Part 10

"Yes--to stay at home. But may be you's noticed, Sapphiry, that whenever I picks out a shoat to be turned into victuals next day, I always gives that shoat fust chanst at the buttermilk, an' see to it as how he kin jes' lay down all night, 'longside o' more corn 'n he could eat in a week. They ain't much difference 'twix' candidates an' shoats I reckon,--leastways some candidates. So you an' me's jes' got to git up a supper fer to-morry night sich as the candidate never seen in his life before. You go to the smoke house an' git the ham that hangs wrong end up on the third row o' hooks, three hams from the left end. Wash it an' put it on to bile right away so's that it'll have time to git firm cold. They's half a shoat in the spring house, an' we'll wring the necks o' some fryin'-size chickens to-night so's to have 'em ready. To-morry's the reg'lar twice a week churnin' day, so's that they'll be fresh butter an' plenty o' buttermilk ef the candidate happens to like buttermilk. I'll set a bakin' o' bread to-morry mornin' so's we kin have a hot loaf fer supper. As fer beat biscuit an' batter bread, we kin make 'em when the time comes. Say, Sapphiry, le's surprise the candidate!"

Judy uttered that sentence with enthusiasm and with a smile on her face. A happy thought had come to her.

"Tain't hog-killin' time yit, nor yit 'twon't be fer more'n a month to come, an' so nobody ain't seen no sassage sence last winter. Le's make some, out'n the trimmin's o' that half a shoat! You an' me kin chop it an' season it to-night an' it'll be extry superfine by supper time to-morrow."

"Well, you certainly is a layin' yourself out fer that there candidate, Mammy," said Sapphira in admiration of her mother's enthusiasm. "Is you a goin' to give him a chanst at your old peach and honey?"

"What! peach an' honey fer that miserable wild mustard patch of a candidate? Well, not ef I see it fust. Apple jack he'll drink, an' it'll come out o' that there bar'l as was made out o' last year's windfalls an' cullin's, at that. They ain't no fine flavor to that slop, but it'll make drunk come just the same, an' I reckon that's all a half breed like Webb's got any call to expect o' liquor. The best o' victuals ain't none too good fer anybody as sets down to Judy Peters's table, but politeness an' liquor goes by favor, an' I ain't got no favor to spare fer that doggoned counterfeit-copper cuss, Webb."

When Webb appeared, he found Judy arrayed in colors that the lilies of the field never dared assume and that Solomon in all his glory did not dream of. She had even put on her bracelets and her breast pin of green glass, simulating a setting of emeralds. She had borrowed Sapphira's earrings--great golden hoops that had cost a dollar and a quarter--and was wearing them in honor of the occasion.

Her gorgeousness of adornment and the barbaric lavishness of the supper she served him, convinced Webb at the outset that her favor was altogether his, that the mountain vote was secure, and that in spite of all alarms his triumphant election was as certain as any human event could be. Perhaps Judy had intended to create that impression on his mind. Certainly she did nothing to correct or remove it, and by the time supper was over Webb was so well satisfied with things as they were that he did not hesitate to indulge freely in the apple jack that Judy set out for his consumption.

When she had got his tongue "loosened up" to her liking, and not till then, she brought the conversation around to subjects connected with the political campaign. Webb had not ventured to introduce those subjects earlier. His instinct was keen enough to realize that in Judy Peters's house Judy Peters was herself the director of the conversation, and he had heard, till the fact was deeply impressed on his mind, that the person who forced the talk into channels of his own choosing was pretty sure to find himself snubbed and snuffed out by some caustic and high-flavored utterance of her majesty the Queen of the Mountains.

