*FOREWORD*
_I am the child of the Centuries. I am the son of the AEons which were.
I have always been, and I shall always be. To make me it has taken
fire, star-dust, and the Spirit of God--the lives of billions of people,
and the lights of a million suns._
_I have grown from sun and star-dust to the Thing-Which-Thinks._
_It were the basest ingratitude if I were not both thankful to God and
proud of my pedigree._
_What has come to me has been good; what shall come will be better: for
I am Evolution, and I grow ever to greater things. Life has been good;
death will be better; for it is the cause of all my past, making for a
still greater future._
_And this I know, not from Books nor from Knowledge, but from the
unafraid, never silent voice of Instinct within me, which is God._
_My debt to the past is great: I can never, in full, repay it; for they,
my creditors, passed with it. They left me a world beautiful: shall I
make it a world bare? They left a world bountiful: shall I leave it
blazed and barren to the sands of death?_
_I am in debt to the Past. Shall the Future present the bill to find
that I have gone to my grave a bankrupt? Find that I have wantonly laid
waste the land, leaving no root of wild flower, no shade of tree, no
spring that falleth from the hills?_
_Shall I destroy their trees for the little gain it may bring to my
short Life-tenantry? Shall I make of their land a desert by day and a
deluge by night? Shall I stamp with the degeneracy of gullies my own
offspring, and scar with the red birth-mark of poverty the unborn of my
own breed?_
_I live, charged with a great Goodness from the Past: I can die, paying
it, only by a greater Kindness for the Future._
*I*
*THE HEIR OF THE BLUEGRASS*
*JACK BALLINGTON,
FORESTER*
*CHAPTER I*
*SOUL-DREAMS AND THE SOIL*
Those who live near to Nature learn much: for it is only by living close
to her that we learn from her. The best advice ever given on longevity
was from the cheery old gentleman who said: "To live long, live
naturally; eat what you want, and walk on the sunny side of the street."
School children think that some wise man made all the hard rules of
grammar that grown-up folks try to teach them. They do not know that
the child-man learned to talk first and that the rules were made from
his speech. It is like the simple people at the circus who think the
trained horse is dancing to the music; it is the music that is dancing
to him. From the facts of life we draw our rules just as the scholars
made rules of grammar from the facts of language.
Nature is the One great Fact.
I was thinking of one of her facts the other day--she has so many--but
one I had noticed very plainly: the man who lives close to her is an
optimist.
Let the farmer fail year after year, and still he plants, hoping. Let
the merchant fall behind one year and he is shaken; another year, and he
quits. One season of deep water-hauling sends the fisherman home to his
fields. When the wild game vanishes the pioneer hunter becomes the
pioneer farmer. The merchant, the lawyer, the doctor,--there never was
one who did not dream, betimes, over his books, that he would yet live
to retire and till his acres.
Every failure in life goes back to the soil for a new start.
That is the fact; now for the rule. It is this: God intended that man
should be, first of all, a soil-worker. And tilling the soil includes
not only planting, but bringing all growing and living things thereon to
strength.
Rearing things on the soil is man's natural vocation, since neither
drought, nor flood, nor failure, can shut out from his heart that
instinct of hope which has come down through so many centuries of
soil-loving ancestors. The hoping instinct has been housed in him so
long that it is part of his heredity.
Maritime nations found empires, but not religions. Religions come from
the soil. Men, living in the open, watching their flocks by night, find
in the eternal wonder of the soul-questioning stars that which satisfies
their own souls.
Imagine fighting Rome founding a religion! Or bookish Greece! Or the
trading Saxon!
Religions come from mangers. All great soul-dreams were born amid
flocks and herds.
This is my own story, and the telling of it shall be in my own way. And
as I am not a writer, but a forester, doubtless my telling will be all
awry. For I have seen enough of life to know that the generals who have
won in the field of fiction, like the generals who have won in the field
of fact, have won because they have had the drilling.
And in my case the drilling has been only trees--trees, and their
children, the flowers.
