Part 6 (1/2)

”The mill-hands ran to Abraham. There the boy lay stretched out on the ground just as though he was dead. They thought he was dead. They got some water, and worked over him a spell. They could see that he breathed, but they thought that every breath would be his last.

”'He's done for this world,' said Gordon. 'He'll never come to his senses again. Thomas Lincoln would be proper sorry.' And so I should have been had Abraham died. Sometimes I think like it was the Evil One that possessed that horse. It don't seem to me that he'd 'a' ever ha'

kicked Abe of his own self--right in the head, too. You can see the scar on him now.

”Well, almost an hour pa.s.sed, when Abe came to himself--consciousness they call it--all at once, in an instant. And what do you think was the first thing he said? Just this--'uk!'

”He finished the word just where he left it when the horse kicked him, and looked around wild-like, and there was the critter standin' still as the mill-stun.' Now, where do you think the soul of Abe was between 'Gl--' and 'uk'? I'd like to have ye tell me that.”

A long discussion would follow such a question. Abraham Lincoln himself once discussed the same curious incident with his law-partner Herndon, and made it a subject of the continuance of mental consciousness after death.

It was a warm afternoon. A dark cloud hung in the northern sky, and grew slowly over the arch of serene and sunny blue.

”Goin' to have a storm,” said the blacksmith. ”Shouldn't wonder if it were a tempest. We generally get a tempest about this time of year, when winter finally breaks up into spring. Well, I declare! there comes Johnnie Kongapod, the Kickapoo Indian from Illinois--he and his dogs.”

A tall Indian was seen coming toward the smithy, followed by two dogs.

The men watched him as he approached. He was a kind of chief, and had accepted the teachings of the early missionaries. He used to wander about among the new settlements, and was very proud of himself and his own tribe and race. He had an honest heart. He once composed an epitaph for himself, which was well meant but read oddly, and which Abraham Lincoln sometimes used to quote in his professional career:

”Here lies poor Johnnie Kongapod, Have mercy on him, gracious G.o.d, As he would do if he was G.o.d, And you were Johnnie Kongapod.”

The Indian sat down on the log sill of the blacksmith's shop, and watched the gathering cloud as it slowly shut out the sky.

”Storm,” said he. ”Lay down, Jack; lay down, Jim.”

Jack and Jim were his two dogs. They eyed the flaming forge. One of them seemed tired, and lay down beside his master, but the other made himself troublesome.

”That reminds me,” said Dennis Hanks; and he related a curious story of a troublesome dog, perhaps the one which in its evolutions became known as ”SYKES'S DOG,” though this may be a later New Salem story. It was an odd and a coa.r.s.e bit of humor. Lincoln himself is represented as telling this, or a like story, to General Grant after the Vicksburg campaign, something as follows:

”'Your enemies were constantly coming to me with their criticisms while the siege was in progress, and they did not cease their ill opinions after the city fell. I thought that the time had come to put an end to this kind of criticism, so one day, when a delegation called to see me and had spent a half-hour, and tried to show me the great mistake that you had made in paroling Pemberton's army, I thought I could get rid of them best by telling the story of Sykes's dog.

”'Have you ever heard the story of Sykes's dog?' I said to the spokesman of the delegation.

”'No.'

”'Well, I must tell it to you. Sykes had a yellow dog that he set great store by; but there were a lot of _small boys_ around the village, and the dog became very unpopular among them. His eye was so keen on his master's interests that there arose prejudice against him. The boys counseled how to get rid of him. They finally fixed up a cartridge with a long fuse, and put the cartridge in a piece of meat, and then sat down on a fence and called the dog, one of them holding the fuse in his hand. The dog swallowed the meat, cartridge and all, and stood choking, when one of them touched off the fuse. There was a loud report. Sykes came out of the house, and found the ground was strewed with pieces of the dog. He picked up the biggest piece that he could find--a portion of the back with the tail still hanging to it--and said:

”'Well, I guess that will never be of much account again--_as a dog_.'--'I guess that Pemberton's forces will never amount to much again--as an army.' By this time the delegation were looking for their hats.”

Like stories followed among the merry foresters. One of them told another ”That reminds me”--how that two boys had been pursued by a small but vicious dog, and one of them had caught and held him by the tail while the other ran up a tree. At last the boy who was holding the dog became tired and knew not what to do, and cried out:

”Jim!”

”What say?”

”Come down.”

”What for?”

”To help me let go of the dog.”