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A Knight Of The Cumberland
by
“Have you ever been drunk before?” asked the prosecuting attorney severely. The lad looked surprised.
“Co’se I have, but I ain’t goin’ to agin–leastwise not in this here town.” There was a general laugh at this and the aged mayor rapped loudly.
“That will do,” said the attorney.
The lad stepped down, hitched his chair slightly so that his back was to the Blight, sank down in it until his head rested on the back of the chair and crossed his legs. The Hon. Samuel Budd arose and the Blight looked at him with wonder. His long yellow hair was parted in the middle and brushed with plaster-like precision behind two enormous ears, he wore spectacles, gold-rimmed and with great staring lenses, and his face was smooth and ageless. He caressed his chin ruminatingly and rolled his lips until they settled into a fine resultant of wisdom, patience, toleration and firmness. His manner was profound and his voice oily and soothing.
“May it please your Honor–my young friend frankly pleads guilty.” He paused as though the majesty of the law could ask no more. “He is a young man of naturally high and somewhat–naturally, too, no doubt–bibulous spirits. Homoepathically–if inversely–the result was logical. In the untrammelled life of the liberty-breathing mountains, where the stern spirit of law and order, of which your Honor is the august symbol, does not prevail as it does here–thanks to your Honor’s wise and just dispensations–the lad has, I may say, naturally acquired a certain recklessness of mood–indulgence which, however easily condoned there, must here be sternly rebuked. At the same time, he knew not the conditions here, he became exhilarated without malice, prepensey or even, I may say, consciousness. He would not have done as he has, if he had known what he knows now, and, knowing, he will not repeat the offence. I need say no more. I plead simply that your Honor will temper the justice that is only yours with the mercy that is yours–only.”
His Honor was visibly affected and to cover it–his methods being informal–he said with sharp irrelevancy:
“Who bailed this young feller out last night?” The sergeant spoke:
“Why, Mr. Marston thar”–with outstretched finger toward the young engineer. The Blight’s black eyes leaped with exultant appreciation and the engineer turned crimson. His Honor rolled his quid around in his mouth once, and peered over his glasses:
“I fine this young feller two dollars and costs.” The young fellow had turned slowly in his chair and his blue eyes blazed at the engineer with unappeasable hatred. I doubt if he had heard his Honor’s voice.
“I want ye to know that I’m obleeged to ye an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to fergit it; but if I’d a known hit was you I’d a stayed in jail an’ seen you in hell afore I’d a been bounden to ye.”
“Ten dollars fer contempt of couht.” The boy was hot now.
“Oh, fine and be–” The Hon. Samuel Budd had him by the shoulder, the boy swallowed his voice and his starting tears of rage, and after a whisper to his Honor, the Hon. Samuel led him out. Outside, the engineer laughed to the Blight:
“Pretty peppery, isn’t he?” but the Blight said nothing, and later we saw the youth on a gray horse crossing the bridge and conducted by the Hon. Samuel Budd, who stopped and waved him toward the mountains. The boy went on and across the plateau, the gray Gap swallowed him. That night, at the post-office, the Hon. Sam plucked me aside by the sleeve.
“I know Marston is agin me in this race–but I’ll do him a good turn just the same. You tell him to watch out for that young fellow. He’s all right when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk–well, over in Kentucky, they call him the Wild Dog.”
Several days later we started out through that same Gap. The glum stableman looked at the Blight’s girths three times, and with my own eyes starting and my heart in my mouth, I saw her pass behind her sixteen-hand-high mule and give him a friendly tap on the rump as she went by. The beast gave an appreciative flop of one ear and that was all. Had I done that, any further benefit to me or mine would be incorporated in the terms of an insurance policy. So, stating this, I believe I state the limit and can now go on to say at last that it was because she seemed to be loved by man and brute alike that a big man of her own town, whose body, big as it was, was yet too small for his heart and from whose brain things went off at queer angles, always christened her perversely as–“The Blight.”