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Title: The bushwhackers & other stories

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock

Release date: May 24, 2022 [eBook #68162]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Herbert S. Stone & Company

Credits: Peter Becker, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUSHWHACKERS & OTHER STORIES ***


THE BUSHWHACKERS
_&_
OTHER STORIES




THE

Bushwhackers

&

Other Stories

BY

CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

AUTHOR OF “IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS,” “THE
STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON,” ETC.

[Illustration: Logo]

HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY
CHICAGO & NEW YORK
MDCCCXCIX


COPYRIGHT 1899 BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.


THIRD IMPRESSION




CONTENTS

                                          PAGE
THE BUSHWHACKERS                             3

THE PANTHER OF JOLTON’S RIDGE              119

THE EXPLOIT OF CHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW      217




THE BUSHWHACKERS




CHAPTER I


One might have imagined that there was some enchantment in the spot
which drew hither daily the young mountaineer’s steps. No visible lure
it showed. No prosaic reasonable errand he seemed to have. But always
at some hour between the early springtide sunrise and the late vernal
sunset Hilary Knox climbed the craggy, almost inaccessible steeps to
this rocky promontory, that jutted out in a single sharp peak, not
only beetling far over the sea of foliage in the wooded valley below,
but rising high above the dense forests of the slope of the mountain,
from the summit of which it projected. Here he would stand, shading his
eyes with his hand, and gaze far and near over the great landscape.
At first he seemed breathless with eager expectation; then earnestly
searching lest there should be aught overlooked; at last dully,
wistfully dwelling on the scene in the full realization of the pangs of
disappointment for the absence of something he fain would see.

Always he waited as long as he could, as if the chance of any moment
might conjure into the landscape, brilliant with the vivid growths and
tender grace of the spring, that for which he looked in vain. A wind
would come up the gorge and flutter about him, as he stood poised on
the upward slant of the rock, the loftiest point of the mountain. If
it were a young and frisky zephyr, but lately loosed from the cave of
Æolus, which surely must be situated near at hand--on the opposite
spur perhaps, so windy was the ravine, so tumultuous the continual
coming and going of the currents of the air,--he must needs risk
his balance on the pinnacle of the crag to hold on to his hat. And
sometimes the frolicsome breeze like other gay young sprites would
not have done with playing tag, and when he thought himself safe and
lowered his hand to shade his eyes, again the wind would twitch it by
the brim and scurry away down the ravine, making all the trees ripple
with murmurous laughter as it sped to the valley, while Hilary would
gasp and plunge forward and once more clutch his hat, then again look
out to descry perchance what he so ardently longed to see in the
distance. Some pleasant vision he surely must have expected--something
charming to the senses or promissory of weal or happiness it must have
been; for his cheek flushed scarlet and his pulses beat fast at the
very thought.

No one noticed his coming or going. All boys are a species of vagrant
fowl, and with the daily migrations back and forth of a young
mountaineer especially, no steady-minded, elder person would care to
burden his observation. Another kind of fowl, an eagle, had built a
nest in the bare branches at the summit of an isolated pine tree, of
which only the lower boughs were foliaged, and this was higher even
than the peak to which Hilary daily repaired for the earliest glimpse
of his materialized hopes advancing down the gorge. The pair of birds
only of all the denizens of the mountain took heed of his movements and
displayed an anxiety and suspicion and a sort of fierce but fluttered
indignation. It is impossible to say whether they were aware that
their variety had grown rare in these parts, and that their capture,
dead or alive, would be a matter of very considerable interest, and it
is also futile to speculate as to whether they had any knowledge of
the uses or range of the rifle which Hilary sometimes carried on his
shoulder. Certain it is, however, the male bird muttered indignantly
as he looked down at the young mountaineer, and was wont to agitatedly
flop about the great clumsy nest of interwoven sticks where the
female, the larger of the two, with a steady courage sat motionless,
only her elongated neck and bright dilation of the eyes betokening
her excitement and distress. The male bird was of a more reckless
tendency, and often visibly strove with an intermittent intention of
swooping down to attack the intruder, for Hilary was but a slender
fellow of about sixteen years, although tall and fleet of foot. A
good shot, too, he was, and he had steady nerves, despite the glitter
of excitement in his eyes forever gazing down the gorge. Because of
his absorption in this expectation he took no notice of the eagles,
although to justify his long absences from home he often brought his
rifle on the plea of hunting. How should he care to observe the birds
when at any moment he might see the flutter of a guidon in the valley
road, a mere path from this height, and hear the trumpet sing out
sweet and clear in the silence of the wilderness! At any moment the
wind might bring the sound of the tramp of cavalry, the clatter of the
carbine and canteen, and the clanking of spur and saber as some wild
band of guerrillas came raiding through the country.

For despite the solemn stillness that brooded in the similitude of the
deepest peace upon the scene, war was still rife in the land. The
theater of action was far from this sequestered region, but there had
been times when the piny gorges were full of the more prickly growth
of bayonets. The echoing crags were taught the thrilling eloquence
of the bugle, and the mountains reverberated with the oratory of the
cannon--for the artillery learned to climb the deer-paths. There was
a fine panorama once in the twilight when a battery on the heights
shelled the woods in the valley, and tiny white clouds with hearts of
darting fire described swift aerial curves, the fuses burning brightly
against the bland blue sky, ere that supreme moment of explosion when
the bursting fragments hurtled wildly through the air.

Occasionally a cluster of white tents would spring up like mushrooms
at the base of a mountain spur--gone as suddenly as they had come,
leaving a bed of embers where the camp-fires had been, a vague wreath
of smoke and little trace besides, for the felled trees cut for fuel
made scant impression upon the densities of the wilderness, and the
rocks were immutable.

And then for months a primeval silence and loneliness might enfold the
mountains.

“Ef they kem agin, ef ever they kem agin, I’ll jine ’em--I’ll jine
’em,” cried Hilary out of a full heart as he stood and gazed.

And this was the reason he watched daily and sometimes deep into the
night, lest coming under cover of the darkness they might depart before
the dawn, leaving only the embers of their camp-fires to tell of their
vanished presence.

The prospect stirred the boy’s heart. He longed to be in the midst
of action, to take a man’s part in the great struggle, to live the
life and do the faithful devoir of a soldier. He was young but he was
strong, and he felt that here he was biding at home as if he were
no more fit for the military duty he yearned to assume than was the
miller’s daughter, Delia Noakes.

“I tole Dely yesterday ez I’d git her ter l’arn me ter spin ef ye kep’
me hyar much longer,” he said one day petulantly to his mother. “I’ll
jes’ set an’ spin like a sure-enough gal ef ye won’t let me go an’ jine
the army like a boy.”

