The group around the fire in the venerable house were listening and waiting. The atmosphere of the room was tense. The slate-colored man’s face was twitching and his drabbed hands were gripped together. The little man was continually looking behind his chair. Upon the countenance of the pudgy man appeared conceit for an approaching triumph over the little man, mingled with apprehension for his own safety. Five pipes glowed as rivals of a timid candle. Profound silence drooped heavily over them. Finally the slate-colored man spoke.
“My ol’ uncle, Jim Crocker, he’s sick ter death.”
The four men started and then shrank back in their chairs.
“Damn it!” replied the little man, vaguely.
Again there was a long silence. Suddenly it was broken by a wild cry from the room above. It was a shriek that struck upon them with appalling swiftness, like a flash of lightning. The walls whirled and the floor rumbled. It brought the men together with a rush. They huddled in a heap and stared at the white terror in each other’s faces. The slate-colored man grasped the candle and flared it above his head. “The black dorg,” he howled, and plunged at the stairway. The maddened four men followed frantically, for it is better to be in the presence of the awful than only within hearing.
Their ears still quivering with the shriek, they bounded through the hole in the ceiling and into the sick room.
With quilts drawn closely to his shrunken breast for a shield, his bony hand gripping the cover, an old man lay with glazing eyes fixed on the open window. His throat gurgled and a froth appeared at his mouth.
From the outer darkness came a strange, unnatural wail, burdened with weight of death and each note filled with foreboding. It was the song of the spectral dog.
“God!” screamed the little man. He ran to the open window. He could see nothing at first save the pine trees, engaged in a furious combat, tossing back and forth and struggling. The moon was peeping cautiously over the rims of some black clouds. But the chant of the phantom guided the little man’s eyes, and he at length perceived its shadowy form on the ground under the window. He fell away gasping at the sight. The pudgy man crouched in a corner, chattering insanely. The slate-colored man, in his fear, crooked his legs and looked like a hideous Chinese idol. The man upon the bed was turned to stone, save the froth, which pulsated.
In the final struggle, terror will fight the inevitable. The little man roared maniacal curses and, rushing again to the window, began to throw various articles at the specter.
A mug, a plate, a knife, a fork, all crashed or clanged on the ground, but the song of the specter continued. The bowl of beef-tea followed. As it struck the ground the phantom ceased its cry.
The men in the chamber sank limply against the walls, with the unearthly wail still ringing in their ears and the fear unfaded from their eyes. They waited again.
The little man felt his nerves vibrate. Destruction was better than another wait. He grasped a candle and, going to the window, held it over his head and looked out.
“Ho!” he said.
His companions crawled to the window and peered out with him.
“He’s eatin’ the beef-tea,” said the slate-colored man, faintly.
“The damn dog was hungry,” said the pudgy man.
“There’s your phantom,” said the little man to the pudgy man.
On the bed, the old man lay dead. Without, the specter was wagging its tail.
July 24, 1892
[New York Tribune, part 2, p. 19.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
KILLING HIS BEAR*
A WINTER TRAGEDY WITH THREE ACTORS
In a field of snow some green pines huddled together and sang in quavers as the wind whirled among the gullies and ridges. Icicles dangled from the trees’ beards, and fine dusts of snow lay upon their brows. On the ridge-top a dismal choir of hemlocks crooned over one that had fallen. The dying sun created a dim purple and flame-colored tumult on the horizon’s edge and then sank until level crimson beams struck the trees. As the red rays retreated, armies of shadows stole forward. A gray, ponderous stillness came heavily in the steps of the sun. A little man stood under the quavering pines. He was muffled to the nose in fur and wool, and a hideous cap was pulled tightly over his ears. His cold and impatient feet had stamped a small platform of hard snow beneath him. A black-barreled rifle lay in the hollow of his arm. His eyes, watery from incessant glaring, swept over the snowfields in front of him. His body felt numb and bloodless, and soft curses came forth and froze on the icy wind. The shadows crept about his feet until he was merely a blurred blackness, with keen eyes.
Off over the ridges, through the tangled sounds of night, came the yell of a hound on the trail. It pierced the ears of the little man and made his blood swim in his veins. His eyes eagerly plunged at the wall of thickets across the stone field, but he moved not a finger or foot. Save his eyes, he was frozen to a statue. The cry of the hound grew louder and louder, then passed away to a faint yelp, then still louder. At first it had a strange vindictiveness and bloodthirstiness in it. Then it grew mournful as the wailing of a lost thing, as, perhaps, the dog gained on a fleeing bear. A hound, as he nears large game, has the griefs of the world on his shoulders, and his baying tells of the approach of death. He is sorry he came.
The long yells thrilled the little man. His eyes gleamed and grew small, and his body stiffened to intense alertness. The trees kept up their crooning, and the light in the west faded to a dull red splash, but the little man’s fancy was fixed on the panting, foam-spattered hound, cantering with his hot nose to the ground in the rear of the bear, which runs as easily and as swiftly as a rabbit, through brush, timber, and swale. Swift pictures of himself in a thousand attitudes under a thousand combinations of circumstances, killing a thousand bears, passed panoramically through him.
The yell of the hound grew until it smote the little man like a call to battle. He leaned forward, and the second finger of his right hand played a low, nervous pat-pat on the trigger of his rifle. The baying grew fierce and bloodcurdling for a moment, then the dog seemed to turn directly toward the little man, and the notes again grew wailing and mournful. It was a hot trail.
The little man, with nerves tingling and blood throbbing, remained in the shadows like a fantastic bronze figure with jeweled eyes swaying sharply in its head. Occasionally he thought he could hear the branches of the bushes in front swish together. Then silence would come again.
The hound breasted the crest of the ridge, a third of a mile away, and suddenly his full-toned cry rolled over the tangled thickets to the little man. The bear must be very near. The little man kept so still and listened so tremendously that he could hear his blood surge in his veins. All at once he heard a swish-swish in the bushes. His rifle was at his shoulder and he sighted uncertainly along the front of the thicket. The swish of the bushes grew louder. In the rear the hound was mourning over a warm scent.
The thicket opened and a great bear, indistinct and vague in the shadows, bounded into the little man’s view and came terrifically across the open snowfield. The little man stood like an image. The bear did not shamble nor wobble; there was no awkwardness in his gait; he ran like a frightened kitten. It would be an endless chase for the lithe-limbed hound in the rear.
On he came, directly toward the little man. The animal heard only the crying behind him. He knew nothing of the thing with death in its hands standing motionless in the shadows before him.
Slowly the little man changed his aim until it rested where the head of the approaching shadowy mass must be. It was a wee motion, made with steady nerves and a soundless swaying of the rifle barrel; but the bear heard, or saw, and knew. The animal whirled swiftly and started in a new direction with an amazing burst of speed. Its side was toward the little man now. His rifle barrel was searching swiftly over the dark shape. Under the foreshoulder was the place. A chance to pierce the heart, sever an artery, or pass through the lungs. The little man saw swirling fur over his gun barrel. T
he earth faded to nothing. Only space and the game, the aim and the hunter. Mad emotions, powerful to rock worlds, hurled through the little man, but did not shake his tiniest nerve.
When the rifle cracked, it shook his soul to a profound depth. Creation rocked and the bear stumbled.
The little man sprang forward with a roar. He scrambled hastily in the bear’s track. The splash of red, now dim, threw a faint, timid beam of a kindred shade on the snow. The little man bounded in the air.
“Hit!” he yelled, and ran on. Some hundreds of yards forward he came to a dead bear with his nose in the snow. Blood was oozing from a wound under the shoulder, and the snow about was sprinkled with blood. A mad froth lay in the animal’s open mouth, and his limbs were twisted from agony.
The little man yelled again and sprang forward, waving his hat as if he were leading the cheering of thousands. He ran up and kicked the ribs of the bear. Upon his face was the smile of the successful lover.
July 31, 1892
[New York Tribune, part 2, p. 18.]
* The Sullivan County Sketches.
THE CAPTAIN
He is the skipper of a catboat and a member of the village fire department. He always wears two uniforms, to be prepared for an emergency. When he goes to a fire he wears his yachting dress; when he is in command of his gallant ship, the Anna, he still wears his fire department uniform. The uniform which marks him as the skipper of the Anna is a straw hat—a most wonderful straw hat, of sunburned yellow, with a rusty ribbon around it and a piece of twine, a peak-halyard, so to speak, running from it to a buttonhole of his coat. That is all there is to the uniform of the commander. But as for the uniform of the fireman that is a different thing. He wears it on his left breast; it is shield-shaped, it is of tin, and on it are red letters designating the name of his engine company. That is all there is of it, but it is quite enough. He is a thin man with a mustache that may be gray from salt encrustation, or “windburn,” or age. At any rate it is gray and if it is not handsome it is at least a mustache. As for the rest of his face his cheek, if you speak of him as the commander of a vessel, is weather-beaten; if as the member of a fire department, burned—you might almost say scorched. His name—perhaps it is Maltravers; perhaps it is De Courcey; perhaps it is only Smith, or Jones, but whatever it is he is first, last and all the time “the Captain.”
The Captain is a wit. His wit does not cut or even sparkle. It isn’t that kind of wit. It’s too dignified. It comes on slowly, to preserve the nautical connection of this sketch, with a full spread of canvas, but making little headway. It does not come about, or tack or reef, or do anything else that a racing yacht in command of a young and ambitious captain might be expected to do. His wit just runs slowly before the wind, comes into collision with you in a dull, heavy fashion, swings clear and drifts away until the sails fill again.
It is a most remarkable and mysterious wit, expressed at regular intervals and in a long drawl. You have to take in sail generally to meet it, for if you are bowling along you will cross the bows; there will not be any collision; you will not feel the bump of its square bows and—you will not know that you have been cruising in the same waters with the Captain’s wit.
The wind is blowing freshly up the sound. The sky is as clear as the hollow of a bluebell. The water has that dark sparkle, which is neither green nor blue nor black—the flash of a darkly tinted jewel. The breeze throws thin wafers off the crests of the waves and tosses them lightly against your cheek, cool and damp and refreshing, like the spray of violet water. There is not a mark in the sweep of the sky. There is not a shadow on the swinging water of the Sound, save the dancing reflection of the Anna’s sail. There is only clearness in the air, and the wind comes up between the green shores with freshening force.
“Captain,” says the young woman from Baltimore, the young woman with a soft voice and the slightest Southern accent, “is a squall coming?”
The Captain, without the quiver of a muscle, with no gleam in his watery eye, with no play around the corner of his mouth, looks up at his peak, glances down the Sound, off to the east, up to the peak again, and then takes a tighter hold on his tiller. For a moment he is thoughtful, and then he breaks the trying silence.
“Yes, Miss,” he says, in his fearfully long drawl, “there is.”
“Oh!” cries the Baltimore girl, “I’m so glad. From which direction is it coming?”
The Captain looks up and studies the top of his mast.
“It’s coming,” he says, with agonizing deliberation, “from my house. My baby ain’t missed a chance to squall in three months!”
Then the Baltimore girl gives a little laugh, a pretty enough laugh to win any man’s approval, and says: “Captain, what a fine sailor you are, to be sure!”
“I was raised on the water,” says the Captain solemnly.
“That is a handsome badge you have, Captain,” says the young woman from Philadelphia. “May I look at it?”
The Captain gives a startled glance, unpins the clasp slowly, hands over his fire department uniform in a pained, doubtful way, and anxiously watches her turn it over in her hand.
“It’s handsome,” she says.
“It’s pretty likely,” he answers, with pardonable pride.
“And do you go to fires?”
“Always when I’m ashore.”
“Captain,” with the most marked admiration for his greatness, “did you ever put out a fire?”
“No-o-o,” with his magnificent drawl.
“Why?”
“Always git there too late.”
Then comes a long pause, in which the uniform is returned to the member of the fire department.
“And I never started a fire either,” says the captain after a silence on his part for five minutes.
“How is that, Captain?”
“I mean never since I was married,” he replies. “She—my wife—does that,” and a faint smile cracks his dry cheeks.
The wind is strong enough now to make the boat leap like a racehorse. She occasionally takes a dive and throws bucketfuls of water on the deck. Every one is getting wet. The young woman from New York gets fairly drenched over the shoulders and head. Perhaps it is because she has pretty hair; perhaps it is because no woman likes to have her hair soaked in salt water; but, however that may be, she unfastens her hair and it tumbles about her shoulders, a mass of dark brown, with threads of it blown across her cheek and throat and drops glistening where the water in the dark curls is struck by the slanting sun.
“How do I look, Captain,” she asks, putting her elbows on her knees and laying a hand on each cheek so that she can lean forward and look into his face with dark, flashing, and tantalizing eyes.
“Look like the gypsies that camp in the woods back of our house,” he says, carefully measuring his words.
“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” asks the ‘smart young man’ from nowhere.
“Well,” answers the captain-fireman cautiously, “they’re wild, you know.”
Then the young woman thinks that her hair is dry and puts it up again.
“What do you think of it now, Captain?” she asks.
No answer.
“What do you think of my hair now, Captain?” she repeats.
The Captain looks up and glances at his host.
“You done pretty well,” he says.
“You like it then!”
“Oh, ye-e-s, I like it. I ain’t h-a-a-rd to please.”
The Baltimore girl thinks she would like to fish and asks the Captain with her most fascinating accent, just touched with her Southern softness, if she may.
“Yes,” says the son of the sea, “take that boat hook and that piece of string. Then put a bent pin on the string and fish.”
“What do you think I’ll catch?” she says, flashing a bewildering smile on him.
“Well,” he answers in a low voice, but with ineffable scorn, “you might catch some of those young men. Ain’t any of ’em heavy enough to b
reak your line.”
The Anna is in the harbor now and every one is getting ready to go ashore in the small boats.
“Good-bye, Captain,” says the Philadelphia girl, “I hope we can go out again tomorrow.”
The party is in the small boats and halfway to shore, so that in the twilight on his craft as he moves about the deck, the Captain looks like a phantom sailor. Then he places his hand to his mouth and halloos with his comfortable drawl.
“Oh, Miss,” he cries out. His voice, coming across the now still air as the oars strike the smooth waters of the harbor, is pleasing in its tones and fulness. “Oh, Miss, there’ll be two squalls tomorrow, one up to the house, one out on the Sound,” and his chuckle, which comes floating after the echo of his words, smacks of the sea and its freshness.
August 7, 1892
[New York Tribune, part 2, p. 19.]
A TENT IN AGONY*
A SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCH
Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of riven rocks whence a boulder could be made to crash through the brush and whirl past the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlock boughs they slept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen, for upon the lake alternately the sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet. Finally they ate the last bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last fearful and wonderful hoecake.
Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while the remaining three should go the Sullivan county miles to a farmhouse for supplies. They gazed at him dismally. “There’s only one of you—the devil make a twin,” they said in parting malediction, and disappeared down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob, they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavily-built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet; his clothes refused to fit his back; his pipe dropped from his mouth; his knees smote each other. “Hah!” he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied, and a bear paced into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon a sapling and regarded his visitor.