by Homer Greene
Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
PICKETT'S GAP
The TMT Co.]
"'I have been to blame.'"]
PICKETT'S GAP
BY HOMER GREENE
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1904
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1902. Reprinted March,1904.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
_The illustrations in this book are reproduced from the originaldrawings by the kind permission of_ THE YOUTH'S COMPANION.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'I have been to blame.'" _Frontispiece_
Facing Page "'This land is my gran'father's, an' I'll stand where I please on it.'" 30
"'No better deed could be done by any one than to pull their accursed stakes from the ground, and fling 'em, one and all, into the water of the brook.'" 42
"'Good-by, my boy!'" 66
Signing the Contract. 82
"Abner Pickett sat upon the wall holding his gun in readiness for action." 102
"'What shall I do, Aunt Martha?'" 114
"'Tell the truth, you fool!'" 132
"He held the door wide open while the old man and his grandson passed out into the corridor." 164
PICKETT'S GAP
CHAPTER I
Abner Pickett stood in the dusty roadway, rake in hand, watching aload of late August clover, that day harvested, move slowly towardthe barn. It was a rich, fragrant, well-proportioned load, coveringthe hay-rigging wholly from sight, hiding the horses that drew it,swallowing in its luxurious depths the man who drove the team. It wasAbner Pickett's hay, and his team, and his barn; so indeed were his allthe fertile acres that surrounded him. But for all this Abner Pickettwas not happy.
The yellow glow of the late afternoon sun rested on his bronzedface, but it left there no look of joy, nor even of content. He wasa picturesque figure as he stood facing the luminous west. His longwhite hair, combed straight back from his forehead, curled gracefullyon his broad shoulders. His complexion was as clear, his cheeks aspink-tinted, his blue eyes as bright and piercing, as though he hadbeen seventeen instead of sixty-five. His woollen shirt, open winterand summer at the throat, disclosed a muscular neck like a bronzecolumn rising from his chest, and revealed nowhere the wrinkles andthe hollows which betoken weight of years. His manners and his moodswere no less eccentric than his looks. There were few people in thatregion who had not, at one time or another, felt the shock of hisblunt speech or the keen edge of his caustic tongue. Yet here andthere some one, usually some poor and friendless one, would be foundbrave enough to face an incredulous community and testify to AbnerPickett's kindness of heart. But he had the Pickett pride. His fatherhad it before him,--brought it with him, indeed, when he came fromNew England into Pennsylvania and purchased from the commonwealththe four hundred acre tract on which he built the Pickett homestead.Abner Pickett inherited the place from his father. Not a square footof the four hundred acres had ever been sold. It was his pride and hispassion to keep it intact. He intended to pass it down that way tohis only son Charlie. Not that he had any exalted idea of Charlie'sability as a farmer. Indeed, it was well known that Charlie did nottake kindly to farming. He was much more fond of knocking around thecountry with the compass and surveyor's kit that he had managed to gettogether, running land lines, locating corners, and laying out villageplots for the people of that section of the country. And whether ornot Abner Pickett was liked by the neighbors, it is very certain thathis son Charlie was the most popular young man in that end of MeredithCounty. No one was surprised when he married the belle of Port Lenox,the nearest up-river town, and brought her to his father's house. Theyall said that a young man of his parts could have married any one hechose. But every one was surprised when it became generally known thatthe young bride had found her way into Abner Pickett's well-guardedheart. People had been shaking their heads ominously for a month, andpredicted all sorts of trouble and unhappiness for Charlie Pickett'swife in his father's household. They knew the old man's eccentricitiesso well. Small wonder, then, that they were astonished when they awoketo the fact that Abner Pickett had become the devoted slave of hisdaughter-in-law. Nothing was too good for her. No service on his partwas too burdensome or too painstaking if it added in the least to hercomfort or pleasure. Brusque and biting to the world about him, he wasto her as gentle and as helpful and as courteous as a knight of old.During her long illness after Dannie, his only grandchild, was born,his devotion to her never ceased. And when he saw the roses beginto come back into her cheeks, he could no more restrain his delightthan he could refrain from drawing his breath. But one night she grewsuddenly ill again. And while Charlie and Aunt Martha did for her allthat loving thought could suggest, or tender care accomplish, AbnerPickett flung himself on his brown mare and dashed madly off throughthe darkness to Port Lenox, ten miles away, to fetch the doctor. He hadthe doctor there by daylight; but no physician, nor any drug, nor themost loving care, could hold the struggling spirit in the frail body,and two days later Charlie's wife was dead.