“I ain’t never gin my word agin yer goin’,” the widow would temporize,
alarmed by the possibility of his running away without permission if
definitely forbidden to enlist, and therefore craftily holding out the
prospect of her consent, which she knew he valued, for he had always
been a dutiful son. “I hev never gin my word agin it--not sence ye
hev got some growth--ye shot up as suddint ez Jonah’s gourd in a
single night. But I don’t want ye ter jine no stray bands--ez mought
be bushwhackers an’ sech. Jes’ wait till we git the word whar Cap’n
Baker’s command be--fur I want ye ter be under some ez kem from our
deestric’--I’d feel so much safer bout’n ye, an’ ye would be pleased,
too, Cap’n Baker bein’ a powerful fighter an’ brave an’ respected by
all. Ye mus’ wait, too, till I kin finish yer new shuts, an’ knittin’
them socks; I wouldn’t feel right fur ye to go destitute--a plumb
beggar fur clothes.”

Hilary had never heard of Penelope’s web, and the crafty device
of raveling out at night the work achieved in the day, but to his
impatience it seemed that his departure was indefinitely postponed for
his simple outfit progressed no whit day by day, although his mother’s
show of industry was great.

The earth also seemed to have swallowed Captain Baker and his command;
although Hilary rode again and again to the postoffice at a little
mountain hamlet some ten miles distant, and talked to all informed and
discerning persons whom the hope of learning the latest details of
the events of the war had drawn thither, and could hear news of any
description to suit the taste of the narrator--all the most reliable
items of the “grape-vine telegraph,” as mere rumor used to be called in
those days--not one word came of Captain Baker.

His mother sometimes could control his outbursts of impatience on these
occasions by ridicule.

“’Member the time, Hil’ry,” she would say, glancing at him with
waggish mock gravity in her eyes as they gleamed over her spectacles,
“when ye offered ter enlist with Cap’n Baker’s infantry year afore
las’, when the war fust broke out--ye warn’t no higher than that
biscuit block then--he tole ye that ye warn’t up ter age or size or
weight or height, an’ ye tole him that thar war a plenty of ye ter pull
a trigger, an’ he bust out laughin’ an’ lowed ez he warn’t allowed ter
enlist men under fourteen. He said he thunk it war a folly in the rule,
fur he had seen some mighty old men under fourteen--though none so aged
ez you-uns. My, how he did laugh.”

“I wish ye would quit tellin’ that old tale,” said her son, sulkily,
his face reddening with the mingled recollection of his own absurdity
and the seriousness with which in his simplicity he had listened to the
officer’s ridicule.

“An’ ye war so special small-sized and spindlin’ then,” exclaimed his
mother, pausing in her knitting to take off her spectacles to wipe away
the tears of laughter that had gathered at the recollection.

“I ain’t small-sized an’ spindling now,” said Hilary, drawing himself
up to his full height and bridling with offended dignity in the
consciousness of his inches and his muscles. “I know ez Cap’n Baker or
enny other officer would ’list me now, for though I ain’t quite sixteen
I be powerful well growed fur my age.”

As he realized this anew his flush deepened as he stood and looked
down at the fire, while his mother covertly watched his expression. He
felt it a burning shame that he should still linger here laggard when
all his instinct was to help and sustain the cause of his countrymen.
His loyalty was to the sense of home. His impulse was to repel the
invader, although the majority of the mountaineers of East Tennessee
were for the Union, and many fought for the old flag against their
neighbors and often against their close kindred, so stanch was their
loyalty in those times that tried men’s souls.

One day, as Hilary, straining his eyes, stood on his perch on the crag,
he beheld fluttering far, far away--was it a wreath of mist floating
along the level, sinuous curves of the distant valley road--a wreath of
mist astir on some gentle current of the atmosphere? He had a sudden
sense of color. Did the vapor catch a prismatic glister from the sun’s
rays? And now faint, far, like the ethereal tones of an elfin horn,
a mellow vibration sounded on the air. Hardly louder it was than the
booming of a bee in the heart of a flower, scarcely more definite
than the melody one hears in a dream, which one can remember, yet
cannot recognize or sing again; nevertheless his heart bounded at the
vague and vagrant strain, and he knew the fluttering prismatic bits of
color to be the guidons of a squadron of cavalry. His heart kept pace
with the hoofbeats of the horses. The lessening distance magnified
them to his vision till he could discern now a bright glint of steely
light as the sun struck on the burnished arms of the riders, and
could distinguish the tints of the steeds--gray, blood-bay, black and
roan-red; he could soon hear, too, the jingle of the spurs, the clank
of sabers and carbines, and now and again the voices of the men, bluff,
merry, hearty, as they rode at their ease. He would not lose sight of
them till they had paused to pitch their camp at the foot of a great
spur of the mountain opposite. There was a famous spring of clear,
cold water there, he remembered.

The great spread of mountain ranges had grown purple in the sunset,
with the green cup-like coves between filled to the brim with the
red vintage of the afternoon light, still limpid, translucent, with
no suggestion of the dregs of shadow or sediment of darkness in this
radiant nectar. Nor was there token of coming night in the sky--all
amber and pearl--the fairest hour of the day. No premonition of
approaching sorrow or defeat, of death or rue, was in the gay bivouac
at the foot of the mountain. The very horses picketed along the bank
of the stream whickered aloud in obvious content with their journey’s
end, their supper, their drink, and their bed; the sound of song and
jollity, the halloo, the loud, cheery talk of the troopers, rose as
lightly on the air as the long streamers of undulating blazes from
the camp-fires and the curling tendrils of the ascending smoke. More
distant groups betokened the precaution of videttes at an outpost. A
sentinel near the road, for the camp guard was posted betimes, was the
only silent and grave man in the gay company, it seemed to Hilary,
as he watched the gallant, soldierly figure with his martial tread
marching to and fro in this solitary place, as if for all the world to
see. For Hilary had made his way down the mountain and was now on the
outskirts of the camp, the goal of all his military aspirations.

He had come so near that a sudden voice rang out on the evening air,
and he paused as the sentry challenged his approach. The rocky river
bank vibrated with the echo of the soldier’s imperative tones.

