The End of the World: A Love StoryEggleston, Edward
General
The End of the World: A Love Story
Eggleston, Edward
Fiction; Love stories
The instruments provided by this orchestra were as various as their
musical tastes. It is likely that even Mr. Jubilee Gilmore never saw
such an outfit. Bob Short had a dumb-bull, a keg with a strip of
raw-hide stretched across one end like a drum-head, while the other
remained open. A waxed cord inserted in the middle of the drum-head, and
reaching down through the keg, completed the instrument. The pulling of
the hand over this cord made a hideous bellowing, hence its name. Bill
Day had a gigantic watchman's rattle, a hickory spring on a cog-wheel.
It is called in the West, a horse-fiddle, because it is so unlike either
a horse or a fiddle. Then there were melodious tin pans and conch-shells
and tin horns. But the most deadly noise was made by Jim West, who had
two iron skillet-lids ("leds" he called them) which, when placed face to
face, and rubbed, as you have seen children rub tumblers, made a sound
discordant and deafening enough to have suggested Milton's expression
about the hinges which "grated harsh thunder."
One of this party was a tallish man, so dressed as to look like a
hunchback, and a hunchback so tall was a most singular figure. He had
joined them in the dark, and the rest were unable to guess who it could
be, and he, for his part, would not tell. They thumped him and pushed
him, but at each attack he only leaped from the ground like a circus
clown, and made his tin horn utter so doleful a complaint as set the
party in an uproar of laughter. They could not be sure who he was, but
he was a funny fellow to have along with them at any rate.
He was not only funny, but he was evidently fearless. For when they came
to the castle it was all dark and still. Bill Day said that it looked
"powerful juberous to him. Ole Andy meant to use shootin'-ir'ns, and
didn't want to be pestered with no lights blazin' in his eyes." But the
tall hunchback cleared the fence at a bound, and told them to come on
"ef they had the sperrit of a two-weeks-old goslin into 'em." So the
bottle was passed round, and for very shame they followed their
ungainly leader.
"Looky here, boys," said the hunchback, "they's one way that we can fix
it so's ole Grizzly can't shoot. They's a little shop-place, a sort of a
shed, agin the house, on the side next to the branch. Let's git in thar
afore we begin, and he can't shoot."
The orchestra were a little stupefied with drink, and they took the idea
quickly, never stopping to ask how they could retreat if Andrew chose to
shoot. Jim West thought things looked scaly, but he warn't agoin' to
backslide arter he'd got so fur.
When they got into Andrew's shop, where he had a new and beautiful
skiff in building, the tall hunchback shut the door, and the rest did
not notice that he put the key in his pocket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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