Besides the burrs acquired by her mane and tail, Old Pickett sometimes got them in her ears, and then a circus act was necessary to get the bridle over her head in the morning.
One summer afternoon, crook-legged, yellow Sabey came up to the house to borrow a mule with which to drag from a distant backwater a large alligator he had just killed, offering to recompense the favor by bringing a portion of the creature’s oily flesh to be cooked for the always hungry hounds. As all the other farm animals were busy, Sabey was told that he might have Old Pickett, who grazed alone in a distant pasture. Not knowing Old Pickett intimately, the poor darkey scraped his foot gratefully, and taking a bridle from the rack, an ear of corn from the crib and a bundle of fodder from the stack, he set out as gaily and as full of faith as the small boy who, receiving from an elder his first handful of “fresh salt,” goes forth in quest of the elusive robin’s tail. Arrived at the pasture, Sabey shambled toward Old Pickett, holding the ear of corn and the blades coaxingly before him. The bridle was hidden from sight at his back, tied to a hickory bark suspender. As Sabey approached, though he looked like no Greek that ever walked, or fought, or ran, Old Pickett, appraising the provender as camouflage and fearing even the Gullah bearing gifts, raised her head and looked at him suspiciously, but, as Sabey slowed down his pace and called “coab, coab, coab” softly and appealingly, she let him come up to her and condescended to nibble at the outstretched handful of blades. The negro’s favorite method of catching a loose mule is to seize her firmly by the ear, and to this Old Pickett, without an earful of sheep burrs, might have submitted, but, as Sabey grabbed, the sharp burrs were pressed so painfully into the inner lining of her ear, that she wheeled as quick as a flash and, lashing out with heels that had lost none of their youthful vigor, would have lifted Sabey into the air had he not with quick presence of mind thrown himself flat on the ground, so that she kicked over him. When the immediate danger had passed, Sabey rose to his feet and followed her about the pasture for two hours, in the vain effort to coax her again within reach, or to drive her into a fence corner, where he might, by getting a rail behind her, so pen her up that the bridle could be slipped over her head without danger. But Old Pickett could neither be led nor driven, and, just as the sun was setting, Sabey returned alone to the house.
“Mas’ Rafe, uh bin ketch cootuh een me time, uh bin ketch alligettuh, but uh yent fuh ketch no t’unduh en’ no lightnin’, en’ da’ t’ing oonuh call Ole Pickett, him duh t’unduh en’ lightnin’ alltwo one time! Uh gone een de pastuh en’ alltwo me han’ full’up wid bittle fuh da’ mule fuh eat. Uh hab uh kin’ feelin’ een me h’aa’t fuh da’ mule ’tell uh fin’um out, but now, uh nebbuh fuh trus’um ’gen no mo’! Mas’ Rafe, da’ mule ’ceitful ez uh ’ooman! ’E nyam de bittle out me han’, en’ w’en uh graff ’e yez fuh ketch’um, please Gawd, ’e head en’ ’e yez gone, en’ me han’ duh graff ’e two hin’ foot! Uh nebbuh see shishuh swif’ hin’ foot lukkuh da’ mule got. Ef me Jedus didn’ bin tell me fuh fall flat ’puntop me belly, sukkuh alligettuh, uh would’uh dead; but w’en uh do dat, een Gawd’ mussy, de mule kick obuh me, en’ de du’t en’ t’ing wuh ’e kick up out de pastuh, gone ’way up een de ellyment, en’ w’en ’e fall ’puntop me ’e kibbuh me up same lukkuh dem t’row du’t ’puntop’uh man een ’e grabe! Mas’ Rafe, uh tengkful fuh you fuh len’ me da’ mule fuh ride, but ’fo’ uh try fuh ketch’um ’gen, uh redduh walk on me han’ en’ me foot frum yuh spang Caw Caw Swamp!”
Old Pickett had now passed her twenty-fifth year, and day by day became sadder and wiser. She accepted her daily tasks with resignation, but not with enthusiasm. The sockets above her weary eyes grew deeper, and white hairs thickened among the tawny pelage about her brow. Her ears, once so erect and responsive to all the sounds of the world about her, now flopped dejectedly like an unstarched “cracker” sunbonnet. Her lips, as pendulous as those of the bull moose that once tried to bite the Faunal Naturalist, hung lower and lower, and the hour drew near when she must shuffle off the mortal harness she had worn so long. Her eyes had looked upon smiling Peace, upon grim War, and—under Reconstruction, the once proud planters on foot and their quondam slaves on horseback—it was time to go. Turned out in the pasture to spend her last days in idleness, she walked listlessly about, cropping here and there a bunch of tender grass, while she waited for the summons. When it came, and she lay down to rise no more, a black spot, slowly circling in the sky, stooped, and, on a lower level, sailed again in narrowing circles. The keen eyes of other questing vultures, miles away, watched the drop, and followed. From the four corners of the heavens they came, and, alighting on rail fence and blasted pine, or hovering low on shadowy wings, they watched and waited, until at last Old Pickett’s glazing eyes told them that her heart and her heels were stilled forever.
