CHAPTER XVII.
LICKSKILLET HAS A SENSATION.
Though this is a true and faithful chronicle of the adventures of our friend Benjamin Cleveland, so closely have his affairs now become linked with the destiny of another that we must temporarily leave him, and turn to the hamlet of Lickskillet.
When the Evangelist arrived with his horse late the previous afternoon, he found the village to consist of a single straggling street, lined by country stores, in front of which were hitched a few farm teams and country wagons. The Evangelist was stared at after the usual bucolic fashion. His immediate business being the disposal of his equine property, he rode up to a long, low, weather-stained building, bearing the legend, "Livery, board and sale stable," in skeleton characters on a board that decorated a pole. Half a dozen loungers greeted his advent with a stolid stare.
Horton rode into the building and dismounting, propounded the question:
"Does anybody know of anybody that wants to buy a horse?"
Another stare, more dense in its stupidity and stolidity, greeted the query.
"If they do, here's a solid good work horse I'll sell cheap," continued he.
At this information a man, who had been engaging his time and attention in company with an intelligent jack knife, upon a shingle, arose, and allowing his hand and knife to pare away at the wood after their own inclination, walked slowly around the horse and observed him with a critical eye.
"Whar'd ye get him?" he asked.
"Bought him of a man up the road," replied Horton. "I got him at a bargain, and I'll sell him at one."
"How much?" asked the man.
"I'll sell him for fifty dollars, cash," said the Evangelist.
The man stared at Horton a full minute without speaking, slowly running his eye from the Evangelist's head to his feet and up again several times. Then, still whittling, he walked to the barn door, where he turned and gave a sly wink to one of the stolid men present; which pantomimic piece of activity seemed to create some little sensation among the human stolidity present.
One after another they arose, and slowly walking around the horse, eyed him from head to tail, then giving Horton a final examination, passed quietly out of the door, until the latter found himself left alone with his horse.
This situation lasted but a few moments, for the man who first went out shortly returned, still whittling, and commenced interrogating him.
"Whar did ye kum frum? Whar air ye goin'? How long ye hed the animyle? Wot ye want to sell it fur? How'd he kum to be rid so hard?" and numerous other questions were asked and duly answered. Having finished his category, the stable-keeper—for it was the owner and proprietor of the "livery"—remarked:
"Looks mighty 'spicious!"
"What looks suspicious?" asked Horton.
"Oh, nothing," replied the man with a tone and look indicating that his yahoo mind was one immense volume of doubt.
The Evangelist was puzzled. He could see nothing strange about the matter, and so expressed himself. If a man wanted a good horse cheap, there was the animal—and if he did not, he could let it alone. A liberty of action that would no doubt have powerfully impressed the "'spicious" man were it not that the attention of both was suddenly diverted into other channels. There were heard the murmur of many voices, and the shuffling of many feet on the street, and half a hundred men, picked up from farmers' wagons, trading stores and adjacent fields, rushed into the stable and surrounded Horton and the horse. While he was staring in astonishment at this influx of purchasers, a lank, sandy-complexioned man stepped from the crowd and taking one look at the horse, exclaimed:
"That's him! Whoa, Bob!"
The animal immediately recognizing the voice and name, turned his head and greeted the sandy man with a neigh.
At this Horton stepped back in astonishment, but the next instant was felled to the stable floor by a blow on the head, and three men pounced upon him, crying out:
"No you don't, you scoundrel! You're too late! We've got ye and'll keep ye! You bet!"
"Gentlemen," cried the Evangelist so soon as he could recover breath, "What in the name of Heaven does all this mean?"
"Mean!" exclaimed half a dozen voices, while a score of angry eyes glared vengefully upon him; "Mean? Why it means ye're gone up, ye whelp of a hoss thief!"
"I am no thief!" he indignantly replied. "That horse is my property, and I came by him honestly."
"Ye lie!" shouted he of the sandy complexion, who was now holding 'Bob.' "Ye lie! Ye stole that hoss outer my cow lot night afore last, I kem from Spoonerville down the town-line rud or I'd hev cot ye on the way, an' ef I hed the county ud hev been saved the expense of yer trial!" And giving utterance to this dark shadowing of a vengeful purpose the sandy man glared upon Horton.
"Gentlemen it isfalse! I—" commenced the Evangelist, but the sandy man, unable to reach him with his hands and hold his horse at the same time, gave the poor captive a vicious kick in the stomach, exclaiming:
"Ye mean to tell meI lie, ye dirty, hoss thief!"
