SOON the fine weather was at an end. One day it was soft and warm, with
a tender blue haze over the distant woods and a sun like a blood-orange
in the tranquil sky, and birds twittering about among the elders and
sumac along the rail-fences. And the next day everything was gray and
lifeless and desolate, with fierce winds sweeping over the bare fields,
and driving the cold rain in sheets before them.
Some people--among them Hurley--said it was the equinoctial that was
upon us. Abner Beech ridiculed this, and proved by the dictionary that
the equinoctial meant September 22d, whereas it was now well-nigh the
end of October. The Irishman conceded that in books this might be so,
but stuck wilfully to it that in practice the equinoctial came just
before winter set in. After so long a period of saddened silence
brooding over our household, it was quite a relief to hear the men argue
this question of the weather.
Down at the Corners old farmers had wrangled over the identity of the
equinoctial ever since I could remember. It was pretty generally agreed
that each year along some time during the fall, there came a storm which
was properly entitled to that name, but at this point harmony ended.
Some insisted that it came before Indian Summer, some that it followed
that season, and this was further complicated by the fact that no one
was ever quite sure when it was Indian Summer. There were all sorts of
rules for recognizing this delectable time of year, rules connected, I
recall, with the opening of the chestnut burrs, the movement of birds,
and various other incidents in nature’s great processional, but these
rules rarely came right in our rough latitude, and sometimes never came
at all--at least did not bring with them anything remotely resembling
Indian Summer, but made our autumn one prolonged and miserable
succession of storms. And then it was an especially trying trick to
pick out the equinoctial from the lot--and even harder still to prove to
sceptical neighbors that you were right.
Whatever this particular storm may have been it came too soon. Being so
short-handed on the farm, we were much behind in the matter of drawing
our produce to market. And now, after the first day or two of rain, the
roads were things to shudder at. It was not so bad getting to and from
the Corners, for Agrippa Hill had a gravel formation, but beyond the
Corners, whichever way one went over the bottom lands of the Nedahma
Valley, it was a matter of lashing the panting teams through seas of mud
punctuated by abysmal pitch-holes, into which the wheels slumped over
their hubs, and quite generally stuck till they were pried out with
fence-rails.
Abner Beech was exceptionally tender in his treatment of live-stock. The
only occasion I ever heard of on which he was tempted into using his big
fists upon a fellow-creature, was once, long before my time, when one of
his hired men struck a refractory cow over its haunches with a shovel.
He knocked this man clear through the stanchions. Often Jeff and I
used to feel that he carried his solicitude for horse-flesh too
far--particularly when we wanted to drive down to the creek for a summer
evening swim, and he thought the teams were too tired.
So now he would not let us hitch up and drive into Octavius with even
the lightest loads, on account of the horses. It would be better to
wait, he said, until there was sledding; then we could slip in in no
time. He pretended that all the signs this year pointed to an early
winter.
The result was that we were more than ever shut off from news of the
outer world. The weekly paper which came to us was full, I remember, of
political arguments and speeches--for a Congress and Governor were to
be elected a few weeks hence--but there were next to no tidings from the
front. The war, in fact, seemed to have almost stopped altogether, and
this paper spoke of it as a confessed failure. Farmer Beech and Hurley,
of course, took the same view, and their remarks quite prepared me from
day to day to hear that peace had been concluded.
But down at the Corners a strikingly different spirit reigned. It quite
surprised me, I know, when I went down on occasion for odds and ends
of groceries which the bad roads prevented us from getting in town, to
discover that the talk there was all in favor of having a great deal
more war than ever.
This store at the Corners was also the post-office, and, more important
still, it served as a general rallying place for the men-folks of the
neighborhood after supper. Lee Watkins, who kept it, would rather have
missed a meal of victuals any day than not to have the “boys” come in of
an evening, and sit or lounge around discussing the situation. Many of
them were very old boys now, garrulous seniors who remembered
“Matty” Van Buren, as they called him, and told weird stories of the
Anti-Masonry days.
These had the well-worn arm-chairs nearest the stove, in cold weather,
and spat tobacco-juice on its hottest parts with a precision born of
long-time experience. The younger fellows accommodated themselves about
the outer circle, squatting on boxes, or with one leg over a barrel,
sampling the sugar and crackers and raisins in an absent-minded way each
evening, till Mrs. Watkins came out and put the covers on. She was a
stout, peevish woman in bloomers, and they said that her husband, Lee,
couldn’t have run the post-office for twenty-four hours if it hadn’t
been for her. We understood that she was a Woman’s Rights’ woman, which
some held was much the same as believing in Free Love. All that was
certain, however, was that she did not believe in free lunches out of
her husband’s barrels and cases.
