Our Southern Highlanders Part 7

"Boys, them dogs' eyes shined like new money. Coaly fit agin, all right, and got his tail bit. The bear div down into a sink-hole with the dogs a-top o' him. Soon's I could shoot without hittin' a dog, I let him have it. Thought I'd shot him through the head, but he fit on. Then I jumped down into the sink and kicked him loose from the dogs, or he'd a-killed Coaly. Waal, sir, he wa'n't hurt a bit--the ball jest glanced off his head. He riz an' knocked me down with his left paw, an' walked right over me, an' lit up the ridge. The dogs treed him in a minute. I went to shoot up at him, but my new hulls [cartridges] fit loose in this old chamber and this one drap [dropped] out, so the gun stuck. Had to git my knife out and fix hit. Then the dad-burned gun wouldn't stand roostered [c.o.c.ked]; the feather-spring had jumped out o' place. But I held back with my thumb, and killed him anyhow.

"Fellers," he added feelingly, "I wish t' my legs growed hind-side-fust."

"_What_ fer?"

"So 's 't I wouldn't bark my shins!"

"Bears," remarked John, "is all left-handed. Ever note that? Hit's the left paw you wanter look out fer. He'd a-knocked somethin' out o' yer head if there'd been much in it, Doc."

"Funny thing, but hit's true," declared Bill, "that a bear allers dies flat on his back, onless he's trapped."

"So do men," said "Doc" grimly; "men who've been shot in battle. You go along a battlefield, right atter the action, and you'll find most o' the dead faces pintin' to the sky."

"Bears is almost human, anyhow. A skinned bear looks like a great big-bodied man with long arms and stumpy legs."

I did not relish this turn of the conversation, for we had two bears to skin immediately. The one that had been hung up over night was frozen solid, so I photographed her standing on her legs, as in life. When it came to skinning this beast the job was a mean one; a fellow had to drop out now and then to warm his fingers.

The mountaineers have an odd way of sharing the spoils of the chase.

They call it "stoking the meat," a use of the word _stoke_ that I have never heard elsewhere. The hide is sold, and the proceeds divided equally among the hunters, but the meat is cut up into as many pieces as there are partners in the chase; then one man goes indoors or behind a tree, and somebody at the carca.s.s, laying his hand on a portion, calls out: "Whose piece is this?"

"Granville Calhoun's," cries the hidden man, who cannot see it.

"Whose is this?"

"Bill Cope's."

And so on down the line. Everybody gets what chance determines for him, and there can be no charges of unfairness.

It turned very cold that night. The last thing I heard was Matt Hyde protesting to the hunchback:

"Durn you, Bill Cope, you're so cussed crooked a man cain't lay cluss enough to you to keep warm!"

Once when I awoke in the night the beech trees were cracking like rifle-shots from the intense frost.

Next morning John announced that we were going to get another bear.

"Night afore last," he said, "Bill dremp that he seed a lot o' fat meat layin' on the table; an' it done come true. Last night I dremp me one that never was knowed to fail yet. Now you see!"

It did not look like it by evening. We all worked hard and endured much--standers as well as drivers--but not a rifle had spoken up to the time when, from my far-off stand, I yearned for a hot supper.

Away down in the rear I heard the snort of a locomotive, one of those cog-wheel affairs that are specially built for mountain climbing. With a steam-loader and three camps of a hundred men each, it was despoiling the Tennessee forest. Slowly, but inexorably, a leviathan was crawling into the wilderness and was soon to consume it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "....Powerful steep and Laurely...."]

"All this," I apostrophized, "shall be swept away, tree and plant, beast and fish. Fire will blacken the earth; flood will swallow and spew forth the soil. The simple-hearted native men and women will scatter and disappear. In their stead will come slaves speaking strange tongues, to toil in the darkness under the rocks. Soot will arise, and foul gases; the streams will run murky death. Let me not see it! No; I will

"'... Get me to some far-off land Where higher mountains under heaven stand ...

Where other thunders roll amid the hills, Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills With other strains through other-shapen boughs.'"

Wearily I plodded back to camp. No one had arrived but "Doc." The old man had been thumped rather severely in yesterday's scrimmage, but complained only of "a touch o' rheumatiz." Just how this disease had left his clothes in tatters he did not explain.

It was late when Matt and Granville came in. The crimson and yellow of sunset had turned to a faultless turquoise, and this to a violet afterglow; then suddenly night rose from the valleys and enveloped us.

About nine o'clock I went out on the Little Chestnut Bald and fired signals, but there was no answer. The last we had known of the drivers was that they had been beyond Thunderhead, six miles of hard travel to the westward. There was fog on the mountain. We did some uneasy speculating. Then Granville and Matt took the lantern and set out for Briar k.n.o.b. "Doc" was too stiff for travel, and I, being at that time a stranger in the Smokies, would be of no use hunting amid clouds and darkness. "Doc" and I pa.s.sed a dreary three hours. Finally, at midnight, my shots were answered, and soon the dogs came limping in. Dred had been severely bitten in the shoulders and Rock in the head. Coaly was b.l.o.o.d.y about the mouth, where his first day's wound had reopened. Then came the four men, empty-handed, it seemed, until John slapped a bear's "melt"

(spleen) upon the table. He limped from a bruised hip.

"That bear outsharped us and went around all o' you-uns. We follered him clar over to the Spencer Place, and then he doubled and come back on the fur side o' the ridge. He crossed through the laurel on the Devil's Court House and tuk down an almighty steep place. It was plumb night by that time. I fell over a rock clift twenty feet down, and if 't hadn't been for the laurel I'd a-bruk some bones. I landed right in the middle of them, bear and dogs, fightin' like gamec.o.c.ks. The bear clim a tree.

Bill sung out 'Is it fur down thar?' and I said 'Purty fur.' 'Waal, I'm a-comin',' says he; and with that he grabbed a laurel to swing hisself down by, but the stem bruk, and down he come suddent, to jine the music.

Hit was so dark I couldn't see my gun barrel, and we wuz all tangled up in greenbriers as thick as ploughlines. I had to fire twiste afore he tumbled. Then Matt an' Granville come. The four of us tuk turn-about crawlin' up out o' thar with the bear on our back. Only one man could handle him at a time--and he'll go a good two hunderd, that bear. We gutted him, and left him near the top, to fotch in the mornin'. Fellers, I'm bodaciously tired out. This is the time I'd give half what I'm worth for a gallon o' liquor--and I'd promise the rest!"

"You'd orter see what Coaly did to that varmint," said Bill. "He bit a hole under the fore leg, through hide and ha'r, clar into the holler, so t' you can stick your hand in and seize the bear's heart."

"John, what was that dream of yours?"

"I dremp I stole a feller's overcoat. Now d'ye see? That means a bear's hide."

Coaly, three days ago, had been an inconsequential pup; but now he looked up into my eyes with the calm dignity that no fool or braggart can a.s.sume. He had been knighted. As he licked his wounds he was proud of them. "Scars of battle, sir. You may have your swagger ribbons and prize collars in the New York dog show, but _this_ for me!"

Poor Coaly! after two more years of valiant service, he was to meet an evil fortune. In connection with it I will relate a queer coincidence:

Two years after this hunt, a friend and I spent three summer months in this same old cabin on top of Smoky. When Andy had to return North he left with me, for sale, a .30-30 carbine, as he had more guns than he needed. I showed this carbine to Quill Rose, and the old hunter said: "I don't like them power-guns; you could shoot clar through a bear and kill your dog on the other side." The next day I sold the weapon to Granville Calhoun. Within a short time, word came from Granville's father that "Old Reelfoot" was despoiling his orchard. This Reelfoot was a large bear whose cunning had defied our best hunters for five or six years. He got his name from the fact that he "reeled" or twisted his hind feet in walking, as some horses do, leaving a peculiar track. This seems rather common among old bears, for I have known of several "reelfoots" in other, and widely separated, regions.

Cable and his dogs were sent for. A drive was made, and the bear was actually caught within a few rods of old Mr. Calhoun's stable. His teeth were worn to the gums, and, as he could no longer kill hogs, he had come down to an apple diet. He was large-framed, but very poor. The only hunters on the spot were Granville, with the .30-30, and a northern lumberman named Hastings, with a Luger carbine. After two or three shots had wounded the bear, he rose on his hind feet and made for Granville. A .30-30 bullet went clear through the beast at the very instant that Coaly, who was unseen, jumped up on the log behind it, and the missile gave both animals their death wound.

CHAPTER V

MOONSHINE LAND

I was hunting alone in the mountains, and exploring ground that was new to me. About noon, while descending from a high ridge into a creek valley, to get some water, I became enmeshed in a rhododendron "slick,"

and, to some extent, lost my bearings.

After floundering about for an hour or two, I suddenly came out upon a little clearing. Giant hemlocks, girdled and gaunt, rose from a steep cornfield of five acres, beyond which loomed the primeval forest of the Great Smoky Mountains. Squat in the foreground sat one of the rudest log huts I had ever seen, a tiny one-room shack, without window, cellar, or loft, and without a sawed board showing in its construction. A thin curl of smoke rose from one end of the cabin, not from a chimney, but from a mere semi-circle of stones piled four feet high around a hole cut through the log wall. The stones of this fireplace were not even plastered together with mud, nor had the builder ever intended to raise the pile as high as the roof to guard his premises against the imminent risk of fire. Two low doors of riven boards stood wide open, opposite each other. These, helped by wide crevices between the unc.h.i.n.ked logs, served to let in some sunlight, and quite too much of the raw November air. The surroundings were squalid and filthy beyond anything I had hitherto witnessed in the mountains. As I approached, wading ankle-deep in muck that reached to the doorsill, two pigs scampered out through the opposite door.

Within the hut I found only a slip of a girl, rocking a baby almost as big as herself, and trying to knit a sock at the same time. She was toasting her bare toes before the fire, and crooning in a weird minor some mountain ditty that may have been centuries old.

I shivered as I looked at this midget, comparing her only garment, a torn calico dress, with my own stout hunter's garb that seemed none too warm for such a day as this.

Knowing that the sudden appearance of a stranger would startle the girl, I chose the quickest way to rea.s.sure her by saluting in the vernacular:

"Howdy?"