On that day Hannibal was haunted by the memory of what he had heard and
seen at Slosson's tavern. More than this, there was his terrible sense
of loss, and the grief he could not master, when his thin, little body
was shaken by sobs. Marking the course of the road westward, he clung
to the woods, where his movements were as stealthy as the very
shadows themselves. He shunned the scattered farms and the infrequent
settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed
either by Murrell or Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across
the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him
forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger
smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter
loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.
“I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried--” he told himself, with
quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and the
tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before him he saw
the scattered lights of a settlement. All his terrors, the terrors that
grouped themselves about the idea of pursuit and capture, rushed back
upon him, and in a panic he plunged into the black woods again.
But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived a whole
day without food, a whole day without speech. He began to skirt the
settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of the woods, and
presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a small clearing in the
center of which stood a log dwelling. The place seemed deserted. There
was no sign of life, no light shone from the window, no smoke issued
from the stick-and-mud chimney.
Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was sleeping. The
hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He yawned and stretched
himself, thrusting out his fat legs and extending his great arms. Then
becoming aware of the small figure which had stolen up the path as
he slept and now stood before him in the uncertain light, he fell to
rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his plump hands. The pale night
mist out of the silent depths of the forest had assumed shapes as
strange.
“Who are you?” he demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his
capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous.
“I'm Hannibal,” said the small figure. He was meditating flight; he
glanced over his shoulder toward the woods.
“No, you ain't. He's been dead a thousand years, more or less. Try
again,” recommended the man.
“I'm Hannibal Wayne Hazard,” said the boy. The man quitted his chair.
“Well--I am glad to know you, Hannibal Wayne Hazard. I am Slocum
Price--Judge Slocum Price, sometime major-general of militia and
ex-member of congress, to mention a few of those honors my fellow
countrymen have thrust upon me.” He made a sweeping gesture with his two
hands outspread and bowed ponderously.
The boy saw a man of sixty, whose gross and battered visage told its own
story. There was a sparse white frost about his ears; and his eyes,
pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore
a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck
was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above
it. His figure was corpulent and unwieldy.
The man saw a boy of perhaps ten, barefoot, and clothed in homespun
shirt and trousers. On his head was a ruinous hat much too large for
him, but which in some mysterious manner he contrived to keep from quite
engulfing his small features, which were swollen and tear-stained. In
his right hand he carried a bundle, while his left clutched the brown
barrel of a long rifle.
“You don't belong in these parts, do you?” asked the judge, when he had
completed his scrutiny.
“No, sir,” answered the boy. He glanced off down the road, where lights
were visible among the trees. “What town is that?” he added.
“Pleasantville--which is a lie--but I am neither sufficiently drunk nor
sufficiently sober to cope with the possibilities your question offers.
It is a task one should approach only after extraordinary preparation,”
and the sometime major-general of militia grinned benevolently.
“It's a town, ain't it?” asked Hannibal doubtfully. He scarcely
understood this large, smiling gentleman who was so civilly given to
speech with him, yet strangely enough he was not afraid of him, and his
whole soul craved human companionship.
“It's got a name--but you'll excuse me, I'd much prefer not to tell you
how I regard it--you're too young to hear. But stop a bit--have you so
much as fifty cents about you?” and the judge's eyes narrowed to a slit
above their folds of puffy flesh. Hannibal, keeping his glance fixed
on the man's face, fell back a step. “I can't let you go if you are
penniless--I can't do that!” cried the judge, with sudden vehemence.
“You shall be my guest for the night. They're a pack of thieves at the
tavern,” he lowered his voice. “I know 'em, for they've plucked me!” To
make sure of his prey, he rested a fat hand on the boy's shoulder
and drew him gently but firmly into the shanty. As they crossed the
threshold he kicked the door shut, then with flint and steel he made a
light, and presently a candle was sputtering in his hands. He fitted
it into the neck of a tall bottle, and as the light flared up the boy
glanced about him.
The interior was mean enough, with its rough walls, dirt floor and
black, cavernous fireplace. A rude clapboard table did duty as a desk,
a fact made plain by a horn ink-well, a notary's seal, and a rack with a
half-dozen quill pens. Above the desk was a shelf of books in worn calf
bindings, and before it a rickety chair. A shakedown bed in one corner
of the room was tastefully screened from the public gaze by a tattered
quilt.
“Boy, don't be afraid. Look on me as a friend,” urged the judge, who
towered above him in the dim candle-light. “Here's comfort without
ostentation. Don't tell me you prefer the tavern, with its corrupt
associations!” Hannibal was silent, and the judge, after a brief moment
of irresolution, threw open the door. Then he bent toward the small
stranger, bringing his face close to the child's, while his thick lips
wreathed themselves in a smile ingratiatingly genial. “You can't look
me squarely in the eye and say you prefer the tavern to these scholarly
surroundings?” he said banteringly.
“I reckon I'll be glad to stop,” answered Hannibal. The judge clapped
him playfully on the back.
“Such confidence is inspiring! Make yourself perfectly at home. Are you
hungry?”
“Yes, sir. I ain't had much to eat to-day,” replied Hannibal cautiously.
“I can offer you food then. What do you say to cold fish?” the judge
smacked his lips to impart a relish to the idea. “I dare swear I can
find you some corn bread into the bargain. Tea I haven't got. On the
advice of my physician, I don't use it. What do you say--shall we light
a fire and warm the fish?”
“I 'low I could eat it cold.”
“No trouble in the world to start a fire. All we got to do is to go out,
and pull a few palings off the fence,” urged the judge.
“It will do all right just like it is,” said Hannibal.
“Very good, then!” cried the judge gaily, and he began to assemble
the dainties he had enumerated. “Here you are!” he cleared his throat
impressively, while benignity shone from every feature of his face. “A
moment since you allowed me to think that you were solvent to the
extent of fifty cents--” Hannibal looked puzzled. The judge dealt him a
friendly blow on the back, then stood off and regarded him with a glance
of great jocularity, his plump knuckles on his hips and his arms akimbo.
“I wonder”--and his eyes assumed a speculative squint “I wonder if you
could be induced to make a temporary loan of that fifty cents? The sum
involved is really such a ridiculous trifle I don't need to point out
to you the absolute moral certainty of my returning it at an early
date--say to-morrow morning; say to-morrow afternoon at the latest; say
even the day after at the very outside. Meantime, you shall be my
guest. The landlady's son has found my notarial seal an admirable
plaything--she has had to lick the little devil twice for hooking
it--my pens and stationery are at your disposal, should you desire to
communicate to absent friends; you can have the run of my library!” the
judge fairly trembled in his eagerness. It was not the loss of his money
that Hannibal most feared, and the coin passed from his possession into
his host's custody. As it dropped into the latter's great palm he was
visibly moved. His moist, blue eyes became yet more watery, while
his battered old face assumed an expression indicating deep inward
satisfaction. “Thank you, my boy! This is one of those intrinsically
trifling benefits which, conferred at the moment of acute need, touch
the heart and tap the unfailing springs of human gratitude--I must step
down to the tavern--when I return, please God, we shall know more of
each other.” While he was still speaking he had produced a jug from
behind the quilt that screened his bed, and now, bareheaded, and with
every indication of haste, took himself off into the night.
Left alone, Hannibal gravely seated himself at the table. What the
judge's larder lacked in variety it more than made up for in quantity,
and the boy was grateful for this fact. He was half famished, and
the coarse, abundant food was of the sort to which he was accustomed.
Presently he heard the judge's heavy, shuffling step as he came up the
path from the road, and a moment later his gross bulk of body filled the
doorway. Breathing hard and perspiring, the judge entered the shanty,
but his eagerness, together with his shortness of breath, kept him
silent until he had established himself in his chair beside the table,
with the jug and a cracked glass at his elbow. Then, bland and smiling,
he turned toward his guest.
“Will you join me?” he asked.
“No, sir. Please, I'd rather not,” said Hannibal.
“Do you mean that you don't like good liquor?” demanded the judge. “Not
even with sugar and a dash of water?--say, now, don't you like it that
way, my boy?”
“I ain't learned to like it no ways,” said Hannibal.
“You amaze me--well--well--the greater the joy to which you may
reasonably aspire. The splendid possibilities of youth are yours. My
tenderest regards, Hannibal!” and he nodded over the rim of the cracked
glass his shaking hand had carried to his lips. Twice the glass was
filled and emptied, and then again, his roving, watery eyes rested
meditatively on the child, who sat very erect in his chair, with his
brown hands crossed in his lap. “Personally, I can drink or not,”
explained the judge. “But I hope I am too much a man of the world to
indulge in any intemperate display of principle.” He proved the first
clause of his proposition by again filling and emptying his glass. “Have
you a father?” he asked suddenly. Hannibal shook his head. “A mother?”
demanded the judge.
“They both of them done died years and years ago,” answered the boy.
“I can't tell you how long back it was, but I reckon I don't know much
about it. I must have been a small child.”
“Ho--a small child!” cried the judge, laughing. He cocked his head
on one side and surveyed Hannibal Wayne Hazard with a glance of comic
seriousness. “A small child and in God's name what do you call yourself
now? To hear you talk one would think you had dabbled your feet in the
Flood!”
“I'm most ten,” said Hannibal, with dignity.
“I can well believe it,” responded the judge. “And with this weight of
years, where did you come from and how did you get here?”
“From across the mountains.”
“Alone?”
“No, sir. Mr. Yancy fetched me--part way.” The boy's voice broke when he
spoke his Uncle Bob's name, and his eyes swam with tears, but the judge
did not notice this.
“And where are you going?”
“To West Tennessee.”
“Have you any friends there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You've money enough to see you through?” and what the judge intended
for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of infinite cunning.
“I got ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars--” the judge smacked his lips once. “Ten dollars” he
repeated, and smacked his lips twice. There was a brief silence, in
which he seemed to give way to pleasant reveries.
From beyond the open door of the shanty came a multitude of night
sounds. The moon had risen, and what had been a dusty country road was
now a streak of silver in the hot light. The purple flush on the judge's
face, where the dignity that belonged to age had gone down in wreck,
deepened. The sparse, white frost above his ears was damp with sweat.
He removed his stock, opened his shirt at the neck, and cast aside his
coat; then he lighted a blackened pipe, filled his glass, and sank back
in his chair. The long hours of darkness were all before him, and his
senses clothed themselves in rich content. Once more his glance rested
on the boy. Here, indeed, was a guest of whom one might make much and
not err--he felt all the benevolence of his nature flow toward him. Ten
dollars!
“Certainly the tavern would have been no place for you! Well, thank God,
it wasn't necessary for you to go there. You are more than welcome here.
I tell you, when you know this place as I know it, you'll regard every
living soul here with suspicion. Keep 'em at arm's length!” he sank his
voice to an impressive whisper. “In particular, I warn you against a
certain Solomon Mahaffy. You'll see much of him; I haven't known how to
rebuff the fellow without being rude--he sticks to me like my shadow.
He's profited by my charity and he admires my conversation and affects
my society, but don't tell him you have so much as a rusty copper, for
he will neither rest nor eat nor sleep until he's plucked you--tell him
nothing--leave him to me. I keep him--there--” the judge extended his
fat hands, “at arm's length. I say to him metaphorically speaking--'so
close, but no closer. I'll visit you when sick, I'll pray with you when
dying, I'll chat with you, I'll eat with you, I'll smoke with you,
and if need be, I'll drink with you--but be your intimate? Never! Why?
Because be's a damned Yankee! These are the inextinguishable feelings
of a gentleman. I am aware they are out of place in this age, but
what's bred in the bone will show in the flesh. Who says it won't, is
no gentleman himself and a liar as well! My place in the world was
determined two or three hundred years ago, and my ancestors spat on such
cattle as Mahaffy and they were flattered by the attention!” The judge,
powerfully excited by his denunciation of the unfortunate Mahaffy,
quitted his chair and, lurching somewhat as he did so, began to pace the
floor.