The chief flaw in this village parliament was the absence of an
opposition. Among all the accustomed assemblage of men who sat about,
their hats well back on their heads, their mouths full of strong
language and tobacco, there was none to disagree upon any essential
feature of the situation with the others. To secure even the merest
semblance of variety, those whose instincts were cross-grained had to
go out of their way to pick up trifling points of difference, and the
arguments over these had to be spun out with the greatest possible care,
to be kept going at all. I should fancy, however, that this apparent
concord only served to keep before their minds, with added persistency,
the fact that there was an opposition, nursing its heretical wrath in
solitude up on the Beech farm. At all events, I seemed never to go into
the grocery of a night without hearing bitter remarks, or even curses,
levelled at our household.
It was from these casual visits--standing about on the outskirts of the
gathering, beyond the feeble ring of light thrown out by the kerosene
lamp on the counter--that I learned how deeply the Corners were opposed
to peace. It appeared from the talk here that there was something very
like treason at the front. The victory at Antietam--so dearly bought
with the blood of our own people--had been, they said, of worse than no
use at all. The defeated Rebels had been allowed to take their own
time in crossing the Potomac comfortably. They had not been pursued
or molested since, and the Corners could only account for this on the
theory of treachery at Union headquarters. Some only hinted guardedly
at this. Others declared openly that the North was being sold out by its
own generals. As for old “Jee” Hagadorn, who came in almost every night,
and monopolized the talking all the while he was present, he made no
bones of denouncing McClellan and Porter as traitors who must be hanged.
Quivering with excitement, the red stubbly hair standing up all round
his drawn and livid face, his knuckles rapping out one fierce point
after another on the candle-box, as he filled the little hot room with
angry declamation. “Go it, Jee!”
“Give ’em Hell!”
“Hangin’s too good for ’em!” his auditors used to exclaim in
encouragement, whenever he paused for breath, and then he would start
off again still more furiously, till he had to gasp after every word,
and screamed “Lincoln-ah!” “Lee-ah!” “Antietam-ah!” and so on, into
our perturbed ears. Then I would go home, recalling how he had formerly
shouted about “Adam-ah!” and “Eve-ah!” in church, and marvelling that he
had never worked himself into a fit, or broken a bloodvessel.
So between what Abner and Hurley said on the farm, and what was
proclaimed at the Corners, it was pretty hard to figure out whether the
war was going to stop, or go on much worse than ever.
Things were still in this doubtful state, when election Tuesday came
round. I had not known or thought about it, until at the breakfast-table
Abner said that he guessed he and Hurley would go down and vote before
dinner. He had some days before.
He comes before me as I write--this thin form secured a package of
ballots from the organization of his party at Octavius, and these he now
took from one of the bookcase drawers, and divided between himself and
Hurley.
“They won’t be much use, I dessay, peddlin’ ’em at the polls,” he said,
with a grim momentary smile, “but, by the Eternal, we’ll vote ’em!”
“As many of ’em as they’ll be allowin’ us,” added Hurley, in chuckling
qualification.
They were very pretty tickets in those days, with marbled and plaided
backs in brilliant colors, and spreading eagles in front, over the
printed captions. In other years I had shared with the urchins of the
neighborhood the excitement of scrambling for a share of these ballots,
after they had been counted, and tossed out of the boxes. The conditions
did not seem to be favorable for a repetition of that this year, and
apparently this occurred to Abner, for of his own accord he handed me
over some dozen of the little packets, each tied with a thread, and
labelled, “State,” “Congressional,” “Judiciary,” and the like. He,
moreover, consented--the morning chores being out of the way--that I
should accompany them to the Corners. The ground had frozen stiff
overnight, and the road lay in hard uncompromising ridges between the
tracks of yesterday’s wheels. The two men swung along down the hill
ahead of me, with resolute strides and their heads proudly thrown back,
as if they had been going into battle. I shuffled, on behind in my new
boots, also much excited. The day was cold and raw.
The polls were fixed up in a little building next to the post-office--a
one-story frame structure where Lee Watkins kept his bob-sleigh and
oil barrels, as a rule. These had been cleared out into the yard, and
a table and some chairs put in in their place. A pane of glass had been
taken out of the window. Through this aperture the voters, each in
his turn, passed their ballots, to be placed by the inspectors in the
several boxes ranged along the window-sill inside. A dozen or more men,
mainly in army overcoats, stood about on the sidewalk or in the road
outside, stamping their feet for warmth, and slapping their shoulders
with their hands, between the fingers of which they held little packets
of tickets like mine--that is to say, they were like mine in form and
brilliancy of color, but I knew well enough that there the resemblance
ended abruptly. A yard or so from the window two posts had been driven
into the ground, with a board nailed across to prevent undue crowding.
Abner and Hurley marched up to the polls without a word to any one, or
any sign of recognition from the bystanders. Their appearance, however,
visibly awakened the interest of the Corners, and several young fellows
who were standing on the grocery steps sauntered over in their wake to
see what was going on. These, with the ticket-peddlers, crowded up close
to the window now, behind our two men.
“Abner Beech!” called the farmer through the open pane, in a defiant
voice. Standing on tiptoe, I could just see the heads of some men
inside, apparently looking through the election books. No questions were
asked, and in a minute or so Abner had voted and stood aside a little,
to make room for his companion.
