11. Teetotalers Two
Several adventures, fruitless so far as concerned his principal appetite, but bearing other consequences of moment, came heel-treading after Parker.
Aroused the first morning of his stay in the cabin by sunrays pouring through the open east door, he arose betimes and managed to feed himself through certain expedients of trail cookery almost forgot. Invigorated by a sleep such as he had not known in months, he found himself impatient to explore the vicinity of his new habitat.
Along a path that led into the "sticks" from behind the cabin, he swung with a certain pleasure in mere activity that left no room for offense at the slap of an occasional laurel. From the hard-pack of the trail, he decided that it must lead somewhere, although the overgrowth of blackberry vines, whose green runners clung to his boots, scratched his puttees, and twice tripped him almost to a fall, augered that it had not recently been traveled.
But "somewhere" was a definite enough place for the Calvin Parker of this morning. Somewhere, somehow, somebody - such indiscriminate expressions might have been used to describe his mood.
Determination to win against his enemy of circumstances had climbed into the saddle of his intention. Elbows spurred sides since there was no cup of realization toward which to stretch his hands; parched tongue scourged palate as a quirt; tighter grew the cinch of his belt against the inner yearning for fiery draught.
After crossing the creek by way of a toppled tree foot-bridge, he struck into a mountain road on the other side, which seemed to point the way to some human habitation. As he plunged along through the mud, there came to him a new grasp of the Ancient Mariner's classic plaint:
Water, water everj-where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
But color, fire, and a horse-power "kick" must be the components of the water he craved. No twinge over good resolutions forsworn delayed him. He would make new ones afterward, he assured himself In an uDsurge of amusement at his own expense - make many others, both new and good, and likely break them later, every one.
It wasn't himself, anyhow, who had proposed that he become a total abstainer; not he who had been most ashamed of that last ghastly night in New York. He had a chance now to prove that he was no weakling; that he could be the sort of man he liked to picture himself. No combination of friends against him - no, not even little Sylvia and Spencer Pope, motive powers of his exile - might settle his fate without his own decisive vote.
Come to look at the situation In this clear, strong light of the Carolinas, he owed It to himself and the Parkers of the past so to do. He would defy all those gratuitous warnings; would wrest from the mountains the secret location of the spirituous enemy he was at last to make his friend; would pursue his self-respecting mission along a path of adventure.
In a forty-acre corn-field, he shortly came upon the humans promised by the road. Behind a bulltongued plow, hitched to a wraith of a horse, a bewhlskered man was at work. His feet were encased In shapeless chunks of mud, his legs In jeans attached precariously to one suspender, his upper body in a hickory shirt.
Upon Parker's hail the native drew on the single rein of the wither-wrung beast for immediate inactivity. Evidently both welcomed any excuse for stopping work; at any rate, both gazed at the approaching interruption with vacuous eyes. They looked a good deal alike - weather-beaten, slabsided, listless, hungry.
As the worker of the perpendicular farm seemed uninspired by any courtesy of meeting a stranger half-way, Parker advanced toward him over the uneven going and went through the form of scraping acquaintance with what heartiness he could command. But the man showed no joy in the fact that they were related in the sacred bonds of near-neighborship; the expensive Havana, proffered as an incentive to friendliness, he crumpled between both palms and used to replace a cud already in his mouth.
"Perhaps you can direct me to the best place for a chap with a full-grown thirst to stock his winecellar?" Parker approached the subject of his quest. "Now that the State's gone dry, they tell me I must apply directly to the mills of the gods. I've been told, also, that several such are located nearby."
For a moment a gleam lit the countryman's dull expression, vitality sounded In his voice.
"So that's it? If you-uns be asking me personal where I gets mine - I does without. My woman don't cotton to no law-breaking on this here farm."
He jerked a thumb up the hill, over the knob of which an apparition in skirts had appeared.
"But if you-uns be set on liquor to drink," the plowman continued, "Bide Shortoff cal'lates you'd best follow that crossroad you came along so far as Roaring Fork - a likely two mile. You just might run acrost one or tother of them Metcalfs afore you reached their hangout."
With elation Parker grasped that the Metcalf place, at once the source of possible supply and the home of the girl with the remarkable shade of hair, was within walking distance. He delivered himself of hearty acknowledgement and recrossed the furrows to the road.
As he swung around the base of the hill, however, having literally accepted the advice to head for Roaring Fork, he found himself intercepted. Bide Shortoff's "woman" had slipslopped hurriedly across the side of the up-and-down corn-patch and now faced him, arms akimbo.
Parker doffed his fedora and waited for her to speak. Mentally he commented on what a fine example she looked of how much a married couple may grow in likeness from association - perhaps, rather, from the food and the work. She, too, was flatsided, round-shouldered, weather-burned to a degree of monotone which included her hair, her lips, and the one-piece calico slip that garbed her.
"Where be your woman, young man?"
The query startled Parker, not only of Itself, but also because of the musical, minor-key voice in which It was pitched.
"Madam " During his hesitant reply the
bucolic scene was obscured by a flash of Sylvia Brainard as he last had seen her, exquisite, reproachful, solicitous - "I hold no legal title to any one of the fair. Why do you ask?"
"Every he-critter had ought to have one looking after him. Stranger, you was asking Abide-with-me Shortoff where to find bumblings yerabouts?"
Again Parker was startled - startled and diverted. That "Abide-with-me" should be the "given" name of any benedick seemed at the moment worth his whole trip to the Blue Ridge. But there was distinct threat back of her mellifluous demand. Under spur of the moment, he decided upon dissimulation.
"As it happens, my chat with your husband carried no mention of bumblings, although I judge you're not often mistaken, Mrs. Shortoff."
"Whatsoever had it to do with - would you-all just as leave tell me?"
Parker glanced around for Inspiration, saw a sleek-looking horse grazing In a green-splotched pasture lot.
"I am looking," he admitted, this time with the impressment of truth, "for a saddle-horse."
"And Bide sent you away?" The suspicion In her question was for him, not her husband.
"I suppose, madam, that he did not wish to part with any of the family horses. One becomes so attached to beasts about the home."
"You suppose ? Well, I don't !"
That so much contemptuous derision could be expressed in her golden drawl seemed incredible. For a moment her gaze traveled with consideration from him to the green-splotched field.
"The only horse-brute on this farm that can be rid belongs to me," she said. "What you-all got to swap?"
"Nothing to swap," Parker apologized; "that is, nothing except cash."
"Nothing except cash? And you-all want a horse?"
From her hard expression he feared that she was going to refuse any consideration of his proposal, but she soon relieved him. Gripping his arm with a hand that trembled, she started him, with herself, across the uptllted corn-field toward the pasture lot.
"Come with me. Yan he stands, as fine a painted horse as ever seen the Blue Ridge."
Along the way she returned to her interrupted advice.
"Stranger, no matter where Abide-with-me Shortoff told you to go for them bumblings, you-all light tother way. He's the most practised tempter in the sticks, if I do say it about my old man, as shouldn't. If so be it he's done directed you to Metcalf's, it's only to make trouble for all concerned. Old Tom's as contentious as a gun. He'll maybe plug you through for spying, and Bide for turning your nose toward Roaring Fork."
Despite the strength of her assertions, she revealed weakness In her closing threat. "And leave me tell you additional, young man, don't you never come back this way with no jug of bumblings to divvy with Bide, unless you want me to plug what's left of you. When this here Carolina went dry, one pore sister made up her mind that one husband at least was going to cotton to the law. Fair warning, stranger!"
They had reached the horse, which looked a personable animal as he gave over grazing to contemplate them, his head held a little to one side. Well shaped and fed he was, and of distinctive markings: At once Mrs. Shortoff switched to the subject of his excellencies.
"Attend how lavish he is with white and red spots I And he's better than he looks, sound all through and well-mannered - as good a stob as you could find In a handful of miles."
''Suppose," suggested Parker, "that you talk it over with Mr. Shortoff and let me know by tomorrow what you will take for your horse."
Uneasiness showed in her manner. "Suppose I don't. Suppose you-all make up your mind here and now. Likely, once I got to cogitating on how much I think of this horse-brute, I'd plumb refuse to swap him for any of that cash you say youVe got."
"In blunt terms, then, how much is he worth to you?"
The woman hesitated, looked distrustful of so ready an agreement.
"It ain't a matter of what he's worth to me. I 'spect you nor nobody would be agreeable to pay that. But if you haul me down to cash, I'm in need of fifty-nine dollars and fifty cents."
It was Parker's turn to be suspicious. Although he was not a practised horseman, the price seemed absurd - too low even for the sticks. What was wrong with the animal? He asked himself.
Walking over, he made a more thorough examination. There was no doubt that the beast was ''plumb gentled," as the farm woman had assured him. Inspection of his hoofs showed no hint of split; his hocks were clean; there were none of the signs of glanders, in so far as Parker knew them. A sharp rap upon his rump sent him across the pasture at an easy, pain-free lope, testifying to no stiffness of joints. There seemed no reason to change first impressions.
The owner was close behind, deepening music in her drawl.
"Being as you-all are a furriner and just naturally afeared of getting burned, Til make it an even iiftynme.
Engaged in watching the movement of his prospective purchase, Parker made no reply.
"Bide's saddle and bridle ain't in no bad way," she added, "but the brute's done got kind of used to them, so Til throw them in."
"He has a name, I suppose?" Parker asked, after paying her the cash.
"I suppose he has! You couldn't make him answer to no other if you tried a month o' Sundays. It is" - she paused from what soon proved to be inherent dramatic appreciation - "It Is Teetotaler!"
Not until returning from a fruitless search along Roaring Fork did Parker Indulge his sense of the ludicrous. In the midst of a laugh, however, he stopped because he was annoyed. Then, appreciating why he felt so, he resumed the laugh.
He, who had set forth so determinedly that mommg to possess himself of a goodly supply of the region's Illicit brew, was hitting the back trail without it, astride an animal named Teetotaler!
For comfort he turned to congratulate himself on having out-hoss-swapped a Carolinian, when the return of the "critter's" stubborn propensity to veer toward the upside of the road interested him.
Soon suspicion replaced Interest. Dismounting, he went to the horse's head, removed his hat, held It first before the right eye, then the left. The uphill one blinked, the other did not.
The sudden rage of the man who first realizes himself outwitted rushed through him who had received the benefits due a "furriner." So that was why Mrs. Shortoff needed only fifty-nine dollars and fifty cents - reason enough to cut off the centimes and throw In the worn equipment! That was why her horse grazed, while Bides' toiled before the plow! The mare, although a scarecrow for looks, at least could keep to the furrows!
As he rode farther, however, and found that bridle vigilance enabled the animal to hold almost in the center of the road, amusement dispersed rage. He must not blame the horse - none would prefer the misfortune. The whole circumstance was divertingly ironic. His new mount's name was Teetotaler, yes. But he was blind in one eye. He could not go straight !