Part 7

Certain types in the medical profession are never called anything but “Doc,” except when more profane appellations are required. Dust was a befitting name for the old man, for he appeared to be much dried up. His parchment like skin was drawn tightly over his protruding cheek bones, and his emaciated figure seemed almost ready to blow away. A frayed Prince Albert coat was secured with one button at the waist, and a rusty plug hat was jammed down on the back of his head. These things were evidently intended to impart a professional air, but they completed a sad satire. The Doc looked like a hypocritical old scamp.

Much human character, or the lack of it, may be indicated by a hat, and the manner of wearing it, particularly if it is a “plug.” Worn in the ordinary conventional way, a “correct” plug is supposed to provide a roof for a certain kind of dignity, but usually it indicates nothing beyond a mere lack of artistic sensibility. Tipped forward, it suggests sulkiness, obstinacy, and self-complacency—a sort of sporty rowdyism, when worn on one side—and disregard of the rights and opinions of others, when it is tilted back of the ears.

Of course the condition and the year of coinage of the plug enter into the equation and complicate it, but even a very shabby plug is an entertaining story teller. To a careful and discriminating student of human folly, it is replete with subtleties.

A Fiji Island cannibal, whose only wearing apparel was a plug hat, was once made chief of his tribe on account of it. It was probably as becoming to him as it had been to the spiritual adviser he had eaten. Such dignity and distinction as it was capable of imparting was his. He had attained what is possibly the apotheosis of barbaric head dress of our age.

Doc carried two medicine cases under his buggy seat on his professional rounds. One of them was stocked with a dozen large bottles with Latin labels, and the other with small phials containing white pills the size of number six shot. If his patient preferred “Alopathy,” he or she got it with a vengeance. If “Homepathy” was wanted, the smaller receptacle was drawn upon. The “leaders” in the “Alopathy” box were castor oil—calomel, and quinine. Aconite and Belladona–100, and Magnesium Phos–10 occupied the places of honor in the other.

Dust had weathered several matrimonial storms, and his last wife was now under the wild flowers in the country cemetery, where the epitaph on the unpretentious stone—erected by her own relatives—was more congratulatory than sorrowful.

“Doc” Hopkins, or “Hoppy Doc” as he was irreverently dubbed along the river, was Dust’s only rival. The competition was bitter, and many untimely ends were ascribed by each of them to the other’s criminal ignorance. Hoppy Doc often told, with great relish, a story of Cornelia Kibbins, Dust’s first wife, alleging that after a year of tempestuous married life, she had fled to her father’s home late one winter night for refuge. Her irate parent refused her an asylum. He had felt greatly outraged when the wedding took place and never wanted to see his daughter again. In answer to the plaintive midnight cry at his door, he leaned out of a second story window and delivered a torrent of invective. As he closed the window he shouted, “Dust thou art, and unto Dust shalt thou return!”

The suppliant disappeared, and evidently the worm turned, for Dust was a physical wreck for a month afterwards. Old man Kibbins subsequently declared that while his daughter “was a damn fool, she had fight’n blood in ’er, an’ the Doc ’ad better look out fer squalls.”

Dust was guyed good-naturedly by the occupants of the platform, as he went into the store to get some fine cut.

“What’s that you’ve got out there between them buggy thills, Doc?” queried Hyatt.

Bill winked at me and asked him if he had driven by his garden lately—a delicate reference to the cemetery, intended to be sarcastic.

Another stove pipe hat was brought by “Pop” Wilkins, an octogenarian. He also wore it jammed well down behind his ears. The old man climbed painfully up the steps with his hickory cane, and dropped into a chair that Hyatt brought out of the store for him. He placed the ancient tile under it, mopped his bald head with a large red bandanna, and looked wistfully beyond the river.

Pop had been afflicted with intermittent ague for several years. He was once a preacher and a temperance advocate. He was placed on the superannuated list by the Methodist conference, and had finally been expunged as a backslider. He fell from grace and yielded to the lure of strong waters. Once, after he had over indulged for several weeks, he went and sat in sad reflection on the bank of the gloomy river at night. Out of its depths came strange six footed beasts and multicolored crawling things that terrified Pop and drove remorse into his soul. Since that eventful night he had been more moderate, but he was still in danger, and it was a question as to whether old age, ague, or J. Barleycorn would get him first.

