But the “good old hoss” not responding to his appeal, he dismounted, and rushed in, repeating his cry.
“What's the matter? what's the matter? who's sick?” said I, rushing in from a back room—one book open in my right hand, and a ponderous tome under my left arm.
“Oh! young doctor, where's the old man? I've bit my son's arm off, and he's gone into 'vulshuns, and I want the boss to come right out.”
“He's gone into the country, and won't be back before night,” replied I. “Did your boy's arm bleed much?”—not reflecting on the absurdity of a man biting a boy's arm off.
“Bleed! Yes, all three stumps bled like a stuck deer.”
“Three h—lls! Spiffle, you're drunk! How could you bite off three of his arms?”
“Oh, doctor! I meant his fingers; he put them in my mouth when I war asleep. Sens the old man's out, doctor, you must go. Jes' save his life, doc, and you'll never want vensun or a good trout-hole while I'm in the swamp! Be in a hurry, that's a good fellow.”
The chance was too good to be lost—a surgical and medical case combined—amputation and convulsions. What could be more opportune?
Telling Spiffle I would go as soon as I got some medicine suitable to the case, I put near half a peck of valerian in my coat pockets, and an ounce vial of prussic acid in my vest; some calomel, assafoetida, lint, and adhesive plaster, completed my preparations, and I was ready for business. The horse I intended to ride was a favourite one of the old doctor's, but one which, accomplished equestrian as he was, he dare not back, except when the visit lay over some old beaten road; and as for riding him through the devious path of the swamp—one moment on the horse's neck to 'scape an impending limb, the next with the body at a right angle, to avoid a gnarled and thorny tree—now on one side, now on the other, and again on both—wading the backwater, jumping logs, swimming the dark and sullen slough, or with feet raised to the pommel to clear the cypress-knees, which on every side, as the path would cross a brake, obtruded their keen points, ready to impale the luckless wight who there might chance to lose his seat; to ride “Chaos” midst such paths as these, the old doctor, I have said, would never have dreamed of doing, and, most assuredly, had he been at home, would not have allowed me to undertake; but such a ride, with its break-neck peril, chimed well with my youthful feelings, which pursued the same reckless course that the heart's current of the medical student has run in, from the time when “Chiron” was a “grave rat,” to the Tyro of yesterday, who is looking in the dictionary for the meaning of “artery.”
With all the seriousness naturally to be elicited by a responsible mission, I mounted Chaos, and started at a speed that beplastered the skeleton houses 011 each side of the way with mud, heaving a delectable morsel, as I passed the “doggery,” full in the mouth of a picayune demagogue, who, viewing the political sky with open mouth, was vociferating vehemently on the merits of his side. “Hurrah!” for he had just ejaculated, when the substance, which perhaps assisted in composing an antediluvian megathaslopsyolamagosogiam, or, possibly, “imperial Cæsar,” hit him “vim” in the patent orifice. Cleaning his throat, he spluttered out, “Cuss the country, when a man can't holler for the feller that he likes best, but the heels of every 'prentice saw-bone's horse must fling clay in his teeth!”
But Chaos heeded him not; imagining I was for a jaunt over his usual road, he gave way to only sufficient movement to indicate his mettle; but when the end of the street was reached, where the roads diverged, one pursuing its upward course over the towering hills—the first from its source that steal down to gaze upon the wavelets of the “dark Yazoo”—the other unobtrusively stealing its way a few hundred yards, and then yielding its being 'neath the placid waters of a bright-eyed lake. Seeing me turn to the latter, the noble horse gave a joyous neigh, and seemed to be imbued with a new life as he viewed the waters stretching far away into the forest, until wave and leaf were melted into one; and as he thought of the wild luxuriance of a hidden dell, gemmed with a glistening spring, the memory of which came floating up, fraught with the enjoyments of a month's pleasure the year gone by, when, disdaining the stable, he had sought the forest, and there, cropping the herbage, and roaming in all the wild luxuriance of freedom, forgot he was a slave, until the insidious wiles of Spiffle restored him to his owner.
Oblivious, apparently, of my weight, he sprung into the waters, and soon—dashing his beautiful head until the spray covered me with delicious coolness—breasted the sleepy lake; and when his feet struck the firm ground, like the fawn from the hunters, away he sprang up the narrow path, which pursued its tortuous way like a monstrous snake, amidst the nodding grass and fragrant spice-wood, and old trees, fantastically interweaving their limbs.
But little cared my courser for those old trees, clothed with moss, with the shadows of their arching boughs the pathway thrown across; he heeded not the verdancy beneath the eye displayed, nor the gorgeous summer mingling of the sunshine and the shade; the gentle voice of Eolus, as dallying with the grove, came breathing gentle symphonies, but not on him it wove the spell of soothing, subdued thought, such as the feelings haunt, when its tones renew the memory of a long-forgotten chant. With eye of dazzling brightness, with foam upon the breast, with mane back flaunting on the air, and proud erected crest; with champing bit, and eager bound, and earth-disdaining tread, and air, as if o'er battle-fields victoriously he sped. Soho! Soft, Chaos! Quiet! Soho!
“Which way now, Spiffle?” said I, as the path appeared to cease at a clear, deep, narrow “slough,” full of cypress “knees,” which did not come to the surface, but seemed some few inches under.
“Right across,” was the answer.
“What! through those shoots? Why there's not room enough between them for a dog to swim, let alone a horse,” said I.
“You'd be mighty out of breath 'fore you got through with the job, doc, if you tried to swim 'tween them, seein' as thar ten foot under. I war fooled here myself for mor'n a year; I'd take a 'bee' for home, an' come to this slew, an' then have to head it, on 'count of the neas; 'till one day I got on a 'bust' in town, an' my critter got loose and struck for home. I tract him up to whar we is, and here they stopt—the trax and me I mean; but on t'other side I seed them, and I knowed he must have swum. I war clean bothered to know how he got over without leaving some of his innards on the neas,—so I tuck a stick and puncht at one of them that war near outen the water, to see if it war a real cypress nubbin. I missed it clear, and kerchunk I went head foremost 'mongst their sharp points. Oh, my 'viscera!' I yelled; but I'll be cust if I toch a nea; they war ten foot under, and thar they stay, and thar they 'tend stayin', for they ain't grown a lick sens that time, and that war so long ago, that the next day I seed the fust steamboat that kum up the Yazoo skare an old buck to death, makin' him jump so fast that he sprung plum through his skull, and the last I seed of him, as he floated down the river, his head had hung on his lines, and one ear on each horn war fluttering his dying elegy.”
By the time this veracious anecdote was over, we had crossed the slough, and a ride of a few miles brought us to the cabin of my patron, who, now elevated with whiskey, had lost his paternal solicitude, and giving way to the garrulity of the drunkard, was making revelations concerning his past history, which, if true, and he had his dues, would have swung him higher than “Barn Poker,” of Coahoma, when the regulators were out.
I found my patient doing very well, Mrs. Spiffle having sent, before my arrival, for one of those knowing old dames who match “'sperience agin book larnin',” and detract so considerably from the physician's income. The old lady, fortunately for the boy, had had sufficient knowledge of surgery to replace the fingers and apply bandages.
Whether it was my naturally prepossessing phiz, or my ready acquiescence in the correctness of her treatment, that softened the old dame, I know not; but she appeared to take to me monstrously;