Chapter C: O N T E N T S (7)

To glance in and around his cabin, you would have thought that the place had been selected for ages past by the bear tribe to yield up their spirits in, so numerous were the relics. Little chance, I ween, had the cold air to whistle through that hut, so thickly was it tapestried with the soft, downy hides, the darkness of the surface relieved occasionally by the skin of a tender fawn, or the short-haired irascible panther. From the joists depended bear-hams and tongues innumerable, and the ground without was literally white with bones. Ay, he was a bear-hunter, in its most comprehensive sense—the chief of that vigorous band, whose occupation is nearly gone—crushed beneath the advancing strides of romance-destroying civilization. When his horn sounded—so tradition ran—the bears began to draw lots to see who should die that day, for painful experience had told them the uselessness of all endeavouring to escape. The “Big Bear of Arkansas” would not have given him an hour’s extra work, or raised a fresh wrinkle on his already care-corrugated brow. But, though almost daily imbruing his hands in the blood of Bruin, Mik-hoo-tah had not become an impious or cruel-hearted man. Such was his piety, that he never killed a bear without getting down on his knees—to skin it—and praying to be d—ned if it warn’t a buster; and such his softness of heart, that he often wept when he, by mistake, had killed a suckling bear—depriving her poor offspring of a mother’s care—and found her too poor to be eaten. So indefatigable had he become in his pursuit, that the bears bid fair to disappear from the face of the swamp, and be known to posterity only through the one mentioned in Scripture, that assisted Elisha to punish the impertinent children, when an accident occurred to the hunter, which raised their hopes of not being entirely exterminated.

One day, Mik happened to come unfortunately in contact with a stray grizzly fellow, who, doubtless in the indulgence of an adventurous spirit, had wandered away from the Rocky Mountains, and formed a league for mutual protection with his black and more effeminate brethren of the swamp. Mik saluted him, as he approached, with an ounce ball in the forehead, to avenge half a dozen of his best dogs, who lay in fragments around; the bullet flattened upon his impenetrable skull, merely infuriating the monster, and before Mik could reload, it was upon him. Seizing him by the leg, it bore him to the ground, and ground the limb to atoms. But before it could attack a more vital part, the knife of the dauntless hunter had cloven its heart and it dropped dead upon the bleeding form of its slayer, in which condition they were shortly found by Mik’s comrades. Making a litter of branches, they placed Mik upon it, and proceeded with all haste to their camp, sending one of the company by a near cut for me, as I was the nearest physician. When I reached their temporary shelter, I found Mik doing better than I could have expected, with the exception of his wounded leg, and that, from its crushed and mutilated condition, I saw would have to be amputated immediately, of which I informed Mik. As I expected, he opposed it vehemently; but I convinced him of the impossibility of saving it, assuring him if it were not amputated he would certainly die, and appealed to his good sense to grant permission, which he did at last. The next difficulty was to procure amputating instruments, the rarity of surgical operations, and the generally slender purse of the “Swamp Doctor,” not justifying him in purchasing expensive instruments. A couple of bowie-knives, one ingeniously hacked and filed into a saw—a tourniquet made of a belt and a piece of stick—a gun-screw converted for the time into a tenaculum—and some buckskin slips for ligatures, completed my case of instruments for amputation. The city physician may smile at this recital, but I assure him many a more difficult operation than the amputation of a leg, has been performed by his humble brother in the “swamp,” with far more simple means than those I have mentioned. The preparations being completed, Mik refused to have his arms bound, and commenced singing a bear-song; and throughout the whole operation, which was necessarily tedious, he never uttered a groan, or missed a single stave. The next day, I had him conveyed by easy stages to his pre-emption; and tending assiduously, in the course of a few weeks, he had recovered sufficiently for me to cease attentions. I made him a wooden leg, which answered a good purpose; and with a sigh of regret for the spoiling of such a good hunter, I struck him from my list of patients.

