Chapter IX: Part 9

The truth is, I wanted to go hunting. It was in my blood that morning, and these beautiful December days with a hazy glow on the blue hills and that stillness that comes like a dropping nut in a forest would put it into anybody's blood, anybody who had it. And when the infection hits you there is only one antidote, a dog, a gun, a tramp over the hills, and--whir! bang! bang!

And to-day was ideal. I had felt it all morning; the cool, bracing air with that little frosty aroma of leaves curling to crispness under the first blight of things, and that other delightful odor of pungent woodland damp with frost-biting dew. And the hills blue and beautiful are alone worth going to meet, and the trees crimson in the hectic flush of the dying year.

Dick, my pointer, was jumping all over me and turning dogsprings of delight.

"Down, Dick! Heigh ho, old boy; that machine is against my religion, but I'd go hunting in a negro hearse to-day. Besides," I said, with a twinge of conscience, "he'll get us to the field in forty minutes, and the little mare is getting old and we've got a late start."

I sighed and felt better. I had fought so long and said so much for the horse, and now--now--it was inexorable; they were being driven to their fate; they had to go before the relentless wheel of progress. I was virtually admitting it, I, who had said I'd never--

I shouldered my gun. Somehow it didn't seem like the old, joyous hunt.

At the front gate the automobile stood, a pretty thing, to be sure. Its owner was smiling, goggle-eyed and all aglow, his hand on the wheel, or whatever you call the steering end of it.

"Jump in, Jack, old man; we must be in a hurry. Slap Dick in there behind with my two setters. Be in a hurry! By George! I know where there are a dozen coveys, and we'll be there in forty minutes. Hi, Dick! What's the matter? Get in! Confound him, what's the matter with that old dog?"

I was lugging Dick and trying to get him in. He was kicking like a half-roped steer. He had always jumped to his place in the little buggy, but now--

I knew what was the matter. Even Dick, dog that he was, had his principles, and he was man enough to say so. While I--

I turned crimson.

"Get in, old boy," I begged. "We'll be there in a jiffy. Dead bird--good doggie."

I got him in, with his head down and his tail between his legs. To all intents he was going to a funeral. I turned quickly away, for I could not stand the scorn and dumb reproach of his eyes. Right then I would have quit and gone back, but I didn't want to hurt my friend's feelings.

"Jump in, jump in, let's be going," he shouted, in his nervous, business way. "Oh, just a minute! There--you're on the ground. Say, here, take this and give that starting crank a turn. I'm not very expert myself," he went on, "and I sometimes forget; but you're on the ground--there--right there!"

I gave her a whirl, several of them. I whirled her like blue blazes. I kept on whirling, while her owner grasped the wheel and his eyes danced nervously, as he expected her to flash into the throb that said steam was on.

But she didn't fire, and I kept cranking.

"Faster, Jack, harder!" he cried.

I whirled and whirled. I began to get warm. The sweat began to pour off.

"Say," I said, gasping for breath, "this beats turning a grindstone. What the devil--"

"Why, I canth--thee," he lisped, "turnth again--quick--a tharp, sthnappy onth!"

I turned her again, quick, sharp and snappy. The thing pulled heavy and felt like an unoiled grindstone, just out of the store. My arms ached, the sweat poured off, and my back was nearly broken.

I gave her a final desperate twist, and--there she was! Dead as a log wagon.

"Confound it," I said, mopping my forehead and staggering up; "I could have curried the mare and hitched her up six times. Why, something's wrong with your old gas wagon," I went on, getting hot. "I'll not turn this crank any more," I said; "I'll be so sore in my arms I couldn't hold my gun straight to-day."

He looked puzzled, annoyed.

"Why, I can't thee--" he began to lisp again.

"What's that you've got in your mouth?" I jerked out. "You don't lisp that way naturally."

A smile broke over his face. He took out a little, black peg, and roared. It was too funny--to him.

