An hour afterwards, Travis heard a well-known walk in the hall and opened the door.
He stepped back astonished. He released the knob and gazed half angry, half smiling.
A large dog, brindled and lean, walked complacently and condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills, and Bonaparte, his dog, were well mated.
The man was large, raw-boned and brindled, and he, also, walked in, complacently and condescendingly.
The dog's ears had been cropped to match his tail, which in his infancy had been reduced to a very few inches. His under jaw protruded slightly—showing the trace of bull in his make-up.
That was the man all over. Besides he had a small, mean, roguish ear.
The dog was cross-eyed—“the only cross-eyed purp in the worl'”—as his master had often proudly proclaimed, and the expression of his face was uncanny.
Jud Carpenter's eastern-eye looked west, and his western-eye looked east, and the rest of the paragraph above fitted him also.
The dog's pedigree, as his master had drawlingly proclaimed, was “p'yart houn', p'yart bull, p'yart cur, p'yart terrier, an' the rest of him—wal, jes' dog.”
Reverse this and it will be Carpenter's: Just dog, with a sprinkling of bull, cur, terrier, and hound.
Before Richard Travis could protest, the dog walked deliberately to the fireplace and sprang savagely on the helpless old setter dreaming on the rug. The older dog expostulated with terrific howls, while Travis turned quickly and kicked off the intruder.
He stood the kicking as quietly as if it were part of the programme in the last act of a melodrama in which he was the villain. He was kicked entirely across the room and his head was driven violently into the half-open door of the side-board. Here it came in contact with one of Cook-mother's freshly baked hams, set aside for the morrow's lunch. Without even a change of countenance—for, in truth, it could not change—without the lifting even of a hair in surprise, the brute seized the ham and settled right where he was, to lunch. And he did it as complacently as he had walked in, and with a satisfied growl which seemed to say that, so far as the villain was concerned, the last act of the melodrama was ending to his entire satisfaction.
Opening a side door, Travis seized him by the stump of a tail and one hind leg—knowing his mouth was too full of ham to bite anything—and threw him, still clutching the ham, bodily into the back yard. Without changing the attitude he found himself in when he hit the ground, the brindled dog went on with his luncheon.
The very cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and said to the man who had followed the dog in: “Carpenter, if I had the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd soon own the world.”
The man had already taken his seat by the fire as unaffectedly as had the dog. He had entered as boldly and as indifferently and his two deep-set, cat-gray cross-eyes looked around as savagely.
He was a tall, lank fellow, past middle age, with a crop of stiff, red-brown hair, beginning midway of his forehead, so near to an equally shaggy and heavy splotch of eyebrows as to leave scarce a finger's breadth between them.
He was wiry and shrewd-looking, and his two deep-set eyes seemed always like a leopard's,—walking the cage of his face, hunting for some crack to slip through. Furtive, sly, darting, rolling hither and thither, never still, comprehensive, all-seeing, malicious and deadly shrewd. These were the eyes of Jud Carpenter, and they told it all. To this, add again that they looked in contrary directions.
As a man's eye, so is the tenor of his life.
Yet in them, now and then, the twinkle of humor shone. He had a conciliatory way with those beneath him, and he considered all the mill hands in that class. To his superiors he was a frowning, yet daring and even presumptuous underling.
Somewhat better dressed than the Hillites from whom he sprang was this Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills—somewhat better dressed, and with the air of one who had arisen above his surroundings. Yet, withal, the common, low-born, malicious instinct was there—the instinct which makes one of them hate the man who is better educated, better dressed than he. All told, it might be summed up and said of Jud Carpenter that he had all the instincts of a Hillite and all the arrogance of a manager.
“Nobody understands that dog, Bonaparte, but me,” said Carpenter after a while—“he's to dogs what his namesake was to man. He's the champ'un fighter of the Tennessee Valley, an' the only cross-eyed purp in the worl', as I have often said. Like all gen'uses of course, he's a leetle peculiar—but him and me—we understan's each other.”
He pulled out some mill papers and was about to proceed to discuss his business when Travis interrupted:
“Hold on,” he said, good humoredly, “after my experience with that cross-eyed genius of a dog, I'll need something to brace me up.”
He handed Carpenter a glass and each drank off his cocktail at a quaff.
Travis settled quickly to business. He took out his mill books, and for an hour the two talked in a low tone and mechanically. The commissary department of the mill was taken up and the entire accounts gone over. Memoranda were made of goods to be ordered. The accounts of families were run over and inspected. It was tedious work, but Travis never flagged and his executive ability was quick and incisive. At last he closed the book with an impatient gesture:
“That's all I'll do to-night,” he muttered decisively. “I've other things to talk to you about. But we'll need something first.”
He went to the side-board and brought out a decanter of whiskey, two goblets and a bowl of loaf sugar.
He laughed: “Mammy knows nothing about this. Two cocktails are the limit she sets for me, and so I keep this private bottle.”
He made a long-toddy for himself, but Carpenter took his straight. In all of it, his furtive eyes, shining out of the splotch of eyebrows above, glanced inquiringly around and obsequiously followed every movement of his superior.
“Now, Carpenter,” said the Secretary after he had settled back in his chair and lit a cigar, handing the box afterwards to the other—“You know me—you and I—must understand each other in all things.”
“'Bleeged to be that way,” drawled the Whipper-in—“we must wu'ck together. You know me, an' that Jud Carpenter's motto is, 'mum, an' keep movin'.' That's me—that's Jud Carpenter.”