"Tell me 'bout your campaign, William Wilberforce Webb," she said after he had had a third or fourth helping of apple jack. Then she changed her mind--or perhaps the change had been in her mind all the while--and said: "No, don't bother 'bout that yit. Tell me, instid o' that, what you's a luggin' all that name around for. I s'pose when you was a boy they called you jes' Billy Webb. Why ain't that a good 'nough name for you now? You see us folks up here in the mountings ain't got much respec' nor patience like with names bigger'n the men what wears 'em. They was wunst a feller come up here what called hisself James Augustus de Forrest Hyde, an' we run him out'n the mountings. He come back arter a while a callin' hisself plain Jim Hyde, an' he's been a breedin' mules successful, like, ever since. You see when he fust come he brought more name along than he could tote, an' that's jest what you's a doin' with your William Wilberforce Webb. It sounds well down 'mong the stuck ups, but 'tain't no go up here in the mountings. Us folks likes somethin' plainer--somethin' like Boyd Westover."

"Of course you're right, Judy," answered Webb flinching a little at the name of his antagonist, "but when a man's parents have given him a long name what's he to do but wear it? A man's name's a part of him."

"Yes, an' it's that part us folks up here in the mountings don't like. It's the fool part. Why ain't 'W. W. Webb' a good enough name fer a one-horse vehicle like you?"

It was the epithet rather than the question that staggered Webb, but that it did stagger him was indicated to Judy's shrewd observation by the fact that he took three deep draughts of the apple brandy before answering. At last he said:

"Well, you see, Judy--"

"No, I don't see," she interrupted, "an' you ain't a goin' to make me see sense in a thing what ain't got no sense in it."

"I was going to say--" he began again.

"Yes, I know you was. Never mind a sayin' it. Listen to me. Ef I'm to help you in your canvass up here in the mountings, you's got to shorten your name somehow. Mind I don't say I's a goin' to help you,"--Judy's sturdy love of truth in the abstract prompted this qualification of what was essentially a lie in the concrete--"but _ef_ I'm to help you, you's got to give me a shorter name 'n William Wilberforce Webb to call you by. You see every time I try to say anything 'bout you my mouth gits so choked up, like, with that durned worm fence of a name that the rest o' the words won't come out nohow."

"I'm sorry, Judy, awfully sorry that my name offends you. Just call me Billy hereafter."

"That's all right for me," answered Judy, "but you was enominated by the name of William Wilberforce Webb, an that's the way it'll be wrote on the pollin' books. How's the folks up here in the mountings to know as how Billy Webb an' William Wilberforce Webb is the same feller? The two don't sound much alike. Howsomever we'll try an' manage that. Now tell me 'bout how things is a goin' down plantation ways."

In the embarrassment created by Judy's critical reflections upon his name, Webb had filled his large tumbler again with the insidious intoxicant, forgetting to add water, and had taken several swigs of the "reverend spirits," which is what Virginians always called undiluted brandy or whiskey. Judy had observed the fact but had not discouraged it. Her son, Daniel Webster, was at home that night to put Webb to bed if need be, and meanwhile she wanted to find out from Webb's indiscretion what she had no hope of learning in any other way, namely, "all about the gal that's mixed up in the matter."

To that end she interrupted Webb many times, checking his tendency to indulge in generalities and holding him down to facts. He told her how greatly Boyd Westover's intrusive nomination had disturbed what had promised to be a "walk-over campaign"; how the refusal of Colonel Conway to sign Boyd's nomination paper was exciting suspicion, and much else of interest to which Judy paid no heed. She harked back instead to the Conway matter.

"What was the matter with Conway?" she asked. "Has him an' young Westover had any fallin' out?"

Webb had attained that condition of alcoholic indiscretion in which the impulse is to be confidential and to say things far better left unsaid. He unbosomed himself.

"Well, you see, Judy," he said, "there are some things we don't mention, but you're a friend of mine, Judy, and you're entitled to my confidence. You see it's this way. The talk is that Boyd Westover and Colonel Conway's daughter Margaret were engaged to be married, when Westover committed--or was accused of committing the crime of which he was convicted and for which he was sentenced to the penitentiary. Some say she stood by him and he threw her over; some suggest that he couldn't explain things to her satisfaction--that she asked him questions he couldn't answer; some say he went back to Wanalah eager to marry the girl, and she threw him over because she didn't believe in his innocence. You see, Judy, he is, after all's said and done, only a pardoned criminal, and his pardon was based only on the confession of a poor demented fellow who has since been sent to Staunton as a lunatic. Anyhow it's plain that Colonel Conway believes Boyd Westover to be guilty, just as I do and as a good many other folks down our way do. If he isn't guilty, why's he hiding himself? Why don't he come into the district and face the music, instead of leaving that little monkey, Carley Farnsworth, to do everything for him? You never saw Carley Farnsworth, did you, Judy? Of course you didn't. Well, he's a little jackanapes of a doctor that's equally ready to give his blue pills by the mouth or at the point of a pistol. Boyd Westover has put him forward to overawe and intimidate everybody; but the Democrats will hold their vote this year and with your help, Judy, we'll make this election memorable."

