CHAPTER XIX

THE CHILD IN THE BLACKBERRY PATCH

“Tell it,” begged Bluebell.

Liza-Robert removed her eyes from the horizon and shook her head at Tildy. Her own girls were companions, to whom she freely imparted the most eldritch tales and wonders; but Doctor Garde objected to having his children’s imaginations tinctured with the folklore of the region. She was so tender and indulgent, however, that no child need plead with her long. All gathered closer around her knees to hear the story of the child who wandered in the blackberry patch.

“It was just after I was married,” said Liza-Robert, “and long before Christeeny was born, that Robert come home one night from the Furnace and told us he had heard something in the blackberry patch. That was before we bought this land, and we lived in part of the old homestead and Abram’s folks lived in the other part. It was a good three miles to the Furnace, but Robert walked there and back every day, and usually got home after dark. This was a summer night, and drizzlin’ rain. He said it was yellow in the west, and the last thing the sun did as it went down was to make a rainbow, and that rainbow stood with one foot across the Rocky Fork, and the other away up in the laurels. Robert he crossed the blackberry patch about dusk.”

“I know the blackberry patch,” said Bluebell. Her mind mapped and tinted it. A high, undulating place terraced around with hills, and a large notch of sky showing in the west; blackberry thickets were grouped over it; there the katydids and cicadæ sang unceasingly, and grasshoppers thumped all over you, penetrating to the tightest part of your clothing, apparently seeking to be crushed, or to be relieved of a leg, while their bulging eyes expressed sulky reproach. It was a very lonesome place, full of echoes, and rank with grass, in which some of the boasted copperheads of the region had been killed.

“But it was lots wilder then,” pursued Liza. “Part o’ the bushes have been grubbed out since that time. But there was a sort of path some o’ the men livin’ on the east road had worn right straight through it.

“So Robert he was about the middle of the patch when he hears a child begin to cry like its heart was breaking. Thinks he, somebody has been here pickin’ berries to-day, and left a child behind. So he begun to call to it and tell it not to be afraid, Bob Banks was there, and he’d take it home. He waded into the grass and looked in different places for it. Now it seemed right at his hand, and now it would sound away off up the hills. It was the most mournful crying he ever heard; but hunt as he might he couldn’t get sight of the child. So, after waitin’ till it got too dark to see, he came home, and was for going back with Abram and a lantern to find that child.

“They got the lantern and went back and hunted that patch high and low, but never saw any child nor heard any cheep of it, and their wamuses was ready to wring out when they got home.

“Next day was Sunday, and we all went to mornin’ meetin’. The neighbor women hadn’t any of ’em been blackberryin’ the day before, and hadn’t heard of any lost child. So we’d have laughed at Robert if Eli Ridenour hadn’t come past the Furnace Monday with _his_ story. _He’d_ heard the child in that patch. He was coming through there about midnight Sunday night, when the most sorrowful cryin’ anybody ever heard begun right close to him. Eli was always cowardly, and he took to his heels. He said it sounded like a woman swishin’ through the grass with her long dress, and cryin’ lonesome-like. But Robert stuck to it, it was more like a child scared half to death.

“People begun to think there was something wrong with that patch. Some said it was a gang of bad men that wanted to steal and had a cave somewhere near the patch; for there was a gang took in a cave ’way up the Rocky Fork when I wasn’t much older than this baby. Mother Banks often told about it. And some said it was a child brought there to be lost and wander ’round till it died--”

“Like the babes in the woods,” murmured Bluebell.

--“By folks that wasn’t as good as they ought to be. And all kinds of stories were told. Some saw it settin’ ’way up in a tree all in white, and some heard it under the ground, as if it was buried up and couldn’t get out. Mr. Willey offered to go before a ’squire and make affidavit that he saw its eyes through the bushes, and they looked like live coals.

“So the neighbor men got together and stayed in the patch at night; they was bound and determined to find that child. They didn’t hear a thing of it, and along in the night all of ’em fell asleep except Robert and Mr. Willey. They were all lying on the grass by a lot of blackberry bushes, and several of the men had their guns, for there was all kinds of suspicions, you know. And Robert said all of a sudden that crying begun again, up the hill at the back of the patch, and it was enough to melt a heart of stone. Mr. Willey and Robert they takes their guns, and they slips along--”

The children clustered closer to Liza’s knee. Rocco opened her mouth; her black eyes scintillated through the dusk; and Bluebell threw a glance at the dark woods above the house.

“So they slips along and along, close to the ground. It was starlight enough to make things out pretty well. And what do you think they came across right at the edge of the woods?”

“Oh, a little lost baby!” cried Doctor Garde’s little girl, “just like Mr. Post in the First Reader! I always loved that story.”

Tildy puffed in derision.

“It was somethin’ with great big shinin’ eyes--”

“Oh,” pleaded Bluebell, “it _wasn’t_ the thing that came after Peggy’s Gold Leg?”

“No,” said Liza, laughing; “it was an animal a good deal bigger than a dog; and it was all ready to spring off of a limb at them when Robert fired his gun, and over it rolled!”

“’Twas a painter!” announced Tildy, with a flourish of triumph.

Bluebell crouched in her seat. Had Tildy pronounced it “panther,” this would have meant little to her. But a “painter!” The Rocky Fork colloquialism bristled with terrors. A “painter” had degrees of ferocity which even a bear could not attain. Lions were the only superiors to “painters,” and, after all, the name of lion had not that hollow, frightful sound to be found in “painter!”

“O my!” breathed Bluebell.

Roxana hid her head under Liza’s apron.

“They skinned it,” said Liza; and this enabled the children to breathe more freely. A skinned “painter” cannot be as formidable to the mind as one with his robes on. “And we’ve got the skin yet. I’ve heard tell painters would cry like women or children to draw folks near so they could eat them. But that’s the only one shot on the Rocky Fork since this country was new. We always called it ‘The Child in the Blackberry Patch.’”

There were those dear elder dollies lying in the play-houses up hill. All night they must hear the trees whisper--now low, as if just dropping asleep; now loud, and breathing deeply, as if startled by something more than a fresh breeze: they must hear the mysterious crackling of twigs, the fall of some crumbling part of a rotten log, the hoot of night-owls, the rattle of the tree-frog, and the dense cry of insects which made the air one unbroken sheet of sound; the dew would gather on their barky faces. Of course they were nothing but elders--but were they at all afraid?--or telling “painter” stories among themselves? Hour by hour their juices would dry, and to-morrow the bright and blooming Emily Mandeville and the bedizened Miss Twist would be old and withered elders, and day after to-morrow you might grind them to powder!

A voice calling from the lower bars with a horn-like rise and fall--a homely, but a comfortable sound--summoned not Rose and Pidey, but the children, to come home.

“Ah!” sighed Bluebell, as she rose reluctantly. She was very loath to ask, but she wanted to know so badly. “That painter’s _dead_ now, ain’t it, Liza?”

“Why, honey, it was killed long before Teeny was born!” This was indeed a relief.