TIOBA
AND OTHER TALES
By Arthur Colton
With a Frontispiece by A. B. Frost
New York
Henry Holt And Company
1903
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DEDICATED TO
A. G. BRINSMADE
TIOBA
FROM among the birches and pines, where we pitched our moving tent, you
looked over the flat meadow-lands; and through these went a river,
slow and almost noiseless, wandering in the valley as if there were
no necessity of arriving anywhere at appointed times. “What is the
necessity?” it said softly to any that would listen. And there was none;
so that for many days the white tent stood among the trees, overlooking
the haycocks in the meadows. It was enough business in hand to study the
philosophy and the subtle rhetoric of Still River.
Opposite rose a strangely ruined mountain-side. There was a nobly-poised
head and plenteous chest, the head three thousand feet nearer the
stars--which was little enough from their point of view, no doubt, but
to us it seemed a symbol of something higher than the stars, something
beyond them forever waiting and watching.
From its feet upward half a mile the mountain was one raw wound. The
shivered roots and tree-trunks stuck out helplessly from reddish soil,
boulders were crushed and piled in angry heaps, veins of granite ripped
open--the skin and flesh of the mountain tom off with a curse, and the
bones made a mockery. The wall of the precipice rose far above this
desolation, and, beyond, the hazy forests went up a mile or more clear
to the sky-line. The peak stood over all, not with triumph or with
shame, but with the clouds and stars.
It was a cloudy day, with rifts of sunlight. An acre of light crept
down the mountain: so you have seen, on the river-boats at night, the
search-light feeling, fingering along the shore.
In the evening an Arcadian, an elderly man and garrulous, came up to see
what it might be that glimmered among his pulp-trees. He was a surprise,
and not as Arcadian as at first one might presume, for he sold milk and
eggs and blueberries at a price to make one suddenly rich. His name was
Fargus, and he it was whose hay-cutter clicked like a locust all day
in the meadow-lands. He came and made himself amiable beside us, and
confided anything we might care to know which experience had left with
him.
“That's Tioba,” he said. “That's the name of that mountain.” And he
told us the story of one whom he called “Jim Hawks,” and of the fall of
Tioba.
She's a skinned mountain [he said]. She got wet inside and slid. Still
River used to run ten rods further in, and there was a cemetery,
too, and Jim Hawks's place; and the cemetery's there yet, six rods
underground, but the creek shied off and went through my plough-land
scandalous.
Now, Jim Hawks was a get-there kind, with a clawed face--by a wildcat,
yes, sir. Tioba got there; and Jim he was a wicked one. I've been
forty years in this valley, with the Petersons and the Storrses and the
Merimys at Canada Center, all good, quiet folk. And nothing happened to
us, for we did nothing to blame, till Jim came, and Tioba ups and drops
on him.
Now look at it, this valley! There've been landslides over beyond in
Helder's valley, but there's only one in mine. Looks as if the devil
gone spit on it. It's Jim Hawks's trail.
He come one day with a buckboard and a yellow horse, and he says:
“Sell me that land from here up the mountain.”
“Who be you?” says I.
“Jim Hawks,” says he, and that's all he appeared to know about it. And
he bought the land, and put up a house close to the mountain, so you
could throw a cat down his chimney if you wanted to, or two cats if you
had 'em.
He was a long, swing-shouldered man, with a light-colored mustache and a
kind of flat gray eye that you couldn't see into. You look into a man's
eye naturally to see what his intentions are. Well, Jim Hawks's eye
appeared to have nothing to say on the subject. And as to that, I told
my wife it was none of our business if he didn't bring into the valley
anything but his name and a bit of money sufficient.
He got his face clawed by a wildcat by being reckless with it; and he
ran a deer into Helder's back yard once and shot it, and licked Helder
for claiming the deer. He was the recklessest chap! He swings his fist
into Helder's face, and he says:
“Shoot, if you got a gun. If you hain't, get out!”
I told Jim that was no place to put a house, on account of Tioba
dropping rocks off herself whenever it rained hard and the soil got
mushy. I told him Tioba'd as soon drop a rock on his head as into his
gridiron.
You can't see Canada Center from here. There's a post-office there, and
three houses, the Petersons', the Storrses' and the Merimys'. Merimy's
house got a peaked roof on it. I see Jeaney Merimy climb it after her
kitten a-yowling on the ridge. She wasn't but six years old then, and
she was gritty the day she was born. Her mother--she's old Peterson's
daughter--she whooped, and I fetched Jeaney down with Peterson's ladder.
Jeaney Merimy grew up, and she was a tidy little thing. The Storrs boys
calculated to marry her, one of 'em, only they weren't enterprising; and
Jeaney ups and goes over to Eastport one day with Jim Hawks--cuts out
early in the morning, and asks nobody. Pretty goings on in this valley!
Then they come back when they were ready, and Jim says:
“What you got to say about it, Merimy?”
