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TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY
by
GRACE MILLER WHITE
Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1909, by
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
WITH
LOVE AND GRATITUDE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO
MY FATHER
TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
One September afternoon, not many years ago, three men sat on the banks
of Cayuga Lake cleaning the fish they had caught in their nets the
previous night. When they glanced up from their work, and looked beyond
the southern borders of the lake, they could see, rising from the mantle
of forestry, the towers and spires of Cornell University in Ithaca City.
An observer would have noticed a sullen look of hatred pass
unconsciously over their faces as their eyes lighted on the distant
buildings, for the citizens of Ithaca were the enemies of these squatter
fishermen and thought that their presence on the outskirts of the town
besmirched its fair fame. Not only did the summer cottages of the
townfolk that bordered the lake, look down disdainfully upon their
neighbors, the humble shanties of the squatter fishermen, but their
owners did all they could to drive the fishermen out of the land. None
of the squatters were allowed to have the title of the property upon
which their huts stood, yet they clung with death-like tenacity to their
homes, holding them through the rights of the squatter-law, which
conceded them the use of the land when once they raised a hut upon it.
Sterner and sterner the authorities of Ithaca had made the game laws
until the fishermen, to get the food upon which they lived, dared only
draw their nets by night. In the winter whilst the summer residents were
to be found again in the city, Nature herself made harder the lot of
these squatters, by sealing the lake with thick ice, but they faced the
bitter cold and frozen surroundings with stolid indifference.
A grim silence had reigned during which the three men had worked with
feverish haste, driven on by the vicissitudes of their unwholesome
lives. Moving his crooked legs upon the hot sand and closing a red lid
over one white blind eye, Ben Letts spoke viciously.
"Tess air that cussed," said he, "that she keeps on saying fishes can
feel when they gets cut. She air worse than that too."
"And she do say," put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and
thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales,
"that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife.
She air that bad too."
Ben Letts scratched his head tentatively.
"She ain't had no bringin' up," he resumed, again plying the
sharp-bladed knife to his scaly victims, "and they do say as how when
she air in a tantrum she'll scratch her dad's face, jumpin' on his back
like a cat. Orn air a fool, I say."
"So says I too," agreed Brewer; "no wonder his shoulders air humped. But
you never hears as much as a grunt from him. He knows he ain't never
give her no bringin's up, that's why."
"Some folks has give their kids bringin's up," interposed Ben Letts with
a glance at the third man, who was industriously cleaning fish and had
not yet spoken. "And they hain't turned out no better than Tessibel
will."
At this the industrious one turned.
"I spose ye be a hittin' at my poor Myry, Ben," he muttered. "I spose ye
be, but God'll some time let me kill the man, and then ye won't be
hittin' at her no more, 'cause there won't be nothin' to hit at. It air
dum hard to keep a girl from the wrong way, love her all ye will."
For an instant Ben Letts dropped his head.
"We always wondered who he was, but more wonder has been goin' on why ye
ain't made no offer to find the fellow."
"Ain't had no time," said the desperate cleaner of fish; "had to get
bread and beans, to say nothin' of bacon."
"But why didn't ye send the brat to the workhouse?" asked Jake.
"Satisfied" Longman, as he was called, shook his head.
"I was satisfied to let it stay," was all he answered.
"My old mammy says," offered Ben Letts, "as how yer son Ezy asked
Tessibel Skinner to marry him and as how she slicked him in the face
with a dirty dishrag."
He slowly closed the scarlet lids over his crossed eyes, suspending the
pickerel in his hand the while.
"Tess ain't had no mother," remonstrated Longman, after a long silence,
pausing a moment in his bloody work and allowing his eyes to rest upon
the magnificent buildings of the University, rearing above the town,
"and Myry says that them what has ought to be satisfied."
Just then a shadow fell upon the shore of the lake near the fishermen.
"There air Tess now," muttered Letts and his two companions eyed a
figure clad in rags, with flying copper-colored hair and bare dirty
feet, which dropped down beside Longman without asking whether or no.
"Cleanin' fish?" she queried.
"Can't ye see?" growled Ben.
"'Course I can," she answered; "just wondered if ye knowed yerselves."
"Where be yer dad?" queried Longman, smiling as he caught up two long
fish, depositing one beside him where it flopped helplessly about upon
the hot sand.
"Gone to Ithacy," replied Tessibel, and without change of expression or
color caught the floundering fish in her dirty fingers.
"I air a hittin' the little devil on the head with a stone," said she,
and with a pointed rock she expertly tapped the fish three times behind
the beady eyes and threw him down again motionless.
"Suppose seein' the fish wrigglin' gives Tessibel mollygrubs in her
belly," grinned Jake Brewer, but Ben Letts broke in.
