Whatever might be the character of the nocturnal visitant of the forge,
it seemed safe enough in the broad glare of sunlight; and as it was
the voting-place of the district, it was by no means deserted on that
momentous Thursday in August when the election was held. Marcella had
felt throughout the canvass the terrible strain of suspense, but when the
day had drawn near she was deprecatory of decision, and wished that if
the worst must be it might not be at once.
“A body would ’low, ter hear ye a-goin’ on, that Eli war ter be hung
ter-day,” her grandmother remarked, tartly. “He ain’t los’ a ounce o’
flesh nor a hour o’ sleep sence he war a candidate, an’ he went off from
hyar this mornin’ high-colored ez common. An’ look at you-uns—big-eyed,
an’ pale-faced, an’ lean-lookin’, an’ fluttery—drapped the blue bowl an’
bruk it in two; an’ Is’bel patterns arter ye, till thar ain’t no ch’ice
fur a fool ’twixt ye. Shucks! I mus’ be mistaken,” sarcastically; “they
be goin’ surely ter hang Eli.”
From time to time, during the rich and dewy morning hours, when the
bees droned about the blooming clover in the orchard aisles, and the
birds were abroad in the highways of the skies, Marcella parted the
sheltering vines on the porch, that she might look forth unobserved
upon the voters gradually assembling at the polls. She knew many of
them by sight, and was informed concerning their disposition toward
her father’s pretensions; and thus her heart weighed heavily or grew
buoyant, as enemies or friends were in the majority. They came chiefly
on horseback, and there were rows of saddle-horses hitched to the rack
before the wide door of the forge, and to the boughs of trees hard by,
and even to the badly chinked logs of the building itself; sometimes
they dully drowsed, sometimes impatiently pawed, sometimes fell to
bickering together, and necessitated the interposition of their masters
to readjust their status. Many of the farmers had come in ox-wagons. The
teams had been unyoked, and were leisurely munching the feed, spread out
in the dappling shadows upon the ground before them. Casting a vote, the
inalienable right of an American citizen, seemed a lengthy and serious
matter, and was not to be lightly discharged; during the main portion
of the day it busied the denizens of the surrounding slopes, and thus
deliberately they saved the country. The assemblage presented, therefore,
something of the aspect of an exclusively masculine picnic, for such
women and children as had been permitted to gratify a long-cherished
hankering to “view” the populous Settle_mint_ had hied them decorously to
the houses of various relatives,—the tender ties of consanguinity thus
utilized on this auspicious occasion,—and were seen no more during the
day. Old friends met, and smoked, and talked at great length. The state
of crops in various localities elicited anxious inquiries; old gossip
that had been on its last legs suddenly developed a new and brisk pair
of limbs, and circulated like a fresh scandal. Parson Donnard could not
have failed to hear his name excitedly coupled with that of the devil,
as he threaded his way through the crowd; but mindful of his vision, he
placed no false nor sensitive interpretation upon this association, and
there was an elongation of his thin compressed lips which in an ungodly
man one might have thought singularly like a smile of flattered vanity.
The heavy jeans-clad mountaineers reverently made way for him, and there
was a perceptible abatement of the guffaws and slowly drawled jokes as
he passed. But as in more cultured communities, the observance and the
feeling were not always in close compatibility, and the criticism he
encountered was as if he were of this world.
“I dunno why pa’son be ’lowed ter vote,” said Joe Bassett, as he sprawled
on the protruding roots of a tree; two mountaineers perched hard by
on the tongue of an ox-wagon from which the team had been released,
and a third reclined on a saddle which he had thrown upon the ground.
“Pa’son can’t run fur nuthin’,” continued Bassett; “he can’t go ter
the Legislatur’, nor nuthin’, nor be sher’ff. They don’t let preachers
hold office, nor butchers set on a crim’nal jury,”—thus seeking in his
ignorance to reconcile the incongruities and oddities of the law.
“Pa’son oughter be a-studyin’ ’bout a seat ’mongst the angels, stiddier
gittin’ registered ’mongst the qualified voters o’ the deestric’,” said
Gideon Dake, who always confirmed Bassett’s views, or added corollary
matter.
“What be Teck Jepson a-bobbin’ ’bout fur, like a float on a fish-line?”
demanded Bassett. “Actially a-stoppin’ the pa’son mighty nigh at the door
of the forge. Looks ter be a-wrastlin’ in prayer with the old man,—in an’
about goin’ ter save the pa’son’s soul, fust thing ye know.”
