It was a day to make glad the heart of slave or freeman. The earth was
cool from a night-long rain, and a gentle breeze fanned coolness
from the north all day long. The clouds were snow-white, tumbling,
ever-moving, and between them the sky showed blue and deep. Grass, leaf,
weed and flower were in the richness that comes to the green things of
the earth just before that full tide of summer whose foam is drifting
thistle down. The air was clear and the mountains seemed to have brushed
the haze from their faces and drawn nearer that they, too, might better
see the doings of that day.
From the four winds of heaven, that morning, came the brave and the
free. Up from Lee, down from Little Stone Gap, and from over in Scott,
came the valley-farmers--horseback, in buggies, hacks, two-horse wagons,
with wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, in white dresses, flowered
hats, and many ribbons, and with dinner-baskets stuffed with good things
to eat--old ham, young chicken, angel-cake and blackberry wine--to be
spread in the sunless shade of great poplar and oak. From Bum Hollow and
Wildcat Valley and from up the slopes that lead to Cracker's Neck came
smaller tillers of the soil--as yet but faintly marked by the gewgaw
trappings of the outer world; while from beyond High Knob, whose crown
is in cloud-land, and through the Gap, came the mountaineer in the
primitive simplicity of home spun and cowhide, wide-brimmed hat and
poke-bonnet, quaint speech, and slouching gait. Through the Gap he came
in two streams--the Virginians from Crab Orchard and Wise and Dickinson,
the Kentuckians from Letcher and feudal Harlan, beyond the Big
Black--and not a man carried a weapon in sight, for the stern spirit of
that Police Guard at the Gap was respected wide and far. Into the town,
which sits on a plateau some twenty feet above the level of the two
rivers that all but encircle it, they poured, hitching their horses in
the strip of woods that runs through the heart of the place, and broad
ens into a primeval park that, fan-like, opens on the oval level field
where all things happen on the Fourth of July. About the street they
loitered--lovers hand in hand--eating fruit and candy and drinking
soda-water, or sat on the curb-stone, mothers with babies at their
breasts and toddling children clinging close--all waiting for the
celebration to begin.
It was a great day for the Hon. Samuel Budd. With a cheery smile and
beaming goggles, he moved among his constituents, joking with yokels,
saying nice things to mothers, paying gallantries to girls, and chucking
babies under the chin. He felt popular and he was--so popular that he
had begun to see himself with prophetic eye in a congressional seat at
no distant day; and yet, withal, he was not wholly happy.
“Do you know,” he said, “them fellers I made bets with in the tournament
got together this morning and decided, all of 'em, that they wouldn't
let me off? Jerusalem, it's most five hundred dollars!” And, looking
the picture of dismay, he told me his dilemma. It seems that his “dark
horse” was none other than the Wild Dog, who had been practising at home
for this tournament for nearly a year; and now that the Wild Dog was an
outlaw, he, of course, wouldn't and couldn't come to the Gap. And said
the Hon. Sam Budd:
“Them fellers says I bet I'd BRING IN a dark horse who would win this
tournament, and if I don't BRING him in, I lose just the same as though
I had brought him in and he hadn't won. An' I reckon they've got me.”
“I guess they have.”
“It would have been like pickin' money off a blackberry-bush, for I was
goin' to let the Wild Dog have that black horse o' mine--the steadiest
and fastest runner in this country--and my, how that fellow can pick off
the rings! He's been a-practising for a year, and I believe he could run
the point o' that spear of his through a lady's finger-ring.”
“You'd better get somebody else.”
“Ah--that's it. The Wild Dog sent word he'd send over another feller,
named Dave Branham, who has been practising with him, who's just as
good, he says, as he is. I'm looking for him at twelve o'clock, an' I'm
goin' to take him down an' see what he can do on that black horse o'
mine. But if he's no good, I lose five hundred, all right,” and he
sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master
of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of
Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as
umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was
to give the “Charge” to the assembled knights before the tournament.
At ten o'clock the games began--and I took the Blight and the little
sister down to the “grandstand”--several tiers of backless benches with
leaves for a canopy and the river singing through rhododendrons behind.
