Lewis Rand | Page 4

too fond of that
word," he exclaimed, with some sternness. "All the wolves that the
Rands ever hunted have somehow got into their blood. Suppose you try
a little unlearning? Great lawyers and great men and great conquerors
and good hunters don't kill their fathers, Lewis,--no, nor any other man,
excepting always in fair fight."
"I know--I know!" said Lewis. "Of course he's my father. But I never
could stand for any one to get in my way!"
"That's just what the rattlesnake says--and after a while nobody does
get in his way. But he must be a lonely creature."
"Do you think," asked the boy oddly,--"do you think I am really like
that,--like a rattlesnake?"
Adam gave his mellow laugh. "No, I don't. I think you are just a poor
human. I was always powerfully fond of you, Lewis,--and I never could
abide a rattler! There's the moon, and it's a long march to-morrow, and
folks sit up late in Richmond! Unroll the blankets, and let's to bed."
The boy obeyed, and the two lay down with the fire between them. The
man's thoughts went back to the Mississippi, to cane-brakes and bayous
and long levees; and the boy's mind perused the road before him.
"When I get to Richmond," he suddenly announced, "I am going to find
a place where they sell books. I have a dollar."
The hunter put his hand in his pouch, drew out a shining coin, and
tossed it across the fire. "There's another," he said. "Good Spanish! Buy
your Cæsars and your Pompeys, and when you are a lawyer like Mr.
Jefferson, come West--come West!"

Men and beasts slumbered through the autumn night, waked at dawn,
and, breakfast eaten, took again the road. Revolving cask, horses, dogs,
and men, they crossed the wet sedge and entered the pine wood, left
that behind and traversed a waste of scrub and vine, low hills, and
rain-washed gullies. Chinquapin bushes edged the road, the polished
nut dark in the centre of each open burr; the persimmon trees showed
their fruit, red-gold from the first frosts; the black haw and cedar
overhung the ravines; there was much sassafras, and along the plashy
streams the mint grew thick and pungent-sweet. In the deep and pure
blue sky above them, fleecy clouds went past like galleons in a
trade-wind.
The tobacco-roller was a taciturn man, and the boy, his son, never
thought of disburdening his soul to his father. Each had the power to
change for the other the aspect of the world, but they themselves were
strangers. Gideon Rand, as he rode, thought of the bright leaf in the
cask, of the Richmond warehouse, and fixed the price in his mind. His
mind was in a state of sober jubilation. His only brother, a lonely,
unloved, and avaricious merchant in a small way, had lately died, and
had left him money. The hundred acres upon the Three-Notched Road
that Gideon had tilled for another were in the market. The money
would buy the land and the small, dilapidated house already occupied
by the Rands. The purchase was in train, and in its own fashion
Gideon's sluggish nature rejoiced. He was as land-mad as any other
Virginian, but he had neither a lavish hand nor a climbing eye. What he
loved was the black earth beneath the tobacco, and to walk between the
rows and feel the thick leaves. For him it sufficed to rise at dawn and
spend the day in the fields overseeing the hands, to come home at dusk
to a supper of corn bread and bacon, to go to bed within the hour and
sleep without a dream until cockcrow, to walk the fields again till dusk
and supper-time. Church on Sunday, Charlottesville on Court Days,
Richmond once a year, varied the monotony. The one passion, the one
softness, showed in his love for horses. He broke the colts for half the
county; there was no horse that he could not ride, and his great form
and coal-black locks were looked for and found at every race. The mare
that he was riding he had bought with his legacy, before he bought the
land on the Three-Notched Road. He was now considering whether he

could afford to buy in Richmond a likely negro to help him and Lewis
in the fields. With all the stubbornness of a dull mind, he meant to keep
Lewis in the fields. Long ago, when he was a handsome young giant,
he had married above him. His wife was a beautiful and spirited woman,
and when she married the son of her father's tenant, it was with every
intention of raising him to her own level in life. But he was the stronger,
and he dragged her down to his. As her