No one would ever have supposed that the big blacksmith at the village was Jack Bracken. All the week he worked at his trade—so full of his new life that it shone continually in his face—his face strong and stern, but kindly. With his leathern apron on, his sleeves rolled up, his hairy breast bare and shining in the open collar, physically he looked more like an ancient Roman than a man of to-day.
His greatest pleasure was to entice little children to his shop, talking to them as he worked. To get them to come, he began by keeping a sack of ginger snaps in his pockets. And the villagers used to smile at the sight of the little ones around him, especially after sunset when his work was finished. Often a half dozen children would be in his lap or on his knees at once, and the picture was so beautiful that people would stop and look, and wonder what the big strong man saw in all those noisy children to love.
They did not know that this man had spent his life a hunted thing; that the strong instinct of home and children had been smothered in him, that his own little boy had been taken, and that to him every child was a saint.
But they soon learned that the great kind-hearted, simple man was a tiger when aroused. A small child from the mill, sickly and timid, was among those who stopped one morning to get one of his cakes.
Not knowing it was a mill child on its way to work, Jack detained it in all the kindness of his heart, and the little thing was not in a hurry to go. Indeed, it forgot all about the mill until its father happened along an hour after it should have been at work. His name was Joe Hopper, a ne'er-do-well whose children, by working at the mill, supported him in idleness.
Catching the child, he berated it and boxed its ears soundly. Jack was at work, but turning, and seeing the child chastised, he came at the man with quiet fury. With one huge hand in Joe Hopper's collar, he boxed his ears until he begged for mercy. “Now go,” said Jack, as he released him, “an' know hereafter how it feels for the strong to beat the weak.”
Of all things, Jack wanted to talk with Margaret Adams; but he could never make up his mind to seek her out, though his love for this woman was the love of his life. Often at night he would slip away from the old preacher's cabin and his cot by Captain Tom's bed, to go out and walk around her little cottage and see that all was safe.
James, her boy, peculiarly interested Jack, but it was some time before he came to know him. He knew the boy was Richard Travis's son, and that he alone had stood between him and his happiness. That but for him—the son of his mother—he would never have been the outlaw that he was, and even now but for this son he would marry her. But outlaw that he was, Jack Bracken had no free-booting ideas of love. Never did man revere purity in woman more than he—that one thing barred Margaret Adams forever from his life, though not from his heart.
He felt that he would hate James Adams; but instead he took to the lad at once—his fine strange ways, his dignity, courage, his very aloofness and the sorrow he saw there, drew him to the strange, silent lad.
One day while at work in his shop he looked up and saw the boy standing in the door watching him closely and with evident admiration.
“Come in, my lad,” said Jack, laying down his big hammer. “What is yo' name?”
“Well, I don't know that that makes any difference,” he replied smiling, “I might ask you what is yours.”
Jack flushed, but he pitied the lad.
He smiled: “I guess you an' I could easily understan' each other, lad—what can I do for you?”
“I wanted you to fix my pistol for me, sir—and—and I haven't anything to pay you.”
Jack looked it over—the old duelling pistol. He knew at once it was Colonel Jeremiah Travis's. The boy had gotten it somehow. The hair-spring trigger was out of fix. Jack soon repaired it and said:
“Now, son, she's all right, and not a cent do I charge you.”
“I didn't mean that,” said the boy, flushing. “I have no money, but I want to pay you, for I need this pistol—need it very badly.”
“To shoot rabbits?” smiled Jack.
The boy did not smile. He ran his hand in his pocket and handed Jack a thin gold ring, worn almost to a wire; but Jack paled, and his hand shook when he took it, for he recognized the little ring he himself had given Margaret Adams years ago.
“It's my mother's,” said the boy, “and some man gave it to her once—long ago—for she is foolish about it. Now, of late, I think I have found out who that man was, and I hate him as I do hell itself. I am determined she shall never see it again. So take it, or I'll give it to somebody else.”
“If you feel that way about it, little 'un,” said Jack kindly, “I'll keep it for you,” and he put the precious relic in his pocket.
“Now, look here, lad,” he said, changing the subject, “but do you know you've got an' oncommon ac'rate gun in this old weepon?”
The boy smiled—interested.
“It's the salt of the earth,” said Jack, “an' I'll bet it's stood 'twixt many a gentleman and death. Can you shoot true, little 'un?”
