“Malaria, backache, pain in the joints, headache, touch of sciatica. No, she's well. She don't complain. It's her husband, David. He's in a bad way.”
“What ails him!” David asked.
“He's blaspheming his God and Maker, Davy,” said Benedict. “He's blaspheming himself into his grave. He has hardened his heart and he curses the God that made him. Davy, he's dying of a breaking heart. He is breaking his heart against the pillars of Heaven.”
David turned in his chair.
“And you came for me? You were right, Benedict. You want me to go to him!”
“I want to take you to him,” said Benedict. “Get on your duds, Davy; the horse is outside.” It is a long drive to Griggs Township and Benedict had ample time to tell all he knew of Hinch. For five days the man had refused to eat. He sat in his chair and cursed his God for bringing the war upon the country; sat in his chair with a letter crumpled in his hand, with his eyes glassy hard and his face in a hideous scowl.
“I heard from the wife of what you did the other day when those loafers would have beaten the old man. He hates all mankind, Davy, but if there is one of the kind can soften his heart you are the one. Hates?” The doctor shook his head. “No, he thinks he hates man and God. It is grief, Davy. He's killing himself with grief.” David was silent. He knew Benedict would continue.
“The day you mixed up in his affair he got a letter at the post office. It's the letter he keeps crushed in his hand.”
“I remember. I picked it up and gave it to him.”
“He read it before he came out of the post office, I dare say,” said the doctor. He flicked his whip over the haunches of his horse. “You don't know why he came West? He was burned out where he came from. He spent his life and his wife's life, too, building up a farm and Fate made it a battlefield. Raiders took his stock first, then one army, and after that the other, made his farm a camp and between them they made it a desert, burning his buildings. He had a boy of fourteen, and they were trying to keep alive in the cellar hole where the house had been. A chance bullet killed the lad. I think the boy was running to the well for a pail of water. It has made, the old man bitter, Davy. It has made him hate the war.”