Part 14

“Mas’ Rafe, uh bin ketch cootuh een me time, uh bin ketch alligettuh, but uh yent fuh ketch no t’unduh en’ no lightnin’, en’ da’ t’ing oonuh call Ole Pickett, him duh t’unduh en’ lightnin’ _alltwo one time_! Uh gone een de pastuh en’ alltwo me han’ full’up wid bittle fuh da’ mule fuh eat. Uh hab uh kin’ feelin’ een me h’aa’t fuh da’ mule ’tell uh fin’um out, but now, uh nebbuh fuh trus’um ’gen no mo’! Mas’ Rafe, da’ mule ’ceitful ez uh ’ooman! ’E nyam de bittle out me han’, en’ w’en uh graff ’e yez fuh ketch’um, please Gawd, ’e head en’ ’e yez gone, en’ me han’ duh graff ’e two hin’ foot! Uh nebbuh see shishuh swif’ hin’ foot lukkuh da’ mule got. Ef me Jedus didn’ bin tell me fuh fall flat ’puntop me belly, sukkuh alligettuh, uh would’uh dead; but w’en uh do dat, een Gawd’ mussy, de mule kick obuh me, en’ de du’t en’ t’ing wuh ’e kick up out de pastuh, gone ’way up een de ellyment, en’ w’en ’e fall ’puntop me ’e kibbuh me up same lukkuh dem t’row du’t ’puntop’uh man een ’e grabe! Mas’ Rafe, uh tengkful fuh you fuh len’ me da’ mule fuh ride, but ’fo’ uh try fuh ketch’um ’gen, uh redduh walk on me han’ en’ me foot frum yuh _spang_ Caw Caw Swamp!”

Old Pickett had now passed her twenty-fifth year, and day by day became sadder and wiser. She accepted her daily tasks with resignation, but not with enthusiasm. The sockets above her weary eyes grew deeper, and white hairs thickened among the tawny pelage about her brow. Her ears, once so erect and responsive to all the sounds of the world about her, now flopped dejectedly like an unstarched “cracker” sunbonnet. Her lips, as pendulous as those of the bull moose that once tried to bite the Faunal Naturalist, hung lower and lower, and the hour drew near when she must shuffle off the mortal harness she had worn so long. Her eyes had looked upon smiling Peace, upon grim War, and--under Reconstruction, the once proud planters on foot and their quondam slaves on horseback--it was time to go. Turned out in the pasture to spend her last days in idleness, she walked listlessly about, cropping here and there a bunch of tender grass, while she waited for the summons. When it came, and she lay down to rise no more, a black spot, slowly circling in the sky, stooped, and, on a lower level, sailed again in narrowing circles. The keen eyes of other questing vultures, miles away, watched the drop, and followed. From the four corners of the heavens they came, and, alighting on rail fence and blasted pine, or hovering low on shadowy wings, they watched and waited, until at last Old Pickett’s glazing eyes told them that her heart and her heels were stilled forever.

A month or two later in the Autumn, when the family returned to the plantation from the pineland village, the boy indignantly reproached the negroes for not having given Old Pickett decent sepulture, and two of them were induced to gather up her whitened bones and bury them in a shallow grave at the edge of the ante-bellum “horse burying ground,” where the old family horses rested under the live-oaks. The negroes could not understand the boy’s emotion as the clods fell on the bones of the faithful old mule. “Eh, eh, buckruh boy too commikil. Him duh cry ’cause mule dead!” They did not know that the passing of Old Pickett severed a link with the golden past, and that into her grave went something of The Lost Cause!

