The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
demoniacal barks proceed from Bonaparte, ending in wailful snorts,
howls and whines, beginning at the foot of the tree and echoing in a
fast vanishing wail toward home.
Jud got one eye in working order soon enough to see a cloud of sand
and dust rolling down the road, from the rear of which only the stub
of a tail could be seen, curled spasmodically downward toward the
earth.
Jud could scarcely believe his eyes--Bonaparte--the champion
dog--running--running like that?
"Whut--whut--whut,"--he stammered, "Whut _did he do_ to Bonaparte?"
Then he saw Archie B. up the road toward home, rolling in the sand
with shouts of laughter.
"If I git my hands on you," yelled Jud, shaking his fist at the boy,
"I'll swaller you alive."
"That's what the fly-ketcher said to the butterfly," shouted back
Archie B.
It was a half hour before Jud got all the fine eggshell out of his
eyes. After that he decided to let the Butts family alone for the
present. But as he rode away he was heard to say again:
"Whut--whut--whut _did he do_ to Bonaparte?"
Archie B. was still rolling on the ground, and chuckling now and then
in fits of laughter, when a determined, motherly looking, fat girl
appeared at the doorway of the family cottage. It was his sister,
Patsy Butts:
"Maw," she exclaimed, "I wish you'd look at Archie B. I bet he's done
sump'in."
There was a parental manner in her way. Her one object in life,
evidently, was to watch Archie B.
"You Archie B.," yelled his mother, a sallow little woman of quick
nervous movements, "air you havin' a revulsion down there? What air
you been doin' anyway? Now, you git up from there and go see why
Ozzie B. don't fetch the cows home."
Archie B. arose and went down the road whistling.
A ground squirrel ran into a pile of rocks. Archie B. turned the
rocks about until he found the nest, which he examined critically and
with care. He fingered it carefully and patted it back into shape.
"Nice little nes'," he said--"that settles it--I thought they lined
it with fur." Then he replaced the rocks and arose to go.
A quarter of a mile down the road he stopped and listened.
He heard his brother, Ozzie B., sobbing and weeping.
Ozzie B. was his twin brother--his "after clap"--as Archie B. called
him. He was timid, uncertain, pious and given to tears--"bo'hn on a
wet Friday"--as Archie B. had often said. He was always the effect of
Archie B.'s cause, the illustration of his theorem, the solution of
his problem of mischief, the penalty of his misdemeanors.
Presently Ozzie B. came in sight, hatless and driving his cows along,
but sobbing in that hiccoughy way which is the final stage of an
acute thrashing.
No one saw more quickly than Archie B., and he knew instantly that
his brother had met Jud Carpenter, on his way back to the mill.
"He's caught my lickin' ag'in," said Archie B., indignantly--"it's a
pity he looks so much like me."
It was true, and Ozzie B. stood and dug one toe into the ground, and
sobbed and wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, and told how, in spite
of his explanations and beseechings, the Whipper-in had met him down
the road and thrashed him unmercifully.
"Ozzie B.," said his brother, "you make me tired all over and in
spots. I hate for as big a fool as you to look like me. Whyncher
run--whyncher dodge him?"
"I--I--wanted ter do my duty," sobbed Ozzie B. "Maw tole me ter
drive--drive the cows right up the road--"
Archie B. surveyed him with fine scorn:
"When the Devil's got the road," said Archie B., "decent fo'ks had
better take to the wood. I'd fixed him an' his ole dorg, an' now you
come along an' spile it all."
He made a cross mark in the road and spat on it. Then he turned with
his back to the cross, threw his hat over his head and said slowly:
"_Venture pee wee under the bridge! bam--bam--bam!_"
"What's that fur?" asked Ozzie B., as he ceased sobbing. His brother
always had something new, and it was always absorbingly interesting
to Ozzie B.
"That," said Archie B., solemnly, "I allers say after meetin' a Jonah
in the road. The spell is now broke. Jus' watch me fix Jud Carpenter
agin. Wanter see me git even with him? Well, come along."
"What'll you do?" asked Ozzie B.
"I'll make that mustang break his neck for the way he treated you, or
my name ain't Archie B. Butts--that's all. _Venture pee wee under
the bridge, bam--bam--bam!_"
"No--oo--no," began Ozzie B., beginning to cry again--"Don't kill
'im--it'll be cruel."
"Don't wanter see me go an' git even with the man that's jus' licked
you for nuthin'?"
"No--oo--no--" sobbed Ozzie B. "Paw says--leave--leave--that for--the
Lord."
"Tarnashun!"--said Archie B., spitting on the ground, disgustedly--,
"too much relig'un is a dang'us thing. You've got all of paw's
relig'un an' maw's brains, an' that's 'nuff said."
With this he kicked Ozzie B. soundly and sent him, still sobbing, up
the road.
Then he ran across the wood to head off Jud Carpenter, who he knew
had to go around a bend in the road.
There was no bird that Archie B. could not mimic. He knew every
creature of the wood. Every wild thing of the field and forest was
his friend. Slipping into the underbrush, a hundred yards from the
road down which he knew Jud Carpenter had to ride, he prepared
himself for action.
Drawing a turkey-call from his pocket, he gave the call of the wild
turkey going to roost, as softly as a violinist tries his instrument
to see if it is in tune.
Prut--prut--prut--it rang out clear and distinctly.
