SATURDAY was the last day of the county fair and the day of the County
Trot. It was also Veterans' Day, when the old soldiers were the guests
of honor of the management, and likewise Ladies' Day, which meant that
all white females of whatever age were admitted free. So naturally, in
view of all these things, the biggest day of fair week was Saturday.
The fair grounds lay in a hickory flat a mile out of town, and the tall
scaly barks grew so close to the fence that they poked their limbs
over its top and shed down nuts upon the track. The fence had been
whitewashed once, back in the days of its youth when Hector was a pup;
but Hec was an old dog now and the rains of years had washed the fence
to a misty gray, so that in the dusk the long, warped panels stood up
in rows, palely luminous--like the highshouldered ghosts of a fence. And
the rust had run down from the eaten-out nail-holes until each plank had
two staring marks in its face--like rheumy, bleared eyes. The ancient
grandstand was of wood too, and had lain outdoors in all weathers until
its rheumatic rafters groaned and creaked when the wind blew.
Back of the grandstand stood Floral Hall and Agricultural Hall. Except
for their names and their flagstaffs you might have taken them for two
rather hastily built and long-neglected bams. Up the track to the north
were the rows of stables that were empty, odorous little cubicles for
fifty-one weeks of the year, but now--for this one week--alive with
darky stable hands and horses; and all the good savors of woodfires,
clean hay, and turned-up turf were commingled there.
The fair had ideal weather for its windup. No frost had fallen yet, but
in the air there were signs and portents of its coming. The long yellow
leaves of the hickories had begun to curl up as if to hold the dying
warmth of the sap to the last; and once in a while an ash flamed red
like a signal fire to give warning for Indian summer, when all the woods
would blaze in warpaints before huddling down for the winter under their
tufted, ragged tawnies and browns--like buffalo robes on the shoulders
of chilled warriors. The first flights of the wild geese were going
over, their V's pointed to the Gulf; and that huckstering little bird of
the dead treetops, which the negroes call the sweet-potato bird--maybe
it's a pewee, with an acquired Southern accent--was calling his mythical
wares at the front door of every woodpecker's hole. The woods were
perfumy with ripening wild grapes and pawpaws, and from the orchards
came rich winy smells where the windfalls lay in heaps and cider mills
gushed under the trees; and on the roof of the smokehouse the pared,
sliced fruit was drying out yellow and leathery in the sun and
looking--a little way off--like countless ears all turned to listen for
the same thing.
Saturday, by sunup, the fair grounds were astir. Undershirted
concessionaries and privilege people emerged from their canvas sleeping
quarters to sniff at a the tantalizing smell that floated across to
them from certain narrow trenches dug in the ground. That smell, just
by itself, was one square meal and an incentive to another; for these
trenches were full of live red hickory coals; and above them, on
greenwood stakes that were stretched across, a shoat and a whole sheep,
and a rosary of young squirrels impaled in a string, had been all night
barbecuing. Uncle Isom Woolfolk was in charge here--mightily and solely
in charge--Uncle Isom Woolfolk, no less, official purveyor to the whole
county at fish fries or camp breakfasts, secretary of the Republican
County Committee, high in his church and his lodges and the best
barbecue cook in seven states. He bellowed frequent and contradictory
orders to two negro women of his household who were arranging clean
white clothes on board trestles; and constantly he went from shoat to
sheep and from sheep to squirrels, basting them with a rag wrapped about
a stick and dipped into a potent sauce of his own private making. Red
pepper and sweet vinegar were two of its main constituents, though, and
in turn he painted each carcass as daintily as an artist retouching
the miniature of his lady fair, so that under his hand the crackling
meatskins sizzled and smoked, and a yellowish glaze like a veneer spread
over their surfaces. His white chin-beard waggled with importance and
the artistic temperament.
Before Uncle Isom had his barbecue off the fire the crowds were pouring
in, coming from the town afoot, and in buggies and hacks, and from the
country in farm wagons that held families, from grandsire to baby in
arms, all riding in kitchen chairs, with bedquilt lap robes. At noon a
thin trickle of martial music came down the pike; and pretty soon then
the veterans, forty or fifty of them, marched in, two by two, some in
their reunion gray and some in their best Sunday blacks. At the head
of the limping line of old men was a fife-and-drum corps--two sons of
veterans at the drums and Corporal Harrison Treese, sometime bugler of
Terry's Cavalry, with his fife half buried in his whiskers, ripping
the high notes out of The Girl I Left Behind Me. Near the tail of the
procession was Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's Hellhounds. Back in
war times that organization had borne a more official and a less
sanguinary title; but you would never have guessed this, overhearing
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby's conversation.
