There were some scout officials lunching at the Inn; I suppose they had
come up from the city. They wore khaki and ate chicken salad and talked
about some Council or other; that and a new store-house. Not many others
were lunching; it was too early in the season.
On my way out I stopped and asked these gentlemen if they could tell me
anything about the history of that region. They expressed regret that
they could not, but were able to advise me about the road I should take
in continuing my journey northward. I learned that I would pass through
West Point and so on over the scenic Storm King Highway up through
Cornwall and on to Newburgh.
I was just pondering on how long it would take me to reach Kingston by
this unpremeditated route when I noticed standing near my car the
strangest looking man I have ever seen in my whole life. He looked queer
enough where he stood, amid rural surroundings; how he would have
impressed one if met with in the city it was amusing to contemplate.
He was, I think, the tallest man I have ever seen; tall and spare and
rawboned. Yet, somehow, _tall_ was not the word for him. _Long_ would be
a better word. And I later learned that this word _long_ was commonly
prefixed to his already romantic title. Long Buck Sanderson was the name
he went by. He was quite old; I would have said seventy years at the
least. He wore a fur cap very much the worse for age, and his face was
as brown and wrinkled and leathery as an old dried-up cocoanut. Probably
his height (though, as I have said, it was an impression rather of
length than of height) was not less than six feet seven inches, and even
so some of his original stature was lost by age.
He wore a corduroy jacket which might have done duty in
pre-revolutionary days. I suppose it was once yellow; it was a sort of
drab when I first saw it. I do not know what his dirt-colored trousers
were made of, but it was not khaki; he and all that pertained to him
were of the pre-khaki era.
He had a pointed nose and even this was deeply wrinkled. Somehow it gave
me the impression of a fox, though I do not mean that there was anything
suggestive of slyness in his expression. His old eyes were gray and of a
shrewdness which only the wilderness can breed. He wore hanging about
his neck a discolored old cartridge shell of a considerable size; why I
do not know. But I later learned that with the aid of this ancient
trophy he could reproduce the voices of birds and beasts at will and
fool them with his mimicry.
I could not repress the temptation to inspect rather frankly so strange
a figure, and he, on his part, watched me with a kind of easy
observation as I felt one of the front tires of my car to make sure that
it was hard.
“She’s a-leakin’,” he said.
“No, she isn’t,” I said, “but she needs a little air.”
“She’s a-leakin’,” he repeated, unperturbed by my superior knowledge.
“All right, feel of it,” I laughed. “Come around here and feel of it.”
“I ain’t got no call to feel it,” he drawled; “I can hear it.”
“Standing there?” I laughed. “You must have better ears than I have.”
I went and stood beside him, in front of the car, and heard nothing.
“Hear it?” he asked.
“I certainly don’t,” I told him.
“Them ears o’ yourn is stopped up like a ole ground-hog hole,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and by way of closing the matter finally I stooped
and listened at the tire valve. As sure as life there was a faint
hissing there, a slow leak. I dare say at the rate of leakage that was
going on the tire might have stood up till I reached Kingston, though I
changed it then and there to be on the safe side. What astounded me was
that this stranger had heard at ten or twelve feet that all but
inaudible hissing which bespoke the slow emission of air out of the
tire. It was nothing less than miraculous.
The stranger smiled, which multiplied the wrinkles about his firm old
mouth. “Them ears o’ yourn is ’baout’s clear as a ole filled up skunk
hole,” he drawled.
“First it was a ground-hog, then it was a skunk,” I complained
good-humoredly.
He disregarded me entirely and moved about the car squinting at it as if
it did not belong to me at all. I felt quite an outsider, the comrade of
skunks and ground-hogs. He seemed to think I would wait till he
completed his leisurely inspection.
“If I’d a had all wuz belongin’ ter me,” he observed carelessly, “I
might o’ had one o’ them pesky contraptions.”
I answered with that insincere phrase which motorists are so fond of
using to the uninitiated. “You’re very lucky not to have one,” I said:
“they’re a lot of trouble.” And I smiled inwardly at the thought of his
driving one. “You going my way?” I added.
“Yer ain’t goin’ by south road, mebbe?” he asked.
“South road; where is that?” I said.
“Yer know Hawkeye Spoke them youngsters got?”
“I don’t,” I said, “but it’s a bully good name all right. Hawkeye. I’m
going north up to Kingston.”
“They got one of them cylums there?” he said.
“Cylums?” I queried.
“Fer youngsters.”
“Oh, asylum,” I said. “Yes, I dare say they have; it’s quite a city.”
He moved out of the way so that I might start, and then I noticed that
he limped.
“Is South Hawkeye, or whatever you call it, far?” I asked him.
“Whatcher call far, mebbe no,” he said, which was not altogether
enlightening. “Like on ten mile,” he added after a pause.
“Well,” I said, “that’s nothing if we can get there by a road. I can
have you there in half an hour. Climb in if you’re going home. Where is
South Hawkeye anyway? I’ll shoot you there quicker than you could foot
it.”
He climbed in and sat beside me without any polite hesitation or
superfluous acknowledgments. He glanced at me with a fixed, shrewd,
inquiring gaze. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not so
astonished at the wonderful speed and convenience of a car as at my use
of the word _shoot_. I think it amused him. He looked me all over and I
fancied he was of the opinion that such a person as myself couldn’t
possibly _shoot_. He was right at that, for I never shot anything in my
life except a game of pool.