Southern Lights and Shadows Part 20

time. An' the minit that sack is full of snipe, all you've got to do is to pull out the prop, an' they're yourn."

"All right, Mr. Tobe," responded Bud, squatting down and clutching the candle, his face radiant with expectation.

The crowd scattered, and for a few moments made a noisy pretence of beating the s.h.i.+nn-oak thickets for imaginary snipe.

"Keep a-whisslin', Bud!" Mr. Cullum shouted, from the far edge of the prairie. A prolonged whistle, with trills and flourishes, was the response; and the conspirators, bursting with restrained laughter, plunged into the ford and separated, making each for his own fireside.

Mrs. Cullum was nodding over the hearth-stone when her husband came in. The six girls, from Minty--Jack Carter's buxom sweetheart--to Little Sis, the baby, were long abed. The hands of the wooden clock on the high mantel-shelf pointed to half-past twelve. "Well, pa," Sissy said, good-humoredly, reaching out for the shovel and beginning to cover up the fire, "you've cavorted pretty late this time! What's the matter?" she added, suspiciously; "you ack like you've been drinkin'!"

For Tobe was rolling about the room in an ecstasy of uproarious mirth.

"I 'ain't teched nary drop, Sissy," Mr. Cullum returned, "but ever' time I think about that fool Bud Mines a-settin' out yander at Buck Snort, holdin'

of a candle, and whisslin' fer snipe to run into that coffee-sack, I--oh Lord!"

He stopped to slap his thighs and roar again. Finally, wiping the tears of enjoyment from his eyes, he related the story of the night's adventure.

"Air you tellin' me, Tobe Cullum," his wife said, when she had heard him to the end--"air you p'intedly tellin' me that you've took Bud Hines _snipin'_? An' that you've left that sickly, consumpted young man a-settin'

out there by hisse'f to catch his death of cold; or maybe git his blood sucked out by a catamount!"

"Shucks, Sissy!" replied Tobe; "nothin' ain't goin' to hurt him. He's sech a derned fool that a catamount wouldn't tech him with a ten-foot pole! An'

him a-whisslin' fer them snipe--oh Lord!"

"Tobe Cullum," said Mrs. Cullum, sternly, "you go saddle Buster this minit and ride out to Buck Snort after Bud Hines."

"Why, honey--" remonstrated Tobe.

"Don't you honey me," she interrupted, wrathfully. "You saddle that horse this minit an' fetch that consumpted boy home."

Tobe ceased to laugh. His big jaws set themselves suddenly square. "I'll do no such fool thing," he declared, doggedly, "an' have the len'th an'

brea'th o' Jim-Ned makin' fun o' me."

"Very well," said his wife, with equal determination, "ef you don't go, I will. But I give you fair warnin', Tobe Cullum, that ef you don't go, I'll never speak to you again whilse my head is hot."

Tobe snorted incredulously; but he sneaked out to the stable after her, and when she had saddled and mounted Buster, he followed her on foot, running noiselessly some distance behind her, keeping her well in sight, and dodging into the deeper shadows when she chanced to look around.

"I didn't know Sissy had so much s.p.u.n.k," he muttered, panting in her wake at last across the s.h.i.+nn-oak prairie. "Lord, how blazin' mad she is! But shucks! she'll git over it by mornin'."

Mr. Hines was s.h.i.+vering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. "The balance of 'em must of got lost," he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. "It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer," he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, the last spark of courage oozing out of his nerveless fingers. He stood up, straining his eyes down the black gully and across the dreary waste around him. "Mr.

T-o-o-be!" he called, feebly, and the wavering echoes of his voice came back to him mingled with an ominous sound. "Oh, Lordy! what is that?" he stammered. He sank to the ground, grabbing wildly for his gun. "It's a cougar! I hear him trompin' up from the creek! It's a c-cougar! He's c-comin' closter! Oh, Lordy!"

"h.e.l.lo, Bud," called Mrs. Cullum, cheerily. She slipped from the saddle as she spoke and caught the half-fainting snipe-hunter in her motherly arms.

"Ain't you 'shamed of yourse'f to let a pa.s.sel o' no-'count men fool you this-a-way?" she demanded, sternly, when he had somewhat recovered himself.

"Get up behind me. I'm goin' to take you to Mis' Bishop's, where you belong. No, don't you da.s.sen to tech any o' that tras.h.!.+"

Mr. Hines, feeling very humble and abashed, climbed up behind her, and they rode away, leaving the snipe--hunting gear, including Sid Northcutt's valuable rifle, on the edge of the gully.

She left him at Bishop's, charging him to swallow before going to bed a "dost" of the home-brewed chill medicine from a squat bottle she handed him.

"He cert'n'y is weaker'n stump-water," she murmured, as she turned her horse's head; "but he's sickly an' consumpted, an' he's jest about the age my Bud would of been if he'd lived."

And thinking of her first-born and only son, who died in babyhood, she rode homeward in the dim chill starlight. Tobe, spent and foot-sore, followed warily, carrying the abandoned rifle.

II

Consternation reigned the "len'th an' brea'th" of Jim-Ned. Mrs.

Cullum--placid and easy-going Mrs. Tobe--under the same roof with him, actually had not spoken to her lawful and wedded husband since the snipe-hunt ten days ago come Monday!

"It's plumb scan'lous!" Mrs. Pinson exclaimed, at her daughter's quilting.

"I never would of thought sech a thing of Sissy--never!"

"As of the boys of Jim-Ned couldn't have a little innercent fun without Mis' Cullum settin' in jedgment on 'em!" sniffed Mrs. Leggett.

"Shot up, Becky Leggett," said her mother, severely. "By time you've put up with a man's capers for twenty-five years, like Sissy Cullum have, you'll have the right to talk, an' not before."

"They say Tobe is wellnigh out'n his mind," remarked Mrs. Trimble. "Ez for that soft-headed Bud Mines, he have fair fattened on that snipe-hunt. He's gittin' ez sa.s.sy an' mischeevous ez Jack Carter hisse'f."

This last statement was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were.

The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's with devil-may-care good-nature, and he besought Mrs. Cullum, almost with tears in his eyes, to "let up on Mr. Tobe."

"I was sech a dern fool, Mis' Cullum," he candidly confessed, "that I don't blame Mr. Tobe for puttin' up a job on me. Besides," he added, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, "I'm goin' to git even. I'm layin' off to take Jim Belcher, that biggetty drummer from Waco, a-snipin' out Buck Snort next Sat'day night. He's a bigger idjit than I ever was."

"You ten' to your own business, Bud, an' I'll ten' to mine," Mrs. Cullum returned, not unkindly. Which business on her part apparently was to make Mr. Cullum miserable by taking no notice of him whatever. The house under her supervision was, as it had always been, a model of neatness; the meals were cooked by her own hands and served with an especial eye to Tobe's comfort; his clothes were washed and ironed, and his white s.h.i.+rt laid out on Sunday mornings, with the accustomed care and regularity. But with these details Mrs. Cullum's wifely attentions ended. She remained absolutely deaf to any remark addressed to her by her husband, looking through and beyond him when he was present with a steady, unseeing gaze, which was, to say the least, exasperating. All necessary communication with him was carried on by means of the children. "Minty," she would say at the breakfast-table, "ask your pa if he wants another cup of coffee"; or at night, "Temp'unce, tell your pa that Buster has shed a shoe"; or, "Sue, does your pa know where them well-grabs is?" et caetera, et caetera.

The demoralized household huddled, so to speak, between the opposing camps, frightened and unhappy, and things were altogether in a bad way.

To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example, took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement.

"Lord, Minty!" he gasped. "Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n five years ago. I--"

"I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter," interrupted his sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; "that settles it!" and she slammed the door in his face.

Matters were at such a pa.s.s finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. "Lord,"

he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, "Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from the wrath to come."

He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding her hens.

"She sh.o.r.e did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did," chuckled Granny Carnes, when this episode reached her ears.

As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fas.h.i.+on, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous.

"He's that wore upon that n.o.body da.s.sent to go anigh him," said Mrs.

Pinson, solemnly. "An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever struck the women o' Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the outbeatenes'."

But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum, impa.s.sive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side.

"Well, ma," began Tobe, with a.s.sumed gayety, turning up his plate, "what for a day have you had?"

Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said never a word.