There is nothing so conducive to happiness as work—work done well and
willingly. It is in itself happiness. Ike wondered to find, as he bent
his mind and all his energy to his simple tasks—grown strangely light and
seeming few—how little he suffered from his exclusion from his friend’s
society and from the unjust discrimination made against him for no fault
of his; how amply his duty filled his horizon, and presently arrayed
itself in the glad garb of pleasure. He sang—he could but sing—as he
wielded the axe, as he fed the stock, as he went back and forth on his
errands through the lonely woods, sometimes hearing the voice of Keedon
Bluffs singing too, in fitful and fugue-like response.
Nevertheless, he was glad enough to be reassured of his friend’s loyalty
in their enforced separation, for when they presently met by accident
Skimpy seized upon him eagerly, “Ye ain’t holdin’ no gredge ag’in _me_,
air ye, Ike? I couldn’t holp it; ye know I couldn’t.”
This accidental meeting occurred one evening when all the boys of
Tanglefoot Cove and the mountain slopes had gathered for a coon-hunt.
The Sawyer lads were of the party, Skimpy and three brothers, all much
alike, all long-legged, red-haired, freckled-faced fellows, and not
fascinating to look upon, but they took a great deal of pleasure in
themselves, and there was considerable boy-nature to the square inch in
these four Sawyers. They were first-rate comrades too; could both take
a joke and make one; all had bright, honest, steady brown eyes, and
they were evidently destined to grow better looking as they grew older.
With one exception they were clad in whole, stout homespun garments,
well woven and well made, for their mother was a peculiarly precise,
neat, and industrious woman. Skimpy was the exception; his elbows were
out; his ankles could not wait for his trousers to grow, so they showed
themselves, right nimble and sturdy members, although the garment, which
was blue, had been encouraged lengthwise with a fresh contrasting piece
of copper-colored jeans; his knees bulged against the threadbare cloth in
a way that intimated they would not long be able to shelter themselves
in their flimsy retirement. He and his mother found it difficult to
reconcile their diverse theories of the uses and the care of clothes.
Although serious enough when they climaxed, these differences had no
depressing effect on Skimpy’s spirits, and did not suffice to save his
wardrobe. He harbored no unfilial resentment, but he thought his mother a
very queer and particular woman.
The Sawyers had brought with them the dutiful clerk, who was also
preëminent as a coon-dog. There he sat in his yellow hide, decorated
with his slit ear, and his docked tail, and his half-closed eyelid. When
away from the store his demeanor lacked the urbanity which characterized
him there. He bore himself now with the surly air of a magnate whose
affability has been swallowed up in the consciousness of importance.
The Sawyers specially piqued themselves on being the proud possessors
of Bose. Every now and then one would reverently glance at the animal,
as he sat upright lolling out an indifferent tongue, and say to those
unacquainted with him—“Mind how ye fool with Bose—he’s sharp” (with
an excited eye and a wag of the red head); “he’s mighty fierce.” And
the other Sawyers would nod their heads in confirmation of this report
of Bose’s belligerent qualities. They had a sort of hero-worshiping
reverence for this trait of dog-sharpness, but any one who did not think
respectfully of Bose was some one who did not care to go coon-hunting. He
was the central figure of the group that had collected in the woods by
a sulphur spring, on a slope of one of the minor ridges at the base of
the Great Smoky. The early dusk had not yet fallen, but the shadows were
lengthening fast, and night was on the way. The boughs of the trees above
their heads were drawn in fine distorted lines on a crimson sky; here and
there a slant of sunshine fell amongst the brown shadows upon some red
and yellow fantasy of foliage that so blazed with color and light in its
dusky surroundings that it might seem some outburst of fire which had
been slyly “set out” in the woods.
The sulphur spring had sought to hide itself, it might seem. Across a
narrow, rocky cleft lay a great flat slab, and a rill trickled away
somewhere; no one would have imagined that beneath this slab was a
spring with brown crystalline water, and a vibrant whisper, and some
exquisite perfumed breath of freshness borrowed from the dawn of day.
