The horsemen received this ungainly addition to their party with polite composure, and the genteel element of the spectators remained silent too from the force of good breeding and good feeling; but the "roughs," always critically a-loose in a crowd, shouted and screamed with derisive hilarity. What they were laughing at Jenks Hollis never knew. Grave and stolid, but as complacent as the best, he too made the usual circuit with his ill-fitting jeans suit, his slouching old wool hat, and his long, gaunt figure. But he sat the spirited "John Barleycorn" as if he were a part of the steed, and held up his head with unwonted dignity, inspired perhaps by the stately attitudes of the horse, which were the result of no training nor compelling reins, but the instinct transmitted through a long line of high-headed ancestry. Of a fine old family was "John Barleycorn."
A deeper sensation was in store for the spectators. Before Jenkins Hollis's appearance most of them had heard of his intention to compete, but the feeling was one of unmixed astonishment when entry No. 12 rode into the arena, and, on the part of the country people, this surprise was supplemented by an intense indignation. The twelfth man was Jacob Brice. As he was a "mounting boy," one would imagine that, if victory should crown his efforts, the rural faction ought to feel the elation of success, but the prevailing sentiment toward him was that which every well-conducted mind must entertain concerning the individual who runs against the nominee. Notwithstanding the fact that Brice was a notable rider, too, and well calculated to try the mettle of the town's champion, there arose from the excited countrymen a keen, bitter, and outraged cry of "Take him out!" So strongly does the partisan heart pulsate to the interests of the nominee! This frantic petition had no effect on the interloper. A man who has inherited half a dozen violent quarrels, any one of which may at any moment burst into a vendetta,—inheriting little else,—is not easily dismayed by the disapprobation of either friend or foe. His statuesque features, shaded by the drooping brim of his old black hat were as calm as ever, and his slow blue eyes did not, for one moment, rest upon the excited scene about him, so unspeakably new to his scanty experience. His fine figure showed to great advantage on horseback, despite his uncouth, coarse garb; he was mounted upon a sturdy, brown mare of obscure origin, but good-looking, clean-built, sure-footed, and with the blended charm of spirit and docility; she represented his whole estate, except his gun and his lean, old hound, that had accompanied him to the fair, and was even now improving the shining hour by quarreling over a bone outside the grounds with other people's handsomer dogs.
The judges were exacting. The riders were ordered to gallop to the right—and around they went. To the left—and there was again the spectacle of the swiftly circling equestrian figures. They were required to draw up in a line, and to dismount; then to mount, and again to alight. Those whom these manoeuvres proved inferior were dismissed at once, and the circle was reduced to eight. An exchange of horses was commanded; and once more the riding, fast and slow, left and right, the mounting and dismounting were repeated. The proficiency of the remaining candidates rendered them worthy of more difficult ordeals. They were required to snatch a hat from the ground while riding at full gallop. Pistols loaded with blank cartridges were fired behind the horses, and subsequently close to their quivering and snorting nostrils, in order that the relative capacity of the riders to manage a frightened and unruly steed might be compared, and the criticism of the judges mowed the number down to four.
Free speech is conceded by all right-thinking people to be a blessing. It is often a balm. Outside of the building and of earshot the defeated aspirants took what comfort they could in consigning, with great fervor and volubility, all the judicial magnates to that torrid region unknown to polite geographical works.
Of the four horsemen remaining in the ring, two were Jenkins Hollis and Jacob Brice. Short turns at full gallop were prescribed. The horses were required to go backward at various gaits. Bars were brought in and the crowd enjoyed the exhibition of the standing-leap, at an ever-increasing height and then the flying-leap—a tumultuous confused impression of thundering hoofs and tossing mane and grim defiant faces of horse and rider, in the lightning-like moment of passing. Obstructions were piled on the track for the "long jumps," and in one of the wildest leaps a good rider was unhorsed and rolled on the ground while his recreant steed that had balked at the last moment scampered around and around the arena in a wild effort to find the door beneath the tiers of seats to escape so fierce a competition. This accident reduced the number of candidates to the two mountaineers and Tip Hackett, the man whom Jacob had pronounced a formidable rival. The circling about, the mounting and dismounting, the exchange of horses were several times repeated without any apparent result, and excitement rose to fever heat.
The premium and certificate lay between the three men. The town faction trembled at the thought that the substantial award of the saddle and bridle, with the decoration of the blue ribbon, and the intangible but still precious secondary glory of the certificate and the red ribbon might be given to the two mountaineers, leaving the crack rider of Colbury in an ignominious lurch; while the country party feared Hollis's defeat by Hackett rather less than that Jenks would be required to relinquish the premium to the interloper Brice, for the young hunter's riding had stricken a pang of prophetic terror to more than one partisan rustic's heart. In the midst of the perplexing doubt, which tried the judges' minds, came the hour for dinner, and the decision was postponed until after that meal.
The competitors left the arena, and the spectators transferred their attention to unburdening hampers, or to jostling one another in the dining-hall.
Everybody was feasting but Cynthia Hollis. The intense excitement of the day, the novel sights and sounds utterly undreamed of in her former life, the abruptly struck chords of new emotions suddenly set vibrating within her, had dulled her relish for the midday meal; and while the other members of the family repaired to the shade of a tree outside the grounds to enjoy that refection, she wandered about the "floral hall," gazing at the splendors of bloom thronging there, all so different from the shy grace, the fragility of poise, the delicacy of texture of the flowers of her ken,—the rhododendron, the azalea, the Chilhowee lily,—yet vastly imposing in their massed exuberance and scarlet pride, for somehow they all seemed high colored.
She went more than once to note with a kind of aghast dismay those trophies of feminine industry, the quilts; some were of the "log cabin" and "rising sun" variety, but others were of geometric intricacy of form and were kaleidoscopic of color with an amazing labyrinth of stitchings and embroideries—it seemed a species of effrontery to dub one gorgeous poly-tinted silken banner a quilt. But already it bore a blue ribbon, and its owner was the richer by the prize of a glass bowl and the envy of a score of deft-handed competitors. She gazed upon the glittering jellies and preserves, upon the biscuits and cheeses, the hair-work and wax flowers, and paintings. These latter treated for the most part of castles and seas rather than of the surrounding altitudes, but Cynthia came to a pause of blank surprise in front of a shadow rather than a picture which represented a spring of still brown water in a mossy cleft of a rock where the fronds of a fern seemed to stir in the foreground. "I hev viewed the like o' that a many a time," she said disparagingly. To her it hardly seemed rare enough for the blue ribbon on the frame.
In the next room she dawdled through great piles of prize fruits and vegetables—water-melons unduly vast of bulk, peaches and pears and pumpkins of proportions never seen before out of a nightmare, stalks of Indian corn eighteen feet high with seven ears each,—all apparently attesting what they could do when they would, and that all the enterprise of Kildeer County was not exclusively of the feminine persuasion.