VI.
Whatever might be the character of the nocturnal visitant of the forge, it seemed safe enough in the broad glare of sunlight; and as it was the voting-place of the district, it was by no means deserted on that momentous Thursday in August when the election was held. Marcella had felt throughout the canvass the terrible strain of suspense, but when the day had drawn near she was deprecatory of decision, and wished that if the worst must be it might not be at once.
“A body would ’low, ter hear ye a-goin’ on, that Eli war ter be hung ter-day,” her grandmother remarked, tartly. “He ain’t los’ a ounce o’ flesh nor a hour o’ sleep sence he war a candidate, an’ he went off from hyar this mornin’ high-colored ez common. An’ look at you-uns—big-eyed, an’ pale-faced, an’ lean-lookin’, an’ fluttery—drapped the blue bowl an’ bruk it in two; an’ Is’bel patterns arter ye, till thar ain’t no ch’ice fur a fool ’twixt ye. Shucks! I mus’ be mistaken,” sarcastically; “they be goin’ surely ter hang Eli.”
From time to time, during the rich and dewy morning hours, when the bees droned about the blooming clover in the orchard aisles, and the birds were abroad in the highways of the skies, Marcella parted the sheltering vines on the porch, that she might look forth unobserved upon the voters gradually assembling at the polls. She knew many of them by sight, and was informed concerning their disposition toward her father’s pretensions; and thus her heart weighed heavily or grew buoyant, as enemies or friends were in the majority. They came chiefly on horseback, and there were rows of saddle-horses hitched to the rack before the wide door of the forge, and to the boughs of trees hard by, and even to the badly chinked logs of the building itself; sometimes they dully drowsed, sometimes impatiently pawed, sometimes fell to bickering together, and necessitated the interposition of their masters to readjust their status. Many of the farmers had come in ox-wagons. The teams had been unyoked, and were leisurely munching the feed, spread out in the dappling shadows upon the ground before them. Casting a vote, the inalienable right of an American citizen, seemed a lengthy and serious matter, and was not to be lightly discharged; during the main portion of the day it busied the denizens of the surrounding slopes, and thus deliberately they saved the country. The assemblage presented, therefore, something of the aspect of an exclusively masculine picnic, for such women and children as had been permitted to gratify a long-cherished hankering to “view” the populous Settlemint had hied them decorously to the houses of various relatives,—the tender ties of consanguinity thus utilized on this auspicious occasion,—and were seen no more during the day. Old friends met, and smoked, and talked at great length. The state of crops in various localities elicited anxious inquiries; old gossip that had been on its last legs suddenly developed a new and brisk pair of limbs, and circulated like a fresh scandal. Parson Donnard could not have failed to hear his name excitedly coupled with that of the devil, as he threaded his way through the crowd; but mindful of his vision, he placed no false nor sensitive interpretation upon this association, and there was an elongation of his thin compressed lips which in an ungodly man one might have thought singularly like a smile of flattered vanity. The heavy jeans-clad mountaineers reverently made way for him, and there was a perceptible abatement of the guffaws and slowly drawled jokes as he passed. But as in more cultured communities, the observance and the feeling were not always in close compatibility, and the criticism he encountered was as if he were of this world.
“I dunno why pa’son be ’lowed ter vote,” said Joe Bassett, as he sprawled on the protruding roots of a tree; two mountaineers perched hard by on the tongue of an ox-wagon from which the team had been released, and a third reclined on a saddle which he had thrown upon the ground. “Pa’son can’t run fur nuthin’,” continued Bassett; “he can’t go ter the Legislatur’, nor nuthin’, nor be sher’ff. They don’t let preachers hold office, nor butchers set on a crim’nal jury,”—thus seeking in his ignorance to reconcile the incongruities and oddities of the law.
“Pa’son oughter be a-studyin’ ’bout a seat ’mongst the angels, stiddier gittin’ registered ’mongst the qualified voters o’ the deestric’,” said Gideon Dake, who always confirmed Bassett’s views, or added corollary matter.
“What be Teck Jepson a-bobbin’ ’bout fur, like a float on a fish-line?” demanded Bassett. “Actially a-stoppin’ the pa’son mighty nigh at the door of the forge. Looks ter be a-wrastlin’ in prayer with the old man,—in an’ about goin’ ter save the pa’son’s soul, fust thing ye know.”
