Other Main Travelled Roads

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"Stove to Serry, because she has the house, bureau to Emmy."

At this point Mrs. Gray said, "I guess that ain't quite even, Deacon;
the bureau ain't worth much."

"Oh, no, no, that's all right! Let her have it," Emma protested
nervously.

"Give her an extry tick, anyway," said Sarah, not to be outdone in
magnanimity.

"Settle that between ye," said the Deacon.

He warmed to his work now, and towels, pans, crockery, brooms, mirrors,
pillows, and bedticks were rapidly set aside in two groups on the soft
soil. The poverty of the home could best be seen in the display of its
pitiful furniture.

The two nieces looked on impassively, standing side by side. The men
came to move the bureau and other heavy things and looked on, while the
lighter things were being handed over by Mrs. Gray and the girls.

At noon they sat down in the empty kitchen and ate a cold snack--at
least, the women took seats, the men stood around and lunched on hunks
of boiled beef and slices of bread. There was an air of constraint upon
the male portion of the party not shared by Mrs. Gray and the girls.

"Well, that settles things in the house," beamed the Deacon as he came
out with the women trailing behind him; "an' now in about two jerks of
a dead lamb's tail, we'll git at the things out in the barn."

"Wal, we don't know much about machines and things, but I guess we'd
better go out and keep you men from fightin'," said Mrs. Gray, shaking
with fun; "Ike didn't come because he didn't want to make any trouble,
but I guess he might just as well 'a' come as send two such critters as
Jim 'n' Hank."

The women laughed at her frankness, and in very good humor they all went
out to the barn-yard.

"Now, these things can't be laid out fast as I call 'em off, but we'll
do the best we can."

"Let's try the stawk first," said Jim.

The women stood around with shawls pinned over their heads while the
division of the stock went forward. The young men came often within
chaffing distance of the girls.

There were nine shotes nearly of a size, and the Deacon said, "I'll give
Serry the odd shote."

"Why so?" asked Jim Harkey, a sullen-faced man of thirty.

"Because a shote is hard to carry off and I can balance--"

"Well, I guess you can balance f'r Em 'bout as well as f'r Serry."

The Deacon was willing to yield a point. "Any objection, Bill? If not,
why--"

"Nope, let her go," said Bill.

"What 'ave _you_ got to say 'bout it?" asked Jim, insolently.

Bill turned his slow bulk. "I guess I've a good 'eal to say--haven't I,
Serry?"

Sarah reddened, but stood beside him bravely. "I guess you have, Bill,
about as much as _I_ have." There was a moment of dramatic tension and
the girls tingled with sympathy.

"Let 'er go," said Bill, splitting a straw with his knife. He had not
proposed to Sarah before and he felt an unusual exaltation to think it
came so easy after all.

When they reached the cattle, Jim objected to striking a balance with a
"farrer cow," and threw the Deacon's nice calculation all out of joint.

"Let it go, Jim," pleaded Emma.

"I won't do it," Ike said--"I mean I know he don't want no farrer cow,
he's got two now."

The Deacon was a little nettled. "I guess that's going to stand," he
said sharply.

Jim swore a little but gave in, and came back with an access of ill
humor on a division of the horses.

"But I've give you the four heavy horses to balance the four others and
the two-year-old," said the Deacon.

"I'll be damned if I stand that," said Jim.

"I guess you'll have to," said the Deacon.

Emma pleaded, "Let it go, Jim, don't make a fuss."

Jim raged on, "I'll be cawn-demmed if I'll stand it. I don't--Ike don't
want them spavined old crows; they're all ring-boned and got the
heaves." His long repressed ill-nature broke out.

"Toh, toh!" said the Deacon, "Don't kick over the traces now. We'll fix
it up some way."

Emma tried to stop Jim, but he shook her off and continued to walk back
and forth behind the horses munching on quietly, unconscious of any
dispute about their value.

Bill sat on the oat box in his hulking way, his heels thumping a tune,
his small gray eyes watching the angry man.

"Don't make a darn fool of yourself," he said placidly.

Jim turned, glad of the chance for a row, "You better keep out of this."

Bill continued to thump, the palms of his big hands resting on the edge
of the box. "I'm in it," he said conclusively.

"Well, you git out of it! I ain't goin' to be bulldozed--that ain't what
I come here for."

"No, I see it ain't," said Bill. "If you're after a row you can have it
right here. You won't find a better place."

"There, there," urged the Deacon. "What's the use? Keep cool and don't
tear your shirts."

Mrs. Gray went up to Jim and took him by the arm. "You need a good
spankin' to make you good-natured," she said. "I think the Deacon has
done first rate, and you ought 'o--"

"Let go o' me," he snarled, raising his hand as if to strike her.

Bill's big boot lunged out, catching Harkey in the ribs, and if the
Deacon had not sprung to his assistance Jim would have been trampled to
pieces by the scared horse under whose feet he found himself. He was
wild with dizzy, breathless rage.

"Who hit me?" he demanded.

Bill's shapeless hulk straightened up and stood beside him as if his
pink flesh had suddenly turned to oak. Out of his fat cheeks his gray
eyes glared.

"I did. Want another?"

The Deacon and Jack came between and prevented the encounter which would
have immediately followed. Bill went on:--

"They cain't no man lay a hand on my mother and live long after it." He
was thoroughly awake now. There was no slouch to his action at that
moment, and Jim was secretly pleased to have the encounter go by.

"You come here for a fuss and you can have it, both of you," Bill went
on in unusual eloquence. "Deacon's tried to do the square thing, Emmy's
tried to do the square thing, and Serry's kep' quiet, but you've been
sour and ugly the whole time, and now it's goin' to stop."

"This ain't the last of this thing," said Jim.

