[Illustration: 9247]
BOUT a week after the events recorded in the preceding chapter, old
man Bishop, just at dusk one evening, rode up to Pole Baker's humble
domicile.
Pole was in the front yard making a fire of sticks, twigs, and chips.
“What's that fer?” the old man questioned, as he dismounted and hitched
his horse to the worm fence.
“To drive off mosquitoes,” said Pole, wiping his eyes, which were red
from the effects of the smoke. “I 'll never pass another night like the
last un ef I kin he'p it. I 'lowed my hide was thick, but they bored fer
oil all over me from dark till sun-up. I never 've tried smoke, but Hank
Watts says it's ahead o' pennyr'yal.”
“Shucks!” grunted the planter, “you ain't workin' it right. A few rags
burnin' in a pan nigh yore bed may drive 'em out, but a smoke out heer
in the yard 'll jest drive 'em in.”
“What?” said Pole, in high disgust. “Do you expect me to sleep sech hot
weather as this is with a fire nigh my bed? The durn things may eat me
raw, but I 'll be blamed ef I barbecue myse'f to please 'em.”
Mrs. Baker appeared in the cabin-door, holding two of the youngest
children by their hands. “He won't take my advice, Mr. Bishop,” she
said. “I jest rub a little lamp-oil on my face an' hands an' they don't
tetch me.” Pole grunted and looked with laughing eyes at the old man.
“She axed me t'other night why I'd quit kissin' 'er,” he said. “An' I
told 'er I didn't keer any more fer kerosene than the mosquitoes did.”
Mrs. Baker laughed pleasantly, as she brought out a chair for Bishop and
invited him to sit down. He complied, twirling his riding-switch in his
hand. From his position, almost on a level with the floor, he could see
the interior of one of the rooms. It was almost bare of furniture. Two
opposite corners were occupied by crude bedsteads; in the centre of the
room was a cradle made from a soap-box on rockers sawn from rough poplar
boards. It had the appearance of having been in use through several
generations. Near it stood a spinning-wheel and a three-legged stool.
The sharp steel spindle gleamed in the firelight from the big log and
mud chimney.
“What's the news from town, Mr. Bishop?” Pole asked, awkwardly, for it
struck him that Bishop had called to talk with him about some business
and was reluctant to introduce it.
“Nothin' that interests any of us, I reckon, Pole,” said the old man,
“except I made that investment in Shoal Cotton Factory stock.”
“That's good,” said Pole, in the tone of anybody but a man who had never
invested a dollar in anything. “It's all hunkey, an' my opinion is that
it 'll never be wuth less.”
“I did heer, too,” added Bishop, “that it was reported that Craig had
set up a little grocery store out in Texas, nigh the Indian Territory.
Some thinks that Winship 'll turn up thar an' jine 'im, but a body never
knows what to believe these days.”
“That shore is a fact,” opined Pole. “Sally, that corn-bread's
a-burnin'; ef you'd use less lamp-oil you'd smell better.”
Mrs. Baker darted to the fireplace, raked the live coals from beneath
the cast-iron oven, and jerked off the lid in a cloud of steam and
smoke. She turned over the pone with the aid of a case-knife, and then
came back to the door.
“Fer the last month I've had my eye on the Bascome farm,” Bishop was
saying. “Thar's a hundred acres even, some good bottom land and upland,
an' in the neighborhood o' thirty acres o' good wood. Then thar's
a five-room house, well made an' tight, an' a barn, cow-house, an'
stable.”
“Lord! I know the place like a book,” said Pole; “an' it's a dandy
investment, Mr. Bishop. They say he offered it fer fifteen hundred. It's
wuth two thousand. You won't drap any money by buyin' that property,
Mr. Bishop. I'd hate to contract to build jest the house an' well an'
out-houses fer a thousand.”
“I bought it,” Bishop told him. “He let me have it fer a good deal less
'n fifteen hundred, cash down.”
“Well, you made a dandy trade, Mr. Bishop. Ah, that's what ready money
will do. When you got the cash things seem to come at bottom figures.”
Old Bishop drew a folded paper from his pocket and slapped it on his
knee. “Yes, I closed the deal this evenin', an' I was jest a-thinkin'
that as you hain't rented fer next yeer--I mean--” Bishop was ordinarily
direct of speech, but somehow his words became tangled, and he delivered
himself awkwardly on this occasion. “You see, Alan thinks that you
'n Sally ort to live in a better house than jest this heer log-cabin,
an'--”
The wan face of the tired woman was aglow with expectation. She sank
down on the doorstep, and sat still and mute, her hands clasping each
other in her lap. She had always disliked that cabin and its sordid
surroundings, and there was something in Bishop's talk that made her
think he was about to propose renting the new farm, house and all,
to her husband. Her mouth fell open; she scarcely allowed herself to
breathe. Then, as Bishop paused, her husband's voice struck dumb dismay
to her heart. It was as if she were falling from glowing hope back to
tasted despair.
