University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
A NIGHT AT PETE JONES'S.

WHEN Ralph got to Pete Jones's he found that
sinister-looking individual in the act of kicking
one of his many dogs out of the house.

“Come in, stranger, come in. You'll find this 'ere
house full of brats, but I guess you kin kick your
way around among 'em. Take a cheer. Here, git out! go to
thunder with you!” And with these mild imperatives he boxed
one of his boys over in one direction and one of his girls over in
the other. “I believe in trainin' up children to mind when
they're spoke to,” he said to Ralph apologetically. But it seemed
to the teacher that he wanted them to mind just a little before
they were spoken to.

“P'raps you'd like bed. Well, jest climb up the ladder on the
outside of the house. Takes up a thunderin' sight of room to
have a stairs inside, and we ha'n't got no room to spare. You'll
find a bed in the furdest corner. My Pete's already got half of
it, and you can take t'other half. Ef Pete goes to takin' his half
in the middle, and tryin' to make you take yourn on both sides,
jest kick him.”

In this comfortless bed “in the furdest corner,” Ralph found
sleep out of the question. Pete took three fourths of the bed,

and Hannah took all of his thoughts. So he lay, and looked out
through the cracks in the “clapboards” (as they call rough
shingles in the old West) at the stars. For the clouds had now
broken away. And he lay thus recounting to himself, as a miser
counts the pieces that compose his hoard, every step of that road
from the time he had overtaken Hannah in the hollow to the
fence. Then he imagined again the pleasure of helping her over,
and then he retraced the ground to the box-alder tree at the
spring, and repeated to himself the conversation until he came
to the part in which she said that only time and God could help
her. What did she mean? What was the hidden part of her
life? What was the connection between her and Shocky?

Hours wore on, and still the mind of Ralph Hartsook went back
and traveled the same road, over the fence, past the box-alder,
up to the inexplicable part of the conversation, and stood bewildered
with the same puzzling questions about the bound girl's
life.

At last he got up, drew on his clothes, and sat down on the
top of the ladder, looking down over the blue-grass pasture
which lay on the border between the land of Jones and the land
of Means. The earth was white with moonlight. He could not
sleep. Why not walk? It might enable him to sleep. And
once determined on walking, he did not hesitate a moment as to
the direction in which he should walk. The blue-grass pasture
(was it not like unto the garden of Eden?) lay right before him.
That box-alder (was it not a tree of life?) stood just in sight. To
spring over the fence and take the path down the hill and over
the brook was as quickly done as decided upon. To stand again
under the box-alder, to climb again over the farther fence, and to
walk down the road toward the school-house, was so easy and so

delightful that it was done without thought. For Ralph was a
man full of élan, who, when he saw no wrong in anything that
proposed itself, was apt to follow his impulse without deliberation.
And this keeping company with the stars, and the memory
of a delightful walk, were so much better than the commonplace
Flat Creek life, that he threw himself into his night excursion
with enthusiasm.

At last he stood in the little hollow where first he had joined
himself to Hannah. It was the very spot at which Shocky, too,
had met him a few mornings before. He leaned against the
fence and tried again to solve the puzzle of Hannah's troubles.
For that she had troubles he did not doubt. Neither did he
doubt that he could help her if he could discover what they
were. But he had no clue. All at once his heart stood still.
He heard the thud of horses' hoofs coming down the road.
Until that moment he had not felt his own loneliness. He
shrank back further into the fence-corner. The horsemen were
galloping. There were three of them, and there was one figure
that seemed familiar to Ralph. But he could not tell who it was.
Neither could he remember having seen the horse, which was a
sorrel with a white left forefoot and a white nose. The men
noticed him and reined up a little. Why he should have been
startled by the presence of these men he could not tell, but an
indefinable dread seized him. They galloped on, and he stood
still shivering with a nervous fear. The cold seemed to have
gotten into his bones. He remembered that the whole region
lying on Flat Creek and Clifty Creek had the reputation of being
infested with thieves, who practiced horse-stealing and house-breaking.
For ever since the day when Murrell's confederate
bands were paralyzed by the death of their leader, there have still

existed gangs of desperadoes in parts of Southern Indiana and
Illinois, and in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and the South-west. It
was out of these materials that border ruffianism has grown, and
the nine members of the Reno band who were hanged two or
three years ago by lynch law, were remains of the bad blood that
came into the West in the days of Daniel Boone. Shall I not say
that these bands of desperadoes still found among the “poor
whitey,” “dirt-eater” class are the outcroppings of the bad blood
sent from England in convict-ships? And ought an old country
to sow the fertile soil of a colony with such noxious seed?

