THE "MEANEST WORD."
Mose Whipple had lifted his head in apprehensive inquiry at the sound
of the footsteps outside the door of the cabin. He sprang to his feet
when the sharp knock on the door followed. Holding a hand downward with
outspread fingers as a warning to silence, he tiptoed out to the middle
of the room, then paused and listened.
The knock came again, bolder and more peremptory still.
Vague notions of resistance were shaping themselves in Mose's mind. He
glanced up at the shot-gun hanging on the chimney behind the stovepipe,
and in another instant had it down, with his thumb on the hammer.
"Loaded?" he asked in a whisper, testing the percussion-cap with his
nail.
The old man nodded. Then he, too, laboriously rose to his feet. Bent as
his form was, he stood a taller man than his son. He rested one hand on
the table for support, and stretched out the other with a masterful
gesture.
[Illustration: "GIMME THAT GUN!"]
"Gimme that gun!" he said, in brusque command. Then covering Mose from
head to foot, he added, slowly, "I'd ruther have starved a hundred
times over than had you do this sort o' thing!"
Mose had sheepishly laid the weapon on the table. He walked now with a
sullen air to the door, lifted the hook, and put his hand on the latch.
"Let me in out of the cold, can't ye?" a shrill voice complained
outside. "It's only me, you gump!"
Mose's face brightened. "Why, it's only young Job Parshall, after all!"
he said, and threw the door wide open.
The boy pushed past Mose without a word, and marching across the room
to the stove held his red fingers over the griddles. He lifted them a
little for inspection after a minute's silence, and screwed his
shoulders about in token of the pain they gave him.
"I couldn't run with my hands in my pockets," he said. "I shouldn't
wonder if they was froze. That's just my luck."
Mose advanced to the stove, and looked at Job's hands critically. "That
little finger there is a trifle tetched, I guess," he said. "It'll be
sore for a day or two, that's all. The rest are all right." Then he
added, noting the boy's crimson cheeks and panting breast, "Why, sonny,
you must 'a' run the whole way!"
Job nodded assent, and turned his hands palm upward. "Every inch of the
way," he said between heavy breaths.
Old Asa had sunk again into a chair, and sat gazing in turn at Mose and
the boy. The fire which had glowed in his eyes when he had confronted
his son had died away again. He was visibly striving not to tremble,
and the glance he bent from one to the other was wistful and
shame-faced.
"I suppose you've brought some news," he remarked at last to Job.
The boy nodded again, twisting his fingers experimentally in the heat.
"When I catch my breath, I'll tell ye," he said.
There was a moment's awkward silence; then Asa Whipple, speaking in
low, deliberate tones, rid his mind of some of its burden.
"My son Mose here," he said gravely, "didn't use to be a coward. I
didn't bring him up to be no coward. Seems to me you can bring up a boy
so't he'll be honest and straightforward and square right up to the
last minute, and then lo and behold! he cuts up some low-down, mean
dido or other that makes you 'shamed to look folks in the face.
"My father fit in the Revolution, and so did my mother's father and his
brothers,--their name was Lapham, and they lived in Rhode Island,--and
my older brother, Jason, he was killed up at Sackett's Harbor in the
1812 War before he come of age; and they ain't one of 'em but 'ud turn
in his grave to think they was a coward and a deserter in the family!"
Mose stood behind the stove, stealing furtive glances at the old man
during this harangue. Once or twice he opened his lips as if to speak,
but either no words would come, or he thought better of it.
But Job listened with obvious impatience. He had quite regained his
breath. "Mose ain't no coward!" he broke in vehemently. "It took a
mighty sight more pluck to light out there, of a night, and come way
off up here just to see how you were gettin' on, and have to hide for
his life, than it would to have stayed right still where he was, with
no fightin' and no work, and three square meals a day."
"You might say four, a'most, countin' supper," Mose suggested softly.
Old Asa Whipple seemed impressed with this view of the situation, and
pondered it for a little in silence.
"What I come over to say was," remarked Job, more placidly, "that
they're out lookin' for you, Mose. Two men drove up in a cutter just
after breakfast--one of 'em's Norm' Hazzard, the deputy marshal down at
Octavius, and the other fellow's name is Moak, I b'lieve, and they've
stopped to Teachout's to breakfast. They started from Octavius before
daylight, and they was about froze solid by the time they got to
'Lishe's. They took out their horse, and they've got so much thawin'
out to do themselves, I reckon they ain't more'n about started now, if
they have that."
"You come straight?" asked Mose.
