The Bishop of Cottontown Part 6

"Papa--luncheon is served, and oh, do come on! Mammy and Helen and I are so hungry."

Mammy Maria had followed her and stood deferentially behind the chair. And as Jud went away he thought he saw in the old woman's eyes, as she watched him, a trace of that fine scorn bred of generations of gentleness, but which whiskey had destroyed in the master.

CHAPTER V

THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT

As Jud went out of the dilapidated gate at Millwood, he chuckled to himself. He had, indeed, accomplished something. He had gained a decided advance in the labor circles of the mill. He had broken into the heretofore overpowering prejudice the better cla.s.s had against the mill, for he held in his possession the paper wherein an aristocrat had signed his two daughters into it. Wouldn't Richard Travis chuckle with him?

In the South social standing is everything.

To have the mill represented by a first family--even if brought to poverty through drunkenness--was an entering wedge.

His next job was easier. A mile farther on, the poor lands of the mountain side began. Up on the slope was a cabin, in the poorest and rockiest portion of it, around the door of which half a dozen cracker children stared at Jud with unfeigned interest as he rode up.

"Light an' look at yer saddle"--came from a typical Hillite within, as Jud stopped.

Jud promptly complied--alighted and looked at his saddle.

A cur--which, despite his breeding, is always a keen detective of character--followed him, barking at his heels.

This one knew Jud as instinctively and as accurately as he knew a fresh bone from a rank one--by smell. He was also a judge of other dogs and, catching sight of Bonaparte, his anger suddenly fled and he with it.

"Won't you set down an' res' yo' hat?" came invitingly from the doorway.

Jud sat down and rested his hat.

A tall, lank woman, smoking a cob pipe which had grown black with age and Samsonian in strength, came from the next room. She merely ducked her long, sharp nose at Jud and, pretending to be busily engaged around the room, listened closely to all that was said.

Jud told the latest news, spoke of the weather and made many familiar comments as he talked. Then he began to draw out the man and woman.

They were poor, child-burdened and dissatisfied. Gradually, carefully, he talked mill and the blessings of it. He drew glorious pictures of the house he would take them to, its conveniences--the opportunities of the town for them all. He took up the case of each of the six children, running from the tot of six to the girl of twenty, and showed what they could earn.

In all it amounted to sixteen dollars a week.

"You sho'ly don't mean it comes to sixteen dollars ev'y week," said the woman, taking the cob pipe out for the first time, long enough to spit and wipe her mouth on the back of her hand, "an' all in silver an' all our'n?" she asked. "Why that thar is mo' money'n we've seed this year. What do you say to tryin' it, Josiah?"

Josiah was willing. "You see," he added, "we needn't stay thar longer'n a year or so. We'll git the money an' then come back an' buy a good piece of land."

Suddenly he stopped and fired this point blank at Jud: "But see heah, Mister-man, is thar any n.i.g.g.e.rs thar? Do we hafter wuck with n.i.g.g.e.rs?"

Jud looked indignant. It was enough.

At the end of an hour the family head had signed for a five years'

contract. They would move the next week.

"Cash--think of it--cash ever' week. An' in silver, too," said the woman. "Why, I dunno hardly how it'll feel. I'm afeared it mou't gin me the eetch."

Jud, when he left, had induced their parents to sell five children into slavery for five years.

It meant for life.

And both parents declared when he left that never before had they "seed sech a nice man."

Jud had nearly reached the town when he pa.s.sed, high up on the level plateau by which the mountain road now ran, the comfortable home of Elder b.u.t.ts. Peach and apple trees adorned the yard, while bee-hives sat in a corner under the shade of them behind the cottage. The tinkle of a sheep bell told of a flock of sheep nearby. A neatly painted new wagon stood under the shed by the house, and all around was an air of thrift and work.

"Now if I cu'd git that b.u.t.ts family," he mused, "I'd have something to crow about when I got back to Kingsley to-night. He's got a little farm an' is well to do an' is thrifty, an' if I cu'd only git that cla.s.s started in the mill an' contented to wuck there, it 'ud open up a new cla.s.s of people. There's that Archie B.--confound him, he cu'd run ten machines at onct and never know it. I'd like to sweat that bottled mischief out of him a year or two.

"h.e.l.lo!"

Jud drew his horse up with a jerk. Above him, with legs locked, high up around the body of a dead willow, his seat the stump of a broken bough and fully twenty feet above the employment agent's head, sat Archie B., a freckled-faced lad, with fiery red hair and a world of fun in his blue eyes. He was one of the b.u.t.ts twins and the very object of the Whipper-in's thoughts. From his head to his feet he had on but three garments--a small, battered, all-wool hat, a coa.r.s.e cotton s.h.i.+rt, wide open at the neck, and a pair of jeans pants which came to his knees. But in the pockets of his pants were small samples of everything of wood and field, from sh.e.l.ls of rare bird eggs to a small supply of Gypsy Juice.

His pockets were miniature museums of nature.

No one but a small boy, bent on fun, knows what Gypsy Juice is. No adult has ever been able to procure its formula and no small boy in the South cares, so long as he can get it.

"The thing that hit does," Archie B. explained to his timid and pious twin brother, Ozzie B., "is ter make anything it touches that wears hair git up and git."

c.o.o.ns, possums, dogs, cats--with now and then a country horse or mule, hitched to the town rack--with these, and a small vial of Gypsy Juice, Archie B., as he expressed it, "had mo' fun to the square inch than ole Barnum's show ever hilt in all its tents."

Jud stood a moment watching the boy. It was easy to see what Archie B. was after. In the body of the dead tree a wood-p.e.c.k.e.r had chiseled out a round hole.

"h.e.l.lo, yo'se'f"--finally drawled Jud--"whatcher doin' up thar?"

"Why, I am goin' to see if this is a wood-p.e.c.k.e.r's nes' or a fly-ketcher's."

Bonaparte caught his cue at once and ran to the foot of the tree barking viciously, daring the tree-climber to come down. His vicious eyes danced gleefully. He looked at his master between his snarls as much as to say: "Well, this is great, to tree the real live son of the all-conquering man!"

It maddened him, too, to see the supreme indifference with which the all-conqueror's son treated his presence.

Jud grunted. He prided himself on his bird-lore. Finally he said: "Wal, any fool could tell you--it's a wood-p.e.c.k.e.r's nest."

"Yes, that's so and jus' exacly what a fool 'ud say," came back from the tree. "But it 'ud be because he is a fool, tho', an' don't see things as they be. It's a fly-ketcher's nest, for all that--" he added.

"Teach yo' gran'-mammy how to milk the house cat," sneered Jud, while Bonaparte grew furious again with this added insult. "Don't you know a wood-p.e.c.k.e.r's nest when you see it?"

"Yes," said Archie B., "an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a wood-p.e.c.k.e.r and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see if it's so with this one."

"Oh," said Jud, surprised, "an' what is it?"

"Jus' as I said--he's whipped the wood-p.e.c.k.e.r an' tuck his nes'."

"What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?" said Jud. Then he grinned derisively.

Bonaparte, watching his master, ran around the tree again and squatting on his stump of a tail grinned likewise.