the car and go up on the porch. Joe would not come back to the house. He
did consent, though, to venture into the yard, near the barn. They were
sitting on the concrete base of the windmill when from around the house
Tommy saw Mr. John Davis and his wife drive up the avenue and get out
near the porch. They lived across the creek and were neighbours. They
did not have a car, but drove an old white horse named Charlie, who was
always pricking up his ears at you, hoping you would give him an apple.
Mr. Davis had a long beard and Mrs. Davis was stout and wore spectacles.
"You go and see what they want," grinned Joe. "I'll stay here."
In vain Tommy begged him to come, too. They weren't going to hurt him.
They would give him apples. Joe shook his head. He didn't want any
apples.
So Tommy went, Frank following. They were sitting on the porch, talking
to his father. Yes, they were talking about Joe; and Tommy catching the
infection of secrecy from his guest, stopped at the side of the portico
that set high off the ground, where he could hear without being seen,
while old Frank, panting, lay down beside him.
He knew the voices of them all. He often went with his father across the
fields to Mr. Davis's house. It was always a delightful excursion. The
Davises didn't have any cook or maid, but they had a grape arbour whose
vines formed a roof thick as a house, and out in the garden they had a
row of bee gums painted white. They lived alone; they had no children,
which struck Tommy as being strange, like not having a dog or a cow. The
water at their well was very cool, and you drew it with a bucket. While
his father and Mr. Davis talked on the porch, Mrs. Davis would call him
in the kitchen, him and Frank both. She seemed to be forever making a
cake. He would talk to her and tell her all about Frank. He was always
sorry when time came to go home.
Mr. Davis was talking now. He always talked in a mumbling way, because
of his beard that the words got tangled in. They thought the child had
been sent away until they got Steve's message just now. They came right
over. So the boy was still here. Well, he was glad of that.
"I know this much about it, Steve," he went on. "Yesterday afternoon the
driver of a truck stopped by Squire Kirby's house on the big road and
asked the Squire and his wife if they had seen a boy. That's all I
know."
"Well, I know more than that," Steve said. "I've been to Greenville and
found out about him from the people at the settlement house. A fruit
dealer reported him to the police for stealing bananas, and the police
passed the case on to them. The kid lives with a man named Grimsley, in
a shack down by the river, in the gas-tank section. You know what that
neighbourhood is, John.
"The settlement house questioned the neighbours. It seems that the
kid's parents are dead, and that Grimsley is an uncle by marriage. He's
a brute, even for the gas-tank section. The neighbours hear him beating
the little devil--see him doing it! He threatens the kid with policemen
all the time. The result is that the child lives in deadly terror of all
policemen, and will run like a rabbit at the sight of one."
"Oh, poor little thing!" cried Mrs. Davis, and Davis growled something
that was lost in the tangle of his beard.
Tommy heard his father knock the ashes out of his pipe.
"The settlement-house people," he went on, "are taking steps to get
control of the child. They've laid the case before Judge Fowler. You
know what that means, John. If anybody has any trouble with the judge
it'll be Grimsley, the uncle."
"Steve," said Mrs. Davis, "you've seen the child. Is he a nice child?"
"I guess all kids are nice according to their chances," said Earle.
"This one hasn't had any chances."
"The reason I ask," said Mrs. Davis, "is that John and I have
talked--have talked--about adopting one. We--we get lonely
sometimes--for a child."
Tommy was holding Frank by the collar now. He noticed that it was
stifling hot and Frank was panting, that the sunlight on the trees was
growing strange in colour, that the trees themselves stood motionless as
if the leaves were made out of iron that could not stir, and when he
glanced behind him, toward the barn, he saw over the hills a black
cloud.
Then something in the road drew his attention. A man had ridden up on a
horse and was dismounting and coming up the walk. He looked twice before
he could make sure. It was Bob Kelley, rural policeman.
He left his hiding place and went running toward the back yard. There
was no one there, not even Joe. For a moment his heart stood still. Then
he remembered that he and Joe had played in the barn that morning. Maybe
Joe was afraid of the cloud and had gone to the barn. He unlatched the
lot gate, swung it heavily open, and went into the high, wide hall. Joe
was sitting on the ladder that led up into the loft.
"Heh!" said Tommy.
Joe looked at him strangely.
"Guess who's out there now!" cried Tommy, out of breath. "Bob Kelley.
