Kitabı oku: «Yellowstone Nights», sayfa 4

"But," said he, "you can assure him when he gets here that you are really in robust health."

"Assure him!" roared Pa. "He'd be dead sure I was trying to put myself in a better light for the dicker. I couldn't make him believe anything at all. I know Prunty."

Billy said that the psychology of the situation was plain. Mr. Prunty was convinced that Pa was in such a condition that he never could go back to the office, and could no more take sole ownership of the Mid-Continent than a baby could enter a shot-putting contest. What would they do when it came to making propositions? They would offer something that they were sure a case in the tertiary stage couldn't accept. They would probably offer to give or take a certain price for the stock. Believing that Pa wasn't in position to buy, but was really forced to sell, they would name a frightfully low price, so that when Pa accepted it perforce they would be robbing him out of house and home, almost. This was the way with these shrewd traders always, and to whipsaw a dying man would be nuts for a man like Prunty. (I am here falling into Billy's dialect when he was in deadly earnest.) Then the conversation grew mysterious again with Pa listening, and once admitting that "that would be like old Enos."

"But he'll back out," said Pa, "if he's thief enough ever to start in."

"Have him make a memorandum in writing, and sign it," answered Billy.

"But," rejoined Pa, in a disgusted way, as if to ask why he condescended to argue with this young fool, "you don't know Prunty. Unless he has the cash in hand he'll go to some lawyer and find a way out."

"I thought of that, too," said Billy; "and so I took the liberty of going to the bank and getting the cash – for temporary use, you know."

"I like your nerve!" moaned Pa angrily. "Do you know, young man, that you've built up a situation that absolutely forces me to adopt your fool plans? Absolutely infernal nonsense! To imagine it possible to get the Prunty stock at any such figures is – " And Pa threw up wild hands of desperation to an unpitying sky.

"Is it possible to imagine," said Billy, "such a thing as the Pruntys trying to get your stock at that figure? That's the thing I'm looking for and counting on." And when Pa failed to reply, but only chewed his mustache, Billy went on: "I thought the logic of the situation would appeal to you," said he. "And now let us set the stage. The time is short."

And then came the most astounding thing, and the thing that showed Billy's genius. First he took out the electric-light bulbs of the electrolier, and screwed in others made of a sort of greenish glass – just a little green tinge in it. He took some stage appliances and put just a little shade of dark under Pa's eyes, and at the corners of his mouth; and when the green lights were turned on Pa had the most ghastly, ghostly, pasty, ghoulish look any one ever saw. I was actually frightened when I came in: it was as bad as Doctor Jekyll turned to Mr. Hyde. Pa looked rather cheap while Billy was doing this, but the time was getting short, and he was afraid the Pruntys would come bursting in and catch them at it. Billy placed Pa right under the green lights, and shaded them so that the rest of us received only the unadulterated output of the side lamps. Then they arranged their cues, and Billy stepped into the next room. As he went, Pa swore for the first time since he quit running the line-gang, when, he claims, it was necessary.

"If this goes wrong, as it will," he hissed through his livid lips, "I'll kick you from here to the city-limits if it blows the plug in the power-house!"

"Very well, sir," answered Billy – and the footman announced the Pruntys.

I was as pale as a ghost, and my eyes were red, and the look of things was positively sepulchral when they came in, Enos tagging at his father's heels as if he was ashamed. The footman turned on the light, and almost screamed as he looked at poor Pa, with the pasty green in his complexion, and the cavernous shadows under his eyes. Billy had seen to it that the Pruntys had had plenty of literature on the symptoms of Bright's disease, and I could see them start and exchange looks as Pa's state dawned on them.

"I'm sorry to see you in this condition," said Mr. Prunty, after Pa had weakly welcomed them and told them to sit down.

"What condition?" snapped Pa, the theatricality wearing off. "I'm all right, if it wasn't for this blamed toe!"

"Is it very bad?" asked Mr. Prunty.

"It won't heal," growled Pa, and the visitors exchanged glances again. "But you didn't come here to discuss sore toes. Let's get down to business."

Then Mr. Prunty, in a subdued and sort of ministerial voice, explained to Pa that he was getting along in years, and that Pa wasn't long – that is, that Pa was getting along in years, too – and both parties would, no doubt, be better satisfied if their interests were separated. Therefore he had decided to withdraw his capital from the business, and place it in some other enterprise which would give his son a life work along lines laid out in his education and training. He didn't want to sell his stock to the Universal Electric Company as he had a chance to do (Pa started fiercely here, for he was afraid of the Universal Electric); although the old agreement by which neither party was to sell out to a competitor was probably no longer binding; and so they had come as man to man to talk adjustment.

