CHAPTER XV.

WANTED THE HORSE.

The days were linked out into weeks; there had been rag-time music and break-down dancing at Mrs. Stuvic's, but Milford had not shown himself.

A farmer pa.s.sing late at night had looked through the window and had seen him boxing with the hired man. Some one else had seen him sparring with an Irishman in Antioch. The old woman swore that he was "going daft." But it was noised around that he had threshed out nearly two thousand bushels of oats, and this redeemed his standing. He had not arrived in time to sow the oats, but the luck of the harvest had fallen to him. The crop had been threatened with rust and the old woman advised him to plow up the fields, but he had held out against her and was rewarded, not alone with a surprising yield of grain, but with a recognized right to exercise freedom of action, such as would not have been tolerated in a man who had fallen short. A wise old skinflint halted one day to ask his opinion of a bulky subscription book for which he had paid one dollar down and signed notes for three more, payable, of course, at times when money worries would buzz thickly about him. And news came through the hired man that a young woman, thin of chest and clumsy of foot, but worth a hundred acres, had set her cap for him.

"Of course, I wouldn't advise you to take her," said Mitch.e.l.l, putting on his necktie before a three-cornered fragment of a looking-gla.s.s, "but I want to tell you that land's land out here. And besides, she might die in a year or two. You never can tell. I may see her at church to-day.

She and my girl are sorter kin to each other. I'm a marryin' man, myself. I don't see enough difference in married life or single life to get scared at either one, so I take the marryin' side. A married man has a place to keep away from and a single man hasn't any place to go to, so it's all about the same, that is, without property. Goin' anywhere to-day?"

"There's no place for me to go except over to the old woman's, and I don't care to go there yet awhile. I wonder why she hasn't been over here?"

"Who, the girl?"

"No, the old woman. Do you suppose I expect the girl to come?"

"Well, I didn't know," said Mitch.e.l.l, brushing his stiff hair. "You never can tell what a girl will do. They keep me guessin' and I'm on to their curves pretty well. I see that Mrs. Goodwin yesterday evenin'. And she looked like a full-rigged ship. Guess I'd be a little afraid of her with her big talk. But you could tackle her all right enough. Say, I'm sore as I can be, boxin' with you. Is that cigar up by the clock, one that the prize-fighter give you? Let me take it along. I want to perfume my way with it. Thanks," he added, taking the cigar before Milford had said a word. "How do these pants set?"

"They strike me as being a trifle short," said Milford, surveying him.

"That's what I was afraid of, but they dragged the ground till the peddler left, and then they began to draw up. A man's sure to get the worst of it when he buys out of a pack. I'd like to have a suit of clothes made to order, but I can't afford it now. Did you ever have a suit put up to your own notion?"

"Yes, a few."

"Well, I said all the time that you wan't no common man."

"And right there you struck the ancient and the modern idea of what a man is--garments. You can't get away from the effect of clothes. The city and the backwoods are alike. With the exception that the city insists that the coat shall fit better and the pantaloons be a little longer," he added, smiling.

"Don't laugh at 'em, Bill; they're all I've got. When a man's got two pair of briches you may laugh at one, but when he's got only one pair, don't laugh. Are you goin' to set up here and read that book all day?

What's his name? Whitson?"

"Whittier. I don't know. I'm a Quaker waiting to be moved. I had this old book with me out West. We used to read it at night in the shack. We had some pretty smart fellows with us. Some of them pretended to be ignorant when in fact they had read their names on a sheepskin. They had been beaten over the head with books till they were sick of them."

"I don't blame 'em," said the hired man. "I'd rather set up with a corpse than a book."

"Sometimes it's about the same thing," Milford replied. "Did you ever read the Bible?"

"What do you take me for?"

"I don't take you for a man who has read very much of it. But it's the greatest thing ever written."

"It's out of date, Bill."

"Yes, to those who don't think. Why, there's more wisdom in it than in all other books put together. I don't care anything about creed, or what one man or another may believe; I don't care how or why it was written--I brush aside the oaths that have been sworn on it, and the dying lips that have kissed it; I shut my eyes to everything but the fact that it is the greatest opera, the greatest poem, the greatest tragedy ever written."

"If I could talk that way I'd go out and preach about it, Bill."

"Not with my record behind you, old fellow."

"But why should a man that believes as you do have a record to hold him down?"

"There you've got me. That's what I'd like to know. But when a man has learned to understand himself, then all things may become clear. We sometimes say that it was not natural for a man to do a certain thing.

The fact is, it's natural for a man to do almost anything that he can do."

"This is good Sunday mornin' talk, all right, Bill. But I've got to go after my girl. She's got lots of sense, horse sense and flap-doodle sense all mixed up. She's got more flap-doodle sense than I have; she reads books, and not long ago she give me a piece of poetry that she'd cut out of a newspaper. I said, 'Read her off and take her back.' And she did. Well, I'm off."

Milford hailed a man who drove up in a buggy, gave ten cents for a Sunday newspaper, and sat on the veranda to read it. The wind blew a sheet out into the yard. He started after it, but halted, looking at a man who was crossing the field where the oats had been reaped, striding with basket and rod toward the lake. Milford left the paper to the wind.

He hastened to the woods between the oat field and the lake and waited for the man, leaning musingly against a tree. The man got over the fence and came along the path. Milford stepped out.

"Good-morning, Mr. Dorsey."

"Why, h.e.l.loa. How's everything?"

"All right, I hope. Are you done with that horse?"

"Oh, that horse. Yes, I'm about done with him."

"Hold on. I want him."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember the last time we met I--well, we'll say, I let you have a horse."

"You mean we fought over yonder in the grove."

"That's what I mean."

"Well, what about it?"

"We are going to fight over here in this grove."

"Why, I thought you had enough?"

"I did have then, but I want more. I said then that I'd never been beaten for long at a time. I've been waiting for you."

"A man don't have to wait for me very long. But say, this is all rank foolishness. I've got nothing against you; and as for what I said about the woman, why, I'm willing to apologize, although I don't know what it was."

"You will apologize, but not till I get through with you. Take off your coat."

"You beat any fellow I ever saw. I don't want to fight; I want to fish."

"I don't want to fish, I want to fight. Take off your coat or I'll knock you down in it."

"All right, my son." He threw his coat on a stump. Milford was in his shirt sleeves. "Wait a moment," said Dorsey. "You have brought this thing about, and I want to tell you that I won't let you off as easy as I did the last time."