Near one of the picturesque bends of the river, about half a mile above the beginning of the Big Marsh, was the home of Col. Jasper M. Peets, a doughty warrior, who had fought valiantly for the Lost Cause, and was spending his declining years in a troubled twilight. 1. The author acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. T. H. Ball, of Crown Point, Ind., for a portion of the material used in this story.
The Colonel was an exotic. Perverse fates had transplanted him into a strange clime. All that anybody along the river knew of his history, up to the time of his arrival, had come from his own lips, and none of it was to his discredit.
I had made his acquaintance at Posey’s store, where he frequently came for supplies. Muskrat Hyatt cautioned me not to have anything to do with him.
“That feller’s bad medicine,” he declared. “He’s worse’n I am, an’ that’s sayin’ a whole lot. If you ever go down to his place, you keep yer cash in yer shoes an’ don’t you take ’em off while you’re there.”
The little farm, with its dilapidated house and barn, had come to the Colonel as an inheritance from 208a distant relative whom he had never seen. The old pioneer, who had died there, had spent years of toil, patient and unremitting, in clearing the land and coaxing a precarious livelihood from the reluctant soil. He had left no will and the Colonel was the nearest surviving relative.
The Colonel explained that this “fahm” and a “small passel of land down south” was all that he now possessed in the world. The “iron heel of the oppressah” had destroyed everything else. His “beautiful mansion on the Cumbe’land,” and all his “niggahs,” had been lost in the fury of the conflict. His “pussonal fo’tune” was a wreck.
He was over seventy, and quite gray, but his erect military figure and splendid health somewhat belied his years. He was rather indolent in his movements, but as he sat in his hickory arm chair before the stone fire place, the lights that played over his storm beaten features pictured a warrior in repose.
His heavy moustache was trained down in horseshoe fashion on each side of his chin, and then twisted outward in a way that gave his face a redoubtable expression when he frowned. He would often stand before the three-cornered piece of mirror attached to the outside of the house, combing and recombing the bellicose ornament, and observing it attentively, until he achieved particular curves at the ends that pleased his fancy. Apparently he affected a formidable facial aspect, becoming to one who had led charging men.
 
Colonel Jasper M. Peets
209Evidently he had somewhere received a fair education, but outside of fiction, a field he had widely covered, he seemed to have little interest in books. His former environment had left a romantic polish, heightened by a florid imagination. His character had been moulded by the traditions of the south and they were the only religion he had. His vanity was delightful, and he had the heart of a child. Little gifts of tobacco and cigars made him happy for hours, and there was a subtle lovable quality about him that radiated even in his foibles.
The old house stood on the rising ground, among tall elms and walnuts, about two hundred feet from the river. It had never been painted. Some of the clapboards and shingles were missing and others were loose. When the wind blew, stray currents permeated the structure, and there were mournful sounds between the walls—like the moanings of uneasy ghosts.
The little log barn was decayed and tenantless, with the exception of a few scraggly hens and a vicious looking old game cock. The Colonel had bought him somewhere and annexed him to his estate—possibly as a concession to his early sporting instincts, or for sympathetic reasons. They were both warriors of better days.
In an enclosure beyond the barn were half a dozen young razor backed pigs. These noisy shoats were a continual source of irritation to the Colonel. He declared that he would shoot the two sopranos and let the other pork loose if Seth Mussey, who looked after them, did not put muzzles on them or 210find some other way of keeping them quiet at night. The Colonel did not do any “wo’k on the fahm.” This was attended to by Mussey “on shares.” Mussey lived a quarter of a mile away, and was the only neighbor. The “shares” were not very remunerative, but, added to the Colonel’s other small resources, they made existence possible.
A narrow path led down to the river bank, where the Colonel kept his row boat and a small duck canoe which he propelled with a long paddle. The landing consisted of a couple of logs secured with stakes, and overlaid with planks. During high water in the spring the landing usually floated away and a new one was built when the freshets subsided. There was an air of general shiftlessness about the place that would have been depressing to anybody who did not know its eccentric proprietor.
He spent much of his time fishing on the river in the summer and early fall until the ducks began to come in. During the game seasons he acted as host, guide and “pusher” for duck hunters, who sometimes spent weeks with him. They had rare sport on the big marsh, but were compelled to suffer some hardships at the Colonel’s house. He did the cooking, or rather he heated the things that were eaten, and some of them baffled analysis.
