CHAPTER I
THE planter alighted from the dusty little train under the crumbling brick car-shed at Darley, turned his heavy hand-luggage over to the negro porter and walked across the grass to the steps of the Johnston House. Here he was met by Jim Thornton, the dapper young clerk, who always had a curled mustache and hair smoothed flatly down over his brow.
“Oh, here you are, right side up, Captain Duncan!” he cried. “You can’t stay away from those level acres of yours very long at a time.”
“No, Jim.” The short, thick-set man smiled as he took the extended hand. “As soon as I heard spring had opened up here we left Florida. I had a bad case of homesickness. My wife and daughter came a week ago. I had to stop on business in Jacksonville. I always want to be here in planting season; my men never seem to know exactly what I want done when I am away. Jim, I’ve got a lot of land out there between the river and the mountains.”
“I reckon you have,” laughed the clerk as he led his guest into the hotel office. “There’s a neighbor of yours over there at the stove, old Tom Mayhew, who runs the big store—Mayhew & Floyd’s—at Springtown.”
“Oh, I know him mighty well,” said Duncan. “How are you, Mayhew? What are you doing away from your beat? I thought you’d be behind your counter such fine weather as this.”
“Trade’s dull,” said the merchant, who was a tall, spare-made man about sixty-five years of age, with iron-gray hair and beard. “Farmers are all at the plow, and that’s where they ought to be if they expect to pay anything on their debts this fall. I had to lay in some stock, and so I ran down to Atlanta day before yesterday. My young partner, Nelson Floyd, usually does the replenishing, but the books got out of whack, and I left him to tussle with them; he’s got a better head for figures than I have. I’ve just sent to the livery-stable for a horse and buggy to take me out; how are you going?”
“Why, I hardly know,” answered the planter as he took off his straw hat and wiped his bald head with a silk handkerchief. “I telegraphed Lawson, my head overseer, to send somebody to meet me, and I was just wondering——”
“Oh, you’ll be attended to all right, Captain Duncan!” said the clerk, with a laugh as he stood at the register behind the counter. “Pole Baker was in here last night asking if you had arrived. He said he had brought a buggy and was going to drive you back. You will make it all right if Pole sobers up long enough to get out of town. He was thoroughly ‘how-come-you-so’ last night. He was in Askew’s bar raising holy Cain. The marshal ordered Billy to close at twelve, but Pole wouldn’t hear to it, and they were within an inch of having a fight. I believe they would if Mrs. Johnston hadn’t heard them and come down. Pole has more respect for women than most men, and as soon as he saw her at the door he hushed up and went to bed.”
“He’s as straight as a shingle this morning, Captain,” put in Charlie Smith, a mulatto porter, who was rolling a pair of trucks across the room laden with a drummer’s enormous brass-bound trunk. “He was up before day asking if you got in durin’ the night.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s sobered up if he’s to take me out,” said the planter. “He’s about the biggest daredevil out our way. You know him, don’t you, Mayhew?”
“Know him? Humph! to the extent of over three hundred dollars. Floyd thinks the sun rises and sets in him and never will close down on him. They are great friends. Floyd will fight for him at the drop of a hat. He says Pole has more manhood in him to the square inch than any man in the county, white or black. He saw him in a knock-down-and-drag-out row in the public square last election. They say Pole whipped three bigger men than he is all in a bunch, and bare-handed at that. Nobody knows to this day how it started. Nelson doesn’t, but I heard it was some remark one of the fellows made about Nelson himself. You know my partner had a rather strange start in life—a poor boy with nobody to see to his bringing up, but that’s a subject that his best friends don’t mention to him.”
The Captain nodded understandingly. “They tell me Pole used to be a moonshiner,” he said, “and I have heard that he was the shrewdest one in the mountains. His wife got him to quit it. I understand he fairly worships the ground she walks on, and there never was a better father to his children.”
