Part VII.DRIFTING CRANE:THE INDIAN AND THE PIONEER.
DRIFTING CRANE:THE INDIAN AND THE PIONEER.
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Before them, surely, sullenly and slow,The desperate and cheated Indians go.
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DRIFTING CRANE.
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Thepeople of Boomtown invariably spoke of Henry Wilson as the oldest settler in the Jim Valley, as he was of Buster County; but the Eastern man, with his ideas of an "old settler," was surprised as he met the short, silent, middle-aged man, who was very loath to tell anything about himself, and about whom many strange and thrilling stories were told by good story-tellers. In 1879 he was the only settler in the upper part of the valley, living alone on the banks of the Elm, a slow, tortuous stream pulsing lazily down the valley, too small to be called a river and too long to be called a creek. For two years, it is said, Wilson had only the company of his cattle, especially during the winter-time, and now and then a visit from an Indian, or a trapper after mink and musk-rats.
Between his ranch and the settlements in Eastern Dakota there was the wedge-shaped reservation known as the Sisseton Indian Reserve, on which were stationed the customary agency and company of soldiers. But, of course, at that time theIndians were not restricted closely to the bounds of the reserve, but ranged freely over the vast and beautiful prairie lying between the coteaux or ranges of low hills which mark out "the Jim Valley." The valley was unsurveyed for the most part, and the Indians naturally felt a sort of proprietorship in it, and when Wilson drove his cattle down into the valley and squatted, the chief, Drifting Crane, welcomed him, as a host might, to an abundant feast whose hospitality was presumed upon, but who felt the need of sustaining his reputation as a host, and submitted graciously.
The Indians during the first summer got to know Wilson, and liked him for his silence, his courage, his generosity; but the older men pondered upon the matter a great deal and watched with grave faces to see him ploughing up the sod for his garden. There was something strange in this solitary man thus deserting his kindred, coming here to live alone with his cattle; they could not understand it. What they said in those pathetic, dimly lighted lodges will never be known; but when winter came, and the new-comer did not drive his cattle back over the hills as they thought he would, then the old chieftains took long counsel upon it. Night after night they smoked upon it, and at last Drifting Crane said to two of his young men: "Go ask this cattleman why he remains in the cold and snow with hiscattle. Ask him why he does not drive his cattle home."
This was in March, and one evening a couple of days later, as Wilson was about re-entering his shanty at the close of his day's work, he was confronted by two stalwart Indians, who greeted him pleasantly.
"How d'e do? How d'e do?" he said in reply. "Come in. Come in and take a snack."
The Indians entered and sat silently while he put some food on the table. They hardly spoke till after they had eaten. The Indian is always hungry, for the reason that his food supply is insufficient and his clothing poor. When they sat on the cracker-boxes and soap-boxes which served as seats, they spoke. They told him of the chieftain's message. They said they had come to assist him in driving his cattle back across the hills; that he must go.
To all this talk in the Indian's epigrammatic way, and in the dialect which has never been written, the rancher replied almost as briefly: "You go back and tell Drifting Crane that I like this place; that I'm here to stay; that I don't want any help to drive my cattle. I'm on the lands of the Great Father at Washington, and Drifting Crane ain't got any say about it. Now that sizes the whole thing up. I ain't got anything against you nor against him, but I'm a settler;that's my constitution; and now I'm settled I'm going to stay."
While the Indians discussed his words between themselves he made a bed of blankets on the floor and said: "I never turn anybody out. A white man is just as good as an Indian as long as he behaves himself as well. You can bunk here."
The Indians didn't understand his words fully, but they did understand his gesture, and they smiled and accepted the courtesy, so like their own rude hospitality. Then they all smoked a pipe of tobacco in silence, and at last Wilson turned in and went serenely off to sleep, hearing the mutter of the Indians lying before the fire.
In the morning he gave them as good a breakfast as he had—bacon and potatoes, with coffee and crackers. Then he shook hands, saying: "Come again. I ain't got anything against you. You've done y'r duty. Now go back and tell your chief what I've said. I'm at home every day. Good day."
The Indians smiled kindly, and drawing their blankets over their arms, went away toward the east.
During April and May two or three reconnoitering parties of land-hunters drifted over the hills and found him out. He was glad to see them, for, to tell the truth, the solitude of his life was telling on him. The winter had been severe,and he had hardly caught a glimpse of a white face during the three midwinter months, and his provisions were scanty.
These parties brought great news. One of them was the advance surveying party for a great Northern railroad, and they said a line of road was to be surveyed during the summer if their report was favorable.
"Well, what d'ye think of it?" Wilson asked, with a smile.
"Think! It's immense!" said a small man in the party, whom the rest called Judge Balser. "Why, they'll be a town of four thousand inhabitants in this valley before snow flies. We'll send the surveyors right over the divide next month."
They sent some papers to Wilson a few weeks later, which he devoured as a hungry dog might devour a plate of bacon. The papers were full of the wonderful resources of the Jim Valley. It spoke of the nutritious grasses for stock. It spoke of the successful venture of the lonely settler Wilson, how his stock fattened upon the winter grasses without shelter, etc., what vegetables he grew, etc., etc.
Wilson was reading this paper for the sixth time one evening in May. He had laid off his boots, his pipe was freshly filled, and he sat in the doorway in vast content, unmindful of the glory of color that filled the western sky, and the superbevening chorus of the prairie-chickens, holding conventions on every hillock. He felt something touch him on the shoulder, and looked up to see a tall Indian gazing down upon him with a look of strange pride and gravity. Wilson sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
"Drifting Crane, how d'e do?"
The Indian bowed, but did not take the settler's hand. Drifting Crane would have been called old if he had been a white man, and there was a look of age in the fixed lines of his powerful, strongly modeled face, but no suspicion of weakness in the splendid poise of his broad, muscular body. There was a smileless gravity about his lips and eyes which was very impressive.
"I'm glad to see you. Come in and get something to eat," said Wilson, after a moment's pause.
The chief entered the cabin and took a seat near the door. He took a cup of milk and some meat and bread silently, and ate while listening to the talk of the settler.
"I don't brag on my biscuits, chief, but theyeat, if a man is hungry enough. An' the milk's all right. I suppose you've come to see why I ain't moseying back over the divide?"
The chief, after a long pause, began to speak in a low, slow voice, as if choosing his words. He spoke in broken English, of course, but his speech was very direct and plain, and had none of thoseabsurd figures of rhetoric which romancers invariably put into the mouths of Indians. His voice was almost lion-like in its depth, and yet was not unpleasant. It was easy to see that he was a chief by virtue of his own personality.
"Cattleman, my young men brought me bad message from you. They brought your words to me, saying he will not go away."
"That's about the way the thing stands," replied Wilson, in response to the question that was in the old chief's steady eyes. "I'm here to stay. This ain't your land. This is Uncle Sam's land, and part of it'll be mine as soon as the surveyors come to measure it off."
"Who gave it away?" asked the chief. "My people were cheated out of it. They didn't know what they were doing."
"I can't help that. That's for Congress to say. That's the business of the Great Father at Washington." Wilson's voice changed. He knew and liked the chief; he didn't want to offend him. "They ain't no use making a fuss, chief. You won't gain anything."
There was a look of deep sorrow in the old man's face. At last he spoke again: "The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because whenever one white man goes and calls it good, the others come. Drifting Crane has seen it far in the east, twice. The white men come thick as the grass.They tear up the sod. They build houses. They scare the buffalo away. They spoil my young men with whisky. Already they begin to climb the eastern hills. Soon they will fill the valley, and Drifting Crane and his people will be surrounded. The sod will all be black."
"I hope you're right," was the rancher's grim reply.
"But they will not come if the cattleman go back to say the water is not good. There is no grass, and the Indians own the land."
Wilson smiled at the childish faith of the chief. "Won't do, chief—won't do. That won't do any good. I might as well stay."
The chief rose. He was touched by the settler's laugh; his eyes flashed; his voice took on a sterner note. "The white manmustgo!"
Wilson rose also. He was not a large man, but he was a very resolute one. "I shan't go!" he said, through his clinched teeth. Each man understood the tones of the other perfectly.
It was a thrilling, a significant scene. It was in absolute truth the meeting of the modern vidette of civilization with one of the rear-guard of retreating barbarism. Each man was a type; each was wrong, and each was right. The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric point of view as the white man. He was a warrior and hunter—made so by circumstances over which he had nocontrol. Guiltless as the panther, because war to a savage is the necessity of life.
The settler represented the unflagging energy and fearless heart of the American pioneer. Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor and a lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that. As he looked into the Indian's face he seemed to grow in height. He felt behind him all the weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers; he stood the representative of an unborn State. He took down a rifle from the wall—the magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the stock, pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view.
"You know this thing, chief?"
The Indian nodded slightly.
"Well, I'll go when—this—is—empty."
"But my young men are many."
"So are the white men—my brothers."
The chief's head dropped forward. Wilson, ashamed of his boasting, put the rifle back on the wall.
"I'm not here to fight. You can kill me any time. You could 'a' killed me to-night, but it wouldn't do any good. It 'ud only make it worse for you. Why, they'll be a town in here bigger'n all your tribe before two grass from now. It ain't no use, Drifting Crane; it'sgotto be. You an' I can't help n'r hinder it. I know just how youfeel about it, but I tell yeh it ain't no use to fight."
Drifting Crane turned his head and gazed out on the western sky, still red with the light of the fallen sun. His face was rigid as bronze, but there was a dreaming, prophetic look in his eyes. A lump came into the settler's throat; for the first time in his life he got a glimpse of the infinite despair of the Indian. He forgot that Drifting Crane was the representative of a "vagabond race;" he saw in him, or ratherfeltin him, something almost magnetic. He was aman, and a man of sorrows. The settler's voice was husky when he spoke again, and his lips trembled.
"Chief, I'd go to-morrow if it 'ud do any good, but it won't—not a particle. You know that, when you stop to think a minute. What good did it do to massacreeall them settlers at New Ulm? What good will it do to murder me and a hundred others? Not a bit. A thousand others would take our places. So I might just as well stay, and we might just as well keep good friends. Killin' is out o' fashion; don't do any good."
There was a twitching about the stern mouth of the Indian chief. He understood all too well the irresistible logic of the pioneer. He kept his martial attitude, but his broad chest heaved painfully, and his eyes grew dim. At last he said: "Good-by. Cattleman right; Drifting Crane wrong.Shake hands. Good-by." He turned and strode away.
The rancher watched him till he mounted his pony, picketed down by the river; watched him as, with drooping head and rein flung loose upon the neck of his horse, he rode away into the dusk, hungry, weary and despairing, to face his problem alone. Again, for the thousandth time, the impotence of the Indian's arm and the hopelessness of his fate were shown as perfectly as if two armies had met and soaked the beautiful prairie sod with blood.
"This is all wrong," muttered the settler. "There's land enough for us all, or ought to be. I don't understand——Well, I'll leave it to Uncle Sam anyway." He ended with a sigh.
PART VIII.OLD DADDY DEERING:THE COUNTRY FIDDLER.
OLD DADDY DEERING:THE COUNTRY FIDDLER.
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Like Scotland's harper,Or Irish piper, with his droning lays,Before the spread of modern life and lightThe country fiddler slowly disappears.
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DADDY DEERING.
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Theywere threshing on Farmer Jennings' place when Daddy made his very characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.
The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, drippingwith sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.
The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships, a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?
Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth, behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile. He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.
A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely setting for this picturesque scene—the low swells of prairie, shrouded with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the machine.But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are quite different things.
They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half-buried in the loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled from the terrible dust beside the measuring-spout, and was shaking the chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:
"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."
"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I told you it wasn't the place for an old man."
"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can daown you, sir—yessir, condemmit, yessir!"
"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.
The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could beseen but a dusty expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men clinched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay at last flat on his back.
"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether—yessir!—I could do it, too!".
"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.
The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.
"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."
His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but toil had bent and stiffened him.
"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" hesaid, in his rapid, rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner. "And by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man, sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the State; no, sir; no, sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's pay—that's all, sir!"
Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up there this afternoon."
The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty places, and his endurance was marvelous. He could stand all day at the tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent air, as if it were all mere play.
He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.
All day while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are tumbling about the sun-lit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks, like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent shoulders and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.
And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to bear the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of the cylinder.
"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And when Milton was unable to laugh the old man tweaked his ear with his leathery thumb and finger.
Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him, just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow with age, with the cotton-batting working out; and yet Daddy took the greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.
One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day, was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got, and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at histhrift, and quietly gave him his breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.
He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end of the third day, he said:
"Now, sir; if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn m' hand over f'r any man in the State; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by gum!"
"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."
Hog-killingwas one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.
It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.
"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got that fire blazin'?Whatthe devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come! hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots—Ha! ha! ha!"
It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.
"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age, I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds! Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"
The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot—mince pie or sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the fire under the big kettle.
The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at the proper slant while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning the grindstone—another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not alleviate.
Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse-trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some heavy snow-storms he had known. Eachparenthesis outgrew its proper limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.
At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly swine.
