"Don't let him get his head down! Gol-ding it! Don't you!"

screamed Mr. Upton in wild excitement.

Red threw the bridle over the horn of the saddle. "Go it, you devil!" cried he. And they went. Six feet straight in the air, first pa.s.s. The crowd scattered, as requested. They hurried at that. Red gave the brute the benefit of his two hundred and a half as they touched earth, and his opponent grunted when he felt the jar of it. They rocketted and ricochetted; they were here, they were there, they were everywhere, the buckskin squealing like a pig, and fighting with every ounce of the strength that lay in his steel strung legs; the dust rose in clouds; Red's hat flew in no time; he was yelling like a maniac, and the crowd was yelling like more maniacs. Now and then a glimpse of the rider's face could be caught, transported with joy of the struggle; then the dust would roll up and hide everything. No one was more pleased at the spectacle than the blacksmith. He was capering in the middle of the road, waving a hand-hammer and shouting "Hold him _down_! Hold him DOWN! Why do you let him jump up like that? If _I_ was on that horse I'd show you! Aw, there it is again--Stop him! _Stop_ him!"

At this point the buckskin made three enormous leaps for the blacksmith, as though he had understood. The smith cast dignity to the winds and went over the nearest fence in the style that little boys, when coasting, call "stomach-whopper"--or words to that effect--and took his next breath two minutes later. He might have saved the labour, as the horse wheeled on one foot, and pulled fairly for the picket fence opposite. Red regretted the absence of herders as the sharp pickets loomed near. It was no time for regrets. The horse was over with but little damage--a slight scratch, enough to rouse his temper, however, for he whaled away with both hind feet, and parts of the fence landed a hundred feet off. Then a dash through an ancient grape arbor, and they were lost to view of the road. Some reckless small boys scampered after, but the majority preferred to trace the progress of the conflict by the aboriginal "Yerwhoops" that came from somewhere in behind the old houses.

"There they go!" piped up a shrill voice of the small-boy brigade.

"Right through Mis' Davisses hen coops!--you _ought_ to see them hens FLY!" The triumphant glee is beyond the reach of words.

Simultaneous squawking verified the remark, as well as a feminine voice, urging a violent protest, cut short by a scream of terror, and the slam of a door. The inhabitants of "Mis' Davisses" house instantly appeared through the front door, seeking the street.

To show the erraticalness of fate, no sooner had they reached the road, than Red's mount cleared the parapet of the bridge in a single leap--a beautiful leap--and came down upon them in the road.

All got out of the way but a three-year-old, forgotten in the excitement. Upon this small lad, fallen flat in the road, bore the powerful man and horse. Then there were frantic cries of warning.

Fifty feet between the youngster and those mangling hoofs--twenty--five! the crowd gasped--they were blotted together!

Not so. A mighty hand had s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy away in that instant of time. He was safe and very indignant in a howling, huddled heap in the ditch by the roadside, but alas, for horse and rider! The buckskin was not used to such feats, and when Red's weight was thrown to the side for the reach he missed his stride, struck his feet together, and down they went, while the foot-deep dust sprang into the air like an explosion.

Miss Mattie rushed to the scene of the accident, followed by everybody. Young Lettis, equally frightened, was close beside her.

"Oh, Will! Are you killed?" she cried.

And then a voice devoid of any signs of weakness, but loaded to the breaking point with wrath, told in such language as had never been heard in Fairfield that the owner was still much alive.

"Run away, Mattie! Run away and let me cuss!" shrieked Red. Miss Mattie collapsed into the arms of Lettis.

The dust settled enough so that the anxious villagers could see horse and man; the former resting easily, as if he had had enough athletics for one day, and the latter sitting in the road. Neither showed any intention of rising.

"What's the matter, Mr. Saunders, are you hurt?" inquired the fussy post-mistress.

"Please go 'way, ma'am," said Red, waving his arm.

"I'm sure you're hurt--I'm perfectly sure you're hurt," she persisted, holding her ground. "Now, do tell us what can possibly be the matter with you?"

"Very well," returned the exasperated cow-puncher, "I will. My pants, ma'am, have suffered in this turn-up, and they're now in a condition to make my appearance in polite society difficult, if not impossible; now please go 'way and somebody fetch me a horse blanket."

It is regrettable that the discomfiture of the post-mistress was received with undisguised hilarity. The blanket was produced, and Red stalked off in Indian dignity, marred by a limp in his left leg, for he had come upon Mother Earth with a force which made itself felt through all that foot of soft dust.

"Bring that durn-fool horse along," he called over his shoulder.

