# The Return of Sledger

Extracted from Everybody's Magazine, Dec. 1923, pp. 85-100. Accompanying illustrations by Grattan Condon may be omitted.
The Return of Sledger
A Story of Life Where Simple Things Are Still Full of Their Old Meaning
By T. S. Stribling
TO illustrate the fantastic quality of a man's eyes, how they look on one thing and see another, take the example of Mr. Grover Kinchin riding through the lanes in the southern part of Wayne County, Tennessee.
Mr. Kinchin's road lay among narrow creek-bottom farms where the young corn twisted in the intense sunshine; where blackberry and elder bushes rioted over dilapidated rail fences; where lizards, green, blue and stone-gray, dozed in an ecstasy of heat; while over the whole scene lay the faint white film of high summer.
And yet Mr. Kinchin saw almost nothing of this. Every turn in the lane flushed a multitude of other scenes and emotions in the covert of Mr. Kinchin's head. His eyes took on a clairvoyant quality, and several miles before he reached a certain log schoolhouse, he already saw it. When he really passed the schoolhouse he peopled its perfectly empty grounds with boys and girls; and half a dozen different scenes, which in reality had occurred years apart, now tumbled forth in simultaneous confusion, jostling and elbowing each other in the most unmannerly fashion. And that is how a man's eyes trick him when he returns home after a long absence.
Mr. Kinchin came out of his imaginings long enough to glance around and see if his dog were following him. This was a white and tan collie, her pelage stiff with burrs and beggar lice. Mr. Kinchin sucked his lips at her, and at the sound his horse gave a little start forward; for the same signal applied to both brutes. The collie, no matter how tired she was, always received it with a wriggle of affection, and the horse, no matter how jaded, with a start of fear.
As Mr. Kinchin rode down the lane an old man in a corn field dropped his hoe and hurried to the fence, holding aloft a knotty hand. When the drover stopped the elderly one leaned against the top rail of the fence, peered up at the horseman with eyes wrinkled against the midsummer glare and after a moment of rather blank staring said they were having a hot spell.
This was so obviously a switch from his original impulse that the horseman laughed and displayed tobacco-stained teeth in his sunburned face.
“You don't know me, Mr. Boggus.”
“Well, now I don't,” admitted the old fellow. “I thought you was that dratted tick inspector and I jest walked over to tell him I wouldn't dip a hoof of my cattle not if he got forty true bills agin me—but you ain't him. I know him.”
The rider nodded. “I heard all your cattle's got Texas fever in the lower end of this county.”
“Well, you heard a blame lie,” denied the old man instantly.
“Hope you're right,” said the rider. Then, as his eyes wandered across the dark green hills which cuddled the narrow creek-bottom farms, he asked with overplayed innocence: “Wonder what them buzzards is sailin' aroun' fur? They're comin' down in three or four places.”
The old man became suddenly and intensely angry. “Why, dad blame it, my young buck, that ain't no sign of Texas fever. A cow's like any other critter; when her time comes she's bound to go. If the good Lord marks the sparrer's fall, don't you know He's watchin' as big a thing' as a cow? I tell you right now”—he drummed a calloused fist on the top rail—“I won't dip my cattle an' interfere with the workin's of Providunce fer nobody. Besides that, nobody or nothin' can ride up to my farm an' tell me what I got to do and what I ain't got to do. They cain't do it!”
Mr. Kinchin smiled with the sophistication of travel and experience. “It might he'p 'em,” he prodded gently.
“He'p nothin'!” roared the old hill man. “By gum, I don't b'lieve in med'cine. I'm sixty-nine year old and I never tuk a dose in my life and now by gravy, I ain't goin' tuh start givin' med'cine to my cows at my age.”
Here Mr. Kinchin flung back his head and burst into a roar of disrespectful laughter. “I swan, same old Bill Boggus; not a day older nor a grain more sense—the devil shore seasons his far wood.”
Mr. Boggus transferred some of his wrath against the county cattle inspector to this young man. He peered up at him again.
“Who the devil air you?”
Now such a direct query was doomed to disappointment. Among Tennessee hill folk no name is ever given on first inquiry. It titillates them to make a little mystery of themselves. So the horseman tipped his head to one side and asked, “Don't you know me?" And the old man forgot his wrath to enter the customary guessing contest.
“Is this one of the Naylor boys?” “No.” “Is it one of the Brasheers?” “No.” “You ain't one of the Praters, air ye?” “No.” “Then, by gad, you're a impostor! You ain't nobody I ever knowed.”
The rider slapped his saddle, made his horse flinch and his slut jump up at him, and reeled to and fro laughing in the scorching sunshine.
“Me an impostor—well, well, I don't reckon you ever heard o' the name uv Kinchin.”
Mr. Boggus was grinning broadly now and thoroughly enjoying himself. “You don't mean one uv ol' man Tobe Kinchin's boys?”
“Yeh.”
“Well, I never would uh knowed you from Adam's mule—which one air ye?”
“I'm the eighth un, Grover Clevelun' Kinchin.”
Mr. Boggus studied the young man as he recalled this multiplicity of Kinchins. Finally recognition somehow made itself apparent in his grooved and leathern face. The effect lay, perhaps, in some redistribution of the wrinkles. At any rate he cried out, “Look here, ain't you young Sledger Kinchin, the one what run off to Texas when the gran' jury found a true bill agin him?”
THE horseman's mirth suddenly vanished. “My name's Grover Clevelun' Kinchin an' I went off tuh Texas because I wanted tuh go, an' I don't give a damn what people think I went fur—I jest went!”
Here Mr. Boggus burst into creaking laughter. “Well, dad burn my skin, if here ain't young Sledger Kinchin got up his gall to come back frum Texas after three or four year——”
“After ten year!” corrected Sledger indignantly.
“Well, I be hanged, is it that long? Ten year——” The old man ruminated. “Then you must hev gone out there before yore pap died.”
The man on the horse straightened somewhat and his face changed. “Is pap dead, Mr. Boggus?”
“Didn't you know it?”
“Why, no!”
“Ain't you written back none?”
“Well, no, I ain't. It—it was a good deal of trouble to write, an' then I didn't have nothin' much tuh say, an'—an' then I thought maybe the sheriff might see my letters travelin' through the post-office an' find out where I wuz.”
The old man nodded at this perfectly reasonable explanation. “So he might. Well then, Sledger, it was the flu. It wuz kinder hard on yore fam'ly. Yore pap an' yore mammy, too, an' Jeems Garfiel' an' Andy an' Calline——”
“You—you mean they air all—all—” He broke off, biting his lip hard and his sudden grief staring out of his eyes.
The old man nodded. “You see,” he explained woodenly, “they wuz all tuk down at wunst. Their sickness wuzn't scattered along so they could wait on their se'ves, an' all the neighbors had their own han's full—”
Youth and man remained silent in the sunshine for two or three minutes; then the younger man said: “I wanted tuh see mam. I rid back from Texas to see——”
“An' a better woman never lived, Sledger,” nodded Mr. Boggus. “Gone tuh the reward God had fur her, an' me, who neighbored with her fer forty years knows hit was a great one.”
For a while the two remained lost in the tragedy; then Mr. Boggus said: “Well, we might as well be gittin' on up toward the house, Sledger; it's gittin' on toward supper-time.” He glanced at the sun to verify his sense of the hours. Then he clambered stiffly over the fence, avoided rolling the top rail, and once down, moved off through the lane at the head of the horse. The collie came up circumspectly, sniffed at Mr. Boggus's legs and retired. Presently the farmer asked over his shoulder in a cheerful tone:
“Well, howd'je git along in Texas, Sledger?”
“Fust rate, Mr. Boggus, fust rate.”
“Made a lot o' money, I reckon?” There was a slight irony in the query.
“Ten dollars out there to one here.”
“D'ju happen to git yore fingers on any of them ten, Sledger?”
For answer Sledger drew a wallet from an inside pocket, opened it and showed it full of bills.
Mr. Boggus looked at it woodenly. “Ones,” he suggested—and hoped.
Mr. Kinchin silently riffled his sheaf and exposed a repetition of tens flanked by a few twenties.
“Well, I'm blamed,” said the old farmer grudgingly. “That is more money than I've seed fur a long time.” A sudden thought struck him. “Look here, Sledger, you ain't robbed a bank or nothin', hev you?”
Mr. Kinchin loudly denied this possibility. “I made this drivin' Texas broncos up through Arkansas an' Mississip', an' runnin' back Tennessee hawgs an' cattle to Memphis. They's money in it if a man keeps his eyes open.”
“Oh, then you come up here cattle-buyin'?”
“Well, I wouldn't min' buyin' a few cattle, though I ain't hurtin' to slap my bran' on none.”
“Oh, no!” agreed the old farmer dryly. “No cattle buyer is ever partic'lar anxious to buy cattle. They're all ridin' aroun' fur their health, an' to look at the scenery.”
“An' to watch the buzzards circlin' aroun',” added Mr. Kinchin meditatively.
The old man turned. “Now looky here, Sledger, if you expect to buy my cattle, that ain't no way to start talkin'.”
“I'm not carin' nothin' special about buyin' cattle,” reassured the young man earnestly, “and besides I couldn't git yore cattle through the quarantine. I know they ain't got Texas fever nor nothin', but the cattle inspectors an' constables an' depity sheriffs air full of their own idees on the subjec'.”
Mr. Boggus snorted dryly. “No, I imagine you couldn't rustle them cattle through the quarantine. I'm satisfied the youngster who was run off to Texas ten year ago couldn't possibly rustle a few perfec'ly clean cattle through a dad-rotted, tyrannical, overbearin', pig-headed quarantine!”
THE bitterness of this irony caused the rider to smile again at the man on the ground. The old farmer saw him and was correspondingly irritated, but he said nothing and stalked along at the head of the horse. After some space of crunching through the dry bed of the watercourse that formed the lane he said without looking around:
“Now—uh—Sledger, I want tuh tell you now, before we reach the house—” Here he broke off to scratch behind his ear and pull at his grizzled ear tufts.
Mr. Kinchin stiffened slightly and after waiting a reasonable time for information, asked with a faint touch of combativeness:
“Well, what is it you want tuh tell me now?”
“I want tuh tell you the preacher's at my house this evenin' an' termorrer.”
The young man looked blankly at the back of his host. “The preacher?”
“Yeh, the preacher. His wife died two year ago an' he's a mighty fine stiddy man. Rides up here every Sat'day evenin' an' preaches over Sunday. Mighty fine stiddy man. Owns his own farm and never takes up no collection at meetin' unless the church house needs repairs, which it usually does. But anyway he ain't responsible fer that, an' he's a blessin' tuh this settlemint.”
Such a panegyric left Mr. Kinchin quite at sea and somehow faintly irritated. “I cain't see what you air tellin' me about him fer.”
“'Cause I want you tuh stay with me,” explained Mr. Boggus solidly. “You're a ol' neighbor's boy. I want you tuh stay with me, Sledger, buy my cattle if you be so minded, but I don't want you cuttin' up no monkey shines aroun' my house.”
“What the hell's the preacher got tuh do with that?”
“You will see when we git thar, Sledger.”
Mr. Kinchin chewed on this distastefully; finally he broke out. “Looky here, I don't understan' you talkin' to me like this a-tall.”
MR. BOGGUS looked around grimly at his guest. “I ricollec' what they run you off to Texas fur, ten year ago, Sledger.”
The tan on Mr. Kinchin's face grew darker. “Good Lord, Mr. Boggus, a man kin change a heap in ten year.”
The old hill man cleared his throat. “A man cain't change a-tall, Sledger. You air whut you air, an' so you'll stay tull they lay you in yore grave. God made his saints unto salvation, Sledger, and the sinners he created unto etarnal destruction. You cain't any more change whut God mapped out fur ye, than you kin lift yorese'f by the boot-straps, Sledger.”
The hill folk of Mr. Boggus's faith never come out plainly and state toward which destination they consider a fellow mortal traveling, but the trend of their remarks seldom leaves the point in doubt.
“I reckon you wuz created unto salvation?” suggested the rider bitterly.
“I hope so, Sledger,” said the old man reverently.
After another space the horseman asked: “If I ain't got no control over my ac's, what makes you ast me not to cut no monkey shines aroun' yore house?”
Without having to wait a moment to assemble his answer the old theologian explained:
“You hev got control over yore ac's. You can ac' a gentleman if you so desire, but it won't do you no good in the hereafter. Some folks God foreordained to destruction before he laid the foundations of the yeth. What I ast you was a personal favor.”
THE Boggus homestead was a great double-storied house of wasp-nest gray, stacked up rather like shattered boxes about two enormous open hallways, the one superimposed upon the other. The place had no sign of a porch. One climbed up into the great hall and was there. Here and there a plank had loosened and dropped out of the weather boarding, and a glance at the roof told that it leaked and no need of weather to prove it. In fact when a rain did come, there was a scurrying about the upper story with buckets and dishpans to protect the lower. The Boggus place was and still is rather an expression of Wayne County magnificence. To live there was to be something of a nabob. The son of such acres was “fixed” for life; the daughter was a “catch.”
During the summer months the family life centered in the enormous unpainted lower hall, and the whole domestic economy was as frankly open to inspection as it would have been in the middle of the public road.
