In Old Kentucky Part 31

Frank paced the floor with nervous tread. Other things than the impending contest for the Ashland Oaks had been worrying him of late.

Since he had left the mountains there had scarcely been a moment, waking or sleeping, when the face of the sweet mountain girl who had fascinated him among her rocks and forests, and had come down to the bluegra.s.s to save not only his life but the life of his beloved mare, had not been vividly before him. Untutored she might be, uncouth of speech, unlearned in all those things, in fact, which the women he had known had ever held most valuable, but her compensating virtues had begun to take upon themselves their actual values--values so overwhelming in their magnitude that her few lackings grew to seem continually less important in his mind.

"Never mind, Colonel," he said slowly, "you can't say anything to me but what I've said, over and over again, to myself. I know she's ignorant and uncultured. I know what it would mean if I should marry her. If I were to choose for a wife a fashionable girl, whose life is centered in the luxury which surrounds her, the world would smile approval; but for Madge, with her true, brave heart and n.o.ble thoughts, there would be only sneers and insults because she happened to be born up there in the mountains. That is the kind of people we are down here in the bluegra.s.s." He smiled, somewhat bitterly. "And I--well, I'm too much like the rest to need any warning--too much of a coward to think of making her my wife."

He sat, dejectedly, in a chair by the long table, and, with face held between his hands and elbows planted on the board, looked across it, through the open window, out into the thronging street with gloomy eyes. For days he had been fighting battle after battle with himself. He could not make his mind up as to what he ought to do. He knew he loved the mountain-girl, but--but--

"There, there, my boy, I'm sorry," said the Colonel, sympathetically, apologetically. "Let's drop the subject. The ladies will be here, soon.

Before they come I'll step over to the office and get the answer from the Dyer Brothers." He rose, looking at his watch. "It's nearly time it was here. They were to wire promptly. I'll bring it to you as soon as it comes." He went to Frank and put his hand upon his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry, my boy. It will all come out, all right.

Ahem! I mean there's nothing the matter with the mare and the sale will go through."

"I hope so," said Frank, rising without much show of energy. He was clearly on the edge of real discouragement. "If it doesn't--and that a.s.sessment to be met--ah, well! What's the use of worrying? It doesn't help the matter any." He walked slowly to the window and looked out.

"Here come Madge and Aunt 'Lethe," he announced, "through with their shopping at last. How different Madge looks from the little mountain-girl I first knew!" He turned and faced the Colonel. "Ah, if the world knew her as I do--"

The Colonel left the room, bound for the telegraph-office, just before a shrill scream came from the corridor, without, startling Layson greatly.

"Oh, dellaw!" the frightened voice said. "Le' me out! Le' me out!"

He recognized the voice, at once, as belonging to the girl whom he had been discussing with the Colonel, and it was so full of terror that he rushed quickly to the door, prepared to rescue her from some dire peril.

"What can be the matter?" he thought, frightened.

At the door he met Madge, white of face and startled, coming in.

"Why, Madge! What is it?"

She leaned against the writing-table, gasping. It was plain enough that she had been greatly frightened.

"Wait till I git my breath," she said; and then: "They got us into a little room, and, all of a sudden, we started skallyhootin' fer th'

roof--room an' all!"

Frank fell back, relieved, and trying not to show amus.e.m.e.nt.

"That was the elevator," he explained. "A machine to carry you upstairs and save you the work of climbing."

"Dellaw!" exclaimed the girl, not yet entirely calm. "As if I couldn't walk! Thought we was blowed up by another dynamighty bomb!"

Miss Alathea entered hurriedly, looking about the room, in evident distress. At sight of Madge she gave a great sigh of relief. "My dear, I'm so sorry you were frightened!"

The girl laughed nervously, pulling herself together. "I understand, now, Miss 'Lethe, and I'm as cool as a cuc.u.mber."

There was a group of darkies at the door, and, suddenly, they all began to grin. Miss 'Lethe knew the sign.

"The Colonel's coming," she said positively. "Their faces show it. Look at them?"

