The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills

neatly dressed. As Mrs. Watts, the Bishop's wife, had become used, as she expressed it, to his "fetchin' any old thing, frum an old hoss to an old man home, wharever he finds 'em,"--she did not express any surprise at having a new addition to the family. The outlaw looked nervous and sorrow-stricken. Several times, when some one came on him unexpectedly, the Bishop saw him feeling nervously for a Colt's revolver which had been put away. Now and then, too, he saw great tears trickling down the rough cheeks, when he thought no one was noticing him. "Now, Jack," said the Bishop after breakfast, "you jes' get on John Paul Jones an' hunt for Cap'n Tom. I know you'll not leave no stone unturned to find him. Go by the cave and see if him an' Eph ain't gone back. I'm not af'eard--I know Eph will take care of him, but we want to fin' him. After meetin' if you haven't found him I'll join in the hunt myself--for we must find Cap'n Tom, Jack, befo' the sun goes down. I'd ruther see him than any livin' man. Cap'n Tom--Cap'n Tom--him that's been as dead all these years! Fetch him home when you find him--fetch him home to me. He shall never want while I live. An', Jack, remember--don't forget yo'se'f and hold up anybody. I'll expec' you to jine the church nex' Sunday." "I ain't been in a church for fifteen years," said the other. "High time you are going, then. You've put yo' hands to the plough--turn not back an' God'll straighten out everything." Jack was silent. "I'll go by the cave fus' an' jus' look where little Jack is sleepin'. Po' little feller, he must ha' been mighty lonesome last night." It was ten o'clock and the Bishop was on his way to church. He was driving the old roan of the night before. A parody on a horse, to one who did not look closely, but to one who knows and who looks beyond the mere external form for that hidden something in both man and horse which bespeaks strength and reserve force, there was seen through the blindness and the ugliness and the sleepy, ambling, shuffling gait a clean-cut form, with deep chest and closely ribbed; with well drawn flanks, a fine, flat steel-turned bone, and a powerful muscle, above hock and forearms, that clung to the leg as the Bishop said, "like bees a'swarmin'." At his little cottage gate stood Bud Billings, the best slubber in the cotton mill. Bud never talked to any one except the Bishop; and his wife, who was the worst Xanthippe in Cottontown, declared she had lived with him six months straight and never heard him come nearer speaking than a grunt. It was also a saying of Richard Travis, that Bud had been known to break all records for silence by drawing a year's wages at the mill, never missing a minute and never speaking a word. Nor had he ever looked any one full in the eye in his life. As the Bishop drove shamblingly along down the road, deeply preoccupied in his forthcoming sermon, there came from out of a hole, situated somewhere between the grizzled fringe of hair that marked Bud's whiskers and the grizzled fringe above that marked his eyebrows, a piping, apologetic voice that sounded like the first few rasps of an old rusty saw; but to the occupant of the buggy it meant, with a drawl: "Howdy do, Bishop?" A blind horse is quick to observe and take fright at anything uncanny. He is the natural ghost-finder of the highways, and that voice was too much for the old roan. To him it sounded like something that had been resurrected. It was a ghost-voice, arising after many years. He shied, sprang forward, half wheeled and nearly upset the buggy, until brought up with a jerk by the powerful arms of his driver. The shaft-band had broken and the buggy had run upon the horse's rump, and the shafts stuck up almost at right angles over his back. The roan stood trembling with the half turned, inquisitive muzzle of the sightless horse--a paralysis of fear all over his face. But when Bud came forward and touched his face and stroked it, the fear vanished, and the old roan bobbed his tail up and down and wiggled his head reassuringly and apologetically. "Wal, I declar, Bishop," grinned Bud, "kin yo' critter fetch a caper?" The Bishop got leisurely out of his buggy, pulled down the shafts and tied up the girth before he spoke. Then he gave a puckering hitch to his underlip and deposited in the sand, with a puddling _plunk_, the half cup of tobacco juice that had closed up his mouth. He stepped back and said very sternly: "Whoa, Ben Butler!" "Why, he'un's sleep a'ready," grinned Bud. The Bishop glanced at the bowed head, cocked hind foot and listless tail: "Sof'nin' of the brain, Bud," smiled the Bishop; "they say when old folks begin to take it they jus' go to sleep while settin' up talkin'. Now, a horse, Bud," he said, striking an attitude for a discussion on his favorite topic, "a horse is like a man--he must have some meanness or he c'udn't live, an' some goodness or nobody else c'ud live. But git in, Bud, and let's go along to meetin'--'pears like it's gettin' late." This was what Bud had been listening for. This was the treat of the week for him--to ride to meetin' with the Bishop. Bud, a slubber-slave--henpecked at home, brow-beaten and cowed at the mill, timid, scared, "an' powerful slow-mouthed," as his spouse termed it, worshipped the old Bishop and had no greater pleasure in life, after his hard week's work, than "to ride to meetin' with the old man an' jes' hear him narrate." The Bishop's great, sympathetic soul went out to the poor fellow, and though he had rather spend the next two miles of Ben Butler's slow journey to church in thinking over his sermon, he never failed, as he termed it, "to pick up charity even on the roadside," and it was pretty to see how the old man would turn loose his crude histrionic talent to amuse