People who knew said that Abner Pickett felt the blow as keenly aswhen his own wife died twenty years before. He would not listen tothe suggestion that her body should be taken back to her old homeat Port Lenox for interment; and, rather than face his wrath, herparents consented that the burial should be made in the Pickett familygraveyard at the mouth of the gap. Their action was fully justified.
That graveyard was the pride of Abner Pickett's heart. It lay in adirect line with the opening into the gap, and barely two hundredfeet distant. On the north, it was bordered by the public road, onthe south, it was washed by the rippling waters of the brook, andon every side, save the west, the hills rose precipitously as if toguard it. It was a beautiful half-acre. The sward was always fresh andgreen, and flowers bloomed there from May to October. Abner Pickett'sparents were buried there, and his wife, and his brother and sister,and his own children who had died in infancy, as well as others moredistantly related to him. And the sheltering soil also hid the bodiesof some without home or friends; bodies that, had it not been for AbnerPickett's generosity, would have found interment in the potter's field.
When Charlie's wife was buried there, the old man's interest in hisgraveyard increased tenfold. He bought the most beautiful monumentthat the marble-cutters of Port Lenox could furnish, and had it placedat the head of her grave. It was a fluted column, with pedestal andcap, draped with chiselled flowers. Looked at from the west, it stoodout, tall and graceful, outlined in perfect proportion against the darkshadows of the gap or the rich verdure of the hills that stood likesentinels about it. That Abner Pickett's graveyard was dear to him, andthat the memory of Charlie's wife was one of the tenderest spots in hisheart, no one who knew the old man ever had reason to doubt.
But alas for Charlie! The life on the old homestead, which had beenirksome enough at its best, grew suddenly unbearable. The ancientfarmhouse, lit up
temporarily by the brightness and sweetness ofthe young life so quickly and pathetically ended, grew tenfold moredark and forbidding than ever. It contained one jewel, indeed, hisbaby, Dannie; but the child was not yet old enough to cheer thefather's heart with companionable ways, and the days dragged by inever increasing loneliness and sorrow. The tasks of the farm, againstthe performance of which he had always rebelled, became burdensomenow beyond endurance, and, on every possible pretext, he found hisway, with compass and chain, outside the borders of his father's fourhundred acres to do work of which he grew more and more fond as hisknowledge and experience increased.
But all this was like gall and wormwood to his father. If Abner Picketthad set his heart on anything, it was that Charlie should follow inhis footsteps as manager and eventually owner of one of the largestand best farms in Meredith County, in which, like his father, heshould take a just and pardonable pride. That Charlie did not developa fondness for the farmer's life was a sore trial to the old man, buthe hoped that, with advancing years and larger wisdom, the boy, grownto manhood, would yet take kindly to the toil and triumphs of the farm.And when Charlie settled down in the old homestead, with his sweetyoung wife to cheer and encourage him, and went out to the tasks oftillage with a hope and vigor almost akin to zest for the work, the oldman felt that the fulness of the time for which he had long hoped andwaited was at last come.
But his satisfaction was short-lived. With the death of Charlie'swife it vanished. And when the boy again took up his more congenialoccupation, and wandered off day after day with compass and chain,leaving the farm to be cared for and worked by others, the old man'scup of sorrow and bitterness was indeed full. Between him and his sonthere had been no open rupture, but day by day their relations witheach other became more strained, and each felt in the air the breath ofimpending disaster.
It was early spring when Charlie's wife died; it was late August now.The summer, rich in warmth and showers, yielding an abundance fromfield and garden, vine and tree, had brought to Abner Pickett onlysorrow, disappointment, and bitterness. All these were depicted inhis rugged face as he stood in the waning sunlight and watched thecreaking, jolting wagon with its fragrant load move slowly to the barn.
