departed for the barn lot behind the store.
One by one, like turtles slipping off a log into a stream, those who sat
along the edge of the platform dropped silently to the ground and
followed him, and most of the occupants of the chairs joined the
procession. Like the oriflamme of Henry of Navarre, the gray overcoat
led them on through the dusk.
The retreat to the rear was in deference to Posey’s scruples. He
preferred that the store itself should be kept free from illegitimate
traffic.
The odor of substantial sin, and a faint suggestion of a dragon’s breath
was in the atmosphere when the crowd returned. Deliverance had come.
Aridity was succeeded by bountiful moisture, that like gentle rain, had
fallen upon thirsty flowers.
The Colonel seemed in some way to be dissatisfied with his visit to the
barn, and was at odds with the owner of the gray overcoat when the
expedition returned. He had parted with a silver coin under protest.
“Inate cou’tesy, suh, compelled me to pa’take of you’ah abundance, suh,”
he declared. “It was not that I wanted you’ah infe’nal mixcha, you mink
eyed old grave robbah,” he declared, as he left with his puppies.
The old bootlegger’s name was Richard Shakes, but the obvious natural
perversion to “Dick Snakes” was too tempting to be resisted by the river
humorists. He was also frequently alluded to as “Tiger Cat,” a term that
seemed much more appropriate to the liquids he dispensed than to him,
for, outside of his questionable occupation, the old man was entirely
inoffensive and harmless. He was another member of the old time trapping
fraternity, and lived alone in a log house on the creek about two miles
away.
He had a large collection of Indian relics, that he had spent many years
in accumulating, and he took great delight in showing them to anybody
who came to see him. The arrow and spear heads were methodically
arranged in long rows on thin smooth boards, and held in place by the
heads of tacks that overlapped their edges. The boards were nailed to
the walls of faced logs all over the interior of the cabin.
Nearly everybody in the surrounding country had contributed to the
collection at one time or another, and it was being added to constantly.
There were many fine specimens of tomahawk heads, stone axes, and other
implements, that had been fashioned with admirable skill. The old man
guarded his hoarded treasures with a miser’s solicitude, for they were
the solace of his lonely life. He had refused large offers for the
collection as a whole, and never could be induced to part with single
specimens, except under pressure of immediate necessity.
There are few mental comforts comparable with those of absorbing
hobbies. They temper the raw winds and asperities of existence to a
wonderful degree, and offer a welcome balm of heart interest to lives
weary of continued conflict for mythical goals. We may smile at them in
others, but we realize their deep significance when they are our own.
Poor old Shakes was but another example of one made happy by a harmless
fad, the joys of which might well be coveted by those whose millions
have brought only fear and sorrow. After it is all over the pursuit of
one phantom has been as gratifying as the quest of another, for they
both end in darkness.
[Illustration:
DICK SHAKES
]
After sitting around for awhile, and listening to the enlivened
conversation, and the gossip of the neighborhood, that now circulated
freely, the old man bought a package of tobacco in the store, for which
he said he had “been stung ten cents,” and left us, with the overcoat,
from which the cargo had been discharged, hung lightly over his arm.
The assemblage gradually dispersed. Wirrick, Hyatt, and the jaundiced
Viking went down to the river bank and departed in their “push boats.”
Doc Dust invited Pop Wilkins to ride with him, and they betook
themselves into the shadows. Tipton Posey relighted his pipe and Bill
Stiles resumed the story of the horse trade.
VI
MUSKRAT HYATT’S REDEMPTION
Except from a picturesque standpoint, “Rat” Hyatt was not an ornament to
the river country. Its meager and widely scattered social life, and its
average of morality, were more or less affected by his shortcomings. In
many communities he would be considered an undesirable citizen. He was
looked upon as a good natured “bad egg,” and as one industrious in the
ways of sin by his associates at Tipton Posey’s store, but the habitues
of that time honored loafing place always welcomed him, for he possessed
a reminiscent talent and a peculiar kind of dry wit and repartee that
helped to enliven the sleepy days.
In this world much sin is forgiven an entertaining personality.
There was always a feeling of incompleteness on the store platform when
Rat was absent, that nobody ever admitted, but when he arrived and took
his accustomed seat on the green wheel barrow, that was part of the
merchandise that Posey kept outside in the day time, the depressing
vacancy existed no longer.
Bill Stiles’s temperamental discharges of ornate philosophy, and his
comments on life’s ironies and human folly, required a target, and this
was commonly the role assigned to Rat Hyatt.
“I’m always the goat,” remarked Rat one hot afternoon, as we sat in the
shade of the wooden awning. “W’y don’t you pick on somebody that likes
to listen? I’ve been kidded by experts, an’ this long talk o’ your’n
seems kind o’ mixed up. The trouble with you an’ a lot o’ the other ol’
mud birds ’round ’ere, is you open yer mouth an’ go ’way an’ leave it,
an’ fergit you started it.”
“Now look ’ere, Rat,” replied Bill, “you aint got no call to talk back
to me. W’en I’m talkin’ to you, I aint arguin’. I’m tellin’ you how
’tis. I knowed you w’en you wasn’t knee high to a duck, an’ you aint got
brains enough to have the headache with.
“That feller that you sold my dog to the last time was ’ere yisterd’y
askin’ ’bout you, an’ if Spot ’ad ever come back. He’d been up to your
place, an’ its a good thing fer you that you an’ Spot was off some’rs in
the woods. He told me what ’e traded you fer the animal, an’ I want you
to bring them things to me, fer it was my dog you got ’em with.”
As Spot was asleep under the wheelbarrow, Bill’s equity in the repeating
rifle and cartridges, that Hyatt had received in exchange for him,
seemed rather hazy. The reason for Spot’s prolonged absence some months
before was now apparent to Bill, and, although the intelligent animal
had returned home, as expected, after being traded off, the old man’s
nurtured wrath was waiting for Rat when he arrived that afternoon. Hyatt
seemed in nowise abashed at the revelation of Bill’s knowledge of his
shady transaction with the trapper.
[Illustration:
“MUSKRAT” HYATT
]
“If I hadn’t a knowed the dog ’ud come home, I wouldn’t a let ’im go. It
showed how much I trusted ’im w’en I let ’im go off with a stranger like
that. If that feller thought ’e c’d keep a fine dog like that away from
them that loved ’im, ’e oughta suffer fer ’is foolishness, an’ leave
sump’n in the country to be remembered by. Of course if sump’n ’ad a
happened to Spot, an’ ’e hadn’t a come back, I’d a given you the rifle,
but I knowed that dog was all right. You c’n have ’im back any time you
want ’im, if he’ll stay with you, but you hadn’t oughta jump on me as
long as ’e aint lost, an’ ’e’s in first class health.”
“Its the funny ideas that some fellers ’ave about other people’s propity
that keeps the state’s prisons filled up,” remarked Bill. “It aint the
lyin’ an’ stealin’ that gits ’em thar, its gitt’n caught. If they don’t
git caught its jest called business shrewdness. You bilked that feller
out o’ that gun an’ you’r deprivin’ me of it w’en you used my dog to git
it with. You’r a fine man to trust anythin’ with, you are. If I had any
place to keep Spot I wouldn’t let you have ’im a minute. I c’n fill my
shanty with stuff by tradin’ ’im off, an’ then wait’n fer ’im to come
home, jest as well as you can, an’ it ’ud be all right fer me to do it,
but you aint got no such right, ’specially if yer goin’ to swindle
people.”
After Bill’s assurance that he had told the deluded trapper nothing of
Spot’s return, and that he had gone off up the river, the conversation
drifted into channels that were less irritating.
The old man’s mind became calm and he ascended the narrow stairway on
the outside of the building, to his room over the store, for a nap.
“That ol’ feller oughta to have a phonygraph with ’is voice in it so he
c’d spin it an’ listen to ’imself speil,” remarked Rat after Bill had
left. “I used to often watch ’im when ’e was set’n quiet out ’ere by the
hour, with that dinkey hat pulled down in front an’ lookin’ wise, an’
wonder what big thoughts was ferment’n up in that old moss covered dome
o’ his, but I found out after a while that ’e wasn’t thinkin’ about
nuth’n at all.”
