at lay before him strengthened his waning vanity.
Something of the loose shuffle went out of his stride and he threw back his
shoulders. "What I have done here amounts to something. I'm all right," he
thought, and had almost reached the old corn-cutter plant when several men
came out of a side door and getting upon the tracks, walked before him.

In the corn-cutter plant something had happened that excited the men. Ed
Hall the superintendent had played a trick on his fellow townsmen. He had
put on overalls and gone to work at a bench in a long room with some fifty
other men. "I'm going to show you up," he said, laughing. "You watch me.
We're behind on the work and I'm going to show you up."

The pride of the workmen had been touched, and for two weeks they had
worked like demons to outdo the boss. At night when the amount of work done
was calculated, they laughed at Ed. Then they heard that the piece-work
plan was to be installed in the factory, and were afraid they would be paid
by a scale calculated on the amount of work done during the two weeks of
furious effort.

The workman who stumbled along the tracks cursed Ed Hall and the men for
whom he worked. "I lost six hundred dollars in the plant-setting machine
failure and this is all I get, to be played a trick on by a young suck like
Ed Hall," a voice grumbled. Another voice took up the refrain. In the dim
light Hugh could see the speaker, a man with a bent back, a product of the
cabbage fields, who had come to town to find employment. Although he did
not recognize it, he had heard the voice before. It came from a son of
the cabbage farmer, Ezra French and was the same voice he had once heard
complaining at night as the French boys crawled across a cabbage field in
the moonlight. The man now said something that startled Hugh. "Well," he
declared, "it's a joke on me. I quit Dad and made him sore; now he won't
take me back again. He says I'm a quitter and no good. I thought I'd come
to town to a factory and find it easier here. Now I've got married and have
to stick to my job no matter what they do. In the country I worked like a
dog a few weeks a year, but here I'll probably have to work like that all
the time. It's the way things go. I thought it was mighty funny, all this
talk about the factory work being so easy. I wish the old days were back. I
don't see how that inventor or his inventions ever helped us workers. Dad
was right about him. He said an inventor wouldn't do nothing for workers.
He said it would be better to tar and feather that telegraph operator. I
guess Dad was right."

The swagger went out of Hugh's walk and he stopped to let the men pass out
of sight and hearing along the track. When they had gone a little away a
quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way responsible
for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations
flew back and forth. One of the men threw a heavy stone that ran down along
the tracks and jumped into a ditch filled with dry weeds. It made a heavy
crashing sound. Hugh heard heavy footsteps running. He was afraid the men
were going to attack him, and climbed over a fence, crossed a barnyard, and
got into an empty street. As he went along trying to understand what had
happened and why the men were angry, he met Clara Butterworth, standing and
apparently waiting for him under a street lamp.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hugh walked beside Clara, too perplexed to attempt to understand the new
impulses crowding in upon his mind. She explained her presence in the
street by saying she had been to town to mail a letter and intended walking
home by a side road. "You may come with me if you're just out for a walk,"
she said. The two walked in silence. Hugh's mind, unaccustomed to traveling
in wide circles, centered on his companion. Life seemed suddenly to
be crowding him along strange roads. In two days he had felt more new
emotions and had felt them more deeply than he would have thought possible
to a human being. The hour through which he had just passed had been
extraordinary. He had started out from his boarding-house sad and
depressed. Then he had come by the factories and pride in what he thought
he had accomplished swept in on him. Now it was apparent the workers in the
factories were not happy, that there was something the matter. He wondered
if Clara would know what was wrong and would tell him if he asked. He
wanted to ask many questions. "That's what I want a woman for. I want
some one close to me who understands things and will tell me about them,"
he thought. Clara remained silent and Hugh decided that she, like the
complaining workman stumbling along the tracks, did not like him. The
man had said he wished Hugh had never come to town. Perhaps every one in
Bidwell secretly felt that way.

Hugh was no longer proud of himself and his achievements. Perplexity had
captured him. When he and Clara got out of town into a country road, he
began thinking of Sarah Shepard, who had been friendly and kind to him when
he was a lad, and wished she were with him, or better yet that Clara would
take the attitude toward him she had taken. Had Clara taken it into her
head to scold as Sarah Shepard had done he would have been relieved.

