I thought of that small shining object that I had picked up in the rubbish the morning after the fire was set under our window. It would have been hard, indeed, to produce more damaging or convincing evidence than that, but Mr. Wilson had just been enjoining a strict silence in regard to Mr. Horton and his works upon us, so I kept the thought to myself.
“Your father was a good man,” Mr. Wilson continued. “He had one big advantage over Horton from the start—he was able to hold both his tongue and his temper even when Horton, by his acts, kept him so short-handed that he was unable to build the fence that would have saved his crops and so helped to defeat Horton. The fencing will cost about three hundred dollars. When I sold off that big bunch of steers, two years ago, I offered to lend him money to fence his claim, but, no sir, he wouldn’t touch a cent—seemed to have a kind of prejudice agin’ borrowing money, even of me. Another thing about Horton is,” went on our friend, who seemed to have made an exhaustive study of his subject, “that he must brag about what he’s going to do before he does it. That’s how every one knows, in reason, that he is the one who has made you all this trouble. He hasn’t scrupled to say that he’s bound to have this place, by hook or by crook, whatever happens—and so he looks out for it that things happen. But there is one thing that I will say for him, and it’s kind of curious, too—let him once be fairly and squarely beaten, so that there’s no way but for him to own up to it, and you needn’t ask for a better or more faithful friend than he is; but he’s like—” Mr. Wilson lifted his hat and scratched his grizzled head, casting about for a simile; his eye fell on Guard. “Why, he’s like a bull-dog, you might say—he’ll hang on until beaten, and then he’s yours to command ever after.”
Jessie was greatly cast down; she looked at Guard and accepted the simile mournfully.
“There’s no hope of our ever being able to do anything that will make him admit himself beaten,” she said, “so, I suppose, we must resign ourselves to enduring his enmity as best we can.”
“I ain’t calculating on his keeping up this racket after you get your title,” Mr. Wilson declared, hopefully; “he’s dead set on getting this land now. He’s made his brags that he would have it, but when it’s once passed out of his reach, he’ll kind of tame down, I’m thinking. Now, about your fences,” he continued, with a sudden, cheery change of tone: “they’re going up. Don’t you worry about the loss of your crop, but Joe, you just whirl in and go to plowing those fields again for fall wheat; nothing better for raising money on than fall wheat; and by the time it’s sprouted, we’ll have it fenced, snug and tight; we will, if I have to mortgage my farm to do it! But I shan’t have to do that. I can raise the money for you somehow.”
Jessie was sitting on the wagon-tongue. She looked gratefully up into the ranchman’s weather-beaten face.
“I think you’re just awful good, Mr. Wilson, but—would it be right for us to let you lend us the money when we know how opposed poor father was to anything of that kind?”
This was a vital question. I leaned forward, awaiting the answer, while Jessie listened with parted lips, as she might if our good neighbor had been some ancient oracle, whose lightest word was law. Mr. Wilson regarded us steadfastly for a moment, then scratched his head again.
“Well,” he said slowly, at last, “I s’pose, setting aside all questions of circumstances, that when the Bible said: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother in the days of thy youth,’ it meant to reach clean down to the things that your parents wanted you to do—or not to do—whether they was alive to see it done or not. I do s’pose that that was what it means, and your father he was sure set against borrowing.”