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"No human bein' could have stood up agin that blow," Crandall said
afterwards. "It was like a mule a-kickin'."
As Steve slowly gained his feet, the silence was so great that Johnny
could hear the thumping of his heart and the fierce, almost articulate
breathing of Steve. The chatter and roar of the drunken crowd had been
silenced by this encounter of the giants. The open door, where Hank
stood, sent a reddish bar of light upon the two men as they faced each
other with a sort of terrific calm. In his swift gaze in search of his
brother, John noticed the dark wood, the river murmuring drowsily over
its foam-wreathed pebbles, and saw his brother's face white with
excitement, but not fear.
Lime's blow had dazed Steve for a moment, but at the same time it had
sobered him. He came to his feet with a rising mutter that sounded like
the swelling snarl of a tiger. He had been taken by surprise before, and
he now came forward with his hands in position, to vindicate his
terrible reputation. The two men met in a frightful struggle. Blows that
meant murder were dealt by each. Each slapping thud seemed to carry the
cracking of bones in it. Steve was the more agile of the two and
circled rapidly around, striking like a boxer.
Every time his face came into view, with set teeth and ferocious scowl,
the boys' spirits fell. But when they saw the calm, determined eyes of
Lime, his watchful, confident look, they grew assured. All depended upon
him. The Nagle gang were like wolves in their growing ferocity, and as
they outnumbered the other party two to one, it was a critical quarter
of an hour. In a swift retrospect they remembered the frightful tales
told of this very spot--of the killing of Lars Peterson and his brother
Nels, and the brutal hammering a crowd of drunken men had given to Big
Ole, of the Wapsy.
The blood was trickling down Lime's face from a cut on his cheek, but
Steve's face was swollen and ghastly from the three blows which he had
received. Lime was saving himself for a supreme effort. The Nagle party,
encouraged by the sound of the blows which Steve struck, began to yell
and to show that they were ready to take a hand in the contest.
"Go it, Steve, we'll back yeh! Give it to 'im. We're with yeh! We'll
tend to the rest." They began to pull off their coats.
Rice also threw off his coat. "Never mind these cowards, Lime. Hold on!
Fair play!" he yelled, as he saw young Nagle about to strike Lime from
behind.
His cry startled Lime, and with a sudden leap he dealt Steve a terrible
blow full in the face, and as he went reeling back made another leaping
lunge and struck him to the ground--a motion that seemed impossible to
one of his bulk. But as he did so one of the crowd tripped him and sent
him rolling upon the prostrate Steve, whose friends leaped like a pack
of snarling wolves upon Lime's back. There came into the giant's heart a
terrible, blind, desperate resolution. With a hoarse, inarticulate cry
he gathered himself for one supreme effort and rose from the heap like a
bear shaking off a pack of dogs; and holding the stunned and nerveless
Steve in his great hands, with one swift, incredible effort literally
swept his opponent's body in the faces of the infuriated men rushing
down upon him.
"Come on, you red hellions!" he shouted, in a voice like a lion at bay.
The light streamed on his bared head, his hands were clinched, his chest
heaved in great gasps. There was no movement. The crowd waited with
their hands lowered; before such a man they could not stand for a
moment. They could not meet the blaze of his eyes. For a moment it
seemed as if no one breathed.
In the silence that followed, Bill, who had kept gut of sight up to this
moment, piped out in a high, weak falsetto, with a comically
questioning accent: "All quiet along the Potomac, boys?"
Lime unbraced, wiped his face and laughed. The others joined in
cautiously. "No, thank yez, none in mine," said Sheehan, in answer to
the challenge of Lime. "Whan Oi take to fightin' stame-ingins Oi'll lit
you knaw."
"Well, I should say so," said another. "Lime, you're the best man that
walks this State."
