Part 7

On this particular morning he seemed a little agitated; and, indeed, he was vexed more deeply than he had ever before been. Just the preceding evening he had learned that a corps of civil engineers were rapidly approaching his premises with a line of survey, and that the purpose was to locate and build a railway right through the middle of his farm. To Luke the very idea was outrageous. He felt that he could never stand such an imposition. His land was his own, and when he wanted it dug up and leveled down and a track laid across it he would do it himself. He did not want his farm cut in two, his fields disarranged and his fences moved, nor did he wish to see his live stock killed by locomotives. The truth is he was bitterly opposed to railroads, any how. They were innovations. They were enemies to liberty. They brought fashion, and spendthrift ways, and speculation, and all that along with them. Other folks might have railroads if they wanted them, but they must not bother him with them. He could take care of his affairs without any railroads. Besides, if he wanted one he could build it. He hung heavily upon the gate, thinking the matter over, and would not have bestowed a second glance at the carriage that came trundling past if he had not caught the starry flash of a pair of blue eyes and a rosy, roguish girl's face within. The beauty of that countenance struck the great rough fellow like a blow. He stared in a dazed, bewildered way. He took his pipe from his mouth and involuntarily tried to hide his great big bare feet behind the gate post. He felt a queer, dreamy thrill steal all over him. It was his first definite impression of feminine beauty. Instantly that round, happy, mischievous face, with its dimples and indescribable shining lines of half latent mirth, set itself in his heart forever.

The carriage trundled on in the direction of the ferry. Luke followed it with his eyes till it disappeared round a turn in the road; then he put the pipe to his mouth again and began puffing vigorously, wagging his head in a way that indicated great confusion of mind. There are times when a glimpse of a face, the sudden half-mastering of a new, grand idea, a view of a rare landscape or even a cadence in some new tune, will start afresh the long dried up wells of a heart. Something like this had happened to Luke.

"Sich a gal! sich a gal!" he murmured from the corner of his mouth opposite his pipe stem. "I don't guess I'm a dreamin' now, though I feel a right smart like it. I _hev_ dreamed of that 'ere face though, many of times. I've seed it in my sleep a thousand times, but I never s'posed 'at I'd see it shore enough when I'd be awake! Sweetest dreams I ever had--sweetest face God ever made! I wonder who she is?" As if to supplement Luke's soliloquy at this point, a cardinal red bird flung out from the dusky depths of the oldest cherry tree an ecstatic carol, and a swallow, swooping down from the clear purple heights, almost touched the man's cheek with its shining wings, and the sun lifted its flaming face in the east and flooded the fields with gold.

Luke turned slowly toward the old house. The breeze that came up with the sun poured through the orchard with a broad, joyous surge, while something like blowing of strange winds and streaming of soft sunlight made strangely happy the inner world of the smitten Hoosier. His big strong heart fluttered mysteriously. He actually took his pipe from his lips and broke into a snatch of merry song, that startled Betsy, his sister, from her morning nap.

For the time the hated railroad survey was forgotten. The landscape at Rackenshack, as if by a turn of the great prisms of nature, suddenly took on rainbow hues. The fields flashed with jewels, and the woods, a wall of dusky emerald, were wrapped in a roseate mist, stirred into dreamy motion by the breeze. A light, grateful fragrance seemed to pervade all space, as if flung from the sun to soften and enhance the charm of his gift of light and heat. Such a hold did all this take upon Luke, and so utterly abstracted was he, that when breakfast was ready Betsy was obliged to remind him of the fact that he had neglected to wash his face and hands, and comb his hair and beard--things absolutely prerequisite to eating at her table.

"Forgot it, sure's the world," said Luke; "don't know what ever possessed me."

"Maybe you've forgot to turn the cows into the milk stalls, too?" said Betsy.

"If I ha'n't I'm a gourd!" and Luke scratched his head distractedly.

"What'd I tell you, Luke Plunkett? It's come at last, O lordy! You're as crazy as a June bug all along of smoking that old pipe! Rot the nasty, stinking old thing! It's a perfect shame, Luke, for a man to just smoke what little brains he's got clean out. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, so you ought!"

While she was speaking Betsy got the big wooden washbowl for her brother, whereupon he proceeded to make his ablutions in a most energetic way, taking up great double handfuls of water and sousing his face therein with loud puffings, that enveloped his head in a cloud of spray.

When a clean tow linen towel had served its purpose, Luke remarked:

"Don't know but what I _am_ some'at crazy in good earnest, Betsy, since I come to think it all over. I'm r'ally onto it a right smart. What'd you think, Betsy, if I'd commence talkin' 'oman to ye?"

"Luke, Luke! are you crazy? Is your mind clean gone out of your poor smoky head?"

"That's not much of a answer to my question."

