Part 3 (1/2)
”I do, but they are mad with thirst; no one can do anything with them.
Besides, in this sun they might die on the road.”
”Hum.”
”Let them drink; they'll go on afterwards.”
”Hum.” And the Elder remained for some moments silent. Then he said, as if thinking aloud:
”It's eight miles to Eureka; they'll be thirsty again before they get to the town.”
Bancroft, too, had had his wits at work, and now answered the other's thought. ”I guess so; if they're allowed just a mouthful or two they can be driven, and long before they reach Eureka they'll be as thirsty as ever.”
Without a word in reply the Elder turned his horse and started off at a lope. In ten minutes the two men had taken down the snake fence for a distance of some fifty yards, and the cattle had rushed through the gap and were drinking greedily.
After they had had a deep draught or two, Bancroft urged his horse into the stream and began to drive them up the bank. They went easily enough now, and ahead of them rode the Elder, his long whitey-brown holland coat fluttering behind him. In half an hour Bancroft had got the herd into the corral. The Elder counted the three hundred and sixty-two beasts with painstaking carefulness as they filed by.
The prairie-track to Eureka led along the creek, and in places ran close to it without any intervening fence. In an hour under that hot October sun the cattle had again become thirsty, and it needed all Bancroft's energy and courage to keep them from das.h.i.+ng into the water. Once or twice indeed it was a toss-up whether or not they would rush over him.
He was nearly exhausted when some four hours after the start they came in sight of the little town. Here he let the herd into the creek. Glad of the rest, he sat on his panting horse and wiped the perspiration from his face. After the cattle had drunk their fill, he moved them quietly along the road, while the water dripped from their mouths and bodies.
At the scales the Elder met the would-be purchaser, who as soon as he caught sight of the stock burst into a laugh.
”Say, Conklin,” he cried out, ”I guess you've given them cattle enough to drink, but I don't buy water for meat. No, sir; you bet, I don't.”
”I didn't allow you would,” replied the Elder gravely; ”but the track was long and hot; so they drank in the crik.”
”Wall,” resumed the dealer, half disarmed by this confession, which served the Elder's purpose better than any denial could have done, ”I guess you'll take off fifty pound a head for that water.”
”I guess not,” was the answer. ”Twenty pound of water's reckoned to be about as much as a kyow kin drink.”
The trading began and continued to Bancroft's annoyance for more than half an hour. At last it was settled that thirty pounds' weight should be allowed on each beast for the water it had drunk. When this conclusion had been arrived at, it took but a few minutes to weigh the animals and pay the price agreed upon.
The Elder now declared himself ready to go ”to hum” and get somethin'
to eat. In sullen silence Bancroft remounted, and side by side they rode slowly towards the farm. The schoolmaster's feelings may easily be imagined. He had been disgusted by the cunning and hypocrisy of the trick, and the complacent expression of the Elder's countenance irritated him intensely. As he pa.s.sed place after place where the cattle had given him most trouble in the morning, anger took possession of him, and at length forced itself to speech.
”See here, Elder Conklin!” he began abruptly, ”I suppose you call yourself a Christian. You look down on me because I'm not a Member.
Yet, first of all, you salt cattle for days till they're half mad with thirst, then after torturing them by driving them for hours along this road side by side with water, you act lies with the man you've sold them to, and end up by cheating him. You know as well as I do that each of those steers had drunk sixty-five pounds' weight of water at least; so you got” (he couldn't use the word ”stole” even in his anger, while the Elder was looking at him) ”more than a dollar a head too much. That's the kind of Christianity you practise. I don't like such Christians, and I'll leave your house as soon as I can. I am ashamed that I didn't tell the dealer you were deceiving him. I feel as if I had been a party to the cheat.”
While the young man was speaking the Elder looked at him intently. At certain parts of the accusation Conklin's face became rigid, but he said nothing. A few minutes later, having skirted the orchard, they dismounted at the stable-door.
After he had unsaddled his horse and thrown it some Indian corn, Bancroft hastened to the house; he wanted to be alone. On the stoop he met Loo and said to her hastily:
”I can't talk now, Loo; I'm tired out and half crazy. I must go to my room and rest After supper I'll tell you everything. Please don't keep me now.”
Supper that evening was a silent meal. The Elder did not speak once; the two young people were absorbed in their own reflections, and Mrs.
Conklin's efforts to make talk were effectual only when she turned to Jake. Mrs. Conklin, indeed, was seldom successful in anything she attempted. She was a woman of fifty, or thereabouts, and her face still showed traces of former good looks, but the light had long left her round, dark eyes, and the colour her cheeks, and with years her figure had grown painfully thin. She was one of the numerous cla.s.s who delight in taking strangers into their confidence. Unappreciated, as a rule, by those who know them, they seek sympathy from polite indifference or curiosity. Before he had been a day in the house Bancroft had heard from Mrs. Conklin all about her early life. Her father had been a large farmer in Amherst County, Ma.s.sachusetts; her childhood had been comfortable and happy: ”We always kept one hired man right through the winter, and in summer often had eight and ten; and, though you mightn't think it now, I was the belle of all the parties.” Dave (her husband) had come to work for her father, and she had taken a likin' to him, though he was such a ”hard case.” She told of Dave's gradual conversion and of the Revivalist Minister, who was an Abolitionist as well, and had proclaimed the duty of emigrating to Kansas to prevent it from becoming a slave state. Dave, it appeared, had taken up the idea zealously, and had persuaded her to go with him. Her story became pathetic in spite of her self-pity as she related the hards.h.i.+ps of that settlement in the wilds, and described her loneliness, her s.h.i.+vering terror when her husband was away hauling logs for their first home, and news came that the slave-traders from Missouri had made another raid upon the scattered Abolitionist farmers. The woman had evidently been unfit for such rude transplanting. She dwelt upon the fact that her husband had never understood her feelings. If he had, she wouldn't have minded so much.
Marriage was not what girls thought; she had not been happy since she left her father's house, and so forth. The lament was based on an unworthy and futile egoism, but her whining timidity appeared to Bancroft inexplicable. He did not see that just as a shrub pales and dies away under the branches of a great tree, so a weak nature is apt to be further enfeebled by a.s.sociation with a strong and self-contained character. In those early days of loneliness and danger the Elder's steadfastness and reticence had prevented him from affording to his wife the sympathy which might have enabled her to overcome her fears. ”He never talked anythin' over with me,” was the burden of her complaint.
Solitude had killed every power in her save vanity, and the form her vanity took was peculiarly irritating to her husband, and in a lesser degree to her daughter, for neither the Elder nor Loo would have founded self-esteem on advent.i.tious advantages of upbringing. Accordingly, Mrs.
Conklin was never more than an uncomfortable shadow in her own house, and this evening her repeated attempts to bring about a semblance of conversation only made the silence and preoccupation of the others painfully evident.
As soon as the supper things were cleared away, Loo signalled to Bancroft to accompany her to the stoop, where she asked him what had happened.