An old man and his wife appeared at the door; both of them shoved back their spectacles until they rested on the tops of their heads, and scanned him searchingly. The old woman had a law-book in her hand, and the old man a quill pen. She had evidently been reading to him, and he copying.
The old man called out to him imperiously:
"Heah, stranger, who air yo"? An" what d"yo" want?"
The tone was so harsh and repellant that the Deacon thought that he would disarm hostility by announcing himself a plain citizen, like themselves. So he replied:
"I"m a farmer, and a citizen from Injianny, and I want to buy some chickens for my son, who"s sick in the hospital at Chattanoogy."
"Injianny!" sneered the old man. "Meanest people in the world live in Injianny. Settled by scalawags that we"uns run outen Tennessee bekase they"uns wuz too onery to live heah."
"Citizen!" echoed the woman. "They"uns heap sight wuss"n the soldjers.
Teamsters, gamblers, camp-followers, thieves, that"ll steal the coppers off en a dead man"s eyes. I had a sister that married a man that beat her, and then run off to Injianny, leavin" her with six children to support. All the mean men go to Injianny. Cl"ar out. We don"t want n.o.body "round heah, and specially no Injiannians. They"uns is a pizun lot."
"Yes, cl"ar out immejitly," commanded the old man. "I"m a Jestice of the Peace, and ef you don"t go to wunst I"ll find a way to make yo". We"ve a law agin able-bodied vagrants. Cl"ar out, now."
"Come, have a little sense," said the Deacon, not a little roiled at the abuse of his State. "I"m just as respectable a man as you dare be.
I never stole anything. I"ve bin all my life a regler member o" the Baptist Church strict, close-communion, total-immersion Baptists. All I want o" you is to buy some o" them chickens there, and I"ll give you a fair price for "em. No use o" your flaring up over a little matter o"
bizniss."
"I don"t believe a word of hit," said the woman, who yet showed that she was touched by the allusion to the Baptist Church, as the Deacon had calculated, for most of the people of that section professed to be of that denomination. "What"ll yo" gi" me for them chickens?"
The bargaining instinct arose in the Deacon"s mind, but he repressed it.
He had no time to waste. He would make an offer that at home would be considered wildly extravagant, close the business at once and get back to Chattanooga. He said: "I"ll give you a dollar apiece for five."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE TOOK ANOTHER LOOK AT HIS HEAVY REVOLVER." 254]
"Humph," said the woman contemptuously. "I don"t sell them for no dollar apiece. They"uns "s all we got to live on now. If I sell "em I must git somethin" that"ll go jest as fur. You kin have "em at $5 apiece."
"Betsy," remonstrated the old man, "I"m afeard this "s wrong, and as a Magistrate I shouldn"t allow hit. Hit"s traffickin" with the inemy."
"No, hit hain"t," she a.s.serted. "He"s not a soljer. He"s a citizen, and don"t belong to the army. Besides, he"s a Baptist, and hit hain"t so bad as ef he wuz a Presbyterian, or a shoutin" Methodist. Most of all, I"m nearly dead for some coffee, and I know whar I kin git a pound o" rayle coffee for $10."
The Deacon had been pondering. To his thrifty mind it seemed like a waste to give a crisp, new $5 bill for such an insignificant thing as a chicken. Like Indiana farmers of his period, he regarded such things as chickens, eggs, b.u.t.ter, etc., as "too trifling for full-grown men to bother about. They were wholly women-folks" truck." He fingered the bills in his bosom, and thought how many bushels of wheat and pounds of pork they represented. Then he thought of Si in the hospital, and how a little chicken broth would build him up. Out came five new $5 bills.
"Here"s your money," he said, thumbing over the bills clumsily and regretfully.
The old woman lowered her spectacles from the top of her head, and scrutinized them.
"What"s them?" she asked suspiciously.
"Why, them"s greenbacks Government money the very best kind," explained the Deacon. "You can"t have no better"n that."
"Don"t tech hit! Don"t have nothin" to do with it!" shouted the old man. "Hit"s high treason to take Federal money. Law"s awful severe about that. Not less"n one year, nor more"n 20 in the penitentiary, for a citizen, and death for a soljer, to be ketched dealin" in the inemy"s money. I kin turn yo" right to the law. Ole man, take yo" money and cl"ar off the place immejitly. Go out and gather up yo" chickens, Betsy, and fasten "em in the coop. Go away, sah, "or I sh.e.l.l blow the horn for help."
"I wuz talkin" "bout Confederit money," said the woman, half apologetically. "I wouldn"t tech that "ere stuff with a soap-stick. Yo"d better git away as quick as yo" kin ef yo" know what"s good for yo"."
She went into the yard to gather up her flock, and the Deacon walked back into the road. When out of sight he sat down on a rock to meditate.
There was not another house in sight anywhere, and it was rapidly growing dark. If he went to an other house he would probably have the same experience. He had set his heart on having those chickens, and he was a pretty stubborn man. Somehow, in spite of himself, he parted the bushes and looked through to see where the woman was housing her fowls, and noted that it was going to be very dark. Then he blushed vividly, all to himself, over the thoughts which arose.
"To think of me, a Deacon in the Baptist Church, akch.e.l.ly meditatin"
about goin" to another man"s coop at night and stealin" his chickens?
Could Maria ever be made to believe such a thing? I can"t be lieve it myself."
Then he made himself think of all the other ways in which he might get chickens. They all seemed impossible. He turned again to those in the coop.
"Nothin" but measly dunhills, after all dear at a fip-and-a-bit, and yet I offered her a dollar apiece for "em. If she"d bin a real Christian woman she"d bin glad to "ve given me the chickens for as sick as man as Si is. Gracious, mother"d give every chicken on the place, if it"d help a sick person, and be glad o" the chance. They"re both tough old rebels, anyhow, and their property oughtter be confiscated."
He stopped and considered the morals of the affair a little further, and somehow the idea of taking the fowls by stealth did not seem so abhorrent as at first. Then, everything was overslaughed by the thought of going into camp with the precious birds, of cleaning one and carefully stewing it, making a delicate, fragrant broth, the very smell of which would revive Si, and every spoonful bring nourishment and strength.
"Mebbe the army"s demoralizin" me," he said to himself; "but I believe it"s a work o" necessity and mercy, that don"t stand on nice considerations. I"m goin" to have five o" them chickens, or know the reason why."
As has been before remarked, when Deacon Klegg made up his mind something had to happen. It was now quite dark. He took one of the $5 bills out of his breast pocket and put it in a pocket where it would be handy. He looked over at the house, and saw the old man and woman sitting by the fire smoking. He picked up the hickory withe to keep off the dogs, and made a circuit to reach the chicken-coop from the rear of the house. The dogs were quarreling and snarling over their supper, and paid no attention to him, until he had reached the coop, when they came at him full tilt.
The Deacon dealt the foremost ones such vicious blows that the beasts fell as if they had been cut in two, and ran howling under the house.
With a quickness and skill that would have done credit to any veteran in the army, he s.n.a.t.c.hed five chickens from their roosts, wrung their necks, and gathered them in his left hand. Alarmed by the noise of the barking and yelping, the old couple flung open the door and rushed out on the porch with shouts. The open door threw a long lane of bright light directly on the Deacon.
"Blow the horn, granddad blow the horn," screamed the woman. Her husband s.n.a.t.c.hed the tin horn down from the wall, and put all his anger into a ringing blast. It was immediately answered by a shot from a distant hill. Still holding his game in his left hand, the Deacon pulled the $5 bill out of his pocket with his right, walked up to the porch, laid it at the woman"s feet and put a stone on it.
"There"s full pay for your dumbed old dunghills, you cantankerous rebel," said he, as he disappeared into the darkness. "Go into the house and pray that the Lord may soften your heart, which is harder than Pharaoh"s, until you have some Christian grace."
When he reached the road he could hear the sound of hoofs galloping toward the house. He smiled grimly, but kept under the shadow of the trees until he reached the main road leading to Chattanooga, where he was lucky enough to find a train making its slow progress toward the town, and kept with it until he was within our lines.
CHAPTER XX. STEWED CHICKEN
THE DEACON"S CULINARY OPERATIONS BRING HIM LOTS OF TROUBLE.
THE Deacon reached the corn-crib again be fore daylight, and found Si and Shorty fast asleep. This relieved him much, for he had been disturbed with apprehensions of what might happen them while he was gone. Though he was more tired, it seemed to him, than he had ever been before in all his life, yet he nerved himself up to clean and cook one of the chickens, so as to give Si a delightful surprise when he awoke.
The Deacon had grown so wise in the army ways that his first problem was how to hide the remaining four fowls until he should need them.
"I"d simply be mobbed," he communed with him self, "if daylight should come, and show me with four chickens in my possession. The whole Army o" the c.u.mberland "d jump me as one man, and I"d be lucky if I got away with my life. Mebbe even the General himself "d send a regiment down to take the things away from me. But what kin I do with "em? If I hang "em up inside the corn-crib they"ll spile. The weather is cold enough to keep "em outside, but I"d need a burglar-proof safe to hold on to "em.
It"s just awful that morals are so bad in the army, and that men will take things that don"t belong to "em."
He stopped short, for there arose the disturbing thought as to just how he himself had come into possession of the birds, and he murmured:
""Tain"t in me to blame "em. What is "t the Bible says about "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone?" Certainly I"m not the man to be heavin" dornicks just now."
Mindful of past experiences, he took the fowls in one hand, when he went down to the branch with a camp-kettle to get water. He washed his face and hands in the cold water, which revived him, and returning, built a fire and hung the kettle over it, while he carefully picked and cleaned one of the chickens for cooking. Then he plucked and cleaned the others, and burned the feathers and entrails in the fire.
"Chicken feathers "s mighty tell-tale things," he said to himself. "I once knowed a man that was finally landed in the penitentiary because he didn"t look out for chicken feathers. He"d bin stealin" hosses, and was hidin" with them in the big swamp, where n.o.body would "ve suspicioned he was, if he hadn"t stole chickens from the neighborhood to live on, and left their feathers layin" around careless like, and some boys, who thought the foxes was killin" the chickens, followed up the trail and run onto him."
Then a bright idea occurred to him. He had a piece of board, which he laid on the stones that formed the foundation of one end of the crib, immediately under the flooring, and on this shelf he laid the other chickens.
"I remember that Wash Jenkins that we arrested for counterfeitin" had hid his pile o" pewter dollars in the underpinnin" of his cabin, and we"d never found any stuff to convict him, except by the merest accident. We hunted all through his cabin, below and in the loft, pulled the clapboards off, and dug up every likely place in the yard, and just about as we wuz givin" the whole thing up, somebody pulled a board out o" the underpinnin" to lay in the bed o" his wagon, and the bogus dollars run out. Wash made shoes for the State down at Jeffersonville for some years on account of that man wantin" a piece o" board for his wagon-bed."
But the astute Deacon had overlooked one thing in his calculations. The crisp morning air was filled with the pungent smell of burning feathers and flesh, and the fragrance of stewing chicken. It reached hungry men in every direction, made their mouths water and their minds wonder where it could come from.