XX
The boom started after its shadow through the hills now, and Halewatched it sweep toward him with grim satisfaction at the fulfilment ofhis own prophecy and with disgust that, by the irony of fate, itshould come from the very quarters where years before he had playedthe maddening part of lunatic at large. The avalanche was sweepingsouthward; Pennsylvania was creeping down the Alleghanies, emissaries ofNew York capital were pouring into the hills, the tide-water of Virginiaand the Bluegrass region of Kentucky were sending in their best bloodand youth, and friends of the helmeted Englishmen were hurrying over theseas. Eastern companies were taking up principalities, and at CumberlandGap, those helmeted Englishmen had acquired a kingdom. They werebuilding a town there, too, with huge steel plants, broad avenues andbusiness blocks that would have graced Broadway; and they were pouringout a million for every thousand that it would have cost Hale to acquirethe land on which the work was going on. Moreover they were doing itthere, as Hale heard, because they were too late to get control ofhis gap through the Cumberland. At his gap, too, the same movement wasstarting. In stage and wagon, on mule and horse, "riding and tying"sometimes, and even afoot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules weredrowned in the mud holes along the road, such was the traffic and suchwere the floods. The incomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at onedollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand CentralHotel was a humming Real-Estate Exchange, and, night and day, theoccupants of any room could hear, through the thin partitions, lotsbooming to right, left, behind and in front of them. The labourand capital question was instantly solved, for everybody became acapitalist-carpenter, brick-layer, blacksmith, singing teacher andpreacher. There is no difference between the shrewdest business man anda fool in a boom, for the boom levels all grades of intelligence andproduces as distinct a form of insanity as you can find within the wallsof an asylum. Lots took wings sky-ward. Hale bought one for June forthirty dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone,he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence and, when springcame, he had the world in a sling and, if he wished, he could toss itplayfully at the sun and have it drop back into his hand again. And theboom spread down the valley and into the hills. The police guard hadlittle to do and, over in the mountains, the feud miraculously came to asudden close.
So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon. SamBudd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign a truce,agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he carried througha land deal in which both were interested. And after that wasconcluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for deviltry and privatevengeance--so busy was everybody picking up the manna which was droppingstraight from the clouds. Hale bought all of old Judd's land, formed astock company and in the trade gave June a bonus of the stock. Money wasplentiful as grains of sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back ofthe furniture store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as helocked the wooden door on the day before the great land sale:
"Capital stock paid in--thirteen thousand dollars;
"Deposits--three hundred thousand;
"Loans--two hundred and sixty thousand--interest from eight to twelveper cent." And, beardless though those directors were, that statementmade them reel.
A club was formed and the like of it was not below Mason and Dixon'sline in the way of furniture, periodicals, liquors and cigars. Pokerceased--it was too tame in competition with this new game of town-lots.On the top of High Knob a kingdom was bought. The young bloods of thetown would build a lake up there, run a road up and build a Swiss chaleton the very top for a country club. The "booming" editor was discharged.A new paper was started, and the ex-editor of a New York Daily was gotto run it. If anybody wanted anything, he got it from no matter where,nor at what cost. Nor were the arts wholly neglected. One man, who wasproud of his voice, thought he would like to take singing lessons. Anemissary was sent to Boston to bring back the best teacher he couldfind. The teacher came with a method of placing the voice by trying tosay "Come!" at the base of the nose and between the eyes. This was withthe lips closed. He charged two dollars per half hour for this effort,he had each pupil try it twice for half an hour each day, and for sixweeks the town was humming like a beehive. At the end of that period,the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocket-book and nota warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experiencedampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raisemoney for a roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa.And even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, theImprovement Company had a great land sale. The day before it, competingpurchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times the sumasked for by the company for the land. So the buyers spent the nightorganizing a pool to keep down competition and drawing lots for theprivilege of bidding. For fairness, the sale was an auction, and one oldfarmer who had sold some of the land originally for a hundred dollars anacre, bought back some of that land at a thousand dollars a lot.
That sale was the climax and, that early, Hale got a warning word fromEngland, but he paid no heed even though, after the sale, the boomslackened, poised and stayed still; for optimism was unquenchable andanother tide would come with another sale in May, and so the springpassed in the same joyous recklessness and the same perfect hope.
