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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Heart of the Hills," John Fox masterfully weaves a narrative that delves deep into the cultural intricacies of the Appalachian region in early 20th-century America. Fox employs a poignant and lyrical style, rich with regional dialect and vivid imagery, painting an authentic picture of local life, struggles, and moral dilemmas. The novel is set against the backdrop of a rugged landscape and explores themes of love, loyalty, and the clash between tradition and modernity, which resonates profoundly within the literary context of American realism and regionalism. John Fox was deeply influenced by his own upbringing in Kentucky, and his intimate understanding of Appalachian heritage shapes the authenticity found within his characters and setting. His experiences as a journalist and a writer who advocated for the often-overlooked rural communities provided him with the perspective needed to illuminate the societal issues faced by these communities. Fox's keen observations and empathy for the human experience reflect in every interaction of his richly drawn characters. I highly recommend "The Heart of the Hills" to readers seeking a nuanced portrayal of Appalachian life, filled with rich character development and emotional depth. This book not only serves as a compelling narrative but also as an insightful commentary on the complexities of a region often caricatured in literature, ensuring its relevance for contemporary discussions about identity and belonging. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Heart Of The Hills
Table of Contents
Introduction
Rooted in the rugged highlands where belonging is both bond and burden, The Heart of the Hills turns on the tension between fidelity to one’s mountain community and the insistent pull of change that challenges tradition, reorders loyalties, and tests how far the human heart will go to protect home while reaching for a larger world.
John Fox Jr.’s novel belongs to the tradition of American regional fiction, unfolding in the Appalachian reaches of Kentucky and depicting the social textures of an early twentieth-century mountain society; first appearing in the 1910s, it participates in a moment when readers were keenly interested in local-color narratives that revealed distinct landscapes, customs, and conflicts beyond urban centers. Fox, already known for portraying Kentucky’s hills and hollows, uses this setting not as mere backdrop but as a living presence that shapes character and choice, situating the book at the intersection of place-based realism and accessible popular storytelling.
Without venturing beyond the opening premise, the novel presents mountain families whose daily rhythms are interrupted by outside pressures—economic, educational, and political—that stir ambition, rivalry, and a reconsideration of long-held codes. Readers encounter a story that blends intimacy with immediacy: scenes of homestead life, tense community gatherings, and youthful aspirations that promise growth and risk. The experience is one of immersion rather than detachment, inviting attention to gesture and cadence, to the way a hillside path or courthouse square can become a crossroads of destiny, while the plot advances through recognizably human motives rather than contrived spectacle.
Themes of identity, class mobility, and civic belonging course through the novel, as characters negotiate what it means to honor kin, keep faith with neighbors, and contend with institutions that may include or exclude them. The book probes how opportunity arrives unevenly and how education, influence, and property can remake a life—or strain a community. It also considers justice as a contested ideal: not simply a verdict, but a lived balance between personal honor and public order. Throughout, the mountains exemplify continuity and constraint, at once sheltering and confining, reminding readers that environment and inheritance shape the moral imagination.
Fox’s narrative voice favors clarity and momentum, pairing vivid landscape description with dialogue attuned to local speech patterns while maintaining an accessible, restrained prose line. The mood alternates between wistful calm and mounting tension, with domestic detail and communal ritual offset by moments of confrontation or choice. Carefully selected incidents build character before crisis, so turning points feel earned rather than sudden. The effect is a grounded realism that still welcomes romance—romance not only of affection, but of place, aspiration, and the hope that decency can prevail without erasing the texture of custom, memory, and the small solidarities that make a society more than a map.
For contemporary readers, the novel’s questions remain resonant: What does upward mobility demand, and who pays its unseen costs? How do communities preserve dignity under the pressures of modernization, resource extraction, and political maneuvering? The Heart of the Hills invites reflection on representation—how rural lives are portrayed, who speaks for them, and what gets simplified or overlooked. It also offers a counterpoint to caricature, showing how aspiration can coexist with rootedness, and how reform without respect risks breaking what it seeks to mend. In this way, the book becomes an ethical inquiry as much as a regional portrait.
Approached today, Fox’s work offers a reading experience that is immersive, emotionally steady, and alert to nuance, rewarding those who value character-centered storytelling shaped by place. The Heart of the Hills asks readers to look closely at how loyalties form and fray, and to consider the costs of both staying and leaving. Without relying on sensational twists, it builds significance through cumulative observation, letting the land and its people reveal themselves. The result is an introduction to Appalachian life that is neither sentimental gloss nor harsh indictment, but an invitation to listen, measure, and care about what endures.
