CHAPTER VI

The Tavern "office" was crowded and hazy with acrid blue smoke. Behind the chairs of the favored members of the old circle, who always sat in nightly conclave about the stove, a long row of men lounged against the wall, but the bitter controversies of other nights were still. Instead, the entire room was leaning forward, hanging breathlessly upon the words of the short fat man who was perched alone upon the worn desk, too engrossed even to notice Young Denny's entrance that night.

The boy stood for a moment, his hand still clasping the knob behind him, while his eyes flickered curiously over the heads of the crowd. Even before he drew the door shut behind him he saw that Judge Maynard's chair was a good foot in advance of all the others, directly in front of the stranger on the desk, and that the rest of the room was furtively taking its cue from him—pounding its knee and laughing immoderately whenever he laughed, or settling back luxuriously whenever the Judge relaxed in his chair.

Subconsciously Young Denny realized that such had always been the recognized order of arrangement, ever since he could remember. The Judge always rode in front in the parades and invariably delivered the Fourth of July oration. Undisputed he held the one vantage point in the room, but over his amply broad back, as near as he dared lean, bent Old Jerry, his thin face working with alternate hope and half fearful uncertainty.

Denny Bolton would have recognized the man on the desk as the "newspaper writer" from New York from his clothes alone, even without the huge notebook that was propped up on his knees for corroborative evidence. From the soft felt hat, pushed carelessly back from his round, good-natured face, to the tips of his gleaming low shoes, the newcomer was a symphony in many-toned browns. And as Young Denny closed the door behind him he went on talking—addressing the entire throng before him with an easy good-fellowship that bordered on intimate camaraderie.

"Just the good old-fashioned stuff," he was saying; "the sort of thing that has always been the backbone of the country. That is what I want it to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion who came from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years like Conway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm—a whole lot! I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones who can give me that—you're the only men who knew him when he was a boy—and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of a youngster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine—now wasn't he?"

The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping a flat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat a little farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judge in jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees, tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back with equal joviality.

"Well, ye-e-s," he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate. "Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy."

One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though he would not be misunderstood.

"Nothing really wrong, of course," he hurried to add with oratorical emphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneaking about Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous—mischievous and up and coming all the time. But there were folks," Judge Maynard's voice became heavy with righteous accusation—"it's always that way, you understand—and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's own village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I—I knew better! Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits—that's what I always thought. And I said it, too—many's the time I said——"

The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little. He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face a little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny Bolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension.

"——That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" he interrupted knowingly.

The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth.

"Well, that's just about it—that's just about as near as words could come to it," he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, too, and pounded its knee as one man.

The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, even while he was speaking.

"And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when he was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don't suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world's champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?"

The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes straining upon the Judge's face.

Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word.

"We-e-ll, no," he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that I downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle—ye-e-s, sir, the very best of 'em, some day!"

The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge's broad back, quavered breathlessly.

"That's jest it—that's jest as it was—right to a hair. It was system done it—system right from the very beginning. And many's the time the Judge says to me—says he——"

Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand majestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroboration died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips working wordlessly.

"As I was saying," the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognized he had what one could call—er——"

"Class?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile.

"Well, yes," the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it, talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn't tackle—absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to him—not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight——!"

Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere words were too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as he turned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that was staring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For one disconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breath before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he threw up one pudgy hand.

"There's one of 'em right now," he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton, who went to school with him, right here in this town. Ask him if Jed Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him," he leered around the room, an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words. Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won't tell—maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it yet. Eh, Denny—just a little mite too sensitive?"

Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new quality in the Judge's chuckling statement—a certain hearty admission of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry's eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the direction of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinning expansively—and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared.

Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slight shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze never wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lips grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone, too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very still.

It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke instead in a low-toned directness.

"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely. "Knew him when he was a kid?"

Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lips opened with equal deliberation.

"I reckon I knew him—pretty well," he admitted.

The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded thoughtfully.

"Er—had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?"

He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a heavy silence before Young Denny replied.

Then, "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did."

The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.

"Maybe," he chortled, "maybe he did! Well—I—reckon!"

And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as Young Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back to the big notebook open on his knees—a vaguely unpleasant smile that was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.

For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house on the hill—he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.

It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.

The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of the night outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike a light—he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in the stalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched something sleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively, although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect his face before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall by the impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. A moment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Then he began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over the great, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open across his chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himself erect.

"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it's only me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wall he groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day's work.

It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily through the door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching for a light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against the wainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a slopping gurgle over the floor.

Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, he lifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket and raised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the small square mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood and looked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin was splashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, and strangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither the one nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared—stared steadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. And for the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Bolton laughed—laughed with real mirth.

He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As if they could still hear him—the circle about the Tavern stove in the valley below—he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until the heavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like live things.



"Size never made any difference to him?" he repeated the Judge's word aloud, with a drawling interrogation. "Size never made any difference to him?"

He laughed again, softly, as if there were a newly discovered humor about it all which must be jealously guarded.

"It never had to make any difference," the drawling voice went on, "it didn't have to—because Jed Conway was always the biggest boy in the school!"

His nostrils were dilating, twitching with the thin, sharp odor of the overturned demijohn which was rising and thickening in the room. His eyes fell and for the first time became conscious of it lying there at his feet. And he stooped and picked it up, lifting it between both hands until it was level with his face—until it was held at arm's length high above his head. Then his whole body snapped forward and the glass from the broken window pane jingled musically on the floor as the jug crashed out into the night.

Young Denny stood and smiled, one side of his chin a gash of crimson against the dead white of his face. Again he lifted his fists.

"He never whipped me," he challenged the lights in the hollow, "he never whipped me—and he never tried but once! I—I—ain't never been—whipped—yet!"

There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to the door. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not even heard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at the threshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horror of Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood and stared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of her transformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with the force of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hair was piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the added height of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever in the bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist which the old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed.

As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood that made his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the broken demijohn, thick in the room—forgot everything but Judge Maynard's face when the latter had looked up and found him standing at the Tavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in their shifty depths; it was fear—fear that he—Young Denny—might speak up in that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. He even failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him. Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips.

"Dryad," he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right—it's always been all right—with us! They lied—they lied and they knew they were lying!"

She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from her knees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached out his arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the power of action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered and whirled—and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed out and held his face away from her.

"Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you—you—don't you even dare to come near me!"

He tried to explain—tried to follow her swift flight as she leaped back, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor and brought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her after she had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realized dully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling head directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to the kitchen door, and received no answer.

With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the top step and sat rocking gently to and fro.

"S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always been all right!"

And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all its unsteadiness.

"Twelve thousand dollars," he said, "and—and he never whipped me! He never could—not the best day he ever lived!"



CHAPTER VII

Denny Bolton never quite knew at what hour of that long black night he reached the final decision; there was no actual beginning or ending or logical sequence to the argument in the back of his brain which led up to it, to crystallize into final resolve.

He merely sat there in the open door of his half-lighted kitchen, swaying a little from side to side at first, giddy with the pain of that crashing blow that had laid open his chin; then balancing, motionless as the thick shadows themselves, in a silence that was unbroken save for the creaking night noises about him and the rhythmic splash of the warm drops that fell more and more slowly from the gaping, unheeded wound, he groped back over the succession of events of that afternoon and night, reconstructing with a sort of dogged patience detail after detail which was waveringly uncertain of outline, until with the clearing of his numbed brain they stood out once again in sane, well-ordered clarity. And as they gradually took shape again each detail grew only more fantastically unbelievable.

