Chapter XXII: An Unmistakable Cure

When the breakfast was over and, with long-stemmed pipes alight, the two friends foregathered in front of a blazing fire--for the drizzling autumn day was chill--Westover again demanded to know "what all this thing means."

"You must have seen some of the placards?"

"_Some_ of them? It seems to me that all the woods have been papered with them. But what does it mean?"

"Oh, that's obvious enough. It means that a goodly number of your neighbors and friends have nominated you for Senator, moved thereto by a conviction that the intelligence and character of the district deserve a better representative than William Wilberforce Webb."

Farnsworth was careful not to suggest Judy Peters's initiative or interest in the matter. That was a secret between him and her.

The mention of Webb's name as that of his opponent, started Westover out of his chair, and as he stood upon the hearth he said, in tones that were kept in subjection by sheer force of a resolute will:

"Oh, then it is Webb I'm running against. That puts a new face on the affair. I like that. Against him I'll make a whirlwind campaign. But how on earth did that fellow manage to secure a nomination by so respectable a party as the Whigs?"

"Chiefly by general neglect. He worked for the nomination and all the rest of us let it go to him by default. That's the substance of the story."

"Well," answered Westover, "the news that he is my opponent gives me a new and eager interest in the campaign. We'll get up squirrel stews and barbecues, late as the season is, and militia musters and every other kind of thing that draws men together, and I'll make my little, red hot speech at all of them. Is there anything in sight?"

"Nothing available, so far as your presence is concerned. This is Court day, of course, and I'm going to make a speech--"

"So am I," interjected Westover.

"But how can you? You've tramped all night and I've ordered a bath and a bed for you."

"Thank you sincerely. I'll enjoy the bath and the bed some other time. To-day I'm going to the Court House with you. I'll ride one of your plugs, if you don't mind, and may be you'll send a boy over to Wanalah with a note to my overseer. I want him to send a horse to the Court House to meet me--a real horse that I'll have a fight with every time I come to a gate."

Carley Farnsworth did not answer immediately. Instead he walked into the dining room under pretence of refilling his pipe--really for the sake of a good chuckle over his friend's condition.

"He's as fit as a fiddle," he said to himself. "He's full of vigor and full of fight. He's Westover of Wanalah again, and that's what I've been working for. That mountain air, and the hunting and fishing and rough tramping have done more for him than all the calomel, quinine and strychnine I've got in my saddle bags could do. It's great! And we'll crown the cure--Judy and I--by making him Senator. Really Judy is a great diagnostician in her way. It was she who found out what was the matter with Boyd and prescribed the remedy. I used to think she had only one medicine, that apple jack was her panacea. I know better now."

Then, with his pipe refilled, he returned to the parlor only to find it empty. Going to the porch he saw Westover astride a three-year-old filly that had been turned loose to graze in the house grounds. Without saddle or bridle the young man was gaily cavorting on the spirited mare's back and rapidly reconciling her to control of his will.

"Well, certainly he's fit," muttered the little doctor. "There aren't many men in Virginia who would prefer that sort of thing to a comfortable bed after an all night's tramp down a mountain side, over the roughest roads that adverse natural conditions, supplemented by the evil ingenuity of road supervisors, ever managed to create. Houp la! I'll dismiss him as cured. But we'll go on and elect him."

Then, as the negro boy for whom he had sent appeared, Farnsworth called out:

"I say, Boyd, I've a boy waiting for you here. Come and give him instructions."

And when Westover reached the steps, his host added:

"Sam may as well bring your horse to the Court House himself. It is hardly at all out of his way in coming back. So give him your instructions."

"Very well. Go to my overseer, Sam, and tell him to send Rob Roy to me by you. And mind you, you are to lead him. If you try to ride him he'll pitch you head first into the deepest mud puddle he can find, and then he'll go galloping home again. Tell the overseer to put the double-bitted snaffle and curb bridle on him and the lightest flat saddle in the stables. And mind, Sam, keep the stirrups crossed over the saddle. If you don't, Rob Roy will mount himself and ride away heaven knows where."

