Part 11

It was evident to her that the wily Josh had discovered the bent tickets, and while he was handling them over inside the hat he had managed to straighten them all and bend Flaherty’s. Whatever other artifice Josh might have had in reserve had he not discovered the bunch of bent tickets will always be a mystery, but he certainly had no intention of leaving Hyder Ali in the river country.

Sophy removed the handkerchief, under which she had found no difficulty in peeking during the drawing, and looked upon Josh.

Human eyes have seldom glittered with the venomous and deadly glow that he now saw in Sophy’s orbs. Such eyes might have blazed through a labyrinth in a jungle upon one who had seized a tiger cub. Backed by courage the look would have portended murder.

Sophy at once realized the hopelessness of her position, for no specious protest was possible. She had encountered an adept in an art in which she was but a tyro. It was all over and she was compelled to smother her impotent wrath.

To the crowd, ignorant of the little drama on the platform, everything had seemed entirely regular. None of them had ever had a ghost of a chance of getting the turkey, but they were good natured losers. Pop Wilkins carefully restored the old stovepipe hat to his shining dome. While regretting that he had not won Hyder Ali and that that remarkable bird from foreign lands was not to remain in the community, he declared that there was now nothing to do but congratulate the winner.

“That’s what we done at the turkey shoot last year,” remarked Bill in an undertone, as we watched the perforated box being loaded on to Flaherty’s spring wagon.

Varney tactfully refrained from assisting in the loading. “I hate to part with that bird,” he declared, “but business is business an’ there ’e goes!”

Sophy continued to look upon him with a steely and viperous glare, but he did not appear to notice her. They each knew that the other thoroughly understood the situation, and there were no ethics that were debatable. Sophy knew that Flaherty was a man of straw, and that she had been skilfully robbed of the fruits of her chicanery. Varney regarded her discomfiture with the generous benevolence of a victor.

Sophy believed that all moral logic, and every other kind of logic, entitled her to Hyder Ali. She considered that in addition to the loss of the bird, she had been swindled out of the seven dollars she had paid for her worthless chances.

She justified her own dishonesty to herself by the conviction that she had worked hard enough for the club to have the turkey anyway, and as long as some ticket had to be left until the last, it might just as well be her’s as anybody’s. It was all a matter of chance anyway, and, as it turned out it would have been much better for everybody if Hyder Ali could have been kept in the neighborhood with her instead of being taken away. She considered that she had suffered a great injustice, and that a defenseless woman should be thus robbed and maltreated was to her the acme of outrage.

Varney had his own rig with him and left for the county seat soon after Flaherty and his spring wagon had departed in an opposite direction. The precious pair was gone—with Hyder Ali, and two hundred and eighty dollars of tangible profits.

A melodious gobble was faintly heard far away on the road while Flaherty was still in sight. It might have been a wail of sorrow and farewell.

“I s’pose,” remarked Bill, “that Hyder Ali’s yellin’ fer help. He’s prob’ly ’fraid them two jay birds’ll send ’im back to them Brummins an’ that Bungspout Swammy fish net man in India, where ’e’ll git ’is crop chilled with them frozen frogs, but ’e needn’t worry. I didn’t buy no chances fer I didn’t think there’d be any show for a white man with Josh an’ Sophy up on them boxes, an’ they wasn’t. I thought they was goin’ to be sump’n doin’ when I seen Sophy eyein’ Josh. She looked like she wanted to squirt some lye at ’im. Sophy’s got a bad eye. She c’n sour a pan o’ milk that’s twenty feet off by jest lookin’ at it in a cert’n way.

“Them kewpies ’ave finished the cookin’ this time an’ we’re done good an’ brown. I don’t think they’ll be ’round any more ’less Josh comes to sell us a striped elephant next year, an’ if ’e does I ’spose we’ll buy it. I don’t think we wanted that misquito fatted bird anyway. He didn’t look to me like ’e was healthy.”

Sophy was ill for a couple of weeks and visited the store but rarely during the rest of the summer.

“She looks like she’d been licked,” observed Rat Hyatt. “She don’t seem to have no pep any more. I met ’er on the bridge the other day, an’ when I spoke to ’er she answered as nice an’ polite as anybody, instead o’ lookin’ at me like I was a skunk, an’ pass’n on the way she used to do.”

