The Starbucks Part 12

"Oh, I tell you," the old man declared, shaking his head, "Jim will keep out of trouble as long as he kin; an' I want to say he is givin' me a mighty useful lesson right along now about this time."

"Gracious! Look thar!" Margaret exclaimed.

"Hold on!" Jasper commanded, "don't n.o.body move. Keep right still and don't say a word."

In the door stood a dog, gazing with gla.s.sy stare. Any one could see that is was mad. A tiger leaping forth from a jungle and standing with his eyes ablaze, must be a terrible sight. But the tiger, red tongue out, crouching, eyes like fire, could not inspire more of terror than the dead eye of a mad dog. We know that its tooth, its claw, its very foam means death, lingering, horrible.

"Don't move," commanded Jasper, slowly getting up from the table. There was no weapon within reach. "I'll have to choke him," said the old man.

"If any of you moves a muscle I'll hold you responsible." Gazing into the eyes of the dog, he slowly moved toward the door. Then, making a sudden motion forward, he sprang to one side; and the dog was in the air, and when he came down the old man was upon his back, with hands grasped around his throat. The women shrieked. Jim and Tom sprang forward. "Look out, boys, don't let him scratch you. Here, Jim, grab his hind legs. Mr. Elliott, fetch that handspike from over thar in the corner."

Jim seized the dog's legs and Tom brought the big stick. "Shall I mash his head with it, sir?"

"No. Put it across his neck and then I'll b'ar down on one end an' you on the other an' with a twist Jim kin break his neck. Thar, we air gittin' him." At the proper moment Jim gave the dog an upward twist and there was a snap. They heard his neck break.

"It's all right," said Old Jasper. "Why, you women folks mustn't take on now. Thar are two times when you mustn't take on--when thar's danger and when thar ain't."

"I know he's pizened!" Margaret cried.

"Well, now, don't bet no money on that fur you'll lose it. He didn't tech me."

"Let us thank the Lord," said Jim.

"All right," Jasper replied; "but thar ain't no hurry; the dog's dead."

CHAPTER VII.

NOT SO FAR OUT OF THE WORLD.

Men with guns came down the road, shouting "mad dog." The cry was taken up and it echoed among the hills. In barbaric Europe, when every village was a princ.i.p.ality unto itself, the cry at midnight, summoning men from their beds to butcher or be butchered, could not have been more startling than the noon-tide cry of "mad dog" in rural Tennessee.

Mothers seized their children, fathers caught up guns and axes. The cross-roads merchant slammed his door and locked it. Oxen, catching the alarm, bellowed in the fields.

Starbuck went out into the road to meet the men. "Say," he said, in answer to their shout, "if you air lookin' for a mad dog I kin let you have one cheap. He's round thar."

The dog was dragged away and the community returned to the allegiance which it owed to quietude and laziness; the s.h.i.+ftless lout loitered along the road, and the old woman, on the gray mare, followed by the fuzzy mule colt, carried down to the "commercial emporium," "a settin'

o' goose aigs" to be swopped for a handful of coffee and a lump of brown sugar.

"Ma'm," said Starbuck to Mrs. Mayfield, as he went back into the house, "you see that we don't live so fur outen the world atter all. Of co'se thar air places that have got mo' l'arnin' than we have, but we kin skeer up a mad dog an' git rid o' him as quick as the best of 'em. An' I reckon by this time you find that our affairs ain't so uneventful as you put it. Young feller," he went on, speaking to Tom, "I like the way you acted under fire. Thar was a time when I believed that a feller with store clothes on was easy skeered, and I laughed when I seed 'em j'inin'

the army--'lowed they would w'ar out in a day or two; but they outmarched us fellers that follered the plow an' when the time come they tuck their red medicine an' never whimpered. Ricolleck one little chap that didn't look like he was strong enough to pull up a handful o' white clover--s.n.a.t.c.hed up a flag, b.u.t.ted his way to the front and put his colors on the breastworks o' the inimy."

"I thank you," Tom replied. "But you don't seem to be astonished that the preacher wasn't scared."

"Who, Jim? Oh, no. Jim's a Starbuck."

"Don't make me out any worse than I naturally am, Uncle Jasper," said Jim, smiling in that mild consciousness of humor sometimes necessary and always appropriate to the pulpit.

