A Blackjack Bargainer

Edition and rights: Complete original English text from Project Gutenberg ebook #1595. This edition is identified as public domain in the USA; the original author died in 1910, satisfying the ordinary Pakistan copyright term. This is the original work, not an AI retelling.

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A BLACKJACK BARGAINER


The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree
himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. The rickety little
office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—the main
street of the town of Bethel.

Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the
mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba
gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.

The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid
shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his
chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury
room, where the “court-house gang” was playing poker. From the open
back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy
lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree
all he ever had—first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the
old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and
manhood. The “gang” had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned
drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men
who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no
longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself
accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker.
The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a
chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the
sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.

Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office,
muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway.
After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had
flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out
at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he
saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which
he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud
between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees
survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the
Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left—Colonel Abner
Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State
Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree’s father. The feud had been
a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong
and slaughter.

But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was
hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself
and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen
to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—but whiskey they
would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was
extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a
borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would
be from lack of opportunity. One more chance—he was saying to
himself—if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win;
but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than
exhausted.

He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man
to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There
had come from “back yan’” in the mountains two of the strangest
creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. “Back yan’,” with a
wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the
mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed
gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf’s den, and the boudoir of
the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack’s shoulder, in the wildest
part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years.
They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the
hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had
dealt with him pronounced him “crazy as a loon.” He acknowledged no
occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he “moonshined”
occasionally by way of diversion. Once the “revenues” had dragged him
from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he
had been sent to state’s prison for two years. Released, he popped back
into his hole like an angry weasel.

Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into
Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.

One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd
prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey’s cabin. Pike lifted his
squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on
the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the
unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence
of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the
Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their
thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a
mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica
underlying the said property.

When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered
in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow
prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to
set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a
certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small
cannon—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in
price—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible
trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers
forever.

But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the
applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an
ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs.
Garvey’s bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty
years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been
the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing
among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of
vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the
means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of
her sex—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the
hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly
vetoed Pike’s proposed system of fortifications, and announced that
they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.

And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of
Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey’s preference for one of
the large valley towns and Pike’s hankering for primeval solitudes.
Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions
comportable with Martella’s ambitions, and was not entirely without
recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting
advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make
it advisable.

Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree’s
feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old
Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the
spendthrift’s shaking hands.

Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees
sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by
the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his
fathers.

A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with
something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the
cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a
slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the
middle of the street as it neared Goree’s office, and stopped in the
gutter directly in front of his door.

On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth,
his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was
a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in
a skin-tight silk dress of the description known as “changeable,” being
a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a
much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street.
However Martella Garvey’s heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of
her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had
carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had
imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his
hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings
were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain-side. She
could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the
stillest of nights.

Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only
faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his
whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose
unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the
transformed, the recently civilized.

The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts
upon Garvey’s soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man’s
countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile
as a statue’s. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to
the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account
for the visit.

“Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?” he inquired.

“Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me
with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo’ old place, and she likes the
neighbourhood. Society is what she ’lows she wants, and she is gettin’
of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to
see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The
best folks hev axed her to differ’nt kinds of doin’s. I cyan’t say, Mr.
Goree, that sech things suits me—fur me, give me them thar.” Garvey’s
huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains.
“That’s whar I b’long, ’mongst the wild honey bees and the b’ars. But
that ain’t what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar’s somethin’ you got
what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy.”

“Buy!” echoed Goree. “From me?” Then he laughed harshly. “I reckon you
are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold
out to you, as you yourself expressed it, ‘lock, stock and barrel.’
There isn’t even a ramrod left to sell.”

“You’ve got it; and we ’uns want it. ‘Take the money,’ says Missis
Garvey, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”

Goree shook his head. “The cupboard’s bare,” he said.

“We’ve riz,” pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object, “a
heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner
every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society.
But there’s somethin’ we need we ain’t got. She says it ought to been
put in the ’ventory ov the sale, but it tain’t thar. ‘Take the money,
then,’ says she, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”

“Out with it,” said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient.

Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing
his unblinking eyes upon Goree’s.