"Well, you'd better believe I did! I scooted 'cross lots like greased
lightnin' the minute they went in t' the house. It's a good hour 'round
by the road, even when it's all open. It's drifted now all the way from
the sash factory down to Taft's place, and it's slow work gettin'
through the fields. As I figure it, you've got more'n an hour's
leeway."
The two men looked at each other as they listened, and they kept up the
mutual gaze after the boy had stopped.
"'Pears to me, dad," Mose finally ventured in a deferential way, "that
you don't seem to take this thing quite in the right spirit. I tell you
straight out, if it was the last word I ever spoke, I ain't done
nothin' I'm ashamed of. A man can't say no more'n that."
"Accordin' to the way I was brought up," replied old Asa, doggedly,
"they ain't no other such an all-fired, pesky mean name for a man in
the dictionary as 'desarter.'"
"Well, anyway," retorted Mose, "I'd ruther be called 'desarter' myself
than have you be called 'starved to death.' So far's I can make out, if
it hadn't ben one, it 'ud ben t'other."
The old man's glance abruptly sought the floor, and lingered there. The
others, as they watched him, could see the muscles of his down-bent
face twitching.
"Besides, they didn't need me down there just now," Mose went on in
more voluble self-defence, "no more'n a frog needs a tail. An' besides
that, they played it monstrous low-down on me. That German fellow that
used to work at the tannery, he was my sergeant, and he kept them big
eyes of his skinned for me all day long. Him and me never hitched very
well down at the mills, you know, and he took it out of me whenever he
got a chance.
"He got all the officers down on me. One day they'd say I'd burnt the
coffee, and the next day that my gun was dirty, and after that that I
was a 'malingerer,'--that's officers' slang for a shirk,--and so on;
and every time it meant that some of my pay got stopped. That's why I
never sent you any money.
"They worked it so't I never got more'n about ten shillings out of my
thirteen dollars, and that I owed twice over before I got it."
Old Asa was looking into his son's face once more, and he nodded
comprehendingly as the other paused. "We never did git a fair show,
like other men," he remarked.
"But I could 'a' stood all that," continued Mose. "What riled me was
when Bill Rood got a letter sayin' that you was poorly, and you stopped
writin'; and then I took pains and behaved extra well, so't even the
Dutchman couldn't put his finger on me. And then I got a chance one
day, and I asked one of the lieutenants that I'd kind o' curried favor
with, doin' odd jobs for him and so on, if he couldn't git me a
furlough, just to run home and see how you was gittin' on."
"I reckon _you_ never got that, Mose."
"No, dad. They was givin' 'em right and left to other fellows, and the
lieutenant said he guessed he could manage it. I don't know how hard he
tried, but a few days after that I see the Dutchman grinnin' at me, and
I felt in my bones that the jig was up. Sure enough, they wouldn't let
me have a furlough because I'd been euchred out of my pay. They wa'n't
no other reason."
"No," said the old man, "that was always the way. I guess me and you
ought to be pretty well used to gittin' the worst of it, by this time.
There's a text in the Bible that's our own private family property, as
much as if it had 'Whipple' marked on it in big letters. It's that one
that says that when a man ain't got anything, he gits took away from
him even what he's got. That's me, Mose, and it's you, too."
Mose had quite recovered his confidence now.
"Of course, if there'd ben any fightin' goin' on, it'd ben different,"
he explained, "but right in the middle of our winnin' everything along
in November, after we'd chased the Johnnies across the Rappahannock and
the Rapidan, and was havin' it all our own way--and in spite of the
rain freezin' as it fell, and no shelter and marchin' till your feet
was ready to fall off, we all liked it first-rate--along come orders
for us to go back again to winter quarters around Brandy Station. So
far as I could see, it was all station and no brandy. And then the new
drafted men, they behaved like sin in camp, and orders got stricter,
and my Dutchman piled it onto me thicker and thicker, and I got to
frettin' about you--and so--so I--I lit out."
"You'd better begin figgerin' on lightin' out agin," said the practical
Job. "I suppose you'll take to the woods, won't you?"
Mose nodded, and reached his hand out for the gun. "Yes," he said,
"five minutes' start'll be all I need. Once I git across the creek I'm
all right. One thing's lucky, there's plenty of powder and shot in the
cupboard there, I see. I suppose, if worst comes to worst, I could get
through the woods up to Canada. But see here,--this is a good deal more
important,--what are you going to do, dad, after I'm gone?"
Old Asa had hardly given this important question a thought before. As
it was forced upon him now, his mind reverted mechanically to that
strange awakening, when he lay in the starved half-stupor on the very
threshold of death, and Mose came in, like some good angel of a dream,
to bring him back to life again. A rush of tenderness, almost of pride,
suddenly suffused the old man's brain.