Up the road from the direction of the gap came Charlie, his compass onhis arm, his tripod on his shoulder, and his two-rod chain swingingloosely from his free hand. He was a stalwart young fellow, blue-eyedand fair-haired, tall and muscular, bronzed with the sun and wind,vigorous with the springing life of early manhood.
When Abner Pickett heard footsteps behind him he turned and faced hisson.
"Well, father, I'm back."
Charlie had been in Jackson County for three days tracing warranteelines.
"Yes, I see," replied the old man, the expression of his faceabsolutely unchanged.
"Is Dannie well?"
"So far as I know."
Charlie started on, but before he had gone a dozen yards, he turned andcame back to his father.
"Father," he said, "let's end it."
"End what?"
"This awkwardness, this uncertainty, this everlasting disagreementabout the farm. I can't do farm work, father, I'm not fitted for it--Ihate it."
Charlie should have been less impulsive, more considerate. To declarefarm work hateful was, in the mind of Abner Pickett, rank treason. ButCharlie was too much like his father to gloss things over. He said whathe felt, whether wise or unwise.
Abner Pickett changed his rake from one hand to the other, and stilllooked at the bulky load of hay making its slow way to the dark andgaping entrance to the barn.
"Yes," he said slowly and coldly; "that's been apparent for some time.There's dogs that'll bite the hand that feeds 'em."
Charlie's face flushed.
"Don't be unjust, father. I appreciate all you've done for me. But Isimply can't stand it on the farm--and I won't."
The old man was still impassive.
"No? Well, you're of age. Your time's your own. There is no law tocompel you to work, exceptin' the law of self-preservation. If youchoose to go gallivantin' round the country like old Hiram Posten, witha needle an' a Jacob's staff, runnin' out people's back yards for 'em,it ain't nobody's business but your own. But men that stay on my farmmust work on my farm."
Charlie stood for a moment gazing at his father intently.
"Does that mean," he said at last, "that I must give up my surveying orleave my home?"
The old man turned on his questioner suddenly, aroused at last from hisseeming impassiveness.
"Look here, young man," he said, "I've got the best four hundred acreso' land in Meredith County. After I'm through with it it's yours if youwant it. But you can't get it by runnin' land lines in Jackson Countyall summer, an' huntin' muskrats in Beaver all winter. If you want myfarm, you've got to earn it, an' the only way you can earn it is tostay home an' work it like your father an' your gran'father did beforeyou. Now, that's the last word. Take it or leave it as you choose."
Charlie took no time for thought, no time to counsel with himself. Asquickly and decisively as though he had been putting aside a toy hereplied:--
"Very well, father; I leave it."
For one moment Abner Pickett stood aghast. That any one, least ofall his own son, whose ancestral pride should have made such a thingimpossible, could throw away so coolly, so carelessly, a gift likethis, the condition of obtaining which should have been a joy to himinstead of a burden--it was simply and wholly incomprehensible. Withouta word he turned on his heel and started up the road toward the barn.
"Father!" called Charlie after him, "does this mean that I must leavemy home?"
The old man swung around and faced him almost savagely.
"_Your_ home!" he cried, "_your_ home! Since when have you possessedit? Didn't I get it from my father as a reward of faithfulness? Hasn'tmy work an' my money made it the best place in Meredith County? Didn'tI bring you up in it? Didn't my money feed and clothe you? Didn't mymoney educate you an' spoil you in the best school in this end o' thestate? Didn't I cater to your whims an' follies an' laziness for yearsat my own expense? An' when you saw fit to get married, and hadn't acent o' your own to support a wife on, an' wasn't likely to get it byyour own exertions, didn't I keep you both under my own roof an' saveyou from starvation? An' what have you ever done to pay for it? An' nowyou call it _your_ home; an' next you'll be orderin' me to vacate. Iwant you to understand that this home, an' this house, an' this farm,an' everything there is here is mine. Do you hear? It's mine, mine,mine!"
When Abner Pickett was angry, the blood mounted slowly to his neck,then to his chin and face, and finally suffused his forehead with itsglow. He was angry now; more angry than Charlie had ever seen himbefore save once; and that was when a man from Port Lenox offered him ahundred dollars for a corner of his graveyard on which to erect a cidermill.
