Mr. Doggett's Acquisition
"I am now in fortune's power,
He that is down can fall no lower."
"Fifty cents! I'm offered a half a dollar! Who'll make it three quarters?" The eyes of the sheriff twinkled, despite his efforts toward solemnity. It was the third Monday morning in August: he stood in front of the Court-house door, facing a "court-day" crowd and conducted the sale of Napper Dunaway, a gentleman afflicted with what the Court had diagnosed to be a case of chronic leisure.
Under the vagrancy law of the State, the remedy for this disease is the enforced sale of the patient's services for a given time,—the purchaser binding himself to furnish food, lodging, and medical attention to his bondman during the term of his compelled servitude.
The crowd pressed up for a nearer view of the young man, who, with a soft white thumb caught in the button-hole of a pale blue negligee shirt, worn in shirt-waist style, with a crimson silk tie, a tan belt, and a pair of blue serge pantaloons, stood in nonchalant contemplation of the church steeple across the street.
"Who'll give me three quarters of a dollar?" repeated the sheriff.
"I will: yes, sir, I'll make the bid seventy-five cents!" drawled a new-comer, slightly out of breath from his hurry to reach the scene of the sale.
Every eye turned toward the advancer of the bid,—a long man, with a wild red beard. For a few minutes, the bidding between Mr. Ephriam Doggett and a derisive competitor advanced by cents, and half-cents, but one dollar marked the end of the bids, and Mr. Doggett became, for the space of ten months, Dunaway's legal owner.
In the summers past, worms had been bad in the Kentucky tobacco fields, but this year, they came in numbers like the Assyrian army: by the middle of August, at the time of the leaving off of the spraying with Paris green, Mr. Doggett was, according to the words of his mouth, "in a tight place."
"Hands" were at a premium: his sons, Marshall and Jappy, had a crop of their own several miles off; Mr. Brock had slyly induced two of Mr. Doggett's "promised" men to stop with him: Mr. Doggett's aids—Dock, Joey, Gran'dad, the brothers, Bunch and Knox Trisler, and his cousins, Roscoe and Ob Doggett, numbered but seven, when there should have been ten, for the worming and the suckering.
Something had to be done, and on court day, with his seven left behind to do battle against the green army, Mr. Doggett went to town in search of a "hand." He heard on the street of the vagrancy sale, and seized the opportunity offered him to secure a free hireling. Time was precious to Mr. Doggett, and fifteen minutes after his one dollar bill went into the pocket of the County's representative, the new acquisition was seated beside him behind the abbreviated tail of Big Money.
"We'll go right on out," he said cheerfully to his purchase: "although," he added thoughtfully, "I wuz on the p'int o' fergittin' hit—you'll want to git your clothes. I'll jest drive by, and you can git 'em."
At the door of the yellow cottage on a rear street, Dunaway pointed out as the residence of his father-in-law, Mr. Doggett drew rein. This building, for five months from the day of his marriage, had been Dunaway's home, until his father-in-law, a one-armed pensioner, grew tired of waiting for him to add a day to the six days of manual labor he did during the term of his married life, and instituted vagrancy proceedings. The hospitality of the Kentuckian is great and lasting, but even gold will wear thin in time.
"I reckon," delicately hinted Mr. Doggett, "considerin' you hain't exactly in faver with your folks, I'd better go in the house fer the clothes."
"You needn't say clothes here," the peppery little man who answered Mr. Doggett's knock informed him, when he had stated his business. "I'll allow you to have them garments he's got coverin' his worthless hide, but the others, they'll have to go to pay a little on what he's eat off of me since Nan got took in last March! I feel sorry for you, man," he concluded, dryly, "ef you are goin' to undertake to keep him fed. I might have been able to put up with what he et at the table, but the between-meal business of runnin' into victuals and eatin' was more than my pension would stand up against!"
A suspicion that his hand was not going to be the gratuitous addition to his laboring force he had supposed crossed Mr. Doggett's mind, and somewhat ruefully he turned Big Money's head again in the direction of the dry goods houses, and climbed out before the store of Jacob Himmelstein.
