Pole Baker
BY WILL N. HARBENAuthor of “The Georgians,” “Abner Daniel,” etc.
THE planter alighted from the dusty little train under the crumbling brick car-shed at Darley, turned his heavy hand-luggage over to the negro porter and walked across the grass to the steps of the Johnston House. Here he was met by Jim Thornton, the dapper young clerk, who always had a curled mustache and hair smoothed flatly down over his brow.
“Oh, here you are, right side up, Captain Duncan!” he cried. “You can’t stay away from those level acres of yours very long at a time.”
“No, Jim.” The short, thick-set man smiled as he took the extended hand. “As soon as I heard spring had opened up here we left Florida. I had a bad case of homesickness. My wife and daughter came a week ago. I had to stop on business in Jacksonville. I always want to be here in planting season; my men never seem to know exactly what I want done when I am away. Jim, I’ve got a lot of land out there between the river and the mountains.”
“I reckon you have,” laughed the clerk as he led his guest into the hotel office. “There’s a neighbor of yours over there at the stove, old Tom Mayhew, who runs the big store—Mayhew & Floyd’s—at Springtown.”
“Oh, I know him mighty well,” said Duncan. “How are you, Mayhew? What are you doing away from your beat? I thought you’d be behind your counter such fine weather as this.”
“Trade’s dull,” said the merchant, who was a tall, spare-made man about sixty-five years of age, with iron-gray hair and beard. “Farmers are all at the plow, and that’s where they ought to be if they expect to pay anything on their debts this fall. I had to lay in some stock, and so I ran down to Atlanta day before yesterday. My young partner, Nelson Floyd, usually does the replenishing, but the books got out of whack, and I left him to tussle with them; he’s got a better head for figures than I have. I’ve just sent to the livery-stable for a horse and buggy to take me out; how are you going?”
“Why, I hardly know,” answered the planter as he took off his straw hat and wiped his bald head with a silk handkerchief. “I telegraphed Lawson, my head overseer, to send somebody to meet me, and I was just wondering——”
“Oh, you’ll be attended to all right, Captain Duncan!” said the clerk, with a laugh as he stood at the register behind the counter. “Pole Baker was in here last night asking if you had arrived. He said he had brought a buggy and was going to drive you back. You will make it all right if Pole sobers up long enough to get out of town. He was thoroughly ‘how-come-you-so’ last night. He was in Askew’s bar raising holy Cain. The marshal ordered Billy to close at twelve, but Pole wouldn’t hear to it, and they were within an inch of having a fight. I believe they would if Mrs. Johnston hadn’t heard them and come down. Pole has more respect for women than most men, and as soon as he saw her at the door he hushed up and went to bed.”
“He’s as straight as a shingle this morning, Captain,” put in Charlie Smith, a mulatto porter, who was rolling a pair of trucks across the room laden with a drummer’s enormous brass-bound trunk. “He was up before day asking if you got in durin’ the night.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s sobered up if he’s to take me out,” said the planter. “He’s about the biggest daredevil out our way. You know him, don’t you, Mayhew?”
“Know him? Humph! to the extent of over three hundred dollars. Floyd thinks the sun rises and sets in him and never will close down on him. They are great friends. Floyd will fight for him at the drop of a hat. He says Pole has more manhood in him to the square inch than any man in the county, white or black. He saw him in a knock-down-and-drag-out row in the public square last election. They say Pole whipped three bigger men than he is all in a bunch, and bare-handed at that. Nobody knows to this day how it started. Nelson doesn’t, but I heard it was some remark one of the fellows made about Nelson himself. You know my partner had a rather strange start in life—a poor boy with nobody to see to his bringing up, but that’s a subject that his best friends don’t mention to him.”
The Captain nodded understandingly. “They tell me Pole used to be a moonshiner,” he said, “and I have heard that he was the shrewdest one in the mountains. His wife got him to quit it. I understand he fairly worships the ground she walks on, and there never was a better father to his children.”
“He thinks well enough of them when he’s at himself,” said Mayhew, “but when he’s drinking he neglects them awfully. I’ve known the neighbors to feed them two weeks on a stretch. He’s got enemies out our way. When he quit moonshining he helped some of the government officers find some stills over there. That was funny. Pole held off from the job that was offered him for a month, during which time he sent word everywhere through the mountains that he would give all his old friends plenty of time to shut up and quit making whisky, but after his month was up he intended to do all he could against law-breakers. He had to testify against several, and they now certainly have it in for him. He’d have been shot long ago if his enemies weren’t afraid of him.”
“I see him coming now, Mr. Mayhew,” said the clerk. “Captain, he walks steady enough. I reckon he’ll take you through safe.”
The tall countryman, about thirty-five years of age, without a coat, his coarse cotton shirt open at the neck, a slouch hat on his massive head and his tattered trousers stuffed into the tops of his high boots, came in. He had a brown, sweeping mustache, and his eyebrows were unusually heavy. On the heel of his right foot he wore an old riding-spur, very loosely strapped.
“How are you, Captain Duncan?” he said to the planter as he extended his brawny hand. “You’ve come back to God’s country, eh?”
