"They began to creep forward, making as little noise as possible"
"Bishop," said Adelaide, in a whisper, "you slip through the Woods one way, and I'll slip through the other way. You can be a bishop and a Injun, too, can't you?"
"Nothin' easier," replied the Bishop, trying to whisper in return; "I'll jest take off my coat an' turn it wrongsud-out'rds, an' thar you are!"
Adelaide's ecstasy shone in her face, and with good reason, for the middle lining of the Bishop's coat was fiery red. This was too good to be true, and Adelaide wished in her heart that she had worn her hat with the big red feather—oh, you know: the one she wore to Sunday School, where all the other little girls were simply green with envy; of course you couldn't forget that hat and feather!
In spite of the fiery red lining of his coat, the Bishop had an idea that he didn't look fierce enough, so he took off his felt hat, knocked in the crown, and put it on upside down. His aspect was simply tremendous. No hobgoblin could have a fiercer appearance than the Bishop had, and if Adelaide didn't shriek with pure delight it was because she put her gun across her mouth and bit it. She bit so hard that the print of her small teeth showed on the gun. Well, of course, after the Bishop had transformed himself into such a ferocious-looking monster, he and Adelaide were obliged to have another consultation, and it was while this was going on that Adelaide came near spoiling the whole thing.
"Oh, Bishop!" she cried, with a great gasp, "how do you laugh when you're obliged to, and when——" she gave another gasp, sank to the ground, and lay there, shaking all over.
"You put me in mind, honey, of the lady in the book that leaned ag'in the old ellum tree and shuck wi' sobs, ever' one on 'em more'n a foot an' a half long, wi' stickers on 'em like a wild briar. It's a sad thing for to say, but I'm oblidze to say it. The time has come when we've got to part. Ef we go on this way, the Boogerman will come along an' put us both in his wallet, an' then what'll we do? Things can't go on this a-way. It may be for years an' it may be forever, as Miss Ann Tatum says when she begins for to squall at her peanner, but the time to part has come. You creep up yander by the fence, so you can see the Boogerman ef he tries for to git away, an' I'll roost aroun' in the bushes. Ef I jump him I'll holla, an' ef he come your way, jest shet your eyes an' give him both barrels in the neighbourhood of eyeballs an' appetite. You can't kill the Boogerman unless you hit him in his green eye—the other is a dark mud colour."
Well, they separated, the Bishop beating in the bushes and underbrush, as he called the crab-grass and weeds that had begun to make their appearance in the corn-patch, and Adelaide creeping to her post of observation as though she were stalking some wild and wary animal. She could hear the Bishop rustling about in the thick corn, but couldn't catch a glimpse of him. Once she heard him sneeze as only a middle-aged man can sneeze, and she frowned as a general frowns when his orders have been disobeyed. Presently she heard some one coming along the side street, which, being away from the main thoroughfares, was little frequented. Occasionally a pedestrian, or a farmer going home, or house servants, who lived near-by, passed along its narrow length.
The moment she heard footsteps, Adelaide shrank back in the thick corn, and held her cornstalk gun in readiness. Her hair might have been mistaken for a tangle of corn-silks newly sunburned as it fell over her face. The steps drew nearer, and, in a moment, a negro came into view. He was a stranger to Adelaide, and that fact only made it more certain that he was the Boogerman himself, who had jumped the garden fence in order to elude Mr. Sanders, and was now sauntering along appearing as innocent as innocence itself. When the Boogerman came opposite Adelaide's hiding-place, she jumped up suddenly, aimed her gun and cried Bang! in a loud voice.
Now, as it happened, the passing negro was one who could meet and beat Adelaide on her own ground. The cornstalk gun, with its imperative Bang! carried him back to old times, though he was not old—back to the times when he played make-believe with his young mistress and the rest of the children. Therefore, simultaneously with Adelaide's Bang! he stopped in his tracks, his face working convulsively, his arms flying wildly about, and his legs giving way under him. He sank slowly to the ground, and then began to flop about just as a chicken does when its head is wrung off.
The Bishop heard a wild, exultant shout from Adelaide: "Run, Bishop, run! I've got him! I've killed the Boogerman! Run, Bishop, run!" Mr. Sanders ran as fast as he could; and when he saw the negro lying on the ground, with no movement save an occasional quiver of the limbs and a sympathetic twitching of the fingers, his amazement knew no bounds.
"Why, honey!" he cried, "what in the world have you done to him?"
"I didn't do a thing, Bishop, but shoot him with my cornstalk gun; I didn't know it had such a heavy load in it. Anyhow, he had no business to be the Boogerman. Do you think he's truly—ann—dead, Bishop?"