“Hain’t you-uns hearn,” said Dake, quickly seizing the opportunity to
regale the professed gossip with a new story, “how turrible smitten
Teck Jepson an’ Marcelly Strobe hev got, all of a suddint? An’ Teck air
a-workin’ fur the lection like he war demented. I made him beg an’ beg
_me_ fur nigh on ter a hour ter vote fur Eli,—like I hed counted on doin’
all the time. Now Teck’s argufyin’ with the pa’son.”
“Every time I hear o’ Marcelly Strobe she hev got another feller
a-danglin’. ’Pears like ter me she _mus’_ be a-foolin’ some o’ them
boys,” Bassett commented sourly.
“Laws-a-massy, jes’ look at Teck,” said Dake, laughing slightly, albeit
his teeth were closed hard upon the quid of tobacco in his mouth, “he hev
gin the old man his arm an’ air jes’ a-draggin’ the pa’son up ter the
polls! Wouldn’t trest the pa’son’s word ter vote fur Eli; gone in ter
see the job well done. Waal, sir,”—he shifted his position as the young
and the old man disappeared together within the door,—“that’s jes’ the
way he done me. I couldn’t hev got away from him, arter I hed promised
ter vote for Eli, ef I hed wanted ter.”
There was a momentary hiatus in the conversation, when a tall, lank man,
some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, with high cheek-bones and a
sunburned, narrow face, joined the group. He had a bright, quick glance,
and a smouldering spark of irritation aided its effect. His countenance
wore a ready and propitiatory smile, the candidate’s smile, that seemed
automatic in some sort, and not subject to the same springs that sufficed
as motor for his other expressions. He flung himself upon a pile of
shucks and hay, the forage of neighboring oxen, and he chewed a long
straw as he talked.
“Hy’re, boys,” he said, agreeably. “How do the chances o’ the ’lection
’pear ter you-uns?” For he was Joshua Nevins, a candidate for constable,
and Eli Strobe’s much-feared rival.
“Mighty well,” said Bassett, reassuringly.
“Whyn’t ye go an’ vote, Dake?” said the candidate, leaning forward to
scan Gideon Dake’s countenance.
“Ye ain’t goin’ ter try ter git folks ter vote twict, air ye?” said Dake,
jocosely. “I hev voted wunst ter-day, an’ they tells me ez that be ez
off’n ez the law allows.”
“I hopes ye voted the right way,” said Nevins, with a bland and
mollifying demonstration of the candidate’s smile.
The specious Dake nodded his head convincingly. “I’ll be bound I did,” he
said equivocally, and yet so unequivocally that the momentary fears of
the candidate were set at rest.
The others, mindful of Dake’s recent representations as to the casting
of his vote under Teck Jepson’s tutelage, experienced a certain
embarrassment and preserved an awkward silence, none arrogating the tact
to innocuously continue the conversation. If the candidate be a wily
genus, the craft of the voter is sometimes commensurate.
Nevins seemed the most innocent of men, as he himself reopened the
subject. He had approached the group with the intention of merely
commending himself by some timely and jocose observations, and then
strolling to other coteries. He had, however, encountered unexpected
opposition to-day; he had thought himself almost assured of success, and
when the doubt began to arise in his mind, untutored to jeopardy, he felt
himself losing his balance.
“What ails Teck Jepson, ter git so sot agin me?” he observed, anxiously.
“He hev jes’ been a-bouncin’ aroun’ electioneerin’ fur Eli ter-day
like—like—a chicken with its head off. I axed him awhile ago,—I beckoned
him off, an I say, ‘What ails ye, ter work agin me, Teck? I ain’t done
nuthin’ ter you-uns, hev I? Air ye holdin’ a gredge agin me?’ An’ he
said, ‘Don’t ye know I be kin ter Eli nowadays? My half-brother married
his cousin,’ Teck say. Shucks! I know that ain’t the reason.” He glanced
in plaintive interrogation at the others.
“Waal, things turns out mos’ly ez they air bid from above,” said one of
the men, with an unexpected attack of piety.
Nevins looked lugubriously at him. This was an arbitration to which he
was not prepared to submit. He was feeling exceedingly helpless in the
hands of Providence.
“I dunno ’bout that,” he observed. “Things in Brumsaidge turns out mos’ly
ez Teck Jepson wills, an’ Providence sings mighty small.”
Then reflecting that this was a dolorous prognostication on his own
account, he gathered himself together as jauntily as he could, and
declared, “But Teck Jepson’s rule is over. Folks in Brumsaidge hev tried
Eli Strobe, an’ he didn’t ’gree with ’em,—he seen too much ‘_Eli Strobe,
Big Man!_’ in his office, ter suit ’em; an’ now they air lookin’ fur a
man what jes’ wants ter sarve the people,—an’ that’s my bes’ wish.”
