“I ain't sayin' nothin' ag'inst the women o' Jim—Ned Creekez women,” said Mr. Pinson; “an' what's more, I'll spit on my hands an' lay out any man ez'll dassen to sass 'em. Butez wivesthe women o' Jim-Ned air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
These remarks, uttered in an oracular tone, were received with grave approbation by the half a dozen idlers gathered about the mesquite fire in Bishop's store. Old Bishop himself, sorting over some trace-chains behind the counter, nodded grimly, and then smiled, his wintry face grown suddenly tender.
“You've shore struck it, Newt,” assented Joe Trimble. “You never kin tell how ary one of 'em 'll ack under any succumstances.”
Jack Carter and Sid Northcutt, the only bachelors present, grinned and winked slyly at each other.
“You boys neenter to be so brash,” drawled Mr. Pinson's son-in-law, Sam Leggett, from his perch on a barrel of pecans; “jest you wait ontell Minty Cullum an' Loo Slater gits a tight holt! Them gals is ez meek ez lambs—now. But so was Mis' Pinson an' Mis' Trimble in their day an' time, I reckon. I know Becky Leggett was.”
“The studdies'-goin' woman on Jim-Ned,” continued Mr. Pinson, ignoring these interruptions, “is Mis' Cullum. An' yit, Tobe Cullum ain't no safeter than anybody else—considerin' of Sissy Cullum ez a wife!”
Mr. Trimble opened his lips to speak, but shut them again hastily, looking a little scared, and an awkward silence fell on the group.
For the shadow of Mrs. Cullum herself had advanced through the wide door-way, and lay athwart the puncheon floor; and that lady, a large, comfortable-looking, middle-aged person, with a motherly face and a kindly smile, after a momentary survey of the scene before her, walked briskly in. She shook hands across the counter with the storekeeper, and passed the time of day all around.
But Hines, the new clerk, shuffled forward eagerly to wait on her. Bud was a sallow-faced, thin-chested, gawky youth from the States, who had wandered into these parts in search of health and employment. He was not yet used to the somewhat drastic ways of Jim-Ned, and there was a homesick look in his watery blue eyes; he smiled bashfully at her while he measured off calico and weighed sugar, and he followed her out to the horse-block when she had concluded her lengthy spell of shopping.
“You better put on a thicker coat, Bud,” she said, pushing back her sunbonnet and looking down at him from the saddle before she moved off. “You've got a rackety cough. I reckon I'll have to make you some mullein surrup.”
“Oh, Mis' Cullum, don't trouble yourself about me,” Mr. Hines cried, gratefully, a lump rising in his throat as he watched her ride away.
The loungers in the store had strolled out on the porch. “Mis' Cullum cert'n'y is a sister in Zion,” remarked Mr. Trimble, gazing admiringly at her retreating figure.
“M-m-m—y-e-e-s,” admitted Mr. Pinson. “But,” he added, darkly, after a meditative pause, “Sissy Cullum is a wife, an' the women o' Jim-Nez,ez wives, air liable to conniptions.”
Mrs. Cullum jogged slowly along the brown, wheel-rifted road which followed the windings of the creek. It was late in November. A brisk little norther was blowing, and the nuts dropping from the pecan-trees in the hollows filled the dusky stillness with a continuous rattling sound. There was a sprinkling of belated cotton-bolls on the stubbly fields to the right of the road; a few ragged sunflowers were still abloom in the fence corners, where the pokeberries were red-ripe on their tall stalks.
“I must lay in some poke-root for Tobe's knee-j'ints,” mused Mrs. Cullum, as she turned into the lane which led to her own door-yard. “Pore Tobe! them j'ints o' his'n is mighty uncertain. Why, Tobe!” she exclaimed, aloud, as her nag stopped and neighed a friendly greeting to the object of her own solicitude, “where air you bound for?”
Mr. Cullum laid an arm across the horse's neck. He was a big, loose-jointed man, with iron-gray hair, square jaws, and keen, steady, dark eyes. “Well, ma,” he said, with a touch of reluctance in his dragging tones, “there's a lodge meetin' at Ebenezer Church to-night, an' I got Mintry to give me my supper early, so's I could go. I—”
“All right, Tobe,” interrupted his wife, cheerfully; “a passel of men prancin' around with a goat oncet a month ain't much harm, I reckon. You go 'long, honey; I'll set up for you.”
“Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild,” muttered Mr. Cullum, striding away in the gathering twilight, “that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its finger—much lessen me!”
About ten o'clock the same night Granny Carnes, peeping through a chink in the wall beside her bed, saw a squad of men hurrying afoot down the road from the direction of Ebenezer Church. “Them boys is up to some devilmint, Uncle Dick,” she remarked, placidly, to her rheumatic old husband.
Uncle Dick laughed, a soft, toothless laugh. “I ain't begrudgin' 'em the fun,” he sighed, turning on his pillow, “but I wisht to the Lord I was along!”
The “boys” crossed the creek below Bishop's and entered the shinn-oak prairie on the farther side.
“Nance ast mighty particular about the lodge meetin',” observed Newt Pinson to Mr. Cullum, who headed the nocturnal expedition; “she know'd it wa'n't the regular night, an' she suspicioned sompn, Nance did.”
“Sissy didn't,” laughed Tobe, complacently. “Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its finger—much lessen me!”
Bud Hines, in the rear with the others, was in a quiver of excitement. He stumbled along, shifting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. “You know, Bud,” said that young gentleman, gravely, “it ain't every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if you've got any grit—”
“I've got plenty of it,” interrupted Mr. Hines, vaingloriously. He was, indeed, inwardly—and outwardly—bursting with pride. “I thought they tuk me for a plumb fool,” he kept saying over and over to himself. “They ain't never noticed me before 'cepn to make fun of me; an' all at oncet Mr. Tobe Cullum an' Mr. Newt Pinson ups an' asts me to go on a snipe-hunt, an' even p'oposes to give me the best place in it. An' I've got Mr. Sid's rifle, an' Mr. Jack is tellin' of me how! Lord, I wouldn't of believed it of I wa'n't right here! Won't ma be proud when I write her about it!”
“You've got to whistle all the time,” Jack continued, breaking in upon these blissful reflections; “if you don't, they won't come.”
“Oh, I'll whistle,” declared Bud, jauntily.
Sam Leggett's snigger was dexterously turned into a cough by a punch in his ribs from Mr. Trimble's elbow, and they trudged on in silence until they reached Buck Snort Gully, a deep ravine running from the prairie into a stretch of heavy timber beyond, known as The Rough.
