IX.

THE WHITE PIG’S STORY.

The next day the children were ready to go to the plum thicket in the peach orchard as soon as they had their breakfast, but while they were talking about it a new trouble arose. It grew out of a question asked by Drusilla.

“Is Unk A’on gwine ’long wid us?” she inquired.

It was a natural and an innocent question, but it presented a difficulty. Sweetest Susan looked at Buster John for an answer, and Buster John looked at Sweetest Susan and Drusilla, but made no reply.

“Kaze ef he ain’t,” remarked Drusilla, pursuing the subject, “you’ll des hatter count me out. I’ll stan’ off som’ers whar I kin run an’ holler when dat ar wil’ hog git mad an’ rip you up, but when it comes ter gwine right whar he is when Unk A’on ain’t wid us, I ain’t gwine ter do it. So dar you got it, flat an’ plain. I ain’t gwine. I watch his eye yistiddy, an’ time I see it lookin’ red on de eye-ball, I know’d dat ar hog was rank pizen when he git mad.”

Finally Buster John said he would find Aaron, but Aaron was not to be found. He had gone off with the plow hands early in the morning, and wouldn’t be back before night. Thereupon Buster John declared that he was going to the plum thicket, if he had to go by himself.

“I’m most afraid,” said Sweetest Susan.

“I’m wuss’n dat,” exclaimed Drusilla. “I’m skeered des dry so.”

“Then both of you stay where you are,” cried Buster John. He started off very boldly, but not without some misgivings. Looking back without pretending to do so, he saw Sweetest Susan coming, though very slowly, while Drusilla was dragging along and bringing up the rear, quarreling, and begging Sweetest Susan to turn back. Buster John stopped and told his sister to come on, and waited for her.

“I’ll go whar I kin see how dat wil’ hog do when he eats folks, but hosses can’t drag me in dat ar plum thicket whar he hidin’,” remarked Drusilla.

Sweetest Susan was not much afraid, seeing Buster John so bold, and Buster John was made bolder by the fact that his sister seemed willing to go. So they went, Drusilla bringing up the rear and protesting.

The plum thicket grew on each side of a gully that had washed in the lower part of the orchard. The plum trees were small and grew very close together, and the gully was filled with a season’s growth of weeds that had not been uprooted by the rains. So that, taken altogether, the plum thicket was a very convenient hiding-place for the White Pig, or for any other creature not larger than a horse.

The children approached it cautiously, and hesitated about entering. While they were halting and considering what to do, they heard a grunt from the middle of the thicket—a grunt as friendly and as familiar as if it came from a fat hog in a pen. Reassured by this, Buster John went into the thicket, followed by Sweetest Susan. They went in cautiously and looked about them very cautiously, but they could see nothing.

“Ooft—gooft!” grunted the White Pig in a contented manner. “Where am I? Can’t you find me?”

They looked about them with all the eyes they had, but failed to find him. Their search became so interesting that Sweetest Susan laughed. There was nothing to laugh at, but she was so thrilled by the excitement of trying to find the White Pig—and he was not a small pig by any means—that she had to express her feelings in some way, and so she laughed.

At that moment Drusilla came to the edge of the thicket. Hearing Sweetest Susan laugh, she grew bold enough to venture in.

“What you-all doin,’ I like ter know?” she asked in a somewhat dubious tone.

“Oh, come and help us, Drusilla!” cried Sweetest Susan, as gleefully as if she were playing hide-the-switch, or kick-the-can. “We are trying to find him. He’s hiding in here, and we can’t find him. Come on!”

Drusilla joined the others, but not with any degree of enthusiasm. “You-all want ter fin’ ’im lots wuss’n I does. I’m mo’ fear’d er fin’in’ ’im dan I is er not fin’in’ ’im.”

[Illustration: THE WHITE PIG TELLS HIS STORY]

“Let’s go across the gully,” said Buster John. He ran down the bank, through the thick weeds, and out on the other side, followed by Sweetest Susan. Drusilla would have followed, too, but just as she had reached the bottom of the gully and started through the weeds, the White Pig rose by her side with a loud grunt. Drusilla was so terrified that she sank in the weeds, unable to utter a sound. Sweetest Susan screamed and Buster John was so taken by surprise and so confused, that for an instant he was undecided whether to take to his heels, dragging his sister after him, or whether to stand his ground.