He's comin' up the walk!"
"Who's he?"
"Pleaseman!"
Joe gasped.
"Cop?"
"Yes, cop!" said Tommy, proud that they had such things in the country
as well as in town. "I'll go an' fin' out what he wants. You stay here.
I'll come back an' tell you. Come on, F'ank!"
He did not look back as he ran. He did not stop at the pillar this time.
He went right up on the porch. Policemen didn't come to their house
every day. Kelley had not sat down.
"That's all right, Bob," Earle was saying. "John or I will look after
him till the matter's settled."
Then, said Kelley, he would be going before the storm broke. He went
down the steps and down the walk. There was no sun now.
Mrs. Davis rose. She was a stout, motherly woman. She was dressed up as
if it were Sunday. Mr. Davis rose, too. You could never tell because of
his beard whether he had on a cravat or not.
"I want to see the child, Steve," Mrs. Davis said. Her face was so
earnest it almost frightened Tommy. "Oh, I hope I will love him! I could
not take a child I did not love. I always thought I wanted one that had
been well brought up. I don't know what I would do with the other
kind--but if he loves me----"
Steve turned and saw Tommy looking up at them with wide eyes. Frank had
lain down in the walk.
"Where have you got your friend stuck away, old man?" asked Steve.
"Out at the barn, Papa. He's skeered."
They all went down the steps. Frank rose and followed, with panting
mouth and wagging tail. He was a part of everything they did. This was
his place as well as theirs, and he had his share in all that went on.
As they turned the corner of the house they came face to face with the
black thunder cloud in the west. As if it had seen them, there came from
its depths a distant rumble.
Steve Earle held the lot gate open for Mrs. Davis. It was like holding
the gate of life open to that boy in the barn. They went into the wide,
lofty hall, lined with stalls. The ladder still led into the loft but
there was no one on it.
"Joe!" called Tommy shrilly.
"He's gone up in the loft," said Davis.
Tommy and Mrs. Davis watched the two men climb the ladder. Mrs. Davis
was breathing hard, as if some great test was about to be put to her.
They heard the men walking about in the rustling hay; they heard Steve
Earle calling.
"Joe--Joe--nobody's going to hurt you, son."
Their faces looked worried when they came down. Aunt Cindy had run out
to them now. She had been in the front room, listening between the
curtains to the conversation on the porch. She had not seen the child.
"He's run off!" screamed Tommy suddenly. "Papa, I tol' him the cop had
come."
Aunt Cindy was down on her knees and had caught him to her ample bosom
as she had caught him so many times. He choked down the sobs that had
begun to rise. With terror he saw that the trees that had been standing
so still were now rustling their leaves violently, and that out at the
road a cloud of dust was rising.
Then Frank took charge of things.
He had gone into the barn with them. He had smelled the ladder, the
ground, and come out into the lot. While they were searching he had run
to them, looked up into their faces, run back out, his nose to the
ground, and turned at the entrance to look at them once more, ears
pricked. Frank had known from the first. That empty ladder, that
straw-carpeted hall, that cleanly kept barn lot, had all the time been
telling him something that it didn't tell people. But Frank couldn't
talk, so now he took his stand beside Steve Earle and barked. Steve
turned quickly.
"I get you, Frank!" he said. "Go find him!"
Gratefully Frank looked up at his master. He ran to the lot fence, and
reared up on it, smelling the top of the planks. Then he drew back,
gathered himself, and sprang up on the fence. He remained poised for a
moment, sprang down, and started across the cotton patch, his nose to
the ground.
"You had better stay, Mrs. Davis," said Earle.
"No, I'm going." Her motherly face was set, the wind was whipping her
skirt about her.
Aunt Cindy had run to the house and brought her a raincoat. She was
going, too, declared the black woman. They all hurried around the lot.
In the cottonfield Frank was still waiting.
"Had we better let Tommy go?" asked Davis.
"He stood up for the kid, John," replied Earle. "He's going to be in at
the finish."
Down by the woods Frank was waiting for them now--waiting for these
slow-moving bipeds. "This is the way he went," he said plainer than
words. "Better than if I had seen him, I know." His long silken ears
were blown back by the wind. As they drew nearer they saw the eagerness
of his dark eyes. Earle took Tommy by the hand. On the other side, his
beard blown against him, hurried Mr. John Davis. Behind came the women.
