II

There were two men in the buggy which came up the little ascent from the

bridge and stopped before the store. The men were Evered, and Evered’s

son, John. Evered lived on a farm that overlooked the Whitcher Swamp on

the farther side. He was a man of some property, a successful farmer. He

was also a butcher; and his services were called in at hog-killing time

as regularly as the services of Doctor Crapo in times of sickness. He

knew his trade; and he knew the anatomy of a steer or a calf or a sheep

as well as Doctor Crapo knew the anatomy of a man. He was an efficient

man; a brutally efficient man. His orchard was regularly trimmed and

grafted and sprayed; his hay was re-seeded year by year; his garden

never knew the blight of weeds; his house was clean, in good repair,

white-painted. A man in whom dwelt power and strength; and a man whom

other men disliked and feared.

He was a short man, broad of shoulder, with a thick neck and a square,

well-shaped head, a heavy brow and a steady burning eye. A somber man,

he never laughed; never was known to laugh. There was a blighting

something in his gaze which discouraged laughter in others. He was known

to have a fierce and ruthless temper; in short, a fearsome man, hard to

understand. He puzzled his neighbors and baffled them; they let him well

alone.

He was driving this evening. His horse, like everything which was his,

was well-groomed and in perfect condition. It pranced a little as it

came up to the store, not from high spirits, but from nervousness. So

much might be known by the white glint of its eye. The nervousness of a

mettled creature too much restrained. It pranced a little, and Evered’s

hand tightened on the rein so harshly that the horse’s lower jaw was

pulled far back against its neck, and the creature was abruptly still,

trembling, and sweating faintly for no cause at all. Evered paid no more

heed to the horse. He looked toward the group of men upon the steps, and

some met his eye, and some looked away.

He looked at them, one by one; and he asked Lee Motley: “Is the mail

come?”

Motley shook his head. He was a farmer of means, a strong man, moved by

no fear of Evered. “No,” he said.

Evered passed the reins to his son. “Hold him still,” he told the young

man, and stepped out over the wheel to the ground, dropping lightly as a

cat. The horse gave a half leap forward and was caught by John Evered’s

steady hand; and the young man spoke gently to the beast to quiet it.

Evered from the ground looked up at his son and said harshly, “I bade

you hold him still.”

The other answered, “I will.”

“You’d best,” said Evered, and turned and strode up the steps into the

store.

The incident had brought out vividly enough the difference between

Evered and his son. They were two characters sharply contrasting; for

where Evered was harsh, John was gentle of speech; and where Evered was

abrupt, John was slow; and where Evered’s eye was hard and angry, John’s

was mild. They contrasted physically. The son was tall, well-formed and

fair; the father was short, almost squat in his broad strength, and

black of hair and eye. Nevertheless, it was plain to the seeing eye

that there was strength in John as there was strength in

Evered--strength of body and soul.

When Evered had gone into the store Motley said to the son, “It’s warm.”

The young man nodded in a wistfully friendly way. “Yes,” he agreed. “So

warm it’s brought up our peas this day.”

“That south slope of yours is good garden land,” Motley told him, and

John said:

“Yes. As good as I ever see.”

Everyone liked John Evered; and someone asked now: “Been fishing any,

over at Wilson’s?”

John shook his head. “Too busy,” he explained. “But I hear how they’re

catching some good strings there.”

“Luke Hills brought in ten to-night that was ten feet long,” Jim

Saladine offered. “Got ’em at Ruffingham.”

The young man in the buggy smiled delightedly, his eyes shining. “Golly,

what a catch!” he exclaimed.

Then Evered came to the door of the store and looked out, and silence

fell upon them all once more. The mail was coming down the hill; the

stage, a rattling, rusted, do-or-die automobile of ancient vintage,

squeaked to a shrill stop before the very nose of Evered’s horse. John

spoke to the horse, and it was still. The stage driver took the mail

sacks in, and Evered left the doorway. The others all got up and turned

toward the door.

Motley said to Saladine, “Did you mark the horse? It was scared of the

stage, but it was still at his word, and he did not tighten rein.”

“I saw,” Saladine agreed. “The boy handles it fine.”

“It’s feared of Evered; but the beast loves the boy.”

