Teeftallow/Chapter 39

AS ABNER drew near the railroad camp he saw that Sheriff Bascom's labour gang was already in possession of the stables and tents. Men were coming and going; teamsters chivvied mules out of the stables, and their oaths came to Abner through the hazy autumn air. Now and then other sounds were overpowered by the sudden churring of some big tractor, which roared for a few seconds and then coughed into silence after the manner of cold machinery.

The stir, the movement, the purposefulness of all these activities brought to Abner a renewed feeling that life was solid and real; a motif which his own existence in Lanesburg lacked.

He walked down the hill, drawing in deep lungfuls of air. He was going to do something at last. For the next month or two he would work, sweat, swear during the day, and tipple and gamble at night.

He strode on toward this final taste of life with joyful strides when he saw ahead of him a little black-haired fellow with two buckets dipping water out of a great spring. This man or boy wore the neatest overalls that Abner had ever seen; in fact, the legs of the overalls had been pressed and the creases stood out clear cut in the sunlight. The fellow rinsed his buckets with great care in the lower part of the spring, then swished water in his barrels, threw that out, and finally began filling the barrels from the undisturbed upper part of the pool.

As Abner approached this finical labourer, his foot rattled a stone, and immediately the little man started up, jerked a ​pistol from his pocket and drew it on the teamster. A shock went through Abner.

"Hey, what the hell!" he shouted, stopped in his tracks by the moral influence of the revolver. "Put down that gun!"

The little man stared with dilated eyes, but presently recognition dawned on his face, and he cried apologetically, "Oh, is that you, Mr. Teeftallow? I thought you were a striker. Come on down."

"Hell far," exclaimed Abner nervously, "what were you goin' to do—shoot him?"

"No, but I was going to make him go away."

Then Abner recognized Sim Pratt in creased overalls and buckskin gloves to keep the bucket handles from skinning his palms. He had a tan four-in-hand around the collar of his blue working shirt; and it all set Abner laughing.

"So you fin'ly got to come with the boys, Sim?"

"Yes," said Sim soberly, "I got to be water boy."

"I see you air. What kind of a weapon was that you pulled on me—wasn't it a thirty-two?"

"Yes, one I kept in the drug store."

Abner took off his hat and broke into large laughter.

"Got a thirty-two. Why, man, you shoot one of these country jakes with a thirty-two an' it would make him 'most mad enough to hit you. Out here in the country we use little dinkusses like that to throw kisses at the gals with." Abner laughed again, disregarding the brain storm which Mr. Pratt's thirty-two had just given him.

"What do you use?" asked Sim with a pink face.

"Somepin' when she barks you don't haff to strain yore years to find out whether she went off or not." Abner drew out a blue forty-five, swung it about in an expert manner, and put it back in his pocket.

"Well, how's ever'thing gittin' on, Sim?"

"All right, I guess."

"You made a hit with Beatrice Belle—goin' off to kill strikers with a great big gun like that."

​"She—seemed to like me very well, last night," coloured Mr. Pratt.

From the drug clerk's manner Abner knew that the two had made an emotional scene of their parting. However, notwithstanding the friendly irony of his thoughts, knowledge that Pratt had reached terms of intimacy with his foster-sister had a sobering effect on Abner. He wondered if Beatrice would marry the little town johnny. . . .

"Well," he said at length, "let's fill up these barrels and get back to camp. I want to get strung out scoopin' dirt again." He took one of Pratt's buckets and the two men set to work filling the barrels.

In camp, Abner found the talk mainly about what the striker would do; speculation ran all the way from Indian ambush to moral suasion.

From what Abner gathered, Shallburger had stopped the men about a mile up the road and had harangued them about humanity and the rights of labour.

"That Shallburger's a smart man," confided one of the caterpillar operators to Abner. "He made ever'thing sound mighty nice, but we had the law with us." By this he did not mean any abstract legal right, but the sheriff and deputies in person. These men were the law and what they did was perforce right.

