Old Aaron scratched his head.

"By Gawd, boys--that's so. Let him pa.s.s!"

Thus it was that only Arch Hawn could have brought about an agreement that was the ninth wonder of the mountain world, and was no less than a temporary truce in the feud between old Aaron Honeycutt and old Jason Hawn until the land deal in which both leaders shared a heavy interest could come to a consummation. Arch had interested Colonel Pendleton in his "wild lands" at a horse sale in the Blue-gra.s.s. The mountaineer's shrewd knowledge of horses had caught the attention of the colonel, his drawling speech, odd phrasing, and quaint humor had amused the Blue-gra.s.s man, and his exposition of the wealth of the hills and the vast holdings that he had in the hollow of his hand, through options far and wide, had done the rest--for the matter was timely to the colonel's needs and to his accidental hour of opportunity. Only a short while before old Morton Sanders, an Eastern capitalist of Kentucky birth, had been making inquiry of him that the mountaineer's talk answered precisely, and soon the colonel found himself an intermediary between buried coal and open millions, and such a quick unlooked-for chance of exchange made Arch Hawn's brain reel. Only a few days before the colonel started for the mountains, Babe Honeycutt had broken the truce by shooting Shade Hawn, but as Shade was going to get well, Arch's oily tongue had licked the wound to the pride of every Honeycutt except Shade, and he calculated that the latter would be so long in bed that his interference would never count. But things were going wrong. Arch had had a hard time with old Jason the night before. Again he had to go over the same weary argument that he had so often travelled before: the mountain people could do nothing with the mineral wealth of their hills; the coal was of no value to them where it was; they could not dig it, they had no market for it; and they could never get it into the markets of the outside world. It was the boy's talk that had halted the old man, and to Arch's amazement the colonel's sense of fairness seemed to have been touched and his enthusiasm seemed to have waned a little. That morning, too, Arch had heard that Shade Hawn was getting well a little too fast, and he was on his way to see about it. Shade was getting well fast, and with troubled eyes Arch saw him sitting up in a chair and cleaning his Winchester.

"What's yo' hurry?"

"I ain't never agreed to no truce," said Shade truculently.

"Don't you think you might save a little time--waitin' fer Babe to git tame? He's hidin' out. You can't find him now."

"I can look fer him."

"Shade!"--wily Arch purposely spoke loud enough for Shade's wife to hear, and he saw her thin, worn, shrewish face turn eagerly-- "I'll give ye just fifty dollars to stay here in the house an' git well fer two more weeks. You know why, an' you know hit's wuth it to me. What you say?"

Shade rubbed his stubbled chin ruminatively and his wife Mandy broke in sharply:

"Take it, you fool!"

Apparently Shade paid no heed to the advice nor the epithet, which was not meant to be offensive, but he knew that Mandy wanted a cow of just that price and a cow she would have; while he needed cartridges and other little "fixin's," and he owed for moonshine up a certain creek, and wanted more just then and badly. But mental calculation was laborious and he made a plunge:

"Not a cent less'n seventy-five, an' I ain't goin' to argue with ye."

Arch scowled.

"Split the difference!" he commanded.

"All right."

A few minutes later Arch was loping back up the river road. Within an hour he had won old Jason to a non-committal silence and straight-way volunteered to show the colonel the outcroppings of his coal. And old Jason mounted his sorrel mare and rode with the party up the creek.

It was Sunday and a holiday for little Jason from toil in the rocky corn-field. He was stirring busily before the break of dawn.

While the light was still gray, he had milked, cut wood for his mother, and eaten his breakfast of greasy bacon and corn-bread. On that day it had been his habit for months to disappear early, come back for his dinner, slip quietly away again and return worn out and tired at milking-time. Invariably for a long time his mother had asked:

"Whut you been a-doin', Jason?" And invariably his answer was:

"Nothin' much."

