_ It was the postmaster who appeared at Parker's invitation to enter. That official stroked down his beard, tipped his chair back, surveyed the young man with the solemnity of the midnight raven and observed:
"I hear you and Colonel Gid had it hot and tight up to Poquette to-day."
"There was an argument," returned Parker, quietly.
"I don't want to be considered as meddlin' with your affairs, Mr. Parker, but I've known Gid Ward for a good many years, and I want to advise you to look sharp that he doesn't do you some pesky mean kind of harm."
"I have been warned already, Mr. Dodge."
"Yes, but you don't seem to take it to heart enough. Or if you do, you don't show it. That was the reason I was afraid you didn't realize what a man you have to deal with."
"He seems to me like a blustering coward. Your really brave and determined men don't make so much talk."
"Oh, Gid Ward has tried his usual game of scare with his mouth, and it didn't work. He won't come again at you that way in the open right way. But"--the postmaster brought his chair down on its four legs and leaned forward to whisper--"he'll come again at you in the dark, and it's then that he's dangerous."
"Of course I needn't tell you, Mr. Dodge, that I do not propose to be backed down and driven out of this section by a man like that. I dare say he is planning mischief, but I have my work to do here, and I shall keep on as best I can."
"I admire your spunk, young man," said the postmaster, heartily, "and I hope you'll come through this all right. But I have felt it my duty to see that you were warned good and solid. I know how Gid Ward got his start in life--and by as mean a trick as ever a man put up.
"His brother Joshua Ward, enlisted for the war in the sixties. Bachelor, Joshua was. He was going with one of the Marshall girls in Carmel, and the thing was settled final. Hows'ever, Josh went away to the war without getting married, because he allowed that if he got killed, an unmarried girl wouldn't have to take last pickings of the men, like a widow would. Mighty kind, square, good-hearted chap that Josh Ward now I can tell ye! Thought of others first all the time. He owned a mighty nice place that his aunt had willed to him. She liked Josh, but hated the sight of Gid, same's every one else did.
"Before Josh went away he deeded his farm and everything to that Marshall girl. Told her that if he came back they would get married, and it would be all right. If he didn't come back, he wanted her to marry a good man, and told her that the farm would make a home for them and help her to get the best kind of a husband. As I told you, that Joshua Ward was as good as wheat.
"For a year that Marshall girl heard from Josh regularly, and then the papers reported that he was killed in a big battle, and from then to the end of the war--two years or more--there wasn't a word from him or of him. Meanwhile Gid laid his plan. The Marshall girl had an idea that if she married Gid--though he wasn't her style--it would please Josh, for then the place would stay in the family. She mourned for Josh terribly, but Gid was right after her all the time, and there she was with a farm on her hands, and so she finally up and married him.
"In Joshua Ward's case it happened, as it did in hundreds of other cases, where the poor chaps weren't important enough to be heard about or from. He was just captured instead of killed, and went from Libby to Andersonville, from Andersonville to Macon, and when Lee surrendered he came home, thin's a shadow, shaking with ague and with eyes bigger than burnt holes in a blanket. Pitiful figure he was, I tell you. I was running a livery business in Carmel village then, and Josh hired me to take him out to the farm.
"I broke the thing to him on the way. Made my throat ache, now I tell you, Mr. Parker. Made my eyes smart and the fields and sky look blurry to see that poor wreck, with everything gone, and know that the hog that had stayed to home was enjoying it all.
"And what made me, as a man, despise Gid Ward more was the fact that he had been colonel of a state regiment in old militia days, boosted there by a gang that trained with him, and as soon as war broke out and the regiment was mustered in he resigned like a sneak, and couldn't be touched by a draft.
"Josh always was a quiet chap. He humped over a little more when I told him, and looked thinner, and I had to help him more when he got out at the farm than I did when he got aboard at the stable. He allowed he'd go to the farm just the same. Said he didn't have any money, or any other place to go, and he guessed 'twas his home, anyway.
"Mr. Parker, I haven't got the language to tell ye how that woman looked when she came to the door and saw me helping Josh out to the ground. No sir, I don't want to think of it--how she sank right down in that doorway, and her head went over sidewise and her eyes shut and--and her heart stopped, I guess."
The postmaster blew his nose and snapped his eyes and cleared his throat with difficulty. Parker had forgotten his figures.
"Gid came round the corner of the house, seeing the team drive up, and what do you suppose he said when he saw his brother back from the grave, as you might say? He looked him over, not offering to shake his hand, and then he says, 'Well, living skelington, it's goin' to cost something to plump you out again, ain't it?'
"When I saw the look on Josh's face at that, I'd have hauled off and cuffed Gid's head up to a pick, swan if I wouldn't, but the Marshall girl--excuse me, Mis' Ward--came tearin' down the path, and threw her arms round Josh's neck and cried, 'O my poor brother!' And I came away.
"It was too much for me. My eyes were so full that I run against a tree, and pretty near took a wheel off.
"Wal, Josh stayed, and as soon as he was able he took a-hold of farm-work, and things went along for a time all quiet. One evening Josh was sitting out at the corner of the house, smoking as usual, and meditatin' in the way he had, when Gid came along and sat down on the door-stone.
