第 16 页

Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but

I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a

little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died,

because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body

could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that

with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She

was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took

sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to

live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a

picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a

bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and

looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had

two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front,

and two more reaching up towards the moon--and the idea was to see which

pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I

was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept

this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her

birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a

little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice

sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery,

seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste

obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the

Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.

It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name

of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad

hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad

hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not

these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach

troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul

did from this cold world fly By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was

gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was

fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck

said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to

stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't

find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down

another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about

anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.

Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on

hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes.

The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the

undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and

then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was

Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but

she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time

I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out

her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been

aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that

family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between

us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was

alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some

about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two

myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's

room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked

to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old

lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers,

and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on

the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines

all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little

old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever

so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and

play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was

plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was

whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and

floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day,

and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better. And

warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!

CHAPTER XVIII.

COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over;

and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's

worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said,

and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town;

and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a

mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a

darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean

shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind

of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy

eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they

seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His

forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his

shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put

on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so

white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue

tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a

silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit,

and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be--you could feel

that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it

was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole,

and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you

wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was

afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners

--everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have

him around, too; he was sunshine most always--I mean he made it seem

like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for

half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again

for a week.

When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up

out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again

till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the

decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he

held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then

they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and THEY bowed

the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all

three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the

mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give

it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.

Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad

shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They

dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and

wore broad Panama hats.

Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud

and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but

when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like

her father. She was beautiful.

So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was

gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.

Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too. My nigger

had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do

anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.

This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more

--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.

The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.

Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or

fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings

round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods

daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly

kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a

handsome lot of quality, I tell you.

There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families

--mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and well

born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons

and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two

mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our

folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses.

One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse

coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:

"Quick! Jump for the woods!"

We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty

soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse

easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I

had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's

gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his head. He

grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we

didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn't

thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen

Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come--to

get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see. We never stopped running till

we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure,

mainly, I judged--then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says,

kind of gentle:

"I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into

the road, my boy?"

"The Shepherdsons don't, father. They always take advantage."

Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling

his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young

men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale,

but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt.

Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by

ourselves, I says:

"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"

"Well, I bet I did."

"What did he do to you?"

"Him? He never done nothing to me."

"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"

"Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud."

"What's a feud?"

"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"

"Never heard of it before--tell me about it."

"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another

man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the

other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS

chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more

feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."

"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"

"Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along

there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle

it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man

that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody

would."

"What was the trouble about, Buck?--land?"

"I reckon maybe--I don't know."

"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?"

"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."

"Don't anybody know?"

"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they

don't know now what the row was about in the first place."

"Has there been many killed, Buck?"

"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's

got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much,

anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once

or twice."

"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?"

"Yes; we got one and they got one. 'Bout three months ago my cousin Bud,

fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the

river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness,

and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees

old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and

his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking

to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they had it, nip and

tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so at