EVERED

BY BEN AMES WILLIAMS NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue Copyright, 1921, By E. P. Dutton & Company All Rights Reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA {1} EVERED

Chapter: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.

I

THERE is romance in the very look of the land of which I write. Beauty beyond belief, of a sort to make your breath come more quickly; and drama—comedy or tragedy according to the eye and the mood of the seer. Loneliness and comradeship, peace and conflict, friendship and enmity, gayety and somberness, laughter and tears. The bold hills, little cousins to the mountains, crowd close round each village; the clear brooks thread wood and meadow; the birches and scrub hardwood are taking back the abandoned farms. When the sun drops low in the west there is a strange and moving purple tinge upon the slopes; and the shadows are as blue as blue can be. When the sun is high there is a greenery about this northern land which is almost tropical in its richness and variety.

The little villages lie for the most part in{2} sheltered valley spots. Not all of them. Liberty, for example, climbs up along a steep hill road on your way to St. George’s Pond, or over the Sheepscot Ridge, for trout. No spot lovelier anywhere. But you will come upon other little house clusters, a white church steeple topping every one, at unsuspected crossroads, with some meadowland round and about, and a brook running through the village itself, and perhaps a mill sprawled busily across the brook. It is natural that the villages should thus seek shelter; for when the winter snows come down this is a harsh land, and bitter cold. So is it all the more strange that the outlying farms are so often set high upon the hills, bare to the bleak gales. And the roads, too, like to seek and keep the heights. From Fraternity itself, for example, there is a ten-mile ridge southwest to Union, and a road along the whole length of the ridge’s crest, from which you may look for miles on either side.

This is not a land of bold emprises; neither is it one of those localities which are said to be happy because they have no history. There is history in the very names of the villages hereabouts. Liberty, and Union, and Freedom; Equality, and Fraternity. And men will tell{3} you how their fathers’ fathers came here in the train of General Knox, when that warrior, for Revolutionary services rendered, was given title to all the countryside; and how he sub-granted to his followers; and how they cleared farms, and tilled the soil, and lumbered out the forests, and exterminated deer and moose and bear. Seventy years ago, they will tell you, there was no big game hereabouts; but since then many farms, deserted, have been overrun by the forests; and the bear are coming back, and there are deer tracks along every stream, and moose in the swamps, and wildcats scream in the night. Twenty or thirty or forty miles to the north the big woods of Maine begin; so that this land is an outpost of the wilderness, thrust southward among the closer dwellings of man.

The people of these towns are of ancient stock. The grandfathers of many of them came in with General Knox; most of them have been here for fifty years or more, they or their forbears. A few Frenchmen have drifted down from Quebec; a few Scotch and Irish have come in here as they come everywhere. Half a dozen British seamen escaped, once upon a time, from a man-of-war in Penobscot Bay, and fled inland,{4} and were hidden away until their ship was gone. Whereupon they married and became part and parcel of the land, and their stock survives. By the mere reading of the names of these folk upon the R. F. D. boxes at their doors you may know their antecedents. Bubier and Saladine, Varney and Motley, McCorrison and MacLure, Thomas and Davis, Sohier and Brine—a five-breed blend of French and English, Scotch and Welsh and Irish; in short, as clear a strain of good Yankee blood as you are like to come upon.

Sturdy folk, and hardy workers. You will find few idlers; and by the same token you will find few slavish toilers, lacking soul to whip a trout brook now and then or shoot a woodcock or a deer. Most men hereabouts would rather catch a trout than plant a potato; most men would rather shoot a partridge than cut a cord of wood. And they act upon their inclinations in these matters. The result is that the farms are perhaps a thought neglected; and no one is very rich in worldly goods; and a man who inherits a thousand dollars has come into money. Yet have they all that any man wisely may desire; for they have food and drink and shelter, and good comradeship, and the woods{5} to take their sport in, and what books they choose to read, and time for solid thinking, and beauty ever before their eyes. Whether you envy or scorn them is in some measure an acid test of your own soul. Best hesitate before deciding.