A few months passed over and I heard nothing more of him. Newer, but not brighter, stars were in the ascendant, filling with their deeds the clanging trump of bear-killing fame, and, but for the quantity of bear-blankets in the neighbouring cabins, and the painful absence of his usual present of bear-hams, Mik-hoo-tah bid fair to suffer that fate most terrible in aspiring ambitionists—forgetfulness during life. It was near sunset when I arrived at home from a long wearisome semi-ride-and-swim through the swamp. Receiving a negative to my inquiry whether there were any new calls, I was felicitating myself upon a quiet night beside my tidy bachelor hearth, undisturbed by crying children, babbling women, or amorous cats—the usual accompaniments of married life—when, like a poor henpecked Benedict crying for peace when there is no peace, I was doomed to disappointment. Hearing the splash of a paddle in the bayou running before the door, I turned my head towards the bank, and soon beheld, first the tail of a coon, next his body, a human face, and, the top of the bank being gained, a full-proportioned form clad in the garments which, better than any printed label, wrote him down raftsman, trapper, bear-hunter. He was a messenger from the indefatigable bear-hunter, Mik-hoo-tah. Asking him what was the matter, as soon as he could get the knots untied, which two-thirds drunkenness had made in his tongue, he informed me, to my sincere regret, that Mik went out that morning on a bear-hunt, and in a fight with one had got his leg broke all to flinders, if possible worse than the other, and that he wanted me to come quickly. Getting into the canoe, which awaited me, I wrapped myself in my blanket, and yielding to my fatigue, was soon fast asleep. I did not awaken until the canoe striking against the bank, as it landed at Mik’s pre-emption, nearly threw me in the bayou, and entirely succeeded with regard to my half-drunken paddler, who—like the sailor that circumnavigated the world, and then was drowned in a puddle-hole in his own garden—had escaped all the perils of the tortuous bayou to be pitched overboard when there was nothing to do but step out and tie the dug-out. Assisting him out of the water, we proceeded to the house, when, to my indignation, I learnt that the drunken messenger had given me the long trip for nothing, Mik only wanting me to make him a new wooden leg, the old one having been completely demolished that morning.

I would have returned that night, but the distance was too great for one fatigued as I was, so I had to content myself with such accommodations as Mik’s cabin afforded, which, to one blessed like myself with the happy faculty of ready adaptation to circumstances, was not a very difficult task.

I was surprised to perceive the change in Mik’s appearance. From nearly a giant he had wasted to a mere huge bony frame-work; the skin of his face clung tightly to the bones, and showed nothing of those laughter-moving features that were wont to adorn his visage; only his eye remained unchanged, and it had lost none of its brilliancy—the flint had lost none of its fire.

“What on earth is the matter with you, Mik? I have never seen any one fall off so fast; you have wasted to a skeleton—surely you must have the consumption.”

“Do you think so, Doc? I’ll soon show you whether the old bellows has lost any of its force!” and hopping to the door, which he threw wide open, he gave a death-hug rally to his dogs, in such a loud and piercing tone, that I imagined a steam-whistle was being discharged in my ear, and for several moments could hear nothing distinctly.

“That will do! stop!” I yelled, as I saw Mik drawing in his breath preparatory to another effort of his vocal strength; “I am satisfied you have not got consumption; but what has wasted you so, Mik? Surely you ain’t in love?”

“Love! pooh! you don’t suppose, Doc, even if I was ’tarmined to make a cussed fool of myself, that there is any gal in the swamp that could stand that hug, do you?” and catching up a huge bull-dog, who lay basking himself by the fire, he gave him such a squeeze that the animal yelled with pain, and for a few moments appeared dead. “No, Doc, it’s grief, pure sorrur, sorrur, Doc! when I looks at what I is now and what I used to be! Jes think, Doc, of the fust hunter in the swamp having his sport spilte, like bar-meat in summer without salt! Jes think of a man standin’ up one day and blessing old Master for having put bar in creation, and the next cussing high heaven and low h—ll ’cause he couldn’t ’sist in puttin’ them out! Warn’t it enough to bring tears in the eyes of an Injun tater, much less take the fat off a bar-hunter? Doc, I fell off like ’simmons arter frost, and folks as doubted me, needn’t had asked whether I war ’ceitful or not, for they could have seed plum threw me! The bar and painter got so saucy that they’d cum to the tother side of the bayou and see which could talk the impudentest!

“‘Don’t you want some bar-meat or painter blanket?’ they’d ask; ‘bars is monstrous fat, and painter’s hide is mighty warm!’

