turns at bay and dies with his face to his enemies. And now, in the
woods of the extensive bottoms that lay between the ridge and the
mountains, old Tom Abercrombie, his race over, stopped and turned his
face, toward his pursuers.
And as he did so all fear left him. His mind became as clear as the
sparkling sunlight about him. He was no longer a fleeing animal matching
wits with a pursuing one. He was a man standing upright, looking
oncoming fate in the face.
Old Tom did not think of it this way. And yet, perhaps because of some
sense of the fitness of things, he took off his hat and dropped it
beside him. Near at hand a giant sycamore, dead and leafless, rose
loftily above the smaller growth into the sky. Beside this tree he
stood, his white hair and beard dishevelled and glistening in the sun,
his eyes, that had shown a momentary despair when he sprang up from the
log, steady, fierce, undismayed.
If the hound attacked him he would fight--fight with his hands, for he
had no other weapon. If the hound merely bayed him, he would wait until
the guards came up. Their commands he would disregard: he would not even
throw up his hands. He knew what the result would be, he had no
illusions about that: Simmons would kill him.
He did think of Molly. He saw her, all her life tramping back and forth
from the spring to the house, solitary and lonely; he saw the cornfield
in the bottom, where he had ploughed so many springs. He saw the faces
of children and grandchildren, one by one. These things made him choke,
but they had no effect upon his mind: that was made up. Life is good but
it is not worth some things.
All these impressions ran through his mind, swiftly, independent of the
element of time. As a matter of fact, there was not sufficient interval
for connected thought. Ahead of him was an open place in the woods, a
place strewn with flinty stones and arrowheads, with now and then a
black and rounded boulder, rolled there by glaciers that had once moved
over the face of the earth. This open spot, made barren by forces older
than man himself, he had crossed in one last effort to make his trail
difficult for the hound.
His eyes were fastened on it now. The sun, hot and brilliant since the
passing of the storms, blazed down upon it. On the other side the forest
grew dense and high like a wall of green. And now out of this forest,
into the ancient opening, came the hound.
Tom had never felt any grudge against the dog--he was only obeying a law
of his nature, only running a trail. Fascinated, he watched the animal,
oblivious for the moment of the significance of his presence. He had
been running fast in the forest, but now on this flinty and difficult
ground he slackened his pace and came on slowly, like a patient,
methodical fellow who makes sure he's right as he goes along. His nose,
almost touching the ground, never left the trail.
In crossing the opening the old man's foot had turned on a stone; he had
staggered, and placed his hand against one of the black boulders for
support. And now, when the hound came to this spot he stopped; he lifted
his head and whiffed the rock the man had touched with his hand. Next,
he reared up on the boulder and looked at its top. Then he came on, nose
low once more, pendulous ears actually dragging on the ground, tail
erect and now and then wagging stiffly as with joy.
While Tom still watched him he raised his muzzle; and there came from
his throat a deep, musical, bell-like challenge that echoed loudly in
the opening itself and more airily and sweetly between the ridge and the
mountains beyond. In answer, from a mile behind, so Tom calculated, came
a far more terrible sound--the wild, savage yells of two men, one wilder
and more savage than the other.
The old man took a deep breath and his beard was thrust suddenly
forward. But for the dog, those men would be helpless. But for the dog,
he could turn now, and the woods would swallow him up. In a flash an
inspiration was born, a conquering purpose such as must have entered the
mind of prehistoric man. He waited, his eyes on the hound.
A dog is nearsighted at best, and Sheriff was old. When he was a short
two hundred feet from the tree there came to his nose the smell, not of
a trail itself, but of the man who made the trail. He stopped and lifted
his head. A moment he stared. Then he raised his grizzled muzzle to the
sky and poured out to high heaven the announcement that here in the
woods at the end of the trail, standing beside a tree, was a man!
Then he started back, amazed, for this man, instead of climbing the
tree, as all men did when he bayed them, was coming straight toward him.
His hand was outstretched, his eyes were blazing, and there was a smile
on his face. "Old Whiskers!" he was saying. "Hush, now, hush! Hush!" The
man had stooped down, his hand still extended. "Come here!" he
commanded.
The great hound began to tremble. Those terrible eyes were looking deep
into his. They were commanding him, they were pleading, too. He had seen
them before, back there in the camp, and he had not forgotten.
