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"Evelina," said Polk, as he stood up suddenly in front of me, "that old Mossback is the finest man in this commonwealth, but from his situation nobody can extract him, unless it is a woman with the wiliness of the devil himself. Poison the whole bunch and I'll back you. But we'll have to plot it later on.
He rolled out one of his jolly chuckles. "Lumber barons!" he chortled. "Oh, it's easy enough! Any mossback can make money lumbering! Here's your stumpage at a dollar a thousand, and there's your lumber at twenty! Simplest thing in the world. Just the same there are more failures in the lumber business than in any other I know anything about. Why is it?"
The man raised his hand and the machinery was suddenly stilled. "So I perceive," said he. "Your boom-piles are drove too far out in the stream." "I don't know about that," objected the mossback. "I do," insisted Larsen. "Nobody on earth could keep from jamming, the way you got things fixed." "That's none of my business," said the man steadily.
I feel as a man feels who has just escaped the gallows. I'm going to the mountains, and I don't intend to open a business letter or think once of this hot hole in a wall for a month. I'm going to fish and hunt and lie in the shade and swap yarns with mossback moonshiners. I've just been thinking of it, and it's like a soothing dream of peace and quiet.
The quills slanted back from all around his diminutive face, and even from between his eyes short at first, but growing longer toward his shoulders and back. Long whitish bristles were mingled with them, and the mossback could not help thinking of a little old, old man, with hair that was grizzly-gray, and a face that was half-stupid and half-sad and wistful.
I been talkin' to old wooden head here about the railroad comin' in." Tom's eyes twinkled. His friend guessed that he was trying to get a rise out of the old-timer. "He's sure some mossback. I been tellin' him the railroad's comin' through here an' Meeker right soon, but he can't see it. I reckon the toot of an engine would scare him 'most to death."
"Your Cousin James's home is the place for you, Evelina, and until he explained to me how you felt last night I was deeply hurt that you hadn't come straight, with Sallie, to me and to him," said Cousin Martha, in as severe a voice as was possible for such a placid individual to produce. Cousin Martha is completely lovely, and the Mossback gets his beauty from her.
But, just as suddenly, a vision came into my mind of the long table across the road at Widegables, with the Mossback seated at one end with only two or three of his charges stretched along the empty sides to keep him company. I wanted him to be here with us! I wanted him badly, and I went to get him. I excused myself suddenly, telling them all just why.
"Isn't that old mossback a treat for the sight of gods and men?" asked Polk with a laugh as we all stood watching the old gray coat-tails flapping in the warm breeze that was rollicking across the valley.
Is there coming a time when the "man with the hoe" will be the true picture of the American farmer, with a low standard of living, without ideals, without a chance for progress? We must eliminate the mossback. It is to be done largely by education and by co-operation. There must be a campaign for rural progress.
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