The Green Forest tribune., 1909-11-12

Jerry SlTdlSuleueu uluSeA III lIiS saddle as he bade his mother good-by. The morning air was invigorating; every breathing creature was filled and brimming with new life; the hounds and children romped about the door, the cattle were alert about their business of feeding, even the guinea fowl fluttered and shrieked more madly than was their wont.
 The day before there had been rain, but this morning the sun rose in a brilliant sky. Little tricksy gusts blew the cloudlets hither and yon, as if in the heavens, too, there was ex- uberant life.
 Jerry was tall and slim and fair, a mountaineer of unmixed English blood. His blue eyes had the slow pondering look of a man unstirred by fancy and unshaken by fear. He ex- pected to win, others stepped from his path: he never had made an enemy or lost a friend Of the spiritual life he had not thought as yet, and things supernatural aroused in him com fortable feeling of contempt; ghosts, spooks, wizards, witch ridings, haunts, all provoked his laughter.
 Riding with leisurely haste he passed the cotton-pickers in the fields and the wagons heaped with snowy burdens going to be ginned-and so came, by eleven o'clock, into Collard Valley. Smiling as he passed a clump of elders, "Ah tell you" he said to himself. Init was that ole elder bush taught me to pick cotton!" and, think ing about his boyhood, he came to the farm of his fathers friend, Foster Black. To Jerry everything looked well. He knew the cotton and the wheat had been good, both on them money crops; old man Foster'l be gitten paint on his house next you know As he thought of the house a dull red arose in his face
 Ma home might be builded come next springtime." He pictured his sweetheart standing in the doorway. To help an imagination slow to visual ize he raised his happy eyes to the door of Foster Blacks house, that stood scant thirty feet back from the road, and refined in his horse
 Gazing at the house, his thoughts stopped and his brave heart shook in his breast What ailed him?" he questioned, and gripped the pommel of his saddle and forced his eyes, swimming and bewildered, to see the house, the porch, the chimney, even as thav faded and mora oopo Ja cot his horse, and yet he seemed to be no longer in the road. For a moment he struggled with the confusion of his vision, and then, although he knew that he was in the road, with his horse rearing beneath him, with a creeping horror he felt himself to be inside the house. Every pot and ket- to sight; on the cold hearth spot of gray light fell from the open chim- ney, the wooden shutters were closed and through the knot-holes came a little brightness. A cold terror shook his frame, the blood drumming in his ears sickened him. He heard the birds twittering, as in the gray before IiC do hlhS. lSA uS ucdIu thing try the shutter; then bare feet running around the house-pad, pad, ad,-intolerably! Then there fell heart-wringing silence-then the bare feet padding again; gutteral, word less cry, and with rending noise, the stout door splintered and fell In the pale, clear light, dropping a fence rail from his hands, stood man, froth flecking his red beard, the lust of blood glinting in his eyes, He cried out, as it were, gladly, and running forward set his hands to Jerrys throat.
 On reaching the town and turning the customary corners, perhaps calmed by old habit, the horse stop ped at the usual livery stable and stood trembling-Jerry trembling in the saddle.
 The men sitting lazily about awhile, unrealizing, and then came forward
 Why, Jerry, whar you all bin?'
 No, sah; he ain drunk"
 My lordy, he air plumb skeered silly!"
 At that plain statement tongues ran riot, all declaring that mo one never had seen Jerry skeered nowhar," and questions rained on him like hail.
 In the midst of the gathering crowd, Jerry, the horse and the dog covered and quaked-the man as speeches. as his beasts.
 Presently someone pulled the will less body from the saddle and forced whisky between the lips that twitched and aeered.
 One slapped him on the back, and another, an old man, looked into his eyes and called him by his name.
 Hes out'n his mind; Ise call him back to hit," he explained.
 Jerry answered the call-recogni- tion awoke in his eyes.
 "Ah caint say hit," he whispered, and, after time, when he had won back some voice, Foster Blacks choked to death. An seen the man as done it-in day vision-jes' now his beard was red and he'd frothed at the mouth. He come to the house prowlin' and cryin' like the wild beas- he broke in the door. An sot ma hoss in the road, an 1t was like And been inside the house an been Foster hisself, an the man come runnin' roun' the house, and heered him, an feared him, an seen him come a-burstin' in hungry to kill somethin'. Ma knees wouldn't hole me up. He come runnin', low with his teeth showin', and he caught me by tha throat--apd-vOu all see-Ah was