As they were driving into the country road, just beyond the straggling
houses in the outskirts of the town, going toward the mountains, which
lay along the western horizon like blue clouds nestling against the
earth, the planter said:
“I’ve seen you fishing and hunting with Mayhew’s young partner, Nelson
Floyd. You and he are rather intimate, are you not?”
“Jest about as friendly as two men can be,” said Pole, “when one’s rising
in the world an’ t’other is eternally at a standstill, or goin’ down like
a round rock on the side of a mountain. Or maybe, I ought to say, when
one of ’em has had the pluck to educate hisself an’ t’other hardly knows
B from a bull’s foot. I don’t know, Captain, why Nelson Floyd’s friendly
to me. I like him beca’se he is a man from his toe-nails to the end o’
the longest hair on his head.”
“I’ve heard a lot of good things about him,” remarked the planter, “and I
understand, too, that he has his faults.”
“They’re part of his manhood,” said Pole philosophically. “Show me a
feller without faults and I’ll show you one that’s too weak to have ’em.
Nelson’s got some o’ the dust o’ the broad road on his coat, an’ yet I’d
take his place in the general bust-up when old Gabe blows his trumpet
at the millennium a sight quicker than I’d stand in the shoes o’ some
o’ these jack-leg preachers. I tell you, Captain Duncan, ef the Lord’s
goin’ to make favorites o’ some o’ the long-face hypocrites I know, that
is robbin’ widows an’ orphans in the week an’ prayin’ an’ shoutin’ on
Sunday to pull the wool over folkses’ eyes, me an’ Him won’t gee in the
hereafter. You know some’n about that boy’s start in life, don’t you,
Captain?”
“Not much, I must own,” answered the planter.
“Thar it is!” said Pole, with a condemning sneer; “ef the pore boy had
belonged to one o’ the big families in yore ring out in Murray—the high
an’ mighty sort, that owned niggers, you’d ’a’ heard all about him.
Captain, nobody on earth knows how that feller has suffered. All his life
he’s wanted to make some’n of hisself an’ has absolutely to my certain
knowledge had more to contend with than any man alive today. He don’t
even know the exact date of his birth, an’ ain’t plumb sure that his name
really is Floyd. You see, jest at the close of the war a woman—so sick
she could hardly walk—come through the Union lines in East Tennessee with
a baby in her arms. The report is that she claimed that her name was
Floyd, an’ that she called the baby ‘Nelson.’ She put up at a mountain
cabin for the night, a shack where some pore razor-back whites lived
by the name o’ Perdue. Old man Perdue was a lyin’, treacherous scamp,
a bushwhacker and a mountain outlaw, an’ his wife was a good mate to
him. Nelson’s mammy, as I say, was tuck in, but thar wasn’t no doctor
nigh, an’ very little to eat, an’ the next mornin’ she was ravin’ out
of her head, and late that day she died. I’m tellin’ you now all that
Nelson Floyd ever was able to find out, as it came down to him from one
person’s recollection to another’s. Well, the woman was buried som’ers,
nobody knows whar, an’ old Mrs. Perdue kept the baby more beca’se she
was afeared to put it out o’ the way than fer any pity fer it. She had
a whole litter of brats of her own goin’ about winter an’ summer in
the’r shirt-tails, an’ so they left Nelson to scratch fer hisself. Then
the authorities made it hot fer Perdue on some charges agin ’im, and he
left the child with another pore mountain family by name o’ Scott and
moved clean out o’ the country. The Scotts couldn’t remember much more
than hearsay about how Nelson got thar an’ they didn’t care, though they
tried to raise the boy along with three of their own. He had a tough
time of it, for he was a plucky little devil and had a fight mighty nigh
every day with somebody. And as he growed up he naturally fell into bad
company, or it fell into him, like everything else did, an’ he tuck to
drinkin’ an’ become a regular young outlaw; he was a bloodthirsty rowdy
before he was fifteen; shot at one man fer some cause or other an’ barely
escaped bein’ put up fer life—nothin’ but bein’ so young got ’im off. But
one day—now I’m givin’ it to you jest as Nelson told me—one day he said
he got to thinkin’ about the way he was a-goin’, and of his own accord he
made up his mind to call a halt. He wanted to cut clean off from his old
set, an’ so he went to Mayhew and told him he wanted to git work in the
store. Old Mayhew would skin a flea fer its hide an’ tallow, an’ seein’
his money in the boy, he bound ’im to an agreement to work fer his bare
board an’ clothes fer three years.”