The others sat and gazed solemnly at him, all meditatively listening. For
a moment there was no sound but the munching of an ox close to him, as
the beast pulled at the pile of fodder on which he reclined. As the great
horns came threateningly near, he threw up his hand, and the ox drew off
with a muttered low of surly dissatisfaction.
“I can’t onderstan’ Teck, though,—I counted on him.” He returned to his
grievance with a lapsing courage.
“Waal, ye mought ez well not,” said an old codger, with a grin. “Hev
you-uns got a darter, seventeen year old?”
The young man stared at him in amazement.
“Course I hain’t.”
“Waal, that’s one o’ the special qualifications of a candidate,”
continued the elderly wag. “A tall, high-steppin’ darter, with long curly
hair; that’s what ye need, ter run agin Eli.”
Nevins was silent for a moment, in painful consciousness of this lack.
He was a good-natured fellow, and had thought his two small boys at home
possessed of all the filial graces and values, and he had never expected
to be summoned to covet a tall daughter of seventeen. He resorted to
contradiction.
“That thar gal o’ Eli Strobe’s ain’t seventeen,” he declared, “nor no
higher’n my vest pocket. I know her. I useter see her constant.”
“Waal, she’s been agein’ an’ growin’ sence then. Leastwise, she’s tall
enough an’ old enough ter make Teck Jepson step around mighty spry. I
ain’t seen better electioneerin’ fur forty year. I hed counted on the
pleasure o’ hevin’ Eli goin’ roun’ hyar with his finger in his mouth,
but I’m feared o’ that gal o’ his’n. Clem Sanders, too, war a-waitin’
roun’ the forge fust thing this mornin’, a-pinin’ fur nine o’clock, so
ez the jedges would declar’ the polls open, an’ let him put in his vote
fur Eli. His ticket ’peared ter burn his fingers till he got it inter the
ballot-box.”
“He in love with her, too?” asked the candidate, drearily. He had never
anticipated these potent odds. What avail was it to parade the virtues of
citizenship, to vaunt his capacity and his will to serve the people in
the office to which he aspired,—with tricksy Cupid afield!
Nevins rose presently, the straw still in his mouth, his hat pulled far
over his brow, and sauntered down toward the forge. The great red and
white ox instantly planted his cloven hoof where Nevins had sat, and took
possession, as it were, of the pile of forage, trampling it down, that it
might not afford further resting-place for loitering politicians.
The post-meridian sun was now a trifle aslant upon the valley below;
purple shadows had begun to creep along the green slopes. How warm was
the fragrance of the grapes, hanging upon a great vine that draped an
oak from topmost bough to root, and which was pillaged as high as the
arm of man could reach! The tall weeds were all resounding with the whir
of acrobatic grasshoppers, now and then leaping amazingly high into the
air. Not a note came from the birds now; not a wing was astir. All the
landscape shimmered through the noontide heat. The forge, where the three
judges of the election sat with the precious ballot-box, of which they
were sworn not to lose sight till the polls were closed and the vote
counted out, seemed a quiet and cool refuge, with its dark shadows, and
its high, tent-like roof, and its ill-chinked walls, affording glimpses
of the green vistas without. The little window at the rear, into which
that mysterious semblance of the smith had stared, pale and reproachful,
at its vigorous living self, was wide open; showing now a squirrel
frisking by on the mountain slope, and now only a devious winding path
amidst the greenth up the mountain-side, with the trumpet-vine a-blooming
scarlet over a gray rock, and in the low branches of an elder-bush a
bird on a nest. Now and then faces were thrust in at this window,—most
often young and beardless, but sometimes old and grizzly,—to curiously
scan the judges and the practical illustration of the theory of election
by suffrage. The judges, in rickety chairs, tilted on the hind legs,
demurely smoked their pipes, while the clerk sat at the pine table on
which the ballot-box rested. The hearth was fireless, the hood smokeless,
the anvil silent. The stir outside came cheerily in, and when the line
of voters slackened, and no ballot had been deposited for some time, and
the interest of the proceedings seemed indefinitely suspended, the judges
looked wistfully through the open door, and were not consoled for the
dullness by their preëminence and responsibility and conspicuous honors.
That spirit of humor, always freakishly manifested in a crowd, was quick
to seize on the situation, and occasionally remarks were made outside,
pointed and personal, obviously intended to be overheard within.
