Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

"'Somebody's fooled you badly, Uncle Jabez. That coin's a counterfeit. Do you happen to know where you got it?'

"'I know well enough,' I says, and I expect I spoke pretty mad, for I felt mad. 'I got it of a travellin' peddler, that's far enough away by this time, and if you're sure it's bad I'm that much out of pocket.' He seemed right concerned about it, and ast me if I hadn't no clue that I could track the peddler by; but I couldn't think of any, and I went home a good deal down in the mouth. But Gracie chirked me up, as she always does, bless her! and she made me a Welsh rabbit for supper, and some corn muffins, and a pot of good rich chocolate, by way of a change, and we agreed that, as she'd a pretty big five dollars worth and as the rest of the change was good, we'd say no more about it, for it would be like lookin' for a needle in a hay-stack to try to track him.

"'Why, father,' she says, 'I don't so much as know his name: do you?'

"I told her no, I didn't; that if I'd heard his name I disremembered it, but that I didn't think I'd heard it. And then that very night come another visit from mother, and she told me all about it. She come the way she always did, and when she spoke the last time, close to, as you may say, she says,—

"'I wouldn't give up that ten dollars so easy, if I was you, father. That peddler's name is Hanigan,—Elwood Hanigan,—and he'll be at the State Fair to-morrow. Now, do you go, and you'll find his red wagon with no trouble at all; and jest be right down firm with him, and tell him that if he doesn't give you good money in place of the bad he foisted off on you you'll show him up to the whole fair, and you'll see how glad he'll be to settle it.'

"And with that she laughed jest as natural as life, and I heard no more till Gracie knocked on my door in the morning."

"And did you go to the fair and find him and get your money back?" asked Birchard, who was interested in spite of his scepticism.

"I did, jest that," replied Uncle Jabez. "I got off bright and early, and, as luck would have it, I'd jest tied and blanketed my horse when that wonderful smart red wagon come drivin' in at the gate. I waited till he'd begun to pull his wares out and make a fine speech about 'em, and then I jest walked up to him, cool and composed, and give him his choice between payin' me good money for his bogus gold or hearin' me make a speech; and you may jest bet your best hat he paid up quicker'n winkin'. Perhaps I'd ought to have warned folks ag'in' him as it was, but I had a notion he'd save his tricks till he got to another neighborhood; and it turned out I was right. He didn't give none of his gold change out that day. But you can see for yourself that if it hadn't been for Lavina he'd have come off winnin' horse in that race. That was always the way when mother was about: she had more sense in her little finger than I had in my whole body, and head too, for that matter."

"And you found that you really had not known the man's name until it was conveyed to you in the manner in which you have described?" asked the schoolmaster deferentially.

"Well, no," said Uncle Jabez. "When I saw his wagon the next day, I remembered of readin' his name in gilt letters on the side, tacked to some patent medicine he claimed to have invented; but I don't suppose I'd ever thought of it again if mother hadn't told it to me so plain."

The schoolmaster said nothing. He had his own neat little theories concerning all the manifestations which had been mentioned, but somehow the old man's guileless belief had touched him, and he had no longer any desire to shake it, even had it been possible to do so. But he could not help probing the subject a little further: so presently he asked, "And you've never spoken to her, never asked her if it were not possible for you to see as well as hear her?"

"Young man," said Uncle Jabez kindly, but solemnly, "there's such a sin as presumption, and there's some old sayin' or other about fools rushin' in where angels fear to tread. If you try to grab too much at once, you're apt to lose all. If it was meant for me to see mother as well as hear her, I should see her; and if I was to go to pryin' round and tryin' to find out what's purposely hid from me, I make no doubt but I should lose the little that's been vouchsafed to me. But I'd far rather hear you ask questions like that than to have you throwin' doubt on the whole business, as you seemed inclined to do at fust."

"Look here," said Mr. Dickey briskly, "do you know it's well on to half-past ten? and we were to have the key at Pegram's by ten. I think we'd better do what there is to do, and clear out of this as quick as we know how, and mebbe some of us will wish before an hour's gone that we had Uncle Jabez's knack at makin' out a good story."

"You speak for yourself, Dickey," said Mr. Crumlish good-naturedly. "There's some of us that goes in and comes out, with nobody to care which it is, nor how long we stay; but freedom has its drawbacks, as well as other things."