Mrs. Mayfield smiled upon him, and bade him come with her to the place where the short shade of noon-time was napping on the hill-top. He clutched his hat and followed her and old Jasper snorted. "Follers her like a pet lamb," said the old man to his wife when Tom and Lou also had strolled off. "I mean Jim do. But to tell you the truth she'll never marry him; don't know that he wants her, you understand, but if he do he's in a bad fix. She's good and as putty as a red-bird, but I don't reckon that she'd like to be the wife of a mountain preacher. And come to think about it, I don't see why a woman would want to be the wife of any preacher--much. Not that the preacher wouldn't be good to her, but because she'd be a settin' herse'f up as a mark fur all the other women in the neighborhood. Ef a preacher's wife laugh they say she ain't a takin' no intrust in church work, an' ef she is sorrowful they say it's all put on."

"Jasper, you don't know what you're a talkin' about, but you air puff.e.c.kly nat'ral as long as you're a sayin' suthin' ag'in women. You don't understand 'em at all."

"And ef I did I'd be smarter than old Solomon. He had fo' or five hundred of 'em about him and he didn't understand even the most foolish one of 'em. How air you goin' to understand a critter that don't understand herse'f? But I tell you this here Miz Mayfield is smart--talks like a new book that's got picturs in it."

"Oh! Then I reckon I can't talk at all."

"Have you hearn anybody hint that you can't talk? Did you ever notice that when a man begins to talk about a woman, makes no diffunce who, his wife puts it up that he's a talkin' about her? Did you?"

"No, nor you nuther. Gracious above!--book with picturs in it! But if Jim wants to marry her, why don't he say so? What do he want allus to be a steppin' round her skirts like a frost-bit chicken?"

"Wall, he ain't had time to ax her yit. It took the gospel mo' than a thousand years to reach America, an' we oughtn't to expect preachers to be in a rush."

She scowled at him and he went away, laughing, and she stood in the door, shading her eyes with her hand, watching Tom and Lou as slowly they walked down the road. Over to the right, in the dazzle of the sun, Jim and Mrs. Mayfield were climbing a hill; and reaching the top, she sat down on a rock and bade him sit near her, but he shook his head and said that he preferred to stand where he was, and then, realizing that his remark was abrupt, sat down by her and was silent. At her feet the violets were blooming. There came a breeze, and the blossom of a poplar sapling brushed her face and shed its perfume in her hair.

"In the city all is struggle and plot," she said, and musing for a time in silence, she continued: "But here all seems to be innocence and beauty."

"Not all innocence, ma'm," the preacher replied. "The poisonous insect sometimes lives where the air is sweet. There is no land that is not in need of the doctrine of gentleness. To the lovely eye almost all things may look lovely--"

"Thank you," she broke in.

"Oh, not at all," he replied, unable to remember his ease of a moment ago. "The fact is I don't believe we are goin' to have any rain for some time yet. Needin' it a little, now, too."

"You were talking in a different strain just now and I interrupted you.

I am sorry. Let me lead you back."

"I don't hardly know where I was, ma'm. The fact is, I'm always about half lost when I'm with you."

"Mr. Reverend, don't embarra.s.s me."

"Embarra.s.s you? Ma'm, I haven't had a fight in a good while, but if a feller was to come along and embarra.s.s you, why he'd soon have reason to think that scarlet fever had broke out in the neighborhood."

"Now, please don't talk that way. Let us get back to where we were. You were saying that all lands were in need of the doctrine of gentleness. I suppose it is true, but this land needs only the doctrine while there are others that are in need of the lash--I might say, the sword. I am not as high in the social world as you may suppose, but what I know of society leads me to believe that we polish a barbarism and call it a brilliant grace. Politeness is charming to look at and to hear, but it is the art of telling and acting a lie. Among these hills we hear a laugh and we know that some one is amused. In society we see a smile and we feel that some one is a hypocrite."

"I hope it ain't that bad, ma'm."

"But it is that bad."

"When Uncle Jasper asked you if yo' husband was dead, you said worse than that--divorced. Was he very mean to you, ma'am?"

"He was a brute, Mr. Reverend."

"Did anybody knock him down for you?"

"Oh, no."

"Is he livin'?"

"Yes, I suppose so."