University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The little town of Raymond, in the state of Mississippi,
was in the utmost commotion. Court-day
was at hand, and nothing was to be heard but the
hum of preparation for that most important of all
days in the history of a country village—that of
general muster alone excepted. Strange faces and
strange dresses began to show themselves in the
main street; lawyers were entering from all quarters—“saddlebag”
and “sulky” lawyers—men who
cumber themselves with no weight of law, unless it
can be contained in moderately-sized heads, or valise,
or saddle-bag, of equally moderate dimensions.
Prowling sheriff's officers began to show their hands
again, after a ten or twenty days' absence in the surrounding
country, where they had gone to the great
annoyance of simple farmers, who contract large
debts to the shop-keeper on the strength of crops yet
to be planted, which are thus wasted on changeable
silks for the spouse, and whistle-handled whips for
“Young Hopeful” the only son and heir to possession,
which, in no long time will be heard best of

under the auctioneer's hammer. The population of
the village was increasing rapidly; and what with the
sharp militia colonel, in his new box coat, squab
white hat, trim collar and high-heeled boots, seeking
to find favour in the regiment against the next election
for supplying the brigadier's vacancy; the
swaggering planter to whom certain disquieting hints
of foreclosure have been given, which he can evade
no longer, and which he must settle as he may; the
slashing overseer, prime for cockfight or quarterrace,
and not unwilling to try his own prowess upon
his neighbour, should occasion serve and all other
sports fail; the pleading and impleaded, prosecutor
and prosecuted, witnesses and victims,—Raymond
never promised more than at present to swell beyond
all seasonable boundaries, and make a noise in
the little world round it. Court-day is a day to remember
in the West, either for the parts witnessed
or the parts taken in the various performances; and
whether the party be the loser of an eye or ear, or
has merely helped another to the loss of both, the
case is still pretty much the same; the event is not
usually forgotten. The inference was fair that there
would be a great deal of this sort of prime brutality
performed at the present time. Among the crowd
might be seen certain men who had already distinguished
themselves after this manner, and who strutted
and swaggered from pillar to post, as if conscious
that the eyes of many were upon them, either in scorn
or admiration. Notoriety is a sort of fame which
the vulgar mind essentially enjoys beyond any other;
and we are continually reminded, while in the crowd,
of the fellow in the play, who says he “loves to be
contemptible.” Some of these creatures had lost an
eye, some an ear, others had their faces scarred
with the strokes of knives; and a close inspection of
others might have shown certain tokens about their
necks, which testified to bloody ground fights, in
which their gullets formed an acquaintance with the
enemy's teeth, not over-well calculated to make
them desire new terms of familiarity. Perhaps, in
most cases, these wretches had only been saved
from just punishment by the humane intervention of
the spectators—a humanity that is too often warmed
into volition, only when the proprietor grows sated
with the sport. At one moment the main street in
Raymond was absolutely choked by the press of
conflicting vehicles. Judge Bunkell's sulky hitched
wheels with the carriage of Col. Fishhawk, and
squire Dickens' bran new barouche, brought up from
Orleans only a week before, was “staved all to
flinders”—so said our landlady—“agin the corner
of Joe Richards' stable.” The 'squire himself narrowly
escaped the very last injury in the power of a
fourfooted beast to inflict, that is disposed to use his
hoofs heartily—and, bating an abrasion of the left
nostril, which diminished the size, if it did not, as
was the opinion of many, impair the beauty of the
member, Dickens had good reason to congratulate
himself at getting off with so little personal damage.
These, however, were not the only mishaps on this
occasion. There were other stories of broken heads,
maims and injuries, but whether they grew out of
the unavoidable concussion of a large crowd in a
small place, or from a great natural tendency to broken
heads on the part of the owners, it scarcely falls
within our present purpose to inquire. A jostle in a
roomy region like the west, is any thing but a jostle
in the streets of New York. There you may tilt
the wayfarer into the gutter, and the laugh is
against the loser, it being a sufficient apology for
taking such a liberty with your neighbour's person,
that “business is business, and must be attended to.”
Every man must take care of himself and learn to
push with the rest, where all are in a hurry. But
he brooks the stab who jostles his neighbour where
there is no such excuse; and the stab is certain
where he presumes so far with his neighbour's wife,
or his wife's daughter, or his sister. There's no
pleading that the city rule is to “take the right hand”
—he will let you know that the proper rule is to give
way to the weak and feeble—to women, to age, to
infancy. This is the manly rule among the strong,
and a violation of it brings due punishment in the
west. Jostling there is a dangerous experiment, and
for this very reason, it is frequently practised by
those who love a row and fear no danger. It is one
of the thousand modes resorted to for compelling
the fight of fun—the conflict which the rowdy seeks
from the mere love of tumult, and in the excess of
overheated blood.

If there was a sensation among the “arrivals” at
Raymond, there was scarcely less among the residents.
The private houses were soon full of visiters,
and the public of guests. Major Mandrake's
tavern was crammed from top to bottom; and this
afflicting dispensation led to the strangest disruption
of anciently adjusted beds and bedsteads. Miss
Artemisia Mandrake, for example, was compelled
to yield her cushions, to a horse-drover from Tennessee,
and content herself with such “sleeps,” as she
could find in an old arm-chair, that stood in immemorial
dust in a sort of pigeon-roost garret. It
was to this necessity, we may be permitted to say
in this place, that she for ever after ascribed her
rheumatism, and a certain awry contraction of the
muscles of the neck, which, defeating her other
personal charms, was not inaptly assumed, by the
damsel herself, to have been the true cause of her
remaining, up to the time of this writing, an unappropriated
spinster. Major Mandrake has certainly

had excellent reason to repent his cupidity. The
rival tavern of Captain Crumbaugh was in equally
fortunate condition with that of the Major. They
were both filled to overflowing by midday, and
after that you could get a bed in neither for love
nor money. And yet the folks continued to arrive;
folks of all conditions and from all quarters,
in gig and sulky, or on horseback; some riding
in pairs on the same donkey,—and not a few short-petticoated
damsels, led by curiosity, from the
neighbouring farms, and mounted in like manner,
on battered jades, whose mouths, ossified by repeated
jerks, now defied the strenuous efforts by which
the riders would have sent them forward with some
show of life and spirit, as they emerged from the
forests into the crowded thoroughfare.

“Well, there's a heap of folks still a-coming, and
where in the world they'll find a place to lie down
in to-night, is a'most past my reckoning. I'm sure
the major ha'n't got another bed left, high nor low;
and as for the captain, I heard him tell Joe Zeigler,
an hour ago, that all was full with him. Yet, do
look, how they are a-coming. Can't you look, Jack
Horsey, if it's only for a minute. You hav'n't got no
more nateral curiosity than—”

“Shut up, Bess, you've got enough for both of us.
What's it to me, and what's it to you, where the
folks sleep. Let them sleep where they can; there'll
be no want of beds where there's no want of money.
If they have that, the captain and the major will
take good care that they have every opportunity to
spend it. As for you, go you and see after the poultry;
court-time is a mighty bad season for chickens;
they die off very sudden, and the owner is not always
the wiser of the sort of death they die. Push,
Bess, and see if you can forget for awhile the business
of the two taverns.”

The good wife was silent for a space, but this was
the only acknowledgment which she condescended
to yield her stubborn and incurious husband. She
did not leave her place at the window, but continued
to gaze with the satisfaction of a much younger person,
at the throng in the thoroughfare, as it received
additions momently from every new arrival. At
length the stir appeared to cease—the carriages to
disappear; horses vanished in the custody of bustling
ostlers, and their riders, making amends for the day's
abstinence, on a dry road, might be seen, in great
part, at the bar-room of the Major or the Captain,
washing away the dust from capacious throats by
occasional draughts of whisky or peach brandy.
The latter article seemed most in demand at the
house of Captain Crumbaugh. He had the art of
preparing it to perfection; and “Crumbaugh's peach”
was, in my day, a sort of proverb with all who travelled
in his parts. Major Mandrake took care to
have the very best whisky—of particular strength
and peculiar flavour; and there was a class, and
this no small one neither, that might readily be found
to give it preference. I class myself among none of
these. The oily excellence of the peach of Crumbaugh
is still a flavour on “memory's waste;”
(query, “taste?”) and whisky was never a favourite
of mine, though I have partaken of it along
with governors and judges, senators and saints.

But to return to the curious Mrs. Horsey. The
dispersion of the crowd, as it ceased to furnish her
with any new subjects of interest, necessarily left her
somewhat more free to remember the injunctions of
her husband; and she was about to turn from the
window, with a long drawn sigh of weariness, or
dissatisfaction that the show was over, when a smart-looking
youth, whom she did not know, rode up to
her door.

“Oh, Mr. Horsey,—a gentleman—on a fine roan
horse—he's at the door—I reckon he wants to see
some of us, and maybe comes to look after a lodging
for to-night. I knew the major was full, and
the captain—”

“Now, the devil take the major and the captain,
and all the taverns in the state, since they drive
every thing out of your brain that ought to be there;”
was the angry speech with which the stubborn husband
interrupted the wandering soliloquy of his
spouse. “Why don't you see what the stranger
wants, woman?—you heard his knocking, and there
you stand, guessing about tavern business, and such
matters as you've no need to think, much less to
speak about.”

“La! John Horsey—you're too positive and contrarious;
not let a body think—”

“No! What the devil should you think for?
that's my business, I tell you now, as I've told you
a good hundred times before. But go to the door;
don't stand there staring like a gray owl in a green
bush; go and open the door and see what the man
wants, unless you desire that I should get up with
my lame leg and show him in. Won't you go, I ask
you.”

“Well, John, don't you see I'm going? You're
always in such a fret.”

“Enough cause too, with such a trouble as you
are.”

“Yes, sometimes I'm any thing but a trouble;
there's no word you have too good for me; and then
agin—”

“There's none too bad;” said the splenetic husband,
finishing the speech as she had begun it;
“but go to the door, as if you had some life in you,
or the stranger will batter it down before you get
there.”

There was some reason, indeed, for the apprehension
expressed by Horsey, as the applicant for admission,
seeing that no heed was given to his first
summons, yet hearing, without doubt, a buzzing of
the sharp controversy going on within, had renewed
his application with redoubled force, employing for
the purpose the but of a loaded whip, every stroke
of which told like a hammer upon the plank. The
dame started in compliance with the clamours from
without, rather than the impatient commands within;
for she still seemed panting for another word, and
muttered between her teeth, as she slowly moved towards
the door, something which, to the jealous authority
of her liege lord, seemed to denote a resolution
still to think as she pleased and when she
pleased, in spite of his declarations against her right
to do so.

“Look you, Bess, go to the door: and move a
little more quickly, if you don't want to make me
mighty angry. See what the stranger wants; and
remember we don't keep a lodging-house any longer.
We have no room; we want no company.”

This was spoken in those subdued tones, and with
that show of suppressed and striving feeling, which,
perhaps, denote a greater degree of earnestness and
resolution than any words might do. The effect
upon the wife was instantaneous, and her hand was
soon upon the lock.

“Remember, we have no lodging,” murmured the
husband, as the door opened. “I only wish I were
a mile or two back in the woods, where I mightn't
be worried as I am about board. There was a
time when I might have been glad of a good stand
on the road, but it's not so now. I can live like a
gentleman, and why should I be bothered to get
breakfasts, and see after strange horses, for people I

shall never see but once, and don't want to see at
all? I'll—”

The words of the stranger, spoken in bold, free,
musical language, which reached the ears of the invalid
at that moment, put an end to the soliloquy.

“Mrs. Horsey, ma'am?”

“He might swear to it, if he knew only half as
much as I,” exclaimed the invalid.

The stranger, a tall, well-made youth of twenty-five
or thereabouts, meanwhile, drew up his steed,
lifted his cap handsomely from his head, like one
born a courtier, with a grace that found its way instantly
to the lady's heart, and proceeded in his inquiries.

“I have been advised, Mrs. Horsey, by a particular
friend, to seek lodgings at your house during my
stay in Raymond. Can I have them?”

Before the good lady, prefacing her denial with a
long apology and a pleasant smirk of the face, could
bring out what she was preparing to say, the rough
voice of the sultan from within, gave his answer to
the stranger.

“Can't have 'em, my friend—this is no lodging-house—no
room to spare.”

“Very sorry, indeed,” said the old lady.

“Not sorry at all, stranger,” said the truth-speaking
Horsey; “for you see, if we wanted to lodge
you, the thing might well enough be done. But we
don't set out to keep company, and there are taverns
enough in the village.”

“Scarcely, if the story is true, that they are all full,”
replied the stranger; “but let me alight and see you.
I have a message to you, madam, and to your husband
from my friend Carter, who tells me that he
lodges with you, and that you could easily find me
lodgings also for the little time I mean to stay in
Raymond.”

The effect of this speech was instantaneous upon
the man of the house. He barely heard the youth
through ere he replied,—

“Eh! what's that you say, my friend? Did you
say, Carter—was it Ben Carter that sent the message?”

“The same,” replied the youth, while entering the
house.

“And why the d—l, stranger, didn't you say so
at first, without any prevarications. What's the
use of this cursed long palaver, when two words
could have done the whole business. Of course we
can give you lodgings. Ben Carter told you nothing
but the truth. He has a habit of speaking the
truth which would be very good for many other
people to take up, not meaning you, stranger, for if
you be a friend of Ben Carter, I reckon, it's like you
are of the same sort of stuff.”

“You speak only as my friend deserves, Mr.
Horsey. Carter is the very man you describe him.
True in all his words, and just in all his dealings
with men, it is my pride in esteeming him one of the
most valuable and closest friends I have. It is not
amiss, Mr. Horsey, to add that he has an opinion of
you, no less favourable than yours of him.”

“Tush, young man, soft soap don't tickle me at
my time of life,” replied Horsey with an Indian
grunt of seeming indifference. “I am as I am, and
it's no great matter what I am, seeing that I'm of
little use in this world at present, and likely to be of
less; yet it's not a bad thing to have the good words
of them that's good. It sort o' reconciles a man to
a great many evil things that might otherwise bring
him a mighty deal of trouble. And Ben Carter is
a good man,—when did you see him last?”

“Some ten days ago. He left me at Monticello,
and was on his way to Jackson, from which place

he promised to return directly to this. He was to
meet me here to-night.”

“Well, I reckon he'll be as good as his word, if
there's nothing to stop him on the way. He's
mighty punctual to his business, and when he says
he'll do, you may count it done. True as steel, is
Ben Carter, and it's no use to say farther. Bess,
let's have something. What'll you take, stranger?—
there's some mighty fine peach, some of Crumbaugh's
peach, as they call it, which is pretty much the same
as calling it the very best in Massissippi. I have
some old Monongahela besides, which I can speak
a good word for—sugar, Bess.”

The beverage was soon prepared, and the two
were about to drink, when Horsey reminded the
other of a degree of inequality between them which
needed to be reconciled before they could properly
drink health together.

“You have all the advantage on your side,
stranger; my name's John Horsey,—that, it seems,
you know already; but yours—what's your name?
There's no pleasure in calling a man `stranger'
every minute, when you're talking and drinking together
all the while.”

“True,” replied the stranger; “but I never thought
of that. My name, Mr. Horsey, is Vernon—Harry
Vernon. It is not improbable that you have heard
it before from my friend Carter.”

“Don't recollect, don't think I ever did. Vernon,
Vernon—it's a good name enough—comes smooth
and easy to the tongue as a gentleman's name ought
to do always; but Harry, Harry Vernon! You
wasn't christened Harry, I reckon, Mr. Vernon?
Must have been Henry, and they call you Harry for
short.”

“For short, say you? Well, it may be so,” replied
the stranger with a laugh, “but long or short,

I was never called by any other since I have known
myself; and never, until this moment thought of
asking which of the two I had the clearest right to
make use of.”

“The old people living, Mr. Vernon? Your
health, sir, in the meantime. That's what I call
peach brandy, sir,—no make b'lieve,—none of your
whisky run through peach timber such as they give
you at Orleans. Old Crumbaugh warrants that
stuff, and gets his price for it. Did I hear you, Mr.
Vernon? the old people, you said they were living.”

