The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
daughter, came out, and putting her arms around her father's neck,
kissed him and said:
"Papa--luncheon is served, and oh, do come on! Mammy and Helen and I
are so hungry."
Mammy Maria had followed her and stood deferentially behind the
chair. And as Jud went away he thought he saw in the old woman's
eyes, as she watched him, a trace of that fine scorn bred of
generations of gentleness, but which whiskey had destroyed in the
master.
CHAPTER V
THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT
As Jud went out of the dilapidated gate at Millwood, he chuckled to
himself. He had, indeed, accomplished something. He had gained a
decided advance in the labor circles of the mill. He had broken into
the heretofore overpowering prejudice the better class had against
the mill, for he held in his possession the paper wherein an
aristocrat had signed his two daughters into it. Wouldn't Richard
Travis chuckle with him?
In the South social standing is everything.
To have the mill represented by a first family--even if brought to
poverty through drunkenness--was an entering wedge.
His next job was easier. A mile farther on, the poor lands of the
mountain side began. Up on the slope was a cabin, in the poorest and
rockiest portion of it, around the door of which half a dozen cracker
children stared at Jud with unfeigned interest as he rode up.
"Light an' look at yer saddle"--came from a typical Hillite within,
as Jud stopped.
Jud promptly complied--alighted and looked at his saddle.
A cur--which, despite his breeding, is always a keen detective of
character--followed him, barking at his heels.
This one knew Jud as instinctively and as accurately as he knew a
fresh bone from a rank one--by smell. He was also a judge of other
dogs and, catching sight of Bonaparte, his anger suddenly fled and he
with it.
"Won't you set down an' res' yo' hat?" came invitingly from the
doorway.
Jud sat down and rested his hat.
A tall, lank woman, smoking a cob pipe which had grown black with age
and Samsonian in strength, came from the next room. She merely ducked
her long, sharp nose at Jud and, pretending to be busily engaged
around the room, listened closely to all that was said.
Jud told the latest news, spoke of the weather and made many familiar
comments as he talked. Then he began to draw out the man and woman.
They were poor, child-burdened and dissatisfied. Gradually,
carefully, he talked mill and the blessings of it. He drew glorious
pictures of the house he would take them to, its conveniences--the
opportunities of the town for them all. He took up the case of each
of the six children, running from the tot of six to the girl of
twenty, and showed what they could earn.
In all it amounted to sixteen dollars a week.
"You sho'ly don't mean it comes to sixteen dollars ev'y week," said
the woman, taking the cob pipe out for the first time, long enough to
spit and wipe her mouth on the back of her hand, "an' all in silver
an' all our'n?" she asked. "Why that thar is mo' money'n we've seed
this year. What do you say to tryin' it, Josiah?"
Josiah was willing. "You see," he added, "we needn't stay thar
longer'n a year or so. We'll git the money an' then come back an' buy
a good piece of land."
Suddenly he stopped and fired this point blank at Jud: "But see heah,
Mister-man, is thar any niggers thar? Do we hafter wuck with
niggers?"
Jud looked indignant. It was enough.
At the end of an hour the family head had signed for a five years'
contract. They would move the next week.
"Cash--think of it--cash ever' week. An' in silver, too," said the
woman. "Why, I dunno hardly how it'll feel. I'm afeared it mou't gin
me the eetch."
Jud, when he left, had induced their parents to sell five children
into slavery for five years.
It meant for life.
And both parents declared when he left that never before had they
"seed sech a nice man."
Jud had nearly reached the town when he passed, high up on the level
plateau by which the mountain road now ran, the comfortable home of
Elder Butts. Peach and apple trees adorned the yard, while bee-hives
sat in a corner under the shade of them behind the cottage. The
tinkle of a sheep bell told of a flock of sheep nearby. A neatly
painted new wagon stood under the shed by the house, and all around
was an air of thrift and work.
"Now if I cu'd git that Butts family," he mused, "I'd have something
to crow about when I got back to Kingsley to-night. He's got a little
farm an' is well to do an' is thrifty, an' if I cu'd only git that
class started in the mill an' contented to wuck there, it 'ud open up
a new class of people. There's that Archie B.--confound him, he cu'd
run ten machines at onct and never know it. I'd like to sweat that
bottled mischief out of him a year or two.
"Hello!"
Jud drew his horse up with a jerk. Above him, with legs locked, high
up around the body of a dead willow, his seat the stump of a broken
bough and fully twenty feet above the employment agent's head, sat
Archie B., a freckled-faced lad, with fiery red hair and a world of
fun in his blue eyes. He was one of the Butts twins and the very
object of the Whipper-in's thoughts. From his head to his feet he had
on but three garments--a small, battered, all-wool hat, a coarse
cotton shirt, wide open at the neck, and a pair of jeans pants which
came to his knees. But in the pockets of his pants were small samples
of everything of wood and field, from shells of rare bird eggs to a
small supply of Gypsy Juice.
His pockets were miniature museums of nature.
No one but a small boy, bent on fun, knows what Gypsy Juice is. No
adult has ever been able to procure its formula and no small boy in
the South cares, so long as he can get it.
"The thing that hit does," Archie B. explained to his timid and pious
twin brother, Ozzie B., "is ter make anything it touches that wears
hair git up and git."
Coons, possums, dogs, cats--with now and then a country horse or
mule, hitched to the town rack--with these, and a small vial of Gypsy
Juice, Archie B., as he expressed it, "had mo' fun to the square
inch than ole Barnum's show ever hilt in all its tents."
