"Why, I never-"

The girl paused and caught her breath. It all came to her like a flash.

Those stealthy movements on the mountain had been made by some of Black Blevens' men. They had been spying on her. She blushed as she realized that they might have seen her sleeping there in the leaves. But her face was flushed with anger as she realized that, having seen her pocket that all but harmless pistol, they had taken a mean advantage and had sworn out a warrant for her arrest.

"Don't you keer," said the little mountain man, putting a hand on her arm. "Don't you keer narry bit. This store's mine, an' all them goods.

I'll mortgage hit all to go your bond. You go right on teaching your school. We'll take keer of old Black Blevens and all them of his sort."

Quick tears blinded her, but she brushed them away. It was hard to be treated as a criminal in a strange land and by the very people you were trying to help.

Quickly, instead of tears, there was a gleam of battle in her eyes.

"We'll beat it!" said Ransom, clinching his fists hard. "Down here in the mountings law's a club to beat your enemies with. Hit's quare, but hit's true. We'll git a lawyer from the court house. We'll beat old Black Blevens, just you wait and see!"

Three times more that morning Florence was reduced to tears by rough-clad, shuffling mountaineers who came to knock timidly at the schoolhouse door and to a.s.sure her that they had heard of her plight and were ready to go her bail and to help in any way. "If hit takes the roof off from over my ole woman an' the last hog shoat I got runnin' in the branch," as one of them expressed it.

It is always good to know that one has friends, and when one is among comparative strangers it is gratifying indeed.

And yet, as the day came to an end and the sudden mountain darkness fell, it found Florence with a heavy heart. To be tried by a Justice of the Peace for a crime, this was a cross indeed.

"Tried by a Justice," she thought to herself. "Who is the Justice?

Pellage Skidmore! One of Black Blevens' henchmen! It's a plot. They'll fine me and let me go; perhaps give me ten days in the county jail. Ten days in that place!" Her heart stopped beating. She had seen that jail-a dark and dirty place full of vermin.

"Oh, I couldn't!" she breathed.

Then of a sudden a new thought came to her. The least fine that could be imposed was twenty-five dollars; one of the men had told her that.

"In the Const.i.tution of the United States," she whispered to herself, "it says that in trials over matters amounting to twenty-five dollars, or over, the defendant may call for a jury. I'll call for one. If I must have a trial, I'll have a real one!"

At that she stamped the ground with her foot and felt immensely relieved.

There is a great comfort to be had sometimes when one has something to say about his own hanging.

CHAPTER VIII THE SILENT WATCHER

Troubles never come singly. Florence's second shock came close on the heels of the first. Having decided to make the best of a bad situation and to allow her friends and fellow clansmen to arrange the legal battle over her trial for carrying a concealed weapon, she went to her work next day with a brave heart.

With all her strong resolves, the look on the faces of her smaller charges came near melting her to tears. All knew of the impending trial.

A few greeted her with a gla.s.sy stare. These were children of her enemies. For the most part they looked at her with such a sad and sorrowful longing as one might expect to find on the face of a mother whose son has been ordered shot.

"Surely," Marion said to her, "being tried by a jury in the mountains must be a solemn affair."

"It is," said Florence, swallowing hard, "and Ransom Turner told me last night this was the first time in the history of the mountains that a woman has been tried for carrying concealed weapons."

"It will be a great occasion!" Marion could see the humor of the situation. "When is it to come off?"

"Ransom says that the judge has set the trial a week from next Monday."

"That's school election day. All Laurel Branch will be there!"

"Let them come!" said Florence, a gleam of fire in her eye. "I haven't done anything to be ashamed of! They want a fight. We'll give them one-a battle royal! They've already lost one point; they must give me a jury.

We'll make them lose some more. I shouldn't wonder if the tide would turn and the power that is higher than I would turn this bit of meanness and trickery to our advantage."

The forenoon of that day pa.s.sed much as had the earlier hours of other days-study and lessons, recess, then again the droning of voices blended with the lazy buzzing of flies and the distant songs of birds.

In spite of the quiet smoothness of the pa.s.sing hours, there was in the air that ominous tenseness which one feels but cannot explain.

This was heightened fourfold by a strange occurrence. Just as Florence was about to ring the bell after the noon hour, Marion drew her to a gaping window that looked out on the upper landscape and pointed with a trembling finger to a solitary figure perched atop a giant sandstone rock that lay in the center of a deserted clearing a few hundred yards above the schoolhouse.

The figure was that of a mountaineer. At that distance it would have been difficult to have told whether he was young or old. Something about the way he sat slouching over the rifle that lay across his lap reminded Florence of Black Blevens. An involuntary shudder shook her.

"On Lookout Rock!" she breathed.

The story of that rock they knew too well. In earlier days, when a deadly feud was raging up and down the creek, this rock had been the lookout for Black Blevens' clan. There, on top of the rock, with rifle at his side, a clansman would watch the movements of his enemy. Smoke curling from a distant chimney, a woman hoeing corn in the field, the distant boom of a rifle, all were signs that he read and pa.s.sed on by signals to his distant clansmen.

"There hasn't been a watcher on that rock for years, they say," said Florence. Her teeth were fairly chattering.

"See! He's looking this way. Seems that he must be expecting something to happen."

"Wha-what could it be?"

Florence stood trembling, all unnerved for one instant. Then, having shaken herself as one will to awaken from an unpleasant dream, she became her brave self again.

It was well she regained her courage. Fifteen minutes later, while Marion was outside beneath a great beech tree, hearing a lesson, Florence sat watching over a study hour. On hearing a sound of commotion she looked up quickly to see her fifty children running for doors and windows. In the back of the room Bud Wax and Ballard Skidmore stood glaring at each other and reaching for their hip pockets.

One instant the teacher's head whirled. The next that dread rumor sped through her brain: "Bud has been carrying his pistol gun to school."

Then, like a powerful mechanical thing, she went into action. One instant she had leaped from the platform; the next found her half way down the aisle. Before the slow muscles of Bud's arm had carried a hand to his pocket, he felt both wrists held in a vice-like grip and a voice that was strange, even to the speaker herself, said:

"Ballard Skidmore, leave the room. All the rest of you take your seats."

Had Bud Wax possessed the will power to struggle, he would have found himself powerless in this girl's grasp. Nature had endowed her with a magnificent physique. She had neither neglected it nor abused it. Gym, when there was gym, hiking, climbing, rowing, riding, had served to keep her fit for this moment.

As Bud sank weakly to his seat he felt something slide from his pocket.

"My pistol gun," his paralized mind registered weakly. The next moment he saw the teacher gripping the b.u.t.t of that magnificent thing of black rubber and blue steel and marching toward the front of the room.

"James Jordon," she said as she tried to still the wild beating of her heart, "go bring me two sandstones as large as your head."

"Yes, mam." James went out trembling.

Florence calmly tilted out the cylinder of the gun and allowed the cartridges to fall out. After that she stood with the weapon dangling in her hand.

When the rocks had been placed on her desk she laid the pistol on the flattest one, then lifted the other for a blow.

She did not look at Bud. She dared not. When a small child she had possessed a doll that was all her own. A ruthless hand had broken the doll's head. No doll ever meant more to a girl than his first gun meant to a mountain boy.