“Did you-uns know ez Jethro Peake war jedge o’ ’lection?” demanded one
tousled-headed apparition, at the famous batten shutter, of an unseen
crony without.
“Never knowed he war jedge o’ nuthin’ ’ceptin’ jedge o’ whiskey,” the
unseen crony replied.
And with these trivial incidents were bridged the intervals when it
seemed as if all the district had voted that cared to vote, and that
there was naught more for the judges but to sit in stately isolation,
till the loitering summer sun should dawdle down the western sky, and the
hour come when it would be lawful to declare the polls closed.
After a long time, when the stir of passing feet, the sound of talking
and laughter, the champing and whickering of horses, had been more than
usually marked to the tantalized referees, whom the county court combined
to honor, they noted that an expectant stillness fell suddenly upon
the crowd. Then half a dozen men pushed into the blacksmith shop, and
turned about with excitement, as if to await and watch an entrance at the
door. Other men stood by without. There were half a dozen heads at the
little window, and the batten shutter was swinging. The bird had flown
from her nest in the elder-bush to a bough of a dogwood-tree above, and
perched there, with quivering, outspread wings, and a feverish, excited
eye, and a harsh, querulous, ceaseless chirring. A ray of sunlight fell
through a rift in the clapboards like some splendid glittering lance,
reaching from the dusky, peaked roof to the “dirt-floor” beneath. The
polished face of the anvil caught the beam and reflected it,—all else
was dark and shadowy; even through the broad door the light was only
a vista of deep green leafage and harmonious gray commingling tones,
hardly definite enough to be called shadow, but of tender and modulating
effects; and the plows left to be sharpened, and the wheels to be tired,
and the bar on which the smith’s tools hung, were but dimly descried.
Thus stepping suddenly into this shaft of light, Jake Baintree’s figure
was singularly distinct, but was not instantly recognized by the judges.
One of them slowly brought down the forelegs of his chair to the ground,
and sat looking at him, one hand on either knee, and with a round, red,
wondering face and an inquisitive eye. So long it had been since Baintree
was familiarly seen in Broomsedge—going thence a stripling, returning
a man—that the certainty of his identity gradually dawning on their
minds was not recognition, but inference. Who else unknown would present
himself to cast his vote in their midst? Who else wore so blanched a face
but the jail-bird, long shut in from the sun and the wind and all the
familiars of the weather? He was very tall and slender, and in the shaft
of light in which he stood, the extraordinarily sharp, clear cutting of
his features was apparent. His hair was black and sleek, and lay close
to his narrow head; it had a fine and thrifty look, like the coat of an
animal. He seemed very meek, but for all that his gray eye was uncertain,
it glittered. He looked about him with a comprehensive understanding,
unlike the dawdling inattention of the mountaineers. As he offered the
closely rolled scroll, his vote was challenged by one of the judges, and
he was quick and ready and self-possessed, and took the oath which Jethro
Peake administered, with a steady manner, and evidently with a deliberate
intention. He wished, perhaps, the crowd thought, to show that he was
entitled to vote; that whatever they might say, the law held him innocent
and denied him none of the rights of citizenship. Still with one hand on
each fat knee, and sitting very upright, Jethro Peake, his round, red
face, with a bristly, unshaven stubble about the chin, solemn with the
sense of the dignity and importance of the occasion, demanded,—
“Air you-uns cit’zen o’ Tennessee?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Twenty-one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reside in this county?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Resided hyar six months ’fore this day?”
“Yes, sir.”
As the vote, the first he had ever cast, was accepted, he looked
curiously on, while the closely rolled scroll was dropped unread
into the ballot-box. Somehow he seemed unaccountably disappointed by
the mysterious silence in which his choice was enveloped. He walked
slowly toward the door, looking back over his shoulder at the guarded
ballot-box. Suddenly he remarked in a strange, offhand manner, “I ain’t
keerin’ who knows how my vote be gin. I scratched one name off’n my
ticket. _I_ know how ter write Eli Strobe.”
There were the makings of a politician in Joshua Nevins; he answered
instantly from out the crowd, “I kin spare yer vote, Jake Baintree. An’
ef I can’t I’d ruther be defeated than hold office by the favor o’ a
scape-gallows.”
There was a sensation in the crowd, and some “scratched tickets” were
presently deposited that might have shown, if unrolled, another name
written in, that was _not_ Strobe. A change ensued in the atmosphere of
popular feeling. It was not definite, but Teck Jepson, with a thousand
fine fibres of sensitiveness, which he had not known he possessed, became
painfully aware of it, and fiercely complained to Eli Strobe.