"Yes, sir," answered Sam. "I hear, an' I'll be keerful. I prides myself on ridin' anything they is short'n a hurricane, but I's contumaciously opposed to gittin' on the back o' that there Rob Roy o' yourn. He's wuss'n a hurricane an' a' earthquake an' a 'clipse o' de moon all put togedder. Dat's my jedgment o' his pussonal character generally. He's wuss now, o' course."

"Why, Sam?"

"'Cause he's done been stabled up fer free or four months, now, 'thout no exercise 'ceptin' bein' led to de branch fer water."

"Do you know that, Sam? Have they kept that horse--"

"Yes, sir, I knows it. Yo' see dey ain't nobody on Wanalah plantation dat dares git on dat dar hoss's back, an' 'taint much fun to exercise a hoss by leadin' of him. 'Sides dat--"

Sam faltered, and his master interposed:

"Go on--'sides what."

"Well, 'taint nothin', sir."

"All right. I like to hear about nothings. Who is she, Sam?"

"Who's who, Mastah?"

"Why, the girl you've been courting over at Wanalah? Of course I know you've been stealing a mule out of the stables and riding over there every night for a month without asking my permission. But I don't know who the girl is or whether she's worthy of you, Sam."

"'Fore de Lawd, Mastah, I ain't--"

"Don't forswear yourself, Sam. I know all about it. I visit my stables every night, and I've missed you and the mule. I don't mind, only, if you had asked me, I'd have let you have a better mule and a saddle. Never mind that now. Take the mare Medora, and get away from here. Bring your Mas' Boyd's horse to the Court House, and mind you, don't stop at Wanalah to sweetheart with Patty Jane--for you see after all I know all about this thing."

"And Sam, tell my body servant to send me some clothes by you," added Westover.

When the boy had gone, in some confusion over what seemed to him his master's supernatural knowledge of things he had carefully guarded against discovery, Farnsworth explained to his companion:

"I always take pains to know what goes on on the plantation, and I never mention it except in sensational ways, calculated to impress the African mind with the conviction that as a doctor I am possessed of strange, occult powers of discovery against which it is useless to practise the ordinary arts of concealment. It's a handy way to keep things in order on a plantation, the master of which has to attend to a medical practice. Now we must be off. Here are our horses. I've assigned to your use the maddest piece of horseflesh I possess. It's a mare that broke my overseer's arm a year ago, and when harnessed to a vehicle for purposes of subjugation and discipline kicked the vehicle into kindling wood and scrap iron and then kept on kicking till there was nothing left on her but a collar. She'd have kicked that off too, I reckon, if it had been behind her shoulders. She has been a good deal tamed since then, but she still has spirit enough to satisfy any reasonable rider. You, of course, are unreasonable. What's your fancy anyhow, Boyd, for riding cataclysms and cyclones instead of serious-minded animals that know their business and do it docilely?"

"Oh I don't know. I like struggle, contest, and all that. I like to match my wits against brute strength. I like--well I suppose I like a fight."

As he spoke the two mounted.

"There's no trace of neurasthenia in him, anyhow," thought Farnsworth. Aloud he said:

"All that is very fortunate, for just now you've got all the fight ahead of you that any reasonable person of fighting temperament could desire."

"Tell me all about it, Carley. I've been trying to worm the facts out of you ever since I got to Chinquapin Knob."

"Oh, the thing's simple enough. You see Webb hates you of course, and he's afraid of you. When he secured the regular nomination he thought he had his fox by the tail. There was only the Democratic candidate, Sam Butler, opposing him, and of course in so strong a Whig district as this is, that candidacy didn't count. But when we nominated you as an independent Whig, things began to cloud up in Webb's sky. He got ugly, but--well, he was made to understand that there were limits to what it would be safe to say about you."

"I understand, Carley," said Boyd, grasping his hand warmly; "I understand, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for a friendship that has no bottom so far as plummet line can discover. But all that's my job now. Go on, I want to hear."

