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THE TOBACCO TILLER
A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields
by
SARAH BELL HACKLEY
The C. M. Clark Publishing Company
Boston, Massachusetts
1909
Copyright, 1909.
By the C. M. Clark Publishing Co.,
Boston, Massachusetts,
U. S. A.
All Rights Reserved.
[Illustration: "I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas."]
CONTENTS
I--MR. DOGGETT AT HOME
II--THE MYRTLE BUDS IN MISS LUCY'S GARDEN
III--AT THE STRIPPING-HOUSE
IV--A COMPACT
V--A VISIT TO THE SEERESS
VI--A NEIGHBORLY CALL
VII--RIVALS
VIII--AT THE TOBACCO BARN
IX--"SURE SOME DISASTER HAS BEFELL"
X--NIGHT RIDERS
XI--MORE NIGHT RIDERS
XII--THE MAD COW
XIII--MR. DOGGETT'S ACQUISITION
XIV--MR. DOGGETT LENDS A HAND
XV--"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_"I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas"_
_"Hit's Jeremiah, my pet," she explained soothingly_
_"Mistu Linney, is 'oo lovin' Miss Luty?"_
_"Here's a letter, Lucy Ann," he sneered_
FOREWORD
Behold, friend, a multitude traversing a road shaded at its edge by
mighty plants whose leaves are thick, broad, and rank in their
odor,--the nicotiana tabacum. Who are they of the multitude?
They are those who have had to do with the making of the history of the
weed whose cousins are the thorn-apple, and the night-shade, from the
time its existence came to be known to the civilized nations.
Listen, friend, to the roll-call.
Ye whose bread was the banana,--whose garb was the sunshine,--whose gods
were worshiped in the smoke-cloud from the burning leaf of the
Petun,--whose weapons of war were arrows, poison-tipped in the oil of
tobacco,--ye red barbarians of Central America, of the off lying
islands, and of the farther northward country; ye from whom the world
learned to use tobacco,--answer to your names!
Sir of the silken robe and waving plume,--dizzy with visions of the
wealth of the Montezumas to be conquered,--you who in the beginning of
the sixteenth century, presented the Indian weed to your Sovereign at
Madrid,--Fernando Cortez--answer to your name!
Sir Frances Drake, the first son of Old England to look to the borders
of the Peaceful Ocean,--bring forward Ralph Lane, starving pearl-hunter
of Roanoke Island, whom you rescued. Answer, Lane, you who introduced
the Indian custom of "drinking tobacco" into your country!
Noble prisoner of the Tower,--chivalrous subject of Her Sovereign
Majesty, Elizabeth, in whose honor was named the sunny land which grew
the herb of enchantment,--you who made the herb fashionable in
Britain,--Sir Walter Raleigh, answer to roll call!
Silversmith, maker of the pipe of silver of the Queen's Favorite, and of
the scales that enabled him to ascertain the weight of the smoke of a
pipeful of tobacco, and win his majesty's wager,--answer to your name!
You, whose name, by courtesy of the great Swedish student of nature, the
Indian's weed bears,--John Nicot, of the Country of Charlemagne, answer
roll-call!
And you, Madame, of the day-fair face, and the night-black heart, wife
to one King, and mother to another,--huntress, builder of the
Tuileries,--you, at whose feet lie the victims of that mid-summer night
of horror, the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day,--you, Madame, first
snuff-taker of Europe, and christener of the Herbe de La
Reine,--Catherine de Medici,--murderess,--answer to roll-call!
Mariners of the Mediterranean, Merchants of Venice, Genoan
tradesmen,--ye who enlightened the Levant, and the wide Continent to the
borders of the deepest ocean, as to the intoxicating delights of the
plant solanaceae,--your names are called!
Hear all ye, who by might of Sovereign rule, of priestly power, and
example, have endeavored to drive the weed of the West from your
domains,--answer to your names!
Unhappy prisoner of St. Helena, who in your day of power, secured to
your Government the exclusive right of making and selling
tobacco,--answer to your name!
Governor of Virginia,--compelled to adjust the proportion between the
corn and the tobacco to be raised in the cleared lands,--when the
colonists, mad with thoughts of gold, neglected the culture of that
which they could eat, for that which they could sell,--Sir Thomas
Dale,--answer roll-call!