The sergeant wore a little skirtless jacket, absurdly high-collared,
faded to all colors and falling to pieces with age. Three tarnished
buttons and a rag of rotted braid still dung to its front. Probably it
had fitted the sergeant well in the days when he was a slim and limber
young partisan ranger; but now the peaked little tail showed halfway
up his back where his suspenders forked, and his white-shirted paunch
jutted out in front like a big cotton pod bursting out of a gray-brown
boll. The sergeant wore his jacket on all occasions of high military and
civic state--that, and a gangrened leather cartridge-box bouncing up and
down on his plump hip--and over his shoulder the musket he had carried
to war and back home again, an ancient Springfield with a stock like a
log butt and a hammer like a mule's ear, its barrel merely a streak of
rust.
He walked side by side with his closest personal friend and
bitterest political foe, Major Ashcroft, late of the Ninth Michigan
Volunteers--walking so close to him that the button of the Loyal Legion
in the major's left-hand lapel almost touched the bronze Southern Cross
pinned high up on the right breast of the sergeant's flaring jacket.
From time to time the sergeant, addressing the comrades ahead of him,
would poke the major in the side and call out:
“Boys, I've took the first prisoner--this here pizen Yank is my meat!”
And the imperturbable major would invariably retort:
“Yes, and along about dark the prisoner will have to be loading you into
a hack and sending you home--the same as he always does.” Thereupon a
cackling laugh would run up the double line from its foot to its head.
The local band, up in its coop on the warped gray roof of the
grandstand, blared out Dixie, and the crowd cheered louder than ever
as the uneven column of old soldiers swung stiffly down the walkway
fronting the grandstand and halted at the word--and then, at another
word, disbanded and melted away into individuals and groups. Soon the
veterans, with their womenfolks, were scattered all over the grounds,
elbowing a way through the narrow aisles of Floral Hall to see the oil
paintings and the prize cakes and preserves, and the different patterns
of home-made rag quilts--Hen-and-Chickens and Lone Star and Log
Cabin--or crowding about the showpens where young calves lowed vainly
for parental attention and a Berkshire boar, so long of body and so vast
of bulk that he only needed to shed his legs to be a captive balloon,
was shoving his snout through a crack in his pen and begging for
goodies. And in Agricultural Hall were water-melons like green
boulders, and stalks of corn fourteen feet long, and saffron blades of
prize-winning tobacco, and families of chickens unhappily domiciled
in wooden coops. The bray of sideshow barkers, and the squeak of toy
balloons, and the barnyard sounds from the tied-up, penned-up farm
creatures, went up to the treetops in a medley that drove the birds
scurrying over the fence and into the quieter woods. And in every handy
spot under a tree basket dinners were spread, and family groups ate cold
fried chicken and lemon meringue pie, picnic fashion, upon the grass.
In the middle of this a cracked bugle sounded and there was a rush to
the grandstand. Almost instantly its rattling gray boards clamored under
the heels of a multitude. About the stall of the one lone bookmaker a
small crowd, made up altogether of men, eddied and swirled. There were
men in that group, strict church members, who would not touch a playing
card or a fiddle--playthings of the devil by the word of their strict
orthodoxy; who wouldn't let their children dance any dance except a
square dance or go to any parties except play parties, and some of them
had never seen the inside of a theater or a circus tent. But they came
each year to the county fair; and if they bet on the horses it was their
own private affair.
So, at the blare of that leaky bugle, Floral Hall and the cattlepens
were on the moment deserted and lonely. The Berkshire boar returned
to his wallow, and a young Jersey bullock, with a warm red coat and a
temper of the same shade, was left shaking his head and snorting angrily
as he tried vainly to dislodge a blue ribbon that was knotted about
one of his short, curving black horns. Had he been a second prizewinner
instead of a first, that ribbon would have been a red ribbon and there
is no telling what might have happened.
The first race was a half-mile dash for running horses. There were four
horses entered for it and three of the four jockeys wore regular jockey
outfits, with loose blouses and top boots and long-peaked caps; but the
fourth jockey was an imp-black stable boy, wearing a cotton shirt and
the ruins of an old pair of pants. The brimless wreck of a straw hat
was clamped down tight on his wool like a cup. He be-straddled a sweaty
little red gelding named Flitterfoot, and Flitterfoot was the only local
entry, and was an added starter, and a forlorn hope in the betting.
While these four running horses were dancing a fretful schottische
round at the half-mile post, and the starter, old man Thad Jacobson, was
bellowing at the riders and slashing a black-snake whip round the shins
of their impatient mounts, a slim black figure wormed a way under the
arms and past the short ribs of a few belated betters yet lingering
about the bookmaker's block. This intruder handled himself so deftly
and so nimbly as not to jostle by one hair's breadth the dignity of any
white gentleman there present, yet was steadily making progress all
the while and in ample time getting down a certain sum of money on
Flitterfoot to win at odds.
