IT was ten o'clock that night when the stage, or “hack,” as it was
called, put Pole down in the square at Springtown. He went directly to
Floyd's store, hoping to see the young man before he went to bed, but
the long building was wrapped in darkness. Pole went over to the little
hotel where Floyd roomed. The proprietor, Jerry Malone, and two tobacco
drummers sat smoking on the veranda.
“He's jest this minute gone up to his room,” the landlord said, in
response to Baker's inquiry as to the whereabouts of his friend. “It's
the fust door to the right, at the top o' the steps.”
Pole went up and knocked on Floyd's door, and the young merchant called
out, “Come in.”
Baker opened the door, finding the room in darkness. From the bed in the
corner Floyd's voice came: “Is that you, Pole?”
“Yes, I jest got back, Nelson. I went to the store expectin' to find you
at work, an' then Jerry told me you was up here.”
“Light the lamp, Pole,” Floyd said. “There are some matches on that
table right under your hand.”
“Oh, I hain't got long to stay,” returned the mountaineer, “an' I
don't need a light to talk by, any more'n a blind man does to write his
letters. I 'lowed I'd tell you what I done down thar. I seed Floyd.”
“Oh, you did! After you left I got really interested in your venture,
and I was afraid you might accidentally miss him.”
“Yes, I seed 'im.” Pole found a chair and sat down at the little table,
resting his hand on it, and tilting the chair back, after his favorite
method of making himself comfortable. There was a lamp on a post in
front of the hotel and its light came through a window and faintly
illuminated the room. Pole could see the white covering of Floyd's bed
and the outline of the young man's head and shoulders against a big
feather pillow.
“You say you saw him?” Floyd's voice was eager and restrained.
“Yes, an' I got news fer you, Nelson--substantial news. Henry A. Floyd
is yore own uncle.”
“Good God, Pole!”--Floyd sat up in bed--“don't make any mistakes. You
say he is actually--”
“I ain't makin' no mistakes,” replied Pole. “He's the only brother of
yore daddy, Charles Nelson Floyd. That old cuss told me so, an' I know
he was tellin' me a straight tale.”
There was silence. Floyd pulled his feet from beneath the coverings and
sat up on the bedside. He seemed unable to speak, and, leaning forward
in his chair, the ex-moonshiner recounted in careful detail all that had
passed between him and the man he had visited. For several minutes after
Pole had concluded the merchant sat without visible movement, then Pole
heard him take a long, deep breath.
“Well, I hope you are satisfied with what I done,” said Pole,
tentatively.
“Satisfied! Great Heavens!” cried Floyd,' “I simply don't know what to
say to it--how to tell you what I feel. Pole, I'll bet I'm having the
oddest experience that ever came to mortal man. I don't know how to
explain it, or make you understand. When a baby's born it's too young to
wonder or reflect over its advent into the world, but to-night, after
all my years of life, I feel--Pole, I feel somehow as if I were suddenly
born again. That dark spot on my history has been in my mind almost
night and day ever since I was old enough to compare myself to others.
Persons who have strong physical defects are often morbidly sensitive
over them. That flaw in my life was my eternally sore point. And my
mother”--Floyd's voice sank reverently--“did he say who she was?”
“No, we didn't git fur enough,” Pole returned. “You see, Nelson, I got
that information by pretendin' to be sorter indifferent about you, an'
ef I'd 'a' axed too many questions, the old codger 'ud 'a' suspicioned
my game. Besides, as I told you, he wasn't willin' to talk perfectly
free. Although yore daddy's in the grave, the old man seems to still
bear a sort o' grudge agin 'im, an' that, in my opinion, accounts fer
him not helpin' you out when you was a child.”
“Ah, I see,” said Floyd; “my father was wild as a young man?”
“Yes, that's the way he put it,” answered Baker; “but I wouldn't let
that bother me, Nelson. Ef yore daddy'd 'a' lived longer, no doubt, he'd
'a' settled down like you have. But he passed away in a good cause. It
ort to be a comfort to know he died in battle.”
“Yes, that's a comfort,” said Floyd, thoughtfully.
“An' now you've got plenty o' kin,” Pole said, with a pleasant laugh. “I
come over in the hack with Colonel Price and Captain Duncan, an' you ort
to 'a' heard 'em both spout about the Floyds an' the Nelsons. They say
yore blood's as blue as indigo, my boy, an' that they suspected it all
along, on account o' yore pluck and determination to win in ever' game
you tackled. Lord, you bet they'll be round to-morrow to give you the
hand o' good-fellowship an' welcome you into high life. I reckon you'll
sorter cut yore mountain scrub friends.”