“Only fairly—can you?”
“Some has been kind enough to give me that character”—he said promptly. “Want me to give you a few lessons?”
The boy warmed to him at once. Jack took him behind the shop, tied a twine string between two trees and having loaded the old pistol with cap and powder and ball, he stepped off thirty paces and shot the string in twain.
“Good,” said the boy smiling, and Jack handed him the pistol with a boyish flush of pride in his own face.
“Now, little 'un, it's this away in shootin' a weepon like this—it's the aim that counts most. But with my Colts now—the self-actin' ones—you've got to cal'c'late chiefly on another thing—a kinder thing that ain't in the books—the instinct that makes the han' an' the eye act together an' 'lowin', at the same time, for the leverage on the trigger.” The lad's face glowed with excitement. Jack saw it and said: “Now I'll give you a lesson to-day. Would you like to shoot at that tree?” he asked kindly.
“Do you suppose I could hit the string?” asked the boy innocently.
Jack had to smile. “In time—little 'un—in time you might. You're a queer lad,” he said again laughing. “You aim pretty high.”
“Oh, then I'll never hit below my mark. Let me try the string, please.”
To humor him, Jack tied the string again, and the boy stepped up to the mark and without taking aim, but with that instinct which Jack had just mentioned, that bringing of the hand and eye together unconsciously, he fired and the string flew apart.
“You damned little cuss,” shouted Jack enthusiastically, as he grabbed the boy and hugged him—“to make a sucker of me that way! To take me in like that!”
“Oh,” said the boy, “I do nothing but shoot this thing from morning till night. It was my great grandfather's.”
And from that time the two were one.
But another thing happened which cemented the tie more strongly. One Saturday afternoon Jack took a crowd of his boy friends down to the river for a plunge. The afternoon was bright and warm; the frost of the morning making the water delightful for a short plunge. It was great sport. They all obeyed him and swam in certain places he marked off—all except James Adams. He boldly swam out into the deep current of the river and came near losing his life. Jack plunged in in time to reach him, but had to dive to get him, he having sunk the third time. It required hard work to revive him on the bank, but the man was strong and swung the lad about by the heels till he got the water out of his lungs, and his circulation started again. James opened his eyes at last, and Jack said, smiling: “That's all right, little 'un, but I feared onct, you was gone.”
He took the boy home, and then it was that for the first time for fifteen years he saw and talked to the woman he loved.
“Mother,” said the boy, “this is the new blacksmith that I've been telling you about, and he is great guns—just pulled me out of the bottom of the Tennessee river.”
Jack laughed and said: “The little 'un ca'n't swim as well as he can shoot, ma'am.”
There was no sign of recognition between them, nothing to show they had ever seen each other before, but Jack saw her eyes grow tender at the first word he uttered, and he knew that Margaret Adams loved him then, even as she had loved him years ago.
He stayed but a short while, and James Adams never saw the silent battle that was waged in the eyes of each. How Jack Bracken devoured her with his eyes,—the comely figure, the cleanliness and sweetness of the little cottage—his painful hungry look for this kind of peace and contentment—the contentment of love.
And James noticed that his mother was greatly embarrassed, even to agitation, but he supposed it was because of his narrow escape from drowning, and it touched him even to caressing her, a thing he had never done before.
It hurt Jack—that caress. Richard Travis's boy—she would have been his but for him. He felt a terrible bitterness arising. He turned abruptly to go.
Margaret had not spoken. Then she thanked him and bade James change his clothes. As the boy went in the next room to do this, she followed Jack to the little gate and stood pale and suffering, but not able to speak.
“Good-bye,” he said, giving her his hand—“you know, Margaret, my life—why I am here, to be near you,—how I love you, have loved you.”
“And how I love you, Jack,” she said simply.
The words went through him with a fierce sweetness that shook him.
“My God—don't say that—it hurts me so, after—what you've done.”
“Jack,” she whispered sadly—“some day you'll know—some day you'll understand that there are things in life greater even than the selfishness of your own heart's happiness.”
“They can't be,” said Jack bitterly—“that's what all life's for—heart happiness—love. Why, hunger and love, them's the fust things; them's the man an' the woman; them's the law unto theyselves, the animal, the instinct, the beast that's in us; the things that makes God excuse all else we do to get them—we have to have 'em. He made us so; we have to have 'em—it's His own doin'.”
