LITMIR.BIZ

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burning of Rome. Finding this person disturbing the effective march of events, the horse-faced Andy – who is nothing if not executive – knocks him down with a bucket. The Cumberland Nero falls into the river, and the ducking, acting in happy conjunction with the stunning thump, brings him to the shore a changed and sobered man. That bucket promptitude, wherewith he deposed Nero, becomes one of those several immediate arguments which make mightily for the communal advancement of Andy the horse-faced.

      CHAPTER V – THE WINNING OF A WIFE

      ALL these energetic matters happen at aforesaid, is dancing attendance upon the court. The fame of them travels to Nashville in advance of his return, and works a respectful change toward him in the attitude of the public. Hereafter he is to be called “Andrew” by ones who know him well; while others, less acquainted, will on military occasions hail him as “Cap’n” and on civil ones as “Square.” On every hand, reference to him as “horse-faced” is to be dropped; wherefore this history, the effort of which is to follow close in the wake of the actual, will from this point profit by that polite example.

      The household at the widow Donelson’s learns of the Jonesboro valor and executive promptitude of the young State’s Attorney. The blooming Rachel rejoices, while her Jonesboro, where the horse-faced one, in the interests of the creditor class drunken spouse turns sullen. His jealousy of Andrew is multiplied, as that young gentleman’s fame increases. The fame, however, is of a sort that seriously mislikes the drunken Robards, who is at heart a hare. Wherefore, while his jealousy grows, he no longer makes it the tavern talk, as was his sottish wont.

      Affairs run briskly prosperous with Andrew, and he finds himself engaged in half the litigation of the Cumberland. There is little money, but the region owns a currency of its own. Some wise man has said that the circulating medium of Europe is gold, of Africa men, of Asia women, of America land. The client’s of Andrew reward his labors with land, and many a “six-forty,” by which the slang of the Cumberland identifies a section of land, becomes his. Finally he owns such an array of wilderness square miles, polka-dotted about between the Cumberland and the Mississippi, that the aggregate acreage swells into the thousands. Those acres, however, are hardly more valuable than are the brown leaves wherewith each autumn carpets them.

      While the ardent Andrew is pushing his way at the bar, and accumulating “six-forties,” he continues to board at the widow Donelson’s.

      The blooming Rachel delights in his society – so polished, so splendidly different from that of the drunkard Robards! Once or twice, too, when Andrew, in his saddlebag excursions from court to court, has a powder-burning brush with Indians and saves his sandy scalp by a narrowish margin, the red cheek of Rachel is seen to whiten. That is to say, the drunkard Robards sees it whiten; the purblind Andrew never once observes that mark of tender concern. The pistol repute of the decisive Andrew serves when he is by to stifle remark on the lip of the recreant Robards. But there come hours when the latter has the blooming Rachel to himself, at which time he raves like one demon-possessed. He avers that the unconscious Andrew is the lover of the blooming Rachel, and in so doing lies like an Ananias. However, the drunken one has the excuse of jealousy; which emotion is not only green-eyed but cross-eyed, and of all things – as history shows – most apt to mislead the accurate vision of folk.

      Andrew overflows of sentiment, and often in moments of loneliness turns homesick. This is the more marvelous, since never from his very cradle days has he had a home. Being homesick – one may as well call it that, for want of a better word – he goes out to the orchard fence, a lonely spot, cut off from view by intercepting bushes, and devotes himself to melancholy. This melancholy, as often happens with high-strung, vanity-bitten young gentlemen, is for the greater part nothing more than the fomentations of his egotism and conceit. But Andrew does not know this truth, and wears a fine tragic air as one beset of what poets term “a nameless grief.”

      One day the blooming Rachel discovers the melancholy Andrew, dreamily mournful by the orchard fence. She watches him unperceived, and her gentle bosom yearns over him. The blooming Rachel is not wanting in that taint of romanticism to which all border folk are born; and now, to see this Hector! – this lion among men! – so bent in sadness, moves her tenderly. At that it is only a kind of maternal tenderness; for the blooming Rachel has a wealth of mother love, and no children upon whom to lavish it. She stands looking at the melancholy one, and would give worlds if she might only take his head to her sympathetic bosom and cherish it.

      The blooming Rachel approaches, and cheerily greets the gloomy one. She seeks to uplift his spirits. Under the sweet spell of her, he tells how wholly alone he is. He speaks of his mother and how her very grave is lost. He relates how the Revolution swallowed up the lives of his two brothers.

      “And your father?”

      “He was buried the week before I was born.”

      The two stay by the orchard fence a long while, and talk on many things; but never once on love.

      The drunken Robards, fiend-guided, gets a green-eyed glimpse of them. With that his jealousy receives added edge, and – the better to decide upon a course – he hurries to a grog-gery to pour down rum by the cup. Either he drinks beyond his wont, or that rum is of sterner impulse than common; for he becomes pot-valorous, and with curses vows the death of Andrew.

      The drunken Robards, filled with rum to the brim, issues forth to execute his threats. He finds his victim still sadly by the orchard fence; but alone, since the blooming Rachel has been called to aid in supper-getting. The pot-valorous Robards bursts into a torrent of jealous recrimination.

      The melancholy Andrew cannot believe his ears! His melancholy takes flight when he does understand, and in its stead comes white-hot anger.

      “What! you scoundrel!” he roars. The blue eyes blaze with such ferocity that Robards the craven starts back. In a moment the other has control of himself. “Sir!” he grits, “you shall give me satisfaction!”

      Robards the drunken says nothing, being frozen of fear. The enraged Andrew stalks away in quest of the taciturn Overton who owns those hair triggers.

      “Let us take a walk,” says hair-trigger Overton, running his arm inside the lean elbow of Andrew. Once in the woods, he goes on: “What do you want to do?”

      “Kill him! I would put him in hell in a second!”

      “Doubtless! Having killed him, what then will you do?”

      “I don’t understand.”

      “Let me explain: You kill Robards. His wife is a widow. Also, because you have killed Robards in a quarrel over her, she is the talk of the settlement. Therefore, I put the question: Having made Rachel the scandal of the Cumberland, what will you do?”

      There is a long, embarrassed pause. Presently Andrew lifts his gaze to the cool eyes of his friend.

      “I shall offer her marriage. She shall, if she accept it, have the protection of my name.”

      “And then,” goes on the ice-and-iron Overton, “the scandal will be redoubled. They will say that you and Rachel, plotting together, have murdered Robards to open a wider way for your guilty loves.”

      Andrew takes a deep breath. “What would you counsel?” he asks.

      “One thing,” – laying his hand on Andrew’s shoulder – “under no circumstances, not even to save your own life, must you slay Robards. You might better slay Rachel; since his death by your hand spells her destruction. Good people would avoid her as though she were the plague. Never more, on the Cumberland, should she hold up her head.”

      That night the fear-eaten Robards solves the situation which his crazy jealousy has created. He starts secretly for the North. He tells two or three that he will never more call the blooming Rachel wife.

      For a month there is much silence, and some restraint, at the widow Donelson’s. This condition wears away; and, while no one says so, everybody feels relaxed and relieved by the absence of the drunken Robards. No one names him, and there is tacit agreement to forget the creature. The drunken Robards, however, has no notion of being forgotten. Word comes down from above that he will return and reclaim his wife. At this the black eyes of Rachel

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