In camp Abner was able even to get back the pair of mules which he had driven before on the plea that they understood his "cussin'," and that he hated to break in another pair. As he put the harness on them in the stable of one of the mules, called Bud, bit at his hand, just as he had always done, and Abner warped Bud over the head with the bridle bits and kicked him in the belly, just as he had always done. It seemed to tone up both man and mule for the work that lay ahead of them.

Within half-a-day's time the new men were broken in and the whole crew were working smoothly. The long red level of the railroad levee began reaching through the last few miles to Lanesburg. However, the men worked in a ​kind of suspense; they were not altogether sure they would not be fired upon from the bushes. As the scoop men jerked their sweating mules around in a great circle they called to each other when opportunity offered, "Well, ain't nothin' happened yit?"

"Naw, guess it was mostly bluff."

"Well, by God, they ain't got a sign o' justice on their side. The idyah we kain't take a job they throwed down!"

"That Shallburger feller talked 'em into it—they won't do nothin'."

"Jest you fellers wait," grumbled a pessimist, "the meetin' ain't over till the shoutin's done."

After he had got into the swing of his work again, Abner went around and around through the loose dirt with the inner voices of his mind pursuing their different interests. It was odd to think that Nessie and Belshue lived in the old manor the tip of whose chimneys he could see over the brow of the hill. Then he mused that all this slowly lengthening railroad would one day belong to him. His thought of marriage with Adelaide always took the form of property.

Presently Sim Pratt came by with his water wagon and Abner pondered Beatrice Belle and the little drug clerk. His thoughts drifted on and on. When a man is at physical work out of doors all themes are on a parity in his mind. They are like suits before a bar of justice: the most trivial causes are heard as gravely as the most momentous. Philosophy was born out of doors. Yet in the midst of this mental meandering, Abner swore at his mules, jerked their bits, and occasionally snatched up a stone and flung at their heads, in a word, "fought them."

That night Sheriff Bascom posted guards about the camp; and as he had no authority to detail his men for any duty, he was forced to go about asking this one and that one to "sit up" during the night and watch the camp.

A number of men told the sheriff that they did not consider a guard necessary that night; others said they were not a good hand at sitting up; still others declared they were paid ​to work, not to watch. However, there were enough volunteers for the duty; and Bascom divided the night into two watches: from sundown till midnight, and from midnight till sun-up.

Along about sundown there was a great to-do in camp about the men who were to watch during the latter part of the night. An early supper was made in order that these men might go to bed early and obtain a half night's sleep. The other men in camp were cautioned to keep quiet to promote their rest. Sure enough, when supper was finished, the appointed men got up from the benches in the mess tent and filed off to their bunks. There was a certain sacrificial air about it which impressed their fellows. They were giving up their nightly gambling, drinking, fighting, and cursing for the benefit of their comrades and the good of the county. Among those who retired at this early hour was Abner Teeftallow.

All this parade about going to bed effectively banished sleep for Abner. He was not tired from his day's labour. He was in his rubbery teens and was keyed to days of toil and nights of carousing. So he lay on his bunk, listening to the flap of his tent in the windy night, and the occasional outburst of some excited crap shooter who forgot the camp pledge of silence and invoked a return of Little Joe or Big Dick from Boston.

Somewhat later in the night Abner heard a bootlegger and a customer just outside his tent chaffering over the price of a pint of moonshine liquor. Abner reflected that a pint of whisky might get him to sleep before midnight, and later, when he went on watch, it might help him stay awake till morning. So he got out of his blankets, put on his shoes, went around and bought the pint from a man in the black shadow of his tent wall.

He took a swallow of the fiery liquid; rubbed the top of the bottle, gave the vender a drink, and went back to bed with his purchase.

After his mouth and throat stopped burning, the current ​of his thought grew pleasanter and more interesting. The fact that he was going to marry Adelaide Jones and live in the Jones mansion appeared in rosier colours than it ever had before. As for Adelaide, her strangeness would naturally wear away after she was his wife. He visualized her as he had last seen her that morning, driving over the hill to Irontown—she was perpetually driving to Irontown; he spent a moment wondering why.