“Oh! Doc, I was a miserable man! The sky warn’t blue for me, the sun war always cloudy, and the shade-trees gin no shade for me. Even the dogs forgot me, and the little children quit coming and asking:

“‘Please, Mr. Bar-Grave, cotch me a young bar or a painter kitten.’

“Doc, the tears would cum in my eyes, and the hot blood would come biling up from my heart, when I’d hobble out of a sundown and hear the boys tell, as they went by, of the sport they’d had that day, and how the bar fit ’fore he was killed, and how fat he war arter he was slayed. Long arter they was gone, and the whip-poor-will had eat up their voices, I would sit out there on the old stump, and think of the things that used to hold the biggest place in my mind when I was a boy, and p’raps sense I’ve bin a man.

“I’d heard tell of distinction and fame, and people’s names never dying, and how Washington and Franklin, and Clay and Jackson, and a heap of political dicshunary-folks, would live when their big hearts had crumbled down to a rifle-charge of dust; and I begun, too, to think, Doc, what a pleasant thing it would be to know folks a million years off would talk of me like them, and it made me ’tarmine to ’stinguish myself, and have my name put in a book with a yaller kiver. I warn’t a genus, Doc, I nude that, nor I warn’t dicshunary; so I detarmined to strike out in a new track for glory, and ’title myself to be called the ‘bear-hunter of Ameriky.’ Doc, my heart jumpt up, and I belted my hunting-shirt tighter for fear it would lepe out when I fust spoke them words out loud.

“‘The bar-hunter of Ameriky!’ Doc, you know whether I war ernin’ the name when I war ruined. There is not a child, white, black, Injun, or nigger, from the Arkansas line to Trinity, but what has heard of me, and I were happy when”—here a tremor of his voice and a tear glistening in the glare of the fire told the old fellow’s emotion—“when—but les take a drink—Doc, I found I was dying—I war gettin’ weaker and weaker—I nude your truck warn’t what I needed, or I’d sent for you. A bar-hunt war the medsin that my systum required, a fust-class bar-hunt, the music of the dogs, the fellers a screaming, the cane poppin’, the rifles crackin’, the bar growlin’, the fight hand to hand, slap goes his paw, and a dog’s-hide hangs on one cane and his body on another, the knife glistenin’ and then goin’ plump up to the handle in his heart! Oh! Doc, this was what I needed, and I swore, since death were huggin’ me, any how, I mite as well feel his last grip in a bar-hunt.

“I seed the boys goin’ long one day, and haled them to wait awhile, as I believed I would go along too. I war frade if I kept out of a hunt much longer I wood get outen practis. They laughed at me, thinkin’ I war jokin’; for wat cood a sick, old, one-legged man do in a bar-hunt? how cood he get threw the swamp, and vines, and canes, and back-water? and s’pose he mist the bar, how war he to get outen the way?

“But I war ’tarmined on goin’; my dander was up, and I swore I wood go, tellin’ them if I coodent travel ’bout much, I could take a stand. Seein’ it war no use tryin’ to ’swade me, they saddled my poney, and off we started. I felt better right off. I knew I cuddent do much in the chase, so I told the fellers I would go to the cross-path stand, and wate for the bar, as he would be sarten to cum by thar. You have never seed the cross-path stand, Doc. It’s the singularest place in the swamp. It’s rite in the middle of a cane-brake, thicker than har on a bar-hide, down in a deep sink, that looks like the devil had cummenst diggin’ a skylite for his pre-emption. I knew it war a dangerous place for a well man to go in, much less a one-leg cripple; but I war ’tarmined that time to give a deal on the dead-wood, and play my hand out. The boys gin me time to get to the stand, and then cummenst the drive. The bar seemed ’tarmined on disappinting me, for the fust thing I heard of the dogs and bar, they was outen hearing. Everything got quiet, and I got so wrathy at not being able to foller up the chase, that I cust till the trees cummenst shedding their leaves and small branches, when I herd them lumbrin’ back, and I nude they war makin’ to me. I primed old ‘bar death’ fresh, and rubbed the frizin, for it war no time for rifle to get snappin’. Thinks I, if I happen to miss, I’ll try what virtue there is in a knife—when, Doc, my knife war gone. Oh! bar, for God’s sake have a soft head, and die easy, for I _can’t_ run!

