RESCUING A LOST RACE
That same evening, as it chanced, one of the younger Wilsh boys came up
to the house on an errand from a neighbor, and Hamilton, remembering
that the messenger's father had been a go-between in the feud story he
had been hearing, noted the lad with interest. Indeed, his appearance
was striking enough in itself, with his drooping form, his extreme
paleness, and his look of exhaustion.
"How far is it from the Burtons, Uncle Eli?" asked Hamilton.
"Eight miles," was the reply.
Hamilton stared at the mountain boy. Judging from his looks he was not
strong enough to walk a hundred yards, yet he had just come eight miles,
and evidently was intending to walk back home that evening. Then
Hamilton remembered that this lad was one of the "poor whites" of whom
he had read so much, and he strolled toward the messenger who was
sitting listlessly on one of the steps.
"Howdy!" said the newcomer in a tired voice.
Hamilton answered his greeting, and, after a few disjointed sentences,
said:
"You look tired. It must be a long walk from the Burtons."
"Jes' tol'able," the boy answered. "I'm not so tired. You f'm the city?"
he queried a few minutes later, evidently noting the difference between
Hamilton's appearance and that of the boys in the neighborhood.
"Yes, New York," answered Hamilton.
But the stranger did not show any further curiosity and Hamilton was
puzzled to account for his general listlessness. He thought perhaps it
might be that the boy was unusually dull and so he asked:
"Are you still going to school?"
A negative shake of the head was the only reply.
"Why not? Isn't there a school near where you live?"
"Close handy, 'bout five miles," was the reply.
"Then why don't you go there?" questioned Hamilton further.
"Teacheh's gone."
"Funny time for holidays," the city boy remarked.
"Not gone fo' holidays."
"Oh, I see," said Hamilton, "you mean he's gone for good. But aren't you
going to have another one?"
"Dunno if he's gone for good," the mountain boy answered.
Hamilton stared in bewilderment.
"Cunjer got him," the other continued.
But this did not explain things any better.
"Cunjer?" repeated Hamilton. "You mean magic?"
The mountain boy nodded.
"Yes, cunjer," he affirmed.
"You're fooling, aren't you?" said Hamilton questioningly, "you can't
mean it. I never heard of 'cunjer' as a real thing. There's lots about
it in books, of course, but those are fairy tales and things of that
sort."
"An' yo' never saw a cunjer?"
"Of course not."
"Reckon they don' know as much in cities as they think they do," the
youngster retorted.
"Just what do you mean by 'cunjer'?" asked Hamilton, knowing that it
would be useless to argue the conditions of a modern city with a boy who
had never seen one.
"Bein' able to put a cunjer on, so's the one yo' cunjer has got to do
anythin' yo' want."
"Sort of hypnotism business," commented the older boy.
"Dunno' what yo' call it in the city. Up hyeh in the mount'ns we call it
cunjer, an' thar's some slick ones hyeh, too."
"But how did the teacher get mixed up in it?" queried Hamilton. "It
doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd expect to find a schoolmaster
doing."
"He wasn't doin' it, it was again' him," the mountain boy explained.
"The folks hyeh suspicioned as he was tippin' o' the revenoo men."
"Who did? Moonshiners?"
"Easy on that word, Hamilton," suddenly broke in the old Kentuckian, who
had overheard part of the conversation, "thar's plenty up hyeh that don'
like it."
"All right, Uncle Eli, I'll remember," the boy answered; then, turning
to his companion, he continued "You were saying that some of the people
in the mountains thought the schoolmaster was giving information to the
revenue men."
"Some said he was. I don' believe it myself, an' most of us boys didn'
believe it, but then the teacheh was allers mighty good to us."
"Did the revenue officers come up here!"
The mountain lad nodded his head.
"Often," he said, "an' when they come to the stills they seemed to know
ev'rythin' an' ev'rybody. An' then some one tol' that it could be proved
on the teacheh. It never was, but thar was a plenty o' people who
believed the story. I didn't, but then the teacheh was allers good to
me."
"But what did the revenue men have to do with the 'cunjering'?" asked
Hamilton, desiring to keep his informant to the point.
"They didn't, it was the men on the Ridge."
"Do you know how it happened?"
"I know all about it," the lad answered, with a slightly less listless
air, "for I was in school that mornin'. For a week or more we boys had
seen ol' Blacky Baldwin sort o' snoopin' aroun' near the school, but as
we allers crossed our fingers an' said nothin' so long as he was in
hearin', we weren't afraid."
"What did you do that for?"