As Mr. Kinchin approached, he saw in the hallway the preacher, a girl in a red bodice and a green skirt, and a huge fat woman. The girl was hovering uncertainly in mid-hall, apparently about to pass from one room to another. The fat woman wore a huge faded Mother Hubbard and sat in a big split-bottom rocking-chair. She had her sleeves rolled up on her shapeless arms while she peeled peaches. The peaches she peeled with such enormous arms were a trifle larger than walnuts. In fact the peach orchard on the Boggus place had somehow taken “the littles.” It was a county-wide complaint.
A young orchard, fresh from a northern nursery, would promise well for a year or two, but after it had been left for several seasons to prune itself, which it did by splitting out its own top from too heavy fruiting, and to spray itself and to fertilize itself, in which two last it failed altogether, it would very unaccountably take “the littles.” This strange disease afflicted nearly every orchard in southern Wayne.
Mr. Boggus paged his guest from the gate as, “Ma, here comes young Sledger Kinchin; you ricollec', the boy the gran' jury chas out o' the county with a true bill ten year ago, well, this is him.”
The heartiness of the introduction could not be questioned, but it left Mr. Kinchin advancing toward the house with a smile on his flushed face that could neither be altered nor removed.
The ponderous woman with the tiny peaches heaved herself by way of acknowledging Mr. Kinchin and relapsed into her great chair. “Of course I remember Grover Kinchin, pa,” she exclaimed; then, after scrutinizing the boy as he came up the path, “Grover, you shore hev filled out.”
Mr. Kinchin seized on this new topic with alacrity. “Yes, Miss Betty, I weigh right aroun' two hundred now.” Here he nodded at the girl in the red bodice, said “Hidy—” hesitated a moment and added, “Emmy.”
The girl in the blouse and green skirt giggled nervously and answer, “Hidy, Grover.”
The fat woman chuckled in her depths. “That ain't Emmy, Grover. Em was married three year ago this comin' fall to Bill Bascom's boy, Lije. They're livin' over on Moccasin now. Lije and Em is doin' mighty well, too. Lije hez bought the old Brasheer place and hez got ten head o' hawgs, two mules sixteen han's high——”
The inventory became blurred in Mr. Kinchin's ears as he glanced as often as politeness would permit at the girl in the middle of the hallway. She seemed on the point of leaving the hall, and presently, to Mr. Kinchin's regret, she did move slowly into the room on the north side of the passage and closed the door behind her.
Mr. Kinchin turned impulsively to the fat woman as if some inhibition had been removed from his tongue. “Is that Euly May?”
“Naw, Euly May's teachin' over on Harrican. That's Lizzie Love.”
“What, growed up like that?”
“She's seventeen,” said the mother.
And Mr. Boggus added: “She's goin' to marry Brother McCall here next month. You know I wuz a-tellin' you about thet, Sledger, as we come on to the house.”
“Yes, yes, so you wuz,” agreed Mr. Kinchin rather hastily. He turned and looked for the first time at the minister.
Brother McCall was a long-faced man with jet black eyes and the thin compressed mouth of rural piety. As the drover looked at Lizzie Love's future husband he felt it incumbent upon him to make some remark, and he cleared his throat slightly and said, “Brother McCall, you shore air gittin' a fine chunk of a gal.”
The minister agreed seriously. “The finest in the settlemint Mr. Kinchin. I hope I'm worthy uv her.”
“Why, the idee, Brother McCall!” cried the fat woman.
“I prayed over sich a union a long time, Sister Boggus, before I axed Brother Boggus fer Lizzie Love. An' I b'lieve God answered me and that He's a-goin' to bless us.”
The parson's answer aroused a certain ghostly interest in Mr. Kinchin. “What did God's answer seem like, Brother McCall?”
“Hit was like a voice, not in my years, but in my heart, sayin', 'Montgomery McCall, go an' take the gal fer yore wife.'”
“It didn't say what gal?” asked the drover, oddly moved by this supernatural message.
“I wuz a-talkin' to God about Lizzie Love,” explained the minister simply.
MR. BOGGUS was not greatly interested in this relation which he had heard a number of times, so he changed the topic with a loud:
“Now, Sledger, gittin' back to them cattle—jest what air you off'rin' fer cattle now?”
The drover gave up Parson McCall's ghostly conversation with God for the solider reality of cattle.
“Well, that's owin' to the grade, Mr. Boggus, whether they air feeders or grazers, and then—the health o' the cattle has somethin' to do with it.”
“Well, my cattle's grazers, an' I'll sell 'em cheap to the right man.”
“The right man?”
“Yeh, some feller as will git out into the hills an' gether 'em up hisse'f. I'm gittin' too ol' to be runnin' over the hills an' hollers after cattle, so I want to close out what I got an' quit.”
The young man sat up straighter. “Well now, we ort to be able to make a dicker on a proposition like that.”
“I think we ort, but you un'erstan' you'll haff to git them cattle up yorese'f.”
“That'll be all right,” assented Kinchin readily.
“With that un'erstan'in', whut's clear grazers wuth?”
“Well, clear grazers is wuth five an' a quarter, but——”
“Now, now,” interrupted the farmer irritably, “don't say it an' we'll stay better frien's. But fer argymint's sake, we'll say mine ain't clear grazers. I got nineteen in the hills an' that's countin' out some dead uns where we seen the buzzards circlin'. Now I'm goin' tuh make you a offer you cain't turn down. It's a offer you kin take or leave an' I'm not keerin' which. Now what do you say?” He waggled a gnarled forefinger impressively between the words of his price. “Ten—dollars—apiece.”
The youth stared at this dramatic offer. “Ten dollars apiece—air they calves?”
“Two and three year old an' up.”
“Well, they mus' be dyin'——”
The old farmer snorted. “One or two here an' there, but I'm makin' you a price you can allow a third of 'em to die an' still come off with money.”
ANY trade creates a tension among the hill folk. The minister, the fat woman, and the old farmer were all staring silently at the sunburned drover. A little thrill went through Grover and his mind danced among probabilities. The old man appeared to be offering about four hundred dollars' worth of cattle for a hundred and ninety dollars. But the youth knew he was not doing that. Then what was he doing? The drover's heart beat as he tried to penetrate the old farmer's scheme.
At that moment the door of the north room opened again and Lizzie Love loitered out with an air of just passing through on an errand. Unconsciously young Kinchin looked at the girl in his uncertainty, and to his surprise, he thought he saw her give a faint nod. He turned to the farmer and closed sharply.
“I'll take ye.”
“And good riddance,” declared Mr. Boggus in a relieved tone; “but it is clearly understood, Sledger, that you air to git them cattle up yorese'f.”
“Shore, shore,” agreed the young man easily.
“An' I reckon you'll agree to a time limit to git 'em in—it ortn't to take you more'n two or three days——”
“Why, no! One day'll be all I——”
At that moment his eyes were caught by Lizzie Love, who had drifted into the doorway of the south room. She was concealed from all except Grover and now she was frowning sharply, shaking her head at the youth and pursing her lips into a negative mouth. The next moment she disappeared into the dark interior.
