Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, December 1905

“It ’u’d been all right, an’ jes’ a joke, ef dey hadn’t stirred up ole Voodoo Jake, de witch doctor. He ’lowed de babies was all right but dey had been voodooed an’ de culler changed, an’ he’d hafter rub ’em all wid de ile ob a black cat killed in de full moon on de grabe ob a man dat hab been hung fur murder, an’ dey’d be all right. A nigger jes’ nachu’lly b’leeves all dis, ’specially all dem dat had de yaller babies an’ not one on ’em ’ud gin ’em up.

“An’ dat’s hu’cum I got a yaller offspring in my family ter-day, I am sorry ter say. But arter awhile it got sorter mernoternous, an’ I thort I’d lak ter git my own black baby back, an’ I tole ole Marster whut I done, an’ sum of de niggers raised sech a stir dat de white folks hilt a meetin’ an’ did git sum on ’em back ag’in, but dey’s jes’ about ha’f of ’em now in dat community dat don’t kno’ who dey daddies is. But dat’s nachul, you kno’. But Dinah hed got stuck on de yaller baby, an’ de preacher’s wife on de black one, an’ tho’ I kicked about it I c’u’dn’t do nuffin’. I tole eb’rybody how I dun it fur a joke, but dey all sed I wus sech a liar dey wouldn’t b’leeve me. Ole Marster laff, an’ say he hated to swap off a good black colt for a yaller one, but ef it suited de wimmin folks it suited him, an’ so dar I was.

“Wal, dey soon found I was right, for when de boys growed up a leetle, an’ big ’nuff fur dey pedergree to sho’ up, whut you’ reckin my black un dun ’fore he ten yeahs ole? De preacher tuck ’im ter campmeetin’ an’ he got up a mule race on de outside an’ broke up his daddy’s campmeetin’ one day by ridin’ ole Marster’s gray mule cl’ar over a bunch of mourners an’ spite of punishment an’ pra’ars arter dat, he tuck to ole Marster’s stable an’ dey ain’t nurver got him out of it yit.

“An’ dat yaller dog I got, he warn’t long showin’ de mettle er his pasture an’ de proof er his pedergree,” and the old man sighed and looked troubled.

“How?” I asked.

“Boss,” he said sadly, “befo’ he was ten yeahs ole he stole eb’ry yaller legged chicken in de na’borhood.”

In the Open

A CHRISTMAS GOOSE HUNT.

The graceful and beautiful wild goose that nests in the Canadian and Northern lakes and marshes, makes his winter home in Tennessee. I think it is the winter wheat that attracts him, as he passes over us, en route to Florida, for wheat is sown in October in Tennessee and by Christmas it is as green as the marsh grasses he left behind in Canada. I do not blame the wild goose for stopping. He has flown for many weary days and nights, over cold and lifeless lands; over mountains brown and sere; over woodlands stripped of leaves and bare and uninviting. All day long the “konk,” “konk” of the leader sounds from the point of the triangle that cuts its ceaseless way through the thin, cold air. Night after night they rest on frozen pond or reedy lake. But one day the air grows sweet and balmy; they look below them at a landscape, which, at their altitude, looks like a mighty lake whose waves are fields of green wheat, broken by islands of dark green hills. It is the Basin of Tennessee. No wonder they come down to earth again. If I were an angel with wings and on my way to heaven by the same route, methinks I’d do the same thing.

“But the wild goose did not always winter here,” said Mr. Adcock, the oldest goose hunter in my town. “I can remember when they first began to come in. I think they began to come in after the country got to be more open and the wheat fields so large that they could alight in the midst of one and the sentinel on guard could see the approach of any hunter. They live to an extreme old age. I know of one flock which winters annually in the Bear Creek neighborhood and has wintered there for forty-two years. The leader of the flock is known to be at least that old. He has a peculiar white mark on his back and is readily recognized each year by the hunters in that section. They propagate very fast in their summer homes, for when this flock left last year it had been reduced to eighteen in number. This year, when it came back, led again by the old gander, it had increased to two hundred and eighty. But I do not think there is a man in that country who would shoot at that old leader with the white mark on him.”

There has always been something peculiarly fascinating to me in the flight of a wild goose or wild duck. I have run up on wild turkeys and seen them in their wild and awkward flight, and while it is beautiful sport to kill a strutting old gobbler who comes to you, allured by your call, and while it is finer sport the next day to sample him when he is baked and browned to a queen’s taste, yet after all he is bred and raised with us, he comes from our woods, not from far distant shores, walks over the earth, does not cleave, like the wild goose, the

—“Pale, purpling evening—”

which in the language of the poet

—“Melts around thy flight.”

And so there is a mystery about him that, to me, is the mystery of other lands and worlds. There is about him the manner as of one who comes from distant climes; there is the everlasting wonder which to me always hangs around the whistle of wings, the admiration for the creature to whom God has given the power to soar above the sordid things of earth and bathe their plumage in that air which is born of the sunset and the silent stars. And in this connection where, in all language, is there a more beautiful poem of its kind than Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl?” I shall copy it in its entirety here, because it so beautifully expresses what we commoner mortals can only feel.

[Illustration: The High Limestone Bluffs of Duck River.]

Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day Far, through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seekest thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast— The desert and illimitable air— Lone wanderer, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere. Ye stoop not, weary, to the welcome land Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end, Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon o’er thy sheltered breast.

Thou’rt gone—the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight In the long way that I must tread alone Will lead my steps aright.

For several weeks I had seen the wild geese flying over us. I knew where they were going—to the wheat fields—and I knew where they roosted at night—under the shadow of the bluff of the river, sitting like swans on the dark waters. I hold it of guns as I do of sulkies and road carts—any good make is good enough. It all depends on whom you happen to start in with. If built by honest men, out of honest stuff, there is but little difference in the rest of it. I happen to fancy the Ithaca and had just got me a new one, and for hard, clean, honest shooting, wear and tear, I’ll put it against any of them.

There is only one way to hunt wild geese successfully, and I had prepared all of that; or rather my friend Jno. W. Jackson, assistant postmaster, and the best all-round hunter and fisherman in Tennessee, had—in fact it is part of our stable and belongs in our barn on the rafters, along with the saddle and harness: a strong, light canoe that will hold three people, two big reflecting headlight lanterns that will light up the river from bank to bank, and for very cold weather a good Clark or Lehman heater to drop in the bottom of the canoe and put your feet on if they get cold. Then, with a laprobe over your knees, good gloves and overcoat, and Jimmy Caldwell, who knows every crook and turn of the river for a hundred miles, to paddle it, you are ready for the finest sport on this side the globe. It was just noon when my man, Frank, hooked up the blue roan Chestnut Hal mare to the buckboard. In the rear were my blankets and gun, and oil-cloth to sleep on; also a saddle and bridle. There is something about a blue roan that I always have liked. It reminds me of steel. I have never seen a quitter that was that color. It is remarkable how often the roan horse figures in the living romance of our literature. Who that has ever read it has forgotten the strawberry roan mare of the big-hearted robber in “Lorna Doone”—to my mind as fine a novel as was ever written—a kind of Shakespeare in prose in the wild woods. Do you remember Browning’s “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and the roan that dropped dead but never gave up the race? By the way, there are, in that poem, two of as fine descriptive verses of horses in motion as I ever read:

“At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past And I saw my stout galloper, Roland, at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland the spray. And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glance O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! And the thick, heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon, His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on”

I claim that the Hals are the best all-round horses in the world—they are tireless roadsters and jog, at a trot, a good road gait. By half past one I was in Williamsport—twelve miles—and the roan mare had not struck a pace—her fastest gait. After crossing the river and getting into the rough roads over the hills of Hickman County, she climbed them like a mountain goat, for if there is anything a pacer likes it is to chop up his gait for hill work. Not once did she make a misstep. The chief beauty of these hunts, to me, had always been in the fact that I had only to throw a saddle on this mare, after getting to camp, and I had an easy seat all day in our rides over the hills and fields in pursuit of that most delightful of all Southern game—quail. It knocks the sport out of things when you have to take one horse to drive and another to ride, and another to do this, and another that. Reared for generations as one of the family, the Hal horse can come very nearly doing everything that his master can, and if this mare had asked me for a toddy before breakfast the next morning I should not have been at all surprised.

[Illustration: Duck River, Where the Wild Geese Roost.

As an illustration of the fertility of Middle Tennessee, the field on the right has been in cultivation ninety years, has had no fertilizers except rotation and clover, and produced this year two crops of Irish potatoes of fifty and ninety barrels per acre, respectively.]

My destination was the little village of Shady Grove, way up in the foothills, and yet down in a little valley thirty miles from nowhere. We reached it just before sunset, when the smoke began to curl up out of the chimneys for the evening meal, and I stopped on the high hill and looked down on the quiet scene. I have always held that it does a man good to get away from the sound of trade and traffic now and then, and for my part there is nothing that appeals to me so much as to look down on one of these little villages in the hills and speculate on the simple life that exists there. So free from the knockout battles of the modern life, so simple and quiet and wanting so little. There is the school house, yonder the quaint little church which means so much to them and, whether narrow, quaint or clannish, we must admit are the real bulwarks of all the great moral structures that are the strength and pride and glory of twentieth century progress. The little homes cluster around these two. Once a day the mail boy rides over the hills on his pacing horse, with the thoughts of the rest of the world in his leathern pouch. In the twilight I could see that the village blacksmith, a sturdy, handsome young fellow, was forging a horse-shoe. A pretty girl came out of the little postoffice and locked the door. She stopped at the blacksmith’s as she passed and they laughed and made love. I smiled as I drove on, and said: “This is the glorious twentieth century with all its knowledge and science and progress, and yet when we come to think of it we are right where we were two hundred years ago, for in spite of engines and automobiles the two things that progress must have first of all, before she can move a foot—is a horse-shoe and—love.”

* * * * *

My destination was three miles farther—at Hen Island—but, when I reached it night had set in and, to my astonishment, I saw neither camp nor canoe. It is one hundred miles by river to Hen Island, a fine all-day and all-night float, with plenty of geese and ducks. The canoe had started down with the Old Hunter and Mr. Jackson, the setter dog and the camping outfit, and I expected them to meet me with a full game bag, and to have the camp pitched and supper ready. Instead, I sat alone on the banks of a river, in the chill of a winter’s evening, out in the woods, and with no prospect of anything but the ground to sleep on. I had begun to feel uneasy and dreadfully lonesome, when I noticed a native come down to water the mule he was riding. In answer to my inquiry he said that the Old Hunter had landed there that morning and had tacked a card on the sycamore tree near where I stood. I struck a match and soon deciphered the old man’s peculiar spelling, which told me he had gone on two miles further to camp at a better place.

A camp-fire at night will draw two months’ work and worry out of a man. How grand the trees look in the big, weird flashes of the firelight in front of the tent! The setter dog is at home and welcomes you with his honest bark and playful gambols. You can smell the fine flavor of the boiling coffee (does any other ever taste so good?) a quarter of a mile before you get to it, while the odor that comes up from the “skillet” is enough to bring every wolf out of the woods. In addition to all this the Old Hunter had two barbecued squirrels and, best of all, a mallard which he had cooked in his own inimitable way. That is to say, he had dressed it, all except taking off the feathers. Then he had pasted a wet clay all over it, wrapped it in wet paper and buried it just under the sod of the camp fire. In two hours it was pronounced done, and then he had taken it out, soon after I came up, and with a few hefty touches had peeled the clay and feathers off, with the skin. You may not think this is good until you eat it at camp; then you will not want to eat duck any other way.

The night had grown intensely dark, it seemed to me. The setter was asleep by the camp-fire, the river sang a surly song as it swept by in the blackness and ever and anon the “konk” of a flock of wild geese sounded from out the heavens as if they still flew about, disdaining to go to roost. In my vanity I supposed that they had heard that I had arrived and so concluded it was best to spend the night in the air.

We did not wish to start until nearly midnight and as we sat around the fire the Old Hunter grew mellow and reminiscent and this was one of the funny stories he told me.

“Talk about horses breakin’ the record, an’ all that, but do you kno’ that in my young days I broke all the records that ever was an’ ever will be, s’fur as a pacin’ hoss is concerned? Whut’s Star Pointer’s time?” he asked.

I told him.

He grunted doubtfully. “Wal, I think I was sixteen an’ about as hefty a lad as ever plowed a furrer. Lemme see; I was either sixteen or it was the year my daddy was the proud father of his sixteenth child, I’ve forgotten which; but I had to work like an ox all week plowin’ in the new ground an’ gettin’ out stumps an’ all that, an’ if there was a boy or man in that settlement that could beat me breakin’ in a colt or hold a hand with me in a wrestlin’ match, I don’t remember it jis’ now. We had one holiday an’ that was Sunday afternoons, which we spent mostly in breakin’ in of colts. Wal, one Sunday we struck the meanest-tempered colt that ever come down the pike. He flung Bill, an’ he flung Jim, an’ then he flung the old man hisse’f. They was all older than me, of course, an’ when he flung the old man it made him bilin’ hot an’ he sez: ‘Dam sech a colt es that! I’ll give ennybody a dollar that will stay on his back a minnit!’

“Then I up an’ sez to the old man: ‘Pap, do you mean that?’

“‘I do,’ sez he, most emphatically.

“‘Then,’ sez I, ‘that dollar is mine.’

“Now, in them days colts wan’t broke till they was fo’ years old, an’ this particular colt had been raised with the mules in the cane bottoms. I got Bill to hold him with a twister till I got on, an’ they turned him loose. He give three buckjumps, one right after the other, but I had locked my long legs around him, and he might as well have tried to throw off the saddle. When he saw he couldn’t fling me he bolted an’ took up the pike like wild. He run under trees an’ through bushes, he jumped rock fences, he scraped trees and jumped ditches, an’ I let him go. He run up the road five miles to Blivens’ mill, then he got skeered at a goat in the road, bolted ag’in and run back home. I calk’lated he run jes’ ten miles back to the barn lot he started frum, an’ when he cleared the last fence I turned loose my grip an’ turned a summerset over his head in ten yards of whar we started. I was sorter dazed at first, but when I came to the old man was standin’ over me sorter smilin’ an’ he sed: ‘Hiram, my son, here’s yo’ dollar; you’ve been on just a minnit!’”

* * * * *

It was nearly midnight when the big lamps were lighted. They were placed on the prow of the canoe, so that their rays crossed in the river, each lamp lighting its opposite side. I knew that the old hunter knew every shoal and log in the river and that no man could guide a boat or shoot quicker or more accurately than John Jackson. So I had no fears of capsizing, and when I took my Ithaca and sat down behind the lights, I was in such a glow of excitement that I did not need my overcoat. And that excitement never left me. The boat glided out and a weird and yet fascinating scene presented itself. We sat in midnight darkness, but for fifty yards ahead of us the river was bright with the glare of the big reflectors. It penetrated the woods on either side and I felt something awesome in the feeling that we were uncovering the hidden secrets of nature, peering into the midnight heart, laying bare her shrouded woods and dark waters and stabbing her silence and her solitude with a knife of light.

Not a word was to be spoken. Everything went by a code of signals. If Jackson put out his right hand, the boat moved to the right—his left hand, to the left. One’s heart beats fast and the blood runs hot, for as he peers into the midnight darkness and sees the white light creeping over the woods and the waters, he expects every minute to see the graceful necks and white outspread banners of a flock of geese fall into its penetrating circle.

There was a splash in the water to the left. It was a beaver. A swift object moved across the prow of the canoe, cutting the water into ripples as it hurried to the shore. It was a muskrat. A half mile farther I almost laughed out at the queer antics of Br’er Coon when the big lights caught him square in the eyes as he sat fishing for earth worms on the bank. He blinked, and winked, and turned his head in a quizzical way as if wondering what that animal with the sun-eyes was floating down the stream. We left him standing on the bank winking, and blinking, and too worthless for us to startle our game with an unnecessary report.