The younger boy looked at the city-bred lad with an evident pity for his
ignorance.
[Illustration: MOONSHINING. Revenue officers hot on the trail. (_Brown
Bros._)]
[Illustration: MOONSHINING. Revenue officers hot on the trail; the fire
is burning, the still working, and the moonshiner's coat hangs on a
tree. (_Brown Bros._)]
"So's he couldn't cunjer us, O' course," he said. "Don' yo' even know
that? Ol' Blacky Baldwin is a first-class cunjer, an' any one o' them
can cunjer you with the words he hears yo' sayin'."
"But if this 'cunjer-fellow' was hanging around the school," suggested
Hamilton, "why didn't you tell the master?"
"An' get Blacky down on us? You-all can bet we kep' quiet an' didn' even
talk about Blacky to each other. Wa'al, that went on for a week or two.
Then, one mornin', while we was all in school, a big storm come up,
thunder an' lightnin' an' all. Suddenly, jes' after a clap o' thunder
that sounded almos' as if it had hit the schoolhouse Ol' Blacky Baldwin
walked through the door an' up to the teacheh's table. He was carryin a
twisted thing in his hand, like a ram's horn, an' I knew it was his
cunjerin' horn, although I hadn't even seen it befo'."
"What did the master say when he came in?"
"Nary a word. It was awful dark an' the thunder was rumbling aroun'
among the hills. I took one look at Ol' Blacky Baldwin's face, an' then
hid my eyes. I reckon the others did the same."
"Why?"
"His face was all shiny with a queer green light, sendin' up smoke,
like ol' dead wood does sometimes after a rain."
"Phosphorus evidently," muttered Hamilton to himself, but he did not
want to interrupt the lad now that he had started, and therefore did not
discuss the point.
"He walked right up to the teacheh's table," continued the younger boy,
"an' he pointed the horn at him, accordin' to one o' the boys who says
he was peepin' through his fingers. I wasn't lookin', I wasn't takin'
any chances. And then we all heard him say to the teacheh:
"'You air goin' to have a fall an' be killed. You air goin' to have a
fear o' fallin' all your days, an' you air goin' to be drove to places
where you're like to fall. By night you air goin' to dream o' fallin',
an', wakin' an' sleepin', the fear is laid upon you.'"
"And that was all?"
"That was all," the mountain boy replied. "After a bit, I looked up and
Ol' Blacky Baldwin was gone; the teacheh looked peaked an' seemed kind
o' skeered, but he didn't say anythin'."
"Well, it was a little scary," said Hamilton. "I don't wonder it shook
him up."
"That was only the beginnin'," the storyteller went on. "About half an
hour after that, one o' the boys dropped his slate pencil on the floor
an' it broke, so he asked the teacheh for a new one. The slates 'n'
pencils was kep' on a shelf over the teacheh's chair, an' he got on the
chair to reach one down. We was all watchin' him, when suddintly he give
a groan an' his eyes rolled back so's we couldn't see nothin' but the
whites; his face got all pale, an' his lips sort o' blue; he reeled an'
was jes' goin' to fall when he sort o' made a grab at the shelf an' hung
on as though he was fallin' off a cliff.
"Two of the bigger boys, thinkin' he had a stroke or somethin', went up
an' spoke, but he didn't answer, jes' hung on to that shelf. Standin' on
the chair as he was, of course the boys couldn' make him let go, an'
they couldn' make him hear or understan' a mite. So they pulled up a
bench and one of 'em climbed up an' forced his hand open. Jes' like a
flash Teacheh grabbed him so hard that he yelled."
"Just with one hand?" Hamilton queried.
"One hand. Wa'al, they pretty soon made Teacheh let go the other hand,
an' helped him down fr'm the chair an' sat him down in it. As soon as
his feet touched the floor, he let go the feller's shoulder an' sort o'
lay back in his chair. He sat there for a bit an' then he leaned
forward, put his hands on the desk, an' stared right in front of him,
jes' as if we wa'n't there at all.
"'I thought I was fallin',' he said gruffly.
"We waited a while for him to begin agin, but he jes' sit there, lookin'
straight in front of him, an' repeatin' ev'ry minute or two: 'I thought
I was fallin'! I thought I was fallin'!'"
Hamilton shivered a little, for the mountain boy told the story as
though he were living through the scene again.
"I don't wonder you got scared," he said. "Did he come to?"
"Not right then," the boy answered. "We waited a while an' then some of
the fellers got up an' went out sof'ly. I went, too, an' the teacheh
never even seemed to see us go."
"Didn't you think he had gone crazy?"