“Hain’t you-uns hearn,” said Dake, quickly seizing the opportunity to regale the professed gossip with a new story, “how turrible smitten Teck Jepson an’ Marcelly Strobe hev got, all of a suddint? An’ Teck air a-workin’ fur the lection like he war demented. I made him beg an’ beg me fur nigh on ter a hour ter vote fur Eli,—like I hed counted on doin’ all the time. Now Teck’s argufyin’ with the pa’son.”
“Every time I hear o’ Marcelly Strobe she hev got another feller a-danglin’. ’Pears like ter me she mus’ be a-foolin’ some o’ them boys,” Bassett commented sourly.
“Laws-a-massy, jes’ look at Teck,” said Dake, laughing slightly, albeit his teeth were closed hard upon the quid of tobacco in his mouth, “he hev gin the old man his arm an’ air jes’ a-draggin’ the pa’son up ter the polls! Wouldn’t trest the pa’son’s word ter vote fur Eli; gone in ter see the job well done. Waal, sir,”—he shifted his position as the young and the old man disappeared together within the door,—“that’s jes’ the way he done me. I couldn’t hev got away from him, arter I hed promised ter vote for Eli, ef I hed wanted ter.”
There was a momentary hiatus in the conversation, when a tall, lank man, some twenty-eight or thirty years of age, with high cheek-bones and a sunburned, narrow face, joined the group. He had a bright, quick glance, and a smouldering spark of irritation aided its effect. His countenance wore a ready and propitiatory smile, the candidate’s smile, that seemed automatic in some sort, and not subject to the same springs that sufficed as motor for his other expressions. He flung himself upon a pile of shucks and hay, the forage of neighboring oxen, and he chewed a long straw as he talked.
“Hy’re, boys,” he said, agreeably. “How do the chances o’ the ’lection ’pear ter you-uns?” For he was Joshua Nevins, a candidate for constable, and Eli Strobe’s much-feared rival.
“Mighty well,” said Bassett, reassuringly.
“Whyn’t ye go an’ vote, Dake?” said the candidate, leaning forward to scan Gideon Dake’s countenance.
“Ye ain’t goin’ ter try ter git folks ter vote twict, air ye?” said Dake, jocosely. “I hev voted wunst ter-day, an’ they tells me ez that be ez off’n ez the law allows.”
“I hopes ye voted the right way,” said Nevins, with a bland and mollifying demonstration of the candidate’s smile.
The specious Dake nodded his head convincingly. “I’ll be bound I did,” he said equivocally, and yet so unequivocally that the momentary fears of the candidate were set at rest.
The others, mindful of Dake’s recent representations as to the casting of his vote under Teck Jepson’s tutelage, experienced a certain embarrassment and preserved an awkward silence, none arrogating the tact to innocuously continue the conversation. If the candidate be a wily genus, the craft of the voter is sometimes commensurate.
Nevins seemed the most innocent of men, as he himself reopened the subject. He had approached the group with the intention of merely commending himself by some timely and jocose observations, and then strolling to other coteries. He had, however, encountered unexpected opposition to-day; he had thought himself almost assured of success, and when the doubt began to arise in his mind, untutored to jeopardy, he felt himself losing his balance.
“What ails Teck Jepson, ter git so sot agin me?” he observed, anxiously. “He hev jes’ been a-bouncin’ aroun’ electioneerin’ fur Eli ter-day like—like—a chicken with its head off. I axed him awhile ago,—I beckoned him off, an I say, ‘What ails ye, ter work agin me, Teck? I ain’t done nuthin’ ter you-uns, hev I? Air ye holdin’ a gredge agin me?’ An’ he said, ‘Don’t ye know I be kin ter Eli nowadays? My half-brother married his cousin,’ Teck say. Shucks! I know that ain’t the reason.” He glanced in plaintive interrogation at the others.
“Waal, things turns out mos’ly ez they air bid from above,” said one of the men, with an unexpected attack of piety.
Nevins looked lugubriously at him. This was an arbitration to which he was not prepared to submit. He was feeling exceedingly helpless in the hands of Providence.
“I dunno ’bout that,” he observed. “Things in Brumsaidge turns out mos’ly ez Teck Jepson wills, an’ Providence sings mighty small.”
Then reflecting that this was a dolorous prognostication on his own account, he gathered himself together as jauntily as he could, and declared, “But Teck Jepson’s rule is over. Folks in Brumsaidge hev tried Eli Strobe, an’ he didn’t ’gree with ’em,—he seen too much ‘Eli Strobe, Big Man!’ in his office, ter suit ’em; an’ now they air lookin’ fur a man what jes’ wants ter sarve the people,—an’ that’s my bes’ wish.”