"Mose," he said, all at once, "I guess I talked more or less like a
fool, here awhile back. Perhaps some folks are entitled to blame you
for turnin' up here, this mornin'--but I ain't one of 'em, and I ought
to known better. I'm stronger, my boy, ever so much stronger, for
seein' you and--eatin' a good meal again. You'll see--I'll be as sound
again as a butternut. I bet I could walk this minute to the bridge
without a break."
"But that wouldn't feed you, after you got there," objected Mose. "Of
course if I could hang around in the neighborhood, and drop in every
now and then to keep an eye on you, it 'ud be different. But they're
sure to watch the place, and with me caught you'd be worse off than
ever. I'd give myself up this minute if only I knew you'd be all right.
But that's the hang of it. There's no mistake, dad," he added, with a
rueful sort of grin, "the last bell was a-ringin' for you when I turned
up here, this mornin'."
It was characteristic of these two men, born and bred here in the
robust air of the forest's borders, that as they confronted this
dilemma, not the shadow of a notion of that standing alternative, the
county-house, crossed either mind. Even if Mose could have thought of
it, he would never have dared suggest it to Asa.
"Come, you'd better be gittin' together what you're goin' to take with
you," broke in Job, peremptorily. "You've got none too much time to
spare."
"Yes, I know," said Mose, with hesitation; "but the old man here--that
worries me."
"You just 'tend to your own knittin'," was the boy's reply. "Asa and
me'll manage for ourselves all right."
Old Asa Whipple opened his eyes wide--not at surprise at hearing his
Christian name fall so glibly from the boy's tongue, for that is the
custom of the section, but with bewilderment at his meaning.
"What on earth are you drivin' at?" demanded Mose, no whit less
puzzled.
"Well," said Job, with deliberation, "I've kind o' soured on that
Teachout job of mine. I've had it in my mind to quit all along, when I
got the chance, and I guess this is about as good as any. I've got
along toward twenty dollars saved up, and there's three days' work a
week for me at the cheese-factory whenever I want to take it, and I
could go to school the other days, and both places are handier to git
at from here than they are from Teachout's. So I'll rig up a bed and so
on here, and I'll look out for the old man. But do you go ahead, and
git out!"
It is another custom of these parts to be undemonstrative in the face
of the unexpected.
Mose merely clapped his hand on Job's shoulder, and said, "You won't
ever be sorry for it, sonny," which had much more of loose prediction
than of pledge about it, yet seemed quite sufficient for them both.
The old man said nothing at all, but sat bending forward in his chair,
his gaze fastened upon every move his son made about the room. For
everything Mose did now spoke plainly of another parting, more sombre
and sinister than the last. A soldier may come back, but how can one
hope for the return of a deserter?
Mose's old instincts as a woodsman rose superior to the exigencies of a
life and death flight. He prepared as if for a holiday camping jaunt
into the wilderness--in a hurried manner, but forgetting nothing.
He made a pile of things on the table--all the powder and shot in the
house, most of the salt, some old stockings, a tin cup, fork and spoon,
and what matches he could find--and then stowed them away in flasks and
his pockets, along with a whole tangled mass of lines, hooks and catgut
fishing gear.
From under the snow in the dismantled shed he unearthed a smaller
frying-pan and two steel traps, and slung these with a string through
handle and chains across his shoulder. Then he took up the gun and was
ready.
"I guess this'll see me through," he said lightly.
Old Asa gazed at him through dimmed eyes. "No, you must take a blanket,
Mose," he said. "I won't hear no for an answer--you must! There's
plenty more for us. If they ain't, we can git more. They're cheap as
dirt. And Mose," the old man rose from his chair as he spoke, "I was
a-goin' to ask you to sing for me afore you went, but I--I guess we'd
better let that go till we meet again. You'll be all right in the
woods----"
"Why, I know twenty places," put in Mose, "where I'll be as snug as a
bug in a rug. I'll make straight for a deer yard. Mebbe"--he chuckled
at the thought--"I'll be bringing you in some venison some o' these
nights. Prob'ly I'll hang it up on a tree--the old butternut by the
fork--so't Job can come out and git it in the mornin'. And in the
spring--why you must come in the spring and--and be with me in the
woods."
The old man's strength had waned once more, and he seated himself.
"Mebbe," was all he said, in a dubious voice, and with his head bowed
on his breast.
He did not lift his head, when Mose shook hands with him; he did not
raise his glance to follow him, either, when, with the traps and
frying-pan clattering about his neck, Mose let himself out by the shed
door and was gone.
He did not even seem to hear when, two or three minutes later, the
reverberating crack of revolver shots--one! two! three! four!
five!--set the echoes clamoring all around the Whipple house.