“Hello!” cried out the figure.
“Hello!—hello!—hello!” the echoing voices of Keedon Bluffs sepulchrally
hailed the boy.
Now Ike would have been indignant had some one suspected him of being
afraid of the witches of the Bluffs. But he was immensely relieved by
this form of address. For although he had never held intimate converse
with witches he felt sure they did not say “Hello!”
He leaned over and responded in a sturdy tone “Hello, yerse’f!”
“Hello yerse’f!” cried out the prompt echoes. Ike drew back a little.
Although he had acquitted the climbing man of being a witch, he could not
repulse an odd uncomfortable feeling that scores of mischievous invisible
spirits of the rock were assisting at the conversation. He could imagine
that they nudged each other as they repeated the words. Perhaps they all
fell to silently laughing when a belated voice far down the river called
in a doubtful and hesitant tone, “Hello yerse’f!”
“Who’s that up thar?” demanded the man, still looking up.
“Ike Guyther,” the boy replied.
He could not accurately distinguish the sound, so confused was he by the
iteration of the meddlesome echoes, but it seemed to him that the man
uttered a sudden gruff imprecation at the revelation of his name, and
surely the tell-tale rocks were presently grumbling in an uncertain and
displeased undertone.
Ike strained his eyes to recognize the features, but the man looked down
suddenly and coughed dubiously.
There was something vaguely familiar in his voice that might have served
to establish his identity but for the repetitious sounds that followed
every word.
“What air ye doin’ up thar?” demanded the man, and all the echoes became
inquisitorial.
“Been a-coon-huntin’. What ye doin’ down thar?” said Ike, at last
thinking it but fair that he should ask a few questions himself.
The white face was once more turned downward, and the man coughed and
seemed to try to spit out his doubt. It had evidently not occurred to him
that he himself was unrecognized, for with a tone that indicated that he
sought to make the best of an awkward situation he said, “Why, I hearn
Ab talkin’ wunst in a while ’bout climbin’ down Keedon Bluffs, ter that
old cannon-ball on that ledge, an’ I ’lowed I’d try ef the thing could be
done—jes’ fur fun—ha! ha! Toler’ble tough fun, though.”
The vain effort at jollity, the strained nervous tone, the merciless
echoes exaggerated a thousand fold. But Ike Guyther sat unheeding, more
perturbed than he could well have expressed.
It was Jerry Binwell, his father’s guest. How had he escaped, Ike
wondered, from the roof room where his host thought he lay sleeping? Had
he stolen out from amongst the unconscious family, leaving the doors
ajar that any marauder might enter? He could not. Old Hiram slept as
lightly as a cat, and the blind man was often wakeful and restless. And
what could be his object here in the stealthy midnight, risking life and
limb—nay, neither! Ike Guyther, watching him climbing—with the frightful
depths below into which a false step would instantly precipitate him—lost
that morbid and nervous fascination which a feat of great danger induces
in the spectator, and began suddenly to experience a sort of confidence,
merging into certainty. He was amazed at the lightness, the strength,
the marvelous elasticity, the fine precision of every movement. Strain
credulity as he might, he could not believe Binwell when he said
suddenly, “But I ain’t goin’ ter try it enny furder—break my neck! This
hyar chicken is a-gittin’ old an’ stiff; couldn’t git down thar ter save
my life.”
He climbed up and up, his silent shadow climbing with him till he neared
the spot where Ike sat, when he suddenly paused. “Git up, Ike,” he said;
“that’s the only place whar thar’s purchase enough ter pull up by.”
He evidently knew all the ground. Ike dragged himself out of the way,
and, with his hands in his pockets, stood pensively watching him as he
pulled himself to the verge, and then upon his knees, and so to his
feet on the roadside. He paused for a moment, panting. He looked at his
companion with an expression which had no relation to the words on his
lips. Many a boy might not have detected this yawning gulf between what
he meant and what he said, but Ike’s senses were sharpened by suspicion
and anxiety.
