Part 8

"They's somethin' about a gal in the case, but jes' naturally I couldn't git at that. Men is sech fools 'bout women anyhow! A young feller will pick one purty gal out'n a dozen, all on 'em jes' as purty an' jes' as smart as she is, an' ef she gives him the mitten he'll go mournin' about, jes' as ef she was the onliest tadpole in the puddle, while all the rest o' the dozen purty gals is a standin' ready to make as big a fool out'n him as ever she could 'a' done. It's cur'ous but 'tain't to be helped no way, I reckon.

"Howsomever the thing to do is to git him interested in somethin', an' I kin manage that. He'll git healthy like, up thar' in the high mountings, an' by the time he comes back I'll git somethin' ready fer him to do."

Boyd was already better in spirits when he greeted the sun the next morning from the top of a hill near Judy's place. The air of the mountains had been good for him. Better still had been Judy's cordiality and her naturalness. After all his depression had been rooted in the artificialities of human association, and in Judy Peters's company there was no such artificiality. She had not hesitated to interrupt his narrative of events at various points to tell him that in this or that particular he had been a "darned fool," or a "frosted potater vine," or a "dod dasted idjit," or something else of the sort that she thought helpful to her endeavor to bring him back to a healthy mental condition.

Her main reliance for his restoration to normality, however, was in getting something strenuous for him to do. "Hard work's the calomel he needs, an' a good hard fight's his quinine. It'll cure his chills, an' I'll git it ready fer him."

With that determination fixed in her mind, Judy knocked the ashes out of her pipe, covered up the kitchen fire, set some roe herrings to soak, and went to bed. Sleep was to her healthy soul a matter of course.

XVII

JUDY INFORMS HERSELF AND MAKES PLANS

It was well past midsummer when Westover after a stay of three days went from Judy Peters's place up into the higher and more desolate parts of the mountain region. He was accompanied by Theonidas, whose instructions from his mother were minute and explicit.

"B'ar in mind, Theonidas," she said to him in an intimate conversation, "as how your duty's to keep him busy with things outsiden' hisself. He's got too many books 'long with him, but they's good ef he don't git to readin' of 'em by daylight. You's got to look out fer that. Ef you find him a readin' an' a broodin' by daylight, you jes' find out somethin' 'bout a b'ar or a catamount hangin' round, an' git him to lookin' fer that. An' ef he gits to readin' too late o' nights, showin' as how his min's oneasy like, you kin git up a night hunt or somethin' like that, or ef that don't work you kin go out an' yell like a painter till he gits his gun."

A "painter," in mountain parlance, meant a panther, or more properly the mountain lion, a catlike, predatory beast between whom and the mountaineers there was eternal war.

"Anyhow, Theonidas," concluded Judy, "you ain't no fool, an' now as you knows my intentions, you's to carry 'em out. Keep him a goin'. Keep him busy. Keep him so durned tired that he can't help sleepin' o' nights. That's your cawntract. Ef he gits contrary an' won't git sleepy an' you can't think o' nothin' else to do, jes' you set down an' tell him a lot o' your yarns. He's too perlite not to let you talk on, an' I ain't never knowed nothin' as would put a feller to sleep quicker'n one o' your yarns, Theonidas."

In the event there proved to be no need of the soporific influence of Theonidas's yarns. Westover had gone into the mountains to distract his mind with sport, and he pursued that purpose ceaselessly by day and by night. He would hunt deer, bears, turkeys, squirrels, pheasants and every other species of game as it came into the advancing season, throughout the day, and at night after a campfire dinner which he cooked for himself, he and Theonidas would go eagerly in quest of night prowlers--'coons, 'possums, and painters. Now and then he would send Theonidas down the mountain with a present of game for Judy, while he himself exercised his wits in controversy with a certain wily old trout that was accustomed to jeer at him from one or another pool of the stream that flowed by the cabin door. Sometimes he sent a haunch of venison, a half dozen pheasants or a brace of young wild turkey gobblers, with a request that Judy should arrange for their delivery to Carley Farnsworth, a commission he knew she would execute to the letter.

In brief, young Westover was growing healthy of mind and body again, while the books he had brought with him to serve as a means of killing time lay unopened in the log cabin where he slept for long hours at such times as physical weariness forbade him further to follow the sports of the glorious out of doors.

