for a piece of your hoecake and some of your meat.”
“Do so—do so,” answered Aaron.
“Bring four biscuits and two pieces of ham,” cried Sweetest Susan, as
Buster John rushed out of the door. He returned in a little while with
four biscuits, each sandwiched with a piece of ham. Whereupon Aaron
turned over to the children all his hoecake and fried bacon, which they
devoured with a relish which belongs to youth alone. This done, they gave
Aaron to understand what they came for, and he, without any apology,
explanation, or delay, such as a negro would have indulged in, and
likewise without any humor, told his story. Perhaps there was no room for
humor, but a negro would have found a place for it.
“I can’t tell you the story as the field hands could,” said Aaron. “They
have a word for everything. What I know is that when I saw the little
white boy crying about me, I was no longer the same man. Something
swelled here”—touching his throat—“and something broke here”—striking his
breast. “I had said to myself, be as cunning as a snake. My mind was made
up to run away from the man that bought me, and follow the negro trader
and strangle him in the night. He was a beast. I promised myself that he
should live no more. The thoughts made me happy, and then I saw the white
child, small and crippled, crying because his father had not bought me.
I said, what is he to me? And then my hands shook and my knees trembled.
Another man crept into my skin and looked out of my eyes. Not since my
mother shook hands with me and told me good-by when I was a boy had I
seen anybody crying for me. Then, I said, the man who gets me to-day will
get a good bargain.
“In my mind there was but one thought—the child is my Little Master. The
Gray Pony has told you what happened. It was to save the Little Master’s
father that I threw the horseshoe. I thought the young man was killed,
and I said, it is a pity! When I rode home with Mr. Gossett, I kept on
saying it is a pity—a great pity; and when my new master asked me if I
would treat him right, I smiled and told him I would do the best I could.
And I did. I worked for him as hard as I ever worked for a man. But he
never trusted me. He was always watching me.
“One night, just after sundown, he called me out of my hut—it was not a
cabin—and said he wanted me to get in the one-horse wagon and take a bale
of cotton to a neighbor’s house and sell it to him. At once I smelled
trouble.
“‘But will the man buy it?’ I asked.
“The answer was: ‘He may; if he does, the money is yours. If not, no harm
is done.’
“‘I am afraid of the patterrollers,’ said I.
“The answer was: ‘I’ll not be far away.’
“I had nothing else to do but go, but I knew there was trouble at the end
of the road. I had seen negroes lashed for selling their masters’ things,
and I had seen white men sent to jail for trading with negroes between
two suns. I found out long afterward that Mr. Gossett’s neighbor had
some land that he refused to sell. He was not very well off, but he held
to his land and made poor crops. If he bought the cotton from me, Mr.
Gossett could buy his land or put him in jail. But this was all dark to
me then.
“I mounted the wagon—But wait! Rambler, the track dog, is here. He knows
what happened. I will call him.”
Aaron went to the door of his cabin, put his right hand to his mouth, and
gave a musical halloo. The dogs were barking in another part of the lot,
but they ceased instantly, as if listening. Then Watch, the catch dog,
barked three times:—
“Who is it?”
Again Aaron gave the halloo, and this time it was answered by the
quavering cry of a hound. Before the children learned the language of
the animals, they would have said a dog was howling somewhere on the
plantation, but now they knew that Rambler was saying:—
“I am c-o-m-i-n-g!”
In a few minutes he came running into the cabin, his hair damp with the
dew. He looked rather sheepish, as the saying is, and crouched near
Aaron, as if he expected to be scolded. Once upon a time Rambler had been
a black-and-tan, but he was now old, and the gray hairs had well-nigh
obliterated the tan, and were encroaching on the black. His muzzle was
very gray, and his dew-claws had grown until they were nearly an inch
and a half long. One of his long ears was split a little at the end, the
result of a skirmish with old Mr. Raccoon. He kept his eyes averted from
Aaron and the children and seemed to be both humble and uneasy. He was
better satisfied when Aaron told him what was wanted. Indeed, he became
very lively and went about the room picking up the scraps of bread the
children had dropped on the floor. Aaron went to his little pine cupboard
and got out a pone of corn bread that he had saved from the day before.
Rambler took the bread in his mouth and then placed it gently on the
floor. Gently wagging his tail, he looked up in Aaron’s face.
“Son of Ben Ali,” he said, “I am getting old, and, what with gnawing
bones and killing cats and fighting coons, my teeth are bad. This bread
is hard.”
