|The Salem Road is a dusty road. Perhaps it is not really any dustier
than other roads, but it is straighter than most roads about Hagar. You
can see more of it at a time, and in that way you can see more dust.
Along this road one day many years ago came Dr. Wye of Salem in his
buggy, which leaned over on one side; and the dust was all over the
buggy-top, all over the big, gray, plodding horse, and all over the
doctor's hat and coat. He was tired and drowsy, but you would not have
suspected it; for he was a red-faced, sturdy man, with a beard cut
square, as if he never compromised with anything. He sat up straight and
solid, so as not to compromise with the tipping of the buggy.
“Come, Billy,” said the doctor, “no nonsense, now.”
He prided himself on being a strict man, who would put up with no
nonsense, but every one knew better. Billy, the gray horse, knew as well
as any one.
“Come now, Billy, get along.”
A tall, dusty, black-bearded man rose up beside the road, and Billy
stopped immediately.
A large pack lay against the bank.
“You ain't seen a yeller dog?”
“No,” said the doctor, gruffly. He was provoked with Billy. “There
aren't any yellow dogs around here.”
“He hadn't no tail,” persisted the stranger, wistfully. “And there were
a boy a-holdin' him. He chopped it off when he were little.”
“Who chopped it off?”
“Hey? He's a little cuss, but the dog's a good dog.”
“Get up, Billy,” growled the doctor. “All boys are little cusses. I have
n't seen any yellow dog. Nonsense! I wonder he did n't ask if I'd seen
the tail.”
But somehow the doctor could not get rid of the man's face, and he found
himself looking along the roadside for boys that were distinctly “little
cusses” and yellow dogs without tails, all the rest of the day.
In the evening twilight he drove into Salem village. Very cool and
pleasant looked the little white house among the trees. Mother Wye
stood on the porch in her white apron and cap, watching for him. She
was flying signals of distress--if the word were not too strong--she was
even agitated. He tramped up the steps reassuringly.
“Oh,” whispered Mother Wye, “you've no idea, Ned! There's a boy and a
dog, a very large dog, my dear, on the back steps.”
“Well,” said the doctor, gallantly, “they've no business to be anywhere
frightening my little mother. We'll tell them to do something else.” The
doctor tramped sturdily around to the back steps, Mother Wye following
much comforted.
The dog was actually a yellow dog without any tail to speak of--a large,
genial-looking dog, nevertheless; the boy, a black-eyed boy, very grave
and indifferent, with a face somewhat thin and long. “Without doubt,”
thought the doctor, “a little cuss. Hullo,” he said aloud, “I met a man
looking for you.”
The boy scrutinized him with settled gravity. “He's not much account,”
he said calmly. “I'd rather stay here.”
“Oh, you would!” grumbled the doctor. “Must think I want somebody around
all the time to frighten this lady. Nice folks you are, you and your
dog.”
The boy turned quickly and took off his cap. “I beg your pardon, madam,”
he said with a smile that was singularly sudden and winning. The action
was so elderly and sedate, so very courtly, surprising, and incongruous,
that the doctor slapped his knee and laughed uproariously; and Mother
Wye went through an immediate revulsion, to feel herself permeated with
motherly desires. The boy went on unmoved.
“He's an easy dog, ma'am. His name's Poison, but he never does
anything;”--which started the doctor off again.
“They said you wanted a boy.”
“Ah,” said the doctor, growing grave, “that's true; but you're not the
boy.”
The boy seemed to think him plainly mistaken. “Stuff!” growled the
doctor, “I want a boy I can send all around the country. I know a dozen
boys that know the country, and that I know all about. I don't want you.
Besides,” he added, “he said you were a little cuss.”
The boy paid no attention to the last remark. “I'll find it out. Other
boys are thick-headed.”
“That's true,” the doctor admitted; “they are thick-headed.” Indeed
this young person's serenity and confidence quite staggered him. A new
diplomatic idea seemed to occur to the young person. He turned to Mother
Wye and said gravely: “Will you pull Poison's ear, ma'am, so he'll know
it's all right?”
Mother Wye, with some trepidation, pulled Poison's ear, and Poison
wagged the whole back end of himself to make up for a tail, signifying
things that were amicable, while the doctor tugged at his beard and
objected to nonsense.
“Well, young man, we'll see what you have to say for yourself. Tut!
tut! mother,”--to Mrs. Wye's murmur of remonstrance,--“we'll have no
nonsense. This is a practical matter;” and he tramped sturdily into the
house, followed by the serious boy, the amicable dog, and the appeased,
in fact the quite melted, Mother Wye.
“Now, boy,” said the doctor, “what's your name?”
“Jack.”
“Jack what? Is that other fellow your father?”
“I reckon maybe he is,” returned Jack, with a gloomy frown. “His name's
Baker. He peddles.”