He heard behind him another yell. He tried to look back, but the eyes
held him. "No!" the man cried sternly--then, "Old boy--old Whiskers!" He
began to pant; the bay he would have uttered died in his throat. Another
yell and another, still he did not reply. His tail was tucked now. He
was looking at the man wonderingly, beseechingly. His universe was
changing, was centring in that man before him, that man who understood.
Again the yells, and now, beyond the opening behind, the faint crash of
running footsteps. His hair rose on his back with rage. His world had
turned about. Those were his enemies coming. All the loyalty of his
dog's soul had gone out to this man who understood, all his hatred to
those who never had. He started to turn about. He would meet them in the
opening. He would rush at them.
"No!" cried the man who understood.
When he looked at Tom once more the miracle of ages past had been
repeated; the man saw in the eyes of the dog, trust, humility, undying
devotion. His voice trembled for the first time.
"Old Whiskers," he said gently. "Old Gray Whiskers! Quick now!"
The pursuing guards never knew why the woods ahead of them grew suddenly
silent, why the tree-bay of the bloodhound that had sounded once clear
and unmistakable sounded no more, though as they ran they filled the
morning with their yells. They did not see the great hound go trembling
to the man. They did not see the old man for just a second catch the
massive head between his hands.
They did not see the two turn and disappear, swiftly, silently, into the
undergrowth that grew densely behind the open space and the giant
sycamore tree.
When, all out of breath, they reached the spot from whence had proceeded
the solitary tree-bay, they looked about at vacant woods. Frantically
they searched the undergrowth, shotguns ready, calling to each other in
their excitement. Man and dog had vanished as if they had never been.
But Simmons did not believe in miracles. "The old devil killed the dog!"
he cried. "He had a knife about him. But where's the blood and where's
the body?"
They hurried here and there as they glimpsed red spots, only to find a
leaf killed by the sun and fallen before season, or a bush reddened by
berries.
"We miscalculated the spot," swore Simmons. "It wasn't here it
happened."
And he sat down out of breath and leaned his burly back against the
trunk of a giant sycamore tree.
The sun was dropping over the mountains when the two guards,
empty-handed, got back to camp. The valleys lay in shadow, but far up in
the enormous folds of the Tennessee mountains its last crimson rays
shone on a bearded old man trudging along a narrow road toward the west.
He looked weary and footsore and his clothes were torn by briers. But
his face was alight, as if with anticipation of to-morrow. Now and then
he spoke. And behind him a great, strange-looking, long-eared hound
lifted his head, as if drinking in the sound of his voice.
X
THE LITTLE BOY IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH
Something strange was going on down there in the woods behind the barn.
Little Tommy Earle was convinced of it as soon as he saw old Frank,
Irish setter, come galloping across the cottonfields from that
direction. For old Frank was excited, that was plain; and old Frank
didn't get excited for nothing.
Accordingly, Tommy dropped his wagon tongue, and watched the old boy
round the barn, jump the lot fence, and run into the yard. His red
silken ears were thrown back, his brown eyes were shining, and he was
looking for somebody to tell his secret to.
"F'ank!" called the boy.
At the call the old fellow's ears flattened and he threw up his head,
then he came running straight to Tommy. There was an eager light in his
eyes that said plain as words, "Come with me and I'll show you
something."
Tommy's heart began to pound. From the kitchen window above his head
came the flop-flop of a churn, accompanied by the wailing song of Aunt
Cindy, the cook. Tommy glanced shrewdly up at this window from whence
proceeded the melancholy refrain. He must not let Aunt Cindy see him
leave the yard. That morning after breakfast his father and mother had
driven off hurriedly in the car, following a telephone message from
Greenville that said Aunt Janet, his mother's sister, was sick in a
hospital. His mother had told him she would be gone several days, and
meanwhile he must do everything Aunt Cindy told him to do and nothing
she did not tell him to do.
But Tommy had no doubt whatever what Aunt Cindy's answer would be if he
asked permission to leave the yard and follow Frank into the woods. She
would put her foot down on it flat, and Aunt Cindy had a big foot.
Better leave right now, while the old woman was in the midst of her
churning and her song.
"All right, F'ank," whispered Tommy.
They went by a circuitous route that placed first the garage, then the
barn, between them and the kitchen window. Then they broke into a run
across the cottonfield and entered the woods, Frank leading. They had
not gone far when Tommy stopped--stopped suddenly. Ahead of him was an
opening where the sun blazed down; and in the midst of this opening was
a creature picking blackberries.
