It seemed indeed to Desmond that his head had scarcely touched the
pillow when he was roused by the baying of hounds from the stable-yard
at the rear of the house. He was on his feet in a moment, for Mr.
Herndon did not monopolize the virtue of promptness at Dryad-Dene, and
Desmond was zealously heedful that his distaste to the occasion and his
entertainers should induce no breach of observance on his part. He was
half dressed when the screech of the speaking-tube summoned him within
the sound of Colonel Kentopp’s voice, urgently asking if he were awake,
then with equal urgency if he were risen,—which demonstrated that
Colonel Kentopp’s brain was not very completely cleared of the vapors of
slumber.
Desmond arrayed himself in his equestrian togs, which he considered the
most appropriate gear at his command, and finding the halls alight and
following the sound of voices, he soon made his way to the dining-room,
where a hasty breakfast was going forward.
“Just a snack,” Colonel Kentopp was saying to the gentlemen seated at
the table, or standing at the sideboard helping themselves to cold
mutton or ham as they would. He himself seemed to be breakfasting on
brandy, and he went around the table, decanter in hand, administering a
nip here and there, willy-nilly, like the Squeers treacle.
“For the stomach’s sake,” he would insist to youths whose hearty young
stomachs could with impunity have begun the day with ice-cold
buttermilk. There was hot coffee, but no hot breads, and therefore, in
Mississippi estimation, no breakfast. “We shall have a hot breakfast
ready for us at the camp. We just want a snack here to enable us to get
away. Those girls will be wild to go, and they couldn’t keep the saddle
half the distance.”
“Why, Miss Kelvin rides as well as any man,” said Rupert Regnan,
displeased; “and Miss Allandyce—”
“Rides just like a man,” Kentopp finished, with a laugh. “The truth is,”
he spoke mysteriously, “we expect a rough day. We hope to get up a bear,
and it isn’t safe to have ladies along in such a harum-scarum
expedition. This is our last chance,—the game laws, you know. Monday is
the first of March!”
There was a touch of the _preux chevalier_ about Regnan. It was
distasteful to him to sneak off and debar the young ladies of the
pleasure they had set their hearts upon. If there had been any means of
rousing them to the deceits practiced upon them, other than
inappropriately appearing at their bedroom doors, he would have availed
himself of it. What cared he for such stereotyped fun as was comprised
in pulling through sloughs and cane-brakes with a lot of men after a
bear, if one could be found! They were not of metropolitan life; the
wilderness and its incidents were an every-day story; they were
veritable “swampers,” as much old “residenters” as the bear himself!
Such amusement as the day might offer lay, to his mind, in the
incongruity of feminine society, and the enjoyment at second-hand of
these hackneyed details, wonderful and new to the young girls’
experience. He would fain have afforded them this joy, which they
childishly craved.
He realized, however, that it was not his place to dictate, and
presently the men had all trooped out to a small room, ambitiously
denominated the armory, and were busied over the choice of weapons and
supply of ammunition. A great array of antique blades, helmets, shields,
more or less genuine or suggestive of the junk-shops of New Orleans,
hung upon the walls, with some really interesting specimens of the
blunderbusses and cutlasses of the buccaneers of early times on the Gulf
coast; of bows and arrows, beaded quivers, scalp-knives, tomahawks, from
the date of the Chickasaw and Choctaw occupation of this region; and of
the flintlock rifles, powder-horns, and shot-pouches of the pioneer
days. Two or three of the party had brought their own guns, but others
had depended on a chance furnishing forth from Kentopp’s armory. The
modern repeating shotgun, holding in its magazine five cartridges, each
with a dozen buckshot, permitting the discharge of sixty balls within
five seconds, was a prime favorite with the sportsmen in preference to
the staunch old double-barreled breechloader; only those who boasted
special accuracy of aim were content with rifles; Desmond, not very
enthusiastic in pressing forward, found his choice limited to necessity.
