The Trail of the Lonesome Pine | Page 8

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 the porch while Bub carved away at another pine dagger on the stoop. As Hale passed out the door, a querulous voice said "Howdye" from the bed in the corner and he knew it was the step-mother from whom the little girl expected some nether-world punishment for an offence of which he was ignorant. He had heard of the feud that had been going on between the red Falins and the black Tollivers for a quarter of a century, and this was Devil Judd, who had earned his nickname when he was the leader of his clan by his terrible strength, his marksmanship, his cunning and his courage. Some years since the old man had retired from the leadership, because he was tired of fighting or because he had quarrelled with his brother Dave and his foster-brother, Bad Rufe--known as the terror of the Tollivers--or from some unknown reason, and in consequence there had been peace for a long time--the Falins fearing that Devil Judd would be led