Hilary remembered that moment always. It meant so much to him. Every
detail of the scene was painted on his memory years and years afterward
as if but yesterday it was aglow--the evening air that was so still,
so filled with mellow, illuminated color, so imbued with peace and
fragrance and soft content, such as one could imagine may pervade the
realms of Paradise, was yet the vehicle for the limning of this warlike
picture. The great purple mountains loomed high around; through the
green valley now crept a dun-tinted shadow more like a deepening of the
rich verdant color of the foliage than a visible transition toward the
glooms of the night; the stream was steel-gray and full of the white
flickers of foam; further up the water reflected a flare of camp-fires,
broadly aglow, with great sprangles of fluctuating flame and smoke
setting the blue dusk a-quiver with alternations of light and shade;
there were the dim rows of horses, some still sturdily champing their
provender, others dully drowsing, and one nearer at hand, a noble
charger, standing with uplifted neck and thin, expanded nostrils and
full lustrous eyes, gazing over the winding way, the vacant road by
which they had come. Beyond were the figures of the soldiers; a few,
who had already finished their supper, were rolled in their blankets
with their feet to the fire in a circle like the spokes of a wheel
to the hub. There, pillowed on their saddles, would they sleep all
night under the pulsating white stars, for these swift raids were
unencumbered with baggage, and the pitching of a tent meant a longer
stay than the bivouac of a single night. Others were still at their
supper, broiling rashers of bacon on the coals, or toasting a bird or
chicken, split and poised on a pointed cedar stick before the flames.
Socially disposed groups were laughing and talking beside the flaring
brands, the firelight gleaming in their eyes, half shaded by the wide,
drooping brims of their broad hats, and flashing on their white teeth
as they rehearsed the incidents of the day or made merry with old
scores. Now and then a stave of song would rise sonorously into the
air as a big bass voice trolled out a popular melody--it was the first
time Hilary had ever heard the sentimental, melancholy measures of
“The Sun’s Low Down the Sky, Lorena.” Sometimes, by way of symphony, a
tentative staccato variation of the theme would issue from the strings
of a violin, borrowed from a neighboring dwelling, which a young
trooper, seated leaning against the bole of a great tree, was playing
with a deft, assured touch.

Hilary often saw such scenes afterward, but not even the reality
was ever so vivid as the recollection of this fire-lit perspective
glimmering behind the figure of the guard.

The two gazed at each other in the brief space of a second--the boy
eager and expectant, the soldier’s eyes dark, steady, challenging,
under the broad, drooping brim of his soft hat. He was young, but he
had a short-pointed dark beard, and a mustache, and although thin and
lightly built, he was sinewy and alert, and in his long, spurred boots
and gray uniform he looked sufficiently formidable with his carbine in
his hand.

“Who comes there?” he sternly demanded.

“A friend,” quavered Hilary, and he could have utterly repudiated
himself that his voice should show this tremor of excitement since
it might seem to be that of fear in the estimation of this man, who
defied dangers and knew no faltering, and had fought to the last moment
on the losing side on many a stricken field, and was content to believe
that duty and courage were as valid a guerdon in themselves as fickle
victory, which perches as a bird might on the standard of chance.

“Advance, friend, and give the countersign,” said the sentry.

It seemed to Hilary at the moment that it was some strange aberration
of all the probabilities that he should not know this mystic word,
this potent phrase, which should grant admission to the life of the
camp that already seemed to him his native sphere. He advanced a step
nearer, and while the sentinel bent his brow more intently upon him
and looked firmly and negatively expectant, he gave in lieu of the
watchword a full detail of his errand,--that he wished to be a soldier
and fight for his country, and especially enlist with this squadron,
albeit he did not know a single man of the command, nor even the
leader’s rank or name.

Hilary could not altogether account for a sudden change in the
sentinel’s face and manner. He had been very sure that he was about to
be denied all admission according to the strict orders to permit no
stranger within the lines of the encampment. The soldier stared at the
boy a moment longer, then called lustily aloud for the corporal of the
guard. For these were the days of the close conscription, when it was
popularly said that the army robbed both the cradle and the grave for
its recruits, so young and so old were the men accounted liable for
military duty. The sentinel could but discern at a glance that Hilary
was younger even than the limit for these later conscriptions, and
that only as a voluntary sacrifice to patriotism were his services
attainable. The corporal of the guard came forthwith--tall, heavy,
broad-visaged, downright in manner, and of a blunt style of speech.
But on his face, too, the expression of formidable negation gave way
at once to a brisk alacrity of welcome, and he immediately conducted
Hilary to another officer, who brought him to a little knoll where
the captain commanding the squadron was seated by a brisk fire, half
reclining on his saddle thrown on the ground. He was beguiling his
leisure, and perhaps reinforcing a certain down-hearted tendency to
nostalgia, by reading the latest letters he had from home--letters a
matter of six months old now, and already read into tatters, but so
illuminated between the lines with familiar pictures and treasured
household memories that they were still replete with an interest that
would last longer than the paper. Two or three other officers were
playing cards by the light of the fire, and one, elderly and grave, was
reading a book through spectacles of sedate aspect.

The measure of Hilary’s satisfaction was full to the brim. Captain
Baker, as he informed his mother when a little later he burst into the
home-circle wild with delight in his adventure and his news, couldn’t
hold a candle to Captain Bertley. And rejoiced was he to be going at
last and going with this officer. Hilary declared again and again that
he wouldn’t be willing to fight in any other command. He was going at
last, and going with the only captain in all the world for him--the
first and foremost of men! And yet only this morning he had not known
that this paragon existed.

He was so a-quiver with excitement and joy and expectation and pride
that his mother, pale and tremulous as she made up his little bundle
of long-delayed clothes, was a trifle surprised to hear him protest
that he could not leave without bidding farewell to the Noakes family,
who lived at the Notch in the mountain, and especially his old crony,
Delia; yet Captain Bertley’s trumpets would sound “boots and saddles”
at the earliest glint of dawn. Delia was near his own age, and he had
always magnanimously pitied her for not being a boy. Formerly she had
meekly acquiesced in her inferiority, mental and physical, especially
in the matter of running, although she made pretty fair speed, and in
throwing stones, which she never could be taught to do with accurate
aim. But of late years she had not seemed to “sense” this inferiority,
so to speak, and once in reference to the war she had declared
that she was glad to be a girl, and thus debarred from fighting,
“fur killing folks, no matter fur whut or how, always seemed to be
sinful!” When argued with on this basis she fell back on the broad
and uncontrovertible proposition that “anyhow bloodshed war powerful
onpleasant.”