“Low enough wages, certainly!” exclaimed the planter.
“Yes, but Nelson didn’t grumble, and Mayhew will tell you hisself that
thar never was sech a worker sence the world was made. He was a general
hand at ever’thing, and as bright as a new dollar and as quick as a steel
trap. The Lord only knows when or how he did it, fer nobody ever seed a
book in his hands in business hours, but he l’arned to read and write
and figure. An’ that wasn’t all. Mayhew was sech an old skinflint, and
so hard on folks who got in his debt, that nobody traded at his shebang
except them that couldn’t go anywhars else; but lo and behold! Nelson
made so many friends that they flocked around ’im from all directions
an’ the business of the house was more than doubled at a jump. Mayhew
knowed the cause of it, fer lots o’ customers throwed it up to ’im. The
prosperity was almost too much fer the old skunk; in fact, he got mighty
nigh scared at it and actually tried to dam the stream o’ profit. To
keep up such a business big credit had to be extended, and it was a new
venture fer the cautious old scamp. But Nelson had perfect faith in all
his friends, and thar it stood—a beardless boy holdin’ forth that it was
the old man’s chance fer a lifetime to git rich, and old Mayhew half
believin’ it, crazy to act on Nelson’s judgment, an’ yet afraid it would
be ruination. That was at the close of the boy’s three-year contract. He
was then about twenty year old, and I was in the store and heard the talk
between ’em. We was all a-settin’ at the big wood stove in the back end,
me an’ the old man, an’ Nelson and Joe Peters, a clerk, who is still with
the firm. I shall never forgit that night as long as I live. I gloried
in the boy’s spunk to sech an extent I could ’a’ throwed up my hat an’
hollered.
“‘I’ve been waitin’ to have a talk with you, Mr. Mayhew,’ Nelson said.
‘Our contract is out today, and you an’ me disagree so much about runnin’
the business that I hardly know what I ought to do an’ not stand in my
own light. We’ve got to make a fresh contract anyway.’
“‘I knowed that was comin’,’ old Mayhew said, with one o’ his big,
hoggish grunts. ‘People for miles around have made it the’r particular
business to fill you up with ideas about what you are wuth. I’ve thought
some about lettin’ you go an’ see ef me an’ Joe cayn’t keep things
a-movin’, but you know the trade round here, an’ I want to do the fair
thing. What do you think yore time’s wuth?’” Pole laughed. “The old skunk
was usin’ exactly the same words he’d ’a’ used ef he was startin’ in to
buy a load o’ produce an’ wanted to kill expectation at the outset.
“‘I want fifty dollars a month, under certain conditions,’ the boy said,
lookin’ the old skinflint straight in the eye.
“‘Fifty—huh! yo’re crazy, stark’ starin’ crazy—plumb off yore base!’ the
old man said, his lip twisted up like it is when he’s mad. ‘I see myse’f
payin’ a beardless boy a Broadway salary to work in a shack like this out
here in the mountains.’
“‘Well, I’ll jest be obliged to quit you then,’ Nelson said as steady as
a millpond on a hot day in August, ’an’ I’d sorter hate to do it. Moore
& Trotter, at Darley, offer me that fer the fust six months, with an
increase later.’
“‘Moore & Trotter!’ the old skunk grunted loud enough to be heard clean
to the court-house. They was the only firm in this end o’ the state that
controlled as much custom as Mayhew did, an’ it struck the old chap
under the ribs. He got up from his chair an’ walked clean down to the
front door. It was shet an’ locked, but thar was a lamp on the show-case
nigh whar he stopped, an’ I could see his old face a-workin’ under
the influence o’ good an’ evil. Purty soon he grunted, an’ come back,
thumpin’ his old stick agin barrels an’ boxes along the way.
“‘How am I goin’ to know whether they offered you that much or not?’ he
axed.