“Timothy Joseph Hurley!” shouted our hired man, standing on his toes to
make himself taller, and squaring his weazened shoulders.
“Got your naturalization papers?” came out a sharp, gruff inquiry
through the window-sash.
“That I have!” said the Irishman, wagging his head in satisfaction at
having foreseen this trick, and winking blandly into the wall of stolid,
hostile faces encircling him. “That I have!”
He drew forth an old and crumpled envelope, from his breast-pocket, and
extracted some papers from its ragged folds, which he passed through
to the inspector. The latter just cast his eye over the documents and
handed them back.
“Them ain’t no good!” he said, curtly.
“What’s that you’re saying?” cried the Irishman. “Sure I’ve voted on
thim same papers every year since 1856, an’ niver a man gainsaid me. No
good, is it? Huh!”
“Why ain’t they no good?” boomed in Abner Beech’s deep, angry voice. He
had moved back to the window.
“Because they ain’t, that’s enough!” returned the inspector. “Don’t
block up the window, there! Others want to vote!”
“I’ll have the law on yez!” shouted Hurley. “I’ll swear me vote in!
I’ll--I’ll--”
“Aw, shut up, you Mick!” some one called out close by, and then there
rose another voice farther back in the group: “Don’t let him vote! One
Copperhead’s enough in Agrippa!”
“I’ll have the law--” I heard Hurley begin again, at the top of his
voice, and Abner roared out something I could not catch. Then as in a
flash the whole cluster of men became one confused whirling tangle of
arms and legs, sprawling and wrestling on the ground, and from it rising
the repellent sound of blows upon flesh, and a discordant chorus of
grunts and curses. Big chunks of icy mud flew through the air, kicked up
by the boots of the men as they struggled. I saw the two posts with the
board weave under the strain, then give way, some of the embattled group
tumbling over them as they fell. It was wholly impossible to guess who
was who in this writhing and tossing mass of fighters. I danced up and
down in a frenzy of excitement, watching this wild spectacle, and, so I
was told years afterward, screaming with all my might and main.
Then all at once there was a mighty upheaval, and a big man
half-scrambled, half-hurled himself to his feet. It was Abner, who had
wrenched one of the posts bodily from under the others, and swung it
now high in air. Some one clutched it, and for the moment stayed its
descent, yelling, meanwhile, “Look out! Look out!” as though life itself
depended on the volume of his voice.
The ground cleared itself as if by magic. On the instant there was
only Abner standing there with the post in his hands, and little Hurley
beside him, the lower part of his face covered with blood, and his
coat torn half from his back. The others had drawn off, and formed
a semicircle just out of reach of the stake, like farm-dogs round a
wounded bear at bay. Two or three of them had blood about their heads
and necks.
There were cries of “Kill him!” and it was said afterward that Roselle
Upman drew a pistol, but if he did others dissuaded him from using it.
Abner stood with his back to the building, breathing hard, and a good
deal covered with mud, but eyeing the crowd with a masterful ferocity,
and from time to time shifting his hands to get a new grip on that
tremendous weapon of his. He said not a word.
The Irishman, after a moment’s hesitation, wiped some of the blood
from his mouth and jaw, and turned to the window again. “Timothy Joseph
Hurley!” he shouted in, defiantly.
This time another inspector came to the front--the owner of the tanyard
over on the Dutch road, and a man of importance in the district.
Evidently there had been a discussion inside.
“We will take your vote if you want to swear it in,” he said, in a
pacific tone, and though there were some dissenting cries from the crowd
without, he read the oath, and Hurley mumbled it after him.
Then, with some difficulty, he sorted out from his pocket some torn and
mud-stained packets of tickets, picked the cleanest out from each, and
voted them--all with a fine air of unconcern.
Abner Beech marched out behind him now with a resolute clutch on the
stake. The crowd made reluctant way for them, not without a good many
truculent remarks, but with no offer of actual violence. Some of the
more boisterous ones, led by Roselle Upman, were for following them,
and renewing the encounter beyond the Corners. But this, too, came to
nothing, and when I at last ventured to cross the road and join Abner
and Hurley, even the cries of “Copperhead” had died away.
The sun had come out, and the frosty ruts had softened to stickiness.
The men’s heavy boots picked up whole sections of plastic earth as they
walked in the middle of the road up the hill.
“What’s the matter with your mouth?” asked Abner at last, casting a
sidelong glance at his companion. “It’s be’n a-bleedin’.”
Hurley passed an investigating hand carefully over the lower part of
his face, looked at his reddened fingers, and laughed aloud. “I’d a fine
grand bite at the ear of one of them,” he said, in explanation. “‘Tis no
blood o’ mine.” Abner knitted his brows. “That ain’t the way we fight
in this country,” he said, in tones of displeasure. “Bitin’ men’s ears
ain’t no civilized way of behavin’.”
“’Twas not much of a day for civilization,” remarked Hurley, lightly;
and there was no further conversation on our homeward tramp.