Gordon Keith Part 10

"_You_ won't have no trouble," he said good-humoredly. "Not if you're like your father. I told 'em you was his son, an' I'd be responsible for you."

Gordon Keith looked at him with softened eyes. A mention of his father always went to his heart.

"I'll try and give you satisfaction," he said earnestly. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Yes."

"Will you come over to the examination of the school when it opens, and then let me try the experiment of running it my way for, say, two months, and then come to another examination? Then if I do not satisfy you I'll do anything you say; I'll go back to the old way."

"Done," said the trustee, cordially. And so, Gordon Keith won another victory, and started the school under favorable auspices.

Adam Rawson asked him to come and live at his house. "You might give Phrony a few extra lessons to fit her for a bo'din'-school," he said. "I want her to have the best edvantages."

Keith soon ingratiated himself further with the old squire. He broke his young horses for him, drove his wagon, mended his vehicles, and was ready to turn his hand to anything that came up about the place.

As his confidence in the young man grew, the squire let Keith into a secret.

"You mind when you come up here with that young man from the North,--that engineer fellow,--what come a-runnin' of a railroad a-h.e.l.lbulgin' through this country, and was a-goin' to carry off all the coal from the top of the Alleghanies spang down to Torment?" Keith remembered. "Well, he was right persuasive," continued the squire, "and I thought if all that money was a-goin' to be made and them railroads had to come, like he said, jest as certain as water runnin' down a hill, I might as well git some of it. I had a little slipe or two up there before, and havin' a little money from my cattle, lumber, and sich, I went in and bought a few slipes more, jest to kind of fill in like, and Phrony's growin' up, and I'm a-thinkin' it is about time to let the railroads come in; so, if you kin git your young man, let him know I've kind o' changed my mind."

Miss Euphronia Tripper had grown up into a plump and pretty country girl of fifteen or sixteen, whose rosy cheeks, flaxen hair, and blue eyes, as well as the fact that she was the only heiress of the old squire, who was one of the "best-fixed" men in all that "country," made her quite the belle of the region. She had already made a deep impression on both big Jake Dennison and his younger brother Dave. Dave was secretly in love with her, but Jake was openly so, a condition which he manifested by being as plainly and as hopelessly bound in her presence as a bear cub tangled in a net. For her benefit he would show feats of strength which might have done credit to a boy-Hercules; but let her turn on him the glow of her countenance, and he was a hopeless ma.s.s of perspiring idiocy.

Keith found her a somewhat difficult pupil to deal with. She was much more intent on making an impression on him than on progressing in her studies.

After the first shyness of her intercourse with the young teacher had worn off, she began for a while rather to make eyes at him, which if Keith ever dreamed of, he never gave the least sign of it. She, therefore, soon abandoned the useless campaign, and for a time held him in mingled awe and disdain.

The Ridge College was a simple log-building of a single room, with a small porch in front, built of hewn logs and plastered inside.

Gordon Keith, on entering on his new duties, found his position much easier than he had been led to expect.

Whether it was the novelty of the young teacher's quiet manner, clear eyes, broad shoulders, and a.s.sured bearing, or the idea of the examination with which he undertook to begin the session, he had a week of surprising quiet. The school filled day after day, and even the noted Dennison boys, from Jacob Dennison, the strapping six-foot senior, down to Dave, who was the youngest and smartest of the three, appeared duly every morning, and treated the young teacher with reasonable civility, if with somewhat insolent familiarity.

The day of the examination Squire Rawson attended, solemn and pompous with a superfluity of white s.h.i.+rt-front. Brief as was the examination, it revealed to Keith an astonis.h.i.+ng state of ignorance of the simplest things. It was incredible to him that, with so many hours of so-called study, so little progress had been made. He stated this in plain language, and outlined his plan for shorter hours and closer application. A voice from the boys' side muttered that the owner did not see anything the matter with the old hours. They were good enough for them. Keith turned quickly:

"What is that?"

There was no answer.

"What is that, Dennison?" he demanded. "I thought I heard you speak."

"Wall, if you did, I warn't speakin' to you," said Jacob Dennison, surlily.

"Well, when you speak in school, address yourself to me," said Keith. He caught Euphronia Tripper's eyes on him.