“There’s others in that same way o’ thinking,” said Saladine.

Inside the store Will Bissell and Andy Wattles, his lank and loyal

clerk, were stamping and sorting the mail. No great matter, for few

letters come to Fraternity. While this was under way Evered gathered up

the purchases he had made since he came into the store, and took them

out and stowed them under the seat of the buggy. He did not speak to his

son. John sat still in his place, moving his feet out of the other’s

way. When the bundles were all bestowed Evered went back up the steps

and Will gave him his daily paper and a letter addressed to his wife,

and Evered took them without thanks, and left the store without farewell

to any man, and climbed into the buggy and took the reins. He turned the

horse sharply and they moved down the hill, and the bridge sounded for a

moment beneath their passing. In the still evening air the pound of the

horse’s hoofs and the light whirring of the wheels persisted for long

moments before they died down to blend with the hum and murmur of tiny

sounds that filled the whispering dusk.

As they drove away one or two men came to the door to watch them go; and

Judd, a man with a singular capacity for mean and tawdry malice, said

loudly, “That boy’ll break Evered, some day, across his knee.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Jean Bubier said cheerfully that he

would like to see the thing done. “But that Evered, he is one leetle

fighter,” he reminded Judd.

Judd laughed unpleasantly and said Evered had the town bluffed. “That’s

all he is,” he told them. “A black scowl and some cussing. Nothing else.

You’ll see.”

Motley shook his head soberly. “Evered’s no bluff,” he said. “You’re

forgetting that matter of the knife, Judd.”

Motley’s reminder put a momentary silence upon them all. The story of

the knife was well enough known; the knife they had all seen. The thing

had happened fifteen or twenty years before, and was one of the tales

many times told about Will’s stove. One Dave Riggs, drunken and

worthless, farming in a small way in North Fraternity, sent for Evered

to kill a pig. Evered went to Riggs’ farm. Riggs had been drinking; he

was quarrelsome; he sought to interfere with Evered’s procedure. Motley,

a neighbor of Riggs, had been there at the time, and used to tell the

story.

“Riggs wanted him to tie up the pig,” he would explain. “You know Evered

does not do that. He says they will not bleed properly, tied. He did not

argue with the man, but Riggs persisted in his drunken way, and cursed

Evered to his face, till I could see the blood mounting in the butcher’s

cheeks. He is a bad-tempered man, always was.

“He turned on Riggs and told the man to hush; and Riggs damned him.

Evered knocked him flat with a single fist stroke; and while Riggs was

still on the ground Evered turned and got the pig by the ears and

slipped the knife into its throat, in that smooth way he has. When he

drew it out the blood came after; and Evered turned to Riggs, just

getting on his feet.

“‘There’s your pig,’ said Evered. ‘Butchered right. Now, man, be still.’

“Well, Riggs took a look at the pig and another at Evered. He was

standing by the chopping block, and his hand fell on the ax stuck there.

Before I could stir he had lifted it, whirling it, and was sweeping down

on Evered.

“It was all over quick, you’ll mind. Riggs rushing, with the ax

whistling in the air. Then Evered stepped inside its swing, and drove at

Riggs’ head. I think he forgot he had the knife in his hand. But it was

there; his hand drove it with the cunning that it knew--at the forehead

of the other man.

“I mind how Riggs looked, after he had dropped. On his back he was, the

knife sticking straight up from his head. And it still smeared with the

pig’s blood, dripping down on the dead man’s face. Oh, aye, he was dead.

Dead as the pig, when it quit its walking round in a little, and laid

down, and stopped its squeal.”

Someone asked him once, when he had told the tale: “Where was Riggs’

wife? Married, wa’n’t he?”

“In the house,” said Motley. “The boy was there, though. He’d come to

see the pig stuck, and when he saw the blood come out of its throat he

yelled and run. So he didn’t have to see the rest--the knife in his

father’s head.”

There had been no prosecution of Evered for that ancient tragedy.

Motley’s story was clear enough; it had been self-defense at the worst,

and half accident besides. Riggs’ wife went away and took her son, and

Fraternity knew them no more.

They conned over this ancient tale of Evered in Will’s store that night;

and some blamed him, and some found him not to blame. And when they were

done with that story they told others; how when he was called to butcher

sheep he had a trick of breaking their necks across his knee with a

twist and a jerk of his hands. There was no doubt of the man’s strength

nor of his temper.

A West Fraternity man came in while they were talking; one Zeke Pitkin,

a mild man, and timid. He listened to their words, and asked at last,

“Evered?”

They nodded; and Pitkin laughed in an awkward way. “He killed my bull

to-day,” he said.

Will Bissell asked quickly, “Killed your bull? You have him do it?”

Pitkin nodded, gulping at his Adam’s apple. “Getting ugly, the bull

was,” he said. “I didn’t like to handle him. Decided to beef him. So I

sent for Evered, and he came over.”

He looked round at them, laughed uneasily. “He scared me,” he said.

Motley asked slowly. “What happened, Zeke?”

Pitkin rubbed one hand nervously along his leg. “We-ell,” he explained.

“I’m nervous like. Git excited easy. So when he come I told him the bull

was ugly. Told him to look out for it.

“He just only looked at me in that hard way of his. I had the bull in

the barn; and he went in where it was and fetched it out in the barn

floor. Left the bull standing there and begun to fix his tackle to h’ist

it up.

“I didn’t want to stay in there with the bull. I was scared of it--it

loose there, nothing to hold it. And Evered kept working round it, back

to the beast half the time. Nothing to stop it tossing him. I didn’t

like to get out, but I didn’t want to stay. And I guess I talked too

much. Kept telling him to hurry, and asking him why he didn’t kill it

and all. Got him mad, I guess.”

The man shivered a little, his eyes dim with the memory of the moment.

He took off his hat and rubbed his hand across his head, and Motley

said, “He did kill it?”

Pitkin nodded uneasily. “Yeah,” he said. “Evered turned round to me by

and by; and he looked at me under them black eyebrows of his, and he

says: ‘Want I should kill this bull, do you?’ I ’lows that I did. ‘Want

him killed now, do you?’ he says, and I told him I did. And I did too. I

was scared of that bull, I say. But not the way he did kill it.”

He shuddered openly; and Motley asked again, “What did he do?”

“Stepped up aside the bull,” said Pitkin hurriedly. “Yanked out that

knife of his--that same knife--out of his sheath. Up with it, and down,

so quick I never see what he did. Down with the knife right behind the

bull’s horns. Right into the neck bone. And that bull o’ mine went down

like a ton o’ brick. Like two ton o’ brick. Stone dead.”

Will Bissell echoed, “Stabbed it in the neck?”

“Right through the neck bone. With that damned heavy knife o’ his.” He

wiped his forehead again. “We had a hell of a time h’isting that bull,

too,” he said weakly. “A hell of a time.”

No one spoke for a moment. They were digesting this tale of Evered. Then

Judd said: “I’d like to see that red bull of his git after that man.”

One or two nodded, caught themselves, looked sheepishly round to

discover whether they had been seen. Evered’s red bull was as well and

unfavorably known as the man himself. A huge brute, shoulder high to a

tall man, ugly of disposition, forever bellowing challenges across the

hills from Evered’s barn, frightening womenfolk in their homes a mile

away. A creature of terror, ruthlessly curbed and goaded by Evered. It

was known that the butcher took delight in mastering the bull, torturing

the beast with ingenious twists of the nose ring, with blows on the leg

joints, and nose, and the knobs where horns should have been. The red

bull was of a hornless breed. The great head of it was like a buffalo’s

head, like a huge malicious battering ram. It was impossible to look at

the beast without a tremor of alarm.

“It’s ugly business to see Evered handle that bull,” Will Belter said,

half to himself.

And after a little silence Jean Bubier echoed: “Almost as ugly as to see

the man with his wife. When I have see that, sometime, I have think I

might take his own knife to him.”

Judd, the malicious, laughed in an ugly way; and he said, “Guess Evered

would treat her worse if he got an eye on her and that man Semler.”

It was Jim Saladine’s steady voice which put an end to that. “Don’t put

your foul mouth on her, Judd,” he said quietly. “Not if you want to walk

home.”

Judd started to speak, caught Saladine’s quiet eye and was abruptly

still.