The Hound-Tuner of Callaway 9780231894456

Table of contents :
Note of Acknowledgment
Preface
Contents
The Hound-Tuner of Callaway
Mollie Shamary
The Ghost of the White Cow
How I Burned for Héloïse
Tennessee
Mocking Bird
The Trees of Sans-Souci
The Mormon Road
The Barking Man
The Canadian Forest
Sawbuttee
Jessie’s Friend
The Deep Sleeper
Sadie
The Power of Scripture
Arkansas
Woodpeckers
Sport for White Men
The Cheyenne Lodge
Two Letters
The Bucking Palfrey
Thou Canst Not Say “I Did It”
On the Road to the Big Blue
The Disappearing Hen’s Nest
Two Gentlemen from Indiany
The Fat Women of Boone
The Snakes of Boone
The Fly-Chaser to the Harris House

Citation preview

THE HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

T H E H O U N D - T U N E R OF C A L L A W A Y

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X THE HOUND-TUNER OF C A L L A W A Y R A Y M O N D WEEKS

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NEW

9

YORK

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS 1927 3

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COPYRIGHT 1 9 2 7 BT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Set up and electrotyped Published Aprit 192?

MISTED IN THE L'SITED STATKS 0 » AKXKICA

NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks are due to the Editors of The Improvement Era, The Midland, Our Own, and The Southwest Review for permission to reprint many of these stories, also to several dear friends, whose advice and guidance have been of great value in the preparation of this volume, but whose modesty will not allow their names to appear. Lastly, credit should be given the talented Anne Bigot for the idea utilized in Two Letters.

PREFACE

unpretentious stories lay no claim to please popular taste. They are merely remembered happenings and imaginings of the time of the later pioneers in the Missouri Valley. They contain no duels to the death, no stabbings, no mortal firing of "guns" (that is, revolvers), no adventures of cowpunchers, no broncos, no wild-cats, lions, typhoons or volcanos; nothing about the Klondike, the Solomon Islands or Bohemia. Nor is there anything here about tramps, freight-trains, irrigation engineers, steam-riveters or other one-hundred per cent Americans. If there are heroes in these pages, few of them are smooth-shaven, none has tiger-tawny hair, and all who are six feet or more in height make up for it by proportional thinness. As for wandering millionaires and fashionable gentlemen with their parasitic consorts at summer hotels, they are entirely absent. Evidently there is no probability that this book will be much read. The book should not, however, be denied the humble virtues of its limitations. No one is obliged to read it. Let him who prefers cheap stories that are cheap photographs of cheap things pass by these pages—they are not for him. Let him who likes the vii THESE

PREFACE

smart, the blase, the sordid, the cynical, pass them. Let him who cares for nothing except the noise, dirt and impertinence of cities pass them. Let him who finds it impossible to love anything passionately pass them. But if there are any readers left who admit that they once ran barefoot; who remember, even dimly, what dew is and the bloom on fresh petals; who have still some faint belief in simplicity and the loveableness of quaintness; who are not ashamed of sympathetic tears; who do not consider innocence and poverty to be necessarily ridiculous; who think now and then of old friends and old places, let them sometimes open the covers of this book.

viii

CONTENTS THE

HOUND-TUNER

MOLLIE THE

1

SHAMARY

GHOST OF T H E

HOW

OF CALLAWAY

I BURNED

3° WHITE

COW

55

FOR H E L O I S E

63

TENNESSEE MOCKING

73 BIRD

T H E T R E E S O F SANS-SOUCI

93

THE

MORMON

ROAD

97

THE

BARKING

MAN

THE

CANADIAN

1 0

3

1 0

9

SAWBUTTEE

1

H

JESSIE'S

U

9

FOREST

FRIEND

T H E DEEP

SLEEPER

1 2 2

SADIE

1 2

6

T H E P O W E R OF S C R I P T U R E

1 2

8

ARKANSAS

*39

WOODPECKERS SPORT F O R THE

WHITE

CHEYENNE

MEN

LODGE

ix

J

75

J

79

CONTENTS TWO L E T T E R S

183

T H E B U C K I N G PALFREY

185

T H O U CANST NOT SAY " i

DID I T *

208

ON T H E ROAD TO T H E BIG B L U E

211

T H E DISAPPEARING H E N ' S N E S T

217

TWO G E N T L E M E N

236

FROM INDIANY

T H E FAT WOMEN OF BOONE

241

T H E S N A K E S OF BOONE

257

T H E FLY-CHASER TO T H E HARRIS HOUSE

266

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THE HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

the war between the States, the inhabitants of Missouri used to speak of Callaway County, and the unregenerate still do so. The minority, however, to which I am for once proud to belong, call the county the Kingdom of Callaway. Here is the origin of this name: Missouri seceded from the Union at the beginning of the war. Later, the Yankees, by a succession of unscrupulous accidents such as befall the ungodly, obtained possession of Saint Louis and Jefferson City, called together an illegal legislature, and had it vote for the return of the State to the Union. Among the counties, Callaway alone possessed the courage which goes with virtue, refused to return to the Union and seceded from Missouri. Thus, you see, the Kingdom of Callaway came into existence. To look at, the Kingdom of Callaway does not amount to much. It is composed of none-too fertile hills, with laps of valleys in between. There are no mines, no factories, few industries and little agriculture, although mendacious travelers have averred the contrary. Boone, Audrain and the other fat, lazy counties lying at the feet of the Kingdom 1 BEFORE

THE

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OF C A L L A W A Y

speak of it with contempt. None the less, its people are the most heroic on the globe. M a n does not live by bread alone. A b o u t thirty years ago, it was my privilege to ride twice across the K i n g d o m of Callaway, and to talk with its hospitable inhabitants. T h e y are few in number, and, like all noble souls, live much amongst the glories of the past. T h e y are set in their ways, as befits a proud, unfortunate race, and they refuse to "smile as the wind sits." Their tongue is not voluble, except when they speak of the degenerate populations which surround the Kingdom. A t such times, they draw from the recesses of the past a vocabulary which leaves nothing to the imagination, and hurl fragments of this vocabulary upon the crapulous counties crouching at their feet. In calmer moments they will tell you that, if there is any good blood in these counties, it strayed, 01 was stolen, from Callaway, and heaven knows that in the matter of good blood C a l l a w a y leads the world, so much so that every family in the Kingdom descends from the ancient kings of Scotland, England, Ireland, W a l e s , or France, and some families descend from several of them at once. T h e traveler is touched to see coagulated in a single realm the descendants of so many noble lines. T u r n i n g from History, and examining the inhabitants of the Kingdom as they now are, we are struck by their many creditable superstitions. But it would take too long even to begin to name these. T u r n i n g

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now from their superstitions to something else, we are struck by the glorious traditions of this people. They believe, for example, that their ancestors discovered fire and music; that they were the first to shoe horses and mules in the modern manner, by nailing the horseshoe to the hoof ; that they invented lightning, gunpowder and steam; and that Robert Fulton was a native of Callaway—in fact, they named their capital Fulton in his honor. As for music, we may readily accept the local tradition. The men, women and children of the Kingdom of Callaway possess voices which carry farther than any other voices in the world. While there are no pianos or guitars or other degrading instruments, one notes the survival of the ancient harp, of which the piano and the guitar are degenerate descendants, and one finds quantities of dulcimores and old fiddles and twanging jew's-harps and mournful hunting horns, such as exist nowhere else. Finally—and this all travelers admit—the voices of the mules are more musical here than elsewhere, and as for the hounds, well! until you have heard the baying of a pack over the hills and little valleys of Callaway of a moonlight night, you have heard nothing! There is none of the hoarse, ridiculous, broken bellowing, none of the inconsequential, stupid yelping which you hear in less favored countries, but a veritable harmony, so strange, so sweet, so primitive, that every fibre in you quivers and shivers, and tears start to your eyes ! T h e improvement in the hounds of Callaway

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probably began about a century ago, but it was destined to receive its great impetus from the genius of one man, who, previous to the War between the States, was known as Uncle Basil. He was born about 1806. It is said that, as a baby, he was given a hound for a pillow, and it is certain that he grew up with dogs as his constant companions. Between him and them—to the honor of both—existed perfect sympathy. A strange dog would run to him as a frightened child to its mama. He spoke their language. He understood their traditions, superstitions, prejudices, resentments, hatreds, longings, ambitions. Consider what it means to be a lost dog! How his body trembles! how his heart aches! how sore his paws are! how covered he is with mud and dust! what hunger! what loneliness! what homesickness! Imagine that you are that lost dog, then think of meeting a gentle, strong spirit, at whose word and touch your lostness, your ugliness, your despair drop from you in the twinkling of an eye. Y o u are in the arms of a tender and sure friend, who is at the same time a magical physician. Such were the gifts of Uncle Basil. He made a great discovery about 1848, the year near which his daughter and only child was born. Long before this, he had become locally famous as a trainer of hounds. A few distinguished men before him in the history of the world had, it is true, advanced the education of these noble animals, but he surpassed them. His love for dogs was greater; he

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wished them perfect. He had found that by his voice alone—he had a voice of wonderful timbre— by a strange, crooning chant, he could get dogs to do almost anything. Recognizing soon the vastness of the field of dog study, he decided to limit his labors to hounds. After a while, he became so skilful that he could correct in the baying of an ordinary hound the "break" which is so distressing. And then—then he invented the tuning-fork! I do not mean that he was the first to invent this instrument, but that he reinvented it—invented it all over again, with the charm of a newly created marvel in a newly created country. And what use he made of it! In Asia and Europe, the tuning-fork has never realized its possibilities. It was a disappointment from the start. It never became more than a toy. In the Kingdom of Callaway, it became the national emblem. Uncle Basil manufactured the forks with his own hands, and called them hound-forks. He graduated them, until he could express in notes of ravishment all the deep emotions of the canine heart. With a set of the hound-forks in his saddle-bags, he was now seen journeying about Callaway, training hounds. Success and glory came, immense, dazzling, as you would have felt, if you could have heard one of his well-trained packs baying in the distance of a moonlight night, or if you could have seen him sitting on his horse under a tree, listening to the hounds, and from time to time humming in a low, profound voice his favorite hymn, with its magnificent assonance:

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"On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you!" His reputation spread, and he refused many offers to descend to the low counties and train hounds. The rich barbarians who lived in those counties were, and have remained, crazy about fox hunting, without ever knowing the first elements of the art. One result of Uncle Basil's refusal to train outside the limits of Callaway was to make it the hound centre of the United States, and indeed of the world. Previously, the only exports of Callaway were limited quantities of mules, wild honey and whiskey. Now orders for hounds poured in more rapidly than they could be filled. The Callaway hound had become famous. When the War between the States broke out, Uncle Basil had already commenced what promised to be famous experiments with mule-forks. Except for the war, he would have made the universe his debtor by a new application of his great invention. The beginning of the war found him a man of about fifty-five, with a long gray beard. H e had recently become a widower. Despite his age, he shouldered his rifle and rode away to do his duty, leaving his thirteen-year-old daughter with his sister. When the rump legislature, got together by the Yankees, voted Missouri back into the Union, he

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made a brief appearance in his native county, and, to the plaudits of the entire population, led the revolution which established the Kingdom of Callaway. He was chosen King against his will. He issued a royal edict that all dogs should be chained up for twenty-four hours (otherwise they would have followed him), kissed his daughter and his sister good-by, and hastened to rejoin his command in the Confederate Army. Much as he hated bloodshed, he fought like a demon, became a colonel, wept like an infant at the fall of the Confederacy, and at last returned home on foot, his uniform in rags and on his breast an immense beard which was no longer gray. He met a more personal grief on his arrival in the Kingdom. He found the population in tears over the flight of his daughter Peggy. That, by the way, is a name which ought to be proscribed. Have you ever known a girl by that name with whom you did not fall in love? Society owes men something! Peggy, then, had run away with a graceless fellow named Sam Black, who was not even born in Callaway! Girls are such fools! Sam had joined the Confederate Army at the eleventh hour, just in time to get a uniform and a briar scratch, had fled to the confines of the Kingdom as to a neutral Power when the Confederacy fell, had seen Peggy—and her beauty did the rest. A word about Peggy. You may have dreamed in favored moments of a beautiful woman, you may possibly have seen one, 7

T H E HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

but you have never seen one her equal. Nor have you ever heard, in dreams or out of dreams, a voice like hers—a low, vibrant voice, with an unconscious promise of ineffable things. Her beauty was that of the dark-eyed, fair-skinned type which has wrought most of the havoc in history. Add to this that, at seventeen, her form had the soft rotundity of a woman. Such was Peggy, as described to me by the inhabitants of the Kingdom. You can imagine how the old man loved her, how shocked he was at her flight. After a few days devoted to affairs of state, the King set out on a sublime quest—the search for Peggy. He took from a cache sufficient gold and silver to fill a money-belt, had well shod a young, powerful gray horse, named Robert in honor of Gen. Lee, tossed into the saddle-bags a change of linen and his best set of hound-forks, also his hunting horn, and rode softly away in the dead middle of a moonless night, accompanied by a hound escort of eight noble beasts. The inhabitants knew of the King's departure. They chained up the dogs, in order that the Kingdom might not be depopulated. These intelligent animals also knew what was happening, and, whether chained in the open air or in cellars, kitchens or barns, they heard Robert's step in the night and the soft-padded paws of the eight fortunate hounds, and threw themselves, howling and whining, as far as their fetters would allow. And so it went from ham-

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T H E HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

let to hamlet, from cabin to cabin—a progressive rattling of chains and howling of dogs, until long after the old man and his silent escort had left behind them in the darkness the Kingdom of Callaway. The King unhesitatingly rode toward the west, for he knew that human thistle-down blows in that direction; he felt that Peggy and her abductor were somewhere between the Kingdom and the Kansas frontier. But what an immense territory to traverse! Following the road when there was one, when not, riding through primeval forests and dense thickets, going round marshes, fording muddy streams, he made his way westward, simulating, especially at night, a fox hunt, for he felt sure that if Peggy could hear the baying of trained hounds from back home and the music made by her daddy, the hound-tuner, she would come to him. Many times the dwellers in an isolated log cabin heard in the darkness the baying of what seemed a pack of celestial hounds, the deep "toom! toom!" of a horn, and a strangely modulated humming: "ding, ding, ding; ting, ting, ting; ling, ling, ling." Then, if they were near enough, they heard the voice, as it were of an old man calling, "Peggy! Peggy!" In the daytime, he stopped to inquire at every house, tavern and village. The inhabitants looked with astonishment and sympathy at this old man in a torn Confederate uniform, with gray hair that reached his shoulders and a great white beard, with

9

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sad, sleepless eyes, and with an escort of mudspattered hounds. A t first, he always inquired if they had seen his daughter, a very pretty girl, who was eloping with a young man, but later, when he had lost nearly all his hounds, he no longer spoke of her as his daughter, but as that of a sick friend. Y o u see, one's social position could be told by the number of dogs which accompanied one. W h e n he had only two or three hounds left, and when his uniform was only a flutter of rags, he became ashamed to say that he was the father of the beautiful girl he sought. Throughout this epic search, the K i n g never abandoned a hound to die in the woods. If the animal f e l l ill, or broke or injured a leg, he lifted him carefully to the saddle, and carried him until he could leave him in safety at a cabin. H e usually camped part of the night in the forest, near a spring or brook. H e kept his saddle-bags stocked with ham, bacon and bread, which he shared generously with his escort. There was always grass for the horse. W h e n he passed the night at a house, his money was refused, for such was the hospitality of the time. It was about a month after he set out that he obtained his first news of the fugitives. T h e y were, he learned, on foot, but occasionally got a " l i f t " from town to town or house to house. T h e y had a long start of him, but he did not give way to discouragement. Sometimes a fortnight passed with no news, then a woman at a cabin would say: 10

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" W y ! yase, they wuz hyah. They stopped the night with us." "Did they say where they were going?" "No, suh." "Which way did they go from here?" "Right on west, suh." Finally, one Sunday morning, a man told him that he had seen them a week before, and that they had asked how far it was to Bluffton, as the oldtimers used to call the county seat of Ray County. H e rode straight to Bluffton, seven miles distant, and entered the little town, followed by two hounds, who, to say the least, had lost their beauty. It was the hour for church, and the pitiful looking old man was seen by nearly all the inhabitants. At the main hotel, they refused him admission, but he was received at a less reputable one, when he planked down a gold piece. H e took as good a room as the house possessed, paid two darkey boys for currying and rubbing down his horse and washing and cleaning the hounds, and tidied himself up a bit. The next morning he walked about the little town, inquiring after the fugitive pair. Many remembered seeing them only a few days before, but no one knew where they had gone. H a d they remained on the north bank of the Missouri, or had they crossed to the southern bank? Or had they perhaps taken a boat for what the King still called Westport Landing, a name which had been changed to Kansas City? No one could tell. H e learned that 11

T H E HOUND-TUNER

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a boat which had recently gone u p the river would be due at Bluffton on the return trip in three days. H e devoted this interval to a search of the country round the little town. N o news whatever of Peggy! When the steamer tied up at the wharf on its return trip, he was the first to leap aboard. Yes, the captain remembered the beautiful girl and the young man. They had taken passage with him to Kansas City, where they had debarked. A few days later, the old man, his precious Robert and his brace of remaining hounds debarked in turn on the flat rock which formed the landing at Kansas City. The teeming, jostling levee received them with smiles of amusement, but the King merely swept with keen eyes the faces before him, made brief inquiries at all the warehouses, stood a moment looking at the immense clay bluffs on whose top and beyond lay the young town, then rode resolutely up the steep, narrow street cut through the bluffs. H e passed a day in visiting the stores, hotels and saloons on the Market Square, Grand Avenue and Main Street, and another day in the remainder of the town. N o one could give him any news. The fugitives must have found on the levee or at the Market Square a trader or farmer just starting for Westport or the interior. It was now late August—three months since he had started on his sublime quest. H e was ill and felt very old, hardly able to sit a horse, but he set out resolutely to search the great, fertile region which extends from the river on the north to the prairies 12

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on the south, and f r o m Independence on the east to the Kansas line on the west. H e resolved to cover this territory systematically, beginning at Independence and working toward Westport and the K a n s a s line. Some days he could hardly drag, but he did his work well, though slowly. H e inquired at every cabin, house, store, or tavern, and of every person whom he met on those wild roads. D a y a f t e r day ended in discomfiture, y e t he searched on in desperation, for he knew that he was at the jumping-off point: if the fugitives were not in the territory he was examining, it w o u l d mean that they had joined one of the caravans which started from Independence and W e s t p o r t to cross the Great Desert. W h e n he saw a caravan, he thought that P e g g y was perhaps in one of the covered wagons. H e questioned the drivers, and peered into as many wagons as possible. Some person was base enough to steal one of the old man's t w o remaining hounds. Undiscouraged, he continued his search with every ounce of failing strength. T h e conclusion of the King's great search was related to me by Joe H o l l o w a y , a middle-aged black man, who had been a slave of M r . James H o l l o w a y 1 1 M r . J a m e s A l l e n H o l l o w a y c a m e f r o m Estill Co., K e n t u c k y , a n d b o u g h t a tract of land l y i n g south of w h a t is now 27th St. a n d w e s t of P r o s p e c t A v e n u e , K a n s a s City. In 1835 he erected a c o m f o r t a b l e t w o - s t o r y house, w h i c h w o u l d still be standing, w e r e it not f o r the i n d i f f e r e n c e and c u p i d i t y of subsequent o w n e r s . T h e house w a s p o w e r f u l l y built of logs, w h i c h w e r e l a t e r c l a p b o a r d e d . It stood j u s t n o r t h of w h a t is n o w 29th St., about f o r t y - f i v e y a r d s east o f B r o o k l y n Avenue, and f r o n t e d south. As f o r the f a m o u s Mormon

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of Jackson County. W h e n a boy, I never missed an opportunity to talk with him, as with all those who could tell of what we already called the old time. And f e w could entertain me so well as honest Joe, who knew something of the Indians, the French and the Mormons, and the great caravans that used to start from Westport for the mountains beyond the Desert, and who knew all that was to be known of the early families of our region. Then, too, it was a pleasure just to hear him talk. H i s dialect walked upright, unaided and unashamed. T o attempt to represent his pronunciation by means of the alphabet is almost a crime, for the result will be nearly as shocking as would a transcription of your dialect or mine. None the less, I am going to try, and if there is one of you who possesses from childhood a knowledge of the dear old dialect, and who has besides a profound, honest voice and a great, generous heart, let him read aloud what Joe told me one day when I found him seated by the Mormon Spring.

S p r i n g , it w a s a f e w f e e t south of 29th St. and p e r h a p s s e v e n t y five f e e t w e s t of B r o o k l y n A v e n u e . T h e S p r i n g w a s about six f e e t in d i a m e t e r , a n d its w a t e r s boiled u p so v i o l e n t l y that w h e n w e b o y s thrust a f e n c e rail into them, they t h r e w it back. T h e M o r m o n s w e r e said to h a v e used this b e a u t i f u l s p r i n g to b a p t i z e their conv e r t s . T h e c h a r m i n g v a l e through w h i c h its w a t e r s ant) those of o t h e r c l e a r s p r i n g s flowed w a s b o u g h t by K a n s a s C i t y , w h o s e t y p i c a l a l d e r m e n c a l l e d it S p r i n g V a l l e y P a r k , a n a m e borne b y 167 other p a r k s in the United States. It should h a v e been called M o r m o n P a r k . A s i m i l a r crime c h a n g e d C u s e n b e r r y S p r i n g s into F a i r m o u n t P a r k , a n a m e f o u n d in m o r e t h a n 1300 other p l a c e in this country.

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After a few moments' conversation about indiferent things, Joe said to me: "Did you heah the mockin' buhd singin' las' night in the moonlight? H i t ' s mos' onusual, an' made me think of anothah night in August a long time ago— hit must o' ben twelve aw fohteen yeahz ago, jest a f t a h the close o' the waw. "Ole Massah James Holloway, who built the Holloway house, 'd been injoyin' poh health faw a numbah of yeahz, an' wuzn't able to sleep much o' nights. H e liked 'speschully to set out in the yahd of a moonlight night in summah, an' he wuz a-settin' thah the night I'm speakin' of. H i t must o' ben well pas' midnight, when he heahd the bayin' of a houn' an' the toom! toom! of a hawn off yonnah in his woods. H e call to Mistah Benjie, his son: 'Benjie, come down heah quick an' go with me!', but Mistah Benjie, he fas' 'sleep, so Massah J i m get up an' hurry off alone, right u p thet-a-way, beyont the family burin' groun' thet you knows. He wuzn't afeahd o' nuthin,' Mass' Jim, an' I seen him do wuhs things n ' thet on the blackes' night the Lawd evah sent. " W a l ! he hurry, he hurry, tell he stop undah a young sycamoh to wait faw the hunt to pass, an' befoh he could see hit comin' he heahd a hummin' an' a buzzin', the stranges' soun' thet mawtal evah heahd. Any othah man 'cep' Massah J i m 'd o' tuhned an' run. An' then he seen come into sight a big gray hoss an' on his back a man with a great white beahd, an' he held in front of him a bright 15

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metal fawk, thet he struck evry time hit wuz goin' to stop hummin'. Mass' Jim step out into the moonlight, an' the strangeah rein in his hoss. They wuz two ole men face to face. " 'Good evnin',' says Mass' Jim. " 'Good evnin',' says the strangeah. " 'Thet's a queah musical enstrument you have thah,' says Mass' Jim. 'What is hit, if I may enquiah?' " 'Hit's a houn'-fawk,' says the strangeah, an' he show two othas hangin' frum the pommel o' the saddle by the side of a big hawn. " 'I nevah seen such a enstrument,' says Mass' Jim. 'I reckon you ain't frum these pahts?' "A shadah seem to pass ovah the strangeah's feachuhs befoh he ansuhd: " 'Nosuh, I'm frum the Kingdom o' Callaway. Back home they call me Uncle Basil, the houn'tunah.' " 'You mus' have wondahful foxes in the Kingdom o' Callaway, if you've chased one clean heah,' says Mass' Jim. " 'Yessuh,' says the ole man, 'I've followed one frum Callaway heah.' He lean on the pommel o' his saddle, an' seem a thousan' miles away in his thoughts, an' on the othah side of his hoss, a little in front, set a houn'-dog with his tongue out, an' the moonlight slipt down sofly an' fell round 'em. Mass' Jim didn' speak faw some time. He seen thet the ole man woh a Confedrit unifohm which wuz

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mosly rags. Mass' J i m ' d lost a boy, his oldes', in the Confedracy. He pitied the ole man, who seemed powahful weak, an' he stept fohwahds an' laid his han' on his ahm right kinely. " 'Come an' be my gues' to-night,' he says. 'I live right ovah yonnah. I'll call a niggah woman an' one o' my men, an' we'll have some suppah, an' I've got some mighty good tobaccy!' " 'You'z very kine,' says the strangeah, 'but I've wuhk to do.' " 'I ain't got nothin' to do faw a month,' says Mass' Jim, 'I'll hep you ! I know evrybody in this section an' evry foot o' country.' "Thet seem to decide the ole man, an' they come ovah to the house, an' Mass' Jim come to the quawtahs an' wake me an' my wife. The ole man went with me to the bahn, so 'z to be shoh thet his hoss wuz well kyahd faw, an' his dog nevah lef him. By the time him an' me an' Jiminy, what wuz the name o' the houn'-dog, come back to the house, suppah wuz neahly ready. Aftah suppah, the ole man an' Mass' Jim set out in front o' the house an' smoked their pipes, an' I sets by 'em on the groun' to listen to their conversation. "The ole man tell how he envent the houn'-fawks an' make heaps o' money trainin' houn's to bahk hahmoniously, like music, an' to be genrally polite. Then come the waw, an' when hit wuz ovah, he retuhned to the Kingdom o' Callaway, an' if Peggy, the daughtah of the King, hadn' jes' runned away 17

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with a young fellah named Sam White, as I remembah. So to please the King, he staht out to fine huh. The King think thet she won' be able to resis' retuhnin' if she heah the houn's an' the houn'-fawks like huh'd always heahd them back home, an' it she see Uncle Basil thet she'd knowd all huh life. So the King send Uncle Basil away with eight aw ten houn's, the best in the Kingdom, an' with plenty o' money, an' Uncle Basil take along his houn'fawks an' his hawn, what wuz also well known to the King's daughtah. Uncle Basil ride an' ride an' seek an' seek. H i t mus' be a thousan' miles f r u m heah to the Kingdom o' Callaway, an' he covahs all thet distance an' loses all his houn's 'cep' Jiminy. "Massah Jim wuzn't no fool. H e didn' say much while the ole man wuz a-tellin' his story, but he jes' set a-lookin' at him. The nex' day he tole us heah at home thet ez he listen to the ole man settin' thah in the moonlight, hit come ovah him suddently thet the ole man hissef wuz the King o' Callaway, an' so he wuz! "Frum that minit, Massah Jim wuz 'tuhmined to hep fine the King's daughtah, no mattah how much trouble hit might give him. They set thah talkin' faw good two hours, an' then they went to bed, but I don' think Mass' Jim slep' much. " W a l ! they did'n' get up tell tohds ten o'clock the nex' mawnin'. The King o' Callaway, faw him hit wuz, wan' to staht right off suhchin', but Massah J i m and his daughtah, Miss Naomy, wouldn' heah 18