"Well, what _do_ you mean, _anyhow_?"

"I mean business, that's what!"

"Luke!"

"Yes'm."

"Do try to act sensible now. What is it, Luke? What makes your eyes look so strange and dance about so? What do you mean by all this queer talk?"

Luke finished combing, and, going to the table, sat down and was proceeding to discuss the fried chicken and coffee without further remark, but Betsy was not so easily balked. She, like most red haired women, wished her questions to be fully and immediately answered, wherefore some indications of a storm began to appear.

Luke smiled a quiet little smile that had hard work getting out through his beard. Betsy trotted her foot under the table. Her hand trembled as she poured the coffee--trembled so violently that she scalded her left thumb. It was about time for Luke to speak or have trouble, so, in a very gentle voice, he said:

"Well, I saw a gal--a gal an' her father, I reckon--go by this mornin'."

"Well, what of it? S'pose there's plenty of girls and their fathers, ain't there?" snapped Betsy.

Luke drew a chicken leg through his mouth, laid down the bone, leered comically at his sister from under his bushy eyebrows, and said:

"But the gal was purty, Betsy--purty as a pictur', sweet as a peach, juicy an' temptin' as a ripe, red cored watermillion! You can't begin to guess how sweet an' nice she did look. My heart just flolloped and flopped about, an' it's at it yet!"

"Luke Plunkett, you _are_ crazy! You're just as distracted as a blind dog in high rye. Drink a cup of hot coffee, Luke, and go lie down a bit, you'll feel better." The spinster was horrified beyond measure. She really thought her brother crazy.

The man finished his meal in silence, smiling the while more grimly than before, after which he took his shot gun and a pan of salt and trudged off to a distant field to salt some cattle. He always carried his gun with him on such occasions, and not unfrequently brought back a brace of partridges or some young squirrels. As he strode along, thinking all the time of the girl in the carriage, he suddenly came upon a corps of engineers with transit, level, rod and chain, staking out, through the centre of a choice field, a line of survey for a railroad. In an instant he was like a roaring lion. He glared for a second or so at the intruders, then lowering his gun he charged them at a run, storming out as he did so:

"What you doin' here, you onery cusses, you! Leave here! Get out! Scratch! Sift! Dern yer onery skins, I'll shoot every dog of ye! Git out 'n here, I say--out, out!"

The corps stampeded at once. The surveyor seized his transit, the leveller his level, the rod man his rod, the axe men and chain men their respective implements, and away they went, "lick-to-split, like a passel o' scart hogs," as Luke afterwards said, "as fast as they could ever wiggle along!"

No wonder they ran, for Luke looked like a demon of destruction. It was a wild race for the line fence, a full half mile away. The leveler, being the hindmost man, rolled over this fence just as a heavy bowlder, hurled by Luke, struck the top rail. It was a close shave, a miss of a hair's breadth, a marvelous escape. Luke rushed up to the fence and glared over at his intended victims. Here he knew he must stop, for he doubted the legality of pursuing them beyond the confines of his own premises. Somewhat out of breath he leaned on the fence and proceeded to swear at the corps individually and collectively, shaking his fists at them excitedly, till the appearance of a new man on the scene made him start and stare as if looking at a ghost. He was a well dressed, gentlemanly appearing person of about the age of forty-five, pale and thoughtful--calm, gray eyed, commanding. Luke recognized him at once as the man he had seen in the carriage, and, indeed, the vehicle itself stood hard by, with a beautiful, laughing, roguish face looking out of one of the windows. The lion in the stalwart farmer was quelled in an instant. He felt his legs grow weak. He set his gun by the fence and touched his hat to the little lady.

"Your name, I believe, is Luke Plunkett?" said the approaching gentleman.

"Yes, sir," said Luke.

"You own two thousand acres of land here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Your residence is called Rackenshack?"

"Yes, sir." (Suppressed titter from the carriage.)

"So I thought. Pull back, men (addressing the corps), pull back to where you dropped the line and bring it right along. Mr. Plunkett will not harm you now."

The corps began to move. Luke fiercely seized his gun; but before he could lift it or utter a word, a ten-inch Colt's repeater was thrust into his face by the calm gentleman, and a steady hand held it there.

"Mr. Plunkett," said the man, "I am the chief engineer of the ---- Railroad. I am making a location. The laws of this State give me the right to go upon your land with my corps and have the survey made. I am not to be trifled with. If you offer to cock that gun I'll put six holes through you. What do you say, now?"

The voice was that of a cold man of business. There was a coffin in every word. The muzzle of the pistol steadily covered Luke's left eye. The situation was rigid. Luke hesitated--his face ashy with anger and fear, his eyes alternating their glances between the muzzle of the pistol and that wonderful shining face at the carriage.