“I hope that you are a good shot, Mr. Desmond,” said Colonel Kentopp,
with polite concern, “for these fellows have left nothing but two rifles
for us. First-rate make, though not repeaters.”
Desmond’s outdoor accomplishments were limited to the “Gridiron.” He
fancied the swamp game destined to be long-lived indeed, if they were to
die from the chances of a single rifle-ball directed by his unaccustomed
aim. For he was no sportsman. He did not thirst for victory over the
sylvan folk. He accepted the rifle as graciously as if he were a dead
shot and confident of his powers, secured his share of the appropriate
ammunition, and rejoined the others, who had already repaired to the
stable-yard.
It was an animated scene. The gas-jet over the stable-door brought it
out in high lights and black shadows. A number of fresh, restive horses
had been led out of their stalls still in their blankets; others were
bare and shivering in process of being saddled.
“Will you ride with a curb, Desmond, or just with a snaffle?” asked
Kentopp, as he bustled about, as busy as any of his negro grooms, who,
with shining eyes and glittering teeth, entered into all the spirit of
the occasion. The dogs were literally beside themselves, and with their
dark, whisking shadows seemed twice as numerous as in reality. Now they
leaped in a series of ecstatic gambols as if they could not keep their
feet to the ground, and again they manifested strange proclivities not
to be accounted for on a basis of human reasoning. One suddenly planted
himself in front of a young and spirited steed and treated him to a
succession of frenzied bayings and elastic boundings that sent the
horse, restricted to a limited space, quite wild with surprise and
dismay,—now leaping aside with the hope of evading his queer tormentor,
and now rearing and threatening to bolt. Another of the dogs, with a
yelp so shrill that it menaced the integrity of every tympanum within
reach of the sound, urged the setting forth without more delay,
scampering around among the hoofs of the horses and the legs of the men,
and so to the gate and away!—looking over his shoulder presently, seeing
that he was not followed, and returning to repeat the demonstration,
calling “Come on! Come on! Come on!” as distinctly as if he had the
powers of human speech.
The horses, sniffing the morning air and the promise of adventure, again
and again sent forth neighs shrill and clear and as matutinal of effect
as a cock’s crow; there was a great stamping and champing; the voices of
the stable-men were loud with calls for gear within the buildings, and
admonitions to the horses, and adjurations to Mr. Sloper to take some
order with his pack.
“’Fore Gawd, them scandalous hound-dogs don’t show no more manners than
if they were so many rapscallion childern,” the head of the stable
averred.
The guests discussed bits and saddles and chose according to their
liking, and went in and out of the harness-room with grooms and
lanterns. Often, in the midst of the turmoil, Colonel Kentopp looked up
with apprehensive forecast at the house, which seemed with its three
stories and tower very tall and stately in this region of the bungalow
preference, expecting to hear a sash lifted and a voice, sweet but
imperious, demand a stay of the proceedings. “Wait for us! Wait for us!”
seemed to sound in his ears, until with the quick, assured tramp of a
body of horse, a frenzied crescendo of the skirling of the dogs, a wild
jocose “Yah! Yah!” of the stable-men left in the deserted yard, the
hunters were mounted and gone.
It was still so dark that Desmond could not have kept the road had it
not been for the horsemen on either side, and the voices of those
valiant precursors, the dogs, some of whom, however, now moderated their
transports and were trotting silently forward. The tones of their owner,
or entertainer it might seem, so honored were they in his domicile, came
from the van, where he rode abreast with Colonel Kentopp, who had ceased
his attentions to Mr. Loring to ply old Sloper with his courtesies. He
really felt under special obligations to the old swamper for the loan of
his pack of hounds, though, as in the case of many other politic people,
his gratitude included a lively sense of favors yet to come. It was the
opportunity for a day of sport preëminently appropriate to the region,
which without Sloper’s coöperation it would have been impossible to
offer to the house-party. Hence Colonel Kentopp had put up Mr. Sloper on
the best horse in his stable, well knowing that the old swamper would be
keen to discern and quick to resent any invidious distinction in the
matter. Mr. Loring rode only the second best, a point which doubtless
ministered to the swamper’s satisfaction and jealous sense of his own
consequence. Therefore in fine fettle he led the cavalcade, continuously
talking, his high-pitched voice, with its frequent breaks into a
snuffling chuckle of falsetto laughter, coming back on the keen, dank,
matutinal air with great distinctness.