“I’m minded ter fling ye over the fence, Eli,” he said. “Ef ye hedn’t
gin yerse’f ter upholdin’ that thar Jake Baintree, ye wouldn’t hev been
lumped with a murderer like him.”
Eli Strobe rested his slow, pompous gaze upon his friend.
“He ain’t no murderer. An’ ef he war, his votin’ fur me don’t lump me
with him.”
He turned his heavy-lidded, full-lashed eyes ruminatively upon the
landscape, and said no more. Despite his deliberate burly dignity,
however, there was a sense of trouble and perplexity about him,
indefinitely perceptible, and he evidently listened heedfully when his
friend and backer rejoined,—
“Waal, his votin’ fur you-uns, an’ tellin’ it out that-a-way, will make
a heap o’ folks vote agin ye. I be powerful glad it never happened no
sooner in the day, an’ ye hev got what ye hev got. What ailed the darned
idjit?”
“I reckon he ’lowed he war doin’ me a favior,” said Strobe, with
unexpected moderation. “He wanted me an’ all the folks ter know ez he war
fur my ’lection. He never voted afore. An’ he hev been cooped up in jail
so long he don’t ’pear ter sense much ’bout some things. An’ yit, ’bout
others he ’pears powerful sly. Pore feller!”
“Poor fool!” ejaculated Jepson, irritably. “What ails him ter set his
heart—dad-burn him!—on yer ’lection?”
He grudged Jake Baintree any sentiment that he shared.
“Waal,” said Eli, hesitating, “the folks down ter my house tuk some
thought o’ his’n whenst his trial an’ imprisonment war goin’ on, an’ I
reckon he feels thankful. Marcelly air one o’ them kind ez can’t rest
enny ef she ’lows ennybody air hongry, or lackin’ ennywise; an’ she toted
’em gyardin truck whenst they never planted, an’ holped ’em sew an’
weave whenst they hed no heart ter work. It’s the natur’ o’ Marcelly.”
Jepson stood with his hands in his pockets, his brows contracting heavily
over his blue eyes, that the candidate’s daughter had thought so cruel
and yet so deep. His hat was drawn down over his face, and the shadow
of the beech-tree, circumscribed nearly to its minimum by the almost
vertical sunshine, was soft upon it. He turned mechanically when others
joined the group, and he listened with frowning displeasure to the
suggestions of defeat that seemed somehow to be suddenly and bountifully
deduced.
“I be powerful afeard I hev flung my vote away on ye, Eli,” said Gideon
Dake. “I never looked ter see ye hev sech a backer ez Jake Baintree,”
with a jeering glance. “An’ some others say the same.”
“An’ yit,” said Jepson, feeling keenly the instability of popular
sentiment, “the t’other day, whenst I purvented him from gittin’ baptized
’mongst the saints, a body would hev ’lowed ez haffen the church members
couldn’t rest easy in the fold ’thout Jake Baintree ’mongst ’em. Sech a
haulin’ over the coals ez I got! An’ now ye ain’t willin’ fur him ter
jine ye at the polls, whar the devil’s vote wouldn’t be challenged ef he
hed been livin’ six months in the county.”
Dake made no defense of this lack of logic on the part of the community,
but fell to whittling a stick with a large clasp-knife, as he leaned
against the bole of the tree.
“That ain’t what makes me oneasy ’count o’ Eli,” put in an elderly
grizzled wight with an air of pleasure in fetching cumulative
disabilities into the prospect. “Eli hev been _too_ spry ez constable; he
hev been _too_ keen ter pry inter the doin’s o’ folks agin the law. Now
Nevins, he mought do the same, an’ then agin he moughtn’t. He hain’t been
tried,—that’s the main chance. Nobody’s got no gredge agin him,—dunno
nuthin’ ’bout his doin’s in office. But Eli, he hev been _too_ sharp-set
ter administer the law.”
“Look-a-hyar,” argued Jepson, “ye be a-takin’ arter the man fur doin’ of
his jewty.”
The elderly interlocutor prefaced his reply by an astute wink. “His jewty
air ter _please_ the people, ef he wants ter git ’lected agin!”—a golden
rule for incumbents.
Jepson relapsed into moody silence, and this choice reasoner proceeded
with an illustration in point:—
“Eli can’t ’low sleepin’ dogs ter lie. He ain’t got no ’scrimination.
