“I hate being unsociable in a railway journey; but, of course, I
couldn’t speak first. And now there’s so little time left,” she adds,
regretfully.
“Where are you going--not to Chattanooga?”
“Only to Scott’s Plains. What’s your name?”
“Horatio Higginbotham,” I have to reply, fearing she will laugh, though
the name is well known in Salem. She does not laugh at all, but smiles
divinely.
“My name is Jeanie Bruce. And that’s my sister May. Come over, and I’ll
introduce you.”
We walk across the car and Miss Jeanie says to Miss May (who, it
appears, is not asleep), “May, I want to introduce to you my friend,
Mr. Higginbotham. Mr. Higginbotham, Miss May Bruce.”
I bow to the more languid beauty, who does not rise, but smiles a twin
sister of Miss Jeanie’s smile, showing her little white teeth and
tapping her little foot in a way to make a man distracted which to look
at.
“I thought you didn’t seem to be getting on very well,” says the
recumbent May, “but now, I suppose, I can go to sleep,” and she pulls
the lace handkerchief back over her eyes, and Jeanie leads me (it is
the word) back to our seat on the other side of the car. “We are twin
sisters; and some people can’t tell one from the other. Could you?” And
she takes off her hat, pushes the soft black mass back from her brow,
and looks at me, frankly, sweetly.
“I shouldn’t want to,” I say. I think I am getting on; but she looks
at me as if puzzled, half displeased.
“May is engaged,” she answers, “and I am not. I have been, though.”
“Dear me,” I answer, heedlessly; “how old----”
“Seventeen. But I never had a gen’leman ask me such a question before.”
She is silent; I speechless. Yet I wish she would pronounce the t in
“gentleman.” She does not bear malice long, but asks “where I come
from?”
“Boston,” I say; “and _I_ am twenty-three.”
She laughs merrily, in forgiveness, with a dear, lovable, quick sense
of humor. Then she scans me curiously. “I never saw a gen’leman from
Boston before.”
“There are some there,” I answer, humbly.
“Of course we see plenty of commercial travellers,” she says, and the
conversation languishes. I look out the window, for suggestions, at the
tall mountain timber and the bearded gray moss. It suggests nothing but
partridges.
“But you have not yet told me whether you can tell us apart.”
Thus challenged, I bring my eyes to hers; there is something dazzling
about them that always makes it hard to see her face, except when she
is looking away; my eyes wander not from hers, until she does look
away--out the window--and I suddenly see something familiar in the face.
“Is there much shooting about here?” I ask, abruptly, meaning game.
“Yes, there is a terrible deal. Why, my cousin, Kirk Bruce, was only
eighteen when he shot and killed another gen’leman at school.”
“Dear me, I didn’t mean men,” I say. “I meant quail and partridges. And
I thought I had seen you yesterday with a shot-gun down in that green
bottom by the Tennessee. It might have been men, though; for your shot
whistled about the ears of my friend, Mr. Coe.”
“I wondered you didn’t remember me when you got upon the train,”
answers Jeanie. “Where is Mr. Coe?”
“He stayed behind at Sheffield,” I say. “Do you belong to the ‘Pirates
of Penzance’?”
“Mercy, no--they’re city people from Knoxville--we’ve only spent two
winters there getting our education in music.”
“Is Knoxville a musical city?”
“The advantages there are considered exceptional. We were at the
Convent of Sacré-Cœur.”
“At the convent?” I ask.
“All our best schools are the convents, you know, for us girls. At
Sacré-Cœur we have instruction from Signor Mancini. I have learned
seventeen pieces, but May knows twenty-four and two duets.”
“Sonatas?” I say. “Concertos? Chopin? Beethoven?”
Miss Bruce shakes her head. “No,” she answers, with some pride. “Our
music is _all_ operatic. Of course, I can play ‘The Monastery
Bells’ and ‘The Shepherd’s Dream;’ but now I’m learning ‘Il Trovatore.’
My sister can play a concert-piece upon ‘La Cenerentola.’”
“What else do you learn?”
“French--and dancing--and embroidery. But I suppose you are terribly
learned,” and Miss Jeanie takes a wide and searching gaze of my poor
countenance with her beautiful soft eyes.
“Not at all. I am a commercial traveller,” I say to justify my blushes.
It was malicious of me; for she looks pained.
“Nearly all _our_ young gen’lemen have got to go into business
since the war. My cousin Bruce----”
(There was an inimitable condescension in her accent of the “our.”)
“The one who shot the other boy at school? Don’t you think you have too
much of that kind of shooting?”
“As a gen’leman he had to do it--in self-defence. Of course, they were
both very _young_ gen’lemen. The other gen’leman had his revolver
out first.”
“You ought not to carry revolvers so much.”
“There! that’s just what I’ve often said. But how can you help it?”
“I help it.”
“You don’t say you haven’t so much as a pistol with you?” And her
gentle eyes are so full open that in looking into them I forget my
answer.
“Well, anyhow, it wasn’t Cousin Kirk’s fault. He didn’t have any
revolver, either, when he first went out of the house; but another
scholar he ran up and made him take one. Mother didn’t ever want him
to go to that school, anyhow; several of our family had got shot there
before by this other boy’s family. This other boy, you see, liked a
young lady Cousin Kirk was attentive to; and he sent word in to him one
day to come out of the school-house to see him. And the other young
gen’lemen in the school, they warned Cousin Kirk not to see him, as he
wasn’t armed. He’d never ought to have gone out unarmed. But he went.