In the meanwhile Judy Peters was maturing her plans. She kept Edgar Coffey most of the time in the plantation part of the county, with instructions to find out how the people down there felt toward Westover, and who among them might be trusted to aid her in a project she had formed, when the time should be ripe for its execution. As a result of Edgar's mousing inquiries and her own shrewd skill in discriminating between truth and falsehood in his periodical reports, Judy Peters knew more about sentiment in the piedmont region than anybody there did, not excepting William Wilberforce Webb, whose personal concern it was to inform himself accurately as to that. She knew, as Webb did not, that the great majority of the men of Westover's own class--the men of assured social position--were strongly disposed to regard his misfortune with generous sympathy, while those of less well assured standing were disposed to shrug shoulders and give hints of doubt.

She learned one thing, however, that troubled her a good deal. Among those of Westover's own class there was a vague, undefined but none the less hurtful suspicion that he had somehow failed of manly chivalry in his treatment of Margaret Conway. The suspicion had its origin in the fact that Colonel Conway would in no way discuss Westover's case or express any opinion concerning him or his conduct. On the other hand it lacked definiteness for the same reason. If there were no truth in it, people argued, Colonel Conway would certainly plant a heavy heel upon the rumor as an act of simple justice to a falsely accused young man; if there were truth in it, it was difficult to understand why Colonel Conway did not call the young man to account in some way.

Of all these conditions Judy was fully informed and when the autumn came, with the general election in prospect, she directed Edgar Coffey to find out definitely concerning the prospective "enominations," as she and all the rest of the mountain folk called them.

"Is that there fadey calico feller, Webb, a goin' to be enominated fer State senator from our distric'," she asked of her emissary when he returned from his mission.

"No, he's a strikin' higher like. He's a goin' to be enominated fer State senator from this distric'; in fac' he's enominated a'ready, an' he's mighty proud like over it."

"Yes, well, what's he a sayin' 'bout it?"

"He says as he's got the reg'lar Whig enomination, an' as this is a strong Whig distric', he's got the 'lection sure."

Judy sat silent for awhile. Then she asked:

"Is he a standin' on one leg while he's a waitin' fer it, Edgar? 'Case ef he is he's a goin' to git mighty tired 'fore he gits the other foot down. You tramp over to Marcellus McGrath's this evenin' an' tell him I want to see him to-morrer mornin', sure. Tell him I've got a job fer him, an' don't fergit to say he's to do it with his head. Ef he thought 'twas work, he would forgit to come. Git along now. Time's money you know, though you can't never git nobody to give you silver change fer it."

Marcellus McGrath was the mountain schoolmaster, who read everything from quack medicine almanacs to patent office reports, remembered everything he read to the last detail, and never in his life made the smallest use of the information with which the lumber room he called his mind was packed full. Facts were everything to him; the significance of facts had never occurred to him as a thing worthy of consideration.

He came promptly in response to Judy's summons, and he brought with him his big, shaggy headful of unrelated facts and figures, more securely lodged in his memory than in any book of reference or any table of statistics.

Judy "tapped him," as she described the process, as soon as he had lighted his pipe after a barbaric feast of fried chicken, jowl and greens, pot cheese, green corn, batter bread, cold ham, tomatoes, souse, roast venison from Westover's camp, cucumbers, onions, apple butter, rice pudding, apple dumplings, and ice cream.

By way of explanation to Sapphira, while the meal was in process of preparation, she had said:

"Mark McGrath don't git none too much to eat at home, I reckon, an' I'm a goin' to pump enough facts an' figgers out'n him to leave room for the other things."

But she did not begin the pumping process until McGrath's pipe was comfortably lighted, and then she did so gently at first. She had placed a slate and pencil on a table by his side, so that he might "figger out" anything she wanted elucidated.

"How many voters is they in this here senate distric'?" she asked him to begin with; and he gave the figures promptly.

"Set that down on the slate," she directed, and the order was obeyed.

"'Bout how many o' them is planters' votes--countin' in the overseers an' the rest o' them as always votes the way the planters tells 'em to?"

McGrath thought for a brief while and then gave his estimate.

