Shawn Of Skarrow Part 3

"We'll peddle him out this evening." It was a joyous pair that climbed the hill leading to the little town, the big fish swinging on a pole between them. There were plenty of buyers, and as they returned to the boat, Burney said to Shawn, "You'll be a great fisherman some day, Shawn," and Shawn said, "I'm goin' to be a doctor."

"What kind of a doctor, Shawn? steam or hoss doctor?"

"Neither one. I'm goin' to be a reg'ler doctor, like Doctor Hissong."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You'll be a great fisherman, some day, Shawn"]

"Shawn, this doctorin' business is a good deal like hoss tradin'; you've got to take your chance on a short hoss and blemishes, and some of the doctors look like they interfere powerfully with themselves--you know how a hoss _interferes_. I calkerlate that a good doctor is mighty rare, and after all, it's a good deal more in his encouraging talk than his medicine. You never knowed old Doc' Felix Simpson--he was away before your time and practiced in the country four miles above Skarrow.

Doc' Simpson would have his joke, and to hear him laugh would cure 'most any case of ailment. Lawse! how I used to love to hear him tell about old P'silly Orton and the time she played dead. Doc' Simpson said that aunt P'silly took a notion that she wanted her old man to raise her some money to take a trip down to the city, and as the money wa'nt raisable, P'silly took on and 'lowed that she was goin' to die, and she kept on havin' sinkin' spells and such, and bye and bye she lays on the bed and wauls up her eyes and breathes her last, to all appearances. Uncle Buck gits skeered and digs out for Doc' Simpson, and when Doc' Simpson gits thar, thar was the old neighbor wimmen tryin' to comfort uncle Buck and sayin', 'Ba'r your burden, Buck; the Lord has give and the Lord has tuck away.' Doc' Simpson goes up to P'silly, who was layin' with folded hands, and feels her pulse, and says, 'Yes, she is dead, pore soul'; and they all bust out cryin' and the hounds begin to howl, and Doc' comes up to the bed and says, 'Bein' she is dead, I'll pour a little of this nitric acid in her yeer to make sh.o.r.e.' And as he took the stopper out of the bottle, P'silly opens one eye an' says, 'Doc' Simpson, if you pour that in my yeer, you'll never straddle that hoss of yourn again.'

"There's another sort of doctor, Shawn, the magic-healers, the sort as cures by the layin' on of hands and rubbin'. Pelican Smith was one of this sort. He practiced up on the Kentucky river and made a sort of circuit down in our country. Sometimes thar would come a report of somebody gittin' well, but when anybody died, Pelican always said, 'The Lord loved him best.' You never knowed Pelican. He was all sorts of a character--got his nickname from his nose--they weren't no other one like it, and him and that nose made history in the river country. His first marriage was to Addie Stringer, up at Ball's Landing, and it was all right as fer as it went. They started on their honeymoon from Ball's Landing on the steamer Little Tiger. They was goin' down to Wide Awake, some thirty miles. The boat caught fire, Pelican swum out on a crackerbox, and when they found the body of his wife next day, Pelican thumped the side of his nose with his thumb and said, 'Hit's a dam pity she couldn't swim'.

"It wasn't long before he got into business by starting a 'blind tiger', and he worked up several war dances in the community, but one night thar was started a mild argument as to whether the Methodists or the Baptists was the chosen of the Lord. The argument was in Pelican's place, and he had to close up the joint, for nearly all of his best customers pa.s.sed out with the close of the argument. Pelican told me afterward that over three hundred shots was fired, and said to me, 'I reckon the only reason I was saved was that I didn't belong to either denomination, as I am a Campbellite.'

"Pelican moved down on the Ohio after this, and it was there I met him.

There is always considerable interest, Shawn, in a stranger when he moves into a community, especially if there is some mystery about him.

Pelican didn't have much to say--he had no desire to mention his past.

He was wise. It was rumored that he had left a good farm at Ball's Landing and had moved down on the Ohio for asthma trouble that bothered him. About the only disease he ever had was the whiskey habit, but he did not dispute any of the statements made by an interested community.

