XVIII
WHAT a fair of American citizenship was on its way to Hillsborough this morning of the Fourth of July! They that now crowded the train were like others travelling on all the main thoroughfares of the county—farmers and their wives, rustic youths and their sweethearts, mill-hands and mill-owners, teamsters, sawyers, axemen, guides, and storekeepers. They were celebrating a day's release from the tyranny of Business, and were not deeply moved by the tyranny which their grandfathers had suffered. History, save that of the present hour, did not much concern them.
They were mostly sound-hearted men. There were some who, in answer to the charge that a local statesman had got riches in the Legislature, were wont to say, "He'd be a fool if he hadn't." He was "a good fellow," anyhow, and they loved a good fellow. All the men of wealth and place and power were in his favor, and had practised upon them the subtle arts of the friend-maker. They would not have accepted "a bribe"—these good people now on their way to Hillsborough—but they could get all kinds of favors from Joe Socket and Pop Migley and Horace Dumay and other henchmen of the wealthy boss and legislator. They had yielded to the insidious briberies of friendship—warm greetings and handshakes, loans, small sinecures, compliments, pledges of undying esteem over clinking glasses, and similar condescension. They loved the forest and were sorry to see it go, but many of them got their bread-and-butter by its downfall—directly or indirectly—and then Socket, Dumay, and Migley were nothing more or less than lumber, pulp, and water-power personified. They were like the lords and barons of the olden time—less arrogant but more powerful. Indeed, Strong was right—the tyrant of the modern world is that ruthless giant that he called "Business," and his nobles are coal, iron, cotton, wool, food, power, paper, and lumber. These people on the edge of the woodland were slaves of power, paper, and lumber. With able and designing chiefs this great triumvirate gently drove the good people this way and that, and there was a little touch of irony in this journey of the latter to celebrate their freedom and independence.
One who knew them could not help feeling that the old martial spirit of the day was wholly out of harmony with their own. They were a peace-loving people, purged of their fathers' hatred, and roars of defiance found no echo in any breast—save those overheated by alcohol.
Some wore flannel shirts and the livery of a woodsman's toil; some, unduly urged, no doubt, by a wife or sister, had ventured forth in more conventional attire. They sat, as if posing for a photograph, galled, hot, gloomy, suspicious, self-suppressed, silent, their necks hooped in linen, their bodies resisting the tight embrace of new attire. In the crowd were a number to whom the reaping of the ruined hills, on either side of the train, had brought wealth and an air of proprietorship. Most of the crowd were in high spirits. The sounds of loud talk and laughter and the rankling smoke of cheap cigars filled the air above them. A lank youth under a dark, broad-brimmed hat, tilted backward, so as neither to conceal nor disarrange a rare embellishment of curls upon his brow, entered the car with another like him. His hair had the ginger-brown, ringletudinous look of spaniel fur. He began to whistle loudly and, as it would seem, prelusively. In a moment he was in full song on a ballad of the cheap theatres, with sentiment like his hair—frank, bold, oily, and outreaching.
As the train stopped at Hillsborough, Strong rose and put on his pack and left with the crowd, coon in hand. The sidewalks were crowded, and Strong took the centre of the street. There, at least, was comparative seclusion.
Silas had not travelled a block when, all unexpectedly, he became a centre of attraction. A group of whining dogs gathered about him, peering wistfully at the coon. They were shortly reinforced by a number of small boys, which grew with astonishing rapidity. Cries of curiosity and derision rose around him. Sportsmen who had visited his camp and who recognized him shouted their greeting to the "Emperor of the Woods." A "swisher" of some prominence in the little school of sportsmanship at Lost River came and dispersed the boys. The Emperor kicked at a dog and ran a little way in pursuit of him. He came back and set down the coon-cage and shook hands with his pupil. Immediately a dog, approaching from behind, sprang at the cage and tipped it over, and leaped upon it and began to claw. Strong seized and flung the dog away, and as he righted the cage its door came open and the coon escaped. Dodging his enemy, the little animal sought refuge in a thicket of people. Being pursued by dogs, and accustomed also to avoid peril by climbing, he straightway climbed, not a tree, but a tall sapling of a youth, from which the others broke away in a panic. They were opposite a little park, and the youth, not daring to lay hold of the animal, fled among the trees, pursued by Strong and two dogs and a throng of brave spirits who shouted information as to what he had best do.
For half a moment the frightened coon clung on a shoulder, his tail in the air, growling at the dogs. The latter leaped up at him, and he began to feel for more altitude. The youth, who had some knowledge of the nature of coons, ran to the nearest tree. Quickly the coon sprang upon it and scrambled far out of reach. He ran up the smooth shaft of elm and settled on a swaying bough some forty feet above ground. A crowd of people were now looking up at him.
"Coon in a cage is worth two in a tree," a man shouted.
Strong sat down beneath the tree and lighted his pipe and "thought out" another bit of wisdom for his memorandum-book. It was: