Part 5
She understood him instantly. As the door swung a little ajar she looked back over her shoulder through the shed-room into the main room of the cabin. Binwell was not there; no one was visible in the ruddy glare of the fire illuminating the brown walls but the little Rosamond and the blind man. She had elected to consider herself some neighing, prancing steed, and Abner held her by one long, golden curl, that served as reins. A short tether, to be sure, but she curveted, and stamped, and laughed as few horses have ever done. The reflection of her merriment was in the smile on the blind man’s face. Her very shadow was glad, as it sported with the firelight on the floor.
VI.
There is nothing so conducive to happiness as work—work done well and willingly. It is in itself happiness. Ike wondered to find, as he bent his mind and all his energy to his simple tasks—grown strangely light and seeming few—how little he suffered from his exclusion from his friend’s society and from the unjust discrimination made against him for no fault of his; how amply his duty filled his horizon, and presently arrayed itself in the glad garb of pleasure. He sang—he could but sing—as he wielded the axe, as he fed the stock, as he went back and forth on his errands through the lonely woods, sometimes hearing the voice of Keedon Bluffs singing too, in fitful and fugue-like response.
Nevertheless, he was glad enough to be reassured of his friend’s loyalty in their enforced separation, for when they presently met by accident Skimpy seized upon him eagerly, “Ye ain’t holdin’ no gredge ag’in _me_, air ye, Ike? I couldn’t holp it; ye know I couldn’t.”
This accidental meeting occurred one evening when all the boys of Tanglefoot Cove and the mountain slopes had gathered for a coon-hunt. The Sawyer lads were of the party, Skimpy and three brothers, all much alike, all long-legged, red-haired, freckled-faced fellows, and not fascinating to look upon, but they took a great deal of pleasure in themselves, and there was considerable boy-nature to the square inch in these four Sawyers. They were first-rate comrades too; could both take a joke and make one; all had bright, honest, steady brown eyes, and they were evidently destined to grow better looking as they grew older. With one exception they were clad in whole, stout homespun garments, well woven and well made, for their mother was a peculiarly precise, neat, and industrious woman. Skimpy was the exception; his elbows were out; his ankles could not wait for his trousers to grow, so they showed themselves, right nimble and sturdy members, although the garment, which was blue, had been encouraged lengthwise with a fresh contrasting piece of copper-colored jeans; his knees bulged against the threadbare cloth in a way that intimated they would not long be able to shelter themselves in their flimsy retirement. He and his mother found it difficult to reconcile their diverse theories of the uses and the care of clothes. Although serious enough when they climaxed, these differences had no depressing effect on Skimpy’s spirits, and did not suffice to save his wardrobe. He harbored no unfilial resentment, but he thought his mother a very queer and particular woman.
The Sawyers had brought with them the dutiful clerk, who was also preëminent as a coon-dog. There he sat in his yellow hide, decorated with his slit ear, and his docked tail, and his half-closed eyelid. When away from the store his demeanor lacked the urbanity which characterized him there. He bore himself now with the surly air of a magnate whose affability has been swallowed up in the consciousness of importance.
The Sawyers specially piqued themselves on being the proud possessors of Bose. Every now and then one would reverently glance at the animal, as he sat upright lolling out an indifferent tongue, and say to those unacquainted with him—“Mind how ye fool with Bose—he’s sharp” (with an excited eye and a wag of the red head); “he’s mighty fierce.” And the other Sawyers would nod their heads in confirmation of this report of Bose’s belligerent qualities. They had a sort of hero-worshiping reverence for this trait of dog-sharpness, but any one who did not think respectfully of Bose was some one who did not care to go coon-hunting. He was the central figure of the group that had collected in the woods by a sulphur spring, on a slope of one of the minor ridges at the base of the Great Smoky. The early dusk had not yet fallen, but the shadows were lengthening fast, and night was on the way. The boughs of the trees above their heads were drawn in fine distorted lines on a crimson sky; here and there a slant of sunshine fell amongst the brown shadows upon some red and yellow fantasy of foliage that so blazed with color and light in its dusky surroundings that it might seem some outburst of fire which had been slyly “set out” in the woods.