“I haven't any scrub friends,” said Floyd, with feeling. “I don't know
that you boast of your ancestry, Pole, but you are as high above the
kind of man that does as the stars are above the earth.”
“Now you are a-kiddin' me!” said Baker. He put out his hand on the table
and felt something smooth and cool under his touch. He drew it to him.
It was a pint flask filled with whiskey. He held it up with a laugh.
“Good Lord, what are you doin' with this bug-juice?” he asked.
“Oh, you mean that bottle of rye,” said Floyd. “I've kept that for a
memento of the day I swore off, Pole, five years ago. I thought as long
as I could pass it day after day and never want to uncork it, that it
was a sign I was safely anchored to sobriety.”
There was a little squeak like that of a frightened mouse. Pole had
twisted the cork out and was holding the neck of the bottle to his nose.
“Gee whiz!” he exclaimed. “That stuff smells _fine!_ You say it's five
years old, Nelson?”
“Yes, it's almost old enough to vote,” Floyd laughed. “It was very old
and mellow when I got it.”
The cork squeaked again Pole had stopped the bottle. It lay flat under
his big, pulsating hand. His fingers played over it caressingly. “I
wouldn't advise you to keep it under yore eye all the time, Nelson,” he
said. “I tried that dodge once an' it got the best o' my determination.”
“I sometimes feel the old desire come over me,” said Floyd; “often when
my mind is at rest after work, and even while I am at it, but it is
never here in my room in the presence of that memento. It seems to make
a man of me. I pity a drinking man, Pole. I know what he has to fight,
and I feel now that if I were to lose all hope in life that I'd take to
liquor as naturally as a starving man would to food.”
“I reckon,” said Pole, in a strange, stilled voice. His fingers were
now tightly clasped about the bottle. There was a pause, then he slid
it cautiously--very cautiously--towards him. He swallowed something that
was in his throat; his eyes were fixed in a great, helpless stare on
the dim figure across the room. Noiselessly the bottle was raised, and
noiselessly it went down into the pocket of his coat.
“I feel like I owe you my life, Pole,” Floyd continued, earnestly.
“You've done to-day what no one else could have done. If that old man
had died without speaking of this matter I'd perhaps never have known
the truth. Pole, you can call on me for anything you want
that is in my power to give. Do you understand me, Pole, old
friend?--anything--anything!”
There was silence. Pole sat staring vacantly in front of him. Floyd rose
in slow surprise and came across the room. Pole stood up suddenly, his
hand on the weighty pocket. Quickly he shifted to a darker portion of
the room nearer the door.
“What's the matter, Pole?” Floyd asked, in surprise.
“Matter? Why, nothin', Nelson.” Baker laughed mechanically. “I was jest
thinkin' that I ought to be in bed. I've told you all I kin, I guess.”
“You were so quiet just now that I thought--really, I didn't know what
to think. I was telling you--”
“I know, Nelson.” Baker's unsteady hand was on the latch of the door.
“Never you mind, I'll call on you if I want anything. I've got yore
friendship, I reckon, an' that's enough fer me.”
He opened the door and glided out into the hall. “Good-night, Nelson.”
“Good-night, Pole, good-night. God bless you, old man!”
On the lonely road leading to his house the mountaineer stopped and drew
the bottle from his pocket. “You dem little devil!” he said, playfully,
holding it up before his eyes in the starlight. “Here I've gone all day
in Atlanta, passin' ten 'thousand barroom doors, swearin' by all that
was holy that I'd fetch Nelson Floyd his news with a sober head on my
shoulders an' a steady tongue _in_ that head; an' I rid, too, by hunkey,
all the way from Darley out here with a hack-driver smellin' like a
bung-hole, with two quarts under his seat an' no tellin' how many under
his hide. I say I got through all that, although my jaws was achin' tell
they felt like they was loose at the sockets, an' I 'lowed I'd slide
safe to the home-base, when _you_--you crawled up under my nose in the
dark like a yaller lizard, with that dern tale about yore ripe old age
an' kingly flavor. '_Memento_' hell!” Pole was using Floyd's word for
the first time. “I'd like to know what sort of a memento you'd make
outside of a man's stomach. No, Poley, I reckon you've reached yore
limit.”
The mouse squeaked again. Pole chuckled. He held the flask aloft and
shook it.
“Gentlemen,” he said to the countless stars winking merrily down from
above, “take one with me,” and he drank.