"I been a layin' off to drap in to see you, Mr. Himmelstein, yes, sir, I have," Mr. Doggett mollified his Israelitish friend, whose first words of greeting were gentle reproaches: "but I jest hain't possible had time 'tel today, and I come in to see ef you couldn't sorter holp me out. Can't you gimme some barg'ins?"
"Can I gif you bargains, mine frient?" Mr. Himmelstein's upraised hands spoke worlds of reproach: "I t'ought your memory vas goot!"
"Thar's a kind o' fellers that won't buy nothin' onless might' night' ever'body says they's gittin' a barg'in," pursued Mr. Doggett, "but I hain't one o' them kind. I wish I wuz."
"Ah, mine frient, you have been to buying elsewhere dan under de sign of J. Himmelstein!" mourned that gentleman.
Mr. Doggett told of his purchase of the morning, and of his garment shortage, and received voluble assurance of Mr. Himmelstein's ability and willingness to fit him out "sheap."
After a half-hour's haggling, the question of everyday clothing was settled in two pairs of azure cottonade "overhalls," three sky-colored hickory shirts, two outfits of underwear, a buckeye hat, and socks (three pairs for a nickel).
"Forty cents seems a reasonable price fer these here jeans breeches," Mr. Doggett mused, when he came to buy Dunaway's "Sunday" raiment: "but hain't they a leetle short in the leg? Hit seems to me they won't more'n hit him at the knees."
"Dey'll be all right for fine wedder," Himmelstein assured him, hastily wrapping up the doubtful pantaloons.
"A hat and shoes," Mr. Doggett reflected: "I hain't able to lay out but a doller er two more on him. I don't keer fer style fer him,—got anytheng a leetle onfashionable in the way o' head and foot coverin's?"
Mr. Himmelstein darted to a box in the extreme back part of his establishment, and after some moment's digging in its depths, brought out a flat derby of the style of twenty years past, and a pair of "needle pointers," number twelves.
"If your man can vear dese," he inveigled Mr. Doggett, "you can haf de great bargain for t'ree quarter of von dollar unt I t'row in de hat for von nickel unt two dimes more."
Mr. Doggett concluded to take the risk of their fitting, and had them wrapped up.
"Before we leave town," observed Dunaway, as Mr. Doggett took the reins, "I'd like to tell you I'm about out of chewing tobacco. 'Lady Isabel' is the brand I use."
"What's the matter with long green?" Mr. Doggett's tone was persuasive. "I've got a world o' that hanging up at home."
Dunaway coughed apologetically. "My stomach is delicate," he declared airily, "and anything but the Lady Isabel seems to irritate it."
Mr. Doggett climbed to the pavement once more and three minutes later a package of the "Lady Isabel" was added to the company of bundles under the buggy's seat.
Mr. Dunaway, on the drive, proved to be a most agreeable talker, oily of tongue,—eloquently mendacious. He explained to Mr. Doggett the circumstances that had brought him to his present state. His family was one of wealth and high social position, he said, and he had never known a care until the failure and death of his father. Since that time, travelling with a party of surveyors in the Arkansas swamps, he had contracted malaria, had drifted to Kentucky, and had married. Because of his delicacy, his wife had persuaded her father to allow them to remain with him for a while and the vagrancy proceedings were taken without hint to him that the old gentleman was weary of his presence. He was astounded at this cruel treatment, and could hardly believe that his two trunks of clothing would be withheld from him.
Mr. Doggett listened respectfully, with expressions of interest and sympathy,—and drew his own conclusions.
Mr. Dunaway's garments were neat in appearance, his face was newly shaved, and the visible portions of his person were clean, but, mindful of the suspicions that would be sure to arise in Mrs. Doggett's mind as to the personal cleanliness of a gentleman convicted of vagrancy, unless she had actual convincing evidence of the recent application of water to his epidermis, Mr. Doggett stopped when they reached a covered bridge, spanning a stream that crossed the road.