The doctor tugged at his beard and muttered that “at any rate there
appeared to be no nonsense about it. But he's looking for you,” he said.
“He'll take you away.”
“He's looking for the dog,” said Jack, calmly. “He can't have him.”
The East End Road, which circles the eastern end of the Cattle Ridge,
is not at all like the Salem Road. It is wilder and crookeder, to begin
with, but that is a superficial matter. It passes through thick woods,
dips into gullies, and changes continually, while along the Salem Road
there is just the smoky haze on the meadows and dust in the chalices
of the flowers; there too the distance blinks stupidly and speculation
comes to nothing. But the real point is this: the Salem Road leads
straight to Hagar and stops there; the East End Road goes over somewhere
among the northern hills and splits up into innumerable side roads,
roads that lead to doorways, roads that run into footpaths and dwindle
away in despair, roads of which it must be said with sorrow that there
was doubt in Salem whether they ever ended or led anywhere. Hence arose
the tale that all things which were strange and new, at least all things
which were to be feared, came into Salem over the East End Road; just as
in Hagar they came down from the Cattle Ridge and went away to the south
beyond Windless Mountain.
Along this road, a month later than the last incident, came the
black-bearded peddler with his pack, whistling; and indeed his pack,
though large, seemed to weigh singularly little; also the peddler seemed
to be in a very peaceful frame of mind. And along this road too came the
plodding gray horse, with the serious boy driving, and the yellow dog
in the rear; all at a pace which slowly but surely overtook the peddler.
The peddler, reaching a quiet place where a bank of ferns bordered the
brushwood, sat down and waited, whistling. The dog, catching sight of
him, came forward with a rush, wagging the back end of himself; and
Billy, the gray horse, came gently to a standstill.
“How goes it?” said the peddler, pausing a moment in his whistling.
“Pretty good?”
“Mostly.”
The peddler took a cigar-case from his pocket, a cigar wrapped in
tin-foil from the case, and lay back lazily among the ferns, putting his
long thin hands behind his head. “My notion was,” he murmured,
“that it would take a month, a month would be enough.”
The serious boy said nothing, but sat with his chin on his fists looking
down the road meditatively.
“My notion was,” went on the peddler, “that a doctor's boy, particularly
that doctor's boy, would get into all the best houses around--learn the
lay of things tolerably neat. That was my notion. Good notion, wasn't
it, Jack?” Jack muttered a subdued assent. The peddler glanced at him
critically. “For instance now, that big square house on the hill north
of Hagar.”
Jack shook his head. “Nothing in it. Old man, name Map, rich enough,
furniture done up in cloth, valuables stored in Hamilton; clock or two
maybe; nothing in it.”
“Ah,” said the other, “just so;” and again he glanced critically through
his half-closed eyes. “But there are others.” Again Jack muttered a
subdued assent.
“Good?”
“Good enough.”
The apparent peddler smoked, quite at his ease among the ferns, and
seemed resolved that the boy should break the silence next.
“Are you banking on this business, dad?” said the latter, finally.
“Ah--why, no, Jack, not really. It's a sort of notion, I admit.” He
lifted one knee lazily over the other. “I'm not shoving you, Jack. State
the case.” A long silence followed, to which the conversation of the two
seemed well accustomed.
“I never knew anything like that down there,” nodding in the direction
of Salem. “Those people.--It's different.”
“That's so,” assented the apparent peddler, critically. “I reckon it
is. We make a point not to be low. Polish is our strong point, Jack.
But we're not in society. We are not, in a way, on speaking terms with
society.”
“It ain't that.”
“Isn't,” corrected the other, gently. “Isn't, Jack. But I rather think
it is.”
“Well,” said Jack, “it's different, and”--with gloomy decision--“it's
better.”
The apparent peddler whistled no more, but lay back among the ferns and
gazed up at the drooping leaves overhead. The gray horse whisked at the
wood-gnats and looked around now and again inquiringly. The yellow dog
cocked his head on one side as if he had an opinion worth listening to
if it were only called for.
“I suppose now,” said the apparent peddler, softly, “I suppose now
they're pretty cosy. I suppose they say prayers.”
“You bet.”.
“You mean that they do, Jack. I suppose,” he went on dreamily, “I
suppose the old lady has white hair and knits stockings.”
“She does that,” said Jack, enthusiastically, “and pincushions and
mats.”
“And pincushions and mats. That's so.”
The lowing of cattle came up to them from hidden meadows below; for the
afternoon was drawing near its close and the cattle were uneasy. The
chimney and roof of a farmhouse were just visible through a break in the
sloping woods. The smoke that mounted from the chimney seemed to linger
lovingly over the roof, like a symbol of peace, blessing the hearth
from which it came. The sentimental outcast puffed his excellent cigar
meditatively, now and again taking it out to remark, “Pincushions and
mats!” indicating the constancy of his thoughts.