Instead Clara walked in silence, thinking of her own affairs and planning
to use Hugh for her own ends. It had been a perplexing day for her. Late
that afternoon there had been a scene between her and her father and she
had left home and come to town because she could no longer bear being in
his presence. When she had seen Hugh coming toward her she had stopped
under a street lamp to wait for him. "I could set everything straight by
getting him to ask me to marry him," she thought.

The new difficulty that had arisen between Clara and her father was
something with which she had nothing to do. Tom, who thought himself so
shrewd and crafty, had been taken in by the city man, Alfred Buckley. A
federal officer had come to town during the afternoon to arrest Buckley.
The man had turned out to be a notorious swindler wanted in several cities.
In New York he had been one of a gang who distributed counterfeit money,
and in other states he was wanted for swindling women, two of whom he
married unlawfully.

The arrest had been like a shot fired at Tom by a member of his own
household. He had almost come to think of Alfred Buckley as one of his
family, and as he drove rapidly along the road toward home, he had been
profoundly sorry for his daughter and had intended to ask her to forgive
him for his part in betraying her into a false position. That he had not
openly committed himself to any of Buckley's schemes, had signed no papers
and written no letters that would betray the conspiracy he had entered
into against Steve, filled him with joy. He had intended to be generous,
and even, if necessary, confess to Clara his indiscretion in talking of a
possible marriage, but when he got to the farm house and had taken Clara
into the parlor and had closed the door, he changed his mind. He told her
of Buckley's arrest, and then started tramping excitedly up and down in
the room. Her coolness infuriated him. "Don't set there like a clam!" he
shouted. "Don't you know what's happened? Don't you know you're disgraced,
have brought disgrace on my name?"

The angry father explained that half the town knew of her engagement to
marry Alfred Buckley, and when Clara declared they were not engaged and
that she had never intended marrying the man, his anger did not abate. He
had himself whispered the suggestion about town, had told Steve Hunter,
Gordon Hart, and two or three others, that Alfred Buckley and his daughter
would no doubt do what he spoke of as "hitting it off," and they had of
course told their wives. The fact that he had betrayed his daughter into an
ugly position gnawed at his consciousness. "I suppose the rascal told it
himself," he said, in reply to her statement, and again gave way to anger.
He glared at his daughter and wished she were a son so he could strike with
his fists. His voice arose to a shout and could be heard in the barnyard
where Jim Priest and a young farm hand were at work. They stopped work and
listened. "She's been up to something. Do you suppose some man has got her
in trouble?" the young farm hand asked.

In the house Tom expressed his old dissatisfaction with his daughter. "Why
haven't you married and settled down like a decent woman?" he shouted.
"Tell me that. Why haven't you married and settled down? Why are you always
getting in trouble? Why haven't you married and settled down?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Clara walked in the road beside Hugh and thought that all her troubles
would come to an end if he would ask her to be his wife. Then she became
ashamed of her thoughts. As they passed the last street lamp and prepared
to set out by a roundabout way along a dark road, she turned to look at
Hugh's long, serious face. The tradition that had made him appear different
from other men in the eyes of the people of Bidwell began to affect her.
Ever since she had come home she had been hearing people speak of him with
something like awe in their voices. For her to marry the town's hero would,
she knew, set her on a high place in the eyes of her people. It would be a
triumph for her and would re-establish her, not only in her father's eyes
but in the eyes of every one. Every one seemed to think she should marry;
even Jim Priest had said so. He had said she was the marrying kind. Here
was her chance. She wondered why she did not want to take it.

Clara had written her friend Kate Chanceller a letter in which she had
declared her intention of leaving home and going to work, and had come to
town afoot to mail it. On Main Street as she went through the crowds of
men who had come to loaf the evening away before the stores, the force
of what her father had said concerning the connection of her name with
that of Buckley the swindler had struck her for the first time. The men
were gathered together in groups, talking excitedly. No doubt they were
discussing Buckley's arrest. Her own name was, no doubt, being bandied
about. Her cheeks burned and a keen hatred of mankind had possession of
her. Now her hatred of others awoke in her an almost worshipful attitude
toward Hugh. By the time they had walked together for five minutes all
thought of using him to her own ends had gone. "He's not like Father or
Henderson Woodburn or Alfred Buckley," she told herself. "He doesn't scheme
and twist things about trying to get the best of some one else. He works,
and because of his efforts things are accomplished." The figure of the farm
hand Jim Priest working in a field of corn came to her mind. "The farm hand
works," she thought, "and the corn grows. This man sticks to his task in
his shop and makes a town grow."