“‘Beca’se I said so,’ Nelson told ’im, an’ his dark eyes was flashin’
like lightnin’. He stood up an’ faced the old codger. ‘I’ll tell you one
thing, Mr. Mayhew,’ he let fly at ’im, ’ef you don’t know whether I’m
tellin’ the truth or not you’d better let me go, fer a man that will lie
will steal. I say they offered me fifty dollars. I’ve got the’r written
proposition in my pocket, but I’ll be hanged ef I show it to you.’”
“Good!” exclaimed Duncan.
“Well, it knocked the old man clean off his feet,” Pole went on. “He sat
down in his chair again, all of a tremble an’ white about the mouth.
Stingy people git scared to death at the very idea o’ payin’ out money,
anyway, an’ stingy don’t fit that old cuss. Ef Noah Webster had known him
he’d ’a’ made another word fer that meanin’. I don’t know but he’d simply
’a’ spelled out the old man’s name an’ ’a’ been done with it.”
“What answer did Mayhew give the young man, Baker?” asked the planter in
a tone which indicated no little interest.
“Why, he jest set still for awhile,” said Pole, “an’ me an’ Joe Peters
was a-wonderin’ what he’d say. He never did do anything sudden. Ef he
ever gits thar he’ll feel his way through heaven’s gate. I seed ’im keep
a woman standin’ in the store once from breakfast to dinner-time while
he was lookin’ fer a paper o’ needles she’d called fer. Every now an’
then he’d quit huntin’ fer the needles an’ go an’ wait on some other
customer, an’ then come back to ’er. She was a timid sort o’ thing, an’
didn’t seem to think she had the right to leave, bein’ as she had started
the search. Whenever she’d go towards the door to see ef her hoss was
standin’, he’d call ’er back an’ ax ’er about ’er crap an’ tell ’er not
to be in a hurry—that Rome wasn’t built in a day, an’ the like. You know
the old cuss has some education. Finally he found the needles an’ tuck
another half an hour to select a scrap o’ paper little enough to wrap ’em
up in. But you axed me what Mayhew said to ’im. You bet the boy was too
good a trader to push a matter like that to a head. He’d throwed down the
bars, an’ he jest waited fer the old man to go through of his own accord.
Finally Mayhew axed, as indifferent as he could under all his excitement,
‘When do you intend to answer the letter you say you got from Moore &
Trotter?’
“‘I’ve already answered it,’ Nelson said. ‘I told ’em I appreciated the’r
offer an’ would run over an’ see ’em day after tomorrow.’”
“Good, very well said, Baker!” laughed Captain Duncan. “No wonder the
young man’s become rich. You can’t keep talent like that down. But what
did old Mayhew say?”
“It was like pullin’ eye-teeth,” answered Pole, “but he finally come
across. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I reckon you kin make yorese’f as useful to me
as you kin to them, an’ ef you are bent on ridin’ me to death, after I
picked you up an’ give you a start an’ l’arnt you how to do business, I
reckon I’ll have to put up with it.’
“‘I don’t feel like I owe you anything,’ said Nelson as plucky as a
banker demandin’ good security on a loan. ‘I’ve worked for you like a
slave for three years for my bare livin’ an’ my experience, an’ from now
on I am goin’ to work for Number One. I said that I’d stay for fifty
dollars a month on certain conditions.’
“‘Conditions?’ the old man growled. ‘What conditions do you mean?’
“‘Why, it’s jest this,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ve had my feelin’s, an’ the
feelin’s o’ my friends, hurt time after time by you turnin’ folks off
without credit when I knowed they would meet the’r obligations. Now, ef
I stay with you it is with the distinct understandin’ that I have the
authority to give or refuse credit whenever I see fit.’
“That knocked the old man off his perch agin. He wilted an’ sat thar as
limp as a dish-rag. Joe Peters worships the ground Nelson walks on, an’
as ’feard as he was o’ the old man, he busted out in a big chuckle, an’
rubbed his hands together. Besides he knowed the boy was talkin’ fer the
interest o’ the business. He’d seed no end o’ good customers sent off fer
no reason in the world than that Mayhew was scared o’ his shadow.
“‘I’ll never consent to _that!_’ Mayhew said, mighty nigh clean whipped
out.