“Whew! Great Molly Har’!” Jerry mopped his brow with his red cotton
handkerchief. “I’m too old fur sech didoes as this hyar—old man’s a-goin’
fas’. Knees plumb bent. Don’t ye laff, Ike! Don’t ye laff.” Ike had shown
no sign of merriment. “An’ ’fore everything don’t ye tell Ab ez I tried
ter climb down Keedon Bluffs ter that old ball, an’ couldn’t. I wouldn’t
hev the mounting ter git a-holt o’ that thar joke on me fur nuthin’!”
He looked sharply at the boy, who said not a word, but simply stared at
him as he stood on the verge of the Bluff in the slanting melancholy
yellow light of the waning moon. There was a quiver in Binwell’s nostril,
a nervous motion of the lips, a keen inimical gleam of the eyes under his
hat brim. He was giving Ike more notice than he had ever before bestowed
on him.
“Hey!” he cried jocularly, clapping the boy on the shoulder, “don’t ye
tell on me, Ike—ye won’t, will ye?”
This direct appeal brought an answer. But Ike was on his guard.
“Mebbe then uncle Ab would quit thinkin’ ez how _he_ could,” he said
cautiously.
Jerry Binwell suddenly changed his tactics.
“Tell ennybody ye want ter, ye wide-mouthed shoat, ye! Ef I can’t climb
down thar nobody else kin, an’ nobody air a-goin’ ter try. Got too tender
feelin’s fur thar necks. I ain’t ashamed o’ gittin’ old nohow! Ye’ll be
whar I am some day, Ike, ef ye don’t die fust.”
He strode on ahead with a deft free step. Ike, doubtful and grievously
ill at ease, followed. Come what might he felt that he would tell his
father all, and let him solve the mystery about this strange guest. Then
he began to reflect how slight this “all” was. There were the innuendoes
of the men at the store; but his father knew as well as he how little
Jerry Binwell had been liked in his early youth, how strong the prejudice
remained. The affront to old Corbin was indeed reprehensible, but as to
climbing about the rocks at night surely any one might do that who was
foolish or idle or nimble enough.
Ike was surprised that although he found in summing up there was no
positive heinous wickedness involved, his aversion to the man remained
and his resolution was strong. He would tell his father all that he had
heard, that he had seen. He would shift the responsibility. His shoulders
were not strong enough to carry it.
Jerry’s long, lean figure, with the company of his longer and leaner
shadow which dogged his steps like some pursuing phantom of sorrow or
dismay that might materialize in the fullness of time, kept steadily down
the road. He made no pretense of silence or concealment, but whistled
blithely and loud—a sound to pierce the pensive hour with discordant
interruption. Did it awaken the birds? A peevish, intermittent chirring
rose drowsily from the woods, and then was still, and anon sounded again.
Or was it that the dawn was coming hardily upon the slowly departing
night, long lingering, loath to go? The moon showed no paling sign; belts
of pearly vapors, catching its light, were rising from the furthest
reaches of the purple mountains. And here the river was dark and deep;
and there it flowed in translucent amber waves, with a silver flash of
foam, all the brighter for the shadow of the rock hard by. And now it
was out of sight and there were the long stretches of the familiar woods
on either hand, with no suggestion of the vivid tints of autumn, only a
dusky black alternating with a gleaming gold strewn like the largess of a
dream fantasy all a-down the winding ways.
Morning surely; the thrush sings a stave. And silence again.
The shadows falter, though the pensive lunar light yet lingers. And again
the thrush—fresh, thrilling, a quiver of ecstasies, a soaring wing,
though it catches the yellow moonbeams. The sky reddens. Alas, for the
waning moon! Oh, sorry ghost; how pale! how pale!
