I reckon we’ll get along, Si.”
“Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother. I wouldn’t be afraid to adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for there’s that Tennessee Land, you know — enough to make an army of them rich. A whole army, Nancy! You and I will never see the day, but these little chaps will. Indeed they will. One of these days it will be the rich Miss Emily Hawkins — and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins — and the Hon. George Washington Hawkins, millionaire — and Gov. Henry Clay Hawkins, millionaire! That is the way the world will word it! Don’t let’s ever fret about the children, Nancy — never in the world. They’re all right. Nancy, there’s oceans and oceans of money in that land — mark my words!”
The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and drawn near to listen. Hawkins said:
“Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world?”
“I don’t know, father. Sometimes I think I’ll have a balloon and go up in the air; and sometimes I think I’ll have ever so many books; and sometimes I think I’ll have ever so many weathercocks and water-wheels; or have a machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and sometimes I think I’ll have — well, somehow I don’t know — somehow I ain’t certain; maybe I’ll get a steamboat first.”
“The same old chap! — always just a little bit divided about things. — And what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world, Clay?”
“I don’t know, sir. My mother — my other mother that’s gone away — she always told me to work along and not be much expecting to get rich, and then I wouldn’t be disappointed if I didn’t get rich. And so I reckon it’s better for me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe I’ll know what I’ll want — but I don’t now, sir.”
“Careful old head! — Governor Henry Clay Hawkins! — that’s what you’ll be, Clay, one of these days. Wise old head! weighty old head! Go on, now, and play — all of you. It’s a prime lot, Nancy; as the Obedstown folk say about their hogs.”
A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes, and bore them a hundred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little tumble-down village on the Missouri shore in the twilight of a mellow October day.
The next morning they harnessed up their team and for two days they wended slowly into the interior through almost roadless and uninhabited forest solitudes. And when for the last time they pitched their tents, metaphorically speaking, it was at the goal of their hopes, their new home.
By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story high — the store; clustered in the neighborhood were ten or twelve more cabins, some new, some old.
In the sad light of the departing day the place looked homeless enough. Two or three coatless young men sat in front of the store on a drygoods box, and whittled it with their knives, kicked it with their vast boots, and shot tobacco-juice at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned comfortably against the posts of the awning and contemplated the arrival of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these people presently managed to drag themselves to the vicinity of the Hawkins’ wagon, and there they took up permanent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs came wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins’s dog, which were not satisfactory and they made war on him in concert. This would have interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro girls and women slouched along with pails deftly balanced on their heads, and joined the group and stared. Little half dressed white boys, and little negro boys with nothing whatever on but tow-linen shirts with a fine southern exposure, came from various directions and stood with their hands locked together behind them and aided in the inspection. The rest of the population were laying down their employments and getting ready to come, when a man burst through the assemblage and seized the newcomers by the hands in a frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed — indeed almost shouted:
“Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure enough — turn around! hold up your heads! I want to look at you good! Well, well, well, it does seem most too good to be true, I declare! Lord, I’m so glad to see you! Does a body’s whole soul good to look at you! Shake hands again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive. What will my wife say? — Oh yes indeed, it’s so! — married only last week — lovely, perfectly lovely creature, the noblest woman that ever — you’ll like her, Nancy! Like her? Lord bless me you’ll love her — you’ll dote on her — you’ll be twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same old — why bless my life it was only jest this very morning that my wife says, ‘Colonel’ — she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do — she says ‘Colonel, something tells me somebody’s coming!’ and sure enough here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected. Why she’ll think she’s a prophetess — and hanged if I don’t think so too — and you know there ain’t any country but what a prophet’s an honor to, as the proverb says. Lord bless me and here’s the children, too! Washington, Emily, don’t you know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won’t I fix you, though! — ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that’ll delight a child’s heart — and — Why how’s this? Little strangers? Well you won’t be any strangers here, I can tell you. Bless your souls we’ll make you think you never was at home before — ’deed and ‘deed we will, I can tell you! Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can’t glorify any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know — can’t eat anybody’s bread but mine — can’t do anything but just make yourselves perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread yourselves out and rest! You hear me! Here — Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to my place — put the wagon in my lot — put the horses under the shed, and get out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain’t any hay and oats? Well get some — have it charged to me — come, spin around, now! Now, Hawkins, the procession’s ready; mark time, by the left flank, forward-march!”
And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his neck, and the newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their tired limbs with quite a spring in them and dropped into his wake.
Presently they were ranged about an old-time fireplace whose blazing logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of heat, but that was no matter — supper was needed, and to have it, it had to be cooked. This apartment was the family bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in one. The matronly little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither and in and out with her pots and pans in her hands, happiness in her heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her eyes.
And when at last she had spread the cloth and loaded it with hot corn bread, fried chickens, bacon, buttermilk, coffee, and all manner of country luxuries, Col. Sellers modified his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to the orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth again as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry. And when the newcomers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the second floor — to wit the garret — Mrs. Hawkins was obliged to say:
“Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than ever, but still a body can’t help liking him if they would — and what is more, they don’t ever want to try when they see his eyes and hear him talk.”
Within a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably domiciled in a new log house, and were beginning to feel at home. The children were put to school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and
