The Bishop and the Boogerman Part 3

Well, Adelaide and Mr. Sanders took their lunch and were about to start on their dangerous expedition, when they bethought themselves of something that Lucindy had forgotten.

"Why, Lucindy!" cried Adelaide, "what is the matter with you?"

"Nothin' 't all dat I knows on, honey. I'm de same ol' sev'n an' six what I allers been."

Then Mr. Sanders came to Adelaide's support. "Well, your mind must be wanderin'," he said, "bekaze we ast you as plain as tongue kin speak for to put us up a couple of b.u.t.termilks."

Lucindy threw her hand above her head with a gesture of despair. "I know it, I know it! but I ain't got but one b.u.t.termilk. Dar's a jar full, but dat don't make but one; an' what I gwine do when dat's de case?"

"Why, ef you've got a jar full, thar must be mighty nigh a dozen b.u.t.termilks in it." And so, after much argument and explanation, Lucindy found a bottle and a funnel and poured two gla.s.sfuls in it, one after the other. Mr. Sanders, very solemn, counted as she filled the gla.s.s.

"That makes one," he said, as she emptied the first gla.s.s, "an'," when she poured in the rest--"that makes two, don't it?"

"Ya.s.ser! La, ya.s.ser! you-all got me so mixified dat I dunner know which eend I'm a standin' on. Two! ya.s.ser, dey sho is two in dar!"

Having everything needful in hand, the hunters took their way toward the large garden. Don't think this garden bore any resemblance to the ordinary gardens that are to be found in cities and towns. No! it was so large that, standing at one end you had to shade your eyes--especially when the sun was s.h.i.+ning--to be able to see the boundary fence at the other end. It held not only a supply of vegetables sufficient for fifty families, but it contained an abundance of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, the kind you see pictured in the magazines--roses, spice pinks, primroses, mint, with its little blue flowers, lavender--oh, and ever so much of everything! And it was all well kept, too, stingy as old Jonas was. In this wide garden the Whish-Whish Forest grew and flourished, and toward this the two hunters bent their steps.

At first they pretended they were not hunting. Nothing could have been more innocent than the careless way in which they made their way toward the home of the Boogerman. Hiding their cornstalk guns behind them as well as they could, they sauntered along examining the flowers, and no one would have supposed that they were after ridding the country of the cruel monster that had terrorised the children for miles around. In not less than seven or seventeen counties was his name spoken in whispers when the sun had gone to bed and tucked his cloud-quilts around him. If a child cried at night, or if a wide-awake little one uttered a whimpering protest when bed-time came, the nurses--not one nurse, but all the nurses--would raise their hands warningly, and whisper in a frightened tone, "Sh-s.h.!.+ the Boogerman is standing right there by the window; if you make a noise, he'll know right where you are--and then what will happen?"

Presently Adelaide and Mr. Sanders (who was still the Bishop, be it remembered) came close in their saunterings to the edge of the Whish-Whish Woods, and then they began to creep forward, making as little noise as possible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "They began to creep forward, making as little noise as possible"]

"Bishop," said Adelaide, in a whisper, "you slip through the Woods one way, and I'll slip through the other way. You can be a bishop and a Injun, too, can't you?"

"Nothin' easier," replied the Bishop, trying to whisper in return; "I'll jest take off my coat an' turn it wrongsud-out'rds, an' thar you are!"

Adelaide's ecstasy shone in her face, and with good reason, for the middle lining of the Bishop's coat was fiery red. This was too good to be true, and Adelaide wished in her heart that she had worn her hat with the big red feather--oh, you know: the one she wore to Sunday School, where all the other little girls were simply green with envy; of course you couldn't forget that hat and feather!

In spite of the fiery red lining of his coat, the Bishop had an idea that he didn't look fierce enough, so he took off his felt hat, knocked in the crown, and put it on upside down. His aspect was simply tremendous. No hobgoblin could have a fiercer appearance than the Bishop had, and if Adelaide didn't shriek with pure delight it was because she put her gun across her mouth and bit it. She bit so hard that the print of her small teeth showed on the gun. Well, of course, after the Bishop had transformed himself into such a ferocious-looking monster, he and Adelaide were obliged to have another consultation, and it was while this was going on that Adelaide came near spoiling the whole thing.