My friend “Kun’l” Peets, who was a comparatively recent importation into the river country, came over the bridge with a basket on his arm containing a couple of setter pups that he wanted Posey to see, with a view of possibly having them applied on his account at the store. He was an ex-confederate from Tennessee, and seemed sadly out of harmony with his surroundings. The pups were liberated on the platform and subjected to much poking about and criticism by the experts. The Colonel considered them “fine specimens of a noble strain,” but Wirrick thought “they looked like they had some wolf blood in ’em.” Posey agreed to accept the little animals in lieu of eight dollars owed by the Colonel, with the understanding that they were to be kept for him until they were a month older. Everybody understood his kindly consideration for the old man, and knew that he had no earthly use for the pups.

The assemblage in front of the store became more varied and interesting with the arrival of other visitors. The chairs were exhausted and the platform edge was entirely occupied. Bill Stiles had just commenced the narration of a horse trade story, when an old man appeared in the twilight on the bridge. He wore a long gray overcoat, although the evening was very warm. The story stopped and interest was centered on the slowly approaching figure.

I asked Posey who he was. He bent his head toward me confidentially, and, in something between a low whistle and a whisper, replied: “S-s-s-s-t——‘the Serpent’s Hiss’!!!”

We were in prohibition territory, and the old “bootlegger” was bringing twelve flat pint bottles in twelve inside pockets of the gray overcoat to break the drought at Posey’s store.

He was an unbonded warehouse, and the reason for the mysterious gathering on that particular evening was now apparent.

He came slowly up the steps, and seemed embarrassed to find a stranger present. I was introduced and vouched for by my friend Posey, and he seemed much relieved.

Conversation had been rather dull during the last half hour, but now it had a merry note. The jaundiced Viking brightened up and wondered how many bird’s nests had been constructed with the whiskers that Wirrick had left up in the bayou. Time worn jokes were laughed at more than usual. Some new insurance that Posey had acquired was regarded as indicating a big fire as soon as business got dull, and Doc Dust was told that he ought to keep the small bag of oats under his buggy seat away from the medicine cases or he would lose his horse.

“Well, time is flitt’n,” remarked the “Serpent’s Hiss,” as he rose and departed for the barn lot behind the store.

One by one, like turtles slipping off a log into a stream, those who sat along the edge of the platform dropped silently to the ground and followed him, and most of the occupants of the chairs joined the procession. Like the oriflamme of Henry of Navarre, the gray overcoat led them on through the dusk.

The retreat to the rear was in deference to Posey’s scruples. He preferred that the store itself should be kept free from illegitimate traffic.

The odor of substantial sin, and a faint suggestion of a dragon’s breath was in the atmosphere when the crowd returned. Deliverance had come. Aridity was succeeded by bountiful moisture, that like gentle rain, had fallen upon thirsty flowers.

The Colonel seemed in some way to be dissatisfied with his visit to the barn, and was at odds with the owner of the gray overcoat when the expedition returned. He had parted with a silver coin under protest.

“Inate cou’tesy, suh, compelled me to pa’take of you’ah abundance, suh,” he declared. “It was not that I wanted you’ah infe’nal mixcha, you mink eyed old grave robbah,” he declared, as he left with his puppies.

The old bootlegger’s name was Richard Shakes, but the obvious natural perversion to “Dick Snakes” was too tempting to be resisted by the river humorists. He was also frequently alluded to as “Tiger Cat,” a term that seemed much more appropriate to the liquids he dispensed than to him, for, outside of his questionable occupation, the old man was entirely inoffensive and harmless. He was another member of the old time trapping fraternity, and lived alone in a log house on the creek about two miles away.

He had a large collection of Indian relics, that he had spent many years in accumulating, and he took great delight in showing them to anybody who came to see him. The arrow and spear heads were methodically arranged in long rows on thin smooth boards, and held in place by the heads of tacks that overlapped their edges. The boards were nailed to the walls of faced logs all over the interior of the cabin.

Nearly everybody in the surrounding country had contributed to the collection at one time or another, and it was being added to constantly.

There were many fine specimens of tomahawk heads, stone axes, and other implements, that had been fashioned with admirable skill. The old man guarded his hoarded treasures with a miser’s solicitude, for they were the solace of his lonely life. He had refused large offers for the collection as a whole, and never could be induced to part with single specimens, except under pressure of immediate necessity.

There are few mental comforts comparable with those of absorbing hobbies. They temper the raw winds and asperities of existence to a wonderful degree, and offer a welcome balm of heart interest to lives weary of continued conflict for mythical goals. We may smile at them in others, but we realize their deep significance when they are our own.

Poor old Shakes was but another example of one made happy by a harmless fad, the joys of which might well be coveted by those whose millions have brought only fear and sorrow. After it is all over the pursuit of one phantom has been as gratifying as the quest of another, for they both end in darkness.

After sitting around for awhile, and listening to the enlivened conversation, and the gossip of the neighborhood, that now circulated freely, the old man bought a package of tobacco in the store, for which he said he had “been stung ten cents,” and left us, with the overcoat, from which the cargo had been discharged, hung lightly over his arm.

The assemblage gradually dispersed. Wirrick, Hyatt, and the jaundiced Viking went down to the river bank and departed in their “push boats.” Doc Dust invited Pop Wilkins to ride with him, and they betook themselves into the shadows. Tipton Posey relighted his pipe and Bill Stiles resumed the story of the horse trade.

VI MUSKRAT HYATT’S REDEMPTION

Except from a picturesque standpoint, “Rat” Hyatt was not an ornament to the river country. Its meager and widely scattered social life, and its average of morality, were more or less affected by his shortcomings. In many communities he would be considered an undesirable citizen. He was looked upon as a good natured “bad egg,” and as one industrious in the ways of sin by his associates at Tipton Posey’s store, but the habitues of that time honored loafing place always welcomed him, for he possessed a reminiscent talent and a peculiar kind of dry wit and repartee that helped to enliven the sleepy days.

In this world much sin is forgiven an entertaining personality.

There was always a feeling of incompleteness on the store platform when Rat was absent, that nobody ever admitted, but when he arrived and took his accustomed seat on the green wheel barrow, that was part of the merchandise that Posey kept outside in the day time, the depressing vacancy existed no longer.

Bill Stiles’s temperamental discharges of ornate philosophy, and his comments on life’s ironies and human folly, required a target, and this was commonly the role assigned to Rat Hyatt.

“I’m always the goat,” remarked Rat one hot afternoon, as we sat in the shade of the wooden awning. “W’y don’t you pick on somebody that likes to listen? I’ve been kidded by experts, an’ this long talk o’ your’n seems kind o’ mixed up. The trouble with you an’ a lot o’ the other ol’ mud birds ’round ’ere, is you open yer mouth an’ go ’way an’ leave it, an’ fergit you started it.”

“Now look ’ere, Rat,” replied Bill, “you aint got no call to talk back to me. W’en I’m talkin’ to you, I aint arguin’. I’m tellin’ you how ’tis. I knowed you w’en you wasn’t knee high to a duck, an’ you aint got brains enough to have the headache with.

“That feller that you sold my dog to the last time was ’ere yisterd’y askin’ ’bout you, an’ if Spot ’ad ever come back. He’d been up to your place, an’ its a good thing fer you that you an’ Spot was off some’rs in the woods. He told me what ’e traded you fer the animal, an’ I want you to bring them things to me, fer it was my dog you got ’em with.”

As Spot was asleep under the wheelbarrow, Bill’s equity in the repeating rifle and cartridges, that Hyatt had received in exchange for him, seemed rather hazy. The reason for Spot’s prolonged absence some months before was now apparent to Bill, and, although the intelligent animal had returned home, as expected, after being traded off, the old man’s nurtured wrath was waiting for Rat when he arrived that afternoon. Hyatt seemed in nowise abashed at the revelation of Bill’s knowledge of his shady transaction with the trapper.

