A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of DemocracyBacheller, Irving
General
A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of Democracy
Bacheller, Irving
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Fiction
That night both of them began, as they say, to put two and two together.
While he rode on in the growing dusk the keen intellect of Samson saw a
convincing sequence of circumstances--the theft of the mail sack, the
false account of Harry's death, the failure of his letters to reach their
destination, and the fact that Bim had accepted money from Davis in time
of need. A strong suspicion of foul play grew upon him and he began to
consider what he could do in the matter.
Having forded a creek he caught the glow of a light in the darkness a
little way up the road. It was the lighted window of a cabin, before
whose door he stopped his horse and hallooed.
"I am a belated and hungry traveler on my way to Chicago," he said to the
man who presently greeted him from the open doorway.
"Have you come through Honey Creek settlement?" the latter asked.
"Left there about an hour ago."
"Sorry, mister, but I can't let you come into the house. If you'll move
off a few feet I'll lay some grub on the choppin' block an' up the road
about a half-mile you'll find a barn with some hay in it where you and
your horse can spend the night under cover."
Samson moved away and soon the man brought a package of food and laid it
on the block and ran back to the door.
"I'll lay a piece of silver on the block," Samson called.
"Not a darned cent," the man answered. "I hate like p'ison to turn a
feller away in the night, but we're awful skeered here with children in
the house. Good-by. You can't miss the barn. It's close ag'in' the road."
Samson ate his luncheon in the darkness, as he rode, and presently came
upon the barn and unsaddled and hitched and fed his horse in one end
of it--the beast having drunk his fill at the creek they had lately
forded--and lay down to rest, for the night, with the saddle blanket
beneath him and his coat for a cover. A wind from the north began to wail
and whistle through the cracks in the barn and over its roof bringing
cold weather. Samson's feet and legs had been wet in the crossing so that
he found it difficult to keep warm. He crept to the side of his horse,
which had lain down, and found a degree of comfort in the heat of the
animal. But it was a bad night, at best, with only a moment, now and
then, of a sort of one-eyed sleep in it.
"I've had many a long, hard night but this is the worst of them," Samson
thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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