IV
The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which topped the summit.
Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the black cow, on her neck.
It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage. Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up, slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.
Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.
Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular greeting:—
"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two cents."
The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."
"Oh, I guess not."
"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't want trouble."
"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've got in the shop."
At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:—
"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"
"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "We don't take what don't belong to us."
"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking intonation.
Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther on down the path. Jim came closer.
"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather cent I'd lick you like hell!"
"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."
"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to Jim, "or I'll take a hand."
Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to strangle him. He meant murder.
Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.
"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound, and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as grappling bull-dogs.
Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.
He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.
Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.
"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.
Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.
"Ah, woe, woe is me!" it cried.
"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.
Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.
At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.
He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood. "How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.
"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."
Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.
"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.
Jim looked at Jack. "That thing didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"
Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one," was the frank and convincing reply.
Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."
He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without looking back.
"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked, when he sat down at the dinner-table.
"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off, and give me a side-winder."
Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.
The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of the way with Bill.
"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there since fifteen minutes after 'leven."
Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down some way."