He was definitely of the class known as the “poor whites” of that
region, and his company was not acceptable to Mr. Loring. The man who
rises in the world is not tolerant of lower conditions. It is only the
acknowledged aristocrat who can really unbend. Sloper’s estate in life
did not duplicate or approximate Loring’s origin, which was in all
essentials distinctly genteel,—in the fact of educated parents, in
refinement of early association, in point of social connection; for
although his immediate family were of small means, he was related to
well-to-do people of good middle-class standing. Sloper, however,
distinctly expressed the “common folks” of that region as contrasted
with the baronial planter, and as Loring had no affiliations with the
latter class, it offended him to be brought into familiar juxtaposition
with the representative of the widely different lower order.
Colonel Kentopp could suffer no reduction of personal consequence in
hobnobbing as man to man with the old plebeian, but as far as Loring was
concerned, familiarity might seem an outcropping of quondam tastes and
associations and similarity of station. Hence he said naught as Colonel
Kentopp’s jovial laughter rang out at the conclusion of one of Jerry
Sloper’s stories that he had heard a score of times heretofore. As the
old swamper’s high falsetto cackle punctuated the applausive mirth of
the others, one might have thought that he was himself too noisy to
distinguish the fact that Mr. Loring had not relaxed his risibles in
compliment to the gifts of the raconteur; it was still too dark to
discriminate facial expressions, and the lantern, which one of the
colored grooms carried, was too far ahead to afford its gleams. There is
not always that submission in the minds of the lowly in estate which
would seem an appropriate concomitant of that humble condition.
“Powerful glad to see you here, Mr. Loring,—though I don’t rightly see
you yit,” Sloper remarked, holding in the spirited steed on which he was
mounted to range alongside the millionaire. “We feel here in the
Miss’ippi bottom that you jes’ nachully b’long to us. Why, I knowed yer
dad way back in the fifties. _Yes_, sir! He used ter run the river in
them days. He was mud clerk on the old Cher’kee Rose. I kep’ a wood-yard
up yander on the p’int, an’ Gus Loring an’ me had chummy old times when
he would come ashore to medjure the wood. That was before he
married—considerable looking up his match was, for a mud clerk, ye know!
Yer mother was a tidy gal,—plump as a partridge,—and I used to set up
ter her considerable myself. He! he! he! She turned me off, though, for
Gus Loring! An’ she done better, though I do say it myself. She done
better to take Gus instead o’ me. She had a leetle chunk o’ money, an’
yer dad quit the river an’ bought a share in a store an’ set out
a-clerkin’. But Lawd! I reckon ye wouldn’t bat yer eye for no such stock
o’ goods as he had. They tell me as ye have prospered considerable down
yander in Orleans! I reckon if _ye_ was ter store-keep, like yer dad, ye
could show forth as good a stock as they had at Whippoorwill
Landing,—that would ha’ made Gus Loring stare! I don’t mean ye could
_own_ it all—part credit o’ course! But I reckon from all I _have_ heard
tell that ye could get a note in bank,—an’ that is mo’ ’n yer dad ever
could do.”
Regnan loved his fellow-man. “For God’s sake, pull that old fox off the
Spartan’s vitals,” he said in a low voice to Kentopp. “I can’t abide for
a fellow to be gnawed like that.”
“Then, curse him,—why can’t he show some sense!” Kentopp growled _sotto
voce_ in return. “Who but a fool would try to top old Jerry Sloper with
his _nil admirari_ millionaire airs. _He_ knows what Loring cut his
teeth on! I am afraid of my life to say a word.”