Whereupon Aaron took the bread, crushed it in his hands, dropped it in an
old tin platter, and placed it on the hearth.
“This would taste better, if it had ham gravy on it,” remarked Rambler,
after saying “Thanky” with his tail; “yes, a good deal better, but I’ll
not be choice.”
When he had finished the bread, he seated himself near the chimney corner
and licked his chops carefully.
“You want to know about that trip the Son of Ben Ali made to sell the
cotton. But I don’t even know how to begin. My tongue and my tail will be
here talking and wagging, and my mind will be off in the woods hunting
minks and coons and possums. You know how one thing leads to another.
Well, if I get started I’ll get things upside down, as the rabbit does
when he tries to run down hill.”
“When I started with the cotton,” suggested Aaron, “you made up your mind
to go with me.”
“That’s so,” said Rambler. “I don’t know why. I knew well enough you
weren’t going hunting. It was just a notion that seized me. I trotted
along sometimes in front of the wagon and sometimes behind it. Before we
had gone very far I happened to be in front of the wagon when a rabbit
ran across the road. I dashed after it and bumped my head against a fence
rail. It hurt so that I sat down by the roadside and waited for the pain
to go away. The wagon went by and I concluded to go back home and go to
bed in the shuckpen. I started back, but before I had gone far, I heard
the clinking of bridle-reins and bits, and presently I saw two men on
horseback.
“I stopped until they passed by. And then I saw that it was Old Grizzly
and the overseer.”
“Old Grizzly!” cried Buster John. “Who was he?”
“That was the name the negroes had for Mr. Gossett,” Aaron explained.
[Illustration: A RABBIT DASHED ACROSS THE ROAD]
“Old Grizzly and the overseer,” Rambler continued, paying no attention
to the interruption. “They were riding along after the wagon, but at
some distance behind it. I says to myself, well, well! something is up.
So, instead of going back home, I turned around and trotted along the
road till I passed Old Grizzly and the overseer, and caught up with the
wagon. I said to the Son of Ben Ali:—
“‘Get down and fix one of your wagon wheels, and see who comes behind
you.’
“This he did, but when Old Grizzly and the overseer heard the Son of Ben
Ali knocking on one of the wagon wheels with a rock, they stopped, and
came no farther until after he drove on again. Then I knew, and the Son
of Ben Ali knew, that Old Grizzly and the overseer were coming to see
that orders were obeyed.
“The house to which the Son of Ben Ali was carrying the cotton was not
far. It was in the midst of a big grove of oak-trees. The trees were too
big for the house, or the house was not fine enough for the trees, for
they made everything so dark that, from the road, those who cannot see in
the night would never know that a house was there.
“The Son of Ben Ali drove the wagon under the trees, waited until he
could hear the clinking of bridles and bits, as Old Grizzly and the
overseer rode up, and then he slipped around the house and went to the
back door. I waited until I saw Old Grizzly and the overseer stop under
one of the big oaks, and then I followed.
“The Son of Ben Ali knocked at the back door, which was soon opened by a
negro woman, who asked him what he wanted. He told her, and then the man
came to the door.
“‘What do you want?’ he asked.
“‘I want to see you,’ said the Son of Ben Ali. ‘I want to sell you a bale
of cotton.’
“‘Who is your master?’ the man asked.
“‘Mr. Gossett,’ the Son of Ben Ali answered.
“‘What is your name?’
“‘They call me Aaron.’
“‘You are the boy he bought not long ago.’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘Wait a moment.’ The man went into another room, and when he appeared
again he had a shotgun in his hands. My hide is not very thick, and so I
went under the steps. The man seemed to be mad. The Son of Ben Ali had
some such idea, for he asked:—
“‘What are you going to do with the gun, sir?’
“‘Get the truth out of you.’
“‘A dead man will neither lie nor tell the truth,’ said the Son of Ben
Ali. His voice sounded as if he might be laughing, but I was under the
steps and couldn’t see.
“‘Is the cotton yours?’ the man asked.
“‘It is Mr. Gossett’s.’
“‘Why do you bring it here to-night?’
“‘I had my orders.’
“‘Oh, if I had the old scoundrel here!’ cried the man in a rage.
“‘If you talk loud, he’ll hear you,” said Aaron.
“The man understood at once. ‘Wait!’ he whispered. Then he slipped around
the corner of the house. Suddenly I heard the gun go off, and it scared
me so I couldn’t help but cry out. Some one else yelled, too — some one
under the oaks in front, and then I heard the snorting and stamping of
horses. The Son of Ben Ali stole off in the dark before the man returned,
and I followed him, not knowing what had happened or what might happen.
