Uncle Tom's Cabin
nothin’ ye thinks they will; mose gen’lly the contrary. Gals is nat’lly
made contrary; and so, if you thinks they’ve gone one road, it is
sartin you’d better go t’ other, and then you’ll be sure to find ’em.
Now, my private ’pinion is, Lizy took der road; so I think we’d better
take de straight one.”
This profound generic view of the female sex did not seem to dispose
Haley particularly to the straight road, and he announced decidedly
that he should go the other, and asked Sam when they should come to it.
“A little piece ahead,” said Sam, giving a wink to Andy with the eye
which was on Andy’s side of the head; and he added, gravely, “but I’ve
studded on de matter, and I’m quite clar we ought not to go dat ar way.
I nebber been over it no way. It’s despit lonesome, and we might lose
our way,—whar we’d come to, de Lord only knows.”
“Nevertheless,” said Haley, “I shall go that way.”
“Now I think on ’t, I think I hearn ’em tell that dat ar road was all
fenced up and down by der creek, and thar, an’t it, Andy?”
Andy wasn’t certain; he’d only “hearn tell” about that road, but never
been over it. In short, he was strictly noncommittal.
Haley, accustomed to strike the balance of probabilities between lies
of greater or lesser magnitude, thought that it lay in favor of the
dirt road aforesaid. The mention of the thing he thought he perceived
was involuntary on Sam’s part at first, and his confused attempts to
dissuade him he set down to a desperate lying on second thoughts, as
being unwilling to implicate Liza.
When, therefore, Sam indicated the road, Haley plunged briskly into it,
followed by Sam and Andy.
Now, the road, in fact, was an old one, that had formerly been a
thoroughfare to the river, but abandoned for many years after the
laying of the new pike. It was open for about an hour’s ride, and after
that it was cut across by various farms and fences. Sam knew this fact
perfectly well,—indeed, the road had been so long closed up, that Andy
had never heard of it. He therefore rode along with an air of dutiful
submission, only groaning and vociferating occasionally that ’t was
“desp’t rough, and bad for Jerry’s foot.”
“Now, I jest give yer warning,” said Haley, “I know yer; yer won’t get
me to turn off this road, with all yer fussin’—so you shet up!”
“Mas’r will go his own way!” said Sam, with rueful submission, at the
same time winking most portentously to Andy, whose delight was now very
near the explosive point.
Sam was in wonderful spirits,—professed to keep a very brisk
lookout,—at one time exclaiming that he saw “a gal’s bonnet” on the top
of some distant eminence, or calling to Andy “if that thar wasn’t
‘Lizy’ down in the hollow;” always making these exclamations in some
rough or craggy part of the road, where the sudden quickening of speed
was a special inconvenience to all parties concerned, and thus keeping
Haley in a state of constant commotion.
After riding about an hour in this way, the whole party made a
precipitate and tumultuous descent into a barn-yard belonging to a
large farming establishment. Not a soul was in sight, all the hands
being employed in the fields; but, as the barn stood conspicuously and
plainly square across the road, it was evident that their journey in
that direction had reached a decided finale.
“Wan’t dat ar what I telled Mas’r?” said Sam, with an air of injured
innocence. “How does strange gentleman spect to know more about a
country dan de natives born and raised?”
“You rascal!” said Haley, “you knew all about this.”
“Didn’t I tell yer I _knowd_, and yer wouldn’t believe me? I telled
Mas’r ’t was all shet up, and fenced up, and I didn’t spect we could
get through,—Andy heard me.”
It was all too true to be disputed, and the unlucky man had to pocket
his wrath with the best grace he was able, and all three faced to the
right about, and took up their line of march for the highway.
In consequence of all the various delays, it was about three-quarters
of an hour after Eliza had laid her child to sleep in the village
tavern that the party came riding into the same place. Eliza was
standing by the window, looking out in another direction, when Sam’s
quick eye caught a glimpse of her. Haley and Andy were two yards
behind. At this crisis, Sam contrived to have his hat blown off, and
uttered a loud and characteristic ejaculation, which startled her at
once; she drew suddenly back; the whole train swept by the window,
round to the front door.
A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza.
Her room opened by a side door to the river. She caught her child, and
sprang down the steps towards it. The trader caught a full glimpse of
her just as she was disappearing down the bank; and throwing himself
from his horse, and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her
like a hound after a deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce
seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water’s
edge. Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as God
gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap, she
vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of
ice beyond. It was a desperate leap—impossible to anything but madness
and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy, instinctively cried out, and
lifted up their hands, as she did it.
The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and
creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment.
With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still
another cake; stumbling—leaping—slipping—springing upwards again! Her
shoes are gone—her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every
step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she
saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.
“Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!” said the man, with an oath.
Eliza recognized the voice and face for a man who owned a farm not far
from her old home.
“O, Mr. Symmes!—save me—do save me—do hide me!” said Eliza.
“Why, what’s this?” said the man. “Why, if ’tan’t Shelby’s gal!”
“My child!—this boy!—he’d sold him! There is his Mas’r,” said she,
pointing to the Kentucky shore. “O, Mr. Symmes, you’ve got a little
boy!”
“So I have,” said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the
steep bank. “Besides, you’re a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I
see it.”
When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.
“I’d be glad to do something for ye,” said he; “but then there’s nowhar
I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go _thar_,” said
he, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main
street of the village. “Go thar; they’re kind folks. Thar’s no kind o’
danger but they’ll help you,—they’re up to all that sort o’ thing.”
“The Lord bless you!” said Eliza, earnestly.
“No ’casion, no ’casion in the world,” said the man. “What I’ve done’s
of no ’count.”
“And, oh, surely, sir, you won’t tell any one!”
“Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? In course not,”
said the man. “Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you
are. You’ve arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all me.”
The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly
away. The man stood and looked after her.
“Shelby, now, mebbe won’t think this yer the most neighborly thing in
the world; but what’s a feller to do? If he catches one of my gals in
the same fix, he’s welcome to pay back. Somehow I never could see no
kind o’ critter a strivin’ and pantin’, and trying to clar theirselves,
with the dogs arter ’em and go agin ’em. Besides, I don’t see no kind
of ’casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither.”
So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed
in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into
acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better
situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.
Haley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza
had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on
Sam and Andy.
“That ar was a tolable fair stroke of business,” said Sam.
“The gal ’s got seven devils in her, I believe!” said Haley. “How like
a wildcat she jumped!”
“Wal, now,” said Sam, scratching his head, “I hope Mas’r’ll ’scuse us
trying dat ar road. Don’t think I feel spry enough for dat ar, no way!”
and Sam gave a hoarse chuckle.
“_You_ laugh!” said the trader, with a growl.
“Lord bless you, Mas’r, I couldn’t help it now,” said Sam, giving way
to the long pent-up delight of his soul. “She looked so curi’s, a
leapin’ and springin’—ice a crackin’—and only to hear her,—plump! ker
chunk! ker splash! Spring! Lord! how she goes it!” and Sam and Andy
laughed till the tears rolled down their cheeks.
“I’ll make ye laugh t’ other side yer mouths!” said the trader, laying
about their heads with his riding-whip.
Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their horses
before he was up.
“Good-evening, Mas’r!” said Sam, with much gravity. “I berry much spect
Missis be anxious ’bout Jerry. Mas’r Haley won’t want us no longer.
Missis wouldn’t hear of our ridin’ the critters over Lizy’s bridge
tonight;” and, with a facetious poke into Andy’s ribs, he started off,
followed by the latter, at full speed,—their shouts of laughter coming
faintly on the wind.
CHAPTER VIII
Eliza’s Escape
Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of
twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river,
enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current
and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her
and her pursuer. Haley therefore slowly and discontentedly returned to
the little tavern, to ponder further what was to be done. The woman
opened to him the door of a little parlor, covered with a rag carpet,
where stood a table with a very shining black oil-cloth, sundry lank,
high-backed wood chairs, with some plaster images in resplendent colors
on the mantel-shelf, above a very dimly-smoking grate; a long hard-wood
settle extended its uneasy length by the chimney, and here Haley sat
him down to meditate on the instability of human hopes and happiness in
general.
“What did I want with the little cuss, now,” he said to himself, “that
I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?” and
Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of
imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible
reason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter of taste, omit.
He was startled by the loud and dissonant voice of a man who was
apparently dismounting at the door. He hurried to the window.
“By the land! if this yer an’t the nearest, now, to what I’ve heard
folks call Providence,” said Haley. “I do b’lieve that ar’s Tom Loker.”
Haley hastened out. Standing by the bar, in the corner of the room, was
a brawny, muscular man, full six feet in height, and broad in
proportion. He was dressed in a coat of buffalo-skin, made with the
hair outward, which gave him a shaggy and fierce appearance, perfectly
in keeping with the whole air of his physiognomy. In the head and face
every organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating
violence was in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed,
could our readers fancy a bull-dog come unto man’s estate, and walking
about in a hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general
style and effect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling
companion, in many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short