Lieutenant Regnan had missed his billet as the destroyer of life. His
instincts were all for first aid to the injured. He presently began
melodiously to hum, and suddenly as he rode in the clump of horsemen he
broke forth: “Say, Mr. Sloper, how does the tune go to that old
high-water song:—
“Step light, neighbor,—_don’t_ jar the river!
Rising, rising, brimful and over—”
Forthwith the old swamper was blissfully chanting as he rode at the head
of the cavalcade, and Mr. Loring had time to readjust the expression of
his face and to conceal the ravages of the onslaught on his pride before
a certain pallid influence began to annul the darkness. A sense of mist
was in the atmosphere, yet great, towering trees were visible, and far
along apparently infinite vistas, level and devoid of woodland débris as
a royal park, some vague presence shifted continually, never so
distinct, so definitely embodied, as to be formulated to the vision, and
at last realized as the impalpable medium of the dawning light. Suddenly
day was revealed in the woods. The sun was up, not seeming to rise on
those infinite levels, but to spring at once like a miracle into the
place of darkness. It filled the world with the amplitudes of a glorious
golden glow, so fresh, so elated, yet pervaded with a sort of awe, a
splendid solemnity. Stillness characterized its earlier moments, but
presently, in the chill morning, the spring birds were singing from the
branches of the trees, which rustled with the sudden stir of the wind.
Through the vistas to the west the great Mississippi was agleam with
thousands of wavelets tipped with dazzling scintillations, and the
rising mist that veiled the Arkansas shore shimmered with opalescent
reflections. Beyond the limits of the forest one could see here and
there a scattered growth of cottonwood trees and the serpentine line of
the levee, its great embankment covered to the summit with the thick
growth of Bermuda grass, the interlacing roots of which were considered
of much avail in strengthening the earthwork to resist the action of the
current in times of high water. At one point, where the river turned in
its corkscrew convolutions, the horsemen could see that the encroaching
flood had crossed the intervening space and was beginning to stand
against the base of the levee. This premonitory symptom of overflow Mr.
Loring was prompt to notice.
“I have a cross levee half a mile back,” Colonel Kentopp said, with a
jaunty air. “I don’t think we will go under, even if that stretch of
levee should give. And if we do,” still more jauntily, “crawfish and
river detritus are fine fertilizers.”
“Best crops ever made in Deepwater Bend was after the biggest water I
ever see,” interrupted Jerry Sloper, exceedingly glib. “Levees broke in
March, and water stood sixty miles wide. Plantations were under till
mighty nigh May. River was not in its banks till nigh May. Then the crop
was planted and—”
“I have heard my grandfather tell about that,” interposed Regnan. “The
fields were so thick with cotton that they laughed and sang,—and the
planters laughed and sang, too.”
“Still, I’d rather Dryad-Dene should keep dry feet,” said Colonel
Kentopp, turning in his saddle to look over his shoulder at the water
lapping about the verdant spaces at the base of the levee. Nevertheless,
he felt very cheerful. The cavalcade could hear the plantation bell at
Dryad-Dene ring forth its strong, mellow acclaim, calling out the hired
force to work, as well as the tenant farmers, who were under the same
regimen. The broad expanse of fields was now and again visible, all
prepared for the planting of cotton,—as carefully laid off and with the
earth as thoroughly pulverized as if for a flower-bed. It was impossible
for the heart of a proprietor of so fine a plantation not to swell at
the sight, and while away from Annetta and her eager fostering of their
mutual ambitions toward metropolitan life, Kentopp felt a sort of
independence of the millionaire’s doubtful attitude. Let the event fall
out as it would, he had here a mighty good thing.