"But," says Pa, "this takes me by surprise. I don't quite see my way clear to taking on such a load as carrying all the stock would be. Mid-Continent stock is valuable."

They exchanged glances again, as much as to say that Pa was evidently anxious to sell rather than buy, and was crying the stock up accordingly, so as to get as much money as he could for me before he died.

"We may not be so grasping as you think," said Mr. Prunty; and then nothing was said for quite a while.

Pa was looking awfully sick, and Mr. Prunty was just exuding love and kindness and magnanimity from every pore.

"You had some proposition thought out," interrogated Pa, feeling anxiously for his own pulse, "or you wouldn't have come. What is it, Prunty?"

"Well," answered Mr. Prunty, gazing piercingly at Pa, as if to ask if such a cadaverous person could possibly take on the sole control of the Mid-Continent even if he had the money – "well, we had thought of it a little, that's a fact. We thought we'd make you an offer to buy or sell – "

"Hurrah for Billy!" my heart shouted. For this was just what he said would happen. But, instead of hurrahing, I came to the front and gave Pa a powder. It was mostly quinine, and was dreadfully bitter.

"To buy or sell," went on Mr. Prunty, "at a price to be named by us. If it's a reasonable figure, take our stock and give us our money. If it's too high, why, sell us yours. That's fair, ain't it?"

Pa lay back and looked green and groaned. He was doing it nobly.

"What is fair in some circumstances," he moaned, "is extortion in others; and I – er – yes, I suppose it would be called fair. What's your give-or-take price, Prunty?"

"We are willing," said Mr. Prunty, "to give or take seventy-five for the stock."

Pa was so still that I had to rouse him, and Mr. Prunty repeated his offer.

"I – I'm getting a little forgetful," said Pa, "and I'd like to have you put it in writing, so I can consider it, and be sure I have it right, you know."

The Pruntys consulted again, and again they came forward. Enos wrote down the proposition, and Mr. Prunty signed it. I didn't understand it very well, and the strain was so frightful that I expected to fly all to pieces every instant, but I didn't.

When Enos handed the paper to Pa, Pa cleared his throat in a kind of scraping way, and in stepped Billy with a great box under his arm.

"Mr. Helmerston," said Pa, as calmly as General Grant at – any place where he was especially placid – "I want you and my daughter to be witnesses to the making of the proposition in this writing, from Mr. Prunty to me."

Billy read the paper, and said he understood that it was a give-or-take offer of seventy-five for all the stock of the Mid-Continent. Mr. Prunty said yes, looking rather dazed, and not so sympathetic.

"I accept the proposition," snapped Pa, his jaw setting too awfully firm for the tertiary stage. "I'll take your stock at seventy-five. Helmerston, pay 'em the money!"

Billy had the cash in ten-thousand-dollar bundles; and I was so fascinated at the sight of so much treasure being passed over like packages of bonbons, that for a while I didn't see how funny Mr. Prunty was acting. When I did look, he was holding his nose in the air and gasping like one of Aunt Maria's little chickens with the pip. He seemed to have a sort of progressive convulsions, beginning low down in wrigglings of the legs, and gradually moving upward in jerks and gurgles and gasps, until it went off into space in twitchings of his mouth and eyes and nose and forehead. Enos had the bundles of money counted, and a receipt written, before he noticed that his father was having these fits, and then he seemed scared. I suppose these people have a sort of affection for each other, after all.

"Father," said he – "Father, what's the matter?"

"Matter?" roared Mr. Prunty. "Does the fool ask what's the matter? Don't you see we're done brown? Look at the basketful they brought, that we might just as well have had as not, if it hadn't been for – Blast you, Blunt, I'll show you you can't chisel old Enos Prunty out of his good money like this, I will! I'll put the whole kit and boodle of yeh in jail! That stock is worth a hundred and fifty, if it's worth a cent. Ene, if you'll stand by like a stoughton bottle and see your old father hornswoggled out of his eye-teeth by a college dude and this old confidence-man, you'll never see a cent of my money, never! Do you hear, you ass? He's no more sick than I am! That's false pretenses, ain't it? He's got some darned greenery-yallery business on that face of his! Ain't that false? Blunt, if you don't give me the rest in the basket there I'll law you to the Supreme Court!"