The others sat and gazed solemnly at him, all meditatively listening. For a moment there was no sound but the munching of an ox close to him, as the beast pulled at the pile of fodder on which he reclined. As the great horns came threateningly near, he threw up his hand, and the ox drew off with a muttered low of surly dissatisfaction.
“I can’t onderstan’ Teck, though,—I counted on him.” He returned to his grievance with a lapsing courage.
“Waal, ye mought ez well not,” said an old codger, with a grin. “Hev you-uns got a darter, seventeen year old?”
The young man stared at him in amazement.
“Course I hain’t.”
“Waal, that’s one o’ the special qualifications of a candidate,” continued the elderly wag. “A tall, high-steppin’ darter, with long curly hair; that’s what ye need, ter run agin Eli.”
Nevins was silent for a moment, in painful consciousness of this lack. He was a good-natured fellow, and had thought his two small boys at home possessed of all the filial graces and values, and he had never expected to be summoned to covet a tall daughter of seventeen. He resorted to contradiction.
“That thar gal o’ Eli Strobe’s ain’t seventeen,” he declared, “nor no higher’n my vest pocket. I know her. I useter see her constant.”
“Waal, she’s been agein’ an’ growin’ sence then. Leastwise, she’s tall enough an’ old enough ter make Teck Jepson step around mighty spry. I ain’t seen better electioneerin’ fur forty year. I hed counted on the pleasure o’ hevin’ Eli goin’ roun’ hyar with his finger in his mouth, but I’m feared o’ that gal o’ his’n. Clem Sanders, too, war a-waitin’ roun’ the forge fust thing this mornin’, a-pinin’ fur nine o’clock, so ez the jedges would declar’ the polls open, an’ let him put in his vote fur Eli. His ticket ’peared ter burn his fingers till he got it inter the ballot-box.”
“He in love with her, too?” asked the candidate, drearily. He had never anticipated these potent odds. What avail was it to parade the virtues of citizenship, to vaunt his capacity and his will to serve the people in the office to which he aspired,—with tricksy Cupid afield!
Nevins rose presently, the straw still in his mouth, his hat pulled far over his brow, and sauntered down toward the forge. The great red and white ox instantly planted his cloven hoof where Nevins had sat, and took possession, as it were, of the pile of forage, trampling it down, that it might not afford further resting-place for loitering politicians.
The post-meridian sun was now a trifle aslant upon the valley below; purple shadows had begun to creep along the green slopes. How warm was the fragrance of the grapes, hanging upon a great vine that draped an oak from topmost bough to root, and which was pillaged as high as the arm of man could reach! The tall weeds were all resounding with the whir of acrobatic grasshoppers, now and then leaping amazingly high into the air. Not a note came from the birds now; not a wing was astir. All the landscape shimmered through the noontide heat. The forge, where the three judges of the election sat with the precious ballot-box, of which they were sworn not to lose sight till the polls were closed and the vote counted out, seemed a quiet and cool refuge, with its dark shadows, and its high, tent-like roof, and its ill-chinked walls, affording glimpses of the green vistas without. The little window at the rear, into which that mysterious semblance of the smith had stared, pale and reproachful, at its vigorous living self, was wide open; showing now a squirrel frisking by on the mountain slope, and now only a devious winding path amidst the greenth up the mountain-side, with the trumpet-vine a-blooming scarlet over a gray rock, and in the low branches of an elder-bush a bird on a nest. Now and then faces were thrust in at this window,—most often young and beardless, but sometimes old and grizzly,—to curiously scan the judges and the practical illustration of the theory of election by suffrage. The judges, in rickety chairs, tilted on the hind legs, demurely smoked their pipes, while the clerk sat at the pine table on which the ballot-box rested. The hearth was fireless, the hood smokeless, the anvil silent. The stir outside came cheerily in, and when the line of voters slackened, and no ballot had been deposited for some time, and the interest of the proceedings seemed indefinitely suspended, the judges looked wistfully through the open door, and were not consoled for the dullness by their preëminence and responsibility and conspicuous honors. That spirit of humor, always freakishly manifested in a crowd, was quick to seize on the situation, and occasionally remarks were made outside, pointed and personal, obviously intended to be overheard within.