The sulphur spring had sought to hide itself, it might seem. Across a narrow, rocky cleft lay a great flat slab, and a rill trickled away somewhere; no one would have imagined that beneath this slab was a spring with brown crystalline water, and a vibrant whisper, and some exquisite perfumed breath of freshness borrowed from the dawn of day. The dogs knew where it was, running to it with lolling tongues and with much affectation of thirst, yet wanting only a drop or two. For other dogs were there and they seemed to have heard and to have profited by the Sawyers’ account of Bose, or perhaps the dignity of his mien awed them, or experience admonished them, for none of them molested him, although they became involved in noisy fights with each other, or gambols as turbulent. The boys, ten or twelve in number, all had cow-horns to blow and torches to carry, and while they waited for certain cronies to arrive the talk was chiefly of the subject that had brought them together. The coon seemed a fascinating study apart from his great gifts of celerity. Mentally he is generously endowed. If Skimpy might be believed the coon can do anything short of reading, writing, and ciphering.
“Even mam, she hev ter ’low ez coons ain’t lackin’ fur head-stuffin’,” he remarked, as he stood with his arms akimbo. “You-uns know the kind o’ ways mam hev gin herself over ter—a-sweepin’, an’ a-scourin’, an’ a-cleanin’, till I actially looks ter see ef she won’t take ter washin’ the chickens’ faces an’ curryin’ the cat. Waal, Cousin Eph Bates, he stopped thar one day with his pet coon. An’ mam she made him welcome an’ set out the table. An’ mam, she ’lowed the coon mus’ be hongry, so she called it an’ gin it a nice piece o’ corn dodger. What’s that coon do?” he cried, his eyes widening with the interest of the recital. “Popped up on the aidge o’ the drinkin’ pail an’ ondertook ter wash that thar piece o’ dodger ’twixt his fore paws, ’fore he would eat it. I wish ye could hev seen mam’s face. I laffed till I like ter drapped in my tracks. An’ Cousin Eph—he jes’ hollered. An’ mam, she hed furgot, ef she ever knowed, how coons do; she say, ‘Cousin Eph, ye needn’t bring no sech pertic’lar vis’tor ter my house ag’in—a-washin’ the clean vittles _I_ gin him.’ Thar sot the coon, ez onconsarned, a-washin’ his hands an’ a-washin’ the dodger.” Skimpy suited the action to the words and teetered up and down, washing his paws and an imaginary piece of corn dodger. “I laffed an’ laffed. That coon like ter been the death o’ me ’fore he got away from thar.”
“I know that thar coon o’ Eph Bates’s,” cried Ike. “I stayed up ter his house one night along o’ his chill’n an’ ’twar bright moonlight whenst I went ter bed in the roof-room, but after a while I woke up an’ I ’lowed ’twar a hailstorm goin’ on outside on the roof. Ye never hearn sech a skedaddlin’ up an’ down them clapboards. Kem ter find out, ’twar nuthin’ but the coon a-playin’ tag with his shadder in the moonlight.”
“Oh, he’s a powerful tricky, Mister Coon air,” Skimpy declared, his freckled face distended with relish of Mr. Coon’s smartness. “Mam an’ Cousin Eph hed sot tharselfs down afore the fire an’ got ter talkin’ ’bout’n the folkses in the Cove, an’ how mighty few o’ ’em had enny sech religion ez they purtended ter hev, when mam she put her hand in her pocket fur ter git her knittin’. An’ there warn’t nuthin’ in her pocket but a ball o’ yarn. An’ she looked up, an’ thar war a great long e-end o’ it a-stretchin’ ter the door. An’ thar on the steps sot Mister Coon with them knittin’ needles, an’ the sock, a-holdin’ ’em like he war knittin’, ez onconsarned—oh my! I laffed ag’in.”
“I’ll bet yer mam didn’t laff,” said an intimate of the family.
“Naw,” Skimpy admitted. “Mam, she’s mighty sober-sided. She’d like the coon better ef he wore spec’s an’ cut wood. Cousin Eph, he axed her how many rows that coon knit. An’ mam, she said—‘_None!_ He drug two needles bodaciously out an’ spiled fower rows.’ Mam ’lowed ez she thought she hed the mos’ mischievious created critter—meanin’ me—but she said she b’lieved Cousin Eph mought take the prem_ium_. An’ Cousin Eph, he said enny time she war minded ter swap he’d trade the coon fur me. An’ mam, she cut her eye round at me an’ tole me I hed better mend my manners; the mounting would talk mightily ’bout me ef I war traded off fur a coon ’thout enny boot.”
