The Soldier of the Valley. Nelson Lloyd
Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost.]
It was reckless in me to mention these sea wonders, for now in defence of my reputation for truthfulness, I had to prove their existence. The fabric of my story seemed to hang on them. Elmer Spiker declared that he had heard his grandfather tell of a flying sucker that inhabited the deep hole below the bridge when he was a boy, but this was the same grandfather who had strung six squirrels and a pigeon on one bullet in the woods above the mill in his early manhood. There Elmer winked. Isaac Bolum allowed that they might be trout that had trained themselves in the use of wings, but he did not believe that any ordinary fish such as a chub or a pike or a sunny would care to leave its natural element to take up with the birds. Perry Thomas began to cough. That cough is always like a snake's warning rattle. Before he had time to strike, I blocked the discussion by promising that if the company suspended judgment I would in the near future prove the accuracy of my statements on flying fishes by the encyclopaedia. This promise met with general approval, so I hurried over the sea to the dry land where I knew the ways better and was less likely to arouse higher criticism. I told them of the stirring times in Cuba, till the day came when we stormed the hill, and they had to carry me back to the sea. I told them how lucky I was to get to the sea at all, for often I had closed my eyes, worn out by the pain and the struggle for life, little caring whether ever again I opened them to the light. Then strength came, and hope, and I turned my face to the North, toward the valley and home. It was hard to come back on crutches, but it was better than not to come at all. It was best, to have gone away, else I had never known the joy of the return, and I was pretty sure to stay, now that I was home, but if they fancied me dozing away my life at the store stove they were mistaken; not that I scorned the learned discussion there, but the frosts were coming soon to stir up sluggish blood, and when the guns were barking in the woods, and the hounds were baying along the ridges, I would be with them.
I looked right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it when our eyes met.
III
The gate latch clicked. From the road Henry Holmes called a last good-night, and Tim and I were alone. We sat in silence, watching through the window the old man's lantern as he swung away toward home. Then the light disappeared and without all was black. The village was asleep.
By the stove lay my hound, Captain, snoring gently. He had tried to keep awake, poor beast! For a time he had even struggled to hold one eye open and on his master, but at last, overcome by weariness, his head snuggled farther and farther down into his fore paws, and the tired tail ceased its rhythmic beating on the floor.
What is home without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the dog that never misses a trail, the dog that never fails him.
The hound raised his head and half opened one eye. He was sure that I was really there, and the gleam of white teeth showed a broadening dog-smile. And once more we were away on the dreamland trail—Captain and I.
"He's been counting the days till you got home, Mark," said Tim, holding a burning match over my pipe. "It was a bit lonely here, while you were gone, so Captain and I used to discuss your doings a good deal after the rest of the place had gone to bed. And as for young Colonel, why he's heard so much of you from Captain there, I'm afraid he'll swallow you when he gets at you in the morning."
Young Colonel was the puppy the returning soldier had never seen. He had come long after I had gone away, and as yet I knew him only by his voice, for I had heard his dismal wails down in the barn. In the excitement of the evening I had forgotten him, but now I raised a warning finger and listened, thinking that I might catch the appealing cry. And is there any cry more appealing than that of a lonely puppy? There was not a sound outside, and I turned to Tim.
My brother lighted his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, and looked at me. I looked at him very, very hard. Then we both began to blow clouds of smoke in each other's faces. Hardly a word had Tim and I passed since that day in the field when I drew the long twig that sent me away and left him behind to keep our home. What a blessing a pipe is at a time like this! Tim says more by the vigor of his smoking than Perry Thomas could express in a year's oration. So we enshrouded our emotions in the gray cloud; but if he did not speak, I knew well what he would be saying, and the harder I puffed the easier did he divine what was uppermost in my mind. For we were brothers! This was the same room that for years had been our world; this the same carpet over which we had tumbled together at our mother's feet. There was the same cupboard that had been our mountain; here the same chairs that formed our ridges and our valleys. At the table by my side, by the light of this very lamp, we sat together not so very long ago, boys, spelling out with our father, letter by letter, word by word, the stories of the Bible. Here we had lived our little lives; here we were to live what was to come; and where life is as simple as it is with us we grow a bit like the animals about us. We sit together and smoke; we purr, as it were, and know each other's mind. Tim and I purred. Incident by incident, year by year, we travelled down the course of our lives again, over the rough ways, over the smooth ways, smoking and smoking, until at last we brought up together at the present. Not a word had either of us spoken, but at last when our reminiscent wanderings were over and we paused on the threshold of the future, Tim spoke.
"Attractive?" he said in a tone of inquiry.
He was looking at me with eyebrows arched, curiously, and there was a faint suggestion of hostility in the set of his mouth.
Poor Tim! He has seen so little of women! We have them in our valley, of course. But he and I lived much in the great book-land beyond the hills. We had read together of all the heroines of the romances, and we knew their little ways and their pretty speeches as well as if we had ourselves walked with them through a few hundred pages and lived happily ever after. They had been the women of our world as distinct from the women of our valley. The last we knew as kindly, honest persons with a faculty for twisting their English and a woful ignorance of well-turned speeches. They never said "Fair Sir" nor "Master." But I had gone from that book-world and had seen the women of the real world. Here I had the advantage of my brother. Into his life a single woman had come from the real world. She was different from the women of our valley. I had known that the moment our eyes met, and by the way Tim smoked now, and by the tone of his terse inquiry, I knew that he had met a woman who had said "Fair Sir" to him, and I feared for him. It was disturbing. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but whether for the tall, strong young fellow before me, to whom I had been all, or for the fair-faced girl, I could not for the life of me tell. It seemed to be a bit of both.
"I remarked that she was attractive," said Tim aggressively, for I had kept on smoking in silence.
"Rather," I answered carelessly. "But who is she—a stranger here?"
"Rather," repeated Tim hotly. "Well, you are blind. I suppose you judged her by that ugly gray gown. You thought she was some pious Dunkard."
"I am no enemy of piety," I retorted. "In fact, I hardly noticed her clothes at all, except to think that their simplicity gave her a sort of Priscilla air that was fetching."
Tim softened. "That's it exactly," he said. "But, Mark, you should have seen Mary Warden when she came here."
"From where?" I asked.
"From Kansas. She lived in some big town out West, and when her mother died there was no one left to her but Luther Warden, her uncle. He sent for her, and now she is living with him. The old man sets a great store by her."
Luther Warden