Will N. Harben
Northern Georgia Sketches
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066201432
Table of Contents
A HUMBLE ABOLITIONIST
Andrew Duncan and his wife trudged along the unshaded road in the beating sunshine, and paused to rest under the gnarled white-trunked sycamore trees. She wore a drooping gown of checked homespun, a sun-bonnet of the same material, the hood of which was stiffened with invisible strips of cardboard, and a pair of coarse shoes just from the shop. Her husband was barefooted, his shirt was soiled, and he wore no coat to hide the fact. His trousers were worn to shreds about the ankles, but their knees were patched with new cloth.
“I never was as thirsty in all my born days,” he panted, as he looked down into the bluish depths of a road-side spring. “Gee-whilikins! ain’t it hot?”
“An’ some fool or other’s run off with the drinkin’-gourd,” chimed in his wife. “Now ain’t that jest our luck?”
“We ’ll have to lap it up dog-fashion, I reckon,” Andrew replied, ruefully, “an’ this is the hardest spring to git down to I ever seed. Hold on, Ann; I ’ll fix you.”
As he spoke he knelt on the moss by the spring, turned his broad-brimmed felt hat outside in, and tightly folded it in the shape of a big dipper. He filled it with water, and still kneeling, held it up to his wife. When their thirst was satisfied, they turned off from the road into a path leading up a gradual slope, on the top of which stood a three-roomed log cabin.
“They are waitin’ fer us,” remarked Duncan. “I see ’em out in the passage. My Lord, I wonder what under the sun they ’ll do with Big Joe. Ever’ time I think of the whole business I mighty nigh bu’st with laughin’.” Mrs. Duncan smiled under her bonnet.
“I think it’s powerful funny myself,” she said, as she followed after him, her new shoes creaking and crunching on the gravel. To this observation Duncan made no response, for they were now in front of the cabin.
An old man and an old woman sat in the passage, fanning their faces with turkey-wing fans. They were Peter Gill and his wife, Lucretia.
The latter rose from her chair, which had been tilted back against the wall, and with clattering heels, shambled into the room on the right.
“I reckon you’d ruther set out heer whar you kin ketch a breath o’ air from what little’s afloat,” she said, cordially, as she emerged, a chair in either hand. Placing the chairs against the wall opposite her husband, she took a pair of turkey-wings from a nail on the wall and handed them to her guests, and with a grunt of relief resumed her seat. For a moment no one spoke, but Duncan presently broke the silence.
“Well, I went an’ seed Colonel Whitney fer you,” he began, his blue eyes twinkling with inward amusement. “An’, Pete Gill, I’m powerfully afeerd you are in fer it. As much as you’ve spoke agin slave-holdin’ as a practice, you’ve got to make a start at it. The Colonel said that you held a mortgage on Big Joe, an’ ef you don’t take ’im right off you won’t get a red cent fer yore debt.”
“I’m prepared fer it,” burst from Mrs. Gill. “I tried my level best to keep Mr. Gill from lendin’ the money, but nothin’ I could say would have the least influence on ’im. The Lord only knows what we ’ll do. We are purty-lookin’ folks to own a high-priced, stuck-up quality nigger.”
The two visitors exchanged covert glances of amusement.
“How did you manage to git caught?” Andrew asked, crushing a subtle smile out of his face with his broad red hand.
Peter Gill had grown quite red in the face and down his wrinkled, muscular neck. As he took off his brogans to cool his feet, and began to scratch his toes through his woolen socks, it was evident to his questioner that he was not only embarrassed but angry.
“The thousand dollars was all the money we was ever able to save up,” he said. “I was laying off to buy the fust piece o’ good land that was on the market, so me ’n the ol’ ’oman would have a support in old age. But I didn’t see no suitable farm just then, an’ as my money was lyin’ idle in the bank, Lawyer Martin advised me to put it out at intrust, an’ I kinder tuck to the notion. Then Colonel Whitney got wind o’ the matter an’ rid over an’ said, to accommodate me, he’d take the loan. He fust give me a mortgage on some swampy land over in Murray, that Martin said was wuth ten thousand, an’ it run on that way fur two yeer. The fust hint I had of the plight I was in was when the Colonel couldn’t pay the intrust. Then I went to another lawyer, fer it looked like Martin an’ the Colonel was kinder in cahoot, an’ my man diskivered that the lan’ had been sold long before it was mortgaged to me for taxes. My lawyer wasn’t no fool, so he got Whitney in fer a game o’ open-an’-shut swindle. He up an’ notified ’im that ef my claim wasn’t put in good shape in double-quick time, he was goin’ to put the clamps on somebody. Well, the final upshot was that I tuck Big Joe as security, an’ now that the Colonel’s entire estate has gone to flinders, I’ve got the nigger an’ my money’s gone.”
Duncan waited for the speaker to resume, but the aspect of the case was so disheartening that Gill declined to say more about it. He simply