Synopsis
John Fox Jr.’s The Heart of the Hills unfolds in the rugged Cumberland mountains of Kentucky, where clan loyalties, honor codes, and long-standing feuds shape daily life. The novel centers on Jason Hawn, a bright, self-possessed mountain boy raised by a resolute mother who urges him toward learning rather than violence. Around them, neighbors balance subsistence work with vigilance, and tensions simmer between the Hawn clan and their rivals. From the outset, the book traces Jason’s awareness of the costs of the feud and his growing conviction that education and law might offer a different path than the rifle and ambush.
Into this world come visitors from the Bluegrass, drawn by the region’s scenery and curiosity about mountain ways. Jason encounters a well-bred family whose polite interest gradually deepens into genuine concern and respect for his abilities. The contrast between their polished manners and his spare, direct upbringing creates a steady current of cultural comparison. Fox presents these meetings as catalysts: the outsiders glimpse the hills’ dignity and hardship, while Jason sees wider possibilities beyond his creek and cabin. Quietly, the friendship opens doors—introductions to schools, mentors, and opportunities that could transform one mountain boy’s trajectory.
While the visitors depart, local pressures intensify. Revenue officers pursue moonshiners, old grievances revive, and clan duty demands vigilance. Jason faces a moment that could bind him to the feud’s cycle or free him to pursue reform through knowledge. Choosing restraint over retaliation, he turns toward schooling, guided by encouragement from his mother and support from sympathetic Bluegrass allies. His decision marks a turning point: the promise of acquiring the tools of law and leadership to serve his people. Leaving home, he carries the hills in his speech and bearing, determined to return with more than memories and marksmanship.
In the Bluegrass, Jason enters a preparatory school and later studies with an eye toward the law. He navigates unfamiliar codes of dress, speech, and etiquette, encountering condescension, kindness, and a few steadfast friends. The racing tracks, broad pastures, and stately houses contrast with his steep hollows, sharpening his sense of identity. He excels in debate and reading, discovering how statutes and courts can settle disputes once handled with the rifle. A young woman from the visiting family becomes a steady presence, cordial and challenging, while his letters home keep him tied to the mountains’ needs and worries.
Meanwhile, change presses into the hills. Timber crews and coal speculators arrive, searching titles and bargaining for mineral rights. With deeds muddled by tradition and vague boundaries, mountaineers risk losing land through contracts they barely understand. Surveyors cut lines where footpaths wound, and talk of a railroad spreads through the gaps. The old feud flickers under this new strain, as economic pressures feed suspicion. Amid rumors of unfair deals and rising tempers, word reaches Jason that circumstances at home require skills beyond a sharp eye and steady hand. He returns to find the hills on the verge of transformation.
Back in the mountains, Jason applies his schooling to disputes that once would have erupted into gunfire. He studies plats, argues over boundaries, and urges neighbors to seek judgments rather than revenge. Elections and court sessions become as critical as ambush sites, and he becomes a voice for order without surrendering pride. A capable local rival, confident with both rifle and rhetoric, tests Jason’s influence and strategy. Tensions crest in a confrontation that forces a choice between clan duty and civil remedy. Without disclosing outcomes, the episode marks a key shift in how power is recognized and exercised in the community.
Jason’s efforts carry him to the state capital, where he argues for schools, roads, and fair enforcement that respects mountain realities. He enlists support from reform-minded officials and Bluegrass friends, framing the hills not as a curiosity but as a constituency. A public address draws attention to the region’s needs—teachers, courts, and infrastructure capable of matching industrial expansion. Newspapers take notice, and allies assemble, though opposition remains from interests that profit by confusion. The narrative builds Jason’s role from local mediator to advocate, highlighting the practical steps by which distant policy can alter life in isolated hollows.
Strains from the feud resurface, threatening to undo legal gains and draw Jason back into retaliatory violence. Personal loyalties and old griefs test his principles at a moment when progress seems within reach. The relationships forged with Bluegrass supporters enter a pivotal phase, shaped by class, expectation, and Jason’s unshaken attachment to his home country. A crisis demands swift judgment, balancing honor against hard-won reforms. Fox stages the turning point without dismantling suspense, emphasizing how one decision can influence a clan’s future, a community’s trust in the law, and the fragile bridge between mountain tradition and modern order.
The Heart of the Hills concludes by underscoring the resilience of mountain identity alongside the possibilities of change. Through Jason’s path, the novel presents education, fair dealing, and public service as practical means to replace feud logic with civic life. Industry and law loom as both risk and remedy, depending on who wields them. The book’s central message affirms that the hills’ core—pride, kinship, and independence—need not vanish to make room for schools, courts, and roads. Instead, Fox charts a cautious hope: that reconciliation between old codes and new institutions can be achieved without surrendering the heart of the hills.