"Shoot him, papa, shoot him! Shoot him!" Sweet as a silver bell rang out the girl's voice, more like a ripple of idle song than a murderous request, and then a clear, happy laugh went echoing off through the woods in which the carriage stood.

Slowly, steadily, Luke let fall the breech of his gun upon the ground beside him. The engineer smiled grimly and lowered his pistol, while the corps, headed by the surveyor, took up its line of march to the point where work had been so suddenly left off.

The young lady clapped her tiny white hands for joy.

A big black woodpecker began to cackle in a tree hard by.

Luke felt like a man in a dream.

The whole adventure, so far, had been clothed in most unreal seeming.

It can hardly be told how, by rapid transitions from one thing to another in his talk, the engineer drew Luke's mind away from the late difficulty and gradually aroused in him a kindly feeling. In less than ten minutes the two men were sitting side by side on a log, smoking cigars from the engineer's pouch and chatting calmly, amicably.

Luke's eyes often rested steadily fixed in the direction of the carriage. Through the thin veil of tobacco smoke the face of the young girl seemed to the farmer angelic in its beauty. All around the sweets of summer rose and fell, and drifted like scarcely visible shining mists, fraught with the spice of leaf and perfume of blossom, agitated by swells of tricksy wind, going on and on to the mysterious goal of the season.

The two men talked on until the corps had pushed the line of survey far past them into the cool, shady deeps of the woods, whence their voices came back fainter and fainter every moment. At length the engineer arose, and stretching out his hand to Luke, said:

"Mr. Plunkett, I'm sure I'll be able to serve you some time; let us be friends. I shall be in this vicinity most of the time till the road is built. No doubt I can show a way to profit by the construction of a railroad across your land. If you are sharp it will make your fortune. I like your independent way, sir, and hope to know you better. Here is my card."

Luke took the bit of pasteboard without saying a word. They shook hands and the engineer got into his carriage.

"Here's my card, too, Mr. Plunkett," cried the girl. She said something more, but the horses were made to plunge rapidly away, and the words were lost; but the flash of a white jewelled hand caught Luke's eye as a delicately tinted card came fluttering towards him. He sprang and seized it. If a bag of diamonds had been flung at his feet he could not have been more excited. His hands trembled. All the incidents of the only fairy tale he had ever read came at once into his mind. He stood with his feet turned in, like some great awkward boy, a bashful, shame-faced look lurking about his mouth and eyes. He filled his pipe and lighted it from the stump of his cigar with nervous eagerness. A squirrel came down to the lowest limbs of a beech tree hard by and barked at him, but he did not notice it. He read the names on the cards:

"_Elliot Pearl, C. E._" "_Hoiden Pearl._"

The first printed in small capitals, the second written in a delicate, rather cramped feminine hand. He stood for a long time dreamily employed in turning these bits of paper over and over. His thoughts were so vague in outline and so dim in filling up that they cannot be reproduced. They slipped away on the summer air, like little puffs of perfume, and were lost, to be found by many and many a one in the ineffable places of dreamland. Finally, shaking himself as if to break the charm that held him in its meshes, he took up his gun and slowly made his way homeward. All along his walk he kept smiling to himself and talking aloud, but his words were such that it would be sacrilege to repeat them now. Let them hover about in the sunlight of summer, where he uttered them, as things too delicate to be pressed between the lids of a book.

Betsy had trouble with Luke for some days after this. He lay about the house, saying little, eating little, giving little attention to the many tenants who worked his estate. He was in good health, was not in trouble (so he said to his sister), but he did not care to be bothered with business. He was tired and would rest awhile. "He smoked pretty near all the time," as Betsy declared. But not a hint fell from his lips as to what might be running in his mind.

So the days slipped past till July hung golden mists on the horizon and filled the woods with that rare stillness and dusky slumbrousness that follows the maturing of the foliage and the coming on of fruit. The cherry trees at Rackenshack had grown ragged and dull, and the birds, excepting a few swallows wheeling about the old chimney tops, had all flown away to the woods and fields. The wheat had been cut and stacked, the corn had received its last ploughing. Still Luke hung about the house annoying Betsy with his pipe and his utter carelessness. That he was "distracted" Betsy did not for a moment doubt. She used every means her small stock of wit could invent to urge him out of his singular mood, but without avail. He took to the few old novels he could find about the house, but sometimes he would gaze blankly at a single paragraph for a whole hour.

