"Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said, as I went out--"they are
two Jonahs that will always smell alike to me hereafter!"
*CHAPTER V*
*THE SICK TREE*
The going of my old grandsire was pathetic, for towards the last he lost
interest in the living, in everything except the great elm he had always
loved because his mother had nursed him under it.
"And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going; but I do so want it to live
until I am gone!"
"It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but with a little surgery
I can save it. It shall live twenty years longer."
The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death, was half rotted as it
stood. Any violent wind was likely to snap it off. Any great storm
would beat it to the earth.
Every morning the old man would rise and look first of all to see if his
tree was still standing.
He was greatly interested in the way I cured it. I cut away the dead rot
up the entire trunk; and when I had finished, little, except a shell,
remained. Into this I drove a section of iron railing from a railway
track, fully fifteen feet high, driven five feet into the ground, down
among the old roots of the tree. Around this and entirely filling the
hollow to the top of the iron rail, I poured cement, casing it in to fit
the old body that was gone, tucking sheets of zinc under the edges of
the bark whose layers carry the sap up and down.
When this was painted and treated to a coating of tar, it looked like
the great tree in its youth, and under a strong wind it swayed,
supported by the cement and its rod of steel, with all the strength of
its younger days.
There one evening, clasping it in the twilight, we found the old General
asleep. It was the last sleep of a second childhood, and having no
mother for the lullaby, he had slept, his arms around the tree she had
loved.
The sun had set; the twilight had come; the great trees shadowed the
eternal hills.
The old warrior had died a tree-lover; the young tree-lover had been
forced, of God, to fight.
We plan, and, like the rough ashlar, we cut and hew; but the Sculptor is
God....
I do not know why Eloise should have risked it, but she did; and though
I would not have her try it again for The Home Stretch nor feel again
that memory-pang of horror when, for one brief second, I saw what she
meant to do, yet when it was done my heart beat fiercely with pride and
love for her. How blessed are those children who have a mother both
brave and beautiful!
We had ridden to town one day, as we often did when the weather was fit.
And for a pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to see a new
colt in training. I suspect she had fixed it all before; for I had seen
her practicing Satan on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls,
mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.
"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns of honorable war," she
laughed, "have stiffened the old fellow's muscles or softened his
heart"; and she would reach over and pat his great neck.
At the track the old bars stood across.
I sickened at the sight of them, remembering. But Eloise, pretending not
to notice, glanced quickly at me.
"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling with fear of my own
suspicion. "I'll tear them down now and burn them," I said, dismounting
quickly.
But Eloise was too quick for me. Even Satan knew her thought and at the
sound of her bantering laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip above
his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the bars.
I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful moment, I saw them mount
straight up toward the sky. Then, realizing that age and service had
hampered his driving power behind, the game horse threw his front easily
over, and like a great see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs,
not straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but sidewise and parallel,
barely saving his neck!
"Well, I did it!" She rode up laughing, Satan trembling so with
excitement and the effort I could see his knees quivering, his flank
fluttering wildly. And in Eloise's face there was the white flag of
peril yet lingering before the red of victory.
She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the tenderness of love's
light, and bedewed with its tears: "_Kiss me, Jack, dearest--for that is
what I had sworn all the time I would do. If--if they had only let me
break the world's record that first time._"