Travis laughed: “O, it's nothing that requires so much heavy villain work as the tone of your voice would suggest. We're not in a melodrama. This is the nineteenth century and we're talking business and going to win a thing or two by common sense and business ways, eh?”
Carpenter nodded.
“Well, now, the first is quite matter of fact—just horses. I believe we are going to have the biggest fair this fall we have ever had.”
“It's lots talked about,” said Carpenter—“'specially the big race an' purse you've got put up.”
Travis grew interested quickly and leaned over excitedly.
“My reputation is at stake—and that of The Gaffs' stable. You see, Carpenter, it's a three-cornered race for three-thousand dollars—each of us, Col. Troup, Flecker and me, have put up a thousand—three heats out of five—the winner takes the stake. Col. Troup, of Lenox, has entered a fast mare of his, and Flecker, of Tennessee, will be there with his gelding. I know Flecker's horse. I could beat him with Lizette and one of her legs tied up. I looked him over last week. Contracted heels and his owner hasn't got horse-sense to know it. It's horse-sense, Carpenter, that counts for success in life as in a race.”
Carpenter nodded again.
“But it's different with Col. Troup's entry. Ever been to Lenox?” he asked suddenly.
Carpenter shook his head.
“Don't know anybody there?” asked Travis. “I thought so—just what I want.”
He went on indifferently, but Carpenter saw that he was measuring his words and noting their effect upon himself. “They work out over there Tuesdays and Fridays—the fair is only a few weeks off—they will be stepping their best by Friday. Now, go there and say nothing—but just sit around and see how fast Col. Troup's mare can trot.”
“That'll be easy,” said Carpenter.
“I have no notion of losing my thousand and reputation, too.” He bent over to Carpenter and laughed. “All's fair in love and—a horse race. You know it's the 2:25 class, and I've entered Lizette, but Sadie B. is so much like her that no living man who doesn't curry them every day could tell them apart. Sadie B.'s mark is 2:15. Now see if Troup can beat 2:25. Maybe he can't beat 2:15.”
Then he laughed ironically.
Carpenter looked at him wonderingly.
It was all he said, but it was enough for Carpenter. Fraud's wink to the fraudulent is an open book. Her nod is the nod of the Painted Thing passing down the highway.
Base-born that he was—low by instinct and inheritance, he had never heard of so brilliant and so gentlemanly a piece of fraud. The consummate boldness of it made Carpenter's eyes twinkle—a gentleman and in a race with gentlemen—who would dare to suspect? It was the boldness of a fine woman, daring to wear a necklace of paste-diamonds.
He sat looking at Travis in silent admiration. Never before had his employer risen to such heights in the eyes of the Whipper-in. He sat back in his chair and chuckled. His furtive eyes danced.
“Nobody but a born gen'us 'ud ever have tho'rt of that,” he said—“never seed yo' e'kal—why, the money is your'n, any way you fix it. You can ring in Lizette one heat and Sadie B.”——
“There are things to be thought and not talked of,” replied Travis quickly. “For a man of your age ar'n't you learning to talk too much out loud? You go and find out what I've asked—I'll do the rest. I'm thinking I'll not need Sadie B. Never run a risk, even a dead sure one, till you're obliged to.”
“I'll fetch it next week—trust me for that. But I hope you will do it—ring in Sadie B. just for the fun of it. Think of old bay-window Troup trottin' his mare to death ag'in two fast horses an' never havin' sense enough to see it.”
He looked his employer over—from his neatly turned foot to the cravat, tied in an up-to-date knot. At that, even, Travis flushed. “Here,” he said—“another toddy. I'll trust you to bring in your report all right.”
Carpenter again took his straight—his eyes had begun to glitter, his face to flush, and he felt more like talking.
Travis lit another cigar. He puffed and smoked in silence for a while. The rings of smoke went up incessantly. His face had begun to redden, his fingers to thrill to the tip with pulsing blood. With it went his final contingency of reserve, and under it he dropped to the level of the base-born at his side.
Whiskey is the great leveler of life. Drinking it, all men are, indeed, equal.
“When are you going out to get in more hands for the mill?” asked Travis after a pause.
“To-morrow——”
“So soon?” asked Travis.
“Yes, you see,” said Carpenter, “there's been ha'f a dozen of the brats died this summer an' fall—scarlet fever in the mill.”
Travis looked at him and smiled.
“An' I've got to git in some mo' right away,” he went on. “Oh, there's plenty of 'em in these hills.”
Travis smoked for a few minutes without speaking.
“Carpenter, had you ever thought of Helen Conway—I mean—of getting Conway's two daughters into the mill?” He made the correction with a feigned indifference, but the other quickly noticed it. In an instant Carpenter knew.
As a matter of fact the Whipper-in had not thought of it, but it was easy for him to say what he thought the other wished him to say.
“Wal, yes,” he replied; “that's jes' what I had been thinkin' of. They've got to come in—'ristocrats or no 'ristocrats! When it comes to a question of bread and meat, pedigree must go to the cellar.”
“To the attic, you mean,” said Travis—“where their old clothes are.”
Carpenter laughed: “That's it—you all'ers say the k'rect thing. 'N' as I was sayin'”—he went on—“it is a ground-hog case with 'em. The Major's drunk all the time. His farm an' home'll be sold soon. He's 'bleeged to put 'em in the mill—or the po'-house.”