THE HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

to hit, an' puhsuade him to wait till a f t a h dinnah. "At dinnah Mass' Jim say to him: " 'I am' nevah heahd sech houn' music as thetthah Jiminy o' yourn kin make! H i t mus' come, I reckon, from them wondahful houn'-fawks an' frum your genius in usin' 'em1?' "The ole man set thah smilin' and seemin' to fawgit his troubles, so powahfully polite wuz he, 'speschully whah thah wuz ladies, an' Miss Naomy wuz settin' at his right han', so he says smilin', " 'I reckon thet houn's is houn's.' " ' W a l ! ' says Mass' Jim, 'we's got a pahsel o' wuhthless houn's, an' we'll be mighty obliged, Naomy an' Benjie an' me, if you'll retuhn in a few days an' give 'em some trainin'.' " 'I promise,' says the ole man. Thoughts seem to pass ovah him, then he went on: 'I jes' wan' to 'zamine the country frum Wes'poht to the Kanzus line. I knows thet the King's d a u g h t a h ' d nevah set foot on the soil o' Kanzus, leas'wise I don' think so. If I don' fine huh, I shall espec' you to hep me, like you said you would.' " 'Sholi I will!' says Mass' Jim, ' W e all will, an' we'll fine huh!' "So the King rid away with Jiminy runnin' along by the hoss as proud as Lucifah. 'Bout an hour a f t a h they wuz gone, Rachel—thet's my wife—comes an' tells me somethin' thet Hildy 'd jes' tole huh— H i l d y lived at the Johnsing place—and I says to Mass' Jim, 19

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" 'Mass' Jim, I jes' luhned thet thah's a strange young man an' a puhty gal ovah at the Johnsing place.' " H e tuhn to me right quick: " ' W h o tole you thet^' " 'Rachel—she jes' heahd hit frum H i l d y . They been thah f a w moh' n a week.' "Miss N a o m y look at huh paw, then she take huh hat an' go ovah to Missis Becky Johnsing's—you knows the house—an' inside of a hour she come back, walkin' fas', an' she say to huh paw an' huh brothah Benjie, says she, 'Hit's them!' " ' H o w ' d you know hit's the King's daughtah?' says Mass' Benjie, takin' the question right out o' his paw's mouth. " 'I seen huh!' says she scawnfully. 'A bline man could see thet she's a princiss! Becky intaduced me.' " T h e n evrybody begin askin' questions all to wunst! " T i l tell you how she is,' says Miss Naomy. 'She's thet puhty thet h i t ' d be a muhcy to the men to kill huh right now! Y o u nevah seen anything blackah than huh hah, an' huh eyes is blackah still an' as soft as black velvit! She don' look to be moh 'n a chile o' fifteen, but she has the f a w m of a woman. A n ' huh voice, hit moh beautiful then she is! T h e moment you heah hit, you wan' to follah huh f a w e v a h ! I kin ondahstan' now thet Queens ain't like othah wimmin!' " ' D i d she seem happy V ax Massah Jim. 20

THE HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY

" 'Yes an' no. I axt huh if they wuz a-goin' to remain with us, an' a cloud seem to pass ovah huh, an' she did'n' ansuh faw a while, then she said they's goin' to jine a caravan in a few days faw the Fah Wes', an' frum that minit she nevah smile agin as long as I stay.' " 'We musn' let huh ¡scape,' says Mass' Jim. 'Sen' Rachel ovah evry day—twicet a day—to ax Miss Becky what their plans is.' "Wal! Rachel go ovah evry day, an' Miss Becky come down an' see we all the secont day—thah wuzn' no grandah lady in these pahts, an' a widah, the moh's the pity! An' when she heahd thet she had at huh house Princiss Peggy, the daughtah o' the King o' Callaway, she become almos' as ixcited as us, an' she entahd into the plan to prevent the Princiss frum iscapin'. Hit was arranged thet the fuhst night aftah the retuhn o' the King we'd remine him of his promise to lead a hunt like he do in the Kingdom, to show us how it ought a be done. The moon'd be jest about full then, we calclated, an' we'd sawt o' guide the hunt roun' tell hit 'd pass neah the Johnsing house, an' we felt shoh thet the Princiss'd come to huh paw if she heahd him suddent-like in the night, an' relized thet he'd jouhned all the way frum the Kingdom o' Callaway jes' to fine huh. "Miss Becky an' the ladies of our fambly wuz so ixcited thet they walk up an' down the room, an' Miss Becky say, 'Nevah in my life did I heah of anything so s'blime as what thet ole man's done! 21

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How I wisht I could see him!' An' Miss Naomy say, 'Don' call him an ole man, Becky, call him the King!' An' Miss Becky reply, 'He is a King!' "But our plans wuz not relized. The day aftah the King set out to covah the country 'tween Wes'poht an' Kanzus hit commence to rain stiddy, what I call rainin', an' hit continue all night an' all the nex' day. Massah Jim, he thet res'less he set by the windah an' cuss somethin' awful, an' then he light his pipe an' walk about the house cussin' some moh, an' Miss Naomy sayin': 'Hesh, Paw!' W a l ! the King had calclated to retuhn the evnin' o' the thuhd day, but he didn't. " 'Long about two hours to sundown o' the thuhd day, hit become suddently hottah 'n blazes. Young like you is, you nevah seen nothin' like hit. Waves an' billahs o' heat roll ovah us frum the south, an' hit become so dahk thet we had to light candles an' lamps, an' Mass' Jim carrin' on v/uhs then evah an' cussin' evrything in the State o' Missouri. An' then hit did rain! Bahrals an' hogsheads an' rivahs o' watah fell out o' the sky all to wunst, an' a night come down thet wuz a night! Hit wuz so black thet a preachah couldn't a seen a sinnah two foot frum him, ixcep' faw the flashes o' lightnin' thet follahd each othah evry three seconts, an' the thundah wuz like the jedgment day. " 'Bout an hour aftah suppah, they wuz thet worrit an' nahvous thet they sen' me ovah to Miss Becky's to enquiah if thah wuz any news. I tuk with 22

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me a stout hickry cane faw to hep keep me frum fallin' an' push the branches out o' my face. L a w d ! H i t wuz jes' like swimmin'! I thought moh 'n wunst I'd nevah git thah, but at last I seen in a flash o' lightnin' the red brick house, an' I reach the shed behine the kitchen. I wait thah half a hour f a w the watah to run off o' me, then I knock on the doh, an' Hildy call: 'Who's thah?', an' she wouldn't opem the doh tell I name mysef. "Miss Becky come in direcly she knowd I wuz thah, an' she shoh wuz pale! She hadn't no news, no moh 'n we all. She walk u p an' down the big kitchen, an' wring huh han's. I ax whah the Princiss wuz, an' she say thet she wuz cryin' up-stahs in the room what she an' the young fellah occupy. The room wuz in the back ell o' the house, an' opemd on the galry. " W a l ! the stawm continue wuhs then evah, an' us three an' Bessie, the othah suhvant, wuz thah alone in the kitchen, 'spectin' the hull house to fall, when I thinks I heah the bayin' of a houn' an' I raise my han' an' says: 'Listen!' An' shoh 'nuff, in between them claps o' thundah we heahd the bayin' of a houn'! " W e throw opem the doh an' resh out undah the shed, what wuz opem at both en's. The houn' wuz a-comin' up frum the low groun' tohds the branch, a little to the southwest o' the house, right through them scattahd fruit-trees this side the awchuhd— you knows the spot. An' suddently we heahd the hummin' o' one o' them houn'-fawks—the soun' 23

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froze our blood—an' in a flash o' lightnin' we seen the King! H e wuz ridin' with his head bent fohwahds, but we seen his great white beahd clingin' all ovah his breast in the rain. Robaht—thet wuz the name of his handsome gray hoss, what wuz named a f t a h Genral Lee—Robaht wuz a-breastin' the stawn somethin' beautiful, an' we seen his eyes like fiah. The King hadn't seen the house, 'cause the rain an' the branches wuz beatin' his face. An' all the time we heahd the bayin' o' Jiminy an' the unuhthly hummin' o' the houn'-fawk, an' wunst the ole man's voice callin', 'Peggy! Peggy!' "Jes' as they come abreast o' the conah o' the house, we heahd a suddent movement up-stahs an' bah feet runnin' along the galry an' down the stahs, an' we heahd the voice o' the Princiss screamin', ' D a d d y ! Daddy!' W e seen huh by the flashes run out into the stawm with huh hah flyin', an' Robaht, when he heahd huh, stop proud-like with his neck ahched, an' the King raise his head an' see huh an' fall out o' the saddle like he shot, an' he fall right into huh ahms. W e all resht out o' the shed. You nevah heah a chile cry like the Princiss did, an' we wuz all weepin', 'cep' the King, who lay thah onconscious in huh ahms, an' the houn' dog Jiminy a-leapin' all ovah the Princiss an' a-kissin' huh. H e knowd who they'd ben lookin' faw, an' so did Robaht! " W e all hep to tote the King into the house, an' we lay him down on the floh o' the kitchen, with his 2

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head in the Princiss's lap, an' he give no sign o' life. An' the Princiss set thah on the floh weepin' an' beggin' him to speak to huh. Miss Becky flew to the pantry, callin' awdahs to Bessie an' Hildy. Miss Becky nevah had huh s'periah faw makin' toddy, an' in no time she wuz kneelin' down an' puttin' spoonfuls o' hot toddy in the King's mouth. At las' he opem his eyes, an' the fust thing he seen wuz the face o' his chile bendin' ovah him. H e close his eyes an' big sobs run through him. H e nevah said a wuhd, an' the Princiss held him in huh buzzum like he wuz a baby, an' she kep' on kissin' him an' sobbin' ovah him, tell at las' we heahd the wuhds she wuz tryin' to say to him: 'Daddy! fawgive me! I ain' nevah goin' to leave you no moh!' H e couldn't speak, but he put his ahms up roun' huh. Miss Becky wuz still kneelin' on the floh, givin' him frum time to time a spoonful o' toddy. H u h puhty dress wuz wringin' wet, an' thah wuz watah all ovah the floh, but what did thet mattah*? Aftah some minits, the King opem his eyes an' look a long time at his daughtah, an' then says: 'I don' know whah I is, an' I don' kyah, so I have you.' "Then Hildy an' Bessie, the othah suhvant, drug in a ahmchyah, an' we lif' the King tendahly an' place him in it, an' the Princiss cuddle up in his ahms, with huh puhty feet showin', an' they whispah to each othah. "By this time, thah wuz coffy ready an' things to eat, but the King an' the Princiss wuz thet happy 25

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they couldn't eat nothin'. Jiminy, he jus' set thah by the ahmchyah with shinin' eyes, the proudes' dog you evah seen! W e try to get him to eat, but he wouldn't eat in company, so we envite him out into the shed, an' he shoh wuz hongry! One of the men 'd already put Robaht in the stable an' rub him down an' give him a big ration of oats an' hay. "The Princiss had done whispahd to the King whah he wuz an' how Miss Becky wuz one o' the grandes' ladies in the wuhld, an' he felt ashamed of all the trouble he'd caused an' of his rags. He whispahd some moh with his daughtah, an' then said to Miss Becky, timid-like, not supposin' thet she knowed he wuz a King: " 'Madam,' says he, 'I feel ashamed of all the trouble I have caused you. I can' thank you 'nuff! I shall nevah fawgit you as long as the good Lawd allows me to live. If you will pahdon me, I mus' be goin'. The stawm won' hahm me now.' "Miss Becky stan' thah an' laugh in the sweet way she had, an' say: " 'Allow you an' this deah chile to go out into the night an' stawm? W e don' do things thet-away at this house. We've lots o' room! Remain with us as long as you kin. Your presence honahs this roof.' " 'Hit's you who honahs us, Madam,' says the King. 'I would remain, only I promist Mistah Holloway to retuhn this evenin' if possible, an' heah it

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is I don' know how many hours in the night, naw how many miles to the Holloway fahm.' "Miss Becky smile right sweet at thet, an' say: " 'Hit's less 'n a mile to the Holloway fahm. I'll tell you—let's all go ovah thah aftah while, if the stawm allows! They mus' be worrit to death, faw hit's nigh on two hours sense Joe l e f them. Joe,' says she, tuhnin' to me, 'couldn' you ride the—' I reckon she wuz goin' to say 'the King's hoss,' but she check huhsef—'couldn' you ride the beautiful gray hoss aw one of ourn, an' tell 'em the good news, an' we'll follah latah, if we kin, in the kerridge1?' "I go out an' saddle Robaht, an' ride like wile. He wuz a powahful hoss, wuz Robaht, an' smahtah then a man. What joy when I got home an' resht in with the news! The ole house wuz a-buzzin' with noise in a minit—preparations in the kitchen, an' most o' the fambly runnin' up-stahs to dress. In less 'n a hour, heah come the othahs in the kerridge, an' Bessie an' Hildy too 'cause you couldn't o' kep 'em away. Miss Becky had loaned the Princiss some shoes an' stockin's, 'cause she wouldn' go back to huh room. Thet young fellah what'd been hepin' to haul wood on the Johnsing place, they nevah seen him agin. He lef' the nex' day—jined a caravan faw the Fah Wes'. "All the suhvants on this fahm wuz thah to hep in the preparations faw dinnah, as wuz Bessie an' 27

THE HOUND-TUNER OF CALLAWAY Hildy. Y o u nevah seen a dinnah prepahd quickah an' bettah. Sech a dinnah! W e ' l l nevah see hits like agin, f a w them times is gawn. The dinnah wuz what you might call complete, frum fried chicken an' hot biscuit down the line to pickles an' jellies an' presuhvs an' cakes an' pies, an' o' cohs thah wuz hot coffy an' cream, an' Massah had got out two bottles o' the bes' wine evah drunk this side o' Saint Louis. An' then thah wuz the gues's, f a w hit's the gues's thet sets off a feast! " W a l ! we kep the King an' the Princiss with us f a w nigh a fawtnight, an' hit wuz a time of onendin' festivities. W e kep opem house evry day, an' Miss Becky wuz heah most o' the time, bless huh! W e wuz jes' one big fambly. T h e King an' Jiminy give a lesson evryday to our houn's, an' all of us went along to see. These woods wuz alive with us happy folks. W a l ! them houn's of ourn, they jes' wuhship the King frum the fuhst! H e train 'em with his voice, an' he train 'em with his eye, an' he train 'em with his houn'-fawks, an' Jiminy hep him all the time. "Sevral times a day, the King an' the Princiss come heah to the Mawmon pool, an' they walk along han' in han', jes' like lovahs. T h e y use to set right heah whah we is this minit, me an' you, an' sometimes we heah them singin' togethah in a low voice, 'On the othah side o' Jawdan, In the sweet fiel's of Eden,'

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an' the soun' wuz so sweet thet we had to cry. "When hit wuz gettin' neahly time faw their depahchah, the King 'lowed he'd ride ovah to Wes'poht an' buy a hoss faw his daughtah, but bless you! we didn' do things thet-a-way! Massah Jim 'd done selected the bes' an' gentles' ridin' hoss in his paschas, an' 'd bought a fine side-saddle an' bridle. He present them all to the Princiss, who threw huh ahms roun' his neck and kist him an' say she goin' to call him 'Uncle Jim,' an' she done so in speakin' an' writin', faw she writ often aftah they got back to the Kingdom o' Callaway. Wal! the day come when they rid away side by side, huh an' the King, with Jiminy trottin' along by the hosses. We all try to smile, but we wuz weepin'. Right ovah yonnah whah the drive tuhns into the Lockridge Road is the spot whah we seen them faw the las' time, tuhnin' an' wavin' to us, an' prob'ly repeatin' their invitation to come down to the Kingdom o' Callaway for the remaindah of our nachral lives."

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the second syllable, if you please: Sha-ma'ry! N o other pronunciation would suit her personality, or the part she played in the life of our wilderness. And do not suppose that her family was Irish. Perish the thought! Strange as it seems, there was a time when we did not know her, unless through the exclamations of her uncle, Leonidas Jackson, who used to say, when conversation turned on charming women: " Y o u know nothing about them! Wait until you see my niece Mollie—Mollie Shamary, of Kent u c k y ! " And the strong men of Jackson County, who courted danger, had visions of riding along Kentucky turnpikes, stopping often and saying to every beautiful woman they met: "Pardon me, Madam, but are you Mollie Shamary And finally she came to us—just think of it! She came a few weeks after the death of her uncle Leonidas, and when her arrival became known, the barometer in the hearts of our women sank as before a disastrous storm. The girls trembled, and the married women went about their work with .1 clutch at the throat. ACCENT

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She had made the journey in her carriage, which was drawn by a span of blue-grass horses. W i t h her came a negro driver and a black serving woman, who had both been slaves in her family. She was the sole heir to her uncle, who had passed as well-to-do. H e certainly had not made money off his absurd forty-acre farm, nor had he tried to. In the centre of the forty acres, on a rather steep little hill, stood a three-roomed log house, where Leonidas Jackson had lived the simple, comfortable life of a sage. H e had never married, and, as far as we knew, was untrammeled. H e spent his time in riding horseback, hunting, directing his hired men, and smoking. H e almost never did any work himself. One half the farm was in forest, while the remaining twenty acres, with the hill nearly in its centre, was under cultivation. Like most of us, Mr. Jackson loved a wager. In the last year of his life, he won a famous bet from T i m Dobson on the presidential election. The loser had agreed to plow "to the satisfaction of the winner" fifteen acres of land. When Dobson presented himself the next spring and was told to plow the fifteen acres nearest the house, running the furrows up and down the hill, instead of around it in the usual way, his profanity needed bounds. But Mr. Jackson proved obdurate, and no prophecy of loss of soil from the rains made any impression on him. H e was that sort of a man: all for principle. So Dobson had to plow up hill and down, day after 31

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day, chaffed by dozens of neighbors who came to watch him. All this time, Mr. Jackson walked about smoking on the top of the hill, or sat by the window, laughing softly at clumps of oaths which floated up from the steep furrows. The tract was planted to corn, and made a good crop, but Leonidas Jackson left its harvesting to Mollie Shamary, and betook his jollity to another sphere. She had not been on the farm fifteen minutes before deciding changes she would make in the farm if she remained, and she really wanted to remain for several years at least, if only to see this western country. That night the windows in the Jackson house shone brightly after many nights of darkness, and the distant neighbors who saw them said: "Widow Shamary has come from Kentucky. I wonder if she will stay?" It was soon reported that she had bought two adjoining farms. The first Sunday afternoon, a half dozen families or more called on her, and all—men, women and children—fell immediately under the charm of the kindliest, jolliest, most beautiful creature ever seen in the Great Valley. Mollie Shamary was about thirty-five years old—women are never perfect at an earlier age—a brunette having just a flash of a fairer type, with bust, shoulders, arms and hands made for the torture of men and the undoing of saints, with eyes so tender and gracious you felt that their "yes" would kill you with joy in ten seconds, and that their "no" would exterminate 32

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you instantly. Within two months, nearly all the women were calling her Mollie, while she called them and most of the men up to her age by their given names, with the zone of intimacy spreading "northward." Men from fifty years "north" usually came to call her Miss Mollie, and with her it was "Uncle Billie," "Uncle Tommie," "Uncle Ned." Some of these older men winced at first under the "uncle," but quickly felt themselves happy, for from her lips everything seemed, and was, a compliment. Mollie Shamary wrought great changes in her uncle's farm. The drive had formerly gone right up the hill toward the house. As soon as the crops were in, she set men to grading and building a new drive, which mounted gradually, winding round the hill and ending under the great trees in front of the house. She had this drive flanked with a strong retaining wall, for there was plenty of rock to be found on the farm. Along about the first of November, she began carrying out a plan of which her uncle had once written her, to erect a suitable house, of which the three rooms already built should be the back wing. She built a comfortable two-story house of logs, carefully chinked u p and protected with clapboards. When the house was completed and furnished, in early March, she invited all the country-side to a house-warming which lasted from the forenoon until after midnight. T h a t party is still talked of by

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pale posterity, and I should describe it to you, except that to do so would leave you envious and dissatisfied. Everything which Mollie touched succeeded. Of the orchard which she planted, not one tree was foolish enough to die, and the same is true of the vineyard. At home, she did not do much work with her hands, but it was different when she visited neighboring farmhouses. Five minutes after her arrival, she might have been seen with sleeves rolled up, a bib apron on, or her dress pinned up, in the thick of whatever was being done—baking bread or cake, pitting cherries, putting u p preserves, churning, preparing vegetables—filling the house with her laughter and songs, and, especially, with the jollity which she aroused in others. Strange as it may seem, the women were as fond of her as the men, and more than one farmer's wife said to herself: "Well, if he had to quit caring for me, I'd rather it 'd be for Mollie Shamary than for anyone else. I don't blame no man for falling in love with her." H o w different she was in the sick room! She seemed to bring to the sufferer an air forever pure and fresh, a conviction that a celestial power was visiting him and would protect him. If he went down the road that dips suddenly into the dark forest, he went content if she held his hand. And this reminds me of her singing at funerals. She discovered an excellent soprano voice in a poor widow with four children, who lived down by the

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Blue. Her own voice was an alto. Old man Borodine's pure tenor was at her disposal. To complete the quartet, she added the profound, true bass of Bud Orrison. H e lived on the other side of the Blue, alone in a house falling about his ears, on a farm mortgaged to the rail fences. He was a heavy drinker, and followed in the footsteps of his late father. Mollie said to him one day: "Listen to me, Bud! I want you to sing with me to-morrow at Mr. Gallard's funeral, but I won't sing with you unless you make me a promise. I have never asked any man to make me a promise, but I'm going to ask you, for no one with a voice like yours should be allowed to ruin it. Promise me never to drink another drop unless I permit it. I do not mean to tie you up for ever. I shall be reasonable. Promise me, just like I were your mother." Of course Bud promised, and kept his promise, too. When you heard Mollie Shamary's quartet sing at a funeral, you felt that all wounds of the past were healed, and that all disasters of the future would weigh as nothing. Death itself seemed a benediction. In and through the blending of three admirable voices, moved the violet-hued, fate-like alto of Mollie Shamary. Although no one of the other voices could be spared, they existed for the alto only. And Mollie's face, what a change! She was no longer the sunny charmer of us all. You no longer thought of her as beautiful. She did not seem human. She was a spirit that had journeyed to the distant

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country, as far as the lotus tree beyond which even the angels might not pass, and had returned to console us: "Be of good cheer! All will be well. It is I who promise you." From the oldest to the youngest, we had confidence in that promise, and wept tears of sorrow and joy. Sometimes it took several days for her to recover her old ways after one of these funerals, which led many of us to see in her a strong woman, the waters of whose life had run deep, but who never spoke of the floods which had swept over her. There were other things which revealed an unsuspected side of Mollie Shamary's character. For example, the runaway which she stopped on the long hill. In the wagon, two screaming women— the reins had slipped from their hands and the horses were off like rabbits—at the bottom of the hill, a bend in the road and the river beyond. Mollie came riding hard after them on her sure-footed iron-gray mare, reached a position along-side the frantic team, leaped to the back of the nearer horse, then stepped to the wagon pole, and brought the horses to a walk. It was like her, too, to beg the women to say nothing of "the trifling thing she had done." Again, it was Mollie Shamary who saved the life of Mr. Dobson's younger brother, Benjie. H e had fallen on a scythe, and was bleeding to death, in spite of all they could do. A boy had come to ask her help. She sent her most trusted man riding hard

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toward Westport Landing, with orders to bring Dr. Sargent "by force if necessary, dead or alive." The man rode like the wind, and what did he see on the Lockridge road two miles from town, but the doctor's horse grazing in the edge of the timber and dragging after him the empty buggy! The doctor's satchel was in the buggy, but where was the doctor? At last he found him, lying drunk in the shade of a bush. H e turned the buggy round, tied his own horse behind, placed the unconscious physician in the bottom of the buggy, where he could hold him in with his feet, and drove like mad for Dobson's. Mollie heard the galloping hoofs, called Mrs. Dobson to replace her at holding the severed artery, and, with her face, hands, arms, and dress spattered with blood, hurried outdoors. Before the buggy came to a stop, she had taken in the situation. She set her man to drawing water furiously at the well, grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and hair, dragged him to the horse trough, which was half full of cool water, lifted him in her arms and dropped him into the trough. H e only gasped and sputtered, but when several persons had doused his head and breast in cold water, while Mollie held him, he revived, climbed out of the trough, called for his satchel and saved Benjie. H e then stood by his buggy, made an eloquent speech to Mollie Shamary, to her black man, to the two horses, to Benjie and the Dobson family, to the neighbors, whether present or not, and to the entire universe, after 37

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which he got into the buggy and drove away, well satisfied with himself and with everybody. Once a week, Mollie sent to Westport for the mail. There were frequent business letters, for she had much property in Kentucky, and there were many letters in recognizably masculine hands. When the mail came, she used to shut herself up for the day. The servants became accustomed to see a little frown on her brow as she sat eating supper that night. Was it from business cares, homesickness, or perhaps from thought of one person dear to her, or perplexity among many old suitors? No one knew. When she had been almost one year with us, we had the excitement of seeing arrive on horseback Col. Robert Pendleton, tall, distinguished, ominously handsome, said to be a candidate for the governership of Kentucky. He put up at the Harris House at Westport and remained a week, riding out to Mollie Shamary's every day. They took long rides and walks together, and sat late conversing on the porch of the new house. When it came time for him to return to Kentucky, he rode away from Westport with a countenance where neither hope nor discouragement could be discerned. Then, a few weeks later, Col. Amos Breckenridge, also from Kentucky, arrived at Westport Landing by steamboat. He had snapping black eyes, a fierce, heavy mustache, and was direct and intense in speech. Ten minutes after leaving the boat, he was

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galloping over the road to Mollie Shamary's, saying to the landscape: "Now, see here, Mollie! You either love me or you don't! It's perfectly simple! I'm neither a lapdog nor a tame turtle. You've got to give me an answer this very second!" H e probably repeated this speech to her more than once, but what was the use? The more he protested, the more she laughed. They rode wild races along the roads and in the woods, and once when her maddening long hair came down, he felt a temptation to twist his hand in it, drag her to his saddle, and ride away with her a captive for ever. Only, he did not dare, and when he rode away to go back home, it was after saying to her: "Look at me for the last time!" which did not prevent him from writing her a half dozen flaming letters, lighting up the wild banks of the rivers, on the journey back to Louisville. Another admirer came to gladden or sadden the road which led to Mollie Shamary's hill—Gov. Beauregard, a man "fifty years of age," as he told every one, "and going strong." Erect, gray-haired, red-faced, fond of good liquor, as becomes a Kentuckian, and jolly as all outdoors, he knew every inhabitant of Westport within two days, and announced laughingly that he had come to carry Mollie Shamary back to heaven. H e had been Lieut.Governor of his native State, and therefore very properly went by the title of Governor, which offered a pleasing variety in the Kentuckian nomenclature

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as we were coming to know it. H e was the only one of her admirers for whom she gave a party. She showed her dashing guest no preference over local admirers, except that she danced the first Lancers with him as a partner, and later did not demur when he proposed a toast to "every letter in the sweet name Mollie, and as for her other name, let it look out for itself!" After a ten days' visit, the Governor started back east, concealing a dazed look in the depths of his eyes and promising to return in the spring. Then, in late September, came a second visit from Col. Pendleton, which, it was feared, left Mollie Shamary more silent than before. There followed a winter like the first she had spent in our country, then a spring and summer like the last, her distant and local admirers being as numerous and devoted as ever. One need not wonder if she was progressively less happy. Have you noticed how, at the beginning, everything is often delightful, and how, in time, every new relation and friendship becomes a fetter"? A smile from a beautiful woman is a lovely thing, but it may cause as much suffering as a sneer, and the hour often comes when such women, if they have any kindliness, are sorry that they ever existed. Do not think that the life of a fair woman is unalloyed pleasure! T h e more her lovers, the more her sufferings. And now came an event of importance. An evangelist from Tennessee arrived at Westport, and 40

