CHAPTER XXVI

THE OWNER OF THE POTATO PATCH, AND HIS DOG.

PASSING the corner of the block, where he dropped Judge Garty’s key into the hogshead of water, Jack slipped into a short, narrow alley, and turned down a back street which brought him quickly to the shore of a broad mill-pond, where it stopped. He then took to the fields.

He got on very well until, as he was crossing a potato patch, he saw, only a few rods ahead of him, a man going up from the shore of the pond, followed by a savage-looking dog. It was our old acquaintance and Jack’s enemy, Duffer,[1] a thick-set, red-faced, black-whiskered teamster, almost the last man Jack would have wished at that moment to encounter.

Footnote 1:

See JACK HAZARD AND HIS FORTUNES, Chapters XXIII. and XXIV.

He stopped running, but kept on at a fast walk, still hoping to pass the man and his dog without trouble. He was bareheaded, having left his hat behind in the court-room. That circumstance was alone sufficient to excite attention; and Duffer looked sharply at him.

“Go back there!”

“I’m in a hurry, I can’t go back,” said Jack, continuing to walk on.

“You’re on my land! you can’t cross here!”

“I can cross farther up, then.”

“No, ye can’t!” said Duffer, brandishing a long black whip which he had been trailing behind him. “I owns this ’ere land, from the pond to the street. Go back the way you come, or I lets my dorg on to ye!”

“I want to pass, and it’s as far going back to get off your land as it is going on,” said Jack, anxiously; for he could hear the shouts in the village, and he feared that pursuers were already on his track.

“You don’t cross this ’ere tater patch!” said Duffer, furiously. “I know ye! Ye had a hand in killing my t’ other dorg!”

“No, I didn’t,” said Jack. “He was killed in a fair fight with my dog,—ask Grodson! Let me go on, and I never ’ll set foot on your land again.”

And he was going on. Then the ruffian said, “The dorg ’ll take ye! Look alive, Bull!”

Jack, growing desperate, screamed back, “Let your whelp come!” and turned to face the brute.

“Sick!” said Duffer, cracking his whip, and the dog started.

Jack had in his hand a slender stick which he had picked up crossing the fields. Duffer laughed at it. “My dorg won’t mind a switch like that! Go in, Bull!”

But Jack had no thought of defending himself by striking blows with so slight a weapon. His long experience on the canal had taught him, as he afterwards said, “a trick worth two of that.”

Boldly facing the cur as he came bounding towards him, he grasped the stick firmly near the ends with both hands, and, lifting it horizontally, held it before him, about as high as his breast. Bull, as Jack had expected, leaped up and seized it with his teeth; in which exposed position he received full in his stomach so sudden and well-directed a kick from Jack’s heavy farm-shoe, that he loosed his hold and rolled over, yelping, on the ground.

“Sick him! go in! tear him!” roared Duffer, running to the rescue.

The “dorg,” however, had had his courage quite kicked out of him with his breath, and nothing could induce him to renew the attack. Whining and limping, or rather crawling, he slunk back to his master, who gave him another fierce command to “go in” and “sick,” and lastly a sharp cut with the snake-like lash, which merely sent him yelping in the opposite direction. Then Duffer, infuriated, advanced upon Jack, flourishing his whip, exactly in the way the boy had persisted in going.

Jack thereupon turned back. Duffer followed him. Jack began to run, and then Duffer began to run. Jack went tumbling over the fences, and Duffer went tumbling over the fences after him. Jack ran for liberty at first, but soon he began to run from the whip; while at each moment, as he gave signs of failing courage, Duffer’s rage and thirst for vengeance increased; for nothing so excites the valorous fury of your genuine bully, as the appearance of faint-heartedness in a foe.

Beyond the street, Jack kept the shore of the pond where it swept around towards the canal. He now regretted not having taken that course in the first place, yet he had avoided it for a good reason; there was the waste-wear in his way.

The “heel-path” side of the canal was narrowed here to a high and steep embankment; into this was set a waste-gate in a frame of strong timbers; and over the gate and the timbers the canal poured its surplus waters in a shining cascade that fell into the pond below. This was the waste-wear, crossed by a single foot-plank, in full view of the village and of the canal, for half a mile up and down. Quite near the gate, its arched top visible at the base of the embankment, was a culvert for the pond water, which there flowed under the canal into a mill-race on the other side.

Towards this conspicuous if not very dangerous place, the hatless Jack, driven back by Duffer, now ran with all his might. Once across the waste-wear, he could still hope to baffle pursuit in the orchards and woods beyond. But Duffer was too swift for him; and, feeling his own strength giving out, and the avenger of the “dorg” fast gaining on him, Jack stooped and caught up from the flat, goose-nibbled and goose-trampled pond-shore the only available missile in sight. Then, like David defying the giant of Gath, he turned, with upraised, menacing arm.

“Come on,” he cried, “and I send this at your head!”

It could not have proved a very formidable projectile, being nothing but a dirty goose-egg, but it served his purpose for the moment; Goliath, mistaking it for a stone, stopped and prepared to dodge or retreat.

“Don’t ye chuck that rock at me! I’ll drownd ye in that water if ye do!”

“Keep your distance, then,” commanded Jack, backing off.

He used often to laugh, in later years, at the ludicrous spectacle of the big-whiskered ruffian brought to a stand and put in fear by a goose-egg; but he had no leisure for laughing at the time. For now the uproar in the village, which had seemed to be subsiding, burst forth afresh in sudden cries of “Ketch him! ketch that boy!” and, looking quickly around, he saw a scattered crowd of men and youngsters running out of the village directly towards him.

Then Jack felt that his chance of escape was small; his breath was spent, and here were fresh pursuers on his track! In his rage, remembering that he might now have been a mile away had it not been for Duffer, he paused, before once more taking to flight, and discharged the goose-egg at his enemy. Long practice with pebbles and stones on the tow-path, in the days when he was a driver, had made him a good shot; wrath nerved his arm; the mark was near, and by no means small; and the result was satisfactory. He whirled and ran, leaving Duffer half stunned, staggering and spluttering and spitting, mouth, beard, and bosom variegated and dripping with the mixed yellow and white of the egg, which had struck and burst, like a bombshell, full in his face.

Jack felt that the egg was suspiciously light, and anybody within half a dozen rods might have heard it _pop_; but it was Duffer who had the strongest evidence of the vile and gassy character of its contents. Blowing and snorting, he rushed down to the pond in order to purify himself, while Jack fled.