Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1910-12-23

/
| these retrospective glimpses
1t was about the time when Thorn
as Jefferson was beginning to recon
slider his ideals. with leaning toward
brass-bound palaces on wheels and
| dictatorial authority over uniformed
! lackeys and other of his fellow crea-
lures, that fate dealt the Major it's
final stab and prepared to pour wine
and oil into the wound-though of the
balm- pouring, none could guess at tho
moment of wounding. 1t was not in
Caspar Dabney to be patient under a
blow, and for a time his ragings
threatened to shake even Nanny Ju-
lets loyalty-than which nothing more
convincing can be said.
'Mistuh Scipio," she would say Use
JUS erbout woed out! I done been
KNOWN Mawstuh CASPIAN ebber sencc
l was OF Mistis' tiah-ooman, and 7
amt new seen him so fractions ez he
been sence dat letter come tellin' him
come get dat po' iii gal-child O. Nav
stub Louis's Seems lax he JUS gwine
rar round twel he hurt somebody"
etoainshrdlu etoian shrdlu etoain ct
Scipio the Majors body servant,
had grown gray in the Dabney service,
and he was well used to the masters
storm periods.
"Doan' you trouble yo'se'f none err
bout dat, Mis- Juliet. Mawstuh Majuh
tekkin' hit mighty hawd cause Nav
stub Louis done daid. But bimeby you
gwine see him climm on his hawss an
ride up yondeh to whah de big steam
boats comes in an'fotch dat Ill gall
child home; an den: uck-uh-h! look
out, niggahs; dar amt gwine be nuttin'
on de top side dishyer yearth good er-
nough for III Missy. You watch what
/ done toll yer erbout dat, now!"
Scipios prophecy, or as much of 1t
as related to the bringing of the or
phaned Ardea to Deer Trace Manor,
wrought itself out speedily, as a mat
l ter of course. At the close of the war,
Captain Louis, the Majors only son,
had become, like many another hot
hearted young Confederate, a self-ex-
patrioted exile. On the eve of his de-
parture for France he had married the
Virginia maiden who had nursed him
alive after Charlottesville. Major
Caspar had given the bride away-the
war had spared no kinsman of hers to
stand in this breach-and when the
Godspeeds were said, had himself
turned back to the weed-grown fields
| VI O6SI 1IdCS A1dAOLB CllOllbOACo oAAN
hostile, swearing never to set foot out
side of his home acres again while the
Union should stand.
For more than twenty years he kept
this vow ALMOST literally, A few of the
older negroes, a mere handful of the
six score slaves of the old patriarchal
days, cast in their lot with their for
mer master, and with these the Major
| co.
stock raising a little, and, unlike most
of the war broken plantation owners,
clinging tenaciously to every rood of
land covered by the original Dabney
title deeds.
In this. cenobitic interval, II you
wanted a Dabney colt or Dabney
COW, you went, or sent, to Deer Trace
Manor on your own initiative, and you,
or your deputy, never met the Major:
your business was transacted with
lean, lantern jawed Japheth Pettigrass,
the Majors stock-and- farm foreman.
And although the Dabney stock was
pedigreed, you kept your wits about
you; else Pettigrass got much the bet
ter of you in the trade, like the shrewd,
calculating Alabama Yankee that he
was.
| Ardea was born in Paris in the
| twelfth year of the exile; and the Vir-
| ginia mother, pining always for the
home land, died in the fifteenth year.
Afterward Captain Louis fought a
long drawn, losing battle, figuring
bravely in his infrequent letters to his
| father as a rising miniature painter.
He had his little girl back and forth
between his lodgings and the studio
where he painted pictures that nobody
would buy, and el1ing out a miserable
existence by giving lessons in English
when he was happy enough to md q
pupil.
The brave letters imposed on the Ma
Tor. as they were meant to do; and
Ardea, the loyal, happening on one OF
them in her first Deer Trace summer
read It through with childish sobs and
never thereafter opened her lips on the
story of those distressful Paris DAYS
Later she understood her fathers mo.
tive better: how he would not be Z
charge on an old man rich in nothins
but ruin; and the memory of the
pinched childhood became a thing sa.
cred.
How the Major. second Rip Var
Wrinkle, found his way to New York
and to the pier of the incoming French
Line steamer must always remain
mystery But he was there, with the
fierce old eyes quenched and swim.
ming and the passionate Dabney lip.
trembling strangely under the grea
moustaches, when the black-frocket
little waif from the Old World raj
down the landing stage and into hi
arms Small wonder that they cluns
to each other, these two at the furthe
extremes of three generations; or tina
the child opened a door in the hear
of the fierce old partisan which wal
! locked and doubly barred against al
others.
1t was all new and very strange t.
child whose only outlook on life hat
been urban and banal. She had neve
seen q mountain, and nothing NOR,
nearly approaching q forest than tn,
parked groves Of the Bots de Boulogne
Would It be permitted that she shoult
sometimes walk in the woods Of tn,
first Dabney, she asked, with the Quain
French twisting of the phrases tina
! she was never able fully to overcome
! 1t would certainly be permitted; more
the Major would make her q deed 4
|, - many of the forest AorOa A All