A quarter of a mile in the woods, dark with the approaching storm, Earle
turned a grim face to his neighbour.
"He's making straight for the mill dam, John."
The breath went out of Tommy with terror. That was an awful place, the
mill dam! Above it the water was fifteen feet deep, his father said.
Below, the water tumbled and foamed over rocks that would beat a man's
life out. On top of the dam, raised above the glancing water on stays, a
narrow walkway of single planks was laid. Grown men could cross, not
boys.
Once, when he had gone with his father to the mill and no one was
looking, Tommy had tried to walk out, just a little way. Everything had
turned black. He only knew his father was calling him to look up, not
down. But he could not take his eyes from the rushing water under his
feet. While he was falling, arms had snatched him up. Tommy began to sob
as they hurried.
It was growing darker in the woods. There had been no rain yet, but high
up in the trees was a roaring sound, and now and then leaves and dead
twigs came whirling down into the quieter regions below.
"Can you see Frank?" asked Earle.
"No. Call him, Steve. We may be off the track."
"I'm afraid to do that, John. If it rains hard, as it's apt to do any
minute, he will lose the trail."
"There's nothing else to do!" cried Davis above the wind. "We may be
going wrong!"
Earle stopped. His hat had fallen off and he had not paused to pick it
up. Tommy had never seen his face as it was now.
"Here, John, take the boy," he said. "I'll run for the dam!"
Just then, sharp and clear above the wind, from the dark wooded bottoms
ahead, came a bark--a strange little yelp to be made by so big a dog,
but the kind a bird dog makes when he functions as a hound. Tommy saw a
smile on his father's face.
"The old dog's treed, John!"
Then he started running, Tommy keeping pace.
"Speak to him, Frank!" he called. "Let us hear you talk!"
Again, in answer, through the woods came the shrill, self-conscious
yelp, then silence, then the yelp again.
"You wait here, son," said Earle. "Wait for Mrs. Davis and Aunt Cindy.
Tell 'em to follow the bark. You know the place, don't you? That's the
boy. Come on, John! Speak to us, Frank! Speak to us, old man!"
The two men were looking up into a lofty, tossing tree when Tommy and
the women reached them. Above them the trees thrashed back and forth
bewilderingly, showing the stormy sky, then covering it over, then
showing it again. And there, looking up into the tree also, eyes
shining, tongue hanging out, sides heaving, was old Frank. Once he
reared up on the trunk of the tree as if to make sure again. He whiffed
the bark, his tail wagging. Then he jumped down and looked up once more.
Earle's voice was strangely quiet when he spoke.
"I see him," he said. They all crowded about. "My God--he's way out at
the end of the top limb. If his head swims----" He began to talk loud,
his face still raised. "Joe, listen, old man. We are all your friends
down here. Tommy's here."
Davis had sat down on the ground and was hurriedly pulling off his
shoes. His beard fell down over his shirt and his hands were trembling.
"It won't do, John," spoke Steve Earle, and Tommy, aghast, saw the look
on his father's face. "The limb he's on will never hold you. He might
try to get farther out, and if he does----"
Then, as calmly as she could, Mrs. Davis called to the boy, pleading
with him to come down, telling him that she would be his mother, not
knowing, anxious, excited woman that she was, that the word probably
meant nothing to that child tossing up there in mid-air.
And now for the first time Tommy's straining eyes saw--saw the white
face, the little body pressed against the swaying limb, saw the frantic
arms clinging to the lofty perch, saw the whole tree moving dizzily back
and forth against the stormy sky, as if in the hands of a giant who was
trying to shake that tiny figure down.
The voice of the boy rang out shrill and clear above the tumult of the
wind and the tearing leaves.
"Joe! You hear me, Joe, don't you?" The voice was quiet and sure now,
the nerves of the man that was to be had steadied. Only grammar went all
to pieces; it had been deteriorating these last twenty-four hours. A
boy's grammar is a structure always ready to tumble, like a house of
cards.
"They ain't no cop down here, Joe. We done sent him home. He's gone,
Joe, honest he has. You know me, Joe. I wouldn't tell you no lie!"
Now the figure up there stirred. A small bare foot felt down and
reached uncertainly, as if blown about by the wind, for a lower branch;
a small hand that had clung to a glass of milk now clung to a limb above
his head. Then Tommy saw that his father, with upraised face, was
standing directly under that figure up there in the angry foliage.