“Yes, Baker,” the planter returned with a genial smile; “I had to see what sort of chance you fellows stand for a crop this year. I understand Lawson sent you over for me and my baggage. I’m certainly glad he engaged a man about whom I have heard such good reports.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Captain,” said Pole, his bushy brows meeting in a frown of displeasure and his dark eyes flashing. “I don’t know as I’m runnin’ a hack-line, or totin’ trunks about for the upper-ten set of humanity. I’m a farmer myself, in a sort of way—smaller’n you are, but a farmer. I was comin’ this way yesterday, and was about to take my own hoss out o’ the field, where he had plenty to do, when Lawson said, said he, ‘Baker, bein’ as you are goin’ to make the trip anyways, I’d feel under obligations ef you’d take my rig and fetch Captain Duncan back when you come.’ By gum, to tell you the truth, I’ve just come in to tell you, old hoss,if you are ready right now, we’ll ride out together, if not I’ll leave you an’ go out with Nathan Porter. Engaged, the devil! I’m not goin’ to get any money out o’ this job.”
“Oh, I meant no offense at all, Baker,” said the planter in no little embarrassment, for the group was smiling.
“Well, I reckon you didn’t,” said Pole, slightly mollified, “but it’s always a good idea fer two men to know exactly where they stand, and I’m here to say I don’t take off my hat to no man on earth.”
“That’s the right spirit,” Duncan said admiringly. “Now, I’m ready if you are, and it’s time we were on the move. Those two valises are mine and that big overcoat tied in a bundle.”
“Here, Charlie!” Pole called out to the porter, “put them things o’ Duncan’s in the back end o’ the buggy, an’ I’ll throw you a dime the next time I’m in town.”
“All right, boss,” the mulatto said, with a knowing wink and smile at Mayhew. “They’ll be in by the time you get there.”
While the planter was at the counter, saying good-bye to the clerk, Pole looked down at Mayhew. “When areyougoin’ out?” he asked.
“In an hour or so,” answered the merchant as he spat into a cuspidor. “I’m waiting now for a turnout, and I’ve got some business to attend to.”
“Collections to make, I’ll bet my hat,” Pole laughed. “I thought mighty few folks was out on Main Street jest now; they know you are abroad in the land an’ want to save the’r socks.”
“Do you reckon that’s it, Pole?” said Mayhew as he spat again. “I thought maybe it was because they was afraid you’d paint the town, and wanted to keep their skins whole.”
The clerk and the planter laughed. “He got you that time, Baker,” the latter said, with a smile.
“I’ll acknowledge the corn,” and the mountaineer joined in the laugh good-naturedly. “To look at the old skinflint, settin’ half asleep all the time, a body wouldn’t think his tongue had any life to it. I’ve seed the dern thing wiggle before, but it was mostly when thar was a trade up.”
As they were driving into the country road, just beyond the straggling houses in the outskirts of the town, going toward the mountains, which lay along the western horizon like blue clouds nestling against the earth, the planter said:
“I’ve seen you fishing and hunting with Mayhew’s young partner, Nelson Floyd. You and he are rather intimate, are you not?”
“Jest about as friendly as two men can be,” said Pole, “when one’s rising in the world an’ t’other is eternally at a standstill, or goin’ down like a round rock on the side of a mountain. Or maybe, I ought to say, when one of ’em has had the pluck to educate hisself an’ t’other hardly knows B from a bull’s foot. I don’t know, Captain, why Nelson Floyd’s friendly to me. I like him beca’se he is a man from his toe-nails to the end o’ the longest hair on his head.”
“I’ve heard a lot of good things about him,” remarked the planter, “and I understand, too, that he has his faults.”
“They’re part of his manhood,” said Pole philosophically. “Show me a feller without faults and I’ll show you one that’s too weak to have ’em. Nelson’s got some o’ the dust o’ the broad road on his coat, an’ yet I’d take his place in the general bust-up when old Gabe blows his trumpet at the millennium a sight quicker than I’d stand in the shoes o’ some o’ these jack-leg preachers. I tell you, Captain Duncan, ef the Lord’s goin’ to make favorites o’ some o’ the long-face hypocrites I know, that is robbin’ widows an’ orphans in the week an’ prayin’ an’ shoutin’ on Sunday to pull the wool over folkses’ eyes, me an’ Him won’t gee in the hereafter. You know some’n about that boy’s start in life, don’t you, Captain?”
“Not much, I must own,” answered the planter.
“Thar it is!” said Pole, with a condemning sneer; “ef the pore boy had belonged to one o’ the big families in yore ring out in Murray—the high an’ mighty sort, that owned niggers, you’d ’a’ heard all about him. Captain, nobody on earth knows how that feller has suffered. All his life he’s wanted to make some’n of hisself an’ has absolutely to my certain knowledge had more to contend with than any man alive today. He don’t even know the exact date of his birth, an’ ain’t plumb sure that his name really is Floyd. You see, jest at the close of the war a woman—so sick she could hardly walk—come through the Union lines in East Tennessee with a baby in her arms. The report is that she claimed that her name was Floyd, an’ that she called the baby ‘Nelson.’ She put up at a mountain cabin for the night, a shack where some pore razor-back whites lived by the name o’ Perdue. Old man Perdue was a lyin’, treacherous scamp, a bushwhacker and a mountain outlaw, an’ his wife was a good mate to him. Nelson’s mammy, as I say, was tuck in, but thar wasn’t no doctor nigh, an’ very little to eat, an’ the next mornin’ she was ravin’ out of her head, and late that day she died. I’m tellin’ you now all that Nelson Floyd ever was able to find out, as it came down to him from one person’s recollection to another’s. Well, the woman was buried som’ers, nobody knows whar, an’ old Mrs. Perdue kept the baby more beca’se she was afeared to put it out o’ the way than fer any pity fer it. She had a whole litter of brats of her own goin’ about winter an’ summer in the’r shirt-tails, an’ so they left Nelson to scratch fer hisself. Then the authorities made it hot fer Perdue on some charges agin ’im, and he left the child with another pore mountain family by name o’ Scott and moved clean out o’ the country. The Scotts couldn’t remember much more than hearsay about how Nelson got thar an’ they didn’t care, though they tried to raise the boy along with three of their own. He had a tough time of it, for he was a plucky little devil and had a fight mighty nigh every day with somebody. And as he growed up he naturally fell into bad company, or it fell into him, like everything else did, an’ he tuck to drinkin’ an’ become a regular young outlaw; he was a bloodthirsty rowdy before he was fifteen; shot at one man fer some cause or other an’ barely escaped bein’ put up fer life—nothin’ but bein’ so young got ’im off. But one day—now I’m givin’ it to you jest as Nelson told me—one day he said he got to thinkin’ about the way he was a-goin’, and of his own accord he made up his mind to call a halt. He wanted to cut clean off from his old set, an’ so he went to Mayhew and told him he wanted to git work in the store. Old Mayhew would skin a flea fer its hide an’ tallow, an’ seein’ his money in the boy, he bound ’im to an agreement to work fer his bare board an’ clothes fer three years.”
