University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

Two days after the occurrence of the events detailed
in the last chapter, the inhabitants of the little village of
Stanford, in Lincoln county, Kentucky, were surprised
by the appearance, in their streets, of a singular group
of travellers. Although emigrants of various descriptions
were continually passing through this place, to the
newer settlements, lying still farther to the west, there was
something about this party which attracted universal
attention. The leader of the cavalcade was the ferocious
individual who has already been more than once brought
under the notice of the reader. He was, as before, bareheaded,
and carried on his shoulder a long rifle, while

his belt supported two knives, a pistol, and a tomahawk.
Without turning to the right or left, and scarcely
appearing to notice objects around him, he moved forward,
along the middle of the street, with a firm and
rapid step, and an air of audacious defiance. Yet a close
observer might have noticed, that although he neither
turned his head, nor seemed to regard those who passed
near him, his fierce eye rolled rapidly from side to side,
with suspicious watchfulness. Behind him followed
three women, two of whom were sun-burnt, coarse, and
wretchedly attired, and the other somewhat more
delicate, and better dressed. The females led two
horses, almost broken down with fatigue, on whose backs
were packed a few cooking utensils, an axe, several
guns, some blankets, and a small quantity of provisions.
Three or four half-naked children, wild, sallow, and
hungry-looking, with small fierce eyes, glancing timidly
about, followed next; and lastly came a man, smaller
in size than him who led the party, but similarly armed,
having the same suspicious exterior, and a countenance
equally fierce and sinister. The deportment of all
the individuals of this company, was that of persons
who considered themselves in a hostile or an alien
country, and who, accustomed to the apprehension of
danger, stood ready to evade by flight, or resist even
to death, any assault which might be made on them.
Even their dog, a thievish-looking cur, resembling a
wolf in looks and action, stole along with a stealthy
tread, his tail drooped, and his malignant eye scowling
watchfully around. Their determination seemed to be
to proceed rapidly on without halting; but when they
had passed the most populous part of the village, and
had nearly reached its farther limit, they stopped, apparently
for the purpose of procuring some article of
which they stood in need. The leader proceeded to a
small shop, while the rest of the party stood in the middle
of the road, exposed to the burning rays of the sun,
and showing no inclination either to seek shelter, or to
hold intercourse with the inhabitants.

At this moment a different scene was presented in the
other end of the village. A horseman, mounted on a
foaming steed, covered with dust, came spurring in at
full speed, and dismounted at the house of one of the
principal inhabitants, who was also a magistrate. He
had brought tidings of the murder committed in the
mountains, and had traced the supposed perpetrators to
this place. Without disclosing his business to any other
person, he sought a private interview with the magistrate;
and in a few minutes a plan was prepared for the
arrest of the suspected persons. Intelligence was
secretly and rapidly passed from house to house, and
the hardy villagers, accustomed to arm hastily for
war, sallied forth with their rifles and tomahawks, and
dividing themselves into small parties, came so suddenly
upon the supposed murderers, that it was equally impossible
for them to resist or escape. They expressed
neither surprise nor fear, neither the shame of guilt nor
the courage of conscious innocence, but submitted to
their captors in sullen insolence. Some articles were
found in their possession, and a variety of facts proved,
which rendered their guilt so probable as to justify their
commitment for further examination.

At that early period in the history of our country,
jails were neither abundant, nor particularly well adapted
for the safe keeping of prisoners. There was none
at Stanford, and it became necessary to send the culprits
to Danville, where a wholesome institution of this kind
had been provided. The men were therefore placed
under the charge of a party of armed citizens, and
marched off, while the women and children, who were
left at liberty, followed at their leisure. The escort rested
that night at the house of a farmer, a comfortable
log cabin, in one apartment of which the prisoners, securely
tied, were placed, under the charge of two
sentinels, while the rest of the guard threw themselves
down to repose, on the floor of the same room. Here I
must introduce a new character, who came on the scene
at this place.

Hercules Short, or, as he was more frequently called,
Hark Short, was the only son of a poor widow, whose
miserable cottage stood on the borders of an extensive
swamp in North-Carolina. It was a wretched abode,
consisting of a single apartment, plentifully supplied
with crevices, which admitted the light of heaven, and
gave free access to the balmy airs of spring, as well as
the rude blasts of winter. On three sides it was surrounded
by a range of barren ridges, covered with a stinted
growth of evergreens. In front, was a dismal swamp,
filled with huge trees, whose great trunks supported a
dense canopy of foliage, which excluded the rays of the
sun from the gloomy mass of turbid waters that covered
the earth. An undergrowth of tall weeds and rank
grass, nourished by the fertilizing ooze, but deprived of

