Part 6

And if you want to see the refinement of ill-temper, stir up two poets!

Golden Wings was safe. He was high in the air, his very flight was now the flight of victory, his poise the poise of one who had won. Twenty yards more he would drop down into the green trees where his mate, perhaps, awaited him, and be safe.

I was about to hurrah with delight, when I saw a lightning bolt of red and white drop from the jagged bark of the dead limb of a towering oak in the midst of the forest and high above poor, weary, fluttering yet happy Golden Wings. I paled at the thought, for I knew no butterfly ever escaped him. Even Golden Wings recognized his doom and, paralyzed with fear, stopped his flight in mid-air and, in a few yards of his goal, and lay floating in the air in hopeless fear. And well he might, for the red and white bolt was the red-headed woodpecker, not generally known to be a fly-catcher, but an expert in it, nevertheless. Often had I seen him poise above a luckless moth, drop like a plummet, and no moth would be there. I despised him as a marauder, besides, for only yesterday I’d seen him pounce on a helpless young humming-bird and rend it as if it had been a worm.

Straight at poor Golden Wings he came. The race was up.

He performed his old tactics, darted above the butterfly, some two yards higher in the air, gauged instinctively a plummet line from the point of his own beak to Golden Wings and then drops with folded wings like a ball of lead.

I forgot to say that I was out that morning with the twelve-gauge, smokeless shells and one and a half ounces of No. 7 chilled, thinking I might see a certain thieving crow that I had a grudge against.

Thoughts are lightning--words thunder, and when I caught the first glimpse of the red-headed marauder of the air all this went through my mind: “Nature is nature--tooth and claw. And yet there is a God who says even when a butterfly shall fall. He makes our lives and marks out our destiny. Sometimes amid injustice He calls Himself Retribution, and then He has been known to raise up a man and a gun, invent smokeless powder and deadly chilled shot, give accuracy of aim and, most wonderful of all, the voice of a purpose to say that harm shall not happen even to a butterfly.”

There was no smoke from the report and so I distinctly saw Golden Wings drop joyfully among the green leaves. But a red-headed marauder lies in the field where he fell.

And if some one who knows, will tell me why I happened to be there, why I carried my gun that morning, why I fired, I will tell him who God is.

HIS CHANCE.

The summer day was nearly gone, and only a few clouds caught the gleam of sunset in the west. A woman of thirty, with a sweet, sincere face, came out of a cottage and walked to the little farm gate that opened on the main road winding across the Iowa prairie. The cottage sat in a small grove of trees, and farther off were neat outhouses, a stable and dairy. Flowers bloomed in a little bed near the front gate, and several hives of bees sat under cherry trees in the front yard. Everything around the neat cottage, from the well-kept vines which climbed over the porch to the orchard and fields of corn, clearly showed that Thrift and Industry were the handmaidens that lived there.

The woman was not pretty, neither was she handsome, but her face was of unusual intelligence and strength. Her hands showed work, and a few gray hairs shone over her temple.

At the little gate she stood while the shadows grew darker around her. There were chirpings of summer insects, and presently down the walk stalked a huge St. Bernard, looking like a great bear in the twilight. He seemed to think the woman had been out alone long enough, and his very way of walking showed that he knew he was her protector. He stalked up and thrust his big cold nose into her hand as it hung listlessly by her side. She started, but closed it over his mouth with a caress, saying:

“Rex, you are silly about me.”

A buggy came out of the gloaming down the road, and stopped at her gate. The woman turned pale in the twilight, as she recognized the middle-aged man who came toward her, holding out his hand: “Jennie--I--well--it’s me!”

He would have opened the gate, but the dog growled savagely, and she hooked the latch hastily, as she said:

“Ralph--why--why--I thought--but don’t try to come in--Rex--I could not control him.”

She was so agitated she could not speak further. Her knees shook, and she clung to the gate, half leaning.

“I have been back a week,” he said slowly. “You haven’t changed much,” he added, eyeing her closely while she flushed under his gaze. “I never expected to see you again.”

“No--no--don’t try to come in--Rex--Rex!”

The great dog had rushed at the gate as the man tried to open it again, and she held her hand on the latch.

“He don’t seem to know your friends from your enemies,” said the man with a cynical laugh.

“I think he does,” she said quietly, “better than I have ever known them.”

He looked at her quickly. Then he tried to laugh.

“Why--Jennie--you know I haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I never expected to see you again. I was not looking for you now,” she said.

“I never thought I’d ever come back, but the Klondike--well, a man pays two dollars for every dollar’s worth of gold he finds there.”

“Tell me about yourself,” she said, still leaning on the gate, one knee resting on the lower plank for support.

“Well, Jennie, after we had our little quarrel and you broke off with me--”

“You are mistaken,” she said quietly. “You left, Hugh, without a word--without telling me good-bye. There was nothing left to do but to send you your ring.”

“We won’t quarrel again, now, Jennie. I have come back to you to tell you--”

She had been looking closely in his face, and her heart beat wildly. She had seen it all--the bravado way, the flushed recklessness, the sign everywhere of dissipation, of modesty gone, of truth, of the old manhood.

“Not that,” she said, quickly interrupting him, “but of yourself. Tell me where you have been and--and what doing.”

He laughed coldly.

“Well, after we split up I went West, then to the Klondike. But it was a nasty life. As I said, I have made nothing, and I hoped all the time to make a fortune and bring it back to you, Jennie.”

“Was it true--that I heard--the trouble?”

“Why, yes, I did get to drinking too much, and got into trouble--but the papers had it overdrawn. I returned him his money. Now I have come back to you--to tell you I still--”

“You need not tell it,” she said quickly. “You could tell nothing I would believe now. You are not the man you were before you left, and never will be. Then you were weak, but honest and sober. Now you are weak, but dishonest and a drinker. And you must not come in--no--no--you are not the Hugh I once knew and loved.”

She sobbed in a quick way as she said it, but went on quietly:

“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left alone. Our little farm--well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I--well--” she laughed hopefully for the first time--a laugh which brought a pang to his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.

“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I have heard enough--before you came--heard it, seen enough. In all our lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and I--think--I know I am happier than if I were now married to you--to you as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.

“But--but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”

“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance. There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”

He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.

“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with another oath.

But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following her.

“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life--life--how strange it is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that is honest and true than a man who it not.”

BLUE JOHN.

A Mississippi planter, and a gentleman of the old school, sends me this one from a little town in the Delta:

“My dear Trotwood, do you know what it is to get out of whisky Christmas morning in a little one-horse Mississippi town where you have to put a darkey on a mule and wait until he rides five miles through the mud before you can get your Christmas toddy? Well, I hope you never may, for that thing happened to me last Christmas.

“The truth is, there was no need why we should have been out of the red ingredient of Christmas jollity, for when we turned in the night before we had a fine, big jug of it. But the Major was there, and the Colonel and the Doctor, and somehow, before we knew it, it was gone.

“I am a bachelor, you know, on a big Mississippi cotton farm, and these were my guests and we went to bed with our boots on. About daylight Christmas morning we all woke up with one impulse and an awful thirst.

“The Doctor got to the jug first, and we heard him growl:

“‘What infernal hog drank all this whisky last night?’

“This stirred up the Colonel, and he sat up in bed and remarked, with his usual emphasis:

“‘That licker gone a’ready? Christmas mornin’, too?’

“By this time we were all investigating it, and some of the talk indulged in concerning the man who did it ought to have made him feel anything but white.

“By this time we would have given a dollar each for a drink. The nearest whisky was five miles away, where Ikey Rosenstein, a little Mississippi Jew, kept a cross-roads grocery. It was raining, and cold, too, but there was nothing to do but to call Blue John and send him on old Kit, the pacing mule, for a new jug of it.

“‘Blue John,’ I said, when he poked his head in the door, ‘you’ll find my bridle and saddle hanging up in the carriage house. Saddle old Kit and take this jug up to old Ikey’s and bring it back full, p. d. q.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘Blue John,’ yelled the Doctor, ‘don’t let old Kit throw off on us this heat and we’ll give you first drink.’

“‘Yassah, Boss.’

“‘And, Blue John,’ said the Major, as he started off, ‘remember it’s Christmas, old man, and get about in a hurry. Here’s a quarter to help you along,’ he said, tossing it across the bed.

“‘Yassah, Boss, yassah.’

“We all laid down again to wait for Blue John.

“‘Boys,’ said the Colonel, after ten minutes of thirst, ‘I’ll bet I can trace every step that old darkey takes. Let’s see, now: He’s got to the barn door, hasn’t he? Now he has found the bridle and has caught old Kit. Now the saddle goes on and he is mounting.

“‘No, he ain’t quite up in the saddle yet,’ chimed in the Doctor. ‘He has stopped to take a chew of twist tobacco and spit on his hands.’

“‘That’s a fact, Doc, but he’s up now, isn’t he?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Now he’s pacing down to the big gate. He’s opening it----’

“‘No,’ put in again the Doctor, ‘he got down off of old Kit and opened it. Hang the old fool, but isn’t he a slow one?’

“‘Well, he’s going up the road now, ain’t he?’ said the Colonel.

“‘Yes, and he’s got to the big swamp. He’s creeping through it. Dad gast, but ain’t it muddy there? Gehew, but I am thirsty,’ broke in the Doctor.

“Ten minutes later he added joyfully: ‘Well, he’s out of the swamp, and he has spurred old Kit into a gallop, thinking of that drink. Oh, old Blue John is a good one!’