"All right,"--he said--"she'll do."
He had not long to wait. Up the road he soon saw the Whipper-in,
riding leisurely along.
Archie B. swelled with anger at sight of the complacent and
satisfactory way he rode along. He even thought he saw a smile--a
kind of even-up smile--light his face.
When opposite his hiding place, Archie B. put his call to his mouth:
_Prut--Prut--P-R-U-T_--it rang out. Then _Prut--prut!_
Jud Carpenter stopped his horse instantly.
"Turkeys goin' to roost."--he muttered. He listened for the
direction.
_Prut--Prut_--it came out of the bushes on the right--a hundred yards
away under a beech tree.
Jud listened: "Eatin' beech-mast,"--he said, and he slipped off his
pony, tied him quietly to the limb of a sweet-gum tree, and cocking
his long gun, slipped into the wood.
Five minutes later he heard the sound still farther off. "They're
walkin'," muttered Jud--"I mus' head 'em off." Then he pushed on
rapidly into the forest.
Archie B. let him go--then, making a short circuit, slipped like an
Indian through the wood, and came up to the pony hitched on the road
side.
Quietly removing the saddle and blanket, he took two tough prickly
burrs of the sweet-gum and placed one on each side of the pony's
spine, where the saddle would rest. Then he put the blanket and
saddle back, taking care to place them on very gently and tighten the
girth but lightly.
He shook all over with suppressed mirth as he went farther into the
wood, and lay down on the mossy bank behind a clay-root to watch the
performance.
It was a quarter of an hour before Jud, thoroughly tired and
disgusted, gave up the useless search and came back.
Untying the pony, he threw the bridle rein over its head and vaulted
lightly into the saddle.
Archie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his
mouth just in time.
"It was worth a dollar," he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had
retired to their trundle bed. "The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to
the groun'--then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin'
summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I
heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road
_kersplash!_--an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin'
to-ards home. Then I hollered out: '_Go it ole, fly-ketcher--you're
as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs_'--an' I lit out
through the wood."
Ozzie B. burst out crying: "Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man
got hurt?"
Archie B. replied by kicking him in the ribs until he ceased crying.
"Say yo' prayers now and go to sleep. I'll kick you m'se'f, but I'll
lick anybody else that does it."
As Ozzie B. dozed off he heard:
"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._ Oh, Lord, you who
made the tar'nal fools of this world, have mussy on 'em!"
CHAPTER VI
THE FLINT AND THE COAL
Love is love and there is nothing in all the world like it. Its
romance comes but once, and it is the perfume that precedes the
ripened fruit of all after life. It is not amenable to any of the
laws of reason; nor subject to any law of logic; nor can it be
explained by the analogy of anything in heaven or earth. Do not,
therefore, try to reason about it. Only love once--and in youth--and
be forever silent.
One of the mysteries of love to older ones is that two young people
may become engaged and never a word be spoken. Put the girl in a
convent, even, and let the boy but walk past, and the thing is done.
They look and love, and the understanding is complete. They see and
sigh, and read each other's secret thoughts, past and present--each
other's hopes, fears.
They sigh and are engaged, and there is perfect understanding.
Time and Romance travel not together. Time must hurry on. Romance
would loiter by the way. And so Romance, in her completeness, loves
to dwell most where Time, traveling over the mile-tracks of the
tropics, which belong by heredity to Alabama--stalks slower than on
those strenuous half-mile tracks that spin around the earth in
latitudes which grow smaller as they approach the frozen pole.
The sun had reached, in his day's journey, the bald knob of Sunset
Peak, and there, behind it, seemed to stop. At least to Helen Conway,
born and reared under the brow of Sand Mountain, he seemed every
afternoon, when he reached the mountain peak, to linger, in a
friendly way, behind it.
And a bold warrior-looking crest it was, helmeted with a stratum of
sand-stone, jutting out in visor-shaped fullness about his head, and
feathery above with scrub-oak and cedar.
Perhaps it had been a fancy which lingered from childhood; but from
the time when Mammy Maria had first told her that the sun went to bed
in the valley beyond the mountain until now,--her eighteenth
year,--Helen still loved to think it was true, and that behind the
face of Sunset Rock he still lingered to undress; and, lingering, it
made for her the sweetest and most romantic period of the day.
True to her antebellum ideas, Mammy Maria dressed her two girls every
afternoon before dinner. It is also true that she cooked the dinner
herself and made their dresses with her own fingers, and that of late
years, in the poverty of her drunken master, she had little to dress
them with and less to cook.
But the resources of the old woman seemed wonderful--to the people
round about,--for never were two girls more gorgeously gowned than
Helen and Lily. It was humorous, it was pathetic--the way it was
done.
From old bureau drawers and cedar chests, stored away in the attic
and unused rooms of Millwood, where she herself had carefully put
them in days long gone--days of plenty and thrift--she brought forth
rich gowns of another age, and made them over for Helen and Lily.
"Now, this gown was Miss Clara's," she would say as she took out a
bundle of satin and old lace. She looked at it fondly--often with
tears in her honest black eyes. "Lor', how well I disremember the
night she fust wore it--the night of the ball we give to Jineral
Jackson when he first come to see old Marster. This flowered silk
with pol'naize she wore at the Gov'nor's ball and the black velvet
with cut steel I've seed her wearin' at many an' many a dinner here
in this very house."