“Neither, sir.”

“Try another sip, Mr. Vernon,” said the other
consolingly, “peach perfectly harmless; Crumbaugh
keeps the temperate society house; warrants his
peach; calls it sobriety peach; and so you've lost
both parents, Mr. Vernon?”

“Both—all, sir. I may almost exclaim with the
Indian, that there runs no drop of my blood in the
veins of any human being.”

“Don't say that, Mr. Vernon, don't say that. It's
much more than any man can say, and be certain.
Fathers, sir, are apt to leave children where they
never look for them; there's something of that sort
at my own door, Mr. Vernon, and so—”

“La, John, how you do talk.”

“What, you're there, Bess, are you?” The
chuckle of the veteran was arrested, and probably a
long string of confessions, by the timely ejaculation
of his wife, who happened to be busy in the closet,—
“these women, Mr. Vernon—but you're married?”

“No!”

“Be thankful, young master—it's a pleasure then
to come, if it comes as a pleasure, which is something
like Bazil Hunter's pea crop, `a very doubtful
up-coming.' You will run your race like the rest of
us, and come up at the post as usual, but it won't be

the starting-post, I tell you! You was saying something
about the Indians, and that brought up some
recollections of mine when I was among them. I've
been among all the Southern Indians, except the
Catawba. I've never been among them, and I reckon
there's but few of them now left to see; but I've been
among the Creeks and the Cherokees, the Choctaws
and the Chickasaws, and there was another tribe,
when I first came into these parts, that I hear nothing
of now, called the Leaf River Indians, there was but
few of them, and I think they belonged to the Chickasaws,
but they were the handsomest Indians I ever
did see in all my travelling, and I begun early. I used
to trade, when I was little, a mere sprout of a boy,
from Tennessee, through the mountains, into North
and South Carolina,—then after that to the Massissippi;
and many's the time I've made out to carry a
matter of five pack-horses,—I and three other lads
of Tennessee—through the very heart of the `nation,'
without so much as losing a thimble, and almost
without having a scare. In one of these journeys I
saw my wife, then a mere bit of a girl.—What! not
gone, Bess!—It's gospel truth, Mr. Harry Vernon,
from that day there's been but one pack-horse in our
family, and that's Jack Horsey himself.”

“La! now, John,” cried the wife with uplifted
hands, “the stranger don't know your ways, and
he'll take for true what you're a-telling him. That's
jist the way with him, stranger—”

“Stranger!—the gentleman's got a name, Bess.
Mr. Vernon, Mr. Harry Vernon; remember, now,
it's not Henry, but Harry Vernon.—Mr. Vernon,
this is my wife. You'd soon enough find that out,
if you lodged with us awhile. And now, Bess, be
off, and look after supper;—a silent wife, and a singing
kettle—it's not always we can have 'em, Mr.

Vernon, but that only helps to make them the more
desirable.”

Mrs. Horsey was not to be sent off, however, in
so conclusive a manner. The complaints of Horsey,
touching the constraints upon him of his better half,
were ludicrous enough; contrasted, as they were,
with the almost despotic sway which he exercised at
every instant. Perhaps a latent desire to show her
guest that her good lord did not have it altogether
his own way, led her on this occasion to dispute his
commands.

“It's not time for supper, John Horsey. Now
that you're lame, you seem to think of nothing but
eating and drinking.”

“Did mortal husband ever hear to such a woman?”
was the exclamation of the sultan. The wife mistook
for compliance a mildness in the speech which
was only due to the astonishment of the speaker.
She continued:—

“It's a good hour to supper yet. We have our
hours, John Horsey, jist the same as the major,
and—”

“Now d—n the major, and d—n the captain, and
d—n all the taverns in Massissippi. Thus it is, Mr.
Vernon, a wife will make a man swear, sir, when
there's nothing in the world farther from his wish.
You see, sir, my wife will do and say just what she
pleases, as I told you. She will always be bringing
up to me those cursed taverns; but I'll stop that, or
there's no snakes! Look you, Betsey!”

Here his finger guided her to the door, through
which she made her departure in the shortest possible
space of time. A look had done what, probably,
no word in John Horsey's vocabulary could have
achieved half so soon.