Merimy hadn't nothing to say about it, nor his wife hadn't nothing
to say, nor Peterson, nor the Storrs boys. Dog-gone it! Nobody hadn't
nothing to say; that is, they didn't say it to Jim.
That was five years ago, the spring they put up the Redman Hotel at
Helder's. People's come into these parts now thicker'n bugs. They have
a band that plays music at the Redman Hotel. But in my time I've seen
sights. The bears used to scoop my chickens. You could hear wildcats
'most any night crying in the brush. I see a black bear come down
Jumping Brook over there, slapping his toes in the water and grunting
like a pig. Me, I was ploughing for buckwheat.
Jeaney Merimy went over to Eastport with her hair in a braid, and came
back with it put up like a crow's nest on top of her head. She was a
nice-looking girl, Jeaney, and born gritty, and it didn't do her any
good.
I says to Jim: “Now, you're always looking for fighting,” says I. “Now,
me, I'm for peaceable doings. If you're looking for fighting any time,
you start in beyond me.
“You!” says Jim. “I'd as soon scrap with a haystack.”
I do know how it would be, doing with a haystack that way, but you take
it from Jim's point of view, and you see it wouldn't be what he'd care
for; and you take it from my point of view, and you see I didn't poke
into Jim's business. That's natural good sense. Only I'm free to say
he was a wicked one, 'stilling whiskey on the back side of Tioba, and
filling up the Storrs boys with it, and them gone to the devil off East
where the railroads are. And laying Peterson to his front door, drunk.
My, he didn't know any more'n his front door! “He's my grandfather,”
says Jim. “That's the humor of it”--meaning he was Jeaney's grandfather.
And mixing the singularest drinks, and putting 'em into an old man named
Fargus, as ought to known better. My wife she said so, and she knew. I
do' know what Jeaney Merimy thought, but I had my point of view on that.
Jim got drunk himself on and off, and went wilder'n a wildcat, and
slid over the mountains the Lord knows where. Pretty goings on in this
valley!
This is a good climate if you add it all up and take the average. But
sometimes it won't rain till you're gray waiting for it, and sometimes
it will snow so the only way to get home is to stay inside, and
sometimes it will rain like the bottom fallen out of a tub. The way of
it is that when you've lived with it forty years you know how to add up
and take the average.
That summer Tioba kept her head out of sight from June to September
mainly. She kept it done up in cotton, as you might say, and she leaked
in her joints surprising. She's a queer mountain that way. Every now and
then she busts out a spring and dribbles down into Still River from a
new place.
In September they were all dark days and drizzly nights, and there was
often the two sounds of the wind on Tioba that you hear on a bad night.
One of 'em is a kind of steady grumble and hiss that's made with the
pine-needles and maybe the tons of leaves shaking and falling. The other
is the toot of the wind in the gullies on edges of rock. But if you
stand in the open on a bad night and listen, you'd think Tioba was
talking to you. Maybe she is.
It come along the middle of September, and it was a bad night, drizzly,
and Tioba talking double. I went over to the Hawkses' place early to
borrow lantern-oil, and I saw Jeaney Merimy sitting over the fire
alone, and the wind singing in the chimney. “Jim hasn't come,” she says,
speaking quiet; and she gets me the lantern-oil. After, when I went
away, she didn't seem to notice; and what with the wind in the chimney,
and Jeaney sitting alone with her big black eyes staring, and Tioba
talking double, and the rain drizzling, and the night falling, I felt
queer enough to expect a ghost to be standing at my gate. And I came
along the road, and there _was_ one!
Yes, sir; she was a woman in a gray, wet cloak, standing at my gate, and
a horse and buggy in the middle of the road.
“'Mighty!” says I, and drops my oil-can smack in the mud.
“Does Mr. Hawks live here?” she says, seeing me standing like a tomfool
in the mud.
“No, ma'am,” says I. “That's his place across the flat half a mile. He
ain't at home, but his wife is.”
The wind blew her cloak around her sharp, and I could see her face,
though it was more or less dark. She was some big and tall, and her face
was white and wet with the rain. After a while she says:
“He's married?”
“Yes, ma'am. You'd better not--'Mighty, ma'am!” says I, “where you
going?”
She swung herself into the buggy quicker'n women are apt to do, and she
whops the horse around and hits him a lick, and off he goes, splashing
and galloping. Me, I was beat. But I got so far as to think if she
wasn't a ghost, maybe Jim Hawks would as lief she would be, and if
she didn't drive more careful she'd be liable to oblige him that way.
Because it stands to reason a woman don't come looking for a man on a
bad night, and cut away like that, unless she has something uncommon
on her mind. I heard the buggy-wheels and the splash of the horse dying
away; and then there was nothing in the night but the drip of the rain
and Tioba talking double--_um-hiss, toot-toot._
Then I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she
disliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste,
but affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed,
and I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world
than common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off
there beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba
groaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking
for Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night,
I'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there
wouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had
the extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she
had come back and was driving _splish-splash_ around my house, though it
was only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she
went round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came
so close to the front door I thought she'd come through it--_bang!_
Then somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went
slap under the table, and I says, “Come in,” though I'd rather it would
have stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. “'Mighty!” says I. “I thought
you was a horse and buggy.”
He picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to
dry off.
“Horse and buggy?” says he. “Looking for me?”
I just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it.
“Saw 'em in Eastport,” says he. “I suppose she's over there”--meaning
his place. “Gone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known
she wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet
on that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she
wouldn't do either of 'em.”
“Well,” says I, “speaking generally, what might she want of you?”
Jim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way.
“Now, look at it, Fargus,” he says. “It ain't reasonable. Now, she and
me, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom
Cheever, and Tom and I didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not
but that he got well again--that is, partly. And she appeared to have
different ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of
me, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come
back and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she
acts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way
myself.” And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire.
“I don't see either end of it,” says I. “You're a bad one, Jim, a
downright bad one.”
“That's so. It's Jeaney you mean,” he says, looking kind of interested.
“It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?”
The wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear
each other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know
how to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something
whimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.
My opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and
that's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might
be the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which
seemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see
rightly what it would mean if I said it.
Jim got up and stretched his legs. “Now, I tell you, Fargus,” says he,
“I'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman,
not to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will
give us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me,
there's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me
mine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort,
why, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a
hand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad.
Now, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man
could be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe
you wouldn't mind if you had.”
“Speaking generally,” says I, “you're about right, Jim.”
With that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the
storm.
Next day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and
the valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking
toward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow
up there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family
for the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping
rocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed
through Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in
Jim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the
Hawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she
being down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of
getting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.
About four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started
over to tell Jim he'd better get out; and sudden I stops and looks,
for there was a crowd coming from Canada Center--the Storrses and the
Petersons and the Merimys, and the extra woman in a buggy with Henry
Hall, who was county sheriff then. “Well, 'Mighty!” says I.
They pulled up in front of Jim's place, and I took it they were going to
walk in and settle things prompt. But you see, when I got there, it was
Jim a-standing by his door with his rifle, and the sheriff and Canada
Center was squeezing themselves through the gate and Jim shooting off
sideways at the pickets on his fence. And the sheriff ups and yelled:
“Here, you Jim Hawks! That ain't any way to do.”
Then Jim walks down the road with his rifle over his arm, and Jeaney
Merimy comes to the door. She looked some mad and some crying, a little
of both.
“Hall,” says he, “you turn your horse and go back where you come from.
Maybe I'll see you by and by. The rest of you go back to Canada Center,
and if Jeaney wants anything of you she'll come and say so. You go,
now!”
And they went. The extra woman drove off with the sheriff, hanging her
head, and the sheriff saying, “You'll have to come to time, Jim Hawks,
soon or late.” Jeaney Merimy sat in the door with her head hung down,
too; and the only one as ought to have been ashamed, he was walking
around uppish, like he meant to call down Tioba for throwing rocks into
his yard. Then Jeaney sees me, and she says:
“You're all down on Jim. There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”
She began to cry, while Jim cocked his head and looked at her curious.
And she kept saying, “There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.”
That was a queer way for her to look at it.
Now, that night set in, like the one before, with a drizzling rain. It
was the longest wet weather I ever knew. I kept going to the window to
look at the light over at the Hawkses' and wonder what would come of
it, till it made my wife nervous, and she's apt to be sharp when she's
nervous, so I quit. And the way Tioba talked double that night was
terrible--_um-hiss, toot-toot_, hour after hour; and no sleep for me and
my wife, being nervous.
I do' know what time it was, or what we heard. All I know is, my wife
jumps up with a yell, and I jumps up too, and I know we were terrible
afraid and stood listening maybe a minute. It seemed like there was
almost dead silence in the night, only the um-m went on, but no hissing
and no tooting, and if there was any sound of the rain or wind I
don't recollect it. And then, “Um!” says Tioba, louder and louder and
_louder!_ till there was no top nor bottom to it, and the whole infernal
world went to pieces, and pitched me and my wife flat on the floor.
The first I knew, there was dead silence again; or maybe my hearing was
upset, for soon after I began to hear the rain buzzing away quietly.
Then I got up and took a lantern, and my wife grabs me.
“You ain't going a step!” says she, and the upshot was we both went, two
old folks that was badly scared and bound to find out why. We went along
the road, looking about us cautious; and of a sudden, where the road
ought to be, we ran into a bank of mud that went up out of seeing in the
night. Then my wife sat down square in the road and began a-crying, and
I knew Tioba had fallen down.
Now, there's Tioba, and that's how she looked next morning, only
worse--more mushy and generally clawed up, with the rain still falling
dismal, and running little gullies in the mud like a million snakes.
