“The man that throwed the silk into me was Jud Carpenter—the same fellow that’s now the whipper-in for these mills. Now, don’t be scared,” said the old man soothingly as Bud’s scary eyes looked about him and he clutched the buggy as if he would jump out—“he’ll not pester you now—he’s kept away from me ever since. He swapped me a black hoss with a star an’ snip that looked like the genuine thing, but was about the neatest turned gold-brick that was ever put on an unsuspectin’ millionaire.
“Well, in the trade he simply robbed me of a fine mare I had, that cost me one-an’-a-quarter. Kathleen an’ me was already engaged, but when old man Galloway heard of it, he told me the jig was up an’ no such double-barrel idiot as I was sh’u’d ever leave any of my colts in the Galloway paddock—that when he looked over his gran’-chillun’s pedigree he didn’t wanter see all of ’em crossin’ back to the same damned fool! Oh, he was nasty. He said that my colts was dead sho’ to be luffers with wheels in their heads, an’ when pinched they’d quit, an’ when collared they’d lay down. That there was a yaller streak in me that was already pilin’ up coupons on the future for tears and heartaches an’ maybe a gallows or two, an’ a lot of uncomplimentary talk of that kind.
“Well, Kathleen cried, an’ I wept, an’ I’ll never forgit the night she gave me a little good-bye kiss out under the big oak tree an’ told me we’d hafter part.
“The old man maybe sized me up all right as bein’ a fool, but he missed it on my bein’ a quitter. I had no notion of being fired an’ blistered an’ turned out to grass that early in the game. I wrote her a poem every other day, an’ lied between heats, till the po’ gal was nearly crazy, an’ when I finally got it into her head that if it was a busted blood vessel with the old man, it was a busted heart with me, she cried a little mo’ an’ consented to run off with me an’ take the chances of the village doctor cuppin’ the old man at the right time.
“The old lady was on my side and helped things along. I had everything fixed even to the moon, which was shinin’ jes’ bright enough to carry us to the Justice’s without a lantern, some three miles away, an’ into the nex’ county.
“I’ll never fergit how the night looked as I rode over after her, how the wildflowers smelt, an’ the fresh dew on the leaves. I remember that I even heard a mockin’-bird wake up about midnight as I tied my hoss to a lim’ in the orchard nearby, an’ slipped aroun’ to meet Kathleen at the bars behin’ the house. It was a half mile to the house an’ I was slippin’ through the sugar-maple trees along the path we’d both walked so often befo’, when I saw what I thought was Kathleen comin’ towards me. I ran to meet her. It wa’n’t Kathleen, but her mother—an’ she told me to git in a hurry, that the old man knew all, had locked Kathleen up in the kitchen, turned the brindle dog loose in the yard, an’ was hidin’ in the woods nigh the barn, with his gun loaded with bird-shot, an’ that if I went any further the chances were I’d not sit down agin for a year. She had slipped around through the woods just to warn me.
“Of course I wanted to fight an’ take her anyway—kill the dog an’ the old man, storm the kitchen an’ run off with Kathleen in my arms as they do in novels. But the old lady said she didn’t want the dog hurt—it being a valuable coon-dog—and that I was to go away out of the county an’ wait for a better time.
“It mighty nigh broke me up, but I decided the old lady was right an’ I’d go away. But ’long towards the shank of the night, after I had put up my hoss, the moon was still shinin’, an’ I c’u’dn’t sleep for thinkin’ of Kathleen. I stole afoot over to her house just to look at her window. The house was all quiet an’ even the brindle dog was asleep. I threw kisses at her bed-room window, but even then I c’u’dn’t go away, so I slipped around to the barn and laid down in the hay to think over my hard luck. My heart ached an’ burned an’ I was nigh dead with love.
“I wondered if I’d ever get her, if they’d wean her from me, an’ give her to the rich little feller whose fine farm j’ined the old man’s an’ who the old man was wuckin’ fur—whether the two wouldn’t over-persuade her whilst I was gone. For I’d made up my mind I’d go befo’ daylight—that there wasn’t anything else for me to do.
“I was layin’ in the hay, an’ boylike, the tears was rollin’ down. If I c’u’d only kiss her han’ befo’ I left—if I c’u’d only see her face at the winder!