Part 10

I borrowed some blank paper and went up to my room and figured for many hours, stopping only to eat a good dinner--a boiled dinner in Vose’s best style. My plate was piled high twice with corned beef fringed with golden fat, succulent disks of yellow carrots, wine-red beets, snowy white spuds, and odorous turnips. No man could possibly be a pessimist with that dinner under his belt! I had every reason to be the most apprehensive man in Avon County, but I had set my face to the front and I had just naturally made up my mind that I was going to pay for that dinner and for the other things which I had been recklessly ordering. I proposed to put myself into a position where I would be compelled to use every bit of my capital of cheek. The sweat stood, out on my forehead, but it wasn’t the kind of moisture which could soften my grit.

In the afternoon, every time a steaming horse came homing back to Vose’s stable, I felt a funny quiver inside me.

“I reckon you have got a good line on human nature, young Sidney,” stated the landlord, when I went down to the foreroom before supper. “From what the men say this rushing around back district’s with teams has got the boys all heifered up. Even if they don’t come in to go to work, they’ll be here to see what in tunket the hoorah’s about.”

“I have heard my father say that this town was always ready to turn out to a bee,” I told him. When I said it another thought came to cheer me--I had noticed that when a lot of men were set at work together on one job the natural spirit of rivalry put pep into the bunch.

When Dodovah Vose went to his kitchen to give an eye to supper, I plucked a telegraph blank from his office desk. I nerved myself to try on my most audacious trick of all. I wrote this:

_To Ross Sidney, Levant.--Offer accepted. Go ahead with work. Will settle with you on my return._

_Z. Kingsley._

I set my jaws and told myself that the message wasn’t all falsehood; the last sentence was strictly true, even if Zebulon Kingsley did not pen it.

I folded the paper, stuck it in my pocket, and went again to the Kingsley house. It was brazen business--a dangerous hazard. But I was depending on woman’s inadequacy. I felt that I had the two of them sized pretty well. They had never presumed to meddle in the affairs of their master. They would not dare to question his will. I figured that sending him a wire asking corroboration of the message to me would seem to them like bold interference which would bring reproof from him.

I waited, respectfully standing, while they read the message, Celene looking over her mother’s shoulder.

“It’s more about the wood-lot matter,” I explained. “I think you heard your father make me a price on it. Miss Kingsley.”

“I remember distinctly, mother. Father said he would sell for two thousand dollars.”

“I know it must seem rather irregular,” I said, “but in my wire I explained that my people are in a great hurry--and I’m glad that he has been willing to meet me half-way. It means that I am to put on a crew at once and cut the wood--and, of course, it’s a safe proposition for the judge,” I went on, forcing the best smile I could. “Neither the land nor the wood can be carried away in a shawl-strap before he returns--I think he said in a week or ten days!”

They returned my smile, and for the first time Mrs. Kingsley seemed rather cordial.

“I’m glad you are taking it off his hands,” she declared. “It will be one less thing for him to worry about. He has been so troubled by his business. I’m sure that he’ll be glad to get rid of a lot more property in the same way.”

My soul whispered its doubts!

“I hope that the matter is all clear now and that you have a good understanding, Mrs. Kingsley. You will explain, will you, if anybody comes to you in regard to the matter or questions my authority?”

“I will, Mr. Sidney.”

She exchanged glances with her daughter and they seemed to understand each other quickly. While we had been talking I heard the subdued clatter of supper preparations in another room.

“I feel sure that if my husband were here,” said Mrs. Kingsley, “he would extend the hospitality of our house to a gentleman who was obliging him in a business matter. Won’t you stay and take supper with us, Mr. Sidney?”

Without replying, I gave my hat into the ready hands of Celene and sat down weakly.

I was tickled nigh foolish--I’ll admit that. But I was not wholly taken in by that hospitality play. Mrs. Zebulon Kingsley had known too much about me and my breed-to feel any great hankering to have me as a guest. But I was willing to bet a big plum that she was thinking a lot about my uncle’s hostility and about the judge’s fear of that rambunctious town official. And I was also sure that certain matters had been talked over between her and Celene since my arrival in town with such outward emblems of importance and prosperity. Furthermore, had I not fairly promised the daughter that I would do my best in the line of uncle-busting?

So I held on to my emotions as best I could and waited for the subject to come up. It did, of course. I had not been in the house ten minutes before Mrs. Kingsley burst out. She was full of that topic. She saw in my uncle’s attitude nothing but a wanton desire to make trouble for a good and great man.

I had been thinking over the matter of that hostility since my morning’s talk with Uncle Deck. I had been developing a sharp-ended suspicion that my uncle had something up his sleeve with which to arm that hostility. Judge Kingsley would never have pulled his wife into a row he was having with Decker Sidney unless desperation had moved him. I was bitterly ashamed and grieved when I listened to her description of that unutterable interview.