"I don't know jest what that last word means, Billy, but after what you's been a tellin' me you kin bet your next winter's meat I'll have a hand in this here 'lection."

Judy never made promises that she did not fulfil. But if a candidate misinterpreted the phrases she used in making promises, she stoutly held that the fault was his and not hers.

"My words is good for what they call fer," she was accustomed to say, "but good money don't stand fer no counterfeits."

When she had got all she wanted out of Webb, she sent that worthy to bed, satisfied in his soul with things as they were, and as confident of the mountain vote in his behalf as of the excellence of Judy's cookery and the exhilaration that resided in her apple jack.

XXI

FLAGS FLYING

Judy was right in her reckoning as to the effect of her blind message upon the mood and movements of Boyd Westover. It was not far from midnight when Theonidas reported what his mother had said, and although the night was one of extreme darkness and a drizzling rain was falling, Boyd Westover set out at once to stumble down the precipitous mountain path to the scarcely less precipitous mountain road three miles away, and thence down, down, down, to whatever level the road might ultimately reach.

As he had never journeyed over that road before, and as its perils by night were very real and very great, Theonidas besought him to postpone the start until the dawn, but he refused to heed, and bidding the boy transfer the camp equipments to Judy Peters's house, to await orders, set off with the energy of a madman. Yet he had never been saner in all his life or in better condition to meet difficulty.

The delphic character of Judy's message left him, of course, in doubt as to the occasion of the talk about himself and to his detriment in his own neighborhood, but from the first he had not a shadow of doubt as to the substance and subject of that talk. He knew without telling that his fellow men had found some occasion--he could not guess what--for discussing his character and conduct and for recalling to his disadvantage his conviction of crime, his pardon and all the rest of it.

But he faced this sort of thing now in very different mood from that which had been his a few weeks before. Where before his impulse had been to shrink away from the horror, his mood now was to seek it out, to dare it, to defy it, to fight it with all the determination of a vigorous manhood aroused to self defence and not averse to vengeance. Where before he had instinctively sought solitude as a refuge, his impulse now was to seek the haunts of his fellow men, to challenge the criticism that had before so appalled him, to face the world with head erect and dare Fate to meet him hand to hand, foot to foot, eye to eye in combat.

The simple fact was that he had ceased to be morbid. In his life up there among the mountain tops he had regained his health of mind and body. In his contests with Nature's forces and his triumph over them in a thousand petty ways, he had become normal again. He was no longer the introspective, morbidly self-conscious victim of adverse circumstance that Judy Peters had found him to be, but a strong man rejoicing in his strength, a Westover of Wanalah who shrank from no danger and blanched in no foe's presence. He tramped down the mountain through six or seven hours of darkness in eager quest of those malignities from which he had before sought escape in a refuge of solitude. He wanted now to hear and combat the criticism from the very thought of which he had before been moved to flee in something like terror.

It was in this mood that he encountered the first news of what had happened. It presented itself in the shape of one of Carley Farnsworth's nominating placards, tacked to the great hewn log posts of a gate that spanned the road, and Westover, after nearly twenty miles of tramping, came upon it about sunrise. He could not imagine what to make of it, and after a minute's consideration he dismissed it as somebody's practical joke--a part perhaps of that "devil to pay" in his own neighborhood of which Judy Peters had sent him warning.

But as he continued his journey he found the thing repeated on every gatepost, on every conspicuous tree by the roadside, and all over the front of a blacksmith's shop which he had to pass.

There was nobody in the shop to answer questions at that early hour, but at that point the road forked, one arm of it leading to Wanalah and the other to Chinquapin Knob, the home of Carley Farnsworth. It was only three miles from that point to Wanalah, and it was full five miles to Chinquapin Knob, but, weary as his legs ought to have been and were not, after his twenty odd miles of tramping over rough roads, he turned his face not toward Wanalah but in the opposite direction, resolving to take breakfast with Carley Farnsworth at Chinquapin Knob. He quickened his pace too, after a glance at his watch.

"It's half-past six," he said to himself, "and Carley has the barbaric habit of breakfasting at eight. I must do the five miles in an hour and a half, if I don't want a breakfast of leftovers, and this morning I don't."

As he trudged on up a glutinous red clay hill road, it began to rain again in dismal fashion, but the fact did not depress him.

"It'll make the clay road soapy," he reflected, "so I must put a little more vim into my leg motions if I'm to do the trick on time."

With that he added ten or a dozen steps per minute to his pace and thought no more about the matter.

Boyd Westover was himself again. That was all.

Tree after tree, as he passed on, confronted him with a repetition of the announcement that "We the undersigned, deeming it desirable that," etc., etc., "hereby nominate Boyd Westover, Esq., of Wanalah, for election as the representative of this Senate district in the upper house of the Legislature, and we appeal to the pride and patriotism of our friends, fellow citizens and neighbors," and so on to the end of the chapter of Carley Farnsworth's free flowing rhetoric. Westover did not pause to look at any of them. There was no need. He had already learned what the placards proclaimed, and he had already observed the conspicuous absence of Colonel Conway's name from the list of those who thus urged his election. He could no more guess the meaning of its absence than others had been able to do, but he was not surprised by the fact. In view of Colonel Conway's failure to call upon him during the days of his late stay at Wanalah, he would have been astonished if that gentleman's name had appeared on the paper. But his mood was not now what it had been before. He was no longer disposed to be submissive even to Fate, or to reconcile himself to its unjust decrees. As he strode onward at the pace he had set himself he reflected:

"Of course Colonel Conway was under no obligation to call upon me, except the obligation of old friendship, and that he was free to regard as cancelled, if he chose. And of course he was under no obligation to sign that nominating paper, if he did not wish. But he knew that his failure to call upon me was a conspicuous neglect to which others would attach importance, and he knew that his refusal to sign the paper would be everywhere interpreted as an accusation that must put shame upon me. I have a right to demand a greater explicitness of accusation, and I will. His silence does me a greater hurt than any other man's utterance could. I have a right to challenge it on the ground of its injustice. I have a right to insist that he shall speak, and I will make that demand and enforce it."

Obviously Boyd Westover had recovered his vigor and was again fit to call himself by the name his forebears had borne for generations past--Westover of Wanalah--a name which in that community had always stood for virility, courage and uncompromising honor; a name that had meant secure peace to those who deserved peace and quick war to those who were hostilely disposed; a name that had always represented what is best in manhood, both in its tenderly forbearing gentleness of impulse and its relentless strength of purpose.

As he approached Chinquapin Knob the evidences of his candidacy rapidly multiplied. The outer gate of Carley Farnsworth's plantation was plastered all over with the nomination placards, and as the house came into view Boyd saw a great flagstaff there carrying in the breeze three long tailed streamers on which, as he presently made out, were inscribed the legends:

"For Senator--Boyd Westover!"

"Vote for a Gentleman!"

"Westover of Wanalah!"

"I don't understand it," Westover reflected as he climbed the last hill and saw by a glance at his watch that he was a quarter of an hour ahead of his scheduled time, "I don't understand it, but obviously I'm a candidate for Senator and with equal obviousness I'm in for a fight if I am to win. So much the better. I don't care a fig about the Senatorship, but I'll enjoy the fight. I'm in the mood for it. And besides I like to win the game, whatever the stake may be. I'll fight for this election as I never fought for anything before in my life. I wonder who the other fellow is, anyhow--my opponent?"