Its face, round and sunburned, was smeared with the red juice, as were
its hands, with which it was reaching for more. It stopped eating when
it discovered Tommy's presence and looked steadily Tommy's way. It was a
boy about Tommy's own size, a boy he had never seen before!
Under a white cloth hat Tommy's eyes narrowed. What right did that boy
have to come on his father's place and pick blackberries? He didn't have
on any hat, either; his hair looked as if it had never been cut; his
clothes were ragged. Ordinarily, Tommy rather admired these things, but
now, taking in the whole appearance of the intruder, he glanced about
quickly at some rocks that lay near-by, rocks the right size to throw.
But evidently the boy didn't want to fight.
"Heh!" he said.
"Heh," said Tommy.
"What's your name?"
"Tommy--what's yours?"
"Joe."
A minute's silence followed this exchange of essential information.
Tommy drew nearer Joe. Joe drew nearer Tommy.
"That your dog?"
"Yes--he's my dog."
"He come down here just now. What's his name?"
"F'ank."
Another silence. Then the boy spoke.
"I seen some fishes down thar in the crick jus' now."
"I've seen 'em--lots of times."
"Say--what about goin' down thar now?"
"I don't care," said Tommy.
An hour later they came out of the woods together and started for the
house, old Frank strolling along pleasantly behind them. Joe's hair was
wet and plastered down over his face like an Indian's; Tommy's was also
wet under the white cloth hat. They had done more than look at fish;
they had gone in with them.
Tommy walked close to Joe: he had learned many thrilling facts, among
them that Joe lived in Greenville and had run away. This he had found
out, not all at once, but in fragments, while they splashed water over
one another, and later while they sat on the shaded bank of the creek.
Somebody had "beat Joe up--see!" Joe had exhibited a welt on his
shoulder and another on his leg in proof of the assertion. It seems that
previous to this Joe had swiped some bananas from the fruit stand of one
Tony, and that, previous to that, Joe had been hungry--"Hung'y as hell"
was Joe's way of putting it--a way that commended itself to Tommy at
once as being extremely picturesque. In fact, even while Joe talked he
kept on saying it over and over in his mind, so fine was the phrase and
so expansive.
There had been a "cop" in the story. Tommy did not know what a cop was
until Joe told him. "Dam ol' cop" was the phrase, to be exact. The cop
had chased him, then Joe had run away. It seemed that he didn't stop
running for a long time. There was also the driver of a motor truck in
the story, Mike by name. Mike drove the truck that carried an oil tank
from the city to a town. Mike had given him a lift; Mike often did that.
When they got out in the country here, Joe had asked Mike to let him
down--he wanted to get some blackberries. Mike had said he would pick
Joe up on the way back.
Such was the thriller Tommy had listened to. It hadn't come easy, this
story, but only after repeated questions. Now and then, while he was
telling it, Joe had looked at Tommy with a wry, wise grin, as if sizing
him up. He was little, and he couldn't talk plainly, but he seemed old
somehow. We live in deeds, not in years, as the poet says.
Joe was still grinning when they came into the back yard. He had held
back a time or two, as if he were afraid of that big house on the hill,
but Tommy had over-persuaded him. There wasn't anybody at home, he had
declared, but there were biscuits and jam in the kitchen.
Halfway between the barn lot and the house they were confronted by Aunt
Cindy. She was an enormous black woman, dressed always in starched
gingham and apron, with a red bandanna handkerchief on her head.
"Whar you been, honey?" she demanded; then sternly: "Whose chile dat you
got wid you?"
Tommy did not reply; in fact, he didn't know; what's more, he didn't
care. It was Joe, that was enough.
She was towering above them now.
"Who yo' ma an' pa, chile?" she demanded of the miniature Marco Polo who
had come home with her charge. "Whar you come from?"
Marco Polo did not reply. He only grinned up at her, an impertinent,
scrappy sort of grin. In a hard school he had learned the virtue of
silence.
"I found him in the woods," volunteered Tommy at last. "He's lost an'
he's goin' to stay wif me."
"Stay wid you, honey?" cried the old woman. "No, honey," she shook her
head. "He ain't gwine stay wid you."
And she meant it, too, every word of it. Society to her was divided into
quality white folks like the Earles, black folks like herself, and poor
white trash like this waif; and between the first class and the third
was there a great gulf fixed.
