II.
There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or wooden stores—a street which developed into a road running back up a wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a courthouse in a yard near the center of the town, and a big summer hotel. The valley was peculiarly picturesque. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose out of the valley sand abruptly, forming a sort of amphitheater in which the village lay. These square-topped hills rose to a common level, showing that they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the original stratification left standing after the vast scooping action of the post-glacial floods.
The abrupt cliffs and lone huge pillars and peaks rising out of tamarack swamps here and there showed the original layers of rock unmoved. They looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a distinct air of romance to the valley at all times; but when in summer vines clambered over their rugged sides and underbrush softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them the remains of an unrecorded, very warlike people.
Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly upon their summits, the hickories and small ashes blue-black with their masses of fine bare limbs meshed against the snow, these towers had a distinct charm. The weather was glorious winter, and in the early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and lasting charm, part of the beautiful and strange Mississippi River scenery.
In the campaign which Hartley began Albert did his best, and his best was done unconsciously, for the charm of his manner (all unknown to himself) was the most potent factor in securing consideration.
"I'm not a book agent," he said to one of the clergymen to whom he first appealed; "I'm a student trying to sell a good book and make a little money to help me to complete my course at the university."
He did not go to the back door, but walked up to the front, asked to see the minister, and placed his case at once before him with a smiling candor and a leisurely utterance quite the opposites of the brazen timidity and rapid, parrot-like tone of the professional. He secured three clergymen of the place to head his list, much to the delight and admiration of Hartley.
"Good! Now corral the alumni of the place. Work the fraternal racket to the bitter end. Oh, say! there's a sociable to-morrow night; I guess we'd better go, hadn't we?"
"Go alone?"
"Alone? No! Take some girls. I'm going to take neighbor Picket's daughter; she's homely as a hedge fence, but I'll take her—great scheme!"
"Hartley, you're an infernal fraud!"
"Nothing of the kind—I'm business," ended Hartley, with a laugh.
After supper the following day, as Albert was still lingering at the table with the girls and Mrs. Welsh, he thought of the sociable, and said on the impulse:
"Are you going to the sociable?"
"No; I guess not."
"Would you go if I asked you?"
"Try me and see!" answered the girl, with a laugh, her color rising.
"All right. Miss Welsh, will you attend the festivity of the evening under my guidance and protection?"
"Yes, thank you."
"I'll be ready before you are."
"No doubt; I've got to wash the dishes."
"I'll wash the dishes; you go get ready," said the self-regardless mother.
Albert felt that he had one of the loveliest girls in the room as he led Maud down the floor of the vestry of the church, filled with laughing young people moving about or seated at the long tables. Maud's cheeks were full of delicate color and her eyes shone with maidenly delight as they took seats at the table to sip a little coffee and nibble a bit of cake.
"I suppose they must have my fifteen cents some way," said Albert, in a low voice, "and I guess we'd better sit down."
Maud introduced him to a number of young people who had been students at the university. They received him cordially, and in a very short time he was enjoying himself very well indeed. He was reminded rather disagreeably of his office, however, by seeing Hartley surrounded by a laughing crowd of the more frolicsome young people. He winked at Albert, as much as to say, "Good stroke of business."
The evening passed away with songs, games, and recitations, and it was nearly eleven o'clock when the young people began to wander off toward home in pairs. Albert and Maud were among the first of the young folks to bid the rest good night.
The night was clear and cold, but perfectly still, and the young people, arm in arm, walked slowly homeward under the bare maples, in delicious companionship. Albert held her arm close to his side.
"Are you cold?" he asked in a low voice.
"No, thank you; the night is lovely," she replied; then added with a sigh, "I don't like sociables so well as I used to—they tire me out."
"We stayed too long."
"It wasn't that; I'm getting so they seem kind o' silly."
"Well, I feel a little that way myself," he confessed.
"But there is so little to see here in Tyre at any time—no music, no theaters. I like theaters, don't you?"
"I can't go half enough."
"But nothing worth seeing ever comes into these little towns—and then we're all so poor, anyway."
The lamp, turned low, was emitting a terrible odor as they entered the sitting room.
"My goodness! it's almost twelve o'clock. Good night." She held out her hand.
"Good night," he said, taking it, and giving it a cordial pressure which she remembered long.
