“Yais’m, ole miss. I ’lowed I’d better slip down to de pound to see whaffor de cattle makin’ such a to-do. Ack like dey skeert o’ suthin.”
“Dearie me,” said Granny, “I hope it isn’t a wildcat! I doubt if I could kill one of the critters nowadays.” She laughed. “Did I ever tell you about the time I killed a wildcat, Polly, a real painter?”
She paused as she passed the chimney shelf, noticing something on it which she picked up to examine.
“Why, ’tis an eagle’s feather, a gray one. It’s some time since I’ve seen an eagle near the settlements. They seem to be passing with the Indians. Where’d it come from, do you reckon?”
“I found it,” replied the girl, slowly. “On our doorstep. Two days ago.”
“On our step? Well, well! After the chickens, of course. But it comes close. I must tell Ben to watch for it—he’s a good shot, for a nigger. Well, about my wildcat, child. Get your knitting; a good housewife never sits idle. We won’t need lights for that. I don’t hold with this newfangled way of lighting a dip as soon as you’d say jack-robinson. Rank wastefulness, I call it. Get you a stool and sit beside me—no, closer. I like to be able to touch your pretty hair now and then, just to be sure you’re here. For so long—you weren’t.”
The girl seated herself between Granny and the cradle, facing the window, toward which the other’s shoulder was turned.
“’Tis a long story,” began the old woman, “but then all of mine are that. You’re patient with a garrulous old tongue, dearie. It happened afore we come over the mountains, Dan’l and me—your real grandfather, you know, the first of my husbands. He was away at the time—he was mostly away, being that sort—and I had your father Johnny in the cradle, and another coming, as usual; when one evening toward dusk, like now, I heard a commotion in the hen yard. I seized my musket and run out. And there in the midst of the fowl crouched a wildcat! I outs with a screech and ups with my gun, not having time to take aim; and then I started to the cabin at a run, the critter after me. It was a race for life, and I reckon the painter’d have won it—his first leap landed so close that his claws tore my petticoat. But out of the door comes our old hound Jinny, rampaging, she having a litter of pups under my bed at the time and fierce as a lion with it—and the painter got her instead of me, laying her wide open with one rip. I was so mad about poor old Jinny that I forgot how scared I was, and turned and busted that cat’s head in with the butt of the gun—I did so!”
Polly seemed to be listening, tensely.
“You do well to hearken to me brag,” said Granny, with a placid chuckle. “For I was certainly as brave as you make ’em, those days! Like Jinny with her litter of pups. When Dan’l come back he was proud of me, said it wa’n’t no use wasting a gun on a woman of my ability, all I needed was a broom handle.”