THE LOST BUCK

An hour after sunrise, hunters and pack assembled at the appointed rendezvous, a centrally situated plantation. There was the usual exchange of pleasant badinage as to the relative speed, stamina and other qualities of the different hounds, who, now united in an imposing pack of twenty, combined almost every type known to the deer hunter, and each had its admirers. The older men preferred the native low-country stock, a blend, perhaps, of the blood of fox hound and beagle, bred for a hundred years or more from dogs brought from England long, long ago. These were fine, high-bred looking animals, mostly “blue speckled,” flecked with patches of black and fawn, whose twisted ears, soft as velvet, were long enough to tie under their wearers’ throats--very aristocrats of the dog world, from their long muzzles to the tips of their slender “rat” tails, not very fast, perhaps, but with noses so “cold” that they could follow a deer trail more than twenty-four hours old. Then, too, their cry! “Rolling tongues,” all of them, sweet and sonorous, whose blending of deep and high-pitched tones sent the blood tingling through the veins. The hard-riding youngsters, however, preferred the recently imported “English” dogs--thick-set, powerful creatures, white, with great patches of black and tan, broad-eared and “feather-tailed.” Their noses were not cold, nor was the music of their yelping “chopped” tongues inspiring, but they had great speed, and their feet were so hard that they could be run day after day without becoming footsore. Here and there, a somber spot in the pack, was a black and tan and--a touch of flame--a big “red-bone” of a western North Carolina strain, a rangy fellow, bred to speed and endurance in a rough, red-fox country. So each type and each individual had special qualities and special advocates, and all were gathered--Countess, Echo, Music, Harper, Lead, Luck, Modoc, Rowser, Blueman, the panther-like Huntress, and many younger dogs--into a pack whose all-round efficiency could not have been matched between Ashley River and the tawny waters of the Savannah!

At last the horns were sounded, and horsemen and hounds passed up the Cypress road. Soon after crossing the two bridges a mile or so away, a short consultation was had, and the “Elliott Big Drive” was decided upon. The elder huntsmen directed the standers to their positions and, after allowing sufficient time for those who had been assigned the more distant passes to reach their stands, the two expert and daring riders who had been designated as the “drivers” put in the eager pack and they spread fanlike among the myrtles.

The old buck, whose trophies were the special object of this day’s hunt, had long baffled the Nimrods of the neighborhood. Unusually large and with a magnificent head of “basket” horns, his resourcefulness had always enabled him to escape his pursuers. He varied his tactics as occasion required. In the early fall and winter, while lying with does and yearlings in the myrtles, or on the sunny side of some broomgrass field, he would cunningly keep his place upon the approach of hounds and hunters, allowing his companions to spring up and lead the cry off on a long run for the river. Then, when the danger was over, he would sneak away and take sanctuary in some distant thicket. Later on, in February and March, when the bucks, having dropped their horns, herded together like timid sheep, he pursued the same course, allowing the younger and less experienced to “jump” at the approach of the pack and lead it away while he remained in safety. In his bachelor days, however, he changed his methods, and, at the first cry of a distant dog opening upon the trail, the wary buck would “sneak,” and, by the time the pack reached his erstwhile bed, they found only the outline of his burly body in the petticoat grass where he had made his luxurious couch, while the old fellow would be perhaps six or seven miles away in the Ti Ti across the Edisto, or in some remote and inaccessible fastness beyond the Toogoodoo. In summer, when his great antlers in the “velvet” were tender and sensitive to the slightest touch of twig or foliage, he avoided thickets and tangled places, skirting the ridges that rose like shoulders on either side of the narrow bays that intersected the great forests of long-leaf pine.

But on this crisp November day, the woods were clean and clear, with no tangle of summer foliage, and the big buck, now carrying iron-hard horns, was as free to run through swamp or thicket as on the higher knolls and ridges, and, cunning and deceitful, he changed his tactics from chase to chase, and kept his pursuers guessing as to whether he would “jump” or “sneak,” whether his course would be east, south or west. Northward he never ran, for thither lay the railway and the flat woods, with no rivers beyond whose waters lay sanctuary.

