Part 5

“Are you sure you’re broad awake now?” he asked coming very close and laying his hand upon the old man’s knee. “It’s awful to walk in your sleep; I feel mighty sorry for you.” He scrambled up on the log, wriggled himself as close to the night-walker as he could get, took a coarse, limp old hand in his, and patted it. “I certainly am sorry for you ’cause I know jes’ how it feels to be woked up in the dark, away off from home and not know how you got there. I walk in my sleep too—that’s how I come out yer to-night—but you’ve got it worse than me, you have; for I don’t do mischief when I’m took, but you—why-e-e-e!” twisting himself about and surveying the log—“you’ve done hacked your tree all to pieces and ’twon’t be no more good for veneerin’! Gran’daddy says they don’t want nary snag in it.

“But maybe this ain’t the curly,” he peered eagerly into the woods; “it ain’t ’less it’s the furtherest one up.”

“This is the curly wa’nut all right,” growled Sumter with a malevolent twang unintelligible to the child.

“I certainly am sorry for you. Gran’daddy wrote three letters ’bout this yer tree and he was goin’ to turn the answers over to you so’t you could take up with ary one you’d a mind to—that’s what he said——”

“You say he did? Didn’t he ’low he’d bought the tree fair ’nough?”

“That ain’t the way he thought about it—and me and gran’daddy, you know, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; he said you could sell it for enough money to pay all you owed. He was plumb glad of it and now he’ll be mighty nigh as sorry as you and me is.”

For a moment sad, silent thought held sway.

“There’s one good thing about it though,” the child tucked his garment tightly under his knees, “you don’t get out without dressin’ yourself, the way I do; you ought to be glad about that. Gran’daddy says there’s always some good even in the baddest things if we watch out for it.”

His companion made no response and the boy resumed his role of sympathizer.

“I reckon you was borned that-a-way, jes’ like me, and it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; and you ain’t got any Dixie to watch out for you. And Aunt Carliny, she makes me sleep with her and Jakey, so’s she can catch me at it, but I don’t guess you’ve got any Aunt Carliny either.”

“Naw,” old man Sumter got up and reached for his lantern, “I ain’t got nary somebody that cares what becomes of me.”

The boy got down off the log and pityingly took his hand.

“Le’s go home,” he said, “I know where I be now an’ if you’re kind o’ mixed up yet, why I can show you the trail,” and he led away as shamefaced an old sinner as ever trod the mountains.

(Seeing the pair on friendly terms, Dixie indulged in a brief interview with a ’possum.)

“As I was a-sayin’,” comforted the child as they picked their way by the lantern’s light, “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; but don’t you go to takin’-on about it, for we’re bound to outgrow it—so gran’daddy says. And there’s another thing where you’re worse off than me: gran’daddy says you was borned mad at everybody all the time—that must be powerful mizzable too, but I reckon you’ll outgrow that too.”

They parted at Sumter’s door and then Grover Cleveland and Dixie sped homeward. Noiselessly the little fellow entered the house, crept into bed beside his Aunt Carliny and straightway forgot his “mizzable” inheritance.

But he had it embarrassingly recalled to his mind next morning at breakfast when Aunt Carliny said as she gave him his second helping of hominy:

“Grover Cleveland’s getting right good ’bout stayin’ in bed o’ nights; he ain’t tried to get up in a dog’s age. Of course he couldn’t get up without my catchin’ him, for I’m always sleepin’ with one eye open, but seem like he don’t try any more.”

“I reckon he’s outgrowin’ them kind of capers,” gran’daddy reached out, stroked the yellow pate and the yellow pate bent lower and lower and finally the whole boy went down under the table.

He next appeared tagging dumbly at the heels of the old gentleman as he was making his morning tour among his stock, who, when a sudden turn brought them into collision, reached behind him and brought the boy out of his obscurity.

“’Pears like you ain’t a mite peart this morning, Grover Cleveland; you got something on your mind?”

The child bored the soil with his toes:

“I—wasn’t in bed _all_ night, gran’daddy, not _every minute_, I wasn’t.”

“You been a-walkin’ in your sleep again?”

The child nodded guiltily and a very awkward pause ensued. Gran’daddy looked serious, but as soon as distressful symptoms began to develop in the little culprit, he applied, as usual, the healing balm of consolation.

“I wouldn’t take-on about it, Grover Cleveland, not a mite, I wouldn’t, for you’re plumb sure to outgrow it. Gran’daddy used to be up to them same tricks but he’s outgrowed ’em. I jes’ go to bed and I lay there as firm as a island in a goose pond and you couldn’t drag me out—not with Butterfly and Bonaparte you couldn’t—not unless something was the matter with Grover Cleveland and _he_ wanted me in the night; if he did, if he ever does, I’ll shoot out of that bed like lightning out of a thunder cloud.” And so he coaxed and petted until the shamed little face was ready to look the world squarely in the eyes again.