Gregarious folk, these, like most people who dwell much alone. So there are grange halls here and there; and the churches are white-painted and in good repair; and now and then along the roads you will come to a picnic grove or a dancing pavilion, set far from any town. Save in haymaking time the men work solitary in the fields; but in the evening, when cows have been milked and pigs fed and wood prepared against the morning, they take their lanterns and tramp or drive half a mile or twice as far, and drop in at Will Bissell’s store for the mail and for an hour round Will’s stove.

You will hear tales there, tales worth the hearing, and on the whole surprisingly true. There is some talk of the price of hay or of feed or of apples; but there is more likely to be some story of the woods—of a bull moose seen along the Liberty road or a buck deer in Luke Hills’ pasture or a big catch of trout in the Ruffingham Meadow streams. Now and{6} then, just about mail time in the evening, fishermen will stop at the store to weigh their catches; and then everyone crowds round to see and remark upon the matter.

The store is a clearing-house for local news; and this must be so, for there is no newspaper in Fraternity. Whatever has happened within a six-mile radius during the day is fairly sure to be told there before Will locks up for the night; and there is always something happening in Fraternity. In which respect it is very much like certain villages of a larger growth, and better advertised.

There is about the intimacy of life in a little village something that suggests the intimacy of life upon the sea. There is not the primitive social organization; the captain as lord of all he surveys. But there is the same close rubbing of shoulders, the same nakedness of impulse and passion and longing and sorrow and desire. You may know your neighbor well enough in the city, but before you lend him money, take him for a camping trip in the woods or go with him to sea. Thereafter you will know the man inside and out; and you may, if you choose, make your loan with a knowledge of what you are about. It is hard to keep a secret in a{7} little village; and Fraternity is a little village—that and nothing more.

On weekday nights, as has been said, Will Bissell’s store is the social center of Fraternity. Men begin to gather soon after supper; they begin to leave when the stage has come up from Union with the mail. For Will’s store is post office as well as market-place. The honeycomb of mail boxes occupies a place just inside the door, next to the candy counter. Will knows his business. A man less wise might put his candies back among the farming tools, and his tobacco and pipes and cigars in the north wing, with the ginghams, but Will puts them by the mail boxes, because everyone gets mail or hopes for it, and anyone may be moved to buy a bit of candy while he waits for the mail to come.

This was an evening in early June. Will’s stove had not been lighted for two weeks or more; but to-night there was for the first time the warm breath of summer in the air. So those who usually clustered inside were outside now, upon the high flight of steps which led up from the road. Perhaps a dozen men, a dog or two, half a dozen boys. Luke Hills had just come and gone with the season’s best catch of trout{8}—ten of them; and when they were laid head to tail they covered the length of a ten-foot board. The men spoke of these trout now, and Judd, who was no fisherman, suggested that Luke must have snared them; and Jim Saladine, the best deer hunter in Fraternity and a fair and square man, told Judd he was witless and unfair. Judd protested, grinning meanly; and Jean Bubier, the Frenchman from the head of the pond, laughed and exclaimed: “Now you, m’sieu’, you could never snare those trout if you come upon them in the road, eh?”

They were laughing in their slow dry way at Judd’s discomfiture when the hoofs of a horse sounded on the bridge below the store; and every man looked that way.

It was Lee Motley who said, “It’s Evered.”

The effect was curious. The men no longer laughed. They sat quite still, as though under a half-fearful restraint, and pretended not to see the man who was approaching.{9}

II

THERE were two men in the buggy which came up the little ascent from the bridge and stopped before the store. The men were Evered, and Evered’s son, John. Evered lived on a farm that overlooked the Whitcher Swamp on the farther side. He was a man of some property, a successful farmer. He was also a butcher; and his services were called in at hog-killing time as regularly as the services of Doctor Crapo in times of sickness. He knew his trade; and he knew the anatomy of a steer or a calf or a sheep as well as Doctor Crapo knew the anatomy of a man. He was an efficient man; a brutally efficient man. His orchard was regularly trimmed and grafted and sprayed; his hay was re-seeded year by year; his garden never knew the blight of weeds; his house was clean, in good repair, white-painted. A man in whom dwelt power and strength; and a man whom other men disliked and feared.