"Beg yo' pardon, old boy--beg yo' pardon--ha-ha-ha! Good joke. That's the switch plug. You take it out when the machine's idle, and I forgot to put it back in the little hole. Here," he said, sticking it in, "it connects the current--ha-ha--good joke--now give her a whirl." I gave the whirl, but in no manner to enjoy the joke. I heard her fire up and begin to throb. We moved off beautifully. We began to fly up the smooth pike, my hand back in Dick's collar, for fear he'd jump out and commit suicide. I dared not turn round to look the honest dog in the eyes.

"Fine, fine--ain't this fine, old man?" cried my friend enthusiastically, as he buzzed up the road. "Look at your watch--nine-twenty. Ah, now we'll be in the field at ten sharp--sharp--two good hours for hunting before we eat our pocket lunch.

"Now your little old mare," he laughed, "would take up those fifteen miles by now? Say, ha! ha!--acknowledge the corn, old man--the decree has gone forth--it's all over with the old pacers."

I growled and said nothing. So did Dick. It was good, though, the way we were eating up space and getting nearer to the birds, those game, nervy, whirring birds that dart like winged flashes of thunder before your gun. We whirled over the bridge at the river at lightning speed. I saw the sign up about the fine for going faster than a walk, but how--

"How can an automobile walk--ha! ha!" he shouted, for he had read it also and divined my thoughts and winked knowingly at me. "That applies to horses and jackasses and such," he laughed--"things that walk. But this don't walk, eh?"

Honk! Honk!

He was blowing for a stray mule to get out of his way.

The mule got, tail up, and settled into a barbed wire fence, which he tried to jump, but only succeeded in cutting up his countenance.

Honk! Honk! "Get out of the way, if that's all the sense, you've got. My! but ain't we buzzing?"

I nodded, beginning to become exhilarated myself.

"This is pretty good," I admitted. "I begin to see how you people soon become speed-crazy. We'll get the birds to-day," I warmed up, "and I thank you for--look out! Stop!"

He stopped, but not in time. It was a nervous-looking, old, fleabitten, gray mare, full of Stackpole, Traveler, Dan Rice and Boston blood. I had seen it so often that I knew the very turn of its tail. In the buckboard she was pulling were three country girls, fat, solid, happy, their lines wabbling around anywhere, and the old mare going where she listeth. They were the kind of girls I knew and loved in my sappy days. I used to commence to kiss 'em about Christmas, knowing they'd wake up and respond about the Fourth of July. Two of them amply filled up the buckboard, but, as usual, a third one had piled on top of the others somewhere, and--

"Great heaven, Horace!" I shouted. "Stop--that one there on top is holding a baby!"

I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to squat, her old, scared, brown eyes blazing in her white face like holes in a big lard can. I heard her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet pattering jigs all over the pike. Then she whirled, running into a fence, where, between the overturned buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she stood wedged upon her hind legs, pawing the air.

But the girls surprised me. Without a change in their fat, immutable, expressionless faces, they simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the baby on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy.

They got up, dusting their frocks. They had taken it for granted. It was all right. There was not a squawk, not even from the baby, as one of them picked it up and I grabbed the bits and straightened out the old mare.

"I hope you ladies aren't hurt," said my friend from the roadside, in his machine.

"Sally, is you hurt?" asked the fattest one.

"Naw," she grunted.

"Mamie, is you?"

Mamie merely wiggled.

"Is Tootsy hurt?"

Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking eyes fixed on the wonderful machine.

Nothing was hurt but the harness.

That was hurt before they started, but I had to spend the next twenty minutes patching it up. Finally we got them all in, Tootsy on top. No word had they spoken, but I could see they were eyeing me, with that country suspicion that makes every maid of them rate every man she meets in the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in disguise.

"Now, ladies, you are all right," I said, trying to keep cheerful. "And I am so glad none of you was hurt."