He paused, thinking. Then, “But ain't that Helen about the pretties' thing you ever seed?” He chuckled. “You're sly—but I seen you givin' her that airin' behin' Lizette and Sadie B.—”
“You've nothing to do with that,” said Travis gruffly. “You want a new girl for our drawing-in machine—the best paying and most profitable place in the mill—off from the others—in a room by herself—no contact with mill-people—easy job—two dollars a day—”
“One dollar—you forgit, suh—one dollar's the reg'lar price, sah,” interrupted the Whipper-in.
The other turned on him almost fiercely: “Your memory is as weak as your wits—two dollars, I tell you, and don't interrupt me again—”
“To be sho',” said the Whipper-in, meekly—“I did forgit—please excuse me, sah.”
“Then, in talking to Conway, you, of course, would draw his attention to the fact that he is to have a nice cottage free of rent—that will come in right handy when he finds himself out in the road—sold out and nowhere to go,” he said.
“'N' the commissary,” put in Carpenter quietly. “Excuse me, sah, but there's a mighty good bran' of whiskey there, you know!”
Travis smiled good humoredly: “Your wits are returning,” he said; “I think you understand.”
“I'll see him to-morrow,” said Carpenter, rising to go.
“Oh, don't be in a hurry,” said Travis.
“Excuse me, sah, but I'm afraid I've bored you stayin' too long.”
“Sit down,” said the other, peremptorily—“you will need something to help you along the road. Shall we take another?”
So they took yet another drink, and Carpenter went out, calling his dog.
Travis stood in the doorway and watched them go down the driveway. They both staggered lazily along. Travis smiled: “Both drunk—the dog on ham.”
As he turned to go in, he reeled slightly himself, but he did not notice it.
When he came back he was restless. He looked at the clock. “Too early for bed,” he said. “I'd give a ten if Charley Biggers were here with his little cocktail laugh to try me a game of poker.”
Suddenly he went to the window, and taking a small silver whistle from his pocket he blew it toward the stables. Soon afterwards a well dressed mulatto boy entered.
“How are the horses to-night, Jim?” he asked.
“Fine, sir—all eatin' well an' feelin' good.”
“And Coquette—the saddle mare?”
“Like split silk, sir.”
“Exercise her to-morrow under the saddle, and Sunday afternoon we will give Miss Alice her first ride on her—she's to be a present for her on her birth-day, you know—eh?”
Jim bowed and started out.
“You may fix my bath now—think I'll retire. O Jim!” he called, “see that Antar, the stallion, is securely stalled. You know how dangerous he is.”
He was just dozing off when the front door closed with a bang.
Then a metal whip handle thumped heavily on the floor and the jingling of a spur rattled over the hall floor, as Harry Travis boisterously went down the hall, singing tipsily,
Just think of your head,
Just think of your head
In the morning.”
Another door banged so loudly it awakened even the setter. The old dog came to the side of the bed and laid his head affectionately in Travis' palm. The master of The Gaffs stroked his head, saying: “It is strange that I love this old dog so.”
CHAPTER IV
FOOD FOR THE FACTORY
The next morning being Saturday, Carpenter, the Whipper-in, mounted his Texas pony and started out toward the foothills of the mountains.
Upon the pommel of his saddle lay a long single-barreled squirrel gun, for the hills were full of squirrels, and Jud was fond of a tender one, now and then. Behind him, as usual, trotted Bonaparte, his sullen eyes looking for an opportunity to jump on any timid country dog which happened along.
There are two things for which all mills must be prepared—the wear and tear of Time on the machinery—the wear and tear of Death on the frail things who yearly work out their lives before it.
In the fight for life between the machine and the human labor, in the race of life for that which men call success, who cares for the life of one little mill hand? And what is one tot of them from another? And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a scrawny brood calling ever for bread?
The world knows not—cares not—for its tiny life is but a thread in the warp of the great Drawing-in Machine.
So fearful is the strain upon the nerve and brain and body of the little things, that every year many of them pass away—slowly, surely, quietly—so imperceptibly that the mill people themselves scarcely miss them. And what does it matter? Are there not hundreds of others, born of ignorance and poverty and pain, to take their places?
And the dead ones—unknown, they simply pass into a Greater Unknown. Their places are filled with fresh victims—innocents, whom Passion begets with a caress and Cupidity buys with a curse. Children they are—tots—and why should they know that they are trading—life for death?
It was a bright fall morning, and Jud Carpenter rode toward the mountain a few miles away. They are scarcely mountains—these beautifully wooded hills in the Tennessee Valley, hooded by blue in the day and shrouded in somber at night; but it pleases the people who live within the sweet influence of their shadows to call them mountains.
Jud knew where he was going, and he rode leisurely along, revolving in his mind the plan of his campaign. He needed the recruits for the Acme Mills, and in all his past experience as an employment agent he had never undertaken to bring in a family where as much tact and diplomacy was required as in this case.
It was a dilapidated gate at which he drew rein. There had once been handsome pillars of stone and brick, but these had fallen and the gate had been swung on a convenient locust tree that had sprung up and grown with its usual rapidity from its sheltered nook near the crumbling rock wall. Only one end of the gate was hung; and it lay diagonally across the entrance of what had once been a thousand acres of the finest farm in the Tennessee Valley.
Dismounting, Jud hitched his horse and set his gun beside the tree; and as it was easier to climb over the broken-down fence than to lift the gate around, he stepped over and then shuffled along in his lazy way toward the house.
It was an old farmhouse, now devoid of paint; and the path to it had once been a well-kept gravel walk, lined with cedars; but the box-plants, having felt no pruning shears for years, almost filled, with their fantastically jagged boughs, the narrow path, while the cedars tossed about their broken and dead limbs.
The tall, square pillars in the house, from dado above to where they rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them, on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and sombre under the casements.