Historical Context
The Heart of the Hills unfolds in the central Appalachian highlands at the turn of the twentieth century, primarily in eastern Kentucky along the Cumberland Plateau and its adjacent valleys, with occasional looks toward the Bluegrass centers of Lexington and Frankfort. The topography—steep hollows, narrow creek bottoms, and forested ridges—shaped communities in Harlan, Letcher, Perry, and Breathitt counties, where subsistence farming, timbering, and small-scale livestock raising prevailed. Sparse roads and seasonal isolation sustained clan-based loyalties and customary law, while county seats such as Hazard and Harlan mediated formal justice. The period spans the 1890s to roughly the 1910s, a time when railroads, coal companies, and reform movements began to pierce the region’s social and geographic seclusion.
Late nineteenth-century Appalachian feuds formed a historical backdrop for the novel’s codes of honor and interfamily violence. The French–Eversole feud in Perry County (1885–1894) left dozens dead around Hazard, reflecting political factionalism and competition for county offices. The Hatfield–McCoy conflict along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River (peak violence 1882–1891) achieved national notoriety, while Breathitt County’s recurring bloodshed (the so-called “Bloody Breathitt,” 1870s–1907) made eastern Kentucky synonymous with vendetta. These events embedded the Winchester rifle, ambush tactics, and jury intimidation into local lore. The novel channels that history by portraying kinship obligations, retaliatory spirals, and the difficulty of establishing impartial law in mountain courts.
The most consequential force shaping the book’s world was the industrial penetration of the mountains by timber and coal interests, enabled by new railroads. Between 1890 and 1910, Kentucky’s coal output grew from under 3 million to nearly 19 million short tons, as recorded by U.S. Geological Survey reports, signaling the transformation from household economies to extractive industry. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad drove branch lines into the eastern coalfields: it reached Harlan by 1911 and completed its North Fork Branch to Hazard in 1912, while the Chesapeake & Ohio pushed feeders toward the Big Sandy and the Kentucky River headwaters. Company towns soon followed: Jenkins in Letcher County was founded by Consolidation Coal in 1912; Benham (International Harvester) and, slightly later, Lynch (U.S. Steel, 1917) grew along the Poor Fork of the Cumberland. Even where precise towns postdate the novel’s action, their prototypes were visible in 1905–1913 surveys, land options, and right-of-way battles. Timber firms, responding to national demand after the Panic of 1893, clear-cut vast tracts of hardwoods via logging railroads, altering watersheds and livelihoods. Speculators employed “broad form” mineral deeds from the 1880s onward, separating surface and subsurface rights and sowing disputes when coal owners asserted access over farms. Fox lived in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, near the Kentucky line, and witnessed the Stonega Coal and Coke Company’s growth after 1902 and the South Atlantic & Ohio/Southern Railway’s expansion. The novel reflects this upheaval through surveyors marking ridgelines, conflicts over titles, debates over selling mineral rights, and the social reordering that rail access brought—new stores, wage labor, and class stratification—as mountaineers confronted agents, engineers, and courts speaking the language of corporate law.
Educational reform and philanthropy reshaped mountain possibilities during the period. Berea College, founded in 1855 by abolitionist John G. Fee, pioneered interracial, coeducational instruction for mountain youth, but the 1904 Day Law banned interracial education in Kentucky; the state’s high court upheld it in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), redirecting Berea’s mission. Settlement schools appeared to fill gaps: Hindman Settlement School opened in Knott County in 1902, and Pine Mountain Settlement School followed in 1913, stressing crafts, health, and practical curricula. Cora Wilson Stewart’s “Moonlight Schools” began in Rowan County in 1911 to combat adult illiteracy. The novel mirrors these efforts by casting education as social mobility and by staging encounters between mountain pupils and Bluegrass benefactors.
Temperance and the federal campaign against illicit distilling shaped mountain-state relations. Federal internal revenue laws dating to the Civil War (1862) criminalized untaxed spirits; by the 1880s–1900s, “revenuers” mounted raids across eastern Kentucky, seizing stills and provoking armed resistance. Kentucky’s local option statute (1894) allowed communities to vote “dry,” strengthening temperance coalitions such as the Anti-Saloon League. Although statewide prohibition arrived only with the Eighteenth Amendment (ratified 1919), many mountain counties adopted dry regimes earlier. The book invokes this matrix through depictions of moonshining as both subsistence and defiance, dramatizing confrontations between kin-based protection networks and officers symbolizing distant state authority and moral reform.
Kentucky’s 1900 gubernatorial crisis deepened sectional antagonisms between the Bluegrass and the mountains. Democrat William Goebel was shot on January 30, 1900, in Frankfort amid a contested election with Republican William S. Taylor; Goebel died on February 3, and rival claims to the governorship triggered armed mobilizations. Mountain contingents, summoned by Republican leaders, converged on the capital, while courts eventually seated Democrat J. C. W. Beckham. The event imprinted the image of armed mountaineers entering state politics and cemented mutual suspicion. The novel echoes this rift by contrasting Bluegrass aristocratic politics and mountain populism, exposing patronage networks and the caricature of highland voters as mere instruments of factional power.