Buckskin rose and followed his owner. There was no light in his eye now; he looked thoughtful. He, too, limped, and there was a trickle of blood down his nose. Verily it had been a hard fought field.

As both men were anxious to see the lay of the land as soon as possible. Red took his place in the waggon that day, after the damages were repaired, content to wait until his leg was less sore for horseback riding.

There followed a busy two weeks for them. Mr. Demilt had some money he wished to put into the enterprise, but his most valuable a.s.sistance was, of course, his thorough knowledge of the resources of the country.

They found an admirable site for the mill, in an old stone barn, which had stood the ravages of desolation almost unimpaired. Red's mining experience told him that the creek could easily be flumed to the barn, and as that was the only objection of the others to this location, they wrote the owner of the property for a price. They were astonished when they received the figures. It had come by inheritance to a man to whom it was a white elephant of the most exasperating sort, and he was glad to get rid of it for almost a song. They were a jubilant three at the news. It saved the cost of building a mill, and including that, the price was as low per acre as any land they could have obtained. Red closed the bargain instantly.

Lettis' part of the business was chiefly to arrange for the disposal of their product, and when he explained to his partners what he could reasonably hope to do in that line, the affair lost its last tint of unreality, and became a good proposition, for Lettis had an excellent business acquaintance, who would be glad to deal with the straightforward young fellow.

The night after the signing of the deeds, Red said to Miss Mattie, "We ought to have a stockholders' dinner to-morrow night, Mattie.

If you could hire that scow-built girl, who wears her hair scrambled, to come in and give you a lift, would you feel equal to it?"

"You always put it that I'm doing you a great favour in such things, Will, but you know perfectly well there's nothing I'd rather do," replied Miss Mattie, with a dimpling smile. "However, it adds to the pleasure of it to have it put in that way, so I won't complain. I'll just have my supper first, and then you men can talk over your business undisturbed."

"You _will_ not--you'll eat with the rest of us."

"Yes, but you stockholders--" The word had an import to Miss Mattie; a something, if not regal, at least a kinship to the king.

Under her democracy lay a respect for the founded inst.i.tution; impersonal; an integral part of the law of the State; in fact, a minor sovereignty within an empire.

"Stockholder yourself!" retorted Red. "Don't you call me names."

"What do you mean, Will?" asked Miss Mattie, with wide-opened eyes.

"I mean you're a stockholder as good as anybody--you've got half my stack. Now, hold on! Just listen! This is a queer run, Mattie, from the regulation point of view, this company of ours; I know enough about fillin' and backin' to know that--you ought to have seen the pryin', and pokin', and nosin' around them Boston men did before they took holt of the Chantay Seeche and made it a stock company! One feller was the ablest durn fool I ever come acrosst.

I used to let on I didn't savvey anything about it. 'Now, explain to me,' says I to him. 'You say you have so many shares of them stock,' waving my hand to a bunch of critters in the distance.

'What part do you take? I mean, what's your share of each animal, and does the last man get the hoofs and the tail?' 'Oh! you don't understand,' says he. 'I'll explain it to you.' So he starts in to tell me that 'stock didn't necessarily mean beef critters,' and a lot more things, whilst old man Ferguson, who was putting the deal through, stood listening and chewing his teeth, thinking I was going to give our friend the frolicsome hee-hee at the wind-up.

But I stood solemn, and never even drew a smile, for fear of queering Ferguson. Well. That's the proper way to start a company; make it as dreary and long-winded as possible. We ain't done that, and perhaps we'll go broke for breaking the rules, and then your stock won't be worth a cuss; so don't you get excited about it. I wanted the Saunders family to be represented. Pretty soon the old lad with the nose will be around, and you'll have a chance to read about the 'parties of the first part,' and 'second parts of the party' and 'aforesaids' and 'behindsaids' and the rest of the yappi them lawyers swing so that honest men won't know what the devil they're up to."

"Oh, Will! How can I ever thank you!" cried Miss Mattie, her eyes filling. It seemed a great and responsible position to the gentle lady to be a stockholder in the corporation. It wasn't the monetary value of the thing; it was the pride of place.

"If you don't know how, don't try," returned Red. "You give the other three stockholders a good feed to-morrow and the thanks will be up to you. h.e.l.lo! There's the old lad now!" as a trumpet blast rang out from the front porch. "It must take some practise to blow your nose like that. I've heard Jacka.s.ses that could not bray in the same cla.s.s with that little old gent--come in. Come in! You needn't sound the rally again."

Thus adjured the lawyer made his entrance, and Miss Mattie became in due and involved course of law a stockholder in the Fairfield Strawboard Mfg. Co.

