The sun gleamed merrily upon the waters, the gaunt, towering tree trunks, and the stumps lying like spatters of wood which had dropped from the clouds. Troops of blue and silver darning needles danced over the surface. Bees bustled about the weeds which grew in the shallow places. Butterflies flickered in the air. Down in the water, millions of fern branches quavered and hid mysteries. The four men sat still and skiddered. The individual puffed tremendously. Ever and anon, one of the four would cry ecstatically, or swear madly. His fellows, upon standing to gaze at him, would either find him holding a stout fish, or nervously struggling with a hook and line entangled in the hordes of vindictive weeds and sticks on the bottom. They had fortune, for the pickerel is a voracious fish. His only faults are in method. He has a habit of furiously charging the fleeting bit of glitter and then darting under a log or around a corner with it.
At noon, the individual corralled the entire outfit upon a stump, where they lunched while he entertained them with anecdote. Afterward, he redistributed them, each to his personal stump. They fished. He contemplated the scene and made observations which ran across the water to the four men in bass solos. Toward the close of the day, he grew evidently thoughtful, indulging in no more spasmodic philosophy. The four men fished intently until the sun had sunk down to some treetops and was peering at them like the face of an angry man over a hedge. Then one of the four stood up and shouted across to where the individual sat enthroned upon the stump.
“You had better take us ashore, now.” The other three repeated. “Yes, come take us ashore.”
Whereupon the individual carefully took an erect position. Then, waving a great yellow-brown bottle and tottering, he gave vent to a sepulchral roar.
“You fellersh—hic—kin all go—hic—ter blazersh.”
The sun slid down and threw a flare upon the silence, coloring it red. The man who had stood up drew a long, deep breath and sat down heavily. Stupefaction rested upon the four men.
Dusk came and fought a battle with the flare before their eyes. Tossing shadows and red beams mingled in combat. Then the stillness of evening lay upon the waters.
The individual began to curse in deep maudlin tones. “Dern fools,” he said. “Dern fools! Why dontcher g’home?”
“He’s full as a fiddler,” said the little man on the third stump. The rest groaned. They sat facing the stump whereon the individual perched, beating them with mighty oaths. Occasionally he took a drink from the bottle. “Shay, you’m fine lot fellers,” he bellowed, “why blazersh dontcher g’home?”
The little man on the third stump pondered. He got up finally and made oration. He, in the beginning, elaborated the many good qualities which he alleged the individual possessed. Next he painted graphically the pitiful distress and woe of their plight. Then he described the reward due to the individual if he would relieve them, and ended with an earnest appeal to the humanity of the individual, alleging, again, his many virtues. The object of the address struggled to his feet and in a voice of faraway thunder, said: “Dern fool, g’home.” The little man sat down and swore crimson oaths.
A night wind began to roar, and clouds bearing a load of rain appeared in the heavens and threatened their position. The four men shivered and turned up their coat collars. Suddenly it struck each that he was alone, separated from humanity by impassable gulfs. All those things which come forth at night began to make noises. Unseen animals scrambled and flopped among the weeds and sticks. Weird features masqueraded awfully in robes of shadow. Each man felt that he was compelled to sit on something that was damply alive. A legion of frogs in the grass by the shore and a host of toads in the trees chanted. The little man started up and shrieked that all creeping things were inside his stump. Then he tried to sit facing four ways, because dread objects were approaching at his back. The individual was drinking and hoarsely singing. At different times they labored with him. It availed them nought. “G’home, dern fools.” Among themselves they broached various plans for escape. Each involved a contact with the black water, in which were things that wriggled. They shuddered and sat still.
A ghostlike mist came and hung upon the waters. The pond became a graveyard. The gray tree trunks and dark logs turned to monuments and crypts. Fireflies were wisp-lights dancing over graves, and then, taking regular shapes, appeared like brass nails in crude caskets. The individual began to gibber. A gibber in a bass voice appalls the stoutest heart. It is the declamation of a genie. The little man began to sob; another groaned; and the two remaining, being timid by nature, swore great lurid oaths which blazed against the sky.
Suddenly the individual sprang up and gave tongue to a yell which raised the hair on the four men’s heads and caused the waters to ruffle. Chattering, he sprang into the boat and, grasping an oar, paddled frantically to the little man’s stump. He tumbled out and cowered at the little man’s feet, looking toward his stump with eyes that saw the unknown.
“Stump turned inter an octopush. I was asettin’ on his mouth,” he howled.
The little man kicked him.
“Legs all commenced move, dern octopush!” moaned the shrunken individual.
The little man kicked him. But others cried out against him, so directly he left off. Climbing into the boat, he went about collecting his companions. They then proceeded to the stump whereon the individual lay staring wild-eyed at his “octopush.” They gathered his limp form into the boat and rowed ashore. “How far is it to the nearest house?” they demanded savagely of him. “Four miles,” he replied in a voice of cave-damp. The four men cursed him and built a great fire of pine sticks. They sat by it all night and listened to the individual who dwelt in phantom shadows by the water’s edge dismally crooning about an “octopush.”
July 10, 1892
[New York Tribune, part 2, p. 17.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
A GHOUL’S ACCOUNTANT*
THE STORY OF A SULLIVAN COUNTY PRODUCE DEAL
In a wilderness sunlight is noise. Darkness is a great, tremendous silence, accented by small and distant sounds. The music of the wind in the trees is songs of loneliness, hymns of abandonment, and lays of the absence of things congenial and alive.
Once a campfire lay dying in a fit of temper. A few weak flames struggled cholerically among the burned-out logs. Beneath, a mass of angry, red coals glowered and hated the world. Some hemlocks sighed and sung, and a wind purred in the grass. The moon was looking through the locked branches at four imperturbable bundles of blankets which lay near the agonized campfire. The fire groaned in its last throes, but the bundles made no sign.
Off in the gloomy unknown a foot fell upon a twig. The laurel leaves shivered at the stealthy passing of danger. A moment later a man crept into the spot of dim light. His skin was fiercely red and his whiskers infinitely black. He gazed at the four passive bundles and smiled a smile that curled his lips and showed yellow, disordered teeth. The campfire threw up two lurid arms and, quivering, expired. The voices of the trees grew hoarse and frightened. The bundles were stolid.
The intruder stepped softly nearer and looked at the bundles. One was shorter than the others. He regarded it for some time motionless. The hemlocks quavered nervously and the grass shook. The intruder slid to the short bundle and touched it. Then he smiled. The bundle partially upreared itself, and the head of a little man appeared.
“Lord!” he said. He found himself looking at the grin of a ghoul condemned to torment.
“Come,” croaked the ghoul.
“What?” said the little man. He began to feel his flesh slide to and fro on his bones as he looked into this smile.
“Come,” croaked the ghoul.
“What?” the little man whimpered. He grew gray and could not move his legs. The ghoul lifted a three-pronged pickerel spear and flashed it near the little man’s throat. He saw menace on its points. He struggled heavily to his feet.
He cast his eyes upon the remaining mummy-like bundles, but the ghoul confronted his face with the sp
ear.
“Where?” shivered the little man.
The ghoul turned and pointed into the darkness. His countenance shone with lurid light of triumph.
“Go!” he croaked.
The little man blindly staggered in the direction indicated. The three bundles by the fire were still immovable. He tried to pierce the cloth with a glance and opened his mouth to whoop, but the spear ever threatened his face.
The bundles were left far in the rear, and the little man stumbled on alone with the ghoul. Tangled thickets tripped him, saplings buffeted him, and stones turned away from his feet. Blinded and badgered, he began to swear frenziedly. A foam drifted to his mouth, and his eyes glowed with a blue light.
“Go on!” thunderously croaked the ghoul.
The little man’s blood turned to salt. His eyes began to decay and refused to do their office. He fell from gloom to gloom.
At last a house was before them. Through a yellow-papered window shone an uncertain light. The ghoul conducted his prisoner to the uneven threshold and kicked the decrepit door. It swung groaning back, and he dragged the little man into a room.
A soiled oil lamp gave a feeble light that turned the pineboard walls and furniture a dull orange. Before a table sat a wild, gray man. The ghoul threw his victim upon a chair and went and stood by the man. They regarded the little man with eyes that made wheels revolve in his soul.
He cast a dazed glance about the room and saw vaguely that it was disheveled as from a terrific scuffle. Chairs lay shattered, and dishes in the cupboard were ground to pieces. Destruction had been present. There were moments of silence. The ghoul and the wild, gray man contemplated their victim. A throe of fear passed over him, and he sank limp in his chair. His eyes swept feverishly over the faces of his tormentors.
At last the ghoul spoke.
“Well!” he said to the wild, gray man.
The other cleared his throat and stood up.
“Stranger,” he said, suddenly, “how much is thirty-three bushels of pertaters at sixty-four an’ a half a bushel?”
The ghoul leaned forward to catch the reply. The wild, gray man straightened his figure and listened. A fierce light shone on their faces. Their breaths came swiftly. The little man wriggled his legs in agony.
“Twenty-one, no two, six and—”
“Quick!” hissed the ghoul, hoarsely.
“Twenty-one dollars and twenty-eight cents and a half,” laboriously stuttered the little man.
The ghoul gave a tremendous howl.
“There, Tom Jones, dearn yer!” he yelled, “what did I tell yer! hey? Hain’t I right? See? Didn’t I tell yer that?”
The wild, gray man’s body shook. He was delivered of a frightful roar. He sprang forward and kicked the little man out of the door.
July 17, 1892
[New York Tribune, part 2, p. 17.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
THE BLACK DOG*
A NIGHT OF SPECTRAL TERROR
There was a ceaseless rumble in the air as the heavy raindrops battered upon the laurel thickets and the matted moss and haggard rocks beneath. Four water-soaked men made their difficult ways through the drenched forest. The little man stopped and shook an angry finger at where night was stealthily following them. “Cursed be fate and her children and her children’s children! We are everlastingly lost!” he cried. The panting procession halted under some dripping, drooping hemlocks and swore in wrathful astonishment.
“It will rain for forty days and forty nights,” said the pudgy man, moaningly, “and I feel like a wet loaf of bread, now. We shall never find our way out of this wilderness until I am made into a porridge.”
In desperation, they started again to drag their listless bodies through the watery bushes. After a time, the clouds withdrew from above them, and great winds came from concealment and went sweeping and swirling among the trees. Night also came very near and menaced the wanderers with darkness. The little man had determination in his legs. He scrambled among the thickets and made desperate attempts to find a path or road. As he climbed a hillock, he espied a small clearing upon which sat desolation and a venerable house, wept over by wind-waved pines.
“Ho,” he cried, “here’s a house.”
His companions straggled painfully after him as he fought the thickets between him and the cabin. At their approach, the wind frenziedly opposed them and skirled madly in the trees. The little man boldly confronted the weird glances from the crannies of the cabin and rapped on the door. A score of timbers answered with groans, and, within, something fell to the floor with a clang.
“Ho,” said the little man. He stepped back a few paces.
Somebody in a distant part started and walked across the floor toward the door with an ominous step. A slate-colored man appeared. He was dressed in a ragged shirt and trousers, the latter stuffed into his boots. Large tears were falling from his eyes.
“How-d’-do, my friend?” said the little man, affably.
“My ol’ uncle, Jim Crocker, he’s sick ter death,” replied the slate-colored person.
“Ho,” said the little man. “Is that so?”
The latter’s clothing clung desperately to him and water sogged in his boots. He stood patiently on one foot for a time.
“Can you put us up here until tomorrow?” he asked, finally.
“Yes,” said the slate-colored man.
The party passed into a little unwashed room, inhabited by a stove, a stairway, a few precarious chairs, and a misshapen table.
“I’ll fry yer some po’k and make yer some coffee,” said the slate-colored man to his guests.
“Go ahead, old boy,” cried the little man cheerfully from where he sat on the table, smoking his pipe and dangling his legs.
“My ol’ uncle, Jim Crocker, he’s sick ter death,” said the slate-colored man.
“Think he’ll die?” asked the pudgy man, gently.
“No!”
“No?”
“He won’t die! He’s an ol’ man, but he won’t die, yit! The black dorg hain’t been around yit!”
“The black dog?” said the little man, feebly. He struggled with himself for a moment.
“What’s the black dog?” he asked at last.
“He’s a sperrit,” said the slate-colored man in a voice of somber hue.
“Oh, he is? Well?”
“He haunts these parts, he does, an’ when people are goin’ to die, he comes and sets and howls.”
“Ho,” said the little man. He looked out of the window and saw night making a million shadows.
The little man moved his legs nervously.
“I don’t believe in these things,” said he, addressing the slate-colored man, who was scuffling with a side of pork.
“Wot things?” came incoherently from the combatant.
“Oh, these—er—phantoms and ghosts and what not. All rot, I say.”
“That’s because you have merely a stomach and no soul,” grunted the pudgy man.
“Ho, old pudgkins!” replied the little man. His back curved with passion. A tempest of wrath was in the pudgy man’s eye. The final epithet used by the little man was a carefully-studied insult, always brought forth at a crisis. They quarreled.
“All right, pudgkins, bring on your phantom,” cried the little man in conclusion.
His stout companion’s wrath was too huge for words. The little man smiled triumphantly. He had staked his opponent’s reputation.
The visitors sat silent. The slate-colored man moved about in a small personal atmosphere of gloom.
Suddenly, a strange cry came to their ears from somewhere. It was a low, trembling call which made the little man quake privately in his shoes. The slate-colored man bounded at the stairway and disappeared with a flash of legs through a hole in the ceiling. The party below heard two voices in conversation, one belonging to the slate-colored man, and the other in the quavering tones of age. Directly, the slate-colored man reappeared from above and said: “The
ol’ man is took bad for his supper.”
He hurriedly prepared a mixture with hot water, salt, and beef. Beef-tea, it might be called. He disappeared again. Once more the party below heard, vaguely, talking over their heads. The voice of age arose to a shriek.
“Open the window, fool! Do you think I can live in the smell of your soup?”
Mutterings by the slate-colored man and the creaking of the window were heard.
The slate-colored man stumbled down the stairs, and said with intense gloom, “The black dorg’ll be along soon.”
The little man started, and the pudgy man sneered at him. They ate a supper and then sat waiting. The pudgy man listened so palpably that the little man wished to kill him. The wood-fire became excited and sputtered frantically. Without, a thousand spirits of the winds had become entangled in the pine branches and were lowly pleading to be loosened. The slate-colored man tiptoed across the room and lit a timid candle. The men sat waiting.
The phantom dog lay cuddled to a round bundle, asleep down the roadway against the windward side of an old shanty. The specter’s master had moved to Pike County. But the dog lingered as a friend might linger at the tomb of a friend. His fur was like a suit of old clothes. His jowls hung and flopped, exposing his teeth. Yellow famine was in his eyes. The wind-rocked shanty groaned and muttered, but the dog slept. Suddenly, however, he got up and shambled to the roadway. He cast a long glance from his hungry, despairing eyes in the direction of the venerable house. The breeze came full to his nostrils. He threw back his head and gave a long, low howl and started intently up the road. Maybe he smelled a dead man.