“Doc, you’ve hearn a bar bustin’ threw a cane-brake, and know how near to a harrycane it is. I almost cummenst dodgin’ the trees, thinkin’ it war the best in the shop one a comin’, for it beat the loudest thunder ever I heard; that ole bar did, comin’ to get his death from an ole one-legged cripple, what had slayed more of his brethren than his nigger foot had ever made trax in the mud. Doc, he heerd a _monstrus long way ahead of the dogs_. I warn’t skeered, but I must own as I had but one shot, an’ no knife, I wud have prefurd they had been closer. But here he cum! he bar—big as a bull—boys off h—llwards—dogs no whar—no knife—but one shot—_and only one leg that cood run_!

“The bar ’peered s’prised to see me standin’ ready for him in the openin’; for it war currently reported ’mong his brethren that I war either dead, or no use for bar. I thought fust he war skeered; and, Doc, I b’leve he war, till he cotch a sight of my wooden leg, and that toch his pride, for he knew he would be hist outen every she bear’s company, ef he run from a poor, sickly, one-legged cripple, so on he cum, a small river of slobber pourin’ from his mouth, and the blue smoke curlin’ outen his ears. I tuck good aim at his left, and let drive. The ball struck him on the eyebrow, and glanced off, only stunnin’ him for a moment, jes givin’ me time to club my rifle, an’ on he kum, as fierce as old grizzly. As he got in reach, I gin him a lick ’cross the temples, brakin’ the stock in fifty pieces, an’ knockin’ him senseless. I struv to foller up the lick, when, Doc, I war fast—my timber toe had run inter the ground, and I cuddent git out, though I jerked hard enuf almost to bring my thigh out of joint. I stuped to unscrew the infurnal thing, when the bar cum too, and cum at me agen. Vim! I tuck him over the head, and, cochunk, he keeled over. Oh! but I cavorted and pitched. Thar war my wust enemy, watin’ for me to giv him a finisher, an’ _I cuddent_ git at him. I’d cummense unacrewin’ leg—here cum bar—vim—cochunk—he’d fall out of reach—and, Doc, _I cuddent git to him_. I kept workin’ my body round, so as to unscrew the leg, and keep the bar off till I cood ’complish it, when jes as I tuck the last turn, and got loose from the pesky thing, here cum bar, more venimous than ever, and I nude that war death to one out, and comin’ shortly. I let him get close, an’ then cum down, with a perfect tornado on his head, as I thought; but the old villain had learnt the dodge—the barrel jes struck him on the side of the head, and glanst off, slinging itself out of my hands ’bout twenty feet ’mongst the thick cane, and thar I war in a fix sure. Bar but little hurt—no gun—no knife—no dogs—no frens—no chance to climb—_an’ only one leg that cood run_. Doc, I jes cummenst makin’ ’pologies to ole Master, when an idee struck me. Doc, did you ever see a piney woods nigger pullin’ at a sassafras root? or a suckin’ pig in a tater patch arter the big yams? You has! Well, you can ’magin how I jurkt at that wudden leg, for it war the last of pea-time with me, sure, if I didn’t rise ’fore bar did. At last they both cum up, ’bout the same time, and I braced myself for a death struggle.

“We fit all round that holler! Fust I’d foller bar, and then bar would chase me! I’d make a lick, he’d fend off, and showin’ a set of teeth that no doctor, ’cept natur, had ever wurkt at, cum tearin’ at me! We both ’gan to git tired, I heard the boys and dogs cumin’, so did bar, and we were both anxshus to bring the thing to a close ’fore they cum up, though I wuddent thought they were intrudin’ ef they had cum up some time afore.

“I’d worn the old leg pretty well off to the second jint, when, jest ’fore I made a lick, the noise of the boys and dogs cummin’ sorter confused bar, and he made a stumble, and bein’ off his guard I got a fair lick! The way that bar’s flesh giv in to the soft impresshuns of that leg war an honour to the mederkal perfeshun for having invented sich a weepun! I hollered—but you have heered me holler an’ I won’t describe it—I had whipped a bar in a fair hand to hand fight—me, an old, sickly, one-legged bar-hunter! The boys cum up, and, when they seed the ground we had fit over, they swore they would hav thought, ’stead of a bar-fight, that I had been cuttin’ cane and deadenin’ timber for a corn-patch, the sile war so worked up, they then handed me a knife to finish the work.