“But,” she said sweetly—“suppose it meant another to be despised, reviled, made infamous.”
“They'd have to be,” he said sternly, for he was thinking of Richard Travis—“they'd have to be, for he made his own life.”
“Oh, you do not understand,” she cried. “And you cannot now—but wait—wait, and it will be plain. Then you'll know all and—that I love you, Jack.”
He turned bitterly and walked away.
For the first time in years, the next Sunday the little church on the mountain side was closed, and all Cottontown wondered. Never before had the old man missed a Sabbath afternoon since the church had been built. This was to have been Baptist day, and that part of his congregation was sorely disappointed.
For an hour Bud Billings had stood by the little gate looking down the big stretch of sandy road, expecting to see the familiar shuffling, blind old roan coming:
“Sum'pins happened to Ben Butler,” said Bud at last—and at thought of such a calamity, he sat down and shed tears.
His simple heart yearned for pity, and feeling something purring against him he picked up the cat and coddled it.
“You seem to be cultivatin' that cat again, Bud Billings,” came a sharp voice from the cabin window.
Bud dropped the animal quickly and struck out across the mountain for the Bishop's cabin.
But he was not prepared for the shock that came to his simple heart: Shiloh was dying—the Bishop himself told him so—the Bishop with a strange, set, hard look in his eyes—a look which Bud had never seen there before, for it was sorrow mingled with defiance—in that a great wrong had been done and done over his protest. It was culpable sorrow too, somewhat, in that he had not prevented it, and a heart-hardening sorrow in that it took the best that he loved.
“She jes' collapsed, Bud—sudden't like—wilted like a vi'let that's stepped on, an' the Doctor says she's got no sho' at all, ther' bein' nothin' to build on. She don't kno' nothin'—ain't knowed nothin' since last night, an' she thinks she's in the mill—my God, it's awful! The little thing keeps reaching out in her delirium an' tryin' to piece the broken threads, an' then she falls back pantin' on her pillow an' says, pitful like—'the thread—the thread is broken!' an' that's jes' it, Bud—the thread is broken!”
Tears were running down the old man's cheeks, and that strange thing which now and then came up in Bud's throat and stopped him from talking came again. He walked out and sat under a tree in the yard. He looked at the other children sitting around stupid—numbed—with the vague look in their faces which told that a sorrow had fallen, but without the sensitiveness to know or care where. He saw a big man, bronzed and hard-featured, but silent and sorrowful, walking to and fro. Now and then he would stop and look earnestly through the window at the little still figure on the bed, and then Bud would hear him say—“like little Jack—like little Jack.”
The sun went down—the stars came up—but Bud sat there. He could do nothing, but he wanted to be there.
When the lamp was lighted in the cabin he could see all within the home and that an old man held on a large pillow in his lap a little child, and that he carried her around from window to window for air, and that the child's eyes were fixed, and she was whiter than the pillow. He also saw an old woman, lantern-jawed and ghostly, tidying around and she mumbling and grumbling because no one would give the child any turpentine.
And still Bud sat outside, with that lump in his throat, that thing that would not let him speak.
Late at night another man came up with saddle bags, and hitching his horse within a few feet of Bud, walked into the cabin.
He was a kindly man, and he stopped in the doorway and looked at the old man, sitting with the sick child in his lap. Then he pulled a chair up beside the old man and took the child's thin wrist in his hand. He shook his head and said:
“No use, Bishop—better lay her on the bed—she can't live two hours.”
Then he busied himself giving her some drops from a vial.
“When you get through with your remedy and give her up,” said the old man slowly—“I'm gwinter try mine.”
The Doctor looked at the old man sorrowfully, and after a while he went out and rode home.
Then the old man sent them all to bed. He alone would watch the little spark go out.
And Bud alone in the yard saw it all. He knew he should go home—that it was now past midnight, but somehow he felt that the Bishop might need him.