To see these friends once again Hilary had no time to waste. As he
made his way along the sandy road with the stars palpitating whitely
in the sky above the heavy forest, which rose so high on either hand
as to seem almost to touch them, this deep, narrow passage looked when
the perspective held a straight line to rising ground, ending in the
sidereal coruscations, like the veritable way to the stars, sought by
every ambitious wight since the days of the Cæsars. Hilary had never
heard an allusion to that royal road, but as he walked along with
a buoyant, steady step, his hat in his hand that the breeze might
cool his hot brow and blow backward his long masses of fair hair, he
followed indeed an upward path in the sentiments that quickened his
pulses, for he was resolved upon duty and thinking high thoughts that
should materialize in fine deeds. He was to do and dare! He would
be useful and faithful and brave--brave! He had a reverence for the
quality of courage--not for the sake of its emulous display, but for
the spirit of all nobly valiant deeds. He had rejoiced in the very
expression of the captain’s eyes--so true and tried! He, too, would
meet the coming years fairly. The raw recruit could see his way to the
stars at the end of that mountain vista.

But it seemed a poor preparation for all this when he awoke the inmates
of the Noakes cabin, for it was past midnight, with the news that
he had “jined the cavalry” and was to march at peep of dawn with
Bertley’s squadron. It is true that the elders crowded around him half
dressed only, so hastily had they been roused, and expressed surprise,
congratulations, and regrets in one inconsistent breath, and old Mrs.
Dite, Delia’s grandmother, bestowed on him a woolen comforter which
she had knitted for him, and for which, improvidently, it being now
near summer, he cared less than for the turmoil of excitement and
interest they had manifested in his preferment, for he felt every inch
a man and a soldier, and they respectfully seemed to defer to his new
pretensions. Delia, however, the most unaccountable of girls--and
girls are always unaccountable--put her arm over her eyes as she stood
beside the mantelpiece, beneath which the embers had been stirred into
a blaze for light, and turned her face to the wall and burst into
tears. She wept with so much vehemence that her long plait of black
hair hanging down her back swayed from side to side of her shoulders
as she shook her head to and fro in the extremity of her woe. When
the elders remonstrated with her, and declared this was no occasion
for sorrow, she only lifted her tear-stained face for a moment to say
in justification that she believed that bullets were too small to be
dodged with any success when they were flying round promiscuously. And
in the midst of the volley of laughter which this evoked from the old
people, Hilary’s voice rang out indignantly, “An’ I ain’t no hand ter
dodge bullets, nuther.”

“That’s jes’ what I am a-crying about,” replied Delia, to the
mischievous delight of the elders.

Thus the farewell to his old friends was not very exhilarating to
Hilary. Delia did not even at the last unveil her face or change her
attitude against the wall. To shake hands he was obliged to pull her
hand from her eyes by way of over her head, and in this maneuver he was
moved to notice how much taller he had lately grown. Her hand was very
limp and cold and wet with her tears--so wet that he had to wipe these
tears from his own hand on the brim of his hat on his homeward way.

And when, as in sudden enchantment, darkness became light and night
developed into dawn, when color renewed the landscape, and the dull sky
grew red as if flushed with sudden triumph, and the black mountains
turned royally purple in the distance and tenderly green nearer at
hand, and the waters of the river leaped and flashed like a live thing,
as with an actual joy in existence, and the great fiery sun, full of
vital yellow flame, flared up over the eastern horizon, the squadron,
with jingling spurs and clanking sabers, with carbines and canteens
rattling, with the trumpet now and again sending forth those elated,
joyous martial strains, so sweet and yet so proud, rode forth into a
new day, and Hilary Knox, among the troopers and gallantly mounted,
rode forth into a new life.

The bivouac fires glowed for a while, then fell to smoldering and died,
leaving but a gray ash to tell of their presence here. Day by day the
eagles in the great bare pine tree on the high rock at the summit of
the mountain looked for Hilary to visit his point of observation and
stir their hearts with fear and wrath. Time and again the male bird
might have been seen to circle about at the usual hour for the boy’s
coming; first with apprehension lest his absence was too good to
be true, then, with the courage of immunity undisciplined by fear,
screaming and flouncing as if to challenge this apparition of quondam
terror. Now and then the pair seemed to argue and collogue together
upon the mystery of his non-appearance, and to chuffily compare notes,
and seek to classify their impressions of this singular specimen of the
animal kingdom. Perhaps, tabulated, their conclusions might stand thus:
Genus, boy; habits, noisy; diet, omnivorous; element, mischief; uses,
undiscovered and undiscoverable.

Long, long after the eagles had forgotten the intruder, after their
brood, the two ill-feathered nestlings, had taken strongly to wing,
after their nest, a mass of loose, but well collocated sticks and
grass, had given way to the beat of the rain and the blasts of the
wind, did Hilary’s mother wearily gaze from the heights where the
mountain cabin was perched down upon the curves of the valley road
along which she had seen him riding away with that glittering train,
and sigh and let her knitting fall from her nerveless hands, and wonder
what would the manner of his home-coming be, or whether the future held
at all a home-coming for him.

And her many sighs kept her heart sick and turned her hair very white.




CHAPTER II


It was a wonderful period of mental development for this wild young
creature of the woods, when Hilary received in his sudden transition
to the “valley kentry” his first adequate impressions of civilization.
He learned that the world is wide; he beheld the triumphs of military
science; he acquiesced in the fixed distinctions of rank, since he must
needs concede the finer grades of capacity. But courage, the inherent,
inimitable endowment, he recognized as the soul of heroism, and in all
the arrogance of elation he became conscious that he possessed it. This
it was that opened his stolid mind to the allurements of ambition. He
rejoiced in an aspiration.

He was brave. That was his identity--his essential vitality! Was
he ignorant, poor, the butt of the campfire jokes, because of his
simplicity in the wide world’s ways, slothful, slow, wild, and
turbulent? He took heed of none of this! He was the bravest of the
brave--and all the command knew it!

With an exultant heart he realized that Captain Bertley was aware
of the fact, and often took account of it in laying his plans. The
regiment of which this squadron was a part belonged to one of those
brigades of light cavalry whose utility was chiefly in quick movements,
in harassing an enemy’s march, in following up and hanging on his
retreat, and sometimes in making swift forced marches, appearing
unexpectedly in distant localities far from the main body and adding
the element of surprise to a sudden and furious onslaught. Often
Hilary was among a few picked men sent out to reconnoiter, or as the
rear-guard when the little band was retreating before a superior force
and it was necessary to fight and flee alternately. It was now and
again in these skirmishes that he had the opportunity to show his pluck
and his strength and his cool head and his ready hand. More than once
he had been the bearer of dispatches of great importance sent by him
alone, disguised in citizen’s dress and his destination a long way off.
Thus did the captain commanding the squadron demonstrate his confidence
in the boy’s fidelity and courage and resource. For his ready wit in an
emergency was hardly less than his courage.