Here they stopped, and Sid Northcutt produced a coarse bag, whose mouth was held open by a barrel hoop, and a tallow candle, which he lighted and handed to the elate hunter. “Now, Bud,” Mr. Cullum said, when the bag was set on the edge of the gully, with its mouth towards the prairie, “you jest scrooch down behind this here sack an' hold the candle. You kin lay the rifle back of you, in case a wild-cat or a cougar prowls up. An' you whistle jest as hard an' as continual as you can, whilse the balance of us beats aroun' an' drives in the snipe. They'll run fer the candle ever' time. An' the minit that sack is full of snipe, all you've got to do is to pull out the prop, an' they're yourn.”
“All right, Mr. Tobe,” responded Bud, squatting down and clutching the candle, his face radiant with expectation.
The crowd scattered, and for a few moments made a noisy pretence of beating the shinn-oak thickets for imaginary snipe.
“Keep a-whisslin', Bud!” Mr. Cullum shouted, from the far edge of the prairie. A prolonged whistle, with trills and flourishes, was the response; and the conspirators, bursting with restrained laughter, plunged into the ford and separated, making each for his own fireside.
Mrs. Cullum was nodding over the hearth-stone when her husband came in. The six girls, from Minty—Jack Carter's buxom sweetheart—to Little Sis, the baby, were long abed. The hands of the wooden clock on the high mantel-shelf pointed to half-past twelve. “Well, pa,” Sissy said, good-humoredly, reaching out for the shovel and beginning to cover up the fire, “you've cavorted pretty late this time! What's the matter?” she added, suspiciously; “you ack like you've been drinkin'!”
For Tobe was rolling about the room in an ecstasy of uproarious mirth.
“I 'ain't teched nary drop, Sissy,” Mr. Cullum returned, “but ever' time I think about that fool Bud Mines a-settin' out yander at Buck Snort, holdin' of a candle, and whisslin' fer snipe to run into that coffee-sack, I—oh Lord!”
He stopped to slap his thighs and roar again. Finally, wiping the tears of enjoyment from his eyes, he related the story of the night's adventure.
“Air you tellin' me, Tobe Cullum,” his wife said, when she had heard him to the end—“air you p'intedly tellin' me that you've took Bud Hinessnipin'? An' that you've left that sickly, consumpted young man a-settin' out there by hisse'f to catch his death of cold; or maybe git his blood sucked out by a catamount!”
“Shucks, Sissy!” replied Tobe; “nothin' ain't goin' to hurt him. He's sech a derned fool that a catamount wouldn't tech him with a ten-foot pole! An' him a-whisslin' fer them snipe—oh Lord!”
“Tobe Cullum,” said Mrs. Cullum, sternly, “you go saddle Buster this minit and ride out to Buck Snort after Bud Hines.”
“Why, honey—” remonstrated Tobe.
“Don't you honey me,” she interrupted, wrathfully. “You saddle that horse this minit an' fetch that consumpted boy home.”
Tobe ceased to laugh. His big jaws set themselves suddenly square. “I'll do no such fool thing,” he declared, doggedly, “an' have the len'th an' brea'th o' Jim-Ned makin' fun o' me.”
“Very well,” said his wife, with equal determination, “ef you don't go, I will. But I give you fair warnin', Tobe Cullum, that ef you don't go, I'll never speak to you again whilse my head is hot.”
Tobe snorted incredulously; but he sneaked out to the stable after her, and when she had saddled and mounted Buster, he followed her on foot, running noiselessly some distance behind her, keeping her well in sight, and dodging into the deeper shadows when she chanced to look around.
“I didn't know Sissy had so much spunk,” he muttered, panting in her wake at last across the shinn-oak prairie. “Lord, how blazin' mad she is! But shucks! she'll git over it by mornin'.”
Mr. Hines was shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. “The balance of 'em must of got lost,” he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. “It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer,” he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. “Mr. T-o-o-be!” he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came back to him mingled with an ominous sound. “Oh, Lordy! what is that?” he stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. “It's a cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! He's c-comin' closter! Oh, Lordy!”
“Hello, Bud,” called Mrs. Cullum, cheerily. She slipped from the saddle as she spoke and caught the half-fainting snipe-hunter in her motherly arms.
“Ain't you 'shamed of yourse'f to let a passel o' no-'count men fool you this-a-way?” she demanded, sternly, when he had somewhat recovered himself. “Get up behind me. I'm goin' to take you to Mis' Bishop's, where you belong. No, don't you dassen to tech any o' that trash!”
Mr. Hines, feeling very humble and abashed, climbed up behind her, and they rode away, leaving the snipe—hunting gear, including Sid Northcutt's valuable rifle, on the edge of the gully.
She left him at Bishop's, charging him to swallow before going to bed a “dost” of the home-brewed chill medicine from a squat bottle she handed him.
“He cert'n'y is weaker'n stump-water,” she murmured, as she turned her horse's head; “but he's sickly an' consumpted, an' he's jest about the age my Bud would of been if he'd lived.”
And thinking of her first-born and only son, who died in babyhood, she rode homeward in the dim chill starlight. Tobe, spent and foot-sore, followed warily, carrying the abandoned rifle.
Consternation reigned the “len'th an' brea'th” of Jim-Ned. Mrs. Cullum—placid and easy-going Mrs. Tobe—under the same roof with him, actually had not spoken to her lawful and wedded husband since the snipe-hunt ten days ago come Monday!
“It's plumb scan'lous!” Mrs. Pinson exclaimed, at her daughter's quilting. “I never would of thought sech a thing of Sissy—never!”
“As of the boys of Jim-Ned couldn't have a little innercent fun without Mis' Cullum settin' in jedgment on 'em!” sniffed Mrs. Leggett.
“Shot up, Becky Leggett,” said her mother, severely. “By time you've put up with a man's capers for twenty-five years, like Sissy Cullum have, you'll have the right to talk, an' not before.”
“They say Tobe is wellnigh out'n his mind,” remarked Mrs. Trimble. “Ez for that soft-headed Bud Mines, he have fair fattened on that snipe-hunt. He's gittin' ez sassy an' mischeevous ez Jack Carter hisse'f.”
This last statement was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were. The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's with devil-may-care good-nature, and he besought Mrs. Cullum, almost with tears in his eyes, to “let up on Mr. Tobe.”
“I was sech a dern fool, Mis' Cullum,” he candidly confessed, “that I don't blame Mr. Tobe for puttin' up a job on me. Besides,” he added, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, “I'm goin' to git even. I'm layin' off to take Jim Belcher, that biggetty drummer from Waco, a-snipin' out Buck Snort next Sat'day night. He's a bigger idjit than I ever was.”
“You ten' to your own business, Bud, an' I'll ten' to mine,” Mrs. Cullum returned, not unkindly. Which business on her part apparently was to make Mr. Cullum miserable by taking no notice of him whatever. The house under her supervision was, as it had always been, a model of neatness; the meals were cooked by her own hands and served with an especial eye to Tobe's comfort; his clothes were washed and ironed, and his white shirt laid out on Sunday mornings, with the accustomed care and regularity. But with these details Mrs. Cullum's wifely attentions ended. She remained absolutely deaf to any remark addressed to her by her husband, looking through and beyond him when he was present with a steady, unseeing gaze, which was, to say the least, exasperating. All necessary communication with him was carried on by means of the children. “Minty,” she would say at the breakfast-table, “ask your pa if he wants another cup of coffee”; or at night, “Temp'unce, tell your pa that Buster has shed a shoe”; or, “Sue, does your pa know where them well-grabs is?” et caetera, et caetera.
The demoralized household huddled, so to speak, between the opposing camps, frightened and unhappy, and things were altogether in a bad way.
To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example, took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement.
“Lord, Minty!” he gasped. “Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n five years ago. I—”
“I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter,” interrupted his sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; “that settles it!” and she slammed the door in his face.
Matters were at such a pass finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. “Lord,” he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, “Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from the wrath to come.”
He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding her hens.
“She shore did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did,” chuckled Granny Carnes, when this episode reached her ears.
As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous.
“He's that wore upon that nobody dassent to go anigh him,” said Mrs. Pinson, solemnly. “An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever struck the women o' Jim-Ned,ez wives, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the outbeatenes'.”
But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum, impassive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side.
“Well, ma,” began Tobe, with assumed gayety, turning up his plate, “what for a day have you had?”
Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said never a word.
Then, as Mr. Cullum afterward said, “Ole Satan swep' an' garnisheedhim an' tuk possession of him.” He seized the heavy teacup in front of him and hurled it at his unsuspecting spouse; she gasped, paling slightly, and dodged. The missile, striking the brick chimney-jamb behind her, crashed and fell shivering into fragments on the hearth. The saucer followed. Then, Tobe's spirits rising, plate after plate hurtled across the table; the air fairly bristled with flying crockery. Mrs. Cullum, after the first shock of surprise, continued calmly to eat her supper, moving her head from right to left or ducking to avoid an unusually well-aimed projectile.
Little Sis scrambled down from her high chair at the first hint of hostilities, and dived, screaming, under the table; the others remained in their places, half paralyzed with terror.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Mr. Cullum, reaching out his long arms, had cleared half the board of its stone and glass ware. Finally he laid a savage hand upon a small, old-fashioned blue pitcher left standing alone in a wide waste of table-cloth.
At this Sissy surrendered unconditionally. “Oh, Tobe, fer Gawd's sake!” she cried, throwing out her hands and quivering from head to foot. “I give in! I give in!Don'tbreak the little blue-chiny pitcher! You fetched it to me the day little Bud was born! An' he drunk out'n it jest afore he died! Fer Gawd's sake, Tobe, honey! I give in!”
Tobe set down the pitcher as gingerly as if it had been a soap-bubble. Then, with a whoop which fairly lifted the roof from the cabin, he cleared the intervening space between them and caught his wife in his arms.
Minty, with ready tact, dragged Little Sis from under the table, and driving the rest of the flock before her, fled the room and shut the door behind her. On the dark porch she ran plump upon Jack Carter.
“Why, Jack!” she cried, with her tear-wet face tucked before she knew it against his breast, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh, just hanging around,” grinned Mr. Carter.
“Gawd be praised!” roared Tobe, inside the house.
“Amen!” responded Jack, outside.
“An' Tobe Cullum,” announced Joe Trimble at Bishop's the next day, “have ordered up the fines' set o' shiny in Waco fer Sissy.”
“It beatsme,” said Newt Pinson; “but I allers did say that the women o' Jim-Ned,ez wives, air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
It was early morning in the Bluegrass. The triumphant sun was driving the white mist before it from wood and rolling meadow-land, rousing the drowsy cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry bushes blooming by the roadside; and then, with many a mile of smiling pastures in its victorious wake, it burst over the low rampart of stable roofs encircling the old Lexington race-course, and, after a hasty glimpse at the horses speeding around the track and the black boys singing and slouching from stall to stall with buckets of water on their heads, it rushed impetuously into an old-fashioned, deep-waisted family barouche beside one of the stables, and shone full upon a slender, girlish figure within. It wasted no time upon a purple-faced old gentleman beside her, nor upon two young gentlemen on the seat opposite, but rested with bold and ardent admiration upon the young girl's face, touching her cheeks with a color as delicate as the apple blossoms in the orchards, and weaving into her rich brown hair the red gold of its own beams.
The picture was so dazzling and altogether so unprecedented that Colonel Bill Jarvis, the young owner of the stable, who had come swinging around the corner, whistling a lively tune, his hat thrown back on his head, and who had almost run plump into the carriage, stopped abruptly and stood staring. He was roused to a realizing sense of his position by Major Cicero Johnson, editor of the LexingtonChronicleand president of the association, who was standing beside the barouche, saying, with that courtliness of manner and amplitude of rhetoric which made him a fixture in the legislative halls at Frankfort: “Colonel Bill, I want to present you to General Thomas Anderson Braxton, the hero of two wars, of whom as a Kentuckian you must be proud, and his sons Matt and Jack, and his daughter, Miss Sue, the Flower of the Blue-grass. Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, with an oratorical wave of his hand towards the Colonel, who had bowed gravely to each person in turn to whom he was introduced, “this is my friend Colonel Bill Jarvis, the finest horseman and the most gallant young turfman between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico.”
While the Major was speaking, Colonel Bill's eyes wandered from the two young gentlemen on the front seat to the purple-faced old General on the rear seat, and then rested on Miss Braxton. Her eyes met his, and she smiled. It was such a pleasant, gracious, encouraging smile, and there was so much kindliness in the depths of the soft brown eyes, that the Colonel was reassured at once.
“We have come to disturb you at this unearthly hour,” said Miss Braxton, apologetically, “because I wanted to see the horses at their work, and father and my brothers were good enough to come with me.”