He saw the moon go down, and the big constellations shine out clearer. Now and then he could see the old nurse reach over and put his ear to the child's mouth to see if it yet breathed. But Bud thought maybe he was listening for it to speak, for he could see the old man's lips moving as he did when he prayed at church. And Bud could not understand it, but never before in his life did he feel so uplifted, as he sat and watched the old man holding the little child and praying. And all the hours that he sat there, Bud saw that the old man was praying as he had never prayed before. The intensity of it increased and began to be heard, and then Bud crept up to the window and listened, for he dearly loved to hear the Bishop, and amid the tears that ran down his own cheek, and the quick breathing which came quicker and quicker from the little child in the lap, Bud heard:
“Save her, oh, God, an' if I've done any little thing in all my po' an' blunderin' life that's entitled to credit at Yo' han's, give it now to little Shiloh, for You can if You will. If there's any credit to my account in the Book of Heaven, hand it out now to the little one robbed of her all right up to the door of death. She that is named Shiloh, which means rest. Do it, oh, God,—take it from my account if she ain't got none yet herse'f, an' I swear to You with the faith of Abraham that henceforth I will live to light a fire-brand in this valley that will burn out this child slavery, upheld now by ignorance and the greed of the gold lovers. Save little Shiloh, for You can.”
Bud watched through the crisis, the shorter and shorter breaths, the struggle—the silence when, only by holding the lighted candle to her mouth, could the old man tell whether she lived or not. And Bud stood outside and watched his face, lit up like a saint in the light of the candle falling on his silvery hair, whiter than the white sand of Sand Mountain, a stern, strong face with lips which never ceased moving in prayer, the eyes riveted on the little fluttering lips. And watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it, suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his head and heard him say:
“Lord God Almighty ... My God ... My own God ... an' You ain't never gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is within me; bless His Holy Name!'”
Bud could not help it. He laughed out hysterically. And then the old face, still smiling, looked surprised at the window and said: “Go home, Bud. God is the Great Doctor, an' He has told me she shall live.”
Then, as he turned to go, his heart stood still, for he heard Shiloh say in her little piping child voice, but, oh, so distinctly, and so sweetly, like a bird in the forest:
“Pap, sech a sweet dream—an' I went right up to the gate of heaven an' the angel smiled an' kissed me an' sed:
“'Go back, little Shiloh—not yet—not yet!'”
Then Bud slipped off in the dawn of the coming light.
In a few days Shiloh was up, but the mere shadow of a little waif, following the old man around the place. She needed rest and good food and clothes; and Bull Run and Seven Days and Appomattox and Atlanta needed them, and where to get them was the problem which confronted the grandfather.
Shiloh's narrow escape from death had forever settled the child-labor question with him—he would starve, “by the Grace of God,” as he expressed it, before one of them should ever go into the mill again.
He had a bitter quarrel about it with Mrs. Watts; but the good old man's fighting blood was up at last—that hatred of child-slavery, which had been so long choked by the smoke of want, now burst into a blaze when the shock of it came in Shiloh's collapse—a blaze which was indeed destined “to light the valley with a torch of fire.”
On the third day Jud Carpenter came out to see about it; but at sight of him the old man took down from the rack over the hall door the rifle he had carried through the war, and with a determined gesture he stopped the employment agent at the gate: “I am a man of God, Jud Carpenter,” he said in a strange voice, rounded with a deadly determination, “but in the name of God an' humanity, if you come into that gate after my little 'uns, I'll kill you in yo' tracks, jes' as a bis'n bull 'ud stamp the life out of a prowlin' coyote.”
And Jud Carpenter went back to town and spread the report that the old man was a maniac, that he had lost his mind since Shiloh came so near dying.
The problem which confronted the old man was serious.
“O Jack, Jack,” he said one night, “if I jes' had some of that gold you had!”
Jack replied by laying ten silver dollars in the old man's hand.
“I earned it,”—he said simply—“this week—shoeing horses—it's the sweetest money I ever got.”
“Why, Jack,” said the Bishop—“this will feed us for a week. Come here, Tabitha,” he called cheerily—“come an' see what happens to them that cast their bread upon the waters. We tuck in this outcast an' now behold our bread come back ag'in.”
The old woman came up and took it gingerly. She bit each dollar to test it, remarking finally: “Why, hit's genuwine!”—
Jack laughed.
“Why, hit's mo' money'n I've seed fur years,” she said—“I won't hafter hunt fur 'sang roots to-morrow.”
“Jack,” said the Bishop, after the others had retired, and the two men sat in Captain Tom's cabin—“Jack, I've been thinkin' an' thinkin'—I must make some money.”
“How much?” asked Jack.
“That's a lot of money,” said the outlaw quickly. “A heap fur you to need.”
