Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over;
and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s
worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said,
and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our
town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn’t no more quality
than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was
clean-shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the
thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high
nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep
back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as
you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was gray and straight
and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of
his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made
out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he
wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany
cane with a silver head to it. There warn’t no frivolishness about him,
not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be—you
could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he
smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like
a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his
eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter
was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell anybody to mind their
manners—everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved
to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always—I mean he made it
seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful
dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn’t nothing go
wrong for a week.
When him and the old lady came down in the morning all the family got up
out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn’t set down again
till _they_ had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where
the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and
he held it in his hand and waited till Tom’s and Bob’s was mixed, and
then they bowed and said, “Our duty to you, sir, and madam”; and _they_
bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank,
all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and
the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and
give it to me and Buck,[5] and we drank to the old people too.
Bob was the oldest and Tom next—tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.
Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn’t stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,
like her father. She was beautiful.
So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.
Each person had their own nigger to wait on them—Buck too. My nigger had
a monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck’s was on the jump most of the time.
This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be
more—three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.
The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen miles around, and stay five or six days, and have such
junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the
woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.
There was another clan of aristocracy around there—five or six
families—mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and
well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat-landing, which was
about two miles above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with
a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on
their fine horses.
One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:
“Quick! Jump for the woods!”
We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty
soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his
horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel.
I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck’s
gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s hat tumbled off from his head. He
grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we
didn’t wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn’t
thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I
seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he
came—to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn’t see. We never stopped
running till we got home. The old gentleman’s eyes blazed a minute—’twas
pleasure, mainly, I judged—then his face sort of smoothed down, and he
says, kind of gentle:
“I don’t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn’t you step into
the road, my boy?”
“The Shepherdsons don’t, father. They always take advantage.”
Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling
his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young
men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale,
but the color come back when she found the man warn’t hurt.
Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:
“Did you want to kill him, Buck?”
“Well, I bet I did.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Him? He never done nothing to me.”
“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”
“Why, nothing—only it’s on account of the feud.”
“What’s a feud?”
“Why, where was you raised? Don’t you know what a feud is?”
“Never heard of it before—tell me about it.”
“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another
man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills _him_; then the
other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the _cousins_
chip in—and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no more
feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”
“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”
“Well, I should _reckon_! It started thirty year ago, or som’ers along
there. There was trouble ’bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man
that won the suit—which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody
would.”
“What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?”
“I reckon maybe—I don’t know.”
“Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”
“Laws, how do _I_ know? It was so long ago.”
“Don’t anybody know?”
“Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they
don’t know now what the row was about in the first place.”
“Has there been many killed, Buck?”
“Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don’t always kill. Pa’s
got a few buckshot in him; but he don’t mind it ’cuz he don’t weigh
much, anyway. Bob’s been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom’s been
hurt once or twice.”
“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?”
“Yes, we got one and they got one. ’Bout three months ago my cousin Bud,
fourteen years old, was riding through the woods on t’other side of the
river, and didn’t have no weapon with him, which was blame’ foolishness,
and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees
old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin’ after him with his gun in his hand and
his white hair a-flying in the wind; and ’stead of jumping off and
taking to the brush, Bud ’lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip
and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so
at last Bud seen it warn’t any use, so he stopped and faced around so as
to have the bullet-holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up
and shot him down. But he didn’t get much chance to enjoy his luck, for
inside of a week our folks laid _him_ out.”
“I reckon that old man a coward, Buck.”
“I reckon he _warn’t_ a coward. Not by a blame’ sight. There ain’t a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons—not a one. And there ain’t no cowards
amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep’ up his end in a
fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out
winner. They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind
a little woodpile, and kep’ his horse before him to stop the bullets;
but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old
man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his
horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had
to be _fetched_ home—and one of ’em was dead, and another died the next
day. No, sir; if a body’s out hunting for cowards he don’t want to fool
away any time amongst them Shepherdsons becuz they don’t breed any of
that _kind_.”
Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them
between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The
Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a
good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me
to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.
About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a
dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up to
our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss
Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in
her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I
said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and not
tell anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she’d forgot her
Testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say
nothing to nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the
road, and there warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two,
for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor
in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to
church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.
Says I to myself, something’s up; it ain’t natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with “_Half-past two_” wrote on it with a pencil.
I ransacked it, but couldn’t find anything else. I couldn’t make
anything out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I
got home and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me.
She pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament
till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad;
and before a body could think she grabbed me and gave me a squeeze, and
said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was
mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it
made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got
my breath I asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I
had read it, and I said no, and she asked me if I could read writing,
and I told her “no, only coarse-hand,” and then she said the paper
warn’t anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and
play now.
I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon
I noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of
sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes
a-running and says:
“Mars Jawge,[6] if you’ll come down into de swamp I’ll show you a whole
stack o’ water-moccasins.”
Thinks I, that’s mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter to
know a body don’t love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for
them. What is he up to, anyway? So I says:
“All right; trot ahead.”
I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle-deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat piece
of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines,
and he says:
“You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; Dah’s whah dey is.
I’s seed ’m befo’; I don’t k’yer to see ’em no mo’.”
Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid
him. I poked into the place a ways and come to a little open patch as
big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man lying there
asleep—and, by jings, it was my old Jim!
