The Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales

Story 6

Trapped in a Tree

Among the many queer characters I have encountered in the shadow of the forest, or the sunshine of the prairie, I can remember none queerer, or more original, than Zebulon Stump – “Old Zeb Stump,” as he was familiarly known among his acquaintances.

“Kaintuck by birth and raisin’,” as he used to describe himself, he was a hunter of the pure Daniel Boone breed. The chase was his sole railing; and he would have indignantly scouted the suggestion, that he ever followed it for mere amusement.

Though by no means of uncongenial disposition, he affected to hold all amateur hunters in a kind of lordly contempt; and his conversation with such was always of a condescending character. For all this, he was not averse to their company; especially that of the young gentlemen of the neighbourhood who chanced to be honoured with his acquaintance.

Being myself one of those who could lay claim to this privilege, I oft-times availed myself of it; and many of my hunting excursions were made in the companionship of Old Zeb Stump. He was, in truth, my guide and instructor, as well as companion; and initiated me into many mysteries of American woodcraft, in which I was at that time but little skilled.

To me one of the most insoluble of these mysteries was that of Old Zeb’s own existence; and I was acquainted with him for a considerable time before I could unravel the clue to it. He stood six feet in boots, fabricated out of the tanned skin of an alligator – into the ample tops of which were crowded the legs of a pair of coarse “copperas” trowsers; while the only other garments upon his body were a doeskin shirt, and a “blanket-coat” that had once been green, but, like the leaves of the autumnal forest, had become changed to a sere and yellowish hue. A slouch “felt” shaded his cheeks from the sun; though for this purpose it was not often needed: since it was only upon very rare occasions that Old Zeb strayed beyond the shadows of the “Timber.”

Where he lived, and how he supported himself, were to me the two points that chiefly required clearing up. In the tract of virgin forest, where I was in the habit of meeting him by appointment, there was neither house nor hut. So said the people of Grand Gulf (a small town upon the Mississippi in which I was sojourning). And yet Old Zeb had told me that in this forest region was his home.

It was only after our acquaintance had ripened into a strong feeling of fellowship, that I became his guest; and had the pleasure of spending an hour under his humble roof.

Humble I may truly designate it, since it consisted of the hollow trunk of a gigantic sycamore-tree, still strading and growing!

In this cavity Old Zeb found sufficient shelter for him self, his “squaw,” as he termed Mrs Stump (whose existence was now for the first time revealed to me), his penates, and, when the weather required it, for the tough old cob that carried him in his forest wanderings.

His household was no longer a puzzle; though there still remained the mystery of how he managed to maintain it.

A skilled hunter might easily procure sufficient food for himself and family; but even the hunter disdains a diet exclusively game. There was the coffee (to a strong cup of which I was myself made welcome); the “pone” of corn-bread; the corn itself necessary to the sustenance of the old horse; the muslin gown that shrouded the somewhat angular outlines of Mrs Stump; with many other commodities that could not be procured by a rifle. Even the rifle itself required food not to be found in the forest.

Presuming on our friendly intimacy, I put the question:

“How do you make out to live? You don’t appear to manufacture anything, nor do I see any signs of cultivation around your dwelling. How, then, do you support yourself?”

“Them keeps us – them thar,” answered my host, pointing to a corner of his tree-cabin.

I looked in the direction indicated. The skins of several species of animals, among which I recognised those of the painter, ’possum, and ’coon, along with a haunch or two of recently-killed venison, met my glance.

“Oh! you traffic in these?”

“Jess so, stranger. Sells the skins to the storekeeper an’ the deer meat to anybody as’ll buy it.”

“But I have never seen you in the town.”

“I never goes thar. I don’t like them stinkin’ storekeepers. They allers cheats me.”

“Who, then, does the marketing for you?”

“The ole ’oman thar. She kin manage them counter-jumpers better’n I kin. Can’t you, ole gurl?”

“Well, that I guess I can,” replied the partner of Old Zeb’s bosom, with an emphasis that left no doubt upon my mind that she believed herself to be speaking the truth.

I now recollected having more than once seen Mrs Stump in the streets of Grand Gulf, on her marketing errands, and having dined at an hotel upon a haunch of buck of her especial providing. Still more, I remembered purchasing from her a brace of white-headed eagles (falco-leucocephalus), which this good lady had brought in from the forest, and which I had forwarded to the Zoological Society of London.

