They went at it. Dorsey fell sprawling. He scrambled to his feet with trash in his hair and blood in his mouth. Milford knocked him over a stump. He got up again and came forward, cutting the capers of a tricky approach, but Milford caught him with a surprising blow and sent him to gra.s.s again. This time he did not get up. He squirmed about on the ground. Milford took him under the arms and lifted him to his knees. "Go away," he muttered, his head drooping. "You've--you've broken my jaw."

Milford ran to the lake and brought water in his hat. Dorsey was sitting up when he returned.

"You've knocked out two of my teeth," he mumbled.

"Here, let me bathe your face."

"Biggest fool thing I ever saw," Dorsey blubbered through the water applied to the mouth. "I told you I'd apologize."

"Yes, and you may do so now. Do you?"

"Of course. What else can I do?"

"I'm almost sorry I hit you so hard."

"Almost! I don't stop at that. I don't want you to say anything about it," he added. "It would hurt my business."

"A horse kicked you," said Milford. "You're all right now. You can go to the house."

"I'm going to town by the first train. I'm done up. You've been practicing. You ought to make a success of yourself if that's the sort of fellow you are."

Milford helped him put on his coat. "Now, I wish I could do something for you," he said. "No matter what I do, I always get the worst of it."

"You didn't get the worst of this, by a long shot."

"Yes. Now I've got to grieve over it. I've been trying to do right, but the cards are against me."

"You needn't grieve over me. You have licked a good man."

"I grieve because you were willing to apologize."

"Don't let that worry you. I wouldn't have apologized any too strong.

Well, I don't believe the fish will bite to-day. I'll go back."

Milford watched him as he walked slowly across the stubble field, and strove to harden his heart against the cutting edge of remorse. The fellow was a bully. To him there was nothing sacred, and he thought evil of all women. His manliest words waited to be knocked out of him.

Milford returned to the house and gathered up the scattered sheets of his newspaper. But he sat a long time without reading. The gathered vengeance of his arm had been spent. It had shot forth with delight, like a thought inspired by devoted study, but like a hot inspiration grown cold, it faded under the strong light of reason. He heard the shriek of a railway train, rushing toward the city. He saw George Blakemore coming up the hill.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE GRIZZLY AND THE PANTHER.

Blakemore came up briskly, shook hands with a quick grasp, looked at his watch and sat down on the edge of the veranda. His eye was no longer fixed and rusty, but bright and restless. He did not drool his words, hanging one with doubtful hesitation upon another, but blew them out like a mouthful of smoke. He talked business; he had just engineered another land deal. He had traveled about among the surrounding towns, and spoke of a railway ticket as a "piece of transportation." Sunday to him was a disease spot, the blotch of an inactive liver. Rest! There was no rest for a man who wanted to work.

"What's to be the end of this rush?" Milford asked. "What's your object?"

"Money, of course. You know what the object of money is, so there you are."

"I don't know that I do. Money's object is to increase, but I've never been able to discover its final aim, except possibly in a few instances.

We struggle to get rich. Then what? We read an advertis.e.m.e.nt and find that we have kidney trouble. We take medicines, go to springs, grow puffy, turn pale--die. That's the average man who makes money for money's sake. But it's a waste of words to talk about it."

"It is undoubtedly a waste of time to think about it," said Blakemore.

"Not only that, to give it daily attention would mean stagnation and dry rot. There'd be no land sales. But, speaking of an object, you have one, of course."

"Yes, such as it is. And strain my eyes as I may, I can't look beyond it. I made up my mind a good while ago that there's not much to live for. This is an old idea, I know, but at some time it is new to every man. We fight off trouble that we may fight into more trouble. And our only pleasure is in looking back upon a past that was full of trouble, or in looking forward to a time that will never come."

"You're a queer sort of a duck, anyhow," Blakemore replied, throwing the stub of a cigar out into the gra.s.s. "You must have been burnt sometime.

And yet you're no doubt looking for the fire again."

"Did you ever catch a ba.s.s with his mouth full of rusty hooks? I'm one--hooks sticking out all around, but I must have something to eat, and I may snap a phantom minnow."

"Yes, sir, you're a queer duck. But there's a lot of good stuff in you, I'll tell you that; and I could take you in tow and make a winner of you. Drop this farm and come to town."

Milford smiled and shook his head. "Winning looks easy to the man that wins. No, when I leave this place I'll have my object in my pocket."

"Queer duck," Blakemore repeated. "Any insanity in your family?"

"No, none to speak of. My father took the bankrupt law and paid his debts ten years afterwards."

Blakemore lighted a cigar. "Did you disown him?"

"No. He went to the springs, grew pale--and we buried him."

Blakemore turned his cigar about between his lips. "And your idea is to pay your debts, grow pale, and let them bury you. Is that it?"

"Not exactly," and then he added: "I owe a peculiar sort of debt."

"A man's foolish to pay a peculiar debt," Blakemore replied.

"But a peculiar debt might take a strange hold on the conscience."

"Yes," Blakemore agreed, "but a tender conscience has no more show in business than a peg leg has in a foot-race. Do you know what I did? I moped about under a debt of twenty thousand dollars. After a while I looked up and didn't see anybody else moping. I quit. Am I going to pay it? Maybe, but not till the last cow has come home, I'll tell you that.

They scalped me, and I'm going to scalp them. By the way, I met a fellow just now--fellow named Dorsey. You might have seen him out here. Met him a while ago, and he told me that a horse kicked him over yonder in the woods. Didn't do a thing but kick his teeth out. He's gone to town to have his jaw attended to. Your horse?"

"No, a horse that Dorsey hired when he was out some time ago. He must have misused him."

"He got in his work all right. Well, I've come after you. They want you at the house. Rig yourself up; I'll wait."

Upon benches and in chairs, and lolling on the thick gra.s.s, Milford found Mrs. Stuvic's summer family. They told jokes and sang vaudeville songs and slyly tickled one another's necks with spears of timothy, frolicking in the shade while time melted away in the sun. The ladies came forward to shake hands. They called Milford a stranger. They inquired as to the health of the young woman in Antioch. He disclaimed all knowledge of a woman in Antioch. They knew better, shaking their fingers at him. Blakemore and Mrs. Stuvic entered upon a harangue.

Milford sat down on a bench with Mrs. Goodwin and Gunhild. Although under the eye of the "discoverer," the girl had shaken hands warmly with him. Between them there was a quiet understanding, and he was at ease.

Mrs. Blakemore sat in a rocking chair that threatened to tip over on the uneven ground. She liked the uncertainty, she said. It gave her something to think about. Mrs. Goodwin had read during all the forenoon, and was sententious. It would soon be time for her to return to the city, and she felt that she wore a yellow leaf in her hair. She was anxious to return, of course, but to go away from a sweet season's death-bed was always a sad departure. Mr. Milford, she said, would attend the summer's funeral.

"I will help dig the grave," he replied.

She thanked him for following her idea. So few men had the patience to fondle the whimsical children of a woman's mind. When they crept out to the Doctor he scouted them back to bed, and there they lay trembling, not daring to peep out at him. Some men thought it a manly quality to despise a pretty conceit, but it was pretty conceits that made marble live, that made a canvas breathe. At one time she had been led to believe that the realist was the man of the hour. And indeed, he was--just for one hour. And the veritist--what was he? One whose soul was kept cool in a moldy cellar. None but the artist had a right to speak. And what was art? A semblance of truth more beautiful than the truth. But writers were often afraid to be artists, even at the promptings of an artistic soul. They were told that women would not read them, and man must write for woman. What nonsense! Take up a book and find the beautiful pa.s.sages marked. A woman has read it.