START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TOBACCO TILLER*** E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 36283-h.htm or 36283-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36283/36283-h/36283-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36283/36283-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-126-29177664 THE TOBACCO TILLER A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields by SARAH BELL HACKLEY The C. M. Clark Publishing Company Boston, Massachusetts 1909 Copyright, 1909. By the C. M. Clark Publishing Co., Boston, Massachusetts, U. S. A. All Rights Reserved. [Illustration: "I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas."] CONTENTS I--MR. DOGGETT AT HOME II--THE MYRTLE BUDS IN MISS LUCY'S GARDEN III--AT THE STRIPPING-HOUSE IV--A COMPACT V--A VISIT TO THE SEERESS VI--A NEIGHBORLY CALL VII--RIVALS VIII--AT THE TOBACCO BARN IX--"SURE SOME DISASTER HAS BEFELL" X--NIGHT RIDERS XI--MORE NIGHT RIDERS XII--THE MAD COW XIII--MR. DOGGETT'S ACQUISITION XIV--MR. DOGGETT LENDS A HAND XV--"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS _"I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas"_ _"Hit's Jeremiah, my pet," she explained soothingly_ _"Mistu Linney, is 'oo lovin' Miss Luty?"_ _"Here's a letter, Lucy Ann," he sneered_ FOREWORD Behold, friend, a multitude traversing a road shaded at its edge by mighty plants whose leaves are thick, broad, and rank in their odor,--the nicotiana tabacum. Who are they of the multitude? They are those who have had to do with the making of the history of the weed whose cousins are the thorn-apple, and the night-shade, from the time its existence came to be known to the civilized nations. Listen, friend, to the roll-call. Ye whose bread was the banana,--whose garb was the sunshine,--whose gods were worshiped in the smoke-cloud from the burning leaf of the Petun,--whose weapons of war were arrows, poison-tipped in the oil of tobacco,--ye red barbarians of Central America, of the off lying islands, and of the farther northward country; ye from whom the world learned to use tobacco,--answer to your names! Sir of the silken robe and waving plume,--dizzy with visions of the wealth of the Montezumas to be conquered,--you who in the beginning of the sixteenth century, presented the Indian weed to your Sovereign at Madrid,--Fernando Cortez--answer to your name! Sir Frances Drake, the first son of Old England to look to the borders of the Peaceful Ocean,--bring forward Ralph Lane, starving pearl-hunter of Roanoke Island, whom you rescued. Answer, Lane, you who introduced the Indian custom of "drinking tobacco" into your country! Noble prisoner of the Tower,--chivalrous subject of Her Sovereign Majesty, Elizabeth, in whose honor was named the sunny land which grew the herb of enchantment,--you who made the herb fashionable in Britain,--Sir Walter Raleigh, answer to roll call! Silversmith, maker of the pipe of silver of the Queen's Favorite, and of the scales that enabled him to ascertain the weight of the smoke of a pipeful of tobacco, and win his majesty's wager,--answer to your name! You, whose name, by courtesy of the great Swedish student of nature, the Indian's weed bears,--John Nicot, of the Country of Charlemagne, answer roll-call! And you, Madame, of the day-fair face, and the night-black heart, wife to one King, and mother to another,--huntress, builder of the Tuileries,--you, at whose feet lie the victims of that mid-summer night of horror, the eve of St. Bartholomew's Day,--you, Madame, first snuff-taker of Europe, and christener of the Herbe de La Reine,--Catherine de Medici,--murderess,--answer to roll-call! Mariners of the Mediterranean, Merchants of Venice, Genoan tradesmen,--ye who enlightened the Levant, and the wide Continent to the borders of the deepest ocean, as to the intoxicating delights of the plant solanaceae,--your names are called! Hear all ye, who by might of Sovereign rule, of priestly power, and example, have endeavored to drive the weed of the West from your domains,--answer to your names! Unhappy prisoner of St. Helena, who in your day of power, secured to your Government the exclusive right of making and selling tobacco,--answer to your name! Governor of Virginia,--compelled to adjust the proportion between the corn and the tobacco to be raised in the cleared lands,--when the colonists, mad with thoughts of gold, neglected the culture of that which they could eat, for that which they could sell,--Sir Thomas Dale,--answer roll-call! Ye one hundred young women of "agreeable persons and respectable character," whose over seas passage was paid with the tobacco of your husbands-to-be,--answer to your names! All ye vast multitude concerned in the making of the past history of tobacco,--answer to roll-call! They have answered, friend! they have passed beyond our vision, and yet the tobacco shadowed highway is traversed by a great throng. Who are they? They are the present day consumers of the weed of the red children of the woods,--they are the subjects of Edward, men of the Fatherland, of France, of Spain, of the cold barren steppes of Russia, of the parched plains of Africa, of the Americas, and the islands of the seas; soldiers, sailors, civilians, barbarians, infidels, Christians, the earth over, and their number is hundreds of millions! Tobacco! Tobacco for the millions of the past! Tobacco for the millions of the present! Whence come the supplies for these? Whence come the supplies for these? For a time, Virginia supplied the world, but the culture of the weed spread with its use, until it came to be grown in many parts of the old world. The United States, however, produces