“‘He’s at the three-mile post now,’ said the Major, twenty minutes later. ‘Lord, but that old mule can hump when he tries!’

“We all smiled in satisfaction.

“‘Where is he now, Doc?’ said the Colonel, after it had seemed an hour of silence.

“‘At old Ikey’s, boys. See, he’s handing old Ikey the jug. Now old Ikey is fillin’ it.’

“‘From what barrel?’ asked the Major, excitedly.

“‘Lincoln County, Tennessee.’

“We all grunted our assent in chorus.

“‘He’s started home now,’ went on the Colonel, ‘and the way that mule can pace! Blue John is settin’ up in that saddle, holdin’ that jug under one arm and a-larrupin’ old Kit every yard. Scott, but ain’t he comin’!’

“‘He’s got to the swamp again, Doc,’ said the Major, after twenty minutes had passed. ‘He’ll get here directly.’

“‘Boys, he’s reached the big gate already. I hear him coming,’ said the Colonel, excitedly.

“Sure enough, we heard him. There was no mistake--Blue John was now coming down the hall.

“‘Open the door and let him in quick!’ said the Major, ‘By gum! but ain’t he and that old mule a pair of buds?’

“By this time we had all jumped out of bed and were hunting for tumblers and sugar. Blue John poked his head in the door.

“‘Boss,’ said Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Major. ‘Fetch it right in. You’re a good old man. Colonel, lend me your spoon a minute.’

“‘Boss, whar--whar----’ stammered Blue John.

“‘Come in, Blue John!’ cried the Doctor, ‘come right in.’”

“‘_Boss, whar de debbil you say you put dat bridle in de kerridge house? I been huntin’ fur it fur er hour an’ I can’t find it ter sabe my life._’”

A DRUNKEN WOMAN.

I saw in a neighboring city not long ago a drunken woman. She was in a fashionable hotel and stood beside a post in the little gallery that ran around the court. She was not three feet above our heads, was dressed in the height of fashion, wore a hat that looked like a huge poppy and altogether she was not unlike a beautiful tiger lily that seemed about to fall over into our arms. Instantly that wave of romance and reverence as natural to man, when he sees beauty clothed in purity, as the tides that do follow the midnight moon, swept over me. Her form was faultless, her gown perfect, her face beautiful.

At least I thought so until I looked up and happened to catch her eye. She smiled the sensual smile of a wood-nymph and leered as disgustingly as ever Bacchus through a glass of old Falerian. In a moment it all changed. Her face was no longer beautiful, but hard and cruel. Her form was made--her gown the gaudy thing of a demi-monde.

I blushed when she singled me out and leered, and ducked my head, for fear someone had seen me. But I soon saw that she leered at all alike and knew no difference between a man and men.

For a half hour she stood there, scarce able to cling to the post she stood by, the observed of every man in the court, the disgusting moral that pointed the old story of the fallen angel.

It is bad enough to see a drunken man. Nothing so quickly robs goodness of its sweetness, genius of its charm, greatness of its colossal form, than to behold it drunk. There are some great men I know who, if I ever saw them drunk, never again would I believe they were great. They say Poe was a drunkard. I cannot imagine it. And S. S. Prentiss--I cannot believe it. I cannot think of DeQuincy and Coleridge as opium eaters, Byron and Burns as whisky-heads. If I did I could never again read anything they wrote. For of all things that levels man to the beasts and makes knowledge a strumpet and genius a bawdy, it is the maudlin rottenness of a plain old drunk.

Whisky and not death is the greatest leveler with the dirt.

But to see a drunken woman--Good God! Nature is partial to a man. She has made some laws for him she has not made for woman. She has filled him with passion and strength and capacity for work and great things. She overlooks it, perhaps, when he steps aside, under the burning law she has forced on him for reproduction, and she sighs and smiles when he drowns his strenuousness now and then in the forgetfulness of the cup. He may do all that, and if his wife be pure still may he sire sons who will be brave and honest, and daughters who will be pure and noble.

But let the woman be weak and fall, and see how quickly nature revenges herself for the desecration of her unwritten law by throwing back on humanity sons who are thieves and daughters who are impure. This is an unwritten law, but it proves that the mother is the great moral force of the world. Let her violate it and the punishment comes quickly on the race.

As I looked at this woman I could not help thinking: “I hope, as one who, interested in stock, is more interested in the human race, that you carry in your life that penalty of impureness--barrenness. For it were better for mankind that such as you should never be mothers, to fill prison pens with thieves and forgers and bawdy houses with painted Magdalenes. Indeed, it is up to you to pass off the stage of life and cease to encumber an earth on which not one single womanly law is left you to fill. The honest matron of the noble horse brings forth yearly and within the sacred laws of nature an animal that is the pride of man and the glory of his kind. The gentle mother of the dairy is an inspiration and a blessing to the earth. The very brood sow of the pen suckles her hungry brood begot in honorable wedlock. But you, O, being of a higher world, O breeder of immortal beings, made in the image of God and endowed with the reason of the angels, you from whom nature expects so much, you fall below all of these and brand yourself the harlot of humanity!”

