The Young Mountaineers | Page 3

had taken the baby with her. Tad was ploughing in the cornfield on the other side of the ravine. Si had no advice, and he had been brought up to think that Old Daddy's word was law.
When the old man, mounted at last, was jogging up the road, Tad chanced to come to the house for a bit of rope to mend the plough-gear. He saw, far up the leafy vista, the departing cavalier. He cast a look of amazed reproach upon Si. Then, speechless with astonishment, he silently pointed at the distant figure.
Si was a logician.
"I never lef' him," he said. "He lef' me."
"Ye oughter rej'ice in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em 'll git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur nuthin', ye triflin' shoat!"
"He lef' me!" Si stoutly maintained.
Meantime, Old Daddy journeyed on.
Except for the wonderful mountain air, the settlement, three miles distant, had nothing about it to indicate its elevation. It was far from the cliffs, and there was no view. It was simply a little hollow of a clearing scooped out among the immense forests. When the mountaineers clear land, they do it effectually. Not a tree was left to embellish the yards of any of the four or five little log huts that constituted the hamlet, and the glare was intense.
As six or eight loungers sat smoking about the door of the store, there was nothing to intercept their astonished view of Old Daddy when he suddenly appeared out of the gloomy forest, blinking in the sun and bent half double with fatigue.
Even the rudest and coarsest of these mountaineers accord a praiseworthy deference to the aged among them. Old Daddy was held in reverential estimation at home, and was well accustomed to the respect shown him now, when, for the first time in many years, he had chosen to jog abroad. They helped him to dismount, and carried him bodily into the store. After he had tilted his chair back against the rude counter, he looked around with an important face upon the attentive group.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the strongest man ever seen, sence Samson!"
"I hev always hearn that sayin', Old Daddy," acquiesced an elderly codger, who, by reason of "rheumatics," made no pretension to muscle.
A gigantic young blacksmith looked down at his corded hammer-arm, but said nothing.
A fly--several flies--buzzed about the sorghum barrel.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son air the bes' shot on this hyar mounting."
"That's a true word, Old Daddy," assented the schoolmaster, who had ceased to be a Nimrod since devoting himself to teaching the young idea how to shoot.
The hunters smoked in solemn silence.
The shadow of a cloud drifted along the bare sandy stretch of the clearing.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev got the peartest boys in Tennessee."
"I'll gin ye that up, Old Daddy," cheerfully agreed the miller, whose family consisted of two small "daughters."
The fathers of other "peart boys" cleared their throats uneasily, but finally subsided without offering contradiction.
A jay-bird alighted on a blackberry bush outside, fluttered all his blue and white feathers, screamed harshly, bobbed his crested head, and was off on his gay wings.
"My son," shrilly piped out Old Daddy,--"my son hev been gifted with the sight o' what no other man on this mounting hev ever viewed."
The group sat amazed, expectant. But the old man preserved a stately silence. Only when the storekeeper eagerly insisted, "What hev Jonas seen? what war he gin ter view?" did Old Daddy bring the fore legs of the chair down with a thump, lean forward, and mysteriously pipe out like a superannuated cricket,--
"My son,--my son hev seen a harnt, what riz up over the bluff a-purpose!"
"Whar 'bouts?" "When?" "Waal, sir!" arose in varied clamors.
So the proud old man told the story he had journeyed three laborious miles to spread. It had no terrors for him, so completely was fear swallowed up in admiration of his wonderful son, who had added to his other perfections the gift of seeing ghosts.
The men discussed it eagerly. There were some jokes cracked--as it was still broad noonday--and at one of these Old Daddy took great offense, more perhaps because the disrespect was offered to his son rather than to himself.
"Jes' gin Jonas the word from me," said the young blacksmith, meaning no harm and laughing good-naturedly, "ez I kin tell him percisely what makes him see harnts; it air drinkin' so much o' this onhealthy whiskey, what hain't got no tax paid onto it. I looks ter see him jes' a-staggerin' the nex' time I comes up with him."
Old Daddy rose with affronted dignity.
"My son," he declared vehemently,--"my son ain't gin over ter drinkin' whiskey, tax