Part 1

Sandhills Sketches

BY WILLIAMS HAYNES

_Author of “Casco Bay Yarns,” etc._

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS.

NEW YORK D. O. HAYNES & CO. Publishers

_COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY WILLIAMS HAYNES_

This little book is just what its title implies: pages from a note book kept during a winter spent in the Piedmont Country of North Carolina. Because the story of the Sandhills has not heretofore been told, it has seemed worth while to collect them in this form.

With one exception, the following sketches have been published in various magazines, and my thanks are due the proprietors of “Travel,” “Forecast,” “House and Garden,” and “Outing” for their kind permission to reprint material that first appeared in their publications.

WILLIAMS HAYNES.

Northampton, Mass.

CONTENTS

DODGING WINTER 5

“THEM HUGGINS BOYS” 15

A SANDHILLS CHRISTMAS CAROL 31

“TAR BURNIN’” 43

SOME QUAIL DOGS AND OTHERS 54

THE CLAY BIRDS 67

THROUGH A JUNGLE TO THE OLD SOUTH 79

Dodging Winter

A winter vacation is as seductive as the opium pipe. Slip away to the sunny Southland just once during the winter; next season you will surely want to do it again--one whiff and you are an habitué.

How drear and dismal snow-bound January seems! What a torrent of chilly discomfort is the sleet and slush of March! The golf bag, or the gun case, in the corner by the fireplace is a subtle, suggestive temptation, and even the cheery open fire itself calls up memories of crackling pine knots that spluttered and blazed not in deadly earnest, so that you should not shiver, but lightly and brightly, impregnating the air with the pungent frankincense of comradeship.

There is a glorious exultation in dodging Winter. You cannot really fight on equal terms with the old rascal--a steam heater is such a pitiful weapon after all--so there is a keen delight in snapping your fingers under his frost-bitten nose. When you slip out of the freezing grasp of his long, cold arms, you have cheated a cruel, inexorable Fate. You feel like the hero of a Greek tragedy who has gloriously turned the play to comedy, and there is a peculiarly delicious feeling of freedom. The smelly coolness of the mid-summer woods is a respite from the burning heat of the city in July; the tingling, briny freshness of the wind-swept sea rocks is a reprieve--but the southern sun in winter gives freely a full pardon to the weather prisoner. It is he himself who weaves the enticing spell of the winter vacation, and the minute you tumble out of the Pullman, from whose blackened eaves the ghosts of icicles still trickle, you become a pagan sun worshipper.

Some winter vacationists carry their sun worshipping to a fanatic extreme. They are not at all content to bask in the sun, they must go way to Florida or Bermuda to be fairly baked. This sun gluttony carries its own punishments of lazy lassitude and all the risks of a sniffling cold or hacking cough when one must, as one always must, return to the cold North. It is wiser and more temperate to slip just far enough into the South to find a friendly sun, but not so far that he becomes a bore.

Isn’t the ideal winter play-place a country where it is warm enough for you to feel the sun, so, if you are out-of-doors, you do not need mufflers and ear tabs; where you can ride or motor, shoot or fish, play golf or tennis without a bungling sweater clinging to your shoulders and elbows; where you can sit under the trees an hour and read a favorite book without your fingers being numbed to blueness? But don’t you like a tang of frost in the morning air? Fifteen minutes in that air before breakfast is worth a whole month of cold baths and setting up exercises for starting the day right. In such a country too, the nights will be cool and refreshing as spring water, and you will sleep a sleep more strengthening than the most potent tonic in the whole pharmacopoeia.

Such a winter play-place is the Piedmont country of the Carolinas, the Sandhills, as the natives who “made cotton and corn on the clay” of the lowlands contemptuously christened them years ago. This was the old sea shore of the continent, and the sandy soil is even today, after all these geological ages, almost as white as a beach. The Sandhills roll away gently, not unlike great dunes, and through each little valley trickles a little stream--“branches” the natives call them--on whose banks crowd great clumps of holly bushes, bluegums, and magnolias. The dry, sandy soil, like a great blotter, keeps the air as dry as cotton, and the most soaking rain leaves no puddles or mud holes behind it. This, as the Old North State’s hearty toast proudly proclaims, is indeed

“The land of the long leaf pine, The southern land where the sun doth shine.”