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spoke every night for a week at the Union Church. H e was a red-faced, smooth-shaven, full-bodied man of fifty, with more than average schooling and eloquence. To hear him, you felt that he had read everything, that he had traveled in all countries and climes, had known intimately Washington, La Fayette and Napoleon, and had, as a boy, played marbles with Columbus. His last sermon was perhaps the one to be longest remembered. He spoke of the Crusades, which had thus far been only a name in our valley. Then he told of the medieval pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and of solitary pilgrims whose love for the Holy Places was so vast that they journeyed eastward taking three steps forward, then two steps backward: "And with some, so great was their love that the steps backward were longer than the steps forward, so that when night came down over that sere, desolate country, the blasted pine which they had passed at sunrise was still visible behind them. And they kept on in the gathering darkness, three steps forward and two steps backward, until the heavens were all sparkling with stars. Then they lay down to sleep, with perhaps a stone for pillow." Ah! those three steps forward and the two steps backward, how they struck the imagination! And why had the heroic pilgrims done that? For love— to honor Palestine and the sacred habitations of Jerusalem! One night soon after this sermon, when the golden moon was approaching its fullness of glory, Mollie 41

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Shamary had passed several hours in writing letter?, had then put out her light and had gone to the window to look out at the country, which was still half wilderness. About her heart hung a weight, such as a woman feels in moments of perplexity between pleading voices of the present and remembered voices whose words once entered the portals of the ear and stepped down its corridor to the brain. And the brain remembers and the spirit is torn. Suddenly a moving figure caught her eye far down the hill. It moved forward and went back, advanced again, then stepped back. And of course she understood. At first, she laughed softly, then sat down by the window and, burying her face in her arms, laughed hysterically—the reaction perhaps from old remembrances and future worries. After a moment, she sat up straight, wiped her eyes and said: "Brute that I am! I don't know who it is down there on the drive, but he's sublime! No one in the blue-grass country ever did such a thing for me, or for any woman. I'm ashamed of myself." She looked again; yes, the figure had come nearer, but oh, so slowly! A shiver, almost of fear, went through her: was it a madman? More than once, of course, men had told her that they were going insane over her, but one grows accustomed to extravagant language when one is Mollie Shamary. No, this man could not be dangerous. He was doing this absurd thing simply through love, through 42

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adoration, and it was all the more touching, because he could not suppose that she would ever know. . . . The man approached as near as he dared in such bright moonlight, then turned and stole away. Who was he? she asked herself, as for an hour or more she went from room to room, from window to window. Who of her admirers was devoted enough or foolish enough to do such an extravagant thing? Tom Ransom, perhaps, who would inherit a fine farm and knew it? Or Charlie St. Clair, who worshipped her, but was a bit timid about it? Or Geoffroy Atkinson—he was a poet? Or Bud Orrison, only he had never spoken a syllable of love to her, unless with those sombre black eyes of his? Or Ben Symmes, who hoped sometime to be a congressman? Or Henry Severance, who was married and ought to know better, only he was perhaps not to blame? Or—and Mollie thought of others, then fell into a comparison of these hardy, uncouth men with the brilliant, elegant gentlemen of the bluegrass. Which type did she prefer? She at last went to bed, leaving the question unanswered. The next morning, it seemed to her that she must have dreamed the strange sight, but another dusk of moonlight showed the same or another silent figure, advancing, retreating, advancing again and retreating, in the fantastic pilgrimage toward a Jerusalem the Golden he would never reach, on the fop of Shamary hill. And the next night it was the

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same, and Mollie wondered with a shiver how it would be in the dark of the moon. Her preoccupations were to undergo a sudden change a few days later. The oldest boy of Doris Pollard, the widow who sang soprano in Mollie's choir, brought news that Bud Orrison was very ill: would she come to see him, and would she send for Dr. Sargent? She did both, and with her accustomed energy. She sent a man on horseback for the doctor, who had already several times taken care of cases at her request, and she and her old mammy bundled a lot of useful things into the buggy and set off at full speed. They crossed the Blue at the muddy ford, and a few minutes later were standing by the bed of poor Bud. H e was unconscious and was breathing heavily, his head thrown back and his defiant black hair showing tragically against the white pillow. The soprano-voiced widow was there, and related how a neighbor had found Bud's body in the river two nights before, had revived him, carried him home and put him to bed. H e had built a good fire and remained all night. As she reached this point in her story, the neighbor and his wife came in. Yes, he said that he had fished Bud out of the river. He was crossing at the ford with his team at about nine o'clock. The river was high, and the off horse became frightened at an object which the current swept against him. H e saw that it was the body of a man, and managed to grab him in time. It was Bud Orrison. H e revived him, carried him

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home and remained all night, but the next morning Bud insisted that he was all right and sent him away, after begging him to say nothing of the accident. The neighbor had returned the next night and found him with a high fever and a terrible cold on his lungs. The women busied themselves with keeping a wet cloth on Bud's forehead, heating plenty of water, preparing flannel compresses, and waited two interminable hours, before they heard the rapid beat of hoofs—Dr. Sargent was arriving on horseback! The gravity of his face as he examined the patient told them that the worst was to be feared. By the time the doctor had finished his work, the old mammy had a good supper ready. She had been ordered to put in the buggy a lot of provisions, and she had done so with the liberality which ruled at her mistress' house. The pale radiance of the waning moon was beginning to replace daylight when Mollie, Doris Pollard, and the doctor sat down to supper. He tried to joke about the danger of his position, sitting at table between two charming widows, but it was impossible to joke long. "Tell us," said Mollie, and her voice trembled, "will he recover?" "He has a fighting chance, no more. If I had been called at once!—but even then, who knows? It might have been impossible to save him. He has in his favor mighty good lungs and a wonderful physique. Then, too, he hasn't drunk a drop, they

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say, for more 'n a year. H e used to drink like a fish —some men can't be moderate, like I can. I knew his father well. A fine man, well educated for these parts. W a s a teacher, then a farmer. Died of drink. You'll find lots of his books in the house." "Doctor, we three women are going to stay here and look after him. W e can take turns. There's plenty of provisions. W e ' l l keep good hot coffee all the time. And, Doctor, you're going to stay too1? As for money " "Damn your money, Mollie Shamary! Oxen couldn't drag me a w a y ! " "You must save him." The two looked at each other, a long, unwavering look. "She's not in love with him," the doctor thought, "but she's suffering in some way I don't understand." And he was right. As she was crossing the ford, a premonition had come to her: " I shall find that I am responsible for what has happened. But how?" Through the agonizing days and nights that followed, she asked herself more than once, " H o w did it happen? W h y ? " The fourth night there came a change for the better, and the next afternoon Dr. Sargent left, saying that the patient was out of danger, provided he obeyed his jailers. Bud went on improving, and two days later Mollie stood smiling down at him, holding his great, calloused hand and saying: " I ' m going home now, Bud, but Doris and

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Mammy will stay with you, and I'm going to ride down every day to inquire whether you've been a good boy." She went out, laughing and waving her hand to him. He tried to say "good-by" at least, but he could not. Left alone, he called himself hard names: "Fool! I've never been anything but a fool! I wish I'd gone to the bottom of the Blue and stayed there!" Mollie rode down every day to see how he was, and one day she found him sitting up in the big rocking chair. Mammy had combed out the tangles in his long hair and had trimmed his beard. He sat wrapped in blankets and leaning back quite helpless against the pillows. She laid her cool, firm hand on his forehead and looked laughingly into his eyes : "You will never know how glad I am that you've recovered!" Why did she say that? he wondered Then she went on, choosing her words carefully, for she had made a secret decision—to go back to Kentucky—but she wanted to be sure that her premonition about the accident was unwarranted. "I'm going to ask you a question, Bud, while we're alone, and don't fear that I shall tell anybody your answer. How did you come to fall into the river? You were not crossing in your canoe, for they found it tied up and the oars were in the shed. You can't have fallen in at the ford, for you 47

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would have been carried on below it. Tell me." His cheeks flushed, but he did not speak. She urged him again, and this time he answered almost inaudibly: "I was swimming across." "Swimming across! At half past eight, at night, in late October! You are not a fool; besides, you are a good swimmer." "You are mistaken—I am a fool." "Come, Bud, tell me!" "I'm a fool, and your fault, Mrs. Shamary." " 'Mrs. Shamary'! Don't 'Mrs. Shamary' me, Bud! Call me Mollie, like everyone else does. Haven't we sung together for a long time? Aren't we the best of friends?" "Yes, we're friends, as a lady can be the friend of a dog!" "Hush! I won't let you talk that way! There is no one whom I respect more than you. Tell me, how did you fall into the river1?" The flush in his cheeks deepened. She could hardly hear him, even by bending forward: "It was . . . that preacher, the crusades, the pilgrims. . . . " "Do you mean this?" And with her arms, she sketched the action of one swimming three strokes forward, then two backward. He nodded with his eyelids. Yes, he meant that. She drew the deepest, proudest breath she had ever drawn, yet pity began immediately to mingle with her pride, then over-

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mastered it. She was four years his senior; there had never been a word of love between them, there must never be. She would treat him as a child. In a month, she would be in Kentucky. N o one would know of her departure until after she was gone. She would write him a letter of farewell, a letter wonderfully constructed, to be given him after she had gone. H e would never know that she had understood. Having decided these things in the flash of a second, she said to him playfully: " N o w , my boy, I'm going to cast an eye about the house, to see if M a m m y has attended to everything." His cheeks burned. H e forgot the confession of his folly, in humiliation that she should see the humble, old-fashioned furniture, the house with its scars and patchings. H e had made almost no repairs for the past year, being too busy running his farm and working out, so as to make a beginning toward paying one of the mortgages. And previous to a year ago, he had made no repairs, because nothing mattered to him then, except whiskey, and now nothing mattered, except something more deadly, more f a t a l — a gay gingham dress, a light footstep, a voice singing snatches of song, a pair of eyes which he would be fortunate never to have seen. And he was a fool and she knew that he was a fool and that he would never be anything else. . . . Thus he tortured himself until the gay gingham dress stood again before h i m :

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"Well, good-by for a few days, Bud! You'll be up in a week, and then you'll come to repay some of my visits. . . ." She regretted instantly what she had said. He had never come to see her, and she knew that he had only one suit of frayed, faded clothes and nothing but heavy boots for his feet. She tried to improve her invitation: "You see, there are lots of things on the farm I need to ask you about. We'll ride all over the place and you'll give me good advice." She saw that he had understood her embarrassment, and her face flushed. How awkward she was! "If you don't come, I'll come here. You have the best collection of books I have seen in this section, and there are many which I ought to read. Well, good-by, sick boy!" and she left him to bitter thoughts. He did not go to see her after his recovery, which was slow, nor did she come to his house down near the Blue. November drew near its close. Finally a descending night saw Mollie Shamary for what she called the last time on her uncle Leonidas' farm. Yes, she had made the great decision, all of her arrangements were completed, and she who had been glad to flee from complications in Kentucky was now fleeing from others in Missouri. To spoil as few lives as possible should be the rule of every charming woman. It was Mollie Shamary's, and she prided herself on following it. 5°

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No one knew of her intended flight. Tom and Mammy had simply been told to put into the carriage certain packages which their mistress had wrapped up, and to harness the best team of horses for half past eight that night. Did the old servants suspect her purpose1? It is not likely. She left with the other woman servant some letters to be distributed among the neighbors according to address, the afternoon of the next day. It was nearing nine o'clock when she said a silent farewell to her new home in the wilderness, and entered the carriage. A possible road for her to take was the one over the hills to Westport Landing, leaving Westport on her left, but she feared that she might meet some neighbor. There was less likelihood of her being seen on the road to Independence, so she said to Tom: "Independence road, Tom, and drive carefully." Low clouds made the night darker, and a heavy wind blew through the dense woods. A bleak, cheerless departure after so much joy. She leaned back in the carriage and thought with set lips and stinging eyelids. This, then, was the end of the chapter, and it would always be the same, until she became an old woman! Intentions counted for nothing—the results were always ruin. The least part of the misfortune was that she always suffered. Would her new friends understand that her flight showed how dear they were to her—that she could not bear to say farewell? She could see their faces when they 51

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learned that she had gone—that they might never see her again. But most insistently she saw, to the point of torture, a very pale face, with large selfdespising black eyes, and great, useless hands folded on the blankets. That was what she had made of him—ruin, always ruin! He was said to be about again, but what of that, if he must suffer from incurable mental wounds? In order to forget, she tried to think of the glad return to the blue-grass country, of good turnpikes, of old mansions, rich plantations, delightful men and women, of girlhood friends and their ecstatic greetings, of moonlight nights, music, and merry parties, of one person, who in a week would perhaps deem himself the happiest man in the world. . . . She thought of these things and many more, but flash-like visions of the pale face down by the Blue kept torturing her. This was natural, for she saw by the light of the swinging lantern, which Mammy held on high, that the horses were feeling their way down the hill that led to the ford. What desolation! The immense forest on both sides, the roar of the pitiless wind through the bare branches, a fitting, a tragic farewell! Now the horses, obedient to Tom's voice, were entering the river. They moved slowly, sniffing the swollen waters, which the wind blew into little waves. Mollie leaned out of the carriage and saw the dark water rushing through the spokes of the 52

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wheels and swirling around and against the carriage bed. She thought with a shiver of that other night when the river ran high and bore the body of a man against the off horse. What did it matter, the folly of his attempt! It had seemed to him the only way he could honor her supremely, and she was never to know! What he had done was not ridiculous; it passed beyond the exploits of all lovers; it was sublime in its extravagance, its uselessness. . . . The dripping horses were toiling up the farther bank when she called to her driver, " T o m , stop the carriage where the road up the river branches off, then pass me the lantern, please." She found in her satchel a sheet of paper, but no envelope. What did envelopes matter"? she wrote in pencil: " R o w across the Blue and come to me at the house immediately, if you are strong enough. If not, Tom will guide you to where I am. I must see you to-night. Mollie." "Here, T o m , " she said, folding the letter, "take this quickly to Mr. Bud. H u r r y ! " Tom returned alone in a few minutes, and received the welcome but surprising order to drive back home. They recrossed the dark ford, and when they reached the house, Mollie got out, saying: " J u s t leave the horses hitched for a while, and you and Mammy go to the kitchen, where it's warm." In the sitting-room, to which she had so recently said a last farewell, the fire still burned on the hearth. It was there that Bud Orrison found Mollie Shamary, the Queen of his Jerusalem the Golden.

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A few minutes after his arrival, she opened the door into the kitchen and called, "Tom! Tom! unhitch the horses, please, and give them an extra ration of oats and hay."

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T H E GHOST OF T H E W H I T E COW OH, the ghosts of my childhood! H o w active they were, how numerous, how varied! Commencing with the dead zone of twilight, they occupied every chance yard of space that lent itself to the imagination. They flitted invisible through thick walls and oaken doors, and lingered, evanescent, in the open gaps of things. T h e cellar contained several of them, as did the attic; the parlor and the winding halls knew them, not alone at night, but on still summer afternoons when the house was empty, and in the hours of the pitchy blackness the orchard and the forest were f u l l of them. Those were the times when the word ghost had an h in it, when its plural—at least in the language of us boys and girls—was ghostses, and when the word haunt was pronounced to rhyme with pant, which is its proper pronunciation. Those were the times when children had an opportunity to be well-balanced. Now-a-days, there are so many fairies and so much foolishness that children have all run to the soft. T h e y know nothing of the manly, vigorous, intense, grisly, real side of the universe. Where have the devils gone? W h a t has become of the ghosts'?

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THE

GHOST OF T H E

WHITE

COW

Ghosts! Whatever imagination I possess is due to them—that is, if they be made to include the devils, as they properly should—and I revere and love them with an august reverence, with a terrible love! Take the case of the ghost of the white cow. As far as I can see moonlight, I can see her. I know her better than you ever knew any living cow. I know her noble forehead and graceful horns, I know every hair on her, every swish of her tail, every thought in her honest eyes, every intonation of her cavernous voice, every emotion of her generous mother-heart. I know her as if I had manufactured her. I know her and I love her. But it is too late to let passion run away with me! I conjure with a half century of time. I wing tonight a prodigious flight. I leave gray hairs and the burden of accumulated disappointments. I people my parents' house with tender figures. I am a child of four on a wintry, moonlight night, and Mama has tucked me into my trundle bed with hands of infinite affection. Now she has left her baby with a final caress of his brown curls. H e is alone in the big room. A full, red, melancholy rising moon makes the pearly panes glitter. The little boy turns toward the window a frightened but resolute face. H e holds his breath. H e listens to every sound. The question he asks himself is: "When will they come?" But they, my good listeners, does not mean, as you suppose, the ghosts: he knows that the ghosts are already there, — t h a t they are always there. The they of whom he

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THE GHOST OF THE WHITE COW thinks are the group of neighbors who come Saturday night, at the close of the long week, to pass the evening with Joseph and J a n e , to relate indifferent gossip, and finally—oh, finally!—to tell of disembodied spirits that did walk the earth. The group sit about the flaming fireplace. The women knit or sew, while the rough-bearded pioneers whittle pine sticks with their sharp jack-knives. A f t e r tales of adventure with wild beasts and Indians, someone is sure to commence a ghost story. Then other ghost stories f o l l o w , each more gruesome than the last. The voices sink lower, sometimes to a whisper, until in the hush one hears the ticking of the clock, the snapping of the fire, the raging of the wind. . . . W h a t tellers of ghost stories those men and women were! H o w their f a v o r i t e stories showed their characters! I salute you, O dead pioneers, defenders of innocence, avengers of broken vows, resurrectors of pale brides and ancient dames and of young mothers departed before their time, transfigurers of those despitefully used and f o u l l y done to death, haters of step-mothers and step-fathers, nullifiers of forged wills, persuaders of the sepulchre, movers of disembodied spirits, unsealers of ghastly lips, coroners of the long-since dead, diviners of f a m i l y secrets, masters of poisons, pistols, and daggers, architects of charnel horrors, freezers of the blood, limners of frosty-chinned old men and of sharpnosed witches, lauders of perished beauties, consolers of the unconsoled, dryers of tears, caressers

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of the uncaressed, stillers of sobs, holders of the celestial balances, somnambulists of justice ! I salute you, dead pioneers, for I remember your eloquence, and I have not heard it equalled among learned men. You alone knew how to turn the earth backward into the mystery of ancient times. You excelled in making out of moonlight a robe of horror, and out of night the cerements of madness. You it was who knew how to garb a ghost, to describe the trailing of its diaphanous garments, to imitate its mouse-like shriek and the howling of the death-dog in the night, to make us hear the scraping of a cypress branch against an affrighted window, or the creak of doom when the untouched and bolted door turned on its hinges. You made us feel sudden, inexplicable currents of air, the trailing across our faces of damp tresses, the approach of a hand that traversed raiment and flesh to close like ice about the heart beneath. You taught our ears to hear footfalls fainter than the sound of a gossamer thread alighting upon a lake. You made us see eyes that could no longer weep, and, in the frosty air, breath that was not breath, from lips that were not lips. Such were the visions, such the imaginings, that filled with fascinating terror the wide-open eyes of the little boy. And so it used to be that when the neighbors had arrived, he slipped out of bed, wrapped himself in his mama's red shawl, stole down-stairs, and squeezed himself between the bottom step and the sitting-room door. Oh ! how cold it

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T H E GHOST OF T H E W H I T E COW

was, in spite of his flannel gown and his mama's shawl! Now, on a night of nights, after Mr. Beach had told a harrowsome tale of a one-legged ghost, whose leg could be heard thumping as he walked, the little boy heard his papa commence in his soft voice the most wonderful ghost story ever told. It seemed more living than any other ghost story, for it concerned a cow. It related how a white cow which we had once owned at Sheridan had disappeared one night and had never been seen again. One bitterly cold moonlight night, great-grandpa Joseph had been awakened by a lowing, had got up, and had seen the ghost of the white cow standing by the stable door, and her calf from within was answering her mother's lowing. The story was so piteous that the little boy found himself crying. His tears might at any moment become sobs. H e slipt noiselessly up-stairs. Arrived there, he heard an unmistakable lowing. It was soft, tender, insistent yet helpless—a lowing as before bars that were never to be let down. Could it be that our lost cow had returned? W a s she out in the bitter cold? In an instant, the small figure, stumbling in its long gown and trailing shawl, was at the window, and there it saw, it saw in the frosty light of the desolate moon, against the tortured background of the forest,—it saw the ghost of the white cow! And the wind did not make her tail move, and no vapor arose from her nostrils or from her cavern-

59

THE GHOST OF T H E WHITE COW

ous mouth when she raised her head to low, and a calf answered from the barn. Shivering with horror and pity, the little boy rushed to his trundle bed, buried himself under the covers, and wept and sobbed for what seemed to him hours and hours. . . . When he awakened in the sunny morning, his mama was caressing him playfully and calling him endearing names. The ghost was gone. It did not reappear the next night, nor the night thereafter, nor ever again. For many nights, the little boy watched at the window, and finally his mama caught him there in the cold. But he clung to her in such a tempest of sobbing that she could not scold him. Instead, she hurried him into his bed, placed a warm soapstone at his feet, and tried to console him. Finally, when he could speak, he answered her questions: " O h ! Mama, it was the cow! It was the ghost!" " W h y ! what do you mean, my little darling?" "It was the ghost, the ghost of the cow!" "What cow?' "The good cow that was stoled away by mean men or devils and they eated her up and her ghost came back 'cause she wanted her calf." "And what did she do1?" "She just stood in the cold and mooed by the barn, and I heard her calf answer." "When?" "Lots of nights ago." " W h a t was the color of the cow?" "White, Mama, all white." 60

T H E GHOST OF T H E WHITE COW It was M a m a who was all white now! She ran to the door and called: " J o s e p h ! Joseph! come q u i c k ! " Among our cows there was none that was white. H e r e is what happened: I became in an. instant the pride of the family. In twenty-four hours, I was the sensation of the region, I was its idol, I was famous. I was the diaphanous soul, the precious intermediary between two worlds. There were daily and nightly sessions at our house. Gentlemen in black and ladies in immense silk dresses journeyed from ten miles or more to see me. T h e y produced on me an unfortunate impression that life was to be a joyous picnic, f o r they gave me candy, cakes, and playthings. T h e silken lady rustled into an easy-chair, drew me to knees which seemed leagues under the swelling dress, kissed and caressed me, called me the most marvelous child she had ever seen, and then said (they all said the same thing): " T e l l me, dear, tell me of the ghost of the white c o w ! " And then I opened my mouth and told her, then I told her husband and her brother and her cousins and her aunts and her envious children. I told them with joy and pride and with an increasing luxury of detail. The nap never wore off my story. M y cow became daily and nightly more beautiful, more intelligent, more perfect,—in short, a better and better cow. F o r the first two or three days, my triumph was equally conspicuous when we went to town, and I walked down the street, holding my proud M a m a by the hand. T h e moment I appeared, nothing else 61

T H E GHOST OF T H E WHITE COW

was visible. N o one paid any attention to the lines of immigrant wagons with horses and dogs trailing on behind, or to the cowboys with their costly saddles and decorated hats, the traveling dentist, the shouting auctioneer, the stranger within our gates, the village preacher, the politician, the judge on his circuit, the passing desperado. But alas for human glory! After a while my public wearied of me. Offended, I decided to cease repeating my story before an ungrateful world. One night, as I was falling asleep, I said: "Mama, I not tell any more the story of the ghost, 'cept just to you and Papa. . .

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IF we had not gone to live a few years in town, I should never have known her. Helo'ise Jenkins! cruel little blonde of seven years! Hands that I could almost have crushed in mine, if I had dared, hair that had to be curled every morning, pale, blinking eyes, one of them slightly crossed, a face covered with freckles, a voice like that of a flute, very small ears, legs disastrously long (only she didn't know it), large, horny feet,—she had all of these defects and many more, yet she seemed happy, and ruled over me like the Queen of Sheba. And this, in spite of the fact that I disliked her, that I felt myself more moral, more interesting, better constructed. I was convinced, too, of HeloTse's dishonesty, for she told fibs with unconstrained pleasure, stole—and forced me to steal—cakes, cookies, candy, raisins, peaches, apricots, pies. She used to plunge her hand into my pocket and abstract marbles and other valuable property, while fixing me with a hypnotic eye. She slapped my face in season and out. In short, she conducted herself in a manner which would have driven to despair a less resolute spirit than mine. And she was profane! I know this, because it was

63

HOW I BURNED FOR HELOISE from her that I learned to swear. Heloise had a sliding scale of oaths, which she practiced like a fivefinger exercise, when she had nothing else to do. Many months passed, during which she and I might have been seen playing together every day, about and through and over and upon and across the yard, not unlike two cannon balls chained together, with most of the chain on one ball. During subsequent periods of servitude, I have studied this, the first period of my subjection to woman, and I explain Heloise's influence over me in the following manner: it was the result of two causes: first, her glassy, crossed eye; second, the aureole which her father's prodigious reputation spun about her head. T o be sure, he was only the prescription clerk in the drug store, but he was none the less one of the stupendous figures in village life. He enjoyed the reputation of being the most wonderful reciter of terrifying poems within five hundred miles. I have since learned that most of these poems were old English and Scottish ballads. Scores of times I heard him recite ballads of fair Rosymonde, of Thomas and Ellender, Sir Gwain, Pat Rickspense, Diveeze and Lazarus, the Bailiff's Daughter of Islingtown, Bellow me Babe, Edward Hedward, Lucyanne Colin, Margaret's Ghost, and Barbery Allin. It was astonishing the amount of suffering, fighting, stabbing, loving, sighing, and dying in Mr. Jenkins' collection. Nearly everybody died. These tales sup-

64'

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plemented beautifully my rich stock of ghost stories, therefore I felt that they must be true, and loved them accordingly. When of an evening or, more rarely, of a Sunday afternoon, I heard Mr. Jenkins practicing—for even he used to practice—I slipped behind the large clump of lilacs near the fence and listened entranced! I did more than t h a t : without any intention on my part, I learned by heart whole sections of his repertory'. W h o knows? In time I might have become his rival or his successor, if he had not finally removed to the other side of the village, thus cutting short my education. "But," you will say, "how can a boy of eight have understood those ballads'?" O doltish critic! You show that you understand neither ballads nor babes! Of course, there were many words that escaped me, that I interpreted in a way to make you smile, but is not poetry great in proportion as it is obscure1? Where have you been all these years? H a v e you learned nothing since the captivity of Israel? W h e n one knows all of a thing, as you do, he has become incapable of pure literary enjoyment. Become a child again, or keep your infamous opinions to yourself ! Yes! I am proud to say that there were scores of words which I failed to understand, but a child at such moments, even while suffering gobs of emotion, preserves an inspirational lucidity, of which you, O critic, are innocent! H e defines luminously, poetically, the obscure words, carries on a running comment among the rapid lines, and the wings of his

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imagination brush those of the ancient poet in an equal flight. Mr. Jenkins shone with particular brilliance when he recited before a roomful of guests. He was a large, florid man and, as I remember, somewhat bald. It required only an instant for his eyes, countenance, and figure to assume the proper aspect of guilt or suffering innocence. H e could freeze his audience with terror in three seconds. Sometimes, as he acted out the story, the women wept, the men coughed, the children sobbed. Before commencing a ballad, Mr. Jenkins hissed out the title from between his teeth, in a noble aside. I can see him now in one of his famous ballads, whose title he gave as "Edward Hedward." H e came slinking into the room, armed with a cane. The ladies and we children shivered. H e advanced slowly, turned his head nobly to one side, hissed "Edward Hedward," and, as nearly as I recall the story, he said—but this I will tell some other time. One beautiful Sunday I returned from church and Sunday School in a pleasant mood, for at church they had sung one of my favorite hymns, the one about the concentrated cross-eyed bear, while at Sunday School I had marched from triumph to triumph in replying to such questions as "Where is Jerusalem?" "At what age did Moses die?" "How many times was Jacob married?" "What did Joshua do to the sun and moon?" "Where did Ruth glean and why?"