Progressive Era reforms and the national “discovery” of Appalachia framed outside intervention. Good Roads advocacy led Kentucky to pass early state-aid measures and, by 1914, to establish a State Highway Commission, pivotal for breaking isolation. Women’s clubs, missionary boards, and the nascent Council of Southern Mountain Workers (organized 1913) coordinated health, sanitation, and vocational uplift. Social surveys and campaigns against child labor (Kentucky strengthened laws in 1908 and 1916) placed the mountains within national reform debates. In the novel, visiting teachers, engineers, and philanthropists embody these movements—bringing clinics, schools, and road plans—while revealing tensions between local autonomy and external paternalism that recast tradition as deficiency.
As social and political critique, the book exposes how structural forces—corporate land acquisition, inequitable courts, and partisan machines—exploited Appalachian isolation. It indicts Bluegrass elitism that romanticized mountaineers yet dismissed their rights, and it condemns the moral simplifications of temperance crusaders who ignored economic precarity. By staging confrontations over mineral deeds, schooling, and public order, the narrative scrutinizes class divides that channeled opportunity toward outsiders and criminalized local survival strategies. The portrayal of feuds as symptoms of state neglect, rather than inherent savagery, challenges prevailing stereotypes. In presenting education as empowerment but also as acculturation, it questions uplift models that demanded cultural surrender to secure justice.
The Heart Of The Hills
I
Twin spirals of blue smoke rose on either side of the spur[1], crept tendril-like up two dark ravines, and clearing the feathery green crests of the trees, drifted lazily on upward until, high above, they melted shyly together and into the haze that veiled the drowsy face of the mountain.
Each rose from a little log cabin clinging to the side of a little hollow at the head of a little creek. About each cabin was a rickety fence, a patch of garden, and a little cleared hill-side, rocky, full of stumps, and crazily traced with thin green spears of corn. On one hill-side a man was at work with a hoe, and on the other, over the spur, a boy—both barefooted, and both in patched jean trousers upheld by a single suspender that made a wet line over a sweaty cotton shirt: the man, tall, lean, swarthy, grim; the boy grim and dark, too, and with a face that was prematurely aged. At the man's cabin a little girl in purple homespun was hurrying in and out the back door clearing up after the noonday meal; at the boy's, a comely woman with masses of black hair sat in the porch with her hands folded, and lifting her eyes now and then to the top of the spur. Of a sudden the man impatiently threw down his hoe, but through the battered straw hat that bobbed up and down on the boy's head, one lock tossed on like a jetblack plume until he reached the end of his straggling row of corn. There he straightened up and brushed his earth-stained fingers across a dullred splotch on one cheek of his sullen set face. His heavy lashes lifted and he looked long at the woman on the porch— looked without anger now and with a new decision in his steady eyes. He was getting a little too big to be struck by a woman,[1q] even if she were his own mother, and nothing like that must happen again.
A woodpecker was impudently tapping the top of a dead burnt tree near by, and the boy started to reach for a stone, but turned instead and went doggedly to work on the next row, which took him to the lower corner of the garden fence, where the ground was black and rich. There, as he sank his hoe with the last stroke around the last hill of corn, a fat fishing-worm wriggled under his very eyes, and the growing man lapsed swiftly into the boy again. He gave another quick dig, the earth gave up two more squirming treasures, and with a joyful gasp he stood straight again—his eyes roving as though to search all creation for help against the temptation that now was his. His mother had her face uplifted toward the top of the spur; and following her gaze, he saw a tall mountaineer slouching down the path. Quickly he crouched behind the fence, and the aged look came back into his face. He did not approve of that man coming over there so often, kinsman though he was, and through the palings he saw his mother's face drop quickly and her hands moving uneasily in her lap. And when the mountaineer sat down on the porch and took off his hat to wipe his forehead, he noticed that his mother had on a newly bought store dress, and that the man's hair was wet with something more than water. The thick locks had been combed and were glistening with oil, and the boy knew these facts for signs of courtship[4]; and though he was contemptuous, they furnished the excuse he sought and made escape easy. Noiselessly he wielded his hoe for a few moments, scooped up a handful of soft dirt, meshed the worms in it, and slipped the squirming mass into his pocket. Then he crept stooping along the fence to the rear of the house, squeezed himself between two broken palings, and sneaked on tiptoe to the back porch. Gingerly he detached a cane fishing-pole from a bunch that stood upright in a corner and was tiptoeing away, when with another thought he stopped, turned back, and took down from the wall a bow and arrow with a steel head around which was wound a long hempen string. Cautiously then he crept back along the fence, slipped behind the barn into the undergrowth and up a dark little ravine toward the green top of the spur. Up there he turned from the path through the thick bushes into an open space, walled by laurel-bushes, hooted three times surprisingly like an owl, and lay contentedly down on a bed of moss. Soon his ear caught the sound of light footsteps coming up the spur on the other side, the bushes parted in a moment more, and a little figure in purple homespun slipped through them, and with a flushed, panting face and dancing eyes stood beside him.