"How many of 'em is Democratic votes?"

"Oh, the district is almost solidly Whig. The Democratic vote is really a negligible quantity," the schoolmaster, beginning to feel his importance, replied.

"I ain't a fishin' fer big words, Mark. I's a huntin' fer facts. Don't you make no mistake about that. Now, tell me, how many Democratic votes was they in the last election?"

So she went on with her catechism, making her interlocutor set down on the slate such figures as she wished to use in her calculations. With these as factors she made the schoolmaster do a deal of abstruse reckoning, the purport and purpose of which he could not at all conjecture, but the results of which seemed to satisfy her, as she said at the end of it all:

"It kin be did, an' by the Hokey Pokey Fenokey it's a goin' to be did. That little worm-eaten, blossom-blasted chestnut of a Webb'll wish he hadn't never let go of his hold on the tree when Judy Peters gits through with him. Say, Mark, what does William Wilberforce mean?"

"It's a name," McGrath began.

"Yes, I know that. But what does it mean? Whose name was it fust off? An' what was it he done? An' how'd that miserable little bob-tailed rooster Webb git a hold onto it?"

Judy's antagonisms were implacable, and they were apt to find expression in her epithets and her metaphors. She knew next to nothing of Webb, and she had permitted her mountaineers to vote for him at the last preceding election. But now that she recognized in him an enemy of Boyd Westover, she hated him with an intensity and an unreason possible only to a nature such as hers, in which the primal passions of humanity had yielded themselves to no chastening of circumstance or civilization.

McGrath, to whom no hint of Judy's purposes had been given, answered her questions as if reading from a cyclopædia:

"William Wilberforce was an Englishman, celebrated as a philanthropist and especially distinguished by his work for the abolition of negro slavery. He was known in England as 'the great abolitionist.'"

"That's all right," said Judy with a grunt of satisfaction. "I ain't got no way o' findin' out how that bow-legged hoppergrass, Webb, got a holt'n the name, but he'll wish't he hadn't 'fore I git through with him. Now, Mark, I want you to write down jes' what you's tole me--no more an' no less--'bout that there abolitionist Wilberforce. Jest write it down on paper an' leave it."

"What are you up to, Judy, anyhow?" McGrath ventured to ask.

"That's what the queen bee axed the b'ar when he clum' the bee tree, an' the b'ar says: 'I'm up to the hole that's got the honey in it'."

And Judy vouchsafed no further explanation of her purposes.

Next day she sent for Edgar Coffey and questioned him.

"Who's this here Don Carlos Farnsworth that Westover's always a sendin' game to? Do you know him?"

"Yes. He's a white man."

In the parlance of Virginia at that time there was no phrase that meant so much as that. To say of one that he was "a white man" was to say that he was honest, upright, true and loyal to the tips of his fingers. Judy perfectly understood and so far was satisfied.

"Kin he talk?" she asked.

"Well I reckon. I ain't never seed him when he was a doin' anything else. Words streams out'n him like water out'n a spoutin' spring, an' they's the sort o' words that wallops you all up an' don't leave you no chanst to argify."

"You go down thar to-morrow, Edgar, an' tell him please to come up here jes' as quick as he kin, an' have dinner an' a night's lodgin' like. Tell him I want to see him 'bout Boyd Westover, an' ef he backs an' pulls on the halter like, you tell him I say Boyd's in a bad way in certain respec's. Remember to say 'in certain respec's.' Ef you don't you'll mislead him."

"Why not write him a letter, Judy, an' let me carry it? Then you'd be sure."

"I ain't a writin' no letters. You see's long as you jes' send word like, they ain't nothin' for anybody to git a hold on. Nobody kin be sure you said jest them words, and nobody kin prove you didn't say 'em jes' a little differenter. But ef you put yourself down in writin' they's got you. No, I ain't a writin' nothin', partic'lar when I's got a hen on the nest fer some feller. So you jes' go down there to-morrow an' tell Don Carlos Farnsworth I'm a invitin' him up here on Boyd Westover's account. Ef he says he'll come, you hain't got no need to say no more. But ef he backs in the traces like, you jes' tell him what I tole you about Boyd a bein' in a bad way in certain respec's. Remember them words an' say 'em right--'_in certain respec's_.'"