Jud stood a moment watching the boy. It was easy to see what Archie
B. was after. In the body of the dead tree a wood-pecker had chiseled
out a round hole.
"Hello, yo'se'f"--finally drawled Jud--"whatcher doin' up thar?"
"Why, I am goin' to see if this is a wood-pecker's nes' or a
fly-ketcher's."
Bonaparte caught his cue at once and ran to the foot of the tree
barking viciously, daring the tree-climber to come down. His vicious
eyes danced gleefully. He looked at his master between his snarls as
much as to say: "Well, this is great, to tree the real live son of
the all-conquering man!"
It maddened him, too, to see the supreme indifference with which the
all-conqueror's son treated his presence.
Jud grunted. He prided himself on his bird-lore. Finally he said:
"Wal, any fool could tell you--it's a wood-pecker's nest."
"Yes, that's so and jus' exacly what a fool 'ud say," came back from
the tree. "But it 'ud be because he is a fool, tho', an' don't see
things as they be. It's a fly-ketcher's nest, for all that--" he
added.
"Teach yo' gran'-mammy how to milk the house cat," sneered Jud, while
Bonaparte grew furious again with this added insult. "Don't you know
a wood-pecker's nest when you see it?"
"Yes," said Archie B., "an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a
wood-pecker and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see
if it's so with this one."
"Oh," said Jud, surprised, "an' what is it?"
"Jus' as I said--he's whipped the wood-pecker an' tuck his nes'."
"What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?" said Jud. Then he grinned
derisively.
Bonaparte, watching his master, ran around the tree again and
squatting on his stump of a tail grinned likewise.
"A fly-ketcher," said Archie B. calmly, "is a sneaking sort of a
bird, that ketches flies an' little helpless insects for a--mill,
maybe. Do you know any two-legged fly-ketchers a-doin' that?"
Jud glared at him, and Bonaparte grew so angry that he snapped
viciously at the bark of the tree as if he would tear it down.
"What do you mean, you little imp?--what mill?"
"Why his stomach," drawled Archie B., "it's a little differunt from a
cotton-mill, but it grinds 'em to death all the same."
Jud looked up again. He glared at Archie B.
"How do you know that's a fly-ketcher's nest and not a wood-pecker's,
then?" he asked, to change the subject.
"That's what I'd like to know, too," said Bonaparte as plainly as his
growls and two mean eyes could say it.
"If it's a fly-ketcher's, the nest will be lined with a
snake's-skin," said Archie B. "That's nachrul, ain't it," he
added--"the nest of all sech is lined with snake-skins."
Bonaparte, one of whose chief amusements in life was killing snakes,
seemed to think this a personal thrust at himself, for he flew around
the tree with renewed rage while Archie B., safe on his high perch,
made faces at him and laughed.
"I'll bet it ain't that way," said Jud, rattled and discomfited and
shifting his long squirrel gun across his saddle. Archie B. replied
by carefully thrusting a brown sunburnt arm into the hole and
bringing out a nest. "Now, a wood-pecker's egg," he said, carefully
lifting an egg out and then replacing it, "'ud be pearly white."
"How did you learn all that?" sneered Jud.
"Oh, by keepin' out of a cotton mill an' usin' my eye," said Archie
B., winking at Bonaparte.
Bonaparte glared back.
"I'd like to git you into the mill," said Jud. "I'd put you to wuck
doin' somethin' that 'ud be worth while."
"Oh, yes, you would for a few years," sneered back Archie B. "Then
you'd put me under the groun', where I'd have plenty o' time to
res'."
"I'm goin' up there now to see yo' folks an' see if I can't git you
into the mill."
"Oh, you are?--Well, don't be in sech a hurry an' look heah at yo'
snake-skin fust--didn't I tell you it 'ud be lined with a
snake-skin?" And he threw down a last year's snake-skin which
Bonaparte proceeded to rend with great fury.
"Now, come under here," went on Archie B. persuasively, "and I'll
sho' you they're not pearly white, like a wood-pecker's, but
cream-colored with little purple splotches scratched over 'em--like a
fly-ketcher's."
Jud rode under and looked up. As he did so Archie B. suddenly turned
the nest upside down, that Jud might see the eggs, and as he looked
up four eggs shot out before he could duck his head, and caught him
squarely between his shaggy eyes. Blinded, smeared with yelk and
smarting with his eyes full of fine broken shell, he scrambled from
his horse, with many oaths, and began feeling for the little branch
of water which ran nearby.
"I'll cut that tree down, but I'll git you and wring yo' neck," he
shouted, while Bonaparte endeavored to tear it down with his teeth.
But Archie B. did not wait. Slowly he slid down the tree, while
Bonaparte, thunder-struck with joy, waited at the foot, his eyes
glaring, his mouth wide open, anticipating the feast on fresh boy
meat. Can he be--dare he be--coming down? Right into my jaws, too?
The very thought of it stopped his snarls.
Jud's curses filled the air.
Down--down, slid Archie B., both legs locked around the tree, until
some ten feet above the dog, and, then tantalizingly, just out of
reach, he suddenly tightened his brown brakes of legs, and thrusting
his hand in his pocket, pulled out a small rubber ball. Reaching
over, he squirted half of its contents over the dog, which still sat
snarling, half in fury and half in wonder.
Then something happened. Jud could not see, being down on his knees
in the little stream, washing his eyes, but he first heard