Rat wended his way down to the bank under the bridge, where he had left
his push boat, followed by the faithful Spot, and poled his way up
stream. When he reached the vicinity of the stranded house boat, where
he had lived for several years, he reconnoitered it cautiously. No
malign presence was detected. He looked over his bee hives that were
scattered about among the trees, and provided two or three week’s food
supplies for his chickens, and some young coons and weasles, that he was
raising for their fur in some wire cages under the house. He then packed
a few necessaries into his boat, and secured the door of the house with
a padlock.
He was not quite satisfied that the trapper, who was looking for Spot,
had left the country, and he did not intend to take any chances. The dog
was ordered to lie down in the bow of the canoe, where he was carefully
covered. The intelligent animal complied cheerfully with all of the
arrangements.
Rat then proceeded down the river for several miles to the big marsh,
where he did the most of his trapping during the late fall, winter, and
spring.
He had two motives for his trip, besides the idea of avoiding a possible
visit of the trapper to the house boat. One was to see if the muskrat
population on the marsh had increased properly during the summer, and
the other was to visit Malindy Taylor, whom he deeply loved, and by whom
he was scorned as a suitor.
Malindy was a peppery widow of about forty, who lived with her aged
mother in a small house beyond the marsh. She was the owner of a wild
duck farm, and conducted it with such success that Rat looked forward to
spending his declining days in peace and comfort if he could persuade
Malindy to take him into life partnership.
Many hundreds of mallards and teal nested among the boggy places in the
marsh during the summer. The eggs were gathered, put into incubators,
and under complaisant hens on the farm. The ducklings were reared in
wired enclosures that prevented them from joining their kind in the
skies when the fall migrations began. During the game season, when they
were properly matured, they were skilfully strangled and shipped away as
wild birds at game prices.
Rat had always willingly hunted nests and gathered eggs for his beloved.
He did odd jobs about the farm and participated in everything but the
harvest. Like Jacob of old, toiling for the hand of Rachael, Rat’s
industry, although intermittent, was sustained by alluring hope.
Outside of her earthly possessions, it must be admitted that Malindy had
few charms. One of her eyes was slightly on the bias, and at times it
had a baleful gleam. Two of her front teeth protruded in a particularly
unpleasant way, as though she expected to bite at something alive. She
had an angular disposition, and her temper was not conducive to the even
flow of life’s little amenities. To use a Scotch expression, she was
“unco pernickity.” She was intolerant of human frailty in others,
especially of the kinds that entered so largely into Rat Hyatt’s
make-up, but divinities sometimes appear in strange forms. To Rat’s love
blinded eyes she was the one lone flower that grew in the dreary desert
of life’s monotonies.
There is something about everybody that appeals to somebody, and this is
why there is nobody who cannot find somebody willing to marry them.
Perhaps the streak of primitive cussedness in Malindy appealed to
compatible instincts in Rat’s heart, but be that as it may, he was a
faithful and much abused worshiper.
When he reached the farther end of the great marsh, he threaded his way
through familiar openings among the tall masses of rushes and wild rice,
landed on the soggy shore, and pulled his canoe up among the underbrush.
He and Spot then took the winding path that led through the woods to the
duck farm, about a quarter of a mile away.
He intended to stay at the farm, in seclusion, for a week or two, do
some work that he had long promised, and then put out his traps on the
marsh. He kept about a hundred of them in Malindy’s barn, when they were
not in use.
About half way down the marsh a long tongue of wooded land extended out
into the oozy slough. It was known as “Swallow Tail Point.” This was
Tipton Posey’s favorite haunt during the shooting season. Thousands of
wild ducks and geese passed over it on their way up or down the river,
and in circling about over the marsh, which was a bountiful feeding
ground. Bill Wirrick spent much time on the point with Posey. They had a
little shack back among the low trees, sheltered so that it could not be
seen from the sky, and hidden from the water by the tall brush.
These two worthies had solved at least one of life’s problems in this
secluded retreat, for they did not have to adjust themselves to the
convenience of anybody else.
In the early morning, just before daylight, when the ducks began to move
over the marsh, and in the evening twilight, when the incoming flocks
were settling for the night, little puffs of smoke, and faint reports,
issued from the end of the point, and dark objects fell out of the sky.
They were diligently retrieved by Posey’s brown water spaniel.
Occasionally wild geese would sweep low over the point, scatter and rise
excitedly, as the puffs of smoke took toll from the honking ranks.
