Tell "em to follow the bark. You know the place, don"t you? That"s the boy. Come on, John! Speak to us, Frank! Speak to us, old man!"
The two men were looking up into a lofty, tossing tree when Tommy and the women reached them. Above them the trees thrashed back and forth bewilderingly, showing the stormy sky, then covering it over, then showing it again. And there, looking up into the tree also, eyes shining, tongue hanging out, sides heaving, was old Frank. Once he reared up on the trunk of the tree as if to make sure again. He whiffed the bark, his tail wagging. Then he jumped down and looked up once more.
Earle"s voice was strangely quiet when he spoke.
"I see him," he said. They all crowded about. "My G.o.d--he"s way out at the end of the top limb. If his head swims----" He began to talk loud, his face still raised. "Joe, listen, old man. We are all your friends down here. Tommy"s here."
Davis had sat down on the ground and was hurriedly pulling off his shoes. His beard fell down over his shirt and his hands were trembling.
"It won"t do, John," spoke Steve Earle, and Tommy, aghast, saw the look on his father"s face. "The limb he"s on will never hold you. He might try to get farther out, and if he does----"
Then, as calmly as she could, Mrs. Davis called to the boy, pleading with him to come down, telling him that she would be his mother, not knowing, anxious, excited woman that she was, that the word probably meant nothing to that child tossing up there in mid-air.
And now for the first time Tommy"s straining eyes saw--saw the white face, the little body pressed against the swaying limb, saw the frantic arms clinging to the lofty perch, saw the whole tree moving dizzily back and forth against the stormy sky, as if in the hands of a giant who was trying to shake that tiny figure down.
The voice of the boy rang out shrill and clear above the tumult of the wind and the tearing leaves.
"Joe! You hear me, Joe, don"t you?" The voice was quiet and sure now, the nerves of the man that was to be had steadied. Only grammar went all to pieces; it had been deteriorating these last twenty-four hours. A boy"s grammar is a structure always ready to tumble, like a house of cards.
"They ain"t no cop down here, Joe. We done sent him home. He"s gone, Joe, honest he has. You know me, Joe. I wouldn"t tell you no lie!"
Now the figure up there stirred. A small bare foot felt down and reached uncertainly, as if blown about by the wind, for a lower branch; a small hand that had clung to a gla.s.s of milk now clung to a limb above his head. Then Tommy saw that his father, with upraised face, was standing directly under that figure up there in the angry foliage.
"Steady, Joe, old scout!" said Earle.
"Don"t talk to him, Papa," pleaded Tommy.
"He"s right, Steve," spoke Mrs. Davis.
But once after this Tommy spoke.
"Joe! Try that un on the other side!"
Again they watched the foot feeling about. Again it found the limb. Once they saw him, like a bear cub, hug the trunk. Once he slid and fragments of bark came tumbling down. Closer to earth drew the small figure. They could hear the calloused little bare feet sc.r.a.ping the bark. Then, all of a sudden, Steve Earle had swung himself up by the lower branches. His strong arms reached upward and were lowered down to them, and from his fingers a gasping little figure slid to the ground.
It was still light enough to see the face. The grin with which he had started out in life to brave an unfriendly world was gone, and in its place was terror--terror of those awful heights, of that swaying tree, of night and storm, and now of these faces about him. The st.u.r.dy chest was rising and falling. He looked pitifully small, like a baby.
There came a blinding flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder that seemed to burst the woods open. In the momentary flash they saw his white face and dilated eyes.
Mrs. Davis had sunk to her knees, arms outstretched.
"Darling!" she cried. Tommy had heard his mother say it that way. Then he turned his head in a sort of embarra.s.sment, for Joe had run into Mrs.
Davis"s arms, and Joe was sobbing on Mrs. Davis"s ample bosom; and no gentleman, big or small, likes to witness his friend"s emotions.
"I guess it"s a go, Steve," said John Davis.
"Looks like it, John," replied Steve.
And then the rain that had held back so long came down through the forest in a deluge.
XI
BLOOD MONEY
"A man," says Poor Richard, "has three friends--an old wife, an old dog, and money." Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. He had an old wife and he had an old dog, but he had no money. And there are times when, let comfortable moralists say what they please, a man"s need for money overshadows everything else. Such a time had come to Jim Taylor.
It came at one o"clock on a cold, starry March morning. Since sundown he and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.
"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not gone.
Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white Llewellyn setter, had hung about within the circle of light cast by the lantern. He had followed Mary to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protector. He had gone with Jim to the well after water. While Jim and the doctor worked, he had sat gravely on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, lank, a bit stooped, stood in the middle of the lot, Mary on one side, Prince on the other.
Before him lay his mule, dead.
Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not uncommon. But on this particular mule Jim had depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton crop he had depended for money to pay off the mortgage on his farm--the farm that represented his and Mary"s belated plunge in life.
Perhaps to say Mary"s plunge would be nearer the truth. But for her, Jim would have remained an easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog before the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing poles out under the shed. His was the lore of field and stream, not of business.
It was Mary who, two years before, had seen in the advancing price of cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked him into trying to make terms with Old Man Th.o.r.n.ycroft, his landlord.
"All right, gal," he had said one morning; "here goes."
He had come back with a new light in his gray, twinkling sportsman"s eyes. He had got right down to work. The sound of his hammer as he patched barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of his shotgun in the woods. He had followed the furrow as earnestly as if it were a wild-turkey track in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter, looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. He had met his first payments. Then had come the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the chance to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had borrowed to the limit on the coming season"s prospects. He had bought ample fertilizer, a new wagon, a new plough. And now the mule, without which all these things were useless, lay at his feet a ma.s.s of worse than useless flesh.
The shivering voice of Mary at his side--he hadn"t realized before how cold it was--roused him from his melancholy contemplation of the spectacle.
"What"re we goin" to do now, Jim?"
"Oh, we"ll manage somehow," he declared.
He picked up the lantern, looked down into her face, and his eyes twinkled momentarily.
"That mule was lazy, anyhow."
But there was no answering twinkle in Mary"s eyes as they turned back toward the house. They left the lot gate open, no need to close it now, and old Prince followed with subdued mien at their heels; their troubles were his troubles, and, besides, he had rather liked the mule in a condescending sort of way.
"How much will a new mule cost?" Mary asked as they went up the steps, their footfalls sounding loud in the dead silence down there under the stars.
"Well, two hundred dollars will get one you won"t have to prop up betwixt the traces."
He did not see the sudden eagerness in her face. He pushed the door open for her.
"Come in, old man," he said to Prince. "You done the best you could."
In the unceiled kitchen he set the lantern down on the table. "Don"t you bother, gal," he said to Mary. "You look all wore out. Go to bed now and get some sleep. I"ll go to Greenville to-morrow and see if I can"t borrow the money."
But next day in town Jim found, as he had been afraid he would find, that it is not easy for a man known primarily as a hunter and fisherman to borrow two hundred dollars. He had not even gone to see Th.o.r.n.ycroft.