“Ain't that your nigger boy Jeff?” inquired Doctor Lake of Judge Priest,
as the new comer, still boring deftly, emerged from the group and with
a last muttered “Scuse me, boss--please, suh--scuse me!” darted away
toward the head of the stretch, where others of his race were draping
themselves over the top rail of the fence in black festoons.
“Yes, I suppose 'tis--probably,” said Judge Priest in that high singsong
of his. “That black scoundrel of mine is liable to be everywhere--except
when you want him, and then he's not anywhere. That must be Jeff, I
reckin.” And the old judge chuckled indulgently in appreciation of
Jeff's manifold talents.
During the parade of the veterans that day Judge Priest, as commandant
of the camp, had led the march just behind the fife and drums and just
ahead of the color-bearer carrying the silken flag; and all the way out
from town Jeff, his manservant, valet, and guardian, had marched a pace
to his right. Jeff's own private and personal convictions--convictions
which no white man would ever know by word of mouth from Jeff anyhow--
were not with the late cause which those elderly men in gray
represented. Jeff's political feelings, if any such he had, would
be sure to lean away from them; but it was a chance to march with
music--and Jeff had marched, his head up and his feet cutting scallops
and double-shuffles in the dust.
Judge Priest's Jeff was a small, jet-black person, swift in his gait and
wise in his generation. He kept his wool cropped close and made the part
in it with a razor. By some subtle art of his own he could fall heir to
somebody else's old clothes and, wearing them, make than look newer and
better than when they were new. Overcome by the specious wiles of Jeff
some white gentleman of his acquaintance would bestow upon him a garment
that seemed shabby to the point of open shame and a public scandal. Jeff
would retire for a season with a pressing iron and a bottle of cleansing
fluid, and presently that garment would come forth, having undergone
a glorious resurrection. Seeing it, then, the former proprietor would
repent his generosity and wonder what ever possessed him to part with
apparel so splendid.
For this special and gala occasion Jim wore a blue-serge coat that had
been given to him in consideration of certain acts of office-tending by
Attorney Clay Saunders. Attorney Clay Saunders weighed two hundred
and fifty pounds If he weighed an ounce, and Jeff would never see one
hundred and twenty-five; but the blue serge was draped upon Jeff's frame
with just the fashionable looseness. The sleeves, though a trifle long,
hung most beautifully. Jeff's trousers were of a light and pearly gray,
and had been the property originally of Mr. Otter-buck, cashier at the
bank, who was built long and rangy; whereas Jeff was distinctly short
and ducklike. Yet these same trousers, pressed now until you could have
peeled peaches with their creases and turned up at the bottoms to a
rakish and sporty length, looked as if they might have been specially
coopered to Jeff's legs by a skilled tailor.
This was Judge Priest's Jeff, whose feet would fit anybody's shoes and
whose head would fit anybody's hat. Having got his money safely down
on Flitterfoot to win, Jeff was presently choking a post far up the
homestretch. With a final crack of the starter's coiling blacksnake and
a mounting scroll of dust, the runners were off on their half-mile dash.
While the horses were still spattering through the dust on the far side
of the course from him Jeff began encouraging his choice by speech.
“Come on, you little red hoss!” he said in a low, confidential tone. “I
asks you lak a gen'leman to come on and win all that money fur me. Come
on, you little red hoss--you ain't half runnin'! little red hoss”--his
voice sank to a note of passionate pleading--“whut is detainin' you?”
Perhaps even that many years back, when it had just been discovered,
there was something to this new theory of thought transference. As if
Jeff's tense whispers were reaching to him across two hundred yards of
track and open field Flitterfoot opened up a gap between his lathered
flanks and the rest of them. The others, in a confused group, scrambled
and hinged out with their hoofs; but Flitterfoot turned into a long red
elastic rubber band, stretching himself out to twice his honest length
and then snapping back again to half. High up on his shoulder the ragged
black stable boy hung, with his knees under his chin and his shoulders
hunched as though squaring off to do a little flying himself. Twenty
long yards ahead of the nearest contender, Flitterfoot scooted over the
line a winner. Once across, he expeditiously bucked the crouching small
incumbrance off his withers and, with the bridle dangling, bounced
riderless back to his stable; while above the roar from the grandstand
rose the triumphant remark of Jeff: “Ain't he a regular runnin' and
a-jumpin' fool!”
The really important business of the day to most, however, centered
about the harness events, which was only natural, this being an end of
the state where they raised the standard breds as distinguished from the
section whence came the thoroughbreds. A running race might do for an
appetizer, like a toddy before dinner; but the big interest would focus
in the two-twenty pace and the free-for-all consolation, and finally
would culminate in the County Trot--open only to horses bred and owned
in the county and carrying with it a purse of two thousand dollars--big
money for that country--and a dented and tarnished silver trophy that
was nearly fifty years old, and valued accordingly.