"Git out of the way, you white-livered hound, or I'll blow hell out o'
yeh," said Steve, who had recovered himself sufficiently to know what it
all meant. He lay upon the grass behind the rest and was weakly trying
to get his revolver sighted upon Lime. One of the men caught him by the
shoulder and the rest yelled:
"Hyare, Steve, no shootin'. It was a fair go, and you're whipped."
Steve only repeated his warnings to get out of the way. Lime turned upon
him and kicked the weapon from his outstretched hand, breaking his arm
at the wrist. The bullet went flying harmlessly into the air, and the
revolver hurtled away into the shadows.
Walking through the ring, Lime took John by the hand and said: "Come,
boy, this is no place for you. Let's go home. Fellers," he drawled in
his customary lazy way, "when y' want me you know where to find me.
Come, boys, the circus is over, the last dog is hung."
For the first mile or two there was a good deal of talk, and Bill said
he knew that Lime could whip the whole crowd.
"But where was you, Bill, about the time they had me down? I don't
remember hearin' anything of you 'long about that time, Bill."
Bill had nothing to say.
"Made me think somehow of Daniel in the lions' den," said Johnny.
"What do you mean by that, Johnny?" said Bill. "It made me think of a
circus. The circus there'll be when Lime's woman finds out what he's
been a-doin'."
"Great Scott, boys, you mustn't tell on me," said Lime, in genuine
alarm.
As for John, he lay with his head in Lime's lap, looking up at the glory
of the starlit night, and with a confused mingling of the play, of the
voice of the lovely woman, of the shouts and blows at the brewery in his
mind, and with the murmur of the river and the roll and rumble of the
wagon blending in his ears, he fell into a sleep which the rhythmic beat
of the horses' hoofs did not interrupt.
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PART VI.
VILLAGE CRONIES: A GAME OF CHECKERS AT THE GROCERY
The village life abounds with jokers,
Shiftless, conscienceless and shrewd.
SOME VILLAGE CRONIES.
Colonel Peavy had just begun the rubber with Squire Gordon, of Cerro
Gordo County. They were seated in Robie's grocery, behind the rusty old
cannon stove, the checkerboard spread out on their knees. The Colonel
was grinning in great glee, wringing his bony yellow hands in nervous
excitement, in strong contrast to the stolid calm of the fat Squire.
The Colonel had won the last game by a large margin, and was sure he had
his opponent's dodges well in hand. It was early in the evening, and the
grocery was comparatively empty. Robie was figuring at a desk, and old
Judge Brown stood in legal gravity warming his legs at the red-hot
stove, and swaying gently back and forth in speechless content. It was a
tough night outside, one of the toughest for years. The frost had
completely shut the window panes as with thick blankets of snow. The
streets were silent.
"I don't know," said the Judge, reflectively, to Robie, breaking the
silence in his rasping, judicial bass, "I don't know as there has been
such a night as this since the night of February 2d, '59; that was the
night James Kirk went under--Honorable Kirk, you remember--knew him
well. Brilliant fellow, ornament to Western bar. But whisky downed him.
It'll beat the oldest man--I wonder where the boys all are to-night?
Don't seem to be any one stirring on the street. Ain't frightened out by
the cold?"
"Shouldn't wonder." Robie was busy at his desk, and not in humor for
conversation on reminiscent lines. The two old war-dogs at the board had
settled down to one of those long, silent struggles which ensue when two
champions meet. In the silence which followed, the Judge was looking
attentively at the back of the Colonel, and thinking that the old thief
was getting about down to skin and bone. He turned with a yawn to Robie,
saying:
"This cold weather must take hold of the old Colonel terribly, he's so
damnably thin and bald, you know,--bald as a babe. The fact is, the old
Colonel ain't long for this world, anyway; think so, Hank?" Robie making
no reply, the Judge relapsed into silence for awhile, watching the cat
(perilously walking along the edge of the upper shelf) and listening to
the occasional hurrying footsteps outside. "I don't know _when_ I've
seen the windows closed up so, Hank; go down to thirty below to-night;
devilish strong wind blowing, too; tough night on the prairies, Hank."