The schoolmaster laughed at himself for striking a match as he turned the last light out, but he felt moving through his brain a vague wish that Uncle Jabez would break himself of that trick he had of gazing fixedly at nothing, and that other trick of stopping suddenly in the middle of a sentence to cock his head, as if he were hearing some far-away, uncertain sound.

MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.

FISHING IN ELK RIVER

When a man has once absorbed into his system a love for fishing or hunting, he is under the influence of an invisible power greater than that of vaccine matter or the virus of rabies. The sporting-fever is the veritable malady of St. Vitus, holding its victim forever on the go, as game-seasons come, and so long as back and legs, eye and ear, can wrestle with Time's infirmities. It breeds ambition, boasting, and "yarns" to a proverbial extent, with a general disbelief in the possible veracity of a brother sportsman, and an irresistible; desire to talk of new and privately discovered sporting-heavens. The gold-seeker stakes his claim, the "wild-catting" oil-borer boards up his lot, the inventor patents his invention, and the author copyrights his brain-fruit; but the sportsman crazily tells all he knows. So the secret gets out, and the discoverer is robbed of his treasure and forced to seek new fields for his rod and gun.

Colonel Bangem had enjoyed a year's sport among the unvisited preserves of Elk River. Mrs. Bangem and Bess, their daughter, had shared his pleasures and acquired his fondness for such of them as were within feminine reach. Any ordinary man would have been perfectly satisfied with such company and delights; but no, when the bass began to leap and the salmon to flash their tails, the pressure was too great. His friends the Doctor and the Professor were written to, and summoned to his find. They came, the secret was too good to keep, and that is the way this chronicle of their doings happens to be written.

No sooner was the invitation received than the Doctor eased his conscience and delighted his patients by the regular professional subterfuge of sending such of them as had money to the sea-shore, and telling those who had not that they needed no medicine at present; the Professor turned his classes over to an assistant on pretext of a sudden bronchial attack, for which a dose of mountain-air was the prescribed remedy. And so the two were whirled away on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad across the renowned valley of Virginia and the eastern valley steps of the Alleghany summits, past the gigantic basins where boil and bubble springs curative of all human ills, down the wild boulder-tossed waters and magnificent cañons of New River, around mountain-bases, through tunnels, and out into the broad, beautiful fertility of the Kanawha Valley, until the spires of Charleston revealed the last stage of their railroad journey. When their train stopped, stalwart porters relieved them of their baggage and deafened them with self-introductions in stentorian tones: "Yere's your Hale House porter!" "I's de man fer St. Albert's!"

"It's no wonder," said the Doctor, as he followed the sable guide from the station to the river ferry, and looked across the Kanawha's busy flow, covered with coal-barges, steamboats, and lumber-crafts, to Charleston's long stretch of high-bank river front, "that Western rivers get mad and rise against the deliberate insult of all the towns and cities turning their backs to them. There is a mile of open front, showing the cheerful faces of fine residences through handsome shade-trees and over well-kept lawns; but here, where our ferry lands, and where we see the city proper, stoops and kitchens, stove-pipes and stairways, ash-piles and garbage-shoots, are stuck out in contempt of the river's charms and the city's comeliness."

"Stove-pipes and stairways have to be put somewhere," said the matter-of-fact Professor. "And the best way to turn dirty things is toward the water."

The ferry-boat wheezed and coughed and sidled across the river to a floating wharf, covered, as usual, with that portion of the population, white and black, which has no interest in the arrival of trains, or anything else, excepting meals at the time for them, but which manages to live somehow by looking at other people working.

"Give me," said the Professor, "the value of the time which men spend in gazing at what does not concern them, and, according to my estimate, I could build a submarine railroad from New York to Liverpool in two years and three months. What are those fellows doing with their huge barrels on wheels backed into the river?"

"Dat is de Charleston water-works, boss," answered the grinning porter. "Widout dem mules an' niggahs an' bar'ls dah wouldn't be 'nough water in dis town to wet a chaw tobacky."

A winding macadamized road leads up the river bank to the main street running parallel with it. There is a short cut by a rickety stairway, but, as some steep climbing has to be done before reaching the lower step, it is seldom used. These formerly led directly to the Hale House, a fine brick building, which faced the river, with a commodious portico, and offered the further attractions of a pleasant interior and an excellent table; but now a blackened space marked its site, as though a huge tooth had been drawn from the city's edge, for one morning a neighboring boiler blew up, carrying the Hale House and much valuable property with it, but leaving the owners of the boiler.