“There’s a old feud,” he said distinctly and slowly, “’tween you ’uns
and the Coltranes.”

Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious
breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from “back yan’” knew it as
well as the lawyer did.

“Na offense,” he went on “but purely in the way of business. Missis
Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the
mountains hev ’em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the
Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin’ on feuds f’om
twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo’ uncle,
Jedge Paisley Goree, ’journed co’t and shot Len Coltrane f’om the
bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f’om the po’ white trash. Nobody
wouldn’t pick a feud with we ’uns, no mo’n with a fam’ly of tree-toads.
Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We ’uns ain’t
quality, but we’re buyin’ into it as fur as we can. ‘Take the money,
then,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy Mr. Goree’s feud, fa’r and
squar’.’”

The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a
roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.

“Thar’s two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree; what you would call a fa’r
price for a feud that’s been ’lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar’s
only you left to cyar’ on yo’ side of it, and you’d make mighty po’
killin’. I’ll take it off yo’ hands, and it’ll set me and Missis Garvey
up among the quality. Thar’s the money.”

The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself,
writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed
Garvey’s last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house
could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot,
for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated
across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood
on Goree’s brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from
under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.

“A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about—what
you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn’t it? Feuds. Prime,
two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged—two hundred, I believe you
said, Mr. Garvey?”

Goree laughed self-consciously.

The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky
without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded
the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and
took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and
taste.

“Two hundred,” repeated Garvey. “Thar’s the money.”

A sudden passion flared up in Goree’s brain. He struck the table with
his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He
flinched as if something had stung him.

“Do you come to me,” he shouted, “seriously with such a ridiculous,
insulting, darned-fool proposition?”

“It’s fa’r and squar’,” said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out
his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own
flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at
himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were
being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman
to an anxious chafferer recommending his goods.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Garvey,” he said, his face crimson and his speech
thick. “I accept your p-p-proposition, though it’s dirt cheap at two
hundred. A t-trade’s all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are
s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?”

Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. “Missis Garvey will be
pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a
scrap ov writin’, Mr. Goree, you bein’ a lawyer, to show we traded.”

Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his
moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.

“Bill of sale, by all means. ‘Right, title, and interest in and to’ . .
. ‘forever warrant and—’ No, Garvey, we’ll have to leave out that
‘defend,’” said Goree with a loud laugh. “You’ll have to defend this
title yourself.”

The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him,
folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.

Goree was standing near the window. “Step here,” he said, raising his
finger, “and I’ll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he
goes, down the other side of the street.”

The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in
the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect,
portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long,
double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high
silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree
glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here
was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the
moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.

“Is that him? Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary
once!”

“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the
way, he’s a first-class shot.”

“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey. “So that
thar’s Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin’. I’ll take
keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better’n you ever did!”

He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight
perplexity.

“Anything else to-day?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. “Any family
traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low
as the lowest.”

“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that
Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of. ’Tain’t so much in my line as t’other,
but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was
willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’ Thar’s a buryin’
groun’, as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the
cedars. Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the
Coltranes. The monyments has the names on ’em. Missis Garvey says a
fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality. She says ef we git the
feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it. The names on them
monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by—”

“Go! Go!” screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out
both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. “Go,
you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his
ancestors—go!”

The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he
was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish
celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the
vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown
wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the
court-house.

At three o’clock in the morning they brought him back to his office,
shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county
clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man “from the
valley” acting as escort.

“On the table,” said one of them, and they deposited him there among
the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.

“Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he’s liquored up,” sighed
the sheriff reflectively.

“Too much,” said the gay attorney. “A man has no business to play poker
who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped to-night.”

“Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had
a cent fur over a month, I know.”

“Struck a client, maybe. Well, let’s get home before daylight. He’ll be
all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the
cranium.”

The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye
to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through
the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint
gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching,
white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the
table’s débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement
dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his
eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking
higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly,
smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.

A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to
make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of
these two families faced each other in peace. Goree’s eyelids puckered
as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he
smiled serenely.

“Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?” he said calmly.

“Do you know me, Yancey?” asked Coltrane.

“Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end.”

So he had—twenty-four years ago; when Yancey’s father was his best
friend.

Goree’s eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. “Lie
still, and I’ll bring you some,” said he. There was a pump in the yard
at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the
click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane
brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink.
Presently Goree sat up—a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax
soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He
tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel.

“Ex-excuse—everything, will you?” he said. “I must have drunk too much
whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table.” His brows knitted
into a puzzled frown.

“Out with the boys awhile?” asked Coltrane kindly.

“No, I went nowhere. I haven’t had a dollar to spend in the last two
months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual.”

Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder.

“A little while ago, Yancey,” he began, “you asked me if I had brought
Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren’t quite awake then, and must
have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want
you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old
playmate, and to my old friend’s son. They know that I am going to
bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome
as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay
until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard
of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we
agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will
you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with
me?”

“Trouble!” said Goree, opening his eyes wide. “There was never any
trouble between us that I know of. I’m sure we’ve always been the best
friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am—a
drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler—”

He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin
tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked
to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple
mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting
upon the genuineness of the invitation.

Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in
the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber
from a high mountain-side to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once
invented a device for this purpose—a series of slides and chutes upon
which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow,
delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread
upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in
demonstration of what he could and would do.

The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again
toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his
thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like
carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the
progress he had made.

Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a
Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by
side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down
across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had
brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he
was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the
contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood,
relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his
equilibrium.

Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a
collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The
colonel, foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of
whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it
almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and
by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he
pulled up his horse suddenly, and said:

“I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I
get that money?”

“Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We’ll go
fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping
there like bullfrogs. We’ll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a
picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham
sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?”

Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so
Goree retired again into brooding silence.

By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between
Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree
place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road
was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The
tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom.
The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopæia. The glades were dark with
mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and
laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage,
exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.

Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the
spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of
Painter’s Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and
Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock
he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to
him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the
music of “Home, Sweet Home.”

They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there
to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was
a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream.
Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house
was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the
fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense.
At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and
saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with
pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent
swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple
orchard in the direction of the house, zig-zagging among the trees.

“That’s Garvey,” said Coltrane; “the man you sold out to. There’s no
doubt but he’s considerably cracked. I had to send him up for
moonshining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I
believed him irresponsible. Why, what’s the matter, Yancey?”

Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. “Do I
look queer, too?” he asked, trying to smile. “I’m just remembering a
few more things.” Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. “I
recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars.”

“Don’t think of it,” said Coltrane cheerfully. “Later on we’ll figure
it all out together.”

They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill
Goree stopped again.

“Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?” he
asked. “Sort of foolish proud about appearances?”

The colonel’s eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of
flax and the faded slouch hat.

“It seems to me,” he replied, mystified, but humouring him, “I remember
a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair,
and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge.”

“Right you are,” said Goree eagerly. “And it’s in me yet, though it
don’t show. Oh, I’m as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as
Lucifer. I’m going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a
little matter.”

“Speak out, Yancey. We’ll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue
Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella’s
peacock’s tail to wear in your hat.”

“I’m in earnest. In a few minutes we’ll pass the house up there on the
hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a
century. Strangers live there now—and look at me! I am about to show
myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar.
Colonel Coltrane, I’m ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your
coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a
foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I
pass the old place.”

“Now, what does this mean?” said Coltrane to himself, as he compared
his companion’s sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange
request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as
if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.

The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him
with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly
the same size—rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were
between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree
looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel
had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on
Goree’s disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.

“Now,” said Goree, taking up the reins, “I’m all right. I want you to
ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can
get a good look at me. They’ll see I’m no back number yet, by any
means. I guess I’ll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow.
Let’s ride on.”

He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he
had been requested.

Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were
turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and
hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself,
“Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?”

It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he
saw what he had been looking for—a puff of white smoke, coming from the
thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that
Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with
one arm.

The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet
where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would
pass—through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane’s black frock coat.

Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses
kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel’s arm kept him steady. The
little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile
away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon
Coltrane’s fingers, which held his bridle.

“Good friend,” he said, and that was all.

Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering
all things, the best showing that was in his power.


XVI