Read Ebook: The island pirate a tale of the Mississippi by Reid Mayne

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Ebook has 810 lines and 40354 words, and 17 pages

Not caring for an encounter with these men--even so much as to saluting them--I stepped aside, intending to let them pass without making my presence known. It was easily done in the darkness, by gliding behind a tree.

"You think ther'll be two hundred bales, Bill?"

"Darned close on it. The old un's had an all-fired fine crop."

"So much the better. See you make the boat big enough to carry it. Don't let a bale be left behind."

"Yer kin trust me for that. She'll take every bale of it."

"Good. If neatly managed, it'll be one of the finest hauls--. Don't you smell tobacco?"

"Darned if I don't!"

"Somebody's been smoking here! A cigar too. Like enough that strange fellow, or Walt Woodley himself. They've been this way--not a great while ago neither."

For a short time there was silence, and I could tell that the two men had stopped in their track, and were listening.

Now, less than ever, did I care to accost Mr. Bill Black and his companion, who was not Stinger, though who I could not guess. And yet the voice did not seem altogether unfamiliar. I fancied I had heard it before!

I stood still as the tree-trunks around me, and equally motionless. I had already taken the cigar from my teeth, and held it with the coal between my fingers.

I was in hopes of hearing something more said, for there was just a taint of mystery in the nature of the dialogue to which I had commenced listening. Who could the man be that took such an interest in the bulk of the flat-boat, and the shipment of Squire Woodley's cotton?

Perhaps the overseer of the plantation?

This was a man I had only spoken to once or twice, but with whose voice I was not enough familiar, to account for the fancy of my having heard it before.

I was forced to be satisfied with the conjecture, for the two men no longer conversed aloud, but in a tone so low, I could not make out what they said.

After standing a few seconds to satisfy themselves that they were alone on the path, they moved on again, and were soon entirely out of my hearing.

As I continued toward the house, I could not help dwelling upon the incident, trifling as it might appear. The voice of the second speaker still kept vibrating in my ear, although it otherwise defied identification. I did not feel convinced of its being that of the overseer.

On reaching the plantation-house I had evidence to the contrary. The man was there himself, standing by the gate! He could not have got to the ground before me.

I found Walter Woodley at home, and related to him the scraps of conversation I had overheard.

"Some of our neighbors," he said, with a careless laugh, "who take this interest in our affairs, though I can not tell which of them I am to thank for being such a well-wisher. Ah! I fancy I can explain it. We propose to allow a percentage on every bale that reaches New Orleans without getting wet or otherwise damaged. Likely enough it's some friend of Black, the boatman, who's been congratulating him on his chance of making a good thing of it.

"How should I know, being a perfect stranger to everybody around you?"

"Nat Bradley! He here? I thought he said he was going down the river."

"He did; but for all that he's here again."

"For what purpose?" I asked, inspired by an unpleasant thought.

While listening to this long explanation, I imagined I had obtained a cue as to the voice I had heard in conversation with Bill Black, the boatman. It was the same that had jarred so disagreeably on my ear, while pronouncing the name "Corneel."

I stated my suspicion to the young planter.

"Like enough," was his reply, "though I didn't know he was acquainted with Black, nor can I see what difference it should make to him about our having a large crop, or how we get it to market."

Neither could I; and it was just this that continued to mystify me, long after we had ceased to converse on the subject.

Strange enough, no one of the neighborhood had either seen or heard of Nat Bradley's reappearance on the place.

During the three days that intervened before my departure from the plantation, I had not failed to make inquiries--of course in an indirect manner--but no one knew of a second visit of Nat Bradley. His first I had frequently heard spoken of. There was nothing strange in it. On the contrary, it was but natural that a man of broken fortune, once more rebuilt, should return to his native place, to receive the congratulations of his friends, as well as to triumph over his enemies.

His second visit made in such secrecy--and with a falsehood for its excuse--must have had some object of a less honest kind.

I could not help thinking so; and more than once, the thought returned to distress me.

A HUNTING PLANTER.

Notwithstanding my reluctance to leave the Tennessean plantation, the event could no longer be delayed. I could bear the thought with greater equanimity that I had hope soon again to see my fair instructress in the statistics of cotton-planting.

"On my journey through the Mississippi State, I must call on her brother Henry. His plantation was not much out of my way. He could give me such sport, hunting bears and deer and panther, shooting swans, egrets and eagles. She herself would be going down soon--perhaps Walter too. Would I not stay till they came?"

I had long since left behind me the region of turnpikes, and my route lay over roads where the hoof struck only on the softly-turfed surface of the earth. Now and then it coincided with the old "Natchez trace"--that once much-traveled highway, on which Murrell had committed many of his murders.

In due time--and with only those slight mischances which form rather the charms of travel--I reached the Mississippi plantation, and presented my letters of introduction to the proprietor. I was received with all the warmth of Western hospitality. Indeed, by my new host, Henry Woodley, credentials would scarce have been called for. Sufficient for him to know that I was fond of hunting, to have insured me a warm reception. With the addition of such introduction as I carried, it was only made the warmer; and I was received with as much zeal as if, instead of that pretty epistle from his sister, I had brought one from the old squire containing a check for a thousand dollars.

I was not long upon the plantation of Mr. Henry Woodley, till I could tell that this last would not have been unwelcome. Here every thing was different from the old homestead in Tennessee.

Instead of a handsome "frame house," well filled with furniture that approached the fashionable, I was introduced to a dwelling of a less pretentious kind. It was a large log-cabin, comfortable enough, but with no claim to architectural style. It stood inside of an inclosure of rude rail fence, overshadowed by trees and surrounded by a shrubbery of magnolias, osage orange, and other fair forms of vegetation, just as the forest had furnished them. At the back were the cooking quarters, standing apart; beyond them the stabling, and to one side a group of negro-cabins at some distance from the dwelling. Despite the primitive rudeness of the place, there was that picturesqueness that is pleasing to the eye.

There were, withal, sufficient signs to insure comfort, and a kennel close by containing a score of stag-hounds--some of them showing scars that could only have been made by the claws of bear or panther--promised something more--that sport of which their proprietor was so passionately fond--the grand chase.

It was for this, in truth, that Henry Woodley had selected his new home; for this consented, year after year, to endure the summer heats, and breathe the miasma of the Mississippi swamps--not to make a fortune in the culture of cotton and tobacco. His corn-growing was intended only to feed the horses in his stable, as well as the hogs required for the sustenance of the negro-quarters and the kennel.

Inside, as without, you had evidence of the house being a true hunter's home. In the vast open porch, with its adjoining gallery, you were surrounded by trophies of the chase--horns, skins and claws, suspended alongside a miscellaneous assortment of guns and riding-gear, nets, traps, and fishing-tackle.

Soon after my arrival, my host commenced initiating me into the ways of a Southern sportsman's life; and ere long I was introduced to the different kinds of chase practiced upon the Mississippi.

In less than a month I had collected, on my own account, most of those trophies that fall to the lot of a Mississippi hunter. Among them were skins of the black bear, the red puma or "painter" of the backwoodsmen, the spotted lynx--better known by the name of "wild-cat"--wolves, black and gray, with raccoons, opossums, skunks, swamp rabbits, and other four-footed "varmints." In my collection were the antlers of the Virginia stag, the scaly skin of the alligator, as also the singular gar-fish, or shark of the South-western waters.

Birds, too, figured among my trophies, including a fine specimen of the wild turkey, whose weight, when shot, was thirty pounds in the scale. I had obtained also the tall American crane, the trumpeter swan, the curious snake-bird, the blue heron, the white egret, the scarlet ibis, and many other beautiful birds, obtainable on the banks and bayous of the lower Mississippi.

The king of all, however--the white-headed eagle--was still wanted to complete my museum. Several times I had seen this splendid bird soaring aloft, or winging his way across the river. But, like most of the falcon tribe, the white-headed eagle is shy of the approach of man; and I had never succeeded in getting a shot at one. All the more did I desire to add the eagle to my collection.

My host, eager to gratify me, caused inquiries to be made.

It ended in our hearing of a "roost" upon one of the islands, some twenty miles down the river, where a nest had been observed in the spring, and afterward the brood of birds--a single brace, along with their parents.

In the neighborhood of a nest where they have succeeded in bringing forth their young, the eagles can more easily be approached. Where they have been so long permitted to go undisturbed, their confidence becomes established. Knowing this, I determined on making an excursion to the island.

On this occasion I was to go without my host, accompanied only by one of his negroes, named "Jake." I had made several excursions so attended when the young planter was otherwise occupied--Jake and the skiff being always placed at my disposal.

The darky knew the island in question, though he had never landed upon it; and what I thought strange, did not seem to relish the idea of guiding me to the place! At other times he had shown the greatest eagerness to be my hunting companion, as it afforded him a pleasanter time than any other employment upon the plantation.

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