“But I soon found out, and it was not as bad as it might have been. The
shot the man fired had shattered one of the overseer’s arms. He was not
hurt so badly but he could ride his horse, and he and Old Grizzly hurried
home as fast as they could.
“After a while the Son of Ben Ali followed, but instead of riding in the
wagon, he walked by the side of it, and I went ahead to see that the way
was clear. The Son of Ben Ali knew that there was trouble in store for
him, and he didn’t want Old Grizzly to get hold of him.”
“I don’t see why,” said Buster John.
“Why, Old Grizzly didn’t know but the Son of Ben Ali had gone to the
man’s house and told him about the whole business. There was nobody else
to tell the man, and if he knew that Old Grizzly and the overseer were
waiting in the grove, of course he must have got the news from the Son
of Ben Ali. But it happened that the overseer was so badly scared about
his wounded arm that Old Grizzly had to go home and sit up with him, and
this left the way clear for the Son of Ben Ali to take the mule and wagon
and cotton where they belonged. He drove the wagon under the gin-shelter,
unharnessed the mule and fed it, and then went to his hut and gathered up
his belongings and took to the woods.”
“Then he was a runaway,” said Sweetest Susan. She looked at Aaron with
new interest. She had often heard of runaways, but she had never seen
one.
“Yes, he was a runaway,” Rambler answered, “and it was a long time before
he was anything else. I didn’t bother my head about the Son of Ben Ali
when he went to the woods, for I knew he was just as much at home there
as I was. I stayed behind to see what would happen, and by staying I soon
found out that I had made some trouble for myself.
“It was very curious, too, when you come to think about it. Old Grizzly
behaved with so much meanness toward his negroes, half feeding and
clothing them, and working them long after dark, that some of them were
in the woods most of the time. Now, Old Grizzly’s son, George, was very
fond of fox-hunting, and some of his friends sent me to him when I was
quite young. My whole family have a great name for running foxes, so it
is said, and Old Grizzly’s George wanted me to hunt foxes for him along
with the other dogs. I didn’t need any teaching in that business, for
the minute I smelled a fox, no matter at what hour of the day or night,
I felt bound to hunt him up and run him down. I had that feeling as far
back as I can remember.
“One day, when I was very young, I was playing at hunting with the
little negroes just to pass the time away. One would hold me, and another
would go far out of sight and hide. I had to use my nose to find him, and
I soon came to enjoy the fun. Once Old Grizzly himself saw us playing,
and he seemed to be very much pleased with the way I followed the trail
of the little negroes. He took part in it himself, holding me while one
of the children ran through the pasture and down the branch, and around
by the gin-screw back to the house. He did this many times, and seemed to
be very much pleased with me. After a while, when I grew older, he made
some of the large negroes run, but I never failed to find and bay them.
I soon found out why Old Grizzly was so well pleased. One morning, one
of the negroes was missing. He had run away some time during the night,
having been promised a strapping for the next morning. Old Grizzly called
me, and we went to the negro’s hut, where I was made to smell of his
blanket and such of his belongings as he had failed to take with him.
I knew at once what Old Grizzly wanted me to do, and I was more than
willing to do it, for the negro happened to be one that had given me
more kicks than scraps. I settled down to business at once. I ran for the
hut, and circled around it. The scent was as plain to me as a track in
the mud is to you. I followed it with no trouble at all, and Old Grizzly,
having his horse ready, went along with me, keeping as close to me as he
could. In an hour we had overtaken the negro, and Old Grizzly carried him
back, making him walk before the horse all the way home.
[Illustration: OLD GRIZZLY BROUGHT HIM BACK]
“After that I had to look out for myself. The negroes treated me worse
than ever. They were ready to kill me at any time, and I had to keep out
of their way. This made it worse for the negroes. None of them could
escape Old Grizzly by going to the woods. I had help, too, for some of
the other hounds, seeing me made much of by the master and the overseer,
joined me in my expeditions, and in a short while Old Grizzly had a pack
of ‘nigger dogs,’ as he called us, that seemed to fill him with pride.
“This was going on when the Son of Ben Ali came—when he came and touched
me and gave me the sign. And then I knew more than I had known before.
After he came he was the first to go into the woods, as I have told you,
and the next morning my trouble began.
