VI
The old man went with him up the creek and, passing the milk house,turned up a brush-bordered little branch in which the engineer saw signsof coal. Up the creek the mountaineer led him some thirty yards abovethe water level and stopped. An entry had been driven through therich earth and ten feet within was a shining bed of coal. There was noparting except two inches of mother-of-coal--midway, which would make itbut easier to mine. Who had taught that old man to open coal in such away--to make such a facing? It looked as though the old fellow were insome scheme with another to get him interested. As he drew closer, hesaw radiations of some twelve inches, all over the face of the coal,star-shaped, and he almost gasped. It was not only cannel coal--it was"bird's-eye" cannel. Heavens, what a find! Instantly he was the cautiousman of business, alert, cold, uncommunicative.
"That looks like a pretty good--" he drawled the last two words--"veinof coal. I'd like to take a sample over to the Gap and analyze it." Hishammer, which he always carried--was in his saddle pockets, but he didnot have to go down to his horse. There were pieces on the ground thatwould suit his purpose, left there, no doubt, by his predecessor.
"Now I reckon you know that I know why you came over hyeh."
Hale started to answer, but he saw it was no use.
"Yes--and I'm coming again--for the same reason."
"Shore--come agin and come often."
The little girl was standing on the porch as he rode past the milkhouse. He waved his hand to her, but she did not move nor answer. What alife for a child--for that keen-eyed, sweet-faced child! But that coal,cannel, rich as oil, above water, five feet in thickness, easy to mine,with a solid roof and perhaps self-drainage, if he could judge from thedip of the vein: and a market everywhere--England, Spain, Italy, Brazil.The coal, to be sure, might not be persistent--thirty yards within itmight change in quality to ordinary bituminous coal, but he could settlethat only with a steam drill. A steam drill! He would as well ask forthe wagon that he had long ago hitched to a star; and then there mightbe a fault in the formation. But why bother now? The coal wouldstay there, and now he had other plans that made even that findinsignificant. And yet if he bought that coal now--what a bargain! Itwas not that the ideals of his college days were tarnished, but he wasa man of business now, and if he would take the old man's land fora song--it was because others of his kind would do the same! But whybother, he asked himself again, when his brain was in a ferment with acolossal scheme that would make dizzy the magnates who would some daydrive their roadways of steel into those wild hills. So he shook himselffree of the question, which passed from his mind only with a transientwonder as to who it was that had told of him to the old mountaineer, andhad so paved his way for an investigation--and then he wheeled suddenlyin his saddle. The bushes had rustled gently behind him and out fromthem stepped an extraordinary human shape--wearing a coon-skin cap,belted with two rows of big cartridges, carrying a big Winchester overone shoulder and a circular tube of brass in his left hand. With hisright leg straight, his left thigh drawn into the hollow of his saddleand his left hand on the rump of his horse, Hale simply stared, his eyesdropping by and by from the pale-blue eyes and stubbly red beard of thestranger, down past the cartridge-belts to the man's feet, on whichwere moccasins--with the heels forward! Into what sort of a world had hedropped!
"So nary a soul can tell which way I'm going," said the red-hairedstranger, with a grin that loosed a hollow chuckle far behind it.
"Would you mind telling me what difference it can make to me which wayyou are going?" Every moment he was expecting the stranger to ask hisname, but again that chuckle came.
"It makes a mighty sight o' difference to some folks."
"But none to me."
"I hain't wearin' 'em fer you. I know YOU."
"Oh, you do." The stranger suddenly lowered his Winchester and turnedhis face, with his ear cocked like an animal. There was some noise onthe spur above.
"Nothin' but a hickory nut," said the chuckle again. But Hale hadbeen studying that strange face. One side of it was calm, kindly,philosophic, benevolent; but, when the other was turned, a curioustwitch of the muscles at the left side of the mouth showed the teeth andmade a snarl there that was wolfish.
"Yes, and I know you," he said slowly. Self-satisfaction, straightway,was ardent in the face.
"I knowed you would git to know me in time, if you didn't now."
This was the Red Fox of the mountains, of whom he had heard somuch--"yarb" doctor and Swedenborgian preacher; revenue officer and,some said, cold-blooded murderer. He would walk twenty miles to preach,or would start at any hour of the day or night to minister to thesick, and would charge for neither service. At other hours he would besearching for moonshine stills, or watching his enemies in the valleyfrom some mountain top, with that huge spy-glass--Hale could seenow that the brass tube was a telescope--that he might slip down andunawares take a pot-shot at them. The Red Fox communicated with spirits,had visions and superhuman powers of locomotion--stepping mysteriouslyfrom the bushes, people said, to walk at the traveller's side and asmysteriously disappearing into them again, to be heard of in a few hoursan incredible distance away.
"I've been watchin' ye from up thar," he said with a wave of his hand."I seed ye go up the creek, and then the bushes hid ye. I know whatyou was after--but did you see any signs up thar of anything you wasn'tlooking fer?"
Hale laughed.
"Well, I've been in these mountains long enough not to tell you, if Ihad."
The Red Fox chuckled.
"I wasn't sure you had--" Hale coughed and spat to the other side of hishorse. When he looked around, the Red Fox was gone, and he had heard nosound of his going.
"Well, I be--" Hale clucked to his horse and as he climbed the laststeep and drew near the Big Pine he again heard a noise out in thewoods and he knew this time it was the fall of a human foot and not of ahickory nut. He was right, and, as he rode by the Pine, saw again at itsbase the print of the little girl's foot--wondering afresh at the reasonthat led her up there--and dropped down through the afternoon shadowstowards the smoke and steam and bustle and greed of the TwentiethCentury. A long, lean, black-eyed boy, with a wave of black hair overhis forehead, was pushing his horse the other way along the Big Blackand dropping down through the dusk into the Middle Ages--both allbut touching on either side the outstretched hands of the wild littlecreature left in the shadows of Lonesome Cove.