“Low enough wages, certainly!” exclaimed the planter.
“Yes, but Nelson didn’t grumble, and Mayhew will tell you hisself that thar never was sech a worker sence the world was made. He was a general hand at ever’thing, and as bright as a new dollar and as quick as a steel trap. The Lord only knows when or how he did it, fer nobody ever seed a book in his hands in business hours, but he l’arned to read and write and figure. An’ that wasn’t all. Mayhew was sech an old skinflint, and so hard on folks who got in his debt, that nobody traded at his shebang except them that couldn’t go anywhars else; but lo and behold! Nelson made so many friends that they flocked around ’im from all directions an’ the business of the house was more than doubled at a jump. Mayhew knowed the cause of it, fer lots o’ customers throwed it up to ’im. The prosperity was almost too much fer the old skunk; in fact, he got mighty nigh scared at it and actually tried to dam the stream o’ profit. To keep up such a business big credit had to be extended, and it was a new venturefer the cautious old scamp. But Nelson had perfect faith in all his friends, and thar it stood—a beardless boy holdin’ forth that it was the old man’s chance fer a lifetime to git rich, and old Mayhew half believin’ it, crazy to act on Nelson’s judgment, an’ yet afraid it would be ruination. That was at the close of the boy’s three-year contract. He was then about twenty year old, and I was in the store and heard the talk between ’em. We was all a-settin’ at the big wood stove in the back end, me an’ the old man, an’ Nelson and Joe Peters, a clerk, who is still with the firm. I shall never forgit that night as long as I live. I gloried in the boy’s spunk to sech an extent I could ’a’ throwed up my hat an’ hollered.
“‘I’ve been waitin’ to have a talk with you, Mr. Mayhew,’ Nelson said. ‘Our contract is out today, and you an’ me disagree so much about runnin’ the business that I hardly know what I ought to do an’ not stand in my own light. We’ve got to make a fresh contract anyway.’
“‘I knowed that was comin’,’ old Mayhew said, with one o’ his big, hoggish grunts. ‘People for miles around have made it the’r particular business to fill you up with ideas about what you are wuth. I’ve thought some about lettin’ you go an’ see ef me an’ Joe cayn’t keep things a-movin’, but you know the trade round here, an’ I want to do the fair thing. What do you think yore time’s wuth?’” Pole laughed. “The old skunk was usin’ exactly the same words he’d ’a’ used ef he was startin’ in to buy a load o’ produce an’ wanted to kill expectation at the outset.
“‘I want fifty dollars a month, under certain conditions,’ the boy said, lookin’ the old skinflint straight in the eye.
“‘Fifty—huh! yo’re crazy, stark’ starin’ crazy—plumb off yore base!’ the old man said, his lip twisted up like it is when he’s mad. ‘I see myse’f payin’ a beardless boy a Broadway salary to work in a shack like this out here in the mountains.’
“‘Well, I’ll jest be obliged to quit you then,’ Nelson said as steady as a millpond on a hot day in August, ’an’ I’d sorter hate to do it. Moore & Trotter, at Darley, offer me that fer the fust six months, with an increase later.’
“‘Moore & Trotter!’ the old skunk grunted loud enough to be heard clean to the court-house. They was the only firm in this end o’ the state that controlled as much custom as Mayhew did, an’ it struck the old chap under the ribs. He got up from his chair an’ walked clean down to the front door. It was shet an’ locked, but thar was a lamp on the show-case nigh whar he stopped, an’ I could see his old face a-workin’ under the influence o’ good an’ evil. Purty soon he grunted, an’ come back, thumpin’ his old stick agin barrels an’ boxes along the way.
“‘How am I goin’ to know whether they offered you that much or not?’ he axed.
“‘Beca’se I said so,’ Nelson told ’im, an’ his dark eyes was flashin’ like lightnin’. He stood up an’ faced the old codger. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Mayhew,’ he let fly at ’im, ’ef you don’t know whether I’m tellin’ the truth or not you’d better let me go, fer a man that will lie will steal. I say they offered me fifty dollars. I’ve got the’r written proposition in my pocket, but I’ll be hanged ef I show it to you.’”
“Good!” exclaimed Duncan.