"We gwine fin' who he ma an' pa is, honey, an' sen' him home," was her
verdict.
"You ain't goin' to send him home!" cried Tommy, his face suddenly
crimson. "He ain't got no home. You ain't goin' to send him anywhere.
He's goin' to stay here wif me. He ain't had anything to eat but
blackberries. He's hungry as"--the phrase was almost out, but he
throttled it--"He's hungry!"
The old woman looked at the waif shrewdly.
"You hongry?" she asked. "Well, one thing's shore--nobody ever come to
Freedom Hill hongry an' went away hongry. You sho' gwine have somethin'
to eat. Den we sen' you home."
She led the way into a kitchen, spacious and cool. She made them wash
their hands while she looked on, shaking her head at the condition of
one pair of them. She set them down to a table and placed before them
biscuits and butter and jam, and cold milk from the refrigerator. But
while she performed this act of hospitality her face showed the
determination she had expressed.
The kitchen opened by a white-panelled passageway into the dining room,
and the dining room into the big front hall. She left the two of them
and went into the hall. They heard her ringing the telephone, and while
they ate her talk came to them.
"Dat you, Mr. Davis? Mr. Davis, dis me. Mr. Davis, dey's a strange chile
here. Tommy say he foun' him in de woods. He won't tell who he ma an' pa
is, or whar he come from. Tommy say he los'. Mr. Steve ain't comin' back
till to-morrow. What I gwine do, Mr. Davis? Call up Mr. Bob Kelley? All
right, suh--yes, suh. Das what I'll do."
Joe looked at Tommy with a grin.
"What's that ol' nigger talkin' about?" he asked.
Tommy's eyes narrowed. Old Aunt Cindy wasn't to be called that even by
such a travelled and honoured gentleman as his present guest.
"Don't call her a nigger," he said. "Hear?"
Joe nodded. There was a touch of wistfulness in his eyes now--there had
been, ever since he entered this mansion stocked with biscuit and jam.
The old woman's voice came to the diners clearly now. She always grew
excited when she talked over the telephone.
"Dat you, Mr. Bob Kelley? Dis Cindy over at Mr. Steve Earle. Mr. Kelley,
dey's a stray chile here. Yes, suh, jus' drap from de clouds. Mr. John
Davis he say you likely git some inquiries about him. Mr. Kelley, I
gwine sen' him over to yo' house by Jake. Yes, suh--dis evenin', right
away."
Tommy slid down from his chair. Joe went on with his biscuits and jam. A
dirty little hand that two bathings had not whitened closed tight around
a slender white glass of cold milk. Tommy ran into the hall.
"You ain't goin' to send him away!" he cried. "He's goin' to stay here
wif me. He's goin' to sleep wif me. Hear, Aunt Cindy?"
Still protesting, he was following her through the hall, out on the
high-columned front porch, and around the house toward the barn.
"Hit won't do, honey," she was saying over and over. "You listen to yo'
mammy now, you 'pen' on her. He ain't de chile for you to play wid. You
can't touch de kittle an' not git smut on you. Yo' ol' mammy know. She
raise you from a baby. Don't pull at my skirts, honey. It don't do no
good. Yo' ol' mammy always is ak de bes' way for you, honey, an' she
always will. Mis' Bob Kelley, she'll be good to him. Mr. Bob Kelley,
he'll fin' out whar de chile belong."
She stopped in the back yard, near the lot.
"Jake!" she called. "Oh, Jake!"
From a cabin beside the garden an elongated darky uncoiled himself out
of a split-bottom chair and sauntered leisurely toward her.
"Jake, hitch up Nelly to de buggy. Dey's a los' chile here. I done spoke
to Mr. Bob Kelley 'bout him, an' I want you to take him over dar."
Then Tommy broke loose; then the future master of Freedom Hill asserted
his authority. He might obey the old woman in such minor matters as
washing his face and putting on a clean nightgown, but here was
something different. He stood before Aunt Cindy and Jake with blazing
eyes and defied them. He forebade Jake to hitch up Nelly.
"He's goin' to stay here, I tell you! He's goin' to stay wif me!"
"Lordy, lordy!" laughed Jake, and fell back three steps, his hand over
his mouth. "Ain't dat boy like he paw!"
"He's goin' to stay wif me! He's goin' to stay wif me!"