Colonel Bill explained that his horses had finished their morning exercise, but that it would afford him great pleasure to show them in their stalls. Miss Braxton was sure that they were putting him to a great deal of trouble, and she was also convinced that to see horses in their stalls must be delightful; so presently the party was marching along under the shed, looking at the calm-eyed thoroughbreds in their narrow little homes, the Colonel and Miss Braxton leading the way.
With the wisdom of her sex, Miss Braxton concealed her lack of special knowledge by a generous general enthusiasm which captivated her simple-hearted host.
“And that is really Beau Brummel!” she cried, with sparkling eyes, pointing to a splendid deep-chested animal, who was regarding them with mild curiosity. “And that is Queen of Sheba next to him! What lovely heads they have, and how very proud you must be to own them!” One would have thought her days and nights had been given to a study of these two thoroughbreds.
“They are the best long-distance horses in the country,” said the Colonel, flushing with pleasure. And then, in reply to her eager questioning, he gave their pedigrees and performances, all their battles and victories, in detail—a list as long and glorious as the triumphs of Napoleon, and perhaps as useful. At each stall she had fresh questions to ask. Her brothers, with an eye to the coming meeting, listened eagerly to the Colonel's answers, while the Major and the General, lagging behind, discussed affairs of state. At last the horses were all seen; everybody shook hands with the Colonel and thanked him, the General with great pompousness, and Miss Braxton with a smile, and a hope that she might see him during the meeting; and the old barouche went lumbering away down the road, until it presently buried itself, like a monstrous cuttlefish, in a cloud of its own making.
Colonel Bill looked after it with a pleased expression on his face, and pulling his tawny mustache reflectively, muttered to himself with true masculine acuteness, “She knew as much about my horses as I did myself.”
The great Lexington meeting was in the full tide of its success. Peach-cheeked, bright-eyed Blue-grass girls, and their big-boned, deep-chested admirers, riding and driving in couples and parties, filled all the white, dusty tumpikes leading to the race-course, and made gay the quaint old Lexington streets. The grand-stand echoed with their merriment, and they cheered home the horses with an enthusiasm seen nowhere else in the world.
The centre of the liveliest of all these merry groups, noticeable for her grace and beauty even there, where so many lovely girls were gathered, was Miss Braxton. She was continuously surrounded by a devoted body-guard of young men, many of whom had ridden miles to catch a glimpse of her bewitching face, and who felt more than recompensed for their efforts by a glance from her bright eyes.
On the first day of the meeting Colonel Bill, arrayed with unusual care, had eagerly scanned the occupants of the grand-stand. His eyes ran heedlessly over scores of pretty faces, until finally they rested upon the group around Miss Braxton. Then carefully buttoning up his coat and straightening out his tall figure, as a brave man might who was about to lead a forlorn hope or receive his opponent's fire, he bore down upon them. Miss Braxton welcomed him cordially, and introduced him to the gentlemen about her. She straightway became so gracious to him that he aroused an amazing amount of suspicion and dislike in the little circle, to all of which, however, he was happily oblivious. He was a capital mimic, and under the inspiration of her applause he told innumerable negro stories with such lifelike fidelity to nature that even the hostile circle was convulsed, and Miss Braxton laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
Time sped so swiftly that the last race was run before the Colonel was aware that the programme was half over, and he found himself saying good-bye to Miss Braxton, and wishing with all his heart he were one of the half-dozen lucky young men who were waiting on their horses outside to escort her carriage back to Lexington.
It was that same evening old Elias, Colonel Bill's body-servant and general assistant, noticed a most surprising development in his young employer. One of the Colonel's most prized possessions was a fiddle. It bad never been known, in all the years he owned it, to utter aught except the most joyful sounds. Whenever he picked it up, as he frequently did on winter nights, when everybody gathered around the big wood fire in his room, the stable-boys at once made ready to beat time to “Money Musk,” “Old Dan Tucker,” and other cheerful airs.
On this particular night the Colonel seized the fiddle and strode gloomily to the end of the stable. Presently there came forth upon the night air such melancholy and dismal notes as made every stable-boy, from little Pete to big Mose, shiver. As the lugubrious sounds continued, the boys fled to their loft, leaving Elias, who had watched over the Colonel from his infancy, to keep vigil, with a troubled look on his withered face. Many nights thereafter was this singular proceeding repeated, to the ever-increasing wonderment of Elias.
Every day during the meeting when Miss Braxton was at the track Colonel Bill sought her out. Sometimes he had a chance for a long talk, but oftener he was forced to content himself with shorter interviews. More than once he noticed General Braxton join his daughter when he approached, and he found that old warrior's manner growing more and more cold.
“He's a loser,” thought the Colonel, to whom it never for a moment occurred that his own presence might be disagreeable to any one. “A man oughtn't to bet when he can't stand a-losing,” he concluded, philosophically, and then he dismissed the matter from his mind.
On the last day of the races, after waiting for an hour or more to speak alone to Miss Braxton, and finding her constantly guarded by her father, who looked fiercer than usual, Colonel Bill was finally compelled to join her as she and the General were leaving the grand-stand. She saw him coming, and stopped, a pleased look on her face. The General, with a frigid nod, moved on a few paces and left them together.
“I have come to ask if I might call on you this evening, Miss Braxton,” said the Colonel, timidly, “if you have no other engagement.”
“I shall be very glad indeed to have you call,” she replied, cordially, adding, with a smile, “You know, Lexington is not so wildly gay that we haven't ample time to see our friends.”
As he walked away the Colonel thought he heard his name mentioned by General Braxton, and although the words were inaudible, the tone was sharp and commanding. He turned and glanced back. The girl's face was flushed, and she looked excited, something unusual to her self-contained, reposeful manner. As they moved out of hearing, the General was still talking with great earnestness, and a feeling of uneasiness began to oppress him. This feeling had not altogether departed when he galloped into Lexington that night, his long-tailed, white linen duster buttoned up to his chin, the brim of his soft black hat pulled down over his eyes.
The Elms, a roomy old-fashioned house encircled by wide verandas, the home of the Braxtons for generations, was one of the landmarks of Lexington. A long stretch of lawn filled with shrubbery and clumps of trees protected its inmates from the city's dust and turmoil and almost concealed the house itself from view. The Colonel, to whom the Elms was perfectly well known, never drew rein till he was before it, and then, checking his horse so suddenly that a less intelligent animal would have turned a somersault, swung himself out of the saddle with the ease of one who had spent the greater part of his life there, fastened the bridle to a ring in a great oak-tree by the curbing, and opening the big iron gate, strode up the gravelled walk which wound through the shrubbery.
