As the principal personage of this story is dead, and there is no
likelihood that any of the others will ever see the "Atlantic Monthly,"
I feel free to tell it without reservation.
The mercantile house of which I was until recently an active member
had many business connections throughout the Western States, and I was
therefore in the habit of making an annual journey through them, in the
interest of the firm. In fact, I was always glad to escape from the dirt
and hubbub of Cortland Street, and to exchange the smell of goods and
boxes, cellars and gutters, for that of prairie grass and even of
prairie mud. Although wearing the immaculate linen and golden studs of
the city Valentine, there still remained a good deal of the country
Orson in my blood, and I endured many hard, repulsive, yea, downright
vulgar experiences for the sake of a run at large, and the healthy
animal exaltation which accompanied it.
Eight or nine years ago, (it is, perhaps, as well not to be very
precise, as yet, with regard to dates,) I found myself at Peoria, in
Illinois, rather late in the season. The business I had on hand was
mostly transacted; but it was still necessary that I should visit
Bloomington and Terre Haute before returning to the East. I had come
from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, and, as the great railroad spider
of Chicago had then spun but a few threads of his present tremendous
mesh, I had made the greater part of my journey on horseback. By the
time I reached Peoria the month of November was well advanced, and the
weather had become very disagreeable. I was strongly tempted to sell my
horse and take the stage to Bloomington, but the roads were even worse
to a traveller on wheels than to one in the saddle, and the sunny day
which followed my arrival flattered me with the hope that others as fair
might succeed it.
The distance to Bloomington was forty miles, and the road none of the
best; yet, as my horse "Peck" (an abbreviation of "Pecatonica") had had
two days' rest, I did not leave Peoria until after the usual dinner at
twelve o'clock, trusting that I should reach my destination by eight or
nine in the evening, at the latest. Broad bands of dull, gray, felt-like
clouds crossed the sky, and the wind had a rough edge to it which
predicted that there was rain within a day's march.
The oaks along the rounded river-bluffs still held on to their leaves,
although the latter were entirely brown and dead, and rattled around me
with an ominous sound, as I climbed to the level of the prairie, leaving
the bed of the muddy Illinois below. Peck's hoofs sank deeply into the
unctuous black soil, which resembled a jetty tallow rather than earth,
and his progress was slow and toilsome. The sky became more and more
obscured: the sun faded to a ghastly moon, then to a white blotch in the
gray vault, and finally retired in disgust. Indeed, there was nothing in
the landscape worth his contemplation. Dead flats of black, bristling
with short corn-stalks, flats of brown grass, a brown belt of low woods
in the distance,--that was all the horizon inclosed: no embossed bowl,
with its rim of sculptured hills, its round of colored pictures, but a
flat earthen pie-dish, over which the sky fell like a pewter cover.
After riding for an hour or two over the desolate level, I descended
through rattling oaks to the bed of a stream, and then ascended through
rattling oaks to the prairie beyond. Here, however, I took the wrong
road, and found myself, some three miles farther, at a farm-house, where
it terminated. "You kin go out over the perairah yander," said the
farmer, dropping his maul beside a rail he had just split off,--"there's
a plain trail from Sykes's that'll bring you onto the road not fur from
Sugar Crick." With which knowledge I plucked up heart and rode on.
What with the windings and turnings of the various cart-tracks, the
family resemblance in the groves of oak and hickory, and the heavy,
uniform gray of the sky, I presently lost my compass-needle,--that
natural instinct of direction, on which I had learned to rely. East,
west, north, south,--all were alike, and the very doubt paralyzed the
faculty. The growing darkness of the sky, the _watery_ moaning of
the wind, betokened night and storm; but I pressed on, hap-hazard,
determined, at least, to reach one of the incipient villages on the
Bloomington road.
After an hour more, I found myself on the brink of another winding
hollow, threaded by a broad, shallow stream. On the opposite side, a
quarter of a mile above, stood a rough shanty, at the foot of the rise
which led to the prairie. After fording the stream, however, I found
that the trail I had followed continued forward in the same direction,
leaving this rude settlement on the left. On the opposite side of the
hollow, the prairie again stretched before me, dark and flat, and
destitute of any sign of habitation. I could scarcely distinguish the
trail any longer; in half an hour, I knew, I should be swallowed up in a
gulf of impenetrable darkness; and there was evidently no choice left
me but to return to the lonely shanty, and there seek shelter for the
night.
To be thwarted in one's plans, even by wind or weather, is always
vexatious; but in this case, the prospect of spending a night in such
a dismal corner of the world was especially disagreeable. I am--or at
least I consider myself--a thoroughly matter-of-fact man, and my first
thought, I am not ashamed to confess, was of oysters. Visions of a
favorite saloon, and many a pleasant supper with Dunham and Beeson, (my
partners,) all at once popped into my mind, as I turned back over the
brow of the hollow and urged Peck down its rough slope. "Well," thought
I, at last, "this will be one more story for our next meeting. Who knows
what originals I may not find, even in a solitary settler's shanty?"
I could discover no trail, and the darkness thickened rapidly while I
picked my way across dry gullies, formed by the drainage of the prairie
above, rotten tree-trunks, stumps, and spots of thicket. As I approached
the shanty, a faint gleam through one of its two small windows showed
that it was inhabited. In the rear, a space of a quarter of an acre,
inclosed by a huge worm-fence, was evidently the vegetable patch, at one
corner of which a small stable, roofed and buttressed with corn-fodder,
leaned against the hill. I drew rein in front of the building, and was
about to hail its inmates, when I observed the figure of a man issue
from the stable. Even in the gloom, there was something forlorn and
dispiriting in his walk. He approached with a slow, dragging step,
apparently unaware of my presence.
"Good evening, friend!" I said.