“Old Grizzly was very mad when, at daylight, he sent for the Son of
Ben Ali and found him gone. I slept under the house in a corner of
the chimney stack, and I heard Old Grizzly when he came in from the
overseer’s house. He bawled at the cook for not having breakfast ready,
though it was not time, and then he came out, ripping and rearing, and
sent the house-boy for the Son of Ben Ali. But the Son of Ben Ali was not
to be found. This made matters worse. Old Grizzly called up my companions
and myself, gave us a few bites of stale bread, had his horse saddled,
and then carried us to the hut where the Son of Ben Ali had lived.
“I knew then what was going to happen. I ought to have known before, but
it had never occurred to me. We were to run the Son of Ben Ali down so
that Old Grizzly could capture him. This didn’t suit me at all, but I had
to go. There was no way to get out of it.”
“Oh, I don’t see why!” cried Sweetest Susan.
“Me, nuther,” Drusilla chimed in.
“It is simple enough,” said Rambler, placing himself in a more
comfortable position—he had been sitting on his haunches. “The other dogs
would have gone whether I went or not. So I pretended I was very glad to
go. I circled around the house, and ran over the scent twice so as to see
what the other dogs would do. They ran over it, too, but I knew that one
of them had a faint hint of it. He went back to it, and then”—
Here a spark from the pine knot that made a light in the cabin flew out
near Rambler’s head, and suddenly burst into a shower of smaller sparks.
Rambler dodged and jumped out of the way so quickly that the children
laughed.
“You may think it is funny,” said Rambler, “and it may be, but I’ll not
laugh until I see you with a hot spark in your ear.”
He settled himself again and resumed his story, but this time he kept one
eye on the pine knot.
VI.
A RUN THROUGH THE WOODS.
“As I was saying,” Rambler went on, “the scent was as plain as the nose
on your face, and, although I passed it over, one of the other dogs had
a hint of it and whimpered over it. This dog afterwards made a very good
track dog. He had what they call a cold nose, and he was hard headed
enough to hang on. But at that time he was young and foolish, and new to
the business. He had no mind of his own. So I went back to the trail,
picked up the scent and went along with it slowly, as if it were a
tedious job to unravel it.
“What I wanted to do was to follow it until it crossed some other trail,
and then pick up the new one and carry Old Grizzly away from the Son of
Ben Ali. But it was impossible. No one had passed, and so we ran on after
the Son of Ben Ali.
[Illustration: I WAS CLOSE TO THE RABBIT]
“The next best thing to finding some other track, I thought, was to get
out of sight of Old Grizzly. I let myself out a little, the other dogs
did the same, and in a few moments we had left Old Grizzly behind. Right
then I did something I have never done before, and that was to try to
catch a rabbit, when I was hunting a different kind of game. While we
were going along, full tilt, a big fat rabbit jumped up right under my
nose. I dashed after it as hard as I could go, and the other dogs came
tumbling after. I was so close to the rabbit that it turned before going
into the swamp. I made it turn again, and it ran into the mouth of one
of my companions. The others ran up, and they had quite a fight over the
rabbit, tearing it to pieces in short order. I was hungry myself, and
nothing would have pleased me better than to rush in and take the rabbit
away from my companions. But I didn’t have time.
“While the others were snapping and snarling I slipped into the swamp,
ran across it and made a circle of a mile or more, and tried to pick up
the scent again where I thought it ought to be. But it was not there. I
knew then that the Son of Ben Ali had wandered about, not knowing or
caring where he went so long as he kept out of the way of Old Grizzly.
I made another circle, and this time I picked up the scent again. I had
said to myself when I was hunting for it that I would remain silent when
I found it, but I came upon it so suddenly and unexpectedly, and it
was so warm and fresh, that I cried out at the top of my voice. It was
foolish, but such is habit. My companions heard it, and they came to me
without delay. I knew they were coming, and the best I could do was to
discover quickly which way the scent led, and then take the back track,
trusting to the dullness of my companions to mislead them. By the time
they came up I was tripping along toward the cold end of the trail as
noisily as if the Son of Ben Ali were in plain view. The others, not to
be outdone, joined in the cry, and we went bolting along the back track.
In this way we came up with Old Grizzly, who seemed to be much astonished
to see us running headlong in the way he had just come.
“The scent grew fainter and fainter, and everything would have gone well
but for one of my companions, the one that discovered the scent at the
beginning of the hunt. When the scent grew colder, he began to circle
around for himself, and about a half a mile away he picked it up with
such a howl and a flourish that I ran up to him. It was so warm that I
looked up, expecting to see the Son of Ben Ali trotting along a quarter
of a mile away. But it was not so. He was not in sight.