"Hush, father," said Enos; "Aurelia's here."

"When you get everything set," said Pa, with a most exasperating smile, "just crack ahead with your lawsuit. We'll trot you a few heats, anyhow. You'd better take your pa away, Enos, and buy him a drink of something cool."

"I want to compliment you, Mr. Helmerston," said Enos, quite like a gentleman, "on the success of your little stage-business, and especially on your careful forecast of the play of human motives. I can see that a man with only ordinary business dishonesty, like myself, need not be surprised at defeat by such a master of finesse as you."

He bowed toward me. Billy flushed.

"If you mean, sir – " he began.

"Oh, I mean nothing offensive," answered Enos. "I will be in the office in the morning, and shall be ready, as secretary, to transfer this stock on the books, previous to resigning. Come, father, we've got our beating; but we can still have the satisfaction of being good losers. Good-by, Miss Blunt; I wish you joy!"

Pa came out of the green light as they disappeared, limping on his wrapped-up foot, and shouted that he had always said that Enos was a brick, and now he knew it. I ran up to him and kissed him. Then I threw myself into Billy's arms.

"Aurelia!" said Pa, looking as cross as a man could look in such circumstances, "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!"

I dropped into a chair and covered up my face, while Pa went on addressing Billy, trying to be severe on him for letting me kiss him, and to beam on him at the same time for helping him with the Pruntys.

"Young man," said he, "I owe you a great deal. This tomfoolery happened to work. Please to consider yourself a part of the Mid-Continent Electric Company in any capacity you choose."

"Yes, sir," said Billy, gathering up the money. "Is that all, sir?"

"I should like to have you take Enos' place as secretary," added Pa.

"Thank you," said Billy. "I shall be pleased and honored. Is that all? Do I still go to Mexico?"

Pa pondered and fidgeted, and acted awfully ill at ease.

"Yes," said he at last. "You're the only competent engineer we've got who understands the plans. You'll have to go for a few months – if you don't mind – anyhow."

"Pa," said I, "I'm tired of metal work, and I need a vacation in new and pleasant surroundings, and – and associations. Billy is awfully pleasant to associate with, and – and be surrounded by; and I've never, never been in Guadalanawhat-you-may-call-it; and – and – may we Pa?"

"Young woman!" glared Pa, "who have you the effrontery to call 'Billy'?" – Pa could never acquire what he calls "the 'whom' habit."

Billy stepped manfully forward.

"You would recognize the name 'Billy,'" said he, "if it were joined with the rather profane surname with which it is, unfortunately, connected, 'from the Atlantic to the Missouri.' Mr. Blunt, you can not be ignorant of the sweet dream in which I have indulged myself with reference to your daughter. I know I am unworthy of her – "

"Oh, cut that short!" said Pa. "Take this grease off my face, and remove these infernal stage lights! There, Dolly – there! Mr. Helmerston, er – Billy – will start for Mexico within a month. If you – if you really want to go with him, why go!"

And so we're going, by way of Yellowstone Park.

CHAPTER IV

"You see," said Mr. Driscoll, when, after three days of independent wonder-gazing in the thirty square miles of the Lower Geyser Basin, his seven fares came together for departure, "as I told yeh, this trip is just gettin' good."

"I have seen," said the Poet, "a spring from the bottom of which fires leap in lambent flames, to be quenched by the air when they reach the surface. Let me die, now!"

"I have seen," said the Artist, "the Mammoth Paint Pots from which we may dip our colors in that day 'when earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried.'"

"I have seen," said the Bride, "a lake perched upon a marble platform, the slopes of which it drapes with a lace of runnels – like the web that was woven by the Lady of Shalott while she looked in her magic mirror."

"In that day when we perfect our mythology," said the Poet, "we shall know of the nymph of this lake, who uses it as a mirror, and will die if she looks away from the image to gaze on the real knight as he passes."

"I question that, really," said the Professor. "In an age of pure science – "

"Scat!" said the Colonel. "I have seen a pool that goes mad when any passing idiot throws gross material into its pure idealism – and I sympathize with it."