“It's not fur me,” he said—“I don't need it—I wouldn't have it for myself. It's for him—see!” he pointed to the sleeping man on the low cot. “Jack, I've been talkin' to the Doctor—he examined Cap'n Tom's head, and he says it'd be an easy job—that it's a shame it ain't been done befo'—that in a city to the North,—he gave me the name of a surgeon there who could take that pressure from his head and make him the man he was befo'—the man, mind you, the man he was befo'.”
Jack sat up excited. His eyes glittered.
“Then there's Shiloh,” went on the old man—“it'll mean life to her too—life to git away from the mill.
“Cap'n Tom and Shiloh—I must have it, Jack—I must have it. God will provide a way. I'd give my home—I'd give everything—just to save them two—Cap'n Tom and little Shiloh.”
He felt a touch on his shoulder and looked up.
Jack Bracken stood before him, clutching the handle of his big Colt's revolver, and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He was flushed and panting. A glitter was in his eyes, the glitter of the old desperado spirit returned.
“Bishop,” he said, “ever' now and then it comes over me ag'in, comes over me—the old dare-devil feelin'.” He held up his pistol: “All week I've missed somethin'. Last night I fingered it in my sleep.”
He pressed it tenderly. “Jes' you say the word,” he whispered, “an' in a few hours I'll be back here with the coin. Shipton's bank is dead easy an' he is a money devil with a cold heart.” The old man laughed and took the revolver from him.
“It's hard, I know, Jack, to give up old ways. I must have made po' Cap'n Tom's and Shiloh's case out terrible to tempt you like that. But not even for them—no—no—not even for them. Set down.”
Jack sat down, subdued. Then the Bishop pulled out a paper from his pocket and chuckled.
“Now, Jack, you're gwinter have the laugh on me, for the old mood is on me an' I'm yearnin' to do this jes' like you yearn to hold up the bank ag'in. It's the old instinct gettin' to wurk. But, Jack, you see—this—mine—ain't so bad. God sometimes provides in an onexpected way.”
“What is it?” asked Jack.
The old man chuckled again. Then Jack saw his face turn red—as if half ashamed: “Why should I blame you, Jack, fur I'm doin' the same thing mighty nigh—I'm longin' for the flesh pots of Egypt. As I rode along to-day thinkin'—thinkin'—thinkin'—how can I save the children an' Cap'n Tom, how can I get a little money to send Cap'n Tom off to the Doctor—an' also repeatin' to myself—'The Lord will provide—He will provide—' I ran up to this, posted on a tree, an' kinder starin' me an' darin' me in the face.”
He laughed again: “Jes' scolded you, Jack, but see here. See how the old feelin' has come over me at sight of this bragging, blow-hard challenge. It makes my blood bile.
“Race horse?—Why, Richard Travis wouldn't know a real race horse if he had one by the tail. It's disgustin'—these silk-hat fellers gettin' up a three-cornered race, an' then openin' it up to the valley—knowin' they've put the entrance fee of fifty dollars so high that no po' devil in the County can get in, even if he had a horse equal to theirs.
“Three thousan' dollars!—think of it! An' then Richard Travis rubs it in. He's havin' fun over it—he always would do that. Read the last line ag'in—in them big letters:
“'Open to anything raised in the Tennessee Valley.'
“Fine fun an' kinder sarcastic, but, Jack, Ben Butler cu'd make them blooded trotters look like steers led to slaughter.”
Jack sat looking silently in the fire.
“If I had the entrance fee I'd do it once—jes' once mo' befo' I die? Once mo' to feel the old thrill of victory! An' for Cap'n Tom an' Shiloh. God'll provide, Jack—God'll provide!”
Bonaparte lay on the little front porch—the loafing place which opened into Billy Buch's bar-room. Apparently, he was asleep and basking in the warm Autumn sunshine. In reality he was doing his star trick and one which could have originated only in the brains of a born genius. Feigning sleep, he thus enticed within striking distance all the timid country dogs visiting Cottontown for the first time, and viewing its wonders with a palpitating heart. Then, like a bolt from the sky, he would fall on them, appalled and paralyzed—a demon with flashing teeth and abbreviated tail.
When finally released, with lacerated hides and wounded feelings, they went rapidly homeward, and they told it in dog language, from Dan to Beersheba, that Cottontown was full of the terrible and the unexpected.