"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir,grab 'im! Why don't ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"
With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out, caught him by the ear and flung him upon his side, squealing with deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort, Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he boasted:
"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth—a dozen o' you—spindle-legged chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"
His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine as the old knight-errant'spride in his ability to stick a knife into another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested, while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.
There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys. The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity, while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.
At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct honor in this selection.
"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No, sir, wouldn't thank 'im."
"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.
"Scrape a hawg with them, sir? What did y' s'pose, you numbskull?"
"Well, I never saw anything"——
"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im around—there! Noweasy, easy! Now, then, one, two; one, two—that's right."
While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he wanted the other man to do.
"The best man I ever worked with.Now turn 'im, turn 'im!" he yelled, reaching over Jennings' wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye never learn how to turn a hawg?Now, out with 'im!" was his next wild yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking. "Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer. Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks! They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick; no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had …
"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who didn't ride the saw.He could jerk a cross-cut saw.… Now let him in again, now;he-ho, once again!Roll him over now; that foreleg needs a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"
Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a pause. "A—n—d Jake he scraped away—Hyare," he shouted, suddenly, "don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave it smooth as a baby, sir—yessir!"
He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.
"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."
He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at an ancient horse-trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.
Butpitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art, for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for dances. He "officiated" for the first time at adance given by one of the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves—had been for three generations—but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing the music while the rest danced.
Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where he would sit.
"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."
He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like this added a paper collar to his red woolen shirt. He took off his coat and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged it and banged it into proper tunefulness.
"A-a-a-ll-ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody git into his place!"Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the strings, he yelled, "Already,g'lang!" and brought his foot down with a startling bang on the first note.Rye doodle doo, doodle doo.
As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept boisterous time with his foot while his high, rasping nasal rang high above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.
"Ladies' gran' change!Fourhands round!Bal-ance all!Elly-man left! Back to play-cis."
His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all that went on in some miraculous way.
"Firstlady lead to the right—toodle rum rum! Gentfoller after (step along thar)! Four hands round"——
The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called "Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a chant which he meant, without doubt, to be musical.
"Hon-ers tew your pardners—tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee!Stand up straight an' put on your style!Rightan' left four"——
The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.
At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the prettiest girl out to supper.
"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the others.
"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and Yark State both; yes, sir."
He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate gallantry, he said: "MayI have the pleasure?" and marched out triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.
His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."
They all took sides in order to please him.
"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."
"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match was arranged to come the first thing after supper.
"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on earth yet."
While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some of the others objected.
"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man"——
"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist in the face of his grinning tormentors.
The others held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the other fellows away.
"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that dancing-match now."
Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers were bagged at the knee, and his red woolen stockings showed between the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon-legs; and his coat, utterly characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders, and yetthere was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of the old-fashioned sort.
"Farrmon," he cried, and the fiddler struck out the first note of the Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a weather-beaten pine-tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.
The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.
"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he danced a final break-down to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he was unsubdued.
Butthese rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls—his music was too monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he broke out to some of the old neighbors in protest against the changes.
"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."
As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his uncleanly habits of spitting and his tiresome stories. Many of the old neighbors had died or moved away, and the young people had gone West or to the cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurthim more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the fall hog-killing.
"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work. Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I s'pose."
"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes, sir, demmit—demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"
Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it all.
"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A gol-dum leetle, nasty, ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'—well, m' wife, she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen again, sir; no, sir."
His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the ax and lamed himself for life.
As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings wentin to see him and tried to relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard thing to put up with.
"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an ax in up to the maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended, with a groan.
As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that brought the ax down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy—that scared him. It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.
A man like this lives so much in the flesh that when his limbs begin to fail him, everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think and to tremble.
When he was able to crawl about again, he wasnot the same man. He was gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He ain't dangerous 'tall," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously ill.
Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.
Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.
In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit: "I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."
The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said. "This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."
"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said, in horror. But Bill drew the bow across the strings in the same way that Daddy always did when tuning up.
He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated left hand and burst into tears.
"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor right off."
"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks;he ain't sick, he's jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.
And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech, seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his throat.
The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into the room.
"Come over there, all of you; we want you."
They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"
"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed by Mr. Jennings and Milton.
While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.
"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course, he'd gone to bed all right, but when I was going out to the barn I stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him." "I dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest slumped down in a chair an setthere—wouldn't do a thing—so I come over to see you."
Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed himself was horrible and seemed impossible.
The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it. There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his vast, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium, not suicide.
There was a sort of majesty in the figure half-buried in the snow. His hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as if he had fancied Death coming and had gone defiantly forth to meet him.