“Doc, les licker, it’s a dry talk—when will you make me another leg? for bar-meat is not over plenty in the cabin, and I feel like tryin’ another!”

XXIV.
COLONEL CROCKETT’S RIDE ON THE BACK OF A BUFFALO.

About ten years ago I fell in with a camp of Konzas, a good piece off the north fork of the Canadian. The Injuns a kyind a sorter give me a sorter tanyard grin, and the old chief specially puckered up his pictur like a green persimmon; but there were three raal roarers from Salt River with me, so I didn’t care a picayoon if it cum to skulpin. Besides I was tetotaciously tired, and I slepp so sound that I wish my rifle may hang fire for ever if I don’t think it would have took something rougher than an earthquake to wake me. So I lay till after daylite, and then one of me comrades shook me, to tell me the Injun boys had found a huraah’s neest. I took up old Kill-devil, and out I went, and about a hundred yards from the camp there war an old buffalo bull with a hundred little screeching imps about him, with their bows and arrows. They’d stuck so many arrows in him that he looked as thorny as a honey locus or a porky-pine; but they hadn’t got deep enough to touch the rite spot. First the old Turk would go arter one full chizzle; but then another would stick an arro into his posterity, saving your presence, and round he would turn and arter the little torment like an ate-horse baggage waggin. I railly pitied the old cretur, and sez I, “It are railly a shame to let this uncircumsised Fillistin defy the army of Israel in this ridiculous way. I’ll let him know there’s a warrant out arter him,” and I wur gwine to blaze away; but an old Injun kort me elbow, and axed me if it were the way in Kentuck to hinder the children from having a little dust of diversion that did no harm to no one.

“Truth are the truth,” sez I, “if an Injun do speak it, and my sarvis to you for the complement.”

After a wile the old devil’s baby of a bull laid down, for he’d lost a purty smart chance of blood, and what doz one of the b’ys do, but gits a-straddle on his back. The way he riz up warn’t slow, and off he sot as if the prairie were afire behind him. I’ve a notion the b’y never rode so sharp a rail before as that bull’s hump.

The old Injun the b’y belonged to wur as white as a lump of chalk for fear his b’y would be killed, and he bangs away at the bull and hits him in the belly, for he wur afraid of breaking the by’s leg if he squinted at the heart. That maid the cretur as ugly as a copperhead in July, and he takes arter the old hero like a whole team of thunderbolts.

“Run! run, father!” screeches the young varmint to the old one, “or I’ll be down on ye like a falling star,” and I begun to see the old one was in danger pretty considerably much.

So I sung out to the b’y to raze his leg, cause it kivered the critter’s heart, and I wish I may be shot if he didn’t do it as cool as if I held the breech of the rifle at him and not the muzzle, but that’s the nature of an Injun. Bang goes old Kill-devil and down comes old bull-beef; but the b’y couldn’t walk for a week, and he kyind of thort he’d never ride bairbacked on a buffalo agin, without he seed some special ’casion.

XXV.
COLONEL CROCKETT’S ADVENTURE WITH A GRIZZLY BEAR.

You may say what you please, and be hanged to you, Mr. Stranger, about your hannycondy, the great terrificacious sarpint of Seelon, in South Ameriky, and your rale Bengal tiger from Afriky. Both on ’em heated to a white heat, and welded into one, would be no part of a priming to a grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains. He’d chaw up your roonosseros, and your lion, and your tiger, as small as cut tobacco, for breakfast, and pick his teeth with the bones. The cretur’s rale grit, and don’t mind fire no more than sugar plums, and none of your wild beastesses can say that for themselves. I’ve killed one or two on ’em myself, which ar not a thing many suckers can boast on, tho’ they are pretty good at scalping Injuns. I was delightfully skeered by the fust I ever saw—no, that ar a lie, tho’ I say it myself: Davy Crockett was never skeered by anything but a female woman; but it ar a fact that I war tetotaciously consarned for my life.