Clearly his twenty-five mile walk, made between midnight and breakfast time, had not robbed Boyd Westover of any of the vigor of mind and temper that were his by inheritance and that the mountains had given back to him.

"I'm almost famished," he said to himself. "It suddenly occurs to me that I was out after a catamount last night and forgot all about my supper. I wonder if Carley has a roe herring for my breakfast. Anyhow he'll have a lot of other good things."

As he finished his wondering he entered the house grounds at Chinquapin Knob, and Carley Farnsworth, who was smoking his before-breakfast pipe in the porch, caught sight of him.

Their greetings and questions were like shots from a rapid fire gun, an implement of slaughter which had not then been invented by the devilish ingenuity of greed in the service of murder.

Out of the cross fire Carley Farnsworth managed to extract the information that his friend had been tramping since midnight with a stomach empty since noon of the preceding day.

"Good!" he exclaimed. "Excellent! You're altogether fit. You're in shape or you never could have done that. But I won't answer any question you can conceivably ask"--for Boyd had already begun a clamorous catechism as to what it all meant--"until we've had breakfast and a pipe. Enos!" addressing a negro boy, "go to the kitchen and tell Elsie there'll be a lot of trouble at Chinquapin Knob if breakfast isn't on the table in five minutes,--do you hear?"

"Now tell me, Carley, what all this means," pleaded Westover.

"I'll do nothing of the kind until after breakfast," answered the other. "I'm a doctor you know, and I have the honor to be the family physician at Wanalah. By the way, Boyd, you've got three cases of typhoid in your lower quarters, and as I suspected the well I've ordered it filled up, and the negroes down there are carrying their water half a mile or so. That isn't what I wanted to talk about. As your family physician I have your health in charge. You're in superb condition now, and it's my business to keep you so. You've made a long tramp on an empty stomach--a very unwise thing to do, but as a doctor I'm used to that sort of thing. There wouldn't be any serious work for us doctors to do, if people generally were wise. But you've made a tremendous draft upon your bank account of vigor, and it is time for you to make a deposit to keep the account good. You need breakfast, before you burden your mind even with anything I have to say. And by the way, Johnny is bringing in the breakfast two whole minutes before the time. There's the loaf of hot light bread, and the roe herrings and the biscuits and the batter bread. There's a cold ham on the dresser and the batter cakes or waffles or something of that kind will come in later. Kizzy, my housekeeper, is making the coffee; she always does that the last thing in order that it may be fresh. She frequently utters the dictum, 'Coffee ain't no good ef you don't drink it while the aromatics is in it.' I don't know where she got that word, but there is always a supply of delicious 'aromatics' in Kizzy's coffee. Come. Here's a cold jowl if you care for it, and there's sausage before you, and liver and chidlings--you see I killed half my hogs the other day. Eat your breakfast and make it a good one. If you don't I'll refuse to tell you any of the interesting things you're so anxious to hear about."

XXII

AN UNMISTAKABLE CURE

When the breakfast was over and, with long-stemmed pipes alight, the two friends foregathered in front of a blazing fire--for the drizzling autumn day was chill--Westover again demanded to know "what all this thing means."

"You must have seen some of the placards?"

"_Some_ of them? It seems to me that all the woods have been papered with them. But what does it mean?"

"Oh, that's obvious enough. It means that a goodly number of your neighbors and friends have nominated you for Senator, moved thereto by a conviction that the intelligence and character of the district deserve a better representative than William Wilberforce Webb."

Farnsworth was careful not to suggest Judy Peters's initiative or interest in the matter. That was a secret between him and her.

The mention of Webb's name as that of his opponent, started Westover out of his chair, and as he stood upon the hearth he said, in tones that were kept in subjection by sheer force of a resolute will:

"Oh, then it is Webb I'm running against. That puts a new face on the affair. I like that. Against him I'll make a whirlwind campaign. But how on earth did that fellow manage to secure a nomination by so respectable a party as the Whigs?"

"Chiefly by general neglect. He worked for the nomination and all the rest of us let it go to him by default. That's the substance of the story."