The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1896-10-01
A. KENTUCKY SENATOR.
Bottom Fails Out q y Isoom-Ais Last
Trade.

~ a KENTUCKY SeNA 'O"' ~
bottom rails Out or y Doom-H.s Last
Trade.
A drove of lean cattle were swing
ing easily over Black mountain, and be-
hind them came a big man with wild
black hair and a bushy beard. Now and
then he would gnaw at his mustache
with his long yellow teeth, or would
ait down to let his lean horse rest, and
would flip meaninglessly at the bushes
with q switch. Sometimes his bnshy
head would droop over on his breast,
and he would snap it up sharply and
start painfully on. Robber, cattle
thief, outlaw he might have been in
another century; for he filed the figure
of any robber hero in life or romance,
and yet he was only the senator from
Bell, as he was known in the little
Kentucky capital; or, as he was known
in his mountain home, just the senator,
who had toiled and schemed and grown
rich and poor; who had suffered long
and was kind.
Only that Christmas he had Quilted
every store in town. ''Give me every
thing you have, brother" he said, across
each counter, and next day every man j,
woman and child in the mountain town
had present from the senator's hand.
He looked like brigand that day, as
he looked now, but he called every man
his brother, and his eye, while black
and lusterless at night, was as brooding
and just as kind.
When the boom went down, with it,
and with everybody else, went the SEN
ator.: Slowly he got dusty, ragged, long
OF hair. He looked tortured and ever
restless. You meyer saw him still. Al
ways he swept by, you, Tapping his legs
on his lean horse or his arms in his
.riclzety abuggyahere,s there, everywhere
turning, twisting, fighting his way
back to freedom-and not murnaur.
Still was every man his brother, and if
some forgot his once open hand,| he
(sforgotsit no mo1eE completely than did
the senator. SHE, went very far tospay
his debts. He felt honor bound, indeed ,
to ask his sister to give hack the farm
that he had given her, which, very prop
erly, people said, she declined to do.
| Nothing could kill hope in the senator's
breast; The would hand back the farm
in another year, he said; but the sister
was firm, and without word still the
senator went other weys and schemed
through the nights, and worked and
rode and walked and traded through
the days, until now, when the light
was beginning to glimmer, his end was
come.
This was the senator's last trade, and
in sight, down in a Kentucky valley,
was home. Strangely CROUCH, the SEN
ator did not care at all, and he had just
enough sanity left to wonder why, and
to be worried. It was the walking
typhoid" that had caught up with him,
and he was listless, and he made strange
gesture and did foolish things as he
stumbled down the mount tain. He was
| going over a little knoll! now, and he
could see the creek that ran around
the house, but he was not touched. He
would Just as soon have lain down right
where he was, or have turned around
and gone back, except that it was hot
and he wanted to get to the water.
He remembered that it was high Christ
mas; he saw the snow about him and
the cakes of ice in the creek. He knew
that he ought not to be hot, and yet
| he was-so hot that he refused to reason
with himself even minute, and hur-
ried on. It was odd that it should be so,
but Just about that time, over in Vir-
ginia, a cattle dealer, nearing home,
stopped to tell neighbor how he had
tricl1ed some black-whiskered fool up
in the mountains. 1t may have been
Just when he was laughing aloud over
there, that the senator, over here. tore
his :woolen shirt from his great hairy
chest and rushed into the icy stream,
clapping his arms to his burning sides
and shouting in his frenzy.
''If he had lived a little longer" said
a constituent, che would have lost the
next election. He hadn't the money.
you know"
IF he had lived little longer" said
the mountain preacher high up on Vel
low creek, I'D have got that trade I
had on hand with him through. Not
that I wanted him to die. but if he had
to-why-"
IF he had lived little longer" said
the senator's lawyer, che might have
cleaned off the score against him."
IF he had lived little longer" said
the senator's"sister,- not meaning to be
unkind, "he would have got all I have"
That was what life held for the sen
ator. Death was more kin6.-John Fox,
Jr., in Harper's Weekly.
A Thin Mans Complaint.
Oneof these days some philanthropist
will take a long time off and try to dis
cover why it is that neckties are always
made for the man with the thickest
conceivable neck, while the rest OF
normal masculinity has to 60 about