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Page 23
He demanded one at any price and bought six, ate them one after the
other without the pretense of a halt and moodily shied the last skin at
a sparrow, realizing then with a shock that the negro had already
untied the mule from the picket fence. The precipitancy of it all made
him slightly uncomfortable. Either the negro was too lazy to bargain
or the offer was out of all proportion to the mule's repute. Kenny
asked.
"He's got a powahful sight of appetite fo' a po' man," explained the
darky fluently. "I's glad to see him go. Dat mule, sah, even eats de
pickets on de fence."
Kenny felt sincerely that he could understand.
"Just give him his haid, sah," called the negro as he climbed aboard,
"and he'll find de road outside fo' yoh."
Mule and rider disappeared with a sort of plunge. Kenny's spirits
soared. Substance and speed here enough for any man. He remembered in
the first moment of his uplift that Cuchullin, foremost champion of the
Red Branch, had had a magic steed that rose from a lake. Its name was
Leath Macha.
Very well, he would christen this amazing beast of sinews with the
compass nose, Leath Macha, and make him a gift of his head as the darky
advised. Leath Macha--Kenny later found less poetic names he liked
better--developed a sylvan taste for roving and lost himself in no
time, pursuing elusive glints of greenness. He seemed always seeking
food. It came over his rider with a sickening wave of apprehension and
disgust that the unscrupulous negro, taking advantage of his plight,
had sold him what the southern darky calls an ornery mule, a mule that
charged forward with fiery snorts and halted only when it pleased him,
kicked backward when he did stop and plunged forward immediately
afterward with a horrible air of purpose.
Kenny groaned. He was between the devil and the deep sea. The
prospect of staying lost in a world of trees filled him with hungry
foreboding. But he dreaded the open highway and pictured himself John
Gilpining through town and village, a thing of ridicule and helpless
progress. Puck in the guise of a hairbrained mule! He would pound
onward into the night and throw his rider with the dawn.
At dusk the mule came out unexpectedly upon a turnpike and halted with
a snort. Perfectly convinced that he was planning something or other
spectacular and public, Kenny slid instantly from his back and grabbed
his knapsack. He left Leath Macha in an attitude of hairtrigger
contemplation, apparently about to begin something at once. When Kenny
looked back the dusk or the forest had engulfed him. Likely the
latter. Trained for the purpose, he decided in a blaze of wrath, Leath
Macha had returned to the negro and a diet of pickets.
Kenny, swinging down the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no
single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He
went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he
bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He
slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the
mental monotony of a cave-dweller. Then he found a railroad and rode.
Not until he reached the town postmarked upon Brian's letter did he
trouble himself with anything but the primitive needs of primitive man.
Here, however, he permitted himself the luxury of a brief but wholly
satisfactory interval of summary. The fortunes of the road had forced
him into the prodigal acquirement of a corncrib and a mule when he had
meant to please Brian by his economy. He had burned the one and
abandoned the other, wholly necessary irregularities. He had thrashed
a farmer. A fugitive from justice he had suffered hunger and thirst
and every form of bodily torment. And he had tramped through a day of
rain with sodden shoes and steaming garments.
Glory be to God! he had infused enough penance into his four days upon
the road to last an ancient martyr a lifetime. Happily he had always
had a gift for concentration.
CHAPTER V
AT THE BLAST OF A HORN
The village was old and depressing. Kenny, a conspicuous guest at the
one hotel, awoke at noon to less imaginative interest in the wood, the
farmhouse and the river than he'd known for days. He had walked into
his picture. Now with perspective gone, he felt uncertain and vaguely
alarmed. Well, any quest that led to an inn like this, he felt, must
in itself be preposterous.
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