One of the standers, well-mounted, took up a distant pass at Elliott’s Wells, the site of a settlement abandoned many generations ago. Concealing his horse in a thicket at the rear of the stand, he returned to the knoll, stood in front of a great pine, a giant among its lofty fellows, and listened for the cry of the pack. But listening was difficult and no cry came to his ears. The wind was high, and, singing among the pine tops like æolian harps, rose and swelled and softened and died away, now whispering of the wold with its peaceful sheep, and quiet meadows where cattle grazed, now thundering of stormswept mountain tops and the break of ocean surges on rockbound coasts, and again softened to the lap of sluggish wavelets on the shining shores of placid bays, and sighing told of those that grieved, and shrieked with the anguish of those that suffered, and softened again with the laughter of little children, and told the myriad stories and waked the thousand memories that the weird and mysterious songs of the wind among the pines bring to those whose hearts are attuned to nature. More than once the stander stood at attention, thinking he heard the cry of a distant hound, but, with a lull in the wind, the aural will-o’-the-wisp was gone, so misleading are the wind-sounds to even the trained ear. An hour passed. Two hours--but only the wind was heard, no bay of dog, no blast of horn betraying the presence of hunter or hound anywhere in the great expanse of forest.

Not far away was an old graveyard, one of the Colonial villages of the dead occasionally found in the low-country forests. The lettering on the marble slabs that covered the eternal sleepers revealed them as members of important families, many of them children who died of fever during the summer months before the days of quinine, deep wells and wire screens. The stander, while listening for the cry of the pack, read the lichen-covered inscriptions on the tombs and mused like Gray and Omar. With a whimsical smile, he looked at the towering crown of a great water-oak deep-rooted in the mould of a stout-hearted 17th century squire--a “five-bottle man” perhaps, and marveled at the alchemy of nature that could, from Madeira, Port and old Jamaica Rum, resolve a dew to nourish a Water Oak! Then, with ineffable sadness, he read the brief life-stories of God’s little children, “Mary,” “Anne,” “William,” “beloved daughter,” “beloved son” “of ---- and ---- his wife,” “died August 171-,” “died September 172-.” A cherub deep-carved in the marble, the line “Suffer little children to come unto Me”--no more! Seven, eight generations of men and women had lived their lives and passed since these little children were taken home 200 years ago! Yet, how near the tragedy seemed! The father returning from field or forest to find the mother in agony over the stricken child, no doctor, no ice, no effective medicines. The brilliant eyes, the burning cheeks, delirium, the end. The little mound in the woodland, wet with a mother’s tears, the graver’s chisel in the marble--and that was all. So men and women lived, and little children died--two hundred years ago!

At the end of the fourth hour of waiting, the stander, hearing only the wind-harps among the pine-tops, and realizing that, either the pack had jumped and been led by the chase out of the drive--a cunning old buck sometimes running contrary to all precedent--or that, striking no trail, the drivers had “blown out” of the Big Drive and called the hunt together for exploitation elsewhere, mounted his horse and rode due west through the woods for the Willtown road, which, running north and south, and nearly parallel with the Edisto and its tributary Penny Creek, would be crossed by any deer making for the river. Just as he reached the road, he accosted a negro walking toward Parker’s Ferry X-Roads, and asked if he had heard horns or hounds.