One would have thought that in that crowd some voice had been found to call "shame" at the cowardly act of striking a man held from self defence by the hands of others. But the agricultural sense of honor is somewhat like the agricultural habits of life—somewhat narrowed by limited associations. Had the good feelings of the crowd been appealed to they would all have rushed after a leader like a flock of sheep, probably. It being the opposite, Horton was kicked and cuffed to their heart's content, as though each had a private grievance to attend to. They then stood him on his feet and demanded that he give an account of himself.
Thoroughly frightened and suffering much pain from the harsh treatment he had received, and fearing a repetition of it that seemed to indicate itself in the lowering looks surrounding him, the poor unfortunate Evangelist humbled his tone, and gave a truthful statement of himself and the manner in which he had obtained possession of the horse. Briefly he stated who he was and did not try to palliate the crime of being a tramp. Then he related how, while in company with Ben, he had traded a watch for the horse with a farmer's boy who lived in Bonfield, and had brought the animal in town to sell it; leaving his comrade back on the road, to come after him on the morrow.
"A likely story!"
"Did he think to stuff that down their throats?"
"A man without money having watches to give for horses! Too thin!"
"Where was his partner?"
"Selling another horse somewhere, probably!"
"He said he was a tramp, and what was a tramp but a hoss thief!"
And they laughed at his statements in derision. The tide was netting strong against the Evangelist. It became a perfect torrent when the sandy complexioned man called upon another sandy-complexioned man, with sandy hair and sandy beard and sandy clothes, and small sandy blue eyes, and hard sandy hands (honest, no doubt, but very ragged at the finger ends and very dirt-grimed) and a sandy voice, and sandy appearance generally from his heel to his occiput, to come take a good "squar" look at Horton, and see if he was not the man he had seen loafing around in the vicinity of Spoonerville? And this sandiest of all sandy men, feeling himself elevated to a consequential position, felt it incumbent upon his new notoriety to aver that Horton was the man; compromising with some slight qualms of conscience with the codicil that "leastways heluksmighty sight like him." That settled it. And all his wild protestations could not change the decision of the crowd that immediately transformed the luckless Evangelist from a tramp into a horse thief.
By this time a man who was duly authorized to act as town marshal appeared on the scene, and with a deal of importance seized Horton's person in the majestic name of the Law! and conveyed his seizure, followed by the crowd, to the village lockup. A small plank box, twelve feet by twelve feet in all of its dimensions, without a window, and principally used for the occasional cooling off of some obstreperous bucolics who on coming to town became surcharged with the staff of life in a liquid form. Into this hole, standing solitary and alone in the centre of the village common, he was thrown, and the door closed with a bang. The rusty key grated in the rusty lock, the rusty crowd outside gave some rusty whoops and yells, and then went off pawing the air as men who had done great deeds. It was as though, in some far off Hindoo village, the tiger that had been fattening his ribs upon the natives had at last been caught and caged. Everybody, save that poor battered and bruised form on the floor of the village lockup, was triumphant!
And now of what use is a triumph unless we celebrate it? And what is the great American method of celebrating triumphs? From the nabob who in gilded apartments gracefully nods his head to his brother nabob, as he remarks: "I congratulate you" before sending the soul of sunny France gurgling down his pink throat, down to the ragged effigy who leans against the sour-smelling fetid bar and cracks his glass against the glass of his brother effigy, with: "Here's luck, d—n your soul!" as he pitches the scorching tanglefoot down his red hot gullet, we Americans have our own method of celebrating triumphs. We get drunk.
So these Lickskilletonians celebrated in the hour of their triumph.
Stiff, sore, bruised, battered and bleeding, the Evangelist struggled to his feet and staggering to a narrow, iron-barred slit in the side of the village lockup, looked out. The sun was creeping to bed among the purple hills of the horizon. Already it had nearly disappeared; all save a narrow disk, that with a red, autumnal glow was bidding the world good-night. Long and earnestly he gazed upon the glowing west, painted with red and purple and russet, and trimmed with silver and gold. With its woods and meadows and vales, painted by God's own hand. With its fading lights, its deepening shadows, its soft grey of coming twilight. Long he gazed, until the shadows had swallowed up the light, and the grey of twilight was lost in the dusk of night. Then he flung himself on the floor, and sleep came with a soft and soothing balm to anoint his wounds; his eyes filled with that last glow—his last—of his Creator's sunlight.