Coal Creek Rebellion

Copyright, 1984 by Jamie McKenzie
CHAPTER ONE
EVICTION

Hidden in the shadows, young Lent Harris kept his eyes on two shaggy-looking men hunched over the commissary steps with shotguns cradled across laps and hats pulled low against the sun. A dirt road wandered past them through dozens of boarded, empty shacks. Lent could see nothing moving . . . nothing but a small band of chickens trying to scratch their lunch from hard baked earth. He had been watching all morning, waiting for these men to make some kind of move.

Finally a man shuffled out onto the store's front porch - a towering giant dressed in a wrinkled cotton shirt and dark, baggy pants held up by sagging suspenders. Lent recognized him as Captain Cross, the mine superintendent. Even from his hiding place at several hundred yards, Lent noted the coldness and sharp features of a weasel - a very large weasel. He hated Cross as much as he could hate anybody in the world.

Cross stood on the porch for a moment looking up the road toward the shacks, and then he spat into the dust.

"Time's come," he announced, giving one of the sleepers a prod
with his heavy boot.

Grumbling and sputtering, both men stumbled to their feet, grabbed up their shotguns, and fell into step behind Cross. The morning heat lay across the road in silence - a silence broken now by the muffled steps of hunters stalking prey.

*****

Tall for fifteen, Lent sprawled behind a fallen tree in a stand of pine just down the road from the commissary. Slender and dark-haired, he normally had the face of a choir boy - a kind of sweet, smiling innocence which brought him no end of teasing from his friends - but now his face was all storm and darkness as he watched the men approach. From the moment they left the porch, he had tracked them with his squirrel gun.

"Got 'em!" he whispered, pretending to fire.

The tall one was in his sights now. Lent smiled. A slight squeeze of the trigger would send one more soul . . .

But the Mining Company which was sending these men would just send another . . . and another. Lent could still picture the hand, the hammer, the nail and the big sheet of paper giving them a week to clear out:

THE TENNESSEE COAL MINING COMPANY
HEREBY GIVES NOTICE
THAT ALL TENANTS MUST REMOVE THEMSELVES
FROM THESE PREMISES
BY MAY 15
OR FACE EVICTION
UNDER PENALTY OF LAW

He could still recall the crossed arms and unyielding eyes of Captain Cross as family after family loaded mattresses, chests, rocking chairs and box upon box of belongings onto farm wagons that groaned in complaint at the heavy loads. There should be a bounty for that kind of man, he found himself thinking.

"Lent!" The whisper was an alarmed hiss in his ear. "Get back in the house before that pea-shooter of yours goes off by mistake."

His Uncle John knelt frowning by his side while his heavily calloused hand gripped Lent's shoulder. "We've got enough trouble, boy. Don't need you adding to it."

There was no time to argue, for Cross and his two gunmen were closing in on the house by now. Lent slipped quietly away from his fallen tree to scurry back along a line of bushes that led to the rear yard. Shoving the squirrel gun into a space in the wood pile, he hurried through the back door of their small house to catch the drama unraveling out front.

His mother and father sat rocking on the front porch. Not a Sunday kind of rocking. Slow and going nowhere, but not peaceful. Watchful, but silent.

Captain Cross halted before this silent couple, nodded his head slightly and then reached into his pocket. Unfolding a wrinkled square of paper, he began reading:

"As the Tennessee Coal Mining Company no longer plans to employ those who had formerly worked in the Briceville shaft, all men are hereby given notice that they, their families, and all their possessions must be removed from company property by May the fifteenth, at the latest. The foregoing is by order of B.A. Jenkins, President."

Lent saw amusement behind the man's mask - the glimmer of something dark, a shadowed form creeping out of a primitive corner. And Lent felt himself at the edge of a deep chasm, fearful of falling.

"You got to move out." The voice was distant and free of emotion. Lent watched the man spit a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. "Yesterday was the fifteenth, you know. Time's passed for leaving."

He had shoved out a hundred families, but the script was always the same . . . same words . . . same expressions . . . same quiet gunmen chewing in the background, shotguns at ready.

Lent scanned his father's face, cold and impassive like the superintendent's, no hint of anger, fear or movement. No sign that he had heard the other man's threat or command.

Charlie Harris would never move. Lent knew it. His father was like the old mountain looming above the hollow where they lived. Solid. Set in his ways. Hard to budge. Some would say stubborn. After working the Briceville shaft half a dozen years now, he had grown attached. The hollow . . . the people . . . even the mine . . . they had become home to him. He'd set deep roots in the bottom land, and now he met the captain's stare with no sign of weakening.

Lent knew his father would never move. They were the last family, but Lent felt the roots and knew his father meant to take a stand. He only wished his rifle was closer by, and found himself wondering what weapon his father would use when the time came.

He saw his father shift weight to send a stream of dark brown liquid toward the can perched on the porch edge.

"We're not movin," his father announced.

Silent shots rang out as the two men's eyes met. In the background Lent saw the gunmen tightening their grip on their shotguns.

"We're staying," said Charlie Harris. And he wiped his mouth
against his shirt sleeve before folding his arms across his chest.

A glimmer of something dark flickered once again on Cross' face, and Lent saw a smile spread across the captain's mouth . . . a smile that awakened a childhood memory Lent had shoved way back into a corner.

One day when he was much younger exploring the tall weeds behind his house, Lent noticed an older boy threading his way through the woods with a small bundle in his hands. Thinking himself alone and safe from watchful eyes, this older boy sank to his knees, opened the bundle and held out a tiny kitten which struggled and whined against its captor rough handling.

From where Lent was hiding, he could hear the kitten's whining shift to the desperate terror of torture and death. Squeezing the tiny body between his legs, the boy grabbed a front paw in each hand and begun to pull them apart, his mouth twisted in a strangely mocking smile. Lent found himself running, hands over ears, but the sound of the kitten chased him into his house, his room, his bed and the rest of his childhood. This shriek of terror stayed with him night after night for more than a year, and he still sometimes awoke with a huge smiling face looming over his head as if he were the kitten.

The same kind of smile played across the captain's features now. "We're not playing, Charlie. You'd best move out and not cause trouble."

Lent waited for his father to break the silence, but quiet settled over the porch as Charlie Harris rocked his chair and locked eyes with the other man.

Stupidly, then, the family's prize rooster, strutting and bold as ever, wandered out from behind the house.

The captain's smile broadened at the sight of the brightly feathered fighting cock. A long moment dragged by as they all saw what was coming. Cross glanced at his gunmen and nodded toward the target. When the two shotguns fired, the bird seemed to disappear. One moment he was strutting proudly, the next he was gone.

Cross nodded toward the few feathers settling in the dust of the road. "As I said, Charlie, you best move out today."

Lent watched the frozen form of his father and the rocker which had come to a complete stop. He waited for the swift lunge of revenge, some kind of strong response, but his father remained stiff and silent.

As the three men turned to wander back down the road, Lent remembered the gun lying in the wood pile. Would his father reach now for the rifle perched over the hearth? Lent could see them striding down the road together . . . Uncle John, his father and Lent. They would call Cross from the commissary and blow him across the road like the dead rooster. They would stop the smiling . . . put an end to the leering . . . silence
the screams of terror that had haunted so many nights.

Lent waited, but his father did not move, did not rise from the silent rocker. He sat stiffly, jaw working hard on his tobacco, eyes staring down at floorboards.

Lent kept waiting until his question finally burst forth.

"What are we gonna do, Pa?"

Lent saw the jaw stop for a moment and then keep on working as if his father had heard no question, as if Captain Cross had made no visit, as if that old rooster was still strutting before the house, as if nothing at all had happened and the day was just like any other day instead of the beginning of some kind of ending.

When Lent looked to his mother for an answer, she caught his gaze for a moment, then looked away, clearly uncomfortable with his question. Shrugging, she rose to her feet, smoothed out her gingham dress, and stood looking far up the hollow.

"I kinda liked it here," she said. And then, without looking at Lent she turned and disappeared into the house.

Lent's uncle moved slowly across the porch and dropped down into the empty rocker next to his brother Charlie. The two men were clearly brothers, both of them almost square in build, shoulders heavily muscled, their faces marked by the
same strong features, brows that seemed carved out of granite and eyes that reminded Lent of hawks. Charlie was a few inches taller than his younger brother, but Uncle John was known throughout the hollow as one of the strongest men to ever work the mines. He could often be found arm wrestling when he wasn't working. His fame had spread over the state line into Kentucky.

"Want me to go for George Cox's wagon?" Lent's father seemed to ignore the question, his expression blank, his jaw still working on the tobacco.

Lent kept waiting for the explosion he knew must come, the call to arms, the rush toward action, but his father did not move.

Finally, slowly - painfully it seemed - Lent saw his father stop chewing, lean forward and send a brown stream into the can.

"Got no choice," he announced. "No choice."

Lent's immediate reaction was violent. "NO!" he shouted. "We're not movin, Pa! We can't!"

Charlie Harris went back to chewing his tobacco, and his eyes never met the question that burned inside his son.

Lent suddenly found himself running, fighting tears, driven
by a rage that roared louder than earth shifting within some mine, louder than the rumble of gas exploding deep at the base of a lonely shaft, a rage more frightening than a miner's deepest fear - the fear of cave-in and burial, slow death and separation.

Lent had been so proud. Last family to leave the hollow. They, the Harris family, were the only ones to stay and fight.

It had almost made up for what his father had done months earlier. The company was fed up with union troubles. Just when business was booming along, the miners always seemed to walk out of the mines in complaint over some problem or other. And so, the president of the Tennessee Coal Mining Company, B.A. Jenkins, tired of losing money and time, had hatched a plan to end the troubles, keep the miners at work and push the union aside.

It was all pretty simple. If you wanted to work, you signed the paper. The paper said you wouldn't strike. It said you didn't want a "check-weighman" to make sure the company didn't cheat when it weighed your day's production. It said you didn't mind getting company "script" instead of cash wages - script that could only be used at a company store which charged high prices. Your signature on this contract meant you wouldn't argue company decisions and you didn't want a union.

Lent's father, reluctantly and bitterly, had signed the
contract, believing that he was buying time and security - a home, a job and a place in the hollow.

As Lent slowed to a walk, the rumble inside him settled into a duller, quieter pain. Although his dream of a last stand was hovering near death, the smile of the captain loomed before him, and Lent found himself making promises, deep promises which filled him with foreboding.

CHAPTER TWO
NEW QUARTERS

The wagon groaned to a stop, complaining loudly of the winding, rutted road they had followed up the mountain all morning. Road, family and wagon would now part company as the Harrises shouldered belongings to climb the ridge to the farm where Charlie Harris had been raised - a few acres of tobacco and a small cabin which lay half an hour away up a path which was barely wide enough for a mule.

"This could take til dark," grumbled John Harris, stepping back to eye the furniture, the chests and the family treasures which were piled high on the back of the wagon.

"Specially if you keep on talkin instead of workin," grinned his older brother. He finished unhitching the mule team and led the largest and angriest around back of the wagon.

"Climb up and give me a hand with that chest there, Lent."

