Once to Every Man. Evans Larry

about Jeddy, s’far as I can recollect. Just mischievous–mischievous and up and coming all the time. But there were folks,” Judge Maynard’s voice became heavy with righteous accusation–“it’s always that way, you understand–and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy’s own village, who used to call him a bad egg. But I–I knew better! Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits–that’s what I always thought. And I said it, too–many’s the time I said–”

      The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little. He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard’s round, red face a little more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon Denny Bolton’s features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from his notebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension.

      “–That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?” he interrupted knowingly.

      The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth.

      “Well, that’s just about it–that’s just about as near as words could come to it,” he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, too, and pounded its knee as one man.

      The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, even while he was speaking.

      “And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even when he was a little shaver?” he suggested tentatively. “But then I don’t suppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world’s champion, right here at home, in the making, did you?”

      The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgot himself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyes straining upon the Judge’s face.

      Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word.

      “We-e-ll, no,” he admitted. “I don’t believe I can say that I downright believed that he’d make a world’s champion. Don’t believe’s I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn’t anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than once that he’d make the best of ’em hustle–ye-e-s, sir, the very best of ’em, some day!”

      The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if to challenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one to speak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But no contradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge’s broad back, quavered breathlessly.

      “That’s jest it–that’s jest as it was–right to a hair. It was system done it–system right from the very beginning. And many’s the time the Judge says to me–says he–”

      Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one hand majestically and the little white-haired old man’s eager corroboration died on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lips working wordlessly.

      “As I was saying,” the Judge then proceeded ponderously, “I recognized he had what one could call–er–”

      “Class?” the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile.

      “Well, yes,” the other continued, “or, as I was about to call it, talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, of course, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have been the one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as a little shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn’t tackle–absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference to him–not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight–!”

      Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere words were too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as he turned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that was staring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For one disconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breath before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he threw up one pudgy hand.

      “There’s one of ’em right now,” he cried. “There’s Young Denny Bolton, who went to school with him, right here in this town. Ask him if Jed Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him,” he leered around the room, an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words. Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. “But maybe he won’t tell–maybe he’s still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it yet. Eh, Denny–just a little mite too sensitive?”

      Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new quality in the Judge’s chuckling statement–a certain hearty admission of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry’s eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the direction of the Judge’s outstretched finger. He was still grinning expansively–and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared.

      Little by little Young Denny’s body straightened until the slight shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze never wavered from the Judge’s face his eyes narrowed and his lips grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone, too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very still.

      It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke instead in a low-toned directness.

      “So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?” he asked gravely. “Knew him when he was a kid?”

      Slowly Denny Bolton’s eyes traveled from the Judge’s face. His lips opened with equal deliberation.

      “I reckon I knew him–pretty well,” he admitted.

      The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded thoughtfully.

      “Er–had a few set-to’s with him, yourself, now and then?”

      He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a heavy silence before Young Denny replied.

      Then, “Maybe,” he said, noncommittally. “Maybe I did.”

      The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard wheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to pounding his knee again in the excess of his appreciation.

      “Maybe,” he chortled, “maybe he did! Well–I–reckon!”

      And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in which all but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, saw that there was a white circle about the boy’s tight mouth as Young Denny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door and passed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was the faintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned back to the big notebook open on his knees–a vaguely unpleasant smile that was not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face.

      For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turned upward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then he turned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak house on the hill–he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again in the deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see.

      It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry had failed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that he recalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had been ploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automatic fashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn.