MY SECOND PERIL
We always thank God for men like Purvis: we never thank them. They are
without honor in their own time, but how they brighten the pages of
memory! How they stimulated the cheerfulness of the old countryside and
broke up its natural reticence!
Mr. Franklin Purvis was our hired man--an undersized bachelor. He had a
Roman nose, a face so slim that it would command interest and attention
in any company, and a serious look enhanced by a bristling mustache and
a retreating chin. At first and on account of his size I had no very
high opinion of Mr. Purvis. That first evening after his arrival I sat
with him on the porch surveying him inside and out.
"You don't look very stout," I said.
"I ain't as big as some, but I'm all gristle from my head to my heels,
inside an' out," he answered.
I surveyed him again as he sat looking at the ledges. He was not more
than a head taller than I, but if he were "all gristle" he might be
entitled to respect and I was glad to learn of his hidden
resources--glad and a bit apprehensive as they began to develop.
"I'm as full o' gristle as a goose's leg," he went on. "God never made a
man who could do more damage when he lets go of himself an' do it
faster. There ain't no use o' talkin'."
There being no use of talking, our new hired man continued to talk while
I listened with breathless interest and growing respect. He took a chew
of tobacco and squinted his eyes and seemed to be studying the wooded
rock ledges across the road as he went on:
"You'll find me wide awake, I _guess_. I ain't afraid o' anythin' but
lightnin'--no, sir!--an' I can hurt hard an' do it rapid when I begin,
but I can be jest as harmless as a kitten. There ain't no man that can
be more harmlesser when he wants to be an' there's any decent chance for
it--none whatsomever! No, sir! I'd rather be harmless than not--a good
deal."
This relieved, and was no doubt calculated to relieve, a feeling of
insecurity which his talk had inspired. He blew out his breath and
shifted his quid as he sat with his elbows resting on his knees and took
another look at the ledges as if considering how much of his strength
would be required to move them.
"Have you ever hurt anybody?" I asked.
"Several," he answered.
"Did you kill 'em?"
"No, I never let myself go too fur. Bein' so stout, I have to be kind o'
careful."
After a moment's pause he went on:
"A man threatened to lick me up to Seaver's t'other day. You couldn't
blame him. He didn't know me from a side o' sole leather. He just
thought I was one o' them common, every-day cusses that folks use to
limber up on. But he see his mistake in time. I tell ye God was good to
him when he kept him away from me."
Aunt Deel called us to supper.
"Le's go in an' squench our hunger," Mr. Purvis proposed as he rose and
shut his jackknife.
I was very much impressed and called him "Mr. Purvis" after that. I
enjoyed and believed many tales of adventure in which he had been the
hero as we worked together in the field or stable. I told them to my
aunt and uncle one evening, whereupon the latter said:
"He's a good man to work, but Jerusalem--!"
He stopped. He always stopped at the brink of every such precipice. I
had never heard him finish an uncomplimentary sentence.
I began to have doubts regarding the greatness of our hired man. I still
called him "Mr. Purvis," but all my fear of him had vanished.
One day Mr. Grimshaw came out in the field to see my uncle. They walked
away to the shade of a tree while "Mr. Purvis" and I went on with the
hoeing. I could hear the harsh voice of the money-lender speaking in
loud and angry tones and presently he went away.
"What's the rip?" I asked as my uncle returned looking very sober.
"We won't talk about it now," he answered.
That look and the fears it inspired ruined my day which had begun with
eager plans for doing and learning. In the candle-light of the evening
Uncle Peabody said:
"Grimshaw has demanded his mortgage money an' he wants it in gold coin.
We'll have to git it some way, I dunno how."
"W'y of all things!" my aunt exclaimed. "How are we goin' to git all
that money--these hard times?--ayes! I'd like to know?"
"Well, I can't tell ye," said Uncle Peabody. "I guess he can't forgive
us for savin' Rodney Barnes."
"What did he say?" I asked.
"Why, he says we hadn't no business to hire a man to help us. He says
you an' me ought to do all the work here. He thinks I ought to took you
out o' school long ago."
"I can stay out o' school and keep on with my lessons," I said.
"Not an' please him. He was mad when he see ye with a book in yer hand
out there in the corn-field."
What were we to do now? I spent the first sad night of my life undoing
the plans which had been so dear to me but not so dear as my aunt and
uncle. I decided to give all my life and strength to the saving of the
farm. I would still try to be great, but not as great as the Senator.
Purvis stayed with us through the summer and fall.
After the crops were in we cut and burned great heaps of timber and made
black salts of the ashes by leaching water through them and boiling down
the lye. We could sell the salts at three dollars and a half a hundred
pounds. The three of us working with a team could produce from one
hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty pounds a week. Yet we
thought it paid--there in Lickitysplit. All over the hills men and women
were turning their efforts and strength into these slender streams of
money forever flowing toward the mortgagee.
Mr. Dunkelberg had seen Benjamin Grimshaw and got him to give us a brief
extension. They had let me stay out of school to work. I was nearly
thirteen years old and rather strong and capable. I think that I got
along in my books about as well as I could have done in our little
school.
One day in December of that year, I had my first trial in the full
responsibility of man's work. I was allowed to load and harness and
hitch up and go to mill without assistance. My uncle and Purvis were
busy with the chopping and we were out of flour and meal. It took a lot
of them to keep the axes going. So I filled two sacks with corn and two
with wheat and put them into the box wagon, for the ground was bare, and
hitched up my horses and set out. Aunt Deel took a careful look at the
main hitches and gave me many a caution before I drove away. She said it
was a shame that I had to be "Grimshawed" into a man's work at my age.
But I was elated by my feeling of responsibility. I knew how to handle
horses and had driven at the drag and plow and once, alone, to the
post-office, but this was my first long trip without company. I had
taken my ax and a chain, for one found a tree in the road now and then
those days, and had to trim and cut and haul it aside. It was a drive of
six miles to the nearest mill, over a bad road. I sat on two cleated
boards placed across the box, with a blanket over me and my new overcoat
and mittens on, and was very comfortable and happy.
I had taken a little of my uncle's chewing tobacco out of its paper that
lay on a shelf in the cellarway, for I had observed that my uncle
generally chewed when he was riding. I tried a little of it and was very
sick for a few minutes.
Having recovered, I sang all the songs I knew, which were not many, and
repeated the names of the presidents and divided the world into its
parts and recited the principal rivers with all the sources and
emptyings of the latter and the boundaries of the states and the names
and locations of their capitals. It amused me in the midst of my
loneliness to keep my tongue busy and I exhausted all my knowledge,
which included a number of declamations from the speeches of Otis, Henry
and Webster, in the effort. Before the journey was half over I had taken
a complete inventory of my mental effects. I repeat that it was
amusement--of the only kind available--and not work to me.
I reached the mill safely and before the grain was ground the earth and
the sky above it were white with snow driving down in a cold, stiff wind
out of the northwest. I loaded my grists and covered them with a blanket
and hurried away. The snow came so fast that it almost blinded me. There
were times when I could scarcely see the road or the horses. The wind
came colder and soon it was hard work to hold the reins and keep my
hands from freezing.
Suddenly the wheels began jumping over rocks. The horses were in the
ditch. I knew what was the matter, for my eyes had been filling with
snow and I had had to brush them often. Of course the team had suffered
in a like manner. Before I could stop I heard the crack of a felly and a
front wheel dropped to its hub. I checked the horses and jumped out and
went to their heads and cleared their eyes. The snow was up to my knees
then.
It seemed as if all the clouds in the sky were falling to the ground and
stacking into a great, fleecy cover as dry as chaff.
We were there where the road drops into a rocky hollow near the edge of
Butterfield's woods. They used to call it Moosewood Hill because of the
abundance of moosewood around the foot of it. How the thought of that
broken wheel smote me! It was our only heavy wagon, and we having to pay
the mortgage. What would my uncle say? The query brought tears to my
eyes.
I unhitched and led my horses up into the cover of the pines. How
grateful it seemed, for the wind was slack below but howling in the
tree-tops! I knew that I was four miles from home and knew, not how I
was to get there. Chilled to the bone, I gathered some pitch pine and
soon had a fire going with my flint and tinder. I knew that I could
mount one of the horses and lead the other and reach home probably. But
there was the grist. We needed that; I knew that we should have to go
hungry without the grist. It would get wet from above and below if I
tried to carry it on the back of a horse. I warmed myself by the fire
and hitched my team near it so as to thaw the frost out of their
forelocks and eyebrows. I felt in my coat pockets and found a handful
of nails--everybody carried nails in one pocket those days--and I
remember that my uncle's pockets were a museum of bolts and nuts and
screws and washers.
The idea occurred to me that I would make a kind of sled which was
called a jumper.
So I got my ax out of the wagon and soon found a couple of small trees
with the right crook for the forward end of a runner and cut them and
hewed their bottoms as smoothly as I could. Then I made notches in them
near the top of their crooks and fitted a stout stick into the notches
and secured it with nails driven by the ax-head. Thus I got a hold for
my evener. That done, I chopped and hewed an arch to cross the middle of
the runners and hold them apart and used all my nails to secure and
brace it. I got the two boards which were fastened together and
constituted my wagon seat and laid them over the arch and front brace.
How to make them fast was my worst problem. I succeeded in splitting a
green stick to hold the bolt of the evener just under its head while I
heated its lower end in the fire and kept its head cool with snow. With
this I burnt a hole in the end of each board and fastened them to the
front brace with withes of moosewood.
It was late in the day and there was no time for the slow process of
burning more holes, so I notched the other ends of the boards and
lashed them to the rear brace with a length of my reins. Then I
retempered my bolt and brought up the grist and chain and fastened the
latter between the boards in the middle of the front brace, hitched my
team to the chain and set out again, sitting on the bags.
It was, of course, a difficult journey, for my jumper was narrow. The
snow heaped up beneath me and now and then I and my load were rolled off
the jumper. When the drifts were more than leg deep I let down the fence
and got around them by going into the fields. Often I stopped to clear
the eyes of the horses--a slow task to be done with the bare hand--or to
fling my palms against my shoulders and thus warm myself a little.
It was pitch dark and the horses wading to their bellies and the snow
coming faster when we turned into Rattleroad. I should not have known
the turn when we came to it, but a horse knows more than a man in the
dark. Soon I heard a loud halloo and knew that it was the voice of Uncle
Peabody. He had started out to meet me in the storm and Shep was with
him.
"Thank God I've found ye!" he shouted. "I'm blind and tired out and I
couldn't keep a lantern goin' to save me. Are ye froze?"
"I'm all right, but these horses are awful tired. Had to let 'em rest
every few minutes."
I told him about the wagon--and how it relieved me to hear him say:
"As long as you're all right, boy, I ain't goin' to worry 'bout the ol'
wagon--not a bit. Where'd ye git yer jumper?"
"Made it with the ax and some nails," I answered.
I didn't hear what he said about it for the horses were wallowing and we
had to stop and paw and kick the snow from beneath them as best we could
before it was possible to back out of our trouble. Soon we found an
entrance to the fields--our own fields not far from the house--where
Uncle Peabody walked ahead and picked out the best wading. After we got
to the barn door at last he went to the house and lighted his lantern
and came back with it wrapped in a blanket and Aunt Deel came with him.
How proud it made me to hear him say:
"Deel, our boy is a man now--made this jumper all 'lone by himself an'
has got through all right."
She came and held the lantern up to my face and looked at my hands.
"Well, my stars, Bart!" she exclaimed in a moment. "I thought ye would
freeze up solid--ayes--poor boy!"
The point of my chin and the lobes of my ears and one finger were
touched and my aunt rubbed them with snow until the frost was out.
We carried the grist in and Aunt Deel made some pudding. How good it was
to feel the warmth of the fire and of the hearts of those who loved me!
How I enjoyed the pudding and milk and bread and butter!
"I guess you've gone through the second peril that ol' Kate spoke of,"
said Aunt Deel as I went up-stairs.
Uncle Peabody went out to look at the horses.
When I awoke in the morning I observed that Uncle Peabody's bed had not
been slept in. I hurried down and heard that our off-horse had died in
the night of colic. Aunt Deel was crying. As he saw me Uncle Peabody
began to dance a jig in the middle of the floor.
"Balance yer partners!" he shouted. "You an' I ain't goin' to be
discouraged if all the hosses die--be we, Bart?"
"Never," I answered.
"That's the talk! If nec'sary we'll hitch Purvis up with t'other hoss
an' git our haulin' done."
He and Purvis roared with laughter and the strength of the current swept
me along with them.
"We're the luckiest folks in the world, anyway," Uncle Peabody went on.
"Bart's alive an' there's three feet o' snow on the level an' more
comin' an' it's colder'n Greenland."
It was such a bitter day that we worked only three hours and came back
to the house and played Old Sledge by the fireside.
Rodney Barnes came over that afternoon and said that he would lend us a
horse for the hauling.
When we went to bed that night Uncle Peabody whispered:
"Say, ol' feller, we was in purty bad shape this mornin'. If we hadn't
'a' backed up sudden an' took a new holt I guess Aunt Deel would 'a'
caved in complete an' we'd all been a-bellerin' like a lot o' lost
cattle."
We had good sleighing after that and got our bark and salts to market
and earned ninety-eight dollars. But while we got our pay in paper "bank
money," we had to pay our debts in wheat, salts or corn, so that our
earnings really amounted to only sixty-two and a half dollars, my uncle
said. This more than paid our interest. We gave the balance and ten
bushels of wheat to Mr. Grimshaw for a spavined horse, after which he
agreed to give us at least a year's extension on the principal.
We felt easy then.