As Henley, the axe in hand, approached the house, his stepfather-in-law,
with considerable clatter, was hanging the horn on its nail.
"I noticed you was talkin' to Dixie Hart at the fence," he said, as he
discarded his quid of tobacco and stroked his grizzled chin, on which a
week-old beard grew. "Well, if I wasn't no older'n you are, an' was as
good-lookin', which maybe I ain't, I'd chin 'er over the fence mornin',
noon, and night--married or unmarried. Man laws was made to keep us
straight, I reckon; but when the Lord Himself lived on earth they wasn't
quite as bindin' as folks try to make 'em now. A feller, in that day an'
time, could be introduced to a new wife every mornin' at breakfast, if
he could afford to keep a drove of 'em, and still be looked up to as a
wise man and a prophet."
"Dixie was talking about buying a new axe," Henley answered, "but I told
her this one was good enough, and that I'd make Pomp grind it."
"She's as purty as red shoes," old Jason said. "And if she hain't had a
load to bear, no female ever toted one. Talk about justice! Why, Alf,
that gal hain't had a thimbleful sence she was a baby. She has set out
to make a livin' fer a mammy that can't hardly see where she's walkin',
and an aunt that is mighty nigh tied in a knot with rheumatism, and she
is doin' it--bless yore life!--better'n many a man could in the same
plight. Folks say she's already paid old Welborne half on that farm,
and that before long she'll own it, lock, stock, and barrel. As you may
'a' noticed, I sometimes poke jabs of fun at women, but I never do at
her. Somehow I jest can't. I was a-settin' right back of Carrie Wade an'
some more frisky gals at meetin' last Sunday when Dixie come in an' tuck
a seat on the bench ahead of 'em. I don't let women bother me, one way
or another, but I got rippin' mad at that gang. They was makin' sport of
her. One of 'em re'ched over an' felt of the ribbon on the pore gal's
hat, and then they stuffed the'r handkerchiefs in the'r mouths and come
nigh bustin' with giggles. Them sort think they are the whole show, with
their white hands, smellin'-stuff, and the'r eyes on every man that
passes, while a gal like Dixie Hart is overlooked. I've stood thar at
the gate and watched her out in her corn or cotton in the br'ilin' sun
with her hoe goin' up and down as regular as the tick of a clock, while
the other gals was whiskin' by in some drummer's dinky-top buggy or
takin' a snooze flat o' the'r backs in a cool room."
"Is breakfast ready?" Henley asked, with an appreciative nod in
recognition of remarks he did not wish to prolong, as he leaned the axe
against the front gate and ascended the steps.
"Sech as it is," the old man answered, taking another tack. "When me an'
Jane decided to come here to reside, Hettie was goin' to do wonders in
the cookin' line. She was particular to ax just what our favorite dishes
was, and you may remember how she spread herse'f the fust three days
after we was installed. It was like a camp-meetin'. You couldn't think
of a single article that she didn't have ready, in some shape or other.
But after 'while hot things quit comin' and cold uns appeared that had a
familiar look, and now me and you and all of us set down to the same old
seven and six. Well, my jaw teeth ain't as good as they used to be, and
I make out by soakin' my bread-crust in my coffee. Hettie says she's
goin' to have me an' Jane both fitted out with store sets. Folks that
have tried 'em say they beat the old sort all holler--that you kin crack
hickory-nuts if you have both upper and lower and git a fair clamp on
'em and use yore muscles."
Henley turned into the big dining-room, where his "stepmother-in-law," a
diminutive woman, sat at the foot of the oblong table dressed in faded
black, even to the poke sunbonnet which, worn indoors and out,
completely hid her wrinkled face. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on
the side of the board opposite Wrinkle, came from the adjoining kitchen
carrying a steaming pot of coffee, which she put by her plate at the
head of the table, and sat down stiffly. The smooth floor of the room
was bare save for a few rugs made of varicolored rags. The walls had a
few cheap pictures on them--brilliant old-fashioned prints in mahogany
frames, and some enlarged photographs in tawdry gilt. The wide hearth of
a deep chimney was whitewashed, as was also the exposed brickwork up to
a crude mantelpiece on which towered a Colonial clock with wooden
wheels, ornamental dial, ponderous weights, and a painted glass door.