In her father's presence during the afternoon Clara had remained calm and
apparently indifferent to his tirade. In town in the presence of the men
she was sure were attacking her character, she had been angry, ready to
fight. Now she wanted to put her head on Hugh's shoulder and cry.

They came to the bridge near where the road turned and led to her father's
house. It was the same bridge to which she had come with the school teacher
and to which John May had followed, looking for a fight. Clara stopped.
She did not want any one at the house to know that Hugh had walked home
with her. "Father is so set on my getting married, he would go to see him
to-morrow," she thought. She put her arms upon the rail of the bridge and
bending over buried her face between them. Hugh stood behind her, turning
his head from side to side and rubbing his hands on his trouser legs,
beside himself with embarrassment. There was a flat, swampy field beside
the road and not far from the bridge, and after a moment of silence
the voices of a multitude of frogs broke the stillness. Hugh became
overwhelmingly sad. The notion that he was a big man and deserved to have a
woman to live with and understand him went entirely away. For the moment he
wanted to be a boy and put his head on the shoulder of the woman. He did
not look at Clara but at himself. In the dim light his hands, nervously
fumbling about, his long, loosely-put-together body, everything connected
with his person, seemed ugly and altogether unattractive. He could see
the woman's small firm hands that lay on the railing of the bridge. They
were, he thought, like everything connected with her person, shapely and
beautiful, just as everything connected with his own person was unshapely
and ugly.

Clara aroused herself from the meditative mood that had taken possession of
her, and after shaking Hugh's hand and explaining that she did not want him
to go further went away. When he thought she had quite gone she came back.
"You'll hear I was engaged to that Alfred Buckley who has got into trouble
and has been arrested," she said. Hugh did not reply and her voice became
sharp and a little challenging. "You'll hear we were going to be married.
I don't know what you'll hear. It's a lie," she said and turning, hurried
away.




CHAPTER XV


Hugh and Clara were married in less than a week after their first walk
together. A chain of circumstances touching their two lives hurled them
into marriage, and the opportunity for the intimacy with a woman for which
Hugh so longed came to him with a swiftness that made him fairly dizzy.

It was a Wednesday evening and cloudy. After dining in silence with his
landlady, Hugh started along Turner's Pike toward Bidwell, but when he had
got almost into town, turned back. He had left the house intending to go
through town to the Medina Road and to the woman who now occupied so large
a place in his thoughts, but hadn't the courage. Every evening for almost a
week he had taken the walk, and every evening and at almost the same spot
he turned back. He was disgusted and angry with himself and went to his
shop, walking in the middle of the road and kicking up clouds of dust.
People passed along the path under the trees at the side of the road and
turned to stare at him. A workingman with a fat wife, who puffed as she
walked at his side, turned to look and then began to scold. "I tell you
what, old woman, I shouldn't have married and had kids," he grumbled. "Look
at me, then look at that fellow. He goes along there thinking big thoughts
that will make him richer and richer. I have to work for two dollars a day,
and pretty soon I'll be old and thrown on the scrap-heap. I might have been
a rich inventor like him had I given myself a chance."

The workman went on his way, grumbling at his wife who paid no attention
to his words. Her breath was needed for the labor of walking, and as for
the matter of marriage, that had been attended to. She saw no reason for
wasting words over the matter. Hugh went to the shop and stood leaning
against the door frame. Two or three workmen were busy near the back door
and had lighted gas lamps that hung over the work benches. They did not see
Hugh, and their voices ran through the empty building. One of them, an old
man with a bald head, entertained his fellows by giving an imitation of
Steve Hunter. He lighted a cigar and putting on his hat tipped it a little
to one side. Puffing out his chest he marched up and down talking of money.
"Here's a ten-dollar cigar," he said, handing a long stogie to one of the
other workmen. "I buy them by the thousands to give away. I'm interested in
uplifting the lives of workmen in my home town. That's what takes all my
attention."

