MY THIRD PERIL
"Mr. Purvis" took his pay in salts and stayed with us until my first
great adventure cut him off. It came one July day when I was in my
sixteenth year. He behaved badly, and I as any normal boy would have
done who had had my schooling in the candle-light. We had kept Grimshaw
from our door by paying interest and the sum of eighty dollars on the
principal. It had been hard work to live comfortably and carry the
burden of debt. Again Grimshaw had begun to press us. My uncle wanted to
get his paper and learn, if possible, when the Senator was expected in
Canton.
So he gave me permission to ride with Purvis to the post-office--a
distance of three miles--to get the mail. Purvis rode in our only saddle
and I bareback, on a handsome white filly which my uncle had given me
soon after she was foaled. I had fed and petted and broken and groomed
her and she had grown so fond of me that my whistled call would bring
her galloping to my side from the remotest reaches of the pasture. A
chunk of sugar or an ear of corn or a pleasant grooming always rewarded
her fidelity. She loved to have me wash her legs and braid her mane and
rub her coat until it glowed, and she carried herself proudly when I was
on her back. I had named her Sally because that was the only name which
seemed to express my fondness.
"Mr. Purvis" was not an experienced rider. My filly led him at a swift
gallop over the hills and I heard many a muttered complaint behind me,
but she liked a free head when we took the road together and I let her
have her way.
Coming back we fell in with another rider who had been resting at
Seaver's little tavern through the heat of the day. He was a traveler on
his way to Canton and had missed the right trail and wandered far
afield. He had a big military saddle with bags and shiny brass trimmings
and a pistol in a holster, all of which appealed to my eye and interest.
The filly was a little tired and the stranger and I were riding abreast
at a walk while Purvis trailed behind us. The sun had set and as we
turned the top of a long hill the dusk was lighted with a rich, golden
glow on the horizon far below us.
We heard a quick stir in the bushes by the roadside.
"What's that?" Purvis demanded in a half-whisper of excitement. We
stopped.
Then promptly a voice--a voice which I did not recognize--broke the
silence with these menacing words sharply spoken:
"Your money or your life!"
"Mr. Purvis" whirled his horse and lashed him up the hill. Things
happened quickly in the next second or two. Glancing backward I saw him
lose a stirrup and fall and pick himself up and run as if his life
depended on it. I saw the stranger draw his pistol. A gun went off in
the edge of the bushes close by. The flash of fire from its muzzle
leaped at the stranger. The horses reared and plunged and mine threw me
in a clump of small poppies by the roadside and dashed down the hill.
All this had broken into the peace of a summer evening on a lonely road
and the time in which it had happened could be measured, probably, by
ten ticks of the watch.
My fall on the stony siding had stunned me and I lay for three or four
seconds, as nearly as I can estimate it, in a strange and peaceful
dream. Why did I dream of Amos Grimshaw coming to visit me, again, and
why, above all, should it have seemed to me that enough things were said
and done in that little flash of a dream to fill a whole day--enough of
talk and play and going and coming, the whole ending with a talk on the
haymow. Again and again I have wondered about that dream. I came to and
lifted my head and my consciousness swung back upon the track of memory
and took up the thread of the day, the briefest remove from where it had
broken.
I peered through the bushes. The light was unchanged. I could see quite
clearly. The horses were gone. It was very still. The stranger lay
helpless in the road and a figure was bending over him. It was a man
with a handkerchief hanging over his face with holes cut opposite his
eyes. He had not seen my fall and thought, as I learned later, that I
had ridden away.
His gun lay beside him, its stock toward me. I observed that a piece of
wood had been split off the lower side of the stock. I jumped to my feet
and seized a stone to hurl at him. As I did so the robber fled with gun
in hand. If the gun had been loaded I suppose that this little history
would never have been written. Quickly I hurled the stone at the robber.
I remember it was a smallish stone about the size of a hen's egg. I saw
it graze the side of his head. I saw his hand touch the place which the
stone had grazed. He reeled and nearly fell and recovered himself and
ran on, but the little stone had put the mark of Cain upon him.
The stranger lay still in the road. I lifted his head and dropped it
quickly with a strange sickness. The feel of it and the way it fell back
upon the ground when I let go scared me, for I knew that he was dead.
The dust around him was wet. I ran down the hill a few steps and stopped
and whistled to my filly. I could hear her answering whinny far down the
dusty road and then her hoofs as she galloped toward me. She came within
a few feet of me and stood snorting. I caught and mounted her and rode
to the nearest house for help. On the way I saw why she had stopped. A
number of horses were feeding on the roadside near the log house where
Andrew Crampton lived. Andrew had just unloaded some hay and was backing
out of his barn. I hitched my filly and jumped on the rack saying:
"Drive up the road as quick as you can. A man has been murdered."
What a fearful word it was that I had spoken! What a panic it made in
the little dooryard! The man gasped and jerked the reins and shouted to
his horses and began swearing. The woman uttered a little scream and the
children ran crying to her side. Now for the first time I felt the dread
significance of word and deed. I had had no time to think of it before.