more tobacco than any other country in the world, and of her great output,--Kentucky, possessed of the soil combined with conditions of climate that makes good tobacco in greater measure than any other of the States, raises more than one-third. Within Kentucky's borders, friend, the number of the agricultural folk who depend for daily bread on crops of tobacco, is great. Every year's August sees more than three hundred thousand of Kentucky's rich acres, yellow green with the growing tobacco, and every year's March sees near three hundred millions of pounds of matured tobacco sent away. The central and north central parts of the State, embracing the Blue Grass region, wherein lies the home of the great Pacificator, is known as the White Burley District, and is world-renowned for the quality and quantity of the famous White Burley tobacco, largely used in the domestic trade. Here this tobacco is produced at its best. In the western part of the State, the lands south-bounded by the waters of the Cumberland, and over which, in the olden day, annual prairie fires swept, are known as the Regie, or Dark Tobacco district, and here are grown the dark heavy varieties of tobacco, adapted to the export trade. A hard life the tobacco tiller's, friend. He who has not seen the tobacco grown, can have no conception of the physical hardships endured, the ceaseless toil, the care and the anxiety as to the likelihood of failure, that enter into the growing of a tobacco crop. It is a crop that requires the very best quality of land on which to cultivate it, and the most arduous of toil in its cultivation. Work may be hard in another crop, but set the work necessary to raise any crop beside the labor entailed in a tobacco crop--from its beginning until it is ready for the manufacturer--and friend, it will be as the labor of the little lad who digs a miniature trench in the beach sands, beside the completed digging of the canal that will unite two oceans! THE TOBACCO TILLER CHAPTER I MR. DOGGETT AT HOME "Awake, awake my lyre, and tell thy silent master's humble tale." "Dock and me went out this mornin' and scraped up about three tablespoonfuls o' frost offen that plank a layin' right thar by the fence,--yes, sir, three tablespoonfuls, nigh about. Ef we don't watch, some o' our terbaccer's a goin' to git ketched a standin'. Frost a holdin' off ontel the last o' September hain't seasonable. What you thenk about hit, Mr. Brock?" The pale blue eyes, half-hidden by the bushy red side-burns that floated wildly out on either side of Mr. Doggett's face, like sunburnt bunches of broom sedge blown in a high wind, included all his audience with a comprehensive beam of agreeability. Finally these pleasant eyes rested, in the enforced deference due the most prosperous guest, on the thick-set man with the hog-like neck, and the enormous mole, that stood, sentinel-like beside the left nostril of his rose-colored, aquiline nose. For reasons domestic and infantile, a portion of the Doggetts' Sunday's company,--Susie Dutton and Hattie Leeds, the two daughters, and Lem and Jim, the two married sons, the four spouses and the eight babes, had taken a reluctant mid-afternoon departure. The unfettered guests, Mr. Nathan Lindsay, Gran'dad Doggett, who was staying with his daughter, Lindy Gumm, over on the River,--and Mr. Galvin Brock (he of the mole and the nose) who had been young Callie Doggett's second husband, lingered. Mr. Lindsay, who held himself a step above the Doggetts, but was not averse to a Sunday's visit to that hospitable household, had suggested that it was warmer outdoors than in the house. The three guests, with their host and his youngest son, sat in the pleasant warmth of the late afternoon's sunshine, at the woodpile on the west side of the house. Mr. Brock's usual manner of answering a question was by an assenting or dissenting grunt. This time, however, his mouth left its grim line an instant. "If it keeps as dry as it is now," he observed, "nobody's tobaccer will see a killin' frost unhoused." During the Civil War, Gran'dad Doggett, on account of what he called "a leetle shootin' scrape, but nothin' criminal," had brought his young family from Bell County, in the Kentucky Mountains, to the Blue Grass. Before this flitting of necessity, he had been a Justice of the Peace, which fact, ever afterward caused him to affect an air of conscious superiority toward his son. "More than that, Ephriam," he remarked, corroborating Mr. Brock's observation, "more than that, frost don't never kill in the dark o' the moon. I'd 'a' thought in the thirty year you've been a raisin' terbaccer, you'd 'a' learned that!" "That's right, old man, yes, sir"--Mr. Doggett's slow drawl was affable in the extreme--"that's jest what I told the boys. A body hain't no use to cross a bridge afore they gits to hit! Jim now, he wuz might' night' wilted down along in July, afeerd the best part o' his crop wuz a Frenchin', but hit growed off all right, and now hit's the best terbaccer he's got! I'm afeerd he'll have too much fer his barn and he'll want to put some in mine. "I says to Jim and Mr. Castle last week, 'I hain't a aimin' to let you scrouge up and burn up my terbaccer.' Although a heap o' men, when they are a leetle short o' room, they'll push up the sticks together, hit's a poor way! Terbaccer'll rot, ef you crowd hit, ever' time. The rot'll start up whar the stem jines the stalk, and hit'll drap off ef you don't watch. "Yes, sir, Jim's got a fine crop. Ef he could save ever' leaf, he'd have two thousand pounds to the acre, jest about. Some o' this farm's mighty tired, but I 'low they hain't no sech land as them ten acres in the world fer