The Trail of the Lonesome Pine | Page 8

up a sliver that had flown to
the hearth and held a match to it. The piece blazed and burned in his
hand.
"I never seed no coal in these mountains like that--did you?"
"Not often--find it around here?"
"Right hyeh on this farm--about five feet thick!"
"What?"
"An' no partin'."
"No partin'"--it was not often that he found a mountaineer who knew
what a parting in a coal bed was.
"A friend o' mine on t'other side,"--a light dawned for the engineer.
"Oh," he said quickly. "That's how you knew my name."
"Right you air, stranger. He tol' me you was a--expert."
The old man laughed loudly. "An' that's why you come over hyeh."
"No, it isn't."

"Co'se not,"--the old fellow laughed again. Hale shifted the talk.
"Well, now that you know my name, suppose you tell me what yours
is?"
"Tolliver--Judd Tolliver." Hale started.
"Not Devil Judd!"
"That's what some evil folks calls me." Again he spoke shortly. The
mountaineers do not like to talk about their feuds. Hale knew this--and
the subject was dropped. But he watched the huge mountaineer with
interest. There was no more famous character in all those hills than the
giant before him--yet his face was kind and was good-humoured, but
the nose and eyes were the beak and eyes of some bird of prey. The
little girl had disappeared for a moment. She came back with a
blue-backed spelling-book, a second reader and a worn copy of
"Mother Goose," and she opened first one and then the other until the
attention of the visitor was caught-- the black-haired youth watching
her meanwhile with lowering brows.
"Where did you learn to read?" Hale asked. The old man answered:
"A preacher come by our house over on the Nawth Fork 'bout three
year ago, and afore I knowed it he made me promise to send her sister
Sally to some school up thar on the edge of the settlements. And after
she come home, Sal larned that little gal to read and spell. Sal died
'bout a year ago."
Hale reached over and got the spelling-book, and the old man grinned
at the quick, unerring responses of the little girl, and the engineer
looked surprised. She read, too, with unusual facility, and her
pronunciation was very precise and not at all like her speech.
"You ought to send her to the same place," he said, but the old fellow
shook his head.
"I couldn't git along without her."

The little girl's eyes began to dance suddenly, and, without opening
"Mother Goose," she began:
"Jack and Jill went up a hill," and then she broke into a laugh and Hale
laughed with her.
Abruptly, the boy opposite rose to his great length.
"I reckon I better be goin'." That was all he said as he caught up a
Winchester, which stood unseen by his side, and out he stalked. There
was not a word of good-by, not a glance at anybody. A few minutes
later Hale heard the creak of a barn door on wooden hinges, a cursing
command to a horse, and four feet going in a gallop down the path, and
he knew there went an enemy.
"That's a good-looking boy--who is he?"
The old man spat into the fire. It seemed that he was not going to
answer and the little girl broke in:
"Hit's my cousin Dave--he lives over on the Nawth Fork."
That was the seat of the Tolliver-Falin feud. Of that feud, too, Hale had
heard, and so no more along that line of inquiry. He, too, soon rose to
go.
"Why, ain't ye goin' to have something to eat?"
"Oh, no, I've got something in my saddlebags and I must be getting
back to the Gap."
"Well, I reckon you ain't. You're jes' goin' to take a snack right here."
Hale hesitated, but the little girl was looking at him with such
unconscious eagerness in her dark eyes that he sat down again.
"All right, I will, thank you." At once she ran to the kitchen and the old
man rose and pulled a bottle of white liquid from under the quilts.
"I reckon I can trust ye," he said. The liquor burned Hale like fire, and

the old man, with a laugh at the face the stranger made, tossed off a
tumblerful.
"Gracious!" said Hale, "can you do that often?"
"Afore breakfast, dinner and supper," said the old man--"but I don't."
Hale felt a plucking at his sleeve. It was the boy with the dagger at his
elbow.
"Less see you laugh that-a-way agin," said Bub with such deadly
seriousness that Hale unconsciously broke into the same peal.
"Now," said Bub, unwinking, "I ain't afeard o' you no more."

V
Awaiting dinner, the mountaineer and the "furriner" sat on