It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed door of the Tavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before his unsuspected presence—days and days since he had stood there and watched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shock of surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyes of Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and support his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merely fantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Denny still found something in the recollection that was amusing—far more amusing than he had imagined anything so simple ever could be.

And already, although it was scarcely hours old, the rest of it, too, was tinged with an uncanny unreality that was not far removed from the bodiless fabric of nightmare itself: Those great, catapulting hoofs which had thundered against him from the darkness and beaten him back, a half-senseless heap, against the barn wall; the blind, mad rage, as much a wildly hysterical abandonment of utter joy as anything else, which had surged through him when, with the stinging odor of the overturned jug in his nostrils, he had stooped and straightened and sent the old stone demijohn, that had stood sentinel for years in the corner near the door, splintering its way through the window into the night; and, last of all, the sick horror of the girl's face as she recoiled before him came vividly before his eyes, and his own strange impotence of limb and lip when he had tried to follow and found that his feet would not obey the impulse of his brain, tried to explain only to find that his tongue somehow refused at that moment to voice the words he would have spoken.

That was hardest of all to believe—most difficult to visualize—and he would not give it full credence until he had reached out behind him in the dark and found the bit of a cloak which, slipping from her shoulders, become entangled in his stumbling feet and brought him crashing to his knees. The feel of that rough cloth beneath his hand was more than enough to convince him, and swiftly, unreasonably, the old bitter tide of resentment began to creep back upon him—bitter resentment of her quick judgment of him, which like that of the village, had condemned in the years that were past, even without a hearing.

"She thought," he muttered slowly aloud to himself, "she thought I had—" He left the sentence unfinished to drift off into a long brooding silence; and then, many minutes later: "She didn't even wait to ask—to see—to let me tell her——"

One hand went tentatively to the point of his chin—his old, vaguely preoccupied trick of a gesture—and the wet touch of that open wound helped to bring him back to himself. A moment longer he sat, trying to make out the stained figures that were invisible even though he held them a scant few inches from his eyes, before he rose, stretching his legs in experimental doubt at first, and passed inside. And once more he stood before the square patch of mirror on the wall, with the small black-chimneyed lamp lifted high in one hand, just as he had stood earlier that same night, and scanned his own face.

All trace of resentment left his eyes as he realized the ghastly pallor of those features—all the ragged horror of that oozing welt which he had only half seen in that first moment when he was clinging to consciousness with clenched teeth. It was not nice to look at, and the light that replaced that sudden flare of bitterness was so new that he did not even recognize it himself at first.

It was a clearer, steadier, surer thing than he had ever known them to reflect before; all hint of lost-dog sophistication was gone; even the smile that touched his thin, pain-straightened lips was different somehow. It was just as whimsical as before, and just as half-mirthless—gentle as it always had been whenever he thought at all of her—but there was no wistful hunger left in it, and little of boyishness, and nothing of lurking self-doubt.

"Why, she couldn't have known," he went on then, still murmuring aloud. "She couldn't have been expected to believe anything else. I—I'm not much to look at—just now."

He even forgot that he had tried to follow her—forgot that her cloak had thrown him sprawling in the doorway.

"I ought to have told her," he condemned himself. "I shouldn't have let her go—not like that."

In the fullness of this new certainty of self that was setting his pulses hammering, he even turned toward the sleeping town, thickly blanketed by the shadows in the valley, in a sudden boyish burst of generosity.

"Maybe they didn't mean to lie, either," he mused thoughtfully. "Maybe they haven't really meant to lie—all this time. They could have been mistaken, just as she was tonight—they certainly could have been that."

He found and filled a basin with cold water and washed out the cut until the bleeding had stopped entirely. And then, with the paper which that afternoon's mail had brought—the sheet with the astounding news of Jed The Red, which Old Jerry prophesied would put Boltonwood in black letters on the map of publicity—spread out on the table before him, he sat until daybreak poring over it with eyes that were filmed with preoccupation one moment and keenly strained the next to make out the close-set type.

Not long before dawn he reached inside his coat and brought out a bit of burnished white card and set it up in front of him against the lamp. There was much in the plump, black capitals and knobby script of Judge Maynard's invitation which was very suggestive of the man himself, but Young Denny failed to catch the suggestion at that moment.

He never quite knew when that decision became final, nor what the mental process was which brought it about. Nor did he even dream of the connection there might have been between it and that square of cardboard lying in front of him. Just once, as the first light came streaking in through the uncurtained window beside him, he nodded his head in deliberate, definite finality.

"Why, it's the thing I've been waiting for," he stated, something close akin to wonder in his voice. "It's just a man's size chance. I'd have to take it—I'd have to do that, even if I didn't want to—for myself."

And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodically preparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to be absolute irrelevance:

"Silk—silk, next to her skin!"

There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur road that connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; one which left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the early morning and one which left just as inconveniently late at night. Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angle any possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment's hesitation to weigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of the latter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the deserted Boltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment.

It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hanging clouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy's approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then he reached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality.

"Why, greetings—greetings!" he exclaimed. "Didn't quite recognize you with your—er—decoration." His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitiveness upon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're the member who stood near the door last night, aren't you—the one who didn't join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?"

Young Denny's big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy white one. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head.

"Thought so," the man in brown rambled blithely on, "and glad to see you again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily to ask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed a fitting occasion."

He tapped Young Denny's arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyelid drooping quizzically.

"Entre nous—just 'twixt thee and me," he went on, "and not for publication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that your eminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, or was he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happens to be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes any difference here," he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'm just curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to know is so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a bet on him half the time. See?"

Denny smiled comprehendingly. He shifted his big body to a more comfortable and far less awkward position.

"I see," he agreed.

Somehow, where it would have been an utter impossibility to have spoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now to understand and meet half way the frivolity of the fat, grinning man before him.

"Well, when he left town about eight years ago, his going was just a trifle hasty. He—he took about everything there was in the cash-drawer of Benson's store with him—except maybe a lead slug or two—and there are some who think he only overlooked those."

The gurgle of sheer delight that broke from the lips of the man in brown was spontaneously contagious.

"Just about as your servant had it figured out last night," he fairly chirped. Then he slipped one hand through the crook of Denny's elbow. "I guess I'll have to take a chance on you. It's too good to keep all to myself." He led the way back to the empty truck. "And you ought to be safe, too, for judging from the sentiments that were expressed after you left last night, you—er—don't run very strong with this community, either."

Again he paused, his eyelid cocked in comical suggestion. Instead of narrowing ominously, as they might have twelve hours before, Denny's own eyes lighted appreciatively at the statement. He even waited an instant while he pondered with mock gravity.

"I reckon," he drawled finally, "that I'll have to confess that I've never been what you might call a general favorite."

The newspaper man's head lifted a little. He flashed a covertly surprised glance at the boy's sharp profile. It was far from being the sort of an answer that he had expected.

"No, you certainly are not," he emphasized, and then he opened the flat notebook with almost loving care across his knees.

Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page, comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffled chuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned the corner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered that half-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon the desk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too. For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the first page of the notebook, needed no explanation—not even that of the single line of writing beneath it, which read:

"I always said he'd make the best of 'em hustle—yes, sir, the very best of 'em!"

