PART VIII.
OLD DADDY DEERING: THE COUNTRY FIDDLER
Like Scotland's harper, Or Irish piper, with his droning lays, Before the spread of modern life and light The country fiddler slowly disappears.
DADDY DEERING.
I.
They were threshing on Farmer Jennings' place when Daddy made his verycharacteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomilyholding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day wasdimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards andchaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of thedreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of hiscousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves ofthe stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his handsin murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.
The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, whichbecame a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It wasnearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glancestoward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, drippingwith sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved roundand round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.
The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung intoMilton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted hiseyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work inthis choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail andsweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?
Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face blackas a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merryeyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He hadalways been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears thatcame into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.
A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovelysetting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shroudedwith faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors ofthe trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of themachine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like thisare quite different things.
They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder wascrowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow andapparently effortless swaying from side to side, half-buried in theloose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to astand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fledfrom the terrible dust beside the measuring-spout, and was shaking thechaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voicecall down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely maskedin dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:
"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It'spoorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."
"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "Itold you it wasn't the place for an old man."
"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I candaown you, sir--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"
"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.
The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud ofdust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old manof sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dustyexpanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. Hiscolor was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the menclinched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was theyounger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted forsome time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he layat last flat on his back.
"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'dknock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether--yessir!--I could do it,too!".
"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.
The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.
"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."
His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and hisskin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had acertain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed tohave the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent andthin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. Atsome far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, buttoil had bent and stiffened him.
"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner."And by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the State; no, sir; no,sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men'spay--that's all, sir!"
Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man upthere this afternoon."
The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirtyplaces, and his endurance was marvelous. He could stand all day at thetail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferentair, as if it were all mere play.
He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisierand dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacitythat Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with thatmost hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old boyit seems to be the worst job in the world.
All day while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the treesglow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are tumblingabout the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks, like aconvict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent shoulders andragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust, necessarilycame to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.
And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to bearthe old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of thecylinder.
"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." Andwhen Milton was unable to laugh the old man tweaked his ear with hisleathery thumb and finger.
Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could makeneither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fellto studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spenta good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sectionsof the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellowwith age, with the cotton-batting working out; and yet Daddy took thegreatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during theheat of the day out of reach of the crickets.
One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home wasfrugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him hisbreakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.
He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a modeof life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the endof the third day, he said:
"Now, sir; if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turnm' hand over f'r any man in the State; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on thegambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; bygum!"
"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."