The boy nodded his head sidewise toward his own home, and the girl silently nodded hers up and down in answer. Her eyes caught sight of the bow and arrow on the ground beside him and lighted eagerly, for she knew then that the fishingpole was for her. Without a word they slipped through the bushes and down the steep side of the spur to a little branch which ran down into a creek that wound a tortuous way into the Cumberland.
II
On the other side, too, a similar branch ran down into another creek which looped around the long slanting side of the spur and emptied, too, into the Cumberland. At the mouth of each creek the river made a great bend, and in the sweep of each were rich bottom lands. A century before, a Hawn had settled in one bottom, the lower one, and a Honeycutt in the other. As each family multiplied, more land was cleared up each creek by sons and grandsons until in each cove a clan was formed. No one knew when and for what reason an individual Hawn and a Honeycutt had first clashed, but the clash was of course inevitable. Equally inevitable was it, too, that the two clans should take the quarrel up, and for half a century the two families had, with intermittent times of truce, been traditional enemies. The boy's father, Jason Hawn, had married a Honeycutt in a time of peace, and, when the war opened again, was regarded as a deserter, and had been forced to move over the spur to the Honeycutt side. The girl's father, Steve Hawn, a ne'erdo-well and the son of a ne'er-do-well, had for his inheritance wild lands, steep, supposedly worthless, and near the head of the Honeycutt cove. Little Jason's father, when he quarrelled with his kin, could afford to buy only cheap land on the Honeycutt side, and thus the homes of the two were close to the high heart of the mountain, and separated only by the bristling crest of the spur. In time the boy's father was slain from ambush, and it was a Hawn, the Honeycutts claimed, who had made him pay the death price of treachery to his own kin. But when peace came, this fact did not save the lad from taunt and suspicion from the children of the Honeycutt tribe, and being a favorite with his Grandfather Hawn down on the river, and harshly treated by his Honeycutt mother, his life on the other side in the other cove was a hard one; so his heart had gone back to his own people and, having no companions, he had made a playmate of his little cousin, Mavis, over the spur. In time her mother had died, and in time her father, Steve, had begun slouching over the spur to court the widow—his cousin's widow, Martha Hawn. Straightway the fact had caused no little gossip up and down both creeks, good-natured gossip at first, but, now that the relations between the two clans were once more strained, there was open censure, and on that day when all the men of both factions had gone to the county-seat, the boy knew that Steve Hawn had stayed at home for no other reason than to make his visit that day secret; and the lad's brain, as he strode ahead of his silent little companion, was busy with the significance of what was sure to come.
At the mouth of the branch, the two came upon a road that also ran down to the river, but they kept on close to the bank of the stream which widened as they travelled—the boy striding ahead without looking back, the girl following like a shadow. Still again they crossed the road, where it ran over the foot of the spur and turned down into a deep bowl filled to the brim with bush and tree, and there, where a wide pool lay asleep in thick shadow, the lad pulled forth the ball of earth and worms from his pocket, dropped them with the fishing-pole to the ground, and turned ungallantly to his bow and arrow. By the time he had strung it, and had tied one end of the string to the shaft of the arrow and the other about his wrist, the girl had unwound the coarse fishing-line, had baited her own hook, and, squatted on her heels, was watching her cork with eager eyes; but when the primitive little hunter crept to the lower end of the pool, and was peering with Indian caution into the depths, her eyes turned to him.
"Watch out thar!" he called, sharply.
Her cork bobbed, sank, and when, with closed eyes, she jerked with all her might, a big shining chub rose from the water and landed on the bank beside her. She gave a subdued squeal of joy, but the boy's face was calm as a star. Minnows like that were all right for a girl to catch and even for him to eat, but he was after game for a man. A moment later he heard another jerk and another fish was flopping on the bank, and this time she made no sound, but only flashed her triumphant eyes upon him. At the third fish, she turned her eyes for approval—and got none; and at the fourth, she did not look up at all, for he was walking toward her.
"You air skeerin' the big uns," he said shortly, and as he passed he pulled his Barlow knife[2] from his pocket and dropped it at her feet. She rose obediently, and with no sign of protest began gathering an apronful of twigs and piling them for a fire. Then she began scraping one of the fish, and when it was cleaned she lighted the fire. The blaze crackled merrily, the blue smoke rose like some joyous spirit loosed for upward flight, and by the time the fourth fish was cleaned, a little bed of winking coals was ready and soon a gentle sizzling assailed the boy's ears, and a scent made his nostrils quiver and set his stomach a-hungering. But still he gave no sign of interest—even when the little girl spoke at last:
"Dinner's ready."
