University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

The landlady spread her little board, on which a
broiled chicken and sundry smoking slices of ham
soon made their appearance. Chubby biscuits of
fresh Pittsburgh flour, formed a pyramidal centre in
the table arrangements, and a capacious bowl of
milk stood beside them. Coffee, which is the sine
qua non in a western supper, was of course not
lacking; and appetite, that commends even the unflavoured
pulse and the dry roots, rendered necessary
no idle solicitings to persuade our young traveller to
do justice to a meal, in preparing which, the good
hostess had spared nothing of her store.

“Fall to, Harry Vernon, and don't wait on me,”
was the frank command of Horsey, as, grunting and
growling the while, he worked his rocking chair,
foot by foot, up to the side of the table, and drew
from it one of the plates into his lap. Vernon had
his good word for the hostess, and in a little time
proved himself to be in possession of the best wisdom
of the traveller, whom experience teaches, that good
humour and a cheerful spirit are the most valuable
stores which he can take with him in a course of

western travel. We recommend them to all your
ill-favoured bookworms who carry their stilts with
them into our swamps and forests, and fancy all the
while that they can see any thing, who never cease
looking on their own pedestals. Vernon had been
already something of a wayfarer. Necessities of
one sort or another, had schooled him into a knowledge
of men of every sort, and it was a rational
boast which he was sometimes wont to make, in the
glow of a youthful and pardonable vanity, that he
could go from Tampa bay to the Rocky mountains,
and win good usage and a smile with his supper
every night. Such a brag may be made by few
with safety. Invidious comparisons constantly rise to
our minds as we think of the little and peculiar luxuries
of our homes, and we lose our appetite for that
which is before us, by suffering our feeble fancies to
trouble us with the memories of what we cannot
have. Your Englishman is a traveller of this sort.
From the first jump which he makes from Dover, or
Liverpool, he begins to smell out novelties which
are always offensive to self-conceit, simply because
they are novelties. His sole business from that moment,
seems to be to discover in what things his
present differs from his past, and to find fault and
grumble accordingly. He turns up his nose with
such an inveterate effort from the beginning, that it
remains in that inodorous position for ever after.

But we have nothing now to do with him. Vernon,
as we have said, was of very different temper;
lively, bold, frank, generous, he was just the sort of
person to commend himself to the southern and
western people. His dignity never apprehensive of
doubt and denial, was never on the watch to take
offence at every thing in the least degree equivocal.
To avoid controversy, to avoid the crowd, to yield
gracefully in argument, and to forbear pressing his

advantage at the proper moment—were some few
of the maxims by which, avoiding every prospect of
offence, he gained the most substantial victories, as
well over the hearts as the understandings of those
with whom he contended. Fluent in speech, with a
memory abounding in illustration and anecdote, a
fancy lively and playful, an imagination vigorous
and bold, the profession which it seems he had
chosen, appeared to be that in which, above all
others, he promised most to excel. Such, we may
add, was the opinion of his friends, and such, were
it proper for the narrator to predict, was the appropriate
event after the lapse of that usual period of
probation, to which it is natural and well that all
ambitious minds should be subjected. Precocious
greatness is generally very short-lived.

There was that superiority in the mind of Harry
Vernon, which never suffered him to think himself
above the occasion. He could descend from the
abstract to the practical with an ease and rapidity
at once singular and successful. To rise from the
actual to the abstract is a far easier matter, and
hence it is that we have so many theoretical men,
who always fail in the attempt to carry out their
own principles. To accommodate himself to the
understandings of those he addressed without degrading
his own, was another of those advantages—
the result of actual experience in the busy world,
which, added to the store of our young traveller, and
supplied to him as it was supplied to others, in many
instances, the lack of money and the aid of powerful
friends. Before supper was fairly ended he had shown
some of these possessions, and Horsey, the rough,
garrulous, grumbling invalid, was not unwilling to
hear another voice than his own occupy those intervals
in the progress of the meal, which he had seldom
failed to fill up hitherto from his own resources,

and to his own perfect satisfaction. The youth requited
him with story for story, joke for joke, and
when, at the usual hour for retiring in the country,
where folks are very apt to go to bed with the fowls,
the worthy dame intimated to Vernon that his bed
was ready whenever he wished “to lie down;” her
spouse blazed out like a splinter of fat lightwood—
bade her be gone and not send the young man to
bed at dark, to tumble about half the night in sleeplessness
and stupor.

“That's the way, Harry; and by the Lord Harry,
it's a monstrous vexing way, my wife has got.
She goes to bed at dark, you see; she's kept up a
little longer to-night than's customary with her; and
before day-peep she's a-stirring, and a-tossing, and
a-calling up the niggers. Now, you see, I can't
sleep soon o' nights for the life of me. I never
could ever since I was a lad driving my pack-horses
over the mountains. 'Twas then I got a sort o'
habit of sitting up late. When we'd come to a running
water, or a spring, or some such fine place for
a camp, why we'd drive stakes, cut bushes, make
tents, and fasten our horses. Then we'd feed 'em,
git up a fire, and set to preparing our own feed.
Well, we'd have to do all this mighty slyly, I tell
you, for fear of the Indians. We'd git away from
the main track, hide our horses pretty deep in the
small woods, and put our fire in a sort of hollow, so
that nobody could see the blaze. Then we'd git
round it, put down a hoe and a griddle, bake the
biscuit and broil the venison. Ah! Vernon, it was
mighty sweet eating in that fashion. There's no
meal I ever ate that come up to them. And as we'd
eat, we'd talk about what happened to this one, and
what happened to that; and how many scares and
dangers we'd had; and then we'd steal off, taking
turns at that business, to look after the horses, and

up and down the road, to see all was right. And
so we'd pass the night, Mr. Vernon; and in the
morning, betimes, we'd brush up and gear the animals,
and put on our packs, and be ready for a start
by dawn; and many's the time, Vernon, my boy, in
them days, that I've taken `Sweetlips,' that ugly
long-shanked rifle you see there in the corner, and
dropped a turkey from his roost in the tree jist over
the horses, so fat that his breast-bone split open by
the time he thumped the ground. Ah! them days,
Mr. Vernon, them blessed days, with all their troubles,
and all their dangers, I'd give all I'm worth, or
ever hope to be worth, if they only were to go over
again. But it's no use pining for what can't be got.
We can't always be young, Mr. Vernon, and if we
could, pack-horses are gone out of use, and there's
no Indians to make us lie snug and suspicious, telling
stories that helped to frighten us the more. The
Choctaws will soon be gone, and the Cherokees and
Creeks, I s'pose, though they're something farther
off, and I don't know so much about them. You
can tell though, Mr. Vernon, seeing you're jist from
Mobile.”

Horsey, with an inevitable tendency, had recurred
to his old practice. The youth replied good
humoredly,—

“I haven't seen Mobile for months, Mr. Horsey;
but you forget, it is my turn to question now, and
lest you should start off, and throw me out again,
I will begin at once. Have you had many visiters
in Raymond—many strangers, I mean, until this
time, within the last two weeks?”

“Psha, Harry Vernon, say what you want in plain
terms. Is it a man, or a woman, you're in chase of?
It's a man, I reckon; for Ben Carter a'n't the chap
to encourage young lawyers to be running about the

country after women. Am I right in my guess,
Vernon?”

“Suppose I tell you, then, a woman?”

“Well, I've nothing to say; but I hardly think it.
Are you sure it's a woman, now?”

“Nay, there's no certainty about it. A small man,
in woman's clothes, might very easily pass himself
off for one,” said Vernon, with an air of musing.

“Yes, nothing very strange in that, if he had to
make a run for it, and had hope of outdoing his
enemy's head sooner than his heels. Your chap
has no such hope, I reckon, Mr. Vernon.”

“It may be not; but man or woman, Mr. Horsey,
have you had any strangers in the village lately?”

“Well, I'm the very last person in Raymond to
see strangers, unless they come to me. I ha'n't
walked out of the house for the last five weeks, and
jist make out to hobble up to bed, when it's time to
lie down. There's my wife, now,—she can tell you
more than I. She sees every thing and every body, I
think, that comes into the village; I don't know but
she sees whoever goes out of it. She's a most curious
woman,—my wife—likes to pry into every
body's business, and know all about them, but she
means no harm; good woman—she's fast asleep
now.”

A hearty laugh of Vernon followed these praises
of the wife, which she was no longer in a condition
to hear; and drawing nigher to his companion, he
renewed his inquiries, though with a slight change of
topic.

“Your wounded limb disables you from seeing
much of the world at present, Mr. Horsey, but it has
not always disabled you, and there are some parts
of it which I know you have seen, about which I
would like to obtain some information—the `Choctaw
purchase,' for example.”

“How do you know I've been in the `nation?”'
demanded Horsey, with some gravity.

“You told me so, yourself.”

“The d—l I did! Can it be possible! Well, it is
strange how difficult it is, when a man's growing old,
for him to keep his own secrets. Out he pops with
every thing he knows, and with the help of a long
tongue, he will empty the longest head. Are you
sure I told you I had been in the `nation,' Mr. Vernon?”

“I think so, sir.”

“You are not certain, then. It is very probable
you are mistaken, sir. I should wish to think so, for
I look upon it as one of the last signs of dotage when
a man can't keep his secrets.”

“But this is no secret, surely. Can there be any
harm in stating so simple a fact,” demanded the
youth, with curiosity mingled with amusement to
discover in a man of so much good practical sense,
an apprehension so ridiculous.

“So simple a fact has hung a man before to-day,
as your law books should have told you. Not that I
fear to be hung for any thing I've done, whether
among Creeks, Cherokees, or Choctaws. I've had
something to do with all of them in my time, and can
show some marks of my acquaintance with the red
rascals; but then there's no sort of need to tell every
thing a man knows, even when it does him no harm
to tell it, and when a man's brains become like a
bottle of sassafras beer, ready to boil over when a
little warm, I think he may as well cast up his accounts,
and get his coffin made. But, sir, I have
been in the `purchase' and maybe can tell you what
you want to know.”

“To what portions do the people go who settle
there now? Which are the portions most in demand?”

“Oh, there's a sprinkling of our people every where,

there's no stopping them when they begin. When
you think you've got to the end of the settlements,
there's still some further on; and the business of the
squatter always carries him over the line of the old
settlements. But the quiet folks that have got something
to go upon and something to lose, they stick
a little behind. It does seem to me, that, if it's them
you're asking for, you'll find a smart chance of them
between the Yazoo and the Big Black, mostly along
the edges of the Big Black, and not often west of the
Yazoo. A heap of little towns are growing up along
the Black. I could name to you a dozen, but it's no
more use naming little towns than little chickens,
there's so many of them, and they all look so much
alike.”

“And the gamblers, Mr. Horsey, where do they
keep?”

“Nowhere in particular, and that's the same as
saying every where. But—I needn't ask you, seeing
you're Ben Carter's friend—I was going to say
I hope you wasn't looking after company among
them.”

“No, no; but are they numerous?” demanded
the youth with interest.

“As peas in a fair season.”

“They are audacious, too?”

“D—d infernal impudent, if you let them. If
you go up in those parts it's my advice to you to
keep finger on trigger and use your pistol at a word.
It's a'most always the quickest hand that gets off
with fewest scratches, and to stand palavering with
a scoundrel, that you know to be a scoundrel, about
what's right, and what's not right, is, to my way of
thinking, little better than begging an ass not to kick
you, while you make a slow journey under his heels.”

“But you're not always sure that it is a scoundrel—”

“Sure as a gun; there's no chance of a mistake
if you keep your senses about you. But that's the
trouble. It's how to keep your senses about you,
Harry Vernon, that's the greatest question. Now,
I'm clear to say, that it's only by getting drunk,
being put in a passion, or having soft soap poured
down their backs, that men lose their senses, and afterward
lose every thing beside. If they wouldn't
listen to smooth words from every stranger they
meet; if they wouldn't stop to hug the whisky bottle,
instead of taking a quiet kiss and walking on;
if they wouldn't get into a passion about every fool
speech they hear, then I'm clear, they'd never get
cheated out of their money, and knocked on the
head, like a blind puppy in a dark night. Now,
Harry, you see the danger before you. So long as
a man keeps his senses, there's not so many dangers
in life, and they may be all got over by a quick head
and bold heart. But it won't do to believe in sweet-spoken
strangers, and it won't do to quarrel about
a fool jest, and it won't do to get drunk. I wouldn't
advise a lad to go up into the Yazoo, now, while its
unsettled, as I may say, and none but scatterers
about; but if you must go, mind your own business,
make no more friends than you can help, and keep
sober as a judge. Come, sir, you've been talking
long enough, let's have a toddy.”

“Thank you—no more, Mr. Horsey; and let me
correct your errors as we proceed. It is you and
not I, who have been doing the talking for the last
half hour; and to say truth, I am so well pleased
with your eloquence, that I'm for having more of it.”

“No gammon, my lad, none of that. But I'm
willing to tell you all I know, so long as you don't
ask for it all. What's next.”

