“Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a ‘prime sow and pigs in the cote-house, and I hain’t got no place for to put ‘em. If the jedge is a gwyne to hold cote, I got to roust ‘em out, I reckon. But tomorrer’ll do, I ‘spect.”
The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato and shot a bumblebee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away. One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and faultless accuracy.
“What’s a stirrin’, down ‘bout the Forks?” continued Old Damrell.
“Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole Drake Higgins he’s ben down to Shelby las’ week. Tuck his crap down; couldn’t git shet o’ the most uv it; hit wasn’t no time for to sell, he say, so he ‘fotch it back agin, ‘lowin’ to wait tell fall. Talks ‘bout goin’ to Mozouri — lots uv ‘ems talkin’ that — away down thar, Ole Higgins say. Cain’t make a livin’ here no mo’, sich times as these. Si Higgins he’s ben over to Kaintuck n’ married a high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an’ he’s come back to the Forks with jist a hell’s-mint o’ whoopjamboree notions, folks says. He’s tuck an’ fixed up the ole house like they does in Kaintuck, he say, an’ tha’s ben folks come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He’s tuck an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin’.”
“What’s plasterin’?”
“I dono. Hit’s what he calls it. Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me. She say she wasn’t gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog. Says it’s mud, or some sich kind o’ nastiness that sticks on n’ covers up everything. Plarsterin’, Si calls it.”
This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and almost with animation. But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so many turtles and strode to the battlefield with an interest bordering on eagerness.
The Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed, and sat long in meditation. At intervals he said:
“Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain.”
At last he said:
“I believe I’ll do it. — A man will just rot, here. My house my yard, everything around me, in fact, shows’ that I am becoming one of these cattle — and I used to be thrifty in other times.”
He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him seem older. He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, and went into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping cornbread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through the middle — for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy cooking, at a vast fireplace. Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the place.
“Nancy, I’ve made up my mind. The world is done with me, and perhaps I ought to be done with it. But no matter — I can wait. I am going to Missouri. I won’t stay in this dead country and decay with it. I’ve had it on my mind sometime. I’m going to sell out here for whatever I can get, and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in it and start.”
“Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children can’t be any worse off in Missouri than, they are here, I reckon.”
Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own room, Hawkins said: “No, they’ll be better off. I’ve looked out for them, Nancy,” and his face lighted. “Do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county — think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy, enormous don’t express it — the word’s too tame! I tell your Nancy — — ”
“For goodness sake, Si — — ”
“Wait, Nancy, wait — let me finish — I’ve been secretly bailing and fuming with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I’ll burst! I haven’t whispered to a soul — not a word — have had my countenance under lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals here how to discern the gold mine that’s glaring under their noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly — five or ten dollars — the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to” [here he dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that there were no eavesdroppers,] “a thousand dollars an acre!
“Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it’s so. You and I may not see the day, but they’ll see it. Mind I tell you; they’ll see it. Nancy, you’ve heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them — of course you did. You’ve heard these cattle here scoff at them and call them lies and humbugs, — but they’re not lies and humbugs, they’re a reality and they’re going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they are now. They’re going to make a revolution in this world’s affairs that will make men dizzy to contemplate. I’ve been watching — I’ve been watching while some people slept, and I know what’s coming.
“Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours — and in high water they’ll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy — it isn’t even half! There’s a bigger wonder — the railroad! These worms here have never even heard of it — and when they do they’ll not believe in it. But it’s another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an hour — heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour. It makes a man’s brain whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our graves, there’ll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles — all the way down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans — and its got to run within thirty miles of this land — may be even touch a corner of it. Well, do you know, they’ve quit burning wood in some places in the Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!” [He bent over and whispered again:] “There’s world — worlds of it on this land! You know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch? — well, that’s it. You’ve taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and they’ve built little dams and such things with it. One man was going to build a chimney out of it. Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet! Why, it might have caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was too crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore — splendid yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There’s fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There’s mountains of iron ore here, Nancy — whole mountains of it. I wouldn’t take any chances. I just stuck by him — I haunted him — I never let him alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land, iron, copper, coal — wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats! We’ll never see the day, Nancy — never in the world — never, never, never, child. We’ve got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and poverty, all hopeless and forlorn — but they’ll ride in coaches, Nancy! They’ll live like the princes of the earth; they’ll be courted and worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah, well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the steamboat, and say, ‘This one little spot shall not be touched — this hovel shall be sacred — for here our father and our mother suffered for us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the hills!’“