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Updated: June 24, 2025
His grinning satellites lined up across the opening, two deep, eyes and mouths wide open. In the front rank Percy recognized the imp who had burnt his coat, Jabe's brother, whose chastisement had started the trouble. The lad was dancing up and down with pleasurable anticipation. "Lick him, Jabe!" he shrilled. "Lick him, Jabe!"
Old Jabe belonged to the Meriwethers, a fact which he never forgot or allowed anyone else to forget; and on this he traded as a capital, which paid him many dividends of one kind or another, among them being a dividend in wives. How many wives he had had no one knew; and Jabe's own account was incredible. It would have eclipsed Henry VIII and Bluebeard.
He knew that there was no better all-round woodsman in these countries than Jabe Smith; but he knew also that Jabe's interest in the craft was limited pretty strictly to his activities as hunter, trapper and lumberman. Just now he was all lumberman.
"Jabe's over in Talcott's grocery. We'll get 'em together again!" Never interrupting his leisurely saunter, Percy passed out of hearing. But his heart was beating a little quicker and he was conscious of a tightening of nerves and muscles. Weeks of secret, painstaking preparation were drawing to a climax.
I made my way over some rolling meadow land, where three or four of Captain Jabe's cows were carefully selecting the edible portions of the herbage, and, having passed the crest of a rounded hill, I found myself on the edge of a piece of woodland, which seemed to be of considerable extent.
The Boy looked around, triumphant to see that Jabe's exclamation was not at all the result of his clever shot. The woodsman was on his hands and knees, his back turned, and staring at the form of a big black bear as it lumbered off in a panic through the bushes.
The latter was Jabe's belief, and he concluded that his ungainly favourite had too soon taken the long trail for the Red Men's land of ghosts. Though Jabe Smith was primarily a lumberman and backwoods farmer, he was also a hunter's guide, so expert that his services in this direction were not to be obtained without very special inducement. At "calling" moose he was acknowledged to have no rival.
"They have very little in their lives," he said, and added, with a characteristic touch, "I do not mean to say that your coming would not be an event in any household." She laughed with him, softly, at this sally. "Not to speak of the visit you are making them," she replied. "Oh, I'm one of the family," he said; "I come and go. Jabe's is my country house, when I can't stand the city any longer."
Thus far, events could not have suited him better if he had planned them. His deliberate motions increased Jabe's anger. "You'll move faster than that when I get after you," he sneered, "or it'll be over so quick that there won't be any fun in it. Now put up your fists, for I'm going to lick you within an inch of your life! Guard that door, boys!"
I've seen her leave the house on a bright Sabbath half an hour before meetin' to be gone the whole day, and Hilary and all the ministers in town couldn't stop her." "I'll drop in once in a while to see you, Phrasie. I'll be at Jabe Jenney's." "Jabe's is not more than three or four miles from Flint's place," Euphrasia remarked. "I've thought of that," said Austen. "You'd thought of it!"
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