



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by Google Books







TIOBA

AND OTHER TALES

By Arthur Colton

With a Frontispiece by A. B. Frost

New York

Henry Holt And Company

1903


[Illustration: 0002]


[Illustration: 0009]


[Illustration: 0010]



DEDICATED TO

A. G. BRINSMADE




TIOBA

FROM among the birches and pines, where we pitched our moving tent, you
looked over the flat meadow-lands; and through these went a river,
slow and almost noiseless, wandering in the valley as if there were
no necessity of arriving anywhere at appointed times. “What is the
necessity?” it said softly to any that would listen. And there was none;
so that for many days the white tent stood among the trees, overlooking
the haycocks in the meadows. It was enough business in hand to study the
philosophy and the subtle rhetoric of Still River.

Opposite rose a strangely ruined mountain-side. There was a nobly-poised
head and plenteous chest, the head three thousand feet nearer the
stars--which was little enough from their point of view, no doubt, but
to us it seemed a symbol of something higher than the stars, something
beyond them forever waiting and watching.

From its feet upward half a mile the mountain was one raw wound. The
shivered roots and tree-trunks stuck out helplessly from reddish soil,
boulders were crushed and piled in angry heaps, veins of granite ripped
open--the skin and flesh of the mountain tom off with a curse, and the
bones made a mockery. The wall of the precipice rose far above this
desolation, and, beyond, the hazy forests went up a mile or more clear
to the sky-line. The peak stood over all, not with triumph or with
shame, but with the clouds and stars.

It was a cloudy day, with rifts of sunlight. An acre of light crept
down the mountain: so you have seen, on the river-boats at night, the
search-light feeling, fingering along the shore.

In the evening an Arcadian, an elderly man and garrulous, came up to see
what it might be that glimmered among his pulp-trees. He was a surprise,
and not as Arcadian as at first one might presume, for he sold milk and
eggs and blueberries at a price to make one suddenly rich. His name was
Fargus, and he it was whose hay-cutter clicked like a locust all day
in the meadow-lands. He came and made himself amiable beside us, and
confided anything we might care to know which experience had left with
him.

“That's Tioba,” he said. “That's the name of that mountain.” And he
told us the story of one whom he called “Jim Hawks,” and of the fall of
Tioba.

She's a skinned mountain [he said]. She got wet inside and slid. Still
River used to run ten rods further in, and there was a cemetery,
too, and Jim Hawks's place; and the cemetery's there yet, six rods
underground, but the creek shied off and went through my plough-land
scandalous.

Now, Jim Hawks was a get-there kind, with a clawed face--by a wildcat,
yes, sir. Tioba got there; and Jim he was a wicked one. I've been
forty years in this valley, with the Petersons and the Storrses and the
Merimys at Canada Center, all good, quiet folk. And nothing happened to
us, for we did nothing to blame, till Jim came, and Tioba ups and drops
on him.

Now look at it, this valley! There've been landslides over beyond in
Helder's valley, but there's only one in mine. Looks as if the devil
gone spit on it. It's Jim Hawks's trail.

He come one day with a buckboard and a yellow horse, and he says:

“Sell me that land from here up the mountain.”

“Who be you?” says I.

“Jim Hawks,” says he, and that's all he appeared to know about it. And
he bought the land, and put up a house close to the mountain, so you
could throw a cat down his chimney if you wanted to, or two cats if you
had 'em.

He was a long, swing-shouldered man, with a light- mustache and a
kind of flat gray eye that you couldn't see into. You look into a man's
eye naturally to see what his intentions are. Well, Jim Hawks's eye
appeared to have nothing to say on the subject. And as to that, I told
my wife it was none of our business if he didn't bring into the valley
anything but his name and a bit of money sufficient.

He got his face clawed by a wildcat by being reckless with it; and he
ran a deer into Helder's back yard once and shot it, and licked Helder
for claiming the deer. He was the recklessest chap! He swings his fist
into Helder's face, and he says:

“Shoot, if you got a gun. If you hain't, get out!”