After the half-mile dash and before the first heat of the two-twenty
pace there was a balloon ascension and parachute drop. Judge Priest's
Jeff was everywhere that things were happening. He did two men's part in
holding the bulging bag down to earth until the spangled aeronaut yelled
out for everybody to let go. When the man dropped, away over by the back
fence, Jeff was first on the spot to brush him off and to inquire in a
voice of respectful solicitude how he was feeling, now that he'd come
down. Up in the grandstand, Mrs. Major Joe Sam Covington, who was stout
and wore a cameo breastpin as big as a coffee saucer at her throat,
expressed to nobody in particular a desire for a glass of cool water;
and almost instantly, it seemed, Judge Priest's Jeff was at her side
bowing low and ceremoniously with a brimming dipper in one hand and an
itch for the coming tip in the other. When the veterans adjourned
back behind Floral Hall for a watermelon cutting, Jeff, grinning and
obsequious, arrived at exactly the properly timed moment to receive a
whole butt-end of red-hearted, green-rinded lusciousness for his own.
Taking the opportunity of a crowded minute about Uncle Isom Woolfolk's
barbecued meat stand he bought extensively, and paid for what he bought
with a lead half dollar that he had been saving for months against just
such a golden chance--a half dollar so palpably leaden that Uncle Isom,
discovering it half an hour later, was thrown into a state of intense
rage, followed by a period of settled melancholy, coupled with general
suspicion of all mankind. Most especially, though, Judge Priest's Jeff
concerned himself with the running of the County Trot, being minded to
turn his earlier winnings over and over again.
From the outset Jeff, like most of the fair crowd, had favored Van
Wallace's black mare, Minnie May, against the only other entry for the
race, Jackson Berry's big roan trotting stallion, Blandville Boy. The
judgment of the multitude stood up, too, for the first two heats of the
County Trot, alternating in between heats of the two-twenty pace and the
free-for-all, were won handily by the smooth-gaited mare. Blandville Boy
was feeling his oats and his grooming, and he broke badly each time, for
all the hobble harness of leather that was buckled over and under him.
Nearly everybody was now betting on Minnie May to take the third and the
decisive heat.
Waiting for it, the crowd spread over the grounds, leaving wide patches
of the grandstand empty. The sideshows and the medicine venders enjoyed
heavy patronage, and once more the stalled ox and the fatted pig were
surrounded by admiring groups. There was a thick jam about the crowning
artistic gem of Floral Hall--a crazy quilt with eight thousand different
pieces of silk in it, mainly of acutely jarring shades, so that the
whole was a thing calculated to blind the eye and benumb the mind.
The city marshal forcibly calmed down certain exhilarated young bucks
from the country--they would be sure to fire off their pistols and yell
into every dooryard as they tore home that night, careening in their
dusty buggies; but now they were made to restrain themselves. Bananas
and cocoanuts advanced steadily in price as the visible supply shrank.
There is a type of Southern countryman who, coming to town for a circus
day or a fair, first eats extensively of bananas--red bananas preferred;
and then, when the raw edge of his hunger is abated, he buys a cocoanut
and, after punching out one of its eyes and drinking the sweet milky
whey, cracks the shell apart and gorges on the white meat. By now the
grass was cumbered with many shattered cocoanut shells, like broken
shards; and banana peels, both red and yellow, lay wilted and limp
everywhere in the litter underfoot.
The steam Flyin' Jinny--it would be a carousel farther North--ground
unendingly, loaded to its gunwales with family groups. Crap games
started in remote spots and fights broke out. In a far shadow of the
fence behind the stables one darky with brass knuckles felled another,
then broke and ran. He scuttled over the fence like a fox squirrel, with
a bullet from a constable's big blue-barreled revolver spatting into the
paling six indies below him as he scaled the top and lit flying on
the other side. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, dragging his Springfield by
the barrel, began a long story touching on what he once heard General
Buckner say to General Breckinridge, went to sleep in the middle of it,
enjoyed a refreshing nap of twenty minutes, woke up with a start and
resumed the anecdote at the exact point where he left off--“An' 'en
General Breckinridge he says to General Buckner, he says, 'General--'”
But Judge Priest's Jeff disentangled himself from the center of things,
and took a quiet walk up toward the stables to see what might be seen
and to hear what might be heard, as befitting one who was speculating
heavily and needed all available information to guide him. What he saw
was Van Wallace, owner of the mare, and Jackson Berry, owner of the
studhorse, slipping furtively into an empty feed-shed. As they vanished
within Van Wallace looked about him cautiously, but Jeff had already
dived to shelter alongside the shed and was squatting on a pile of
stable scrapings, where a swarm of flies flickered above an empty pint
flask and watermelon rinds were curling up and drying in the sun like
old shoesoles. Jeff had seen something. Now he applied his ear to a
crack between the planks of the feedshed and heard something.
For two minutes the supposed rivals confabbed busily in the shelter of
a broken hay-'rack. Then, suddenly taking alarm without cause, they
both poked their heads out at the door and looked about them
searchingly--right and left. There wasn't time for Jeff to get away. He
only had a second's or two seconds' warning; but all the conspirators
saw as they issued forth from the scene of their intrigue was a small
darky in clothes much too large for him lying alongside the shed in
a sprawled huddle, with one loose sleeve over his face and one
black forefinger shoved like a snake's head down the neck of a flat
pocket-flask. Above this figure the flies were buzzing in a greedy
cloud.
“Just some nigger full of gin that fell down there to sleep it off,”
said Van Wallace. And he would have gone on; but Berry, who was a tall
red-faced, horsy man--a blusterer on the surface and a born coward
inside--booted the sleeper in the ribs with his toe.
“Here, boy!” he commanded. “Wake up here!” And he nudged him again hard.
The negro only flinched from the kicks, then rolled farther over on his
side and mumbled through a snore.
“Couldn't hear it thunder,” said Berry reassured. “Well, let's get away
from here.”
“You bet!” said Van Wallace fervently. “No use takin' chances by bein'
caught talkin' together. Anyhow, they'll be ringing the startin' bell in
a minute or two.”
“Don't forget, now!” counseled Berry as Wallace started off, making by a
roundabout and devious way for his own stable, where Minnie May, hitched
to her sulky and with her legs bandaged, was being walked back and forth
by a stable boy.
“Don't you worry; I won't!” said Wallace; and Berry grinned joyously and
vanished in the opposite direction, behind the handy feedshed.
On the instant that both of them disappeared Judge Priest's Jeff rose to
his feet, magically changing from a drunken darky to an alert and flying
black Mercury. His feet hardly hit the high places as he streaked it for
the grandstand--looking for Judge Priest as hard as he could look.
Nearly there he ran into Captain Buck Owings. Captain Buck Owings was a
quiet, grayish man, who from time to time in the course of a busy life
as a steamboat pilot and master had had occasion to shoot at or into
divers persons. Captain Buck Owings had a magnificent capacity for
attending strictly to his own business and not allowing anybody else
to attend to it. He was commonly classified as dangerous when
irritated--and tolerably easy to irritate.
“Cap'n Buck! Cap'n Buck!” sputtered
Jeff, so excited that he stuttered. “P-please, suh, is you seen my
boss--Jedge Priest? I suttinly must see him right away. This here next
heat is goin' to be thro wed.”
It was rarely that Captain Buck Owings raised his voice above a low,
deliberate drawl. He raised it a trifle now.
“What's that, boy?” he demanded. “Who's goin' to throw this race?”
He caught up with Jeff and hurried along by him, Jeff explaining what he
knew in half a dozen panted sentences. As Captain Buck Owings' mind
took in the situation, Captain Buck Owings' gray eyes began to flicker a
little.
Nowhere in sight was there any one who looked like the judge. Indeed,
there were few persons at all to be seen on the scarred green turf
across which they sped and those few were hurrying to join the crowds
that packed thick upon the seats of the grandstand, and thicker along
the infield fence and the homestretch. Somewhere beyond, the stable bell
jangled. The little betting ring was empty almost and the lone bookmaker
was turning his blackboard down.
His customary luck served Jeff in this crisis, however. From beneath a
cuddy under the grandstand that bore a blue board lettered with the word
“Refreshments” appeared the large, slow-moving form of the old judge.
He was wiping his mouth with an enormous handkerchief as he headed
deliberately for the infield fence. His venerable and benevolent pink
face shone afar and Jeff literally flung himself at him.
“Oh, Jedge!” he yelled. “Oh, Jedge; please, suh, wait jes' a minute!”
In some respects Judge Priest might be said to resemble Kipling's East
Indian elephant. He was large as to bulk and conservative as to his
bodily movements; he never seemed to hurry, and yet when he set out to
arrive at a given place in a given time he would be there in due season.
He faced about and propelled himself toward the queerly matched pair
approaching him with such haste.
As they met, Captain Buck Owings began to speak and his voice was back
again at its level monotone, except that it had a little steaming sound
in it, as though Captain Buck Owings were beginning to seethe and simmer
gently somewhere down inside of himself.
“Judge Priest, suh,” said Captain Buck, “it looks like there'd be some
tall swindlin' done round here soon unless we can stop it. This boy of
yours heard something. Jeff tell the judge what you heard just now.” And
Jeff told, the words bubbling out of him in a stream:
“It's done all fixed up betwixt them w'ite gen'lemen. That there Mr.
