Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”
I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought.
I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m sure of it.
But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home, under his thumb.
“You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse.
I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure, the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts. Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far, far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that I had asked nothing of her.
However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable.
I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when a horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his forehead would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed to think that the animal’s course was nearly run.
I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the martyr’s skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my resolution left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I felt as if he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the cellar and fetched apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully slobbering mouth until he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to sleep.
Constable Nute came for me during the day.
“There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If you feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal investigation, you needn’t come.”
“I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along. There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left.
I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the noddle of the village fool.
“But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are the organizer and the ringleader.”
“And I confess that I was leader at first,” I owned up to him, just as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing to do with the society since.”
He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with a sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a good looking over.
“Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real reason why you quit your devilishness.”
I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent.
“You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?”
I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when he raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he had been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to me.
“You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the boys who have owned up.”
“I knew there were sneaks in the crowd—that’s another reason I had for getting out, Judge Kingsley.”
“If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place the blame.”
“It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a square deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you the way he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame on to me.”
“I know for myself.”
“No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth! I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt—yes, sir, to my awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes—this very evening—so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever propped on four legs.”
That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense enough to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge more thoroughly angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd business man.
“What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?”
“You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him and I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want to see you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. You know my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you about him it ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how much the truth is going to harm me.”
“There’s no decency in this town—not even honor among thieves,” snarled the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young Sidney! Remember for yourself—and tell others—that the grand jury sits in this county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on depends what the county prosecutor will be inclined to do.”
Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my clawed face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I had many things to ponder on.
All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. I turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance, ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly beautiful!
“I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said, graciously.