The Choir Invisible

Perhaps before his eyes the historic vision of the road had risen: that

crowded pageant, brute and human, all whose red passions, burning rights and

burning wrongs, frenzied fightings and awful deaths had left but the

sun-scarred dust, the silence of the woods clothing itself in green. And

from this panoramic survey it may have come to him to feel the shortness of

the day of his own life, the pitifulness of its earthly contentions, and

above everything else the sadness of the necessity laid upon him to come

down to the level of the cougar and the wolf.

But as O'Bannon struck his horse and would have passed on, he sprang up

quickly enough and walked out into the middle of the road. When the horse's

head was near he quietly took hold of the reins and throwing his weight

slightly forward, brought it to a stop.

"Let go!" exclaimed O'Bannon, furious and threatening.

He did let go, and stepping backward three paces, he threw off his coat and

waistcoat and tossed them aside to the green bushes: the action was a

pathetic mark of his lifelong habit of economy in clothes: a coat must under

all circumstances be cared for. He tore off his neckcloth so that his high

shirt collar fell away from his neck, showing the purple scar of his wound;

and he girt his trousers in about his waist, as a laboring man will trim

himself for neat, quick, violent work. Then with a long stride he came round

to the side of the horse's head, laid his hand on its neck and looked

O'Bannon in the eyes: "At first I thought I'd wait till you got back to town. I wanted to catch

you on the street or, in a tavern where others could witness. I'm sorry. I'm

ashamed I ever wished any man to see me lay my hand on you.

"Since you came out to Kentucky, have I ever crossed you? Thwarted you in

any plan or purpose? Wronged you in any act? Ill-used your name? By

anything I have thought or wished or done taken from the success of your

life or made success harder for you to win?

"But you had hardly come out here before you began to attack me and you have

never stopped. Out of all this earth's prosperity you have envied me my

little share: you have tried to take away my school. With your own good name

gone, you have wished to befoul mine. With no force of character to rise in

the world, you have sought to drag me down. When I have avoided a brawl with

you, preferring to live my life in peace with every man, you have said I was

a coward, you unmanly slanderer! When I have desired to live the best life

I could, you have turned even that against me. You lied and you know you

lied--blackguard! You have laughed at the blood in my veins--the sacred

blood of my mother--"