One morning as he lay on the porch, his head resting upon the back of a chair, reading, or pretending to read an odd volume of "The Scottish Chiefs," a little boy, 'Squire Brown's son, came to bring home a monkey-wrench his father had borrowed some time before. The boy was a bright, rattle-box, say-everything, pop-eyed sort of child, and was not long telling all the news of the neighborhood. Luke gave little attention to what he was saying, till at length he let fall something about a young lady--a fine, rich young lady, staying at Judge Barnett's--a young lady who could outrun him, out jump him, beat him playing marbles and ball, who could climb away up in the June apple tree, who could ride a colt bareback, who could beat Jim Barnett shooting at a mark, who could, in fact, do a half a hundred things to perfection that strict persons would think a young lady should never do at all, but which seemed to make a heroine of her in the narrator's boyish view.

"What's the gal's name?" queried Luke in a slow, lazy way, but his eyes shot a gleam of hope.

"Hoidy Pearl," replied the lad.

Hoiden Pearl! That name had been woven into every sound that had reached Luke's ears for days and nights and nights together, and now, like a sweet tune nearly mastered, it took a deeper, tenderer meaning as the boy pronounced it in his childish way.

"Hoidy Pearl is her name," the lad continued. "She's come to stay at the Judge's all summer till the new railroad's finished. Her father's the boss of the road. She's jest the funniest girl, o-o-e! And she likes me, too!"

Luke raised himself to a sitting posture and looked at the boy so earnestly that he drew back a pace or two as if afraid.

"Boy, you're not lyin', are ye?" said the man in a low, earnest tone.

"No I'm not, neither," was the quick reply.

Luke got up, flung aside his book and strolled off into the woods. Wandering there in the cool, silent places, he dreamed his dream. For hours he sat by a little spring stream in the dense shadow of a big cotton-wood tree. The birds congregated about him, and chirped and sang; the squirrels came out chattering and frisking from branch to branch; but he gave them no look of recognition--he saw them not, heard them not. The birds might have lit upon his head and the squirrels might have run in and out of his pockets with impunity. He smoked all the time, refilling and relighting his pipe whenever it burned out. He did not know how much he was smoking, nor that he was smoking at all. A bright face set in a mass of yellow curls, a wee white hand all spangled with jewels, a voice sweeter than any bird's, a name--Hoiden Pearl--these rang, and danced, and echoed, and shone in the recesses of his brain and heart to the exclusion of all else. He was trying to think, but he could not. He wanted to mature a plan, but not even an outline could find room in his head. It was full. Strange, indeed, it may seem, that a rough farmer of Luke's age should thus fall into the ways of the imaginative, sentimental stripling; but, after all, the fit must come on some time in life. No doubt it goes harder with some constitutions than with others. Luke may have been unwittingly strongly predisposed that way. Neither the exterior of a man nor his surroundings will do to judge him by. Nature is that mysterious in all her ways. Luke talked aloud, sometimes gesticulating in a quiet way.

"I _must_ see the gal--I _will_ see the gal," he muttered at last. "It's no use talkin', I jist will see her!"

Suddenly a light broke from his face. He smiled like one who has victory in his grasp--like an editor who has an idea, like a reviewer who has found some bad verse. He got up immediately, went back to the barn, hitched a horse to a small road wagon and drove to town. There he spent time and money with a merchant tailor and other vendors of clothing. He was very fastidious in his selection. Nothing but the finest would do him. A few days after this he brought home a trunk full of princely raiment--broad cloth and fine linen. Betsy was struck dumb with amazement when the trunk was opened. A dream of such costly things, such reckless extravagance, would have driven her mad. Silent, open-eyed, wondering, she came in and stood behind Luke while he was unpacking. He looked up presently and saw her. His face flushed violently, and in a half-whining, half-ashamed tone he muttered:

"Now, Betsy, you jest git out'n here faster'n ye come in, for I'm not goin' to stan' no foolin' at all, now. These 'ere's my clothes and paid for out'n my money, an' I'm the jedge of what I need. I ha'n't had any good duds for a long time, and I'm tired o' lookin' like a scarecrow made out'n a salt bag. I've been thinkin' for a long time I'd git these 'ere things, an' now I've got'm. You kin git you some if ye like, but I don't want ye a standin' round here gawpin' at me on 'count o' my clothes; so you go off an' mind yer own affairs. It's no great sight to see some shirts, an' coats, and pants, an' collars, an' vests, an' sich like, is it?"

Before this speech was finished Betsy had backed out of the room and closed the door. As she did so she let go a sigh that came back to Luke like a Parthian arrow; but it happened just then that he was holding up in front of him a buff linen vest which kept the missile from his heart.

He dressed himself with great care, and an hour later he slipped out of the house unseen, and took his way towards the rather pretentious residence of Judge Barnett, the gables of which, a mile away, gleamed between rows of Lombardy poplars. The Judge was one of those half cultivated men who, in every country neighborhood, pass for prodigies of learning and ability. He was the autocrat of the county in political and social affairs--one of those men who really know a great deal, but who arrogate more. He got his title from having been County Commissioner when the court house was building. Some said he made money out of the transaction, but our story is silent there.