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Next to the Ground 


“< "A babbled of green fields” 


Next to the 
Ground 


Chronicles of a 
Countryside 
By 
|| Martha(McCulloch}Williams 


New York 


McClure, Phillips & Co. 


Memii 


The Contents 


loreword . ; 

I Ploughing . 

vil Wasps and Ants . 
Ill The Ragged Month 
IV The Hog 


V Shooting “3 
VI Quail and Partridge . 
VIL The Possum 
VII Night Noises . 
IX The Big Snow 
X Clearing 
AT The Horse 
XII The Oaks . 
XII Fox-Hunting . 
XIV The Cow . 
XV Feathered Folk 
XVI Insects . 


Foreword 


T means so much to grow up 
next to the ground. There 
are no playmates like grass 
and orchard trees, colts in the 
pasture, chickens in the yard, 
nor any story-tellers to match 

be the winds when they play 
with the jue, or dance a sword-dance through 
fields of yellowing wheat. The fields too are rare 
gossips, if only you take the trouble to under- 
stand. The pity of it is that one can never 
write down the charm of their living voices! 

They have something almost epic in their gossip- 

ing, yet always something new to tell. 

What follows does not claim to tell all the 
field story. Who can put adequately into words, 
the dew, the dawn, the quickening of springtime, 
summer's golden heat, the subtile odors of ripen- 
ing grain? . But it is a record at first hand,of 
much that comes to pass between the time of 
summer fallows and the gathering of next year’s 
corn. ; 

Idiosyncrasy is one charm of every countryside 
—as one star differeth from another in glory, 


xii Foreword 


so does one field or wood or hedgerow differ from 
another. This chronicling is not meant to be 
universal, It applies to a Southern countryside 
lying westward of the Alleghanies and eastward 
of the Mississippi, nearly midway between the 
mountains and the river. 

The chronicling has been a labor of love— 
for were not the fields, the woods, the creeks, 
friendly comrades of the chronicler? Partly 
because of delight in them, partly also because they 
make up what seems to be, in outdoor literature, 
an Unknown Country, she has written of them 
at some length, but always veritably, with no 
greater ambition than to give the feel of outdoors, 
and the life of- outdoors, as known to herself. 


Ploughing 


Chapter I 


AWN broadened into day- 
light as the teams came 
out to the clover land at 
White Oaks. Neighbor- 
ing fallowers had been at 
" b work since they could see 
a hand before them, but 
Major Baker, the master of White Oaks, was 
merciful to his beasts, especially his plough- 
beasts. He knew they got their best, sleep 
in the hour or two before dawn, as he knew 
also that for fallowing they needed all the 
strength sleep and rest could give. He liked 
to think of them stretched at ease, sometimes. 
even snoring as a tired man snores. Waking 
them to be fed about the second chicken- 
crow, was, to his way of looking at things, 
haste without speed. 
The clover lay upland, in broad undulant 
reaches, without a stump or a serious gall to 
break its expanse. Here or there sparse 


4 Next to the Ground 


briers had sprung up in the two years since 
it was seeded. Occasionally too there were 
sassafras clumps, and at the sink-hole, some 
remnant wild growths — hazels, a hydrangea 
bush, and a rampant young sycamore rooted in 
a cleft three feet below the surface. The sink- 
hole had apparently no reason whatever for 
being where it was, in the middle of a broad 
plateau, between two rich swales, but the 
grass country of Middle Tennessee, in which 
White Oaks lay, is a limestone region, full 
of underground streams that play curious 
pranks with the over-lying earth. 

Venus, the morning star, had showed as a 
point of white flame in a rosy east when the 
ploughmen started out. She was pale, the 
wan ghost of a star, as they filed through the 
draw-bars. There were three of them, — 
black Dan, the plantation foreman; slow Pete, 
Dan’s elder brother; and Joe Baker, the 
Major’s eldest son. Each rode a mule, sit- 
ting sidewise, and balancing carefully on the 
backbone, and led two'others. Dan had 
three blacks, matched to a hair, in height, 
color, weight, and motion. Joe had three 
creamy-duns, likewise matched. It is cruel, 
and a waste of strength in fallowing, to hitch 
a light beast beside a heavy one, or harness 
together a quick-stepper and a snail. Slow 
Pete had cross-matches —a gray, a sorrel, and 


Ploughing 5 


a bay. Notwithstanding, they went very well 
together. They were slow like himself— slow 
that is, by comparison with the blacks and 
the creamy-duns. But they had weight, 
strength, and steadiness, if they were not so 
good to look at. The strength was about to 
be severely strained —they had a tougher 
job ahead than even clover fallowing. It 
was the breaking of old grass land, never very 
mellow, and now sour and lifeless through 
years of trampling. 

There were no better teams in the county, 
nor any in better condition. Each and several, 
the beasts were sightly, neither fat nor lean, 
active, light on their feet, with good mouths, 
and sound in wind and limb. Major Baker 
kept none but mare-mules, knowing them to be 
sounder, kinder, and hardier. For the most 
part, he bred them himself, to make sure they 
had an infusion of blood. Blood tells in a 
mule, quite as much as in a horse, or a man. 
Dan’s blacks were out of handsome half-bred 
mares, and stood near sixteen hands at the 
withers, yet except in pulling through the 
depths of winter mud, they could not hold 
out with the creamy-duns, whose dams were 
thoroughbred. 

When it came to shearing mules Dan was 
an artist. He had spent two hours or more 
at it the day before. Manes were trimmed 


6 Next to the Ground 


to half-inch upstanding fringes, tails banged 
to the pertest tasseled tip, even the ears had 
been shorn of their long inner hairs. Dan 
had a firm faith in witches. Now a witch, it 
is well known, cannot ride down a horse or 
mule unless there are hairs long enough to 
twist into a stirrup. Dan had not left a 
single long one — hence he was satisfied the 
teams would thrive and stand up to their work, 
not to name being ever so much more bid- 
dable, since witches, working unhindered, put 
the devil into even the best broken of them, 

The clover-shift was at the very back of 
the place, running out to the flat-woods and 
the crawfishy strip, which had been so long 
abandoned it was overgrown like a jungle with 
every sort of brier, persimmon trees, crab- 
apples, blackthorn and scrub-oak. Birds sang 
riotously in the strip, after their fashion upon 
late midsummer mornings. Their clear reedy 
jangle filled all the silence of the fields. Wood- 
peckers flying in to plunder the early apple 
trees, made wavering lines of black and white 
against the pink sky. Under the strengthen- 
ing light, corn began to rustle and cast down 
heavy drops, which beat like fairy drums upon 
the lower blades. 

Joe could have shut his eyes tight, yet 
named the fields as they passed them. Each 
had its own scent, subtly unlike all the rest. 


Ploughing 7 


Tobacco gave out mainly the fragrance of 
newly-turned earth — the single ploughs were 
just laying it by. The corn-fields smelled of 
ripe tassels, a smell that is a sort of sublima- 
tion of new-mown hay. Still it was not quite 
so delicate as the scent of the wheat-stubble, 
where the young clover was just well in bloom. 
In a week the young clover would hide the 
stubble entirely. Already there was but the 
faintest suffusion of yellow underneath its gray- 
ish green. 

The new clover did not look or smell like 
that which grew in the fallow land. Tis 
leaves were not only grayer, but more alive- 
looking than even those of the aftermath, in 
the end that had been fenced off for mowing. 
The aftermath stood mid-leg high, and was 
not gray at all, except when dew-beads shim- 
mered around the edges of every leaf, ora 
low wind lifted them delicately to show their 
silvery undersides. The fence had been taken 
away, so the whole spread might be broken 
in one land, except across the other end where 
the clover winter-killed so badly it had been 
ploughed up, and sowed with peas in the 
spring. 

There would be a turn-row between the 
peas and the clover, that is to say, a strip of 
ground left unbroken, and unseeded. The 
draw-bars were at one end of it. At the 


8 Next to the Ground 


other there was a gate leading into the old 
grass. Slow Pete kept on to the gate, dron- 
ing a dismal hymn as he went. Dan and 
Joe struck across the clover almost as soon 
as they were inside the bars. Dan was to 
plough in the pea-ground — still he thought 
it the part of wisdom to see that Joe got 
started right. But Joe motioned him back : 
“JT know what I’m doin’,” he said. ‘“ Be- 
sides, I shan’t feel like I earn that new gun 
Marse Major ’s goin’ to buy me, if my work 
makes you lose time.” 

“ Aye, yi! little boss! But don’t you go 
holler fer me, ’ceptin’ you drives right slap 
in er yaller jacket’s nes’,” Dan said, grinning 
broadly as he turned back. He was munch- 
ing a hunk of cold corn-bread. None of 
them had waited for breakfast. The cool of 
the morning was too precious. Each had a 
runlet full of water slung at his back. Dan 
and Joe had filled their hat-crowns with fresh 
dewy leaves, but Slow Pete had stuck to his 
everyday red head-rag. All of them wore 
boots. Ploughing is nothing like so tiresome 
to either man or beast barefoot, as when they 
go shod. Fresh sun-warm earth seems to give 
back electric strength to the foot that treads 
it naked. But fallowers seldom dare go bare- 
foot. Snakes abound in the clover. So do 
stinging things — humble bees, yellow-jackets 


Ploughing 9 


and their kind —still they are not to be 
named beside the mysterious danger of ‘“ dew- 
poison,” which takes off the skin with a touch, 
and leaves a deep, angry sore. 

Happily it is rare, but the fear of it had 
made the ploughmen go shod, and grease their 
mules well above the ankles, with neat’s foot 
oil, The mules were all unshod, and har- 
nessed to a nicety, with collars beaten smooth 
inside, back-bands exactly true, chin-straps 
easy, and hames firmly tied. On top of all 
came the leather nets — which were not prop- 
erly nets at all, but fringes of long leather 
strings, swung from a stouter string, and fall- 
ing down either side from the ears, to the 
roots of the tail. Swinging back and forth 
they kept off the blood-suckers, flies, gnats, 
and midges, that otherwise would have run 
the poor beasts wild. 

Dan had really started both ploughs the 
day before, first looking them over, and test- 
ing every nut, bolt, and bar, to make sure 
they were fully land-worthy. They were 
left-hand ploughs, with steel shares, and weed- 
coulters, and light iron guide-wheels support- 
ing their heavy beams. He had run half a 
dozen furrows with each, then cleaned it 
carefully, and turned it upside down, so the 
dew might not fall upon the scoured share. 
Dew would not rust the shares in a single 


10 Next to the Ground 


night, but it would roughen them — delicately, 
it is true, but enough to make the first morn- 
ing rounds harder than they need be. 

A left-hand plough in fallowing, makes its 
own land. Land, it may be explained, is the 
technical name for the space of ground laid 
off to be ploughed to a finish. Sometimes a 
whole field is taken in a land. That depends 
a good deal upon the field’s size and shape. 
A land needs to be much longer than it is 
wide. Square fields are cut in three to five 
lands, the number depending somewhat upon 
the lay of them. Good land-masters have 
their fields fallowed or winter-broken across 
the last breaking — thus if the breaking plough 
skips a spot going: one way, it will be likely 
to hit it next time. 

Lands are ploughed in or out, according as 
the breaking is done with a right-hand plough 
or aleft. “This applies to the practice of mid- 
dle Tennessee only. Taking the world by little 
and by large, there are possibly as many sorts 
of ploughing as of religious beliefs. Ploughs 
are right-hand or left-hand through the placing 
of the share. If it is set upon the stock to 
throw the furrow-slice to the ploughman’s right, 
then the plough isa right-hander. If it is so 
set as to turn the furrow to the ploughman’s 
left, then it is a left-hander. The spread of 
broken ground is always on the side toward 


Ploughing 11 


which the furrows fall. A left-hand plough 
thus puts the broken ground to the left. With 
a triple team drawing it, the leader—the 
left-hand horse —walks in the clean fur- 
row, the other two animals upon firm un- 
broken ground. Another advantage of the 
left-hand plough is that it leaves no dead 
furrows for winter rains to turn into gulleys 
or miry spots, and a still greater one that in 
the ploughing there are no corners to be 
turned. At a corner the ploughman needs 
must lift out his plough and set the share afresh 
in earth —a heartbreaking and back-break- 
ing job with a big Number 40, —the best 
size for heavy fallowing. At starting the left- 
hand plough runs back and forth in the middle 
of the land, throwing furrow to furrow, and 
stopping half the land’s breadth from the ends. 
The plough is lifted out and reset at the begin- 
ning of each furrow, until there are half a dozen 
orso. Thenthe ploughman drives all around 
the broken strip, taking his plough out only 
when it needs must be unclogged. The land, 
first a long narrow oval, grows and spreads 
until it touches either the field-edges or the 
border of another land. There will be small 
triangles unbroken at the corners. These are 
finished with lighter ploughs, generally right- 
hand ones. After a land is well begun two 
ploughs or even three may run in it, each keep- 


12 Next to the Ground 


ing out of the other’s way. This is common 
practice where the land is very big, and the 
breaking ploughs of the same pattern. 

Vety many more right- than left-hand 
ploughs do the world’s work —the ratio is pos~ 
sibly seventoone. Right-hand breaking com- 
monly begins at the land’s edges —thus the first 
furrow is the longest. The broken ground lies 
to the ploughman’s right. Lands are of almost 
any shape, but preferably a long square. The 

‘ plough is driven clear out at each corner, and 
reset inthe unbroken ground. Thus the team 
is forced to trample the freshly broken ground. 
When the land is finished, you can see a big 
trampled cross diagonally upon the breast of 
it, marking out the corners. In the middle 
there will be a dead furrow — that is to say a 
naked one, where the plough cut away the last 
bit of upper soil, and flung it apart from the. 
furrow on the other side. But neither dead 
furrows nor trampling matter greatly with land 
that is tobe cross-broken before planting in the 
spring. Good tilth also requires back-furrow- 
ing at the margins of the fields—that is to say 
throwing in several furrows at the outer edges 
before full breaking begins. This prevents a 
ridge at the edge. 

It is entirely possible to plough in with a 
right-hand plough, quite the same as with a left- 
hand one — but tremendously inconvenient. 


Ploughing 13 


At least with teams broken to a haw-lead, har- 
nessed without breeching, and governed by a 
single line, which runs to the leader’s bit and 
is held in the ploughman’s left hand. Middle 
Tennessee plough-teams are so harnessed and 
driven. Draught beasts working double, be 
it understood, are distinguished as “nigh” and 
“off” horses. The nigh horse works on the 
left, the off horse on the right, and either to 
plough or wagon the nigh horse always leads. 
When draught-beasts hear their driver shout : 
“Gee up there! Gee! Gee!” they know it 
means pull to the right; when the shout is: 
“ Haw-aw! Whoa-haw!” they know they 
must pull to the left. In a three-horse team 
there is properly but one guiding mind — that 
of the leader. The off horse and the middle 
one follow his initiative — their bridle-reins, 
indeed, are linked to a ring in hishames. If 
they do not step with him, they are tied back 
—and if they try to run around him, a favor- 
ite trick with youngsters half-broken, the bear- 
ing-stick comes into play. ‘This is a light 
stick swung a little below the recalcitrant’s bit, 
and running on to the leader’s hames. 

A team can be hawed around, that is turned 
to the left, by little more than a steady pull 
on the line. To gee it around takes five times 
as long, and ever so much more trouble. First 
the ploughman must by jerks and cries make 


14 Next to the Ground 


the leader understand what is wanted, then 
the leader has to crowd against his mates and 
almost force them into position. Ploughing 
in with a right-hand plough, team motion is 
reversed and the lead is against the furrow — 
hence the share is apt to be drawn out, especi- 
ally on the rounds. Sometimes it leaves un- 
broken strips a full yard wide — especially if 
the ploughman is careless or not fairly strong 
enough for the work in hand. Ploughmen, 
like poets, are born, and need a deal of mak- 
ing afterwards. Given this special aptitude, 
supplemented with practice, there will be good 
work with almost any sort of plough and 
team. ; 

Dan was a born ploughman, a master of 
the craft. It was among Joe’s dearest ambi- 
tions to prove himself also of the guild. Un- 
ti] to-day he had always resented the sink-hole, 
as a wholly needless blot on the fair field-face. 
Now he was glad it was there-——the bushes 
gave just the shade he needed to keep his run- 
let cool and fresh. He slipped down, unslung 
it, and nestled it expertly amid the vagrant 
greenery, reminding himself as he did it to be 
sure and look for snakes when he came to 
drink. Snakes, for all they are so cold-blooded, 
love coolness in hot weather — he had known 
of more than one choosing to coil itself about 
a sheltered sweating water vessel. Then he 


Ploughing 15 


stood up, drew a long breath and looked about 
him. The mists that had hung so low over the 
swales and in the creek valley had risen as high 
as the tree-tops. The sky was clear, except 
for the faintest silver mottle far down at the 
southwest. Overhead the blue brightened 
momently, but still the east was a soft trans- 
lucent pink. Joe hoped it would not deepen 
to angry red — he did not want hindering rain 
upon this first fallow day. He was weather- 
wise after the manner of country lads, but the 
omens were contradictory. Clouds and heat- 
lightning in the south meant fine weather, as 
a red sunrise foreboded rain. On top of that, 
the locusts, which he called “ dry-flies,” were 
shrilling merrily, yet there was the rain-crow, 
the clown of the woods, “ calling rain,” with 
all his. might. 

Bob Whites, feeding in the stubble upon. 
clover buds and scattered wheat, called in 
soft half-plaintive singsong to their fledg-_ 
ling broods. Grasshoppers hung, often head 
downward, upon tall weeds, and stout grass- 
culms, but were as yet too damp and chilly 
for hopping — indeed, almost too sluggish even 
for crawling. There were butterflies every- 
where, their wings too heavy for flight. 
Clouds of tiny white ones clung to the damp 
places, their motionless wings held flat to- 
gether, straight above their tiny bodies. 


16 Next to the Ground 


Bigger brown ones crawled painfully about 
the netted clover, too inert to think of homes 
for their eggs. As yet they were not very 
plenty. By mid-August there would be mil- 
lions. Their cousins in golden-yellow, and 
the gorgeous tawny-orange gentry, spotted 
all over with black velvet, began to flutter 
languidly out of the hedgerows and the corn- 
field. Now and again a tobacco-fly, belated 
in his night-ranging, hovered irresolutely 
above the fresh white trumpets of a vagrant 
honeysuckle, or the honey-heart of a late wild 
rose. Humble bees drowsed upon the plumes 
of early goldenrod. They had slept there all 
night — perhaps to be ready for work in the 
morning. 

Possibly it is some dim comprehension of 
his: work’s worth which makes the humble bee 
not humble at all, but the most self-important 
among winged creatures. Clover is worth, 
you see, uncounted and unreckonable mil- 
lions, not merely to the landward folk, but 
to the world which the landward folk feeds. 
Without the humble bee and his congeners, 
clover would never ripen seed. Since the. 
plant is a biennial, no seed would mean its 
extinction, possibly in ten years: in twenty 
at the outside. 

The clover-heads, understand, are made up 
of little trumpet-shaped florets, so curiously 


Ploughing 17 


lipped and throated that self-fertilization is 
impossible. Humble bees and their cousins 
gather honey by means of a long retractile 
proboscis. In plundering the clover-heads 
they gather more than honey. Pollen sticks 
in little lumps to forehead and eyes. It is 
cleared off, with strokes of the fore-legs, and 
in the clearing spread along the proboscis, 
which deposits it where it will do most good, 
——in the heart of the next clover-floret 
rifled. 

Hence clover seed. It is small — very 
small to mean so much, no bigger than a tiny 
grain of sand. Its vitality is wonderful — it 
will lie twenty years deep down in the ground, 
and germinate when brought to the quicken- 
ing of sun and air and springtime. One 
might show statistically its value in hay and 
pastures, and their derivatives, beef and butter. 
But that would not by any means close the 
account. What clover is worth to the land 
itself, is a matter beyond all reckoning. Like 
all the pea family, scientifically the Legum- 
inos@, Clover has for ages been accepted as a 
plant of paradox. Other crops grew, and 
took away with them the strength of the soil. 
The more lavishly clover grew, the richer , 
it left the place where it had grown — not 
merely lighter and looser, but in better heart. 
The wise men explained that clover was a 


18 Next to the Ground 


sort of air-plant, drawing thence a store of 
nitrogen, the most valuable of all plant foods. 
It was a fine explanation — except for the 
fact that it did not in the least explain how 
the trick was done. Still, in one point the 
wise men blundered upon fact — the fact 
that clover fed the land through its roots 
rather than its stalks or leaves or branches. 
But the wise men took no sort of account of 
some queer little knobs and bunches, found 
upon clover roots, also upon those of its 
cousins, the peas. Latterly it has been dis- 
covered that the knobs and bunches do the 
work, ‘They are made up of beneficent bac- 
teria, which attack and dissolve the elements 
in the soil, thus rendering them fit for plant 
food. 

Clover is even more an aristocrat than a 
paradox. It will not grow save on land in 
fairish condition. Thin soil, or sour, or badly 
galled spots, it leaves to the peas, to rye, to 
the miscalled Japan clover, which is not a 
clover at all. Neither does it love a sandy 
soil, though it will grow on it something lag- 
gardly. Peas luxuriate in sand, and do not 
disdain the thinnest crawfishy stretches. In- 
deed they will flourish pretty well anywhere. 
To say land “won’t sprout black-eyed peas 
without moving,” is to express in the verna- 
cular of Tennessee, the height and depth 


Ploughing » 19 


and extreme of sterility. At White Oaks 
they had made such riotous growth, Major 
Baker knew there was no such thing as turn- 
ing the untouched vines under. So he had 
put hogs upon them to eat them down, leaf 
and pod and branch. Only the long, tough 
vines remained, and the wads of fibrous stuff 
the hogs had thrown out after chewing it and 
sucking the sweet juice. Still, even the vines 
made a nasty tangle. Joe was glad he did 
not have to deal with it. He smiled as across 
the sunlit distance he heard Dan shouting : 
“© Whoa-haw-w dar you, Tige! Git up, 
Nancy! Tote yosef, Beck! Tote yosefs!. 
All you black gals, tote!” 

His own team was ready. Against Dan’s 
advice, he had Wicked Sal in the lead. She 
was not wicked to him —- never wicked at all, 
as he saw it, only tricksy and full of mischief 
asa kitten. Her kicking even was prankish. 
Altogether she was ever so much a better mule 
than Blarney, who stood next, not to name 
being quicker than Beauty, who worked on 
the off-side. He loved all three — had he not 
played with them ever since they were foaled, 
and helped to break them? He had taught 
them to start and stop at his whistle, a soft 
piping something like a partridge’s feeding 
call. Inthe pasture they ran to him even if 
they were hungry, following him like dogs if 


20 Next to the Ground 


he held out his hand. They had seemed that 
morning to know what was before them, stand- 
ing like lambs to be hitched, without snatch- 
ing at the green stuff so temptingly under their 
feet. No wonder he patted them, called them 
pretty girls, and stuck little leafy bushes in 
their head-stalls to frighten the flies from their 
ears. 

He whistled. Wicked Sal laid one ear back, 
one forward, shook herself the least bit, and 
flung her weight against the collar. Blarney 
and Beauty stepped with her as though the 
three were one. There was no lurching, nor 
lagging, nor darting. The share surged for- 
ward, with foam-light earth creaming away 
from it almost as water creams from the prow 
of a boat. It was set to cut a furrow-slice 
nine inches broad, and five inches thick. Thus 
if the slices kept shape, they would fall slant- 
wise, one on the other, and cover the field’s 
face with six inches of light earth. 

Ploughing began just where the pasture ad- 
joined the mown land. Down the tramped 
side the slices did keep shape. Over in the 
aftermath, the earth was so mellow they melted 
as they fell, leaving bare a netted intricacy of 
big yellow clover-roots. Joe knew the tramped 
land would be mellow enough by seedtime. 
It was only firm, not packed and caked as the 
path was. The path ran through the mowed 


Ploughing 21 


stretch — it was a hungry man’s path, straight, 
very narrow, and deeply trodden. Slow Pete 
had made it, walking at night and morning to 
and from his cabin in the edge of the flat- 
woods. 

The ploughshare tore up the path in a clod 
half a yard long. Joe looked at it, and won- 
dered why it should take two ploughings and 
as many seedings to get the path-mark en- 
tirely out of the field. He wondered also why 
so many coarse, broad-leafed things, plantain, 
burdock and their kidney, should keep spring- 
ing up in the ploughed land to mark the 
path’s course. He speculated a little too as 
to whether the path proper would fetch wheat, 
or if the clean sound seed sown on it, would 
turn out cheat. He knew tramping wheat 
through the winter would turn it to cheat. 
At least his father said and thought so— and 
Joe never let himself doubt anything his father 
said. 

Sunshine had flooded the field as he stuck 

the share in earth. By time he had gone 
around the land his forehead was beaded all 
over. He wiped off the sweat, swung his hat 
high above his head, and yelled, loudly, hap- 
pily. Dan answered with a whoop. Slow 
- Pete, down in the grass-land, sent :back a qua- 
vering halloo, ‘There was a drenching dew. 
Joe was wet tothe knees. He looked doubt- 


22 Next to the Ground 


fully at his boots, then at the sweet-smelling 
earth: “ Dew-poison or not, I’ risk it!” he 
said, kicking off the boots and tramping on. 

The fresh earth more and more fascinated 
him. It was a warm chocolate loam, except 
in the swales where it was richest. There 
it was black-brown with gold-lights of sand. 
There the clover roots were half as big as his 
wrists. The brown butterflies were plentiest 
there, and the grasshoppers rose before the 
share in clittering clouds. The strengthening 
sun drew up the dew in steamy vapors. Birds 
sang only in fitful snatches, but the crows 
were noisier than ever. “They flew in from 
the flat-woods to hover impudently behind the 
ploughs. Joe picked up a handful of rounded 
pebbles. Rocks, he called them. They were 
just the things for throwing — and those black 
thieves deserved to be thrown at if ever any- 
thing did. But as he made to launch the 
first stone, he laughed and flung away the 
whole handful, saying to himself: “ My young 
man, remember you ’re ploughin’ to-day, not 
playin’! Suppose Marse Major came and 
found you throwin’ rocks! ‘You might be 
out of a job — besides, it ain’t fair.” 

He had let the mules make their own pace, 
sure that they knew enough to make it safely 
slow. As the sweat broke out on them in 
faint darkish lines around collars and back- 


Ploughing 23 


bands, he smiled and drew a long breath then 
said, nodding his head: ‘‘ You’ll stand up to 
it, nice girls!”” And then all at once, he was 
so hungry he thought almost enviously of Dan 
and his corn-cake. He was thirsty too — 
thirsty enough to make the image of the spring 
half a mile away very tantalizing. With a 
quick turn, he checked the mules, looped the 
line over the left plough-handle, and ran to 
the bushes where he had left his runlet. 

As he reached for it, something caught his 
hand, pinching hard, and somebody said sepul- 
chrally : “ Boo hoo! the snappin’ turtle got 
you that time.” He parted the brush, and 
there was Patsy, his tomboy sister, balancing 
by her elbows upon the edges of the sink-hole, 
and kicking her feet against the sides of it. 
Joe was fond of her, but not nearly as fond as 
he would have been if she had not happened 
to be so very like himself. He had ideas 
about girls. “They ought to mind about things 
— especially their frocks, he thought — and 
be afraid of things, particularly such things as 
snakes and freckles and guns. Patsy was not 
even afraid of fishing worms. She baited her 
own hook when they went fishing together. 
What was much worse — she usually caught 
bigger fish. 

“You ’re tryin’ to get snake-bit,” Joe said, 
as sternly as he could speak. 


24 Next to the Ground 


Patsy scrambled up and out on all fours. 
“ Snakes don’t harbor this time o’ day,” she 
said. “They ’re like you— too hungry ! 
Here is your breakfast! Eat it, and be glad 
I didn’t hide your runlet. I thought about 
it — but was ’fraid to put it in the sink-hole. 
I did n’t know but it might roll down clean to 
the bottom.” , 

Joe had left his team with heads over the 
broken ground, but while he ate and drank the 
mules turned half about, and began to nibble 
clover. Patsy stepped in front of them, pre- 
tended to shake her fist at them, and said with 
a frown at the leader: “ Sally-gal, I thought 
you, had more sense! You ought to know 
that second-growth stuff will make you slob- 
ber yourself ’most to death.” 

“No, it won’t! Not until August! But 
here ’s what ’s a heap better,” Joe said, com- 
ing to them runlet in hand. He filled his 
palm generously with water, and held it to 
each mule’s mouth. They drank eagerly, and 
Beauty rubbed her nose against his sleeve, 
making the while a little soft satisfied noise. 
Patsy nodded approval: “ You’ll make a 
ploughboy yet,” she said judicially, in her 
father’s own tone. Joe pretended to throw 
a soft clod at her by way of answer, but as 
she walked off, he called to her over his 
shoulder, “ Thanky, Patsy ! It’s too bad about 


Ploughing 25 


you though. I d wish you were —the boy 
‘you ought to be.” 

The dew dried fast — so fast the sun-heat 
took on a tonic quality. The mules went 
freer, and faster, breathing deep, yet not labor- 
ing in the least. The second sweat came out 
in areeking smother all over them. When it 

‘ dried in crusty white lines Joe drew a sigh of 
relief. Twice wet, twice dry, he knew his 
team was proof against the heat, for that day 
at least. It was fierce heat — still it was not 
the sun that would send them in at eleven or 
a little later, to stay in stall until three of the 
afternoon. It was the flies — the flies which 
in spite of the nets kept them kicking, biting, 
stamping, at times almost squealing. That 
was the worst part of breaking pastured clover 
land. Cattle had drawn and left there such 
clouds of flies. 

The plough hardly ever choked in the after- 
math; though the growth was so heavy it 
was not tall and tough like the early stalks in 
the pasture-ground. Going farther and far- 
ther into the swales the plough encountered 
the long stalks in mats. Grazing beasts are 
something finicky — they choose to crop short 
sweet herbage rather than that which is rank 
and coarse. Even in hay they know the dif- 
ference. Many of the swale-stalks were over 
two yards long, and set throughout their 


26 Next to the Ground 


length with blossoming branches. They did 
not stand upright, but curled and writhed them- 
selves together, swelling as high as the knee. 
The plough could not begin to bury them, 
and though the weed-bar ripped through them 
savagely, Joe had to stop every little while, 
turn the share half on edge, and free it with 
his heel, from the mass of gathered stems. 

Once a humble bee stung the heel, but so 
slightly it smarted only a very little bit. Once 
too agreen garter-snake made him shudder by 
wriggling out of the tangle across his bare foot. 
That made him think seriously of putting on 
his boots, but he decided to risk it until he 
took the mules to water. He would take 
them to the creek, and thus have a chance to 
see how Slow Pete was getting on. The 
creek-road ran through the grass land, cutting 
it into nearly equal halves. His father was 
there, watching the outlander, who had come 
around preaching the gospel of subsoiling, and 
ready to prove his faith by works. He had 
a plough of the pattern he wanted to sell, also 
an ox-team to pull it. ‘The Major had struck 
a contingent bargain with him, to subsoil five 
acres, and lose his work, and his selling 
chances, unless the crop next year was 
heavier on the subsoiled plot than on the 
ground merely surface-broken. 

The sun began to blister. It shone so hot 


Ploughing ay 


the tender aftermath wilted almost as the fur- 
row was turned. Joe stopped the mules, let 
go the plough, and stretched himself long and 
hard. He had never known before how tired 
a boy could be. Still he had no thought of 
giving up. That was not the Baker way. 
If the Bakers made bad bargains, they stuck 
the closertothem. Joe wiped his face, loosed 
his shirt-collar, and comforted himself by the 
reflection that the first day was always the 
hardest. 

Just then he heard the watering-bell — the 
very welcomest sound in all his life. Ina 
trice he had the gear stripped from his mules, 
and laid orderly back upon the singletrees, and 
was clipping away toward the gate. A big 
branchy red oak shaded it. The shade was 
like a cool green cave. The mules stopped 
short as they stepped within it, and Wicked 
Sal gave a little whimpering bray to Tiger, 
trotting in ten yards behind her. 

Slow Pete was breaking the old grass in 
ridge and furrow. That is to say, he was 
turning over a furrow slice to lie flat upon an 
equal breadth of sward. ‘Tennessee plough- 
men call such half-breaking of weed-land, 
whip-stitching. The use and reason of it is 
to prevent surface-washing upon slopes and 
ridges. Pete’s plough left the field’s face all 
in little hills and valleys. He was not plough- 


28 Next to the Ground 


ing, as the others were, for wheat. Rough 
old sward requires a year under plough to fit 
it for small grain, or if badly beset with 
broom-sedge, the pest of all south-country 
grassland, two years. ‘The sedge stalks are 
so stiff and glassy, the roots so tussocky, they 
make the soil too thirsty for either wheat or 
mowing grass. Arable land has many capri- 
ces of condition. Earable land, old English 
law writes it, perhaps with regard to eared 
crops, as wheat, rye, and barley, which grow 
only where ploughs have run. 

The subsoiler was well up, though his oxen 
could not step with the cross-matched team. 
The oxen were big red fellows with tapering 
horns, a yard in spread from tip to tip. They 
held their heads low, and went so slowly Dan 
said it made you tired to watch them. But 
the chain which drew the deep-running invis- 
ible ploughshare never slackened. The share 
turned nothing, threw up nothing. Lifted for 
unclogging after it had touched a water-vein, 
it showed as an uncanny long-shanked thing, 
well-scoured, and shining in the sun, with a 
clot of very bright red clay under the tip. 
The clay upon the long shank was of a warm 
chocolate yellow, very unlike the topsoil, which 
was almost black with unwholesome faint 
green scum at the surface between the grass 
roots. 


Ploughing 29 


The outlander did not himself hold .the 
plough — he had another man to do that. As 
he scanned the plough-shank he said persuas- 
ively: “Well, Major, what do you say to 
that? We’re letting in air and daylight at 
least twenty inches down for you. Soil that 
deep must be worth more than just a skim.” 

“ Maybe,” Major Baker answered, with a 
cautious smile; “but I can tell you more 
about that when the crop is gathered next 
year. I know you can easily have light soil 
too deep for wheat.” 

Notwithstanding, the Major did not under- 
value the work of light and air. It was 
knowledge of their worth which had made him 
order ridge-and-furrow. Frost would creep 
through the ridges, sweetening, melting, mel- 
lowing them; air and sunlight would flood 
the furrows and finish what the frost had be- 
gun. Besides the old sward would die better 
— partly from exposing its roots, partly from 
smothering. So would the pestilential wild 
growths, sassafras, saw-brier, and dewberry. 
Every inch of turf was netted with them — 
they made it so tough, indeed, the mules had 
to rest and blow after every round. It was 
thus that the patient oxen, never hasting, 
never resting, kept up with them. 

The mules pacing down to water snorted 
skittishly at sight of the ox-team. ‘ You 


30 Next to the Ground 


know when there’s strange work afoot — 
don’t you, nice gal?” Joe asked, patting 
Wicked Sal on the shoulder. Blarney 
crowded close up to rub her neck against his 
hand, and Beauty gave a little complaining 
whicker. Gray Nell, Pete’s leader, trotted out 
to them with Pete on her back. Grinning 
broadly, he said: “Icaint hep but laugh! I 
been laughin’ all de mawnin’ dest thinkin’ 
*bout whut dat dar ox-man would do, ef us 
wus ter run ’crost er bumblybee nest.” 

“© Mought be dat ’s er good thing,” Dan said 
thoughtfully, motioning towards the subsoiling. 
“ But — you hear me! I don’t wants none o” 
hit. I don’t nebber wanter be ploughin’ way 
down whar dem water-dawgs libs. No sir-ee 
-bob! Dat I don’t!” 

The mule began to gallop. They scented 
running water. When they came to the 
creek, they plunged in, turned their heads up- 
stream and began to drink thirstily. The 
ploughmen let them have one deep swallow, 
then snatched up their heads, and held them 
up a minute, before letting them drink their 
fill. After the drinking they stood in the 
stream splashing water all about while the 
ploughmen went to the spring, lay flat upon 
the brink of it, and drank and drank, almost 
as the beasts had drunk, with living water 
slipping past their lips. 


Ploughing 31 


It took grit to go back from rest and shade 
and cool freshness to the ache and burning 
of the fallows, but Joe did not flinch. He 
had put his hand to the plough rather against 
his father’s will ; besides, though he had a de- 
cent enough gun, he wanted a new one very 
badly. Breech-loader, choke bore —he 
thought of it, over and over, between whistles 
and chirrups to his mules. It would cost a 
lot — more, no doubt, than a fallow-hand’s 
wages. He was likely to get it whether he 
ploughed or not, but somehow he felt that he 
should care more for it, if he knew he had 
really earned it. 

Dan was singing in the unspoiled African 
voice, full of pure melody. He sang a bold 
air, and lively, one that had come down 
from the slave days, when every sort of 
work had its chant in time and tune. The 
singing broke welcomely across the sunlit hush. 
Clouds were boiling up in the south, but lo- 
cust and rain-crow alike had fallen silent. 
There was not a breath of wind, but sound 
carried so as to forebode a thunder-shower. 
The words came distinct and clear across the 
unbroken ground. If more of it had been 
ploughed they would have blurred. Joe 
caught the rhythm of the singing. He had 
not much breath to spare, but as strongly as 
he might, he joined in the chorus. And so 


39 Next to the Ground 


in the white-hot sunshine, bar answering bar, 
three hundred yards apart, they sang the 
fallow song. 


IRD-EYE lady tell de pigin 
“ Howdy!” 
Bird-eye lady sooner in de 
mornin’ | 
Pigin flop an’ flap tell he 
make de wor? cloudy ! 
Bird-eye lady sooner in de 
mornin’ 
Bird-eye lady! Bird-eye lady ! 
Bird-eye lady cloud so cool an’ shady! 
Bird-eye lady tell de pigin “ Howdy!” 
Bird-eye lady sooner in de mornin’ 
Cloud talk “Rain!” an de rain talk: “ Res’, sir!” 
Den de nigger an’ de mule kick dey heels up an 
say “ Yes sir!” 
Bird-eye lady see de mules er crawlin’! 
Bird-eye lady, sooner in de mornin’! 
Bird-eye lady hear de rain-crow callin’! 
Bird-eye lady sooner in de mornin’! 
Bird-eye lady hear de rain-crow callin’! 
Bird-eye lady here’s de rain er fallin’! 
Rain-crow tell de crab-grass : “ Grow! Don’t 
you res, sir!” 
De crab-grass answer back: “ Yes sir! Yes sir! 
Yes sir! Yes sir!” 


Wasps and Ants 


Chapter II 


ALLOWING asted six 
weeks —from mid-July 
to the end of August. 
Throughout it, Joe spent 
the most part of Sunday flat 
on his back, realizing, for 
the first time in his life, the 

sweetness of doing nothing. It was pure bliss 

to stir drowsily at dawn, remember the day, 
and roll over again for a long, delicious sleep. 

Then when he really awoke, what joy to lie 

relaxed, at full ease, upon white sheets smell- 

ing of rose leaves, and watch the vagrant 
creeping sunrays set little suns, blurred and 
tremulous with leaf-shadows, here, there, 
everywhere, on the clean oak floor! 
Through every fiber his body cried out for 
rest, but his mind was more than ever active. 

Thus he fell in the way of watching things 

—the things that flew and crept and crawled. 

It was not wholly a new pursuit —he had 


36 Next to the Ground 


entertained himself casually with them many 
times before. But long looking required one 
to keep unreasonably still —so still, Joe made 
up his mind one had to be very tired to get 
great diversion from it. 

Now that he was tired enough, he watched 
and wondered. As to the dirt-daubers for 
instance. Were they the creatures which the 
books called mason-wasps? ‘They had the 
true wasp-shape — were slim, uncanny-look- 
ing, greeny-black, or bronze-black, with beau- 
tiful gauze wings. But, so far as he knew, 
they stung nothing but spiders—he had caught 
and held them without provoking attack. Joe 
could not in the least understand why Dan so 
hated and feared them. Dan said: “‘ Dam 
dar dirt-dobbers dee des all de time ca’in’ news 
fer de witches.” He would climb to the very 
top of the stable to break up a dauber’s nest, 
and rub the place with yarrow. After the 
rubbing, he stuck sprigs of the green plant 
under the ridge-pole, climbed down, walked 
out of the stable backwards, and turned around 
three times upon his left heel before lifting his 
eyes. 

Joe’s mother also hated the daubers, but not 
on account of witchwork, though she ad- 
mitted their noise made her feel creepy. She 
was a pattern housewife, so had no use for 
creatures which littered her back piazza floor 


Wasps and Ants 37 


the whole summer through. It was a cedar 
floor trig and tight, laid down rough but worn 
smooth by uncounted scrubbings. The posts 
were also of cedar, with rails of seasoned pop- 
lar running between. There was no ceiling 
— nothing overhead but rafters and roof. 
The roof was sharply pitched, of hand-drawn 
oak shingles that had been on twenty years, 
yet seemed good for twice as many more. 
Space underneath them was curiously divided 
between winged tenants. The red-wasp zone 
came at the very tip-top, in the keen angle of 
roof and house-wall. Fruit-wasps, brown, 
‘gold-banded gentry, ravagers of orchards and 
vineyards, came next lower, but their nests 
were invisible —they crawled behind the 
weather boards, and burrowed into the daub- 
ing of the log walls. Any way they were not 
plenty enough to fill a whole zone. The 
daubers more than made up for that. Their 
zone indeed threatened to becomea continent. 
Left to themselves they would no doubt have 
overrun the whole space, but since they built 
low enough to be within reach of a broom, 
betwixt Mrs. Baker below, and the red wasps 
above, they were held within reasonable 
bounds. 

Joe cared least of all for the red wasps. It 
was not only because of their ill-temper — 
they stung upon occasion or without it — they 


38 Next to the Ground 


seemed to him as mechanical as they were 
fretful. Then too, when a nest got populous 
the drip underneath it was not good to smell. 
It dried upon the floor or the wind-beams or 
whatever caught it, in whitey-gray splotches 
fine and thin as mist, but with something of 
the same pungently acrid odor that came from 
a ball of fighting wasps. Still he wondered 
where the red wasps came from — in early 
spring they were so very few, and by late sum- 
mer so very many. Nests that ended broader , 
than the two hands began with no more than 
halfa dozen roundish cells set on, rosette fash- 
ion, at the end of a stout pillar of wood-pulp 
paper, anchored to and pendant from some 
sheltered surface. 

Joe did not know that fertile red-wasp 
queens live through the winter, sleeping away 
the cold in snug cracks or caves or cellars or 
barns. Very early in spring these hibernating 
queens creep out, feed a bit, then set them- 
selves to nest-making. The pillar and first 
cells are the sole work of the swarm-mother. 
When she has possibly half a dozen cells she 
lays eggs in each, which very soon hatch into 
tiny grubs. These the queen feeds and tends, 
distilling for them within herself a sort of 
brownish liquid, from honey and the juice of 
insects. In twenty days or thereabouts the 
early grubs come out strong young worker- 


Wasps and Ants 39 


wasps, which at once set themselves to making 
newcells. Thenceforward the nest grows mag- 
ically. Relieved of family cares, the queen 
gives her whole mind and strength to egg-lay- 
ing. Her elder children feed and care for the 
younger ones as they themselves were cared 
for. Midsummer often sees a nest with a 
thousand cells. Since the first cells are used 
over and over that gives some idea of a wasp- 
colony’s late summer strength. Nests with 
many thousand cells are not uncommon. 
Sometimes a new pillar is built out from the 
middle of the first paper comb, and another 
and bigger nest hung below it. Oftener it 
happens that a queen is somehow destroyed 
while her first brood is in cell. Then her 
deserted nest stands the summer through no 
bigger than three fingers, a piteous monument 
to frustrated maternity. In the peopled nests, 
late summer sees broods of drones and new 
queens. They reach maturity only a little 
time before frost. When frost threatens, the 
queens and the workers quit the nest, leaving 
the poor drones and the immature brood to 
starve. The workers shift for themselves 
until cold makes an end of them, while the 
queens crawl away and hide themselves in 
winter quarters. Earth-nesting wasps are re- 
ported to drag out their young at the approach 
of frost, and strew them upon the ground where 


40 Next to the Ground 


birds may devour them, evidently feeling that 
sudden death is much better than slow starva- 
tion. 

If Joe had known all this he would have 
watched the red fellows with keener eyes. 
Even as it was, he noted that though they 
worked hard, and showed themselves the hust- 
lers of the air, they did not begin over-early 
nor stick very late. Until the dew was off, 
they clung to the nest, and if it stormed, did 
not leave it at all. Upon fair days they be- 
haved as though they had a rigorous eight-hour 
law — every wing was folded close around 
five o’clock. Whether they were commun- 
ists, or had each an individual place, Joe could 
not quite make out. He knew that the early 
wasps slept perpendicularly, clinging to the 
nest-pillar, or in a partly finished cell. When 
the nest grew big, at night the whole face of it 
was covered with wasps hanging flat, and other 
wasps inside cells, head downward, and only 
the heads showing.. 

The hotter the day, the livelier and more 
quarrelsome they became. Whenever the 
thermometer hovered around ninety-five in the 
shade, not a half hour passed but a knot of 
brawlers fell down upon the porch, buzzing 
mad anger with all their wings, biting and sting- 
ing as hard as they could. Sometimes, though 
not very often, a brawler was stung to death. 


Wasps and Ants 41 


Always, when the knot disentangled itself, the 
fighters flew off in the worst possible temper, 
ready to sting anything that came in their way. 
Except when they fell thus, they rarely flew 
in and out through the piazza. They chose 
instead to light upon the weather-boarded 
gable, and crawl through the big crack be- 
tween the weatherboards and the roof. Light 
or laden it made no difference —they came 
through the cracks with balls of wood-pulp in 
their jaws, crawled two or three inches, spread 
their wings, balanced themselves, then flew 
-buzzing to the nest. 

Joe wondered why the wasps waited until 
the dew was off before setting to work on 
weathered wood, gathering stuff for their 
nests; the wood was much softer with the 
dew on it. He decided that the wasps might” 
find the damp fibers tough, and so prefer them 
dry and brittle. Every Sunday he wished for 
a microscope so he might look close at their 
wonderful fore feet, which spread out the 
pulp-balls into such beautifully smooth cell- 
paper. He thought further that there must be 
sluggards among them. Watching them, he 
thought he had seen the beginning of more 
than one quarrel, when a swift worker buzzed 
and fumed impatiently, waiting laden, for a 
blunderer to get out of its way. Some cells 
too, were better-shaped and smoother than 


42 Next to the Ground 


others, and some wasps ever so much bigger 
and stronger than their fellows. He could not 
in the least understand how anything so strong- 
winged, savage and cunning as a wasp ever 
let itself be trapped and killed in a gauzy 
spider-web. 

The fruit wasps did not fight among them- 
selves —.perhaps there were not enough of 
them, but they did fight the red fellows to a 
standstill whenever the reds came whirring 
arrogantly about through fruit-wasp territory. 
Then it was not a case of the battle to the 
strong. The red wasps were unquestionably 
stronger, and had more venomous stings. But 
in fighting the fruit wasps turned upon their 
backs, and bit and stung with such judgment 
they rarely failed to be victorious. There was 
this to be said for them —they never stung 
unprovoked. If you had the nerve not to 
flinch, one of them might crawl up and down 
a bare arm, yet fly away harmless with a merry 
buzzing of wings. 

That is but another way of saying they are 
fine gentlemen on wings — much the finest, 
Joe thought, of all that lived on the piazza- 
roof. Besides honey and fruit-juices they fed 
on caterpillars, and occasionally on spiders. 
When the caterpillar was very big, maybe 
three times as heavy as its captor, the wasp 
brought it home by stages, flying a little way 


Wasps and Ants 43 


with it, then resting, perfectly motionless with 
wings shut tight. Commonly the last rest was 
upon the piazza floor —after it the wasp 
mounted to the nest plane in slow rather 
wavering spirals, keeping all four wings in 
rapid motion. Caterpillars were not carried 
like spiders, nor as the red wasps carried paper- 
pulp, in jaws and between fore legs. ' The 
wasps caught the caterpillars back of the head, 
stupefied them with judicious stings, then sat 
with all six legs astride their backs, held fast, 
set all wings fanning, and rose from the ground, 
but never very high. Indeed throughout the 
hunting they flew so low it was a standing mar- 
vel how they ever managed to mount to the nest. 

But after all, none of the others were as 
funny as the dirt-daubers. Once they had 
made their minds up to build a nest upon a 
particular spot, they knew no such word as 
fail. If their mud-walls were knocked down, 
they swept off the place with a rapid fanning 
of wings, and laid a new foundation. Joe saw 
‘ them do this four times one morning in the 
time between a late breakfast and a noon din- 
ner. ‘That made him understand about Dan 
and the yarrow. White Oaks daubers some- 
how could not abide the smell of the plant. 
Dan said the reason was, yarrow was a con- 
jure herb, but upon that point Joe reserved 
opinion. 


44 Next to the Ground 


There seemed to be no proper dauber com- 
munity, though several darted and buzzed 
about the nest. A mud-castle, once begun, 
went up and forward with a rush. Still the 
daubers made haste slowly. Mortar they got 
most commonly out at the chicken-trough in 
the back yard, where there was nearly always 
water spilled over the edges. Sometimes a 
dozen settled upon the soft earth at the margin 
of the over-flow puddle and began to ball up 
the soft earth. It required some minutes to 
gather a pellet, shape it properly, and balance 
it for flying. Before starting to the nest there 
was a trial flight of a few inches. If the flyer 
settled either forward or back, she at once 
alighted and shifted her burden back or forth. 

Sometimes the puddle dried quickly, leav- 
ing stiffish mud behind. The daubers gath- 
ered balls of this, and crawled with them 
cautiously to the edge of the trough so the 
water in it might soften the balls and make 
them spread properly. If the mud crusted all 
over, the daubers crawled about evidently in 
search of a wet spot. When they did not 
find a wet spot, they flew away, either to the 
far trough, in the edge of the orchard, or to 
the calf-lot pond more than a hundred yards 
off. If they took these long flights they were 
much apter to drop their mud-balls, although 
they rested once or twice on the way home. 


Wasps and Ants 45 


Joe could tell where they had been by the 
color of the dropped pellets. Mud from the 
orchard was almost black, that from the calf- 
pond distinctly reddish. Sometimes he pur- 
posely renewed the yard-puddle — he liked to 
watch the nests grow, and they grew very 
much faster with building stuff handy. 
Building began by sticking a thickish lump 
against a flat surface. Two or three balls 
commonly went into this lump. The walls 
spread from it either side in a sort of semi- 
Gothic arch, and grew to a gallery, often 
longer than the hand. Throughout the build- 
ing the arch remained. New work began 
in the point of it—a laden dauber stuck a 
mud-ball there and spread it down one side 
or the other, using fore legs for trowels, and 
stretching the ball into an earth-cord. Dried, 
these round cords formed walls as thick as 
thin.cardboard, and ridged delicately all over. 
Each ridge outlined the wall-arch. Some- 
times a dauber built so fast there was an 
inch of gallery with the mortar still wet. 
The daubers were poor judges of mortar, 
for all their experience. Black stuff, such as 
came from the orchard, was hardly worth 
bringing in. Dry, it crumbled for the least 
jar. Red-clay mud made fairly good walls, 
but not as good as yellow, which dried almost 
flint-hard. No dauber in good standing was 


46 Next to the Ground 


ever satisfied with a nest of one gallery. As 
soon as the first was an inch long a second was 
begun, then a third, a fourth— a seventh even 
was not at all uncommon. As a gallery 
lengthened it was walled across into cells a 
little more than an inch deep. Before a cell 
was finally sealed, it was crammed full of 
spiders or caterpillars, not killed but deftly 
stung into paralysis. It was not a complete 
paralysis. After the sting, a spider’s legs 
would quiver, a caterpillar move feebly. But 
the creatures could not crawl. If the daub- 
ers dropped them, they lay where they fell. 
Sometimes the daubers flew down, and made 
a feint of picking up their lost prey, but more 
generally they flew off after fresh game. 