"As dead," Mr. Sanders declared solemnly, "as Hector. I dunno how dead Hector was, but this feller is jest as dead as him—that is ef he ain't got a conniption fit; I've heern tell of sech things."
They climbed the garden fence, and went to where the Boogerman was lying stretched out. "When a man's dead," said Mr. Sanders, "he'll always tell you so ef you ax him."
"Boogerman! oh, Boogerman!" cried Adelaide, going a little closer.
"Ma'am!" replied the dead one feebly.
"When the Boogerman is dead," said Adelaide, "and anybody asks him if it is so, he lifts his left foot and rolls his eyeballs. Are you dead?"
In confirmation of that fact, the foot was lifted, and the eyeballs began to roll. Adelaide was almost beside herself with delight. Never had she hoped to have such an experience as this. "Where shall he be buried, Bishop?"
"Close to the ash-hopper, right behind the kitchen," promptly responded Mr. Sanders.
"Get up, Boogerman!" commanded Adelaide. "You have to go to your own fumerl, you know, and you might as well go respectably." Adelaide always uttered a deliciously musical gurgle when she used a big word.
"Yes," said Mr. Sanders; "as fur as my readin' goes, thar ain't nothin' in the fourteenth an' fifteenth amendments ag'in it."
Now, old Jonas's side-gate opened on this street, and on this gate Lucindy chanced to be leaning, when the Boogerman, fatally wounded by Adelaide's cornstalk gun, sank upon the ground and began to jump around like a chicken with its head off. She was tremendously frightened at first; in fact she was almost paralysed. So she stayed where she was, explaining afterward that she didn't want to be mixed up "wid any er deze quare doin's what done got so common sence de big rucus." Then she saw Adelaide and Mr. Sanders climb the garden fence and stand over the fallen negro, and curiosity overcame her fright. By the time the negro was on his feet, Lucindy had arrived. She looked at him hard, jumped at him, threw her arms around his neck, and squeezed him so tight that the two of them kept turning around as if they were trying to keep time to a smothered waltz; and all the while Lucindy was moaning and groaning and thanking the Lord that her son whom she had not seen in four long years, had come, as it were, right straight to her bosom.
She hugged him to the point of smifflication, as Mr. Sanders declared, and she held him at arm's length, the better to see whether he had changed, and in what particular. Then she turned to Mr. Sanders:
"Mr. Sanders, sholy you knows dis chil'—sholy you ain't done gone an' disremembered Randall. Des like you seed him doin' des now, dat de way he been doin' all his born days—constantly a-playin', constantly a-makin' out dat what ain't so is so, an' lots mo' so. Many an' many's de time sence Miss Adelaide been here has I had de idee dat ef Randall wuz here, he'd be mo' dan a match fer Cally-Lou an' all de rest un um dat slips out'n dreams an' stays wid us. Yasser, I sho has. But now he's come, I des feels in my bones dat he gwine ter git in deep trouble 'bout dem crimes what he run away fer."
"Randall is the chap that knocked Judge Bowden's overseer crossways an' crooked, ain't he?" inquired Mr. Sanders.
"Yasser, he done dat thing," replied Lucindy: "an how come he ter do it—him dat wuz afear'd er his own shadder—I'll never tell you. Let 'lone dat, he ain't gwin ter tell you; kaze I done ax'd him myse'f. I speck he'll haf ter run away ag'in."
"You know me, don't you, Randall?" inquired Mr. Sanders.
"La! yasser, Mr. Sanders, I've been knowin' you sence I could walk good."
"That's what I thought," said Mr. Sanders. "Well, my advice to you is to stay an' face the music. Ef the man you hit makes a move we'll have him right whar we've been a-tryin' fer to git him for two long years!"
They went toward the house, and entered the side-gate, attracting, as they did so, the attention of two or three of the neighbours. The Bishop had been so absorbed in what had occurred that he forgot to turn his coat, or to right his hat.
"Did you see old Billy Sanders?" one woman asked another over the back fence.
"I did," replied the other, "and I like to have dropped—I believe he is going crazy."
"Going!" exclaimed the first woman, "he's gone! Done gone!"
PART III
O winds of the sea, that whisper,
Will you not whisper to me
What the marvellous strange visions
Of a little child may be?
O wild rose, stirred and shaken,
By the wind that ripples the stream,
Why are the children dreaming,
And what are the dreams they dream?
—Beverly's Attitudes and Platitudes: A Drama.
"Them that slip out'n dreams an' stay with us!" said Mr. Sanders to himself, as they went along. "Be jiggered ef that ain't a new one on me! I'll take it home an' chew on it when I'm lonesome."
Adelaide had just cause of complaint, she thought. "Now we can't have any fumerl, with strange folks tip-toeing about the place, and carriages at the door, with horses snorting and pawing the ground."
"It's jest as well," remarked Mr. Sanders. "All that sort of thing will come along lot's quicker than we want it to."
"They come'd twice to our house—two times!" said Adelaide, in the tone of one who has a proprietary interest in such matters. "They come'd and come'd," she went on, with the air of imparting important secret information, "and they peeped in all the rooms, and in the closets, and behind the doors, and pulled out all the booro draws; yes, and some of 'em looked in the safe where mother keeps her vittles!"
There was something pitiful about the child's brief recital. She had seen and noted everything, and the report she had inadvertently made to Mr. Sanders rang true to life, and almost humorously true to the results of Mr. Sanders's observation. His lips twitched, as they had a way of doing when he was in doubt whether to laugh or cry, which was often the case.
"Well, honey," he replied, making what excuse he could for poor humanity, "ef folks is ever gwine for to find out anything in this world they've got to stick the'r noses in ev'ry nook an' cranny."
"That's why I wanted to put the Boogerman in the grave-yard. Lucindy is his mother, and we could go and look under her bed, and peep in her cubberd, and find out everything she's got, and more too."
What reply Mr. Sanders would have made to this will never be known, for they were just going in the side gate that let them into old Jonas's back-yard. Old Jonas himself had come out of the house, and was now walking about in the yard with his hat pulled well down to his ears. The opening and shutting of the gate attracted his attention, and he turned to see who could be trespassing on his premises. When he saw Mr. Sanders fantastically arrayed, his coat turned inside out, and his hat upside down, old Jonas flung both hands over his head in a gesture of amazement.
"Why, what foolery is this? Good Lord, Sanders! have you turned lunatic? Why—why—if this kind of thing goes on much longer, I'll sue out a writ, and have you sent to the asylum; I'll do it as sure as my name is Whipple!"
"Please, sir, Nunky-Punky, let me off this time, and I'll never play wi' Miss Adelaide any more. An' the Boogerman may git you for all I keer! An' ol' Raw-Head-an'-Bloody-Bones'll crawl out from under the house whar he lives at, an' snap his jaws an' wink his green eyes at you; an' he'll ketch you an' put you in his wallet, an' chaw you up bone by bone—mark my words!"
"Sanders!" said old Jonas, with less anger and more earnestness, "what in the name of all that's sensible, is the matter with you?"
"Not a thing in the world but pyore joy, Jonas! Climb up in the waggon and let's all take a ride. I'm dead in love wi' this little gal here; won't you j'ine me? Nan Dorrin'ton used to be my beau-lover, but Nan's too old, an' now Adelaide's done took her place! Slap yourself on the hams an' crow like a rooster! Jump up an' crack your heels together twice before you come to earth ag'in. We've ketched the Boogerman, an' was gittin' ready for to fetch him home bekaze we had him whar he could nuther back nor squall, but jest about that time, here come Lucindy. She wa'n't gallopin', but she give us ez purty a sample of the ginnywine buzzard-lope as you ever laid eyes on. She grabbed the Boogerman an' give him the Putmon county witch-hug. Arter she'd smivelled an' smovelled him mighty nigh to death, she helt him off from her an' claimed him as her long-lost son; she know'd it bekaze he had a swaller-fork in one y'ear, an' a under-bit in the other, an' a wind-gall on the back of his neck. Her son, mind you! Well, when I know'd her son the first letter of his name was Randall Bowden, bekaze Bowden was the name of the man he belonged to—you remember him, Jonas?"
"He admitted me to the bar and came within one of frightening me to death," responded old Jonas.
"Well, you're a lawyer, an' you know mighty well that a man an' a citizen can't change his name wi'out a special law passed by the legislatur'. Now, ef the Boogerman was a plain nigger, it wouldn't make a bit of difference what he called hisse'f. But thar ain't no plain niggers any more; they're all sufferin' citizens. An' here he is callin' hisself Randall Holden. What do you think of that?"
Randall shifted from one foot to the other and looked, first, at Mr. Sanders, and then at all of the others in turn. "Well, suh, Mr. Sanders, I call myse'f Holden bekaze they ain't no Bowdens fer me ter be named after. Marster's dead, Mistiss is dead, an' Miss Betty is done gone an' changed her name by—er—gittin' married. De Holdens ain't all dead yit, an' my mistiss wuz a Holden proceedin' the day she married marster. I felt like I want ter be named after somebody that wuz alive."