It was a picture of Judge Maynard—the Judge Maynard whom Young Denny knew best of all—unctuous of lip and furtively calculating of eye. For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect in detail, and as he stared the corners of the boy's lips began to twitch until his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him.

"Get it, do you?" he chuckled. "Get it, eh?"

And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turned through page after page to the end.

"Not bad—not bad at all," he frankly admired his own handiwork at the finish. "You see, it was like this. I've been short on anything like this for a long time—good Rube stuff—and so when Conway came through in his match the other night it looked like a providential opportunity—and it certainly has panned up to expectations."

Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far more openly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him, bewildered him—this easy certainty and consciousness of power which had replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his own lips the night before when he had followed Judge Maynard's beckoning finger.

Hours after the enthusiastic circle about the Tavern stove had dissolved he had labored to reproduce that white, bitter, quivering face at the door, only to find that the very vividness of his memory somehow baffled the cunning of his pencil. There had been more than mere bitterness in those curveless, colorless lips; something more than doubt of self behind the white hot flare in the gray eyes. Now, in the light of day, his eyes searched for it openly and failed to find even a ghost of what it might have been.

"No," he ruminated gently, and he spoke more to himself than the other, "you don't stand deuce high with this community. You're way down on the list." He hesitated, weighing his words, suddenly a little doubtful as to how far he might safely venture. "I—I guess you've—er—disappointed them too long, haven't you?"

The blood surged up under Young Denny's dark skin until it touched his crisp black hair, and the fat man hastened to throw a touch of jocularity into the statement.

"Yep, you've disappointed 'em sorely. But I've been monopolizing all the conversation. I can't convince myself that you've come down here merely to say me a touching farewell. Was there—was there something you wanted to see me about in particular?"

It was the very opening for which Denny had been waiting—the opening which he had not known how to make himself, for his plan for procedure by which he was to accomplish it was just as indistinct as his resolution had been final. He nodded silently, uncertain just how to begin, and then he plunged desperately into the very middle of it.

"I thought maybe you could tell me if this was true or not," he said, and he drew from his pocket the paper which bore the account of Jed The Red's victory over The Texan. A hint of a frown appeared upon the forehead of the man in brown as he took the folded sheet and read where Denny's finger indicated—the last paragraph of all.

"The winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve thousand dollars," was its succinct burden.

He read it through twice, as if searching for any puzzling phrase it might contain.

"I certainly can," he admitted at last. "I wrote it myself, but it's no doubt true, for all that. Not a very big purse, of course, but then, you know, he isn't really championship calibre. He's just a second-rate hopeful, that's all. It seems hard to find a real one these days. But why the riddle?" he finished, as he handed back the paper.

"Why, I thought if it was true maybe I'd ask you to tell me if I—how I could get a chance at him."

The boy's explanation was even more flounderingly abrupt than his former question had been, but his eyes never wavered from the newspaper man's face. The latter laid his notebook upon the truck with exaggerated care and rose and faced him.

"Another!" he lamented in simulated despair. But the next moment all the bantering light went from his face, while his eyes flashed in lightning-like appraisement over Denny's lean shoulder-heavy body, from his feet, small and narrow in spite of the clumsy high boots, to his clean-cut head, and back again. There was a hint of businesslike eagerness in that swift calculation of possibilities. The boy shifted consciously under the scrutiny.

"It isn't that he never was able to whip me—even when he was a kid," he tried to explain. "It—it's because I don't believe, somehow, that he ever could."

All the strained eagerness disappeared from the face of the pudgy man in brown. He laughed softly, a short little laugh of amusement at his own momentary folly.

"Whew!" he murmured. "I'm getting to be just as bad as all the rest!"

He felt in a pocket for a card and scribbled an address across its back. A trace of good-natured familiarity—the first hint of superiority that had marked his manner—accompanied his gesture when he extended it in one hand. It savored of the harmless humoring of a childish vagary.

"If you ever did chance to get as far from home as that, there's a man at that address who'd fall on your neck and weep real tears if you happened to have the stuff," he said. "But just one additional word. Maybe I've led you astray a bit. Just because I said that Jed The Red is a second-rater, don't think for a moment that he fights like a schoolboy now. He doesn't—nothing like that!"

He gazed for another second at the boy's thin, grave face, so like, in its very thinness and gravity, all that a composite of its Puritan forbears might have been. And as he became suddenly conscious of that resemblance he reversed the card, a whimsical twist touching his lips, and wrote above his own name, "Introducing the Pilgrim," and put it in the outstretched hand.

"Any idea when you expect to make a start?" he inquired with an elaborate negligence that brought the hot color to the boy's cheeks. But again, at the words, he caught, too, a glimpse of the unshaken certainty that backed their gray gravity.

"Tomorrow, I reckon. It'll take me all of today to get things fixed up so I can leave. I'll take this train in the morning. And they—they ought to have told you at the hotel that it's always a half-hour late."

Young Denny rose.

"Surely—surely," the chubby man agreed. "Nothing like getting away with the bell. And—er—there's one other thing. Of course if it's a little private affair, I'll bow myself gracefully out, but I do confess to a lot of curiosity concerning that small souvenir." His eyes traveled to the red welt across the boy's chin. "May I inquire just how it happened?"

Denny failed to understand him at first; then his finger lifted and touched the wound interrogatively.

"This?" he inquired.

The man in brown nodded.

"Last night," the boy explained, "I—I kind of forgot myself and walked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'd forgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's young yet—and nervous—and——"

The other scowled comprehendingly.

"And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in the morning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?"

Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his head negatively.

"No-o-o," he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that. Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzy and faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I—I'd worked them pretty hard in the timber last week."

The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softly while he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, and the utter simplicity of the explanation.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "I wonder—I wonder!" And then, almost roughly: "Give me back that card!"

Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without a word. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with the pencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cocked his head while he read it through, and handed it back again.

The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when he thrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell.

"My name's Morehouse," he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by my immediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend, and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you this because I have a premonition that we are to meet again. And don't lose that card!"

Young Denny's fingers closed over the outstretched hand with a grip that brought the short, fat man in brown up to his toes. Long after the train had crawled out of sight the boy stood there motionless beside the empty truck, reading over and over again the few scrawled words that underran the line of address.

"Some of them may have science," it read, "and some of them may have speed, but, after all, it's the man that can take punishment who gets the final decision. Call me up if this ever comes to hand."

Which, after all, was not so cryptic as it might have been.



CHAPTER VIII

That drearily bleak day which was to witness the temporary passing of the last of the line of Boltons from the town which had borne their name longer even than the oldest veteran in the circle of regulars which nightly flanked the cracked wood-stove in the Tavern office could recall, brought with it a succession of thrills not second even to those that had been occasioned by the advent of the plump newspaper man from the metropolis, and all his promised works.

And yet, so far as he himself was concerned, Young Denny Bolton was totally oblivious, or at least apparently so, to the very audible hum of astonishment which ripped along behind them when they—he and Judge Maynard of all men—whirled down the main street of the village that morning through the gray mist already heavy as fine rain, to stop with a great flourish of glittering harness buckles and stamping of hoofs before the post-office doors.

