Chapter III: Nat Bradley

I had been for some time expecting to see my guide strike into one of those side gates, sparsely appearing along the pike, and which I knew, by the pretentious piers of hewn post-oak, to be the entrances to some dwelling or plantation.

"How far is it to your father's place?" I asked, in a careless way, so as to conceal my impatience.

"Oh! a long way yet," was the discouraging reply. "At least forty miles. We can not reach it to-night. We must sleep in Columbia."

"Beyond Columbia it is?"

"A long way beyond. There's no cotton land on this side worth cultivating. It lies too far north, and the frost, as I've told you, often kills the young plants. Father's plantation is a good ways from the road, on one of the creeks that run into Duck river. It's capital soil for cotton, only that we have a long way to haul it to a steamboat landing. This year we intend sending the crop to New Orleans on a flat. Father's got an idea it will pay, and the boat's being built. You see, the creek runs right through our plantation, and it's wide enough to get a flat through to the Duck. Once there, it's only to float down to the Tennessee and into the Ohio--then on to the Mississippi. We never did it before, but some of our neighbors have tried it, and they say it pays. Of course you know, after the crop's gathered the niggers haven't much to do, and half a dozen of them, with one or two of the regular river boatmen, can navigate a flat without much expense. By steamboat there's heavy freight charges just now; besides the hauling before you can get it aboard. There's no landing nearer our plantation than twenty miles, and with bad roads at that. We make a hundred and fifty bales every year, and as a team can only take four at a time, you can tell what a tedious affair it is. With a flat we can load right on our own land, close to the cotton-press."

I had become so interested in these details of cotton planting that I had almost ceased to think of that other attraction which I expected to find upon the plantation.

It was something so original, so American-like, a crop raised in the very heart of a continent--amid forest-clad slopes apparently inaccessible--to be thus transported from the spot on which it was grown to a market more than a thousand miles distant, not by ship or steam, or the intervention of any kind of carrier to share the profits of transportation, but transported by the agriculturist who had grown it--going, as it were, direct from the producer to the consumer!

Absorbed in the contemplation of this curious problem in political economy--important as curious--I had for the time forgotten the traveling companion who had suggested it.

I was aroused from my reverie by hearing him exchange a salutation with some one who had met us on the road. On looking up I saw it was a horseman going in the opposite direction. He, too, had the appearance of a traveler, his horse dimmed with dust and dry sweat, with a pair of swollen saddle-bags protruding behind his thighs.

He was a young man--apparently twenty-five--though with a countenance whose expression told of an experience far beyond his age--a circumstance by no means rare in the region of the South-west.

By his dress he would also have been taken for a planter; although it was unlike that worn by young Woodley. Like him, he had a Panama hat; but instead of white linen, his coat was a blouse of sky-blue _cottonade_, plaited and close-buttoned over the breast, while his trowsers were of the same stuff and color. It was, in fact, the dress of the Louisianian creole, adopted by many Americans who have migrated to lands on the lower Mississippi.

"Well, Walt! Been to Nashville?" was the speech he had addressed to my companion, as they reined up their horses in the middle of the road.

"Nat Bradley!" exclaimed the young planter, evidently under some surprise, which might be caused by an unexpected encounter.

"Yes, Nat Bradley it is."

"Who'd have looked for you here? Where have you been?"

"Only out to take a squint at the old place. Mighty glad I got shet of it. You're all a set of fools for staying in Tennessee. Talk of growin' cotton up here! Mississippi's the place for that. Why, the meanest nigger on my plant can make two bales to your one."

"I've heard you have been having great success. My brother has written to say so."

"Has he, indeed? Well, it's a wonder he don't give up his corn-growing and try the cotton too. For my part I go in for the weed that fetches the ready cash--twenty cents to the pound. You've a good crop this year, haven't you?"

"I believe it is."

"How many bales are you countin' on?"

"Father thinks there will be nearly two hundred."

"D----d handsome crop, if you can only get it safe to market. I've heard out on Duck you intend flatting it."

"Yes; we are building a boat for that purpose."

"Best way in the world. Far the best. No expense, no hauling, no freight charges of any kind. Besides, the steamers are eternally getting blown up. There's half a score of them bu'st their boilers last season. Recommend me to the good old-fashioned flat. I always send my truck to Orleans that way, and would do so even if I could tumble the bales into a steamboat right off the plantation press. Last flat I sent down fetched me as lumber enough to pay all the expenses of takin' it there. Come straight from Nashville?"

"Yes."

"Know if there's any boat about starting for below?"

"I haven't heard."

"Hope there is. I want to get down to Mississip. I only run up for a little business I had in Nash, and thought when so near, I might as well run out and have a look at the old diggin's on the Duck. Corneel's out there, ain't she?"

"Yes. My sister is with us."

"Of course I didn't see her, as your old man and I hain't been on the square ever since that--you know--. D----d hot, ain't it?"

The last remark appeared to be by way of changing the subject, which I could see was not at all agreeable to my young companion.

"Very hot," was the assenting reply.

"The sooner we get out of it the better. _You're_ bound straight for home, I suppose?"

"Straight."

The emphasis on the "you're," with a look cast toward me, was evidently meant to draw out a different answer; while in the glance, quick and furtive as it was, I could read in Nat Bradley's mind a sentiment hostile to myself.

"Well!" he exclaimed, turning to conceal his dissatisfaction, "I'm off, Woodley. Hope to see you some day in Mississippi. Good-by!"

And with another sullen side-look at me, which I did not fail to return, Nat Bradley struck the spur into his sweating horse, and went clattering off along the turnpike toward Nashville.