The dogs knew where it was, running to it with lolling tongues and with
much affectation of thirst, yet wanting only a drop or two. For other
dogs were there and they seemed to have heard and to have profited by
the Sawyers’ account of Bose, or perhaps the dignity of his mien awed
them, or experience admonished them, for none of them molested him,
although they became involved in noisy fights with each other, or gambols
as turbulent. The boys, ten or twelve in number, all had cow-horns to
blow and torches to carry, and while they waited for certain cronies
to arrive the talk was chiefly of the subject that had brought them
together. The coon seemed a fascinating study apart from his great
gifts of celerity. Mentally he is generously endowed. If Skimpy might
be believed the coon can do anything short of reading, writing, and
ciphering.
“Even mam, she hev ter ’low ez coons ain’t lackin’ fur head-stuffin’,”
he remarked, as he stood with his arms akimbo. “You-uns know the kind
o’ ways mam hev gin herself over ter—a-sweepin’, an’ a-scourin’, an’
a-cleanin’, till I actially looks ter see ef she won’t take ter washin’
the chickens’ faces an’ curryin’ the cat. Waal, Cousin Eph Bates, he
stopped thar one day with his pet coon. An’ mam she made him welcome an’
set out the table. An’ mam, she ’lowed the coon mus’ be hongry, so she
called it an’ gin it a nice piece o’ corn dodger. What’s that coon do?”
he cried, his eyes widening with the interest of the recital. “Popped up
on the aidge o’ the drinkin’ pail an’ ondertook ter wash that thar piece
o’ dodger ’twixt his fore paws, ’fore he would eat it. I wish ye could
hev seen mam’s face. I laffed till I like ter drapped in my tracks. An’
Cousin Eph—he jes’ hollered. An’ mam, she hed furgot, ef she ever knowed,
how coons do; she say, ‘Cousin Eph, ye needn’t bring no sech pertic’lar
vis’tor ter my house ag’in—a-washin’ the clean vittles _I_ gin him.’
Thar sot the coon, ez onconsarned, a-washin’ his hands an’ a-washin’ the
dodger.” Skimpy suited the action to the words and teetered up and down,
washing his paws and an imaginary piece of corn dodger. “I laffed an’
laffed. That coon like ter been the death o’ me ’fore he got away from
thar.”
“I know that thar coon o’ Eph Bates’s,” cried Ike. “I stayed up ter his
house one night along o’ his chill’n an’ ’twar bright moonlight whenst I
went ter bed in the roof-room, but after a while I woke up an’ I ’lowed
’twar a hailstorm goin’ on outside on the roof. Ye never hearn sech a
skedaddlin’ up an’ down them clapboards. Kem ter find out, ’twar nuthin’
but the coon a-playin’ tag with his shadder in the moonlight.”
“Oh, he’s a powerful tricky, Mister Coon air,” Skimpy declared, his
freckled face distended with relish of Mr. Coon’s smartness. “Mam an’
Cousin Eph hed sot tharselfs down afore the fire an’ got ter talkin’
’bout’n the folkses in the Cove, an’ how mighty few o’ ’em had enny sech
religion ez they purtended ter hev, when mam she put her hand in her
pocket fur ter git her knittin’. An’ there warn’t nuthin’ in her pocket
but a ball o’ yarn. An’ she looked up, an’ thar war a great long e-end o’
it a-stretchin’ ter the door. An’ thar on the steps sot Mister Coon with
them knittin’ needles, an’ the sock, a-holdin’ ’em like he war knittin’,
ez onconsarned—oh my! I laffed ag’in.”
“I’ll bet yer mam didn’t laff,” said an intimate of the family.