But, by and by, as the long dark mountaineer, Steve Hawn, got in the daily habit of swinging over the ridge, she was glad to be free from the boy's sullen watchfulness, and particularly that morning she was glad to see him start as usual up the path his own feet had worn through the steep field of corn, and disappear in the edge of the woods. She would have a long day for courtship and for talk of plans which she was keeping secret from little Jason.

She was a Honeycutt and she had married one Hawn, and there had been much trouble. Now she was going to marry another of the tribe, there would be more trouble, and Steve Hawn over the ridge meant to evade it by straightway putting forth from those hills.

Hurriedly she washed the dishes, tidied up her poor shack of a home, and within an hour she was seated in the porch, in her best dress, with her knitting in her lap and, even that early, lifting expectant and shining eyes now and then to the tree-crowned crest of the ridge.

Up little Jason went through breaking mist and flashing dew. A wood-thrush sang, and he knew the song came from the bird of which little Mavis was the human counterpart. Woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were hammering and, when a crested c.o.c.k of the woods took billowy flight across a blue ravine, he knew him for a big cousin of the little red-heads, just as Mavis was a little cousin of his. Once he had known birds only by sight, but now he knew every calling, twittering, winging soul of them by name. Once he used to draw bead on one and all heartlessly and indiscriminately with his old rifle, but now only the whistle of a bob-white, the darting of a hawk, or the whir of a pheasant's wings made him whirl the old weapon from his shoulder. He knew flower, plant, bush, and weed, the bark and leaf of every tree, and even In winter he could pick them out in the gray etching of a mountain-side--dog-wood, red-bud, "sarvice"

berry, hickory, and walnut, the oaks--white, black, and chestnut-- the majestic poplar, prized by the outer world, and the black-gum that defied the lightning. All this the dreamy stranger had taught him, and much more. And n.o.body, native born to those hills, except his uncle Arch, knew as much about their hidden treasures as little Jason. He had trailed after the man of science along the benches of the mountains where coal beds lie. With him he had sought the roots of upturned trees and the beds of little creeks and the gray faces of "rock-houses" for signs of the black diamonds. He had learned to watch the beds of little creeks for the shining tell-tale black bits, and even the tiny mouths of crawfish holes, on the lips of which they sometimes lay. And the biggest treasure in the hills little Jason had found himself; for only on the last day before the rock-p.e.c.k.e.r had gone away, the two had found signs of another vein, and the geologist had given his own pick to the boy and told him to dig, while he was gone, for himself. And Jason had dug. He was slipping now up the tiny branch, and where the stream trickled down the face of a water- worn perpendicular rock the boy stopped, leaned his rifle against a tree, and stepped aside into the bushes. A moment later he reappeared with a small pick in his hand, climbed up over a mound of loose rocks and loose earth, ten feet around the rock, and entered the narrow mouth of a deep, freshly dug ditch. Ten feet farther on he was halted by a tall black column solidly wedged in the narrow pa.s.sage, at the base of which was a bench of yellow dirt extending not more than two feet from the foot of the column and above the floor of the ditch. There had been mighty operations going on in that secret pa.s.sage; the toil for one boy and one tool had been prodigious and his work was not yet quite done. Lifting the pick above his head, the boy sank it into that yellow pedestal with savage energy, raking the loose earth behind him with hands and feet. The sunlight caught the top of the black column above his head and dropped shining inch by inch, but on he worked tirelessly. The yellow bench disappeared and the heap of dirt behind him was piled high as his head, but the black column bored on downward as though bound for the very bowels of the earth, and only when the bench vanished to the level of the ditch's floor did the lad send his pick deep into a new layer and lean back to rest even for a moment. A few deep breaths, the brushing of one forearm and then the other across his forehead and cheeks, and again he grasped the tool. This time it came out hard, bringing out with its point particles of grayish-black earth, and the boy gave a low, shrill yell. It was a bed of clay that he had struck--the bed on which, as the geologist had told him, the ma.s.sive layers of coal had slept so long. In a few minutes he had skimmed a yellow inch or two more to the dingy floor of the clay bed, and had driven his pick under the very edge of the black bulk towering above him.