“Did you-uns know ez Jethro Peake war jedge o’ ’lection?” demanded one tousled-headed apparition, at the famous batten shutter, of an unseen crony without.
“Never knowed he war jedge o’ nuthin’ ’ceptin’ jedge o’ whiskey,” the unseen crony replied.
And with these trivial incidents were bridged the intervals when it seemed as if all the district had voted that cared to vote, and that there was naught more for the judges but to sit in stately isolation, till the loitering summer sun should dawdle down the western sky, and the hour come when it would be lawful to declare the polls closed.
After a long time, when the stir of passing feet, the sound of talking and laughter, the champing and whickering of horses, had been more than usually marked to the tantalized referees, whom the county court combined to honor, they noted that an expectant stillness fell suddenly upon the crowd. Then half a dozen men pushed into the blacksmith shop, and turned about with excitement, as if to await and watch an entrance at the door. Other men stood by without. There were half a dozen heads at the little window, and the batten shutter was swinging. The bird had flown from her nest in the elder-bush to a bough of a dogwood-tree above, and perched there, with quivering, outspread wings, and a feverish, excited eye, and a harsh, querulous, ceaseless chirring. A ray of sunlight fell through a rift in the clapboards like some splendid glittering lance, reaching from the dusky, peaked roof to the “dirt-floor” beneath. The polished face of the anvil caught the beam and reflected it,—all else was dark and shadowy; even through the broad door the light was only a vista of deep green leafage and harmonious gray commingling tones, hardly definite enough to be called shadow, but of tender and modulating effects; and the plows left to be sharpened, and the wheels to be tired, and the bar on which the smith’s tools hung, were but dimly descried. Thus stepping suddenly into this shaft of light, Jake Baintree’s figure was singularly distinct, but was not instantly recognized by the judges. One of them slowly brought down the forelegs of his chair to the ground, and sat looking at him, one hand on either knee, and with a round, red, wondering face and an inquisitive eye. So long it had been since Baintree was familiarly seen in Broomsedge—going thence a stripling, returning a man—that the certainty of his identity gradually dawning on their minds was not recognition, but inference. Who else unknown would present himself to cast his vote in their midst? Who else wore so blanched a face but the jail-bird, long shut in from the sun and the wind and all the familiars of the weather? He was very tall and slender, and in the shaft of light in which he stood, the extraordinarily sharp, clear cutting of his features was apparent. His hair was black and sleek, and lay close to his narrow head; it had a fine and thrifty look, like the coat of an animal. He seemed very meek, but for all that his gray eye was uncertain, it glittered. He looked about him with a comprehensive understanding, unlike the dawdling inattention of the mountaineers. As he offered the closely rolled scroll, his vote was challenged by one of the judges, and he was quick and ready and self-possessed, and took the oath which Jethro Peake administered, with a steady manner, and evidently with a deliberate intention. He wished, perhaps, the crowd thought, to show that he was entitled to vote; that whatever they might say, the law held him innocent and denied him none of the rights of citizenship. Still with one hand on each fat knee, and sitting very upright, Jethro Peake, his round, red face, with a bristly, unshaven stubble about the chin, solemn with the sense of the dignity and importance of the occasion, demanded,—
“Air you-uns cit’zen o’ Tennessee?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Twenty-one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reside in this county?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Resided hyar six months ’fore this day?”
“Yes, sir.”
As the vote, the first he had ever cast, was accepted, he looked curiously on, while the closely rolled scroll was dropped unread into the ballot-box. Somehow he seemed unaccountably disappointed by the mysterious silence in which his choice was enveloped. He walked slowly toward the door, looking back over his shoulder at the guarded ballot-box. Suddenly he remarked in a strange, offhand manner, “I ain’t keerin’ who knows how my vote be gin. I scratched one name off’n my ticket. I know how ter write Eli Strobe.”
There were the makings of a politician in Joshua Nevins; he answered instantly from out the crowd, “I kin spare yer vote, Jake Baintree. An’ ef I can’t I’d ruther be defeated than hold office by the favor o’ a scape-gallows.”
There was a sensation in the crowd, and some “scratched tickets” were presently deposited that might have shown, if unrolled, another name written in, that was not Strobe. A change ensued in the atmosphere of popular feeling. It was not definite, but Teck Jepson, with a thousand fine fibres of sensitiveness, which he had not known he possessed, became painfully aware of it, and fiercely complained to Eli Strobe.
