The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

rapidly driven, and Van Dorn's voice from the driver's seat was heard to say, without its usual lisp and Spanish interjection: "Whitecar, is your brother at Dover sure of his game?" "Cock sure, Cap'n. Got 'em tree'd! Best domestic stock in the town thar, an' the purtiest yaller gals: I know that suits _you_, Cap'n!" "Have they arms?" "Not a trigger. We trap 'em at one of their 'festibals.' No, sir, niggers won't scrimmage." "We assemble at Devil Jim Clark's," said Van Dorn, and passed by with a crack of his whip. Levin, whom some friendly hand had wrapped in a bearskin coat--he had seen one like it upon Van Dorn--next heard the slaver speak to another party he had overtaken: "Melson?" "Ay yi!" "Milman?" "Ah! boy." "You get your orders at Devil Jim Clark's!" The stars were out, yet the night was rich in large, fleecy clouds, as if heaven were hurrying onward too. Levin lay on his back, jostled by the rough wagon, but, being perfectly sober now, he was more reasoning and courageous, and his new-found love impelled him to self-preservation. He might have rolled out of the vehicle and into the woods, and at least saved himself from committing further crime, but how would he see Hulda any more--Hulda, in danger, perhaps? Thus, even to ignorance, love brings understanding, and Levin began to ask himself the cause of his own misery. He knew it was liquor, yet what made him drink if not a disposition too easily led? Even now he was under almost voluntary subjection to the bandit in the wagon, whose voice he heard blandly command again to some pair he had caught up to: "Tindel?" "Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van! Tackle 'em!" "You are not to be in peril to-night, so keep your spirits. I expect you to look out for the cords, gags, and fastenings generally!" "Tackle 'em, Captin; oh, tackle 'em!" "You and Buck Ransom there--" "Politely, Captain; politely, sir!" exclaimed an insinuating voice from a negro rider. "Are to meet us all at Devil Jim's!" "Tackle 'em, Captin!" "Politely, Captain!" As Van Dorn urged his way to the head of the line, Levin looked out silently upon the flat country of forest and a few poor farms, drained imperfectly by some ditches of the Choptank. He supposed it might be almost midnight, from the position of those brilliant constellations which shone down equally upon his mother and himself--she in her innocence and he in his anxiety--and shone, also, perhaps, upon his poor father's grave in isle or ocean. Within an hour blood was to be shed, no doubt, and rapine done, and he knew not the road to escape by nor the hole to hide in. Yet in that hour he had to make his choice,--to fight for liberty, or go to the jail, the whipping-post, or, perhaps, the gallows. Levin considered ruefully his vagrant past, and how little could be said in extenuation of him in a court of justice, except by his mother's faith, which was no more evidence than a negro's oath. Once it arose in his mind to surprise Van Dorn, overcome him, cast him out in a ditch, and drive to some one of the little farmhouses and rest, till day should give him his whereabouts and remedy. Levin was not a coward, and his muscles were hard, and his feet could cling to a smooth plank like a bird's to a bough; but his heart relented to the fierce, soft man so unsuspectingly sitting with his back to him, when Levin reflected that he must, perhaps, put an end to Van Dorn's life with his sailor's knife, if they grappled at all, and this day expiring Van Dorn had paid a debt for him to the widow whose son was next overtaken, and who cried, forwardly, without being addressed: "Van Dorn, what you goin' to give me if I git a nigger?" "This!" said Van Dorn, without a pause, reaching the boy a measured blow with his whip-lash on the shoulder that made him literally fall from the mule and grovel with pain. "Discipline is what your mother failed to give you, _reprobo_. Manners I shall teach you. Fall in the rear!" Owen Daw crawled desperately on his mule and obeyed without parley, but his audacity soon recovered enough to force his animal up to the wagon tail and open whispered communications with Levin there. Nothing had passed them for hours that Levin had seen, when suddenly a horseman at a rapid lope stopped the wagon, and a hoarse negro voice muttered: "How de do, now? See me! see me!" "Derrick Molleston?" spoke Van Dorn. "See me! see me!" "Get down and ride with me. Levin, are you awake?" "Yes, Captain." "Take this man's horse and ride him. John Sorden is ahead. It will stretch your chilled limbs." "May I go with him?" asked Owen Daw, in his Celtic accent, quite cringing now. "Not unless he wants you." "Come, then," Levin obligingly said. While the two youths were still lingering by the wagon they heard these words: "Have you arranged everything with Whitecar and Devil Jim?" "See me! see me!"--apparently meaning, "Rely upon me." "Is Greenley ready to make the diversion if any attack be made upon us?" "See me! see me! His gallus is up and he'd burn de world." "This Lawyer Clayton?" "See me! see me! He gives a big party, Aunt Braner tole me. A judge is dar from Prencess Anne, an' liquor a-plenty. See me! see me!" "The white people absolutely gone from Cowgill House?" "See me! It's nigh half a mile outen de town. Dar's forty tousand dollars, if dar's a cent, at dat festibal: gals more'n half white, men dat can read an' preach: de cream of Kent County. See me! see me!" "And not a suspicion of our coming?" "See me! O see me!" hoarsely said the negro; "innercent as de unborn. To-night's deir las' night!" Levin trembled as these merciless words reached his ears, but Owen Daw seemed to forget his affront at the tidings, and chuckled to Levin as they trotted away: "Bet you I git a better nigger nor you!" "Oh, shame, Owen Daw! Your mother was saved to-day from bein' turned out of doors by my pity. Think of robbin' these niggers of their freedom! What have they done?" "Been niggers!" exclaimed Owen Daw. "That's enough!" "What will you do, Owen, to help your poor mother?" "Wait till I git big enough, bedad, an' kill ole Jake Cannon for this day's work." As they rode on they came to the man called Sorden, riding as the guide to the invading column, a person of more genteel address than any beneath Van Dorn, and young, pliable, and frolicking. "My skin!" he said. "Now, boys, Van Dorn oughtn't had to brung you. You're too sniptious for this rough work. I love the Captain better than I ever loved A male, but he oughtn't to spile boys." "Van Dorn told me to come," Owen Daw cried. "I'm big enough to buck a nigger." "I love him better than I ever loved A male," said Sorden, apologetically. "Who is t'other young offender?" "I'm a stranger to your parts," Levin replied. "Mrs. Cannon made me come. I didn't want to." "Are you afear'd?" "Yes," Levin said. "Well, I love the Captain better than I ever loved A male. But boys is boys, and I hate to see 'em spiled. If you was nigger boys I wouldn't keer a cent; but white's my color, and I don't want to trade in it." They halted at a small, sharp-gabled brick house, of one story and a kitchen and garret, at the left of the road, to which the corner of a piece of oak and hickory woods came up shelteringly, while in the rear several small barns and cribs enclosed the triangle of a field. A door in the middle, towards Maryland, seemed very high-silled, and low grated windows were at the cellar on each side of the steps. The place had a suspicious appearance, and a pack of hounds in full cry rushed from the kitchen, and, while in the act of leaping the stile and palings, were arrested almost in mid air by a chuffy voice crying from within: "Hya! Down! Spitch!" The whole pack meekly sneaked back to the house, whining low, and a few blows of a switch and short howls within completed the excitement. "What place is this?" asked Owen Daw. "Devil Jim Clark's," said Sorden. The dwelling stood about forty yards back from the road, drawing nearly into the cover of the woods, and its little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light was shining from it. "Devil Jim's business-office," nodded Sorden. "What's his business?" asked Levin, freshly. "Niggers. He keeps 'em up thar between the garret and the roof--sometimes in the cellar." "Does he want a business-office for that?" "He's a contractor on the canawl, too, Jim is--raises race-horses, farms it, gambles a little, but nigger-runnin' is his best game. My skin! Yer comes Captain Van Dorn. I love him as I never loved A male." "Van Dorn," spoke a voice from the house, "remember my family is particular. Your men must go to the barn. Come in!" "Spiced brandy at the barn!"--a quiet remark from somewhere--was sufficient to lead the herd away, and, giving the order to "water and fodder," Van Dorn passed into the kitchen, thence through a bedroom to the chief room of the house, and up a small winding-stair to a scrap of hallway or corridor hardly two feet wide. The man who led pointed to a trap above one end of this hall, and exclaimed, "Niggers there! family yonder!"--the last reference to a door closing the little passage. He then opened a wicket at the side of the hall, admitting Van Dorn to an exceedingly small closet or garret room, barely large enough for the men to sit, and lighted by a lamp in the little dormer window seen from below. "Drink!" said the man, uncorking a bottle of champagne; "I had it ready for you." He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a sort of secretary or desk, and then looked anxiety and avarice together out of his liquid black eyes and broad, heavy face. "_Buena suerte, senor!_" Van Dorn lisped, as they drank together. "Hya! spitch!" nervously muttered Clark, cutting his own top-boots with a dog-whip. "I wish I was out of the business: the risk is too great. My wife is religious--praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the seminaries, spendin' money like the Canawl Company on the lawyers. Nothin' pays like nigger-stealin', but it's beneath you and me, Van Dorn." "_A la verdad!_ This is my last incursion, Don Clark. Pleasure has kept me poor for life. To-day I did a little sacrifice, and it grows upon me." "If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, Van Dorn, for what you do to-night, hya! spitch!"--he slashed his knees--"it would break Mrs. Clark's heart." "I want this money to-night," said Van Dorn, "to make two young people happy. They shall take my portion, and take me with them out of the plains of Puckem." "Oh, it is nervous business"--Clark's eyes of rich jelly made the pallor on his large face like a winding-sheet--"hya! spitch! The Quakers are a-watchin' me. Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to the mill, these durned Hunns at the Wildcat--they look me through every time they ketch me on the road. But the canawl contract don't pay like niggers; my folks must hold their heads up in the world; Sam Ogg won't let me keep out of temptation." "Do you fear me, Devil Jim?" "Hya! spitch! No. If all in the trade was like you, I could sleep in trust. If you go out of it, so will I." "Then to-night, _penitente!_ we make our few thousand and quit. Give up your cards and I my _doncellitas_, and we can at least live." They shook hands and drank another glass, and then Van Dorn said: "Send up to me, _hermano!_ the lad who will reply to the name of Levin.