Her unexpected warning set up a sharp titillation in the drover's chest. Mr. Boggus was continuing warmly. “Now if it's un'erstood you're to git 'em out an' off my han's by day arter termorrow, I reckon you can pay me the money and the preacher's the witness, an' we'll call it a trade.”
Mr. Kinchin groped wildly for some possible clue to Lizzie Love's negation. He felt sure she had some serious reason for her mute advice. But he could not guess it and his hundred and ninety dollars were departing from him. He felt weak. He made a desperate effort to think of some reason for rescinding his trade, but found none. All the thousand and one objections which a cattle buyer can usually summon out of nothingness deserted him.
“Come over here and witness the count, Brother McCall,” said the farmer.
Brother McCall got slowly to his feet. He and the drover walked over together; then the minister stood watching with expressionless black eyes as Kinchin told off nineteen greasy ten-dollar bills. It took about a third of his sheaf. A certain wrinkling in the grooves of the old hill man's face told that he was pleased.
“The cattle's yores,” he said simply, “an' you're to git 'em up in two days—that was the un'erstan'in', wasn't it. Brother McCall?”
“That was it,” nodded the preacher.
“Sure, that's it,” swallowed Grover. He moistened his dry mouth. He knew from this particularity that somehow he had been trapped, that his money was gone, that there was some kind of joker in the trade. A weak feeling shook his knees and he wondered desperately what Lizzie Love had meant.
At that moment the girl appeared in the doorway with two enormous wooden pails over her arms. The drover turned to her with a thrill of relief.
“Goodness! Lizzie Love, you cain't tote them great big buckets. Here, give 'em to me.”
Lizzie Love began saying that she brought water from the spring every day but the youth already had the pails and the two got down the hall steps and went hurrying along the path that led down under the hill. The moment they were out of sight and hearing of the house, Kinchin said:
“Lizzie Love, what did you mean, shakin' yore head at me?”
The girl turned to him, evidently under a strain herself. “Oh, Grover—you didn't pay him, did you?”
“Why, yes, I had to. I didn't know what to say.”
“An' vou agreed to git 'em up bv yorese'f?”
“Yeh, but that ain't nothin'.”
“Nothin'! Nothin'!” cried the girl tragically. “It means yore money's gone. Why, Grover, them cattle's as wild as deer. You kin run yore hoss tuh death and never git a single one in the barnyard. Why, pap's been sellin' them cattle all year to fust one buyer an' another'n, with the un'erstan'in' they must ketch 'em. An' they ain't been but two caught! Why, Sledger, he's sold 'em as low as two dollar an' a half apiece. He allus tells the man he's too old to run 'em hisse'f, an' wants to quit the cattle business.…”
Lizzie Love's voice was tearful with sympathy. Mr. Kinchin stared at her. “Why, I b'lieve I kin ketch 'em,” he ventured.
The girl shook her head. “They all b'lieve thet.”
“Well, it ain't half as bad as I thought it wuz, Lizzie Love,” he said in much better spirits. “An' I shore am obleeged to ye fer tryin' to stave me off'n a bad trade.”
“Oh, that wuzn't nothin',” replied the girl who was reassured herself by the drover's returning confidence.
“Well, it wuz too,” declared the youth awkwardly. “When I lef' Texas, I didn't expect to fin' many frien's back here—I didn't leave many—but I shore am glad I found one.”
This open speaking of friendship had an effect of quieting Lizzie Love. She walked on in silence for a space and presently said in a slightly accusing tone:
“You didn't know me even if I am yore frien'. You thought I wuz Emmy, an' then you thought I was Euly May.”
“Well, Lizzie Love,” explained Mr. Kinchin apologetically, “you wuz jest a little tad runnin' aroun' here when I lef' the country, no mo' like what you air now than a hossfly's like a redbird.”
Mr. Kinchin's simile may not have had many points of resemblance, but it affected Lizzie Love pleasurably. She colored faintly, and after a moment said, “I knowed you the minute I laid eyes on you.”
“You did?”
“Yes, an' I knowed where you had gone to all this time, too.”
“You knowed I'd gone tuh Texas?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What made you know that?”
“'Cause you allus seemed so—well, so sorter brash an' bold I jest knowed you'd go to Texas an' lasso cattle and kill Indians an' find gold mines.”
Mr. Kinchin stared at the girl in amazement. “Well, I declare, jest think o' that!”
The drover's reaction was so simple and amazed that the girl was encouraged to go on in quite a feather.
“Yes, an' on rainy nights I could jest see you sleepin' out on the wild pu-ray-ree and the wolves howlin' aroun' yuh. An' threetimes I dreamp I wuz a-ridin' behin' you escapin' frum the Indians.”
Mr. Kinchin was wonder-struck. “Well, I wonder what in the worl' that dream meant?”
“I went right to the almanac an' foun' out,” announced Lizzie Love triumphantly; “it said to dream of riding on a hoss meant an onexpected gift.”
“Well, I declare—did you git anything?”
“No,” said Lizzie Love, “it jest meant that.”
“I see,” said Mr. Kinchin thoughtfully.
ALTHOUGH Mr. Freud and his reveal- ing theory were as far removed from Mr. Grover Kinchin and Miss Lizzie Love Boggus as the stars are removed from the bottom of the sea, still Lizzie Love's thinking of him and dreaming of him touched Mr. Kinchin in a queer way. Because of these dreams, the two went on down to the spring wrapped in a vague and pleasant intimacy.
At the spring Mr. Kinchin dipped his pails while Lizzie Love peered into the cold pool for “watter dawgs,” slimy little monsters of a glistening mottled,brown which were always rather fearful to catch. As she stooped a curl of her hair fell down past her cheek and across her neck.
And a queer thing happened to the drover as he looked up at her from filling his buckets. A thrill ran through him. He became strangely aware, for the first time, of the sunshine splashing down through the beech trees over the girl and the pool which reflected her red bodice and falling hair. It seemed to Mr. Kinchin that this light which he saw somehow radiated from Lizzie Love herself, that she had become self-luminous. Some such feeling may lie at the bottom of the legend that saints wear halos.
At any rate Mr. Kinchin blurted out, “And you remembered me all this time, ever sence you wuz seven year old!” He was amazed that his image should have had a niche in such a shrine.
Lizzie Love looked up in her search after water dogs. “An' you forgot all about me.”
“Oh, no, I didn't,” declared the drover.
“You say that—an' didn't know me!”
“I cain't ricollec' you as a young un,” hesitated the cattle buyer, “but, Lizzie Love, when I look at you now, it seems like I've knowed you jest as you air all my life long.”
“That cain't be, Grover,” cried the girl; “I ain't old enough fer thet.”
“That's the curi's thing about it,” explained Kinchin earnestly; “hit seems like I've knowed you all my life long an' didn't know hit wuz you tull right this minute.”
