II.
Thus it happened that Little Crotchet and his gray pony were pretty well known through all the country-side, for it seemed that he was never tired of riding, and that the pony was never tired of going. What was the rider's errand? Nobody knew. Why should he go skimming along the red road at day dawn? And why should he come whirling back at dusk—a red cloud of dust rising beneath the gray pony's feet? Nobody could tell.
This was almost as much of a puzzle to some of the whites as it was to the negroes; but this mystery, if it could be called such, was soon eclipsed by a phenomenon that worried some of the wisest dwellers in that region. This phenomenon, apparently very simple, began to manifest itself in early fall, and continued all through that season and during the winter and on through the spring, until warm weather set in. It was in the shape of a thin column of blue smoke that could be seen on any clear morning or late afternoon rising from the centre of Spivey's Canebrake. This place was called a canebrake because a thick, almost impenetrable, growth of canes fringed the edge of a mile-wide basin lying between the bluffs of the Oconee River and the uplands beyond. Instead of being a canebrake, it was a vast swamp, the site of cool but apparently stagnant ponds and of treacherous quagmires, in which cows, and even horses, had been known to disappear and perish. The cowitch grew there, and the yellow plumes of the poison-oak vine glittered like small torches. There, too, the thunderwood tree exuded its poisonous milk, and long serpentlike vines wound themselves around and through the trees and helped to shut out the sunlight. It was a swamp, and a very dismal one. The night birds gathered there to sleep during the day, and all sorts of creatures that shunned the sunlight or hated man found a refuge there. If the negroes had made paths through its recesses to enable them to avoid the patrol, nobody knew it but themselves.
Why, then, should a thin but steady stream of blue smoke be constantly rising upwards from the centre of Spivey's Canebrake? This was a mystery to those who first discovered it, and it soon grew to be a neighborhood mystery. During the summer the smoke could not be seen, but in the fall and winter its small thin volume went curling upward continually. Little Crotchet often watched it from the brow of Turner's Hill, the highest part of the uplands. Early in the morning or late in the afternoon the vapor would rise from the Oconee; but the vapor was white and heavy, and was blown about by the wind, while the smoke in the swamp was blue and thin, and rose straight in the air above the tops of the trees in spite of the wayward winds.
Once when Little Crotchet was sitting on his pony watching the blue smoke rise from the swamp he saw two of the neighbor farmers coming along the highway. They stopped and shook hands with the lad, and then turned to watch the thin stream of blue smoke. The morning was clear and still, and the smoke rose straight in the air, until it seemed to mingle with the upper blue. The two farmers were father and son—Jonathan Gadsby and his son Ben. They were both very well acquainted with Little Crotchet—as, indeed, everybody in the county was—and he was so bright and queer that they stood somewhat in awe of him.
"I reckin if I had a pony that wasn't afeard of nothin' I'd go right straight and find out where that fire is and what it is," remarked Ben Gadsby.
This stirred his father's ire apparently. "Why, Benjamin! Why, what on the face of the earth do you mean? Ride into that swamp! Why, you must have lost what little sense you had when you was born! I remember, jest as well as if it was day before yesterday, when Uncle Jimmy Cosby's red steer got in that swamp, and we couldn't git him out. Git him out, did I say? We couldn't even git nigh him. We could hear him beller, but we never got where we could see ha'r nor hide of him. If I was thirty years younger I'd take my foot in my hand and wade in there and see where the smoke comes from."
Little Crotchet laughed. "If I had two good legs," said he, "I'd soon see what the trouble is."
This awoke Ben Gadsby's ambition. "I believe I'll go in there and see where the fire is."
"Fire!" exclaimed old Mr. Gadsby, with some irritation. "Who said anything about fire? What living and moving creature could build a fire in that thicket? I'd like mighty well to lay my eyes on him."
"Well," said Ben Gadsby, "where you see smoke there's obliged to be fire. I've heard you say that yourself."
"Me?" exclaimed Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, with a show of alarm in the midst of his indignation. "Did I say that? Well, it was when I wasn't so much as thinking that my two eyes were my own. What about foxfire? Suppose that some quagmire or other in that there swamp has gone and got up a ruction on its own hook? Smoke without fire? Why, I've seed it many a time. And maybe that smoke comes from an eruption in the ground. What then? Who's going to know where the fire is?"
Little Crotchet laughed, but Ben Gadsby put on a very bold front. "Well," said he, "I can find bee-trees, and I'll find where that fire is."
"Well, sir," remarked Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, looking at his son with an air of pride, "find out where the smoke comes from, and we'll not expect you to see the fire."
"I wish I could go with you," said Little Crotchet.
"I don't need any company," replied Ben Gadsby. "I've done made up my mind, and I'm a-going to show the folks around here that where there's so much smoke there's obliged to be some fire."
The young man, knowing that he had some warm work before him, pulled off his coat, and tied the sleeves over his shoulder, sash fashion. Then he waved his hand to his father and to Little Crotchet, and went rapidly down the hill. He had undertaken the adventure in a spirit of bravado. He knew that a number of the neighbors had tried to solve the mystery of the smoke in the swamp and had failed. He thought, too, that he would fail; and yet he was urged on by the belief that if he should happen to succeed, all the boys and all the girls in the neighborhood would regard him as a wonderful young man. He had the same ambition that animated the knights of old, but on a smaller scale.