He did not look around, for he had crouched, his body taut from head to foot, and he might have been turned suddenly to stone for all the sign of life he gave, and the little girl too was just as motionless. Then she saw the little statue come slowly back to quivering life. She saw the bow bend, the shaft of the arrow drawing close to the boy's paling cheek, there was a rushing hiss through the air, a burning hiss in the water, a mighty bass leaped from the convulsed surface and shot to the depths again, leaving the headless arrow afloat. The boy gave one sharp cry and lapsed into his stolid calm again.
The little girl said nothing, for there is no balm for the tragedy of the big fish that gets away. Slowly he untied the string from his reddened wrist and pulled the arrow in. Slowly he turned and gazed indifferently at the four crisp fish on four dry twigs with four pieces of corn pone[10] lying on the grass near them, and the little girl squatting meekly and waiting, as the woman should for her working lord. With his Barlow knife he slowly speared a corn pone, picking up a fish with the other hand, and still she waited until he spoke.
"Take out, Mavie," he said with great gravity and condescension, and then his knife with a generous mouthful on its point stopped in the air, his startled eyes widened, and the little girl shrank cowering behind him. A heavy footfall had crunched on the quiet air, the bushes had parted, and a huge mountaineer towered above them with a Winchester[3] over his shoulder and a kindly smile under his heavy beard. The boy was startled—not frightened.
"Hello, Babe!" he said coolly. "Whut devilmint you up to now?"
The giant smiled uneasily:
"I'm keepin' out o' the sun an' a-takin' keer o' my health," he said, and his eyes dropped hungrily to the corn pone and fried fish, but the boy shook his head sturdily.
"You can't git nothin' to eat from me, Babe Honeycutt."
"Now, looky hyeh, Jason—"
"Not a durn bite," said the boy firmly, "even if you air my mammy's brother. I'm a Hawn now, I want ye to know, an' I ain't goin' to have my folks say I was feedin' an' harborin' a Honeycutt—'specially you."
It would have been humorous to either Hawn or Honeycutt to hear the big man plead, but not to the girl, though he was an enemy, and had but recently wounded a cousin of hers, and was hiding from her own people, for her warm little heart was touched, and big Babe saw it and left his mournful eyes on hers.
"An' I'm a-goin' to tell whar I've seed ye," went on the boy savagely, but the girl grabbed up two fish and a corn pone and thrust them out to the huge hairy hand eagerly stretched out.
"Now, git away," she said breathlessly, "git away—quick!"
"Mavis!" yelled the boy.
"Shet up!" she cried, and the lips of the routed boy fell apart in sheer amazement, for never before had she made the slightest question of his tyrannical authority, and then her eyes blazed at the big Honeycutt and she stamped her foot.
"I'd give 'em to the meanest dog in these mountains."
The big man turned to the boy.
"Is he dead yit?"
"No, he ain't dead yit," said the boy roughly.
"Son," said the mountaineer quietly, "you tell whutever you please about me."
The curiously gentle smile had never left the bearded lips, but in his voice a slight proud change was perceptible.
"An' you can take back yo' corn pone, honey."
Then dropping the food in his hand back to the ground, he noiselessly melted into the bushes again.
At once the boy went to work on his neglected corn-bread and fish, but the girl left hers untouched where they lay. He ate silently, staring at the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her eyes his way, for in the last few minutes some subtle change in their relations had taken place, and both were equally surprised and mystified. Finally, the lad ventured a sidewise glance at her beneath the brim of his hat and met a shy, appealing glance once more. At once he felt aggrieved and resentful and turned sullen.
"He throwed it back in yo' face," he said. "You oughtn't to 'a' done it."
Little Mavis made no answer.
"You're nothin' but a gal, an' nobody'll hold nothin' agin you, but with my mammy a Honeycutt an' me a-livin' on the Honeycutt side, you mought 'a' got me into trouble with my own folks." The girl knew how Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made miserable up and down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew wistful and her chin quivered.
"I jes' couldn't he'p it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little man threw up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness over her sex in general, and at the same time an ungracious acceptance of the terrible calamity she had perhaps left dangling over his head. He clicked the blade of his Barlow knife and rose.
"We better be movin' now," he said, with a resumption of his old authority, and pulling in the line and winding it about the cane pole, he handed it to her and started back up the spur with Mavis trailing after, his obedient shadow once more.
On top of the spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with the slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which, fold after fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above the green crests billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more could happen to them if they went home two hours later than would surely happen if they went home now, the boy thought, and he did not want to go home now. For a moment he stood irresolute, and then, far down the river, he saw two figures on horseback come into sight from a strip of woods, move slowly around a curve of the road, and disappear into the woods again.
