The Soldier of the Valley Part 8

"It's all over at last," said Tim, smiling, "and now I am glad I've come; for Black Log is a good place, but it's so little, after all."

"I'm afraid you will find it bigger than a desk in Western's office, and a tiny room on a cramped city street," said I.

My brother recovered his old spirit and refused to be discouraged by my pessimistic view of his expedition. He laughed gayly and pointed across the country where half a dozen spires of smoke were rising.

There was the railroad. There was the great highway where his real journey was to start. There was the beginning of his great adventure.

I was the last outpost of the friendly land, and he was going into the unknown. There we were to part! It was my turn to whistle and to watch the wheels as, mile by mile, they measured off the road to that last bend, where I should see no more of Tim.

There was something strange in my brother's resolve to leave Six Stars and try his fortunes in the city. Just as I had settled down to the old easy ways which my absence had made doubly dear to me, when we should have been drawn closer to each other than ever, and my dependence on him was greatest, he announced his purpose. It was only yesterday. I returned from my accustomed afternoon visit to the Wardens to find him rummaging the house for a few of his more personal belongings and stowing them away in a small, blue tin trunk that a little while before had adorned the counter in the store.

"I am going to New York," he said, not giving me time to inquire into his strange proceeding.

I laughed. Tim was joking. This was some odd prank. He had borrowed the tin trunk and was giving me a travesty on Tip Pulsifer fleeing over the mountain from his petulant spouse: for last night Tim and I had had a little tiff. For the first time I had forgotten the post-prandial pipe, and undismayed by the horrors of the famine in India or the tribulations of Sister Flora Martin, journeyed up the road to sit at Mary's side.

"Over the mountain, eh, Tim?" I laughed. "And is Tip going?"

My brother caught my meaning, but he did not smile.

"Honest," he said. "I am going to New York."

"To New York!" I cried. My crutches clattered to the floor as I sank into my chair.

"Yes," said Tim, speaking so quietly that I knew it was the truth.

"Mr. Weston has given me a position in his store. It's a tea importing concern, and he owns it, though he doesn't spend much time at his business."

"I didn't think you'd leave me alone." The words were hardly spoken till I regretted them. I had spoken in spite of my better self, for what right had I to stand between my brother and a broader life? When I had gone away to see the world, he had plodded on patiently in the narrow valley to keep a home for me. Now that I was back, it was justly his turn to go beyond the mountains and learn something more than the dull routine of the farm and the sleepy village.

"I hate to leave you, Mark," he said. "But you have felt as I feel about getting away and seeing something. Still, if you really want me to stay, I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little part in them myself--you understand."

"Yes, Tim," said I, "you are right, and I'll get along first rate."

"That's the way to talk," he cried cheerfully, slapping me on the shoulder. "You won't be half as lonely here as I shall down there in a strange city; and when you clean away the supper dishes and light your pipe and think of me, I'll be lighting mine and thinking of you and----" He stopped. Captain had trotted in, and was sitting close by, looking first at one and then at the other of us quizzically.

"You'll have Captain," added Tim, laughing, "and then by and by, when I am making money, you and Captain will come down to the city and we'll all smoke our pipes together--eh, Captain?"

The hound leaped up and Tim caught his forepaws and the two went dancing around the room until a long-drawn howl warned us that such bipedic capers were not to the dog's liking.

"Captain isn't going to leave home, Tim," I cried. "You mustn't expect him to take so active a part in your demonstrations of joy."

"It wasn't the delight of leaving home made me dance," returned the boy. "It was the contemplation of the time we'll have when we get together again."

"Then why go away at all?"

"There you are. A minute ago you agreed with me; you were right with me in my plan to do something in this world. Now you are using your cunning arguments to dissuade me. But you can't stop me, Mark. I've accepted the place. Mr. Weston has sent word that I am coming, and there you are. I must keep to my bargain."

"When did Weston arrange all this for you?"

"This morning. We were on Blue Gum Ridge hunting squirrels, and we got to talking over one thing and another. I guess I kind of opened up--for he's a clever man, Mark. Why, he pumped me dry. We hadn't sat there on a log very long till he knew the whole family history and about everything I had ever learned or thought of. He asked me if I intended to spend all my life here, and I said it looked that way, and then I told him how I wanted to go and do something and be somebody."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He pumped me dry."]

Tim stopped suddenly, and winked at Captain. "I told him I wanted to go away and see something as you had done, for I was weary of listening to your accounts of things you'd seen. It's awful to have to listen to another's travels. It must be fine to tell about your own."

"Well, is it my talking that's driving you away, or is it Weston's alluring offers?"

"Alluring?" Tim laughed. "I'll say for Weston, he is frank. He told me that to his mind business was worse than death. He was born to it.

His father left it to him and he has to keep it going to live; but he lets his partner look after it mostly, and he is always worrying lest his partner should die and leave him with the whole thing on his hands.

He told me I'd have to drudge in a dark office over books for ten hours a day, and that it would be years before I began to see any rewards.

By that time I would probably decide that the old-fas.h.i.+oned scheme of having kings born to order was more sensible than making men wear their lives out trying to become rulers. A cow was contented, he said, because it was satisfied to stand under a tree and breathe the free air, and look up into the blue skies and over the green fields, and chew the cud. As long as the cow was satisfied with one cud it would be contented; but once the idea got abroad in the pasture that two cuds were required for a respectable cow, peace and happiness were gone forever."

"Our lanky stranger seems a wise man," said I. "In the face of all that, what did you say?"

"I told him I wasn't a cow," Tim answered.

There was no controverting such a reply, and though my sympathies were with the pessimistic Weston, I dared not raise my voice in defence of his logic as against this young brother. Tim seemed to think that the fact that he was not a cow turned from him all the force of Weston's philosophy, and insisted on going blindly on in search of another cud.

"He laughed when I said that," Tim continued, "and he said he guessed there was no sense in using figures of speech to me, but he was willing to bet that some time I would come to his way of thinking. I told him that perhaps I would when I had seen as much of men and things as he had; but now I looked about me with the mind and the eye of a yokel.

That was just what I wanted to escape. He was himself talking to me from a vantage-point of superior knowledge, and the consciousness of my own inferiority was one of the main things to spur me on."

"At that he gave you up?" said I.

"He gave me up," Tim answered; "and after all, Mark, old Weston is a fine fellow. He said that there was just one thing for me to do, and that was to see and learn for myself. So he wrote to his partner to-day, and I go in the morning."

"But must you go on a day's notice?"

"The quicker the better, Mark; and you see I haven't been letting any gra.s.s grow under my feet. When Weston and I reached our conclusion, I went to the store and got the trunk. In the interval of packing, I've gone over to Pulsifer's and arranged for Tip to work regularly for you this winter, looking after the farm. He wanted to go up to Snyder County and dig for gold. He knows where there's gold in Snyder County and you may have trouble there; but when you see any signs of a break you are to tell Mrs. Tip. She says she'll head him off all right.

Nanny Pulsifer, by the way, will come every day and straighten up the house. I saw Mrs. Bolum, and she said she would keep an eye on Nanny Pulsifer, for Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work. When you hear her singing hymns around the house, you are to tell Mrs. Bolum."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells and quit work."]

"Who will look after Mrs. Bolum? To whom must I appeal when I see signs there?"

"When Mrs. Bolum fails you, Mark, write to me," Tim answered. "When you see signs of her neglecting you, drop me a line and I'll be home in three days."

"I may have to appeal to you to save me from my friends," I said, "if Tip Pulsifer goes digging gold and Nanny Pulsifer gets religion and old Mrs. Bolum belies her nature and forgets me. But anyway, if Captain and I sit here at night knee-deep in dust and cobwebs, at least we can swell our chests and talk about our brother in the city, who is making--how much?"

"Seven dollars a week!" cried Tim. "Think of it, Mark, seven dollars a week. That's more than you made as a soldier."

"We are near the last bend, Tim. Yes--I'll say good-by to Mary for you. I'll tell her that in the hurry you forgot her. And she will believe me! Why didn't you go up the hill last night, instead of sneaking off this way?--for you know you didn't forget her. That last smoke--that's right--you and Captain and I, and our pipes. I fear she did pa.s.s from our minds, but we had many things to talk over in those last hours. I promise you I will go up to-night and explain. Tell Weston about that fox on Gander k.n.o.b--of course I shall. School starts tomorrow, else I'd be after him myself; but on Sat.u.r.day we'll hie to the mountain, Weston and Captain and I. You, Tim, shall have the skin, a memento of the valley. I'll say good-by to Captain again, and I'll keep the guns oiled, and Piney Carter shall have the rifle whenever he wants it--provided he cleans it every hunting night. And I'll tell old Mrs. Bolum--but the train is going to start. Are you sure you have your ticket, and your check, and your lunch? Yes, I'll say good-by to Mary for you.--Good-by, Tim!"

And Tim went around the bend.

VIII