Work, Morton could not. After his noonday dinner he lifted his
flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was
laid, and set out to seek for deer,--rather to seek forgetfulness of
the anxiety that preyed upon him. Excitement was almost a necessity
with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for
his depression. But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot
everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it
impossible to absorb himself in hunting. For when a frontierman
loves, he loves with his whole nature. The interests of his life are
few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.
After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a
deer, but did not see at in time to shoot. He had tramped through
the brush without caution or vigilance. He now saw that it would be
of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting. He was seized with
an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the
door should be closed against him. He might strike the trail, and
reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the
Captain was away from the house. His only chance was to see her in
the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some
interruption if he were present.
So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half
accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild
turkeys. They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not
until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy
young gobblers. Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw
bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his
shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite
empty-handed.
As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is
such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made,
broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose
litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away
somewhere for an emergency. His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging;
he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness,
timidity, nor craftiness in his gait. The legs are as much a test of
character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness.
His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair,
and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his
Scotch-Irish mother. His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the
look of a hunter. The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his
buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.
The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but,
like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect
his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the
gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance.
The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old
fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed
tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if
Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.
Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion
of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room. The monotonous
rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder
and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking,
then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax--this cadenced
hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run
back across the room after each climax of sound. He knows the quick,
elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the
house, and passes round to the kitchen door. It is Patty, as he
thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very
act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it
roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of
it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her
left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is
somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the
wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door. She
changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right
with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."
"Yes, one for you and one for mother."
"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."
"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his
coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief.
"Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."
"Well, I will. I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day. I've been at
it since five o'clock."
Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin. He was, in his present
perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken
talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the
spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.
Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old
spinning-wheel. Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or
pads, or paniers--her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left
hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile
figure in lithe action. If plastic art were not an impossibility to
us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like
school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and
counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey
Washingtons on stage-horses;--they would by this time have found out
that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in
mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists. But I do not
believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the
October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of
unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day. He did not
know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm
half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a
statue. He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues
except in the talk of the old schoolmaster. How should her think to
call her statuesque? Or how should he know that the wide old
log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein
sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on
which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending--the old kitchen, with
its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned
strings of drying pumpkins--how should Morton Goodwin know that this
wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,
fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts
of yarn in a day, would make a _genre_ piece, the subject of which
would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters? He could not
know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading
swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face,
ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a
whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible--he did know that Patty
Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he
remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be
shut out from her father's house.
It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of
sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain
Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his
boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the
kitchen door.
"Hello, Morton! here, eh? Been hunting? This don't pay. A young
man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the
sunshine talking to the girls. Leave that for nights and Sundays.
I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late. Eh?"
And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.
Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he
rose to go. He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door,
took up the other, and was about to leave. Meantime the captain had
lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.
"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his
sips of water--and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of
Kike. "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare. You oughtn't to
let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet. Here comes Kike
himself. I wonder where he's been to?"
Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate,
evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking
for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat
him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.
"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch
faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that
filley to-day? I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you
ride that she-devil. She'll break your blamed neck some day, and
then there'll be one fool less." And the captain chuckled
triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing. "Don't kick
the dog! What an ill-natured ground-hog you air! If I had the
training of you, I'd take some of that out."
"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."
Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.
"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.
"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his
slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an
ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"
"Tut! tut! Kike, you're crazy, you little brute. What's up?"
"You know what's up. You want to cheat me out of that bottom land;
you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's
holler, without consulting mother or me. I have been over to
Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my
gardeen."
"Colonel Wheeler? Why, that's an insult to me!" And the captain
ceased to laugh, and grew red.
"I hope it is. I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for
the sale of the land; he's afeard of you. But now let me tell you
something, Enoch Lumsden! If you sell my land by that order of the
court, you'll lose more'n you'll make. I ain't afeard of the devil
nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest.
It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and
sheep than what you make will pay for. You cheated pappy, but you
shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike. I'll turn Ingin, and take
Ingin law onto you, you old thief and--"
[Illustration: THE ALTERCATION.]
Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide. "I'll
teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"
Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot. "Hit me if
you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then. You
hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year. You
or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."
Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a
day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton. Morton advanced
and took hold of Kike.
"Come, Kike! Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.
"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose. "I've
got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with
a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us. We'll settle with
blood then."
"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain. "I
know well enough who put Kike up to this. I'll settle with both of
you, some day." Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house,
while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring
to look at Patty.
What Morton dreaded most had come upon him. As for Kike, when once
they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame
was terrible. He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.
"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.
And Morton did not reply.
_CHAPTER VI._