Hoosier Mosaics Part 12

'There he goes! Ketch him, dern him, ketch him!' But they didn't.

"That conductor's name was Fuller, and I swear, stranger, 'at you look jest like him! Gi' me a match, will you, my pipe's out. Thanky. Hope I ha'n't bored you. Good bye all."

He shambled out and I never saw him again.

HOIDEN.

The house was known as Rackenshack throughout the neighborhood for miles around. It was a frame structure, originally of sorry workmans.h.i.+p, at least thirty years old, and upon which not a cent's worth of repairing had been done since first erected, wherefore the name was peculiarly appropriate. It was not only old, rickety, paintless, half rotten and sadly sunken at one end, but the fencing around the place was broken, grown over with weeds, and slanted in as many ways as there were panels.

The lawn or yard in front of the house had some old cherry trees, gnarled and decaying, growing in what had once been straight rows, but storms and more insidious vicissitudes had twisted and curled them about till they looked as though they had been thrown end foremost at the ground hap-hazard. Under and all round these trees young sprouts, from the scattered cherry seeds of many years of fruiting, had grown so thick that one could with difficulty get through them. A narrow, well-beaten path led from the gate, which lazily lolled on one hinge, up to the decayed and sunken porch, in front of which was the well, with its lop-eared windla.s.s and dilapidated curb and shed.

A country thoroughfare, one of the old State roads leading westward to a ferry on the Wabash river near the village of Attica and eastward to either Crawfordsville, Indianapolis or Lafayette. This road was in the direct line of emigration, and in the proper seasons long lines of covered wagons rolled past, the drivers, a jolly set, hallooing to each other and bandying sharp wit and rude sarcasm at the expense of Rackenshack. Poor old house, it leered at the pa.s.sers, with its windows askew, and clattered its loose boards and battered shutters in utter and complacent defiance of all their jeers!

Rackenshack belonged to Luke Plunkett and Betsy, his sister; the latter an old maid beyond all cavil, the former a bachelor of about thirty. The lands of the estate were pretty broad, comprising some two thousand acres of rich prairie and "river bottom" land, which had been kept in a much better state of improvement than the house had. In fact, Luke was considered a careful, industrious, frugal farmer. He had large, well regulated barns and stock sheds and stables--plenty of fine horses, cattle, hogs, sheep and mules, all well fed and cared for, and it was generally understood that he had a pretty round deposit in a bank.

Perhaps 'Squire Rube Fink, sometimes called "the Rev. Major Fink" and sometimes "Talking Rube," gives the best description of Luke's condition, habits and surroundings, that I can offer. It is truthful and singularly graphic. He says:

"Luke Plunkett's no fool if he does live at Rack-a-me-shack and 'spect the ole rotten tabernacle to fall down on him every time a rooster crows close by. That feller's long-headed, he is. To be sure, sartinly, his barn's a dern sight better 'n his house, but his head's level, for, d'ye see, that's the way to make money. A house don't never make no money for a feller--it's nothin' but dead capital to put money into a fine dwellin'. Luke's pilin' his money in the bank. He's been doin' a sharp thing in wheat and live stock at Cincinnati, and I guess he knows what he's about. He don't keer about what sort o' house he lives in. But I tell you that red haired sister o' his'n is lightning. She's what bosses the job all round that ole shanty; but she can't red-hair it over Luke in the farm matters. He has his own way. He's so quiet and peculiar; a still, say nothin', bull-dog sort o' man he is."

Indeed, Luke was one of that quiet sort of men who, without ever once loudly a.s.serting a right or disputing any word you say, invariably go ahead on their own judgment and carry their point in everything.

Nevertheless, he was a man of fine, generous nature at bottom, a good brother and a worthy friend.

But it was with Luke just as it is, more or less, with us all. He absorbed into his life the spirit of his surroundings. He grew somewhat to resemble Rackenshack in outward appearance. He became slovenly in his dress and let his hair and beard grow wild. His naturally handsome face gradually took on a sort of good humored ugliness, and his heavy shoulders slanted over like the uneven gables of his house. He became an inveterate chewer and smoker of tobacco. What time a quid of the weed was not in his mouth, the short thick stem of a dark, nicotine-coated briar-root pipe took its place there.