Miss Braxton had been sitting at the piano in the drawing-room playing softly. The long windows looking out on the veranda were opened to admit the balmy air, and before her visitor arrived she heard his approaching footsteps.
“I am very glad you have come,” she said, walking out to meet him; “I was afraid that in the excitement of the race-track you might have forgotten our engagement. I felt a little depressed this evening, and that is another reason why I am glad to see you.” She led the way back into the drawing-room as she talked, and invited the Colonel to sit beside her on one of the sofas. In the soft glow of the dimly lighted lamps he thought she had never appeared so beautiful; and the rich fragrance of the dew-laden roses and honeysuckle wafted in through the open windows seemed to him to be an atmosphere peculiar to her alone, like the exceeding sweetness of her soft, low voice and the easy grace of her movements.
In reply to her questions he told her of his adventures on far Southern tracks, and of the careless, reckless life he had led. He had seen many strange and stirring sights during his wanderings; and to her, whose young life lead hitherto flown along as peacefully as a meadow-brook, it seemed like a new and thrilling romance, with a living being in place of the printed page. Once he mentioned a woman's name, and she started.
“In all that time,” she inquired, softly, her eyes lowered, “did no woman ever come into your life?”
“No,” he answered, simply; “I never thought of a woman then.”
She raised her eyes to his, and lowered them instantly, her face flushing.
During a moment's lull in the conversation the hour was struck from a neighboring steeple. They both started, half-guiltily. It was midnight. He at once arose to go, apologizing for the lateness of his visit.
“I would like to see you again, Miss Braxton, before I go North,” he said, as he prepared to leave.
She had risen with him, and they were both standing beside the mantel. Her face paled. Then she turned her head aside, and said, in a tone that was almost inaudible, “Father objects.”
He became rigid instantly, and his lips grew white. “I suppose your father don't know who I am,” he said, proudly. “My family is as good as any in the State. I loved horses and the life and color of the race-track, and refused to go to college when I could. Until I met you I never thought of anything except horses. But that pedigree of my people is straight. There isn't a cold cross on either side. I know I amount to nothing myself,” he continued, bitterly, his eyes resting gloomily on the floor; “I'm only a no-account old selling-plater, and I'll just go back to the stable, where I belong.” Here an unusual sound interrupted him, and he looked up. The girl, with her head on her arm, was leaning against the mantel, sobbing quietly. In a moment he forgot all about himself and snatched up her disengaged hand.
“Do you really care?” he cried, pressing the fluttering little hand in both of his.
She lifted up her face, the soft brown eyes swimming in tears. “I wouldn't mind,” she replied, half laughing and half sobbing—“I wouldn't mind at all about the pedigree, and I know you're not an old selling-plater; but if you were, I am very sure that I would care for you.”
The Lexington meeting was over, and the horsemen were scattered far and wide, from Chicago to Sheepshead Bay. Colonel Bill alone remained behind. As the days passed and he made no preparation to depart, old Elias's irritation grew apace, and the lives of the stable-boys under the increasing rigor of his rule became almost unendurable. The Colonel, however, saw very little of Elias or the stable-boys. Even his beloved horses no longer interested him. He passed the days walking the streets of Lexington, hoping by some chance to meet Miss Braxton, and it was not until late at night that he returned to the race-track, foot-sore and disappointed. He had been too deeply wounded and was too proud to make any further effort to visit the Elms, and he thought it would be unmanly and ungenerous to ask Miss Braxton to meet him away from her father's house.
In the mean time the old General's wrath increased as the days passed. He was unused to any kind of opposition, and the Colonel's persistence irritated him beyond measure. The dream of his life was a brilliant marriage for his daughter, and no amount of argument could alter his opinion that Colonel Bill was a rude, unlettered stable-man.
“Why, sir,” he would exclaim, over a mint-julep, to his friend Major Johnson, who always defended the Colonel vigorously, “the idea of such attentions to my daughter is preposterous—ludicrous! I will not permit it, sir—not for one moment. If he persists in annoying my family, sir,” and the purple hue of the General's face deepened, “I would no more hesitate to shoot him—no more, by gad!—than I would a rattlesnake.” After the fourth or fifth julep he did not always confine his conversation to his friend, and so his threats often found their way back to the object of his wrath, losing nothing by the journey. Although the Colonel's disposition was the sunniest, the strain to which he was being subjected was telling on his nerves, and once or twice he replied sharply to the tale-bearers. The little city was soon excited over the quarrel, and every movement of the principals was eagerly noted.
“My money goes on Bill,” said Jule Chinn, the proprietor of the Blue-grass Club, when the matter came up for discussion there between deals. “I saw him plug that creole down in Orleans. First he throws him down the steps of the St. Charles for insultin' a lady. When Frenchy insists on a duel an' Bill gets up in front of him, he says, in that free-an'-easy way of his, 'We mark puppies up in my country by cutting their ears, and that's what I'm going to do to you, for you ain't fit to die,' an' blame me if he don't just pop bullets through that fellow's ears like you'd punch holes in a piece of cheese!” After that the Colonel ruled a strong favorite in the betting.
When this condition of affairs had existed for two weeks, the Colonel arose one morning from a sleepless bed with a fixed idea in his mind. He sat down to a table in his room, pulled out some writing-paper, and set to work. After many sheets had been covered and destroyed, he finally decided upon the following:
“DEAR MISS BRAXTON,—I am going away from Lexington to-morrow, probably never to return. Will you be at your father's gate at three o'clock this afternoon, as I would like to say good-bye to you before I go?
“Your sincere friend,
After he had finished this epistle it seemed to him entirely too cold; but the others, which he had written in a more sentimental vein, had appeared unduly presumptuous. He finally sealed it and gave it to Pete, with terrific threats of personal violence in case of anything preventing its prompt delivery. While Pete was galloping off to Lexington at breakneck speed, the Colonel was wondering what the answer would be.
“I'll just say good-bye to her,” he muttered, moodily, “and then I'll never see her again. I suppose I belong with the horses, anyhow, and that old bottle-nosed General has me classed all right!”
When Pete returned he handed the Colonel a dainty little three-cornered note. It was addressed to “My dear friend,” and the writer wasso sorryhe was going away sovery soon, and had hoped he would stayeverso much longer, and then signed herself cordially his, Susan Burleigh Braxton. At the bottom was a postscript—“I will expect you at three o'clock.”
