daylight this morning I found myself in a wide sheet of water, with marshes
all round, and I saw a steamboat coming. I tied my handkerchief to the
paddle and waved it, and they picked me up. And, John, I did not tell them
anything except that the freshet had swept me away. They were kind to me,
and a friendly woman bound up my foot. We got to town this morning early,
and the captain lent me five dollars, John--Captain Meakin--so I
telegraphed you, and took a carriage to the station and came out.
Have--have you caught him? And, oh--but I am afraid--afraid!” And again she
broke into hysterical sobs.
She asked no explanation. The negro's guilt was so burned in on her mind,
that she was sure that all knew it as well as she.
“You need have no further fears,” her husband comforted. And the judge
shook his head, and the sheriff swore again.
* * * * *
A white-haired woman in rusty black stood talking to a negro convict. It
was in a stockade prison camp in the hill country. She had been a
slave-owner once, long ago, and now for her mission-work taught on Sundays
in the stockade, trying to better the negroes penned there.
This was a new prisoner, and she was asking him of himself.
“How long are you in for?” she asked.
“Fuhrebber, ma'm; fuh des es long es I lib,” the negro answered, looking
down to where he was making marks on the ground with his toes.
“And how did you get such a dreadful sentence?”
“I ent do much, ma'm; I des scare a white lady.”
A wave of revulsion swept over the teacher, and involuntarily she stepped
back. The negro looked up and grinned.
“De hatchet des cut 'e foot a little bit; but I trow de hatchet. I ent tech
um; no, ma'm. Den atterwards 'e baby daid; den dey say I muss stay yer
fuhrebber. I ent sorry, 'kase I know say I hab to wuck anywheys I is; if I
stay yer, if I go 'way, I hab to wuck. En I know say if I git outer dis
place Mr. Morris'll kill me sho--des sho. So I like fuh stay yer berry
well.”
And the teacher went away, wondering if her work--if _any_ work--would
avail; and what answer the future would have for this awful problem.
A Snipe-Hunt
A Story of Jim-Ned Creek
BY M. E. M. DAVIS
“I ain't sayin' nothin' ag'inst the women o' Jim--Ned Creek _ez women_,”
said Mr. Pinson; “an' what's more, I'll spit on my hands an' lay out any
man ez'll dassen to sass 'em. But _ez wives_ the women o' Jim-Ned air the
outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
These remarks, uttered in an oracular tone, were received with grave
approbation by the half a dozen idlers gathered about the mesquite fire in
Bishop's store. Old Bishop himself, sorting over some trace-chains behind
the counter, nodded grimly, and then smiled, his wintry face grown suddenly
tender.
“You've shore struck it, Newt,” assented Joe Trimble. “You never kin tell
how ary one of 'em 'll ack under any succumstances.”
Jack Carter and Sid Northcutt, the only bachelors present, grinned and
winked slyly at each other.
“You boys neenter to be so brash,” drawled Mr. Pinson's son-in-law, Sam
Leggett, from his perch on a barrel of pecans; “jest you wait ontell Minty
Cullum an' Loo Slater gits a tight holt! Them gals is ez meek ez
lambs--now. But so was Mis' Pinson an' Mis' Trimble in their day an' time,
I reckon. I know Becky Leggett was.”
“The studdies'-goin' woman on Jim-Ned,” continued Mr. Pinson, ignoring
these interruptions, “is Mis' Cullum. An' yit, Tobe Cullum ain't no safeter
than anybody else--considerin' of Sissy Cullum ez a wife!”
Mr. Trimble opened his lips to speak, but shut them again hastily, looking
a little scared, and an awkward silence fell on the group.
For the shadow of Mrs. Cullum herself had advanced through the wide
door-way, and lay athwart the puncheon floor; and that lady, a large,
comfortable-looking, middle-aged person, with a motherly face and a kindly
smile, after a momentary survey of the scene before her, walked briskly in.
She shook hands across the counter with the storekeeper, and passed the
time of day all around.
But Hines, the new clerk, shuffled forward eagerly to wait on her. Bud was
a sallow-faced, thin-chested, gawky youth from the States, who had wandered
into these parts in search of health and employment. He was not yet used to
the somewhat drastic ways of Jim-Ned, and there was a homesick look in his
watery blue eyes; he smiled bashfully at her while he measured off calico
and weighed sugar, and he followed her out to the horse-block when she had
concluded her lengthy spell of shopping.