You see it war when I war young I went to massacree the buffaloes on the head of Little Great Small Deep Shallow Big Muddy River, with my nigger b’y Doughboy, what I give three hundred dollars for. I’d been all day, till now, vagabondizing about the prairie, without seeing an atom of a buffalo, when I seed one grazing in the rushes, on the edge of a pond, and a crusty old batchelder he was. He war a thousand year old at least, for his hide were all kivered with skars, and he had as much beard as would do all the dandies I’ve seen in Broadway for whiskers and mustashes a hull year. His eyes looked like two holes burnt in a blanket, or two bullets fired into a stump; and I see he was a cross cantankerous feller, what coodent have no cumfort of his life bekays he war too quarrelsome. If there’s ennything Davy Crockett’s remarkable for, it’s for his tender feelings, speshally toward dum creturs; and I thort it would be a marcy to take away his life, seeing it war onny a torment to him, and he hadent no right to live, no how. So I creeps toward him like a garter snake through the grass, tralein Kill-devil arter me. I war a going to tickle him a little about the short ribs, jest to make him feel amiable, when out jumps a great bear, as big as Kongress Hall, out of the rushes, and lights upon the old Jew like a grey-winged plover. He only hit him one blow, but that war a side winder. I wish I may be kicked to death by grasshoppers, if he didn’t tare out five of his ribs, and laid his heart and liver all bare. I kinder sorter pitted the old feller when I see him brought to such an untimely eend, and I didn’t somehow think the bear done the thing that war right, for I always does my own skalping, and no thanks to interlopers. So, sez I:

“I’m a civil man, Mr. Bear, saving your presence, and I won’t come for to go to give you no insolatious language; but I’ll thank you, when we meet again, not to disremember the old saying, but let every man skin his own skunks.”

And with that I insinnivated a ball slap through his hart.

By the ghost of the great mammoth of Big Bone Licks, you’d have thort, by the way he nashed his teeth, I’d a spoken sumthing onpleasant to him. His grinders made a noise jest as if all creation war sharpening cross-cut saws by steam-power, and he war down upon me like the whole Missouri on a sand-bar.

There’s no more back out in Davy Crockett than thar ar go-ahead with the Bunker Hill Monument, and so I give him a sogdologer over his coco-nut with the barrel of old Kill-devil that sot him a konsidering, and he thort better on it, and sot off after Doughboy as if the devil had kicked him on eend. It’s true Doughboy slipped a ball into his ampersand jest as I struck him; but that war not what turned him; I grinned him out a countenance, so he thort it war safer to make his breakfast on Doughboy than me, which war a thing oncreditable to his taste, seeing I war a white man and he only a nigger.

Well, I hadn’t time to load my iron before he gathered upon Doughboy like a Virginny blood mear, and the nigger give himself up for a gone sucker, and fainted away. The bear got up to him jest as I war putting down my ball, and I expected to see him swaller the b’y without greasing; but he no sooner smelt of him than he turned up his nose in disgust, as Isaac Hill did when Mr. Upham hosswipt him, and run away howling as if his delicacy was hugaceously shocked.

By this time I felt most inticingly wolfy and savagerous, and I jest giv him a hint that no man could neglect that it war best to turn in his tracks, and I waited for him jest on the edge of Little Great Small Deep Shallow Big Muddy. He pitched inter me like the piston of a steam-injun, and we both rolled into the drink together. Onluckily for him I didn’t lose holt of Kill-devil, and when he raised his head and tried to get over his astonishment, I clapt the barrel right across his neck to shove his visnomy under water. I’ll be shot with a packsaddle without benefit of clargy if the ridiculous fool didn’t help me himself, for he clapped both hands on the eends of the barrel and pulled away as if it war a pleasure to him. I had nuthing to do but hold on to the stock and float alongside of him till he war drowned.

Don’t you come for to say I’m telling the least of a lie, for every fool knows a grizzly bear will live an hour with a ball through his heart, if so be he’s onny mad enuff.