In addition to a big bunch of wooden decoys that floated in an open
space near the edge of the point, the wary birds were lured by
mechanical quacks and honks from small patented devices, operated by
their concealed enemies.
Notwithstanding their civilized garb, and highly developed weapons, Tip
and Bill were barbarians. Their instincts were lower than those of the
carnivora of the jungle, for they killed not for food, or even for
profit, but for the joy of the killing. They did not bother about the
wounded birds that curved away and fluttered into the matted grasses and
rushes, to suffer in silence, or be eaten by the big snapping turtles
that had no ideas of sport. They exulted over piles of beautiful
feathered creatures, motionless and splashed with blood, many of which
were afterwards thrown away.
Tip had devoted many of his idle hours to the invention of a new goose
call. The range of the ordinary devices seemed to him too restricted.
His theory was that if the volume of sound could be increased so as to
fill a radius of four or five miles, the distant V shaped flocks could
be lured to within gun shot of the point.
After long meditation, and consultation with Bill Wirrick, they began
putting the plan into execution.
They procured a pair of blacksmith’s bellows from a distant country
town, and some big instruments that had once belonged to the local brass
band. These things, in addition to some rubber garden hose, and a lot of
other miscellaneous material, were carefully covered in a wagon and
secretly conveyed to the point.
Weeks were spent in the construction of the apparatus. The brass
instruments were arranged in the interior of a huge megaphone. Rubber
balls bobbed about intermittently within the capacious horns when the
air was pumped through them. The requisite volume of sound was attained,
but somehow the turbulent honks of the wild geese were not
satisfactorily imitated, although repeated adjustment and alteration
gave much hope of success.
The experiments were conducted cautiously during the summer, when there
was nobody on the marsh, and no mention of the contrivance was made
around the store, for a cruel gauntlet of jibes and merciless humor
awaited the nonsuccess of the enterprise, if the wiseacres of the
platform ever learned of it.
Rat Hyatt, although much interested in all that pertained to the marsh,
and its surroundings, had never suspected what was going on on the
point. He never had occasion to land there, and, by common consent, its
possession by Posey and Wirrick for shooting purposes was respected by
the few hunters who frequented the vicinity.
Malindy Taylor had sometimes heard some terrible noises from the
direction of the point, but she was too far away to be much disturbed.
Both Posey and Wirrick had often referred to Malindy as “an old
fuss-bug,” although she was much younger than either of them, and they
probably would not have cared if they had scared her out of the country,
but she had little curiosity about things that did not affect her duck
farm.
She and her mother had concluded that the uncanny sounds were produced
by donkeys in the woods, and doubtless this was also the opinion of most
of those who afterwards learned all of the facts.
When Rat emerged from his retirement at the duck farm, he spent two or
three days puttering about through the water openings, setting his
traps.
The furred inhabitants of the slough had builded their picturesque
little domes of stringy roots, rushes, and dead grass, and plastered
them together with lumps of mud in the quiet places, away from the river
currents that crept in sinuous and broken channels through the broad
wastes of sodden labyrinths.
Hyatt was an intelligent trapper, and was careful not to depopulate his
grounds. He frequently moved the traps, so as not to exhaust the animals
in a particular locality. The little competition he had on the marsh
must have been discouraging to his rivals, for he always had more traps
at the end of the season than at its beginning, and the traps set by
others never seemed to be very productive, except to Hyatt. By degrees
each new comer was eliminated.
Rat had finished a hard day’s work. He sat on some dry grass in the
bottom of his canoe, lighted a redolent old pipe, and decided to indulge
in a good smoke and a long rest before starting up the river.
Twilight had come. The vast expanse of overgrown water was silent,
except for the low lullabies of the marsh birds among the thick grasses
and bulrushes. He sat for a long time and watched the smoke curl up into
the still air. The moon came over the distant rim of the forest that
bordered the great marsh, and one by one, the stars began to tremble in
the crystal sky, but it was not with the eye of the poet that Rat
regarded these things. The moonlighted river would be easy to navigate
on the trip home.
Suddenly a flash of greenish light shot into the heavens in the north
west, and in a few minutes the entire horizon in every direction flamed
and shimmered with long gleaming streamers of rose and green beams that
touched fluttering segments of a corona of orange glow at the zenith.