the light and warmth of the sun-beam, shot up into a
sickly and dropsical luxuriance. Here the mocasin-snake
might be seen gliding over the roots of the melancholy
cypress, or exposing his loathsome form on the
decaying trunk of a fallen tree. Here the tuneful frogs
held nightly concerts, astonishing the hearer by the
loudness and variety, if not by the melody, of their
voices. This too was the favorite haunt of that musical
and valiant insect, the musquito, whose thirst for human
blood is so distressing to all persons of tender feelings.
The bear, too, loved to wander and repose in these solitudes,
wading with delight among the flags and rushes
of the ponds, in search of tender buds, or snoring
securely in the hollow of a tree, where the sound of a
human footstep never disturbed his pleasant slumbers.
His neighbor, the owl, sometimes kept bad hours,
screeching her untimely song at mid-day, when all discreet
brutes should be sleeping; but this he had learned
to consider as a pleasant serenade. Other innocent and
playful animals tenanted these shades, but the spectator
who should have visited them at an hour while the sun
was above the horizon, would scarcely have believed
that any living thing existed here. All around him
would be motionless and silent. Even the humid
atmosphere seemed here to have lost its elasticity and
power of circulation. One animated being alone might
occasionally be seen, winding his way through the morass,
with the stealthy tread of the midnight prowler. It
was a youth, whose slender and emaciated form, of
dwarfish height, seemed a living personification of hunger.
His diminutive skeleton was covered with a skin
sallowed by the humid damps, and embrowned by
exposure. His gait was slow, from caution as well as
from indolence. His features were stolid, and the
muscles of his face as immovable as if nature had denied
them the power of expressing passion or emotion.
A small gray eye alone, moving warily in its socket,
and continually glancing from side to side, with the
watchfulness of apprehension, indicated the existence of
feelings common to the human animal. He was bare-headed
and bare-footed; his tangled hair seemed never
to have known the discipline of a comb; while his
coarse and torn garments, which certainly performed no
useful or agreeable office in relation to the comfort of
his body, might have been worn in deference to the customs
of his species; and this was probably the only
instance in which he complied so far with the prejudices of
society as to identify himself as a member of the human
family.

This promising young gentleman was Mr. Hark Short,
the boy of the swamp, and the heir of the pleasant cabin
described above. His father had, from necessity or
choice, found it convenient to select a retired country
residence; and after his demise, the widow, whose love
of solitude seemed congenial with that of her lord, continued
to inhabit the family mansion. The earliest
employment of our hero, was to gather for his mother
the pine-knots which not only constitute the fuel of that
country, but are the most fashionable substitutes for
spermaceti candles; his first amusement in life was to
spear frogs and rob birds'-nests. His ambition, however,
soon rose above these humble pursuits, and before he

was twelve years old, he took to killing snakes, hunting
opossums, catching fish, and finding wild pigs in the
woods. His practice in relation to pigs was a little remarkable.
The farmers in that country suffer their hogs
to run at large in the woods, paying them little attention
except that of marking the ears of each generation of
pigs while in their infancy, so that each owner may be
able to distinguish his property. Our friend Hark, well
aware of this practice, and of the care with which the
farmers performed it, whenever an increase in their
swinish families rendered it expedient, reasoned plausibly
enough, that every pig which was not marked must be
common property, or, as he expressed it, a wild varment,
subject to be converted to the individual use of any one
who should first appropriate it to himself. Whether he
inferred this doctrine from the principles of natural law,
or practised it as an instinct, is not important, and could
not now be precisely ascertained. We deal only in facts,
and the truth is, that although Hark never acquired a
pig either by descent or purchase, he made it a rule to
place his own mark in the ear of every juvenile animal
of this species, which he found running unmarked in the
woods. Whenever the maternal care of a female swine,
wilder or more cunning than usual, induced her to hide
her litter in some unfrequented covert of the woods, or
in some solitary islet of the swamp, inaccessible to the
owner's search, or when any unfortunate orphan strayed
from the herd and escaped the owner's eye, Hark was
sure to find them. His dexterity in accomplishing this
feat was remarkable. He would lie at the root of a tree
watching a herd for hours; but no sooner were the grunters
nestled in their beds of leaves, than Hark commenced
operations, crawling towards them with a noiseless and
almost imperceptible motion, until he could place his remorseless
hand upon an innocent pig, who never dreamt
of being marked, until the knife was at its ear, while the
left hand of the dexterous Hark grasped the snout with
such skill as to stifle the cries of the affrighted animal.
A whole litter would thus pass through his hands in the
course of a short time.