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FOR HELOISE

Dinner not being ready, I went out into the yard, a n d there I saw Heloise on the other side of the fence. She was dressed entirely in white. She beckoned her slave to a place in the fence where two pickets had warped asunder. She stuck her impudent features through the opening, fixed me with her eye, a n d the Queen of Sheba lived again. A cork-screw curl blew across her nose from time to time. She commenced in her usual style: "Come here, you Egyptian idolator! you mangy c a t ! you moon-faced shrimp! If you say the word, I'll crawl under the fence and mop u p the garden with you!" The idolator remained silent. H e did not know what a shrimp was. H e felt embarrassed. She continued after a moment: " Y o u piece of dough! I'm tempted to come right over and chew your ears off!" I suffered from this added insult, but not because its metaphor was mixed: I understood perfectly what she meant. And then she spoke winged words which I did not understand, but which none the less made me feel the depths of female scorn: "You ain't no true knight!" I did not know what a knight was, but the only thing for me to do was to deny the allegation. I did so: "I am!" " Y o u ain't!" "I am!"

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"You ain't! If you was, you'd burn for me! So there!" By sheer female genius she had driven me into a corner. To what dangers men are exposed! How frail is human happiness! how like unto grass cast into the oven! Only three minutes ago, I had been free and happy! Now, after having been cruelly humiliated, I stood condemned to burn something! What was a true knight supposed to burn? The house? I glanced at it. Burn our house? Impossible, not even for the Queen of Sheba! The stable? Perhaps. The wood-shed? the chicken coop? Perhaps. Heloise continued to fix me with her implacable eye. "I will burn for you," I said. "When?" "Whenever you please." "What'll you burn?" "The stable." "All right! I'll see if you're a true knight!" Then our dinner bell! As I walked toward the house, there shone about me the same soft sunlight as half an hour before, yet what a difference! Have you ever, my reader, seen the peace of your life disappear in the twinkling of an eye? The small boy who entered the house and sat down at table bore on his shoulders the weight of Mt. Sinai. O succulent roast, O new potatoes, O radishes, O doughnuts, O dumplings, what could you say to me now! After dinner, the small boy passed through the kitchen, put some matches into his pocket, and

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walked slowly toward the stable. T o burn or not to burn, that was the question. H e had always been taught to keep his promise: he had promised! H e entered the dark, cool stable. T h e horses and the cow were in Cook's pasture. Again the terrible struggle. Should he do the deed? H e stepped out into the sunlight, still undecided. H e saw at an upper window of the Jenkins house the pitiless face of Heloise. She was watching the stable, she was watching! She was the audience, the public, the Hebrew prophets—she was posterity, everything. The small boy slipped back into the stable, climbed into a manger, struck a match and set fire to the hay and stubble. H e leaped out of the manger, his face full of smoke. In an instant he recognized that he had committed a crime, that E v e had again been active. H e rushed out of doors, filled his lungs with air to cry " f i r e ! " but could not. N o ! he would extinguish the fire himself or would perish! T h e manger was burning. T h e flames would soon reach the hay in the loft. H e saw in the glare a bucket partly filled with water. It was heavy, but not for his arms. H e threw the water on the fire, seized a horse blanket which was hanging in the stall, and climbed into the manger to do or die. O h ! the flames! the smoke! A t one moment, it seemed that he must give up and let himself sink d o w n ; then he thought of the bluebirds and their nest of young ones in the box on top of the stable, and his fury saved him. W h e n the fire was at last put out, the

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boy had lost his eye-lashes, eye-brows, and the hair below the circle formed by his little round felt hat. His face and hands were covered with blisters. He ran to the well and pumped a full bucket of water to make doubly sure that no spark remained. Then came a tempest of sobs and tears. H e crawled into the cool cornbin and passed there the interminable hours of the afternoon. Oh! the burning of his skin, the pain in his swollen eyes and in his breast! The shame, the humiliation! If he could only die! and through his sobs ran the names "Mama! Papa!" Finally, after what seemed to him years, he knew that the sun was setting. Would it ever be dark enough for such a badly singed boy to reach his room unseen? If there were only some friend, to break the news! And then he thought of good Mr. Queste. Mr. Queste was a kind-hearted old Frenchman whose cow the small boy often drove up from Cook's pasture. Thus it was that a half hour later, Mr. Queste smilingly held the back gate open for Belle and her singed companion. The boy at first tried to smile as usual, then threw himself sobbing into the old man's arms. How gentle, how kind he was! How he held the boy! how he hushed him with his quaint speech! Then motherly Mrs. Queste came, and the boy's crying commenced all over again. Little by little, they got the story from him. The old people looked at each other and exchanged a few words in French. "Do you know what my wife is saying?" inquired 70

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Mr. Queste. " She says that you are a hero, and you are!" "What is a hero1?" "A hero is a brave man who does his duty at any cost. But, come! Let's milk Belle, then we will takei you home and tell your papa and mama that you are a hero." Mrs. Queste had run to the house. She returned, bringing a cup of cream, some flour, and some cloths. In a moment she dressed my burns. She talked to me all the time in the most charming manner, and convinced me that my complexion and hair would be all the prettier for the singeing. As they led me home through the friendly darkness, I inquired: "Mr. Queste, is a hero more than a knight*?" "Seven thousand times more! Every hero is a knight, with lots of things thrown in." My sponsors found no difficulty in convincing my family that I was both a hero and a knight, but this did me no good in the eyes of Heloise. In her estimation, I had sunk too low for contempt. No one ever fell farther, swifter, and harder than I did in her opinion. "Singed cat" became my name, and calls of "Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!" could be heard twenty times a day from across the border. Then the unexpected happened. The Jenkins family removed to the other side of the village. I saw Heloise climb to the top of the last load of furniture, and seat herself in an armchair. She was sucking a large stick of striped candy.

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"Good-by, little shrimp! Good-by, Kitty," she called almost graciously. "Come down to see me, so that I can kick you round!" Then, as the wagon started: "Good-by, Kitty!" "Good-by, Heloise!"

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TENNESSEE

M R . D A D D Y — I never knew any other name for him —was the happiest man in the world. The reasons for this were not hard to see. In the first place, he rented a little farm on the sunny side of nowhere, about half a mile from our house. You have rarely seen a more restful habitation. The tumble-down cabin, the barn that had been, the very haystacks and piles of straw, all looked to the south with engaging cordiality. T o own such a farm would have made M r . Daddy unhappy. T o rent it, left him a king. In the second place, Mr. Daddy's wife was the joiliest, rosiest, most even-tempered woman in seven counties. A simple "Good morning!" called to a passerby as she stood bare-armed on her threshold, was better than presenting him a peach cobbler or a pumpkin pie. Never in all my wanderings have I seen her superior for geniality. In the third place, Mr. Daddy possessed what we children knew to be a slice right out of heaven in the person of more than eight devoted dogs. I know that there were more than eight, because I could only count that far, and when I had counted with

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difficulty eight rolling, rollicking dogs, mostly pups, there remained plenty of uncounted tails wagging about. And such dogs! N o t the degenerate counterfeits which one sees in cities, but dogs that were dogs! They were polite, genial, loving, and loyal. T o caress their silken, floppety ears was a delight. They had sufficient hound blood in them to render them perfect, and they varied somewhat in color, just enough to rest the eye. Their voices sounded sweeter to me than the tinkling cymbals about which the preacher talked. It was an education in morals to play with them, to look into their kindly eyes and open, generous countenances, full of delicate emotions. Think of possessing more than eight of these magnificent animals, and of having them worship the ground you walk on! N o wonder Mr. Daddy was happy! Finally, Mr. Daddy was happy because he had the largest, finest family of children in the world, and all girls at that. History mentions several fine families, from Cornelia's down, and you may have seen some of them; but rest assured, you never saw a family of children equal to his! How many there were of these lovely, ragged, bare-footed little girls, I do not know. They were much, much more numerous than the dogs. I know this, because each girl boasted of owning half a dog. I tried to count these girls many times. I stepped up on the back porch and surveyed the universe of calico dresses, dusty feet, brown legs and arms, tawny faces, and hang-

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ing hair. I then commenced painfully to count by eights, but it was no use. Nor is it certain that Mr. and Mrs. Daddy knew how many children they had. Indeed, the three youngest, the babies, had no names. Mr. Daddy said that they were on the waiting list, and if you want to know what he meant by that, I can tell you. The girls were named after the States of the Union. Every name of a State which had a dash of femininity about it was utilized, but Mr. and Mrs. Daddy drew the line at the Territories. Hence the waiting list. I understand now the neighbors' laughing comment on Mr. Daddy's pretended wrath at the slowness of the administration at Washington. He affected to clamor for the admission of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Dakota. He favored admitting at once all these Territories, saying that he needefl them. It is of course impossible for me to recall the names of more than a limited number of these lovely girls. I remember, however, romping with Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. There were many more, it seems to me. Virginia was the oldest. It will be noticed that Massachusetts was the only girl from New England. The touch of perfection in this charming family lay in the fact that the oldest children seemed to be no older than the average. They still made dolls of

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TENNESSEE

corn husks, played in the dust and sand, tripped the rope, danced like fairies when their daddy twanged the guitar of an evening under the elm tree, or hoppity-skipped down to the spring, singing tra-la-la with the five-year-olds. Their hands and feet were no browner than those of their younger sisters, nor their hearts less tender. Nor did Mr. Daddy appear much older than his flock. H e wore, it is true, a long, silky beard, but that did not add to his age, which seemed to have stopped at ten years. His potatoes, corn, pumpkins, melons grew of their own accord, hence he passed much time about the house, or down at the "branch," or wandering through the woods. H i s triumph was to take his guitar, start a jolly dance tune, stamp his way with exaggerated movements toward the elm tree, and see his dusky darlings follow, keeping time. There they danced, waving their arms, striking the grass with noiseless feet. While dancing, they neither spoke nor laughed, but moved silently, like young foxes playing in the forest. W h e n the music stopped, they trooped about him, clamoring for more, and the dogs, which had been bounding and running about during the dance, commenced to bark joyously. Mr. Daddy often gave way before the popular appeal, and joined the frolic, playing and dancing at the same time. Nearly every Saturday afternoon I danced with these charming fellow savages, or played with them in front of the house or among the scattered trees of

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the orchard. You may suppose that, since I was the only boy, they received me with some of the honors due to Solomon. Error! Both girls and dogs treated me just like one of themselves. My first question on arriving was usually, "Where is Tennessee1?" Tennessee was probably about seven, but seemed neither younger nor older than her sisters. Perhaps her eyes appeared a shade blacker, her tiny hand somewhat more authoritative. And such a hand! Later, at various periods, I have thought myself an expert in hands, but I have never seen one more worthy of marble. As I remember, its beauty was too great for bronze or ivory, and matched the perfection of her valiant brown arm. What good fortune it was to cut my foot, then feel her motherly little arm round my neck while she dried my tears, and see her prepare and apply a poultice of mud and plantain leaves! One sunny afternoon I started as usual for Mr. Daddy's. As I drew near, I was surprised to see neither girls nor dogs, to hear not the slightest sound. The doors were closed, and oh, the desolate, shut windows! With a frightened voice, I called, "Tennessee! Where are you, Tennessee?" There was no answer; then I knew that they were gone, that I should never see her again, for if she had been there, she would have answered. I sat down on the edge of the porch. In the dust were visible as usual the multitudinous tracks of 77

TENNESSEE

children and dogs. I could see near the end of the bare trodden earth, where the grass began, the rectangle which she and I had marked off as "our farm" the last time we had played together. She always preferred to be on the outskirts, and I shared her taste. Finally, I noticed the print of wheels close to the porch in the hard earth. I ran to the barn: the horses were gone, the cow was gone—they had evidently all gone! I returned to the porch and looked in at the windows. The rooms had been neatly swept and washed, and were entirely empty. I should never see good Mrs. Daddy there again, nor Tennessee, nor any of her sisters, nor the dear dogs, nor Mr. Daddy! I have never felt such an impression of desolation in any human dwelling, not even the afternoon which some years later I passed in the empty Gillis mansion, reputed to be haunted, and haunted it was. In what month did Tennessee disappear'? Probably in late September, for I remember that the persimmons in the tree by the gate had begun to turn golden. I sat for a long time on the edge of the porch. Finally, a chipmunk ran out from under the house, paused an instant to look at me, scampered up a tree, and began to scold at me. A terror seized me; I started for home, sobbing as I ran. I lay down in the warm hay on the sunny side of one of our haystacks, and probably cried myself to sleep, for when I heard Mama calling supper, it was

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after sundown. I washed my face at the well and entered the presence of the family. Fortunately for me, we had a guest, a hardy blueshirted farmer from Clay County. I soon found myself listening to what he was saying, especially when he commenced to tell a long story of a sad event which had taken place in his district fifteen years before: the death of a young affianced bride. She was the most beautiful girl in Clay County, and had selected her intended husband from among forty suitors. H e gave a long description of her, of her parents and grand-parents, and traced the family through Kentucky back to Virginia. He then described the farm where she was born and the farm where she and her husband-to-be had planned to live. I became more and more interested. When the stranger had finished this part of his story and was about to take up the history of the family of the prospective bridegroom, Papa said, "In the midst of life, we are in death." Then there commenced a conversation which made a deep impression on me. My parents did most of the talking, while our guest devoted his energies to the supper, until growing astonishment suspended his activities. Mama maintained, with an eloquence which increased as she spoke, that there were worse things for a woman than to die young and beautiful. "Take the case of the poor young bride. She will always be remembered as she was and as you, after

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fifteen years, describe her—rosy and beautiful, sweet-tempered and kind. If she had lived, she might have become old, homely, and perhaps crabbed. There would possibly have been misunderstandings with her neighbors, or even with her husband. There might have been quarrels. Then, too, she might have become sickly, thin—thin as a rail " "Or fat," interrupted Papa. "Too fat even—immense," said Mama. "Stoop-shouldered " "Gray-haired " "Bald " "Rheumatic " "Asthmatic " "Neuralgic " "Afflicted with quinsy " "With shingles " "With a hacking cough " "Toothless, or nearly so " "Sharp-chinned '' "With bristles " ' 'Watery-eyed '' "Grisly-faced " "Pinch-nosed " "Afflicted with divers maladies " The stranger from Clay County sat as if petrified, with his fork in the air. As for me, I felt such horror that my hair seemed to stand on end. Was this the close of an ordinary life"? Would Tennessee become like that? Was it for the best that she had been 80

TENNESSEE snatched from me while still a little g i r l ? W o u l d her sisters too become hags, and the dogs, shadows'? A n d M r . and M r s . D a d d y , what would they bec o m e ? I could eat nothing more. T h e flame of the l a m p seemed to be sinking under the green shade. I fixed staring eyes on the darkest corner of the room, and saw come s l o w l y out of the shadows a dance of grisly hags, where I recognized the distorted, hideous forms and faces of Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia, K e n t u c k y a n d — t o m e — i n n u m e r a b l e others. B u t there were t w o little figures which danced face to face, their brown arms tossing in the air, their eyes fixed on each other. A n d still they danced, for ever and for ever children, and one of them was beautiful. N o r has any effort of the imagination, aided by silent forests or distant cities or lonely midnights, enabled me to age b y one hour that sweet face or that tiny form. Since I thus profit by a puissant mirage, it is m y hope, Tennessee, that b y this time your eyes have been touched b y the greater magic which passeth all understanding, and that from a safe resting place you behold your sisters, yourself and me, dancing, eternally young, t o your D a d d y ' s guitar.

81

MOCKING BIRD give much to see and hear Mocking Bird again. Y e s ! I would give more than you can reasonably suppose, and it would be worth a great price, f o r none but a prodigious sorcerer could provide me that pleasure—a sorcerer who could rejuvenate me to the age of eleven, and with me a band of seven or eight companions, some of whom have ceased to care about the coming and going of seasons. I WOULD

Bare-foot country boys we were, shaggy of hair, timid of eye before strangers, with no higher ambition than to eat as rapidly as possible a good dinner, or to go swimming, or attend the County Fair, or the picnic at Lone Jack, or the one at Pink Hill. T h e most timid of us all was Mocking Bird. That is the name his parents, Bob and M y r t l e Cheney, gave him, and we knew him by none other. Bob was much of a wag, and rarely laughed, except when playing with his only child. M y r t l e was a gaunt, large-boned woman, sad of j a w , and with heavy, flat hands intended f o r domestic use. Bob devoted as much time to the education of Mocking Bird as would have sufficed f o r six children. J u d g e f o r yourself.

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When Mocking Bird was two years old, the serious part of his education began. Several times a day, his father placed him on his knee and said something like this: " W a g your head . . . Wink your eyes . . . Open your mouth . . . Wiggle your ears . . . Mew . . . Bark . . . Sneeze . . . Laugh . . . That's a little angel! Myrtle, just look at him! Ain't he a beauty! Now, once again: W a g your head," etc. "There, you little darlin'! If your daddy 'd had half your ability, h e ' d ' v e amounted to somethin', but he never had no ability and no education." I assure you that, while at the beginning Mocking Bird could neither wiggle his ears nor sneeze to order, Bob, by sandwiching between visible and easy functions the wiggling and sneezing, led him by degrees to wiggle his ears and sneeze to order. T h a t is, he taught him a harmonious development of all the organs of the head. You will see at once that, although Bob Cheney had received no education, he had through sheer genius arrived at the secret of all education—to proceed from the known to the unknown, from the possible to the impossible, from the real to the non-existent. By his third birthday if not sooner, Mocking Bird could sneeze perfectly and inerrantly to order, and wiggle his ears, which, it must be admitted, were viggleable, being large and generous, like his mother's. Thus far did Bob Cheney push into uncharted regions the science of education! At the proper moment, Bob introduced into

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Mocking Bird's training the principle of rhythm. Oh! what a wonderful thing is rhythm! It gives you a conviction that you are infallible—it makes you infallible. You feel that the universe is with you, that nothing can happen until you finish your beats. Accordingly, you do your task well. You take plenty of time. You produce a masterpiece. When I have mentioned rhythm, I have mentioned the dance. Bob Cheney believed in the dance, in its eternal principle. He believed especially in the square dance, which was the only dance he knew. His lessons to Mocking Bird took on more and more the semblance of a well-ordered, rhythmic whole, of a square dance, if you will—a sublime and magnified cotillion, in which the noble organs of the head saluted their partners, advanced gravely, "crossed over," chassed, balanced, swung their partners, and returned gracefully to their position of rest. What a marvelous machine is man, especially his head, when the bat of an eyelid, the flop of an ear can make the beholders see a roomful of dancers and hear the thump of heavy feet, the cries of the dance-caller, the squeak of the fiddle! The day came when the constellations of heaven could teach nothing to a freckle-faced, bare-foot boy. He knew their secrets. H e was beauty and harmony and sublimity and numbers and music and space and time. He was Mocking Bird. Yet it would not be right to leave the impression that Mocking Bird possessed natural beauty. N o ; his

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was moral beauty, the result of education. To view him when not in action, he appeared insignificant — a long face and a long head, especially if seen in profile; a long, melancholy nose; thinnish, drabcolored hair; sad, watery eyes; immense ears. Thus Mocking Bird in repose. But in action, what a change! His features awoke one by one, like windows in a tavern at nightfall. Unfortunately no record remains of a model lesson such as Bob gave his marvelous boy. The best that can be done at this late hour in history is for me to trust to memory. Let us take Mocking Bird as I remember him at about ten years of age, when he had attained the flower of perfection. The lesson is given in the open air, after the antique manner. It is four o'clock on a beautiful June day. The sun sifts down its glory through the imperceptible haze which covers an earthly paradise— recently stolen, it is true, from the Indians. Bob Cheney, according to foolish neighbors, should be plowing or hoeing, for, heaven knows, weeds are not lacking. But a feeling of higher duty actuates him. H e is a great man, much misunderstood. Three or four of us boys, among them Tommie Atkinson, the whistling wonder, son of G. Atkinson, lie sprawled on the grass. Hounds equally numerous lie sleeping in the sun. The cat and her kittens are washing their faces on the porch. Chickens strut about, conversing in low tones. Birds come and go on their eternal business, and the hum of bees is heard in the air.

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Nature feels that a change is about to take place, and it does, for Bob from his big chair under the elm has called Mocking Bird, who gets up from our midst and stands before him. "Attention, Mocking Bird!" cries Bob Cheney. The dogs raise their heads, the cats cease their toilet, the chickens pause with one foot in the air. All of these creatures say to themselves, " I T is going to commence again!" It commences. As Bob calls out the orders, Mocking Bird executes each one of them four times, keeping measure to unheard music. A less rhythmic, less beautiful soul could never have done it. "Nod your head . . . W a g your head . . . Right eye wink . . . Left eye wink . . . Both eyes wink . . . Eyes crossed . . . Open your mouth . . . Wag your jaw . . . Yawn . . . Sneeze . . . Pant . . . Yelp . . . WThine . . . Mew . . . Sigh . . . Smile . . . Wrinkle your nose . . . Ears wiggle . . . Chicken talk . . . Duck talk . . . Shake your scalp . . . Grand finally, all hands round!" At this last command, Mocking Bird begins the series again, doing each "stunt" once only. Then, the performance over, he lapses into passivity. He becomes an ordinary little boy, like the rest of us. Do not suppose that Mocking Bird's different feats were perfunctory, that they in any degree fell short of high art! When he yelped and whined, the hounds were moved to their marrow. The oldest and most hardened of them became puppies and whined

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for their mamas. The cats showed emotion when he mewed, while the chickens often answered his chicken talk, and the ducks recognized with pleasure their honest language in his quacks. His ears actually wiggled, his scalp shook, and as for his sneeze, it was profound, unavoidable, irretrievable, absolute—a sneeze that was a sneeze. "But," you say, "what has all this to do with a mocking bird?" Ah! I have been keeping that for the last, as Bob Cheney did! H e was constantly adding fringes to the beautiful tapestry of his boy's education. H e ended by adding music, for he had one of the best voices in the world for singing, and he knew it. W e now see him rise from his chair with the dignity of a great performer and take his place by the side of Mocking Bird. H e begins to sing the song which for two generations caused more marriages and brought back more wandering husbands than all other songs of the world combined—the wonderful, the unique, the adored "Mocking Bird." The words are nothing, and the air does not in the least resemble any notes of the sweet bird, but you should have heard Bob Cheney sing the song: "I'm dreaming now of Hally, Sweet Hally, sweet H a l l y . . ." O h ! power of music! imagination of children! W e had never known a girl named Hally. No one in our great valley had known one. W e knew noth-

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ing as yet of the tortures of love. We had only vague ideas of dreaming about a dead sweetheart, but we had heard a thousand times the ravishment of mocking birds, and we were listening to the prodigious beauty of Bob Cheney's voice. If a little girl named Hally had come in a covered wagon to live amongst us, we should all have fallen in love with her, no matter how homely she might have been. Yet I have not described all the embellishments of the song as Bob often produced it. We boys were allowed to join in the refrain, but what was far more important, Tommie Atkinson, the marvelous Tommie Atkinson, who could whistle the heart out of a thrush or robin, our Tommie, whistled his wonderful accompaniment to the music of "Mocking Bird." And then there was the part of Mocking Bird himself—Mocking Bird Cheney—the part which had ended by giving him his name. Ah! you would have laughed to see him, and perhaps he would have spoiled the song for you as a thing of beauty! But that would be because you have not been educated to the level of perfect art. Here is what he did. He took his place by the side of his daddy, at the other side of whom now stood Tommie. At the close of every line of the song,—after the words Hally and valley, for example—he filled out the measure with a profound, honest, perfect sneeze! This sneeze counted as two beats in the music, or if, as I suspect, you know little of music, as two syllables, and it was in harmony with the preceding note. The song,

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then, went somewhat thus, although no printed plan can render Tommie's whistling accompaniment, which is not indicated: "I'm dreaming now of Hally, KTCHOO, Sweet Hally, KTCHOO, sweet Hally, KTCHOO, I'm dreaming now of Hally, KTCHOO. M y thought of her is one that never dies, KTCHOO,'' etc. Sometimes a dog, carried away by nostalgic longings for paradise, added a whine or a little yelp to the melody. Frequently Myrtle came out on the porch and listened with folded arms. The scene was idyllic. But we did not always have the pleasure of Bob Cheney's company, and thereby hangs a tale. What is the use of being an eleven-year-old country boy, if you can't go swimming on a hot July afternoon, especially when you live only two miles from the grateful coolness of Brush Creek1? On such a day, six of us glided through Bob Cheney's timber, found Mocking Bird hoeing corn, and abstracted him. Bob too would have gone with us, if we could have found him, for he often did. We were accompanied by three or four hounds and a handsome pup. It was a soft-padding band of boys and dogs that walked through the tender grasses and on the green moss, under the great forest which stretched south-

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ward to Brush Creek. W e reached the bottom lands, where the shade of the wild grapevines, pawpaw bushes and willows lay dense, and where the moist, black earth felt cool to our pads. Instead of stopping at the usual swimming hole, we went down the creek half a mile to a place where an old man had told us that in earlier times the little Indian boys had learned to swim. An ideal place it was, with a dense screen of willows on the near bank, and on the farther, a grove of enormous sycamores. A lovely time was had. Finally, when we had been in the water about two hours, little Tommie Atkinson began to whistle the sweetest song in the world, and in a moment Mocking Bird floundered out of the stream and stood dripping against the willow background. Tommie too left the stream and took his place at Mocking Bird's right, while Jimmie Sinclair, the best voice among us, clambered up the bank and stood equally wet at his left. The rest of us remained sitting in the water up to our shoulders, near the opposite shore, facing the musicians. The dogs sat scratching off fleas under a big sycamore. The scene had become still more idyllic. The song began, and the virgin forest round us listened with ravishment. At times one of the dogs yelped softly: "I'm dreaming now of Hally, KTCHOO, Yelp," etc. 90

MOCKING BIRD W e who were seated in the water joined in on the chorus. The scene was becoming every moment more idyllic. At the close of the second stanza, just as we were finishing the chorus: " H e ' s singing where the weeping willows w a v e , " the willow branches behind the three performers suddenly parted, M y r t l e Cheney appeared, seized Mocking Bird in her powerful arms, turned him across her knee and commenced to spank him with her big, flat hands! Tommie and J i m m i e fell into the water, and abandoned Mocking Bird to his fate. W e of the chorus looked on in terror. T h e spanking lasted a long time—too long, we thought, and we were judges. Imagine hearing our dear companion, our sweet Mocking Bird, calling to M y r t l e in the voice we knew and loved, "Scatter the licks, M a w , scatter the l i c k s ! " imagine hearing that, and being unable to come to his rescue! H o w had she been able to f o l l o w us through the great woods, where our bare feet had l e f t no trace4? Love will find a way. . . . All things come to an end. M y r t l e finally dropped Mocking Bird on the bank, stepped slowly backward and disappeared behind the willow screen. She was gone. . . . As for us, not a word was spoken. Mocking Bird 91

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slipped on his poor little shirt and his faded overalls, which were too big for him. H e took his straw hat and stood fingering it a moment. A queer attempt to smile trembled at the corners of his large mouth, then he turned, parted the willows and disappeared.