“That thar mus’ be the same coon ez Cousin Eph Bates fotched along o’ him ter the store when he kem ter trade, las’ summer,” said Obadiah, the eldest Sawyer. “An’ dad, he tole Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. An’ nobody noticed the coon till Cousin Eph war ready ter go, an’ tuk ter huntin’ fur him. I don’t reckon that coon could surely hev thunk ez dad meant it fur _him_ whenst he told Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. But leastwise the coon done it; he holped _his_-self. They fund him propped up on the aidge o’ the sugar bar’l, an’ they say the way his whiskers war gormed with sugar war a sight ter be seen. He hedn’t no expression ter his face, an’ he looked plumb cross-eyed with pleasure. Sugar in his paws, too, and dad kerried on like he war mighty nigh demented. An’ he wanted Cousin Eph ter pay for that sugar the coon hed eat, an’ said he wanted that thar coon’s skin. But Cousin Eph, he snatched his coon up under his arm an’ ’lowed he mought ez well try ter trade fur one o’ his chill’n’s hides. I b’lieve he gin dad some money or suthin’, though. He sot out arter that with his coon fur home.”
“Waal, he warn’t so ’fectionate with that thar coon las’ time I seen him,” Ike added his testimony. “’Twar over yander at the church-house in the gap. An’ whilst the folks war settin’ inside, a-listenin’ ter the preachin’, we-uns hearn the biggest rumpus outside ’mongst the teams, an’ everybody looked plumb wretched, wonderin’ ef ’twar suthin’ hed happened ter thar steer or horse critter. An’ dad whispered ter me ter go out an’ see. An’ thar, ’mongst all the wagins, an’ yokes o’ oxen, an’ saddle horses under the trees, war a young claybank horse ez b’long ter Eph Bates. An’ that thar coon he had slyed off an’ follered his master ter the church-house, an’ stiddier goin’ inside—it’s a mercy he didn’t—he seen Eph’s horse, an’ he clomb the tree, an’ drapped down on the pommel o’ the saddle. Waal, sir, sech kickin’! that horse war young an’ skeery; sech squealin’! An’ whenst I seen him he war tremblin’ like he hed a fit o’ the ague, an’ then he’d turn his head an’ git a glimge o’ that thar citizen in the saddle, an’ begin ter plunge an’ shy an’ snort ag’in. Jes’ ’fore I got ter him he bruk his halter, an’ he lit out; around an’ around that thar church-house he went a-cavortin’ an’ a-gallopin’, Mister Coon settin’ in the saddle, a-holdin’ on fur life, an’ a-smilin’ from ear to ear. An’ the folks in the church-house seen what war a-goin’ on, an’ Eph an’ some o’ them nigh the door run out an’ hollered, ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ at the horse. Didn’t do no good. Ez soon ez the critter seen he couldn’t shake the coon off he bolted an’ run through the woods. Eph, he walked home that Sunday, five mile, but Mister Coon, he rid.”
“Oh, Mister Coon, oh, Mister Coon,” Skimpy was murmuring, and presently he broke into song:—
“Bob Snooks, he eat up all in his plate, An’ he dreampt a dream that night right late. A-settin’ on a cloud war a big raccoon, A-eatin’ an’ a-washin’ his paws in the moon. ’Twar brimmin’ full o’ clabber an’ whey. His tail war ringed with black an’ gray; It hung plumb down ter the poplar-tree, An’ he wagged it up an’ down in glee.
CHORUS.
“Oh, Mister Coon! oh, Mister Coon, Oh, take them dirty paws out’n the moon.
“He looked at Bob, ter wink an’ grin, An’ then Bob say—‘Ez sure ez sin I’ll yank ye off’n the aidge o’ that moon, Though ye air a mos’ surprisin’ coon.’ Bob sicked on Towse—_Towse clomb the tree!_ An’ grabbed the coon right nat’rally. An’ suddint Bob woke—thar war _no_ raccoon, Bob wisht he hed lef’ him up thar on the moon.
CHORUS.
“Oh, Mister Coon! oh, Mister Coon, Oh, why can’t ye once more balance on the moon.”
It was quite dark before they were fairly started. The shadows gloomed thick about them. The stars were in the sky. The sound of the boyish voices whooping and calling, and singing snatches of the coon-song, echoed far and wide among the solemn woods and the listening rocks. The dogs answered to the eager urgency of their masters by wheezing and snuffing about the ground as they ran with their muzzles down, but the best among them, even the preëminent Bose, could conjure no coon where no coon was.
“What ails ’em ter take ter sech a piece o’ briars,” Skimpy cried out suddenly with an accompaniment of a ripping sound. “Ef I tear up these hyar clothes o’ mine enny mo’ I’ll hev some rents ter mend in my skin, fur my mother hev sot it down ef I gin her so many repairs ter make she’ll gin me some.”