richness! "Although when I wuz in town on a Court day last--Monday wuz a week--a Texas feller wuz a tellin' about how rich the ground is _thar_. He says the crops thar is astoundin', the dirt is so rich; he says he raised one punkin'--jest an ordinary sized one too, fer Texas,--and his old sow, she made a bed in hit fer her peegs! Yes, sir!" Mrs. Doggett, a large, spare, and comely woman, with high cheek bones and olive skin, lifted the battered zinc buckets she was filling with chips. "Well, Eph," she vouchsafed, "ef that's the truth, I dunno but what we'd better move to Texas. Ef anybody's any worse needin' a betterin' o' their condition than us, I dunno who ner what hit is! Look at the house we have to live in, will you, front and back! It'd be mighty late when Mr. Castle'd durst offer to put _you_ in sech a house, wouldn't hit, Mr. Brock? He knows better. He couldn't put hit off on none his terbaccer men but Eph!" The house, had it been a thing of feeling, would have shrunk before the scrutiny of the five pairs of eyes lifted to it, so disreputable was its aspect. Panes were dropping from the time and weather-gnawed sash in the windows of the two rooms below; rags stopped the holes in the one window above that had a sash in it, and the lank old pine leaning over the stone-paved walk that led to the little hingeless gate assisted a wide board to keep the wind out of the other window. "Seems to me, Ephriam, Castle ort to pervide a better house fer ye, er make out to fix up this un," quavered the old man. "He ort now, he ort," assented his son, "though he's been a promisin'--" "Promisin'll be all!" broke in Mrs. Doggett. "He's never kept nary promise yit, about the house, ner nothin' else! But Eph, he'll jest stay here and put in another three years a grubbin' canes and choppin' roots--a clearin' up a thicket, and then git jest half the terbaccer he raises on hit, like ever'body else does on ready-cleared land!" "The old lady, she's a poppin' hit to me and Mr. Castle, hain't she?" Mr. Doggett smiled indulgently in the direction of Mrs. Doggett as she went across the rotting planks that served for a back porch floor, with her chips. "Although," he went on, "hit's might' night' the truth. Mr. Castle is mighty close. "'Doggett,' he says, 'don't bring in nothin' but one cow and a horse er two on me to pastur fer you,' and that's the way he talks, and me a lookin' after his mar's and colts, and fixin' up his water-gaps, and all sech like work outside the terbaccer crop, all the time, both afore and sence he tuck to livin' in town. "I says to him one day--I says, 'Mr. Castle, here you are a gittin' rich offen our work, able to have a conquick mansion, with burssels cyarpetin', and a brick hin-house, and me and the boys is a workin' our finger nails off, and in the house I have to live in I can't hardly find a dry place to hang my hoe!' (And hit's the truth, yes, sir, though Mr. Castle says sence terbaccer is so low, he has to make a livin' on his other investments.) Mr. Castle, he never said nothin', jest tuck up my hoe and went to lookin' at hit,--my old hoe thar I've used in the terbaccer fer twenty-five year." Mr. Doggett pointed to where against the side of the patched weather-boarding hung a hand-made hoe, shining like polished silver, its hickory handle worn to the hard glossiness of Japanese lacquer. "I says, 'Mr. Castle, ef that hoe could talk, hit'd tell o' enough sweat to drownd a elephant in, and o' enough warrysome back-aches, and arm j'int aches, and gineral _all-over_ aches to keep one them thar rest cyores Joey wuz a readin' about, a runnin' at full blast fer all time to come. Yes, sir, hit could! And, although a body has a heap to be thankful fer anyhow, hit's mighty little I've got to show fer all that sweat and them aches.' "Mr. Castle looked at me mighty hard; then he says, 'Doggett, you've had a livin'.' 'Yes, sir,' I says, 'but Mr. Castle, I've had to git out and sometimes work fer other people!'" "'Pears like to me, Ephriam, takin' your words fer what they're wuth, movin'd be a good thing fer ye," suggested Gran'dad at this moment. "No, sir, I hain't a needin' none them way-off States," Mr. Doggett shook his head emphatically: "thar's too many quair creeters in 'em fer me. That feller Fletch Keerby I had a workin' fer me last spreng, him and his brother Larkin, they lived out in Texas fer a while, and Fletch he said one day they wuz goin' 'long together sommers, and on the way they ketcht sight o' a beeg snake. Hit wuz fifteen foot long and beeg as a post, and hit wuz layin' plumb acrost the road a sunnin'! Hit wuz one them buoy instructors. "Keerby, he told me he says, 'Larkin, ef a feller had a kag o' damanite, he'd be all right, but we hain't got hit, so what can we do? Hit won't do to shoot him; I'm afeerd to, because ef we don't git _him_, he'll git _us_!' Yes, sir, that's what he said. And Larkin he went and got a club and slipped up on the snake and hit him back o' the head about eight inches. Yes, sir! And that snake jest swapped eends! But he wuz dead, yes, sir, he wuz dead. He wuz a instructor, a buoy instructor!" "Well, Ephriam," Gran'dad slapped the new gray jeans that covered his thin legs, with a prolonged cackle of derisive mirth, "you wouldn't be no fust rate hand to kerry on a funeral--you'd tickle the ondertaker. They don't have none them buoys in Texas. They don't live nowhars but in _Africy_!" Mr. Doggett rubbed his narrow forehead reflectively, ignoring the correction. "Whar is hit them mare-maids lives, er is hit _marry-maids_? I fergit the name. Keerby, he said he seed a pair o' 'em onct--in Floridy Gulf hit must 'a' been. He said they had a woman head and a fish body