Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories. Joel Chandler Harris

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СКАЧАТЬ paraded on fine afternoons in front of Lloyd’s Hotel a penniless man. He had borrowed and lost until he could borrow no longer.

      Balaam, who was familiar with the situation, was not surprised to learn that his master had made up his mind to sell him.

      “Well, suh,” said Balaam, brushing his master’s coat carefully,“you kin sell me, but de man dat buys Balaam will git a mighty bad bargain.”

      “What do you mean?” exclaimed Berrien.

      “You kin sell me, suh, but I ain’t gwine stay wid um.”

      “You can’t help yourself,” said the master.

      “I got legs, Marse Berry. You know dat yo’se’f.”

      “Your legs will do you no good. You’ll be caught if you go back home.”

      “I ain’t gwine dar, suh. I’m gwine wid you. I hear you say yistiddy night p’intedly dat you gwine ’way f’om dis place, an’ I’m gwine wid you. I been ’long wid you all de time, an’ ole marster done tole me w’en you was baby dat I got ter stay wid you.”

      Something in this view seemed to strike Mr. Cozart. He walked up and down the floor a few minutes, and then fell to laughing.

      “By George, Balaam, you are a trump—a royal flush in spades. It will be a famous joke.”

      Thereupon Berrien Cozart arranged his cards, so to speak, for a more hazardous game than any he had ever yet played. He went with Balaam to a trader who was an expert in the slave market, and who knew its ups and downs, its weak points and its strong points. At first Berrien was disposed to put Balaam on the block and have him auctioned off to the highest bidder; but the trader knew the negro, and had already made a study of his strong points. To be perfectly sure, however, he thumped Balaam on the chest, listened to the beating of his heart, and felt of his muscles in quite a professional way.

      “I reckon he ain’t noways vicious,” said the trader, looking at Balaam’s smiling face.

      “I have never seen him angry or sullen,” said Mr. Cozart. Other questions were asked, and finally the trader jotted down this memorandum in his note-book:—

      “Buck nigger, Balaam; age 32; 6 feet 1 inch; sound as a dollar; see Colonel Strother.”

      Then the trader made an appointment with Berrien for the next day, and said he thought the negro could be disposed off at private sale. Such was the fact, for when Berrien went back the next day the trader met him with an offer of fifteen hundred dollars in cash for Balaam.

      “Make it eighteen,” said Mr. Cozart.

      “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the trader, closing his eyes and pursing his mouth in a business-like way. “I’ll give you sixteen fifty—no more, no less. Come, now, that’s fair. Split the difference.”

      Thereupon Mr. Cozart said it was a bargain, and the trader paid him the money down after the necessary papers were drawn up. Balaam seemed to be perfectly satisfied. All he wanted, he said, was to have a master who would treat him well. He went with Berrien to the hotel to fetch his little belongings, and if the trader had searched him when he returned he would have found strapped around his body a belt containing fifty dollars in specie.

      Having thus, in a manner, replenished his empty purse, Mr. Berrien Cozart made haste to change his field of operations. To his competitors in his own special department of industry he let drop the hint that he was going to Columbus, and thence to Mobile and New Orleans, where he would hang on the outskirts of the racing season, picking up such crumbs and contributions as might naturally fall in the way of a professional gentleman who kept his eyes open and his fingers nimble enough to deal himself a winning hand.

      As a matter of fact Mr. Cozart went to Nashville, and he had not been gone many days before Balaam disappeared. He had been missing two days before Colonel Strother, his new master, took any decided action, but on the morning of the fourth day the following advertisement appeared among others of a like character in the columns of the Atlanta “Intelligencer”:—

      $100 reward will be paid for the apprehension of my negro boy Balaam. Thirty-odd years old, but appeared younger; tall, pleasant-looking, quick-spoken, and polite. Was formerly the property of the Hon. William Cozart. He is supposed to be making his way to his old home. Was well dressed when last seen. Milledgeville “Recorder” and “Federal Union” please copy.

      Bozeman Strother,

       Atlanta, Georgia.

      (d. & w. 1 mo.)

      This advertisement duly appeared in the Milledgeville papers, which were published not far from Billville, but no response was ever made; the reward was never claimed. Considering the strength and completeness of the patrol system of that day, Balaam’s adventure was a risky one; but, fortunately for him, a wiser head than his had planned his flight and instructed him thoroughly in the part he was to play. The shrewdness of Berrien Cozart had provided against all difficulties. Balaam left Atlanta at night, but he did not go as a fugitive. He was armed with a “pass” which formally set forth to all to whom it might concern that the boy David had express permission to join his master in Nashville, and this “pass” bore the signature of Elmore Avery, a gentleman who existed only in the imagination of Mr. Berrien Cozart. Attached thereto, also, was the signature seal of the judge of ordinary. With this little document Balaam would have found no difficulty whatever in traveling. The people he met would have reasoned that the negro whose master trusted him to make so long a journey alone must be an uncommonly faithful one, but Balaam met with an adventure that helped him along much more comfortably than the pass could have helped him. It is best, perhaps, to tell the story in his own language, as he told it long afterwards.

      “I won’t say I weren’t skeered,” said Balaam, “kaze I was; yit I weren’t skeered ’nough fer ter go slippin’ ’longside er de fences an’ ’mongst de pine thickets. I des kep’ right in de big road. Atter I got out er town a little piece, I tuck off my shoes an’ tied de strings tergedder an’ slung ’em ’cross my shoulder, on top my satchel, an’ den I sorter mended my gait. I struck up a kind er dog-trot, an’ by de time day come a many a mile lay ’twix’ me an’ Atlanta. Little atter sun-up I hear some horses trottin’ on de road de way I come, an’ bimeby a man driv up in a double buggy. He say, ‘Hello, boy! Whar you gwine?’ I pulled off my hat, an’ say, ‘I gwine whar my marster is, suh.’ Den de white man ’low, ‘W’at he name?’ Well, suh, when de man ax me dat, hit come over me like a big streak er de chill an’ fever dat I done clean fergit de name what Marse Berry choosen ter be call by. So I des runned my han’ und’ de lindin’ er my hat an’ pulled out de pass, an’ say, ‘Boss, dis piece er paper kin talk lots better dan I kin.’

      “De man look at me right hard, an’ den he tuck de pass an’ read it out loud. Well, suh, w’en he come ter de name I des grabbed holt un it wid my min’, an’ I ain’t never turned it loose tell yit. De man was drivin’ long slow, an’ I was walkin’ by de buggy. He helt de pass in his han’s some little time, den he look at me an’ scratch his head. Atter a while he ’low: ‘You got a mighty long journey befo’ you. Kin you drive? Ef you kin, put on yo’ shoes an’ mount up here an’ take dese lines.’

      “Well, suh, I wuz sorter glad, an’ yit I wuz sorter skittish, but I tol’ de white СКАЧАТЬ