“Where was you at, last night, eh?”

“When I come to, I was up to Sundown Hill where them wa’nut trees is.”

“Was you ’way off there, grandson?” Gran’daddy settled to a seat on a wagon tongue and put a snug arm about the boy who grew suddenly voluble in the recollection of stirring times.

“Hi, gran’daddy! Cap’n Sumter, _he_ walks in his sleep jes’ like me! He does a heap of things in his sleep! An’ he talks right out loud too; that’s a heap worse’n me, ain’t it?”

“If he does it, it’s a heap worse’n you. Did you meet up with him last night?”

“Why he was a-doin’ mischief, _he_ was! He was choppin’ up that ar curly wa’nut and every lick he hit, he says, ‘_Now_ will you bring twelve-hundred dollars for veneerin,’ and he chopped big holes in it!”

“_That curly?_”

“Ye-e-s, that ar one that lays furtherest up the hill.”

The old man loosened his hold of the lad and rose slowly to his feet, a look on his face that Grover Cleveland had never seen there before and that he could only vaguely interpret, but it made him feel sorry for his companion in misery. So he took his grandfather’s hand and as they walked toward the house he discoursed:

“He can’t help doin’ things in his sleep for he was borned that-a-way, and he can’t help bein’ mad all the time for he was borned that-a-way too; and I reckon he feels mighty shamed of hisself now—that’s the way I feel.”

Receiving no response he squeezed the hand he held in both his own demanding recognition of his reiterated sentiment:

“It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”

And gran’daddy replied:

“So it is, Grover Cleveland, so it is.”

* * * * *

For two or three days the lives of our heroes ran along in the usual quiet channels, and then one morning Colonel Ledbetter drove up in front of Captain Sumter’s broken-spirited-looking dwelling-place. On the seat beside him was a “city-dressed fellow” and Grover Cleveland swung his legs over the pendant tail board.

In response to a call old man Sumter appeared.

“This yer man” (the mountaineer is apt to be off-hand in his introductions), “is the owner of that veneerin’ mill in Kentucky. He’s come to look at that ar curly wa’nut and to make you a offer for it; and here’s two letters from two other men that runs that kind of mills. One of ’em bids ’leven-hundred-an’-fifty dollars for it and the other a hundred or two more.”

Sumter fumbled with the letters, affecting even more than his habitual gruffness.

“Looks like you ain’t been to look at your property lately. That ar curly wa’nut ain’t no good for veneerin’ nor nothin’ else; it’s done chopped to pieces.”

Apparently his neighbour was absorbed in switching a fly off the white mule’s back, for he replied with his eye following the fly:

“I was up thar yesterday evening an ’twas all right then. You jump in thar ’long side of my boy and we’ll go up and look at it,” and the embarrassed old man got in because he didn’t know what else to do or what to say.

When next they halted they were among the felled trees. It was strange, but Colonel Ledbetter’s eyes never happened to light on that scarred log as he led his party past it and toward the summit of the hill.

“There’s only ten trees lying here,” he said, “that curly I left standing. Sometimes the man that buys it will give more for it that-a-way because he wants to have it cut particular; sometimes they count on gettin’ root and all.”

“Thar she is neighbour,” he said to the Kentuckian, slapping the old tree’s sides as proudly as if it had been a three-year-old thoroughbred and his own, “and if you don’t ’low she’s a giant and a beauty, you want to go out of the lumber business.”

He waited to hear his sentiment confirmed and then hand in hand with his grandson walked away leaving Sumter to make his own bargain.

“You see, Grover Cleveland,” he said as they came up to the hacked log, “he was too mad to see straight and he lit on the wrong tree.”

“Why gran’daddy, he was walkin’ in his sleep!”

“Sure ’nough; gran’daddy plumb forgot _that_ part of the story”—he sorted some chips about with the toe of his boot—“but, Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to actin’ _that_ spiteful, sleepin’ or wakin’.”

Two days afterward Sal stood sampling a pile of choice limber-twigs while her master sat on the Ledbetter porch. It is difficult to describe the expression of his hard old face. Its obduracy was there but less marked; as if a thin lava-flow of astonishment had hardened upon his features.

“That thar feller,” he said, “’lowed me fo’teen hundred dollars for the curly wa’nut and yesterday evening I druv over to the cou’t-house and—nary man’s got a nickel’s worth of claim on my farm now.”

Colonel Ledbetter grabbed his hand and shook it heartily.

“I certainly am glad, Sam,” he said, “I certainly am.”