hitched onto hit somehow, and ever' scale on the fish part wuz as beeg as a sasser, and a shinin' like the sun! He said he never looked at 'em perticular _clos_, considerin' they wuzn't dressed fer company ner cold weather, but they wuz ondoubtedly the purtiest creeters a body ever seed!" "Did Keerby mention anytheng that _wuz_ dressed fer winter out thar?" asked Gran'dad with a covert wink at Mr. Brock. "Well, Keerby, he said they wuz b'ars--them kind that'll hug like a courtin' feller, and their meat's as sweet as a courtin' feller's tongue. Keerby says you can p'intedly eat all the b'ar's fat you can git around ef you pepper and salt hit right good, and instid o' sickenin' you, hit'll fatten you." "Keerby'll never see as much b'ar's fat ner nothin' else as he can git around!" jeered Gran'dad. "I'm afeerd he won't," agreed Mr. Doggett. "I'd 'a' kept him longer, he had sech a good sleight at turnin' off work,--done more'n three thirds o' the feedin' ginerally, and ever'theng else accordin'--but the old lady 'lowed she wuzn't goin' to be et out o' house and home ef _I_ wuz. Onct he et so long I thought I'd have to hitch up the team and pull him away from the table." Dock, the twelve-year-old, small and scrawny, but tough as a hickory withe, who had up to this time lain stretched on his front by a hollow log, skilfully executing with his barlow a colony of ants as fast as they crawled from the rotting section of buckeye, gave a wicked glance at the slender and hollow-cheeked man of fifty sitting near him. "Mr. Lindsay, he ort to have some o' that b'ar's fat Keerby wuz a tellin' about to make him sortie plump up and look purty to Miss Lucy." A slow red crept into Mr. Lindsay's sensitive face. "I don't reckon I need any bear's fat yit, Dock," his voice was low and gentle: "My mother always told me whatever I done, never to starve a woman, and I ain't ready to starve one yit, ef I could git one to have me." Mrs. Doggett who had come out again with her improvised chip baskets, turned toward him, her black eyes sparkling mischievously. "Now Mr. Lindsay, ef I wuz a single man like you, that'd been to Texas and Missoury, and seed all over the country you might say,--a man that knows how to keep on the good side o' women folks--a not a trackin' in mud no time, ner never spittin' on the hearth, and always washin' his feet at night in plowin'-time--I'd be plumb ashamed to say I couldn't git no woman to have me! "Been here in this neighborhood might' night' six year, too, and hain't never said nary word yit as anybody's ever heerd tell of, to keep Miss Lucy Jeemes from settin' thar always with her pa and Miss Nancy! I thenk hit's time he wuz doin' a little courtin' in that direction, don't you, Mr. Brock?" The best beginning of a man's enmity is the suspicion that another man has a better chance of the regard of a woman he has selected for his own, and though Mr. Brock had sat during Mrs. Doggett's speech with stern inscrutable face that conveyed no hint of his feelings, his heart beat with angry tumult, and within its inmost chamber was born a lusty beginning of hatred toward the pale man sitting on the beech log. Callie had been in her grave only six weeks, but when a man has been twice married, and twice bereft, may he not, after six weeks, begin to consider a third partner with propriety, if the consideration is done in secret? And after the convenient pattern set by other widowers, Mr. Brock had selected a neighbor, the kind-faced woman who had been a ministering angel at the death beds of both his wives, for that third partner. His pale grey eyes gave their sidewise glance at Mr. Lindsay. The warm color on that gentleman's cheek irritated him strangely; he rose precipitately, and with a mumbled word of farewell, took his departure. "Mr. Brock got in a mighty hurry all to onct," said Mr. Doggett, gazing in some wonderment after the departing figure: "I can't thenk what tuck him off so suddent." After the departure of Mr. Lindsay and Gran'dad, a few minutes later, Mr. Doggett, with a pleasing idea in his head, strolled out to the barn-yard, where Mrs. Doggett milked the red muley. "Ann," he remarked, "I been a thenkin' about Mr. Lindsay a not havin' no settled home, ner no nigh kin to take keer o' him, ef he ever wuz to git down sick. Hit would be a sorter nice theng fer him and Miss Lucy Jeemes to marry now, wouldn't hit?" Mrs. Doggett looked uncertain. "Maybe Miss Lucy wouldn't marry him, Eph," she advanced. "Sometimes I thenk she's one o' them women that wouldn't marry any man." Mr. Doggett took a few steps out of range of the milker. "Don't you fool yourself, Ann," he chuckled, "thar's jest one woman in the world that won't marry!" "Who is she?" Mrs. Doggett asked curiously. "She's a dead woman!" responded Mr. Doggett. "Aw, shet up, Eph!" Mrs. Doggett spoke with some acerbity. "You jest go git me some stovewood, ef you want any supper tonight!" CHAPTER II THE MYRTLE BUDS IN MISS LUCY'S GARDEN "No spring or summer's beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one autumnal face." For more than a half-hour old Milton James had limped up and down the gravelled drive that led through the grove of poplars in front of the lead-colored, one-and-a-half storied house that was his home, alternately watching the fat old bay mare and three cows that pulled at the fodder scattered in the pasture field over the fence, and the muddy road that ran across the foot of the avenue and disappeared over the hill beyond. "Lucy Ann beats ever'theng a stayin'," he muttered, irritably pulling at his sparse white beard; "jest now in sight, and hit nigh twelve o'clock!" The dark object at length resolved itself into an