Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's
house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a
broken chair by the fire-place. His father, a hypochondriac, hard of
hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a
moment, and then said:
"Sick, Mort? Goin' to have a chill?"
"No, sir."
"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe
full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on
the other side of the fire-place. "I feel a kind of all-overishness
myself. I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year. Hey?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What?"
"I said I didn't know." Morton found it hard to answer his father
with decency. The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's
last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he
devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful
consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to
have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee
bottom. Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence
of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to
hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect.
Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his
mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the
election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling
that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen.
She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin
corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a
griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place
before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the
milk, and arranging the plates--white, with blue edges--and the
yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that
Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of
the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.
The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the
fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her
son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break
with Captain Lumsden--all three set agoing primarily by one
cause--were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of
the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.
"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.
"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."
"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father. "Well, the captain's feeling
clever, I 'low."
"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss
Patty's somethin' or other--couplements, Bob called 'em."
"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling. "Well,
you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to
send a turkey?" The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he
did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty.
Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself
and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible. Of
course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey
was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.
"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after
supper. "Quarreled with Lumsden! He'll drive us off. We'll all
take the fever"--for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of
immediately became inevitable, in his imagination--"we'll all take
the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time." Saying
this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his
knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination
to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from
this new and improved stand-point of despair.
But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock
had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into
a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the
best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement
until the captain should have time to cool off.
"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate. We
want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd
better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.
Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in
some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his
mother. He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had
little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager
desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer. He
seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the
house of Kike's mother. Soon after Morton went, his father woke up,
and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed,
that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that
away at night."
[Illustration: THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.]
Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion--pale, angry, and sick.
Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received
most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best
to divert Kike from his revengeful mood. It is a singular fact in
the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first
school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.
"Ha! Moirton, is it you?" said Brady. "I'm roight glad to see ye.
Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a
toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip. An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi
hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered
him with baich switches. I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay
wuz, sure. Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd
a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the
bayginnin'. Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A
wusn't B."
It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old
fellow's banter. Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of
his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and
Morton in scholarship though much younger.
Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to
see him in so dangerous a passion. "I wish he was leetle-er, ur
bigger," she said.
"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the
Irishman.
"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen
him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool. Boys is allers
powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween--nary man
nor boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to
be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all
sich like. Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid
acrost your lap, and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's
been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a
oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and
he's one of them you can't turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I
_would_ be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like
Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody but God
A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort
to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart
so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle
_then_, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in
_his_ face. It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment,
akordin' to my thinkin'. I mean to call his attention to some things
then. He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families
thar, I 'low."
Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's;
and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting
things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.
Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should
leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt. Kike felt the first
dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand
with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the
opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and
killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as
shooting his uncle.
"I don't want to run away from him. He'll think I've backed out," he
said, hesitatingly.
"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git
some bear's ile for your noice black hair. If the cap'n makes so
bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile
ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back.
The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit. It'll burn a dale
better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad. An', as for the shootin' part,
practice on the bears fust! 'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the
captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know. He'll keep till ye
come back. If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist
spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own
affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin'
blood kin, sure."
Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the
matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go. She'd
bundle him off in the early morning. And long before daylight, the
two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with
guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a
pack-horse. Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted
in business so grave.
_CHAPTER VII._