One of his guests once told of a “mud-hen hash” that the Colonel had compounded, in which there were many feathers, and of some “snapping turtle soup” where all was lost but the adjective. The complaining visitor had slept on the floor, with a 211bag of shelled corn for a pillow, and the unholy mess, with a cup of doubtful coffee, had been served for breakfast, but he soon got “broken in” and learned to put up with these things if he wanted to shoot ducks with the Colonel.
The various dishes, when cooked for the first time, could usually be identified, but succeeding compositions were culinary by-products, and afforded few clues to their component parts, except to a continuous and very observant guest.
I once ate some “fish chowder” with the Colonel, which, if it had been called almost anything else, would have been really very good. I never knew the ingredients, and doubt if its author could have reconstructed it, or have given an accurate account of its contents. Some one has aptly said, “if you want to be happy don’t inquire into things,” and the injunction seemed quite applicable to the Colonel’s fare.
There are many accidents—both happy and sad—in cookery. A wise cook is never free with recipes, for, in any art, formula dissipates mystery that is often essential to appreciation. Some cooks enter where angels fear to tread, and when the trip is successful the glory is properly theirs. Their task is thankless, and malediction is upon them when they fail. They are in contact with elemental instincts, and their occupation is perilous, for they are between an animal and its meat.
One stormy night we sat before the crackling fire. The loose clapboards rattled outside and the big 212trees were grumbling in the wind. Water dripped from the leaky roof and little streams crept across the floor.
I had come down the river in a small rowboat, and intended to spend a week fishing for bass in the stream and sketching in the big marsh.
“You must pa’don the appeahance of things ’round heah,” remarked the Colonel. “Theah is a lot of fixin’ up to be done, and the weatheh has been so pleasant lately that that infe’nal Mussey has had to wo’k out doahs. If this weatheh stays bad he will come in heah an’ straighten things up.”
He had queer notions regarding work. There were some things that he would do diligently, and others he considered beneath his dignity. The line of demarcation was confused, and I was never quite able to be certain of it. He cooked and partially washed the dishes, but never swept the floors, or fed the chickens and shoats at the barn. He never repaired anything except under urgent necessity, and his idea of order was not to disturb anything after he had let go of it.
“You may be interested to know, suh, that I have been occupying my spaiah time writing my memoahs,” he continued. “I have collected the scattehed reco’ds of my careah. I have no descendants, an’ I may say to you confidentially, as one gentleman to anotheh, that I do not expect any, suh, so theah will be nobody to take pride in my literary wo’k afteh I am gone, but the gene’l public, but as a paht 213of the history of the south, durin’ its period of great trial, I think my memoahs would be valuable.
“I am going to put my memoahs in the fawm of a novel, suh, an’ I have had to mix up a lot of otheh people in it who ah, to some extent, fictitious, so my book will be a combination of fact and romance. I have thought it all oveh. I am of the opinion that a book to be populah must be a story. It must have a plot, and somebody must get married on the last page. I am writing such a story, suh, and am weaving the main incidents of my careah into the plot. In this way I will get my history befoah a great many people who nevah read memoahs. I will gild what is the real pill, so to speak, by dipping it into the bright hued watehs of romance.
“I am having a great deal of trouble with my plot, suh. Theah is a fellah in it by the name of Puddington Calkins. I want to kill this cussed Calkins, but if I kill ’im I will have nobody to marry to the mystehious veiled lady that I see in the dim distance. She is gliding towa’d the web of my plot, but I do not yet know whetheh she comes upon an errand of vengeance, or to demand justice foh her child. This veiled lady is pe’fumed with tube rose, suh, and I hate to leave her out, foh, with the exception of bou’bon, tube rose is my favorite odeh, and that reminds me, suh—pahdon me just one moment.”
The Colonel arose and went to the cupboard. He brought forth a tall bottle, poured a liberal dose 214into a tin cup, and swallowed it with impressive solemnity.
“That bou’bon came f’om Tennessee. It was sent to me by an old friend who was related to Jedge Benton of Nashville. When the Jedge died he had two bar’ls of this noble fluid in his cellah, and one of them was left to my friend in the Jedge’s will. It had been twenty-foah yeahs in the wood, suh. I was fo’tunate enough to be presented with some of that wonde’ful whiskey. I am sorry, suh, that you do not indulge, foh you ah missin’ something that puts spangles on a sad life, suh!
“Most people drink whiskey foh its alcohol, and such people, suh, should pat’onize a drug stoah. A gentleman drinks it foh its flavah, and that reminds me, suh, that birdy cannot fly with one wing, an’ if you’ll pahdon me I’ll take anotheh.”
After replacing what was left of the “bou’bon,” the Colonel stuffed some fragrant tobacco into a much darkened cob pipe, contemplated the ascending wreaths for a while, and reverted to his novel.
“The plot of that story is a pe’plexity to me, suh. I think of things to put in it when I am out on the rivah, and when I get back I fo’get what they ah. I am going to get some moah papeh and write the whole thing oveh. Maybe I will kill that infe’nal Pud Calkins and I will myself marry that female whose face is concealed. Somebody must marry her or she will be left without suppo’t at the end of the book. People will nevah buy my memoahs. They 215will look in the back, and if theah is no wedding theah, they will cast the volume aside.
“That Pud Calkins is much on my mind, suh. He is a predicament. He wakes me f’om my slumbehs, an’ sits beside me at my humble meals. He has dammed up the flow of my fancy in my novel, suh. I have nevah read a novel that had anything like him in it. He is a damned nuisance, suh, and he has got to go.
“The next time you come down I would like to read to you what I have written. It is too much mixed up now, but I will have it all in o’deh when you come again. And anotheh thing that bothehs me is my chestnut filly that I rode durin’ the wah. I have got to have her in the story. I rode her through battle smoke and oveh fields of ca’nage. I was at the head of my men, suh, an’ ev’ry fall of her hoofs was on dead Yankees that fell befoah ouah onslaught. It would break my heaht if Pud Calkins should evah ride that hawss, even in a story, and yet Pud Calkins was on the field where I fell covehed with wounds, and he rode some hawss home to tell the tale, and if he had some otheh hawss, I would have to leave my filly out, foh only one live hawss was left at the end of that cha’ge, and that was the one I fell f’om, an’ Great Gawd, man, I couldn’t kill my filly!
“Of co’se my hawss will succumb in my memoahs to the immutable laws of natcha, but that must appeah as the reco’d of the actual fact, afteh the wah was oveh. She will not die by my hand, even in 216fiction—no, suh! I will kill Pud Calkins a thousand times first, suh!
“The prepahation of all this written matteh has been a great labah to me, but it has occupied many houahs that would othe’wise be unbeahable in this Gawd fo’saken country. I sit heah by my fiah and wo’k with my pen, but this Pud Calkins is always by my side, suh.”
Barring a few unavoidable discomforts, I spent a very pleasant week with the Colonel. The fishing had been good, and there was a world of interest and joy in the stretches of the great marsh, teeming with wild life, and filled with the gentle melodies of hidden waters.
I paid mine host his modest bill, bade him good bye at the landing, rowed up stream, and, after spending a day with Tipton Posey at Bundy’s Bridge, left the river country.
It was six months before I returned. I sought the Colonel and found him much changed. A trouble had come upon him. His eye had lost its lustre, he had an air of listlessness and preoccupation, and he looked older.
It seemed that there had been great excitement in the county after my departure, and the Colonel had been the storm center.
When we had finished our simple evening meal, and had lighted our pipes before the fire, the Colonel handed me a copy of The Index, the weekly paper, published at the county seat. Its date was about four months old.
217“I would like to have you read that, suh, and then I will hand you anotheh.”
On the front page were some glaring headlines: THE BURGLARY!!!—THE EXPLOSION!!!—THE PURSUIT!!! I read the account with deep interest, which was as follows:
“On Monday morning of June 10th a crowd assembled in front of the County Treasurer’s office at the Court House, amid very unusual circumstances. Nearly seven thousand dollars were known to have been in the safe Saturday night, and now as the anxious citizens crowded through the door, they saw a ruined open safe, and abundant evidences of a fearful explosion. A steel drill, some files, and an empty can that had probably contained the explosive compound, were scattered about on the floor. The rugs were in a pile near the safe, where they had probably been used to muffle the explosion. The money was gone.
“It was learned that a stranger of singular appearance, and marked individualities, with a gray coat, a heavy gray moustache and long chin whiskers, who entered the town last Friday, and had been observed by many of the citizens during Friday and Saturday, had deposited at the Treasurer’s office, for safe keeping, a box represented to contain valuables. This box, made of tin, some eight inches in length and five in width, was deposited on Friday, and taken out on Saturday morning. It was again deposited on Saturday afternoon, to be called for on Monday morning.
218“The county treasurer, the Hon. Truman W. Pettibone, had gone fishing on Thursday and expected to remain away until Tuesday, as is his custom during the summer months.
“The mysterious stranger was waited on by Mr. J. Milton Tuttle, the courteous and well known clerk in the treasurer’s office. Mr. Tuttle’s charming daughter has just returned from a visit to her aunt in Oak Grove township—but we digress. J. Milton Tuttle had no suspicions, and retired at evening to his home and his interesting family.
“The stranger was thought by several citizens to have taken the evening train, but was seen lurking around town, with a slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes, at a late hour Saturday night. He entered the Busy Bee Buffet at eleven o’clock and was served by Mr. Oscar Sheets, the gentlemanly bartender. He immediately departed. It is supposed that he spent the night in some barn.
“It was ascertained that the tall and singular looking man, in the gray coat, who appeared to be disguised, was seen on Sunday morning to enter the front door of the Court House. This door, as is well known, is usually left open on Sunday for the convenience of Sunday callers who wish to read the legal notices on the bulletin board in the hallway.
“Miss Anastasia Simpson, an unmarried lady, living near the Court House, noticed particularly that the stranger was very distinguished looking. She watched from her window for his reappearance, which did not take place until three in the afternoon, when he departed seemingly in a state of great perturbation and excitement.
 
Miss Anastasia Simpson
219“It was ascertained that Mr. Wellington Peters, proprietor of the prominent and well known low priced hardware store bearing his name, and whose business is advertised in our columns, while standing on the corner talking with a traveling man near the hotel, heard a dull booming sound from the direction of the court house, at about 2:45 P.M., but thinking that it was boys making some kind of a racket, he paid no attention to it. Several other prominent and well known citizens heard the same sound at the same hour.
“The tall and mysterious stranger was seen by Miss Simpson to walk south after leaving the court house. She went to another window to further observe him, but he had disappeared.
“The little tin box which the artful and designing robber had left ‘for safe keeping’ with J. Milton Tuttle, and which he locked up in the safe, was opened and found to contain nothing but a bag of sand.
“It was evident to all that the tin box was a subterfuge. It was used as an excuse to visit and inspect the ‘lay of the land’ in the office of the treasurer of our county.
“About noon, on Monday, a posse was formed by the Hon. Cyrus Butts, our gentlemanly and efficient sheriff. The posse, consisting of three prominent and well known citizens, Oliver K. Gardner, Silas B. Kendall and Elmer Dinwiddie, accompanied by 220the sheriff, made a circuit of the town. They ascertained that the mysterious stranger had stopped at the pleasant little home of Mr. Mike Carney, the genial and well known butcher of our town, and asked for a drink of water, which was given him. He had then taken a southerly direction along the section line road. The posse procured Toppington Smith’s mottled blood hound and put the intelligent animal on the trail of the fleeing burglar. The pursuit continued for about twelve miles. The fugitive was evidently making a bee line along the section road for the river marshes. A team was met on the road, with a load of baled hay, and impressed into service. All of the bales but two were unloaded and left by the roadside. The two bales were retained on the wagon for use as a barricade in case of a revolver battle with the burglar.
“Drivers of teams, met along the route, reported seeing a man enter the woods before they met him, and go back into the road a long ways behind them after they had passed. The variations in the course taken by the hound confirmed this.
“About ten o’clock at night there was a full moon. The trail left the road and led into some thick underbrush, near a small slough. Some smoke issued from the brush, where the fugitive had evidently built a fire and expected to spend the night. The place was surrounded and the posse cautiously advanced, but the burglar was gone. It was thought that the cunning malefactor had got wind of his pursuers, that he had turned aside and lighted this 221fire in the brush with a view of delaying and baffling those behind him with artful strategy.
“The hound left the brush, and a few minutes later a tall figure, with a light gray coat, was seen a few hundred yards away on a bare ridge in the moonlight. It was unquestionably the fugitive and the hound was with him. The posse opened fire with revolvers, but at such a distance it was futile. The man and the dog disappeared over the ridge into the woods. The burglar had escaped, and the dog had evidently joined forces with him.
