“I have been warned already, Mr. Dodge.”
“Yes, but you don't seem to take it to heart enough. Or if you do, you don't show it. That was the reason I was afraid you didn't realize what a man you have to deal with.”
“He seems to me like a blustering coward. Your really brave and determined men don't make so much talk.”
“Oh, Gid Ward has tried his usual game of scare with his mouth, and it didn't work. He won't come again at you that way in the open right way. But”—the postmaster brought his chair down on its four legs and leaned forward to whisper—“he'll come again at you in the dark, and it's then that he's dangerous.”
“Of course I needn't tell you, Mr. Dodge, that I do not propose to be backed down and driven out of this section by a man like that. I dare say he is planning mischief, but I have my work to do here, and I shall keep on as best I can.”
“I admire your spunk, young man,” said the postmaster, heartily, “and I hope you'll come through this all right. But I have felt it my duty to see that you were warned good and solid. I know how Gid Ward got his start in life—and by as mean a trick as ever a man put up.
“His brother Joshua Ward, enlisted for the war in the sixties. Bachelor, Joshua was. He was going with one of the Marshall girls in Carmel, and the thing was settled final. Hows'ever, Josh went away to the war without getting married, because he allowed that if he got killed, an unmarried girl wouldn't have to take last pickings of the men, like a widow would. Mighty kind, square, good-hearted chap that Josh Ward now I can tell ye! Thought of others first all the time. He owned a mighty nice place that his aunt had willed to him. She liked Josh, but hated the sight of Gid, same's every one else did.
“Before Josh went away he deeded his farm and everything to that Marshall girl. Told her that if he came back they would get married, and it would be all right. If he didn't come back, he wanted her to marry a good man, and told her that the farm would make a home for them and help her to get the best kind of a husband. As I told you, that Joshua Ward was as good as wheat.
“For a year that Marshall girl heard from Josh regularly, and then the papers reported that he was killed in a big battle, and from then to the end of the war—two years or more—there wasn't a word from him or of him. Meanwhile Gid laid his plan. The Marshall girl had an idea that if she married Gid—though he wasn't her style—it would please Josh, for then the place would stay in the family. She mourned for Josh terribly, but Gid was right after her all the time, and there she was with a farm on her hands, and so she finally up and married him.
“In Joshua Ward's case it happened, as it did in hundreds of other cases, where the poor chaps weren't important enough to be heard about or from. He was just captured instead of killed, and went from Libby to Andersonville, from Andersonville to Macon, and when Lee surrendered he came home, thin's a shadow, shaking with ague and with eyes bigger than burnt holes in a blanket. Pitiful figure he was, I tell you. I was running a livery business in Carmel village then, and Josh hired me to take him out to the farm.