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C O M E out of the darkness, Camilla, and tell me again the story of Sans-Souci ! I would call you by your married name if I knew it, and this would be more seemly in one who, a small country boy, listened to you fifty years ago, you whose dark hair was already turning to silver about the temples. It was a warm summer night when you told us of SansSouci. You sat on a bench under the big locust. It was in bloom, and as I lay on the grass at your feet, I saw above me your face against the high canopy of fern-like leaves and white clusters of flowers, and I saw, above the softly-moving canopy, the endlessly deep sky. Do you remember? Come out of the darkness, Camilla, and tell me again the story of Sans-Souci ! I shall recognize your voice, even if it comes to me mingled with the sighing of long grasses. No? You will not, or you can not? You have forgotten the story? Then let me tell you what I remember of it; perhaps little by little the memory of past times and the lineaments of long-buried friends may return to you, and you can tell it all to me again. Listen to me, then, Camilla, from out the darkness!

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You were visiting in our neighborhood, and you came from Kentucky. You it was who first taught me to like that country, and, listening to you, I felt that it must be beautiful and kindly. You lived on a large plantation near a turnpike, and the next plantation, more than two miles away, was SansSouci. At both places lived many slaves and horses and cows, hounds, chickens, ducks, guinea-fowl, and peacocks, and at Sans-Souci lived your dearest friend, Lucy. Do you remember'? You and Lucy frequently visited each other, remaining days at a time. One pleasant Sunday night in the spring, a long, long time ago, you were at Sans-Souci, and Lucy's sweetheart, whose name was Tom, came to take her out driving. He came in his narrow-seated buggy, and the horse's name was Moonbeam. You remained behind, Camilla, standing under the big elm in front of the verandah, waving to them and calling laughing warnings. And Lucy was dressed in white, and Tom in black. And you stood under the tree and the moonlight fell about you. Do you remember? They returned in an hour, talking and laughing. You came out of the house and stood on the verandah, and you saw Tom help Lucy to alight from the buggy by catching her in his arms. Then old Bob came round the corner of the house and said, "Massa Tom, let me hitch Moonbeam." 94

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But Tom and Lucy paid no attention to him. They were running across the lawn, leading Moonbeam and trying to find a tree small enough to hitch him to. A strange notion, for there were a dozen hitching-posts, but sweethearts, you said, are that way. You saw them go to tree after tree, and Tom, from the farther side, passed his arm round the trunk as far as he could, and Lucy from her side stretched out her arms, and their fingers touched, but the strap was too short. And sometimes the tree was so large that their fingers touched on one side only, but which side you did not say. Now, the lawn at Sans-Souci was immense. It had fifteen acres, or was it more? And they went further and further among the great trees and their words and laughter became fainter and fainter, and finally you could see only, from time to time, the glint of a white dress. Then it was that you sat down in a chair on the verandah and fell asleep, and you dreamed a dream. In this dream, they went on and on, an immense distance, and hours passed. You walked out to find them. You kept calling as you walked, and you tried to follow the track of the buggy in the grass, but finally there was no more track. And at last you came to a very big tree, behind which they might have been hiding to plague you, and you walked clear around it, calling them, but there came no answer. Then you felt that something terrible was going to happen—that they were never going to return. And then you awoke shivering

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T H E TREES OF SANS-SOUCI and went up-stairs to bed. And as for T o m , you never saw him again, for he went to the war within a week. H e was killed in battle, and when his notebook and watch were brought back to Lucy, she carried them up to her room and shot herself with a pistol. D o you remember'? Come out of the darkness, Camilla, and tell me again the story of Sans-Souci !

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I HAD found it—the Mormon Road—in one of my lonely walks, but the most aged settlers could not tell me what it was, except Mr. Louis Turgeon, an intelligent and charming old Frenchman, who had married the daughter of Gabriel Prudhomme. W e children loved to visit their hospitable brick house. He had heard about the Road when he first removed to that region, a young man. H e told me that all the beautiful country around us, including his own rich farm, had belonged to the Mormons, who had robbed the Indians of it; that the Gentiles had united against the Mormons, surrounded them without warning, and seized all the roads. The Mormons made a stand near Independence, but a tornado suddenly swept through their camp, a tornado which also passed through our own district. Traces of its havoc could still be seen on the Holloway farm, where scores of great trees stood mutilated, shorn of their tops in that terrifying storm. The southern line of this devastated zone seems to have passed what is now the intersection of Linwood Avenue and Prospect Avenue, Kansas City. The Mormons, attacked immediately after the tornado, had met de97

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feat, and had fled in our direction—that is, toward Westport. Finding all the roads held by the enemy, they had cut their way through the virgin forest. This way ran due south, down the hills to Brush Creek, and up the opposite hills to the prairies. It was this way which I had discovered. It is of course impossible for me to tell now just where this road commenced, but it ran somewhere within a mile west of the street on which the Linwood school stands. W e children all knew the beautiful Mormon Spring, which boiled up a few rods west of where the old Holloway house stood until a degenerate owner had it torn down, and we often dug up charred wood where once had been a Mormon mill, a few rods north of the present Spring Valley Park. Our imagination was still further fired by our finding some Mormon papers in the attic of an old house. Needless to say, my sympathies lay with the unfortunate Mormons, hence my frequent lonely journeys to the "Mormon Road." Imagine a strip about thirty feet wide, where all the trees were smaller than those of the great forest on either side. Not only were they smaller, but their foliage was of a paler green. It was my fortune to discover, near the top of the hill, an immense basswood tree, whose trunk inclined slightly over the strip which had once been the Mormon Road. The bass-wood did not have a branch for perhaps twenty feet, but from its fork descended an ancient, still vigorous grapevine, up which I used to climb with

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clinging hands and bare feet. From the first fork, it was possible to climb to a second, which hung well out over the Mormon Road. The main trunk of the tree had begun to decay at this point, and a great horned owl had found there a deep niche for his nest, long since abandoned. In the niche could still be seen the bones of mice and other small animals. It was easy for me to enlarge the niche, by digging into the rotten wood, and I thus arranged a seat as comfortable as an armchair. I used to sit for hours in this nook under the forest eaves, my feet hanging in the leafy sunlight. Below me ran a Mormon Road such as probably no other human eyes ever beheld—a magnificent corridor of leaves. This amazing corridor ran straight down the hill to Brush Creek, and u p the opposite hills to the great southern prairies, whose horizon line quivered and danced in the summer heat. Long sighs of a cool breeze passed almost continuously up this hollow way, accompanied by a soft bending of delicate branches and a multitudinous sound of leaves. Birds, especially wild pigeons, passed up and down it, as men use a beaten road. Many times these birds flew so close to me that I heard the whistle of their wings. After a few moments in this leafy heaven, I became almost as much a part of the wild solitude as a tree, a branch, a leaf. I heard, as it were without hearing, the intimate sounds of the woods—the twitter of birds near the nest, the chatter of squir-

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rels, the fall of a dead branch or of an acorn— and I saw without surprise some of the lofty secrets of the forest. As I sat there dreaming, it seemed to me that nothing would ever be different—that I should remain seated there for ever, that the trees would continue unchanged through all eternity, that the gossamer swaying in the sun from a near-by leaf would sway there for a million years. . . . Finally, however, a shiver ran over me. It had grown cooler, and in the depths below me, shadows were gathering. Then, the perilous descent and the long walk home. The visit to the Mormon Road which remains clearest in my memory took place in my sixteenth summer, probably late in August. It would be difficult to forget that summer, because it was the first since the covering snows had known me to be an orphan. The season, with its paling verdure, fitted my loneliness. I had sat in my nook for perhaps an hour, plunged in gloom of bereavement and dread of the future, when the sound of young voices reached me. Never had I seen a human being in that wilderness. There soon came into sight a boy and a girl of hardly more than my age. They walked with their arms around each other's waist, and as they walked they laughed and chattered in a language unknown to me. I had never seen them before, and was not to see them again. She wore no hat, and her black hair hung in braids down her back. Almost at the foot of my tree, they stopped, looked at each other lOO

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without laughing or speaking, then embraced and kissed. M y face burned. Did such things exist V Could they exist? After that kiss, the couple started on, still without speaking. I watched them cross the Mormon Road, disappear and reappear and disappear through the screen of branches. And still my cheeks burned. A few moments later, there passed by me in playful flight a pair of wild pigeons, touching and billing as they flew. I followed with my eyes their veering, happy course down the long corridor. An hour perhaps went by, and still I sat there, and words began to pass strangely through my mind, words that answered one another, that jingled, that caressed. From remembrance of that harmony of words which you, O lonely boy, repeated to yourself so often in the days that followed, I, a man and an artisan in words, transcribe your melody in accordance with the cunning of books, and here it is: THE

MORMON

ROAD

The wind is weighing the oriole's nest Where elm-tree steelyards swing, And counting the spotted eggs that rest Under the oriole's wing. Like to the sound of myriad sheaves Which many arms upraise, A multitudinous voice of leaves Sighs through the forest maze . . . ioi

T H E MORMON

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One little, two little Indian boys, Where have they gone with their charming noise'? The dusky girls and their dusky mates ? The forest wonders . . . The forest waits. . . . The trees have taken the Mormon Road And raised on their finger-tips its load, Till I look adown from the forest eaves On a road of earth and a road of leaves. The road of earth is a road no more, And the road of leaves, a corridor Where long, long sighs of the breeze are heard, And the whistling wings of a passing bird. Along that earthen road one night, Sounded the desperate Mormon flight— Chopping of axes, trees a-crash, Plunging of horses neath the lash, The screams of women, oaths of men, And crack of rifles down the glen. But now the lazy sunlight sifts Among the lofty timber rifts. The hushed birds twitter, breezes sough, A squirrel jumps from an oaken bough, And here, of a leaf the prisoner, Sways in the sun a gossamer . . . One little, two little Indian boys, Where have they gone with their charming noise? The dusky girls and their dusky mates'? The forest wonders . . . The forest waits. . . .

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THE horror of that night was only increased by its beauty. Its remembrance to-day, after fifty years, is not exempt from terror. I should not care now to pass a summer moonlight night in the Wild Lands beyond Sniabar, not though I know that its beauty would not drive me insane, and that if a barking, coughing creature came down the valley in the uncounted hours after midnight, it would be only a ghost. For the barking man is dead—must be dead—these many years. My story? There is none to tell. Simply that a twelve-year-old boy found himself lost on a late August afternoon, so far lost that even his intelligent horse no longer knew at which point of the immense horizon his stable lay. The great ball of fire burned its way down through the haze of early autumn and disappeared among the stunted trees. Yet neither the boy nor the horse felt sure that where it disappeared marked the western zone, and what if it did? Were we east or west, north or south of home? Home! We should never know where it was! W e should never see it again! The hazy glow burned fainter. Its wings drew 103

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in and settled into the immense dreariness. Violet shades trailed dark shadows after them by invisible threads. It was night. Then a nappe of moonlight unrolled through the heavens and fell softly upon the earth. The last twitter of the birds had ceased. At times we heard a slight rustle among the dry leaves. I had stopped my horse, and we both listened and trembled together. I at last dismounted and led Billy into the open space under a stunted oak near the almost invisible path we had been following. I touched his warm neck, and laid my face against his. H e was breathing deeply yet noiselessly through distended nostrils. H e was all of a quiver. I looked into his great honest, frightened eyes. His ears moved swiftly back and forth, taking in, doubtless, multitudinous sounds which escaped me. It seemed many minutes that I stood there, holding his head and neck in my embrace, then I lay down at his feet, passing my arm through the bridle. I did not sleep. M y throat remained contracted with fear. I hardly breathed. A mocking bird began to sing softly, plaintively, from a dwarfed tree on the slope of the little valley. "Sweet! sweet! sweet!" he sang, and "dear! dear! dear!" then rang the medley of his calls, chirps, trills and riotings. Although all my life I had heard mocking birds singing by moonlight, I said to myself, " H e is gone m a d ! " And still he sang on, until . . . 104

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W h y had the bird stopped"? And why was B i l l y breathing more deeply through red nostrils? "Why h a d he half faced about, his head turned in terror u p the valley 1 ? F i n a l l y I too heard . . . I heard a sound which seemed to me the barking of a f o x , miles and miles away, yet I felt that the sound was not remote, that it came from some other animal than a f o x , and that it was drawing near. Nearer and nearer! yes, it was coming! B i l l y breathed deeper and deeper, and trembled like a man with the ague. T w o or three rabbits ran by in velvet-footed leaps. Then there loped noiselessly along the path a large, dark animal, probably a w o l f , hurrying down the Lands, in the same direction as the ghostly rabbits. Above us in the trees some birds fluttered suddenly out into the moonlight and fled a w a y from the grisly terror that was approaching. A l l living things seemed to be fleeing. W e too should have fled, except that we could not. T h e creature was only a few rods distant. It would pass along the path. Its barking was between a gasp and a cough, and came at intervals as regular as the emission of breath. I crouched behind a dense bush. B i l l y stood near me, but his shoulders and head were visible in the moonlight. N o w I distinguished at intervals of foliage and light, a dark figure which walked erect and appeared to be a man. It had long white hair that fell over its shoulders and a wild white beard which tossed and jerked with each cough. J u s t as it reached a plaque 105

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of open moonlight at the nearest point in the path, Billy gave a snort of horror. The ghastly thing stopped and looked toward us. It carried in one hand a heavy stick. Swinging limply at its belt were some rabbits, evidently newly slain. It stood barking at regular intervals, fixing Billy with haggard eyes. It was a man. A bear would have frightened us less. I was at one with the universal terror which men inspire in other animals, whose word for man means demon. The demon took one step toward us. Billy whirled in horror and tore away through the bushes and clumps, making off after the rabbits, the wolf, the birds. The coughing, ghastly monster rushed after him without perceiving me. If he had seen me, I should have expired under his presence. Billy's mad crashing plunged away across the Lands and the coughing, barking pursuit followed. The terrifying sounds became fainter and fainter and merged into silence. I lay as if dead. Then I rose and fled away from the mortal path . . . away at what seemed right angles to the line of Billy's flight. I fled after the manner I had learned from my wild playmates, noiselessly, swiftly, avoiding bushes and dead branches. I fled far and long, in terror of death, I fled for hours, then I hid in the hollow trunk of a tortured tree. I had picked up a ragged splinter of rock. I crouched with this in my hand, my face toward the opening. At last I fell asleep. The sun was high when I awoke. From what 106

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point had he risen? W h a t good would it have done me to know"? I slipped like a shadow among the stunted trees. I ate berries and acorns and drank deeply from springs. T h e great golden orb commenced again to sink down the pitiless sky. I was lost, doubly and hopelessly lost. I should never see m y family again. I wept like a baby. Again the premonitions of coming night. T h e soft, last flight of birds. A deeper silence. T h e glint of the last level rays. Where should I hide to die"? Then a whinny, the tramp of glad hoofs, and I saw B i l l y running toward me with head erect! H e caressed me with his soft face. O B i l l y ! you have been sleeping for forty years. O f your strong valiant bones not one is anything now but earth, yet I feel again the warmth of the dear neck I clasped, the caress of your honest face, the touch of your velvet nostrils! W i t h what sobs did I cling to your neck, with what kisses! W e should live or die together! W e passed a night of unmixed terror, in a dense clump of bushes. T h e same moonlight, the same noises, even to the late-night barking of the human horror. Fortunately, it was more remote this time, and passed at a distance. I finally fell asleep at Billy's feet. T h e next morning I was too weak to walk, but succeeded in mounting Billy from a fallen trunk. I sat faint and reeling in the saddle, allowing him to go where he wished. T h e appearance of the country began to change. A t last, we saw a poorly 107

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cultivated field of corn, beyond it, a cabin. We stopped in front of it. A man came to meet us. "Give Billy something to eat," I said, as I tried to dismount, and fell into his arms. The last thing I saw was a woman running toward us from the cabin. Then I knew nothing more.

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since Charley and I made on horseback that rash voyage from Westport to the Black Hills, we have felt that we understood something of French character. "Yet," you exclaim, "how can that desolate region have shown you anything connected with the French?" None the less, it is there that we saw what we later called the Canadian forest. Wait and you will understand! I shall not weary you with a description of our horses, of the heavy packs which creaked behind our saddles, of discomforts and dangers met. Suffice to say that we were young, and that we eagerly confronted the adventures of the almost limitless desert. At what is now the village of Milford, we said farewell to the last Palefaces whom we expected to see, a few families of pioneers, camping by some springs. We rode for nearly two days in a northwesterly direction over the ocean level of the alkali plains, and saw no living creatures, except herds of buffalos, villages of prairie dogs, a few rabbits and snakes, and, here and there, a small bird. Late in the afternoon of the second day, our eyes, which had become 109 EVER

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skilful in sweeping the distant circle of the horizon, perceived an object which grew and grew with our approach, until it proved to be a hut, half cabin, half dug-out. Near it were a wagon, a weatherstained tent, two horses grazing, and a man chopping wood. Charley and I looked at each other in astonishment to see a man chopping wood in a treeless desert, but we heard clearly the firm strokes of the ax, and once or twice, as we drew nearer, we saw the flash of its blade. Then came the ferocious barking of a dog. The bare-headed wood-chopper looked u p in amazement and sprang to seize a carbine which stood leaned against the side of the cabin. Our friendly salutes reassured him. H e called sharply to the dog in French, and stepping forward welcomed us in that language. In spite of his Canadian accent, the French which we had learned enabled us to understand a small part of what he said. Before we had time to dismount, his darkhaired young wife, with two children clinging to her, appeared in the doorway and looked at us with astonishment not unmixed with pleasure. The cheerful young French mother cooked supper for us in the open air, nor were her two boys the only ones to aid her, for Charley and I lent a hand. Then we brought from our packs delicacies which aroused enthusiasm—sugar, salt, cheese, and coffee. The young husband returned to his wood cutting. The rapid blows of his ax rang loud and clear in 110

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that strange place. Judging from the sound, the log was the dry trunk of a sycamore tree. M y appetite made me forget the wood chopping, and I was following with pleasure the preparations for supper, when Charley touched me on the arm and directed my eyes to the young Frenchman. He was striking the log -with the head of his ax! There was no doubt: regularly and powerfully the head of the ax descended on the resonant log, then rose, swung in the air, and descended again. Not a chip flew. Perhaps never in the strange history of men had a log been so treated. Our curiosity, however, was not to be satisfied until after supper, for at that moment the little wife said with a sweet smile, "Messieurs, vous etes servis!" W e all threw ourselves down on the warm earth at a distance from the fire of grass and faggots, and Charley and I enjoyed one of the most delightf u l meals we had ever eaten. W h e n our repast was well under way, Madame disappeared into the cabin with a bowl of broth. After supper, Charley and I pulled forth our tobacco pouches, to the pleasure of our host and the wonder of the brighteyed boys. After a while, their mother came and finished her supper. The sun by that time had disappeared in an ocean of crimson. In every direction stretched the level, limitless prairie. A hardly perceptible twilight commenced to rise from the earth and to close mysteriously, like the petals of a dusky* flower. W e seemed submerged in an impenetrable in

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zone, on the f a r side of silence. W e sat and smoked without speaking, until I had gathered a sheaf of French words to inquire of our host an explanation of his strange method of cutting wood. H e took no offence at m y question. H o w can I give you an idea of his explanation? Perhaps by translating its salient parts, its significant words, which we understood or divined. " W e from C a n a d a , " said he w i t h a pathetic gesture. "Seek mild c l i m a t e — M y father d y i n g of l u n g s — b a d a d v i c e — l o s t in d e s e r t — Father more s i c k — Spring of water h e r e — B u i l d c a b i n — Father beg return C a n a d a — D e l i r i u m — H i m in cabin there, sick, s i c k — M e go, horses, wagon, fifty miles to s t r e a m — c u t dead sycamore—bring h e r e — beat sycamore many times every day with head of a x — Deceive F a t h e r — H i m think him in forest of Canada, back there," and again the pathetic gesture. T e a r s came to our eyes when we understood suddenly the fragmentary story. As soon as I could control m y voice I inquired: " A n d w h a t will you do a f t e r — a f t e r , " but my sentence remained unfinished. H e replied: "Return Canada, a f t e r " — a n d his sentence too was l e f t uncompleted. Charley and I slept that night in the tattered tent, under the dome of a million stars. Soon after sunrise, we ate breakfast, replenished our supply of water, insisted on leaving some sugar, salt, and tobacco, and said adieu to the smiling group of four persons. T h e y wished us bon voyage and w a v e d their hands to us as we rode a w a y . T h e baked earth re112

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sounded under the hoofs of our horses. The prairie grass seemed to rise gradually behind us and soon concealed the children up to their shoulders. A few minutes later, all became invisible, then the cabin followed them, sinking into the immensity of the plain. "That is the greatest hero I ever expect to meet!" said I as we rode along. Charley did not answer for a while, then he said: "Do you know, it dawns on me that in France he would not be a hero at all—merely a typical Frenchman."

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Sawbuttee, come, Sawbuttee," called the sweet voice of Aunt Polly, with the indescribable break or quaver that you may have noticed in the voices of lovable women. How well that gentle voice expressed the character of the gray-haired woman who stood calling by the pasture bars! "Sawbuttee! Sawbuttee! Sawbuttee! Sawbuttee!" she called in a sort of cadence, and then was heard a crashing of branches among the pawpaws and alders in the bottom lands of the creek, and in a few moments a pretty, dark red cow with white trimmings came jumping and plunging out of the thicket. It was sunset, that is, milking time, in Linwood. Suddenly, from the other side of the hollow came the husky rasping of an old man's voice: "Hey! Sawbuttee! Hey! Sawbuttee! Sawbuttee! Sawbuttee !" It was Mr. Montgall—Col. Montgall, if you please—calling his mule. Just why Mr. Montgall should call his mule, one would have found it difficult to tell. In the first place, the mule Sawbuttee had never been known to pay attention to his master's call. In the second place, he found plenty to eat and drink in his succulent pasture. Then, again, 114 "COME,

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the name by which he had been raised was Jim. Two years ago his name had been changed, a result of the bitter dissension which divided Linwood into two camps. The dispute had spread even to the adjoining districts. Seven Oaks was divided into hostile groups, as was Goose Neck and the region beyond the Big Blue, nearly to Sniabar. This was the question: was Sawbuttee the name of a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, a male or a female? This is how the trouble originated. An itinerant elocutionist from Red Oak, Iowa, had given an entertainment—for money of course— at the Linwood school house. A fair-sized audience heard him. Some of the "numbers" were sung, but most were recited. From having heard Mr. Bompus for five consecutive seasons, I am able to remember at this late date some of his titles, such as "Curfew shall not ring to-night," "Polly Vaughan," "Devilish Mary," "The Boy and the Bumble Bee," "Seymour Wilson," "The Turk in his guarded Tent," "Beauchamp's Confession," "We have Met and We have Parted," "Thomas and fair Ellender," "The Maid of Prairie du Chien," "The Woman and the Devil," and—finally—"The Boy stood on the Burning Deck," or "Sawbuttee," as it became known among us: The boy stood on the burning deck When Sawbuttee had fled . . . Who was Sawbuttee? What was Sawbuttee, a man, 115

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a woman, a boy or a girl? T h a t was the question! There are communities, reposing in the lap of ease, to which this question would have been one of indifference. Not so Linwood! It was too noble, too eager to know the truth, too scrupulous in its historical fidelity! Linwood was too honest! It was all fish or all fowl. N o compromise ever tempted us! It is sometimes possible to tell where a revolution started, but ours seemed to break out everywhere. The trouble commenced on the way home from the school house. In at least a dozen families there was found to be disagreement as to the sex of Sawbuttee. Mr. Mahaffy, for example, said to his wife as he drove home, " T h a t miserable scoundrel Sawbuttee ought to have been shot!" Whereupon Sally Mahaffy, surprised, answered, " W h y ! Sawbuttee wasn't a man; she was the captain's daughter!" "Captain's daughter, nonsense!" " W e l l ! you'll see; she was the captain's daughter!" There you have it! T o see! In a score of families they would have given much to see, but how could they? Mr. Bompus had already started for Goose Neck and Independence. A letter was despatched to him at Red Oak, Iowa, but no answer came. Meanwhile, the situation was becoming more and more strained at Linwood. Nearly everyone except Mr. McDaniels, the school116

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master, took sides. At first there was little acrimony, but toward spring real animosities developed. Matters quieted down in the summer, only to blaze up in the late fall. Mr. Bompus had been invited to a return engagement for the winter. His daughter had written accepting. The December night of his second appearance was long remembered in Linwood. The little school house was jammed full. When as his last number he recited "Sawbuttee," one could have heard a mouse cough under the floor. There was not much applause; we were too deeply moved. Mr. Bompus seemed to understand, and repeated, without being asked, the entire poem: The boy stood on the burning deck When Sawbuttee had fled . . . "Who was Sawbuttee?" someone inquired. Mr. Bompus did not know, but promised to try to find out before his next appearance. There we were, left in suspense for another year! It was maddening. What a year that was! The cleavage ran deeper and deeper through the community. Neighbors sometimes ceased to speak, families were all but disrupted, marriage engagements counted as straws! Even we children at school took sides, and for the second time, perhaps, Sawbuttee caused the effusion of blood. Mr. Bompus returned for five consecutive seasons, but he never knew or never would tell who and what 117

SAWBUTTEE Sawbuttee was. Then came a tearful letter from his daughter announcing his death. A l a s ! we should never know! B y this time, the country-side was f u l l of cats, dogs, ducks, chickens, cows, mules, children, and even tame crows, who, irrespective of sex, were named Sawbuttee. T h a t is why the loud calling of this name of a still evening occasioned a multitudinous start all over Linwood. And that is why to-night an old man, in a populous town, sitting alone with memory, smiles a tearful smile. . . . It is again for him sunset in far-off Linwood. H e sees the golden haze over the country, and, by the pasture bars, a gray-haired woman with a face of gentle and tender kindness. H e hears her voice, and then below in the little valley a crashing of branches and leaves. . . .

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IT must have been in the early fifties that a man of about thirty-five, with flowing black beard and black eyes, rode into Westport, coming of course from the east. H e was of average height, and wore the usual attire, but with a dash of elegance in the saddle, boots and hat. His horse was a beautiful animal, well shod. His pistols were of costly make, and his saddle-bags full. His black hair lay matted on his forehead and behind hung nearly to the collai of his flannel shirt. He said that he planned to join a caravan en route for California. The stranger put up at the Harris House. He seemed to be ill and talked with no one. He remained in his room, except that several times a day he came out to see that his horse was well cared for. After two or three days, he paid his bill, mounted his horse with difficulty, seemed to hesitate as to what direction to take, then rode away slowly to the south, into the wildness which extended from Westport to the great prairies. He came at last to a log cabin in a clearing in the forest. A young pioneer and his wife stood by the door. The stranger wished them good morning, sat 119

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unsteadily in the saddle for a moment or two looking at them, and said: "You are honest people. I am a very sick man. Will you take care of me? You will not regret it." They Helped him to alight. H e was burning with fever. They soon recognized that it was typhoid, but did not hesitate, for the custom of hospitality among our ancestors differed from ours. As they were putting him to bed and his head sank into the pillow, they heard him murmur, "Here I shall end." They hung his saddle-bags on a peg where he could see them, and laid by his pillow his well-filled money-belt. His only request was that they take good care of Fincastle, his horse. By his bed—the only bed in the one-roomed cabin—was a low window. Twice a day, the young pioneer led the horse to this window, and every time, as long as he was conscious, the dying man caressed the velvet nostrils and bright face of Fincastle. One day at his request, his host brought to his bedside the nearest neighbor, and the stranger, after thanking them, said to the neighbor: "I want you to witness that, if anything happens to me, I leave to these kind friends everything I possess, including my horse and what is in this money-belt. They are to bury me somewhere within half a mile of this spot. You do not need to know my name." He was unconscious the last time they led Fin120

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castle to the window. T h e horse touched his burning face with his nose. T w o days before he died, as he lay with his long hair showing black against the white pillow, the young woman noticed that his eyes were following her, and she heard him say clearly, "Jessie used to walk that w a y . " W h o was Jessie? His sister, his daughter, his cousin, or his sweetheart? T h e y placed a broad board above his grave, and on it they carved "Jessie's Friend." This board had disappeared before my time, but two old women who related to me this story remember to have seen it, and they it was who showed me the grave.