“‘Well, Moore & Trotter _will_,’ Nelson said. ‘That’s one o’ the things
laid down in the’r proposition.’ An’ the boy went to the desk an’ drawed
out a sheet o’ paper an’ dipped his pen in the ink. The old man set
quivering awhile, an’ then got up an’ went an’ stood behind the boy. ‘Put
down yore pen,’ said he, with a sigh from away down inside of ’im. ‘It
would ruin me fer you to go to Darley—half the trade would follow you. Go
ahead; I’ll keep you an’ run the risk.’”
The planter had been listening attentively, and he now said admiringly:
“Even at that early age the boy was showing what developed later. It
wasn’t long after that before he became the old man’s partner, I believe.”
“The next year,” answered Pole. “He saved every dollar of his wages,
and made some good investments that turned out money. It wasn’t a big
slice of the business at fust, but he now owns a half, an’, countin’ his
outside interests, he’s wuth a great deal more than old Mayhew. He’s rich
already, Captain.”
“So I’ve heard the women say,” smiled the planter. “Women always keep
track of well-to-do unmarried men.”
“It hain’t spiled Nelson one bit, though,” added Baker. “He’s the same
unselfish friend to me as he ever was, and I hain’t hardly got a roof
to cover me an’ mine. But, as solid as he always was, he had a serious
back-set about three years ago, and all his well-wishers thought it was
goin’ to do him up.”
“You mean when he took to drinking,” said Captain Duncan interrogatively.
“Yes, that’s what I mean. He’d formed the habit when he was a boy, and,
along with his prosperity an’ late work hours, it begun to fasten its
claws on ’im like it has on some other folks I know, Captain. He had a
lot o’ night work to do, an’ Thigpen’s bar was right j’inin’ the store.
Nelson used to slide in at the back door whenever the notion struck ’im,
and he made the trail hot, I tell you. Old Mayhew kept a sharp eye on
’im, an’ ever’ now and then he’d git powerful blue over the way things
was a-goin’. Finally the old cuss got desperate an’ called a halt. He had
a straight talk with Nelson, an’ told ’im they would have to divide the’r
interests, that he wasn’t a drinkin’ man hisse’f, an’ he didn’t want to
be yoked to one that was soaked half the time. It fetched the boy to his
senses. He come over to my house that night an’ called me out to the
fence.
“‘I want to make a deal with you, Pole,’ said he.
“‘With me?’ says I. ‘What sort of a deal?’
“‘Why,’ said he, ‘I’ve made up my mind to swear off fer good an’ all, an’
I want you to j’ine me.’
“I agreed all right,” Pole laughed. “In fact, I was sorter in that
business. I’d promised every preacher an’ temperance worker in the
county to quit, an’ I couldn’t refuse a friend what I was dispensin’ so
freely right an’ left. So I said, said I, ‘All right, Nelson; I’m with
you.’”
“And how did it come out?” questioned the planter as he bowed to a wagon
full of farmers going in an opposite direction.
“His vaccination tuck,” Pole smiled. “He had a mighty sore arm fer a week
or so, but he held out. As fer me, I was so dern glad to see his success
in abstainin’ that I started in to celebrate. I did try at fust, though.
One mornin’ I went in the store an’ seed Nelson have sech a clean,
prosperous look an’ so well satisfied with his stand that I went out with
fresh resolutions. What did I do? I went to the barroom an’ bought four
pint bottles o’ red rye an’ tuck ’em home with me. I set ’em all in a
straight row on the mantel-shelf, nigh the edge, in front o’ the clock,
an’ was standin’ lookin’ at ’em when Sally, my wife, come in. She seed
the display an’ jest set kerflop down in her chair an’ begun to whimper.
“‘You hold on,’ said I; ‘don’t you cross a foot-log till the tree’s
down. I’m tryin’ a new dicker. I’ve always heard that familiarity breeds
contempt, an’ I’ve also heard that the hair o’ the dog is good fer the
bite. Now, I’ve tried my level best to quit liquor by stayin’ away from
it an’ I’m a-goin’ to see ef I cayn’t do it with its red eye on me all
the time.’ Well, Captain, the sweet little woman—she’s a sweet, dear
little creature, Captain Duncan, ef I do say it myself.”
“I’ve always heard so, Baker,” the planter said. “She’s very popular with
your neighbors.”