As for her, she had no suspicions as to her husband’s integrity--I could see that! The picture she made of the affair was of a mad dog chasing a saint!

“But what does the man think he can do to my husband? He can do nothing. He must realize it. What has he said to you, Mr. Sidney? I ask you, for I am sure you do not approve, his actions.”

I looked at Celene, and answered that I certainly did not approve, nor had I ever approved many things my uncle did.

“I will say further that I did what I could to-day to turn him from his grudge.”

“But what does he think he can do to my husband?” she insisted. “I suppose he told you.”

“No, he did not, madam. He said he did not trust me. He twitted me with having betrayed him once before to the judge--about the doctored horse,” I added, with a sickly grin.

“But, of course, you--his own nephew--you produced some effect on him?”

“Yes, I made him so mad he would have struck me if he had dared. That’s all the effect I seemed to produce.”

Tears came into her eyes. “How will it end?” she quavered.

I did not feel like bragging just then about any powers of mine in the matter; I had plenty on my mind and conscience as it was. I was distinctly aware of being glad I had had that boiled dinner, and plenty of it, and I say that much with all due respect for the blessed presence of Celene at the supper-board. For between my ever-swelling love for her, my self-consciousness at table, my shame on account of my uncle, and my general emotions, anyway, I could scarcely choke down a mouthful. And at the end I was wholly and fairly rattled--that expression seems to fit my state of mind better than anything I can think of right now.

She accompanied me to the door that evening when I departed--Mrs. Kingsley allowed her to go alone, evidently having elevated me to the plane of, at least, a buttonhole friend of the family after hearing of my quarrel with my uncle.

And being rattled, and seeing the grieved anxiety in her eyes, and knowing how much distress must be tearing at her poor heart, I gulped out that I would put my uncle where he belonged. I was saying to myself that I would see him in tophet before I’d allow his persecution to harm those innocent women, and I came nigh saying that to her in my excitement.

She put out to me both of her hands, and I took them. I tossed all prudence over the rail then.

“If there’s got to be a fight in the Sidney family, then there’ll be one! You tell your mother to sleep easy. I’ll take this thing in hand from now on and I won’t have your father abused by anybody.”

I was talking as big as old Lord Argyle, and I knew I was babbling like a fool--bu t what can’t a girl’s wet eyes do to a fellow’s common, sense?

“We trust you,” she said. “You have made me so happy!”

I bent down and kissed her dear hands, first one and then the other. When I straightened up and saw the flush on her cheeks and the shy pleasure in her eyes I went the limit without stopping to take thought. I put my arms around her and kissed her on the lips--and no honest man can look me squarely in the eye and tell me there’s any memory like the remembrance of the first kiss from one’s own true love! For the first true love is not merely maiden--she has elements of the goddess in her!

Therefore, having presumed so much with a goddess, I was immediately frightened and found myself ready to struggle with apology--and apology did not fit that occasion. So I ran away before I made more of a fool of myself.

“Good night!” I whispered from the gate. “I love you!”

She closed the big door very softly and I gathered good omen from that.

How bright the stars were when I looked at them through my tears! A half-century ago a Yankee poet wrote these verses when he was in love:

When twilight’s sable curtain falls,

Then stars stand thick at even To act as outside sentinels Around the gates of heaven.

That night along the shimmering slant,

(I tell you true, my brother)

The password was “Almira Grant”

They whispered to each other.

I knew mighty well what was their password that March night when I walked away from Celene.

I was not fit for any tavern society just then. Impulse seized upon me and I went down into the orchard. True love does not forget his trails and his caches! I found the tree with the hollow trunk and slipped my hand into the hole; I pulled forth the little packet of three rings. I reckoned that when I got my courage and my voice I would have a story to tell her--some evidence of love longstanding to offer--and that I’d find those rings pretty valuable as exhibits A, B, and C.

There were quite a number of gossiping loafers in the tavern foreroom when I marched in at last and took my room key from its hook.

If there had been any doubt among them as to my importance in the world, that doubt must have vanished when they looked on me that night; for if I did not feel at that moment that the world was mine, nobody ever did!

XII--STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT

THE men were there in the morning--a mob of them.

They came riding and they footed it into the village. The tavern office was crowded and the yard was full.

The growing buzz of them woke me before sunup, and I wasted no time in dressing and getting down.

It was just as I had expected--the spirit of a lark was in them. They were not like men who had come dragging themselves to work. The men I knew--and I knew a lot of them on account of my early goings and comings about the countryside on my uncle’s affairs--were on my back in a moment, their mouths full of questions.

