A Man for the Ages Part 19

"You look like a walking checkerboard," said she, stopping her pony.

"This--this is my new suit," Harry answered, looking down at it.

"It's a tiresome suit," said she impaciently. "I've been playing checkers on it since I caught sight o' you, and I've got a man crowned in the king row."

"I thought you'd like it," he answered, quite seriously, and with a look of disappointment. "Say, I've got that razor and I've shaved three times already."

He took the razor from his pocket and drew it from its case and proudly held it up before her.

"Don't tell anybody," he warned her. "They'd laugh at me. They wouldn't know how I feel."

"I won't say anything," she answered. "I reckon I ought to tell you that I don't love you--not so much as I did anyway--not near so much. I only love you just a wee little bit now."

It is curious that she should have said just that. Her former confession had only been conveyed by the look in her eyes at sundry times and by unpremeditated acts in the hour of his peril.

Harry's face fell.

"Do you--love--some other man?" he asked.

"Yes--a regular man--mustache, six feet tall and everything. I just tell you he's purty!"

"Is it that rich feller from St. Louis?" he asked.

She nodded and then whispered: "Don't you tell."

The boy's lips trembled when he answered. "I won't tell. But I don't see how you can do it."

"Why?"

"He drinks and he keeps slaves and beats them with a bull whip. He isn't respectable."

"That's a lie," she answered quickly. "I don't care what you say."

Bim touched her pony with the whip and rode away.

Harry staggered for a moment as he went on. His eyes filled with tears.

It seemed to him that the world had been ruined. On his way to the village he tried and convicted it of being no fit place for a boy to live in. Down by the tavern he met Abe, who stopped him.

"Howdy, Harry!" said Abe. "You look kind o' sick. Come into the store and sit down. I want to talk to you."

Harry followed the big man into Offut's store, flattered by his attention. There had been something very grateful in the sound of Abe's voice and the feel of his hand. The store was empty.

"You and I mustn't let ourselves be worried by little matters," said Abe, as they sat down together by the fire. "Things that seem to you to be as big as a mountain now will look like a mole hill in six months. You and I have got things to do, partner. We mustn't let ourselves be fooled. I was once in a boat with old Cap'n Chase on the Illinois River. We had got into the rapids. It was a narrow channel in dangerous water. They had to keep her headed just so or we'd have gone on the rocks. Suddenly a boy dropped his apple overboard and began to holler. He wanted to have the boat stopped. For a minute that boy thought his apple was the biggest thing in the world. We're all a good deal like him. We keep dropping our apples and calling for the boat to stop. Soon we find out that there are many apples in the world as good as that one. You have all come to a stretch of bad water up at your house. The folks have been sick. They're a little lonesome and discouraged. Don't you make it any harder by crying over a lost apple. Ye know it's possible that the apple will float along down into the still water where you can pick it up by and by. The important thing is to keep going ahead."

This bit of fatherly counsel was a help to the boy.

"I've got a book here that I want you to read," Abe went on. "It is the _Life of Henry Clay_. Take it home and read it carefully and then bring it back and tell me what you think of it. You may be a Henry Clay yourself by and by. The world has something big in it for every one if he can only find it. We're all searching--some for gold and some for fame. I pray G.o.d every day that He will help me to find my work--the thing I can do better than anything else--and when it is found help me to do it. I expect it will be a hard and dangerous search and that I shall make mistakes. I expect to drop some apples on my way. They'll look like gold to me, but I'm not going to lose sight of the main purpose."

When Harry got home he found Sarah sewing by the fireside, with Joe and Betsey playing by the bed. Samson had gone to the woods to split rails.

"Any mail?" Sarah asked.

"No mail," he answered.

Sarah went to the window and stood for some minutes looking out at the plain. Its sere gra.s.ses, protruding out of the snow, hissed and bent in the wind. In its cheerless winter colors it was a dreary thing to see.

"How I long for home!" she exclaimed, as she resumed her sewing by the fire.

Little Joe came and stood by her knee and gave her his oft repeated blessing:

"G.o.d help us and make His face to s.h.i.+ne upon us."

She kissed him and said: "Dear comforter! It s.h.i.+nes upon me every time I hear you say those words."

The little lad had observed the effect of the blessing on his mother in her moments of depression and many times his parroting had been the word in season. Now he returned to his play again, satisfied.

"Would you mind if I called you mother?" Harry asked.

"I shall be glad to have you do it if it gives you any comfort, Harry,"

she answered.

She observed that there were tears in his eyes.

"We are all very fond of you," she said, as she bent to her task.

Then the boy told her the history of his morning--the talk with Bim, with the razor omitted from it; how he had met Abe and all that Abe had said to him as they sat together in the store.

"Well, Harry, if she's such a fool, you're lucky to have found it out so soon," said Sarah. "She does little but ride the pony and play around with a gun. I don't believe she ever spun a hank o' yarn in her life.

She'll get her teeth cut by and by. Abe is right We're always dropping our apples and feeling very bad about it, until we find out that there are lots of apples just as good. I'm that way myself. I guess I've made it harder for Samson crying over lost apples. I'm going to try to stop it."

Then fell a moment of silence. Soon she said:

"There's a bitter wind blowing and there's no great hurry about the rails, I guess. You sit here by the fire and read your book this forenoon. Maybe it will help you to find your work."

So it happened that the events of Harry's morning found their place in the diary which Sarah and Samson kept. Long afterward Harry added the sentences about the razor.

That evening Harry read aloud from the _Life of Henry Clay_, while Sarah and Samson sat listening by the fireside. It was the first of many evenings which they spent in a like fas.h.i.+on that winter. When the book was finished they read, on Abe's recommendation, Weem's _Life of Was.h.i.+ngton_.

Every other Sunday they went down to the schoolhouse to hear John Cameron preach. He was a working man, noted for good common sense, who talked simply and often effectively of the temptations of the frontier, notably those of drinking, gaming and swearing. One evening they went to a debate in the tavern on the issues of the day, in which Abe won the praise of all for an able presentation of the claim of Internal Improvements.

During that evening Alexander Ferguson declared that he would not cut his hair until Henry Clay became president, the news of which resolution led to a like insanity in others and an age of unexampled hairiness on that part of the border.

For Samson and Sarah the most notable social event of the winter was a chicken dinner at which they and Mr. and Mrs. James Rutledge and Ann and Abe Lincoln and Dr. Allen were the guests of the Kelsos. That night Harry stayed at home with the children.

Kelso was in his best mood.

"Come," he said, when dinner was ready. "Life is more than friends.h.i.+p. It is partly meat."

"And mostly Kelso," said Dr. Allen.