“Knowed me an' didn't know hit wuz me!”
“That's right.”
“Grover Kinchin—air you goin' deranged?”
He took the question with perfect seriousness. “I don't think I am, Lizzie Love; I feel all right.”
Mr. Kinchin's extraordinary mental condition fascinated the girl and also the drover himself. They sat down on a bank of moss and the girl probed endlessly into this strange retroactive memory of Mr. Kinchin's. They talked and talked. Their colloquy might very well have lasted till sundown had not a rumbling in the hills broken it up.
“Why, that's thunder,” cried the girl, jumping up. “It's goin' tuh rain at last. Well, I'm glad o' thet.”
The drover went to the spring and picked up his buckets. The thunder might have been the signal to set them moving. On the way back up to the house Lizzie Love tried to take one of the pails as her share of the burden. In her efforts to get it from the drover they spilled some water over both and this was extremely funny. Everything was gay and funny. They climbed back up the path in a gust of spirits such as the drover, certainly, and perhaps Lizzie Love had never felt before.
But when they turned the corner and saw the immense fat woman peeling the tiny peaches, and the farmer smoking, and the preacher staring across the hills with his coal-black eyes; when they saw these elders, the spirits of the water carriers sunk, as youth's gaiety must always sink before age. The glister of the sun vanished; wet clothes ceased to be amusing. The world became old and dull again because dull and elderly folk were looking on it.
The fat woman spoke, “Wuzn't thet thunder I heared?” and her leathered husband said, “I b'lieve it wuz.”,
Mrs. Boggus heaved herself out of her armchair and Mr. Boggus arose as if the thunder had somehow set them also about their duties.
Kinchin gave the buckets of water to Lizzie Love and said he would go and see about his horse. The collie lay asleep in the shadow of the house. The drover sucked his lips at her. She opened an eye, stretched herself, bit at a flea through the coat of beggar lice, then followed her master toward the lot.
Mr. Kinchin took his collie down to the stable yard, turned her inside and then said in the urgent aspirate a man uses to a dog, “Find 'em, Lou; hunt 'em up, gal!”
She came out of her lethargy, pricked up her ears and began trotting about over the the lot sniffing at the cow tracks and at the dried manure. Presently she whined at her master. Mr. Kinchin motioned in the general direction of the circling buzzards. “Go git 'em, girl,” he aspirated. “Go after 'em.”
Lou galloped out of the gate as if on some certain errand. The drover went to the fence and looked after her down the rocky lane. There was a touch of pathos about the dog, her smallness and shabbiness pitted against the rocky lane, the fields and the immensity of the hills. Mr. Kinchin watched her go until she became a mere glimmer of movement far down the lane. Then he went to the stable, fed his horse and retraced his steps to the house.
THE voice of Lizzie Love calling impersonally, “You all kin come on,” told Mr. Kinchin that supper was ready. He found Mr. Boggus and the preacher just washing their faces and hands preparatory to entering the kitchen.
The kitchen itself was dark and overpoweringly hot. Mother and daughter were awaiting the men-folk. The fat woman looked as if she had been dipped in water. She waddled about the kitchen in a great shaking mass. Lizzie Love herself was damp. A strand of her hair was plastered against her cheek and the turn of her neck, but oddly enough, instead of displeasing the drover, this had a curious suggestion of intimacy that made his heart beat fast.
The men seated themselves in strained silence. The minister said a rather long grace and pronounced the words so rapidly that only snatches of it were intelligible. The concluding “Amen” and the turning over of his plate were, one might say, a single movement. Neither of the two women sat at the table with the men. The huge wife stood by the stove frying something. Lizzie Love came and went from table to stove offering hot biscuits. The Reverend McCall said he thought it would rain before morning. Mr. Boggus said it would take a good season to save the corn now, as it was already twistin'.
THE drover followed hardly any of this conversation. He was aware mainly of Lizzie Love. Every time she passed behind his chair he could feel her presence as clearly as if she wore about her a field of force and it dragged across his naked back. Each time she passed he wished that she would pause there, but she never did. The fact that he sat with his back to Lizzie Love annoyed Mr. Kinchin. He thought to himself: "I won't get to see her at all. By the time she eats and gets the dishes clean up it will be bedtime.” The extreme heat of the kitchen oppressed the young man. The minister inspired Grover with distaste, because of the manner in which he ate.
The minister ate whole-heartedly, picking up the pieces of fried chicken in his fingers, biting off the flesh and now and then cracking a bone in his teeth and sucking out the marrow. He turned his head this way and that to get at it better. He had a pile of bones on his plate. He poured his coffee in his saucer, lifted it with a good deal of skill and drank in audible suckings.
When supper was finished and the men escaped from the extreme heat of the kitchen, they found the hallway swept by a wind chilled by some distant rain. The spirits of Mr. Boggus and the minister rose at once. Mr. Boggus plucked a straw from a broom as he passed into the hall. When he reached his chair he sat down, and began picking his teeth with the straw. He winked at the preacher.
“Well, Sledger,” he began in a quizzical tone, “you shore hev made a wonderful trade in them cattle you bought off'n me.”
“Jest how, Mr. Boggus?” asked the young man absently.
The old farmer winked at the preacher again. “I'm calculatin' you paid a hundred an' ninety dollars fer so much wind in the woods, Sledger.”
“What do you mean?” asked Grover uncomfortably, and knowing what he did mean.
“I mean, Sledger, you've got jest as good a chanst to round up the shadders of them turkey buzzards yander as to round up them cattle o' mine.” All this was said in a voice more and more shaken with internal laughter. “Sledger, you shore ain't got a cobbler's chanst. Hey! Hey, Brother McCall, this is one o' them Texas cattle men come to Wayne County to skin us pore farmers.” And he flung back his head and guffawed at the ceiling.
Mr. Boggus had what they call “the laff” on Kinchin. Among the hill folk a trade is a blood brother to a practical joke. Any sort of swindle, deceit, surprise, stratagem is allowable in a trade provided the trader adheres to certain rules of verbal truthfulness. The more outrageous the cheat a seller perpetrates the better business man he is and the more he will boast of the exploit. In Wayne County it is shameful to be bitten, but it is honorable to bite. “Caveat emptor”: “Let the buyer beware.”
And Mr. Boggus flung back his head and creaked with laughter and slapped his legs. This laughter was, one might say, Mr. Boggus's unearned increment.
Even the melancholy preacher was forced to smile at such a droll pass. “I guess you will hev trouble gittin' them cattle, Brother Kinchin. Brother Boggus has already sold them cattle to four or five buyers—which is he, Brother Boggus, the fourth or the fifth?”
Old man Boggus was holding his sides in genuine physical pain. “The f-f-fifth; ef I ain't sol' them cattle five times, s-so h-he'p me!” And he went off again.