A half dozen hounds came baying and barking around him. As Jud proceeded, others poured out from under the house. All were ribby, and half starved.
Without a moment's hesitation they promptly covered Bonaparte, much to the delight of that genius. Indeed, from the half-satisfied, half malignant snarl which lit up his face as they piled rashly and brainlessly on him, Jud took it that Bonaparte had trotted all these miles just to breakfast on this remnant of hound on the half-shell.
In a few minutes Bonaparte's terrible, flashing teeth had them flying in every direction.
Jud promptly cuffed him back to the gate and bade him wait there.
On the front portico, his chair half-tilted back, his trousers in his boot legs, and his feet on the balustrade rim, the uprights of which were knocked out here and there, like broken teeth in a comb,—sat a man in a slouch hat, smoking a cob pipe. He was in his shirt sleeves. His face was flushed and red; his eyes were watery, bleared. His head was fine and long—his nose and chin seemed to meet in a sharp point. His face showed that form of despair so common in those whom whiskey has helped to degenerate. He did not smile—he scowled continuously, and his voice had been imprecatory so long that it whined in the same falsetto twang as one of his hounds.
Jud stepped forward and bowed obsequiously.
“How are you to-day, Majah, sah?” he asked while his puckered and wrinkled face tried to smile.
Jud was chameleon. Long experience had taught him to drop instinctively into the mannerism—even the dialect—of those he hoped to cajole. With the well-bred he could speak glibly, and had airs himself. With the illiterate and the low-bred, he could out-Caliban the herd of them.
The man did not take the pipe out of his mouth. He did not even turn his head. Only his two bleared eyes shot sidewise down to the ground, where ten feet below him stood the employment agent of the mills, smiling, smirking, and doing his best to spell out on the signboard of his unscrupulous face the fact that he came in peace and good will.
Major Edward Conway scarcely grunted—it might have been anything from an oath to an eructation. Then, taking his pipe-stem from between his teeth, and shifting his tobacco in his mouth,—for he was both chewing and smoking—he expectorated squarely into the eyes of a hound which had followed Jud up the steps, barking and snarling at his heels.
He was a good marksman even with spittle, and the dog fled, whining.
Then he answered, with an oath, that he was about as well as the rheumatism and the beastly weather would permit.
Jud came up uninvited and sat down. The Major did not even turn his head. The last of a long line of gentlemen did not waste his manners on one beneath him socially.
Jud was discreetly silent, and soon the Major began to tell all of his troubles, but in the tone of one who was talking to his servant and with many oaths and much bitterness:
“You see it's this damned rheumatism, Carpenter. Las' night, suh, I had to drink a quart of whiskey befo' I cu'd go to sleep at all. It came on me soon aftah I come out of the wah, an' it growed on me like jim'son weeds in a hog-pen. My appetite's quit on me—two pints of whiskey an' wild-cherry bark a day, suh, don't seem to help it at all, suh. I cyant tell whut the devil's the matter with my stomach. Nothin' I eat or drink seems to agree with me but whiskey. If I drink this malarial water, suh, m'legs an' m'feet begin to swell. I have to go back to whiskey. Damn me, but I was born for Kentucky. Why, I've got a forty dollar thirst on me this very minute. I'm so dry I cu'd kick up a dust in a hog wallow. Maybe, though, it's this rotten stuff that cross-roads Jew is sellin' me an' callin' it whiskey. He's got a mortgage on everything here but the houn's and the house cat, an' he's tryin' to see if he cyant kill me with his bug-juice an' save a suit in Chancery. I'm goin' to sen' off an' see if I cyant git another bran' of it, suh.”
Edward Conway was the type of the Southerner wrecked financially and morally by the war. His father and grandfather had owned Millwood, and the present owner had gone into the war a carefully educated, well reared youth of twenty. He came out of it alive, it is true, but, like many another fine youth of both North and South, addicted to drink.
The brutality of war lies not alone in death—it is often more fatal, more degenerating, in the life it leaves behind.
Coming out of the war, Conway found, as did all others in the Tennessee Valley who sided with the South, that his home was a wreck. Not a fence, even, remained—nothing but the old home—shutterless, plasterless, its roof rotten, its cellar the abode of hogs.
Thousands of others found themselves likewise—brave hearts—men they proved themselves to be—in that they built up their homes out of wreck and their country out of chaos.
The man who retrieves his fortune under the protecting arm of law and order is worthy of great praise; but he who does it in the surly, snarling teeth of Disorder itself is worthy of still greater praise.
And the real soldier is not he with his battles and his bravery. All animals will fight—it is instinct. But he who conquers in the great moral battle of peace and good government, overcoming prejudice, ignorance, poverty and even injustice, till he rises to the height of the brave whose deeds do vindicate them—this is the real soldier.
Thousands of Southern soldiers did this, but Edward Conway had not been one of them. For where whiskey sits he holds a scepter whose staff is the body of the Upas tree, and there is no room for the oak of thrift or the wild-flower of sweetness underneath.
From poverty to worse poverty Edward Conway had gone, until now, hopelessly mortgaged, hopelessly besotted, hopelessly soured, he lived the diseased product of weakness, developed through stimulated inactivity.
Nature is inexorable, morally, physically, mentally, and as two generations of atheists will beget a thief, so will two generations of idle rich beget nonentities.
On this particular morning that Jud Carpenter came, things had reached a crisis with Edward Conway. By a decree of the court, the last hope he had of retaining a portion of his family estate had been swept away, and the entire estate was to be advertised for sale, to satisfy a mortgage and judgment. It is true, he had the two years of redemption under the Alabama law, but can a drunkard redeem his land when he can not redeem himself?