"We all knew it was cunjerin'," the lad rejoined "an' when we got
outside the door thar was Ol' Blacky Baldwin waitin', lookin' jes' the
same as usual. As I come by, he said, jes' as smooth, 'School's out
early to-day, boys.' But I don't think any of us answered him. I know I
didn't. I jes' took and run as hard as I knew how. An' when I got to the
top o' the hill an' looked back, an' saw Blacky goin' into the
schoolhouse again, I couldn' get home fast enough."
"Was that what broke up the school?"
"Not right away," the other replied. "Thar was some that never come nigh
the place agin, but befo' two weeks most of us was back. Teacheh allers
seemed diff'rent; ev'ry once in a while, one of us would see him walkin'
on the edge of a cliff, or fin' him dizzily hangin' on to somethin' for
fear o' fallin'."
"How long did that go on?" queried Hamilton.
"'Bout a month, I reckon. An' Teacheh was in trouble more'n more all the
time, because folks wouldn' have him boardin' 'roun', same's he'd allers
done."
"Why not?"
"Wa'al, he'd wake up in the night screamin', 'I'm fallin', I'm fallin','
and no one wanted to have a ha'nted teacher in the house. An' Blacky
Baldwin, he jes' hung aroun' the school, and we-all would see him every
day, mutterin' an' laughin' to himself. Then, suddintly, Teacheh
disappeared, an' though we hunted fo' him everywhar, he wasn' found.
We-all reckoned he had fallen somewhars, but I've thought sence that
p'r'aps he jes' went away, goin' back to the city, and leavin' no tracks
so's to make Ol' Blacky Baldwin believe he'd be'n killed."
"That sounds likely enough," Hamilton said. "But even if he did get
away, I don't believe that he'd want to come back."
"I reckon not," the mountain boy agreed. "Anyway, the school's shut up
now."
"How about the revenue men?" asked Hamilton.
"They haven't be'n here sence Teacheh went away," was the reply. "An' I
reckon they're not wanted."
The boy stopped short as the old mountaineer came over to where he was
squatting and gave him a long answer to the message he had brought. The
old man read it to him from a sheet of paper on which he had penciled it
roughly. Bill Wilsh listened in a dreamy way, and Hamilton wondered at
his seeming carelessness. The old man read it twice, then, rising to his
feet, the boy repeated it word for word and without so much as a nod to
Hamilton, slouched off in a long, lazy stride that looked like loafing,
but which, as Hamilton afterwards found out, covered the ground rapidly.
"Do you suppose he'll remember all that, Uncle Eli?" asked Hamilton in
surprise.
"He? Oh, yes," the mountaineer replied, "word for word, syllable for
syllable--that is, fo' to-day."
"He must have a good memory," the boy exclaimed "I'm sure I couldn't."
"But he'll forget every word by to-morrow," the other continued, "almost
forget that he was hyeh to-day at all. That's why they're so hard to
teach, those po' whites, what they learn doesn't stick. I heard him
tellin' yo' about the disappearance o' the last teacheh."
"Yes, he was putting it down to 'cunjering.' Is there much of that sort
of idea in the mountains?"
"None among the mount'neers proper," replied the old man. "Some o' the
po' whites down in the gullies talk about it, but thar's mo' difference
between the folks in the gullies an' on the Ridge th'n there is between
the mount'ns an' the Blue Grass. They are different, an' they look
different, too."
"Bill Wilsh certainly does," agreed Hamilton, "but I thought at first it
was because he was tired out with a long walk after a day's work."
The Kentuckian shook his head.
"They're all that way," he said. "They jes' look all beaten out as if
they hadn't any life left in them at all. I reckon the most o' them have
hookworm, too, an' they just look fit to drop."
"Hookworm, Uncle Eli? What is that?" asked the boy.
"It's a queer kind o' disease," the old man answered, "that comes from
goin' barefoot. There's a kind o' grub in the soil, and it works its way
in. It's only jes' recently that it's be'n found out that the po' whites
are peaked and backward because they're sick, and now they know a cure
fo' it, why hookworm is being driven right out o' the South."
"Was there so much of it?"
"Puttin' an end to it will make useful American citizens out o'
thousands o' poor critters that never knew what ailed them."
"But where did the 'poor whites' come from, Uncle Eli? What made them
that way?"
"Whar they come from I jes' don' rightly know. I reckon I saw more o'
them when I was down in Georgia, but the Florida 'crackers' are still
worse off. Thar's not so many in the mount'ns an' those that are here
live 'way up in the gullies. The sure 'nough po' whites, or 'Crackers'
as they call them, belong to the pine belt, between the mount'ns an' the
swamps o' the coast."