"You bet," replied Hank, briefly.
The Colonel was plainly getting excited. His razor-like back curved
sharper than ever as he peered into the intricacies of the board to spy
the trap which the fat Squire had set for him. At this point the squeal
of boots on the icy walk outside paused, and a moment later Amos Ridings
entered, with whiskers covered with ice, and looking like a huge bear in
his buffalo coat.
"By Josephus! it's cold," he roared, as he took off his gloves and began
to warm his face and hands at the fire.
"Is it?" asked the Judge, comfortably, rising on his tiptoes, only to
fall back into his usual attitude legal, legs well spread, shoulders
thrown back.
"You bet it is!" replied Amos. "I d'know when I've felt the cold more'n
I have t'-day. It's jest snifty; doubles me up like a jack-knife, Judge.
How do you stand it?"
"Toler'ble, toler'ble, Amos. But we're agin', we ain't what we were
once. Cold takes hold of us."
"That's a fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the
Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding
with the girls on a night like this and never notice it."
"Yes, sir; yes, sir!" said the Judge with a sigh. It was a little
uncertain in Robie's mind whether the Judge was regretting the lost
ability to stand the cold, or the lost pleasure of riding with the
girls.
"Great days, those, gentlemen! Lived in Vermont then. Hot-blooded--lungs
like an ox. I remember, Sallie Dearborn and I used to go a-foot to
singing-school down the valley four miles. But now, wouldn't go riding
to-night with the handsomest woman in America, and the best cutter in
Rock River."
"Oh! you've got both feet in the grave up t' the ankles, anyway," said
Robie, from his desk, but the Judge immovably gazed at the upper shelf
on the other side of the room, where the boilers and pans and washboards
were stored.
"The Judge is a little on the sentimental order to-night," said Amos.
"Hold on, Colonel! hold on. You've _got_'o jump. Hah! hah!" roared
Gordon from the checkerboard. "That's right, that's right!" he ended,
as the Colonel complied reluctantly.
"Sock it to the old cuss!" commented Amos. "What I was going to say," he
resumed, rolling down the collar of his coat, "was, that when my wife
helped me bundle up t'night, she said I was gitt'n' t' be an old
granny. We _are_ agin', Judge, the's no denyin' that. We're both gray as
Norway rats now. An' speaking of us agin' reminds me,--have y' noticed
how bald the old Kyernel's gitt'n'?"
"I have, Amos," answered the Judge, mournfully. "The old man's head is
showing age, showing age! Getting thin up there, ain't it?"
The old Colonel bent to his work with studied abstraction, and even when
Amos said, judicially, after long scrutiny: "Yes, he'll soon be as bald
as a plate," he only lifted one yellow, freckled, bony hand, and brushed
his carroty growth of hair across the spot under discussion. Gordon
shook his fat paunch in silent laughter, nearly displacing the board.
"I was just telling Robie," pursued Brown, still retaining his
reminiscent intonation, "that this storm takes the cake over
anything"----
At this point Steve Roach and another fellow entered. Steve was Ridings'
hired hand, a herculean fellow, with a drawl, and a liability for taking
offense quite as remarkable.
"Say! gents, I'm no spring rooster, but this jest gits away with
anything in line of cold _I_ ever see."
While this communication was being received in ruminative silence, Steve
was holding his ears in his hand and gazing at the intent champions at
the board. There they sat; the old Squire panting and wheezing in his
excitement, for he was planning a great "snap" on the Colonel, whose
red and freckled nose almost touched the board. It was a solemn battle
hour. The wind howled mournfully outside, the timbers of the store
creaked in the cold, and the huge cannon stove roared in steady bass.
"Speaking about ears," said Steve, after a silence, "dummed if I'd like
t' be quite s' bare 'round the ears as Kernel there. I wonder if any o'
you fellers has noticed how the ol' feller's lost hair this last summer.
He's gittin' bald, they's no coverin' it up--gittin' bald as a plate."