Lent's thoughts were far away. In his mind he was off fighting battles on horseback. Pictures flashed like illustrations in dime novels as the miners in his daydreams found uniforms
and gallant steeds, sometimes even lances and armor. In these dreams, Captain Cross was usually the Knight of Darkness, while Lent took turns being Lancelot or Robin Hood.

Lent's band of miners sometimes resembled the green outlaws of Sherwood Forest and sometimes took on the finery of Arthur's Round Table, but one thing never changed . . . Captain Cross and his men were always defeated. Lent cut Cross down time after time like a rat caught in the feed bin. His sense of justice was simple and severe.

But his father was equally clear about his helping with the work . . .

"LENT!" The command was not especially loud, but Lent awakened as if slapped by a huge hand. His father's voice penetrated so intensely that his dream walls came tumbling down like a house of cards.

Lent vaulted onto the wagon and did as he was told.

By late afternoon the mountain of furniture had moved from wagon to porch. Lent squatted in the shadows while his grandfather rocked his chair back and forth, back and forth, the oaken ribs seeming to chant, "I told you so. I told you so." He had stood against working in the mines from the very start, and now he greeted his sons' return with cold, silent anger.

The boy's eyes wandered away from the bitter old man to explore the ramshackle farmyard. Down from the cabin ran several rows of lettuce and other vegetables, newly planted. His grandpa's house meant good food. That was one thing good about the change.

Lent gazed out across tree tops to a distant wisp of smoke. They were isolated - far removed from any other family. And far removed from the coal dust that had crept into every corner of their lives.

He hauled himself to his feet and found his way down to the creek. The water ran swift, cold and clear. As he bent to drink, he pictured the creek back in the coal camp, water clouded by debris and run-off from the mines. This was no coal camp. It was clean and unspoiled.

The two room cabin groaned with the weight of new arrivals. Lent slept with his two little brothers and his sister on mattresses thrown across the floor of the main room while the rest of the family crammed into what had once been the old man's bedroom. As night fell and the other children collapsed into an early sleep brought on by the day's hard labor, Lent found himself awake and listening to the muffled talk of father and grandfather out on the porch.

"Don't think we'll stay long, Pa. The farm's real nice, but I guess I spent too long workin the coal. It's a dirty life, but, it's what I know, what I do best."

Lent heard the older man clear his throat and spit into the darkness.

"I know it don't seem like much to you, Pa, but things are changing. A man needs some money to go to the store and buy his woman somethin nice now and then, shoes for the young ones . . . and schoolin, too. Life in town is better somehow."

The older man remained silent. He had argued once before and now there was nothing left to say.

"We'll stay a week or so until we can find work," Charlie Harris announced, his voice sounding confident and full of hope. Lent fell asleep wondering where his father found his hope. As far as he knew, the mines weren't hiring men like his father.

As the night pulled heavy covers up around his troubled thoughts, Lent dreamed of Captain Cross climbing onto an enormous dark battle steed.

******

While Lent took to the forest each day in search of small game, his father and uncle took a path down the mountain on a different kind of hunt. With hats in hand they approached the superintendents of half a dozen mines, but while Lent always came home with a bag of squirrel and rabbit, the two
older men always arrived home late and empty-handed.

"Work's slow right now."

"Won't hire now."

"Laid off thirty men down to Scoville."

"Closin Rose for a week or two."

And then came word of the old coal camp.

"Folks say they been tearin down all the houses to build some kind of stockade. Our place is gone . . . just bare ground now, they say."

"They brought in a trainload of convicts and guards already. They been tearin down houses one after the other."

"Convicts?" Lent had asked, surprised at the news. "What kind of convicts?"

"Don't know. Haven't seen any yet. But we heard they're sick from workin all day and bein locked up all night. Any that don't work hard enough, they get knocked around til they do."

"And one's from right here in Coal Creek, you know. Remember that Billy Evans they sent down the penitentiary a few months back for knifin a fella in the back? Well, he's back workin
in the mines again . . . only this time he ain't gettin paid for it!"

As Lent listened to the stories, he felt a hardening inside. Each time he captured a rabbit in his sights, he imagined Captain Cross and tried to blast away the pain that had built inside. And each time the two men came home with tales of convicts in the mines and real miners losing their jobs, Lent's rage darkened.

"Families been buildin cabins up in the hollows," explained Lent's father one day, "but they don't have much to eat. Most of the time they got to scratch for small game and they end up eatin beans and biscuits."

Lent's mother sat peeling potatoes into her apron. "When do you think the mines will start hirin again?" she asked.

"Don't know," sighed Charlie Harris. "I really don't know. Some say they'll bring these convicts into all the mines and throw the rest of us out for good. Folks say the owners are fed up with unions and all that . . ."

His words trailed off into silence. After a long while, his wife stood up with an apron full of peeled potatoes.

"It don't seem right, bringin all these convicts in to take jobs from folks who've been workin all these years," she announced. "It don't seem right," she repeated, shaking her
head as if she expected an answer.

Lent watched for a response from his father, some hint of a plan seething somewhere under the surface, but as he watched, his father's eyes darkened and shifted away. His mother noticed also, but spotting darkness and anger, she turned away to start the evening meal.

******

A few days later the two men came home excited and looking for Lent. They sent his brothers scurrying off to find him. "LENT!" they screamed, chasing around the cabin.

They discovered him out back with their sister on his lap whittling something small and delicate. It looked like a swan.

"Pa wants you, Lent."

Lent nodded and lifted his little sister, Caroline, down from his knee.

"Here," he said, handing the carving to her. "You hold on to this until we can finish it."

She looked up at him with a big smile, then watched him disappear with his brothers.

His father stood waiting impatiently.

""Got you a job today, boy. You can start drivin tomorrow down at Thistle. Boy got hurt this mornin in a bad cave-in. We were there when they brought him out."

Lent listened quietly while his uncle explained how they had jumped at the job, signing him up right on the spot.

"You get a job, too?" he asked.

They shook their heads.

"They gonna make me sign the paper?"

His father frowned. "You mean a contract?"

Lent nodded. "The paper that says no strikes and no union. The paper that says you gotta buy at the company store and do as you're told."

His father's eyes clouded as he nodded.

"Well, I ain't goin," Lent announced. "I ain't signin no paper and I ain't workin there." He dug his thumbs into his pants and planted his feet, standing ready to take a blow from his father's now upraised, threatening hand.

The hand loomed for a long moment as father stared at son,
and then Lent saw it fall to his father's side as if he had been winged by some hunter's shotgun.

"Suit yourself," he heard his father mutter. "You can find your own job, then."

A week passed with no change in luck. Each night the men returned empty handed to sit silently at the table inside the cabin. Words fled with hope. Laura Harris served stew and biscuits and left them to eat in peace. Later, out on the porch with pipes lit, they would speak of their day.

"Some of the boys are gettin ready to throw the convicts out," reported Uncle John one evening.

Lent stopped whittling to listen.

"They been meetin with a bunch of fellas from the Kentucky mines. Even been drillin . . . marchin back and forth like tin soldiers, with rifles and all, like they did it back in the war between the states."

Lent was bent forward, suddenly eager and alive. "When they gonna do it?" he asked. John shook his head. "Don't know. Expect it's gonna be soon, though. New trainload of convicts is comin in from Knoxville any day now."

Lent listened carefully to catch the name of a leader or a place, but all he heard was disapproval.

"They'll get themselves shot," said Lent's father. "Bunch of fools to march about like soldiers."

John nodded agreement. "You can't fight the mine owners. Even if they throw this bunch of convicts out, the owners will load the next train with twice as many new ones and a whole army of real soldiers!"

Lent's father seemed troubled. "I don't much like these convicts, myself, but there must be some better way . . ."

Lent stood up. He was ready to enlist in this new army of miners, ready to carry a rifle or a flag, ready to settle a score that burned in his memory like a scar. He hurried off into the night to get away from the mocking laughter of his father and uncle.

The next evening the two men returned home with a great deal of shouting.

"We're moving tomorrow!" announced Charlie Harris from a spot in front of the cabin. "Hear that? Is everybody ready to move?"

Laura Harris rushed to the doorway followed by a small crowd of faces. "Tomorrow? Did you get a job, Charlie?"

Charlie Harris grinned, relief spread across his whole face
like apple butter on warm bread.

"You bet we did. They took us both on at Fraterville. And we got a nice little house, too. There's room for a little garden out back."

Lent stood forward. "How come they hired you? I thought things were slow?"

Charlie Harris shrugged off his son's question. "Couple of men left their jobs, and we're takin their places. That's all."

Laura Harris frowned.

"How come they left, Charlie?"

Charlie Harris was no longer smiling. "They were part of that crew that's been marchin around pretendin to be soldiers. The Company laid off all men suspected to be takin part in the drills."

Lent saw his mother sink down onto one of the chairs.

"I don't know, Charlie. I don't much like this job you've brought us. I don't much like movin into another family's home or eatin another family's food."

Charlie Harris stood listening, his eyes seeming dull and
lifeless.

"I don't much like it either, Laura, but it's the only job I can find. I'm tired of livin squashed in this cabin and walkin from mine to mine with my hat in hand beggin for work."

He stopped to spit into the earth. "A man needs work. He isn't worth nothin unless he's workin."

He raised his hand as if to point at the sky. "Tomorrow evening, this time, we'll be in our new home." He looked from wife to son, his eyes set like heavy boulders.

Laura Harris seemed to weigh her choices for a moment, then stood with a sigh. "Guess I'll start packin, then. Seems a shame, though . . . one man losing a job so another can find one."

Lent sat quietly whittling while his uncle and father ate supper inside the cabin. His carving of the long piece of cherry was nearing completion. The barrel and stock of a miniature rifle were emerging, smooth and carefully crafted.

CHAPTER THREE
IF YOU WANT TO GET TO HEAVEN

The mine whistle lay silent as the miners stayed late in bed while their women stirred quietly through frame houses readying biscuits, potatoes and ham for Sunday breakfast.

Lent's family rose earlier than most, for their walk to church was longer than most. Laura Harris was a preacher's daughter, a Methodist preacher's daughter who held tightly to her father's faith. This meant walking several miles down to the town of Coal Creek itself, for there was no Methodist church in the coal camp. Methodists were mostly store owners or farmers - the kind of farmers with large, well stocked barns. Methodist miners were rare, but the Harris family rarely missed a Sunday.

For Methodists, church was more than religion. It was also an important social occasion. Come each Sunday, family after family would pull up to the sharply spired, white frame building in neat buggies drawn by smartly stepping mares, the women bedecked in broad-brimmed hats and lace-trimmed blouses, the men stiff and formal in high collars and dark suits, the children uncomfortably slicked down and spruced
up.

In the long moments before the service began, groups spread across the lawn with the women sharing new recipes for chocolate cake, the children chasing around clumps of parents, and the men speculating about whose quarter horse stood the best chance of outrunning E.C. Prescott's champion at the county fair.

The Harris family had no buggy to ride to church. They faced a two mile walk down a curving road to the town of Coal Creek, a dusty path which wandered alongside the railroad bed and the very creek the town was named after.

Lent felt sweat crawling down between his shoulder blades as they plodded along, and before long his neatly ironed pants and carefully polished shoes were covered with soft dust. His once stiff white shirt clung limp and wrinkled to his chest, while the suit jacket which once belonged to his father hung sadly from his shoulders. The whole family struggled through the morning heat in much the same condition.

