The Prodigal Judge Part 24

Mahaffy, morose and embittered, regarded the life they were living as an unmixed hardship. The judge entered upon it with infinite zest. He displayed astonishing adaptability, while he brought all the resources of a calm and modest knowledge to bear on the vexed problem of procuring sustenance for himself and for his two companions.

"To an old campaigner like me, nothing could be more delightful than this holiday, coming as it does on the heels of grinding professional activity," he observed to Mahaffy. "This is the way our first parents lived--close to nature, in touch with her gracious beneficence! Sir, this experience is singularly refreshing after twenty years of slaving at the desk. If any man can grasp the possibilities of a likely looking truck-patch at a glance, I am that man, and as for getting around in the dark and keeping the lay of the land--well, I suppose it's my military training. Jackson always placed the highest value on such data as I furnished him. He leaned on me more than any other man, Solomon--"

"I've heard he stood up pretty straight," said Mahaffy affably.

The judge's abandoned conduct distressed him not a little, but his remonstrances had been in vain.

"I consider that when society subjected me to the indignity of arrest, I was relieved of all responsibility. Injustice must bear its own fruit,"

the judge had answered him sternly.

His beginnings had been modest enough: a few ears of corn, a few hills of potatoes, and the like, had satisfied him; then one night he appeared in camp with two streaks of scarlet down the side of his face.

"Are you hurt, Price?" demanded Mahaffy, betraying an anxiety of which he was instantly ashamed.

"Let me relieve your apprehension, Solomon; it's only a trickle of stewed fruit. I folded a couple of pies and put them in the crown of my hat," explained the judge.

"You mean you've been in somebody's springhouse?"

"It was unlocked, Solomon, This will be a warning to the owner. I consider I have done him a kindness."

Thus launched on a career of plunder, the judge very speedily acc.u.mulated a water bucket--useful when one wished to milk a cow--an ax from a woodpile, a kettle from a summer kitchen, a tin of soft soap, and an excellent blanket from a wash-line.

"For the boy, Solomon," he said gently, when he caught Mahaffy's steady disapproving glance fixed upon him as he displayed this last trophy.

"What sort of an example are you setting him?"

"The world is full of examples I'd not recommend, Solomon. One must learn to discriminate. A body can no more follow all the examples than he can follow all the roads, and I submit that the ends of morality can as well be served in showing a child what he should not do as in showing him what he should. Indeed, I don't know but it's the finer educational idea!"

Thereafter the judge went through the land with an eye out for wash-lines.

"I'm looking for a change of linen for the boy, Solomon," he said. "Let me bring you a garment or two. Eh--how few men you'll find of my build; those last shirts I got were tight around the armholes and had no more tail than a rabbit!"

Two nights later Mr. Mahaffy accepted a complete change of under linen, but without visible sign of grat.i.tude.

A night later the judge disappeared from camp, and after a prolonged absence returned puffing and panting with three watermelons, which proved to be green, since his activity had been much in advance of the season.

"I don't suppose there is any greater tax on human ingenuity than to carry three watermelons!" he remarked. "The human structure is ideally adapted to the transportation of two--it can be done with comfort; but when a body tackles three he finds that nature herself is opposed to the proceeding! Well, I am going back for a bee-gum I saw in a fence corner.

Hannibal will enjoy that--a child is always wanting sweets!"

In this fashion they fared gaily across the state, but as they neared the Mississippi the judge began to consider the future. His bright and illuminating intelligence dealt with this problem in all its many-sidedness.

"I wish you'd enter one of the learned professions, Solomon--have you ever thought of medicine?" he inquired. Mr. Mahaffy laughed. "But why not, Solomon? There is nothing like a degree or a t.i.tle--that always stamps a man, gives him standing--"

"What do I know about the human system?"

"I should certainly hope you know as much as the average doctor knows.

We could locate in one of these new towns where they have the river on one side and the ca.n.a.l on the other, and where everybody has the ague--"

"What do I know about medicine?" inquired Mahaffy.

"As much as Aesculapius, no doubt--even he had to make a beginning. The torch of science wasn't lit in a day--you must be willing to wait; but you've got a good sick-room manner. Have you ever thought of opening an undertaker's shop? If you couldn't cure them you might bury them."

A certain hot afternoon brought them into the shaded main street of a straggling village. Near the door of the princ.i.p.al building, a frame tavern, a man was seated, with his feet on the horse-rack. There was no other sign of human occupancy.

"How do you do, sir?" said the judge, halting before this solitary individual whom he conjectured to be the 'landlord. The man nodded, thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his vest. "What's the name of this bustling metropolis?" continued the judge, c.o.c.king his head on one side.

As he spoke, Bruce Carrington appeared in the tavern door; pausing there, he glanced curiously at the shabby wayfarers.

"This is Raleigh, in Shelby County, Tennessee, one of the states of the Union of which, no doubt, you've heard rumor in your wanderings," said the landlord.

"Are you the voice from the tomb?" inquired the judge, in a tone of playful sarcasm.

Carrington, amused, sauntered toward him.

"That's one for you, Mr. Pegloe!" he said.

"I am charmed to meet a gentleman whose spirit of appreciation shows his familiarity with a literary allusion," said the judge, bowing.

"We ain't so dead as we look," said Pegloe. "Just you keep on to Boggs' race-track, straight down the road, and you'll find that out--everybody's there to the hoss-racing and shooting-match. I reckon you've missed the hoss-racing, but you'll be in time for the shooting.

Why ain't you there, Mr. Carrington?"

"I'm going now, Mr. Pegloe," answered Carrington, as he followed the judge, who, with Mahaffy and the boy, had moved off.

"Better stop at Boggs'!" Pegloe called after them.

But the judge had already formed his decision.

Horse-racing and shooting-matches were suggestive of that progressive spirit, the absence of which he had so much lamented at the jail raising at Pleasantville--Memphis was their objective point, but Boggs' became a side issue of importance. They had gained the edge of the village when Carrington overtook them. He stepped to Hannibal's side.

"Here, let me carry that long rifle, son!" he said. Hannibal looked up into his face, and yielded the piece without a word. Carrington balanced it on his big, muscular palm. "I reckon it can shoot--these old guns are hard to beat!" he observed.

"She's the clostest shooting rifle I ever sighted," said Hannibal promptly. "You had ought to see the judge shoot her--my! he never misses!"

Carrington laughed.

"The clostest shooting rifle you ever sighted--eh?" he repeated. "Why, aren't you afraid of it?"

"No," said Hannibal scornfully. "But she kicks you some if you don't hold her right."

There was a rusty name-plate on the stock of the old sporting rifle; this had caught Carrington's eye.

"What's the name here? Oh, Turberville."

The judge, a step or two in advance, wheeled in his tracks with a startling suddenness.

"What?" he faltered, and his face was ashen.

"Nothing, I was reading the name here; it is yours; sir, I suppose?"

said Carrington.