Luke was an early riser; therefore it happens that our story properly begins on a fine June morning, just before sunrise. The birds seemed to suspect that a story was to date from that hour, for they were up earlier than usual and made a great rustle of wings and a sweet Babel of voices in the old cherry trees. There were the oriole, the cat bird, the yellow throat, the brown thrush and the red bird, all putting forth at once their charmingest efforts. The old cherry trees, knee deep in the foliage of their under growing seedlings, gleamed dusky green in the early light, as Luke, bareheaded, barefooted and in his "s.h.i.+rt sleeves,"

as the phrase goes, issued from the front door of Rackenshack, and walked down the path across the yard to the gate at the road. Of late he had been in the habit of "taking a smoke" the first thing after getting up in the morning, and somehow the gate, though off one hinge and having doubtful tenure of the other, was his favorite thing to lean upon while watching the whiffs of blue smoke slowly float away.

On this particular morning he seemed a little agitated; and, indeed, he was vexed more deeply than he had ever before been. Just the preceding evening he had learned that a corps of civil engineers were rapidly approaching his premises with a line of survey, and that the purpose was to locate and build a railway right through the middle of his farm. To Luke the very idea was outrageous. He felt that he could never stand such an imposition. His land was his own, and when he wanted it dug up and leveled down and a track laid across it he would do it himself. He did not want his farm cut in two, his fields disarranged and his fences moved, nor did he wish to see his live stock killed by locomotives. The truth is he was bitterly opposed to railroads, any how. They were innovations. They were enemies to liberty. They brought fas.h.i.+on, and spendthrift ways, and speculation, and all that along with them. Other folks might have railroads if they wanted them, but they must not bother him with them. He could take care of his affairs without any railroads.

Besides, if he wanted one he could build it. He hung heavily upon the gate, thinking the matter over, and would not have bestowed a second glance at the carriage that came trundling past if he had not caught the starry flash of a pair of blue eyes and a rosy, roguish girl's face within. The beauty of that countenance struck the great rough fellow like a blow. He stared in a dazed, bewildered way. He took his pipe from his mouth and involuntarily tried to hide his great big bare feet behind the gate post. He felt a queer, dreamy thrill steal all over him. It was his first definite impression of feminine beauty. Instantly that round, happy, mischievous face, with its dimples and indescribable s.h.i.+ning lines of half latent mirth, set itself in his heart forever.

The carriage trundled on in the direction of the ferry. Luke followed it with his eyes till it disappeared round a turn in the road; then he put the pipe to his mouth again and began puffing vigorously, wagging his head in a way that indicated great confusion of mind. There are times when a glimpse of a face, the sudden half-mastering of a new, grand idea, a view of a rare landscape or even a cadence in some new tune, will start afresh the long dried up wells of a heart. Something like this had happened to Luke.

"Sich a gal! sich a gal!" he murmured from the corner of his mouth opposite his pipe stem. "I don't guess I'm a dreamin' now, though I feel a right smart like it. I _hev_ dreamed of that 'ere face though, many of times. I've seed it in my sleep a thousand times, but I never s'posed 'at I'd see it sh.o.r.e enough when I'd be awake! Sweetest dreams I ever had--sweetest face G.o.d ever made! I wonder who she is?" As if to supplement Luke's soliloquy at this point, a cardinal red bird flung out from the dusky depths of the oldest cherry tree an ecstatic carol, and a swallow, swooping down from the clear purple heights, almost touched the man's cheek with its s.h.i.+ning wings, and the sun lifted its flaming face in the east and flooded the fields with gold.

Luke turned slowly toward the old house. The breeze that came up with the sun poured through the orchard with a broad, joyous surge, while something like blowing of strange winds and streaming of soft sunlight made strangely happy the inner world of the smitten Hoosier. His big strong heart fluttered mysteriously. He actually took his pipe from his lips and broke into a s.n.a.t.c.h of merry song, that startled Betsy, his sister, from her morning nap.

For the time the hated railroad survey was forgotten. The landscape at Rackenshack, as if by a turn of the great prisms of nature, suddenly took on rainbow hues. The fields flashed with jewels, and the woods, a wall of dusky emerald, were wrapped in a roseate mist, stirred into dreamy motion by the breeze. A light, grateful fragrance seemed to pervade all s.p.a.ce, as if flung from the sun to soften and enhance the charm of his gift of light and heat. Such a hold did all this take upon Luke, and so utterly abstracted was he, that when breakfast was ready Betsy was obliged to remind him of the fact that he had neglected to wash his face and hands, and comb his hair and beard--things absolutely prerequisite to eating at her table.

"Forgot it, sure's the world," said Luke; "don't know what ever possessed me."

"Maybe you've forgot to turn the cows into the milk stalls, too?" said Betsy.

"If I ha'n't I'm a gourd!" and Luke scratched his head distractedly.