"Oh, Bishop!" she cried, with a great gasp, "how do you laugh when you're obliged to, and when----" she gave another gasp, sank to the ground, and lay there, shaking all over.

"You put me in mind, honey, of the lady in the book that leaned ag'in the old ellum tree and shuck wi' sobs, ever' one on 'em more'n a foot an' a half long, wi' stickers on 'em like a wild briar. It's a sad thing for to say, but I'm oblidze to say it. The time has come when we've got to part. Ef we go on this way, the Boogerman will come along an' put us both in his wallet, an' then what'll we do? Things can't go on this a-way. It may be for years an' it may be forever, as Miss Ann Tatum says when she begins for to squall at her peanner, but the time to part has come. You creep up yander by the fence, so you can see the Boogerman ef he tries for to git away, an' I'll roost aroun' in the bushes. Ef I jump him I'll holla, an' ef he come your way, jest shet your eyes an' give him both barrels in the neighbourhood of eyeb.a.l.l.s an' appet.i.te. You can't kill the Boogerman unless you hit him in his green eye--the other is a dark mud colour."

Well, they separated, the Bishop beating in the bushes and underbrush, as he called the crab-gra.s.s and weeds that had begun to make their appearance in the corn-patch, and Adelaide creeping to her post of observation as though she were stalking some wild and wary animal. She could hear the Bishop rustling about in the thick corn, but couldn't catch a glimpse of him. Once she heard him sneeze as only a middle-aged man can sneeze, and she frowned as a general frowns when his orders have been disobeyed. Presently she heard some one coming along the side street, which, being away from the main thoroughfares, was little frequented. Occasionally a pedestrian, or a farmer going home, or house servants, who lived near-by, pa.s.sed along its narrow length.

The moment she heard footsteps, Adelaide shrank back in the thick corn, and held her cornstalk gun in readiness. Her hair might have been mistaken for a tangle of corn-silks newly sunburned as it fell over her face. The steps drew nearer, and, in a moment, a negro came into view.

He was a stranger to Adelaide, and that fact only made it more certain that he was the Boogerman himself, who had jumped the garden fence in order to elude Mr. Sanders, and was now sauntering along appearing as innocent as innocence itself. When the Boogerman came opposite Adelaide's hiding-place, she jumped up suddenly, aimed her gun and cried _Bang!_ in a loud voice.

Now, as it happened, the pa.s.sing negro was one who could meet and beat Adelaide on her own ground. The cornstalk gun, with its imperative _Bang!_ carried him back to old times, though he was not old--back to the times when he played make-believe with his young mistress and the rest of the children. Therefore, simultaneously with Adelaide's _Bang!_ he stopped in his tracks, his face working convulsively, his arms flying wildly about, and his legs giving way under him. He sank slowly to the ground, and then began to flop about just as a chicken does when its head is wrung off.

The Bishop heard a wild, exultant shout from Adelaide: "Run, Bishop, run! I've got him! I've killed the Boogerman! Run, Bishop, run!" Mr.

Sanders ran as fast as he could; and when he saw the negro lying on the ground, with no movement save an occasional quiver of the limbs and a sympathetic twitching of the fingers, his amazement knew no bounds.

"Why, honey!" he cried, "what in the world have you done to him?"

"I didn't do a thing, Bishop, but shoot him with my cornstalk gun; I didn't know it had such a heavy load in it. Anyhow, he had no business to be the Boogerman. Do you think he's truly--ann--dead, Bishop?"

"As dead," Mr. Sanders declared solemnly, "as Hector. I dunno how dead Hector was, but this feller is jest as dead as him--that is ef he ain't got a conniption fit; I've heern tell of sech things."

They climbed the garden fence, and went to where the Boogerman was lying stretched out. "When a man's dead," said Mr. Sanders, "he'll always tell you so ef you ax him."

"Boogerman! oh, Boogerman!" cried Adelaide, going a little closer.

"Ma'am!" replied the dead one feebly.

"When the Boogerman is dead," said Adelaide, "and anybody asks him if it is so, he lifts his left foot and rolls his eyeb.a.l.l.s. Are you dead?"

In confirmation of that fact, the foot was lifted, and the eyeb.a.l.l.s began to roll. Adelaide was almost beside herself with delight. Never had she hoped to have such an experience as this. "Where shall he be buried, Bishop?"

"Close to the ash-hopper, right behind the kitchen," promptly responded Mr. Sanders.

"Get up, Boogerman!" commanded Adelaide. "You have to go to your own fumerl, you know, and you might as well go respectably." Adelaide always uttered a deliciously musical gurgle when she used a big word.

"Yes," said Mr. Sanders; "as fur as my readin' goes, thar ain't nothin'

in the fourteenth an' fifteenth amendments ag'in it."

Now, old Jonas's side-gate opened on this street, and on this gate Lucindy chanced to be leaning, when the Boogerman, fatally wounded by Adelaide's cornstalk gun, sank upon the ground and began to jump around like a chicken with its head off. She was tremendously frightened at first; in fact she was almost paralysed. So she stayed where she was, explaining afterward that she didn't want to be mixed up "wid any er deze quare doin's what done got so common sence de big rucus." Then she saw Adelaide and Mr. Sanders climb the garden fence and stand over the fallen negro, and curiosity overcame her fright. By the time the negro was on his feet, Lucindy had arrived. She looked at him hard, jumped at him, threw her arms around his neck, and squeezed him so tight that the two of them kept turning around as if they were trying to keep time to a smothered waltz; and all the while Lucindy was moaning and groaning and thanking the Lord that her son whom she had not seen in four long years, had come, as it were, right straight to her bosom.

She hugged him to the point of smifflication, as Mr. Sanders declared, and she held him at arm's length, the better to see whether he had changed, and in what particular. Then she turned to Mr. Sanders:

"Mr. Sanders, sholy you knows dis chil'--sholy you ain't done gone an'

disremembered Randall. Des like you seed him doin' des now, dat de way he been doin' all his born days--constantly a-playin', constantly a-makin' out dat what ain't so is so, an' lots mo' so. Many an' many's de time sence Miss Adelaide been here has I had de idee dat ef Randall wuz here, he'd be mo' dan a match fer Cally-Lou an' all de rest un um dat slips out'n dreams an' stays wid us. Ya.s.ser, I sho has. But now he's come, I des feels in my bones dat he gwine ter git in deep trouble 'bout dem crimes what he run away fer."

"Randall is the chap that knocked Judge Bowden's overseer crossways an'

crooked, ain't he?" inquired Mr. Sanders.

"Ya.s.ser, he done dat thing," replied Lucindy: "an how come he ter do it--him dat wuz afear'd er his own shadder--I'll never tell you. Let 'lone dat, he ain't gwin ter tell you; kaze I done ax'd him myse'f. I speck he'll haf ter run away ag'in."

"You know me, don't you, Randall?" inquired Mr. Sanders.

"La! ya.s.ser, Mr. Sanders, I've been knowin' you sence I could walk good."

"That's what I thought," said Mr. Sanders. "Well, my advice to you is to stay an' face the music. Ef the man you hit makes a move we'll have him right whar we've been a-tryin' fer to git him for two long years!"

They went toward the house, and entered the side-gate, attracting, as they did so, the attention of two or three of the neighbours. The Bishop had been so absorbed in what had occurred that he forgot to turn his coat, or to right his hat.

"Did you see old Billy Sanders?" one woman asked another over the back fence.

"I did," replied the other, "and I like to have dropped--I believe he is going crazy."

"Going!" exclaimed the first woman, "he's gone! Done gone!"

PART III