“What officers of the law may be found in those
parts, in the event of my being in want of them?”

“Lord keep you from law officers in your own
case, my lad, though as a lawyer, it's like enough,
you'll be making them toil hard enough in the business
of other people. But what makes you think of
them—do you calculate on any trouble?”

“Nay, that matters not, my friend. Should I
have any trouble, which a man of the world, who
lives in the world, must always look for, I should
like to know in how much I may depend upon the
countenance and protection of the law in the places
to which I'm going.”

“Depend upon a hickory sapling and your own
teeth rather. Depend upon steel and bullet, Harry
Vernon, when you're on the Yazoo. What the
d—l would a man expect to find, out, away on the
very skirts, as I may call it, of civilization? Would
you have gentlemen and Christians in a part of the
world where there's no timber cut, no lands cleared,
no houses built, nothing done, but what's done by
the squatters and that sort of people? No, no: your
only chance is a keen eye, a quick hand, and a
steady head. Trust to these in the Yazoo; there
are few better friends any where.”

“The counsel of one who has certainly done more
by their help than most men;” responded Vernon,
with a compliment that was not displeasing to the
veteran, and showed a degree of intimacy with his
history on the part of his guest, which proved him
to have been no inattentive auditor of himself and of
his friend Carter;—“but,” continued the youth,
“what can you tell me of the `Braxley settlement.”'

“Not a syllable—I know nothing good of it, however;
though I couldn't say, more than from general
report, any thing bad agin it.”

“What of `Ford's camp?”'

“Nothing.”

“Georgeville?”

“That's sprung up into a village since my day.
I believe it's a poor affair:—but two or three stores
or thereabouts. I never saw the place but once, and
then there was but one; I didn't stay in that longer
than to take a sup of whisky. If there's nothing
better in it than the whisky, don't go there. It's a
place to shun, Mr. Vernon.”

“What of Lexington?”

“Don't know the place.”

“Squab Meadow?”

“Never heard of it.”

“There's a little village called Lucchesa, that lies
somewhere upon Green Briar Creek in Carroll
County. Do you know any thing about that? it's a
new village.”

“New to me, yet I think I have heard the name;
there are several little villages grown up since I've
been in those parts, and, for that matter, they grow
up every day. I know the country well enough, but,
bless your soul, Mr. Harry Vernon, it's no sign of
ignorance in Massissippi, not to know the towns by
their names. We can't find names for half of 'em.”

This was said with some signs of impatience, and
the youth, though still seemingly desirous of pressing
for information which was yet desirable to obtain,
was compelled to rest contented with the imperfect
statistics already gleaned, which, perhaps, no continued
examination of the old man would have rendered
more complete.

“I am afraid I have wearied and worried you,
Mr. Horsey, without much help to myself. What I
get from you is to the full as satisfactory as the
comparisons of that categorical personage, Captain
Fluellen; `There is,' says he, `a river in Macedon,
and there is also, moreover, a river at Monmouth,'
&c.”

The youth gave in full the passage which has been

prefixed as an epigraph to this idle chapter, and
which we care not to repeat again. Portions of the
quotation, however, and the authority referred to,
seemed to disquiet our landlord.

“Fluellen,” said he; “where was he captain?
There's Captain Fenelon, I know, that heads the
`Buck Swamp Rangers,' and that's the nearest name
to it, I can think of. I know Fenelon, and a mighty
clever fellow he is; a little too fond of the girls
perhaps; but that only hurts himself. It isn't him,
you mean.”

“No, no—Fluellen is a captain far more famous,
I think, than Fenelon will ever become. He is one
of the honoured names of Shakspeare—the world
renowned—”

“That d—d player-man!” cried the impatient
landlord, interrupting the eulogy which our hero had
begun, of the merits of the divine bard. “Look
you, Mr. Vernon, if you want that we should keep
friends, and part friends, say no more of that player-fellow
and his cursed books; don't I beg you.”

The youth was silent from wonder for a few moments,
to behold such an earnest countenance as the
speaker wore while he uttered this serious remonstrance.
When he recovered breath, it was to expostulate.

“In the name of wonder, and all the wonders,
Mr. Horsey, but how is this? How is it that you
are so hostile to a writer whom all the world joins
to honour and applaud?”

“The world, Mr. Vernon, may honour as it
pleases, and it frequently gives honour where very
little is due. But it's the honour which the world
gives to this same player-fellow, which has done
more to make me an unhappy man, than any thing
in the world beside.”

