The differing interests of his crops evidently divided his affections, and he was in the normal condition of the farmer disappointed in either rain or shine.
They stood silent for a moment by the fence, and as Shattuck turned one of the great trumpet-flowers in his hand and looked down into its scarlet horn, then let the tendril spring back elastically into its place, Rhodes's words came to them as he wrestled with Eph Guthrie's presumable political persuasions against him. These were altogether assumed by the candidate for the purposes of argument, for which the plastic Eph furnished but a straw man, as it were, easily knocked down, requiring to be cleverly and surreptitiously picked up again by his insistent opponent, in order to plant still more well-delivered and coercive blows.
"Fee 'ain't got no grudge against me, I know," Rhodes was saying. "I don't bear no malice for a little tussle like that, and I know Fee don't."
"How ye know he don't?"
Shattuck was startled by hearing this sotto voce comment upon the dialogue by Fee in person close to his elbow. He turned and looked at the man, seeking to convey in the glance an intimation that he had spoken his thought aloud and that it had been overheard. Felix Guthrie evidently cared as little as might be. His eyes met Shattuck's unabashed.
"Fee ain't in no wise malicious," Eph piped up.
"I know it—I know that—no man better," Rhodes interrupted him promptly, for he knew that Eph could talk by the yard measure on the subject of his brother's perfections, so close was the fraternal bond. "I know Fee can't bear malice. I like Fee, and Fee likes me, and won't do a thing against me—not a thing!"
"Waal, ye better not be too sure o' that," the voice at Shattuck's elbow said, in that suppressed, significant soliloquy.
Shattuck, embarrassed by these confidences in prejudice to his friend's loudly expressed conclusions, was about to turn away, when Guthrie's hand was laid upon his arm.
"Stranger," he said, his head with his big broad hat and its clinging curls bent forward, "don't it 'pear a sorter cur'ous dispensation to you-uns that that man yander b'lieves so what he say whenst it air in my heart ter kill him—yes, sir, ter kill him!—if he war ter interfere with me?"