CHAPTER III

THROW-BACKS

“There’s throw-backs in folks jist like in horses,” said the proprietor of Moosehead House, seating himself close to the kitchen stove and waving his guest to a rocking chair. “An’ that girl, Joe Hinch, is a throw-back—an’ a long throw—clear beyond my memory, anyhow. She’s got more than looks—more of some other things than she has of looks—an’ you know what she looks like! That’s sayin’ somethin’ would crack a stiff jaw, hey? Well, it’s the truth! She’s got brains, an’ she’s got speerit—and she’s got honesty! The Lord only knows where she got that. That’s where the long throw comes in. She’s an orphant. But she’s got the worst two old grandpas you could find if you hunted a week. I’ll bet a dollar there ain’t a worse pair of grandpas in the whole province, or maybe not in the whole country, when it comes to sheer downright cussedness an’ crookedness. Ain’t that right, Liza?”

“I guess so,” replied Miss Hassock, but Vane saw and felt that she had given no consideration to her brother’s question.

“Sure it’s right!” continued Jard, with relish. “Old Dave Hinch an’ old Luke Dangler! There’s a pair of hellyuns you wouldn’t have the heart to wish onto your worst enemy for grandpas. Dave’s mean an’ crooked an’ a coward. Luke’s mean an’ crooked an crazy—but he ain’t afeared of anything nor anybody. Now with horses an’ horned cattle the top-crosses is the things to look at an’ consider in their pedigrees; an’ so it should be with humans, and usually is—but there’s throw-backs in both, now an’ then. There must surely be some fine strains in Joe’s pedigree, but an all-fired long ways back. The Danglers have speerit an’ looks, right enough, but I’m referrin’ to honesty. Why, the biggest bit of thievery ever done in this province—the slickest an’ coolest an’ sassiest ever pulled off without benefit of lawyers—was done by her great-grandpa, old Luke’s own pa, one hundred years ago. That fetches me right around to what I was tellin’ you in the stable about how this strain of blood got into this country. Now that’s queer—talkin’ of throw-backs—for the Willy Horse was one jist as certain as Joe Hinch is one. He throwed clear back to that English mare, he did. He was the dead spit, the livin’ image, of the English mare Luke Dangler’s pa stole an’ hid in the year eighteen hundred an’ twenty-three. His name was Mark—Mark Dangler—but they tell how the Injuns named him Devil-kill-a-man-quick, an’ he was most generally called Devil Dangler for short by whites an’ Injuns. That was Luke’s own pa. He was a handy man with a knife. He could throw a knife that quick that——”

“Jard!” exclaimed Miss Hassock. “If that old Dangler ever threw knives half as fast as you wag your tongue he’d of killed off all the settlers on the river in half a day. That story will keep, Jard—though I don’t say this gentleman won’t be interested in it.”

“You are right, I’m interested in it,” replied Vane. “In fact, what I really came here for”—and here Jard looked up expectantly—“was in the hope of finding a good young horse of the Eclipse strain of blood. Willoughby Girl, that stolen mare—whose story I’ve known for a very long time—was a grandfather of the great Eclipse. She was a bay with white legs. Eclipse was also a bay with white legs. But her dam, Getaway, was a strawberry roan. So the color of your filly looks good—but bay is the true Eclipse color. The mare, Willoughby Girl, was ten years old when she was brought to this country.