They went on into the house, and left the tree to itself. A thrill ran through it from topmost branch to root. It lifted its head and waved its arms triumphantly. The dried-up sap seemed to course through its cells once more. It sent forth a low call to the ocean, and the ocean answered with a long-drawn, thunderous moan, through which yet quivered a chord of sublime joy, as if mourning and yet rejoicing that now, after the weary waiting and disappointed hopes of a century, the moment when the end of all must take place had arrived; for no great purpose can be attained without sacrifice, and the oak now felt that the accomplishment of its life-long desire would only be effected at that life’s cost. Yet it did not shrink, but gloried in the conviction.
Now the wind began to rise, and black clouds gathered together to witness the final scene. The sea bellowed like an imprisoned lion, and leaped madly forward up the steep bank, as if striving to clasp its ancient friend in a last embrace. The tree swayed and strained, and was bent hither and thither in the mad throes of its grand agony. Now it seemed to turn towards the house, where those for whom it was about to die were sleeping unconscious of its sacrifice—now toward the tumultuous ocean, which for so many centuries had been its constant companion and unwavering friend. Then the wind yelled yet more fiercely, the clouds gathered closer and more darkly still, the sea sent a gigantic breaker booming and foaming to the coast, freighted with a last mighty farewell, and the faithful oak tree, with a final convulsive throb and wild, appalling shriek of victory, was wrenched away from its sturdy foothold in its mother-earth, and flung, crushed and headlong, down the rocky slope.
* * * *
“Oh! Where is the dear old oak tree?” cried Mildred.
“See! It has been torn up by the roots and fallen head-foremost down the bank,” exclaimed Holinshed. “But what is that sticking up there in the roots? Is it a rock, or—a box!”
They approached closer. The tree had fallen on its branches, and its knotted and twisted roots spread upward thirty feet into the air. And there, in the midst of them, bound round and firmly clutched, even in death, by those faithful hands, appeared the massive, brass-bound chest, which it had guarded so well, and now delivered up again so nobly. As Mildred and Holinshed gazed up at it in wonder-stricken silence, it was loosened form its position, and fell crashing down upon a jut of rock. The decayed wood was shattered by the blow, and a flood of gold, silver, and precious stones was scattered in countless profusion at their feet—the oak tree’s Christmas Gift; only, at the moment, no one thought of that. But the next morning, when the first excitement was over, they sought for the old tree, and sought for it in vain. Its immemorial friend had come up silently in the night, and borne the lifeless remains away upon its soft and mighty bosom.
THE LONG HILLSIDE: A CHRISTMAS HARE-HUNT IN OLD VIRGINIA, by Thomas Nelson Page
I.
There do not seem to be as many hares now as there used to be when I was a boy. Then the “old fields” and branch-bottoms used to be full of them. They were peculiarly our game; I mean we used to consider that they belonged to us boys. They were rather scorned by the “gentlemen,” by which was meant the grown-up gentlemen, who shot partridges over the pointers, and only picked up a hare when she got in their way. And the negroes used to catch them in traps or “gums,” which were traps made of hollow gum-tree logs. But we boys were the hare-hunters. They were our property from our childhood; just as much, we considered, as “Bruno” and “Don,” the beautiful “crack” pointers, with their brown eyes and satiny ears and coats, were “the gentlemen’s.”
The negroes used to set traps all the Fall and Winter, and we, with the natural tendency of boys to imitate whatever is wild and primitive, used to set traps also. To tell the truth, however, the hares appeared to have a way of going into the negroes’ traps, rather than into ours, and the former caught many to our one.
Even now, after many years, I can remember the delight of the frosty mornings; the joy with which we used to peep through the little panes of the dormer-windows at the white frost over the fields, which promised stronger chances of game being caught; the eagerness with which, oblivious of the cold, we sped through the garden, across the field, along the ditch banks, and up by the woods, making the round of our traps; the expectancy with which we peeped over the whitened weeds and through the bushes, to catch a glimpse of the gums in some “parf” or at some clearly marked “gap”; our disappointment when we found the door standing open and the trigger set just as we had left it the morning before; our keen delight when the door was down; the dash for the trap; the scuffle to decide which should look in first; the peep at the brown ball screwed up back at the far end; the delicate operation, of getting the hare out of the trap; and the triumphant return home, holding up our spoil to be seen from afar. We were happier than we knew.
So far to show how we came to regard hares as our natural game, and how, though to be bird-hunters we had to grow up, we were hare-hunters as boys. The rush, the cheers, the yells, the excitement were a part of the sport, to us boys the best part.
Of course, to hunt hares we had to have dogs—at least boys must have—the noise, the dash, the chase are half the battle.
And such dogs as ours were!
It was not allowable to take bird-dogs after hares. I say it was not allowable; I do not say it was not done, for sometimes, of course, the pointers would come, and we could not make them go back. But the hare-dogs were the puppies and curs, terriers, watch-dogs, and the nondescript crew which belonged to the negroes, and to the plantation generally.
What a pack they were! Thin, undersized black-and-tans, or spotted beasts of doubtful breed, called “houn’s” by courtesy; long legged, sleepy watch-dogs from the “quarters,” brindled or “yaller” mongrels, which even courtesy could not term other than “kyur dogs”; sharp-voiced “fises,” busier than bees, hunting like fury, as if they expected to find rats in every tuft of grass; and, when the hares got up, bouncing and bobbing along, not much bigger than the “molly cottontails” they were after, getting in everyone’s way and receiving sticks and stones in profusion, but with their spirits unbroken. And all these were in one incongruous pack, growling, running, barking, ready to steal, fight, or hunt, whichever it happened to be.
We used to have hunts on Saturdays, just we boys, with perhaps a black boy or two of our particular cronies; but the great hunt was “in the holidays”—that is, about Christmas. Then all the young darkies about the place were free and ready for sport.
This Christmas hunt was an event.
II.
It was the year 186—, and, Christmas-day falling on a Sunday, Saturday was given as the first day of the holidays. It had been a fine Fall; the cover was good, and old hares were plentiful. It had been determined some time before Christmas that we would have a big hare-hunt on that day, and the “boys”—that is, the young darkies—came to the house from the quarters, prepared for the sport, and by the time breakfast was over they were waiting for us around the kitchen door.
Breakfast was always late about Christmas time; perhaps, the spareribs and sausages and the jelly dripping through a blanket hung over the legs of an upturned table accounted for it; and on, this Christmas eve it was ten by the tall clock in the corner of the dining-room before we were through.
When we came out, the merry darkies were waiting for us, grinning and showing their shining teeth, laughing and shouting and calling the dogs. They were not allowed to have guns; but our guns, long old single-barrels handed down for at least two generations, had been carried out and cleaned, and they were handing them around, inspecting and aiming them with as much pride as if they had been brand-new. There was only one exception to this rule: Uncle “Limpy-Jack,” so called because he had one leg shorter than the other, was allowed to have a gun. He was a sort of professional hunter about the place. No lord was ever prouder of a special privilege handed down in his family for generations.
The other boys were armed with stout sticks and made much noise.
Uncle Limpy-Jack was in this respect also the only exception; he was grave as became a “man” who was a hunter by business, and “warn’t arter no foolishness.” He allowed no one to touch his gun, which thus possessed a special value. He carried his powder in a gourd and his shot in an old rag.
The pack of dogs I have described, fully recruited, were hanging around, growling and snarling, sneaking into the kitchen and being kicked out by Aunt Betty and her corps of varicolored assistants, largely augmented at the approach of Christmas with its cheer. The yelping of the mongrel pack, the shouts and whoops of the boys, and the laughter of the maids or men about the kitchen and back yard, all in their best clothes and in high spirits, were exhilarating, and with many whoops and much “hollering,” we climbed the yard fence, and, disdaining a road, of course, set out down the hill across the field, taking long strides, each one bragging loudly of what he would do.
Let me see: there were John and Andrew and Black Peter, and Bow-legged Saul, and Milker-Tim, and Billy, and Uncle Limpy-Jack, and others now forgotten, and the three white boys. And the dogs, “Ole Rattler,” and “Ole Nim-rod,” who had always been old by their names, and were regarded with reverence akin to fetich-worship because they were popularly supposed to be able to trail a hare. It was a delusion, I am now satisfied; for I cannot recall that they ever trailed one certainly three feet. Then there were the “guard dawgs”: “Hector,” brindled, bob-tailed, and ugly, and “Jerry,” yellow, long-tailed, and mean; then there was “Jack,” fat, stumpy, and ill-natured; there were the two pointers, Bruno and Don, the beauties and pride of the family, with a pedigree like a prince’s, who, like us, were taking a holiday hunt, but, unlike us, without permission; “Rock,” Uncle Limpy-Jack’s “hyah dawg,” and then the two terriers “Snip” and “Snap.” We beat the banks of the spring ditch for form’s sake, though there was small chance of a hare there, because it was pasture and the banks were kept clean. Then we made for the old field beyond, the dogs spreading out and nosing around lazily, each on his own hook. Whether because of the noise we made and their seeking safety in flight, or because they were off “taking holiday” (The hares, according to the negroes, used to take holidays and would not go into traps in this season; so the only way to get them was by hunting them) as the negroes claimed, no hares were found, and after a half-hour our ardor was a little dampened. But we soon set to work in earnest and began to beat a little bottom lying between two hills, through which ran a ditch, thickly grown up with bushes and briers. The dead swamp-grass was very heavy in the narrow little bottom along the sides, and was matted in tufts. The dogs were scattered, and prowling around singly or in couples; and only one of the pointers and Snip were really on the ditch. Snip showed signs of great industry, and went bobbing backward and forward through a patch of heavy matted grass. In any other dog this might have excited suspicion, even hope. There are, however, some dogs that are natural liars. Snip was one of them. Snip’s failing was so well known that no attention was paid to him. He gave, indeed, a short bark, and bounced up two or three times like a trap-ball, looking both ways at once; but this action only called down upon him universal derision.
Just then, however, a small boy pointed over to the top of the hill calling, “Look-a yander,” and shouts arose, “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!”
Sure enough, there, just turning the hill, went a “molly cotton,” bouncing. In a second we were all in full chase and cry, shouting to each other, “whooping” on the dogs, and running with all our might. We were so carried away by the excitement that not one of us even thought of the fact that she would come stealing back.
No negro can resist the inclination to shout “Dyah she go!” and to run after a hare when one gets up; it is involuntary and irresistible. Even Uncle Limpy-Jack came bobbing along for a while, shouting, “Dyah she go!” at the top of his voice; but being soon distanced he called his dog, Rock, and went back to beat the ditch bank again.
The enthusiasm of the chase carried us all into the piece of pine beyond the fence, where the pines were much too thick to see anything and where only an occasional glimpse of a dog running backward and forward, or an instinctive “oun-oun!” from the hounds, rewarded us. But “molly is berry sly,” and while the dogs were chasing each other around the pines, she was tripping back down through the field to the place where we had started her.
We were recalled by hearing an unexpected “bang” from the field behind us, and dashing out of the woods we found Uncle Limpy-Jack holding up a hare, and with a face whose gravity might have done for that of Fate. He was instantly surrounded by the entire throng, whom he regarded with superb disdain and spoke of as “you chillern.”
“G’ on, you chillern, whar you is gwine, and meek you’ noise somewhar else, an’ keep out o’ my way. I want to git some hyahs!”
He betrayed his pleasure only once, when, as he measured out the shot from an old rag into his seamed palm, he said with a nod of his head: “Y’ all kin run ole hyahs; de ole man’ shoots ’em.” And as we started off we heard him muttering:
“Ole Molly Hyah, What yo’ doin’ dyah? Settin’ in de cornder Smokin’ a cigah.”
We went back to the branch and began again to beat the bushes, Uncle Limpy-Jack taking unquestioned the foremost place, which had heretofore been held by us.
Suddenly there was a movement, a sort of scamper, a rash, as something slipped out of the heavy grass at our feet and vanished in the thick briers of the ditch bank. “Dyah she go!” arose from a dozen throats, and gone she was, in fact, safe in a thicket of briers which no dog nor negro could penetrate.
The bushes were vigorously beaten, however, and all of us, except Uncle Limpy-Jack and Milker-Tim, crossed over to the far side of the ditch where the bottom widened, when suddenly she was discovered over on the same side, on the edge of the little valley. She had stolen out, the negroes declared, licking her paws to prevent leaving a scent, and finding the stretch of hillside too bare to get across, was stealing back to her covert again, going a little way and then squatting, then going a few steps and squatting again. “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!” resounded as usual.
Bang!—bang!—snap!—bang! went the four guns in quick succession, tearing up the grass anywhere from one to ten yards away from her. As if she had drawn their fire and was satisfied that she was safe, she turned and sped up the hill, the white tail bobbing derisively, followed by the dogs strung out in line.
Of course, all of us had some good excuse for missing, Uncle Limpy-Jack’s being the only valid one—that his cap had snapped. He made much of this, complaining violently of “dese yere wuthless caps!” With a pin he set to work, and he had just picked the tube, rammed painfully some grains of powder down in it, and put on another cap which he had first examined with great care to impress us. “Now, let a ole hyah git up,” he said, with a shake of his head. “She got man ready for her, she ain’t got you chil-lern.” The words were scarcely spoken when a little darkey called out, “Dyah she come!” and sure enough she came, “lipping” down a furrow straight toward us. Uncle Limpy-Jack was on that side of the ditch and Milker-Tim was near him armed only with a stout well-balanced stick about two feet long. As the hare came down the hill, Uncle Jack brought up his gun, took a long aim and fired. The weeds and dust flew up off to one side of her, and she turned at right angles out of the furrow; but as she got to the top of the bed, Milker-Tim, flinging back his arm, with the precision of a bushman, sent his stick whirling like a boomerang skimming along the ground after her.
Tim with a yell rushed at her and picked her up, shouting, “I got her! I got her!”
Then Uncle Limpy-Jack pitched into him: “What you doin’ gittin’ in my way!” he complained angrily. “Ain’ you got no better sense ’n to git in my way like dat! Did’n you see how nigh I come to blowin’ yo’ brains out! Did’n you see I had de hyah when you come pokin’ yer wooly black head in my way! Ef I had’n flung my gun off, whar’d you ’a’ been now! Don’ you
come pokin’ in my way ag’in!”
Tim was too much elated to be long affected by even this severity, and when he had got out of Uncle Jack’s way he sang out:
“Ole Molly Hyah, You’ ears mighty thin. Yes, yes, yes, I come a-t’ippin’ thoo de win’!”
So far the honors were all Uncle Jack’s and Milker-Tim’s, and it was necessary for the rest of us to do something. Accordingly, the bottom having been well hunted, the crowd struck out for an old field over the hill, known as “the long hillside.” It was thick in hen-grass and broom-straw, and sloped down from a piece of pine with a southern exposure on which the sun shone warm. We had not reached it before a hare jumped out of a bush near Charlie. In a few moments, another bounced out before one of the dogs and went dashing across the field. Two shots followed her; but she kept on till at last one of the boys secured her.
We were going down the slope when Peter called in great excitement,
“Heah a ole hyah settin’ in her haid. Come heah, Dan, quick! Gi’ me your gun; le’ me git him!”
This was more than Dan bargained for, as he had not got one himself yet. He ran up quickly enough, but held on tightly to his gun.
“Where is he? Show him to me: I’ll knock him over.”
As he would not give up the gun, Peter pointed out the game.
“See him?”
“No.”
“Right under dat bush—right dyah” (pointing). “See him? Teck keer dyah, Don, teck keer,” he called, as Don came to a point just beyond. “See him?” He pointed a black finger with tremulous eagerness.
No, Dan did not see, so he reluctantly yielded up the gun.
Peter took aim long and laboriously, shut both eyes, pulled the trigger, and blazed away.
There was a dash of white and brown, a yell, and Don wheeled around with his head between his forepaws stung by the shot as “molly” fled streaking it over the hill followed only by the dogs.
The Second Christmas Megapack Page 44