*CHAPTER II*
*LITTLE SISTER*
This is my story, as I said, and the telling of it must be in my own
way. That is why I am giving this chapter first--because it happened
first--four years before the real story began. Another reason is that in
the telling of it I can set forth the characters of the old general, my
grandsire, who believed in fighting; of my Aunt Lucretia, his daughter,
who believed in pedigrees; of Eloise, the beautiful and daring one, who
believed in dancing and riding and shooting, and in making those who
loved her miserable; of Colonel Goff, an Englishman, who believed in
horses and hounds; and of Little Sister, who believed in Uncle Jack; and
even of myself, Uncle Jack, who believed in trees.
Little Sister is the three-year-old daughter of my brother Ned
Ballington, who, with his lovely wife, Thesis, and his major domo, Uncle
Wash (a colored gentleman of the Old School), and his other live things
and birds, resides on the farm adjoining ours.
But Little Sister, whose real name is Mildred, and her brother, two
years younger, who was baptized Edward, but whom Uncle Jack had
nicknamed Captain Skipper, because nothing could keep him still, spent
the most of their time at The Home Stretch, the home of their great
grandsire, General John Rutherford, where also lived their Aunt
Lucretia, and Eloise, and Uncle Jack.
It was either very hot or very cold on those days when Uncle Jack did
not drive them over to spend the day, and maybe a night, too. Once in a
great while the footing was too slippery for the pony. But these
omissions occurred, at the most, perhaps twice each summer and winter;
for the heart of the Middle Basin, that beautiful bluegrass country in
which they live, beats in the breast of Summer.
John Rutherford, the First, built The Home Stretch in 1800. It adjoined
the lands of Andrew Jackson, and the very spirit of the old fighter
hangs over the place. For John Rutherford had loved him--nay, had
lived, fought, and died for him--at New Orleans. There is a tradition
that Old Hickory himself named the place--in fact, that John Rutherford
owned it for no other reason than that his horse beat Andrew Jackson's
in the home stretch. The bet was a thousand acres of land. The race
track may still be seen at Clover Bottom, just across the way, where
Stone's River makes a bend around a hundred acres of land, rich as ever
the crow made a granary of, and as level as Chalmette Plain, where
Jackson's riflemen stopped the British before New Orleans.
Little Sister was a fair, frail, sensitive little tot. Her bright blue
eyes, pale pink face and dark brown hair kept one thinking of full
summer moons rainbowed at night. And her temper--she was fire and
powder there--a flash, maybe a clenched small fist, a small foot brought
down in sudden scorn--an explosion--and then she was sobbing for
forgiveness in your arms. That was Little Sister.
Once she slapped Aunt Lucretia in the face. "I can't see where in the
world she gets her temper from," Aunt Lucretia said; "for if there is an
angel on earth it is Thesis, her mother. General Rutherford" (Aunt
Lucretia always called her father General Rutherford), "this child ought
to be spanked till she is conquered. Her mother sends her over here
expecting us to make her behave."
"Tut, tut, Madam," said the General (he always called his daughter
madam), "that is not the way to break colts. That kind of a conquering
would spoil her. She'll need all of that temper, when she knows enough
to control it, to get through life and land anywhere near the wire
first. Besides, with her sensitiveness, don't you see she is suffering
now more than if we had punished her? If she were a plug now" (for the
General hated nothing so much as a plug), "she would never be sorry till
you made her sorry with a beating. But the conscience of a thoroughbred
beats hickory, and gentleness, Madam, is away ahead of blows in
everything but war--and we are not fighting now."
Then to make sure that she did not get a whipping, Uncle Jack, who was
eighteen and preparing for college, would snatch her away from Aunt
Lucretia and take her out to see the colts. At sight of them her
troubles vanished; for her love of all live things which are born on a
stock farm was as deep as her Ballington blood. A great burst of
sunshine would spread over her conscience-stricken face.
"O Uncle Jack, aren't they just too sweet for anything? Do let me get
down this minute and hug them--every one!" And Uncle Jack would let
her, if he had to catch each colt himself.