"How'd you like to go in washin', Dunaway, bein's hit's so hot?" he asked, as he hitched his horse to the roadside fence. "I b'leeve I'll go in!"
Dunaway did not particularly relish the idea—it involved the expenditure of some energy—but he politely refrained from objection, and a few minutes later, he and his owner were disrobing behind a clump of elders that hid one of the banks of the Silver Run about fifty yards below the bridge.
Mr. Dunaway was in the deep water, first, enjoying the cool splashing, and swimming toward the bridge, before Mr. Doggett had divested himself of half his garments. This was Mr. Doggett's opportunity. Dunaway had laid his top shirt, his belt, tie, and shoes, apart from his other garments, which fact saved them to him, for when he started in the water, Mr. Doggett remembered other suspicions—unjust or otherwise—that might enter Mrs. Doggett's mind,—suspicions as to possible inhabitants of a vagrant's garments—and in his plunge, accidentally caught his foot in the heap of clothes, sending them into the deep water.
When Dunaway came back to the clump of elders for his clothes, Mr. Doggett was using the cake of laundry soap he held in his hand, in vigorous applications.
"I thought I'd wash my years and neck good while I wuz at hit, Dunaway," he said: "the old lady's mighty perticular. S'pose'n you lay on a little too, hit takes the pike dust off so slick!"
When the two climbed out of the water, Dunaway gazed uncertainly at the spot where had lain his trousers and underwear.
"Where the—" he began. Mr. Doggett interrupted him. "Ef your breeches and thengs hain't gone, Dunaway! That must 'a' been them I stumbled over when I went in! My foot caught on somethin'—I wuz a lookin' at you swimmin' off so peart—and I thought hit wuz a bunch o' grass er somethin'!"
"I guess they're in the bottom of some deep hole by this time," Dunaway remarked in a tone of light regret. "And what am I to wear?"
"Wear?" cried Mr. Doggett: "don't them thengs I got fer you come in handy now? Jest put on a suit them new underin's and a pair them overhalls, and one them hick'ry shirts, and you'll be ready to work in the patch this evenin'!"
It was twelve when Mr. Doggett reached home. "Jest step down in the spreng thar on the creek bank," he said to Dunaway who complained of thirst, "but don't knock over the old lady's milk jairs."
After dinner, Mr. Doggett conducted his new man to the field.
"I won't be hard on you this evenin', Dunaway, your fust day o' wormin'," he avowed, as each man started his row: "I'll take a row and sorter holp you in your'n too, onct in a while."
Dunaway was quick and agile, and although the sweat poured into his eyes, and his back ached with the unaccustomed stooping to lift the leaves, he managed to do a fair amount of worm-killing.
Dock or Gran'dad was usually sent to the spring for fresh water for the toilers, but when about three o'clock, Dunaway offered to go, Mr. Doggett made no objection.
"The pore feller hain't seasoned yit," he conciliated Dock and Gran'dad, for thus favoring the stranger, "and hit hain't no more'n jest to give him a leetle breathin' spell."
That evening, seven men (Bunch Trisler and his brother boarded at their own home) very weary of eye, of back and of arm, soiled with dust, perspiration, and tobacco gum—filed in, and immediately after supper, five of them, including the worn and dejected Dunaway, climbed the steps to their bedroom. Gran'dad rested a while in the sitting-room, discussing Dunaway with his son and Mrs. Doggett, while Dock stretched himself flat on the floor.
To Mr. Doggett's enthusiastic congratulation of himself on the wisdom of his purchase, Gran'dad remarked:
"I dunno as I'd keer to own him: seems to me he'd be a slippery possession."
"Yes," broke in Mrs. Doggett, "about the time you git him clothed up fer winter, he'll light out and that'll be the last you'll hear o' him!"
"Why, Ann," Mr. Doggett obtruded, "I could excribe him over the tillephorm, and could git him anywhar. He wouldn't have no chanst a runnin'!"