And a great morning he had had of it—for already three humble and unsuspecting curs, following three humble and unsuspecting countrymen who had walked in to get their morning's dram, had fallen victims to his guile.
Each successful raid of Bonaparte brought forth shouts of laughter from within, in which Billy Buch, the Dutch proprietor, joined. It always ended in Bonaparte being invited in and treated to a cuspidor of beer—the drinking, with the cuspidor as his drinking horn, being part of his repertoire. After each one Billy Buch would proudly exclaim:
“Mine Gott, but dat Ponyparte ees one greet dog!”
Then Bonaparte would reel around in a half drunken swagger and go back to watch for other dogs.
“I tell you, Billy,” said Jud Carpenter—“Jes' watch that dog. They ain't no dog on earth his e'kal when it comes to brains. Them country dogs aflyin' up the road reminds me of old Uncle Billy Alexander who paid for his shoes in bacon, and paid every spring in advance for the shoes he was to get in the fall. But one fall when he rid over after his shoes, the neighbors said the shoemaker had gone—gone for good—to Texas to live—gone an' left his creditors behin'. Uncle Billy looked long an' earnestly t'wards the settin' sun, raised his han's to heaven an' said: 'Good-bye, my bacon!'”
Billy Buch laughed loudly.
“Dat ees goot—goot—goot-bye, mine bac'n! I dus remember dat.”
Bonaparte had partaken of his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, dressed up like a man.
His hair bristled with indignation. That little thing dividing honors with him in Cottontown? It was not to be endured for a moment!
Bonaparte stood gazing in indignant wonder. He slowly arose and shambled along half drunkenly to see what it all meant. A crowd had gathered around the thing—the insignificant thing which was attracting more attention in Cottontown than himself, the champion dog. Among them were some school boys, and one of them, a red-headed lad, was telling his brother all about it.
“Now, Ozzie B., this is a monkey—the furst you've ever seed. He looks jes' like I told you—sorter like a man an' sorter like a nigger an' sorter like a groun' hog.”
“The pretties' thing I ever seed,” said Ozzie B., walking around and staring delightedly.
The crowd grew larger. It was a show Cottontown had never seen before.
Then two men came out of the bar-room—one, the bar-keeper, fat and jolly, and the other lank and with malicious eyes.
This gave Bonaparte his cue and he bristled and growled.
“Look out, mister,” said the tender-hearted Ozzie B. to the Italian, “watch this here dog, Bonaparte; he's terrible 'bout fightin'. He'll eat yo' monkey if he gets a chance.”
“Monk he noo 'fear'd ze dog,” grinned the Italian. “Monk he whup ze dog.”
“Vot's dat?” exclaimed Billy Buch—“Vot's dat, man, you say? Mine Gott, I bet ten to one dat Ponyparte eats him oop!”
To prove it Bonaparte ran at the monkey savagely. But the monkey ran up on the Italian's shoulder, where he grinned at the dog.
The Italian smiled. Then he ran his hand into a dirty leathern belt which he carried around his waist—and slowly counted out some gold coins. With a smile fresh as the skies of Italy, full of all sweetness, gentleness and suavity:
“Cover zees, den, py Gar!”
Billy gasped and grasped Jud around the neck where he clung, with his Dutch smile frozen on his lips. Jud, with collapsed under jaw, looked sheepishly around. Bonaparte tried to stand, but he, too, sat down in a heap.
The crowd cheered the Italian.
“We will do it, suh,” said Jud, who was the first to recover, and who knew he would get his part of it from Billy.
“Ve vill cover eet,” said Billy, with ashen face.
“We will!” barked Bonaparte, recovering his equilibrium and snarling at the monkey.
There was a sob and a wail on the outskirts of the crowd.
“Oh, don't let him kill the monkey—oh, don't!”
It was Ozzie B.
Archie B. ran hastily around to him, made a cross mark in the road with his toe and spat in it.
“You're a fool as usual, Ozzie B.,” he said, shaking his brother. “Can't you see that Italian knows what he's about? If he'd risk that twenty, much as he loves money, he'd risk his soul. Venture pee-wee under the bridge—bam—bam—bam!”
Ozzie B. grew quieter. Somehow, what Archie B. said always made things look differently. Then Archie B. came up and whispered in his ear: “I'm fur the monkey—the Lord is on his side.”
