The Graysons Part 23

They crossed the road and climbed into the corn-field, seating themselves on the edge of the unplowed gra.s.sy balk between the corn and the fence. Here they were hidden and shaded by the broad-leaved horse and trumpet weeds in the fence-row. As was to be expected, Bob won rather oftener than he lost at first. After a while the luck turned, and Bob stopped playing.

"You'd better go on," said Dave.

"I d' know," answered Bob; "I'm about as well off now as I wuz in the beginnin'. I 'low I'd better hold up."

"Aw, no; let's go on. You might make sumpin."

"Well," said Bob, running the ends of the cards through his fingers, "ef you'll tell me jest how that air shootin' tuck place, I will."

"I don't keer to talk about that," said Dave, with a nonchalant air, that hardly concealed his annoyance. "The prosecuting attorney thought I'd better not."

"I wuzn't at the eenques'," Bob pleaded, "un they's so many stories a-goin' that I want to h-yer it f'om you."

"Oh, I know _you_," said Dave. "You think I haven't got my eye-teeth cut yet. You have been a-layin' for me and I know what you are here fer.

Do you think I don't see through your winter wheat? I know you're on Tom's side."

"Well, in course I am," said Bob, roused to audacity by his failure to deceive. "But it mout be jest as well fer you to tell me. Un maybe a leetle better. It mout be the very k-yard fer you to throw at this p'int in the game." And Bob's face a.s.sumed a mysterious and suggestive look as he laid his cards on the gra.s.s and leaned forward regarding Dave.

"Well," said Dave, in a husky half-whisper, letting his eyes fall from Bob's, "I'll tell you what: I don't really keer to have Tom hung, un I've been feelin' bad un wis.h.i.+n' I could git out ov it. Ef I had anuff money to go to New Orleans like a gentleman, I'd just light out some night, and give Tom a chance for his life."

"Maybe you mout git the money," said McCord, picking up his cards. "But your story wouldn' hang him nohow, I 'low." Here Bob laid down a half-dollar for a new game, and Dave covered it.

"Of course, if I stay he's _got_ to swing," said Dave; and by way of proving this to Bob, he told his story of the shooting with some particularity, while he proceeded to win one half-dollar after another almost without interruption. "Now," he said, when he had told the story and answered Bob's questions, "you can see that's purty tolerable bad. I sh'd think they'd ruther I'd clear out. An' if somebody'd give you a hundred dollars an' you'd let me play three or four games of poker with you some fine day I'd make tracks, an' the prosecuting attorney'd have to get along without me."

By this time all of the five dollars that Barbara had furnished, except the last twenty-five-cent piece, had pa.s.sed from Bob's reluctant hands to Dave Sovine's greedy pockets. This one quarter of a dollar Bob had prudently placed in the great pocket of his hunting-s.h.i.+rt, that he might have something to fill his stone jug with. For though he was devoted to the Graysons' side of the controversy, Bob McCord could hardly be called a disinterested philanthropist; and he held that even in serving one's friends one must not forget to provide the necessaries of life.

"You're awful good on a game," said Bob, with a rueful face. "You've cleaned me out, by hokey; I'll see ef I can't git you that hundred dollars, so's you kin win it. But it'll take time fer the Widder Grayson to raise it, I 'low."

"Oh! they ain't no _partik'lar_ hurry," said Dave, cheerfully counting over his winnings and stowing the silver about in his pockets as a s.h.i.+p-master might distribute his ballast. "Only if I don't get the money I'll have to stay h-yer an' go to court, I guess." And Dave hitched up his trousers and walked off with the air of a man who has a master-stroke of business in view.

Lincoln came to town the next week and Bob told him the story, while Lincoln made careful notes of Dave's account of the shooting.

"He says ef Widder Grayson'll let me have a hunderd dollars, un I'll let him play draw poker fer it, he'll light out fer parts onknown."

"Oh! he wants pay, does he?" And the young lawyer sat and thought awhile. Then he turned full on Bob and said:

"Could I depend on you to be in court at the trial without fail, and without my sending a subpoena?"

"Oh, I'll be there un nowheres else," said Bob. "You needn't soopeeny me. I'll come 'thout callin', foller 'thout tollin', un stan' 'thout hitchin'."

"Now if Dave Sovine comes after you for that hundred dollars, you'd better put him off, as easy as you can. If we should buy him off we wouldn't want to give the prosecution time to fetch him back."

Bob thought he saw a twinkle in Lincoln's eye as he said this; a something in his expression that indicated more than he said. But though he looked at the lawyer curiously, he got no further light. That evening, as Bob pa.s.sed the Grayson farm-house, he told the anxious Barbara something about it, and added: "Abe Lincoln's powerful deep.

He's got sumpin ur nuther in 'is head 't I can't noways see into. I don't half believe 't 'e means to buy up that low-lived scoundrel arter all. He acts like a man that's got a deadfall all sot, un is a-tryin' to honey-fugle the varmint to git 'im to come underneath."

And Barbara took what comfort she could out of this a.s.surance.

XXI

HIRAM AND BARBARA

To Barbara, indeed, the unrelieved apprehension and suspense of those long, hot August days were almost intolerable. The frequent excursions to the Moscow jail, to carry some tidbits of home cookery, or some article for Tom's personal comfort, afforded a practical outlet to feeling and a relief from the monotony of pa.s.sive suffering, but these journeys also brought sharp trials of their own to Barbara's courage and self-control. She might not betray to Tom or to her mother how much she suffered; it was for her to support both the one and the other.

Doubtless it would have been a relief could she have told Hiram Mason all the dreadful apprehensions that haunted her during the long, sleepless nights. But from the hour of Mason's entering the house he had avoided confidential relations with Barbara. Before and after school Hiram attended to all those small cares that about a farm-house usually fall to the lot of a man. Gentle and considerate to Mrs. Grayson and Barbara, he preserved toward the latter a careful reserve. He could not resume the subject discussed the evening they had peeled apples by the loom; it seemed out of the question that he should talk to Barbara of such things while her mind was engrossed with the curse of Cain impending upon her brother. He might have sought to renew the matter under cover of giving her a closer sympathy and a more cordial support in her sorrows, but he saw in her demureness only the same sensitive pride that had shrunk from his advances; and he knew that this pride had been wounded to the quick by the family disgrace. Moreover, to urge his claims as a lover at such a time would cover all his services to the family with a verdigris of self-interest; and he thought that such advances would add to Barbara's distress. In making them he would be taking an unfair advantage of the obligations she might feel herself under to him, and the more he thought of it the more he abhorred to put himself in such an att.i.tude. So he daily strengthened his resolution to be nothing but Mrs. Grayson's next friend while he remained under her roof, and to postpone all the rest until this ordeal should be past.

In many ways he was able to be helpful to the two troubled women. He stood between them and the prying curiosity of strangers, answering all questions about the family, about Tom, and about the case. He was their messenger on many occasions, and he went with them every Sat.u.r.day or Sunday to Moscow. But at other times Barbara saw little of him except at the table, and he avoided all conspicuous attentions to her. Even Mely McCord, though often at the house, could find no subject for chaff in the relations of the two. When the matter was under discussion among the young gossips at the Timber Creek school-house, Mely declared she "did n' 'low they wuz anything in the talk about the master un Barbary,--he did n' pay Barbary no 'tention 't all, now 't 'e 'd got every chance."

If Mason had been a person of less habitual self-repression he would not have been able to house his feelings so securely; but this man came of an austere stock; self-control was with him not merely habitual, it was hereditary.

Hiram had besides a battle of his own to fight. The Monday morning after the killing of Lockwood, as he went to the school-house, he was met in the road by Lysander b.u.t.ts, next neighbor to the Graysons--a square-built man with a cannon-ball head. b.u.t.ts was from the hill country of New Jersey, a man of narrow prejudices and great obstinacy.

"Looky here, Mr. Mason," he said, "d' you think now that a schoolmaster ought to take up for a rascal like Tom Grayson, that's a gambler, and I don't know what, and that's killed another fellow, like a sneak, in the dark?"

"I have n't taken up for Tom any more than to want him to have fair play," said Mason. "But I thought that the poor old lady needed somebody to be her friend, and so I went there, and am going to do what I can for her."

"Well, I know the Graysons mighty well, first and last, this many a ye'r, and they're all cut off of the same piece; and none of them is to be overly trusted, now you mind that."

"You have a right to your opinion," said Hiram; "but I am Mrs. Grayson's friend, and that is my lookout."

"Mrs. Grayson's friend?" said b.u.t.ts, with a sneer. "Mrs. Grayson, ainh?

As if you could make me believe it was the mother you're defending. It's Barbary _you_'re after."

Mason colored as though accused of a crime. Then, recovering himself, he said: "It's very impudent of you to be meddling, Mr. b.u.t.ts. So long as I behave myself, it's none of your business." And he went on toward the school.

"None of my business, ainh? You'll find out whose business it is mighty shortly," b.u.t.ts called after Hiram.

The quarrel between the b.u.t.tses and the Graysons dated back to their first settlement in Illinois. b.u.t.ts had regularly cut wild hay on the low-lying meadow between the two farms. Fond of getting something for nothing, he gave out among his neighbors that this forty acres was his own, but he put off entering it at the Land Office. When Tom Grayson's father entered his farm he found this piece blank and paid for it. From that time b.u.t.ts had been his enemy, for there was no adjunct to a farm in the timber so highly prized as a bit of meadow. When once near neighbors in the country have quarreled their proximity is usually a guarantee that they will never be reconciled;--there are so many occasions of offense between people who must always be eating off the same plate. It was universally known that "the b.u.t.tses and the Graysons couldn't hitch." Where two of their fields joined without an intervening road they had not been able even to build a line fence together; but each man laid up a rail fence on the very edge of his own land, and the salient angles of the two hostile fences stood so near together that a half-grown pig could not have pa.s.sed between. This is what is called, in the phrase of the country, a "devil's lane," because it is a monument of bad neighborhood.

When Mason reached the school-house that morning Angeline b.u.t.ts had her books and those of her younger brother and two younger sisters gathered in a heap, and the rest of the scholars were standing about her, while she did her best to propagate the family antagonism to the master. The jealousy of Lysander b.u.t.ts's family had been much inflamed by Barbara's swift success in study. Angeline had never been able to get beyond the simple rules of arithmetic; her feeble bark had quite gone ash.o.r.e on the sandy reaches of long division. The b.u.t.tses were therefore not pleased to have Barbara arrive at the great goal of the Rule of Three, and even become the marvel of the neighborhood by pa.s.sing into the mysterious realm of algebraic symbols. For Angeline's part she "couldn't see no kind-uv good, noways you could fix it, in cipherin' with such saw-bucks." Figgers was good enough for common folks, she said, and all this gimcrack work with x's and y's was only just a trick to ketch the master. For her part she wouldn' fool away time settin' her cap for sech as him, not if he was the only man in the world.

When Tom was arrested for murder, the b.u.t.tses felt that their day had come. Folks would find out what sort of people the Graysons were now; and what would become of all Barbary's fine match with the master? Hey?

But when, on the very day after the shooting, Angeline came home bursting with indignation, that the master'd gone and took up his board and lodging at the Graysons', and had put John Buchanan into his place for a day and gone off down to the jail with the Graysons, their exasperation knew no bounds. b.u.t.ts rose to the occasion, and resolved to take his children out of the school. No man that countenanced murder could teach b.u.t.ts's children. It is the inalienable right of the free-born American citizen to relieve his indignation by taking his children from school, and by stopping his newspaper.

When Mason entered the school-room after his encounter with the father he was not surprised to find the whole battalion of b.u.t.ts infantry drawn up in martial array, while Angeline held forth to the a.s.sembled pupils on the subject of the master's guilt in countenancing Tom Grayson, and the general meanness of the whole Grayson "click," living and dead. When the auditors saw Hiram come in they fell away to their seats; but Angeline, pleased to show her defiance of the master, who could no longer punish her, stood bolt upright with her bonnet on until the school had been called to order. The younger b.u.t.tses sat down from habitual respect for authority, and the brother pulled off his hat; but Angeline jammed it on his head again, and pulled him to his feet. She might have left before the school began; but she preferred to have a row, if possible. So when the school had grown quiet, she boldly advanced to the s.p.a.ce in front of the master's desk, with the younger and more timid b.u.t.tses slinking behind her.

"Mr. Mason, father's goin' to take me out of school," she said.

"So he told me."

"He wants us to come right straight home this morning."

"Well, you know the road, don't you?" said Hiram, smiling. "If he's in a hurry for you, I should have thought you might have been there by this time."

This reply set the school into an audible smile. Angeline grew red in the face, but the master was standing in silence waiting for her to get out, and the scholars were laughing at her. There was nothing more to be said, and nothing for it but to be gone or burst. In her irritation she seized her youngest sister, who was shamefacedly sneaking into Angeline's skirts, and gave her a sharp jerk, which only added a fresh impulse to the t.i.tter of the scholars, and Angeline and her followers were forced to scuffle out of the door in confusion.

Lysander b.u.t.ts was not a man to give over a struggle. Conflict was his recreation, and he thought he could "spite the master" not only by refusing payment for the tuition his children had already received, but by getting the Timber Creek district to shut Mason out of their school-house. There were those in the district who resented Mason's friends.h.i.+p for the Graysons, but they were not ready to go so far as b.u.t.ts proposed. And in asking Buchanan to teach school for him a single day Mason had unwittingly made friends against the time of trouble; for the old schoolmaster now took the young man's part, and brought over to his side the three Scotch families in the district, who always acted in unison, as a sort of clan. b.u.t.ts was at a serious disadvantage in that he lived beyond the limits of the Timber Creek district. "What does he want to come a-maiddlin' wi'us fer?" Buchanan demanded of the Timber Creekers. "Let 'im attaind to the beesness of his own deestrict, and not go to runnin' his wee crookit daivils' lanes doun here." Such arguments, with the help of Mason's good-nature, his popularity with the pupils, and his inflexible determination to keep his own gait, caused the opposition to weaken and die out gradually without doing serious damage to the school.