The Legend of Potato Creek.
Big yellow butterflies were wheeling about in the drowsy summer air, and hovering above the moist little sand bars of Potato Creek. A shady dell, wrapped in the hot lull of August, sent up the spires and domes of its walnut and poplar trees, clearly defined, and sheeny, while underneath the forest roof the hazel and wild rose bushes had wrung themselves into dusky mats. The late violets bloomed here and there, side by side with those waxlike yellow blossoms, called by the country folk "butter and eggs." Through this dell Potato Creek meandered fantastically, washing bare the roots of a few gnarled sycamores, and murmuring among the small bowlders that almost covered its bed. It was not a strikingly romantic or picturesque place—rather the contrary—much after the usual type of ragged little dells. "A scrubby little holler" the neighborhood folk called it.
Perched on the topmost tangle of the dry, tough roots of an old upturned tree, sat little Rose Turpin, sixteen that very August day; pretty, nay beautiful, her school life just ended, her womanhood just beginning to clothe her face and form in that mysterious mantle of tenderness—the blossom, the flower that brings the rich sweet fruit of love. From her high perch she leaned over and gazed down into the clear water of the creek and smiled at the gambols of the minnows that glanced here and there, now in shadowy swarms and anon glancing singly, like sparks of dull fire, in the limpid current. Some small cray-fishes, too, delighted her with their retrograde and side-wise movements among the variegated pebbles at the bottom of the water. A small sketch book and a case of pencils lay beside her. So busy was she with her observations, that a fretful, peevish, but decidedly masculine voice near by startled her as if from a doze. She had imagined herself so utterly alone.
"Wo-erp 'ere, now can't ye! Wo, I say! Turn yer ole head roun' this way now, blast yer ole picter! No foolin', now; wo-erp, I tell ye!"
Rose was so frightened at first that she seemed about to rise in the air and fly away; but her quick glance in the direction of the sound discovered the speaker, who, a few rods further down the creek, stood holding the halter rein of a forlorn looking horse in one hand, and in the other a heavy woodman's axe.
"Wo-erp, now! I hate like the nation to slatherate ye; but I said I'd do it if ye didn't get well by this August the fifteenth; an' shore 'nuff, here ye are with the fistleo gittin' wus and wus every day o' yer life. So now ye may expect ter git what I tole ye! Stan' still now, will ye, till I knock the life out'n ye!"
By this time Rose had come to understand the features of the situation. The horse was sadly diseased with that scourge of the equine race, scrofulous shoulder or fistula, commonly called, among the country folk, fistleo, and because the animal could not get well the man was on the point of killing it by knocking it on the head with the axe.
Of all dumb things a horse was Rose's favorite. She had always, since her very babyhood, loved horses.
"Wo-wo-wo-erp, here! Ha'n't ye got no sense at all? Ding it, how d'ye 'spect me to hit yer blamed ole head when ye keep it a waggin' 'round in that sort o' style? Wo-erp!"
The fellow had tied the halter rein around a sapling about two feet from the ground, and was now preparing to deal the horse a blow with the axe between its eyes. The animal seemed unaware of any danger, but kept its head going from side to side, trying to fight certain bothersome gad-flies.