“You better put on a thicker coat, Bud,” she said, pushing back her
sunbonnet and looking down at him from the saddle before she moved off.
“You've got a rackety cough. I reckon I'll have to make you some mullein
surrup.”
“Oh, Mis' Cullum, don't trouble yourself about me,” Mr. Hines cried,
gratefully, a lump rising in his throat as he watched her ride away.
The loungers in the store had strolled out on the porch. “Mis' Cullum
cert'n'y is a sister in Zion,” remarked Mr. Trimble, gazing admiringly at
her retreating figure.
“M-m-m--y-e-e-s,” admitted Mr. Pinson. “But,” he added, darkly, after a
meditative pause, “Sissy Cullum is a wife, an' the women o' Jim-Nez, _ez
wives_, air liable to conniptions.”
Mrs. Cullum jogged slowly along the brown, wheel-rifted road which followed
the windings of the creek. It was late in November. A brisk little norther
was blowing, and the nuts dropping from the pecan-trees in the hollows
filled the dusky stillness with a continuous rattling sound. There was a
sprinkling of belated cotton-bolls on the stubbly fields to the right of
the road; a few ragged sunflowers were still abloom in the fence corners,
where the pokeberries were red-ripe on their tall stalks.
“I must lay in some poke-root for Tobe's knee-j'ints,” mused Mrs. Cullum,
as she turned into the lane which led to her own door-yard. “Pore Tobe!
them j'ints o' his'n is mighty uncertain. Why, Tobe!” she exclaimed, aloud,
as her nag stopped and neighed a friendly greeting to the object of her own
solicitude, “where air you bound for?”
Mr. Cullum laid an arm across the horse's neck. He was a big, loose-jointed
man, with iron-gray hair, square jaws, and keen, steady, dark eyes. “Well,
ma,” he said, with a touch of reluctance in his dragging tones, “there's a
lodge meetin' at Ebenezer Church to-night, an' I got Mintry to give me my
supper early, so's I could go. I--”
“All right, Tobe,” interrupted his wife, cheerfully; “a passel of men
prancin' around with a goat oncet a month ain't much harm, I reckon. You go
'long, honey; I'll set up for you.”
“Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild,” muttered Mr. Cullum, striding
away in the gathering twilight, “that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun'
its finger--much lessen me!”
About ten o'clock the same night Granny Carnes, peeping through a chink in
the wall beside her bed, saw a squad of men hurrying afoot down the road
from the direction of Ebenezer Church. “Them boys is up to some
devil_mint_, Uncle Dick,” she remarked, placidly, to her rheumatic old
husband.
Uncle Dick laughed, a soft, toothless laugh. “I ain't begrudgin' 'em the
fun,” he sighed, turning on his pillow, “but I wisht to the Lord I was
along!”
The “boys” crossed the creek below Bishop's and entered the shinn-oak
prairie on the farther side.
“Nance ast mighty particular about the lodge meetin',” observed Newt Pinson
to Mr. Cullum, who headed the nocturnal expedition; “she know'd it wa'n't
the regular night, an' she suspicioned sompn, Nance did.”
“Sissy didn't,” laughed Tobe, complacently. “Sissy is that soft an'
innercent an' mild that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its
finger--much lessen me!”
Bud Hines, in the rear with the others, was in a quiver of excitement. He
stumbled along, shifting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the
other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. “You know,
Bud,” said that young gentleman, gravely, “it ain't every man that gets a
chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if you've got any grit--”
“I've got plenty of it,” interrupted Mr. Hines, vaingloriously. He was,
indeed, inwardly--and outwardly--bursting with pride. “I thought they tuk
me for a plumb fool,” he kept saying over and over to himself. “They ain't
never noticed me before 'cepn to make fun of me; an' all at oncet Mr. Tobe
Cullum an' Mr. Newt Pinson ups an' asts me to go on a snipe-hunt, an' even
p'oposes to give me the best place in it. An' I've got Mr. Sid's rifle, an'
Mr. Jack is tellin' of me how! Lord, I wouldn't of believed it of I wa'n't
right here! Won't ma be proud when I write her about it!”