In the midst of these more vital and manly interests, Loring’s phlegm
and pose of indifference could but give way. He knew the country and its
possibilities thoroughly, and now and again he made searching inquiries
into local conditions, which showed that his mind was genuinely occupied
with the proposition, and caused Colonel Kentopp to think that he did
not half care to sell at all. Repeatedly the richness of the opportunity
was demonstrated. A turn in the road suddenly gave to view a lovely
level of pasturage inclosed by hedges of the Cherokee rose, over whose
wide-spreading evergreen brambles the horsemen could look upon a green
plain, dotted with trees of gigantic girth, and embellished with as fine
a flock of sheep as ever wore wool. Three or four black pickaninnies,
already absorbed in a game of mumble-the-peg, and several collie dogs
were entered upon their guardian duties for the day, and Colonel Kentopp
was descanting upon varieties and pedigrees, weight of shearings and
flavor of mutton.
“We raise everything at Dryad-Dene, as a model plantation should. The
world is within the bounds of Dryad-Dene. We buy nothing but gunpowder,
salt, iron, and sugar.”
This was, of course, the ancient brag of the great river principalities;
but the immense drove of hogs which the horsemen passed after a time,
crowding about a gate where swineherds were throwing out as breakfast
the contents of a wagon loaded with corn over the high fence of the
inclosure, the wide expanse of the potato-fields, harvested long ago,
their yield garnered into the potato-sheds that stretched along on one
side like the roofs of a little street, the saw-and-grist mill, the
cotton-press and steam-gin, with the obeliscal smokestack towering above
the plain,—all the appurtenances of the industry, went far to confirm
the boast.
And now into the depths of the wilderness, primeval, apparently
illimitable, with the wind footing it featly alongside. There were
clouds in the densely blue sky, but high, white, flocculent, and lightly
floating. The odors of spring vegetation, of early blooms, came on every
breath; and when the first of the sloughs was reached, it was so draped
in lace-like willows, so full of verdant moss and ooze, so still and
dreamy in its marshy pools, mirroring the sky, that one might have
accounted it a valued feature of the landscape, but for the experience
of fording it.
“We can’t hunt bear in a parlor,” Colonel Kentopp declared, as he forced
Ringdove to wet her dainty hoofs. The rest were soon splashing after,
unmindful of mire and solicitous only of quicksands. But on the farther
side they were on dry and level ground once more, cantering alertly
amidst the great forest trees, the horses scarcely breathed, and the
courage of the cavalcade rising to the summons of exertion. And
now,—deepest shades, great overhanging, swamp-like growths! The dense
cypress, festooned by the gray Spanish moss, rose towering out of
ink-black water; a white heron, standing motionless beside a clump of
the protuberances known as “cypress-knees,” looked as if it might have
been sketched into the scene with a bit of chalk; logs, moss-covered and
dripping with slime, lay half buried in the ooze; the canopy of foliage
was so thick, the boughs of the trees so densely interlacing, that the
light of the brilliant day was cut off and the hunters rode as if in a
dream-shadow. Lakes presently opened alongside, series of glassy
stretches, blue under the azure sky, and connected by a bayou so dully
flowing that, gaze as one might, the motion of a current could not be
discerned. Once wild ducks were glimpsed, and though old Jerry Sloper
protested, he could not hinder the prompt discharge of one of the
shot-guns. On the crash of the report ensued the whizzing of wings in
the flurry of terrified flight, and two of the birds floated dead upon
the water. A handsome setter sprang into the lake, and presently swam
out with his feathered trophy; while the dogs of different breeds
wheezed uneasily about the margin, and one of them, a famous bear hound
of a singular bluish tint, his hide about his jaws hanging in loose
folds, sat down and contemplated the feat with head askew, as much as to
say, “Now, how did _you_ find out how to do that?”