"Steady, Joe, old scout!" said Earle.
"Don't talk to him, Papa," pleaded Tommy.
"He's right, Steve," spoke Mrs. Davis.
But once after this Tommy spoke.
"Joe! Try that un on the other side!"
Again they watched the foot feeling about. Again it found the limb. Once
they saw him, like a bear cub, hug the trunk. Once he slid and fragments
of bark came tumbling down. Closer to earth drew the small figure. They
could hear the calloused little bare feet scraping the bark. Then, all
of a sudden, Steve Earle had swung himself up by the lower branches. His
strong arms reached upward and were lowered down to them, and from his
fingers a gasping little figure slid to the ground.
It was still light enough to see the face. The grin with which he had
started out in life to brave an unfriendly world was gone, and in its
place was terror--terror of those awful heights, of that swaying tree,
of night and storm, and now of these faces about him. The sturdy chest
was rising and falling. He looked pitifully small, like a baby.
There came a blinding flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder that
seemed to burst the woods open. In the momentary flash they saw his
white face and dilated eyes.
Mrs. Davis had sunk to her knees, arms outstretched.
"Darling!" she cried. Tommy had heard his mother say it that way. Then
he turned his head in a sort of embarrassment, for Joe had run into Mrs.
Davis's arms, and Joe was sobbing on Mrs. Davis's ample bosom; and no
gentleman, big or small, likes to witness his friend's emotions.
"I guess it's a go, Steve," said John Davis.
"Looks like it, John," replied Steve.
And then the rain that had held back so long came down through the
forest in a deluge.
XI
BLOOD MONEY
"A man," says Poor Richard, "has three friends--an old wife, an old dog,
and money." Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. He had an old wife
and he had an old dog, but he had no money. And there are times when,
let comfortable moralists say what they please, a man's need for money
overshadows everything else. Such a time had come to Jim Taylor.
It came at one o'clock on a cold, starry March morning. Since sundown he
and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the
lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried
back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.
"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not
gone.
Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white Llewellyn setter, had
hung about within the circle of light cast by the lantern. He had
followed Mary to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protector. He
had gone with Jim to the well after water. While Jim and the doctor
worked, he had sat gravely on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the
veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, lank, a bit stooped,
stood in the middle of the lot, Mary on one side, Prince on the other.
Before him lay his mule, dead.
Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not uncommon. But on this
particular mule Jim had depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton
crop he had depended for money to pay off the mortgage on his farm--the
farm that represented his and Mary's belated plunge in life.
Perhaps to say Mary's plunge would be nearer the truth. But for her, Jim
would have remained an easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog
before the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing poles out
under the shed. His was the lore of field and stream, not of business.
It was Mary who, two years before, had seen in the advancing price of
cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked him into trying to
make terms with Old Man Thornycroft, his landlord.
"All right, gal," he had said one morning; "here goes."
He had come back with a new light in his gray, twinkling sportsman's
eyes. He had got right down to work. The sound of his hammer as he
patched barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of his shotgun
in the woods. He had followed the furrow as earnestly as if it were a
wild-turkey track in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter,
looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. He had met his first
payments. Then had come the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the
chance to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had borrowed to the
limit on the coming season's prospects. He had bought ample fertilizer,
a new wagon, a new plough. And now the mule, without which all these
things were useless, lay at his feet a mass of worse than useless flesh.
The shivering voice of Mary at his side--he hadn't realized before how
cold it was--roused him from his melancholy contemplation of the
spectacle.
"What're we goin' to do now, Jim?"
"Oh, we'll manage somehow," he declared.
He picked up the lantern, looked down into her face, and his eyes
twinkled momentarily.
"That mule was lazy, anyhow."
But there was no answering twinkle in Mary's eyes as they turned back
toward the house. They left the lot gate open, no need to close it now,
and old Prince followed with subdued mien at their heels; their troubles
were his troubles, and, besides, he had rather liked the mule in a
condescending sort of way.
"How much will a new mule cost?" Mary asked as they went up the steps,
their footfalls sounding loud in the dead silence down there under the
stars.
"Well, two hundred dollars will get one you won't have to prop up
betwixt the traces."
He did not see the sudden eagerness in her face. He pushed the door open
for her.
"Come in, old man," he said to Prince. "You done the best you could."