"I have seen," went on Professor Boggs, "a natural object – I refer to the Fountain Geyser – which gives us a valuable lesson in steady performance, with no eccentricities. Every four hours it plays for fifteen minutes, shooting its water to a height of sixty feet. Note the mathematical correspondence – the feet correspond to the minutes in the hour – the hours are four – four into sixty goes fifteen times, the number of minutes the geyser plays – I shall work this out in an essay – it seems very significant."

"I have seen," said the Groom, "in the Great Fountain Geyser, a natural power installation. It throws its huge volume of water to a height of one hundred feet. It is on a pedestal like an emplacement for a monument, and its crater looks like the hole in which to set the shaft. That makes the matter of utilizing the power a cinch. I figure – "

"Billy!" said the Bride. "Aren't you ashamed?"

"The Professor and myself," answered the Groom, "represent the spirit of the age. We only are sane."

"You, Billy Helmerston," said the Bride, "are a fraud!"

Nine miles to the Upper Geyser Basin – passing the Midway Basin half-way – and the tourists found their tents already pitched by Aconite who had preceded them with the impedimenta, and returned light for the drive. They took a whole day for the journey, and even so felt as if they were committing an atrocity in negligence. The Jewell Geyser, the Sapphire Pool and the Mystic Falls seemed small by comparison with the gigantic phenomena of the Lower Basin, and smaller still next day compared with the stupendous marvels of the Upper Basin. At the Mystic Falls, the Bride insisted on taking luncheon.

"It's like the really normal loveliness of earth," said she. "It goes better with humanity, and luncheon, and flowers and fairies and gentle things. I want to eat a meal in neither Paradise nor the Inferno – and we seem to be in one or the other most of the time."

At luncheon, Professor Boggs came forward with an original and practical idea with relation to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment, as they had come to call their camp-fire stories.

"I hold," said he, "that one is entitled to time for putting his thoughts in order before presuming to deliver an address, even of the narrative sort. I find myself apprehensive of being called upon next, and this interferes with my powers of observation. I suggest that we cast lots for the next tale now, and thus free the minds of all but the narrator, who may retire if he choose, and collate his data."

"It's a good thought," said the Groom. "Poet, perform your office!"

The Poet passed the hat to the Bride, who closed her eyes and felt about discriminatingly, saying she was trying to find Billy in the hat. The Poet read the ballot and handed it to the Artist.

"Groom!" read the Artist, handing the slip of paper to Billy. "You're nominated."

"Stung!" ejaculated Billy.

THE HEART OF GOLIATH

THE STORY TOLD BY THE GROOM

"I often think," said the Groom, in beginning his tale that night, "when this adventure recurs to me, what a different world it would be if we could see into one another's minds, and telepathically search one another's hearts. I don't know whether it would be better or not; but that it would be different, this story proves. It is a tale that came to me when I was traveling about in the Missouri Valley, earning the money for my Tech course, and long before my time with the Mid-Continent Electric Company. It shows how a soul that is pitchy darkness to its nearest and dearest, may be illumined by the electric light of self-revelation to the eye of the chance-met stranger."

I first saw him on the platform just before my train pulled out from Sioux City to Aberdeen. He was a perfect mountain – an Alp, a Himalaya – of man. He must have been well toward seven feet tall; and so vast were his proportions that as he stooped to the window to buy his ticket he reminded me of a mastiff peering into a mouse's hole. From a distance – one could scarcely take in the details at close range – I studied him as a remarkable specimen of the brawny western farmer, whose score in any exhibition would be lowered by one fact only: lofty as his height was, he was getting too heavy for it.

I had to go into the smoking-car to find a vacant seat, and there I could see but one. I had but just slipped into it when in came the Gargantuan farmer and sat down all over me, in a seemingly ruthless exercise of his undoubted right to half the seat, and his unquestionable ability to appropriate as much more as his dimensions required. Falstaff with his page reminded himself of a sow that had overwhelmed all her litter save one: I felt like the last of the litter in process of smothering. And he was as ignorant of my existence, apparently, as could possibly be required by the comparison.

He wore with bucolic negligence clothes of excellent quality. His hat was broad as a prairie. I have no idea where such hats are bought. I am sure I never saw one of such amplitude of brim on sale anywhere. It was of the finest felt, and had a band of heavy leather pressed into a design in bas-relief. A few dried alfalfa leaves had lodged in the angle between the crown and the brim, and clung there, even when he took the hat off to wipe his brow, thus giving me a view of the plateau of felt, which I should never have obtained otherwise.