Before Ralph was able to move, he heard the hoofs of another
horse striking upon the hard ground in an easy pace. The rider
was Dr. Small. He checked his horse in a cool way, and stood
still a few seconds while he scrutinized Ralph. Then he rode
on in the same easy gait as before. Ralph had a superstitious
horror of Henry Small. And, shuddering with cold, he crept
like a thief over the fence, past the tree, through the pasture,
back to Pete Jones's, never once thinking of the eyes that looked
out of the window at Means's. Climbing the ladder, he got into
bed, and shook as with the ague. He tried to reason himself out
of the foolish terror that possessed him, but he could not.

Half an hour later he heard a latch raised. Were the robbers
breaking into the house below? He heard a soft tread upon
the floor. Should he rise and give the alarm? Something restrained
him. He reflected that a robber would be sure to
stumble over some of the “brats.” So he lay still and finally
slumbered, only awakening when the place in which he slept
was full of the smoke of frying grease from the room below.

At breakfast Pete Jones scowled. He was evidently angry
about something. He treated Ralph with a rudeness not to be

overlooked, as if he intended to bring on a quarrel. Hartsook
kept cool, and wished he could drive from his mind all memory
of the past night. Why should men on horseback have any
significance to him? He was trying to regard things in this way,
and from a general desire to keep on good terms with his host he
went to the stable to offer his services in helping to feed the stock.

“Didn't want no saft-handed help!” was all he got in return
for his well-meant offer. But just as he turned to leave the stable
he saw what made him tremble again. There was the same sorrel
horse with a white left forefoot and a white nose.

To shake off his nervousness, Ralph started to school before the
time. But, plague upon plagues! Mirandy Means, who had seen
him leave Pete Jones's, started just in time to join him where
he came into the big road. Ralph was not in a good humor
after his wakeful night, and to be thus dogged by Mirandy did
not help the matter. So he found himself speaking crabbedly
to the daughter of the leading trustee in spite of himself.

“Hanner's got a bad cold this mornin' from bein' out last
night, and she can't come to spellin'-school to-night,” began
Mirandy, in her most simpering voice.

Ralph had forgotten that there was to be another spelling-school.
It seemed to him an age since the orthographical conflict
of the past night. This remark of Mirandy's fell upon his
ear like an echo from the distant past. He had lived a lifetime
since, and was not sure that he was the same man who was spelling
for dear life against Jim Phillips twelve hours before. But
he was sorry to hear that Hannah had a cold. It seemed to
him, in his depressed state, that he was to blame for it. In fact,
it seemed to him that he was to blame for a good many things.
He seemed to have been committing sin in spite of himself.

Broken nerves and sleepless nights often result in a morbid
conscience. And what business had he to wander over this very
road at two o'clock in the morning, and to see three galloping
horsemen, one of them on a horse with a white left forefoot
and a white nose? What business had he watching Dr. Small as
he went home from the bedside of a dying patient near daylight
in the morning? And because he felt guilty he felt cross with
Mirandy, and to her remark about Hannah he only replied that
“Hannah was a smart girl.”

“Yes,” said Mirandy, “Bud thinks so.”

“Does he?” said Ralph, pricking up his ears.

“I should say so. What's him and her been a-courtin' fer for a
year ef he didn't think she was smart? Marm don't like it; but
ef Bud and her does, and they seem to, I don't see as it's marm's
lookout.”

When one is wretched, there is a pleasure in being entirely
wretched. Ralph felt that he must have committed some unknown
crime, and that some Nemesis was following him. Was
Hannah deceitful? At least, if she were not, he felt sure that
he could supplant Bud. But what right had he to supplant Bud?

“Did you hear the news?” cried Shocky, running out to meet
him. “The Dutchman's house was robbed last night.”

Ralph thought of the three men on horseback, and to save his
life he could not help associating Dr. Small with them. And
then he remembered the sorrel horse with the left forefoot and
muzzle white, and he recalled the sound he had heard as of the
lifting of a latch. And it really seemed to him that in knowing
what he did he was in some sense guilty of the robbery.