第31章

"How many friends have you got that hate to hear folks talk bad about you?""Not a one!" For once Eskew's guard was down, and his consistency led him to destruction.

"Not a one! It ain't in human nature.They're bound to enjoy it!""Got any friends that would FIGHT for you?"Eskew walked straight into this hideous trap.

"No! There ain't a dozen men ever LIVED that had! Caesar was a popular man, but he didn't have a soul to help him when the crowd lit on him, and I'll bet old Mark Antony was mighty glad they got him out in the yard before it happened,--HE wouldn't have lifted a finger without a gang behind him! Why, all Peter himself could do was to cut off an ear that wasn't no use to anybody.

What are you tryin' to get AT?"

The Squire had him; and paused, and stroked his chin, to make the ruin complete."Then I reckon you'll have to admit," he murmured, "that, while I ain't defendin' Joe Louden's character, it was kind of proper for him to stand by a feller that wouldn't hear nothin' against him, and fought for him as soon as he DID hear it!"Eskew Arp rose from his chair and left the hotel.

It was the only morning in all the days of the conclave when he was the first to leave.

Squire Buckalew looked after the retreating figure, total triumph shining brazenly from his spectacles."I expect," he explained, modestly, to the others,--"I expect I don't think any more of Joe Louden than he does, and I'll be glad when Canaan sees the last of him for good; but sometimes the temptation to argue with Eskew does lead me on to kind of git the better of him."When Happy Fear had suffered--with a give-and-take simplicity of patience--his allotment of months in durance, and was released and sent into the streets and sunshine once more, he knew that his first duty lay in the direction of a general apology to Joe.But the young man was no longer at Beaver Beach; the red-bearded proprietor dwelt alone there, and, receiving Happy with scorn and pity, directed him to retrace his footsteps to the town.

"Ye must have been in the black hole of incarceration indeed, if ye haven't heard that Mr.

Louden has his law-office on the Square, and his livin'-room behind the office.It's in that little brick buildin' straight acrost from the sheriff's door o' the jail--ye've been neighbors this long time! A hard time the boy had, persuadin' any one to rent to him, but by payin' double the price he got a place at last.He's a practisin' lawyer now, praise the Lord! And all the boys and girls of our acquaintance go to him with their troubles.

Ye'll see him with a murder case to try before long, as sure as ye're not worth yer salt! But Iexpect ye can still call him by his name of Joe, all the same!"It was a bleak and meagre little office into which Mr.Fear ushered himself to offer his amends.

The cracked plaster of the walls was bare (save for dust); there were no shelves; the fat brown volumes, most of them fairly new, were piled in regular columns upon a cheap pine table; there was but one window, small-paned and shadeless; an inner door of this sad chamber stood half ajar, permitting the visitor unreserved acquaintance with the domestic economy of the tenant; for it disclosed a second room, smaller than the office, and dependent upon the window of the latter for air and light.Behind a canvas camp-cot, dimly visible in the obscurity of the inner apartment, stood a small gas-stove, surmounted by a stew-pan, from which projected the handle of a big tin spoon, so that it needed no ghost from the dead to whisper that Joseph Louden, attorney-at-law, did his own cooking.Indeed, he looked it!

Upon the threshold of the second room reposed a small, worn, light-brown scrub-brush of a dog, so cosmopolitan in ancestry that his species was almost as undeterminable as the cast-iron dogs of the Pike Mansion.He greeted Mr.Fear hospitably, having been so lately an offcast of the streets himself that his adoption had taught him to lose only his old tremors, not his hopefulness.At the same time Joe rose quickly from the deal table, where he had been working with one hand in his hair, the other splattering ink from a bad pen.

"Good for you, Happy!" he cried, cheerfully.

"I hoped you'd come to see me to-day.I've been thinking about a job for you.""What kind of a job?" asked the visitor, as they shook hands."I need one bad enough, but you know there ain't nobody in Canaan would gimme one, Joe."Joe pushed him into one of the two chairs which completed the furniture of his office."Yes, there is.I've got an idea--""First," broke in Mr.Fear, fingering his shapeless hat and fixing his eyes upon it with embarrassment,--"first lemme say what I come here to say.

I--well--" His embarrassment increased and he paused, rubbing the hat between his hands.

"About this job," Joe began."We can fix it so--""No," said Happy."You lemme go on.Ididn't mean fer to cause you no trouble when I lit on that loud-mouth, `Nashville'; I never thought they'd git me, or you'd be dragged in.But I jest couldn't stand him no longer.He had me all wore out--all evening long a-hintin' and sniffin' and wearin' that kind of a high-smile 'cause they made so much fuss over you.And then when we got clear in town he come out with it! Said you was too quiet to suit HIM--said he couldn't see nothin'

TO you! `Well,' I says to myself, `jest let him go on, jest one more,' I says, `then he gits it.' And he did.Said you tromped on his foot on purpose, said he knowed it,--when the Lord-a'mightiest fool on earth knows you never tromped on no one!

Said you was one of the po'rest young sports he ever see around a place like the Beach.You see, he thought you was jest one of them fool `Bloods'

that come around raisin' a rumpus, and didn't know you was our friend and belonged out there, the same as me or Mike hisself.`Go on,' I says to myself, `jest one more!' `HE better go home to his mamma,'

he says; `he'll git in trouble if he don't.Somebody 'll soak him if he hangs around in MY company.