The other workmen laughed and the little man continued to prance up
and down and talk, but Hugh did not hear him. He stared moodily at the
people going along the road toward town. Darkness was coming but he could
still see dim figures striding along. Over at the foundry back of the
corn-cutting machine plant the night shift was pouring off, and a sudden
glare of light played across the heavy smoke cloud that lay over the town.
The bells of the churches began to call people to the Wednesday evening
prayer-meetings. Some enterprising citizen had begun to build workmen's
houses in a field beyond Hugh's shop and these were occupied by Italian
laborers. A crowd of them came past. What would some day be a tenement
district was growing in a field beside a cabbage patch belonging to Ezra
French who had said God would not permit men to change the field of their
labors.

An Italian passed under a lamp near the Wheeling station. He wore a bright
red handkerchief about his neck and was clad in a brightly colored shirt.
Like the other people of Bidwell, Hugh did not like to see foreigners
about. He did not understand them and when he saw them going about the
streets in groups, was a little afraid. It was a man's duty, he thought, to
look as much as possible like all his fellow men, to lose himself in the
crowds, and these fellows did not look like other men. They loved color,
and as they talked they made rapid gestures with their hands. The Italian
in the road was with a woman of his own race, and in the growing darkness
put his arm about her shoulder. Hugh's heart began to beat rapidly and he
forgot his American prejudices. He wished he were a workman and that Clara
were a workman's daughter. Then, he thought, he might find courage to go to
her. His imagination, quickened by the flame of desire and running in new
channels, made it possible for him, at the moment to see himself in the
young Italian's place, walking in the road with Clara. She was clad in
a calico dress and her soft brown eyes looked at him full of love and
understanding.

The three workingmen had completed the job for which they had come back to
work after the evening meal, and now turned out the lights and came toward
the front of the shop. Hugh drew back from the door and concealed himself
by standing in the heavy shadows by the wall. So realistic were his
thoughts of Clara that he did not want them intruded upon.

The workmen went out of the shop door and stood talking. The bald-headed
man was telling a tale to which the others listened eagerly. "It's all over
town," he said. "From what I hear every one say it isn't the first time
she's been in such a mess. Old Tom Butterworth claimed he sent her away to
school three years ago, but now they say that isn't the truth. What they
say is that she was in the family way to one of her father's farm hands and
had to get out of town." The man laughed. "Lord, if Clara Butterworth was
my daughter she'd be in a nice fix, wouldn't she, eh?" he said, laughing.
"As it is, she's all right. She's gone now and got herself mixed up with
this swindler Buckley, but her father's money will make it all right. If
she's going to have a kid, no one'll know. Maybe she's already had the kid.
They say she's a regular one for the men."

As the man talked Hugh came to the door and stood in the darkness
listening. For a time the words would not penetrate his consciousness, and
then he remembered what Clara had said. She had said something about Alfred
Buckley and that there would be a story connecting her name with his. She
had been hot and angry and had declared the story a lie. Hugh did not know
what the story was about, but it was evident there was a story abroad, a
scandalous story concerning her and Alfred Buckley. A hot, impersonal anger
took possession of him. "She's in trouble--here's my chance," he thought.
His tall figure straightened and as he stepped through the shop door his
head struck sharply against the door frame, but he did not feel the blow
that at another time might have knocked him down. During his whole life he
had never struck any one with his fists, and had never felt a desire to
do so, but now hunger to strike and even to kill took complete possession
of him. With a cry of rage his fist shot out and the old man who had done
the talking was knocked senseless into a clump of weeds that grew near
the door. Hugh whirled and struck a second man who fell through the open
doorway into the shop. The third man ran away into the darkness along
Turner's Pike.

Hugh walked rapidly to town and through Main Street. He saw Tom Butterworth
walking in the street with Steve Hunter, but turned a corner to avoid a
meeting. "My chance has come," he kept saying to himself as he hurried
along Medina Road. "Clara's in some kind of trouble. My chance has come."

By the time he got to the door of the Butterworth house, Hugh's new-found
courage had almost left him, but before it had quite gone he raised his
hand and knocked on the door. By good fortune Clara came to open it. Hugh
took off his hat and turned it awkwardly in his hands. "I came out here to
ask you to marry me," he said. "I want you to be my wife. Will you do it?"