In the unceiled kitchen he set the lantern down on the table. "Don't you
bother, gal," he said to Mary. "You look all wore out. Go to bed now and
get some sleep. I'll go to Greenville to-morrow and see if I can't
borrow the money."
But next day in town Jim found, as he had been afraid he would find,
that it is not easy for a man known primarily as a hunter and fisherman
to borrow two hundred dollars. He had not even gone to see Thornycroft.
The old man would be glad enough of an opportunity to get the improved
place back; Jim knew that.
But he did call on the banks. They were sorry, cashiers explained
courteously after they had questioned him briefly through barred
windows. But right at this particular time their customers had use for
all the money they could get their hands on, and----
"You think you've got it," he said to Mary that night before the fire,
"till you come out in the street and feel in your pockets. Then you know
you ain't."
"But, Jim--what're you goin' to do now?"
"I'll bait another hook, Mary," he said, trying to conceal the growing
anxiety he felt.
Old Prince went joyfully with him when next morning early he set out on
foot to call on the few farmers he knew who might have money to lend;
Prince always went when Jim was afoot. The sun rose on them when, a mile
up the road, they came in sight of the Northern Hunt Club. It shone
ruddily on the bare oaks and the columned porticos, and the white
stables and kennels in the rear.
Jim never saw the place without a touch of grave reminiscence. Here used
to come old Doctor Tolman from New York, to attend the field trials and
to hunt, and Jim had been his hunting companion. On just such mornings
as this he would join the doctor out here in the road. Before those
stone gate posts that marked the entrance to the grounds they had had
their last talk, eight years ago.
"Don't know when I'll get back, Jim," the doctor had said. "I can't
tramp around as I used to, and my practice gets heavier instead of
easing up. I want to say this, Jim: I've hunted with many a man, but
you're the best sport I ever went into the fields with. I'm going to
send you a pup. Call him 'Prince' if you want to. He's got a pedigree
like a king--goes back to the old country. He's good enough for you, and
you're good enough for him."
That winter, just before the news came of the doctor's death, Prince had
arrived at Breton Junction by express; a roly-poly puppy done up in a
crate and scared to death. Jim had reared him tenderly, taught him while
he was still a pup to retrieve and stand steady in the yard, taken him
into the fields when he was old enough, shown him what was necessary,
and left the rest to instinct. Season after season he had watched the
dog gain in wisdom and steadfastness. Now they understood one another as
only hunting man and hunting dog, who have been intimately associated
for years, can understand. Together they passed the club, old Prince
running contentedly ahead.
They were gone all day. First Jim called on Steve Earle, then on Squire
Kirby. Both lived seven miles away, but they were his best chance. The
Squire and his wife had gone to visit their children and would not be
back till Christmas. Steve Earle had left the day before for New York on
business.
He did not mention his troubles to Steve Earle's wife. He was not the
man to parade his perplexities before a woman. He turned back toward the
section where lived small farmers, like himself. It was dusk when he
returned home, Prince trotting with dejected tail at his heels, for
Prince had seen the troubled look in his master's eyes. One farmer after
another had turned Jim down. The country was poor, for one thing. But
for Kirby and Earle there were no large planters in it; and in this day
of high-priced cotton each small farmer was straining every nerve to
better his own fortunes.
"I'd like to, Jim," they had said, "but----"
"Oh, that's all right," Jim had replied.
He answered Mary's questions cheerfully enough. She had stuck to him
through thick and thin, mostly thin, he reckoned, and he was going to
stick to her. This farm was her gamble, and he was going to see it
through for her. But in the silence of the night, unknown to her, he
fought one of the hardest battles of his life, a battle that kept him
awake and drenched him with perspiration. For he was a hunter, was Jim,
and old Prince was his dog.
He arose with grave face to greet another day. While Mary was in the
kitchen getting breakfast, he rummaged secretly among his queer
assortment of papers--gun catalogues, directions about building a boat,
advertisements of shotgun shells with hunting dogs painted on them. At
last he found it--Prince's pedigree that Doctor Tolman had sent along
with Prince. He folded it carefully, stuck it in his pocket, and
replaced the other papers.
He was going to see some men at the club, he told Mary at breakfast. He
might take a little round. She could look for him when she saw him. She
insisted on putting up a lunch for him. She saw him getting back before
night, she laughed, when he protested. She came out on the porch with
him and patted him on the back when he went down the steps in his
patched old hunting coat, his gun stuck under his arm.