FullReads

“Well, I got a piece of land ’bout two miles back of my place that belongs to my wife, and I ain’t never fenced it in, for I ain’t never had no time somehow to cut the timber to do it, she’s been so sickly lately. ‘Bout a year ago I was goin’ ‘long toward Hi Stephens’s mill a-lookin’ for muskrats when I heard some feller’s axe a-workin’ away, and I says to Hi, ‘Hi, ain’t that choppin’ goin’ on on the wife’s land?’ and he said it was, and that Luke Shanders and his boys had been drawin’ out cross-ties for the new railroad; thought I knowed it.

“Well, I kep’ ‘long up and come on Luke jes’s he was throwin’ the las’ stick onto his wagon. He kinder started when he see me, jumped on and begin to drive off. I says to him, ‘Luke,’ I says, ‘I ain’t got no objection to you havin’ a load of wood; there’s plenty of it; but it don’t seem right for you to take it ‘thout askin’, ‘specially since the wife’s kind o’ peaked and it’s her land and not yourn.’ He hauled the team back on their hind legs, and he says:

“‘When I see fit to ask you or your old woman’s leave to cut timber on my own land, I will. Me and Lawyer Fillmore has been a-lookin’ into them deeds, and this timber is mine;’ and he driv off.

“I come along home and studied ’bout it a bit, and me and the wife talked it over. We didn’t want to make no fuss, but we knowed he was alyin’, but that ain’t no unusual thing for Luke Shanders.

“Well, the nex’ mornin’ I got into Pondville ’bout eight o’clock and set a-waitin’ till Lawyer Fillmore come in. He looked kind o’ shamefaced when he see me, and I says, ‘What’s this Luke Shanders’s been a-tellin’ me ’bout your sayin’ my wife’s timberland is hisn?’

“Then he began ‘splainin’ that the ‘riginal lines was drawed wrong and that old man Shanders’s land, Luke’s father, run to the brook and took in all the white oak on the wife’s lot and—-“

The buzzard sprang to his feet and shrieked out:

“Your Honor, I object to this rigmarole. Tell the jury right away”–and he faced the prisoner–“what you know about this glass of whiskey. Get right down to the facts; we’re not cutting cross-ties in this court.”

The old man caught his breath, placed his fingers suddenly to his lips as if to choke back the forbidden words, and, in an apologetic voice, murmured:

“I’m gettin’ there’s fast’s I kin, sir, ‘deed I am; I ain’t hidin’ nothin’.”

He wasn’t. Anyone could see it in his face.

“Better let him go on in his own way,” remarked the Judge, indifferently. His Honor was looking over some papers, and the monotonous tones of the witness diverted attention. Most of the jury, too, had already lost interest in the story. One of the younger members had settled himself in his chair, thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched out his legs, and had shut his eyes as if to take a nap. Nothing so far had implicated either the whiskey or the dime; when it did he would wake up.

The old man turned a grateful glance toward the Judge, leaned forward in his chair, and with bent head looked about him on the floor as if trying to pick up the lost end of his story. The young attorney, in an encouraging tone, helped him find it with a question:

“When did you next see Mr. Fillmore and Luke Shanders?”

“When the trial come off,” answered the old man, raising his head again. “Course we couldn’t lose the land. ‘Twarn’t worth much till the new railroad come through; then the oak come handy for cross-ties. That’s what set Fillmore and Luke Shanders onto it.

“When the case was tried, the Judge seed they couldn’t bring no ‘riginal deed ‘cept one showin’ that Luke Shanders and Fillmore was partners in the steal, and the Judge ‘lowed they’d have to pay for the timber they cut and hauled away.