Here he had an impulse to reach out in the darkness and have another drink, but he thought he had had enough. That was the thing about drinking whisky, to know when you had had enough. Then he did take another drink, after all; the merest sip, which again set burning his mouth and throat.

Outside somebody fired a pistol very rapidly five times, and Abner heard a voice expostulating, "Let the men sleep!"

A little later somebody drew aside the flaps of his tent and told him it was time for him to come on watch. Abner arose, put on his shoes and trousers, took his bottle, and went yawning out into the night. The man who had come for him preceded him through the dim line of tents and came to a place on the levee overlooking a long shanghai stable. Here, seated on the levee over a little pile of coals, was the first watch of the night, mending his fire with some pieces of pine boxes. The fellow handed Abner a flashlight and apologized for the dying fire; he said he had gone to sleep "accident'ly."

Abner produced his bottle and offered the departing watchman a swig to make him sleep well, while he himself took another to keep from getting drowsy during the long stretch till dawn. The men went away and Abner sat down by the freshly burning fire to watch.

The wind nipped him chilly after the warmth of his blankets, and the big fellow turned his collar up about his ears and reached into the inner pocket of his coat and felt the bulk of his pistol. A wide rustling of dead leaves filled the whole dark valley, and against this came an occasional squeal of a mule in the long stable, or the hard kicking of hoofs ​against the walls. From far off in the direction of the Coltrane place he heard the howl of a dog mourning the evil of night.

The howl made Abner think hazily of ghosts, of hobgoblins, of the eerie things that endanger the darkness to men. A shiver went through his chill frame. He bestirred himself and kicked the pine fagots so that they burst into flame and guttered down the wind.

He thought of Nessie and his child again with a queer detachment, little Nessie Teeftallow Belshue; and presently he would be living in the Jones's manor in Lanesburg, married to Adelaide. In what a queer way life worked! There was no justice to that; there was nothing supervising such things as that: it was just luck.

Abner drew out his bottle again with a feeling that here at least was something dependable in an unstable world. He took a draught of the liquid, then breathed through his open mouth while tears started to his eyes from the fiery stuff. He hoped his little girl baby would never marry a drinking man. A song started in Abner's head, and he began crooning aloud the words of a doleful tune.

He did not know how long he had been singing when a sense of movement among the bushes beyond the shanghai stable caught his attention. He had been, one might say, only tentatively tipsy, now this movement near the stable sobered him for the time being.

He arose swiftly from his sitting posture, took two long strides out of the firelight into the darkness, then moved silently down the levee toward the stables with his automatic ready. For some reason he was growing angry. He levelied on the dark bushes and snarled out, "Come out o’ there, you damn snake. I'll blow hell out of ye!"

He was on the verge of shooting when a voice quite to one side of the suspected spot said, "Wait a minute, partner—you ain't shootin' peaceable men, air ye?"

"You're a striker, ain't ye?" snapped Abner, shifting his gun in the new direction.

​"I'm a labour union man," returned the voice with dignity.

"Then the quicker you git out o' here the fewer holes you'll have in yore hide!"

"But, look here," argued the voice, "you're open to reason, ain't ye?"

Abner considered, and as all hillmen avow fealty to reason, he said that he was.

"I know you got yore gun on me," said the voice. "I'll hol' my han's up agin the sky so you can see 'em. An' le's git over there by the far an' talk this thing over. I ain't tryin' to do you no dirt, but I take it if you are ackshelly doin' me a wrong you'll be man enough to change over an' say I'm right."

This was fair speech, in fact, too fair and too glib; it sounded recitative.

"Well," agreed the guard suspiciously, "hol' 'em up where I can see 'em; come up slow an' lemme search you fer a gun an' I'll talk with ye."

As Abner made his proposition, a form with arms elevated arose against the sky.

"I got a gun," said the figure, "in my front breeches pocket on my left side. I could 'a' shot you when I come up if I wanted to, but I ain't wantin' to hurt nobody."