XVIII

JUDY PLANS A CAMPAIGN

Judy's summons brought Carley Farnsworth up into the mountains within the fewest possible hours after she gave it to her emissary to deliver. For Carley Farnsworth was Westover's friend, and in Virginia at that time friendship meant a readiness to serve at any cost or hazard.

It was nearing supper time when Farnsworth appeared at Judy's hospitable door and introduced himself.

"This is Mrs. Peters, I suppose?" he said as she confronted him.

"Judy Peters is my name," she answered in that spirit of mountain democracy which scorns titles and distinctions and shams of every other sort.

Farnsworth was quick to catch the underlying significance of her correction and both diplomacy and humor prompted him to play the game as she wanted it played.

"That's what I hoped for," he responded quickly; "for Judy Peters is the very person I most want to see in all the world just now. I am Carley Farnsworth, Judy. Of course Boyd has written the name 'Don Carlos' every time he has sent me game through you, and so you don't know me as 'Carley,' but that's what I am to all my friends, and I count you as one of the best of them because you're a friend of Boyd Westover, just as I am."

"Now that's spoke up like a real, natural young feller, an' not like a drasted stuck-up," responded Judy, shaking hands and bestowing him in a porch chair where a minute later she pressed a toddy of apple brandy upon his acceptance, as a sure cure for the weariness he must feel after his trapes up the mountain.

As he sipped the seductive beverage he and she talked. But neither alluded even in the most distant way to the occasion for his visit or to Judy's summons, or to anything else relating to Boyd Westover. They were both fencing for position. Each wanted to "size up" the other, before approaching matters of confidence and consequence. But by the time Judy's generous supper was at an end these two understood each other and each trusted the other. Judy had told him how many "hawgs" she sent down the mountain every year to be sold to planters, to be corn fed for three weeks, and converted into hams, bacon, souse, and all the rest of the good things in which Virginian appetites revelled. She had told him how many "bar'ls" of apple brandy she made "in a average year," how much cider, how much vinegar, and where her market was for all these things. Incidentally she had given him her picturesque opinions upon many questions of human character, life and conduct, and he in his turn had told her everything he could think of, concerning himself.

"Now you an' me's acquainted," Judy said when she thought the time ripe for the revelation of her plans. "You's the sort o' feller to git acquainted with, easy an' natural like, 'case you ain't got nothin' to keep up your sleeve, an' you ain't got up in a lot o' shams an' frills. You is straight goods, Carley, all wool, a yard wide an' dyed in the hanks. May be it's 'cause you's a real 'ristocrat what don't need to keep on tellin' 'bout it."

"Thank you for the compliment, Judy," said Farnsworth, interrupting.

"They ain't no compliment to thank anybody for," she replied. "They ain't never no compliments a flyin' about when Judy Peters is mixed up in the talk; or ef they is they's purty apt to git holes punched in 'em. Ef I thought you was a palaverin' liar, Carley, I'd tell you so straight out. Ef I thought you was a feller what would say one thing an' do another, you'd hear that opinion from Judy Peters's lips, an' what's more you wouldn't hear none o' the things I axed you to come up here to hear about. Now le's git down to business, as the feller said when the sheriff was slow about a hangin' of him. You see, Carley, Boyd Westover's had a shakin' up, an' he ain't right in his sperits. He's got a notion into his head that folks is down on him an' all that. S'long as he's up there a huntin' an' fishin' an' listenin' to Theonidas's yarns an' sleepin' tight he's all right. But that notion 'bout folks a bein' down on him is still a stickin' in his mind, like mutton gravy sticks in the roof of your mouth, an' you an' me's got to cure him of it. I's already laid out plans, an' ef you're game to help me, we'll rub that thing off'n his slate."

"I'm game to help you, Judy, in any way you like. You may bet all the apple brandy you've got on that."

"Is that a hint, like? Does you want another nip? 'Cause ef you do, it'll be here quicker'n lightnin'."

"No, Judy. I don't want another dram, and I never indulge in hints, especially with a straightforward person like you. If I wanted a drink I'd tell you so, but in fact I hardly ever taste liquor of any sort, and that toddy you gave me was the first I've sipped in a year or more."