"Good night," she repeated softly, going up the stairs.
Hartley came in a few moments later, and found Bert sitting thoughtfully by the fire, with his coat and shoes off, evidently in deep abstraction.
"Well, I got away at last—much as ever. Great scheme, that sociable, eh? I saw your little girl introducing you right and left."
"Say, Hartley, I wish you'd leave her out of this thing; I don't like the way you speak of her when——"
"Phew! You don't? Oh, all right! I'm mum as an oyster—only keep it up! Get in all the church sociables, and all that; there's nothing like it."
Hartley soon had canvassers out along the country roads, and was working every house in town. The campaign promised to lengthen into a month, perhaps longer. Albert especially became a great favorite. Every one declared there had never been such book agents in the town: such gentlemanly fellows, they didn't press anybody to buy; they didn't rush about and "poke their noses where they were not wanted." They were more like merchants with books to sell. The only person who failed to see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to be engaged to Maud. He grew daily more sullen and repellent, toward Albert noticeably so.
One evening about six, after coming in from a long walk about town, Albert entered his room without lighting his lamp, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep. He had been out late the night before with Maud at a party, and slumber came almost instantly.
Maud came in shortly, hearing no response to her knock, and after hanging some towels on the rack went out without seeing the sleeper. In the sitting room she met Ed Brann. He was a stalwart young man with curling black hair, and a heavy face at its best, but set and sullen now. His first words held a menace:
"Say, Maud, I want t' talk to you."
"Very well; what is it, Ed?" replied the girl quietly.
"I want to know how often you're going to be out till twelve o'clock with this book agent?"
Perhaps it was the derisive inflection on "book agent" that woke Albert. Brann's tone was brutal—more brutal even than his words, and the girl turned pale and her breath quickened.
"Why, Ed, what's the matter?"
"Matter is just this: you ain't got any business goin' around with that feller with my ring on your finger, that's all." He ended with an unmistakable threat in his voice.
"Very well," said the girl, after a pause, curiously quiet; "then I won't; here's your ring."
The man's bluster disappeared instantly. Bert could tell by the change in his voice, which was incredibly great, as he pleaded:
"Oh, don't do that, Maud; I didn't mean to say that; I was mad—I'm sorry."
"I'm glad you did it now, so I can know you. Take your ring, Ed; I never'll wear it again."
Albert had heard all this, but he did not know how the girl looked as she faced the man. In the silence which followed she looked him in the face, and scornfully passed him and went out into the kitchen. He did not return at supper.
Young people of this sort are not self-analysts, and Maud did not examine closely into causes. She was astonished to find herself more indignant than grieved. She broke into an angry wail as she went to her mother's bosom:
"Mother! mother!"
"Why, what's the matter, Maudie? Tell me. There, there! don't cry, pet! Who's been hurtin' my poor little bird?"
"Ed has; he said—he said——"
"There, there! poor child! Have you been quarreling? Never mind; it'll come out all right."
"No, it won't—not the way you mean," the girl cried, lifting her head; "I've given him back his ring, and I'll never wear it again."
The mother could not understand with what wounding brutality the man's tone had fallen upon the girl's spirit, and Maud felt in some way as if she could not explain sufficiently to justify herself. Mrs. Welsh consoled herself with the idea that it was only a lovers' quarrel—one of the little jars sure to come when two natures are settling together—and that all would be mended in a day or two.
But there was a peculiar set look on the girl's face that promised little for Brann. Albert, being no more of a self-analyst than Maud, simply said, "Served him right," and dwelt no more upon it for the time.
At supper, however, he was extravagantly gay, and to himself unaccountably so. He joked Troutt till Maud begged him to stop, and after the rest had gone he remained seated at the table, enjoying the indignant color in her face and the flash of her infrequent smile, which it was such a pleasure to provoke. He volunteered to help wash the dishes.
"Thank you, but I'm afraid you'd be more bother than help," she replied.
"Thank you, but you don't know me. I ain't so green as I look, by no manner o' means. I've been doing my own housekeeping for four terms."
"I know all about that," laughed the girl. "You young men rooming do precious little cooking and no dish-washing at all."
"That's a base calumny! I made it a point to wash every dish in the house, except the spider, once a week; had a regular cleaning-up day."
"And about the spider?"