“A good woman enough, Mr. Vernon; but women,
sir, are women; and the very best of them are

incapable of serious concerns: they are all triflers—
mere children—a sort of gingerbread creatures, the
ginger of which lasts a deused sight longer than the
molasses. But, as you were saying, Mr. Vernon,
you are a lawyer.”

“You have guessed rightly, sir, that is my profession
indeed. Your ears are something better than
mine, I think, for I do not recollect ever having told
you the fact.”

“Nor did you, my dear fellow,” replied the old
man with a hearty laugh. “It was, as you say, a
mere guess of mine, and Jack Horsey's guess is seldom
short of the mark. It's a way with me to take
for granted, just as if my neighbour had said it, the
thing which it appears to me reasonable to think he
will say; and I could ha' sworn, from a rakish,
sharp, lively something about your face and eyes,
and a little swing of your shoulders, that you was a
lawyer, or going soon to be one. You practise in
Monticello.”

“I came from Monticello last, but it is not my
residence.”

“Well, but you practise law somewhere in Massissippi.”

“I shall in season, I doubt not, provided I get
clients. Young lawyers find in this their chief difficulty.
They practise with some such rule as governs
a good angler,—where the fish bite best,
there you are sure to find them. For my part, I am
but too lately admitted to determine where the best
water lies for my purposes; I have not yet thrown
out my lines.”

“And that you won't do till your hooks are well
baited, for that I believe is one of the first lessons
which a lawyer learns. I know'd if you had begun
to practise, you hadn't done much in that way; your
chin is almost too smooth, though that's no misfortune

as times go, if so be your tongue proves smooth
and oily like your chin. But there, it seems to me,
Mr. Vernon, that your difficulty lies. I'm afraid
you ha'n't got the gift of the gab. I haven't heard
you say much.”

“And for a very excellent reason, Mr. Horsey:
you haven't given me a chance. Your tongue has
utterly outwagged mine, and I yield the palm to you,
where my vanity, perhaps, would allow me to yield
it to few other persons. But, it is now my turn, and
if I do not prove myself quite your equal before I'm
done with you, I will at least convince you that I am
not entirely without my claims to take rank among
the mouthing part of my profession.”

“Spoken like a man, and a good fellow,” cried
Horsey, with a hearty laugh, and with no sort of
discomfiture at a retort as just as it was unexpected.
“I have better hopes of you now, Mr. Harry Vernon.
'Ecod, you gave it me then,—a raal dig in the
side with a sharp elbow. The truth is, I am a leetle
too much given to hearing myself talk, and what's
worse, I can't easily be convinced that it is not my
neighbour whose tongue all the while has been
making the hellabaloo. Somehow or other, thinking
of what the man ought to say, that I'm talking to,
I come to think he says it, and half an hour after,
could almost take my Bible oath to the fact. It's a
strange infirmity, Mr. Vernon; don't you think so?”

“Very,—very strange,” said the other, smiling at
the seeming seriousness of his companion.

“And so, you were telling me you practise law in
Orleans.”

“No—”

“Ah, Mobile, yes—Mobile you said.”

“Nay, nay, Mr. Horsey, I said neither,” replied
the youth laughing out aloud; “this is only another
sample of the infirmity you were telling me about—

another of your guesses—and I will not tell you how
far from the truth. But it is my turn now, and while
I throw another stick upon your fire, and draw my
chair a foot closer, I will prepare my thoughts for
the cross-examination which I mean to give you in
turn.”

“Ah, well; but `wait a bit and take a bit,' first,
as we say in Massissippi. We'll have it over after
supper, when you may try your skill upon me, for a
first witness, and see what you'll get for going. I'm
a tough colt to ride, when the bit hurts me; and he
must be a skilful rider, indeed, if he saves himself a
throw.”

“We shall see, we shall see,” said Vernon confidently,
and with a smile of good nature; while the
old man, with whose humour the course which the
youth had taken seemed admirably to tally, told him
a dozen anecdotes of the young lawyers round about
the country, with most of whom he had had sharp
passes of wit, and in all cases, according to his own
phrase and showing, had “come down uppermost.”