UNCLE ABNER, MASTER OF MYSTERIES: 18 Detective Tales in One Volume. Melville Davisson Post

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      Abner never would have taken me into that house if he could have helped it. He was on a desperate mission and a child was the last company he wished; but he had to do it. It was an evening of early winter-raw and cold. A chilling rain was beginning to fall; night was descending and I could not go on. I had been into the upcountry and had taken this short cut through the hills that lay here against the mountains. I would have been home by now, but a broken shoe had delayed me.

      I did not see Abner's horse until I approached the crossroads, but I think he had seen me from a distance. His great chestnut stood in the grassplot between the roads, and Abner sat upon him like a man of stone. He had made his decision when I got to him.

      The very aspect of the land was sinister. The house stood on a hill; round its base, through the sodded meadows, the river ran-dark, swift and silent; stretching westward was a forest and for background the great mountains stood into the sky. The house was very old. The high windows were of little panes of glass and on the ancient white door the paint was seamed and cracked with age.

      The name of the man who lived here was a byword in the hills. He was a hunchback, who sat his great roan as though he were a spider in the saddle. He had been married more than once; but one wife had gone mad, and my Uncle Abner's drovers had found the other on a summer morning swinging to the limb of a great elm that stood before the door, a bridle-rein knotted around her throat and her bare feet scattering the yellow pollen of the ragweed. That elm was to us a duletree. One could not ride beneath it for the swinging of this ghost.

      The estate, undivided, belonged to Gaul and his brother. This brother lived beyond the mountains. He never came until he came that last time. Gaul rendered some accounting and they managed in that way. It was said the brother believed himself defrauded and had come finally to divide the lands; but this was gossip. Gaul said his brother came upon a visit and out of love for him.

      One did not know where the truth lay between these stories. Why he came we could not be certain; but why he remained was beyond a doubt.

      One morning Gaul came to my Uncle Abner, clinging to the pommel of his saddle while his great horse galloped, to say that he had found his brother dead, and asking Abner to go with some others and look upon the man before one touched his body-and then to get him buried.

      The hunchback sniveled and cried out that his nerves were gone with grief and the terror of finding his brother's throat cut open and the blood upon him as he lay ghastly in his bed. He did not know a detail. He had looked in at the door-and fled. His brother had not got up and he had gone to call him. Why his brother had done this thing he could not imagine-he was in perfect health and he slept beneath his roof in love. The hunchback had blinked his red-lidded eyes and twisted his big, hairy hands, and presented the aspect of grief. It looked grotesque and loathsome; but-how else could a toad look in his extremity?

      Abner had gone with my father and Elnathan Stone. They had found the man as Gaul said-the razor by his hand and the marks of his fingers and his struggle on him and about the bed. And the country had gone to see him buried. The hills had been afire with talk, but Abner and my father and Elnathan Stone were silent. They came silent from Gaul's house; they stood silent before the body when it was laid out for burial; and, bareheaded, they were silent when the earth received it.

      A little later, however, when Gaul brought forth a will, leaving the brother's share of the estate to the hunchback, with certain loving words, and a mean allowance to the man's children, the three had met together and Abner had walked about all night.

      As we turned in toward the house Abner asked me if I had got my supper. I told him "Yes"; and at the ford he stopped and sat a moment in the saddle.

      "Martin," he said, "get down and drink. It is God's river and the water clean in it."

      Then he extended his great arm toward the shadowy house.

      "We shall go in," he said; "but we shall not eat nor drink there, for we do not come in peace."

      I do not know much about that house, for I saw only one room in it; that was empty, cluttered with dust and rubbish, and preempted by the spider. Long double windows of little panes of glass looked out over the dark, silent river slipping past without a sound, and the rain driving into the forest and the loom of the mountains. There was a fire-the trunk of an apple tree burning, with one end in the fireplace. There were some old chairs with black hair-cloth seats, and a sofa-all very old. These the hunchback did not sit on, for the dust appeared when they were touched. He had a chair beside the hearth, and he sat in that-a high-backed chair, made like a settee and padded-the arms padded too; but there the padding was worn out and ragged, where his hands had plucked it.

      He wore a blue coat, made with little capes to hide his hump, and he sat tapping the burning tree with his cane. There was a gold piece set into the head of this black stick. He had it put there, the gossips said, that his fingers might be always on the thing he loved. His gray hair lay along his face and the draft of the chimney moved it.

      He wondered why we came, and his eyes declared how the thing disturbed him; they flared up and burned down-now gleaming in his head as he looked us over, and now dull as he considered what he saw.

      The man was misshapen and doubled up, but there was strength and vigor in him. He had a great, cavernous mouth, and his voice was a sort of bellow. One has seen an oak tree, dwarfed and stunted into knots, but with the toughness and vigor of a great oak in it. Gaul was a thing like that.

      He cried out when he saw Abner. He was taken by surprise; and he wished to know if we came by chance or upon some errand.

      "Abner," he said, "come in. It's a devil's night-rain and the driving wind."

      "The weather," said Abner, "is in God's hand."

      "God!" cried Gaul. "I would shoestrap such a God! The autumn is not half over and here is winter come, and no pasture left and the cattle to be fed."

      Then he saw me, with my scared white face-and her was certain that we came by chance. He craned his thick neck and looked.

      "Bub," he said, "come in and warm your fingers. I will not hurt you. I did not twist my body up like this to frighten children-it was Abner's God."

      We entered and sat down by the fire. The apple tree blazed and crackled; the wind outside increased; the rain turned to a kind of sleet that rattled on the window-glass like shot. The room was lighted by two candles in tall brass candlesticks. They stood at each end of the mantelpiece, smeared with tallow. The wind whooped and spat into the chimney; and now and then a puff of wood-smoke blew out and mounted up along the blackened fireboard.

      Abner and the hunchback talked of the price of cattle, of the "blackleg" among yearlings-that fatal disease that we had so much trouble with-and of the "lump-jaw."

      Gaul said that if calves were kept in small lots and not all together the "blackleg" was not so apt to strike them; and he thought the "lump-jaw" was a germ. Fatten the bullock with green corn and put it in a car, he said, when the lump begins to come. The Dutch would eat it-and what poison could hurt the Dutch! But Abner said the creature should be shot.

      "And lose the purchase money and a summer's grazing?" cried Gaul. "Not I! I ship the beast."

      "Then," said Abner, "the inspector in the market ought to have it shot and you fined to boot."

      "The inspector in the market!" And Gaul laughed. "Why, I slip him a greenback-thus!"-and he set his thumb against his palm. СКАЧАТЬ