"He seems to be a mighty light eater," Gran'dad mused. "Wouldn't drink no buttermilk tonight: said hit wuz too fillin'."
"I bet he's a holdin' in," said Dock.
"He tuck holt o' work well," said Mr. Doggett. "Got a good sleight at suckerin', although I had to holp him some in his row a wormin'—him not bein' broke into the work—so we'd come out ever' row together. He's sorter green about hit. Told me he wisht I'd git him a pair o' gloves to keep the gum offen his hands. I told him I jest couldn't possible do hit,—he'd tear the leaves up in gloves."
"He's green about a heap o' work," put in Dock: "he told me he'd been all over the Nuniter States, and he'd never yit stuck job that wuz heftier, ner killiner, ner back-breakin'er, ner disagreeabler than wormin' and suckerin' terbaccer! I ast him wouldn't he holp me milk,—hit wuzn't no mean job, and he said he didn't know how to milk! I told him I thought ever'body knowed how to milk, and he said he reckon they ort ter ef they don't, and he'd git me to learn him when he wuzn't so wore out."
"Somethin's been in the milk jairs at the spreng," remarked Mrs. Doggett, regretfully. "When I went to strain the milk a while ago, I found two jairs o' fraish milk with ever' bit the cream skimmed off: wuzn't no cream on 'em—fraish mornin's milk—and the milk on one jair wuz half down, like hit had been poured out into somethin'."
A suspicion as to the receptacle into which the milk and cream had been emptied, entered Mr. Doggett's mind, but he was discreet.
"Maybe some Mr. Archie Evans' fox hounds done hit, Ann," he suggested, maligning the innocent, "I heerd 'em out this evenin' about four o'clock."
"But the leds wuz all on," objected Mrs. Doggett.
"Well, maybe some the hands seed 'em off, and laid 'em back," persuaded Mr. Doggett,—"Bunch er Knox when they went home."
"Somethin's goin' with my aigs too," Mrs. Doggett further complained; "not nary aig did I git at the barn this evenin', and been a gittin' nineteen ever' day!"
The next day, to Mr. Doggett's secret chagrin, the energy and initiative of his new work-hand suffered a relapse: he complained that the sun affected his malaria infested system, and insisted on short rests every hour: he left suckers standing: he skipped worms: he came out many minutes behind the other men with his row.
The other hands enjoyed Mr. Doggett's discomfiture. Dunaway, working without wages, they regarded as a grand joke,—something that distinctly enlivened their hard toil, and they listened to his airy tales, and his light flippant fun making with keen relish.
"Darn that man Castle!" he inveighed in the middle of the afternoon, clinching one grimy, gum-covered fist. "Darn all tobacco that grows anyhow! I'd be happier in hell than I am here: I'll bet it's eighty per cent. cooler down there any time than it is in a tobacco patch in August!"
"Hain't none of us disputin' your statements, Dunaway," chuckled Gran'dad: "and ef you are a cravin' to git whar you claim thar's more bliss in store fer you, than you're enjoyin' here, jest wet a few them biggest leaves and lay 'em crost your chist and take a leetle nap, and you'll wake up down thar!"
Dunaway, however, declined to take this short cut to happiness.
With Dunaway's slackness in field work, came a degree of facility at table that surprised Mr. Doggett. While batting, and blinking his black eyes, directing airily polite and delicately conciliatory speeches toward Mrs. Doggett, and telling gay tales to interest the men,—not seeming to gorge—he threw food into his mouth with the rapidity and dexterity of the ant-eater at his repast.
"I declare, Eph," remarked Mrs. Doggett, one evening after a few days of the new hired man, "that crittur has shorely got the right name! He's done away with more victuals in them four days sence he's been here than'd lasted Lily Pearl a year! Ever' meal thar hain't been nary bite o' bread left, and I've had to go and make up more bread before me and Lily Pearl could eat!"
"Thenk he eats as much as Keerby?" asked Mr. Doggett.