This terrifying prospect did not unduly alarm Skimpy nor hinder his joyous pursuit of the coon. He was the first fellow to fall into the briars and to flounder into the branch. His nimble feet followed more closely than any others their canine precursors. It was he who cried out and encouraged the dogs and kept them together, and even the self-sufficient and experienced Bose hearkened to his counsel and lent himself to guidance. Skimpy was close upon the docked tail of this animal when suddenly the wheezing Bose emitted a short sharp cry and sprang off in the darkness with all the dogs after him.
VII.
The moon was just beginning to rise. A vague red glow suffused the summit of the eastern mountains. It hardly revealed, but in some sort it suggested, the presence of the vast forests of the Cove, that still stood dusky and gloomily mysterious. The solemn silence, native to the solitudes, was for the nonce annihilated. The whole night seemed to ring with the shouting triumph of the boys. The cry of the dogs was unintermittent. Naught impeded the wild chase, save that now and then a projecting root caught an unwary foot, and a boy would go crashing to the ground, his companions jumping over his prostrate form, or perhaps falling upon him, then scrambling up together and away again hilariously. Sometimes a horn would sound, and if one had cared to listen he might have wondered to hear the countless blasts that the echoes wound, or laughed to fancy how that mimic chase in the air did fare. Sometimes, too, a voice would call out from the van of the line, “Oh, Mister Coon!” And anon Keedon Bluffs repeated the words in a solemn staccato, as if they were some uncomprehended incantation. “Oh, Mister Coon!”
What that gentleman thought of it all nobody can say. Whether he resented the fact that his coat was considered too good for him, and just good enough for a cap for somebody else; or whether he felt complimented that he was esteemed so game that it was accounted a pleasure to see him fight, singly, a score of savage dogs, and die in the jaws of the enemies he crippled, nobody will ever know. The only certain thing is that he carried his fat and his fur, and his palpitating identity inside of them, as fast and as far as he could. And then in desperation he swiftly climbed a tree, and sat there panting, looking down with eyes whose dilated pupils defied the night, to mark how the fierce rout came at full cry over the rise. The boys knew what he had done, notwithstanding the dark forests that intervened, for the dogs announced in loud and joyful barks that the coon was treed as they besieged the oak, springing as high as they could about its trunk. There was a chorus, “Oh, Mister Coon!” from the hunters as they came pelting over the hill, almost dead beat with the run. For the coon had footed it bravely, and treeing him was long delayed.
The torches, skimming swiftly about under the oak, which was close upon a precipice, flared in the darkness far along the slopes, and the coon hunt glimpsed from the distant cove was like an errant constellation, run away from the skies. Nearer, flame and smoke flaunted back in the wind, showing the colors of a limited section of the autumn woods close about, and thus conjuring an oasis of gorgeous brilliance in that desert of gloom. In the radiance of the fringed flaring lights might be distinguished, in high relief against the dusky background, Ike’s eager face, and Skimpy’s hatchet-like features,—as he bent to beseech Bose to calm himself instead of bounding futilely about the tree which he could not climb like the dream-dog,—and the muscular poses of Obadiah Sawyer, who wielded the axe about the trunk of the tree. How the echoes answered! How the rocks rang with the stalwart strokes! The chips flew with every cleavage. The dogs leaped, and barked on every shrill key of impatience. The coon, barely visible, crouched in the darkness, growled, and looked down on his boisterous enemies. “Keep out’n the way o’ this axe, I tell ye,” Obadiah Sawyer would cry as the backward motion would threaten one of the boys or their four-footed comrades, who pressed so close about the tree as to lose all sense of safety.
Suddenly, without any warning, the trunk of the tree not half severed, the coon ran down almost over Obadiah into the midst of the dogs. There was a frantic plunge amongst them; a fierce growling and yelping and snapping; a crunching of teeth; and now and then as one suffered the sharp fangs of the coon, a hideous clamor that seemed to pierce the sky.
The boys stood amazed at this innovation on the part of Mr. Coon, whose sense of etiquette does not usually permit him to tackle the dogs until the falling of the tree throws the hapless creature into their jaws. How he distinguished the sound in all that shrill tumult Skimpy could never say;—a low growl, exceeding in ferocity aught he had ever before heard, caught his attention. He moved back a pace and held the torch aloft. There, upon the bole of the tree, slowly descending from limb to limb, with lissome noiseless tread, with great yellow eyes, illuminated by the flare, was a full-grown female panther, made bold enough to face the light by the imminence of the danger, for the cutting down of the tree meant certain dislodgment amongst the dogs and the boys. This was the denizen of the oak, the discovery of whom had made the coon prefer the dogs.