For the prosaic day is in the awakening woods. The mountains rise above
their encompassing mists and shadows. Beneath them, brown and gray, with
closed batten shutters, Ike sees, slowly revealed, his father’s house,
the sheep lying huddled at one side, barely astir—a head lifted now, and
then dropped—the cow drowsing in a fence corner; the chickens beginning
to jump down from the althea bushes, where, despite the autumnal chill,
they still roost. And, as the first slanting sun ray shoots up over the
mountains, the door opens, and there is thrust out the pink face of
Rosamond, dimpling with glee at the sight of them, and her shout of glad
recognition is loud enough to waken all the sluggards in the cabin, or
for that matter in the Cove.
The cabin, however, was already astir. Ike learned, with emotions not
altogether relating to the recital, that his father’s aunt who had
brought him up from infancy had been taken ill, and a runner having been
sent to apprise him he had gone over to the Carolina side, and would not
return until the old woman should be better or the worst over.
Ike had postponed his disclosures too long. There was little good, he
thought, as he swung his axe at the wood-pile—as wide awake as though
he had participated in no coon-hunt—to tell his mother; she had cares
enough—and what could she do? And truly he had nothing to tell except
to put into words vague suspicions; nay, his thoughts were not so well
defined; to canvass actions and accents and looks that displeased him.
They all knew—at least they would not be surprised to learn that Jerry
Binwell had not outlived the malice of his youth. Aunt Jemima would
regard the slightest word against him as an effort to bereave her of
this late-blooming pleasure and joy of her life, the little Rosamond.
Ike hopefully considered for a time the blind man’s aversion to Binwell.
Abner would never hear nor reply when he spoke—and since the first night,
he had not spoken to Binwell, except indeed one day when he chanced to
stumble against the sprawling loafer before the fire. Abner struck at him
fiercely and called out imperiously—“Get out of my way—or I will kick you
out!”
Jerry had moved, but there was an odd glancing expression from his
half-closed lids that alarmed Ike, so malignant it seemed. The little
girl had run gayly up, caught Abner by the hand, and guided him to his
place by the fire. For she it was who had superseded all the others,
and had made the blind artillery-man her special charge. All day she
was laughing beside him. Any time the oddly assorted couple could be
met, she leading him carefully, holding two of his bronzed fingers, as
they strolled down the sunset road, or they might be seen sitting on the
wood-pile while he told her stories or sang. And she sang also, loud
and clear—gayly too, whatever might have been the humble poet’s mood—in
no wise dismayed or hindered by the infantile disability of not being
able to carry a tune. She had a thousand quirks and conceits, incredibly
entertaining to him in his enforced idleness. She had watched wide-eyed
when Hiram Guyther read from an old and tattered Testament, for the
accomplishment of reading was rare in the region, and had not before been
brought to her observation. Often thereafter she equipped herself with a
chip, held sturdily before her dancing eyes, and from this unique book
she droned forth, in imitation of Hiram’s gruff voice, strange stories of
beasts and birds, and the human beings about her, pausing only to scream
with laughter at her own wit, and then gruffly droned on once more. She
fell ill once for a day or so—a red and a swollen throat, and a flushing,
dull-eyed fever. Aunt Jemima and Ike’s mother exhausted their skill and
simple remedies, and went about haggard and nervous; and the blind man,
breaking a long silence, said suddenly, “Ef ennything war ter happen ter
that thar child I’d ’low the Lord hed fursook me.”
A neighbor, who happened to be at the house, eyed him curiously. “Ef I
war you-uns, Ab,” he said, “I’d ’low ez He hed fursook me whenst He let
my eyes git put out.”
The brave fellow had had no repinings, not even when the war was his
daily thought. Now he seemed to have forgotten it, so full, and varied,
and cheerful an interest had this little creature brought into his life.
Often aunt Jemima would tell in gladsome superlatives what she looked
like, and when she spoke he would turn an intent smiling face toward her
as if he beheld some charming image.
What was the use of talking, Ike thought, remembering all this. They
would not jeopardize the loan of this treasure for all that Jerry Binwell
could do or say.