“I joined in and took the lead, saying to myself that when we got into
the woods I’d show my spotted companion a new wrinkle in trailing. When
we came to the bushes I dropped back a little, seized my companion by the
neck and dragged him around and shook him up in a way that surprised him
and the others.
“‘What’s that for?’ he cried. ‘You’re too spotted,’ I replied. This
quieted them down, but it was too late to carry out my new plans. The
scent had been growing warmer and warmer, and I took it up again as a
matter of duty, and the others followed in a more sober manner. We went
through the woods at a pretty good pace, and I expected to see the Son of
Ben Ali limping along ahead of us, ready to drop, for we had now come
several miles in doubling and twisting and turning.
“But instead of seeing the Son of Ben Ali, we saw something that was more
surprising. We came upon a young man and a young lady. The young man had
been hunting, for he had a gun, and the young lady had been gathering
wild flowers, for a negro girl with her had a basketful.”
“I know! I know!” cried Drusilla. “Dat nigger ’oman wuz my mammy. I been
hear ’er tell dat many an’ many’s de time. Yes, suh! dat wuz my mammy!
An’ dat ain’t all. Dat ar white man an’ dat ar white ’oman wuz yo’ all’s
pa an’ ma.”
Buster John and Sweetest Susan looked at Aaron for confirmation or denial.
“That’s so,” Aaron said.
“Mammy say dey wuz courtin’,” explained Drusilla.
[Illustration: MAMMY SAY DEY WUZ COURTIN’]
Buster John seemed to be somewhat embarrassed at this information, but
Sweetest Susan appeared to relish it. On the other hand, Rambler went to
Aaron and said:—
“Son of Ben Ali, it would please me much if you would scrape your shoe
just behind my shoulders. A colony of fleas has settled there, because
they know I can reach them neither with my teeth nor with my hind feet.”
Aaron performed this service willingly, and the scraping seemed to tickle
Rambler so that he raised one of his hind feet from the ground, and made
believe to be scratching himself, but his foot was simply moving up and
down in the air. At this the children laughed very heartily.
“Well,” said Rambler, “when we ran up on the young man and the young
lady there was a great flurry. The negro girl screamed, and the young
lady rushed into the arms of the young man for protection. My companions
and I ran around and circled, but all trace of the Son of Ben Ali had
disappeared.
“I found the warm scent of a horse, but there was no horse to be seen.
I thought this very strange, so I followed it a few hundred yards, but
said nothing to my companions about it. The scent led out of the woods,
through a field in which the brown sedge grew high, and, in going through
this, I caught the scent of the Son of Ben Ali. It was high on the sedge,
and I knew by this that the horse had the Son of Ben Ali for a rider.
But I said nothing to my companions. I turned away from the horse’s
trail, and continued to go in a circle, until, coming to the point where
the young man had entered the woods, I made some fuss over it, and thus
drew my companions away from the sedge field. They came to me, but I told
them it was a mistake, and in this way cooled them off, so that they were
no longer as keen to find the trail of the Son of Ben Ali as they had
been.
“I have told pretty much all I know about it,” continued Rambler, dodging
another spark. “It happened that the young man who was out there in the
woods with the young lady was the man to whom Old Grizzly had sent the
Son of Ben Ali with the bale of cotton.”
“Was it really papa and mamma?” asked Buster John, turning to Aaron.
Aaron laughed and nodded his head.
“Well, they’ve never told me anything about it,” said Sweetest Susan, in
an injured tone.
“Nor me either,” remarked Buster John.
“Huh!” exclaimed Drusilla, “folks don’t hafter tell dey chilluns all dey
know.”
Just then a loud, but mellow voice outside cried out: “Drusilla! You
Drusilla! You better answer me gal! I boun’ I’ll make you talk when I git
holt er you!”
Drusilla put her head outside the door and yelled out: “Ma’am!”
“Come ’ere dis minnit, madam! Whar is you?”
“At Unk A’on’s house, mammy!”
“Tell her, Uncle Aaron says he wants to see her,” said Buster John. This
Drusilla did, and presently Drusilla’s mother was heard coming along the
path, breathing dire vengeance against Drusilla, and wondering what in
the world Aaron wanted.
“Is that you, Jemimy?” asked Aaron. “Come in—don’t be scared.”
Jemimy came in laughing, and her smile was in queer contrast to the
threats she had just made against her daughter.