I told Jim that was no place to put a house, on account of Tioba
dropping rocks off herself whenever it rained hard and the soil got
mushy. I told him Tioba'd as soon drop a rock on his head as into his
gridiron.

You can't see Canada Center from here. There's a post-office there, and
three houses, the Petersons', the Storrses' and the Merimys'. Merimy's
house got a peaked roof on it. I see Jeaney Merimy climb it after her
kitten a-yowling on the ridge. She wasn't but six years old then, and
she was gritty the day she was born. Her mother--she's old Peterson's
daughter--she whooped, and I fetched Jeaney down with Peterson's ladder.
Jeaney Merimy grew up, and she was a tidy little thing. The Storrs boys
calculated to marry her, one of 'em, only they weren't enterprising; and
Jeaney ups and goes over to Eastport one day with Jim Hawks--cuts out
early in the morning, and asks nobody. Pretty goings on in this valley!
Then they come back when they were ready, and Jim says:

“What you got to say about it, Merimy?”

Merimy hadn't nothing to say about it, nor his wife hadn't nothing
to say, nor Peterson, nor the Storrs boys. Dog-gone it! Nobody hadn't
nothing to say; that is, they didn't say it to Jim.

That was five years ago, the spring they put up the Redman Hotel at
Helder's. People's come into these parts now thicker'n bugs. They have
a band that plays music at the Redman Hotel. But in my time I've seen
sights. The bears used to scoop my chickens. You could hear wildcats
'most any night crying in the brush. I see a black bear come down
Jumping Brook over there, slapping his toes in the water and grunting
like a pig. Me, I was ploughing for buckwheat.

Jeaney Merimy went over to Eastport with her hair in a braid, and came
back with it put up like a crow's nest on top of her head. She was a
nice-looking girl, Jeaney, and born gritty, and it didn't do her any
good.

I says to Jim: “Now, you're always looking for fighting,” says I. “Now,
me, I'm for peaceable doings. If you're looking for fighting any time,
you start in beyond me.

“You!” says Jim. “I'd as soon scrap with a haystack.”

I do know how it would be, doing with a haystack that way, but you take
it from Jim's point of view, and you see it wouldn't be what he'd care
for; and you take it from my point of view, and you see I didn't poke
into Jim's business. That's natural good sense. Only I'm free to say
he was a wicked one,'stilling whiskey on the back side of Tioba, and
filling up the Storrs boys with it, and them gone to the devil off East
where the railroads are. And laying Peterson to his front door, drunk.
My, he didn't know any more'n his front door! “He's my grandfather,”
 says Jim. “That's the humor of it”--meaning he was Jeaney's grandfather.
And mixing the singularest drinks, and putting 'em into an old man named
Fargus, as ought to known better. My wife she said so, and she knew. I
do' know what Jeaney Merimy thought, but I had my point of view on that.
Jim got drunk himself on and off, and went wilder'n a wildcat, and
slid over the mountains the Lord knows where. Pretty goings on in this
valley!

This is a good climate if you add it all up and take the average. But
sometimes it won't rain till you're gray waiting for it, and sometimes
it will snow so the only way to get home is to stay inside, and
sometimes it will rain like the bottom fallen out of a tub. The way of
it is that when you've lived with it forty years you know how to add up
and take the average.

That summer Tioba kept her head out of sight from June to September
mainly. She kept it done up in cotton, as you might say, and she leaked
in her joints surprising. She's a queer mountain that way. Every now and
then she busts out a spring and dribbles down into Still River from a
new place.

In September they were all dark days and drizzly nights, and there was
often the two sounds of the wind on Tioba that you hear on a bad night.
One of 'em is a kind of steady grumble and hiss that's made with the
pine-needles and maybe the tons of leaves shaking and falling. The other
is the toot of the wind in the gullies on edges of rock. But if you
stand in the open on a bad night and listen, you'd think Tioba was
talking to you. Maybe she is.