And as soon as they met he shot Cousin Bruce in the right arm. And a
friend that was with him gave Cousin Bruce his pistol; and he had to
fire; and he killed him; and Cousin Bruce always says that man’s face
haunts him yet. And the mother of the young man was almost crazy; and
afterward she called at the school with a revolver, dressed in deep
mourning. And when Cousin Bruce came into the parlor he didn’t know who
she was; and she shot at him through the crape veil. But, of course,
she didn’t hit him. And Cousin Bruce always says that man’s face haunts
him yet.”
(I have endeavored to set down this conversation just as it happened.
At the time I did not know at all what to make of Miss Jeanie Bruce. I
had seen no girls like her in Salem, or even Boston. Her English was
poor, her education deficient, her manners free. On all these points
she was about on a par with the shop-girls in Lynn. But she was not at
all like a Lynn shop-girl. Had I supposed it possible for there to be
any ladies except according to the Salem and Boston standards, I should
have set her down for a lady at the time.)
Here we arrived at Decatur, where I had the pleasure of taking the two
Misses Bruce in to dinner, in a hotel built alongside of the railroad
track, as the principal street of the town. In the long dining-room
were six transverse tables, over everyone of which was a huge wooden
fan like the blade of a paddle. The six fans were connected together,
and at the back of the room a small bare-footed negro swung the entire
outfit to and fro by means of a long pole like a boat-hook; and with
a great swish! swish! disturbed in regular oscillations the clouds
of flies. Miss Jeanie took off the lace mitts at the dinner-table,
and upon one forefinger of her pretty white hand I noticed a ring--a
single band of gold setting a small ruby.
When we got back into the cars and May had gone to sleep again, I
reproached Jeanie with telling me she was not engaged. “I, too, was
going to spend this winter at Knoxville, and I had hoped to see
something of you.”
“I am not engaged,” said Miss Jeanie. “The ring was given me by a
gen’leman, but I do not care for him at all. I only promised to wear it
a few weeks, because he bothered so. I’ll tell you what,” she said, “to
show I don’t care for him and remind you to be sure and call, I’ll give
it to you.”
I was in some surprise, you may suppose. “But I can’t take a
gentleman’s ring----”
“It’s my ring, I tell you,” said Miss Jeanie. “And if you don’t take
it, I shan’t believe you’re coming to see me, and I won’t give you my
address--there!”
What could I do? I took the ring.
When I got that night to Knoxville, I wrote at once to Jerry Sullivan.
If they had spent two winters in Knoxville, he might have met them,
or, at least, known something about them.
“KNOXVILLE, June 30, 188--
“DEAR JERRY: Tell me all you know about Miss Jeanie Bruce.
“Yours,
“H. HIGGINBOTHAM.”
To which the answer came by telegram:
“H. HIGGINBOTHAM, Knoxville:
“It would take too long.
“SULLIVAN.”
3.
I HAD deferred my call upon Miss Bruce until I should receive
Sullivan’s answer to my letter; but when his telegram came I was in
a quandary. It struck me as ambiguous. And what could be the extreme
haste that made a telegram advisable? Or, perhaps, was the whole thing
only one of Jerry Sullivan’s jokes?
Meantime I was wearing Miss Jeanie Bruce’s ring. Once it struck me
that if I did not mean to call upon her, I ought to send it back. But
I did mean to call upon her. There never was any question about that,
from the first. I did not in the least approve of her, but I meant to
call upon her, if only to tell her so. Her conversation had revealed a
certain indifference to human life, but she had very soft and gentle
eyes. Like the face of the boy whom Cousin Kirk had shot, they “haunted
me yet.”
Coe noticed my ring. Oddly enough, though a foreigner, he had got into
the ways of the people quicker than I had; and I saw him looking at it
one day, though he said nothing. That is, nothing of the ring; he did
ask me whether I had been to see Miss Bruce. So I went; they boarded in
a small frame house that belonged to a Mrs. Judge Pennoyer. I suspect
it was this female justice who came to the door; it was a Monday
afternoon and the house was odorous with soup; but Miss Jeanie was
“very much engaged.” The Friday following she was out, and Wednesday I
met her walking on the principal street of Knoxville with a tall young
man.
“Try Saturday,” said Coe that evening. “I want you to ask those girls
for my trip up over the line.” During the summer, Coe had got some
rusty rails spiked upon his right of way; and now wished to invite the
youths and ladies of Tennessee to run over them in a trial trip.
That day I found Miss Jeanie alone in the parlor, almost as if awaiting
me. “I began to think you had forgotten us,” said she, softly. Dear me,
how soft her eyes were! I said that I had called there many times.
“You could scarcely expect me to let you in when another gen’leman was
here!” said she. “Especially when----” I saw her look at the ring; but
she checked herself. My afternoon calls in Salem had not so exclusively
monopolized the lady’s attention, and I looked at her, puzzled. Just
then the front door-bell rang; and I was confident I heard Mrs. Judge
Pennoyer tell someone that Miss Jeanie “was very much engaged.”
My conversation languished. I think that Miss Bruce was disappointed.
“Shall I play to you?” I saw her hesitate between “The Shepherd Boy”
and a romance of Brinley Richards; and I hastened to reply, “I would
rather talk.”-- “But you don’t talk,” cried she. “But I look.”-- “You
can look while I play.”-- “Not so well,” said I.-- “I have a new
piece--one they sent me from the convent, the Sacré-Cœur, you know,
where I was for some years. It is called the ‘Tears of Love.’ The
musical instruction of the convent was very good. Sister Ignatia had
studied in Italy. I suppose it was better than outside--don’t you?”
I had never studied in a convent, and I don’t think I made much answer,
for she went on. “Of course, you know, it is pleasanter in other ways.
One has so much more liberty. Yet the most Kentucky ladies are all
educated in convents. But I felt that I wished to see more of society.
