His name was Gabriel Lucien Todd—an odd name, perhaps, but it suited him, for he was an odd boy. No one ever thought the race of giants extinct after seeing him. When he was thirteen years old he was as tall and heavy as his father, and much stronger. Indeed Sandy often boasted that he could pull as many bales of cotton on a wagon as any yoke of oxen in Warren County.
That, of course, was saying a great deal too much; but his strength was really something wonderful. He could outlift any two of our fellows, without puffing out his cheeks, but we could all take his measure on the ground as fast as he could get up.
There were other noticeable things about Sandy, such as his utter disregard for all the proprieties of language, his bright-red hair, and his extreme good nature, which I seldom saw ruffled. The first was by no means the result of ignorance, for Sandy, besides being a capital scholar in other respects, was looked upon by our fellows as a walking repository of grammatical knowledge.
He wrote splendid letters—and that is an accomplishment that every boy, or man either, does not possess—and he would correctly analyze and parse any sentence you could give him, no matter how complex; but when it came to talking he was all afloat. He twisted his sentences into all sorts of awkward shapes, and sometimes used words that had but little connection with the idea he wished to communicate. It was not the result of carelessness either, for he made some desperate attempts to “talk proper,” as he expressed it, especially in the presence of strangers; but the harder he tried the more he blundered.
After saying this much, it is scarcely necessary to add that Sandy was as slow as an elephant in all his movements, and that he never got surprised at any thing that happened.
Mark’s room and mine was regarded as the headquarters of our fellows. On one side two windows looked out upon a wide porch, and on the other was a fire-place, backed up by an immense brick chimney.
An unpainted board over the fireplace formed the mantel, on which were a collection of books, a couple of lamps, an ornamental clock, and a few articles of curiosity, such as alligators’ teeth, bears’ claws, stone arrow-heads and hatchets.
Two pairs of deer’s antlers were fastened to the wall over the head of the bed, and on them hung our guns, game-bags, shot-pouches, riding-whips, gloves and hunting-horns. These last were of great use to us. They were simply cows’ horns scraped thin and supplied with carved mouth-pieces. They were used principally for calling the hounds during a bear or deer-hunt (it may astonish you to learn that every dog knew the sound of his master’s horn and would obey no other), and with them we could talk to a friend on a calm day a mile distant.
I have lately learned that when boys in a city want a companion, they will station themselves in front of his gate and whistle. We did not go to all that trouble. If Mark and I had any thing exciting on hand, and wanted our fellows to join in, one of us would go out on the porch and blow three long blasts on his horn.
We were always sure of an answer, and in a few minutes here would come Sandy Todd from one direction, and Duke and Herbert from the other. We had written out a regular code of signals, and each of us kept a copy at hand for reference, so that there could be no mistake.