"Keerby?" Mrs. Doggett's voice rose to a scornful screech. "When Keerby put his feet onder our table, we wuz hurt, but when Dunaway puts them long legs o' his'n onder our oil-cloth, we're might' night' ruined, I tell you, Eph Doggett!"
In the days that followed, to Mrs. Doggett's distress (for it made serious inroads on her butter making), her cream was skimmed almost daily, and on Wednesday morning of the second week of Dunaway's bondage, when she went into her smoke-house to take down a large ham for cooking, she found that the lean portion was completely hollowed out, not by rats, but by a skilful pocket-knife. In addition, a dozen or more of the large "hill onions," on which she had taken a premium at the County fair, and which she took pride in showing visitors, were gone from their shelf in the meat-house, and a full jar of honey, she had obtained from the Evans beeyard, to use when her most honored guest (Mr. Brock) should sit at her table, was eaten half-down!
Full of wrathful suspicion, she locked her smoke-house in the daytime, kept an eye on the milk at the spring, and sent Lily Pearl running to the nests at every hen's cackle.
Dunaway, during his ten days' stay in the Doggett household, had become an intimate of Dock: the "hands," including Gran'dad and Joey, liked him, like Desdemona the Moor, because of the tales he told, and his glib pleasantries: even Mr. Doggett, despite the trouble to which he was put to get his bondman to work any, fell under his charm.
Not so Mrs. Doggett. After the between-meal pilfering of her provisions, although she did not openly accuse Dunaway, her dislike and distrust of him were glaringly apparent, and although he was unfailingly polite and respectful to her, and adroitly concealed his enmity, he heartily returned her dislike.
Little Dock Doggett would have pressed through fire or an iron wall, had there been an apple or a plum on the other side the flames or the metal: he knew the whereabouts of every wild haw, (red or black), pawpaw, or persimmon tree, or wild grape vine, in the neighborhood, and nobody's fruit orchard or melon patch was immune from his visits.
When the Castles moved to town, leaving Mr. Brock to occupy a portion of their country residence, and in full and absolute control of their strawberry beds, grape-arbors, and fruit-orchards, invasion of these fruiteries was no longer easy.
Dock had never liked Mr. Brock, and when his inner part began to cry for fruit whose acquisition Mr. Brock's presence prevented, his hatred of that gentleman became violent.
Mr. Brock prided himself on an annual patch of fine melons, and at the time of the coming of Dunaway, his melons were approaching maturity. There was no other melon patch in the neighborhood, and for days, Dock's dreams at night had been of nothing else.
"I know whar thar's ripe mush and water millerns," he confided to Dunaway, the next morning after Mrs. Doggett's securing of her provisions against thieves. "A body has to go at night to git 'em though, 'cause they're right next to a terbaccer patch whar the man is workin' ever'day." Dock was an arrant coward at night.
"If it's a partner you want," Dunaway grinned, "I'm your man!"
Dock agreed that this was the desire of his heart, and a compact was made for the evening.
It rained the entire day through, but there was no cessation of work in the tobacco-field of Ephriam Doggett: it was near the end of the week, and Sunday—Sunday when suckers grow and worms eat as on a week day!
As weary and besoaked as the Continental Army, on the Christmas night of '76, the men trailed in at nightfall. They had been wet to the skin since early morning, and as soon as hunger was satisfied, each, with two exceptions, stumbled off to bed, to fall into the immediate sleep of exhaustion. These exceptions were Dock and Dunaway, who, when the others were safely asleep, stole out and took their well-lighted way (the moon was full) to the hillside where, separated from the tobacco field by a wire fence, lay Mr. Brock's water-melon patch. The dread wet day tobacco patch weariness is a powerful thing, but the desire of the stomach for the fruit of the vine is more mighty.
Near a great stump in the middle of the patch grew a vine with which Mr. Brock had taken the greatest pains in work and fertilization. The one mighty melon he allowed to grow on this vine, he intended for a present, and when it was about half developed, he had traced on its rind, with the point of a pin, the inscription: "To Miss Lucy James, from her friend, Galvin Brock."