At the Sacré-Cœur they do not allow you to receive your gen’lemen
friends except in the presence of the mother superior.”
There was a freshness, a simplicity of method in this young lady’s
playing with the boys that quite took my breath away, and to relieve
the situation I deemed it best to submit to the “Tears of Love.”
Of this piece of music I remember little, save that the composer
was continually bringing the left hand over the right to execute
unnecessary arpeggios in the treble notes. Jeanie’s girlish figure was
so round, and swayed so easily, that I thought this part of the music
very pretty.
Then I bethought myself of the object of my visit; and I invited Miss
Jeanie and Miss May, on Mr. Coe’s behalf, to make the railroad trip. A
Salem instinct made me include Mrs. Judge Pennoyer; I then saw in Miss
Bruce’s look that it had been unnecessary. Only when I got out the door
did I remember that the ring had, after all, been my main object; to
return it, I mean.
On the other side of the street, along by a low white-painted paling,
lowered a heavy, hulking fellow in a rusty black frock-coat, a
great deal of white shirt, and a black clerical tie. In this garb
I recognized the Southern University man, and in the man I had a
premonition I saw the redoubtable “Cousin Kirk.”
4.
COE was chartered by the sovereign States of Florida and
Alabama to construct his line “from that part of the Atlantic Ocean
called the Gulf of Mexico, in the former State,” to a point “at or
near” the Tennessee River in the latter. And so “a point at or near the
Tennessee River” was the first object of our journey, and this proved
as definite a designation as we could give it; though it had public
parks and corner lots and a name--on paper. Its name in reality was
“Cat Island,” the only native settlement being on a beautifully wooded
island thus called, midstream in the river.
“Wouldn’t do to call it that, you know,” said Coe, in a burst of
frankness. “Famous place for chills and fever; everybody born on Cat
Island, white or black, turns clay-color! So we thought of Bagdad--from
its resemblance to the Euphrates.”
Mrs. Judge Pennoyer had come; but so had a strange young man whose name
I found was Raoul. He devoted himself to Miss May with a simplicity
of purpose amazing to a Northern mind. Hardly anyone knew of the
expedition at Knoxville, but when we arrived at Bagdad, that spacious
plain was peopled in a way to delight the speculator. “Who are they?”
I asked of Coe, puzzled at his evident anxiety where I expected pride.
“Who are they, O Caliph of Bagdad?”
“Who are they? The Mesopotamians. Dash it,” he added, “they’ve come,
with their wives and children, for the trip.”
So, indeed, they had. Tim Healy met us as we alighted on the platform
of the old railroad station--there was, indeed, a platform, but nothing
more--and grasping Coe and me warmly by the hand, said rapidly, in
the latter’s ear, “had to invite a few of them, you know--prominent
gen’lemen of the neighborhood--valuable political influence”--and then,
aloud, “General McBride, gen’lemen. Mrs. McBride. Judge Hankinson I
think you know. Mr. Coe, I want you fo’ to know Senator Langworthy; one
of our most prominent citizens, gen’lemen, an’ I had the grea-at-est
difficulty in persuading the senator fo’ to come along. I told him,
Mr. Coe, we could show him something of a railroad already----” Coe
expressed his acknowledgments.
“Sir, it was a pleasure to study the developments of my country. It
does not need to be a citizen of Bagdad to appreciate the advantages
of your location,” and the senator waved his hand in the direction
of a rusty line of track I then first perceived winding across the
prairie from the Tennessee. “Let me introduce to you Mrs. Langworthy.”
A pale lady, with bonnet-strings untied and a baby at the breast, was
indicated by the second gesture; she looked worn and world-weary, but
I lived to learn she had an endurance of hardship Stanley might have
envied, and a relish for fried cakes and bacon in the small hours of
night that I am sure only an optimist could feel. “My partner, Mr.
Hanks. My wife’s sister, Miss McClung.”
By this time we were ready to start. A brand-new locomotive decorated
with flowers had backed down awkwardly from the new-laid track to the
junction; and we entered what Coe with some pride informed me was the
directors’ car. It contained one long saloon, two staterooms, a minute
kitchen, and a glass gallery behind.
It was amazing how we all got into it; and when we had, I counted
three babies, seven old women, and a dog, besides some twenty men.
All had brought their luncheon-baskets, and the babies (except that
appertaining unto Mrs. Senator Langworthy) were consoled with bottles.
After a prodigious deal of whistling, we were off, and Bagdad resumed
its quietude--at least, we thought so; but even then a distant shouting
was heard, and Colonel Wilkinson, his wife, and two urchin boys were
descried, hastening down the track from the direction of the Bagdad
Hotel. Judge Hankinson pulled the bell-cord and then thrust his head
out of a window and roared to the engineer. “Stop, driver, it’s Colonel
Wilkinson. How are you, colonel?” he added to that gentleman, who had
arrived, and was mopping himself with a red silk handkerchief, his wife
and offspring still some laps behind. “Almost thought you’d be left.”
“Great heavens, I wish he was!” groaned Coe in my ear.
“Never mind, the judge hasn’t brought Miss Julia,” said Tim Healy; and
this time we were really off.
