The conventions of dress are sometimes pestilential. If any doubt this
truth let him remember the nightmares wherein his nudity made torment.
And, while remembering the anguish such lack of clothing has
occasioned in dreams, let him think with pity on the suffering of Zeke
whose plight was real. It was in sooth, a predicament to strain the
_savoir faire_ of the most polished courtier. Perhaps, the behavior of
the mountaineer was as discreet as any permitted by the unfortunate
circumstances, and could hardly have been improved on by the Admirable
Crichton himself. He simply retained an immobile pose, facing the
girl, with his whole soul concentrated in desire that the earth should
split asunder to engulf him. The tide of his misery was at its flood,
so that it grew no worse when some deck-hands thrust the forward doors
open, and a policeman bounded into the cabin, drawn revolver in hand.
But the bull-terrier was to escape the fate unjustly inflicted on so
many of its fellows. The girl, crouching over the dog, barred the
policeman's purpose.
"Get away from him, miss," the officer directed. "He ain't safe, even
if he's quiet. I know mad dogs. A bullet's the only medicine."
"Chub isn't mad in the least," the girl snapped; "though he's been
through enough to make him crazy--and so have I. If you're so anxious
to do your duty, officer," she added, bitterly, "why don't you arrest
that horrid, hulking man over there?" She pointed a neatly gloved,
accusing finger at the motionless Zeke, who was staring fixedly at the
point where he hoped the abyss might yawn.
"What's he done?" the policeman inquired gruffly. He was miffed over
this lost opportunity. The slayer of a mad dog is always mentioned as
a hero in the newspapers.
The girl stood up. The dog, at the end of the leash, also stood up,
and shook itself. It had, to all seeming, recovered fully. It regarded
Zeke intently from its red eyes. But it did not growl. It was plain
that the bull-terrier was thinking deeply, and that Zeke was the
center around which thought revolved. But, if the dog did not growl,
its mistress showed no lessening of hostility. She explained
succinctly to the representative of the law:
"He assaulted my dog--with his feet and his hands."
"And maybe he bit him, too!" the policeman suggested, with heavy
sarcasm. He could not forgive this pretty girl for foiling his
heroism.
The girl did not heed. Her white brow was wrinkled in a frown. She was
recalling, with an effort, her somewhat meager knowledge of legal
terms.
"I shall charge him with homicidal assault," she announced firmly.
"I hope you'll tell that to the sarge," the officer chuckled, his
pique forgotten in appreciation of the girl's naïve announcement.
"I'll take this chap to the station-house. You'll appear against him,
miss?" The girl nodded emphatically. He turned on Zeke, frowning.
"Come on quiet, young feller, if you know what's good for ye." His
practiced eye studied the young mountaineer's physique respectfully.
Zeke made no movement, nor answered nor lifted his eyes. The policeman
attributed this demeanor to recalcitrancy. He put the revolver in his
pocket, drew his club and took a step forward. Yet, he sensed
something unfamiliar in the situation; the stiff posture of the arms
and hands of the culprit attracted his attention. He felt vaguely that
something of a painful nature was toward. He stopped short, puzzled,
and spoke:
"What's the matter with ye, anyhow?" he demanded fiercely. "Hain't ye
got any tongue?"
Then, at last, Zeke raised his eyes. They went first to the forward
door, to make sure that the girl had vanished. There were only two
mildly interested deck-hands in the cabin, beside the policeman,
though soon the place would be filled with newly arriving passengers.
He looked at the officer squarely, with despair in his expression:
"Hit ain't my tongue--hit's my pants!" he said huskily. "Hit's the
seat of my pants. Hit's--hit's thar!" He nodded toward the strip of
jeans left on the floor by the dog.
The policeman stared at the fragment of cloth, then his gaze returned
appreciatively to the victim's hands. He threw his head back and
bellowed with laughter, echoed raucously by the deck-hands. Zeke
waited grimly until the merriment lessened a little.
"I hain't a-stirrin' nary a step to no jail-house," was his morose
announcement, "unless somebody gits me some pants with a seat to
'em."
The policeman liked his ease too well to fight needlessly, and he had
an idea that the thews and sinews of the boomer might make a good
account of themselves. Moreover, he was by way of being a kindly soul,
and he apprehended in a measure the young man's misery.
"Can you dig up a pair of jumpers?" he asked the deck-hands. "You can
have 'em back by calling at the station to-morrow."
In this manner, the difficulty was bridged. Clad in the dingy and
dirty borrowed garment, the burning shame fell from Zeke, and he was
once again his own man. Nevertheless, he avoided looking toward the
piece of torn cloth lying on the floor, as he went out with the
policeman. He only wished that he might with equal ease leave behind
all memory of the lamentable episode.