Jackson Berry he's been tormentin' the stallion ontwell he break and
lose the fust two heats. Now, w'en the money is all on the mare, they
goin' to turn round and do it the other way. Over on the backstretch
that Mr. Van Wallace he's goin' to spite and tease Minnie May ontwell
she go all to pieces, so the stallion'll be jest natchelly bound to win;
an' 'en they'll split up the money amongst 'em!”
“Ah-hah!” said Judge Priest; “the infernal scoundrels!” Even in this
emergency his manner of speaking was almost deliberate; but he glanced
toward the bookmaker's block and made as if to go toward it.
“That there Yankee bookmaker gen'leman he's into it too,” added Jeff. “I
p'intedly heared 'em both mention his name.”
“I might speak a few words in a kind of a warnin' way to those two,”
purred Captain Buck Owings. “I've got a right smart money adventured on
this trottin' race myself.” And he turned toward the track.
“Too late for that either, son,” said the old judge, pointing. “Look
yonder!”
A joyful rumble was beginning to thunder from the grandstand. The
constables had cleared the track, and from up beyond came the glint of
the flashing sulky-spokes as the two conspirators wheeled about to score
down and be off.
“Then I think maybe I'll have to attend to 'em personally after the
race,” said Captain Buck Owings in a resigned tone.
“Son,” counseled Judge Priest, “I'd hate mightily to see you brought up
for trial before me for shootin' a rascal--especially after the mischief
was done. I'd hate that mightily--I would so.”
“But, Judge,” protested Captain Buck Owings, “I may have to do it! It
oughter be done. Nearly everybody here has bet on Minnie May. It's plain
robbin' and stealin'!”
“That's so,” assented the judge as Jeff danced a dog of excitement just
behind him--“that's so. It's bad enough for those two to be robbin'
their own fellow-citizens; but it's mainly the shame on our county fair
I'm thinkin' of.” The old judge had been a director and a stockholder
of the County Jockey Club for twenty years or more. Until now its record
had been clean. “Tryin' to declare the result off afterward wouldn't
do much good. It would be the word of three white men against a
nigger--and nobody would believe the nigger,” added Captain Buck Owings,
finishing the sentence for him.
“And the scandal would remain jest the same,” bemoaned the old judge.
“Buck, my son, unless we could do something before the race it looks
like it's hopeless. Ah!”
The roar from the grandstand above their heads deepened, then broke up
into babblings and exclamations. The two trotters had swung past the
mark, but Minnie May had slipped a length ahead at the tape and the
judges had sent them back again. There would be a minute or two more of
grace anyhow. The eyes of all three followed the nodding heads of the
horses back up the stretch. Then Judge Priest, still watching, reached
out for Jeff and dragged him round in front of him, dangling in his grip
like a hooked black eel.
“Jeff, don't I see a gate up yonder in the track fence right at the
first turn?” he asked.
“Yas, suh,” said Jeff eagerly. “'Tain't locked neither. I come through
it myse'f today. It opens on to a little road whut leads out past the
stables to the big pike. I kin--”
The old judge dropped his wriggling servitor and had Captain Buck Owings
by the shoulder with one hand and was pointing with the other up the
track, and was speaking, explaining something or other in a voice
unusually brisk for him.
“See yonder, son!” he was saying. “The big oak on the inside--and the
gate is jest across from it!”
Comprehension lit up the steamboat captain's face, but the light went
out as he slapped his hand back to his hip pocket--and slapped it flat.
“I knew I'd forgot something!” he lamented, despairingly. “Needin' one
worse than I ever did in my whole life--and then I leave mine home in my
other pants!”
He shot the judge a look. The judge shook his head.
“Son,” he said, “the circuit judge of the first judicial district of
Kintucky don't tote such things.”
Captain Buck Owings raised a clenched fist to the blue sky above and
swore impotently. For the third time the grandstand crowd was starting
its roar. Judge Priest's head began to waggle with little sidewise
motions.
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's Hell hounds, rambled with weaving
indirectness round the corner of the grandstand not twenty feet from
them. His gangrened cartridge-box was trying to climb up over his left
shoulder from behind, his eyes were heavy with a warm and comforting
drowsiness, and his Springfield's iron butt-plate was scurfing up the
dust a yard behind him as he hauled the musket along by the muzzle.
The judge saw him first; but, even as he spoke and pointed, Captain Buck
Owings caught the meaning and jumped. There was a swirl of arms and legs
as they struck, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, sorely shocked, staggered back
against the wall with a loud grunt of surprise and indignation.
Half a second later, side by side, Captain Buck Owings and Judge
Priest's Jeff sped northward across the earth, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby
staggered toward the only comforter near at hand, with his two empty
arms upraised. Filled with a great and sudden sense of loss he fell upon
Judge Priest's neck, almost bearing his commander down by the weight of
his grief.
