Part 4

“No,” said our hero, warming with the subject, “no, stranger, for you see it ain’t the natur of bar to go in droves; but the way they squander about in pairs and single ones is edifying. And then the way I hunt them—the old black rascals know the crack of my gun as well as they know a pig’s squealing. They grow thin in our parts, it frightens them so, and they do take the noise dreadfully, poor things. That gun of mine is a perfect _epidemic among bar_: if not watched closely, it will go off as quick on a warm scent as my dog Bowie-knife will: and then that dog—whew! why the fellow thinks that the world is full of bar, he finds them so easy. It’s lucky he don’t talk as well as think; for with his natural modesty, if he should suddenly learn how much he is acknowledged to be ahead of all other dogs in the universe, he would be astonished to death in two minutes. Strangers, that dog knows a bar’s way as well as a horse-jockey knows a woman’s: he always barks at the right time, bites at the exact place, and whips without getting a scratch. I never could tell whether he was made expressly to hunt bar, or whether bar was made expressly for him to hunt: any way, I believe they were ordained to go together as naturally as Squire Jones says a man and woman is, when he moralizes in marrying a couple. In fact, Jones once said, said he:

“‘Marriage, according to law, is a civil contract of divine origin; it’s common to all countries as well as Arkansaw, and people fake to it as naturally as Jim Dogget’s Bowie-knife takes to bar.’”

“What season of the year do your hunts take place?” inquired a gentlemanly foreigner, who, from some peculiarities of his baggage, I suspected to be an Englishman, on some hunting expedition, probably at the foot of the Rocky mountains.

“The season for bar-hunting, stranger,” said the man of Arkansaw, “is generally all the year round, and the hunts take place about as regular. I read in history that varmints have their fat season, and their lean season. That is not the case in Arkansaw: feeding as they do upon the _spontenacious_ productions of the sile, they have one continued fat season the year round: though in winter, things in this way is rather more greasy than in summer, I must admit. For that reason, bar with us run in warm weather, but in winter they only waddle. Fat, fat! it’s an enemy to speed; it tames everything that has plenty of it. I have seen wild turkeys, from its influence, as gentle as chickens. Run a bar in this fat condition, and the way it improves the critter for eating is amazing; it sort of mixes the ile up with the meat, until you can’t tell t’other from which. I’ve done this often. I recollect one perty morning in particular, of putting an old he fellow on the stretch, and considering the weight he carried, he run well. But the dogs soon tired him down, and when I came up with him, wasn’t he in a beautiful sweat—I might say fever; and then to see his tongue sticking out of his mouth a feet, and his sides sinking and opening like a bellows, and his cheeks so fat he couldn’t look cross. In this fix I blazed at him, and pitch me naked into a briar patch if the steam didn’t come out of the bullet-hole ten foot in a straight line. The fellow, I reckon, was made on the high-pressure system, and the lead sort of bust his biler.”

“That column of steam was rather curious, or else the bear must have been _warm_,” observed the foreigner, with a laugh.

“Stranger, as you observe, that bar was _warm_, and the blowing off of the steam show’d it, and also how hard the varmint had been run. I have no doubt if he had kept on two miles farther, his insides would have been stewed; and I expect to meet with a varmint yet of extra bottom, who will run himself into a skinful of bar’s grease: it is possible; much onlikelier things have happened.”

“Whereabouts are these bears so abundant?” inquired the foreigner, with increasing interest.

“Why, stranger, they inhabit the neighbourhood of my settlement, one of the prettiest places on old Mississipi—a perfect location, and no mistake; a place that had some defects, until the river made the ‘cut-off’ at ‘Shirt-tail Bend;’ and that remedied the evil, as it brought my cabin on the edge of the river—a great advantage in wet weather, I assure you, as you can now roll a barrel of whiskey into my yard in high water from a boat, as easy as falling off a log. It’s a great improvement, as toting it by land in a jug, as I used to do, _evaporated_ it too fast, and it became expensive. Just stop with me, stranger, a month or two, or a year, if you like, and you will appreciate my place. I can give you plenty to eat; for, beside hog and hominy, you can have bar-ham and bar-sausages, and a mattrass of bar-skins to sleep on, and a wildcat-skin, pulled off hull, stuffed with corn-shucks, for a pillow. That bed would put you to sleep, if you had the rheumatics in every joint in your body. I call that ar bed a _quietus_. Then look at my land—the government ain’t got another such a piece to dispose of. Such timber, and such bottom land! why, you can’t preserve anything natural you plant in it, unless you pick it young; things thar will grow out of shape so quick. I once planted in those diggins a few potatoes and beets: they took a fine start, and after that an ox-team couldn’t have kept them from growing. About that time, I went off to old Kentuck on bisiness, and did not hear from them things in three months, when I accidentally stumbled on a fellow who had stopped at my place, with an idea of buying me out. ‘How did you like things?’ said I. ‘Pretty well,’ said he: ‘the cabin is convenient, and the timber land is good; but that bottom land ain’t worth the first red cent.’ ‘Why?’ said I. ‘’Cause,’ said he. ‘’Cause what?’ said I. ‘’Cause it’s full of cedar stumps and Indian mounds,’ said he, ‘and _it can’t be cleared_.’ ‘Lord!’ said I, ‘them ar “cedar stumps” is beets, and them ar “Indian mounds” ar tater hills.’

“As I expected, the crop was overgrown and useless: the sile is too rich, and _planting in Arkansaw is dangerous_. I had a good-sized sow killed in that same bottom land. The old thief stole an ear of corn, and took it down where she slept at night to eat. Well she left a grain or two on the ground, and lay down on them: before morning, the corn shot up, and the percussion killed her dead. I don’t plant any more: natur intended Arkansaw for a hunting-ground, and I go according to natur.”

The questioner who thus elicited the description of our hero’s settlement, seemed to be perfectly satisfied, and said no more; but the “Big Bar of Arkansaw” rambled on from one thing to another with a volubility perfectly astonishing, occasionally disputing with those around him, particularly with a “live Sucker” from Illinois, who had the daring to say that our Arkansaw friend’s stories “smelt rather tall.”

In this manner the evening was spent; but, conscious that my own association with so singular a personage would probably end before morning, I asked him if he would not give me a description of some particular bear-hunt; adding, that I took great interest in such things, though I was no sportsman. The desire seemed to please him, and he squared himself round towards me, saying that he could give me an idea of a bar-hunt, that was never beat in this world, or in any other. His manner was so singular, that half of his story consisted in his excellent way of telling it, the great peculiarity of which was, the happy manner he had of emphasizing the prominent parts of his conversation. As near as I can recollect, I have italicized them, and given the story in his own words.

“Stranger,” said he, “in bar-hunts _I am numerous_; and which particular one, as you say, I shall tell, puzzles me. There was the old she-devil I shot at the Hurricane last fall—then there was the old hog thief I popped over at the Bloody Crossing, and then—Yes, I have it! I will give you an idea of a hunt, in which the greatest bar was killed that ever lived, _none excepted_; about an old fellow that I hunted, more or less, for two or three years; and if that ain’t a _particular bar-hunt_, I ain’t got one to tell.

“But, in the first place, stranger, let me say, I am pleased with you, because you ain’t ashamed to gain information by asking and listening; and that’s what I say to Countess’s pups every day, when I’m home; and I have got great hopes of them ar pups, because they are continually _nosing_ about; and though they stick it sometimes in the wrong place, they gain experience any how, and may learn something useful to boot.

“Well, as I was saying about this big bar, you see, when I and some more first settled in our region, we were drivin’ to hunting naturally: we soon liked it, and after that we found it an easy matter to make the thing our business. One old chap, who had pioneered ’afore us, gave us to understand that we had settled in the right place. He dwelt upon its merits until it was affecting, and showed us, to prove his assertions, more marks on the sassafras-trees than I ever saw on a tavern door ’lection time. ‘Who keeps that ar reckoning?’ said I. ‘The bar,’ said he. ‘What for?’ said I. ‘Can’t tell,’ said he; ‘but so it is: the bar bite the bark and wood too, at the highest point from the ground they can reach; and you can tell by the marks,’ said he, ‘the length of the bar to an inch.’ ‘Enough,’ said I; ‘I’ve learned something here a’ready, and I’ll put it in practice.’

“Well, stranger, just one month from that time I killed a bar, and told its exact length before I measured it, by those very marks; and when I did that, I swelled up considerable—I’ve been a prouder man ever since. So I went on, larning something every day, until I was reckoned a buster, and allowed to be decidedly the best bar-hunter in my district; and that is a reputation as much harder to earn than to be reckoned first man in Congress, as an iron ramrod is harder than a toadstool. Did the varmints grow over-cunning by being fooled with by green-horn hunters, and by this means get troublesome, they send for me as a matter of course; and thus I do my own hunting, and most of my neighbours’. I walk into the varmints though, and it has become about as much the same to me as drinking. It is told in two sentences—a bar is started, and he is killed. The thing is somewhat monotonous now—I know just how much they will run, where they will tire, how much they will growl, and what a thundering time I will have in getting them home.

“I could give you this history of the chase, with all the particulars at the commencement, I know the signs so well—_Stranger, I’m certain_. Once I met with a match though, and I will tell you about it; for a common hunt would not be worth relating.

“On a fine fall day, long time ago, I was trailing about for bar, and what should I see but fresh marks on the sassafras-trees, about eight inches above any in the forests that I knew of. Says I, ‘Them marks is a hoax, or it indicates the d—t bar that was ever grown.’ In fact, stranger, I couldn’t believe it was real, and I went on. Again I saw the same marks, at the same height, and _I knew the thing lived_. That conviction came home to my soul like an earthquake. Says I, ‘Here is something a-purpose for me: that bar is mine, or I give up the hunting business.’ The very next morning what should I see but a number of buzzards hovering over my corn-field. ‘The rascal has been there,’ said I, ‘for that sign is certain;’ and, sure enough, on examining, I found the bones of what had been as beautiful a hog the day before, as was ever raised by a Buck-eye. Then I tracked the critter out of the field to the woods, and all the marks he left behind, showed me that he was _the bar_.

“Well, stranger, the first fair chase I ever had with that big critter, I saw him no less than three distinct times at a distance: the dogs run him over eighteen miles and broke down, my horse gave out, and I was as nearly used up as a man can be, made on _my_ principle, _which is patent_. Before this adventure, such things were unknown to me as possible; but, strange as it was, that bar got me used to it before I was done with him; for he got so at last, that he would leave me on a long chase _quite easy_. How he did it, I never could understand. That a bar runs at all is puzzling; but how this one could tire down and bust up a pack of hounds and a horse, that were used to overhauling everything they started after in no time, was past my understanding. Well, stranger, that bar finally got so sassy, that he used to help himself to a hog off my premises whenever he wanted one; the buzzards followed after what he left, and so, between _bar and buzzard_, I rather think I was _out of pork_!

“Well, missing that bar so often took hold of my vitals, and I wasted away. The thing had been carried too far, and it reduced me in flesh faster than an ager. I would see that bar in everything I did: _he hunted me_, and that, too, like a devil, which I began to think he was. While in this fix, I made preparations to give him a last brush, and be done with it. Having completed everything to my satisfaction, I started at sunrise, and to my great joy, I discovered from the way the dogs run, that they were near him; finding his trail was nothing, for that had become as plain to the pack as a turnpike road. On we went, and coming to an open country, what should I see but the bar very leisurely ascending a hill, and the dogs close at his heels, either a match for him this time in speed, or else he did not care to get out of their way—I don’t know which. But wasn’t he a beauty, though? I loved him like a brother.

“On he went, until he came to a tree, the limbs of which formed a crotch about six feet from the ground. Into this crotch he got and seated himself, the dogs yelling all around it; and there he sat eyeing them as quiet as a pond in low water. A green-horn friend of mine, in company, reached shooting distance before me, and blazed away, hitting the critter in the centre of his forehead. The bar shook his head as the ball struck it, and then walked down from that tree as gently as a lady would from a carriage. ’Twas a beautiful sight to see him do that—he was in such a rage that he seemed to be as little afraid of the dogs as if they had been sucking-pigs; and the dogs warn’t slow in making a ring around him at a respectful distance, I tell you; even Bowie-knife, himself, stood off. Then the way his eyes flashed—why the fire of them would have singed a cat’s hair; in fact that bar was in a _wrath all over_. Only one pup came near him, and he was brushed out so totally with the bar’s left paw, that he entirely disappeared; and that made the old dogs more cautious still. In the meantime, I came up, and taking deliberate aim, as a man should do, at his side, just back of his foreleg, _if my gun did not snap_, call me a coward, and I won’t take it personal. Yes, stranger, _it snapped_, and I could not find a cap about my person. While in this predicament, I turned round to my fool friend—says I, ‘Bill,’ says I, ‘you’re an ass—you’re a fool—you might as well have tried to kill that bar by barking the tree under his belly, as to have done it by hitting him in the head. Your shot has made a tiger of him, and blast me, if a dog gets killed or wounded when they come to blows, I will stick my knife into your liver, I will——’

“My wrath was up. I had lost my caps, my gun had snapped, the fellow with me had fired at the bar’s head, and I expected every moment to see him close in with the dogs, and kill a dozen of them at least. In this thing I was mistaken, for the bar leaped over the ring formed by the dogs, and giving a fierce growl, was off—the pack, of course, in full cry after him. The run this time was short, for coming to the edge of a lake the varmint jumped in, and swam to a little island in the lake, which it reached just a moment before the dogs.

“‘I’ll have him now,’ said I, for I had found my caps in the _lining of my coat_—so, rolling a log into the lake, I paddled myself across to the island, just as the dogs had cornered the bar in a thicket. I rushed up and fired—at the same time the critter leaped over the dogs and came within three feet of me, running like mad; he jumped into the lake, and tried to mount the log I had just deserted, but every time he got half his body on it, it would roll over and send him under; the dogs, too, got around him, and pulled him about, and finally Bowie-knife clenched with him, and they sunk into the lake together. Stranger, about this time I was excited, and I stripped off my coat, drew my knife, and intended to have taken a part with Bowie-knife myself, when the bar rose to the surface. But the varmint staid under—Bowie-knife came up alone, more dead than alive, and with the pack came ashore.

“‘Thank God!’ said I, ‘the old villain has got his deserts at last.’

“Determined to have the body, I cut a grape-vine for a rope, and dove down where I could see the bar in the water, fastened my queer rope to his leg, and fished him, with great difficulty, ashore. Stranger, may I be chawed to death by young alligators, if the thing I looked at wasn’t a _she-bar, and not the old critter after all_. The way matters got mixed on that island was onaccountably curious, and thinking of it made me more than ever convinced that I was hunting the devil himself. I went home that night and took to my bed—the thing was killing me. The entire team of Arkansaw in bar-hunting, acknowledged himself used up, and the fact sunk into my feelings like a snagged boat will in the Mississippi. I grew as cross as a bar with two cubs and a sore tail. The thing got out ’mong my neighbours, and I was asked how come on that individ-u-al that never lost a bar when once started? and if that same individ-u-al didn’t wear telescopes when he turned a she-bar, of ordinary size, into an old he one, a little larger than a horse?

“‘Prehaps,’ said I, ‘friends’—getting wrathy—‘prehaps you want to call somebody a liar?’

“‘Oh, no!’ said they ‘we only heard such things as being _rather common_ of late, but we don’t believe one word of it; oh, no,’—and then they would ride off and laugh like so many hyenas over a dead nigger.

“It was too much, and I determined to catch that bar, go to Texas, or die,—and I made my preparations accordin’. I had the pack shut up and rested. I took my rifle to pieces, and iled it. I put caps in every pocket about my person, _for fear of the lining_. I then told my neighbours, that on Monday morning—naming the day—I would start _that bar_, and bring him home with me, or they might divide my settlement among them, the owner having disappeared. Well, stranger, on the morning previous to the great day of my hunting expedition, I went into the woods near my house, taking my gun and Bowie-knife along, just _from habit_, and there sitting down also from habit, what should I see, getting over my fence, but _the bar_! Yes, the old varmint was within a hundred yards of me, and the way he walked _over that fence_—stranger, he loomed up like a _black mist_, he seemed so large, and he walked right towards me. I raised myself, took deliberate aim, and fired. Instantly the varmint wheeled, gave a yell, and _walked through the fence_ like a falling tree would through a cobweb. I started after, but was tripped up by my inexpressibles, which, either from habit, or the excitement of the moment, were about my heels, and before I had really gathered myself up, I heard the old varmint groaning in a thicket near by, like a thousand sinners, and by the time I reached him he was a corpse. Stranger, it took five niggers and myself to put that carcass on a mule’s back, and old long-ears waddled under his load, as if he was foundered in every leg of his body, and with a common whopper of a bar, he would have trotted off, and enjoyed himself. ’Twould astonish you to know how big he was: I made a _bed-spread of his skin_, and the way it used to cover my bar-mattress, and leave several feet on each side to tuck up, would have delighted you. It was in fact a creation bar, and if it had lived in Samson’s time, and had met him, in a fair fight, it would have licked him in the twinkling of a dice-box. But, stranger, I never liked the way I hunted him, _and missed him_. There is something curious about it, I could never understand,—and I never was satisfied at his giving in so _easy at last_. Prehaps, he had heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day, so he jist come in, like Capt. Scott’s coon, to save his wind to grunt with in dying; but that ain’t likely. My private opinion is, that that bar was an _unhuntable bar, and died when his time come_.”

When the story was ended, our hero sat some minutes with his auditors in a grave silence; I saw there was a mystery to him connected with the bear whose death he had just related, that had evidently made a strong impression on his mind. It was also evident that there was some superstitious awe connected with the affair,—a feeling common with all “children of the wood,” when they meet with anything out of their everyday experience. He was the first one, however, to break the silence, and jumping up, he asked all present to “liquor” before going to bed,—a thing which he did, with a number of companions, evidently to his heart’s content.

[7] By T. B. Thorpe.

V. JOHNNY BEEDLE’S COURTSHIP.[8]

After my sleigh-ride last winter, and the slippery trick I was served by Patty Bean, nobody would suspect me of hankering after the woman again in a hurry. To hear me rave and take on, and rail out against the whole femenine gender, you would have taken it for granted that I should never so much as look at one again, to all etartinity. Oh, but I was wicked! “Darn their ’ceitful eyes,” says I, “blame their skins, torment their hearts, and drot them to darnation!”

Finally, I took an oath, and swore that if I ever meddled, or had any dealings with them again—in the sparking line I mean—I wish I might be hung and choked. But swearing off from woman, and then going into a meeting-house chockfull of gals, all shining and glistening in their Sunday clothes and clean faces, is like swearing off from liquor and going into a grog-shop—it’s all smoke.

I held out and kept firm to my oath for three whole Sundays, forenoons, a’ternoons, and intermissions complete: on the fourth there were strong symptoms of a change of weather. A chap, about my size, was seen on the way to the meeting-house, with a new patent hat on, his head hung by the ears upon a shirt-collar, his cravat had a pudding in it, and branched out in front into a double-bow knot. He carried a straight back, and a stiff neck, as a man ought to when he has his best clothes on; and every time he spit, he sprung his body forward like a jack-knife, in order to shoot clear off the ruffles.

Squire Jones’s pew is next but two to mine, and when I stand up to prayers, and take my coat-tail under my arm, and turn my back to the minister, I naturally look quite straight at Sally Jones. Now Sally has got a face not to be grinned at in a fog. Indeed, as regards beauty, some folks think she can pull an even yoke with Patty Bean. For my part, I think there is not much boot between them. Anyhow, they are so well matched that they have hated and despised each other like rank poison, ever since they were school-girls.

Squire Jones had got his evening fire on, and set himself down to read the great Bible, when he heard a rap at his door.

“Walk in. Well, John, how der do? Git out, Pompey!”

“Pretty well, I thank you, Squire; and how do you do?”

“Why, so as to be crawling. Ye ugly beast will ye hold yer yop! Haul up a chair and set down, John.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?”

“Oh, middlin’. How’s yer marm?”

“Don’t forget the mat there, Mr. Beedle.”