Other Main Travelled Roads

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The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
at last flat on his back.

"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it,
too!"

"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.

The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.

"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."

His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
toil had bent and stiffened him.

"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
pay--that's all, sir!"

Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
there this afternoon."

The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
air, as if it were all mere play.

He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with
that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.

All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.

And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
the cylinder.

"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
leathery thumb and finger.

Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.

One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.

He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
of the third day, he said:--

"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
gum!"

"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."

II

Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.

It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came
driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half
his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was
delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.

"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got
that fire blazin'? What the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is
broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a
thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come!
hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots--ha! ha! ha!"

It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.

"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age,
I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds!
Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"

The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and
then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot--mince pie or
sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat
down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the
fire under the big kettle.

The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into
position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at
the proper slant, while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning
the grindstone--another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not
alleviate.

Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse
trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of
cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some
heavy snow-storm he had known. Each parenthesis outgrew its proper
limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories
had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he
was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.

At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was
the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with
laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the
ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly
swine.

"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, _grab 'im_! Why don't
ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell
out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"

With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator
toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected
victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out,
caught him by the ear, and flung him upon his side, squealing with
deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort,
Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he
boasted:--

"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth--a dozen o' you--spindle-legged
chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"

His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine
as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into
another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was
swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested,
while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.

There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys.
The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam
rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped
steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity,
while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long
stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.

At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the
other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct
honor in this selection.

"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No,
sir, wouldn't thank 'im."

"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two
iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.

"Scrape a hawg with them, sir. What do y' s'pose, you numskull?"

"Well, I never saw anything--"

"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im
around--there! Now easy, easy! Now then, one, two; one, two--that's
right."

While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion
rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of
stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he
wanted the other man to do.

"The best man I ever worked with. _Now turn 'im, turn 'im!_" he yelled,
reaching over Jennings's wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye
never learn how to turn a hawg? _Now out with 'im!_" was his next wild
yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking.
"Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his
hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer.
Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks!
They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick;
no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake
Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n
he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had....

"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got
no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good
hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who
didn't ride the saw. He could jerk a crosscut saw.... Now let him in
again, now, _he-ho_, once again! _Rool him over now_; that foreleg needs
a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By
gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"

Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What
the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a
pause. "A--n--d Jake, he scraped away--_hyare_!" he shouted suddenly,
"don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave
it smooth as a baby, sir--yessir!"

He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a
hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.

"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind
gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."

He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at
an ancient horse trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet
finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.

III

But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art,
for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for
dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of
the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves,--had been for
three generations,--but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and
at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing
the music while the rest danced.

Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his
money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his
personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came
early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was
neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very
clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where
he would sit.

"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."

He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore
huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like
this added a paper collar to his red woollen shirt. He took off his coat
and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the
young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed
on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged
it and banged it into proper tunefulness.

"A-a-a-ll ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody
git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle
under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the
strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a
startling bang on the first note. _Rye doodle duo, doodle doo_.

As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy
boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept
boisterous time with his foot, while his high, rasping nasal rang high
above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.

"_Ladies_' gran' change! Four hands round! _Balance_ all! _Elly_-man
left! Back to play-cis."

His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all
that went on in some miraculous way.

"_First_ lady lead to the right--_toodle rum rum!_ _Gent_ foller after
(step along thar)! Four hands round--"

The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics
rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They
seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called
"Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a
chant which he meant, without a doubt, to be musical.

"HON-ers tew your pardners--_tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee_! Stand
up straight an' put on your style! _Right_ an' left four--"

The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy
got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.

At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the
prettiest girl out to supper.

"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the
others.

"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and
Yark State both; yes, sir."

He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about
the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection
long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate
gallantry, he said: "_May_ I have the pleasure?" and marched out
triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.

His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm
the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance
down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."

They all took sides in order to please him.

"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."

"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match
was arranged to come the first thing after supper.

"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on
earth yet."

While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured
Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some others objected.

"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man--"

"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get
ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem
jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist
in the face of his grinning tormentors.

His friends held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the
other fellows away.

"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on
him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that
dancing-match now."

Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his
violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the
middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers
were bagged at the knee, and his red woollen stockings showed between
the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon legs, and his coat, utterly
characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders;
and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his
bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of
the old-fashioned sort.

"_Farrm_ on," he cried, and the fiddler struck up the first note of the
Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened
up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a
weather-beaten pine tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called
off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.

The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the
time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.

"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled
like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into
place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved
his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the
days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he
danced a final breakdown to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he
was unsubdued.

IV

But these rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the
wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but
seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls--his music was too
monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he
broke forth in protest against the changes.

"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They
wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are
gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up
with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."

As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on
the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest
John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes
where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection
keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his
uncleanly habits of spitting, and his tiresome stories. Many of the old
neighbors died or moved away, and the young people went West or to the
cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him
more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the
fall hog-killing.

"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
s'pose."

"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"

Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
all.

"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A goldum leetle, nasty,
ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife,
she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
again, sir; no, sir."

His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the axe
and lamed himself for life.

As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
thing to put up with.

"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an axe in up to the
maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended with a groan.

As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
brought the axe down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.
It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life
he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.

A man like this lives so much in the flesh, that when his limbs begin to
fail him everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his
strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the
swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong
as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think
and to tremble.

When he was able to crawl about again, he was a different man. He was
gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like
a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter
following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no
one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his
wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his
suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or
whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the
stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He
ain't dangerous 't all," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously
ill.

Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was
so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home
with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in
a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when
Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.

Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had
seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his
jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering
and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.

In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit:
"I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be
all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm
me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."

The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved
about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or
did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.
"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."

"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said in horror. But Bill drew the bow across
the strings with the same stroke that Daddy always used when tuning up.

He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of
Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with
his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
left hand, and burst into tears.

"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
right off."

"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.

And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
throat.

* * * * *

The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
the room.

"Come over there, all of you; we want you."

They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"

"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
by Mr. Jennings and Milton.

While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.

"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
he'd gone to bed all right; but when I was going out to the barn I
stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him. I
dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest
slumped down in a chair an' set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I come
over to see you."

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