"Why are they called 'Crackers'?"
"I don' know, unless because they live on cracked corn and razor-back
hog. It an't so easy to say how they begun. Thar's a lot o' French
names, an' thar's a tradition that two shiploads o' Huguenots were
wrecked off Georgia in the early days an' foun' their way inland,
settlin' down without anythin' to start with, an' not knowin' for a
generation or two whar any settlements could be foun'. An' thar's a lot
o' folks that have just drifted down, down,--livin' jes' like the
'Crackers' an' often taken to be the same. An' the slavery system made
it worse because thar was no middle white class--either rich or po',
thar was nothin' between,--that is, down in that part o' the country.
But yo' mus' remember that thar has been a great change in the last
twenty years, an' that the children o' 'Cracker' families are doin' jes'
as well as anybody in the South."
"How is that, Uncle Eli?"
"Wa'al, in the days befo' the war, the po' whites were jes' trash. The
planters wouldn' have 'em, because the slaves did all the work; they
wouldn' work themselves, an' they didn' own slaves. So they were worse
off than the negroes an' even the black race looked down on 'em. But the
war waked them up."
"They all fought for the South, didn't they?"
"Mos'ly all. They were food fo' powder, but I always reckoned they
hindered more'n they helped. For the 'Cracker,' however, the war meant
everythin'. It placed him side by side with the Southern gentleman, it
strengthened the color line, an' jes' enough o' them made good to show
the others thar was a chance fo' them, too."
"Then they started in to improve right after the war, did they?"
The Kentuckian shook his head negatively.
"No," he said, "at first they were far worse off than befo' because the
Freedman's Bureau an' the carpet-baggers made trouble right an' lef'.
The No'th had a fine chance, but the carpet-baggers were jes' blind to
everythin' excep' the negro, an' the po' white was jes' as shabbily
treated by the No'th as he had be'n by the South. Now that everybody is
seein' that yo' can't make a negro jes' the same as a white man by
givin' him a vote, thar's a chance fo' the po' white. I reckon the
'Cracker' as a 'Cracker' is goin' to be extinct pretty soon, an' the
South is goin' to be proud o' the stock it once despised. Atlanta is the
fastes' growin' city in the South, an' Atlanta is jes' full o' men whose
folks weren't much more'n 'Crackers.' The po' white, in a few years, is
goin' to be only a memory like the backwoodsman o' the time o' Dan'l
Boone."
"That promises well for the South," said Hamilton.
"The boom o' the South is jes' beginnin'," the old man said, "an' if
you're goin' to do census work this next year, yo' jes' watch the
figures an' see whar the old South comes in. It's a pity you're goin'
back to Wash'n'ton to-morrow, as I think yo' ought to see more o' this
country befo' yo' go."
"I'd like to, ever so much, Uncle Eli," the boy answered, as he got up
from the step and started for the big loft where he slept with the
mountaineer's two sons, "but, even if I don't get a chance, I've learned
a lot from you about the folk on the mountains and about the South
generally."
The mountaineer nodded a good-night as the boy disappeared.
"Now thar," he said to his wife, who had been knitting stockings during
the latter part of the conversation, and occasionally interjecting a
word, "thar is a boy that is really achin' to know things. I wish Rube
and Eph were more like him."
"Nothin' but hounds an' vittles worries them," the woman replied
sharply, "but they an't none like city boys, an' I'd ruther have 'em the
way they air than to come pesterin' with questions like Hamilton does
you. I don't set any sort o' stock in it, an' I don't encourage him in
sech nonsense."
The big Kentuckian smiled, and filled his corn-cob leisurely as he
turned the talk to other things.
Early the next morning, Hamilton and the oldest of the two boys started
on their fourteen-mile ride to the station, where the lad was to take an
afternoon train for Washington. They had gone about three miles, when
they came upon Bill Wilsh sitting on the stump of a tree by the
roadside.
"I reckoned you-all would come along this way," he said, "an' I've be'n
thinkin' more'n more 'bout Teacheh havin' likely gone to the city, an'
not bein' dead after all. Yo' goin' to the city now?"
[Illustration: BILL WILSH'S HOME IN THE GULLY. (_Courtesy of Doubleday,
Page & Co._)]
[Illustration: BILL WILSH IN THE SCHOOL. (_Courtesy of Doubleday, Page
& Co._)]
"I'm going to Washington, Bill," Hamilton answered.
"Is that the city?"