“Carried her four years!” he exclaimed piteously; “four endurin' years,
Judge, and not a single dam' Yankee ever laid his hand on her! Carried
her ever since, and nobody ever dared to touch her! And now to lose her
this away!”
His voice, which had risen to a bleat, sank to a sob and he wept
unrestrainedly on the old judge's shoulder. It looked as though these
two old men were wrestling together, catch-as-catch-can.
The judge tried to shake his distressed friend off, but the sergeant
clung fast. Over the bent shoulders of the other the judge saw the
wheels flash by, going south, horses and drivers evened up. The “Go!”
of the starting judge was instantly caught up by five hundred spectators
and swallowed in a crackling yell. Oblivious of all these things the
sergeant raised his sorrowing head and a melancholy satisfaction shone
through his tears.
“I lost her,” he said; “but, by gum, Judge, it took all four of 'em to
git her away from me, didn't it?”
None, perhaps, in all that crowd except old Judge Priest saw the two
fleeting figures speeding north. All other eyes there were turned to
the south, where the county's rival trotters swung round the first turn,
traveling together like teammates. None marked Captain Buck Owings as,
strangely cumbered, he scuttled across the track from the outer side
to the inner and dived like a rabbit under the fence at the head of
the homestretch, where a big oak tree with a three-foot bole cast its
lengthening shadows across the course. None marked Judge Priest's Jeff
coiling down like a black-snake behind an unlatched wooden gate almost
opposite where the tree stood.
None marked these things, because at this moment something direful
happened. Minnie May, the favorite, was breaking badly on the back
length. Almost up on her hindlegs she lunged out ahead of her with her
forefeet, like a boxer. That far away it looked to the grandstand crowds
as though Van Wallace had lost his head entirely. One instant he was
savagely lashing the mare along the flanks, the next he was pulling her
until he was stretched out flat on his back, with his head back between
the painted sulky wheels. And Blandville Boy, steady as a clock, was
drawing ahead and making a long gap between them.
Blandville Boy came on grandly--far ahead at the half; still farther
ahead nearing the three-quarters. All need for breaking her gait being
now over, crafty Van Wallace had steadied the mare and again she trotted
perfectly--trotted fast too; but the mischief was done and she was
hopelessly out of it, being sure to be beaten and lucky if she saved
being distanced.
The whole thing had worked beautifully, without a hitch. This thought
was singing high in Jackson Berry's mind as he steered the stud-horse
past the three-quarter post and saw just beyond the last turn the
straightaway of the homestretch, opening up empty and white ahead of
him. And then, seventy-five yards away, he beheld a most horrifying
apparition!
Against a big oak at the inner-track fence, sheltered from the view of
all behind, but in full sight of the turn, stood Captain Buck Owings,
drawing down on him with a huge and hideous firearm. How was Jackson
Berry, thus rudely jarred from pleasing prospects, to know that
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby's old Springfield musket hadn't been fired since
Appomattox--that its lode was a solid mass of corroded metal, its stock
worm-eaten walnut and its barrel choked up thick with forty years of
rust! All Jackson Berry knew was that the fearsome muzzle of an awful
weapon was following him as he moved down toward it and that behind the
tall mule's ear of a hammer and the brass guard of the trigger he saw
the cold, forbidding gray of Captain Buck Owings' face and the colder,
more forbidding, even grayer eye of Captain Buck Owings--a man known to
be dangerous when irritated--and tolerably easy to irritate!
Before that menacing aim and posture Jackson Berry's flesh turned to
wine jelly and quivered on his bones. His eyes bulged out on his cheeks
and his cheeks went white to match his eyes. Had it not been for the
stallion's stern between them, his knees would have knocked together.
Involuntarily he drew back on the reins, hauling in desperately until
Blandville Boy's jaws were pulled apart like the red painted mouth of
a hobby-horse and his forelegs sawed the air. The horse was fighting to
keep on to the nearing finish, but the man could feel the slugs of lead
in his flinching body.
And then--and then--fifty scant feet ahead of him and a scanter twenty
above where the armed madman stood--a wide gate flew open; and, as this
gap of salvation broke into the line of the encompassing fence, the
welcome clarion of Judge Priest's Jeff rose in a shriek: “This way out,
boss--this way out!”
It was a time for quick thinking; and to persons as totally, wholly
scared as Jackson Berry was, thinking comes wondrous easy. One
despairing half-glance he threw upon the goal just ahead of him and the
other half on that unwavering rifle-muzzle, now looming so dose that he
could catch the glint of its sights. Throwing himself far back in his
reeling sulky Jackson Berry gave a desperate yank on the lines that
lifted the sorely pestered stallion clear out of his stride, then sawed
on the right-hand rein until he swung the horse's head through the
opening, grazing one wheel against a gatepost--and was gone past the
whooping Jeff, lickety-split, down the dirt road, through the dust and
out on the big road toward town.