Clara stepped out of the house and closed the door. A whirl of thoughts ran
through her brain. For a moment she felt like laughing, and then what there
was in her of her father's shrewdness came to her rescue. "Why shouldn't I
do it?" she thought. "Here's my chance. This man is excited and upset now,
but he is a man I can respect. It's the best marriage I'll ever have a
chance to make. I do not love him, but perhaps that will come. This may be
the way marriages are made."

Clara put out her hand and laid it on Hugh's arm. "Well," she said,
hesitatingly, "you wait here a moment."

She went into the house and left Hugh standing in the darkness. He was
terribly afraid. It seemed to him that every secret desire of his life had
got itself suddenly and bluntly expressed. He felt naked and ashamed. "If
she comes out and says she'll marry me, what will I do? What'll I do then?"
he asked himself.

When she did come out Clara wore her hat and a long coat. "Come," she said,
and led him around the house and through the barnyard to one of the barns.
She went into a dark stall and led forth a horse and with Hugh's help
pulled a buggy out of a shed into the barnyard. "If we're going to do it
there's no use putting it off," she said with a trembling voice. "We might
as well go to the county seat and do it at once."

The horse was hitched and Clara got into the buggy. Hugh climbed in and sat
beside her. She had started to drive out of the barnyard when Jim Priest
stepped suddenly out of the darkness and took hold of the horse's head.
Clara held the buggy whip in her hand and raised it to hit the horse. A
desperate determination that nothing should interfere with her marriage
with Hugh had taken possession of her. "If necessary I'll ride the man
down," she thought. Jim came to stand beside the buggy. He looked past
Clara at Hugh. "I thought maybe it was that Buckley," he said. He put a
hand on the buggy dash and laid the other on Clara's arm. "You're a woman
now, Clara, and I guess you know what you're doing. I guess you know I'm
your friend," he said slowly. "You been in trouble, I know. I couldn't help
hearing what your father said to you about Buckley, he talked so loud.
Clara, I don't want to see you get into trouble."

The farm hand stepped away from the buggy and then came back and again put
his hand on Clara's arm. The silence that lay over the barnyard lasted
until the woman felt she could speak without a break in her voice.

"I'm not going very far, Jim," she said, laughing nervously. "This is Mr.
Hugh McVey and we're going over to the county seat to get married. We'll be
back home before midnight. You put a candle in the window for us."

Hitting the horse a sharp blow, Clara drove quickly past the house and into
the road. She turned south into the hill country through which lay the road
to the county seat. As the horse trotted quickly along, the voice of Jim
Priest called to her out of the darkness of the barnyard, but she did not
stop. The afternoon and evening had been cloudy and the night was dark. She
was glad of that. As the horse went swiftly along she turned to look at
Hugh who sat up very stiffly on the buggy seat and stared straight ahead.
The long horse-like face of the Missourian with its huge nose and deeply
furrowed cheeks was ennobled by the soft darkness, and a tender feeling
crept over her. When he had asked her to become his wife, Clara had pounced
like a wild animal abroad seeking prey and the thing in her that was like
her father, hard, shrewd and quick-witted, had led her to decide to see the
thing through at once. Now she became ashamed, and her tender mood took the
hardness and shrewdness away. "This man and I have a thousand things we
should say to each other before we rush into marriage," she thought, and
was half inclined to turn the horse and drive back. She wondered if Hugh
had also heard the stories connecting her name with that of Buckley, the
stories she was sure were now running from lip to lip through the streets
of Bidwell, and what version of the tale had been carried to him. "Perhaps
he came to propose marriage in order to protect me," she thought, and
decided that if he had come for that reason she was taking an unfair
advantage. "It is what Kate Chanceller would call 'doing the man a dirty,
low-down trick,'" she told herself; but even as the thought came she leaned
forward and touching the horse with the whip urged him even more swiftly
along the road.

A mile south of the Butterworth farmhouse the road to the county seat
crossed the crest of a hill, the highest point in the county, and from the
road there was a magnificent view of the country lying to the south. The
sky had begun to clear, and as they reached the point known as Lookout
Hill, the moon broke through a tangle of clouds. Clara stopped the horse
and turned to look down the hillside. Below lay the lights of her father's
farmhouse--where he had come as a young man and to which long ago he had
brought his bride. Far below the farmhouse a clustered mass of lights
outlined the swiftly growing town. The determination that had carried Clara
thus far wavered again and a lump came into her throat.