Ye one hundred young women of "agreeable persons and respectable
character," whose over seas passage was paid with the tobacco of your
husbands-to-be,--answer to your names!
All ye vast multitude concerned in the making of the past history of
tobacco,--answer to roll-call!
They have answered, friend! they have passed beyond our vision, and yet
the tobacco shadowed highway is traversed by a great throng.
Who are they? They are the present day consumers of the weed of the red
children of the woods,--they are the subjects of Edward, men of the
Fatherland, of France, of Spain, of the cold barren steppes of Russia,
of the parched plains of Africa, of the Americas, and the islands of the
seas; soldiers, sailors, civilians, barbarians, infidels, Christians,
the earth over, and their number is hundreds of millions!
Tobacco! Tobacco for the millions of the past! Tobacco for the millions
of the present! Whence come the supplies for these? Whence come the
supplies for these?
For a time, Virginia supplied the world, but the culture of the weed
spread with its use, until it came to be grown in many parts of the old
world.
The United States, however, produces more tobacco than any other country
in the world, and of her great output,--Kentucky, possessed of the soil
combined with conditions of climate that makes good tobacco in greater
measure than any other of the States, raises more than one-third.
Within Kentucky's borders, friend, the number of the agricultural folk
who depend for daily bread on crops of tobacco, is great. Every year's
August sees more than three hundred thousand of Kentucky's rich acres,
yellow green with the growing tobacco, and every year's March sees near
three hundred millions of pounds of matured tobacco sent away.
The central and north central parts of the State, embracing the Blue
Grass region, wherein lies the home of the great Pacificator, is known
as the White Burley District, and is world-renowned for the quality and
quantity of the famous White Burley tobacco, largely used in the
domestic trade. Here this tobacco is produced at its best.
In the western part of the State, the lands south-bounded by the waters
of the Cumberland, and over which, in the olden day, annual prairie
fires swept, are known as the Regie, or Dark Tobacco district, and here
are grown the dark heavy varieties of tobacco, adapted to the export
trade.
A hard life the tobacco tiller's, friend. He who has not seen the
tobacco grown, can have no conception of the physical hardships endured,
the ceaseless toil, the care and the anxiety as to the likelihood of
failure, that enter into the growing of a tobacco crop.
It is a crop that requires the very best quality of land on which to
cultivate it, and the most arduous of toil in its cultivation. Work may
be hard in another crop, but set the work necessary to raise any crop
beside the labor entailed in a tobacco crop--from its beginning until it
is ready for the manufacturer--and friend, it will be as the labor of
the little lad who digs a miniature trench in the beach sands, beside
the completed digging of the canal that will unite two oceans!
THE TOBACCO TILLER
CHAPTER I
MR. DOGGETT AT HOME
"Awake, awake my lyre, and tell thy silent master's humble tale."
"Dock and me went out this mornin' and scraped up about three
tablespoonfuls o' frost offen that plank a layin' right thar by the
fence,--yes, sir, three tablespoonfuls, nigh about. Ef we don't watch,
some o' our terbaccer's a goin' to git ketched a standin'. Frost a
holdin' off ontel the last o' September hain't seasonable. What you
thenk about hit, Mr. Brock?"
The pale blue eyes, half-hidden by the bushy red side-burns that floated
wildly out on either side of Mr. Doggett's face, like sunburnt bunches
of broom sedge blown in a high wind, included all his audience with a
comprehensive beam of agreeability. Finally these pleasant eyes rested,
in the enforced deference due the most prosperous guest, on the
thick-set man with the hog-like neck, and the enormous mole, that stood,
sentinel-like beside the left nostril of his rose-colored, aquiline
nose.
For reasons domestic and infantile, a portion of the Doggetts' Sunday's
company,--Susie Dutton and Hattie Leeds, the two daughters, and Lem and
Jim, the two married sons, the four spouses and the eight babes, had
taken a reluctant mid-afternoon departure.
The unfettered guests, Mr. Nathan Lindsay, Gran'dad Doggett, who was
staying with his daughter, Lindy Gumm, over on the River,--and Mr.
Galvin Brock (he of the mole and the nose) who had been young Callie
Doggett's second husband, lingered.
Mr. Lindsay, who held himself a step above the Doggetts, but was not
averse to a Sunday's visit to that hospitable household, had suggested
that it was warmer outdoors than in the house. The three guests, with
their host and his youngest son, sat in the pleasant warmth of the late
afternoon's sunshine, at the woodpile on the west side of the house.