Mrs. Henley had not always been so unattractive; her dark eyes were good
and her face held the glow of fine health. She had added to the severity
of her sharp features by the too-elderly manner in which she parted her
hair exactly in the centre of her high brow and brushed it sharply
backward to a scant knot behind. She wore constantly an expression of
one who was well aware of the fact that vast and vague duties to the
dead as well as to the living rested on her and which should be
performed at any cost. She was not usually talkative, and she had few
observations to make this morning. As she nibbled the hot biscuit, upon
which she had daintily spread a bit of butter, she allowed her glance to
rove perfunctorily over the three plates beyond her own. She asked
Wrinkle if his coffee was strong enough, and the gap in the black bonnet
if the mush was too lumpy. From the bonnet came a mumbling content with
the yellow mass into which cream was being slowly stirred with a
quivering hand. Wrinkle seemed more ready in the use of his tongue.
"I hain't got no complaint to make," he said. "Especially sence Alf said
t'other day at the store that coffee was on the rise. I was curious to
see how this batch would sample out. I reckon when the market takes a
jump storekeepers has to take a lower grade to keep customers satisfied
with the price. But it won't work ef they are as good a judge of the
stuff as I am. I parched this lot myself and picked out heaps o' rotten
grains."
"They wasn't rotten," Henley explained, authoritatively. "They was
water-stained by a wet crop-year, that's all. You was throwing away good
coffee."
"Good or not, the chickens wouldn't eat it," argued the tangled head. "I
know, fer I watched 'em. They was hangin' round the kitchen-door and
would run every time I throwed out a handful, but they didn't swallow
'em any more'n they would so many buckshot. But prices nor nothin' else
will ever git right, if I am any judge, till we git free silver. I tell
you, Alf, that man Bryant is the biggest gun, by all odds, that ever
belched fire in the defence of a helpless nation, and when them dratted
Yankees tricked 'im out of the Presidency they put the ball an' chain o'
slavery on every citizen of this fair land. Bryant told 'em that sixteen
to one would do the work, and what did they say? Huh, they said he was a
fool and didn't know how to figure. I tell you if he was a fool, Solomon
was a idiot. Who was the'r brag man up in Yankeedom?--why, Abe
Lincoln--an' what did he ever do but set back in the White House and
tell smutty jokes, while the rest o' the country was walkin' on its
uppers, eatin' hardtack, sweatin' blood, an' spittin' out minnie-balls.
_That_ man"--Wrinkle swallowed as he pointed the prongs of his fork at
the crayon portrait of Henley's predecessor, which, with shaggy mustache
and partially bald pate, in a new oaken frame, hung near the
clock--"that man was a Bryant supporter from the minute the
sixteen-to-one proposition electrocuted the world to the day of his
death."
"Electro_fied_," corrected Mrs. Henley. "You oughtn't to use words out
of the common. People don't understand them hereabouts."
"Well, they ought to grow up to it," Wrinkle grunted in his cup. "I read
more'n they do, I reckon, an' sometimes a word tickles me till I git it
out."
Henley ate his breakfast in silence. He was known to be a good talker
himself, but he seldom indulged the tendency when Wrinkle was present.
The meal over, he took his hat and went out. The road passing the
farm-house led straight into the main street of the village, and along
it he strode in the soothing, crisp air. His store stood on the square
which encompassed the stone court-house. The store was a plain wooden
building which had never been painted, but had received from time and
the weather a gray, fuzzy coat which answered every purpose. It was
about eighty feet long by thirty in width, and had a porch in front,
which was reached from the sidewalk by a few steps. Ascending to the
door, Henley unlocked it and proceeded from the rather dark interior to
unscrew the faded green window-shutters. These thrown back on the
outside, the light filled the long room, displaying two rows of counters
and shelving. The right-hand side was devoted to dry goods and notions,
the left to groceries, hardware, and crockery. Henley went on to the
rear, where, by lifting a massive wooden bar from iron sockets, he
opened a door in one side of the house. Next he took up a water-pail
from an inverted soap-box, and, emptying the contents, he went to the
well in the adjoining yard, a fenced enclosure which contained a
conglomerate mass of old junk, broken-down wagons, buggies, agricultural
implements, and other odds and ends which the merchant had bought very
low or taken in some sort of exchange for new wares whereby they had
cost him practically nothing. Returning with the water, he had just
seated himself at his desk in the rear when his clerk, James Cahews,
entered at the front, busied himself putting out some samples of
hardware on the porch, and then came back to his employer. He was tall,
well built, had very blue eyes, yellow hair, and a sweeping mustache
which was well curled at the ends. He was without a coat and wore a blue
cravat and a shirt of fancy cotton which matched none too well.
"You beat me to the tank again, Alf," was his jovial greeting. "I would
have got here sooner, but I stopped to drive Mrs. Hayward's cow in for
her. The blamed huzzy took a notion to prance about over the
school-house lot, and the old lady is too near-sighted to see which way
to turn and was afraid she'd get hooked."
"No hurry, no hurry," Henley said, as the other took up a battered tin
sprinkling-pot and, filling it from the pail, began to dampen and sweep
the floor, after which he lazily wiped the counters with a soiled towel.
"Pomp will be here after a while," the clerk said, pausing near where
Henley sat, his glance thoughtfully on the sunlit ground in the yard. "I
come by his cabin. He said he had to run for some medicine for his wife,
and I told him I'd sweep out for him. Them dern niggers had rather take
medicine than eat ice-cream at a festival. I don't know that it's
anybody else's business," he went on, after he had stood the broom in a
corner and was wiping the top of Henley's desk, "but thar is
considerable talk going around that you intend to take a trip to Texas."
"I'm thinking seriously of it," Henley admitted. "I've heard of a deal
or two in land out there that I want to get a finger in. You know, Jim,
that I don't really make my best trades here in this shack; nothing
worth while seems to come this way. I reckon it's because this country
is old and settled. In a new, undeveloped section like that out there
big things is continually happening. The general impression is that a
trading-man can make more amongst ignorant folks than amongst keen
traffickers, but it is a mistake. Folks that ain't born with the flea of
speculation wigglin' in their brain-pans won't never let loose of
nothing. It is the feller that is eternally on the lookout for
opportunities that will sell the shirt off his back to raise money when
he thinks he sees an opening. Then there ain't no fun nor Christianity
in making money out of a fool. I want to know that a feller is up to
snuff and fairly in the game, and then I'll swat 'im if it is in my
power. It's been the ambition of my life to get the best of old Welborne
across the street there. He's made his pile off of widows and orphans,
and if I ever get him under my thumb I'll crack every bone in his hide."
"Traders that have the knack of it like you have, Alf, are simply born
that way," Cahews smiled. "I never had any turn of that sort. I can talk
an old woman into buyin' a dress pattern off of a shelf-worn bolt of
linsey, or a pair of shoes too tight for her, but this way you have of
buying a feller's wagon that breaks down in the road and having it
patched up by a blacksmith that owes you money, and selling the wagon
for more than it cost new--well, as I say, I don't know how to do it."
"I believe myself, as you say, that the trading turn is born in a
feller," Henley laughed, reminiscently. "I know I was swapping knives
'sight unseen' when I was wearing petticoats. I had a stock of old ones
and I kept the jaws of 'em rubbed up bright. My daddy used to whip me
for it. He was one of the best men, Jim, that ever wore shoe-leather,
and he never could stand to see one neighbor get the best of another. He
was dead agin all the deals I made when I was growing up, but I learnt
him the trick and showed him the beauty of it before I was twenty."
"You say you did?" Cahews sat down and eyed his employer eagerly.
"Yes, it come about through my fust hoss-trade," Henley smiled. "It was
this way. Pa was on the lookout for a hoss to do field-work, and he let
everybody know he had the money, and a good many came his way. He wasn't
any judge of hoss-flesh, and a gypsy, passing along, stuck him--burned
the old chap clean to the bone. It was a flea-bitten hoss that was as
round and slick as a ball of butter, and as active under the gypsy's
lash and spur as a frisky young colt. The gypsy said he had paid two
hundred for him, but, as he was anxious to get to his sick wife in
Atlanta, he would make it a hundred and fifty and be thankful that he'd
made one man happy. The old man was his meat. He told him he only had a
hundred and twenty-five, and--well, the gypsy was a smooth article. He
wanted to get his eye on the cash. He said a whole lot about havin' had
counterfeit money paid to him, an' that he had to be careful, and with
that Pa went to the house and got the money and spread it out before the
skunk to prove that it was all right. And in that way the chap got his
hands on it. He shed some tears as he put it into his pocket. Pa said he
kissed the hoss square betwixt the eyes and rubbed him on the nose and
went away with his head hanging down."
"I catch on," the clerk broke in, deeply interested; "it was stolen
property, and your Pa had to give 'im up."
"No, the titles was all right," Henley answered, dryly. "The time come
when Pa would have greeted any claimant with open arms. The hoss had the
disease traders call 'big shoulders.' I was a mile or two off when the
calamity fell, but somebody told me Pa'd bought a hoss, and I come home
as fast as I could. I found Ma and Pa out in the stable-yard, and he was
fairly chattering over his wonderful bargain, and what a kind heart the
gypsy had. Pa saw me and grinned from ear to ear.
"'Say, Alf,' he said, 'you are always making your brags about knowing
hoss-flesh; what do you think of this prince of the turf?'
"I walked round in front of the animal to size him up, and my heart sunk
'way down in my boots. 'Pa,' I said, 'it looks to me like he's got "big
shoulders."'
"'Big nothing!' Pa said; but when he stood in front and took a squint I
saw him turn pale. 'Big shoulders, a dog's hind-foot!' he grunted, and
he was so mad at me that he could hardly talk. He put the hoss in a
stall and jowered at me all that evening, and at the supper-table he
clean forgot to ask the blessing. The more he feared I was right the
worse he got, till Ma had to call him to order by putting the family
Bible in his lap and making him read and pray. I couldn't help laughing,
as serious as it was; for while we was on our knees the thought struck
me that he ought to ask the Lord to bless that gypsy and restore his
wife to health. Well, I was right. Early the next morning, after a good
night's rest and plenty of water and feed, we found the hoss lying down.
He'd get up and go about a little whenever we'd prod 'im, but he'd lie
down whenever our backs was turned."
"I've seen hosses like that," Cahews remarked, "and they might as well
be shot."
"That's exactly what Pa decided to do, after two weeks' nursing and
cajoling," Henley laughed. "He come in to the breakfast-table one
morning with his rifle in his clutch, a sort of resigned look in his
eyes.
"'What are you going to do, Pa?' I asked him.
"'Why, I see that danged thing has got on one of his lively spells,' he
said, 'and I'm going to shoot him while he's at his best. If there is
any hoss-heaven, he'd make a better appearance like he is now than at
any other time. I've had my fill. The sight of that hoss peeping out
betwixt the bars every day at meal-time and lying on a bed of ease the
rest of the day is driving me crazy. He'll be on his way in a few
minutes if I can shoot straight.'
"'No, don't kill 'im,' I said, my trading blood up. 'Let me ride 'im to
town while he's lively and maybe I can git rid of him. I might get a few
dollars for his hide, and that would be better than having to dig a hole
to put 'im in.'
"'No, don't kill 'im here,' Ma said, for she had a tender heart--God
bless her memory--and so the old man hung his gun up on the rack and
went to eating, almost too mad to swallow. Well, after the meal was over
I saddled the hoss and rid into town at a purty lively gait. It was
really astonishing what a decent trot the thing could take at times. You
see, I'd heard that Tobe Wilks, a big hardware man at Carlton, who had a
plantation in the country, was looking for a hoss, and I thought I'd see
what he'd say to mine. I was jest a boy, but I'd hung around
hoss-swappers enough to know that it never was a good idea to be the
first to propose a trade, and so I hitched at the post in front of
Wilks's store and went in. I bought a pound of tenpenny nails, that I
thought would come in handy in patching fences at home, and while the
clerk was weighing 'em up I saw Tobe leave his chair behind a counter
and go out and walk around the hoss. Finally he come to me and said,
said he:
"'Alf, does your Pa want to sell that stack of bones out there?'
"'He don't,' says I, 'fer the hoss is mine; he gave 'im to me.'
"'Oh, that's it!' said Wilks; 'well, do _you_ want to sell him?'
"'Well, I ain't itchin' fer a trade,' I says, and I paid no more
attention to Wilks, pretending to be looking at some ploughshares in a
pile on the floor, till he come at me again.
"'But you _would_ sell him, wouldn't you?' he asked.
"'Well,' I said, slowlike, as if I had some difficulty in recalling
exactly what we'd been talking about, 'I had sorter thought that a good
mule would do the work I have to do better than a hoss.'
"'What would you take for him?' Wilks come at me again, and he looked
kinder anxious. 'I want a hoss to send out to my plantation. They are
needing one about like yours.'
"'It will take a hundred and fifty of any man's money to buy him,' I
says. 'Friend nor foe don't get him for a cent less.'
