The Trail of the Lonesome Pine | Page 5

face
stern and pale with open anger now, and he, too, grew suddenly
serious.
"Suppose I don't tell you," he said gravely. "What--"
"Git!" said the mountaineer, with a move of one huge hairy hand up the
mountain. "An' git quick!"
The fisherman never moved and there was the click of a shell thrown
into place in the Winchester and a guttural oath from the mountaineer's
beard.
"Damn ye," he said hoarsely, raising the rifle. "I'll give ye--"
"Don't, Dad!" shrieked a voice from the bushes. "I know his name, hit's
Jack--" the rest of the name was unintelligible. The mountaineer
dropped the butt of his gun to the ground and laughed.
"Oh, air YOU the engineer?"
The fisherman was angry now. He had not moved hand or foot and he
said nothing, but his mouth was set hard and his bewildered blue eyes
had a glint in them that the mountaineer did not at the moment see. He
was leaning with one arm on the muzzle of his Winchester, his face had
suddenly become suave and shrewd and now he laughed again:
"So you're Jack Hale, air ye?"

The fisherman spoke. "JOHN Hale, except to my friends." He looked
hard at the old man.
"Do you know that's a pretty dangerous joke of yours, my friend--I
might have a gun myself sometimes. Did you think you could scare
me?" The mountaineer stared in genuine surprise.
"Twusn't no joke," he said shortly. "An' I don't waste time skeering
folks. I reckon you don't know who I be?"
"I don't care who you are." Again the mountaineer stared.
"No use gittin' mad, young feller," he said coolly. "I mistaken ye fer
somebody else an' I axe yer pardon. When you git through fishin' come
up to the house right up the creek thar an' I'll give ye a dram."
"Thank you," said the fisherman stiffly, and the mountaineer turned
silently away. At the edge of the bushes, he looked back; the stranger
was still fishing, and the old man went on with a shake of his head.
"He'll come," he said to himself. "Oh, he'll come!"
That very point Hale was debating with himself as he unavailingly cast
his minnow into the swift water and slowly wound it in again. How did
that old man know his name? And would the old savage really have
hurt him had he not found out who he was? The little girl was a wonder:
evidently she had muffled his last name on purpose--not knowing it
herself--and it was a quick and cunning ruse. He owed her something
for that--why did she try to protect him? Wonderful eyes, too, the little
thing had--deep and dark--and how the flame did dart from them when
she got angry! He smiled, remembering--he liked that. And her hair--it
was exactly like the gold-bronze on the wing of a wild turkey that he
had shot the day before. Well, it was noon now, the fish had stopped
biting after the wayward fashion of bass, he was hungry and thirsty and
he would go up and see the little girl and the giant again and get that
promised dram. Once more, however, he let his minnow float down
into the shadow of a big rock, and while he was winding in, he looked
up to see in the road two people on a gray horse, a man with a woman

behind him--both old and spectacled--all three motionless on the bank
and looking at him: and he wondered if all three had stopped to ask his
name and his business. No, they had just come down to the creek and
both they must know already.
"Ketching any?" called out the old man, cheerily.
"Only one," answered Hale with equal cheer. The old woman pushed
back her bonnet as he waded through the water towards them and he
saw that she was puffing a clay pipe. She looked at the fisherman and
his tackle with the naive wonder of a child, and then she said in a
commanding undertone.
"Go on, Billy."
"Now, ole Hon, I wish ye'd jes' wait a minute." Hale smiled. He loved
old people, and two kinder faces he had never seen--two gentler voices
he had never heard.
"I reckon you got the only green pyerch up hyeh," said the old man,
chuckling, "but thar's a sight of 'em down thar below my old mill."
Quietly the old woman hit the horse with a stripped branch of elm and
the old gray, with a switch of his tail, started.
"Wait a minute, Hon," he said again, appealingly, "won't ye?" but
calmly she hit the horse again and the old man called back over his
shoulder:
"You come on down to the mill an' I'll show ye whar you can ketch a