These letters had widened and healed with the growth of the melon, until, in its maturity, they were like something done in crewel embroidery. It looked an unique thing. Mr. Brock was proud of it to a degree, and had planned on Sunday to take it to Miss Lucy.
"Here's our melon!" cried Dunaway, thumping the prize gift.
"Don't plunk right," objected Dock: "hit needs about one more day's sun: less hunt another un."
At that moment a sneeze betrayed to the raiders the approach of their enemy. Mr. Brock, coming out to test the ripeness of his intended gift, thought he saw two shapes by the big stump: he wheezed forward, but when he reached the stump, no one was there, and the gate at the lower end of the patch hung wide open.
Dock and his assistant did not dare to make another venture that night, but laid their plans for an invasion at a later hour on the following evening. Fatigue was the portion next evening of Dunaway, who, under Mr. Doggett's constant urging, did a fair day's work, and of Dock, who never shirked in the tobacco patch, but ten o'clock found Dunaway gleefully bearing the big melon ornamented with the words of presentation in the direction of the gate of exit, and Dock, filling an empty flour sack with cantaloupes.
"Lay down that melon!" suddenly sounded gruffly on their ears, and a thick-set man, brandishing a stout leather whip, emerged from the shadow of a big walnut near the fence.
"Lay down that melon, I tell you, or I'll smash you flat!"
Something was smashed, but it was not the bondsman. Dunaway, cornered, lifted the melon high, and dropped it heavily on a flat rock that lay near the gate. It burst in a dozen pieces, and the sweet juice flew in the face of the horrified Mr. Brock.
That gentleman, enraged at this wanton destruction of Miss Lucy's present, said something that would have fallen harshly on the lady's ear, and rushed forward with his cowhide. But Dunaway had fled and Dock, his booty cast aside, was making a wild dash toward the open gate. Fate, in the shape of fatigue, retarded his movements; a tough vine tripped him, and he fell.
Before he could rise, the sole of a heavy foot was forcibly applied to the rear side of his trousers, the lash of his pursuer had twice smote his bare legs, and before he could reach the gate and safety, a half dozen more mighty cuts were bestowed on those insignificant members that Gran'dad called Dock's foot-handles.
Early next morning, Mr. Brock appeared at Mr. Doggett's with anger burning in his eyes. Mrs. Doggett was not at home, but Mr. Doggett had remained at the house a few minutes behind his workmen, and into his ears Mr. Brock poured his melon tale. Mr. Doggett was solicitously sympathetic.
"Who on earth you reckon 'twuz tuck your big millern, Mr. Brock?" he asked wonderingly.
"The man was nobody but that vagabond, Dunaway, you've got a workin' for you, and the little feller with him, judgin' by his size, was Dock!"
Mr. Doggett smiled. "Shorely, Mr. Brock, you are mistakened. We all worked in the rain, day before yistiddy, and hit wuz all the boys could do to git upstairs last night to bed, after they et, and I noticed Dock wuz so stiffened up, he wuz walkin' lame this mornin'."
"I saw a man's track in the mud by the gate this mornin'," said Mr. Brock: "a pointed shoe track."
Dunaway had reviled the long needle-pointed shoes, but his worn patent leathers had come in pieces on the second day of his labors, and he had been, perforce, to the great delight of the other men, obliged to put the "new" shoes on to protect his feet from blistering and the dry clods.
"And," added Mr. Brock in fine scorn, "there's nobody in the County a wearin' needle-pointed shoes at present, but your hireling. As for his companion, I didn't see his face, for the cloud that came up over the moon when I was close to him, and he got away before I could git my hands on his collar, but an old cowhide in my hand came in close contact with his legs. You never noticed any stripes on Dock's standards this mornin' did you?"
Mr. Doggett was much troubled.
"I jest hate hit awful, Mr. Brock," he deplored, "ef 'twuz them. I hain't never warned the boys ag'in goin' in millern patches, no, sir, I hain't, although I ort to 'a' done hit, yes, sir. But I'll see they don't go in yourn no more."
