CHAPTER VI
NI'S TALK WITH ABNER
It must have been a fortnight before we learned that Jeff Beech andByron Truax had been reported missing. I say "we," but I do not knowwhen Abner Beech came to hear about it. One of the hired girls had seenthe farmer get up from his chair, with the newly arrived weekly _World_in his hand, walk over to where his wife sat, and direct her attentionto a line of the print with his finger. Then, still in silence, hehad gone over to the bookcase, opened the drawer where he kept hisaccount-books, and locked the journal up therein.
We took it for granted that thus the elderly couple had learned thenews about their son. They said so little nowadays, either to eachother or to us, that we were driven to speculate upon their dumb-show,and find meanings for ourselves in their glances and actions. No one ofus could imagine himself or herself venturing to mention Jeff's namein their hearing.
Down at the Corners, though, and all about our district, people talkedof very little else. Antietam had given a bloody welcome to our littlegroup of warriors. Ray Watkins and Lon Truax had been killed outright,and Ed Phillips was in the hospital, with the chances thought to beagainst him. Warner Pitts, our other hired man, had been wounded in thearm, but not seriously, and thereafter behaved with such conspicuousvalor that it was said he was to be promoted from being a sergeantto a lieutenancy. All these things, however, paled in interest afterthe first few days before the fascinating mystery of what had becomeof Jeff and Byron. The loungers about the grocery-store evenings tooksides as to the definition of "missing." Some said it meant being takenprisoners; but it was known that at Antietam the Rebels made next to nocaptives. Others held that "missing" soldiers were those who had beenshot, and who crawled off somewhere in the woods out of sight to die.A lumberman from Juno Mills, who was up on a horse-trade, went so faras to broach still a third theory, viz., that "missing" soldiers werethose who had run away under fire, and were ashamed to show their facesagain. But this malicious suggestion could not, of course, be seriouslyconsidered.
Meanwhile, what little remained of the fall farm-work went on as ifnothing had happened. The root-crops were dug, the fodder got in, andthe late apples gathered. Abner had a cider-mill of his own, but wesold a much larger share of our winter apples than usual. Less manurewas drawn out onto the fields than in other autumns, and it looked asif there was to be little or no fall ploughing. Abner went about histasks in a heavy, spiritless way these days, doggedly enough, but withnone of his old-time vim. He no longer had pleasure even in abusingLincoln and the war with Hurley. Not Antietam itself could have brokenhis nerve, but at least it silenced his tongue.
Warner Pitts came home on a furlough, with a fine new uniform,shoulder-straps and sword, and his arm in a sling. I say "home," butthe only roof he had ever slept under in these parts, was ours, andnow he stayed as a guest at Squire Avery's house, and never came nearour farm. He was a tall, brown-faced, sinewy fellow, with curly hairand a pushing manner. Although he had been only a hired man he now cuta great dash down at the Corners, with his shoulder-straps and hisofficer's cape. It was said that he had declined several invitationsto husking-bees, and that when he left the service, at the end ofhis time, he had a place ready for him in some city as a clerk in adrygoods store--that is, of course, if he did not get to be colonel orgeneral. From time to time he was seen walking out through the dry,rustling leaves with Squire Avery's oldest daughter.
This important military genius did not seem able, however, to throwmuch light upon the whereabouts of the two "missing" boys. From what Imyself heard him say about the battle, and from what others reportedof his talk, it seems that in the very early morning Hooker's line--apart of which consisted of Dearborn County men--moved forward through abig cornfield, the stalks of which were much higher than the soldiers'heads. When they came out, the rebels opened such a hideous fire ofcannon and musketry upon them from the woods close by, that those whodid not fall were glad to run back again into the corn for shelter.Thus all became confusion, and the men were so mixed up that therewas no getting them together again. Some went one way, some another,through the tall corn-rows, and Warner Pitts could not remember havingseen either Jeff or Byron at all after the march began. Parts of theregiment formed again out on the road toward the Dunker church, butother parts found themselves half a mile away among the fragments of aMichigan regiment, and a good many more were left lying in the fatalcornfield. Our boys had not been traced among the dead, but that didnot prove that they were alive. And so we were no wiser than before.
Warner Pitts only nodded in a distant way to me when he saw me first,with a cool "Hello, youngster!" I expected that he would ask afterthe folks at the farm which had been so long his home, but he turnedto talk with someone else, and said never a word. Once, some daysafterward, he called out as I passed him, "How's the old Copperhead?"and the Avery girl who was with him laughed aloud, but I went onwithout answering. He was already down in my black-books, in companywith pretty nearly every other human being roundabout.
This list of enemies was indeed so full that there were times whenI felt like crying over my isolation. It may be guessed, then, howrejoiced I was one afternoon to see Ni Hagadorn squeeze his way throughour orchard-bars, and saunter across under the trees to where I wasat work sorting a heap of apples into barrels. I could have run tomeet him, so grateful was the sight of any friendly, boyish face. Thethought that perhaps after all he had not come to see me in particular,and that possibly he brought some news about Jeff, only flashed acrossmy mind after I had smiled a broad welcome upon him, and he stoodleaning against a barrel munching the biggest russet he had been ableto pick out.
"Abner to home?" he asked, after a pause of neighborly silence. Hehadn't come to see me after all.
"He's around the barns somewhere," I replied; adding, upon reflection,"Have you heard something fresh?"
Ni shook his sorrel head, and buried his teeth deep into the apple."No, nothin'," he said, at last, with his mouth full, "only thought I'dcome up an' talk it over with Abner."
The calm audacity of the proposition took my breath away. "He'll bootyou off'm the place if you try it," I warned him.
But Ni did not scare easily. "Oh, no," he said, with light confidence,"me an' Abner's all right."
As if to put this assurance to the test, the figure of the farmer wasat this moment visible, coming toward us down the orchard road. He wasin his shirt-sleeves, with the limp, discolored old broad-brimmed felthat he always wore pulled down over his eyes. Though he no longer heldhis head so proudly erect as I could remember it, there were stillsuggestions of great force and mastership in his broad shoulders andbig beard, and in the solid, long-gaited manner of his walk. He carrieda pitchfork in his hand.
"Hello, Abner?" said Ni, as the farmer came up and halted, surveyingeach of us in turn with an impassive scrutiny.
"How 'r' ye!" returned Abner, with cold civility. I fancied he mustbe surprised to see the son of his enemy here, calmly gnawing his waythrough one of our apples, and acting as if the place belonged to him.But he gave no signs of astonishment, and after some words of directionto me concerning my work, started to move on again toward the barns.
Ni was not disposed to be thus cheated out of his conversation: "SeenWarner Pitts since he's got back?" he called out, and at this thefarmer stopped and turned round. "You'd hardly know him now," thebutcher's assistant went on, with cheerful briskness. "Why you'd thinkhe'd never hoofed it over ploughed land in all his life. He's got hisboots blacked up every day, an' his hair greased, an' a whole new suitof broadcloth, with shoulder-straps an' brass buttons, an' a sword--hebrings it down to the Corners every evening, so't the boys at the storecan heft it--an' he's--"
"What do I care about all this?" broke in Abner. His voice was heavy,with a growling ground-note, and his eyes threw out an angry lightunder the shading hat-brim. "He can go to the devil, an' take hissword with him, for all o' me!"
Hostile as was his tone, the farmer did not again turn on his heel.Instead,
he seemed to suspect that Ni had something more important tosay, and looked him steadfastly in the face.
"That's what I say, too," replied Ni, lightly. "What's beat me ishow such a fellow as that got to be an officer right from the word'go!'--an' him the poorest shote in the whole lot. Now if it had a' benSpencer Phillips I could understand it--or Bi Truax, or--or your Jeff--"
The farmer raised his fork menacingly, with a wrathful gesture. "Shetup!" he shouted; "shet up, I say! or I'll make ye!"
To my great amazement Ni was not at all affected by this demonstration.He leaned smilingly against the barrel, and picked out another apple--aspitzenberg this time.
"Now look a-here, Abner," he said, argumentatively, "what's the good o'gittin' mad? When I've had my say out, why, if you don't like it youneedn't, an' nobody's a cent the wuss off. Of course, if you come downto hard-pan, it ain't none o' my business--"
"No," interjected Abner, in grim assent, "it ain't none o' yourbusiness!"
"But there is such a thing as being neighborly," Ni went on,undismayed, "an' meanin' things kindly, an' takin' 'em as they'remeant."
"Yes, I know them kindly neighbors o' mine!" broke in the farmer withacrid irony, "I've summered 'em an' I've wintered 'em, an' the Lorddeliver me from the whole caboodle of 'em! A meaner lot o' cusses nevercumbered this foot-stool!"
"It takes all sorts o' people to make up a world," commented thisfreckled and sandy-headed young philosopher, testing the crimson skinof his apple with a tentative thumb-nail. "Now you ain't got anythingin particular agin me, have you?"