The clear-cut way she talked English! And her great heart of
motherhood! These were the two wonderful things in a tot so small. It
was not difficult to see where she inherited the first. But how could so
tiny a thing have such a great mother-heart? She loved everything
little--everything _just born_ on the place. The fact that anything in
hair, hide or feathers had arrived was a cause of jollification. "O do
let me see the dear little things!" would be her cry. And she generally
saw them if Uncle Jack were around.
One day they missed her from the house and Uncle Jack quickly tracked
her to the cow barn. It had occurred to him that the day before he had
shown her the Short-Horn's latest edition, a big, double-jointed, ugly,
hungry male calf, who slept all day in a bedded stall, a young Hercules
in repose, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle his huge nose and
sleep again.
There Uncle Jack found her. She had climbed over the high stall-gate to
pet and coddle the great calf. She had placed her own beautiful string
of beads around his tawny neck.
"Come out of there," laughed Uncle Jack. "What do you see pretty about
that great ugly calf?"
"O Uncle Jack," and she sighed affectedly, "I am truly sorry for him.
He is not pretty, to be sure--and so I have given him my beads. And he
doesn't seem to be very bright, nor at all well mannered, poor
dear--but--but," she added reflectively--"he has a lovely curly head and
he seems to be such a healthy child!"
On another occasion they missed her. It was nearly night. Everybody
started out in alarm to hunt for her. Aunt Lucretia was the first to
find her, coming from the brood-sow's lot.
"Where in the world have you been, child?" she asked as she picked her
up.
"Playing with the little yesterday-pigs," said Little Sister. "And Aunt
Lucretia, I ought to have come home sooner, I know, but I kissed one of
the cunningest of the little pigs good night, and all the others looked
so hurt, and squealed so because I didn't kiss them too, I just had to
catch and kiss every one before they would go to sleep."
Inheritance had played a tremendous part in Little Sister. Most
children crow and lisp and talk in divers languages before they learn to
talk English; while some never learn at all. But not so with her. The
first long word she attempted was perfectly pronounced. The first
sentence she put together was grammatically correct. The correctness of
her language for one so small made it sound so quaint that Uncle Jack
had her always talking. Her earnestness and intensity only added to her
originality.
Pete was a little darky on the farm whose chief business was to
entertain Little Sister when everything else failed. His repertoire
consisted of all the funny tricks of a monkey. But his two-star
performances were racking like Deacon Jones' old clay-bank pacer and
playing 'possum. Little Sister never tired of having Pete do these two
things. They were very comical. Everybody knew Deacon Jones, with his
angular, sedate, solemn way of riding, and the double-shuffling,
twisting, cork-screw gait of the old pacer. The ludicrous motions of
the pacer had struck Pete early in life, and he had soon learned to get
down on all-fours and make Deacon Jones's horse ashamed of himself. The
imitation was so perfect that Ned and Uncle Jack used to call in their
friends to see the show, which consisted of Pete's doing the racking
act, while Little Sister, astraddle of his back, with one hand in his
shirt collar, and the other wielding a hickory switch, played the
Deacon.
One evening, before company, Pete had paced around so many times that he
was leg-weary. Little Sister, astride his back, whacked him in the
flanks vigorously and exclaimed: "Come, pace along there, damn you, or
I'll put a head on you!"
The company nearly fell out of their chairs, while Thesis blushed and
Ned stammered an apology. Then he remembered that only a few days
before he had heard his grandsire, the swearing old Indian Fighter, make
the same remark to Pete for being slow about bringing his shaving water;
and he knew that if Little Sister was proud of anyone, it was of her
great grandsire, who fought valiantly with "Stonewall" in the Valley.
Ned and Thesis gave the old gentleman a talk, and begged him to be
careful of his oaths in the presence of Little Sister: but when he had
heard it, he laughed more than he had laughed for a year, and
straightway proceeded to buy her a doll that cost a gold eagle, and was
as large, and nearly as beautiful, as Little Sister herself.
