XXIV. THE MUSCADINE STORY.

It was a bland September morning, in a year that need not be specified, that the Captain, standing in view of the west door of the Court-House at Dadeville, perceived the sheriff emerging therefrom, a bundle of papers in hand, and looking as if he desired to execute some sort of a capias.

The Captain instantly bethought him, that there was an indictment pending against himself for gaming, and began to collect his energies for an emergency. The sheriff hailed him at the same moment, and requested him to “hold on.”

“Stop, Ellis—right thar in your tracks, as the bullet said to the buck,” Suggs responded; “them dockyments look venermous!”

“No use,” said the officer—“sooner or later you must be taken; dog-face Billy Towns is here, and he’ll go your security.”

“Keep off, I tell you, Ellis; I ain’t safe to-day—the old woman’s coffee was cold this mornin’, and it fretted me. If you’ve got anything agin me, keep it ’till Court—I’ll be thar—‘waive all formalities,’ you know!”

“I will waive nothing,” replied the sheriff, advancing: “I’ll put you whar I can find you when wanted.”

Suggs drew an old revolving pistol, whereupon the sheriff paused.

“The blood,” shouted the Captain, “of the High Sheriff of Tallapoosy County be upon his own head. If he crowds on to me, I give fair warnin’ I’ll discharge this revolten’ pistol seven several and distinct times, as nigh into the curl of his forehead, as the natur’ of the case will admit.”

For a moment the sheriff was intimidated; but recollecting that Captain Suggs had a religious dread of carrying loaded fire-arms about his person, although he often sported them uncharged for effect, he briskly resumed his stride, and the Captain, hurling the “revolter” at his head, at once fell into a “killing pace” towards the rack where stood his pony, “Button.”

The sheriff’s horse, by chance, was tied at the same rack, but a wag of a fellow, catching Suggs’s idea, unhitched the pony, and threw the bridle over its neck, and held it ready to be mounted; so that the Captain was in his saddle, and his nag at half speed, ere the sheriff put his foot in the stirrup.

Here they go! clattering down the street “like an armed troop!” Now the blanket-coat of the invincible Captain disappears round Luke Davenport’s corner! The sheriff is hard after him! “Go it, Ellis!” “Go it Suggs!” “Whoop! whoop! hurrah!” Again the skirts of the blanket-coat become visible, on the rise by M’Cleudon’s, whisking about the pony’s rump! “Lay whip, Sheriff; your bay’s lazy!” The old bay gains on Button, however. But now they turn down the long hill towards Johnson’s Mill creek. Right sturdily the pony bears his master on, but the bay is overhauling him fast! They near the creek! He has him! no!—the horse runs against the pony—falls himself—projects his rider into the thicket on the right—and knocks the pony and its rider into the stream.

It happened, that, by the concussion or some other cause, the girth of Captain Suggs’s saddle was broken; so that neither himself nor his saddle was precisely on Button’s back when they reached the water. It was no time to stop for trifles, however; so leaving the saddle in the creek, the Captain bestrode the bare back of his panting animal, and made the best of his way onward. He knew that the Sheriff would still follow, and he therefore turned from the road at right angles, skirted the creek swamp for a mile, and then took a direction by which he would reach the road again, four or five miles from the scene of his recent submersion.

The dripping Captain and his reeking steed cut a dolorous figure, as they traversed the woods. It was rather late in the season to make the hydropathic treatment they had so lately undergone agreeable; and the departure of the Captain from Dadeville had been too unexpected and hurried to allow the slightest opportunity for filling his quart tickler.

“Wonder,” said he to himself, “if I won’t take a fit afore I git any more—or else have a whole carryvan of blue-nose monkeys and forky-tail snakes after me—and so get a sight of the menajerie ’thout payin’ the fust red cent. Git up, you lazy Injun!”

With the last words, Simon vigorously drove his heels against Button’s sides, and in a half hour had regained the road.

Scarcely had Captain Suggs trotted a hundred yards, when the sound of horses’ feet behind him caused him to look back. It was the Sheriff.

“Hello! Sheriff! stop!” said Suggs.

The Sheriff drew up his horse.

“I’ve got a proposition to make to you; you can go home with me, and thar I can give bond.”

“Very well,” said the Sheriff.

“But hands off till we git thar, and you ride fifty steps ahead of me, for fear of accidents—that’s the proposition.”

“Agreed!”

“Not so fast,” said Suggs, “thar’s a condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Have you got any liquor along?”

The Sheriff pulled out a black bottle by way of reply.

“Now,” said Captain Suggs, “do you put the bottle on that stump thar, and ride out from the road fifty yards, and when I git it, take your position in front.”

These manœuvres were performed with much accuracy, and the parties being ready, and the Captain one drink ahead:

“For—rard, march!” said Suggs.