Old Zeb’s shooting was something that to me at the time appeared marvellous. He could “bark” a squirrel among the tops of the tallest tree; or could equally kill it by sending his bullet through its eye. He used to boast, in a quiet way, that he never “spoilt a skin, though it war only that o’ a contemptible squ’ll.”

But what interested me more than all was his tales of adventure, of most of which he was himself the hero. Many of these were well worthy of being recorded.

One I deemed of especial interest, partly from its own essential oddness, partly from the quaint queerness of the language in which it was related to me, and not a little from the fact of its hingeing on a phenomenon, to which more than once I had myself been witness. I allude to the caving in, or breaking down of the banks of the Mississippi river, caused by the undermining influence of the current; when large slips of land, often whole acres, thickly studded with gigantic trees, glide into the water, to be swished away with a violence equalling the vortex of Charybdis.

It was in connection with one of these land-slips that Old Zeb had met with the adventure in question, which came very near depriving him of his life, as it did of his liberty for a period of several days’ duration.

Perhaps the narration had best be given in his own piquant patois; and I shall so set it forth, as nearly as I can transcribe it from the tablets of my memory.

I was indebted for the tale to a chance circumstance: for it was a rare thing in Old Zeb to volunteer a story, unless something turned up to suggest it.

We had killed a fine buck, which had run several hundred lengths of himself with the lead in his carcass, and had fallen within a few feet of the bank of the river.

While stopping to “gralloch the deer,” Old Zeb looked around with a pointed expression, as he did so, exclaiming:

“Darn me! ef this ain’t the place whar I war trapped in a tree! Dog-gone ef taint! Thar’s the very saplin’ itself.”

I looked at the “saplin’” to which my companion was pointing. It was a swamp cypress, of some thirty feet in girth, by at least a hundred and fifty in height.

“Trapped in a tree?” I echoed, with emphatic interest, perceiving that Old Zeb was upon the edge of some odd adventure.

Desirous of tempting him to the relation of it, I continued, “Trapped in a tree? How could that be, Mr Stump, an old forester like you?”

“It did be, howsomedever,” was the quaint reply of my companion, “an’ not so very long agone neyther; only about three yeer. Ef ye’ll sit down a bit, an’ we may as well, since the sun’s putty consid’able hellish hot jest now, I’ll tell ye all about it. An’ I kin tell ye, for I hain’t forgotten neery sarcumstance o’ the hul thing. No, that I hain’t, an’ I’ll lay odds, young feller, that ef you ever be as badly skeeart as I war then, you’ll carry the recollexshun o’ that skeear till ye gets chucked into yur coffin – ay, that ye will!”

Old Zeb here paused; but whether to reflect on what he was going to say next, or to give time for his last words to produce their due impression, I could not determine. I refrained from making rejoinder, knowing that I had now got him fairly over the edge of the adventure, and was safe enough to “have it out.”

“Wal, kumrade, I war out arter deer, jest as you an’ me are the day; only it had got to be lateish – nigh sundown i’deed – and I hadn’t emptied my rifle the hul day. Fact is, I hadn’t sot eye on a thing wuth a charge o’ powder an’ lead. I war afut; an’, as you know yerself, it are a good six mile from this to my shanty. I didn’t like goin’ home empy handed, ’specially as I knowed we war empy-housed at the time, an’ the ole ’ooman wanted somethin’ to get us a pound or two o’ coffee an’ sugar fixins. So I thort I shed stay all night i’ the wuds, trustin’ to gettin’ a shot at a stray buck or a turkey-gobbler i’ the urly daylight. I war jest in the spot whar we air now; only it looked quite different then. The under scrub’s been all burnt down, as you may see. Then the hul place about hyar war kivered wi’ the tallest o’ cane, an’ so thick, a coon ked scace a worm’d his way through it.

“Wal, stranger, ’ithout makin’ more ado, I tuk up my quarters for the night under that ere big cyprus. The groun’ war dampish, for thar had been a spell o’ rain; so I tuk out my bowie, an’ cut me enuf o’ the green cane to make me a sort o’ a shake-down.

“It war comfitable enuf; an’ in the twinklin’ o’ a buck’s tail I war sound asleep.

“I slep like a ’possum till the day war beginnin’ to break; an’ then I awoke, or rayther, war awoke by the damdest noise as ever rousted a fellar out o’ his slumber. I heerd a skreekin’, an’ screamin’, an’ screevin’, as ef all the saws in Massissippi war bein’ sharped ’ithin twenty yards o’ my ear.

“It all kim from overhead, from out the tops o’ the cyprus.

“I warn’t puzzled a bit by them thar sounds. I knowed it war the calling o’ the baldy eagles: for it warn’t the fust time I had listened to them thar.

“‘Thar’s a neest,’ sez I to myself; ‘an’ young uns too. Thet’s why the birds is makin’ such a dod-rotted rumpus.’

“Not that I cared much about a eagle’s neest, nor the birds themselves neyther. But jess then I remembers some thin’ my ole ’ooman hed tolt me. She hed heerd thet there war a rich Britisher staying at the hotel in Grand Gulf, who were offerin’ no eend o’ money to whomsoever ud git him a brace o’ young baldy eagles.”

“You were rightly informed: it was I who made the offer.”

“Dog-gone it, wur it you? Ef I’d know’d – but niver mind; I kudn’t a done diff’rent from what I did. Wal, strenger, in coorse I clomb the tree. It warn’t so easy as you may s’pose. Thar war forty feet o’ the stem ’ithout a branch, an’ so smooth that a catamount kedn’t a scaled it. I thort at first that the cyprus warn’t climeable nohow; but jess then I seed a big fox-grape-vine, that arter sprawlin’ up another tree clost by, left this un, an’ then sloped off to the one whar the baldies hed thar neest. This war the very thing I wanted – a sort o’ Jaykup’s ladder – an’ ’ithout wastin’ a minute o’ time, I speeled up the grape-vine.

“It warn’t no joke neyther. The darned thing wobbled about till I wur well nigh pitched back to the groun’: an’ there war a time when I thort seriously o’ slippin’ down agin.

“But then kim the thort o’ the ole woman an’ the empty house at hum, along wi’ what she’d sayed about the Britisher an’ his big purse; and bein’ freshly narved by these recolleckshuns, I swarmed up the vine like a squ’ll.

“Once upon the Cyprus thar warn’t no diffeequilty in reachin’ the neest. There war plenty o’ footin’ among the top branches whar the birds had made thar eyeray.

“For all that it warn’t so easy to get into the neest. There kedn’t a been less than a waggon-load o’ sticks in that thar construckshun, to say nothin’ o’ Spanish moss, an’ the baldies’ own dreppins, an’ all sorts o’ bones belonging to both fish an’ four-footed anymals. It tuk me nigh an hour to make a hole so that I ked get my head above the edge, and see what the neest contained.

“As I expected, thar war young ’uns in it, two o’ them about half-feathered. All this time the ole birds had been abroad – as I supposed, lookin’ up a breakfast for thar chicks.

“‘How darned disappointed they’ll be!’ sez I to myself, ‘when they gits back an’ find that thar young ’uns have fled the neest – ’ithout feathers!’

“I war too sure o’ my game and too kewrious about the young baldies, watchin’ them as they cowered close together, hissin’ and threetenin’ me, to take notice o’ anythin’ besides.

“But I war rousted out o’ my rev’rie by feelin’ the hat suddintly jirked up off o’ my head, at the same time gettin’ a scratch across the cheek, that sent the blood spurtin’ all over my face. It wur the talons o’ the she eagle as did it; while the ole cock, clost to her tail, kept skreekin’ an’ screamin’ an’ makin’ a confusion o’ noises, as if he had jess come custrut from the towers o’ Babylon.

“I had grupped one o’ the young baldies afore the old ’uns kim up. I needn’t tell ye I war only too glad to let the durned thing go agen, an’ duck my head under the edge o’ the neest; whar I kep it, till the critters had got a sort o’ tired threetenin’ me, and guv up the attack.

“I needn’t tell ye, neyther, thet I, too, hed gin up all thort o’ takin’ the young eagles. Arter the wound I’d received I war contented to leave ’em alone; an’ not all the gold in the Britisher’s purse ked then have bought that brace o’ birds.

