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Updated: June 28, 2025
"I don't, myself, nuss grudges in times of distress, Cap Sproul," shouted Todd. "You kicked me. I know that. But you was in the wrong, and you got the wu'st of it. Proverdunce has allus settled my grudges for me in jest that way. I forgive and pass on, but Proverdunce don't. Take that fence-rail. It sha'n't ever be said by man that Marengo Todd nussed a grudge."
She looked at him appealingly for a moment, then tiptoed over the fragments of the gate, and hurried away through the bridge. "You ain't no iron-clad, Kun'l Ward," muttered Sproul. "I'll hold ye next time." He set to work on the river-bank that afternoon, cutting saplings, trusting to the squall of the faithful parrots to signal the approach of passers.
The first thing Cap'n Sproul did, as he squatted down, was to pull out his wallet and inspect the precious check. "It's pretty wet," he remarked, "but the ink ain't run any. A little dryin' out is all it needs."
Lysander Sproul, driving his dun-colored mules leisurely toward the mesa, looked back now and then at the winery which crowned its low hill like a bit of fortification. "If I'd really had any idee o' gettin' ahead o' him," he reflected, "or circumventin' him an inch, I reckon I'd been more civil; it's no more 'n fair to be civil to a man when you're gettin' the best of 'im; but I hain't.
They made a detour through the Sproul orchard to avoid possible observation by Louada Murilla, the Cap'n's wife, and by so doing showed themselves plainly to any one who might be looking that way from the widow's premises. This was a part of the showman's plan. He hoped to attract Reeves's attention. He did.
Murray, the Smyrna blacksmith, growled back something about not seeing what good the rope did, anyway. Cap'n Sproul turned his back on the dim gleam of open sea framed by distant headlands. "I'm ashamed to look the Atlantic Ocean in the face, with that bunch of barn-yarders aboard," he complained. "Shipped crew," went on Hiram, who had not paused in his reading.
The plumply genial countenance of Governor Sproul next to him was an odd contrast to that dry, hard face. The bell in the tower tolled eleven times. He stood up for the photographers. Walter Crail, appearing from somewhere, sprang up on the parapet facing the general. "Look this way!" he shouted as the general turned toward some movie men.
Cap'n Sproul had touched the tenderest spot in T.W. Brackett's nature by that savage yelp at his vocal efforts. But the chief of the Ancients had been wounded as cruelly in his own pride. He stood up and swung a bucket over the crouching peddler. "Drive on, you lubber," he howled, "or I'll peg you down through that seat like I'd drive a tack. Drive on!" Brackett ducked his head and drove.
Sproul, relaxing her spine under Melissa's sympathy; "but it ain't altogether the heat. I don't like Lysander bein' mixed up with murderers and dangerous characters; not but what he's able to pertect himself, havin' been through the war, but it seems as if the harmlessest person wuzn't safe when folks go 'round shootin' right an' left without no provocation whatever.
An instant later he had the reins, swung the frightened horse across the gutter and around into the road, and continued his flight in the direction of the railroad-station. The constables, leading the pursuing voters by a few lengths, found Colonel Ward sitting up in the ditch and gaping in utter amazement and dire wrath at the turn of the road where Cap'n Sproul had swept out of sight.
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