During the latter part of August Sophy chanced to see a copy of a weekly paper that was published in a small town about fifty miles away. In it was an announcement of a “grand raffle,” to be held the following week, “for a wonderful white turkey imported from Siberia at great expense, the like of which has never been seen or heard of in this country.”

The article went on to say that “this is a great event that is about to take place in our midst, and ye editor blushingly owns to the soft impeachment of having taken ten chances with his hard earned pelf. We hope to win the splendid prize, but if we fail we respectfully ask anybody who is in arrears on their subscription to please call at our holy editorial sanctum with some mazuma, for though ye ed. toys with the trailing skirts of fickle fortune, yet must he eat.”

Sophy kept her own counsel and prevailed on Pop Wilkins to lend her his horse and two seated buggy for a few days to enable her to visit a sick relative who lived some distance away. She was gone a week, and when she returned Hyder Ali was in the buggy. His beautiful head protruded inquiringly from the top of a gunny sack in which he was carefully secured. Sophy drove home with her prize, returned the rig to the obliging Pop, and walked loftily into the store, on her way back, to make some purchases.

She was a changed woman, and victory was on her brow. She greeted the loiterers about the store, but, as Posey expressed it, “she spoke from above.”

Naturally the neighborhood was in a ferment of curiosity.

“How’d you git ’im?” asked Bill pleasantly.

“I caught ’im on a fish line,” she replied grimly.

Beyond this she refused any explanations and her attitude was regarded as the height of cruelty. She said it was nobody’s business but her own, and no further light was thrown on the subject.

Early in the fall a band of gipsies came and camped on a grassy glade in the woods not far from where Sophy lived. They remained several weeks. The men traded horses with the nearby farmers, and the women went about the neighborhood in their picturesque costumes, begged small articles, and told fortunes.

One morning Sophy was horrified to find that Hyder Ali was gone. She at once suspected the gipsies, and rushed to their camp, but the Romany folk had departed. She found a long white feather on the ground that undoubtedly had come from her cherished bird. She at once enlisted all the help she could get. The assistance of the sheriff was invoked and the trail of the gipsies was taken by a large party. They were located about fifteen miles away. Thorough search revealed no trace of the missing property. The gipsies were confronted with the tell-tale feather, but denied all knowledge of it. There seemed to be nothing further to do and the matter was dropped by the sheriff.

In November, just before the annual turkey shoot, Mr. Roscoe Plunkett, of the firm of Plunkett & Mott, whose goods Varney had sold for several years, came to Posey’s store to check up their account. He said that his firm had suffered considerable losses through the shady and sinuous methods of Varney, and that he was no longer with them. They had delved deep into his history before he came to them and found that he had a rancid past. It was checkered with a couple of jail confinements, but he had managed in each case to obtain his freedom after trial. He had been a champion rifle shot, and had given exhibitions of trick shooting in a wild west show for a year or two. Of late he had been mixed up with a man named Flaherty. They had found a farmer in the southern part of the state who had an albino turkey—one of those rare freaks of nature, due to deficient pigmentation. It was a beautiful gobbler of abnormal size. They bought the bird for twenty-five dollars, and, since that time they had been going about the country raffling it off. One of them had always won it.

During the previous week a friend of Plunkett’s, who was a commercial traveler, had written him that he had met Varney in Michigan, and that Flaherty and the white turkey were with him.

This new light on the general cussedness and dark ways of Josh Varney came too late to be of any benefit to Sophy. She had gone to live with some relatives in a small town in Iowa, taking her illusions and her bitter hatreds with her. Her henpecked husband had mercifully been relieved of his earthly troubles, but this had not seemed to disturb her as much as her other afflictions. She had become completely disgusted with her surroundings, and had sought new fields for her restless propensities.

“It’s too bad Josh don’t know she’s a widow,” remarked Bill, “fer them two might git married now, if they wanted to.”

Bill labored long in lettering out the notice of the next annual turkey shoot, which he tacked up in the store.

There was a full attendance when the day came. The weather was again pleasant, the blood letting was satisfactory, and no untoward incident marred the joy of the occasion.