It was the busiest hour which the straggling one-story shops along the unpaved thoroughfare knew, this one directly following the unshuttering of the specked, unwashed show-windows, known distinctly as "mail time"—a very certain instant when Old Jerry's measured passage from the office doors to his dilapidated rig at the edge of the boardwalk heralded the opening of the general delivery window within.

It was Old Jerry's hour—the one hour of the day in which his starved appetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment—that moment when the small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle about the Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the "Gov'mint" which he personified.

Since that first morning, years back, which had hailed his initial appearance with the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he had made the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any word of greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a few hours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; a certain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to their purposeless unemployment.

Just once this haughty reserve had been assailed. It happened that same first morning when Old Dave Shepard, white of head and womanishly mild of voice, alike the circle's patriarch and most timid member, had stepped forward and laid one unsteady hand upon his arm, some embarrassed word of congratulation trembling on his lips. Old Jerry's bearing upon that one occasion had precluded for all time the possibility of its recurrence. He had stepped back a pace, out of reach of those detaining fingers, and fastened the offender with a stare of such baleful resentment that the latter drew off in pitiful haste for self-effacement. And Jerry's words on that one occasion were still current history.

"I warn you, Mister Shepard," he had shrilled, "that it's a state's prison offense to interfere with a Gov'mint official in the performance of his duty—and if you've got any complaints to make they'll have to be set down reg'lar in writin', so's I can give 'em due consideration!"

Dating from that day Old Jerry's daily appearance had taken on, at least in the eyes of the Tavern regulars, a ceremonious importance that demanded their personal attendance, and although it still lacked a few moments of the hour for which they were waiting, a roll-call would have found their number complete when the yellow-wheeled buckboard of Boltonwood's most important citizen, with its strangely assorted pair of passengers, flashed into view. Denny Bolton was totally oblivious to the stir which their appearance created, but if he was too engrossed with other things to be aware of the breathless hush which followed it, the huge, moon-faced man who occupied the seat of the buckboard with him was conscious of it all to a degree sufficient for both.

From the moment when he had himself answered the summons at the front door of his great, boxlike house on the hill, and found Young Denny standing there, Judge Maynard had sensed a sensation. With unerring judgment he read it in the very carriage of the big-shouldered boy before him, who for the first time in his life failed to uncover his head, with a due amount of reverence, in the presence of the town's great man.

Perhaps with his mind set upon other things that morning Young Denny forgot it, perhaps there was an even deeper reason for his remissness, but the Judge, while he stood and listened to the boy's tersely short explanation of his errand, was himself too taken up with other thoughts to note the omission. He was already formulating the rounded sentences with which he would introduce the subject that night to the circle in the Tavern office.

There was much of the dramatic in the whole situation—much that needed only proper staging and elaboration to make of it a tremendous triumph, a personal triumph, the extent of which he began to foresee with Denny's opening words. And the greater became his consciousness of Denny Bolton's strange new bearing, the clearer he saw all the possibilities of the situation.

To cap it all, the one big, irrefutable fact about which he could build his climax was there all ready before him, ripe for exploitation. It was with an actual effort of the will that the Judge held his brain sufficiently attentive to the boy's words to grasp the reason for his early morning visit, in the face of the fascination which that great, ragged bruise across Denny's chin had for him. Properly displayed, properly played up, the possibilities of that raw, unbandaged wound were incalculable, and the Judge started almost guiltily from his greedy scrutiny of it to a sudden realization that the boy before him had paused in his recital and was waiting in almost insulting self-possession for a reply.

Many men and some few women had rung boldly at the Judge's front door or, more often, tapped timidly at the entrance in the rear of the house, all bent upon the same errand. For it was a country-wide secret that no one had ever been turned away from those doors with a refusal. If any of those same visitors ever awakened to a realization that the terms of their bargain were far harder to bear than a refusal might have been, they nursed that knowledge in secret.

The Judge was a first mortgage financier, and he scanned each new addition to his already extensive collection with all the elaborate care which a matcher of precious stones might have exercised in the assembling of a fabulous priced string of pearls. It was his practice to scrutinize each transaction from every possible angle, in every degree of light and shade, but in his eagerness that morning he forgot to don for Denny the air of gracious understanding that was half paternal, half deprecating, which he always wore to set the others more at their ease. He even forgot to clear his throat judicially when he asked the boy before him if he had considered sufficiently the gravity of such a step as the placing in pawn of the roof that sheltered him and the ground that gave him food. It may have been because Young Denny, as he stood quietly waiting for his answer, came under neither classification—he was neither pitifully timid nor more pitifully bold—that the Judge omitted the usual pompous formula, or merely that in his eager contemplation of the boy's hurt face he forgot for once his perfectly rehearsed part.

No preoccupation, however, marred the businesslike statement of his terms, but even while he named the amount which he was willing to risk upon Young Denny's arid, rocky acres, and the rate of interest which he felt compelled to demand, his brain was racing far ahead of the matter in hand. It was the Judge himself who engineered the half hour's delay which resulted in the fullest possible audience for their appearance that morning. While he had never attended it himself, except now and then by chance, he knew too well the infallibility of that little knot of regulars who watched Old Jerry's daily departure to have any fears that the first of that day's many thrills would go unseen or unsung. And he timed their arrival to a second.

Old Jerry was in the doorway, ready for his straight-backed descent of the worn steps, when Judge Maynard pulled his smooth gaited pair to a restive standstill before the office and gave the reins into Young Denny's keeping. The throng of old men upon the sidewalk was at the point of opening ranks to allow him to pass through to his tattered buggy, which stood at the roadside, a bare half-length ahead of the Judge's polished equipage. And now those same ranks broke in wild disorder and then closed tighter even than before, while they shifted and struggled for a better view.

They forgot the ceremonious solemnity of the moment and the little, birdlike figure upon the top step trying not to show too plainly upon his face a sense of his own importance—they forgot everything but the portend of the scene which the Judge was handling in so masterful a fashion.

The latter's descent from his seat to the ground was deliberate, even for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have equaled the results which the very profundity of his silence achieved.

There was a momentous promise in his gravity, a hint of catastrophe in the tilt of his head. Like two receding waves the tight ranks opened before him, clearing a path for his heavy-footed advance to the post-office doors—a lane of bulging eyes and clicking tongues such as Old Jerry in all his days had never provoked. And the latter stood there stock still in the middle of the entrance, too dazed at first to grasp the whole meaning of the situation, until he, too, was swept aside, without so much as a glance or a word, by one majestic sweep of the Judge's hand.

Old Jerry's sparrowlike, thinly, wistful face flamed red, and then faded a ghastly white, but no one seemed conscious at that moment of the ignominy of it all. It was hours later that they recalled it and realized that they had looked upon history in the making. No one noticed the old man's faltering descent of the steps, or saw that he paused in his slow way to the buggy to turn back and stand looking about him in a kind of bewildered desperation. For the gaze of all had swung from the Judge's broad, disappearing back to the face of the boy who was sitting in the buckboard, totally unconscious of that battery of eyes, smiling to himself.

He even chuckled aloud once—Young Denny did—a muffled, reasonless sort of a chuckle, as if he did not even know they were there. It was almost as though he were playing straight into the Judge's own plan, for the effect of the mirth upon the group on the walk was electrical. It sent a shiver of anticipation through it from end to end. And then, like the eyes of one man, their eyes swung back again from the ragged bruise across the boy's chin to meet the Judge as he reappeared.

