University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Ignorant, as we have already said, of his late
most providential escape from the weapon of his
implacable enemy, Ralph Colleton was borne forward
by his affrighted steed with a degree of
rapidity which entirely prevented his rider from
remarking any of the objects around him, or, indeed,
as the moon began to wane amid a clustering
body of clouds, of determining positively whether
he was still in the road or not. The trace (as public
roads are called in that region) had been
rudely cut out by some of the earlier travellers
through the Indian country, merely traced out—
and hence, perhaps, the term—by a blaze, or white
spot, made upon the trees by hewing from them the
bark; which badge, repeated in succession upon
those growing immediately upon the line chosen
for the destined road, indicated its route to the wayfarer.
It had never been much travelled, and from
the free use at the present time of other and more
direct courses, it was left almost totally unemployed,
save by those living immediately in its
neighbourhood. It had therefore become, at the
time of which we speak, what, in backwood phrase,
is known as a blind-path. Such being the case, it is
not difficult to imagine that, when able to restrain

his horse, Ralph, as he feared, found himself entirely
out of its guidance—wandering without
direction among the old trees of the forest. Still, as
for the night now nearly over, he could have no
distinct point in view, and saw just as little reason
to go back as forward, he gave himself but little
time for scruple or hesitation. Resolutely, though
with a cautious and gentle motion, he pricked his
steed forward through the woods, accommodating
his philosophy, as well as he could, to the various
interruptions which the future, as if to rival the
past, seemed to have treasured up in store for him.
He had not proceeded far in this manner when he
caught the dim rays of a distant fire, flickering and
ascending among the trees to the left of the
direction he was taking. The blaze had something
in it excessively cheering, and, changing his
course, he went forward under its guidance. In
this effort, he stumbled upon something like a path,
which, pursuing, brought him at length to a small
and turbid creek, into which he plunged fearlessly,
and soon found himself in swimming water. The
ford had been little used, and the banks were steep,
so that he got out with difficulty upon the opposite
side. Having done so, his eye was enabled to
take a full view of the friendly fire which had just
attracted his regard, and which he soon made out
to proceed from the encampment of a wagoner,
such as may be seen every day, or every night, in
the wild woods of the southern country. He was
emigrating, with all his goods and gods, to that
wonderfully winning region, in the estimation of this
people, the valley of the Mississippi. The emigrant
was a stout, burly, bluff old fellow, with full
round cheeks, a quick, twinkling eye, and limbs
rather Herculean than human. He might have
been fifty-five years or so; and his two sons, one of
them a man grown, the other a tall and goodly youth
of eighteen, promised well to be just such vigorous
and healthy looking personages as their father.
The old woman, by whom we mean—in the manner
of speech common to the same class and region
—to indicate the spouse of the wayfarer, and
mother of the two youths, was busied about the
fire, boiling a pot of coffee, and preparing the family
repast for the night. A somewhat late hour for
supper and such employment, thought our wanderer;
but the difficulty soon explained itself in the
condition of their wagon, and the conversation
which ensued among the travellers. There was
yet another personage in the assembly, who must
be left to introduce himself to the reader. The
force of the traveller—for such is the term by
which the number of his slaves are understood—
was small; consisting of some six workers, and
three or four little negro children asleep under the
wagon. The workers were occupied at a little distance,
in replacing boxes, beds, and some household
trumpery, which had been taken out of the wagon,
to enable them to effect its release from the slough
in which it had cast one of its wheels, and broken
its axle, and the restoration of which had made
their supper so late in the night. The heavier
difficulties of their labour had been got over, and
with limbs warmed and chafed by the extra exercise
they had undergone, the whites had thrown
themselves under a tree, at a little distance from
the fire at which the supper was in preparation,
while a few pine torches, thrown together, gave
them sufficient light to read and remark the several
countenances of their group.

“Well, by dogs, we've had a tough 'bout of it,
boys; and, hark'ye, strannger, give us your hand. I
don't know what we should have done without you,

for I never seed man handle a little pole-axe as you
did that same affair of your'n. You must have
spent, I reckon, a pretty smart time at the use of
it, now, didn't ye?”

To this speech of the old farmer, a ready reply
was given by the stranger, in the identical voice
and language of our old acquaintance, the pedler,
Jared Bunce, of whom, and of whose stock in
trade, the reader will probably have some recollection.