I have neither time nor memory to describe that day; though it was very
funny while it lasted, perhaps all the funnier that there was no one to
share the humor of it. Everybody was great on the development of the
country, and everybody made speeches. We stopped at least twenty times
in the first fifteen miles to look at a seam of coal, or a field of
iron, or a marble quarry (suitable for the Alhambra Palace or the new
State Capitol, sir), or, at least, one of the most wonderful mineral
springs of the world--only waiting the completion of Colonel Coe’s
line of railroad to become another Saratoga. At all these places we
got off the train, and went in a long, straggling, irregular file to
inspect, Mrs. Senator Langworthy ruthlessly interrupting the repast of
her youngest-born at such moments, and leaving him upon a car-seat in
charge of the fireman. At the quarry or mineral spring the proprietor
would take his turn in making a little stump speech, standing on the
edge and gesticulating into the pool, while the rest of us stood
grouped around the margin. Meantime Miss May Bruce and Raoul would go
to walk in the woods; and we would hear the engine whistling wildly
for us to return. It was a novel interruption to a flirtation, that
railway-whistle; but everybody looked upon us amiably as we hurried
down to the track; live and let live, and take your time for happiness;
no schedule time, as at Salem.
By the hot noon we were above the river valley and winding up the folds
of fir-forest that clothed the shaggy shoulders of the mountain. Engine
No. 100 puffed and strained, and reeled up before us like a drunken
man. We had had our dinner; the sexes began to separate, and even the
Langworthy baby went to sleep. Raoul and May were riding on the engine.
I left Miss Jeanie Bruce and joined the gentlemen, who were sitting
cross-legged and contented in the smoking end of the car, from the
glass-housed platform of which we looked already back upon the great
central plain from the rising Appalachians.
“Oh, it’s a glorious country,” said “Colonel” Coe; and, I think, winked
at me.
“Why, senator,” said the judge, “I have seen a corner-lot sold at
Bagdad six times in one day, ’n a thousan’ dollars higher every time.”
“General,” said the senator, “do you know what the original purchase
of the Bagdad Land and Investment Company aggregated--for the whole
eighteen hundred acres?”
There was a silence. Everybody looked at me. It dawned upon me that I
was the “general,” and I wondered why I ranked poor Coe.
“I’ve no idea,” I hastened to add; fearing the senator had followed
Coe’s wink.
“Thirty thousand dollars,” answered General McBride, as if it were a
game of “School-teacher.” “And they sold three hundred acres for----”
“Fifteen hundred thousand dollars,” resumed Judge Hankinson, with
intense solemnity.
“Paper?” said Tim Healy.
“Cash, Captain Healy,” said the judge, fiercely, “cash.”
“I want to know!--Was that the lot you bought of Widow Enraghty, judge?”
A roar of laughter greeted Tim’s answer. People tipped back their
chairs, slapping their thighs; the Langworthy baby woke up and cried,
and even the judge screwed up his whiskey-softened old face in vain.
“Tell us about it, judge,” said Raoul, who had come back from the
engine and was peering over our shoulders. “I’m a young lawyer, and I
want to know these tricks.”
“Young man,” said the judge, “I’ll _tell_ you, and let it be a
warning to you when you’re married, to be honest and say so” (Raoul
blushed violently). “The fact was, I had been acquainted with the widow
Enraghty more than fifty years--her husband had got killed in the
forties, an’ she was sixty-five if she was a day, and she owned that
valuable corner lot opposite the new Court-house and by the building
of the Board of Trade.” (“Not built yet,” whispered Coe to me.) “I’d
been dickering with her for weeks; but I stood at four thousand, and
she wanted five. Now I rode up that morning (it was a fine day; warm
and spring-like, and I felt rather sanguine) and I said, ‘What’s
your price, Mrs. Enraghty, to-day?’ ‘Six thousand,’ said she. This
raise made me kind o’ nervous, an’ I got rash. ‘I’ll give you three
thousand,’ said I, ‘cash.’ ‘Here’s your deed,’ says Widow Enraghty.
And I declare she had it all ready. I looked at it carefully; it seemed
all right, and I paid her the money. I kinder noticed there was a young
fellow sittin’ in the room. Well, sir!”
“Well, judge?” The judge’s manner grew impressive.
“Next week that young fellow--Bill Pepper he was, an’ he was just
twenty-one--he brought an ejectment against me. _She had married him
that morning._ So Bill Pepper kep’ the land, and Mrs. Pepper kep’
the money.”
In the laughter that followed I became conscious of Raoul pinching
my arm mysteriously. “I want a word with you in private,” said he.
“Would you mind coming out upon the cow-catcher? It’s been railed off
on purpose for observation,” he added, answering my look of amazement,
“and it’s a first-rate place to see the cobweb trestle from. It’s
something about the young ladies,” he added, seeing that I still
hesitated, “and there’s really no other place.”
I looked through the car, but perceived the ladies were sitting in
earnest conclave. On the front platform Mrs. Langworthy and the baby
were taking the air. In the cab of the engine were the two girls. I
suppose I made a gesture of assent, for Raoul nodded to the engineer,
who slowed to a halt that almost threw the Langworthy’s domestic group
into the bed of a brawling mountain stream some three hundred feet
below.
“These gen’lemen want to ride on the pilot,” shouted the engineer in
explanation; and we took our way to that exalted perch, where, sitting
cross-legged and with hands nervously gripping the rail, I listened to
Raoul’s story.
The Misses Bruce, he said, were wild not to go back that day with the
railroad party, but to drive to the end of the location through the
woods.
“Great Heavens!” said I, “but only Coe and I are going, with Captain
Healy. There is nothing but tents----”
“The ladies are used to camping out.”
“But it will be so rough--there are two thousand niggers in camp!”
“The ladies are not afraid.”
I certainly was; for just then, with a preliminary corkscrew-like
lurch, the engine began climbing the famous cobweb trestle; the earth
suddenly vanished beneath us and we looked down through a lath-like
tracery of wooden girders to the foaming stream, now four hundred feet
below. I heard a cry behind, and looking timidly around, I saw the pale
face of Jeanie at one engine-window and of May Bruce at the other.
“But--but there is no chaperone,” I gasped.
“Mrs. Judge Pennoyer has agreed to come,” answered Mr. Raoul, sweetly.
5.
THE end of our journey lay upon the very summit of the mountain
ridge; twenty leagues of forest all around. Here, with the
sweep of his gesture to the westering sun, Judge Hankinson made the
great speech of the day. I remember little about it save that he
likened Coe to Icarus, referred to me (General Higginbotham) as one of
the merchant princes of the Orient, and to Tim Healy as some mighty
magician “spinning his iron spell o’er mountain and o’er sea.” The
rusty iron rails stopped abruptly in a field of stumps; beyond and
below us stretched “the right of way.” Only a broad swath cut through
the forest, the trees heaped where they fell, like jack-straws. At the
edge of the clearing stood a three-seated wagon and a pair of mules.
Everyone took very simply to the proposition that we were not
returning; and after all the speech-making was over and all the
whiskey drunk, the train, with prolonged and reiterated tooting, began
backing slowly down the mountain toward civilization again.
“Isn’t this delightful?” said Miss Jeanie. Tim Healy sniffed.
I had made it all right with Coe; but Healy still looked at the
proceeding askance.
“Last time I rode through this yer wood I had the pay-chest with me;
and two bullets went through my hat. And last week they killed the
United States mail and Jim, the storekeeper of Section Fourteen.”
I considered this to be a story for tender-feet, so I mildly hinted
that “they” would not attack so large a party.
“Won’t they, though? The only double mule team as ever goes through yer
is the month’s pay, an’ hit’s jest due this Saturday.”
“Who is ‘they’?” said I.
“Moonshiners. But they’re all on ’em up to it. Hope you’ve got your
shooters?”
By this time we had started, and were driving through the twilight
of the forest over a trail hardly perceptible where the wood grew
scantier.
“Not I,” said I, “I never carry them.”
“Nor I,” said Coe, “I left ’em on the bureau at home.”
“All right,” said Tim, gloomily. “But most fellers like a shot of their
own afore they turn their toes up.”
Miss Jeanie produced a small, pearl-handled, silver-mounted revolver,
and begged me to borrow it. Miss May handed the mate of it to Coe; and
young Raoul displayed a formidable pair of Smith & Wesson’s, where he
was sitting with her on the back seat.
“All right,” said Tim, somewhat mollified. “But the wood’s chock full
of chickers all the same.”
At this the ladies appeared really so terrified that I asked what
“chickers” were, and discovered them to be a kind of insect.
“I’ve got my pennyr’yle,” said Mrs. Judge Pennoyer, who was a woman of
resource.
What a drive it was! We lost our way; and the girls sang. Tim swore,
Mrs. Judge Pennoyer laughed, and May and Jeanie sang all the sweeter.
Tim Healy thought he saw twenty moonshiners and emptied his revolver
at one of them; a charred stump it proved to be. We passed one hut in
a clearing, and were refreshed by veritable whiskey; _i.e._,
“pine-top” whiskey, milky-white in color, and said to be made out of
the cones of pines. We found the trail once more and the stars came
out, and the nightingales sang, and May Bruce and young Raoul became
more silent. At last we saw, upon a hillside in the forest, the burning
pitch-pine torches of the great construction “camp.” Hundreds of black
forms surrounded these ruddy fires; from some of the groups came sounds
of banjos and negroes singing; and I looked suddenly up and saw the
starlight reflected in Miss Jeanie’s eyes.
There was only one tent in the camp with “sides” to it--_i.e._,
perpendicular flaps making walls below the roof, and that, of course,
was sacred to the ladies. We lay beneath a mere =V=-shaped canvas
roof, which was stretched downward so as to end some three feet from
the ground, our heads in a heap of pillows, and our legs all radiating
outward, like a starfish, to terminate in thirty booted feet. Under the
canvas back I could see the starlight, and there I lay awake some time
regarding it, which now seemed to bear some reflection of Miss Jeanie’s
eyes. Next thing came the sun and opened mine by shining into them;
then closed them up again, and I rolled into the canvas-shade, and up,
and out of doors, and followed Coe and Healy to the “branch” below. Big
Bear Creek it was, of a rich red-chocolate color, fit, perhaps, to wash
a Chinaman who could not see. Yet Coe took a plunge, and looked up,
white enough.
“Come in,” he shouted to us, who were hesitating, “it doesn’t come off.”
The negroes had been sleeping all over the place, tentless; and now
they were pulling themselves together, in groups, and starting for
the railroad, or rather where the railroad was to be. On the way they
stopped at the commissaries’ to get their breakfast, standing in long
rows before the counter, waiting their turn. The commissaries’ stores
were the only wooden buildings in camp; well walled and bolted, too, as
they had to be, said Tim Healy, to withstand the attacks of a riotous
Saturday night. Four men, he said, were always in them armed; and on
Saturday nights, pay-night, they would often empty a revolver or two
into the crowd and perhaps “drop” a nigger, before it ceased to besiege
their doors for fruit or whiskey.
Then we all went to breakfast, the Misses Bruce both fresh as dewy
wood-flowers, and Mrs. Judge Pennoyer radiating amiability. Only the
head commissary and the section contractor were thought of sufficient
social importance to breakfast with us, and the former from his stores
brought many delicacies in cans and bottles. Then after breakfast we
went to walk--the ladies with sunshades and gloves--upon the location;
a broad swath cut through the rolling forest and undulating far as the
eye could reach in either direction, dotted with men and mules. Ahead,
they were still blowing out stumps with gunpowder and dragging them
away; where we stood was being built an embankment of gravel; and they
were dragging out gravel from the “cut” ahead and heaping it upon the
long mound. I gave my hand to Miss Jeanie and helped her up. Each black
negro worked with a splendid mule; seventeen or eighteen hands high
perhaps, dragging a curious sort of drag-spade, which the mule knew
how to catch in the gravel, turn out full, drag the load evenly along,
and then tip it out adroitly at the precise spot, a foot in front of
the last dump; the negro hardly doing more than standing by to see
the mule kept working; not, of course, working himself. Thus each
man-laborer became an overseer, if only to a mule.
