“Them duds thar,” answered my host, pointing to a corner of his tree-cabin. I looked and saw the skins of several animals,—among which I recognized those of the “painter,” “possum,” and “'coon,” along with a haunch or two of recently killed venison. “I sell 'em, boy; the skins to the storekeepers, and the deer-meat to anybody as 'll buy it.”
Old Zeb's shooting appeared marvellous to me. He could “bark” a squirrel in the top of the tallest tree, or kill it by a bullet through its eye. He used to boast, in a quiet way, that he never spoilt a skin, though it was only that of a “contemptible squir'l.”
What most interested me was his tales of adventure, of which he was often the hero; one possessed especial interest, partly from its own essential oddness, and partly from its hinging on a phenomenon which I had more than once witnessed. I allude to the “caving in,” or breaking down, of the banks of the Mississippi River, caused by the undermining of the current, when large strips of land, often whole acres, thickly studded with gigantic trees, slip into the water, to be “swished” away with a violence eclipsing the fury of fabled Charybdis. It was at the time of these land-slides that old Zeb had met with this adventure, which, by the way, came very near killing him.
I shall try to set it forth in his own piquant patois, as nearly as I can transcribe it from the tablets of my memory. I was indebted for the tale to a chance circumstance, for old Zeb seldom volunteered a story, unless something suggested it. We had killed a fine buck, that had run several hundred times his length with the bullet in his body, and fallen within a few feet of the bank of the great river. While stopping to dress him, old Zeb looked around keenly, exclaiming, “If this ain't the place whar I war trapped in a tree! Thar's the very saplin' itself!”
I looked at the “saplin'.” It was a swamp cypress of some thirty feet in girth, by at least a hundred and fifty in height.
“Trapped in a tree!” I echoed with emphatic interest, perceiving that he was upon the edge of some odd adventure; and, desirous of tempting him to the relation, I continued: “Trapped in a tree! How could that be with an old forester like you?”
“It dud be, howsomedever,” was the quaint reply of my companion; “an' not so very long agone, neyther. Ef ye'll sit down a bit, I'll tell ye all, as I kin tell it; for I hain't forgotten neery sarcumstance; an' I'll lay odds, young feller, thet ef ever you be as badly skeeart, you'll carry the recollection o' that skeer ter yer coffin.
“Ye see, kumrade, I war out arter deer jest as we are the day; only it had got to be nigh sundown, i'deed, an' I hedn't emptied my rifle the hul day. Fact is, I hedn't sot eye on a thing wuth a charge o' powder an' lead. I war afut; an' it are a good six mile from this to my shanty. I didn't like goin' home empty-handed, specially as I knowed we war empty-housed; an' the ole 'ooman wanted somethin' to git us a pound or two o' coffee an' sugar with. So I thort I shed stay all night i' the wuds, trustin' to gettin' a shot at a stray buck or a turkey in the early mornin'. I war jest in this spot; but it looked quite different then. The hul place about hyar war kivered wi' the tallest o' cane, an' so thick, a coon ked sca'ce worm his way through it; but sence then the under-scrub's all been burnt out. So I tuk up my quarters for the night under that 'ere big cyprus. The ground war dampish; for thar hed been a spell o' rain. So I tuk out my bowie, an' cut me enough o' the green cane to make a sort o' a shake-down. It war comf'table enough; an' in the twinklin' o' a buck's tail, I war soun' asleep. I slep' like a possum, till daybreak, an' then I war awoke by the worst noises as ever rousted a feller out o' his slumber. I heerd a skreekin' an' screamin' an' screevin', as ef all the saws in Massissippi wor bein' sharped 'ithin twenty yards o' my ear. It all kim from overhead,—from out the top o' the cyprus; an' it war the callin' o' the baldy eagles; it wa'n't the fust time I had listened to them hyar. 'That's a neest,' sez I to myself; 'an' young 'uns, too. That's why the birds is makin' sech a rumpis.' Not that I cared much about a eagle's nest, nor the birds neyther. But jest then I remembered my ole 'ooman had told me that there war a rich Englishman at the tavern in Grand Gulf who offered no eend o' money for a brace o' young baldy eagles.
“So in coorse I clomb the tree. 'T warn't so easy as you may s'pose. Thar war forty feet o' the stem 'ithout a branch, an' so smooth thet a catamount kedn't 'a' scaled it. I thort at fust that the cyprus wa'n't climable no how; but jest then I seed a big fox grape-vine, that, arter sprawlin' up another tree clost by, left it an' sloped off to the one whar the baldies had thar nest. This war the very thing I wanted,—a sort o' Jaykup's ladder; an', 'ithout wastin' a minit, I shinned up the grape-vine. The shaky thing wobbled about, till I war well-nigh pitched back to the groun'; an' thar war a time when I thort seriously o' slippin' down agin.
“But then kim the thort o' the ole 'ooman, an' the empty larder, along wi' the Englishman an' his full purse; an' bein' freshly narved by these recollections, I swarmed up the vine like a squir'l. Once upon the cyprus, thar warn't no differculty in reachin' the neest. Thar war plenty o' footing among the top branches whar the birds had made thar eyeray. But it warn't so easy to get into the neest. Thar kedn't 'a' been less than a wagon-load o' sticks in it, to say nothin' o' Spanish moss, an' all sorts o' bones o' fish and four-footed animals. It tuk me nigh a hour to make a hole, so that I ked git my head above the edge, an' see what the neest contained. As I expected, thur war young 'uns in it,—two o' them about half feathered.