Even the golfer on the Pinehurst links, who is so strictly admonished “to keep his eye on the ball,” carries away with him the picture of the towering long-leaf pines with their great, foot-long needles and their giant cones. The Aiken motorist, as he bowls down the hillsides and rattles over the little wooden bridge that spans the branch, cannot fail to distinguish out of the whirling landscape the sandy hilltops and the green thickets along the valley bottoms. The fox hunter, since Reynard will surely lay a line of scent ’way off the beaten tracks into the heart of the pine woods and the magnolia lowlands, will know the Sandhills better. But the one who tramps over the Sandhills behind a brace of bird dogs will know them best. Up through the valley, skirting the branch--over the hillside and across the fallow cotton fields--a scramble over the rail fence and a plunge through the tangle of holly bushes and briars all snarled with creepers--splash, splash, through the stream and up the other side of the hill. He is sure to learn the country first hand, and he will meet all sorts of interesting people. A lusty negro boy will be perfectly delighted to stop chopping at the black-jack stumps to tell him, “Dere’s a whalin’ big cobey ob birds done feed ober in dat field ob cow-peas. Ah hyah ’em whistlin’ ’bout half an hour ’go.” On a level hilltop an old darky tar burner will be his willing instructor in the mysteries of tar making. In a little hollow, miles from the high road, he will come suddenly upon a slatternly cabin with a curious chimney of clay and crossed sticks. Here a trio of putty faced babies will eye him suspiciously from behind the pig sty while their mother, a drab, timid woman, gives him a dipper of water.

The quail shooter cannot wander over the Sandhills without sooner or later being reminded of the post card with the picture of the revenue officers and the score of captured blockade whisky stills he sent off to his particular friend the first night he reached his hotel. I remember very well a suspicious old fellow, whose curt answers and strange advice sent our imaginations weaving tales of the moonshiners. ’Way back in the hills the dogs found a big covey beside a swamp and the birds flushed over the hill. We followed them to pick up the scattered singles and found two before we noticed this old fellow sitting on a stump at the edge of the thicket. We called in the dogs and walked over to him. He sat there, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him, quite motionless. A rusty, single barrelled shotgun, with a hammer as big as a clothes hook, rested in the crook of his arm, and between his feet sat a thin, black and tan foxhound, with a meek, sorrowful expression in her dark eyes. Neither man nor dog moved as we came up to them.

“Hello. Is this your land?” I asked.

He had been peering at us keenly from under his heavy brows as we approached, but now he dropped his eyes and mumbled noncommittally, “Dunno.”

“It isn’t posted, is it?”

“Tain’t posted,” he replied shortly.

“Are you finding many rabbits?” I asked him cheerfully.

“Ain’t huntin’ rabbits.”

“’Possums then?” I suggested.

“Ain’t huntin’ ’possum.”

“Does your hound point quail?”

“Nope.”

“Are you running deer? We saw some tracks back in the swamp.”

“Ain’t huntin’ deer.”

“Well, what are you hunting?”

“Ain’t huntin’ nawthin’.”

I gave up in despair, and my friend asked him very politely, “Do you live hereabouts?”

“Ovah yondah,” he answered without a sign, so whether his home was north, south, east, or west, and whether a hundred yards or ten miles away, there was no telling.

“Are there many birds about here?”

“Dunno,” he answered shortly.

“Queen” had found another bird and was pointing beautifully. We went over to her and my friend made a fine shot on a hard single. We started on and the old man yelled after us. We stopped and turned. He was hobbling slowly towards us.

“Is it possible he has found his tongue?” I whispered.

“The age of miracles is past,” replied my companion.

“Them birds you-all is huntin’,” said the old man when he was close beside us, “went ovah t’other side o’ the swamp.”

“But,” protested my friend, “we saw them come over the hill and we’ve found three singles already.”

“Right smart o’ ’em circled ’round.”

“Are you sure?” I persisted.

“Sartin’,” he grunted.

We exchanged glances, both wondering whether we were receiving a friendly tip from a strange fellow-sportsman or whether we were being gently warned away from the proximity of an illicit whisky still. We accepted his advice and recrossed the swamp. We found just one lone bird on that hillside where he had indicated, that “right smart o’ ’em” had flown.

As we went down the hill on the other side my friend asked me in all seriousness, “You know something about this Tar Heel dialect--would you call one, ’right smart’?”

“Would you?” I asked, and we both laughed.

If “the East is East and the West is West,” so the North is North and the South, South. That, if you really know the Sandhills, is one of the best charms of a winter vacation in that fascinating country. It is a very different country with different trees and flowers and birds and animals. The people too, are different. The Sandhill darky is a type quite distinct, and the Tar Heel is as fascinating and romantic as his cousin up in the Cumberland Mountains. You will not find these things at your hotel nor in the shops at Southern Pines, or Hamlet, or Aberdeen. You will not find them on the golf links or the tennis courts. You are very apt to ride over them on horseback, and you will surely pass them in a motor; but they are there, and over and above the good sport of winter play, they add a great deal to the fun of dodging winter in the Sandhills.

“Them Huggins Boys”

Everybody in the Sandhills, it seemed, knew “them Huggins boys”, and nobody had a good word to say for them. Everywhere I went I heard of them, and everything that I heard was ill.

Just after my arrival, as I was superintending the loading of my trunk onto a most rickety wagon, the station agent touched my arm and, pointing across the tracks, said, “Thar’s one o’ them Huggins boys, suh.”

I caught a fleeting glance of an amazingly long and lank youth jogging away astraddle a dilapidated mule.

“Looks like Ichabod Crane, doesn’t he?” I noted casually.

The station agent was frankly puzzled to find the resemblance. He scratched his sandy head and spat thoughtfully.

“Ah doan reckon,” he drawled, “Ah know What’s-his-name Crane. Is he kin to the Cranes over in Scotland County?”

“No,” I laughed, “he’s a school-master in a book.”

This information relieved him immensely. He would have been touched to the quick in his pride had he failed to recognize anyone in all the Sandhills, but a character in a book was quite a different matter. He grinned appreciatively.

“Oh,” he replied easily, “Ah ain’t much at book readin’; but ef What’s-his-name Crane looked laik them Huggins boys, Ah bet he wasn’t much of a school teacher.”

“Looks are deceiving,” I quoted.

“They shore are--them Huggins boys ain’t more’n half as mean lookin’ as they is.”

It was my turn to be puzzled, but the trunk was loaded now, and by the time I had given Uncle Willis his instructions, the agent had stepped back into his cubbyhole office. I wanted to question him further about “them Huggins boys” and find out the reason for his venomous words, but there were many things to be attended to, and, resolving to drop in on him some day between train times, I hurried over to the store.

Ten minutes later I again heard of “them Huggins boys.” The storekeeper, introductions having been completed and after he had done his duty by the good weather and the abundance of quail in the vicinity, remarked in his cheerful, talkative way that a neighbor of mine had just left.

“Is that so--who was it?” I asked politely.

“One of them Huggins boys.”

I began to be distinctly curious about these mysterious youths.

“’Bout a mile away,” the storekeeper replied to my question, “but Ah reckon you’ll find that close enough.”

“These Huggins boys don’t seem to be very popular,” I said, hoping to lead him on.

“They ain’t,” he answered shortly, adding confidentially, “Doan you lend ’em nawthin’ you set no value on.”

Another customer interrupted us. I thanked him for his advice, and he supplemented it with the information. “We-all doan give ’em no credit here.”

That evening my next door neighbor, who lived half a mile away, dropped in to extend his welcome. He too, warned me about these boys. Later I questioned his overseer, who had ordered them off the plantation, and he characterized them shortly as “the damnedest nuisances in the country”. Uncle Willis, after a deal of questioning, confessed, “Well, Massa Billie, hit’s disaway, dey is jest natcherly meaner dan a mad mule”.