"Well, he hasn't dared say a thing in any open fashion, but there are a lot of his followers whom no gentleman can afford to honor by slapping their jaws or kicking them off the steps of a barroom, and through them Webb has managed to circulate insinuations."

"Of what sort?" asked Westover quickly.

"It isn't easy to pin them down to a definition. They have mainly taken the form of questions. 'Where is Boyd Westover, anyhow? Why doesn't he present himself to the people he asks to vote for him? What's he afraid of? Why didn't his oldest and best friend Colonel Conway sign the paper nominating him? Does Colonel Conway doubt his innocence after all? Isn't he satisfied with the other fellow's confession? Or does he think the confession of a lunatic insufficient?' These are some of the questions set afloat, nobody knows how or by whom."

"What are the others?" demanded Westover with set teeth and a jaw that seemed to have added to its massiveness by reason of the determination of the mind behind it. "Go on. Tell me the whole story. I want to know just what I have got to fight."

"That's right, and I'll be with you in the fight. We'll run these questions down till we make it unsafe to ask them. I've already made a good many people quit asking them by notifying them that I should treat any repetition of the questions as an assertion for which the questioner could be and should be and would be held responsible; confound that grammar rule about can and will and could and should and would, I never could remember it, but I've given notice to all and singular that I recognize no distinction between insinuation and assertion in such a case as this, and that--oh, well, you know what a notice of that kind suggests."

"Oh, yes, I know, and I thank you. But you're evading my question, Carley. What is the other insinuation? I quite understand that you shrink from mentioning it, but you must. I have a right to demand that much from a friendship so loyal as yours has proved itself to be. Go on. Tell me the worst."

"I will. But the thing has been so subtilely put forth that I've found it impossible even to find anybody who has asked the question. Indeed everybody who has helped to circulate the slander has done so not by asking if there was truth in it but by declaring his utter disbelief in it. I never knew anything so cleverly managed in my life, or anything so malignant."

"You haven't yet told me what the scandal was," said Boyd, with lips so tightly compressed that the purple had all gone out of them.

"In substance it amounted to this, that you had in some way treated Colonel Conway's daughter with unchivalrous disrespect--that you had put some unforgivable slight upon her--nobody suggests what. In fact the thing is so vague and shadowy and unsubstantial that it is difficult even to define it. But Colonel Conway's refusal to join with us in nominating you has lent a sort of color to it, and this thing, utterly unsubstantial as it is, has done more than all else to embarrass our campaign. In your absence it has been impossible to meet it and throttle it, for nobody but you could have a shadow of authority to question Colonel Conway on such a subject."

"I understand," answered Boyd; "I'll deal with that matter in a way that will satisfy myself at any rate, and possibly my friends also. Thank you for all. I know the situation now, and knowing it, I think I know how to meet it."

As he said this the pair were entering the Court House village, and their road took them within a few feet of the house and law office of Sam Butler, the Democratic candidate for Senator. As they passed, Butler stepped out into the porch accompanied by Edgar Coffey, and engaged in the earnest end of a conversation. They could not avoid hearing Coffey say:

"Well, that's what Judy tole me to tell you, an' ef you do as she says, she'll take keer o' the rest."

Neither Westover nor Farnsworth said a word until they had passed well beyond hearing. Then Westover exclaimed:

"I wonder what on earth that means! Surely Judy Peters isn't going to throw the mountain vote for him."

"Very certainly not," answered Farnsworth, but he said nothing of his visit to the Queen of the Mountains or of her initiative in Boyd Westover's nomination.

"No," answered Westover, recalling Judy's last message to himself, "that isn't even one of the possibilities." But he did not explain the grounds of his confidence.

After a little, as the two rode into the stable yard of the hotel to put up their horses, Westover said:

"Nevertheless I'd give something handsome to know what that meant."

"So would I," answered Farnsworth.

They were destined to find out, before the campaign ended, but not yet.