UMD ie
ALTE

iM at sie a
peas SHH is
Fa aaa a

Lau i y}

icici
oe

Ai
iy aah tle

Ee e | e) ae
* Private Library

of

Stewart H. Burnham
Sandy Hill, N. Y.

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
~ LIBRARY

BEQUEST

OF

STEWART HENRY BURNHAM
1943

TT

Cornell University

Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www. archive.org/details/cu31924031491941

Next to the Ground

“4 babbled of green fields”

Next to the
Ground

Chronicles of a
Countryside

By
Martha McCulloch-Williams

New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.

Memii

Copyright, 1901-1902, by
S. S. McClure Co., rgo2,
by McClure, Phillips & Co.

Published, March, 1902

1 NSCRIBED with love to
The memory of my father—
4 pattern among the good

men and true

Bred next to the ground.

The Contents

loreword .

[ Ploughing .

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

VI Quail and Partridge .
VII The Possum
VII Night Noises .

IX The Big Snow

X Clearing

XI The Horse
AIT 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

ae the winds when they play

with the Nii 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? Butitis 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

SHAWN broadened into day-
yj light as the teams came
out to the clover land at
White Oaks. Neighbor-
j ing fallowers had been at
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. Its
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:
“T 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 is a 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 II

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.

Very many more right- than left-hand
ploughs do the world’s work—the ratio is pos-
sibly sevento one. 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 inhis hames. 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-
til 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
as a 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 7ll 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-
terided 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 a 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 a reeking 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 a7

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 totip. 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: “I caint 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 0’
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 ce!

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

Ke 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 crawlinw’!
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!”

Wi asps and Ants

Chapter II

ALLOWING [lasted six
weeks —from mid-July
gto 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 feelcreepy. She
was a pattern housewife, so had no use for
creatures which littered her back piazza floor

Wasps and Ants KY;

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 become a 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 stifish 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 4§

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 knoeked
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 many 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 inthis 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 Si

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

52 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 —
fEsop’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,
He out a path for the worker-ants to fol-
ow.

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 ge

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, cufted
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
their liege. 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
deathwithin 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. If 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.”

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

B beeen sess of every sort in time

Ve 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 fame 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 43

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 a little 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 75

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.
The wind 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 ?””

“ O !T 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. Jt 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 hada 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 77

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 in stifling
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.

738 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 was a 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 Hog

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
over the 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. Afterdeep 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
toname 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

g2 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 awise 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 credit 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 the corn for
feeding, then there was the benefit to the land.
The hogs ate the peas very nearly clean, they
also rooted and ravaged out dormant insects
inthe soil. It was so light and black, all sorts
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—vno 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 lying in
wait to bag the whole drove.

That is wild-hog hunting for profit. 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

“T° is lawful in Tennessee to
shoot over your own land
j 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 thriftless — 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 themsélves, 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. The 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 die 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

T14 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 spare 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. Theyellow leaves crisped and crumbled
to powder in a monthif 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
upfirstin 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 ina 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 upon the 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.
Whenevery 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

AT Joe had been called to
choose the real merry month,
he would have pitched upon
November, yet not wholly
because of the hunting.
October brought the tragedy
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
than rain. 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 125

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 ina
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
Jay 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 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. J 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 inthe 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 fireagun. 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.

The Possum

Chapter VII

SPORT has an extra relish
when it has a tang of ven-
geance underneath. Joe
had a private grudge against
the whole race of possums
—no wonder then that he
liked a possum hunt even
more than a bird-hunt. The sly gray-coats
had not only robbed him, but fooled him ever
and ever so long. It happened in this wise.
Joe and Patsy both had small hen-houses set
up in the orchard quite apart from their
mother’s. Only the spring before a possum
had plundered them, sucking eggs without
number, and eating many young chicks.
But there was no way to catch him —traps
he stepped over or around, poisoned eggs
he disdained. The dogs told of his presence,
but somehow always lost his trail. So Joe
sat up to watch for him, gun in hand, and
waited so late he fell sound asleep. A great

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 they 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 151

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, was ever 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 acur of
no degree, Damsel had a remote hound cross ;

The Possum 1g

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 155

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. If
there is a color of reason behind his belief, it
is easy to understand why November hunts
are so fruitful. The Hunter’s Moon shines
then, red and fiery at the rising, later a shield
or a sickle of burnished silver swimming slow
across a violet velvet sea. It rises earlier than
any other moon of the year. The light of it
makes bright the fields and woods when it is
even alittle way upthe sky. But the thickets
are densely dark. Torchlight is needed there

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
covet them — still sometimes they struggled
through the wall of tangled stems, so as to
make a short cut and get ahead of impertinent
earlier comers, whom they heard whooping in-
side. Whoever came first to the big swale,
about 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 in
September. Others keep the acrid puckery
tang until February. The early trees are often
bare before frost, covering the ground under-
neath with their fruit, which is round, deeply

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. Too 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
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-
simmon trees never grow big — one as much
as two feet across at the butt is exceptional.
The late trees bear lavishly, literally loading
down their twigs with fruit, but the fruit is
small, not half the size of the early globes, yet
fuller of seed. It is also 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 around
as a man’s body. How they climb so high is
a mystery. Often they have long swaying
cables twoinches through, running up, up, with
no sign of tendril, nor of twig to which a ten-
dril might cling, for thirty or forty feet.

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-
dines, they raise their heads, open their mouths,
and make a little blowing noise, as though
trying to cool a burning tongue.

Winter grapes, otherwise coon grapes, are
inedible even to Brer Coon until after frost
has fallen upon them. The vines are ram-
pant, the fruit very plenty, though both the
clusters 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 upto 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 seemingly dead,
eyes shut, tail limp, paws limber, a lump of
fur and flesh not even stirring at a snufiing
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 fora 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 upon
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
LE Brer Ring-Tail, Ring,

Ring, Ring —
Ring-Tail ! Ring-Tail!
Ring-T-a-i — 1!

He lip froo de tree, an he
swore “ By jing |”

= Ring- Tail! Ring-Tail !

Ring- T-a-i — 1!

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 von 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!!
Hit 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 poo]

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. A 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, and amused kimself 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’ slap. 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 goin 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 forthe fun of killing. That .
is the besetting sin of bird-dogs, which, how-
ever, are shrewd-witted enough to eave 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 ringing, 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 to the 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 185

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 péep 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 Noises 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

j Heaven decided to make

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 were created. 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

snow 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, ana 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 : “ We are 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 to a
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, asnow-
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 you had 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 sparrows, 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 flock, 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 is not 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 /aw, -
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. AA 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 215

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
only now and again he
had a big new ground,
such as the one phic 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 cits 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 aut

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 flew into 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 few. 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 53

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

aod. 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 aa

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. lLady-slippers grow rank
there, so do the fairy white plumes of rattle-
weed, and the constellations of whiter August
lilies. Cross-vine 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 aay

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 a red 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 that the bed is tramped
or rolled smooth, and covered with flat brush
— commonly dogwood brush. Inthe 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,

290 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 239

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 a5

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. Beforea 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 239

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 with a 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, waitedthe 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 in the 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 Horse

Chapter XI

RG

ENIUS is rare, common
sense rarer still, horse sense
rarest of all. Horse sense
isatwo-edged phrase. “The
pity of it that men never

SS Jc know horses intuitively, un-

es A 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

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. Even 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. Trotting 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 251

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 thick and 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 25%

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 stifly 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 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.
Mates 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
cal] 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 along 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 aoiwanely 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-
gitthed, 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 goa yard 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 together 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
ofthe 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 witha young colt at her side,
drew the whole herd to the 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

a72 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 297

small branches develop all round, standing
stiffly out -at almost exact right angles. 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. he 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 Juxu-
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. Inthe 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
close grain. 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.

Val ox- Flunting

Chapter XIII

EYNARD the fox is a wise

beast and cunning — still

B 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. There 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 29 9

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. Mencome 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. Itis 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 | 301

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
—vbelongs 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 got a
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 acounty. 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 in the 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 2 corruption or contraction of the
Norman-French tazllis bors —“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
fal] —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

virtue of all herbs.” Thus
saith an ancient worthy.
No doubt he had in mind
the quick spring earth,
washed clean by peniten-
@ tial floods, poignantly alive
with the livening 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

"Tend PBHIE earth hath in it the

312 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 313

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

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 around 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 301

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
shé 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

Kee 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 beastings, 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 309

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 325

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 424

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. Therunning 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 some 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

332 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. ‘Thhis 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 grass, is

The Cow 39

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. ‘['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
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,
y 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-ep!! 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 further turning. 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. There 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 inthe 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 345

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 347

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. Offtener 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 fe-
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 353

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. ‘Iwo 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 did
not pay for the trouble.

Heavy thunder just as the eggs were ready
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 365

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’! Deed’]-
deed’|-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 357

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 to refresh. 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, ever so 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-
Me % 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 be a
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, antennz 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
worth 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

372, 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

Insects 379

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 his 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 a76

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 flewat 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-

ation. 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.
At a 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 354

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
“ sluts? — 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 383

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

agbetgeass

saeco ara eee

EIEN

eS

ib A As ry SELES SES:

athe

dit

2 hslith
a fphx eee i fascia NUL enti Sat aah :