“Well, it knocked the old man clean off his feet,” Pole went on. “He sat down in his chair again, all of a tremble an’ white about the mouth. Stingy people git scared to death at the very idea o’ payin’ out money, anyway, an’ stingy don’t fit that old cuss. Ef Noah Webster had known him he’d ’a’ made another word fer that meanin’. I don’t know but he’d simply ’a’ spelled out the old man’s name an’ ’a’ been done with it.”
“What answer did Mayhew give the young man, Baker?” asked the planter in a tone which indicated no little interest.
“Why, he jest set still for awhile,”said Pole, “an’ me an’ Joe Peters was a-wonderin’ what he’d say. He never did do anything sudden. Ef he ever gits thar he’ll feel his way through heaven’s gate. I seed ’im keep a woman standin’ in the store once from breakfast to dinner-time while he was lookin’ fer a paper o’ needles she’d called fer. Every now an’ then he’d quit huntin’ fer the needles an’ go an’ wait on some other customer, an’ then come back to ’er. She was a timid sort o’ thing, an’ didn’t seem to think she had the right to leave, bein’ as she had started the search. Whenever she’d go towards the door to see ef her hoss was standin’, he’d call ’er back an’ ax ’er about ’er crap an’ tell ’er not to be in a hurry—that Rome wasn’t built in a day, an’ the like. You know the old cuss has some education. Finally he found the needles an’ tuck another half an hour to select a scrap o’ paper little enough to wrap ’em up in. But you axed me what Mayhew said to ’im. You bet the boy was too good a trader to push a matter like that to a head. He’d throwed down the bars, an’ he jest waited fer the old man to go through of his own accord. Finally Mayhew axed, as indifferent as he could under all his excitement, ‘When do you intend to answer the letter you say you got from Moore & Trotter?’
“‘I’ve already answered it,’ Nelson said. ‘I told ’em I appreciated the’r offer an’ would run over an’ see ’em day after tomorrow.’”
“Good, very well said, Baker!” laughed Captain Duncan. “No wonder the young man’s become rich. You can’t keep talent like that down. But what did old Mayhew say?”
“It was like pullin’ eye-teeth,” answered Pole, “but he finally come across. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I reckon you kin make yorese’f as useful to me as you kin to them, an’ ef you are bent on ridin’ me to death, after I picked you up an’ give you a start an’ l’arnt you how to do business, I reckon I’ll have to put up with it.’
“‘I don’t feel like I owe you anything,’ said Nelson as plucky as a banker demandin’ good security on a loan. ‘I’ve worked for you like a slave for three years for my bare livin’ an’ my experience, an’ from now on I am goin’ to work for Number One. I said that I’d stay for fifty dollars a month on certain conditions.’
“‘Conditions?’ the old man growled. ‘What conditions do you mean?’
“‘Why, it’s jest this,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ve had my feelin’s, an’ the feelin’s o’ my friends, hurt time after time by you turnin’ folks off without credit when I knowed they would meet the’r obligations. Now, ef I stay with you it is with the distinct understandin’ that I have the authority to give or refuse credit whenever I see fit.’
“That knocked the old man off his perch agin. He wilted an’ sat thar as limp as a dish-rag. Joe Peters worships the ground Nelson walks on, an’ as ’feard as he was o’ the old man, he busted out in a big chuckle, an’ rubbed his hands together. Besides he knowed the boy was talkin’ fer the interest o’ the business. He’d seed no end o’ good customers sent off fer no reason in the world than that Mayhew was scared o’ his shadow.
“‘I’ll never consent tothat!’ Mayhew said, mighty nigh clean whipped out.
“‘Well, Moore & Trotterwill,’ Nelson said. ‘That’s one o’ the things laid down in the’r proposition.’ An’ the boy went to the desk an’ drawed out a sheet o’ paper an’ dipped his pen in the ink. The old man set quivering awhile, an’ then got up an’ went an’ stood behind the boy. ‘Put down yore pen,’ said he, with a sigh from away down inside of ’im. ‘It would ruin me fer you to go to Darley—half the trade would follow you. Go ahead; I’ll keep you an’ run the risk.’”
The planter had been listening attentively, and he now said admiringly: “Even at that early age the boy was showing what developed later. It wasn’t long after that before he became the old man’s partner, I believe.”
“The next year,” answered Pole. “He saved every dollar of his wages,and made some good investments that turned out money. It wasn’t a big slice of the business at fust, but he now owns a half, an’, countin’ his outside interests, he’s wuth a great deal more than old Mayhew. He’s rich already, Captain.”
“So I’ve heard the women say,” smiled the planter. “Women always keep track of well-to-do unmarried men.”
“It hain’t spiled Nelson one bit, though,” added Baker. “He’s the same unselfish friend to me as he ever was, and I hain’t hardly got a roof to cover me an’ mine. But, as solid as he always was, he had a serious back-set about three years ago, and all his well-wishers thought it was goin’ to do him up.”
“You mean when he took to drinking,” said Captain Duncan interrogatively.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. He’d formed the habit when he was a boy, and, along with his prosperity an’ late work hours, it begun to fasten its claws on ’im like it has on some other folks I know, Captain. He had a lot o’ night work to do, an’ Thigpen’s bar was right j’inin’ the store. Nelson used to slide in at the back door whenever the notion struck ’im, and he made the trail hot, I tell you. Old Mayhew kept a sharp eye on ’im, an’ ever’ now and then he’d git powerful blue over the way things was a-goin’. Finally the old cuss got desperate an’ called a halt. He had a straight talk with Nelson, an’ told ’im they would have to divide the’r interests, that he wasn’t a drinkin’ man hisse’f, an’ he didn’t want to be yoked to one that was soaked half the time. It fetched the boy to his senses. He come over to my house that night an’ called me out to the fence.
