A Man and a Woman | Page 7

side. With cries like those of some young wild
beast, the child ran at the snake, raining blows with the stout club, and
with rage in every feature. The black-snake, checked in its course,
turned with the constrictor's instinct and sprang at the boy, whipping its
strong coils about one of its assailant's legs and rearing its head aloft to
a level with his face. The boy but struck and gasped and stumbled over
some obstruction, and, somehow, the snake was wrenched away, and
then there was another rush at it, another rain of blows, and it was hit as
had been its mate, and lay twisting with a broken back. The man
dashed through the creek and came upon the scene with a great stick in
his hand, but its use was not required. The only labor which devolved
upon him was to tear away from his quarry the boy who was possessed
of a spirit of rage and vengeance beyond all reasoning. Upon the
heaving, tossing thing, so that he would have been fairly in its coils had

it possessed longer any power, he leaped, striking fiercely and
screaming out all the fearful terms he knew--what would have been the
wildest of all abandonment of profanity had he but acquired the words
for such performance. His father caught him by the arm, and he
struggled with him. It was simply a young madman. Carried across the
creek and held in bonds for a brief period, he suddenly burst out
sobbing, and then went to inspect the ravished nest where the two old
birds hovered mourningly about, and where the remaining nestlings
seemed dead at first, though they subsequently recovered, so
gruesomely had the fascination of their natural enemy affected them!
What happened then? What happens when any father and mother have
occasion to consider the matter of a son, a child, bone of their bone and
flesh of their flesh, who has transgressed some rule they have set up for
him wisely, thoughtfully, but with no provision for emotional or
extraordinary contingencies, because it would be useless, since he
could not comprehend exceptions. They took him to the house. The
father looked at him queerly, but with an expression that was far
removed from anger on his face, and his mother took the young man
aside and washed him, and put on another hickory shirt, and told him
that his sparrows would raise a pretty good family after all, and that it
wouldn't be so hard for the old birds to feed three as four.
Early that same evening a six-foot father strolled over to the place of
the nearest settler, a mile or so away, and the two men walked back,
talking together as neighbors will in a new country, though they do not
so well in cities, and when they reached the creek one of them, the
father, cut a forked twig and lifted the black-snake to its full length. Its
head, raised even with his, allowed its tail to barely touch the ground.
Evidently the men were interested, and evidently one of them was
rather proud of something. But he said nothing to his son about it. That
would, in its full consideration, have involved a licking of somebody
for disobedience of orders. It was a good thing for the bereaved
song-sparrows, though. Older heads than that of the boy were now
considerate of their welfare. Lucky sparrows were they!
As for the youth, he had, that night, queer dreams, which he

remembered all his life. He was battling with the snakes again, and the
fortunes of war shifted, and there was much trouble until daylight.
Then, with the sun breaking in a blaze upon the clearing, with the
ground and trees flashing forth illuminated dew-drops, with a clangor
of thousands of melodious bird-voices--even the bereaved father
song-sparrow was singing--he was his own large self again, and went
forth conquering and to conquer. He found the murdered nestling
stranded down the creek, and buried it with ceremony. He found both
dead invaders, and punched their foul bodies with a long stick. And he
wished a bear would come and try to take a pig!
This was the boy. This was the field he grew in, the nature of his
emergence into active entity, and this may illustrate somewhat his
unconscious bent as influenced by early surroundings, while showing
some of the fixed features of heredity, for he came of a battling race.

CHAPTER IV.
GROWING UP WITH THE COUNTRY.
Have you ever seen a buckwheat field in bloom? Have you stood at its
margin and gazed over those acres of soft eider-down? Have your
nostrils inhaled the perfume of it all, the heavy sweetness toned keenly
with the whiff of pine from the adjacent wood? Have