The Starbucks | Page 8

flock. There's
many a poor old man tottering along that needs me to help him walk."
"That's a fact," said Starbuck, and turning to Mrs. Mayfield he
continued: "He settles nearly all their troubles, ma'm; he's not only their
church but their cou't house. I've seed him preach the gospel with one
hand and with the other one tear up a lawsuit."
Lou, standing on a chair, had taken down an old gun which rested upon
deer horns above the fire place, and was exhibiting it to Tom. "My
great grandfather carried it at the battle of New Orleans," she said; and
reverently the young man took the gun and pressed the butt to his
shoulder, taking aim. "No wonder our country has a spirit that can't be
crushed," he remarked, lowering the ancient war hound and looking
into its black mouth.
"When we've got such guns?" she said, smiling down upon him, still
standing on the chair.
"No, not such guns but men who do such deeds and women who are
proud of them."
Jasper looked round and saw that the young man in his carelessness had
the gun pointed at him. "Here," he called, "turn that thing tuther way."

"Why it isn't loaded, is it?" Tom asked, returning the gun to Lou.
"No, but them's the sort that usually goes off and kills folks. Thar's an
old sayin', ma'm," he said to Mrs. Mayfield, "that thar's danger in a gun
without lock, stock, or barrel--you kin w'ar a feller out with the
ram-rod."
Lou replaced the gun and sat down. Tom stood over her, slily showing
her some verses. Mrs. Mayfield, glancing round, understood that it was
a "poetic situation," and remarked to Jasper. "Just now we were
speaking of trouble. Heart-hunger is the real poetry of
life--heart-hunger and heart-ache; our pleasures are but jingling
rhymes."
Jasper and his wife exchanged glances, and the old man said: "Husband
dead, ma'm?"
"Worse than that, Mr. Starbuck."
"Why, ain't that awful," Margaret declared.
Jasper studied for a few moments and then inquired: "Wan't hung, was
he?"
She shook her head, sighed and made answer: "We were divorced."
Then the old man thought to be consoling. "Well, let us hope that you
won't marry him over ag'in."
"No, his heart is black."
"There is a fountain where it may be made white," said the preacher.
Sadly she smiled at him and replied: "To that fountain he would never
go."
Old Jasper jingled and clanked the iron of his harness. "I don't know
much about fountains," said he, "but I know a good deal about men,
and I never seed one with a black heart that ever had it washed out

clean. I never knowd a scoundrel that wan't allus a scoundrel, and the
Book don't say that the Savior died for scoundrels--died for sinners. A
sinner kin be a fust-rate feller, full o' that weakness that helps a wretch
outen trouble. The Savior knowed that and died for him."
Margaret slammed her pan of turnips down upon the table. "Oh,
sometimes I'm so put out with you."
"Yes," drawled the old man, "and old Miz Eve was put out with Adam,
too, but atter all the best thing she could do, was to stick to him and go
whar he went."
"Oh, of course," said Margaret. "The only use a man ever has for the
Bible is to hit a woman with it." She went over to a safe, looking back
at her husband who stood watching her, his droll countenance lighted
with a humorous grin; she began to mix meal in a pan, stirring
vigorously to make up corn pone, throwing in water with a dash. Tom
and Lou were still engaged with the verses.
"What is this line?" she asked.
"'Her eye a star of heart's most gleaming hope,'" he read, and she purred
like a kitten.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"Why, er--it means all sorts of things."
"It sounds like things you find in a book, but this is in writin', isn't it?
And--and it smells like a violet in the woods."
"What have they got thar, a mortgage?" Jasper inquired of Mrs.
Mayfield.
"The beginning of many a mortgage, Mr. Starbuck; some verses."
"Huh," grunted the old man, "I don't reckon they are like some verses I
had not long ago. Had a lawsuit befo' a jestice of the peace and they
called it Starbuck verses Brown."

Margaret ceased her work of mixing corn pone and looked round at
him. "Jasper, anybody to hear you talk would think you don't know
nuthin'."
"Well," Starbuck replied, "that's the way to find out that a man don't
know nuthin'--by hearin' him talk. Feller over the mountains had a son
that was deef and dumb for twenty-odd year. Everybody lowed he