Yet not one of them so much as dared to whisper the question that was quivering upon the lips of all and burning hungrily in their faded eyes. Once more the wide lane opened magically for him—but again Judge Maynard's measured progress was momentarily barred. Curiosity may have prompted it, and then again it may have been that he was betrayed by the very fury of his desperate, eleventh hour effort to assert his right to the center of that stage—the right of long-established precedent—yet even those two long files of old men gasped aloud their dismay at his temerity when Old Jerry thrust his way forward and planted himself for a second time squarely in the great man's path.

Half way from the office doors to the yellow-wheeled buckboard, in the very middle of the walk, he stood and stretched out a tentatively restraining hand, just as mild-voiced, white-haired Dave had done years before. And in his high, cracked falsetto, that was tremulously bitter for all that he struggled to lift it to a plane of easy jocularity, he exclaimed:

"Now see here, Jedge; what's the meanin' of all this? You ain't turned kidnapper, hev you?"

There came a heavy hush, while the Judge stood and stared down at the thin face trying to smile confidently up at him—a hush that endured while Judge Maynard swept him from head to foot with one shriveling glare and then walked around him without a word—walked around him just as he might have walked around the hitching post at the roadside, or any other object that chanced to bar his way! And this time Old Jerry's face twitched and went whiter even than before.

Nobody laughed, not even after the yellow-wheeled buckboard with its strangely assorted pair of passengers had sped from sight toward the county seat and a legal adjustment of still another mortgage on the Bolton acres. Not a word was spoken until Old Jerry, too, had clambered silently into his own creaking buggy and crawled slowly off up the hill, with a squealing accompaniment of ungreased axles.

And even then, in the argument which began with a swirl of conjecture and ended, hours later, in a torrent of bitter personalities farthest of all from the first question under consideration, they avoided a mention of that regrettable incident just as for some time after its occurrence they avoided each other's eyes, as if they felt somehow that theirs was, after all, the real guilt.

Upon one point alone did they agree; they were unanimous that if Young Denny Bolton's bearing that morning—the angle at which he held his chin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth—was not entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to require more than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none other than the very one which the Judge had already planned for them.



CHAPTER IX

Old Jerry drove his route that morning in a numbed, trancelike fashion; or, rather, he sat there upon the worn-out leather seat with the reins looped over the dash, staring straight ahead of him, and allowed the fat old mare to take her own pace. It was she who made the customary stops; he merely dug absent-mindedly beneath the seat whenever she fell to cropping grass at the roadside, and searched mechanically for the proper packet of mail. And twice he was called back to correct mistakes which he admitted were his own with an humbleness that was alarming to the complainant. In all the days of his service he had never before failed to plead extenuating circumstances for any slip that might occur—and to plead with much heat and staccato eloquence. But then, too, in all those years no day had ever equalled the bitter awakening of that morning.

As he reviewed it all, again and again, Old Jerry began to understand that it was not the public rebuff which had hurt so much; for there was that one of the night previous, when the Judge had cut him off in the middle of his eager corroboration of Jed The Red's history, which had not left a trace of a sting twelve hours later. It was more than wounded vanity, although hurt pride was still struggling for a place in his emotions against a shamed, overwhelming realization of his own trifling importance, which could not hold its own against the first interloper, even after years of entrenchment. Judge Maynard's first thrill had been staged without a hitch; he had paved the way for the personal triumph which he meant to achieve that night, but he had accomplished it only at a cost—the loyalty of him who had been, after all, his stanchest supporter.

From that moment Old Jerry's defection from the ranks must be dated, for it was in those bitter hours which followed the yellow-wheeled buckboard's early morning flight down the main street that the old man woke to the fact that his admiration for the Judge was made of anything but immortal stuff. He weighed the Judge in the balance that morning, and half forgot his own woe in marveling at the discrepancies which he discovered.

Self-deceit may or may not be easy of accomplishment. Maybe it is merely a matter of temperament and circumstance, after all. But it is a certainty that the first peep at one's own soul is always the most startling—the most illuminating, always hardest of all to bear. And once stripped of that one garment of grandeur, which he had conjured out of his own great hunger for attention, Old Jerry found a ruthless, half-savage joy in tearing aside veil after veil, until he found himself gazing straight back into the eyes of his own spirit—until he saw the pitiful old fraud he really was, naked there before him.

Just as well as though he had been a party to it he understood the Judge's crafty exhibition of Young Denny's maimed face that morning; he knew without a trace of doubt just what the Judge, in his ominous silence, had meant to insinuate, and what the verdict would be that night around the Tavern stove. What he could not understand quite was why all of them were so easy to convince—so ready to believe—when only the night before they had sat and heard the Judge's recital of Jed The Red's intimate history for the benefit of the newspaper man from the metropolis which, to name it charitably, had been anything but a literal translation of facts.

Groping back for one single peg upon which to hang the fabric of their oft-reiterated prophesy was alarmingly profitless. There had been nothing, not even one little slip, since Old Denny Bolton's passing on that bad night, years before. And from that realization he fell to pondering with less leadenness of spirit upon what the real facts could be which lay behind Young Denny's sudden transformation. For that also was too real—too evident—for any eyes to overlook.

It was not until long after the hour which witnessed the return flight of the yellow-wheeled buckboard through the village street, leaving behind an even busier hum of conjecture than before, that he awoke to a realization that his opportunity for a solution of the riddle was at least better than that of the wrangling group that had turned traitor before the post-office steps.

Long before he reached the top of the grade that ran up to the bleak house alone on the crest, he was leaning out of his seat, trying to penetrate the double gloom of rain and twilight; but not until he had reined in his horse was he positive that there was no shadowy figure standing there waiting for his arrival.

He could not quite understand the sensation which the boy's absence waked in him at that instant. Days afterward he knew it had been lonesomeness—a rather bewildering loneliness—for no matter what his reception chanced to be along the way, Young Denny's greeting had been infallibly regular.

And another emotion far less difficult to understand began to stir within him as he sat motionless for a time scanning the shapeless bulk of the place, entirely dark save for a single light in the rear room. For the first time he saw how utterly apart from the rest of the town those unpainted old farm buildings were—how utterly isolated. The twinkling lights of the village were mere pin-points in the distance. Each thick shadow beneath the eaves of the house was blacker than he had ever noticed before. Even the soft swish of the rain as it seeped from the sodden shingles, even the very familiar complaint of loose nails lifted by the wind under the clapboards, set his heart pumping faster. All in an instant his sensation-hungry old brain seized upon each detail that was as old as he himself and manufactured, right there on the spot, a sinister something—a something of unaccountable dread, which sent a delightful shiver up and down his thin, bony, old back.

For a while he waited and debated with himself, not at all certain now that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cut which had adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, even while he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom—pride in the contemplation of his own intrepid dare-deviltry.

He could scarcely have put into words just what reception he had imagined was awaiting him; but, whatever it might have been, Young Denny's greeting was full as startling. A worn, dusty, shapeless leather bag stood agape upon the table before the window, and Denny Bolton paused over the half-folded garment in his hands to wheel sharply toward the newcomer as the door creaked open.

For one uncomfortable moment the old adventurer waited in vain for any light of welcome, or even recognition, to flash up in the boy's steady scrutiny. Then the vaguest of smiles began to twitch at the corners of Denny's lips. He laid the coat back upon the table and stepped forward a pace.