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_Depravity is not so much a creature of inheritance as of environment._

Geers and Walter Direct

The most talked-of pacer in the light harness world to-day is Walter Direct. The greatest living reinsman is Ed F. Geers, his breeder, joint owner, trainer and driver. The object of this sketch is to tell the story of these two--the one a horse, the other a man. For when it is all sifted down at last, it will be found that there are many parallel lines between a great race horse and a great driver. Each to succeed must possess certain qualities in common which make for success.

And first, each must be born for greatness. This may seem strange to the uninitiated, but no man knows the truth of it more than he who has spent his life in breeding great horses and in studying great men. It is pedigree that counts in man and horse, and by pedigree I do not mean blood lines only, though they count more in the life of the lower animal, the horse, than in the life of the higher animal, the man. Blood lines alone will not carry a man through the battle of life and bring him out victor at the end. For there are two pedigrees in every man which count for greatness or weakness in him. One is the pedigree of his body, the other is the pedigree of his soul. With horse, the pedigree of body counts most. With man, the soul. For it is that which counts for honesty, for singleness of purpose, for truthfulness, for silence, for thought, for right living, for that deathless spirit which never says die. In victory, calm; in defeat, silent, but saying proudly:

“Out of the darkness which surrounds me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be For my unconquerable soul.”

Unfortunately for man--outside of the pygmies which some call kings--he keeps no record of his pedigree. This is wrong, for man should at least take as much interest in his own pedigree as he does in his horses’ or his dogs’. And so, now and then, a master, in his craft, comes out of the great mass of humanity, with no extended pedigree but the product of earnest and honest and strong God-fearing fathers and mothers of many, many centuries. The child may not know them but for one generation, but they are all there--there in his blood and his brain and his brawn.

And so he is born honest and earnest and strong. Such is Ed Geers--a man who has come up from the common people. Common people of a century ago, but O, how uncommon now in these days of trusts and steals and grinding graft! In these days, when a millionaire is a poor man, these days of the Equitable, these days of Rockefeller, these days of the cursed trusts and tariff and the unspeakable graft-days when man is nothing and money all. God of our fathers, give us back again the days of the honest common people!

From such source comes Shakespeare, whose genius was also the product of honesty, of brawn, of rest. Shakespeare, who has written and left nothing else to be said! From such a source came James Knox, and Andrew Jackson, and John Wesley, and Abraham Lincoln--these and every other great man whose silent statues now stand as the mile-posts of human progress, each marking an era in the epoch of the thing God made him for.

And so, as I said, from such a source came Geers, the honest man and the master reinsman of his age. And so, as I said, counting the recorded pedigree, Walter Direct has it over Geers, for man, who foolishly lets his own pedigree slip, has been very careful in preserving that of his horse. Strange, isn’t it? And yet we are all doing it. Ah, well, perhaps it is best for many of us that it is so. For, as we say of the horse, in the fifth generation each one of us would have to count for sixty-two fathers and mothers, landing us back two hundred years ago in Scotland and Ireland, and out of that number, in that age and country, fortunate is he who was not sent up for poaching, for cattle-lifting, for breaking heads and, perhaps--locks!

Walter’s pedigree is blue-blooded. His owners, Chaffin & Gears, saw to that. We can make our horse’s pedigree better than we can make our own--for that is made for us, and often, in the making, when two warm youngsters fall in love and decide to marry, nothing but the grace of God, or the breaking of a midnight ladder, has saved us.

In _The Horse Review_ of 1900, when Walter Direct was then a suckling at his mother’s heels, I wrote a description of him and predicted from his blood lines that one day he would be the greatest of pacers. It sounds prophetic now, but I rise hastily to disclaim it. Any horseman posted in the pedigree and achievement of his sire and dam, and of all his bluelines, would naturally have said the same thing. His sire, Direct Hal, was the greatest horse of his day. His name and career are household words in horsedom and will not be extended in this article. But later on, in “The History of the Hals,” now running as a serial in this Monthly, a chapter will be devoted to him in its proper place. It is enough here to say that he was unbeaten and that his sire, Direct, before him, was the greatest pacing stallion of his day, and that beyond that lies the great Director, Dictator and Hambletonian 10--an unbroken line of greatness--and in a horse greatness means gameness, soundness, honesty, speed.

Isn’t that enough to give us a tip on the breeding of boys and girls?