Pastoral Days; or, Memories of a New England Year

by W. Hamilton Gibson

Here is the low thicket of weeds and hazel-bushes where we always flushed that flock of quail, or started up some lively white-tailed hare that jumped away among the quivering brakes and golden-rod. Here are soft beds of rich green moss, studded with scarlet berries of winter-green and partridge-vine. Now we come upon a creeping mat of princess-pine, and here among the leaves we had almost stepped upon a spreading chestnut-burr—that same burr I have so often seen before, that same fuzzy, open palm holding out its tempting bait to lure the eagerness of youth; an eagerness which always invested a neighbor’s chestnuts with a peculiar charm too tempting to resist; “take one,” it seems to say, as it did in years ago; and its hedge of thorny prickles truly typifies the dangers which surrounded such an undertaking, for these trees belong to Deacon Turney, and he prizes them as though their yellow autumn leaves were so much gold. He guards them with an eagle’s eye, and he gathers all their harvest; no single nut is ever known to sprout in Turney’s woods if he knows it.

This pointed reminder among the leaves fairly pricks my conscience as I recall the many October escapades in which it formed the chief attraction. I remember one occasion in particular, for it is indelibly impressed on my memory, and it was on this very spot. A party of adventurous lads, myself among the number, were out for a glorious holiday. Each had his canvas bag across his shoulder, and we stole along the stone wall yonder, and entered the woods beneath that group of chestnuts. Two of us acted as outposts on picket guard; and another, young Teddy Shoopegg by name, the best climber in the village, did the shaking. He prided himself on being able to “shin up any tree in the caounty,” and after he had once got up among those chestnut-trees we stood from under, and in a very short space of time no single burr was left among their branches. There were five busy pairs of hands beneath those trees, I can tell you, for each one of us fully realized the necessity of making the most of his time, not knowing how soon the warning cry from our outposts might put us all to headlong flight; for the alarm, “Turney’s coming!” was enough to lift the hair of any boy in town.

But luck seemed to favor us on that day; we “cleaned out” six big chestnut-trees, and then turned our attention to the hickories. There was a splendid tall shagbark close by, with branches fairly loaded with the white nuts in their open shucks. They were all ready to drop, and when the shaking once commenced, the nuts came down like a shower of hail, bounding from the rocks, rattling among the dry leaves, and keeping up a clatter all around. We scrambled on all fours, and gathered them by quarts and quarts. There was no need of poking over the leaves for them, the ground was covered with them in plain sight. While busily engaged, we noticed an ominous lull among the branches overhead.

“’Sst! ’sst!” whispered Shoopegg up above; “I see old Turney on his white horse daown the road yender.”

“Coming this way?” also in a whisper, from below.

“I dunno yit, but I jest guess you’d better be gittin’ reddy to leg it, fer he’s hitchin’ his old nag ’t the side o’ the road. Yis, sir, I bleeve he’s a-cummin’. Shoopegg, you’d better be gittin’ aout o’ this,” and he commenced to drop hap-hazard from his lofty perch. In a moment, however, he seemed to change his mind, and paused, once more upon the watch. “Say, fellers,” he again broke in, as we were preparing for a retreat, “he’s gone off to’rd the cedars; he ain’t cummin’ this way at all.” So he again ascended into the tree-top, and finished his shaking in peace, and we our picking also. There was still another tree, with elegant large nuts, that we had all concluded to “finish up on.” It would not do to leave it. They were the largest and thinnest-shelled nuts in town, and there were over a bushel in sight on the branch tips. Shoopegg was up among them in two minutes, and they were showered down in torrents as before. And what splendid, perfect nuts they were! We bagged them with eager hands, picked the ground all clean, and, with jolly chuckles at our luck, were just about thinking of starting for home with our well-rounded sacks, when a change came over the spirit of our dreams. There was a suspicious noise in the shrubbery near by, and in a moment more we heard our doom.

“Jest yeu look eeah, yeu boys!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the neighboring shrubbery, accompanied by the form of Deacon Turney, approaching at a brisk pace, hardly thirty feet away. “Don’t yeu think yeu’ve got jest abaout enuff o’ them nuts?”

Of course a wild panic ensued, in which we made for the bags and dear life; but Turney was prepared and ready for the emergency, and, raising a huge old shot-gun, he levelled it, and yelled, “Don’t any on ye stir ner move, or by Christopher I’ll blow the heels clean off’n the hull pile on ye. I’d shoot ye quicker’n lightni’.”

And we believed him, for his aim was true, and his whole expression was not that of a man who was trifling. I never shall forget the uncomfortable sensation that I experienced as I looked into the muzzle of that double-barrelled shot-gun, and saw both hammers fully raised too. And I can clearly see now the squint and the glaring eye that glanced along those barrels. There was a wonderfully persuasive power lurking in those horizontal tubes; so I at once hastened to inform the deacon that we were “not going to run.”