"Well, come on," said Abner, and the two walked together back up the railroad embankment and sat down by the fire.

"Well, what do you want to say?" asked Abner. Then peering through the dim light he saw he was talking to Tim Fraley, the man who had laughed at Nessie and her little baby girl. A regret went through the guard that he had not fired when he first heard Fraley's voice, but the next moment his vengeful mood passed, and he sat looking at the striker with an inactive dislike.

Mr. Fraley cleared his throat and asked, "Got anything to drink? It's purty cold."

Abner produced his bottle.

Mr. Fraley took some, wiped the neck, and returned it to ​Abner ceremoniously, who lifted it to his own mouth out of politeness.

"It's like this," began Mr. Fraley, smacking his lips and blowing out gently, "if us workin' fellers don't stand together, the rich fellers will git richer and the pore, porer."

"I'm rich already," said Abner flatly.

Mr. Fraley came to a dead halt. "Why, by God, that's a fact," he admitted, quite taken aback; a moment later he excused himself by saying, "Of course, I couldn't tell it was you in the dark."

Abner was gratified at this common-sense view that Mr. Fraley took. This man admitted frankly that the rich were for the rich and the poor for the poor; a most pleasing contrast from Shallburger's muddled argument which Abner had heard that morning.

"But, after all," said Fraley, "we might as well set a spell. I was detailed to talk to jest one guard, an' if I tried another'n, I might git shot next time."

"Sure," agreed Abner, rather pleased with Mr. Fraley now, "set as long as you please—kinder lonesome watchin' the stables by myse'f." He produced his flask again.

Mr. Fraley helped himself.

"After all, Abner, you boys ain't doin' us right—takin' our job when we ain't been paid for what we done."

"I don't know—Railroad Jones is goin' to pay ever'body as soon as he gets a line of credit."

"Yeh, I see him payin' us—Railroad never paid nothin' to nobody."

"You fellers can sue him," counselled Abner.

"Sue hell," snarled Mr. Fraley bitterly. "I see myse'f with a debt of eighteen dollars an forty cents suin' Railroad through the Circuit Court an' the Supreme Court."

This personal reasoning moved Abner in a way no labour-union argument ever could have done.

"By God, that ain't right," he admitted, impersonally.

"I say it ain't," nodded Fraley.

Abner felt that such wrongs deserved another drink, so he ​gave Mr. Fraley one. Then he suddenly and unaccountably began telling his companion about his little girl baby, her dark film of hair, her slate-coloured eyes which eventually would turn brown, and her name, "Nessie Teeftallow Belshue."

"Looks like Belshue would raise hell about that."

"Looks like I'd raise hell about him keepin' my little gal."

"Oh, well, a baby nachelly goes with its mammy. Then you're goin' to marry Adelaide Jones anyway; you'll have some more."

"Yeh, that's right, too," admitted Abner, growing more despondent than ever. He felt so bad he was forced to take another drink. It was for such crises as this in a man's life that Adam distilled the forbidden fruit and invented whisky.

Presently Abner broke off this wandering conversation to listen to a certain change in the overtones of the noise among the mules.

Mr. Fraley listened, too. "They're puttin up a hell of a fight," he suggested.

But Abner's country ears diagnosed the screams of the mules with more precision that did his companion's.

"That ain't a fight, somethin's botherin' them mules."

"Hell, what could be botherin' 'em?" yawned the striker.

"Don't know, guess I better step down an' see."

Abner got up lazily and stretched himself in the cold night air.

"Hell," disparaged Fraley, "you drink too much liquor, Abner; if you prance down there ever' time them mules whicker, you'll be on the jump all night long."

"No, I tell you there's somethin' the matter with them mules," insisted Abner, with a faint suspicion edging his tone.

By this time the stable was a bedlam of noise, and Abner set off down the railroad dump. Fraley tried to discourage him but remained by the fire.

Abner found the outer rank of doors all closed. He unfastened a hasp and jerked open a door and entered just as he heard the peculiar scream of a mule in the act of kick​ing. The youth crouched instantly and the iron-shod hoofs crashed into the wall just above his head.

