Desirous of tempting him to the relation of it, I continued, “Trapped in a tree? How could that be, Mr Stump, an old forester like you?”
“It did be, howsomedever,” was the quaint reply of my companion, “an’ not so very long agone neyther; only about three yeer. Ef ye’ll sit down a bit, an’ we may as well, since the sun’s putty consid’able hellish hot jest now, I’ll tell ye all about it. An’ I kin tell ye, for I hain’t forgotten neery sarcumstance o’ the hul thing. No, that I hain’t, an’ I’ll lay odds, young feller, that ef you ever be as badly skeeart as I war then, you’ll carry the recollexshun o’ that skeear till ye gets chucked into yur coffin—ay, that ye will!”
Old Zeb here paused; but whether to reflect on what he was going to say next, or to give time for his last words to produce their due impression, I could not determine. I refrained from making rejoinder, knowing that I had now got him fairly over the edge of the adventure, and was safe enough to “have it out.”
“Wal, kumrade, I war out arter deer, jest as you an’ me are the day; only it had got to be lateish—nigh sundown i’deed—and I hadn’t emptied my rifle the hul day. Fact is, I hadn’t sot eye on a thing wuth a charge o’ powder an’ lead. I war afut; an’, as you know yerself, it are a good six mile from this to my shanty. I didn’t like goin’ home empy handed, ’specially as I knowed we war empy-housed at the time, an’ the ole ’ooman wanted somethin’ to get us a pound or two o’ coffee an’ sugar fixins. So I thort I shed stay all night i’ the wuds, trustin’ to gettin’ a shot at a stray buck or a turkey-gobbler i’ the urly daylight. I war jest in the spot whar we air now; only it looked quite different then. The under scrub’s been all burnt down, as you may see. Then the hul place about hyar war kivered wi’ the tallest o’ cane, an’ so thick, a coon ked scace a worm’d his way through it.
“Wal, stranger, ’ithout makin’ more ado, I tuk up my quarters for the night under that ere big cyprus. The groun’ war dampish, for thar had been a spell o’ rain; so I tuk out my bowie, an’ cut me enuf o’ the green cane to make me a sort o’ a shake-down.
“It war comfitable enuf; an’ in the twinklin’ o’ a buck’s tail I war sound asleep.
“I slep like a ’possum till the day war beginnin’ to break; an’ then I awoke, or rayther, war awoke by the damdest noise as ever rousted a fellar out o’ his slumber. I heerd a skreekin’, an’ screamin’, an’ screevin’, as ef all the saws in Massissippi war bein’ sharped ’ithin twenty yards o’ my ear.
“It all kim from overhead, from out the tops o’ the cyprus.
“I warn’t puzzled a bit by them thar sounds. I knowed it war the calling o’ the baldy eagles: for it warn’t the fust time I had listened to them thar.
“‘Thar’s a neest,’ sez I to myself; ‘an’ young uns too. Thet’s why the birds is makin’ such a dod-rotted rumpus.’