while they kept the promise. You would have done it yourself, uncle.”
“You are right, my boy; I would. A man’s secret is still his
own property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him
like that. You did well, and I am proud of you.”
Then he added mournfully, “But I wish I could have been saved the
shame of meeting an assassin on the field on honor.”
“It couldn’t be helped, uncle. If I had known you were going
to challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice
my pledged word in order to stop it, but Wilson couldn’t be
expected to do otherwise than keep silent.”
“Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. Tom, Tom,
you have lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very
soul when I seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family.”
“You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle.”
“Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it. And I can understand how much
it has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time.
But it is all right now, and no harm is done. You have restored
my comfort of mind, and with it your own; and both of us
had suffered enough.”
The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up
with a satisfied light in his eye, and said: “That this assassin
should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the
field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will
presently settle–but not now. I will not shoot him until after election.
I see a way to ruin them both before; I will attend to that first.
Neither of them shall be elected, that I promise.
You are sure that the fact that he is an assassin has not got abroad?”
“Perfectly certain of it, sir.”
“It will be a good card. I will fling a hint at it from the stump
on the polling day. It will sweep the ground from under both of them.”
“There’s not a doubt of it. It will finish them.”
“That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty.
I want you to come down here by and by and work privately among
the rag-tag and bobtail. You shall spend money among them;
I will furnish it.”
Another point scored against the detested twins! Really it was
a great day for Tom. He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now,
at the same target, and did it.
“You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making
such a to-do about? Well, there’s no track or trace of it yet;
so the town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh.
Half the people believe they never had any such knife,
the other half believe they had it and have got it still.
I’ve heard twenty people talking like that today.”
Yes, Tom’s blemishless week had restored him to the favor of
his aunt and uncle.
His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately, she believed she
was coming to love him, but she did not say so. She told him to
go along to St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow.
Then she smashed her whisky bottle and said:
“Dah now! I’s a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string,
Chambers, en so I’s bown, you ain’t gwine to git no bad example
out o’ yo’ mammy. I tole you you couldn’t go into no bad comp’ny.
Well, you’s gwine into my comp’ny, en I’s gwine to fill de bill.
Now, den, trot along, trot along!”
Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with
his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep
of the unjust, which is serener and sounder than the other kind,
as we know by the hanging-eve history of a million rascals.
But when he got up in the morning, luck was against him again:
a brother thief had robbed him while he slept, and gone ashore at