XXVI.
COLONEL CROCKETT, THE BEAR AND THE SWALLOWS.

People tell a great many silly stories about swallows. Some say that if you kill one your cows will give bloody milk, and others tell as how they fly away in the fall and come back again in the spring, when the leaves of the white oaks are jest as big as a mowses ear. Agin, thar ar some that tell how they keep Christmas and New Year’s among the little fishes, at the bottom of some pond; but you may tell all them that sez so they are dratted fools, and don’t know nothing about the matter. Swallows sleep all winter in the holler of some old rotten sycamore, and I’ll tell you how I come to find it out.

I war out airly in the spring with my rifle on the banks of the Tennessee, making up my opinion about matters and things in general, when all of a sudden I heard a clap of thunder, and that sot me a thinking. “Now,” sez I, “if I war to go home and tell of that, the boys would think me a liar, if they didn’t dare to call me so; for who ever heard of such a thing as thunder under a clear sky of a bright spring day!” And with that I looked up, and agin I heerd the thunder, but it war not thunder anyhow I could fix it; for a hull swarm of swallors came bodily out of an old hollow sycamore, and it war the noise they made with the flapping of their wings.

Now I thought to myself that them ar little varmints war doing some mischief in the tree, and that it war my duty to see into it; for you see just then I felt hugeously grandiferous; for the nabors had made me a Justus Pease. So I cut down a saplin’ with my knife, and set it agin the tree, and clim’ up like a squirrel; for you know a sycamore has a smooth bark. As I war bending over the edge of the holler to look down, the saplin’ broke under me, and trying to catch at something I lost my balance, and fell down into the tree head-foremust. When I got to the bottom I found myself a little the nastiest critter ever you saw, on account of the swallows’ dung, and how to get out I didn’t know; for the hole war deep, and when I looked up I could see the stars out of the top. Presently I put my hand into something as soft as a feather-bed, and I heerd an awful growling. But it war only an old bar I woke out of his winter nap, and I out butcher to see which war the best man. But the kritter war clean amazed, and seemed to like my room better than my company, and made a bolt to get out of the scrape most cowardly.

“Hollo, stranger!” sez I; “we don’t part company without having a fair shake for a fite;” and so, saving your presence, I clenched hold both his posterities. But finding the hair war like to give way, I got hold of his stump of a tail with my teeth, and then I had him fast enough. But still he kept on clim’ing up the holler, and I begun to sorter like the idee; for you know he couldn’t get up without pulling me up arter him. So when he begun to get tired, I quickened his pace with an awful fundamental poke with my butcher, jest by way of a gentle hint. Before long we got to the top of the tree, and then I got to the ground quicker than he did, seeing he come down tale foremust, I got my shooting iron to be ready for him. But he kinder seemed to got enough of my company, and went off squeeling as if something ailed his hinder parts, which I thought a kind of curious; for I’ve no opinion of a fellow that will take a kick, much less such usage as I give him. However, I let him go, for it would be onmanly to be onthankful for the sarvis he done me, and for all I know he’s alive yet. And it war not the only thing I had to thank him for, I had a touch of the toothache before, and the bite I got at his tale cured me entirely. I’ve never had it since, and I can recommend it to all people that has the toothache to chew two inches of a bear’s tail. It’s a sartin cure. Thar ar a wicked sight of vartue in bear’s grease, as I know by my own experience.

XXVII.
A PRETTY PREDICAMENT.

When I was a big boy, that had jist begun to go a galling, I got astray in the woods one arternoon; and being wandering about a good deel, and got pretty considerable soaked by a grist of rain, I sot down on to a stump, and begun to wring out my leggin’s, and shake the drops off of my raccoon cap.

Whilst I was on the stump, I got kind of sleepy, and so laid my head back in the crotch of a young tree that growed behind me, and shot up my eyes. I had laid out of doors for many a night before, with a sky blanket over me—so I got to sleep pretty soon, and fell to snoring most beautiful. So somehow, or somehow else, I did not wake till near sundown; and I don’t know when I should have waked, had it not been for somebody tugging at my hair. As soon as I felt this, though I wan’t more than half awake, I begun to feel to see if my thum’ nail was on, as that was all the ammunition I had about me. I lay still, to see what the feller would be at. The first idee I had was that a cussed Ingun was fixing to take off my scalp; so I thought I’d wait till I begun to feel the pint of his knife scraping against the skin, and then I should have full proof agin him, and could jerk out his copper-coloured liver with the law all on my side. At last I felt such a hard twitch, that I roared right out, but when I found my head was squeezed so tight in the crotch that I could not get it out, I felt like a gone sucker. I felt raal ridiculous, I can assure you; so I began to talk to the varmint, and telled him to help me get my head out, like a man, and I would give him five dollars before I killed him.