Jerry Sloper was beside himself with indignation. “Now, you fellers air
goin’ to spile the chances fur the whole day! How fur d’ ye think this
here piece o’ water ’ll carry the crack o’ that thar gun? Old Pa Bear
will hide in the cane-brake an’ old Ma Bear will gather the children up
in the hollow tree, an’ they won’t ventur’ out ’fore June. An’ then the
manners of my dogs! I been tryin’ ter get it out o’ that thar
Lightfoot’s fool head that he is expected to go arter what I shoot. _I_
don’t kill fowels with a gun.” His lip curled with scorn, showing his
long, tobacco-stained teeth. “I go ter my hen-cup an’ chop off thar
heads with a hatchet. I am a man, I am! An’ when I play, I take my sport
like a man. I shoot deer an’ bear an’ wolves an’ sech animals. The last
time I killed a bear, ’twas by accident. I hed nobody with me but
Lightfoot, thar. An’ the crittur,—durn his little old cranky soul!—he
p’inted. Came to a stand, with his forefoot crooked,—jes’ so”—and Jerry
Sloper crooked his great hairy paw in clumsy imitation of Lightfoot’s
graceful instinct—“else I wouldn’t have seen old Bruin. I ’lowed a’ fust
’twar jes’ a hawg over in the brake. An’ all of a suddenty, lo an’
behold, ’twas revealed to me that thar was a bear! An’ I fired,—an’ o’
course he fell. An’ off skittered Lightfoot ter _bring him in_, mind ye!
Thar I was hollerin’ arter the child, thrown to the wild beast,—I warn’t
able to stir hand or foot,—I was jes’ palsied with skeer. Lightfoot tuk
him gently by the ear,—not to spile him with gnawing,—jes’ like he done
that duck—Gimme that thar fowel, _you_ distracted beast!” and the
setter, with half-squatting hind-legs and wriggles of delight and pride,
and lifted, liquid, shining eyes, relinquished the game into his hand.
“An’ what happened? The bear warn’t plumb dead! And Lightfoot come back
tore mighty nigh ter the breastbone. See them scars on his chist? An’ ez
soon as he was able to stand it, I gin him a beatin’ besides ter teach
him better. An’ now,—ye have set him at his old tricks ag’in. I wouldn’t
own a dog with sech a mania, if he warn’t a present ter me. An’ till ye
fellers tuk to triflin’ with him, I ’lowed I’d got him plumb sensible.
You see that duck?”—he looked down sternly at his accomplished retainer,
who, discerning the change of tone, began to cringe miserably,
thoroughly crestfallen. “Oh, ho! ain’t forgot what I told you, eh? Well,
then,—want some mo’ slipper pie?”
Oh, he did not! He did not, indeed,—his pleading countenance protested.
But the threat was a mere feint; and as the old swamper turned to take
up the route once more, the setter, with a shrill yelp of delight to get
off from the colloquy with no painful sequence, dashed ahead, and was
presently trotting nimbly with his companions of various families and
traditions, the only bird dog, and the only one whose record comprised
the heady effort to retrieve a bear.
“I’d buy that setter, Mr. Sloper, if you’d put a price on him,” said
Regnan, who sometimes descended to the trifling sport of bird hunting.
“An’ _I’d_ buy the State of Miss’ippi, if ’twas layin’ around loose,”
was the not too encouraging response.
Sloughs, lagoons, bayous unnumbered! The horses were soon mired to their
girths; the men were splashed from head to foot, and those inexpert at
swimming a horse when suddenly out of his depth, had their high
riding-boots full of water. More than once an alligator was viewed, half
embedded in the ooze, only distinguished from the rotting log that he
resembled when he would rouse himself to swim slowly a few yards,
tempting the knights of the magazine shot-guns.
“Don’t ye know that a bullet from a forward shot will glance off as if
he wore chain armor!” old Sloper remonstrated. “The only chance is a
rifle-ball behind the eye.”
“And when did _you_ become acquainted with chain armor?” asked one of
the Mayberry youths, in merry wonderment and with a twinkling eye.
“About twenty-five years before you was bawn,” retorted the old swamper.
He paused to spit forth an enormous volley of tobacco-juice against the
trunk of a tree, with a seeming solicitude for the accuracy of his aim;
then resumed with the greatest deliberation.