“Gooft—ooft!” grunted the White Pig. “What is the matter here?”

With this he walked out of the gully, went past Buster John and Drusilla, and lay down where the shade was thickest. Drusilla recovered almost immediately, and, as sometimes happens with older and more enlightened people, anger took the place of fear. To the surprise of her companions, she came out of the gully, walked straight to the White Pig, and sat down by him, so close that she might have touched him with her hand without unbending her arm.

“Humph!” grunted the White Pig, in a friendly way. “That is better. The Son of Ben Ali brought some roasting ears before the sun came out. They were very fine—sweet and juicy. Gooft!” The White Pig smacked his mouth and blinked his eyes as if to show how he had enjoyed the feast. Buster John and Sweetest Susan seated themselves near Drusilla.

“The first time I saw the Son of Ben Ali,” said the White Pig, “I was just big enough to hide in the grass and run about without squealing for my mammy. I used to slip out of the swamp and run into the woods after the acorns. The red squirrel was my friend then, and his great-grand-children are my friends now. He used to climb the big turkey oak, and run about on the limbs pretending to be playing, but all the time he would be shaking down the sweet little acorns. He barked at me and I grunted at him, and we used to have a very nice time all by ourselves.

“One day, while I was out in the open woods cracking acorns, I heard some one call, ‘Run here little Pig! run quick!’ I didn’t have any better sense than to do as I was told, so I ran as hard as I could toward the call. Then I heard a zooning sound in the air, a loud squall, and a noise as of a tree falling. I ran right into the hands of a big man. I was terribly frightened, and I suppose I must have squealed as loud as I could. The big man was the Son of Ben Ali, and he hushed me up by telling me that he called me because a wildcat had been watching me from the lowest limb of the turkey oak.

“Humph—ooft!” grunted the White Pig, “the only reason he didn’t get me was because the Son of Ben Ali struck him with a stone just as he started to jump. The wildcat fell out of the tree dead. His skull was shivered. You have never seen the Son of Ben Ali throw a stone? Well that is between you and him. I have seen him.

“He killed the wildcat that my mammy had often told me about, and after that I came to know the Son of Ben Ali well. Whenever I could find him, night or day, I trotted around with him, and that is how it happened that when my brothers and sisters were shot by men and caught by dogs I was not with them to be shot or caught. I was trotting about with the Son of Ben Ali.

“It was the same thing day after day and night after night, the Son of Ben Ali coming and going, and I trotting at his heels or running in the bushes close by. One day, when the sun had gone down, we were slipping along behind the orchard here. The Son of Ben Ali said he was going to see the Little Master, and I was to wait for him. I heard a dog bark, and this made me stop. And then, while I was listening, a man came upon us—a white man. He seemed to rise out of a dark place in the road. I dodged into a fence corner before he saw me, and stood there, listening.

“‘Who are you?’ said the Son of Ben Ali. His voice shook a little.

“‘That’s what the owl said,’ answered the white man. This tickled me so that I grunted before I knew it. The white man laughed, too, and said he was the Teacher of the young people at the big house. Gooft! a Teacher! There was once a schoolhouse—they called it that, but it was nothing in the world but a log cabin—in the woods over yonder. Every day the Teacher would come and pound and pummel the boys, and every day the boys would go out and stone the cows and hogs. They killed a blood cousin of mine.

“So I said to myself, Gooft! if this Teacher is teaching the Little Master to do these things, I will keep out of the Little Master’s way.

[Illustration: A WILD CAT WAS WATCHING ME]

“Humph! The Son of Ben Ali said to this Teacher: ‘You ought to know me. You saw me in the speculator’s train, and you saw me sold from the block.’

“The Teacher placed his hand on the Son of Ben Ali’s shoulder and replied: ‘I came from far away, and there the people are thinking about you and praying for you. Bear that in mind—thinking about you, and praying for you every day and every night. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands—all thinking about you and praying for you.’

“Gooft—ooft! This Teacher talked as the man talks in the little house on the creek road where the people go when the bell rings—the little house with the high wooden chimney, where the bell is.”

“It is a church,” said Buster John.