“Naw,” Skimpy admitted. “Mam, she’s mighty sober-sided. She’d like the
coon better ef he wore spec’s an’ cut wood. Cousin Eph, he axed her how
many rows that coon knit. An’ mam, she said—‘_None!_ He drug two needles
bodaciously out an’ spiled fower rows.’ Mam ’lowed ez she thought she
hed the mos’ mischievious created critter—meanin’ me—but she said she
b’lieved Cousin Eph mought take the prem_ium_. An’ Cousin Eph, he said
enny time she war minded ter swap he’d trade the coon fur me. An’ mam,
she cut her eye round at me an’ tole me I hed better mend my manners;
the mounting would talk mightily ’bout me ef I war traded off fur a coon
’thout enny boot.”
“That thar mus’ be the same coon ez Cousin Eph Bates fotched along o’
him ter the store when he kem ter trade, las’ summer,” said Obadiah, the
eldest Sawyer. “An’ dad, he tole Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. An’ nobody
noticed the coon till Cousin Eph war ready ter go, an’ tuk ter huntin’
fur him. I don’t reckon that coon could surely hev thunk ez dad meant it
fur _him_ whenst he told Cousin Eph ter holp hisself. But leastwise the
coon done it; he holped _his_-self. They fund him propped up on the aidge
o’ the sugar bar’l, an’ they say the way his whiskers war gormed with
sugar war a sight ter be seen. He hedn’t no expression ter his face, an’
he looked plumb cross-eyed with pleasure. Sugar in his paws, too, and
dad kerried on like he war mighty nigh demented. An’ he wanted Cousin Eph
ter pay for that sugar the coon hed eat, an’ said he wanted that thar
coon’s skin. But Cousin Eph, he snatched his coon up under his arm an’
’lowed he mought ez well try ter trade fur one o’ his chill’n’s hides. I
b’lieve he gin dad some money or suthin’, though. He sot out arter that
with his coon fur home.”
“Waal, he warn’t so ’fectionate with that thar coon las’ time I seen
him,” Ike added his testimony. “’Twar over yander at the church-house in
the gap. An’ whilst the folks war settin’ inside, a-listenin’ ter the
preachin’, we-uns hearn the biggest rumpus outside ’mongst the teams, an’
everybody looked plumb wretched, wonderin’ ef ’twar suthin’ hed happened
ter thar steer or horse critter. An’ dad whispered ter me ter go out an’
see. An’ thar, ’mongst all the wagins, an’ yokes o’ oxen, an’ saddle
horses under the trees, war a young claybank horse ez b’long ter Eph
Bates. An’ that thar coon he had slyed off an’ follered his master ter
the church-house, an’ stiddier goin’ inside—it’s a mercy he didn’t—he
seen Eph’s horse, an’ he clomb the tree, an’ drapped down on the pommel
o’ the saddle. Waal, sir, sech kickin’! that horse war young an’ skeery;
sech squealin’! An’ whenst I seen him he war tremblin’ like he hed a fit
o’ the ague, an’ then he’d turn his head an’ git a glimge o’ that thar
citizen in the saddle, an’ begin ter plunge an’ shy an’ snort ag’in. Jes’
’fore I got ter him he bruk his halter, an’ he lit out; around an’ around
that thar church-house he went a-cavortin’ an’ a-gallopin’, Mister Coon
settin’ in the saddle, a-holdin’ on fur life, an’ a-smilin’ from ear to
ear. An’ the folks in the church-house seen what war a-goin’ on, an’ Eph
an’ some o’ them nigh the door run out an’ hollered, ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ at the
horse. Didn’t do no good. Ez soon ez the critter seen he couldn’t shake
the coon off he bolted an’ run through the woods. Eph, he walked home
that Sunday, five mile, but Mister Coon, he rid.”
“Oh, Mister Coon, oh, Mister Coon,” Skimpy was murmuring, and presently
he broke into song:—
“Bob Snooks, he eat up all in his plate,
An’ he dreampt a dream that night right late.
A-settin’ on a cloud war a big raccoon,
A-eatin’ an’ a-washin’ his paws in the moon.
’Twar brimmin’ full o’ clabber an’ whey.
His tail war ringed with black an’ gray;
It hung plumb down ter the poplar-tree,
An’ he wagged it up an’ down in glee.