I thought of the robber fleeing, terror-stricken, in the growing
darkness.
The physical facts which are further related to this tragedy are of
little moment to me now. The stranger was dead and we took his body to
our home and my uncle set out for the constable. Over and over again
that night I told the story of the shooting. We went to the scene of the
tragedy with lanterns and fenced it off and put some men on guard there.
How the event itself and all that hurrying about in the dark had shocked
and excited me! The whole theater of life had changed. Its audience had
suddenly enlarged and was rushing over the stage and a kind of terror
was in every face and voice. There was a red-handed villain behind the
scenes, now, and how many others, I wondered. Men were no longer as they
had been. Even the God to whom I prayed was different. As I write the
sounds and shadows of that night are in my soul again. I see its
gathering gloom. I hear its rifle shot which started all the galloping
hoofs and swinging lanterns and flitting shadows and hysterical
profanity. In the morning they found the robber's footprints in the damp
dirt of the road and measured them. The whole countryside was afire with
excitement and searching the woods and fields for the highwayman.
"Mr. Purvis," who had lost confidence suddenly in the whole world, had
been found, soon after daylight next morning, under a haycock in the
field of a farmer who was getting in his hay. Our hired man rose up and
reported in fearful tones. A band of robbers--not one, or two, even, but
a band of them--had chased him up the road and one of their bullets had
torn the side of his trousers, in support of which assertion he showed
the tear. With his able assistance we see at a glance both the quality
and the state of mind prevailing among the humbler citizens of the
countryside. They were, in a way, children whose cows had never
recovered from the habit of jumping over the moon and who still
worshiped at the secret shrine of Jack the Giant Killer.
The stranger was buried. There was nothing upon him to indicate his name
or residence. Weeks passed with no news of the man who had slain him. I
had told of the gun with a piece of wood broken out of its stock, but no
one knew of any such weapon in or near Lickitysplit.
One day Uncle Peabody and I drove up to Grimshaw's to make a payment of
money. I remember it was gold and silver which we carried in a little
sack. I asked where Amos was and Mrs. Grimshaw--a timid, tired-looking,
bony little woman who was never seen outside of her own house--said that
he was working out on the farm of a Mr. Beekman near Plattsburg. He had
gone over on the stage late in June to hire out for the haying. I
observed that my uncle looked very thoughtful as we rode back home and
had little to say.
"You never had any idee who that robber was, did ye?" he asked by and
by.
"No--I could not see plain--it was so dusk," I said.
"I think Purvis lied about the gang that chased him," he said. "Mebbe he
thought they was after him. In my opinion he was so scairt he couldn't
'a' told a hennock from a handsaw anyway. I think it was just one man
that did that job."
How well I remember the long silence that followed and the distant
voices that flashed across it now and then--the call of the mire drum in
the marshes and the songs of the winter wren and the swamp robin. It was
a solemn silence.
The swift words, "Your money or your life," came out of my memory and
rang in it. I felt its likeness to the scolding demands of Mr. Grimshaw,
who was forever saying in effect:
"Your money or your home!"
That was like demanding our lives because we couldn't live without our
home. Our all was in it. Mr. Grimshaw's gun was the power he had over
us, and what a terrible weapon it was! I credit him with never realizing
how terrible.
We came to the sand-hills and then Uncle Peabody broke the silence by
saying:
"I wouldn't give fifty cents for as much o' this land as a bird could
fly around in a day."
Then for a long time I heard only the sound of feet and wheels muffled
in the sand, while my uncle sat looking thoughtfully at the siding.
When I spoke to him he seemed not to hear me.
Before we reached home I knew what was in his mind, but neither dared to
speak of it.
People came from Canton and all the neighboring villages to see and talk
with me and among them were the Dunkelbergs. Unfounded tales of my
bravery had gone abroad.
Sally seemed to be very glad to see me. We walked down to the brook and
up into the maple grove and back through the meadows.
The beauty of that perfect day was upon her. I remember that her dress
was like the color of its fire-weed blossoms and that the blue of its
sky was in her eyes and the yellow of its sunlight in her hair and the
red of its clover in her cheeks. I remember how the August breezes
played with her hair, flinging its golden curving strands about her neck
and shoulders so that it touched my face, now and then, as we walked!
Somehow the rustle of her dress started a strange vibration in my
spirit. I put my arm around her waist and she put her arm around mine as
we ran along. A curious feeling came over me. I stopped and loosed my
arm.
"It's very warm!" I said as I picked a stalk of fire-weed.
What was there about the girl which so thrilled me with happiness?
She turned away and felt the ribbon by which her hair was gathered at
the back of her head.
I wanted to kiss her as I had done years before, but I was afraid.
She turned suddenly and said to me:
"A penny for your thoughts."
"You won't laugh at me?"
"No."
"I was thinking how beautiful you are and how homely I am."