“What did you do, then, with the Colonel’s letter that you were
to deliver at brigade head-quarters?” asked the Captain in much
agitation, but with a voice like thunder and a flashing eye, when one
day Hilary returned from a fruitless expedition, with his finger in his
mouth, so to speak, and a tale of having encountered Federal scouts,
who had stopped and questioned him, and finally after suspiciously
searching him, had turned him loose, believing him nothing more than he
seemed--a peaceful, ignorant country boy.

Hilary glanced ruefully down at the hat that he swung in his hand, then
with anxious deprecation at the Captain, whose face as he stood beside
his horse, ready to mount, had flushed deeply red, either because of
the reflection of the sunset clouds massed in the west or because of
the recollection that he had earnestly recommended the boy to his
superior officer, for this dangerous mission, and thus felt peculiarly
responsible; for the letter had contained details relating to the
Colonel’s orders from brigade headquarters, his numbers, and other
matters, the knowledge of which in the enemy’s hands might precipitate
his capture, together with all the detachment.

“It’s gone, sir,” mumbled Hilary, the picture of despair; “I never
knowed what ter do, so--”

“So you let them have that letter--when I had told you how important it
was!”

“I don’t see how it could have been helped, since the boy was
searched,” said Captain Blake, the junior captain of the squadron, who
was standing by. “I am glad he came back to let us know.”

“That’s why I done what I done,” eagerly explained Hilary. “I--I--eat
it.”

“All of it?” cried Captain Bertley, with a flash of relief.

“Yes, sir, I swallowed it all bodaciously--just ez soon ez I seen ’em
a-kemin’ dustin’ along the road.”

“Well done, Baby Bunting!” cried the senior officer, for thus was
Hilary distinguished among the troopers on account of his tender years.

The gruff Captain Blake laughed delightedly, a hoarse, discordant
demonstration, much like the chuckling of a rusty old crow. He seemed
to think it a good joke, and Hilary knew that he, too, was vastly
relieved to have saved from the enemy such important information.

“Pretty bitter pill, eh?”

“Naw, sir,” said Hilary, his eyes twinkling as he swung his hat in his
hand, for he could never be truly military out of his uniform; “it war
like eatin’ a yard medjure of mustard plaster, bein’ stiff ter swaller
an’ somehow goin’ agin the grain.”

The senior captain gravely commended his presence of mind, and said he
would remember this and his many other good services. As he dismissed
the young trooper and still standing, holding a sheet of paper against
his saddle, began to write a report of the fate of the letter that
had so threatened the capture of the whole command, Hilary overheard
Captain Blake say in his bluff, extravagant way, “That boy ought to be
promoted.”

“What?” said Captain Bertley, glancing back over his shoulder with the
pencil in his hand. “Baby Bunting with a command!”

Despite the ridicule of the idea Hilary’s heart swelled within him as
he strolled away, for he cared only to deserve the promotion and the
confidence shown him, even if on account of his extreme youth and
presumable irresponsibility he was debarred from receiving it.

He could not have said why he was not resentful of being called
“Baby Bunting” by Captain Bertley. He felt it was in the nature of
a courteous condescension that the officer should comment on the
inadequacy of his age and the discrepancy between his limited powers
and his valuable deeds--almost as a jesting token of affection, kindly
meant and kindly received. But the name fell upon his ear often with a
far different significance; the camp cry “Bye, oh, Baby Bunting,” was
intended to goad him to such a degree of anger as should make him the
sport of the groups around the bivouac fire. The chief instigator of
this effort was a big, brutal cavalryman, by name Jack Bixby. He had a
long, red beard; long, reddish hair; small, twinkling, dark eyes, and
a powerfully built, sinewy, well-compacted figure. He was superficially
considered jolly and genial, for few of his careless companions were
observant enough of moral phenomena or sufficiently students of human
nature to take note of the fact that there was always a spice of
ill-humor in his mirth. Malice or jealousy or grudging or a mean spirit
of derision pervaded his merriment. He found great joy in ridiculing
a raw country boy, whose lack of knowledge of the world’s ways laid
him liable to many mistakes and misconceptions, and at first Hilary’s
credulity in the big lies told him by Jack Bixby and his simplicity
in acting upon them exposed him to the laughter of the whole troop.
This was checked in one instance, however; having been instructed that
it was an accepted detail of the observances of a soldier, Hilary
was induced to advance with great ceremony one day, and duly saluting
ask Captain Bertley how he found his health. The officer was standing
on ground somewhat elevated above the site of the camp, in full gray
uniform, a field-glass in his hand, his splendid charger at his
shoulder, the reins thrown over his arm. The humble “Baby Bunting”
approaching this august military object, and presuming to ask after
the commanding officer’s health, was in full view of a hundred or more
startled and amazed veterans.

But Captain Bertley had seen and known much of this world and its
ways. He instantly recognized the incident as a bit of malicious play
upon the simplicity of the new recruit, and he took due note, too, of
his own dignity. He realized how to balk the one and to support the
other. He accepted the unusual and absurd demonstration concerning
his health by saying simply that he was quite well, and then he
kept the boy standing in conversation as to the state of a certain
ford some distance up the river, with which Hilary was acquainted,
having been of a scouting party which had been sent in that direction
the previous day. The staring military spectators, their attention
previously bespoken by Bixby, saw naught especial in the interview, the
boy apparently having been summoned thither by order of the officer
to make a report or give information, and thus the joke, attenuated
to microscopic proportions, failed of effect. It had, however, very
sufficient efficacy in recoil. Before dismissing Hilary the Captain
asked how he had chanced to accost him in the manner with which he had
approached him, and the boy in guilelessly detailing the circumstance,
before he was admonished as to his credulous folly, betrayed Bixby
as the perpetrator of the pleasantry at his expense, and what was far
more serious at the expense of the officer. Jack Bixby, dull enough,
as malicious people often are, or they would not otherwise let their
malice appear--for they are not frank--did not see it in that light
until he suddenly found himself under arrest and then required to mount
the “wooden horse” for several weary hours.

“You’ll be hung up by the thumbs next time, my rooster,” said the
sergeant, as he carried the sentence into effect. “The Cap’n ain’t
so mighty partial to your record, no hows. He asked me if you hadn’t
served with Whingan’s rangers, ez be no better’n bushwhackers, an’ ye
know he is mighty partic’lar ’bout keepin’ up the tone an’ spirit o’
the men.”

