“I'm glad to hear you say that, Pole,” replied Alan, greatly moved by the fellow's earnestness. “I believe you can do it. Then your wife and children—”
“Damn my wife an' children,” snorted Pole. “It's you I'm a-goin' to work fer—you, I say!”
He suddenly turned through the open gate and strode homeward across the fields. Alan stood looking after him till his tall form was lost in the hazy moonlight, and then he went up to his bed.
Pole entered the open door of his cabin and began to undress as he sat on the side of his crude bedstead, made of unbarked poles fastened to the bare logs in one corner of the room. His wife and children slept on two beds on the other side of the room.
“Did you see 'im, Pole?” piped up Mrs. Baker from the darkness.
“Yes, I seed 'im. Sally, say, whar's that bottle o' whiskey I had the last time I was at home?”
There was an ominous silence. Out of it rose the soft breathing of the children. Then the woman sighed. “Pole, shorely you ain't a-goin' to begin agin?”
“No, I want to bu'st it into smithereens. I don't want it about—I don't want to know thar's a drap in the house. I've swore off, an' this time she sticks. Gi'me that bottle.”
Another silence. Suddenly the woman spoke. “Pole, you've swore off as many times as a dog has fleas. Often when I feel bad an' sick when you are off, a drap o' whiskey makes me feel better. I don't want you to destroy the last bit in the house jest be-ca'se you've tuck this turn, that may wear off before daylight. The last time you emptied that keg on the ground an' swore off you got on a spree an' helt the baby over the well an' threatened to drap 'er in ef I didn't find a bottle, an' you'd 'a' done it, too.”
Pole laughed softly. “I reckon yo' re right, old gal,” he said. “Besides, ef I can' t—ef I ain't man enough to let up with a bottle in the house I won't do it without. But the sight or smell of it is hell itse'f to a lover of the truck. Ef I was to tell you what a little thing started me on this last spree you'd laugh. I went to git a shave in a barber shop, an' when the barber finished he soaked my face in bay-rum an' it got in my mustache. I kept smellin' it all mornin' an' tried to wipe it off, but she wouldn't wipe. All the time I kept walkin' up an' down in front o' Luke Sell-more's bar. Finally I said to myself: 'Well, ef you have to have a bar-room stuck under yore nose all day like a wet sponge, old man, you mought as well have one whar it 'll taste better, an' I slid up to the counter.” The woman sighed audibly, but she made no reply. “Is Billy awake?” Pole suddenly asked.