"Well, we went out to the hoss, and Wilks got astraddle of him, and,
sir, he took him round the square in the purtiest rack you ever saw
shuffle under a saddle. I saw Wilks thought I was his game, for his eyes
was dancing as he lit and hitched.
"'How would a hundred and forty strike you, cash down?' he said.
"'I'm needing the other ten,' I said. 'I'm a one-price man. I know what
I've got in that hoss' (and you bet I did), 'and you can take him or
leave him. I didn't start the talk, nohow.'
"'Well, we won't fight over the ten,' he said, 'but here is one
trouble, Alf. You are under age, and I don't often trade with minors. I
don't know how your daddy may look at it, and I'm going to make this
deal before witnesses so there won't be any trouble later.'
"'You'll not have any trouble with Pa,' says I. 'I'll guarantee that.'
"Well, Wilks called up two of his clerks to see the money handed to me,
and with the wad of bills in my pocket I lit out for home. But the
nearer I got to the house the more I got afraid Pa wouldn't endorse what
I'd done, and so I felt sorter funny when him and Ma met me at the gate,
their eyes wide open in curiosity to know what I'd done.
"'Well, what did you do with the hoss?' Pa wanted to know.
"'I sold him,' says I. 'I let him go to Tobe Wilks for cash.'
"'Cash the devil,' says Pa. 'How much?'
"I drawed out my roll and fluttered the bills in the wind. 'A hundred
and fifty,' I said. 'If I'd asked less he'd have been suspicious and
backed out.'
"Well, sir, Pa was plumb flabbergasted. He leaned against the gate-post
and puffed for air, and Ma was the same way. But he wouldn't touch the
money. 'It's plain open-and-shut stealing,' he said, when he riz to the
surface, 'and we are simply going to hitch a hoss to the buggy and take
the money back.'
"Well, it looked like it was no go. I argued and produced evidence till
I was black in the face, but Pa just kept saying he wouldn't sanction no
such deal, and Ma she agreed with him. So you bet I felt like a whipped
school-boy as me and him set side by side and drove into town. He was
bewailing all the way that he'd fetched into the world an only son that
was no better than a hog-thief in principle, an', if I didn't change, me
'n him would have to part.
"When we got to the square I saw Tobe Wilks standing in the door of the
store, and I saw that he was mad. At first I thought he'd found out
about the hoss, but I saw it wasn't that as soon as he reached the
buggy.
"'Now, I'll tell you right now,' he said to Pa, when the old man drawed
the roll out and started to hand it to him over my legs. 'You sha'n't
come here and try to back down in a fair trade like that. I made it
before witnesses, and your boy said he had your consent. I've sent the
hoss out home, and I don't do business that way.' Pa tried to get in a
word, but Tobe 'ud cut him short as soon as he opened his mouth, so the
old man couldn't do anything but wave the money at him.
"'If you get the hoss you'll do it by law,' Tobe went on, fairly
frothing at the mouth, 'and I'll put your boy in the pen for selling
stolen property. You can't browbeat me, you old hog.'
"'Old hog!' I heard Pa grunt in his beard, and he stuffed the roll down
in his pants pocket. Now Pa wouldn't take advantage of his worst enemy
in a trade, but he'd fight a bosom friend if he was insulted. And before
I could bat my eyes he had lit out of the buggy, and him and Wilks was
engaged in a scrap that'ud make two wildcats go off and take lessons.
The town marshal run up and parted them by the aid of bystanders, and
some of 'em persuaded me to drive Pa home. He was a good, holy man, but
he cussed all the way, and ended by saying that Wilks never should see
hair nor hide of that money. And he never offered it back again,
neither, and him and Wilks never spoke for two years. Pa bought a fine
Kentucky mare with the money, and used to chuckle every time she'd pass
him. He got so he thought hoss-trading wasn't the worst crime on earth."
"And what became of the hoss?" the listener asked.
"I never knew," Henley answered; "men don't advertise such things when
they go against them. But one day, during election, Tobe asked me to
cast a vote for his son, and I promised to do it, and we got kinder
friendly. As he was leaving me he turned back and laid his hand on my
shoulder and said, 'Alf, I've wondered many a time what in the name of
common-sense your Pa wanted with that hoss.'
"'So have I,' said I, and he went one way and me another."
Pomp, the negro porter, was entering the door, and with a laugh Cahews
turned to meet him.