The serious boy motioned in the direction of Salem. “I think I'll stay
there,” he said. “It's better.”
“Reckon I know how you feel, Jack,--know how you feel. Give me my lowly
thatched cottage, and that sort of thing.” After a longer silence
still, he sat up and threw away his cigar. “Well, Jack, if you see your
way--a--if I were you, Jack,” he said slowly, “I wouldn't go half and
half; I'd go the whole bill. I'd turn on the hose and inquire for the
ten commandments, that's what I'd do.” He came and leaned lazily on
the carriage wheel. “That isn't very plain. It's like this. You don't
exactly abolish the old man; you just imagine him comfortably buried;
that's it, comfortably buried, with an epitaph,--flourishy, Jack,
flourishy, stating”--here his eyes roamed meditatively along Billy's
well-padded spine--“stating, in a general way, that he made a point of
polish.”
The serious boy's lip trembled slightly. He seemed to be seeking some
method of expression. Finally he said: “I'll trade knives with you, dad.
It's six blades”; and the two silently exchanged knives.
Then Billy, the gray horse, plodded down the hill through the woods, and
the apparent peddler plodded up. At one turn in the road can be seen the
white houses of Salem across the valley; and here he paused, leaning on
the single pole that guarded the edge. After a time he roused himself
again, swung his pack to his shoulder, and disappeared over the crest of
the hill whistling.
The shadows deepened swiftly in the woods; they lengthened in the open
valley, filling the hollows, climbed the hill to Salem, and made dusky
Dr. Wye's little porch and his tiny office duskier still. The office
was so tiny that portly Judge Carter of Gilead seemed nearly to fill it,
leaving small space for the doctor. For this or some other reason
the doctor seemed uncomfortable, quite oppressed and borne down, and
remonstrating with the oppression. The judge was a man of some splendor,
with gold eye-glasses and cane.
“There really is no doubt about it,” he was saying, with a magnificent
finger on the doctor's knee, “no doubt at all.”
The conversation seemed to be most absorbing. The doctor pulled his
beard abstractedly and frowned.
The serious boy drove by outside in the dusk, and after a while came up
from the bam. He sat down on the edge of the porch to think things over,
and the judge's voice rolled on oracularly. Jack hardly knew yet
what his thoughts were; and this was a state of mind that he was not
accustomed to put up with, because muddle-headedness was a thing that
he especially despised. “You don't exactly abolish the old man,” he kept
hearing the peddler say; “you just imagine him comfortably buried--with
an epitaph--flourishy--stating--”
“Clever, very,” said the judge. “Merriwether was telling me--won't
catch him, too clever--Merri-wether says--remarkable--interesting scamp,
very.” The doctor growled some inaudible objection.
“Why did he show himself!” exclaimed the judge. “Why, see here. Observe
the refined cleverness of it! It roused your interest, didn't it? It was
unique, amusing. Chances are ten to one you would n't have taken the boy
without it. Why, look here--”
“Stuff!”--Here the doctor raised his voice angrily. “The boy ran away
from him, of course.”
“Maybe, doctor, maybe,” said the judge, soothingly. “But there are
other things--looks shady--consider the man is known. Dangerous, doctor,
dangerous, very. You ought to be careful.” Then the words were a mere
murmur.
Jack sat still on the porch, with his chin on his hands. Overhead
the night-hawks called, and now and then one came down with a whiz of
swooping wings. Presently he heard the chairs scrape; he rose, slipped
around to the back porch and into the kitchen.
The little bronze clock in the dining-room had just told its largest
stint of hours,--and very hard work it made of it. It was a great trial
to the clock to have to rouse itself and bluster so. It did not mind
telling time in a quiet way. But then, every profession has its trials.
It settled itself again to stare with round, astonished face at the
table in the centre of the room.
Jack sat at the table by a dim lamp, the house dark and silent all
around him, writing a letter. He leaned his head down almost on a level
with the paper.
“I herd him and you,” he wrote in a round hand with many blots. “I lied
and so did he I mean dad. I can lie good. Dad sed I must learn the ten
comandments. The ten comandments says diferent things. You neednt be
afrad. There dont anithing happen cep to me. I do love Mother Wye tru.”
The clock went on telling the time in the way that it liked to do,
tick-tick-tick. Overhead the doctor slept a troubled sleep, and in
Gilead Judge Carter slept a sound sleep of good digestion.
Far off the Salem Road led westward straight to Hagar, and stopped, and
the moonlight lay over it all the way; but the East End Road led through
the shadows and deep night over among the northern hills, and split
up into many roads, some of which did not seem ever to end, or lead
anywhere.
Jack dropped from the window skilfully, noiselessly, and slid away in
the moonlight. At the Corners he did not hesitate, but took the East End
Road.