"You never'll have a better time," said Bill.

Mrs. Gray and the Deacon turned in now to quiet Bill, and the settlement
went on. Jim kept close watch on the proceedings, and muttered his
dissent to his friends, but was careful not to provoke Bill further.

In dividing the harnesses they came upon a cow-bell hanging on a nail.
The Deacon jingled it as he passed. "Goes with the bell-cow," he said,
and nothing further was said of it. Jim apparently did not consider it
worth quarrelling about.

At last the work was done, a terribly hard day's work. The machines and
utensils were piled in separate places, the cattle separated, and the
grain measured. As they were about to leave, the Deacon said finally:--

"If there's any complaint to make, let's have it right now. I want this
settlement to _be_ a settlement. Is everybody satisfied?"

"I am," said Emmy. "Ain't you, Serry?"

"Why, of course," said Sarah, who was a little slower of speech. "I
think the Deacon has done first rate. I ain't a word of fault to find,
have you, Bill?"

"Nope, not an ioty," said Bill, readily.

Jim did not agree in so many words, but, as he said nothing, the Deacon
ended:--

"Well, that settles it. It ain't goin' to rain, so you can leave these
things right here till Monday. I guess I'll be gettin' out for home.
Good evening, everybody."

Emma drove away down the road with Jim, but Sarah remained to straighten
up the house. Harkey's hired hand went home with Dade Walker who
considered that walk the pleasant finish to a very interesting day's
work. She sympathized for the time with the Harkey faction.

Sunday forenoon, when Bill and Sarah drove up to the farm to put things
in order in the house, they found Ike Harkey walking around with that
queer side glance he had, studying the piles of furniture, and mentally
weighing the pigs.

He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm _purr_fickly satisfied,
_purr_fickly! Not a word to say--better'n I expected," he added.

Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that
final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.

As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction
with him.

"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such
butter-mouth chaps--they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."

III

The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned
out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to
the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight,
drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside
their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the
men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the
fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding,
slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon
spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during
the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had
come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly
as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from
each spoonful.

"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing
about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a
clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.

"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in
Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly.
"Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on
him."

"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.

"Well, _I_ heard it was a shote."

"So did I," said another.

"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to
the black farrer cow," said another late comer.

"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really
worth while!

"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way
I heard it."

"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"

"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.

"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin'
on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone,
hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."

"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the
fellows, with a grin.

"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."

"Well--I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."

"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's
Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the
door.

Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one
side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to
his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude
in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.

Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the
story of trouble between the sisters.

After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of
his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet
utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.

It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to
know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and
their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for
her to conceive of slander and envy.

Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The
entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it
any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and
poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was
aghast.

"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over
it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to
go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin'
settled, seems 's if you ought 'o _stay_ settled. Good land! It ain't
anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"

"But it is _our_ cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim
turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite
us."

"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.

"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said
Sarah in a lamentable voice.

"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak,
"that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"

"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said--"

"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a _snoop_ and everybody
knows it."

"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."

"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I
wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."

"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the
house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."

"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some
sarcasm.

"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest
flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the bureau. I did everything I
could to make her feel satisfied."

"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy
myself."

When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it
to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One
party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the
_tertium quid_ said it was "all darn foolishness."

Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to
maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married,
things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding
supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter
adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even
refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of
Bill and Sarah as unseemly.

Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and
crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale
woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the
situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:--

"She never has been to see me since that day, and--but I hoped she'd
come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding."
She choked with sobs at the memory of it.

Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put
her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on
so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an
invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point.
With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not
bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.

After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the
chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah--"

"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah
said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"

"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly.
She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.

The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used
to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other
wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help
cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
either of them to make the first concession.

Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
among her friends and neighbors.

Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.

The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed
to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
was mentioned.

One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
very bad humor.

"I want this thing stopped," he said.

Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
pretty hard to keep 'em--"

"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
rotten as a pumpkin."

"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you
are."

"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
pasturing on my oats."

"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."

"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
and I ain't a-goin' to have it."

Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."

"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill
called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.

IV

The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the
east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and
pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the
oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which
topped the summit.

Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old
material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's
cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully
gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the
black cow, on her neck.

It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin
landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps
or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in
softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage.
Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up,
slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.

Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the
meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands
began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could
hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.

Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the
forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular
greeting:--

"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two
cents."

The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."

"Oh, I guess not."

"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't
want trouble."

"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that
business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've
got in the shop."

At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they
came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:--

"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"

"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "_We_ don't take what
don't belong to us."

"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking
intonation.

Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther
on down the path. Jim came closer.

"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather
cent I'd lick you like hell!"

"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."

"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to
Jim, "or I'll take a hand."

Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like
a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against
Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about
his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor
strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon
Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to
strangle him. He meant murder.

Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and
was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.

"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed
how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound,
and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as
grappling bull-dogs.

Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came
into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all
the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the
ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.

He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face
beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his
neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly
fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles
quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.

Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In
the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower
valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.

"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.

Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish
for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning
dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.

"_Ah, woe, woe is me!_" it cried.

"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.

Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.

At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up
into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The
angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.

He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood.
"How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.

"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."

Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come
back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.

"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.

Jim looked at Jack. "That _thing_ didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"

Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one,"
was the frank and convincing reply.

Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all
right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."

He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without
looking back.

"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked,
when he sat down at the dinner-table.

"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off,
and give me a side-winder."

Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner
shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return
to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its
noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.

The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of
the way with Bill.

"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring
to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the
undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there
since fifteen minutes after 'leven."

Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down
some way."

V

All through July and August Mrs. Jim Harkey seemed to renew her
endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to
and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had
become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop
now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past.
If the sisters should come together, her lies would instantly appear.

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