Among the Pines Part 27

"Dunno, sar; jess as you say."

"I think you'd better," returned the Colonel.

"Yas, ma.s.sa," and the darky left the apartment.

The Colonel shortly rose, and bade me "good-night." I continued reading till the clock struck eleven, when I laid the book aside and went to my room.

I lodged, as I have said before, on the first floor, and was obliged to pa.s.s by the overseer's apartment in going to mine. Wrapped in his blanket, and stretched at full length on the ground, Jim lay there, fast asleep. I pa.s.sed on, thinking of the wisdom of placing a tired negro on guard over an acute and desperate Yankee.

I rose in the morning with the sun, and had partly donned my clothing, when I heard a loud uproar in the hall. Opening my door, I saw Jim pounding vehemently at the Colonel's room, and looking as pale as is possible with a person of his complexion.

"What the d--l is the matter?" asked his master, who now, partly dressed, stepped into the hall.

"Moye hab gone, sar--he'm gone and took Firefly (my host's five-thousand-dollar thorough-bred) wid him."

For a moment the Colonel stood stupified; then, his face turning to a cold, clayey white, he seized the black by the throat, and hurled him to the floor. With his thick boot raised, he seemed about to dash out the man's brains with its ironed heel, when, on the instant, the octoroon woman rushed, in her night-clothes, from his room, and, with desperate energy, pushed him aside, exclaiming: "What would you do? Remember WHO HE IS!"

The negro rose, and the Colonel, without a word, pa.s.sed into his own apartment.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PURSUIT.

I sauntered out, after the events recorded in the last chapter, to inhale the fresh air of the morning. A slight rain had fallen during the night, and it still moistened the dead leaves which carpeted the woods, making an extended walk out of the question; so, seating myself on the trunk of a fallen tree, in the vicinity of the house, I awaited the hour for breakfast. I had not remained there long before I heard the voices of my host and Madam P---- on the front piazza:

"I tell you, Alice, I cannot--must not do it. If I overlook this, the discipline of the plantation is at an end."

"Do what you please with him when you return," replied the lady, "but do not chain him up, and leave me, at such a time, alone. You know Jim is the only one I can depend on."

"Well, have your own way. You know, my darling, I would not cause you a moment's uneasiness, but I must follow up this d----d Moye."

I was seated where I could hear, though I could not see the speakers, but it was evident from the tone of the last remark, that an action accompanied it quite as tender as the words. Being unwilling to overhear more of a private conversation, I rose and approached them.

"Ah! my dear fellow," said the Colonel, on perceiving me, "are you stirring so early? I was about to send to your room to ask if you'll go with me up the country. My d----d overseer has got away, and I must follow him at once."

"I'll go with pleasure," I replied. "Which way do you think Moye has gone?"

"The shortest cut to the railroad, probably; but old Caesar will track him."

A servant then announced breakfast--an early one having been prepared.

We hurried through the meal with all speed, and the other preparations being soon over, were in twenty minutes in our saddles, and ready for the journey. The mulatto coachman, with a third horse, was at the door, ready to accompany us. As we mounted, the Colonel said to him:

"Go and call Sam, the driver."

The darky soon returned with the heavy, ugly-visaged black who had been whipped, by Madam P----'s order, the day before.

"Sam," said his master, "I shall be gone some days, and I leave the field-work in your hands. Let me have a good account of you when I return."

"Yas, ma.s.sa, you shill dat," replied the negro.

"Put Jule--Sam's Jule--into the woods, and see that she does full tasks," continued the Colonel.

"Haint she wanted 'mong de nusses, ma.s.sa?"

"Put some one else there--give her field-work; she needs it."

On large plantations the young children of the field-women are left with them only at night, and are herded together during the day, in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for outdoor labor.

Madam P----, who was waiting on the piazza to see us off, seemed about to remonstrate against this arrangement, but she hesitated a moment, and in that moment we had bidden her "Good-bye," and galloped away.

We were soon at the cabin of the negro-hunter, and the coachman, dismounting, called him out.

"Hurry up, hurry up," said the Colonel, as Sandy appeared, "we haven't a moment to spare."

"Jest so--jest so, Cunnel; I'll jine ye in a jiffin," replied he of the reddish extremities.

Emerging from the shanty with provoking deliberation--the impatience of my host had infected me--the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, while his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-encrusted children, followed close at his heels, the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was the noise they made, or their frightful aspect, I know not, but the horse, a spirited animal, took fright on their appearance, and nearly broke away from the negro, who was holding him. Seeing this, the Colonel said:

"Clear out, you young scare-crows. Into the house with you."

"They arn't no more scare-crows than yourn, Cunnel J----," said the mother, in a decidedly belligerent tone. "You may 'buse my old man--he kin stand it--but ye shan't blackguard my young 'uns!"

The Colonel laughed, and was about to make a good-natured reply, when Sandy yelled out:

"Gwo enter the house and shet up, ye---- ----."

With this affectionate farewell, he turned his horse and led the way up the road.

The dog, who was a short distance in advance, soon gave a piercing howl, and started off at the speed of a reindeer. He had struck the trail, and urging our horses to their fastest speed, we followed.

We were all well mounted, but the mare the Colonel had given me was a magnificent animal, as fleet as the wind, and with a gait so easy that her back seemed a rocking-chair. Saddle-horses at the South are trained to the gallop--Southern riders not deeming it necessary that one's breakfast should be churned into a Dutch cheese by a trotting nag, in order that he may pa.s.s for a horseman.

We had ridden on at a perfect break-neck pace for half an hour, when the Colonel shouted to our companion:

"Sandy, call the dog in; the horses wont last ten miles at this gait--we've a long ride before us."

The dirt-eater did as he was bidden, and we soon settled into a gentle gallop.

We had pa.s.sed through a dense forest of pines, but were emerging into a "bottom country," where some of the finest deciduous trees--then brown and leafless, but bearing promise of the opening beauty of spring--reared, along with the unfading evergreen, their tall stems in the air. The live-oak, the sycamore, the Spanish mulberry, the holly, and the persimmon--gaily festooned with wreaths of the white and yellow jessamine, the woodbine and the cypress-moss, and bearing here and there a bouquet of the mistletoe, with its deep green and glossy leaves upturned to the sun--flung their broad arms over the road, forming an archway grander and more beautiful than any the hand of man ever wove for the greatest hero the world has worshipped.

The woods were free from underbrush, and a coa.r.s.e, wiry gra.s.s, unfit for fodder, and scattered through them in detached patches, was the only vegetation visible. The ground was mainly covered with the leaves and burrs of the pine.

We pa.s.sed great numbers of swine, feeding on these burrs, and now and then a horned animal browsing on the cypress-moss where it hung low on the trees. I observed that nearly all the swine were marked, though they seemed too wild to have ever seen an owner, or a human habitation. They were a long, lean, slab-sided race, with legs and shoulders like deer, and bearing no sort of resemblance to the ordinary hog, except in the snout, and that feature was so much longer and sharper than the nose of the Northern swine, that I doubt if Aga.s.siz would cla.s.s the two as one species. However, they have their uses--they make excellent bacon, and are "death on snakes." Ireland itself is not more free from the serpentine race than are the districts frequented by these long-nosed quadrupeds.