"I mought an' I moughtn't," said Jacob, insolently.

"I propose to see that you do."

Jacob's reply was something between a grunt and a sneer, and the school rustled with a sound very much like applause.

Next morning, on his arrival at school, Keith found the door fastened on the inside. A t.i.tter from within revealed the fact that it was no accident, and the guffaw of derision that greeted his sharp command that the door should be opened immediately showed that the Dennison boys were up to their old tricks.

"Open the door, Jake Dennison, instantly!" he called.

The reply was sung through the keyhole:

"'Ole Molly hyah, what you doin' dyah? Settin' in de cordner, smokin' a ciggyah.'"

It was little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led by Phrony Tripper.

An axe was lying at the woodpile near by, and in two minutes the door was lying in splinters on the school-house floor, and Keith, with a white face and a dangerous tremble in his voice, was calling the amazed school to order. He heard the lessons through, and at noon, the hour he had named the day before, dismissed all the younger scholars. The Dennisons and one or two larger boys he ordered to remain. As the scholars filed out, there was a colloquy between Jacob Dennison and his younger brother Dave. Dave had the brains of the family, and he was whispering to Jake. Keith moved his chair and seated himself near the door. There was a brief muttered conversation among the Dennisons, and then Jake Dennison rose, put on his hat slowly, and, addressing the other boys, announced that he didn't know what they were going to do, but he was "a-gwine home and git ready to go and see the dance up at Gates's."

He swaggered toward the door, the others following in his wake.

Keith rose from his seat.

"Go back to your places." He spoke so quietly that his voice could scarcely be heard.

"Go nowhere! You go to h----l!" sneered the big leader, contemptuously.

"'Tain't no use for you to try to stop me--I kin git away with two like you."

Perhaps, he could have done so, but Keith was too quick for him. He seized the split-bottomed chair from which he had risen, and whirling it high above his head, brought it cras.h.i.+ng down on his a.s.sailant, laying him flat on the floor. Then, without a second's hesitation, he sprang toward the others.

"Into your seats instantly!" he shouted, as he raised once more the damaged, but still formidable, weapon. By an instinct the mutineers fell into the nearest seats, and Keith turned back to his first opponent, who was just rising from the floor with a dazed look on his face. A few drops of blood were trickling down his forehead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "If you don't go back to your seat, I'll dash your brains out," said Keith.]

"If you don't go to your seat instantly, I'll dash your brains out,"

said Keith, looking him full in the eye. He still grasped the chair, and as he tightened his grip on it, the crestfallen bully sank down on the bench and broke into a whimper about a grown man hitting a boy with a chair.

Suddenly Keith, in the moment of victory, found himself attacked in the rear. One of the smaller boys, who had gone out with the rest, hearing the fight, had rushed back, and, just as Keith drove Jake Dennison to his seat, sprang on him like a little wild-cat. Turning, Keith seized and held him.

"What are you doing, Dave Dennison, confound you?" he demanded angrily.

"I'm one of 'em," blubbered the boy, trying to reach him with both fist and foot. "I don't let n.o.body hit my brother."

Keith found that he had more trouble in quelling Dave, the smallest member of the Dennison tribe, than in conquering the bigger brothers.

"Sit down and behave yourself," he said, shoving him into a seat and holding him there. "I'm not going to hit him again if he behaves himself."

Keith, having quieted Dave, looked to see that Jake was not much hurt.

He took out his handkerchief.

"Take that and wipe your face with it," he said quietly, and taking from his desk his inkstand and some writing-paper, he seated himself on a bench near the door and began to write letters. It grew late, but the young teacher did not move. He wrote letter after letter. It began to grow dark; he simply lit the little lamp on his desk, and taking up a book, settled down to read; and when at last he rose and announced that the culprits might go home, the wheezy strains of the three instruments that composed the band at Gates's had long since died out, and Gordon Keith was undisputed master of Ridge College.

His letter to the trustees was delivered that morning, saying that if they would sustain his action he would do his best to make the school the best in that section; but if not, his resignation was in their hands.

"I guess he is the sort of medicine those youngsters need," said Dr.

Balsam. "We'd better let it work."