He cut away vehemently at the wood, making the chips fly and the mountain
echoes ring. He responded curtly, but without discourtesy, when Jerry
Binwell came out of the house, took a seat upon the wood-pile, and began
to talk to him. Jerry had a confidential tone, and he slyly laughed at
the folks in the Cove, and he took on a comrade-like manner—implying a
certainty of appreciation and sympathy—that might once have flattered
Ike, coming from one so much older than himself. Now, however, Ike merely
swung the axe in silence, casting an occasional distrustful glance at
the thin sharp face with its long grayish goatee. More than once he
encountered a keen inquiring look that did not seem to agree with the
careless, casual nature of the talk.
“Old Jake Corbin—ye know him; oh yes, ye seen me h’ist him up on the beam
thar at the store—waal, he be powerful keen ter get a chance ter torment
other folks, but cut a joke on him, an’ I tell ye, old Jake’ll git his
mad up, sure. I seen him the ’tother day, an’ he plumb looked wild-cats
at me—fairly glared. Tell ye, Ike, ye an’ me’ll git round him some day,
an’ hev some fun out’n him—git his dander up an’ see him hop.” He winked
at Ike and chewed resolutely on his huge quid of tobacco.
“Naw, I won’t,” said Ike suddenly. “I hev’ been raised ter respec’ my
elders. An’ I’m a-goin’ ter do it now jes’ the same ez afore ye kem.”
“Bless my bones!” cried Jerry Binwell, affecting contemptuous surprise
and speaking in a jeering falsetto voice. “Jes’ listen how leetle Sally
do talk—ye plumb perlite leetle gal!” He leered unpleasantly at the
flushing boy. Then he suddenly resumed his natural tone and his former
manner, as if he had borne no part in this interlude.
“Ye oughter hear how he talks ’bout you-uns, Ike—’lows ye air plumb lazy.”
“That war a true word whenst he said it,” interpolated Ike.
“An’ never done yer work, an’ war onreliable, an’ onstiddy, an’ hedn’t no
grit ter stan’ up ter yer word, an’ thar war no sech thing ez makin’ a
man out’n ye. I hearn him say that an’ mo’, ’fore twenty other men.”
Ike’s axe had dropped to the ground. He listened with a red cheek and a
glowing eye. The other watched him intently.
“Waal, that’s pretty tough talk,” said Ike.
“’Tis _that_!” assented Binwell.
“But I hev been shirking some an’ no mistake, an’ I reckon the old man
’lowed that war jes’ the kind o’ stuff I be made out’n, totally. Now I be
a-goin’ ter show him ’tain’t nuthin’ more ’n a streak.”
And the steady strokes of the axe rang, and the chips flew, and the
mountains echoed the industrial sound.
Jerry Binwell looked unaccountably disappointed and disturbed. He changed
the subject. “Why war ye axin’ Ab fur the loan o’ his gun this mornin’?”
“Kase dad hev kerried his’n off, an’ I be a-goin’ ter git up the boys an’
go arter that thar painter. It riles me powerful ter go a-huntin’ a coon
an’ git run by a painter. So I ’lowed we-uns would go ter-night.”
Again the man slouching on the wood-pile seemed unaccountably worried
and ill at ease. This reminded Ike of that curious nocturnal climbing of
the rocks, and when he went up to the roof-room for some lead to mould
bullets for the gun, he stood looking about him and wondering how Jerry
Binwell contrived to escape from his hospitable quarters without rousing
the family who slept in the room and in the shed-room below. There was no
window; the long tent-like place was illumined only by the many cracks in
the wall and roof. They had a dazzling silvery glister when one looked
steadily at the light pouring through them amongst the brown timbers, and
the many garments, and bags, and herbs, and peltries, hanging from the
ridge-pole. One of these rifts struck him as wider than he had thought
any of them could be. He reached up and touched the clapboard. It was
loose; it rose with the pressure. A man not half so active as Binwell
could have sprung through and upon the roof, and thence swung himself to
the ground.
The panther was surprised and killed that night. Jerry Binwell, and
several other men who heard of the adventure, joined the party. They
were all in high feather going home, and Skimpy sang a number of his
roundelays, as he had often done before without exciting any particular
admiration. He sang from animal spirits, as the other boys, less
musically endowed, shouted and grotesquely yelled. Nevertheless, with
the musician’s susceptibility to plaudits, his ear was attuned to Jerry
Binwell’s exclamation, addressed to one of the men in the rear, “Jes’
listen how that thar young one kin sing! ’Pears plumb s’prisin’!”
And the good-natured mountaineer returned, “That’s a fac’. Wouldn’t be
s’prised none ef Skimp shows a reg’lar gift fur quirin’.”
“He sings better now’n all the folkses in the church-house,” said the
guileful Jerry.
The flattered Skimpy!
He knew that the society of Ike had been forbidden to him, lest he should
come in contact with this elderly reprobate, but he felt a great flutter
of delight when Binwell, coming up beside him, as he trotted along in the
moonlight, said again that he could sing like all possessed, and declared
that if he had a fiddle he could teach Skimpy many new tunes that he had
heard when he lived down in Persimmon Cove. “Mighty fiddlin’ folks down
thar,” he added, seductively.
Now there was hanging on the wall at the Sawyer house—and it is barely
possible that Jerry Binwell may have seen it there—a crazy old fiddle and
bow. It was claimed as the property of Obadiah, the eldest of the boys,
who had his share of such musical talent as blessed the Sawyer family. In
him it expressed itself in fiddling to the exclusion of his brothers—for
very intolerant was he of anybody who undertook to “play the fool with
this fiddle,” as he phrased it. A critical person might have said that he
played the fool with it himself, or perhaps that it played the fool with
him. But such as the performance was, he esteemed the instrument as the
apple of his eye, and was very solicitous of not breaking its “bredge.”
Therefore Skimpy was a very bold boy, and preposterously hopeful, when
he suggested to Binwell that he could borrow Obadiah’s fiddle, and thus
the treasures of sound so rapturously fiddled forth by the dwellers in
Persimmon Cove might rejoice the air in Tanglefoot.
“Naw, naw, don’t ’sturb Obadiah,” said the considerate Jerry. “Jes’
to-morrer evenin’, two hours by sun, whenst he ain’t needin’ it an’ ain’t
studyin’ bout’n it, ye jes’ git it, an’ ye kem an’ meet me by the sulphur
spring, an’ I kin l’arn ye them new chunes.”
Skimpy’s ridiculous attenuated shadow thumped along in front of them;
Jerry’s eyes were fixed upon it—he was too cautious to scan the boy
himself. It stumped its toe presently on a stone which Skimpy was too
much absorbed to see, and so it had to hop and limp for a while. Skimpy
said nothing, for he was wondering how it would be easiest and safest to
undertake to play the fool with that fiddle of Obadiah’s.
They were a considerable distance in advance of the others and nearing
Keedon Bluffs; the whoopings of their invisible companions, who were
hidden by the frequent turns in the road, came now and again upon the
air, arousing the latent voices of the rocks; occasionally there was only
the sound of loud indistinguishable talking, as if the powers of the
earth and the air had broken out in prosaic communion.
“Pipe up, sonny,” said the paternal Jerry, seeing that the conversation
was not likely to be resumed. “Gin us that one bout’n ‘Dig Taters;’ that
thar one air new ter me.”
To his surprise Skimpy refused. “I can’t ’pear ter git no purchase on it
hyar. Them rocks keep up sech a hollerin’.”
They trudged on in silence for a few minutes. Then said Skimpy, glancing
back over his shoulder, “I wish them boys would stir thar stumps an’
overhaul us. I hate ter be with sech a few folks arter night-fall ’roun
Keedon Bluffs,”—he shrank apprehensively from the verge.