“The mule’s the finer animal of the two,” said Coe, “and much the more
moral.”
“But he’s got no vote,” grunted Jim. “Ef we didn’t keep them black
Mississippi niggers up here off’m the farms, they’d swamp us all.”
“Are they allowed to bring their wives to camp with them?” queried Miss
Jeanie, softly; and, following her glance, we saw several coal-black
damsels sitting in the warm sand-bank at the side of the cut, their
finery about them, and evidently established there for the morning,
basking in the sun.
“Oh, yes, they bring up their wives,” said Healy, reluctantly. “If we
didn’t, they’d run away every two or three days. Nothing a contractor
dislikes so much as irregular labor.”
“But it shows they have some good in them to be so devoted,” said Miss
Jeanie.
“We don’t all of us have emotions stronger than money-getting,” added I.
“I don’t know about emotions,” said Tim. “There’s forty of their
wives and eighteen hundred niggers, and every Saturday night they
has a fight an’ a batch on ’em gets killed, an’ I know it’s terrible
expensive on labor. Most as bad as moonshine.”
“Have you got King Kelly, yet?” said Coe, in an undertone.
“Hush!” hissed Captain Healy, dramatically. Just then I noticed a file
of peculiarly idle negroes sauntering down the “right of way;” they had
passed us once or twice before, and appeared to have no occupation.
“See anythin’ peculiar about them niggers?”
“They are very lazy,” said Coe.
“They look like minstrels,” said Miss Jeanie.
“By gracious!” cried Healy, slapping his thigh, “if she hasn’t hit it!”
We looked at him inquiringly; he dropped his voice to a stage whisper.
“Come up here,” and he started, dragging Mrs. Judge Pennoyer by one
hand up the new gravel slope beside the line. Raoul followed, with Miss
May; he had been very silent that morning; and I with Miss Jeanie. Her
little foot was buried at once in the sliding gravel, over the dainty
low shoe; I wanted to carry her up, had only propriety sanctioned it.
At the top, Healy swept the horizon as if for spies; then bending over
us, all in a close group, he said:
“Them ain’t real niggers--them’s United States revenue officers from
New Orleans, under General McBride.”
“General McBride?”
“He’s in hidin’ in my hut. He wouldn’t black up. But them
deputy-marshals thought it was a spree. We had to do it. Every Saturday
the niggers are paid off--one dollar and fifty cents a day, nigh on to
ten dollars apiece--an’ then King Kelly he’d come down from his stills
in the mountain, with his men loaded with casks o’ pine-top, warranted
to kill--an’ by sundown eighteen hundred niggers would be blind-drunk,
an’ fit for shootin’. On last Sunday we lost sixty-two hands. An’ the
head contractor, he swore nigh to lift yer ha’r off.”
“Sixty-two men killed?” cried Jeanie, in horror.
“Some killed, some wounded; but it tells on the contract just the same.
Why, you could have heared ’em poppin’ all over camp.”
The Higginbothams had always been abolitionists; and I felt my
ancestors turn in their complacent graves.
“Expect to get Kelly this time?” said Coe.
“Dunno, we’ll see at twelve o’clock, when they’re paid off. It’ll be
quite a thing to see, all the same. But the ladies had better stay in
their tent. An’ it’s eleven now, so I reckon we’ll go back to camp.
See, there go the marshals.”
When we got back to camp Raoul received a telegram. He read it hastily,
and crumpled it into his pocket; but, I thought, looked troubled.
Jeanie and I wandered down by the brook side before dinner, and
afterward Raoul, Healy, Coe, and I sallied forth to “see the fun.” We
were let into the chief commissary’s hut, the front of which, above a
strong wooden bar, was open; and before it a great crowd of negroes,
singing and dancing, and a hundred others, in a long queue, waiting for
their pay. “You kin lie down on the floor ef they git to shootin’,”
said General McBride, whom we found there smoking placidly in a
cane-seated chair. “Those revolvers won’t carry through the boards.”
It was a curious spectacle, that line of coal-black, stalwart, “swamp”
negroes; and then to watch the first human expression--in their
case greed--impress their stolid features as they took their pay.
Among the crowd we noticed many bearded, well-armed, flannel-shirted
mountaineers; these we took to be the moonshiners; and near each one,
but loitering as if to avoid attention, one of the made-up negroes; to
us now obviously factitious. It was a wonder the moonshiners did not
find them out, but that they were intent on other things.
“See, that’s King Kelly,” whispered General McBride. “That big fellow
there with the slouched hat and rifle.” Having said this, I was
surprised to hear him, when the last man had been paid off, get up and
make a speech to the navvies, in which he congratulated them that the
camp had at last been freed from that great pest, Kelly; and urged them
to save their money and be abstemious. “I am General McBride, of New
Orleans----”
“Three cheers for Gineral McBride, of New Orleans!” cried a big mulatto
opposite, I thought at a sign from Healy. They were given, not very
heartily.
“And I’ve come up to see those poisoners keep away.”
I had seen the man he said was Kelly start and look about him, as if
for other enemies; then he stood still nervously, and fidgetted at his
gun. Meanwhile the General made quite a speech, apparently thinking the
opportunity too good a one to remain unimproved. He took every occasion
to heap obloquy upon the head of Kelly, king of the moonshiners; and
concluded by lamenting that that “poor white trash” would not dare to
show his head in camp while even he, McBride, was there alone.
“Look yar,” shouted Kelly, striding up to the bar of the tent when he
had got through, “I’m the man you call King Kelly; an’ I’ve got four
stills a-runnin’ within a bit an’ a screech of this yer camp; an’ I
kin tell yer it’s deuced lucky yer white-faced, biled-shirted revenue
officers stayed down to New Orleans.”
“And I,” said another, “I own a still myself; an’ it ain’t goin’ ter
stop up fur no United States Government--though we’re mighty glad to
see the Gineral, ez he comes here sociable and pleasant like.”
“And I,” “and I,” “and I;” and three more strode forward, and I noticed
a pair of pseudo darkies get behind each one as he moved.
“What’ll yer take ter drink, Gineral?” said Kelly. Quick as a flash,
every man had four stout arms about his neck, choking him, and the
handcuffs on his wrists. Not a shot was fired; and Kelly and his gang
were safely immured in an improvised guardhouse. The General sank back
upon his cane-seated chair.
“A pretty job, gentlemen,” said he. “What _will_ you take to
drink? None of their pine-top, though,” he added, with a laugh. “Yet, I
don’t know as you can hardly blame ’em--corn’s mighty scarce up here.”
“May I trouble you, sir, with a few words in private?” The voice was
serious, but familiar, and appertained to Mr. Hampton Raoul.
6.
“I HAVE appealed to you, sir,” said Raoul, when we had abandoned
the still quiet camp for the solitude of the forest, “to demand
that which every gentleman has the right to ask of every other.”
I feared the man had some notion of a duel, and his next words did not
tend to relieve me. “I have long loved Miss Bruce.”
I must have appeared disquieted, for he hastened to add, “Miss May
Bruce, I mean. But until yesterday I did not know my love was returned.
We have now resolved on being married.”
I expressed my congratulations, but intimated that I did not yet see
how my aid was necessary.
“We have resolved to make our bridal journey to the White Sulphur
Springs, in Virginia. We shall be married upon arrival there, and I
should esteem it a favor initial of a life-long friendship if you,
sir, would consent to be best man. Moreover, your escort may prove
necessary to Miss Jeanie to return.”
My escort! to Miss Jeanie! I was to travel with her four hundred
miles--meantime her sister philandering with this young man--perhaps
make a visit at a fashionable watering-place--give away her sister
in matrimony--and then make the principal bridesmaid companion of my
journey home! And this young Huguenot, _pour sauver la situation_,
called me her escort. I looked at Raoul; his attitude was impassive
and his manner still courteous; but evidently he thought there was
something unchivalric even in my hesitation.
“I--has Miss Jeanie Bruce,” I hazarded, “yet been told of your plans?”
“Of course--and she approves them. She can hardly invite you herself
to join her party; it might look forward, as you and she, necessarily,
will be left much to yourselves.”
Absent-mindedly I twirled the ring on my finger, still there, that she
had given me. Evidently, as a gentleman, in the eyes of him, of her,
and of her sister, there was nothing else for me to do. “I must see
Miss Bruce herself,” I gasped.
“Certainly,” said Raoul. “I had reckoned, sir, that such would be your
course. I will meet you in front of the commissary’s tent at three. We
start at four.” He stalked off, and left me under the live-oak tree.
It was two o’clock. I felt that I must see Miss Jeanie at once. Nothing
could exceed the good-breeding of her greeting; but she evidently
expected me to go. The calm of her gentle voice told me so. I found the
two beautiful young girls in afternoon toilette of white muslin, half
reclining under their open tent, fanning themselves. I think I would
not have been so much in doubt had not Jeanie been so very pretty.
Then, how hazard, in the presence of her sister, and of her own soft
eyes, the fear that she might be committing an impropriety?
And it was with the greatest difficulty and an acute sense of my own
brutality, that I did so. I began by congratulating Miss May, which
evoked a lovable blush. “You know we have to start after dark and
drive twenty miles to-night,” said she, “to a station on the Georgia
road--we cannot return the same way; Mr. Raoul has some reason.”
“Do you think that we four ought to go off--ought to go off just like
that?”
Miss Bruce looked at me, amazed. Jeanie tried to help her. “Do you not
have wedding-journeys in the North?”
“Alone, I mean,” I ended, desperately.
“Alone? Mrs. Judge Pennoyer is going.”
Mrs. Judge Pennoyer had all the elements of a true sport; and I went
back to Raoul--(having had a long walk down the brook with Jeanie; her
happiness in her sister’s prospects was quite charming)--an hour after
the time fixed, less decided--I think there is some adventurous blood
in the Higginbothams--and found the camp in a state of wild tumult.
Raoul met me nervously.
“General McBride paroled Kelly and his gang,” said he, “and the
moonshiners have come back from the mountains a hundred strong, and
given the revenue officers twenty minutes to leave for New Orleans.”
“And are they going?” said I.
“They calculate, sir, to go,” answered Raoul, gravely. “The mule team
will take them back to the head of the line, and there we have wired
for a special to carry them back to Bagdad. I have decided it is best
for us to go with them. The special train simplifies matters. I trust
you have come to a decision?”
“I--I do not know,” said I.
“We certainly cannot leave them here in camp. Every nigger in it
will be blind drunk before midnight, and they are fortifying the
commissary’s store.”
“What on earth did McBride mean by paroling those ruffians,” I sighed.