“Well, now, I guess, friend, you an't far wide of
your reckoning. I've been a matter of some fifteen
or twenty years knocking about, off and on,
in one way or another, with this same instrument,
and pretty's the service now, I tell ye, that it's done
me in that bit of time.”

“No doubt, no doubt—but what's your trade,
if I may be so bold, that made you larn the use of
it so nicely.”

“Oh, what—my trade—why, to say the truth,
now, I never was brought up to any trade in particular,
but I play a pretty slick hand, now, I tell
you, at all of them. I've been in my time a little
of a farmer, a little of a merchant, a little of a
sailor, and somehow or other, a little of every
thing, and all sort of things. My father was jest
like myself, and swore, before I was born, that I
should be born jest like him—and so I was. Never
were two black peas more alike. He was a 'cute
old fellow, and swore he'd make me so too—and
so he did. You know how he did that?—now, I'll
go a York shilling 'gainst a Louisiana bit, that you
can't tell to save you.”

“Why no, I can't—let's hear,” was the response
of the wagoner, somewhat astounded by the volubility
of his new acquaintance.

“Well, then, I'll tell you. He sent me away, to

make my fortune and git my edication 'mongst
them who wasn't cute themselves, and maybe that
an't the best school for larning, a simple boy ever
went to. It was the very making of me, so far as
I was made.”

“Well, now, that is a smart way, I should
reckon, to get one's edication. And in this way
I suppose you larned how to chop with your little
pole-axe—dogs!—but you've made me as smart a
looking axle as I ever tacked to my team.”

“I tell you, friend, there's nothing like sich an
edication. It does every thing for a man, and he
larns to make every thing out of any thing. I
could make my bread where these same Indians
wouldn't find the skin of a hoe-cake; and in these
woods or in the middle of the sea, t'ant any thing
for me to say I can contrive always to fish up
some notion that will sell in the market.”

“Well, now, that's wonderful, strannger, and I
should like to see how you would do it.”

“You can't do nothing, no how, friend, unless
you begin at the beginning. You'll have to begin
when you're jest a mere boy, and set about getting
your edication as I got mine. There's no two
ways about it. It won't come to you; you must
go to it. When you're put out into the wide world,
and have no company and no acquaintance, why,
what are you to do? Suppose now, when your
wagon mired down, I had not come to your help,
and cut out your wood, and put in the spoke,
wouldn't you have had to do it yourself?”

“Yes—to be sure; but then I couldn't have done
it in a day. I an't handy at these things.”

“Well, that was jest the way with me when I
was a boy. I had nobody to help me out of the
mud—nobody to splice my spokes or assist me
any how, and so I larned to do it myself. And

now, would you think it, I'm sometimes glad of a
little turn over, or an accident, jest that I may keep
my hand in, and not forget to be able to help myself
or my neighbours.”

“Well, you're a curous person, and I'd like to
hear something more about you. But it's high
time we should wet our whistles, and it's but dry
talking without something to wash a clear way for
the slack. So, boys, be up, and fish up the jemmijohn—I
hope it han't been thumped to bits in the
rut. If it has I shall be in a tearing passion.”

“Well, now, that won't be reasonable, seeing
that it's no use, and jest wasting good breath that
might bring a fair price in the market.”

“What, not get in a passion if all the whiskey's gone? That won't do, strannger, and though you
have helped me out of the ditch, by dogs, no man
shall prevent me from getting in a passion if I
choose it.”

“Oh, to be sure, friend—you an't up to my idee.
I did'nt know that it was for the good it did you
that you got in a passion. I am clear that when a
man feels himself better from a passion, he oughtn't
to be shy in getting into it. Though that wasn't a
part of my edication, yet I guess, if such a thing
would make me feel more comfortable, I'd get in a
passion fifty times a day.”

“Well, now, strannger, you talk like a man of
sense. 'Drot the man, says I, who hasn't the courage
to get in a passion. None but a miserable,
shadow-skinning Yankee would refuse to get in a
passion when his jug of whiskey was left in the
road.”

“Ahem—” coughed the dealer in small wares—
the speech of the old wagoner grating harshly
upon his senses; for if the Yankee be proud of any
thing, it is of his country—its enterprise, its institutions;

and of these, perhaps, he has more true
and unqualified reason to be pleased and proud
than any other one people on the face of the globe.
He did not relish well the sitting quietly under the
harsh censure of his companion, who seemed to
regard the existence of a genuine emotion among
the people down East as a manifest absurdity;
and was thinking to come out with a defence, in
detail, of the pretensions of New-England, when,
prudence having first taken a survey of the huge
limbs of the wagoner and calling to mind the fierce
prejudices of the uneducated southrons generally
against all his tribe, suggested the convenient propriety
of an evasive reply.

“Ahem—” repeated the Yankee, the argumentum
ad hominem still prominent in his eyes—
“well, now, I take it, friend, there's no love to spare
for the people you speak of down in these parts.
They don't seem to smell at all pleasant in this
country.”

“No, I guess not, strannger, as how should they
—a mean, tricky, catchpenny, skulking set—that
makes money out of everybody, and han't the
spirit to spend it. I do hate them, now, worse than
a pole-cat.”

“Well, now, friend, that's strange. If you were
to travel now for a spell, down about Boston or
Salem in Massachusetts, or at Meriden in Connetticut,
you'd hear tell of the Yankees quite different.
If you believe what the people say thereabouts,
you'd say there was no sich people on the
face of the airth.”

“That's jist because they don't know any thing
about them; and it's not because they can't know
them neither, for a Yankee is a varmint you can
nose any where. It must be that none ever travels

in those parts—selling their tin kettles, and their
wooden clocks, and all their notions.”

“Oh, yes, they do. They make 'em in those
parts. I know it by this same reason, that I bought
a lot myself from a house in Connetticut, a town
called Meriden, where they make almost nothing
else but clocks—where they make 'em by steam,
and horse-power, and machinery, and will turn
you out a hundred or two to a minute.”

The pedler had somewhat “overleaped his
shoulders,” as they phrase it in the west, when his
companion drew himself back over the blazing
embers, with a look of ill-concealed aversion, exclaiming,
as he did so—

“Why, you an't a Yankee, are you?”

The pedler was a special pleader in one sense
of the word, and knew the value of a technical distinction
as well as his friend, Lawyer Pippin. His
reply was prompt and professional.

“Why, no, I an't a Yankee according to your
idee. It's true, I was born among them, but that,
you know, don't make a man one on them?”

“No, to be sure not. Every man that's a freeman
has a right to choose what country he shall belong
to. My dad was born in Ireland, yet he always
counted himself a full-blooded American.”

The old man found a parallel in his father's nativity,
which satisfied himself of the legitimacy of
the ground taken by the pedler, and helped the
latter out of his difficulty.

“But here's the whiskey, standing by us all the
time, waiting patiently to be drunk. Here, Nick
Snell, boy, take your hands out of your breeches
pocket, and run down with the calibash to the
branch. The water is pretty good there, I reckon;
and, strannger, after we've taken a sup, we'll eat a

bite, and then lie down. It's high time, I reckon,
that we do so.”

It was in his progress to the branch, that Ralph
Colleton came upon this member of the party.
Nick Snell was no genius, and did not readily reply
to the passing inquiry which was put to him
by the youth, who advanced upon the main party
while the dialogue between the pedler and the
wagoner was in full gust. They started, as if by
common consent, to their feet, as his horse's tread
smote upon their ears; but satisfied with the appearance
of a single man, and witnessing the jaded
condition of his steed, they were content to invite
him to partake with them of the rude cheer which
the good woman was now busied in setting before
them. The hoe-cakes and bacon were smoking
finely, and the fatigue of the youth engaged his
senses, with no unwillingness on their part, to detect
a most savoury attraction in the assault which
they made upon his sight and nostrils alike. He
waited not for a second invitation, but in a few
moments, having first stripped his horse, and put
the saddle, by direction of the emigrant, into his
wagon, he threw himself beside them upon the
ground, and joined readily and heartily in the consumption
of the goodly edibles which were spread
out before them. They had not been long at this
game when a couple of fine watch dogs which
were in the camp, guarding the baggage, gave the
alarm, and the whole party was on the alert, with
sharp eye and cocked rifle. They commenced a
survey, and at some distance could hear the tread
of horsemen seemingly on the approach. The banditti,
of which we have already spoken, were well
known to the emigrant, and he had already to complain
of divers injuries at their hands. It is not,
therefore, matter of surprise, that he should place

his sentinels, and prepare even for the most audacious
attack. He had scarcely made this disposition
of his force, which exhibited them to the best
advantage, when the strangers made their appearance.
They rode cautiously around, without approaching
the defences sufficiently nigh to occasion
strife, but evidently having for their object
originally an attack upon the wayfarer. At length
one of the party, which consisted of six persons,
now came forward, and with a friendly tone of
voice, bade them good evening, in a manner which
seemed to indicate a desire to be upon a footing of
the most amiable sort with them. The old man
answered dryly, with some show of sarcastic indifference
in his speech,—

“Ay, good evening enough, if the moon had
not gone down and if the stars were out, that we
might pick out the honest men from the rogues.”