Lent hoped they would arrive late. He hoped to hear the church bell which would call the families in off the lawn. That way he and his family could slip in the back of the church and find a pew without being noticed.

Lent had complained over and over again about this weekly ordeal. Since he worked and lived with miners, he didn't see
why they couldn't go to church with miners.

"Why not, Ma?" he would ask.

Laura Harris smiled each time. "I know it's a long walk, Lent. But those people are Baptists, and it's not the same thing. We believe Jesus will take us all to Heaven when our days on earth are over, but the Baptists don't."

His mother would go on describing how Baptists were different, but Lent never listened. He knew that he didn't fit in that church with those people, and each Sunday he wished he could disappear under the pew. He wondered what drew his family back again and again.

As they neared town, Lent tried brushing the dust from his clothes, but his rough hand just made matters worse, and his younger brother, Frank, began pointing and taunting, "Lent's got a sweetheart! Lent's got a sweetheart!"

Lent blushed and grabbed out for his brother's neck, but Frank darted free before the hand could connect. Catching his mother's look of warning, Lent held himself in check and contented himself with the sight of Frank fleeing down the road before them. His brother had been teasing him for weeks just because one Sunday he had spoken with a dark-haired girl at Church. Ever since then, Frank had been unmerciful.

The Harrises crossed a bridge over the creek, turned left down
a side street, and rounded a corner to face a freshly painted white church with a sharply pointed steeple and a green lawn that seemed to swarm with families.

Lent felt the weight of a hundred disapproving eyes all staring at him. It seemed as if the whole world was eying his rumpled clothes and the shroud of dust that had collected on shoulders, chest and pant legs. The whole world was staring and laughing, and there was no place to hide. He shuffled along behind his parents, his eyes looking down and away. He wondered if the girl was watching him.

He tried silent prayer . . .

"Please, Lord, won't you make the bell ring?"

No bells rang, and Lent found himself alone as his parents wandered off to join different groups. Laura Harris was quickly swallowed by a circle of chatting women while Charlie Harris stood respectfully at the edge of a group of prosperous looking men.

Lent was adrift in an unfriendly sea. There was nothing to do but lean against the church buildinh while he waited for the bell. Lent allowed his eyes to wander over the crowd, moving from face to face as he began to recognize a few of the men.

Standing stiff and tall at the center of his father's group
was G.W. Moore, the county sheriff. His long mustaches gave his face a slightly evil look, but Lent knew that Moore took the miners' side whenever he could. At least, that's what the miners all said. He'd been elected with miners' votes, and they knew they'd get something in return.

To Moore's right was a shorter, heavy-set man whose jacket opened to display a heavy gold watch chain stretching across a seemingly endless belly. John Chumbley was the superintendent of the new branch prison built to hold the convicts working the Knoxville Iron Mines.

During the entire time Chumbley stood talking, Lent noticed his hands were in constant motion. If they weren't fingering a button, they were twisting a piece of cord or messing with the watch chain. Lent wondered if there was a pistol hidden somewhere under the mammoth jacket, but then he decided even Chumbley wouldn't bring a weapon to church.

Twenty years earlier Chumbley had been superintendent of the Tennessee Penitentiary, and since that time he had held a string of jobs that guaranteed him a reputation for brutality.

Lent had heard tales of frequent beatings and unexplained deaths, of food too rancid to eat, and of men working double shifts in icy water that reached above the knees. He had heard of sickness and suicide, but he had heard no story of mercy or Christian charity. He found himself wondering what Chumbley was doing in church.

Surely this was one man who couldn't expect to get to Heaven! Even though his mother believed Jesus would forgive even the worst sinner, Lent felt certain that Jesus would have the good judgment to make a few exceptions, and he figured that Chumbley would appear high on the list.

Next to Chumbley stood a handsome, smiling hulk of a man whom Lent recognized as Dick Luallen. Luallen's general store had the best penny candy in Coal Creek, and he also owned a large saw mill which had supplied lumber for most of the houses in town. Before Lent started his first job in the mines, he had often spent summer afternoons watching Luallen's huge circular saw slice through mammoth logs as if they were sticks of butter.

The fourth member of the group Lent recognized as Donald Prebot, the operator of a large dry goods store. Lent knew little about the man - only that he and his family lived in a towering white house on Church Street. They were new in town, Mr. Prebot having moved his business to Coal Creek from Knoxville just the year before. It was Prebot's daughter who had approached him with a smile a few weeks earlier. It was she who had spoken with him and provided his brother with ammunition for teasing. Lent's feelings were mixed as he realized that she was nowhere in sight.

*******

"Are you Lent Harris?" she had asked. And he had nodded.

"My mother knows your mother. I'm Sarah Prebot."

And with that she held out her hand, a formality that had caught Lent unprepared. He had blushed and stuck out his own big hand awkwardly.

"Pleased to meet you."

******

The ringing of the long awaited bell cut short Lent's thoughts as families clustered together and found their way through the doorway to their usual pews, the town leaders generally seated up front on the left. Lent and his family sat in the last row.

The large room was painted a crisp white with few decorations to break the simple, square lines and the rows of crudely fashioned wooden pews. Only a few windows had colored panes and there was nothing but a small wooden cross perched on the wall above the pulpit, but the church was still a great deal more elegant in Lent's eyes than the ramshackle building the miners used for worship.

Lent settled on the hard wood and waited for the minister to begin the ordeal. He noticed the girl, Sarah, immediately, six rows forward, but he tried not to stare at the long dark
hair and bright red ribbon. Before long he found his mind wandering off to another time and another place. He saw himself as older, a tall, handsome figure in a dark blue uniform astride a beautiful stallion commanding a large

army that was advancing along the valley below to engage the enemy in battle. Lent had gathered his staff at the crest of a long ridge and was busily sending off orders to the men below.

In the midst of all the coming and going, a courier broke wildly through the circle of officers and reined his horse to a violent stop right before Lent, his jacket darkly blood-stained and his horse ready to collapse.

"We've been attacked by cavalry on the left flank, General. The men are being overrun and cut down, and the Colonel says we must pull back to regroup."

"Never!" Lent heard himself cry. "We must attack!"

His brother elbowed him and whispered in his ear . . .

"Stand up, Lent!" It was a hymn.

Later on Lent found himself in the middle of another dream as the minister droned on through his endless sermon and the room sagged under the heavy, unrelenting heat of midsummer. In this dream he imagined his father with a band of heavily armed miners. His father was leader and spokesman . . .

Chumbley stood at the stockade mocking the ragged army of miners. He greeted Lent's father with contemptuous laughter.

"Go on home, Charlie Harris. You and these other boys here should stop playin soldier and go on home to your families before you get yourselves hurt."

Charlie Harris lifted his rifle and aimed it at Chumbley's chest.

"Out of the way, Chumbley!"

Chumbley's answering laugh was deep and loud, and it rolled from his belly like summer thunder . . . thunder cut short by rifle fire from a dozen miners, booming new thunder that echoed against the hillside and vibrated through the coal camp with the warning of a coming storm.

But Lent's dream and all the thunder was cut short by another elbow from his brother. Lent's head jerked to attention just as the minister came to the point of his sermon.

"The Lord Jesus tells of two men who built houses. One dug deep and tied the foundation to rock. And it is this man who builds his life on the words of Jesus."

Lent rubbed his eyes against the temptation of sleep. The minister paused as if the next few words were almost too big to say. "And then," he thundered mightily, waving a finger
of warning, "then there was the foolish man who built his house on sand. And we all know of such men, don't we? These are the men who ignore the words of Jesus and do just as they please."

Again he stopped and waited for what seemed to Lent to be an hour. "And you all know what happened in the Bible story. A great storm roared down from the heavens. It tore at the first man's home, but found it too strong to shake. Neither wind nor rain nor high waters could shift that house from its foundation."

"And so it is with your lives . . . If you trust in the Lord and follow his Word, you will stand up to the storms of life just as that house did."

And now the minister raised his finger in warning once again. "But heed the lesson of the foolish man who built on sand. The storm swept his house down into the valley and crushed it into tiny pieces. For he did not follow the Word of our Lord. And the same will befall each of you if you come to church Sunday after Sunday and fail to bring home the Word."

Lent shifted uncomfortably in his wrinkled clothes. Passing his eyes over the congregation, he wondered how many of them really did take the Lord's Word home with them. His eyes rested on Captain Chumbley. Had he listened to the sermon? Could he understand it? Lent had his doubts.

Lent's mind wandered to the story of the Good Samaritan. He tried to imagine Captain Chumbley stopping to help a man beaten and thrown to the roadside, but he could not picture it.

His eyes began moving again, landing for several moments on Sarah's long, dark hair and bright, red ribbon.

Suddenly he found himself flushing with embarrassment as she turned her head and caught him mid stare. His eyes darted swiftly away, a moment too late, for he thought he had seen the glimmer of a smile darting out from behind her eyes. He wanted to look back, but his eyes stayed glued to the floor boards at his feet.

As the congregation rose to sing, Lent felt sure he was being stared at, but he buried his face in the hymnal. When he finally built the courage to sneak a look, he caught her eyes darting away.

When his family shuffled back to the coal camp and morning turned to afternoon, Lent kept seeing the smiling, taunting eyes. He dreamed once again that he was a general on horseback marching an army through a hostile South. Lent had once seen a picture of a cotton plantation with a white columned mansion surrounded by slave quarters, and now he saw himself riding up to the door of the mansion, his officers following respectfully behind him.

Standing at the door was a dark-haired beauty with shot-gun in hand. Lent reined in his horse and tipped his hat gallantly.

"Evening, Ma'am. My men and I need a place to settle for the night, and we'd be pleased to pay you for food and lodging."

The lady's eyes burned with hatred. "No Yankee will ever sleep in this house," she announced.

The general was about to reply when the dream was interrupted by his mother's impatient voice.

"The weedin, Lent. You said you'd do the weedin when we got home."

The dream dissolved into coal dust as they came into sight of the mine tipple looming above a smoldering slag pile and the rows of frame houses. They marched on past the commissary with its broad front porch and half a dozen men chewing tobacco in its shade. Next to the commissary sat two saloons and the small building used as church on Sundays and school the rest of the week. Their own house lay across a log bridge on the other side of the creek.

As they crossed the bridge, Lent stared down into the yellowish brown current seeping through ash-covered banks. The stench of waste, both human and mine, forced Lent to hold his breath. He found himself wishing for the clear stream
up at Grave's Gap, remembering trout he had caught there.

He would waste no time fishing in this creek. The fish had long since passed down stream or died away.

CHAPTER FOUR
BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The pile of firewood slowly grew taller as Lent chopped his way through the early morning. Each time he felt the ax bite wood, a faint smile flickered momentarily. With each blow anger rose to the surface, dark and shining like freshly mined coal.

The mining camp awakened around him with children running wildly about while mothers began to wrestle with the day's washing. Lunch pails in hand and faces freshly scrubbed, the men had left much earlier for the darkness of the mine shafts, reporting at the tipple just as the rising sun cast a rose hue across the sky to signal the arrival of a new day.

These miners lived most of their time in darkness. Rising before the sun, they lined up to disappear down shafts where they would spend their day carving and shoveling coal into iron cars that would be dragged back to the elevator shaft by mules who had no memory of the color green. They worked in an ocean of darkness cut here and there by lanterns and candles too weak to offer any real warmth or comfort. Like distant, flickering beacons along a rocky coast, they spoke
more of danger and warning than home and harbor.

Death lurked in the shadows and seemed to taunt the men. Sometimes it came rumbling down upon them, a mountain of stone and coal shifting and collapsing as a house will tumble upon its foundations after termites have eaten through the main timbers. And sometimes it chose to dance with the flame of a candle, sparking some wandering gas released by all the hammering and digging. Death might come quickly or it might linger, locking the miner in a room with no exit.

As Lent chopped, he recalled an August morning when he had been playing along the creek with other children. The mine whistle had blown - signal of disaster. He remembered looking up from his play to see an entire mining camp freeze and then run. Laundry, stoves and children were dropped and left behind as all the women sprinted toward the mine to discover just how bad it was, whose father or brother or husband was crushed or buried this time. The terror in their eyes had stayed with him through the years, sometimes visiting in dreams, sometimes disturbing the calm of a summer morning like this one.

Even as the sun wrapped him in its warmth, Lent found himself missing the darkness and the danger of the mines. Carving tunnels through stone had become a way of life. Somehow the danger and the hardship formed a bond among the miners, a brotherhood that drew them together.

As father and son worked side by side, the stories of disaster and danger, of brotherhood and survival, were told and retold until a folklore emerged to cloak mining with a robe of heroism and courage that brought pride to the miners and their families. These were not common laborers digging ditches in the earth. They were Greek warriors fighting demons and evil spirits, struggling each day like Odysseus on his way home from Troy.

This miner's pride would not easily wash off, for it clung like coal dust clings to the body even after the evening bath that was every miner's ritual. This miner's pride drove Lent's ax deeply into the wood as he thought of Captain Cross and the mine owners who had brought a new kind of mining disaster to Coal Creek.

"Lent!"

He turned to see his friend Silas struggling up the path toward his wood pile. Silas had injured his leg in a cave-in, and his heavy limp slowed him down considerably.

Lent smiled at his sweating friend who was so out of breath he couldn't speak.

"What is it, Silas? Is there a fire or something?"

Silas shook his head and looked around to see if they were alone. He grabbed Lent's shoulder and pulled him close.

"They're meeting," he whispered hoarsely.

Lent grew serious and his frown returned. He, too, looked around to make certain no one was listening.

"Where, Silas? Where's it gonna be?"

"Rock face at noon. You going?"

Lent nodded.

Silas smiled and squeezed Lent's shoulder with his big hand. "I'm glad you're with us, Lent. We'll send those convicts packing and teach the owners a lesson. You'll see."

And then Lent noticed a change in Silas. He seemed to be remembering something unpleasant. His face darkened, and he seemed to be struggling.

"What is it?" Lent asked. "What's the trouble?"

Silas shook his head. "Nothing, Lent."

Lent took Silas by the shoulders and forced him to look him in the eye. "What is it, Silas? You're holding something back."

Silas looked down and away. "It's your pa," he muttered.
"Some of the men didn't want me to tell you about the meeting cause of your pa."

Lent pushed his friend away and cursed. His body was stiff with the shame and anger struggling for control within.

"I can't help what my Pa does," he whispered.

Silas nodded. "That's what I told 'em, Lent. I told em you were with us all the way. I told em how you wouldn't take that job your pa got you. So they said you could come."

Lent still frowned. He felt the weight of his father's

surrender heavy upon his shoulders now.

"Lent!"

Now it was his mother calling from the doorway of their house. She had been watching them, Lent could tell, but he didn't know how long.

"You better go, Silas. I'll see you at the rock face."

He buried the ax in a nearby stump and walked slowly toward his mother.

"What is it, Lent? What did Silas want?"

Lent stared into his mother's fiery green eyes, wondering how
much to tell her.

"He wanted to go fishing, Ma. That's all."

His mother's eyes spoke of disbelief.

"Silas Turner never ran nowhere in his life like that unless it was for something important. The way he came huffin and puffin with his face all red and sweatin, I know it was something more than fishing."

Lent was trapped, but he remained silent. He could feel his mother's eyes trying to read what was going on inside his head, digging deep within to mine the secrets hidden below.

She reached out a hand to touch his cheek softly.

"I've a notion that you and that boy are running straight after trouble." She shook her head. "And I've a pretty good idea what it might be."

For a moment she looked troubled and undecided, but then she bent over to kiss him. "Just you be careful, Lent Harris. If those fish get too big to handle, you cut your line and get right on home here."

Lent could tell she was fighting tears.

"I'll be fine, Ma. Don't you worry."

His mother nodded. "I know you will, son. I know."

******

Lent hurried along the path, eager to hear when and how the miners would strike. After months of holding anger within he could finally load it into a rifle and send it where it belonged.

The group of men swung rifle barrels his way the moment he broke into the clearing.

"What do you want, boy?" Lent recognized the tall speaker as D.B. Munroe, a local hero among the miners who had often stood up to the mine owners when trouble had started. He had the huge, muscled shoulders of a man who had devoted years to lifting and digging.

"I want to join," Lent answered in his strongest, man voice, wondering if Munroe would send him away now because of his father.

"You Charlie Harris' boy?" asked Munroe, moving closer to scrutinize this young man trying to stand tall before the doubtful eyes of the group.

Lent nodded. He felt like a horse at an auction as the group of men joined Munroe in a circle that tightened around him,
a human noose of questions and suspicion.

Lent remembered that Munroe had been the main spokesman against the contract which took away the miner's right to pick their own check-weighman. Since miners were paid by how much coal they shoveled into the metal cars, they wanted to make sure the owners couldn't cheat them by weighing the coal unfairly. Munroe had been loud, angry and unsuccessful.

Lent scanned the tough, reddened face for anger or contempt, but he saw nothing but serious questioning.

"His pa's a scab!" yelled one man.

"Yeah, we don't need his kind," added another.

Lent felt his stomach tighten. Ignoring the hateful eyes of the last speaker, he spoke directly to Munroe.

"I drove mules for Tennessee Mining for two years, but when they shoved that new contract in front of me, I never signed it."

He paused and looked around at the other men. "It's true my Pa signed," he said, "but I ain't my Pa. I'm here to fight. What he does is his business."

Munroe smiled slightly at this. "How old are you, boy?"

"Fifteen, Mr. Munroe. And my name is Lent."

He stood tall and proud as the older man walked over and took him by his shoulders. His hands were heavily calloused and yet strangely gentle now as he stared into Lent's eyes.

"Can we trust you to keep our plans a secret?"

Lent nodded. "Yes, sir."

Munroe released his shoulders and waved over a man who produced a battered old Bible. Lent recognized the man as John Hatmaker, another of the miner's leaders.

"Put your hand on this Bible and repeat my words, Lent."

Lent swallowed hard and somehow found the breath to force out the words. "I swear to keep the secrets of this solemn brotherhood of miners. . . "

Lent imagined a long hallway with a door at one end. As he spoke the words, he saw the door to this hallway swing slowly shut and the heavy sound of metal striking metal echoed through his brain.

". . . to give my life, if need be. . ."

The hallway seemed to be growing shorter and shorter.

". . . to never quit until every convict is dead or gone."

It seemed like the walls were closing around him.

"If anyone betrays the brotherhood, I will help deliver the punishment of death."

The door suddenly swung open to show Lent's father bound to a tree, a bullet wound clearly marking his forehead. Lent frowned and cast the grotesque image out of his mind.

D.B. Munroe was shaking his hand warmly, welcoming him to the brotherhood.

"Sit yerself down, Lent. We're makin plans for the stripes up at Briceville."

Lent settled down on a log to listen to the older men debate tactics. They seemed about evenly divided between those who wanted to set the convicts free and those who wanted to burn the place down, killing everyone within.

John Hatmaker stood to argue the case for killing the guards. "Some of them used to work side by side with us, and now they're carryin guns for the company. Seems like we ought to show folks that it matters what side they take."

Another leader, a tall man with a white straw boater, Eugene Merrill, argued for calm and restraint. "I don't know, John.
If we go in there shootin and killin, they'll rush the militia down here and we'll end up fighting a war. We're better off with words than guns."

Hatmaker looked disgusted. "Time's passed for words. We've tried words before, and what good did they do?"

He stopped to pat his rifle. "There's only one kind of talk they understand," he said. And with that, most of the group nodded agreement.

Merrill looked around at the angry faces and frowned. "I know how you all feel," he said, "but if we start off killin, they'll chase us down put ropes round our necks. We won't get any changes, just an early grave."

The arguing went back and forth in the same manner for several hours until the two sides struck a compromise. They agreed to start with talk and hold their fire until the guards started something. Hatmaker, Munroe and Merrill went over the plan several times until each man knew what he was to do and what the signal was to begin firing.

"Spread the word to all those who are with us to meet here on Tuesday. We'll march up the tracks from here to the Tennessee stockade . . ."

The group split off to spread the word through the valley, and Lent knew that some would race their horses north to the
Kentucky mines where there were many friends willing to take up rifles in support of their cause.

Lent took his time returning to his house, wondering how he would get away to join the group in its visit to the stockade. It was clear that he could tell neither parent about the raid. He was on his own and they would just have to keep out of his way.

The sky was a clear, thin blue where it showed through the tree tops. There was no sign of the storm soon to hit the valley.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE MAN SECRET

Lent helped his mother fix his father's bath by hauling buckets of water from the well they shared with several other families. As he plodded along with water slopping over the wooden sides, his mind focused on plans for his escape.

"Here, son. Fetch some more stove wood."

Mrs. Harris handed Lent a box, but Lent stood lost in thought.

"Son!" His mother was frowning by now. "You stand there dreamin long enough and this fire's gonna die. Get a move-on."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Lent hurried out to the back of the house where the wood was kept neatly stacked. His sister Caroline was playing happily in the grass with his wooden carving of the swan.

"Hi, Lent."

He smiled and turned to the wood-pile. As he carefully laid the wood in the box the way his mother liked it, he wondered if his father and uncle would be going to the saloon after supper. That would make his escape easy.

When the box was full, he waved to his sister and made his way back to the kitchen.

"Thanks, son. You can go off now, if you want."

Lent grabbed a wooden chair and settled down with a satisfied sigh. "I think I'll sit til you need more water."

"Suit yourself, Lent."

Lent surveyed the small kitchen thoughtfully. The walls were unpainted planks, rough hewn and hastily thrown together. Whoever built the house had no intention of living in it. His mother had tried picking up the appearance - calico curtains around the one small window and a small glass full of wild flowers on the table - but it was the same drab kind of room Lent had known as long as his father had worked in the mines.

In one corner sat a large wooden tub, half filled with steaming water, where his father and uncle would scrub away at the black coating they always carried home with them. Across the room squatted a soot-darkened iron stove with large kettles for heating the bath water. Each time his mother opened the stove's grate to feed it more wood, Lent could see hungry
flames dancing within.

As he watched her fussing over some small pots which held the night's supper, Lent thought his mother looked old and tired out. He stood up suddenly and wandered out into the space which served as living room and parlor.