Her guess proved a true prophecy. The Colonel, plainly busy with absorbing thoughts, was striding along the uneven old brick sidewalk, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, when the crowd of darkies, sure of his good-nature, beneficiaries from past favors, many times, surrounded him, beseeching him for tips upon the coming races. Very different were these city darkies from the respectful negroes of the Kentucky plantations of the time. They swarmed about him in an insistent horde.

"Who gwine win dat race, Ma.r.s.e Cunnel? Who gwine win dat race?" they chorussed.

He stopped and beamed at them good-naturedly.

"Who's going to win?" said he. "Queen Bess, of course."

He joined the group, inside, with a bundle in one hand and an open telegram in the other. "Good morning, ladies. Miss 'Lethe, you're looking fresh and blooming as you used to twenty years ago." He tried to catch himself, but failed. "As fresh and blooming," he corrected, "as usual, Miss 'Lethe." His bow was very courtly and her own no less so.

"Frank, my boy," said he, turning to the youthful owner of Queen Bess, "I've got their answer, and it's all right."

Frank had been acutely worried. There had been some question of the sale of the mare to the Dyer Brothers before the fire; now that this disaster had occurred and stories had been started, as, of course, he knew they must have been, about injuries to her, there might be, he had feared, good reason to expect the celebrated hors.e.m.e.n to withdraw their proposition. The Colonel's news, therefore, was very welcome.

"They take the mare?" he asked, all eagerness."

"N-o," began the Colonel, "but--"

Frank's face fell, instantly, and his shoulders drooped despairingly.

"Then it's all wrong."

"Not yet," said the Colonel, "score again." He raised the telegram and read from it: "'Can't take mare without positive proof that she's all right. Let her run in the Ashland Oaks, to-day. If she wins, we take her.'" The Colonel looked up beamingly. "Do you hear? They take her!"

The condition which, now, the Dyer brothers made, when, before this, they had made none, bothered Frank. The telegram did not elate him quite as much as the old horseman had supposed it would. "Ah, if she wins!"

said he.

Miss Alathea spoke up, eagerly. "Oh, Frank, of course she'll win."

"She's _got_ to win!" exclaimed the Colonel with much emphasis.

Frank was in a pessimistic mood. "I'm not so sure," said he, a little gloomily. The strain of the past days had been a hard trial for the youth. "If that imp of a jockey, Ike, should get in range of a whiskey bottle--however, he has promised not to leave his room."

The Colonel laughed. "Ike leave his room?" he said. "You're right--he won't; but it will not be his promise that will keep him from it. He couldn't leave it if he would."

"Why not?" inquired Miss 'Lethe.

"Because," the Colonel answered, "I have got his clothes!"

"His clothes!" said Frank, astonished.

"Yes--a Napoleonic device. When I went to see him, this morning, I found him in bed. I knew how it might be if he got out, so I saw to it that his meals would reach him promptly, and borrowed the one suit of clothes he brought with him, under pretence of needing them to help me order a new jockey-suit for him to wear in the great race. I've been fair about it, too--I've got the new clothes for him." He pointed to the bundle which he had just brought in. "They're in there--and they'll not disgrace Queen Bess. They're the best I could get."

Frank, less interested in the clothes than in the fact that the jockey, now, was quite secure against temptation, sighed with satisfaction.

"Then he's safe," said he.

The Colonel nodded, notably well satisfied with his performance. Miss Alathea, shocked, as she tried to be, by all this business, adjunct of gambling, every bit of it, yet smiled admiringly at the big horseman.

Only Madge, learned, through much experience with mountaineers, whose greatest curse is whisky, in the ways of men addicted to its use, was not convinced that all was surely well.

"I'd keep a watch on him, just the same," she said. Now that she understood the vast importance of this race to Layson her whole heart was wrapped up in its fortunes. "When a man wants whisky he gener'ly finds a way to git it."

"You're right, Madge," Frank agreed. "I think I'll go and look after him, now."

He started toward the door just as a knock sounded on it. When he opened it he found Horace Holton standing waiting for admittance. The man seemed to be excited.

"I don't want to intrude, sar," said the ex-merchant in slaves, "but I come to tell you what you'd orter know. Th' news of th' fire, last night, hev set ev'rybody wild. They're lookin' to you, sar, to sw'ar out a warrant for Joe Lorey an' set th' sheriff on his track."