When the shooting was over Bill pounded officially on a barrel top and called the business meeting to order.

“The first thing to be done at this meet’n is to ’lect a new Chief Gobbler, fer this one has now resigned. This chair has quit, an’ now pays its parting respects to all the members. I say now that this chair has been blasphemed an’ jumped on fer five years. Nothin’ has ever been done right. Ev’rybody has cussed the chair right an’ left, an’ the chair has never peeped or said a word back. In quit’n this hon’able office this chair now makes answer to all them sore heads that’s been criticize’n it fer all these years, an’ that answer is _BAH!!!!_

“Now we’ll perceed to nominations fer the chair’s successor.”

A Voice:—“I nom’nate Mr. Bill Stiles fer the ensuin’ year, an’ I move it be made unimous.”

The Chair:—“Is there no other nominations?”

Another Voice:—“I nom’nate Mr. Josh Varney, an’ I move it be made unimous.” (Chorus of cat calls.)

A voice from the rear:—“I move that the chair stops smokin’ when it’s presidin’ an’ I move we adjourn!”

The Chair:—“If that feller back there thinks ’e c’n run this meet’n better’n it’s bein’ done, let ’im come up in front. This chair’s goin’ to do its smokin’ while it’s alive instid o’ wait’n ’till afterwards like some people. We gotta have some dignity about this thing, an’ you fellers keep quiet! Now who makes any more nominations?”

After some further parliamentary bickering, the reluctant Bill was duly reëlected, as usual.

“Now,” he continued, “havin’ got this turr’ble weight offen our chests, the next business’ll be the ’lection of a new boss, fer Sophy Perkins has left us. She’s gone way off some’rs where the winds are blowin’ an’ she’ll never come back. Mr. Posey has been suggested fer new secretary an’ treasurer. Does anybody nominate ’im?”

“He’d be a good man to take in the money, but he’d make a hell of a secretary!” shouted somebody in the crowd.

“Never mind, does somebody nominate ’im?” continued Bill.

“How d’ye know Sophy’ll never come back?” demanded another voice from the rear.

“How do I know? How do I know anything? Shut up!” replied the chair with asperity.

Mr. Posey modestly declined his impending honors, but was elected.

“The next business,” announced Bill, “is the report o’ the chair on the case o’ Mr. Josh Varney. Some o’ you’ll prob’ly faintly recollect of ’is havin’ been among us some time ago.”

He then related the story of Plunkett, revealed the sins of Varney in all their sable hues and commented caustically on the soft headedness of the victims of that artful tactician.

“All you fellers has been just as easy marks fer Josh as them ten turkeys in them boxes was a year ago. Some day we may ketch the perfessor, but knowin’ ’im as I do, I don’t b’lieve we will. He bruised a lot o’ gold shekels out o’ this bunch with that pale fowl, an’ besides ’e made us feel bad.”

Mr. Rat Hyatt was now recognized by the chair.

“Fer years,” said Rat, “all of us has called Sophy Perkins ‘the stinger,’ an’ she was a stinger, but I now move you, Mr. Chairman, that that title be hereby shifted offen ’er an’ put on that pink eyed turkey man.”

The motion was unanimously carried and ordered spread upon the records that Sophy had left at the store.

The meeting then adjourned.

As we left I casually mentioned the fine weather we were having.

“Yes, it’s been a phenonomous year,” replied Bill, thoughtfully.

VIII THE PREDICAMENTS OF COLONEL PEETS[1]

Near one of the picturesque bends of the river, about half a mile above the beginning of the Big Marsh, was the home of Col. Jasper M. Peets, a doughty warrior, who had fought valiantly for the Lost Cause, and was spending his declining years in a troubled twilight.

Footnote 1:

The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. T. H. Ball, of Crown Point, Ind., for a portion of the material used in this story.

The Colonel was an exotic. Perverse fates had transplanted him into a strange clime. All that anybody along the river knew of his history, up to the time of his arrival, had come from his own lips, and none of it was to his discredit.

I had made his acquaintance at Posey’s store, where he frequently came for supplies. Muskrat Hyatt cautioned me not to have anything to do with him.

“That feller’s bad medicine,” he declared. “He’s worse’n I am, an’ that’s sayin’ a whole lot. If you ever go down to his place, you keep yer cash in yer shoes an’ don’t you take ’em off while you’re there.”

The little farm, with its dilapidated house and barn, had come to the Colonel as an inheritance from a distant relative whom he had never seen. The old pioneer, who had died there, had spent years of toil, patient and unremitting, in clearing the land and coaxing a precarious livelihood from the reluctant soil. He had left no will and the Colonel was the nearest surviving relative.

The Colonel explained that this “fahm” and a “small passel of land down south” was all that he now possessed in the world. The “iron heel of the oppressah” had destroyed everything else. His “beautiful mansion on the Cumbe’land,” and all his “niggahs,” had been lost in the fury of the conflict. His “pussonal fo’tune” was a wreck.

He was over seventy, and quite gray, but his erect military figure and splendid health somewhat belied his years. He was rather indolent in his movements, but as he sat in his hickory arm chair before the stone fire place, the lights that played over his storm beaten features pictured a warrior in repose.

His heavy moustache was trained down in horseshoe fashion on each side of his chin, and then twisted outward in a way that gave his face a redoubtable expression when he frowned. He would often stand before the three-cornered piece of mirror attached to the outside of the house, combing and recombing the bellicose ornament, and observing it attentively, until he achieved particular curves at the ends that pleased his fancy. Apparently he affected a formidable facial aspect, becoming to one who had led charging men.

Evidently he had somewhere received a fair education, but outside of fiction, a field he had widely covered, he seemed to have little interest in books. His former environment had left a romantic polish, heightened by a florid imagination. His character had been moulded by the traditions of the south and they were the only religion he had. His vanity was delightful, and he had the heart of a child. Little gifts of tobacco and cigars made him happy for hours, and there was a subtle lovable quality about him that radiated even in his foibles.

The old house stood on the rising ground, among tall elms and walnuts, about two hundred feet from the river. It had never been painted. Some of the clapboards and shingles were missing and others were loose. When the wind blew, stray currents permeated the structure, and there were mournful sounds between the walls—like the moanings of uneasy ghosts.

The little log barn was decayed and tenantless, with the exception of a few scraggly hens and a vicious looking old game cock. The Colonel had bought him somewhere and annexed him to his estate—possibly as a concession to his early sporting instincts, or for sympathetic reasons. They were both warriors of better days.

In an enclosure beyond the barn were half a dozen young razor backed pigs. These noisy shoats were a continual source of irritation to the Colonel. He declared that he would shoot the two sopranos and let the other pork loose if Seth Mussey, who looked after them, did not put muzzles on them or find some other way of keeping them quiet at night. The Colonel did not do any “wo’k on the fahm.” This was attended to by Mussey “on shares.” Mussey lived a quarter of a mile away, and was the only neighbor. The “shares” were not very remunerative, but, added to the Colonel’s other small resources, they made existence possible.

A narrow path led down to the river bank, where the Colonel kept his row boat and a small duck canoe which he propelled with a long paddle. The landing consisted of a couple of logs secured with stakes, and overlaid with planks. During high water in the spring the landing usually floated away and a new one was built when the freshets subsided. There was an air of general shiftlessness about the place that would have been depressing to anybody who did not know its eccentric proprietor.

He spent much of his time fishing on the river in the summer and early fall until the ducks began to come in. During the game seasons he acted as host, guide and “pusher” for duck hunters, who sometimes spent weeks with him. They had rare sport on the big marsh, but were compelled to suffer some hardships at the Colonel’s house. He did the cooking, or rather he heated the things that were eaten, and some of them baffled analysis.

One of his guests once told of a “mud-hen hash” that the Colonel had compounded, in which there were many feathers, and of some “snapping turtle soup” where all was lost but the adjective. The complaining visitor had slept on the floor, with a bag of shelled corn for a pillow, and the unholy mess, with a cup of doubtful coffee, had been served for breakfast, but he soon got “broken in” and learned to put up with these things if he wanted to shoot ducks with the Colonel.