“I holped in a jewel that was fought by two tremenjious swells, who got
themselves landed by the Great Republic for that purpose. They tuk up an
insult to each other while on the boat. They came up to my wood-yard—I
used ter furnish fuel ter the packets reg’lar. They said all they wanted
was a man ter see fair play an’ shut his mouth. They plastered mine good
an’ tight with a double eagle. One of the parties was tremenjious brash
an’ overbearin’; I could see that the other looked into death’s
eyesockets at close quarters. I medjured the ground for them with the
Flying Cloud’s wood-staff that the mud clerk had left at the
yard,—miserable, unshifty, keerless cuss! Bet he needed it himself
before he got ter New Orleans! An’ these two dandy fellers tuk thar
stand an’ fired. An’ the one that was so cocksure missed his aim, though
his hair-trigger was as fine a weepon as ever I see. An’ the t’other,
that thought he had come to his las’ minit, shot straight. But he aimed
at the man’s mouth, as it ’peared to me. He threw up his pistol at the
last second. The ball tuk the gentleman right through the throat. Ought
to have seen the blood spurt out ’n his jugular! Mighty nasty way to
kill a gentleman, I thought! An’ as we both run to the body on the
ground, one on either side, the winner’s hand shook so he could hardly
undo the vest. So I laid back the fine linen shirt, though I knew it was
no use to feel his heart, for he was as dead as a buckeye; I seen
between it an’ his silk underwear a shirt of fine steel rings. ’T would
turn a bullet; ’t would break a knife! An’ the s’vivor says,—his chin
shook so that he could hardly talk,—‘What do you think of that? I
s’picioned from the fust that he would give me no fair chance in a
fight, an’ he forced it upon me.’ An’ I say, ‘Let’s put this murderer in
the bayou. Thar’s some fierce catfish thar, an’ snakes, an’ slimy beasts
to eat the flesh from his bones. The mud is deep an’ will hold him down,
an’ the mire is fit for his last home! The Miss’ippi is too tricky to
trust,—floats things, ye know. The bayou for me, every time!’”
“Why, Mr. Sloper,” cried young Mayberry, suddenly grave and aghast. “I
should think that you would have been afraid.”
“Well, he ain’t never got up from thar,—so fur as I have heard tell.
What’s to be afeard of?”
“Was that _all_ you did? To bury him in the bayou?”
“Naw, sir; I went down to Natchez an’ spreed away the double eagle, the
twenty dollars.”
“But I mean about notifying the authorities?”
The old swamper’s face had a bewildered look. “Whar was they? What call
had they ter meddle? I done nothin’ but the heftin’.”
“Didn’t the Great Republic say anything the next time she passed?”
“Oh, yes! I told the mud clerk that the price of wood had riz, an’ he
told me to go to hell. That’s the last word with the Great Republic.”
Suddenly a sound smote the sylvan silence. A keen note of query, a wide
blare of discovery,—and all the pack opened on the scent, baying as
rhythmically as if trained to this woodland music. The horn rang out its
elated, spirited tones, the sound leaping like a live thing along the
far reaches of the levels. The horsemen, in a frenzy of excitement, were
separating, each taking his own course and riding as if the rout of some
swift pursuit were upon his track. Desmond hesitated for a moment,
bewildered, the only stranger to the wilderness of all the party,
forgotten utterly by his host, by old Sloper, by the huntsman on ahead
with the dogs, by the youthful sportsmen. Presently, however, Regnan
bethought himself of the tutor and his imminent danger of being lost in
the fastnesses, and paused after an instant of frantic plunging through
a narrow bogue that issued from a swamp where there was promise indeed
of scant solid ground.
“Come with me,” he called. “I am going to try an old stand on a deer
path I know. The hounds have got up a buck—I think so from the tongue
they are giving. Follow me. Swim your horse when he begins to flounder
in the bayous.”