“June! June!” he said brokenly. “You mustn't, little girl. I'm
proud—proud—why little sweetheart—” She was clinging to him and
looking up into his eyes and he bent his head slowly. Their lips met and
the man was startled. He knew now it was no child that answered him.
Hale walked long that night in the moonlit woods up and around
Imboden Hill, along a shadow-haunted path, between silvery beech-trunks,
past the big hole in the earth from which dead trees tossed out their
crooked arms as if in torment, and to the top of the ridge under which
the valley slept and above which the dark bulk of Powell's Mountain
rose. It was absurd, but he found himself strangely stirred. She was a
child, he kept repeating to himself, in spite of the fact that he knew
she was no child among her own people, and that mountain girls were even
wives who were younger still. Still, she did not know what she felt—how
could she?—and she would get over it, and then came the sharp stab of
a doubt—would he want her to get over it? Frankly and with wonder he
confessed to himself that he did not know—he did not know. But again,
why bother? He had meant to educate her, anyhow. That was the first
step—no matter what happened. June must go out into the world to
school. He would have plenty of money. Her father would not object, and
June need never know. He could include for her an interest in her own
father's coal lands that he meant to buy, and she could think that it
was her own money that she was using. So, with a sudden rush of gladness
from his brain to his heart, he recklessly yoked himself, then and
there, under all responsibility for that young life and the eager,
sensitive soul that already lighted it so radiantly.
And June? Her nature had opened precisely as had bud and flower that spring. The Mother of Magicians had touched her as impartially as she had touched them with fairy wand, and as unconsciously the little girl had answered as a young dove to any cooing mate. With this Hale did not reckon, and this June could not know. For a while, that night, she lay in a delicious tremor, listening to the bird-like chorus of the little frogs in the marsh, the booming of the big ones in the mill-pond, the water pouring over the dam with the sound of a low wind, and, as had all the sleeping things of the earth about her, she, too, sank to happy sleep.
XVI
The in-sweep of the outside world was broadening its current now. The improvement company had been formed to encourage the growth of the town. A safe was put in the back part of a furniture store behind a wooden partition and a bank was started. Up through the Gap and toward Kentucky, more entries were driven into the coal, and on the Virginia side were signs of stripping for iron ore. A furnace was coming in just as soon as the railroad could bring it in, and the railroad was pushing ahead with genuine vigor. Speculators were trooping in and the town had been divided off into lots—a few of which had already changed hands. One agent had brought in a big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope was in every man's eye.
And the Guard went to its work in earnest. Every man now had his Winchester, his revolver, his billy and his whistle. Drilling and target-shooting became a daily practice. Bob, who had been a year in a military school, was drill-master for the recruits, and very gravely he performed his duties and put them through the skirmishers' drill—advancing in rushes, throwing themselves in the new grass, and very gravely he commended one enthusiast—none other than the Hon. Samuel Budd—who, rather than lose his position in line, threw himself into a pool of water: all to the surprise, scorn and anger of the mountain onlookers, who dwelled about the town. Many were the comments the members of the Guard heard from them, even while they were at drill.
“I'd like to see one o' them fellers hit me with one of them locust posts.”
“Huh! I could take two good men an' run the whole batch out o' the county.”
“Look at them dudes and furriners. They come into our country and air tryin' to larn us how to run it.”
“Our boys air only tryin' to have their little fun. They don't mean nothin', but someday some fool young guard'll hurt somebody and then thar'll be hell to pay.”