An hour before the appointed time the Colonel was striding impatiently up and down before the Elms, incessantly consulting his watch or wistfully gazing up the gravelled walk. It still lacked several minutes of three, when his heart gave a great jump as he saw Miss Braxton's graceful figure flitting in and out through the shrubbery. She stopped to pluck some roses from a bush that hung over the walk, bending down the richly laden bough so that the flowers made a complete circle about her bright young face, and as she raised her eyes she caught the Colonel gazing at her with such a look of abject idolatry that she laughed and blushed. “You see I am on time,” she cried, gayly, hastening down to the gate and handing him one of her roses. “I am going to the post-office, and you may walk with me if you care to.” If he cared to! Her mere presence beside him, the feeling that he could reach out his hand and touch her, the music of her voice, filled him with a joy of which he had never before dreamed.
After they had left the post-office, by mutual direction their footsteps turned from the more crowded thoroughfares, and they walked down a quiet and deserted street where the stones were covered with moss, and where solemn gnarled old trees lined the way on either side and met above their heads, the fresh green leaves murmuring softly together like living things.
They reached the end of the old street, and were almost in the country. A wide-spreading chestnut-tree stood before them, around whose giant bole a rustic seat had been built. They walked towards it in silence and sat down side by side.
They were entirely alone. A gay young red-bird, his head knowingly cocked on one side, perched in the branches just above them. A belated bumblebee, already heavy laden, hung over a cluster of wild flowers at their feet. A long-legged garrulous grasshopper, undismayed by their presence, uttered his clarion notes on the seat beside them.
The inquisitive young red-bird looking down could only see a soft black hat and a white straw hat with flowers about its broad brim. He heard the black hat wondering if any one ever thought of him, to which the straw hat replied softly that it was sure some one did think of him very often. Then the black hat wondered if some one, when it was away, would continue to think of it, and the flowered straw, still more softly, was very, very sure some one would.
Then the red-bird saw such a remarkable thing happen that his bright eyes almost popped out of his little head. He saw a hand and a powerful arm suddenly steal out from below the black hat and move in the direction of the flowered straw—not hurriedly, but stealthily and surely. Having reached it, the hand and the arm drew the unresisting flowered straw in the direction of the black hat, until presently the hats came together. And then the red-bird, himself desperately in love, knew what it all meant, and burst into jubilant song. And the hard-working bumblebee, who also had a sweetheart, took a moment's rest in honor of the event and buzzed his delight; and even the long-legged grasshopper, an admirer of the sex, but a confirmed bachelor, shouted his approbation until he was fairly hoarse.
It was some time before the adventurous hand could be put back where it properly belonged, and the face beneath the straw, when it came into view, was a very flushed face, but the brown eyes shone like stars. As they walked through the old street, the setting sun filling the air with a golden glory, they passed a sweet-faced old lady cutting flowers in her garden, and she smiled an indulgent smile, and they nodded and smiled back at her.
“I want you to promise me something,” Miss Braxton said, suddenly stopping and looking up at him. “I want you to promise me,” she continued, not waiting for his reply, “that you will not quarrel with my father. He is the best father in the world. My mother died when I was a child, and since then he has been father and mother and the whole world to me. I could never forgive myself if you exchanged a harsh word with him.”
“If all the stories I hear are true,” replied the Colonel, with a good-humored laugh, “your father is the one for you to see.”
“My father says a great deal which he frequently regrets the moment afterwards,” she responded, earnestly. “He is a warm-hearted and an impulsive man, and the dearest and best father in the world.” The Colonel gave the desired promise, and they walked on in silence. When they reached the Elms, and her hand was on the big iron gate, she turned to him, an appealing look in her eyes. “Must you really go to-morrow?” she asked.
“I am compelled to go,” he replied, sadly. “I have already remained here too long. I must start to-morrow night.”
“I cannot tell you how sorry I am that you are going away,” she said, softly, extending her hand. He caught it up passionately.
“I must see you again!” he cried. “I can't go away until I do. It is hard enough to leave even then. I won't ask you to come away from your father's house to meet me, but you could be here, couldn't you?”
“When shall I come?” she asked, simply.
“The train leaves to-morrow night at twelve. Could you be here at eleven?”
“I will be here at eleven,” she said; and then, with a brave attempt to smile, she turned away. Just at that moment General Braxton rounded the neighboring corner and came straight towards them.
In the hotel across the way the loungers leaning back in their cane-bottomed chairs straightened up with keenest interest and delight. Jule Chinn in the Blue-grass Club up-stairs, happening to glance out of the window, turned his box over, and remarked that if any gentleman cared to bet, he would lay any part of $5000 on Bill. When the General was directly opposite him Colonel Bill gravely and courteously lifted his hat. For an instant the old man hesitated, and then, with a glance at his daughter, he lifted his own hat and passed through the gate.
“Well, I'll be——!” cried Jule, with a whistle of infinite amazement. “Things is changed in Kentucky!”
“That,” said Major Cicero Johnson, who had exchanged several hundred subscriptions to his paper for an ever-decreasing pile of Jule's blue chips—“that is the tribute which valor pays to beauty. Their pleasure has only been postponed. Colonel Chinn, you have overlooked that small wager on the ace. Thanks.”
Ten minutes later Colonel Bill was galloping out to the race-track, gayly singing a popular love-song. Suddenly something occurred to him and he stopped, reached back into his hip-pocket, and drew out a long pistol. He threw it as far as he could into a neighboring brier-patch, and once more giving rein to his horse, began to sing with renewed enthusiasm.
When he reached the track he called old Elias into his room, and they remained together for a long time in whispered conference. That night any one who happened to have been belated on the Versailles 'pike might have passed Elias jogging along on his horse, looking very important, and an air of mystery enveloping him like a garment.
It was far into the night when he returned. As he started to creep up the ladder to the loft above his young master's room, his shoes in his hand so as not to awaken him, the Colonel, who had been tossing on a sleepless bed for hours, called out. Elias, who evidently regarded himself as a conspirator, waited until he had reached the loft, and then whispered back, “Hit's all right, Marse Bill,” and was instantly swallowed up in the darkness.
It was one of those perfect June nights so often seen in Kentucky. The full moon hung in a cloudless sky, filling the air with a soft white radiance. There was not a movement in the still, warm atmosphere, and to Colonel Bill, waiting beneath the shadows of the big oak-tree near the General's gate, it seemed that all nature was waiting with him. The leaves above his head, the gray old church steeple beyond the house, the long stretch of deserted streets—they all wore a hushed, expectant look.