"You're right, Stephen," said the Judge, as he gravely took his stand
behind his brother advocate and studied, with the eye of an adept, the
field of battle. "We were noticing it when you came in. It's a sad
thing, but it must be admitted."
"It's the Kyernel's brains wearin' up through his hair, I take it,"
commented Amos, as he helped himself to a handful of peanuts out of the
bag behind the counter. "Say, Steve, did y' stuff up that hole in front
of ol' Barney?"
A shout was heard outside, and then a rush against the door, and
immediately two young fellows burst in, followed by a fierce gust of
snow. One was Professor Knapp, the other Editor Foster, of the _Morning
Call_.
"Well, gents, how's this for high?" said Foster, in a peculiar tone of
voice, at which all began to smile. He was a slender fellow with
close-clipped, assertive red hair. "In this company we now have the
majesty of the law, the power of the press, and the underpinning of the
American civilization all represented. Hello! There are a couple of old
roosters with their heads together. Gordon, my old enemy, how are you?"
Gordon waved him off with a smile and a wheeze. "Don't bother me now.
I've got 'im. I'm laying f'r the old dog. Whist!"
"Got nothing!" snarled the Colonel. "You try that on if you want to.
Just swing that man in there if you think it's healthy for him. Just as
like as not, you'll slip up on that little trick."
"Ha! Say you so, old True Penny? The Kunnel has met a foeman worthy of
his steel," said Foster, in great glee, as he bent above the Colonel. "I
know. _How_ do I know, quotha? By the curve on the Kunnel's back. The
size of the parabola described by that backbone accurately gauges his
adversary's skill. But, by the way, gentlemen, have you--but that's a
nice point, and I refer all nice points to Professor Knapp. Professor,
is it in good taste to make remarks concerning the dress or features of
another?"
"Certainly not," answered Knapp, a handsome young fellow with a yellow
mustache.
"Not when the person is an esteemed public character, like the Colonel
here? What I was about to remark, if it had been proper, was that the
old fellow is getting wofully bald. He'll soon be bald as an egg."
"Say!" asked the Colonel, "I want to know how long you're going to keep
this thing up? Somebody's dummed sure t' get hurt soon."
"There, there! Colonel," said Brown, soothingly, "don't get excited;
you'll lose the rubber. Don't mind 'em. Keep cool."
"Yes, keep cool, Kunnel; it's only our solicitude for your welfare,"
chipped in Foster. Then, addressing the crowd in a general sort of way,
he speculated: "Curious how a man, a plain American citizen like Colonel
Peavy, wins a place in the innermost affections of a whole people."
"That's so!" murmured the rest.
"He can't grow bald without deep sympathy from his fellow-citizens. It
amounts to a public calamity."
The old Colonel glared in speechless wrath.
"Say! gents," pleaded Gordon, "let up on the old man for the present.
He's going to need all of himself if he gets out o' the trap he's in
now." He waved, his fat hand over the Colonel's head, and smiled blandly
at the crowd hugging the stove.
"My head may be bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin,
indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to skunk any
man in this crowd three games out o' five."
"The ol' man rather gits the laugh on y' there, gents," called Robie
from the other side of the counter. "I hain't seen the old skeesix play
better'n he did last night, in years."
"Not since his return from Canada, after the war, I reckon," said Amos,
from the kerosene barrel.
"Hold on, Amos," put in the Judge warningly, "that's outlawed. Talking
about being bald and the war reminds me of the night Walters and I----
By the way, where is Walters to-night?"
"Sick," put in the Colonel, straightening up exultantly. "I waxed him
three straight games last night. You won't see him again till spring.
Skunked him once, and beat him twice."
"Oh, git out."
"Hear the old seed twitter!"
"Did you ever notice, gentlemen, how lying and baldness go together?"
queried Foster, reflectively.
"No! Do they?"
"Invariably. I've known many colossal liars, and they were all as bald
as apples."