And so, partly from despair, and partly from that instinct which makes even the most sensitive of mortals wish to pour their secret troubles into another's ear, partly even from drunken recklessness, Edward Conway sat on his verandah this morning and poured his troubles into the designing ear of Jud Carpenter. The refrain of his woe was that luck—luck—remorseless luck was against him.
Luck, since the beginning of the world, has been the cry of him who gambles with destiny. Work is the watchword of the man who believes in himself.
This thing went because that man had been against him, and this went because of the faithlessness of another. His health—well, that was God's doing.
Jud was too shrewd to let him know that he thought whiskey had anything to do with it—and so, very cautiously did the employment agent proceed.
A child with sunny hair and bright eyes ran across the yard. She was followed by an old black mammy, whose anxiety for fear her charge might get her clothes soiled was plainly evident; from the parlor came the notes of an old piano, sadly out of tune, and Jud could hear the fine voice of another daughter singing a love ballad.
“You've got two mighty pyeart gyrls here,” at last he ventured.
“Of course, they are, suh,” snapped their father—“they are Conways.”
“Ever think of it, sah,” went on Jud, “that they could make you a livin' in the mill?”
Conway was silent. In truth, he had thought of that very thing. To-day, however, he was nerved and desperate, being more besotted than usual.
“Now, look aheah—it's this way,” went on Jud—“you're gettin' along in age and you need res'. You've been wuckin' too hard. I tell you, Majah, sah, you're dead game—no other man I know of would have stood up under the burdens you've had on yo' shoulders.”
The Major drew himself up: “That's a family trait of the Conways, suh.”
“Wal, it's time for you to res' awhile. No use to drive a willin' hoss to death. I can get a place for both of the gyrls in the mill, an' aftah the fust month—aftah they learn the job, they can earn enough to support you comf't'bly. Now, we'll give you a nice little cottage—no bother of keepin' up a big run-down place like this—jes' a neat little cottage. Aunt Mariah can keep it in nice fix. The gyrls will be employed and busy an' you can jes' live comf't'bly, an' res'. An' say,” he added, slyly—“you can get all the credit at the Company's sto' you want an' I'm thinkin' you'll find a better brand of licker than that you've been samplin'.”
Besotted as he was—hardened and discouraged—the proposition came over Conway with a wave of shame. Even through his weakened mind the old instinct of the gentleman asserted itself, and for a moment the sweet refined face of a beautiful dead wife, the delicate beauty of a little daughter, the queenliness of an elder one, all the product of good breeding and rearing, came over him. He sprang to his feet. “What do you mean, suh? My daughters—grandchildren of Gen. Leonidas Conway—my daughters work in the mill by the side of that poor trash from the mountains? I'll see you damned first.”
He sat down—he bowed his head in his hands. A glinty look came into his eyes.
Jud drew his chair up closer: “But jes' think a minute—you're sold out—you've got no whur to go, you've wuck'd yo'self down tryin' to save the farm. We've all got to wuck these days. The war has changed all the old order of things. We havn't got any mo' slaves.”
“We,”—repeated Conway, and he looked at the man and laughed.
Jud flushed even through his sallow skin:
“Wal, that's all right,” he added. “Listen to me, now, I'm tryin' to save you from trouble. The war changed everything. Your folks got to whur they did by wuckin'. They built up this big estate by economy an' wuck. Now, you mus' do it. You've got the old dead-game Conway breedin' in yo' bones an' you've got the brains, too.” He lowered his voice: “It's only for a little while—jes' a year or so—it'll give you a nice little home to live in while you brace up an' pull out of debt an' redeem yo' farm. Here—it is only for a year or so—sign this—givin' you a home, an' start all over in life—sign it right there, only for a little while—a chance to git on yo' feet—.”
Conway scarcely knew how it happened that he signed—for Jud quickly changed the subject.
After a while Jud arose to go. As he did so, Lily, the little daughter, came out, and putting her arms around her father's neck, kissed him and said:
“Papa—luncheon is served, and oh, do come on! Mammy and Helen and I are so hungry.”
Mammy Maria had followed her and stood deferentially behind the chair. And as Jud went away he thought he saw in the old woman's eyes, as she watched him, a trace of that fine scorn bred of generations of gentleness, but which whiskey had destroyed in the master.
CHAPTER V
THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT
As Jud went out of the dilapidated gate at Millwood, he chuckled to himself. He had, indeed, accomplished something. He had gained a decided advance in the labor circles of the mill. He had broken into the heretofore overpowering prejudice the better class had against the mill, for he held in his possession the paper wherein an aristocrat had signed his two daughters into it. Wouldn't Richard Travis chuckle with him?
In the South social standing is everything.
To have the mill represented by a first family—even if brought to poverty through drunkenness—was an entering wedge.
His next job was easier. A mile farther on, the poor lands of the mountain side began. Up on the slope was a cabin, in the poorest and rockiest portion of it, around the door of which half a dozen cracker children stared at Jud with unfeigned interest as he rode up.
“Light an' look at yer saddle”—came from a typical Hillite within, as Jud stopped.
Jud promptly complied—alighted and looked at his saddle.
A cur—which, despite his breeding, is always a keen detective of character—followed him, barking at his heels.
This one knew Jud as instinctively and as accurately as he knew a fresh bone from a rank one—by smell. He was also a judge of other dogs and, catching sight of Bonaparte, his anger suddenly fled and he with it.