“Looks like you think as you say, Jake.” The old fellow hoisted himself on his feet and, after the distortions of figure necessary to get possession of his pocket-book, said: “Here’s the thirty dollars you give me for the curly and here’s another thirty for the log that got hacked.” Without another word he stumped clumsily out to his wagon, Colonel Ledbetter following in a neighbourly way.

“That’s a fine heifer you’ve got tied behind, Sam; tollable much Holstein in her, ain’t there?”

“Looks like thar is; g’long!”

He turned into the road, but a second thought made him look back.

“See here”; Colonel Ledbetter went to him.

“That thar line fence that Higgins has been a-snarlin’ ’bout for twenty year—he says it b’longs on my side the branch. It was on yon side when the property come into my hands but, ’cordin’ to the records over to the cou’t-house, looks like there’s a chance of him bein’ in the right of it. And I’m like you and Grover Cleveland, Jake; I don’t want nothin’ ’tain’t mine. I don’t reckon Higgins’ll have anything to say to me, but if you’re a mind to go over and talk to him ’bout it, we’ll have it straightened out. G’long.”

Over the hill he went, jerked Sal to a stand in front of Mis’ Jimson’s log-cabin, clambered out of the wagon, and began to untie the cow. The old woman came limping down the walk with surprise but no welcome in her face.

“Where’ll you have her?” he asked with his eyes on his fingers.

“Whatever do you mean, Sam Sumter?”

“Mis’ Jimson, you ’lowed I’d put my brand onto the ears of your calf. This ’ere creeter run with mine up on the mounting the whole season and when they brought my cattle down she was with ’em; but if you say she’s yours——”

“She _is_ mine, I know her by the shape of the white blanket on her back. ’Tain’t hard to know your own when one is all you’ve got.”

“Here she is,” he opened the gate, put the animal into the yard and had regained his seat before she recovered her speech.

“How’s all the folks, Cap’n Sumter?”

“Tollable; g’long!”

The cow was too wild to let her mistress come near so she stood and admired her afar off:

“Looks like the millenyum has done come,” she said, “and I’m mighty glad I’ve lived to see it.”

* * * * *

“Well what about it!” exclaimed Aunt Dicey the next Sunday, pointing to her dingy little wooden clock, “she’s done stopped—a hour ago for all I know. We’ll be late to church an’ I wouldn’t miss what Preacher Carr has got to say this mornin’—not for a pretty. Why, Zeb’lon, they’re a-sayin’ that ole man Sumter’s sure ’nough got religion!”

“You say he has!” Zeb’s tone was as wrathy as it was incredulous.

“Sure ’nough; Mis’ Campbell says he’s a-restorin’ fourfold!”

“Thar’s the old sinner now,” grumbled Zeb; “talk about good folks and they’re plumb sure to heave into sight.”

“Well, what about it? He’s a-drivin’ up!”

“Hullo in there! Zeb’lon!”

Just within the door but out of the old man’s sight, Aunt Dicey counseled her grandson:

“You speak him fair, Zeb’lon, for they say he sure has got religion; but I’ll stand on the porch with the gun whar he can see me good; maybe that’ll keep him from backslidin’ all of a suddent.”

They went out together. Zeb said “Mornin’” but his tone was not conciliatory.

“I’ve got a mighty pretty year-old colt up to my place; come of first-class Kentucky stock. If you’re a mind to, you can come up and git him, to pay for that thar tame deer I shot. G’long!”

Church was “in” when Aunt Dicey and Zeb drove up, and before they had alighted and found a place to hitch among the two score beasts of draught or burden that were disposed in the surrounding woods, church was “out.” But the congregation didn’t disperse; they stood about in groups discussing the wonderful events of the past week. Preacher Carr came and stood in the doorway:

“Give me that old-time religion,” he sang out lustily, and his people joined joyously in the refrain. Arsula Garrett always led the singing and she followed him with:

“It was good for the Hebrew children,” and they kept on chanting the efficacy of the “old-time religion” in the case of “the prophet Daniel,” “the good Elijah,” “the psalmist David,” “poor old Noah,” “the patriarch Abr’ham,” and, when they had exhausted Arsula’s list of sacred-history heroes, they sang:

“It was good for my old mother,” “It will be good in the time of trouble,” “It will be good when the world’s on fire,”

and finally they rounded up the catalogue of human experiences and human apprehensions with:

“It will be good when I am dying, It is good enough for me.”

But Grover Cleveland wasn’t ready to go home yet and, tugging at Arsula’s skirt, he piped timorously:

“It will be good while I’m a-livin,”—probably it was only dislike of the thought of dying that inspired his improvisation, but Arsula and the rest took it up with all their heart:

“It will be good while I am living, It is good enough for me.”

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 72 Changed: an “understanding,” existed betwen to: an “understanding,” existed between