The picture on the wall showed a different woman. This Laura Harris was so young, so beautiful and so smiling, her face not yet creased by years of living with the mines. Soft curls framed an oval marked by passionate eyes and a prettily pointed nose. And the groom beside her stood handsome and proud, shoulders as yet unbent by years and tons of coal. Lent shook his head at the sight of his parents stepping out of church with dreams and visions that had never come true. He wondered what would happen to his face and his dreams.

When he entered the kitchen, he found his mother sitting, her head in her hands. Hearing his footsteps, she sat upright and tried to smile, but Lent noticed heavy lines across the forehead. Although she tried to hide them in her apron, Lent could see that her hands were rough from years of washing, scrubbing, digging, kneading, peeling and sewing. Her hair, once a rich, reddish brown that caught attention wherever she went, was now dull and fading. To Lent, her face seemed gaunt and haggard, perhaps because her cheeks were somewhat sunken from the loss of teeth.

As Lent slid back into his chair, he noticed one remnant of
his mother's beauty . . . her eyes. They remained a piercing, bold light in the middle of a tired and aging face. There was still a sparkle and a glimmer of dreams.

"Now what are you starin at, boy?" Mrs. Harris rose to her feet and stood with hands on hips.

Lent looked away and muttered, "Nothin." He wondered if that girl he'd seen in church would grow old by the time she was thirty, but then he thought of the other women he had seen in church and knew the answer. The wives of doctors and store-owners did not seem to grow old. They had children his age, but their faces were strangely unmarked. They looked ten years younger than his mother.

And now he caught her staring at him. She looked worried.

"What is it that's so heavy on your mind this evenin, Lent? You never looked so dark and angry before."

Lent glanced down at his hands.

"Ma . . . Did you ever wish you hadn't married a miner? Someone with money? Or a house in town? Someone more like your own pa?"

Laura Harris stepped back as if slapped across the face.

"Lent! Whatever made you ask questions like that?"

Lent's hands rubbed together nervously. "I just wondered if you ever wished things had turned out differently." He looked up to search his mother's face and noticed her anger soften into understanding.

Laura Harris wiped hands on apron and settled onto a nearby wooden chair with a sigh. "I suppose I once thought of a house in town and . . . well . . . a flower garden. I always thought it would be nice to have a flower garden . . . one with roses."

Lent noticed her face grow calm. After a few quiet moments, she continued, "I once thought Charlie might be hired to work as a foreman or something. We might have moved into town then."

His mother became silent once again, and the two of them sat dreaming of other lives while the fire cracked on in the iron stove and the iron kettles began to steam.

******

"Laura?"

It was Charlie Harris with lunch pail in hand and a face fully blackened by a day in the mines. His sudden arrival set off a flurry of activity as the bath was readied and the soiled clothes were stripped off to lie in a pile near the back door.

"How was it today?" asked Mrs. Harris.

"Not bad," his father grunted, as he always did.

Lent watched the older man scrub at the stubborn dust, a trail of blackened soap suds sliding from neck and shoulders into the once clean water of the tub. He had learned long ago that his father rarely spoke to his wife of what happened in the mines. He had learned it the first day he himself went down to work in the mines.

The morning of his ninth birthday his father led him to the tipple for his first job. Lent had spent the day picking up small coal pieces that scattered about as his father's pick went to work on the seam. The larger pieces he left for his father, but the small ones were his responsibility.

On that first morning he had hustled from piece to piece in order to show his father he could handle the job. He was so wrapped up in the work that he almost missed his father's warning whistle and raised hand. He froze in place, just as he had been taught to do, and watched for his father to show what to do next. The roof above his head was groaning and creaking as if the whole mountain was about to collapse and crush them against the floor, but his father stood calmly waiting and watching.

After a few moments, his father signalled for him to follow, and they had slowly backed their way out of the work area.
A few seconds later, the rocks started raining down from the ceiling with an enormous, thundering roar and Charlie Harris yelled to his son, "Hit the ground!"

Lent dropped immediately to his knees and crouched with arms over his neck the way he'd been taught. When the rocks stopped falling, the air was filled with choking dust that forced them to stumble blindly along the tunnel back to the main shaft.

That night his mother asked, "How was it today?" and Charlie Harris had grunted the same answer he always gave.

"Not bad," he said, leaving his son surprised and confused but proud at the sharing of a man secret.

Now Lent found himself wondering if his father was again hiding the truth. He seemed agitated and ill at ease as he scrubbed away at the dust.

"Any news of the convicts?" asked Laura Harris.

"The main group is coming tomorrow by train," answered Charlie Harris.

"They say there'll be a couple a hundred of em."

Mrs. Harris shook her head in anger. "It isn't right! They got no business bringing them in here like that."

Charlie Harris shrugged and went back to washing away the grime.

Lent felt the old anger creeping up inside as he saw his father's shrug. He couldn't see how his father could manage to block out the arrival of the convicts as if it meant nothing. His father stood in the tub and began drying.

"I hear there may be trouble tonight," he announced.

"What kind of trouble?" asked Mrs. Harris.

"Bunch of the men said there's gonna be a meeting tonight to run the convicts out of the valley."

Lent felt his breath catch at his father's words. "Are you goin, Pa?"

His father's answer was an angry look. "No. I ain't goin to no meeting."

Lent settled back in his chair and waited for supper. He could see that he would walk alone that night. If danger fell upon him, his father would not be there to give a whistle of warning or signal what to do. He was walking down a long tunnel all by himself, and the light he was following seemed to keep moving just beyond reach.

CHAPTER SIX
BASTILLE DAY

It was turning dark by the time Charlie Harris and his brother John had headed off to the saloon. Lent could finally think of leaving. His gun lay waiting for him where he had hidden it, but he was careful not to rush or seem impatient.

Finally, almost as if by plan, his mother wandered down the road to sit with a neighbor lady and sew. Since his brothers and sister had already disappeared to play hide-and-seek in the creeping darkness, Lent was able to slip away into the forrest unnoticed, rifle in hand. Once beyond earshot of the house, he hurried along the path so as not to miss Silas where he would be waiting near the railway tracks.

Silas crouched at the base of a huge maple tree, a heavy gauge shot gun cradled across his arm. At the sound of Lent's running feet, he swung the barrel round and called out a warning.

"Who's that? You stop right there now!"

""It's me, Silas!"

Silas swung the barrel away and spat noisily. "I been here all night, it seems. Where you been, Lent?"

Lent shrugged for an answer. "Let's go," he said. "If we stand here talkin, we'll miss the others."

The two boys set off at a trot, Lent slowing the pace a bit for his limping friend. After half an hour of following trails through the heavy woods, they came upon the miners' meeting place and found the clearing brightly lit with more than a hundred lamps and blazing torches. It was hard to count, but Lent thought there had to be several hundred men seething around the leaders. Some he recognized as local miners, but many faces were strange to him, and these he guessed were the miners from Kentucky.

The crowd was ready to move. They had heard speeches and sung a song or two. And now it was time. Eugene Merrill jumped onto a tree stump in the center of the crowd and raised arms to gain quiet.

"Are you ready?" he shouted.

The voices rose to greet his question like a tidal wave. He raised his arms again and waited for the screaming to settle down.

"All right, then. Remember, though. Ingraham, Turner and
I will start by giving them a chance to surrender."

This last message was greeted by groans. This crowd had no patience with talk. Each man held a rifle, and some carried pistols besides. Most intended to use them.

As Merrill gave the signal to start, the miners squeezed onto the narrow path toward the stockade, and the two boys found themselves swept along like small bits of wood in a storm swollen creek. Angry voices surged around them and the night was filled with curses.

When they finally poured out onto a hilltop overlooking the stockade, the wooden rectangle with its shacks and other buildings appeared small, dark and deserted.

Lent watched Merrill step to the front of the crowd, raise his pistol and fire two shots into the night sky. Below them, the stockade awakened with a great deal of shouting and lantern lighting.

Merrill tied a white rag on Captain Ingraham's rifle and began walking down the hill with him and Turner. Lent guessed the walls of the stockade were a good two hundred feet long and twenty feet high, with a block house set in the middle. As the three men neared the wall, they called out to those inside.

"You there, Cross?"

Lent could see nothing move within the stockade from where he stood, but he heard the same voice that had told his family to move. The voice carried all the way up the hillside.

"You all better go on home, now. These prisoners are under the protection of the state of Tennessee, and any man that steps near this stockade with a weapon can be shot on the spot."

Merrill did not waver but answered in a voice that was equally strong. "There are three hundred men here, Cross, and we know there are just six of you."

He paused to let his message sink in. "We want those convicts of yours let loose, Cross, and there ain't no wall and no man that's gonna stop us."

At these words, the hillside full of miners roared agreement and filled the night with a blur of waving torches.

Merrill raised his arms for quiet.

"We'll burn you out, if we need to, Cross, but no one gets hurt if you lay down your rifles and let us in."

Cross was silent. The entire stockade was silent. Even the hillside was silent as the miners awaited an answer.

"You up there, Cross?"

A single shot cut through the silence and thudded into the ground at Merrill's feet.

"That's my answer, Merrill. Step any closer, and the next shot will buy you a grave."

Merrill waved to the miners to take cover and ran back to the tree line with the rest of his committee.

"OK, men!" he shouted. "Fire one round."

Lent lifted his squirrel gun, feeling foolish as he noticed the men around him aiming Winchesters and Colts. All at once the night was fractured by hundreds of shots, no two of which seemed fired at the same time.

Just as suddenly, the silence returned as the miners awaited the next command. Lent was flushed with the excitement of his first battle as he hastily rammed a new load down the old muzzle-loader and crouched in readiness.

A thin voice called up from the stockade.

"Merrill?"

"What do you want, Cross?"

Lent tried to picture the man who had stood in the road before his house. He imagined him cowering behind the wooden
ramparts.

"We're coming out!"

Lent watched as the gate to the stockade swung open and Cross emerged with a half dozen guards with hands above their heads. The man looked small and helpless as he stood unarmed in the light of the miners' torches, but Lent suddenly found himself swept up once again as the miners rushed forward to open bunk houses and free the convicts.

The convicts were lined up double file and marched along down the road with miners swarming all around them, joking and yelling, pushing and prodding. It seemed to Lent a bit like a carnival as the joy of the miners mixed with the relief of the convicts. Both groups could almost taste the freedom that seemed just around the bend.

Houses along the road awakened to the uproar as the sky began to lighten around the edges. Here and there a hand offered bread or a shirt to the ragged group of convicts, many of whom stumbled along obviously weakened from the weeks of living under Cross' rule.

Silas and Lent hurried along with the human tide, listening eagerly for stories of life in the stockade. One man swore he'd not seen daylight for three weeks. Another pulled up his shirt to show a back that was purple from bruises.

{All I did was complain about the food," he explained.

"We were all gonna die there," insisted another man. "They were gonna work us til we dropped."

Earlier that night, the miners had cursed the convicts, but the stories of rotten food, endless work and harsh punishment softened them and drew them all together, as many a convict found a miner at each side to help him along the road.