According to my guess, Jim and Jeaney and the cemetery were about ten
rods in, or maybe not more than eight. Anyway, I says to Peterson, and
he agreed with me, that there wasn't any use for a funeral. I says: “God
A'mighty buried 'em to suit himself.” It looked like he didn't think
much of the way Canada Center did its burying, seeing the cemetery was
took in and buried over again. Peterson and me thought the same on that
point. And we put up the white stone, sort of on top of things, that
maybe you've noticed, and lumped the folk in the cemetery together, and
put their names on it, and a general epitaph; but not being strong
on the dates, we left them out mostly. We put Jeaney Merimy with her
family, but Canada Center was singularly united against letting Jim in.
“You puts his name on no stone with me or mine,” says Merimy, and
I'm not saying but what he was right. Yes, sir; Merimy had feelings,
naturally. But it seemed to me when a man was a hundred and fifty feet
underground, more or less, there ought to be some charity; and maybe I
had a weakness for Jim, though my wife wouldn't hear of him, on account
of his drinks, which were slippery things. Anyway, I takes a chisel
and a mallet, and I picks out a boulder on the slide a decent ways from
Canada Center's monument, and I cuts in it, “Jim Hawks”; and then I cuts
in it an epitaph that I made myself, and it's there yet:
HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.
HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.
THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.
HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.
And I thought that stated the facts, though the second line didn't
rhyme really even. Speaking generally, Tioba appeared to have dropped
on things about the right time, and that being so, why not let it pass,
granting Merimy had a right to his feelings?
Now, neither Sheriff Hall nor the extra woman showed up in the valley
any more, so it seemed likely they had heard of Tioba falling, and
agreed Jim wouldn't be any good, if they could find him. It was two
weeks more before I saw the sheriff, him driving through, going over to
Helder's. I saw him get out of his buggy to see the monument, and I went
up after, and led him over to show Jim's epitaph, which I took to be a
good epitaph, except the second line.
Now, what do you think he did? Why, he busted out a-haw-hawing
ridiculous, and it made me mad.
“Shut up!” says I. “What's ailing you?”
“Haw-haw!” says he. “Jim ain't there! He's gone down the road.”
“I believe you're a blamed liar,” says I; and the sheriff sobered up,
being mad himself, and he told me this.
“Jim Hawks,” says he, “came into East-port that night, meaning business.
He routed me out near twelve o'clock, and the lady staying at my house
she came into it, too, and there we had it in the kitchen at twelve
o'clock, the lady uncommon hot, and Jim steaming wet in his clothes and
rather cool. He says: 'I'm backing Jeaney now, and she tells me to come
in and settle it to let us alone, and she says we'll hand over all we've
got and leave. That appears to be her idea, and being hers, I'll put it
as my own.' Now, the lady, if you'd believe it, she took on fearful, and
wouldn't hear to reason unless he'd go with her, though what her idea
was of a happy time with Jim Hawks, the way he was likely to act, I give
it up. But she cried and talked foolish, till I see Jim was awful bored,
but I didn't see there was much for me to do. Then Jim got up at last,
and laughed very unpleasant, and he says: 'It's too much bother. I'll go
with you, Annie, but I think you're a fool.' And they left next morning,
going south by train.”
That's what Sheriff Hall said to me then and there. Well, now, I'm an
old man, and I don't know as I'm particular clever, but it looks to me
as if God A'mighty and Tioba had made a mistake between 'em. Else how
come they hit at Jim Hawks so close as that and missed him? And what was
the use of burying Jeaney Merimy eight rods deep, who was a good girl
all her life, and was for standing up for Jim, and him leaving her
because the extra woman got him disgusted? Maybe she'd rather Tioba
would light on her, that being the case--maybe she would have; but she
never knew what the case was.
That epitaph is there yet, as you might say, waiting for him to come
and get under it; but it don't seem to have the right point now, and it
don't state the facts any more, except the second line, which is more
facts than rhyme. And Tioba is the messiest-look-ing mountain in these
parts. And now, I say, Jim Hawks was in this valley little more than a
year, and he blazed his trail through the Merimy family, and the Storrs
family, and the Peterson family, and there's Tioba Mountain, and that's
his trail.
No, sir; I don't get on to it. I hear Tioba talking double some nights,
sort of uneasy, and it seems to me she isn't on to it either, and has
her doubts maybe she throwed herself away. And there's the cemetery six
to ten rods underground, with a monument to forty-five people on top,
and an epitaph to Jim Hawks that ain't so, except the second line, there
being no corpse to fit it.
Canada Center thinks they'd fit Jim to it if he came round again; but
they wouldn't: for he was a wicked one, but sudden to act, and he was
reckless, and he kept his luck. For Tioba drawed off and hit at him,
slap! and he dodged her.
A MAN FOR A' THAT
COMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it
left for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member
of Company G, which nicknamed him “'is huliness.” Company A came from
Dutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of
Brewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good
woman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon
walked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals.
She dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south
window, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose
the cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England
spilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.
The deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard
trimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded
him to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious
restraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in
the Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it
is by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.
But no doorkeeper in the house of God--the deacon's service in the
meeting-house at Brewster--who should come perforce to dwell in the
tents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no
tents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that
thin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his
left fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and
swore in the pleasantest manner possible.
The deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day,
and did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down
in that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty
for fighting in the ranks.
The deacon declared “that young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas,” and did
his guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of
it. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant
how the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both
forgot about the guard duty.
Dinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what
the deacon meant by “moral ideas,” nor reverence for anything above or
beneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough
malice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and
snicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.
Dinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry
Bend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a
lonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little
schoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white
meeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both
seemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and
the camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills,
looking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.
What happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a
deal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon
smoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon
bridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They
were having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on
the ridge beyond.
There seemed to be no end to him, anyway; up and down the valley, mile
beyond mile, the same line of wooded heights and drifting smoke.
And the regiment found itself crossing a shaky pontoon bridge on a
Saturday morning in the mist and climbing the bank into a most battered
and tired-looking little town, which was smoldering sulkily with burned
buildings and thrilling with enormous noise. There they waited for
something else to happen. The deacon felt a lump in his throat, stopping
his breath.
“Git out o' me tracks!” snickered Dinkey Cott behind him. “I'll step on
yer.”
Dinkey had never seemed more impish, unholy and incongruous. They seemed
to stand there a long time. The shells kept howling and whizzing around;
they howled till they burst, and then they whizzed. And now and then
some one would cry out and fall. It was bad for the nerves. The men were
growling.
“Aw, cap, give us a chance!”
“It ain't my fault, boys. I got to wait for orders, same as you.”
Dinkey poked the deacon's legs with the butt of his rifle.
“Say, it's rotten, ain't it? Say, cully, my ma don't like me full o'
holes. How's yours?”
The other gripped his rifle tight and thought of nothing in particular.
Was it five hours that passed, or twenty, or one? Then they started, and
the town was gone behind their hurrying feet. Over a stretch of broken
level, rush and tramp and gasping for breath; fences and rocks ahead,
clumps of trees and gorges; ground growing rougher and steeper, but that
was nothing. If there was anything in the way you went at it and left
it behind. You plunged up a hill, and didn't notice it. You dove into a
gully, and it wasn't there. Time was a liar, obstacles were scared and
ran away. But half-way up the last pitch ran a turnpike, with a stone
wall in front that spit fire and came nearer and nearer. It seemed
creeping down viciously to meet you. Up, up, till the powder of the guns
almost burned the deacon's face, and the smoke was so thick he could
only see the red flashes.
And then suddenly he was alone. At least there was no one in sight, for
the smoke was very thick. Company G all dead, or fallen, or gone back.
There was a clump of brambles to his left. He dropped to the ground,
crept behind it and lay still. The roar went on, the smoke rolled down
over him and sometimes a bullet would clip through the brambles, but
after a time the small fire dropped off little by little, though the
cannon still boomed on.
His legs were numb and his heart beating his sides like a drum. The
smoke was blowing away down the slope. He lifted his head and peered
through the brambles; there was the stone wall not five rods away, all
lined along the top with grimy faces. A thousand rifles within as
many yards, wanting nothing better than to dig a round hole in him. He
dropped his head and closed his eyes.
His thoughts were so stunned that the slowly lessening cannonade seemed
like a dream, and he hardly noticed when it had ceased, and he began
to hear voices, cries of wounded men and other men talking. There was
a clump of trees to the right, and two or three crows in the treetops
cawing familiarly. An hour or two must have passed, for the sun was down
and the river mist creeping up. He lay on his back, staring blankly at
the pale sky and shivering a little with the chill.
A group of men came down and stood on the rocks above. They could
probably see him, but a man on his back with his toes up was nothing
particular there. They talked with a soft drawl. “Doggonedest clean-up I
ever saw.”
“They hadn't no business to come up heah, yuh know. They come some
distance, now.”
“Shuah! We ain't huntin' rabbits. What'd yuh suppose?”
Then they went on.
The mist came up white and cold and covered it all over. He could not
see the wall any longer, though he could hear the voices. He turned on
his face and crawled along below the brambles and rocks to where the
clump of trees stood with a deep hollow below them. They were chestnut
trees. Some one was sitting in the hollow with his back against the
roots.
During the rush Dinkey Cott fairly enjoyed himself. The sporting blood
in him sang in his ears, an old song that the leopard knows, it may be,
waiting in the mottled shadow, that the rider knows on the race course,
the hunter in the snow--the song of a craving that only excitement
satisfies. The smoke blew in his face. He went down a hollow and up the
other side. Then something hot and sudden came into the middle of him
and he rolled back against the roots of a great tree.
“Hully gee! I'm plunked!” he grumbled disgustedly.
For the time he felt no pain, but his blood ceased to sing in his ears.
Everything seemed to settle down around him, blank and dull and angry.
He felt as if either the army of the North or the army of the South had
not treated him rightly. If they had given him a minute more he might
have clubbed something worth while. He sat up against a tree, wondered
what his chance was to pull through, thought it poor, and thought he
would sell it for a drink.
The firing dropped off little by little, and the mist was coming up.
Dinkey began to see sights. His face and hands were hot, and things
seemed to be riproaring inside him generally. The mist was full of
flickering lights, which presently seemed to be street lamps down the
Bowery. The front windows of Reilly's saloon were glaring, and opposite
was Gottstein's jewelry store, where he had happened to hit one Halligan
in the eye for saying that Babby Reilly was his girl and not Dinkey's;
and he bought Babby a 90-cent gold ring of Gottstein, which proved
Halligan to be a liar. The cop saw him hit Halligan, too, and said
nothing, being his friend. And Halligan enlisted in Company G with the
rest of the boys, and was keeled over in the dark one night on picket
duty, somewhere up country. All the gang went into Company G. The
captain was one of the boys, and so was Pete Murphy, the big lieutenant.
He was a sort of ward sub-boss, was Pete.
“Reilly, he's soured on me, Pete. I dun-no wot's got the ol' man.”
The lights seemed to grow thick, till everything was ablaze.
“Aw, come off! Dis ain't de Bowery,” he muttered, and started and rubbed
his eyes.
The mist was cold and white all around him, ghostly and still, except
that there was a low, continual mutter of voices above, and now and then
a soft moan rose up from somewhere. And it seemed natural enough that a
ghost should come creeping out of the ghostly mist, even that it should
creep near to him and peer into his face, a ghost with a gray chin beard
and haggard eyes.
“I'm going down,” it whispered. “Come on. Don't make any noise.”
“Hully gee!” thought Dinkey. “It's the Pope!”
A number of things occurred to him in confusion. The deacon did not see
he was hit. He said to himself:
“I ain't no call to spoil 'is luck, if he is country.”
He blinked a moment, then nodded and whispered hoarsely: “Go on.”
The deacon crept away into the mist. Dinkey leaned back feebly and
closed his eyes.
“Wished I'd die quick. It's rotten luck. Wished I could see Pete.”
The deacon crept down about two hundred yards, then stopped and waited
for the young man Cott. The night was closing in fast A cry in the
darkness made him shiver. He had never imagined anything could be so
desolate and sad. He thought he had better see what was the matter with
Dinkey. He never could make out afterward why it had seemed necessary
to look after Dinkey. There were hundreds of better men on the slopes.
Dinkey might have passed him. It did not seem very sensible business
to go back after that worthless little limb of Satan. The deacon never
thought the adventure a credit to his judgment.
But he went back, guiding himself by the darker gloom of the trees
against the sky, and groped his way down the hollow, and heard Dinkey
muttering and babbling things without sense. It made the deacon mad
to have to do with irresponsible people, such as go to sleep under the
enemy's rifles and talk aloud in dreams. He pulled him roughly by the
boots, and he fell over, babbling and muttering. Then it came upon the
deacon that it was not sleep, but fever. He guessed the young man was
hit somewhere. They had better be going, anyway. The Johnnies must have
out a picket line somewhere. He slipped his hands under Dinkey and got
up. He tried to climb out quietly, but fell against the bank. Some one
took a shot at the noise, spattering the dirt under his nose. He lifted
Dinkey higher and went on. Dinkey's mutterings ceased. He made no sound
at all for a while, and at last said huskily:
“Wot's up?”
“It's me.”
“Hully gee! Wot yer doin'?”
His voice was weak and thin now. He felt as if he were being pulled in
two in the middle.
“Say, ol' man, I won't jolly yer. Les' find Pete. There's a minie ball
messed up in me stomick awful.”
“'Tain't far, Dinkey,” said the deacon, gently.
And he thought of Pete Murphy's red, fleshy face and black, oily
mustache. It occurred to him that he had noticed most men in Company
G, if they fell into trouble, wanted to find Pete. He thought he should
want to himself, though he could not tell why. If he happened to be
killed anywhere he thought he should like Pete Murphy to tell his wife
about it.
Dinkey lay limp and heavy in his arms. The wet blackness seemed like
something pressed against his face. He could not realize that he was
walking, though in the night, down the same slope to a river called the
Rappahannock and a town called Fredericksburg. It was strange business
for him, Deacon Terrell of Brewster, to be in, stumbling down the
battlefield in the pit darkness, with a godless little brat like Dinkey
Cott in his arms.
And why godless, if the same darkness were around us all, and the same
light, while we lived, would come to all in the morning? It was borne
upon the deacon that no man was elected to the salvation of the sun or
condemned to the night apart from other men.