The spring that Little Sister was four years old, the General, as was
his custom every morning before breakfast, went out to the barn and
paddock to see the brood mares and colts. A stately brown mare,
ankle-deep in blue grass, stood in the paddock nearest the house, under
a great maple tree, its falling branches almost concealing her. She
turned every now and then in a nervous, unhappy way, and, going up to
the brown, new-born weakling of a colt lying in the blue grass, and
which seemed unable to rise, she lowered her shapely head till her
nozzle caressed it and then she whinnied softly. Something was very
badly wrong and she knew it.
The old General had been looking on for quite a while, frowning. When
the General was sorry for anything he expressed his sympathy by a
nervous strutting and swearing. When he was angry or fighting--as his
battles in Virginia proved--he was as silent as a stone wall, and as
staunch. _Then_ he never swore.
"The damned little thing's deformed, Jim," he said to the negro stable
boy who was standing near. "Poor old Betty," and he rubbed his favorite
saddle mare's nose, "she is distressed."
There was the sound of fox hunters coming up the pike. The hounds
passed first, in a trot, nosing. Then the two hunters rode up to the
rock fence where the General stood. One of them rode a docked hunter
with ungainly long head and sloping rump and shoulders. Both horse and
rider were unmistakably English; the man was middle-aged, portly, and
handsome. The other rider was a young man riding a Tennessee saddle
horse.
"Good morning, General," said the Englishman, saluting, "can't you join
us to-day? Thought we'd exercise the pack a bit. The blooming old chap
was out last night--over in the hills after a negro's chickens--and
we'll take up his trail and have a little chase. Fawncy striking him in
that stretch of Stone's River bottom--aw--but we'll have a chase!"
"No--no--Goff," said the old General, impatiently, "I'm pestered to
death with this little colt. I don't know what to do with it."
The hunter glanced over into the paddock.
"O that old ambling saddle mare of yours! Aw--you know what we did with
them in England--two centuries ago--anything with that Andalusian jennet
blood in it--that old pacing gait--killed 'em--aw! exterminated 'em,
sir! Always told you so. They're fit for nothing but for old women to
ride to church on."
The younger man broke out into a boisterous laugh. His face was round
and weak, his mouth wide, his eyes insincere, and his laugh was affected
and betook of his eyes.
"The Colonel's right, Grandpa. Tell Jim to kill it an' come on with
us."
The old General glanced at him quickly. "Braxton Bragg Rutherford, my
son, when you enter West Point you will find it a rule there that very
young officers do not try to impress their views on their superiors
until asked."
"Colonel Goff, suh," he said, turning to the Englishman, "that old mare
has carried me for fifteen years and never stumped her toe. Her dam
carried me through the Valley campaign with Stonewall Jackson. She
helped us chase Banks and Fremont out of God's country. She saved my
life once because she could outfoot Yankee cavalry. You were with me
and know it. I owe the whole family a debt I can never repay, and suh,
I'll be damned if I don't hate to kill her colt."
Colonel Goff looked over the fence at the colt lying in the grass. Then
he said to the negro, aside: "Pull out its legs, my man--there--that
will do. Hold them up!"
The legs were knuckled over at the ankles, deformed evidently. When it
tried to stand it came down limply in a heap.
Colonel Goff turned and, beckoning to the negro, whispered: "Jim, take
it into the stall there and destroy it without letting the General
know." Then he added in a louder tone, "Come, General, we'll wait till
you get your cup of coffee and join us."
But the General shook his head. Rough he was and used to war and death,
yet this was old Betty's colt. Goff, knowing his stubbornness, saluted,
and rode on after the hounds.
The old man stood thinking. He examined the deformed limbs again. Very
sternly he looked the colt over. Very sternly he reached his
conclusion, and once reached it was irrevocable. Jim, knowing, put in
apologetically:
"Giner'l, hit'll never walk, we'll hafter kill it."
"I don't want to see it done, Jim. I'll go in. Po' ole Betty--that she
should be played off on like that!" He stroked the mare's neck with a
kindly pat, and went in.
