



Produced by David Edwards, David E. Brown, and the Online
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  Affectionately to my Father,
  The Reverend GRIGG THOMPSON.




  HOOSIER MOSAICS.

  By MAURICE THOMPSON.


  NEW YORK:
  E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS,
  MURRAY STREET.
  1875.


  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
  E. J. HALE & SON,
  In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.




CONTENTS.


                                PAGE.

  _WAS SHE A BOY?_                 _7_

  TROUT'S LUCK,                    29

  _BIG MEDICINE_,                 _50_

  _THE VENUS OF BALHINCH_,        _76_

  THE LEGEND OF POTATO CREEK,      92

  _STEALING A CONDUCTOR_,        _114_

  HOIDEN,                         127

  THE PEDAGOGUE,                  162

  AN IDYL OF THE ROD,             188




WAS SHE A BOY?


No matter what business or what pleasure took me, I once, not long ago,
went to Colfax. Whisper it not to each other that I was seeking a
foreign appointment through the influence of my fellow Hoosier, the late
Vice-President of the United States. O no, I didn't go to the Hon.
Schuyler Colfax at all; but I went to Colfax, simply, which is a little
dingy town, in Clinton County, that was formerly called Midway, because
it is half way between Lafayette and Indianapolis. It was and is a place
of some three hundred inhabitants, eking out an aguish subsistence,
maintaining a swampy, malarious aspect, keeping up a bilious, nay, an
atra-bilious color, the year round, by sucking like an attenuated leech
at the junction, or, rather, the crossing of the I. C. & L., and the L.
C. & S. W. railroads. It lay mouldering, like something lost and
forgotten, slowly rotting in the swamp.

I do not mean to attack the inhabitants of Colfax, for they were good
people, and deserved a better fate than the eternal rattling the ague
took them through from year's end to year's end. Why, they had had the
ague so long that they had no respect for it at all. I've seen a woman
in Colfax shaking with a chill, spanking a baby that had a chill, and
scolding a husband who had a chill, all at once--and I had a dreadful
ague on me at the same time! But, as I have said, they were good people,
and I suppose they are still. They go quietly about the usual business
of dead towns. They have "stores" in which they offer for sale calico,
of the big-figured, orange and red sort, surprisingly cheap. They smoke
those little Cuba sixes at a half cent apiece, and call them cigars;
they hang round the depot, and trade jack-knives and lottery watches on
the afternoons of lazy Sundays; they make harmless sport of the incoming
and outgoing country folk; and, in a word, keep pretty busy at one thing
or another, and above all--they shake.

In Colfax the chief sources of exciting amusement are dog fights and an
occasional row at Sheehan's saloon, a doggery of the regular
old-fashioned, drink, gamble, rob and fight sort--a low place, known to
all the hard bats in the State.

As you pass through the town you will not fail to notice a big sign,
outhanging from the front of the largest building on the principal
street, which reads: "Union Hotel, 1865." From the muddy suburbs of the
place, in every direction, stretch black muck swamps, for the most part
heavily timbered with a variety of oaks, interspersed with sycamores,
ash, and elms. In the damp, shady labyrinths of these boggy woods
millions of lively, wide awake, tuneful mosquitoes are daily
manufactured; and out from decaying logs and piles of fermenting leaves,
from the green pools and sluggish ditch streams, creeps a noxious gas,
known in that region as the "double refined, high pressure, forty hoss
power quintessential of the ager!" So, at least, I was told by the
landlord of the Union Hotel, and his skin had the color of one who knew.

Notwithstanding what I have said, Colfax, in summer, is not wholly
without attractions of a certain kind. It has some yellow dogs and some
brindle ones; it has some cattle and some swine; it has some swallows
and some spotted pigeons; it has cool, fresh smelling winds, and, after
the water has sufficiently dried out, the woods are really glorious
with wild roses, violets, turkey-pea blossoms, and wild pinks. But to
my story.

I was sitting on the long veranda of the Union Hotel, when a rough but
kindly voice said to me:

"Mornin', stranger; gi' me a light, will ye?"

I looked up from the miserable dime novel at which I had been tugging
for the last hour, and saw before me a corpulent man of, perhaps,
forty-five years of age, who stood quite ready to thrust the charred end
of a cigar stump into the bowl of my meerschaum. I gave him a match, and
would fain have returned to Angelina St. Fortescue, the heroine of the
novel, whom I had left standing on the extreme giddy verge of a sheer
Alpine precipice, known, by actual triangulation, to be just seven
thousand feet high, swearing she would leap off if Donald Gougerizeout,
the robber, persisted further in his rough addresses; but my new friend,
the corpulent smoker, seemed bent on a little bit of conversation.

"Thankee, sir. Fine mornin', sir, a'n't it?"

"Beautiful," I replied, raising my head, elevating my arms, and, by a
kind of yawn, taking in a deep draught of the fresh spring weather,
absorbing it, assimilating it, till, like a wave of retarded
electricity, it set my nerves in tune for enjoying the bird songs, and
filled my blood with the ecstasy of vigorous health and youth. I, no
doubt, just then felt the burden of life much less than did the big
yellow dog at my feet, who snapped lazily at the flies.