"God's little hell!" thought the teamster, switching on his flashlight and leaping into the adjoining stall. But the next mule was as infuriated as its mate. In the ray of his light Abner glimpsed the swift balling up of enormous haunches. Next moment the hoofs crashed past him. He flattened against the stall bar shouting, "Tobe! Sam! Be quiet, boys! Whoa there, whoa!"

The sweep of his light showed him a long row of mules, all kicking or standing trembling and flocked with sweat. While farther up toward the end of the stable two mules were lying down.

Oddly enough these quiet mules shocked Abner's nerves more than did the lunging furies. He climbed along the stall partition to the nearest door, loosed the hasp and jumped outside. He ran to the end stalls and entered the rank ammoniacal darkness again.

His flashlight showed him the two mules on the dirt floor of their stalls. At his light, they lunged helplessly, getting their hind legs under them only to roll against the stall bars. The animals had been hamstrung. Pain from their tearing muscles covered them with lather; and blood and ordure stunk from the ground. A plank had been pried off the back of the stable to permit the entrance of the miscreant. Through this same hole, no doubt he had fled when the kicking of the mules had stopped his cruelty.

A tide of fury seized Abner, tightening his belly, lifting his chest and setting two hot coals behind his eyes. The mules were as near to him as human dependents. He strode past one trembling, prostrate animal, patting its wet hide with unsteady hands. The next moment he was out through the gap into the bushes behind the stable.

"God damn ye!" he yelled at the top of his voice. "Come here, you damn yellow houn'. I'll beat hell out of ye. I'll—"

Then he realized the insanity of shouting and cursing in ​the blackness. He hushed and stood holding his breath, listening intently, but could hear nothing except the frantic mules and the drum-drum of the pulse in his ears.

Abner pushed forward in the undergrowth with every nerve stretched ready to lunge at the first moving thing, when he suddenly remembered Tim Fraley.

The duplicity of Fraley detaining him by the camp fire while an accomplice slipped into the stable and hamstrung his mules poured the last drop into Abner's vial of fury. He turned from his futile search in the bushes and crashed out of the growth, passed the stable, and saw the fire on the top of the levee. In its light Fraley still sat.

Abner went running up the slope with clenched fists. Fraley saw his threatening form, moved to get up crying, "What the hell!"

Abner rapped out the bitterest expletive of the hills, and lunged. Fraley had not time to get to his feet but kicked at Abner's flying form. The next moment the two men were grappling on the levee, rolling over and over, choking each other; pounding each other's faces; panting, sobbing, cursing. . . .

Blows on the head filled Abner's eyes with red flames of light. Abner beat Fraley's head and face with all his strength; even receiving the fellow's blows was a sort of satisfaction. Once in the rolling Abner struck at Fraley's head and hit a stone.

With his skinned hand he clutched at his enemy's face and succeeded in sticking his fingers in the striker's eye and mouth. He clamped down digging his fingernail in the tender eyeball. Fraley bit savagely on Abner's thumb.

The most excruciating pain of the fight filled Abner's thumb and flowed up his arm in a hot jet. The teamster beat the prostrate man's face with his left hand, but Fraley recognized his advantage and lay doggedly biting off the first joint of the thumb. Amid a lancinating agony, Abner gouged his middle finger deeper into Fraley's eye, and with his left hand seized and choked the striker's hairy throat. ​They were floundering about under these torturing punishments when a voice near the embankment cried out:

"Turn him on top an' I'll shoot the God damned—"

Instantly both fighters began trying to whirl the other on top. A sudden realization filled Abner that he was about to be killed. He made a terrific effort to turn Fraley, flinging himself to one side and lifting with his throttling hand and chewed thumb. He could hear other voices shouting. He made a last desperate lift. A man was over him. Came the crash of a pistol almost in his eyes. The blaze of fire seemed to fill the whole world, and the next moment, the fight, the night, the shouts were no more for Abner Teeftallow.