Breakfast was ready for him. He sat down, abstracted, worried. Uncle
Jack, his grandson, eighteen, slender, and slightly lame, and who didn't
love to talk of the war, nor the thought of going to West Point, and who
wanted always to study about trees and a better way of farming, sat next
to Little Sister. The General told him of his misfortune. "It is a
great disappointment to me, suh, old Betty, my favorite saddle
mare--I've ridden her for fifteen years--the best mare in Tennessee, by
gad, suh, the very best!
"It's weak, puny and no-count, Jack," he went on as he tested his
coffee--"deformed or something in its front, and knuckles over, can't
stand up."
"That's too bad," said Uncle Jack; "I'll go out after breakfast and see
what I can do for it, Grandfather."
"No use," said the General, gruffly. "It'll be merciful to destroy it.
I've told Jim, too; it'll be better off dead."
Little Sister had not seemed to listen, but she had heard. This last
remark of her grandsire stopped a spoonful of oatmeal half way to her
mouth. The next instant, unobserved, she had slipped from her chair and
gone to the barn.
"I tell you, Jack, I think this breeding business is a poor lottery,"
went on the old General after a while. "To think of old Betty, the
gamest, speediest, best mare I ever owned--"
There were protesting screams from the barn. They were instantly
recognized as Little Sister's. Uncle Jack glanced at her empty place,
paled, kicked over two chairs and a setter dog which blocked the door,
and rushed to the barn.
A tragedy was on there. A negro stood in old Betty's stall with an ax
in his hand. On some straw in a far corner lay a sorry-looking colt.
But it was not alone, for Little Sister stood over it, shaking her tiny
fist at the black executioner, and screaming with grief and anger:
"You shan't kill this baby colt--you shan't--don't you come in
here--don't! How dare you, Jim?"
The flash of her keen blue eyes had awed the negro in the doorway. He
had stopped, hesitating, in confusion.
"Go away, Jim," said Uncle Jack firmly. "Come, Little Sister, let us go
back to grandpa." But for once in her life Uncle Jack had no influence
over her. She was indignant, grieved. She fairly blazed through her
tears and sobs: she would never speak to grandpa again as long as she
lived! As for Jim, she would kill him as soon as she got big enough!
She wouldn't even speak to Uncle Jack unless he promised her that the
baby colt should not be killed!
"Poor little colt," she said as she put her arms around its neck and her
tears fell over its big, soft eyes, "God sent you last night and they
want to kill you to-day."
Uncle Jack brushed away a tear himself and, stooping, picked up the
colt's feet, one at a time, examining the little filly.
Little Sister watched him intently: to her mind Uncle Jack knew
everything. The tears were still in her eyes when Uncle Jack looked up
quickly and said in his jolliest way: "Hello, Little Sister, this filly
is all right! Deformed be hanged! She's sound as a hound's tooth, just
weak in her tendons and we can soon fix them. Give her a little time for
strength. No, they'll not kill her, little one--" and he caught the
little girl up, giving her a hug.
The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh. Little Sister was
dancing in the straw for joy! What fun it was to help Uncle Jack fix her
up! She brought him the cotton batting herself and gravely watched him
as he made stays for the weak tendons and bent ankles. Finally, when he
had the filly fixed and had called Jim, who held her in his arms to the
mother's flank until she had had a good breakfast, the little girl could
not keep still. In a burst Of generosity she begged Jim's pardon and
said she intended to give him a pair of grandpa's boots that very day.
In return for this Jim promptly named the filly "Little Sister."
But having once said that the colt was "no-count," the old General
refused to notice it. "Po' little thing," said he, a month after it was
able to pace around without help from its stays, "po' little thing!
What a pity they didn't kill it."
But Uncle Jack and Little Sister, with the help of old Uncle Wash,
nursed it, petted it and helped old Betty to raise it. And the next
spring their reward came in a nervous, high-strung but delicate looking
little slip that was indeed a beauty. The General would surely relent
now! But those who thought so did not know the old man. He merely
glanced at the weanling and remarked again: "The damned little weakling!
That old Betty should ever have played off on me like that!" He turned
indifferently away. Whereupon both the filly and the little girl turned
up their noses behind his back.
