Part 7 (1/2)
”I never seen anybody develop anything for another man, leastways a Yankee,” said Squire Rawson, reflectively.
Just then Ferdy chipped in. He was tired of being left out.
”My father'll come down here and show you old mossbacks a thing or two,”
he laughed.
The old man turned his eyes on him slowly. Ferdy was not a favorite with him. For one thing, he played on the piano. But there were other reasons.
”Who is your father, son?” The squire drew a long whiff from his pipe.
”Aaron Wickersham of Wickersham & Company, who is setting up the chips for this railroad. We are going to run through here and make it one of the greatest lines of the country.”
”Oh, you're _goin'_ to run it! From the way you talked I thought maybe you _had_ run it. Was a man named Aaron once thought he knew more 'bout runnin' a' expedition than his brother did. Ever heard what became of him?”
”No,” said Ferdy.
”Well, he run some of 'em in the ground. He didn't have sense to know the difference between a calf and G.o.d.”
Ferdy flushed.
”Well, my old man knows enough to run this railroad. He has run bigger things than this.”
”If he knows as much as his son, he knows a lot. He ought to be able to run the world.” And the squire turned back to Rhodes:
”What are you goin' to do, my son, when you've done all you say you're goin' to do for us? You will be too good to live among them Yankees; you will have to come back here, I reckon.”
”No; I'm going to marry and settle down,” said Rhodes, jestingly. ”Maybe I'll come back here sometime just to receive your thanks for showing you how benighted you were before I came, and for the advice I gave you.”
”He is trying to marry a rich woman,” said Ferdy, at which Rhodes flushed a little.
The old man took no notice of the interruption.
”Well, you must,” he said to Rhodes, his eyes resting on him benevolently. ”You must come back sometime and see me. I love to hear a young man talk who knows it all. But you take my advice, my son; don't marry no rich man's daughter. They will always think they have done you a favor, and they will try to make you think so too, even if your wife don't do it. You take warnin' by me. When I married, I had just sixteen dollars and my wife she had seventeen, and I give you my word I have never heard the last of that one dollar from that day to this.”
Rhodes laughed and said he would remember his advice.
”Sometimes I think,” said the old man, ”I have mistaken my callin'. I was built to give advice to other folks, and instid of that they have been givin' me advice all my life. It's in and about the only thing I ever had given me, except physic.”
The night before the party left, Ferdy packed his kit with the rest; but the next morning he was sick in his bed. His pulse was not quick, but he complained of pains in every limb. Dr. Balsam came over to see him, but could find nothing serious the matter. He, however, advised Rhodes to leave him behind. So, Ferdy stayed at Squire Rawson's all the time that the party was in the mountains. But he wrote his father that he was studying.
During the time that Rhodes's party was in the mountains Squire Rawson rode about with them examining lands, inspecting coal-beds, and adding much to the success of the undertaking.
He appeared to be interested mainly in hunting up cattle, and after he had introduced the engineers and secured the tardy consent of the landowners for them to make a survey, he would spend hours haggling over a few head of mountain cattle, or riding around through the mountains looking for others.
Many a farmer who met the first advances of the stranger with stony opposition yielded amicably enough after old Rawson had spent an hour or two looking at his ”cattle,” or had conversed with him and his weather-beaten wife about the ”c.r.a.ps” and the ”child'en.”
”You are a miracle!” declared young Rhodes, with sincere admiration.
”How do you manage it?”
The old countryman accepted the compliment with becoming modesty.