Then one of them drawled, but looking over toward the distant horizon, "Ain't you named Mister Jack?"

I turned red and pleaded guilty.

"After all you've writ, I don't think you had oughter done this," she said, and then they all drove sedately off, still looking toward the horizon.

"Now that's the worst thing about automobiles," said Horace, after we started again, "these fool country horses. Why, I waited till this time of day, thinking they'd all be in town by now, for they get up with the chickens. Anyway, we're not likely to meet any more of them."

"I hope not," I sighed, pulling out a cigar and a match, as I'd always done in the buggy. It was blown out before the sulphur burned.

"You can't do that in an automobile," he yelled, "we're going too fast. Like to stop for you, but we're fairly humming--be there in half an hour, old man." Honk! Honk!

We had turned a bend in the road.

"Great Caesar!" I shouted. "Nobody going to town! Look!"

His jaws dropped. There they were. We could see for half a mile, and so help me heaven, but this was the procession that passed as we pulled out of the narrow pike on the roadside, consumed with impatience to get to the field, the machine throbbing beneath us like a loft over a barn dance:

First an old sorrel mare, a worn-out buggy of the vintage of 1874, and two old ladies.

The whole thing approached gingerly, creeping up like a yellow cat. It was a toss-up as to which of the two's eyes popped the biggest, or which had her mouth shut tightest. The old mare was game, and sidled up, and just as I saw the wheels begin to form in her head the occupants threw down the lines and began to pop two pairs of country-yarned legs out of the two sides of the buggy, exclaiming, "Fur ther Lord's sake thar, Mister, ketch 'er!"

I jumped out and had her by the bits.

One of them relieved herself by spitting snuff over the dashboard, while the other took it out on me, deprecating the day when "Sech folks an' things blocks up ther public trail--an' so help me, ain't that thar Mister Jack, an' my old man bred this mar' by his say so! Jack,--Ananias," she sniffed, as she drove off.

The next were right on us, two slick, three-year-old sugar-mules, hauling a load of darkies. They came on at a rattling clip, making more noise than a freight train, jollying, laughing and cackling. The men were on plank seats across the wagon, the women in high-back hickory chairs, squatting low and feeling as good as Senegambians usually do in a white man's country, where he does all the worrying and thinking and they do all the loafing and eating.

They passed us without a wabble. I expected that, for a mule, like a negro, never sees anything until he has passed it. I saw the gate of the wagon had been taken out in the rear to let the damsels in: also the chickens, the coop of ducks, a bundle of coon-skins, pumpkins, a sack of unwashed wool, some spare ribs and a tub of only such nice chitlings as a country mammy can prepare. They passed, and then the scare got into those three-year-old corn feds good by way of their tails. For I saw these straighten out first, then their ears. I saw the big driver fall back on the lines, and--

"Whoa, dar!"

They jumped twenty feet in the first jump, and ran half a mile in spite of his lugging and sawing. But the first jump was enough. The damage was done then, for everything in it but the driver, who held on to the reins, came boiling out of the rear. Up the road for half a mile was a telegraph line of chitlings, the rest were mixed up. They all rose but one damsel, weighing close to 468 pounds. She sat still. A young buck went to help her up.

"G'way f'm heah, nigger, wait till I see ef my condiments is busted," she cried, feeling her sides and her chest. "'Sides, I wants Brer Simon to hope me up."

Brother Simon helped her and she was all right.

We gave her a dollar and the others a quarter each. It was expensive, but I deemed it just.

The following then passed with more or less hesitancy, shying and plunging: a surrey and team; a boy and his best girl; a log wagon and four mules, the leaders rushing by in terror, pulling the wheelers by the neck, as they were trying to go the other way.