“If I hadn’t a knowed the dog ’ud come home, I wouldn’t a let ’im go. It showed how much I trusted ’im w’en I let ’im go off with a stranger like that. If that feller thought ’e c’d keep a fine dog like that away from them that loved ’im, ’e oughta suffer fer ’is foolishness, an’ leave sump’n in the country to be remembered by. Of course if sump’n ’ad a happened to Spot, an’ ’e hadn’t a come back, I’d a given you the rifle, but I knowed that dog was all right. You c’n have ’im back any time you want ’im, if he’ll stay with you, but you hadn’t oughta jump on me as long as ’e aint lost, an’ ’e’s in first class health.”

“Its the funny ideas that some fellers ’ave about other people’s propity that keeps the state’s prisons filled up,” remarked Bill. “It aint the lyin’ an’ stealin’ that gits ’em thar, its gitt’n caught. If they don’t git caught its jest called business shrewdness. You bilked that feller out o’ that gun an’ you’r deprivin’ me of it w’en you used my dog to git it with. You’r a fine man to trust anythin’ with, you are. If I had any place to keep Spot I wouldn’t let you have ’im a minute. I c’n fill my shanty with stuff by tradin’ ’im off, an’ then wait’n fer ’im to come home, jest as well as you can, an’ it ’ud be all right fer me to do it, but you aint got no such right, ’specially if yer goin’ to swindle people.”

After Bill’s assurance that he had told the deluded trapper nothing of Spot’s return, and that he had gone off up the river, the conversation drifted into channels that were less irritating.

The old man’s mind became calm and he ascended the narrow stairway on the outside of the building, to his room over the store, for a nap.

“That ol’ feller oughta to have a phonygraph with ’is voice in it so he c’d spin it an’ listen to ’imself speil,” remarked Rat after Bill had left. “I used to often watch ’im when ’e was set’n quiet out ’ere by the hour, with that dinkey hat pulled down in front an’ lookin’ wise, an’ wonder what big thoughts was ferment’n up in that old moss covered dome o’ his, but I found out after a while that ’e wasn’t thinkin’ about nuth’n at all.”

Rat wended his way down to the bank under the bridge, where he had left his push boat, followed by the faithful Spot, and poled his way up stream. When he reached the vicinity of the stranded house boat, where he had lived for several years, he reconnoitered it cautiously. No malign presence was detected. He looked over his bee hives that were scattered about among the trees, and provided two or three week’s food supplies for his chickens, and some young coons and weasles, that he was raising for their fur in some wire cages under the house. He then packed a few necessaries into his boat, and secured the door of the house with a padlock.

He was not quite satisfied that the trapper, who was looking for Spot, had left the country, and he did not intend to take any chances. The dog was ordered to lie down in the bow of the canoe, where he was carefully covered. The intelligent animal complied cheerfully with all of the arrangements.

Rat then proceeded down the river for several miles to the big marsh, where he did the most of his trapping during the late fall, winter, and spring.

He had two motives for his trip, besides the idea of avoiding a possible visit of the trapper to the house boat. One was to see if the muskrat population on the marsh had increased properly during the summer, and the other was to visit Malindy Taylor, whom he deeply loved, and by whom he was scorned as a suitor.

Malindy was a peppery widow of about forty, who lived with her aged mother in a small house beyond the marsh. She was the owner of a wild duck farm, and conducted it with such success that Rat looked forward to spending his declining days in peace and comfort if he could persuade Malindy to take him into life partnership.

Many hundreds of mallards and teal nested among the boggy places in the marsh during the summer. The eggs were gathered, put into incubators, and under complaisant hens on the farm. The ducklings were reared in wired enclosures that prevented them from joining their kind in the skies when the fall migrations began. During the game season, when they were properly matured, they were skilfully strangled and shipped away as wild birds at game prices.