“Won't you set down an' res' yo' hat?” came invitingly from the doorway.
Jud sat down and rested his hat.
A tall, lank woman, smoking a cob pipe which had grown black with age and Samsonian in strength, came from the next room. She merely ducked her long, sharp nose at Jud and, pretending to be busily engaged around the room, listened closely to all that was said.
Jud told the latest news, spoke of the weather and made many familiar comments as he talked. Then he began to draw out the man and woman. They were poor, child-burdened and dissatisfied. Gradually, carefully, he talked mill and the blessings of it. He drew glorious pictures of the house he would take them to, its conveniences—the opportunities of the town for them all. He took up the case of each of the six children, running from the tot of six to the girl of twenty, and showed what they could earn.
In all it amounted to sixteen dollars a week.
“You sho'ly don't mean it comes to sixteen dollars ev'y week,” said the woman, taking the cob pipe out for the first time, long enough to spit and wipe her mouth on the back of her hand, “an' all in silver an' all our'n?” she asked. “Why that thar is mo' money'n we've seed this year. What do you say to tryin' it, Josiah?”
Josiah was willing. “You see,” he added, “we needn't stay thar longer'n a year or so. We'll git the money an' then come back an' buy a good piece of land.”
Suddenly he stopped and fired this point blank at Jud: “But see heah, Mister-man, is thar any niggers thar? Do we hafter wuck with niggers?”
Jud looked indignant. It was enough.
At the end of an hour the family head had signed for a five years' contract. They would move the next week.
“Cash—think of it—cash ever' week. An' in silver, too,” said the woman. “Why, I dunno hardly how it'll feel. I'm afeared it mou't gin me the eetch.”
Jud, when he left, had induced their parents to sell five children into slavery for five years.
It meant for life.
And both parents declared when he left that never before had they “seed sech a nice man.”
Jud had nearly reached the town when he passed, high up on the level plateau by which the mountain road now ran, the comfortable home of Elder Butts. Peach and apple trees adorned the yard, while bee-hives sat in a corner under the shade of them behind the cottage. The tinkle of a sheep bell told of a flock of sheep nearby. A neatly painted new wagon stood under the shed by the house, and all around was an air of thrift and work.
“Now if I cu'd git that Butts family,” he mused, “I'd have something to crow about when I got back to Kingsley to-night. He's got a little farm an' is well to do an' is thrifty, an' if I cu'd only git that class started in the mill an' contented to wuck there, it 'ud open up a new class of people. There's that Archie B.—confound him, he cu'd run ten machines at onct and never know it. I'd like to sweat that bottled mischief out of him a year or two.
“Hello!”
Jud drew his horse up with a jerk. Above him, with legs locked, high up around the body of a dead willow, his seat the stump of a broken bough and fully twenty feet above the employment agent's head, sat Archie B., a freckled-faced lad, with fiery red hair and a world of fun in his blue eyes. He was one of the Butts twins and the very object of the Whipper-in's thoughts. From his head to his feet he had on but three garments—a small, battered, all-wool hat, a coarse cotton shirt, wide open at the neck, and a pair of jeans pants which came to his knees. But in the pockets of his pants were small samples of everything of wood and field, from shells of rare bird eggs to a small supply of Gypsy Juice.
His pockets were miniature museums of nature.
No one but a small boy, bent on fun, knows what Gypsy Juice is. No adult has ever been able to procure its formula and no small boy in the South cares, so long as he can get it.
“The thing that hit does,” Archie B. explained to his timid and pious twin brother, Ozzie B., “is ter make anything it touches that wears hair git up and git.”
Coons, possums, dogs, cats—with now and then a country horse or mule, hitched to the town rack—with these, and a small vial of Gypsy Juice, Archie B., as he expressed it, “had mo' fun to the square inch than ole Barnum's show ever hilt in all its tents.”
Jud stood a moment watching the boy. It was easy to see what Archie B. was after. In the body of the dead tree a wood-pecker had chiseled out a round hole.
“Hello, yo'se'f”—finally drawled Jud—“whatcher doin' up thar?”
“Why, I am goin' to see if this is a wood-pecker's nes' or a fly-ketcher's.”
Bonaparte caught his cue at once and ran to the foot of the tree barking viciously, daring the tree-climber to come down. His vicious eyes danced gleefully. He looked at his master between his snarls as much as to say: “Well, this is great, to tree the real live son of the all-conquering man!”
It maddened him, too, to see the supreme indifference with which the all-conqueror's son treated his presence.
Jud grunted. He prided himself on his bird-lore. Finally he said: “Wal, any fool could tell you—it's a wood-pecker's nest.”
“Yes, that's so and jus' exacly what a fool 'ud say,” came back from the tree. “But it 'ud be because he is a fool, tho', an' don't see things as they be. It's a fly-ketcher's nest, for all that—” he added.
“Teach yo' gran'-mammy how to milk the house cat,” sneered Jud, while Bonaparte grew furious again with this added insult. “Don't you know a wood-pecker's nest when you see it?”
“Yes,” said Archie B., “an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a wood-pecker and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see if it's so with this one.”
“Oh,” said Jud, surprised, “an' what is it?”
“Jus' as I said—he's whipped the wood-pecker an' tuck his nes'.”
“What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?” said Jud. Then he grinned derisively.
Bonaparte, watching his master, ran around the tree again and squatting on his stump of a tail grinned likewise.
“A fly-ketcher,” said Archie B. calmly, “is a sneaking sort of a bird, that ketches flies an' little helpless insects for a—mill, maybe. Do you know any two-legged fly-ketchers a-doin' that?”