In this order, the Sheriff and Captain wended their way, until they arrived at the crossing of Eagle Creek, a stream having a miry swamp on each side. As his pony was drinking, an idea popped into the Captain’s head which was immediately acted upon. He suddenly turned his pony’s head down stream, and in half a minute was out of sight.

“Come, Button,” said he, “let’s hunt wild-cats a spell!”

The Sheriff, almost as soon as he missed our hero, heard him splashing down the creek. He plunged into the swamp, with the intention of heading him, but the mud was so soft that after floundering about a little while, he gave it up, and returned to the road, cursing as much for the loss of his black bottle, as of the Captain.

“Hello, Ellis!” shouted Suggs.

“Hello, yourself!”

“Don’t you try that swamp no more; it’ll mire butterflies, in spots!”

“No danger!” was the response.

“And don’t you try to follow me, on that tall horse, down the run of this creek; if you do, you’ll have both eyes hangin’ on bamboo briers in goin’ a hundred yards—besides, moccasin time ain’t over yet, and thar’s lots of ’em about these old logs!”

“Take care of yourself, you old thief!” said the irritated officer.

“Once again, Ellis, old fellow!” said Suggs, coaxingly.

“What do you want?”

“Nothin’, only I’m much obleeged to you for this black bottle—here’s luck!—you can charge the price in the next bill of costs you git agin me.”

The discomfited Sheriff could stand this jeering from the Captain no longer, so he put spurs to his horse and left.

“Now,” murmured Suggs, “let me depart in peace, for thar’s no chance to ketch up with me now!—Cuss the hole—and yonder’s a horsin’ log!

“Well, the wicked flee when no man pursueth; wonder what they’d do if they had that black rascal, Martin Ellis, after ’em, on that infernal long-legged bay? Durn the luck! thar’s that new saddle that I borrowed from the Mississippi feller—which he’ll never come back for it—that’s lost in the mill creek!—jist as good as ten dollars out of my pocket. Well, it’s no use ’sputin’ with providence—hit will purvide!

“The Grand Jurors of the State of Alabama,” he continued, soliloquizing in the verbiage of an indictment; “elected, sworn, and charged—darned rascals all, with Jim Bulger at the head!—to inquire for the body of Tallapoosa County—durn their hearts! it’s my body they’re after!—upon their oaths present—confound them!—that Simon Suggs—hem! that’s me, but they might’ve put the ‘Captain’ to it, though!—late of said County—just as if I warn’t one of the fust settlers, which I was here, afore they had a sign of a Court-House!

“Well, it’s no use thinkin’ about the lyin’ thing; I’ll have to go Hadenskeldt, at Court, to get me out’n the suck. Now, he’s a quar one, ain’t he? Never got him to do any law job for me yet but what I had to pay him—drot the feller. Anybody would think ’twas as hard to git money from me as ’tis for a man to draw a headless tenpenny nail out’n an oak post with his teeth—but that little black-headed lawyer makes a ten, or a twenty, come every pop!

“Wonder how fur ’tis down to the bend? This creek makes into the river about a mile below it, they say. Never mind, thar’s a few drinks of the ipsydinxy left, and the menajerie won’t open to-day. I judge if my old woman knowed whar I was goin’, and who I was goin’ to see, she’d make the yeath shake. But she don’t know; it’s a prinsippel that Providence has put into the bosom of a man—leastways all sensible men—to run on and talk a heap afore their wives, to make ’em believe they’re turnin’ wrong-side out before ’em and yet never tell ’em the fust word of truth. It’s a wise thing in providence, too. Wonder, if I’ll ketch that rascal Jim Sparks jewlarkin’ round Betsy, down at old Bob’s!”

On the morning after the occurrence of the adventure we have related, Captain Suggs sat in a long trim-built Indian canoe, which was moored to the north bank of the Tallapoosa river. Near him was Miss Betsy Cockerell. She sat facing the Captain, on a board laid across the gunwales of the boat. Miss Betsy was a bouncing girl, plump, firm, and saucy, with a mischievous rolling eye, and a sharp word for ever at her tongue’s end. She seemed to be coquetting with the paddle she held in her hand, and occasionally would strike it on the water, so as to besprinkle Captain Suggs, much to his annoyance.

“Oh, Captin, you do persuade me to promise you so hard. And Jim Sparks says you’re married; and if you ain’t you mought ’a been, twenty years ago; you’re old enough.”—(splash!)

“I say, mind how you throw your water! Jim Sparks is a triflin’ dog—if I have got a wife, Betsy, she is goin’ fast.”

“Goin’ whar?” asked Betsy, striking the water again.