Hilary, contradictorily enough, lost all sense of injury and shame in
sorrow that he should have divulged Bixby’s agency in the matter and
brought this disaster upon the trooper, who perhaps had only intended a
little diversion, and had neither the good taste nor the good sense to
perceive its offensiveness to the officer. Bixby _had_ served in a band
generally reputed bushwhackers, who did little more than plunder both
sides, and in which discipline was necessarily slight. And thus after
this episode they were better friends than before. True, in the days
of dearth, for these men must needs starve as well as fight, when only
rations of corn were served out, which the soldiers parched and ate
by the fire, and which were so scanty that a strict watch was kept to
prevent certain of them from robbing their own horses, on the condition
and speed of which their very lives depended, Hilary, as in honor
bound, being detailed for this duty, reported his greedy comrade, but
in view of the half-famished condition of the troops Bixby’s punishment
was light, and the incident did not break off their outward semblance
of friendship, although one may be sure Bixby kept account of it.

So the years went--those wild years of hard riding and hard fighting;
sleeping on the ground under the open skies whether cloudy or clear--it
was months after it was all over before Hilary could accustom himself
to sleep in a bed; roused by the note of the trumpet, sometimes while
the stars were yet white in the dark heavens, with no token of dawn
save a great translucent, tremulous planet heralding the morn, and that
wild, sweet, exultant strain of reveille, so romantic, so stirring,
that it might seem as if it had floated down, proclaiming the day, from
that splendid vanguard of the sun. So they went--those wild years, all
at once over.

The end came on a hard-contested field, albeit only a thousand
or so were engaged on either side. The squadron, in one of those
wild reckless assaults of cavalry against artillery, for which the
Confederate horse were famous in this campaign, had gone to the attack
straight up a hill, while the muzzles of the big, black guns sent
forth smoke and roar, scarcely less frightful than the bombs which
were bursting among the horses and men riding directly at the battery.
It was hard to hold the horses. Often they swerved and faltered, and
sought to turn back. Each time Captain Bertley, with drawn sword,
reformed the line, encouraging the men and urging them to the almost
impossible task anew. At it they went once more, in face of shot and
shell. Now and again Hilary, riding in the rear rank, with his saber
at “the raise,” heard a sharp, singing sibilance, which he knew was a
minie-ball, whizzing close to his ear, and he realized that infantry
was there a little to one side supporting the battery. The rush,
the turmoil, the blare of the trumpets sounding “the charge,” the
clamor of galloping hoofs, of shouting men, the roar of cannon, the
swift panorama of moving objects before the eye, the ever-quickening
speed, and the tremendous sensation of flying through the air like
a projectile--it was all like some wild tempest, some mad conflict
of the elements. And suddenly Hilary became aware that he was flying
through the air without any will of his own. The horse had taken the
bit between his teeth, and maddened by the noise, the frenzy of the
fight, was rushing on he knew not whither, his head stretched out,
his eyes starting, straight up the hill unmindful of the trumpet now
sounding the recall and the heavy pull of the boy on the curb. Hilary
was far away in advance of the others when the line wheeled. A few more
impetuous bounds and plunges, and he was carried in among the Federal
guns, mechanically slashing at the gunners with his saber, until one
of the men, with a well-directed blow, knocked him off his horse with
the long, heavy sponge-staff. So it was that Hilary was captured. He
surrendered to the man with the sponge-staff, for the others were
busily limbering up the guns; they were to take position on a new
site--one less exposed to attack and very commanding. They had more
than they wanted in Hilary. He realized that as he was on his way to
the rear under guard. The engagement was practically at an end, and
the successful Federals were keenly eager to pursue the retreating
force and secure all the fruits of victory. To be hampered with the
disposition of prisoners at such a moment was hardly wise, when an
active pursuit might cut off the whole command. Therefore the few
already taken, who were more or less wounded, were temporarily paroled
in a neighboring hamlet, and Hilary, the war in effect concluded for
him--for the parole was a pledge to remain within the lines and report
at stated intervals to the party granting it--found himself looking
out over a broad white turnpike in a flat country, down which a cloud
of dust was all that could be seen of the body of cavalry so lately
contending for every inch of ground.

Now and again a series of white puffs of smoke from amidst the
hillocks on the west told that the battery of the Federals was shelling
the woods which their enemy had succeeded in gaining, the shells
hurtling high above the heads of their own infantry marching forward
resolutely, secure in the fact of being too close for damage. Presently
the battery became silent. Their vanguard was getting within range
of their own guns, and a second move was in order. The boy watched
the flying artillery scurrying across the plain, as he struck down a
“dirt-road” which intersected the turnpike, and soon he noticed the
puffs of white smoke from another coign of vantage and the bursting of
shells still further away.

“Them dogs barkin’ again! Waal, I’m glad ter be wide o’ thar mark,”
said a familiar voice at his elbow; the speaker was Bixby, a paroled
prisoner, too, having been captured further down the hill during the
general retreat.

Hilary was not ill-pleased to see him at first, especially as something
presently happened which made him solicitous for the advice and
guidance of an older head than his own. By one of the vicissitudes of
war victory suddenly deserted the winning side, and presently here
was the erstwhile successful party in full retreat, swarming over
the flat country, the battery scurrying along the turnpike with two
of its guns missing, captured as they barked with their mouths wide
open, so to speak. The hurrying crash and noisy rout went past like
the phantasmagoria of a dream, and these two prisoners were presently
left quite outside the Federal lines by no act or volition of their
own, and yet apparently far enough from Bertley’s squadron, for the
pursuit was not pressed, both parties having had for the nonce enough
of each other. The first object of the two troopers was to procure food
of which they stood sadly in need. They set forth to find the nearest
farmhouse, Hilary on his own horse, which in the confusion had not
been taken from him when he was disarmed, and Bixby easily caught and
mounted a riderless steed that had been in the engagement, but was now
cropping the wayside grass.

A thousand times that day Hilary wished, as they went on their journey
together, that he had never seen this man again. All Jack Bixby’s
methods were false, and it revolted Hilary, educated to a simple but
strict code of morals, to seem to share in his lies and his dubious
devices to avoid giving a true account of themselves. In fact their
progress was menaced with some danger. Having little to distinguish
them as soldiers, for the gray cloth uniform in many instances had
given place to the butternut jeans, the habitual garb of the poorer
classes of the country, they could be mistaken for citizens, peacefully
pursuing some rustic vocation, and this impression Bixby sought to
impose on every party who questioned them. He feared to meet the
Federals, because of their paroles, which showed them to be prisoners
and yet out of the lines, and he thought this broken pledge might
subject them to the penalty of being strung up by the neck.

“That air tale ’bout our bein’ in the lines an’ the lines shrinkin’
till we got out o’ ’em ain’t goin’ ter go down with no sech brash
fellers,” he argued with some reason, for the probabilities seemed
against them.