It was several minutes past the appointed hour, and Miss Braxton had not come. He had begun to fear that perhaps her father, suspecting something, had detained her, when he saw her figure, a white outline among the rose-bushes, far up the walk. As she drew near he stepped out from the shadows, and she gave a little cry of delight.
“I know I am late, but I was talking with father,” she said, apologetically, and the brown eyes became troubled. “He was very restless and nervous to-night and when he is in that condition he says I soothe him.” They had slowly walked towards the tree as she was speaking, and when she had finished they were completely hidden from any chance passer. She glanced up, and even in the gloom she noticed how white and tense was his face.
“Do you know,” he cried, abruptly, “if I go away from Lexington to-night it will only be to return in a day, or two days? For weeks I have been able to think of nothing, to dream of nothing, except you. I haven't come here to-night to say good-bye to you,” he continued, passionately, “because I cannot say good-bye to you, but to implore you to come with me—to marry me—to-night—now.” She shrank back. “I have made all my arrangements,” he continued, feverishly. “I have a cousin, a minister, living in Versailles. Once a month he preaches in a little church on the 'pike near there. I sent word by Elias last night for him to meet us there to-night, and he said he would. Elias has the horses under the trees yonder; they will be here in a moment, and in an hour we will be married. Come!” His arms were around her, and while he spoke she was carried away by the rush of his passion, and yielded to it with a feeling of languorous delight. Then there came the thought of the lonely old man who would be left behind. She slipped gently from her lover's arms and looked back at the house which had been her home for so many years. She saw the light, in her father's room, and recalled how she went there when she was a little girl to say her prayers at his knee and kiss him good-night. He had always been so kind to her, so willing to sacrifice himself for her pleasure, and he was so old. What would he do when she had gone out of his life? No; she could not desert him. She covered her face with her hands. “I cannot leave father,” she sobbed. “I cannot; I must not.” They had moved out from the shadow of the tree into the moonlight. He had taken her hand, and had begun to renew his appeals, when they were both startled by the sound of footsteps on the gravelled walk and the General's voice crying, “Sue! Sue, where are you?” At the same moment Elias came up, leading two horses. The Colonel and Miss Braxton stood just as they were, too surprised to move. They could not escape in any event, for almost as soon as the words reached them the General came into view. He saw them at once, and it required only a glance at the approaching horses to tell him everything. With an inarticulate cry of rage, his gray hair streaming behind him, he rushed wildly back to the house. The Colonel looked after him, and then turned to Miss Braxton.
“He has gone to arm himself,” he said, quietly. “He will be back with your brothers.”
The girl looked up in his face and shivered. Then she glanced towards the house, where lights were flashing from room to room, and the doors were being opened and shut, and she wrung her hands. In the stillness every sound could be heard—the rush of footsteps down the stairs, the fierce commands, the creaking of the great stable door in the rear of the house.
“They are getting out the horses,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he replied, calmly. “He thought we were running away.” There was not a tremor in his voice. She was reared in a society where physical bravery is the first of virtues, and even in that terrible moment she could not help feeling a thrill of pride as she looked at him.
She never thought of asking him to fly. She could hear the horses as they were led out of their stalls one by one, their hoofs echoing sharply on the stone flagging. Her excited imagination supplied all the details. Now they were putting on the bridles; now they were fastening the saddles; they were mounted; the gate was being opened; in another moment they would sweep down on them. Then she looked at her lover standing there so motionless, waiting—for what? The thought of it was maddening.
“Quick! quick!” she cried, wildly, catching his arm; “I will go with you.”
Without a word he lifted her up in his arms and seated her on one of the horses. He carefully tested the saddle, although the hoofs of their pursuers' horses were already ringing on the street behind the house. Then he swung himself easily into the saddle, and was hardly there before the General and his two sons swept around the neighboring corner, not fifty yards away.
“Good-bye, Elias,” called the Colonel, cheerfully, as they shot out into the moonlit street; and Elias's “God bless you bofe, Marse Bill!” came to them above the rush of the horses.
As they went clattering through the quiet streets and past the rows of darkened houses, the horses, with their sinewy necks straightened out speeding so swiftly that the balmy air blew a soft wind in their riders' faces, Colonel Bill, with a slight shade of disappointment in his voice, said:
“I guess you didn't get a good look at the horses, or you would have recognized them. That's old Beau Brummel you're on, and this is Queen of Sheba. They're both fit, although they haven't been particularly trained for these free-for-all scrambles, owners' handicap, ten miles straightaway. But I don't believe there's a horse in Kentucky can catch us to-night,” he concluded, proudly patting the neck of his thoroughbred. He glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, and noted that the distance between them and their pursuers was constantly widening, until, turning a corner, they could neither see nor hear them.
And now the Colonel's spirits fairly bubbled over. He was a superb rider, and swinging carelessly in his saddle, his hands hardly touching the reins, he kept up a running stream of jocular comment.
“It looks to me like the old gentleman's going to be distanced,” he cried, with a chuckle, “He can't say a word, though, for he made the conditions of this race. The start was a trifle straggling, as Jack Calloway told me once when he left seven horses at the post in a field of ten, and perhaps the Beau and the Queen didn't have the worst of it.”
In every possible way he sought to divert his companion's mind. Once or twice she delighted him by faintly smiling a response to his speeches. They had passed the last of the straggling houses, and the turnpike stretched before them, a white ribbon winding through the green meadow-land. They had to wait while a sleepy tollgate-keeper lifted his wooden bar, and straining their ears, they could just catch the faint, far-away sound of galloping horses.
“In another hour,” he cried, pressing her hand, and once more they were off. A mile farther on they stopped again. Before them was a narrow lane debauching from the turnpike.
“That lane,” he said, reflectively, “would save us a good two miles, for the 'pike makes a big bend here. Elias told me that he heard it was closed up, and we might get in there and not be able to get out. We can't afford to take the chance,” he concluded, thoughtfully, and they continued on their journey. For some time neither spoke. As they were about to enter the wood through which the road passed they stopped to breathe their horses.
“I don't hear them,” said the girl. Then she added, joyfully, “Perhaps they have turned back.”
He listened attentively. “Perhaps they have,” he said, at last.
As they rode forward more than once an anxious expression passed over his face, although his conversation was as cheerful as ever. Miss Braxton, from whose mind a great weight had been lifted, laughed and chatted as she had not done since the journey began.
