“They say he's got cats round his place by the hundred. Spends all his time in hunting meat and catching fish for 'em. Well, most everybody is cranky about some notion or others, whether it's in the city or in the woods, and I reckon that Josh has a right to keep cats if he wants to. No one ever sees him out in civilization now. Cynthy's in the asylum. Most people think it's just the trouble of the thing preying on her mind. And then again, I guess that Gid wasn't ever any too good to her. Hard case, ain't it, Mr. Parker?” The postmaster's voice trembled.
“It's as sad a story—as anger-stirring a story as I ever listened to, Mr. Dodge,” replied the young man, passionately. “I cannot understand how a scoundrel of that style should have been allowed to stamp roughshod over people without a champion arising in some quarter. It is small wonder that he has come to think that he can run the universe. He needs a lesson.”
“There's no doubt about his needin' the lesson,” replied the postmaster. “But for years half the wages that are paid out in this section have come through the hands of Gideon Ward. Laboring men with families to support and the traders have to stand in with him or be side-tracked. I don't know as Gid ever did a real up-and-down crime, any more than what I've been telling you—and some men in the world would be mean enough to gloss all that over, saying that it's only right to look out for number one first of all. But I tell ye honestly, Mr. Parker, Gid would have to do something pretty desperate and open to have the prosecuting officers of this county take it up against him. Now you can understand the width of the swath he cuts in these parts. Where would the witnesses come from? He owns his men, body and soul.”
Parker's forehead wrinkled doubtfully.
“What do you think will be his next move in regard to me?”
“I can't make a guess, but you need smellers as long as a bobcat's and as many eyes as a spider.” With this cheering opinion expressed, the postmaster went away.
There was no more work for Parker on his plans that night.
The grim pathos of the story that he had heard haunted him. This pitiful tragedy in real life stirred his youthful and impressionable sensibilities to their depths.
Despite his brave outward demeanor during his tilt with the ferocious old man he had feared within himself. He possessed no gladiatorial spirit and did not relish fray for the sake of it. But he did have accurate notions of right and wrong, of the justice of a cause and of manliness in standing for it. He had exhibited that trait many times to the astonishment of those who had been deceived by his quiet exterior. In this instance his employers had put a trust into his hands. He had resolved to go through with his task. But now there was added another incentive—a very distinct determination to give Gideon Ward at least one check and lesson in his career of wholesale domination.
A queer grief worked in his heart and a wistful tenderness moistened his eyes as he thought upon that injured brother, living out his wrecked life somewhere in the heart of those great woods about him. Perhaps there was a bit of prescience in the warmth with which he dwelt on the subject, for Fate had written that Joshua Ward was to play an important part in the life of Rodney Parker.