And now he dreaded an encounter with Union men, non-combatants, for
the same reason. He slipped off his boot at one time and hid the
paper under the sole of his foot. “Ef we-uns war ter be sarched they
wouldn’t look thar, mos’ likely.” And finally when they reached the
house of an aged farmer, who with partisan cordiality welcomed and fed
them, declaring that although he was too old to fight he could thus
help on the southern cause, Bixby took advantage of his host’s short
absence from the dining-room to strike a match which he discovered in a
candlestick on the mantel piece, for the season was too warm for fires,
and lighting the candle he held the parole in the flame till the paper
was reduced to a cinder; then he hastily extinguished the candle.

When once more on the road, however, Bixby regretted his decision. For
aught he knew they were still within the Federal lines. The Union
troops had doubtless been reinforced, for they were making a point of
holding this region at all hazards. He was a fool he said to have burnt
his parole--it was his protection. If he were taken now by troops not
in the extreme activities of resisting a spirited cavalry attack, who
had time to make his capture good, and means of transportation handy,
he would be sent off to Camp Chase or some other prison, and shut up
there till the crack of doom, whereas his parole rendered him for the
time practically free.

“Why didn’t you keep me from doin’ it, Hil’ry?”

“Why, I baiged an’ baiged an’ besought ye ’fore we went in the house
ter do nothin’ ter the paper,” said Hilary, wearied and excited and
even alarmed by his companion’s vacillations, so wild with fear had
Bixby become. “I wunk at ye when the old man’s back was turned. I even
tried ter snatch the paper whenst ye put yer boot-toe on the aidge of a
piece of it on the ha’thstone an’ helt it down till it war bu’nt.”

“I war a fool,” said Bixby, gloomily. “I wish I hed it hyar now.”

“I tole ye,” said Hilary, for he had spent the day in urging the fair
and open policy, let come what might of it, “I tole ye ez I war a-goin’
ter show my parole ter the fust man ez halts me, an’ ef I be out’n
the lines, an’ he won’t believe my tale, let him take it out on me
howsumdever the law o’ sech doin’s ’pears. Nobody could expec’ me ter
set an’ starve on that hillside till sech time ez the Fed’rals throw
out thar line agin.”

“I wisht I hed my parole agin,” said Bixby, more moodily still.

Down the road before them suddenly they saw a dust, and a steely
glitter--not so strong a reflection, however, as marching infantry
throws out. A squad of cavalry was approaching at a steady pace.
Jack Bixby’s first idea was flight; this the condition of the jaded
horse rendered impolitic. Then he thought of concealment--in vain. On
either hand the level, plowed fields afforded not the slightest bush
as a shield. The only thicket in sight was alongside the road and now
in line with the approaching party whom it so shadowed that it was
impossible to judge by uniform or accoutrements to which army they
belonged.

“Hil’ry,” said Jack Bixby, “let’s stick ter the country-jake story;
I’ll say that I be a farmer round hyar somewhar, an’ pretend that you
air my son. That’ll go down with any party.”

“I be goin’ ter tell the truth myself, an’ show my parole, whoever
they be; that’s the right thing,” said Hilary, stoutly.

“But I ain’t got no parole,” quavered Bixby.

“Tell the truth an’ I’ll bear ye out,” said Hilary. “Tell ’em that thar
be so many parties--Feds an’ Confeds an’ Union men an’ bushwhackers,
an’ we-uns got by accident out’n the lines an’ ye took alarm an’
_dee_stroyed yer parole. I’ll bear ye out an’ take my oath on it; an’
ye know the old man war remarkin’ on them cinders on the aidge o’ the
mantel shelf an’ ha’thstone ez we left the house.”

“Hil’ry,” said Bixby, as with a sudden bright idea--anything but the
truth seemed hopeful to him--“I’ll tell ye. I’ll take yer parole an’
claim it ez mine, an’ pretend that ye air my son--non-combatant, jes’ a
boy, ez ye air.”

“But it’s got _my_ name on it. It’s a-parolin’ of _me_,” said Hilary,
“an’ I _ain’t_ no non-combatant.”

“But I’ll claim your name; I’ll be Hil’ry Knox, an’ tall ez ye air, yer
face shows ye ain’t nuthin’ but a boy. Nobody wouldn’t disbelieve it.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t put off a lie on ’em! I hev fought an’ fought
an’ I’ll take the consekences o’ what I done--all the consekences o’
hevin’ fought. _I_ am Hilary Knox, an’ I be plumb pledged by my word of
honor. But I’ll bear ye out in the fac’s, an’ thar’s nuthin’ ter doubt
in the fac’s--they air full reasonable.”

He had taken the paper out of his ragged breast-pocket to have it in
readiness to present to the advance guard, who had perceived them and
had quickened the pace for the purpose of halting them. Perhaps Bixby
had no intention, save, by sleight-of-hand, to possess himself of the
paper. Perhaps he thought that having it in his power the boy would
hardly dare to contradict the story he had sketched and the name he
intended to claim as the owner of the parole; if Hilary should protest
he could say his son was weak-minded, an imbecile, a lunatic. He made
a sudden lunge from the saddle and a more sudden snatch at the paper.
But the boy’s strong hand held it fast. Jack Bixby hardly noted the
surprise, the indignation, the reproach in Hilary’s face--almost an
expression of grief--as he turned it toward him. With the determination
that had seized him to possess the paper, Bixby struck the boy’s wrist
and knuckles a series of sharp, brutal blows with the back of a strong
bowie-knife, which had been concealed in his boot-leg at the surrender.
They palsied the clutch of the boy’s left hand. But as the quivering
fingers opened, Hilary caught the falling paper with his right hand.

“Let go, let go!” cried Jack Bixby in a frenzy; “else I’ll let you hev
the blade--there, then!--take the aidge--ez keen ez a razor!”

The steel descended again and again, and as the boy was half dragged
out of the saddle the blood poured down upon the parole. It would have
been hard to say then what name was there!

A sudden shout rang out from down the road. The approaching men had
observed the altercation, and mending their pace, came on at a swift
gallop.

With not a glance at them, Jack Bixby turned his horse short around and
fled as fast as the animal could go, striking out of the road and into
the woods as soon as he reached the timbered land.

Poor “Baby Bunting,” dragged out of his saddle, fell down in the road
beneath his horse’s hoofs, and all covered with white dust and red
blood there he lay very still till the cavalrymen came up and found him.