Ozzie B. thought this was grand.
Then Archie B. hunted for his Barlow pocket knife. Around his neck, tied with a string, was a small greasy, dirty bag, containing a piece of gum asafœtida and a ten-dollar gold piece. The asafœtida was worn to keep off contagious diseases, and the gold piece, which represented all his earthly possessions, had been given him by his grandmother the year she died.
Archie B. was always ready to “swap sight under seen.” He played marbles for keeps, checkers for apples, ran foot-races for stakes, and even learned his Sunday School lessons for prizes.
The Italian still stood, smiling, when a small red-headed boy came up and touched him on the arm. He put a ten-dollar gold piece into the Italian's hand.
“Put this in for me, mister—an' make 'em put up a hundred mo'. I want some of that lucre.”
The Italian was touched. He patted Archie B.'s head:
“Breens,” he said, “breens uppa da.”
Again he shook the gold in the face of Jud and Bill.
“Now bring on ze ten to one, py Gar!”
The cheers of the crowd nettled Billy and Jud.
“Jes' wait till we come back,” said Jud. “'He laughs bes' who laughs las'.'”
They retired for consultation.
Within the bar-room they wiped the cold perspiration from their faces and looked speechlessly into each other's eyes. Billy spoke first.
“Mine Gott, but we peek it oop in de road, Jud?”
“It seems that way to me—a dead cinch.”
Bonaparte was positive—only let him get to the monkey, he said with his wicked eyes.
Billy looked at Bonaparte, big, swarthy, sinewy and savage. He thought of the little monkey.
“Dees is greet!—dees is too goot!—Jud, we peek it oop in de road, heh?”
“I'm kinder afraid we'll wake an' find it a dream, Billy—hurry up. Get the cash.”
Billy was thoughtful: “Tree hun'd'd dollars—Jud—eef—eef—” he shook his head.
“Now, Billy,” said Jud patronizingly—“that's nonsense. Bonaparte will eat him alive in two minutes. Now, he bein' my dorg, jes' you put up the coin an' let me in on the ground floor. I'll pay it back—if we lose—” he laughed. “If we lose—it's sorter like sayin' if the sun don't rise.”
“Dat ees so, Jud, we peek eet oop in de road. But eef we don't peek eet oop, Billy ees pusted!”
“Oh,” said Jud, “it's all like takin' candy from your own child.”
The news had spread and a crowd had gathered to see the champion dog of the Tennessee Valley eat up a monkey. All the loafers and ne'er-do-wells of Cottontown were there. The village had known no such excitement since the big mill had been built.
They came up and looked sorrowfully at the monkey, as they would look in the face of the dead. But, considering that he had so short a time to live, he returned the grin with a reverence which was sacrilegious.
“So han'sum—so han'sum,” said Uncle Billy Caldwell, the squire. “So bright an' han'sum an' to die so young!”
“It's nothin' but murder,” said another.
This proved too much for Ozzie B.—
“Don't—d-o-n-'t—let him kill the monkey,” he cried.
There was an electric flash of red as Archie B. ran around the tree and kicked the sobs back into his brother.
“Just wait, Ozzie B., you fool.”
“For—what?” sobbed Ozzie.
“For what the monkey does to Bonaparte,” he shouted triumphantly.
The crowd yelled derisively: “What the monkey does to Bonaparte—that's too good?”
“Boy,” said Uncle Billy kindly—“don't you know it's ag'in nachur—why, the dorg'll eat him up!”
“That's rot,” said Archie B. disdainfully. Then hotly: “Yes, it wus ag'in nachur when David killed Goliath—when Sampson slew the lion, and when we licked the British. Oh, it wus ag'in nachur then, but it looks mighty nach'ul now, don't it? Jes' you wait an' see what the monkey does to Bonaparte. I tell you, Uncle Billy, the Lord's on the monkey's side—can't you see it?”
Uncle Billy smiled and shook his head. He was interrupted by low laughter and cheers. A villager had drawn a crude picture on a white paste-board and was showing it around. A huge dog was shaking a lifeless monkey and under it was written:
“What Bonaparte Done To The Monkey!”
Archie B. seized it and spat on it derisively: “Oh, well, that's the way of the worl',” he said. “God makes one wise man to see befo', an' a million fools to see afterwards.”
The depths of life's mysteries have never yet been sounded, and one of the wonders of it all is that one small voice praying for flowers in a wilderness of thorns may live to see them blossom at his feet.
“I've seed stranger things than that,” remarked Uncle Billy thoughtfully. “The boy mout be right.”
And now Jud and Billy were seen coming out of the store, with their hands full of gold.
“Eet's robbery—eet's stealin'”—winked Billy at the crowd—“eet's like takin' it from a babe—”
With one accord the crowd surged toward the back lot, where Bonaparte, disgusted with the long delay, had lain down on a pile of newly-blown leaves and slept. Around the lot was a solid plank fence, with one gate open, and here in the lot, sound asleep in the sunshine, lay the champion.
The Italian brought along the monkey in his arms. Archie B. calmly and confidently acting as his bodyguard. Jud walked behind to see that the monkey did not get away, and behind him came Ozzie B. sobbing in his hiccoughy way:
“Don't let him kill the po' little thing!”
He could go no farther than the gate. There he stood weeping and looking at the merciless crowd.
Bonaparte was still asleep on his pile of leaves. Jud would have called and wakened him, but Archie B. said: “Oh, the monkey will waken him quick enough—let him alone.”
In the laugh which followed, Jud yielded and Archie B. won the first blood in the battle of brains.
The crowd now stood silent and breathless in one corner of the lot. Only Ozzie B.'s sobs were heard. In the far corner lay Bonaparte.
The Italian stooped, and unlinking the chain of the monkey's collar, sat him on the ground and, pointing to the sleeping dog, whispered something in Italian into his pet's ear.
The crowd scarcely drew its breath as it saw the little animal slipping across the yard to its death.
Within three feet of the dog he stopped, then springing quickly on Bonaparte, with a screeching, bloodcurdling yell, grabbed his stump of a tail in both hands, and as the crowd rushed up, they heard its sharp teeth close on Bonaparte's most sensitive member with the deadly click of a steel trap.
The effect was instantaneous. A battery could not have brought the champion to his feet quicker. With him came the monkey—glued there—a continuation of the dog's tail.
Around and around went Bonaparte, snarling and howling and making maddening efforts to reach the monkey. But owing to the shortness of Bonaparte's tail, the monkey kept just out of reach, its hind legs braced against the dog, its teeth and nails glued to the two inches of tail.
Around and around whirled Bonaparte, trying to throw off the things which had dropped on him, seemingly, from the skies. His growls of defiance turned to barks, then to bowls of pain and finally, as he ran near to Archie B., he was heard to break into yelps of fright as he broke away dashing around the lot in a whirlwind of leaves and dust.
The champion dog was running!
“Sick him, Bonaparte, grab him—turn round an' grab him!” shouted Jud pale to his eyes, and shaking with shame.
“Seek heem, Ponyparte—O mine Gott, seek him,” shouted Billy.
Jud rushed and tried to head the dog, but the champion seemed to have only one idea in his head—to get away from the misery which brought up his rear.
Around he went once more, then seeing the gate open, he rushed out, knocking Ozzie B. over into the dust, and when the crowd rushed out, nothing could be seen except a cloud of dust going down the village street, in the hind most cloud of it a pair of little red coat tails flapping in the breeze.
Then the little red coat tails suddenly dropped out of the cloud of dust and came running back up the road to meet its master.
Jud watched the vanishing cloud of dust going toward the distant mountains.
“My God—not Bonaparte—not the champion,” he said.
Billy stood also looking with big Dutch tears in his eyes. He watched the cloud of dust go over the distant hills. Then he waved his hand sadly—
“Goot-pye, mine bac'n!”
The monkey came up grinning triumphantly.
Thinking he had done something worthy of a penny, he added to Billy Buch's woe by taking off his comical cap and passing it around for a collection.
He was honest in it, but the crowd took it as irony, and amid their laughter Jud and Billy slipped away.
Uncle Billy, the stake-holder, in handing the money over to the Italian, remarked:
“Wal, it don't look so much ag'in nachur now, after all.”
“Breens uppa dar”—smiled the Italian as he put ten eagles into Archie B.'s hand. All of which made Archie B. vain, for the crowd now cheered him as they had jeered before.
“Come, let's go, Ozzie B.,” he said. “They ain't no man livin' can stand too much heroism.”