The deacon never could recall the details of his night's journey, except
that he fell down more than once, and ran against stone walls in the
dark. It seemed to him that he had gone through an unknown, supernatural
country. Dinkey lay so quiet that he thought he might be dead, but he
could not make up his mind to leave him. He wished he could find Pete
Murphy. Pete would tell him if Dinkey was dead.
He walked not one mile, but several, in the blind night Dinkey had long
been a limp weight. The last thing he said was, “Les' find Pete,” and
that was long before.
At last the deacon saw a little glow in the darkness, and, coming near,
found a dying campfire with a few flames only flickering, and beside it
two men asleep. He might have heard the ripple of the Rappahannock, but,
being so worn and dull in his mind, he laid Dinkey down by the fire and
fell heavily to sleep himself before he knew it.
When he woke Pete Murphy stood near him with a corporal and a guard.
They were looking for the pieces of Company G. “Dead, ain't he?” said
Pete.
The deacon got up and brushed his clothes. The two men who were sleeping
woke up also, and they all stood around looking at Dinkey in awkward
silence.
“Who's his folks?”
“Him!” said the big lieutenant. “He ain't got any folks. Tell you what,
ol' man, I see a regiment drummer somewhere a minute ago. He'll do a
roll over Dinkey, for luck, sure!”
They put Dinkey's coat over his face and buried him on the bank of the
Rappahannock, and the drummer beat a roll over him.
Then they sat down on the bank and waited for the next thing.
The troops were moving back now across the bridge hurriedly. Company G
had to take its turn. The deacon felt in his pockets and found the cough
drops and Mrs. Terrell's scissors. He took a cough drop and fell to
trimming his beard.
THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER
ANY one would have called Bobby Bell a comfortable boy--that is, any
one who did not mind bugs; and I am sure I do not see why any one should
mind bugs, except the kind that taste badly in raspberries and some
other kinds. It was among the things that are entertaining to see Bobby
Bell bobbing around among the buttercups looking for grasshoppers.
Grasshoppers are interesting when you consider that they have heads
like door knobs or green cheeses and legs with crooks to them. “Bobbing”
means to go like Bobby Bell--that is, to go up and down, to talk to
one's self, and not to hear any one shout, unless it is some one whom
not to hear is to get into difficulties.
Across the Salem Road from Mr. Atherton Bell's house there were many
level meadows of a pleasant greenness, as far as Cum-ming's alder swamp;
and these meadows were called the Bow Meadows. If you take the alder
swamp and the Bow Meadows together, they were like this: the swamp was
mysterious and unvisited, except by those who went to fish in the Muck
Hole for turtles and eels. Frogs with solemn voices lived in the swamp.
Herons flew over it slowly, and herons also are uncanny affairs. We
believed that the people of the swamp knew things it was not good to
know, like witchcraft and the insides of the earth. In the meadows, on
the other hand, there were any number of cheerful and busy creatures,
some along the level of the buttercups, but most of them about the roots
of the grasses. The people in the swamp were wet, cold, sluggish, and
not a great many of them. The people of the meadows were dry, warm,
continually doing something, and in number not to be calculated by any
rule in Wentworth's Arithmetic.
So you see how different were the two, and how it comes about that the
meadows were nearly the best places in the world to be in, both
because of the society there, and because of the swamp near at hand and
interesting to think about. So, too, you see why it was that Bobby Bell
could be found almost any summer day “bobbing” for grasshoppers in the
Bow Meadows--“bobbing” meaning to go up and down like Bobby Bell, to
talk to one's self and not to hear any one shout; and “grasshoppers”
being interesting because of their heads resembling door knobs or green
cheeses, because of the crooks in their legs, and because of their
extraordinary habit of jumping.
There were in Hagar at this time four ladies who lived at a little
distance from the Salem Road and Mr. Atherton Bell's house, on a road
which goes over a hill and off to a district called Scrabble Up and
Down, where huckleberries and sweet fern mostly grow. They were known as
the Tuttle Four Women, being old Mrs. Tuttle and the three Miss Tuttles,
of whom Miss Rachel was the eldest.
It is easy to understand why Miss Rachel and the children of the village
of Hagar did not get along well together, when you consider how clean
she was, how she walked so as never to fall over anything, nor took
any interest in squat tag, nor resembled the children of the village of
Hagar in any respect. And so you can understand how it was that, when
she came down the hill that Saturday afternoon and saw Bobby Bell
through the bars in the Bow Meadows, she did not understand his actions,
and disapproved of them, whatever they were.
The facts were these: In the first place a green grasshopper, who was
reckless or had not been brought up rightly, had gone down Bobby's back
next the skin, where he had no business to be; and naturally Bobby stood
on his head to induce him to come out. That seems plain enough, for, if
you are a grasshopper and down a boy's back, and the boy stands on his
head, you almost always come out to see what he is about; because it
makes you curious, if not ill, to be down a boy's back and have him
stand on his head. Any one can see that. And this is the reason I had
to explain about Miss Rachel, in order to show you why she did not
understand it, nor understand what followed after.
