The Entailed Hat Part 55

Levin went on putting the bridles and breeching on the horses, when the man said again, with an insinuating grin:

"By smoke!"

"Heigh?" exclaimed Levin.

"By smoke!" the man remarked again, with a very ardent emphasis.

"You must have been in Prencess Anne," Levin said, "to swar 'by smoke.'"

The ill-raised man, with such an inferior head and cranish neck, now slipped around to the front of Levin and looked down on him, and whispered:

"Hokey-pokey!"

The idea crossed Levin's mind that the scullion of Patty Cannon must have gone crazy.

"Whair did you pick up them words, Cy?" Levin asked.

"Hokey-pokey!" answered Cy James, with a more mysterious and impressive sufflation; "Hokey-pokey! By smoke! and Pangymonum, too!"

"Why, Cy! what do you mean? Jimmy Phoebus never swars but in them air words. Do you know Jimmy Phoebus?"

"Pangymonum, too!" hissed Cy James, with every animation. "Hokey-pokey, three! an' By smoke, one!"

He put his long arms on his knees, and bent down like a great goose, and stared into Levin's eyes.

"I never had sense enough," Levin said, "to guess a riddle, Cy Jeems.

Them words I have hearn a good man--my mother's friend--use so often that they scare me. My mind's been a-thinkin' on him night an' day. Oh, is he dead?"

"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!" the long, lean, excited fellow whispered, with the greatest solemnity.

"They're Jimmy Phoebus's daily words, dear Cyrus. He was killed on the river night before last; I saw him fall; it is my sin and misery."

"He ain't dead," Cy James whispered, very low and carefully. "I won't tell you whar he is till you make Huldy _like_ me."

"How kin I do that, Cy?"

"She thinks I'm a coward and gits whipped by Owen Daw. Tell her I ain't no coward. Tell her I'm goin' to fry all these people on my griddle--all but Huldy. Tell her I'm only playin' coward till I gets 'em all in batter an' the griddle greased, an' then I'll be the bully of the Cross-roads!"

"Do you hate _me_, Cy Jeems? I ain't done nothin' to you. I'm a prisoner here till I kin git my boat back from Joe an' go to Prencess Anne."

"I won't hate you if you kin make Huldy love me," Cy James replied.

"Tell her I ain't no coward; that I'm goin' to be free, an' rich too."

He dropped his palms to his knees again, and whispered, "fur I know whar ole Patty buries her gole an' silver!"

"Come with those horses, you idle lads," the lisping voice of the Captain was heard to call. "_Ya, ya!_ there, _luego!_ the morning pa.s.ses on."

"All ready," Cy James replied, and as they left the stable door he whispered once again, and looked significantly towards Johnson's Cross-roads:

"By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an' Pangymonum, too!"

The Captain, looking like a gentleman of the knightly ages misplaced in this forest lair, held the reins standing on the ground, and handed Hulda in to the seat beside his own with a grace and a blush and a lisping laugh that, Levin thought, were very fascinating.

"Now, Master Cannon, take your place in the tail of the vehicle," the Captain said, bowing to Levin, and darting one of those cold, coa.r.s.e looks at him that he vouchsafed but for a moment, like a soft cat that has all the nature of the rabbit except the tiger's glare.

The vehicle was an old wagon without springs, and Levin's seat was a piece of board, while Hulda's had a back to it, and the Captain had padded it with a bear's-skin robe. He looked with the most delicate attention at Hulda, blushed when she looked at him, and, scarcely noticing the horses, yet having them under nearly automatic control, he drove out of Patty Cannon's lane and turned into the woods.

Levin cast one long, prying look at Johnson's tavern, wis.h.i.+ng he might have the gift to see through its weather-stained planking and tall blank roof, and then he watched the road, of hard sand or piney litter, with here and there a mud-hole or long, puddly rut in it, unravel like a ribbon behind the wheels among the thick pines.

He also observed the skill with which the Captain threw his long cowhide whip, a mere strip of rawhide fastened to a stick, awkward in other hands; but Van Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, s.h.a.ggy Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck or disturb the horse, and he could deliver a blow with it by mere sleight that made the animal stagger and tremble with the abrupt pain.

At a little sandy rill, the only one they crossed, a long water-snake endeavored to escape before the rapid wagon could strike it, but the Captain rose to his feet quick and cat-like, and projected the long lash into the roadside, and the snake writhed and bounded in the air almost cut in two. Then, sitting again and bending so close to Hulda that his long, downy mustache of gold touched her cheek, Van Dorn said, softly:

"_Que hermoso!_ Young wild-flower, let me take a snake out of your path also?"

"Which one, Captain?"

"It does not matter. Name any one."

"Alas!" said Hulda, "I am of them; how can I wish harm to my stepfather and my grand-dame? They are not what I wish, but I am commanded to honor them."

"By whom, fair Hulda?"

"By G.o.d. I read it in the Book after I heard it from a slave."

"_Donde esta!_ What slave that we know was so G.o.d-read?"

"Poor drunken Dave. He was a good man before he knew us. He told me all the Commandments for a drink of brandy, and I wrote them down and afterwards I found them in a book."

"_Chis! chito!_ how graceful is your mind, Hulda! It comes out of the absolute blank of your condition and discovers things, as the young osprey, untaught before, knows where to dive for fish. Who that ever comes to Johnson's Cross-roads brings the Bible?"

"Colonel McLane."

"He? the self-righteous crocodile! he gave you the Book?"

"Yes. He told me Joe and grandma were good people--'conservative good people,' I think he called it; but he said you believed nothing, and there was no basis, I think he called it, for 'conservative good' in you."

"_O hala hala!_ But this is good," the Captain softly remarked, stroking his golden mustache with the hand that carried the l.u.s.trous ring. "Patty Cannon may be saved; I must be d.a.m.ned; and Allan McLane will sit in judgment. No, I believe nothing, because such as they believe!"

"That is why n.o.body likes you," Hulda frankly observed, "agreeable as you are."

"And can you believe in anything after the surroundings of your childhood, touching crime like the pond-lily that grows among the water-snakes?"

"The lily cannot help it, and is just as white as if it grew under gla.s.s, because--"

"Because the lily has none of the blood of the snake?" the captain lisped. "Do you enter that claim?"

"No," said Hulda; "I know I am born from wicked parents, a daughter of crime, my father hanged, my mother of dreadful origin, but never have I felt that G.o.d held me accountable for their works if I kept my heart humble and my hands from sin; and never have I been tempted yet from within my own nature to enjoy a single moment of such hideous selfishness. And I thank my kind Maker that something to love and believe in, though unhappy as myself, has come down the sad pathway I looked along so many years, and found me waiting for him."