Oblivious, apparently, of my weight, he sprung into the waters, and soon—dashing his beautiful head until the spray covered me with delicious coolness—breasted the sleepy lake; and when his feet struck the firm ground, like the fawn from the hunters, away he sprang up the narrow path, which pursued its tortuous way like a monstrous snake, amidst the nodding grass and fragrant spice-wood, and old trees, fantastically interweaving their limbs.
But little cared my courser for those old trees, clothed with moss, with the shadows of their arching boughs the pathway thrown across; he heeded not the verdancy beneath the eye displayed, nor the gorgeous summer mingling of the sunshine and the shade; the gentle voice of Eolus, as dallying with the grove, came breathing gentle symphonies, but not on him it wove the spell of soothing, subdued thought, such as the feelings haunt, when its tones renew the memory of a long-forgotten chant. With eye of dazzling brightness, with foam upon the breast, with mane back flaunting on the air, and proud erected crest; with champing bit, and eager bound, and earth-disdaining tread, and air, as if o'er battle-fields victoriously he sped. Soho! Soft, Chaos! Quiet! Soho!
“Which way now, Spiffle?” said I, as the path appeared to cease at a clear, deep, narrow “slough,” full of cypress “knees,” which did not come to the surface, but seemed some few inches under.
“Right across,” was the answer.
“What! through those shoots? Why there's not room enough between them for a dog to swim, let alone a horse,” said I.
“You'd be mighty out of breath 'fore you got through with the job, doc, if you tried to swim 'tween them, seein' as thar ten foot under. I war fooled here myself for mor'n a year; I'd take a 'bee' for home, an' come to this slew, an' then have to head it, on 'count of the neas; 'till one day I got on a 'bust' in town, an' my critter got loose and struck for home. I tract him up to whar we is, and here they stopt—the trax and me I mean; but on t'other side I seed them, and I knowed he must have swum. I war clean bothered to know how he got over without leaving some of his innards on the neas,—so I tuck a stick and puncht at one of them that war near outen the water, to see if it war a real cypress nubbin. I missed it clear, and kerchunk I went head foremost 'mongst their sharp points. Oh, my 'viscera!' I yelled; but I'll be cust if I toch a nea; they war ten foot under, and thar they stay, and thar they 'tend stayin', for they ain't grown a lick sens that time, and that war so long ago, that the next day I seed the fust steamboat that kum up the Yazoo skare an old buck to death, makin' him jump so fast that he sprung plum through his skull, and the last I seed of him, as he floated down the river, his head had hung on his lines, and one ear on each horn war fluttering his dying elegy.”
By the time this veracious anecdote was over, we had crossed the slough, and a ride of a few miles brought us to the cabin of my patron, who, now elevated with whiskey, had lost his paternal solicitude, and giving way to the garrulity of the drunkard, was making revelations concerning his past history, which, if true, and he had his dues, would have swung him higher than “Barn Poker,” of Coahoma, when the regulators were out.
I found my patient doing very well, Mrs. Spiffle having sent, before my arrival, for one of those knowing old dames who match “'sperience agin book larnin',” and detract so considerably from the physician's income. The old lady, fortunately for the boy, had had sufficient knowledge of surgery to replace the fingers and apply bandages.
Whether it was my naturally prepossessing phiz, or my ready acquiescence in the correctness of her treatment, that softened the old dame, I know not; but she appeared to take to me monstrously; and, after having had her mind satisfied as to my name, natality, and genealogy, she reciprocated intelligence, and, untying the scrap-bag of memory, proceeded to make a patch-quilt for me, of a case that resembled the one we were ministering to.
“Short arter I had kum from Georgy to Mass-ass-sip, a nere nabur—Miss Splicer—had a darter—Miss Spiffle, you had better gin Boney another sup of the sheep safurn—doctor, you said you had no injections to it—what made a slide one day, and 'lowed her dad's axe to fall on her foot, cutting her big toe clean off as sarcumstances would permit. It bled 'mazinly, and the gal hollered out till her mammy, who war splittin'—his throat, Miss Spiffle, a spoonful at a time—rails at the far end of the clearin' (for she was a monstrous 'dustryus woman, Miss Splicer was), heard the rumption and came to the house, lumbrin' over the high logs like a big bull in—a little more whiskey in mine, Miss Spiffle, if you please; what a pity it is that your husband drinks—a small pastur' in the worst of flytime, as she told me arter, thinking some of the town-boys had got hold of the gal.