Hugh also turned to look but did not see the dark beauty of the country
wearing its night jewels of lights. The woman he wanted so passionately
and of whom he was so afraid had her face turned from him, and he dared to
look at her. He saw the sharp curve of her breasts and in the dim light
her cheeks seemed to glow with beauty. An odd notion came to him. In the
uncertain light her face seemed to move independent of her body. It drew
near him and then drew away. Once he thought the dimly seen white cheek
would touch his own. He waited breathless. A flame of desire ran through
his body.

Hugh's mind flew back through the years to his boyhood and young manhood.
In the river town when he was a boy the raftsmen and hangers-on of the
town's saloons, who had sometimes come to spend an afternoon on the river
banks with his father John McVey, often spoke of women and marriage. As
they lay on the burned grass in the warm sunlight they talked and the boy
who lay half asleep nearby listened. The voices came to him as though out
of the clouds or up out of the lazy waters of the great river and the talk
of women awoke his boyhood lusts. One of the men, a tall young fellow with
a mustache and with dark rings under his eyes, told in a lazy, drawling
voice the tale of an adventure had with a woman one night when a raft on
which he was employed had tied up near the city of St. Louis, and Hugh
listened enviously. As he told the tale the young man a little awoke from
his stupor, and when he laughed the other men lying about laughed with him.
"I got the best of her after all," he boasted. "After it was all over we
went into a little room at the back of a saloon. I watched my chance and
when she went to sleep sitting in a chair I took eight dollars out of her
stocking."

That night in the buggy beside Clara, Hugh thought of himself lying by the
river bank on the summer days. Dreams had come to him there, sometimes
gigantic dreams; but there had also come ugly thoughts and desires. By his
father's shack there was always the sharp rancid smell of decaying fish and
swarms of flies filled the air. Out in the clean Ohio country, in the hills
south of Bidwell, it seemed to him that the smell of decaying fish came
back, that it was in his clothes, that it had in some way worked its way
into his nature. He put up his hand and swept it across his face, an
unconscious return of the perpetual movement of brushing flies away from
his face as he lay half asleep by the river.

Little lustful thoughts kept coming to Hugh and made him ashamed. He moved
restlessly in the buggy seat and a lump came into his throat. Again he
looked at Clara. "I'm a poor white," he thought. "It isn't fitten I should
marry this woman."

From the high spot in the road Clara looked down at her father's house and
below at the lights of the town, that had already spread so far over the
countryside, and up through the hills toward the farm where she had spent
her girlhood and where, as Jim Priest had said, "the sap had begun to run
up the tree." She began to love the man who was to be her husband, but like
the dreamers of the town, saw him as something a little inhuman, as a man
almost gigantic in his bigness. Many things Kate Chanceller had said as the
two developing women walked and talked in the streets of Columbus came back
to her mind. When they had started again along the road she continually
worried the horse by tapping him with the whip. Like Kate, Clara wanted to
be fair and square. "A woman should be fair and square, even with a man,"
Kate had said. "The man I'm going to have as a husband is simple and
honest," she thought. "If there are things down there in town that are not
square and fair, he had nothing to do with them." Realizing a little Hugh's
difficulty in expressing what he must feel, she wanted to help him, but
when she turned and saw how he did not look at her but continually stared
into the darkness, pride kept her silent. "I'll have to wait until he's
ready. Already I've taken things too much into my own hands. I'll put
through this marriage, but when it comes to anything else he'll have to
begin," she told herself, and a lump came into her throat and tears to her
eyes.




CHAPTER XVI


As he stood alone in the barnyard, excited at the thought of the adventure
on which Clara and Hugh had set out, Jim Priest remembered Tom Butterworth.
For more than thirty years Jim had worked for Tom and they had one strong
impulse that bound them together--their common love of fine horses. More
than once the two men had spent an afternoon together in the grand stand at
the fall trotting meeting at Cleveland. In the late morning of such a day
Tom found Jim wandering from stall to stall, looking at the horses being
rubbed down and prepared for the afternoon's races. In a generous mood he
bought his employee's lunch and took him to a seat in the grand stand.
All afternoon the two men watched the races, smoked and quarreled. Tom
contended that Bud Doble, the debonair, the dramatic, the handsome,
was the greatest of all race horse drivers, and Jim Priest held Bud
Doble in contempt. For him there was but one man of all the drivers he
whole-heartedly admired, Pop Geers, the shrewd and silent. "That Geers
of yours doesn't drive at all. He just sits up there like a stick," Tom
grumbled. "If a horse can win all right, he'll ride behind him all right.
What I like to see is a driver. Now you look at that Doble. You watch him
bring a horse through the stretch."