"Nothin' except your breed," the farmer admitted. The frown with whichhe had been regarding Ni had softened just the least bit in the world.
"That don't count," said Ni, with easy confidence. "Why, what doesbreed amount to, anyway? You ought to be the last man alive to lug_that_ in--you, who've up an' soured on your own breed--your own sonJeff!"
I looked to see Abner lift his fork again, and perhaps go evenfurther in his rage. Strangely enough, there crept into his sunburnt,massive face, at the corners of the eyes and mouth, something like thebeginnings of a puzzled smile. "You're a cheeky little cuss, anyway!"was his final comment. Then his expression hardened again. "Who put youup to comin' here, an' talkin' like this to me?" he demanded, sternly.
"Nobody--hope to die!" protested Ni. "It's all my own spec. It riledme to see you mopin' round up here all alone by yourself, not knowin'what'd become of Jeff, an' makin' b'lieve to yourself you didn't care,an' so givin' yourself away to the whole neighborhood."
"Damn the neighborhood!" said Abner, fervently.
"Well, they talk about the same of you," Ni proceeded with an air ofimpartial candor. "But all that don't do you no good, an' don't do Jeffno good!"
"He made his own bed, and he must lay on it," said the farmer, withdogged firmness.
"I ain't sayin' he mustn't," remonstrated the other. "What I'm gittin'at is that you'd feel easier in your mind if you knew where that bedwas--an' so'd M'rye!"
Abner lifted his head. "His mother feels jest as I do," he said. "Hesneaked off behind our backs to jine Lincoln's nigger-worshippers, an'levy war on fellow-countrymen o' his'n who'd done him no harm, an'whatever happens to him it serves him right. I ain't much of a hand tolug in Scripter to back up my argyments--like some folks you know of--butmy feelin' is: 'Whoso taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword!'An' so says his mother too!"
"Hm-m!" grunted Ni, with ostentatious incredulity. He bit into hisapple, and there ensued a momentary silence. Then, as soon as he wasable to speak, this astonishing boy said: "Guess I'll have a talk withM'rye about that herself."
The farmer's patience was running emptings. "No!" he said, severely,"I forbid ye! Don't ye dare say a word to her about it. She don't wantto listen to ye--an' I don't know what's possessed _me_ to stand roundan' gab about my private affairs with you like this, either. I don'tbear ye no ill-will. If fathers can't help the kind o' sons they bringup, why, still less can ye blame sons on account o' their fathers. Butit ain't a thing I want to talk about any more, either now or any othertime. That's all."
Abner put the fork over his shoulder, as a sign that he was going, andthat the interview was at an end. But the persistent Ni had a last wordto offer--and he left his barrel and walked over to the farmer.
"See here," he said, in more urgent tones than he had used before, "I'mgoin' South, an' I'm goin' to find Jeff if it takes a leg! I don't knowhow much it'll cost--I've got a little of my own saved up--an' I thoughtp'r'aps--p'r'aps you'd like to--"
After a moment's thought the farmer shook his head. "No," he said,gravely, almost reluctantly. "It's agin my principles. You knowme--Ni--you know I've never b'en a near man, let alone a mean man. An' yeknow, too, that if Je--if that boy had behaved half-way decent, thereain't anything under the sun I wouldn't 'a' done for him. But thisthing--I'm obleeged to ye for offrin--but--No! it's agin my principles.Still, I'm obleeged to ye. Fill your pockets with them spitzenbergs, ifthey taste good to ye."
With this Abner Beech turned and walked resolutely off.
Left alone with me, Ni threw away the half-eaten apple he had held inhis hand. "I don't want any of his dummed old spitzenbergs," he said,pushing his foot into the heap of fruit on the ground, in a meditativeway.
"Then you ain't agoin' South?" I queried.
"Yes I am!" he replied, with decision. "I can work my way somehow. Onlydon't you whisper a word about it to any livin' soul, d'ye mind!"
* * * * *
Two or three days after that we heard that Ni Hagadorn had left forunknown parts. Some said he had gone to enlist--it seems that, despitehis youth and small stature in my eyes, he would have been acceptableto the enlistment standards of the day--but the major opinion was thatmuch dime-novel reading had inspired him with the notion of becoming atrapper in the mystic Far West.
I alone possessed the secret of his disappearance--unless, indeed, hissister knew--and no one will ever know what struggles I had to keep fromconfiding it to Hurley.
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