[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
want to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger-
some idiots don't require documents- leastways I've heard there's
207
such down South here. And when you tell him the handbill and the
reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him
what the idea was for getting 'em out. Go 'long, now, and tell him
anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any
between here and there."
So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around,
but I kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire
him out at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a
mile, before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods
towards Phelps's. I reckoned I better start in on my plan straight
off, without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth
till these fellows could get away. I didn't want no trouble with their
kind. I'd seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get entirely
shut of them.
208
Chapter Thirty-Two
When I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and
sunshiny- the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them
kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it
seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone; and if a
breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel
mournful, because you feel like it's spirits whispering-spirits that's
been dead ever so many years- and you always think they're
talking about you. As a general thing it makes a body wish he was
dead, too, and done with it all.
Phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations; and
they all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile,
made out of logs sawed off and up-ended, in steps, like barrels of a
different length, to climb over the fence with, and for the women to
stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse; some sickly
grass-patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth,
like an old hat with the nap rubbed off; big double log house for
the white folks- hewed logs, with the chinks stopped up with mud
or mortar, and these mud-stripes been whitewashed some time or
another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad, open but roofed
passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of the
kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the
smokehouse; one little hut all by itself away down against the back
fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side;
ash-hopper, and big kettle to bile soap in, by the little hut; bench
by the kitchen door, with bucket of water and a gourd; hound
asleep there, in the sun; more hounds asleep, round about; about
three shade-trees away off in a corner; some currant bushes and
gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence; outside of the fence a
garden and a water-melon patch; then the cotton fields begins; and
after the fields, the woods.
I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper,
and started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways, I heard the
dim hum of a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along
down again; and then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead- for
209
that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world.
I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just
trusting to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the
time come; for I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right
words in my mouth, if I left it alone.
When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up
and went for me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept
still. And such another pow-wow as they made! In a quarter of a
minute I was a kind of a hub of a wheel, as you may say- spokes
made out of dogs- circle of fifteen of them packed together around
me, with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking
and howling; and more a coming; you could see them sailing over
fences and around corners from everywheres.
A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a
rolling-pin in her hand, singing out, "Begone! you Tige! you Spot!
begone, sah!" and she fetched first one and then another of them a
clip and sent him howling, and then the rest followed; and the next
second, half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and
making friends with me. There ain't no harm in a hound, nohow.
And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little
nigger boys, without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