“An’ I’m jest t’other way,” said Pole. “Well, Sally, she got up an’
kissed me, an’ said that somehow she felt like my plan would work.”
“And did it—I mean,” the Captain recalled Pole’s spree of only the night
before, “I mean did it work for any length of time?”
“I was goin’ on to tell you,” answered the mountaineer. “That night fer
the fust time sence my marriage I woke smack dab in the middle o’ the
night, an’ as I laid thar in the room filled with moonlight I couldn’t
see a blessed thing but that row o’ bottles, an’ then my mouth set in
to waterin’ at sech a rate that I got afeard I’d ketch my death from
sleepin’ on a wet pillow. It was certainly a struggle with the flesh.
I’d put my thirst, when she’s good an’ dry, agin any that ever tickled a
human throat. It ’ud take the blue ribbon at a state fair. It’s a rail
thing; it kin walk an’ talk an’ kick an’ squirm, but it won’t be dictated
to. Finally Sally woke up an’ said:
“‘What’s the matter, Pole? Hain’t you comfortable?’
“‘Comfortable, the devil!’ said I. I’m usually polite to Sally, but I
felt like that wasn’t no time an’ place to talk about little matters.
‘Comfortable, nothin’,’ said I; ‘Sally, ef you don’t take that “dog-hair”
out o’ this house an’ hide it, I’ll be as drunk as a b’iled owl in ten
minutes.’
“’“Dog-hair?”’ said she, an’ then the little woman remembered an’ got
up. I heard the bottles tinkle like sorrowful good-bye bells callin’
wanderin’ friends back to the fold as she tuck ’em up an’ left. Captain,
I felt jest like”—Pole laughed good-naturedly—“I felt like thar was a
plot agin the best friends I ever had. I actually felt sorry fer them
bottles, an’ I got up an’ stood at the window an’ watched Sally as she
tuck ’em away out in the lonely moonlight to the barn. I seed ’er climb
over the fence o’ the cow-lot an’ go in the side whar I kept my hay an’
fodder an’ roughness fer my cattle. Then I laid down in bed agin.”
“That was certainly a courageous thing to do,” said the planter, “and you
deserve credit for putting your foot down so firmly on what you felt was
so injurious, even, even—” the Captain came back again to reality—“even
if you did not remain firm very long afterward.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” the ex-moonshiner laughed again, and his
eyes twinkled in subtle enjoyment, “it tuck Sally longer, it seemed to
me, to git to sleep after she got back than it ever had in all her life.
Of all times on earth she wanted to talk. But I shet ’er off. I made
like I was breathin’ good an’ deep an’ then she set in too. What did I
do? Captain Duncan, I spent the best half o’ that night out in the barn
lookin’ fer hens’ nests. I found two an’ had to be put to bed at sun-up.”
The planter laughed heartily. “There is one good thing about the
situation, Baker,” he said, “and that is, your making a joke of it. I
believe you will get the under-hold on the thing some day and throw it
over. Coming back to your friend Floyd; it’s a fact that he gave up
whisky, but if reports are true, he has another fault that is almost as
bad.”
“Oh, you mean all that talk about Jeff Wade’s sister,” answered the
mountaineer.
“Yes, Baker, a reputation of that sort is not a desirable thing in any
community. I know that many brainy and successful men hold that kind of
thing lightly, but it will down anybody who tampers with it.”
“Now, look here, Captain,” Pole said sharply, “don’t you be plumb
foolish! Ain’t you got more sense ’an to swallow everything that passes
amongst idle women in these mountains? Nelson Floyd, I’ll admit, has got
a backbone full o’ the fire o’ youth an’ strong-blooded manhood, but
he’s, to my positive knowledge, one o’ the cleanest young men I ever come
across. To tell you the truth, I don’t believe he ever made but that
one slip. It got out, an’ beca’se he was rich an’ prominent, it raised
a regular whirlwind o’ gossip an’ exaggeration. If the same thing had
happened to half a dozen other young men round about here, not a word
would ’a’ been said.”
“Oh, I see!” smiled the planter. “He’s not as black as he’s painted,
then?”
“Not by a jugful!” said the farmer. “I tell you he’s all right, Captain,
an’ folks will know it ’fore long.”