“What, are there rogues in these parts, then, old
gentleman?” asked the new comer.

“Why do you ask me,” was the sturdy reply.
“You ought to be able to say, without going farther
than your own pockets.”

“Why, you are tough to-night, my old buck,”
was the somewhat crabbed speech of the visiter.

“You'll find me troublesome, too, Mr. Night-walker—so
take good counsel, and be off while
you've whole bones, or I'll tumble you now in half
a minute from your crittur, and give you a sharp
supper of pine-knots.”

“Well, that wouldn't be altogether kind on your
part old fellow, and I mightn't be willing to let
you; but as you seem not disposed to be civil, I
suppose the best thing I can do is to be off.”

“Ay, ay, be off. You get nothing out of us;
and we've no shot that we want to throw away.

Leave you alone, and Jack Ketch will save us
shot.”

“Ha, ha!” exclaimed the outlyer, in concert, and
from the deeper emphasis which he gave it, in chorus
to the laughter which followed, among the
party, the dry expression of the old man's humour.

“Ha, ha! old boy—you have the swing of it to-night,”
was the reply of the visiter, as he rode off
to his companions—“but, if you don't mind, we
shall smoke you before you get into Alabam.”

The robber rejoined his companions, and a sort
of council for deliberation was determined upon
among them.

“How now, I ambert—you have been at dead
fault,” was his sudden address, as he returned, to
one of the party. “You assured me that old Snell
and his two sons were the whole force that he carried,
while I find two stout able-bodied men beside,
all well armed, and ready for the attack. The
old woman, too, standing with the gridiron in her
fists, is equal of herself to any two men, hand to
hand.”

Lambert, a short, sly, dogged little personage,
endeavoured to account for the error, if such it was
—“but he was sure, that at starting, there were
but three—they must have had company join them
since. Did the lieutenant make out the appearance
of the others?”

“I did,” said the officer in command, “and, to
say truth, they do not seem to be of the old fellow's
party. They must have come upon him
since the night. But how came you, Lambert, to
neglect sawing the axle. You had time enough
when it stood in the farm-yard last night, and you
were about it a full hour. The wagon stands as
stoutly on its all-fours as the first day it was built.”

“I did that, sir, and did it, I thought, to the very

mark. I calculated to leave enough solid to bear
them to the night, when in our circuit we should
come among them just in time to finish the business.
The wood is stronger, perhaps, than I took it to be,
but it won't hold out longer than to-morrow, I'm
certain, when, if we watch, we can take our way
with them.”

“Well, I hope so, and we must watch them, for
it won't do to let the old fellow escape. He has, I
know, a matter of three or four hundred hard dollars
in his possession, to buy lands in Mississippi,
and it's a pity to let so much good money go out
of the state.”

“But why may we not set upon them now,” inquired
one of the youngest of the party.

“For a very good reason, Briggs—they are
armed, ready, and nearly equal in number to ourselves;
and though I doubt not we should be able
to ride over them, yet I am not willing to leave
one or more of us behind. Besides, if we keep
the look-out to-morrow, as we shall, we can settle
the business without any such risk.”

This being the determination, the robbers, thus
disappointed of their game, were nevertheless in
better humour than might have been well expected;
but such men are philosophers, and their very
recklessness of human life is in some respects the
result of a due estimate of its vicissitudes. They
rode on their way laughing at the sturdy bluntness
of the old wagoner, which their leader, of
whom we have already heard under the name of
Dillon, related to them at large. With a whoop
and halloo, they cheered the travellers as they rode
by, but at some distance from, the encampment.
The tenants of the encampment, thus strangely
but fortunately thrown together, having first seen

that every thing was quiet, took their severally
assigned places, and laid themselves down for repose.
The pedler contenting himself with guessing
that “them 'ere chaps did not make no great
deal by that speculation.”