Chapter 10

In an instant the crowd rushed in, headed by Morris, whose burning eyes seemed to be starting from his drawn white face. Like a flash Doty sprang forward and wrenched an axe from the infuriated man, crying out, “Partin ain't armed!”

For answer a blow from Morris's fist dropped the sheriff like a dead man. A sudden silence fell, and Morris, standing over his fallen foe, looked about him as if dazed. For an instant he stood so, then with a violent movement he pushed back the crowding men, and lifting the sheriff, dragged him toward the open window.

“Give him air,” he ordered, “and go for the doctor, and for cold water!” He laid Partin flat and dragged open his collar. “He's not dead--see there; I struck him on the temple; under the ear would have killed him, but not this, not this! Give me that water, and plenty of it, and move back. He's not dead, no; and I didn't mean to kill him; but he has worked against me all night, and I didn't think a white man would do it.”

“He's comin' round, Mr. Morris,” said Doty, who knelt on the other side of the sheriff; “an' he didn't bear no malice against you--don't fret; but it's a good thing I jerked that axe outer yo' hand! See, he's ketchin' his breath; it's all right,” as Partin opened his eyes slowly and looked about him.

A sound like a sigh came from the crowd, then a voice said, “Here comes Judge More.”

Morris was still holding his wet handkerchief on the sheriff's head when the old judge came in.

“My dear boy!” he said, laying his hand on John Morris's shoulder. But Morris shook his head.

“Let's talk business, Judge More,” he said, “and let's get Partin into a chair where he can rest; I've just knocked him over.”

Then Morris left the room, and Mitchell with him, going to the far side of the jail-yard, where they walked up and down in silence. It was not long before Judge More and the sheriff joined them.

“The evidence was too slight for lynching,” the judge said, looking straight into John Morris's eyes.

“Great God!” Morris cried, and struck his hands together.

“What more do you want?” Mitchell demanded, angrily. “His wife has disappeared, and the negro ran away.”

“True, and I'll see to the case myself; but I'm glad that you did not hang the negro.”

A boy came up with a telegram.

“From Jim, I reckon,” the sheriff said, taking it. “No; it's for you, Mr. Morris.”

It was torn open hastily; then Morris looked from one to the other with a blank, scared face, while the paper fluttered from his hold.

Mitchell caught it, and read aloud slowly, as if he did not believe his eyes:

“'Am safe. Will be out on the ten o'clock train. ELEANOR.'”

Morris stood there, shaking, and sobbing hard, dry sobs.

“It'll kill him!” the sheriff said. “Quick, some whiskey!”

A flask was forced between the blue, trembling lips.

“Drink, old fellow,” and Mitchell put his arm about Morris's shoulders. “It's all right now, thank God!”

Morris was leaning against his friend, sobbing like a woman. The sheriff drew his coat-sleeve across his eyes, and shook his head.

“What made the nigger run away?” he said, slowly--adding, as if to himself, “God help us!”

A vehicle was borrowed, and the judge and the sheriff drove with John Morris over to the station to meet the ten-o'clock train. The sheriff and the judge remained in the little carriage, and the station agent did his best to leave the whole platform to John Morris. As the moments went by the look of anxious agony grew deeper on the face of the waiting man. The sheriff's ominous words, falling like a pall over the first flash of his happiness, had filled his mind with wordless terrors. He could scarcely breathe or move, and could not speak when his wife stepped off and put her hands in his. She looked up, and without a query, without a word of explanation, answered the anguished questioning of his eyes, whispering,

“He did not touch me.”

Morris staggered a little, then drawing her hand through his arm, he led her to the carriage. She shrank back when she saw the judge and the sheriff on the front seat; but Morris saying, “They must hear your story, dear,” she stepped in.

“We are very thankful to see you, Mrs. Morris,” the judge said, without turning his head, when the sheriff had touched up the horse and they moved away; “and if you feel able to tell us how it all happened, it'll save time and ease your mind. This is Mr. Partin, the sheriff.”

Mrs. Morris looked at the backs of the men in front of her; at their heads that were so studiously held in position that they could not even have glanced at each other; then up at her husband, appealingly.

“Tell it,” he said, quietly, and laid his hand on hers that were wrung together in her lap. “You sent Aggie to catch the chickens, and the dog went with her?”

“Yes,” fixing her eyes on his; “and I sent”--she stopped with a shiver, and her husband said, “Abram”--“to cut some bushes to make a broom,” she went on. “I had been for a walk to the old house, and as I came back I laid my gloves and a bit of vine on the steps, intending to return at once; but I wished to see if the boat was safe, for the water was rising so rapidly.” She paused, as if to catch her breath, then, with her eyes still fixed on her husband, she went on, “I did not think that it was safe, and I untied the rope and picked up the paddle that was lying on the dam, intending to drag the boat farther up and tie it to a tree.” She stopped again. Her husband put his arm about her.

“And then?” he said.

“And then--something, I don't know what; not a sound, but something--something made me turn, and I saw him--saw him coming--saw him stealing up behind me--with the hatchet in his hand, and a look--a look”--closing her eyes as if in horror--“such an awful, awful look! And everybody gone. Oh, John!” she gasped, and clinging to her husband, she broke into hysterical sobs, while the judge gripped his walking-stick and cleared his throat, and the sheriff swore fiercely under his breath.

“I was paralyzed,” she went on, recovering herself, “and when he saw me looking he stopped. The next moment he threw the hatchet at me, and began to run toward me. The hatchet struck my foot, and the blow roused me, and I sprang into the boat. There were no trees just there, and jumping in, I pushed the boat off into the deep water. He picked up the hatchet and shook it at me, but the water was too deep for him to reach me, and he ran back along the dam and turned toward the railroad embankment. I was so terrified I could scarcely breathe; I pushed frantically in and out between the trees, farther and farther into the swamp. I was afraid that he would go round to the bridge and come down the bank to where the outlet from the swamp is and catch me there, but in a little while I saw where the rising water had broken the dam, and the current was rushing through and out to the river. The current caught the boat and swept it through the break. Oh, I was so glad! I'm so afraid of water, but not then. I used the paddle as a rudder, and to push floating timber away. My foot was hurting me, and I looked at last and saw that it was cut.”

A groan came from the judge, and the sheriff's head drooped.

“All day I drifted, and all night. I was so thirsty, and I grew so weak. At daylight this morning I found myself in a wide sheet of water, with marshes all round, and I saw a steamboat coming. I tied my handkerchief to the paddle and waved it, and they picked me up. And, John, I did not tell them anything except that the freshet had swept me away. They were kind to me, and a friendly woman bound up my foot. We got to town this morning early, and the captain lent me five dollars, John--Captain Meakin--so I telegraphed you, and took a carriage to the station and came out. Have--have you caught him? And, oh--but I am afraid--afraid!” And again she broke into hysterical sobs.

She asked no explanation. The negro's guilt was so burned in on her mind, that she was sure that all knew it as well as she.

“You need have no further fears,” her husband comforted. And the judge shook his head, and the sheriff swore again.

* * * * *

A white-haired woman in rusty black stood talking to a negro convict. It was in a stockade prison camp in the hill country. She had been a slave-owner once, long ago, and now for her mission-work taught on Sundays in the stockade, trying to better the negroes penned there.

This was a new prisoner, and she was asking him of himself.

“How long are you in for?” she asked.

“Fuhrebber, ma'm; fuh des es long es I lib,” the negro answered, looking down to where he was making marks on the ground with his toes.

“And how did you get such a dreadful sentence?”

“I ent do much, ma'm; I des scare a white lady.”

A wave of revulsion swept over the teacher, and involuntarily she stepped back. The negro looked up and grinned.

“De hatchet des cut 'e foot a little bit; but I trow de hatchet. I ent tech um; no, ma'm. Den atterwards 'e baby daid; den dey say I muss stay yer fuhrebber. I ent sorry, 'kase I know say I hab to wuck anywheys I is; if I stay yer, if I go 'way, I hab to wuck. En I know say if I git outer dis place Mr. Morris'll kill me sho--des sho. So I like fuh stay yer berry well.”

And the teacher went away, wondering if her work--if _any_ work--would avail; and what answer the future would have for this awful problem.

A Snipe-Hunt

A Story of Jim-Ned Creek

BY M. E. M. DAVIS

“I ain't sayin' nothin' ag'inst the women o' Jim--Ned Creek _ez women_,” said Mr. Pinson; “an' what's more, I'll spit on my hands an' lay out any man ez'll dassen to sass 'em. But _ez wives_ the women o' Jim-Ned air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”

These remarks, uttered in an oracular tone, were received with grave approbation by the half a dozen idlers gathered about the mesquite fire in Bishop's store. Old Bishop himself, sorting over some trace-chains behind the counter, nodded grimly, and then smiled, his wintry face grown suddenly tender.

“You've shore struck it, Newt,” assented Joe Trimble. “You never kin tell how ary one of 'em 'll ack under any succumstances.”

Jack Carter and Sid Northcutt, the only bachelors present, grinned and winked slyly at each other.

“You boys neenter to be so brash,” drawled Mr. Pinson's son-in-law, Sam Leggett, from his perch on a barrel of pecans; “jest you wait ontell Minty Cullum an' Loo Slater gits a tight holt! Them gals is ez meek ez lambs--now. But so was Mis' Pinson an' Mis' Trimble in their day an' time, I reckon. I know Becky Leggett was.”

“The studdies'-goin' woman on Jim-Ned,” continued Mr. Pinson, ignoring these interruptions, “is Mis' Cullum. An' yit, Tobe Cullum ain't no safeter than anybody else--considerin' of Sissy Cullum ez a wife!”

Mr. Trimble opened his lips to speak, but shut them again hastily, looking a little scared, and an awkward silence fell on the group.

For the shadow of Mrs. Cullum herself had advanced through the wide door-way, and lay athwart the puncheon floor; and that lady, a large, comfortable-looking, middle-aged person, with a motherly face and a kindly smile, after a momentary survey of the scene before her, walked briskly in. She shook hands across the counter with the storekeeper, and passed the time of day all around.

But Hines, the new clerk, shuffled forward eagerly to wait on her. Bud was a sallow-faced, thin-chested, gawky youth from the States, who had wandered into these parts in search of health and employment. He was not yet used to the somewhat drastic ways of Jim-Ned, and there was a homesick look in his watery blue eyes; he smiled bashfully at her while he measured off calico and weighed sugar, and he followed her out to the horse-block when she had concluded her lengthy spell of shopping.

“You better put on a thicker coat, Bud,” she said, pushing back her sunbonnet and looking down at him from the saddle before she moved off. “You've got a rackety cough. I reckon I'll have to make you some mullein surrup.”

“Oh, Mis' Cullum, don't trouble yourself about me,” Mr. Hines cried, gratefully, a lump rising in his throat as he watched her ride away.

The loungers in the store had strolled out on the porch. “Mis' Cullum cert'n'y is a sister in Zion,” remarked Mr. Trimble, gazing admiringly at her retreating figure.

“M-m-m--y-e-e-s,” admitted Mr. Pinson. “But,” he added, darkly, after a meditative pause, “Sissy Cullum is a wife, an' the women o' Jim-Nez, _ez wives_, air liable to conniptions.”

Mrs. Cullum jogged slowly along the brown, wheel-rifted road which followed the windings of the creek. It was late in November. A brisk little norther was blowing, and the nuts dropping from the pecan-trees in the hollows filled the dusky stillness with a continuous rattling sound. There was a sprinkling of belated cotton-bolls on the stubbly fields to the right of the road; a few ragged sunflowers were still abloom in the fence corners, where the pokeberries were red-ripe on their tall stalks.

“I must lay in some poke-root for Tobe's knee-j'ints,” mused Mrs. Cullum, as she turned into the lane which led to her own door-yard. “Pore Tobe! them j'ints o' his'n is mighty uncertain. Why, Tobe!” she exclaimed, aloud, as her nag stopped and neighed a friendly greeting to the object of her own solicitude, “where air you bound for?”

Mr. Cullum laid an arm across the horse's neck. He was a big, loose-jointed man, with iron-gray hair, square jaws, and keen, steady, dark eyes. “Well, ma,” he said, with a touch of reluctance in his dragging tones, “there's a lodge meetin' at Ebenezer Church to-night, an' I got Mintry to give me my supper early, so's I could go. I--”

“All right, Tobe,” interrupted his wife, cheerfully; “a passel of men prancin' around with a goat oncet a month ain't much harm, I reckon. You go 'long, honey; I'll set up for you.”

“Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild,” muttered Mr. Cullum, striding away in the gathering twilight, “that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its finger--much lessen me!”

About ten o'clock the same night Granny Carnes, peeping through a chink in the wall beside her bed, saw a squad of men hurrying afoot down the road from the direction of Ebenezer Church. “Them boys is up to some devil_mint_, Uncle Dick,” she remarked, placidly, to her rheumatic old husband.

Uncle Dick laughed, a soft, toothless laugh. “I ain't begrudgin' 'em the fun,” he sighed, turning on his pillow, “but I wisht to the Lord I was along!”

The “boys” crossed the creek below Bishop's and entered the shinn-oak prairie on the farther side.

“Nance ast mighty particular about the lodge meetin',” observed Newt Pinson to Mr. Cullum, who headed the nocturnal expedition; “she know'd it wa'n't the regular night, an' she suspicioned sompn, Nance did.”

“Sissy didn't,” laughed Tobe, complacently. “Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its finger--much lessen me!”

Bud Hines, in the rear with the others, was in a quiver of excitement. He stumbled along, shifting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. “You know, Bud,” said that young gentleman, gravely, “it ain't every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if you've got any grit--”

“I've got plenty of it,” interrupted Mr. Hines, vaingloriously. He was, indeed, inwardly--and outwardly--bursting with pride. “I thought they tuk me for a plumb fool,” he kept saying over and over to himself. “They ain't never noticed me before 'cepn to make fun of me; an' all at oncet Mr. Tobe Cullum an' Mr. Newt Pinson ups an' asts me to go on a snipe-hunt, an' even p'oposes to give me the best place in it. An' I've got Mr. Sid's rifle, an' Mr. Jack is tellin' of me how! Lord, I wouldn't of believed it of I wa'n't right here! Won't ma be proud when I write her about it!”

“You've got to whistle all the time,” Jack continued, breaking in upon these blissful reflections; “if you don't, they won't come.”

“Oh, I'll whistle,” declared Bud, jauntily.

Sam Leggett's snigger was dexterously turned into a cough by a punch in his ribs from Mr. Trimble's elbow, and they trudged on in silence until they reached Buck Snort Gully, a deep ravine running from the prairie into a stretch of heavy timber beyond, known as The Rough.

Here they stopped, and Sid Northcutt produced a coarse bag, whose mouth was held open by a barrel hoop, and a tallow candle, which he lighted and handed to the elate hunter. “Now, Bud,” Mr. Cullum said, when the bag was set on the edge of the gully, with its mouth towards the prairie, “you jest scrooch down behind this here sack an' hold the candle. You kin lay the rifle back of you, in case a wild-cat or a cougar prowls up. An' you whistle jest as hard an' as continual as you can, whilse the balance of us beats aroun' an' drives in the snipe. They'll run fer the candle ever' time. An' the minit that sack is full of snipe, all you've got to do is to pull out the prop, an' they're yourn.”

“All right, Mr. Tobe,” responded Bud, squatting down and clutching the candle, his face radiant with expectation.

The crowd scattered, and for a few moments made a noisy pretence of beating the shinn-oak thickets for imaginary snipe.

“Keep a-whisslin', Bud!” Mr. Cullum shouted, from the far edge of the prairie. A prolonged whistle, with trills and flourishes, was the response; and the conspirators, bursting with restrained laughter, plunged into the ford and separated, making each for his own fireside.

Mrs. Cullum was nodding over the hearth-stone when her husband came in. The six girls, from Minty--Jack Carter's buxom sweetheart--to Little Sis, the baby, were long abed. The hands of the wooden clock on the high mantel-shelf pointed to half-past twelve. “Well, pa,” Sissy said, good-humoredly, reaching out for the shovel and beginning to cover up the fire, “you've cavorted pretty late this time! What's the matter?” she added, suspiciously; “you ack like you've been drinkin'!”

For Tobe was rolling about the room in an ecstasy of uproarious mirth.

“I 'ain't teched nary drop, Sissy,” Mr. Cullum returned, “but ever' time I think about that fool Bud Mines a-settin' out yander at Buck Snort, holdin' of a candle, and whisslin' fer snipe to run into that coffee-sack, I--oh Lord!”

He stopped to slap his thighs and roar again. Finally, wiping the tears of enjoyment from his eyes, he related the story of the night's adventure.

“Air you tellin' me, Tobe Cullum,” his wife said, when she had heard him to the end--“air you p'intedly tellin' me that you've took Bud Hines _snipin'_? An' that you've left that sickly, consumpted young man a-settin' out there by hisse'f to catch his death of cold; or maybe git his blood sucked out by a catamount!”

“Shucks, Sissy!” replied Tobe; “nothin' ain't goin' to hurt him. He's sech a derned fool that a catamount wouldn't tech him with a ten-foot pole! An' him a-whisslin' fer them snipe--oh Lord!”

“Tobe Cullum,” said Mrs. Cullum, sternly, “you go saddle Buster this minit and ride out to Buck Snort after Bud Hines.”

“Why, honey--” remonstrated Tobe.

“Don't you honey me,” she interrupted, wrathfully. “You saddle that horse this minit an' fetch that consumpted boy home.”

Tobe ceased to laugh. His big jaws set themselves suddenly square. “I'll do no such fool thing,” he declared, doggedly, “an' have the len'th an' brea'th o' Jim-Ned makin' fun o' me.”

“Very well,” said his wife, with equal determination, “ef you don't go, I will. But I give you fair warnin', Tobe Cullum, that ef you don't go, I'll never speak to you again whilse my head is hot.”

Tobe snorted incredulously; but he sneaked out to the stable after her, and when she had saddled and mounted Buster, he followed her on foot, running noiselessly some distance behind her, keeping her well in sight, and dodging into the deeper shadows when she chanced to look around.

“I didn't know Sissy had so much spunk,” he muttered, panting in her wake at last across the shinn-oak prairie. “Lord, how blazin' mad she is! But shucks! she'll git over it by mornin'.”

Mr. Hines was shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. “The balance of 'em must of got lost,” he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. “It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer,” he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. “Mr. T-o-o-be!” he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came back to him mingled with an ominous sound. “Oh, Lordy! what is that?” he stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. “It's a cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! He's c-comin' closter! Oh, Lordy!”

“Hello, Bud,” called Mrs. Cullum, cheerily. She slipped from the saddle as she spoke and caught the half-fainting snipe-hunter in her motherly arms.

“Ain't you 'shamed of yourse'f to let a passel o' no-'count men fool you this-a-way?” she demanded, sternly, when he had somewhat recovered himself. “Get up behind me. I'm goin' to take you to Mis' Bishop's, where you belong. No, don't you dassen to tech any o' that trash!”

Mr. Hines, feeling very humble and abashed, climbed up behind her, and they rode away, leaving the snipe--hunting gear, including Sid Northcutt's valuable rifle, on the edge of the gully.

She left him at Bishop's, charging him to swallow before going to bed a “dost” of the home-brewed chill medicine from a squat bottle she handed him.

“He cert'n'y is weaker'n stump-water,” she murmured, as she turned her horse's head; “but he's sickly an' consumpted, an' he's jest about the age my Bud would of been if he'd lived.”

And thinking of her first-born and only son, who died in babyhood, she rode homeward in the dim chill starlight. Tobe, spent and foot-sore, followed warily, carrying the abandoned rifle.

II

Consternation reigned the “len'th an' brea'th” of Jim-Ned. Mrs. Cullum--placid and easy-going Mrs. Tobe--under the same roof with him, actually had not spoken to her lawful and wedded husband since the snipe-hunt ten days ago come Monday!

“It's plumb scan'lous!” Mrs. Pinson exclaimed, at her daughter's quilting. “I never would of thought sech a thing of Sissy--never!”

“As of the boys of Jim-Ned couldn't have a little innercent fun without Mis' Cullum settin' in jedgment on 'em!” sniffed Mrs. Leggett.

“Shot up, Becky Leggett,” said her mother, severely. “By time you've put up with a man's capers for twenty-five years, like Sissy Cullum have, you'll have the right to talk, an' not before.”

“They say Tobe is wellnigh out'n his mind,” remarked Mrs. Trimble. “Ez for that soft-headed Bud Mines, he have fair fattened on that snipe-hunt. He's gittin' ez sassy an' mischeevous ez Jack Carter hisse'f.”

This last statement was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were. The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's with devil-may-care good-nature, and he besought Mrs. Cullum, almost with tears in his eyes, to “let up on Mr. Tobe.”

“I was sech a dern fool, Mis' Cullum,” he candidly confessed, “that I don't blame Mr. Tobe for puttin' up a job on me. Besides,” he added, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, “I'm goin' to git even. I'm layin' off to take Jim Belcher, that biggetty drummer from Waco, a-snipin' out Buck Snort next Sat'day night. He's a bigger idjit than I ever was.”