The Graysons Part 12

"Y' ain't heern nothin' 'v no bears a-cap'rin' 'round h-yer lately, eh?'

Bob asked, relaxing his gait a little.

"They say as they's a b'ar been seed furder upt the run, un I 'low you mout fine some thar ur tharabouts," replied the woman, intermitting her batting a moment and pus.h.i.+ng back her faded pink sun-bonnet. "But wha'

choo doin' away f'om home, I'd thes like to know, when they's so much a-goin' on in your diggin's? They say you've had a murder 'n' all that."

"I don't talk, S'manthy. I'm a-lookin' fer bears. They 's times when yo'd orter hole onto yer tongue with both uh yore han's."

Bob quickened his stride again and was soon out of sight among the scrubby trees of the rugged valley.

"I say, daddy!" called S'manthy, when Bob had had time to get out of hearing; "looky h-yer, daddy!"

Old Lazar Brown, in answer to this call, came and stood in the door, taking his cob-pipe from his mouth with his shaky hand and regarding his daughter.

"Big Bob McCord's thes gone along upt the run a-hunt-in' fer b'ars,"

said S'manthy. "Un they say as the feller that killed t' other feller las' night's the son uh the woman 't 'e works fer. Bob's the beatinest hunter! Ef Gaberl wuz to toot his horn, Bob'd ax him to hole on long anough fer him to git thes one more b'ar, I'll bet."

Lazar Brown had shaking-palsy in his arms, and, being good for nothing else, could devote his entire time to his congenial pursuits as gossip and wonder-monger of the neighborhood. Having listened attentively to S'manthy, he shook his head incredulously.

"Yeh don't think ez he's arter b'ars, do yeh, S'manthy? Bob's got some trick er 'nother 'n 'is head. W'y, thes you look, he mus' uh le't home afore daybreak. Now, Bob'd natterly go to the carner's eenques' to-day, whar they'll be a-haulin' that young feller up that shot t' other feller las' night. Big Bob's got some ornery trick 'n 'is head." Here Lazar Brown stopped to replace his pipe in his mouth. He was obliged to use both hands, but after two or three attempts he succeeded. "Looky h-yer, S'manthy, you thes keep one eye out fer Bob; I 'low he'll go down the run towurds ev'nin'. He'll be orful dry by that time, fer he's one of the _driest_ fellers. Thes you tell him 't I've got a full jug, un ax him in, un we'll kind-uh twis' it out uh'im. I 'low I'll go 'n find Jake."

Lazar returned to the house, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and refilled it. Then with some difficulty he succeeded in taking a live coal from the ashes; holding it in the leathery palm of his shaking left hand, he got it deposited at last on the corn-cob bowl of his pipe. As soon as this operation of firing-up was completed, he set out in a trotty little walk, glad to have news that would make the neighbors hearken to him.

Meantime Bob McCord, having pa.s.sed out of sight of S'manthy in his progress up the creek, had faced about and come back through the bushes to a point overlooking Lazar Brown's cabin, where, in a dense patch of pawpaws, he stood in concealment. This movement greatly perplexed the old dog Pup, who stood twitching his nose nervously, unable to discover what was the game that had attracted his master's eye. When at length Bob saw Lazar start off down the run, he smote his knee with his hand and gave vent to half-smothered laughter.

"Tuck like the measles!" he soliloquized. "Un it'll spread too. See 'f it don't! Come, Pup--bears! bears! ole boy!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Why it was that Bob said "bears," and did not say "b'ars,"

as some of his cla.s.s did, I do not know. Broad as his dialect was, it was perceptibly less aberrant than that of Lazar Brown's family, for example. It is impossible to trace the causes for local and family variations of speech; nor is a word always p.r.o.nounced in the same way in a dialect,--it varies in sound sometimes, when more or less stress is put upon it. The varieties are here set down as they existed, except that print can never give those shades of p.r.o.nunciation and inflection that const.i.tute so large a part of the peculiarities of speech, local, personal and temporary.]

The dogs took the hint and ceased their nosing about the roots of trees for squirrels, and in beds of leaves and bunches of gra.s.s for hares.