Lent could still picture Cross and his men slipping away into the darkness, and he found himself wishing more had been done, more shots fired, more pain inflicted. To his way of thinking, Cross was building up a large debt.

When the crowd reached town, it was morning, and after the convicts were loaded onto a freight train headed for Knoxville, they were sent along their way to the victorious cheers of the miners. The early morning train steamed loudly out of the small town and sent back a plaintive, whining whistle, almost in warning, as it wound out of sight. Lent followed the smoke of the engine as it skirted the tree line, and he wondered what lay before the convicts . . . how many would jump train before Knoxville and how many would just end up back in prison?

His father sat waiting for Lent's return. His rocker moved with slow anger.

"Pa?"

Lent approached the older man tentatively, almost as if afraid his father would leap forward to strike him. His father just stared into his eyes, probing for something.

"I had to go, Pa."

His father frowned and then nodded. "Figured you'd see it that way."

Lent's face showed quick surprise. "Then why didn't you stop me?"

At this, his father looked away and shifted uneasily. His rocker ceased moving. "I couldn't stop you. You're old enough to figure things for yourself and pay the price if there is a price."

"What do you mean?"

Charlie Harris stood up and walked toward his son. As they stood head to head, toe to toe, Lent knew he was just a finger taller.

Charlie Harris looked away at the sky again. "Rifles have a way of staying loaded," he said. "And the shots you fired tonight are just the beginning. There'll be soldiers back here on the next train from Knoxville, and then you'll see
real fighting."

Lent shook his head. "You're wrong, Pa. When they hear about a whole army of miners marching and fighting together, they won't dare send soldiers or stripes into this valley."

He saw his father shrug and shake his head. "I wish you were right, boy, but I fear the worst is coming."

Lent watched his father disappear down the path to the tipple, cap in hand, and wondered how he could go on with work as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THISTLE SWITCH

Lent slept late into the morning. To his mother, his sleep seemed calm for the first time in months, and staring down at her son's face, her thoughts travelled back to the days when she first met Charlie, a hot-tempered young miner whose temper gradually softened under her calming touch. His fame for fighting had spread beyond Coal Creek to all of the neighboring towns, and when professional fighters came to town, Charlie was always the miners' favorite to challenge the stranger. He rarely disappointed the crowd. But all of that began changing when Laura entered his life. The clenched fist relaxed, and soon he became a family man, the wildness laid aside for good.

Lent reminded her of that younger Charlie Harris now. She had seen the anger burning behind his eyes and knew where it might lead. As he slept, she feared the calm was temporary, for she had developed a sixth sense about disaster. Having spent so many years in the mining camps, Laura Harris had hardened to disaster's frequent visits, but she wished there was some way to shield her sleeping boy from what lay ahead.

A sudden loud knocking broke her mood and Lent's sleep.

"What is it, Ma?"

Lent had been dreaming of wild horses racing across a vast meadow - fiercely beautiful stallions streaking across a sea of flowers and tall grass. But now he awakened with a frightened, hunted look.

"Who is it, Ma?"

Laura Harris shook her head and signaled silence with her finger to her lip.

"Lent Harris. You in there?" The pounding started up again.

Lent's face relaxed, and he reached for his pants.

"It's Jack Murphy, Ma. Could you let him in?"

The man stood impatiently in the doorway and shook his head when Laura offered coffee.

"Thanks, Ma'am, but I need to speak with Lent . . . outside."

Lent followed Jack down the path to where they could speak without being overheard.

"The stripes are back."

Lent stared in disbelief. "They couldn't be," he insisted. "We just loaded them on the train."

The older man frowned. "The Governor was so angry that he called up the militia, rounded up the convicts, and brought them back on the next train."

"The Governor? He came all the way from Knoxville?"

Murphy nodded. "He's agreed to meet with Merrill and the rest of us round noon time down at Thistle Switch, so we need to raise a crowd. Will you be there?"

"Sure I will."

Murphy smiled. "And leave your rifle behind, son. This is one time we'll have to do our fighting with words."

******

Lent hurried into his clothes and ran the half mile down to the main road where he hoped to catch a glimpse of the convicts.

He was not disappointed. A squad of khaki-uniformed militia was passing by leading some fifty prisoners back to their mining camp prison. As Lent stared down from behind a tree on a hill-top overlooking the road, the group seemed to drag
along with boots shuffling through the dust as if they had already marched fifty miles. This was no Fourth of July parade. It was more funeral march than parade.

Lent stared hard at the faces of the militia, trying to figure what kind of men would sign on for such duty. But they looked little different from the store clerks and young men he might have seen in Coal Creek. Beneath the surface harshness of their grim faces, Lent thought he saw fear and uncertainty. From the awkward way they slung rifles over their shoulders he could tell this soldiering business was new to most of them, and he noticed that they struggled with their packs as if they had never carried heavy loads of any kind.

This was no crack battalion of well-trained soldiers. They were nothing like the ones he had seen pictured in dime novels. They were city soldiers, poorly trained and ill-equipped to handle the men who marched along under their charge.

The prisoners' eyes seemed to dart from under cover as if always seeking escape. These men had made a life of killing or stealing, and Lent could tell the militia was no match. When they cursed at the prisoners or prodded them with rifle butts to keep them moving along, it was a toughness that seemed born out of fear. If not for the iron shackles that bound one prisoner to another, Lent knew the convicts would be long gone.

Lent shook his head as he watched the group slowly disappear
around a bend in the road. It had all seemed so sweet and simple when they loaded the convicts on the train to Knoxville, but now he knew his father's prediction was coming true. He began to wonder how they would untangle the knot that threatened to strangle them all.

*****

Lent had never seen Governor Buchanan, except in newspaper pictures, and he never expected to see him in Coal Creek, but there he stood, a broad-bellied, well-dressed man surrounded by armed guards. His train had been slowed to a stop at Thistle Switch by a gathering of several hundred enraged miners demanding an explanation for the invasion of their valley.

The only guns Lent could see were in the hands of the militia and guards, but he noticed bulges under the jackets of many men standing throughout the crowd. As the governor spoke from the platform of his railroad car, Lent wondered if the anger and the guns could stay under cover. He half expected a shot to ring out, cutting short the governor's speech. Instead, each sentence the governor spoke was cut short by a groan or a loud uproar from the crowd.

"We must restore law and order to this valley," the Governor insisted, his finger pointing a warning at the crowd.

The crowd hurled angry insults back at the governor.

"As Governor of this state I give you my word that we will enforce safety in the mines and protect your rights as miners."

The crowd responded with shouts of disbelief, and Lent felt anger surging all around him. He was sure the shot would come.

"You have a right to be paid fairly for the coal you mine, and the mines should be well ventilated and drained. I promise our inspectors will close down any mine which violates these laws."

As the miners growled their distrust, Lent saw Eugene Merrill rise up out of the crowd onto a large wooden box where he could be seen by all. He loomed tall and foreboding above the miners, his own finger pointing a warning back at the governor. Well-dressed in a vested suit much like the governor's, he hardly looked like a miner to Lent at all. His flat straw boater rested on his head with a slightly rakish tilt that set him apart from the rest of the miners, most of whom sported crumpled felt hats and worn jackets.

The governor stopped talking as Merrill began his attack.

"We're tired of promises, Governor."

"Yeah!" roared the crowd, waving arms and hats in approval.

"We're tired of false promises and broken vows."

The crowd roared again.

"Your inspectors come to town, have a few drinks with the mine superintendent and sign the inspection papers without setting foot inside a mine or ever riding down the shaft."

The miners were fast becoming a mob. As Merrill waited for the crowd's frenzied agreement to subside, Lent saw the governor's face cloud with frustration and anger.

When the crowd was nearly still again, Merrill spoke sternly. "If you want law and order in this valley, take the convicts away and put them in prison where they belong. And you can take a few mine superintendents with them, too . . . the ones who cheat us at the check weigh station and the company store . . . the ones who make us work in water up to our knees . . . the ones who make us work in unventilated shafts . . . "

His words were cut off by the shouts and threats of the crowd.

Finally the governor gave his answer. His voice was shaking with anger as his guards pointed their rifles out at the crowd.

"The problems you list are well known to me, and I give you my word that those who break the law will be brought to trial and punished. But I warn you all . . ."

Here he paused and scanned the entire crowd. "There will be no mob rule in this valley or anywhere else in this state. Anyone who interferes with the lawful operation of this state's prison system will be severely punished."

With these words of warning, he drew his speech to an end and ducked inside his railroad car, leaving the crowd seething with rage. Lent and the others stepped back away from the tracks as the whistle called out a shrill warning and the train began to pull away.

Lent wondered why the shot had never come.

******

A huge bonfire filled the clearing with a wild, flickering light that twisted and distorted the faces of the miners who had gathered to make plans for a counter-attack. The anger sparked by the governor's words had ignited feelings of frustration buried through months of struggle, and Lent had found himself listening to more than two hours of bitter speeches.

"We should attack right now!" one man insisted. "We've got two hundred men here. Why wait for the others?"

Eugene Merrill was still the voice of calm and reason. "There's a hundred militia in the stockade right now, and the stockade gives them the advantage. By morning our friends
from Kentucky will be here and we'll have two thousand rifles to argue with. I like those odds a whole lot better."

The group settled into silence for the first time that evening. It seemed to Lent that every man was waiting for Merrill to give the orders. And they didn't have long to wait. Sensing their readiness, Merrill shared his plan . . .

"We march on the stockade tomorrow morning, first light. Go home, tell your neighbors and meet us back at Thistle Switch at dawn. We'll give the militia a surprise awakening and a free train ride home to Knoxville."

Lent lifted his rifle in the air to add his war cry to a rising chorus as the night filled with promises of revenge. Satisfied with he plan now, the crowd broke up into smaller groups that dispersed through the forest toward a dozen different mining camps.

******

Lent found his father waiting on the front steps. He seemed bent over and tired. Lent remembered the stories of Charlie Harris the fighter, the man with a clenched fist who would back down to nobody. He wondered what had happened to that Charlie Harris.

"Where you been, boy?"

Lent told him of the fire and the angry speeches.

His father sat shaking his head.

"They don't have a chance, Lent. Can't you see that? The Governor'll just send more troops until this valley is one big prison and we can't go anywhere without seeing guns and uniforms."

Lent remained silent, knowing that his words would not change his father's mind.

"If the fighting gets bad enough, they may just shut down the mines and try starving us all."

Lent hardly listened to his father's predictions. His mind was filled with pictures of two thousand miners marching on the stockade the next morning. He didn't know where the fighting would lead. He only knew that he must be there.

"We got to fight 'em, Pa. That's all there is to it."

His father stood and put his hands on his shoulders. His eyes were warm and full of concern.

"Be careful, son. We don't want to lose our boy over no convicts."

Lent nodded. "I'll be careful," he said. "Don't you worry."

CHAPTER EIGHT
A FREE TICKET HOME

The turbulence of Lent's dreams kept him on the edge of sleep and wakefulness. A huge smiling face loomed over him, and he heard the shriek of a tortured kitten which seemed to come from somewhere deep within his own body. When he twisted his way free from the grip of this dream, he found himself racing along bare-back with a herd of wild stallions, charging across a vast meadow of flowers and grass, and then . . . a cliff. He could see they were headed for a cliff, but there were no reins and Lent could not stop. The entire herd swept over the edge, and Lent was suddenly falling . . .

