Part 51

And then the rain that had held back so long came down through the forest in a deluge.

BLOOD MONEY

"A man," says Poor Richard, "has three friends--an old wife, an old dog, and money." Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. He had an old wife and he had an old dog, but he had no money. And there are times when, let comfortable moralists say what they please, a man's need for money overshadows everything else. Such a time had come to Jim Taylor.

It came at one o'clock on a cold, starry March morning. Since sundown he and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.

"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not gone.

Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white Llewellyn setter, had hung about within the circle of light cast by the lantern. He had followed Mary to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protector. He had gone with Jim to the well after water. While Jim and the doctor worked, he had sat gravely on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, lank, a bit stooped, stood in the middle of the lot, Mary on one side, Prince on the other. Before him lay his mule, dead.

Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not uncommon. But on this particular mule Jim had depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton crop he had depended for money to pay off the mortgage on his farm--the farm that represented his and Mary's belated plunge in life.

Perhaps to say Mary's plunge would be nearer the truth. But for her, Jim would have remained an easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog before the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing poles out under the shed. His was the lore of field and stream, not of business. It was Mary who, two years before, had seen in the advancing price of cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked him into trying to make terms with Old Man Thornycroft, his landlord.

"All right, gal," he had said one morning; "here goes."

He had come back with a new light in his gray, twinkling sportsman's eyes. He had got right down to work. The sound of his hammer as he patched barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of his shotgun in the woods. He had followed the furrow as earnestly as if it were a wild-turkey track in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter, looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. He had met his first payments. Then had come the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the chance to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had borrowed to the limit on the coming season's prospects. He had bought ample fertilizer, a new wagon, a new plough. And now the mule, without which all these things were useless, lay at his feet a mass of worse than useless flesh.

The shivering voice of Mary at his side--he hadn't realized before how cold it was--roused him from his melancholy contemplation of the spectacle.

"What're we goin' to do now, Jim?"

"Oh, we'll manage somehow," he declared.

He picked up the lantern, looked down into her face, and his eyes twinkled momentarily.

"That mule was lazy, anyhow."

But there was no answering twinkle in Mary's eyes as they turned back toward the house. They left the lot gate open, no need to close it now, and old Prince followed with subdued mien at their heels; their troubles were his troubles, and, besides, he had rather liked the mule in a condescending sort of way.

"How much will a new mule cost?" Mary asked as they went up the steps, their footfalls sounding loud in the dead silence down there under the stars.

"Well, two hundred dollars will get one you won't have to prop up betwixt the traces."

He did not see the sudden eagerness in her face. He pushed the door open for her.

"Come in, old man," he said to Prince. "You done the best you could."

In the unceiled kitchen he set the lantern down on the table. "Don't you bother, gal," he said to Mary. "You look all wore out. Go to bed now and get some sleep. I'll go to Greenville to-morrow and see if I can't borrow the money."

But next day in town Jim found, as he had been afraid he would find, that it is not easy for a man known primarily as a hunter and fisherman to borrow two hundred dollars. He had not even gone to see Thornycroft. The old man would be glad enough of an opportunity to get the improved place back; Jim knew that.

But he did call on the banks. They were sorry, cashiers explained courteously after they had questioned him briefly through barred windows. But right at this particular time their customers had use for all the money they could get their hands on, and----

"You think you've got it," he said to Mary that night before the fire, "till you come out in the street and feel in your pockets. Then you know you ain't."

"But, Jim--what're you goin' to do now?"

"I'll bait another hook, Mary," he said, trying to conceal the growing anxiety he felt.

Old Prince went joyfully with him when next morning early he set out on foot to call on the few farmers he knew who might have money to lend; Prince always went when Jim was afoot. The sun rose on them when, a mile up the road, they came in sight of the Northern Hunt Club. It shone ruddily on the bare oaks and the columned porticos, and the white stables and kennels in the rear.

Jim never saw the place without a touch of grave reminiscence. Here used to come old Doctor Tolman from New York, to attend the field trials and to hunt, and Jim had been his hunting companion. On just such mornings as this he would join the doctor out here in the road. Before those stone gate posts that marked the entrance to the grounds they had had their last talk, eight years ago.