They began to make large circles through the trees about Bob, who moved forward as the center of a sort of planetary system, the short-legged dog keeping near the center, while Pup ranged as far away as he could without losing sight of his master,--the remote Ura.n.u.s of the hunt. Joe, having "tairrier" blood in him, ran with his nozzle down; but long-legged Pup, with a touch of greyhound in his build, carried his head high and depended on his eyes. The fact that Tom Grayson's life was at stake afforded no reason, in Bob's view, for giving over the pursuit of bears. Nor did he hunt in serious earnest merely because there was neither bread nor meat at home. A cat will catch mice for the mere fun of it, and with Bob the chase was ever the chief interest of life. But Bob did not forget his other errand; while the dogs were seeking for bears, he was eagerly scanning the bushes in every direction for Zeke Tucker. Half a mile above Lazar Brown's he encountered Zeke, carrying a blind-bridle on his arm, and still looking in vain for Britton's stray horse.

"h.e.l.lo, Zeke! the very feller I wuz a-lookin' fer. Don't ax me no questions about what I'm a-doin' over h-yer, an' I won't tell you no lies. Let's set down a minute on that air hackberry log."

The writer of a local guide-book to the city of Genoa recounts, among the evidences of piety exhibited by his fellow-citizens, the hospital built by them for those "_la quale non e conceduto di bearsi nel sorriso di un padre_." Zeke was one of those to whom, in the circ.u.mlocution of the Genoese writer, had not been granted the benediction of a father's smile. Such unfortunates were never wanting in a community like Broad Run, but no one had ever thought of building an asylum for them, though there were many ready to make them suffer the odium of sins not their own. From that unexpected streak of delicacy which is sometimes found in a rough man of large mold, Bob McCord had always refrained from allusion to the irregularity of Zeke's paternity, and had frequently awed into silence those who found pleasure in jibing him. This had awakened in Zeke a grateful adhesion to Bob, and in the young man's isolation among his neighbors and his attachment to himself Bob saw a chance to secure an ally.

"Zeke," said McCord, when once they were seated on the hackberry log, "you 'n' me's all-ays been frien's, hain't we?"

"Toobsh.o.r.e, Bob! they hain't no man a-livin' I'd do a turn fer quicker."

"Well, now, you tell me this: Is Jake Hogan a-goin' to town weth the boys to-night?"

"I hadn't no ways orter tell, but I 'low 't 'e is."

"You a-goin' along?"

"I dunno. 'F you don't want me to, I don't reckon ez I shall."

"Yes, but I'd ruther you 'd go. I don't want that air fool boy hung 'thout a fair stan'-up trial, 'n' I may as well tell you 't I don't mean he shall be nuther, not 'f I have to lick Jake Hogan tell his ornery good-fer-nothin' hide won't hold shucks. But don't choo tell him a word 't I say."

"Trust _me_." Zeke was pleased to find himself in important confidential relations with a man so much "looked up to" as Bob McCord. "Jake 's been the _hardest_ on me 'v all the folks, un they 's been times when I 'lowed to pull up un cl'ar out for the Injun country, to git shed uv 'im. I wish to thunder you _would_ lick him 'thin 'n inch 'viz life.

He's a darn-sight wuss 'n git out."

"Looky h-yer, Zeke; I'll tell you how you kin git even with Jake. You jest go 'long weth the boys to-night, wherever they go. I'm goin' to fix it so's they won't do nuthin' to-night. You're livin' 't ole man Britton's now, ainch yeh?"

"Yes."

"Well, you git off fer half a day f'om Britton's, un go to the eenques'

this arternoon, un fine out all you kin. Arter supper, you go over to the groc'ry; un jest as soon's you fine out whech way the wind sets, you've got to let me know. 'T won't do fer me to be seed a-talkin' to you, ur fer me to loaf aroun' Britton's. But ef Jake makes up his mine to go to Moscow, you light a candle to-night un put it in the lof'

where you sleep, so 't 'll s.h.i.+ne out uv a crack on the south side uv the chimbley, in the furder eend uv the house."

"But his mine 's already made up," said Zeke.

"They's time to change afore night. Ef he's goin' to Perrysburg----"

"Perrysburg? They ain't no talk uv Perrysburg," said Zeke.

"They may be," answered Bob. "Un ef Perrysburg's the place, you put the candle at the leetle winder on the north side uv the chimbley. Un when I shoot you put out the candle, un then I'll know it's you, un you'll know 't I understan'. You see, 't won't do fer me to stop any nearder 'n the hill, un I'll wait there till I see your candle. Then you go weth Jake."

Here Bob got up and strained his longsighted eyes at some object in the bushes on the other side of the brook. "Is yon hoss yourn, on t' other side of the branch?"

"I don't see no hoss," said Zeke.

"Well, you watch out a minute un you'll ketch sight uv 'im. He's gone in there to git shed of the flies."

"That's our clay-bank, I believe," said Zeke, getting up and carefully scanning the now half-visible horse.

"Mine! you hain't seen nor heern tell of me, un you b'long to Jake's crowd weth all your might."

With these words Bob set out again for his bear-hunt, while the barefoot Zeke waded through the stream, which was knee-deep, and set himself to beguile Britton's clay-bank horse into standing still and forfeiting his liberty.

XIII

A BEAR HUNT

Bob McCord had that quick, sympathetic appreciation of brute impulses which is the mark of a great hunter. Given a bear or a deer in a certain place, at a certain hour of the day, and Bob would conjecture, without much chance of missing, in which direction he would go and what he would be about. In a two-hours' beating-up the ravine he found no traces of bears. He then faced almost about and bent his course to where the illimitable western prairie set into the woods in a kind of bay. Why he thought that on a hot day like this a bear might be taking a sunning in the open gra.s.s I cannot tell; he probably suspected Bruin of an excursion to the corn-fields for "roas'in' ears." At any rate his conjecture was correct. Pup, beating forward in great leaps, with his head above the gra.s.s, caught sight of a female bear making her way to a point of timber farther down the run known as Horseshoe Neck. When the bear saw the dogs she quickened her leisurely pace into a lumbering gallop. Pup's long legs were stretched to their utmost in eager leaps which presently brought him in front of her; Joe, when he came up, annoyed her at the side; and stout little Seizer, watching the chance whenever she was making an angry lunge at Pup, would bravely nip her heels and so make her turn about. Before she could get her head fairly around the fiste would turn tail and run for his life. Bob tried to get within range before the bear should disappear in the forest, but as soon as she saw herself near the timber she charged straight for it, refusing to strike at Pup, and wholly disregarding the barking of bob-tail Joe, or the proximity to her heels of Seizer. She quickly disappeared from sight in the underbrush, and the embarra.s.sed dogs came near losing her.

A few moments too late to get a shot, McCord came running to the woods at the point of her entrance. He examined the brush and listened a moment.

"She's gone up stream," he said, "bound to make her hole at c.o.o.n's Den, 'f I don't git there fust."

He returned to the prairie and ran breathlessly along the edge of the woods for the better part of a mile; then he dashed into the timber, and pus.h.i.+ng through the brush until he reached a cliff, he clambered down and stood with his back to the head of a ravine tributary to the valley in which Broad Run flowed. He was breathless, and his flimsy lower garments had been almost torn off him by the violence of his exertion and the resistance of underbrush and rocks; in fact, raiment never seemed just in place on him; the vigorous form burst through it now on this side, and now on that. Hearing the dogs still below him, he knew that he had come in time to intercept the progress of the bear toward the heap of rocky debris at the head of the ravine. Once in these fastnesses, no skill of hunter or perseverance of dogs would have been sufficient to get her out.

The bear was soon in sight, and Bob saw that the nearly exhausted dogs were taking greater risks than ever. Little Seizer was particularly venturesome, and was so much overcome with heat and fatigue, and so breathless with barking, that it was hard for him to get out of the way of the bear's retorts. "She'll smash that leetle ijiot the very nex'

time, sh.o.r.e," muttered Bob with alarm; and though he knew the range to be a long one, he took aim and fired. Unluckily the infuriated Seizer gave the bear's heel a particularly savage bite, and at the very instant of Bob's pulling the trigger she turned on the little dog, and thus caused the ball to lodge in her right shoulder just as she was striking out with her left paw. She barely reached the dog, and failed to crush him with the full weight of her arm, but she lacerated his side and sent him howling out of the fray. Now, wounded and enraged, she recognized in the hunter her chief enemy; and, neglecting the dogs, she rushed up the ravine toward McCord. Bob poured a large charge of powder into his gun, and, taking a bullet from his pouch, he felt in his pocket for the patching. A moment he looked blankly at the oncoming bear and muttered "Gos.h.!.+" between his set teeth. There was not a patch in his pocket. He had put some pieces of patching there in the darkness of the morning before leaving home, without remembering that his pocket was bottomless.

He stood between a wounded bear and her cubs, and there was no time for deliberation. He might evade the attack if he could succeed in getting up the cliff where he had come down, but in that case she would reach her hole and he would lose the battle. He promptly tore a piece from the ragged leg of his trousers, and, wrapping his ball in it, rammed it home. Then he took a cap from a hole in the stock of his gun and got it fixed just in time to shoot when the bear was within a dozen feet of him. Uncultivated man that he was, he had the same refined pleasure in the death-throes of his victim that gentlemen and ladies of the highest breeding find in seeing a frightened and exhausted fox torn to pieces by hounds with b.l.o.o.d.y lips.