“I only waited to rekiver my composure; an’ then I commenced makin’ back tracks down the tree.

“I hed got ’bout halfway atween the baldies’ neest an’ the place whar the fox-grape tuk holt o’ the cyprus, when I war stopped short by somethin’ I heerd – a sound far more terrific than the screech o’ the eagles.

“It war the creakin’ and crashin’ o’ timber – along wi’ that unairthly rumblin’ such as ye may hear when the banks o’ the great Mississippi be a cavin’ in.

“It war that very thing itself. I kud see the trees that stood atween me an’ the river, tumblin’ an’ tossin’ about, an’ then goin’ wi’ a grand swish an’ a plunge into the fast flowin’ current o’ the stream. The cyprus itself shook as if the wind war busy among its branches. I ked feel a suddint jirk upon it, an’ then it righted agin, and stood steady as a rock. The eagles above me war screamin’ wusa than ever, while I below war tremblin’ like an aspin.

“I knowed well enuf what it all meaned. I knowed that it war the bank o’ the river cavin’ in; but knowin’ this, didn’t gie me any great satisfaction: since I war under the belief that in another minute the Cyprus mout cave in too.

“I didn’t stay the ten thousandth frakshun o’ a minute. I hurried to git back to the groun; an’ soon reached the place whar the grape-vine jeined on to the Cyprus.

“There warn’t no grape-vine to be seen. It war clur gone away.

“The tother tree to which its root had been clingin’ war one o’ them as had falled into the river, takin’ the fox-grape along wi’ it. It war that had gin the pluck I feeled when descendin’ from the neest.

“I looked below. The river had changed its channel. Instead o’ runnin’ twenty yurds from the spot it war surgin’ along clost to the bottom o’ the cyprus. I seed that in another minuit the cyprus itself mout topple over into the stream, an’ be whirled along, or swallowed in the frothin’ water.

“For me to git to the ground was plainly unpossible. I ked only do so by jumpin’ forty foot in the clur, an’ I knew that to do so wud a shivered my ole thigh-bones, tough as they mout be.

“I ked do nothin’ but stay whar I war – nothin’ but wait and watch – listenin’ to the screamin’ o’ the eagles – as skeeart as myself – to the hoarse roarin’ o’ the angry waters, an’ the crashin’ o’ the trees, as one arter another they fell victims to the underminin’ influence o’ the flood.”

I had by this time become fascinated by the narrative, Old Zeb’s thoughts, notwithstanding the patois in which they were expressed, had risen to the sublime; and although he paused for some minutes, I made no attempt to interrupt his reflections, but in silence I waited for him to continue his tale.

“Wal, strenger, what do ye suppose I did next?” was the interrogation with which my ears were soon after saluted.

“Really, I cannot imagine,” I replied, considerably surprised at Old Zeb’s question, abrupt as it was unexpected.

“Wal; ye don’t suppose I kim down from the tree?”

“I don’t see how you could.”

“Neyther did I. I kedn’t an’ I didn’t. I mout as well a tried to git down the purpendikler face o’ the Chicasaw bluff, or the wall o’ Lexin’ton Court-house. I seed I kedn’t make a descent o’ it no how, an’ thurfore I guv it up, an’ stayed whar I war, crosslegs on a branch o’ the tree.

“It warn’t the most comfutable kind o’ seat, but I hed somethin’ else than kushions to think o’. I didn’t know the minnit I mout be shot out into the Massissippi; an’ as I never war much o’ a swimmer – to say nothin’ o’ bein’ smashed among the branches in fallin’, I warn’t over satisfied wi’ my situation.

“As I ked do nothin’ but stick it out, I stuck it out, keepin’ to my seat like death to a dead nigger, only shiftin’ a leetle now an’ then to ease my achin’ posteerors.

“In this unkomfitable condishun I passed the hul o’ that day. Though there warn’t an easy bone in my body, I had got to be a bit easier in my mind; for on lookin’ down at the river, I begun to believe that the cavin’ in had kum to an eend, an’ that the Cyprus war goin’ to keep its place.

“So far I felt komfited; but this feelin’ didn’t last long. It war follered by the reflexshun that whether the tree war to stand or fall, I war equally a lost man.