At last my hair begun to come out by the roots, and then I was mad to be took advantage of in that way. I swore at the varmint, till the tree shed all its leaves, and the sky turned yaller. So, in a few minutes, I heerd a voice, and then a gall cum running up, and axed what was the matter. She soon saw what was to pay, and telled me that the eagles were tearing out my hair to build nests with. I telled her I had endured more than a dead possum could stand already, and that if she would drive off the eagles, I would make her a present of an iron comb.

“That I will,” says she; “for I am a she steam-boat, and have doubled up a crocodile in my day.”

So she pulled up a small sapling by the roots, and went to work as if she hadn’t another minnit to live. She knocked down two of the varmints, and screamed the rest out of sight. Then I telled her the predicament I was in; and she said she would loosen the hold that the crotch had on my head. So she took and reached out her arm into a rattlesnake’s hole, and pulled out three or four of them. She tied ’em awl together, and made a strong rope out of ’em. She tied one eend of the snakes to the top of one branch, and pulled as if she was trying to haul the multiplication table apart. The tightness about my head begun to be different altogether, and I hauled out my cocoa-nut, though I left a piece of one of my ears behind.

As soon as I was clear, I could not tell which way to look for the sun, and I was afeared I should fall into the sky, for I did not know which way was up, and which way was down. Then I looked at the gal that had got me loose—she was a strapper: she was as tall as a sapling, and had an arm like a keel boat’s tiller. So I looked at her like all wrath, and as she cum down from the tree, I says to her:

“I wish I may be utterly onswoggled if I don’t know how to hate an Ingun or love a gal as well as any he this side of roaring river. I fell in love with three gals at once at a log rolling, and as for tea squalls my heart never shut pan for a minnit at a time; so if you will marry me, I will forgive the tree and the eagles for your sake.”

Then she turned as white as an egg-shell, and I seed that her heart was busting, and I run up to her, like a squirrel to his hole, and gave her a buss that sounded louder than a musket. So her spunk was all gone, and she took my arm as tame as a pigeon, and we cut out for her father’s house. She complained that I hung too heavy on her arm, for I was enermost used up after laying so long between the branches. So she took up a stone that would weigh about fifty pound, and put it in her pocket on the other side to balance agin my weight, and so she moved along as upright as a steam-boat. She told me that her Sunday bonnet was a hornet’s nest garnished with wolves’ tails and eagles’ feathers, and that she wore a bran new goun, made of a whole bear’s-hide, the tail serving for a train. She said she could drink of the branch without a cup, could shoot a wild goose flying, and wade the Mississippi without wetting herself. She said she could not play on the piane, nor sing like a nightingale, but she could outscream a catamount and jump over her own shadow; she had good strong horse sense and new a woodchuck from a skunk. So I was pleased with her, and offered her all my plunder if she would let me split the difference and call her Mrs. Crockett.

She kinder said she must insult her father before she went so fur as to marry. So she took me into another room to introduce me to another beau that she had. He was setting on the edge of a grind-stone at the back part of the room with his heels on the mantel-piece! He had the skull-bone of a catamount for a snuff-box, and he was dressed like he had been used to seeing hard times. I got a side squint into one of his pockets, and saw it was full of eyes that had been gouged from people of my acquaintance. I knew my jig was up, for such a feller could outcourt me, and I thort the gal brot me in on proppus to have a fight. So I turned off, and threatened to call agin; and I cut through the bushes like a pint of whiskey among forty men.

END OF VOL. I.
L O N D O N :
Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Printer errors have been corrected where obvious errors occur.

Author spellings have been maintained and differences corrected to majority author use.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

A cover was created for this eBook.

[The end of _Traits of American Humour, Vol. I of III_, by Thomas Chandler Haliburton.]