“Take me for your example, boy! You may be poor, you may possibly be
hungry you'll often be thirsty, but through it all you will remain that
splendid thing--a gentleman! Lands, niggers, riches, luxury, I've had
'em all; I've sucked the good of 'em; they've colored my blood, they've
gone into the fiber of my brain and body. Perhaps you'll contend that
the old order is overthrown, that family has gone to the devil? You are
right, and there's the pity of it! Where are the great names? A race
of upstarts has taken their place--sons of nobody--nephews of
nobody--cousins of nobody--I observe only deterioration in the trend of
modern life. The social fabric is tottering--I can see it totter--” and
he tottered himself as he said this.
The boy had watched him out of wide eyes, as ponderous and unwieldy he
shuffled back and forth in the dim candlelight; now shaking his head and
muttering, the judge dropped into his chair.
“Well, I'm an old man-the spectacle won't long offend me. I'll die
presently. The Bench and Bar will review my services to the country, the
militia will fire a few volleys at my graveside, here and there a flag
will be at half-mast, and that will be the end--” He was so profoundly
moved by the thought that he could not go on. His voice broke, and he
buried his face in his arms. A sympathetic moisture had gathered in
the child's eyes. He understood only a small part of what his host was
saying, but realized that it had to do with death, and he had his own
terrible acquaintance with death. He slipped from his chair and stole
to the judge's side, and that gentleman felt a cool hand rest lightly on
his arm.
“What?” he said, glancing up.
“I'm mighty sorry you're going to die,” said the boy softly.
“Bless you, Hannibal!” cried the judge, looking wonderfully cheerful,
despite his recent bitterness of spirit. “I'm not experiencing any of
the pangs of mortality now. My dissolution ain't a matter of to-night
or to-morrow--there's some life in Slocum Price yet, for all the rough
usage, eh? I've had my fun--I could tell you a thing or two about that,
if you had hair on your chin!” and the selfish lines of his face twisted
themselves into an exceedingly knowing grin.
“You talked like you thought you were going to die right off,” said
Hannibal gravely, as he resumed his chair. The judge was touched. It had
been more years than he cared to remember since he had launched a decent
emotion in the breast of any human being. For a moment he was silent,
struck with a sense of shame; then he said:
“You are sure you are not running away, Hannibal? I hope you know
that boys should always tell the truth--that hell has its own especial
terrors for the boy who lies? Now, if I thought the worst of you, I
might esteem it my duty to investigate your story.” The judge laid a fat
forefinger against the side of his nose, and regarded him with drunken
gravity. Hannibal shook with terror. This was what he had feared.
“That's one aspect of the case. Now, on the other hand, I might draw
up a legal instrument which could not fail to be of use to you on
your travois, and would stop all questions. As for my fee, it would be
trifling, when compared with the benefits I can see accruing to you.”
“No, I ain't running away. I ain't got no one to run away from,” said
the boy chokingly. He was showing signs of fatigue. His head drooped and
he met the judge's glance with tired, sleepy eyes. The latter looked at
him and then said suddenly:
“I think you'd better go to bed.”
“I reckon I had,” agreed Hannibal, slipping from his chair.
“Well, take my bed back of the quilt. You'll find a hoe there. You can
dig up the dirt under the shuck tick with it--which helps astonishingly.
What would the world say if it could know that judge Slocum Price makes
his bed with a hoe! There's Spartan hardihood!” but the boy, not
knowing what was meant by Spartan hardihood, remained silent. “Nearing
threescore years and ten, the allotted span as set down by the
Psalmist--once man of fashion, soldier, statesman and lawgiver--and
makes his bed with a hoe! What a history!” muttered the judge with weary
melancholy, as one groping hand found the jug while the other found the
glass. There was a pause, while he profited by this fortunate chance.
“Well, take the bed,” he resumed hospitably.
“I can sleep most anywhere. I ain't no ways particular,” said Hannibal.
“I say, take the bed!” commanded the judge sternly. And Hannibal quickly
retired behind the quilt. “Do you find it comfortable?” the judge asked,
when the rustling of the shuck tick informed him that the child had lain
down.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Have you said your prayers?” inquired the judge.
“No, sir. I ain't said 'em yet.”
“Well, say them now. Religion is as becoming in the young as it is
respectable in the aged. I'll not disturb you to-night, for it is God's
will that I should stay up and get very drunk.”