If any should be so squeamish as to object to the
propriety of this mode of gaining a livelihood, we must
urge in its extenuation the same apology which is considered
as sufficient in most of the ordinary transactions
of life, and especially in reference to its pecuniary concerns,—that
of necessity. Hark had been raised a gentleman,
that is to say, he had never been taught to
work; he had no fancy for agricultural pursuits, and
the barren sands around his mother's cabin were ill
suited to that employment. He therefore necessarily
resorted to the woods for a support, where he sometimes
shot a deer; but although he handled a rifle well, he
disliked its use; the labor of carrying the weapon was
irksome to one of his gentlemanly nature, and the noise
of its report particularly uncongenial with his habits of
privacy, and meditative turn of mind. Besides, gun-powder
and lead cost money, which is not to be picked
up every day in the swamps of North-Carolina. And
why should not marking a pig be considered as respectable
as gambling, or as honest as overreaching a neighbor
in a bargain? Hark could see no difference. He
knew little, of course, of morality; but an intuitive greatness

of mind induced him, early in life, to adopt the
magnanimous rule of the Spartan, which attached no
shame to any act, except that of doing it so awkwardly
as to be detected. Hark had no ambition to make a
noise in the world, but on the contrary shrunk habitually
from observation, and courted the society of his own
thoughts. Like many great men, he seemed to have
discovered that ingenuity is a nobler quality than brute
force, and that discretion is the better part of valor.
His mother's table, therefore, was tolerably well supplied
with game, consisting entirely of the flesh of animals
which might be taken without labor, or ensnared by art.
In the spring he caught fish, in the autumn he shook the
stupid opossum from the persimmon-trees and pawpaw
bushes, and during the rest of the year he took—whatever
chance threw in his way. Sometimes the weather
was inclement, and nothing stirred in the woods, but the
creaking bough, or the trembling leaf; and sometimes
Hark, who like other persons of genius had his dark days
of despondency and lassitude, was disinclined to hunt, and
he and Dame Short were reduced to short allowance. But
they were used to this, and it was marvellous to see with
what resignation they could starve. They polished the
bones which they had picked before, and when this
resource was exhausted, passed whole days without eating;
the goodwife croaking over the fire with a short
black pipe in her mouth, and Hark nestling in his pallet,
like some hybernating animal who sleeps away the long
months of winter.

Solitary as was the life of Hark, it was not passed
without amusement. Every intelligent mind is apt to

become addicted to some pursuit, which soon grows into
a master passion of the soul; and although we can
hardly conceive that the practice of cruelty could ever
afford enjoyment, yet, strange as it may seem, it is no
less true, that destructiveness has been strongly developed
in men of the most magnanimous souls. From
Nimrod the “mighty hunter,” down to Black Hawk,
the Sac warrior, the magnates of the earth have ever
taken great delight in killing animals, and cutting the
throats of their fellow-men. Setting down this remarkable
thirst for blood as one of the undoubted attributes
of high ambition, we see no reason why Hark should
not be ranked with “Macedonia's madman and the
Swede.” The bent of his genius lay particularly
towards the killing of reptiles. With a slight spear,
formed of a pointed stick, or slender cane, he would sit
for hours by a pond, transfixing every frog which showed
its head above the surface of the water, or, with a great
switch in his hand, lie in wait for lizards by the decaying
trunk of some great fallen tree. But his soul panted
for higher exploits than these. He entertained a special
antipathy for snakes, and like Hannibal vowed eternal
enmity against the whole race. Nothing delighted him
so much as to encounter a serpent; no matter to what
variety it belonged, the intrepid rattle-snake, the lurking
copper-head, the insidious viper, or the harmless black-snake,—he
no sooner beheld his enemy, than he prepared
for battle with the eagerness of an amateur, and
the skill of an experienced gladiator. A martial hatred
flashed from his eye, and his swarthy visage, flushed
with a chivalrous intrepidity, assumed an unwonted
animation. His mode of proceeding on such occasions
was a little singular; for, either to show his contempt
for the reptile, or his indifference to danger, or because
he thought it the most scriptural plan of bruising his
adversary's head, he invariably jumped upon the crawling
animal with both his feet, and trampled it to death.