Jud glared at him, and Bonaparte grew so angry that he snapped viciously at the bark of the tree as if he would tear it down.
“What do you mean, you little imp?—what mill?”
“Why his stomach,” drawled Archie B., “it's a little differunt from a cotton-mill, but it grinds 'em to death all the same.”
Jud looked up again. He glared at Archie B.
“How do you know that's a fly-ketcher's nest and not a wood-pecker's, then?” he asked, to change the subject.
“That's what I'd like to know, too,” said Bonaparte as plainly as his growls and two mean eyes could say it.
“If it's a fly-ketcher's, the nest will be lined with a snake's-skin,” said Archie B. “That's nachrul, ain't it,” he added—“the nest of all sech is lined with snake-skins.”
Bonaparte, one of whose chief amusements in life was killing snakes, seemed to think this a personal thrust at himself, for he flew around the tree with renewed rage while Archie B., safe on his high perch, made faces at him and laughed.
“I'll bet it ain't that way,” said Jud, rattled and discomfited and shifting his long squirrel gun across his saddle. Archie B. replied by carefully thrusting a brown sunburnt arm into the hole and bringing out a nest. “Now, a wood-pecker's egg,” he said, carefully lifting an egg out and then replacing it, “'ud be pearly white.”
“How did you learn all that?” sneered Jud.
“Oh, by keepin' out of a cotton mill an' usin' my eye,” said Archie B., winking at Bonaparte.
Bonaparte glared back.
“I'd like to git you into the mill,” said Jud. “I'd put you to wuck doin' somethin' that 'ud be worth while.”
“Oh, yes, you would for a few years,” sneered back Archie B. “Then you'd put me under the groun', where I'd have plenty o' time to res'.”
“I'm goin' up there now to see yo' folks an' see if I can't git you into the mill.”
“Oh, you are?—Well, don't be in sech a hurry an' look heah at yo' snake-skin fust—didn't I tell you it 'ud be lined with a snake-skin?” And he threw down a last year's snake-skin which Bonaparte proceeded to rend with great fury.
“Now, come under here,” went on Archie B. persuasively, “and I'll sho' you they're not pearly white, like a wood-pecker's, but cream-colored with little purple splotches scratched over 'em—like a fly-ketcher's.”
Jud rode under and looked up. As he did so Archie B. suddenly turned the nest upside down, that Jud might see the eggs, and as he looked up four eggs shot out before he could duck his head, and caught him squarely between his shaggy eyes. Blinded, smeared with yelk and smarting with his eyes full of fine broken shell, he scrambled from his horse, with many oaths, and began feeling for the little branch of water which ran nearby.
“I'll cut that tree down, but I'll git you and wring yo' neck,” he shouted, while Bonaparte endeavored to tear it down with his teeth.
But Archie B. did not wait. Slowly he slid down the tree, while Bonaparte, thunder-struck with joy, waited at the foot, his eyes glaring, his mouth wide open, anticipating the feast on fresh boy meat. Can he be—dare he be—coming down? Right into my jaws, too? The very thought of it stopped his snarls.
Jud's curses filled the air.
Down—down, slid Archie B., both legs locked around the tree, until some ten feet above the dog, and, then tantalizingly, just out of reach, he suddenly tightened his brown brakes of legs, and thrusting his hand in his pocket, pulled out a small rubber ball. Reaching over, he squirted half of its contents over the dog, which still sat snarling, half in fury and half in wonder.
Then something happened. Jud could not see, being down on his knees in the little stream, washing his eyes, but he first heard demoniacal barks proceed from Bonaparte, ending in wailful snorts, howls and whines, beginning at the foot of the tree and echoing in a fast vanishing wail toward home.
Jud got one eye in working order soon enough to see a cloud of sand and dust rolling down the road, from the rear of which only the stub of a tail could be seen, curled spasmodically downward toward the earth.
Jud could scarcely believe his eyes—Bonaparte—the champion dog—running—running like that?
“Whut—whut—whut,”—he stammered, “Whut did he do to Bonaparte?”
Then he saw Archie B. up the road toward home, rolling in the sand with shouts of laughter.
“If I git my hands on you,” yelled Jud, shaking his fist at the boy, “I'll swaller you alive.”
“That's what the fly-ketcher said to the butterfly,” shouted back Archie B.
It was a half hour before Jud got all the fine eggshell out of his eyes. After that he decided to let the Butts family alone for the present. But as he rode away he was heard to say again:
“Whut—whut—whut did he do to Bonaparte?”
Archie B. was still rolling on the ground, and chuckling now and then in fits of laughter, when a determined, motherly looking, fat girl appeared at the doorway of the family cottage. It was his sister, Patsy Butts:
“Maw,” she exclaimed, “I wish you'd look at Archie B. I bet he's done sump'in.”
There was a parental manner in her way. Her one object in life, evidently, was to watch Archie B.
“You Archie B.,” yelled his mother, a sallow little woman of quick nervous movements, “air you havin' a revulsion down there? What air you been doin' anyway? Now, you git up from there and go see why Ozzie B. don't fetch the cows home.”
Archie B. arose and went down the road whistling.
A ground squirrel ran into a pile of rocks. Archie B. turned the rocks about until he found the nest, which he examined critically and with care. He fingered it carefully and patted it back into shape. “Nice little nes',” he said—“that settles it—I thought they lined it with fur.” Then he replaced the rocks and arose to go.
A quarter of a mile down the road he stopped and listened.
He heard his brother, Ozzie B., sobbing and weeping.