“It was beginning to be so pleasant.”
“It was an error of judgment. But it will be equally pleasant at White
Sulphur.”
As we talked we had returned to the centre of the camp. There we found
a picturesque scene. McBride and his men were seated in the glade of
the live-oak forest, no longer disguised; around them stood or lounged
some forty bearded mountaineers, all provided with long rifles. General
McBride was sitting with King Kelly himself, amicably drinking his own
“pine-top;” as we approached he rose to meet us and handed a telegram
to Raoul, who cast his eyes over it and gave it to me, with the remark
that it might assist my decision. It read:
“If cousins Miss Bruce are with you, detain them and escorts. Will
wire parental authority to-morrow.
“KIRK BRUCE.”
“I feel bound, sir, to ask you your intentions,” said McBride to Raoul.
“Miss May Bruce and I are to be married, sir.”
“In that case, sir,” said the General, “in the absence of parental
authority I cannot, of course, interfere. Permit me to congratulate
you.” They shook hands.
“And this Northern gentleman?”
“Goes with me, of course. And Mrs. Judge Pennoyer.”
“A most estimable lady. I knew her as a girl.”
“We thought of returning on your special.”
“An excellent idea. Particularly as I have an idea Mr. Bruce may pass
us on Number Two. But stop--we have unluckily only one mule-team.”
“Is there no room?” I asked. For I, myself, was beginning to see the
necessity of getting away--to White Sulphur or to Salem.
“Room enough--but you must remember we have nigh twenty miles through
the woods. These gentlemen--” and the General waved his hand at the
surrounding moonshiners--“will naturally take a few shots at us.”
We looked at one another in perplexity. The colloquy was interrupted
by the appearance of Jeanie and May, in travelling dress again, but
looking very charming, and Mrs. Judge Pennoyer. To her the situation
was rapidly explained.
I have before remarked that Mrs. Pennoyer was a true sport. She rose
immediately to the occasion, and desired to be introduced to King Kelly.
“Colonel Kelly,” said she, “these young ladies are travelling under my
protection. One of them is engaged to be married to Mr. Raoul, and they
are desirous of going to White Sulphur on their wedding journey. As
there is only one wagon they must return with General McBride’s party.
I trust the journey will be perfectly safe.”
Kelly scratched his head. “I can answer, of course, for these gentlemen
here,” said he, “but some of my friends are out’n the mountain, and
it may be difficult to notify them of the sitooation. Let me see your
team,” he added, as if a bright idea struck him.
The General and Kelly walked off in the direction of the wagon. The
ladies followed. Raoul, Healy, Coe, and I followed the ladies. The
undisguised United States marshals followed us, and the moonshiners
followed the marshals. It was a large wagon with high wooden sides,
bound with iron, and was used for bringing supplies to camp. A team of
six of the biggest mules--some fully eighteen hands high--was already
being harnessed to it.
“Reckon you can fix the ladies safely,” said Kelly. “We are good shots
on the mountain,” he added, significantly, to McBride.
“I see your idea,” said the General. “Bring some straw.”
The straw was brought and filled the bottom of the wagon. Upon this
sat the three ladies. McBride, Coe, and Healy went on the high front
seat; Raoul and I sat on the tail-board looking out behind; and the
eight revenue officers disposed themselves, four on each side, sitting
on the side-board with their legs hanging over. They had nothing but
six-shooters, which, however, they displayed with some ostentation.
“Colonel Kelly,” said Raoul, slipping down after he had taken his seat,
“lend me one of your rifles--I want it very particularly” (I heard him
add the name of “Kirk Bruce,” in the ear of that chief of moonshiners),
“and I’ll send it back in Number Four to-morrow.”
“By G-- you shall have it, sir.” And Kelly gave him his own. “I like
your spunk, sir; an’ if you’n Mrs. Raoul will come back here without
them darned biled-shirted gov’en’m’nt men, I’ll give you a real good
time.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” said Raoul. “Good-by--and fire high.”
We departed amid quite a cheer; lumbering out of the picturesque great
camp some two hours before sunset, and as we passed the negroes’
quarters, heard already sounds of revelry beginning. We felt the girls
were fairly safe between the double rampart of men. Still, the General
thought they had perhaps better not sing (which they were fond of
doing), so the long ride was rather silent. Raoul lay leaning back,
talking in whispers with May Bruce, and I was left to do the same with
Jeanie. Coming to the last long hill before the end of the line, one
or two shots were fired; but they whistled in the tree-tops far above
our heads. We found the “special” waiting for us, got into the one
“directors’ car,” and started safely.
But when we got to the siding at Bear Creek, Raoul asked the conductor
which train had the right of way. Learning that the special had,
he beckoned to me, and, taking his rifle, went out upon the rear
platform. I followed, wondering. Our train was running rather fast, the
engine having suddenly started up after Raoul’s conversation with the
conductor; I presume to him also Raoul had explained “the sitooation.”
At Bear Creek the regular up-train stood side-tracked waiting for us.
We rattled by, and on its rear platform, in the moonlight, I saw a tall
frock-coated figure standing. I had hardly recognized it to be Kirk
Bruce when Raoul threw up his rifle, and I saw a flash of fire from
the platform of the side-tracked Mr. Bruce. The reports were quite
simultaneous; but neither was hurt, for I saw Bruce leaning his head
out of the shadow of the platform to look at us, while Raoul remarked,
as we went back into the car, now jumping wildly on the down grade:
“He knew I was yere, and I knew he was thar. You’d hardly see worse
rifle-practice in the North.”
There was a tinge of disgust in his voice, and he went out to smoke on
the engine.
“Was it Cousin Kirk?” said May to me, breathlessly.