The Colonel was getting nervous, and was so slow that even Gordon (who
could sit and stare at the board a full half hour without moving) began
to be impatient.
"Come, Colonel, marshal your forces a little more promptly. If you're
going at me _echelon_, sound y'r bugle; I'm ready."
"Don't worry," answered the Colonel, in his calmest nasal. "I'll
accommodate you with all the fight you want."
"Did it ever occur to you," began the Judge again, addressing the crowd
generally, as he moved back to the stove and lit another cigar, "did it
ever occur to you that it is a little singular a man should get bald on
the _top_ of his head first? Curious fact. So accustomed to it we no
longer wonder at it. Now see the Colonel there. Quite a growth of hair
on his clapboarding, as it were, but devilish thin on his roof."
Here the Colonel looked up and tried to say something, but the Judge
went on imperturbably:
"Now, I take it that it's strictly providential that a man gets bald on
top of his head first, because, if he _must_ get bald, it is best to get
bald where it can be covered up."
"By jinks, that's a fact!" said Foster, in high admiration of the
Judge's ratiocination. Steve was specially pleased, and, drawing a
neck-yoke from a barrel standing near, pounded the floor vigorously.
"Talking about being bald," put in Foster, "reminds me of a scheme of
mine, which is to send no one out to fight Indians but bald men. Think
how powerless they'd be in"----
The talk now drifted off to Indians, politics and religion, edged round
to the war, when the grave Judge began telling Ridings and Robie just
how "Kilpatrick charged along the Granny White Turnpike," and, on a
sheet of wrapping-paper, was showing where Major John Dilrigg fell. "I
was on his left, about thirty yards, when I saw him throw up his
hand"----
Foster in a low voice was telling something to the Professor and two or
three others, which made them whoop with uncontrollable merriment, when
the roaring voice of big Sam Walters was heard outside, and a moment
later he rolled into the room, filling it with his noise. Lottridge, the
watchmaker, and Erlberg, the German baker, came in with him.
"_Hello_, hello, _hello_! All here, are yeh?"
"All here waiting for you--and the turnkey," said Foster.
"Well, here I am. Always on hand, like a sore thumb in huskin' season.
What's goin' on here? A game, hey? Hello, Gordon, it's you, is it?
Colonel, I owe you several for last night. But what the devil yo' got
your cap on fur, Colonel? Ain't it warm enough here for yeh?"
The desperate Colonel, who had snatched up his cap when he heard Walters
coming, grinned painfully, pulling his straggly red and white beard
nervously. The strain was beginning to tell on his iron nerves. He
removed the cap, and with a few muttered words went back to the game,
but there was a dangerous gleam in his fishy blue eyes, and the grizzled
tufts of red hair above his eyes lowered threateningly. A man who is
getting swamped in a game of checkers is not in a mood to bear
pleasantly any remarks on his bald head.
"Oh! don't take it off, Colonel," went on his tormentor, hospitably.
"When a man gets as old as you are, he's privileged to wear his cap. I
wonder if any of you fellers have noticed how the Colonel is shedding
his hair."
The old man leaped up, scattering the men on the checkerboard, which
flew up and struck Squire Gordon in the face, knocking him off his
stool. The old Colonel was ashy pale, and his eyes glared out from under
his huge brow like sapphires lit by flame. His spare form, clothed in a
seedy Prince Albert frock, towered with a singular dignity. His features
worked convulsively a moment, then he burst forth like the explosion of
a safety valve:
"Shuttup, damyeh!"
And then the crowd whooped, roared and rolled on the counters and
barrels, and roared and whooped again. They stamped and yelled, and ran
around like fiends, kicking the boxes and banging the coal scuttle in a
perfect pandemonium of mirth, leaving the old man standing there
helpless in his wrath, mad enough to shoot. Steve was just preparing to
seize the old man from behind, when Squire Gordon, struggling to his
feet among the spittoons, cried out, in the voice of a colonel of Fourth
of July militia:
"H-O-L-D!"