“Humph! It may be a church for all I know. I have stood in the woods and heard the man talk to the people, and the Teacher talked just like him. I don’t know what else the Teacher said to the Son of Ben Ali, nor what the Son of Ben Ali said to him, but that night, after the Son of Ben Ali had seen the Little Master, and when we were on our way back to the woods, we met the Teacher again. He had been to another plantation, and told the negroes there how the people in his country were thinking about them and praying for them.

“‘You go too far from home,’ said the Son of Ben Ali. ‘Many a negro where you’ve been to-night will tell what you have said, in hopes of getting an extra rasher of meat.’

“Ooft—gooft!” grunted the White Pig; “and hog meat at that. But the Teacher said that he would trust them.

“‘The best good-night I can give you,’ said the Son of Ben Ali, ‘is not to trust them too much or too far.’

“Ooft—oof! Now you might wonder how I could remember such little things. But little things have a way of growing, and this was one of the little things that grew. Humph! It grew like a pumpkin vine. One thing followed another like sheep jumping over a rail on the ground. The last sheep to go over jumps higher than a man’s head. So with these things I am telling you of. They grew, and they jumped.

“When we met the Teacher, the grass was green, but it was not long before the winds began to blow keen and cold, and then the grass shriveled and the leaves on the trees began to fall. As for me, I could lie in the sedge and keep warm, or I could make me a bed of leaves on the windward side of the fence and never know that the weather was cold. With the Son of Ben Ali, it was different. Not having been born free to the woods and the weather—to the four winds and the four seasons—humph!—he must have a fire. He must have a fire that could be felt and not be seen. So he dug him a hole in the ground, a trench he called it, and in this he made his fire, and he seemed to be very fond of it when the weather was damp and cold.

“One night when I was returning from the yam patch to the top of the hill, I heard horses going along the road. I knew the horses had riders, for I could hear no wheels. The fog was heavy and thick, and so I went close to the road to see and hear what I could. I slipped through the wet grass and listened. Suddenly one of the riders pulled up his horse and cried out:—

“‘Look! look on the hill yonder!’

“I turned to see what it was, and it was terrible enough to scare anybody. On the clouds above the hill was the shadow of a man as big as a fodder stack, and as high as the tallest pine. Even the horses saw it and snorted with fear. The shadow raised its arms above its head and then let them drop quickly. I knew at once that it was the shadow of the Son of Ben Ali, but even then I had a quaking fear. Suddenly I heard another voice call out:—

“‘Whoever you are, come and help a man in trouble.’

“The Son of Ben Ali heard it, too, for the cry of the man for help had hardly died away before the shadow on the clouds disappeared as if it had been wiped out. I knew that the voice that had called to the shadow was the voice of the Teacher, the man who had told the Son of Ben Ali that thousands and tens of thousands were praying for him. And I wondered whether the thousands and the tens of thousands were praying for the Teacher, now that he seemed to be in trouble.

“The Teacher called again, and then I heard the voice of old Grizzly’s son George tell the man to hush or he would blow his brains out.

[Illustration: LOOK ON THE HILL YONDER]

“‘But I have done nothing to you, gentlemen,’ said the Teacher. ‘I have not harmed you in the least. What have you seized me for, and where are you taking me?’

“‘Hush, you sniveling wretch!’ said old Grizzly’s son George. ‘You’ve been colloguing with the niggers, and telling them about freedom. You want to raise an insurrection, and you’ll have to pay for it!’

“After that the Teacher said no more, and the patrol rode on. I could see, dark as it was, that they had the Teacher riding behind Old Grizzly’s son George. The Teacher was tied with a rope, and the rope was fastened to Old Grizzly’s son. All this I saw, and I saw guns—gooft—the things that burn and sting you from afar. It was well that my eyes were fitted for the dark, otherwise the Son of Ben Ali would have been riddled. But I ran and met him, and told him of the guns. He wanted to slip among the horses, cut the ropes that bound the Teacher, and carry him out of hearing among the bushes. But there were the guns!

“Then the Son of Ben Ali wanted me to run ahead, get in the road and rush out at the horses when they came up, while he cut the ropes from the Teacher. Gooft! But there were the guns! We heard the men talking, and found that they were going to take the Teacher to a cross-roads store, called Harmony, seven miles away, and there hang him.”

Sweetest Susan shuddered. Drusilla cried, “Well, suh!” Buster John pulled up a big bunch of grass and threw it away from him. His face was red with anger or excitement.

“Humph! Hang him to a limb!” grunted the White Pig. “Ooft! There was a bridge a quarter of a mile ahead. It was long and narrow and low—just wide enough for a wagon and not higher from the shallow creek than a man’s head. Over this bridge the men had to go, and the Son of Ben Ali wanted me to run ahead, get on the further end of the bridge, charge the horses when they reached the middle, and then jump off and get under the bridge before the men could make their guns talk. It was not to my taste. If I had had to choose between charging the horses on that bridge and a mess of ripe persimmons—humph—I think I would have taken a few of the persimmons. But what could I do? Gooft! The Son of Ben Ali had his mind made up.

“So I ran ahead, jumped over a low place in the fence, and reached the bridge before the horses did. I heard them come on the other end of the bridge, and I tried to get my bristles up, but—gooft—ooft—they wouldn’t stay up. As the men came across I went to meet them, and when they came within a few steps of me, I charged at them, making as much noise as I could, crying:

“‘Gooft—ooft! Gooft!’

“It was all so sudden that the horses were terribly frightened. There were five of them. One reared and I ran under his forelegs. Another shied too far to one side, and went crashing through the railing into the creek. One of the horses kicked me, and—gooft!—that made me mad. For the first time my bristles rose. I rushed at them with open mouth. Another crashed through the railing and went over. All this time I could see the Son of Ben Ali at the heels of the horse that was carrying the Teacher and old Grizzly’s son.

“But the horse was scared nearly to death. His rider couldn’t manage him. He was wild. Before the Son of Ben Ali could cut the rope, the scared horse had whirled and rushed off the bridge, and I went after him. The Son of Ben Ali disappeared, and I went over the fence and rested in the bushes. Presently the Son of Ben Ali came creeping to where I was. He was wet with sweat and trembling all over.

“Neither the men nor the horses were hurt. Gooft! they came together and sat on their horses within a few steps of where we lay. One said it was a man seven feet high. Another said it was a wild varment as big as a lion. Still another said it was Satan. Gooft—ooft! The Teacher said it was a warning. Ooft! ‘The hand of the Lord is in it,’ he said.

“‘It will be a hard race, little Grunter—a hard race! It is three miles to the big house, and from there eight miles to Harmony. It is to be a hard race, little Grunter—a hard race. But it must be run.’ So said the Son of Ben Ali.

“‘Am I to go, Son of Ben Ali?’ I said.

“‘As far as you may and as fast as you can, little Grunter.’

“Gooft! you have never seen the Son of Ben Ali throw a stone, and you have never seen him run! We got in the big road where the ground was firm. Gooft! I began to gallop, but I heard the Son of Ben Ali right at my heels. I began to run, and—gooft—ooft!—I heard him closer at my heels. The faster I went, the faster the Son of Ben Ali went. I was a pretty swift runner and am to this day, but that night I could never get more than twenty steps away from the Son of Ben Ali. Gooft! he was running to save life, and I was running for fun. Once we passed a stray traveler—a stray negro. He called out: ‘What are you trying to do, brother? ‘Ooft!—and the Son of Ben Ali called back: ‘Trying to catch little Grunter, brother!’ Gooft—and the stranger cried: ‘I wish you mighty well, my brother!’

“Gooft—ooft! It was a warm race and a long one. We were not going as fast at the end as we were at the beginning. Ooft! but we were going. And we went till we came to the horse lot, and then I stopped. I spoke to the Son of Ben Ali and said that we were now as close to the hogpen as I hoped ever to be, and so he cried out as he ran: ‘Good night, little Grunter!’ I heard him go to the stable where the Black Stallion, the Son of Abdallah, is kept. Then I heard the door thrown open, and the Son of Abdallah came out with a scream and a snort, and that is all I know. The rest the Black Stallion can tell you.

“Ooft—gooft! That is all. Say nothing to no one. I’ll sleep here a little, and when the sun gets lower I’ll slip away to the swamp.”

“We are very much obliged to you,” said Sweetest Susan.

“Humph—umph! Humph—umph!” grunted the White Pig. “Nicely said—nicely said! I’m over-paid.”