old-fashioned and much mud-bespattered buggy, drawn by the counterpart of the bay in the pasture, and driven by a woman in black. "Lucy Ann, don't drive ag'in the gate-post!" With a hand that slightly trembled, both from weakness and nervous irritability, the tall old man, leaning on his stick, his bald head shining in the December sun, held open the side gate of the yard, while his daughter, measuring the space between the white-washed gate posts with an anxious eye, drove cautiously in. To a person of fifty years, agility is ordinarily a stranger. Miss Lucy, carefully protecting her new black etamine dress skirt from the wheel, climbed slowly out of the buggy, and gathered up the numerous bundles from the floor of the vehicle. Then, while her father fumbled with the straps of the harness, she lingered for a moment, watching him. "Pa," she ventured in the apologetic manner of one who expects a rebuff, "spose'n you let _me_ help take out old Maud. I'm afraid you'll hurt your bad knee." "Naw, I won't," answered her father testily: "you'd better jest take them thar bundles in the house, and put on your ever' day clothes and holp Nancy about the dinner! Nancy's been a workin' hard all the time you've been a gaddin' about town." When Miss Lucy came out of the front bedroom into the sitting-room behind it, an imaginary speck of dust on a pane of glass in the door of the tall cherry "press" filled with gay-colored dishes, caught her eye. She rubbed the glass carefully with a corner of her apron, and catching up the little hearth-broom, stooped to brush up a microscopic cinder that had fallen from the grate on the green and red striped rag carpet. Her sister greeted her with a look of reproach. "Do you think, Lucy, I ain't done no cleanin' up while you was gone?" she asked. Both the Misses James were alike tall, but what was angularity in the uncompromisingly erect figure of Miss Nancy, who had never known a sick day, was slenderness and delicacy in her elder sister. Miss Nancy's rugged face found no redeeming beauty in her eyes, which were gray and cold as the foundation stones of the house, and carried in their depths a perpetual look of rebuke to the world in general, and to her sister in particular; but the irregularity of Miss Lucy's features seemed akin to beauty in the light of her dark-blue eyes, shining with loving kindness,--eyes that despite their owner's years, held a look of singularly childlike innocence, and a sort of timidity that appeals to the chivalry of men. According to Mrs. Doggett, the James' nearest neighbor, for whom spinsterhood in one she did not admire required a just reproof, but in a friend necessitated an explanation and an apology, "Miss Nancy's never had any notice as I ever heerd tell of, but to the best o' my belief, Miss Lucy'd 'a' been married long ago, ef hit hadn't 'a' been fer skeer o' them old thengs,"--the "old thengs" in question being Miss Nancy and her father. "How do you like Pa's overcoat, Nancy?" asked Miss Lucy, opening the great bundle she had laid on the middle star of the sitting-room bed, and holding up the garment. Miss Nancy looked at the neat gray beaver with cold disapproval. "Why'n't you git black?" she demanded: "you wanted a black one, didn't you, Pa?" The old man looked at the coat and then over his steel-rimmed spectacles at his elder daughter whose hand went up to her face in a nervous, defensive movement,--an acquired gesture that told of a life lived under the lash of rebuke. "I taken this one, Pa, because I got it cheap; it was a young man's overcoat, left over from last spring. Jest see how fine quality it is, and Pa, I wisht you'd look at the linin'!" Mr. James fingered the soft nap of the garment, and examined its handsome lining with reluctant eyes. "Yes," he admitted grudgingly, "hit _is_ fine quality. A blind hog will stumble on an acorn sometimes!" Miss Lucy helped him into the coat. "Wall," he grumbled triumphantly, "I knowed thar'd be somethin' wrong. Hit don't fit: I hain't a goin' to torment myse'f squez in sech tight armholes as them is! You'll jest have to take hit back! Go to town one day to git thengs,--go to town next day to swap 'em! I thenk next time you start out to town, you'd better let Nancy--a person with some jedgement, go with you to keep you from actin' like a chicken with hit's head off!" "Ef you'd jest go along and try a coat on, Pa, like I want you to, you might git a better fit and be better suited too," remonstrated Miss Lucy mildly, although her lips trembled, as she carefully folded the coat, and laid it on a bottom shelf of the press, and smoothed the wrinkle on the bed where the bundle had lain. "And Pa," she added, "Brother and Sister Avery's a comin' out this evenin' to stay all night. I told 'em you'd be awful glad,--you got so lonesome a settin' 'round since you'd had the rheumatism so bad and the doctor told you not to work any." "Why'n't you git some crackers, Lucy, ef you knowed comp'ny was comin'?" asked Miss Nancy. "We won't have no time to bake no lightbread between now and the time they git here, and we ought to have somethin' to eat with the beef soup." "I did," replied Miss Lucy following her sister to the big, low-ceiled kitchen whose woodwork, cupboard shelves, biscuit board, and puncheon floor were alike white and immaculate with much scrubbing. Miss Nancy emptied the sugar into its jar and poured out the crackers. "Why'n't you git square crackers?" she grumbled, as the round soda biscuits rattled in the tin can. "They didn't have none, Nancy, where I took the butter, no kind but the round ones," explained Miss Lucy: "I didn't have no time to go nowhere else then, it was so late, and I had to go around through Plumville to get the money the colored woman owed me on the last dress I made her. I wanted to order that safety razor for Pa for Christmas, with the money." She lowered her voice, so the old man, partially deaf, could not hear. "Then I wouldn't go back through town; I thought I ought to save the mare all the pullin' I could. The apples I took made a right heavy load goin'--" "I don't thenk you tried to save her much," broke in her father tartly, laying a scant armful of stovewood by the little cracked stove whose high polish would have led even a stove-dealer to strike off ten years from its real age: "that thar mar's mighty nigh into the thumps. I lay you driv' her too fast!" "Why, Pa, I walked her all the way back from town." Miss Lucy's voice was gently deprecative. "Wall, hit's a good theng you did, because she's got a shoe off, and her foot's all turned up like a cheer rocker now." "The stock seems to be enjoyin' their stalks. Who foddered for you today, Pa?" ventured Miss Lucy, thinking to divert his thoughts. "Whar's your mem'ry, Lucy Ann?" fretted Mr. James. "Didn't I go down to Doggett's yistiddy and git Marshall to promise to come? He's the only one o' the Doggetts that I can ever git to do anytheng fer me. He's been about more'n the others, a workin' up thar in Ohawo, and he's learnt the value of a promise. Old Man Doggett'll promise you anytheng when he hain't got no notion he's goin' to have time to do hit,--he's so afeerd o' bein' disagreeable, then he'll tell you he hated hit awful, but he jest possible couldn't come!" "It's a pity more people ain't afraid of bein' disagreeable," thought Miss Lucy with a sigh: "if they was, this'd be a pleasenter world." To Miss Lucy, the minister and his bride were creatures far above ordinary clay. Months before his marriage, the young man, quite alone in the world, had made the gentle Miss Lucy the confidant of his hopes and fears, and the marriage of the handsome and magnetic young lover to the pretty sweetheart, whose wealth and social position had threatened to be unsurmountable barriers, was a romance dear to her heart. She went about her work of preparing for the expected guests in a glow of pleasure, but the charmed spell of her thoughts was presently broken by a call from Miss Nancy in the kitchen. "Lucy Ann, I know you've done had time to change them spreads and shams, and 'tain't no use a puttin' _all_ the ever'day thengs away! Mother used to say, 'nobody can't put hand on nary ever'day towel when comp'ny's around. Lucy's hid 'em all,' and hit looks like you're bent on keepin' up your reputation. Come on here and bake them pies, ef you're a goin' to!" Miss Lucy sighed, and went about the task of pie making with the ready skill of one whose fingers had fashioned pastries before they measured the length of the bowl of the spoon with which she mixed them. "Pa, I had a new boy to help me milk this evenin'." This bit of information imparted by Miss Lucy, when after the early supper, while Miss Nancy attended to the dishes, she and her father sat around the sitting-room grate with their guests, was met by an infectious trill of laughter from the minister's wife. "O Glen," she gurgled, "you would have been a widower this evening if the milk-bucket had not saved me! I went on the wrong side of Miss Lucy's black cow and raised her ire. _She_ raised her _foot_, Miss Lucy said, but I think it must have been her _feet_!" "I am afraid you won't do for a chore boy," laughed her husband, "if you begin by antagonizing the cows. Have you in view any more suitable boy, Miss Lucy?" The question of a small boy to be paid for his services in food and in raiment, was a constant and unsettled one in the James family. Five youths had been its portion in one year, and the last one had left by the light of the moon two weeks before. "No," Miss Lucy looked away from her father as she spoke: "Cousin Becky Willis told me where she thought I could get one, and I tried today, but the childern are all goin' to school--" "Hit's hard to git a boy to stay," interrupted Mr. James, smiling affably at the minister, "but I shan't let the girls do the work by theirselves no way this winter. I've got the promise o' a mighty good man." "Who've you got, Pa,--Mr. Lindsay?" hazarded Miss Nancy as she economically extinguished the small lamp she had just brought in from the kitchen, and slightly lowered the flame of the large one on the mantel. "Yes, Lindsay," assented her father. A little pleased gasp escaped Miss Lucy, but no one noticed it but little Mrs. Avery, sitting next her. "Lindsay, he come by here this mornin' a goin' to my nephew, Simeon Willises, and stopped a few minutes. He's lookin' mighty puny: said he hain't felt well all this fall, not sence he got p'izened with Paris green in Archie Evans' terbaccer last August. Archie, he would have him to spray fer him, wantin' a man o' jedgement to do hit. Lindsay's been plumb laid up fer about two weeks, he said. I told him he ort to 'a' come here and staid while he wuz laid up, but he's been a stayin' at Doggett's. "He said he didn't allow to do no regular work this winter, and I put at him to come and stay with us ontel spreng and holp the girls out. I told him ef he'd jest come and stay, I'd give him his board, and his washin' shouldn't cost him nary cent, and he agreed to breng his trunk and come day after termorrer--Saturday. "Lindsay's a mighty fine man--raised down hyonder whar I wuz, in Wayne, though I never knowed him ontel he come to Simeon's to work. He used to keep store down thar ontel he got burnt out, and sence then he's been a croppin' in terbaccer part the time, and part the time travellin' around