He was a short man, broad of shoulder, with{10} a thick neck and a square, well-shaped head, a heavy brow and a steady burning eye. A somber man, he never laughed; never was known to laugh. There was a blighting something in his gaze which discouraged laughter in others. He was known to have a fierce and ruthless temper; in short, a fearsome man, hard to understand. He puzzled his neighbors and baffled them; they let him well alone.

He was driving this evening. His horse, like everything which was his, was well-groomed and in perfect condition. It pranced a little as it came up to the store, not from high spirits, but from nervousness. So much might be known by the white glint of its eye. The nervousness of a mettled creature too much restrained. It pranced a little, and Evered’s hand tightened on the rein so harshly that the horse’s lower jaw was pulled far back against its neck, and the creature was abruptly still, trembling, and sweating faintly for no cause at all. Evered paid no more heed to the horse. He looked toward the group of men upon the steps, and some met his eye, and some looked away.

He looked at them, one by one; and he asked Lee Motley: “Is the mail come?{11}”

Motley shook his head. He was a farmer of means, a strong man, moved by no fear of Evered. “No,” he said.

Evered passed the reins to his son. “Hold him still,” he told the young man, and stepped out over the wheel to the ground, dropping lightly as a cat. The horse gave a half leap forward and was caught by John Evered’s steady hand; and the young man spoke gently to the beast to quiet it.

Evered from the ground looked up at his son and said harshly, “I bade you hold him still.”

The other answered, “I will.”

“You’d best,” said Evered, and turned and strode up the steps into the store.

The incident had brought out vividly enough the difference between Evered and his son. They were two characters sharply contrasting; for where Evered was harsh, John was gentle of speech; and where Evered was abrupt, John was slow; and where Evered’s eye was hard and angry, John’s was mild. They contrasted physically. The son was tall, well-formed and fair; the father was short, almost squat in his broad strength, and black of hair and eye. Nevertheless, it was plain to the seeing eye{12} that there was strength in John as there was strength in Evered—strength of body and soul.

When Evered had gone into the store Motley said to the son, “It’s warm.”

The young man nodded in a wistfully friendly way. “Yes,” he agreed. “So warm it’s brought up our peas this day.”

“That south slope of yours is good garden land,” Motley told him, and John said:

“Yes. As good as I ever see.”

Everyone liked John Evered; and someone asked now: “Been fishing any, over at Wilson’s?”

John shook his head. “Too busy,” he explained. “But I hear how they’re catching some good strings there.”

“Luke Hills brought in ten to-night that was ten feet long,” Jim Saladine offered. “Got ’em at Ruffingham.”

The young man in the buggy smiled delightedly, his eyes shining. “Golly, what a catch!” he exclaimed.

Then Evered came to the door of the store and looked out, and silence fell upon them all once more. The mail was coming down the hill; the stage, a rattling, rusted, do-or-die{13} automobile of ancient vintage, squeaked to a shrill stop before the very nose of Evered’s horse. John spoke to the horse, and it was still. The stage driver took the mail sacks in, and Evered left the doorway. The others all got up and turned toward the door.

Motley said to Saladine, “Did you mark the horse? It was scared of the stage, but it was still at his word, and he did not tighten rein.”

“I saw,” Saladine agreed. “The boy handles it fine.”

“It’s feared of Evered; but the beast loves the boy.”

“There’s others in that same way o’ thinking,” said Saladine.

Inside the store Will Bissell and Andy Wattles, his lank and loyal clerk, were stamping and sorting the mail. No great matter, for few letters come to Fraternity. While this was under way Evered gathered up the purchases he had made since he came into the store, and took them out and stowed them under the seat of the buggy. He did not speak to his son. John sat still in his place, moving his feet out of the other’s way. When the bundles were all bestowed Evered went back up the steps and Will gave him his daily paper{14} and a letter addressed to his wife, and Evered took them without thanks, and left the store without farewell to any man, and climbed into the buggy and took the reins. He turned the horse sharply and they moved down the hill, and the bridge sounded for a moment beneath their passing. In the still evening air the pound of the horse’s hoofs and the light whirring of the wheels persisted for long moments before they died down to blend with the hum and murmur of tiny sounds that filled the whispering dusk.

As they drove away one or two men came to the door to watch them go; and Judd, a man with a singular capacity for mean and tawdry malice, said loudly, “That boy’ll break Evered, some day, across his knee.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Jean Bubier said cheerfully that he would like to see the thing done. “But that Evered, he is one leetle fighter,” he reminded Judd.