“Thar's more land in that farm an' I could do jestice to, Mr. Bishop; but
ef thar's a good cabin on it an' you see fit to cut off enough fer me'n
one hoss I'd jest as soon tend that as this heer. I want to do what you
an' Alan think is best all'round.”
“Oh, Pole, Pole!” The woman was crying it to herself, her face lowered
to her hands that the two men might not see the agony written in her
eyes. A house like that to live in, with all those rooms and fireplaces,
and windows with panes of glass in them! She fancied she saw her
children playing on the tight, smooth floors and on the honeysuckled
porch. For one minute these things had been hers, to be snatched away
by the callous indifference of her husband, who, alas! had never cared a
straw for appearances.
“Oh, I wasn't thinking about _rentin'_ it to you,” said Bishop, and the
woman's dream was over. She raised her head, awake again. “You
see,” went on Bishop, still struggling for proper expression, “Alan
thinks--well, he thinks you are sech a born fool about not acceptin'
help from them that feels nigh to you, an' I may as well say grateful,
exceedingly grateful, fer what you've done, things that no other livin'
man could 'a' done. Alan thinks you ort to have the farm fer yore own
property, an' so the deeds has been made out to--”
Pole drew himself up to his full height. His big face was flushed, half
with anger, half with a strong emotion of a tenderer kind. He stood
towering over the old man like a giant swayed by the warring winds of
good and evil, “I won't heer a word more of that, Mr. Bishop,” he said,
with a quivering lip; “not a word more. By golly! I mean what I say. I
don't want to heer another word of it. This heer place is good enough
fer me an' my family. It's done eight yeer, an' it kin do another
eight.”
“Oh, Pole, Pole, _Pole!_” The woman's cry was now audible. It came
straight from her pent-up, starving soul and went right to Bishop's
heart.
“You want the place, don't you, Sally?” he said, calling her by her
given name for the first time, as if he had just discovered their
kinship. He could not have used a tenderer tone to child of his own.
“Mind, mind what you say, Sally!” ordered Pole, from the depths of his
fighting emotions. “Mind what you say!”
The woman looked at Bishop. Her glance was on fire.
“Yes, I want it--I _want_ it!” she cried. “I ain't goin' to lie. I want
it more right now than I do the kingdom of heaven. I want it ef we have
a right to it. Oh, I don't know.” She dropped her head in her lap and
began to sob.
Bishop stood up. He moved towards her in a jerky fashion and laid his
hand on the pitifully tight knot of hair at the back of her head.
“Well, it's yores,” he said. “Alan thought Pole would raise a kick agin
it, an' me'n him had it made out in yore name, so he couldn't tetch it.
It's yores, Sally Ann Baker. That's the way it reads.”
The woman's sobs increased, but they were sobs of unbridled joy. With
her apron to her eyes she rose and hurried into the house.
The eyes of the two men met. Bishop spoke first:
“You've got to give in, Pole,” he said. “You'd not be a man to stand
betwixt yore wife an' a thing she wants as bad as she does that place,
an', by all that's good an' holy, you sha 'n' t.”
“What's the use o' me tryin' to git even with Alan,” Pole exclaimed,
“ef he's eternally a-goin' to git up some 'n'? I've been tickled to death
ever since I cornered old Craig till now, but you an' him has sp'iled it
all by this heer trick. It ain't fair to me.”
“Well, it's done,” smiled the old man, as he went to his horse; “an' ef
you don't live thar with Sally, I 'll make 'er git a divorce.”
Bishop had reached a little pig-pen in a fence-corner farther along, on
his way home, when Mrs. Baker suddenly emerged from a patch of high corn
in front of him.
“Is he a-goin' to take it, Mr. Bishop?” she asked, panting from her
hurried walk through the corn that hid her from the view of the cabin.
“Yes,” Bishop told her; “I'm a-goin' to send two wagons over in the
morning to move yore things. I wish it was ten times as good a place
as it is, but it will insure you an' the children a living an' a
comfortable home.”
After the manner of many of her kind, the woman uttered no words of
thanks, but simply turned back into the corn, and, occupied with her own
vision of prosperity and choking with gratitude, she hurried back to the
cabin.