Jim looked at his employer with something like pity in his eyes. "Huh," he
exclaimed. "If you haven't got eyes you can't see."

The farm hand had two strong loves in his life, his employer's daughter and
the race horse driver, Geers. "Geers," he declared, "was a man born old
and wise." Often he had seen Geers at the tracks on a morning before some
important race. The driver sat on an upturned box in the sun before one of
the horse stalls. All about him there was the bantering talk of horsemen
and grooms. Bets were made and challenges given. On the tracks nearby
horses, not entered in the races for that day, were being exercised. Their
hoofbeats made a kind of music that made Jim's blood tingle. Negroes
laughed and horses put their heads out at stall doors. The stallions
neighed loudly and the heels of some impatient steed rattled against the
sides of a stall.

Every one about the stalls talked of the events of the afternoon and Jim
leaned against the front of one of the stalls and listened, filled with
happiness. He wished the fates had made him a racing man. Then he looked at
Pop Geers, the silent one, who sat for hours dumb and uncommunicative on a
feed box, tapping lightly on the ground with his racing whip and chewing
straw. Jim's imagination was aroused. He had once seen that other silent
American, General Grant, and had been filled with admiration for him.

That was on a great day in Jim's life, the day on which he had seen Grant
going to receive Lee's surrender at Appomattox. There had been a battle
with the Union men pursuing the fleeing Rebs out of Richmond, and Jim,
having secured a bottle of whisky, and having a chronic dislike of battles,
had managed to creep away into a wood. In the distance he heard shouts and
presently saw several men riding furiously down a road. It was Grant with
his aides going to the place where Lee waited. They rode to the place near
where Jim sat with his back against a tree and the bottle between his legs;
then stopped. Then Grant decided not to take part in the ceremony. His
clothes were covered with mud and his beard was ragged. He knew Lee and
knew he would be dressed for the occasion. He was that kind of a man;
he was one fitted for historic pictures and occasions. Grant wasn't. He
told his aides to go on to the spot where Lee waited, told them what
arrangements were to be made, then jumped his horse over a ditch and rode
along a path under the trees toward the spot where Jim lay.

That was an event Jim never forgot. He was fascinated at the thought of
what the day meant to Grant and by his apparent indifference. He sat
silently by the tree and when Grant got off his horse and came near,
walking now in the path where the sunlight sifted down through the trees,
he closed his eyes. Grant came to where he sat and stopped, apparently
thinking him dead. His hand reached down and took the bottle of whisky.
For a moment they had something between them, Grant and Jim. They both
understood that bottle of whisky. Jim thought Grant was about to drink,
and opened his eyes a little. Then he closed them. The cork was out of the
bottle and Grant clutched it in his hand tightly. From the distance there
came a vast shout that was picked up and carried by voices far away. The
wood seemed to rock with it. "It's done. The war's over," Jim thought. Then
Grant reached over and smashed the bottle against the trunk of the tree
above Jim's head. A piece of the flying glass cut his cheek and blood came.
He opened his eyes and looked directly into Grant's eyes. For a moment the
two men stared at each other and the great shout again rolled over the
country. Grant went hurriedly along the path to where he had left his
horse, and mounting, rode away.

Standing in the race track looking at Geers, Jim thought of Grant. Then his
mind came back to this other hero. "What a man!" he thought. "Here he goes
from town to town and from race track to race track all through the spring,
summer and fall, and he never loses his head, never gets excited. To win
horse races is the same as winning battles. When I'm at home plowing corn
on summer afternoons, this Geers is away somewhere at some track with all
the people gathered about and waiting. To me it would be like being drunk
all the time, but you see he isn't drunk. Whisky could make him stupid. It
couldn't make him drunk. There he sits hunched up like a sleeping dog. He
looks as though he cared about nothing on earth, and he'll sit like that
through three-quarters of the hardest race, waiting, taking advantage of
every little stretch of firm hard ground on the track, saving his horse,
watching, watching his horse too, waiting. What a man! He works the horse
into fourth place, into third, into second. The crowd in the grand stand,
such fellows as Tom Butterworth, have not seen what he's doing. He sits
still. By God, what a man! He waits. He looks half asleep. If he doesn't
have to do it, he makes no effort. If the horse has it in him to win
without help he sits still. The people are shouting and jumping up out of
their seats in the grand stand, and if that Bud Doble has a horse in the
race he's leaning forward in the sulky, shouting at his horse and making a
holy show of himself.