"Yes, it's curious, but they's a good many young men nowadays as don't take to their drams natural like. I s'pose it's all right, but I don't understand it. Anyhow, that's no matter. As I was a sayin', Boyd Westover's got that notion in his head 'bout folks a bein' down on him, an' it'll come back to him when the snow drives him down out'n the mountings. Now the way to cure him of it's to git him 'lected to somethin', an' I's got the somethin' picked out. When he fin's as folks has voted for him agin t'other feller, he jes' naturally can't go on a thinkin' folks is down on him. See?"

"Yes, I see that, and your idea is a good one, Judy, if we can get him to run for some office."

"Git him to run? We won't ax him. We'll jes' run him ourselves, an' we'll 'lect him too, ef the big figgers tops the little ones as I's always seed 'em do in a 'lection count."

Judy was apt to be confident in her predictions, chiefly for the reason that she never made a prediction till she knew all the facts that might bear in any way upon its fulfilment.

"That's what I wanted to see you about, Carley. This is the way of it. You kin help, an' I'm a bettin' my fingers agin fishhooks you'll do it."

"It's a good bet, Judy," he interrupted. "I'd do anything imaginable for Westover, and, now that I know you, I'd do even more than that for you. Go on. What's your plan?"

"Well, you see that measly little soap-locked sap-head, William Wilberforce Webb--they's more name to the man than man to the name--has gone an' got hisself enominated fer the Senate. That suits me down to the ground. You an' me is a goin' to beat him out'n his boots, an' 'lect Westover in his stid. That's the game an' the way the wind blows, an' the lay o' the land."

"But, Judy, can we do it? You see Webb has secured the regular Whig nomination, and this is a strong Whig district."

"That's all right," answered Judy, confident of the "figgerin'" she had made Marcellus McGrath do on her slate. "You see it's this a'way. The Democrats ain't got no chanst to 'lect a man o' their own, but they're a layin' low to rip the righteousness out'n the reg'lar Whig candidate ef they git the chanst, an' you an' me's a goin' to give 'em the chanst. We'll enominate Westover as a 'Independent Whig candidate' an' every Democrat in the distric' 'll vote for him. They won't be no Democrat candidate."

"Are you sure of that, Judy? With two Whigs running they might think they had a chance to slip a Democrat in."

"They mout, of course, but they won't," answered Judy, confidently. "I's seen to that. You don't s'pose Judy Peters was borned day before yesterday, do you, Carley?" Then, without waiting for him to protest a greater respect for her age and experience, she continued:

"Shouldn't wonder ef the Democrats got some local offices this year. You see the mounting vote is uncertain. Anyhow, they won't enominate anybody for the Senate; or, yes they will. They's a makin' the enomination to-day. But after you an' me has got Westover a goin' their candidate will withdraw hisself an' urge all Democrats to vote fer Westover an' 'lect him. You see the Democrat vote is a leetle more'n twenty-five per cent. in this Senate distric'. I got Marcellus McGrath to figger that out. An' twenty-five per cent. is a quarter, Mark says, an' he knows. Now the vote up here in the mountings is more'n half o' the whole, 'cause us folks up here raises more children than the planter people does. They ain't no profit in boastin', but I kin tell you jes' confidential like, that ef Judy Peters lets her tongue git too loose an' the secret slips out that she wants Boyd Westover 'lected, you could count on your fingers an' toes the votes the other feller'd git up here in the mountings. Seems to me like a sure thing, Carley."

With that Judy chuckled in satisfaction.

"But you've hearn talk o' 'moral effec',' haven't you, Carley?"

Farnsworth intimated that he had some small perception of the meaning of the terms, and Judy went on:

"Well, what you an' me's a playin' for is moral effec' on Boyd Westover. As fer 'lectin' him, they won't be no trouble 'bout that. But ef the moral effec' is to be strong, we mus' git the biggest vote we kin for him down among the plantation people. Fust off, then, he's got to be enominated by that sort o' folks, without no hint o' Judy Peters or the mountings in it. That's your fust job. You go down there, sayin nothin' 'bout Judy Peters or the mountings, an' git a lot o' the stuck-ups to jine you in enominatin' him."