“I’m minded ter fling ye over the fence, Eli,” he said. “Ef ye hedn’t gin yerse’f ter upholdin’ that thar Jake Baintree, ye wouldn’t hev been lumped with a murderer like him.”
Eli Strobe rested his slow, pompous gaze upon his friend.
“He ain’t no murderer. An’ ef he war, his votin’ fur me don’t lump me with him.”
He turned his heavy-lidded, full-lashed eyes ruminatively upon the landscape, and said no more. Despite his deliberate burly dignity, however, there was a sense of trouble and perplexity about him, indefinitely perceptible, and he evidently listened heedfully when his friend and backer rejoined,—
“Waal, his votin’ fur you-uns, an’ tellin’ it out that-a-way, will make a heap o’ folks vote agin ye. I be powerful glad it never happened no sooner in the day, an’ ye hev got what ye hev got. What ailed the darned idjit?”
“I reckon he ’lowed he war doin’ me a favior,” said Strobe, with unexpected moderation. “He wanted me an’ all the folks ter know ez he war fur my ’lection. He never voted afore. An’ he hev been cooped up in jail so long he don’t ’pear ter sense much ’bout some things. An’ yit, ’bout others he ’pears powerful sly. Pore feller!”
“Poor fool!” ejaculated Jepson, irritably. “What ails him ter set his heart—dad-burn him!—on yer ’lection?”
He grudged Jake Baintree any sentiment that he shared.
“Waal,” said Eli, hesitating, “the folks down ter my house tuk some thought o’ his’n whenst his trial an’ imprisonment war goin’ on, an’ I reckon he feels thankful. Marcelly air one o’ them kind ez can’t rest enny ef she ’lows ennybody air hongry, or lackin’ ennywise; an’ she toted ’em gyardin truck whenst they never planted, an’ holped ’em sew an’ weave whenst they hed no heart ter work. It’s the natur’ o’ Marcelly.”
Jepson stood with his hands in his pockets, his brows contracting heavily over his blue eyes, that the candidate’s daughter had thought so cruel and yet so deep. His hat was drawn down over his face, and the shadow of the beech-tree, circumscribed nearly to its minimum by the almost vertical sunshine, was soft upon it. He turned mechanically when others joined the group, and he listened with frowning displeasure to the suggestions of defeat that seemed somehow to be suddenly and bountifully deduced.
“I be powerful afeard I hev flung my vote away on ye, Eli,” said Gideon Dake. “I never looked ter see ye hev sech a backer ez Jake Baintree,” with a jeering glance. “An’ some others say the same.”
“An’ yit,” said Jepson, feeling keenly the instability of popular sentiment, “the t’other day, whenst I purvented him from gittin’ baptized ’mongst the saints, a body would hev ’lowed ez haffen the church members couldn’t rest easy in the fold ’thout Jake Baintree ’mongst ’em. Sech a haulin’ over the coals ez I got! An’ now ye ain’t willin’ fur him ter jine ye at the polls, whar the devil’s vote wouldn’t be challenged ef he hed been livin’ six months in the county.”
Dake made no defense of this lack of logic on the part of the community, but fell to whittling a stick with a large clasp-knife, as he leaned against the bole of the tree.
“That ain’t what makes me oneasy ’count o’ Eli,” put in an elderly grizzled wight with an air of pleasure in fetching cumulative disabilities into the prospect. “Eli hev been too spry ez constable; he hev been too keen ter pry inter the doin’s o’ folks agin the law. Now Nevins, he mought do the same, an’ then agin he moughtn’t. He hain’t been tried,—that’s the main chance. Nobody’s got no gredge agin him,—dunno nuthin’ ’bout his doin’s in office. But Eli, he hev been too sharp-set ter administer the law.”
“Look-a-hyar,” argued Jepson, “ye be a-takin’ arter the man fur doin’ of his jewty.”
The elderly interlocutor prefaced his reply by an astute wink. “His jewty air ter please the people, ef he wants ter git ’lected agin!”—a golden rule for incumbents.
Jepson relapsed into moody silence, and this choice reasoner proceeded with an illustration in point:—
“Eli can’t ’low sleepin’ dogs ter lie. He ain’t got no ’scrimination. He dunno who ter sot the law onter, nor who ter muzzle it fur. Thar’s old Jer’miah Miles jes’ drawed a pistol ter skeer some o’ them bad boys out’n his watermillion patch, an’ Eli, passin’ by, druv the boys out’n the patch, an’ then ups an’ ’rests the old man fur kerryin’ concealed weepons. Thar’s fourteen o’ the Miles kinsfolks kem hyar ter vote ter-day.”