"Hello!—Here at last, are you?" he saluted. "Aren't you pretty late tonight?"

Old Jerry swallowed hard at the cheery ease of the words, but his fluttery heart began to pump even faster than when he had sat outside in the buggy debating the advisability of his further advance. That warning premonition had not been a footless thing, after all, for this self-certain, vaguely amused person who stood steadily contemplating him was not the Denny Bolton he had known twenty-four hours before—not from any angle or viewpoint.

Behind the simulated cheer of his greeting there was something else which Old Jerry found disturbingly new and hard to place. In his perplexity the wordless accusation that morning had been correct at that. And Young Denny was smiling widely at him now—smiling openly. The old man shuffled his feet and shifted his gaze from the open wound upon the boy's face as though he feared his suspicion might be read in his eyes. Then he answered Denny's question.

"I—I cal'late I be late—maybe a little," he admitted.

Denny nodded briskly.

"More than a little," he corrected. "I expected you to be along even earlier today! An hour or two, at least."

Even while he was speaking Young Denny turned back to the packing of the big bag on the table. Old Jerry stood there, still shifting from one foot to the other, considering in growing wonder that silent preparation, and waiting patiently for a further explanation of what it meant. At last, when he could no longer endure the suspense, he broke that silence himself.

"Packin' up for a little trip, be you?" he ventured mildly.

There was no progress made or satisfaction gained from Young Denny's short nod. Again the little man bore it as long as he was able.

"Figurin' on bein' gone quite a spell?" he ventured again.

And again the big-shouldered figure nodded a silent affirmative. Old Jerry drew himself up with an air of injured dignity at that inhospitable slight; he even took one step backward toward the door; but that one step, in the face of his consuming curiosity, was as far as he could force himself to go.

"I—I kinda thought you might be leavin'. Why, I—kinda suspicioned it this morning when I seen you ridin' townward with the Jedge."

The boy stuffed the last article into the bulging bag and turned. Old Jerry almost believed that the lack of comprehension in Young Denny's eyes was real until he caught again that hint of amusement behind it. But when Denny started toward him suddenly, without so much as a word, the old man retreated just as suddenly, almost apprehensively, before him.

"You say you was expectin' me," he faltered unsteadily, "but—but if there wa'n't anything special you wanted to see me about, I—I reckon I better be joggin' along. I just kinda dropped in, late's it was, to tell you there wa'n't no mail, and to say—to tell you——"

He stopped abruptly. He didn't like the looks of Denny Bolton's eyes. They were different than he had ever seen them before. If their inscrutability was not actually terrifying, Old Jerry's active imagination at that moment made it so. And never before had he noted how huge the boy's body was in comparison with his own weazened frame. He groped stealthily behind him and found the door catch. The cool touch of the metal helped him a little.

"I—I may be a trifle late—jest a trifle," he hurried on, "but I been hustlin' to git here—that is, ever sense about five o'clock, or thereabouts. There's been something I been wantin' to tell you. I—I jest wanted to say that I hoped it wa'n't anything I might have said or—or kinda hinted at, maybe, nights down to the Tavern, that's druv you out. That's a mighty mean, gossipy crowd down there, anyway, always kinda leadin' a man along till he gits to oversteppin' hisself a little."

It was the first declaration of his own shortcomings that he had ever voiced, an humble confession that was more than half apology born of that afternoon's travail of spirit; but somehow it rang hopelessly inadequate in his own ears at that minute. And yet Young Denny's head came swiftly forward at the words; his eyes narrowed and he frowned as though he were trying to believe he had heard correctly. Then he laughed—laughed softly—and Old Jerry knew what that laugh meant. The boy didn't believe even when he had heard; and his slow-drawled, half-satirical question more than confirmed that suspicion.

"Wasn't at all curious, then, about this?" he inquired, with a whimsical twist to the words.

He touched his chin with the tips of his fingers. Old Jerry's treacherous lips flew open in his eagerness, and then closed barely in time upon the admission that had almost betrayed him.

He was sorry now, too, that he had even lingered to make his apology. That disturbing glint was flaring brighter than ever in Young Denny's eyes. Merely because he was afraid to turn his back to pass out, Old Jerry stood and watched with beadily attentive eyes while the boy crossed and took a lantern from its peg on the wall behind the stove and turned up the wick and lighted it. That unexplained preparation was as fascinating to watch as its purport was veiled.

"You must be just a little curious about it—just a little bit?" Denny insisted gravely. "I thought you'd be—and all the others, too. That's why I was waiting for you—that and something in particular that I did want to ask you, after I'd made you understand."

If the first part of his statement was still tinged with mirth, the second could not possibly have been any more direct or earnest. Without further explanation, one hand grasping his visitor's thin shoulder, he urged him outside and across the yard in the direction of the black bulk of the barn. The rain was still coming down steadily, but neither of them noticed it at that moment. Old Jerry would have balked at the yawning barn door but for that same hand which was directing him and urging him on. His apprehension had now turned to actual fright which bordered close on panic, and he heard the boy's voice as though it came from a great distance.

"——two or three things I'd like to have you understand and get straight," Denny was repeating slowly, "so that—so that if I asked you, you could see that—someone else got them straight, too."

Old Jerry was in no mental condition to realize that that last statement was untinged by any lurking sarcasm. He was able to think of but one thing.

The hand upon his shoulder had loosened its grip. Slowly the little man turned—turned with infinite caution, and what he considered was a very capable attitude of self-defense. And for a moment he refused to believe his own eyes—refused to believe that, in place of the threat of sudden death which he had expected, Young Denny was merely standing there before him, pointing with his free hand at a dark, almost damp stain upon the dusty woodwork behind the stalls. It flashed through his brain then that Denny Bolton had not merely gone the way of the other Boltons—it was not the jug alone that had stood in the kitchen corner, but something far worse than that.

"I got to humor him," he told himself, although he was shivering uncontrollably. "I got to keep a grip on myself and kinda humor him." And aloud, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, he murmured:

"What—what is it?"

"Couldn't you guess—if you had to?"

Denny made the suggestion with appalling calm. Old Jerry clenched his teeth to still their chattering.

"Maybe I could—maybe I could;" and his voice was a little stronger. "I—I'd say it was blood, I reckon, if anyone asked me."

Without a word the boy set the lantern down and walked across the barn to lay one hand upon the flank of the nervous animal in the nearest stall.

"That's what it is," he stated slowly; and again he touched the wound on his chin gingerly. "From this," he went on. "I came in last night to feed—and I—I forgot to speak to Tom here, and it was dark. He—he laced out and caught me—and that's where I landed, there against the wall."

The servant of the "Gov'mint" nodded his comprehension—he nodded it volubly, with deep bows that would have done credit to a dancing master, lest his comprehensions seem in the least bit veiled with doubt. He even clicked his tongue sympathetically, just as the plump newspaper man had done.

"Quite a tap—quite a tap!" he said as soothingly as his uncertain tongue would permit; but he took care to keep a safe distance between himself and his guide when Denny stooped and lifted the lantern and led the way outside.

Now that he was free from that detaining hand upon his shoulder, he contemplated the advisability of a sudden dash for the buggy and flight behind the fat white mare. Nothing but the weakened condition of his own knees and a lack of confidence in her ability to carry him clear kept him from acting instantly upon that impulse. And then the summoning voice of the great blurred figure which had been zigzagging across the grass before him checked him at the very moment of decision.

Young Denny had stopped beside a sapling that stood in a direct line with the kitchen window, and was pointing down at a heap of broken crockery that lay at its foot.

"And if anyone was to ask you," he was deliberately inquiring, "what do you suppose you would say that had been?"

Old Jerry knew! He knew without one chance for doubt; but never before had the truth seemed more overwhelmingly dreadful or surcharged with peril. A dozen diplomatic evasions flashed through his mind, and were all condemned as inadequate for that crisis. He knew that candor was his safest course.

"Why, I—I'd say it looked mighty like a—a broken jug," he quavered, with elaborate interest. "Jest a common, ordinary jug that's kinda got broke, somehow. Yes, sir-e-e, all broke up, as you might say!"

His shrill cackle of a voice caught in his throat, and grew husky, and then broke entirely. Even Young Denny, absorbed as he was in his methodical exhibition of all the evidence, became suddenly aware that the little figure beside him was swallowing hard—swallowing with great, noisy gulps, and he lifted the lantern until the yellow light fell full upon the twitching face below him, illuminating every feature. And he stared hard at all that the light revealed, for Old Jerry's face was very white.

"Jest a little, no-account jug that's got busted," the shrill, bodiless voice went chattering on, while its owner recoiled from the light. "Busted all to pieces from hittin' into a tree!" And then, reassuringly, on a desperate impulse: "But don't you go to worryin' over it—don't you worry one mite! I'm goin' to fix it for you. Old Jerry's a-goin' to fix it for you in the morning, so's it'll be just as good as new! You run right along in now. It's kinda wet out here—and—and I got to be gittin' along toward home."

Absolute silence followed the promise. Young Denny only lowered the lantern—and then lifted it and stared, and lowered it once more.

"Fix it!" he echoed, his voice heavy with wonder. "Fix it?"

Then he noted, too, the chattering teeth and meager, trembling body, and he thought he understood.

"You'd better come along in," he ordered peremptorily. "You come along inside. I'll rake up the fire and you can warm up a bit. I—I didn't think, keeping you out here in the rain. Why, you'll feel better after you've had a little rest. You ought not to be out all day in weather like this, anyway. You're too—too——"

He was going to say too old, but a quick thought saved him. Old Jerry did not want to accompany him; he would have done almost anything else with a light heart; but that big hand had fallen again upon his shoulder, and there was no choice left him.

Young Denny clicked the door shut before them and pulled a chair up before the stove with businesslike haste. After he had stuffed the fire-box full of fresh fuel and the flame was roaring up the pipe, he turned once more and stood, hands resting on his hips, staring down at the small figure slumped deep in its seat.

"I didn't understand," he apologized again, his voice very sober. "I—I ought to have remembered that maybe you'd be tired out and wet, too. But I didn't—I was just thinking of how I could best show you—these things—so's you'd understand them. You're feeling better now?"

Furtively, from the corners of his eyes, Old Jerry had been watching every move while the boy built up the fire. And now, while Denny stood over him talking so gravely, his head came slowly around until his eyes were full upon that face; until he was able to see clearly, there in the better light of that room, all the solicitude that had softened the hard lines of the lean jaw. It was hard to believe, after all that he had passed through, and yet he knew that it could not be possible—he knew that that voice could not belong to any man who had been nursing a maniacal vengeance behind a cunningly calm exterior.

There was no light of madness in those eyes which were studying him so steadily—studying him with unconcealed anxiety. Old Jerry could not have told how it had come about; but there in the light, with four good solid walls about him, he realized that a miracle had taken place. Little by little his slack body began to stiffen; little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh of deeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, for Young Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through which he had just passed.

"Godfrey" he thought, and the exclamation was so poignantly real within him that it took audible form without his knowledge. "Godfrey 'Lisha, but that was a close call! That's about as narrer a squeak as I'll ever hev, I reckon."

And he wanted to laugh. An almost hysterical fit of laughter straggled for utterance. Only because the situation was too precious to squander, only because he would have sacrificed both arms before confessing the terror which had been shaking him by the throat, was he able to stifle it. Instead, he removed his drenched and battered hat and passed one fluttering hand across his forehead, with just the shade of unsteadiness for which the affair called.

"Yes, I'm a-feelin' better now," he sighed. "Godfrey, yes, I'm a sight better already! Must 'a' been just a little touch of faintness, maybe. I'm kinda subject to them spells when I've been overworked. And I hev been a little mite druv up today—druv to the limit, if the truth's told. Things ain't been goin' as smooth's they might. Why—why, they ain't nobody'd believe what's been crowded into this day, even if I was to tell 'em!"

He filled his lungs again and shoved both feet closer to the oven door.

"But that fire feels real nice," he finished; "real nice and comfortin', somehow. And maybe I could stop just a minute." The old hungry light of curiosity was kindling again, brighter than ever before, in the beady little eyes. "As you was remarkin', back a stretch, you'd been a-waitin' for me to come along. Was they—was they something you wanted to see me about?"



CHAPTER X

The perplexed frown still furrowed Young Denny's forehead. He felt that the fire had wrought a most remarkably swift cure of all that he had feared, but the anxiety faded from his eyes. White head perked forward, balanced a little on one side, birdlike, Old Jerry was waiting for him to pick up the thread which had been broken so long. And now it was the big-shouldered boy who faltered in his words, uncertain just how to begin.

"I—I don't know just how to ask you," he started heavily. "I'm—I am going away. I'm figuring on being gone quite a while, I think. First, just after I had decided to go, some time last night, I made up my mind to ask you to take care of the stock till I came back. I thought maybe it wouldn't be too hard for you—with you coming by at night, anyhow. There's just the one cow and the team, and the hens to feed. And then I—I got to thinkin' that maybe, too, you'd be able to do something else for me, if I sort of explained how things were. There—there wasn't anyone else I could think of who'd be likely to want to do me a favor."

He paused and licked his lips. And Old Jerry, too, furtively touched his with the tip of his tongue. He was waiting breathlessly, but he managed to nod his head a little, encouragingly, as he leaned closer.

"And that was what I was really waiting for," the slow voice went on ponderously. "I saw this morning—anybody could have seen—what the Judge meant them all to believe along the street when we drove through. Somehow things have changed in the last twelve hours. I sort of look at some things differently than I did, and so it was funny, just funny to watch him, and I'm not so blind that I don't know what his story will be tonight down at the Tavern. Not that I care what they say, either. But there is some one who couldn't help believin' it—couldn't believe anything else—after what happened last night." He stopped, groping for words to finish. "And so I—I waited for you to come," he went on lamely. "I took you outside and showed you how it really happened, so that—so that you could tell her—the truth."

He nodded over his shoulder—nodded once out across the valley in the direction of John Anderson's small drab cottage huddled in the shadow under the hill. And now, once he had fairly begun, all the diffidence, all the self-consciousness went from his voice. It was only big and low and ponderous, as always, as he went back and told the old man, who sat drinking it in, every detail of that night before, when he had stooped and risen and sent the stone jug crashing through the window—when he had turned, with blood dripping from his chin, to find Dryad Anderson there in the doorway, eyes wide with horror and loathing. Not until he had reached that point did Old Jerry move or hint at an interruption.