He dunno who ter sot the law onter, nor who ter muzzle it fur. Thar’s
old Jer’miah Miles jes’ drawed a pistol ter skeer some o’ them bad boys
out’n his watermillion patch, an’ Eli, passin’ by, druv the boys out’n
the patch, an’ then ups an’ ’rests the old man fur kerryin’ concealed
weepons. Thar’s fourteen o’ the Miles kinsfolks kem hyar ter vote
ter-day.”
If the officer had done amiss, his punishment seemed likely to be
greater than he could bear. Like most people brought into propinquity
with the law, Eli Strobe sought to furnish a precedent rather than a
justification. “Waal,” he argued, barely lifting his eyelids, “Sam
Blake”—his predecessor in office—“would hev done the same.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed the other. “I kin jes’ hear Sam Blake a-hollerin’
ter them boys, ‘Git out’n this million patch, or I’ll be the death o’
ye! I’ll jail ye ’fore night.’” Then dropping his rough voice to dulcet
courtesy, “‘Mister Miles, got enny o’ them fine cantaloupes ter spare fur
my saddle-bags?’ I say, arrest old Miles fur kerryin’ concealed weepons!
Sam Blake would jes’ hev begged a few cantaloupes, that’s all, an’ never
seen no pistol.”
Teck Jepson could ill adapt his intolerant and domineering spirit to the
prospect of defeat, even when the cause was not his own. He had made
to-day perhaps the greatest sacrifice to his affection of which he was
capable, bending his pride to beg of the community favor for another
which he could never have been brought to ask for himself. He was weary
of it all, and depressed, and the continual collision, in which he must
restrain himself rather than constrain others, irked him. If, among the
narratives upon which he loved to brood, he had ever heard of aught so
modern as the romances of the Middle Ages, the idea of a knight sallying
forth in search of noble adventure and deeds of prowess, whereby he
might prove himself worthy of the fair, would have commended itself as
cheap and easy in comparison to his devoirs to earn the gratitude of the
candidate’s daughter.
There are times that come to all of us when the trivial incidents of the
world pall, when the presence of crowds weighs upon the spirit, when
existence seems petty and sordid, and we look back to some period of
solitude, rich with quiet thought or chosen and cherished labor, with a
suddenly awakened sense that then we were clothed in our true identity;
in that interval we verily lived rather than merely exercised the
respiratory organs, and went about in the outer disguise that wears our
name and is recognized of men.
Perhaps in human experience naught might more fitly foster this repulsion
of the world than certain stages of a political canvass. Jepson stood
with his hat in his hand, feeling foreign among them all, looking
now down in the valley, and again up to the great heights; wondering
sub-acutely if it were only yesterday that he had heard David sing to
the dulcet measure of the lilting harp-strings, and watched the moody
Saul listening on his couch, his dexterous hand toying with the stealthy
javelin, ready to launch it at the head of the singer,—only yesterday
that he had seen the high-priest’s rod blossom in the tabernacle, had
heard the waters gush from the rock that Moses smote. Still the solemn
clouds, as then, mysteriously communed with peak and cliff; the radiant
sunshine wore a rich effulgence among the lonely and far-away ranges,
blue and unreal, like some fine deceit of the senses, ineffably ethereal
as they withdrew into the unseen spaces. The valley, mute and peaceful,
lay far below, with here and there a harvested field—a tiny yellow
square—and a flash of water; and further, a wisp of smoke that came from
an invisible chimney, the only motion in the supreme tranquillity of the
scene. Here, higher up, where the massive purple range yawned with the
wide deep interval called Broomsedge Cove, which seemed to be in the
valley as one looked at the vast steep stretches of the mountains above,
and seemed on the range when one looked down at the valley below, the
men wrangled loudly, the oxen lowed; there was a great clamor among the
horses, and suddenly Teck Jepson heard his name called. He turned slowly,
to see his mare’s hoof in the hands of the blacksmith, who from his
leaning posture looked up, and nodded to him to approach.
Clem Sanders, ejected from the forge by its conversion to the public
uses, was devoting the day to the pursuit of art for art’s sake. He had
on his leather apron, and the sleeve of his hammer-arm was well rolled
back, showing its swelling cords. He carried a hammer in his hand, and
was going about examining the feet of all the horses that had been ridden
to the Settlement that day. He seemed by some means to recognize his own
work, and he would stoop down and take the hoof up, and tell when he had
made that shoe and had shod that horse, and boast to the little group of
idlers how his work lasted. His face was a study when, in catching up a
hoof, he would descry the work of another smith,—his alert joy to discern
defects, or dismayed solicitude to perceive craft as good as his own
or superior. It was a happy moment with him now when he had one of the
clay-bank mare’s hoofs upon his leather apron, between his knees, as he
stooped.
“One more sech shoein’ ez this, Teck,” he remarked oracularly, “an’ yer
mare won’t have nare frawg ter her huff.”
He dropped the foot, and snatched up another so suddenly that he nearly
pulled the creature down; Teck caught the bridle and stroked her head,
for she was restive, and then stood reassuringly beside her as he looked
at the groups about.
The polls were almost deserted. The crowd around the horses had grown
denser. The general conversation had a wider range than the blacksmith’s
remarks on the hoof, and the frog, and the shoe, and the nail. Dake and a
man from North Carolina, a visitor and a cousin of a neighboring farmer,
were turning the interval to account in the way of a horse-trade, and
about them stood a breathlessly interested coterie, all eager to witness
how the negotiation should terminate; all ready to advise, to dissuade,
to instill suspicion; all marking with thrills of excitement that
invariable phenomenon of bargain and sale,—when the buyer is willing,
the vendor is reluctant and haggles, swinging back to eager entreaties
and persuasive logic when the trade seems likely to fall through. Other
wrangles now and then drowned their voices, and usurped the popular
interest in the horse-trade.
“Listen at Teck, now!” cried Jube Donnard, the parson’s son. “Teck ’lows
that thar leetle mare o’ his’n, ez be sca’cely bridle-wise, kin go all
the gaits. Naw, sir! Naw, sir! That mare can’t pace. I know all about
that mare. She don’t kem of pacing stock. Daddy trot, mammy trot, colt
_can’t_ pace!”
Jube was in his own person the most pointed contradiction of his
assertion. Piety as it was expressed in Broomsedge Cove proved itself
there as elsewhere no hereditary quality, nor possessed of any traits of
consanguinity. In Jube, the parson’s son, was filially repeated the long,
lank paternal frame, the lantern jaw, the narrow head, the small excited
gray eye, and the thin straight lips, one compressed upon the other.
But the spirit which animated the youth was devoid of any similarity
to that of the solemn ascetic religionist; and as Jube went at large
in Broomsedge, it seemed a disrespect in some sort for him to look so
like his father. A jovial caricature: the parson’s image with a jocose
swagger; the enthusiast’s eye, lighted with a dancing leer or eclipsed by
a flexible wink; a mouth grotesquely solemn and frequented by all the
well-worn jests and songs of Broomsedge Cove. Even the old man himself
sometimes paused to look wonderingly at this junketing blade, so like,
yet so unlike, his recognition of himself.
Jube stood now with his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of
his head and all askew, his solemn face intent, watching the action of
the mare as Teck led her out into the open space and stood holding her
bridle, while she snorted and pawed impatiently, and bowed down her head,
and tossed her black mane. She was a very ordinary specimen, good-looking
only because she was young, and fat, and strong, and frisky. She had had
the best of care, and perhaps made a finer show than the facts warranted.
Some of the galled-backed, grass-fed old cattle near her turned their
heads to mark her airs, with a sort of slow and surprised disapproval in
their meek and jaded eyes.
“I hev hearn that sayin’ all my days,—daddy trot, mammy trot, colt
_ca-a-n’t_ pace,” the parson’s son reiterated, with a long lingering
twang upon the negative declaration.
“This filly kin,” stoutly asseverated Teck. “She kin go all the gaits.
She kin pace. An’ she kin trot like a fox, an’ run like a deer, an’ walk
like a cat on a pallet.”
“I’ll bet ye a dollar an’ a half,” said the parson’s son, “ez this hyar
hoss-critter o’ mine kin beat her enny gait she’s a mind ter travel.
I dare ye put her out now, an’ try her along the road ter the sulphur
spring—toler’ble level all the way.”
The hoss-critter was a bay, furnished with the usual complement of ribs
evidently, and with a tail and mane that seemed sunburned a dull yellow,
so unnatural was the color; but he picked up his feet well, he was about
sixteen hands high, and according to the mountain estimate of speed he
had a speedy look.
Teck had put his foot into the stirrup; there was a stir of excitement in
the crowd. Half a dozen were backing the little mare, but the sunburned
nag had his friends too, and a spirited clamor arose. Upon it Eli
Strobe’s bass voice boomed suddenly:—
“I warn ye now, hoss-racin’ an’ a-bettin’ on it air agin the law; an’ ef
ye boys ondertake ter bet yer money an’ race yer hosses, I’ll ondertake
ter arrest ye. I be constable yit.” He had his hands in his pockets,
and he strode a few paces to and fro in the crowd, his hat pulled down
over his lowering eyes, from which shot now and then a watchful surly
side-glance. The young men were arranging to start together from an
oak-tree at the farther end of the clearing. They gave no heed to the
threat of the constable. An elderly farmer assumed the negative in the
discussion:—
“Shucks, Eli, ain’t I seen races run yander ter Glaston, an’ ain’t they
got a reg’lar race-track thar?”
“That’s ’cordin’ ter law,” said the officer. “The law’s mighty partic’lar
in the diff’unces it makes. Racin’ at a reg’lar race-track ain’t no
harm, an’ bettin’ ain’t nuther, kase it’s puttin’ suthin’ in the State’s
pocket, bein’ ez the race-track folks hev ter pay fur a license. But
racin’ on a common road an’ a-bettin’ demau’lizes the young men an’ air
agin the dignity o’ the State.” He still stood with his hands in his
pockets, balancing himself alternately on the heels and the toes of his
boots. “The State’s mighty partic’lar.”
The singular logic of this utterance occasioned no surprise.
Unsophisticated as his auditors were, they were far too wise to reason
with the law. They stood meditating on this view, chewing hard, and
looking vaguely about them, hardly wondering whether the young men would
balk them of their sport in deference to the constable’s threat, or
whether they would persist and ride a race on the common road, thus doing
a damage to the dignity of the State.
“Ye jes’ let ’em alone,” remonstrated the old farmer. “Ye air sech a
stirrer up o’ strife, Eli, through tryin’ ter be sech a stickler fur the
law. ’Tain’t yer business ter be so tarrifyin’ ter the kentry.”
The horse-trade was complete, the exchange made, the boot paid, and
the stranger from North Carolina had left the Settlement. Gideon Dake,
satisfied with his acquisition, mounted the roan steed and trotted about
for a time, showing its paces to the crowd. Presently he dismounted,
and looked the animal over. Some of his friends came up, and, with the
unerring perspicacity of that genus exerted upon the new purchase, their
comments roused his anxiety. He turned from them in alarm, after a few
minutes. “Eli,” he said, in confused haste, “do ye know ennything ’bout’n
a horse’s eyes? I be sort’n ’feard he’s moon-eyed, or suthin’. Don’t his
eyes look cur’ous ter you-uns?”
Strobe took hold of the headstall, and the horse, uneasy at being stared
out of countenance, tossed his head hastily backward.
“I can’t see the critter,” said Strobe, once more pulling the animal’s
head down to his own shorter stature.
“He couldn’t be blind, or lacking eyesight, could he, Eli? Hey! Hey!
Hello thar! Hev that thar North Ca’liny fox gone?” Dake called out to a
man near the blacksmith shop. “He hev gone! He hev gone,” in frenzied
accents, “He hev gone ter—I dunno whar!—with my sound mare an’ five
dollars boot!” He made a pass with his hand before the eyes of the
animal, who winked violently and tossed up his head. But that might
have been only because he felt the wind of the motion. His unwilling
owner moved back a pace, and taking his hat from his head—a large dark
object—passed it quickly up and down, too far for the animal to feel the
stir in the air, yet near enough to alarm or surprise him if he could see
it. The constable stood looking on with interest, awaiting the result of
the experiment, when a sudden thunder of galloping hoofs smote the air.
He turned to see in full progress the race he had interdicted. Along the
sandy slope Jepson’s little mare led five others, bounding under whip and
spur, her head stretched out long and straight, her tail and mane flying,
her body close to the ground, the dust rising in clouds beneath her hoofs.
It was a rash thing to do, and Eli Strobe, one of the most reasonable
of men, would perchance never have risked it save for the applause that
greeted her; one quavering voice arose, then the rotund swelling of
cheers. He could not endure to see the race run and applauded in open
defiance of the law. He rushed out to meet the animal, and springing at
her neck he caught the bridle, throwing his full weight upon it. The
mare, frightened, reared, despite the heavy burden at her head. She pawed
the air with her forefeet. Then, as she broke loose, the man fell with a
terrible wrench, and away she went, with a cloud of dust skirrying after
her like a witches’ dance.
Jepson reined up on the opposite rise, for he reached it the next moment;
the other riders had not followed. He saw their horses shy away, one by
one, from the prostrate figure that seemed a lifeless heap in the road.
Did it stir? Or did the bystanders, rushing to it, move it in some way,
seeking to aid? A bloody face was upturned; the crowd interposed, and he
saw no more.
At one side of the road, unheeding the tragedy, stood the man who doubted
his horse’s sight, still waving his hat up and down before the creature’s
eyes, to discover if he would flinch.