My parents began to regain confidence, believing that the Seminoles were gone from the neighborhood, as they doubtless were for the time. Father said they were probably scouts, and there was no telling how they might have scattered themselves, or at what point some of them might appear next. He hoped, however, that the presence of the soldiers had led them to abandon any design they might have entertained of attacking us.
On the third day after Jason's adventure we were feeling much relieved. The negro men were at work in the fields, and father had gone to a considerable distance from the house. Mother, Arthur, and myself, with the female servants, were within-doors.
Presently, not far off, we heard the gobble of a wild turkey, or what seemed such, although, as turkeys were not in the habit of approaching so near the house, we imagined Jason to be at his old silly pastime again, imitating the call which he could so well counterfeit.
The notes were continued with great regularity at intervals of a minute or two, and so natural were they that Arthur would have been all on fire to seize his rifle and hurry in quest of the game had he not remembered how often he had been led upon a fruitless chase by the vocal powers of the poor idiot.
"We all excel in something," said my mother, "and Jason was made to call turkeys. But I do wish he would be quiet; it makes me nervous to hear him."
"Jason," said a little negro girl who just then came in from the rear of the premises; "why, missus, Jason done gone asleep in de shade at de back ob de wash-house. I done seen him dis minute."
Arthur hastened out-doors, looked behind the wash-house, and having assured himself that the black boy had nothing to do with the gobbling, returned quickly for his rifle.
"It is a real turkey," he said, "and he's somewhere in the hollow."
The hollow was made by a depression of the ground about fifty rods from the house front, and running parallel with it. Upon its further side was a decayed stump, some four or five feet high, standing below the sloping bank, and with its top just visible from the house. Of this stump the portion next to the slope had so fallen away as to leave a large cavity capable of containing a man.
The gobble indicated the turkey's whereabouts pretty definitely.