In the next place, Bobby knew that when you go where you have no
business to, you are sometimes spanked, but usually you are talked to
unpleasantly, and tied up to something by the leg, and said to be in
disgrace. Usually you are tied to the sewing machine, and “disgrace”
means the corner of the sewing-room between the machine and the sofa. It
never occurred to him but that this was the right and natural order of
things. Very likely it is. It seemed so to Bobby.
Now it is difficult to spank a grasshopper properly. And so there was
nothing to do but to tie him up and talk to him unpleasantly. That seems
quite simple and plain. But the trouble was that it was a long time
since Miss Rachel had stood on her head, or been spanked, or tied up to
anything. This was unfortunate, of course. And when she saw Bobby
stand violently on his head and then tie a string to a grasshopper, she
thought it was extraordinary business, and probably bad, and she came up
to the bars in haste.
“Bobby!” she said, “you naughty boy, are you pulling off that
grasshopper's leg?”
Bobby thought this absurd. “Gasshoppers,” he said calmly, “ithn't any
good 'ith their legth off.”
This was plain enough, too, because grasshoppers are intended to jump,
and cannot jump without their legs; consequently it would be quite
absurd to pull them off. Miss Rachel thought one could not know this
without trying it, and especially know it in such a calm, matter-of-fact
way as Bobby seemed to do, without trying it a vast number of times;
therefore she became very much excited. “You wicked, wicked boy!” she
cried. “I shall tell your father!” Then she went off.
Bobby wondered awhile what his father would say when Miss Rachel told
him that grasshoppers were no good with their legs off. When Bobby told
him that kind of thing, he generally chuckled to himself and called
Bobby “a queer little chicken.” If his father called Miss Rachel “a
queer little chicken,” Bobby felt that it would seem strange. But he had
to look after the discipline of the grasshopper, and it is no use trying
to think of two things at once. He tied the grasshopper to a mullein
stalk and talked to him unpleasantly, and the grasshopper behaved very
badly all the time; so that Bobby was disgusted and went away to leave
him for a time--went down to the western end of the meadows, which is a
drowsy place. And there it came about that he fell asleep, because his
legs were tired, because the bees hummed continually, and because the
sun was warm and the grass deep around him.
Miss Rachel went into the village and saw Mr. Atherton Bell on the steps
of the post-office. He was much astonished at being attacked in such
a disorderly manner by such an orderly person as Miss Rachel; but
he admitted, when it was put to him, that pulling off the legs of
grasshoppers was interfering with the rights of grasshoppers. Then Miss
Rachel went on her way, thinking that a good seed had been sown and the
morality of the community distinctly advanced.
The parents of other boys stood on the post-office steps in great
number, for it was near mail-time; and here you might have seen what
varieties of human nature there are. For some were taken with the
conviction that the attraction of the Bow Meadows to their children was
all connected with the legs of grasshoppers; some suspected it only, and
were uneasy; some refused to imagine such a thing, and were indignant.
But they nearly all started for the Bow Meadows with a vague idea of
doing something, Mr. Atherton Bell and Father Durfey leading. It was not
a well-planned expedition, nor did any one know what was intended to be
done. They halted at the bars, but no Bobby Bell was in sight, nor
did the Bow Meadows seem to have anything to say about the matter. The
grasshoppers in sight had all the legs that rightly belonged to them.
Mr. Atherton Bell got up on the wall and shouted for Bobby. Father
Durfey climbed over the bars.
It happened that there was no one in the Bow Meadows at this time,
except Bobby, Moses Durfey, Chub Leroy, and one other. Bobby was asleep,
on account of the bumblebees humming in the sunlight; and the other
three were far up the farther side, on account of an expedition through
the alder swamp, supposing it to be Africa. There was a desperate battle
somewhere; but the expedition turned out badly in the end, and in this
place is neither here nor there. They heard Mr. Atherton Bell shouting,
but they did not care about it. It is more to the point that Father
Durfey, walking around in the grass, did not see the grasshopper who was
tied to the mullein stalk and as mad as he could be. For when tied up
in disgrace, one is always exceedingly mad at this point; but repentance
comes afterwards. The grasshopper never got that far, for Father Durfey
stepped on him with a boot as big as--big enough for Father Durfey to be
comfortable in--so that the grasshopper was quite dead. It was to him as
if a precipice were to fall on you, when you were thinking of something
else. Then they all went away.
Bobby Bell woke up with a start, and was filled with remorse,
remembering his grasshopper. The sun had slipped behind the shoulder of
Windless Mountain. There was a faint light across the Bow Meadows, that
made them sweet to look on, but a little ghostly. Also it was dark in
the roots of the grasses, and difficult to find a green grasshopper
who was dead; at least it would have been if he had not been tied to a
mullein stalk. Bobby found him at last sunk deep in the turf, with his
poor legs limp and crookless, and his head, which had been like a
green cheese or a door knob, no longer looking even like the head of a
grasshopper.