And Charlie was angry in his turn. Up to this moment he had beenimpatient and impulsive; now, stung by unjust reproaches, the hot bloodof passion went surging through his veins.
"You say what is not true!" he cried. "Since I was eighteen I haveearned enough and more than enough to support myself and thosedependent on me. And in all that time I have received from you onlydiscouragement and ridicule, and abuse and cruelty. I could stand it.I had learned through years of suffering to stand it. But when, in thepresence of my wife, you kept it up, she could not fathom you; it madeher heartsick and homesick and sorrowful, and in the end it killed her!I say she could have conquered disease, but her sympathy for me andher fear of you, that killed her! Now I, too, have said my last word.To-morrow I shall go. When you can treat me justly I will come again,and not till then."
He turned on his heel, strode down the road, past the graveyard,lifting his hat reverently as he went by, and then was lost in thedeepening shadows of the glen.
Abner Pickett started homeward in a daze. His son's terrible chargeagainst him came upon him like a stroke of lightning, and left himblinded and bewildered.
"I k
illed her?" he murmured to himself. "I killed her? I that loved herso; that would 'a' cut off my right hand for her any day? What does hemean? What Satan's falsehood is it he has given me?"
In the gray of the next morning Charlie Pickett came up the path tohis old home. The door was unlocked. He opened it and entered. In thesitting-room, with his head resting on his hand, his face gray in theearly morning light, he found his father. He crossed the room and stoodbefore him.
"Father," he said, "I lied to you yesterday. I was unjust and unfilial.I have no excuse to make except that I was moved by uncontrollableanger. I do not know that you ever said a word in the presence ofmy wife that could in any way hurt her feelings. I do not know thatyou ever caused her a single pain, a single regret, a single sorrow.I do know that you were more than kind to her, that you did for hereverything that loving thought or willing hands could do, and thatyour grief at her death was scarcely less than my own. I owe you thisapology. I make it now. For this offence I ask your forgiveness. May Ihave it?"
The old man looked up at him impassively.
"No."
"But, father, it is the only lie I ever told you, and I am sorry for itfrom the bottom of my heart."
"One lie is enough."
"But I am going now. I may never see you again. It is terrible forfather and son to be thus estranged. What can I do to redeem myself inyour eyes?"
"Nothing."
"May I come sometime to see you?"
"No."
Charlie turned toward the door, then, a thought striking him suddenly,he turned back again.
"And Dannie, father?"
"Leave him with Martha."
"Thank you! Good-by!"
The old man did not again respond. He still sat with his forehead inhis hands, motionless, passionless, like granite. Charlie left theroom, closing the door behind him, and went upstairs. In the hall hemet Aunt Martha.
"It's all over, Auntie," he said. "I'm going."
The good woman had been weeping.
"I knew you had had it out with each other, Charlie."
"Yes, I'm not to return. I'm going to kiss Dannie good-by. Father saysI shall leave him with you. Will you take him, Auntie?"
"Alice gave him to me to take care of when she died, and I'll keep himtill you want him, Charlie. But you'll soon be coming back?"
"I'm afraid not, Auntie. I can't tell you about it. You know father. Iwas thoughtless and cruel. He is firm and unforgiving. But you'll knowwhere I am. When you want me send for me, and I'll come."
He passed on into Dannie's room. The child was still sleeping. Hebent down and kissed the flushed cheek and the dimpled hand. A smilecrept over the little face, and the baby stirred in his sleep. Thenhe went into his own room and threw together a few things to supplyhis immediate wants. When he went downstairs again, Aunt Martha wasstanding in the front door. She threw her arms around his neck andkissed him good-by. She had known all his hopes, his ambitions, hissorrows, his faults. She did not side with him against his father, butshe felt for him from the bottom of her heart.
At the gateway he turned and threw back to her a kiss. She stood in thefront door and saw his stalwart figure stride down the road through themorning mist, and lose itself in the shadows of the gap.
The summer passed, and autumn brought tinted glory to Pickett's Gap,and then winter came and covered the landscape with her snows; butCharlie Pickett did not come back. Years went by, and still he did notreturn, and finally his very name grew to be but a memory among thosewho had known him in his boyhood and his youth.