Cudjo's Cave Part 5

The poor man looked around at his captors in the starlight, stooping dejectedly, and rubbing his bent knees.

"I ain't to blame--I'll tell ye that to begin with. I've been jest knocked about, from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, till I don't know who's my friends and who ain't. I reckon more ain't than is!"

added he, dismally.

"That's neither here nor there!" said Stackridge. "Where's Hapgood?

that's what I want to know."

"Ye see," said Dan, endeavoring to collect his wits (you would have thought they were in his kneepans, and he was industriously rubbing them up), "Ropes sent me to tote the kittle home, and when I got back here, I be durned if they wasn't all gone, schoolmaster and all."

"But what had they done to him?"

"I don't know, I'm sh.o.r.e! That's what I was a comin' back fur to see. He let me down when I was hung up on the rail, and helped me home; and so I says to myself, says I, 'Why shouldn't I do as much by him?' so I come back, and found him gone."

"What was in the kittle?" Stackridge took him by the throat.

"O, don't go fur to layin' it to me, and I'll tell ye! Thar'd been tar in the kittle! It had been used to give him a coat. That's the fact, durn me if it ain't! They put it on with the broom--my broom--they made me bring my own broom, that's the everlastin' truth! made me do it myself, and spile my wife's best broom into the bargain!" And Pepperill sobbed.

"You put on the tar?"

"Don't kill me, and I'll own up! I did put on some on't, that's a fact.

Ropes would a' killed me if I hadn't, and now you kill me fur doin' of it. He did knock me down, 'cause he said I didn't rub it on hard enough; and arter that he rubbed it himself."

"What next, you scoundrel?"

"Next, they rolled him in the feathers, and sent me, as I told ye, to tote the kittle home. Now don't, don't go fur to hang me, Mr.

Stackridge! Help me, men! help me, Withers,--Devit! For he means to be the death of me, I'm sh.o.r.e!"

Indeed, Stackridge was in a tremendous pa.s.sion, and would, no doubt, have done the man some serious injury but for the timely interposition of Carl.

"O, you're a good boy, Carl!" cried Dan, in an exstasy of terror and grat.i.tude. "You know they druv me to it, don't ye? You know I wouldn't have gone fur to do it no how, if 't hadn't been to save my life. And as fur rubbing on the tar, I know'd they'd rub harder 'n I did; so I took holt, if only to do it more soft and gentle-like."

Carl testified to Dan's apparent unwillingness to partic.i.p.ate in the outrage; and Stackridge, finding that nothing more could be got out of the terror-stricken wretch, flung him off in great rage and disgust.

"We must find what they have done with Hapgood," he said. "We're losing time here. We'll go to his boarding-place first."

As Pepperill fell backwards upon some stones, and lay there helplessly, Carl ran to him to learn if he was hurt.

"Wal, I be hurt some," murmured Dan; "a good deal in my back, and a durned sight more in my feelin's. As if I wan't sufferin' a'ready the pangs of death--wus'n death!--a thinkin' about the master, and what's been done to him, arter he'd been so kind to me--and thinkin' he'd think I'm the ongratefulest cuss out of the bad place!--and then to have it all laid on to me by Stackridge and the rest! that's the stun that hurts me wust of any!"

Carl thought, if that was all, he could not a.s.sist him much; and he ran on after the men, leaving Pepperill snivelling like a whipped schoolboy on the stones.

Penn's landlady, the worthy Mrs. Sprowl, lived in a lonesome house that stood far back in the fields, at least a dozen rods from the road. She was a widow, whose daughters were either married or dead, and whose only son was a rover, having been guilty of some crime that rendered it unsafe for him to visit his bereaved parent. Penn had chosen her house for his home, partly because she needed some such a.s.sistance in gaining a living, but chiefly, I think, because she did not own slaves. The other inmates of her solitary abode were two large, ferocious dogs, which she kept for the sake of their company and protection.

But this night the house looked as if forsaken even by these. It was utterly dark and silent. When Stackridge shook the door, however, the illusion was dispelled by two fierce growls that resounded within.

"h.e.l.lo! Mrs. Sprowl!" shouted the farmer, shaking the door again, and knocking violently. "Let me in!"

At that the growling broke into savage barks, which made Stackridge lay his hand on the revolver Carl had returned to him. A window was then cautiously opened, and a bit of night-cap exposed.

"If it's you agin," said a shrill feminine voice, "I warn you to be gone! If you think I can't set the dogs on to you, because you've slep'

in my house so long, you're very much mistaken. They'll tear you as they would a pa'tridge! Go away, go away, I tell ye; you've been the ruin of me, and I ain't a-going to resk my life a-harboring of you any longer."

"Mrs. Sprowl!" answered the stern voice of the farmer.

"Dear me! ain't it the schoolmaster?" cried the astonished lady. "I thought it was him come back agin to force his way into my house, after I've twice forbid him!"

"Why forbid him?"

"Is it you, Mr. Stackridge? Then I'll be free, and tell ye. I've been informed he's a dangerous man. I've been warned to shet my doors agin'

him, if I wouldn't have my house pulled down on to my head."

"Who warned you?"

"Silas Ropes, this very night. He come to me, and says, says he, 'We've gin your abolition boarder a coat, which you must charge to his account;' for you see," added the head at the window, pathetically, "they took the bed he has slep' on, right out of my house, and I don't s'pose I shall see ary feather of that bed ever agin! live goose's feathers they was too! and a poor lone widder that could ill afford it!"

"Where is the master?"

"Wal, after Ropes and his friends was gone, he comes too, an awful lookin' object as ever you see! 'Mrs. Sprowl,' says he, 'don't be scared; it's only me; won't ye let me in?' for ye see, I'd shet the house agin' him in season, detarmined so dangerous a character should never darken my doors agin."

"And he was naked!"

"I 'spose he was, all but the feathers, and suthin' or other he seemed to have flung over him."

"Such a night as this!" exclaimed Stackridge. "You're a heartless jade, Mrs. Sprowl!--I don't wonder the fellow hates slavery," he muttered to himself, "when it makes ruffians of the men and monsters even of the women!--Which way did he go?"

"That's more'n I can tell!" answered the lady, sharply. "It's none o' my business where he goes, if he don't come here! That I won't have, call me what names you please!" And she shut the window.

"Hang the critter! after all Hapgood has done for her!" said the indignant Stackridge,--for it was well-known that she was indebted to the gentle and generous Penn for many benefits. "But it's no use to stand here. We'll go to my house, men,--may be he's there."

V.

_CARL AND HIS FRIENDS._

Carl Minnevich was the son of a German, who, in company with a brother, had come to America a few years before, and settled in Tennessee. There the Minneviches purchased a farm, and were beginning to prosper in their new home, when Carl's father suddenly died. The boy had lost his mother on the voyage to America. He was now an orphan, destined to experience all the humiliation, dependence, and wrong, which ever an orphan knew.

Immediately the sole proprietors.h.i.+p of the farm, which had been bought by both, was a.s.sumed by the surviving brother. This man had a selfish, ill-tempered wife, and a family of great boys. Minnevich himself was naturally a good, honest man; but Frau Minnevich wanted the entire property for her own children, hated Carl because he was in the way, and treated him with cruelty. His big cousins followed their mother's example, and bullied him. How to obtain protection or redress he knew not. He was a stranger, speaking a strange tongue, in the land of his father's adoption. Ah, how often then did he think of the happy fatherland, before that luckless voyage was undertaken, when he still had his mother, and his friends, and all his little playfellows, whom he could never see more!

So matters went on for a year or two, until the boy's grievances grew intolerable, and he one day took it into his head to please Frau Minnevich for once in his life, if never again. In the night time he made up a little bundle of his clothes, threw it out of the window, got out himself after it, climbed down upon the roof of the shed, jumped to the ground, and trudged away in the early morning starlight, a wanderer.

It has been necessary to touch upon this point in Carl's history, in order to explain why it was he ever afterwards felt such deep grat.i.tude towards those who befriended him in the hour of his need.

For many days and nights he wandered among the hills of Tennessee, looking in vain for work, and begging his bread. Sometimes he almost wished himself a slave-boy, for then he would have had a home at least, if only a wretched cabin, and friends, if only negroes,--those oppressed, beaten, bought-and-sold, yet patient and cheerful people, whose lot seemed, after all, so much happier than his own. Carl had a large, warm heart, and he longed with infinite longing for somebody to love him and treat him kindly.

At last, as he was sitting one cold evening by the road-side, weary, hungry, despondent, not knowing where he was to find his supper, and seeing nothing else for him to do but to lie down under some bush, there to s.h.i.+ver and starve till morning, a voice of unwonted kindness accosted him.