"Lent!"

The whisper broke Lent's fall, and he awakened to the insistent voice of his friend Silas. The room was still dark, but he knew it was his friend from the feel of his hands on his shoulders.

"It's time to go. I waited for you down at the bridge, and when you didn't come, I thought you'd overslept."

Lent struggled to awaken, but his body complained and his spirit was shaken by the night of strange dreams.

His friend began to lose patience. "Come on, Lent! They're probably half-way to the stockade by now. We'll miss the action if you don't get movin!"

Lent grunted his agreement, grabbed his overalls and climbed into the rough denim.

"Sorry, Silas," he said, pulling the straps over his shoulder. "Thanks for coming to get me. Sorry I was so slow."

Silas was already heading out of the house, stopping only long enough to grab the rifle he'd left leaning just inside the door. Lent followed a bit more slowly, knowing his friend would slow down once he'd gone a few hundred paces. He'd catch up to him easily enough then.

*******

They arrived breathless. From a hill overlooking the stockade they could see Eugene Merrill advancing with a dozen other miners.

"Where are the others?" asked Silas.

Lent's eyes scoured the trees on the hills facing them, but he could see no sign of the two thousand men Merrill had
promised the night before.

He shrugged.

"Do you think they stayed behind?"

Lent ignored his friend's question as he saw the committee of miners approach the stockade's gate. Merrill held a white flag, and the others stood weaponless in a cluster behind him.

The top edge of the stockade was suddenly lined with faces and rifles. The militia was not sleeping.

The group of miners halted fifty paces from the gate and Merrill stepped forward.

"Sevier! We've come for the convicts!"

There was a stir among the faces lining the stockade, and then a tall, brightly uniformed figure appeared.

"This is government property, Merrill, and you are trespassing."

Although Lent couldn't see his face, he felt sure a broad grin had spread across their leader's face.

"You're the ones who're trespassing," replied Merrill. "This is our town and our valley, and none of you belong here."

"We'll see," answered Sevier. He seemed to wave to someone out of sight behind him and the gates of the stockade suddenly swung open to spit forth a dozen riders. They dashed straight for the miners and had them quickly surrounded.

Lent saw Merrill and the others hold their ground despite the prodding of rifle butts. In what Lent suddenly realized was a prearranged signal, Merrill dropped the white flag and crossed his arms. The valley was immediately filled with miners streaming down from their hiding places behind the trees and boulders that lined the hillsides. There were too many to count, but it was clear to Lent that Merrill had been true to his word. There must have been close to two thousand.

"Call off your men, Sevier!"

Merrill was clearly in control again, for the riders lost no time in racing back to the cover of the stockade. The gates nearly swung shut before the last rider could spur his horse through the opening.

"You've got a choice, Sevier. If you open the stockade and release the convicts to us, we'll go away without hurting anyone or destroying anything. If you refuse, we'll burn you and this stockade to the ground before the day is over."

Lent smiled at his leader's courage. Lent had always connected courage with fighting and guns, yet here was a man who seemed to win more by talking than by fighting. He stood
weaponless before the stockade dictating terms of surrender, and Lent knew the militia had no real choice but to submit to the terms.

*******

The air of celebration was dampened for Lent by his memory of the last time they had set the convicts free. Here they were shouting and dancing their way down the road to town as if all their troubles were over, and Lent just couldn't shake his father's words. How long would it be before this same group returned with a bigger army and more guns?

"What's the matter, Lent? You look like you're going to a

funeral."

Silas had been whooping and hollering along with all the others as they swept down the valley with guns firing into the air and voices raised in song. Here and there a jug passed through the crowd and the tension of the early morning, once broken, gave way to a reckless kind of festivity which carried them along like leaves and twigs caught in a storm swollen river.

The road was lined with cheering families who held out sandwiches and drinks for soldier, prisoner and miner alike. For this brief morning, at least, all distinctions seemed blurred.

All of these men were seeking freedom in some form or other. For the convicts it meant the chance to jump off the train and head out across country away from iron bars and forced labor. For the militia, many of whom had been hastily conscripted and torn from jobs and families, it meant escape from this strange world of mountain men and miners, a train ride back to the city where they could lay aside rifles and heavy packs, where they could shrug off the constant possibility of a knife blade between the ribs from one of the convicts or a bullet in the neck from one of the mountain sharp-shooters who had perched high above the stockade waiting for some careless guard to show his head above the wooden posts.

For the miners, freedom meant lifting the cloud which had settled over the valley, driving off the intruders and regaining a hold over the mines. To most of them, the real enemy was the Governor and the mine owners. These other men were mere puppets whose strings the miners were now cutting free.

Lent tried to shake off the dread that perched on his shoulder like an unsmiling vulture, but the voices and the singing could not dispel his mood. He remembered the Governor's stern warning and his promise to punish all who broke the law. Even though the miners had cut the telegraph wires back to Knoxville, Lent knew that word would reach the Governor along with the train full of refugees. He could picture the Governor's angry response all too well.

******

Lent sat with Silas, legs dangling from the porch edge of Prebot's dry goods store. The morning's celebration had dragged to an uneasy conclusion as the party arrived in town to find no train waiting there bound for Knoxville. The cheering and singing subsided as the miners realized they would be spending the morning on guard duty. Separating the militia and the convicts into two groups at different ends of the street, the miners made them sit quietly in the dust of the road while the leaders went off to commandeer engine and engineer. The easy comradeship of the early morning evaporated as the miners' rifles were turned on militia and convict alike.

Lent found himself scanning the faces of the convicts before him, many of whom were black. There were so few blacks in his part of Tennessee that he had never spoken to one before this morning. One or two wandered through town now and then, but they always seemed to move on after a day or so as if there was some unwritten law that his was a white town. Even though most of the miners sided with the Union back in the war between the states, Lent knew it had nothing to do with love for these people sneeringly referred to as "Nigras." Most of the miners joked freely about " . . . sending the Nigras back to Africa."

While the white convicts seemed to look around with some curiosity about their surroundings, Lent noticed that most
of the blacks kept their eyes down on the ground. Here and there he could detect whispered conversations, but they all seemed to be concealing something. The group almost seemed to be plotting something that might suddenly erupt into serious fighting.

The miners stood with rifles casually pointing toward the ground, apparently unconcerned and unaware of any danger, but Lent sensed trouble. Word was being passed among the prisoners one by one. He could trace its path through the group as first one man would whisper, then the other would nod. This man would then whisper to his neighbor and the word would move on.

He grabbed Silas by the elbow. "They mean some kind of trouble, Silas."

Silas seemed surprised. "What kind of trouble, Lent?"

"Watch them over there."

Lent pointed to the spot where the message was weaving its way through the group. "Over there," he whispered.

"What is it?"

"They're passing some kind of message."

Silas shook his head. "I don't know what you're talkin about,
Lent."

Lent shrugged and gave up trying to convince his friend. Perhaps he had been imagining it. Even when he had been little, his mother had always chided him about his wild imagination.

"Ma! There's a boy out back and he's hurting a kitten! Come quick!"

His mother had followed him grumbling into the woods only to find the boy and the kitten had disappeared. Frowning, she had warned him not to tell tales.

"You watch your stories, boy!" And she had told him the story of the boy who had cried "Wolf!" too many times.

Now he was silent and angry. Something was building up and about to burst, but he kept quiet.

"Lent Harris?"

"Yes, Ma'am?"

As he turned to speak, he found Mrs. Prebot standing behind him with an apron full of ribbons, thread and other items from the store within, and he realized that she must have recognized him from church.

Her daughter Sarah stood right alongside of her, the girl from church with the long dark hair and the bright red ribbon, the girl whose eyes had smiled so brightly at his that hot summer morning that seemed so long ago. They stared intently and seriously at him now as her mother did the talking.

"Does your mother know that you're here, Lent?"

He and Silas both stood up, and Lent suddenly felt awkward holding his rifle.

"Yes, Ma'am. Well . . . Not exactly."

Mrs. Prebot smiled and reached out a hand to touch him on the shoulder.

"She's probably worried about you, you know."

He nodded, unsure as to where she stood when it came to convicts and miners and rifles.

She looked out at the crowd of prisoners and militia sprawled across the street before her store. "We'll be glad to see them sent home once and for all, Lent. They've brought nothing but trouble to this town and this valley."

Lent found himself relaxing as he realized she might approve of the miners' actions. He stood a bit taller and cradled his rifle with a bit more assurance. Silas was a silent shadow
beside him.

"Yes, Ma'am. You're right about that."

It was hard speaking with the girl watching him so closely and with Silas right there witnessing the exchange. The girl's eyes were so serious. They seemed to penetrate deep inside.

"What was it like at the stockade?"

Now she was talking. He fought to keep his eyes from falling sheepishly to the ground. He wanted to speak to these women as a man, not a nervous boy.

"We . . . well, Merrill and the leaders I mean, they did it all with talking instead of fighting," he began. As he began to describe the first tense negotiations at the stockade gate and the festive march down the valley into town, he noticed that mother and daughter listened appreciatively, and he found himself regaining his calm.

The train whistle cut into his story with a startling, shrill warning, as the street was suddenly swarming with prisoners jumping to their feet and crowding toward the freight that was moving slowly and loudly into town. Lent and his audience turned to watch as the miners herded their charges up over the sides of the cars where they perched atop mountains of freshly mined black coal.

The locomotive snorted out great clouds of steam as it waited impatiently for its next move, and Lent realized that Sarah Prebot had moved up alongside him. He had trouble concentrating on the scene before him, for he was acutely aware of her presence. When her arm brushed lightly and accidentally against his, he found his body tensing with excitement. His pulse seemed to be pounding more furiously than the steam engine standing on the track before them.

In a matter of minutes the train was loaded and moving, and the street was filled with the cheers of the hundreds of miners who remained behind.

"And now we march on the stockade at the Knoxville Mines," Silas reminded Lent.

"The Knoxville Mines?" asked Mrs. Prebot.

The two boys nodded. "There's a pack of convicts and militia there, too," Lent explained. "We took a vow to send every one of them home before nightfall."

He stared at the smoke of the train weaving its way out of the valley. The body of the train had already disappeared from sight behind a line of trees, but the dark trail of smoke betrayed its movement down along the river bank that led to the west. He wondered what the prisoners had whispered to each other and what plans had been interrupted by the sudden
arrival of the train. The secret was safe with the men who were packed on the train, and Lent shivered slightly as the smiling face from his kitten dream flashed momentarily through his mind.

It was time for Lent and Silas to be going, as the street was rapidly clearing and returning to its normal calm.

"You give my best to your mother, now, Lent."

"I will, Ma'am."

He turned to say "Good bye" to the girl and found her smiling at him.

"Come back and see us," she said.

He nodded and returned her smile. "I will," he said and then hurried down the steps to join the miners racing out of town toward the Knoxville Mines. When he reached the corner of the street, he looked back to find her still watching and smiling. She raised her hand, he raised his, and then Silas broke the moment by shouting at him . . .

"Come on, Lent! They'll be done before we get there."