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IN the late fifties, there arrived at Westport early one night a timid little old lady from Virginia. She wore a black dress which told of better times, and it was with a flush in her delicate cheeks that she peered from under her black cap and said to the clerk at the Harris House: "Good evening, sir. I wonder if you know my boy Tom—Tom Chivington? H e promised to meet me here—Tom Chivington, from Virginia?" Now, Tom Chivington had been killed in a game of cards ten days before, and the clerk and the loungers who heard the old lady all knew it. The clerk consulted the loungers by a rapid glance and spoke so that they could hear: "Certainly, madam, I know—I know Tom well. A fine young man. He'll be coming in over the Santa Fe Trail one of these days." Then he was not there! She set down her black satchel and turned trembling to the group of men: "Pardon me, sirs, do any of you know anything further of my boy Tom—Tom Chivington? He was to meet me here." Her lips quivered. Several of the men were desperadoes and all were 122

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adventurers. They touched their hats, and the one who seemed best able to control his voice spoke: "Yes, ma'am, we all know Tom. A fine boy! We'll hep you to find a place to stop near the hotel while you're waitin' for Tom, unless you want to remain here?" The honest old eyes peering from under the quaint bonnet were suddenly filled with tears: "I ain't got no money—just two dollars left. It's Tom I want," and her frail shoulders began to shake with sobs. One of the men hurried to support her and led her to a chair, where she sank down, burying her face in her hands. "Come, madam," he said in a husky voice. "Money don't matter here. W h y ! there ain't one of us that don't owe Tom money, don't we, boys'? We'll fix you up nice, and you can wait for . . . for Tom." The men had tears in their eyes, and were glad of the excuse to set about finding for Tom's mother a pleasant room near the hotel. They thought of someone, perhaps far to the eastward, who was waiting, or had ceased to wait, for them. Before night, they had put into her fragile hands eight hundred dollars, which, they said, was part of what they owed her boy. All day long and every day for many months, when the wagon trains, drawn by oxen, mules or horses, pulled into Westport to the crack of whips and the cries of drivers, there moved among them a 123

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pathetic little figure in a black dress and black sunbonnet: "Do you know my boy Tom—Tom Chivington, from Virginia? He was to meet me here." The wagon trains often arrived at night. The figure moved among the lanterns, peered into each face, and asked: "Is my boy Tom with you—Tom Chivington, from Virginia?" The word had gone out over the great plains, but even if it had not, no one who knew of Tom's fate would have failed to see that he was in the presence of Tom's mother, and to speak accordingly. She loved roses. The only varieties we had then —the white and the yellow—would seem to you poor things. In the season, she used to carry a large bouquet of these roses, which she distributed among the men. After a time, drivers began to bring her sums of money, sent, they said, by Tom, who was in California, so busy tearing gold out of the mountains that he did not have time to write. He would come some day, and they would be rich! But what she wanted was her boy, not riches. She wrote him long letters at the addresses given. They were signed "Mama" or "Your old Mama," and of course were never returned. At the end of about two years, she faded away. The last word which they heard from her lips was only a whisper: "Tom!" They buried her light and fragile body, and covered with roses her grave and a grave beside it. 124

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Into the nothingness covered with roses, Into the silence deep, Into the peace that never closes, Into the lasting sleep.

12 5

SADIE

Her heart beat quick as she neared the clump Whence came the voice that her bosom thrilled. She spied the hunchback and his hump; The lady passed, and the song was stilled. are songs for unfortunate men, little Sadie, a few for unfortunate women, but none at all for girl hunchbacks. Even if there were, it would not have lessened the ache at your heart, or added color to your cheeks and triumphant lustre to your dark, tender eyes. W h a t was needed, was a celestial surgeon, who, fifty years ago, in your tinyhood, possessed the skill to remove your incipient wings. Our dull vision, even, would then have seen the beauty of your face—for you were beautiful, Sadie—the dignity and sweetness of your spirit, which were beyond compare. One of us young men would have spoken to you the sublime language, the consummate rhetoric that charms a woman, not one word of which ever sounded in your ears, O lost playmate, little Sadie! THERE

I saw your white face at your mother's window, that day when the bridal carriages passed merrily 126

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through the streets of the village. Y o u had excused yourself from attending the wedding. I saw you dart back as Tom saluted you, as Madeleine leaned from her immaculate snow and waved to you her white-gloved hand. During my rare visits later to the old place in the West, I used to see you sewing by the window, bending forward under the crown of your too-slowly graying hair. I entered. Y o u welcomed me with your sweet eyes and ineffable smile, and you did not rise. Y o u r little hand was lost in the clasp of mine. I kissed your cheek, and we sat for hours, talking in low voices of many things. W e talked above all of the old times, but there were two whom neither of us mentioned. Now news has come to me that the celestial surgeon has been discovered, and that you have entered upon infinite beauty in infinite peace. From the noise of a distant city and from the society of strange faces, I salute you, pure and beautiful playmate, little Sadie!

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is a stern master, especially in a newly settled country. H e leads his devotees over thorny paths. Some would have hesitated to follow him on so beautiful an early summer day as the one of which you are to hear, but not so the women of the Linwood of the old time. "With them, it was duty first, and they had agreed to labor with Mrs. Becky Johnson, who to the charms of beauty and fortune added those of widowhood. T h e red brick mansion where she lived was one of the oldest houses in the region. It was built long before the W a r between the States, and stood on a road, which, if you clung to it, would lead you to Westport on the west or Independence on the east. At the back of the hall, you could see where a panel had been blown out of the door which led to the large side porch under the gallery. Through this panel, the father of the late Mr. Johnson had shot and killed a slave who was running from him. The heavy front door and the window sash on its east side showed many bullet holes. It was through this door that the old man himself was shot one night DUTY

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during the war by a band of Union sympathizers. In front of the house, on the west side of the walk, was a beautiful flower garden, and on the east side, a hedge of untrimmed lilacs. In the mid-afternoon of the day of which we are to tell, four slow-moving buggies, each containing two robust women, stopped in front of the Johnson house. The women tied the horses to hitching posts, opened the gate and walked solemnly up the brick walk, without pausing to smell of the flowers and lilacs. Bessie, one of the black servants, admitted them to the house, and showed them to the parlor, where they sat down in silence. A moment later, Becky Johnson, scenting danger, floated into the room with her most engaging, most pernicious smile: "How lovely of you all to come! I didn't know what to do with myself this beautiful evening. Let's have a jolly good chat, while Bessie prepares some refreshments!" Refreshments! That had been their last thought. The moment was awkward. Mrs. Joe Severance began : "Mrs. Johnson, knowing your devotion to the morals of Linwood, and feeling sure that there is nothing you wouldn't do in a . . . in a similar case, we . . ." But she could go no further. Mrs. Dave Clement, a harsh-featured, angular female, came to the rescue: "You see, Mrs. Johnson, knowing your . . . well! 129

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your . . . In a word, we've come to labor with you, in the hope . . And there she too stuck. "To labor with me1?" exclaimed Becky Johnson. "Yes," said Miss Anne Bennett, a reverberant church member. "It appears that you told a . . . that is, last week Bessie said to Susie Jackson, who came to see you, that you were not in, yet two witnesses saw you at an upstair window a few minutes later." The deed was done! Wonderful stock, those Bennetts! What could Mrs. Becky Wells Johnson say? She sat calmly caressing a red rose. Her smile had not left her. At that moment, Bessie and another servant entered, bearing trays laden with cake and the first strawberries of the season. An odor of delicious coffee stole into the room. THe moment proved embarrassing for the inquisitors. Should they partake? They could not refuse. And such berries! such cream! such coffee! A contented cat walked purring into the parlor and went from guest to guest. Becky Johnson talked merrily of a dozen different things. They had never seen her more at her ease. When they had finished, she said with suavity, speaking slowly and almost negligently, and toying with her rose: "I want to thank you all for your interest in . . . in my welfare and that of our neighbors . . . I want to quote Scripture in my defense—you don't 130

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mind ? I am sure that Scripture will justify me, and that you, with your beautiful Christian characters, will agree with Holy Writ. You see, I know more Scripture than any of you can, because I was such a naughty child and had to learn by heart whole chapters in the Bible. You accuse me of having Bessie say to Susie Jackson that I was not in, when I really was in—is that it?" The visitors nodded. "Well, let me say first that I was busy, and that I like Susie—like her fully as much as I do you. If you wish to find justification for what I did, you will find it in Luke—let me see!—in Luke, chapter 24, verse 28, which tells us that Christ, wishing to throw people off his track, 'made as he would have gone further.' I'll find the passage for you." The Bible went from hand to hand. Stupefaction showed in the visitors' faces. At last Mrs. Clement burst out: "Well! that beats me! Here for years I must have been depriving myself of millions of liberties, pleasures, what not!" Becky continued in the same negligent tone: "As for such pleasures as card playing, you all know of course the passage in II Samuel, chapter 10, verse 1 2 : 'Let us play the men.' The meaning has been obscured in the translation, but you will understand. Then, as for dancing, the Bible is full of it." A feeling of astonishment, of indignation even, swept into eight bosoms. A rapid cross-fire of con-

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versation began to rage up and down the parlor. T h e visitors all had something to say, and said it. A n hour later, Becky Johnson, holding the enigmatic rose to her lips, accompanied her guests to the gate, and at every moment it was: " M y dear Mrs. Johnson," " M y dear Becky." The flowers and the lilac hedge received their delayed homage, and at last the four buggies swayed away, each with its pair of women talking at once. Such a buzzing had never before jolted over that road. There was that night a great thumbing of Bibles in Linwood. In some houses, lights burned late. W i t h i n a month, the sun shone on a new Linwood. There commenced now for this favored region a ten-year period which may be called its Golden Age. U n t i l then, dancing, cards and many other games had been considered the appanage of the devil. N o w all was changed. W i t h cards and dancing, came charades, tableaux vivants, extravagant variations of the old "play dances," such as " W e e v i l y W h e a t , " and a series of madder and madder parties—dinners, suppers, picnics, hay-rides, serenades, stable dances, barn-raisings, surprise parties, chivarees, masquerades, costume dances, card parties. A t many of them, the smiling Becky Johnson appeared, a rose her confidant. Musicians, especially fiddlers, were in demand. Violins and guitars were rescued from the dust of attics, and several old ladies got out and had repaired at Westport or Kansas City the dul132

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cimers (called dulcimores) brought by them or their mothers from Kentucky or Virginia. When a party was given on a summer night, the guests began to arrive at about eight. Soon many buggies, family carriages, spring wagons, farm wagons and saddle horses could be seen, hitched along the fences and to the outlying trees about the yard. By way of welcome, there stood on a bench under a tree two cedar buckets full of cider, while elsewhere was to be found a frequently replenished bucket of aromatic punch which made deacons dance. At about nine, the fiddlers could be heard coaxing their fiddles softly, to be sure they were in tune, then suddenly the best fiddler commenced "Haste to the Weddin'," or "Little Log Cabin in the Lane," or "Ladies' Fancy," or perhaps "Wild Hog in the Cane Brake." After this preliminary, was heard the loud call of the dance-leader: "Choose your pardners for the first quadrille!" The couples, trembling with impatience, took their places in one, two, or three contiguous rooms, according to the size of the house, and on the porch. The fiddles attacked some favorite piece, such as "The Campbells are Comin'," the men saluted gallantly their partners, and the dance began. Then, imagine above the squeak of the fiddles and the tramp of light and sturdy feet, the cries of the proud dance-leader: "Forward two! . . . Cross over! . . . Cbassez! . , . Cross back to 133

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places! . . . Balance! . . . Next couple same! . . . Forward f o u r ! . . ." etc. W h e n two or three quadrilles had been danced, the voice of the leader called: "Choose your pardners for the first round dance!" There was then a great stir among the belles and beaux, and soon the fiddles commenced in slow, languorous measure the "Blue Danube W a l t z , " for that waltz early came to be known among us. The handsome girl and her plow-boy cavalier, the pudgy lady and her fantastic partner, the gallant captain and his gray-haired wife, began to turn. Life seemed worth while! There were glances and whispered words, sighs and protestations, while to the perfume of crushed bouquets, dresses, white or of gay color, flared, and all the other millinery of the dance raged back and forth. At intervals during the evening, a fiddler played an air in which many voices joined, such as "Mollie Darling," "Seeing Nellie Home," "You'll Remember Me," " W h e n You and I Were Young," "Mocking Bird." And the refreshments, prepared by neat and skilful hands—cakes, tarts, puddings, lady fingers, cream puffs, pies, custards, ice cream that was ice cream—heaven knows the provisions that perished there! The last dance was always a waltz, and was danced in slow time to "Home Sweet Home." W h a t a change in our habits! Now even the birds knew, and when in their migrations at night 134

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the wild ducks and wild geese saw a luminous spot that whirled to the frenzy of screaming fiddles, they said: "That's Linwood!" It was on an unforgettable midsummer night, as one of these revels approached its close, that Becky Johnson, the hostess, received a note which had just been brought by a boy. She knew the writing, and hurried to a quiet room to read the message. "When you receive this," she read, "I shall be waiting behind the lilac hedge to see you. I must see you to-night, if possible, Becky! I shall wait until you come. Jack." She slipped out of the side door, and went toward the hedge. H e was waiting. "Let's walk down the path to the orchard, Becky! I've so much to say to you." She did not speak, and they walked away under the trees to the orchard path. "Becky, it's to-night or never!" he commenced. "I have resigned my pastorate. If you still refuse me, I shall go away for good. W h a t I say is not a threat—of course not. I owe you the truth, and I never tell you anything else . . . You know my reasons for going. I can't live here longer without you. Do not tell me that I have passed all my life without you, for that is not true! We were raised together; you always seemed to belong to me, and I thought that I owned you, until you up and married. May you never know how I suffered! Well! I at least had the fervor of my new duties; I had faith. I believed many things which now . . ." He 135

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gave a discouraged gesture. "You should have married me, and not him, and you know it now. Hope returned to me when you became a widow, but these awful five years have taken it away, and as for my church at Westport, it is like Linwood to-night— it is in the flowery path that I should have called damnation a year or two ago. And the worst of all, Becky, is that part of the change has come through you, and," he added with a little laugh, "that you have converted me along with the others! You really ought to marry me by way of penance! . . . W e l l ! I didn't mean to complain, but simply to show you that I am at the parting of the ways. At forty, I'm going to abandon the ministry and seek other work. As you know, I've enough money to live modestly. It may be possible for me to find in a city, or farther west, employment which will increase my means a little." They were standing under an apple tree. She did not speak. After a moment, he went on: "Forgive the selfish thought, but it occurred to me that you might look more favorably on me if I were no longer a minister. You could never endure the thought of being a minister's wife, though you're a wonder at quoting Scripture!" and he laughed as he remembered her reply to the committee of inquisitors. "You know, Jack—or rather you do not know— how much I have always liked and admired you. No one else seemed quite the jolly, loyal boy that 136

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you seemed when I was a girl. Only, the thought of marrying you did not occur to me, until it was too late. As it is, I say to you freely that I should have been happier with you than with anyone else." She did not resist as he took her hand. "But that does not mean that we should marry at our age!" "Look at yourself!" said he passionately. "You are as beautiful as you were twenty years ago, when you were a slip of a girl—when our families had just come to this new country! You have the form and carriage of a young girl. All of the men are as crazy about you as they have always been. It is I who am changed—who ought to talk of age. You did not love me when I was young, why should you now!" "Don't speak like that, Jack, don't! Besides, you too have broken hearts—not intentionally, of course." "Because I was so in love with you that I couldn't look at anyone else, yes! perhaps I did, I was that blind. But you, Becky, you have been a curse to scores, to hundreds perhaps! Would it not have been better if you had never lived, as I wish I never h a d ? " As she started to answer, they heard the first, sad, slow strains of " H o m e Sweet Home," the final waltz of the night. "I must go, Jack, there's 'Home Sweet H o m e ' ! " "Good night, Becky Wells! Return to your 'Home Sweet H o m e ' ! There's none for me, but perhaps I don't deserve one." 137

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They had started back along the path. He continued : "Unless it's too much, I want an answer to-night, even if it's the old one, only not now! not with that music in my ears! Listen to me. After they have all gone—" he paused to look at his watch in the bright moonlight—"after they've all gone, I shall slip back to the lilac hedge. From there I can see clearly the front gallery porch. If you at last allow me to hope for pity, and stand ready to do penance for having robbed me of happiness and the whole region of its religion"—he smiled—"appear on the balcony, please! at midnight! Please do, Becky! This is the last request of your foolish old lover." Silence and darkness in the house at last, darkness and silence. Finally the clock commenced to strike the twelve fated strokes. At that instant, a figure in white appeared in the open French window of the gallery porch, and advanced into the moonlight. There was a start among the lilacs. He saw her white face, her dark, dark eyes and hair, her beautiful shoulders and the twin waves of the bosom for which he hungered.

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is not a story. It is not a history. It is a fact. One cannot say that Arkansas belonged to Alphonse Turgeon or that Alphonse belonged to her. They belonged to each other. In the annals of Jackson County there is no record of a more mutual affection or of a more mysterious end. A few of the oldest inhabitants still remember their close union, their constant companionship, their disappearance in a blaze of glory. It all began at the County Fair. The Martin hogs had won all the first prizes except one, while the Turgeon hogs had received only seconds. Tom Martin began the trouble. As he stood looking at his blue-ribboned grunters he declared: "In the matter of pigs we can beat the world." Now, this was wrong of Tom. We ought to be modest in victory. Alphonse Turgeon spoke up: "Hum! anybody can raise fat hogs! As for speed and sense, your hogs ain't nowhere!" In judging this remark of Alphonse, you should bear in mind the long line of Turgeons and their glorious record: the walls of their parlor were hung with blue ribbons. Since the death of old Mr. Louis THIS

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Turgeon, the eclipse of the family had begun. Not that no ambitious Turgeons were l e f t ; there were plenty of them—four sons and two daughters, all reared in veneration of the past. But victory avoided them. For three consecutive seasons the County Fair had left the Turgeons broken in spirit, baffled. They returned home in silence and hardly spoke all winter. They did not love one another less for their misfortunes—only, what use was there for words'? Would they bring back lost glory? So you will understand Alphonse—you will understand him and sympathize with him when he said: " H u m ! anybody can raise fat hogs. As for speed and sense, your hogs ain't nowhere!" Tom Martin answered insolently: "I'll run my pigs against yourn this minute or at the next f a i r ! " And Alphonse Turgeon replied: "Next fair, so be it! A race of yearlings!" Thus was the gauntlet thrown down in the presence of bearded men and breathless women. Excitement spread throughout the county. Two days later, neighbors came to the Turgeon farm to talk with Alphonse. They learned that he had gone, nor would the family say where. Tom Martin declared that Alphonse had left the country for good. But just wait, T o m ! wait and watch! Fate has something in store for you! One cannot forever trample upon virtue. Now, of course you wonder where Alphonse was. 140

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Where do you suppose? Five days after the close of the County Fair he was riding Bonny, his best saddle horse, through the valleys of Arkansas! That's speed for you! The valleys did not delay him long. H i s proud spirit was not looking for valleys, but pigs. H e made for the mountains. Nothing stopped him, neither fine cooking nor beautiful maidens nor enchanting scenery. H e rode with set features and indifferent eye. People marveled at this cool, handsome young man from the north country. His bearing, his horse and saddle and the three hounds that accompanied him, bespoke the gentleman. Perhaps he was a fugitive from justice? Yes! that must be i t ! Brave men admired him, soft-eyed women sighed when he had passed. The whole State of Arkansas was his for the asking, but it was not the State of Arkansas that Alphonse wanted. Among the cone-like small mountains of Arkansas live, as you of course know, the famous wild pigs of America. These noble beasts formerly possessed the entire northern continent. They held their own against the Indians, but the Palefaces, with their cruel and treacherous firearms, forced them slowly into the mountain fastnesses of Arkansas. The pigs would never have yielded in fair fight, but their generous nature hated treachery and cowardice. They retired, therefore, more through contempt than fear. Travelers and scientists who want to study the p i g under conditions approaching, though not equal141

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ing, his former splendor, are accustomed to go to Arkansas. There they see him master of a wild and beautiful domain, all of whose peaks and valleys, rivers and lakes, caverns, forests, paths, thickets, and lairs are as familiar to him as your pockets are to you. In his architecture he differs notably from the degenerate brutes called pigs which have been imported from Europe. H e is long, thin, wiry, made of bones, muscles, nerves, and brain. H e can run so fast as to make a dog think himself a turtle. Accordingly, if he runs from dogs, as he sometimes does, it is purely out of love of running. At any moment he can turn round and shake any dog into thistledown. His sense of hearing is as remarkable as his sense of sight. His intelligence is as great as his beauty. In short, he is a pig that is a pig! It will never be known how Alphonse managed to capture a sucking pig of this illustrious stock. That he did so and escaped alive is proof that he was a hero. H e always refused to tell how he did it. W e can only imagine his seizure of the tiny treasure, its squeals, his mad flight to where his horse waited, the pursuit, through the mountain fastnesses, of two hundred indignant and infuriated relatives of the victim, their cries and grunts and oaths and snorts and jibberings, the breathing of the horse fleeing from death and horror! N o other man ever accomplished such a feat. The bones of many who tried it are preserved as trophies by the pigs of Arkansas. . . .

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N o sow ever cared for her baby with greater tenderness than Alphonse for his little prisoner. H e carried it at first in his bosom, later on a soft bed of cotton in a sack which he hung from his neck. H e stopped at many secluded cabins to give it warm milk, and taught it to drink from a bottle. H e petted it and talked to it for hours as he rode. The little thing wept for days and called for its mama. At last, however, it began to nestle close to his body, especially at night-fall. Alphonse sang it to sleep with old French songs which he had learned from his mother. W h a t saved the life of the captured baby was not so much the care which it received as the affection back of that care, for Alphonse, when he had definitely escaped from his pursuers and was able to look at and to fondle his captive, saw that it was the most intelligent and lovable little creature in the world. Accordingly, he loved it with what proved to be the passion of his life. They both longed for sympathy and love. They were made for each other. N o t until he had crossed the frontier into Missouri did Alphonse feel safe from pursuit and arrest at the hands of the Governor of Arkansas. W h a t a relief to reach his native State, to be able to caress and look freely at the baby pig! H e took it from its sack, petted its curly brown hair, its silken ears, pressed it against his neck and cheek. H e noted in detail its beauty, looked into its deep, intelligent H3

ARKANSAS eyes and, transported out of h i m s e l f , he f e l t that only one name would fit the lovely creature: he named her A r k a n s a s ! T h e r e was a memorable scene one night at the T u r g e o n house. T h e f a m i l y had just finished supper when the beat of hoofs was heard coming rapidly. T h e y all rushed to the door with one name on their lips. Alphonse arrived, tossed the rein to the hired man, got down f r o m the saddle with care, holding something in his arms, caressed an instant with one hand the f a c e of his f a i t h f u l B o n n y and hurried into the house. H e embraced all the f a m i l y , motioned to h a v e the door and window blinds closed, then drew tenderly f r o m the sack the mite of a piglet and exclaimed in F r e n c h : " T h i s is M i s s A r k a n s a s ! L o n g l i f e to h e r ! " H e sat down and held her in his arms. T h e f a m i l y crowded round. F o r a f e w moments Arkansas l a y there blinking at the light and the strange faces, then she closed her eyes and tried to bury herself in A l phonse's bosom. H e pressed her to his neck and cheek, humming the low song that she knew best. She did not squeal, as v u l g a r pigs do, but uttered a sweet little plaint, interrupted by tiny sobs, while a tear rolled f r o m each eye. She was thinking of her mama, her brothers and sisters and brave f a m i l y in the F a r Country. Needless to say, Arkansas slept that night and f o r many weeks in a snug box, close by Alphonse's bed. H e gave her warm milk and tended her like a sick

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infant. If anyone had suggested fixing a place for her in one of the stables, Alphonse would have said to him: "Go there yourself!" I will not delay you with a long account of Arkansas' education, although the subject would prove of interest to pedagogues. Let it suffice to give a few details. At the age of less than three weeks, she knew how to eat from a bowl without putting her feet in it. She had inherited all of the native neatness of the pigs of Arkansas. Her feet and skin she kept immaculate, which added to her beauty, for she had a lovely clear pink complexion. By the time she was a month old, she understood French perfectly and could already speak several words, such as: "Hem*?", which means: "Excuse me, Sii [or M a d a m ] , what did you say?" O r : "Allons!", which means: "If you have no objection, Sir [or M a d a m ] , let us start." Could you have done as well at the age of one month? She also knew how to recognize the sound of the horn which called to meals. While not expansive toward visitors, she received them with courtesy and was polite to all. She soon began to pick u p English, and in time understood it quite well, though she naturally preferred French and her own language. From the first, Arkansas was a prime favorite. The dogs idolized her. They used to run to her and kiss her good morning. They played hide-and-seek and tag with her. It was a delight to watch these games. She enjoyed almost equal popularity with H5

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the cats, chickens, ducks, geese, horses, cows, and mules. They all regarded her as a princess, and she was one. But Arkansas' great favorite, her sunlight and her comfort, was, and remained, Alphonse! She worshipped him. She followed him all over the farm, keeping close behind him and talking to him almost continuously. Before she was two months old, he had taught her to start running at a signal and to return at another. H e r progress was rapid. There was on the farm only one animal with which Arkansas refused to have anything to do, and that was the pigs. She despised and hated them as coarse, swollen, dirty, loathsome, degenerate caricatures of a noble race. She never went into their lot or paid any attention to them, although they often spoke to her through the fence. Winter passed, spring, mid-summer. September arrived, the month of the great trial! The heart of Jackson County almost ceased to beat, so intense was the excitement. There were more than forty pigs entered for the speed contest. Large wagers were put up, with the odds favoring Arkansas, partly because of her family descent and romantic history, partly because no one was more respected and loved than the handsome, silent young man of twenty-five, who was her master, Alphonse Turgeon, whose name stood as a synonym for honesty, generosity, and loyalty. It had been the happiest year of Alphonse's life. 146