"What have you been doing all this time?" old Jonas asked in his sharpest and curtest tone.
"Workin' hard all day, an' studyin' hard at night, suh. I laid off ter be a preacher. In four years, I reckon I has been to school about one year. I can read a little, an' write a little, an' maybe do some easy figgerin'. It looks like that books git harder the more you fool with 'em. That's what I find about 'em. I jest come ter see my mammy, suh, an' she come up on me while I was playin' Boogerman with the little mistiss there."
"Doing what?" snapped old Jonas; and then Mr. Sanders had to relate the wonderful adventures that befell Adelaide and him in the Whish-Whish Woods. How he did it must be imagined, but old Jonas listened patiently to the end, without uttering so much as the habitual "pish-tush."
"Sanders," said old Jonas, when the narrative of the expedition was concluded, "do you mean to stand there and tell me that you, a man old enough to be a grandfather, got in that rig, and went trampling about in my garden, just to give that child a little pleasure?"
"Why, no, Jonas, I can't say that I did; I sorter had the idee that I mought git my name in your will, seein' as how you're so abominably fond of Adelaide. That's why I come!"
It was at this point that Jonas's "pish-tush" did execution; he fired it at Mr. Sanders with as much energy as indignation could give.
Randall, the Boogerman, was evidently somewhat in doubt of old Jonas's disposition in regard to him, and so he said, with every appearance of embarrassment: "I can't stay here long, suh, bekaze they's people in this county that would Ku-Kluck me ef they know'd I was anywheres around. I'm the one, suh, that knocked Mr. Tuttle in the head with my hoe-handle when he was marster's overseer. I didn't go ter do it, suh, but he pecked on me an' pecked on me twel I didn't have the sense I was born with. It looked like somebody had flung a red cloth over my head; ev'rything got red, an' when I come ter myse'f Mr. Tuttle was layin' there on the ground jest as still as ef he'd a' been a log of wood. I know'd mighty well that ef they cotch me I'd be hung, bekaze that was the law in them times; Miss Betty tol' me so. I got away from there, an' run home; but before I got there, I could hear white folks a-hollerin', an' then I know'd they was after me. I run right in the big house, an' went up stairs the back way, an' before I could stop myse'f I run right in Miss Betty's room. She was in there combing her hair; she'd been having a party, the first one after she come back frum college."
"Wasn't she frightened?" old Jonas inquired. "Didn't she scream and raise a row?"
"No, suh," replied Randall, the Boogerman; "she wa'n't no more skeer'd than what you is right now. She say, 'How dast you ter come in here?' But by ther time she seed the blood runnin' down my face where Mr. Tuttle had hit me, an' time she looked ag'in, I was down on my knees, sayin' a prayer to her. I tol' her that the white folks was after me, an' begged her not ter let 'em git me. I know'd that the way to the top of the house led through her room, an' that was the reason I run in there—I thought she was down stairs lookin' after her party. I begged an' prayed so hard that she went to the door leadin' to the plunder room under the roof, an' flung it open with, 'Go up there, an' keep still; don't you dast to make any fuss!' Well, suh, up I went, an' I stayed there twel I could git away. Ef any of you-all know where Miss Betty is, an' will tell me, I'll go right whar she is an' work fer her twel she gits tired of bein' worked fer."
"All dat's de naked trufe," exclaimed Lucindy, "kaze Miss Betty come out ter de kitchen an' tol' me whar Randall wuz, an' gi' me de key er de do', an' I tuck him vittles an' clean cloze plum twel he got away. I'd 'a' gone wid Miss Betty, but I know'd dat boy would come back here ef he wa'n't dead, an' I stayed an' waited fer 'im twel des now. You may have de idee dat I'm quare, but Randall is my own chile."
By this time, Mr. Sanders had righted his coat and hat, and was now regarding the negro with some curiosity. "Lucindy ain't the only one that's been a-waitin' fer you," he said. "I reckon that old Tuttle and his crowd have been doin' some waitin' the'rselves; an' I know mighty well that I'm one of the waiters. How much do you charge me for knockin' ol' Tuttle in sight of the Promised Land, and how much will you charge me for hittin' him another side-wipe?"
"No, suh, Mr. Sanders! Not me! I ain't never lost my senses sence that day in the cotton-patch; no matter what you do, I'll never see red any more; I've done tried myself an' know. No more red fer me—not in dis world!"