“Maussuh, uh binnuh stan’ een Willtown road close to Mas’ Edwu’d Baa’nwell’ Clifton place, w’en uh yeddy de dog duh comin’ fuh me, en’ uh stop fuh liss’n. Bimeby, uh see de mukkle duh shake, en’, fus’ t’ing uh know, de deer jump out de t’icket en’ light een de big road en’ look ’puntop me! ’E foot fall saaf’ly ’pun de groun’ same lukkuh cat duh sneak ’puntop’uh bu’d. ’E tu’n ’e head en’ ’e look ’puntop me lukkuh somebody, ’cep’n’ suh ’e yeye big lukkuh hawn owl’ eye. ’E look at me so positubble, uh t’ink mus’be ’e duh haant, en’ uh dat ’f’aid ’e gwine t’row one spell ’puntop me, uh tu’n ’way me head. W’en uh look roun’ ’gen, ’e gone! Yuh come de dog’! Uh nebbuh see summuch dog’! Dem full’ de road, en’ dem woice’ roll ’tell you nebbuh yeddy shishuh music. Dem cross’ de road, en’ dem gone! Attuh leetle w’ile, uh yeddy’um duh gib dem toung een de gyaa’d’n uh ole Maussuh’ Clifton house wuh dem Nyankee bu’n down eenjurin’ uh de wah. De gyaa’d’n big ez uh cawnfiel’, en’ ’e full’uh high rose bush duh climb up ’pun de tree, en’ all kind’uh briah en’ t’icket dey dey. Uh yeddy de dog’ mek uh sukkle roun’ de gyaa’d’n, den dem stop. Bimeby, yuh come de ole buck duh run puhzackly ’pun ’e back track, en’, w’en ’e git to de big road weh him lef’ me duh stan’up, uh t’awt at de fus’ ’e bin gwine jump ’puntop me, but ’e tu’n shaa’p roun’ en’ light down de road gwine Paa’kuh’ Ferry Cross-road’. ’E run ’traight een de big road, en’ uh’ spec’ ’e gone ’way todduh side Allstun’ Abenue befo’ de dog’ git back to de big road on ’e trail. De dog’ comin’ so fas’ uh git out ’e way fuh l’em pass, en’ dem so hasty, dem nebbuh ’top fuh smell weh de deer tu’n off down de road, en’ dem gone uh bilin’ t’ru de mukkle t’icket on de back track weh dem come f’um, en’ dem run ’bout uh mile befo’ dem fin’ out sun dem bin ’puntop de back track, den dem tu’n roun’ en’ come back fuh weh uh binnuh stan’ up. One leetle blue speckle’ toad bus’ out de pack en’ tek de fresh trail weh de buck jump off de back track, en’ gone! Soon ez dem todduh dog’ yeddy him woice, dem lef’ de ole trail en’ bu’n de win’ down de big road on de fresh track. Da’ duh de las’ uh shum, en’ uh nebbuh yeddy’um no mo’ attuh ’e done gone.”

Sure enough, the veteran Echo, the most intelligent dog in the pack, was running wide when she reached the road for the second time and detected the old buck’s maneuver. With a roar, the pack followed her at top speed down the open road, but, by the time the cry reached the Allston place on Penny Creek, the buck, with two or three miles the start of them, had run directly through the negro quarters, causing general consternation in the settlement, and had taken the water at the landing. Instead of crossing, however, he swam rapidly up stream and, aided by the flood tide, was a mile away before the pursuing pack reached the water’s edge. True to their usual practice, they crossed the creek and spread over the swamp on the other side in search of the trail, but trail there was none. The puzzled hounds ran up and down the bank for several hundred yards, whimpering with disappointment, but, for them that day, the buck was lost as completely as though the brown waters had swallowed him up, and one by one the disappointed dogs reluctantly recrossed the stream, and, as there was no sound of horn to summon them, singly and in groups they made their way to their respective homes.

Realizing that the buck had run far out of the chive, and, by giving all the passes a wide berth had lost the hunt, the sometime stander of Elliott’s Wells followed the spreading slot of the deer in the “big road” as far as Allston’s, and, riding up to the quarters, sought information of hounds and quarry from an old negress who was seated on the steps of her cabin, trying to loosen, with a tough horn comb, the kinky wool of a little black girl who sat on a lower step between her knees.

“Mauma, have you seen anything of a deer or dogs?”

The old woman, true to her training, tried to rise to drop a curtsy before replying, but the wide-eyed imp of darkness between her knees sat stolidly on the hem of her homespun skirt and prevented her rising.

“Git up, gal, ent you hab sense ’nuf fuh mek yo’ mannus w’en you see w’ite people? Uh bin agguhnize ’long all dem fowl’ fedduh en’ t’ing you hab een you head, en’ dem tanglety up ’tell uh cyan’ git ’um out, en’ you hab no bidness fuh gone en’ creep t’ru da’ fowlh’us’ winduh fuh git dem aig’. Git up en’ gone!”

