A Son of the Hills | Page 8

fail.
"There be some right good horses down to The Forge," Tansey Moore ventured after a while.
"It's a blamed risky thing, though," said Mason Hope, "to let a--lady drive 'em. I've allus noticed that a woman is more sot on gittin' where she wants to git--than to considering how to git there. It's mighty risky to trust horseflesh to a female. They seem to reckon all horses is machines."
"I've seen men as didn't know a hoss from a steam engine," Norman Teale broke in, glancing sharply at Moore. "Times is when a hoss has to be sacrificed to man--but I reckon The Forge folks was taking some risks when they-all hired out a team to a stranger."
"That stranger," said Greeley, hitting the nail on the head with a violence that brought his audience to an upright position, "ain't nothing short of, to my mind, than"--he glanced at Teale--"well, she ain't, and that's my opinion! She comes loaded with facts up to her teeth. Knows all the names, and says she's going to settle down over to Trouble Neck and--live along with us-all quite a spell. Weak lungs and all, but she's a right new brand."
"Hell!" ejaculated Teale, springing to his feet. "If the government has got so low that it has to trifle with ladies--it's in a bad way. I reckon I better git a-moving. Any mail, Tod? I take it right friendly that you give me this hint. A lady may be hard to handle in some ways, but we-all can at least know where she is--that's something."
After the departure of Teale the club fell into moody gloom. It was always upsetting to have outside interference with their affairs. Even if Teale wasn't arrested the whiskey would be limited for a time, and that was a drawback to manly rights.
Andrew Townley fell into an audible doze; he was the oldest inhabitant and a respected citizen. He was given to periods of senile dementia preceded or followed by flashes of almost superhuman intelligence. There were times when, arousing suddenly from sleep, he would bring some startling memory with him that would electrify his hearers. He was an institution and a relic--every one revered him and looked to his simple comfort. Suddenly now, as the dense silence enveloped the club, old Andrew awoke and remarked vividly:
"I was a-dreaming of Theodore Starr!"
"Now what in thunder!" cried Tod Greeley, who had purposely refrained from mentioning some part of his late visitor's conversation,--"what made you think of--Theodore Starr?"
"I reckon," whined the trembling old voice, "that it was 'long o' Liza Hope. I was a-passing by and I heard her calling on God-a'mighty to stand by her in her hour. Theodore Starr was mighty pitiful of women in their hours."
Mason Hope felt called upon, at this, to explain and apologize. He did so with the patient air of one detached and disdainful.
"Liza do make a powerful scene when she is called to pass through her trial. This is her ninth, and I done urged her to act sensible, but when I saw how it was going with her, I just left her to reason it out along her own lines. Sally Taber is sitting 'long of her ready to help when the time comes. I done all I could." Tansey Moore nodded significantly. He had an unreasonable wife of his own, and he had no sympathy with women in their "hours."
"Theodore Starr, he done say," Townley was becoming lachrymose, "that women got mighty nigh to God when they reached up to Him in their trial and offered life for a life. He done say if God didn't forgive a woman every earthly thing for such suffering, he was no good God. He done say that to me onct."
"That be plain blasphemy," Tansey Moore remarked. "I reckon he was a right poor parson. The religion he doctored with was all soothin' syrup and mighty diluted at that, where women was concerned. I never trusted that Yankee."
"The women, children, and old folks counted some on him in his day." Greeley was getting interested in this heretofore myth. Moore nodded his head suspiciously.
"They sho' did, and a mess they made of it. Did you ever hear 'bout his mix-up with the Walden girls?"
Greeley never had and, as the last Walden "girl" was a woman of sixty and over, he looked puzzled.
"Miss Ann, her as is now, was considerable older than Theodore Starr, but she shined up to him and let him lead her about considerable--some said him and her was--engaged to marry. Then there was the Walden girl as isn't now, her they called Queenie. She was a right pert little thing what growed into a woman like a Jonas gourd, sudden and startling! That was the summer that young Lansing Hertford came back to the old home place