There was jumping broad and high, and a 100-yard dash and hurdling and
throwing the hammer, which the Blight said were not interesting--they
were too much like college sports--and she wanted to see the base-ball
game and the tournament. And yet Marston was in them all--dogged and
resistless--his teeth set and his eyes anywhere but lifted toward the
Blight, who secretly proud, as I believed, but openly defiant, mentioned
not his name even when he lost, which was twice only.
“Pretty good, isn't he?” I said.
“Who?” she said indifferently.
“Oh, nobody,” I said, turning to smile, but not turning quickly enough.
“What's the matter with you?” asked the Blight sharply.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” I said, and straightway the Blight thought
she wanted to go home. The thunder of the Declaration was still rumbling
in the poplar grove.
“That's the Hon. Sam Budd,” I said.
“Don't you want to hear him?”
“I don't care who it is and I don't want to hear him and I think you are
hateful.”
Ah, dear me, it was more serious than I thought. There were
tears in her eyes, and I led the Blight and the little sister
home--conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I would find that young
jackanapes of an engineer and let him know that anybody who made the
Blight unhappy must deal with me. I would take him by the neck and pound
some sense into him. I found him lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien
to any consciousness that I could have any knowledge of what was going
or any right to poke my nose into anybody's business--and I did nothing
except go back to lunch--to find the Blight upstairs and the little
sister indignant with me.
“You just let them alone,” she said severely.
“Let who alone?” I said, lapsing into the speech of childhood.
“You--just--let--them--alone,” she repeated.
“I've already made up my mind to that.”
“Well, then!” she said, with an air of satisfaction, but why I don't
know.
I went back to the poplar grove. The Declaration was over and the crowd
was gone, but there was the Hon. Samuel Budd, mopping his brow with
one hand, slapping his thigh with the other, and all but executing a
pigeon-wing on the turf. He turned goggles on me that literally shone
triumph.
“He's come--Dave Branham's come!” he said. “He's better than the Wild
Dog. I've been trying him on the black horse and, Lord, how he can take
them rings off! Ha, won't I get into them fellows who wouldn't let me
off this morning! Oh, yes, I agreed to bring in a dark horse, and I'll
bring him in all right. That five hundred is in my clothes now. You see
that point yonder? Well, there's a hollow there and bushes all around.
That's where I'm going to dress him. I've got his clothes all right and
a name for him. This thing is a-goin' to come off accordin' to Hoyle,
Ivanhoe, Four-Quarters-of-Beef, and all them mediaeval fellows. Just
watch me!”
I began to get newly interested, for that knight's name I suddenly
recalled. Little Buck, the Wild Dog's brother, had mentioned him, when
we were over in the Kentucky hills, as practising with the Wild Dog--as
being “mighty good, but nowhar 'longside o' Mart.” So the Hon. Sam might
have a good substitute, after all, and being a devoted disciple of Sir
Walter, I knew his knight would rival, in splendor, at least, any that
rode with King Arthur in days of old.
The Blight was very quiet at lunch, as was the little sister, and my
effort to be jocose was a lamentable failure. So I gave news.
“The Hon. Sam has a substitute.” No curiosity and no question.
“Who--did you say? Why, Dave Branham, a friend of the Wild Dog. Don't
you remember Buck telling us about him?” No answer. “Well, I do--and,
by the way, I saw Buck and one of the big sisters just a while ago. Her
name is Mollie. Dave Branham, you will recall, is her sweetheart. The
other big sister had to stay at home with her mother and little Cindy,
who's sick. Of course, I didn't ask them about Mart--the Wild Dog. They
knew I knew and they wouldn't have liked it. The Wild Dog's around, I
understand, but he won't dare show his face. Every policeman in town is
on the lookout for him.” I thought the Blight's face showed a signal of
relief.
“I'm going to play short-stop,” I added.
“Oh!” said the Blight, with a smile, but the little sister said with
some scorn:
“You!”