But long before she reached the end of her sentence, the girl was up and gone, and, with a deep curtsy, the old woman answered the hunter.

“Maussuh, ’bout two hour attuh middleday, dish’yuh nigguhhouse yaa’d bin full’uh nigguh’, ’cause duh Sattyday, en’ all dese’yuh ’ooman duh wash dem clo’es. All ub uh sudd’nt, uh yeddy’um holluh same lukkuh roostuh holluh w’en ’e see hawk’ shadduh ’puntop de groun’, en’ eb’ry Gawd’ nigguh, ’ooman en’ chillun alltwo, drap eb’ryt’ing wuh dem got een dem han’ en’ run fuh dem house. Uh look ’roun’ fuh see wuh ’smattuh mek’um fuh holluh, en’, ef you b’leebe me, suh, one deer duh comin’ down de paat’, big same lukkuh ole Baa’ney, Mas’ Rafe dem bull! ’E hawn big ’nuf fuh hol’ bushel tub, en’, w’en ’e jump, ’e rise een de ellyment high mo’nuh dem house ebe’. W’en ’e look ’puntop me wid alltwo ’e yeye, uh ’f’aid suh de debble dey een’um, en’ uh drap ’pun me knee een de du’t en’ uh pray! Bimeby uh look ’roun’, en’ uh yent see nutt’n’ but ’e tail. De pyo’ tail dat big ’e kibbuhr’um, en’ ’e ’pread out w’ite lukkuh buckruh’ shu’t buzzum duh Sunday w’en ’e yent got on no weskit! ’E gone duh crick, ’e jump een, en’ nobody shum no mo’! All de nigguh’ come out dem house fuh look, en’ attuh w’ile dem yeddy de dog’ duh comin’, en’ dem run back ’gen. De beagle’ tayre up de street ’long dem foot, en’ dem mek shishuh woice de fowl’ fly up ’puntop de roof, en’ dem jis’ leely w’ile come down. Tengky, Maussuh, Gawd bless you, suh!--Come’yuh, gal! Yo’ head full’uh fedduh’ ’tell ’e stan’ same lukkuh frizzle’ hen! Come’yuh!”

Meanwhile, the big buck’s sensitive ears told him what had happened. He knew that the pack, at fault and silent, a mile behind him, was out of the running for that day, at least as far as he was concerned, and, touching bottom on a little wampee-covered spit of land that thrust itself into the creek, his dun and dripping body rose from the waters as he leisurely walked to shore, landing conveniently near a dense canebrake, within whose safe seclusion he found a dry bed until nightfall. With the rising of the moon soon thereafter, he slowly fed his way homeward through the forest, pausing, first near the edge of the Baring backwater, and then on every knoll where he could find a grove of the beautiful swamp white-oaks, for his favorite autumn food, the great over-cup acorns. At last, as the morning star blazed in the east and the far off roosters--long before Maude Adams won her spurs and her tail-feathers in Edmond Rostand’s Chanticler--heralded the coming of the dawn, the old fellow returned to his bed among the myrtles in the Big Drive, and, full of acorns and the satisfaction of having again outwitted his pursuers, lay down to his well-earned rest, undisturbed by dreams of horn or hound.

JIM MOULTRIE’S DIVORCE

The tail of a cold, blustering February day. In the creeks and leads of the Jehossee marshes the ducks sought protection from the wind until flushed by the hunter. Since early morning he had successfully explored every promising hiding place in the great marsh, under the guidance of Jim Moultrie, a skilled negro hunter and paddler, who pushed the nose of his clumsy dugout canoe up every little run that looked like a likely shelter for the wary game. As the sun sank below the horizon, staining the sky a dull red, the hunter quitted the marshes, and the bow of the canoe was turned toward Willtown, five miles away. Crouching low in the stern, Jim paddled silently and strenuously against the current for an hour. Like birdshot “patterns” thrown against the red sky, flocks of belated blackbirds hurried to their roosts.