"Yes, yes, this 'ere's a fine mornin'--julicious, sir, julicious,
indeed; but le' me tell ye, sir, this 'ere wind's mighty deceitful--for
a fact it is, sir, jist as full of ager as a acorn is of meat. It's
blowin' right off'n ponds, and is loaded chock down with the miasm--for
a fact it is, sir."

While delivering this speech, the fat man sat down on the bench beside
me there in the veranda. By this time I had my thumbs in the arm holes
of my vest, and my chest expanded to its utmost--my lungs going like a
steam bellows, which is a way I have in fine weather.

"Monstrous set o' respiratory organs, them o' your'n," he said, eyeing
my manoeuvres. Just then I discovered that he was a physician of the
steam doctor sort, for, glancing down at my feet, I espied his well worn
leather medicine bags. I immediately grew polite. Possibly I might ere
long need some quinine, or mandrake, or a hot steam bath--anything for
the ague!

"Yes, I've got lungs like a porpoise," I replied, "but still the ague
may get me. Much sickness about here, Doctor----a----a----what do they
call your name?"

"Benjamin Hurd--Doctor Hurd, they call me. I'm the only thorer bred
botanic that's in these parts. I do poorty much all the practice about
here. Yes, there's considerable of ager and phthisic and bilious fever.
Keeps me busy most of my time. These nasty swamps, you know."

After a time our conversation flagged, and the doctor having lit a fresh
cigar, we smoked in silence. The wind was driving the dust along the
street in heavy waves, and I sat watching a couple of lean, spotted
calves making their way against the tide. They held their heads low and
shut their eyes, now and then bawling vigorously. Some one up stairs was
playing "Days of Absence" on a wretched wheezing accordeon.

"There's a case of asthma, doctor," I said, intending to be witty. But
my remark was not noticed. The doctor was in a brown study, from which
my words had not startled him. Presently he said, as if talking to
himself, and without taking the cigar from his mouth:

"'Twas just a year ago to-night, the 28th day of May, 'at they took 'er
away. And he'll die afore day to a dead certainty. Beats all the denied
queer things I ever seed or heerd of."

He was poking with the toe of his boot in the dust on the veranda floor,
as he spoke, and stealing a glance at his face, I saw that it wore an
abstracted, dreamy, perplexed look.

"What was your remark, doctor?" I asked, more to arouse him than from
any hope of being interested.

"Hum!--ah, yes," he said, starting, and beginning a vigorous puffing.
"Ah, yes, I was cogitatin' over this matter o' Berry Young's. Never have
been able to 'count for that, no how. Think about it more an' more every
day. What's your theory of it?"

"Can't say, never having heard anything of it," I replied.

"Well, I do say! Thought everybody had hearn of that, any how! It's a
rale romance, a reg'lar mystery, sir. It's been talked about, and writ
about in the papers so much 'at I s'posed 'at it was knowed of far and
wide."

"I've been in California for several years past," I replied, by way of
excuse for my ignorance of even the vaguest outline of the affair,
whatever it might be.

"Well, you see, a leetle more'n a year ago a gal an' her father come
here and stopped at this 'ere very hotel. The man must 'a' been som'res
near sixty years old; but the gal was young, and jist the poortiest
thing I ever seed in all my life. I couldn't describe how she looked at
all; but everybody 'at saw her said she was the beautifulest creatur
they ever laid eyes onto. Where these two folks come from nobody ever
knowed, but they seemed like mighty nice sort of persons, and everybody
liked 'em,'specially the gal. Somehow, from the very start, a kind of
mystery hung 'round 'em. They seemed always to have gobs o' money, and
onct in awhile some little thing'd turn up to make folks kinder juberous
somehow 'at they wasn't jist what they ginerally seemed to be. But that
gal was fascinatin' as a snake, and as poorty as any picter. Her flesh
looked like tinted wax mixed with moon-shine, and her eyes was as clear
as a lime-stone spring--though they was dark as night. She was that full
of restless animal life 'at she couldn't set still--she roamed round
like a leopard in a cage, and she'd romp equal to a ten-year-old boy.
Well, as mought be expected, sich a gal as that 'ere 'd 'tract attention
in these parts, and I must say 'at the young fellows here did git
'bominable sweet on her. 'Casionally two of 'em 'd git out in the swamps
and have a awful fight on her 'count; but she 'peared to pay precious
little 'tention to any of 'em till finally Berry Young stepped in and
jist went for 'er like mad, and she took to'm. Berry was r'ally the
nicest and intelligentest young man in all this country. He writ poetry
for the papers, sir--snatchin' good poetry, too--and had got to be
talked of a right smart for his larnin', an' 'complishments. He was good
lookin', too; powerful handsome, for a fact, sir. So they was to be
married, Berry and the gal, an' the time it was sot, an' the day it
come, an' all was ready, an' the young folks was on the floor, and the
'squire was jist a commencin' to say the ceremony, when lo! and
beholden, four big, awful, rough lookin' men rushed in with big pistols
and mighty terrible bowie knives, and big papers and big seals, and said
they was a sheriff and possum from Kaintucky. They jist jumped right
onto the gal an' her father an' han'cuffed 'em, an' took 'em!"

"Handcuffed them and took them!" I repeated, suddenly growing intensely
interested. This was beating my dime novel, for sensation, all hollow.

"Yes, sir, han'cuffed 'em an' took 'em, an' away they went, an' they've