“‘I want to make a deal with you, Pole,’ said he.
“‘With me?’ says I. ‘What sort of a deal?’
“‘Why,’ said he, ‘I’ve made up my mind to swear off fer good an’ all, an’ I want you to j’ine me.’
“I agreed all right,” Pole laughed. “In fact, I was sorter in that business. I’d promised every preacher an’ temperance worker in the county to quit, an’ I couldn’t refuse a friend what I was dispensin’ so freely right an’ left. So I said, said I, ‘All right, Nelson; I’m with you.’”
“And how did it come out?” questioned the planter as he bowed to a wagon full of farmers going in an opposite direction.
“His vaccination tuck,” Pole smiled. “He had a mighty sore arm fer a week or so, but he held out. As fer me, I was so dern glad to see his success in abstainin’ that I started in to celebrate. I did try at fust, though. One mornin’ I went in the store an’ seed Nelson have sech a clean, prosperous look an’ so well satisfied with his stand that I went out with fresh resolutions. What did I do? I went to the barroom an’ bought four pint bottles o’ red rye an’ tuck ’em home with me. I set ’em all in a straight row on the mantel-shelf, nigh the edge, in front o’ the clock, an’ was standin’ lookin’ at ’em when Sally, my wife, come in. She seed the display an’ jest set kerflop down in her chair an’ begun to whimper.
“‘You hold on,’ said I; ‘don’t you cross a foot-log till the tree’s down. I’m tryin’ a new dicker. I’ve always heard that familiarity breeds contempt, an’ I’ve also heard that the hair o’ the dog is good fer the bite. Now, I’ve tried my level best to quit liquor by stayin’ away from it an’ I’m a-goin’ to see ef I cayn’t do it with its red eye on me all the time.’ Well, Captain, the sweet little woman—she’s a sweet, dear little creature, Captain Duncan, ef I do say it myself.”
“I’ve always heard so, Baker,” the planter said. “She’s very popular with your neighbors.”
“An’ I’m jest t’other way,” said Pole. “Well, Sally, she got up an’ kissed me, an’ said that somehow she felt like my plan would work.”
“And did it—I mean,” the Captain recalled Pole’s spree of only the night before, “I mean did it work for any length of time?”
“I was goin’ on to tell you,” answered the mountaineer. “That nightfer the fust time sence my marriage I woke smack dab in the middle o’ the night, an’ as I laid thar in the room filled with moonlight I couldn’t see a blessed thing but that row o’ bottles, an’ then my mouth set in to waterin’ at sech a rate that I got afeard I’d ketch my death from sleepin’ on a wet pillow. It was certainly a struggle with the flesh. I’d put my thirst, when she’s good an’ dry, agin any that ever tickled a human throat. It ’ud take the blue ribbon at a state fair. It’s a rail thing; it kin walk an’ talk an’ kick an’ squirm, but it won’t be dictated to. Finally Sally woke up an’ said:
“‘What’s the matter, Pole? Hain’t you comfortable?’
“‘Comfortable, the devil!’ said I. I’m usually polite to Sally, but I felt like that wasn’t no time an’ place to talk about little matters. ‘Comfortable, nothin’,’ said I; ‘Sally, ef you don’t take that “dog-hair” out o’ this house an’ hide it, I’ll be as drunk as a b’iled owl in ten minutes.’
“’“Dog-hair?”’ said she, an’ then the little woman remembered an’ got up. I heard the bottles tinkle like sorrowful good-bye bells callin’ wanderin’ friends back to the fold as she tuck ’em up an’ left. Captain, I felt jest like”—Pole laughed good-naturedly—“I felt like thar was a plot agin the best friends I ever had. I actually felt sorry fer them bottles, an’ I got up an’ stood at the window an’ watched Sally as she tuck ’em away out in the lonely moonlight to the barn. I seed ’er climb over the fence o’ the cow-lot an’ go in the side whar I kept my hay an’ fodder an’ roughness fer my cattle. Then I laid down in bed agin.”
“That was certainly a courageous thing to do,” said the planter, “and you deserve credit for putting your foot down so firmly on what you felt was so injurious, even, even—” the Captain came back again to reality—“even if you did not remain firm very long afterward.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” the ex-moonshiner laughed again, and his eyes twinkled in subtle enjoyment, “it tuck Sally longer, it seemed to me, to git to sleep after she got back than it ever had in all her life. Of all times on earth she wanted to talk. But I shet ’er off. I made like I was breathin’ good an’ deep an’ then she set in too. What did I do? Captain Duncan, I spent the best half o’ that night out in the barn lookin’ fer hens’ nests. I found two an’ had to be put to bed at sun-up.”
The planter laughed heartily. “There is one good thing about the situation, Baker,” he said, “and that is, your making a joke of it. I believe you will get the under-hold on the thing some day and throw it over. Coming back to your friend Floyd; it’s a fact that he gave up whisky, but if reports are true, he has another fault that is almost as bad.”
“Oh, you mean all that talk about Jeff Wade’s sister,” answered the mountaineer.
“Yes, Baker, a reputation of that sort is not a desirable thing in any community. I know that many brainy and successful men hold that kind of thing lightly, but it will down anybody who tampers with it.”
