第71章

"'Your apol'gy is accepted,' says Peets, but still haughty; 'Idescerns how you gets maladroit through errors over which you has no control.As to this person, who's so full of stealthy cunnin', he's all right.So long as he don't get no licker, no voylence is called for in his case.' An' with that Peets conducts his patient, who's come to ag'in, back to his reservation.

"But I onbuckles this afternoon to tell you-all about Old Man Enright's early love, an' if I aims to make the trip before the moon comes up, I better hit the trail of them reminiscences an' no further delays.

"It's in the back room of the New York Store where the casks be, an'

Enright, on whose nerves an' sperits Peets' preescriptions of 'no licker' has been feedin' for two full days, sits thar sort o'

fidgin' with his fingers an' movin' his feet in a way which shows he's a heap on aige.Thar's a melancholy settles on us all, as we camps 'round on crates an' shoe boxes an' silently sympathizes with Enright to see him so redooced.At last the grand old chief starts in to talk without questions or requests.

"'If you-all don't mind,' says Enright, 'I'll let go a handful of mem'ries touchin' my yooth.Thar's nothin' like maladies to make a gent sentimental, onless it be gettin' shot up or cut up with bullets or bowies; an' these yere visitations, which Peets thinks is alkali an' I holds is the burdens of them years of mine, shore leaves me plumb romantic.

'Which I've been thinkin' all day, between times when I'm thinkin'

of licker, of Polly Hawks; an' I'll say right yere she's my first an' only love.She's a fine young female, is Polly--tall as a saplin', with a arm on her like a cant-hook.Polly can lift an' hang up a side of beef, an' is as good as two hands at a log-rollin'.

"'This yere's back in old Tennessee on the banks of the Cumberland.

It's about six years followin' on the Mexican war, an' I'm shot up'ards into the semblances of a man.My affections for Polly has their beginnin's in a coon-hunt into which b'ars an' dogs gets commingled in painful profoosion.

"'I ain't the wonder of a week with a rifle now, since I'm old an'

dim, but them times on the Cumberland I has fame as sech.More'n once, ag'inst the best there is in either the Cumberland or the Tennessee bottoms, or on the ridge between, I've won as good as, say first, second and fifth quarters in a shoot for the beef.'

"'Whatever do you-all call a fifth quarter of beef?' asks Dan Boggs.

'Four quarters is all I'm ever able to count to the anamile.'

"'It's yooth an' inexperience,' says Enright, 'that prompts them queries.The fifth quarter is the hide an' tallow; an' also thar's a sixth quarter, the same bein' the bullets in the stump which makes the target, an' which is dug out a whole lot, lead bein' plenty infrequent in them days I'm dreamin' of.

"'As I'm sayin', when Dan lams loose them thick head questions, I'm a renowned shot, an' my weakness is huntin' b'ars.I finds 'em an'

kills 'em that easy, I thinks thar's nothin' in the world but b'ars.

An' when I ain't huntin' b'ars, I'm layin' for deer; an' when Iain't layin' for deer, I'm squawkin' turkeys; an' when I ain't squawkin' turkeys, I'm out nights with a passel of misfit dogs Iharbors, a shakin' up the scenery for raccoons.Altogether, I'm some busy as you-all may well infer.

"'One night I'm coon huntin'.The dogs trees over on Rapid Run.When I arrives, the whole pack is cirkled 'round the base of a big beech, singin'; my old Andrew Jackson dog leadin' the choir with the air, an' my Thomas Benton dog growlin' bass, while the others warbles what parts they will, indiscrim'nate.

"'Nacherally, the dogs can't climb the tree none, an' I has to make that play myse'f.I lays down my gun, an' shucks my belts an' knife, an' goes swarmin' up the beech.It's shorely a teedious enterprise, an' some rough besides.That beech seems as full of spikes an'

thorns as a honey locust--its a sort o' porkypine of a tree.

"'Which I works my lacerated way into the lower branches, an' then, glances up ag'in the firmaments to locate the coon.He ain't vis'ble none; he's higher up an' the leaves an' bresh hides him.I goes on till I'm twenty foot from the ground; then I looks up ag'in, "'Gents, it ain't no coon; it's a b'ar, black as paint an' as big as a baggage wagon.He ain't two foot above me too; an' the sight of him, settin' thar like a black bale of cotton, an' his nearness, an'

partic'larly a few terse remarks he lets drop, comes mighty clost to astonishin' me to death.I thinks of my gun; an' then I lets go all bolts to go an' get it.Shore, I falls outen the tree; thar ain't no time to descend slow an' dignified.

"'As I comes crashin' along through them beech boughs, it inculcates a misonderstandin' among the dogs.Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton an'

the others is convoked about that tree on a purely coon theery.They expects me to knock the coon down to 'em.They shorely do not expect me to come tumblin' none myse'f.It tharfore befalls that when Imakes my deboo among 'em, them canines, blinded an' besotted as Isay with thoughts of coon, prounces upon me in a body.Every dog rends off a speciment of me.They don't bite twice; they perceives by the taste that it ain't no coon an' desists.

"'Which I don't reckon their worryin' me would have become a continyoous performance nohow; for me an' the dogs is hardly tangled up that a-way, when we're interfered with by the b'ar.Looks like the example I sets is infectious; for when I lets go, the b'ar lets go; an' I hardly hits the ground an' becomes the ragin' center of interest to Andrew Jackson, Thomas Benton an' them others, when the b'ar is down on all of us like the old Cumberland on a sandbar doorin' a spring rise.I shore regyards his advent that a-way as the day of jedgment.

"'No, we don't corral him.The b'ar simply r'ars back long enough to put Andrew Jackson an' Thomas Benton into mournin', an' then goes scuttlin' off through the bushes like the grace of heaven through a camp-meetin'.As for myse'f, I lays thar; an' what between dog an'