"I wiped that out nicely with a newspaper every time I wanted to use it."
"Oh, horrors!—Mother, listen to that!"
"Why, what more could you ask? You wouldn't have me wipe it six times a day, would you?"
"I wonder it didn't poison you," commented Mrs. Welsh.
"Takes more'n that to poison a student," laughed Albert, as he went out.
The next afternoon he came bursting into the kitchen, where Maud stood with her sleeves rolled up, deep in the dish pan, while Stella stood wiping the dishes handed to her.
"Don't you want a sleigh ride?" he asked, boyishly eager.
She looked up with shining eyes.
"Oh, wouldn't I!—Can you get along, mother?"
"Certainly, child; the air'll do you good."
"W'y, Maud!" said the little girl, "you said you didn't want to when Ed——"
Mrs. Welsh silenced her, and said:
"Run right along, dear; it's just the nicest time o' day. Are there many teams out?"
"They're just beginning t' come out," said Albert. "I'll have a cutter around here in about two jiffies; be on hand, sure."
Troutt was standing in the sunny doorway of his stable when the young fellow dashed up to him.
"Hullo, Uncle Troutt! Harness the fastest nag into your swellest outfit instanter."
"Aha! Goin' t' take y'r girl out, hey?"
"Yes; and I want 'o do it in style."
"I guess ol' Dan's the idee, if you can drive him; he's a ring-tailed snorter."
"Fast?"
"Nope; but safe. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin' as a fox. Drive him with one hand—left hand," the old man chuckled.
"Troutt, you're an insinuating old insinuator, and I'll——"
Troutt laughed till his long faded beard flapped up and down and quivered with the stress of his enjoyment of his joke. He ended by hitching a vicious-looking sorrel to a gay, duck-bellied cutter, saying as he gave up the reins:
"Now, be keerful; Dan's foxy; he's all right when he sees you've got the reins, but don't drop 'em."
"Don't you worry about me; I grew up with horses," said the over-confident youth, leaping into the sleigh and gathering up the lines. "Stand aside, my lord, and let the cortège pass. Hoop-la!"
The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway like a shot before the old man could utter a word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he felt the reins stiffen in his hands, while the traces swung slack beside the thills.
"If he keeps this up he'll do," he thought.
As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to the eyes.
"Oh, what a nice cutter! But the horse—is he gentle?" she asked, as she climbed in.
"As a cow," Albert replied.—"Git out o' this, Bones!"
The main street was already full of teams, wood sleighs, bob-sleighs filled with children, and here and there a man in a light cutter alone, out for a race. Laughter was on the air, and the jingle-jangle of bells. The sun was dazzling in its brightness, and the gay wraps and scarfs lighted up the street with flecks of color. Loafers on the sidewalks fired a fusillade of words at the teams as they passed:
"Go it, Bones!"
"'Let 'er go, Gallagher!'"
"Ain't she a daisy!"
But what cared the drivers? If the shouts were insolent they laid them to envy, and if they were pleasant they smiled in reply.
Albert and Maud had made two easy turns up and down the street, when a man driving a span of large black-hawk horses dashed up a side street and whirled in just before them. The man was a superb driver, and sat with the reins held carelessly but securely in his left hand, guiding the team more by his voice than by the bit. He sat leaning forward with his head held down in a peculiar and sinister fashion.
"Hel-lo!" cried Bert; "that looks like Brann."
"It is," said Maud.
"Cracky! that's a fine team—Black Hawks, both of them. I wonder if ol' sorrel can pass 'em?"
"Oh, please don't try," pleaded the girl.
"Why not?"
"Because—because I'm afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Something is goin' t' happen; I'm goin' t' pass him if old Bones has got any git to him."
"It'll make him mad."
"Who mad? Brann?"
"Yes."
"Well, s'pose it does, who cares?"
The teams moved along at an easy pace. Some one called to Brann:
"They're on y'r trail, Ed."
There was something peculiar in the tone, and Brann looked behind for the first time, and saw them. He swore through his teeth, and turned about. He looked dogged and sullen, with his bent shoulders and his chin thrust down.