I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to
him to see me again, but it warn’t. He nearly cried he was so glad, but
he warn’t surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard
me yell every time, but dasn’t answer, because he didn’t want nobody to
pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again. Says he:
“I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considerable
ways behine you towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could
ketch up wid you on de lan’ ’dout havin’ to shout at you, but when I see
dat house I begin to go slow. I ’uz off too far to hear what dey say to
you—I wuz ’fraid o’ de dogs; but when it ’uz all quiet ag’in I knowed
you’s in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early
in de mawnin’ some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey
tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can’t track me on accounts
o’ de water, end dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how
you’s a-gittin’ along.”
“Why didn’t you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?”
“Well, ’twarn’t no use to ’sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn—but
we’s all right, now. I ben a buyin’ pots en pans en vittles, as I got a
chanst, en a-patchin’ up de raf’, nights, when——”
“_What_ raft, Jim?”
“Our ole raf’.”
“You mean to say our old raft warn’t smashed all to flinders?”
“No, she warn’t. She was tore up a good deal—one en’ of her was; but dey
warn’t no great harm done, on’y our traps was mos’ all los’. Ef we hadn’
dive’ so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn’t ben so
dark, en we warn’t so sk’yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin’
is, we’d a seed de raf’. But it’s jis’ as well we didn’t, ’kase now
she’s all fixed up ag’in mos’ as good as new, en we’s got a new lot o’
stuff, in the place o’ what ’uz los’.”
“Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim—did you catch her?”
“How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No; some er de niggers
foun’ her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben’, en dey hid her in a
crick ’mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin’ ’bout which un ’um
she b’long to de mos’ dat I come to heah ’bout it pooty soon, so I ups
en settles de trouble by tellin’ ’um she don’t b’long to none uv ’um,
but to you en me; en I ast ’m if dey gwyne to grab a young white
genlman’s propaty, en git a hid’n for it? Den I gin ’m ten cents apiece,
en dey ’uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo’ raf’s ’ud come along
en make ’m rich ag’in. Dey’s mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en
whatever I wants ’m to do fur me I doan’ have to ast ’m twice, honey.
Dat Jack’s a good nigger, en pooty smart.”
“Yes, he is. He ain’t ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he’d show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens _he_ ain’t
mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it’ll be the
truth.”
I don’t want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I’ll cut it
pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go
to sleep again when I noticed how still it was—didn’t seem to be anybody
stirring. That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone.
Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs—nobody around;
everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what
does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack and says:
“What’s it all about?”
Says he:
“Don’t you know, Mars Jawge?”
“No,” says I, “I don’t.”
“Well, den, Miss Sophia’s run off! ’deed she has. She run off in de
night some time—nobody don’t know jis when; run off to get married to
dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know—leastways, so dey ’spec. De
fambly foun’ it out ’bout half an hour ago—maybe a little mo’—en’ I
_tell_ you dey warn’t no time los’. Sich another hurryin’ up guns en
hosses _you_ never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river
road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him ’fo’ he kin git
acrost de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck’n dey’s gwyne to be mighty rough
times.”
“Buck went off ’thout waking me up.”
“Well, I reck’n he _did_! Dey warn’t gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars
Buck loaded up his gun en ’lowed he’s gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson
or bust. Well, dey’ll be plenty un ’m dah, I reck’n, en you bet you
he’ll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.”
I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off. When I came into sight of the log store and
the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees
and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks
of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a
wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I
was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn’t.
There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open
place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a
couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the
steamboat-landing—but they couldn’t come it. Every time one of them
showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two
boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch
both ways.
By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started
to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the
run. They got half-way to the tree I was in before the men noticed. Then
the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them.
They gained on the boys, but it didn’t do no good, the boys had too good
a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and
slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. One of
the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen
years old.
The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn’t know what to
make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful
surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men
come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or
other—wouldn’t be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I
dasn’t come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and ’lowed that him and his
cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day
yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or
three of the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. Buck
said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations—the
Shepherdsons was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of
young Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they’d got across the river and
was safe. I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take on because he
didn’t manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him—I hain’t never
heard anything like it.
All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had
slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their
horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum
down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing
out, “Kill them, kill them!” It made me so sick I most fell out of the
tree. I ain’t a-going to tell _all_ that happened—it would make me sick
again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night
to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times
I dream about them.
I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my
mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was
to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss
Sophia was to meet Harney some-wheres at half-past two, and run off; and
I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way
she acted, and then maybe he would ’a’ locked her up, and this awful
mess wouldn’t ever happened.
When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces,
and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to me.
It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn’t on his island, so I tramped
off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot
to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone! My
souls, but I was scared! I couldn’t get my breath for most a minute.
Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me, says:
“Good lan’! is dat you, honey? Doan’ make no noise.”
It was Jim’s voice—nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the
bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was
so glad to see me. He says:
“Laws bless you, chile, I ’uz right down sho’ you’s dead ag’in. Jack’s
been heah; he say he reck’n you’s been shot, kase you didn’t come home
no mo’; so I’s jes’ dis minute a-startin’ er raf’ down towards de mouf
er de crick, so’s to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack
comes ag’in en tells me for certain you _is_ dead. Lawdy, I’s mighty
glad to git you back ag’in, honey.”