Rat had always willingly hunted nests and gathered eggs for his beloved. He did odd jobs about the farm and participated in everything but the harvest. Like Jacob of old, toiling for the hand of Rachael, Rat’s industry, although intermittent, was sustained by alluring hope.

Outside of her earthly possessions, it must be admitted that Malindy had few charms. One of her eyes was slightly on the bias, and at times it had a baleful gleam. Two of her front teeth protruded in a particularly unpleasant way, as though she expected to bite at something alive. She had an angular disposition, and her temper was not conducive to the even flow of life’s little amenities. To use a Scotch expression, she was “unco pernickity.” She was intolerant of human frailty in others, especially of the kinds that entered so largely into Rat Hyatt’s make-up, but divinities sometimes appear in strange forms. To Rat’s love blinded eyes she was the one lone flower that grew in the dreary desert of life’s monotonies.

There is something about everybody that appeals to somebody, and this is why there is nobody who cannot find somebody willing to marry them.

Perhaps the streak of primitive cussedness in Malindy appealed to compatible instincts in Rat’s heart, but be that as it may, he was a faithful and much abused worshiper.

When he reached the farther end of the great marsh, he threaded his way through familiar openings among the tall masses of rushes and wild rice, landed on the soggy shore, and pulled his canoe up among the underbrush. He and Spot then took the winding path that led through the woods to the duck farm, about a quarter of a mile away.

He intended to stay at the farm, in seclusion, for a week or two, do some work that he had long promised, and then put out his traps on the marsh. He kept about a hundred of them in Malindy’s barn, when they were not in use.

About half way down the marsh a long tongue of wooded land extended out into the oozy slough. It was known as “Swallow Tail Point.” This was Tipton Posey’s favorite haunt during the shooting season. Thousands of wild ducks and geese passed over it on their way up or down the river, and in circling about over the marsh, which was a bountiful feeding ground. Bill Wirrick spent much time on the point with Posey. They had a little shack back among the low trees, sheltered so that it could not be seen from the sky, and hidden from the water by the tall brush.

These two worthies had solved at least one of life’s problems in this secluded retreat, for they did not have to adjust themselves to the convenience of anybody else.

In the early morning, just before daylight, when the ducks began to move over the marsh, and in the evening twilight, when the incoming flocks were settling for the night, little puffs of smoke, and faint reports, issued from the end of the point, and dark objects fell out of the sky. They were diligently retrieved by Posey’s brown water spaniel.

Occasionally wild geese would sweep low over the point, scatter and rise excitedly, as the puffs of smoke took toll from the honking ranks.

In addition to a big bunch of wooden decoys that floated in an open space near the edge of the point, the wary birds were lured by mechanical quacks and honks from small patented devices, operated by their concealed enemies.

Notwithstanding their civilized garb, and highly developed weapons, Tip and Bill were barbarians. Their instincts were lower than those of the carnivora of the jungle, for they killed not for food, or even for profit, but for the joy of the killing. They did not bother about the wounded birds that curved away and fluttered into the matted grasses and rushes, to suffer in silence, or be eaten by the big snapping turtles that had no ideas of sport. They exulted over piles of beautiful feathered creatures, motionless and splashed with blood, many of which were afterwards thrown away.

Tip had devoted many of his idle hours to the invention of a new goose call. The range of the ordinary devices seemed to him too restricted. His theory was that if the volume of sound could be increased so as to fill a radius of four or five miles, the distant V shaped flocks could be lured to within gun shot of the point.

After long meditation, and consultation with Bill Wirrick, they began putting the plan into execution.

They procured a pair of blacksmith’s bellows from a distant country town, and some big instruments that had once belonged to the local brass band. These things, in addition to some rubber garden hose, and a lot of other miscellaneous material, were carefully covered in a wagon and secretly conveyed to the point.

Weeks were spent in the construction of the apparatus. The brass instruments were arranged in the interior of a huge megaphone. Rubber balls bobbed about intermittently within the capacious horns when the air was pumped through them. The requisite volume of sound was attained, but somehow the turbulent honks of the wild geese were not satisfactorily imitated, although repeated adjustment and alteration gave much hope of success.