“You've got to whistle all the time,” Jack continued, breaking in upon
these blissful reflections; “if you don't, they won't come.”
“Oh, I'll whistle,” declared Bud, jauntily.
Sam Leggett's snigger was dexterously turned into a cough by a punch in his
ribs from Mr. Trimble's elbow, and they trudged on in silence until they
reached Buck Snort Gully, a deep ravine running from the prairie into a
stretch of heavy timber beyond, known as The Rough.
Here they stopped, and Sid Northcutt produced a coarse bag, whose mouth was
held open by a barrel hoop, and a tallow candle, which he lighted and
handed to the elate hunter. “Now, Bud,” Mr. Cullum said, when the bag was
set on the edge of the gully, with its mouth towards the prairie, “you jest
scrooch down behind this here sack an' hold the candle. You kin lay the
rifle back of you, in case a wild-cat or a cougar prowls up. An' you
whistle jest as hard an' as continual as you can, whilse the balance of us
beats aroun' an' drives in the snipe. They'll run fer the candle ever'
time. An' the minit that sack is full of snipe, all you've got to do is to
pull out the prop, an' they're yourn.”
“All right, Mr. Tobe,” responded Bud, squatting down and clutching the
candle, his face radiant with expectation.
The crowd scattered, and for a few moments made a noisy pretence of beating
the shinn-oak thickets for imaginary snipe.
“Keep a-whisslin', Bud!” Mr. Cullum shouted, from the far edge of the
prairie. A prolonged whistle, with trills and flourishes, was the response;
and the conspirators, bursting with restrained laughter, plunged into the
ford and separated, making each for his own fireside.
Mrs. Cullum was nodding over the hearth-stone when her husband came in. The
six girls, from Minty--Jack Carter's buxom sweetheart--to Little Sis, the
baby, were long abed. The hands of the wooden clock on the high
mantel-shelf pointed to half-past twelve. “Well, pa,” Sissy said,
good-humoredly, reaching out for the shovel and beginning to cover up the
fire, “you've cavorted pretty late this time! What's the matter?” she
added, suspiciously; “you ack like you've been drinkin'!”
For Tobe was rolling about the room in an ecstasy of uproarious mirth.
“I 'ain't teched nary drop, Sissy,” Mr. Cullum returned, “but ever' time I
think about that fool Bud Mines a-settin' out yander at Buck Snort, holdin'
of a candle, and whisslin' fer snipe to run into that coffee-sack, I--oh
Lord!”
He stopped to slap his thighs and roar again. Finally, wiping the tears of
enjoyment from his eyes, he related the story of the night's adventure.
“Air you tellin' me, Tobe Cullum,” his wife said, when she had heard him to
the end--“air you p'intedly tellin' me that you've took Bud Hines
_snipin'_? An' that you've left that sickly, consumpted young man a-settin'
out there by hisse'f to catch his death of cold; or maybe git his blood
sucked out by a catamount!”
“Shucks, Sissy!” replied Tobe; “nothin' ain't goin' to hurt him. He's sech
a derned fool that a catamount wouldn't tech him with a ten-foot pole! An'
him a-whisslin' fer them snipe--oh Lord!”
“Tobe Cullum,” said Mrs. Cullum, sternly, “you go saddle Buster this minit
and ride out to Buck Snort after Bud Hines.”
“Why, honey--” remonstrated Tobe.
“Don't you honey me,” she interrupted, wrathfully. “You saddle that horse
this minit an' fetch that consumpted boy home.”
Tobe ceased to laugh. His big jaws set themselves suddenly square. “I'll do
no such fool thing,” he declared, doggedly, “an' have the len'th an'
brea'th o' Jim-Ned makin' fun o' me.”
“Very well,” said his wife, with equal determination, “ef you don't go, I
will. But I give you fair warnin', Tobe Cullum, that ef you don't go, I'll
never speak to you again whilse my head is hot.”
Tobe snorted incredulously; but he sneaked out to the stable after her, and
when she had saddled and mounted Buster, he followed her on foot, running
noiselessly some distance behind her, keeping her well in sight, and
dodging into the deeper shadows when she chanced to look around.
“I didn't know Sissy had so much spunk,” he muttered, panting in her wake
at last across the shinn-oak prairie. “Lord, how blazin' mad she is! But
shucks! she'll git over it by mornin'.”