If the officer had done amiss, his punishment seemed likely to be greater than he could bear. Like most people brought into propinquity with the law, Eli Strobe sought to furnish a precedent rather than a justification. “Waal,” he argued, barely lifting his eyelids, “Sam Blake”—his predecessor in office—“would hev done the same.”
“Shucks!” exclaimed the other. “I kin jes’ hear Sam Blake a-hollerin’ ter them boys, ‘Git out’n this million patch, or I’ll be the death o’ ye! I’ll jail ye ’fore night.’” Then dropping his rough voice to dulcet courtesy, “‘Mister Miles, got enny o’ them fine cantaloupes ter spare fur my saddle-bags?’ I say, arrest old Miles fur kerryin’ concealed weepons! Sam Blake would jes’ hev begged a few cantaloupes, that’s all, an’ never seen no pistol.”
Teck Jepson could ill adapt his intolerant and domineering spirit to the prospect of defeat, even when the cause was not his own. He had made to-day perhaps the greatest sacrifice to his affection of which he was capable, bending his pride to beg of the community favor for another which he could never have been brought to ask for himself. He was weary of it all, and depressed, and the continual collision, in which he must restrain himself rather than constrain others, irked him. If, among the narratives upon which he loved to brood, he had ever heard of aught so modern as the romances of the Middle Ages, the idea of a knight sallying forth in search of noble adventure and deeds of prowess, whereby he might prove himself worthy of the fair, would have commended itself as cheap and easy in comparison to his devoirs to earn the gratitude of the candidate’s daughter.
There are times that come to all of us when the trivial incidents of the world pall, when the presence of crowds weighs upon the spirit, when existence seems petty and sordid, and we look back to some period of solitude, rich with quiet thought or chosen and cherished labor, with a suddenly awakened sense that then we were clothed in our true identity; in that interval we verily lived rather than merely exercised the respiratory organs, and went about in the outer disguise that wears our name and is recognized of men.
Perhaps in human experience naught might more fitly foster this repulsion of the world than certain stages of a political canvass. Jepson stood with his hat in his hand, feeling foreign among them all, looking now down in the valley, and again up to the great heights; wondering sub-acutely if it were only yesterday that he had heard David sing to the dulcet measure of the lilting harp-strings, and watched the moody Saul listening on his couch, his dexterous hand toying with the stealthy javelin, ready to launch it at the head of the singer,—only yesterday that he had seen the high-priest’s rod blossom in the tabernacle, had heard the waters gush from the rock that Moses smote. Still the solemn clouds, as then, mysteriously communed with peak and cliff; the radiant sunshine wore a rich effulgence among the lonely and far-away ranges, blue and unreal, like some fine deceit of the senses, ineffably ethereal as they withdrew into the unseen spaces. The valley, mute and peaceful, lay far below, with here and there a harvested field—a tiny yellow square—and a flash of water; and further, a wisp of smoke that came from an invisible chimney, the only motion in the supreme tranquillity of the scene. Here, higher up, where the massive purple range yawned with the wide deep interval called Broomsedge Cove, which seemed to be in the valley as one looked at the vast steep stretches of the mountains above, and seemed on the range when one looked down at the valley below, the men wrangled loudly, the oxen lowed; there was a great clamor among the horses, and suddenly Teck Jepson heard his name called. He turned slowly, to see his mare’s hoof in the hands of the blacksmith, who from his leaning posture looked up, and nodded to him to approach.
Clem Sanders, ejected from the forge by its conversion to the public uses, was devoting the day to the pursuit of art for art’s sake. He had on his leather apron, and the sleeve of his hammer-arm was well rolled back, showing its swelling cords. He carried a hammer in his hand, and was going about examining the feet of all the horses that had been ridden to the Settlement that day. He seemed by some means to recognize his own work, and he would stoop down and take the hoof up, and tell when he had made that shoe and had shod that horse, and boast to the little group of idlers how his work lasted. His face was a study when, in catching up a hoof, he would descry the work of another smith,—his alert joy to discern defects, or dismayed solicitude to perceive craft as good as his own or superior. It was a happy moment with him now when he had one of the clay-bank mare’s hoofs upon his leather apron, between his knees, as he stooped.