Zeke's tractability increased the favorable impression already made on
the officer by the mountaineer's wholesome face and modest, manly
bearing. It was evident that this was no ordinary rake-helly boomer
come to town. There was, too, the black bag to witness that the
prisoner was an honest voyager. On the way to the station, the
constable listened with unusual patience to Zeke's curt account of the
misadventure, and the narrative was accepted as truth--the more
readily by reason of some slight prejudice against the dog, which had
failed as an exploiter of heroism. In consequence, the policeman grew
friendly, and promised intercession in his captive's behalf. This was
the more effective when, on arrival at the station-house, it was
learned that the girl with the dog had not appeared. Nor was there
sign of her after a period of waiting. The sergeant at the desk
decided that there could be no occasion to hold the prisoner. But he
frowned on the deadly weapon, which the usual search had revealed.
"'Twon't do for you to go totin' that cannon promiscuous," he
declared. "You shore don't need a gun--you shore do need breeches.
What's the answer?... Hock the gun, and buy some pants."
Thus simply did an alert mind solve all difficulties of the
situation.
So in the end, Zeke issued safely from his first bout with mischance
and found himself well content, for his dress now was more like that
of the men about him. The new trousers were full length, which the
jeans had not been, and the creases down the legs were in the latest
style. The salesman had so stated, and Zeke observed with huge
satisfaction that the stiffness of the creases seemed to mark the
quality of the various suits visible in the streets. And his own
creases were of the most rigid! Zeke for the first time in his life,
felt that warm thrill which characterizes any human integer, whether
high or low, when conscious of being especially well dressed.
Followed an interval of loitering. The sights of the town formed an
endless panorama of wonder to the lad's eager vision. Though he was a
year past the age of man's estate, this was his first opportunity of
beholding a town of any size, of seeing face to face things of which
he had heard a little, had read more. His fresh, receptive mind
scanned every detail with fierce concentration of interest, and
registered a multitude of vivid impressions to be tenaciously retained
in memory.
And ever with him, as he roamed the streets, went a tall slender girl,
barefooted, garbed in homespun, with great dark brown eyes that looked
tenderly on him from beneath the tumbled bronze masses of her hair. No
passer-by saw her, but the mountaineer knew her constant presence, and
with her held voiceless communion concerning all things that he
beheld. His heart exulted proudly over the bewildering revelations of
many women, both beautiful and marvelously clad in fine raiment--for
this girl that walked with him was more radiantly fair than any
other.
It was late afternoon when, finally, Zeke aroused himself to think of
the necessities of his position. Then, after a hasty and economical
meal at a lunch counter near the water-front, he made haste to the
pier, where his attention was at once riveted on an Old Dominion
Liner, which was just backing out into the river. He watched the great
bulk, fascinated, while it turned, and moved away down the harbor, to
vanish beyond Sewall's Point, on its way toward Hampton Roads.
Immediately afterward, his attention was attracted to a much smaller
steamer, which drew in on the opposite side of the wharf. There
chanced to be no one else near, and, as the boat slid into the slip, a
man in the bow hurled a coil of rope toward Zeke, with an aim so
accurate that it fell across Zeke's shoulder.
"Don't dodge it, you lubber!" the man roared, in answer to the
mountaineer's instinctive movement. "Haul it in, an' make fast to the
punchin'."
Zeke obeyed readily enough, hauled in the hawser, and made the loop
fast over the piling. At the same moment, he saw two negroes, blacker
from soot and grime than nature had made them, who leaped down from
the deck, and scampered out of sight. He heard the captain in the
pilot-house shouting down the tube.
"There go your----nigger stokers on the run."
Zeke could both see and hear the man in the engine-room, who vowed
profanely that he would ship a pair of white men, to sail before ten
that night. It seemed to the listener that the situation might develop
to his advantage. When, presently, the captain descended to the dock,
Zeke made bold to accost that red-faced and truculent-appearing
person. Much to his surprise, his request for work met with an amiable
reply. The captain verified what Zeke already knew, that the engineer
had need of men, and bade the inquirer get aboard and offer himself.
In the engine-room, the harried chief scowled on the intruder.
"What the devil do you want?" he cried harshly.
But Zeke's purpose was too earnest to be put down by mere
ungraciousness.
"Work," he replied with a smile.
Something in the applicant's aspect mitigated the engineer's
asperity.
"Ever fire a boiler?" he questioned, more affably.