Rat had often seen the Aurora Borealis; he was familiar with sheet
lightning, and the electrical discharges of the thunder storms, but this
awful light was something new.
It was a magnetic storm, one of those rare phenomena, that the average
person sees but once in a life time, and never forgets, caused by the
sudden incandescence of heavily charged solar dust in the earth’s
atmosphere.
The play of the fitful quivering gleams through the firmament was a
sublime spectacle. The motionless air had the peculiar odor that comes
from an excess of ozone.
Rat Hyatt was in the throes of mortal fright. The dog uttered a long
howl, and just at that moment—like a yell of demonic mockery out of
sulphurous caverns—the unearthly tones of Tipton Posey’s goose call
resonated from the woods on Swallow Tail Point, and reverberated beyond
the weirdly lighted waters.
One or both of its builders had probably come to test the powers of the
unholy device, and were unabashed by the drama that glorified the night
skies.
With blind instinct of self preservation, Rat rose to his knees and made
a faltering attempt to grasp his paddle, but his hands refused the
dictates of his palsied brain. He cowered as one in the presence of the
Ultimate.
To him, in this appalling display of supernatural power, and the evident
impending end of all things, had come the agony of abject terror and
despair, and before it his rude conception of life collapsed.
His past flashed before his distorted vision like a hideous nightmare.
His world suddenly lost reality. The human creatures in it changed to
throngs of fleeting phantoms, impelled by unseen forces. They glared,
grinned and gibbered at each other, as they hurried through the mist,
and vanished into the oblivion from which they came.
In the realm of fear there are ghastly solitudes. They pervade dim
phosphorescent glows on ocean floors, and they brood in the desolation
around the poles. They creep into awe stricken hearts when the filmy
strands, that sustain the Ego on its frail human web are broken, and the
denuded spirit stands in utter loneliness at the brink of Chaos.
In the course of an hour the wonderful radiance, that had transfigured
the heavens, and chilled the marrow bones of Rat Hyatt, ceased as
suddenly as it had begun. The frightful unknown sounds from the woods
were not repeated.
Rat finally succeeded in getting on his feet. He pushed his canoe out
into the channel and started up stream, but it was a changed man who
swung the long paddle. His soul had been rarefied in chastening flames.
He was as one who had met his Maker face to face, and his only hope now
was that his life span might be mercifully extended until he could make
amends for the past.
He reached the house boat in the early morning, much exhausted, and
threw himself on the rude bed, where his shattered nerves found partial
repose.
His sleep was much troubled. He awoke with a sudden start late in the
afternoon, and, lashed by an avenging conscience, slid his canoe into
the river and hurried up stream to find the Reverend Daniel Butters, a
venerable preacher, who lived about six miles away. To him he would
carry his heavy laden heart, and in the consolations of religion seek
forgiveness and peace.
The Reverend Butters was known far and wide as “Dismal Dan,” and was
referred to in Bill Stiles’s chronicles as “the Javelin of the Lord.” He
was an eccentric, heavily bewhiskered old character, who believed in the
Church Militant, and had exhorted, quoted reproving scripture, and made
doleful prophecies in the river country for two normal generations.
In the little weather beaten country church, up the river, his small
audiences consisted of aged ladies and pious old settlers, who were
already saved, and did not need the rescuing hand. He preached
Calvinistic damnation in the belief that fear of hell was a more potent
factor in human redemption than hope of reward.
His principal authority on hell was Jonathan Edwards, a fiery divine,
who glowed in Massachusetts about two hundred years ago. During his
eruptive period, Edwards’s sermons on damnation blistered and enriched
the sectarian literature of his time. Dismal Dan frequently resurrected
and reheated these old printed sermons, and hurled the sputtering embers
at his inoffensive listeners.
He had not made a convert for many years. Of late his powers of
spiritual persuasion had languished, and, like his hearers, had become
atrophied.
He was a revivalist who did not revive. He needed new and pliant
material, and when Muskrat Hyatt had told his errand he was welcomed as
one who had fled from among the Pharisees. Out of the wilderness of sin
a lowly suppliant had come.
[Illustration:
THE REVEREND DANIEL BUTTERS
]