ZEEK.
“Didn’t I see your horse tied to Old Lee’s gate?” said Zeek. And that
led to a discussion of the old hero’s character.
“Is he a Union man?”
“I kain’t say; but that’s the story they tell on him. One of the men he
killed was one of our neighbors; a man we used to consider right
respectable; but he tuke to thieving during the wa’, and got to be of no
account. That was the way with a many I know. You may stop at a house
now whur they’ll steal your horse, and like as not rob and murder ye.”
Zeek told me he lived on the edge of the battle-field; and I engaged him
to guide me to it. He thought I must be going to search for the body of
some friend who fell there. When I told him I was from the North, and
that my object was simply to visit the battle-field, he looked at me
with amazement.
“I should think you’d be afraid to be riding alone in this country! If
’t was known you was a Yankee, and had money about you, I allow you’d
get a shot from behind some bush.”
“I think the men who would serve me such a trick are very few.”
“Thar was right smart of ’em befo’e the wa’ closed. They’d just go about
robbing,—hang an old gray-haired man right up, till he’d tell whur his
money was. They called themselves Confederates, but they was just
robbers. They’ve got killed off, or have gone off, or run out, till, as
you say, there an’t but few left.”
With these exceptions, Zeek praised highly the middling class of people
who inhabited that region.
“Some countries, a pore man ain’t respected no mo’e ’n a dog. ‘Tan’t so
hyere. Man may be plumb pore, but if he’s honest, he’s thought as much
of as anybody. Mo’e ’n two thirds of ’em can read and write.” Before the
war, they used to have what they called “neighborhood schools.” The
teacher was supported by the pupils, receiving two dollars a month for
each: he taught only in winter, and was fortunate if he could secure
forty pupils.
Flocks of sparrows flew up from the bushes or hopped along the ground.
There were bluebirds also; and I noticed one or two robins. “We never
see robins hyere only in winter,” said Zeek.
Green bunches of mistletoe grew on the leafless brown trees,—a striking
feature of Southern woods in winter. “It’s a curiosity, the way it
grows,” said Zeek. “It just grows on the tops of trees, without no rute,
nor nothing. It’s a rare chance you find it on the hills; it grows
mostly on the bottoms whur thar’s mo’e moisture in the air.” It was a
beautiful sight to me, riding under its verdant tufts, sometimes so low
on the boughs that, by rising in the stirrups, I could pluck sprigs of
it, with their translucent pearly berries, as I passed. But Zeek was
wrong in saying it had no root. It is supposed to be propagated by birds
wiping their bills upon the limbs of trees, after eating the berries. A
stray seed thus deposited germinates, and the penetrating root feeds
upon the juices that flow between the bark and the wood of the tree.
We passed but few farm-houses, and those were mostly built of logs. We
crossed heavy lines of Beauregard’s breastworks; and could have traced
the route of the great armies by the bones of horses, horned cattle, and
mules we saw whitening in the woods and by the roadside. A crest of
hilly fields showed us a magnificent sweep of level wooded country on
the west and south, like a brown wavy sea, with tossed tree-tops for
breakers.
“Mighty pore soil along hyere,” observed Zeek. When I told him that it
was as good as much of the soil of New England, which farmers never
thought of cultivating without using manures, he said, “When our land
gits as pore as that, we just turn it right out, and cle’r again. We
don’t allow we can afford to manure. But No’th Car’linians come in
hyere, and take up the land turned out so, and go to manuring it, and
raise right smart truck on it.”
As I was inclined to ride faster than Zeek, he looked critically at my
horse, and remarked, “I don’t reckon you give less ’n a dollar a day for
that beast.” I said I gave more than that. “I ride my beasts hard
enough,” he replied, “but I reckon if I paid a dollar a day for one, I’d
ride him a heap harder!”
He had been down to the saw-mill, to get pay for a yoke of oxen his
father had sold. “I started by sun-up, and got thar agin nine o’clock.”
It was now afternoon, and he was hungry and cold. He therefore proposed
to me to go home with him and get warm, before visiting the
battle-field.
It was after two o’clock when we came to a hilly field covered with
rotting clothes.
“Beauregard’s troops come plumb up this road, and slept hyere the night
befo’e the battle. They left their blankets and knapsacks, and after
they got brushed out by the Yankees, the second day, they didn’t wait to
pick ’em up again.”
We entered the woods beyond, directing our course towards the western
edge of the battle-field; and, after riding some distance, forded Owl
Creek,—a narrow, but deep and muddy stream. Zeek’s home was in view from
the farther bank; a log-house, with the usual great opening through the
middle; situated on the edge of a pleasant oak-grove strewn with
rustling leaves, and enclosed, with its yard and out-houses, by a
Virginia rail-fence.