One rode sidewise, both looked absurdly small, and even that far away the boy knew them for strangers. He did not call Mavis's attention to them—he had no need—for when he turned, her face showed that she too had seen them, and she was already moving forward to go with him down the spur. Once or twice, as they went down, each glimpsed the coming "furriner[7]s" dimly through the trees; they hurried that they might not miss the passing, and on a high bank above the river road they stopped, standing side by side, the eyes of both fixed on the arched opening of the trees through which the strangers must first come into sight. A ringing laugh from the green depths heralded their coming, and then in the archway were framed a boy and a girl and two ponies—all from another world. The two watchers stared silently—the boy noting that the other boy wore a cap and long stockings, the girl that a strange hat hung down the back of the other girl's head—stared with widening eyes at a sight that was never for them before. And then the strangers saw them—the boy with his bow and arrow, the girl with a fishing-pole—and simultaneously pulled their ponies in before the halting gaze that was levelled at them from the grassy bank. Then they all looked at one another until boy's eyes rested on boy's eyes for question and answer, and the stranger lad's face flashed with quick humor.
"Were you looking for us?" he asked, for just so it seemed to him, and the little mountaineer nodded.
"Yes," he said gravely.
The stranger boy laughed.
"What can we do for you?"
Now, little Jason had answered honestly and literally, and he saw now that he was being trifled with.
"A feller what wears gal's stockings can't do nothin' fer me," he said coolly.
Instantly the other lad made as though he would jump from his pony, but a cry of protest stopped him, and for a moment he glared his hot resentment of the insult; then he dug his heels into his pony's sides.
"Come on, Marjorie," he said, and with dignity the two little "furriners" rode on, never looking back even when they passed over the hill.
"He didn't mean nothin'," said Mavis, "an' you oughtn't—"
Jason turned on her in a fury.
"I seed you a-lookin' at him!"
"'Tain't so! I seed you a-lookin' at HER!" she retorted, but her eyes fell before his accusing gaze, and she began worming a bare toe into the sand.
"Air ye goin' home now?" she asked, presently.
"No," he said shortly, "I'm a-goin' atter him. You go on home."
The boy started up the hill, and in a moment the girl was trotting after him. He turned when he heard the patter of her feet.
"Huh!" he grunted contemptuously, and kept on. At the top of the hill he saw several men on horseback in the bend of the road below, and he turned into the bushes.
"They mought tell on us," explained Jason, and hiding bow and arrow and fishing-pole, they slipped along the flank of the spur until they stood on a point that commanded the broad river-bottom at the mouth of the creek.
By the roadside down there, was the ancestral home of the Hawns with an orchard about it, a big garden, a stable huge for that part of the world, and a meat-house where for three-quarters of a century there had always been things "hung up." The old log house in which Jason and Mavis's great-great-grandfather had spent his pioneer days had been weather-boarded and was invisible somewhere in the big frame house that, trimmed with green and porticoed with startling colors, glared white in the afternoon sun. They could see the two ponies hitched at the front gate. Two horsemen were hurrying along the river road beneath them, and Jason recognized one as his uncle, Arch Hawn, who lived in the county-seat, who bought "wild" lands and was always bringing in "furriners," to whom he sold them again. The man with him was a stranger, and Jason understood better now what was going on. Arch Hawn was responsible for the presence of the man and of the girl and that boy in the "gal's stockings," and all of them would probably spend the night at his grandfather's house. A farm-hand was leading the ponies to the barn now, and Jason and Mavis saw Arch and the man with him throw themselves hurriedly from their horses, for the sun had disappeared in a black cloud and a mist of heavy rain was sweeping up the river. It was coming fast, and the boy sprang through the bushes and, followed by Mavis, flew down the road. The storm caught them, and in a few moments the stranger boy and girl looking through the front door at the sweeping gusts, saw two drenched and bedraggled figures slip shyly through the front gate and around the corner to the back of the house.
III
The two little strangers sat in cane-bottomed chairs before the open door, still looking about them with curious eyes at the strings of things hanging from the smoke-browned rafters—beans, red pepper-pods, and twists of homegrown tobacco, the girl's eyes taking in the old spinning-wheel in the corner, the piles of brilliantly figured quilts between the foot-boards of the two beds ranged along one side of the room, and the boy's, catching eagerly the butt of a big revolver projecting from the mantel-piece, a Winchester standing in one corner, a long, old-fashioned squirrel rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers over the front door, and a bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall of the back porch. Presently a slim, drenched figure slipped quietly in, then another, and Mavis stood on one side of the fire-place and little Jason on the other. The two girls exchanged a swift glance and Mavis's eyes fell; abashed, she knotted her hands shyly behind her and with the hollow of one bare foot rubbed the slender arch of the other. The stranger boy looked up at Jason with a pleasant glance of recognition, got for his courtesy a sullen glare that travelled from his broad white collar down to his stockinged legs, and his face flushed; he would have trouble with that mountain boy. Before the fire old Jason Hawn stood, and through a smoke cloud from his corn-cob pipe looked kindly at his two little guests.
