53. CHAPTER LIII.
EVERY now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I
ought to get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his
grandfather's old ram—but they always added that I must not
mention the matter unless Jim was drunk at the time—just
comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept this up until my
curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to haunting
Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with his
condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk.
I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest,
such anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man
uncompromisingly drunk before. At last, one evening I hurried to
his cabin, for I learned that this time his situation was such that
even the most fastidious could find no fault with it—he was
tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk—not a hiccup to mar his
voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to obscure his
memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty powder-keg,
with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command
silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was
bare and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he
was a stalwart miner of the period. On the pine table stood a
candle, and its dim light revealed "the boys" sitting here and there
on bunks, candle-boxes, powder-kegs, etc. They said:
"Sh—! Don't speak—he's going to commence."
THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
`I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There
never was a more bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather
fetched him from Illinois—got him of a man by the name of
Yates—Bill Yates—maybe you might have heard of him; his father
was a deacon—Baptist—and he was a rustler, too; a man had to get
up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful Yates; it was him
that put the Greens up to jining teams with my grandfather when
he moved west.
Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a
Wilkerson—Sarah Wilkerson—good cretur, she was—one of the
likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody
said that knowed her. She could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I
can flirt a flapjack. And spin? Don't mention it! Independent?
Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a browsing around her, she let
him know that for all his tin he couldn't trot in harness alongside of
her. You see, Sile
Hawkins was—no, it warn't Sile Hawkins, after
all—it was a galoot by the name of Filkins—I disremember his first
name; but he
was a stump—come
into pra'r meeting drunk, one night, hooraying for
Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary; and old deacon
Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit on old
Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul—had a
glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to
receive
company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't
noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up,
maybe, or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one
was looking as straight ahead as a spy-glass.
Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children
cry, it was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but
it wouldn't work, somehow—the cotton would get loose and stick
out and look so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no
way. She was always dropping it out, and turning up her old
dead-light on the company empty, and making them
oncomfortable, becuz
she never
could tell when it hopped out, being blind on that side, you
see. So somebody would have to hunch her and say, "Your game
eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner dear"—and then all of them
would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in again—wrong side
before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg, being a
bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But
being wrong side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz
her own eye was sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front
side, so whichever way she turned it it didn't match nohow.
Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When
she had a quilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally
borrowed Miss Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was
considerable shorter than her other pin,
but much
she minded that.
She said she couldn't abide crutches when she had
company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had company
and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself.
She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops's
wig—Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife—a ratty old
buzzard, he was, that used to go roosting around where people was
sick, waiting for 'em; and there that old rip would sit all day, in the
shade, on a coffin that he judged would fit the can'idate; and if it
was a slow customer and kind of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations
and a blanket along and sleep in the coffin nights. He was
anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for about three weeks,
once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and after that,
for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms with
the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him. He got one of his
feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable
turn and got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to
make up with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and
fetched it along; but old Robbins was too many for him; he had
him in, and 'peared to be powerful weak; he bought the coffin for
ten dollars and Jacops was to pay it back and twenty-five more
besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin after he'd tried it. And
then Robbins died, and at the funeral he bursted off the
lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let up on the
performances, becuz he could
not stand
such a coffin as that. You see he had been in a trance once
before, when he was young, and he took the chances on another,
cal'lating that if he made the trip it was money in his pocket, and if
he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. And by George he sued
Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up the coffin in
his back parlor and said he 'lowed to take his time, now. It was
always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing
acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon—went to
Wellsville—Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from.
Mighty fine family. Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn
could carry around more mixed licker, and cuss better than most
any man I ever see. His second wife was the widder Billings—she
that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon Dunlap's first wife.
Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and died in grace—et
up by the
savages. They et
him, too, poor
feller—biled him. It warn't the custom, so they say, but
they explained to friends of his'n that went down there to bring
away his things, that they'd tried missionaries every other way and
never could get any good out of 'em—and so it annoyed all his
relations to find out that that man's life was fooled away just out of
a dern'd experiment, so to speak. But mind you, there ain't
anything ever reely lost; everything that people can't understand
and don't see the reason of does good if you only hold on and give
it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blank ca'tridges, boys. That
there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to himself, actu'ly
converted every last one of them heathens that took a chance at the
barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don't
tell
me it was an accident that
he was biled. There ain't no such a thing as
an accident.
When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick,
or drunk, or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on
him out of the third story and broke the old man's back in two
places. People said it was an accident. Much accident there was
about that. He didn't know what he was there for, but he was there
for a good object. If he hadn't been there the Irishman would have
been killed. Nobody can ever make me believe anything different
from that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Why didn't the Irishman
fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him a coming and
stood from under. That's the reason the dog warn't appinted. A
dog
can't be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my
words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle
Lem's dog—I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar
shepherd—or ruther he was part bull and part shepherd—splendid
animal; belonged to parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him.
Parson Hagar belonged to the Western Reserve Hagars; prime
family; his mother was a Watson; one of his sisters married a
Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got nipped by the
machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than a
quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had
his remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the
funeral. There was fourteen yards in the piece.
She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so—full
length. The church was middling small where they preached the
funeral, and they had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the
window. They didn't bury him—they planted one end, and let him
stand up, same as a monument. And they nailed a sign on it and
put—put on—put on it—sacred to—the m-e-m-o-r-y—of fourteen
y-a-r-d-s—of three-ply—car —
-pet—containing all that
was—m-o-r-t-a-l—of—of—W-i-l-l-i-a-m—W-h-e—"
Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and
drowsier—his head nodded, once, twice, three times—dropped
peacefully upon his breast, and he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears
were running down the boys' cheeks—they were suffocating with
suppressed laughter—and had been from the start, though I had
never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold." I learned then that
Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached a certain
stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from
setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful
adventure which he had once had with his grandfather's old
ram—and the mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as
any man had ever heard him get, concerning it. He always
maundered off, interminably, from one thing to another, till his
whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep. What the thing was
that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is a dark
mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.