Then came Old 'Squire Jones on his roan Hal pacer. The horse got half-way by before he decided that the goggle eyes on the roadside had him. Well--no goggle eyes had ever caught any of his tribe--not yet! In bucking to wheel, he tapped the old 'Squire in the mouth with his poll. The old man had been raised a Presbyterian, with Baptist propensities, and he made the ozone sulphuric. He brought his horse back to the scratch, spurring and swearing. It was all right this time, till the old horse looked into the back of the machine. True to the fool in his pedigree, he knew what the machine was, because he had never seen one before; but the dogs--they were things he had seen all his life, and he bolted backward again, jamming the old 'Squire's stomach against the pommel and his back against the cantle. It was the time to go, and we shot out, leaving the old horse waltzing into town on his hind legs.

"I didn't hear his last remarks," I said, as we went along. "They seemed to be rather personal."

"Let 'em go," said Horace. "You wouldn't want to put them in your scrap-book."

"I don't think the mare and buggy would have made us all these enemies," I remarked, "and we would have been there by now. Do you know it's eleven o'clock?"

"We've got a fine run, now," he apologized. "We'll be there in thirty minutes."

"We'll be there by night," I snarled. "Say, we'll just call it a possum hunt, eh?"

This made him mad, and he did not speak till he got to the big hill.

Here at the foot we stopped and sat, throbbing.

Horace fumbled with a side brake a moment, touched a pedal and looked wise.

"What's all this for?" I said.

"I'm resting for a little headway before taking that steep hill. And say, while we're at it, you ought to know something about a machine, you might be called on to help me in an emergency."

I turned pale. Up to this time I had felt secure. Now I understood something of the feelings of that pair of mules that never saw danger until they had passed it.

"Why, I thought you knew all about it," I began.

"Of course I do, but something might happen to me. You might be thrown on your own resources. Now here," he went on. "This little lever on the wheel is the spark-control--it quickens things--the next one is the throttle; that means more power. This is the switch-plug here: this is the clutch, and this the brake. Now, remember, and watch me start."

He did, the thing starting slowly up the hill and then beginning to go in little jumps, exactly like a horse galloping.

"Pull him down," I growled, "he's broken his gait." For I felt every moment as if it would soon wabble and quit. But he kept galloping and I settled down and began unconsciously to wabble my body as I would in motion to a galloping horse. I couldn't help it. I glanced at Horace, he was doing the same, but hitching at the side lever all the time, and we were bobbing like two Muscovy ducks over a mud hole.

It was uncomfortable, it was uncanny.

"Confound you," I growled, "I tell you the thing's galloping--he's all tangled up; bring him down."

_Snap_ went something, and Horace breathed easy.

"All right now," he said, as we began to climb the hill beautifully. Over the top we went, and then--down--down! How she did fly! My heart jumped into my throat! I held my breath and felt that same feeling I used to feel pumping in a swing when I'd soar up to the top and start down again, the same when I started down the elevator from the 19th story of the Masonic Temple and felt my legs give way and threw my arms around the neck of the elevator boy and begged him for heaven's sake to stop until I got my breath and my legs in speaking distance of each other, and collected the rest of myself.

"Stop her," I cried, "down-this-hill-I'm-feeling-queer-Lord-I'm-stop, I tell you!"

"It's easy," he laughed. "Do it yourself--on that brake--there--just to teach you--there!"

Gasping for breath and pale with fright, I kicked up a little pedal.

The thing jumped twenty feet!

"Don't!" I heard him yell, "Good Lord, that's the throttle!"

I saw a big ditch on the other side of us. I saw his hand dart quickly to his side.

Like all man and woman-kind, in emergencies with a horse, I do the fool thing, grab at the reins. This instinct overpowered me. I grabbed the brakes to help him. I over-did it. It stopped too quickly; it actually kicked up behind. It stopped like a twelve-inch ball striking armor plate. I went over clear across the ditch. The three dogs were faithful and they followed.

Horace tried it, but the steering wheel stopped him.

"It was my fault," I said, as I limped up, after the dogs got off of me. "I grabbed at your reins, I guess--thought you were running away."

But the sudden stop had sprung something, and Horace was out fixing it. He had pulled off his cap and got under the machine, and I saw the beaded sweat begin to rise on the crown of his bald head, like bubbles on a mill pond.

This did me a world of good. I lighted a cigar, propped up and began to smoke.

For half an hour he tinkered and tinkered. I smoked and gave him such bits of sarcastic encouragement as happened into my head. I reminded him that Tempus was fugiting, and that it was already quite 9:50 and we were still ten miles from nowhere; that the little mare would have been there by now, and we would still have some friends left on the pike.

"Consider the lilies that ride in automobiles," I quoted, "they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that old gray mare, in all her glory, never worked as hard as you are working now."

It was my time, and Dick and I enjoyed it, sensible dog that he was. After every bit of such talk he'd wink and fairly guffaw.

Horace was working hard. He was groveling in the dirt to do it, too, and that suited me also. I could gauge his efforts by the sweat drops that arose on his bald spot, growing and then bursting like soap bubbles, to roll down his collar.

"Plague it!" he said at last, rising, "I can't see very well without my glasses. Say, stop your guying, now, and look under here and see if you can see what's wrong."

I got out as leisurely as a lord; all I could see was a small coil of wire, red hot. "I see it," I said, solemnly. "The thing's appendix is red hot. Give me an axe and I'll open it up."

Dick howled with delight. I thought he'd die. Horace smiled grimly, but it was a smile that said, "I'll even this up yet."

"Put in your shells; we'll hunt around toward that farm house, and up there I'll 'phone to town and have Smith come out and fix it."

Thus he spoke, and I agreed. In fact, there was nothing else to do. We rolled the machine aside, the dogs were let out, and we were soon quartering a field toward a farm house.

"Whose place is this?" I asked, as the dogs began to hunt down the wind.

"Old Bogair's, a French Canadian. He came here three years ago from Canada; ticklish old fellow, but he knows me, and it's all right."

I felt secure, for while the game law is very strict, requiring written permission to hunt on one's premises, intended as a guard against pot hunters, no gentleman ever objected to another hunting on his farm.

We started through a cedar wood in a gladey spot and I saw Dick beginning to nose the wind and to throw up his head for quail. Then I heard my companion calling lustily for me to come. I rushed up, Dick at my heels.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A coon--a big coon--up in that cedar tree. Get on the other side, quick!"

I ran around, and, sure enough, up among the branches, trying to hide, but showing the end of a brindled and streaked tail, was the coon.

In a trice I let him have it, and he came crashing through the branches. Dick ran up and seized it, shaking. I saw yellow eyes, ears laid back, and the coon spitting and fighting for life. It was dying, but struck out, tearing Dick's nose to threads. I ran up and planted the heel of my hunting boot on its neck, while Dick howled with his lacerated nose.

"That's a funny looking coon," I said, as I eyed the thing suspiciously. I heard Horace laugh and saw him turn and make a break for the road. I looked up. Old Bogair had run up, red-faced and breathless.

"By gar," he yelled, as soon as he saw what I'd done, "vut fur you keeled ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"

It was true; but never had I seen a tomcat look more like a coon. On a distant hillside I could see my deserting friend rolling on the grass and shouting.

In vain I apologized. Old Bogair kept dancing around and shouting, "Vut fur you keel ze house cat fur? Vut fur?"

"What are you damaged?" I said at last, with disgust.

"Ah, en passant--dees one from T'ronto, I breeng. Hee's registraire--fife taller, an' fife fur treespaire."

I paid it like a man. Old Bogair smiled and bowed, with his hand on his stomach.

"Eet vus all right now."

I took up the cat by the tail.

"Vut fur? You don't vant heem?" he gasped.

"Yes, I do," I said, hotly. "He's mine. I've paid for him and I want to take him over yonder and rub him under the nose of that villain that induced me to go hunting in an automobile and steered me on the premises of a damned Dago who keeps registered cats that look exactly like coons when up a tree."