Dismay filled the drover as he watched the convulsed farmer and the irrepressible grins on the face of the parson. “Look here,” he stammered at last, “i-is there nineteen head o' them cattle in the hills?”
Mr. Boggus became sober on the instant. “Look here,” he said severely, “you don't imagine I would misrepresent anything in a trade, do you, Sledger?”
The drover was taken aback. “Well—no-o; but how do you know there are nineteen and them dyin' like they air?”
“I count 'em when they come up fer salt. I said nineteen, but it's likelier there is twenty-two or -three. I figgered off six fer buzzards' bait, but I'll g'ar'ntee they ain't six dead. Howsomever, I'm willin' to sacrifice a little money an' stick to the truth, Sledger. Money ain't all they is in this world.”
The preacher was moved to speak on this congenial topic: “I don't reckon you'll fin' a honester man in Wayne County than Brother Boggus, Brother Kinchin. I don't believe he would misrepresent a single thing fer no earthly reward. I consider him the most consecrated layman I ever met in all my ministerin'.”
Mr. Kinchin himself was impressed by this earnest praise. There was no questioning the perfect sincerity of the two men. At the very lowest reckoning there were nineteen head of cattle out in the hills somewhere—cattle that couldn't be caught.
Although Lizzie Love had told Mr. Kinchin the very same tale, when the girl told it the drover had felt quite confident that his collie would bring up the cattle. Now he was equally confident she would not. Such is the force of sympathy. The cattle buyer grew bluer and bluer. A hundred and ninety dollars gone. That was about a third of his money.
IF THE truth must be told the loss of this money was a keener thrust than the vague and unaccountable melancholy set up by Lizzie Love. For the money was solid and real, whereas Lizzie Love seemed nebulous and dreamy. When Lizzie Love married the minister, Mr. Kinchin would not lose anything he had ever possessed; quite possibly, he would not lose anything he ever could have possessed. But a hundred and ninety dollars out of his wallet—that was bad.
Just then Lizzie Love herself came into the hallway, dabbing at her flushed face with a powder-puff. She glanced about the passage and her eyes traveled past the minister and settled on the drover.
Mr. Boggus got up at once and suggested to Kinchin that they go out and feed the stock. The drover said he had already fed his nag. The minister volunteered to go. Mr. Boggus told him to stay where it was cool; then turned to Kinchin, “You come along with me, Sledger,” he said with heavy determination in his voice. “I want to show you my Durocs.”
The drover glanced haplessly at Lizzie Love. The minister was drawing two chairs close together in the hallway. Lizzie Love stood glancing sidewise at young Kinchin and biting her lower lip. Mr. Boggus stood his ground solidly, waiting for his guest. At last Grover followed. When the two had withdrawn some little distance from the house the farmer said in a lowered tone, “You see, I was wantin' fer us to git away an' give Lizzie Love an' her preacher a chanst to spark a little—the nights air so short.”
AN UNUTTERABLE despondency settled on Grover. “Oh, was that it?” he mumbled, and followed the old farmer to see the Durocs.
Mr. Boggus strung out his feeding interminably. Rural courtesy demand that Grover help him. The youth carried baskets of corn among the stalls, breaking the ears in the troughs. Each trough was a log hollowed out, and its sides were polished by the rubbing of endless cattle.
The tormenting scene of two figures sitting in the hallway beset Grover's eyes. A perfectly unreasonable wrath rose up in him against the girl, predicated somehow upon her laughter and charm for him at the spring. He held these two points against her with an intensity which a civilized man could not even imagine. As he broke the ears in the troughs, he fancied that he was somehow breaking the perfidious Lizzie Love.
It was dusk when Mr. Boggus made an end to his feeding. A wet wind was blowing steadily out of the east and the whole countryside rang with frogs. From far and near came the sharp trilling of frogs. “T-r-r-r, T-r-r-r!” in every key and cadence. What endless high tremolos stabbing the cool air, “T-r-r-r, T-r-r-r!” Grotesque little toper guzzling the east wind, and what a drinking song!
“I shore hope that rain won't blow aroun' this settlemint,” said Mr. Boggus as they went back to the house.
Mr. Boggus invited the cattle buyer through the darkening hall into the living-room. They passed the engaged couple in silence and with an effect of complicity in evil doing.
The drover was so angry at the false Lizzie Love that he was glad not to spend the hour or two before bedtime with her. He thought to himself he would not sit out there with her if he could. He was just as independent as she was. Every hill lover, in the slightest degree miffed by his lady, boils with an irrational “independence.”
The Boggus living-room was still hot with the air of noon day. A small lamp with a blue glass bowl gave forth a feeble yellow glow. Mrs. Boggus was already inside, en during that curious incarceration of hill parents during the courtship of their daughters.
Mr. Boggus fumbled around in a corner of the living-room and presently produced a home-made checkerboard with buttons for counters. He pulled up chairs and invited Grover to a game.
The goal of checkers in Wayne County is not only to defeat an opponent, but also to laugh at him. The idea is to make that laughter as roaring and sardonic as possible. It requires a man in perfect spirits and well grounded in all the Christian virtues to lose a game of checkers amiably in Wayne County.
After some five minutes of play, the hill man observed: “Well, well, Sledger, yore game is stoopendous. Jest when you got my men scatter so you could ketch 'em, why yore own men give out!” The old farmer roared with laughter. “Sledger, don't you ever let the fool killer see you playin' this game, lad, or yore life wouldn't be wuth shotgun waddin'.” He guffawed again.
The men were rearranged and the farmer, perfectly sure of winning now, attacked Mr. Kinchin's morale with a barrage of rural witticisms. Mrs. Boggus, who was watching the game and laughing, asked to play against Grover. Seats were exchanged. Mrs. Boggus played almost silently with an occasional submerged chuckle but the results were the same.
The drover tried to keep his attention fixed on his game, but found himself perpetually straining his ears toward the dark hallway. Sometimes he would altogether forget to move and then come to himself with a start and move planlessly, to the scorn of his hosts.
There was a wind blowing now, banging things about in the darkness. And troops of the most depressing emotions came drifting through Grover's head.
Apparently the Bogguses never wearied of whisking his feeble forces from the field. Game after game and the wind rose; there came the sound of tin things being blown about, interspersed with nerve-racking silences from the dark hallway.
At some period of the unhappy play Mr. Boggus was saying, “Sledger, when you cut yorese'f out fer a cattle buyer an' a checker player, you spiled a mighty good pattern fer a cotton hoer.”
This was an ancient and a merry gibe. The hill folk have reconciled the contradictory virtues of politeness and sincerity by habitually saying exactly what they think of a person under the guise of a jest.
MR. KINCHIN could endure it no longer. He got up abruptly. “Oh, well, I cain't play checkers tonight,” he said roughly; “I'm bothered.”
“What bothered ye, yore cattle-buyin'?” Mr. Boggus winked at his wife.
“I guess it wuz my cattle-buyin'.” Grover stood in the dim light with a certain pathos in his face. Now that he was on his feet he hardly knew what to do.
Mr. Boggus laughed a trifle more considerately. “Oh, well,” he philosophized, “somebody loses in every trade an' game. Cain't both win. An' a man stan's the gaff without a whimper, Sledger. That's life fer a rale man, Sledger, stan'in' the gaff without a whimper.”
A far tinny rattling became audible in the blowing night and interrupted Mr. Boggus's moralizing. It was an extraordinary rattling which grew gradually into a flat clattering and clanking as if a hundred broken bells were being bumped along over stones.
Mr. Boggus got to his feet. “Ma!” he exclaimed, “What's thet?”
In the midst of this cacophony of bells came the sound of bellowing and the faint but constant barking of a dog. Old Mr. Boggus started for the door.
“Ma! What in thunderation's broke loose!”
The drover recognized Lou's tongue. “It's them cattle!” he whooped, leaping past the farmer out into the dark hallway. “Them cattle's come up!”
And from complete darkness he heard Lizzie Love's voice with a joyful break in it. “Oh, Grover, hev they come up!”
The cattle buyer ran on through the hall out into the yard into the faint glimmer of a new moon hanging low in the west. After him came Mr. Boggus, Lizzie Love and the preacher and, somewhat later, Mrs. Boggus, poising her bulk on each step as she climbed down it.
The faint moonlight glimmered on a lane filled with moving shadows with the horns and heads of cattle dimly seen against this indistinct background. As the cattle pressed against the gate their bells kept up a din.
“What made 'em come up like that!” shouted the old farmer in despair. “Why, the blame fool cattle, they never acted this way before!”
“Why, his dawg!” cried Lizzie Love.
Mrs. Boggus, who came trundling down from the rear, keened: “His dawg! His dawg! Who ever heared of sich a thing!”
But now that the attention of the crowd was called to it, all could plainly hear the monotonous yipping of the collie beyond the cattle in the lane.
Mr. Kinchin went flying down to the gate, unchained it, applied his shoulder to it, for the bottom hinge was gone, and walked about with it until it was open. One or two cows snorted at him, then the whole herd flowed past him away from the keener danger of the yipping outside.
Kinchin shut the gate and his collie came up to him with the drooping head and tail of an exhausted dog. The drover was overjoyed. He reached down and caught the burry head in his hands and pressed it against his knees.
“Oh, you gal!” he said roughly, in the voice a man uses to love his dog. “You lallapaloosa go-git-'em! The finest bitch in Ameriky!” He patted her flank heavily.
This was the collie's exceeding great reward. She waggled her tired tail, made a lick up at her master's face and lay down at his feet utterly exhausted.
Mr. Boggus, the minister and Lizzie Love were looking at master and servant.
“Look here,” cried the farmer. “What'll you take fer that dog, Sledger? By Gad, I'll give—I'll give ye haff vore money back——”
Mr. Kinchin straightened and burst into Homeric laughter. “Haff my money back an' she jest made me three hundred dollars clear! Haff! Why, blame it, man, yore whole little ol' shoe-string farm wouldn't buy her!” He roared again, filled with the recovery of his money and the sweetness of his revenge.
“He's got you there, Brother Boggus,” said the preacher impersonally.
“But how in tarnation did she know which was my cattle?” marveled the farmer.
“Why, she smelt aroun' the pen here before she started,” said Grover with a chuckle, “an' I'll vence she's got ever' one that belongs to yuh—here, let's count 'em an' see.”
The men counted them as best they could in the uncertain light. The drover made it twenty-four, the farmer twenty-five and the preacher twenty-three.
While the counting was in progress, Lou sniffed discreetly at the fat woman. Mrs. Boggus made a violent gesture at the animal.
“You no-'count dirty slut! Git away frum here!”' She even essayed a kick, and almost upset herself. This outburst had no connection whatever with the loss of the cattle. It was the instinctive hatred of all hill women for all dogs. Merely to see a dog makes a hill woman furious; merely to see a hill woman makes a hill dog yelp and flee the wrath to come.
WHEN the marvel of the returned cattle was over, the group went back into the house. By that time the moon was dropping into the west, a thin crescent of silver magnified by a distant fringe of trees on the western hills. Up from the east came clouds looking like an old-fashioned wagon cover being drawn over the world. The east wind was now cold and blew wetly against their faces.
Mr. Boggus surmised that it must be eight o'clock, late bedtime. When they reached the house hosts and guests went sleepily to their rooms. Lizzie Love gave the drover and the preacher a candle and directed them up a stairway let in between two downstairs rooms. This stairway emptied in an upstairs bedroom.
This guest chamber contained a huge double stuffed feather bed, an unpainted table, two chairs, a pitcher of water and a wavering mirror hung over the table. The air in the room was violently hot from the beating of the sun on the roof. Only one small window set high could have given any ventilation. This was tightly shut to exclude the unhealthful night air.
The men sat down in the faint candlelight and pulled off their shoes. Then they stood up and removed their trousers, which finished their preparations for bed.
By now Mr. Kinchin had suffered a reaction from his triumphs, and he answered the minister's bedtime conversation in monosyllables. His anger at Lizzie Love returned. The coming profit on his cattle lost its glow. It would mean merely so much more money, so many more bills in his wallet.
Mr. Kinchin climbed up into the thick hot feather bed with a feeling of the futility of money. He chose the preferred front side and stretched himself uncomfortably under the sheet. He lay looking at the minister with distaste.
THE preacher knelt by the bedside and prayed audibly. He prayed for the Bogguses, for Mr. Kinchin, his bedfellow, and asked God to give him what was good for him. He prayed especially for Lizzie Love, who was about to become his wife. Thence his petition spread to the congregation that would hear him preach on the morrow, to the sick of the neighborhood. He prayed that rain might come and bless the farmers' crops, that God might bestow his blessings on all. When he made an end of his prayer he asked Grover if he were ready for him to blow out the candle. The drover, who was hating the man of God intensely at that moment, said shortly that he was.
The minister blew out the candle and a little later the cow buyer could feel him crawling over him to his place at the back of the bed. The drover detested both the odor and the touch of the man. He could hardly control himself from giving the preacher's groping hands a little shrug with his shoulder, a wriggle to let him know how he detested him; but he did not.
The darkness was absolute. The air was hot, stale, scented with shoes, and the faint smell of burnt tallow from the extinguished candle. Outside the cold wind whipped and roared, but it was effectually excluded from the bedroom in order to protect the health of the occupants.
Within a few minutes the preacher dropped off to sleep. The drover could tell this from his breathing. Young Mr. Kinchin himself was so uncomfortable and miserable that he wondered how the minister could get to sleep so quickly. He thought perhaps he slept in the Peace of God—well, the Peace of God was a long, long way from the drover.