Joe decided that the daubers purposely let 
fall some of their captives. He knew the 
spiders and caterpillars were meant to feed 
the young daubers that would hatch out in 
the cells. Dauber-grubs fed by sucking, and 
dead insects would be too dry for that, long 
before the grubs hatched out. He had knocked 
down dauber nests in mid-winter, and found 
the spiders in them still soft and plump, even 
faintly alive. So it was reasonable to con- 
clude that the castaways were castaways be- 
cause they had been stung so they would die 
— either too deeply, or in the wrong place. 

Speculation upon the point sometimes sent 


Wasps and. Ants 47 


him to sleep. The speculation was, however, 
mightily aided by the noise of daubers at 
work. It was a sharp vibrant metallic hum- 
ming, which began as the mud-ball was set 
on the wall, and ended when the last grain 
was properly spread. Joe thought if fairies 
played on the jew’s-harp it must sound much 
..the same. He was, you see, a jew’s-harp 
player himself. When half a dozen daubers 
worked and harped at the same time, he found 
there was a difference of almost half a note 
in the volume of sound at the end, and the 
beginning. It was loudest at first, and strong- 
est and clearest when the mortar spread easily. 
Daubers did not always make good jobs of 
the spreading. Often Joe saw lumps bitten 
off, and whole new earth-cords gone over. 
For the most part the galleries ran straight 
and plumb, but one much harried builder, ran 
up a fifth nest with walls as crooked as could 
be, and slapped on fresh galleries wholly at 
haphazard. 
The daubers crawled with wings flat at 
the sides, now and then lifting them, and 
dropping them with a faint flick. Sometimes 
only the wings on one side went up. More 
commonly they raised wings on both sides. 
The wing opening and shutting was almost 
instantaneous. The daubers did not crawl 
with spread wings. ‘They left that to the 


48 Next to the Ground 


wasps, red and brown. A crawling wasp 
whose wings are folded either over the back 
or at the sides is reasonably peaceful. Crawl- 
ing with spread wings it will sting anything 
stingable— and sometimes try to sting those 
which are not, as posts or boards. 

Hornets were regular piazza busybodies, 
darting everywhere about it after flies, their 
favorite prey, alighting now and then to dress 
their wings with their fore feet, or to'rub off 
the feet themselves upon a smooth wooden 
surface. But they did not nest on the piazza. 
Instead, they built around a_ three-pronged 
bough in the sweeting apple-tree. Weather- 
wise folk said their setting the nest so high 
was a sure sign the next winter would be mild. 
Before a very cold winter — thus the weather 
sages — hornets build low, on shrubs or 
even weeds, and make their paper walls extra 
thick. However that may be, the nest is 
built in rings much as an onion grows, with 
cells like wasp-cells in between the rings. 
The building begins modestly, yet the nest 
which at first is no bigger than an egg, may 
end by reaching the size of a water-bucket. In 
shape it is always an irregular oval, in color 
grayish. Sometimes the small end is up, 
sometimes down. There is an opening at 
the bottom, through which the insects fly in 
and out. 


Wasps and Ants 49 


Rain and dew did not daunt the hornets ; 
further, they kept at work from daylight until 
dark. They were indeed very much the most 
energetic among the nest-builders, also the 
most ill-tempered. They stung with malice 
aforethought, and did not even fly about their 
own affairs without buzzing complaint. Not- 
withstanding, Mrs. Baker tolerated them — 
partly, it is true, because she could not help 
it, and ‘partly also on account of the fly- 
catching. They pounced hawk-like upon 
every fly they could surprise. That was not 
very many. Fly-eyes have so miany facets, — 
that dilettante insect sees as well behind and 
at the side of himself, as before. Hornets 
are far from being so clear-sighted. Many 
a time they pounced upon a little black spot, 
mistaking it for a fly. They were fond also 
of spiders, but more wary of attacking them 
than either the wasps or daubers. If they 
ever attacked a spider hard by his web the 
chances were rather more than even, that 
instead of catching, they would themselves 
be caught. 

Spider webs are often so fine-spun they are 
invisible except when hung with dew. So it 
was not at all strange that the hornets, hot- 
tempered, blustering, almost ruffianly blunder- 
heads, often fell foul of them, and by their 
frantic rage only entangled themselves the 


50 Next to the Ground 


more fatally. As between the spiders and 
their various enemies, Joe decided that the 
webs caught three hornets to one wasp, and 
at least two wasps for every dauber. 

Nearly ever since the piazza was built sweat- 
bees had made nests in the rails across the 
east end. The rails were about three inches 
through and nearly always damp from the 
shade of the honeysuckle trellis outside. They 
had been painted white. The paint was now 
mainly a_ reminiscence. They were set ten 
inches apart and had upon the bottom an inch- 
wide flat space. It was in this that the sweat- 
bees always began work. They worked in 
pairs, and stuck to the second rail which they 
had chosen first, weakening it so much that it 
had had to be replaced more than once. There 
were always three or four pairs of them, never 
more nor less. In early June they began chip- 
ping out a round hole as big as the finger. Each 
pair made a separate hole, and the two took 
turns at the chipping, one resting while the 
other worked. For maybe an inch the hole 
went straight up, then turned horizontally and 
ran several inches right or left, with the grain 
of the wood, and was shaped into a rounded 
nest chamber. Sometimes they made two or 
three false starts, so evidently they were not 
over-easy to please. In boring straight up- 
ward, their chips took care of themselves, but 


Wasps and Ants 51 


when it came to cutting the gallery, and hol- 
lowing the nest proper, they crawled with the 
big bits to the mouth of the nest and dropped 
them outside, then set their wings buzzing so 
strongly the fine dust was fanned out. 

They were black and gold like humble bees, 
only smaller. They lined their wooden walls 
with bits cut from flower-petals, most gener- 
ally roses —at least Joe believed so, he had 
found bits of rose-petals dropped below the 
nest. And when he had split up one of the. 
condemned rails, he had found some wooden 
chambers empty, others full of darkish sticky . 
stuff something like bee-bread, meant no 
doubt for the nourishing of another season’s 
sweat-bees. 

He was very curious about the death- 
watches that lived inside the house, hollow- 
ing out winding homes for themselves in the 
oak logs of the big dining room. But all he 
was ever permitted to find out was that the 
insects looked like yellow-jackets, only stouter. 
His mother hated to hear the creatures named 
—her black mammy had told her in child- 
hood that they “knew when death was ridin’ 
and would keep it away from houses where 
they were let alone.” 

So when he grew tired of lying upon the 
piazza floor beside his baby brother, Billy-Boy, 
his head on Billy-Boy’s sheepskin, his eyes fast 


$2 Next to the Ground 


on the piazza roof, he got up, picked up the 
baby and the sheepskin, and took them out 
upon the shady grass at the end of the house. 
There he could see what the ants were doing. 
In a way they were old friends of his. When 
the flying ants swarmed in the spring he knew 
danger of frost was over. “They came out 
with a rush, almost like the spray of a foun- 
tain, lost their silver-gray wings pretty soon 
after they touched ground, and became ordin- 
ary big ants, black or reddish. Some of them 
were almost an inch long, but did not sting 
as viciously as the little red ones which were 
the pest of midsummer housekeeping. 

If Joe had known that the flying-out was a 
tumultuous ant-wedding, he would have been 
more than ever interested in watching it. As 
the case stood, he did not care for the fliers 
half so much as for the little black ants — 
#sop’s pismires. The pismires had a strong 
nest somewhere in the chimney foundation. 
Joe liked to put out a lump of sugar upon the 
chimney shoulder twenty feet in air, and watch 
what happened when a ranger-ant found it. 
He was certain there were ranger-ants — in- 
sects bolder, and of better brain than the rest. 
He saw solitary fellows going everywhere, up, 
down, across, around —to the chimney-top, 
the garden fence, or all about the big oak trees 
seeking honey-dew to devour. The most of 


Wasps and Ants 53 


folk thought the honey-dew fell like other dew, 
but Joe knew better — he had read about the 
insects which secrete it, and serve in a manner 
as ant-cows. But that did not interest him 
half so much as watching what the rangers 
did— how they hunted, and when they had 
found, went home to the nest by the best route, 
blazing out a path for the worker-ants to fol- 
low. 

He spent hours, propped on his elbows, - 
looking at the paths and what went on in 
them. The paths appeared to be barely wide 
enough for two ants to travel side by side, or 
one to pass another, coming or going. Usu- 
ally the ants moved in two lines — one going 
out light, the other coming in laden. The 
light line always gave road to the loaded one 
—that is to say, turned a little out, so the 
loaded fellows could keep straight on home. 
But there are rogues among ants as well as 
among men. It happened sometimes that a 
rogue-ant tried to seize on what another had 
brought nearly home, and take it to the nest 
as his own. ‘The rogue did not turn out. 
Instead he stood square in the passway, 
snatched at the load as it came against his 
head, then made to turn and run back. If 
he surprised the other ant, broke his hold, and 
got the booty, he did turn and run. Other- 
wise there was a very pretty fisticuff. The 


54 Next to the Ground 


two rose on their hind legs, and with their 
fore ones pummelled each other soundly, both 
keeping jaws fast upon the thing in dispute. 
Generally they fell over, thus blocking the 
path and getting a huddle of distracted ants 
either side themselves. The crowd jostled 
and scrambled in a mighty human fashion as 
though trying to see what it was all about, 
but commonly the disturbance was over in a 
minute. One fighter or the other quickly 
gave in. Sometimes Joe saw two ants or 
even three struggling home with a big load 
—say a grain of rice or wheat kernel, or a 
crumb of bread. They had their heads be- 
neath the load, their bodies spread out in 
wedge-shape, and held their heads as high as 
possible, so as to keep the load clear of the 
ground. Once or twice he saw a fourth ant 
stand almost upright opposite the bearers, 
propping the load with head and fore legs, 
and walking backwards with funny mincing 
steps. 

An over-loaded ant or a tired one seemed 
sometimes to ask help of another. The tired 
ant dropped his load, stopped and rubbed a 
feeler over the helper’s ‘head, then picked up 
his burden and went on with it. The light 
ant ran on an inch or so, then turned, over- 
took the tired one, put his head under the 
load, and kept it there until the nest was 


Wasps and Ants os 


reached. If a straw was laid across the path, 
they dropped the load, and measured the straw 
with their feelers, first one then the other. 
Then they tried the ground to see if they could 
go under the straw. If they could not, they 
ended by picking up their burden, lugging and 
tugging it to the top of the straw, and tumb- 
ling it down on the other side. 

Blocking the path with a pebble, a pinch 
of earth, even a splash of water was much 
more serious. Ants gathered in knots either 
side the obstacle, turning uncertainly about, 
until a ranger came to lay out a new path 
for them. The new path was almost always 
around the obstacle, not over it. By wetting 
the ground either side the path for a little 
distance, it was possible to make the ants crawl 
over a pebble. Loose earth they would not 
set foot on — a strange thing when one con- 
siders that they nest so often in earth — indeed 
that they cannot live without earth. Where 
a path was blocked continuously for a yard or 
so, or two or three times close together, the 
rangers abandoned it, and struck out a new 
one. 

Joe fancied the ants followed their paths by 
scent. This was because water in a path set 
them at fault even after it had dried. He be- 
lieved also the pathmaking was in the nature of 
a providence to help ant-swarms to their proper 


56 Next to the Ground 


nests. Swarms from many points fed on the 
same honey-dew — there would be a mighty 
mixing up of families unless each inhabitant 
of a nest knew beyond dispute the proper road 
home. Occasionally he saw what he took for 
a stray ant — one which ran bewilderedly back 
and forth, turning in the path about every yard 
or so, and obsequiously keeping out of the way 
of all it met. Notwithstanding the obsequi- 
ousness, the ants to whom the path belonged 
fell upon these presumable strangers, cuffed 
them, hustled them roughly about, and at last 
drove them to seek shelter in the grass or leaf- 
age outside. Joe wondered a little if the 
strays starved there, or if, in the end, they 
managed to steal home. 

He was sure the ants were all weatherwise. 
Else how should they, when honey-dew was 
plentiest, six hours before a rainstorm, so crowd 
the paths to it they were fairly in each other’s 
way ? Sometimes then they tried to come and 
go three abreast in paths just big enough for 
one. He laughed to see the tangle they made, 
and thought how odd it was, with all their 
foresighted wisdom they knew no better. An- 
. other thing these Sunday studies taught him, 
was the wonders and uses of ant-feelers. They 
were such little things, much finer than hairs, 
set on in the middle of the forehead, yet able 
to reach back, forth, sidewise, up, down, around. 


Wasps and Ants 57 


By help of them the ants knew what was 
edible, what impassable, what safe, and what 
dangerous. Anything they came to, the feelers 
examined. Joe told himself the feelers were 
much more than feelers — they stood to the 
little black fellows for hands, eyes, ears, not 
to mention nose and tongue. 


The Ragged Month 


Chapter III 


N Tennessee, August is the 
ragged month, especially 
towards the end. Pas- 
tures, in the main, are bare 
and sun-baked ; the yel- 
lowed corn blades have 
begun to whip and tatter. 
If grasshoppers are plenty 

they eat the high corn-blades to the midrib 

while still they are green. In fields so eaten 
the whipping sounds like a battle of willow 
wands. Gardens lie waste and weedy, except 
in the late cabbage plots, and the sweet potato 
patches. But in the flower borders there is a 
fine riot of red and yellow, and pink and purple, 
with now and then a blotch of white. 
Verbenas, ‘petunias, phlox, geraniums, nas- 
turtiums, are, each and several, the real sun- 
flowers. The sun never shines too white-hot 
for them. They live but to meet such shin- 
ing, and stretch out stems almost fabulously 


62 Next to the Ground 


long, in the effort to escape from shade. Upon 
rainy days they either close or droop, and stand 
patterns of sad-colored constancy, in wait for 
theirliege. But the big staring blooms, dahlias, 
sunflowers, zinnias, and late hollyhocks, rejoice 
in a moderate downpour and after it laugh out 
in new beauty. August freshets wash out and 
beat, down even the hardiest blowth. 

Roses bloom through the ragged month, but 
languidly, after the manner of fretful fine ladies 
impelled solely by the obligation of nobility. 
It is an ephemeral blooming —fresh one morn- 
ing, faded and falling the next. But what 
would you have? ‘The bushes are ripening 
new wood, striking new and stronger roots 
that the late autumn blooming shall be richer 
and more perfect than even the roses of May. 

The orchards have their own ragged story, 
told by rifled boughs, and bent and broken ones. 
Stripped peach boughs in particular, are ragged 
to the point of desolation. Peaches ripen 
quickly, once the time of ripeness comes, and 
only a few among them — the old seedling 
sorts — hang long after ripening. To taste 
a perfect peach you must eat one that has 
fallen of its own ripeness from a high sunlit 
bough where the free winds played over it, 
yet where it had adue and proper shade. The 
sunny side of a peach is always juiciest and 
of the finest flavor — still sun-baking makes 


The Ragged Month 63 


the fruit tough and leathery. Furthermore 
sun-baking presages lack of sufficient leafage, 
and it is the leaves which elaborate the sap, 
making it fit to feed wood, and fruit and root. 
A tree stripped of leaves just as its fruit was 
ready to ripen, would be apt to die. Certainly © 
the fruit would dry and shrivel. Grape vines 
so stripped do die down to the root. Next 
year they will grow again from the root, but it 
will be several years before the growth is 
normal. 

Feathered folk are the raggedest things of 
all. From the big bronze turkeys to the tini- 
est bantams, they give their whole minds and 
bodies to getting themselves new coats. It is 
much the same with the birds. The fledg- 
lings have shed part of the nest-plumage, so 
are more unkempt and pen-feathered than 
even their elders. The ground beneath a 
hawk’s or owl’s roost is flecked with cast-off 
quills and hackles. Birds of prey have all an 
instinct of fixity, and unless greatly disturbed, 
nest and roost on the same spot year after year. 
They preen themselves and dress their coats 
before leaving the perch. Still now and then 
a straggling loose feather flutters down as they 
fly in aerial heights. 

Ishmaels of upper air, with beak and claw 
against every other feathered or creeping thing, 
hawks yet cry softly and clearly, one to an- 


64 Next to the Ground 


other, especially hungry young hawks, just 
out of the nest. It is a cry of three notes, 
melodious, and pleading, unlike yet pitched in 
key with the call of the mourning dove. If the 
young hawks cry continuously upon an August 
morning it is to the countryside almost a certain 
sign of rain before midnight. The three notes 
are insistently repeated, after a barely percep- 
tible pause. The sound is curiously vibrant 
and carrying, often coming clearer across 
stretches of open field than in the woods about 
the nest. The young birds haunt the vicin- 
age of the nest, long after they are strong on 
the wing. They growso rapidly,and take wing 
so easily, it is only this haunting that by mid- 
August distinguishes them from their parents. 

Hawks commonly lay two eggs, but the 
bigger ones, such as the red-winged hen hawk 
oftener than not raise but a single nestling. 
That is true also of the horned owls, big 
brown-mottled fellows, six feet from tip to tip. 
Blue-tailed hawks which are small, yet savage 
hunters of quail, often destroying whole coveys 
of them, bring up their young in pairs. Sodo 
the comic screech-owls, the fussiest and most 
self-important of all birds. Owlets speak to 
their parents and the world at large, with a sort 
of chuckle, half querulous, half wheedling. 
They are full-fledged before they quit the nest, 
which is in either a hollow tree, a dry cranny 


The Ragged Month 65 


in the bluff, or a dark safe place in some de- 
serted building. 

Negroes call the screech-ow] “ squinch- 
owels,” and hold them in dread as prophets and 
fore-runners of bad luck. A screech-owl cry- 
ing on the roof they say brings death to the 
house ; if he perches on the fence he is “ callin’ 
trouble,” and if he drops down the chimney 
either hunting swallows, or hiding himself from 
sudden daylight, somebody will get burned to 
death within the year. There are various coun- 
ter-charms — flinging salt, a black walnut, or 
an Irish potato at him, chewing a tow wad to 
shoot him, or making everybody in the house, 
when he comes down the chimney, walk out 
of it behind him as he flies away. To kill 
him inside would simply clinch the ill luck. 
Even to hear him screech in woods or fields 
when anybody is sick, means that the sick 
person will die, or come near death. 

Woodlands stand hushed and desert in this, 
the turn of the summer. There are days when 
no wind stirs either the low leaf or the high. 
Oak-leaves are stiff, and shine as though var- 
nished, especially those of the Spanish oak, 
and the scrubby black-jack. Dew drenches 
the fields, yet is light in the woods upland. 
Trees growing along the creek, or in low 
moist swales, gather it so heavily the least 
ruffle of air toward morning sends heavy drops 


66 Next to the Ground 


pattering down. Still the undergrowth al- 
ways seems thirsty. The struggle for exist- 
ence, always sharp among growing things, 
comes to a fighting finish in August heats. 
The low-growing boughs shut away from 
sunlight, perish, the thickets grow ragged with 
fading leaves and dead stems. Nature’s law 
is inexorable. IPf the root cannot suck up 
sap and substance for the leaves to shape into 
_ new living wood, then it is better the whole 
plant should die than remain and cumber the 
ground. The mounting sap is mainly water, 
faintly tinctured with various elements. ‘The 
chiefest of them is carbon, in the form of car- 
‘bonic acid. This the leaves turn back into 
oxygen and carbon, keeping the carbon in 
their own cells, and giving off the oxygen from 
their under sides. ‘They also give off much 
water. Evena small plant in vigorous growth 
soon covers a bell glass set over it with good- 
sized drops. A tree three feet through at the 
ground is estimated to send up to its trunk 
and boughs, in the season of full growth, about 
five barrels of sap each twenty-four hours. 
And such is the force of the sending up, that 
if it were possible suddenly to check the trans- 
piration through the leaves, trunk and branches 
would burst. 
Since moist air draws electricity, which is 
the real rain and climate maker, it is easy to 


The Ragged Month 67 


see how important a good breadth of forest 
trees is to arable land. Their deep roots suck 
up the waters under the earth, and send them 
out in fine invisible clouds to invite the clouds 
visible. But the trees distill in these clouds 
only water. What the water brought to them, 
they keep for their own enriching, mysteriously 
transmuting elemental substances into cells, 
sugar, starch, gum, oil, and woody fiber. The 
leaves are their laboratories. The leaves have 
done their perfect work in August. There is 
rich sap ready to swell and ripen every man- 
ner of fruit or nut, also to go down for the 
refreshing of the roots, and on the way, build 
up a ring of new wood. 

Trees felled as the new wood is hardening, 
give the very best timber, provided the trunks _ 
are at once lopped of boughs and branches. 
Should they lie as they fall, with all their leaves 
and twigs, the wood becomes brash and life- 
less, warping easily and hard to work. It 
never splits freely, but with a ragged eating-in 
ofthe grain. Windfalls, which are very plenty 
thanks to August thunderstorms, thus are 
often of no value, except for firewood. But 
whether wind-felled, or ax-felled, the timber 
lasts twice as long as that cut in May or June. 
Big trees do not sprout after August cutting, 
and even tenacious shrubs like sassafras often 
die of it. Indeed, there is a short period in 


68 Next to the Ground 


the month when woody things die almost at a 
touch. The stroke of an ax, a wheel jolting 
roughly over an exposed root, the wrenching 
of a branch, or a slight wound to the bark 
may be fatal then to the tallest, sturdiest oak. 
Greenly alive to-day, to-morrow it may be 
withered to the tip, and next week dry and 
dead. Yet lightning scathe is not so deadly 
as in early spring, though if the lightning 
shatters the tree, particularly an oak tree, it 
often makes the wood more durable than even 
felling. Slivers of it stay sound and keep 
shape, after whole trunks, cut and left on the 
ground, have rotted and crumbled. 

Old man Shack, who rented a place in the 
flat woods, claimed to know by the moon just 
when: this time of danger came round. If 
Major Baker did not fully credit the claim, he 
was too wise in the unwrit ways of wind and 
weather, and life, and growth, to scout it al- 
together. So he took advice of the old man 
before setting men at work in the bush pas- 
ture — fifty acres of tangle he had bought only 
the fall before. He had wanted it all the years 
it had lain waste, but the title had been clouded 
with a suit in chancery. When the suit ended 
in a decree of partition, he snapped up the 
field, although to get it he had to take also a 
hundred acres in the flat woods, for which he 
did not greatly care. 


The Ragged Month 69 


The fallow ground lay next it, running 
broadside to it indeed. There was a worm- 
fence between —a line fence, rightly charge- 
able as much to one field as the other, though 
Major Baker had kept it up the ten years 
past. Upon his side, the corners were un- 
picturesquely clean, but those opposite made 
up for the fact. They were ablaze with yel- 
low, and purple and scarlet. Golden-rod, 
ironweed, early asters, Spanish needles, white 
sumach grew tall there and rampant — higher 
than a tall man’s head. Bents of the barrens 
grass also —as lusty as in the pioneer days, 
when it covered the whole face of the earth, 
and could be tied over a horse’s neck as a 
rider threaded it. Occasionally there were 
sedge clumps, not quite so tall as the grass. 
Sedge loves the light earth of a hedge-row but 
cannot live in the thick shade. 

Many other things love it. A fence-row 
is indeed the chosen haunt of vagrant woody 
stems. Elder bushes, hazels, wild cherries, 
wild roses, wild grapes, seedling apples, black- 
thorns, peach-trees, and selfsown honeysuckles 
disputed ground in this hedgerow with the 
legions and cohorts of sassafras and black- 
berry. Joe loved the sights and sounds and 
smells of the hedgerow. His plough crept 
near and nearer it each day. He was glad it 
had been spared so long — partly on his own 


70 Next to the Ground 


account but more because of the birds. So 
many had nested in it, June cutting would 
have been tragic. They sang very little now 
—only a few broken notes before sunrise, 
but whenever he heard the singing he won- 
dered whether there would have been one to 
sing if his father had not decided to wait 
until old man Shack said the sign was right. 
The sign came right in the very last week. 
O but then there was ruthless work! Ax, 
bill-hook, brier scythe, flashed in and out, in 
and out, and all the green growing things 
toppled to a fall. They were cut level with 
the ground and left to lie as they fell. The 
growth was so thick there was no need of 
piling. Green sedge and dry was matted 
over every yard of earth the bushes had left 
clear. The cutting was a tough job, but so 
many hands were laid to it there was a fine 
race betwixt cutters and fallowers as to which 
should get done first. Dan had finished in 
the pea ground and come over to Joe’s help. 
The land was by that time so big a dozen 
ploughs might have run in it at once. Next 
to the last day, they slipped out at daybreak, 
and ploughed at night till moonrise, yet for 
all that, had barely time to raise a triumphant 
shout and head their teams for the bars, with 
the ploughs jingling against the pebbles as 
they dragged behind, before an answering 


The Ragged Month 71 


shout told them the last bush had fallen al- 
most as the last furrow was run. 

Joe flung himself down upon the broken 
ground, and lay for a minute motionless. 
He had made those last rounds with set teeth, 
keeping up entirely upon his courage. It 
had been dry for ten days. The tramped 
ground had broken up in tremendous yard- 
long clods, and the aftermath had grown so 
stout and tough it choked twice as often as at 
first. He sat up and looked down the long 
dun ridges, ragged and blotched with wav- 
ing clover heads, then got up, and set his 
mules trotting, yet as he hung on to the 
plough-handle glanced across at the crisping 
tangle. He had no breath for speaking. He 
was too tired even to tell himself what he 
was thinking. But Sunday morning it came to 
him clearly. “It was a battlefield — two 
battlefields,” he said to himself; “ and battle- 
fields, where there is so much fighting and 
dying, are bound to be ugly.” 


ATTLEFIELDS of every sort in time 
B become glorified. The rain and the 
fine weather, winds, sunshine, and seed- 
sowing, glorified the fallows. Frost-fall found 
them dressed in the green velvet of strong 
young wheat. And when the frost had done 


72 Next to the Ground 


its appointed work, of making the sappy green 
things sere and brown, fire came in to the help 
of the tangled ground. 

The line fence had been pulled down, its 
sound rails taken away, its rotten ones cast 
where they would help feed the fire. Then 
for almost a day Slow Pete and the cross- 
matched team ran furrows round about the 
tangle’s other boundaries. Half an hour by 
sun, the plough stopped. The sky was faintly 
overcast, and the wind sitting due south, 
freshened so fast as to hint of rain. The 
ground was dry and warm — powder-dry in 
spots. The leafy bushes, the sedge, the dead 
weeds, were as quick astinder. They were so 
dry, indeed, Major Baker thought it safest to 
fire the field first against the wind — that is, 
along the north end before setting it along the 
south, 

Eating its way thus against the wind, he 
knew the flame would be less likely to leap 
the barrier of fresh earth. If once it did whip 
across, it might creep into the flat-woods, and 
that would mean a running fight several miles 
long. He hated to see woods burned over, 
no matter who owned them; it hurt the tim- 
ber so, and never helped anything, to say noth- 
ing of destroying the mast, and killing thrifty 
saplings. There might have been reason for 
it, in pioneer days, when there was no open 


The Ragged Month 73 


land for pastures, and stock of every sort ran 
out. Nimble Will always grew quicker and 
stronger and sweeter upon burnt land — so did 
the grasses of the little open meadows scat- 
tered through the woods. Times had changed. 
Then land and timber were both plenty 
enough to be had anywhere almost without 
asking. Now when both had settled yet con- 
stantly growing values, it was well worth 
while to look out for them. 

So Joe, Dan, and half a dozen more, ran 
about with lighted sedge torches, firing the 
tangle a yard in front of the eating flame, until 
the sun went down. The burned over strip 
was some thirty yards across. Major Baker 
waved his hand. Instantly there was a race 
toward the other edge, not across the brushy 
space, but down the furrows, or the fallows. 
Slow Pete won the race, with Dan a close 
second, still Joe had the luck to set the first 
fire. The black fellows tried to light their 
torches from matches, which the wind blew 
out as soon as they were struck. Joe shel- 
tered his very first match with his hat, until 
he could drop it upon alittle pile of leaves ; 
then the trick was done — there was fire and 
to spare for everybody. 

Swiftly, lightly, the firemen ran up and 
down the line bent almost double so as 
to trail the flaming torches close along 


74 Next to the Ground 


the furrow edge. In a minute the work 
was over. Banners and pennons of flame 
leaped up into the sky, swirled into roaring 
vortexes, and swept hissing, roaring, crack- 
ling, sparking in showers, smoking in clouds, 
in sheeted splendor down the length of the 
field. In the swales where the tangle lay 
thickest, there was a curious drawing of flame 
to flame. Lesser flames either side joined to 
shape a fiery pyramid,. whose waving point 
seemed to melt into the low clouds. Swiftly 
falling darkness made the flames majestic. 
Their light filled all the fields and flickered 
back like the angry crimson of sunset from 
the gable windows of the plantation house. 
The fallows were so bright, you could trace 
the green drill-rows half across them. The 
moon, creeping up behind clouds, the round, 
red Hunter’s Moon of late October, turned 
garish and ghastly by contrast with the field 
fire. 

Undervoicing the flame, there was the pop- 
ping of hollow weed stalks, the tinkle of 
woody stems crisping and falling in coals. 
Between them wind and fire were making 
quick work and clean. They would leave 
hardly a wagon load of bush-butts and charred 
sticks inthe whole field, The burning sassa- 
fras gave out a clean, strong scent, wonderfully 
pleasant. Young pithy stalks of it popped like 


The ‘Ragged Month fas 


the weeds, and the woody stems sparkled and 
sputtered like cannon crackers after the flame 
had swept on. 

Once it seemed the fire must break out, in 
spite of burning and land turning. Just as 
the foremost tongue of flame came to the 
burned over strip, a savage flaw of wind caught 
it, bore it almost flat against the earth, and 
stretched, stretched it, untilit lapped the outer- 
most furrow. Five seconds more of the flaw, 
and the mischief would have been irrevocable. 
Thewind lightened barely in time. The flame 
wavered, hovered in air, curled backward, died 
to asmoulder of smoke, above sheeted smoking 
embers. As it died, Major Baker let his hand 
slip from Joe’s shoulder, and said with a deep 
breath, “Son, that was touch and go—a 
mighty near thing. Don’t forget it. Don’t 
forget either that fore-handed trouble is safe 
trouble. Suppose we had not fired against the 
wind first?” 

“OQ! I reckon we would have been fightin’ 
fire until it rained,” Joe said. “That would 
have been — let ’s see ! — one, two, three days. 
The moon’s got a ring round her with just 
three stars inside it.” 

Though the clouded moon filled the world 
with gray shining, it seemed to the fire- 
watchers black darkness came with the dying 
of the flames. The field had burned over in 


76 Next to the Ground 


ten minutes. It would have taken half an 
hour by daylight, with clouds and the same 
wind. In still sunshine it would have taken 
half a day, yet been nothing like so well done. 
Why, is among the curious small secrets of 
nature’s processes the wise men have yet to 
find out. ‘The cave-dwellers no doubt knew 
that sunshine had a trick of making fire burn 
languidly, yet their remote descendants have 
not gone much beyond the fact. 

Joe went home over the burned ground, 
stepping out sturdily at his father’s side. The 
earth was still warm — warm enough to pene- 
trate thick boot soles. It was light too — 
so light in places they sank shoe-mouth deep, 
and in other places the sedge tussocks came up 
for a sound kick. Given its own time, its own 
way, and freedom from trampling hoofs, sedge 
loosens land marvelously, and makes it rich. 
The drawback is, it takes so muchtime. Un- 
like clover it neither feeds on the air nor breeds 
enriching spores. Its work is mechanical — 
the roots creep, the stalks shelter, the leaves 
droop as a mulch to entangle air and moisture, 
which are the primal soil-solvents. By their 
help the mineral particles break down, as, on a 
bigger scale, stone and pebble broke down to 
sand and clay. Then the rotting mulch adds 
humus —the leaf mould in which all grow- 
ing things delight. Further, the mulch catches 


The Ragged Month . vi) 


and saves the field-drift, leaves, weed-stems, 
dead insects, every sort of flotsam, for the 
strengthening of the land. Best of all, it 
keeps the soil itself receptive. How impor- 
tant that is, may be gathered from the fact 
that the richest manure is almost worthless if 
left to dry and leach out on hard ground in 
sunshine and rain. There have been men, 
indeed, who declared that air was the one all- 
sufficient fertilizer for any land in fair condi- 
tion. They advocated cultivating the whole 
surface but taking crops from but half of it, 
planting strips of it alternately upon alternate 
years. Sedge works along their lines, but 
makes haste much more slowly. 

Rotting is only’slow combustion. Decay 
or fire, the end alike is ashes. Ashes quicken 
and hearten whatever ground they ° ‘fall on. 
Joe was glad he could kick them up instifling 
clouds wherever he stepped. He looked over 
the blackened earth set thick with red winking 
points, and smiled to think of next year’s crop ; 
yet, in almost the same breath, he sighed. 
Somehow he had loved the tangle better than 
the smooth home fields. All the wild things 
were his friends — even the pushing sassafras. 
He had shot his first rabbit there, and caught 
his first trapful of birds. It had never been 
like the crawfishy strip, sombre, savage, thorny, 
but an elfin solitude, full of tricksy surprises. 


78 Next to the Ground 


There had been a settler’s cabin upon one 
corner of it, and still in the garden spot mint 
came up every year. Occasionally also there 
were cornflowers, blue and white and purple, 
horehound stalks, and deep red single poppies. 
Sweetbrier persisted too, rooted under the 
pile of rock that had been the chimney. On 
beyond there wasa plum thicket. The plums 
were red and yellow, very small, but very 
plenty, and full of sweet juice. Periodically 
the thicket was cut down, as were the locust 
sprouts, but both grew up again, only the 
thriftier for the cutting. 

Joe was curious as to whether they would- 
grow now that they had been cut when the 
sign was right. He rather hoped they would, 
partly out of friendliness, but more for the 
confounding of old man Shack. 


The Fog 


Chapter IV 


OE had been taught chivalry 
by precept and example, 
also to understand that 
chivalry is, in essence, but 
the consideration of 
strength for weakness. 
“A gentleman owed. him- 
self courtesy toward every- 

body,” said his father, “ but was doubly bound 

to be courteous to women, little children, old 
men, and men poorer than himself.” Thus 
the lad’s dislike of old man Shack was not 
grounded in the fact of the old man’s being 

a poor white. A man could not help it no 

matter what he was born, but he could help 

accepting the poor white condition, after he 

had grown up to a man’s strength, and a 

man’s chance. 

Old man Shack stood six foot two, barefoot, 
was a jack-of-all-trades, and could beat any 
man in the county, black or white, at a log- 


82 Next to the Ground 


rolling, a chopping frolic, cradling wheat, 
wrestling, or pitching horseshoes. He was 
not really old —a little under forty; but he 
had married at sixteen, and had twin sons 
rising twenty, so it was necessary in some 
way to distinguish him. Beyond that, his 
family never called him anything else. When 
he was in the humor for boasting, he said 
he had moved seventeen times since his wed- 
ding day, had brought up twelve children, 
and was a sow and pigs and three yearlings 
better off than when he married. 

He showed a sort of cynical pride in his 
shiftlessness, and cynical contempt for good 
repute. He let all his stock run out on the 
range, even when he had a pasture handy. 
Joe had never quite got over hearing him say 
with a grin: “I woon’t have no mark but 
the rogue’s mark — both ears cut off close to 
the head.” Marks, properly earmarks, are 
important things on a farm. Law _ takes 
cognizance of them — it is actionable to 
change or counterfeit an established mark. 
Considering that the beasts of the field have 
but two ears, the variety possible in marks 
is astounding. Their primary elements, the 
crop, half-crop, slit, hole, swallow-fork, un- 
der-bit, and over-bit, may be’ used, singly, 
or together, in above five hundred ways — 
as slit-and-crop, slit-and-under-bit, slit-and- 


The Hog 83 


over-bit, slit right, crop left, both ears slit, 
slit and swallow-fork, swallow-fork, slit and 
hole. Merciful men mark as lightly as pos- 
sible; suspicious ones cut ears to rags and 
tatters. In a question of ownership there is 
no going behind an authentic mark well 
healed. Likewise a mark bloody, and visibly 
tampered with, is convincing proof of theft. 

It is not easy to tamper with marks. The 
cuts toughen so in healing they almost turn 
the edge of the later knife. Taking off the 
whole ear is quickest and safest. If old man 
Shack did not really do it, he wanted his 
neighbors to think he was quite bold enough 
and bad enough for such work. It was of 
a piece with his vaporings as to what he 
might be or do if he “was not so cussed 
lazy.” He had, according to himself, poten- 
tialities for anything betwixt robbing a train 
and making a million dollars. Joe did not 
believe the half of that, but he did believe, if 
the old man chose to work only half as in- 
dustriously as he chose to idle, he could not 
help but be much better off. 

The Baker mark, a crop in the right, under- 
bit in the left, ran back through the pioneer- 
ing Baker and certain Carolina planters to the 
original English emigrants, two brothers from 
the borders of the New Forest. They were 
yeomen, also young men— which yeomen 


84 Next to the Ground 


originally signified. According to an old invent- 
ory, they brought the mark with them, upon 
the ears of some pigs, white with a black list 
over the loins. No doubt the pigs were both 
marked and listed like others that, before com- 
ing out, the Bakers had sent feeding in the New 
Forest through the time of pannage. 

Pannage ran for six weeks from the first 
of September. For every hog feeding through 
it, a shilling was paid to the king’s majesty, 
through the hand of his verdurer. Most 
likely the king’s majesty never touched a groat 
of the shilling, but his liege subjects revelled 
in rashers of beech-nut bacon. Joe liked to 
think of that old time — the hogs going out 
in charge of the village herd, to range and riot 
through the woodland, and sleep at night in 
the sweet-smelling new-fallen leaves. He had 
three books about the royal forests. One of 
them was old — so old it was full of puzzling 
long esses, which half the time he took at first 
for efs. They were the books of books for 
winter nights and rainy Sundays. He was 
sure he would have read them over and over, 
and loved them quite as he did, even if no 
traditions had come down to give a personal 
accent to the forest history. 

Something else had come down. Atavism, 
the tendency to throw back, is strong in all 
domestic animals. The throwing back is 


The Hog 85 


nearly always to remote ancestors rather than 
near ones. Eachand several, the Bakers had 
crossed all their stock judiciously, but every 
year or two, among the litters at White Oaks, 
there was a white pig with a broad black list 
overthe loins. Commonly the listed pigs had 
also a black spot back of the ears, or over the 
eyes. A pig’s coat is colored in skin as well 
as hair. In the list, the black skin was bigger 
than the black hair, so there was a band of 
silver-gray all around —white hairs with black 
skin showing through. 

It was not for lack of pasture that Major 
Baker let his hogs run in the flat-woods toward 
the end of summer. He knew the run- 
ning out made them healthier and more vig- 
orous. They found in the woods a mysterious 
tonic, a root it might be, or a seed, or some 
quality of the earth itself. They went in and 
out at pleasure, through a slip-gap in the back 
fence, and were called and fed beside the gap 
every morning. The most part came to the 
call, but nobody worried over absentees until 
they had been three days unseen. Hogs have 
a curious sense of time —these knew to a 
minute when their salt and ashes were due— 
upon Wednesday and Saturday mornings. A 
hog that did not come up then, might reason- 
ably be set down as either sick, stolen, or 
strayed. 


86 Next to the Ground 


In general, straying was not so easy. Hogs 
of different pastures might range the woods to- 
gether, feeding and grunting amicably, even 
seeming to gossip, in cheerful piggish fashion, 
yet when they took the path home, woe to 
him who tried to go except where he belonged. 
At night the going was in single file, one trot- 
ting right on the heels of another, and all 
squealing as they went. At morning, in an- 
swer to the call, there was a rush pell mell as 
fast as they could leg it, tumbling and squeal- 
ing hungrily all the way. Either at night or 
morning a stray had to fight for his place. If 
he conquered a place then and there, all well. 
If not, he had to lag a long way behind, hang 
hungrily about, and endure the pangs of Tan- 
talus until his enemies were too busy eating 
to have a thought for him. 

Still, there were exceptions. In every drove, 
there are now and then individuals who de- 
light to entice in outlanders. Sometimes they 
choose fine, fat, well-appearing, young hogs, 
very well worth stealing. Oftener choice falls 
upon a leggy, slouchy animal, with long coarse 
bristles, and a very keen nose. All day long 
the enticer ranges and roots beside him, rub- 
bing shoulders with him, putting nose to nose, 
and sniffing amicably, scratching him behind 
the forearm, and, when he wallows, along the 
backbone. Then when it is time to go home, 


The Hog 87 


if the victim hangs back in fear, or the other 
members of the drove grunt out threats, the 
enticer falls instantly to rooting, but roots so 
as to keep the victim headed the way he should 
not go. After the drove is running well in. 
line there may be a pretty bit of by-play — the 
victim trying to lay a homeward course, and 
the other blocking his way. Often the two 
of them stand for ten minutes face to face, 
twiddling noses one around the other as you 
mighttwiddle fingers. The chances are that, 
next morning, that particular drove will boast 
a stray inmate, or the morning after at the 
latest. Once the stray is well wonted, the 
captor takes no notice of him, but goes after 
another. The passion for conquest indeed 
seems to grow by what it feeds on. 

Only the fattening hogs ever thus ran out. 
The sows and pigs were kept in the woods pas- 
ture, beside the ,creek, where they had clear 
water to drink and wallow in, and leaves a 
plenty for their beds. Straw beds or litter, 
made them mangy — even grass and sedge, 
-though wholesome enough, did not compare 
with leaves. The sows did not sleep all to- 
gether, cross-and-pile, as did the fattening hogs. 
Just before farrowing each made herself a new 
bed, choosing for it the most sheltered and 
sequestered spot she could find. 

Hogs are artistic bed-makers. In the woods 


88 Next to the Ground ' 


the first thing is to gnaw off, or pull up, the 
low bushes over a space several yards across ; 
next the leaves are rooted up, and inward, in 
aring. Then the bed-makers get inside the 
ring, put their fore legs over the heaped leaves, 
and deftly draw them back, until the ring nar- 
rows to a pyramid. A suckling sow plumps 
down right in the middle of her bed, whirls 
round and round until] she has snugly hollowed 
a cup big enough to lie in, then calls in her 
litter, bestows them beside and slightly under- 
neath her, and with her nose tosses leaves 
lightly over them, as well as over her own 
back and shoulders. When at last she lies 
down she is invisible, under a leaf coverlet six 
inches thick. Until she begins to think of 
weaning her pigs, she fights everything else 
away from the bed. In the hottest summer 
weather she makes for herself and her children 
a bed of fresh clean earth, light and dry, but 
not dusty. She will wallow all day in mud, 
and keep her piggies beside her, but will not 
sleep in it. 

Hogs are wonderfully sensitive to weather 
influences. They squeal and run restlessly 
about hours in advance of a storm. They 
have also some mysterious faculty which warns 
of coming cold, hardly waiting to feed some- 
times before they rush to work, thickening 
their beds, and heaping them anew. They 


The Hog 89 


bite down leafy bushes and run almost incredi- 
ble distances, holding them in their mouths. 
In making beds of sedge they ingeniously avoid 
the tussocks, by planting their fore feet firmly 
upon the roots, then gathering a mouthful of 
stalks, and gnawing and snatching them off. 
But they are so lazy they will cling to the 
same bed year after year, if permitted, only 
now and then bringing in a little fresh bed- 
stuff. A drove-bed is always big and broad, 
but if fifty sleep in it, the aim of each indi- 
vidual pig is always to lie in the middle with 
all the rest for cover. Asa result, upon nights 
when the cold strengthens greatly, there is not 
much rest in it, but a continuous hurly-burly 
of crowding and squealing. After deep snows, 
or in days of cold rain, hogs keep in the bed 
until driven out by hunger. Young pigs creep 
out of it at three days old, if the weather is 
fine. If it is cold and stormy, they lie inside 
a week. : 

Before they come out, it is easy to tell how 
many the sow is suckling. Like the most of 
litter-borne animals, pigs keep to the teat they 
first began to suck. After a day or two teats 
that do not suckle grow dry and small — thus 
by the teats in milk, you may know the num- 
ber of pigs. A sow always lies down to suckle, 
though if the pigs are hungry they are apt to 
catch the teats, and squeal shrill complaints 


go Next to the Ground 


before she lies down, maybe while she is feed- 
ing. As she drops, she gives a little grunting 
call. If the pigs are in the bed, they rush out 
in answer to it, and fall all over each other, 
as they range themselves along her side. Each 
lays hold upon the teat that comes handiest, 
but almost instantly lets go, and burrows under 
the pig next, in search of his proper fountain. 
The search is so vigorous, for a minute the 
litter looks to be boiling allover. But when at 
last the cunning creatures are properly placed 
there is nowhere a better picture of mother 
care and infantile content. 

. Pigs learn to nip tender green stuff before 
they are two weeks old. At six they can crack 
shelled corn cleverly ; but White Oaks pigs 
did not wait so long for grain. They had a 
pen inside the woods pasture, with a gap too 
low for the mothers to go through. ‘There 
were troughs inside for mush and milk. The 
saucy rascals throve as mightily as they ate. 
‘They knew whoever fed them as far as they 
could see, and always ran to meet him and 
followed him to the pen, squealing in chorus. 
If he stopped to rest, the squeals grew agon- 
izing — the squealers meantime huddling 
thicker, and standing upon their hind feet, 
with the fore feet resting against him. The 
sows followed too, though not quite so im- 
petuously. While the pigs ate, their mothers 


The Hog gi 


ran round the pen, snuffing and grunting com- 
plaints, though they were fed twice a day, not 
to name the pasture. No hog of any sort ever 
saw eating going on without wanting a share. 
What, then, could one expect of suckling 
mothers ? 

Bold, gluttonous fellows among the pigs, 
climbed bodily into the low troughs, and lay 
there swilling. Joe laughed to see that they 
chose always to lie in the low ends where the 
mush and milk was deepest. Often it came 
half way up their sleek sides. He fancied 
they lay down over as much of it as possible 
to keep it from the rest. He had caught his 
father’s knack of picking up a pig by the tail 
and swinging him gently back and forth to 
judge his weight and growth. So held, a pig 
does not squeal, though he opens his mouth, 
as though he would like to doit. Pig-thieves 
take advantage of the fact. They shell corn 
all around their feet, then when the pigs are 
eating seize upon a fat one, lift him up, and 
stun him by a fist-blow between the eyes. 

And thus they get safe away. Ear or leg- 
hold makes a pig squeal loudly, no matter how 
tame he may be. A curious thing is that 
sows or hogs of any sort, which pay no atten- 
tion whatever to the squealing for food, start 
upon the dead run, bristling, giving out angry 
guttural roars, and gnashing their tusks until 


92 Next to the Ground 


foam flies the minute they hear a squeal of dis- 
tress. Yet to human ears one squeal is the 
same as the other. Hogs know the difference, 
as they know the difference in calls. Three 
men may be calling outside droves at once, 
and each call be audible to all the droves, yet 
there are no mistakes. "The animals are never 
in doubt as to where they belong. 

The gregarious instinct of defense is still 
lively among hogs. A drove of all sizes will 
upon the approach of a dog, a fox, or, if half 
wild, a man, form itself into a ring, with the 
pigs and young hogs in the middle, the strong 
tuskers outside, and stand heads out, gnashing 
and bristling, until the marauder slinks out 
of sight. If instead of slinking he ventures 
upon attack, the ring roars louder than ever, 
and stretches to meet him, still keeping forma- 
tion, though it may be so elongated the two 
lines almost touch. 

A wise man will not rashly invite the ring’s 
attack, neither will a wise dog. A boar three 
years old has tusks often several inches long, 
very much curved, and sharp as a knife. Sows 
of full age are nearly as formidable — some- 
times indeed they are the fiercest fighters of 
the drove, ripping and rending whatever they 
can reach. An angry hog is a wicked antag- 
onist, — bloodshot, foaming, with sinews tense 
as cords. Solitary he can beat off half a dozen 


The Hog 93 


hounds as they come at him. In the ring, 
where there is no chance of escaping his tusks, 
he is well nigh invincible. Experienced dogs 
never venture upon a direct charge. They 
halt a little way off, leaping and howling an- 
grily. Then, when the quarry makes his rush, 
the aim is to leap aside, and, as he passes, 
wheel, and nip him by the ear. A game dog 
with good ear-hold may worry down his hog, 
but the chances are against it. Once his 
blood is well up, a boar will commonly kill 
or disable half a dozen'dogs before giving up 
the fight. ~ 

When a pig did not thrive properly, or a 
hog looked pinched and rough, Major Baker 
knew something was wrong with the devil- 
marks. The marks are rows of tiny indenta- 
tions, no bigger than small peas, running down 
the inside of each fore leg. Countryside super- 
stition has it that the marks commemorate the 
devils which went into the herd of swine, and 
made the swine rush violently down into the 
sea. However that may be, nobody quite 
understands what end they serve. They are 
hairless, and without secretion of any sort, yet 
if they get full of extraneous matter the hog 
shows it very soon. He eats as well as ever, 
and roots actively, but does no crédit to his 
keeping until the marks are cleared. 

Hogs have sensitive palates. Joe thought 


94 Next to the Ground 


nobody could doubt that, after seeing them, 
as he did, fight over the ripe horse-apples and 
sweetings, the while utterly neglecting the sour 
winter windfalls, although they were sound 
and well-colored. He saw them, too, when 
they were cloyed with juicy fruit and melons, 
rush at the piles of seed from the peach- 
drying, and stand for half an hour craunching 
up the hard shells, and dropping them out of 
their mouths, yet keeping in the rich almond- 
flavored kernels. They could also distinguish 
between ripe melons and sickly ones from dead 
vines. But none of all those things were so 
odd as their preference for sulphur water. 
There was a sulphur spring in the woods 
pasture, close on the edge of the creek. The 
sows would come racing to the creek, with a 
string of pigs behind, wade across, sometimes 
dropping to wallow if the day was very warm, 
then come on to the spring which was nause- 
ously strong, and drink and drink until they 
almost drained the little rock basin. The taste 
for sulphur water, was, he at last decided, an 
acquired one. The Berkshire gilt, bought a 
long way off, sniffed it when she saw the 
others drinking, but turned up her nose at it, 
and waddled on to the creek. 

The fattening hogs were put up at White 
Oaks early in September. They were not 
really penned until cold weather came. Major 


The Hog 95 


Baker fed down standing corn in the creek 
bottoms. The corn was planted in March, 
laid ‘by in early June, and sowed with peas as 
it was laid by. The peas, vine, and pod, 
were worth a third as much as th 
feeding, then there was the benefit to 
The hogs ate the peas very nearly cle 
also rooted and ravaged out dormant 1 
inthe soil. It was so light and black, all SY 
of creeping things infested it. When old 
man.Shack scouted what he called the sinful 
waste o’ good bread-corn — with mast enough 
a-comin’ to fatten hogs by the rigimint, Major 
Baker only smiled and said his hogs paid 
for all the corn they ate, in cut-worms, bud- 
worms, and wire-worms. 

Old man Shack generally had hogsa-plenty, 
but never fattened them — he let the mast do 
it for him. By the middle of October the 
flat-woods were full of acorns — unless, as 
sometimes happened, the mast had not hit. 
Such years the old man sold his hogs and 
bought fat bacon of his neighbors. You didn’t 
never ketch him, he said, a-ploughin’ and 
a-sweatin’ to raise corn to make meat for no 
twelve children, an’ wife an’ dogs throwed 
in. He would n’t do it—no tetch! No 
sir-ee Bob! He’d swap a passel er hogs fer 
all the meat they ’d fetch—ef they did n’t 
fetch enough— why! his folks would jest 


96 Next to the Ground 


have to look to either the Lord er the county 
for more. 

Beech-mast makes the finest pork in the 
world — not quite so firm as grain-fed meat, 
but sweeter and more delicate. Sweet mast 
—that is to say, butternuts, small hickory- 
nuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, white oak and 
post oak acorns, give good, fairly firm fat, 
and an agreeable game flavor. Bitter mast — 
pignuts, buckeyes, red-oak acorns, and those 
of the Spanish oak, the black-jack, water- 
oak, turkey oak, and over-cup oak, make flesh 
that is oily, somewhat rank, slightly bitter, 
with yellow fat instead of white. Still, bushel 
for bushel, it makes more fat than any except 
pure beech-mast. The yield is also more 
plenty, and very much more certain. The 
flat-woods mast was nearly all bitter, but old 
man Shack was rather glad of it. He called 
hogs every morning, and gave them grudging 
handfuls of shattered corn — just enough, as 
he explained, to ha’nt ’em home against 
killin’ time. Hogs fed even scantily at reg- 
ular intervals, will come to the feeding-place 
without calling at the feeding time, often per- 
sisting for weeks after feeding has ceased. 

The instinct is turned to account against 
wild hogs. With a wide stretch of woods, 
and mast in plenty, there are always adven- 
turous individuals to stray into the wooded 


The Hog 97 


depths, establish themselves, and breed there 
year after year. Such animals are truly 
wild, running away like deer at the least 
alarm, and, like deer, able to wind the hunter. 
They run.when they can, and fight when 
they must. The cracking of a dead branch 
beneath the foot, or a single incautious yelp 
from a dog, sends them off like a shot, so 
long as the danger is unseen. It is when it 
comes in plain sight they begin to bristle 
and, in early winter when they know them- 
selves too fat to run far or fast, make ready 
for a charge. “They feed very early in the 
morning, and again towards dusk, lying hid- 
den in thickets and beside fallen trees through 
the daylight, and snug in their beds through 
the night. No hog, wild or tame, makes a 
path to his bed, though they make strongly 
defined ones to their feeding and drinking 
places. But wild hogs cannot feed without 
leaving strong sign— the circles and spirals 
rooted in the fallen leaves in search of mast. 
All about the rooted circles there will be 
tracks. By the depth of these tracks the 
hunter judges the size and fatness of the 
game. He seeks out some very quiet place, 
where tracks are plenty, and baits it — that is, 
strews it thickly with shelled corn and little 
lumps of salt. Then he watches until the 
bait has been eaten, and renews it, judging as 


98 Next to the Ground 


near as he can whether it was eaten at night 
or morning. It may take a dozen baitings to 
decide the point — but once it is decided, the 
game is in his own hands. He goes before- 
hand, climbs a tree, and waits, gun in hand. 
A good shot may knock over two or three 
hogs before they get out of range. And he 
has only to keep up the baiting and tying 4 in 
wait to bag the whole drove. 

That is wild-hog hunting for tate It is 
much better sport to track them in light 
snow, and run them down with dogs. Un- 
less the hunters are well mounted, and the 
woods open, they have their trouble for their 
pains. Wild hogs swiftly approximate the 
razor-back or wind-splitter type — lean, long- 
nosed, long-legged, tremendously muscled. 
Even when fattest they creep or slip through 
incredibly small spaces, and can double like 
rabbits. Besides, they know every nook and 
corner and saving hollow of the woods, and 
are wily enough to lie snug, and let the chase 
go by almost over their heads. Running over 
snow they leave but a faint scent, and one 
that the dogs fail to pick up after an hour or 
so of running. They can so far outrun 
most dogs, they can well afford to stop and 
catch breath whenever they find themselves 
tiring, When they come to the end of en- 
durance, they turn at bay. 


The Hog 99 


The boars fight fiercely among themselves. 
It is very rare to kill a boar even two years 
old with tusks unbroken. They seldom kill 
each other in these fights, but the vanquished 
has a cheerful habit of running away and 
venting his anger upon the trunk of a tree. 
He rears, and gashes the bark of it as high 
as he can reach. If he strikes a knot, the 
gashing may cost him a tusk. Woodsmen 
judge of his size by the height of these gashes. 
When they find gashes breast-high they know 
it is time to go wild-hog hunting. A big 
savage boar can go through or over any 
fence ever built, and, beside being the worst 
ravager of growing crops, may kill a flock 
of lambs, rip up grazing cattle, hamstring a 
colt or two, and even attack human beings. 


Shooting 


Chapter V 


‘ie is lawful in Tennessee to 
shoot over your own land 
any time in the year, yet 
the Bakers, father and son, 
were sportsmen enough to 
observe religiously all the 
close seasons. There was 
none for either rabbits or 
squirrels. Indeed it was part of the year’s 

work to shoot Mister Long-Tail — the negro 

name for the gray squirrel. Squirrels are sad 
thieves, withal very dainty feeders, and pos- 
sessed of a decided sweet tooth. Needs must 
they keep Lent somewhat rigorously, living on 
buds and bark in early spring when their nut 
hoards are exhausted, but after the Lenten 
buds they plunder birds’-nests impartially, 
suck the eggs as they are laid, and so get 
through to the time of mulberries and wild 
strawberries. 

They love mulberries much the better — 
perhaps because they love to stay in trees so 


104 Next to the Ground 


much better than to run along the ground. 
Sometimes they feed upon the fallen berries, 
but commonly they do their own picking, | 
crawling supplely along even the slenderest 
berry-bearing twigs, snatching off a ripe berry, 
and backing with it to a stouter branch, there 
to sit upright and devour it. Paws and muz- 
zles grow deeply dyed with the purple juice, 
as alittle later they may be browned by young 
walnut hulls. Walnut hulls are, however, so 
thick and full of acrid juice, squirrels leave 
them untouched unless hazelnuts have blasted, 
and cornfields are very far off, and very well 
guarded. 

Corn in the milk is a feast to them — hence 
the necessity of shooting. Were the woods 
allowed to fill with them, they would destroy 
acres of corn in a night. They run up the 
stalks, cling fast to a roasting-ear, deftly strip 
off half the husk, and gnaw the milky grain, 
sucking the milk as it drips. Full-fed they 
drop down and run away, to come back in an 
hour for another meal, That means the 
spoiling of a second ear—they do not feed 
twice in the same place — nor will one squir- 
rel eat the nut another has begun to gnaw, 
unless he has snatched it and run off with it. 
Corn is eaten from the time the grain first 
swells until it is hard —hence an active 
squirrel colony prove somewhat expensive 


Shooting 105 


neighbors. Major Baker and Joe did not in 
the least grudge the furry fellows the berries, 
the nuts, nor even a reasonable share of corn, 
but they did think it wise to keep the share 
from becoming unreasonable. 

Joe and Patsy often went prospecting for 
nuts while still everything was green. Thus 
it happened that more than once they gota 
chance to watch the squirrels in the hazel 
bushes, and saw them creep upon the long slen- 
der nutted boughs, often bending them almost 
to the ground, reach out fore paws, draw in the 
pendant green-frilled nut-clusters, gnaw a hole 
at the base of each young nut, and suck out the 
milky kernel. When the last nut was empty, 
the squirrel dropped down on the ground, and 
either ran up another stem, seeking new clus- 
ters to plunder, or scampered away. Unless 
he was frightened, the going away was in 
little niggling leaps, halting between every two 
or three to curl the long gray plume of tail 
up along the back. But if he had spied out 
the eyes watching him, the leaps were prodi- 
gious, six feet at the least, and ending at the 
foot of some big tree, up and around which 
the leaper whipped in the twinkle of an eye. 

Patsy abused the squirrels for being so 
lazy —their summer nests, she said, were 
such shackly affairs, of sticks and leafy twigs 
—then they sometimes made shift with an 


106 Next to the Ground 


abandoned crow’s nest, or even a hawk’s. 

That certainly did look "hriftless — still there 
was something to be said on the other side. 
Commonly Joe said it. The squirrels, he 
told Patsy, knew it was fun to camp out — 
their leaf-and-stick houses were no more than 
camps. They did nothing but sleep in them, 
and that only in chilly or damp weather. 
They had the whole summer world for home 
and playground. Why then should they weary 
themselves to build fine houses? They were 
industrious enough, even forehanded, in the 
fall. ‘They did not wait for frost to open the 
hickory-nut hulls and the chestnut burs, but 
gnawed them through and carried the nuts to 
their winter nests, beginning as soon as ever 
the kernels were hard. They had sense as 
well as thrift — sense enough not to mix in bit- 
ter mast with their sweet stores, but foresight 
enough to know they might come to need the 
acorns. And so they buried them, down be- 
side some rememberable tree, and left them 
against the spring scarcity. He was not quite 
sure as to the motive of the burying. He 
knew the bitter acorns got sweet as they be- 
gan to sprout — not a very tempting sweet, 
and with still a rough tang under it, but a 
sweet the squirrels might reasonably prefer to 
the original flavor. Joe had tried a sprouting 
acorn himself, to find out if germination 


Shooting. 107 


changed the taste as it did that of a walnut. 
He was uncertain as to whether the squirrels 
buried them with intent to make them better 
eating, or whether they had some instinctive 
knowledge of forestry, and meant thus to help 
in assuring the perpetuation of the oaks. 

Anyway, in winter they were good house- 
keepers, never eating in the nest if the 
weather was open, but running off with their 
nut ration to some convenient higher sunny 
crotch, whence they might drop the hull with- 
out betraying the nest. And if bad weather 
kept them inside, making them eat and huddle 
there for maybe a week, as soon as it cleared, 
they fetched out the accumulated shells, and 
instead of dropping them just outside, ran 
all about with them —to the ends of the 
longest branches upon the home tree, or even 
across the whole breadth of a neighboring 
one. 

If they did not make visits; they were social 
— often half a dozen of them played together, 
chasing each other up and about the highest 
sunny boughs. Sometimes the play was hide- 
and-seek. One squirrel popped under or 
around a big limb, out of sight of the rest, and 
clung motionless there while they seemed to 
search for him everywhere. 

Joe loved to watch them going to drink at 
the creek. They will not drink muddy water 


108 Next to the Ground 


if there is fair water within a mile. If they 
came through the tree tops, it was in a line 
almost as straight as a bird’s flight. More 
commonly they came along the ground, in 
running leaps, rising upon the haunches every 
little while to throw the ears back, listen, and 
look around. Sometimes when dew was heavy, 
a squirrel stopped to sip beads of it from the 
edge of a broad leaf. At the waterside they 
did not sip, but drank deep, bending far out 
over the water, with tails laid flat and stiff 
on the ground as though to anchor them. 
Because of this fine tail, a squirrel is a very 
poor swimmer. Old hunters declare that 
when the little animals migrate, as sometimes 
happens through the failure of mast, they cross 
rivers by launching upon the water, sticks, bits 
of bark and chips, to which they cling, keep- 
ing their tails above water, and holding them 
up as sails, until they drift across. 

Joe and Patsy inclined to believe the story, 
although they had never seen such a thing hap- 
pen. But they had seen the squirrels do other 
things almost as wonderful — as for example 
distinguishing between a gun and a fishing 
pole, or just a plain stick. Sometimes when 
they went through the woods, with sticks or 
fishing poles, the squirrels really jeered at 
them from low boughs, barking their loudest, 
and even flinging down acorn hulls on their 


Shooting 109 


heads. The bark is grating, long-drawn and 
full of z-sounds. Between themselves, the 
gray-coats chirrup faintly, but if they make a 
noise over sighting an enemy, it is always a 
bark. 

But when Joe had his gun, the gray-coats 
whisked away, running up very high, or else 
lying so flat upon top of a stout branch as to 
be invisible. Joe had a good squirrel gun, 
long before the epoch of the breech-loader. 
It had been reckoned a fine weapon when his 
father was a lad —a long, light double-barrel, 
too long for bird-shooting, but carrying 
almost as straight as a rifle up to thirty yards. 
If the squirrel ran around the tree, it was 
always Patsy’s privilege to “turn”? him. She 
left Joe standing stock-still, finger on trigger, 
and went noisily to the opposite side, shook 
bushes there, or swung up and down upon the 
tip of a low hung bough, or a loop of grape- 
vine. Her aim was to be heard, not seen — 
when the squirrel heard her, he popped cun- 
ningly back —then Joe and the double-barrel 
settled accounts with him. 

Patsy could shoot, but she did not care for 
agun. ‘You always have to watch out, if 
you tote a gun,” she said; “I had a heap 
rather see things.” Nobody who walked 
through the autumn woods could well blame 
her. The whole world was enchanted then. 


110 Next to the Ground 


Along the creek, beeches, maples, ash trees, 
scaly-barks, and sycamores ran the whole 
scale of yellows from pale gold to sturdy russet. 
Rock-maples were blood-red, dogwoods of a 
dull purplish crimson, flecked and blotched all 
over with stars of coral-red berries. Black- 
gums had leaves of clear crimson set off by 
sprinkles of frosted blue-black fruit. The 
whole haw family had crumpled their leaves 
until the stalks showed through, but there was 
no room for complaint of bareness — the haws 
were so thick. Only a few of the black haws 
ripened before frost. The ripe ones had a 
rich blue bloom, and set off wonderfully the 
piebald unripe ones round about, where black 
spots struggled to overcome their pinkish 
cream. 

Some of the red haws were like fairy apples, 
as big as the end of the thumb, and set singly 
at the ends of the twigs. But more of them 
grew in clusters of two or three or five. They 
were smaller a good deal than the single ones, 
but like them a sweetish-sour, and so full 
of seed they were not worth eating. Still 
they were worth while —they jewelled the 
trees so royally, glowing ruby-red in sunshine 
against the sober tangle of leaves and stems 
and thorns. But they were not quite so 
much like jewels, nor anything like so good, 
as the little red haws which grew in clusters, 


Shooting 111 


like currants, and had just a tiny seed in the 
middle of their sweet pulp. 

But for beauty, no haw that ever bloomed 
can compare with spicewood berries, or those 
of the strawberry bush. Both are waterside 
growths, somewhat uncanny, and super- 
stitiously held to possess magic properties. 
The strawberry bush sometimes grows to 
be a small tree. Spicewood is always a 
shrub. The leaves of it are coarse, both 
in shape and fiber — so coarse they seem ex- 
crescences upon the slender, graceful twigs, 
so round, smooth, and brown, with tiny 
white freckles all over the brown. ‘There 
is no smell to either bloom or leaf, but the 
wood itself is delicately fragrant. It is a 
subtle scent, hinting of sandalwood, and cam- 
phor and sassafras. The blossoms, which are 
yellow and fringed like knops of spun sun- 
shine, are stemless and come out early, before 
the leaf-buds start, slipping out at the joints of 
last year’s twigs. About one in three comes 
to fruit. The leaves fall early though they 
are so laggard in coming out. Any time after 
September the spicewood thicket stands a 
netted blur of clean brown tensile stems, be- 
set or rather inlaid with translucent fairy ovals 
of clear royal scarlet. 

It is bad luck to break the spicewood in 
blossom, but whipping the water with a branch 


112 Next to the Ground 


full of berries gives you excellent good luck 
in catching fish. At least old man Shack said 
so—the old man was a welling fountain of 
signs and superstitions. It is likely the poor 
whites have a gypsy strain somewhere in their 
pedigree. They are nearly as clannish as 
gypsies — which in part accounts for their 
evolution from the rags and tatters of early 
immigration. he old man said he could find 
water underground by the dipping of a forked 
hazel or willow twig held in both hands. He 
said also if he dared cut a forked twig of 
strawberry bush and walk with it, he could 
find hidden treasure, all round about. But 
he was afraid to try it —— unless the twig was 
cut by a left-handed man when the moon 
and the sign both were just right, though 
the rod would find right enough, the one 
who carried it to its finding would dic inside 
half a year. 

Spicewood and the strawberry bush have 
only beauty in common. Strawberry bush 
twigs are green; the stem, when it reaches 
tree size, is a soft pale-russet. It grows very 
straight, branches almost at right angles, and 
has the primmest of oval leaves coming out 
in exact pairs. The leaves turn a mottled 
greenish brown before the berries ripen. The 
berries proper are small and shining. They 
hang like coral drops at the ends of short 


Shooting 113 


white filaments. Sometimes there is but one 
in a place, sometimes half a dozen, But 
they do not make the glory of the tree. 
Where the filaments start, there are broad 
waxen bracts, of the richest coral-pink, curved 
and voluted like the petals of a flower. They 
grow so lavishly too. Every little smooth 
green twig-end wears its flittering pink and 
scarlet. One might fancy the shrub, out of 
love with May, had flouted that month with 
small greeny-white inconspicuous blossoms, 
and saved Strength and beauty to do more 
than blossom against St. Martin’s summer. 
Maples throw down their winged seed long 
before leaf-fall—thus giving them a better 
chance to grow. ‘The ash tree has the same 
habit. It is interesting to note that the seed 
is shaped like a fairy oar, since ashen blades 
are the things for rowing. Sassafras keeps its 
pungent bright black berries until all the leaves 
are down, although, as in the case of the per- 
simmon, the keeping varies according to sit- 
uation, and somewhat according to variety. 
The books may not recognize the fact, but 
there are many varieties of sassafras —« as in- 
deed there must be of every seed-grown tree. 
Joe laughed at the thought of Captain John 
Smith sailing home to England with cargoes 
of sassafras root in the hold of every ship. 
Still he loved the smell of sassafras, root and 


114 Next to the Ground 


branch, especially when burning. Sassafras- 
root bark was good to eat, if you did not try 
to eat too much of it, full of a burning aromatic 
bitter, wonderfully staying to the stomach when 
you were cold and hungry. Now and again 
also he chewed the budded tips of the stalks. 
When the buds had swelled to very young 
leaves, he sometimes ate the leaves outright. 
He always gathered handfuls of them for his 
mother to dry. Dried they were good to put 
in winter soup, though not quite so good as 
the fresh tips which flavored gumbo in sum- 
mer. It had to be the merest flavor — if it 
amounted to a taste, the gumbo was spoiled. 
It was spoiled anyway if the tips had turned 
green before they were broken. The time to 
gather them was while they were brownish 
red, and so tender a touch bruised them. 
Sassafras is aromatic all through— wood, 
bark, leaves and fruit. It rarely grows into a 
big tree, no matter how rich the soil. A trunk 
three feet through is almost phenomenal. It 
cannot fight shade, so does not dispute ground 
with forest trees. Around the edges of a rich 
low-lying open glade, it often grows very tall, 
running up maybe fifty feet, with trunks a foot 
through. The sunny edge of a clearing is 
indeed its favorite seat. Inthe fall when the 
leaves are all of the richest golden-yellow, you 
may look along field margins, and judge fairly 


_ Shooting 115 


how long they have been cleared, by the height 
and strength of the sassafras torches flaming 
in the woodland wall. 

There are wonderful differences in fallen 
leaves. Joe did not know whether it were cause 
or effect —the earth along the creek, and in 
the hickory flats upland, being so much lighter, 
blacker, and livelier than the soil of the flat- 
woods. But he knew the leaves from the nut 
trees, the ashes, and maples, crisped and lay 
much lighter and higher than those of the oaks. 
The hickory flats late in October looked as 
though they had been shaped of sunshine and 
beaten gold. ‘Tall blackish-gray trunks ran 
up slim and straight to lose themselves in clouds 
of gold foil. They had few boughs below the 
top — there the branches were thick enough 
and Jeafy enough to spate a carpet for the earth 
yet still ruffle it grandly in cloth of gold. The 
carpet lay knee-deep, richly rustling, and upon 
damp mornings or in the heat of noon, gave 
out a fine elusive breath too subtle to be called 
perfume. 

It was a delight to roll on the carpet or bur- 
row beneath it for nuts. “The leaves felt so 
clean and springy until rains had beaten them 
down. They packed easily, and took but a 
winter to dissolve into their original elements 
and become leaf-mold. Oak leaves did not 
crisp — they scarcely even drew in their edges. 


116 Next to the Ground 


Hence they fell and lay flat one upon another, 
shingling the earth as it were, and shedding 
rain for hours. You might find dry ones at 
the bottom of a deep drift after an all-day 
rain. Beyond that they were of much stouter 
fiber. ‘The yellow leaves crisped and crumbled 
to powder in a month if they stayed dry. Oak 
leaves varnished all over never crumbled, and 
took three years to rot, unless they were 
packed wet and covered. Joe wondered some- 
times if the oaks did not grudge the light ground 
to the trees of better fruit, or if they were 
content to rest on use. 

He wondered too how the ash, which is so 
great a robber of the soil, ever came to be 
known as the farmer’stree. To his thinking 
it was rather the lumberman’s tree, for, though 
it did not grow so big as some of the rest, the 
wood was so tough and springy it was fit for 
many special uses. His mother had, he knew, 
insisted upon having ashen floors all through 
the new wing to match the rest of the house. 
In summer the floors were all bare and the ash 
showed a clean beautiful grain after the weekly 
scrubbing. Then it split so straight and freely 
it was fine for plantation carpentry— making 
a hoe-handle, or replacing one accidentally 
broken upon a plough. Still he did not like 
the tree, as he did some of the rest. It might 
be only fancy or coincidence, but he was cer- 


Shooting 117 


tain in his own mind he never had any luck 
fishing if he chanced to wet his line first where 
ash roots ran into the water. 

The oaks, and even the flat-woods, had a 
charm all their own. Things grew in the 
flat-woods not to be found anywhere else. 
Holly-bushes for example, not plentifully, but 
enough of them to make looking for them hope- 
ful work. Holly,according to tradition, sprang 
up first in the footprints of our Saviour — hence 
the beasts of the field reverence it and never 
feed on it. Hence too its use at- Christmas. 
Everybody knows it is bad luck to take down 
Christmas holly before Old Christmas Day, 
otherwise Twelfth Night. Joe had read in 
his forest books how complaints in the swain- 
mote, the forest.court, were sworn to, upon a 
holly wand, instead of a Bible. Dan had told 
him further weird tales of the holly’s power: 
— how if you walked under it after dark, you 
would “ dream true”? — and in general dream 
very ill —and what dangers waited upon dig- 
ging it up, or even around it. As for cutting 
one down -— that was not to be thought of, if 
you did not care to be conjured for life. And 
when you went hollying for Christmas, some- 
thing bad would surely happen to you, if you 
failed to bow and say “Thank you” to each 
tree you plundered. 

Indian pipe also grew in the oak woods — 


118 Next to the Ground 


so did Indian turnip, which the black people 
call ‘ devil-in-a-pulpit.”” Patsy bore a con- 
science toward most wild flowers — she did 
not care to pick them only to see them wither 
in her hand, but the Indian pipe tempted her. 
She did not break the uncanny wax-white 
things, but lifted them bodily with a ball of 
earth underneath, took them home, and set 
them in a platter, with moss all around, and 
yellow leaves and gay red berries flecking the 
green of it. She chose the Indian turnip’s 
glowing cones oftener than any other. They 
were not the prettiest, she said — indeed, the 
big huddled lump of them was sometimes 
awkward, but they held color so well, glowing 
for weeks as they lay on the ground after the 
stalk had faded. More than that, nothing ever 
fed on them. Patsy did not taste them — she 
had promised her mother never to taste any 
of the wild things she picked — but she fancied 
the berries might be as pungent and peppery 
as the root, which blisters the mouth and 
puckers it in spite of all you can do. 
Sometimes with delicate caution she shook 
off the earth and tried to see roots to the Indian 
pipe. If there were roots they were invisible 
or else suckers at the base of the stems. Patsy 
made up her mind that the plant was an un- 
derground parasite, feeding upon oak roots, as 
mistletoe feeds uponthe branches. This was 


Shooting 119 


because she never found it except underneath 
a robust oak, pushing up through matted leaves 
and seeming to be anchored to a feeding oak 
root two or three inches below ground. Un- 
canny as it was, she loved it, almost better than 
the real sweet-smelling flowers,— loved to 
watch the white stalks push up, the fairy pipe 
shape itself at the end of them, unfold, and 
gradually bend down, down, so rain might not 
wash away its pollen and make it unfruitful. 
When every stalk had blossomed — sometimes 
there were a dozen —the clump died, pipes as 
well as stems withering to dust. But Patsy 
knew there was seed somewhere in the dust. 
She could not see it, of course — but if there 
was not, how should there be Indian pipes 
next year, and all the years? 


Quail and Partridge 


Chapter VI 


F Joe had been. called to 
A choosethe real merry month, 
he would have pitched upon 
November, yet not wholly 
because of the hunting. 
gy October brought the tragedy 
B of frost — it was pitiful to 
see all the green things die, 
even if the frost did paint the leaves so roy- 
ally and bring so many things to full ripeness. 
Maybe he was fanciful, but it seemed to him 
‘the earth shrank from the frost, and grew 
pinched in the first cold, as he himself shrank 
and grew pinched. When three nights of 
frost had ushered in a warm rainy week, he 
thought the fields rejoiced and when the clouds 
broke up into low clinging mists, he was sure 
the trees sang together a low jubilant song. 
They ruffled lightly as they sang — thus 
there was a plashing accompaniment — the 
noise of the big mist drops pattering down. 


124 Next to the Ground 


The mist drops are clear as dew, and heavier 
thanrain. They distil from the woolly white- 
ness, gathering all along boughs and branches. 
Sometimes just after sunrise a quick wind rolls 
away the white wool, and then you see the 
trees diamonded all over, flashing back the low 
red shining. It is a royal spectacle, especially 
if you chance to look at the sun through the 
bediamonded boughs, and thus have the red 
shining turned into a flood of rainbows. The 
big drops act as prisms to bring out the pri- 
mary colors. 

It took a warm stealing south wind thus 
to roll back the mists. A cold westerly or 
northerly breeze blew them up into the sky, 
and shaped them into flying rain-scud. If the 
winds did the work quick enough there was 
a shower, and a morning rainbow in the sky. 
Of rainbows at morning all good: husbandmen, 
especially shepherds, take warning, since they 
are infallible signs of foul weather. Falling 
weather, say the country folk. Scientific ones 
might say almost the same, since it is the fall- 
ing barometer which gives notice of coming 
disturbances. 

When Joe went out bird-hunting he had 
no need of either rainbows or barometer to tell 
him what weather impended. Birds for hunt- 
ing in Tennessee are quail, there called par- 
tridge, as the true partridge is known as pheas- 


Quail and Partridge bo 


ant. Pheasants were rare round about White 
Oaks. Joe had seen just four of them. He 
wished they were plentier. Two of those he 
had seen were in a game-bag, but the others 
he had watched, strutting and drumming upon 
a log in the woods, and at last, flinging furiously 
at each other, fighting as desperately as game- 
cocks, and in much the same fashion. They 
were cock-birds. His father had said their 
mates must have been looking on, concealed 
in the brush a little way off. Major Baker 
had in his boyhood often watched such encoun- 
ters. Then there were pheasants in every deep 
and wide stretch of woodland. It was the clear- 
ing, more than hunting, that had made them so 
few and shy. They feed and breed, and haunt 
in remote thickets, virgin of human footsteps, 
and, though hatched in broods, do not keep to- 
gether much after they are half-grown. The 
broods are very much smaller than those of 
quail, rarely more than nine, and commonly 
under seven. The nest is a hollow in the 
ground, under thick thorny cover. The young 
run swiftly as soon as hatched, and can dis- 
appear in the very lightest cover, their little 
gray-brown downy bodies never showing against 
leafy earth, At a week old they have wing 
feathers strong enough to help them toa perch 
amid low bushes. The mother bird takes 
them there, and goes higher and higher as they 


126 Next to the Ground 


grow older. Thus she puts them out of reach 
-of foxes, though she brings them within the 
range of owls. Still, as she is wise enough to 
roost for the most part in viny tangles, the 
owls carry off but few. Owls must strike 
flying to strike with effect. 

A cock-pheasant drumming is a figure of 
pride. How he drums nobody quite under- 
stands. He can make the sound standing on 
the ground, though he commonly stands upon 
a fallen tree, and prefers to drum on a trunk 
bare of bark. He spreads his tail fan-wise, 
after the manner of a peacock, raises his ruff 
stifly behind and around his head, lets his 
wings drop, and struts, swelling his breast, 
preening, stretching his neck, and looking 
upon every side. You can hear the tips of 
the wing-quills draw hard against the tree 
trunk, as the bird wheels slowly about. He 
seems to listen intently. All at once the 
wings begin to move, so swiftly the eye can- 
not follow them. They do not seem to strike 
either the bird’s body or the log underneath, 
yet all about there sounds a curious vibrant 
drumming, almost metallic, as loud many 
yards off as close at hand. After a minute it 
stops short, to begin again and continue longer. 
Between drummings the drummer walks back 
and forth with his head aside, listening toward 
every point of the compass. 


Quail and Partridge 127 


When Joe chanced upon his pheasants only 
one was in sight and drumming. The log 
was a big white-oak, wind-felled across a little 
glade walled in with hazel bushes. Joe 
was herb-gathering — looking, in fact, for 
yellow puccoon root. It was early March and 
he knew the plant had not peeped above 
ground, except in the richest, most sheltered, 
woodsy places. He had left his gun out at 
the edge of the hazel thicket, and was crawl- 
ing through it upon hands and knees, or he 
would never have got within eye-shot of the 
feathered gladiators. Pheasants are the wari- 
est of al] game birds, running at the crackling 
of a dead twig, and flying upon the least stir. 
Negroes believe that they can also smell 
human beings. Notwithstanding, there are 
traditions of battling birds seized with the bare 
hands. 

Joe had no such luck, though he waited 
breathlessly the event of the duel. He knew 
almost at once it was to be a duel—he did 
not hear answering drumming, but saw the 
pheasant on the white-oak log swell till his 
breast was almost on top, and his ruffed neck 
lay upon his back. The bird had heard 
something too fine for the boy’s ear. He 
was not surprised when the second bird 
whirred out of the woods, like a cannon ball, 
half-circled as he flew, and settled upon the 


128 Next to the Ground 


log five feet from the drummer. The two 
eyed each other for perhaps a minute, then 
both began to drum at once. Still drumming 
they moved toward each other. When they 
were two feet apart, the wings grew rigid, and 
they hurled themselves furiously against each 
other. The shock of impact sent them down 
upon the leaves, there to tumble about peck- 
ing, clawing, striking with the wings, each 
aiming to reach his adversary’s eyes. Joe 
knew that, because both the dead birds he had 
seen had lost an eye. He had heard old hun- 
ters tell also, of finding pheasants wholly 
blind, starving in the thickets. He did not 
mean that should be the fate of these fine 
fellows, so he rushed in upon them and sent 
them scuttering away, before much harm was 
done. He wondered if they would not meet 
again, and fight it out, with their sultanas look- 
ingon. From what he had heard, the sultanas, 
the hen-pheasants, were cruel creatures, de- 
lighting to be the cause of battle, and though 
indifferent to the victor, vengeful even to death 
upon the vanquished if he ventured later to 
creep back into company. They were jeal- 
ous too, often fighting among themselves, 
until their brown coats were ragged, and their 
sultan came magisterially to peck and cuff 
them apart. But there was something to be 
said for them, he reflected — they had the sole 


Quail and Partridge 129 


care of the eggs, and the young broods. As 
soon as the eggs were laid, the cocks with- 
drew, generally keeping alone, but sometimes 
companying in twos or threes. All through 
the pleasant fall weather, as became bachelors 
of consequence, they fed high, on grapes, and 
wild peas, and hazel nuts, and the smaller 
acorns. Though the first snow did not 
gather them into flocks, with their deserted 
families, it did make them feed and range in 
fairly close neighborhood. 

Thus they were not a bit like his weather- 
wise friends, the partridges, who are easily 
the most clannish of all the fowls of the air. 
Joe made a point of knowing where every 
partridge nest was—also of seeing that it 
came to no harm. If it happened to be in a 
wheat field, the binder drove around, not over 
it, even though, going around left a yard of — 
standing grain. A sitting partridge: would 
stick to her eggs, and let the machine cut her 
head off. One merely laying would fly off 
and of course desert, the nest left bare to the 
broiling sun. The harvest hands made that 
their excuse for plundering the nests. A 
partridge egg is one of the daintiest morsels 
in the world. It is pure white, of a very 
sharp oval, with a strong shell, but so delicate 
the light shines faintly through as the eggs 
lie huddled in the nest. When the nest is 


130 Next to the Ground 


ready for brooding there may be from ten to 
fifty eggs in it. Bob White is a rank Mor- 
mon. He is never content with less than 
two wives, and oftener has three. The wives 
lay in the same nest, and take turns with 
their common lord in brooding the eggs, also 
in feeding and carrying the young after they 
are hatched. 

Grass or standing small grain is the favor- 
ite nest-cover, though Bob White often builds 
in a blackberry thicket, or a clean hedgerow. 
A hedge overrun with poison ivy or with bind- 
weed he will have none of. Neither will he 
choose one full of rank herbaceous growth. 
Whatever the seat, the nest itself is no more 
than a shallow basin scratched in the light 
earth. There is no pretence of lining it. In- 
deed the only attempt at architecture is the 
bending down of green stalks to overarch it 
and form a little tunnel leading into it. The 
tunnel is faintly curved. A nest disturbed ever 
so slightly when there are but two or three 
eggs in it will be at once forsaken; but if it 
is full to overflowing, the birds keep to it, 
though people may pass within a yard of it 
every day. On the whole, Bob White is not 
averse to human kind. Partridge eggs are 

‘ sometimes laid in the nests of domestic fowls, 
especially guinea fowls, which are as prone 
as themselves to nesting in the fields. 


Quail and Partridge 131 


Young partridges look like brown downy 
chickens seen through the small end of a 
spyglass. They are hardly bigger than your 
thumb, but can run fast before their down is 
dry. They make the faintest little chittering 
noises, and are wonderfully obedient. At their 
mother’s lightest note of warning, they vanish. 
Like the young pheasants, they are helped by 
their color. Indeed, this is true of all earth- 
nesting birds. Their young can with diffi- 
‘culty be distinguished from the ground. 

A brood of pheasants makes a bevy, a brood 
of partridges (quail) a covey. The covey 
feeds, and haunts, and plays together until the 
next mating time. It also comes home to 
roost — seldom sleeping more than a hundred 
yards from the nest it was hatched in. The 
roosting is upon the ground, huddled as close 
as possible in a perfect ring, heads out, tails 
in. Thus they guard against surprise, or the 
back-seizure which is the fox’s chosen method 
of attack. They are very light sleepers, stir- 
ring at the least noise, and uttering a little 
shrill cry. At sound of it the covey scatters, 
and lies snug after running perhaps fifty yards. 
Nature has given them in protection power 
to withhold their scent when thus frightened.1 


1 The power of withholding scent is a mooted point ; 
but experience in the hunting field convinces the writer 
of its existence. 


132 Next to the Ground 


Sportsmen do not know whether to be grate- 
ful or grieved over the gift. Though it un- 
questionably helps to make partridges plenty, 
it also helps to make the truest-nosed dogs do 
oftentimes very faulty work. 

When the danger has passed, the covey be~ 
gins calling, faint, shrill, plaintive, no matter 
what the hour of night. It is the same call, 
only not so loud, as that which assembles the 
remnant of a covey scattered by a day’s shoot- 
ing. You hear it then, just at dusk. Birds 
thoroughly frightened keep silent until the 
whole world is still. However uttered, the 
assembly call bring the birds together. If 
there are even half a dozen left of them, they 
keep together, but if only two or three, they 
at once join themselves to a covey still strong. 
There is no recognized leader, yet in feeding, 
the formation is somewhat that of wild geese 
in flight. Running, the covey moves in a 
long slant following the head bird, very much 
as sheep follow the bell. Their short, stiff 
pinions are very strong — strong enough for 
half-mile flights. Still the birds can run eas- 
ier than they can fly, and very nearly as fast. 

In wet weather they will not fly, if running 
is possible. Hence netting. The partridge 
net is a purse-net, with little hoops inside to 
hold it open, and long wings upheld by light 
wooden sticks. The whole affair is dyed the 


Quail and Partridge 133 


color of frosted weeds. It is set among frosted 
weeds, where partridges are known to use, 
and commonly upon a day of mist mingled 
with rain. After it is set, with a light screen 
of brush over the mouth, the netters ride up 
and down the field diagonally, coming gradu- 
ally closer and closer to the net mouth. The 
partridges see only the trampling hoofs, and 
run gently a little further off. They run again 
and yet again, until at last they come to an 
odd light wall. It isa wing of thenet. They 
run down it, see the convenient cover of 
bushes, scuttle through it, and run on—to 
find themselves trapped a little further in. 
Netted birds are much the best for either 
the table or the market, but anybody with a 
drop of sportsman’s blood, holds ‘netting in 
abhorrence. Some few who practise it salve 
their consciences by turning out two pairs 
of each covey netted. Neither nets nor coops 
were permitted at White Oaks. Joe had built 
a coop once when he was ten years old — 
a three cornered tobacco-stick coop, with a 
weighted roof of boards, and a tunnel running - 
down under the side of it, to come up in the 
floor. He had baited it liberally with wheat 
and dried peas, strewing the bait all along the 
tunnel, and in a trail for yards outside. A 
covey found the trail, fed through the tunnel, 
and got inside the coop, then lacked the wit 


134 Next to the Ground 


to go back the way they had come. Instead 
they ran round and round, sticking their heads 
through the cracks, and trying vainly to make 
their bodies follow the heads, until Joe came 
to see about them. 

Patsy came too, Joe took out his captives 
one by one, very carefully so as not to hurt 
them in the least. He meant to tame them, 
and see if he could not raise whole flocks from 
them. He passed them over to Patsy, charging 
her strictly to be also careful. He was on his 
knees beside the coop. She stood right be- 
hind him. When he got up, with the last 
bird in his hand, her hands were empty. Patsy 
was not over-tenderhearted — she was even 
then severe upon Joe if he missed a shot. But 
he saw tears in her eyes, and her lips trembled 
as she said, trying to speak airily : «I could n’t 
hold the birdies Joe — not after — I felt their 
little hearts — flutter so. I thought, what if 
you an’ me, an’ Pappy, an’ — yes —an’ mother 
—were all in a great b-i-g jail—with a 
giant as high as the sky pickin’ us up —an’ 
— an’ —we could n’t get away — an’ knew 
the old giant meant to —to eat us —an’ then 
—well! I just had to let *em go.” 

Joe was a boy, not an angel, so of course 
he scored Patsy roundly for her breach of trust, 
but down at the bottom of his heart he was 
just a little glad she had done what she had 


Quail and Partridge 135 


done, although he hated to lose the birds. But 
somehow he never baited the coop any more, 
Later he came to agree with his father that 
every hunted thing should have at least a chance 
for its life, hence that coops had better be left 
to hungry fellows who wanted birds to eat, and 
could not buy powder and shot to get them. 

Patsy would not go with him bird-hunting. 
She said the little brown beauties ought not to 
be shot — they ate up so many weed seed, and 
destroyed so many insect eggs, they should go 
scot-free, besides having all the wheat, peas, 
. grapes, cherries, and strawberries they could 
devour. Her father in large part agreed with 
her. He would not allow indiscriminate shoot- 
ing, and always saw to it that the coveys were 
fed throughout snows, and in severe weather 
generally. Himself a keen sportsman, he 
meant his son to grow up likewise. When 
they went out together, and they went very 
often, Joe was always glad. They shot against 
each other with the best possible temper, and 
when, as now and then happened, Joe “ wiped 
Marse Major’s eye,” that is to say, knocked 
over a bird Marse Major had missed, it was 
not Joe who chuckled most, though Marse 
Major pretended to frown. 

If their dogs got up a late covey, the birds 
not yet grown, they let it go down wind un- 
touched, and went on to find another. Early 


136 Next to the Ground 


in the season they liked best to beat the hedge- 
rows. The bachelor birds fed there. The 
bachelors existed because of the Mormon ten- 
dencies. Since the stronger cocks will have 
so many wives, there are not wives enough to 
goround. So the very young fellows, and the 
very old ones, beaten in the struggle, flock to- 
gether in threes or couples the summer through, 
skulking away from the lords of families until 
the young are fairly grown. ‘Then they feed 
round about the broods, growing gradually 
bolder and bolder, until they are accepted as 
covey members in good standing. That hap- 
pens commonly about the middle of December. 
From then until mating time, the first of 
February, the involuntary prodigals stay with 
the rest. 

At mating time it often falls out that the 
exiles come to their own. Fighting and feed- 
ing alone the youngsters have grown stronger 
than last year’s lordly Mormon. Now it is 
his turn to go to the hedgerows, and lag super- 
fluous there until a shot finds him out, or, dis- 
abled in fight, he starves. Cruelty of this 
sort is among Nature’s necessary processes. 
It is only thus that she can assure the per- 
petuation of the strongest, and the extinction 
of those less strong. 

Upon sunrises before going hunting, Joe 
always listened for the feeding calls. By the 


Quail and Partridge 137 


sound of them he could foretell the weather. 
He knew where the coveys slept with reason- 
able certainty. If they fed in the wheat stub- 
ble among young clover, he looked for a mild 
day, with maybe rain at the end; if they went 
toward the woods he knew it would be hot 
and windy; if into the pea fields, or standing 
corn, there was likelihood of snow. If they 
sought thick sedge land full of briers and 
tangle, he might look for very sharpcold. If 
they lay close, ‘not flushing until the dog and 
hunter were in the midst of them, or ran along 
the ground in a swift line with the dogs on a 
dead point, he was sure of heavy windy rain. 
What he loved best was a mild, moist day, 
not too mild, with a sky overcast, and a little 
tingling breeze coming out of the southwest. 
He liked to have the weeds so dry and dead 
walking through them was easy. He com- 
monly rode from field to field, but did most 
of his shooting afoot, although his black colt 
Pipe Stem, stood fire like a veteran. Joe 
sometimes shot off him, with the gun lying 
between Pipe Stem’s ears. Patsy said he did 
that only to show off, but Joe did not think it 
was any great showing off, although he was 
reasonably proud of the colt’s steadiness. No 
mistake — Pipe Stem was a good fellow. So 
also was High-Low, the pointer who divided 
with the colt the first place in Joe’s affections. 


138 Next to the Ground 


High-Low had a white coat, satin smooth, 
with big liver blotches, a deep brawny chest, 
strong back, good legs and feet, and a perfect 
nose. He had also a dashing, high-headed 
way of going. It was beautiful to see him 
quarter, covering the field in long zigzags, 
nose to wind, tail up and lightly waving, 
glancing now and again at the huntsmen, and 
whipping from one side of them to the other 
at the mere motion of the hand. Upon the 
merest taint —as of a running covey fifty 
yards away — he crept stealthily forward, until 
he caught a full scent, then at once stood as 
though carved from stone, often with one foot 
poised in air, ready for the forward leap. He 
would wait thus an hour, never moving, though 
quivering through and through in the eager- 
ness of sport, holding his point until the guns 
came. When he heard Joe shout “ Hie on!” 
he quivered stronger than ever — with joy this 
time as he made a plunging leap. Then he 
came to heel hardly waiting for the word, but 
before the blurred booming of the guns had 
done echoing, he was out, retrieving the dead 
birds. 

Sometimes when a covey ran after he came 
to a point, if the guns were slow coming up, 
he followed the running quarry, almost crawl- 
ing himself, and looking shamefaced as who 
should say : “I know my business — also that 


Quail and Partridge 139 


this is dreadfully irregular — but really one 
cannot let a covey get clean away.” High- 
Low’s face indeed was wonderfully expressive. 
Joe declared the dog winked if you asked him 
if he could be so ill-bred-as to suck eggs, and 
that he looked a scolding if, with three guns 
out, he put up a covey and did not have at 
least four birds to retrieve. However that 
may have been, it is a fact that once, when a 
city visitor took High-Low out and persis- 
tently missed every bird that got up, after two 
hours the dog deliberately went home, crept 
under the porch, and lay hidden there until he 
saw the city man go away next morning. 
Joe shot always to make a clean kill, or a 
clean miss. He hated above everything to 
wing a bird, and maybe lose it. High-Low 
rejoiced to have them winged. No matter 
how fast and far they ran, he ran after, caught 
them, and brought them to Joe, without rump- 
ling even a feather. Unless he followed them 
by the scent of the blood, Joe could not tell 
how he did it. Unharmed birds he overran 
— putting them up sometimes right under his 
feet. Major Baker inclined to believe that 
the shock of the wound made the winged bird 
unable to withhold its scent. A bird badly 
hurt Joe always killed at once. Those merely 
wing-tipped, he often took home to Patsy, who 
fed and coddled and healed them, and some- 


140 Next to the Ground 


times made them so tame they would come 
up all winter to feed with the chickens, though 
they always ran away in the spring. 

It was in bringing such birds home that 
Joe found out another curious trick of theirs. 
Some of them fell as though dead, and lay limp 
and flaccid so long as he held them fast. But 
if he walked or rode with the seemingly dead 
bird thrust loosely in his pocket or lying upon 
his open palm, the minute he came close to 
thick cover the dead came to life — there was 
a flutter, a stiffening, a flash of limping wings 
—then a bird out of sight — and generally 
past even High-Low’s finding. 

Partridge shooting is more than mere sport, 
—a liberal education in sureness of eye and 
brain and hand. Unless they work together, 
and so swiftly the working appears to be sim- 
ultaneous, it is very near a waste of good 
powder to firea gun. When the covey whirs 
up, a cloud of wings, the man who hesitates 
is lost. He who takes slow aim is in much 
the same case. You must see whether the 
birds fly to right or left, mark their speed, and 
shoot, not at them but where your eye assures 
you they will be in the next two seconds. 
Sometimes this is as much as ten yards ahead. 
With birds going straight away, the gunner of 
course lets drive right at them. Commonly 
they scatter like the fragments of a bursting 


Quail and Partridge 141 


shell, going down singly or in couples all about 
the field. They keep a perfectly straight 
course for maybe two hundred yards, then 
wheel, usually across the wind, and go down 
with a long very gradual circling slant. A 
covey put up and not fired upon does not 
scatter, but circles, or rather wheels before 
settling just as do the worse frightened birds. 
Birds scattered by a volley lie close for several 
hours, until nightfall indeed if they are scat- 
tered in the afternoon, never stirring until 
they give out the assembly-call and find it 
answered. 

There was never any killing out of whole 
coveys at White Oaks, not even when the 
neighbors gathered for an all-day’s hunt there. 
Often then there were a dozen guns in hands 
that knew what to do with them. Shooting 
began out in the tangle upon the edge of the 
flat-woods. By twelve o’clock the hunters 
were commonly at the creek. Mrs. Baker 
sent down dinner, and they ate beside the 
spring, while the dogs, tired and thirsty, swam 
about in the creek, lapping and laving their 
fill, There was a fire on the bank for boil- 
ing coffee. Mrs. Baker would never have in- 
sulted her own palate nor that of a guest, with 
coffee made a mile from the place it was to be 
drunk. Sometimes Patsy went along with the 
dinner baskets and the coffeepot. Both were 


142 Next to the Ground 


in charge of Seeny, Dan’s wife, who was very 
black, very deft, and very discreet. Seeny and 
Patsy also carried salt, pepper, and butter for 
the bird-roast. The hunters themselves did 
the roasting, wrapping up fresh-killed par- 
tridges, feathers and all, in lumps of very wet 
clay, and then thrusting the lumps in the 
hottest part of the coffee fire. By time the 
other things were eaten the birds were done. 
Each man pulled out his clay lump, cracked 
it between two stones, peeled off the frag- 
ments, which took with them all the feathers, 
then, holding the hot juicy bird by the legs, 
dipped it in melted butter, salted it, peppered 
it, and ate the tender flesh, throwing away, of 
course, the skeleton, though some few twisted 
off leg bones, and craunched them in their 
teeth, claiming a bird’s real savor lay in the 
bones. 
Since they were kindly men and gallant, 
Patsy was tempted with many roasted birds, 
but she would not eat. Captain Billy Ven- 
tress, the best shot in all the hunt, teased her 
by saying it was because she herself was so 
near a bird, she did not like to be a cannibal, 
Patsy was brown like the birds, — brown- 
eyed, with a mop of tangled curly brown 
hair. She stepped lightly too, upon little 
hollow feet. Captain Billy claimed her for 
his sweetheart, gave her things, and kissed 


Quail and Partridge 143 


her, upon Christmases and birthdays, but 
since he was a bachelor and very old, Patsy 
did not mind. She was rising ten you see, 
and Captain Billy — well, he was thirty if he 
was a day. 


T. be Possum 


148 Next to the Ground 


squawking and fluttering among the hens 
with young broods waked him — he ran to the 
hovels, saw a gray furry thing slide away from 
them, leap upon the fence, follow it to the 
gate, spring thence into a black walnut tree 
growing beside it, run along the walnut boughs 
until they lapped those of an oak above the 
wood pile, scutter through the oak, and down 
its trunk, and at last disappear under the 
logs. 

When they got him out at dawn, they 
found the whole place full of shells and 
feathers and bones. The sly rascal- had 
harbored there, right under the noses of 
everybody, choosing a route back and forth 
the wisest dog could not follow. It was 
early spring, so Joe knew his mate had 
whipped him away from the nest. She had 
just got her young in her pouches, so needed 
all the room herself. Like the mother-hawk, 
she is bigger than her mate, also a better 
fighter. She will fight almost anything for 
her young until they are big enough to run 
and climb. For six weeks after they are 
born she keeps them snug in the pouches 
underneath her. When she sits up you see 
funny little heads each side, sticking out of 
the slit between the pouches, or suckling, 
very much as pigs suck. They do not stay 
constantly in the pouches. They creep out 


The Possum 149 


to play clumsily, after their eyes open, but 
scurry back at her first warning grunt. The 
play-spells outside grow longer and longer, 
but still the young possums seek their ac- 
customed shelter until hey grow too big to 
get in it. 

Then Sis Possum carries them another 
way, all huddled on her back, with their tails 
clinging to her tail, which is held up over 
and parallel to the backbone. ‘Thus she runs 
out of the nest with them, or blunders about 
the woods. The nest is in either a hollow 
tree, or log, or stump, a dry cranny in the 
bluff, or is scratched out beneath the floor of 
a low-set outbuilding. It is lined with leaves 
and grass, and is deserted after one season. 

Sis Possum likes best to fight with a tree 
or a stone at her back, but if she must do it 
in open ground, she half-crouches over her 
young family, and strikes out with teeth and 
fore feet. Her teeth are almost tusks. That 
is another point of likeness to her cousins, 
the pigs. Like them, also, she is carnivorous 
if need be — eating birds and their eggs, very 
young rabbits, beside such small deer as mice, 
and grub-worms. To get at the grubs she 
turns over rotting logs with her sharp nose. 
She also roots pig-fashion for sprouting acorns, 
and nips off mouthfuls of tender grass. 

Feeding thus in spring and summer the 


150 Next to the Ground 


possum’s flesh is coarse, rank, tough, and 
stringy. The beast is a gross and mighty 
feeder, yet withal an epicure, eating many 
things and much of them if he must, eating 
the best things, and still more of them, if he 
may. He divides the mulberry crop with the 
squirrels, though he does not care much for 
green corn. Sweet apples tempt him to the 
orchard, he has also a nice taste in black- 
berries. But none of these compare in-his 
mind with grapes and persimmons. The 
earliest of these ripen in September. By 
October possums are fairly edible, but it is 
not until November that they reach their 
prime. 

They are fat then — fat as they can wad- 
dle. All their flesh indeed is delicate and of 
melting richness. The skin under the gray 
white-tipped hair glows a lively pink, like 
the skin of a young white pig. A possum 
is never skinned for cooking. Instead it is 
rolled in hot ashes, and scraped as a pig is 
scraped. It is either stuffed with sweet po- 
tatoes, and roasted whole, or baked with the 
potatoes in the pan all around. ‘The cooking 
must be thorough —the skin crisp enough to 
crackle in the teeth. The taste of a young 
possum, properly fat, freshly caught, and 
dressed before he was fairly cold, is very 
much that of a glorified sucking pig. 


The Possum 1S 


Before the roasting comes the catching, 
consequently the possum-hunt. Black men 
are incomparably the best hunters — perhaps 
through the inherited aptitude of many gen- 
erations. Joe always went with Dan and 
Little Mose. Other black fellows went along, 
but only those two were essential. Dan 
could out-chop, out-climb and out-halloo 
anything of his inches in the county. Little 
Mose’s distinction was that he owned Wrong, 
the very prince of possum dogs. 

Nose makes the possum dog. He may be 
of any breed, or all, or none. A setter or 
pointer which develops the possum nose is 
hard to beat, but ruined for work after birds. 
The very best dogs are mongrels of wholly in- 
distinguishable antecedents. Some few have 
rough wiry coats hinting of terrier blood, others 
jaws of bulldog pattern, and still others ears 
and legs that bespeak a remote hound cross. 
A simple yellow cur may turn out an ideal 
possum dog—so may a fice, especially a 
bench-legged fice. But, whatever the breed, 
the fact is indisputable — no litter, however 
big it may be, wasever known to hold more 
than one real possum dog. 

Wrong was proof enough of that. Except 
when the two were hunting, you could scarcely 
distinguish him from his litter-brother Right, 
whose name had turned out to be severely 


152 Next to the Ground . 


ironic. Both had dead-black coats, crooked 
fore legs, strong jaws, bluntish noses, stump 
tails, and pure pale-green eyes. In spite of 
the likeness Right was always wrong, and 
Wrong as invariably right. Right the dog 
had no brains whatever. Heran anything or 
nothing, just as the notion took him, would 
stand barking half a day beside a perfectly. 
sound stump, trying to make the world share 
his belief that there was some wonderful beast 
inside or under it, or if he ran a real rabbit, 
followed it at an easy dilettante trot, his 
mouth open, and yawping once in every ten 
yards. A molehill was quite another matter — 
he ran along it so fast and barking so furiously, 
he sometimes stumbled over his own fore legs 
and took a header that knocked the breath 
out of him. Notwithstanding, Slow Pete, his 
master, had faith to believe he would make a 
great dog, when he had time to come to himself. 
Since Right was rising two years old, Dan and 
Little Moses laughed at the prediction. 

They scoffed at the bare mention of taking 
Right possum-hunting. They did not really 
need any other dog than Wrong, but since a 
barking chorus is jollier of nights than a single 
cry, they tolerated Daddy Jim’s two dogs 
Music and Damsel, who at least knew enough 
to follow Wrong’s lead. Music was a cur of 
no degree, Damsel had a remote hound cross; 


The Possum 153 


neither was much to look at, but both had a 
place in the hearts of their hunting country- 
men. It was a near thing as to which of 
them was the better, but nobody ever thought 
of disputing that after Wrong the incompar- 
able, the pair were the best possum dogs in the 
county. 

All three knew their business to a nicety. 
They understood what was up, in fact, as soon 
as their masters began splitting wood for 
torches. It was odd to see them then crouch at 
the men’s feet, looking up at them with plead- 
ing eyes, whining a little and beating the 
ground with their tails. They dearly loved a 
night run, and sometimes, when the torches 
were for fishing, they were left at home, 
chained to the cabin walls. Hence the little 
entreating whimpers, the crawling to the mas- 
ter’s feet to lay the head upon them. Wrong 
had this much of real greatness——he never 
thought himself indispensable. Instead he 
begged as piteously to be taken as the awkward- 
est and most unkempt puppy of the possum- 
dog brotherhood. Before hunting nights Little 
Mose always gave him extra feed at breakfast, 
with only bread and milk at noon, and a hunch 
of ash-cake for supper. He knew a dog must 
have strength to run well, also that he would 
never run his best nor trail his best with an 
overfull stomach. 


152 Next to the Ground . 


ironic. Both had dead-black coats, crooked 
fore legs, strong jaws, bluntish noses, stump 
tails, and pure pale-green eyes. In spite of 
the likeness Right was always wrong, and 
Wrong as invariably right. Right the dog 
had no brains whatever. He ran anything or 
nothing, just as the notion took him, would 
stand barking half a day beside a perfectly 
sound stump, trying to make the world share 
his belief that there was some wonderful beast 
inside or under it, or if he ran a real rabbit, 
followed it at an easy dilettante trot, his 
mouth open, and yawping once in every ten 
yards. A molehill was quite another matter — 
he ran along it so fast and barking so furiously, 
he sometimes stumbled over his own fore legs 
and took a header that knocked the breath « 
out of him. Notwithstanding, Slow Pete, his 
master, had faith to believe he would make a 
great dog, when he had time to come to himself. 
Since Right was rising two years old, Dan and 
Little Moses laughed at the prediction. 

They scoffed at the bare mention of taking 
Right possum-hunting. They did not really 
need any other dog than Wrong, but since a 
barking chorus is jollier of nights than a single 
cry, they tolerated Daddy Jim’s two dogs 
Music and Damsel, who at least knew enough 
to follow Wrong’s lead. Music was acur of 
no degree, Damsel had a remote hound cross ; 


The Possum 163 


neither was much to look at, but both had a 
place in the hearts of their hunting country- 
men. It was a near thing as to which of 
them was the better, but nobody ever thought 
of disputing that after Wrong the incompar- 
able, the pair were the best possum dogs in the 
county. 

All three knew their business to a nicety. 
They understood what was up, in fact, as soon 
as their masters began splitting wood for 
torches. It was odd to see them then crouch at 
the men’s feet, looking up at them with plead- 
ing eyes, whining a little and beating the 
ground with their tails. They dearly loved a 
night run, and sometimes, when the torches 
were for fishing, they were left at home, 
chained to the cabin walls. Hence the little 
entreating whimpers, the crawling to the mas- 
ter’s feet to lay the head upon them. Wrong 
had this much of real greatness —he never 
thought himself indispensable. Instead he 
begged as piteously to be taken as the awkward- 
est and most unkempt puppy of the possum- 
dog brotherhood. Before hunting nights Little 
Mose always gave him extra feed at breakfast, 
with only bread and milk at noon, and a hunch 
of ash-cake for supper. He knew a dog must 
have strength to run well, also that he would 
never run his best nor trail his best with an 
overfull stomach. 


‘154 Next to the Ground 


Possum-hunters have an assembly-call the 
same as partridges. It is a keen whooping 
halloo. Little Moses generally raised it, in 
signal to the rest to gather in the road before 
his cabin. Dan and Joe were commonly the 
first to answer it. Dan could out-whoop Little 
Mose if he tried —but when your hunting 
depends largely upon the loan of another fel- 
low’s dog, it is not the part of wisdom to hal- 
loo him down at the beginning. As the hunt 
trooped in, Little Mose distributed torches. 
Daddy Jim always fetched his own torch — 
he had a special art of shaping and tying the 
stick bundles so they burned with a steady 
pointed flame. Joe had tried to learn the art, 
but Daddy Jim pretended he had none. He 
was secretive in many things — as for example 
regarding the bait he used when he came back 
with such fine strings of fish, and how to make 
a water-melon vine bear red-meated melons 
or yellow, at will. 

A possum dog is generally likewise a fine 
coon dog, so the three dogs did not know 
until the hunters laid their course what sort of 
game they were expected to follow. Coons 
abide in the woods along the streams. They 
cannot live far away from fresh water, since 
they first dip into it every stored morsel they 
eat. If the hunt headed for the creek, that 
meant coons as plain as daylight. If, contrari- 


The. Possum igs 


wise, it went toward the old fields and the 
strip of tangle, possum was the word. And 
then the dogs were glad’— so glad they leaped 
and fawned upon their masters, then set off 
running full tilt, and barking in little short 
happy yelps as they ran. Wrong’s bark was 
his worst point. It was shrill, almost -whin- 
ing. Damsel had a bell note, Music a loud 
half-roaring voice, not the least bit, musical, 
but dependably honest. 
Luck is best under a growing moon. At 
least every experienced black possum-hunter 
firmly believes so. That is not strange con- 
sidering he also believes that life and death, 
and blight and growth, the turn of the seasons, 
wind, sunshine, and rain, all depend upon lunar 
influence. He explains that as the moon 
waxes or wanes so does the scent of the wild 
creatures. Naturally a growing scent leaves; 
a trail quickly found and easily followed. I 
there is a color of reason behind his belief, i 
is easy to understand why November hunt 
are so fruitful. The Hunter’s Moon shi 
then, red and fiery at the rising, later a s 
or a sickle of burnished silver swimming 
across a violet velvet sea. It rises earlierf 
any other moon of the year. The lig 
makes bright the fields and woods whg@* 
even alittle way upthe sky. But the f'® 
are densely dark. Torchlight is nee 


156 Next to the Ground 


—also late or early when the moon does not 
shine. 

Still, it is bad luck to start out by torchlight. 
After the hunt is a hundred yards away, it 
does not so much matter. Dan commonly 
lit his torch, even if there was a moon, when 
they came to the fence around the old field. 
If it had not been for the hedgerow you might 
have walked through the rotting rails anywhere. 
The old fields made part of the land that had 
been in chancery. It was all of twenty years 
since a plough had run in them. Still there 
were many acres clear of everything but sedge, 
yet thickets were plenty, and very tall, as were 
also persimmon trees. Grape vines overran 
the thickets, and not one persimmon tree in 
a dozen was unfruitful. Persimmon trees 
are male and female, but, luckily for Brer Pos- 
sum and his congeners, the proportion of un- 
fruitful staminate trees to fruitful pistillate 
ones is less than one to twenty. Hedgerow 
thorns made it well to go in through the gap, 
unless you coveted rents, tatters, and scratches. 
‘The White Oaks possum-hunters did not 
‘ovet them — still sometimes they struggled 
yhrough the wall of tangled stems, so as to 
nake a short cut and get ahead of impertinent 
eXrlier comers, whom they heard whooping in- 
sifle. Whoever came first to the big swale, 
abiput the middle of the old fields, always got 


The Possum 157 


the cream of the night’s hunting. There were 
some six hundred acres of the old fields, so 
there was room for many possums and their 
hunters. But since White Oaks lay nearest, 
those who lived there felt a sort of pre-emption 
right to choice in the chase after the night 
rangers. 

Persimmon trees are, after a sort, sylvan 
immortelles. Nobody ever saw a dead one, 
any more than a dead mule. Cutting down 
and grubbing up does not destroy them. They 
sprout cheerfully from the tiniest tip of root, 
and keep on sprouting from year to year, de- 
fying even August cutting. As to seat, the 
tree is nobly catholic, growing and bearing 
much fruit upon thin land, growing more, 
bearing still more fruit, upon rich. It spreads 
by seed as well as by sprouts. In the sunny 
open fields, which it loves passing well, it grows 
commonly in clumps, from five to twenty, 
though the clumps stand well apart. In the 
woods it grows singly, and, curiously enough, 
ripens its fruit earlier than when growing in 
the open, ‘There are very many varieties of 
it, differentiated mainly by the several man 
ners of fruit. Some trees ripen it -early j 
September. Others keep the acrid pucke 
tang until February. The early trees are oft 
bare before frost, covering the ground und 
neath with their fruit, which is round, dee 


158 Next to the Ground 


flattened at either end, of a deep tawny yel- 
low, and thickly covered with the richest blue 
bloom. The flowers, green and inconspicuous, 
come out in mid-May all along last year’s 
twigs. Sometimes they are very many, some- 
times very few. By their number you can 
judge the next fall’s persimmon crop, since 
every one sets fruit. This early-ripe fruit is 
lusciously sweet and juicy. The pulp is near 
the color of a ripe pumpkin’s flesh, but a 
thought more tawny. It lies close around 
the seeds, which are flat, satin-smooth, and of 
a light brown, each firmly incased in a fleshy 
skin. A persimmon might indeed be described 
without libel, as a rosette of these flat seeds 
bedded in pulp and covered. ‘To the very last 
the seeds keep the puckery quality of the green 
fruit, so, in eating, it is the part of wisdom 
merely to suck the pulp. 
Late persimmons hang on all winter, and 
_ are thus a real godsend to the wild things in 
i| the time of deep snows. The trees grow most 
~ commonly on poor clay soil, lying high and 
dry, yet reach a fair size for their kind. Per- 
iimmon trees never grow big — one as much 
*s two feet across at the butt is exceptional. 
‘he late trees bear lavishly, literally loading 
swn their twigs with fruit, but the fruit is 
all, not half the size of the early globes, yet 
| erof seed. It isalso dry, to mealiness, yet 


The Possum 159 


well worth eating when picked frozen from the 
tree. Betwixt the early sort and the late there is 
a constant succession. All but the very latest 
cast their fruit as soon as it reaches full ripeness. 
Wild grapes are something the same way. 
They are divided roughly into summer grapes 
and winter ones, though the summer grapes 
do not ripen until October. They turn black 
the last of August, but are hard and so sour, 
even the birds leave the clusters for a while 
untouched. By and by when the leaves turn 
yellow, and the tendrils crisp, summer grapes 
are truly delectable. Strong young vines 
rooted in a rich hedgerow, or woodland, bear 
many long clusters of fruit as big as a pea. 
Old vines cumbered with much wood, blos- 
som profusely, but bear little fruit. What 
they do bear commonly hangs so high the birds 
get all of it, though sometimes when the crop 
is heavy, and there comes a warm rainy spell 
just after frost, the grapes drop from the 
bunches and feast the hogs wild and tame 
which may happen to have the range of the 
woods. ‘These vines climb to the tip of the 
tallest oaks, and occasionally are as big arourt 
as a man’s body. How they climb so highed 
a mystery. Often they have long swayifyl 
cables twoinches through, running up, up, V 
no sign of tendril, nor of twig to whicha and 
dril might cling, for thirty or forty feet. Juck 


160 Next to the Ground 


Muscadines which are half wild, half tame, 
growing as well in the garden as the woods, 
look more like plums than grapes, though the 
vine proclaims their real nature. They are 
as big as small marbles, and grow in clusters 
of three or five. They turn black in August, 
and ripen in mid-September. As soon as they 
are ripe they drop, often bursting if they drop 
from a good height. They are full of sweet 
juice and pale-greenish pulp. The skin is 
thick, leathery even, black outside with a 
heavy blue bloom, and deep wine-red inside. 
It is full of burning foxy flavor that quite 
spoils the fruit for the human palate. But 
muscadine wine, properly made, is nearly as 
good as champagne — clear, sparkling, of a 
delicious pale pink, and a rich fruity bouquet. 
Proper making is tedious work —the pulp 
must be deftly popped out, and the skins 
thrown away. Pigs and possums do not in 
the least object to the skins, though some- 
\ times when they are eyelid-deep in musca- 

lines, they raise their heads, open their mouths, 
cd make a little blowing noise, as though 
wing to cool a burning tongue.. 

+; Winter grapes, otherwise coon grapes, are 

‘dible even to Brer Coon until after frost 

fallen upon them. The vines are ram- 
os | z, the fruit very plenty, though both the 
cers and the berries are much smaller than 


The Possum _ 161 


the summer grapes. The skin is black and 
shining. Pulp there is none, but when ripe 
the twin seeds seem to swim in sweetish odd- 
flavored juice. The vines love a moist situ- 
ation, so take possession of the banks along 
wet-weather streams, pond edges, and low 
overflown flats beside the creeks. They grow 
also in swales if once they can manage to 
overtop other growths. They have not the 
summer grape’s facile habit of creeping from 
shade into the fullest sunshine, no matter what 
stands in the way. 

Winter grapes hang on a long time — until 
March unless they are pecked away. Some- 
times they even dry up in the bunch. Foxes 
love them so well, they haunt the ground 
underneath, nosing about for the scattered ber- 
ries the luckier birds have lung down. Brer 
Fox is by no means opposed to mixing his 
grapes with all the birds he can catch. Indeed 
some say it is the chance of bird-catching that 
brings him to the grape-tree, and that the nos- 
ing in the leaves is merely a blind. Brer Fox 
is beyond question a strategist, still he must be 
granted his natural appetites. One fox at 
least, captive and far from’ content, showed 
every mark of delight when a choice handful 
of coon grapes was flung into his cage. 

Possums may be depended on to know and 
choose the best feeding-ground. Hunting-luck 


162 Next to the Ground 


depends very much upon the hunter’s know- 
ing the same thing. In the old field, Joe 
and Dan had the lay of the land by heart. 
The big swale was full of grapes, summer 
and winter ones, not to name crab-apples and 
black haws and persimmons thick enough 
on the higher ground round about the swale 
always to furnish two or three trees fully ripe. 
So they went straight to it, crossing open 
breadths of sedge, with the dogs running out 
in leaping circles upon either side. Wrong 
worked majestically alone. Music and Damsel 
kept together as though hunting in couple. 
They were excellent comrades except now 
and then, when it happened Music was taken 
upon a night hunt and Damsel left. 

All three ran deviously, sniffing audibly, 
and visible only when they leaped higher than 
the sedge. It came up to the waist, in places 
even up to the shoulders. So the hunters cried 
lustily to the dogs: “Hi-yi! hi-yi! Hunt 
him up! Hunt him up, old dog!” The 
crying was spasmodic. There must be inter- 
vals of silence to catch a dog’s possible open- 
ing on the trail. The trail might be struck 
in the unlikeliest place. Brer Possum comes 
and goes almost as crookedly as Brer Rabbit. 
But no matter how crooked a line may be, if 
you take a compass and keep drawing circles 
all over the surface it crosses, one circle is 


The Possum 163 


sure at last to fall slap upon it — hence the 
tactics of the dogs. 

When Damsel found first, Daddy Jim gave 
a yell at least three miles wide and half a 
mile high. Daddy Jim’s dogs stood to him 
for wife and children and friends. So the 
others never in the least grudged his triumph 
— Little Mose indeed led the whooping after 
him, quite as though Wrong was not in the 
field. Everybody ran pell-mell after the dogs, 
all three in cheery full cry. Somehow their 
notes accorded well — particularly well when 
they were undervoiced by lusty yells and 
whoopings. It was a jocund rush to the 
persimmon trees. There often the moon- 
shine showed a couple of gray gluttons feast- 
ing in the very tip. Persimmon trees are 
ill to climb — they are not only distressingly 
slender, but have few low growing branches. 
Notwithstanding, somebody at once went up 
to shake out the feasters. The climber got 
as near them as he dared go, then set the tree 
rocking, at the same time shaking with all his 
might the especial branch to which they clung. 
If they were fat and what November pos- 
sum is not ? — he easily shook loose their foot- 
hold, but then the tail came into play. A 
possum’s tail is as long as himself, very strong, 
and hairless for six inches from the tip. With 
this hairless part he can grip and cling, wrap- 


164 Next to the Ground 


ping it round and round a small bough, and 
holding fast though the shaking may swing 
him back and forth like a pendulum. 
Sometimes if he felt the tail-hold slipping 
he let go and made a mad leap for a neighbor- 
ing bough. But when at last he was shaken 
out, or, if that was impracticable, the tree it- 
self chopped down, he lay scemingly dead, 
eyes shut, tail limp, paws limber, a lump of 
fur and flesh not even stirring at a snuffing 
dog. He did not breathe indeed so long as 
his captors stood watching him, but once their 
eyes turned elsewhere he was up and away like 
a flash. He rarely got the chance, though. 
Somebody either hustled him into a stout 
gunny-sack, or slipped his tail into the cleft 
end of a sapling, and swung him over the 
shoulder. A double catch — that is, two pos- 
sums in one tree — was balanced at either end 
of the sapling, and sent joyously home. A 
fat possum is too heavy to carry uselessly 
throughout a night hunt —how much more 
then two fat possums? The beasts were 
always kept alive, fed, and often fattened, until 
wanted for cooking. Unless dressed as soon as 
killed, the flesh becomes rank and unpleasant. 
It was odd to see the dog strike a wild-cat’s 
track. They ran faster than ever, but with 
bristles up and a deeper menacing note in their 
barking. Wrong always seemed to be pro- 


The Possum 165 


testing — he trailed nothing but possums and 
coons, though he could do no less than join 
in the crying when Music’s growling note 
said “ Varmint!’’ There were not so many 
wild-cats, but almost every season one was 
killed. The negroes never let a cat slip if 
they could help it — Major Baker had a stand- 
ing offer of a lamb and a pig for barbecuing, 
to each man who killed a wild-cat. The cats 
if they multiplied would, he knew, cost him 
very many pigs and lambs. When old and 
savage, they kill, not from hunger, but purely 
for the sake of killing. Their harborage was 
the sink-holes about in the swales, especially 
the big swale, which had a water-shed of many 
acres. When the dogs ran them to their holes 
somebody threw a lighted torch into the hole, 
and when the wild-cat leaped out, yowling and 
spitting, trying to turn on his back, or to sink 
his claws in a dog as he leaped, he was knocked 
down with long poles, and quickly killed. 
Whoever gave him the finishing stroke cut off 
his ears, and the tip of his blunt tail to show 
he was a real wild-cat, not merely a tame cat 
gone wrong. But even if the tail was long, 
the Major did not grudge the reward. 
Towards twelve o’clock, when the moon 
stood high enough to light up tall timber, the 
possum-hunt was apt to turn into a coon-hunt 
— particularly if it had had great luck in pos- 


166 Next to the Ground 


sums. Coons compared to possums are lean 
at their fattest, but of a high game flavor, 
savory enough after a surfeit of sweet fat. 
Old Man Shack said “a yearlin’ coon that 
had n’t hustled hisself too much, killed when 
the sign was right, skinned with the head on, 
and fixed up nice with pepper and salt, an’ 
flour-doin’s inside, was better’n any wild turkey 
that ever gobbled or strutted”? — but the old 
man, it was well known, would eat pretty 
much anything that could be got inside an oven 
or roasted in the ashes. For the most part, 
negroes only ate the coons. Joe tasted the 
meat once, when Dan had a particularly fine 
roast. It was well-flavored, but somehow he 
did not relish it. He did relish though, to the 
utmost, a coon-hunt after midnight. 

The world lay all enchanted then, with the 
dew crisping into frost under the silver moon- 
shine. ‘There were white blurs and blotches 
upon the tree-trunks, and a glorious mottle of 
light and shadow all over the rustling leaves. 
The dogs ran freer, and bayed louder, the 
whoops were keener and more thrilling. 
Wrong, took the lead then as of right. No 
coon ever littered could trick his keen nose — 
not even by springing from one tree to another 
for maybe three hundred yards before he came 
to earth and set off at a dead run for his water- 
side castle. 


The Possum 167 


Wrong ran leaping, catching the scent in air, 
barking as he ran, his eyes glinting green fire. 
When at last he treed, either at the nest, or 
away from it, he was the very moral of quiver- 
ing eagerness until he saw the axes out and 
somebody building a fire. Then he lay down 
sedately, put his nose between his fore paws, 
but kept his eyes fast upon the tree. 

When the coon was shaken out, or the tree 
came crashing down, Wrong was upon his foe 
in the twinkling of an eye. Coons are hard 
and bitter fighters, turning upon their backs as 
they touch the earth, and striking out furiously 
with teeth andclaws. But no matter how big 
and savage the coon, nor what a master of 
fence he showed himself, Wrong never let him 
get away. Wrong had both the wit and the 
art to nip Brer Coon betwixt ear and shoulder, 
whirl him over and finish .him with a quick 
crunch at the back of the neck. Sometimes 
when a nest tree came down and a whole coon 
colony was chopped out of the snug, grass- 
lined woody chamber in which they had thought 
to sleep away part of the winter, Wrong had 
to choose betwixt old coons and young, and 
always chose those who would put up the best 
fight. 

Coons hibernate but slightly, sleeping com- 
monly from the winter solstice to about 
Ground-hog Day — which is the second of 


168 Next to the Ground 


February. They nest high, in hollows well 
up the trunks of tall trees. A warm spell in 
January wakes them to sit nodding and blink- 
ing in the doors of their holes. But the sleep- 
ing is evidently not to escape cold weather, 
since they run about over light early snows, and 
if the creeks, at their lowest in November, 
skim over from sudden severe weather, often 
break the ice to wash their feet, their faces, and 
their breakfasts, thus showing themselves the 
cleanliest among nest-making animals. Joe 
had had more than one young coon for a pet. 
They were pretty, intelligent, and full of cun- 
ning tricks, but so mischievous he always ended 
by turning them loose as soon as they were big 
enough to shift well for themselves. 

Sharp axes, with strong and willing arms to 
ply them, bring down very big trees in a 
little while. By time the coon was caught or 
the colony chopped out, the fire was blazing 
royally and potato-roasting in order. Some- 
times the potatoes, sweet yellow yams, came 
out of the gunny-sack or the pockets of the 
hunters. Oftener somebody had slipped aside 
to plunder an outlying patch. Nobody ever 
objected to such plundering. It was accepted 
indeed as the sign of good neighborhood — 
besides the plundered knew their potatoes 
might come back to them in the shape of a 
fat possum. The yams were dumped right 


The Possum 169 


in the middle of the fire, covered first with 
embers, then with blazing brands that would 
shortly be coals, and left for half an hour, 
men and dogs the while lying supine upoit 
the leaves, feet to the fire, the men telling 
ghost tales, or hunting stories, or the signs 
and wonders of witch-work. Joe listened 
drowsily, watching the moonshine creep, the 
fireshine flicker, until his eyelids shut of their 
own weight. And then he knew nothing 
more until Dan hauled him up standing, thrust 
something hot into his hands, and said loudly : 
“Wake up, ole son! Eberybody else done 
eat er hot tater — eben ter de dawgs.” 

Going home through the gray small hours 
with cocks crowing all about, the hunters 
often sang. Daddy Jim never sang out loud 
but droned a low deep under-chord. Most 
“of the songs were but snatches. Dan said 
Daddy Jim knew every song that ever was 
made for a night hunt but wanted to keep 
them all to himself. Little Mose also knew 
songs, and many tales of the animals, but he 
had a fitful memory —it was not once a 
month he could sing anything or tell anything 
straight through. If Joe lives to be a hun- 
dred he will never forget one especial night 
hunt, all mist and moonshine, when Little 
Mose found his memory, and sang without 
a break, this true and proper coon song. 


170 Next to the Ground 
« a i> Wal) LE Brer Ring- Tail, Ring, 


wary Ring, Ring — 
i ¥ K7 | Ring-Tail ! Ring-Tail ! 
1 ¢ Ring-T-a-i— 1! 


He lip froo de tree, an’ he 
swore “ By jing!” 
Ring- Tail! Ring-Tail ! 
ilk “ai —/l! 
De dog wa’nt er puppy dat eber could ketch him! 
De nigger wa’nt er nigger dat eber could tetch 
him! 
De bag wa’nt er bag dat eber would fetch him, 
Ter turn an’ twis’ an’ splutter an’ sizz, 
Down dar in de ?on jail. 


Brer Ring-Tail mighty sly, but de moon, moon, 
_ moon — 
Moon-Shine! Moon-Shine! Moon-S-h-i-n—e!! 
Hit gut de tricks ter beat ole Brer Possum an’ 
Brer Coon 
Moon-Shine! Moon-Shine! Moon-S-h-i-n—e!! 
Hitt tole ole Brer Possum: “ Yes, yo tail is mighty 


long!” 
Hit tol ole Brer Coon: “ Yes, yo claws is mighty 
_ strong!” 
Hit tole ole Brer Rabbit: “Yo ears is set on 
wrong | 


But you aint got er show when I lets my dog go! 
Den, you ebery one is mine!” 


Night Notses 


Chapter VIII 


OUND carries wonderfully 
through the unvexed hush 
of a farmland night. As 
dusk deepens to thick dark- 
ness the stillness of woods 
and fields becomes impres- 
sive. Night noises break 

up the stillness as a stone dropped into a pool 

breaks up its glassy surface. 

Joe loved to listen for the night noises. 
He thought if he should go to sleep, and wake 
suddenly months afterward, he would know 
the season by the night sounds. The sounds 
made a sort of aural calendar. Every month 
had its own, and every sort of weather. Sum- 
mer sounds were so many they blurred and 
blended ; so did those of the full springtime. 
Uponwinter nights the noises were littleislands 
set in washing seas of ‘silence, unless the wind 
blew very hard. Fall nights were vocal, but 
the voices were always distinct, rising with 
clean-cut cadences, and dying as they rose. 


174 Next to the Ground 


Cocks, which crow all the year round for 
midnight and for daybreak, begin early in 
November to crow more and more frequently, 
until at Christmas, according to Shakespeare : 


“ The bird of morning singeth all night long.” 


Shakespeare and superstition agree that the 
constant crowing is to banish ghosts and 
witches, and make the nights safe and whole- 
some all through the holy days. Science con- 
trariwise, says atavism — throwing back to the 
jungle days, when the wild ancestors of our 
domestic fowls sounded their clarions as a sort 
of sentry-call to frighten off night prowlers, who 
are always most audacious and most bloodthirsty 
at this special season. AQ fact in support of 
science is that you may set cocks crowing as 
the nights lengthen, anytime after nine o’clock, 
by lightly disturbing the roost, or even moving 
about it carrying a torch or lighted lantern. 

Cocks never crow simultaneously. Some- 
times a veteran begins, oftener a pert young 
cockerel half rouses, flaps his wings three times, 
and flings across the still dark his raucous 
immature challenge. He may crow twice be- 
fore he is answered. Generally better grown 
cocks upon the same roost keep silence until 
they hear from the neighbors. Then they 
crow lustily two or three times, at intervals 
of a minute. The sounds ripple from farm 


Night Noises 175 
to farm. All through the hushed fields there 


is a cross-fire of answering crows, near or dis- 
tant, but all shrilly clear. By the distance 
and direction Joe could tell whose cocks an- 
swered first. Little Mose half a mile off had 
a famous red-game fellow whose crow was 
really tuneful by contrast with the hoarse sput- 
tering note of the Shanghais and Langshans 
over at the Suter place half a mile beyond 
Mose’s cabin. 

Upon the off nights when Joe himself was 
not hunting, he came pretty near to knowing 
who was afield. Indeed he could not help 
but know — yells, halloos, and barks are so dis- 
tinctly individual. When they came in run- 
ning chorus, with the beat of flying axes.a little 
later, and afterward the crash of a falling tree, 
it all meant, of course, that a coon had run his 
last; but by the after-whooping Joe judged 
whether old man Shack had got him, or Daddy 
Jim, or some of the black fellows from the 
saw mill. Even in whooping the old man 
drawled a bit — though night hunting was the 
one thing at which he was not lazy. Daddy 
Jim’s whoop was mellow, but savage at the 
very last. The mill fellows whooped hoarse 
and hungrily, as though their vocal chords were 
in need of oil. 

The sounds came clearest upon still moon- 
lit nights, but loudest when the air was thick 


176 Next to the Ground 


and mists hungin the tree tops. In Decem- 
ber, the ground froze hard of nights, and then 
you could hear all the passing on the big road 
for miles and miles. Still it did not touch the 
borders of White Oaks. The road ran to the 
county town seven miles away. There was 
much heavy hauling over it, and in the fall, 
before the winter rains, the red clay surface 
of it was beaten as smooth and almost as hard 
asglairice. Wheels did not rattle or grind over 
it. Instead they set up a sort of vibrant hum. 
Shod-teams, or even those half-shod beat out 
with their hoofs a deep drumming rat-tat. 
Those going barefoot made a blurred plopping 
sound. Saddle-horses galloping set the clay 
ringing almost as though it were metal. 

The road wound down a long hill to cross 
the creek. A spring broke out just above the 
ford. Wagoners often camped there. Joe 
knew when they meant to camp by the way 
they rattled their teams down hill. ‘The sound 
of axes chopping logs for the camp fire was 
quite superfluous. He knew too by the rattle 
whether the wagonswere light orladen. Light, 
they made a great clatter ; loaded, they bumped 
and jarred. Wind and weather had much to 
do with the distinctness of the sound. The 
road ran to northwards. South winds blew 
back the sounds, as northerly ones, or north- 
westerly, brought them straight to the ear. 


Night Noises 177 


The railroad came, at its nearest point, with- 
in five miles of White Oaks, but, with the 
ground frozen and the wind right, you might 
have fancied you heard the trains just back of 
the fields. There wasa trestle of some height 
a little beyond the nearest point. Joe could 
tell, by the sinking of the sound, when the 
trains were slacking up for it, long before he 
heard the three whistles, which asked the 
bridge-walker if it were firm and clear. He 
gota time-table, arid amused himself by noting 
when trains were on time or behind it. He 
began to hear the noise of passing five minutes 
after they left the station in town. He had 
tested that over and over. One especial train, 
the south-bound limited, was due to leave at 
seven sharp. It started in a deep cut, else 
you might have heard the whistle at White 
Oaks. When it struck the open, a little down 
grade, the burr and buzz of it went all across 
country. Joe persuaded himself that the burr- 
ing and buzzing were some way unlike the 
sound of the two freights, which ran next, but 
Patsy, who was a regular Fine-Ear, laughed 
at him— though she agreed anybody could 
tell the noise of a coal train, it was so much 
more a grumble than that of common freight. 

Toward Christmas the big road was so much 
travelled the noises ran into each other. 
Everybody went to town and stayed until sun- 


178 Next to the Ground 


down, hustling for Christmas money or spend- 
ing Christmas money already in hand. Since 
there was no fun in listening to a stream of 
noises you could not disentangle, Joe and 
Patsy gave ear to the foxes barking in the 
woods, the owls hooting, the chickens scramb- 
ling about on the perches, and sometimes fall- 
ing with a great squawking clatter, Their 
fine new feathers were so thick and warm, 
cold touched them only upon the feet. They 
roost in huddled rows, with the breast-bone 
coming down upon the perch between the 
claws. When their feet begin to sting and 
pinch, they rouse the least bit, and crowd to 
one side or the other, trying thus to bring one 
aching foot upon the perch where it is warm 
from, contact with the breast-bone. If the 
whole perchful sidled at once, and in the same 
direction, all would be well. But the sidling 
is individual, and often in contrary directions, 
—hence the squawking falls, hence also the 
chicken thief’s trick of the warm board, learned 
most likely from the gypsies. It is simple, 
sure, silent. The thief warms a long board, 
light and narrow enough to be easily held hori- 
zontal, and thrusts it in through the hen hole, 
under and parallel to the nearest perch. After 
it is in place he presses the warm surface of 
it up against the breasts of the drowsy birds. 
As the grateful warmth comes to them they 


Night Noises 179 


step still more drowsily off perch upon the 
warm surface, and settle down with a soft, 
satisfied chuckle. How many settle there de- 
pends upon the nerve and the muscle of the 
chicken stealer. Two or three fat hens upon 
the far end of a long board, make even sturdy 
arms ache after a bit. The board must not 
droop the least bit — if it does the chickens fall 
off. It must be slowly and steadily with- 
drawn, until the nearest hen can be grasped 
through the hole. Her neck is wrung deftly, 
another and another follows until the warm 
board is empty. But no tramp nor outlander 
need attempt the trick at a well-furnished 
‘Tennessee hen-house. There arealways dogs 
to give warning. If the warm board has done 
its work, the fact is first-hand proof that the 
hen-roost has suffered the dishonest troubling 
of a friend. 

Time out of mind dogs have bayed the 
moon, but it is from the farmlands she gets 
the most varied chorus. Major Baker kept 
nine dogs. Eight of them were supernum- 
eraries, so far as guarding the place went. 
Watch, the guard-dog proper, a big white 
mastiff strong enough to pull down a mule 
or an ox, let nothing come or go unchallenged 
after dark. He was not a noisy dog. In- 
deed acquaintance with him taught both Joe 
and Patsy that a dog’s bark was really in 


180 Next to the Ground 


inverse ratio to his bite. All day Watch 
was a frolic on four legs, ready to leap and 
tumble about, stand up, and shake hands across 
the yard gate, or roll Joe and Patsy over and 
over in the leaves or upon the grass, some- 
times catching a hand or foot in his mouth, 
but never so much as bruising it. He car- 
ried Billy-Boy on his back, or crawled to 
put his head in the little fellow’s lap. Visit- 
ing neighbors he saluted with respectful wags 
of his bushy tail, strangers he followed to 
the front door, eying them judicially as he 
walked. ‘That is, unless they were foolish 
enough to make advances, such as whistling 
to him, or trying to pat his head. Then 
he growled hoarsely, and showed half his 
teeth. 

All this by daylight. At night even his 
master had to ask his leave to go in or out. 
If any unwary stranger got through the yard 
gate Watch leaped upon him, threw him over, 
and pinned him down, howling loudly for his 
master to come and see what manner of man 
he held. Still, unless the captive struggled 
the dog did not bite. He was vigilant, not 
vicious. The least sound round about the 
yard, lawn, orchard, or stable lot, set him off 
patrolling. He never barked unless he found 
something really suspicious. Patsy said he 
could smell out thieves from honest folk. 


Night Noises 181 


However that may have been, he had cer- 
tainly a wonderful nose, and a still more 
wonderful eye. If he was bidden to cut out 
from the herd and catch one hog or sheep or 
calf in a hundred, he did it without fail, if he 
had to follow it all day, through and across 
all the tracks of a populous pasture. 
Beside the home dogs, every negro on the 
place owned from one to five. Thus the 
Christmas guns were answered always with 
a yelping howling chorus. Neither men nor 
dogs thought of sleeping a wink upon Christ- 
mas Eve. The negroes big and little got 
home from town about midnight. You could 
hear them singing and shouting half an hour 
before the wagon turned in through the gate. 
They whooped and sang more while they fed 
the team, and later themselves. Then they 
popped firecrackers, half a dozen at a time, 
standing out in front of their cabins, and 
chaffing each other at long range. ‘Towards 
three o’clock in the morning they touched off 
the Christmas guns — hollow logs witha pound 
of powder securely plugged inside with a fuse 
of waxed or greasy string running through a 
gimlet hole in the plug. The Christmas 
guns made a big awkward, blurring noise. 
By time the echoes of it, and the dogs were 
quiet, the gunmakers had set out, singing, or 
rather droning hymn tunes as they went, 


182 Next to the Ground 


upon a round of industrious and far-spread 
visiting. 

All the white folks sat up to hear the 
blacks sing, as they watched upon Old Christ- 
mas Night. The blacks were shy and fur- 
tive over this watching. White folks who 
did not believe in witches, nor conjure-work, 
nor even in ghosts, were unsympathetic with 
their lively and child-like faith that Christ 
was born in a cow-shed, cradled warm be- 
tween two snow-white heifers, and that still 
upon his proper birth-night, cattle knelt to do 
him homage. They also believed it was bad 
luck to watch the kneeling cattle, and still 
worse luck not to be singing when the cocks 
crew for midnight. Their singing was weird, 
a droning, wordless monochord, by turns low 
or loud, and always in perfect time, no matter 
how many sang. Although so simple, it was 
thrilling. They sang in the log church Major 
Baker had helped them build for themselves 
in the corner of the old fields, next to White 
Oaks. When the singing was at its loudest 
you could hear it two miles off. The mel- 
lowing of distance made it indescribably 
plaintive. 

The January sound in Joe’s calendar 
though was not the Old Christmas chant. 
In a spell of bitter cold about the second or 
third night, the house timbers and the trees 


Night Noises 183 


in the woods froze and popped like guns, but 
with a harsher, flatter noise. The popping 
was scattered, coming maybe half a dozen 
times in a night, and commonly after the 
turn of it. Joe wondered no little as to how 
it was made. It could not be that the timbers 
burst from freezing, as a pitcher or a glass 
would do if left full of water. The house 
had been standing fifty years, yet the sills 
and plates were as sound as at first. Still, once 
or twice in the woods he saw curious gaping 
seams up and down a trunk. Old man Shack 
explained that “ such trunks were fool trees 
that had hilt their sap too long and had it 
freeze in ’em an’ bust”? — but Joe was not 
sure the old man ever told the truth except 
by accident. 

In February it was the sheep-bells. Feb- 
ruary was lambing time. ‘The ewes ran on 
the early wheat, and one in three was belled. 
This was to save them from the dogs. Many 
bells frighten off a sheep-killing dog which is 
not hungry but kills for the fun of killing. That 
is the besetting sin of bird-dogs, which, how- 
ever, are shrewd-witted enough to leave their 
home flocks untouched and go miles away for 
sheep-slaughter. In another fashion the bells 
were protective. When any commotion in 
the flock set up such a finging, Joe or his 
father at once went out to see what it meant. 


184 Next to the Ground 


Bells before midnight seldom meant more 
than a stir and fright from casual passing. 
Sheep-killing dogs know enough to wait until 
sheep-owners are very sound asleep. But 
any time between midnight and day, a tinkle 
even was alarming. 

March had the noise of many waters. A 
pouring day or a quick thaw made the creek 
a mad thing, brawling fifty yards wide, snatch- 
ing at the drifts, gnawing gravel-beds and 
sand-bars, roaring out hoarse and hollow 
threats as it raced past bluff and tree. The 
big horned owls seemed to take the threats as 
personal. They lived down in the creek val- 
ley, and, with the stream at flood, hooted from 
hill to hill all night long. 

In April the swallows came to rumble down 
the long-necked stone chimneys at dark, and 
twitter and chitter there the nights through. 
Tree-toads also began to peep, spasmodically 
at first, but as the spring strengthened so did 
the peeping, until it filled the whole night 
world. It is a long-drawn ululation, in many 
keys. Tree-toads run all sizes from the spread 
of your hand tothe end of your thumb. Na- 
ture colors them in -protective mimicry of the 
leaves and trunks they live on and among. 
The big very flat ones are a clear, young leaf- 
green. The tiny fellows are greenish gray, 
for all the world like the lichens upon the oak 


Night Noises 18 5 


trunks. Intermediate sizes run the whole 
range of greens, grays, and gray-browns. 
Clinging flat against the trunk, you can hardly 
distinguish a toad from a blur of lichens. 
The creatures hop up or down, or back or 
forth, in the most astonishing fashion. They 
can get over ground as well as the common 
toads, but are much more at home in the trees. 
They live upon ants, moths, midges, and 
young slugs, crawling upon the slenderest 
twigs to get them, even resting contentedly 
upon the under side of a fluttering leaf itself. 
The peeping is not continuous, but very oft 
repeated. It rises crescendo at the end, and 
there is a delicate little accenting cluck be- 
tween. If they began to peep in daylight, or 
the crying lasted until dawn, Joe knew he 
might look for rain. Thus they opposed the 
whip-po’-will, which also came in April, but 
whose call, even in the face of a thunder-cloud, 
is a sure presage of no rain that night. 

Tree frogs and whip-po’-wills sang on 
through May and June, often so loud you 
could scarcely hear your ears for them, but in 
Joe’s mind May nights belonged to the mock- 
ing-birds — especially nights of the full moon. 
Then he often lay awake all night long, en- 
tranced by their night chorus, the richest of all 
the year. Three mockers nested in the gar- 
den — one in the arbor matted over with 


186 Next to the Ground 


white roses and honeysuckle, another in the 
plum thicket, and a third in a hedge-row peach 
tree, overrun with arampant muscadine. The 
garden was big, and not very trim, really half 
orchard, with a touch of playground. The 
mockers policed it vigorously, never letting 
dog or cat go through it. There was another 
and shyer colony of them, in the very: back 
of the orchard, nesting in some very slim, tall 
cherry trees, yet haunting and harboring in 
the orchard hedgerow. All of them sang by 
day, but with such exquisite mimicry it was 
hard to distinguish the singing from that of 
the birds the singers mocked. At night they 
sang more clearly, more constantly, flooding 
the still world with pure melody, in rippling 
tricksy cascades. Love and strenuous rivalry 
lay under the singing. Each tried to outdo 
all the rest in the ears of his brooding mate. 
June had a clown’s note — the big double- 
bass bullfrog’s: ‘ Jug-o-rum! Jug-o-rum ! 
Brek-ke-ke-coax !_ Brek-ke-ke! Jug-o-rum- 
um-um! Ru—um! ” Though they bellowed 
something earlier, Joe always set them men- 
tally to lead the orchestra of June. He specu- 
lated sometimes as to what a fine fright it 
would give a stranger — say a man from Mars 
—to find himself alone at night in a swamp 
where bullfrogs were plenty, and laughed to 
think of the Martian’s relief when he came to 


Night Noises 187 


find out the ridiculous disproportion between 
Brer Frog and his voice. And he will never, 
no matter how long he lives, forget his father’s 
comment upon a disappointing great man: 
“O! He’s a sort of bullfrog — sounds very 
big until you see him.” 

After June, the deluge — otherwise the 
katydids. Their first song was important. 
Countryside folk believe that three months 
from the day of it, neither earlier nor later, 
there will come killing frost. Where tobacco 
is a money crop the frost date means much. 
Wheat and tobacco were the money crops at 
White’ Oaks — hence a great comparing of 
notes as to when the first katydid was heard. 
Katydids are not pretty, but look wiser than 
King Solomon. They are long-legged, also 
many legged, with longish, boat-shaped bodies, 
and are bright grass-green all over. They 
swarm all through the big new leaves, sleeping 
the day around, to feed and sing at night. It 
is almost a continuous singing, long drawn and 
rasping, not shrill like the tree-toads’, and of 
a maddening monotony. It begins at dark 
and lasts until after midnight. Poets who 
sing the stillness of summer nights have cer- 
tainly never heard katydids in July and August. 

Indeed throughout the later summer day is 
stiller than night. Though the katydids lead 
in number and volume of noise, tree-toads 


188 Next to the Ground 


peep on, whip-po’-wills wheel and shout, Brer 
Bull-Frog pipes away upon his double bassoon. 
Sometimes, but rarely, a mocker, nesting late 
through a mischance to his early building, 
drops down a snatch of languid melody, but 
the melody is lost in the noise of creeping and 
crawling things. As a chorus the summer 
insects no doubt delight the Wagnerian soul, 
which bids avaunt such things as melody and 
harmony. But the simple folk who think 
music the better for tune and time, find it a 
trifle wearing, and rejoice when September 
silences a large part of the choristers. 
Katydids keep on singing through Septem- 
ber, but the month-note with Joe was the 
cricket’s. He was always very glad, and just 
a little sorry when he caught the first cheep. 
It meant many things to him — slacking work, 
time to rest, and read, and play — the delight 
of gathering in fruits and nuts. But it meant 
also that a summer was dead. And Joe loved 
the summer. Still he could not bewail it when 
October brought the fox-hunting. Fox-hunt- 
ing began with night-hunting — thus hounds 
in full cry, horns singing thin and high and 
sweet, galloping hoofs and cheery whooping 
halloos, stood to him for the month and 
rounded out the year. Of course there were 
no hard and fast limits. Every noise lapped 
or lapsed — either going over into another 


Night Notses 189 


month or failing to fill wholly its own. Not- 
withstanding none of them fitted so well in 
another place as in its own. He was glad he 
had ranged them in due sequence, as he was 
glad of anything that fixed more clearly in his 
mind the charms and the aspects of his beloved 


fields. 


The Big Snow 


Chapter IX 


ERE isa tale Little Mose 
told Joe by way of account- 
‘ing for Brer Rabbit’s hare- 
lip. Brer Rabbit was the 
very first thing created, 
when the Lord up in 
Heaven decided to make 
a world. ‘That of course accounts for the 
fact that Brer Rabbit is not so well-propor- 
tioned as he might be —he is really to be 
regarded in the light of an experiment. Still 
when he was dry and running around, he 
was set to keep watch over other animals as 
they werecreated. Brer Coon, Brer Possum, 
and Sis Cow, Brer Rabbit shooed away all 
right, but when Brer Fox got lively on his 
legs, he was inclined to argue the question. 
Still Brer Rabbit minded his work, and kept 
Brer Fox in check until Brer Fox somehow 
persuaded him to eat a piece of puccoon root, 
- which at once made Brer Rabbit so sleepy he 


194 Next to the Ground 


nodded. The Lord meantime had made the 
moon and set it up by the fence. It was 
gilded all over, and the gilt not dry. Brer 
Fox thought it looked good enough to eat, 
so he slid past Brer Rabbit, and licked and 
licked the new moon, until he made the 
dark places still visible over the face of it. 
Just as he was about to bite the edge of it, 
the Lord turned around, saw what he was 
doing, and in anger flung his trowel spang at 
Brer Rabbit. It hit him in the mouth, and 
cut his lip in two. By way of punishment, 
the Lord decreed that the cut should mark 
all later rabbits — also that Brer Fox, who 
seems to have a knack of escaping his deserts, 
should be entitled to eat Brer Rabbit — 
whenever he could catch him. 

If the big snow of all big snows had never 
come, Little Mose might never have had time 
to remember the tale. “Then, if ever, witch- 
work, whose polite and bookish name is 
enchantment, touches the farmlands. Big 
snows are not a winter commonplace round 
about White Oaks. Indeed, in that latitude, 
winter is truly a season of vagary, — sometimes 
so mild and open flowers bloom all through 
it, early blossoms lapping over upon linger- 
ing remnant late ones, — other times, so sav- 
agely cold even navigable waters freeze hard 
enough for teams to be driven across them. 


The Big Snow 195 


More commonly, it is a season of contradic- 
tions — lumps and blotches of hard cold, 
mixed with other lumps and blotches of April 
weather and real Indian summer. 

Snow stops farm work, but brings no holi- 
days. Joe went to bed each night as tired as 
he was happy. This snow was twenty-six 
inches on the level, with drifts over a tall 
man’s head. It began to fall just after day- 
light, first in little round spiteful stinging pel- 
lets, pelting so hard they jumped up at a 
lively rate when first they struck the earth. 
They came out of a lead-gray cloud that 
seemed to rest upon the tree-tops, and were 
whirled about by a sobbing gusty east wind. 
Weatherwise people said, because it was an 
east wind the snow was sure to turn into 
either rain or sleet. According to their belief, 
the wind could not veer from east to north 
without boxing the whole compass. If once 
it blew straight from the south, the snow 
would melt, thaw and resolve into its original 
element, water. 

When the wind did whip around north- 
west, they shook their heads and said the 
weather was not what it used to be. They 
shook them still more when the pellets became 
a smother of glistening icy dust so thick you 
could hardly see ten yards through it. Pres- 
ently, when the dust lay half-leg deep, the 


196 Next to the Ground 


thermometer went tumbling from just below 
freezing to a little above zero. Then the 
dust became a wall of thick soft flakes, small 
at first, but all the while growing bigger, 
until at last they fell with little soft, fat plops, 
like the patting of fairy fingers. They kept 
it up until after midnight. The moon rose 
then, and the strengthening wind blew every 
hint of cloud, or vapor even, out of the air. 
It was a still-voiced wind, neither shrieking 
around the eaves nor howling down the 
chimneys. To make up for that, it cut 
with an edge of tempered steel, and when the 
sun rose over a white muffled world, mys- 
teriously strained all warmth out of the pink 
shining, and flung it back into stellar space. 

Notwithstanding, everybody came out with 
a whoop of joy. Joe in particular saw so 
much fun ahead he danced and capered as he 
buttoned on his second pair of trousers over 
the first. When the legs of both pairs 
were snug inside his high boots, the boots 
duly greased, and his feet further protected 
by two pairs of home-knit woollen socks, one 
pair outside the boots, one pair in, he was 
ready to face and conquer the snow and all 
its works. 

Some of them were pitiful. For instance 
among the birds. A partridge covey deeply 
snowed in will perish without help, though 


The Big Snow | 197 


gow less than a foot it can break through, 
‘by rising all together. That is, unless the 
snow is crusted over. “Then the poor brown- 
ies beat their lives out knocking against the 
crust. Joe found that some coveys had been 
wise enough to leave their ground perches for 
the thickets. Even there they were in snow 
caves, since the thickets were all mounded 
over. But they had at least a chance of 
life and some small show for food. There 
were peas and sumach berries in most thickets 
standing higher than the snow. ‘The buck- 
berries, though, were all hidden, so were most 
of the weed seed, all of the grasses, and 
likewise all of the mast. 

Joe scattered food in every likely place — 
wheat, corn, peas, heads of millet, locks of 
hay. He threw corn only under the thick- 
ets. If he put it in the open he knew the 
pestilent crows would steal it, and also try to 
seize upon other smaller birds as they came 
to feed. Several rescued coveys he turned 
loose in the granary, which was big and quiet, 
and had still bins of wheat along one side. 
The birds would be safe there from foxes and 
minks — he knew if he took them home and 
put them in a coop, they would be too fright- 
ened to feed well. Since many birds would 
infallibly be lost, he wanted to save every life 
possible among them. 


198 Next to the Ground 


Partly because of the wish, he set a dozen 
traps in the hedgerows, and around the hay- 
stacks. Whatever he caught, he promised 
himself, should have food and shelter through 
the snow, and liberty afterward. He was the 
least bit sorry for the promise when he found 
redbirds in two of the traps pretty soon after 
they were set. Patsy had wanted a redbird 
for a pet this ever and ever so long. Joe 
decided before he laid hands on the fine fel- 
lows to tell Patsy of his promise, then give 
her the birds, and leave her own conscience 
to do the rest. 

The birds were cardinals, as gorgeous as 
their namesakes and as warlike as any car- 
dinal that ever wore the red robe. They bit 
Joe’s fingers so hard they drew blood, and 
tried to peck him savagely in the eye, as he 
was huddling them inside his overcoat. Once 
they were inside the roomy cage, they flew at 
each other in fury, each seeming to regard his 
fellow as an upstart intruder, somehow the 
cause of his own evil case. In separating 
them for the sake of peace, Patsy let the most 
savage of them get away. It flew to the very 
top of the room, and clung there with its crest 
up, scolding vigorously at all the people in 
sight. A little later it flew back to the outside 
of the cage, stuck his head as near through 
the bars as possible, ruffled its feathers menac- 


The Big Snow 199 


ingly, and made a shrill hissing note that set 
the bird inside also to ruffling and hissing. 
This kept up for two days, the bird out of 
the cage meantime growing tamer than the 
bird within. Though he defied capture, he 
watched Patsy intently when she set food 
and water where he could reach it, and 
flew down to it the minute she was a safe 
distance away. And when, the second even- 
ing, he managed to fly out of an incautiously 
opened door, he hung about the house, sleep- 
ing at last in a cedar tree a little way from 
the front door, and came bright and early 
in the morning to the window-sill, peeked 
through it, ruffled, and hissed defiance of his 
imprisoned enemy, whose cage sat just inside. 

The window looked out on the back piazza. 
Joe and Patsy had strung oat sheaves and mil- 
let heads all along under the eaves of it. They 
also strewed grain upon the ground outside, 
so all the winter birds were chattering and 
chittering there. The redbird noticed none 
of them. He fed disdainfully alone, pecking 
out all the grains of a stalk, then tossing the 
head away. As soon as he was done he flew 
upon the sill, and began to torment the caged 
bird. Patsy was strongly tempted to set her 
captive free, but Joe insisted that they had 
better be kept from fighting until warm weather 
should improve their tempers. 


200 Next to the Ground 


The fifth day of captivity she turned the 
caged bird out in the room. He had grown, 
not tame but fearless, and at once flew all 
about, investigating everything. ‘There was 
a pan of water upon the hearth a little way 
from the chimney jamb. The bird flew down 
to it, drank, balanced himself gingerly upon 
the rim of it, stepped one foot over the edge, 
then plunged in up to his neck, and began a 
lively fluttering —all this less than six feet 
from where Major Baker sat, making a pre- 
tence of reading. His bath over, the cardinal 
hopped out, shook himself vigorously, then 
sailed up to the top of a tall secretary, perched 
there and began to dress his feathers with the 
utmost nicety. After a little, satisfied with 
his coat, he hopped down upon the bureau, 
and caught sight of his image in the glass. 
His tormentor outside was invisible. At once 
he jumped to the conclusion that the bird 
in the glass was his enemy. Ruffling, with 
fiercely lowered wings and a sibilant hiss, he 
rushed at the mirror. The impact was so vio- 
lent he was:'thrown backward several inches, 
but in a breath he was again up and at it. 
Twice, three times, four times, he charged 
this enemy, evidently as eager and as angry 
as himself. Each time something cold and 
hard and smooth held him back. After the 
fourth failure, he stood quiet a full minute, 


The Big Snow 201 


with his head the least bit aside. Evidently 
he was in deep thought. As a result of it, 
he marched to the side of the glass, stretched 
his neck cautiously and peeped behind it. It 
stood perhaps six inches from the wall — room 
enough for a bird, but no bird there. Ina 
flash he was at the other side, peeping there 
also. Still finding no bird he walked out in 
‘front and again began a battle with his own 
image. He did not give it up until he caught 
a faint hiss from outside, looked over his 
shoulder, and saw the other bird upon the 
sill, Then he hesitated a minute, as though 
uncertain which to fight, but at last smoothed 
himself, turned his head aside, and twittered 
amicably to the bird in the glass, as who should 
say: “ Weare friends! Certainly! Come 
and let us two finish this other impertinent 
fellow !” 

The bird in the glass also turned his head 
and twittered amicably. The bird outside 
gave his tail a diplomatic flirt. It was an- 
swered as diplomatically. In a flash the cap- 
tive was at the window, ruffling and scowling 
furiously at the bird outside. But he kept 
looking over his shoulder, for the other bird, 
until it grew so late his real enemy flew off 
to roost.-. Then with a louder scowl, he flew 
up again on the secretary, fidgeted there a min- 
ute, spread his wings and made a hopping 


202 Next to the Ground 


flight toward the cage. Patsy had propped 
open the door and hung a bit of tempting 
green inside. Slowly, with much glancing 
about, and turning of the head, the bird hopped 
toward it. At the door he stopped, looked 
inside, then half drew back. But the next 
breath he flew boldly upon a perch of it, and 
made no motion to fly out when he saw Patsy 
coming to shut him in. He always showed 
her afterward a distant friendliness, but never 
permitted the least familiarity, though she 
kept him until the trees bloomed in the or- 
chard, and she found him singing love toa 
small meek-looking browny-red creature, who 
fluttered anxiously around his cage. 
Somehow Joe never found a jay bird in his 
traps. Jays were plenty and hungry and 
thievish no end. Joe was sure they ate at 
least half his bait, as he was also sure they 
sprung the triggers of the traps pretty often in 
the eating. Naturally there was a reason for 
not finding them. The reason lived and 
moved and answered to the name of Dan. 
Dan stole the jays, not because he loved them, 
but because he hated and feared them. He 
believed superstitiously, you see, that no jay 
was ever visible of a Friday. They spent all 
the Fridays in carrying sticks to the devil — 
sticks with which to kindle extra hot fires 
under all the bad black people; further, that 


The Big Snow 203 


it was the worst sort of bad luck to have a jay 
fly over your head, or in and out of your stable. 
Bad luck also haunted whoever cut downa tree 
with a jay’s nest in it, unless the cutter took 
the precaution first to knock down the nest 
by throwing stones, and, if possible, also to 
kill or cripple the nest-builders. 

Joe thought there was something to be said 
for the jays. All he had ever shot had their 
crops full of slugs, weed seed, and insect eggs. 
He knew the jays were not patterns of all the 
feathered virtues, but they were good to look 
at, flashing in and out like bits of winged sky. 
So he had made a slatted cover for an empty 
hogshead in the granary, and had meant to 
keep the jays in it, not so much to save them 
— they were as hardy as they were audacious, 
as to see what they would do by way of pass- 
ing their time of captivity. He had seen them 
by half dozens skylarking and chasing each 
other in the bare branches of an oak. They 
were bold fellows, bolder even than the red- 
birds, nipping and pecking lustily at whatever 
tried to seize them. They fought almost 
constantly with the woodpeckers after cold 
weather set in. He: thought that was be- 
cause they found, and stole, the woodpeck- 

.ers’ hoarded acorns. Going through the 
woods, he had grabbled acorns from under 
the snow, thinking to fling them in the hogs- 


204! Next to the Ground 


head, and find out if the jays would really eat 
them. : 

Still, if Dan did wring their necks, it was 
no great matter. They were plagues to the 
singing birds, robbing their nests of both eggs 
and young. Joe was tempted to do a little 
neck-wringing on his own account when he 
found doves and field-larks in the traps. ‘They 
were pretty and appealingly helpless — but 
they also made the finest sort of bird-pies. 
Notwithstanding, conscience prevailed over 
appetite. Conscience had an active ally in 
Patsy. She said she would n’t take advantage 
of a hungry bird to eat it — she left that sort 
of thing to the Shack gang. 

Snowbirds fed round about the house in 
clouds. Old man Shack, coming to borrow 
a peck of meal, tried his best to persuade Patsy 
into having a dead-fall. ‘ Children ’t home 
had one,” he said, “ an’ it wus jest next door 
ter a merikle how many er them thar little fat 
gray rascals they did ketch. Why they had 
as many as half a dozen hangin’ at the eend 
o’ strings, an’ roastin’ before the fire, all the 
time, tween daylight an’ dark. No, a snow- 
bird ra’alely wa’nt no more’n a mouthful, but 
roasted that-a-way, with er walnut meat fer 
stuffin’, hit was a mouthful worth while. 
Dead-fall! Makin’ hit wa’n’t no work at all. 
Jest set er trigger under one aidge o’ er long 


The Big Snow 205 


wide plank, scrape off the snow under the 
plank, bait the ground well, tie er rope ter the 
trigger, an’ carry the rope inside —thar you 
wus! All youhad terdo wus watch. When 
the snowbirds crope under the plank, er flew 
under the plank — zip! you pulled the rope 
— plank fell down —an’ every bird hit ketched 
went right ter kingdom-come. Some flew 
away, of co’se, when the plank lit down, but 
hit ketched enough — except when thar wus 
sech er cussed heap er children ter eat as he 
happened ter wrastle with. Hit warn’t jest no 
sort o’ use tryin’ ter fill em up on nothin’ — 
not eben rabbits, ef the dogs an’ the boys had 
ketched sech er God’s plenty on ’em.” 

Snow time has nowhere a cheerier sight or 
sound than the wee bit of gray fluff, winging 
and twittering about, hopping daintily on one 
foot, pecking, preening his smart white waist- 
coat, or huddling cosily with his fellows, asleep 
in the shelter of evergreen boughs. Such shel- 
ter was plenty at White Oaks. There was an 
overgrown cedar hedge between the back yard 
and the front. Some trees in it had shot up 
thirty feet. They were sharply conical and 
so thickly branched the snow weighing down 
one branch upon another had transformed 
the whole hedge into a real Sierra Nevada— 
which is Spanish for “the saw-tooth range of 
snow.” Birds flying in and out rifted the snowy 


206 Next to the Ground 


sides, and left deep dark caves in them, but, until 
the thaw began, all about the foot of the sierra 
there were foothills of swelling, gently rounded 
drifts, burying and staying the tips of the 
bended boughs. But for such staying the 
boughs would soon have shaken down some 
part of their snow blanket — and then the 
snowbirds and all the other birds would have 
been in very much worse case. The snow- 
tent kept off the bitter wind; further there 
were cedar berries available here and there 
about the twigs. It was no wonder birds of 
many sorts crowded in — redbirds, bluebirds, 
garden and swamp spatrows, sap-suckers, an 
obstinate pair of mockers which had refused 
to migrate, jays, and even an occasional shy 
field-lark. 

Each and several they hopped about the 
doors, some fearlessly, others flying if even 
the wind made a wavering shadow. Patsy 
laid planks across the rails, at the corner of the 
piazza, and strewed the planks with seed and 
crumbs, and tiny bits of fat meat. In reward 
she was able to watch the birds feeding, herself 
standing snug inside the window. Some of 
the shyest chose rather to feed with the fowls. 
Joe and Dan had had a great time, getting 
the turkeys down from their perch in a tall 
oak. One pert young gobbler sailed down 
at the usual time, stuck in a drift, then with 


The Big Snow 207 


much loud gobbling, and many floundering 
leaps, gained the back steps, and stood there, 
telling the flock in most emphatic turkey talk 
they had better not try it — it was easier and 
ever so much more dignified to starve where 
they were. 

That is the wild turkey’s way. In a deep 
snow they keep to the roost for days — until 
the snow either melts, settles, or crusts over 
hard enough to bear their weight. But instinct 
has warned them to feed heavily, and upon 
things of staying quality, while snow is fall- 
ing. Commonly they go to roost with crops 
almost bursting, they are so full of acorns, 
beechnuts, dried peas, or corn. Indeed, to find 
wild turkeys feeding in a deserted corn-field, 
searching it through and through for down ears 
missed in gathering, or overlooked nubbins, 
is about the surest sign of either deep snow, © 
or a savage freeze. 

Corn is heating — full of starch and fats. 
Green or dry, wild turkeys devour it greedily. 
They are either not wise enough, or not bold 
enough to tear off the green husk, but they 
follow in the squirrel’s wake, and finish ears 
he has partly plundered. Summer corn lands 
have another charm for them. After the last 
ploughing, when the tasselling stalks make a 
thick green jungle with light earth at foot, 
wild turkeys go in to scratch, wallow, dust 


208 Next to the Ground 


themselves in the powder-dry earth, and feed 
on the grasshoppers, beetles, butterflies, and 
all the host of creeping things that are the corn 
land’s rabble guests. Turkeys, wild or tame, 
feed gluttonously, gulping down a worm yet 
wiggling, an insect wings and all, except when 
they are carrying young. Then they practise, 
and teach to the broods, the art of killing 
before eating, also of pecking their prey and 
beating it against earth until it is freed of 
wings, legs, and long stiff feelers. Mother 
turkeys peck up a grasshopper into a flat 
mangled mass before they let their young seize 
upon it and pullitapart. Sometimes after the 
mother has pecked a dozen insects thus for 
her brood, she slips stealthily away from the 
brood, runs after other insects, and swallows 
them whole the instant they are in her beak. 

There were several gangs of wild turkeys 
in the flat-woods, but Joe did not hunt them 
in the snow. Instead he hunted rabbits. 
Indeed everybody hunted rabbits. Every cabin 
on the place or round about it, had its big bunch 
of cottontails swung high on the outer walls. 
There was broiled rabbit, and fried, and 
smothered, for everybody. As to rabbit- 
skins, a regiment of Baby Buntings could have 
been wrapped in them until they looked like 
little Esquimaux. Killing rabbits, indeed, was 
partly a sport, but more nearly a duty. Major 


The Big Snow 209 


Baker cheerfully furnished powder and shot — 
it was the cheapest way of saving his young 
trees inthe orchard. Notwithstanding, he did 
not trust wholly to it. The day after the snow, 
he had all the trunks rubbed for three feet up, 
either with fresh bloody fat, or the skins and 
entrails of the first rabbits slaughtered. 

Brer Rabbit looks a pattern of innocence, 
but like many another pattern person, belies 
his looks. He is really a standing menace to 
the prosperity of the farm lands. “The menace 
lies in his amazing faculty of multiplying him- 
self by a million in a very little while. Under 
favoring conditions rabbits litter many times 
in a year. Litters run from three to six in, 
number, and the young are full-grown at six 
months old. Figure a bit and you will under- 
stand how a homesick settler’s chance turning 
loose of half a dozen rabbits, less than fifty 
years back,has brought about Australia’s rab- 
bit plague, whose damage must be reckoned 
in the hundred millions. Like the locusts 
of Egypt, rabbits devour every green thing — 
unless the green thing has a protective animal 
taint. Then even starvation will not make 
them touch the tainted stuff — especially if 
the taint comes from their own flesh. 

That is lucky for the orchards and the 
gardens. Brer Rabbit dearly loves the smooth 
bark of young apple trees, and upon a pinch 


210 Next to the Ground 


will also girdle young peach trees. In the 
garden he eats down green peas, young beet 
tops, beans, sweet-potato slips, cabbage plants. 
Fluttering white rags, scraps of bright tin 
strewed on the ground, or bottles tipped to- 
gether so they will roll at a touch, all serve 
to frighten him away, especially in moon- 
shine. But the safe and sure preventive of 
his night ravaging, is to sprinkle the garden 
plot liberally roundabout with water in which 
a freshly killed rabbit has been torn to pieces. 
Until rain falls he will no more cross a strip 
of ground so sprinkled than a snake will 
crawl over a horsehair rope. Rain washes 
the scent away, so after it there needs must 
be more sprinkling. 

Brer Rabbit fights only one animal — his 
cousin-german, almost his counterpart, the 
hare. To the casual eye the animals are 
much the same, though science distinguishes 
between them. Both have the cleft upper 
lip, also the thick flocculent down under- 
neath the hair of the coat, which makes the 
game books class them flack, as opposed to 
feather — which includes pheasants, partridges, 
quails, grouse and black cock, indeed the 
whole range of land-feeding game birds. 
Flock — the thick underdown —-- comes away 
easily. Mother-rabbits strip their breasts of 
it to line their nests. The nest is dug shal- 


The Big Snow 211 


lowly in light earth. Sometimes it is a mole- 
run very much enlarged. Rabbit-litters are 
blind at first, and have no use of their legs, 
though they will roll clumsily over and begin 
nuzzling at the touch of anything warm —a 
hand, a cheek, or even the warm side of a 
basket. They breathe very slowly and look 
more like pinches of whitey-brown hair than 
living creatures. The birth-coat is scant and 
almost rough to the touch. Down grows as 
they get their eyes open. But before they 
can walk they have the curious rabbit power 
to close at will the external ear. 

A baby rabbit creeping shyly out for his 
first meal of buds and grass is the quaintest, 
daintiest figure of all the fields, so tiny he can 
snuggle down in your palm, soft all over as 
a fluff of thistle down, moving uncertainly 
with a slow, velvet- footed amble, yet never in 
a straight line. Thus early he knows that 
his track must be a maze — also that he must 
go home to the nest along the way he came. 
And there is where the exquisite rabbit-nose 
comes in. Coming and going thus, and 
breaking up the trail now and then with a 
leap, he lessens the danger of being followed 
and caught much more than half. 

Like the other wild things, Brer Rabbit 
is instinctively ware of deep snow. He feeds 
mightily when the fall begins, then scutters 


212 Next to the Ground 


away to his form in the grass or the sedge, 
crouches there, sinks his head well between 
his shoulders, and lets the falling snow wall 
him in. As the wall grows high and higher, 
he surges back and forth against it, still 
crouching, and thus shapes for himself a 
snow chamber something bigger than him- 
self. When the wall grows higher than his 
head, he arches his back to the utmost and 
presses up against it. “Thus even when the 
fall is very heavy he keeps himself from being 
wholly shut in. His warm breath fills the 
chamber, and rises in tiny spirals through the 
skylight of it, thus betraying his refuge to 
the folk who come hunting. 

If they are but pot-hunters with no drop 
of sporting blood, they come without dog or 
gun, and, once the breathing hole is spied, 
fall flat upon it, seize the rabbit, spring up, 
swing him around the head holding him by 
his hind feet, and knock out his brains 
against the nearest stump or fence or tree. 
Sometimes Brer Rabbit evades the clutching 
hand, and bursts up through the snow, wild- 
eyed and panting, to run away in prodigious 
long leaps. The catcher’s comrades have 
something to say about that. Armed with 
longish stout sticks they stand round about, 
and commonly knock over Brer Rabbit at 
the second bound. Even if he escapes the 


The Big Snow 213 


stick men his race isnot long. He can make 
ten-foot jumps for a little while, but cannot 
keep doing it with deep snow under foot. 

When the snow crusts over, then there is 
sport indeed. The hunters go out with all 
the little dogs available. Then truly Tray, 
Blanche, and Sweetheart come to their own. 
They wear collars, and are held back with 
stout strings until the rabbit has been routed 
out, and has got thirty yards away. So much 
remains in Tennessee wood-craft of the Jaw, 
otherwise the start, allowed by the art of 
venery, to all hunted things. Brer Rabbit 
well away, and going like a shadow over the 
snow-crust, the dogs are slipped, and go after 
him, in howling, dancing chorus, sometimes 
so eager they trip over themselves. Only 
light dogs can run thus — fices, terriers, and 
cross-bred mongrel beagles. Wrong, Right, 
Watch, High-Low, Music, and Damsel, all 
had to be left at home, lest they break through 
the crust and lame themselves on the sharp 
edges. Patsy was a person of consequence, 
to be deferred to and conciliated. Her ter- 
rier Trix, and Button, who was nothing much 
but plain little dog, were the best rabbit- 
runners on the plantation. 

Sometimes the little dogs ran down Brer 
Rabbit in fair open field. Oftener by dodg- 
ing and doubling, Brer Rabbit got to a thicket 


214 Next to the Ground 


or a hollow log, and was pulled out or smoked 
out. After a day or two, when paths in plenty 
had been broken through the fields so Brer 
Rabbit ran about freely, shooting began. The 
moon changed just then, and every black 
hunter cut off the left hind foot of the first 
rabbit he shot after the moon ran dark. He 
was careful to tell nobody, nor to let anybody 
see him do it. But all understood that the 
left hind feet were lucky charms good until 
next new year. 

Belief in the rabbit foot’s magic virtues is 
an old English superstition, engrafted, no 
doubt, by early immigrant owners upon the 
slave mind. Pepys in his diary tells of own- 
ing a rabbit’s foot, and of his joy at finding 
out that its lack of power arose from the fact 
that it had but a single joint. One of his fine 
gentleman acquaintances owned a foot with 
two joints, and by the bare handling of it, Mr. 
Pepys found his rheumatism very much bet- 
tered. A little later, when he had duly sup- 
plied himself with the two-jointed rabbit’s 
foot, he writes that he was never so well or 
so prosperous in his life, ‘ and do lay it all to 
the workings of a proper foot.” Books of 
necromancy also give directions for cutting the 
foot and curing it so as to enhance its magic 
strength. A foot cut from a live rabbit, and 
the rabbit allowed afterward to hop away, was 


The Big Snow 206 


accounted peculiarly powerful, but dangerous 
in that if the rabbit died of the hurt, his fam- 
iliar spirit would be apt to visit the torture the 
poor creature had suffered upon the torturer. 
Curing, well packed in herbs, over the smoke 
from green tansy stalks, was also essential. 
But if the curer talked with a red-haired 
woman, met a brindled cow in the road, or 
found a black cat following him, he was ad- 
vised to throw away the rabbit’s foot, or, better 
still, bury it, give himself a sulphur purge, and 
, not even think of magic until a moon later. 

The big snow went as it came. White 
Oaks awoke to find the wind sitting south, 
the sky hazily overcast, and sluices running 
wherever there was a sloping track. By noon 
the ground began to peep out on the hillsides, 
by night it was raining, a warm flood. Next 
day, only remnant ragged drift-blotches, and 
the sodden green of the wheat fields remained 
to tell the tale of the snow. 


Clearing 


Chapter X 


HAT with fences, firewood, 
‘outbuildings,. and plant- 
beds, Major Baker had to 
clear more or less land 
each season. But it was 
uB only now and again he 
: wl had a big new ground, 
such as the one which ran out into the old 
pigeon-roost. The pigeon-roost was part of 
his late purchase, lying upon the edge of it 
away from the flat-woods. That is to say, 
along the hills bounding the creek valley, lower 
down than White Oaks itself. The soil 
was quick and lively, especially upon the 
benches. The hills were high, and sloped 
gradually half way down, then fell in a sharp 
ramp to broad almost level spaces, at whose 
outer edges the slopes began anew. 
The hills had been well-timbered — before 
the pigeons came. A hurricane could hardly 
have served the trees worse. Looking the 


220 Next to the Ground 


ground over thirty years after the last wing 
had fluttered away, Joe could realize in large 
measure all his father told him. The first 
pigeons, said the Major, came always early in 
October, flying in, in wide wavering lines, two 
or three birds deep, exactly as the feeble rem- 
nant of them now flew over each autumn. 
Those first birds also flew over or away. 
They were here to-day, to-morrow even, and 
gone the day after. Everybody knew, though, 
that they were harbingers of the flocks — sent, 
it might be, to spy out the land. 

The flocks came ten days later. They 
flew in clouds, darkening the whole heavens 
for hours at a time,and filling the world with 
the rushing noise of wings. A single flock 
was estimated to be five miles broad, forty 
miles long, and a mile deep from top to bot- | 
tom.* Between flocks there was a little clear 
space. The sky showed through it as through 
a rift in thick clouds. The rifts proved that 
in flight, the pigeons kept always to the broad 
wavering formation. ‘Though now and then 
a line bellied or sank, the head of one flock 
never stretched over into the tail of the flock 
ahead. ‘They did not sail as do birds of prey 
—hawks, vultures, eagles—nor flap their 
wings like wild fowl. Instead, their wings 
had a quick convulsive motion, half flutter, 


* Wilson’s estimate. 


Clearing 221 


half shudder. Notwithstanding, they were 
swifter than the wind and as tireless. The 
feeding grounds lay hundreds of miles away, 
yet the flocks went out to them at morning 
and came back from them at night. 

The going was like the moving of an army. 
Flock after flock rose separately, poised itself 
and skimmed away, one flock always waiting 
until another was clear of the roost. Males 
and females flew and roosted apart. Male 
flocks flew highest in the air. There were 
feeding grounds both sides of the roost. The 
flocks flew north or south according to the wind, 
choosing always to go as near down wind as 
they could. ‘Thus it happened people living 
north or south of the roost often did not see a 
flying pigeon for days — then all at once found 
the sky dark and thick with them, coming or 
going, from the earliest dawn to long after 
dark. A flock never came home until it was 
full fed — consequently those going out late, 
or lighting upon ground already stripped, some- 
times flewinto the roost about midnight. Some 
few hundred sluggard stragglers, and lame or ' 
wounded birds, fed in the woods and fields 
close about the roost, going out in half dozens, 
but flying even then in the common wavering 
line. 

At night the pigeon-roost was a sight to see, 
It stretched several miles— all along the hills 


222 Next to the Ground 


indeed, until the creek ran into the mill stream. 
The trees were tall— beeches, poplars, red 
and Spanish oaks, white oaks, hickories, tulip 
poplars and occasional maples. They were 
big also, with sturdy branches spreading so they 
locked well together. Butthesturdiness availed 
nothing against the weight of the massed 
pigeons. The birds settled in clouds, as thick 
as they could stick, wherever they found a foot- 
hold. Over-loaded boughs broke under them 
all night long. People came from far and near 
— at first to shoot, later simply to pick up the 
birds knocked down with long poles or stunned 
by the falling boughs. The ground was 
covered with pigeon guano, feathers, and dead 
birds, although hogs ranged underneath the 
trees, and ate fat pigeons until even they could 
eat no more. 

One single shot up amid the laden branches 
brought down half a cart load of pigeons. The 
man who dared to move about the roost with 
a lighted lantern was swamped, almost crushed 
indeed by the weight of birds flying to the light. 
Pigeon-getters —hunters they could not be 
called —went in bands. One carried the light, 
the rest walked each side and knocked down 
the birds as they flew. Soon the smell became 
something indescribable, — even stronger and 
more reeking than the odor of genuine Peruvian 
guano. The pigeons themselves fled from it 


Clearing na9 


at the first hint of spring. Toward the end 
of March they flew away to their breeding- 
place, among some river hills lying thirty miles 
to north. 

That put them in Kentucky — White Oaks 
lies in a border county. The nesting-place 
was, in soil and timber, a counterpart of the 
roost. But though the pigeons began leaving 
the roost, which was less than an hour’s flight 
away, in late March, they got to the breeding- 
_ place around the tenth of April. Where they 
had dawdled nobody ever found out. Once 
settled, nesting went onapace. The nests were 
mere huddles of sticks, like those of the wood 
dove, with no architecture, lining, nor much 
of anything else. Each nest had two eggs in 
it. Sometimes there were as many as a thou- 
sand in one tree. Males and females took 
turns in brooding, also in feeding the young. 
The feeding was with “ pigeon’s milk” as in 
the case of tame pigeons. Pigeon’s milk, be 
it understood, is‘a whitish creamy stuff secreted 
in the crops of the parent birds from partly 
digested food, and forced into the open mouths 
of their young. The young thrive magically 
upon it. The wild pigeon squabs were so fat, 
people knocked them down in loads, and ren- 
dered the fat to use for butter or, in conjunc- 
tion with wax and tallow, for candle-making. 

The pigeons reared two broods, or even three 


224 Next to the Ground 


if the first nest came to grief. Yet they left 
the nesting-place about the last of May, flying 
away straight north, and leaving the trees of 
it stripped, broken, dying, worse used, if pos- 
sible, than the timber of the roost. The young 
went in flocks by themselves, flying just below 
the tops of the trees, the hen pigeons flew just 
above the tree-tops, and the cocks highest of 
all — so high indeed that sometimes they were 
out of sight. Major Baker had gone several 
times to see the nesting-place, also to watch 
the flocks setting out, as it was popularly be- 
lieved, for the North Pole. Nobody in close 
neighborhood regretted their going. Regret 
came in later falls, when the flocks got fewer 
and smaller, then, all at once, did not come at 
all. 

Word comes that the wild pigeons, flying 
down across Mexico, have found asylum in 
the wilds of South America. Whether the 
word be true or false, their migration is a 
mystery, only partly explicable by the narrow- 
ing of their feeding-grounds. They live 
largely upon beech mast, wild rice, wild oats, 
and the seed of other coarse grasses growing 
along natural meadows. They also eat post- 
oak mast, hazel nuts, dried grapes, and wild 
peas, foraging at a pinch in winter wheat 
fields, and among standing cornstalks. Much 
clearing has turned their favorite ranges, the 


\ 


Clearing 225 


beechlands of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cum- 
berland River valleys, into cultivated fields. 
Still, the clearing was not done in a wink — 
and it was thus the birds vanished, as a fea- 
ture of the year. Every fall, a close watcher 
sees flocks of a hundred or two, flurry in the 
well-known wavering line across a morning 
or evening sky. 

A pigeon roost untouched bears to this day 
the mark of the birds. Two years of roost- 
ing killed all the big trees. Guano of any 
kind thickly applied kills every sort of vege- 
tation. Beside this embarrassment of soil- 
riches, the trees had lost so many limbs, they 
had nowhere to bud and put out saving leaves. 
Trees forking a little way up had been riven 
in two by the weight of the pigeon mass. 
Undergrowth had been killed, or trampled 
down. Sometimes even fire had added to 
the desolation. A lantern overset found plenty 
of inflammable stuff to start a lively burn- 
ing. Thunderstorms — pocket cyclones — 
are plenty in Tennessee, particularly along 
the creek and river valleys. They soon blew 
down the dead trees or twisted them off two 
yards above ground and flung the trunks cross- 
and-pile among the sickly, struggling saplings 
which alone survived. ‘The saplings had not 
been branchy enough to serve as roosts, when 
there were big trees handy. 


226 ‘Next to the Ground 


Time, unhasting, unresting, changes all that 
—and always for the better. Sun, wind, and 
rain are alchemists, always working to repair 
nature’s hurts. When they have done their 
appointed work, leaching out, mixing through, 
giving back some part to the air, some other 
part to the clay, a pigeon-roost becomes the 
richest of all virgin soil. The saplings grow 
magically into trees, not tall and stately like 
the dead trees, but gnarled and sturdily spread- 
ing. In between, the quick earth laughs into 
matted jungle — thicker, thornier, than even 
the jungle which springs up in a hurricane 
tract to feed upon the decaying trunks of the 
windfalls. The jungle is starred all through 
its green gloom with the rarest and richest of 
the wild flowers. Lady-slippers grow rank 
there, so do the fairy white plumes of rattle- 
weed, and the constellations of whiter August 
lilies. Cross-viné runs riot, creeping and 
climbing to reach the sunlight, clinging fast 
with clutching roots from each joint of the 
stalk, then flinging down cataracts of flame- 
hued blossoms and mottled waxen leaves. 
Bindweed also stars the thickets all over. 
There are never humblebees enough to sip all 
its purple-spotted trumpets. Scarlet trumpet- 
flower grows there, too, so does the wild 
buckwheat in the edges of sunny spaces. 
And wherever a dead trunk stands fast, or a 


Clearing 227 


walnut grows, the Virginia creeper mantles it 
from root to tip, in a rippling vesture of liv- 
ing green. In September when the walnut 
turns yellow, and the creeper bright crimson, 
a tree so clothed looks to have come from 
fairyland. All outside there is the flittery 
yellow ; all underneath, a spectral tree-skeleton 
of glowing crimson. 

Something else glowed there, even more 
eerily, upon damp nights of summer and fall. 
The dead trees had turned to fox-fire. Fox- 
fire is the pale, peculiar phosphorescence 
evolved from slowly rotting wood. It showed 
in lines and blurs and blotches all under the 
thickets, where a tree-trunk lay half imbedded 
in the black soil. If sunshine was let in upon 
the mouldering wood, it dried to a brown 
crumbling tinder, which the countryside folk 
called spunk, or punk. True Tennessee punk 
is a dried toadstool, but the brown wood had 
most of its properties, catching fire if the least 
spark fell upon it, and smouldering in and in 
till the heart was ared glowing ember. Back: 
in pioneer daysit was almost as essential to keep 
your punk dry as your powder. Fires were 
kindled by striking sparks overit. Hunters 
struck the sparks with the flint locks of their 
rifles, snapping the unloaded weapons over 
the punk. When a household lost seed-fire, 
if there was no neighbor close enough to make 


228 Next to the Ground 


borrowing a chunk handy, a flint, often an 
Indian arrow-head, a pocket-knife, and the 
ever faithful punk, soon had a roaring blaze. 
You may still hear about the countryside as a 
hurried visitor goes after the briefest possible 
stay: “ You must have come after a chunk 
of fire.’ Thus there is recalled the time 
when all the household economy lagged until 
the chunk of fire came. 

Because the old pigeon-roost was so quick 
and so rich, Major Baker resolved to keep 
the most part of it for plantbeds, clearing only 
a few acres of it at the back side of his new 
ground. Fine plant beds are the first essen- 
tial of a good tobacco crop. The Major 
knew there was money in raising fine tobacco, 
and loss in raising poor trashy stuff. So he 
always burned land a plenty, beginning in 
December, if the ground was dry, and finish- 
ing in March. Sometimes early-sown plants 
do best, sometimes late-sown ones. Dan said 
truly, Marse Majer he always did hit de season, 
’case he took an’ tooked hit bofe comin’ an’ 
gwine. Beds are burned either by piling or 
pulling. Either way it is hard work but pic- 
turesque. In piling, the whole space to be 
burned over is raked clean of leaves, then 
grubbed and covered thickly first with brush, 
then with green sticks three inches through, 
and on top of them with logs from six inches 


Clearing 229 


to a foot in diameter. It is then set fire all 
along the windward side, and in a dry time 
with plenty of wind burns through like a 
charm. But the dry time, the brisk wind, no 
man can command. Pulling, which is inde- 
pendent of them, is the tobacco-planter’s re- 
course. _ For pulling you build a fire upon 
clean, grubbed ground, as long as the bed is to 
be, and four feet across. When it has burned 
the ground hard enough, which is known 
by the light black soil turning a rich dull-red 
hue, the burners, armed with long handled 
hooks, cut from the woods round about, pull 
the burning logs over upon a fresh clear space, 
pile more logs, sticks, chips, and leaves upon 
them there, and let them burn afresh. They 
are pulled again and again until the bed is 
finished. A bed ten yards square requires at 
least ten cords of wood. Sometimes Major 
Baker burned beds fifty yards square. Nearly 
always he had plants to give away. 

What virtue lies in the burning, the wisest 
among the wise men cannot say. But the 
virtue of it is beyond dispute. In pulling, 
streaks between fires are often insufficiently 
burned, and there the tobacco plants grow yel- 
low and stunted, crisping up at the hint of 
drought, while those upon the well-burned 
ground are green and vigorous, the very moral 
and pattern of healthy growth. Tobacco 


230 Next to the Ground 


seeds are small — so small and fine they feel 
like a pinch of dust between the fingers. They 
are mixed thoroughly through a panful of light 
ashy earth before sowing. The bed is dug or 
harrowed very fine, then marked in three-foot 
spaces lengthwise. The sower goes up and 
down by the marks, then across, sowing seed 
a second time. After thatthe bed is tramped 
or rolled smooth, and covered with flat brush 
— commonly dogwood brush. In the old days 
the brush-covering sufficed. Now the beds 
have a mystery to equal that of the burning, 
It is a hopping mystery —a bug, called the 
flea-bug, which is about as big as the head of 
a pin, but owns an appetite many sizes larger. 
He swarms over the plant beds just as the 
tiny plants peep through, and eats them off | 
close to the ground, thus ending their infant 
careers. But for some occult reason the flea- 
bug will not live under cover. So the remedy 
for him is to cover your beds — usually with 
spreads of cheese-cloth stretched over edge- 
wise planks, enclosing the beds. “The cheese- 
cloth helps the plants as much as it hurts the 
bug. It keeps in warmth and moisture, and 
keeps out the ravagers. Plants underneath it 
grow big enough for setting out at least three 
weeks earlier than if left without it. 

Since tobacco requires four months to grow 
and ripen, early setting is worth a good deal. 


Clearing 231 


Still the very best tobacco is not the earliest. 
Early planting is ready to cut in August. It 
is the hot days and cool drenching dews of 
September which make the rich, heavy ship- 
ping leaf, full of gum and oil and aromatic 
strength. Still it is seldom worth while to 
set a field after the middle of June, though 
with a good season — that is, plenty of rain 
for setting out — in new ground even Fourth- 
of-July planting may result in a fine crop. 
Late or early, stocky “rose plants ” with leaves 
coming out all round, go a long way toward 
making a good crop — wherefore Major Baker 
aimed always to have rose plants and a great 
plenty of them. 

There were twenty acres in the new ground; 
yet after all the trees were down, and before 
working up the timber began, you could run 
nearly all over it, and never touch earth, by 
simply jumping from one log or stump to an- 
other. It was along, north-looking hill slope. 
North slopes are always richest and best worth 
clearing — possibly because even summer sun- 
shine strikes over, rather than upon them, and 
thus the dead leaves stay moist and rot, like- 
wise the dead twigs and fallen trunks. Neither 
is the earth underneath the leaves baked and 
made lifeless, as happens upon slopes facing 
south. While a real cracking drought does 
land nearly as much good asa deep hard freeze, 


1 


232 Next to the Ground 


sun-baking with wettings in between makes 
it thin and slow and cloddy after years of 
cultivation. 

Joe loved the woods, yet the clearing fas- 
cinated him. He did not work there regu- 
larly, though for five minutes or so he could 
chop with the best of the men. It took mighty 
and well-seasoned muscle to ply an ax day after 
day. The black fellows knew all the art and 
mystery of clearing — which is not nearly so 
much a haphazard performance as at first blush 
it looks to be. Here upon the hillside they 
could look up a tree before setting ax to it, 
and tell which way it would fall if it fell of 
its own mass. ‘They could also throw it any 
way that pleased them — up hill, or down, or 
across. Further they could judge by the bark 
pretty well how the timber of a standing oak 
would run. Rough, warty bark was a sure 
sign of brash timber, never splitting true, but 
with an eating cleavage. Where the outer 
bark cracked in what looked like flights of 
little stair-steps, the timber was warped — so 
much so sometimes that in the ten feet of a 
rail-cut, the fibers made half a turn from top 
to bottom. Crinkly crisscross patches of bark 
meant wind-shakes underneath. Sometimes 
in a big board-tree, the wind-shake ran only 
through one eighth or one quarter of the trunk. 
More commonly it spoiled a whole half. Oc- 


Clearing | 233 


casionally the cut next the stump was of no 
value, with the cuts further up fair. But it. 
was only occasionally. The negroes had a 
very true saying: “* Whut start at de butt, 
don’t end tell hit come ter de lap.” 

Burning the woods away back accounted 
for much of the brash timber. The oaks 
were but saplings then, thin enough in bark 
to be badly scorched on the windward side 
where the fire drove against them. Since the 
other side escaped with no more than a singe- 
ing, they lived on, and throve after a fashion, 
but always kept the fire-scar at the heart. 
Very often they began rotting there, and the rot 
spread in and upward, though still they grew 
fairly and looked green and thrifty outside. 
When the axes chopped into the rotten wood, 
the axmen said the tree was “ doated at de 
heart.” Joe smiled to hear them. He knew 
where doated came from — it was a corrup- 
tion of dotard. His books had told him how 
the oaks in the royal forests were reckoned, 
so many thousand sound, so many hundred 
dotard — that is, failing through age or in- 
firmity. As in case of the rabbit’s foot sup- 
erstition, slaves had caught the word from 
English owners and passed it down to their 
free descendants. It was the same with lap, 
meaning the branches of a tree. He knew it 
came from /op. He had read how “lop, top, 


234 Next to the Ground 


and crop” were, in the old days often forest 
perquisites of royal favorites. Lop, top, and 
crop, meant what could be cut away yet still 
leave ship timber for the king’s or the queen’s 
navy. Shipbuilders had complained that the 
lop was stretched to include much wood “ ex- 
cellently crooked, and fit for ship-knees.” So 
the lop was strictly the big branches, as the 
top was the whole upper tip which came down 
when the tree was pollarded — that is to say, 
topped, or derived of its poll, or head. 

Often sitting upon the stump of a board- 
tree, and counting its two hundred odd rings, 
each marking a year’s growth, Joe let him- 
self dream of the oaks a thousand years old, 
whose destruction had been the prime end of 
the great Spanish Armada. Spain aimed to 
conquer England by destroying her real hearts 
of oak. What availed it to burn or sink a 
fleet, so long as those pestilent islanders had 
timber to build two ships for every one sunk? 
He thought too of Sarah Jennings, Ranger of 
Windsor Forest, scowling, scuffling, scraping 
every possible penny for the enrichment of her 
husband, the scapegrace John Churchill, first 
Duke of Marlborough; also of the knight who 
held a forest upon condition of “‘ giving the 
king’s majesty one snowball any day in the 
year it may be asked”’; and of the baronet 
whose tenure hinged upon furnishing a pair 


Clearing 235 


of white greyhounds in silver couple, “ for the 
king’s majesty’s hunting, when the king’s 
majesty shall require it.” 

“ Crop” he knew was the brush, which, 
bound into fagots, made so large a part of the 
fuel in that old time. Sometimes he specu- 
lated as to how many loads of fagots the 
brush burned upon this one new ground 
would make. There were big piles of it 
everywhere except around the plant beds. 
There it had been already burned. Making 
brush piles indeed was the first step toward 
clearing, as making log piles was nearly the 
very last. Before a tree fell, the undergrowth 
was all cut and flung in heaps. Thus there 
was better room to throw the trees, and the 
wood-wagons got about easier, not to name 
better space for working in the laps when the 
trees came down. Brush from the laps of 
course went upon the piles first formed. Burn- 
ing them was very great fun. It was done 
always before log-rolling began, generally to- 
ward sunset of a windy early March day. 
The leaves were raked back a little way around 
each heap — then a blazing chunk tossed in to 
windward did the rest. The blaze sputtered 
and smouldered, sending up a smother of thick 
smoke, yellow-white at first, but swiftly dark- 
ening, and bursting a little later into licking 
blue flame. The little dry twigs fed it — 


236 Next to the Ground 


soon it was strong enough, hot enough to gnaw 
through the stoutest stems. If they were 
hickory stems they writhed in the fire like 
things of life. Hickory brush keeps its sap, 
long after oak and poplar are bone-dry. A 
pile of it will hardly catch unless weighted, or 
thickly underlaid with finer brush. But once 
well afire it makes a magnificent flame, red 
and leaping, and full at the heart of twisting 
fiery serpents. Any big brush heap, indeed, 
in a decent burning wind, makes a beautiful 
fire, the flames leap and flicker, and blow off 
in long fading sheets, or snap and curl like 
whip-lashes, twenty feet in air. 

Joe wondered no little what his English 
ancestors would have thought of the log heaps. 
Plenty of folks in Tennessee said Major 
Baker was dreadfully extravagant of timber, 
wasting so much good wood a little bit 
more work would save. Some of them said 
it to the Major himself. He only smiled in 
answer. The Major kept books with his 
plantation by a curious sort of double entry. 
Whatever increased the strength and heart of 
a field struck him in the light of a good in- 
vestment, and nobody knew better than he 
that the more log heaps were burned upon a 
piece of fresh land, the longer it would bring 
big crops without manure, let the season be 
wet or dry. Besides, since his firewood cost 


Clearing 237 


him nothing beyond cutting and hauling, there 
would be real extravagance in hiring men to 
split up knots and forks and burls. Rail and 
board and stave timber, indeed whatever was 
fair and straight-riving, he always had worked 
up, even if he had no present need of rails or 
boards or staves. 

Log-rolling was a great day —so great it 
is easy to see how the name of it has got into 
politics with something of sinister implication. 
Big logs are best moved by the strength of 
many men. Hence, for log-rolling you ask 
help of your neighbors, of course returning 
the help in kind when they have logs to roll. 
Fifty men black and white came to the roll- 
ing in the big new ground. ‘They chose out 
captains, as boys do when playing ball. There 
was need for literal captaining. Log-rolling 
requires headwork no less than handwork. 
Sleight even more than strength best solves 
its problems of weight and mass. The four 
captains were all veterans of many heaps, as 
well as men of mighty muscle. Their men 
were armed with hand-sticks, for the most 
part of sassafras or hickory, six feet long, 
three inches through, and trimmed tapering 
at each end; so they might be held with a 
desperate grip. 

There was edged rivalry between the crews. 
There was honor in putting up the first heap, 


238 Next to the Ground 


more honor in putting up the most heaps, most 
honor of all in walking off witha log that had 
proved too heavy, or two unhandy for another 
crew. Dan and his crew won this crowning 
glory three times at the big log-rolling, al- 
though they were working against older heads 
and heavier bodies. White men and black 
worked amicably elbow to elbow, but Joe felt 
a distinct thrill of personal triumph when 
Dan’s men picked up and almost ran with a 
big chunky black-jack burl that had downed 
old man Shack and his crew. 

Where the logs lay close they were really 
rolled, often over improvised pole tramways, 
along which they sped impelled by heaves of 
the hand-sticks. Carrying was quicker, and 
in most cases somewhat easier. Two men 
worked to a stick — thus there were six sticks 
toacrew. After the captain had duly squinted 
up and down the log, making sure in his own 
mind how it would roll and lie when lifted, 
everybody got down beside it, and surged 
against it, until it was loosened in its bed. 
Then the sticks were placed end on, equidis- 
tant along the length of it. More surging 
rolled it over upon them, then each man bent, 
gripped his end of the stick, waited the captain’s 
word, and when he got it, rose upward, slowly, 
steadily, bringing the stick with him, and inci- 
dentally his share of log. Lifting thus equally, 


Clearing 239 


they kept the log steady. If one man’s grip 
had failed, it might have meant serious hurt 
for the rest. A log inert upon the sticks is one 
thing, and a log rolling and bounding off them, 
gaining impetus and momentum as it moves, 
very much another. Every hand holding, 
when the log comes well above the knees, the 
men walk off with it, moving in time as though 
locked. When they come to the log pile, 
all those upon one side lay their stick-ends 
firmly upon the foundation log, or that one 
which it is best the new log shall hug through- 
out the burning. Then the captain shouts 
interrogatively : “ All the good men out?” 
But he waits for no answer before crying: 
“Let her roll!” At the word the men who 
still hold stick ends raise them with a little 
shout, heave the log in place, then rush off to 
find another. 

Simple as it looks, there is art in building log 
piles. Some men are born with it, just as some 
other men are born to other arts. If old 
man Shack had not been so lazy he would 
have been the king of log-rollers, indeed of all 
manner of timber-workers. He had the nicest 
eye, the quickest judgment as to how and 
where a stick would fit best. Logs, if they 
are to burn freely must be so placed they will 
roll together, not apart inthe burning. ‘There 
was something behind the old man’s braggart 


240 Next to the Ground 


boast that “ef them other fellers did put up 
the mostest logs at er rollin’, them fellers 0” 
his’n put theirn up bestest, though they picked 
an’ choosed the wustest ones ter tote. Fur- 
dermore ” — thus the old man —“ them thar 
piles stayed put up, — ye didn’t never have 
ter go an’ waste yer breath an’ strenth, a- 
chunkin’ “em up,an’ a-chunkin’’em up. Ef 
hit wa’n’t that he jest natchully hated ter seem 
like he gredged lab’rin’ men er little frolic, 
he’d take the Majer’s log-rollin’ by contrac’ 
—but thar! workin’ folks had little ’nough 
fun.” ‘ 

They had fun at Major Baker’s log-rolling, 
in spite of the hard work. They feasted too, 
in a manner befitting even their noble appetites. 
Good feeding was a cardinal article of faith at 
White Oaks, whether it had to do' with men, 
horses, cattle, dogs, or land. , 


The FHforse 


Chapter XI 


ENIUS is rare, common 
sense rarer still, horse sense 
rarest of all. Horse sense 

isatwo-edged phrase. The 

ON pity of it that men never 

know horses intuitively, un- 

SS Wa erringly as horses know 

men! No less thana poet, a horseman must 

be born, and get fine making afterward. 

The proportion of horsemen to horse masters 

is about as one to five thousand, yet only the 

horseman born and made can fitly master a 

creature so worthy and so wise. 

Horse sense upon both sides is really know- 
ledge distilled by time and love into wisdom. 
Upon the human side the first essential of it 
is negative— you must simply not know how 
to be afraid of anything on four hoofs. Next 
comes generous kindness, next justice strongly 
tempered with mercy. Horses are very wise. 
They understand when punishment comes 


ay 


ay 


244 Next to the Ground 


because of their own airs and tempers, also 
when it is the vent of uncontrolled nerves, 
savage tremors, or suppressed rage provoked 
in other quarters. And they have very long 
memories. Indeed they have throughout an 
almighty lot of human nature. They have a 
language, intelligible between themselves, and 
also to those persons they admit to anything 
like intimacy. They are moreover social, 
something waggish and tremendously conven- 
tional. 