"Dat's where de Hale House was, boss, but it's done burned down. I's de porter yit. When it's done builded ag'in I's gwine back dar. Dis time I take you down to de St. Albert. I's used to yellin' Hale House porter so many years dat St. Albert kind chokes me."

So to the St. Albert went the Doctor and Professor, where they met with a home-like greeting from its popular host.

Wheeling was formerly the capital of West Virginia, but for good reasons it was decided to move the seat of government from "that knot on the Panhandle" to Charleston. A commodious building of brick and sandstone, unchristened as to style of architecture, has been erected for the home of the law-makers; and henceforth the city which started around the little log fort built in 1786 by George Glendermon to afford protection against Indians will be the seat of government for the great unfenced State of West Virginia. Its business enterprise and thrift, its excellent geographical and commercial position, its healthiness notwithstanding its bad drainage, or rather no drainage, have induced a growth almost phenomenal. Churches, factories, and commodious storehouses have spread the town rapidly over the beautiful valley in which it lies. The United States government has been lavish in its expenditure upon a handsome building for court, custom, and post-office purposes; and to it flock, especially when court is in session, as motley an assortment of our race as ever assembled at legal mandate. Moonshiners, and those who regard whiskey-making, selling, and drinking as things that ought to be as free as the air of the mountain and licenses as unheard-of impositions of a highly oppressive government, that would "tax a feller for usin' up his own growin' uv corn," and courts as "havin' a powerful sight uv curiosity, peekin' into other fellers' business," afford ample opportunities for the exercise of judicial authority.

A long mountaineer was before a dignified judge of the United States Court for selling liquor without a license. He had bought a gallon at a still,—as to the locality of which he professed profound ignorance,—carried it thirty miles, and peddled it out to his long-suffering and thirsty neighbors. Every native being a natural informer, the story was soon told: arrest followed, a march of fifty miles over the mountains, and a lengthy imprisonment before trial. Following the advice of his assigned counsel, he pleaded guilty. Being too poor to pay a fine, and having an unlimited family dependent upon their own exertions,—which comprises the sum of parental responsibility among the natives,—the judge released him on his own bail-bond, and told him to go home. He deliberately put on his hat, walked up to his honor, and said, "I say, jedge, I reckon you fellers 'ill give me 'nough money to ride hum an' pay fer my grub, 'cause 'tain't fair, noway. You fetched me clar down yere, footin' it the hull way, an' now you're lettin' me off an' tellin' me to foot it back. 'Tain't fair, noway. You-uns oughter pay me fer it." And he went off highly indignant at having his modest request refused.

There is much of the primitive not outgrown as yet by Charleston: it has put on a long-tailed coat over its round-about. The gossipy telephone is ahead of the street-cars; gas-works supply private consumers, while the citizens wade the unlighted streets by the glimmer of their own lanterns; innumerable cows contest the right of pedestrians to the board footways and what of pavement separates the mud-holes; an ice-manufactory supplies coolness to water peddled about in barrels; the officials outnumber the capacity of the jail; the ferry-facilities vary from an unstable leaky bateau to a dirty, open-decked dynamite steamboat, whose night-service is subject to the lung-capacity of the traveller hallooing for it, and the fares to necessities and circumstances; the fine brick improvements are flanked by frame tinder-boxes; the offal of the city has not a single relieving sewer: yet it is a beautiful, healthy place, and the chief city of the greatest mineral-district in the world.

Our travellers breakfasted on delicious mountain mutton and vegetables fresh from surrounding farms. Their host secured three men and a canoe to carry them up Elk River to Colonel Bangem's camp, at the cost of one dollar a day and "grub," or one dollar and a quarter a day if they found themselves, with the moderate charge of fifty cents a day for the canoe.

When the time arrived for starting, the Professor was missing. Bells were rung, servants were despatched to search the hotel for him, but he was not to be found. The Doctor grew impatient, but restrained himself until an uncoated countryman, who had just walked into town and was ready for a talk, told him that he "seed a feller, thet wuz a stranger in these parts, with a three-legged picter-gallery, chasin' a water-cart a right smart ways back in the town, ez I come in."

"That's he," said the Doctor. "He is crazy after pictures. I'll give you a dollar if you bring him to the hotel alive."

"Is he wicked?" asked the man.

"Generally," answered the Doctor, whose eyes began to twinkle; "but you get hold of his picture-gallery and run for the hotel: he will follow you. I often have to manage him that way."

"I'm minded to try coaxin' him in thet a-way fer a dollar. You jist take keer uv my shoes, an' I'll hev him yer ez quick ez Tim Price kin foot it, if he follers well an' hain't contrairy-like, holdin' back."

Tim Price relieved his feet of their encumbrances, and started. When his tall, gaunt figure had disappeared around the corner, the Doctor grew red in the face from an internal convulsion, and then exploded past all concealment of his joke.

"If you gentlemen," he said to the by-standers, "want to see some fun, just follow that man. I will stay here as judge whether the man brings in the Professor or the Professor brings in the man."

A good joke would stop a funeral in Charleston. The hotel was cleared of men in an instant to follow Tim and enjoy the hunt. Tim sighted the Professor about a quarter of a mile back in the town, A darky driving a water-cart was standing up on the shafts, thrashing his mule with the ends of his driving-lines, and urging it, by voice and gesture, to the highest mule-speed: "Git up! git up! you lazy old no-go! Git up! Don't you see dat picter-feller tryin' to took you an' me an' de bar'l? Git up! Wag yer ears an' switch yer tail. You're not gwine ter stan' still an' keep yer eyes on de instrement fer no gallery-man to took, 'less you's fix' up fer Sunday. Git up, you ole long-eared corn-eater!"

The Professor was keeping well up with the flying water-works. His hat was stuck on the back of his head, he carried his camera with its tripod spread ready for sudden action, and every step of his run was guided by thoughts of proper distance, fixed focus, and determination to have the water-works in his collection of instantaneous photographs. A turn in the street gave the Professor his opportunity: he darted ahead, set his camera, and took the whole show as it went galloping by, when he reclined against a fence while making the street ring with his laugh.

Tim Price, who was watching his chance, saw that it had come. He grabbed the camera, gave a yell of triumph, and faced for the home-run. He had not an instant to lose. The Professor sprang for his precious instrument. Tim's long legs carried him across the street, over a fence into a cross-cut lot, and away for the hotel at a mountaineer's speed. The Professor was small, but active as a cat. Where Tim jumped fences, the Professor squirmed through them; where Tim took one long stride, the Professor scored three short ones. Tim lost his hat, and the Professor threw off his coat as he ran. The main street was reached without perceptible decrease of distance between them; but there the pavements were something Tim's bare feet were not used to catching on, and the people something he was not used to dodging: he upset several, but dashed on, with his pursuer gaining on his heels. Men, women, dogs, and darkies turned out to witness the race or follow it. "Stop thief!" "Go it, Tim!" "You're catching him, stranger!" "Foot it, little one!" were cries that speeded the running. The Doctor stood waiting at the hotel door, laughing, shaking, and red as a veritable Bacchus. Tim Price banged the camera into him, whirled round suddenly, caught the Professor as he dashed at him, and held him in his powerful arms, squirming like an eel.

"Yere's your crazy man, stranger," said Tim, in slow, drawling tone. "I tell you he kin jest p'intedly foot it. Thar hain't been such a run in Kanoy County sence they stopped 'lectin' country fellers fer sheriff. I reckon I've arned thet dollar. What shall I do with the leetle feller?"

The Professor was powerless, but lay in Tim's arms biting, kicking, and curled up like a yellow-jacket interested with an enemy.

"Let him go," said the laughing Doctor. "He will stay with me now. He is not dangerous when I am about. Set him on his feet."

No sooner was the Professor deposited on the pavement than he dealt Tim a stinging blow which staggered him, and stood ready with trained muscles set for defence.

"Look yere, leetle un," said Tim, coolly and with great self-restraint, "'tain't fer the likes uv me to hit you, bein's you're a bit out in your top, but I'll gin you another hug ef you do that ag'in; I will, p'intedly."

In the good humor of the crowd, the mirth of the Doctor, and the latter's possession of the camera the Professor scented a joke, and at once saw his friend's hand in it. He joined in the laugh at his expense, and lengthened his friend's face by saying, "The Doctor having had his fun, he will now pay the bill at the bar for all of you: he pays all my expenses: so walk in, gentlemen."

The laws of hospitality west of the Alleghanies do not permit any one to decline an invitation, so the Doctor settled for the whole procession and paid Tim Price his well-earned dollar.

"Captain," said Tim to the hotel-proprietor, who had joined the crowd, "ef two fellers comes here from the East, one uv 'em ez round ez a punkin an' red ez a flannel shirt an' bald ez a land-tortle, an' t'other ez brown ez a mud-catty an' poor ez a razor-back hog, tell 'em I'm yere to pilot 'em up Elk to Colonel Bangem's caliker tents. He said they were ez green ez frogs, an' didn't know nothin' noway, an' fer me to take keer uv 'em. He don't reckon they'll come tell to-morrow. One uv 'em's a hoss-doctor, an' t'other's a perfessor uv religion, Colonel Bangem telled me. I dunno whether the feller's a circuit-rider er a rale preacher."

"That's the highly-illuminated pumpkin, my good man," said the Professor, pointing to the Doctor, "and I am Colonel Bangem's spiritual adviser. We got here a day sooner than we expected to."

"You don't say? May I never! An' the colonel never telled me nothin' nohow 'bout any one uv you bein' crazy. Howdee? How do you like these parts? Right smart town we've got yere, hain't it? I'll take keer uv you. There hain't no man on Elk River kin take keer uv you better nor Tim Price, ary time. I hain't much up to moon men, though. Thar's one feller up my way thet gits kinder skeery at the full uv the moon; but I hain't never tended him. I reckon I kin l'arn the job,—ez the ole boy said when his marm set him to mindin' fleas off the cat."

Tim Price was the hunter, boatman, fisherman, yarn-spinner, and character of his region, and Colonel Bangem's faithful ally in all his sports: the latter had therefore sent him to meet his friends on their arrival at Charleston, and he at once proceeded to take command of the whole party as a matter of course.

"I footed it over the mountains, and sent my boat the river way. Hit oughter be yere now: so we'll pack you men's tricks to the boats an' p'int 'em up-stream. It 'ill be sundown afore we git thar."

The party started from the hotel, the procession followed to see them off, and they were soon down the Kanawha and into the mouth of Elk at the point of the town. Log rafts, huge barges, miles of railroad-ties, laid-up steamers, peddling-boats, with their highly-colored storehouses, fishermen's scows, floating homely cabins alive with bare-legged children and idlers of the water-side, push-boats loaded to the edge of the narrow gunwales with merchandise for delivery to stores and dwellers far up the river, boats loaded with hoop-poles, grist, chickens, and the "home-plunder" of some mover to civilization, coming down the river from the mountain-clearing, and samples of every conceivable kind of the river's outpour, were tied to the banks or lazily floating on the currentless back-water from the Kanawha.

An old steamboat-captain once said of Elk that "it was the all-firedest river God ever made,—fer it rises at both ends and runs both ways to wunst." This is true, and is caused by the Kanawha, when rising, pouring its water into the mouth of Elk and reversing its current for many miles, while at the same time rain falls in the mountains, increasing the latter river's depth and velocity. Flour-mills, iron-foundries, saw-mills, woollen-mills, and barrel-factories extend their long wooden slides down to the river's edge, to gather material for their consumption. A railroad spans it with an iron trussed bridge, and the demands of wagon and foot-travel are met by an airy one suspended by cables from tower-like abutments on either side, both bridges swung high in the air, out of reach of flood and of the smoke-stacks of passing steam-craft.

A mile from the river's mouth, and just beyond the limits of Charleston, is one of the finest sandstone-quarries in the world. The United States government monopolizes most of its product in the construction of the magnificent lock and shifting dams in course of erection on the Kanawha to facilitate the transportation of coal from the immense deposits now being mined to the great markets of the Ohio River. A little farther on, the brown front of a timber dam and cribbed lock looks down upon a wild swirl and rush of water; for through a cut gap in its centre Elk flows unobstructed,—a penniless mob having made the opening one night that their canoes might pass free and capitalists be encouraged to remove such worthless stuff as money from the growing industries of the river. Prior to this act of vandalism the water was backed by the dam for a distance of fourteen miles, to Jarrett's Ford, making a halting-place for rafts and logs, barges and floats, coming down from the vast forests above when rains and snow-thaws raised the river and its tributaries; but now a long stretch of boom catches what it can of Elk's commerce and is a chartered parasite upon it.