“What fur?” demanded Jerry sharply.
“Kase,” Skimpy lowered his voice and slipped nearer to his companion,
“the folkses ’low ez thar be witches ’round hyar of a night arter it gits
cleverly dark an’ lays by day in them hollows in the Bluffs, an’ kem out
of a night ter strangle folkses.” He suddenly remembered from whom he had
heard these fables. “Ye know ’twar _you-uns_ ez war a-tellin’ me an’ Ike
’bout them witches fus’ evenin’ we ever seen ye—along this hyar road
with yer kyart an’ yer leetle gal.”
Binwell was silent for a moment. Then he began to laugh in a chuckling
way, and the Bluffs responded in muffled and sinister merriment. “’Twar
jes’ a pack o’ lies, Skimp!” he said jovially. “I jes’ done it ter skeer
that thar boy ez war along o’ you-uns—Ike Guyther. He be powerful easy
skeered, an’ I wanted ter see how he’d look! I tell ye of a night he
jes’ gathers his bones tergether an’ sets close ter the ha’th. Ef enny
witches take arter him, they’ll hev ter kem down the chimbly afore all
the fambly. Ike, he puts them witches on thar mettle ter ketch him.”
“Waal, sir!” exclaimed the candid Skimpy, “it skeered me a sight wuss’n
it did Ike. I ’lowed I’d never git home; ef I hed hed ez many feet ez a
thousand-legs I could hev fund a use fur ’em all. An’ them two I did hev
mos’ weighed a ton. Ike never ’peared ter me ter skeer a speck.”
There was no doubt in his tones. He was a friendly fellow himself, and he
looked only for fair-dealing in others.
“Waal, I never went ter skeer _you-uns_,” said Jerry in his companionable
manner. “I seen from the fust jes’ what sort’n boy you-uns war—stiddy,
an’ reliable, an’ the kind o’ feller ez a body kin put dependence in—know
jes’ whar ter find ye.”
Skimpy listened in tingling delight to this sketch—it would not have been
recognized at home. His mother might have considered it ridicule.
“I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other boy”—he was looking Skimpy
over very closely as he spoke, his eyes narrowing, his lips pursed up
in a sort of calculation—he might have seemed to be mentally measuring
Skimpy’s attenuated frame. “I jes’ wanted ter skeer that thar t’other
boy. He’s powerful mean, Ike is. He air always a-purtendin’ ter like
ennybody, an’ then a-laffin’ at ’em ahint thar backs. I didn’t know him
then, but I knowed his uncle Ab, an’ I seen the minit I clapped eyes on
him ez they war jes’ alike. An’ ez I hed a reason fur it, I skeered him.
He’s mighty cantankerous ahint ennybody’s back,” Jerry continued as he
strode on, swinging his right arm. “I hev hearn him declar’ ez that
thar old cur o’ yourn, Bose, air the bes’-lookin’ member o’ the Sawyer
fambly.” He glanced sharply at Skimpy, steadily stamping along the sandy
road.
“Waal, ye know,” said Skimpy in a high excited voice, “Bose, ye know, is
a plumb special coon-dog. An’ he’s sharp; mighty few gyard-dogs sech ez
Bose. An’ he air a shepherd too. I’ll be bound none o’ our sheep air ever
missin’ or kilt. An’ Bose sets ez much store by the baby ez enny o’ the
fambly do; he jes’ gyards that cradle; he’ll snap at me if I so much ez
kem nigh it—nobody but mam kin tech that baby arter Bose takes his stand.
An’ Bose, he kin go out an’ find our cow out’n fifty an’ fetch her home.”
Binwell had long ago perceived that he had touched the wrong chord.
Skimpy was quite content to be rated as secondary in beauty to the
all-accomplished and beloved Bose.
“I know Bose,” he admitted. “Bose is hard to beat.”
“_Yes_, sir! Yes, _sir_!” And Skimpy wagged his convinced head.