“He thinks well enough of them when he’s at himself,” said Mayhew, “but when he’s drinking he neglects them awfully. I’ve known the neighbors to feed them two weeks on a stretch. He’s got enemies out our way. When he quit moonshining he helped some of the government officers find some stills over there. That was funny. Pole held off from the job that was offered him for a month, during which time he sent word everywhere through the mountains that he would give all his old friends plenty of time to shut up and quit making whisky, but after his month was up he intended to do all he could against law-breakers. He had to testify against several, and they now certainly have it in for him. He’d have been shot long ago if his enemies weren’t afraid of him.”
“I see him coming now, Mr. Mayhew,” said the clerk. “Captain, he walks steady enough. I reckon he’ll take you through safe.”
The tall countryman, about thirty-five years of age, without a coat, his coarse cotton shirt open at the neck, a slouch hat on his massive head and his tattered trousers stuffed into the tops of his high boots, came in. He had a brown, sweeping mustache, and his eyebrows were unusually heavy. On the heel of his right foot he wore an old riding-spur, very loosely strapped.
“How are you, Captain Duncan?” he said to the planter as he extended his brawny hand. “You’ve come back to God’s country, eh?”
“Yes, Baker,” the planter returned with a genial smile; “I had to see what sort of chance you fellows stand for a crop this year. I understand Lawson sent you over for me and my baggage. I’m certainly glad he engaged a man about whom I have heard such good reports.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Captain,” said Pole, his bushy brows meeting in a frown of displeasure and his dark eyes flashing. “I don’t know as I’m runnin’ a hack-line, or totin’ trunks about for the upper-ten set of humanity. I’m a farmer myself, in a sort of way—smaller’n you are, but a farmer. I was comin’ this way yesterday, and was about to take my own hoss out o’ the field, where he had plenty to do, when Lawson said, said he, ‘Baker, bein’ as you are goin’ to make the trip anyways, I’d feel under obligations ef you’d take my rig and fetch Captain Duncan back when you come.’ By gum, to tell you the truth, I’ve just come in to tell you, old hoss, if you are ready right now, we’ll ride out together, if not I’ll leave you an’ go out with Nathan Porter. Engaged, the devil! I’m not goin’ to get any money out o’ this job.”
“Oh, I meant no offense at all, Baker,” said the planter in no little embarrassment, for the group was smiling.
“Well, I reckon you didn’t,” said Pole, slightly mollified, “but it’s always a good idea fer two men to know exactly where they stand, and I’m here to say I don’t take off my hat to no man on earth.”
“That’s the right spirit,” Duncan said admiringly. “Now, I’m ready if you are, and it’s time we were on the move. Those two valises are mine and that big overcoat tied in a bundle.”
“Here, Charlie!” Pole called out to the porter, “put them things o’ Duncan’s in the back end o’ the buggy, an’ I’ll throw you a dime the next time I’m in town.”
“All right, boss,” the mulatto said, with a knowing wink and smile at Mayhew. “They’ll be in by the time you get there.”
While the planter was at the counter, saying good-bye to the clerk, Pole looked down at Mayhew. “When are you goin’ out?” he asked.
“In an hour or so,” answered the merchant as he spat into a cuspidor. “I’m waiting now for a turnout, and I’ve got some business to attend to.”
“Collections to make, I’ll bet my hat,” Pole laughed. “I thought mighty few folks was out on Main Street jest now; they know you are abroad in the land an’ want to save the’r socks.”
“Do you reckon that’s it, Pole?” said Mayhew as he spat again. “I thought maybe it was because they was afraid you’d paint the town, and wanted to keep their skins whole.”
The clerk and the planter laughed. “He got you that time, Baker,” the latter said, with a smile.
“I’ll acknowledge the corn,” and the mountaineer joined in the laugh good-naturedly. “To look at the old skinflint, settin’ half asleep all the time, a body wouldn’t think his tongue had any life to it. I’ve seed the dern thing wiggle before, but it was mostly when thar was a trade up.”