His work was done, and no buccaneer ever gloated more over hidden treasure than Jason over the prize discovered by him and known of n.o.body else in the world. He raised his head and looked up the shimmering black face of his find. He took up his pick again and notched foot-holes in each side of the yellow ditch. He marked his own height on the face of the column, and, climbing up along it, measured his full length again, and yet with outstretched arm he could barely touch the top of the vein with the tips of his fingers. No vein half that thick had the rock-p.e.c.k.e.r with all his searching found, and the lad gave a long, low whistle of happy amazement. A moment later he dropped his pick, climbed over the pile of new dirt, emerged at the mouth of the pa.s.sage, and sat down as if on guard in the grateful coolness of the little ravine.

Drawing one long breath, he looked proudly back once more and began shaking his head wisely. They couldn't fool him. He knew what that mighty vein of coal was worth. Other people--fools-- might sell their land for a dollar or two an acre, even old Jason, his grandfather, but not the Jason Hawn who had dug that black giant out of the side of the mountain.

"Go away, boy," the rock-p.e.c.k.e.r had said, "Get an education. Leave this farm alone--it won't run away. By the time you are twenty- one, an acre of it will be worth as much as all of it is now."

No, they couldn't fool him. He would keep his find a secret from every soul on earth--even from his grandfather and Mavis, both of whom he had already been tempted to tell. He rose to his feet with the resolution and crouched suddenly, listening hard. Something was coming swiftly toward him through the undergrowth on the other side of the creek, and he reached stealthily for his rifle, sank behind the bowlder with his thumb on the hammer just as the bushes parted on the opposite cliff, and Mavis stood above him, peering for him and calling his name in an excited whisper. He rose glowering and angry.

"Whut you doin' up here?" he asked roughly, and the girl shrank, and her message stopped at her lips.

"They're comin' up here," she faltered.

The boy's eyes accused her mercilessly and he seemed not to hear her.

"You've been spyin'!"

The dignity of his manhood was outraged, and humbly and helplessly she nodded in utter abas.e.m.e.nt, faltering again:

"They're comin' up here!"

"Who's comin' up here?"

"Them strangers an' grandpap an' Uncle Arch--an' another rock- p.e.c.k.e.r."

"Did you tell'em?"

The girl crossed her heart and body swiftly.

"I hain't told a soul," she gasped". I come up to tell you."

"When they comin'?"

The sound of voices below answered for her.

The boy wheeled, alert as a wild-cat, the girl slid noiselessly down the cliff and crept noiselessly after him down the bed of the creek, until they could both peer through the bushes down on the next bend of the stream below. There they were--all of them, and down there they had halted.

"Ain't no use goin' up any furder," said the voice of Arch Hawn; "I've looked all up this crick an' thar ain't nary a blessed sign o' coal."

"All right," said the colonel, who was puffing with the climb.

"That suits me--I've had enough."

At Jason's side, Mavis echoed his own swift breath of relief, but as the party turned, the rock-p.e.c.k.e.r stooped and rose with a black lump in his hand.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said, "where did this come from?"

The boy's heart began to throb, for once he had started to carry that very lump to his grandfather, had changed his mind, and thoughtlessly dropped it there. The geologist was looking at it closely and then began to weigh it with his hand.

"This is pretty good-looking coal," he said, and he laughed. "I guess we'd better go up a little farther--this didn't come out all by itself."

The boy dug Mavis sharply in the shoulder.

"Git back into the bushes--quick!" he whispered.

The girl shrank away and the boy dropped down into the bed of the creek and slipped down to where the stream poured between two bowlders over which ascent was slippery and difficult. And when the party turned up the bend of the creek, Arch Hawn saw the boy, tense and erect, on the wet black summit of one bowlder, with his old rifle in the hollow of his arm.