His face was enormous but not puffy; and the red veinlets on the cheek and nose had acquired their varicosity by weathering rather than by indulgence. His hair was clipped short, as though he had had a complete job done as a measure of economizing time. He had a high beak of a nose, with rugged promontories of bone at the bridge, like the shoulders of a hill; and his mouth was a huge but well-shaped feature, hard and inflexible like the mouth of a cave.

His shirt was of blue flannel, clean and fine, and its soft roll collar fell away from his great muscular neck unconfined and undecorated by any sort of cravat. His tun of a torso bulged roundly out in front of me like the sponson of a battleship. Stretched across the immense waistcoat was a round, spirally-fluted horsehair watchguard as big as a rope, with massive golden fastenings; and suspended from it was a golden steer made by some artificer who had followed Cellini afar off, if at all, and which gave the area (one must use geographical terms in describing the man), an auriferous and opulent appearance.

His trousers were spotted with the stains of stables; and his huge boots, like barges, had similar discolorations overlaying a brilliant shine. He carried one of those heavy white sticks with which the drovers and dealers at the Sioux City stockyards poke the live stock and take the liberties accorded to prospective purchasers with pigs and bullocks. On the crook of this he rested his great hands, one piled upon the other, and stared, as if fascinated by them, at four soldiers returning from service in the Philippines, who had two seats turned together, and were making a gleeful function of their midday meal, startling the South Dakota atmosphere with the loud use of strange-sounding expressions in Tagalog and Spanish, and, with military brutality, laughing at the dying struggles of a fellow-man being slowly pressed to death under that human landslide. I resented their making light of such a subject.

My oppressor stared at them with a grim and unwavering gaze that finally seemed to put them out and set them ill at ease; for they became so quiet that we could hear noises other than theirs. Once in a while, however, they winked at me to show their appreciation of my agonies, and made remarks about the water-cure and the like, meant for my ears. My incubus seemed not to hear a word of this badinage. I wondered if he were not deaf, or a little wrong in his intellect. The train stopped at a little station just as I had become quite desperate, and two men sitting in front of us got off. With the superhuman strength of the last gasp I surged under my tormentor – and he noticed me. I verily believe that until that instant he had not known of my presence; he gave such a deliberate sort of start.

"Excuse me!" said he. "Forgot they was any one here – let me fix you!"

He had already almost done so; but he meant well. He rose to take the vacated seat; but with a glance at the soldiers he threw the back over, turned his back to them and his face to me, and sat down. His ponderous feet like valises rested on each side of mine, his body filled the seat from arm to arm. For a while, even after discovering me, he stared past me as if I had been quite invisible. I saw a beady perspiration on his brow as if he were under some great stress of feeling. It was getting uncanny. I understood now how the soldiers, now breaking forth into riot again, had been suppressed by that stony regard. When he spoke, however, it was in commonplaces.

"They're lots of 'em comin' back," said he.

A slow thrust of the bulky thumb over his shoulder indicated that he meant soldiers. I nodded assent. A great many were returning just then.

"Jack's come back," said he; "quite a while."

His voice was in harmony with his physique – deep, heavy, rough. Raised in rage it might have matched the intonations of Stentor, and terrified a thousand foes; for it was a phenomenal voice. The rumble of the train was a piping treble compared with it.

"You don't know Jack, do yeh?" he asked.

"I think not," said I.

"Course not," he replied. "Fool question! An' yit, he used to know most of you fellers."

I wondered just what he might mean by "you fellows," but he was silent again.

"You don't live near here," he stated at last.

"No," said I. "I am just passing through."

"If you lived in these parts," said he, "you'd know him."

"I dare say," I replied. "Who is Jack?"

I was a little piqued at his rudeness; for he returned no reply. Then I saw that he was gazing into vacancy again so absently that I should have pronounced his case one of mental trouble if his appearance had not been so purely physical. He took from a cigar-case a big, dark, massive cigar, clubhouse shape like himself, gave it to me and lighted the twin of it. I thought myself entitled to reparation for his maltreatment of me, and, seeing that it was a good cigar, I took it. As for any further converse, I had given that up, when there rumbled forth from him a soliloquy rather than a story. He appeared to have very little perception of me as an auditor. I think now that he must have been in great need of some one to whom he might talk, and that his relations to those about him forbade any outpouring of expression. He seemed all the time in the attitude of repelling attack. He did not move, save as he applied the cigar to his lips or took it away; and his great voice rolled forth in subdued thunder.