Bits like this, a little here and a little there, I gathered up everywhere. In little scraps too, I collected their history. Their father before them had been a notorious character, famous as a fighter and a leader of moonshiners. All his life he had been a hard-drinking, work-hating good-for-nothing, and his sons, according to common report, were following right in his unsteady footsteps. There was not enough energy among the four of them to cultivate their little farm properly. They raised a little cotton and harbored a scrubby cow and half a dozen gaunt, half-wild hogs, but land and stock, little cabin and dilapidated barn were all going to rack and ruin as fast as abuse and neglect could drive them. Failing to make a living out of what might have been a good little plantation, they hired out for odd jobs and in the winter burned tar. But their services were never greatly in demand, and just how they managed to live, and their old mother and sister too, was a mystery. Some people, with a great show of pretended knowledge, hinted at a blockade still and raw corn liquor sold to the darkies for two bits a quart. Others pointed out that whatever ready money they scraped together was invested in the cheapest and most virulent whisky, which argued against any home-made intoxicants. All this I learned before I made their acquaintance, and our first meeting did not tend to improve the opinion I had formed of them.

One Sunday morning, as I was sitting on the verandah pretending to read, but really luxuriating in the January sun, the Sabbath peace was rudely broken by a quavering falsetto voice whining out a darky song:

“De Lord he thought he’d mak’ a man. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again! Lil’ bit o’ earth an’ lil’ bit o’ sand. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again! Ah knows it: de-ed Ah do know: Ah knows it, Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!

Thought He’d mak’ a ’ooman too. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again! Cast about see what He’d do. Dese bones gwine rise again! Ah knows it: de-ed Ah do know: Ah knows it, Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!”

The mournful sound was getting louder and louder. Evidently the singer was coming up the driveway. I laid aside my book and walked around the house to see who it was.

“Took a rib from Adam’s side. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again! Made Miss Eve t’ be his bride. Dese bones gwine rise again! Ah knows it: de-ed Ah----”

I stepped around the corner and the song stopped abruptly. A most remarkable vehicle, an ancient phaeton, all besplattered with red clay mud and held together with odd bits of rope, twine, and wire, was approaching at a slow and dignified pace. It was drawn by a little moth-eaten mule who dragged his hoofs through the sand and flopped his big ears in a distressingly spiritless manner. In violent contrast to their melancholy equipage two cheerful figures sprawled in the carriage. The driver, his great feet thrust over the wobbly dashboard his head resting on the back of the seat, was paying much more attention to the wisps of white clouds overhead than to his steed. His companion, the singer, sat sideways, swinging his legs over the side in time with his song. He broke off in the middle of a word when he caught sight of me, and giving the driver a violent nudge, switched himself around into the carriage. The driver slipped his feet off the dashboard and hunched up into an almost sitting position. The mule just stopped and, for all the world with the Dormouse at the mad tea-party, immediately went to sleep. The singer, too, might have posed for the drawings of the Mad Hatter himself. He had the same lean face with high cheek bones; the same bulging eyes and prominent nose; the same protruding teeth and receding chin. Nor was the driver unlike the March Hare. There was a strange mixture of brazen effrontery and extreme timidity in his manner. His shifting eyes and shuffling feet belied his bold speech.

“Good morning,” I said.

The singer nodded embarrassedly, and the driver, his eyes scanning the landscape, grunted, “Mawnin’”.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“Is you the gemmen’s rented dis place?” asked the driver bluntly.

I told them I had and they exchanged glances.

“Ah’m Jim Huggins,” the driver replied to my question, “an’ he’s mah brother Tom,” indicating the singer with a side-wise jerk of his head. “We live ovah yondah.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “two of the Huggins boys. I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard of you.”

They shook hands doubtfully, and Jim questioned me with open suspicion. “What’d you heah ’bout us?”

Tom, who had not spoken till now, shifted uneasily, and before I could reply asked if I didn’t want to buy some eggs.

“MacDougall’s sellin’ ’em at the store,” he added, “fo’ fo’ty cents a dozen, but we-all’l let you have ’em for thirty-five.”

I had bought eggs from MacDougall just the day before for thirty-five cents.

“You say,” I said, “that you’ll sell me eggs for five cents less than the store price?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Well, then. I’ll give you thirty cents a dozen for them--if Sally wants some.”

Again they exchanged glances.

“Ah reckon that’ll be alright,” said Jim, looking everywhere but at me.

I called Sally out of her kitchen, and she explained that “’deed, Massa Billie, we-all has all de aiggs we kin use till ’bout Wednesday,” so I told the Huggins boys to come back then. Their almost proverbial meanness flared up at this. They considered my refusal to buy of them an insult and a great injustice, and muttered threats and abuse.

“Here,” I said, “stop your grumbling and clear out. I didn’t ask you to bring me eggs, and I’ve ordered some for next Wednesday though you lied about the price. Stop your grumbling and get along with you. And next time you come round here leave that home.”

I pointed to an empty flask that lay neglected on the floor of the carriage. Jim kicked it under the seat, jerked at the reins to wake up the mule, and with something about “Jest’s you say, boss,” drove slowly off.

So these were the far-famed Huggins boys. I watched them half way down the driveway, and then went back to my sunny seat and the book. As I settled myself, the quavering tones of Tom’s high voice, taking up again his interrupted song, came floating to me.

‘Put ’em in a gardin fair. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again! Tole ’em eat what they see there. Dese bones gwine rise again! Ah knows it: de-ed Ah do know: Ah knows it, Dese bones gwine ’t rise again.

“Sarpint wound around a trunk. Dese bones gwine t’ rise again. At Miss Eve his eye he wunk. Dese bones gwine rise again. Ah knows it: de-ed Ah----”

The words faded gradually in the distance into a thin minor wail.

The very next morning I had another visit from “them Huggins boys”. I was out riding at the time, and when I came back I noticed someone had driven in and out of the driveway. It had rained during the night and the fresh tracks were plain in the sandy road. The hoof prints were long and narrow, evidently of a mule, and I wondered idly who my visitor could have been. Sally told me.

“Hit’s dose shiftless Huggins boys again. They was trying t’ sell mo’ eggs, an’ they got out an’ cum right in de libin’ room. Ah couldn’t stop ’em nohow.”

Evidently they were going to make themselves a first-class nuisance unless I put my foot down firmly. Resolving to read them the riot act next time they came around, I tied the pony and went into the house, Sally protesting all the while against “all dese heah pore white trash”. I went to the mantlepiece to fill my pipe. There was the tobacco pouch, but my pipe, my favorite briar, which I was sure I had put there just before I went out, was not there. Sally remembered seeing it, but had not touched it.

“Hit mus’ a been them Huggins boys tuk hit,” she suggested.

I hurried out and jumped on the pony.

“Ef dey’s been drinkin’ look out fo’ ’em,” Sally called after me. “Dey’s pow’rful mean in liquah.”

“Don’t worry about me, Sally,” I called back. “They wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

By riding ’cross lots I came out on the road to their farm ahead of them. The telltale tracks in the sand told they had driven out, but had not yet returned. I rode back to meet them. Half way to the main road I came up with them. They were coming along at their usual funeral pace, and the musical Tom was whistling a jolly jig tune. I rode up and stopped their mule.

“Good mawnin’, suh,” they chorused.

“Which of you boys smokes a pipe?” I asked.

They were surprised and outdid each other in looking as innocent as lambs.

“Whichever it is, hand over my pipe.”

They shifted uneasily, but neither made a move to restore my property.

“Come, be quick,” I said, moving the pony in closer to their carriage.

Tom slowly reached in his pocket and drew out my pipe. He reached it out to me silently.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now understand this: the next time I catch or hear of one of you boys on my place except on business I am coming after him with this.”

I shook my riding crop and they nodded solemnly. The pony was dancing about and I rode off, leaving them looking after me surprised and disgusted, a little mad, but properly scared. After that we became friends.