"Ha, that Geers! He waits. He doesn't think of the people but of the horse
he's driving. When the time comes, just the right time, that Geers, he lets
the horse know. They are one at that moment, like Grant and I were over
that bottle of whisky. Something happens between them. Something inside the
man says, 'now,' and the message runs along the reins to the horse's brain.
It flies down into his legs. There is a rush. The head of the horse has
just worked its way out in front by inches--not too soon, nothing wasted.
Ha, that Geers! Bud Doble, huh!"

On the night of Clara's marriage after she and Hugh had disappeared down
the county seat road, Jim hurried into the barn and, bringing out a horse,
sprang on his back. He was sixty-three but could mount a horse like a young
man. As he rode furiously toward Bidwell he thought, not of Clara and her
adventure, but of her father. To both men the right kind of marriage meant
success in life for a woman. Nothing else really mattered much if that were
accomplished. He thought of Tom Butterworth, who, he told himself, had
fussed with Clara just as Bud Doble often fussed with a horse in a race. He
had himself been like Pop Geers. All along he had known and understood the
mare colt, Clara. Now she had come through; she had won the race of life.

"Ha, that old fool!" Jim whispered to himself as he rode swiftly down the
dark road. When the horse ran clattering over a small wooden bridge and
came to the first of the houses of the town, he felt like one coming to
announce a victory, and half expected a vast shout to come out of the
darkness, as it had come in the moment of Grant's victory over Lee.

Jim could not find his employer at the hotel or in Main Street, but
remembered a tale he had heard whispered. Fanny Twist the milliner lived
in a little frame house in Garfield Street, far out at the eastern edge
of town, and he went there. He banged boldly on the door and the woman
appeared. "I've got to see Tom Butterworth," he said. "It's important. It's
about his daughter. Something has happened to her."

The door closed and presently Tom came around the corner of the house. He
was furious. Jim's horse stood in the road, and he went straight to him and
took hold of the bit. "What do you mean by coming here?" he asked sharply.
"Who told you I was here? What business you got coming here and making a
show of yourself? What's the matter of you? Are you drunk or out of your
head?"

Jim got off the horse and told Tom the news. For a moment the two stood
looking at each other. "Hugh McVey--Hugh McVey, by crackies, are you right,
Jim?" Tom exclaimed. "No missfire, eh? She's really gone and done it? Hugh
McVey, eh? By crackies!"

"They're on the way to the county seat now," Jim said softly. "Missfire!
Not on your life." His voice lost the cool, quiet tone he had so often
dreamed of maintaining in great emergencies. "I figure they'll be back by
twelve or one," he said eagerly. "We got to blow 'em out, Tom. We got to
give that girl and her husband the biggest blowout ever seen in this
county, and we got just about three hours to get ready for it."

"Get off that horse and give me a boost," Tom commanded. With a grunt
of satisfaction he sprang to the horse's back. The belated impulse to
philander that an hour before sent him creeping through back streets and
alleyways to the door of Fanny Twist's house was all gone, and in its place
had come the spirit of the man of affairs, the man who, as he himself often
boasted, made things move and kept them on the move. "Now look here, Jim,"
he said sharply, "there are three livery stables in this town. You engage
every horse they've got for the night. Have the horses hitched to any kind
of rigs you can find, buggies, surreys, spring wagons, anything. Have them
get drivers off the streets, anywhere. Then have them all brought around
in front of the Bidwell House and held for me. When you've done that, you
go to Henry Heller's house. I guess you can find it. You found this house
where I was fast enough. He lives on Campus Street just beyond the new
Baptist Church. If he's gone to bed you get him up. Tell him to get his
orchestra together and have him bring all the lively music he's got. Tell
him to bring his men