"I've got four sections of ground," said he, "right by the track… Show you the place when we go through. Of course I've got a lot of other truck scattered around… Land at the right figger you've got to buy – got to… But when I hadn't but the four sections – one section overruns so they's a little over twenty-six hundred acres – I thought 'twas about the checker f'r a man with three boys… One f'r each o' them, you understand, an' the home place f'r mother if anything happened… Mother done jest as much to help git the start as I did… Plumb as much – if not more.

"Tom an' Wallace is good boys – none better. I'd about as quick trust either of 'em to run the place as to trust myself."

There was a candid self-esteem in the word "about" and his emphasis on it.

"I sent Wallace," he resumed, "into a yard of feeders in Montana to pick out a trainload o' tops with a brush and paint-pot, an' I couldn't 'a' got a hundred dollars better deal if I'd spotted 'em myself… That's goin' some f'r a kid not twenty-five. Wallace knows critters … f'r a boy … mighty well… An' Tom's got a way of handlin' land to get the last ten bushel of corn to the acre that beats me with all my experience… These colleges where they study them things do some good, I s'pose; but it's gumption, an' not schoolin', that makes boys like Tom an' Wallace… They're all right… They'd 'a' made good anyhow."

I could feel an invidious comparison between Tom and Wallace, of whom he spoke with such laudatory emphasis, and some one else whom I suspected to be the Jack who had come back from the Philippines; and his next utterance proved this instinctive estimate of the situation to be correct. He went on, slower than before, with long pauses in which he seemed lost in thought, and in some of which I gave up, without much regret, I confess, the idea of ever hearing more of Jack or his brothers.

"Jack was always mother's boy," said he. "Mother's boy … you know how it is… Make beds, an' dust, an' play the pianah, an' look after the flowers!.. Wasn't bigger'n nothin', either… Girl, I always thought, by good rights. I remember … mother wanted him to be a girl… She was on the square with the children … but if any boy got a shade the best of it anywhere along the line, it was Jack… I don't guess Tom an' Wallace ever noticed; but maybe Jack got a leetle the soft side o' things from mother… Still, she's al'ays been dumbed square…

"I seen as soon as he got old enough to take holt, an' didn't, that he wasn't wuth a cuss… Never told mother, an' never let on to the boys; but I could see he was no good, Jack wasn't… Some never owns up when it's their own folks … but what's the use lyin'?.. Hed to hev a swaller-tail coat, an' joined a 'country club' down to town – an' him a-livin' in the middle of a strip o' country a mile wide an' four long, wuth a hundred dollars an acre … all ourn … goin' out in short pants to knock them little balls around that cost six bits apiece. I didn't let myself care much about it; but 'country club!' – Hell!"

He had visualized for me the young fellow unfitted to his surroundings, designed on a scale smaller than the sons of Anak about him, deft in little things, finical in dress, fond of the leisure and culture of the club, oppressed with the roughnesses and vastnesses about his father's farms, too tender for the wild winds and burning suns, with nerves attuned to music and art rather than to the crushing of obstacles and the defeat of tasks: and all the while the image of "mother" brooded over him. All this was vividly in the picture – very vividly, considering the unskilful brush with which it had been limned – but just as it began to appeal to me, Anak fell quiescent.

"I never thought he was anything wuss than wuthless," he went on, at last, "till he come to me to git some money he'd lost at this here club… Thirty-seven dollars an' fifty cents… Gamblin'… I told him not by a damned sight; an' he cried – cried like a baby… I'd 'a' seen him jugged 'fore I'd 'a' give him thirty-seven fifty of my good money lost that way… Not me.

"… Wallace give him the money f'r his shotgun… An' mother – she al'ays knowed when Jack had one o' his girl-cryin' fits – she used to go up after Jack come in them nights, an' when he got asleep so he wouldn't know it she'd go in and kiss him… Watched and ketched her at it, but never let on… She run down bad – gittin' up before daylight an' broke of her rest like that… I started in oncet to tell her he was no good, but I jest couldn't… Turned it off on a hoss by the name o' Jack we had, an' sold him to make good f'r twenty-five dollars less'n he was wuth, ruther'n tell her what I started to… She loved that wuthless boy, neighbor – there ain't no use denyin' it, she did love him."