But I was not ready to talk turkey till I had settled on one point, and I told them to be easy for a few minutes.

I needed one man for a special purpose. I had left the selection of that man for morning, feeling instinctively that I would do better to pick from the crowd than to give away my plans overnight.

I saw him inside of ten seconds. It was as clear a case of the right man for the job as if I had specified and had received the goods.

The man was Henshaw Hook, the best-known man in that section, the town auctioneer. He had the gift of gab, the science of talking all men into good humor, and was as alert in all his doings as a cricket on a hot spider.

I took him by the arm and rushed him up to my room. Mr. Hook had brought no ax to the levee; he told me, by way of explanation, that he had come around out of curiosity. So had a lot of others, I knew well enough.

Dodovah Vose followed us, for I had summoned him by a jerk of my head.

“Now, Mr. Hook, here’s the story short and snappy,” I told him. “I represent a big syndicate which is buying all kinds of property. I have bought Judge Kingsley’s wood-lot for the sake of what is on it--and it must be cleaned off in a hurry. Of course, I can’t hang around town to attend to that part of the business. I need an able man who can attend to it.” I pulled out my papers and inspected my figures. “Mostly we are after hardwood--cord-wood! Do you suppose you can pull a hundred or so good workers out of that crowd downstairs?”

“Yep!” snapped Hook. “Mebbe more.”

He was just as brisk as I was.

The newspaper had given me quotations in its market column, and I had chopped cord-wood in my own young life. Furthermore, in my everlasting scurryings after squirrels and birds I had made many explorations on Judge Kingsley’s domains. I was fully prepared to talk business, therefore.

“Mr. Hook, green cord-wood is selling for five dollars a cord. It’s a poor man with an ax who can’t chop, trim, and pile his cord a day--four-foot length. If you can put two hundred men on that job and will abide by the rules of my syndicate, you can turn a profit of around fifty dollars a day for your own pocket--for I offer you five per cent, on five dollars a cord.”

Mr. Hook promptly showed much interest. “You said rules?”

“I said rules!”

“Spill,” invited Mr. Hook.

“Get out your pencil and make notes--and I’ll ask you to do the same, Mr. Vose, so that there’ll be no comeback!”

They obeyed promptly.

“I am to do all my business with you--you are to do all the business with the choppers. You are the responsible party in all the details. You are to keep the books, measuring each man’s daily cut and giving him due credit. He is to be paid two dollars and fifty cents a cord--a weekly bonus of twenty-five dollars to the man who comes across with the most cords! No payment to be made for two weeks and then one week’s pay will be held back so that the men will not quit on me.”

“Don’t know about their agreeing!”

“Then the syndicate doesn’t want them. There’s no chance for argument. We’ll see how many volunteer when you put the matter up to ’em. I’m going to leave the speechmaking to you!”

“I’m fairly handy with my tongue,” he said, with a grin. “So I know. And I must be sure that _you_ will not quit. That would disorganize the whole thing. All money to the men must go through your hands. Therefore, Mr. Hook, you must deposit with me, so as to cinch your responsibility, the sum of five hundred dollars in cash before axes start this morning.”

That idea did not please Mr. Henshaw Hook--not for a minute! He looked pretty blank.

“I haven’t any option in the matter,” I stated, coldly. “The syndicate makes its rules--but you can see that’s a common-sense one. I couldn’t be jumping around the country, leaving behind a lot of operations running by guess and by gosh, nobody financially responsible for the details.”

“Corporations have to have their rules, Hen,” said helpful Landlord Vose. “We all know how young Sidney, here, has come along in the world!”

“The Sortwells have advertised that all right,” agreed Mr. Hook.

“He isn’t working for dubs, Hen!”

“Probably not! But with the judge out of town I can’t dig up more than three hundred and fifty this morning, not even if I went and robbed my old woman’s work-basket!”

“Needn’t worry about that,” said Dodovah Vose. “I’ve got public spirit and I want to see business get a hump on in this town. I’ll lend you enough to make up the five hundred.”

Mr. Hook devoted thirty seconds to meditation. “Let’s see--what did I understand you to say your concern is?” he queried with assumed innocence.

“I did not say--we are not advertising; we are pussyfooting so that they won’t be boosting land values on us,” I said, serenely.

“But among friends--”

“News travels faster among friends than anywhere else. Mr. Hook, I’m not going to risk my job by shooting off my mouth. You don’t think I’ve come back to my home town to work a flimflam trick, do you?”

“I’ll grab in on this myself rather than see the plan dumped,” stated the landlord.

“I’ll go down and put the thing up to the boys,” offered Hook, hastily. Fifty dollars and over a day had properly baited this Hook.

