Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1910-12-29
CHAPTER w.

CHAPTER w.
III you have never had the pleasure
of meeting a Southern gentleman of
the patriarchal school, 1 despair of
bringing you well acquainted with Ma
jor Caspar Dabney until you have
summered and wintered him. But the
Dabneys of Deer Trace figure so large
ly in Thomas Jeffersons boyhood and
youth as to be well-nigh elemental in
these retrospective glimpses
1t was about the time when Thorn
as Jefferson was beginning to recon-
slider his ideals, with a 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 its
hnal stab and prepared to pour wine
and oil into the wound-though of the
balm pouring, none could guess at the
moment of wounding. 1t was not in
Caspar Dabney to be patient under a
blow, and for 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 wo'ed outl 1 done been
KNOWN Mawstuh CASPIAN ebber sence
L was or Mistis' tiah-'ooman, and
amt new seen him so fractions ez he
been sence dat letter come tellin' him
come get dat po' iii gall child o. Nav
stub Louis's. Seems lax he JUS gwine
r'ar round twel he hut 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 yosef none err
dot Tse~f
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 lii gall
child home; an den: uck-uh-hl look
out, niggahs; dar amt gwine be nuttin'
on de top side dishyer yearth good cr-
nough for iii Missy. You watch what
L done toP yer erbout dat, nowl"
Scipio's 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
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
God-speeds were said, had himself
turned back to the weed grown fields
of Deer Trace Manor, embittered and
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, 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
made shift thriftily, farming a little,
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 a 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
1>NiSANSNs SOU fSPb yOuI WllS ABOUT
you; else Pettigrass got much the bet
ter of you in the trade, like the shrewd. |
Alabama Yankee that he
was.
Ardea was born in Paris in the
twelfth year of the exile; and the VIr-
sinia mother, pining always for the
non land. died in the fifteenth year.
Afterward Captain Louis fought a |
ong- drawn, losing battle, figuring
oravely In his infrequent letters to his |
'ather 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 eking out miserable |
existence by giving lessons In English |
when he was happy enough to find a
pupil.
The brave letters imposed on the Ma
or, as they were meant to do; and |
Ardea, the loyal, happening on one OF |
hem in her first Deer Trace summer. |
'ead 1t through with childish sobs and |
never thereafter opened her lips on the
story OF those distressful Paris DAVIS
later she understood her fathers mo-
i've better: how he would not be a |
charge on an old man rich In nothing
out ruin; and the memory of the |
oinched childhood became a thing sa-
:red.
How the Major. second Rip Van