Skimpy needed but a single glance. He said afterward that it flashed upon him in a moment that the animal’s young were perhaps in a crevice of the great wall of rock close at hand, and that for this reason she had not fled from the noise and the lights. Skimpy dashed his torch to the ground, and crying “Painter! Painter!” he set out at a pace which has seldom been excelled. All the torches were flared upward. The creature glared down at the boys and growled. There was not a gun in the party. Obadiah in a sort of mental aberration flung his axe into the tree; it almost grazed the animal’s nose, then fell upon the back of a yelping dog.
Each boy seemed to announce his flight by taking up the panic-stricken cry of “Painter!” The dogs had discovered that more had been treed than the coon, which at last had been killed. They would not heed the whistlings and the callings of their masters, and as the boys ran a tremendous yelping and growling announced that the panther had sprung from the tree amidst the pack. Presently something, with its tail between its legs, shot by the hindmost boy, and another, and yet another. The dogs had felt the panther’s teeth and claws and were leaving, but none of these fugitives was Bose.
“Oh,” cried Skimpy, “le’s go back—le’s go back—Bose will be bodaciously eat up! Le’s go back an’ call Bose off!”
“Call the painter on, ye mean!” exclaimed Ike. “Ye can’t do nuthin’ ter hurt a painter ’thout ye hed a gun!”
“Oh Bose!” plained another of the Sawyers in a heart-wrung voice. “What’ll mam do ’thout Bose! Sech a shepherd! Sech a dog ter take keer o’ the baby, too! Sech a gyard dog!” For Bose’s virtues were not all belligerent, but shone resplendent in times of peace. “Oh _Bose_,” he shrieked down the wind, “let the painter be!”
“Oh _Bose_!” cried Obadiah in a tone of obituary. “Sech a coon dog! _Bose!_ An’ a swimmer! _Bose!_ How he used ter drive up the cow! Oh, _Bose_!”
“Ye talk like nobody in the mountings hed a dog but you-uns,” panted one of the fleeing hunters. “Ye ought ter be thankful ye air out’n the painter’s jaws—’thout no gun!”
“Oh, Bose ain’t no common dog!” cried the bereaved Skimpy; “Bose is like folks! Bose _is_ folks!” rising to the apotheosis of grief.
He did not run like folks. Deserted both by boys and dogs he had bravely encountered the panther. It required not only a broken rib and repeated grips of the creature’s teeth, but the stealthy approach of its mate to convince Bose how grievously he was overmatched. Then this gifted dog, whose prowess was only exceeded by his intelligence, saw that it was time to run. He passed the boys with the action of a canine meteor. He sought the seclusion beneath the house and he did not leave it for days.
When Ike struck into the road that leads by Keedon Bluffs he was feeling considerably nettled by the result of the adventure, and resolved that hereafter he would always carry a gun for any presumable panther that might hang upon the outskirts of a coon-hunt. He walked on slowly for a time, sure that the panther would hardly follow so far, if indeed she had followed at all. He listened now and then, hearing no sound of the hunt or of the hunters. It was growing late, he knew as he glanced at the sky. The moon had risen high—a waning moon of a lustrous reddish tint, sending long shafts of yellow light down the dusky woods, and, despite its brightness, of grewsome and melancholy suggestions. As the road turned he came upon the great Bluffs towering above the river, and he noted the spherical amber reflection in the dark current below, with trailing lines of light and gilded ripples seeming to radiate from it. A vague purple nullity had blurred the familiar distances, but close at hand all was wonderfully distinct. The gloomy forest on one side of the road drew a sharp summit line along the sky. A blackberry bush, denuded of all but a few leaves, was not more definite than the brambly wands of its shadow on the sandy road. As he drew nearer he noted how dark the water was, how white in the slant of the yellow moonlight rose the great sheer sandstone Bluffs; how black, how distinct were the cavities in the rock. And the voiceless beams played about the old cannon-ball on the ledge. How silent! Only his crunching tread, half muffled in the soft sand; the almost imperceptible murmur of the deep waters; the shrilling of a cricket somewhere, miraculously escaped from the frost. Near midnight, it must have been. He realized how tired he was. He suddenly sat down on the verge of the Bluffs, his feet dangling over, and leaned his back against a bowlder behind him.