CHAPTER NINE
THE TRUCE

A group of miners traveled to Knoxville to try to convince the governor to end the convict labor system, and the governor sent them home with the promise to call the legislature together within sixty days to consider their request.

In a few days, a train rumbled back into Coal Creek with a load of convicts and guards. An unsteady truce settled over the valley as the convicts were delivered back to the mines and their guard was strengthened.

"How do we know the Governor will keep his promise? What if the Legislature refuses to change the law?"

The miners spent hours arguing over the compromise that had led to the return of the convicts.

"Merrill sold us out. After all that fighting, the stripes are back workin the mines and we have nothing to show for it."

Lent sat quietly on the edge of a group of men arguing the afternoon away on the porch of Prebot's store. Their anger swayed back and forth in the July heat. First one man would curse the leaders who had met with the Governor in Knoxville, and then another would rise to their defense.

"They gave him sixty days, Thornton. If he can't get the law changed by then, there will be plenty of time to settle with the stripes. Those stockades will burn just as well come October as they would if we put the torch to them today."

Thornton was a tall, sour-faced man "black-listed" a year earlier for arguing and causing trouble. The mine owners suspected him of union organizing, so they agreed amongst themselves to give him no work in the mines. He had stayed around town stirring up the miners' anger, hoping for revenge. He lived off odd jobs and a steady diet of bitterness. Lent had seen him stumble out of a saloon more than once, often at midday.

He sneered now at the other man's words. "You think they'll sit around and waste these two months?" He spat into the road dust. "If I know them boys at all, and I reckon I know them pretty well, you'll be seeing work done on those stockades to make them stronger and taller. We should have burned 'em down last week and had it done with."

The other speaker was Robert Walker, a kindly, older man who had worked alongside Lent's father in more than one mine over
the years. He was a family man who had raised nearly a dozen children, half of whom had followed their father into the mines. Lent remembered now that two of Walker's sons had been crushed in a cave-in a few years back. Lent had stood at grave-side while the mining camp paid its final respects.

Walker stood up to the taller man now. "This ain't no war, Thornton. Don't be so eager to get yourself into a fight. Some of us got families to look out for and bills to pay. If we can get the convicts out of town without shooting, it makes sense to wait."

Thornton looked disgusted. "You never been afraid of a fight before, Bob Walker. What's got into you?"

Walker smiled. "You ain't gonna bait me, Thornton. A man don't show courage by firin his gun off every time he sees something move in he woods."

A couple of the other men nodded, and one jumped in to defend Walker. "You got no right speakin to Bob that way, Thornton. You know his record in the war."

Thornton looked around and Lent could tell he sensed the group's anger. Lent thought he saw a sudden softening around the eyes as the tall man turned his hands palm up as if making a plea to the others.

"I didn't mean no offense," he apologized. "I just think we
shoulda finished what we started."

With this he shuffled over to a corner, lowered himself slowly into a chair and began searching through a small leather bag that hung at his side. In a few seconds he found what he wanted - a metal flask covered with old leather. Lent watched him raise the flask to his lips and take a long pull. He guessed it was "shine" from one of he stills which dotted the hollows. Now that Thornton had said his "piece," Lent knew he would slip deeper and deeper into silence as the afternoon crept along toward evening. He had watched this same scene unfold a dozen times before, and now he found himself wondering

where Thornton slept and whether he had a family any place nearby.

"I don't think the Governor will keep his word."

The group seemed shocked by Lent's speaking. He knew they viewed him as a boy, and boys were expected to keep silent when men spoke of politics. His father's friend, Bob Walker, helped to ease the moment by asking him to explain.

"Now why is it you feel that way, Lent Harris?"

As Lent felt the weight of two dozen eyes shift upon him, he nearly faltered.

"I . . . I heard Chumbley and some of the others talkin one day in church." He noticed the eyes widen with interest.
Strengthened by this sign of interest, he plunged on.

"They were talkin about the campaign and some money they had sent to Knoxville - some kind of 'contribution.' Chumbley pulled the others in close and whispered so I almost couldn't hear him. But I did hear." He paused long enough to notice his audience leaning forward with curiosity. "Chumbley whispered, 'He's our man now!'"

The miners exchanged knowing glances.

"Who were these men with Chumbley?" asked Walker, obviously alarmed by his message.

"Mine owners," answered Lent, who listed the names of the group.

Silence settled over the porch, and Lent almost regretted speaking. The hopeful mood of Walker and some of the others seemed to dissolve.

"But that was months ago," Lent explained. "Maybe he'll change his mind about the convicts since we threw em out twice."

The group had lost its momentum.

"Think I best be headin home," announced one man.

"Me, too," seconded Walker. "I got weeds to pull."

And next thing Lent knew he was left alone on the porch with Thornton. The older man slumped in his chair.

"I told em, boy. Told em."

Lent was about to follow the others down the street toward home when he heard a voice from within the store.

"Lent?"

It was Sarah Prebot standing at the door. He turned to greet her with an awkward smile.

"Hello, Sarah."

"I heard what you said, Lent."

Lent nodded, looking past the intense eyes and noting her dark, shining hair tied back with a bright yellow ribbon. Sarah was different from the girls he'd known in the mining camp. It wasn't just the clothes - the ribbons and gaily colored dresses that one would expect a store-owner's daughter to wear. It was her eyes and the way she spoke. The girls he'd known always looked away and seemed to giggle or blush when speaking to a boy. Sarah's directness knocked him off balance.

"Did you really hear Captain Chumbley whispering at church?"

Lent nodded again, wondering if she would tell her parents of his spying. He could see the word passing through the church.

"Remember that Harris boy? The one whose mother married a miner? Well, he's been sneaking around spying on us."

He could imagine his parents called before the congregation and banished from attending services.

Sarah reached out her hand and touched his elbow.

Her voice was a low whisper as she leaned over close. "I never liked that Chumbley. He always seemed evil to me."

She looked over her shoulder as if to see if anyone in the store could hear her.

"Now and then he stops in the store here and sits talking with my father. He's always so loud and bragging about this time or that time when he was back in the war or running some prison. And he talks about the convicts as if they were animals. Specially the colored ones. 'Nigras are the worst!' he says. 'They can't stand hard work. Couple of weeks in the mines and they get sick. Always moanin and carryin on.'"

"I'm not surprised to hear he'd be trying to bribe the
Governor," she concluded.

Lent had stood listening, amazed by the angry feelings of this store owner's daughter. He'd half expected her to side with the mine owners, but he remembered her mother's words on the day they had loaded the convicts on the train to Knoxville . . .

"We'll be glad to see them sent home once and for all."

Lent had always split the valley into two groups. The miners, the dirt farmers and the workers in the lumber mill were one group, and those who owned stores or mines or large farms were the other group. There were workers and there were owners. It was all very simple, and in his simple picture people went about life without crossing boundary lines.

Miners' sons did not speak with store owner's daughters unless they were buying something, and then the exchange would be brief and business-like. They would never stand whispering secrets on a front porch, certainly not stand so close that Lent should be able to notice the subtle fragrance of wild flowers at Sarah's throat. He had never smelled a girl's perfume before - had only smelled cheap bar-maid perfume in mining saloons - and the scent was making it hard for him to focus on her words.

"I hate him," he blurted out.

Sarah nodded. "I can see that."

Lent found himself wondering why Sarah had picked him out. She must have known the boundary lines. What was it that drew her across the lines and made her want to speak with him?

It was as if she was reading his mind. "My father was a miner, too, Lent. A long time ago. Before he started working in a store. He often tells us stories of those days." She paused to watch his reaction. "They were hard times for my father, and he's never forgotten. He still has two brothers that are miners over at Oliver Springs, and they've been out of work for months now because of the convicts."

Lent's simple picture of the valley fractured like a thin layer of morning ice cracked by a miner's boot trudging toward mine tipple. It had never occurred to him that miners could become store owners, especially not wealthy store owners. And yet it seemed to make sense. After all, his own mother had come from a family that was very comfortable, if not wealthy. His own mother had crossed a boundary line by marrying Charlie Harris, and Sarah's words and actions suddenly seemed less mystifying. But why him? What did she see in him? Why did she seek him out?

"Where did you grow up?" he asked.

Sarah seemed pleased by his question. The tense lines in her face seemed to disappear as she described her birth in Oliver
Springs, the years her father had worked in another man's store and how he had saved enough to buy the store for himself. And then she described the sale of that store and the big move to Knoxville where he had bought a larger, more successful store - the store they sold in order to move to Coal Creek.

The two of them perched on the edge of the porch and swapped stories through the afternoon. When Sarah described the stern schoolmaster of her city school, Lent countered with his own tales of country schooling. When Lent told of his work in the mines as a trapper boy and the long hours leading mules through the mines, Sarah described her own long hours waiting on customers, some of whom treated her rudely when her father or mother were out of ear-shot.

As they sat with feet dangling, Lent mostly stared at the ground, but every now and then he turned to listen and watch. He found it hard to watch her for very long, for her eyes were shining with an excitement that set off strangely turbulent feelings of his own. When she wanted to make a special point, she had a way of lightly touching his arm that left him wishing she would leave her hand where it rested.

The town was quiet, and business was slow. Every now and then a family would drive a wagon up to the porch or a single farmer or miner would arrive on foot or horseback, but Lent and Sarah were left to themselves for most of the afternoon. When Sarah's mother appeared at the doorway several times, they did not notice her or see her turn to go back into the store.
When she finally stepped out onto the porch and walked over to stand above them, they snapped out of their reverie and both jumped to their feet.

"Oh, Momma, I'm so sorry! Lent and I got to talking and I just forgot the time."

Mrs. Prebot smiled and reached out to touch her daughter's arm reassuringly.

"It's fine, Sarah. Things were slow in the store. I managed fine."

Lent liked the woman's warm smile and the way she looked right at him with eyes that were intense like her daughter's.

"And how are you today, Lent Harris?"

Lent blushed a bit but managed to smile and meet her gaze directly. "I'm fine, Ma'am." He looked over at Sarah and then back at her mother. "Sarah and I have been tradin stories."

Mrs. Prebot nodded. "I figured."

"She tells me Mr. Prebot was a miner once."

She nodded again. "When we were growing up over in Oliver Springs, he worked in the mines and I worked in town in a store.
That's how we met . . . in the store."

Lent's own smile broadened and his blush deepened as he felt Sarah watching him.

Mrs. Prebot looked back and forth between the two. It seemed to Lent that she was busy hatching some idea, for her face reminded him of his mother's when her mind was working on a plan.

"Are you working on a job these days, Lent?"

"No, Ma'am."

Mrs. Prebot gestured back in the direction of the store.

"Well," she said, "Mr. Prebot and I have been talking, and we think we need another hand to help out in the store here. Would you be interested? The pay wouldn't be much at first, but we would teach you how to maintain the stock, wait on customers, keep the books and handle a store like this one."

She stopped talking and stood waiting for his reply.

Lent was shocked by the offer - caught completely off balance. He was a miner's son and a miner himself. He had never thought of working in a store or working in town. Miner's sons follow their fathers into the mines. It was as simple as that.

But there was Mr. Prebot, a miner's son who had become the owner of a store. And there was Sarah . . . waiting for him to answer . . .

"Yes, Ma'am. I think I'd like that . . . to learn about