“One more sech shoein’ ez this, Teck,” he remarked oracularly, “an’ yer mare won’t have nare frawg ter her huff.”
He dropped the foot, and snatched up another so suddenly that he nearly pulled the creature down; Teck caught the bridle and stroked her head, for she was restive, and then stood reassuringly beside her as he looked at the groups about.
The polls were almost deserted. The crowd around the horses had grown denser. The general conversation had a wider range than the blacksmith’s remarks on the hoof, and the frog, and the shoe, and the nail. Dake and a man from North Carolina, a visitor and a cousin of a neighboring farmer, were turning the interval to account in the way of a horse-trade, and about them stood a breathlessly interested coterie, all eager to witness how the negotiation should terminate; all ready to advise, to dissuade, to instill suspicion; all marking with thrills of excitement that invariable phenomenon of bargain and sale,—when the buyer is willing, the vendor is reluctant and haggles, swinging back to eager entreaties and persuasive logic when the trade seems likely to fall through. Other wrangles now and then drowned their voices, and usurped the popular interest in the horse-trade.
“Listen at Teck, now!” cried Jube Donnard, the parson’s son. “Teck ’lows that thar leetle mare o’ his’n, ez be sca’cely bridle-wise, kin go all the gaits. Naw, sir! Naw, sir! That mare can’t pace. I know all about that mare. She don’t kem of pacing stock. Daddy trot, mammy trot, colt can’t pace!”
Jube was in his own person the most pointed contradiction of his assertion. Piety as it was expressed in Broomsedge Cove proved itself there as elsewhere no hereditary quality, nor possessed of any traits of consanguinity. In Jube, the parson’s son, was filially repeated the long, lank paternal frame, the lantern jaw, the narrow head, the small excited gray eye, and the thin straight lips, one compressed upon the other. But the spirit which animated the youth was devoid of any similarity to that of the solemn ascetic religionist; and as Jube went at large in Broomsedge, it seemed a disrespect in some sort for him to look so like his father. A jovial caricature: the parson’s image with a jocose swagger; the enthusiast’s eye, lighted with a dancing leer or eclipsed by a flexible wink; a mouth grotesquely solemn and frequented by all the well-worn jests and songs of Broomsedge Cove. Even the old man himself sometimes paused to look wonderingly at this junketing blade, so like, yet so unlike, his recognition of himself.
Jube stood now with his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head and all askew, his solemn face intent, watching the action of the mare as Teck led her out into the open space and stood holding her bridle, while she snorted and pawed impatiently, and bowed down her head, and tossed her black mane. She was a very ordinary specimen, good-looking only because she was young, and fat, and strong, and frisky. She had had the best of care, and perhaps made a finer show than the facts warranted. Some of the galled-backed, grass-fed old cattle near her turned their heads to mark her airs, with a sort of slow and surprised disapproval in their meek and jaded eyes.
“I hev hearn that sayin’ all my days,—daddy trot, mammy trot, colt ca-a-n’t pace,” the parson’s son reiterated, with a long lingering twang upon the negative declaration.
“This filly kin,” stoutly asseverated Teck. “She kin go all the gaits. She kin pace. An’ she kin trot like a fox, an’ run like a deer, an’ walk like a cat on a pallet.”
“I’ll bet ye a dollar an’ a half,” said the parson’s son, “ez this hyar hoss-critter o’ mine kin beat her enny gait she’s a mind ter travel. I dare ye put her out now, an’ try her along the road ter the sulphur spring—toler’ble level all the way.”
The hoss-critter was a bay, furnished with the usual complement of ribs evidently, and with a tail and mane that seemed sunburned a dull yellow, so unnatural was the color; but he picked up his feet well, he was about sixteen hands high, and according to the mountain estimate of speed he had a speedy look.
Teck had put his foot into the stirrup; there was a stir of excitement in the crowd. Half a dozen were backing the little mare, but the sunburned nag had his friends too, and a spirited clamor arose. Upon it Eli Strobe’s bass voice boomed suddenly:—
“I warn ye now, hoss-racin’ an’ a-bettin’ on it air agin the law; an’ ef ye boys ondertake ter bet yer money an’ race yer hosses, I’ll ondertake ter arrest ye. I be constable yit.” He had his hands in his pockets, and he strode a few paces to and fro in the crowd, his hat pulled down over his lowering eyes, from which shot now and then a watchful surly side-glance. The young men were arranging to start together from an oak-tree at the farther end of the clearing. They gave no heed to the threat of the constable. An elderly farmer assumed the negative in the discussion:—
“Shucks, Eli, ain’t I seen races run yander ter Glaston, an’ ain’t they got a reg’lar race-track thar?”