There were a dozen similar rigs moving up or down the street, and greetings passed from sleigh to sleigh. Everybody except Brann welcomed Albert with sincere pleasure, and exchanged rustic jokes with him. As they slowed up at the upper end of the street and began to turn, a man on the sidewalk said confidentially:
"Say, cap', if you handle that old rack-o'-bones just right, he'll distance anything on this road. When you want him to do his best let him have the rein; don't pull a pound. I used to own 'im—I know 'im."
The old sorrel came round "gauming," his ugly head thrown up, his great red mouth open, his ears back. Brann and the young doctor of the place were turning together a little farther up the street. The blacks, superbly obedient to their driver, came down with flying hoofs, their great glossy breasts flecked with foam from their champing jaws.
"Come on, fellers!" yelled Brann, insultingly, as he came down past the doctor, and seemed about to pass Albert and Maud. There was hate in the glare of his eyes.
But he did not pass. The old sorrel seemed to lengthen; to the spectators his nose appeared to be glued to the glossy side of Brann's off black.
"See them blacks trot!" shouted Albert, in ungrammatical enthusiasm.
"See that old sorrel shake himself!" yelled the loafers.
The doctor came tearing down with a spirited bay, a magnificent stepper. As he drew along so that Bert could catch a glimpse of the mare's neck, he thrilled with delight. There was the thoroughbred's lacing of veins; the proud fling of her knees and the swell of her neck showed that she was far from doing her best. There was a wild light in her eyes.
These were the fast teams of the town. All interest was centered in them.
"Clear the track!" yelled the loafers.
"The doc's good f'r 'em."
"If she don't break."
Albert was pulling at the sorrel heavily, absorbed in seeing, as well as he could for the flung snowballs, the doctor's mare draw slowly, foot by foot, past the blacks. Suddenly Brann gave a shrill yell and stood up in his sleigh. The gallant little bay broke and fell behind; Brann gave a loud laugh; the blacks trotted on, their splendid pace unchanged.
"Let the sorrel out!" yelled somebody.
"Let him loose!" yelled Troutt on the corner, quivering with excitement. "Let him go!"
Albert remembered what the fellow had said; he let the reins loose. The old sorrel's teeth came together with a snap; his head lowered and his tail rose; he shot abreast of the blacks. Brann yelled:
"Sam—Saul, git!"
"See them trot!" shouted Bert, lost in admiration; but Maud, frightened into silence, had covered her head with the robe to escape the blinding cloud of flying snow. The sorrel drew steadily ahead; he was passing when Brann turned.
"Durn y'r old horse!" he yelled through his shut teeth, and laid the whip across the sorrel's hips. The blacks broke wildly, but, strange to say, the old sorrel increased his speed. Again Brann struck at him, but missed him, and the stroke fell on Bert's outstretched wrists. He turned to see what Brann meant by it; he did not see that the blacks were crowding him to the gutter; his hands felt numb.
"Look out, there!"
Before he could turn to look, the cutter seemed to be blown up by a bomb, and he rose in the air like a vaulter; he saw the traces part, he felt the reins slip through his hands, and that was all; he seemed to fall an immeasurable depth into a black abyss…. The next that he knew was a curious soft murmur of voices, out of which a sweet, agonized girl-voice broke, familiar but unrecognized:
"Oh, where's the doctor! He's dead—oh, he's dead! Can't you hurry?"
Next came a quick, authoritative voice, still far away, and a hush followed it; then an imperative order:
"Stand out o' the way! What do you think you can do by crowding on top of him?"
"Stand back! stand back!" other voices called.
Then he felt something cold on his head: they were taking his cap off and putting snow on his head; then the doctor (he knew him now) said:
"Let me take him!"
"Oh, can't I do something?" said the sweet voice.
"No—nothing."
Then there came a strange fullness in his head. Shadows lighted by dull red flashes passed before his eyes; he wondered, in a slow, dull way, if he were dying. Then this changed: a dull, throbbing ache came into his head, and as this grew the noise of voices grew more distinct and he could hear sobbing. Then the dull, rhythmic red flashes passed slowly away from his eyes, and he opened his lids, but the glare of the sunlight struck them shut again; he saw only Maud's face, agonized, white, and wet with tears, looking down into his. He felt the doctor's hands winding bandages about his head, and he felt a crawling stream of blood behind his ear, getting as cold as ice as it sank under his collar.
They raised him a little more, and he opened his eyes on the circle of hushed and excited men thronging about him. He saw Brann, with wild, scared face, standing in his cutter and peering over the heads of the crowd.
