A Knight of the Cumberland Part 6

Ah, dear me, it was more serious than I thought. There were tears in her eyes, and I led the Blight and the little sister home--conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I would find that young jackanapes of an engineer and let him know that anybody who made the Blight unhappy must deal with me. I would take him by the neck and pound some sense into him. I found him lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien to any consciousness that I could have any knowledge of what was going or any right to poke my nose into anybody's business--and I did nothing except go back to lunch--to find the Blight upstairs and the little sister indignant with me.

"You just let them alone," she said severely.

"Let who alone?" I said, lapsing into the speech of childhood.

"You--just--let--them--alone," she repeated.

"I've already made up my mind to that."

"Well, then!" she said, with an air of satisfaction, but why I don't know.

I went back to the poplar grove. The Declaration was over and the crowd was gone, but there was the Hon. Samuel Budd, mopping his brow with one hand, slapping his thigh with the other, and all but executing a pigeon-wing on the turf. He turned goggles on me that literally shone triumph.

"He's come--Dave Branham's come!" he said. "He's better than the Wild Dog. I've been trying him on the black horse and, Lord, how he can take them rings off! Ha, won't I get into them fellows who wouldn't let me off this morning! Oh, yes, I agreed to bring in a dark horse, and I'll bring him in all right. That five hundred is in my clothes now. You see that point yonder? Well, there's a hollow there and bushes all around.

That's where I'm going to dress him. I've got his clothes all right and a name for him. This thing is a-goin' to come off accordin' to Hoyle, Ivanhoe, Four-Quarters-of-Beef, and all them mediaeval fellows. Just watch me!"

I began to get newly interested, for that knight's name I suddenly recalled. Little Buck, the Wild Dog's brother, had mentioned him, when we were over in the Kentucky hills, as practising with the Wild Dog--as being "mighty good, but nowhar 'longside o' Mart." So the Hon. Sam might have a good subst.i.tute, after all, and being a devoted disciple of Sir Walter, I knew his knight would rival, in splendor, at least, any that rode with King Arthur in days of old.

The Blight was very quiet at lunch, as was the little sister, and my effort to be jocose was a lamentable failure. So I gave news.

"The Hon. Sam has a subst.i.tute." No curiosity and no question.

"Who--did you say? Why, Dave Branham, a friend of the Wild Dog. Don't you remember Buck telling us about him?" No answer. "Well, I do--and, by the way, I saw Buck and one of the big sisters just a while ago. Her name is Mollie. Dave Branham, you will recall, is her sweetheart. The other big sister had to stay at home with her mother and little Cindy, who's sick. Of course, I didn't ask them about Mart--the Wild Dog. They knew I knew and they wouldn't have liked it. The Wild Dog's around, I understand, but he won't dare show his face. Every policeman in town is on the lookout for him." I thought the Blight's face showed a signal of relief.

"I'm going to play short-stop," I added.

"Oh!" said the Blight, with a smile, but the little sister said with some scorn:

"You!"

"I'll show you," I said, and I told the Blight about base-ball at the Gap. We had introduced base-ball into the region and the valley boys and mountain boys, being swift runners, throwing like a rifle shot from constant practice with stones, and being hard as nails, caught the game quickly and with great ease. We beat them all the time at first, but now they were beginning to beat us. We had a league now, and this was the champions.h.i.+p game for the pennant.

"It was right funny the first time we beat a native team. Of course, we got together and cheered 'em. They thought we were cheering ourselves, so they got red in the face, rushed together and whooped it up for themselves for about half an hour."

The Blight almost laughed.

"We used to have to carry our guns around with us at first when we went to other places, and we came near having several fights."

"Oh!" said the Blight excitedly. "Do you think there might be a fight this afternoon?"

"Don't know," I said, shaking my head. "It's pretty hard for eighteen people to fight when nine of them are policemen and there are forty more around. Still the crowd might take a hand."

This, I saw, quite thrilled the Blight and she was in good spirits when we started out.

"Marston doesn't pitch this afternoon," I said to the little sister. "He plays first base. He's saving himself for the tournament. He's done too much already." The Blight merely turned her head while I was speaking.

"And the Hon. Sam will not act as umpire. He wants to save his voice--and his head."

The seats in the "grandstand" were in the sun now, so I left the girls in a deserted band-stand that stood on stilts under trees on the southern side of the field, and on a line midway between third base and the position of short-stop. Now there is no enthusiasm in any sport that equals the excitement aroused by a rural base-ball game and I never saw the enthusiasm of that game outdone except by the excitement of the tournament that followed that afternoon. The game was close and Marston and I a.s.suredly were stars--Marston one of the first magnitude.

"Goose-egg" on one side matched "goose-egg" on the other until the end of the fifth inning, when the engineer knocked a home-run. Spectators threw their hats into the trees, yelled themselves hoa.r.s.e, and I saw several old mountaineers who understood no more of base-ball than of the lost _digamma_ in Greek going wild with the general contagion. During these innings I had "a.s.sisted" in two doubles and had fired in three "daisy cutters" to first myself in spite of the guying I got from the opposing rooters.