“That’s ’cordin’ ter law,” said the officer. “The law’s mighty partic’lar in the diff’unces it makes. Racin’ at a reg’lar race-track ain’t no harm, an’ bettin’ ain’t nuther, kase it’s puttin’ suthin’ in the State’s pocket, bein’ ez the race-track folks hev ter pay fur a license. But racin’ on a common road an’ a-bettin’ demau’lizes the young men an’ air agin the dignity o’ the State.” He still stood with his hands in his pockets, balancing himself alternately on the heels and the toes of his boots. “The State’s mighty partic’lar.”
The singular logic of this utterance occasioned no surprise. Unsophisticated as his auditors were, they were far too wise to reason with the law. They stood meditating on this view, chewing hard, and looking vaguely about them, hardly wondering whether the young men would balk them of their sport in deference to the constable’s threat, or whether they would persist and ride a race on the common road, thus doing a damage to the dignity of the State.
“Ye jes’ let ’em alone,” remonstrated the old farmer. “Ye air sech a stirrer up o’ strife, Eli, through tryin’ ter be sech a stickler fur the law. ’Tain’t yer business ter be so tarrifyin’ ter the kentry.”
The horse-trade was complete, the exchange made, the boot paid, and the stranger from North Carolina had left the Settlement. Gideon Dake, satisfied with his acquisition, mounted the roan steed and trotted about for a time, showing its paces to the crowd. Presently he dismounted, and looked the animal over. Some of his friends came up, and, with the unerring perspicacity of that genus exerted upon the new purchase, their comments roused his anxiety. He turned from them in alarm, after a few minutes. “Eli,” he said, in confused haste, “do ye know ennything ’bout’n a horse’s eyes? I be sort’n ’feard he’s moon-eyed, or suthin’. Don’t his eyes look cur’ous ter you-uns?”
Strobe took hold of the headstall, and the horse, uneasy at being stared out of countenance, tossed his head hastily backward.
“I can’t see the critter,” said Strobe, once more pulling the animal’s head down to his own shorter stature.
“He couldn’t be blind, or lacking eyesight, could he, Eli? Hey! Hey! Hello thar! Hev that thar North Ca’liny fox gone?” Dake called out to a man near the blacksmith shop. “He hev gone! He hev gone,” in frenzied accents, “He hev gone ter—I dunno whar!—with my sound mare an’ five dollars boot!” He made a pass with his hand before the eyes of the animal, who winked violently and tossed up his head. But that might have been only because he felt the wind of the motion. His unwilling owner moved back a pace, and taking his hat from his head—a large dark object—passed it quickly up and down, too far for the animal to feel the stir in the air, yet near enough to alarm or surprise him if he could see it. The constable stood looking on with interest, awaiting the result of the experiment, when a sudden thunder of galloping hoofs smote the air.
He turned to see in full progress the race he had interdicted. Along the sandy slope Jepson’s little mare led five others, bounding under whip and spur, her head stretched out long and straight, her tail and mane flying, her body close to the ground, the dust rising in clouds beneath her hoofs.
It was a rash thing to do, and Eli Strobe, one of the most reasonable of men, would perchance never have risked it save for the applause that greeted her; one quavering voice arose, then the rotund swelling of cheers. He could not endure to see the race run and applauded in open defiance of the law. He rushed out to meet the animal, and springing at her neck he caught the bridle, throwing his full weight upon it. The mare, frightened, reared, despite the heavy burden at her head. She pawed the air with her forefeet. Then, as she broke loose, the man fell with a terrible wrench, and away she went, with a cloud of dust skirrying after her like a witches’ dance.
Jepson reined up on the opposite rise, for he reached it the next moment; the other riders had not followed. He saw their horses shy away, one by one, from the prostrate figure that seemed a lifeless heap in the road. Did it stir? Or did the bystanders, rushing to it, move it in some way, seeking to aid? A bloody face was upturned; the crowd interposed, and he saw no more.
At one side of the road, unheeding the tragedy, stood the man who doubted his horse’s sight, still waving his hat up and down before the creature’s eyes, to discover if he would flinch.