His stock went up with the talk about the farm. He was invited to take supper with Bill Bristow. Bill owned twenty acres of hill land, with a small house and a mortgage on it. Old Bill's daughter, Lettie, set next to Pelican at the table, and old Bill looked on with satisfaction at the headway they was making. Old Bristow was thinking of the farm up at Ball's Landing; Pelican was thinking of the one he was on. After a time, Pelican and Lettie was married. Bristow give a dance and ice cream supper and charged fifty cents admission. There was dancing, singing and a cuttin' sc.r.a.pe and the couple felt that the occasion had been one of success. Pelican certainly married into old Bristow's family for he never made any move toward looking for another home, and it wasn't long before Bristow begin to screw up his face.

"Time pa.s.sed and then come the twins, a boy and a girl, and Pelican was proud of the boy, for he had the Pelican nose, but old Bristow rose up in his wrath and said that they would have to go, and so Pelican and his wife come down into my neighborhood to live in a shanty-boat on the river, but they didn't git along, and fit and cussed from mornin' till night. Bristow come down to patch up matters. Pelican knocked him off the boat with an oar, and as he floundered out to the sh.o.r.e and wrung the water out of his whiskers he said, 'Fix yer own troubles--far'well.'

Two weeks after the fight Mrs. Pelican Smith went back to live with her father and Pelican went into the fis.h.i.+n' and 'blind tiger' business. I had two new nets and a set of trot lines, and we bunched into a sort of partners.h.i.+p. I couldn't git him to say anything about his family or whether he wanted to see them again. But one night we set together on the sh.o.r.e. We had run out of bait and was tryin' to make plans to git some, as the lines was dry upon the sh.o.r.e and the fish would be runnin'

with the gentle rise comin' in the river. We set on an old sycamore log together. The moon had just swung over the hill and I could see the white rim of it above the edge of Pelican's nose.

"'Pelican,' I said, 'why don't you go back to your wife and children and try to live happy with them?' He made no answer and I pressed on him, 'Pelican, them two little twins air dependent on you, and if you had a little home to yourself, where the vines could run over your doorway and the birds sing in your own trees, with your wife and children beside you, your life would be happy--think of them, Pelican, your wife and children.'"

"Pelican rose up, his face turned to the river. Ah, I had him at last thinking of his dear ones.

"'What are you thinkin' of, Pelican?'

"'I was thinkin' wher'n the h.e.l.l we'd git that bait' said he."

CHAPTER V

"Did you ever eat a mussel, Shawn?"

"No, sir, I didn't think they were good to eat."

"Well, lots of things are made good to eat by the way you cook 'em. I want you to bale out the boat and we'll go up to the head of the bar and drop the grab-hooks along in shoal water and after we get a good dozen, small broilin' size, I'm goin' to show you how to cook 'em. A mussel, my boy, is a sort of lefthanded cousin to an oyster, only he lacks the salt water and a good many of the finer points; a right smart like a good many men, and I want to tell you another thing--one of the finest pearls that sold in a jewelry store in Cincinnati for fifteen hundred dollars, was taken from a mussel that come out of the Ohio river."

"Luke Walters found it at Craig's bar," said Shawn.

"The same," said Burney.

"We might boil a bushel or two down and run a chance of finding somethin'; there's no tellin'. Git one of them lemons out of the box and the wire broiler and a stew-pan."

Shawn came around with the boat, Burney came out with the drag-hooks.

Shawn sat at the oars and they started up the stream. The white pebbles on the sh.o.r.e gleamed in the rosy sunlight. A kingfisher perched on a rock by the stream, tilted his head to the side in a quizzical way and watched the boat approach. The leaves from the tall sycamores and cottonwoods came tumbling down to the edge of the water as if seeking to embark upon a journey southward. A little creek came pouring its crystal waters into the great river. Just above the mouth of the creek, some boy had built a miniature mill-race, and the water coursing over the little wheel murmured tenderly and soothingly upon the ear.