"Four-eyes" they called me on account of my spectacles until a new nickname came at the last half of the ninth inning, when we were in the field with the score four to three in our favor. It was then that a small, fat boy with a paper megaphone longer than he was waddled out almost to first base and levelling his trumpet at me, thundered out in a sudden silence:

"h.e.l.lo, Foxy Grandpa!" That was too much. I got rattled, and when there were three men on bases and two out, a swift grounder came to me, I fell--catching it--and threw wildly to first from my knees. I heard shouts of horror, anger, and distress from everywhere and my own heart stopped beating--I had lost the game--and then Marston leaped in the air--surely it must have been four feet--caught the ball with his left hand and dropped back on the bag. The sound of his foot on it and the runner's was almost simultaneous, but the umpire said Marston's was there first. Then bedlam! One of my brothers was umpire and the captain of the other team walked threateningly out toward him, followed by two of his men with base-ball bats. As I started off myself towards them I saw, with the corner of my eye, another brother of mine start in a run from the left field, and I wondered why a third, who was scoring, sat perfectly still in his chair, particularly as a well-known, red-headed tough from one of the mines who had been officiously antagonistic ran toward the pitcher's box directly in front of him. Instantly a dozen of the guard sprang toward it, some man pulled his pistol, a billy cracked straightway on his head, and in a few minutes order was restored. And still the brother scoring hadn't moved from his chair, and I spoke to him hotly.

"Keep your s.h.i.+rt on," he said easily, lifting his score-card with his left hand and showing his right clinched about his pistol under it.

"I was just waiting for that red-head to make a move. I guess I'd have got him first."

I walked back to the Blight and the little sister and both of them looked very serious and frightened.

"I don't think I want to see a real fight, after all," said the Blight.

"Not this afternoon."

It was a little singular and prophetic, but just as the words left her lips one of the Police Guard handed me a piece of paper.

"Somebody in the crowd must have dropped it in my pocket," he said. On the paper were scrawled these words:

"_Look out for the Wild Dog!_"

I sent the paper to Marston.

VII. AT LAST--THE TOURNAMENT

At last--the tournament! Ever afterward the Hon. Samuel Budd called it "The Gentle and Joyous Pa.s.sage of Arms--not of Ashby--but of the Gap, by-suh!" The Hon. Samuel had arranged it as nearly after Sir Walter as possible. And a sudden leap it was from the most modern of games to a game most ancient.

No knights of old ever jousted on a lovelier field than the green little valley toward which the Hon. Sam waved one big hand. It was level, shorn of weeds, elliptical in shape, and bound in by trees that ran in a semicircle around the bank of the river, shut in the southern border, and ran back to the northern extremity in a primeval little forest that wood-thrushes, even then, were making musical--all of it shut in by a wall of living green, save for one narrow s.p.a.ce through which the knights were to enter. In front waved Wallens' leafy ridge and behind rose the c.u.mberland Range shouldering itself spur by spur, into the coming sunset and cras.h.i.+ng eastward into the mighty bulk of Powell's Mountain, which loomed southward from the head of the valley--all nodding sunny plumes of chestnut.

The Hon. Sam had seen us coming from afar apparently, had come forward to meet us, and he was in high spirits.

"I am Prince John and Waldemar and all the rest of 'em this day," he said, "and 'it is thus,'" quoting Sir Walter, "that we set the dutiful example of loyalty to the Queen of Love and Beauty, and are ourselves her guide to the throne which she must this day occupy." And so saying, the Hon. Sam marshalled the Blight to a seat of honor next his own.

"And how do you know she is going to be the Queen of Love and Beauty?"

asked the little sister. The Hon. Sam winked at me.

"Well, this tournament lies between two gallant knights. One will make her the Queen of his own accord, if he wins, and if the other wins, he's got to, or I'll break his head. I've given orders." And the Hon. Sam looked about right and left on the people who were his that day.

"Observe the n.o.bles and ladies," he said, still following Sir Walter, and waving at the towns-people and visitors in the rude grandstand.

"Observe the yeomanry and spectators of a better degree than the mere vulgar"--waving at the crowd on either side of the stand--"and the promiscuous mult.i.tude down the river banks and over the woods and clinging to the tree-tops and to yon telegraph-pole. And there is my herald"--pointing to the cornetist of the local band--"and wait--by my halidom--please just wait until you see my knight on that black charger o' mine."

The Blight and the little sister were convulsed and the Hon. Sam went on:

"Look at my men-at-arms"--the volunteer policemen with bulging hip-pockets, dangling billies and gleaming s.h.i.+elds of office--"and at my refreshment tents behind"--where peanuts and pink lemonade were keeping the mult.i.tude busy--"and my attendants"--colored gentlemen with sponges and water-buckets--"the armorers and farriers haven't come yet. But my knight--I got his clothes in New York--just wait--Love of Ladies and Glory to the Brave!" Just then there was a commotion on the free seats on one side of the grandstand. A darky starting, in all ignorance, to mount them was stopped and jostled none too good-naturedly back to the ground.

"And see," mused the Hon. Sam, "in lieu of the dog of an unbeliever we have a dark a.n.a.logy in that son of Ham."

The little sister plucked me by the sleeve and pointed toward the entrance. Outside and leaning on the fence were Mollie, the big sister, and little Buck. Straightway I got up and started for them. They hung back, but I persuaded them to come, and I led them to seats two tiers below the Blight--who, with my little sister, rose smiling to greet them and shake hands--much to the wonder of the n.o.bles and ladies close about, for Mollie was in brave and dazzling array, blus.h.i.+ng fiercely, and little Buck looked as though he would die of such conspicuousness.