Chapter II

There were two men in the buggy which came up the little ascent from the bridge and stopped before the store. The men were Evered, and Evered’s son, John. Evered lived on a farm that overlooked the Whitcher Swamp on the farther side. He was a man of some property, a successful farmer. He was also a butcher; and his services were called in at hog-killing time as regularly as the services of Doctor Crapo in times of sickness. He knew his trade; and he knew the anatomy of a steer or a calf or a sheep as well as Doctor Crapo knew the anatomy of a man. He was an efficient man; a brutally efficient man. His orchard was regularly trimmed and grafted and sprayed; his hay was re-seeded year by year; his garden never knew the blight of weeds; his house was clean, in good repair, white-painted. A man in whom dwelt power and strength; and a man whom other men disliked and feared.

He was a short man, broad of shoulder, with a thick neck and a square, well-shaped head, a heavy brow and a steady burning eye. A somber man, he never laughed; never was known to laugh. There was a blighting something in his gaze which discouraged laughter in others. He was known to have a fierce and ruthless temper; in short, a fearsome man, hard to understand. He puzzled his neighbors and baffled them; they let him well alone.

He was driving this evening. His horse, like everything which was his, was well-groomed and in perfect condition. It pranced a little as it came up to the store, not from high spirits, but from nervousness. So much might be known by the white glint of its eye. The nervousness of a mettled creature too much restrained. It pranced a little, and Evered’s hand tightened on the rein so harshly that the horse’s lower jaw was pulled far back against its neck, and the creature was abruptly still, trembling, and sweating faintly for no cause at all. Evered paid no more heed to the horse. He looked toward the group of men upon the steps, and some met his eye, and some looked away.

He looked at them, one by one; and he asked Lee Motley: “Is the mail come?”

Motley shook his head. He was a farmer of means, a strong man, moved by no fear of Evered. “No,” he said.

Evered passed the reins to his son. “Hold him still,” he told the young man, and stepped out over the wheel to the ground, dropping lightly as a cat. The horse gave a half leap forward and was caught by John Evered’s steady hand; and the young man spoke gently to the beast to quiet it.

Evered from the ground looked up at his son and said harshly, “I bade you hold him still.”

The other answered, “I will.”

“You’d best,” said Evered, and turned and strode up the steps into the store.

The incident had brought out vividly enough the difference between Evered and his son. They were two characters sharply contrasting; for where Evered was harsh, John was gentle of speech; and where Evered was abrupt, John was slow; and where Evered’s eye was hard and angry, John’s was mild. They contrasted physically. The son was tall, well-formed and fair; the father was short, almost squat in his broad strength, and black of hair and eye. Nevertheless, it was plain to the seeing eye that there was strength in John as there was strength in Evered--strength of body and soul.

When Evered had gone into the store Motley said to the son, “It’s warm.”

The young man nodded in a wistfully friendly way. “Yes,” he agreed. “So warm it’s brought up our peas this day.”

“That south slope of yours is good garden land,” Motley told him, and John said:

“Yes. As good as I ever see.”

Everyone liked John Evered; and someone asked now: “Been fishing any, over at Wilson’s?”

John shook his head. “Too busy,” he explained. “But I hear how they’re catching some good strings there.”

“Luke Hills brought in ten to-night that was ten feet long,” Jim Saladine offered. “Got ’em at Ruffingham.”

The young man in the buggy smiled delightedly, his eyes shining. “Golly, what a catch!” he exclaimed.

Then Evered came to the door of the store and looked out, and silence fell upon them all once more. The mail was coming down the hill; the stage, a rattling, rusted, do-or-die automobile of ancient vintage, squeaked to a shrill stop before the very nose of Evered’s horse. John spoke to the horse, and it was still. The stage driver took the mail sacks in, and Evered left the doorway. The others all got up and turned toward the door.

Motley said to Saladine, “Did you mark the horse? It was scared of the stage, but it was still at his word, and he did not tighten rein.”

“I saw,” Saladine agreed. “The boy handles it fine.”

“It’s feared of Evered; but the beast loves the boy.”