Our auctioneer was a good talker! When--as he put it to them amidst laughter--he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal that they were ready to go to work.

Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was counting the deposit money--a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready for that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank paper in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my crook acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen.

I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an envelope in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that sandwich by flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the blank paper. I licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed the packet to Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer and slammed it shut.

“I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on a little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will feel all right about our affairs.”

I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of Navarre--providing I remember my _Fourth Reader_ selection. That wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked against my ribs in most comforting manner.

I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash down.

I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for extra profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and there was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special bargains with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also considerable pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a portable-sawmill man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, came hurrying to the village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a sizable deposit; advertising was certainly paying!

One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose to the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He made several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to walk back to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his wagon and I accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was footsore.

“Recorded your deed yet?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” I said, airily.

“Probably not, seeing that you haven’t got any.”

I let it go at that, having no sensible explanation to give a business man like my uncle.

“So, as it stands,” he went on, “it’s a case of neck-and-neck whether _he’ll_ jew you or _you’ll_ jew _him_. As bad as I hate _him_ I’m getting to hate _you_ worse! I hope he’ll stick you. But I doubt it. A young pirate who can step in here and steal a whole wood-lot right under the noses of men who ought to know better is qualified to give old Judas I-scarrot lessons in deviltry.”

“I don’t blame you for feeling pleased and for praising me, Uncle Deck. I certainly am doing credit to your training.”

“But as first selectman of this town I’ve got a reputation to look after, and where will I get off with one of my blood and name serving time in State prison for grand larceny?”

“Oh, I’m not going to State prison.”

“You will, with that old devil after you, surer’n hell’s down-hill!”

“We’re sort of partners, the judge and I.” I decided that I might as well give him a jolt or two, even if his common sense did tell him that I was lying.

“Oh, bah-h-h!” he yelped.

“And as his partner I want to warn you against trying to trig his business affairs.”

He almost yanked the jaw off his horse, pulling the animal to a standstill.

“Condemn your young tripe! You are about as much a partner of his as a pullet is partner of a polecat! Don’t you talk up to me! If you are trying to cheat him I’ll help you do it. But if you are trying to help him, down goes your house!”

“I propose to help him--help his family,” I said.

To my surprise he held himself in. “Help him how?” he asked.

“Why, by making you quit hounding him, for one thing. It’s time this foolish old row was stopped. I am taking a special interest in Judge Kingsley’s family in these days.”

“Down to brass tacks, now! You mean just what you say, do you?”

“I most certainly do, Uncle Deck!”

“Don’t you dare to call me uncle, you wall-eyed pup! You have gone to leaning up against that girl like a tomcat cuddling a warm brick, have you? You’re letting her fool you along--”

“Shut that dirty mouth of yours!” I shouted.

“Get out of this wagon--out with you!”

I obeyed promptly, for I had had plenty of his society.

He waggled his whip-lash close to my nose when I stood in the road. “When you get into State prison, where you belong,” he snarled, “you’ll have a chum there. For that’s where I’m going to send old Kingsley, so help me the living God!”

And he curled the lash with all his might under the belly of his horse, taking it out on the poor brute, and tore away, with the animal on the dead run.

I trudged along in the dust he left flying. A fine chance I stood of handling my uncle Deck!

A precious lot of fool babbling that talk had been at the front door of the Kingsley house the night before!

Nevertheless, I went to the house again that evening, for I had a business excuse. I told mother and daughter that certain urgent matters called me out of town and that I would be leaving early in the morning. I had a word or two to say about my arrangements for clearing the lot so that their minds might be at ease if any gossip came to them; in country communities there are busybodies who are always guessing at mischief and are trying to make trouble.

I remained with them only a short time, for I was afraid they would try to get consolation out of me regarding my uncle and I was not in the mood to do any more lying. I was in a generally uncomfortable state of mind, anyway, and I knew that Celene was troubled by my manner. There seemed to be sense of impending evil hovering over the three of us. Frankly, my uncle’s threat regarding the judge had thrown a good-sized scare into me; Uncle Deck had truly acted as if he knew what he was talking about. My own conscience was creaking considerably inside me. When I rose to go Celene did not see me to the door. She gazed at me tenderly when I stated that I would be back in a few days, but some sort of reserve kept her at her mother’s side.

The stars were certainly not so bright that night when I walked back to the tavern. In my gloom a memory popped into my mind, queerly enough. I remembered that Dodovah Vose had loaned me ten dollars the night he helped me to escape.

I plucked a bill out of my breast pocket and handed it to him when I walked into the tavern.

“I hope you’ll excuse the delay,” I pleaded.

“I sure will,” he replied, heartily. “You’re an honest chap, young Sidney!”

But I was far from feeling honest that night.

XIII--THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK