Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-04-23


everybody on Providence Reach said he
was kind o curious" Jack Pedikin.
who kept the light on Ajax bar, called
him ''shuckless" and said that he 'hed
no sperit, while even old Uncle Pitches,
who farmed five acres Of cotton on Judge
Wyle's place, CONTEMPORARY called him
pore white trash" But this disturbed
the serenity of Zeb Posey not one lot or
title, and year in and year out he made
his occasional trips to Lake Providence
with fish, and in the winter took in bun
dies of beaver and otter pelts or bunch
Of ducks, and buying his few necessities
went away as unobtrusively as he had
come. Some of the fishermen knew
where he lived, but most people never
gave the subject thought. As matter
of fact Zeb lived in a shack built among
the great cottonwood and sycamore trees
on the Mississippi shore, back of Island
55, and with him lived his mother and
his sister Cordia, the latter a shy. half
pretty child of Is. When Zeb built his
cabin there 1t was on the main channel
of the river, but during the high water
of 10 the stream forced its way through
Point Lookout, left the end as an island,
and its old bed became the shallower
channel and was deserted by steamboats,.
This did not disturb Zeb in the least. If
anything, it pleased him. True he could
not sit in front of his cabin and watch
the great steamers go blowing by, but
he was only mile off the main stream,
and he could hear their whistles and
catch glimpse of their lights at night
as they fitted past the opening of the cut
off. Zeb's cabin stood on top of the
high bank, and he had carved fight of
rude steps in the precipitous mud bluff
leading up from the narrow strip of beach
below, where he tied his boat 1t was
not pretentious home, but Zeb had
built it with his own hands out of great
cottonwood logs, chinked with saplings,
and had put chimney on one end,
wonderfully constructed from persim-
mon sticks, plastered with mud.
Zeb was strange character. When
this incident in his life which l am
about to relate transpired he was
perhaps 30 years of age. He was tall
and slender and awkward-much sit
ting in skif had given his shoulders a
covered with a thin, yellowish beard,
and his long hair had grotesque fash
ion of falling down over his big, inno-
cent gray eyes. In feeling, intent and
intellect Zeb always seemed like child.
He was intelligent enough, but he had
never come into that business contact
with men which makes other men shrewd
and mercenary and unsympathetic. His
perceptive faculties were keen enough
perhaps, but they had been developed in
abnormal directions. If any one thing
made him recluse it was because he
was diffident-modest of his own ability
to make place and hold it. Il amt
ticker" he always said when his own
interests were at stake, and this idiomatic
expression was the keynote of his charac-
ter. Zeb Posey simply declined to be self
asseItive. So when he went up to Lake
Providence or Ben Lomond, the largest
places he had ever known Familiarity, he
would sometimes hang upon the out
skirts OF a little knot of men such as
idly gathered in front of one of the
stores and listen TO their conversation,
but if any question was referred to him
he would grow suddenly nervous, shift
from one foot to the other uneasily and
slowly reply, Il dun no; amt ticker"
But Zeb preferred to live down back of
''95" and go to the village as seldom as
possible. He was better content trap
ping ''coons" in the persimmon FLATS"
back in the timber, or lying over the
edge of his sSiff in the still water. peer
ing down into the amber depths, or on
summer nights sitting in front of his
cabin watching the moon swinging like
the silver shield of Achilles above the
dark island. His little patch of corn
and potatoes, supplementing the fruits
of his lines and traps, amply sufficed for
the simple needs of the family, an d if
there was but little their wants Were
fewer and easily supplied without great
effort or the exercise of muchingenuity
Zeb's mother was an example of the
type of woman developed by the condi-
tons under which river squatters
flourish and have their being. She was
tall and angular, with a "dead-and-
alive" expression of complacent misery
Her hair was brushed back tight from
her temples and tied in knot behind
when it was brushed at all. She smoked
cob pipe and was densely ignorant.
Indeed, it seems to me her complacent
want of knowledge is somehow better
explained by saying that she was "obliv-
ious" of those things which go to make
up the sum Of human knowledge. She
seemed in no wise to have taken part or
been interested in any matter pertain
ing to people or affairs.
Cordia looked like her mother, except
that she was too young to have acquired
the habit of smoking, for that seems an
attribute of matronhood; and if she was
not pretty, still in vague way she was
interesting because of her shrinking
shyness and modesty. Somewhere the
girl had learned to read in slow, I'M