And even Aunt Cindy gave in. The spirit of Steve Earle had spoken in
Steve Earle's child.
When they went back into the kitchen an oblivious diner sat at the
kitchen table, bent over a plate, and still mopped up blackberry jam
with buttered biscuit.
That night the full moon, declining over the sheltering eaves of the
mansion, sent its rays into the windows of the big upstairs bedroom.
First they fell on a bed where lay one boy asleep, as he had slept all
his life, on soft mattresses, between white sheets. Then the silver
light crept slowly over the bed, across the floor, where it seemed to
linger a while on a pile of toys--an engine with three passenger cars, a
red hook and ladder whose fiery horses galloped forever, a picture book
open at the place where a man in shaggy skins, with a shaggy umbrella,
stared with bulging eyes at a track in the sand. And last this gentle
light climbed upon another bed and embraced a swarthy little figure
lying on its side, one arm stretched out, one fist closed tight, as if
to keep fast hold on this chance life had thrown his way.
Never before had this child slept on a soft mattress, never before in a
clean nightgown; never before that night had he seen a tiled bathroom
and a white tub where water ran. On one sturdy leg that braced the body
as it lay on the side the moonlight revealed a ridged place, a scar,
purple and hard. But the hard grin was gone now, the face in repose; and
the peering moon, which so silently inspected that room and its inmates,
might have had a hard time deciding, so serene were the two small faces,
which, in the years to come, would be, please God, the gentleman, and
which, God forbid, the ruffian!
The two were up at sunrise. Jennie, the maid, dressed them in clothes
just alike--all except shoes--Joe drew the line there. They ate
breakfast in the dining room, Tommy in his own chair, the visitor
elevated to the proper height by a dictionary. They ate oatmeal and
cream, waffles and syrup. While the dew still sparkled on the lawn and
on the thousands of tiny morning spiderwebs stretched along the hedges,
they went out into the yard, where old Frank came running to meet them
with his morning welcome of wagging tail.
But the grin had come back to the visitor's face now. He was afraid of
Aunt Cindy, of the maid, of Jake, of all grown folks. In vain Tommy
tried to play with him: he did not know how to play--a wagon was a wagon
to him, nothing more; a stick a stick, and not a horse to be ridden.
Tommy gave it up. They walked around inspecting things, like little old
men. Now and then the visitor swore, the oaths coming naturally, like
any other talk. He did not even know he was swearing. Tommy, listening,
grinned now and then, looking at his visitor with comprehending eyes.
The little shrill oaths fascinated him; as for the child who uttered
them, God had never entered his garden in the cool of the evening, and
he didn't know he was naked.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, an old black woman, seeing them saunter
about, followed by old Frank, and noting that they did not play but
talked, shook her wise head.
"I wish Mr. Steve would come," she said. "He teachin' dat chile things
he ought not to know."
He came early in the afternoon. Tommy saw the long shining car turn in
at the end of the avenue and Frank race to meet it. At the boy's cry
that yonder came Papa, Joe turned and started toward the barn.
"Where you goin'?" demanded Tommy.
"He'll beat me up," said Joe.
While the car hummed up the avenue the two stood close together, Tommy's
face earnest as he argued and reassured.
The car stopped near the garage. A tall, clean-shaved man in palm beach
clothes and panama hat came toward them. "Hello, old man," he said and
stooped down and kissed one boy; then straightening up: "Who's this
you've got with you?"
"Joe," said Tommy simply.
He saw the keen look in the gray eyes, the smile that caused the fine
wrinkles to gather about their corners way up there under the panama
hat.
"Well, Joe--where did you drop from?"
Then Aunt Cindy called the master of Freedom Hill aside, and Tommy saw
the old woman talking earnestly up into his face. His father nodded,
then came toward them, smiling.
"All right, boys," he said. "Come up on the porch where it's cool, and
tell me all about it."
But Joe would not tell. He drew away and looked at the man with that
scrappy grin. Silence, secretiveness where grown people were, had been
beaten into his small brain. Out behind the house, the conference
finished, Tommy reassured his guest again and again, sometimes laughing,
sometimes very earnest.
"Oh, he won't hurt you, Joe!"
But Joe's chest was rising and falling. He was afraid of Steve Earle,
afraid of those powerful arms, even of those kind gray eyes.
An hour later Steve Earle called Tommy to him.
"Keep him with you, son," he said. "I'm going to Greenville."