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Read Ebook: Tom Slade at Bear Mountain by Fitzhugh Percy Keese Hastings Howard L Howard Livingston Illustrator
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Ebook has 905 lines and 42590 words, and 19 pages
"I don't," I said, "but it's a bully good name all right. Hawkeye. I'm going north up to Kingston."
"They got one of them cylums there?" he said.
"Cylums?" I queried.
"Fer youngsters."
"Oh, asylum," I said. "Yes, I dare say they have; it's quite a city."
He moved out of the way so that I might start, and then I noticed that he limped.
"Is South Hawkeye, or whatever you call it, far?" I asked him.
"Whatcher call far, mebbe no," he said, which was not altogether enlightening. "Like on ten mile," he added after a pause.
"Well," I said, "that's nothing if we can get there by a road. I can have you there in half an hour. Climb in if you're going home. Where is South Hawkeye anyway? I'll shoot you there quicker than you could foot it."
I had seen something of Interstate Park and now I was to have a glimpse of the old life which had been there before the region was set aside; the life and times which had caught my imagination.
We had almost reached Sandyfield and I was preparing to part from my chance acquaintance when it jumped into my head to ask him what he had meant by saying that if he had what really belonged to him he might own one of them contraptions--meaning an automobile.
"I reckon three thousand would buy one," he said.
"It would certainly buy a better one than mine," I observed. "Did somebody cheat you out of three thousand dollars?" I asked. For I suspected that he might have had some differences with the government in the matter of taking over his property in the public interest, though to be sure his real estate holdings in Rattlesnake Gulch could not have been worth three hundred dollars, to say nothing of three thousand. I should say three dollars would have been a fair price.
"You come 'long daown ter my cabin, mister," he said, "and I'll tell yer, an' show yer. Mebbe yer kin tell me along 'baout my little gal. Guess yer a lawyer, mebbe, huh?"
I told him no, I was an author, but that if he had anything interesting to show or tell me, I would be glad to follow him. He did not vouchsafe me any further information but started down into the woods, and after making sure that my car would be safe I followed him.
I have often wondered why I did this upon such slight provocation and with a destination elsewhere. I suppose there is a little of the spirit of adventure left in me. For one thing the old man captivated me. Perhaps also the name of Rattlesnake Gulch fascinated me. At all events, I was in for it before I knew it and the machinery of the weirdest chain of happenings I have ever heard of was set going.
Our way led down through a dense wood and up a rugged height and through a wild pass between hills. Beyond this he showed me where the White Bar Trail crossed our path, that trail of the Boy Scouts which inscribes an erratic oblong course about the region and is met at intervals by spoke trails, as they are called, which converge in a rambling way toward Scout Headquarters at the lakes. Old Buck did not take the Scouts very seriously.
All the way he was telling me a queer story. "Me'n Mink lived daown here till he got possessed," the old man said. "Mink, me'n him was pardners."
"You mean dispossessed--put out?" I suggested.
"They can't put me outer here nor him neither if he was here," he said. "I got title ter my place 'long as I live. When I go it re-verts."
"You mean it's taken over as part of the reservation?"
"My little gal goes ter the Home then."
"She's my granddaughter, she's a orphant, she's my son's little gal."
"Well," I laughed, "I think you'll live to be a hundred."
He made no comment upon that, only trudged along ahead of me through the woods, following a sort of path of least resistance, verging here and there the easiest way; one could hardly call it a trail.
"We can't rent or sell though," he said.
"Well, I shouldn't think you'd want to," I observed. "It's just the idea of home, of the old homes of your people, that the state is thinking about, I suppose. But wouldn't your granddaughter have the place when--if she were old enough, I mean?"
"She ain't like ter be old enough," said he. "Fifteen, that's all she is."
"You're mighty lucky to have her," I observed. He stopped short, quite disregarding my last remark and appeared to be listening. "Yer hear footsteps?" he asked me.
"No," I laughed; "you know what you said about my ears. Why, did you hear someone?"
It seemed to me that the silence of the woods was as that of a grave. An unseen bird flitted from one limb to another, causing a quick rustling of leaves as if it had been startled. I could hear a drowsy locust humming his monotonous little solo. He ceased just as I began listening, which is an uncanny way they have.
"I guess nobody but you ever comes through here," I said.
"Mink, he's like to come back," he said as he moved on.
"And how long since Mink went away?"
"Yes, tell me about that."
"Mink Havers, me'n him was pardners," old Buck said.
I tried to walk alongside him the better to hear his narrative but the way through the tangled thicket was so narrow that I was forced to follow. Now and again he would hold the brush apart so that I might pass through. Occasionally we were able to proceed side by side. He told me that in the fall an old trail was visible here. In the spring and summer when the foliage was thick, he followed it by instinct. He did not go back and forth often enough to make a permanent opening through the brush.
"Yes," I encouraged, "and he got possessed?"
"Crazy like," he said.
"Oh, yes." I caught his meaning then.
"We was trappers and hunters 'round here, me'n Mink was. We got bear and deer aplenty in them days. Me'n him, we didn't think nothin' o' hoofin' it ter Newburgh in them days. More often I'd hoof it ter Suffern 'n' go daown ter Noo York on the cars. I ain't seed a train close by fer twenty year. Ole Haley Corbett, he was engineer them days. Reckon you didn't guess when yer looked me over I'd ben in Noo York, now, did yer? I seed 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' in Fourteenth Street. Them wasn' real bloodhounds; reckon I know a bloodhound when I see one. Hed two on 'em here jes' after the war."
"The Civil War, you mean?"
"Me, I wuz usual the one ter go ter Noo York with furs."
"And I dare say you had a pretty good time when you went there, eh?"
"Ever ter Barnum's Museum?" he asked.
"That was before my time," I said.
"Me'n old Haley we was there nigh on every time I went daown with furs. Ever hear o' Union Square?"
"Oh, yes."
"Ever hear o' Joe Pollock?"
"No, I never did. I suppose probably he's dead."
"Him it was I'd fetch furs to. He wouldn' say nuthin', I wouldn' say nuthin'."
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