The world went quietly along with Hark until he
approached his eighteenth year, when several untoward
events occurred to mar his felicity. In childhood he
had been an honest boy, with a character perfectly unblemished
except by certain little improprieties, such as
sucking eggs, or milking the neighbors' cows when he
found them grazing in the swamps; and it was thought
that the undue severity of the farmers, in flogging him
for these little frailties of his nature, caused him to grow
up with the shy and misanthropic habits, for which he
was so remarkable. But as he became older, his large
herd of swine began to attract attention; the farmers,
who believed in the adage of the civil law, partus sequitur,
&c., which means in plain English that the offspring
belong to the owner of the mother, began to complain
that the descendants of their hogs were passing frequently
into the possession of Hark, the snake-killer,
and threatened him with the visitation of Lynch's law.
Indeed, it is rumored that he was actually arraigned
before a tribunal exercising this impartial jurisdiction;
but as there is no report of the case, we suppose the
allegation to be slanderous. Dangers, however, were
thickening around him; he now spent all of his days in
the deepest recesses of the swamp, and grew so wild,
that whenever he heard the tramp of a horse, or the

crack of a rifle, he crept into some hollow tree, or
bounded away with the caution of a startled fox. The
fear of Lynch's law was continually before his eyes,
and he would rather have crawled into a den of rattle-snakes,
than have shown his face in the neighboring
settlement.

But the longest lane will have a turning, and the time
was arrived when the destiny of Hark was to be materially
changed. One night, on returning home, he found
his mother expiring. He would have gone in search of
a physician, but she knew that the hand of death was
upon her, and charged him not to leave her bedside.
He lighted some pine knots, and as the blaze illumed the
cheerless cabin, gazed in stupefied wonder at the pale
and distorted features of her, who had been his sole
companion through life. She was the only human being
who had ever treated him with kindness. He had not
been taught obedience by precept or example, but had
served and supported her from that kind of instinct
which induces animals to consort together for mutual
protection, or to follow the hand that feeds them.
Blunted as his feelings were by his habits of life, he
discovered for the first time an emotion of tenderness
swelling at his heart. He watched for hours, in silence,
the expiring taper of existence. Unable to render any
assistance, and unskilled in those tender assiduities
which soothe the pillow of disease, he felt how helpless
and how hopeless is the sorrow of him, who watches
alone in the chamber of death, awaiting the departure
of the soul of a beloved object, whose flight he cannot
arrest nor retard. At length, when her breathing

became indistinct, he leaned over the ghastly form, and
sobbed in broken accents, “Mother, don't—don't
die!” The dying woman recognized the voice of her
son; she turned her eyes towards him; a gleam of maternal
tenderness passed over her face, and in the next
moment her spirit passed from life to eternity.

Hark, who was naturally superstitious, would now
have fled from the house of death, but a decent sense of
propriety restrained him, and renewing the blaze upon
his now solitary hearth, he sat with his face buried in
his hands, giving unrestrained vent to his sorrow. These
were new feelings, and, like all sudden impulses, they
were evanescent. Grief soon exhausted itself, and
when day dawned, and the beams of the sun began to
dissipate the mists that hung over his dwelling, his
wonted habits resumed their empire. The events of
that day need not be told. The following night the
moon shone brightly. A hunter who had strayed far
from home in search of game, returning at a late hour,
discovered the diminutive form of Hark, perched on the
summit of a small knoll, not far from the cabin of the
late widow. He sat motionless, with his head resting
on his hand, unconscious of the hunter's approach.
The latter, who knew the wary habits of the boy, was
surprised at his remaining thus motionless, and supposing
he was hurt, or had fallen asleep, drew near with a
friendly intent to awaken or assist him. But the sound
of his approaching footsteps soon broke the reverie of
Hark, who no sooner became aware of being observed,
than he started up, and after a cautious glance around,
instantly fled in terror from the spot. The astonished

hunter, on examining, found that the boy had been sitting
by a newly-made grave, over which the moist earth
had been just closed. The spade lay there, with the
fresh soil still clinging to the blade. Alone, and by moon-light,
this singular being had performed the melancholy
rite of sepulture. On the following morning, some of
the neighbors visited the cabin by the swamp, but found
it deserted; nor was Hark ever seen again in that vicinity.
Sometimes the hunter, when entangled in the mazes of
that wild morass, fancied he heard a sound like that of
a man striking his feet rapidly on the ground, and it was
said that the form of Hark, the snake-killer, was seen
gliding quietly over the turbid pools. But his fate
remained unknown; whether in his solitary wanderings
he had been stung to death by some venomous reptile,
or sunk in a quagmire, or whether the Evil One, who
seemed to have long since marked him for his prey, had
carried him off, none could conjecture. It is said that
a variety of noxious animals took possession of the
deserted cabin, as if in triumph over their persecutor;
and when it was visited long afterwards, it was surrounded
by a rank growth of weeds, and the entrance
choked with thorns and briers; a she-wolf had hidden
her litter under the ruins of the chimney; a numerous
colony of rattle-snakes coiled their loathsome forms
beneath the dilapidated floor, and the roof afforded a congenial
solitude to the bat; from the hollow of a blasted
tree hard by, the owl shouted a savage note of exultation,
and a thousand voices arising out of the green and
stagnant pools, proclaimed that the tenants of the swamp
had increased in number and security.