“There’s others in that same way o’ thinking,” said Saladine.

Inside the store Will Bissell and Andy Wattles, his lank and loyal clerk, were stamping and sorting the mail. No great matter, for few letters come to Fraternity. While this was under way Evered gathered up the purchases he had made since he came into the store, and took them out and stowed them under the seat of the buggy. He did not speak to his son. John sat still in his place, moving his feet out of the other’s way. When the bundles were all bestowed Evered went back up the steps and Will gave him his daily paper and a letter addressed to his wife, and Evered took them without thanks, and left the store without farewell to any man, and climbed into the buggy and took the reins. He turned the horse sharply and they moved down the hill, and the bridge sounded for a moment beneath their passing. In the still evening air the pound of the horse’s hoofs and the light whirring of the wheels persisted for long moments before they died down to blend with the hum and murmur of tiny sounds that filled the whispering dusk.

As they drove away one or two men came to the door to watch them go; and Judd, a man with a singular capacity for mean and tawdry malice, said loudly, “That boy’ll break Evered, some day, across his knee.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Jean Bubier said cheerfully that he would like to see the thing done. “But that Evered, he is one leetle fighter,” he reminded Judd.

Judd laughed unpleasantly and said Evered had the town bluffed. “That’s all he is,” he told them. “A black scowl and some cussing. Nothing else. You’ll see.”

Motley shook his head soberly. “Evered’s no bluff,” he said. “You’re forgetting that matter of the knife, Judd.”

Motley’s reminder put a momentary silence upon them all. The story of the knife was well enough known; the knife they had all seen. The thing had happened fifteen or twenty years before, and was one of the tales many times told about Will’s stove. One Dave Riggs, drunken and worthless, farming in a small way in North Fraternity, sent for Evered to kill a pig. Evered went to Riggs’ farm. Riggs had been drinking; he was quarrelsome; he sought to interfere with Evered’s procedure. Motley, a neighbor of Riggs, had been there at the time, and used to tell the story.

“Riggs wanted him to tie up the pig,” he would explain. “You know Evered does not do that. He says they will not bleed properly, tied. He did not argue with the man, but Riggs persisted in his drunken way, and cursed Evered to his face, till I could see the blood mounting in the butcher’s cheeks. He is a bad-tempered man, always was.

“He turned on Riggs and told the man to hush; and Riggs damned him. Evered knocked him flat with a single fist stroke; and while Riggs was still on the ground Evered turned and got the pig by the ears and slipped the knife into its throat, in that smooth way he has. When he drew it out the blood came after; and Evered turned to Riggs, just getting on his feet.

“‘There’s your pig,’ said Evered. ‘Butchered right. Now, man, be still.’

“Well, Riggs took a look at the pig and another at Evered. He was standing by the chopping block, and his hand fell on the ax stuck there. Before I could stir he had lifted it, whirling it, and was sweeping down on Evered.

“It was all over quick, you’ll mind. Riggs rushing, with the ax whistling in the air. Then Evered stepped inside its swing, and drove at Riggs’ head. I think he forgot he had the knife in his hand. But it was there; his hand drove it with the cunning that it knew--at the forehead of the other man.

“I mind how Riggs looked, after he had dropped. On his back he was, the knife sticking straight up from his head. And it still smeared with the pig’s blood, dripping down on the dead man’s face. Oh, aye, he was dead. Dead as the pig, when it quit its walking round in a little, and laid down, and stopped its squeal.”

Someone asked him once, when he had told the tale: “Where was Riggs’ wife? Married, wa’n’t he?”

“In the house,” said Motley. “The boy was there, though. He’d come to see the pig stuck, and when he saw the blood come out of its throat he yelled and run. So he didn’t have to see the rest--the knife in his father’s head.”

There had been no prosecution of Evered for that ancient tragedy. Motley’s story was clear enough; it had been self-defense at the worst, and half accident besides. Riggs’ wife went away and took her son, and Fraternity knew them no more.