The cattle buyer rolled and tossed and threshed his big sweaty body about. His drawers stuck to his legs and he would pull them loose in a sort of desperation.
HIS thoughts threshed about quite as helplessly as his body. He was miserable and pestered. Nothing helped him. The exorbitant profit he would make on his cattle now seemed to him entirely without advantage. It would mean more money, more bills in his wallet—what of that? Of what earthly benefit would it be to his real life to have his wallet grow thicker and bulkier? Lord, his real life was not in his wallet!
And now indeed, from this dark angle in the Boggus house in the midst of a blustery night, it seemed to him that his whole life had been futile and pointless, and no stuffing of his wallet with bills would remedy it.
He looked at himself. He was here tonight. Tomorrow he would drive his cattle across the quarantine and spend the night in Florence. Then he would put them on a train for Memphis, and so on and on, night after night. He would be here and there in his lonely and pointless, migrations and all that he did, all that he gained would have no meaning. His life would be a sort of stringing together of futilities—as it had been.
He tossed feverishly among the hot feathers. “Oh, good God,” he thought, “they ain't no sense to what I'm doin'. Tradin' an' traffickin' fer a little money, with spells of gittin' drunk an' gamblin' an' raisin' hell—they jest ain't no sense a-tall to me.” Tears came to the cattle buyer's eyes, and that was the way he said his prayers.
A sudden spattering of rain on the roof interrupted the reproach of his thoughts. The rain grew swiftly heavier and louder until it filled the whole night with its up roar. It bloomed and assailed the old house and amidst the roaring the sharp staccato click-click-click of leaks in the roof began to develop.
The noise of the rain was so great that the minister aroused himself long enough to say, “The Lord is shorely blessin' our settlemint with a good season, Brother Kinchin.” Then he immediately went back to sleep again.
The drip of the leaky roof gave the drover a peculiar, chilly feeling. He lay straining his cars, trying to locate the exact spots when a tiny beam of light played through the cracks of the door.
Mr. Kinchin lifted his head, opened his mouth and listened intently. Through some prescience his heart began to beat. He saw the door open very slowly, he heard the rattle of tin; then a girl's head with the hair down, an abnormous shape in the candlelight, peered into the room. Then Lizzie Love barely whispered, “Is anybody awake?”
The drover drew in his breath. “I'm awake,” he returned in the same tone.
The girl lowered her voice still more. “Is he?”
“No.”
Lizzie Love's tones seemed breaking under some strong excitement. “Here are—some buckets—to put under the drips.”
“I'll come git 'em!”
The drover slid out of bed with a silent movement. He jerked on his trousers in the darkness. He hurried with every nerve a-stretch for fear the girl would be gone. He watched the ray of light breathlessly. It did not move. When he got to the door Lizzie Love waited with the buckets. The sight of her face, her flowing hair, sent a queer intimate tremor through the drover. Instead of handing him the vessels when he appeared in the doorway, Lizzie Love gasped out:
“Oh, Grover, dad's phoned the inspector!”
The cattle buyer stood staring at her. “What d'ye mean?”
“Dad—Dad's phoned the tick inspector. He's goin' to git here in the mornin' by gray daylight an' levy on all yore cattle fer goin' ag'inst the tick regerlations.”
“The hell he is!” gasped the buyer blankly.
“Yes, 'n' you'd better clear out o' here right this minute,” warned Lizzie Love with big eyes. “Oh, I was jest wonderin' how I could come up an' tell ye, when it 'gin tuh rain an' I thought of the leaks.”
“Wait, you wait here a minute, Lizzie Love!” The drover strode noiselessly back into the room, put on his coat, picked up his shoes and assured himself that the preacher still slept. He returned to the stairway. “Now le's git down.”
THE girl went down first, holding the candle above her head. It illuminated her bare arm and rough young hand and silhouetted her hair and shoulder. When they stepped into the lower hallway the wind abruptly blew the candle out. Lizzie Love had foreseen this and had placed a lighted lantern at the bottom of the steps. Both were working swiftly to save the cattle now.
“I laid my slicker down here in the hall somewhere,” said the drover, groping after it through the blowing mist of the rain.
“You'll haff to git yore cattle acrost Big Cypress before it gits swimmin',” warned Lizzie Love sotto voce, “or you'll never git into Alabam'.”
Mr. Kinchin stopped to put on his shoes, for the floor of the hall was wet. Then he peered about, found his slicker where it had been blown down the passage. He put the wet garment on. He look again about the hallway.
“Where's Lou?” he asked.
“Who?”
“My dog.”
“I don't know.”
“She ort to be here in the hall; she usually sneaks into the house when she can.”
Both looked over the empty hallway, but saw only the two chairs sitting close together.
“Good Lord!” groaned the drover. “I cain't turn a wheel without her—I daresn't call her——”
The girl started looking about with the lantern and the drover followed her. But it was with a miserable sinking in his heart, for two chairs had reminded him that he was going away from Lizzie Love to see her no more. This girl who had dreamed of him, and who had warned him against the inspector, and was now hunting his dog with a lantern, she would go out of his life and certainly he would never see her again. And his years would string out in endless futilities and have no reason to them at all. And he followed the girl, shivering and miserable as though he had an ague.
Lizzie Love went ahead searching for the dog and presently she saw the kitchen door ajar. With a farm woman's instinct she quickened her steps. The drover followed. They entered the door almost together. The girl held the lantern up in the hot kitchen and suddenly gave a little cry of rage.
“You triflin' dawg! Eatin' thet chicken!” She darted forward to rescue the fowl she and her mother had dressed for breakfast.
The man pushed after her, reached for her.
“Let her have it, Lizzie Love,” he cried; “the pore thing must be nearly starved!”
“Have it!” cried the girl. “Have the chicken!” She seized a broom from behind the door and made a lunge at Lou.
The man snapped out a “Damn it!” leaped forward, flung his arms about her. The girl made a furious struggle to wield the broom. The drover crushed her to him. Then as he struggled to protect his dog the feel of the girl's soft body in his arms swiftly changed the whole motive of the struggle. Kinchin had been trying not to use strength enough to hurt her. Now he whirled her roughly about and pressed her body hard against his own. His hand in the masses of her hair suddenly forced her mouth to his.
At the rough embrace the girl gasped, her broom and lantern clattered to the floor. Her knees wavered under her so that she was half clinging to him and half supported by him. Her arms tightened convulsively about his neck and she began sobbing.
“Oh! Oh, Grover, d-don't leave me! Don't let me stay here! Dear, dear Grover, I cain't stan' it!”
In the faint yellow light of the overturned lantern, the drover and the girl clung to each other with pounding hearts and sobbing incoherent words. The rain beat at the small window set high in the wall. The dog bolted the remnants of the chicken in huge gulps with her eyes rolled fearfully toward the woman.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1965, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 59 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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