"Yes, an' no," Zeke answered; "not any real steam b'iler. But, when
hit comes to keepin' a hick'ry fire under a copper kittle, an' not
scorchin' the likker, wall, I 'lows as how I kin do hit. An' when it
comes to makin' o' sorghum m'lasses, I hain't never tuk off my hat to
nobody yit. Fer the keepin' o' proper temp'rature folks says, I'm
'bout's good's anybody in Wilkes."
"Humph!--boomer," the engineer grunted, and there was silence for a
moment. When next he spoke, his manner was kindly.
"Those niggers of mine skedaddled 'cause they're lazy and worthless.
But the stoke-hole is hell, all right. It ain't no place for a
youngster like you. I'll hustle round to the gin-mills an' get hold of
a pair of tough guys. But there's something else," he went on, as
Zeke's face fell. "If you can make sorghum molasses and moonshine
without scorchin' 'em, you'll fill the bill, I reckon. We cruise off
the coast for menhaddin--fat backs--for the oil in 'em. We carry
steam-jacket kettles. I've got a green man now who's no good. I'll
fire him and take you on. Thirty a month and your board--more
by-and-by, if you suit."
Zeke, elated at this opportunity, felt, nevertheless, that honesty
required of him some further explanation. But the engineer dismissed
consideration of the future.
"A month will give you enough for your fare to New York. If you ain't
pressed for time, a voyage will do you good. But don't let the captain
get a sight of that black bag, or it'll go overboard. Sailors are
afeared of 'em," he chuckled. "_The Neuse_, my old ship, ran into _The
Blanche_ off Creek Beacon, in a fog, and sunk her. We rescued officers
and crew, but the captain--Smith, his name was--couldn't stop cussin'
'cause he'd allowed a nigger mammy to go aboard as a passenger along
with her old black bag, which was the why of the wreck, 'cording to
his way of thinking. Took his friends nigh onto a year, to convince
him that _The Neuse_ was to blame for the collision. I suspect he'll
always have it on his conscience that he did finally collect damages
off our owners." The engineer chuckled again. "Stow your bag under
your bunk in the fore peak before the captain comes aboard."
_The Bonita_ was a stanchly built and seaworthy craft with a draft of
less than twelve feet under full cargo, which made possible her use of
the shorter and smoother inland water-way from Norfolk to Beaufort,
North Carolina, where was the factory. Zeke, who would remain idle
until the first catch of fish, went early to his bunk the first
evening aboard, wearied by the long and exciting day. He had, indeed,
scarce time to contemplate a guardian vision of Plutina ere his senses
were locked in slumber, and his next consciousness was of a dim
morning light struggling into the gloom of the stuffy peak, and the
jolting rhythm of the engine, which announced that the voyage was
begun. When he hurried on deck, he was at first disappointed to learn
that the boat was still some distance from the open sea, for which he
longed with all an inlander's curiosity over the mystery of endless
waters. _The Bonita_ was now working forward slowly through the old
Dismal Swamp Canal, to reach the Pasquotank River and Albemarle Sound.
Zeke's astonished eyes perceived in every direction only the level,
melancholy expanse of the swamp. His sensitive soul found,
nevertheless, a strange charm and beauty in the scene. There was space
here, even as in the mountains. Yet this calm was not of strength, he
felt vaguely, like that he had known, but the tranquillity of nature
in another, a weaker, less-wholesome mood, apathetic, futile. The
thickly dotting cypresses and junipers, bedecked with streaming
draperies of Spanish moss, touched the vistas with a funereal aspect.
The languid movement of the festoons under the breeze was like the
sighings of desolation made visible. The dense tangle of the
undergrowth stretched everywhere, repellent, unrelieved by the vivid
color flashes of the mountain blossoms. Stagnant wastes of amber-hued
water emphasized the dreariness.
Zeke's spirits were too exultant to suffer more than a fleeting
depression from this first survey of the waste. He realized how unjust
his impressions might be when he learned that this seemingly filthy
water was highly esteemed. The deck-hand, filling the water barrel
from a pail let over the ship's side, explained the swamp water's
virtues.
"All the capens fill their barrels with it. Juniper water cures chills
an' fever, an' keeps 'em off if ye hain't got 'em. Some says it's
better 'n gin for the kidneys." But the deck-hand looked doubtful.
Zeke, still suspicious because of the unlikeness of this liquid to the
crystal-clear element of the mountains, essayed an experimental
swallow, then spat disgustedly.
"Hit may be all right fer med'cine, or yarb tea," was his verdict,
"but it needs real water to wash it down."
The progress was tediously slow, for a strong southwest wind had come
on, which lowered the water in the canal, so that _The Bonita_ often
went scraping along the bottom, and betimes stuck fast in the mud.