Fairfield rose to activity like a very small giant refreshed.

Teams and their heavy loads kept the respectable dust in constant commotion. A grist mill was added to the intended plant, thus offering an inducement to the farmer to raise grain, and incidentally straw, "So we can ketch 'em on both ends, too," as Red put it.

The time seemed like enchantment to Miss Mattie. As a bringer of the tidings, and a stockholder in the company, she had risen to be a person of importance, with the result that she was even more modestly shy than before, although in her heart she liked it; but more delightful yet was the spirit of holiday activity which inspired and pervaded the place.

Red had insisted on operating on the lines that are laid down with railroad spikes in the Western communities; to patronise home industries as much as possible. Therefore the machinery orders went through Mr. Farrel, the blacksmith, initiating that worthy man into the mysteries of making money without doing anything for it, which seemed little less than a miracle to him. Everything that could be bought through local people was obtained in that way. It cost a trifle more, but it brought more money into the place, and enabled the villagers to partake of the enlivenment, without the feeling that it was a Barmecide feast. The post-mistress furnished the paint, and it is painful to add that she tried to furnish a number three paint for a number one price, arguing that she was a poor, lone woman, struggling through an uncharitable world and that the increased profit would do her considerable good--a view which Red did not share. He would willingly have made her a present of the difference, but he did not in the least intend to be choused out of it by man nor woman. They had a very funny debate in private, wherein the feminine tried to dominate the masculine principle by sheer volubility and found to its disgust that the method didn't work. Red listened most respectfully and always replied, "Yes ma'am, but we don't want that paint. Get us some good paint--bully old paint with stick'um in it--this stuff is like whitewash, only feebler. We're going to put on a swell front up at the mill, and we've got to have the right thing." And at last the post-mistress said that she would, her respect for the ex-cowpuncher having risen noticeably in the meantime.

V

The work on the mill was pushed, and in spite of the usual amount of unforeseen delays, it was ready for work by the latter part of September. The official opening was set for the twenty-seventh--Miss Mattie's birthday--and the village of Fairfield was invited to a picnic to be held at the mill in honor of the occasion. It is needless to say that the Fairfield Strawboard Mfg. Co. did the thing up in shape. Waggons loaded with straw, and drawn by four-horse teams, went the rounds of the village, collecting the guests. It is doubtful if Fairfield was ever more surprised than at the realisation of how much there was of her--using the p.r.o.noun out of respect to the majority--"when she was bunched," as Red said. You would not have believed that straggling, lonesome-looking place held so many people. As Red could discover no means in the town's resources to provide a meal for three hundred people it was necessarily a basket party, which struck Mr. Saunders as being grievously like a Swede treat. He made up for it in a measure by having barrels of lemonade and cider on tap at the grounds--stronger beverages being barred--and by hiring a quartette of strings "clear from town."

At half-past two on a resplendent but hot September afternoon the caravan started for the mill grounds, the women dressed in the most un-picnicky costumes imaginable, and the men ostentatiously at ease in their store clothes. Everyone was in the best of spirits, keen for the excitement and pleasure that was sure to mark the occasion.

Red rode old Buckskin, who had succ.u.mbed to the inevitable, and only "jumped around a little," as Red put it, on being mounted. It was pretty lively "jumping around," but perhaps Mr. Saunders found some satisfaction in sitting perfectly at his ease, smoking his cigarette, while Buck jumped and Fairfield admired. And, at any rate, Buck had legs of iron, and the wind of a locomotive, carrying Red all day, and willing to kick at anything which bothered him when night came. He was a splendid beast through and through, from forelock to tail-tip, but he had learned who was his master and obeyed him accordingly.

It was a five mile ride, mostly under the shade of fine old trees.

The road wound around the hills; here and there a break in the arboreal border showed views of rolling country, well-shaped and pleasing, winding up gra.s.sy slopes in groves of verdure. Of course most of the freshness of leaf was past, yet the modest gray-green gave a silvery sheen to the landscape that brought it into unity.

One member of the party felt that his heart was very full as he looked at it. That was Lettis. "Blast the old office!" he kept saying to himself. "Blast its six dingy windows, and the clock at the end! Doesn't this look good, and doesn't it smell good, dust and all?" and then he'd howl at the horses in sheer exuberance of good feeling, making the mild old brutes put a better foot of it to the front.

Red cantered up beside his waggon. "Well, Lettis," he said, "here we go for the opening overture, with the full strength of the company--we're great people this day, ain't we?" And the big man smiled like a pleased big boy.