“I'll show you,” I said, and I told the Blight about base-ball at the
Gap. We had introduced base-ball into the region and the valley boys
and mountain boys, being swift runners, throwing like a rifle shot from
constant practice with stones, and being hard as nails, caught the game
quickly and with great ease. We beat them all the time at first, but now
they were beginning to beat us. We had a league now, and this was the
championship game for the pennant.
“It was right funny the first time we beat a native team. Of course, we
got together and cheered 'em. They thought we were cheering ourselves,
so they got red in the face, rushed together and whooped it up for
themselves for about half an hour.”
The Blight almost laughed.
“We used to have to carry our guns around with us at first when we went
to other places, and we came near having several fights.”
“Oh!” said the Blight excitedly. “Do you think there might be a fight
this afternoon?”
“Don't know,” I said, shaking my head. “It's pretty hard for eighteen
people to fight when nine of them are policemen and there are forty more
around. Still the crowd might take a hand.”
This, I saw, quite thrilled the Blight and she was in good spirits when
we started out.
“Marston doesn't pitch this afternoon,” I said to the little sister. “He
plays first base. He's saving himself for the tournament. He's done too
much already.” The Blight merely turned her head while I was speaking.
“And the Hon. Sam will not act as umpire. He wants to save his
voice--and his head.”
The seats in the “grandstand” were in the sun now, so I left the
girls in a deserted band-stand that stood on stilts under trees on the
southern side of the field, and on a line midway between third base and
the position of short-stop. Now there is no enthusiasm in any sport that
equals the excitement aroused by a rural base-ball game and I never
saw the enthusiasm of that game outdone except by the excitement of the
tournament that followed that afternoon. The game was close and
Marston and I assuredly were stars--Marston one of the first magnitude.
“Goose-egg” on one side matched “goose-egg” on the other until the end
of the fifth inning, when the engineer knocked a home-run. Spectators
threw their hats into the trees, yelled themselves hoarse, and I saw
several old mountaineers who understood no more of base-ball than of the
lost _digamma_ in Greek going wild with the general contagion. During
these innings I had “assisted” in two doubles and had fired in three
“daisy cutters” to first myself in spite of the guying I got from the
opposing rooters.
“Four-eyes” they called me on account of my spectacles until a new
nickname came at the last half of the ninth inning, when we were in
the field with the score four to three in our favor. It was then that
a small, fat boy with a paper megaphone longer than he was waddled out
almost to first base and levelling his trumpet at me, thundered out in a
sudden silence:
“Hello, Foxy Grandpa!” That was too much. I got rattled, and when there
were three men on bases and two out, a swift grounder came to me, I
fell--catching it--and threw wildly to first from my knees. I heard
shouts of horror, anger, and distress from everywhere and my own heart
stopped beating--I had lost the game--and then Marston leaped in the
air--surely it must have been four feet--caught the ball with his left
hand and dropped back on the bag. The sound of his foot on it and the
runner's was almost simultaneous, but the umpire said Marston's was
there first. Then bedlam! One of my brothers was umpire and the captain
of the other team walked threateningly out toward him, followed by two
of his men with base-ball bats. As I started off myself towards them I
saw, with the corner of my eye, another brother of mine start in a run
from the left field, and I wondered why a third, who was scoring, sat
perfectly still in his chair, particularly as a well-known, red-headed
tough from one of the mines who had been officiously antagonistic ran
toward the pitcher's box directly in front of him. Instantly a dozen of
the guard sprang toward it, some man pulled his pistol, a billy cracked
straightway on his head, and in a few minutes order was restored. And
still the brother scoring hadn't moved from his chair, and I spoke to
him hotly.
“Keep your shirt on,” he said easily, lifting his score-card with his
left hand and showing his right clinched about his pistol under it.
“I was just waiting for that red-head to make a move. I guess I'd have
got him first.”
I walked back to the Blight and the little sister and both of them
looked very serious and frightened.
“I don't think I want to see a real fight, after all,” said the Blight.
“Not this afternoon.”
It was a little singular and prophetic, but just as the words left her
lips one of the Police Guard handed me a piece of paper.
“Somebody in the crowd must have dropped it in my pocket,” he said. On
the paper were scrawled these words:
“_Look out for the Wild Dog!_”