My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me.
“Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out a few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night, around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ has got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.”
“I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected.
My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers.
“A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on his weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh will be bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”
I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought.
I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m sure of it.
But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home, under his thumb.
“You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse.
I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure, the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts. Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far, far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that I had asked nothing of her.