Silence was restored, and all stood around in expectant attitudes to
hear the Squire's explanation. He squared his elbows, shoved up his
sleeves, puffed out his fat cheeks, moistened his lips, and began
pompously: "Gentlemen"----
"You've hit it; that's us," said some of the crowd in applause.
"Gentlemen of Rock River, when, in the course of human events, rumor had
blow'd to my ears the history of the checker-playing of Rock River, and
when I had waxed Cerro Gordo, and Claiborne, and Mower, then, when I say
to my ears was borne the clash of resounding arms in Rock River, the
emporium of Rock County, then did I yearn for more worlds to conquer,
and behold, I buckled on my armor and I am here."
"Behold, he is here," said Foster, in confirmation of the statement.
"Good for you, Squire; git breath and go for us some more."
"Hurrah for the Squire," etc.
"I came seekin' whom I might devour, like a raging lion. I sought foeman
worthy of my steel. I leaped into the arena and blew my challenge to
the four quarters of Rock"----
"Good f'r you! Settemupagin! Go it, you old balloon," they all
applauded.
"Knowing my prowess, I sought a fair fout and no favors. I met the
enemy, and he was mine. Champion after champion went down before me
like--went down like--Ahem! went _down_ before me like grass before the
mighty cyclone of the Andes."
"Listen to the old blowhard," said Steve.
"Put him out," said the speaker, imperturbably. "Gentlemen, have I the
floor?"
"You have," replied Brown, "but come to the point. The Colonel is
anxious to begin shooting." The Colonel, who began to suspect himself
victimized, stood wondering what under heaven they were going to do
next.
"I am a-gitt'n' there," said the orator with a broad and sunny
condescension. "I found your champions an' laid 'em low. I waxed
Walters, and then I tackled the Colonel. I tried the _echelon_, the
'general advance,' then the 'give away' and 'flank' movements. But the
Colonel _was there_! Till this last game it was a fair field and no
favor. And now, gentlemen of Rock, I desire t' state to my deeply
respected opponent that he is still champion of Rock, and I'm not sure
but of Northern Iowa."
"Three cheers for the Kunnel!"
And while they were being given the Colonel's brows relaxed, and the
champion of Cerro Gordo continued earnestly:
"And now I wish to state to Colonel the solemn fact that I had nothing
to do with the job put up on him to-night. I scorn to use such means in
a battle. Colonel, you may be as bald as an apple, or an egg, yes, or a
_plate_, but you can play more checkers than any man I ever met; more
checkers than any other man on God's green footstool. With one single,
lone exception--myself."
At this moment, somebody hit the Squire from Cerro Gordo with a decayed
apple, and as the crowd shouted and groaned Robie turned down the lights
on the tumult. The old Colonel seized the opportunity for putting a
handful of salt down Walters' neck, and slipped out of the door like a
ghost. As the crowd swarmed out on the icy walk, Editor Foster yelled:
"Gents! let me give you a pointer. Keep your eye peeled for the next
edition of the Rock River _Morning Call_."
And the bitter wind swept away the answering shouts of the pitiless
gang.
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PART VII.
DRIFTING CRANE: THE INDIAN AND THE PIONEER
Before them, surely, sullenly and slow,
The desperate and cheated Indians go.
DRIFTING CRANE.
The people of Boomtown invariably spoke of Henry Wilson as the oldest
settler in the Jim Valley, as he was of Buster County; but the Eastern
man, with his ideas of an "old settler," was surprised as he met the
short, silent, middle-aged man, who was very loath to tell anything
about himself, and about whom many strange and thrilling stories were
told by good story-tellers. In 1879 he was the only settler in the upper
part of the valley, living alone on the banks of the Elm, a slow,
tortuous stream pulsing lazily down the valley, too small to be called a
river and too long to be called a creek. For two years, it is said,
Wilson had only the company of his cattle, especially during the
winter-time, and now and then a visit from an Indian, or a trapper after
mink and musk-rats.
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