Southern Lights and Shadows Part 19

Have--have you caught him? And, oh--but I am afraid--afraid!" And again she broke into hysterical sobs.

She asked no explanation. The negro's guilt was so burned in on her mind, that she was sure that all knew it as well as she.

"You need have no further fears," her husband comforted. And the judge shook his head, and the sheriff swore again.

A white-haired woman in rusty black stood talking to a negro convict. It was in a stockade prison camp in the hill country. She had been a slave-owner once, long ago, and now for her mission-work taught on Sundays in the stockade, trying to better the negroes penned there.

This was a new prisoner, and she was asking him of himself.

"How long are you in for?" she asked.

"Fuhrebber, ma'm; fuh des es long es I lib," the negro answered, looking down to where he was making marks on the ground with his toes.

"And how did you get such a dreadful sentence?"

"I ent do much, ma'm; I des scare a white lady."

A wave of revulsion swept over the teacher, and involuntarily she stepped back. The negro looked up and grinned.

"De hatchet des cut 'e foot a little bit; but I trow de hatchet. I ent tech um; no, ma'm. Den atterwards 'e baby daid; den dey say I muss stay yer fuhrebber. I ent sorry, 'kase I know say I hab to wuck anywheys I is; if I stay yer, if I go 'way, I hab to wuck. En I know say if I git outer dis place Mr. Morris'll kill me sho--des sho. So I like fuh stay yer berry well."

And the teacher went away, wondering if her work--if _any_ work--would avail; and what answer the future would have for this awful problem.

A Snipe-Hunt

A Story of Jim-Ned Creek

BY M. E. M. DAVIS

"I ain't sayin' nothin' ag'inst the women o' Jim--Ned Creek _ez women_,"

said Mr. Pinson; "an' what's more, I'll spit on my hands an' lay out any man ez'll da.s.sen to sa.s.s 'em. But _ez wives_ the women o' Jim-Ned air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!"

These remarks, uttered in an oracular tone, were received with grave approbation by the half a dozen idlers gathered about the mesquite fire in Bishop's store. Old Bishop himself, sorting over some trace-chains behind the counter, nodded grimly, and then smiled, his wintry face grown suddenly tender.

"You've sh.o.r.e struck it, Newt," a.s.sented Joe Trimble. "You never kin tell how ary one of 'em 'll ack under any succ.u.mstances."

Jack Carter and Sid Northcutt, the only bachelors present, grinned and winked slyly at each other.

"You boys neenter to be so brash," drawled Mr. Pinson's son-in-law, Sam Leggett, from his perch on a barrel of pecans; "jest you wait ontell Minty Cullum an' Loo Slater gits a tight holt! Them gals is ez meek ez lambs--now. But so was Mis' Pinson an' Mis' Trimble in their day an' time, I reckon. I know Becky Leggett was."

"The studdies'-goin' woman on Jim-Ned," continued Mr. Pinson, ignoring these interruptions, "is Mis' Cullum. An' yit, Tobe Cullum ain't no safeter than anybody else--considerin' of Sissy Cullum ez a wife!"

Mr. Trimble opened his lips to speak, but shut them again hastily, looking a little scared, and an awkward silence fell on the group.

For the shadow of Mrs. Cullum herself had advanced through the wide door-way, and lay athwart the puncheon floor; and that lady, a large, comfortable-looking, middle-aged person, with a motherly face and a kindly smile, after a momentary survey of the scene before her, walked briskly in.

She shook hands across the counter with the storekeeper, and pa.s.sed the time of day all around.

But Hines, the new clerk, shuffled forward eagerly to wait on her. Bud was a sallow-faced, thin-chested, gawky youth from the States, who had wandered into these parts in search of health and employment. He was not yet used to the somewhat drastic ways of Jim-Ned, and there was a homesick look in his watery blue eyes; he smiled bashfully at her while he measured off calico and weighed sugar, and he followed her out to the horse-block when she had concluded her lengthy spell of shopping.

"You better put on a thicker coat, Bud," she said, pus.h.i.+ng back her sunbonnet and looking down at him from the saddle before she moved off.

"You've got a rackety cough. I reckon I'll have to make you some mullein surrup."

"Oh, Mis' Cullum, don't trouble yourself about me," Mr. Hines cried, gratefully, a lump rising in his throat as he watched her ride away.

The loungers in the store had strolled out on the porch. "Mis' Cullum cert'n'y is a sister in Zion," remarked Mr. Trimble, gazing admiringly at her retreating figure.

"M-m-m--y-e-e-s," admitted Mr. Pinson. "But," he added, darkly, after a meditative pause, "Sissy Cullum is a wife, an' the women o' Jim-Nez, _ez wives_, air liable to conniptions."

Mrs. Cullum jogged slowly along the brown, wheel-rifted road which followed the windings of the creek. It was late in November. A brisk little norther was blowing, and the nuts dropping from the pecan-trees in the hollows filled the dusky stillness with a continuous rattling sound. There was a sprinkling of belated cotton-bolls on the stubbly fields to the right of the road; a few ragged sunflowers were still abloom in the fence corners, where the pokeberries were red-ripe on their tall stalks.

"I must lay in some poke-root for Tobe's knee-j'ints," mused Mrs. Cullum, as she turned into the lane which led to her own door-yard. "Pore Tobe!

them j'ints o' his'n is mighty uncertain. Why, Tobe!" she exclaimed, aloud, as her nag stopped and neighed a friendly greeting to the object of her own solicitude, "where air you bound for?"

Mr. Cullum laid an arm across the horse's neck. He was a big, loose-jointed man, with iron-gray hair, square jaws, and keen, steady, dark eyes. "Well, ma," he said, with a touch of reluctance in his dragging tones, "there's a lodge meetin' at Ebenezer Church to-night, an' I got Mintry to give me my supper early, so's I could go. I--"

"All right, Tobe," interrupted his wife, cheerfully; "a pa.s.sel of men prancin' around with a goat oncet a month ain't much harm, I reckon. You go 'long, honey; I'll set up for you."

"Sissy is that soft an' innercent an' mild," muttered Mr. Cullum, striding away in the gathering twilight, "that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun'

its finger--much lessen me!"

About ten o'clock the same night Granny Carnes, peeping through a c.h.i.n.k in the wall beside her bed, saw a squad of men hurrying afoot down the road from the direction of Ebenezer Church. "Them boys is up to some devil_mint_, Uncle d.i.c.k," she remarked, placidly, to her rheumatic old husband.

Uncle d.i.c.k laughed, a soft, toothless laugh. "I ain't begrudgin' 'em the fun," he sighed, turning on his pillow, "but I wisht to the Lord I was along!"

The "boys" crossed the creek below Bishop's and entered the s.h.i.+nn-oak prairie on the farther side.

"Nance ast mighty particular about the lodge meetin'," observed Newt Pinson to Mr. Cullum, who headed the nocturnal expedition; "she know'd it wa'n't the regular night, an' she suspicioned sompn, Nance did."

"Sissy didn't," laughed Tobe, complacently. "Sissy is that soft an'

innercent an' mild that a suckin' baby could wrop her aroun' its finger--much lessen me!"

Bud Hines, in the rear with the others, was in a quiver of excitement. He stumbled along, s.h.i.+fting Sid Northcutt's rifle from one shoulder to the other, and listening open-mouthed to Jack Carter's directions. "You know, Bud," said that young gentleman, gravely, "it ain't every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt. And if you've got any grit--"

"I've got plenty of it," interrupted Mr. Hines, vaingloriously. He was, indeed, inwardly--and outwardly--bursting with pride. "I thought they tuk me for a plumb fool," he kept saying over and over to himself. "They ain't never noticed me before 'cepn to make fun of me; an' all at oncet Mr. Tobe Cullum an' Mr. Newt Pinson ups an' asts me to go on a snipe-hunt, an' even p'oposes to give me the best place in it. An' I've got Mr. Sid's rifle, an'

Mr. Jack is tellin' of me how! Lord, I wouldn't of believed it of I wa'n't right here! Won't ma be proud when I write her about it!"

"You've got to whistle all the time," Jack continued, breaking in upon these blissful reflections; "if you don't, they won't come."

"Oh, I'll whistle," declared Bud, jauntily.

Sam Leggett's sn.i.g.g.e.r was dexterously turned into a cough by a punch in his ribs from Mr. Trimble's elbow, and they trudged on in silence until they reached Buck Snort Gully, a deep ravine running from the prairie into a stretch of heavy timber beyond, known as The Rough.

Here they stopped, and Sid Northcutt produced a coa.r.s.e bag, whose mouth was held open by a barrel hoop, and a tallow candle, which he lighted and handed to the elate hunter. "Now, Bud," Mr. Cullum said, when the bag was set on the edge of the gully, with its mouth towards the prairie, "you jest scrooch down behind this here sack an' hold the candle. You kin lay the rifle back of you, in case a wild-cat or a cougar prowls up. An' you whistle jest as hard an' as continual as you can, whilse the balance of us beats aroun' an' drives in the snipe. They'll run fer the candle ever'