"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.
"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.
His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered slowly, "Yes; I guess—I'm all—right."
"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded, with all the authority of a physician in a small village. The crowd opened, and silenced its muttered comments as the doctor and Troutt helped the wounded man into the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse, but Albert's perception of things grew in proportion; he closed his eyes to the sun, but in the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and looked up at her. He felt a vague, childlike pleasure in knowing she was holding him in her arms; he felt the sleigh moving; he thought of his mother, and how it would frighten her if she knew.
The doctor was driving the horse and walking beside the sleigh, and the people were accosting him. Albert could catch their words now and then, and the reply:
"No; he isn't killed, nor anything near it; he's stunned, that's all; he isn't bleeding now. No; he'll be all right in a day or two."
"Hello!" said a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been doing with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked, clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's face. Albert smiled.
"I'm here—what there is left of me," he replied faintly.
"Glory! how'd it happen?" he asked of the girl.
"I don't know—I couldn't see—we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.
"Weren't you hurt?"
"Not a bit. I stayed in the cutter."
Albert felt a steady return of waves of pain, but did not know that they were waves of returning life. He groaned, and tried to rise. The girl gently but firmly restrained him. Hartley was walking beside the doctor, talking loudly. "It was a devilish thing to do; the scoundrel ought 'o be jugged!"
Albert groaned, and tried to rise again. "I'm bleeding yet; I'm soaking you!"
The girl shuddered, but remained firm.
"No; we're 'most home."
She felt no shame, but a certain exaltation, as she looked into the curious faces she saw in groups on the sidewalk. The boys who ran alongside wore in their faces a look of awe, for they imagined themselves in the presence of death.
Maud gazed unrecognizingly upon her nearest girl friends. They seemed something alien in that moment; and they, gazing upon her white face and unrecognizing eyes, spoke in awed whispers.
At the gate the crowd gathered and waited with deepest interest, with a sort of shuddering pleasure. It was all a strange, unusual, inthralling romance to them. The dazzling sunshine added to the wonder of it all.
"Ed Brann done it."
"How?" asked several.
"With the butt end of his whip."
"That's a lie! His team ran into Lohr's rig."
"Not much; Ed crowded him into the ditch."
"What fer?"
"'Cause Bert cut him out with Maud."
"Come, get out of the way! Don't stand there gabbing," yelled Hartley, as he took Albert in his arms and, together with the doctor, lifted him out of the sleigh.
"Goodness sakes alive! Ain't it terrible! How is he?" asked an old lady, peering at him as he passed.
On the porch stood Mrs. Welsh, supported by Ed Brann.
"She's all right, I tell you. He ain't hurt much, either; just stunned a little, that's all."
"Maud! child!" cried the mother, as Maud appeared out of the crowd, followed by a bevy of girls.
"Mother, I'm all right!" she said as gayly as she could, running into the trembling arms outstretched toward her; "but, oh, poor Albert!"
After they disappeared into the house the crowd dispersed. Brann went off by way of the alley; he was not prepared to meet their questions; but he met his brother and several others in his store.
"Now, what in——you been up to?" was the fraternal greeting.
"Nothing."
"Welting a man on the head with a whip-stock ain't anything, hey?"
"I didn't touch him. We was racing, and he run into the culvert."
"Hank says he saw you strike——"
"He lies! I was strikin' the horse to make him break."
"Oh, yeh was!" sneered the older man. "Well, I hope you understand that this'll ruin us in this town. If you didn't strike him, they'll say you run him into the culvert, 'n' every man, woman, 'n' child'll be down on you, and me f'r bein' related to you. They all know how you feel towards him for cuttin' you out with Maud Welsh."
"Oh, don't bear down on him too hard, Joe. He didn't mean t' do any harm," said Troutt, who had followed Ed down to the store. "I guess the young feller'll come out all right. Just go kind o' easy till we see how he comes out. If he dies, why, it'll haf t' be looked into."
Ed turned pale and swallowed hastily. "If he should die!" He would be a murderer; he knew that hate was in his heart. He shivered again as he remembered the man's white face with the bright red stream flowing down behind his ear and over his cheek. It almost seemed to him that he had struck him, so close had the accident followed upon the fall of his whip.