“Confound your paddle! can’t you keep it still? Providence is goin’ to take her home, Betsy—she’s dwindled away to a shadder, with that cough and one thing and another. She ain’t long for this world,” he added, mournfully; “and if you, Betsy, will only make up your mind—the devil take that paddle!—you’ll turn over the boat, and throw me in the river!—make up your mind to step into her shoes, it looks like it would sort o’ reconcile me to lose her”—and here a tear leaked out of each corner of the Captain’s eyes.

“Oh, Captin,” said Betsy, half shutting one eye, and looking quizzical; “thar’s so many good-lookin’ young fellers about, I hate to give ’em up. I like you, Captin, but thar’s Bill Edwards, and Jet Wallis, and Jim Sparks, and”—

“ ‘Good lookin’!’ and ‘Jet Wallis’ and ‘Jim Sparks!’ Why Jet’s mouth is no better than a hole made in the fore part of his head with a claw-hammer—and as for Jim Sparks, he’s got the face of a terrier dog.”

“Do you count yourself good-lookin’?” asked Betsy, with great naïveté.

“Gal!” replied Suggs, with dignity, “did you ever see me in my uniform? with my silver oppolots on my shoulder? and my red sash round my waist? and the sword that Governor Bagby give me, with the gold scabbard a hangin’ by my side?”

Just at this moment a step was heard, and before the Captain and Betsy had recovered from the shock of intrusion, Sheriff Ellis stepped into the boat, and asserted that Suggs “was his prisoner!”

“Treed at last!” said the Captain; “but it’s no use frettin’; the ways of Providence is mysterious. But whar did you cross, Ellis?”

“Oh, I knew you’d be about the old lick log ’a fishin’ with Betsy. I’ll turn the kunnoo loose, and Bets will take us across. I crossed at Hambrick’s ferry, left my horse on t’other side, and come down on you, like a mink on a settin’ hen. Come! come! it’s time we were off to Dadeville.”

“Providence is agin me,” sighed the Captain; “I’m pulled up with a short jerk, in the middle of my kurreer. Well, but,” he continued, musing, “ ’spose a feller tries on his own hook—no harm in takin’ all the chances—I ain’t in jail, yet!”

A few yards below the boat landing, there grew out of the bank, an immense water-oak, projecting over the river, at an angle of about forty-five. A huge muscadine vine enwrapped the oak in every part, its branches and tendrils covering it like network. The grapes were now ripe, and hung over the river

“In bacchanal profusion,—

Purple and gushing.”

Betsy allowed the canoe to drop down slowly, just outside of where the tips of the lower branches of the tree dallied with the rippling water. The fruit attracted the Sheriff’s eye and appetite, and reaching out an arm he laid hold of a branch, and began to “pluck and eat.”

“Drot the grapes!” said Suggs, angrily; “let’s go on!”

“Keep cool,” said the Sheriff, “I’ll fill my pockets first.”

“Be in a hurry, then, and if you will gather the sour things, reach up and pull down them big bunches, up thar,” pointing to some fine clusters higher than the Sheriff could reach, as he stood up in the boat, “pull the vines down to you?”

The Sheriff tried, but the vines resisted his utmost strength; so crying “steady!” he pulled himself up clear of the boat, and began to try to establish a footing among the foliage.

At this moment Captain Suggs made no remark orally, but his eye said to Betsy, as plainly as eye could talk, “hit her a lick back, my gal!”

Silently the paddle went into the water, Betsy leaning back, with lips compressed, and in a second the canoe shot ten feet out from the tree, and the Sheriff was left dangling among the vines!

“Stop your senseless jokes!” roared the officer.

“Keep cool, old Tap-my-shoulder! thar’s jist the smallest grain of a joke in this here, that ever you seed. It’s the coldest sort of airnest.”

“What shall I do? How shall I get out of this?” asked Ellis, piteously.

“Let all go and drop in the water, and swim out,” was the reply.

“I can’t swim a lick—how deep is it?”

Suggs seemed to ruminate, and then replied:

“From—say—fifteen—yes, at least, fifteen—to—about twenty-five foot. Ugly place!”

“Gracious goodness!” said poor Ellis, “you certainly won’t leave me here to drown—my strength is failing already.”

“If I don’t,” said the Captain, most emphatically, “I wish I may be cotched and hanged where you are,” and saying a word to Betsy, they shot rapidly across the river.

Kissing his companion as he stepped out of the boat, Suggs sought Button, who was tied to a thicket near by, and mounting, pursued his homeward way.

“Never despar,” he said to himself, as he jogged along, “never despar! Honesty, a bright watch-out, a hand o’ cards in your fingers and one in your lap, with a little grain of help from Providence, will always fetch a man through! Never despar! I’ve been hunted and tracked and dogged like a cussed wolf, but the Lord has purvided, and my wust inimy has tuck a tree! Git up, Button, you old, flop-eared Injun!”