A month or two later in the Autumn, when the family returned to the plantation from the pineland village, the boy indignantly reproached the negroes for not having given Old Pickett decent sepulture, and two of them were induced to gather up her whitened bones and bury them in a shallow grave at the edge of the ante-bellum “horse burying ground,” where the old family horses rested under the live-oaks. The negroes could not understand the boy’s emotion as the clods fell on the bones of the faithful old mule. “Eh, eh, buckruh boy too commikil. Him duh cry ’cause mule dead!” They did not know that the passing of Old Pickett severed a link with the golden past, and that into her grave went something of The Lost Cause!
THE LOST BUCK
An hour after sunrise, hunters and pack assembled at the appointed rendezvous, a centrally situated plantation. There was the usual exchange of pleasant badinage as to the relative speed, stamina and other qualities of the different hounds, who, now united in an imposing pack of twenty, combined almost every type known to the deer hunter, and each had its admirers. The older men preferred the native low-country stock, a blend, perhaps, of the blood of fox hound and beagle, bred for a hundred years or more from dogs brought from England long, long ago. These were fine, high-bred looking animals, mostly “blue speckled,” flecked with patches of black and fawn, whose twisted ears, soft as velvet, were long enough to tie under their wearers’ throats—very aristocrats of the dog world, from their long muzzles to the tips of their slender “rat” tails, not very fast, perhaps, but with noses so “cold” that they could follow a deer trail more than twenty-four hours old. Then, too, their cry! “Rolling tongues,” all of them, sweet and sonorous, whose blending of deep and high-pitched tones sent the blood tingling through the veins. The hard-riding youngsters, however, preferred the recently imported “English” dogs—thick-set, powerful creatures, white, with great patches of black and tan, broad-eared and “feather-tailed.” Their noses were not cold, nor was the music of their yelping “chopped” tongues inspiring, but they had great speed, and their feet were so hard that they could be run day after day without becoming footsore. Here and there, a somber spot in the pack, was a black and tan and—a touch of flame—a big “red-bone” of a western North Carolina strain, a rangy fellow, bred to speed and endurance in a rough, red-fox country. So each type and each individual had special qualities and special advocates, and all were gathered—Countess, Echo, Music, Harper, Lead, Luck, Modoc, Rowser, Blueman, the panther-like Huntress, and many younger dogs—into a pack whose all-round efficiency could not have been matched between Ashley River and the tawny waters of the Savannah!
At last the horns were sounded, and horsemen and hounds passed up the Cypress road. Soon after crossing the two bridges a mile or so away, a short consultation was had, and the “Elliott Big Drive” was decided upon. The elder huntsmen directed the standers to their positions and, after allowing sufficient time for those who had been assigned the more distant passes to reach their stands, the two expert and daring riders who had been designated as the “drivers” put in the eager pack and they spread fanlike among the myrtles.
The old buck, whose trophies were the special object of this day’s hunt, had long baffled the Nimrods of the neighborhood. Unusually large and with a magnificent head of “basket” horns, his resourcefulness had always enabled him to escape his pursuers. He varied his tactics as occasion required. In the early fall and winter, while lying with does and yearlings in the myrtles, or on the sunny side of some broomgrass field, he would cunningly keep his place upon the approach of hounds and hunters, allowing his companions to spring up and lead the cry off on a long run for the river. Then, when the danger was over, he would sneak away and take sanctuary in some distant thicket. Later on, in February and March, when the bucks, having dropped their horns, herded together like timid sheep, he pursued the same course, allowing the younger and less experienced to “jump” at the approach of the pack and lead it away while he remained in safety. In his bachelor days, however, he changed his methods, and, at the first cry of a distant dog opening upon the trail, the wary buck would “sneak,” and, by the time the pack reached his erstwhile bed, they found only the outline of his burly body in the petticoat grass where he had made his luxurious couch, while the old fellow would be perhaps six or seven miles away in the Ti Ti across the Edisto, or in some remote and inaccessible fastness beyond the Toogoodoo. In summer, when his great antlers in the “velvet” were tender and sensitive to the slightest touch of twig or foliage, he avoided thickets and tangled places, skirting the ridges that rose like shoulders on either side of the narrow bays that intersected the great forests of long-leaf pine.
But on this crisp November day, the woods were clean and clear, with no tangle of summer foliage, and the big buck, now carrying iron-hard horns, was as free to run through swamp or thicket as on the higher knolls and ridges, and, cunning and deceitful, he changed his tactics from chase to chase, and kept his pursuers guessing as to whether he would “jump” or “sneak,” whether his course would be east, south or west. Northward he never ran, for thither lay the railway and the flat woods, with no rivers beyond whose waters lay sanctuary.