They had passed through the wood and were out in the open country again. As they galloped on, only the distant barking of a watch-dog guarding some lonely farm-house, or the premature crowing of a barn fowl, deceived by the brilliancy of the moonlight into thinking that day had come, broke the absolute silence. They might have been the one woman and the one man in a new world, so profound was their isolation.
“Do you see that group of trees on the hill there just ahead of us,” he asked, carelessly, as the horses slowed to a canter. “Well, just the other side of those trees the lane we passed joins the 'pike again. Now it is possible that instead of your amiable relatives going home, they may have taken to the lane. If it hasn't been closed, they may be waiting there to welcome us.” For a moment the girl was deceived by the lightness of his manner; and then, as she realized what such a situation meant, she grew white to the lips. “The chances are,” he continued, cheerfully, “that they won't be there, but we had just as well be prepared. If they are there we must approach them just as if we were going to talk to them, slowing up almost to a walk. They will be on my side, and I will keep in the middle of the 'pike. You remain as close to the fence as you can. When we get opposite them I'll yell, 'Now!' You can give your horse his head, and before they know what's happened we will be a hundred yards away. All my horses have been trained to get away from the post, and these two are the quickest breakers on the Western Circuit. Now let's go over the plan again.” And the Colonel carefully repeated what he had said, illustrating it as he went along. Yes, she understood him. It was very simple. How could she forget it? As she told him this her frightened eyes never left his face, and she followed his movements with such a look of pain that he swore at her father, under his breath, with a vigor which did full justice to the occasion.
A few minutes' ride brought them to the top of the hill, and they both looked eagerly before them. A furlong away, standing perfectly still in the middle of the lane, their horses' heads facing the turnpike, were three mounted men. It required no second glance to identify the watchers. Colonel Bill's eyes blazed, and his right hand went back instinctively to his empty pistol-pocket. He regained his composure in a moment. “Go very slow,” he whispered, “and don't make a move till I shout. Keep as far over to your side as you can.” They approached the three grim watchers, their horses almost eased to a walk. Not a word was spoken on either side. When they had reached a point almost directly opposite their pursuers, Colonel Bill made a pretence of pulling up his horse, only to catch the reins in a firmer grip, and then, with a sudden dig of the spurs, he yelled, “Now!” and his horse sprang forward like a frightened deer. At the same instant Miss Braxton deliberately swung her horse across the road and behind his. Then there came the sharp report of a pistol, followed by the rush of the pursuing horses. But high above all other sounds rose General Braxton's agonized voice: “My God, don't shoot! Don't shoot!” Before the Colonel could turn in his saddle Miss Braxton was beside him.
“Why didn't you stay where you were?” he cried, sharply, the sense of her peril setting his nerves on edge. As he realized that it was for his sake she had come between him and danger, his eyes grew moist. “Suppose you had been hurt?” he added, reproachfully. She did not reply, and they rode on at full speed. They had once more left their pursuers behind; but as the church was now only a few miles away, and they needed every spare moment there, they urged their horses to renewed effort.
“There is the church now, and it's lighted up,” cried the Colonel, joyfully, as they dashed around a bend in the road, pointing to a little one-story building tucked away amid trees and under-brush beside the turnpike. In the doorway the minister stood waiting for them—a tall young man whose ruddy face, broad shoulders, and humorous blue eyes suggested the relationship the Colonel had mentioned. As they pulled up, the young minister came forward and was introduced by the Colonel as “My cousin, Jim Bradley.” While they were both assisting Miss Braxton to dismount and fastening the horses, the Colonel, in a few words, told of the pursuit and of the necessity of haste. Mr. Bradley led the way into the church, the lovers following arm in arm. It was a plain whitewashed little room, with wooden benches for the worshippers, and a narrow aisle leading up to the platform, where stood the preacher's pulpit. Half a dozen lamps with bright tin reflectors behind them, like halos, were fastened to brackets high up on the walls. The young couple stopped when they reached the platform, and at Mr. Bradley's request joined their hands. He had opened the prayer-book at the marriage service, and was beginning to read it, when he gave a start. Far away down the turnpike, faint but unmistakable—now dying away into a mere murmur, now rising clear and bold—came the sound of galloping horses. The Colonel felt the girl's hand cold in his, and he whispered a word of encouragement. Mr. Bradley hurried on with the ceremony. The centuries-old questions, so often asked beneath splendid domes before fashionable assemblages to the accompaniment of triumphant music, were never answered with more truth and fervor than in that little roadside church, with no one to hear them but the listening trees and the heart of the night wind.
“Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
How he pressed the trembling little hand in his, and how devotedly he answered, “I will.”
“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband? Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
The downcast eyes were covered with the drooping lids, and the voice was faint and low, but what a world of love was in the simple, “I will.”
As the young minister, very solemn and dignified now, paused for each reply, there came ever nearer and ever louder the ringing of the hoof-beats. Once he stole a hurried glance through the window which gave on the turnpike. Not half a mile away, their figures black against the sky-line, fiercely lashing their tired horses to fresh effort, were three desperate riders. The couple before him did not raise their eyes.
And now the concluding words of the service had been reached, and the minister had begun, “Those whom God hath joined together—” when the rest of the sentence was lost in the old General's angry shout, as he flung himself from his horse, and, with his sons at his heels, rushed into the church. At the threshold they stopped with blanched faces, for, as they entered, the girl, uttering a faint cry, her face whiter than her gown, down which a little stream of blood was trickling, reeled and tottered, and fell senseless into her husband's arms.
A few days later Major Johnson's LexingtonChronicle, under the heading “Jarvis—Braxton,” contained the following:
“Colonel William Jarvis, the distinguisbed and genial young turfman, and Miss Susan Braxton, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of General Thomas Anderson Braxton, the hero of two wars, whose name is a household word wherever valor is honored and eloquence is admired, were united in marriage Monday night. With the romance of youth, the young couple determined to avoid the conventionalities of society, and only the bride's father and two brothers were present. Immediately preceding the ceremony the lovely bride was accidentally injured by the premature explosion of a fire-arm, but her hosts of friends will be delighted to learn that the mishap was not of a serious character. The young couple are now the guests of General Braxton at the historic Elms. We are informed, however, that Colonel Jarvis contemplates retiring from the turf and purchasing a stock-farm near Lexington. As a souvenir of his marriage he has promised his distinguished father-in-law the first three good horses he raises.”