Gradually the shadowy mantle of the dusk shrouded marsh and headland and the shimmering waters that slid by the struggling canoe; then night fell and healed the blood-red wound in the West. The dugout crept along the shore where the current was less swift. Now and then a raccoon hunting in the marsh sprang away affrighted. The whistling wings of a swift-flying teal cut through the icy air. Far up the river, like low-hung stars, twinkled the watchfires of a great timber raft outward bound for the estuary of the North Edisto. From a distant plantation came the sweet lu-la-lu of a happy negro freed from work. The raft, borne upon the bosom of the strong ebb-tide, neared rapidly, and, around its fires built on earth-covered platforms, the negro raftsmen talked and laughed as they cooked their supper, and the flames lighted the face and magnified the figure of the black steersman who stood by the great sweep oar with which, at the stern of the raft, he guided its course down stream.

For an hour Jim had silently bucked the tide, impelling the boat under the powerful strokes of his paddle, alternately left and right.

“What are you thinking of, Jim?”

“Study ’bout ’ooman, suh.” (A short silence.)

“’Ooman shishuh cuntrady t’ing, dem nebbuh know w’en dem well off. You kin feed dem, you kin pit clo’es ’puntop dem back, you kin pit shoe ’puntop dem foot, you kin pit hat ’puntop dem head, you kin pit money een dem han’, en’ still yet oonuh nebbuh know de ’ooman, nebbuh know w’en dem min’ gwine sattify. Dem fuhrebbuh duh lookout fuh trubble. Ef dem ent meet trubble duh paat’, dem gwine hunt fuhr’um duh ’ood. I dunkyuh howsoeb’uh fudduh de trubble dey, dem gwine _fin’um_. Ef dem cyan’ see ’e track fuh trail’um, dem gwine pit dem nose een de du’t en’ try fuh smell’um, but dem gwine _fin’um_! I duh study ’pun dat wife I nyuse fuh hab, name Mary. Look how him done, w’en him hab no cajun! You yeddy ’bout me trubble, enty, suh? Lemme tell you. One Sat’d’y night I gone home frum de ribbuh. I tek two duck’, bakin, flour en’ sugar en’ tea, den I pit fibe dolluh’ een Mary’ lap. Enty you know, suh, dat is big money fuh t’row een nigguh’ lap? W’en I binnuh boy en’ you t’row uh ’ooman uh fifty cent, ’e t’ink ’e rich, but I bin all dat week wid one cump’ny uh dese yuh rich Nyankee buckruh’ dat Mr. FitzSimmun hab yuh fuh shoot, en’ dem buckruh’ t’row me fibe dolluh bill same lukkuh dem bin dime’! W’en I t’row de money in de ’ooman’ lap, en’ pit de todduh t’ing wuh I fetch ’pun de flo’, Mary nebbuh crack ’e teet’. I ax’um ’smattuh mek’um stan’ so? ’E mek ansuh, ’nutt’n’. Nex’ day de ’ooman keep on same fashi’n. ’E nebbuh crack ’e bre’t’. I quizzit’um ’gen. I ax’um ’smattuh ’long’um. Him say, ’nutt’n’. Den I say ’berry well den.’ Monday mawnin’ I tek me gun, I call me dog en’ den I talk to de ’ooman. I say, ’Mary, I gwine duh ribbuh, en’ I gwine come back Sat’d’y two week’. I dunno ’smattuh mek you stan’ so, but I know suh de debble dey een you. No ’ooman ’puntop dis ribbuh hab mo’ den you, no ’ooman got so much, but I yent able fuh lib dis way ’long no ’ooman wuh tie’up ’e mout’, en’, w’en I come back las’ Sat’d’y two week’, I gwine ’tarrygate you one mo’ time, en’ I gwine ax you ’smattuh mek you stan’ so, en’ ef oonuh still een de same min’ ez now, den me nuh you paa’t.’