Brother Against Brother; Or, The War on the Border

by Oliver Optic

Probably Noah Lyon had never felt anything like the emotion of anger in his being against his brother until they met that day on the bridge. As one and another had said several times, no two men of the same blood and lineage could have been more differently constituted. Noah had been a diligent student as a boy, and a constant reader in his maturity; while Titus had been the black sheep of the family, had neglected his studies in his youth, and did not even read a newspaper in his manhood, unless for a special purpose.

Titus could read and write, and knew enough of arithmetic to enable him to keep the accounts of his business. Whatever he learned after he left school he gathered from the speech of people; and as his associates were not of the intelligent class in his native town any more than they were in his new home, his education was very limited and his moral aims, if he could be said to have any, were not elevated enough to keep him very far within the limits of the law, which were his principal tests between right and wrong.

Before he was twenty-one he obtained a position to drive a stage on a twenty-mile route, so that he spent every other night at a tavern; and this did not improve his manners or his morals. As a boy he had become disgusted with farming, and had learned the trade of a mason, working at it three years. Like his elder brother, he was a horse fancier, and was a skilful driver. An accident to the old stage-driver placed him on the box, and when the place became permanent he was only twenty years old.

With so little intellectual and moral foundation as he had laid for his future character, it was a misfortune for him that he was then a "good-looking fellow." He boarded at the tavern, and paid only two dollars a week in consideration of his position, for it was believed that he had some influence with his passengers. He was well supplied with money for one of his age in the country, and he spent all he had.

He was an agile dancer, which, with his good looks, made him popular in the town, especially with the girls. Amelia Lenox was a pretty girl. She had a fancy for the handsome stage-driver; and, in spite of the earnest objections of her father and mother, she accepted him as her husband, and they were married. Titus took a cottage near the tavern, and for a year, with the help of his and her father, they got along very well.

All of a sudden a railroad shot through the town, and the business of the place was gone in the twinkling of an eye. The wages of Titus stopped, and he had a wife and child to support. He went to his father for advice. The mason, who had done a good business in the town and its vicinity, had grown old. Hopestill Lyon, the grandfather of the boys, was his best friend, and bought out his business for Titus.

For several years he worked well, made some money, and paid his grandfather for the investment made on his behalf. But he did not like the business. Unlike his brothers, he seemed to believe that fate, destiny, circumstances, or some other indefinable power that regulates the worldly condition of mortals, had misused and abused him; for he ought to have been "born with a silver spoon in his mouth," with wealth at his command, so that he could live in luxury without work.

When he built chimneys, plastered rooms, or jobbed in filthy drains and smutty fireplaces, he labored with an active protest against his occupation in his soul, which extended down to his hands and feet, shutting out ambition, and making him lazy. He was always on the lookout for some other occupation, or for some change which would put more money in his pocket. He did a vast deal of grumbling and growling at his lot, occasionally taking home with him a gallon jug of New England rum, which did not improve his condition. He was not a drunkard, but he was unconsciously falling into a bad habit.

His wife was an intelligent woman, and was a good helpmate; but it did not require a prophetic vision to read the future, near or distant, of Titus Lyon. It was said by some of the old people in the town that he "took after" his grandmother, who had been a stylish woman in her younger days, though the solid character of Hopestill Lyon had controlled her inclinations so that she made him a good wife.

Mrs. Lyon reasoned kindly with Titus; but before she left her Northern home she had lost whatever influence she had ever exercised over him. He was eager to settle in Kentucky when the colonel's letter announcing an opening for him came, and she was utterly opposed to the plan. It was at least a change, and he was determined to make it, in spite of the fact that his brother could not advise him to do so; and the result proved the solidity of the colonel's judgment.