The various dishes, when cooked for the first time, could usually be identified, but succeeding compositions were culinary by-products, and afforded few clues to their component parts, except to a continuous and very observant guest.

I once ate some “fish chowder” with the Colonel, which, if it had been called almost anything else, would have been really very good. I never knew the ingredients, and doubt if its author could have reconstructed it, or have given an accurate account of its contents. Some one has aptly said, “if you want to be happy don’t inquire into things,” and the injunction seemed quite applicable to the Colonel’s fare.

There are many accidents—both happy and sad—in cookery. A wise cook is never free with recipes, for, in any art, formula dissipates mystery that is often essential to appreciation. Some cooks enter where angels fear to tread, and when the trip is successful the glory is properly theirs. Their task is thankless, and malediction is upon them when they fail. They are in contact with elemental instincts, and their occupation is perilous, for they are between an animal and its meat.

One stormy night we sat before the crackling fire. The loose clapboards rattled outside and the big trees were grumbling in the wind. Water dripped from the leaky roof and little streams crept across the floor.

I had come down the river in a small rowboat, and intended to spend a week fishing for bass in the stream and sketching in the big marsh.

“You must pa’don the appeahance of things ’round heah,” remarked the Colonel. “Theah is a lot of fixin’ up to be done, and the weatheh has been so pleasant lately that that infe’nal Mussey has had to wo’k out doahs. If this weatheh stays bad he will come in heah an’ straighten things up.”

He had queer notions regarding work. There were some things that he would do diligently, and others he considered beneath his dignity. The line of demarcation was confused, and I was never quite able to be certain of it. He cooked and partially washed the dishes, but never swept the floors, or fed the chickens and shoats at the barn. He never repaired anything except under urgent necessity, and his idea of order was not to disturb anything after he had let go of it.

“You may be interested to know, suh, that I have been occupying my spaiah time writing my memoahs,” he continued. “I have collected the scattehed reco’ds of my careah. I have no descendants, an’ I may say to you confidentially, as one gentleman to anotheh, that I do not expect any, suh, so theah will be nobody to take pride in my literary wo’k afteh I am gone, but the gene’l public, but as a paht of the history of the south, durin’ its period of great trial, I think my memoahs would be valuable.

“I am going to put my memoahs in the fawm of a novel, suh, an’ I have had to mix up a lot of otheh people in it who ah, to some extent, fictitious, so my book will be a combination of fact and romance. I have thought it all oveh. I am of the opinion that a book to be populah must be a story. It must have a plot, and somebody must get married on the last page. I am writing such a story, suh, and am weaving the main incidents of my careah into the plot. In this way I will get my history befoah a great many people who nevah read memoahs. I will gild what is the real pill, so to speak, by dipping it into the bright hued watehs of romance.

“I am having a great deal of trouble with my plot, suh. Theah is a fellah in it by the name of Puddington Calkins. I want to kill this cussed Calkins, but if I kill ’im I will have nobody to marry to the mystehious veiled lady that I see in the dim distance. She is gliding towa’d the web of my plot, but I do not yet know whetheh she comes upon an errand of vengeance, or to demand justice foh her child. This veiled lady is pe’fumed with tube rose, suh, and I hate to leave her out, foh, with the exception of bou’bon, tube rose is my favorite odeh, and that reminds me, suh—pahdon me just one moment.”

The Colonel arose and went to the cupboard. He brought forth a tall bottle, poured a liberal dose into a tin cup, and swallowed it with impressive solemnity.

“That bou’bon came f’om Tennessee. It was sent to me by an old friend who was related to Jedge Benton of Nashville. When the Jedge died he had two bar’ls of this noble fluid in his cellah, and one of them was left to my friend in the Jedge’s will. It had been twenty-foah yeahs in the wood, suh. I was fo’tunate enough to be presented with some of that wonde’ful whiskey. I am sorry, suh, that you do not indulge, foh you ah missin’ something that puts spangles on a sad life, suh!

“Most people drink whiskey foh its alcohol, and such people, suh, should pat’onize a drug stoah. A gentleman drinks it foh its flavah, and that reminds me, suh, that birdy cannot fly with one wing, an’ if you’ll pahdon me I’ll take anotheh.”