Mr. Brock's usual manner of answering a question was by an assenting or
dissenting grunt. This time, however, his mouth left its grim line an
instant.
"If it keeps as dry as it is now," he observed, "nobody's tobaccer will
see a killin' frost unhoused."
During the Civil War, Gran'dad Doggett, on account of what he called "a
leetle shootin' scrape, but nothin' criminal," had brought his young
family from Bell County, in the Kentucky Mountains, to the Blue Grass.
Before this flitting of necessity, he had been a Justice of the Peace,
which fact, ever afterward caused him to affect an air of conscious
superiority toward his son.
"More than that, Ephriam," he remarked, corroborating Mr. Brock's
observation, "more than that, frost don't never kill in the dark o' the
moon. I'd 'a' thought in the thirty year you've been a raisin'
terbaccer, you'd 'a' learned that!"
"That's right, old man, yes, sir"--Mr. Doggett's slow drawl was affable
in the extreme--"that's jest what I told the boys. A body hain't no use
to cross a bridge afore they gits to hit! Jim now, he wuz might' night'
wilted down along in July, afeerd the best part o' his crop wuz a
Frenchin', but hit growed off all right, and now hit's the best
terbaccer he's got! I'm afeerd he'll have too much fer his barn and
he'll want to put some in mine.
"I says to Jim and Mr. Castle last week, 'I hain't a aimin' to let you
scrouge up and burn up my terbaccer.' Although a heap o' men, when they
are a leetle short o' room, they'll push up the sticks together, hit's a
poor way! Terbaccer'll rot, ef you crowd hit, ever' time. The rot'll
start up whar the stem jines the stalk, and hit'll drap off ef you don't
watch.
"Yes, sir, Jim's got a fine crop. Ef he could save ever' leaf, he'd have
two thousand pounds to the acre, jest about. Some o' this farm's mighty
tired, but I 'low they hain't no sech land as them ten acres in the
world fer richness!
"Although when I wuz in town on a Court day last--Monday wuz a week--a
Texas feller wuz a tellin' about how rich the ground is _thar_. He says
the crops thar is astoundin', the dirt is so rich; he says he raised one
punkin'--jest an ordinary sized one too, fer Texas,--and his old sow,
she made a bed in hit fer her peegs! Yes, sir!"
Mrs. Doggett, a large, spare, and comely woman, with high cheek bones
and olive skin, lifted the battered zinc buckets she was filling with
chips.
"Well, Eph," she vouchsafed, "ef that's the truth, I dunno but what we'd
better move to Texas. Ef anybody's any worse needin' a betterin' o'
their condition than us, I dunno who ner what hit is! Look at the house
we have to live in, will you, front and back! It'd be mighty late when
Mr. Castle'd durst offer to put _you_ in sech a house, wouldn't hit, Mr.
Brock? He knows better. He couldn't put hit off on none his terbaccer
men but Eph!"
The house, had it been a thing of feeling, would have shrunk before the
scrutiny of the five pairs of eyes lifted to it, so disreputable was its
aspect. Panes were dropping from the time and weather-gnawed sash in the
windows of the two rooms below; rags stopped the holes in the one window
above that had a sash in it, and the lank old pine leaning over the
stone-paved walk that led to the little hingeless gate assisted a wide
board to keep the wind out of the other window.
"Seems to me, Ephriam, Castle ort to pervide a better house fer ye, er
make out to fix up this un," quavered the old man.
"He ort now, he ort," assented his son, "though he's been a promisin'--"
"Promisin'll be all!" broke in Mrs. Doggett. "He's never kept nary
promise yit, about the house, ner nothin' else! But Eph, he'll jest stay
here and put in another three years a grubbin' canes and choppin'
roots--a clearin' up a thicket, and then git jest half the terbaccer he
raises on hit, like ever'body else does on ready-cleared land!"
"The old lady, she's a poppin' hit to me and Mr. Castle, hain't she?"
Mr. Doggett smiled indulgently in the direction of Mrs. Doggett as she
went across the rotting planks that served for a back porch floor, with
her chips. "Although," he went on, "hit's might' night' the truth. Mr.
Castle is mighty close.
"'Doggett,' he says, 'don't bring in nothin' but one cow and a horse er
two on me to pastur fer you,' and that's the way he talks, and me a
lookin' after his mar's and colts, and fixin' up his water-gaps, and all
sech like work outside the terbaccer crop, all the time, both afore and
sence he tuck to livin' in town.
"I says to him one day--I says, 'Mr. Castle, here you are a gittin' rich
offen our work, able to have a conquick mansion, with burssels
cyarpetin', and a brick hin-house, and me and the boys is a workin' our
finger nails off, and in the house I have to live in I can't hardly find
a dry place to hang my hoe!' (And hit's the truth, yes, sir, though Mr.
Castle says sence terbaccer is so low, he has to make a livin' on his
other investments.) Mr. Castle, he never said nothin', jest tuck up my
hoe and went to lookin' at hit,--my old hoe thar I've used in the
terbaccer fer twenty-five year."
Mr. Doggett pointed to where against the side of the patched
weather-boarding hung a hand-made hoe, shining like polished silver, its
hickory handle worn to the hard glossiness of Japanese lacquer.
"I says, 'Mr. Castle, ef that hoe could talk, hit'd tell o' enough sweat
to drownd a elephant in, and o' enough warrysome back-aches, and arm
j'int aches, and gineral _all-over_ aches to keep one them thar rest
cyores Joey wuz a readin' about, a runnin' at full blast fer all time to
come. Yes, sir, hit could! And, although a body has a heap to be
thankful fer anyhow, hit's mighty little I've got to show fer all that
sweat and them aches.'
"Mr. Castle looked at me mighty hard; then he says, 'Doggett, you've had
a livin'.' 'Yes, sir,' I says, 'but Mr. Castle, I've had to git out and
sometimes work fer other people!'"
"'Pears like to me, Ephriam, takin' your words fer what they're wuth,
movin'd be a good thing fer ye," suggested Gran'dad at this moment.
"No, sir, I hain't a needin' none them way-off States," Mr. Doggett
shook his head emphatically: "thar's too many quair creeters in 'em fer
me. That feller Fletch Keerby I had a workin' fer me last spreng, him
and his brother Larkin, they lived out in Texas fer a while, and Fletch
he said one day they wuz goin' 'long together sommers, and on the way
they ketcht sight o' a beeg snake. Hit wuz fifteen foot long and beeg as
a post, and hit wuz layin' plumb acrost the road a sunnin'! Hit wuz one
them buoy instructors.
"Keerby, he told me he says, 'Larkin, ef a feller had a kag o' damanite,
he'd be all right, but we hain't got hit, so what can we do? Hit won't
do to shoot him; I'm afeerd to, because ef we don't git _him_, he'll git
_us_!' Yes, sir, that's what he said. And Larkin he went and got a club
and slipped up on the snake and hit him back o' the head about eight
inches. Yes, sir! And that snake jest swapped eends! But he wuz dead,
yes, sir, he wuz dead. He wuz a instructor, a buoy instructor!"
"Well, Ephriam," Gran'dad slapped the new gray jeans that covered his
thin legs, with a prolonged cackle of derisive mirth, "you wouldn't be
no fust rate hand to kerry on a funeral--you'd tickle the ondertaker.
They don't have none them buoys in Texas. They don't live nowhars but in
_Africy_!"
Mr. Doggett rubbed his narrow forehead reflectively, ignoring the
correction.
"Whar is hit them mare-maids lives, er is hit _marry-maids_? I fergit
the name. Keerby, he said he seed a pair o' 'em onct--in Floridy Gulf
hit must 'a' been. He said they had a woman head and a fish body hitched
onto hit somehow, and ever' scale on the fish part wuz as beeg as a
sasser, and a shinin' like the sun! He said he never looked at 'em
perticular _clos_, considerin' they wuzn't dressed fer company ner cold
weather, but they wuz ondoubtedly the purtiest creeters a body ever
seed!"
"Did Keerby mention anytheng that _wuz_ dressed fer winter out thar?"
asked Gran'dad with a covert wink at Mr. Brock.
"Well, Keerby, he said they wuz b'ars--them kind that'll hug like a
courtin' feller, and their meat's as sweet as a courtin' feller's
tongue. Keerby says you can p'intedly eat all the b'ar's fat you can git
around ef you pepper and salt hit right good, and instid o' sickenin'
you, hit'll fatten you."