“Now, look here, Captain,” Pole said sharply, “don’t you be plumb foolish! Ain’t you got more sense ’an to swallow everything that passes amongst idle women in these mountains? Nelson Floyd, I’ll admit, has got a backbone full o’ the fire o’ youth an’ strong-blooded manhood, but he’s, to my positive knowledge, one o’ the cleanest young men I ever come across. To tell you the truth, I don’t believe he ever made but that one slip. It got out, an’ beca’se he was rich an’ prominent, it raised a regular whirlwind o’ gossip an’ exaggeration. If the same thing had happened to half a dozen other young men round about here, not a word would ’a’ been said.”
“Oh, I see!” smiled the planter. “He’s not as black as he’s painted, then?”
“Not by a jugful!” said the farmer. “I tell you he’s all right, Captain, an’ folks will know it ’fore long.”
Springtown was about twelve miles west of Darley, only a mile from Captain Duncan’s house, and half a mile from Pole Baker’s humble cottage and small farm. The village had a population of about two hundred souls. It was the county seat; and the court-house, a simple, ante-bellum brick structure, stood in the centre of the public square, round which were clustered the one-storied shops, lawyers’ offices, cotton warehouses, hotel and general stores.
Chief among the last mentioned was the well-known establishment of Mayhew & Floyd. It was a long frame building, once white but now a murky gray, a tone which nothing but the brush of time and weather could have given it.
It was only a week since Captain Duncan’s talk with Pole Baker, and a bright, inspiring morning, well suited to the breaking of the soil and the planting of seed. The village was agog with the spirit of hope. The post-office was filled with men who had come for their mail, and they stood and chatted about the crops on the long veranda of the hotel and in the front part of Mayhew & Floyd’s store. Pole Baker was in the store talking with Joe Peters, the clerk, about seed-potatoes, when a tall countryman in the neighborhood of forty-five years of age slouched in and leaned heavily against the counter.
“I want a box o’ forty-four cartridges,” he said, drawing out a long revolver and rapping on the counter with the butt of it.
“What! you goin’ squirrel huntin’?” Peters laughed and winked at Pole. “That gun’s got a long enough barrel to reach the top o’ the highest tree in these mountains.”
“You slide around behind thar an’ git me them cartridges!” retorted the customer. “Do yore talkin’ to somebody else. I’ll hunt what an’ whar I want to, I reckon.”
“Oh, come off yore perch, Jeff Wade!” the clerk said, with another easy laugh. “You hain’t nobody’s daddy. But here you are. Forty cents a box, full count, every one warranted to make a hole an’ a noise. Want me to charge ’em?”
“No, I don’t; by God—I don’t! An’ what’s more, I want to know exactly how much I owe this house. I went to a dozen money lenders ’fore I found what I wanted, but I got it an’ I want to pay what I owe Mayhew & Floyd.”
Just then Pole Baker stepped up to the man’s side and, peering under the broad brim of his hat, said:
“Looky here, Jeff Wade, what you shootin’ off yore mouth fer? I ’lowed at fust that you was full, but you hain’t drinkin’; at least, you don’t seem that way to me.”
“Drinkin’, hell! No, I’m not drinkin’, an’ what’s more, I don’t intend to let a drap pass down my throat till I’ve done my duty to me an’ mine. Say, you look an’ see ef I’m drinkin’. See ef you think a man that’s in liquor would have as steady a nerve as I’ve got. You watch me! Maybe it’ll show you what I’m able to do.”
Turning, he stalked out of the store, and Peters and Pole followed, watching him in wonder. He strode across the street to the court-house, loading his revolver as he went. Reaching the closed door of the public building he took an envelope from his pocket and fastened it to the panel by thrusting the blade of his big pocket-knife into it several times. The spectators heard the hollow, resounding blows like the strokes of a carpenter’s hammer, and then Wade turned and came back toward them.
“By gum, he’s off his nut!” said Peters seriously. “He’s as crazy as a bedbug.”
“It’s my opinion he’s jest comin’ to his senses,” Pole mused, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Yes, that’s about it; he’s jest wakin’ up, an’ the whole county will know it, too. By gum, I hate this—I hate it!”
“You hate what?” asked Peters, his eyes on the farmer, who was now quite near them. Pole made no reply, for Wade was by his side on the brickwalk beneath the wooden shed in front of the store, his revolver swinging at his side.
“You fellows keep yore eye on that envelope,” said Wade, and he cocked his revolver.
“Look here, don’t make a dern fool o’ yorese’f,” said Pole Baker, and he laid a remonstrating hand on the tense arm of the gaunt mountaineer. “You know it’s agin the ordinance. You know you’ll git into trouble; you listen to the advice of a friend. Put that gun up an’ go home.”
“I’m my own boss!” snarled the man with the weapon.
“You’re a blamed fool too,” answered Baker.
“Well, that’s my lookout.” Wade glared over his shoulder and raised his voice significantly: “I want to show this town how easy it will be fer me to put three balls into the blackest heart that ever pumped human blood.”
“You’d better mind what yo’re about, Jeff Wade.” Pole Baker was pale, his lips were tight, his eyes flashing.
“I know what I’m about. I’m tryin’ to draw a coward from his lair. I’m not shore—I’m notdeadshore, mind you, but I’m mighty nigh it. Ef the guilty stand an’ hear what I’m a-sayin’ an’ don’t take it up, they are wuss than hell-tainted. You watch that white mark.”
The bystanders, several comprehending, stood rigid. Pole Baker stared. Wade raised his revolver, aimed steadily at the mark and fired three shots in quick succession.
“Thar!” said the marksman, with grim triumph, “as bad as my sight is, I kin see ’em from here.”
“By gum, they are thar!” exclaimed Peters, with a strange look into Pole Baker’s set face. “They are thar, Pole.”