The wonder of the youth increased, and a single
word conveyed his farther interrogation:

“How?”

“I have a son, Mr. Vernon; you haven't seen him
in my house; nor, till this minute, have you heard
his name from my lips; nor, perhaps, from the lips
of Ben Carter, though you may have got a good
deal out of him. Well, sir, this son of mine, got in
with some of these player-fellows at Mobile or Orleans,
and they carried him to their blasted stage-houses,
where he got possession of these Shakspeare
books, and he's never been worth a picayune since
that day. He took up with the stage-fellows, got to
making a d—d fool of himself before the Mobile
people, and had the impudence to send me a paper,
a printed paper with a great heading, and his name
among the rest to play some pieces out of Shakspeare.
Sure enough, that very time my neighbour
here, Major Mandrake, that keeps one of the taverns,
being down on a visit to Mobile, saw Tom Horsey,
with his own eyes, come out in front of the whole
people, with a gold crown upon his head, and covered
with spangles, and dressed up, in a most ridiculous
way beside, jist for another chap, who come
out afterwards, to stick him with a sword. And
there he rolled about over the floor, until he died,
and the people shouted and clapped their hands, as if
he had done some great thing, and it was jist that
d—d stupid shouting and clapping, that led the fellow
to make such a bloody fool of himself. But
mind you, I don't mean to say that he died in airnest
—it was all pretence—all make b'lieve; but, by the
Eternal, Mr. Vernon, I'd rather a thousand times he
had died in raal airnest in a fair fight, than to have
fallen into such a folly, and brought disgrace upon
his family.”

A playful commentary upon this speech rose to

the lips of Vernon, as the old man concluded; but
the youth saw that the grief was too serious and
sacred, to suffer any light or irreverential remark.
He contented himself with inquiring into the fate of
a lad in whom he began to take some interest, the
rather, perhaps, because he saw the matter in a less
severe light than the father, and possibly because he
thought that the backwoods boy, wanting in all the
advantages of education and city life, who could
relish Shakspeare to so great a degree, must be of
something more than ordinary metal.

“And where is your son now, Mr. Horsey?”

“The saints know best, Mr. Vernon. Tom Horsey
has not darkened these doors since March gone
was a year.”

“But you hear from him?”

“Ay, sir, and of him. I hear from him when he
wants money, and of him when he has it. He makes
me hear when he's out, and makes every body else
hear when his pockets are full. The misfortune is,
that this Shakspeare fellow never comes alone. He
brings with him late hours and strong drink, and
damned bad company, Mr. Vernon; and what with
him and them, Tom Horsey is in the broad road to
destruction.”

“But do you provide him with money when he
demands it for such indulgences.”

“Fill your glass, Vernon; let us drink, and say
no more. I'm a surly, crabbed sort of creature;
they will all tell you so; and yet, they all wonder, and
I wonder at it myself, that I have so little strength
to do the things that I resolve upon. The boy's my
only boy, bad as he is, Harry Vernon; and he gets
more money from me than I ought to give him.
But, what's that? Did you hear nothing, Mr. Vernon?—no
voices—none—just below the window?”

The old man trembled with sudden agitation,

while bending forward to listen, as indistinct accents
fell upon his own and the ears of his guest. In another
instant, the room rang with a loud burst of declamation
from without, in which Vernon detected
some lines from the bard whom the old man had so
terribly denounced, but which now seemed to awaken
in his mind any other than hostile feelings. Meanwhile
the voice proceeded, and the passages spoken
seemed not inappropriate; and, perhaps, were chosen
from their partial fitness, to those relations between
father and son, which had formed the subject of the
previous conversation. The passage was from the
speech of Bolingbroke, third scene, fifth act of Richard
the Second.

The eye of the father caught the glance of his
guest earnestly fixed upon him, and in that instant
he recovered his composure.

“Now, out upon the scrub! he comes at last, with
his player-verses in his mouth—”

“Ay; but how truly do they suit, Mr. Horsey!”
was the reply of Vernon.

“Yes, indeed, well enough; but will they cure the
mischief that they tell of? No, sir; this graceless
rascal thinks it handsome to swagger with a belly
full of whisky, and a brain full of Shakspeare, at
the lowest tavern in the city of New Orleans. By
the Lord Harry, but he comes not in my door!”

A loud knocking from without answered this resolve;
and, following the glance of the father's eye,
Vernon rose quietly and opened the door to the son.