"Tomath Dickinthon Kinney. I'm thix and a half. I've got a colt," lisped
the youngster, breathlessly, as he crept toward the money.
"Oh, you are, eh? Well, now, are you Tom's boy, or Ed's?"
"Tomth's boy. Uncle Ed heth got a little--"
"Ed got a boy?"
"Yeth, thir--a lil baby. Aunt Agg letth me hold 'im."
"Agg! Is that her name?"
"Tha'th what Uncle Ed callth her."
The man's head fell, and it was a long time before he asked his next
question.
"How is she anyhow?"
"Purty well," piped the boy, with a prolongation of the last words into
a kind of chirp. "She'th been thick, though," he added.
"Been sick? How long?"
"Oh, a long time. But she ain't thick abed; she'th awful poor, though.
Gran'pa thayth she'th poor ath a rake."
"Oh, he does, eh?"
"Yeth, thir. Uncle Ed he jawth her, then she crieth."
Will's anger and remorse broke out in a groaning curse. "O my God! I see
it all. That great lunkin houn' has made life a hell for her." Then that
letter came back to his mind--he had never been able to put it out of
his mind--he never would till he saw her and asked her pardon.
"Here, my boy, I want you to tell me some more. Where does your Aunt
Agnes live?"
"At gran'pa'th. You know where my gran'pa livth?"
"Well, you do. Now I want you to take this letter to her. Give it to
her." He wrote a little note and folded it. "Now dust out o' here."
The boy slipped away through the trees like a rabbit; his little brown
feet hardly rustled. He was like some little wood-animal. Left alone,
the man fell back into a revery which lasted till the shadows fell on
the thick little grove around the spring. He rose at last, and taking
his stick in hand, walked out to the wood again and stood there gazing
at the sky. He seemed loath to go farther. The sky was full of
flame-colored clouds floating in a yellow-green sea, where bars of faint
pink streamed broadly away.
As he stood there, feeling the wind lift his hair, listening to the
crickets' ever-present crying, and facing the majesty of space, a
strange sadness and despair came into his eyes.
Drawing a quick breath, he leaped the fence and was about going on up
the road, when he heard, at a little distance, the sound of a drove of
cattle approaching, and he stood aside to allow them to pass. They
snuffed and shied at the silent figure by the fence, and hurried by with
snapping heels--a peculiar sound that made Will smile with pleasure.
An old man was driving the cows, crying out:
"St--boy, there! Go on there! Whay, boss!"
Will knew that hard-featured, wiry old man, now entering his second
childhood and beginning to limp painfully. He had his hands full of hard
clods which he threw impatiently at the lumbering animals.
"Good-evening, uncle!"
"I ain't y'r uncle, young man."
His dim eyes did not recognize the boy he had chased out of his plum
patch years before.
"I don't know yeh, neither," he added.
"Oh, you will, later on. I'm from the East. I'm a sort of a relative to
John Hannan."
"I want 'o know if y' be!" the old man exclaimed, peering closer.
"Yes. I'm just up from Rock River. John's harvesting, I s'pose?"
"Yus."
"Where's the youngest one--Will?"
"William? Oh! he's a bad aig--he lit out f'r the West somewhere. He was
a hard boy. He stole a hatful o' my plums once. He left home kind o'
sudden. He! he! I s'pose he was purty well cut up jest about them days."
"How's that?"
The old man chuckled.
"Well, y' see, they was both courtin' Agnes then, an' my son cut William
out. Then William he lit out f'r the West, Arizony, 'r California, 'r
somewhere out West. Never been back sence."
"Ain't, heh?"
"No. But they say he's makin' a terrible lot o' money," the old man said
in a hushed voice. "But the way he makes it is awful scaly. I tell my
wife if I had a son like that an' he'd send me home a bushel-basket o'
money, earnt like that, I wouldn't touch finger to it--no sir!"
"You wouldn't? Why?"
"'Cause it ain't right. It ain't made right noway, you--"
"But how is it made? What's the feller's trade?"
"He's a gambler--that's his trade! He plays cards, and every cent is
bloody. I wouldn't touch such money nohow you could fix it."
"Wouldn't, heh?" The young man straightened up. "Well, look-a-here, old
man: did you ever hear of a man foreclosing a mortgage on a widow and
two boys, getting a farm f'r one quarter what it was really worth? You
damned old hypocrite! I know all about you and your whole tribe--you old
blood-sucker!"
The old man's jaw fell; he began to back away.
"Your neighbors tell some good stories about you. Now skip along after
those cows, or I'll tickle your old legs for you!"
The old man, appalled and dazed at this sudden change of manner, backed
away, and at last turned and racked off up the road, looking back with a
wild face, at which the young man laughed remorselessly.
"The doggoned old skeesucks!" Will soliloquized as he walked up the
road. "So that's the kind of a character he's been givin' me!"
"Hullo! A whippoorwill. Takes a man back into childhood--No, don't 'whip
poor Will'; he's got all he can bear now."
He came at last to the little farm Dingman had owned, and he stopped in
sorrowful surprise. The barn had been moved away, the garden ploughed
up, and the house, turned into a granary, stood with boards nailed
across its dusty, cobwebbed windows. The tears started into the man's
eyes; he stood staring at it silently.
In the face of this house the seven years that he had last lived
stretched away into a wild waste of time. It stood as a symbol of his
wasted, ruined life. It was personal, intimately personal, this decay of
her home.
All that last scene came back to him; the booming roar of the
threshing-machine, the cheery whistle of the driver, the loud, merry
shouts of the men. He remembered how warmly the lamp-light streamed out
of that door as he turned away tired, hungry, sullen with rage and
jealousy. Oh, if he had only had the courage of a man!
Then he thought of the boy's words. She was sick, Ed abused her. She had
met her punishment. A hundred times he had been over the whole scene. A
thousand times he had seen her at the pump smiling at Ed Kinney, the sun
lighting her hair; and he never thought of that without hardening.
At this very gate he had driven up that last forenoon; to find that she
had gone with Ed. He had lived that sickening, depressing moment over
many times, but not times enough to keep down the bitter passion he had
felt then, and felt now as he went over it in detail.
He was so happy and confident that morning, so perfectly certain that
all would be made right by a kiss and a cheery jest. And now! Here he
stood sick with despair and doubt of all the world. He turned away from
the desolate homestead and walked on.
"But I'll see her--just once more. And then--"
And again the mighty significance, responsibility of life, fell upon
him. He felt, as young people seldom do, the irrevocableness of living,
the determinate, unalterable character of living. He determined to begin
to live in some new way--just how he could not say.