“You bet they are thar, an’ some’ll be in another spot ’fore long,” said Wade. “Now, Peters, you go in the house an’ bring me my account. I’ve got the money.”
Wonderingly the clerk obeyed. Pole went into the store behind him, and, as Peters stood at the big ledger figuring, Pole stepped up to Nelson Floyd, who sat near a window in the rear with a newspaper in front of him.
“Did you hear all that, Nelson?” the farmer asked.
“Did I? Of course I did; wasn’t it intended for—?” The young merchant glanced furtively at Peters and paused. His handsome, dark face was set as from some inward struggle.
There was a pause. Peters went toward the front, a written account drying in the air as he waved it to and fro.
“I was about to ask you if—?” the young merchant started to say, but he was interrupted by Baker.
“Hush, listen!”
There was the sound of clinking coin on the counter below. The bell on the cash-drawer rang as the clerk put the money away.
“Thar, I’m even with this dirty shebang!” It was Jeff Wade’s raised voice. “An’ I kin act when the proper time comes. Oh, you all know what I’m talkin’ about! Nobody kin hide a thing in these mountains. But you’ll all understand it better ef it ever comes into yore families. I never had but one little sister—she was all the Lord ever allowed me to have. Well, she was married not more’n a month ago, an’ went off to Texas with a man who believes in ’er an’ swears he will make her a good husband an’ protector. But no sooner was the pore little thing gone than the talk set in. It was writ out to her, an’ she writ back to me to stop it. She admitted it was true, but wouldn’t lay the blame. Folks say they know, but they won’t talk. They are afeared o’ the influence o’ money an’ power, I reckon, but it will git out. I have my suspicions, but I’m not dead sure, but I will be, an’ what I done fer that scrap o’ paper I will do fer that man, ef God don’t paralyze this right arm. Ef the black-hearted devil is within the sound o’ my voice at this minute, an’ stays still, he’s not only the thief of a woman’s happiness, but he’s wuss than a coward. He’s a sneakin’ son——”
Nelson Floyd, his face rigid, sprang up and went into Joe Peters’s little bedroom, which was cut off in one corner of the store. Opening the top drawer of an old bureau, he took out a revolver. Turning, he met the stalwart form of Pole Baker in the doorway.
“Put down that gun, Nelson; put it down!” Pole commanded. “Jeff Wade’s deliberately set this trap to draw you into it, an’ the minute you walk down thar it will be a public acknowledgment, an’ he’ll kill you ’fore you can bat an eye.”
“No doubt,” said Nelson Floyd; “but the fellow has his rights. I could never draw a free breath if this passes. I owe it to the poor devil, Pole, and I’ll pay. That has always been my rule. I’ll pay. Stand aside!”
“I’ll be damned ef I do!” Pole stood his ground firmly. “You must listen to reason. It’s deliberate death.”
“Stand out of the way, Pole; don’t make me mad,” said Floyd. “I’m goin’ down. I’d expect him to pay me, and I shall him.”
“Stop! you are a fool—you are a hot-headed idiot, Nelson Floyd! Listen to me”—Pole caught the revolver and held on to the barrel of it, while the young merchant clutched the butt—“listen to me, I say. Are you a-goin’ back on a helpless little woman who gets married to a man who believes in her an’ goes away off an’ is on a fair road to happiness—are you, I say, a-goin’ to publicly advertise her shame, an’, no doubt, bust up a contented home?”
“Great God, Pole!” exclaimed Floyd as he sank on to the edge of Peters’s bed, “do you think, if I give him satisfaction, it will——?”
“Will it? It will be in every paper from Maine to California. Meddlesome devils will mark the articles an’ mail ’em to the gal’s husband. A lot o’ folks did the’r level best to bust up the match anyway, by talkin’ to him about you an’ others.”
Nelson Floyd stared at the floor and slowly nodded his head.
“He’s caught me in a more degrading trap than the other would have been, Pole,” he declared bitterly. “My conduct has branded me as a coward and left me without power to vindicate myself. That’s one of the ways Providence has of punishing a poor devil. He may have a good impulse, but can’t act upon it owing to the restrictions laid on him by his very sins.”
Pole looked down into the store.
“Never mind,” he said gloomily. “Wade’s gone.”
Floyd dropped the revolver into the drawer of the bureau and went back to his desk.
“It’s only a question of time, Pole,” he said. “He suspects me now, but is not sure. It won’t be long before the full story will reach him, and then we’ll have to meet. As far as I am concerned, I’d rather have had it out with him. I’ve swallowed a bitter pill this mornin’, Pole.”
“Well, it wasn’t a lead one.” Baker’s habitual sense of humor was rising to the surface. “Most any sort o’ physic is better’n cold metal shoved into the system the wrong way.”
There was a step in the store. Pole looked down again.
“It’s old Mayhew,” he said. “I’m powerful glad he was late this mornin’, Nelson. The old codger would have seed through that talk.”
“Yes, he would have seen through it,” answered Floyd despondently as he opened a big ledger and bent over it.
Mayhew trudged toward them, his heavy cane knocking against the long dry-goods counter.
“I’ll have the law on that fellow!” he growled as he hung his stick on its accustomed nail behind the stove. “No rampageous daredevil like that can stand right in my door and shoot for mere amusement at the county court-house. This isn’t a fort yet, and the war is over, thank the Lord.”
Pole glanced at Floyd.
“Oh, he’s jest a little hilarious this mornin’, Mr. Mayhew,” he said. “He must ’a’ met a mountain whisky wagon on his way to town. Anyways, youneedn’t complain; he come in here jest now an’ paid off his account in full.”
“What? Paid off? Is that so, Nelson?”
Floyd nodded, and then bent more closely over the ledger. “Yes, he paid up to date.”
“Well, that’s queer—or I am, one or the other. Why, boys, I had that fellow on my dead-list. I didn’t think he’d ever raise any money, and if he did I had no idea it would drift our way.”
Floyd left the desk and reached for his hat. Pole was watching him closely.
“Post-office?” he asked.
“Yes.” The two walked part of the way to the front door and paused. Joe Peters was attending a man on the grocery side of the house, and a young woman neatly dressed, with a pretty figure and graceful movement, stood waiting her turn.
“By gum,” Pole exclaimed under his breath, “that’s my little neighbor, Cynthia Porter—the purtiest, neatest an’ best little trick that ever wore a bonnet. I needn’t tell you that, though, you old scamp. You’ve already found it out. Go wait on ’er, Nelson. Don’t keep ’er standin’ thar.”
Pole sat on a bag of coffee and his friend went to the girl.
“Good morning, Miss Cynthia,” he said, his hat in his hand. “Peters seems busy. I don’t know much about the stock, but if you’ll tell me what you want I’ll look for it.”
Turning, she stared at him, her big brown eyes under their long lashes wide open as if in surprise.
“Why—why—” She seemed to be making a valiant effort at self-control, and then he noticed that her voice was quivering and that she was quite pale.
“I really didn’t want to buy anything,” she said. “Mother sent me to tell Mr. Peters that she couldn’t possibly have the butter ready before tomorrow.”
“Oh, the butter!” Floyd said, studying her face and manner in perplexity.
“Yes,” the girl went on, “she promised to have ten pounds ready to send to Darley, but the calves got to the cows and spoiled everything. That threw her at least a day behind.”
“Oh, that don’t make a bit o’ difference to us, Miss Cynthia,” the clerk cried out from the scales, where he was weighing a parcel of sugar. “Our wagon ain’t going over till Saturday, nohow.”
“Well, she will certainly be glad,” the girl returned in a tone of relief, and she moved toward the door. Floyd, still wondering, went with her to the sidewalk.
“You look pale,” he said tentatively, “and—and, well, the truth is, I have never seen you just this way, Cynthia. Have you been having more trouble at home? Is your mother still determined that we sha’n’t have any more of those delightful buggy-rides?”
“It wasn’t that—today,” she said, her eyes raised to his in a glance that, somehow, went straight to his heart. “I’ll tell you. As I came on, I had just reached Sim Tompkins’s field, where he was planting corn and burning stumps, when a negro—one of Captain Duncan’s hands—passed on a mule. I didn’t hear what he said, but when I came to Sim he had stopped plowing and was leaning over the fence saying, ‘Awful, horrible!’ and so on. I asked him what had happened and he told me—” she dropped her eyes, her words hung in her throat and she put a slender, tapering, though firm and sun-browned, hand to her lips.
“Go on,” Floyd urged her, “Tompkins said——”
“He said,” the girl swallowed, “that you and Jeff Wade had had words in front of the store and that Wade had shot and killed you. I—I—didn’t stop to inquire of anyone—I thought it was true—and came on here. When I saw you just then absolutely unharmed I—I—of course—it surprised me—or—I mean——”
“How ridiculous!” He laughed mechanically. “There must be some mistake, Cynthia. People always get things crooked. That shows how little truththere is in reports. Wade came in here and paid his bill, and did not even speak to me or I to him.”
“But I heard pistol shots myself away down the road,” said the girl, “and as I came in I saw a group of men right there. They were pointing down at the sidewalk, and one of them said, ‘He stood right there and fired three times.’”
Floyd laughed again, while her lynx eyes slowly probed his face. He pointed at the court-house door. “Cynthia, do you see that envelope? Wade was shooting at it. I haven’t been over to see yet, but they say he put three balls close together in its centre. We ought to incorporate this place into a town so that a thing of that sort wouldn’t be allowed.”
“Oh, that was it!” Cynthia exclaimed in a full breath of relief. “I suppose you think I’m a goose to be so scared at nothing.”
Floyd’s face clouded over, his eyes went down. A customer was going into the store, and he walked on to the street corner with her before replying. Then he said tenderly: “I’m glad, though, Cynthia, that you felt badly, as I see you did, when you thought I was done for. Good-bye; I shall see you again some way, I hope, before long, even if your mother does object.”
As they walked away out of his sight Pole Baker lowered his shaggy head to his brawny hands, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Fool!” he exclaimed. “Right now with his head in the very jaws o’ death he goes on talkin’ sweet stuff to women. A purty face, a soft voice an’ a pair o’ dreamy eyes would lead that man right into the fire o’ hell itself. But that hain’t the p’int. Pole Baker, he’s yore friend, an’ Jeff Wade is a-goin’ to kill ’im jest as shore as preachin’.”
When Pole left the store he saw nothing of Floyd, but he noticed something else. He was passing Thigpen’s bar and through the open doorway he caught sight of a row of bottles behind the counter. A seductive, soothing odor greeted him; there was a merry clicking of billiard balls in the rear, the joyous thumping of cues on the floor and merry laughter. Pole hesitated and then plunged in. At any rate, he told himself, one drink would steady his nerves and show him some way, perhaps, to rescue Floyd from his overhanging peril. Pole took his drink and sat down. Then a friend came in and gave him two or three more. Another of Pole’s sprees was beginning.
(To be continued.)