University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE FALL HUNT.

MORTON led Kike home in silence, and then returned
to his father's house, deposited his turkey
outside the door, and sat down on a broken chair by
the fire-place. His father, a hypochondriac, hard of
hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at
him steadily a moment, and then said:

“Sick, Mort? Goin' to have a chill?”

“No, sir.”

“You look powerful dauncy,” said the old man, as
he stuffed his pipe full of leaf tobacco which he had
chafed in his hand, and sat down on the other side of
the fire-place. “I feel a kind of all-overishness myself.
I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this
year. Hey?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“What?”

“I said I didn't know.” Morton found it hard to
answer his father with decency. The old man said
“Oh,” when he understood Morton's last reply; and
perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he devoted
himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on
the awful consequences that might result if “the fever,”
which was rumored to have broken out at Chilicothe,
should spread to the Hissawachee bottom. Mrs. Goodwin
took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence

of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and
she began to hope more than ever that he might
prove to be one of the elect. Indeed, she thought it
quite probable that a boy so good to his mother would
be one of the precious few; for though she knew that
the election was unconditional, and of grace, she could
not help feeling that there was an antecedent probability
of Morton's being chosen. She went quietly and
cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin corn-meal
dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a
griddle, for baking the “hoe-cake,” and putting the
hoe in its place before the fire, setting the sassafras
tea to draw, skimming the milk, and arranging the
plates — white, with blue edges — and the yellow cups
and saucers on the table, and all the while praying
that Morton might be found one of those chosen before
the foundation of the world to be sanctified and
saved to the glory of God.

The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible
breaking out of the fever, and the meditation of his
wife about the hopeful state of her son, and the painful
reflections of Morton about the disastrous break
with Captain Lumsden — all three set agoing primarily
by one cause—were all three simultaneously interrupted
by the appearance of the younger son, Henry, at
the door, with a turkey.

“Where did you get that?” asked his mother.

“Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it.”

“Captain Lumsden, eh?” said the father. “Well,
the captain's feeling clever, I 'low.”

“He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said

it was with Miss Patty's somethin' or other — couplements,
Bob called 'em.”

“Compliments, eh?” and the father looked at Morton,
smiling. “Well, you're gettin' on there mighty
fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to send a turkey?”
The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing
he did not evince any pleasure at so singular a
present from Patty. Morton was obliged to explain
the state of affairs between himself and the captain,
which he did in as few words as possible. Of course,
he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the
turkey was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional
pain.

“It's bad,” said the father, as he filled his pipe
again, after supper. “Quarreled with Lumsden! He'll
drive us off. We'll all take the fever”—for every evil
that Job Goodwin thought of immediately became inevitable,
in his imagination—“we'll all take the fever,
and have to make a new settlement in winter time.”
Saying this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth,
rested his elbow on his knee, and his head on his
hand, diligently exerting his imagination to make real
and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from
this new and improved stand-point of despair.

But the wise mother set herself to planning; and
when eight o'clock had come, and Job Goodwin had
forgotten the fever, having fallen into a doze in his
shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that
the best thing for him and Kike would be to get out
of the settlement until the captain should have time
to cool off.

“Kike ought to be got away before he does anything
desperate. We want some meat for winter; and
though it's a little early yet, you'd better start off with
Kike in the morning,” she said.

Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown
pain and forebodings in some excitement, Morton did
not need a second suggestion from his mother. He
feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he
had little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he
had an eager desire to forget his trouble in a chase
after bears and deer. He seized his cap, saddled and
mounted Dolly, and started at once to the house of
Kike's mother. Soon after Morton went, his father
woke up, and, finding his son gone out, complained,
as he got ready for bed, that the boy would “ketch the
fever, certain, runnin' 'round that away at night.”

Morton found Kike
in a state of exhaustion—pale,
angry, and
sick. Mr. Brady, the
Irish school - master,
from whom the boys
had received most of
their education and
many a sound whipping,
was doing his
best to divert Kike
from his revengeful
mood. It is a singular
fact in the history
of the West, that so

large a proportion of the first school-masters were Irishmen
of uncertain history.

“Ha! Moirton, is it you?” said Brady. “I'm
roight glad to see ye. Here's this b'y says hay'd a
shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a toiched him
with his roidin' - fwhip. An' I've been a - axin ov him
fwoi hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times,
sayin' oive lathered him with baich switches. I didn't
guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay wuz, sure. Else I'd a
had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd a venter'd
to inform him which end of the alphabet was
the bayginnin'. Hay moight a busted me impty pate
for tellin' him that A wusn't B.”

It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling
at the good old fellow's banter. Brady was bent on
mollifying Kike, who was one of his brightest and
most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and
Morton in scholarship though much younger.

Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was
much troubled to see him in so dangerous a passion.
“I wish he was leetle-er, ur bigger,” she said.

“An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair
madam?” asked the Irishman.

“Bekase,” said the widow, “ef he was leetle-er, I
could whip it outen him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't
be sich a fool. Boys is allers powerful troublesome
when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween—nary man nor
boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n
they used to be, that they think theirselves men, and
talk about shootin', and all sich like. Deliver me from
a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid acrost your lap,

and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's
been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y
he's got a oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like
his pappy afore him, and he's one of them you can't
turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I would be glad ef
he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like Kike
to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody
but God A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an'
it's a blessed comfort to me that I'll meet him at the
Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart so much good,
like, as to think what a bill Nuck 'll have to settle
then, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake
a mortgage in his face. It's the on'y rale nice thing
about the Day of Jedgment, akordin' to my thinkin'.
I mean to call his attention to some things then. He
won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families
thar, I 'low.”

Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs.
Hezekiah Lumsden's; and even Kike smiled a little,
partly at his mother's way of putting things, and partly
from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.

Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he
and Kike should leave early in the morning, on the
fall hunt. Kike felt the first dignity of manhood on
him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand with his
uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the
opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a
rare one, and killing a bear would be almost as pleasant
to his boyish ambition as shooting his uncle.

“I don't want to run away from him. He'll think
I've backed out,” he said, hesitatingly.

“Now, I'll tell ye fwat,” said Brady, winking; “you
put out and git some bear's ile for your noice black
hair. If the cap'n makes so bowld as to sell ye out
of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile ye're
gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git
back. The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit.
It'll burn a dale better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad.
An', as for the shootin' part, practice on the bears fust!
'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the captain, and
him ye're own dair uncle, ye know. He'll keep till ye
come back. If I say anybody a goin' to crack him
owver, I'll jist spake a good word for ye, an' till him
as the captin's own affictionate niphew has got the
fust pop at him, by roight of bayin' blood kin, sure.”

Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation
of the matter; and while he hesitated, his mother
said he should go. She'd bundle him off in the
early morning. And long before daylight, the two
boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started,
with guns on their shoulders, and with the venererable
Blaze for a pack-horse. Dolly was a giddy
young thing, that could not be trusted in business so
grave.