When they were come to the Lake Drummond region, Captain Lee decided
to tie up until a change or falling of the wind, with its consequent
rise of water in the channel. At the point where they finally made
fast to the bank, there was an old trail, a woods road long abandoned,
running off into the jungle. Zeke promptly set off to explore this,
and almost at once espied a wild turkey; a plump gobbler, feeding in
the path before him. There could be no doubt as to the acceptability
of such food aboard and Zeke hastened back to _The Bonita_, where the
captain gladly loaned him a rifle. Thus equipped, Zeke returned to the
wilderness trail. He was not surprised to find that the turkey had
vanished, nor disheartened, for he was sure that a little patience
would bring him in sight of game, and there was leisure a plenty since
an interval must elapse after a change in the wind before the
deepening of the water. Within a half-hour, he shot a turkey from its
perch in a cypress. With much satisfaction, Zeke swung the gobbler,
which was big and fat, over his shoulder, and set out to return.
Almost at once, however, his steps were arrested by the faint baying
of a hound. As he listened, the sound grew louder, as if the dog drove
its quarry toward him. The instinct of the chase dominated the
mountaineer. He cast down the turkey, and waited, hopeful that a deer
or bear might cross the path within range.
Soon, he heard a noisy crackling of underbrush a little to his right,
but near at hand. With the rifle in readiness Zeke peered from the
concealment of a cypress trunk. But it was neither the lithe leaping
form of a deer, nor the uncouth shambling bulk of swamp bear that
broke from the cover a moment later. Instead, there lurched into view
a huge negro. The fugitive's clothing hung in shreds, witness of the
cat's-briar claws; his face, from the same cause, was torn and
bleeding. The breath wheezed loudly through the open mouth; the sweat
ran in streams from the face; the eyes rolled whitely. There was
terror in his expression. He carried a thick club. Now, as he came to
a halt, it was plain to the watcher that the runner's fear had at last
driven him to make a stand, when he could flee no further. Zeke had no
difficulty in understanding the situation sufficiently well. The negro
was undoubtedly a criminal who had fled in the hope of refuge from the
law in the swamp's secret lurking places. Now trailed by the dog, he
was brought to bay. Zeke determined, as a measure of prudence, to
remain inactive until the issue between man and dog should be
adjusted. Otherwise, he might find himself engaged against both man
and beast with only a single bullet to his aid.
The querulous cries of the dog here and there showed that the scent
had been lost where the negro had splashed through some pool. Then,
abruptly, a sharp volley announced recovery of the track. A minute
later a huge black-and-tan body catapulted from the thicket into the
open space of the trail. From his cover, Zeke watched excitedly. The
negro, who had stood with club swung back ready for the blow, was
caught at disadvantage by the pursuer's emergence at an unexpected
point. The branches of the thicket projected to prevent a blow. The
dog, silent now, hurled itself straight at the man's throat. But the
negro, alert to the peril, avoided the charge by a swift spring to the
side. Zeke heard the great jaws of the beast click shut as it shot
harmlessly past its foe; he heard the savage growl with which it
whirled to renew the attack. As it leaped a second time the negro's
club fell true in a mighty stroke--caught the creature fair on the
skull, stopped it in midair, dropped it dead to the ground.
Zeke's turn in the action was come, at last. Even as the negro stood
gloating over his victory, the mountaineer, with leveled rifle,
stepped from the concealment of the cypress, and cried a sharp
command:
"Drop thet-thar club, an' stand still whar ye be, if ye don't want to
be kilt!"
The effect on the exultant negro was almost pitiful. Where had been
the assurance of final escape was now the certainty of capture. The
shock of contrasting emotions was too much for the fellow's strength,
coarse-fibered and hardened as he was. He stared at Zeke with
protruding eyes, his face grown gray. His thrilling joy in the slaying
of the dog was lost in the black despair of defeat. The club fell from
the trembling fingers, and in the next moment the man himself sagged
to the ground and crouched whimpering, whining, in a child-like
abandon to fatigue and grief. Then, presently, while the captor
watched in some perplexity, the moaning ceased. In its stead came a
raucous rhythm--the sleep of utter exhaustion.
A sound of footsteps on the path caught Zeke's ear. He turned, and saw
close at hand a short, stockily built, swarthy-complexioned man of
middle age, who came swinging forward at a lope. The newcomer halted
at sight of the mountaineer.
"Seen anything of a big nigger or a hound passing this way?" he
demanded.
Zeke nodded, gravely.
"Ye'll find the two of 'em right thar." He raised the rifle, which
the other man now observed for the first time, and with it pointed to
where, beyond the cypress-tree, the negro huddled, breathing
stertorously, beside the dead body of the dog.