THE PETTICOAT AND THE PRETENDER
Not least among the things which the devil's imps ought to know from
watching the world is this: that hatred is always big when one is young.
Then, if the heart is bitter, it is bitter through and through. It is
terribly just, and terribly vindictive against the stranger who hurts us
with a cruel word, against our brother when we have misunderstood his
heart, against the traitor who owes us love because we loaned him love.
It is strange, too, how that hatred becomes a great force, pressing out
the empty places of the heart, and making the weak, strong, and the
simple, crafty.
El Mahdi ran with his jaws set on the bit, jumping high and striking the
earth with his legs half stiff, the meanest of all the mean whims of
this eccentric horse. On the level it was a hard enough gait; and on the
hill road none could have stood the intolerable jamming but one long
schooled in the ugly ways of the False Prophet. Along the skirts of the
saddle, running almost up to the horn, were round, quilted pads of
leather prepared against this dangerous habit. I rode with my knees
doubled and wedged in against the pads, catching the terrible jar where
there was bone and tendon and leather to meet and break it, and from
long custom I rode easily, unconscious of my extraordinary precautions
against the half-bucking jump.
The fence rushed past. The trees, as they always do, seemed to wait
until we were almost upon them, and then jump by. Still the horse was
not running fast. He wasted the value of his legs by jumping high in the
air like a goat, instead of running with his belly against the earth
like every other sensible horse whose business is to shorten distance.
He swept around the bare curves with the most reckless, headlong
plunges, and I caught the force of the great swing, now with the right,
and now with the left knee, throwing the whole weight of my body against
the horse's shoulder next to the hill. Once in a while the red nose of
the Cardinal showed by my stirrup and dropped back, but Jud was holding
his horse well and riding with his whole weight in the stirrups and the
strain on the back-webbed girth of his saddle where it ought to be. It
was a dangerous road if the horse fell, only El Mahdi never fell,
although he sometimes blundered like a cow; and the Cardinal never fell
when he ran, and the Bay Eagle, who knew all that a horse ever learned
in the world,--we would as soon have expected to see her fly up in the
air as to fall in the road.
We were a mile down the long hill, thundering like a drove of mad
steers, when I caught through the tree-tops a glimpse of Cynthia's cart,
and wrenched the bit out of El Mahdi's teeth. He was not inclined to
stop, and plunged, ploughing long furrows in the clay road. But a stiff
steel bit is an unpleasant thing with which to take issue, and he
finally stopped, sliding on his front feet.
We turned the corner in a slow, deliberate trot, and there, as calmly as
though it were the most natural thing in the world, was Cynthia, sitting
as straight as a sapling on the high seat, with the reins held close in
her left hand, and beside her Woodford, and jogging along before the
cart was the bald-faced cattle-horse.
A pretty picture in the cool shade of the golden autumn woods. Of
course, Cynthia was the most beautiful woman in the world. My brother
thought so, and that was enough for us. It was true that Ward observed
her from a point of view wonderfully subject to a powerful bias, but
that was no business of ours. Ward said it, and there the matter ended.
If Ward had said that Cynthia was ugly, a trim, splendid figure, brown
hair, and a manner irresistible would not have saved Cynthia from being
eternally ugly so far as we were concerned; and although Cynthia had
lands and Polled-Angus cattle and spent her winters in France, she must
have remained eternally ugly.
So, when we knew Ward's opinion, from that day Cynthia was moved up to
the head of the line of all the women we had ever heard of, and there
she remained.
Our opinion of Woodford was equally clear. In every way he was our
rival. His lands joined ours, stretching from the black Stone Coal south
to the Valley River. His renters and drivers were as numerous and as
ugly a set as ours.
Besides, he was Ward's rival among the powerful men of the Hills, ten
years older, shrewd, clear-headed, and in his business a daring gambler.
