TIOBA

AND OTHER TALES

By Arthur Colton

With a Frontispiece by A. B. Frost

New York

Henry Holt And Company

1903

Original

Original

Original

DEDICATED TO

A. G. BRINSMADE

CONTENTS

TIOBA

A MAN FOR A' THAT

THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER

THE ENEMIES

A NIGHT'S LODGING

ON EDOM HILL

SONS OF R. RAND

CONLON

ST CATHERINE'S

THE SPIRAL STONE

THE MUSIDORA SONNET

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-colored 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