Mr. Hines was shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the
hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of
his heart. “The balance of 'em must of got lost,” he thought, listening to
the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. “It's too c-cold for
snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any
longer,” he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of
courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his
eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. “Mr.
T-o-o-be!” he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came
back to him mingled with an ominous sound. “Oh, Lordy! what is that?” he
stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. “It's a
cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! He's
c-comin' closter! Oh, Lordy!”
“Hello, Bud,” called Mrs. Cullum, cheerily. She slipped from the saddle as
she spoke and caught the half-fainting snipe-hunter in her motherly arms.
“Ain't you 'shamed of yourse'f to let a passel o' no-'count men fool you
this-a-way?” she demanded, sternly, when he had somewhat recovered himself.
“Get up behind me. I'm goin' to take you to Mis' Bishop's, where you
belong. No, don't you dassen to tech any o' that trash!”
Mr. Hines, feeling very humble and abashed, climbed up behind her, and they
rode away, leaving the snipe--hunting gear, including Sid Northcutt's
valuable rifle, on the edge of the gully.
She left him at Bishop's, charging him to swallow before going to bed a
“dost” of the home-brewed chill medicine from a squat bottle she handed
him.
“He cert'n'y is weaker'n stump-water,” she murmured, as she turned her
horse's head; “but he's sickly an' consumpted, an' he's jest about the age
my Bud would of been if he'd lived.”
And thinking of her first-born and only son, who died in babyhood, she rode
homeward in the dim chill starlight. Tobe, spent and foot-sore, followed
warily, carrying the abandoned rifle.
II
Consternation reigned the “len'th an' brea'th” of Jim-Ned. Mrs.
Cullum--placid and easy-going Mrs. Tobe--under the same roof with him,
actually had not spoken to her lawful and wedded husband since the
snipe-hunt ten days ago come Monday!
“It's plumb scan'lous!” Mrs. Pinson exclaimed, at her daughter's quilting.
“I never would of thought sech a thing of Sissy--never!”
“As of the boys of Jim-Ned couldn't have a little innercent fun without
Mis' Cullum settin' in jedgment on 'em!” sniffed Mrs. Leggett.
“Shot up, Becky Leggett,” said her mother, severely. “By time you've put up
with a man's capers for twenty-five years, like Sissy Cullum have, you'll
have the right to talk, an' not before.”
“They say Tobe is wellnigh out'n his mind,” remarked Mrs. Trimble. “Ez for
that soft-headed Bud Mines, he have fair fattened on that snipe-hunt. He's
gittin' ez sassy an' mischeevous ez Jack Carter hisse'f.”
This last statement was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's
disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were.
The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the
homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's
with devil-may-care good-nature, and he besought Mrs. Cullum, almost with
tears in his eyes, to “let up on Mr. Tobe.”
“I was sech a dern fool, Mis' Cullum,” he candidly confessed, “that I don't
blame Mr. Tobe for puttin' up a job on me. Besides,” he added, his eyes
twinkling shrewdly, “I'm goin' to git even. I'm layin' off to take Jim
Belcher, that biggetty drummer from Waco, a-snipin' out Buck Snort next
Sat'day night. He's a bigger idjit than I ever was.”
“You ten' to your own business, Bud, an' I'll ten' to mine,” Mrs. Cullum
returned, not unkindly. Which business on her part apparently was to make
Mr. Cullum miserable by taking no notice of him whatever. The house under
her supervision was, as it had always been, a model of neatness; the meals
were cooked by her own hands and served with an especial eye to Tobe's
comfort; his clothes were washed and ironed, and his white shirt laid out
on Sunday mornings, with the accustomed care and regularity. But with these
details Mrs. Cullum's wifely attentions ended. She remained absolutely deaf
to any remark addressed to her by her husband, looking through and beyond
him when he was present with a steady, unseeing gaze, which was, to say the
least, exasperating. All necessary communication with him was carried on by
means of the children. “Minty,” she would say at the breakfast-table, “ask
your pa if he wants another cup of coffee”; or at night, “Temp'unce, tell
your pa that Buster has shed a shoe”; or, “Sue, does your pa know where
them well-grabs is?” et caetera, et caetera.
