The Bishop of Cottontown Part 4

"To the attic, you mean," said Travis--"where their old clothes are."

Carpenter laughed: "That's it--you all'ers say the k'rect thing. 'N'

as I was sayin'"--he went on--"it is a ground-hog case with 'em. The Major's drunk all the time. His farm an' home'll be sold soon. He's 'bleeged to put 'em in the mill--or the po'-house."

He paused, thinking. Then, "But ain't that Helen about the pretties'

thing you ever seed?" He chuckled. "You're sly--but I seen you givin'

her that airin' behin' Lizette and Sadie B.--"

"You've nothing to do with that," said Travis gruffly. "You want a new girl for our drawing-in machine--the best paying and most profitable place in the mill--off from the others--in a room by herself--no contact with mill-people--easy job--two dollars a day--"

"One dollar--you forgit, suh--one dollar's the reg'lar price, sah,"

interrupted the Whipper-in.

The other turned on him almost fiercely: "Your memory is as weak as your wits--two dollars, I tell you, and don't interrupt me again--"

"To be sho'," said the Whipper-in, meekly--"I did forgit--please excuse me, sah."

"Then, in talking to Conway, you, of course, would draw his attention to the fact that he is to have a nice cottage free of rent--that will come in right handy when he finds himself out in the road--sold out and nowhere to go," he said.

"'N' the commissary," put in Carpenter quietly. "Excuse me, sah, but there's a mighty good bran' of whiskey there, you know!"

Travis smiled good humoredly: "Your wits are returning," he said; "I think you understand."

"I'll see him to-morrow," said Carpenter, rising to go.

"Oh, don't be in a hurry," said Travis.

"Excuse me, sah, but I'm afraid I've bored you stayin' too long."

"Sit down," said the other, peremptorily--"you will need something to help you along the road. Shall we take another?"

So they took yet another drink, and Carpenter went out, calling his dog.

Travis stood in the doorway and watched them go down the driveway.

They both staggered lazily along. Travis smiled: "Both drunk--the dog on ham."

As he turned to go in, he reeled slightly himself, but he did not notice it.

When he came back he was restless. He looked at the clock. "Too early for bed," he said. "I'd give a ten if Charley Biggers were here with his little c.o.c.ktail laugh to try me a game of poker."

Suddenly he went to the window, and taking a small silver whistle from his pocket he blew it toward the stables. Soon afterwards a well dressed mulatto boy entered.

"How are the horses to-night, Jim?" he asked.

"Fine, sir--all eatin' well an' feelin' good."

"And Coquette--the saddle mare?"

"Like split silk, sir."

"Exercise her to-morrow under the saddle, and Sunday afternoon we will give Miss Alice her first ride on her--she's to be a present for her on her birth-day, you know--eh?"

Jim bowed and started out.

"You may fix my bath now--think I'll retire. O Jim!" he called, "see that Antar, the stallion, is securely stalled. You know how dangerous he is."

He was just dozing off when the front door closed with a bang.

Then a metal whip handle thumped heavily on the floor and the jingling of a spur rattled over the hall floor, as Harry Travis boisterously went down the hall, singing tipsily,

"Oh, Johnny, my dear, Just think of your head, Just think of your head In the morning."

Another door banged so loudly it awakened even the setter. The old dog came to the side of the bed and laid his head affectionately in Travis' palm. The master of The Gaffs stroked his head, saying: "It is strange that I love this old dog so."

CHAPTER IV

FOOD FOR THE FACTORY

The next morning being Sat.u.r.day, Carpenter, the Whipper-in, mounted his Texas pony and started out toward the foothills of the mountains.

Upon the pommel of his saddle lay a long single-barreled squirrel gun, for the hills were full of squirrels, and Jud was fond of a tender one, now and then. Behind him, as usual, trotted Bonaparte, his sullen eyes looking for an opportunity to jump on any timid country dog which happened along.

There are two things for which all mills must be prepared--the wear and tear of Time on the machinery--the wear and tear of Death on the frail things who yearly work out their lives before it.

In the fight for life between the machine and the human labor, in the race of life for that which men call success, who cares for the life of one little mill hand? And what is one tot of them from another?

And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a scrawny brood calling ever for bread?

The world knows not--cares not--for its tiny life is but a thread in the warp of the great Drawing-in Machine.

So fearful is the strain upon the nerve and brain and body of the little things, that every year many of them pa.s.s away--slowly, surely, quietly--so imperceptibly that the mill people themselves scarcely miss them. And what does it matter? Are there not hundreds of others, born of ignorance and poverty and pain, to take their places?

And the dead ones--unknown, they simply pa.s.s into a Greater Unknown.

Their places are filled with fresh victims--innocents, whom Pa.s.sion begets with a caress and Cupidity buys with a curse. Children they are--tots--and why should they know that they are trading--life for death?

It was a bright fall morning, and Jud Carpenter rode toward the mountain a few miles away. They are scarcely mountains--these beautifully wooded hills in the Tennessee Valley, hooded by blue in the day and shrouded in somber at night; but it pleases the people who live within the sweet influence of their shadows to call them mountains.

Jud knew where he was going, and he rode leisurely along, revolving in his mind the plan of his campaign. He needed the recruits for the Acme Mills, and in all his past experience as an employment agent he had never undertaken to bring in a family where as much tact and diplomacy was required as in this case.

It was a dilapidated gate at which he drew rein. There had once been handsome pillars of stone and brick, but these had fallen and the gate had been swung on a convenient locust tree that had sprung up and grown with its usual rapidity from its sheltered nook near the crumbling rock wall. Only one end of the gate was hung; and it lay diagonally across the entrance of what had once been a thousand acres of the finest farm in the Tennessee Valley.

Dismounting, Jud hitched his horse and set his gun beside the tree; and as it was easier to climb over the broken-down fence than to lift the gate around, he stepped over and then shuffled along in his lazy way toward the house.

It was an old farmhouse, now devoid of paint; and the path to it had once been a well-kept gravel walk, lined with cedars; but the box-plants, having felt no pruning shears for years, almost filled, with their fantastically jagged boughs, the narrow path, while the cedars tossed about their broken and dead limbs.

The tall, square pillars in the house, from dado above to where they rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them, on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and sombre under the cas.e.m.e.nts.