the slubber. He knew, too, that Bud was foolish about horses, and that Ben Butler was his model! They got into the old buggy, and Ben Butler began to draw it slowly along the sandy road to the little church, two miles away up the mountain side. CHAPTER II BEN BUTLER Bud was now in a seventh heaven. He was riding behind Ben Butler, the greatest horse in the world, and talking to the Bishop, the only person who ever heard the sound of his voice, save in deprecatory and scary grunts. It was touching to see how the old man humored the simple and imposed-upon creature at his side. It was beautiful to see how, forgetting himself and his sermon, he prepared to entertain, in his quaint way, this slave to the slubbing machine. Bud looked fondly at the Bishop--then admiringly at Ben Butler. He drew a long breath of pure air, and sitting on the edge of the seat, prepared to jump if necessary; for Bud was mortally afraid of being in a runaway, and his scared eyes seemed to be looking for the soft places in the road. "Bishop," he drawled after a while, "huc-cum you name sech a hoss"--pointing to the old roan--"sech a grand hoss, for sech a man--sech a man as he was," he added humbly. "Did you ever notice Ben Butler's eyes, Bud?" asked the old man, knowingly. "Blind," said Bud sadly, shaking his head--"too bad--too bad--great--great hoss!" "Yes, but the leds, Bud--that hoss, Ben Butler there, holds a world's record--he's the only cock-eyed hoss in the world." "You don't say so--that critter!--cock-eyed?" Bud laughed and slapped his leg gleefully. "Didn't I always tell you so? World's record--great--great!" Then it broke gradually through on Bud's dull mind. He slapped his leg again. "An' him--his namesake--he was cock-eyed, too--I seed him onct at New 'Leens." "Don't you never trust a cock-eyed man, Bud. He'll flicker on you in the home-stretch. I've tried it an' it never fails. Love him, but don't trust him. The world is full of folks we oughter love, but not trust." "No--I never will," said Bud as thoughtfully as he knew how to be--"nor a cock-eyed 'oman neither. My wife's cock-eyed," he added. He was silent a moment. Then he showed the old man a scar on his forehead: "She done that last month--busted a plate on my head." "That's bad," said the Bishop consolingly--"but you ortenter aggravate her, Bud." "That's so--I ortenter--least-wise, not whilst there's any crockery in the house," said Bud sadly. "There's another thing about this hoss," went on the Bishop--"he's always spoony on mules. He ain't happy if he can't hang over the front gate spoonin' with every stray mule that comes along. There's old long-eared Lize that he's dead stuck on--if he c'u'd write he'd be composin' a sonnet to her ears, like poets do to their lady love's--callin' them Star Pointers of a Greater Hope, I reck'n, an' all that. Why, he'd ruther hold hands by moonlight with some old Maria mule than to set up by lamplight with a thoroughbred filly." "Great--great!" said Bud slapping his leg--"didn't I tell you so?" "So I named him Ben Butler when he was born. That was right after the war, an' I hated old Ben so an' loved hosses so, I thought ef I'd name my colt for old Ben maybe I'd learn to love him, in time." Bud shook his head. "That's agin nature, Bishop." "But I have, Bud--sho' as you are born I love old Ben Butler." He lowered his voice to an earnest whisper: "I ain't never told you what he done for po' Cap'n Tom." "Never heurd o' Cap'n Tom." The Bishop looked hurt. "Never mind, Bud, you wouldn't understand. But maybe you will ketch this, listen now." Bud listened intently with his head on one side. "I ain't never hated a man in my life but what God has let me live long enough to find out I was in the wrong--dead wrong. There are Jews and Yankees. I useter hate 'em worse'n sin--but now what do you reckon?" "One on 'em busted a plate on yo' head?" asked Bud. "Jesus Christ was a Jew, an' Cap'n Tom jined the Yankees." "Bud," he said cheerily after a pause, "did I ever tell you the story of this here Ben Butler here?" Bud's eyes grew bright and he slapped his leg again. "Well," said the old man, brightening up into one of his funny moods, "you know my first wife was named Kathleen--Kathleen Galloway when she was a gal, an' she was the pretties' gal in the settlement an' could go all the gaits both saddle an' harness. She was han'som' as a three-year-old an' cu'd out-dance, out-ride, out-sing an' out-flirt any other gal that ever come down the pike. When she got her Sunday harness on an' began to move, she made all the other gals look like they were nailed to the roadside. It's true, she needed a little weight in front to balance her, an' she had a lot of ginger in her make-up, but she was straight and sound, didn't wear anything but the harness an' never teched herself anywhere nor cross-fired nor hit her knees." "Good--great!" said Bud, slapping his leg. "O, she was beautiful, Bud, with that silky hair that 'ud make a thoroughbred filly's look coarse as sheep's wool, an' two mischief-lovin' eyes an' a heart that was all gold. Bud--Bud"--there was a huskiness in the old man's voice--"I know I can tell you because it will never come back to me ag'in, but I love that Kathleen now as I did then. A man may marry many times, but he can never love but once. Sometimes it's his fust wife, sometimes his secon', an' often it's the sweetheart he never got--but he loved only one of 'em the right way, an' up yander, in some other star, where spirits that are alike meet in one eternal wedlock, they'll be one there forever." "Her daddy, old man Galloway, had a thoroughbred filly that he named Kathleena for his daughter, an' she c'ud do anything that the gal left out. An' one day when she took the bit in her teeth an' run a quarter in twenty-five seconds, she sot 'em all wild an' lots of