"But why in time didn't you tell her yourself?" he asked then. "Why didn't you explain that old Tom hit you a clip out there in the dark?"

Young Denny's face burned.

"I—I tried to," he explained simply. "I—I started toward her, meaning to explain, but I tripped, there on the threshold, and went down on my knees. I must have been a little sick—a little giddy. And when I got up again she—she was gone."

Old Jerry nodded his head judicially. He sucked in his lips from sheer delight in the thrill of it all, and nodded his head in profound solemnity.

"Jest like a woman—jest like a woman, a-condemnin' of a man without a bit of mercy! Jest like 'em! I ain't never been enticed yet into givin' up my freedom; but many's the time I've said—says I——"

The boy's set face checked him; made him remember. This was no mimic thing. It was real; too real to need play-acting. And with that thought came recollection. All in a flash it dawned on him that this was no man-created situation; it must have something greater than that behind it.

That morning had seen his passing from the circle to which he had belonged as long as the circle had existed. All through that dreary day he had known that he could never go back to it. Just why he could not say, but he felt that that decision was irrevocable. And for that whole day he had been alone—more utterly, absolutely alone than he had ever been in his whole life—yet here was a place awaiting him, needing him. For some reason it was not quite so hard to look straight back into the eyes of that soul which he had discovered that day; it wasn't so hard, even though he knew it now for the pitiful old fraud it really was.

His thin, leathery face was working spasmodically. And it was alight—aglow with a light that came entirely from within.

"Could you maybe explain," he quavered hungrily; "could you kinda tell me—just why it is—you're a-askin' me? It—it ain't jest because you hev to, entirely; now, is it? It ain't because there ain't nothin' else left you to do?"

Denny Bolton sensed immediately more than half of what was behind the question. He shook his head.

"No," he answered steadily. "No, because I'm going to try to tell her again, myself, tonight. It's only partly because maybe I—I won't be able to see her before I go—and part because she—she'd believe you, somehow, I think, when she wouldn't believe any of the rest."

The white-haired old man sighed. His stiffened body slackened as he shifted his feet against the stove.

"Why—why, I kinda hoped it was something like that," he murmured; and he was talking more to himself than to Denny. "I kinda hoped it was—but I never had no reason to believe it."

His voice lifted until it was its shriller, more natural falsetto.

"I wouldn't 'a' believed myself today, at twelve o'clock noon," he stated flatly. "No, sir-e-e! After takin' stock of myself, as you might say, the way I done this morning, I wouldn't 'a' believed myself on oath!"

His feet dropped noisily to the floor, and he sat bolt upright again.

"But she's a-goin' to believe me! Godfrey, yes, she'll believe me when I git through tellin' her!"

His pale eyes clung to the boy's face, tinged with astonishment before so much vehemence.

"And ain't it kinda struck you—ain't it sorta come to you that she wa'n't quite fair, either, any more than the rest of us, a-thinkin'—a-thinkin' what she did, without any real proof?"

Young Denny did not have time to reply.

"No, I reckon it ain't," Old Jerry rushed on. "And I don't know's I've got much right criticizing either. Not very much! I've been a tidy hand at jedgin' other folks' matters until jest lately. Some way I ain't quite so handy at it as I was. And I kinda expect she's goin' to be sorry she even thought it, soon enough, without my tryin' to make her any more so. She's goin' to be mighty uncomfortable sorry, if she's anything like me!"

He rose and shuffled across to the door, and stopped there. Denny could not understand the new thrill there was in his cracked voice, nor the light in those pale eyes. But he knew that the old man before him had been making something close akin to an eleventh-hour confession; making it out of a profound thankfulness for the opportunity. With the same gesture with which he bade the old man wait, his big hand went inside his shirt, and came out again. And he reached out and pressed something into Old Jerry's knotty fingers.

"I—I was sure you'd do it," he told him. "I knew you would. And I want you to take this, too, and keep it. I don't want to go away like this, but I have to. If I didn't start right now I—I might not go at all. I hate to leave her alone—in this town. That's half of what the Judge let me have today on this place. It's not much, but it's something if she should need anything while I'm gone. I thought you might—see that she was all right—till I got back?"

The servant of the "Gov'mint" stood and stared down at the limp little roll of bills in his hand; he stared until something caught in his throat and made him gulp again noisily. But his face was shamelessly defiant of the mist that smarted under his eyelids when he looked up again.

"Take care of her?" he whispered. "Me take care of her for you? Why—why, Godfrey—why, man——"

He dashed one hand across his eyes.

"I'm a old gossipy fool," he exclaimed. "Nothin' but a old gossipy fool; but I reckon you don't hev to count them bills over before you leave 'em with me. Not unless you want to. I've been just an ordinary, common waggle-tongue. That's what I really come for in such a hurry tonight, once I'd thought of it. Jest to see if I couldn't nose around into business that wa'n't no concern of mine. But I'm gittin' over that—I'm gittin' over that fast! Learning a little dignity of bearin', too, as you might say. And I don't deny I ain't a little curious yet—more'n a little curious. But I want to tell you this: There's some folks that lies mostly for profit, and some that lies largely for their own amusement, and they both do jest about as much damage in the long run, and I ain't no better, jest because I never made nothin' outen mine. But if you could kinda drop me a line, maybe once in a while, and tell me how you're gittin' on, I'd be mighty glad to hear. An' it wouldn't do no harm, either." He nodded his head, in turn, in the direction of the drab cottage across the valley. "Because—because she's goin' to be waitin' to hear—she's goin' to be sorry, and kinda wonderin'. I know—well, jest because I know!"

Still he lingered, with his fingers on the door catch. He shoved out his free hand.

"I—I suppose we'd ought to shake hands, hedn't we," he faltered; "bein' as it's kinda considered the reg'lar and customary thing to do on such occasions?"

Denny was smiling as his hand closed over those clawlike fingers; he was smiling in a way that Old Jerry had never seen before. Because the noise in his throat was growing alarmingly louder every moment, the latter went on talking almost wildly, to cover that weakness which he could not control.

"I hope you git on," he said. "And I reckon you will. It's funny—it's more'n that—and I don't know where I got the idea. But it's kinda come to me, somehow, that maybe it was that account in the paper—that story of Jeddy Conway—that's set you to leavin'. It ain't none of my business, and I ain't askin' no questions, but I do want to say that there never was a time when you couldn't lick the everlastin' tar outen him. And you've growed some since then. Jest a trifle—jest a trifle!"

The boy's smile widened and widened. Then he laughed aloud softly and nodded his head.

"I'll send you the papers," he promised. "I'll send you all of them."

Old Jerry stood with his outstretched hand poised in midair while he realized that his chance shot had gone home. And suddenly, unaccountably, he began to chuckle; he began to cackle noisily.

"I might 'a' knowed it," he whispered. "I ought to hev knowed it all along. Now, you don't hev to worry—they ain't one mite of a thing I ain't a-goin' to see to while you're away. You don't want nothin' on your mind, because you're goin' to hev a considerable somethin' on your hands. And I got to git along now. Godfrey, but it's late for me to be up here, ain't it? I got to hustle, if I ever did; and there ain't too much time to spare. For tonight—tonight, before I git through, I aim to put a spoke in the Jedge's wheel, down to the Tavern, that'll make him think the axles of that yello'-wheeled gig of his'n needs greasin'. Jest a trifle—jest a trifle!"