More "Short Sixes"

by H. C. Bunner

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When Samantha Spaulding was left a widow with a little boy, she got, as one of her neighbors expressed it, “more politeness than pity.” In truth, in so far as the condition has any luck about it, Samantha was lucky in her widowhood. She was a young widow, and a well-to-do widow. Old man Spaulding had been a good provider and a good husband; but he was much older than his wife, and had not particularly engaged her affections. Now that he was dead, after some eighteen months of married life, and had left her one of the two best farms in the county, everybody supposed that Mis’ Spaulding would marry Reuben Pett, who owned the other best farm, besides a saw-mill and a stage-route. That is, everybody thought so, except Samantha and Pett. They calmly kept on in their individual ways, and showed no inclination to join their two properties, though these throve and waxed more and more valuable year by year. They were good friends, however. Reuben Pett was a sagacious counselor, and a prudent man of affairs; and when Samantha’s boy became old enough to work, he was apprenticed to Mr. Pett, to the end that he might some day take charge of the saw-mill business, which his mother stood ready to buy for him.

But the youthful Baxter Spaulding had not reached the age of twenty when he cast down his mother’s hopes in utter ruin by coming home from a business trip to Augusta and announcing that he was going to marry, and that the bride of his choice was a young lady of the variety stage who danced for a living, her specialty being known as “hitch-and-kick.”

Now, this may not seem, to you who read this, quite a complete, perfect and unimprovable thing in the way of the abomination of desolation; but then you must remember that you were not born and raised in a far corner of the Maine hills, and that you probably have so frequently seen play-actoress-women of all sorts that the mere idea of them has ceased to give you cold creeps down your back. And to Samantha Spaulding the whole theatrical system, from the Tragic Muse to the “hitch-and-kick artiste,” was conceived in sin and born in iniquity; and what her son proposed to do was to her no whit better than forgery, arson, or any other ungodliness. To you of a less distinctively Aroostook code of morals, I may say that the enchainer of young Spaulding’s heart was quite as good a little girl in her morals and her manners as you need want to find on the stage or off it; and “hitch-and-kick” dancing was to her only a matter of business, as serio-comic singing had been to her mother, as playing Harlequin had been to her father, and as grinning through a horse-collar had been to her grandfather and great-grandfather, famous old English clowns in their day, one of whom had been a partner of Grimaldi. She made her living, it is true, by traveling around the country singing a song called “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay,” which required a great deal of high-kicking for its just and full artistic expression; but then, it should be remembered, it was the way she had always made her living, and her mother’s living, too, since the old lady lost her serio-comic voice. And as her mother had taught her all she knew about dancing, and as she and her mother had hardly been separated for an hour since she was out of her cradle, Little Betty Billington looked on her profession, as you well may imagine, with eyes quite different from those with which Mrs. Samantha Spaulding regarded it. It was a lop-sided contest that ensued, and that lasted for months. On one side were Baxter and his Betty and Betty’s mama—after that good lady got over her natural objections to having her daughter marry “out of the profession.” On the other side was Samantha, determined enough to be a match for all three of them. Mr. Reuben Pett hovered on the outskirts, asking only peace.

At last he was dragged into the fight. Baxter Spaulding went to Bangor, where his lady’s company happened to be playing, with the avowed intention of wedding Betty out of hand. When his mother found it out, she took Reuben Pett and her boy’s apprenticeship-indenture to Bangor with her, caught the youngster ere the deed was done, and, having the majesty of the law behind her, she was taking her helpless captive home on this particular August afternoon. He was on the front seat of the wagon, Samantha was on the splint-bottomed chair, and Reuben Pett was driving.

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It was a two-days’ drive from the railroad station at Byram’s Pond around the spur of the mountain to their home. The bi-weekly stage did it in a day; but it was unwonted traveling for Mr. Pett’s easy-going team. Therefore, the three travelers put up at Canada Jake’s camp; so called, though it was only on the edge of the wilderness, because it was what Maine people generally mean when they talk of a “camp”—a large shanty of rough, unpainted planks, with a kitchen and eating-room below, and rudely partitioned sleeping-rooms in the upper story. It stood by the roadside, and served the purpose of an inn.

Canada Jake was lounging in the doorway as they came up, squat, bullet-headed and bead-eyed; a very ordinary specimen of mean French Canadian. He welcomed them in as if he were conferring a favor upon them, fed them upon black, fried meat and soggy, boiled potatos, and later on bestowed them in three wretched enclosures overhead.

He himself staid awake until the sound of two bass and one treble snore penetrated the thin partition planks; and then he stole softly up the ladder that served for stairway, and slipped into the moonlit little room where Baxter Spaulding was lying on a cot-bed six inches too short for him. Putting his finger upon his lips, he whispered to the wakeful youth: