Chapter I: DID not bother with any of the victualing houses in that low-down (3)

Probably the most sensible way was for me to go along to his house, exhorting him to keep his mouth shut till he understood the matter. But a row with him in his own house would be exposing myself to Celene. I held his arm and hurried him across the road and into the woods opposite. He protested angrily, but I kept him on the move until we were in a little clearing which the red western skies still lighted enough for my purpose.

I flapped the contracts under his nose. “You advertised the land--you gave me a price, Judge Kingsley. I know I have been irregular. I cannot stop now to explain why, but I have sold all the wood. Here are the contracts. Hunt up the men and make sure, if you don’t believe writing and signatures. I’ll let you go and collect your two thousand dollars before a dollar comes to me.” I shoved the papers into his hands and he pawed them over without seeming to understand very well. “Contracts?”

“Yes, sir! Contracts with responsible concerns.”

“I’ll have you arrested,” he insisted, but his anger was dying out and he sort of whined, “It’s my land; you haven’t any right to make contracts.”

All at once his legs bent under him and he sat down on the ground. There was plainly something special the matter with Zebulon Kingsley!

“Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and swindlers in this world on my track?”

“Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t fair!”

“You have robbed me!”

“Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child waving a rattle.

“First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!”

I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the mood for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old head that there was one man who was trying to help him.

“Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the money. If my estimates are in any way near right--and I reckon I am inside the truth--there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal, profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take it all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll explain my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.”

He looked at me and never said a word.

“I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying to make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started on the savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do is keep my promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in cash!”

In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to his breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the region of my neckband.

“If that’s the way you feel about it, Judge Kingsley,” I said, straightening up, “I’ll bid you good evening. After you have tucked your three thousand in your jeans, send me a bill for damages and I’ll settle.”

He called me back before I had taken many steps.

“My head isn’t right,” he mumbled. “I have been having much trouble. What have you been telling me?”

I went over the thing again, very patiently, for I saw I was dealing with a case which was more serious than I thought. The night was on us by that time. I tore strips of birch bark from a tree, lighted them one by one, and made a torch so that he could examine one of the contracts. Again I insisted that he must cake the whole thing over profits and all.

“I had no right to start in on your property as I did, Judge Kingsley. So I’ll fine myself a thousand!”

“I think I ought to call you honest, young man,” he said, after a time. “I have hard work to believe that any man is honest in this world just now, but what you say sounds honest. I’ll meet you half-way in your honesty.”

He asked me to hold more torches. He found a sheet of letter-paper in his wallet, bearing his name printed at the top. He wrote a receipt for two thousand dollars, using the long wallet for his desk.

“I have dated it four days back. Now that I have met you half-way in one matter, young man, I ask you to meet me half-way in another. When you get that, money in hand, pay it to my wife. Do not tell anybody that you did not pay it to me.” He hesitated a moment. “As to the land--the deed--”

“I have no use for the land, Judge Kingsley. So there’s no call for a deed.”

“I think you are honest, young man. I believe I can trust you to give the money to my wife--and say nothing about it outside!”

“But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!”

“I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist that you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the receipt.”

“Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” I pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call on you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of the profits--but I won’t bother you any more to-night.”

“That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.”

I waited for him to come along with me.

“Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I prefer to walk home alone--I have some business matters to run over in my head.”

I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a Sidney chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take this dismissal in bad part. I marched off.

But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the road I stood stock-still. What did it mean--his command to hand over the money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for his footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound.

It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I left her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness.

I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked.

I heard him talking rapidly and clearly, not as one talks aloud in soliloquy, but as if he were addressing somebody. I stepped carefully in through the fringe of trees and I found out that Zebulon Kingsley _was_ talking to somebody; he was talking to God!

I listened five seconds and I realized what he was talking about. Then I leaped on him and struck his wrist with the edge of my hand.

He dropped a fat, ugly revolver which had glinted in the starlight. I pounced on it and flung it into the woods as far as muscle, fright, and anger could prevail. When I turned on the judge he had just tugged another revolver out of his pocket, twin of the other weapon. I had a tussle with him to get it, and he fairly squealed in his fury. But I wrenched the thing out of his clutch and threw it; then I pulled him to his feet and patted him all over, as a policeman frisks a prisoner, to make sure that he was not serving as arsenal for more artillery.

“Judge Kingsley,” I kept saying over and over, “your wife! Your daughter! Think of them!”

I was obliged to drag him out of the woods by main strength. I propelled him along the highway and he walked as stiffly as some kind of a wooden figure, moved by springs. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face was white in the starlight.

So we came into the village without a word between us, and I led him by dark lanes to his house.

Then he held back and replied to what I had said in the woods as if I had just spoken.

“I _am_ thinking of them! That’s why I can’t face them!”

Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my throat, but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge Kingsley’s most certainly were. But I had to have some assurance from him.

“Judge Kingsley,” I said, with respect in my voice, “I am meddling, but God knows there was a call for somebody to meddle just now.”

“I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf.

“But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to you, sir.”.

“But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!”

“I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew I was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him.

“I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this night? I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods--to my woods on purpose to do it!”

It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were not there--and _I_ was.

“Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a man-to-man promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with me to-morrow? I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help you in other ways!”

“There’s no help for me.”

“But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley. Give me your promise till tomorrow!”

He stiffened up and scowled at me. He resented what I said, I could see. I guess he thought I was trying to be too familiar with him. The old chap’s pride was still on tap. I suppose it seemed like lowering his dignity to make any sort of a man’s compact with young Ross Sidney. However, I was glad to see pride bristle up a bit in him.

“I never heard of a Kingsley being a coward, Judge,” I told him. “Or being a liar, either! You owe me something, sir, and I’ll insist on being paid with your promise. So I reckon I have it.” I did not give him opportunity to do any talking. I rang the bell at the door, though he grabbed at my hand to stop me.

“I can’t go in now! My face--my conscience!” So his conscience was still working!

“Leave it all to me, sir. I’ll fix it.”

The maid opened the door, and I led him into the sitting-room. Celene and her mother were there and they came to their feet, gasping with fright, for I was half carrying the judge.

“It’s nothing--it’s all right!” I told them. “We have been inspecting the work in the wood-lot on the way from the train. It’s nothing, I say--just a little touch of the heart. The judge insisted on walking too much.” I helped him to a couch. “I’ll call in the morning on that business, sir!” I told him. Then I turned to Celene, who was giving me warm welcome with her eyes, now that her fears were subsiding. “Keep your eye on your father during the night,” I advised her. “Of course, it’s nothing serious in his case--only a little overtasking of the heart--but a bit of home nursing will do him good.”

I reckoned I had planted a loyal sentinel over the man who was indebted to me for giving him more days of his life, even though they might be bitter days.

I went to Dodovah Vose’s tavern, feeling still more like an overloaded mule--saddled with plenty of my own troubles, to say nothing of other folks’.

XIV--THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN BUSINESS