"If I catch Dunaway in again," said Mr. Brock, thickly and with heat, as he started homeward, "it certainly won't be good for him. I'll just manage to get word to the sheriff down where he wintered, where he broke jail without servin' out his time for indulgin' in some law breakin'!"
Dock's legs, Mr. Doggett's public reproof, and the ungratified longing in his stomach for melons, were still giving the boy trouble late Saturday afternoon, after the flight of Friday evening.
"Old devil!" Dock remarked to Dunaway as they went from the field together, conversing of their enemy: "he's a layin' hisse'f out to please the Jeemeses—sendin' 'em water-millerns and canterlopes, and mush-millerns! He thenks he's a gittin' on with Miss Lucy, and I don't b'lieve Miss Lucy'd give Mr. Lindsay's little fenger fer all old Galvin Brock, ef Mr. Jeemes and Miss Nancy'd let her have Mr. Lindsay. I b'lieve old Brock told old Mr. Jeemes some lies, anyway, on Mr. Lindsay! And he couldn't let us jes' taste one his old millerns! Old devil! I'll stamp him yit!"
"Consarn his old moley, red nose! I'll help you stamp him, Dock!" offered Dunaway, mindful of possible weary days in a Mississippi jail.
"Miss Lucy Jeemes used to give me pears sometimes; her'n is gittin' ripe now," Dock remarked irrelevantly: "I believe I'll go up thar in the mornin', ef Miss Nancy is gone to church (she's stingy), and git some. Wanter go with me?"
"I'd go in a minute," said Dunaway, "if it were not for the figure I cut in the confounded short jeanses, and these blasted needle-pointers, and that Noah's Ark derby!"
"Ef I'll slip you out a pair o' Jappy's pants, and his last year's Sunday slippers, and one of his white shirts and collars, and Joey's cap, will you go?" asked Dock.
"Sure!" agreed Dunaway.
Dunaway had liked the gentle Mr. Lindsay, from their first meeting. From Dock, he had learned of Mr. Lindsay's connection with the James family, of the affair of the trunk, and of the interrupted winter's courtship. He had discovered that Mrs. Doggett was espousing the cause of Brock, had observed that Mr. Lindsay on his Saturday evening's visit, had winced when she had prophesied that Mr. Brock would be married to Miss Lucy before his tobacco was cured, and had resolved to help him when opportunity offered itself.
After Mrs. Doggett's application of locks to her food supplies, and after Mr. Brock's threats became known to him, Dunaway had the incentive of revengeful desires to stimulate him to aid Mr. Lindsay in the cause of love.
"My hair is a gittin' turrible long, Mr. Lindsay," Mr. Doggett remarked on Sunday morning to his guest who, more pallid and worn than the week before, had come on Saturday evening: "and your'n's might' night' long enough to do up in a French twist: less git a pair clippers, and have a hair cuttin'."
"All right," agreed Mr. Lindsay, "I'll jest step over to Archie Evans'—he's got ever'thing—and borry his. Anybody want to go with me?"
Dunaway proffered his company immediately.
"You're paler and thinner than you were this time last week," he observed, on their way, "and hard work oughtn't to bleach you that way. What's the matter? Sweetheart gone back on you?"
Mr. Lindsay looked at him intently: but sympathetic interest alone was expressed in the shining black eyes.
"I dunno about her, Dunaway," he said, after a moment: "sometimes I believe her folks have set her ag'in me, and turned her toward another man, then ag'in I dunno whether I am right er not!"
"I hear she's like an angel," reflected Dunaway. "You still think so too, don't you?"
"I don't deny I still thenk hit," confided Mr. Lindsay, "and I believe she'd 'a' married me too," he added impulsively, "ef hit hadn't been fer Galvin Brock lyin' about me to old Milton! Brock—maybe you don't know hit—wants her hisse'f!"