The fall that the filly was three years old the big county fair came
off, with pacing stakes for the best three-year-old. The purse was a
thousand dollars, but greater still was the glory!
The old General had entered a big colt named Princewood for the stakes.
This colt had been carefully trained for two seasons and had already
cost his owner more than he was worth. "But it's the reputation I am
after, suh," the General said to the driver, "the honor of the thing.
Our farm has already taken it twice, you know."
Now Uncle Jack was something of a whip himself. He could not ride
because of a lame knee, so he became an expert in driving. The old
General had failed to notice how all the fall he had been giving Betty's
filly special attention with a hot brush now and then. Wrapped up as he
was in Princewood's wonderful speed, he had not noticed that Uncle Jack
had frequently called for his light road wagon, and that he and Little
Sister, now six years old, had taken delightful spins down the shady
places in the cool byways, where the footing was good and there was no
gravel or stones, and nobody could see them when they asked the
high-strung little filly "to step some," as Little Sister expressed it.
Then at supper one night, when Colonel Goff had dropped in as he often
did, the old General began to brag about Princewood's wonderful speed
and of the way in which his favorite grandson, Braxton Bragg, could
drive him.
"Why, Goff," said the General, "that boy is a wonder! He drove the colt
to-day a mile with one hand in 2:25."
Uncle Jack winked at Little Sister, and she had to cram her mouth full
of peach preserves to keep from laughing. The General saw and guessed
there was a joke on him somewhere, and being one of those who loved to
joke others, but did not love to be joked himself, he flushed red and
began to praise Braxton Bragg openly, hoping it would go home to his
other grandson who sat so quietly at the table winking at Little Sister
and with something evidently up his sleeve....
"Yes, suh," said the General after a while, "Princewood will simply eat
up the field, and Braxton Bragg--ay, there's a boy for you!--he'll be a
great soldier some day--Braxton Bragg will simply drive the hoofs off
the whole bunch."
Then Eloise looked up. Eloise was fifteen and lithe, with her red-gold
hair just being put up, and so graceful and beautiful that Little Sister
worshipped her, as did also Uncle Jack and Braxton Bragg, and Colonel
Goff for that matter.
Eloise had caught the wink that Uncle Jack gave, and understood it in an
instant. For Eloise knew things, especially about horses.
"And you really think Braxton Bragg and Princewood will eat up the
field," she said ever so sweetly and respectfully to the old General.
"My, I'd like ever so much to take the field end of that," she added
indifferently, but winking at Uncle Jack.
"My dear," said the old General, "I don't gamble with sweet school
girls; but if Princewood fails to make good, I'll just give you that
fine Whiteman saddle you've been wanting all the time----"
"I can't play a one-sided bet like that; it isn't fair," said Eloise.
"I'd like to be as generous as you are, sir, and put up a forfeit. But
dear me," and she sighed like the exiled queen in the fairy tale, "I'm
dowerless and own nothing."
"Good," said Colonel Goff. "Brave girl! now that lets _me_ in.
General, just let me take the bet off your hands. Now then, Eloise,
I'll take you dowerless--for you are a dower all unto yourself," he
said, bowing grandly, "and I'll bet you--mark me now--I'll bet you that
new English saddle mare I've just imported, against your own sweet self,
that my friend the General's Princewood will win that race!"
"It's a go," cried Eloise, rising gracefully and taking his hand,
"red-leather-bargain-done-for-ever," she added laughing.
The General looked pleased--he showed it in his bland smile and the
vigorous nodding of his head. He whispered to Goff: "By gad, Goff, but
all joking aside--she'll make you the finest wife alive!"
Eloise heard and looked over at Jack with a smile, but Jack's head was
down on his breast and there was no smile on his lips.
Never remotely--in any way--in his dreams--(and being a poet, he dreamed
often) had he thought of Eloise belonging to anyone but him!...
It looked as if all the county was there on the fine fall day of the
race. It was one of those sweet old country fairs where the yeomanry of
the hills and the lassies from the valleys make holiday, and the heifers
with polished horns share the glory with the fillies, bedecked with
ribbons, and stepping proudly in air to music.
The field was a large one; for the purse was rich and the honor even
richer.
"And Princewood's a prime favorite, suh," chuckled the old General as he
walked around, holding by the hand a little girl who went everywhere
with him, and who wondered whether, after all, Uncle Jack really knew.
And so hearing so much that was braggart of Princewood, she all but lost
faith: as is the way of us all if we do not touch, now and then, the
shrine of our Truth.
Eloise was there, now flirting with the country beaux, and now riding
Colonel Goff's saddle mare in the rings for blue ribbons. By two
o'clock she had the mare's head-stall full of them, and one big one
adorned her own riding whip as "the best lady rider." Seeing her beauty
and grace, Colonel Goff murmured to himself:
"By gad, but I'll make her Lady Carfax some day."
The bell had already rung twice for the race and all the owners and
horses were supposed to be preparing to score down, when a new entry
drove in. He sat in a spider-framed four-wheeled gentleman's road cart
instead of in a sulky, which would make him at least four seconds slow
in a race like that. And he wore a cutaway business suit and a soft
felt hat, and not a gaudy jockey cap and silk coat as did Braxton Bragg,
who drove Princewood and was bragging about what he was going to do.
The newcomer nodded familiarly to the starting judge and paced his
nervous looking little filly up the stretch.
"Who is that coming into this race in that kind of a thing?" asked the
old General of a farmer standing near, for his eyesight was failing him.
"Why, General, don't you know yo' own grandson? That's young Jack
Ballington," said the man.
"The hell you say!" shouted the excited old man. "Why dammit, has Jack
gone crazy? He always was a fool!" And he clattered over a bench with
his wooden leg and hobbled up the stretch to head off the pair.
"By gad, suh, Jack," he shouted, "are you going to drive in this race?"
Jack nodded and smiled, while he soothed the nervous little filly with
gentle words.
"And what's that little rakish looking thing you've got there?"
"That's Little Sister, Grandfather," he said, good-naturedly. "I'm
really just driving her to please our little girl and see how she'll act
in company."
The old General was amazed, indignant, outraged. "Why, you're the daddy
of all damned fools that ever lived!" he blurted. "They'll lose you
both in this race! Get off the track, Jack, for God's sake, and don't
disgrace old Betty this way--why, that old mare--I've ridden her for
fifteen years! Why, I rode her dam clear through the war. She helped
chase Banks and Fremont out of the valley--why that little no-count
thing--Jack, she'll drop dead if you extend her."
Jack smiled. "It's just for a little fun, Grandfather, and to please
the little girl; for it's her pet, you know. I'll just trail them and
if she's too soft I'll pull out the second heat. But she's better than
you think," he added indifferently.
The old General expostulated, threatened; but Jack laughed
good-naturedly and drove off. Then the old General repented. It was
comically pathetic to hear him call out: "Jack, Jack, don't tell anybody
it's old Betty's colt, will you? Promise me, boy. Why, I rode her for
fifteen years. I rode her dam all through the valley of Virginia with
Stonewall Jackson." But Uncle Jack drove on, chuckling to himself:
"I'll bet ten to one he'll be telling it before I do."
When the little filly got into company she was positively gay. She
forgot all about herself, and like great people the world over she lost
her nervous ways when the great effort was on, and went away at the go
of the starter with a rush that almost took Uncle Jack's breath from
him.
He pulled her quickly down. "Ho--ho, Little Sister--if you do that
again you'll give us all dead away, and that will spoil the fun." He
glanced quickly around to see if anyone saw him. But the crowd were all
busy watching Princewood. So Uncle Jack trailed behind, the very last of
the bunch, but with the little filly fighting indignantly for her head
all the way.
Nobody seemed to see them at all, that is, nobody but a little girl, who
clung nervously to the old General's middle finger, and wondered, with
her child's faith fiercely battered, if her Uncle Jack, her Uncle Jack
who knew it all and could do anything, if he, the mighty, was really
going to tumble from his lofty throne in her mind?