“But Ike ’lows he be ugly.”
“Shucks! I say ugly!” cried Skimpy scornfully; he was willing to be
considered no beauty himself—but _Bose_!
“An’ he ’lows he’d jes’ ez lief hear Bose howl ez you-uns sing.”
Skimpy paused, turning his astonished face up to Binwell, the moonlight
full upon its stung and indignant expression. Now Bose had never been
considered musical—not even by Skimpy. He drew the line that bounds
perfection at Bose’s dulcet utterances. He was almost incredulous at
this, despite his confiding nature.
“Why, I hev jes’ sot an’ sung fur Ike till I mighty nigh los’ my breath.”
“Ye oughter hear him mock ye, arter ye gits gone. Oh, Mister Coon! Oh,
e-aw, Mister Kyune!” mimicked Jerry in an insulting falsetto. “He ’lows
it gin him the year-ache; ye ’members how bad he had it.”
“Dellaw!” exclaimed the outdone and amazed Skimpy, stopping in the road,
his breath short, his face scarlet.
“Made me right up an’ down mad,” said Jerry. “Oh, I knowed that Ike,
minit I set eyes on him! I knowed his deceivin’ natur’. I wanted ter
skeer him away from Keedon Bluffs. I never minded you-uns. I’d jes’ ez
lief tell you-uns ez not why I wanted ter keep him off’n ’em.”
“What fur?” said Skimpy, once more trudging along.
“Waal, hyar I be whar my road turns off from yer road,” said Jerry,
pausing. He stood at the forks of the road, half in the light of the
moon, half in the shadow of the thinning overhanging foliage. The mists
were in the channel of the river, and the banks were brimming with the
lustrous pearly floods; the blue sky was clear save that the moon was
beset by purple broken clouds—all veined about with opalescent gleams.
The shadows were black in the woods; the long shafts of light, yellow and
slanting, penetrated far down the aisles, which seemed very lonely and
silent; an acorn presently fell from the chestnut oak above Binwell’s
head into the white sandy road, so unfrequented that the track of a
wagon which had passed long before would hardly be soon displaced unless
by the wind or the rain.
“I tell ye,” said Jerry, looking down into the candid upturned face
beneath the torn brim of the old white wool hat, “ye fetch Obadiah’s
fiddle ter-morrer, an hour ’fore sundown, ter the sulphur spring, an’
I’ll l’arn ye them new chunes. An’ I’ll tell ye all ’bout Ike, an’ what
he said an’ why I wanter keep sech ez him off’n them Bluffs.”
“Waal,” assented Skimpy, “I kin make out ter git the fiddle, I reckon.”
But it was with little joyous anticipation that he turned away. Ike’s
words, as reported by Binwell, rankled in his heart; it was hot and heavy
within him. He even shed a forlorn tear or two—to thus make acquaintance
with the specious delusions of friendship. It was not so much the sting
of wounded vanity, although he was sensible too of this—but that Ike
should affect to esteem him so dearly and ridicule him behind his back!
He was generous enough, however, to seek to make excuses to himself
for his friend. “I reckon,” he muttered, “it mus’ hev been arter dad
wouldn’t lemme go with Ike no mo’ an’ it riled him, an’ so he tuk ter
tongue-lashin’ me. I reckon he never thunk ez I couldn’t holp it.”
And thus he disappeared down the woodland ways, leaving Jerry Binwell
standing in the road and looking meditatively after him.
“I reckon it’s better ennyhow,” Binwell soliloquized. “Ike’s a hundred
times smarter’n him, but he air smart enuff. Bes’ not be too smart. An’
though he be ez tall ez Ike he’s a deal stringier; he’s powerful slim.
Ike ain’t much less’n me—an’ I be a deal too bulky—git stuck certain.
Skimpy’s the boy.”
He remained silent for a time, vacantly gazing down the woods. Then
suddenly he turned and betook himself homeward.