Dunaway declined entering the brick house of the Evans', but remained a respectable distance out, in the field, giving "the confounded jeanses" as his reason. His mind rapidly formulated a plan, on the way back to the Doggett home. Dock impatiently awaited him at the woodpile.
"I snooped up thar in Mr. Jeemeses pastur," he whispered, "and seed Miss Nancy a startin' off to church—she's plumb out o' sight by now; now's our time to go ast Miss Lucy fer them pears. I got them clothes ready on the back side Mr. Jeemeses strawstack."
The pear tree of Dock's admiration stood in the northeast corner of the orchard, out of range of the porch, and next the garden, from which the orchard was separated by a post-and-rail fence, easily climbed; along the eastern side of the garden and orchard lay a picket fence, over which leaned blackberry bushes on the orchard side, and golden rod on the pasture field side.
There was no opening into the pasture field from the orchard, but a small gate led into the grass field from the garden. Miss Lucy James, gathering green beans, looked up to see Dock, accompanied by a tall and good-looking young man, in a neat shirt-waist costume, coming toward her.
"This is Ma's cousin, Alfred Bronston, Miss Lucy," said Dock (acting by instructions) by way of introduction. "He's been a workin' fer us a month. He's the one Mr. Lindsay thenks so much of."
Miss Lucy's slim hand was very cold when she held it out to Dunaway.
"How is Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Bronston?" she asked. "Have you saw him lately?"
"He's at our house today," answered Dunaway, "but I'm sorry to say, he is not looking well."
"He's awful puny lookin'," exaggerated Dock, still following previous instructions: "Pap says he thenks he's goin' into a recline; his eyes is all sunk in, and he's paler'n a taller candle, and jest wouldn't weigh nothin'!"
Miss Lucy's heart gave a great plunge, and seemed to stand still: her hand lost its grasp of the basket—the beans were scattered.
"Allow me to pick them up, Miss James," said courteous Dunaway, and the knees of dudish Jappy's second best pantaloons went down in the dirt.
"Me and Dun—my cousin—" ventured Dock,—"we wanted to git a few pears to eat—jest a little taste, Miss Lucy."
"Ef you'll empty the beans on the kitchen table for me, Dock," said Miss Lucy, "you can gather some pears in the basket to take home with you."
The words had scarcely left her lips, before Dock was opening the kitchen door in joyful obedience.
"Is what Dock says about Mr. Lindsay true, Mr. Bronston?" Miss Lucy's voice trembled over the question.
"Well," answered Dunaway, "when a man is in deep trouble, his bodily health is bound to be disturbed, and Mr. Lindsay—" he paused as though reluctant to go on.
"What—what is he worryin' about?" fluttered Miss Lucy.
Dunaway looked straight at her—an earnest, honest look.
"You want me to tell you the truth, Miss James? He thinks he has lost your love."
When Dock came back, Miss Lucy pointed to the pear tree.
"Jest go and help yourselves, Dock, you and your cousin: I—I've got to git a little note ready, I want to send by you."
It was many minutes before Miss Lucy, with her eyes suspiciously pink, appeared under the pear tree with a sealed envelope of a delicate lavender shade, in her hands, and the three, Dock, his "cousin" and the basket were alike full.
"Ef you could give this to him, without anybody seein' hit, I'd be glad," faltered Miss Lucy, as Dunaway placed the envelope carefully in the pocket of Jappy's white blouse.
"Mr. Lindsay shall have this in his hands in a few minutes, and nobody shall be the wiser," he assured her with a smile so full of good-will and encouragement, that her heart lightened as she looked at him.
When the two pear-bearers once more appeared at the Doggett home, Dunaway wore his own clothes, and a bundle in a clump of briars awaited a favorable opportunity to be conveyed to the house.
All that afternoon, Mr. Lindsay sat leaning against the pine in the front yard, with a glow in his face that told of a joyful heart within, and when Lily Pearl's pet pig, his especial aversion, poked an inquiring nose against the letter in his left hand, he gently patted the muddy back with his right.