"What'd I tell you, Luke Plunkett? It's come at last, O lordy! You're as crazy as a June bug all along of smoking that old pipe! Rot the nasty, stinking old thing! It's a perfect shame, Luke, for a man to just smoke what little brains he's got clean out. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, so you ought!"

While she was speaking Betsy got the big wooden washbowl for her brother, whereupon he proceeded to make his ablutions in a most energetic way, taking up great double handfuls of water and sousing his face therein with loud puffings, that enveloped his head in a cloud of spray.

When a clean tow linen towel had served its purpose, Luke remarked:

"Don't know but what I _am_ some'at crazy in good earnest, Betsy, since I come to think it all over. I'm r'ally onto it a right smart. What'd you think, Betsy, if I'd commence talkin' 'oman to ye?"

"Luke, Luke! are you crazy? Is your mind clean gone out of your poor smoky head?"

"That's not much of a answer to my question."

"Well, what _do_ you mean, _anyhow_?"

"I mean business, that's what!"

"Luke!"

"Yes'm."

"Do try to act sensible now. What is it, Luke? What makes your eyes look so strange and dance about so? What do you mean by all this queer talk?"

Luke finished combing, and, going to the table, sat down and was proceeding to discuss the fried chicken and coffee without further remark, but Betsy was not so easily balked. She, like most red haired women, wished her questions to be fully and immediately answered, wherefore some indications of a storm began to appear.

Luke smiled a quiet little smile that had hard work getting out through his beard. Betsy trotted her foot under the table. Her hand trembled as she poured the coffee--trembled so violently that she scalded her left thumb. It was about time for Luke to speak or have trouble, so, in a very gentle voice, he said:

"Well, I saw a gal--a gal an' her father, I reckon--go by this mornin'."

"Well, what of it? S'pose there's plenty of girls and their fathers, ain't there?" snapped Betsy.

Luke drew a chicken leg through his mouth, laid down the bone, leered comically at his sister from under his bushy eyebrows, and said:

"But the gal was purty, Betsy--purty as a pictur', sweet as a peach, juicy an' temptin' as a ripe, red cored watermillion! You can't begin to guess how sweet an' nice she did look. My heart just flolloped and flopped about, an' it's at it yet!"

"Luke Plunkett, you _are_ crazy! You're just as distracted as a blind dog in high rye. Drink a cup of hot coffee, Luke, and go lie down a bit, you'll feel better." The spinster was horrified beyond measure. She really thought her brother crazy.

The man finished his meal in silence, smiling the while more grimly than before, after which he took his shot gun and a pan of salt and trudged off to a distant field to salt some cattle. He always carried his gun with him on such occasions, and not unfrequently brought back a brace of partridges or some young squirrels. As he strode along, thinking all the time of the girl in the carriage, he suddenly came upon a corps of engineers with transit, level, rod and chain, staking out, through the centre of a choice field, a line of survey for a railroad.

In an instant he was like a roaring lion. He glared for a second or so at the intruders, then lowering his gun he charged them at a run, storming out as he did so:

"What you doin' here, you onery cusses, you! Leave here! Get out!

Scratch! Sift! Dern yer onery skins, I'll shoot every dog of ye! Git out 'n here, I say--out, out!"

The corps stampeded at once. The surveyor seized his transit, the leveller his level, the rod man his rod, the axe men and chain men their respective implements, and away they went, "lick-to-split, like a pa.s.sel o' scart hogs," as Luke afterwards said, "as fast as they could ever wiggle along!"

No wonder they ran, for Luke looked like a demon of destruction. It was a wild race for the line fence, a full half mile away. The leveler, being the hindmost man, rolled over this fence just as a heavy bowlder, hurled by Luke, struck the top rail. It was a close shave, a miss of a hair's breadth, a marvelous escape. Luke rushed up to the fence and glared over at his intended victims. Here he knew he must stop, for he doubted the legality of pursuing them beyond the confines of his own premises. Somewhat out of breath he leaned on the fence and proceeded to swear at the corps individually and collectively, shaking his fists at them excitedly, till the appearance of a new man on the scene made him start and stare as if looking at a ghost. He was a well dressed, gentlemanly appearing person of about the age of forty-five, pale and thoughtful--calm, gray eyed, commanding. Luke recognized him at once as the man he had seen in the carriage, and, indeed, the vehicle itself stood hard by, with a beautiful, laughing, roguish face looking out of one of the windows. The lion in the stalwart farmer was quelled in an instant. He felt his legs grow weak. He set his gun by the fence and touched his hat to the little lady.

"Your name, I believe, is Luke Plunkett?" said the approaching gentleman.

"Yes, sir," said Luke.

"You own two thousand acres of land here?"