Judd laughed unpleasantly and said Evered had the town bluffed. “That’s all he is,” he told them. “A black scowl and some cussing. Nothing else. You’ll see.”

Motley shook his head soberly. “Evered’s{15} no bluff,” he said. “You’re forgetting that matter of the knife, Judd.”

Motley’s reminder put a momentary silence upon them all. The story of the knife was well enough known; the knife they had all seen. The thing had happened fifteen or twenty years before, and was one of the tales many times told about Will’s stove. One Dave Riggs, drunken and worthless, farming in a small way in North Fraternity, sent for Evered to kill a pig. Evered went to Riggs’ farm. Riggs had been drinking; he was quarrelsome; he sought to interfere with Evered’s procedure. Motley, a neighbor of Riggs, had been there at the time, and used to tell the story.

“Riggs wanted him to tie up the pig,” he would explain. “You know Evered does not do that. He says they will not bleed properly, tied. He did not argue with the man, but Riggs persisted in his drunken way, and cursed Evered to his face, till I could see the blood mounting in the butcher’s cheeks. He is a bad-tempered man, always was.

“He turned on Riggs and told the man to hush; and Riggs damned him. Evered knocked him flat with a single fist stroke; and{16} while Riggs was still on the ground Evered turned and got the pig by the ears and slipped the knife into its throat, in that smooth way he has. When he drew it out the blood came after; and Evered turned to Riggs, just getting on his feet.

“‘There’s your pig,’ said Evered. ‘Butchered right. Now, man, be still.’

“Well, Riggs took a look at the pig and another at Evered. He was standing by the chopping block, and his hand fell on the ax stuck there. Before I could stir he had lifted it, whirling it, and was sweeping down on Evered.

“It was all over quick, you’ll mind. Riggs rushing, with the ax whistling in the air. Then Evered stepped inside its swing, and drove at Riggs’ head. I think he forgot he had the knife in his hand. But it was there; his hand drove it with the cunning that it knew—at the forehead of the other man.

“I mind how Riggs looked, after he had dropped. On his back he was, the knife sticking straight up from his head. And it still smeared with the pig’s blood, dripping down on the dead man’s face. Oh, aye, he was dead. Dead as the pig, when it quit its walking round{17} in a little, and laid down, and stopped its squeal.”

Someone asked him once, when he had told the tale: “Where was Riggs’ wife? Married, wa’n’t he?”

“In the house,” said Motley. “The boy was there, though. He’d come to see the pig stuck, and when he saw the blood come out of its throat he yelled and run. So he didn’t have to see the rest—the knife in his father’s head.”

There had been no prosecution of Evered for that ancient tragedy. Motley’s story was clear enough; it had been self-defense at the worst, and half accident besides. Riggs’ wife went away and took her son, and Fraternity knew them no more.

They conned over this ancient tale of Evered in Will’s store that night; and some blamed him, and some found him not to blame. And when they were done with that story they told others; how when he was called to butcher sheep he had a trick of breaking their necks across his knee with a twist and a jerk of his hands. There was no doubt of the man’s strength nor of his temper.

A West Fraternity man came in while they{18} were talking; one Zeke Pitkin, a mild man, and timid. He listened to their words, and asked at last, “Evered?”

They nodded; and Pitkin laughed in an awkward way. “He killed my bull to-day,” he said.

Will Bissell asked quickly, “Killed your bull? You have him do it?”

Pitkin nodded, gulping at his Adam’s apple. “Getting ugly, the bull was,” he said. “I didn’t like to handle him. Decided to beef him. So I sent for Evered, and he came over.”

He looked round at them, laughed uneasily. “He scared me,” he said.

Motley asked slowly. “What happened, Zeke?”

Pitkin rubbed one hand nervously along his leg. “We-ell,” he explained. “I’m nervous like. Git excited easy. So when he come I told him the bull was ugly. Told him to look out for it.

“He just only looked at me in that hard way of his. I had the bull in the barn; and he went in where it was and fetched it out in the barn floor. Left the bull standing there and begun to fix his tackle to h’ist it up.{19}