There is something infinitely pathetic in the 
neighing of a solitary horse. It is long, shrill, 
oft-repeated, rising at the end toa keen trem- 
ulous crescendo, full of appeal. The neigh 
of welcome, on the other hand, either to a 
comrade, chance or well-known, or to the 
home gate, or the stall, is almost merry, full 
of chuckling cadences, altogether a voicing of 
content. A horse used to company, left alone 
either in the stall or at grass, neighs almost 
continuously for ten minutes, then waits a bit, 
listening for possible answers. At pasture, 
jumping-out is likely. A mare’s mating call 
is a keen, thin, tremulous treble, the most 
piercing note in all the spring chorus. The 
stallion’s is deep and virile, clear, yet touched 
at bottom witha growlingbass. “The gelding’s 
neigh is clearest of all. Horse voices vary 
almost as much as human voices do. When 


The Horse 245 


they call one to another about the pasture, it 
is no feat at all for one who knows, to locate 
each by thecall. Under pain horses are stoic, 
But if the pain reaches the height of mortal 
agony they scream pitifully, heartrendingly. 
Indeed a horse’s scream, either of agony or rage, 
is a haunting and memorable sound. 

A neigh is in most minds the same thing 
as a whinny—in Tennessee vernacular, 
a whicker — yet there can scarcely be two 
sounds more distinct. The neigh rises through- 
out until it is ear-piercing as a trumpet-note 
at the climax. The whinny is soft, almost 
gurgling, loudest at the beginning, and at the 
end a flickering, husky tremolo. Possibly the 
difference is best expressed thus: the neigh 
is articulate, uttered through an open mouth, 
and varied or prolonged to the limit of breath ; 
the whinny is inarticulate, coming out of 
the nose above shut lips, and blurred after the 
manner of nasal sound. As the whinny is 
provincially a whicker, so is the neigh a nicker. 
In both cases the words are palpably efforts to 
imitate the sound. 

Brood mares whinny calls to their foals 
when the youngsters are in plain sight, and 
neigh to them when they have wandered afar, 
or are in hiding. Nine tenths of foals are 
dropped between mid-April and mid-June. 
A horse’s age is reckoned unofficially by 


246 Next to the Ground 


“grasses,” that is by springs — and officially 
from the first of January — hence the impor- 
tance of an early birthday. Hence too Sep- 
tember is almost universally the weaning time. 
Then the mares neigh plaintive distress for a 
week at least, and much longer if their young 
have not been taken clean out of sight and 
hearing. Weaning is, in fact, impossible so 
long as dam and foal can hear and answer 
each other. Some weaning-times one must 
have regard to the wind. If it blows scent 
strongly from the mares to the foals, or vice 
versa, though they may be grazing a mile 
apart, the weaning will be tedious and trouble- 
some. Mares kept thus apart for six weeks, 
and their udders thoroughly dried, have been 
brought back to their milk in a very little 
while by the vigorous sucking and nuzzling 
of the youngsters when they were again 
brought together. 

Things stranger still sometimes come to 
pass in horse breeding. With every lot of 
weanlings breeders graze a big mare, prefer- 
ably a barren mare, one that has never thrown 
a foal, yet is sound and kind. She wears a 
tinkly bell, and the young creatures become 
her abject slaves, grazing round about her, 
lying down when she lies down, and rising up 
when she rises. To shift pastures, or get 
them into the big stable, it is only necessary 


The Horse 247 


to take the bell — they follow like dogs. A 
stampede is impossible unless the bell mare 
takes fright. Back in the days of droving, when 
horses went to market upon their own legs, 
instead of riding in stock cars, the bell mare 
always led, and was also always the point of 
attack for horse thieves. If they could shoot 
her rider, and make off with her, the drove 
came tumbling pell-mell after, even if they 
had to swim rivers or breast mountains to 
reach her. Contrariwise, if the bell escaped, 
it was hardly worth while to capture part of 
the drove — the animals would break out, and 
go back in search of her, if they were halted 
anywhere within a hundred miles. 

Bell mares are thus herd stepmothers. 
Some of them have been known to become 
suckling mothers, although they had never 
thrown foals of their own. In several cases 
they have been pulled down almost to skele- 
tons, by the incessant sucking of a dozen strong 
young mouths. One mare at least did her 
best to drive away all but one of the sucklers. 
That one she mothered in really touching 
fashion, licking it while it sucked, and feed- 
ing after it, no matter which way it went. 
She also whinnied to it with the true mother- 
note — which is unlike any other whinny, 
softer, yet keener. Indeed, this special foal, 
which curiously enough belonged to the bell 


248 Next to the Ground 


mare’s full sister, could never be weaned from 
its foster mother, but kept sucking until it 
was two years old, and had finally to be sold 
on account of the propensity. The rogue 
must have had an extra milk tooth, since his 
new owner sold him to a drover because he 
had got in a way of jumping into the clover 
pasture and sucking every drop of milk from 
a fine Jersey cow. 

He was a peculiar-colored beast — pigeon- 
blue, with pure flaxen mane and tail. The 
drover sold him in the far south. Nothing 
was known of him fora matter of ten years. 
Then one morning, in the pasture where he 
had grazed with his foster-mother and his 
fellows, his first owner found the wreck and 
remnant of a horse, blind in one eye, scarred 
all over, so thin every bone showed through, 
and so lame he could scarcely hobble upon 
feet worn all round to the quick. But there 
were flaxen hairs still waving in his shred of 
tail: and along his worn mane, and the coat 
between the scars was pigeon blue, faded it is 
true, but still unmistakable. Homing instinct, 
the marvellous possession of all the brute crea- 
tion, had brought the poor creature, aged and 
worn out before his time, back to his birth- 
place. Neither his career nor his wanderings 
were ever traced, but from the condition of 
his feet and the varied flotsam tangled in his 


The Horse 249 


hair, it was plain he had made a long journey, 
and a hard one, impelled by that mysterious 
force which stirs at the touch of spring to 
send all dumb things home. 

A homing beast does not follow the track 
by which he was taken away. Instead he 
strikes straight across——as the crow flies. 
No matter how badly a rider may be lost, if 
his beast is well wonted to either starting- 
place or destination, all he needs do is to drop 
rein, and let the beast take him somewhere. 
At first the beast may be a little uncertain. 
He turns his head, paws the least bit, sniffs 
now this side, now that, shifts from one foot 
to another in leading as he walks about, seems 
to listen intently, then all at once neighs 
shrill and long and strikes a course, maybe 
fetching a compass to do it. After it is struck, 
he keeps straight on. Ifa fence or stream 
traverses his way, he appears to know unerr- 
ingly whether to go around it to right or 
to left, or what ford to choose. He will 
choose a ford in preference to plunging in the 
stream at an untouched place, if there is a 
ford within a mile. When at last he scents 
home — commonly a mile before it is in sight, 
he stretches his neck to the utmost and gives 
his keenest, most triumphant neigh. 

“ An-Arab is no Arab away from the des- 
ert.” The proverb is an exact statement of 


250 Next to the Ground 


fact. Everi more than men, horses are the 
product of environment. Running blood, 
otherwise thoroughbred blood, had its begin- 
nings in Arabs and Turks bred amid desert 
stretches, without bush or brake to stint their 
rattling gallops. T'rotting blood contrariwise 
traces most directly to Barbs or Barbary 
horses, bred in rough and ragged country, 
where sweeping gallops are impossible, and 
speed is attainable only at the trot. The 
Barb blood has of course been largely rein- 
forced by that of the thoroughbred ; further 
trotting action is not unknown among de- 
scendants of even the Godolphin Arabian. 
Indeed Mambrino, sire of Messenger, the 
corner-stone of trotting pedigrees, had more 
than one cross of that prepotent strain. 

If all flesh is grass, how much more all 
horseflesh? Bone from animals: bred in the 
open, running upon grass and feeding upon it 
solely, though smaller and slenderer, weighs 
more, section for section, than bone from 
animals reared within stable walls. It is the 
bone, the coat, the hair which make up what 
is known as quality, and distinguish the 
thoroughbred from the common cold-blooded 
stock. A straw can hardly be thrust within 
the hollow of a thoroughbred or Arab or Barb 
bone, yet a forefinger will go inside that in the 
bone of a Conestoga, or Clydesdale, or Perche- 


‘The Horse ae 


ron, or his derivative, the Canadian. More- 
over, the big breeds have coarse bones and 
spongy as to texture. Oriental horses and 
thoroughbreds have bone compact as ivory 
and well-nigh as hard as flint. 

A thoroughbred wears a satin coat set off 
with mane and tail of silk. A cart horse, be 
he never so glossy, has hair coarse to the 
touch, with mane and tail of hemp. A 
sightly beast, a pattern of his kind, the lead- 
ing factor until lately in the world’s develop- 
ment, the cart horse is yet no match, weight 
for weight, even in his own special province, 
for the thoroughbred, compact of fire and stay, 
ivory bone, and whipcord muscle. A blood 
horse will break down, even kill, two common 
ones, yet be sound and serviceable afterward. 
Witness Omar Pacha, the Turk, who travelled 
ninety miles without check, in time of the 
Crimean War to carry news of a Russian 
repulse, and lived to a good old age after, 
though his rider died of sheer exhaustion. 
Witness also the Nedjed breed, derived 
from Mahomet’s own favorite mare, and still 
kept religiously by the Imaun of Muscat, 
whose warriors think nothing of a hundred 
and twenty miles without once drawing rein, 
if horsed with these, “ The Daughters of the 
Stars.” 

“ Oats!” wrote Dr. Samuel Johnson: “A 


252 Next to the Ground 


grain fed in England to horses, in Scotland to 
men.” The thrust was well countered by 
an indignant Scot: “ An’ whar will ye find 
sic horses — an’ sic men?’ Beyond ques- 
tion, if horses needs must decline and fall to 
grain, oats should be the grain. Shelled oats 
and stemmed fodder — that is to say, dry corn 
blades with the midrib removed — made up 
the feed of the famous four-mile racing stars 
of the early American turf. Corn is both 
heating and stiffening, to say nothing of pro- 
ducing “ big-head,” unless fed with the nicest 
judgment, particularly in animals not fully 
developed. Enthusiasts firm in the faith of 
blue grass and blue blood, indeed regard corn 
as little less than poison. They keep sepa- 
rate summer and winter pastures for brood 
stock. The winter pastures lie untouched 
until October, and the grass in them cures to 
the finest natural hay. Still the cured grass 
is not the dependence through the winter. 
Beneath the matted blanket of it, young 
grass pushes up fresh and vigorous. It is 
nothing for the brood mares or the young 
things in their separate pastures, to paw aside 
the brown overlay, nibbling the choicest bits 
of it, and crop the rich sweet blue-green 
blades below. 

Blue grass in full bloom, growing upon 
the richest land, comes well above the knee. 


The Horse 253 


By the height of it, indeed, one wise in land 
lore can gauge accurately the producing 
power of its seat. It thrives only upon deep 
limestone clays, with plenty of humus mixed 
through, and fat black feeding pebbles here 
and there. Rainfall has something to do 
with the growth of the grass. In a dry 
season the best blue-grass pastures stand but 
little beyond mid-leg high. Conversely a 
very damp and forcing season may make the 
grass upon second or even third rate land, 
come level with the knee. Whatever the 
height of it, in flower it is the most beautiful 
of all grasses. Not only are the blossoms 
delicately tinted in greenish blue, a sort of 
pastel shade, but the blades as well have a 
blue bloom. ‘They are thickand fine always, 
even when the grass grows in sparse, scat- 
tered clumps. Close-cropped blue-grass turf 
is like velvet, especially if it has been cropped 
and trampled for fifty years. 

The fine feathery heads stand so thick and 
even, when they toss in the wind it is as 
though a misty gray-green cloud had come 
bodily to earth, and was rippling under foot. 
Sometimes, but very rarely, blue grass is 
mowed. Stock breeders think it better in 
many ways to let it cure upon the stools. 
Ripening seed is, they admit, exhausting both 
to the land and the grass. Notwithstanding, 


254 Next to the Ground 


seeds thus ripened are not taken away from 
the soil. They sow themselves evenly over 
it, thus perpetuating pasturage no matter 
what the weather. Further, the mulch of 
dried grass saves from drought and from 
freezes, conserves from sun-killing, and in 
time decays to furnish anew vegetable mould. 
Altogether, there is a mighty fine case to be 
made for the practice, and though “ much 
might be said on the other side,” experience 
and theory jump so well together, the practice 
is likely to endure a long time. 

: A horse’s muzzle is as sensitive and nearly 
as deft as a blind man’s finger tips. It serves 
him indeed in place of fingers, also for things 
where fingers would avail nothing. The 
muzzle is as soft as velvet —- especially upon 
the upper lip. When a horse plunges his 
muzzle into a heaped manger and scours all 
about the bottom of it, it is not through greed 
but through caution. He is searching out 
inequalities — knot, splinter, snag, or nail, so 
he may not break his teeth upon them nor 
hurt his tongue and lips. He eats, turning 
his head first on one side then the other, 
licking up a mess of ground feed, or grinding 
sturdily himself any sort of whole grain, as 
he grinds hay and grass. Thus he records 
his age, up to nine yearsin his mouth. After 
nine, his teeth are so smooth all over the 


The Horse aes 


crown he may be any age or none. Jockey- 
ing dealers sometimes file the smooth crowns 
to simulate the ridges and corners of youth. 
In the case of a blood horse that is impossi- 
ble. The stud book forbids any man thus 
to take freakish liberties with Father Time. 

Colt-teeth are shed progressively, as are 
human milk-teeth. Normally the shedding 
is finished at five years old, when the horse 
is reckoned “ aged.”’ Occasionally colt-teeth 
stay in the mouth up to seven years. Then 
they are commonly so discolored and decayed 
country farriers call them “wolf’s teeth” 
and insist that unless they are at once pulled 
the horse owning them will go blind. Five 
years is the common period of growth, though 
exceptional horses may grow as well as cut 
teeth, up to the age of seven. 

One of the most famous and deliberate 
among turf frauds was foiled by the fact that 
a horse’s jaw thus records his age. Epsom’s 
famous Derby is a stake exclusively for three- 
year-olds. A long time back, two four-year- 
olds were unfairly entered for it, and one of 
them, Running Rein, had the luck to come 
first, with Orlando, a game three-year-old, 
second. Some way a whiff of the fraud got 
about. Orlando’s owner claimed the stake 
and went to law to prove his claim. The 
frightened conspirators killed and buried 


256 Next to the Ground 


Leander, the non-winning four-year-old, tak- 
ing the precaution to remove his under-jaw, 
spirited away Running Rein, and sent his 
nominal owner into hiding. When the case 
was called, the judge could do nothing but 
give Orlando the stake. He said, in giving 
it, Running Rein was the one really material 
witness, and his absence was proof positive 
of fraud. 

A horse feels not only his manger but his 
bed, more especially the bed of delight upon 
which he flings himself to wallow. His joy 
in wallowing is unmistakable, though the 
reason forthe act even the wisest among 
horsemen has not yet found out. It cannot 
be classed with motions involuntary but nec- 
essary, such as stretching and yawning. 
Upon waking, horses both yawn and stretch, 
also after rising from long lying in the shade. 
The yawn is open-mouthed, with a strong 
out-breath, the stretching much like a cat’s 
stretching, with the four legs stiffly extended 
and the back slightly arched. In rare in- 
stances the back is deeply saddled — that is, 
swayed down. Sometimes also one hind leg 
is held straight out, and kicked swiftly two 
or three times. But all this is solemn and 
serious work, if something languid at times. 
Wallowing makes a horse, both spiritually 
and actually, of another color. 


The Horse . 257 


Nothing equals a wallow on freshly ploughed 
ground. To obtain it, the quietest animal 
will often jump or throw down a lawful fence 
— that is, one ten rails high, either locked 
or stake-and-ridered. Such jumping is the 
privilege of elegant leisure. A working ani- 
mal, horse or mule, wallows when and how 
he can, the minute he is stripped of gear and 
turned loose. But whatever his haste, he 
always puts his muzzle upon the ground, and 
turns slowly around, feeling all over his pro- 
spective bed. If he finds a stone, or snag, or 
brush stout enough to hurt, he moves on and 
feels over a fresh place. He does not even 
neglect the feeling over upon his favorite 
ploughland, though after the first wallow, 
when he rises evidently thrilling through and 
through from the delicious contact with 
Mother Earth, he often flings himself reck- 
lessly down a yard or so from his first bed, 
after the merest perfunctory whirl-about, head 
down, tail up. 

After wallowing three or four times on one 
side, he turns himself full on his spine, and 
rocks rather than rolls for half a minute, all 
four feet playing convulsively in air. Then 
he whips over, wallows the other side well, 
maybe rolls again, gets up, humps himself, 
puts his head down, and shakes, shakes, until 
there is a cloud of dust or fine mud-flecks all 


258 Next to the Ground 


round about. There are of course idiosyncra- 
sies in wallowing. Some horses wallow three 
times a day, others three times a week. Some 
likewise get up and down half a dozen times 
before they are satisfied, while others find 
that one long, strong roll suffices. However 
that may be, in getting up, all of them rise 
first upon the fore feet, setting the hoofs firm 
and full on earth before lifting the quarters. 
Getting up from sleep, or even from rest, 
it is just the other way. The quarters are 
raised first, not full height, but squatting so 
as to about equal the height of the fore legs 
at the knees. When the fore hand is up on 
the knees the quarters rise all the way — 
then it is a simple matter of flexing the fore 
legs to stand upright. 

Horses learn very quickly how to flip up 
an easy gate latch with the flexible, almost 
prehensile, upper lip; also to unpin a stall 
door with it, or to jar down draw bars. They 
reach under fences with it to pull out apples 
lying just inside, and dexterously stretch it for 
the sweet, untainted grass growing in shelter 
of thorny brush in a closely cropped stretch 
of grazing ground. In horses, as in men, it 
is the mouth which is truly expressive — 
helped out, it is undeniable, in the horse’s case, 
by ears that not only hear everything, but say 
a great deal. An angry or vicious horse 


The Horse 259 


comes at you open-mouthed, the picture of 
fury, his teeth bare and gleaming, nostrils 
wide, eyes rolling-red, ears laid close to the 
head. Batted ears indeed are the danger sig- 
nal. Mares with foals at foot, especially very 
young foals, keep their ears batted all the 
while, in sign of war to the teeth. Nor do 
many of them hesitate to attack whatever 
comes closer than they think proper. Other 
horses, cattle, dogs, men, even their own famil- 
iar grooms, all are objects of suspicion. 

Not without reason. Working horses, 
mules, and barren mares, all will chase and 
maltreat very young foals, biting them, tramp- 
ling them savagely underfoot, and killing them 
if permitted. Brood mares rarely j join in such 
attacks. Sometimes a mare late in foaling or 
which has lost a colt, tries to steal another 
mare’s foal, and thus brings on a battle royal. 
Mares are indeed throughout the breeding sea- 
son, of a temper so uncertain they bear watch- 
ing and a great plenty of it. After grazing 
peacefully side by side for weeks, they may 
engage in a melley whose cause nobody knows, 
and fight, kicking, screaming, biting, rearing, 
lashing out with the fore legs, until half the 
combatants are seriously, even mortally dis- 
abled. Yet if separated before serious harm 
is done, once the mad fit is past, the fighters 
call to each other disconsolately, and whinny 


260 Next to the Ground. 


recognition as one or the other passes the 
fence, or goes along the highway. 

A foal’s first coat is thick and roughish, and 
never true in color, It begins to be shed at 
two months old —then the little bay beast 
may turn out a chestnut, the ash-yellow one 
black or bay, the black-coat very dark gray. 
These false first coats sunburn readily to a 
sort of muddy uniformity. Milk-white horses, 
which are about the rarest of all, are white- 
skinned from the first, though the hair is a sort 
of dull foxy yellow. White hairs in the false 
coat prophesy a roan nag. White, or rather 
pink, nostrils augur a light coat hereafter. 
White marks, as stars, snips, white stockings, 
blazes, and skewbalds, exist from the first, and 
persist, never varying from the shape they 
showed at foaling. Dapples come out with 
the true coat. Four sevenths of all foals de- 
velop bay coats. The percentage would be 
larger but for the increase of Norman and 
Percheron stock, which is very largely gray 
and chestnut. Among thoroughbreds, grays 
are rarest — especially among winning thor- 
oughbreds, yet grays are many among Arabs, 
and chestnuts rarest and most highly prized. 
Roan is a coat the Arabs do not know. It is 
held to be a sign of much mixed blood, yet is 
plenty among English thoroughbreds, and not 
unknown, though unfavored, among Ameri- 


The Horse 261 


can blood stock. Gray horses, even the dark- 
est iron-grays and silver-roans, become white 
with advancing years, or else grow flea-bitten 
all over. Flea-bites, be it understood, are 
little reddish-black spots sprinkled thickly 
through the white coat. Like a hog’s, a 
horse’s epidermis is colored to match the hairs 
growing on it. The colored skin extending 
underneath white hairs often makes shaded 
edges to the white marks. A white star is a 
lucky mark, so is one white hind foot. A 
star and snip prefigures speed and kindliness. 
A violent blaze, or a skewbald, especially 
upon a long Roman-nosed head, bids you be- 
ware. A symmetrical blaze alony with a 
tapering muzzle, is a good mark. ‘The very 
worst mark of all is four white feet. If the 
four white feet run up to the knees in white 
stockings, and are backed up by great height, 
very high withers, and a bald white face, they 
are the mark of Turcoman blood. Horses 
shed their winter coats betwixt March and 
May, according to climate and condition. At 
grass the new coats get sadly sunburned — 
you can hardly tell the most ebon-black, or 
glowing bay from washy sorrel. In Septem: 
ber they put on new, heavy winter coats, sleek 
and full colored. In cities, and among fine 
folk, the winter coats are snipped off with 
clipping machines, so the horses may shine 


262 Next to the Ground 


as in spring, and the place of the clipped coat 
is taken by clumsy blankets. 

A horse has naturally these gaits: walk, trot, 
canter —an easy slow gallop —full gallop, and 
full run. Tennessee saddle stock owns be- 
sides, these fancy saddle gaits: running walk, 
pace, fox trot, single-foot, and rack. A well- 
trained horse whips from one to another at a 
touch on rein or mane, or the mere snap of 
the rider’s fingers. For an all-day ride the 
fox trot is incomparably the best and easiest 
both to horse and rider. Women prefer the 
pace for journeys of a mile or two. Five 
miles at the pace, unrelieved by any other 
gait, will tire anybody. The single foot, in 
which the horse appears to have all but one 
leg in air, is oddly enough the easiest of 
all gaits to sit well. As for “rising to the 
trot’? —or even riding at a trot, unless 
mounted upon a beast which could do noth- 
ing but trot — anybody undertaking it in 
Tennessee would be reckoned sadly lacking 
both in horse sense and regard for his own 
comfort. Trotting is there recognized as 
solely a harness gait. -Pacing is also a har- 
ness gait, but for the race track rather than 
road driving, although Tennessee has devel- 
oped the most famous pacing blood in the 
world. 

For pure joy of motion nothing matches 


The Horse 263 


the full sweeping gallop. The one drawback 
is that neither horse nor rider can stand it for 
very many miles. For a brief pleasure jaunt, 
over good roads, the canter is unequalled. In 
any gait it is curious what a difference it 
makes whether the horse leads with his right 
fore foot, or his left. Leading means stepping 
out with it first. Well-gaited horses are 
broken to lead with either and to change from 
one to the other upon the instant, at the snap 
of the whip. A saddle horse that overreaches, 
— that is steps further with the hind foot than 
with the fore one corresponding to it, is al- 
ways risky. The danger lies in treading upon 
his own heels, and thus tangling himself so 
as to stumble or even fall. Crossing the fore 
feet in motion is even more dangerous. With 
such action the gallop is always the safest 
gait, as the horse in galloping moves both fore 
feet simultaneously. A perfect foot is round, 
hollow underneath, well open at the heel, but 
not spraddling, with a clean, live-looking 
hoof, and soft, elastic skin above the heel, 
reaching to the fetlocks. A horse goes easi- 
est and freest unshod, but over hard roads or 
rocky ones shoeing is essential. 

To judge of a horse’s temper and spirit, 
look at his eye. If it shows much white, let 
him pass, though he be otherwise the sum and 
pattern of equine perfection. White-rimmed 


264 Next to the Ground 


eyes with an upward roll, are the hall-mark 
of stubborn viciousness. "The owner of them 
is sly, sneaking, undependable. He will act 
lamb for a fortnight to get the chance of 
bucking his rider off where the ground is 
hardest, or rearing where rearing is most dis- 
quieting. ‘The white eye is as bad as the 
“ unlucky hairs” which grow, if they grow at 
all, a little above the eye-socket. They are 
longer and coarser than the hairs of the coat. 
Arabs so dread them they will not ask even 
a foreigner more than half price for a beast 
showing them. 

Ears tell of intelligence or conversely of 
stupidity. They should be thin, wide at the 
bottom, pointed, neither large nor small, with 
few long hairs inside. Ears set too high or 
too close together prefigure lack of stamina 
and level-headedness. Ears wide apart, not 
too low nor too high, with the forehead arch- 
ing the least bit between, stand for sense, 
vigilant courage, and a fine equable mind. 
Either at grass or upon the road, good horses 
keep one ear laid back, one pointing forward. 
Horses both see and hear very far. Negroes 
believe firmly that in the dark they see and 
walk around ghosts. However that may be, 
they certainly see the road plain, through what 
seems thick murk to human eyes. 


Unthinking people do not distinguish be- 


The Horse 265 


tween the herd and the drove. The drove is 
a number of live beasts, gathered and driven 
off to sale or shipment. A herd is likewise 
a number of live beasts, but driven only casu- 
ally, as from pasture to pasture, and feeding 
and being used together. In every herd of 
horses there is a leader, usually a mare. She 
it is who breaks in or out and runs prancing 
and nickering about, with the rest tumbling 
at her heels. She has memory, also judgment. 
In trying a fence, she always selects first the 
spot, if such a spot there is, where she has made 
a breach before. If she finds it inconveniently 
strengthened she goes pacing up and down 
the whole length of the fence, setting her breast 
against each panel, at each third or fourth one 
rising in tentative measuring half-leaps. When 
she finds a weak panel, or one that gives to 
her impulse, she takes the jump standing, then 
neighs a call to the rest. They come on the 
dead run, and jump through the gap she has 
made. Unless a gap has been made, or there 
is a space of fence enticingly low and bare 
of hedgerow growth, very few horses will 
venture upon a running leap over it. 

There is a slight anarchist leaven in every- 
thing on four hoofs. Horses, mules, hogs, 
cattle, even sheep, appear to regard a fence as a 
challenge—something they are in honor bound 
to go over, under or through. The horses 


266 ‘Next to the Ground 


at White Oaks sometimes jumped out in pure 
tricksy wantonness, ran maybe ten miles, in 
a circuit of the plantation, then jumped in 
again, exactly where they jumped out. They 
had all even an unreasonable beast could wish, 
sweet grass, fair water, shade in plenty, salt 
at will. ‘They had also room and to spare 
for racing on their own account. There were 
above a hundred acres in native blue grass, 
cut in two with a stone wall, and snipped at 
the ends of the big fields, by snug, stoutly 
fenced paddocks. ‘The summer pasture lay 
upland. When rain was imminent it saw 
some fine and true-run races. Whip-Lash, 
Major Baker’s own saddle mare, was queen 
of the herd. She gave the racing signal. 
First she snorted very loud, then, when every 
head was raised, and every eye upon her, 
neighed, long and low, put her head down, 
and began to run against the wind. As the 
others got in motion, she wheeled, and ran 
down wind, as hard as she could leg it. The 
others lagged a bit until she came to the turn, 
waiting to see if she meant to break out, or 
race at home. If she swept on inside the 
fence, they streamed after her at their very 
best speed. For a round she held everything 
safe —then something younger forged ahead. 
Sometimes it was Pipe-Stem, sometimes Light- 
Foot, sometimes the chestnut Sir Galahad, but 


The Horse 267 


three removes in descent from the immortal 
Lexington. Light-Foot had the heels — she 
could leave any of the rest yards behind, but 
she was not so stout-hearted as the colts. In 
the beginning everything ran. It was laugh- 
able to see the big brood mares lumbering 
prankily forward, looking over the shoulder 
at their foals. For a little way the brood 
mares could go with the best, but mother- 
love hampered them inconveniently. 

One after another dropped out, and went 
to grazing, until maybe there were but three 
contenders left. Then came the real pinch. 
It was marvellous to see the blood things, un- 
girthed, unreined, unbitted, without whip or 
spur, lie down to it, stretching till they almost 
lay flat on earth, eyes flaming, ears laid back, 
straining nerve and sinew to the uttermost in 
big greyhound leaps. Sometimes these last 
contenders went twice about at that heart- 
breaking pace. Oftener it lasted but through 
a half-round. If one or the other drew two 
clear lengths ahead he checked, flung up his 
head, turned it sidewise, and nickered shrill 
triumph all across the field. Then he went 
off at a dainty mincing run, head and tail in 
air, punctuating his running with little side- 
wise jumps. The lifted head and tail are 
enormously characteristic of horseflesh after 
a quick triumph — so characteristic, in fact, 


268 Next to the Ground 


scrub racers, known otherwise as quarter 
horses, have earned the cant name of “ cock- 
tails.” 

It is a far cry from quarter-racing to the 
mixed drink accepted the world over as Amer- 
ica’s glorious contribution to the things that 
slake a thirst. Notwithstanding they hang 
together. Quarter-racing was the favorite 
sport of tavern gentry in days before the Revo- 
lution. Almost any horse with four legs and 
a tail, could be patched and pampered to show 
a decent quarter of a mile, though he might 
not be able to goayard beyond. Thus “ cock- 
tails’? abounded; thus also mine hostess at 
any fair inn knew all about them. It was 
one of these hostesses who mixed for Wash- 
ington and his staff, drinks of excellent Hol- 
lands savored and flavored with various 
home-brewed cordials. ‘ Drink!” she said, 
nodding her head, and setting her arms akimbo, 
over flowered short-gown and decent stuff 
petticoat : “ Drink lads! Lord ’t will make ye 
all feel as sassy as a cock-tail.” At least, thus 
saith tradition. The indisputable fact is : the 
name, however given, has stuck. 

Cock-tails and their like have given further 
to common speech the picturesquely express- 
ive phrase “a wild goose chase.” It is in all 
mouths, yet not one in a million knows that 
the original wild-goose chase was a scrub-race 


The Horse 269 


in which the leading rider set the course, and 
aimed to make it include as many desperate, 
dangerous and cramped leaps as_ possible. 
Whoever rode it, keeping forty yards ahead, 
funking at no fence however stiff, won what- 
ever stake was up. Wild goose chasing was 
popular in England and America throughout 
the eighteenth century. Ireland clung to it 
even after that date. Rough sport, spiced with 
danger, it is yet a question if it was more risky 
than Polo, or as much so as the steeplechasing 
still in high favor. 

Herd horses gossip dopether like a whole 
sewing society. Joe and Patsy were sure of 
that when they saw Whip-Lash standing in 
the shade, her head close to two or three others, 
tossing it lightly now and then, mumbling the 
lips faintly, and making little gurgling noises. 
Sometimes if strange horses passed on the mill 
road Whip-Lash neighed a greeting. If the 
stranger answered, the rest neighed back. But 
if the stranger neighed first, the reply was apt 
to be a chorus of whinnies, but they were 
non-committal, not warm and welcoming, such 
as greeted Joe when he went to them with the 
salt basket on his arm. At the sound of either 
wheels or hoofs, the herd, especially the brood 
mares, pricked up ears, listening intently for 
halfa minute. Thenif nothing developed out 
of the common they fell again to grazing. But 


270 Next to the Ground 


a led horse, a bunch of cattle, a wagon loaded 
with live stock, or big bright red farm machin- 
ery, even a mare with a young colt at her side, 
drew the whole herd tothe fence, there to run 
up and down, peering curiously across, and 
sometimes showing a wavering inclination to 
break out. 

Whip-Lash was a fine hunter, but her mas- 
ter had not always time to follow the hounds. 
If she heard them in stall she began to neigh 
and paw; if running out, she went after them, 
no matter what fences stood in the way. She 
kept close upon the dogs, but not too close, 
and was commonly in at the death. After it, 
she came home, but not with the guilty and 
appealing air she wore upon returning from a 
purposeless breaking out. Instead herhead was 
high — she whinnied when she came to the 
gate, and stood patiently for it to be opened, 
though it would have been nothing for her to 
jump over it. Once inside she looked expect- 
antly at her master, whisking her tail nattily, as 
who should say : “ You see, I am keeping up 
our credit, no matter how much trouble it 
may be.” 

Her master never scolded her. He knew 
what is bred in the bone is bound to come out 
in the flesh, also in the spirit. Whip-Lash 
came ofa famous hunting strain. Neither did 
he scold her when she got lonesome and ran 


The Horse 271 


away. It was not often she had the home 
paddock all to herself, but whenever she did, 
she went over the fence and off for a good gos- 
sip with old man Shack’s flea-bitten gray 
beast. The gray was disreputable in looks as 
his owner — still he had had wide experience 
— he had been withthe old man throughout his 
last four moves, so no doubt knew many very 
entertaining things to tell. 

Horses have very sensitive palates. If ac- 
customed to soft water, as of a pond or cistern, 
they will cross running limestone water with- 
out touching it, even when very thirsty. In 
grazing they also discriminate, always choos- 
ing the short, soft grass of the hillsides rather 
than the lush growth of the swalesand bottoms. 
They love sweet things, and very bitter ones. 
When they break into an orchard, they will 
feed upon ripe fruit, though green may be 
much plentier, and take sweet apples before 
sour ones, even riper and mellower. They 
dearly love the bark upon peach-boughs in the 
second year of growth, also the bark upon 
poplar poles, and the fibrous inner bark of red 
oak. Apple bark they will strip off in big 
mouthfuls with their sharp cutting teeth, but 
spit out as soon as they begin fairly to taste it. 
They browse fairly well, but care little for any 
wooded forage after the budded stage. At 
work they will nip almost any green thing 


272 Next to the Ground 


within reach, though they may drop the nibble 
as soon as cropped. 

A shy colt is much easier broken than a 
tame one. A pet colt, in fact, nearly always 
turns out to be a stubborn and ill-tempered 
horse. ‘They are the hardest of all to break. 
Patsy insisted that was because the breakers 
did not reason with them, as she herself did 
with Light-Foot, but she could not bring her 
father round to her way of seeing it. So she 
was forced to content herself with salting the 
pretty fellows, and teaching them to come at 
her whistle to the fence and eat apples from 
her hand. Sometimes that made Light-Foot 
jealous enough to charge down upon the knot 
of youngsters and chase them away. Light- 
Foot was the least bit a vixen, but Patsy could 
catch her anywhere — unless the mare saw the 
bridle. Then she ran, tossing up contemp- 
tuous heels, though after a while she let herself 
be cornered, caught, and bridled. 


The Oaks 


Chapter XII 


VERY manner of green 

wood is a true land of 
faery, but for subtilely 
varied charm the oak 
wood leads all. Oaks of 
even the same sort are 
individual to the degree 
of idiosyncrasy. How 
much more so then the lithe white oak 
against the brash and burly red, the canny post 
oak compared to the splendid unthrift of the 
black? Oaks all, in bark, in leaf, in fruit, 
in manner of growth, touch, taste, smell, 
color, they are as unlike one to another as to 
all other trees. 

By their seat you may know them. Post 
oak pre-empts thin gravelly ridges, and dis- 
putes swampy flats with the water oak, and 
swamp hickory, though you find it inter- 
mingled wherever oaks have root. White 
oak, on the other hand, loves a deep soil, warm, 
light, well-drained, sloping, and full of pebbles. 


276 Next to the Ground 


So does the bastard white oak, whose pedigree 
is blurred with a post oak cross. The won- 
der is that blossoming, as the oaks do before 
the leaves come out, with such richness of 
tasselled fringes on every twig, such clouds 
of pollen as the south winds shake out of the 
fringes, there are any oaks still true to name, 
growing up after the manner of their parent 
stems with never a blot on the scutcheon. 
The secret lies most likely in the fact that 
the fringes are wholly staminate — the young 
ovules lie so snugly scaled about. The curl- 
fringes come out every March in undi- 
minished numbers. Whether or no the mast 
hits depends not upon them, but upon the 
number of pistillate flowers. Sometimes that 
number is very small — at others a hard frost 
destroys the ovules. In either case there is 
no mast worth mention. A squirrel even 
may have to travel a league between the find- 
ings of his breakfast and his dinner. 

A clown among oaks is the black-jack, the 
genuine scrub oak. ‘The trunk is so crooked 
woodsmen vow it takes it half an hour after it 
has been cut down to find out how it can lie 
still. It is knottier than it is crooked, with 
very thick bark roughly clotted all over. As 
to grain, it has none worth the name. A rail 
or lath split from it with infinite pains might ° 
serve for a giant’s corkscrew. As it grows, 


The Oaks 2977 


small branches develop all round, standing 
stiffly out at almost exact rightangles. They 
break through the bark as water shoots, 
instead of growing naturally by partition of 
the trunk proper. After a few years they die, 
but do not break off and have done with it. 
Instead they shed twigs, bark, and sap-wood, 
yet persist as to the heart, standing out all 
along the trunk like bluntish iron pegs. 

Black-jack rots quicker than any other 
oak, and burns more slowly. Tradition says 
that in the day of slaves, one particularly 
griping master promised his black people: 
«“ Christmas as long as the back-log lasted.” 
Then the wood-choppers laid their heads 
together, sought out the biggest, gnarliest 
black-jack upon the place, cut a back-log 
from it, soaked the log in the pond for a 
week, then rolled it in triumph to the great 
house, and laid it behind the firedogs. There 
it hissed and sputtered and smouldered through 
a fortnight —until two days after Twelfth 
Night, to be exact—in spite of all the 
hickory sticks and oak logs, and kindling 
truck, and dry chips, the master of the great 
house piled upon it. A grim man, withal 
waggish, he saw the humor of the situation, 
and rewarded his black people for thus out- 
witting him, with a fine supper and an extra 
stiff dram all round. 


278 Next to the Ground 


The black-jack is twice a paradox. It 
grows upon the very richest land fringing . 
about the barrens, which are a sort of glori- 
fied prairie, yet belying their fatness by its 
starveling size and scant coarse mast. The 
leaves are likewise coarse, clumsily lobed, very 
thick, and so varnished rain sounds upon them 
almost as on a roof. But when frost comes 
the tree is transfigured. For six weeks it 
wears a royal robe, a winding sheet of the 
richest, the most glowing ruby-red, so royal, 
so glowing it puts every other red to shame. 

A white oak well situated is never less than 
beautiful, but most of all in early spring and 
fall. Before the curls are all down it is full 
of young leaves, covered all over with silver 
down. The leaves and their stalks are of 
the tenderest live-red. The tree shows likea 
huge knot of bloom upon the face of the 
greening wood. The young leaves grow 
magically. By time they are as big as rabbits’ 
ears they begin to pale. Next day they show 
the most delicate silver-green. The lobes are 
so finely cut half grown, their shadow at mid- 
day might serve as a pattern for lace. Even 
when full grown they are lighter green than 
those of other oaks. In the fall they turn 
grayish crimson on the varnished upper sides, 
clear silver underneath. 

White oak timber is the toughest and most 


The Oaks 279 


elastic among oaks. So elastic, indeed, that it 
is not well to use long beams of it, unless 
they are supported. Its tensile strength is 
enormous, but it gives so much under loads 
as to throw things higher out of plumb. 
But for bending and warping it has no equal. 
Old time shipbuilders swore by it —it was 
the very thing for sheathing hulls, flooring 
decks, or making handy boats. Inland tim- 
ber workers in small ways also found it a 
godsend. They made thin tough. splints 
from it to weave into baskets, bottom chairs, 
knot into muzzles, and do a hundred other 
things. “Then from seasoned sticks of it they 
turned wagon spokes and felloes, to say 
nothing of riving pipe-staves for shipping down 
the river to New Orleans, whence they went 
further to the wine-makers of France. 
Beyond that, white oak acorns are the big- 
gest, and far and away the handsomest of all 
that grow in the woods. ‘They are very 
long — more than an inch, set in beautiful 
shallow cups, finely scaled outside, and grow 
singly or in pairs, in extra mast years in 
threes, all along last year’s twigs. The acorn 
hulls proper are a rich glossy brown, with a 
round orange-yellow spot at bottom, where 
the nut grew into the cup. The shell is 
thin, with a white furry lining upon the inner 
side. The kernel is richly yellow, inside a 


280 Next to the Ground 


transparent brown skin. It is sweetish, with 
alittle rough tang at the last. Squirrels and 
hogs eat it greedily —children even do not 
despise it. Growing, the acorns are pale- 
green, the cups bright brown. At ripeness 
the acorns darken, and the cups lighten to a 
fine fawn-gray. 

Oak galls are curious things, coming it is 
said from the stinging of an unfolding leaf 
by a peculiar oak-gall insect. The white 
oak is almost solitary in that it bears two 
distinguishable sorts of galls. One is round 
and fuzzy, as big as a guinea egg, white with 
red flecks all over, solid, partly edible and 
sweetish-sour to the taste. It grows at the 
end of a young shoot, with no sign of a leaf 
anywhere about. This is also the habit of 
the “ devil-thumb,” the gall of the black-jack. 
The devil-thumb is smooth, deep-green, coni- 
cal, sharply pointed, and borne most plenti- 
fully by the shoots springing up around a 
black-jack stump. The fuzzy white oak 
galls are also most numerous upon such 
second growth. The smooth ones, which 
are about the size of a big marble, form 
underneath perfect leaves high in the top of 
the tree, and are seldom discovered until the 
leaves fall. 

Description and habit fit exactly the post- 
oak gall. In every other point the two trees 


The Oaks 281 


are unlike. Post oak never grows tall, even 
in rich land. White oaks easily reach a 
hundred feet. White oaks are grayish pink 
at the heart, and have very smooth whitish- 
brown bark. Post oaks are rough barked, 
light gray on the trunks and almost white on 
the branches. Russet is in fact the post oak’s 
color-note. The leaves turn yellow, then 
brown, and hang on well through the winter. 
The sapwood has a yellowish tinge through 
its white, and the heart is grayish yellow, with 
marblings of black. It is the most lasting 
of all wood out in the weather — hence in- 
deed the name —post oak. Its habit of 
growth is branchy and round-headed, the 
branches spread far and droop almost to the 
ground wherever they have room. Post oak 
acorns are tiny, with shells almost black, set 
in the daintiest possible cups, and clustered 
three to six on a stalk. They are sweeter 
than white oak acorns, but have a stronger 
astringent under-tang. 

The over-cup oak presents the strongest 
possible contrast to the post oak’s fairy fruit. 
‘It bears single acorns sparsely, big lumpish 
brown things, spongy of hull, bitter as to 
kernel, but sunk in. the most beautiful cups, 
mossed all about the edges with richly crimped 
brown fringe. The acorn indeed is all that 
differentiates the over-cup from an indiffer- 


282 Next to the Ground 


ently grown red or turkey oak. Though it 
loves the waterside, and is rarely found out 
of alluvial bounds, it does as little credit 
as the black-jack to the rich earth which 
mothers it. 

The red oak is a yeoman bold, ruddy only 
at the heart. His leaves come out a pert, 
glaring green, of coarse texture and fuzzy all 
over. By and by the fuzz flies away, and 
then, for a little while, the woods roads are 
unbearable. The fuzz is warranted to set 
eyes and noses watering after the first three 
good whiffs. The galls are round and hol- 
low, likewise coarsely rough, and so plenti- 
ful even half a gale sends them down in 
dozens. Red oak acorns are bitter, with 
chestnut-brown hulls deep set in light-brown 
cups, with, like all other acorns, the orange- 
yellow mark at the bottom. They have also 
butter-yellow kernels, which change to pinky- 
white after lying on the ground all winter. 
The change means sprouting. The sprout 
comes out of the cracked hull from the 
blossom end, where in every sort of acorn 
there is a tiny knob-like point. From this 
point, the root creeps down, the little plumule, 
that will be later a stem, up. If the oaklet 
escapes with its life, it may have four leaves 
and stand as high as your hand by next 
fall. 


The Oaks 283 


Oaks should be planted acorns — never 
transplanted. They strike a strong taproot 
down,down. Transplanting destroys it. ° Per- 
haps the fact accounts for the old “ gentle- 
man’s superstition ” against digging up an oak, 
though the assigned reason was that either 
the planted or the planter, the tree or the 
man, was bound to die within a year because 
of the planting. A sprouting acorn may be 
lifted almost carelessly, dropped in the pocket, 
kept there all day, then planted, yet thrive 
afterward. 

Red oaks are, as becomes yeomen, sturdily 
adaptable, growing branchy where they can, 
slim and tall where they must. They thrive 
upon land of every sort except swamps and 
sour crawfishy spots — there water oaks 
crowd them out. They are further quick- 
growing, making thick new layers of sapwood 
each year, to replace the sap-layer mysteri- 
ously changed to heart. The sap is clear 
white, the heart richly ruddy. Both chip 
freely, and split still more freely. ‘The 
puncheon floors, which were signs of luxu- 
rious enterprise in pioneer cabins, were almost 
invariably split from red oak trunks. It is 
the coarse grain due to free growth which 
makes red oak timber split so much more 
readily than white or post oak. The bastard 
white oak, which is a true white oak, except 


284 Next to the Ground 


in the darker color of its bark and the fact 
that its leaves are green in spring and turn 
yellow in the fall, splits easily, once you 
have it started, and with a perfectly true 
cleavage, although it owns the solidest, closest- 
grained timber of them all. 

Red oak bark stands next to chestnut oak 
for tanning. It is also good for dyeing, 
furnishing either a reddish tan color, or a 
smoky-gray, according to whether the dye is 
set with copperas or alum. The inner bark 
infused in cold water, is the sovereign’st thing 
for sore throats, besides a fine tonic. As 
to the timber the name of its uses is legion. 
It furnishes rails without number, house 
logs, sills, plates, beams, boards, staves, barn 
wood and firewood without end. Red oak 
is truly the bone and sinew of the woodlands. 
A health and good luck to him who either 
plants it or spares what is self-planted. 

Turkey oak is, after a sort, the red oak’s 
country cousin, full of family likeness, but 
rougher as to bark and stems and leaves, 
also coarser as to timber, and addicted to 
warty gnarls of a size and ugliness no well- 
bred oak should cherish. In the sapling stage, 
its leaves are particularly ill-lobed. That is 
however, true of all except Spanish oak sap- 
lings. A sapling, by the way, gets its name 
from the fact that it is still all sapwood, too 


The Oaks 285 


young to have a heart worth reckoning. 
Old timbermen say that the thickness of 
sapwood is always the same. In the 
merchantable tree it seems a mere skin 
round the heartwood, yet is really as wide 
across as it was when the heart was but a 
slender dark streak down the middle of a 
white stem. All real hard wood comes out 
of the heart. For riving, as boards, staves, 
tobacco sticks, and so on, the core of the 
heart will not answer. It is full of scars 
and knots, left by outgrown and overgrown 
branches. A tree, like a man, keeps deep 
in the heart ineffaceable records of every 
vital event. The scars, the knots, may be 
overgrown, buried under inches of sound, 
straight-grained wood, but remain just the 
same. Sapwood rots much sooner than 
heartwood —hence extra careful builders 
split off the sap-edge from board timber 
before riving it. ‘Thus the boards are nar- 
row, but a roof of them lasts twice as long 
as one of ordinary boards. 

Spanish oak and black oak are close kin. 
Both love rich, warm land inclining to be 
moist; both grow very straight, and very 
tall, not branching considerably until well 
up in air. Neither is very umbrageous. 
The branches fork sharply instead of stand- 
ing straight out or drooping. The leaves 


286 Next to the Ground 


are very finely cut—the most lacy indeed 
among all oak foliage. Both have grayish- 
black bark, thinner and less rough than the 
bark of red oak, and nearly always richly 
dappled with gray’ and green splotches of 
lichen. The main difference is in the acorns, 
and the color of the leaves in autumn. 
Black-oak acorns are longish, with black- 
and-brown striped shells, and set in rather 
shallow delicate cups. Spanish oak acorns 
are also in striped shells, but with deeper 
cups, and the deepest orange-yellow rounds 
at bottom. They are sweeter than those 
of the black oak, hence are often called 
“chinquapin acorns.” School children nib- 
ble them, but do not choose them for weap- 
ons in an acorn battle. It is not that they 
are too small, but some way they are 
not easily shot after the manner of a mar- 
ble; hence but poor ammunition. 

Frost turns the black oak a rich, dull crim- 
son, the Spanish oak, a clear, green-mottled 
yellow. Thus the trees, growing cheek-by- 
jowl, dapple gorgeously the autumn woods. 
Both trees are prolific in galls. The galls are 
practically indistinguishable, round, growing 
out from a fragment of leaf, smooth, bright- 
green, glistening, as big as the biggest glass 
marble, faintly crinkled over the outer sur- 
face, and hollow except for spider-webby rays 


The Oaks 287 


running from the green shell to a central 
core. ‘The shell is very tender, turning black 
almost at a touch. It is edible if one has 
a palate for faint sweet with a touch of 
tannin under it. Spanish oaks rival the 
white oaks in producing a second sort of 
gall, one the size of your thumb’s end, 
smooth, shiny, almost woody, of a mingled 
red and white all over. ‘Ink-balls,’’ country 
children call them, with some show of rea- 
son. Ink can be made from them by put- 
ting in a little copperas or bluestone. Besides, 
the ink-balls are cousins-german to the Aleppo 
nut galls, that were, in the days before coal- 
tar came to its kingdom, a great factor in 
making the very best black ink. 

Black oak and Spanish furnish timber of 
the best, since, though they grow big and tall, 
they grow slow enough to make wood of fine 
closegrain. The sap is cream white, the hearts 
ruddily dark. Both work up excellently, and 
when green make the very best of firewood. 
Seasoned, they burn too free. It may be worth 
while to add that green wood, though not so 
easy to set on fire, once it is afire, makes a 
hotter glow and lasts longer than dry. 

Chestnut oaks did not grow upon White 
Oaks plantation. Joe had heard they were 
very plenty upinthe mountains. He won- 
dered if they were in the least like the 


288 Next to the Ground 


uncouth water oaks. The water oak has a 
trick of sending up twin trunks or even tri- 
ple ones, beset all their length with stubby 
outstanding branches. Below the tops the 
branches are mostly dead, like those of the 
black-jack, only longer and hornier. The 
trunks are lichen-covered almost to the top. 
Gray-beard moss also fringes the boughs along 
their under sides. The moss is not a strang- 
ling parasite as is the moss of Mississippi 
swamps, still it rarely flourishes upon oaks 
in high condition. It may be the water 
oak’s chosen seat, damp fenny ground, is in 
large part the moss’s reason for being. 
Water oak foliage is finely cut, the leaves 
thin, very glossy, and of a deep green, but so 
sparse the tree makes no shade worth the 
name. It rarely bears acorns, though it 
blooms profusely and often sets a crop of 
fruit. About mid-May the acorns blast and 
drop. So do the galls, which, however, are 
few. Scattered remnant acorns are long, 
almost black, deeply cupped, and intensely 
bitter. As timber the water oak comes close 
to the post oak— it is hard, heavy, close- 
grained, lasting, ill to split, and worse to 
burn, but when you have built a fire of it, 
you may turn your mind to other things, 
secure of half a day’s warmth. 


Fox-lunting 


Chapter XIII 


EYNARD the fox is a wise 

beast and cunning — still 

D there is reasonable doubt as 

to some stories told of him. 

As, for example, how he rids 

| himself of fleas. Tradition 

avouches that he goes about 

thorny pastures where sheep have been rob- 

bed by thorns of wool, gathers the locks one 

after another until his mouth is full, then 

seeks out a still pool, and backs gradually into 

it, until he is in water, all but his eyes, nose, 

and mouth. Now since fleas, it is well known, 

cannot abide water, they run before it, and 

take refuge in the wool. When the last one 

is safe there, Reynard the fox leaps ashore, 

frolicly spits the wool back into the water, 
and gallops away, flealess and happy. 

Most likely the tradition is apocryphal. 

But when it comes to luring foolish birds 

within reach, Reynard certainly does things 


292 Next to the Ground 


which give a color of possibility to the flea- 
story. Wild fowl—ducks and geese —are 
as curious as a village gossip. So are wild 
turkeys. Any strange sight draws them to 
circle about it, close and closer, peering and 
gabbling one to another after their various 
fashions. Some way Reynard knows their 
weakness. He takes advantage of it, by drop- 
ping flat upon the earth and lifting his tail at 
short intervals to wave it furiously back and 
forth. If he is after wild fowl, although he 
hates wetting more than his feet, he some- 
times plays in- shallows close to the bank, 
splashing, and standing momently upon his 
hind feet, making a pretense of snapping at 
something high above his head. The won- 
dering birds swim closer, and begin to chatter 
aloud. As he hears them Reynard plays more 
gently, and at last lies quite still, with only his 
eyes and nose above water. If the quacking 
and gabbling lessens he splashes again. But 
if the unwary flock comes within a jump of 
him, he makes the jump, snatches a bird by 
the neck, flings it over his shoulder by an 
adroit jerk, then runs as hard as he can. Usu- 
ally he gets off scot-free — the birds are too 
amazed to do more than quack. But some- 
times it happens that they fall upon the 
trickster, beak and wings, rapping him, jounc- 
ing him, trouncing him, till he is lucky if he 


Fox-Hunting 293 


can drop his prey and escape with a whole 
skin. 

Human wild fowlers have taken Reynard’s 
example to heart. Hence decoy dogs—small, 
reddish, supple fellows, much like a fox in 
looks, which are painfully trained to swim 
up and down, and in and out, of creeks and 
marshy estuaries, the haunts of web-foot 
things, splash water, play up and down, and 
move, half swimming, half wading, in the 
direction of the blinds, sure that the feathered 
flocks are swimming after. In the vernacular 
this is, “toling ducks.” The dogs are known 
familiarly as “the toler breed.” The breed 
and the practice are said to have originated 
along the English broads, whence they have 
been brought with so much else that is Eng- 
lish to American shallows both seaboard and 
inland. 

When wild turkeys are the game, Reynard 
lies down in a drift of leaves, rolls lightly, 
and kicks the leaves about at first, but only 
moves his tail after the birds begin to approach. 
He is careful not to lie down to windward of 
them — whether because he suspects them of 
noses to match his own, or because he knows 
they generally feed down wind, nobody can 
say. Some ways wild turkeys are as shrewdly 
wary as in others they are simple. If Rey- 
nard barked ever so low, they would be off 


294 Next to the Ground 


like the wind. It is to escape him and his 
sort that they roost so high. The young birds 
leave the ground at night at three days old, 
and at a week can hop and flutter to perches 
higher thana man’s head. At six weeks they 
go to the tree-tops as easily as the old birds. 
But neither old nor young perch in the high- 
est tips. They keep under thickly netted 
branches and almost invariably hug the tree- 
trunk, thus depriving owls and night-hawks 
of the flying impetus necessary to a success- 
ful strike. 

But they have no fear of the curious thing 
stirring there in the leaves, any more than 
they have of the fluttering red rag which sets 
turkeys, wild or tame, to gabbling and scold- 
ing with all their might. As the big birds run 
toward the leaf-stirrer they yelp and p-prut- 
prut angrily. As with the ducks, Reynard 
lies quiet until they come within range. He 
singles out a hen — he has no mind for run- 
ning weighted with a gobbler — snatches her, 
gives a quick crunch through the head, and 
gallops off, dragging the carcass until he can 
take time to fling it over his back. In some 
points he is a gentleman — especially as com- 
pared with the wild-cat, or the weasel. He 
always kills before eating, and kills only to 
eat. Wild-cats eat their prey alive, rending 
and tearing quivering flesh until by chance 


Fox-Hunting 295 


they strike a truly vital part. Weasels kill 
from pure blood-thirst, first sucking the blood 
of their victims, then finishing them with a 
bite through the base of the brain. Reynard 
returns again and again to prey partly eaten. 
Wild-cats will not touch it— each meal de- 
mands a fresh victim. And weasels not only 
make fresh kills, but kill, and kill, and kill, 
long after they are completely gorged with 
‘blood. 

A red fox sharp-set from long fasting will 
devour a whole goose or turkey. If occasion 
serves, he may kill and eat one chicken, then 
kill and half eat a second. But if he supped 
well last night, and for many nights before, 
hence is in generous condition, one chicken 
or half a goose suffices, though he may kill 
another and drag it home, then come back 
himself next night, either to finish a carcass, 
or to kill anew. Gray foxes are neither so 
big nor so rapacious as red ones. One full- 
grown chicken is their limit, or a nest of 
field-mice, or a brace of very young rabbits. 
It is a mistake to think of foxes as living high 
upon poultry the year round. They hunt the 
fields as sedulously as men do, and only per- 
mit themselves to feed on things tame and 
fatted when their favorite wild ones are not 
to be had. 


Gray foxes are most common in Tennes- 


296 Next to the Ground 


see, but there are regions where red ones have 
driven out the grays. The two sorts will 
not live in good fellowship and close neighbor- 
hood. All through the grass country, fox- 
hunting is a favorite sport. ‘There are few 
regular packs, but almost every place of conse- 
quence has a couple or two of hounds — 
sometimes half a dozen couple. Couple, it 
may be said, used in connection with dogs and 
hunting, never takes a plural. The phrase 
hunting in couples, is wrong — it should be 
hunting in couple. It derives, of course, 
from venery when stag and boar hounds were 
hunted in couple —that is in pairs with a 
short leash between the two collars — partly 
by way of keeping up their courage and their 
cry, partly also to show how excellently equal 
the kennel keepers had turned them out. It 
takes mighty well-broke dogs to run thus, one 
with another, each not only afire to follow 
and blood the quarry, but to do it ahead of 
the fellow at the other end of the string. 
Afield, Tennessee hounds are coupled only 
in name. Until twenty years back they were 
almost exclusively of the stout black-and-tan 
breed, or the stouter blue-mottled Virginia 
hunting strain. Latterly there is a sharp 
sprinkle of white-coated hounds, with black 
or liver or lemon spots. Black or lemon 
spots, or black spots turned up with lemon 


Fox-Hunting 297° 


around the edges, are most in favor. The 
spotted hounds are thought to be faster than 
the blacks or the blue-mottles. Certainly 
they are nothing like so pleasing to eye or ear. 
Shakespeare might have had the blue-mottles 
in mind when he wrote of hounds: 


“ With ears that sweep away the morning dew, 

Crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian 
bulls, 

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like 
bells, 


Each under each.” 


Since it is largely Shakespeare’s English 
which is spoken in Tennessee, it is not sur- 
prising to find there many dogs called by the 
names he has made immortal. Lady, Love- 
Locks, Sweet-Lips, Snow-Ball, Jupiter, Juno, 
Remus, Romulus, each and several are favor- 
ites; along with Ring, Rattler, Black-Eye, 
Beauty-Spot, Dancer, Dixie, Tiger, and Top- 
Knot. There are others much more common- 
place, but the rule of alliteration is almost 
invariable. No man thinks of keeping a 
single hound. Since he has at the least two, he 
gives them names that halloo well, one after 
the other. 

Fox-hunting has left its mark indelibly on 
life and language. He who talks of running 
riot, mouths a hunting phrase. Riot is tech- 


298 Next to the Ground 


nically hare, or rabbit scent. When the pack 
in full cry runs off on it, it is said to run riot. 
It is the same with running to earth and un- 
earthing. Under strict hunting-law, a fox 
going to earth — that is sheltering himself in 
a hole in the ground, outside the limits 
of the hunt, was safe for that chase. By 
comity of huntsmen, though, he might be 
scared out of the earth, unearthed, and run 
down. He must not however, be dug out. 
“ No spade in the hunting-field ” is hunting 
law, fixed as that of the Medes and Persians. 
Neither can a fox be found out of hunt-bounds 
— damages will lie against the hunt so finding. 
Anciently the finding was unkennelling. Now- 
adays when the fox goes away he is said to 
break cover. Since he was a beast of chase, 
along with buck, doe, badger or brock, mar- 
ten and roe, his flesh was ranked venison, 
although he was “a beast of stinking flight ” 
as opposed to such “ beasts of sweet flight ” 
as the hare and the hind. 

Tennessee fox-hunting is not a thing of 
pomp and circumstance. It turns out no gor- 
geous gentlemen in “pink and leathers,” 
neither does it demand a small fortune in- 
vested in hunters. Thhere is rarely a regular 
meet. Hunting begins in October, after the 
tobacco crop is well in the barn. Hounds 
and huntsmen racing through a field of ripe 


Fox- Hunting 299 


tobacco would leave little merchantable leaf 
behind. Runs commonly begin or end in 
the night. Preferably they begin then. Some 
shrewd hard rider, maybe, feels the stir of 
sporting blood along toward the first cock- 
crow. He gets up, feeds himself and his 
horse, mounts, and sets out, blowing his horn 
as he rides, with his own dogs leaping and 
howling at his heels, and other dogs answer- 
ing the horn, from all the neighboring farm- 
steads. 

He is not long lonely. Men come out of 
every gate he passes with fresh hounds howl- 
ing delight in their wake. Still the horn 
sounds, still the hounds answer it, in long 
drawn staccato chorus. By and by the riders 
reach likely ground and cast off. They are 
well-mounted. Even the common road stock 
has several crosses of blood. Soil, climate, 
and pastures help to insure condition — fur- 
ther the riders each and several, and their 
fathers before them, have known all about 
horses and riding ever since they knew any- 
thing. It is not long until the hounds, run- 
ning out in leaping circles upon either hand, 
strike the drag or cold trail, and open upon it. 
Every rider knows the tongue of his own 
hounds —the minute a challenge comes up 
wind, the challenger’s master answers with a 
ringing shout, calling the hound’s name, 


300 Next to the Ground 


and harking the pack after. The dogs run 
fast or slow according to scent and ground. 
If the trail is old — “faded,” say the hunters 
— the pace is slow, as it is also if the trail 
runs through thickets or over stony, broken 
ground. 

Scent will not lie on frozen ground, nor 
when it is dry and windy. The man who 
wrote : 


“ A southerly wind and a cloudy sky do pro- 


claim it a hunting morning” 


had assuredly himself “gone a-hunting and * 
catched a fox,” as G. Washington, Esq., puts 
it. It is under a mackerelled dawn sky, with 
steamy mists rising up in the swales, that 
dogs find best, follow best, and fill the 
heavens with their stirring bell-mouthed 
chorus. 

The full cry breaks out when the pack 
strikes the warmtrail. The cold trail is sim- 
ply the fox’s old track, made as he ran to or 
fro. The warm trail is his scent as he flees 
before. It is known otherwise as a scent 
breast-high, since the dogs need not stoop to 
find it but pick it up as they run, from tainted 
herbage and reeking air. Where he has choice 
of a course, a fox always goes down wind; 
thus he can run longer, and faster — thus too 
the scent is blown away from his pursuers. 


Fox- Hunting 308 


He makes straight for the handiest earth, but 
doubles before he has runamile. A curious 
thing is that he will not run along a footpath, 
yet shows no objection to racing down a trav- 
elled road. He knows where the pastures lie, 
and aims to strike them in doubling, so he 
can weave in and out among grazing beasts, 
particularly sheep, or cattle, confusing the scent 
so much it takes a keen-nosed dog to disen- 
tangle it. But he will not go into the pasture 
through a gap or over a stile. He slides 
shadow-like through the hedge or over the 
wall, or worms through cracks in the fence. 
Hard pressed he often lies down to rest in an 
embattled, thorny thicket. His hairy coat 
protects him against thorns that tear cruelly a 
hound’s satin skin. 

A gray fox may run one mile or ten before 
he gives up his brush. The brush — the tail 
— belongs to the rider first in at the death. 
Next in value are “ the pegs ” — the fore feet 
— after them, the “‘ mask ” — or scalp — and 
lowest of all, “« the pads ” — that is to say, the 
hind feet. A fox moving about is said to be 
“ on the pad ” —a phrase familiar to many as 
a cant synonym for much gadding about. If 
the cold trail is so little cold the hounds run 
along it crying as they run, the hunters know 
the quarry is on the pad —that is to say, he 
has not fed himself and lain down to rest — 


302 Next to the Ground 


also that they will not be able to “ jump him,” 
but must follow a running start. 

A red fox runs as long as there are men and 
dogs to follow. An especially game and wiry 
fellow may run across three counties, and 
break down as many packs coming in success- 
ively to chase him. It is accepted as a fact 
among Tennessee fox-hunters that without 
fresh dogs you may never hope to run downa 
red fellow. Notwithstanding, there is a story 
current there of a North Carolina pack master 
who went out one fine fall morning and gota 
big red fox afoot. The pack were all blue- 
mottles, in the pink of condition, thin as lath, 
but in hard muscle, and perfect as to wind and 
feet. The pack master rode a thoroughbred 
hunter, a son of the great Sir Archy — for all 
this happened in the good old, very old days. 
He rode with the nicest judgment, sparing his 
dogs and his mount all he might. ‘The hunt 
began about daylight in the extreme eastern 
edge of a county. At sundown, in spite of 
doubles, it crept over the lines of a second 
county into a third lying westerly. All but 
three dogs had turned tail, and were slinking 
home, hobbling on worn-out feet. The mas- 
ter followed for two hours longer guided by the 
baying of the three staunch ones ahead. Then 
he too gave up the chase, blew his horn in re- 
call, and sought shelter for the night. But 


Fox- Hunting 303 


no dogs came back to the horn, neither did 
he find any trace of them inthe morning. As 
he rode homeward he overtook two dogs, the 
leaders of the pack. A big bitch was still miss- 
ing. The pack master gave her up for lost. 
But six months later, chancing to go still fur- 
ther toward the west, he found his blue-mottle 
Lady, safe and much cherished in the hands 
of another pack master, who told him how, 
about such a date, his dogs had broken out in 
chase of a spent and draggled red fox, that 
could barely keep in front of a bitch as spent 
and draggled, which had yet no notion of 
quitting. This was about daylight. Evi- 
dently the fox had run all night after running 
all day. It was sixty odd miles, as the crow 
flies, from find to kill, with doubles to make 
it easily more than half as far again. At the 
end Lady’s feet were raw and bleeding — for 
a week she could do no more than crawl. She 
came to herself as to looks, and bred many 
fine whelps, but was never thereafter up to a 
hard run. 

Joe loved that story best of all his father 
told. His great-grandfather, you see, had 
been Lady’s master. Naturally, Joe was him- 
self an ardent fox-hunter, ready to ride and 
jump with the best of them. He loved, too, 
to read in his books all the niceties of the 
sport — though he was wise enough to keep 


304 Next to the Ground 


strictly to himself much of what he read 
there. The horns, the whoops, the yelling 
set his blood on fire. When he went to a 
reunion of the veterans and heard the “ rebel 
yell” from the lips of the very men who 
made it famous, he said to Patsy : “I know 
how that started. When our men went out 
to fight, they just had to holler like they had 
hollered when they went hunting.” Bigger 
and more distinguished listeners have noted 
the same fact — for fact it is — but Joe and 
Patsy did not know it. That wild keen cry- 
ing, utterly defiant of vowels and consonants, 
stirred them as speech or martial music could 
never do. When the yelling rose and fell, 
and then leaped suddenly as high as the sky, 
at sight of a riderless horse, a battle standard 
tattered until it was little more than a staff, 
tears rained down Patsy’s white cheeks, and 
though Joe clinched his hands and breathed 
very hard, all the world grew blurred and 
dim for at least a minute. 

The gorgeous tallyho’s name is another of 
the things due to fox-hunting. “ Tallyho!” is 
the cry when Reynard is sighted, as “Stole 
away !”” means that he has gone off unseen. 
Tallyho is a corruption or contraction of the 
Norman-French taillis hors —“out of the 
thicket.” After the cry came horn-blowing: 
Thus, when coaches were set up upon the 


Fox-Hunting 305 


public roads, with horns to blow at the stages, 
they came likewise to be known as tallyho 
coaches, and later as simply tallyhos. 

Dogs will not trail a she fox while she 
carries young. She foxes are properly vixens. 
Like mother possums, they have no tolerance 
for their mates in the den while the cubs are 
very small, though after a fortnight or so the 
mate is welcome, and does his full share of 
the feeding. Sometimes there are but two 
cubs in a litter; occasionally there are six. 
They are pretty creatures, sleek and dark, 
with spots all over their velvet coats, not 
lighter, but looking as though the velvet had 
been crushed so as to throw back the light at 
a different angle. The den is usually among 
rocks —any dry small cave, but a big hollow 
tree convenient to good feeding-ground is a 
great temptation. Foxes will kill and carry 
off young pigs, young lambs, and even attack 
a very young calf,—this, however, in the 
event of game becoming scarce. Rabbits, 
and every sort of bird, especially game birds, 
are very much more to their mind. 

They also eat moles, mice, and such small 
deer, besides nuts, berries, grapes, and even 
grain. Captive they grow very fond of corn 
bread, also of sweets, particularly honey. 
Some woodsmen even say that they despoil 
the humblebee’s grass-nest and suck the 


306 Next to the Ground 


honey he stores there in what looks like a 
cluster of waxen grapes. Fox cubs, which 
are littered in early spring, are full grown by 
October. They are frolic creatures, always 
rolling each other over or tumbling about the 
backs of indulgent parents. They come 
boldly out of the den before they are even 
steady upon their legs, and lie blinking in the 
sun or spatting with dainty paws at the bits 
of leaf the winds blow over. 

Old or young, foxes drink delicately. 
They will wade a considerable creek to slake 
thirst at the coldest spring within reach. 
Once well rid of family cares even the sedate 
mother fox is no more sedate. She sits in 
the sun upon a hillside playing with her tail, 
scolding and barking saucily at all the forest 
folk in sight. Sometimes she plants herself 
upon a rock jutting over a glassy pool, and 
surveys her own image in the water, licking 
her lips the while, and smoothing her coat 
with every mark of self-satisfaction. While 
suckling she lets herself go. At all other 
times her coat is spick and span. But she is 
far from a neat housekeeper. Possibly that 
is the reason that she has half a dozen caves 
of refuge all through the late summer and 
fall — also that she never rears the litter of 
successive years in the same den. She will 
scratch out a hole in a place exactly to her 


Fox-Hunting 307 


liking, but much prefers to be spared that 
labor. Altogether she is a shrill-voiced and 
shrewish entity, withal somewhat blood- 
thirsty. But, as Joe said, what else could you 
expect of a creature hunted ever since creation 
began ? 


The Cow 


Chapter XIV 


AMBHE earth hath in it the 
virtue of all herbs.” Thus 
saith an ancient worthy. 
No doubt he had in mind 
the quick spring earth, 
washed clean by peniten- 
g@ tial floods, poignantly alive 
with the Tvening of the frost. Even the 
smell of it is vital — especially waterside 
earth. As you inhale it you cease to marvel 
at the forwardness of waterside growth. 
Trees of every sort there are half in leaf 
when their kin-folk upland are barely bud- 
ded. As for the low things, shrubby alders 
and slim honey-dew trees, they stir before 
the swallow dares even to dream of flight 
and take earlier than March winds with 
their beauty. 

The honey-dew tree is hardly a tree at 
all, seldom gaining a height of fifteen feet. 
The bark is smoothish and silver-gray, the 


03 Next to the Ground 


stems inclined to curves, the leaves like 
those of a hickory, only less finished and 
of coarser cells. Against the memory of 
the leaves, the blossoms are anachronistic — 
they are so fine, so delicate, so rarely scented. 
They grow in long sprays that recall the 
sprays of a white star-flowered orchid, with 
their golden eyes, and crimson flecks at the 
base of each petal. They come out all over 
the tree, while it is bare of leaves, clothing it 
in beauty as of the starry night. Sometimes 
the blooming is so rathe, a quick sleet falls 
upon it—then indeed is the tree a fairy 
spectacle. It does not grow plentifully, even 
at the waterside, and very rarely ever away 
from it. 

The groundlings — windflowers, wild flax, 
wild violets, harebells, larkspur and running 
fern, push up as the snow melts. So does 
the grass. Blue grass haunts and clings to 
the light earth of waste spaces along the 
creek channels. Nimble Will grows with it, 
and in the wettest earth, low branchy clumps 
of a dwarf reed. Occasionally there are 
rushes, but the muskrats give account of 
them, serving them as, later on, they will 
serve the young corn in the bottoms. Just as 
the corn-stalks are ready to tassel, the muskrats 
gnaw them down, drag them to the water, 
and float them upstream or down to their 


The Cow 913 


favorite feeding-places. The feeding-place 
is commonly a bare rock. The muskrat sits’ 
up on it, with a bit of rush or young corn 
stalk between his paws, peels and eats it, 
much as a child peels and eats a roasted sweet 
potato. 

Still cattle do not miss the rushes — there 
is so very much else. White Oaks cattle 
never ran out, except in the early spring. 
Trampling ruins the thickest and best estab- 
lished sward if the ground underneath is like 
a wet sponge. It is a waste, withal danger- 
ous, to graze clover until the early heads are 
well in blossom. That usually comes to 
pass between the first and the middle of May. 
Even then it is unsafe to turn cattle upon it 
until the dew is well off, or indeed for longer 
than an hour of grazing, if they are just off 
dry feed, hence sharp set for green. 

Cattle, like sheep, like all the ruminants 
in fact, have no teeth in the front of the 
upper jaw. They crop and browse by press- 
ing grass and buds against their sharp cutting 
lower teeth, with the upper lip and the tongue. 
The cropping is then rolled into morsels — 
cuds — and swallowed without chewing. 
The cuds go down into an outer stomach, 
whence they are raised to be chewed at 
leisure. Clover too young, too damp, or 
too greedily swallowed, is apt to ferment and 


314 Next to the Ground 


produce bloating. ‘That is to say, in fer- 
menting it sets free quantities of gas — then 
the poor beast swells violently, falls, rolls, 
gets up again, lows, staggers, falls, and dies, 
unless help comes, and quickly. If the 
bloating is discovered in time, it may be 
checked by running the beasts hard, until 
they are ready to drop. Drenches some- 
times avail, but the sure if painful remedy is 
the trocar—a sharp spike-like knife with 
which to pierce the animal’s side just back 
of the right foreshoulder. It must go deep 
enough to cut the outer stomach, yet leave 
the inner one intact; further it must be so 
skilfully directed it will miss a vital part. 
Major Baker thought prevention ever: so 
much better than such cure. So his cattle 
ranged for six weeks up and down the creek 
valley, getting their fill of tender watery green 
things which could not possibly do them 
harm, 

Cattle browse by nature and graze by 
opportunity. A richly budded thicket tempts 
them more than the tenderest sweet grass. 
They nip off not only buds but lengths of 
slender stem as well. When the buds grow 
to young shoots, the tongue comes into play. 
A cow’s tongue is not only her curry-comb, 
— long, flexile, muscular, and viscid, it can 
draw into her mouth herbage beyond reach 


The Cow 315 


and capacity of the mouth itself. Sometimes 
when an especially tempting, especially well- 
leafed stalk hangs just out of reach, Sis Cow 
rears awkwardly, licks her tongue ground it, 
and holds it until she comes doWn on all 
fours, so has a purchase to snatch it off. 

Shrubs abounded in the creek valley, so 
did grassy banks, and flats set thick with 
May-apples. These the cattle nipped if 
they came upon them just as the leaves were 
pushing through, folded like fairy umbrellas 
of shot silk, green and crimson. If the 
umbrella escaped to unfold as flat round- 
notched pale-green leaves, with waxen apple- 
scented blossoms set singly upon the stalks 
underneath, the beasts did no more than 
trample them down. It was the same with 
the pawpaw thickets — budded tips were 
greedily snatched, although they came out 
later than the most. But after the curious 
blackish-red blooms opened, such tips as 
remained were safe against browsing. Paw- 
paw blossoms like those of the May-apple, 
breathe an odor reminiscent of the ripe fruit, 
which possibly is not to the ruminant mind 
and nostrils. 

There was an old field or two along the 
creek. Pioneer settlers hugged the wooded 
streamsides, thus assuring themselves fuel and 
water, though the barrens and the farther 


316 Next to the Ground 


prairies invited with land all but ready for the 
plough. The bottoms were mostly still in 
cultivation, but some upland stretches lay 
out, and were swarded over with blue grass, 
battling for root-hold against the ever-present 
sedge. It was not so unequal a battle as it 
looked. If the sedge was strong and flinty, 
with feather-winged seed, the blue grass had 
stay to match the best thorough-bred that 
ever grazed on it. Moreover, it throve 
under trampling, as sedge could not do. 
Between them they managed to make the 
old fields the assembly-place of cattle for, 
miles and miles about. 

One of the old fields had big gnarled 
apple trees dotted over half of it. They 
stood, some of them, four-square, and all of 
them in such manner you could see they 
were the remnant of orchard rows. They 
did not bear much fruit, and what did form 
was sour and apt to mildew ; but, for all that, 
they bloomed royally as certain as the spring 
came round. They had wide-spread droop- 
ing branches, marked all along the under 
edge, as high as cattle could reach, with dead 
twigs killed by continuous cropping. Above 
that the round heads were half-globes of 
netted stems and leaves, so thick no sunray 
pierced through even at the hottest high 
noon. Cattle came to lie in the shade, 


The Cow 317 


chewing the cud contentedly, and flicking 
away chance flies with lazy flourishes of the 
tail tip. There was a path from the creek 
to almost every tree. Cattle, indeed, are as 
great path-makers as hogs or ants. They 
walk in single file, one treading almost upon 
the heels of the other. In every herd, how- 
ever small, there is a queen. Commonly it 
is the bell cow. In the old field there was 
of course disputed supremacy. Three bell 
cows sometimes chewed the cud of peace in 
the shade of a single tree. More commonly 
there was a bell cow to a tree, monarch of 
all she surveyed, within its circle of shadow. 
When she rose up, the rest obediently fol- 
lowed her example; when she browsed, they 
also browsed; when she turned her head, 
nose upward, sniffed, lowed, and began the 
march home, her companions followed in her 
footsteps. Outlanders also laid a course for 
their own proper pens. 

Sometimes, when grazing was lush and 
extra plenty, the home-going began about 
four o’clock. Oftener sundown was the 
starting hour. For a while the going was 
slow — slow enough to nip grass and- swing- 
ing bushes in passing. But as dusk thickened, 
the leader was apt to break into a furious 
running, which set her bell wildly jangling, 
and brought the herd after her at speed, low- 


318 Next to the Ground 


ing, and crowding one upon another, in place 
of keeping the proper orderly rank. Then 
the black milk-maids waiting in the cow-pens 
nodded as they heard the bell jangling, and 
said to the calf-minders: “Ah, ha! Old Sis 
Bell Cow comin’ home a-gilpin! Reckon 
she sees ha’nts out dar in the woods.”’ Since 
the milk-maids were wholly unlettered and 
had never heard of John Gilpin, it is at least 
a tenable supposition that gi/pin, an old Eng- 
lish word for rapid motion, was chosen by 
Cowper as an emblematic name for his hero 
of the fast and furious ride. 

In the farmlands a calf’s weaning age is 
indefinite; it runs from six months to two 
years. At each milking the calves are 
suckled. If there are cows a plenty, a young 
calf gets two teats — that is, all the milk in 
them, besides sucking the other two, until 
the froth ropes from his mouth. Let alone, 
he will hang on to the first teat seized, until 
milk no longer flows freely into his mouth, 
then change to the others, one after another, 
and at last go back to the first, sucking it 
till it looks like a dry wrinkled whiffet, then 
hunching vigorously to make the last drops 
of cream come down. Cows can and do 
hold up their milk. To do it, they stand 
with the backbone slightly arched, the feet 
braced and squarely under them, instead of 


The Cow 319 


spread out behind and before. In the udder, 
as in the pail, cream always rises to the top. 
As fast as the milk is secreted, specific grav- 
ity begins to work, setting the fats of it above 
the watery parts. This is the reason close 


, ,Stripping is so essential to big butter-yields. 


It is also the reason that, as the calves get 
old enough to eat grass, they are suckled all 
round —that is to say, have their mouths 
pulled quickly from teat to teat, so as to 
draw away the low milk, and leave the cream 
for the pail. 

Sis Cow does not stomach this robbery of 
her calf. She knows intuitively how much 
more nourishing and heartening is her cream 
than mere milk. So, when milking proper 
begins, at first she gives down freely enough, 
then all at once the flow checks — milk as 
she may, the milker gets but a faint white 
frothy trickle. Then it is strategy meets 
strategy. The calf, which has been pulled 
off and either roped or turned outside the 
cow-pen, is fetched back and allowed to 
suck a bit. Sis Cow spreads her feet, mocs 
content, and licks her baby, seeming to thrill 
happily at his vigorous hunchings. In a 
twinkle he is dragged off, and there is the 
milker, quart-cup in hand, intent to fill it 
with the precious strippings, and save them 
for her churn. Plain milk, she holds, is 


320 Next to the Ground 


plenty rich enough for drinking, either by 
children or calves. 

There were thickets round about the old 
field of the apple trees and skirting woods 
beyond. That made it a favorite place for 
cows to drop and hide their calves. They 
stole away from the herd to some sequestered 
spot, were invisible for twenty-four hours, 
then came pacing back to graze with the 
rest. Since wild hogs sometimes came into 
the woods, it was the part of wisdom to hunt 
the calves and bring them home as soon as 
possible. Joe and Patsy nearly always went 
with Black Mammy upon such expeditions. 
They also rode out to drive up the cows 
whenever they got in the way of coming late 
to the pen. Pipe-Stem and Light-Foot both 
knew how to drive cattle without hurting 
them, and enjoyed the wheeling, the twisting, 
the gallops to head the herd off, just a little 
bit more than even their riders. But the calf 
hunting was done afoot, with Watch for 
guide, philosopher, and friend. 

Watch could easily have smelled out the 
little hidden beast, but there was no need for 
it. The minute the cow caught sight of the 
big dog, she charged down upon him with 
lowered horn and angry puffs of breath. If 
she had mooed, a low peculiar moo, every 
hoof and horn within hearing would have 


The Cow ‘ 321 


come to her help. If Watch had been 
alone, she would have sounded this rallying- 
call. Human company changed his presence 
from a menace to an irritation. Watch met 
the charge by dropping behind Joe, not slink- 
ing, but simply effacing himself until there 
was need of action. Black Mammy soothed 
the cow, fed her a little bran with gun- 
powder mixed through it, and while the beast 
ate, tried to get her hand upon the swollen 
udder. With cows broken to the pail that 
was easy. Heifers, just coming in, backed 
away from her, sometimes with brandished 
horns. Then there was nothing for it but 
to find the calf and drive it home with the 
mother. Unless a cow, especially a young 
cow, is milked clean soon after calving, the 
milk will clot, cake, set up fevers, and spoil 
the udder — particularly if she gets her fill 
of succulent green food. 

Mammy went on with her gang toward 
the likeliest thickets, looking over her shoulder 
as she walked, and changing her course until 
she saw the cow begin to run after. Then 
she kept straight ahead, and set Watch to 
snuffing at leaves and brush. Instantly the 
cow began to run, lowing as she ran, And 
then out from some brush clump or tuft of 
sedge there started a calf, a saucy fellow, 
bright-eyed, with a rich velvety coat, dazzling 


522 Next to the Ground 


white if it had white anywhere about it, 
royally red, or spotted to vie with Joseph’s 
coat of old. He stood stiffly upright for a 
breath, staring about him, then curled his tail 
over his back and dashed to meet his dam, 
who at once cuddled him under her chin, 
lowered her horns, and brandished them if 
Watch so much as looked at her, but after 
the dog was ordered home, suffered herself to 
be driven slowly to the pen, with her baby 
trotting at her side. 

In milking her, the first flow was rather 
sticky, and of a deep cheesy yellow. “ Beasly 
milk,” Black Mammy called it. Joe listened 
to her and smiled. Beasly seemed to him a 
corruption of deastings, the old English name 
for such a flow. He smiled too to see how 
careful Mammy was that none of the first 
flow should fall upon the ground. She 
believed firmly that to let it fall there and 
dry in would dry up the cow’s milk very 
shortly, and make her ever after unprofitable. 
She had faith too that by pouring the milk all 
along the backbone, rubbing it in, making the 
sign of a cross with it over the shoulders, and 
mumbling inarticulately while all this went on, 
she made it certain that the cow could not 
be “ witched,” that she would not kick over 
the milk-pail, nor spoil her milk by feeding 
upon poison oak, known locally as cow-itch, 


The Cow 95 


‘Milk-giving is a habit, founded upon 
nature and predisposition. A young cow of 
the finest milking strain, will soon give only 
what her calf can suck, if the calf is per- 
mitted to do the milking. White Oaks 
cows were milked regularly, and stripped 
very clean from-the day they came in, but 
until the calves were a month old, the pigs 
got the milk. The calves, of course were 
allowed to suck, and suck —the trouble was 
their small bodies could not hold four gallons. 
Though they were suckled three times a 
day if the cows came home at noon, they 
always set up a great bawling and bleat- 
ing at night and ran with lifted tails down 
the fence, the minute they heard the first 
faint low of their homing dams. ‘These of 
course were calves of the milk cows. Joe 
pitied the little creatures, though he knew 
they were always well fed, and wondered if 
they did not envy the other calves, those meant 
for beef, which ran with their mothers, and 
took nips of warm milk about every half hour. 

They were fine fellows, all dark red roans 
like their short-horn sire, but Joe did not 
care for them as he did for the scrub calves. 
Scrub stock is a colloquialism for ordinary 
native blood. White Oaks scrub stock was 
not the least scrubby, although it lacked uni- 
formity — had red coats, or black, or white, 


324 Next to the Ground 


or gay red-and-white blotched, was long- 
horned, short-horned, even entirely hornless. 
Young calves have no horns. ‘The horns 
come through between two and three months 
old. Muley calves — properly, polled or 
hornless ones — could be told from the first 
by the high bunchy crest of long hair stand- 
ing up pertly between the ears. The scrub 
stock was the same, of course with many 
dilutions, and much intermingling, the pioneer 
Baker had driven over the mountains into 
Tennessee. In proof now and again, a red 
cow, or a white one, or a blotchy brindle, or 
a white-faced black, dropped a calf with a 
pure dun coat, like the dun ever-so-many- 
times great grandmothers which had come 
out of Carolina. 

Cows do not forget their big children in 
the delight of loving and licking their little 
ones. Even after the big ones have calves 
of their own, the milky mothers moo recog- 
nition and lick the daughters all over. That 
is however a service any cow will perform 
for a herd-comrade with whom she keeps 
terms of amity and comity. Considering 
how blockily a cow is built she has a, won- 
derful facility in reaching all over herself with 
her tongue, her tail, or her hoofs. She 
scratches herself back of the ears and under the 
jaws, with deft motions of her hind hoofs. 


The Cow 925 


But the hoofs overshoot the neck, and can- 
not reach the region directly between the 
shoulders — elsewhere along the back and 
quarters Sis Cow licks herself, at the appar- 
ent risk of dislocating her neck. The risk is, 
however, only apparent. She can and does 
suck herself, if she chooses, and further can 
both lick and scratch with her teeth the 
root of her tail. But the face, forehead, 
space betwixt the horns, and some ten inches 
of backbone where neck and body join, must 
go unlicked unless a helping friendly tongue 
is available. When shedding their coats in 
the spring they scratch themselves against 
any handy upright —tree, fence post, house 
corner, what not. By turning the head well 
around they can flick off with the tail a 
troublesome insect from the eyelid — one bit- 
ing too far forward to be touched by the 
hind foot. At shedding time, and indeed all 
through the summer, all sorts of cattle love 
to find a dry bare spot, either sandy or dusty, 
and paw up the light earth all over them- 
selves, bellowing faintly as they do it. Three 
or four bulky cows around the same spot, 
pawing, kneeling, seeming to bow to each 
other, then rise and try to dance, is a sight 
as grotesquely humorous as any in all the 
panorama of the pastures. 

August with its clouds of winged stinging 


326 Next to the Ground 


blood-suckers, sends cattle to the refuge of 
deep still pools, or deeper stiller thickets. 
There they stand all day, hurrying out to 
feed at night, or rather early dawn, when the 
chill of the dew keeps flies and mosquitoes 
inert. Milk cows running upon rich fresh 
pasture fall back so much in milk, it is the 
part of wisdom to stable and feed them. A 
perfectly dark stable protects from flies. 
Notwithstanding, cattle do not love it. Be- 
yond all other domestic animals they keep 
the tang of primal savagery, in spite of hav- 
ing been for so long intimately dominated by 
humankind. In hot weather they hate to be 
penned at night, and are wily enough to hide 
themselves toward sundown, and stand per- 
fectly still in the thickets or high weeds, 
until the cattle-driver has passed them by. 
Bell cows have a hard time, but manage to 
avoid sending out one betraying tinkle. Old 
man Shack’s cow always ran out, so toward 
midsummer he hit upon the expedient of bell- 
ing her tail instead of her neck. She ’d be 
jest natchully bound ter make er racket then, 
‘he said — nothing weth a tail couldn’t, no 
tetch, keep hit still, weth them inseckses 
a-chawin’ an’ a-chawin’. The scheme was 
brought to naught, yet with some approach to 
poetic justice. Old man himself undertook 
to milk the cow, and got the belled tail so fair 


The Cow 437 


and square against the side of his head, it 
knocked him over and made him spill all the 
milk. 

Most times cattle go to the same place to 
sleep, and choose for it the highest ground 
available, unless it is wholly unsheltered. 
Cattle turned into a strange pasture run 
about it, snuffing eagerly, as though intent 
upon finding out if it has held other cattle. 
Almost invariably the new herd sleeps in the 
same place the old one did —that is suppos- 
ing it is an established cattle run. A single 
cow in milk, or with a sucking calf at 
her side, can lead and dominate a whole herd 
of beef cattle. At sight of a dog, stirred 
perhaps by remote memories of the days 
when there were wolves, cattle charge down 
upon him in mass. Unless he gets out of 
their way, they will roll and trample him to 
death, then gore the carcass, drooling and 
bellowing. Blood scent, especially the blood 
of their own kind, sets them crazy. Even 
to cross the trail of a fresh hide dragged 
through their feeding-ground, makes them 
prance, bellow, and make leaping plunges, 
lowering the head, and brandishing the horns 
as they come down. Bulls, curiously enough, 
are not so fierce over scenting blood as are 
cows. Cows with young calves grow most 
frantic. It is unsafe to go too near, either, 


328 Next to the Ground 


while the phrenzy rages — especially if any 
member of the herd has an old score to pay. 
Cattle keep their grudges to equal Scotch 
highlanders. Indeed they have, throughout, 
long memories, and are apt in many ways. 

Oxen well broken are driven without reins. 
They go to right or left, turn, back, hold 
back, or pull, according to the driver’s word 
and the cracking and tickling of his keen 
black-snake whip. Ox-goads are unknown 
in the grass country of Tennessee, though 
they are in scattered use in the mountains. 
Oxen are slow but mighty — good for every 
use ‘that requires steady power without speed. 
Literally they learn to bear the yoke in their 
youth. An ox running unbroken until three 
years old would be ill to handle and worse to 
drive. 

Joe and Dan broke a yoke of oxen every 
season — sometimes two yoke. Yoke, like 
couple, requires no plural. As soon as the 
calves were weaned, late in the fall, they 
matched two of them, made a light "yoke, 
penned the chosen beasts, fitted the ox bows 
to their necks, tied their tails lightly but 
strongly together, so they could not break 
their necks by trying to face each other, then 
made a rope fast about their horn, and drove 
them throughout the Saturday afternoon holi- 
day. Before loosing the yoke, they stroked 


The Cow 329 


and petted the calves, gave them nubbins of 
corn — nubbins, understand, are short ears, 
just the size to go in a calf’s mouth — 
rubbed their noses over with a rabbit’s foot, 
for luck, then set them free to gallop away 
and bleat their tale of ill-usage to the rest. 
After two or three such afternoons the 
calves were hitched to Billy-Boy’s truckle- 
wagon, and made to draw it without a load. 
A truckle-wagon is somewhat a primitive 
vehicle, yet it is a question if a real live boy 
could get as much fun out of the finest in the 
shops as the truckle-wagon affords. The 
wheels are solid rounds, four inches thick, 
sawed from the butt of a black-gum log. 
They tare commonly about eighteen inches 
across. Then the truckle-wagon is good for 
something. With wheels a foot across, it is 
little more than atoy. The running gear, like 
the wheels, is home-made; the axles of sea- 
soned oak, with nails for linch-pins. There 
are rocking bolsters that do not rock worth 
mentioning, upright standards, and a box-body 
fitting racketily between them. The body was 
for use when Billy-Boy himself, or walnuts, 
or bark for cake-baking had to be hauled. 
Serious work, — such as fetching a barrel of 
water a-field, or a barrel of cider from the 
orchard, or taking the scalding-tub down to 
the creek, when hog-killing was afoot, — 


330 Next to the Ground 


required only the standards and pretty careful 
driving. 

The driver of course walked beside, as be- 
fitted a genuine ox team. It was always the 
two or three-year-old oxen, fairly broken, 
and toughened to work, that did the real 
truckle-hauling. The calves might have 
pulled Billy-Boy, or even Joe himself, easily. 
But Joe would not impose upon anything 
weak and young —and as for risking Billy- 
Boy anywhere there was the least danger — 
you could not have hired either Joe or Dan 
to think of that. Billy-Boy was the apple of 
every eye at White Oaks. Even Patsy, for 
‘all she was so up-headed, delighted in his 
tyranny, and was proud to be ranked the 
most obedient of all his humble subjects. 

Well-matched oxen working for years in 
the same yoke grow pathetically fond of each 
other. They feed side by side at grass, lie 
down and rise up together, low disconsol- 
ately if by chance one gets out of sight, and 
if forcibly separated, sometimes breach the 
stoutest fences to reach one another. Ox 
feet wear to the quick— not so easily as 
horses’ feet do, but still so as to make shoe- 
ing imperative if they needs must travel over 
rocks either to the wagon or plough. An 
ox-shoe is a queer-looking plate of iron, split 
like the hoof, ill to make fast, not so easily 


The Cow 331 


kept in place. Unruly oxen must be thrown 
and roped stoutly before they can be shod. 
Old man Shack told wonderful tales of “ the 
fine ridin’ oxen he had often an’ often seed, up 
in the mountings,” but Joe was unconvinced. 
He did not doubt in the least that sonie moun- 
taineers rode upon oxen, carrying their grist 
to mill, their truck to town, or purely for the 
fun of it. But he did very much doubt the 
pleasure of such riding — from all he knew 
of cattle’s lumbering, clumsy motion, he 
thought it must be ever so much more 
tiresome than walking. 

Twin calves both of the same sex grow 
up strictly normal. But a heifer calf twin 
to a bull calf will not make a cow. She is 
called a free martin, and almost never breeds, 
though sometimes she gives milk. More 
generally she makes a fine free-footed plough- 
beast, quicker and lighter-stepping than an 
ox. A yoke of free martins, indeed, — 
though such a thing is hard to come by — 
are worth almost as much in the making 
of a crop as a span of slow mules. 

A hungry cow has quick wits. She learns 
easily to lift a gate latch with her horns, or 
lay down the rails of a fence in the same 
fashion, also to kneel, thrust her head and 
neck through a low slip-gap, surge upward 
with her shoulders, and thus wreck the fence 


hee Next to the Ground 


above, even though it be stake-and-ridered. 
She is, further, wise enough to eat in and in at 
a hay or straw. stack in bitter weather, until 
she gnaws out a snug shelter for herself. 
She has her likes and dislikes among bipeds 
and quadrupeds: standing —the very pattern 
of bovine content —to be milked by one 
hand; snorting and kicking the minute an- 
other hand is laid upon her udder. Dogs, 
in general, she hates. Shepherd dogs she 
tolerates, because she knows they mean no 
harm — besides, they are so persistent, there 
is no use in trying to escape them. Among 
grazing beasts she has a certain awed admira- 
tion for horses, an amused contempt for 
mules, toleration of a sort for hogs, and 
bitter hate for sheep. 
_ Cattle, indeed, will not graze freely where 
sheep have fouled and nipped the pasture, nor 
drink where the wooly gentry have roiled the 
water. This is partly because of the strong 
odor — an ill odor — sheep leave behind, 
partly also from the fact that sheep graze so 
close even a rabbit can hardly nibble after them 
until they have been three days away. Cows 
have an odor of their own, nearly as strong 
as the sheep smell, and pleasant or unpleasant 
largely according to circumstance and state 
of mind. The breath of cattle running 
where there is much sweet vernal gtass, is 


The Cow 43% 


really fragrant, very unlike their breath when 
grazing red clover, or feeding down stubble 
or aftermath. 

A prodigal son or daughter — otherwise a 
stray — is not received by the herd when he 
comes home as becomes a fatted calf. In- 
stead, he is hustled and tussled mightily, 
forced to his knees, beaten with many horn- 
stripes, before he establishes himself upon 
even a footing of toleration. Even more 
curious is the way herd cattle fight among 
themselves, when turned from a wonted pas- 
ture eaten bare into one full of fat pickings. 
The plenteous prospect seems to go to their 
heads. At first they run all about, bleating 
and bawling like so many hungry calves. 
They snatch mouthfuls between bawls, then 
all at once set to locking horns in twos and 
threes, butting, pummelling, overthrowing, 
rolling the overthrown along so violently 
they seem in danger of broken bones. The 
smaller and lighter the contestant, the greater 
is his spirit. “T'wo-year-olds scramble up, 
bleating defiance at the big fellows who have 
downed them, brandishing their horns mar- 
tially, and pawing up earth all around. After 
an hour or so, when every horn of them has 
tried conclusions with every other horn, they 
settle to steady feeding, and keep the peace 
until the time of the next new pasture. 


334 Next to the Ground 


All animals play the game of follow-my- 
leader. Cattle are no exception. At the 
shipping points, where there is much business, 
every stockyard has or had its trained steer 
which runs nimbly up the gangway from the 
stock-pens to the car, thus luring its unwary 
fellows to the beginning of doom. One such 
beast, out West, was said to have placed a 
half million fat steers aboard the trains. 
Since after it all his end was beef, there may 
be something of even-handed justice yet 
remaining in the world. 


Feathered Folk 


Chapter XV 


FREAK scientist declares 
g birds taught men to speak. 
Whether or no he is right, 
it is a fact that chickens 
talk. Even very little 
chicks, just out of the shell, 
have three separate manners 
of speech. Cold, hungry, or lost, they utter 
a shrill, piercing peep, oft-repeated and con- 
tinuous, until they are either comforted or 
exhausted. But this shrill crying can change 
all in a wink to a soft wit-twit-wit, intensely 
full of satisfaction. Sleepy, chicks tell their 
mothers or keepers of the fact with a gurgling 
yeepl-leepl-Ip, yee-epl-lee-epl!! When they 
cry thus in the brood, if the mother persists 
in tramping about instead of hovering them, 
the biggest and boldest of the flock springs 
upon her back, and tries to huddle down 
there, though he is physically certain to 
topple off the next minute. Sometimes two 


338 Next to the Ground 


or three chicks fly up at once. It takes 
either a very hungry or very hard-headed 
hen to withstand such assault. She may 
keep moving for a few yards, but is sure to 
end by settling down, spreading her wings, 
and drawing in her neck, the while crooning 
content, as her babies run underneath her 
and nestle little heads against the warmth 
of her bare breast. 

Brooding hens strip their breasts the better 
to warm their eggs. Twice a day they turn 
each egg completely over so the warmth may 
be equal. They sit very close to the eggs, 
but bear no weight upon them, any more 
than they do upon their living chicks. Just 
how it is managed it is not easy to say, but 
in hovering their broods hens do not sit flat 
down:as they do asleep on the perch. They 
poise their bodies mysteriously so as to come 
within an inch or so of the ground, then 
drop the wings, curtain-wise around the edges. 
The bigger the brood, the more the wings 
spread, but the loosening is the same with 
one chick or with twenty. Very big broods 
as they grow into the estate of spring chicken- 
hood, huddle about their mother, well content 
if they can get their heads in anywhere about 
her. Fall broods, which are carried very 
much longer than spring ones, indeed often 
make the hen look a feathered freak with one 


Feathered Folk 339 


big head and very many pairs of small legs 
treading in every direction. 

Normally hen eggs hatch in three weeks. 
In very warm weather, the chicks may come 
out in twenty days. If the eggs were old 
before brooding began, they may require 
twenty-two days. After that, though chicks 
may be alive inside the shell, they are too 
feeble to break out. A chick lies coiled into 
the neatest possible oval inside the shell, and 
pips it, that is to say breaks it, by pressing the 
point of his beak strongly outward against it. 
The whiff of air that goes through the first 
pip and sets the chick to breathing, strengthens 
it to turn itself slightly, so as to bring the 
beak against a new space of shell. After 
this is broken there is furtherturning. Five 
pips commonly break the shell in two unequal 
cups. The beak comes somewhere towards 
the middle. 

It is dangerous to try helping out a weakly 
chick. The turning in the shell has a use 
other than that of breaking out. Eggs are 
lined throughout inside with a fine white 
silken membrane. In hatching, blood-vessels 
develop all through this membrane, and the 
blood is oxygenated in them by means of air 
coming through the pores of the shell, to 
feed and form the growing embryo. These 
blood-vessels center. in a sort of umbilical 


340 Next to the Ground 


cord, which the turning twists loose so 
gradually as to prevent hemorrhage. A 
chick just hatched is not pretty — it sprawls 
and spraddles, sways a weak head from side 
to side, and wears a wet coat, depressingly 
clammy to the touch. But three hours 
of mother warmth make it quite another 
creature. The coat dries to the softest silky 
down, the eyes grow bright, the head is 
pertly erect —if placed upon a plane surface 
Master Chicky makes the funniest clumsy 
staggers at walking, stretching his winglets 
in the attempt to balance himself, exactly as 
a baby balances with his arms before the 
first step. 

Indeed there is no prettier sight in all the 
life of the farmlands than a nest whose 
maker has discharged the whole duty of a 
hen. Brooding twenty eggs, she has probably 
hatched seventeen. [here may have been 
a difference of twenty-four hours in the time 
of hatching. With the eldest of her children 
running up over her back and beginning to 
cheep hunger, she knows it is time to go off 
with her brood. So she steps out, clucking 
and scowling. The nest may be three feet 
above ground, but she will get every chick 
that is dry out of it, no matter how feeble. 
If any are just coming out of the shell, and 
cry pitifully as they miss her warm breast, 


Feathered Folk 341 


she stays, clucking very hard, occasionally 
going back on the nest, then hopping off, to 
join the little balls of fluff crying on the 
floor. 

If instead of thus coming off herself she is 
taken off by the hen-wife, she will scowl 
mightily, even squawk, and peck so as to 
draw blood from the hand slipped under her 
wing to lift her. Hens with game blood fly 
furiously at whatever comes near the nest, 
after the first week of brooding. The heavy 
eastern breeds — Shanghai, Brahma, Cochin, 
and their derivatives, such as Plymouth Rock 
—are very gentle, hardly even scowling when 
lifted off. Leghorn and Black Spanish are 
so fond of egg-laying they will not hatch out 
a clutch of eggs, except in very rare cases. 
To make up for that, they scowl and peck 
if touched while laying. Brooding hens seem 
to think it is both a right and duty to claim 
every egg within reach. They stretch the 
head into adjoining nests, clutch the egg under 
their beaks against the breast, and thus roll 
it into their own nests. They will also often 
call enticingly to other hens laying close by, 
and endure almost any amount of crowding 
while the laying hen deposits her fresh egg 
along with the rest. Some few hens fight 
off such intrusion, and if it continues, will 
even quit the nest. But hens in the mass are 


342 Next to the Ground 


hard to break from the nest, whether laying 
or sitting. A brooding hen deprived of eggs 
or the chickens she has hatched, will some- 
times starve, sitting upon the rocks with 
which her nest has been filled. Hens some- 
times choose to lay upon top of a beam or 
a big bough in a tall tree, and continue to 
do it, although each egg, as soon as laid, falls 
and is smashed before their eyes. Hens 
begin laying at from six to nine months old. 
The average of egg-production in the common 
barnyard fowl, is something less than five 
hundred, distributed over four years’ time. 
After that age, hens lay but sparingly in 
spring and fall. A laying runs anywhere be- 
tween eleven and nineteen, in most breeds. 
Leghorn and Black Spanish lay sometimes as 
high as forty eggs without checking, and two 
hundred within the year. 

Brooding, a hen lets herself go, and be- 
comes a slattern of deepest dye. Though she 
dusts herself in earth or ashes whenever she 
comes off to feed — usually once in thirty- 
six hours —that is a precaution against ver- 
min. She does not preen and place her 
rumpled feathers, while as for oil, they know 
it not. Commonly a fowl’s coat is oiled in 
part each day. The oil-bag lies at the root 
of and in front of the tail feathers. It is a 
round gland with a queer little upstanding 


Feathered Folk 343 


nipple at the top. The beak squeezes oil 
out of this nipple, and spreads it deftly over 
the plumage, thus keeping up gloss and color. 
Oil-secretion stops while a hen broods. All 
her vitality goes in warmth to enliven the 
eggs underneath her. It is the same while 
she carries young — she must warm as well 
as feed and look out forthem. Her comb is 
pale, her feet look pinched, her feathers fade 
and grow draggled, as she runs clucking 
about, keeping a weather-eye for hawks — 
so ware indeed of the danger which cometh 
out of the air she often gives the grating cry of 
warning that sends her brood scuttering to 
cover, at the chance flutter of a kite, or even 
the darkening of a quick cloud. 

She has somewhat of weather wisdom, but 
is without discretion. "Though she hovers 
her brood as the first raindrops fall, she 
does not know enough to keep them dry and 
quiet until the fall has soaked in the earth, 
Instead, as soon as rain ceases she marches 
about, her draggled, unhappy brood peeping 
at her heels, and maybe drowns half of them 
in hidden small pools or high wet grass. 
Chickens drown very easily even after they 
are full-feathered, yet full-grown fowls thrive 
best when permitted to roost outdoors. Fur- 
ther their manner of feeding foretells the 
length of a summer shower. If they keep 


344 Next to the Ground 


on pecking grass it will be short —if they 
run to cover and sing disconsolately there, 
look out for a rainy day. 

A hen begins clucking at the first touch 
of broodiness, and keeps on clucking until 
she weans her young family. The clucks 
are individual, loud or low, soft and muffled, 
or spitefully sharp. They have need to be, 
since it is through them the broods differenti- 
ate their mothers. How the hens know their 
own chicks from all other chicks, even those 
of the same age, size, and markings, is among 
nature’s mysteries — but know them they do. 
Hence often pitiful tragedies —little tender 
downy bodies cruelly pecked to death, little soft 
heads crushed and bloody, and all because of 
a quite pardonable mistake. Scent has, it is 
likely, much to do with it, since if a strange 
chick can be smuggled under the spitefullest, 
of hens while she sleeps, she will be apt to 
mother it in the morning. But there are cases 
in which hens will kill even a chick of their 
own hatching, if by chance it falls under ban. 
One hen, a speckled top-knot, whose own 
proper eggs nearly always hatched out pert 
brown-striped little fellows, tolerated the 
brown-striped chicks, would steal every 
white one she could entice from another 
brood, and kill instantly a black chick, either 
in her own brood, or which tried to follow her. 


Feathered Folk S48 


The more shrewish and spiteful toward 
the rest of the world, the better mother to 
her own brood a hen is likely to be. She 
calls them loudly, joyously to feed, catching 
up the food in her bill, and dropping it 
among them with a back-and-forth move- 
ment of her under jaw. She does not peck 
a mouthful until the little fellows are well 
through eating — this of course, the proper 
hen-mother —there are greedy sluggards all 
too many. She scratches out worms and 
chases down bugs industriously, beats the 
worm to death and deprives the bugs of 
stings, wings and legs, and hard scales, then 
calls her young to eat — which they do by 
seizing the prey among them, tugging back- 
ward one against the others until they rend 
it, when they gobble each his share, stretch- 
ing their necks as the morsel goes down, and 
chirping satisfaction after. Often before 
seizing hold, the chicks eye the prey, and 
back away from it, with little chir-r-s of fear 
or amazement. As they grow up the chir-r 
develops, as an immature cackle, the voice of 
wonder rather than of fright. 

In spring heartless hens sometimes abandon 
a three-weeks brood. Yet the very same 
hens will carry fall chickens three months. 
Seven weeks is about the average time of 
mothering. Sometimes the weaning is grad- 


346 Next to the Ground 


ual. More commonly it comes all at once. 
There is delicious comedy in watching a hen 
who has made up her mind and body to quit 
her brood. She calls them with intense ear- 
nestness to feed upon imaginary worms, then 
when they stand looking bewilderedly for the 
titbit they feel sure has escaped them, she 
runs off as fast as her legs can carry her, 
making believe she is after a grasshopper or 
butterfly. The chicks follow her —she 
wheels and runs again. Some of them run 
back to hunt the mythical worm. Others 
keep at her heels, but half a dozen fruitless 
runs disgust them — they begin to peck upon 
their own account, paying no further heed to, 
a parent so erratic. Slyly, with infinite 
caution, she slips away, runs down the fence 
side, hunts a favorite wallowing place, drops 
into it, and throws up clouds of fine earth 
with wings and claws, all the while pecking 
the earth in front of her. When she gets 
up she shakes herself vigorously two or three 
times, slips away to some shady covert, and 
begins to preen and oil herself for maybe the 
first time in three months. 

Somehow she works a miracle. The coat 
so faded, so draggled it was fairly disreput- 
able, gets gloss and color. The feathers 
properly placed hide all the ragged spots. 
Primly folded wings give an air of tailor- 


Feathered Folk S49 


made elegance, wonderfully set off by a comb 
grown suddenly coral-red. Her neck frill 
and breast are objects of Madame’s special- 
est arts. Carrying her brood she has walked 
with her head well forward, neck somewhat 
outstretched. Now that she is re-entering 
feathered high society, she holds her head 
high, and very well back, breast protruding, 
and tail so pertly upright, it comes within a 
hand’s-breadth of the comb. A toilet so 
elaborate, of course, takes time. It may be 
late afternoon before Madame goes singing 
down the yard, flaunting her tail as she walks, 
and glancing out of the tail of her eye at the 
most gorgeous cock on the place. Presently 
when he finds a worm, and calls softly 
“ Co-cuk-oo! = Co-cuk-co! Cuk-oo-cuk- 
oo!” she runs with the rest of the hens, 
and sidles toward him, her head coquettishly 
turned. If he gives her a little peck she 
receives it as an endearment — though cocks 
have been known to punish roundly hens 
that had abandoned downy callow broods. 
Weaned chicks well feathered seldom miss 
their mothers until night. “Then indeed they 
set up a pother, calling and peeping wildly. 
It happens sometimes that the peeping calls 
the mother back to them. Oftener she stays 
upon a high perch, and salves her conscience 
by clucking to them, though she knows well 


348 Next to the Ground 


they cannot come up to her. If a pole is 
set to lead up to the perch she may go teeter- 
ing up and down it, clucking and evidently 
trying to show her late family the way they 
should also go. Flying comes by nature to 
a chick. He will stretch his wings and 
attempt it before he has the sign of a pin- 
feather, though the pinfeathers start at three 
days old. But walking up to a height makes 
his head swim —at least until he has mas- 
tered the art of balancing. He gets on well 
enough upon the pole until he looks below — 
then he falters, turns to go down, and ends 
commonly in a fluttering fall. 

A cock is not vain glory’s emblem — he is 
vain glory’s self. Any court accepting his 
testimony can easily prove that fine feathers 
make fine birds. Yet he is not without re- 
deeming features. The game cock is cour- 
age made manifest in flesh and feathers. 
He fights purely from the love of it, when 
the spirit moves him. A sort of plumed 
Berserker, he has fits when he must fight or 
die. Fight and die is perhaps the better 
phrasing. Oft-times two birds of this tem- 
per keep battling all day long, stopping only 
for scant breathing-spells, and at last mak- 
ing an end of each other. In fighting, the 
wings are dropped so as to bear hard on the 
earth, the neck feathers ruffled until the 


Feathered Folk | 349 


head is almost like John the Baptist’s on a 
charger. A pure-bred game fowl should 
have no white quills in his wings. A white 
feather there indicates a discreditable out- 
‘cross. Hence the phrase “to show the 
white feather,” whose obvious application all 
the world knows. 

Cocks of any breed are gallant, and to a 
degree industrious, although hardly to the 
degree beseeming persons of so many wives. 
However, family cares sit light upon their 
crests. They have nothing to do but crow, 
look handsome, and make a pretence of 
scratching out worms or chasing down fat 
grasshoppers for their wives. It is only a 
pretence — indulged in mainly to awaken ago- 
nized jealousy in the breasts of the other 
cocks. Often after calling, calling, for ten 
minutes, until half the hens are round about, 
each hoping for the worm held high in the 
caller’s bill, that fine gentleman bolts the 
worm himself, then looks about as though to 
say: “See how magnificently just! I have 
allowed each of you inferior creatures to wit- 
ness the refreshment of your lord!” 

Turkey eggs, and duck eggs, which are 
much bigger than hen eggs, and guinea eggs, 
which are very much smaller, all hatch out 
in twenty-eight days. Goose eggs, biggest 
of all laid by domestic fowl -— hatch in thirty 


350 Next to the Ground 


to thirty-three days. Goose eggs are pure 
white, and of an almost perfect oval. Duck 
eggs are pale sky-green, so pale they look 
white in some lights, and rounded at both 
ends. Ducks lay their eggs either at dawn 
or just before it. Puddle ducks make no 
nests, dropping the eggs where they roost. 
Guinea eggs are sharply oval, with a shell 
several times as thick as that of a hen egg, 
and in color a delicate yellowish-brown. A 
turkey egg, three times as big as a guinea egg, 
is also sharply oval, with a thin fine white 
shell, richly freckled all over with brown 
freckles, light or dark. Ducks lay only in 
spring, from twenty-five to fifty eggs. Geese, 
also spring layers, produce from ten to fifteen 
each. Guineas begin laying about mid-May, 
and keep on until September, if the eggs are 
taken duly from the nest. If the eggs re- 
main, the guinea hen sits when she has laid 
twenty or twenty-five. Guineas are to a 
degree monogamous — almost strictly paired 
where the sexes are equal. But plural wives 
among them lay in the same nest — which is 
made as far a-field as possible. While a 
guinea hen is laying, her mate perches upon 
a near-by stock or stone, and shouts a defiant 
“ Ch-che-ch-ch-ze-ze-che-che-ee!”’ to all the 
world. Both sexes have another cry, inter- 
preted in the farmlands as “‘ Pot Rack! Pot 


Feathered Folk 351 


Rack!” Save and except by their crying the 
males and females are indistinguishable. 
They are singular among fowls in that they 
can scent any tampering with the nest. If 
eggs are taken from it with the bare hand, 
they will at once quit it, but if all but the nest 
egg be dipped out with a spoon, they will lay 
on indefinitely. 

At White Oaks, the turkeys were Black 
Mammy’s special charge, with Patsy next in 
authority. O but the turkey hens were sly 
creatures! They nested in the woods lot — 
Mrs. Baker believed in keeping them as near 
the natural state as possible. Along towards 
the middle of February, when the hens began 
to yelp mornings and evenings, the big 
bronze gobblers to strut half the day, holding 
wings hard as they strutted, and turning their 
red wattles to livid blue, Black Mammy 
knew it was time to be hunting eggs. Patsy 
wondered no little why the gobblers as they 
strutted let fall their snouts, like veils, dang- 
ling away down below the beak-tips well 
upon the breast. She wondered too why the. 
Lord chose to give them such tufts of stiff 
black beard underneath their chins. The 
beards were certainly not pretty, nor any use 
as she saw things. Mammy explained that 
they really had a use — without them an old 
gobbler would. not know himself from a 


352 Next to the Ground 


young one. The beards came out the first 
winter and got two inches long. They were 
three inches the second winter — after that 
truly patriarchal. The gobblers were very 
high-mightiful toward the hens, ruffling and 
shouting at them, almost from the minute 
they swallowed their morning corn. But the 
hens did not seem to mind in the least. 
They had a way of setting one wing upon 
the other above the back, flirting the tail, and 
going exactly when and where they pleased. 
Watching them to the nest was fine and 
ticklish work. As certain as you let them 
see you, they led you a merry dance. A hen 
starting for her nest left the flock, pretending 
to feed away for maybe fifty yards, then set 
off, running, in almost a contrary direction. 
She doubled more than once in the course 
she laid, and if she knew herself followed, 
went directly from the nest, scratched out a 
false nest beside a log, or likely brier clump, 
and squatted down in it, never moving until 
she was satisfied she had tricked the watchers. 
When they were safe away, she fluttered up, 
and half flew, half ran towards the real nest, 
hurriedly laid her egg beside the others, got 
up, picked up leaves with her bill, and filled 
the nest until every egg was hidden, then ran 
home, yelping at the very top of her voice. 
Covering the eggs is a remainder from the 


Feathered Folk 205: 


wild state, also a wise provision against theft 
by crows. A hungry crow indeed is the 
most patient and most stealthy of all watch- 
ers to the nest. A watcher of any sort must 
beware the gobbler no less than the hen. If 
the gobbler catches sight of you he sends a 
special hoarse warning after the nesting hen. 
When Black Mammy and Patsy heard that, 
they turned and went straight home, waiting 
there until another hen began to yelp — then 
they set out upon a fresh and more strategic 
hunt. Once a nest was found they did not 
disturb its maker, but marked the place, and 
went back to it later, to take out the eggs and 
leave instead of them a hen egg. So long as 
it stayed for nest egg, the turkey would keep 
on laying. At first she laid every other day, 
but towards the end, every day. Two hens 
were commonly set upon the eggs laid by 
three. Turkey hens were not so very hard 
to break from brooding. ‘Two days in the 
coop, with plenty of stimulating feed usually 
put the nest out of their minds. Ina week 
they would be laying again, but the eggs 
were whiter, and of thinner shell, besides 
seldom more than eleven in the clutch. A 
hen broken from sitting a second time, often 
stole a nest in September, and if she escaped 
minks and foxes, came up with a peeping 
brood of half a dozen just after frost. These 


354 Next to the Ground 


winter turkeys could be raised by taking 
pains, but they were always so stunted, never 
half the size of the spring hatch — they ae 
not pay for the trouble. 

Heavy thunder just as the eggs were realy 
to hatch often killed a whole brood in the 
shell. Like all other beaked young creat- 
ures, turkeys have a very sharp small triangle 
of horn at the tip of the beak, whose use is 
to chip the shell. It can be pinched off with 
the thumb-nail. Mammy always pinched it 
off — she said to make the turkeys healthy. 
She also always made them swallow a whole 
black-pepper corn, the minute they were out 
of the nest. For the first thirty-six hours 
turkeys are the most delicate of all young 
fowls —after that, with proper care, they 
thrive amazingly. At a week a healthy 
poult will eat his own weight in fresh clabber 
three times a day. But salt is poison to 
them. Black Mammy let her mother tur- 
keys go free as air, but kept the young ones 
secured in three-cornered pens of twelve-inch 
plank set edge-wise, changing the pen to a 
spot of clean earth every morning. 

The mothers did not go far, and the young 
were kept from straying. Young turkeys 
have an insensate habit of running off after 
anything in motion, even though they leave 
their mothers to do it. Their wing feathers 


Feathered Folk 355 


grow very quickly— at ten days old they 
could fly out of the pens at pleasure, and go 
off with their mothers to range and run in 
the wheat. Major Baker insisted upon rais- 
ing all the turkeys possible because they were 
so helpful in the time of tobacco worms. 
Mammy had commonly seventy-five fine fel- 
lows, tall enough when the August glut of 
worms came, to pick worms from all but the 
topmost leaves. There were ducks too — but 
the trouble with them was to keep them from 
the water. If they got to the creek they ate 
the corkscrew shelled periwinkles, and died 
of indigestion. Patsy wanted geese, but the 
Major would have none of them — they ate 
too much grass, and grazed too close, he 
said, besides murdering sleep. 

These are the feeding-calls, and pseudo- 
nyms for young poultry, in large part at- 
tempts to imitate their own cries. At the 
chicken coop: “Coo Chick! Coo Chick! 
Coo-oo Chick!! Cluck! Cluck! Run! 
Run! Ru-un! Chick-ee! Chick-chick! 
Chickee!” At the turkey pen, or in the 
edge of the wheat: “Pee! Pee! Pee-ce! 
Co-pee! Co-pee! Pee-pee! Pee-pee!”’ 
Young turkeys and sometimes old, are famil- 
iarly pee-pees, not ‘‘deidees’”—as some 
writing folk, who should know better, try 
to make it appear. Deidees are truly young 


356 Next to the Ground 


ducks, from the call which runs: “ Ducky- 
diddle! Ducky-diddle! Diddle-did’1 Deed’l- 
deed’l-deed’]! Ducky-diddle Quawk ! Quack! 
Quack!” It is not a close second to the little 
duck’s wheedling chatter, yet neither wholly 
unreminiscent of it, That is also true of the 
guinea call: “ Widdie! Widdie! Wi-iddie ! 
Widdie!” ‘Young guineas are so small, so 
shy, withal so pretty, they look much more 
like game birds than any sort of domestic 
fowl. 

Brooding turkeys and guineas are somewhat 
slovenly in appearance, yet less so than a 
brooding hen. Indeed a brooding hen is not 
only unkempt but seemingly out of love with 
life, herself, all things. She ruffs her neck, 
scowls, and drops her wings as she runs mo- 
mentarily off the nest, fights all the prim, 
pretty pullets, also other hens like herself. 
Turkeys, which usually leave the nest only 
once in three days, go away from it with a 
hopping, flopping flight, and repeatedly 
stretch the wings, one after the other, over 
the back. But they do not show ill-temper 
—that is the prerogative of hens. While a 
goose sits the gander keeps ward over the 
nest, ruffling, hissing, and pecking viciously 
at anything living which comes near. If the 
attacked runs, so much the worse for it. 
The gander is after it, beating it with strong 


Feathered Folk By 


wings, and pecking to draw blood, his vicious 
blue eyes snapping all the while. Blue-eyes 
are among the gander’s dear distinctions, but 
he is proud in proportion to the spotlessness 
of his white coat, and tyrannic to his geese 
in proportion as they are gray. 

Live geese can be plucked of merchant- 
able down every six weeks between April 
and October. The down is picked from 
the breast and underneath the wings. The 
pickers must have a care, though, not to pluck 
a ridge of down, called the bolster, growing 
where the wings join the body. If they do, 
the geese cannot hold their wings up, but 
move with them hanging uncomfortably until 
the bolster grows again. A well-fed . goose 
yields yearly a pound of feathers. 

All domestic fowls moult between the last 
of July and mid-September. Apparently the 
process of getting new clothes is exhausting, 
even if they do not have to fight with mo- 
distes and tailors. Eggs in the moulting sea- 
son are as scarce as the proverbial hen’s 
teeth —that is, eggs fresh-laid. ‘Turkeys are 
the least disconsolate among the fowls, but 
even with them, the gobblers cease from 
strutting and lose their big rolling voices. 
Cocks crow languidly right in each other’s 
faces without provoking the ghost of a fight. 
Both cocks and hens cackle upon the least 


358 Next to the Ground 


provocation, or none at all, but it is a cracked 
unbalanced cackling, thin and reedy, half- 
way through, then suddenly pitched three 
keys lower. Upon rainy days the whole 
fowlyard gather in open sheltered spaces, as 
in a shed, or underneath a high-set outhouse, 
stand each upon one foot, with the head sunk 
between the shoulders, uttering now and then 
a sleepy croon, and never venturing out in 
the rain unless hard pressed by hunger. 
Nature orders all things wisely. When 

her feathered children are thus under stress 
she spreads for them the richest table of all 
the year. Grain, grass, and weed seed, ten- 
der green stuff, fruits, bugs, worms, slugs, 
caterpillars, grasshoppers, butterflies, all 
abound, to tempt and torefresh. They help 
in bringing every manner of fowl to the 
glory of span-new feathers, gorgeously irides- 
cent, red combs, and shiny well-oiled boots. 
Even rumpless chickens, which are born 
without tails, hence seem always the patterns 
of subdued and ill-used humility, become to 
a degree high and saucy, in early October. 
Better made cocks crow and fight, hens flaunt 
and sing aloud, turkeys vaingloriously strut 
and gobble, guinea fowl smooth and preen 
their fine spotted plumage, stretch their curi- 
ous topknots to the utmost, and keep stren- | 
uous watch and ward. In that they are 


Feathered Folk 359 


better than the keenest watch-dog. Nothing 
can stir about the place between dawn and 
thick darkness without setting them into vig- 
orous cry. 

But one creature indeed is more wary — 
the thrice gorgeous peacock. His vigilance 
is not limited to daylight. Any time in the 
night, if he hears a noise within a mile of his 
perch, he sends his unearthly cry ringing far 
and wide. There is a story in Tennessee 
of an old-time gentlemanly counterfeiter 
who kept flocks of peacock sentinels and for 
twenty years defied detection, though he 
worked in his own house, set fair to view 
not so far off the big road. Peacocks roost 
always in the highest trees about. Only the 
cock has the long gorgeous many-eyed greeny- 
blue tail. The tail comes out at three years 
old, and is thus the sign of maturity. Hens 
have modest and symmetrical tails of rufous- 
brown feathers matching their coats, though 
full grown they have metallic blue-green 
breasts and neck ruffs. A strutting peacock 
is the sum and pattern of feathered pride, yet 
if by chance he glances down at his insignifi- 
cant feet, the cart-wheel tail falls instantly, 
and its owner slinks out of sight. When 
the tail feathers are plucked, the despoiled 
owner of them runs away, and hides for 
several days. He will indeed sometimes 


360 Next to the Ground 


refuse to eat. By way of consoling him the 
despoilers tie long strips of soft rag lightly 
around his legs, so they may stream out 
behind him. Whether fear of them diverts 
his mind, or he looks upon them as the very 
latest mode, everso much more stylish than 
mere feathers, nobody can decide. But the 
fact remains that he does often look over his 
shoulder to see them trailing after, also that 
with them he gets back to his normal poise 
of vanity very much earlier than without. 


Lnsects 


Chapter XVI 


EN wise in the wonder- 
ways of the Egyptians 
tell us that contradictory 
people deified and built 
monumental temples to 
the scarabeus. "The Egyp- 
a i tians made a mistake — 
there is another insect, which deserves much 
better of humanity than the scarab —this 
upon the counts of use and beauty. It is 
the snake-doctor, which those unfortunates 
who are merely book-wise call the dragonfly. 
The book-wise people have, however, this 
justification. Snake-doctor is a name of wide 
and variable application, given in many 
mouths indiscriminately to the true snake- 
doctor, the dragonfly, and the gorgeous hell- 
gramite-fly, whose larva is known variously 
as hellgramite, hellbender, or dobson, and is 
further an aquatic prowler, and the most 
killing lure for trout. 


364 Next to the Ground 


That has, however, little to do with the 
true snake-doctor’s claim to consideration. 
It is well to increase the number of trout 
men may eat, but ever so much better to 
diminish the “number of musquitoes which 
do eat men. Musquitoes lay their eggs in 
clumps like fairy boats, or loose chain-clusters, 
upon the surface of stagnant water. The 
female musquito is the bloodthirsty one. 
She is bigger and stronger than the male, and 
altogether the executive end of the family. 
She lays eggs by the hundred — eggs which 
hatch and mature so rapidly she may bea 
great-grandmother many times over in course 
of a summer. A very little figuring shows 
how she would overrun and possess the land 
if there were not checks and balances. Her 
eggs hatch into that minute but writhing entity 
the wiggle-tail, the liveliest pest of ponds and 
standing rain water generally. The wiggle- 
tail is not without its uses — few things are, 
in nature’s grand economy. It feeds mainly 
upon things invisible to the naked eye, and 
thus clears its pool-haunts of things worse 
even than itself. By and by it becomes a 
pupa which changes to the perfect musquito. 
The pupa is light enough to float quite at the 
surface. When the lava skin bursts to let 
the new musquito out, there is an instant of 
ticklish balancing before the creature gets its 


Insects 365 


wet wings fairly spread. If by chance the 
water roughens at that exact moment there 
is an end of one particular musquito. Mus- 
quitoes may be semi-immortal, but they are 
not even demi-semi-aquatic, after they get 
their wings. 

Now, Mrs. Snake-doctor — Princess Drag- 
onfly, just which you please —also lays her 
eggs either in water or hard by it, upon 
herbage likely to sink into the pool. The 
eggs hatch under water into fierce and lively 
wrigglers, which prey upon wiggle-tails and 
much else, moult several times, and end by 
changing to a nymph, from which in the end 
the perfect dragonfly comes out. 

There are all sorts and conditions of 
dragonflies ——more than a lazy person would 
like to count. White Oaks dragonflies were 
of two sorts—in color either iridescent 
blackish-green, or still more iridescent black- 
ish-brown. They had long, round, slender 
bodies swelling lumpishly where the wings 
were set on, stout heads, and voracious 
mouths. The wings were their chief beauty 
——two on each side, gauzy, glittering, three 
parts as long as your finger, and full of lace- 
like veinings richly dark. For all the wings 
are so gauzy-glittering they are incredibly 
strong in flight. They bear the snake-doctor, 
almost with the speed of a bullet, far and 


366 Next to the Ground 


wide over woodlands, pastures, and meadows, 
though still his favorite hunting-ground is 
the neighborhood of pools. ‘True to inherited: 
instinct, he hunts musquitoes, also midges, 
gnats, May-flies and such small deer, seizing 
them upon the wing and bolting them as 
he flies. Hence the name— dragonfly, after 
the mythical dragons—St. George’s, for 
example — which caught and devoured their 
enemies as they flew abroad. A cant name 
for the dragonfly is gnat-hawk, or musquito- 
hawk — but who would ever think of setting 
it beside snake-doctor? Negroes say the 
snake-doctor is called on to help snakes 
cast the skin—especially the skin of head 
and eyes, which the snake-doctor picks off. 
Further, in August, when the black people 
believe that all venomous snakes go blind, 
the snake-doctor is thought to lead them to 
water, and to distil into their eyes dew 
gathered from certain plants and so full of 
their virtues it brings back sight. 

Possibly the belief grows out of the fact 
that it is to the wet and marshy places be- 
loved of snake-doctors many snakes choose 
to go when ready to cast the skin. Joe did 
not believe the snake-doctors had anything 
to do with it, but Patsy said if the books told 
the truth about the snake-doctors, they had 
changed their own skins so many times and 


Insects 367 


fitted on such different new ones, they ought 
to know a great deal about the way to do it. 

People much more learned than Patsy are 
in doubt over the locust —the cicada of 
Greek poets, indeed of poets generally. 
Some spell his name cicala — perhaps be- 
cause they accept Ruskin’s saying that the 
first essential of poetry is untruth. The 
name has, however, little to do with wise in- 
certitude — that hinges upon the question of 
whether the true locust period is seventeen 
years. Records show seventeen-year broods 
and thirteen-year broods. The wise men 
divide upon the question whether the two are 
the same, with the period of development 
shortened by climate. The  thirteen-year 
broods are oftenest seen in south-lying 
regions. ‘There is also a biennial cicada — 
but Joe and Patsy knew nothing of the differ- 
ence. If they had known they would not 
have cared. Possibly through overlapping 
broods there were locusts at White Oaks 
every year— sometimes very many, some- 
times very few. 

Locusts begin existence in the shape of 
fine pearly eggs, very much smaller than 
grains of mustard seed. These eggs the 
mother-locust lays in woody substance of 
some kind, preferably growing twigs and 
bark.. She saws the twigs through to the 


368 Next to the Ground 


pith with a pair of fine saws, specially pro- 
vided. The egg-laying is done from mid- 
summer forward, and after it is finished the 
mother-locust dies. 

Young locusts are tiny creatures, but 
worm-like and lively in wriggling. Safe in 
earth they live through long years, feeding 
first upon grass roots, and later when they 
have strength to burrow deeper, sucking the 
feeding rootlets of trees and shrubs. Several 
times they cast the skin after the manner of 
wriggling things. By and by they change 
from worms to bugs — bugs with many legs, 
very big horn-shielded eyes, and roughish, 
horny coats. In this form they occasionally 
venture above ground, but quickly run back 
again. After a while comes another change. 
This time it is to the nymph, whose vacant 
horny shell scattered thickly all about is the 
hall-mark and sign manual of a true locust year. 

As to how long a nymph remains a 
nymph, the wise men say it depends — de- 
pends upon breed, season, and environment. 
A proper nymph possibly takes note of time 
only from its loss—it is too fully occupied 
with grubbing about, and sucking juice from 
the roots for day or night dreams. But by 
and by, when the time comes, it dreams to 
good purpose. Then some fine night it 
begins a furious tunnelling upward. And 


Insects 369 


about daybreak some finer morning there is a 
round hole in the earth’s surface, a hole more 
than half an inch across and running down 
to deeps unknown. Something crawls out 
of it—a horny russet-yellow creature with 
six legs each ending in two sharp hooks 
reflexed like a fish-hook. Its impulse is still 
to go higher. It crawls up something firm, 
as a post or wall or tree-trunk, sometimes 
going ten feet above the earth. Once sure 
it is high enough, it sinks in its hooked feet 
as firmly as possible, and waits. 

Presently the horny back cracks open. It 
parts, at first almost imperceptibly, but still it 
parts. After an hour a new creature shows 
inside the parting. It is dark and wet, and 
before long begins to bulge outward. By 
looking close you see that the hooked feet 
are holding against considerable strain. It is 
the locust, no more a nymph, pulling itself 
together before launching itself on the new, 
wide, sunlit world. By and by the head 
shows, the eyes of it peeling off their horn 
coverings as though they were outworn 
glasses. Fore legs, pushed gingerly out, un- 
fold and stretch themselves to rig a purchase 
upon the horny shell. There is a sort of 
surge when the wings come through the 
crack. They are not the glancing wings 
that a little later will charm all eyes, but 


370 Next to the Ground 


lumpy and damply clotted from very tight 
packing. Another pair of legs follows the 
wings, then the pointed tip of the body, and 
last of all, the strong hind legs. 

The coming out is a marvel, but less mar- 
vellous than the aftergrowth. Before it flies 
the new-born insect grows visibly. Nymphs 
may measure something over an inch in 
length — the locust, full-fledged, is twice as 
long and three times as broad as its abandoned 
shell. As the insect dries, a fine iridescent 
down shakes out all over its body —the 
unfolding wings, stretched with infinite care, 
quiver gently as air is forced into their veins 
and ribs. Long before men invented pneu- 
matic tires nature was putting the same sort 
of thing into the stiffening of her myriad 
gauzy summer wings. 

By and by the wings cease to quiver, and 
wave gently back and forth. Eyes harden 
to endure the light, antenne unfold. Before 
midday there is a perfect locust ready to sail 
away through the summer air, to sip dew 
and honey and the spilled juices of ripe fruit, 
sport through happy days in the ‘sun, mate 
and die, chanting to the last the stridulous 
chant of midsummer. When one considers 
its active life one ceases to wonder that the 
Greeks, wise in all earth-wisdom, held it the 
happiest of created things. 


Insects 371 


Joe and Patsy loved the locust song, and 
dared each other often and over to get up 
early enough to watch them break out of the 
shell. But somehow there were always so 
many other early-morning things to do, they 
hardly ever got round to it. Still they were 
distinctly on the locust’s side, even when they 
were plenty enough to spoil the fishing. Fish 
woith catching would not take other bait 
when they had all the locusts they could 
eat for the swallowing. Before the locust 
‘dropped too plentifully into the streams, Joe 
sometimes caught a big fish by putting a 
locust delicately upon his hook, and dancing 
it lightly over deep still water. Old man 
Shack shook his head over’such fishing — 
“hit wus er clean da’ar ter Provydence,” he 
said. ‘ Locusses wus knowed, well-knowed, 
ter be pi’son, and besides nigh kin ter witches. 
Else how-come it, in the Bible they wus sent 
ter eat outen house an’* home them thar 
nigger-kings that would n’t let the Childern- 
*f-Isruul go — not no tetch? An’, furdermo’, 
that wus how-come it, they could kill trees 
by jest a-stingin’ of ’em, up ter yit. As fer 
fruit, — well, er baby knowed hit wa’nt never 
safe ter eat no sort o’ hit, in er plumb locus’ 

ear.” 

The blacks had quite the same beliefs, and 
even greater dread of the locusts. They told 


a2 Next to the Ground 


weird tales of boys and girls poisoned by eat- 
ing “locusted blackberries,” or mulberries, 
or plums, or peaches. But Joe and Patsy 
laughed at the tales, ate all the fruit they 
wanted, and were never the worse for it. 
The reason may have been that they kept 
themselves too busy and too happy to think 
of falling ill. Day time or night, there was 
always something to entertain them. The 
lamps were no more than lighted, for example, 
before there were all sorts of things flying in. 
All of them, of course, had to be looked at, 
but what delighted the children most were 
the ponderous black things they called Betty 
bugs. 

The Bettys were bigger and solider than 
any other flying things they knew. Some of 
them were oval, or rather terrapin-shape, and 
quite as big as small terrapin. Others were 
longish, and nearly as broad at the head as 
through the body. These long gentlemen 
had curious crescent-shaped horns projecting 
either side from their foreheads. They were, 
further, jointed a little less than half way 
their length. Long or oval, the Bettys had 
hard shells, glossy, as black as charcoal, and 
finely ridged up and down. They sailed in 
almost straight to the light, veered wildly, 
flew round and round, then bumped against 
walls or ceiling, and came croppers on the 


i 


i 


Insects 373 


floor. If the rounded ones fell on their backs 
they could not turn themselves, but lay, legs 
up, kicking stupidly until Patsy swept them 
up on the shovel and tossed them into outer 
darkness. Some of these were nearly three 
inches long, and so heavy they plopped like 
clods in falling. They had fine brown gauze 
wings, which, except in flying, they kept 
snuggly tucked within the cupped black shell. 
Patsy always ran the minute she heard a fall 
—she liked to see the Betty draw in its 
wings and tuck them in place, though she 
was sure the cupped shell must be as clumsy 
and heavy as was the armor a knight wore 
back in the old days. Occasionally she turned 
a Betty right side up, in hope to see it spread 
its wings and fly. But the Bettys disappointed 
her; instead of flying, they scuttled for cover 
as fast as strong legs could carry them. 

The long Bettys could right themselves ; 
they were not quite so heavy as the broad 
ones. But if a fall stunned them, or lamed 
them a bit, they feigned death, after the 
manner of their poor kinsmen the tumble- 
bugs. You had but to touch one of the 
tumble-bugs, rolling his malodorous ball, ever 
so lightly, to have him drop motionless. 
Then you might turn him upon his back, 
and by watching five minutes, see him right 
himself, and either go on with bis ball or 


374 Next to the Ground 


spread his wings from beneath his cupped 
outer coat, and fly away. There was an egg 
inside each of the balls he rolled. When he 
got it where he thought it would be safe, he 
dug a hole with his round flat spade-head, 
rolled the ball inside, filled up the hole with 
loose dirt, and flew off to begin work over 
again. After the beetle fashion, his outer 
shell was turtle-shaped, divided across the 
middle where the waist might be thought to 
lie, with the lower half hinged and split 
lengthwise up the middle. The earliest 
tumble-bugs were dull black all over, then 
came fine fellows green throughout the upper 
half, and later, gorgeous gentlemen, golden- 
green all over. ‘The gorgeous gentry were 
less industrious than the black fellows —at 
least in the matter of rolling balls. They 
made balls all right enough, but commonly 
buried them very close to where they found 
them, whereas the blacks sometimes rolled 
balls over a hundred yards. 

Golden green tumble-bugs grew plenty just 
as June-bug time came on. Thus the black 
people had a color of reason for believing as 
they did that the June bugs were tumble-bugs 
transfigured. The June bugs had rich green 
coats, with lacy wings hidden underneath, 
and legs, breasts, and throats of the finest yel- 
low. They haunt gardens and cornfields in 


Insects 375 


myriads, and have a curious trick of clinging 
together in stair-step clusters, often six or 
seven long. Captive, they buzz like mad. 
The black children caught the June-bugs by 
handfuls, tied strings to their hind legs, then 
let them fly the length of the strings, to hear 
the buzzing which they call “ Junein’.” 
They also called the bugs “ Juney-bugs,” 
and ran about with a dozen on the same 
string flying above their heads, and shouting 
as they ran: “Juney bug! Juney bug! Fly 
’way wid me!” 

Billy-Boy’s nurse always let him June a 
big cluster — at the end of a very long string. 
Neither Joe nor Patsy ever touched them 
with bare hands — not that they feared them 
— it was only that the June-bugs looked so 
like the unclean tumble-bugs. What the 
June-bugs ate nobody knew —unless they 
really fed with the tumble-bugs. They spent 
their time for the most part stair-stepping on 
the under side of corn blades, and staying 
motionless for hours. Yet they did not 
seem to mind sunlight, often flying right out 
into it, if they flew at all. Thus they were 
unlike most of the corn’s insect haunters. 
Moths abound there. One of them, a strict 
night-flier, gave Joe and Patsy heaps of occu- 
pation. It was as big as a hummingbird, 
with blackish gray wings, two on each side, 


376 Next to the Ground 


a hollow honey-sucking beak as long as your 
little finger, prominent eyes, a thick black 
velvety body, and two rows of gorgeous 
orange spots down either side. The children 
called it a tobacco-fly, and waged war on it 
with might and main. 

The war was singular in that there was 
reason, even a color of justice, back of it. 
Tobacco-worms are so much the pest of to- 
bacco fields, if once they get beyond control 
in a week they can bring the whole year’s 
crop to naught. They are hatched from 
little clear white eggs, which the tobacco-fly 
lays numerously on the broad leaves. At 
first they are no bigger than a cambric needle. 
Notwithstanding, they quickly manage to eat 
a passway through the leaf, and shelter them- 
selves from the sun under its under side. 
Ata day old they have, maybe, made a hole 
the size of your little finger tip. At a week 
old they are as big as the finger itself, and 
quite capable of devouring half a leaf in 
twenty-four hours. Now since a tobacco 
plant has but eight leaves or ten at the most, 
and may have from two to one hundred 
worms upon those leaves, it becomes evident 
that here is a struggle — with the chances 
favoring the survival of the unfittest, that is 
to say, the worms. 

Worms are what make eternal vigilance 


Insects 377 


the price of fine tobacco. Sometimes a field 
is hail-beaten out of commercial quality, the 
leaves bruised and riddled until it looks to be 
badly worm-eaten. ‘Green hail” is thus a 
cant name for worms, specially applicable if 
they are slothfully permitted to ruin a promis- 
ing field. The worms have sharp horns at 
the tail — hence are also called horn worms. 
They are green, with lighter-green markings 
along the back, round heads full of strong 
teeth, and many legless feet. If disturbed 
in their feeding after they are well grown, 
they raise the head, grit the teeth audibly and 
eject a big drop of acrid brownish fluid, the 
juice of the green tobacco. They come in 
“ gluts ” — that is, in special numbers. The 
first glut, hatched early in July, is from eggs 
laid by flies that were worms last year. 
The worms went deep in the ground just 
after frost, changed themselves to blackish- 
gray shiny “jug-handle” chrysalids and lay 
dormant until the spring sun was hot enough 
to hatch them under the earth blanket. 

Since the destruction of a pair of flies 
means the prevention of five hundred worms, 
Major Baker set a price on flyheads, and 
paid it cheerfully. Further, he helped his 
emissaries all he could in the work of de- 
struction. Tobacco-flies feed daintily upon 
dew and honey. .The early hatch haunted 


378 Next to the Ground 


the flower borders and honeysuckle trellises 
all through June, hovering momently to 
rifle roses and lilies, but in the end returning 
to the long-throated blossoms whose sweets 
the bees could not reach. Joe and Patsy 
also haunted the flowers of evenings. The 
flies came out after sundown, and the children 
grabbed at them until it was pitch dark, or 
long after, if the moon shone. They pulled 
off and strung the flyheads, and there was 
sharp rivalry as to which should show the 
most. They got double price for these 
early heads, since each of them meant many 
thousand fewer worms in the dreaded “ August 
glut.” Eggs for the August glut are laid by 
flies hatched from June or July worms. The 
full moon of August is the really trying time. 
Flies are plentiest then, also most active, and 
forsake the garden blossoms for those of field 
and waste. 

To destroy these fine summer-hatched 
legions was the end of jimson weed planting. 
Books make it Jamestown weed, or datura 
stramonium, but the farmlands know it only 
as jimson weed. The weeds were planted 
along the turn rows, also in convenient 
clumps about the fields. They must have 
felt the world a bit upside down, at finding 
themselves, the weediest of weeds, neither 
plucked up, nor hewn down, but tended and 


Insects 379 


coaxed to full blowth with the very nicest 
care. The first long white frilly-edged 
trumpets came out on them when they were 
no more than knee-high, but towards the 
last they grew taller than your head, and 
correspondingly branchy. Every flower they 
opened was poisoned at sunset after. Joe 
and Patsy tramped about, armed with long- 
necked quill-stoppered bottles, full of cobalt 
mixed in honey, and shook drops of it deep 
in the flower-hearts. Next morning they 
came again to snip off the poisoned blossoms 
— if left to wither, the poison ran down the 
stalk and killed the plant. With half a dozen 
blooms to the weed it was no great task, but 
when the blooming was fairly on, and fifty 
opened upon each plant, it was something 
considerable. Since it is so considerable, a 
wildly inventive genius has sprung upon 
tobacco-growing communities an imitation 
jimson bloom of staring white glass, which 
can be tied to a stick, and poisoned once for 
always, but the planters rarely insult the 
intelligence of their enemies with a make- 
shift so crude. 

A cent each for dead flies is no great price, 
but what with doubling on the early ones, 
between snatching and poison, Joe and Patsy 
turned a very pretty penny. Major Baker 
let them do the work because. it required in- 


380 Next to the Ground 


telligence and the strictest attention. He 
never haggled in settlements, and allowed 
liberally for the poisoned flies which died too 
far off to be counted. He only smiled when 
old man Shack said, “ the Majer he wus jest 
a-baitin’ them thar p’ison inseckses ter come 
in droves ter the terbaker patch an’ eat the 
crap plumb ter the stalk.” The Major could 
afford to smile when he found himself getting 
through the August glut without the bother 
and expense of hiring extra hands. 

Unless the poisoned blooms had been cut 
and buried, the bees might have got at them, 
with very bad results in poisoned honey. 
Bees can suck poison almost with impunity. 
They produce both wax and honey from the 
sweets they suck. “Throughout the summer, 
bees feed largely upon pollen mixed with 
a very little honey. The mixture is the 
“ bee-bread,” with which the brood-comb of 
a hive is filled. 

A swarm has but one mother — the queen, 
who lays all the eggs. The drone-fathers do 
no work, creeping listlessly about, and feed- 
ing on stored honey until after the eggs are 
laid. Then the working bees, all rudimen- 
tary females, fall upon the drones, sting them 
to death, and drag them outside the hive. 
Thus it appears that the little busy bee is 
not a pattern of filial excellence, any more 


Insects 381 


than of several other virtues with which she 
is mistakenly accredited. Industry, for 
example. Bees get out of the way of laying 
up honey, if they can find a weaker hive to 
plunder. Plundering is indeed so universal 
an instinct, and so well recognized among 
bees, every swarm has a few guards whose 
business it is to watch the hive- and at 
once sting to death any stray bee that creeps 
into it. 

Bees also lose industry in the time of 
cider-making, if that process lasts longer than 
a day. They hum and buzz around the 
mills or the trough, swarm over the pomace, 
and end by getting gloriously drunk as the 
cider gets hard. They will cluster thick 
along the edge of an open bucket, sucking, 
sucking, until sometimes when they try to fly 
away, they either tumble helplessly to the 
ground, or describe zigzag somersaults 
infinitely diverting. They will also feed 
supinely upon shallow pans of sugar and 
water set conveniently near, though richly 
flowered fields and woods may invite. 

Still they are active, and fine workers if 
they must be. In early spring, when the 
plum-blossoms swell, the first flowers are not 
open before the bees begin to haunt them. 
It is the same with the peachtrees. There 
the bees show discrimination. Unrifled, a 


382 Next to the Ground 


peach blossom has a drop of clear honey at 
the heart almost as rich as any the bees them- 
selves secrete. ‘To secure so great a prize 
the bees crawl laboriously up and down the 
stalks, and over and around each swelling 
bud, seeking to thrust a head within the 
richly incurved petals, as soon as they begin 
tounroll. Often the honey-gatherer succeeds, 
and sucks the drop, herself hidden by the 
pale pink petals. Peach bloom is singular in 
that it does not fade, but deepens as it falls. 
Fresh blossoms are little more than flesh-pink 
and shed petals richly crimson. 

A swarm is a strict monarchy, though it is 
questionable if the queen mother is not rigor- 
ously held by constitutional limitations. It 
appears that bee royalty is wholly a matter of 
nurture. The workers prepare special cells, 
a little larger than the rest for rearing young 
queens, and after the egg is laid, fill the cells 
with royal jelly, in place of ordinary bee- 
bread. After she is done flying out, sporting 
with the drones, the queen rarely ventures 
out of hive-bounds. It happens sometimes, 
though, that her subjects rise up and slay her, 
or that in some other way she is destroyed. 
Then if there are young queens hatching, 
the hive stands still, waiting for them to 
come out and settle the succession among 
themselves. But if the queen should be 


Insects 333 


taken away before filling the royal cells, the 
workers enlarge ordinary cells, take out the 
bee-bread, put in royal jelly, and get queens 
quite up to standard as a result. 

It is the queen-bee, young or old, who leads 
out a new swarm. If several queens hatch 
simultaneously, there is an interval of chaos 
in the hive, much crawling back and forth, 
humming, buzzing, and stinging. At such 
times bees are most difficult of approach. 
By and by, occultly, affairs seem to adjust 
themselves. A swarm goes off, the queen 
settles in place, and the workers in mass take 
the superfluous queens and kill them, then 
drag them outside the hive. Bees are neater 
than wax in their housekeeping. They permit 
no spilled honey to remain, neither any chips 
of any sort. They mass themselves thickly, 
and with fluttering wings fan out all sorts of 
trash. 

Since the queen is the mother, stocks of 
bees can be changed completely in two years 
by the introduction of new queens. Italian 
bees are said to sting much less, and make 
more honey, hence are high in favor. Bee 
eggs have the curious property of partheno- 
genesis — that is to say, they will hatch even 
if there happens to have been no drone in the 
hive. 

Honey betrays its origin even more than 


384 Next to the Ground 


milk. The whitest, richest, finest flavored 
of all honey is that from peach blossoms. 
Next comes that garnered from raspberry and 
blackberries in bloom; after that the product 
of white clover, with linden-bloom honey a 
very close second. Buckwheat makes heavy 
yields of honey, but it is cloying and sickish- 
sweet. Goldenrod taints fall honey with a 
faint weedy taint. Honey ravaged from plums 
or grapes is fine and flavorous, though not very 
light. The trouble with such bee-pasturage 
is that it goes to the head, and makes the 
bees for the time too convivially inclined to 
think of real work. 

New swarms are finicky as to where they 
will settle. Sometimes they go inside a hive, 
stay there a week, and begin working blithely, 
then all at once are up and off. Rubbing a 
hive inside with peach-tree leaves or smoking 
it lightly with sulphur is thought to make a new 
swarm better content. In flying, a swarm 
looks like a small brown cloud, careering, 
or, more properly, rolling just above the tree- 
tops. At first swarming bees settle in thick 
clumps upon anything handy, the queen in 
the middle, the others massed all over her. 
Sometimes the mass droops in a long blunt 
pendant almost like an icicle. If the swarm 
comes out after midday it is likely to settle 
close to the hive and stay quiet until morning. 


Insects. 385 


If it has settled upon anything detachable, as 
a tree branch, or projecting board, bee-keepers 
spread a white sheet down underneath, place 
a clean hive in the middle of the sheet, then 
saw off the bough or the board, and lower it 
gently, taking care not to disturb the bees. 
If the bees cannot be thus detached, they are 
sprinkled and swept off. After a little those 
upon the outer edge begin crawling along the 
sheet, and go inside the hive. They may 
come back in a minute. Commonly there are 
three hours of running to and fro. If at last 
they stay inside, the hive is left standing until 
night, then moved in place on the stand. But 
the bees may go in with every sign of satis- 
faction, then all at once swarm out again, and 
whip away before anybody knows it. 

Wild bees are not native to America, but 
strays from civilization. In the old days it is 
said the wild swarms kept twenty miles in ad- 
vance of the pioneers. The Indians said when 
they heard them humming about: “Here 
come the little white men!” A wild swarm, 
undisturbed, with plenty of pasture, will stay 
for fifty years in the same place, filling every 
crack and cranny of it with honey and brood 
comb. A dry cave, or an unused garret or 
belfry, suits them to a nicety. 

Bee superstitions are innumerable. Old 
man Shack had at least twenty without stop- 


386 Next to the Ground 


ping to recollect. For instance, it was seven 
kinds of bad luck to buy or sell bees, excel- 
lent good luck to steal them, and lightning 
luck — that is the most unexpected strokes 
of it — to have a stray swarm settle on your 
place, with nobody ringing bells at them or 
throwing up clods of dirt. Further, bees 
would be sullen, sting, work laggardly, and in 
the end run away, if you did not specially tell 
them when any body died or was born. Neither 
would they thrive if you forgot to give them a 
special Easter good-morrow — good-morning 
would n’t do in the least. 

The people at White Oaks disputed none 
of this. They were kindly wise enough to 
understand that the old man’s beliefs were too 
ingrained to be controvertible by mere reason. 
Besides, they had all the large tolerance of the 
fields — which teach, as nothing else can do, 
that there are more things than have ever been 
mapped and bounded, or brought to book in 
the widest or the narrowest philosophies. 


THE END 


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