It come along the middle of September, and it was a bad night, drizzly,
and Tioba talking double. I went over to the Hawkses' place early to
borrow lantern-oil, and I saw Jeaney Merimy sitting over the fire
alone, and the wind singing in the chimney. “Jim hasn't come,” she says,
speaking quiet; and she gets me the lantern-oil. After, when I went
away, she didn't seem to notice; and what with the wind in the chimney,
and Jeaney sitting alone with her big black eyes staring, and Tioba
talking double, and the rain drizzling, and the night falling, I felt
queer enough to expect a ghost to be standing at my gate. And I came
along the road, and there _was_ one!

Yes, sir; she was a woman in a gray, wet cloak, standing at my gate, and
a horse and buggy in the middle of the road.

“'Mighty!” says I, and drops my oil-can smack in the mud.

“Does Mr. Hawks live here?” she says, seeing me standing like a tomfool
in the mud.

“No, ma'am,” says I. “That's his place across the flat half a mile. He
ain't at home, but his wife is.”

The wind blew her cloak around her sharp, and I could see her face,
though it was more or less dark. She was some big and tall, and her face
was white and wet with the rain. After a while she says:

“He's married?”

“Yes, ma'am. You'd better not--'Mighty, ma'am!” says I, “where you
going?”

She swung herself into the buggy quicker'n women are apt to do, and she
whops the horse around and hits him a lick, and off he goes, splashing
and galloping. Me, I was beat. But I got so far as to think if she
wasn't a ghost, maybe Jim Hawks would as lief she would be, and if
she didn't drive more careful she'd be liable to oblige him that way.
Because it stands to reason a woman don't come looking for a man on a
bad night, and cut away like that, unless she has something uncommon
on her mind. I heard the buggy-wheels and the splash of the horse dying
away; and then there was nothing in the night but the drip of the rain
and Tioba talking double--_um-hiss, toot-toot._

Then I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she
disliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste,
but affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed,
and I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world
than common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off
there beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba
groaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking
for Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night,
I'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there
wouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had
the extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she
had come back and was driving _splish-splash_ around my house, though it
was only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she
went round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came
so close to the front door I thought she'd come through it--_bang!_

Then somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went
slap under the table, and I says, “Come in,” though I'd rather it would
have stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. “'Mighty!” says I. “I thought
you was a horse and buggy.”

He picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to
dry off.

“Horse and buggy?” says he. “Looking for me?”

I just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it.

“Saw 'em in Eastport,” says he. “I suppose she's over there”--meaning
his place. “Gone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known
she wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet
on that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she
wouldn't do either of 'em.”

“Well,” says I, “speaking generally, what might she want of you?”

Jim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way.

“Now, look at it, Fargus,” he says. “It ain't reasonable. Now, she and
me, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom
Cheever, and Tom and I didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not
but that he got well again--that is, partly. And she appeared to have
different ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of
me, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come
back and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she
acts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way
myself.” And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire.

“I don't see either end of it,” says I. “You're a bad one, Jim, a
downright bad one.”

“That's so. It's Jeaney you mean,” he says, looking kind of interested.
“It'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?”

The wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear
each other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know
how to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something
whimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.

My opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and
that's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might
be the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which
seemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see
rightly what it would mean if I said it.

Jim got up and stretched his legs. “Now, I tell you, Fargus,” says he,
“I'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman,
not to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will
give us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me,
there's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me
mine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort,
why, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a
hand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad.
Now, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man
could be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe
you wouldn't mind if you had.”

“Speaking generally,” says I, “you're about right, Jim.”

With that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the
storm.

Next day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and
the valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking
toward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow
up there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family
for the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping
rocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed
through Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in
Jim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the
Hawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she
being down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of
getting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.

About four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started
over to