"Shawn, there's many a boy in the city would like to have a plaything like that. Did you notice how nice and keerful-like he has made that dam and the shoot? I'll tell you, a country boy knows how to look out for his fun. You'll see the day when the old water-mill will be a thing of the past; steam will run 'em out, as it has run out the flat-boat. In the old days I used to make the flat-boat trip to New Orleans and walk all the way back and help _cordelle_ the boat, they brought back their flat-boats in them days--think of doing that now. But I hate to see the water-mills go. There's one out on Eagle that has been run by five generations, and they can't make flour by steam as good as Amos Kirby's flour. Amos' father had the process down, it seems, better than any of them. The old man was knowed all over that country, not only for his good flour, but for his good deeds and his kindness to the poor, and that's a mighty good name to leave behind. He always had a houseful of company, and always got drunk fust, so that the rest of his company would feel at home. I et dinner thar once, and they wound up with some cake they called egg-kisses. You didn't have to chaw 'em--you just throwed 'em up in the roof of your mouth and let 'em melt--pull over thar to the head of the bar."

Shawn took off his shoes, and bare-footed, with trousers rolled to his knees, began the hunt for mussels around the bar, as Burney threw out the drag-hooks in deeper water. Burney was drifting slowly down the stream and Shawn could see him bringing up the hooks and putting the mussels inside the boat. Shawn found them plentiful around the edge of the bar, and when Burney came back they had the boat well filled.

"Now, Shawn, we're goin' over to the sh.o.r.e and I am goin' to give you a feast." Burney made a wood fire, and after taking the mussels from the sh.e.l.l, put them in the stew-pan and let them boil for a short time, then putting them on the broiler, he held them over the live wood coals.

"Squeeze a little of that lemon juice over them, Shawn, and season 'em up--now try one." Shawn took one of them and nibbled it gingerly around the edges.

"What do you think of 'em?"

"Did you ever drink out of a cow-track, Mr. Burney?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, you never missed much," said Shawn.

They rowed down to the shanty-boat and Burney built a big fire on the sh.o.r.e. He got out his big kettle and said, "We're goin' to boil these out and look for a pearl."

Under the roaring fire the kettle began to sing. Shawn watched Burney as he filled the big pot with mussels. "You've got to boil them until the meat comes away from the sh.e.l.l and is boiled all to smithereens, before you've a chance to git a pearl."

It was late afternoon before the kettle was taken off. Burney began to drain off the water and take out the sh.e.l.ls. All of the substance in the bottom of the kettle was subjected to a careful inspection as he drew it forth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Burney began to take out the sh.e.l.ls.]

Suddenly Burney held his hand up toward the sun and exclaimed, "Come here, quick, Shawn, I've found one--I don't know how good, but it's a pearl!" He rubbed it between his hands and wiped it off carefully on his sleeve. "That tiny pink spot on the side of it is a blemish that will never come out, but I think it is a pearl of some value. I'm goin' to give it to you; maybe you can sell it or give it to some girl some day--leastwise, Shawn, we'll put in the spare time boilin' down a few more of 'em."

Shawn took the pearl, his cheeks were aglow under the stress of the find. "Oh, Mr. Burney, I'll keep it always for a luck stone."

CHAPTER VI

Shawn was clearing away the supper dishes. Burney tilted his hickory chair against the wall and puffed at his short pipe. Coaly was asleep in the corner. "Shawn, when you git through I want you to read me some more out of your Testament--I'm gittin' to like it."

Shawn carefully wiped his hands before taking up the little book.

Seating himself by the table, and drawing the lamp nearer, he opened the book at random. The chapter was Revelation, XIII.

Shawn began reading in a halting and uncertain voice: "And I stood upon the sands of the sea and saw a beast rise out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns."

"Hold on there, Shawn," said Burney, "Is that in the Bible?"

"Yes, sir, you can see for yourself."

"I can't read to no account," said Burney, "but air you certain that's in the Bible?"