"You are not homely. I like your eyes and your teeth are as white and
even as they can be and you are a big, brave boy, too."
Oh, the vanity of youth! I had never been so happy as then.
"I don't believe I'm brave," I said, blushing as we walked along beside
the wheat-fields that were just turning yellow. "I was terribly scared
that night--honest I was!"
"But you didn't run away."
"I didn't think of it or I guess I would have."
After a moment of silence I ventured:
"I guess you've never fallen in love."
"Yes, I have."
"Who with?"
"I don't think I dare tell you," she answered, slowly, looking down as
she walked.
"I'll tell you who I love if you wish," I said.
"Who?"
"You." I whispered the word and was afraid she would laugh at me, but
she didn't. She stopped and looked very serious and asked:
"What makes you think you love me?"
"Well, when you go away I shall think an' think about you an' feel as I
do when the leaves an' the flowers are all gone an' I know it's going to
be winter, an' I guess next Sunday Shep an' I will go down to the brook
an' come back through the meadow, an' I'll kind o' think it all
over--what you said an' what I said an' how warm the sun shone an' how
purty the wheat looked, an' I guess I'll hear that little bird singing."
We stopped and listened to the song of a bird--I do not remember what
bird it was--and then she whispered:
"Will you love me always and forever?"
"Yes," I answered in the careless way of youth.
She stopped and looked into my eyes and I looked into hers.
"May I kiss you?" I asked, and afraid, with cheeks burning.
She turned away and answered: "I guess you can if you want to."
Now I seem to be in Aladdin's tower and to see her standing so red and
graceful and innocent in the sunlight, and that strange fire kindled by
our kisses warms my blood again.
It was still play, although not like that of the grand ladies and the
noble gentlemen in which we had once indulged, but still it was
play--the sweetest and dearest kind of play which the young may enjoy,
and possibly, also, the most dangerous.
She held my hand very tightly as we went on and I told her of my purpose
to be a great man.
My mind was in a singular condition of simplicity those days. It was due
to the fact that I had had no confidant in school and had been brought
up in a home where there was neither father nor mother nor brother.
That night I heard a whispered conference below after I had gone
up-stairs. I knew that something was coming and wondered what it might
be. Soon Uncle Peabody came up to our little room looking highly
serious. He sat down on the side of his bed with his hands clasped
firmly under one knee, raising his foot below it well above the floor.
He reminded me of one carefully holding taut reins on a horse of a bad
reputation. I sat, half undressed and rather fearful, looking into his
face. As I think of the immaculate soul of the boy, I feel a touch of
pathos in that scene. I think that he felt it, for I remember that his
whisper trembled a little as he began to tell me why men are strong and
women are beautiful and given to men in marriage.
"You'll be falling in love one o' these days," he said. "It's natural ye
should. You remember Rovin' Kate?" he asked by and by.
"Yes," I answered.
"Some day when you're a little older I'll tell ye her story an' you'll
see what happens when men an' women break the law o' God. Here's Mr.
Wright's letter. Aunt Deel asked me to give it to you to keep. You're
old enough now an' you'll be goin' away to school before long, I guess."
I took the letter and read again the superscription on its envelope:
To Master Barton Baynes--
(To be opened when he leaves home to
go to school.)
I put it away in the pine box with leather hinges on its cover which
Uncle Peabody had made for me and wondered again what it was all about,
and again that night I broke camp and moved further into the world over
the silent trails of knowledge.
Uncle Peabody went away for a few days after the harvesting. He had gone
afoot, I knew not where. He returned one afternoon in a buggy with the
great Michael Hacket of the Canton Academy. Hacket was a big, brawny,
red-haired, kindly Irishman with a merry heart and tongue, the latter
having a touch of the brogue of the green isle which he had never seen,
for he had been born in Massachusetts and had got his education in
Harvard. He was then a man of forty.
"You're coming to me this fall," he said as he put his hand on my arm
and gave me a little shake. "Lad! you've got a big pair of shoulders! Ye
shall live in my house an' help with the chores if ye wish to."
"That'll be grand," said Uncle Peabody, but, as to myself, just then, I
knew not what to think of it.
We were picking up potatoes in the field.
"Without 'taters an' imitators this world would be a poor place to live
in," said Mr. Hacket. "Some imitate the wise--thank God!--some the
foolish--bad 'cess to the devil!"
As he spoke we heard a wonderful bird song in a tall spruce down by the
brook.
"Do ye hear the little silver bells in yon tower?" he asked.
As we listened a moment he whispered: "It's the song o' the Hermit
Thrush. I wonder, now, whom he imitates. I think the first one o' them
must 'a' come on Christmas night an' heard the angels sing an'
remembered a little o' it so he could give it to his children an' keep
it in the world."
I looked up into the man's face and liked him, and after that I looked
forward to the time when I should know him and his home.
Shep was rubbing his neck fondly on the schoolmaster's boot.
"That dog couldn't think more o' me if I were a bone," he said as he
went away.
END OF BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
Which is the Story of the Principal Witness