"So that's yo' boy an' gal?"
"That's my son Gray," said Colonel Pendleton.
"And that's my cousin Marjorie," said the lad, and Mavis looked quickly to little Jason for recognition of this similar relationship and got no answering glance, for little did he care at that moment of hostility how those two were akin.
"She's my cousin, too," laughed the colonel, "but she always calls me uncle."
Old Jason turned to him.
"Well, we're a purty rough people down here, but you're welcome to all we got."
"I've found that out," laughed Colonel Pendleton pleasantly, "everywhere."
"I wish you both could stay a long time with us," said the old man to the little strangers. "Jason here would take Gray fishin' an' huntin', an' Mavis would git on my old mare an' you two could jus' go flyin' up an' down the road. You could have a mighty good time if hit wasn't too rough fer ye."
"Oh, no," said the boy politely, and the girl said:
"I'd just love to."
The Blue-grass man's attention was caught by the names.
"Jason," he repeated; "why, Jason was a mighty hunter, and Mavis— that means 'the songthrush.' How in the world did they get those names?"
"Well, my granddaddy was a powerful b'arhunter in his day," said the old man, "an' I heerd as how a school-teacher nicknamed him Jason, an' that name come down to me an' him. I've heerd o' Mavis as long as I can rickellect. Hit was my grandmammy's name."
Colonel Pendleton looked at the sturdy mountain lad, his compact figure, square shoulders, well-set head with its shock of hair and bold, steady eyes, and at the slim, wild little creature shrinking against the mantel-piece, and then he turned to his own son Gray and his little cousin Marjorie. Four better types of the Blue- grass and of the mountains it would be hard to find. For a moment he saw them in his mind's eye transposed in dress and environment, and he was surprised at the little change that eye could see, and when he thought of the four living together in these wilds, or at home in the Blue-grass, his wonder at what the result might be almost startled him. The mountain lad had shown no surprise at the talk about him and his cousin, but when the stranger man caught his eye, little Jason's lips opened.
"I knowed all about that," he said abruptly.
"About what?"
"Why, that mighty hunter—and Mavis."
"Why, who told you?"
"The jologist."
"The what?" Old Jason laughed.
"He means ge-ol-o-gist," said the old man, who had no little trouble with the right word himself. "A feller come in here three year ago with a hammer an' went to peckin' aroun' in the rocks here, an' that boy was with him all the time. Thar don't seem to be much the feller didn't tell Jason an' nothin' that Jason don't seem to remember. He's al'ays a-puzzlin' me by comin' out with somethin' or other that rock-pecker[6] tol' him an'—" he stopped, for the boy was shaking his head from side to side.
"Don't you say nothin' agin him, now," he said, and old Jason laughed.
"He's a powerful hand to take up fer his friends, Jason is."
"He was a friend o' all us mountain folks," said the boy stoutly, and then he looked Colonel Pendleton in the face—fearlessly, but with no impertinence.
"He said as how you folks from the big settlemints was a-comin' down here to buy up our wild lands fer nothin' because we all was a lot o' fools an' didn't know how much they was worth, an' that ever'body'd have to move out o' here an' you'd get rich diggin' our coal an' cuttin' our timber an' raisin' hell ginerally."
He did not notice Marjorie's flush, but went on fierily: "He said that our trees caught the rain an' our gullies gethered it together an' troughed it down the mountains an' made the river which would water all yo' lands. That you was a lot o' damn fools cuttin' down yo' trees an' a-plantin' terbaccer an' a-spittin' out yo' birthright in terbaccer-juice, an' that by an' by you'd come up here an' cut down our trees so that there wouldn't be nothin' left to ketch the rain when it fell, so that yo' rivers would git to be cricks an' yo' cricks branches an' yo' land would die o' thirst an' the same thing 'ud happen here. Co'se we'd all be gone when all this tuk place, but he said as how I'd live to see the day when you furriners would be damaged by wash-outs down thar in the settlements an' would be a-pilin' up stacks an' stacks o' gold out o' the lands you robbed me an' my kinfolks out of."
"Shet up," said Arch Hawn sharply, and the boy wheeled on him.
"Yes, an' you air a-helpin' the furriners to rob yo' own kin; you air a-doin' hit yo'self."
"Jason!"
The old man spoke sternly and the boy stopped, flushed and angry, and a moment later slipped from the room.
