Windy McPhersons Son | Page 9

He
can't blow a bugle; I know he can't. The whole town will have another

laugh at our expense."
Jane McPherson listened in silence to the boy's outburst, then, turning,
went back to rubbing clothes, avoiding his eyes.
With his hands thrust into his trousers pocket Sam stared sullenly at the
ground. A sense of justice told him not to press the matter, but as he
walked away from the washtub and out at the kitchen door, he hoped
there would be plain talk of the matter at supper time. "The old fool!"
he protested, addressing the empty street. "He is going to make a show
of himself again."
When Windy McPherson came home that evening, something in the
eyes of the silent wife, and the sullen face of the boy, startled him. He
passed over lightly his wife's silence but looked closely at his son. He
felt that he faced a crisis. In the emergency he was magnificent. With a
flourish, he told of the mass meeting, and declared that the citizens of
Caxton had arisen as one man to demand that he take the responsible
place as official bugler. Then, turning, he glared across the table at his
son.
Sam, openly defiant, announced that he did not believe his father
capable of blowing a bugle.
Windy roared with amazement. He rose from the table declaring in a
loud voice that the boy had wronged him; he swore that he had been for
two years bugler on the staff of a colonel, and launched into a long
story of a surprise by the enemy while his regiment lay asleep in their
tents, and of his standing in the face of a storm of bullets and blowing
his comrades to action. Putting one hand on his forehead he rocked
back and forth as though about to fall, declaring that he was striving to
keep back the tears wrenched from him by the injustice of his son's
insinuation and, shouting so that his voice carried far down the street,
he declared with an oath that the town of Caxton should ring and echo
with his bugling as the sleeping camp had echoed with it that night in
the Virginia wood. Then dropping again into his chair, and resting his
head upon his hand, he assumed a look of patient resignation.

Windy McPherson was victorious. In the little house a great stir and
bustle of preparation arose. Putting on his white overalls and forgetting
for the time his honourable wounds the father went day after day to his
work as a housepainter. He dreamed of a new blue uniform for the
great day and in the end achieved the realisation of his dreams, not
however without material assistance from what was known in the house
as "Mother's Wash Money." And the boy, convinced by the story of the
midnight attack in the woods of Virginia, began against his judgment to
build once more an old dream of his father's reformation. Boylike, the
scepticism was thrown to the winds and he entered with zeal into the
plans for the great day. As he went through the quiet residence streets
delivering the late evening papers, he threw back his head and revelled
in the thought of a tall blue- clad figure on a great white horse passing
like a knight before the gaping people. In a fervent moment he even
drew money from his carefully built-up bank account and sent it to a
firm in Chicago to pay for a shining new bugle that would complete the
picture he had in his mind. And when the evening papers were
distributed he hurried home to sit on the porch before the house
discussing with his sister Kate the honours that had alighted upon their
family.
* * * * *
With the coming of dawn on the great day the three McPhersons
hurried hand in hand toward Main Street. In the street, on all sides of
them, they saw people coming out of houses rubbing their eyes and
buttoning their coats as they went along the sidewalk. All of Caxton
seemed abroad.
In Main Street the people were packed on the sidewalk, and massed on
the curb and in the doorways of the stores. Heads appeared at windows,
flags waved from roofs or hung from ropes stretched across the street,
and a great murmur of voices broke the silence of the dawn.
Sam's heart beat so that he was hard put to it to keep back the tears
from his eyes. He thought with a gasp of the days of anxiety that had
passed when the new bugle had not come from the Chicago company,
and in retrospect he suffered again the horror of the days of waiting. It

had been all important. He could not blame his