He thought I was complimenting him.

"Voila--I t'ank you," he said, bowing again, with his hand on his stomach.

I hunted around an hour before I went to the machine. I waited to cool off. Dick found a fine covey, and I missed them right and left. I had lost my nerve and my luck.

When I reached the machine, Horace was in, blinking, and we said not a word. It was my time to freeze. Smith had run out from town and fixed it. A little wire the size of a pencil-point had got an inch out of place, and it had been as dead as a log wagon on us.

It was now exactly 3:30, but we decided we still had a chance to get a covey. We made the next three miles in beautiful time, meeting only one man driving a game, high-headed horse that swept by us without giving us the least notice.

"If they were all bred like that one," I said, "a man in a machine might think he had some rights on the road."

"Glad you are beginning to see the other side," said Horace.

"We'll be there by four," he said; "just the time the birds begin to feed good. Oh, we'll get a few yet. It's a long lane, you know. Our luck is turning."

"This is fun," I said, as we flew along the newly-graveled road parallel with the creek, "fine, give it to her."

The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we buzzed along.

_Honk! Honk!_ "Let her out!" I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into me. "Say, I see how it is," I said, "why a man soon gets the speed mania in him. Horsemen can't blame you, for they have got it, too."

"Oh, we're riding," he cried. "You have an hour yet."

We were indeed riding, along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending.

"Halt! Stop!" I cried.

It was too late, everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral procession, that of good old Uncle Thomas, as good an old time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly now.

I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick.

Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It is his glory and his religion. This kind was hauling Uncle Thomas. Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that negro hearse. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darkey shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time.

I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which I knew held a flask of whiskey, and rushed pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank. All I wanted was a little water in that whiskey.

After satisfying myself I would not faint, I went back in time to see that everything had been fixed and the procession headed north again.

"No, sah, it didn't hurt Brer Thomas," the preacher was explaining to Horace; "but it did upsot some of the sisterin, an' they fainted when he come outer the back end of that kerridge so nachul an' briefly. No, sah; nobody's hurt, sah; it wuz jes' a sivigerus accerdent."

"How much money have you, Horace? I've spent all mine on dead and registered cats," I said, bitterly.

He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles of them, as they passed by, singing: "_Jordan is a hard road to travel._"

Never had that old song seemed so real to me!

"I stop right here," I said, after assuring myself that I would not faint again. "The sun is setting; we've been out all day, and found nothing but a cat and a corpse."

Our experience had taken our nerve, and we waited two hours by the roadside, way after dark, until we'd seen everything we met in the morning go back home.

Then we lit up, and reached home at ten o'clock.

Eloise and the twins met me at the gate, scared to death.

"So glad you're safe," she cried, kissing me. "I know you've got a full bag, you've never failed, and, oh, dearie, I've invited a dozen ladies over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on toast, so I hope nothing has happened."

By this time one of the twins was climbing over me, shouting, "Daddy, show me old Bob White--show me old Brer Rabbit." And the other echoed, "Daddy, show me old Bob White--show me old Brer Rabbit."

The bitterness of it went into me.

"Quail on toast?" I cried with sarcasm. "Change it now, my dear; write them all a note at once and tell them tomcat is better, for that's all I've killed to-day! Just make it tomcat on toast!"

Eloise looked at me curiously. "Jack, I believe you have taken one of those cheap drinks."

"One?" I said. "I drank a flask of it. I had to or faint when I saw poor old Uncle Thomas come out of the rear end of that hearse as natural as life."

"Oh!" said Eloise, putting her fingers in her ears. "Come in, dearie, and I'll give you another, poor dear!"

But it was rubbed in on me that night. It was midnight when Eloise came to my room. I heard one of the twins crying. "Come here, Jack," she said laughing. "One of them wants you, has waked up crying for you."

