A TRIP TO BROAD RUN
As the wagon disappeared, Bob called to his daughter, who had been left in charge.
"Mely! Mely! You jes stir up the kitchen fire there, honey, un bile me a cup of coffee, agin I go home un fetch my gun wi' the dogs, un come back." (Bob knew there was no coffee at home.) "I'm a-goin' over onto Broad Run arter bears."
"Aw, now, pap, you're all-ays off fer a hunt at the wrong time. Don' choo go away now, un the folks in sech a world uh trouble. Un besides, mammy hain't got anough to eat in the house to do tell you come back." All this Mely said in a minor key of protest, which she had learned from her mother, who was ever objecting in a good-natured, pathetic, impotent way to her husband's thriftless propensities.
"I know what I'm up to, Mely. They's reasons, un the schoolmaster knows'em. You keep your tongue still in yer head, honey. On'y be shore to remember, 'f anybody axes about me, 't I'm arter bears. Jes say't bears uz been seed over onto Broad Run, un't pap couldn't noways keep still, he wuz so sot on goin' over 'n' sayin' howdy to 'em. That'll soun' like me, un folks 'll never mistrust."
"But mammy hain't akchelly got anough fer the children to eat," responded Mely.
"Well, I 'low to fetch some bear meat home, un you kin borry some meal from Mrs. Grayson's bar'el tell I git back. 'F they knowed what kind uh varmints I wuz arter over there, they wouldn't begrudge me nuthin', Sis. Come, now, hump yer stumps; fer I'll be back in a leetle less'n no time."
And Bob went off in the darkness. In about a dozen minutes he returned with his powder-horn slung about his shoulders over his hunting-shirt and carrying his rifle. He was closely followed by Pup, Joe, and Seizer, his three dogs, whose nervous agitation, as they nosed the ground in every direction, contrasted well with the massive stride of their master. Having swallowed such a breakfast as Mely could get him out of Mrs. Grayson's stores, and put a pone of cold corn-bread into the bosom of his hunting-shirt, McCord was off for the Broad Run region at the very first horizon-streak of daybreak. Though game was but a secondary object in this expedition, he could not but feel an exhilaration which was never wanting when he set out in the early morning with his gun on his shoulder and in the congenial companionship of his dogs. Hercules or Samson could hardly have rejoiced in a greater assurance of physical superiority to all antagonists. The most marked trait in Bob's mental outfit was the hunter's cunning, a craft that took delight in tricks on man and beast. The fact that he was akin to some of the families on Broad Run enhanced the pleasure he felt in his present scheme to get the better of them. He would "l'arn the Broad Run boys a thing or two that'd open their eyes." His great plump form shook with merriment at the thought. Plovers rose beating the air and whistling in the morning light as he passed, and the dogs flushed more than one flock of young prairie-chickens, which went whirring away just skimming the heads of the grass in low level flight, but Bob's ammunition was not to be spent on small game this morning. By 7 o'clock the increasing heat of the sun made the wide, half-parched plain quiver unsteadily to the vision. The sear August prairie had hardened itself against the heat—the grass and the ox-eyes held their heads up without sign of withering or misgiving: these stiff prairie plants never wilt—they die in their boots. But the foliage of the forest which Bob skirted by this time appeared to droop in very expectation of the long oppressive hours of breathless heat yet to come. In this still air even the uneasy rocking poplar-leaves were almost stationary on their edge-wise stems.
Steady walking for more than three hours had brought Bob to the outskirts of the Broad Run region, and had sobered the dogs; these now sought fondly every little bit of shade, and lolled their tongues continuously. The first person that Bob McCord encountered after entering the grateful region of shadow was one Britton—"ole man Britton," his neighbors called him. This old settler led a rather secluded life. Neither he nor his wife ever left home to attend meetings or to share in any social assembly. They had no relatives among the people of the country, and there was a suspicion of mystery about them that piqued curiosity. Some years before, a traveler, in passing through the country, gave out that he recognized Britton, by his name and features, as one whom he had known in Virginia, where he said Britton had been an overseer and had run away with his employer's wife. The neighbors had never accepted the traveler's story in this way; though they were ready to believe that the woman might have run away with Britton. When Bob came in sight of him the saturnine old man was standing looking over the brink of a cliff into a narrow valley through which coursed the waters of Broad Run, steadying himself meanwhile by a sapling. Bob, following his first impulse, deposited his gun, beckoned his close-following little dog back, and crept stealthily towards Britton, keeping a tree between him and the old man when he could. Arrived in reach he made a spring, and laying firm hold of his victim by grasping him under the arms, he held him for a moment over the edge of the precipice. Then he brought him back and set him safely down as one might a child, and said innocently:
"W'y, Mr. Britton, I do declare, 'f I hadn't'a' cotcht you, you'd'a' fell off!"
The shriveled old man drew back to a safe distance from the brink, and tried to force his insipid face into a smile, but he was pale from the deadly fright. Big Bob rubbed his legs and gave way to a spasm of boisterous boyish laughter.
"Seed any bear signs 'round about, Mr. Britton?" he said, when his laugh had died into a broad grin.
"No."
"What wuz you lookin' over the cliff fer?"
"Zeke Tucker. He's workin' fer me, an' he's been gone all the mornin' arter my clay-bank hoss. I'm afeard sumpin's happened."
"'F I find him I'll set the dogs onto him an' hurry him up a leetle," said Bob, laughing again and going on, intent now on encountering Zeke, alone, for purposes of his own.
