Read Ebook: The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields by Hackley Sarah Bell

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Ebook has 621 lines and 30242 words, and 13 pages

Miss Nancy's face was still averted, but her ears turned crimson.

"I dunno what we've done to him!" she exclaimed.

"Well, he's a talkin' awful about you and your Pa anyway. He tuck you and him both up last night, and throwed off on you scandalous. I said to myse'f when he wuz a rantin', 'pore Miss Nancy, he hates her, the Lord goodness!' He jest called you ever'theng his tongue could lay to. Says you are a reg'lar rip-tearer, and fer all your pa jest sets and studies up meanness, he can't turn a wheel to you, when you git on one them highs o' your'n. He said ef your Ma'd 'a' saw fit to send you to the ejut-house when you wuz a child, and 'a' never 'a' brung you away 'tel you wuz a corpse, the world would 'a' had a little somethin' to be thankful fer in his opinion.

"I spoke up and says: 'Mr. Lindsay, you know you don't mean them thengs! And he went on and said: 'Miss Lucy is as harmless as a rabbit, and she's got the disposition of a forgivin' angel, but that old Nancy is as bitter as quineirn and as ill as a copperhead! She's the devil's half-sister, ef not more nigh kin.'

"And he said you jest staid thar all the time, a reg'lar cock o' the walk, and quarreled at Miss Lucy, and she had to mind you er you'd take the place! And he said Miss Lucy'd fattened ever' little nigger in town, tryin' to git a boy to stay to do your all's turns, and the reason none wouldn't stay, you made the time so hot fer 'em, they couldn't stand hit!

Here there was a complete annihilation of the unoffending chickweed.

"He 'lowed," manufactured Mrs. Doggett, "that you wuz as ugly as the devil before day, and as old-lookin' as I dunno what: said fer all you wore big leather gloves night and day, your hands wuz as yaller as old bacon rind, and your mouth looked like a hollyhock, and your eyes like they wuz bound 'round with red thread!

"I says, 'Mr. Lindsay, I'd hush!' But he went on: 'She's the tightest human too, I ever knowed,--one o' them that'd skin a flea fer hit's hide and taller, and then dry the meat fer the dogs!' Said he happened in at your Pa's once when he wuz a workin' at Mr. Willises, and you had that little fool nigger Lish down on the kitchen floor, a lickin' up a little gob o' molasses he'd spilt, to save it!"

"I never thought of sech a theng!" Miss Nancy burst out.

Miss Nancy's face was furiously flushed, and her eyes gleamed steely.

"Did he tell any more lies on me?" she demanded, when Mrs. Doggett paused for breath.

"And he said after all he'd done fer you all, last winter, when he come back on a friendly visit, he wuz ordered off the place. Then he lit out on your Pa, and I never heerd the like in my life.

"'Old Milton Jeemes,' he says, 'sets up to the world to be mighty religious, but he hain't got no Christianity, jest hypocrites before company. He's about as contrary and overbearin' as people gits to be in this world, a hard old party, a kind of a dog-man.'

"I says, 'Mr. Lindsay, somethin'll be sent on you fer that, and don't you fergit hit!' And I thought to myse'f ef I hated anybody like that, I'd have more respect'n to be a tryin' to talk to their daughter!"

"Now wouldn't you?" fleered Miss Nancy: "wouldn't you?"

"And talkin' about the brazen impudence o' men, he said: 'Ef I wuz to take a notion to Miss Lucy, they wouldn't be nothin' in my way thar--the old man couldn't keep her from havin' me--but I hain't tuck the notion yit. As fer old Nance--'" Mrs. Doggett had reached the climax of her narration, "'she'd jump at the chance o' me! Jest see how she does that old bachelor cousin of Archy Evans that lives there. He comes to see old man Jeemes sometimes, and you ort to see her fly about in her Sunday dress, a sayin', "Now Mr. Whitley," jest as fine as a bird twitterin'. She thenks he's got money.'"

Miss Nancy could endure no more.

"I've got to go!" she announced in a freezing voice, as she stalked off, leaving all farewells unsaid.

Mrs. Doggett looked after her with a pleased expression.

"Ef ever Miss Lucy Jeemes gits sight o' Mr. Lindsay ag'in," she said happily to herself, "hit'll be when Miss Nancy is a corpse, not before!"

"MORE NIGHT RIDERS"

"Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous."

One afternoon in the last week of March, Mr. Doggett came into his yard with six mysterious envelopes in his hand. Mrs. Doggett pounced curiously upon them.

"Diamont dyes! What you gona color with all them, Eph? You must be a thenkin' o' startin' up one them dyin' fact'rys!"

Mr. Doggett grinned. "Them's Mr. Castle's pertection ag'in night riders, Ann! He had the laugh on me when the boys skeered me, week afore last, and now I got the laugh on him a leetle. He says, 'Doggett, hit looks so bad, them beeg white beds a layin' right thar alongside the road. Ef they wuz colored now, they wouldn't show nigh so plain!'

"He 'lowed too, he didn't no ways expect no night riders in this County, on account o' this not bein' a regular terbaccer County, and the Equity not havin' tuck much holt here, but he'd feel safeter, ef them canvases wuz dyed! Yes, sir, old lady, he's skeered some. Hit tickled me to hear him talk, and I brung the dye along to please him, although I hain't no notion thar's any need o' usin' hit.

Mr. Lindsay nodded. "I jest got a letter from my cousin over in Woodford, tellin' about the night ridin' there. She says the people there thenks the terbaccer trust is hirin' a good many tough fellers to burn barns,--and a layin' hit on the Equity, a tryin' to destroy the Equity's credit. He says the people think the trust men actually destroyed some of their own ware-houses, jest to discredit the Equity."

"Yes, sir," Mr. Doggett agreed, "and a heap o' the mischeef is a bein' done by mean fellers that sees a chance to git in some spite work on other fellers they are enemies to, without bein' cotched up with, like hit wuz in time o' the war, when a heap o' devilment they never thought o' doin', wuz laid on the soldiers! Hain't that so, Mr. Lindsay? You remember them times, don't you?"

Mr. Lindsay signified that he did.

"Mr. Brock says that he don't believe they're a goin' to tech this County," broke in Mrs. Doggett: "he says ef they do though, they'll have to whoop him about three times a day before he'll quit! And, speakin' o' angels,"--a look of intense pleasure enveloped Mrs. Doggett: "thar comes Mr. Brock, now. And what's he fetchin'? Hit's a newspaper, hain't hit, Eph?"

Mr. Brock proved the bearer of bad news. A paragraph in a New York paper he had gotten at the Castle house, stated that in Bracken County, Kentucky, a tobacco planter had killed two negroes, and shot off both arms of a white man who he had caught scraping his plant beds. The name of the white man was given as Hancock Slemp, and the paper further stated that he was in a precarious condition. Hancock Slemp was no other than Mr. Doggett's brother-in-law, his sister's husband.

Mrs. Doggett was much affected by the news, but Mr. Doggett suggested that it might not be true.

Mr. Brock did not know, but gave it as his opinion that it was true.

Mrs. Doggett had made a fire in her stove, and cut a strip of bacon, before she thought to ask, "How do people travel 'thout money, Eph?"

Mr. Doggett's jaw fell. "I plumb fergot I never had nothin' left from the terbaccer! And now, what am I to do? I sorter hate to ask Mr. Castle to advance me any now, this early, on another crop that I might not git to raise."

Mr. Brock looked out of the window in a sudden strong interest in a bird in a willow on the creek's bank, so that Mr. Doggett's look of appeal was lost to him. Mr. Lindsay unfolded a worn leather pocket-book.

"How much will your 'round trip ticket come to, Uncle Eph? I guess I can fix you up."

Within twenty minutes from the time of the reception of Mr. Brock's ill tidings, Big Money was making quick application of his hoofs to the turnpike leading to the railroad station from which Mr. Doggett was to take the train.

Rain set in on the morning after Mr. Doggett's departure on his visit of consolation, and for a week, fell heavily at intervals, precluding all possibility of plowing. In the afternoon sunshine of the eighth day, Mr. Doggett returned, and walked home from the station, his face rivalling the sun in its good cheer.

Crossing a rye field, he came suddenly upon Mr. Lindsay, tacking slats upon a strip of wire fencing,--an accommodation job, he had taken for the man for whom he had been stripping tobacco.

"I thought you had gone off for good, Uncle Eph," he greeted Mr. Doggett, as warm, and blowing with exercise, his shoes and the bottoms of his Sunday pantaloons muddy from road splashes, Mr. Doggett seated himself on a weather-beaten "drag," lying alongside the fence.

"How's your sister's man got?"

"He wuz as well as common when I left. He brung me to the train," answered Mr. Doggett.

"You don't say!" Mr. Lindsay dropped his hammer. "I 'lowed he'd be dead of blood poison by now, maybe, with his arms shot off that a way."

Mr. Doggett grinned blithely. "He's all thar, Mr. Lindsay! Hain't nary bit o' him missin', so fur as I could see, from his scelp lock, clean down to his frost-bit toe-nail. Yes, sir, he's all thar. You see, he wuzn't never shot at, let alone bein' hit. Hit wuz all a made-up tale!

"Hancock says that the Equity men thar says that Terbaccer Company that buys all our terbaccer, jest hires some sassy, no-count fellers that hain't easy onless they're a lyin', to write made-up news. Yes, sir, them's the fellers that's a puttin' in more'n three thirds o' the killin's and barn-burnin's.

"Hancock says him and them fellers thar thenks like him, jest aims to sp'ile the seed beds, and do a little skeerin', so the other fellers that is so shortsighted, er stubborn, er selfish, they can't see the benefit o' cuttin' out a crop, won't git to raise none."

"I reckon Hancock and the rest of 'em ain't a livin' very high these days," observed Mr. Lindsay.

"No, sir, they hain't," Mr. Doggett agreed. "Hancock and most the raisers in that County is jest got a little piece o' their own ground but they hain't got much else. Hancock never had no glass in his winders,--jest had a slidin' board, and he never had no great thengs to eat while I wuz thar. He says him and the rest of the County has been beat down to cornbread and greens, but they are willin' to live on that, ef hit'll holp any, ontel the trust's holt on 'em is broke. Yes, sir.

"They're a goin' to have a parade some time this spreng, at Augusty, to show they're a holdin' out, and Hancock, he says they're a goin' to carry flags with 'Very little money, but plenty of cornbread and greens!' writ on 'em.

"Cornely, Hancock's girl, says she's a goin' to be in that parade ef she has to go barefooted. She's been a wearin' a pair o' Hancock's old shoes all winter, but they're about et into the uppers now! Hit's my belief, they're plumb right, Mr. Lindsay, a tryin' to keep the crop down this year.

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