Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 138 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SS Fe eee _—-. — -_——<—=-- Oe eee re ee eee ee The Border Bandits. : sts ses sy ‘took them for the right ones, and no others nad crossed them. Hatfield himself declared tbat they were those of his own horses, before we rode into the water—he swore to it—I heard him myself. He must have been mis- ‘taken though. We didn’t search long on the other bank, but threw our torches away, and spurred on after the supposed thieves, as fast as our tired nags could carry us.” ‘*Ha, ha!” laughed Barker. “We only stopped once in the night—at a farm-house—to rest our beasts, and take a bite ‘ourselves. Here we heard that a man had rid- den by with horses, and at a pretty sharp pace. The farmer had, of course, only heard the tramp of the hoofs, and hadn’t seen the animals; but he assured us that we would soon overtake him, if that was our object, for it was only half an hour since he had passed by. ‘My poor horses!’ groaned Hatfield; ‘how the scoundrel will ride them! But God be gracious to him when I catch bim!—on this rope here’ —he carried the rope about his body—‘he shall breathe out his thievish soul!’ But it was very easy to swear vengeance. About day- ‘break, as we followed fast upon the tracks down a steep hill, we came suddenly upon the man with the horses. He was sitting quietly under a tree, and didn’t make the slightest at- tempt to escape when he saw us approach. I turned to Hatfield in astonishment, but he was staring with open eyes at the animals; and at dast, pulling in his own beast with a jerk, he cried; ‘Thunder and lightning! those are not my horses.’ He was right; there were a pair of grays among them that none of us knew, and the stranger rode his own horse, and was no other than the fellow Johnson, who has been roaming about on the La Fave for some time past, and who, for all I know, lives by hunting.” ‘* Bill Johnson!” exclaimed Brown. ‘* Hatfield was furious,” continued Cook, without heeding this interruption, “ especial- ly as—this he told me afterward—he had a bitter grudge against the vagabond, whom he thought capable of any rascality. Yet, there was nothing to be done. We rode up to the borses, but Johnson gave us very short an- swers; and to the question, what he intended to do with the beasts, he replied, ‘I suppose I ‘can do what I like with my own horses.’” ‘* Reasonable enough, that,” cried Barker. *‘ Hatfield gnashed his teeth in fury, and, though I tried to pacify him, he was too ex- cited, and before long high words were pass- ing between them. Johnson was cool and calm, but kept his hand all the while hid under his waistcoat, where he, of course, had his pis- itols and knife.” ** Naturally,” said Barker. ‘* Hatfield, at last, cursed him roundly, and ‘swore that he would lynch him the first time that he found him on his own land; but Johnson jaughed, and said that he would soon have the pleasure of paying him a visit. Finally, I separated them; but it was now in vain to think of looking for the other tracks, for the rain had washed everything away, and we were obliged to give up the pursuit. Hatfield stuck to it that the beasts were still on the set- tlement, and we searched every nook and cor- ner in the bottom-land that a horse could pos- sibly get into, but it was all useless; they are gone, though in what way is a riddle.” ‘And which way, too?’ queried Barker. “Well, that is less so; to Texas probably. I must go there one of these days, to get ac- quainted with the people. If a man finds no old faces among the men, he will at least find horses that he knows.” ““ And it was on the same evening the squaw was rmurd was it not? Did you hear nothing?’ asked Roberts. ‘‘ You must have ridden close by the place.” ““T believe—yes, it seems to me as if one of us said that he heard acry. It was just as we came to the ford, and it was probably from the poor womau; the distance between the road and the hut is but trifling. Brown, don’t you know where the Indian is?” “No,” replied the latter. ‘Four days after the squaw’s burial, he left the neighborhood, or at least be bas not been seen here; but I am expecting him back every day, for I can not think that he would leave the country withvut fulfilling his oath of vengeance.” ‘‘But where can he be wandering?” “Have no fear for him,” said Barker; ‘ he is crawling and spying around somewhere, and who knows how soon he ’ll be here again, and perhaps with news.” ——————_— eee TU on “You Regulators couldn’t wish a better member than that same Indian.” “Ts it true, Brown, that they have chosen you for their leader, in Heathcote’s place?” in- quired Roberts. ‘* Hatfield and me,” replied the young man; ‘‘him on the Petit-Jean, me on the La Fave; but I shall resign the office as soon as my vow is fulfilled, and the murderers of Heathcote and the squaw are discovered and punished. But I hear that Mr. Rawson preaches zealously against the union of the Regulators, as some- thing not merely illegal, but unchristian.”’ ** He has been gone for a week,” said Roberts, “as T understand, to the Mississippi, to make various purchases there—in Memphis, I believe —but he was to be back this week; and as | Atkins wants to sell his land, which is very good soil, if there wasn’t so much swamp—” ‘Atkins wants to sell?’ asked Mullins, ‘TI haven’t heard a syllable about it. Has he found a purchaser?” ‘Rawson seems to have a fancy for the place,” replied Roberts, ‘‘and I have nothing to say against it; for then Marion will not go so far from us, and when she comes Sundays to the new church that we mean to build at the fork of the road—for the timbers have been hewn since Christmas, and I ought to see to the—” ‘*Gentlemen, move your seats to the table, and please to take up with what we have,” cried Brown, interposing, who had, with Cook’s help, prepared the simple meal. ‘‘ What say you to trying a bit of panther’s flesh?’ said Roberts, laughing. “Thank you, [’m much obliged,” replied Barker, ‘‘I tried it once, and it made me dead- ly sick.” ‘* Where?” cried Harper, who was in the act of raising a cup of tea to bis lips, and now paused in expectation. ‘* Where? why, in the woods; where else should it be?” replied Barker. ‘It was on the Washita, and we had hunted the whole day until late in the evening, when I returned, without a hair or hide, to the place where we bad agreed to meet.” “You had sprained your foot, I suppose?” said Roberts, winking to Harper. “Go to the d—l!” cried the other, surlily, as he continued—*‘ To the place where we had agreed to meet. They were having fine times there; there was a heap of bones before the fire, and near by it, slung across the branch of a low, wild plum-tree, hung a skinned fawn, as the others called it, declaring that it was of a most delicate flavor. The feet, head, tail, and one of the legs, were missing; and when I asked after them, they said that they had eaten the leg, and had given the rest to the dogs, I wasn’t slow in falling to; I cut a good slice from the animal’s haunch, and devoured it all alone, for the rascals said that they had had enough. In the very middle of my meal, my dog, who was hungry too, and had been snuffling all about, came close up to me, dragging some- thing in his mouth, as if he would say, ‘ Look here, see what they have shot!’ And what do you think it was?—the head of a young pan- ther. The piece that I was swallowing stuck in my throat, and I looked up and stared at the grinning scoundrels that were sitting around me, But when they couldn’t hold in no longer, but broke out into a roar of laugh- ter, I got angry, and was determined to make them think that panther’s flesh was a favorite dish of mine. I crammed down the morsel, which stuck on the way and wouldn’t go any further, cut off another piece, and asked them, th all coolness imaginable, why they hadn’t ld me at once that it was panther’s flesh, as I should have relished it twice as much. I had lived for a whole month in Tennessee, I said, on nothing but panther’s meat, only sometimes of a Sunday I had a wildcat for a change.” ‘** Ha, ha, ha!” roared the men at this asser- tion. ‘* Well, there they sat, with their mouths wide open in astonishment, and one of the party, a young fellow of sixteen, who was right opposite to me, made the most hideous faces, and kept chewing, in his thoughts, upon the morsel [ had in my mouth. Bat this last piece wouldn’t go down, the more I worked at it with my teeth, the more it swelled. I stood it for a while. At last, I could hold out no longer. Ileaped up— Well, I needn’t tell you the rest. Why, Brown, this turkey is delicious; have you shot many this spring?” “Well, yes,” replied the young map, still laughing at the anecdote which he had just heard, “and they are very fat and nice this year.” “Did you ever eat a rattlesnake?’ asked Mullins, ‘*No, I thank you.” said Harper, who was soinewhat enlivened, and who felt well and cheerful again, for the first time in many days, “thank you, the creatures have very good look- ing meat, and it is tender as a chicken’s, but then the smell is so disagreeable.” ‘Only the smell of the body,” said Mullins; ‘‘ the tail is delicious.” *Isn’t the poison injurious?” inquired Bar- ker, in amazement. ‘Oh, no, not to swallow,” replied Brown; “besides, there is no poison in the flesh. The smell is disagreeable, but not injurious; and I am acquainted with a nan who ate quite a piece of a horned snake, which, as you know, is thought to be the most poisonous of all, with- out its harming bim in the least.” ‘* Poisonous! I should think so,” cried Har- per. ‘‘I once saw a horned snake in a large oak, and was just going to shoot, when down it came in a rage, and snapped off one of the little sprouts that grew at the foot of the tree; then the thing held still for a moment, and I took off its head with a bullet. The oak died that very month, and the little shoot that the reptile had bitten, turned all black, and even the creeping vines that clamwbered up around the tree, withered and dropped off.” “That’s nothing,” said Barker, turning to Harper, “you know what kind of a place Poinsett county is, and especially as to poison- ous reptiles. There are hardly more in the Mississippi bottom-lands. Among them you will sometimes, though not often, luckily, come ° across a horned snake. Two years ago, a German settled there with his family—it is true, be bas moved away again; that is, he died, and somehow or another his family could- n’t get acclimated—well, at that time, he had a relation, or acquaintance, or something of that sort, living with him, who did the greater part of the work about the house. During the week he always had the fever; and he looked curious enough when he walked out on Sun- days, dressed in his best. He then wore a bright yellow vest, with red stripes, an enor- mous fur hat, short black tight pantaloons, and a blue cloth coat, that reached down to—” ‘““What is the coat to us?” said Harper, im- patiently. ‘‘More than you think,” said Barker, with a grave nod, and then continued quietly—* down to his ankles, with a very narrow collar, and very large white linen pockets, which the fellow was always cramming full of mished peaches, slices of watermelon, and other like vegetable:. But the greatest ornament on this coat were the enormous buttons.” **What have the buttons to do with the story?” asked Cook. ‘* Much—very much,” said Barker, with a significant nod; “but listen! This young man, then, went on Sunday, with a large black- bound Bible under his arm, over to a neighbor's, where one of these everlasting prayer-meetings was to be held. Well, close by the narrow foot-path that he followed, he found a small green parroquet, that seemed to have just fallen from a tree. He stooped down to pick it up, but, unfortunately, he didn’t see the ‘horned snake’ whose property he wished to appropriate to himself. The reptile at once darted from beneath a yellow leaf, and bit the poor fellow just below the elbow, through his coat. Of course, he died in a few minutes, and his relative, who was walking behind bim with his wife, found him lying dead in the path. He got the doctor, but it was too late. They carried him on a sort of barrow to the house; there they took off his coat, and found the little wound, which had already turned perfectly black. That same evening, for it was very warm, the poor fellow was buried, and the blue coat was hung upon a nail near the door, But what do you think happened to the coat that the borned snake had bitten? When the German got up the next morning, the sleeve that the poison bad touched was covered with bright streaks; toward nocn, the seams turned a light blue, and came apart in some places; the right sleeve, however, got to be of a handsome black color, with a tinge of red. During the afternoon, the buttons dropped off one by one, the button-holes gave way, the pockets and the lining swelled up, and toward night the loop broke; it fell down, and began to smell,” ‘* Why, Barker!” cried Harper, in dismay. CONNIE MOO KS ‘ ; (E(0)