fer his health, helpin' folks with their farm work and terbaccer when he feels like hit." "He's a mighty nice man," volunteered Miss Nancy: "Cousin Becky said when he was workin' there, her stovewood box was always full, and when she wanted to clean hit, she had to empty hit. They ain't many men that'll do that!" Miss Lucy said nothing, and the lights were too low for the warm color in her face to tell any tales. "Hit's a wonder, too," went on Miss Nancy, "he'd be so nice, bein' a tobacco man: most them tobacco people are awful rough: they don't seem to care for church goin' ner nothin' that way, and all their idy of pleasure is crap shootin', and drinkin', and dancin' at them all-night parties they have around among theirselves durin' the winter." "Mr. Lindsay ain't no regular tobacco man, Nancy; he jest learned how to raise hit when he was stayin' in Fayette," corrected Miss Lucy. "And besides," she remonstrated, flushing at her own temerity, "I don't think you ought to blame the tobacco folks so much; they don't have much chance to learn refinement and genteel ways, but they ain't all rough. Mr. Doggett's folks are as polite as anybody. And as fer goin' to church, I reckon ef me and you was to work in the tobacco all day ever' Saturday, we wouldn't feel much like dressin' up on Sunday. Some of 'em ain't got suitable clothes to wear to church neither, and sometimes they have to work on Sunday, too." "It's hard for any one of us to put himself in a brother's place," remarked the minister gently. Miss Nancy said no more, and Mr. James resumed his theme. "Lindsay hain't no trouble to wait on nuther: he's jest as tidy as a womern," he remarked, "and that's one reason I got him to come. I want to spar' the girls all I can." "You are right, Brother James," commended the bride, dimpling seductively, "they're so good to you! You are surely to be congratulated for having two such good daughters to care for you." "Thar hain't no danger o' me a losin' 'em, nuther." Mr. James' tone was confident. "I've allus been mighty good to 'em, and I've paid 'em fer teckin' keer o' me!" Miss Lucy looked up from the sock she was knitting,--one of a dozen pairs she had knit to pay for her winter hat. "Why, Pa," she protested mildly, "I've never saw any of the money you ever give anybody for takin' care of you!" "Money fer takin' keer o' me?" cried the old man in a tone of surprise: "I've been a feedin' you I reckon, and a feedin' you a mighty long time too!" When the minister and his wife were safely upstairs in their room, her clear, low laugh filled the little apartment. "I don't mean to be disrespectful," she cried out softly, "but Glen, I'm worried about the pay those two women received for their trouble in getting up that delicious supper!" "The pay?" The Reverend Avery's puzzled face sent his helpmeet off in another gurgle of laughter. "Their food, Stupid," she railed softly, "what a high estimate our brother must put on his '_feed_!'" "That isn't what's troubling me," responded the young man in mock trepidation: "I'm worried lest when we are in a house of our own, I shan't be able to come up to Miss Nancy's wood-box standard!" Miss Lucy crept cautiously to her bedroom on the ground floor, lighted only by the moon. In the kitchen Miss Nancy took down the papers she had hung the day before on the wall nails on which to hang her skillets and pans, and replaced them with fresh papers, and laid the morning's sticks in the stove by the light of the only lamp she would permit to be lighted beside the one in the guest-chamber. Miss Lucy pressed her face against the window and looked serenely out in the moonlit yard. "Them two are so happy together," she said to herself as a sound of laughter came to her ears, "I wish--" A shade of regret saddened her face for an instant. "But a body has always got somethin' to be glad over," she mused: "there's havin' _them_, such pleasant company, here tonight, and Pa and Nancy so agreeable, and--and Mr. Lindsay a comin' to stay with us a Saturday." The sudden warmth that came into her heart brought a faint heat to her cheeks. She remembered something Mr. Lindsay had said to her when he sat beside her in her buggy on the way to Callie Brock's burial, in the last month of the summer. On that occasion, he had no way to go and some one had pointed out to him a vacant seat in Miss Lucy's buggy. It was something about the loneliness of a man with no home ties, and the look that accompanied the words was responsible, though Miss Lucy did not realize it herself, for the various soft-hued and pretty "remnants" she had bought and made into waists for everyday wear for herself,--waists Miss Nancy supposed were long since sold to the negroes in Plumville, to whose trade Miss Lucy catered. In reality they were locked in Miss Lucy's trunk, away from chance of Miss Nancy's revilement of their colors and rebukement of her for extravagance. Miss Nancy herself wore prints, patched, and faded to a nondescript brown, for everyday. Miss Lucy went to the end window of her room and looked wistfully out on the coal-shed with its meager pile. "I wish," she said to herself, "considerin' we ain't got no wood hardly on the place, Nancy and Pa'd agreed to get a little more coal, so's we could have bigger fires when we are all a settin' around when the work's done up, and could set up later of nights." CHAPTER III AT THE STRIPPING-HOUSE "It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his pack: But no one can rate a burden's weight Until it has been on his back." It was the last of January and every snow-laden twig in the little thicket that fringed the brook back of the Castle barn that stood across the road in front of the James dwelling, shimmered like an oriental woman's tiara in the brilliant sunshine that suggested a not far distant thaw. The thaw was not today however; the icy air nipped the fingers and sent a trail of vapor after little Dock Doggett, carrying sticks of tobacco from the south end of the barn to the stripping-house twenty yards away. But the stripping-house stove was a dull red, and the atmosphere of the room was eminently satisfactory to the strippers standing by the high platform that ran the length of the house under the eight window sashes ranged in a long single row. Four of Mr. Doggett's sons,--Jim, the second married son, Jappy, Joe and Dock, who lived at home, and Bunch Trisler, a short, trim, and amiable little man of thirty worked at the stripping, while Gran'dad Doggett sat, an interested spectator, on a box beside the stove. "I declare," Trisler remarked wearily, about two o'clock in the afternoon, "my feet is plumb blistered a standin' so long!" "He wants a stool,--a cushion' stool like one them store counter stools, Pap," grinned Dock facetiously. "We are sorry not to be able to accommodate you, Bunch," averred Mr. Doggett, smiling, and his long hand dexterously lifted some leaves Trisler had wrongly graded to their proper places on the platform along the opposite side of the room where the stripped and tied "hands" were placed: "but we jest possible couldn't. Thar hain't no room ner place fer seats in a strippin'-house. Though ef you'd pay a leetle more 'tention to your fengers, so's not to git a green leaf in ever hand, maybe hit'd draw your 'tention offen your feet. A man can't hardly study about two thengs at the same time right handy, and we don't want people a sayin' 'Bunch, he don't _strip_, he jest takes the terbaccer offen the stalks!'" "How you thenk terbaccer prices'll be this time, Mr. Doggett?" queried he of the sore feet after the laugh that went around had ended in a titter from Dock. "Better'n they're been, I am in hopes," answered Mr. Doggett: "Mr. Castle, he says sometimes, 'Less hold our terbaccer a while, Doggett,' but hit looks like I'm jest bound to sell ever'time as soon as I git done strippin', bein' in debt. A feller has to buy his flour and groceries, and clothes, and most his meat on the credit, and ef I don't pay up my store debt onct a year, the store-keeper, he can't credit me. He has to live, too. And then, after ever'theng's counted in, I don't have nary dollar left ahead. Hit's 'howdy money,--good-bye money,' with me, when I sell my terbaccer, Bunch. The old lady blames me fer stickin' to hit, but I don't know nothin' else but terbaccer. Been at hit so long, I wouldn't know how to quit croppin'." "Prices don't come in a hundred miles o' the hard work that hit takes to raise terbaccer," observed Bunch: "them buyers--" "Them buyin' companies does mighty curis and onreasonable," interrupted Mr. Doggett. "Fer a long time now, they've been a sendin' out a agent er two to each County, er givin' one man all the ground, say on one side the pike, fer his territory, and orders not to go on t'other man's ground. Ef your barn happens to be on the t'other side from him, hit's the hardest matter in the world to git him to come anigh hit. A many a time, Mr. Castle, he's had to go out on the pike, and bag, and persuade a buyer to come and jest _look_ at the terbaccer. Sometimes he wouldn't come neither, and a body'd jest have to buy hogsheads, and prize and ship hit, and then maybe, after he'd went to the extry expense o' paying fer prizin' and shippin' and ware-house charges after he got hit shipped, he would git less'n somebody else got right here at home. "And some them buyers don't keer what they say to a body neither. Last spreng wuz a year, when that thar man, Garred, wuz goin' 'round, he acted as independent as a couple o' hounds settin' by a dead hoss, yes, sir! "He called Mr. Castle and Mr. Evans a pair o' softheads because they wuzn't willin' to sell at _his_ price at first askin', and when he come through the barn thar, he 'lowed the crop looked mighty pore to him. I says, 'Hain't thar somethin' the matter with your eyes, Mr. Garred? My terbaccer looks mighty _good_ to men that raises hit: they say I ginerally always beat 'em all in growin'!' "He never sampled none hardly, neither,--jest pertended to know what I had without hardly lookin' at hit, and when he put his hand on my _bright_ terbaccer, my _ceegar_ terbaccer, and I had some o' the purtiest a body ever seed, he 'lowed hit wuz house-burnt! Said he smelt the smoke whar we'd had fires in the barn a dryin' out the damp (and, ef you remember, Bunch, we never had no rain the fall before). And he jest offered me six cents fer my bright, and five cents fer the rest, tips, flyin's, trash, and all, him to do the gradin'. You know, Bunch, that a way I wouldn't 'a' had no bright to speak of! "I says 'I've got some mighty fine terbaccer, Mr. Garred, and five cents is a mighty pore price, considerin'. Can't you do a leetle better fer me?' Then he ast me ef I thought he wuz born yistiddy, er the day afore, er wuz out a buyin' terbaccer fer his health, and jest ripped out the cuss words. 'Anytheng over six cents fer your terbaccer'd be an adstortionate price to pay,' he says: 'hit hain't worth no more, and I'd see hell froze over before I'd pay you another cent!' "Then he 'lowed ef I didn't let him have hit, what wuz I goin' to do with hit? Wuz I goin' to feed hit to my hogs, er make hit into pies fer myse'f to eat? "Yes, sir, that's jest the way
{'title': 'The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields by Sarah Bell Hackley', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}