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For the last week before the great event, he had slept in the open air near Arkansas' little house. He feared trouble. Then, too, the moon was approaching full, and he had noticed that at such times Arkansas seemed to be melancholy, that she remembered then more than at other times the Far Country where her family waited for her. She did not conceal her longing from him. On the contrary, she used to lean against his leg with a soft pressure when they stood watching the full moon rise at bedtime, and she used to say, looking off to the Southland with her nose in the air: "Ah! Ah!" which was her pronunciation of Arkansas, the Far Country. The day of the great race arrived. All of the beauty and chivalry of the county were gathered there, as well as everybody else. The farms were entirely deserted. One of the Turgeon boys had ridden Bonny over to the fair early in the day, to be sure that all arrangements had been made. Alphonse was to come in a big wagon with the rest of the family, including Arkansas, to whom he had carefully explained what was to take place. They planned so as to arrive only a few minutes before the race, whereas most of Arkansas' rivals had been there for days, the judges having granted permission for all entries to become acquainted with the track at times when it was not otherwise in use. The great race was to be the final event of the afternoon. An immense throng was present, fully two thousand persons. The grand-stand was packed H7

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with sturdy farmers, their red-faced wives, rosycheeked daughters and brown-cheeked boys. H u n dreds sat or stood in wagons, or perched on the branches of trees. There was no wind. The dust of previous races hung in a soft haze over the landscape. The grunting of the entries for the race could be heard, mingled with the cajolings of their masters and seconds—cajolings which often changed to exclamations and kicks, and were then followed by loud squeals. Emotion rose to the breaking point half an hour before the race. Where was Alphonse? Where was Arkansas? The questions passed from lip to lip. As for the Martins, they were there in force. Tom looked pale, as was inevitable when the reputation and the glory of the family were at stake. His father, the Major, his mother, and his sister Bessie tried to remain calm, but showed their nervousness. At last the Turgeons arrived. The rumor spread like lightning: "They have come!" The families of the other entries turned pale. Finally, from the judges' stand came the signal, "Get ready, gentlemen!" Then followed the loudest clamor of squeals and grunts that has ever been heard at a race course. The owners and attendants dragged, pulled, pushed and drove to the track the more than forty entries, and one is forced to admit that they—I mean the entries —were a handsome lot of porkers. Each one had a number tied about his neck and a rope to a hind 148

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foot. The rope was to be detached at the last moment, when the chief judge should cry: "One! two! three! G o ! ! ! " The mob of the entries crowded to the inside of the track, to get the advantage. Where so much is at stake, no precaution should be neglected. A murmur of admiration burst from the immense throng when Alphonse and Arkansas appeared, walking side by side, she being unattached by any vile, dishonoring rope. They walked slowly, conversing as quietly as if on their farm. H e was calling her his treasure, his delight, his darling, his Arkansas, and she looked up at him out of her black eyes and said: " H a v e no feai, Alphonse!" She paid not the least attention to the grunting, squealing horde of her rivals, but one could see that her nose curled in contempt. It is now necessary to mention one thing about Arkansas which I have intentionally deferred. I have more than once spoken of her beauty, which was of the purest type, but I have not stated that her two left legs were slightly shorter than their right mates. This was due to one of the peculiar habits of the Arkansas pigs. It was not in any sense a defect. Allow me to explain. For centuries these pigs, whose life is most complex, have recognized the principle of private ownership of property. Each family or clan owns a hill or mountain, where its members pass .their time. A member of another clan is forbidden to walk or

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forage on that mountain, unless by special invitation. Furthermore, the mountains are cone-shaped. But this is not all: the families or clans always walk or run round their mountain in the same direction. The result of this is that all Arkansas pigs, without exception, have their legs shorter on one side than on the other. Time is lacking to enlarge on this wellknown fact, whose origins lie concealed behind the mists of antiquity. All Arkansas pigs are either lefters or righters, and naturally run on a curve. Any pig can run straight! Now, Alphonse, with his keen intelligence, saw the bearing of this fact. H e had accordingly stolen his prize from among the lefters: Arkansas was a lefter. You will readily see the immense advantage which her form of architecture gave her on a race course where the contestants had the judges, and consequently the inside of the track, on their left hand. The fated moment arrived. The chief judge, Col. Milt McGee, proud of his role, called in a tremendous voice: "Are you ready"? One! T w o ! Three! G o ! ! ! " Oh, my friends, what a race was there! The squealing, squirming mob was off, at least most of them, launched by violent kicks. The crowd rose en masse. Their shouts shook the hills, and would have been heard clear to the Missouri River, if there had been anyone there to hear them. Against a background of unsurpassed beauty a great historical event was taking place. The spectators 150

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knew this. They also knew that they were present looking at it and that they knew that they were looking at it. In this manner, their emotion continued to double on itself, until excitement and enthusiasm swept silence off the earth! As I have said, the contestants had started in the mad race. Each one had been told to do or die. The people looked down on a surging mass of rumps, tails, and flopping ears. Never since the time of the Greeks had so much vieing ambition torn round a race course. Never had contestants talked so much to one another as they ran, so intense was their excitement. But, you ask, what of Arkansas'? She and her master had taken their place on the outer side, in the most unfavorable position. At the moment of starting, Alphonse, who was bending over Arkansas, said in her ear, "Go, little treasure! Go, little angel!" And she went! She was built for it! Being constructed to run on a curve, she fitted the race track, and being thin—an enemy might have said too thin—her flight through the air caused almost no friction. She did not appear to be running; she seemed to glide through the air, close to the earth but not touching it and not of it. The Martins and the other entries, where were they! They seemed to be standing still or even running backward when Arkansas passed them. As she swept by the grandstand on the first lap, not one of her rivals had even come into sight at the bend of the track! It 151

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was only when she passed right in front of you like a cannon ball that you could catch a glimpse of little black hoofs walking on the air. She passed as a flash from a mirror would pass, yet she kept her bearings, and, as she swept by an island of French where Alphonse and the family stood, they thought they saw her wink at them! Oh! the love of a pig! the unequalled, the magnificent Arkansas! She ran faster and faster. When she passed by on the third and supposedly last lap she was going so rapidly that the judges' hats blew off. She knew that the race was won, but she saw in front of her the vile mob of her rivals who were almost two laps behind. She gave a little flirt of her hind quarters, just to signal to the judges that she knew what she was doing, and tore on round the dizzy track for a fourth time. She finished the extra lap amidst a frenzied scene of enthusiasm that shook the earth. With cries of "Arkansas! Arkansas!" the vast crowd surged over the track. But she did not hear their cries. She was in the arms of Alphonse, who was weeping like an infant. Ah! Alphonse! why did you not die that moment1? At last the judges, led by Col. McGee, forced their way to where Arkansas and the family stood. The Colonel himself wound her glorious neck with streamers of blue ribbon, while another judge tied a tuft to her tail. She received with becoming 152

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modesty these badges of victory. They all noticed that she was not breathing faster than in repose, and that she had not turned a hair. The judges also decked with blue ribbons the broad straw hat of Alphonse, the lapel of his coat, his happy mother and sisters, and even the saddle of Bonny. The great sun went down through the golden dust and the crowd finally began to disperse. Arkansas and Alphonse had left the race track. She had leaped into the wagon unaided. Alphonse had followed and sat down by her, with his arm caressing her shoulders. At that moment she beheld, pale and ghostly through the haze, the full orb of the rising moon. She was seen to whisper something into Alphonse's ear, to give him a single, tender glance, then to jump from the wagon and start off, running toward the west. Alphonse turned deathly pale. H e not only had heard what she whispered, he knew her—he knew her from the life lines on her hoofs to the hair on her back. W i t h a mere wave of farewell to his mother, he leaped out of the wagon, unhitched Bonny, mounted him like a flash and was gone! The assembled thousands stood spell-bound. They saw Arkansas running rapidly, her blue trophies fluttering in the air. She turned her head at times to see if Alphonse was following. Indeed he was! Never had Bonny run as then, except perhaps the night when they stole the baby pig. The throng watched them breathlessly, until at the crest of a 153

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hill they saw faintly a last flutter of the blue ribbon on Alphonse's hat; then they broke as one man, rushed to the swift saddle horses, and made off in mad pursuit of Alphonse and Arkansas. Ride hard, brave men and adventurous boys! Gallop, horses! Cut into tatters the prairies and the fields! You do not know that the flutter of blue over the hill was the last you are ever to see of the unfortunate Alphonse Turgeon! . . . There are those who will tell you, my listeners, that this whole affair is only a dream—that it never happened. They are persons who were not present. Do not believe them! For months, tales drifted in from the Indians and traders to the west and southwest of us—tales of a phantom pig and a spectre horseman, of their furious course, of beseeching cries, songs and whistlings heard in the night. Piously and with sinking hearts we pieced together these rumors. Alas! there could be no doubt! Arkansas, running true to her architecture, had described a vast curve, which turned gradually toward the south, with all the inevitability of mathematics! Finally, an Indian brought in the hat of Alphonse, still decked, O pathos! with a piece of blue ribbon. H e had found it in the direction of the Verdigris River, two hundred miles away! Then even the most stupid among us understood. Arkansas had transcribed her inherited curve across the limitless prairies and deso-

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late plains of Kansas Territory, down through the corner of Indian Territory and into her native State of Arkansas, carrying in her wake her beloved master and Bonny, his horse.

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" N o w , is it clear what you're to do and what you are not to d o ? " Young Greg Suratt placed one finger the length of his long nose and fixed authoritative eyes on Zach Benton. "Listen again! W h e n you feed Martin's stock, you are not to call them by any of the usual cries, but by beating on the fence with a stick or a hammer, like this," and Greg beat a series of strokes on the dry rail fence beside them. "But that isn't all," he continued. "You are not to breathe a word of all this to any soul alive! It's a joke I'm getting up, and we've got to keep it secret. Now, that's your part, and it's easy. Here's mine: if you do exactly as I have said, I'll pay you five dollars a month for ten months. Is it a go?" "It sure is!" exclaimed Zach, who remembered the stammering calf which Greg had exhibited at the County Fair two years before. Greg was a wonderful boy for a joke, he thought. Greg's plot would not have succeeded on any other farm in the new country. The Martins had brought considerable money with them, so that they ij6

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had been able in twenty years to develop their acres until they resembled a well-kept eastern farm. The freeing of the slaves had affected them little, for they could hire plenty of men. The fields, orchards, wood lots and pastures were in perfect condition. Better fences could not be found anywhere. On a farm of this sort, the new way of calling the live stock worked like a charm. Within a fortnight, all the animals on the Martin farm knew the joyous signal, even to the smallest pig. W h e n Zach beat with his stick on the fence of the fifteen-acre horse pasture, part of which was in forest, the horses, mares and colts came racing. A similar scene took place in the cow pasture. The hog lot was entirely in forest, and about twelve acres in extent. You should have seen the pigs when they heard Zach's dinner gong! They tore like mad through the bushes and underbrush, over logs and fallen branches, grunting and talking as they charged. It seemed as if the earth were being pulled from under the forest, like a carpet. D o not be surprised that M a j o r Martin had his stock fed right up to the middle of June, despite his unequalled pastures. W h a t will ambition not lead a man to do, especially if he has the means'? One is not great with impunity. The Major had won so many blue ribbons at the County Fair, that he thought more about them, as he grew old, than about his daughter Bessie. And why n o t ? There were plenty of others who thought of her. You sometimes see a girl who seems

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WOODPECKERS predestined to belong to the band of glorified trouble makers, fetterers of strong men, guide-posts to ambition and general desperation. This one had sloe-black eyes, an enigmatic smile, the habit of talking little and looking much. W h a t more need be said? " A h h a ! " you exclaim, " I understand! G r e g Suratt is in love with Bessie Martin, and s o — " N o t at all. It was his next older brother, J i m , who was in love with her. J i m ' s sufferings f o r two years had been terrible. H e lost six pounds the first year, and twelve the second. One did not need to be a mathematician to see his finish. . . . Then, too, something else troubled J i m — b a f f l e d ambition. For two years, the highest award obtained at the Fair by the once-famous Suratt horses, mules, cows, sheep, hogs, fruit, and grain had been second prizes. Add to this the fact that first prizes had been won by several of J i m ' s score of rivals, such as Alphonse Turgeon, Bud Tolson, and Cash T y l e r (Cassius Clay T y l e r ) . J i m slept little, ate less and smiled not at all. What would you have done if you had been his brother G r e g ? E x a c t l y what he did. H e formed an original, an incredible plot, whose carrying out might possibly require two years. H e formed the plot, executed it step by step and kept his own counsel. N o small feat, this, in a boy of seventeen! H e felt that the way to Bessie's heart

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would be draped with blue ribbons. Despite his lack of experience, he judged inerrantly the heart feminine, in believing that a trifle, a glint, a shadow, a nothing often decides a girl's inclination. In fact, can it be said that women choose at all in matters of love"? The next time that you enjoy the privilege of conversing with a beautiful woman who is old enough to be sincere—that is, past seventy—ask her what it was that started her affections on the steep declivity in any one of the score of "affairs" she went through. W a s it the victim's superior stature, weight, shape, utility, innocence, helplessness, power of listening, or perhaps his skill in jumping, smiling, swimming or any other graceful art—was it any one of these"? N o t at all! Greg Suratt felt this basic mystery. Simple blue ribbons would do the trick. This meant that the Suratts must win them, which meant that the Martins must lose them. N o one could have divined Greg's plan in October, nor for many months thereafter. H e obtained his father's consent to use a small brick grange, the most remote of the farm buildings. H e then had gathered and stored in the grange a dozen or more bushels of acorns. The idle boys of the neighborhood aided him, and received twenty-five cents a bushel. The report spread among them that Greg expected to obtain a valuable oil from the fruit of the oak, and most of them began collecting acorns on their own account, so great was their confidence in

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Greg's genius. In this manner, the country for several miles around was stripped of acorns, which fell in perfectly with Greg's plan. H e commenced active operations as soon as snow disappeared. H e sallied forth secretly at night, equipped with a brace and bit and with a set of spikes and a belt, such as line-men now use in climbing a telegraph pole. Slung from his neck and hanging under his arm, he carried a sack of acorns. H e knew every foot of the country. An Indian could not have moved more cautiously. H e soon reached that part of the Martin forest which was fenced off to form a deep fringe of shade and coolness along one side of the famous four pastures. H e gave most of his attention to the oaks, hickories, ashes, and hackberries. When he discovered a dead limb, or, better, a dead tree, he planted it full of acorns and "anchored" them well. Never in the history of the world had there been so many acorns in twenty acres of wood lot. H e finished his task early in April, about a month after Zach Benton began his new method of calling live stock. The mast-eating birds returned from their migrations and discovered what treasures were contained in the Martin woods. The news spread, and for miles around brilliant plumaged travelers could be seen at any hour of the day flying to or from what we may henceforth call, as did the birds, Martinville. Dotting the tree trunks could be seen red-headed woodpeckers, with their 160

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white and black bodies, hairy woodpeckers, the smaller downy woodpeckers, superciliary woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, ivory-billed woodpeckers, log-cock woodpeckers, a few gay wanderers known as the California woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, flickers, also pretty little brown creepers and nut-hatches examining the trunks and branches with the care of a tax collector. Everywhere were bluejays, talking, scolding, taunting, daring. Quarrels broke out among these many birds, and especially between the bluejays and the numerous squirrels and chipmunks. Scores of varieties of nonmast-eating birds flitted about uneasily. All the airy lanes and leafy tenements of Martinville became a riot of color and noise. And how about the soil underneath? Its bushes witnessed strange scenes. Think of the horses, mules, jacks, colts, cows, calves, hogs, shoats, accustomed to the knocking signal of Zach, and hearing many times a day the insistent, persuasive "knock," "knock" of all those woodpeckers! Consider in mid-summer the once beautiful horse pasture. At first blush, the sight would have charmed you: broad acres, with here and there a solitary tree for shade; forty animals grazing with a peacefulness which we know to be on the surface only; the rich pasture merging gradually into a magnificent wood, with cool thickets and promise of brooks and springs. Look on that picture, then on this: suddenly, for no apparent reason, the forty animals 161

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give a kick in the air and race as one man toward a lone tree. Turf flies in the air. The horses tear along with head erect, the colts follow whinnying. They converge at the tree, where they prance about, kick, whinny, shriek, then in a few minutes disperse as inexplicably as they came together. . . . And the cows ! Oh ! those picture cows ! many of them blue-ribbon winners and knowing it! H o w often they charged across their pasture, with expectant look and tail in air, to gather bellowing around an isolated tree, or disappear into the wood lot, if, as often happened, the knocking came from there ! And the hogs ! Nothing in the Martin débâcle was more tragic than the undoing of the hogs. All too many of us fail to recognize the sterling, lofty qualities of pigs. They have their traditions, their precedents, their beliefs, their superstitions, their dignity, their pride, their ambition, their sense of justice. They do not say much, but they feel deeply. Imagine these noble beasts plowing madly through damp moss, sousing through mire and water, crashing through brambles and bushes, snorting, grunting, cursing—for character and breeding have their limits—and converging, snout in air, a hundred strong, about a tree! And what was their reward"? T o see plethoric, impudent bluejays, indolent, heavy-weight woodpeckers, full-bodied flickers, gaily-clad, sarcastic sapsuckers, snickering, fatbellied squirrels and exultant chipmunks—the scum 162

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of the earth, in short—to see them sitting in the seats of the mighty and casting down to you shells, husks, and wormy acorns! And there you stand for a while, foot-fast, breathing heavily, then you move away with lowered head. W h a t wonder that some blue-ribbon winners had to pinch themselves to be sure that they were awake! O h ! it was maddening! Then, there were the nights. Imagine lying at night on the generous earth, enjoying sleep, which, however agitated, was none the less sleep. Suddenly —why or where you know not—you find yourself on your feet with a snorting mob of your fellows; then, your eyes still stupid with slumber, you tear away in a race fit to make witches turn faint. You and your companions pause under a tree which stands in ghostly silence, and, finally, after moments that seem ages, you crawl away with a broken heart! Such was night in the suburbs of Martinville. Perhaps it was a dream? Perhaps it was that imp of a Greg Suratt, who had been beating on a dead branch up in the tree? And the turf, the famous Martin t u r f ! Consider its condition after a few months of this life, if life it was! Cut into ribbons, trampled into marmalade during the rainy season, the dryer weather reduced it later to tinder, excelsior, dust! You see what was happening: the Martin empire of glory was following that of Nineveh, of Babylon. . . . All this time, how pitiful to see old Major Martin

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sitting on his front porch smoking pipe after pipe and dreaming of a future blue with fame! Rumors indeed reached him that his stock was not thriving, but he puffed them away in smoke. His stock would come out all right—it always had and always would. Finally, one day late in July, the bolt fell out of a clear sky. The Major witnessed a stampede of his cattle. "Lombardy poplars!"—it will be well to translate into our dialect the Major's favorite exclamation—"Lombardy poplars! What's the matter with my cattle1?" He climbed the fence. Before him lay the once beautiful cow pasture, dry, trampled like a stockyards pen. There was no breeze, and a golden haze of dust hung over the field. The entire herd stood lowing and pawing round an isolated tree. The Major's face reddened as he strode forward, his white mustache twitched, his goatee stuck out at an ominous angle. He paused before the herd of nervous wrecks, noted their condition, controlled himself somewhat and addressed them kindly but firmly: "Lombardy poplars! what's the matter with you?" The cow who was the most gifted in conversation replied, "We do not know, Major Martin." "They don't know! What're you running for1?" 164

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"It's automatic with us, Major Martin." "Automatic! Lombardy poplars! What've they been doing to my cattle? Come! what's lacking here? What do you want?" "Peace, Major Martin, we want peace!" "Peace!" cried the Major, addressing the universe. "My cattle want peace! What do you mean by peace, you dusty mongrels?" "Fewer meals, Major Martin." "Fewer meals! Lombardy poplars! my cattle are crazy! What've they been doing to my cattle? What do you mean by asking for fewer meals, you miserable sun-burns?" "We mean fewer calls to dinner, Major Martin." "Fewer calls to dinner!" shrieked the Major, holding his head to keep it from bursting. Then, controlling himself: "Tell me, my dears, what else do you want?" "Sleep, Major Martin, we want sleep!" "Sleep!" cried the Major to the universe. "My cattle want sleep! They are insane! Lombardy poplars ! Listen to me, my darlings, my winners of blue ribbons! Think of the family! Remember the past! You've become thin and nervous—Poplars!—Is the water brackish? Are the flies bad? Shall I—Lombardy!—let down the bars into the fresh pasture yonder? Do you want more range?" "More range? Oh! Major Martin, can you not discern that the distances are already too great? 165

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Give us rather stalls, or make us little calves again, lying by our bossies in green pastures, a thousand miles from here!" The speaker's smile—for she tried to smile through her tears—was heart-rending. "Lombards!" choked out the half-strangulated M a j o r , waving his arms. " W h a t you want is troughs of gold to eat out of and Bessie to play the piano for you! Now, listen to me—poplars! . . ." But his auditors suddenly heard a knocking in the forest, and with an automatic kick in the air, shot away toward the wood lot. They converged in their mad course. The bushes closed behind them. They were gone. The only visible sign of their late presence hung in a cloud of dust. The Major stood for a moment open-mouthed, then he fell at full length. It was after sunset before they found him lying there unconscious under the tree. They carried him to the house, and his son Tom drove at full speed to Westport for the doctor. H e was delirious all night, and babbled of cows, dinner calls, turf, sleep, calves and "Lombardy poplars." But it took more than this to kill a Martin. In the morning, he beckoned T o m to his bedside and whispered: "Lombardy poplars! Tom, what've they done to the cattle'?" Tom reassured him the best way he could, but the Major found ten days later, when able to move about, that his experience had not been a dream: the famous herds were shadows. This would teach 166

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him to leave the direction of the stock to others! The hogs were on the whole the heaviest sufferers. You know how difficult it is to bring this animal to the point of perfection and maintain him there for the brief period of a county fair. The M a j o r had a saying which shows what a devotee of art he was: "A little thing gives a pig perfection," he used to say, then, after a pause: "but perfection is not a little thing." Imagine the despair of this great idealist when he saw the condition of his pigs! Tom and Bessie expected to persuade their father not to exhibit at the fair that year. Go and talk to a granite cliff! The Martins had exhibited for nine seasons. They would continue, even if they had nothing to show but a bald-headed rooster! Mrs. Martin and the hired men joined forces with Bessie and Tom. They reasoned, pleaded, wept, but in vain. Major Martin had in him the stuff of Leonidas. And so, while the birds and squirrels played riot in the lanes of Martinville, a selection of stock was made for exhibition at the fair. The poor beasts marched away as to slaughter. They knew! . . . And the Major knew, too! Every morning, carefully dressed and shaven, a large cigar carried between his sweeping white mustache and his goatee, he drove to the fair. But under this bravado lay no hope. At times his chin quivered, his mustache trembled. H e knew. . . . The Martin stock might have won an award in 167

WOODPECKERS A r k a n s a s , where the judges decide on the basis of speed and intelligence, but not with us, where the test is f a t . N o t a first, second or third prize to a n y a n i m a l f r o m the M a r t i n herds! T h e Suratt live stock won seven firsts and five seconds. T h e M a j o r g a v e no sign of disappointment. As f o r Bessie, f r o m childhood she had f o l l o w e d the awards passionately. T h e y tried to hurry her a w a y before the final results were announced, but she refused to go. W h e n she knew the worst, she smiled bravely, climbed into the carriage, nor did she break d o w n until they were a good quarter of a mile f r o m the f a i r grounds, and then w h a t a tempest of sobs and tears! T h e next f e w months were among the happiest in J i m ' s l i f e , f o r he spent much time at Bessie's. H i s suit progressed. H i s good qualities were numerous, and the Suratt first prizes made him seem to her like a patch right out of the blue sky. T h e w e d d i n g was set f o r Christmas day. It took place at noon at the bride's house, and was f o l l o w e d by a royal dinner, a f t e r which the guests played games until dusk, w h e n they all went down to the Suratt house tor supper and a dance. T h e M a j o r and his w i f e insisted on conducting Bessie in the f a m i l y carriage, though the distance was barely half a mile. A f e w inches of snow had f a l l e n the d a y before. T h e f u l l moon would rise at about eleven o'clock. W e pass over the supper, where the happy, quiet J i m sat by the side of a ravishing white cloud of mystery, and

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we pass over the merrymakings which followed. It may have been half past ten when Jim whispered to Bessie that he had something important to tell her. He brought her white cloak to her in the back hall, and for the first time his great, clumsy hands fumbled in putting on her overshoes. Oh, the tiny white slippers, the provoking little feet! The two lovers slipped out into the clear night. As they passed in the starlight, the yard, its trees, the stables and the lane by the orchard knew the son of the homestead, but did not know the white figure on his arm. "Where are we going, Jim?" "Just a moment, and I'll tell you." They reached Greg's grange. Jim pushed open the door. It was too dark for them to see. "There's a great pile of acorns there in the corner. . . ." "Well?" said Bessie, more and more surprised. Something in his voice made her fear. inches, weight 223 pounds, 7 ounces.' As published, this record stood under Flossie's full-length portrait. Or this, of Maggie. M a g g i e was my pride—she led all the rest. Under her f u l l length appeared her record: 'Maggie Marland, maiden name Richardson, age 35, address, Sturgeon, Boone County, Missouri, girth 7 4 inches, weight 267 pounds, 3 ounces.' T h e total avoirdupois of my con249

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testants was 3,405 pounds and some ounces, an average of 227 pounds per, as against 3,165 pounds and an average of 211 pounds for Madison. " M y article was sworn to before Judge John D e Wilton Robinson. " I had ordered two hundred copies of my article, and when they arrived, I could hardly control myself with joy. Fool that I was—dancing on my own tombstone! " M y plans had been carefully formed. As soon as the papers came, I locked them up, then sent to all of the fifteen heavy-weights an invitation for them and all their f a m i l y : place, at my best farm, known as 'Blue W a t e r s ' ; time, a week from next Saturday at 11 o'clock; if weather bad, then the following Saturday, etc., to satisfaction. " I f I'd stopped there, it wouldn't have been so bad, but those papers were burning me up with impatience. W h y postpone the pleasure of the fat ladies'? I asked myself. W h y not let them know at once of the glory I'd brought them1? I sent out my man on horseback with fifteen copies of the Richmond Register, each one nicely wrapped and addressed. " T h e day arrived, and a perfect day it was. Ever pass a f e w days in Boone in late October 1 ? Wonderful ! T h e air still soft, the trees a little bare, but all spangled with gold and crimson; the rich crops mostly gathered, except that here and there they 250

T H E FAT WOMEN OF BOONE haven't been able to pick all the apples; persimmons without end; golden pumpkins in the field; f a t herds in the pastures. . . . " I was proud of my farm, of its stables, horses, cows, sheep and hogs. Everything was in order. I had arranged f o r a big dinner—a real Boone County dinner, the sort our grandmothers talk about. I had hired four black women to help my servants in cooking and serving. Tables were set out of doors for seventy-five guests. " W i l l you believe me? Not one guest appeared! From eleven o'clock to four, I walked up and down, champing my bit and looking at my watch every three minutes. W h a t had happened? I counted on my fingers forty times, to be sure there was no mistake about the date. W h a t ! could it be that I, J a c k Avidon, had escaped death in the army a hundred times to see myself brought low in this manner? And the servants and hired help conversing in low tones and pitying m e ! " I spent the night at 'Blue Waters,' and such a night! N o sleep f o r me, but in the morning something was waiting for me—fifteen big red belts hanging scornfully on the riders of the worm fence out in front! Then I understood. . . . " I drove back to town that next morning, trying to convince myself that nothing had happened. But it had. D o you know, I didn't sell five dollars' worth of stuff all day. B y afternoon, the news got out, and

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more than a score of prominent citizens dropped in to condole with me and see a copy of the article. A n d if they didn't laugh right before m e ! " W h i l e I was talking in the back of the store with m y friend M a j o r Rollins and two young men, R . B . Price and Jerry D o r s e y — I was standing with my back to the door—and as I was repeating 'I never meant no harm,' I felt some danger coming from behind and saw a look of apprehension in the countenances of my friends, who were facing the door. Just as I was about to turn round—but I'd better pause to make a confession to you. " I had included among the Fat W o m e n of Boone Miss Millie McBride, though there were three or four heavier than her whom I had excluded. Please note that there was nothing dishonest in this. M y monograph was not entitled 'The Fifteen Fattest W o m e n of Boone,' but 'The Fat W o m e n of Boone.' B y including Millie, who was nineteen years of age and weighed a bare 204 pounds, I not only was conferring immortality on her, but I was holding in reserve, like a well-trained officer, my heavier squadrons, in case Madison came back at us. D o you see? " B u t why Millie, you inquire. Simply because I had decided to marry her and retire to Madison County. . . . " N o w what do you suppose it was that I felt coming and that my frightened friends saw? It was Millie M c B r i d e ! Before I could turn round and 252

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grab her arm she had shaken down my neck and into my hair a bottle of greasy, foul smelling hair-oil. Of all things—hair-oil on Jack Avidon! And could it be the purring voice which I had so admired that was saying: " 'Never meant no harm! You leper! You beveledged alligator! You snipe! You varmint! You idiot!' "She was actually beating me over the head. As I warded off some of her blows, I uttered the bitterest words in the world: " 'Et tu, Brute!' " 'Don't you call me no names!' "She made a lunge to catch and strangle me instantly in her embrace. I escaped by dodging under her arm, leaped over the counter and rushed out the back door. My friends had already vanished, how or where I never knew. . . . " W h a t humiliation! W h a t disaster! Millie McBride was the only one of the fifteen prize-winners to put foot in the store as long as I owned it, but they were all doing to me outside the store what she had done inside, only worse if anything. They were ruining my trade and my reputation. M y business went down almost to nothing. I made a brave fight, but what was the use? I had to let my clerks go. Oh! the hours passed in that store, without so much as one customer opening the door! Those fifteen f a t women, who had been purring kittens, had become

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T H E FAT WOMEN OF BOONE ferocious rhinoceroses and were trampling me to pulp. A f t e r five months of heroic resistance, I sold out at a loss and retired f r o m business. "Since then, I have spent several months traveling. I went to Madison County, but resentment against me was too strong. Madison, like Boone, is closed to me for ever. I visited a cousin in Doniphan County, Missouri, and he introduced me to his wife's niece. She was low and f a t . Everything looked favorable on the surface, but, as an honest man, I felt obliged to make a confession about the f a t women of Boone and to show her the article. H e r manner changed, and, through a mutual friend, my cousin was asked to request me to cease my attentions. I came from there to Westport. Y o u people have been mighty good to me, but I haven't seen what I want. It looks like a man of my age, with sixty thousand dollars in the bank, three farms and a house in town ought to be able to find a wife, but I can't, and it looks like 'good night' to J a c k . " " B u t , Cousin J a c k , " said Juliette after a moment's silence, "you are hard to please! F a t women of charm and good birth don't grow on bushes." " I ' m done with f a t women! Never again for m e ! The sight of a f a t woman fills me with terror! N o , I'm c u r e d ! " " W h a t sort of a w i f e do you want, J a c k ? " " W e l l , she must be hand-picked, of good f a m i l y , honest and generous, neither f a t nor lean." Juliette thought for a moment.

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"Cousin Jack, do you know, I think I have in mind just the woman you want!" "Is she fat?" "No!" "Lean?" "No, just right—about like me, only prettier." "I don't believe that, nor does Willie. Is she of good family?" "None better hereabouts." "A good house-keeper?" "Fine!" "Kind to servants?" "Very." "Is she a good listener?" "To one who talks like you do! . . . Jack, the more I think of her, the more I see that she's made for you!" "Tell me her given name." "We call her Kennie—it's short for Kentucky." "Where does she live, Juliette?" Juliette pointed off into the night, beyond the forest: "She lives in that direction. She will admire you for your courage and patriotism in that affair of the fat women of Boone, and for your six wounds in defense of the Confederacy. She's a noble heart, Jack! We more than like her—we love her!" Long after the others had gone, Col. Jack Avidon, late of Boone, sat before his replenished glass, looking off into the night in the direction his cousin had indicated and glancing from time to time at the 255

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splendid constellations above him, redressors, perhaps, of unmerited misfortune . . . " W h o knows? . . . Juliette is a good judge . . . Perhaps after all . . . Kennie. . .

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Y o u have probably heard how Col. Jack Avidon of Boone County found himself fascinated by the lady whom his cousin Juliette selected for him, how he wooed her not in vain, and how there was a great wedding at the house of the bride. You may not have heard how Col. Avidon decided to remain among us, how he bought a large farm about two miles from Westport, and built the mansion which you know as the Avidon house. It was late in April that he and his bride held their house-warming, and what a great occasion! It was not an affair of one night, but they kept open house for a month. The Colonel's oldest friend, Harry Tutt of Boone, came to grace the festivities. We had had a sight of him at the wedding, but now we came to know him. It was on a cool, still night in April that Mr. Tutt told us about the snakes of Boone. A crackling fire leaped on the new hearth. A half-dozen neighbors and their wives sat on comfortable benches and in casy-chairs, and near by stood a big table laden with good things to eat, drink and smoke, all duly replenished by the fair hands of the bride, Juliette and the servants. On the floor near the fireplace lay

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four or five of us boys, consuming nuts and cakes, drinking cider, and losing no word of the wonderful conversation. I do not now remember what introduced the subject of snakes, but it seemed to come up naturally, as it usually does among persons of intelligence. Mr. Tutt was fully as tall as his friend Jack, and even thinner, and he wore neither beard nor mustache. We had perhaps never before seen a smoothshaven man past thirty years of age, and we watched with curiosity his long, thin face and his deftly moving Adam's apple. His eyes, of the color of ripe horse-chestnuts, had a way of resting on you without seeing you, and rarely abandoned their apparent melancholy while he was speaking. Many of his remarks passed over the heads of us boys, but caused the grown-ups to laugh. He had a good voice for singing, and many times we heard from him snatches of the ballad of "Joe Bowers," which begins, as you all know: "My name is Joe Bowers, I've got a brother Ike, I come here from Missouri, Yes, all the way from Pike." For us boys, at least, Mr. Tutt put Pike on the map. We believed it a town in Boone County, and we came to think that Mr. Tutt's name was Joe Bowers. Among other songs of his was "Little Girl," in whose chorus we joined. It would be impossible to write 2)8

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phonetically or otherwise the pronunciation of Mr. Tutt when he sang this well-known dialect song. Such words as girl, unconcerning, stingers, yearning, which occur in "Little Girl," defy transcription, as does the intonation. H e spoke the rich, beautiful dialect which crept up the rivers of Missouri in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and was as much superior to the inane, schoolmarm English now to be heard as persimmon to pawpaw! Mr. Tutt, then, sang: "Oh! Willyum thought hisself a wundah, When he peeped a sunbonnet undah. Little guhl, Pritty guhl! He hitcht his hoss so unconsuhnin' An' stept to whah she set a-chuhnin'. Little guhl, Pritty guhl! He felt that he had shohly bound huh, When he slipt his ahm around huh. Little guhl, Pritty guhl! She up an' giv his jaws two stingahz, An' toh his hah with huh long fingahz. Little guhl, Pritty guhl! 259

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'Go back to whah yo hoss is a-yuhnin' An' let me finish this-heah chuhnin'!' Little guhl, Pritty g u h l ! " One of the guests having inquired what crops he raised on his farm, Mr. T u t t glanced at Col. Avidon, then slowly moistened his lips at his glass, coughed slightly and commenced: "I see that Jack has not betrayed me, no more than I'd have betrayed him, if the circumstances was reversed. I hope that you will all imitate him and say nothing, because I need to be careful of my reputation. I am a raiser of snakes. Being a bachelor without visible ties, I have been able to consecrate my life to this work, until I have come to possess, as Jack will admit, the richest, most varied collection of snakes in Boone County, and that's saying something." Col. Avidon nodded: "Your collection drives me crazy with jealousy! You're a real amatoor." " I ' m an amatoor and a kunazoor," said Mr. T u t t , "but I did not arrive at this perfection in a day. T o be able to raise snakes with conspicuous success is a gift, like red hair or profanity. You either have it, or you don't." Several of the men, especially Willie Simpson, were laughing until they were red in the face, although we boys could not understand why. And all the time, Mr. T u t t ' s sad eyes remained fixed on

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T H E SNAKES OF BOONE objects at an immense distance. H e commenced again : " I t is to be supposed that you have all heard of the snakes of Boone, but do you know their beginnings—do you know history"?" W e shook our heads. " W e l l , the constitution of the State of Missouri, adopted in 1 8 2 0 , provided that there should be established a State University, and in 1 8 2 7 certain lands were indicated which were later to be sold for its maintenance. The project fortunately slept for a dozen years, but the legislature of 1 8 3 9 brought the matter up, allowed itself to be purchased by the central counties of the State, and passed a bill providing that the university should be located in one of the central counties. There were six of them, as the whole world knows: Cole, Cooper, Howard, Boone, C a l l a w a y , and Saline. Y o u understand—it was these counties that had secretly bought the legislature. N o w , in which of these six counties should the university be located? W e l l , Boone County bribed the next legislature, and thus won the award. But where in Boone County should the universitybe located? T h e county was f u l l of ideal towns clamoring f o r the location. There was Sturgeon, Cent r a l a , Perché, Deer Park, Pierpont, Terrapin Neck, Bonne Femme, Clayville, Ginlet, Providence, Rocheport, M i d w a y , and, finally, Smithton. This last-named hamlet, which stood on the western shores of F l a t Branch, a stream about two feet wide in a wet season, crossed the Branch overnight, 261

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changed its name from Smithton to Columbia, bought up the judges of the award, and obtained the location of the university! "You see the situation. W a r s have been fought for less. First we have more than a hundred counties robbed by the six central counties, then these robbed by Boone, then Boone robbed by Columbia, that is, Smithton! "There followed one of the most significant events in the history of the world. If we had had historians, they would have called it the W a r of the Snakes. All of the outlying counties, from Pemtscot to Clark, and from McDonald to Atchison, began driving their snakes in on the interior counties next them, and these drove them on—increased with their own snakes—on and on! There were blacksnakes, blueracers, rattlesnakes, adders, kingsnakes, hoopsnakes, vipers, lizards, centipedes, dipsades—oh! them dipsades!—boas, crocodiles, mocassins, rubbersnakes, copperheads, watersnakes, pythons, salamanders—even I can not name them all! Night and day, this creeping, writhing, coiling, hissing mass of snakes was slowly driven in on the six central counties, which lie strung along the Missouri River like a string of sausages. Then five of these counties— the ones that was betrayed by Boone's bribery of the legislature—commenced to drive the snakes in on Boone. Talk of snakes! Boone was nothing but snakes! They were so thick that in many low places hundreds of thousands of them was suffocated. But

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there was plenty l e f t ! The men of Boone tried to drive them back, but you might as well try to drive a river back with the tail-feathers of a rooster. I saw them terrible events from the roof of my daddy's barn, and I could talk about them for a month without stopping, except to take a drink occasionally. I reckon that us men of Boone has forgotten more about snakes than all other humans knows . . . "Well, you see the close of my lesson in history. W h e n the other towns of Boone learned how they'd been tricked by Columbia, they knowed what to do with their snakes! Bless your souls! Columbia was buried under snakes—buried so deep that the minds of its inhabitants will see nothing but snakes for a thousand years. Let me hurry over the horror of them scenes!" Mr. T u t t paused. H e passed his long fingers through his tumbled hair and appeared to lose himself in troubled memories. One of the youngest of us boys asked timidly: " W h a t is a university, Mr. Bowers?" Something like the beginning of a smile flashed for an instant in Mr. T u t t ' s horse-chestnut eyes: "I might refer you to Mr. Avidon, who is the finished product of the State University, were it not that recent events have clouded his memory. H e entered the university and went clean through it, but I got just far enough inside the door to receive a kick which landed me plumb in the middle of my daddy's farm. It was my first disappointment, and it 263

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has been followed by many more. All my life, I've been hoping to arrive where there was a watermelon as big as a haystack, with no one near, but I've always been disappointed. A university, my boy, is a perpetual circus. It has a group of performing animals quite wonderful to observe, and a collection of fossils which are fascinating to examine and whose remembrance is a joy for ever. These fossils are selfperpetuating and never disappear. The more fossils, the greater the university. . . ." " W h a t are fossils, M r . Bowers'?" "Professors." " W h a t are professors, Mr. Bowers'?" "They are talkers, men who are paid to talk— just think of it: paid to talk! Young men go and pass four years listening to them, so as to learn to become fossils in turn." " M r . Bowers," said another boy, "if there is so many snakes in Boone, why do you raise any?" "Sonny, it's partly because I love them. W h y ! I even have tame snakes that follow me round like a dog! I've some that you couldn't get me to part with. Then, the time I've been telling you about was when I was your age or younger. Snakes ain't so plentiful as they was in Boone, though they're still numerous. Finally, if you want to know, some of us, who have not forgotten the wrongs of the past, raise snakes to drive them in on SmithtonColumbia." " M r . Bowers," said a third boy, "they's lots of 264

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snakes here in Jackson County, but you said they was all druve off1?" "Right you are, my boy! But remember this: the snakes now to be seen in this beautiful and popular region once lived in Columbia, Boone County, every one! You see, they become attached to the young men who went down to the university from here and followed them home." W e boys, sitting huddled close together on the hearth, whispered among ourselves. We were thinking of all the snakes outside in the black night— snakes freshly awakened from their winter sleep and hungry. We were urging the youngest among us to make a request. "Mr. Bowers," said he timidly, "will you ask Col. and Mrs. Avidon if us boys can't pass the night here by the fire? We can sleep on the floor, if—if you'll bring in the hounds." Mr. Tutt consulted with his eyes our hostess and host, and replied joyously: "Why, of course you can! I'll help to spread the covers myself! My dear old Jack and his lovely bride can refuse me nothing, for "My name is Joe Bowers, I've got a brother Ike . . ."

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T H E FLY-CHASER TO THE HARRIS HOUSE T H E first in the honorable line of darkey boys who were fly-chasers to the Harris House, Westport, was named Sylvester. H e is still remembered by the old settlers. Born a slave, and set free in 1 8 6 3 while a child, he continued to live at the tavern after his emancipation as before. A slender little fellow of about eleven he was, at the time of this story. H e was less than four feet high, and as black as the boxlike chamber, five feet square, in which he sat for two hours or more three times a day in fly time and propelled with hands and bare feet the marvelous appliance that had been installed in the dining-room beneath him. This appliance was a frame which slipped back and forth above the long table, and from it hung strips of newspaper that barely cleared the heads of the happy diners. Through the small opening in the ceiling at his feet, Sylvester could see them, the princes of the earth, devouring the good things of which he never tasted, unless in the leavings, and talking, talking, for in that age men knew how to talk. At times, when the conversation interested the boy too much, the movement of the frame slackened, and a voice called up through the ceiling: 266

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" H e y ! fly-chaser! faster! Push hard on them flies!" Immediately the valiant little hands and feet responded. One Thursday in August, there arrived at the Harris House from Liberty, Clay County, which is on the other side of the river, the Rev. J o b Limner, a noted preacher and revivalist, a getter of souls, a saver of whole communities. H e was a Campbellite —that is, a Christian—when he wasn't a Methodist or a Baptist or something else—about thirty-eight years old, full-bodied, as becomes the cloth, and had been for a score of years a destroyer of pies, puddings and pickles, and a peril to poultry. H e was beginning to be bald, and knew it. H e wore his face smooth-shaven, which was against him, and he looked on humanity with the sort of contempt often seen in men of low birth who have risen to high estate. Sylvester, who was no fool, had always disliked the man, and this day he felt irritated when he saw him, ten minutes after his arrival at the Harris House, seated at the head of the table consuming everything in sight, and bawling u p from time to time through the ceiling, as if he had been born under a fly-chaser, " H e y ! fly-boy! fastah! fastah!" Westport needed the ministrations of the Rev. J o b Limner, and needed them badly. People had everything hard at Westport. It was an awful place for chills and ague, coughs, revivals, fevers, politics, 267

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flies, phrenology, blizzards, mosquitoes, rheumatism, desperadoes, theology, mud, fleas, mumps, tornadoes, shingles, measles, prayer-meetings, neuralgia, grasshoppers, ghosts, nervous prostration, floods, shooting stars, prophecies, male quartets, fainting spells, cyclones, eclipses, divers maladies—everything! As for revivals, no place in all creation had them harder, longer, or oftener. No sooner had the entire population been converted and the evangelist gone to a new field, than they commenced to backslide, so that in a few months it all had to be done over again. Despite the bad reputation of Westport, which had gone out to the ends of the earth, the Rev. Job Limner, a garnerer of souls, a whole fire-escape in himself, believed that he could convert the inhabitants so that they would show at least a flash of staying qualities. At his second meal at the Harris House, Sylvester heard him boasting of the great revival he was going to start the next Sunday at the Union Church. H e ended by saying on a full mouthful, "Souls is happiah and stays gahnahd longah if I gahnah them." "You ain't goin' to gahnah me!" Sylvester said under his breath as he rocked back and forth, like a man rowing a boat. Among the delicious fumes from below which filled the darkness of his box, he now scented the odor of strong coffee. It always went to his head,

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gave him wings, set him free from his black, hot labor. H e saw himself a member of one of the caravans about which he had heard so many bearded men tell, down there in the dining-room at his feet. Yes, he was out on the Great Plains, with a handsome mustang under him and pistols in his belt. The Mexican saddle on his mustang cost eight hundred dollars, and his broad hat cost sixty-four dollars, and he wore spurs of gold on his two-hundred-dollar boots. H e it was who saved the caravan during an attack by four million Indians, he it was who found water, when the caravan was dying of thirst, who discovered the richest mine in the mountains made of gold. " H a ! Sylvestah's rich now! Plenty to eat now! Plenty of coffee now! Hosses an' mules an' wagins an' fine close, an' a big gole ring on his fingah! Sylvestah's six foot t a l l ! Sylvestah won't be a flychasah no m o h ! " T h e little black body rocked more slowly, so intense the vision it saw. Then the brutal voice of the man at the head of the table thundered up through the hole in the ceiling, " H e y ! fly-chasah! fastah! fastah!" And so it was, meal after meal and every meal. H e had come to hate the big man from Clay County. Finally, as the voice boomed up for the fourth time Saturday at supper, a plan of vengeance—a great, a magnificent plan—came to Sylvester. H i s eyes shone and his white teeth flashed in the dark-

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ness of his prison. He muttered under his breath: "Hit's fly time. Jes' you wait, Clay County!" Sylvester was more than fly-chaser to the Harris House; he was the cleaner and polisher of boots— knee-boots, if you please, the only sort that men wore. That night, then, after the guests had gone to bed, he slipped as usual through the halls, took the boots that waited by the bedroom doors, carried them to the log hut where he lived back of the hotel, cleaned and polished them. Never had the little flychaser work so earnestly: Clay County should see! Just let him wait! He left the boots of the Rev. Job Limner until the last. When he reached them, he took the candle, went to the pantry next to the big kitchen, uncovered the crock full of comb honey, put a large piece into his mouth, worked it into one cheek like a quid of tobacco, and returned to the hut. It was with blacking that was half honey that he gave the boots a wonderful polish, then he carried them up-stairs, and set them down softly at the door of the Rev. Limner, who lay dreaming of the swath he was going to cut to-morrow among the sinners of Westport. O Job! why did nothing warn you of the mortal trap into which you were going to thrust your manly feet! It was waiting there at your door. Were there no angels left in heaven? There were other things than the garnering of souls in the dreams of Job Limner. There were eyes that would not let a man rest when he had once seen 270

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them, a voice which no man could hear and ever be sane again, a pair of little hands that held one of the richest fortunes in Jackson County—yes! there was Becky W e l l s ! She would be sitting alone in the family pew, the second from in front, on the left side of the pulpit. She would sit there looking at him as he sat by the pulpit, she would see him rise majestically, she would hear him speak, she would turn pale under the torrents of his eloquence. For he would be eloquent—he did not know how to be anything else! It was for her that he had of late multiplied his visits to Westport—to lead her to the happiness which could come through him alone. H e felt success in the air. W h o could resist him? W h a t a lovely time he would have to-morrow! what triumphs ! Dream on, Job Limner! but there is an ominous thing waiting by your door—two things, in fact—which you ought to look into. They are similar, they are very similar; they are black and shiny —you could see to shave by them—and their height is about half that of the little fly-chaser—have you ever seen him, the little fly-chaser who sits above the dining-room ceiling, you know, to push the frame that frightens away the flies from your plate and cools your dome when you sit at table? It is an established fact that Sundays are hotter than other days, and this Sunday came ready-made to the tongue of the eloquent man who would soon uncover hell for the saving of sinners. As, superb and massive, the Rev. Limner walked down the aisle 271

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by the side of the Rev. Augustus Catbird, a tall, spare man, like him an illustrious snatcher of souls along the western frontier, his eye sought one bench, one form, and there she was, but, horror! who was that by her side? A thin, dandified, long-necked young m a n ! The cheeks of the Rev. Limner flushed: had anything been happening since his last visit? H e recognized the young man, Chinkie Rice, a relative of Angeline Parish. Only the day before, he had passed an hour watching him waste his time as usual, pitching horseshoes with the other idlers, back of Bud Donaldson's livery stable. A graceless fellow, always laughing. Chinkie Rice, however, proved the only fly as yet visible in the ointment. The church was already nearly full, and fresh worshippers were arriving every moment. Through the low windows of the brick church could be heard the stamping of horses and mules, and the familiar sound which the Rev. Limner liked to hear when they shook themselves under their sweaty collars or saddles. All through the congregation, the women and many of the children were using fans, which gave the church an appearance of elegance. Outside, there was not a breath stirring. The Rev. Catbird had folded himself u p and sat down at the right of the pulpit, the Rev. Limner had taken the chair on the left. They were of course dressed in black, and both wore boiled shirts and high collars, which were already sinking under the heat, like the subsiding ribs of an ae272

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cordeon. The members of the choir, four female voices and as many male, were in their places, at their head Christopher Huffaker, the school teacher and leader of the choir, whose manly beard showed all its color. Strangely enough, the trouble—because trouble came, it always does—commenced with Christopher Huffaker, the most inoffensive of mortals. You see, it had long been known that he was going on a visit to Blue Mills, eighteen miles distant. Not only was this known, he knew that it was known, and that the eyes of the worshippers would look at him with peculiar interest, as at an object which they might not behold again. One did not travel with impunity. Furthermore, the public knew—and he knew that they knew—that the other members of the choir had composed the words of a song of farewell to him, and that they were going to sing the song. H e had even slipped u p to the shrubbery by the church at night to hear them practising it, and he almost knew by heart the flattering message of the song. H e sat in his place, then, covered with blushes such as cover the cheeks of delicate souls at certain moments. The dear man would have given something to be lying in the shade, down by Brush Creek! After the choir and the congregation had sung " O H a p p y Day," the Rev. Catbird made a brief twentyminute prayer. Precious minutes they were for the Rev. Limner, for he could contemplate from between his fingers the adorable figure in pink which

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sat with head slightly bent in the second pew on the left—sat there calm, inscrutable, under its dark crown of heavenly hair. Just one more hymn, and it would be his turn to speak to the worshippers— to stir them, break them as he knew so well how to do, beneath the boom of his tremendous voice! Even the bricks should hear. . . . The choir rose, all except Christopher Huffaker, who sat blushing heavier than ever. The temporary leader gave the signal. The fans ceased to move. The congregation was about to hear an historic event—the song composed in honor of Christopher Huffaker on the eve of his voyage. The tune was that of "All H a i l the Power of Jesus' Name," and the first stanza ran thus: " O Christopher, our singing chief, W e raise for you our song. W e hope your absence will be brief, And that it won't be long. W e hope your absence will be brief, And that it won't be long. There was a stir of choking in Becky Wells' pew. The thin young man by her side bent forward, struggled a while, straightened up, grabbed his hat, and ran down the aisle toward the door, his cheeks wet with hysterical laughter. W h a t a scene! W h a t a scandal! And Becky's pretty shoulders were shaking, but she mastered herself. She would have given a farm to be a mile outside of Westport, in a solitude. 274

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Above the buzzing of the congregation, the choir kept on bravely but haltingly through six more stanzas, then sat down in confusion. Christopher Huffaker's face had become a dark crimson, and gave promise of remaining so. The Rev. Catbird rose to the thin height of his six feet three, and waved his hand for silence. He looked to be ten feet tall. Just at this moment, the Rev. Limner, who had been smiling grimly under his chops at the discomfiture of his horseshoe-pitching rival, uncrossed his plump legs to recross them and give them a change and relieve a strange crawling which he felt. Fate was upon him! What do you think the horrified congregation saw? From his feet and the bottom of his august pantaloons, which were of course not tucked into his boots, rose in the air thousands of flies! Yes, all the flies in Jackson County were there. They had been shooting in at the door and windows in an uninterrupted stream, flying so fast that no one had seen them. His feet had become like twin branches of an apple tree with a swarm of bees on them. The flies now rose in the air as one man, and blurred him from the multitude, who wanted to see him. His heavy chops glowed red under the shadow of all those wings. He settled himself and avoided movement: perhaps it was all a mistake—it must be a mistake. The swarms of eager flies also settled to their former position, covered his boots, crawled up his pantaloons. . . . During these winged moments, the Rev. Catbird 275

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stood in the outer fringe of the cloud, so astonished that he forgot to take his hand down. Accordingly, it remained in the air, and lost its symbolic meaning: the congregation paid no attention to it. At last he pulled it down, as averred later by groups of longnecked men who stood looking in at the windows— pulled it down, and sat down all of a piece, his eyes fastened on his unfortunate companion. The Rev. Limner, from behind his cloud, had unconsciously picked up his broad-brimmed felt hat, with the gesture of one who fears that he has worn out his welcome. As the flies settled, he came gradually into the clearer sight of the congregation— first his dome, then his head, then his shoulders, then his hands holding to his manly breast the black hat, then his knees, crossed as before, but interchanged for variety and other reasons. It cannot be said that the public really saw his legs and feet, for they were concealed under glinting wings. For once, the eyes of the multitude were not riveted to the countenance of the great revivalist, but to where his feet and calves must be. H e had Pharaoh beaten at the post. And then something happened—something had to happen. The Rev. Limner was seen to hit viciously at his feet with his big hat. Instantly he became blurred as before, only differently, for there was more taking place within the cloud this time. I t was torn into violent eddies by a vast, sweeping, circular movement, and by stampings and smothered

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objurgations, then out of it shot the terrifying figure of Job Limner making for the door! A few men and boys rushed after him, but most could not—they were doubled up with laughter in the pews, or had dived headfirst out of the low windows, and lay rolling in convulsions on the grass and among the shrubbery. Becky Wells laughed until she fainted. The women found her later on the floor of her pew, unconscious but happy. The Rev. Limner dashed down Main Street, past horses and mules enjoying their first flyless summer day at church, past a small, bareheaded black boy standing in the shade. As he ran by the livery stable of Bud Donaldson, he bawled an order in at the door, then rushed to the Harris House. Ten minutes later, the small black boy, still standing in the same place, watched him jolting down the road on the back of the big, mean sorrel that Bud hired to persons whom he did not like.

COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK FOREIGN HUMPHREY

AGENT MILFORD

AMEN HOUSE, E . C . LONDON