Then she got behind the General's big Prince Albert coat tail, and wiped
away two nervous little tears. Princewood had paced in way ahead. She
stuck her fingers in her ears, so that she could not hear the shouts,
and her little nervous lips closed tight with indignant shame. When she
took them out the shouting was over, but she heard the old General say,
"Wasn't it a walkover? That fool grandson of mine has always made me
tired. I don't believe the little thing can go round again."
This cut into the soul of the little girl. She pretended to go after a
glass of the big red lemonade that they sold under a near-by tree; but
really she went to cry in the dark hall under the grand stand and to
wipe her tears on the frills of the pretty little petticoat Mother
Thesis had made for her just to wear to the fair.
There was one who knew, however, because she really had horse sense.
She was riding a beautiful English saddle mare across the infield, and
she looked like a young Diana in her dark blue riding suit, and she sat
her horse like the Centaur's wife. As she rode across the grassy
infield, Braxton Bragg came up, and catching her mare by the bit,
stopped her short. His little round, weak face was focused into a
smile. Eloise flushed, vexed that he should seize a moving mare by the
bit, for it is against all good horsemanship to do it; just as one pilot
would resent another interfering with his wheel. She looked down on him
without a smile.
"Say, Eloise," he said as one who seeks a compliment, "how do you like
the way I did it?"
Long ago Eloise had said of Braxton Bragg: "Answer a fool according to
his folly." Therefore she smiled dryly now and said, "Beautifully. How
entirely and completely you do fill that sulky seat, Braggy." Braxton
Bragg, not knowing what satire was, took this for a compliment, and
smiled again. Then, encouraged, he whispered low to her: "You've never
given me a chance to show you just how much I could do for love of you,
Eloise."
"Oh," she answered, ever so sweetly.
"Yes," he sighed affectedly, trying to look love-lorn, cocking his head
with affected sadness and succeeding only in looking ridiculous.
"Oh," she said sweetly again. If he had had sense he would have seen
the sweetness was for ends of her own. "Oh, how sweet of you and how
cruel of me, Braggy." Her tone was very clear. If he had only looked
down the past he might have remembered that whenever she had called him
Braggy she had been planning to do him.
He sighed again, which shut his mouth the second time. Eloise,
demurely, but inwardly nearly bursting, did likewise. "Well?" he asked,
expectantly.
"Yes," said Eloise encouragingly.
"I mean--can't--I now?"
"There's never a better time than the present, Braggy, you remember the
school books say." Then she reached down and, pretending earnestness,
said:
"You've got a walk-over, it's plain. It's yours for the asking, Braggy.
And so--well--it's big odds I'm giving you, Braggy," and she laughed
like a wood thrush, "but if you win that race I'll be yours alone
henceforth and forever, Braggy."
He paled, taking her hand, which fell sidewise down past her saddletree,
in his.
"Oh Eloise--dearest,"--he started bookishly, but ended in his own way,
which was mentally unlearned: "Gee--but I'll win or bust!"
"And if you don't," began Eloise, ever so indifferently. "Of course you
will," she smiled; "but if you don't, Braggy, now dear, why you'll just
send me that set of seal-skins for that fashionable hennery I'm going to
at Washington?"
"Good! Good!" he cried boisterously. "What odds you give me! You
against a hundred dollar seal-skin! Oh, my, let me get busy!" And he
rushed off, smirking back sillily at her.
"A saddle mare, a saddle, and a set of sealskins all in one day. Well,
that's going some," Eloise chuckled as she rode up to the fence where
Uncle Jack stood. Reaching down from her saddle, she tapped him on the
shoulder.
He looked up into her laughing eyes, and flushed, for he had always
loved her.
"Jack, Jack, you are a dandy! You did it beautifully! O, the stride of
that rush before you called her down! Say, how do you like my mare?
Isn't she a beauty?"
"If you say so," he said slowly, testing her, "I'll lay up the next
heat; let _him_ win." He had remembered Goff's bet.
She flushed. Then she rapped him over the shoulder lightly with her
whip.
"Why, Jack, that would be horrible! Do you think I'd have made the bet
if I hadn't believed in you, loved you, brother mine?"