"Keerby'll never see as much b'ar's fat ner nothin' else as he can git
around!" jeered Gran'dad.
"I'm afeerd he won't," agreed Mr. Doggett. "I'd 'a' kept him longer, he
had sech a good sleight at turnin' off work,--done more'n three thirds
o' the feedin' ginerally, and ever'theng else accordin'--but the old
lady 'lowed she wuzn't goin' to be et out o' house and home ef _I_ wuz.
Onct he et so long I thought I'd have to hitch up the team and pull him
away from the table."
Dock, the twelve-year-old, small and scrawny, but tough as a hickory
withe, who had up to this time lain stretched on his front by a hollow
log, skilfully executing with his barlow a colony of ants as fast as
they crawled from the rotting section of buckeye, gave a wicked glance
at the slender and hollow-cheeked man of fifty sitting near him.
"Mr. Lindsay, he ort to have some o' that b'ar's fat Keerby wuz a
tellin' about to make him sortie plump up and look purty to Miss Lucy."
A slow red crept into Mr. Lindsay's sensitive face.
"I don't reckon I need any bear's fat yit, Dock," his voice was low and
gentle: "My mother always told me whatever I done, never to starve a
woman, and I ain't ready to starve one yit, ef I could git one to have
me."
Mrs. Doggett who had come out again with her improvised chip baskets,
turned toward him, her black eyes sparkling mischievously.
"Now Mr. Lindsay, ef I wuz a single man like you, that'd been to Texas
and Missoury, and seed all over the country you might say,--a man that
knows how to keep on the good side o' women folks--a not a trackin' in
mud no time, ner never spittin' on the hearth, and always washin' his
feet at night in plowin'-time--I'd be plumb ashamed to say I couldn't
git no woman to have me!
"Been here in this neighborhood might' night' six year, too, and hain't
never said nary word yit as anybody's ever heerd tell of, to keep Miss
Lucy Jeemes from settin' thar always with her pa and Miss Nancy! I thenk
hit's time he wuz doin' a little courtin' in that direction, don't you,
Mr. Brock?"
The best beginning of a man's enmity is the suspicion that another man
has a better chance of the regard of a woman he has selected for his
own, and though Mr. Brock had sat during Mrs. Doggett's speech with
stern inscrutable face that conveyed no hint of his feelings, his heart
beat with angry tumult, and within its inmost chamber was born a lusty
beginning of hatred toward the pale man sitting on the beech log.
Callie had been in her grave only six weeks, but when a man has been
twice married, and twice bereft, may he not, after six weeks, begin to
consider a third partner with propriety, if the consideration is done in
secret? And after the convenient pattern set by other widowers, Mr.
Brock had selected a neighbor, the kind-faced woman who had been a
ministering angel at the death beds of both his wives, for that third
partner. His pale grey eyes gave their sidewise glance at Mr. Lindsay.
The warm color on that gentleman's cheek irritated him strangely; he
rose precipitately, and with a mumbled word of farewell, took his
departure.
"Mr. Brock got in a mighty hurry all to onct," said Mr. Doggett, gazing
in some wonderment after the departing figure: "I can't thenk what tuck
him off so suddent."
After the departure of Mr. Lindsay and Gran'dad, a few minutes later,
Mr. Doggett, with a pleasing idea in his head, strolled out to the
barn-yard, where Mrs. Doggett milked the red muley.
"Ann," he remarked, "I been a thenkin' about Mr. Lindsay a not havin' no
settled home, ner no nigh kin to take keer o' him, ef he ever wuz to git
down sick. Hit would be a sorter nice theng fer him and Miss Lucy Jeemes
to marry now, wouldn't hit?"
Mrs. Doggett looked uncertain.
"Maybe Miss Lucy wouldn't marry him, Eph," she advanced. "Sometimes I
thenk she's one o' them women that wouldn't marry any man."
Mr. Doggett took a few steps out of range of the milker.
"Don't you fool yourself, Ann," he chuckled, "thar's jest one woman in
the world that won't marry!"
"Who is she?" Mrs. Doggett asked curiously.
"She's a dead woman!" responded Mr. Doggett.
"Aw, shet up, Eph!" Mrs. Doggett spoke with some acerbity. "You jest go
git me some stovewood, ef you want any supper tonight!"