"How be yer toad to-day, Tessibel?"
This he said with a malevolent smile, as he took from his pocket a huge
hunk of tobacco and munched a generous mouthful therefrom.
"Pretty well," answered Tess pertly, and measuring the blue water with
her eye, she sent a flat stone skipping across it. Then with darkening
face she wheeled about upon the heavy squatter.
"But air it any of yer business how my toad air, Ben Letts?"
"Naw," laughed Ben, nudging Jake in the ribs with his bare elbow, "only
I thought as how he might be dead." Then he whispered to Brewer, "Wait
till I get at him."
"Dead--dead, who said as how he air dead? Ye in't been a rubberin' in
his hole, have ye, Ben Letts?"
Ben only laughed in reply.
"Ye have, Ben Letts, ye have, damn ye," screamed the girl now glowering
above the fishermen with eyes changing to the deep copper of her hair.
"Take that, and that, and that."
She had snatched the long fish from his fingers, and with swift swirls
slapped it thrice into the fisherman's face. Turning she flashed away,
her long shadows giving out the smaller ones of the tatters that hung
about her.
"I'll be goldarned," gasped Letts, "and I'll be goldarned twice if I
don't get even with her some of these here days. The devil's built his
nest in her alright, and if hell fire don't get her, it'll be 'cause she
air burned up by her own cussed wickedness."
He rubbed his face frantically with the soiled sleeve of his shirt,
spitting out the scales and blood that hat lodged between his
dark-colored teeth.
"Ye're always a tormentin' her, Ben," said Longman; "now if ye was only
satisfied to let her alone, I air a thinkin' that she wouldn't bother
ye. Tess air a good girl, for Myry says as how she can hush the brat
when he air a howlin' like a nigger."
"She'll cast a spell over him, that's what she will," muttered Ben
Letts. "Her ma could take off warts afore she was knee high to a
grasshopper, and so can Tess. Once she whispered ten off from Minister
Graves' hand under his very eyes when he was a laughin' at the idee."
"Wish they'd lit on his nose," broke out Jake Brewer, darkly, "he
wouldn't be makin' it so hard for us down here. He gets his bread on
Sunday if any man does. But they do say as how, when he sees Tess a
comin' along, he scoots like a jack-rabbit."
"Sposin' the Dominie don't laugh now, sposin' he don't," put in Longman
with a chuckle, "he air lost the ten warts, ain't he? Tess ain't the
worst in this here county."
"She can keep the bread-risin' from comin' up," objected Brewer; "she
did it with us one day last winter. She scooted by our hut and down
dropped the yeast. Wouldn't as much as let her step her foot in my
kitchen bakin' day. Air we goin' out again to-night, fellers?"
"Yep," answered Ben Letts. "Sposin' Orn'll go, too. He air in town but
he'll get back, Orn will. There ain't no man on the shores of this here
lake that can pull a net with a steady hand like Orn Skinner. Pity he
has such a gal."
Letts gave another wipe at the scales which still clung to his neck and
his eyes glittered evilly as he looked in the direction the girl had
taken. He turned when Longman touched his arm. For years it had been the
custom of the fishermen to allow the subject of netting to remain
undiscussed. They plied their trade, spent a term in prison if detected,
and returned to again take up their occupation of catching and selling
fish. Ben Letts knew he was venturing upon dangerous ground.
"Broad daylight," he growled, catching the expression upon his
companion's face, "and there ain't no one in sight that'll tell."
"Better be satisfied to keep yer mouth shut, Ben Letts," cautioned
Longman, "nettin' air bad for the man what gets caught."
"Got any bait out there?" he finished, pointing lakeward to a bobbing
box anchored a distance from the shore.
"Not a damn bit," replied Jake Brewer, "don't need it now. Keep the bait
cars a floatin' to blind the eyes of some guy that might be a rubberin'.
They don't know a minnie from a whale, those city coves don't."
"Ain't that Orn's boat comin' under the shadders of the trees?" queried
Longman, rising to his feet and wiping his long jack-knife on his
blue-jeans breeches. "Yep, it air him," he added, getting a closer look
at the approaching flat-bottomed boat in which sat a big
round-shouldered individual working vigorously away at the oars. Orn
Skinner was called the "Giant Fisherman," because even in his bare feet
he was seven inches above every other man in the settlement. Two
enormous humps stood side by side on his shoulders, and a grizzled head
lifted and sank with each sweep of the oars. Glancing around to direct
his course, Skinner saw the men waiting for him in front of Jake
Brewer's hut. With a sharp turn he swung the boat shoreward and a few
vigorous strokes sent it grating upon the sand. Jumping out he dragged
the boat to a safe mooring, from where the waves could not beat it back
into the lake.