The demoralized household huddled, so to speak, between the opposing camps,
frightened and unhappy, and things were altogether in a bad way.
To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example,
took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman
with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement.
“Lord, Minty!” he gasped. “Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n
five years ago. I--”
“I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter,” interrupted his
sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; “that settles it!” and she
slammed the door in his face.
Matters were at such a pass finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider,
when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church,
deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own
house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without
a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. “Lord,”
he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's
misdeeds, “Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road
to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from
the wrath to come.”
He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which
changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and
Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding
her hens.
“She shore did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did,” chuckled Granny
Carnes, when this episode reached her ears.
As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a
jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive
his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at
reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as
herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous.
“He's that wore upon that nobody dassent to go anigh him,” said Mrs.
Pinson, solemnly. “An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever
struck the women o' Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the
outbeatenes'.”
But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the
supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his
discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over
his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated
himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum,
impassive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side.
“Well, ma,” began Tobe, with assumed gayety, turning up his plate, “what
for a day have you had?”
Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said
never a word.
Then, as Mr. Cullum afterward said, “Ole Satan swep' an' garnish_eed_ him
an' tuk possession of him.” He seized the heavy teacup in front of him and
hurled it at his unsuspecting spouse; she gasped, paling slightly, and
dodged. The missile, striking the brick chimney-jamb behind her, crashed
and fell shivering into fragments on the hearth. The saucer followed. Then,
Tobe's spirits rising, plate after plate hurtled across the table; the air
fairly bristled with flying crockery. Mrs. Cullum, after the first shock of
surprise, continued calmly to eat her supper, moving her head from right to
left or ducking to avoid an unusually well-aimed projectile.
Little Sis scrambled down from her high chair at the first hint of
hostilities, and dived, screaming, under the table; the others remained in
their places, half paralyzed with terror.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Mr. Cullum, reaching out his long
arms, had cleared half the board of its stone and glass ware. Finally he
laid a savage hand upon a small, old-fashioned blue pitcher left standing
alone in a wide waste of table-cloth.
At this Sissy surrendered unconditionally. “Oh, Tobe, fer Gawd's sake!” she
cried, throwing out her hands and quivering from head to foot. “I give in!
I give in! _Don't_ break the little blue-chiny pitcher! You fetched it to
me the day little Bud was born! An' he drunk out'n it jest afore he died!
Fer Gawd's sake, Tobe, honey! I give in!”
Tobe set down the pitcher as gingerly as if it had been a soap-bubble.
Then, with a whoop which fairly lifted the roof from the cabin, he cleared
the intervening space between them and caught his wife in his arms.
Minty, with ready tact, dragged Little Sis from under the table, and
driving the rest of the flock before her, fled the room and shut the door
behind her. On the dark porch she ran plump upon Jack Carter.
“Why, Jack!” she cried, with her tear-wet face tucked before she knew it
against his breast, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh, just hanging around,” grinned Mr. Carter.
“Gawd be praised!” roared Tobe, inside the house.
“Amen!” responded Jack, outside.
“An' Tobe Cullum,” announced Joe Trimble at Bishop's the next day, “have
ordered up the fines' set o' shiny in Waco fer Sissy.”
“It beats _me_,” said Newt Pinson; “but I allers did say that the women o'
Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
The Courtship of Colonel Bill
BY J. J. EAKINS
It was early morning in the Bluegrass. The triumphant sun was driving the
white mist before it from wood and rolling meadow-land, rousing the drowsy
cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the
inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his
head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel
flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid
impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry
bushes blooming by the roadside; and then, with many a mile of smiling
pastures in its victorious wake, it burst over the low rampart of stable
roofs encircling the old Lexington race-course, and, after a hasty glimpse
at the horses speeding around the track and the black boys singing and
slouching from stall to stall with buckets of water on their heads, it
rushed impetuously into an old-fashioned, deep-waisted family barouche
beside one of the stables, and shone full upon a slender, girlish figure
within. It wasted no time upon a purple-faced old gentleman beside her, nor
upon two young gentlemen on the seat opposite, but rested with bold and
ardent admiration upon the young girl's face, touching her cheeks with a
color as delicate as the apple blossoms in the orchards, and weaving into
her rich brown hair the red gold of its own beams.