Ozzie B. was his twin brother—his “after clap”—as Archie B. called him. He was timid, uncertain, pious and given to tears—“bo'hn on a wet Friday”—as Archie B. had often said. He was always the effect of Archie B.'s cause, the illustration of his theorem, the solution of his problem of mischief, the penalty of his misdemeanors.
Presently Ozzie B. came in sight, hatless and driving his cows along, but sobbing in that hiccoughy way which is the final stage of an acute thrashing.
No one saw more quickly than Archie B., and he knew instantly that his brother had met Jud Carpenter, on his way back to the mill.
“He's caught my lickin' ag'in,” said Archie B., indignantly—“it's a pity he looks so much like me.”
It was true, and Ozzie B. stood and dug one toe into the ground, and sobbed and wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, and told how, in spite of his explanations and beseechings, the Whipper-in had met him down the road and thrashed him unmercifully.
“Ozzie B.,” said his brother, “you make me tired all over and in spots. I hate for as big a fool as you to look like me. Whyncher run—whyncher dodge him?”
“I—I—wanted ter do my duty,” sobbed Ozzie B. “Maw tole me ter drive—drive the cows right up the road—”
Archie B. surveyed him with fine scorn:
“When the Devil's got the road,” said Archie B., “decent fo'ks had better take to the wood. I'd fixed him an' his ole dorg, an' now you come along an' spile it all.”
He made a cross mark in the road and spat on it. Then he turned with his back to the cross, threw his hat over his head and said slowly: “Venture pee wee under the bridge! bam—bam—bam!”
“What's that fur?” asked Ozzie B., as he ceased sobbing. His brother always had something new, and it was always absorbingly interesting to Ozzie B.
“That,” said Archie B., solemnly, “I allers say after meetin' a Jonah in the road. The spell is now broke. Jus' watch me fix Jud Carpenter agin. Wanter see me git even with him? Well, come along.”
“What'll you do?” asked Ozzie B.
“I'll make that mustang break his neck for the way he treated you, or my name ain't Archie B. Butts—that's all. Venture pee wee under the bridge, bam—bam—bam!”
“No—oo—no,” began Ozzie B., beginning to cry again—“Don't kill 'im—it'll be cruel.”
“Don't wanter see me go an' git even with the man that's jus' licked you for nuthin'?”
“No—oo—no—” sobbed Ozzie B. “Paw says—leave—leave—that for—the Lord.”
“Tarnashun!”—said Archie B., spitting on the ground, disgustedly—, “too much relig'un is a dang'us thing. You've got all of paw's relig'un an' maw's brains, an' that's 'nuff said.”
With this he kicked Ozzie B. soundly and sent him, still sobbing, up the road.
Then he ran across the wood to head off Jud Carpenter, who he knew had to go around a bend in the road.
There was no bird that Archie B. could not mimic. He knew every creature of the wood. Every wild thing of the field and forest was his friend. Slipping into the underbrush, a hundred yards from the road down which he knew Jud Carpenter had to ride, he prepared himself for action.
Drawing a turkey-call from his pocket, he gave the call of the wild turkey going to roost, as softly as a violinist tries his instrument to see if it is in tune.
Prut—prut—prut—it rang out clear and distinctly.
“All right,”—he said—“she'll do.”
He had not long to wait. Up the road he soon saw the Whipper-in, riding leisurely along.
Archie B. swelled with anger at sight of the complacent and satisfactory way he rode along. He even thought he saw a smile—a kind of even-up smile—light his face.
When opposite his hiding place, Archie B. put his call to his mouth: Prut—Prut—P-R-U-T—it rang out. Then Prut—prut!
Jud Carpenter stopped his horse instantly.
“Turkeys goin' to roost.”—he muttered. He listened for the direction.
Prut—Prut—it came out of the bushes on the right—a hundred yards away under a beech tree.
Jud listened: “Eatin' beech-mast,”—he said, and he slipped off his pony, tied him quietly to the limb of a sweet-gum tree, and cocking his long gun, slipped into the wood.
Five minutes later he heard the sound still farther off. “They're walkin',” muttered Jud—“I mus' head 'em off.” Then he pushed on rapidly into the forest.
Archie B. let him go—then, making a short circuit, slipped like an Indian through the wood, and came up to the pony hitched on the road side.
Quietly removing the saddle and blanket, he took two tough prickly burrs of the sweet-gum and placed one on each side of the pony's spine, where the saddle would rest. Then he put the blanket and saddle back, taking care to place them on very gently and tighten the girth but lightly.
He shook all over with suppressed mirth as he went farther into the wood, and lay down on the mossy bank behind a clay-root to watch the performance.
It was a quarter of an hour before Jud, thoroughly tired and disgusted, gave up the useless search and came back.
Untying the pony, he threw the bridle rein over its head and vaulted lightly into the saddle.
Archie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his mouth just in time.
“It was worth a dollar,” he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had retired to their trundle bed. “The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to the groun'—then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin' summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road kersplash!—an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin' to-ards home. Then I hollered out: 'Go it ole, fly-ketcher—you're as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs'—an' I lit out through the wood.”
Ozzie B. burst out crying: “Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man got hurt?”
Archie B. replied by kicking him in the ribs until he ceased crying.
“Say yo' prayers now and go to sleep. I'll kick you m'se'f, but I'll lick anybody else that does it.”
As Ozzie B. dozed off he heard:
“Venture pee-wee under the bridge—bam—bam—bam. Oh, Lord, you who made the tar'nal fools of this world, have mussy on 'em!”