Sometimes he would cross the Stone Coal and buy every beef steer in the
Hills, and sometimes Ward bought. It was a stupendous gamble, big with
gain, or big with loss, and at such times the Berrys of Upshur, the
Alkires of Rock Ford, the Arnolds of Lewis, the Coopmans of Lost Creek,
and even the Queens of the great Valley took the wall, leaving the road
to Woodford and my brother Ward. And when they put their forces in the
field and man[oe]uvred in the open, there were mighty times and someone
was terribly hurt.
I think Woodford lacked the inspiration and something of the swift
judgment of my brother, but he stopped at nothing, and was misled by no
illusions. Woodford and my brother never joined their forces. Ward did
not trust him, and Woodford trusted no man on the face of the earth.
There is an old saying that "the father's rival is the son's enemy"; and
we hated Woodford with the healthy, illimitable hatred of a child.
I was young, and the arrogance of pride was very great as I pulled up by
the tall cart. I had Cynthia red-handed, and wanted to gloat over the
stammer and the crimson flush of the traitor. I assumed the attitude of
the very terrible. Sharp and jarring and without premonition are the
surprises of youth. This straight young woman turned, for a moment her
grey eyes rested on the False Prophet and me, then a smile travelled
from her red mouth out through the land of dimples, and she laughed like
a blackbird.
"Of all the funny little boys! Dear me!" And she laughed again.
I know that the bracing influence of a holy cause has been tremendously
overrated, for under the laugh I felt myself pass into a status of
universal shrinking until I feared that I might entirely disappear,
leaving a wonder about the empty saddle. And the blush and the
stammer,--will men be pleased never to write in books any more, how
these things are marks of the guilty? For here was Cynthia, as composed
as the October afternoon, and here was I stammering and red.
"Quiller!" she pealed, "what a little savage! Do look!" And she put her
grey glove on her companion's arm.
Woodford clapped his hand on his knee, and broke out into a jeering
chuckle. "Why!" he said, "it's little Quiller. I thought it must be some
bold, bad robber."
The jeer of the enemy helped me a little, but not enough. The reply went
in a stammer. "You are all out of breath," said Cynthia; "a hill is no
place to run. The horse might have fallen."
I gathered my jarred wits and answered. "Our horses don't fall." It was
the justification of the horse first. Woodford stroked his clean-cut
jaw, tanned like leather. "Your brother," he said, "tumbled out of the
saddle some days ago. It is said his horse fell."
My courage flared. "Do you know how the Black Abbot came to fall?" I
answered.
"An awkward rider, little Quiller," he said. "Is it a good guess?"
"You know all about it," I began, breaking out in my childish anger.
"You know how that furrow as long as a man's finger got on the Black
Abbot's right knee. You know--" I stopped suddenly. Cynthia's eyes were
resting on me, and there was something in their grey depths that made me
stop.
But Woodford went on. "My great aunt," he said, "was thrown day before
yesterday, but she did not take to her bed over it. How is your
brother?"
"Able to take care of himself," I said.
"Perhaps," he responded slowly, "to take care of himself." And he
glanced suggestively at Cynthia.
The innuendo was intolerable. I gaped at the slim, brown-haired girl.
Surely she would resent this. Traitor if she pleased, she was still a
woman. But she only looked up wistfully into Woodford's face and smiled
as artless, winning, merry a smile as ever was born on a woman's mouth.
In that instant the picture of Ward came up before me. His pale face
with its black hair framed in pillows; his hand, always so suggestive of
unlimited resource, lying on the white coverlid, so helpless that old
Liza moved it in her great black palm as though it were a little
child's; and across on the mantle shelf, where he could see it when his
eyes were open, was that old picture of Cynthia with the funny little
curls.
I felt a great flood rising up from the springs of life, a hot,
rebellious flood of tears. A moment I held them back at the gateway of
the eyepits, then they gushed through, and I struck the False Prophet
over his iron grey withers, and we passed in a gallop.