"It's one of them."
"Do yo' s'pose that'd be the city Teacheh went to?"
"I couldn't say, Bill," the lad replied, "there's no way of knowing, but
it's likely enough."
"I was thinkin'--" the mountain boy began then he broke off suddenly.
"I'm mighty partial to whittlin'," he continued irrelevantly.
"The best ever," interjected Hamilton's companion. "Yo' ought to have
shown him some of your work, Bill."
"I was allers hopin' Teacheh would come back," said the boy in his
listless, passionless way, "an' he seemed so fond o' the school that I
whittled a piece to give him when he showed up agin. But now I reckon he
an't a-goin' to come back. Does you-all reckon he'll come back from the
city?"
Hamilton looked down at the lad, and wanted to cheer him up, but he
could not see what would be likely to bring the schoolmaster back, and
so he answered:
"I'm afraid not, Bill. But he might, you know."
"I reckon not. But I'd like him to know he a'nt fo'gotten in the
mount'ns. I want yo' to tell him that thar a'nt be'n a week sence he
went away that I an't be'n down to the school an' swep' the floor an'
seen that his books was in the place he liked to have 'em be. I wouldn'
want him to come back from his wanderin', if he still is wanderin', an'
think he was fo'gotten. It an't much, I know, to sweep a floor," he
added, looking up to Hamilton, "but yo' tell him an' he'll understan'.
It's about all that I kin do. He'll understan' if yo' tell him."
Neither of the other boys spoke, and after a moment the mountain lad
went on:
"An' when yo' see him, give him this, an' tell him it comes from Bill,
his 'tryin' scholar.' He used to call me that because, although I wasn't
learnin' much, I was always tryin'. An' yo' can tell him I'm tryin'
still."
Reaching his hand into the bosom of his ragged shirt the boy pulled out
a slab of wood four inches square. It was carved as a bas-relief,
showing the schoolhouse in the foreground in high relief, with the
wooded hills beyond.
"That's great!" exclaimed Hamilton. "I don't believe I ever saw better
carving than that anywhere."
A momentary gleam of pleasure flashed into the boy's dull eyes, but he
went on again in the same lifeless voice.
"Thar's the schoolhouse jes' as it was when he was here last, but it's
never looked the same to me sence. I want yo' to give this to him an'
show him, if yo' will, that I whittled it with the door open, jes' to
show him we're lookin' for him back."
"But supposing I shouldn't meet him in the city?" queried Hamilton
gently. "Washington is a large place and there are many other cities."
"I reckon you-all have mo' chance o' findin' him thar than I have hyeh.
I reckon he an't goin' to come back hyeh, an' then he'd never know that
we an't fo'gotten him, an' he'd think we was ungrateful. But yo'll try
an' find him?"
Hamilton was conscious of a lump in his throat at the simple
faithfulness of the mountain boy, and he said gently:
"Very well, Bill, if you feel that way about it, of course I'll try.
But you haven't told me his name as yet."
"I was thinkin' o' that," the boy answered. Then he took from his pocket
a home-made gum-wood case, and opening it, took out a small piece of
paper and handed it to Hamilton.
"Be keerful of it," he said, "that paper tears mighty easy."
Hamilton smoothed the paper out on the palm of his hand, and looked at
it carefully. It was a "copy," merely of pothooks, done in lead pencil,
the strokes wavering and of differing slopes, and the whole so smudged
as scarcely to be recognizable But, down in the corner, written in ink,
in a firm, bold hand, were the words, "Very Good, Gregory Sinclair."
Hamilton copied the name into his notebook and, refolding the paper as
carefully as possible in the same folds, he handed it to the barefooted
boy standing on the road beside his horse's head.
"Did you-all read it?" he asked.
"Yes," said Hamilton.
"Did you-all see that he said 'Very Good'?"
"'Very Good' was what was written," agreed Hamilton, thinking of the
wavering and smudged pothooks.
"I c'n do better now," the boy said quietly, "an' I've been tryin' jes'
as hard as though Teacheh was in yonder schoolhouse. But thar's no one
to write 'Very Good' on 'em any mo', an' I reckon thar an't goin' to be.
But I'm trustin' that you'll fin' him an' you'll tell him that he an't
fo'gotten."
Without a word of farewell, the boy struck into the woods and was lost
to sight. The two lads started on their way, but they had not ridden a
hundred yards when they heard a hail; looking back, they saw the
mountain boy standing on a point of the ridge; and echoing down to them
came the lonely cry:
"Fin' him, an' tell him he an't fo'gotten."