In April, the first railroad reached the Gap at last, and families camein rapidly. Money was still plentiful and right royally was it spent,for was not just as much more coming when the second road arrived inMay? Life was easier, too--supplies came from New York, eight o'clockdinners were in vogue and everybody was happy. Every man had two orthree good horses and nothing to do. The place was full of visitinggirls. They rode in parties to High Knob, and the ring of hoof and thelaughter of youth and maid made every dusk resonant with joy. On PoplarHill houses sprang up like magic and weddings came. The passing strangerwas stunned to find out in the wilderness such a spot; gayety, prodigalhospitality, a police force of gentlemen--nearly all of whom werecollege graduates--and a club, where poker flourished in the smoke ofHavana cigars, and a barrel of whiskey stood in one corner with a faucetwaiting for the turn of any hand. And still the foundation of the newhotel was not started and the coming of the new railroad in May did notmake a marked change. For some reason the May sale was postponed by theImprovement Company, but what did it matter? Perhaps it was better towait for the fall, and so the summer went on unchanged. Every man stillhad a bank account and in the autumn, the boom would come again. At sucha time June came home for her vacation, and Bob Berkley came back fromcollege for his. All through the school year Hale had got the bestreports of June. His sister's letters were steadily encouraging. Junehad been very homesick for the mountains and for Hale at first, but thehomesickness had quickly worn off--apparently for both. She had studiedhard, had become a favourite among the girls, and had held her ownamong them in a surprising way. But it was on June's musical talent thatHale's sister always laid most stress, and on her voice which, she said,was really unusual. June wrote, too, at longer and longer intervals andin her letters, Hale could see the progress she was making--the changein her handwriting, the increasing formality of expression, and theincreasing shrewdness of her comments on her fellow-pupils, her teachersand the life about her. She did not write home for a reason Hale knew,though June never mentioned it--because there was no one at home whocould read her letters--but she always sent messages to her father andBub and to the old miller and old Hon, and Hale faithfully deliveredthem when he could.
From her people, as Hale learned from his sister, only one messenger hadcome during the year to June, and he came but once. One morning, a tall,black-haired, uncouth young man, in a slouch hat and a Prince Albertcoat, had strode up to the school with a big paper box under his arm andasked for June. As he handed the box to the maid at the door, it brokeand red apples burst from it and rolled down the steps. There was ashriek of laughter from the girls, and the young man, flushing red asthe apples, turned, without
giving his name, and strode back with nolittle majesty, looking neither to right nor left. Hale knew and Juneknew that the visitor was her cousin Dave, but she never mentioned theincident to him, though as the end of the session drew nigh, her lettersbecame more frequent and more full of messages to the people in LonesomeCove, and she seemed eager to get back home. Over there about this time,old Judd concluded suddenly to go West, taking Bud with him, and whenHale wrote the fact, an answer came from June that showed the blot oftears. However, she seemed none the less in a hurry to get back, andwhen Hale met her at the station, he was startled; for she came back indresses that were below her shoe-tops, with her wonderful hair massedin a golden glory on the top of her head and the little fairy-crossdangling at a woman's throat. Her figure had rounded, her voice hadsoftened. She held herself as straight as a young poplar and she walkedthe earth as though she had come straight from Olympus. And still, inspite of her new feathers and airs and graces, there was in her eye andin her laugh and in her moods all the subtle wild charm of the child inLonesome Cove. It was fairy-time for June that summer, though her fatherand Bud had gone West, for her step-mother was living with a sister, thecabin in Lonesome Cove was closed and June stayed at the Gap, not at theWidow Crane's boarding-house, but with one of Hale's married friendson Poplar Hill. And always was she, young as she was, one of the merryparties of that happy summer--even at the dances, for the dance, too,June had learned. Moreover she had picked up the guitar, and many timeswhen Hale had been out in the hills, he would hear her silver-clearvoice floating out into the moonlight as he made his way toward PoplarHill, and he would stop under the beeches and listen with ears ofgrowing love to the wonder of it all. For it was he who was the ardentone of the two now.
June was no longer the frank, impulsive child who stood at the foot ofthe beech, doggedly reckless if all the world knew her love for him. Shehad taken flight to some inner recess where it was difficult for Hale tofollow, and right puzzled he was to discover that he must now win againwhat, unasked, she had once so freely given.
