Other Main-Travelled Roads Part 37

Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates among her friends and neighbors.

Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.

The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve; it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name was mentioned.

One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats, and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however, but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in very bad humor.

"I want this thing stopped," he said.

Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's pretty hard to keep 'em--"

"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as rotten as a pumpkin."

"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey a.s.sented quickly. "I'm ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you are."

"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle pasturing on my oats."

"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."

"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground and I ain't a-goin' to have it."

Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."

"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.

IV

The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which topped the summit.

Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully gnawing the fresh, green gra.s.s, with the bell, which belonged to the black cow, on her neck.

It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage.

Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up, slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.

Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.

Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular greeting:--

"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two cents."

The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."

"Oh, I guess not."

"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't want trouble."

"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've got in the shop."

At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:--

"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"

"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "_We_ don't take what don't belong to us."

"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking intonation.

Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther on down the path. Jim came closer.

"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather cent I'd lick you like h.e.l.l!"

"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."

"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to Jim, "or I'll take a hand."

Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about his a.s.sailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to strangle him. He meant murder.

Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.

"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound, and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as grappling bull-dogs.

Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.

He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.

Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower valley, and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r cried resoundingly.

"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.

Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly a.s.sumed new meaning.

"_Ah, woe, woe is me!_" it cried.

"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.

Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.

At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.

He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood.

"How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.

"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."

Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.

"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.