The Tobacco Tiller Part 23

"I guess they're in the bottom of some deep hole by this time," Dunaway remarked in a tone of light regret. "And what am I to wear?"

"Wear?" cried Mr. Doggett: "don't them thengs I got fer you come in handy now? Jest put on a suit them new underin's and a pair them overhalls, and one them hick'ry s.h.i.+rts, and you'll be ready to work in the patch this evenin'!"

It was twelve when Mr. Doggett reached home. "Jest step down in the spreng thar on the creek bank," he said to Dunaway who complained of thirst, "but don't knock over the old lady's milk jairs."

After dinner, Mr. Doggett conducted his new man to the field.

"I won't be hard on you this evenin', Dunaway, your fust day o'

wormin'," he avowed, as each man started his row: "I'll take a row and sorter holp you in your'n too, onct in a while."

Dunaway was quick and agile, and although the sweat poured into his eyes, and his back ached with the unaccustomed stooping to lift the leaves, he managed to do a fair amount of worm-killing.

Dock or Gran'dad was usually sent to the spring for fresh water for the toilers, but when about three o'clock, Dunaway offered to go, Mr.

Doggett made no objection.

"The pore feller hain't seasoned yit," he conciliated Dock and Gran'dad, for thus favoring the stranger, "and hit hain't no more'n jest to give him a leetle breathin' spell."

That evening, seven men (Bunch Trisler and his brother boarded at their own home) very weary of eye, of back and of arm, soiled with dust, perspiration, and tobacco gum--filed in, and immediately after supper, five of them, including the worn and dejected Dunaway, climbed the steps to their bedroom. Gran'dad rested a while in the sitting-room, discussing Dunaway with his son and Mrs. Doggett, while Dock stretched himself flat on the floor.

To Mr. Doggett's enthusiastic congratulation of himself on the wisdom of his purchase, Gran'dad remarked:

"I dunno as I'd keer to own him: seems to me he'd be a slippery possession."

"Yes," broke in Mrs. Doggett, "about the time you git him clothed up fer winter, he'll light out and that'll be the last you'll hear o' _him_!"

"Why, Ann," Mr. Doggett obtruded, "I could excribe him over the tillephorm, and could git him anywhar. He wouldn't have no chanst a runnin'!"

"He seems to be a mighty light eater," Gran'dad mused. "Wouldn't drink no b.u.t.termilk tonight: said hit wuz too fillin'."

"I bet he's a holdin' in," said Dock.

"He tuck holt o' work well," said Mr. Doggett. "Got a good sleight at suckerin', although I had to holp him some in his row a wormin'--him not bein' broke into the work--so we'd come out ever' row together. He's sorter green about hit. Told me he wisht I'd git him a pair o' gloves to keep the gum offen his hands. I told him I jest couldn't possible do hit,--he'd tear the leaves up in gloves."

"He's green about a heap o' work," put in Dock: "he told me he'd been all over the Nuniter States, and he'd never yit stuck job that wuz heftier, ner killiner, ner back-breakin'er, ner disagreeabler than wormin' and suckerin' terbaccer! I ast him wouldn't he holp me milk,--_hit_ wuzn't no mean job, and he said he didn't know how to milk!

I told him I thought ever'body knowed how to milk, and he said he reckon they ort ter ef they don't, and he'd git me to learn him when he wuzn't so wore out."

"Somethin's been in the milk jairs at the spreng," remarked Mrs.

Doggett, regretfully. "When I went to strain the milk a while ago, I found two jairs o' fraish milk with ever' bit the cream skimmed off: wuzn't _no_ cream on 'em--fraish mornin's milk--and the milk on one jair wuz half down, like hit had been poured out into somethin'."

A suspicion as to the receptacle into which the milk and cream had been emptied, entered Mr. Doggett's mind, but he was discreet.

"Maybe some Mr. Archie Evans' fox hounds done hit, Ann," he suggested, maligning the innocent, "I heerd 'em out this evenin' about four o'clock."

"But the leds wuz all on," objected Mrs. Doggett.

"Well, maybe some the hands seed 'em off, and laid 'em back," persuaded Mr. Doggett,--"Bunch er Knox when they went home."

"Somethin's goin' with my aigs too," Mrs. Doggett further complained; "not nary aig did I git at the barn this evenin', and been a gittin'

nineteen ever' day!"

The next day, to Mr. Doggett's secret chagrin, the energy and initiative of his new work-hand suffered a relapse: he complained that the sun affected his malaria infested system, and insisted on short rests every hour: he left suckers standing: he skipped worms: he came out many minutes behind the other men with his row.

The other hands enjoyed Mr. Doggett's discomfiture. Dunaway, working without wages, they regarded as a grand joke,--something that distinctly enlivened their hard toil, and they listened to his airy tales, and his light flippant fun making with keen relish.

"Darn that man Castle!" he inveighed in the middle of the afternoon, clinching one grimy, gum-covered fist. "Darn all tobacco that grows anyhow! I'd be happier in h.e.l.l than I am here: I'll bet it's eighty per cent. cooler down there any time than it is in a tobacco patch in August!"

"Hain't none of us disputin' your statements, Dunaway," chuckled Gran'dad: "and ef you are a cravin' to git whar you claim thar's more bliss in store fer you, than you're enjoyin' here, jest wet a few them biggest leaves and lay 'em crost your chist and take a leetle nap, and you'll wake up down thar!"

Dunaway, however, declined to take this short cut to happiness.

With Dunaway's slackness in field work, came a degree of facility at table that surprised Mr. Doggett. While batting, and blinking his black eyes, directing airily polite and delicately conciliatory speeches toward Mrs. Doggett, and telling gay tales to interest the men,--not seeming to gorge--he threw food into his mouth with the rapidity and dexterity of the ant-eater at his repast.

"I declare, Eph," remarked Mrs. Doggett, one evening after a few days of the new hired man, "that crittur has sh.o.r.ely got the right name! He's done away with more victuals in them four days sence he's been here than'd lasted Lily Pearl a year! Ever' meal thar hain't been nary bite o' bread left, and I've had to go and make up more bread before me and Lily Pearl could eat!"

"Thenk he eats as much as Keerby?" asked Mr. Doggett.

"Keerby?" Mrs. Doggett's voice rose to a scornful screech. "When Keerby put his feet onder our table, we wuz _hurt_, but when Dunaway puts them long legs o' his'n onder our oil-cloth, we're might' night' ruined, I tell you, Eph Doggett!"

In the days that followed, to Mrs. Doggett's distress (for it made serious inroads on her b.u.t.ter making), her cream was skimmed almost daily, and on Wednesday morning of the second week of Dunaway's bondage, when she went into her smoke-house to take down a large ham for cooking, she found that the lean portion was completely hollowed out, not by rats, but by a skilful pocket-knife. In addition, a dozen or more of the large "hill onions," on which she had taken a premium at the County fair, and which she took pride in showing visitors, were gone from their shelf in the meat-house, and a full jar of honey, she had obtained from the Evans beeyard, to use when her most honored guest (Mr. Brock) should sit at her table, was eaten half-down!

Full of wrathful suspicion, she locked her smoke-house in the daytime, kept an eye on the milk at the spring, and sent Lily Pearl running to the nests at every hen's cackle.

Dunaway, during his ten days' stay in the Doggett household, had become an intimate of Dock: the "hands," including Gran'dad and Joey, liked him, like Desdemona the Moor, because of the tales he told, and his glib pleasantries: even Mr. Doggett, despite the trouble to which he was put to get his bondman to work any, fell under his charm.

Not so Mrs. Doggett. After the between-meal pilfering of her provisions, although she did not openly accuse Dunaway, her dislike and distrust of him were glaringly apparent, and although he was unfailingly polite and respectful to her, and adroitly concealed his enmity, he heartily returned her dislike.

Little Dock Doggett would have pressed through fire or an iron wall, had there been an apple or a plum on the other side the flames or the metal: he knew the whereabouts of every wild haw, (red or black), pawpaw, or persimmon tree, or wild grape vine, in the neighborhood, and n.o.body's fruit orchard or melon patch was immune from his visits.

When the Castles moved to town, leaving Mr. Brock to occupy a portion of their country residence, and in full and absolute control of their strawberry beds, grape-arbors, and fruit-orchards, invasion of these fruiteries was no longer easy.

Dock had never liked Mr. Brock, and when his inner part began to cry for fruit whose acquisition Mr. Brock's presence prevented, his hatred of that gentleman became violent.

Mr. Brock prided himself on an annual patch of fine melons, and at the time of the coming of Dunaway, his melons were approaching maturity.

There was no other melon patch in the neighborhood, and for days, Dock's dreams at night had been of nothing else.

"I know whar thar's ripe mush and water millerns," he confided to Dunaway, the next morning after Mrs. Doggett's securing of her provisions against thieves. "A body has to go at night to git 'em though, 'cause they're right next to a terbaccer patch whar the man is workin' ever'day." Dock was an arrant coward at night.

"If it's a partner you want," Dunaway grinned, "I'm your man!"

Dock agreed that this was the desire of his heart, and a compact was made for the evening.

It rained the entire day through, but there was no cessation of work in the tobacco-field of Ephriam Doggett: it was near the end of the week, and Sunday--Sunday when suckers grow and worms eat as on a week day!

As weary and besoaked as the Continental Army, on the Christmas night of '76, the men trailed in at nightfall. They had been wet to the skin since early morning, and as soon as hunger was satisfied, each, with two exceptions, stumbled off to bed, to fall into the immediate sleep of exhaustion. These exceptions were Dock and Dunaway, who, when the others were safely asleep, stole out and took their well-lighted way (the moon was full) to the hillside where, separated from the tobacco field by a wire fence, lay Mr. Brock's water-melon patch. The dread wet day tobacco patch weariness is a powerful thing, but the desire of the stomach for the fruit of the vine is more mighty.

Near a great stump in the middle of the patch grew a vine with which Mr.

Brock had taken the greatest pains in work and fertilization. The one mighty melon he allowed to grow on this vine, he intended for a present, and when it was about half developed, he had traced on its rind, with the point of a pin, the inscription: "To Miss Lucy James, from her friend, Galvin Brock."