The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story. Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien
His intimate hurtled down the tunnel of mountain ash directly and assented.
"Wait till I go back and tell Reuben, though. I'm cooking this week. Wish Onnie 'd marry dad. Make her, can't you? Hi, Reu! I'm eating at the house. The beef's on, and dad wants fried onions. Why won't she have dad? You're grown up."
He trotted beside the mare noiselessly, chewing a birch spray, a hand on his friend's knee.
"She says she won't get married. I expect she'll stay here as long as she lives."
"I suppose so, but I wish she'd marry dad," said Ling. "All this trouble's wearing him out, and he won't have a hired girl if we could catch one. There's a pile of trouble, San. He has rows every day. Had a hell of a row with Percival yesterday."
"Who's this Percival? Onnie was cursing him out last night," Sanford recollected.
"He's an awful big hog who's pulling logs at the runway. Used to be a plumber in Australia. Swears like a sailor. He's a—what d' you call 'em? You know, a London mucker?"
"Cockney?"
"Yes, that's it. He put in your new bath-tub, and Onnie jumped him for going round the house looking at things. Dad's getting ready to fire him. He's the worst hand in the place. I'll point him out to you."
The sawmill whistle blew as the trail joined open road, and they passed men, their shirts sweat-stained, nodding or waving to the boys as they spread off to their houses and the swimming-place at the river bridge.
A group gathered daily behind the engine-yard to play horseshoe quoits, and Sanford pulled the mare to a walk on the fringes of this half-circle as old friends hailed him and shy lads with hair already sun-bleached wriggled out of the crowd to shake hands, Camerons, Jansens, Nattiers, Keenans, sons of the faithful. Bill Varian strolled up, his medical case under an arm.
"I'm eating with you. The boss asked me. He feels better already. Come in and speak to dad. He's hurt because he's not seen you, and you stopped to see Ian at the forge. Hi, Dad!" he called over the felt hats of the ring, "here's San."
"Fetch him in, then," cried the foreman.
Bill and Ling led the nervous mare through the group of pipe-smoking, friendly lumbermen, and Varian hugged his fosterling's son.
"Stop an' watch," he whispered. "They'll like seein' you, San. Onnie's been tellin' the women you've growed a yard."
Sanford settled to the monotony of the endless sport, saluting known brown faces and answering yelps of pleasure from the small boys who squatted against the high fence behind the stake.
"That's Percival," said Ling, as a man swaggered out to the pitching-mark.
"Six foot three," Bill said, "and strong as an ox. Drinks all the time. Think he dopes, too."
Sanford looked at the fellow with a swift dislike for his vacant, heavy face and his greasy, saffron hair. His bare arms were tattooed boldly and in many colors, distorted with ropes of muscle. He seemed a little drunk, and the green clouds cast a copper shade into his lashless eyes.
"Can't pitch for beans," said Ling as the first shoe went wide. When the second fell beside it, the crowd laughed.
"Now," said Ian Cameron, "he'll be mad wi' vainglory. He's a camstearlie ring' it an' a claverin' fu'."
"Ho! larf ahead!" snapped the giant. "'Ow's a man to 'eave a bloody thing at a bloody stike?"
The experts chuckled, and he ruffled about the ring, truculent, sneering, pausing before Varian, with a glance at Sanford.
"Give me something with some balance. Hi can show yer. Look!"
"I'm looking," said the foreman; "an' I ain't deaf, neither."
"'Ere's wot you blighters carn't 'eave. Learned it in Auckland, where there's real men." He fumbled in his shirt, and the mare snorted as the eight-inch blade flashed out of its handle under her nose. "See? That's the lidy! Now watch! There's a knot-'ole up the palings there."
The crowd fixed a stare on the green, solid barrier, and the knife soared a full twenty yards, but missed the knot-hole and rattled down. There was flat derision in the following laughter, and Percival dug his heel in the sod.
"Larf ahead! Hany one else try 'er?"
"Oh, shut up!" said some one across the ring. "We're pitchin' shoes."
Percival slouched off after his knife, and the frieze of small boys scattered except a lint-haired Cameron who was nursing a stray cat busily, cross-legged against the green boarding.
"Yon's Robert Sanford Cameron," said the smith. "He can say half his catechism."
"Good kid," said Sanford. "I never could get any—"
Percival had wandered back and stood a yard off, glaring at Bill as the largest object near.
"Think I can't, wot?"
"I'm not interested, and you're spoiling the game," said Bill, who feared nothing alive except germs, and could afford to disregard most of these. Sanford's fingers tightened on his whip.
"Ho!" coughed the cockney. "See! You—there!"
Robert Cameron looked up at the shout. The blade shot between the child's head and the kitten and hummed gently, quivering in the wood.
"Hi could 'a' cut 'is throat," said Percival so complacently that Sanford boiled.
"You scared him stiff," he choked. "You hog! Don't—"
"'Ello, 'oo's the young dook?"
"Look out," said a voice. "That's San, the—"
"Ho! 'Im with the Hirish gal to 'elp 'im tike 'is bloody barth nights? 'Oo's he? She's a—"
A second later Sanford knew that he had struck the man over the face with his whip, cutting the phrase. The mare plunged and the whole crowd congested about the bellowing cockney as Bill held Cameron back, and huge Jansen planted a hand on Rawling's chest.
"No worry," he said genially. "Yim an' us, Boss, our job."
Varian had wedged his hawk face close to the cockney's, now purple blotched with wrath, and Rawling waited.
"Come to the office an' get your pay. You hear? Then you clear out. If you ain't off the property in an hour you'll be dead. You hear?"
"He ought to," muttered Ling, leading the mare away. "Dad hasn't yelled that loud since that Dutchman dropped the kid in the—hello, it's raining!"
"Come on home, Sonny," said Rawling, "and tell us all about it. I didn't see the start."
But Sanford was still boiling, and the owner had recourse to his godson. Ling told the story, unabridged, as they mounted toward the house.
"Onnie'll hear of it," sighed Rawling. "Look, there she is by the kitchen, and that's Jennie Cameron loping 'cross lots. Never mind, San. You did the best you could; don't bother. Swine are swine."
The rain was cooling Sanford's head, and he laughed awkwardly.
"Sorry I lost my temper."
"I'm not. Jennie's telling Onnie. Hear?"
The smith's long-legged daughter was gesticulating at the kitchen trellis, and Onnie's feet began a sort of war-dance in the wet grass as Rawling approached.
"Where is this sufferin' pig, could your honor be tellin' me? God be above us all! With my name in his black, ugly mouth! I knew there'd be trouble; the snake's bells did be sayin' so since the storm was comin'. An' him three times the bigness of Master San! Where'd he be now?"
"Jim gave him an hour to be off the property, Onnie."
"God's mercy he had no knife in his hand, then, even with the men by an' Master San on his horse. Blessed Mary! I will go wait an' have speech with this Englishman on the road."
"You'll go get dinner, Onnie Killelia," said Rawling. "Master San is tired, Bill and Ling are coming—and look there!"
The faithful were marching Percival down the road to the valley-mouth in the green dusk. He walked between Jansen and Bill, a dozen men behind, and a flying