Bob Berkley, too, had developed amazingly. He no longer said "Sir" toHale--that was bad form at Harvard--he called him by his first name andlooked him in the eye as man to man: just as June--Hale observed--nolonger seemed in any awe of Miss Anne Saunders and to have lost alljealousy of her, or of anybody else--so swiftly had her instinct taughther she now had nothing to fear. And Bob and June seemed mightilypleased with each other, and sometimes Hale, watching them as theygalloped past him on horseback laughing and bantering, felt foolishto think of their perfect fitness--the one for the other--and theincongruity of himself in a relationship that would so naturally betheirs. At one thing he wondered: she had made an extraordinaryrecord at school and it seemed to him that it was partly through theconsciousness that her brain would take care of itself that she couldpay such heed to what hitherto she had had no chance to learn--dress,manners, deportment and speech. Indeed, it was curious that she seemedto lay most stress on the very things to which he, because of his longrough life in the mountains, was growing more and more indifferent.It was quite plain that Bob, with his extreme gallantry of manner,his smart clothes, his high ways and his unconquerable gayety, hadsupplanted him on the pedestal where he had been the year before, justas somebody, somewhere--his sister, perhaps--had supplanted Miss Anne.Several times indeed June had corrected Hale's slips of tongue withmischievous triumph, and once when he came back late from a long trip inthe mountains and walked in to dinner without changing his clothes,Hale saw her look from himself to the immaculate Bob with an unconsciouscomparison that half amused, half worried him. The truth was he wasbuilding a lovely Frankenstein and from wondering what he was going todo with it, he was beginning to wonder now what it might some daydo with him. And though he sometimes joked with Miss Anne, who hadwithdrawn now to the level plane of friendship with him, about thetransformation that was going on, he worried in a way that did neitherhis heart nor his brain good. Still he fought both to little purposeall that summer, and it was not till the time was nigh when June mustgo away again, that he spoke both. For Hale's sister was going to marry,and it was her advice that he should take June to New York if only forthe sake of her music and her voice. That very day June had for thefirst time seen her cousin Dave. He was on horseback, he had beendrinking and he pulled in and, without an answer to her greeting, staredher over from head to foot. Colouring angrily, she started on and thenhe spoke thickly and with a sneer:
"'Bout fryin' size, now, ain't ye? I reckon maybe, if you keep on,you'll be good enough fer him in a year or two more."
"I'm much obliged for those apples, Dave," said June quietly--and Daveflushed a darker red and sat still, forgetting to renew the old threatthat was on his tongue.
But his taunt rankled in the girl--rankled more now than when Dave firstmade it, for she better saw the truth of it and the hurt was the greaterto her unconquerable pride that kept her from betraying the hurt to Davelong ago, and now, when he was making an old wound bleed afresh. Butthe pain was with her at dinner that night and through the evening. Sheavoided Hale's eyes though she knew that he was watching her all thetime, and her instinct told her that something was going to happen thatnight and what that something was. Hale was the last to go and when hecalled to her from the porch, she went out trembling and stood at thehead of the steps in the moonlight.
"I love you, little girl," he said simply, "and I want you to marry mesome day--will you, June?" She was unsurprised but she flushed under hishungry eyes, and the little cross throbbed at her throat.
"SOME day--not NOW," she thought, and then with equal simplicity: "Yes,Jack."
"And if you should love somebody else more, you'll tell me rightaway--won't you, June?" She shrank a little and her eyes fell, butstraight-way she raised them steadily:
"Yes, Jack."
"Thank you, little girl--good-night."
"Good-night, Jack."
Hale saw the little shrinking movement she made, and, as he went downthe hill, he thought she seemed to be in a hurry to be alone, and thatshe had caught her breath sharply as she turned away. And brooding hewalked the woods long that night.
Only a few days later, they started for New York and, with all herdreaming, June had never dreamed that the world could be so large.Mountains and vast stretches of rolling hills and level land meltedaway from her wondering eyes; towns and cities sank behind them, swiftstreams swollen by freshets were outstripped and left behind, darknesscame on and, through it, they still sped on. Once during the night shewoke from a troubled dream in her berth and for a moment she thought shewas at home again. They were running through mountains again and therethey lay in the moonlight, the great calm dark faces that she knew andloved, and she seemed to catch the odour of the earth and feel the coolair on her face, but there was no pang of homesickness now--she was tooeager for the world into which she was going. Next morning the air wascooler, the skies lower and grayer--the big city was close at hand. Thencame the water, shaking and sparkling in the early light like a greatcauldron of quicksilver, and the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge--a ribbon oftwinkling lights tossed out through the mist from the mighty city thatrose from that mist as from a fantastic dream; then the picking of away through screeching little boats and noiseless big ones and whitebird-like floating things and then they disappeared like two tiny grainsin a shifting human tide of sand. But Hale was happy now, for on thattrip June had come back to herself, and to him, once more--and now, awedbut unafraid, eager, bubbling, uplooking, full of quaint questionsabout everything she saw, she was once more sitting with affectionatereverence at his feet. When he left her in a great low house thatfronted on the majestic Hudson, June clung to him with tears and of herown accord kissed him for the first time since she had torn her littleplayhouse to pieces at the foot of the beech down in the mountains faraway. And Hale went back with peace in his heart, but to trouble in thehills.