She was sitting up in bed and her lamentations were loud. At sight of me she broke out, "Daddy--you brought sister a dead cat and--and--wouldn't--bring me--me--one!"

To jolly her into good humor, as I often did, I picked her up and turned her a somersault in the bed: I was unfortunate again--that accursed cat and automobile!

Accidentally her head was bumped.

In blazing indignation, she sat up and spat upon me!

I retreated as best I could: "Your mother will spank you for that"--I said.

She quieted--ashamed: but almost instantly the other one sat up in bed, crying lustily.

"What do _you_ want?" I said. "I thought you were asleep."

"Tum back here," she wailed heart-brokenly, "_and let me spit on you too!_"

I heard Eloise laugh.

"Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said, as I went out--"they are two Jonahs that will always smell alike to me hereafter!"

*CHAPTER V*

*THE SICK TREE*

The going of my old grandsire was pathetic, for towards the last he lost interest in the living, in everything except the great elm he had always loved because his mother had nursed him under it.

"And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going; but I do so want it to live until I am gone!"

"It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but with a little surgery I can save it. It shall live twenty years longer."

The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death, was half rotted as it stood. Any violent wind was likely to snap it off. Any great storm would beat it to the earth.

Every morning the old man would rise and look first of all to see if his tree was still standing.

He was greatly interested in the way I cured it. I cut away the dead rot up the entire trunk; and when I had finished, little, except a shell, remained. Into this I drove a section of iron railing from a railway track, fully fifteen feet high, driven five feet into the ground, down among the old roots of the tree. Around this and entirely filling the hollow to the top of the iron rail, I poured cement, casing it in to fit the old body that was gone, tucking sheets of zinc under the edges of the bark whose layers carry the sap up and down.

When this was painted and treated to a coating of tar, it looked like the great tree in its youth, and under a strong wind it swayed, supported by the cement and its rod of steel, with all the strength of its younger days.

There one evening, clasping it in the twilight, we found the old General asleep. It was the last sleep of a second childhood, and having no mother for the lullaby, he had slept, his arms around the tree she had loved.

The sun had set; the twilight had come; the great trees shadowed the eternal hills.

The old warrior had died a tree-lover; the young tree-lover had been forced, of God, to fight.

We plan, and, like the rough ashlar, we cut and hew; but the Sculptor is God....

I do not know why Eloise should have risked it, but she did; and though I would not have her try it again for The Home Stretch nor feel again that memory-pang of horror when, for one brief second, I saw what she meant to do, yet when it was done my heart beat fiercely with pride and love for her. How blessed are those children who have a mother both brave and beautiful!

We had ridden to town one day, as we often did when the weather was fit. And for a pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to see a new colt in training. I suspect she had fixed it all before; for I had seen her practicing Satan on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls, mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.

"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns of honorable war," she laughed, "have stiffened the old fellow's muscles or softened his heart"; and she would reach over and pat his great neck.

At the track the old bars stood across.

I sickened at the sight of them, remembering. But Eloise, pretending not to notice, glanced quickly at me.

"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling with fear of my own suspicion. "I'll tear them down now and burn them," I said, dismounting quickly.

But Eloise was too quick for me. Even Satan knew her thought and at the sound of her bantering laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip above his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the bars.

I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful moment, I saw them mount straight up toward the sky. Then, realizing that age and service had hampered his driving power behind, the game horse threw his front easily over, and like a great see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs, not straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but sidewise and parallel, barely saving his neck!

"Well, I did it!" She rode up laughing, Satan trembling so with excitement and the effort I could see his knees quivering, his flank fluttering wildly. And in Eloise's face there was the white flag of peril yet lingering before the red of victory.

She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the tenderness of love's light, and bedewed with its tears: "_Kiss me, Jack, dearest--for that is what I had sworn all the time I would do. If--if they had only let me break the world's record that first time._"

THE END