"Old Tuttle!" snapped Mr. Jonas Whipple. "I wish the buzzards had him!" Then he turned to Randall. "Stay, if you want to stay. I've plenty of work for you to do. Sanders, can't you find a job for him at a pinch?"
"Mercy, yes!" replied Mr. Sanders; "I've got jobs that have grown gray waitin' for some un to do 'em."
"Stay! stay!" cried old Jonas, in his harsh voice, "and if old Tuttle bothers you, come to me or go to Mr. Sanders there, and we'll see who has the longest arm!"
"Tooby shore!" assented Mr. Sanders, "an' likewise who's got the longest money-purse. But what's betwixt you an' Tuttle?"
"Why," said old Jonas, "he borrowed a thousand dollars from me the second year of the war, and after the surrender crawled under the exemption act. Now if he had come to me like a man—I'll not say like a gentleman, for that is beyond him—if he had come to me and said that he found it impossible to pay the money I had loaned him to keep the sheriff out of his yard, I'd have told him plainly to go on about his business, and pay me when he could. Now, I propose to make it as hot as pepper for him, especially since he has developed into a scalawag. The latest report is, that he is one of the officials of the Union League."
Old Jonas paused, and his bead-like eyes glittered maliciously. "Sanders," he went on, "it isn't often I ask a man to do me a favour, but I'm going to ask one of you. It will pay you to do it," he added, observing the shadow of a doubt on Mr. Sanders's face.
Adelaide's Bishop seemed to be very serious, but there was a twinkle in his eye. He passed his hand over his mouth, in order to drive away a smile that threatened to become insubordinate. "Would it be troublin' you too much, Jonas," he said, "ef I was to ax you to pay me in advance?"
"Pish-tush!" exclaimed old Jonas, with a scowl; "you should get you a fiddle, Sanders, or a hurdy-gurdy! What I want you to do, the first opportunity you have, is to tell old Tuttle that the nigger that laid him low in Judge Bowden's cotton-patch is at my house. He hates me for doing him a favour, and he hates the nigger for striking him when striking a white man was a hanging offence. He pretends to be a nigger-lover now because he wants office; but when you tell him that this boy is at my house, one of two things will happen: he'll get together a gang of men of his own kidney and try the Ku-Klux game, or he'll have him arrested for assault with intent to murder."
"Bishop," said Adelaide, who had only a dim idea of the meaning of what she had heard, "please don't let them get my Boogerman. I killed him, you know, and he belongs to me."
"No, suh! no, suh!" protested the Boogerman. "I don't want Mr. Tuttle to lay eyes on me. I jest wanted to see my mammy, an' find out where 'bouts Miss Betty is, an' then I'll git out'n folks' way. I might stand up an' tell Mr. Tuttle the truth frum now twel next year an' he wouldn't b'lieve a word I said. Me see Mr. Tuttle? No, suh! When Mr. Tuttle calls on me, I'll be gone—done gone!"
"Yasser!" cried Lucindy; "he's tellin' you de naked trufe! You reckin I'd let my chile see ol' Tuttle? Well, not me! Maybe somebody else'd do it, but not me! not ol' Lucindy! Don't you never b'lieve dat."
"You say you can read and write?" said old Jonas to the Boogerman. "Well, come into the house here, and black my shoes. Then, after that you may preach me a sermon."
"Yes!" exclaimed Adelaide, "Cally-Lou is awake now; I saw her at the window; come in, Boogerman, and let her see you. She is seven years old, and has never seen the Boogerman."
"First, let Lucindy give you something to eat," said old Jonas, "but don't fail to come in and black my shoes!"
Old Jonas, Bishop Sanders, and Adelaide went into the house, while the Boogerman went into the kitchen with his mother, where, seated by the window, and as far away from the fireplace as ever, he told the tale of his adventures—a tale which we are not concerned with here. Mr. Sanders and old Jonas were soon absorbed in a game of checkers, but they were not so completely lost in their surroundings that they failed to pay heed to Adelaide as she went from room to room calling Cally-Lou. Presently she seemed to find her in the parlour.
"You are pouting," she said, "or you'd never be sitting in this room where nobody ever comes. Why, they don't have any fires in here, and nothing to eat. Nunky-Punky says if the sun was to shine in here, the carpet would curl up and get singed. You don't know what it is to be singed, do you? Well, it's the way Mammy Lucindy does the chicken after all the feathers are picked off. She kindles the fire until it blazes, and then holds the chicken in it until all its whiskers are burnt off. You didn't know chickens had whiskers, did you? Well, they have. You'll never find out anything if you mope in the house and pout like this. I didn't know any child could be so hard-headed."