* * * * * * *
Not suddenly did the boom drop down th
ere, not like a falling star,but on the wings of hope--wings that ever fluttering upward, yet sankinexorably and slowly closed. The first crash came over the waters whencertain big men over there went to pieces--men on whose shoulders restedthe colossal figure of progress that the English were carving from thehills at Cumberland Gap. Still nobody saw why a hurt to the Lion shouldmake the Eagle sore and so the American spirit at the other gaps andall up the Virginia valleys that skirt the Cumberland held faithfuland dauntless--for a while. But in time as the huge steel plants grewnoiseless, and the flaming throats of the furnaces were throttled, asympathetic fire of dissolution spread slowly North and South and it wasplain only to the wise outsider as merely a matter of time until, all upand down the Cumberland, the fox and the coon and the quail could comeback to their old homes on corner lots, marked each by a pathetic littlewhitewashed post--a tombstone over the graves of a myriad of buriedhuman hopes. But it was the gap where Hale was that died last andhardest--and of the brave spirits there, his was the last and hardest todie.
In the autumn, while June was in New York, the signs were sure but everysoul refused to see them. Slowly, however, the vexed question of labourand capital was born again, for slowly each local capitalist went slowlyback to his own trade: the blacksmith to his forge, but the carpenternot to his plane nor the mason to his brick--there was no more buildinggoing on. The engineer took up his transit, the preacher-politician wasoftener in his pulpit, and the singing teacher started on his round ofraucous do-mi-sol-dos through the mountains again. It was curious to seehow each man slowly, reluctantly and perforce sank back again to his oldoccupation--and the town, with the luxuries of electricity, water-works,bath-tubs and a street railway, was having a hard fight for the plainnecessities of life. The following spring, notes for the second paymenton the lots that had been bought at the great land sale fell due,and but very few were paid. As no suits were brought by the company,however, hope did not quite die. June did not come home for thesummer, and Hale did not encourage her to come--she visited some of herschool-mates in the North and took a trip West to see her father who hadgone out there again and bought a farm. In the early autumn, Devil Juddcame back to the mountains and announced his intention to leave them forgood. But that autumn, the effects of the dead boom became perceptiblein the hills. There were no more coal lands bought, logging ceased, thefactions were idle once more, moonshine stills flourished, quarrellingstarted, and at the county seat, one Court day, Devil Judd whipped threeFalins with his bare fists. In the early spring a Tolliver was shotfrom ambush and old Judd was so furious at the outrage that he openlyannounced that he would stay at home until he had settled the old scoresfor good. So that, as the summer came on, matters between the Falins andthe Tollivers were worse than they had been for years and everybody knewthat, with old Judd at the head of his clan again, the fight would befought to the finish. At the Gap, one institution only had suffered inspirit not at all and that was the Volunteer Police Guard. Indeed, asthe excitement of the boom had died down, the members of that force,as a vent for their energies, went with more enthusiasm than ever intotheir work. Local lawlessness had been subdued by this time, the Guardhad been extending its work into the hills, and it was only a questionof time until it must take a part in the Falin-Tolliver troubles.Indeed, that time, Hale believed, was not far away, for Election Day wasat hand, and always on that day the feudists came to the Gap in a searchfor trouble. Meanwhile, not long afterward, there was a pitched battlebetween the factions at the county seat, and several of each would fightno more. Next day a Falin whistled a bullet through Devil Judd's beardfrom ambush, and it was at such a crisis of all the warring elements inher mountain life that June's school-days were coming to a close. Halehad had a frank talk with old Judd and the old man agreed that thetwo had best be married at once and live at the Gap until thingswere quieter in the mountains, though the old man still clung to hisresolution to go West for good when he was done with the Falins. At sucha time, then, June was coming home.