Motley said to Saladine, “Did you mark the horse? It was scared of the stage, but it was still at his word, and he did not tighten rein.”
“I saw,” Saladine agreed. “The boy handles it fine.”
“It’s feared of Evered; but the beast loves the boy.”
“There’s others in that same way o’ thinking,” said Saladine.
Inside the store Will Bissell and Andy Wattles, his lank and loyal clerk, were stamping and sorting the mail. No great matter, for few letters come to Fraternity. While this was under way Evered gathered up the purchases he had made since he came into the store, and took them out and stowed them under the seat of the buggy. He did not speak to his son. John sat still in his place, moving his feet out of the other’s way. When the bundles were all bestowed Evered went back up the steps and Will gave him his daily paper and a letter addressed to his wife, and Evered took them without thanks, and left the store without farewell to any man, and climbed into the buggy and took the reins. He turned the horse sharply and they moved down the hill, and the bridge sounded for a moment beneath their passing. In the still evening air the pound of the horse’s hoofs and the light whirring of the wheels persisted for long moments before they died down to blend with the hum and murmur of tiny sounds that filled the whispering dusk.
As they drove away one or two men came to the door to watch them go; and Judd, a man with a singular capacity for mean and tawdry malice, said loudly, “That boy’ll break Evered, some day, across his knee.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Jean Bubier said cheerfully that he would like to see the thing done. “But that Evered, he is one leetle fighter,” he reminded Judd.
Judd laughed unpleasantly and said Evered had the town bluffed. “That’s all he is,” he told them. “A black scowl and some cussing. Nothing else. You’ll see.”
Motley shook his head soberly. “Evered’s no bluff,” he said. “You’re forgetting that matter of the knife, Judd.”
Motley’s reminder put a momentary silence upon them all. The story of the knife was well enough known; the knife they had all seen. The thing had happened fifteen or twenty years before, and was one of the tales many times told about Will’s stove. One Dave Riggs, drunken and worthless, farming in a small way in North Fraternity, sent for Evered to kill a pig. Evered went to Riggs’ farm. Riggs had been drinking; he was quarrelsome; he sought to interfere with Evered’s procedure. Motley, a neighbor of Riggs, had been there at the time, and used to tell the story.