They conned over this ancient tale of Evered in Will’s store that night; and some blamed him, and some found him not to blame. And when they were done with that story they told others; how when he was called to butcher sheep he had a trick of breaking their necks across his knee with a twist and a jerk of his hands. There was no doubt of the man’s strength nor of his temper.

A West Fraternity man came in while they were talking; one Zeke Pitkin, a mild man, and timid. He listened to their words, and asked at last, “Evered?”

They nodded; and Pitkin laughed in an awkward way. “He killed my bull to-day,” he said.

Will Bissell asked quickly, “Killed your bull? You have him do it?”

Pitkin nodded, gulping at his Adam’s apple. “Getting ugly, the bull was,” he said. “I didn’t like to handle him. Decided to beef him. So I sent for Evered, and he came over.”

He looked round at them, laughed uneasily. “He scared me,” he said.

Motley asked slowly. “What happened, Zeke?”

Pitkin rubbed one hand nervously along his leg. “We-ell,” he explained. “I’m nervous like. Git excited easy. So when he come I told him the bull was ugly. Told him to look out for it.

“He just only looked at me in that hard way of his. I had the bull in the barn; and he went in where it was and fetched it out in the barn floor. Left the bull standing there and begun to fix his tackle to h’ist it up.

“I didn’t want to stay in there with the bull. I was scared of it--it loose there, nothing to hold it. And Evered kept working round it, back to the beast half the time. Nothing to stop it tossing him. I didn’t like to get out, but I didn’t want to stay. And I guess I talked too much. Kept telling him to hurry, and asking him why he didn’t kill it and all. Got him mad, I guess.”

The man shivered a little, his eyes dim with the memory of the moment. He took off his hat and rubbed his hand across his head, and Motley said, “He did kill it?”

Pitkin nodded uneasily. “Yeah,” he said. “Evered turned round to me by and by; and he looked at me under them black eyebrows of his, and he says: ‘Want I should kill this bull, do you?’ I ’lows that I did. ‘Want him killed now, do you?’ he says, and I told him I did. And I did too. I was scared of that bull, I say. But not the way he did kill it.”

He shuddered openly; and Motley asked again, “What did he do?”

“Stepped up aside the bull,” said Pitkin hurriedly. “Yanked out that knife of his--that same knife--out of his sheath. Up with it, and down, so quick I never see what he did. Down with the knife right behind the bull’s horns. Right into the neck bone. And that bull o’ mine went down like a ton o’ brick. Like two ton o’ brick. Stone dead.”

Will Bissell echoed, “Stabbed it in the neck?”

“Right through the neck bone. With that damned heavy knife o’ his.” He wiped his forehead again. “We had a hell of a time h’isting that bull, too,” he said weakly. “A hell of a time.”

No one spoke for a moment. They were digesting this tale of Evered. Then Judd said: “I’d like to see that red bull of his git after that man.”

One or two nodded, caught themselves, looked sheepishly round to discover whether they had been seen. Evered’s red bull was as well and unfavorably known as the man himself. A huge brute, shoulder high to a tall man, ugly of disposition, forever bellowing challenges across the hills from Evered’s barn, frightening womenfolk in their homes a mile away. A creature of terror, ruthlessly curbed and goaded by Evered. It was known that the butcher took delight in mastering the bull, torturing the beast with ingenious twists of the nose ring, with blows on the leg joints, and nose, and the knobs where horns should have been. The red bull was of a hornless breed. The great head of it was like a buffalo’s head, like a huge malicious battering ram. It was impossible to look at the beast without a tremor of alarm.

“It’s ugly business to see Evered handle that bull,” Will Belter said, half to himself.

And after a little silence Jean Bubier echoed: “Almost as ugly as to see the man with his wife. When I have see that, sometime, I have think I might take his own knife to him.”

Judd, the malicious, laughed in an ugly way; and he said, “Guess Evered would treat her worse if he got an eye on her and that man Semler.”

It was Jim Saladine’s steady voice which put an end to that. “Don’t put your foul mouth on her, Judd,” he said quietly. “Not if you want to walk home.”

Judd started to speak, caught Saladine’s quiet eye and was abruptly still.