"''Bout time to have a business understanding, ain't it, Josh?' Gid asked.
"'Yes, perhaps it is,' said Joshua.
"'Well then, ye'll answer a fair question. If ye continue to stay here, where's the money for your board comin' from?'
"'Board?' says Josh.
"'Yes, board! You don't reckon to run a visit over three months, do ye?'
"'Why, I didn't think there'd be any question of this sort between us, Gid.'
"'Business is business. If you'd had more business to you, you wouldn't be a pauper now.'
"'A pauper!'
"'That's what I said. You deeded this place to Cynthy Marshall, didn't ye? Well, she has deeded it to me. 'Tain't much of a husband that don't have his property in his own name.'
"'But see here, Gideon, you know why I deeded this property. You know how matters have come out. Between brothers in such a case there should be no such thing as stickin' to the letter of deeds.'
"'Nearer the relatives be to ye, closer you ought to follow the law,' snapped Gid, 'or else ye'll get cheated worse than by a stranger!'
"'He didn't seem to be takin' any of that to himself.'
"'I've been thinkin' I'd give half the place to Cynthy as a weddin' present, and we could--'
"'Why, you've given it all to her, hain't ye?'
"Josh had to say yes, of course. Never was any hand to argue his own rights."
"'Well, she has given it to me and it was hers to give. Now, I say, can ye pay board?'
"'I haven't any money, Gid.'
"'Well, then, ye'll have to get a job somewhere. I don't need a hired man just now. Ye won't starve, Josh. The gov'ment will take care of soldiers,' he sneered. Then he got up and went into the house.
"That's the way it was told to me by Joshua Ward himself, Mr. Parker," concluded the postmaster. "He had to get out. He didn't have any money to fight in law. He didn't want to stir up the thing on poor Cynthy's account. And he was ashamed to have the whole world know how mean a man he had for a brother."
"What has become of this Joshua?" asked the young man, his heart hot with new and fresh bitterness against this unspeakable tyrant of the timber country.
"Josh did what so many other heart-broken men have done. He went into the woods, on an island in Little Moxie, built a cabin, has his pension to live on, and has become one of those queer old chaps such as you will find scattered all the way from Holeb to New Brunswick. There's old Young at Gulf Hagas, and the Mediator at Boarstone, and a lot like them. They call Joshua the 'cat hermit of Moxie.'
"They say he's got cats round his place by the hundred. Spends all his time in hunting meat and catching fish for 'em. Well, most everybody is cranky about some notion or others, whether it's in the city or in the woods, and I reckon that Josh has a right to keep cats if he wants to. No one ever sees him out in civilization now. Cynthy's in the asylum. Most people think it's just the trouble of the thing preying on her mind. And then again, I guess that Gid wasn't ever any too good to her. Hard case, ain't it, Mr. Parker?" The postmaster's voice trembled.
"It's as sad a story--as anger-stirring a story as I ever listened to, Mr. Dodge," replied the young man, passionately. "I cannot understand how a scoundrel of that style should have been allowed to stamp roughshod over people without a champion arising in some quarter. It is small wonder that he has come to think that he can run the universe. He needs a lesson."
"There's no doubt about his needin' the lesson," replied the postmaster. "But for years half the wages that are paid out in this section have come through the hands of Gideon Ward. Laboring men with families to support and the traders have to stand in with him or be side-tracked. I don't know as Gid ever did a real up-and-down crime, any more than what I've been telling you--and some men in the world would be mean enough to gloss all that over, saying that it's only right to look out for number one first of all. But I tell ye honestly, Mr. Parker, Gid would have to do something pretty desperate and open to have the prosecuting officers of this county take it up against him. Now you can understand the width of the swath he cuts in these parts. Where would the witnesses come from? He owns his men, body and soul."
Parker's forehead wrinkled doubtfully.
"What do you think will be his next move in regard to me?"
"I can't make a guess, but you need smellers as long as a bobcat's and as many eyes as a spider." With this cheering opinion expressed, the postmaster went away.
There was no more work for Parker on his plans that night.
The grim pathos of the story that he had heard haunted him. This pitiful tragedy in real life stirred his youthful and impressionable sensibilities to their depths.
Despite his brave outward demeanor during his tilt with the ferocious old man he had feared within himself. He possessed no gladiatorial spirit and did not relish fray for the sake of it. But he did have accurate notions of right and wrong, of the justice of a cause and of manliness in standing for it. He had exhibited that trait many times to the astonishment of those who had been deceived by his quiet exterior. In this instance his employers had put a trust into his hands. He had resolved to go through with his task. But now there was added another incentive--a very distinct determination to give Gideon Ward at least one check and lesson in his career of wholesale domination.
A queer grief worked in his heart and a wistful tenderness moistened his eyes as he thought upon that injured brother, living out his wrecked life somewhere in the heart of those great woods about him. Perhaps there was a bit of prescience in the warmth with which he dwelt on the subject, for Fate had written that Joshua Ward was to play an important part in the life of Rodney Parker.
He went to sleep with the sorrow of it all weighing his mind, and his teeth gritting with determination as he reflected on Gideon Ward and his ugly threats. _