“Further pursuit that night was considered hopeless. The posse slept at a farm house and resumed the search Tuesday morning. They found the dog tied to a tree near the edge of the big marsh, there were tracks in the soft mud at the margin of the slough, and an old boat belonging to a farmer in the vicinity was gone. There were marks in the mud showing where the boat had been shoved out to the water.
“The pursuit was abandoned and the posse returned home. A full description of the robber was sent broadcast, and it is thought that his capture is only a matter of time.
“Up to the hour of going to press there are no further particulars to record, but we hope that before our next issue, justice will triumph, and the burglar with his ill gotten booty will be within its grasp.”
“And now, suh, will you please cast youah eye 222oveh this reco’d of infamy,” requested the Colonel, as he handed me a later copy of the same paper.
The next account was headed:
“ARRESTED!!!—PRELIMINARY
HEARING!!!—HABEAS CORPUS!!!”
and it read as follows:
“We are able to announce that the crafty and resourceful robber of the county treasurer’s office, who so successfully eluded the grasp of his pursuers, and made good his retreat into the river marshes, has probably been apprehended.
“The evidence seems to indicate that one Col. Peets, who lives on a small farm on the river, above the marsh, is the culprit.
“He was captured there by the sheriff, the day after our last week’s issue was in the hands of the public. He offered no resistance. The information that led to his capture was received from Mr. Tipton Posey who keeps the well known general store near Bundy’s Bridge. Mr. Posey stated that the description of the robber, printed in this paper, exactly fitted Col. Peets, with the exception of the chin whiskers, which he thought were false.
“This paper is invariably modest and unassuming. It vaunteth not itself, but we may say, without undue self glorification, that it was the thoroughness of the journalistic work of this paper that made the description of the robber available, and that this capture is therefore exclusively due to the enterprise of The Index. Our circulation covers the entire county. Our advertising rates will be found 223on another page. Our subscription rates are two dollars a year, cash, or two fifty in produce—strictly in advance.
“Col. Peets claims to be an ex-officer in the Rebel Army. He bears a bad reputation along the river, and is said to be a man of immoral character.
“The prisoner was securely lodged in the county jail, and, after the usual legal forms, he was brought before the Justice of the Peace for preliminary hearing.
“When the morning of the examination came, the court was thronged as it never has been before. The ladies crowded the room as they had never done at any court during our existence as a county, while the trial progressed, manifesting a strange interest, which has never been exhibited till now, for or against any prisoner. And yet not so strange, for a remarkable prisoner appeared before them. He was tall, strongly built, with a heavy moustache, and pale—as though just recovering from an illness—marked in his individualities, a man of martial bearing, whom one would expect to recognize among ten thousand.
“Every female eye was uninterruptedly focussed on this striking looking man during the entire hearing. He was claimed to be the same stranger who had blown open the safe and abstracted the seven thousand dollars of the county’s money. The loss will of course have to be made good by the treasurer or his bondsmen, if the plunder is not recovered from the thief, and much sympathy is felt 224for the Hon. Truman W. Pettibone, who has long borne an enviable and unsullied reputation in our midst.
“Several of the ladies present were to appear among the witnesses in behalf of the state and for the defense. The question under consideration was the identity of this tall mysterious looking prisoner and that tall disguised stranger who was unquestionably responsible before the law for the astounding burglary.
“The counsel for the state was the Hon. John Wesley Watts, our brilliant and alert county attorney. The prisoner was represented by W. St. John Hopkins, whose very name smacks of irreverence for the Holy Writ. He is a young aspiring sprig of the law who has recently come into our midst.
“It seems that this man Hopkins, who parts both his name and his hair in the middle, volunteered to defend the prisoner without compensation, probably for the purpose of showing off his talents. The prisoner was without counsel, and claimed to have no funds with which to hire one. They seemed to be suspiciously good friends in court. Whether or not a part of the loot from the exploded safe has covertly changed hands in payment for certain legal services during the past few days, it is not within the province of this paper to determine, or even hint.
“The examination continued during Wednesday and Thursday, excellent order prevailing in the court room. Many citizens gave strong testimony 225both for and against the prisoner. The public were deeply interested in the solution of the question, and there were strong and conflicting opinions as to the identity of the prisoner in the minds of all present. The progress of the examination, as numerous witnesses were examined who had seen the prowling and disgu............