the sun. At the moment Hale's horse nickeredfrom the bushes, and the Red Fox slipped his hand into his pocket,crouched listening a moment, and then, step by step, backed toward theledge. Hale rose:
"I want you, Red!"
The old man wheeled, the wolf's snarl came, but the big rifle was tooslow--Hale's pistol had flashed in his face.
"Drop your gun!" Paralyzed, but the picture of white fury, the old manhesitated.
"Drop--your--gun!" Slowly the big rifle was loosed and fell to theground.
"Back away--turn around and hands up!"
With his foot on the Winchester, Hale felt in the old man's pockets andfished out an empty cartridge shell. Then he picked up the rifle andthrew the slide.
"It fits all right. March--toward that horse!"
Without a word the old man slouched ahead to where the big black horsewas restlessly waiting in the bushes.
"Climb up," said Hale. "We won't 'ride and tie' back to town--but I'lltake turns with you on the horse."
The Red Fox was making ready to leave the mountains, for he had beenfalsely informed that Rufe was to be brought back to the county seatnext day, and he was searching again for the sole bit of evidence thatwas out against him. And when Rufe was spirited back to jail and was onhis way to his cell, an old freckled hand was thrust between the bars ofan iron door to greet him and a voice called him by name. Rufe stoppedin amazement; then he burst out laughing; he struck then at the pallidface through the bars with his manacles and cursed the old man bitterly;then he laughed again horribly. The two slept in adjoining cells of thesame cage that night--the one waiting for the scaffold and the otherwaiting for the trial that was to send him there. And away over the bluemountains a little old woman in black sat on the porch of her cabinas she had sat patiently many and many a long day. It was time, shethought, that the Red Fox was coming home.