Prairie Folks Part 26

"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that dancing-match now."

Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers were bagged at the knee, and his red woolen stockings showed between the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon-legs; and his coat, utterly characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders, and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of the old-fashioned sort.

"_Farrm_ on," he cried, and the fiddler struck out the first note of the Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a weather-beaten pine-tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.

The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.

"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he danced a final break-down to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he was unsubdued.

IV.

But these rare days pa.s.sed away. As the country grew older it lost the wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls--his music was too monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he broke out to some of the old neighbors in protest against the changes.

"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."

As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his uncleanly habits of spitting and his tiresome stories. Many of the old neighbors had died or moved away, and the young people had gone West or to the cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the fall hog-killing.

"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.

Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I s'pose."

"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes, sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"

Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it all.

"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A gol-dum leetle, nasty, ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife, she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen again, sir; no, sir."

His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only tw.a.n.g a little on the strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the ax and lamed himself for life.

As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard thing to put up with.

"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an ax in up to the maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended, with a groan.

As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that brought the ax down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.

It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.

A man like this lives so much in the flesh that when his limbs begin to fail him, everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think and to tremble.

When he was able to crawl about again, he was not the same man. He was gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He ain't dangerous 'tall," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously ill.

Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.

Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.

In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit: "I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."

The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.

"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."

"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said, in horror. But Bill drew the bow across the strings in the same way that Daddy always did when tuning up.

He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated left hand and burst into tears.

"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor right off."

"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.

And the old lady, moving about without pa.s.sion and without speech, seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his throat.

The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into the room.

"Come over there, all of you; we want you."

They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"

"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed by Mr. Jennings and Milton.

While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.

"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course, he'd gone to bed all right, but when I was going out to the barn I stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so't we wouldn't hear him."

"I da.s.sn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest slumped down in a chair an set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I come over to see you."

Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed himself was horrible and seemed impossible.

The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.

There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his vast, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium, not suicide.

There was a sort of majesty in the figure half-buried in the snow. His hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as if he had fancied Death coming and had gone defiantly forth to meet him.

PART IX.

THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S: DANCING THE "WEEVILY WHEAT."

"Good night, Lettie!"

"Goodnight, Ben!"

(The moon is sinking at the west.) "Good night, my sweetheart." Once again The parting kiss, while comrades wait Impatient at the roadside gate, And the red moon sinks beyond the west.