Jeff slammed the gate shut and vanished instantly. Captain Buck
Owings dropped his weapon into the long, rank grass and slid round the
treetrunk. And half a minute later Van Wallace, all discomfited and
puzzled, with all his fine hopes dished and dashed, sorely against his
own will jogged Minnie May a winner past a grandstand that recovered
from its dumb astonishment in ample time to rise and yell its approval
of the result.
*****
Judge Priest being a childless widower of many years' standing, his
household was administered for him by Jeff as general manager, and by
Aunt Dilsey Turner as kitchen goddess. Between them the old judge
fared well and they fared better. Aunt Dilsey was a master hand at a
cookstove; but she went home at night, no matter what the state of the
weather, wearing one of those long, wide capes--dolmans, I think they
used to call them--that hung dear down to the knees, hiding the wearer's
hands and whatsoever the hands might be carrying.
It was a fad of Aunt Dilsey's to bring one covered splint basket and one
close-mouthed tin bucket with her when she came to work in the morning,
and to take both of them away with her--under her dolman cape--at night;
and in her cabin on Plunkett's Hill she had a large family of her own
and two paying boarders, all of whom had the appearance of being well
nourished. If you, reader, are Southern-born, these seemingly trivial
details may convey a meaning to your understanding.
So Aunt Dilsey Turner looked after the judge's wants from the big old
kitchen that was detached from the rest of the rambling white house, and
Jeff had the run of his sideboard, his tobacco caddy, and his wardrobe.
The judge was kept comfortable and they were kept happy, each respecting
the other's property rights.
It was nine o'clock in the evening of the last day of the county fair.
The judge, mellowly comfortable in his shirtsleeves, reclined in a
big easy rocking-chair in his sitting room. There was a small fire of
hickory wood in the fireplace and the little flames bickered together
and the embers popped as they charred a dimmer red. The old judge was
smoking his homemade corncob pipe with the long cane stem, and sending
smoke wreaths aloft to shred away like cobweb skeins against the dingy
ceiling.
“Jeff!” he called to a black shadow fidgeting about in the background.
“Yas, suh, Jedge; right yere!”
“Jeff, if your discernin' taste in handmade sour-mash whisky has
permitted any of that last batch of liquor I bought to remain in the
demijohn, I wish you'd mix me up a little toddy.”
Jeff snickered and mixed the toddy, mixing it more hurriedly then
common, because he was anxious to be gone. It was Saturday night--a
night dedicated by long usage to his people; and in Jeff's pocket was
more ready money than his pocket had ever held before at any one time.
Moreover, in the interval between dusk and dark, Jeff's wardrobe had
been most grandly garnished. Above Mr. Clay Saunders' former blue serge
coat a crimson necktie burned like a beacon, and below the creased legs
of Mr. Otterbuck's late pearl-gray trousers now appeared a pair of
new patent-leather shoes with pointed toes turned up at the ends like
sleigh-runners and cloth uppers in the effective colors of the Douglas
plaid and rows of 24-point white pearl buttons.
Assuredly Jeff was anxious to be on his way. He placed the filled toddy
glass at the old judge's elbow and sought unostentatiously to withdraw
himself.
“Jeff!” said the judge.
“Yas, suh.”
“I believe Mr. Jackson Berry did not see fit to return to the fair
grounds this evenin' and protest the result of the third heat?”
“No, suh,” said Jeff; “frum whut I heared some of the w'ite folks
sayin', he driv right straight home and went to bed and had a sort of a
chill.”
“Ah-hah!” said the judge, sipping reflectively. Jeff fidgeted and drew
nearer a halfopen window, listening out into the maple-lined street. Two
blocks down the street he could hear the colored brass band playing in
front of the Colored Odd Fellows Hall for a “festibul.”
“Jeff,” said Judge Priest musingly, “violence or a show of violence is
always to be deplored.” Jeff had only a hazy idea of what the old
judge meant by that, but in all his professional life Jeff had never
intentionally disagreed in conversation with any white adult--let alone
a generous employer. So:
“Yas, suh,” assented Jeff promptly; “it suttinly is.”
“But there are times and places,” went on the old judge, “when it is
necessary.”
“Yas, suh,” said Jeff, catching the drift--“lak at a racetrack!”
“Ah-hah! Quite so,” said Judge Priest, nodding. “And, Jeff, did it ever
occur to you that there are better ways of killin' a cat than by chokin'
him with butter?”
“Indeed yas, suh,” said Jeff. “Sometimes you kin do it best with one of
these yere ole rusty Confedrit guns!”
At that precise moment, in a little house on the next street, Sergeant
Jimmy Bagby's family, having prevailed upon him to remove his shoes and
his cartridge-belt before retiring, were severally engaged in an
attempt to dissuade him from a firmly expressed purpose of taking his
Springfield musket to bed with him.