For this was what they called him--“_Poor Baby Bunting!_” They were
a small reconnoitering party of his own comrades, and it was with a
hearty good will that they pursued Jack Bixby who fled, as from his
enemies, through the brush. Perhaps his enemies would have been gentler
with him than his quondam friends could they only have laid hands on
him, for they all loved “Baby Bunting” for his brave spirit and his
little simplicities and his hearty good-comradeship. Hilary recognized
none of them. He only had a vague idea of Captain Bertley’s face with
a grave anxiety and a deep pity upon it as the officer gazed down at
him when he was borne past on the stretcher to the field hospital
where his right arm was taken off by the surgeon. He was treated as
kindly as possible, for the remembrance of his gallant spirit as well
as humanity’s sake, and when at last he was discharged from the more
permanent hospital to which he had been removed he realized that he
had indeed done with war and fine deeds of valiance, and he set out to
return home, tramping the weary way to the mountain and his mother.

After that fateful day, when maimed and wan and woebegone he came forth
from the hospital and journeyed out from among the camps and flags
and big guns and all the armaments of war, thrice splendid to his
backward gaze, it seemed to him that he had left there more than was
visible--that noble identity of valor for which he had revered himself.

For he found as he went a strange quaking in his heart. It was an
alien thing, and he strove to repudiate it, and ached with helpless
despair. When he came into unfamiliar regions, and a sudden clatter
upon the lonely country road would herald the approach of mounted
strangers, halting him, the convulsive start of his maimed right
arm with the instinct to seize his weapons and the sense of being
defenseless utterly would so unnerve him that he would give a
disjointed account of himself, with hang-dog look and faltering words.
And more than once he was seized and roughly handled and dragged
to headquarters to show his papers and be at last passed on by the
authorities.

He began to say to himself that his courage was in his cavalry pistol.

“Before God!” he cried, “me an’ my right arm an’ my weepon air like
saltpetre an’ charcoal an’ sulphur--no ’count apart. An’ tergether
they mean _gunpowder_!”

And doubly bereaved, he had come in sight of home.

But his mother fell upon his neck with joy, and the neighbors gathered
to meet him. The splendors of the Indian summer were deepening upon the
mountains, with gorgeous fantasies of color, with errant winds harping
æolian numbers in the pines, with a translucent purple haze and a great
red sun, and the hunter’s moon, most luminous. The solemnity and peace
stole in upon his heart, and revived within him that cherished sense of
home, so potent with the mountaineer, and in some wise he was consoled.

Yet he hardly paused. In this lighter mood he went on to the
settlement, eager that the news of his coming should not precede him.

There was the bridge to cross and the rocky ascent, and at the summit
stood the first log cabin of the scattered little hamlet. From the
porch, overgrown with hop vines, he heard the whir of a spinning wheel.
He saw the girl who stood beside it before she noticed the sound of
his step. Then she turned, staring at him with startled recognition,
despite all the changes wrought in the past two years. “It air me,” he
said, jocosely.

From his hollow eyes and sunken cheeks and wan smile her gaze fell
upon his empty sleeve. She suddenly threw her arm across her face.
“I--I--can’t abide ter look at ye!” she faltered, with a gush of tears.

He stood dumfounded for a moment.

“Durn it!” he cried. “I can’t abide ter look at myself!”

And with a bitter laugh he turned on his heel.

He would not be reconciled later. The wound she had unintentionally
dealt him rankled long. He said Delia Noakes was a sensible girl.
Plenty of brave fellows would come home from the war, hale and hearty
and with two good arms, better men in every way, in mind and body
and heart and soul, for the stern experiences they were enduring so
stanchly. The crop of sweethearts promised to be indeed particularly
fine, and there was no use in wasting politeness on a fellow with
whom she used to play before either of them could walk, but whose
arm was gone now, through no glorious deed wrought for his country,
for which he had intended to do all such service as a man’s right
arm might compass, but because he was a fool, and had made a friend
of a malevolent scoundrel, who had nearly taken his life, but had
only--worse luck--taken his right arm! And besides he had seen enough
of the world in his wanderings to know that it behooves people to
look to the future and means of support. He had learned what it was to
be hungry, he had learned what it was to lack. He was no longer the
brave and warlike man-at-arms, “Baby Bunting.” He had no vocation,
no possibility of a future of usefulness; he could not hold a gun or
a plow or an ax, and Delia doubtless thought he would not be able to
provide for her. And “dead shot” though he had been he could not now
defend himself, he declared bitterly, much less her.




CHAPTER III


It was the last month of the year, and the month was waning. The winds
had rifled the woods and the sere leaves all had fallen. Yet still a
bright after-thought of the autumnal sunshine glowed along the mountain
spurs, for the tardy winter loitered on the way, and the silver rime
that lay on the black frost-grapes melted at a beam.

“The weather hev been powerful onseasonable an’ onreasonable, ter
my mind,” said old Jonas Scruggs, accepting a rickety chair in his
neighbor’s porch. “’Tain’t healthy.”

“Waal, ’tain’t goin’ ter last,” rejoined Mrs. Knox, from the doorway,
where she sat with her knitting. “’Twar jes’ ter-day I seen my old
gray cat run up that thar saplin’ an’ hang by her claws with her head
down’ards. An’ I hev always knowed ez that air a sure sign of a change.”

Presently she added, “The fire air treadin’ snow now.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the deep chimney-place, where a dull
wood fire was sputtering fitfully with a sound that suggested footfalls
crunching on a crust of snow.

“I dunno ez _I_ need be a-hankerin’ fur a change in the weather,
cornsiderin’ the rheumatiz in my shoulder ez I kerried around with me
ez a constancy las’ winter,” remarked Jonas Scruggs, pre-empting a
grievance in any event.

“Thar’s the wild geese a-sailin’ south,” Hilary said, in a low,
melancholy drawl, as he smoked his pipe, lounging idly on the step of
the porch.

His mother laid her knitting in her lap and gazed over her spectacles
into the concave vault of the sky, so vast as seen from the vantage
ground of the little log cabin on the mountain’s brow. Bending to the
dark, wooded ranges encircling the horizon, it seemed of a crystalline
transparency and of wonderful gradations of color. The broad blue
stretches overhead merged into a delicate green of exquisite purity,
and thence issued a suffusion of the faintest saffron in which flakes
of orange burned like living fire. A jutting spur intercepted the sight
of the sinking sun, and with its dazzling disk thus screened, upon
the brilliant west might be descried the familiar microscopic angle
speeding toward the south. A vague clamor floated downward.

“Them fow_els_, sure enough!” she said. “Sence I war a gal I hev
knowed ’em by thar flyin’ always in that thar peaked p’int.”

“They keep thar alignment ez reg’lar,” said her son suddenly, “jes’
like we-uns hev ter do in the army. They hev actially got thar markers.
Look at ’em dress thar ranks! An’ thar’s even a sergeant-major standin’
out ez stiff an’ percise--see him! Thar! Column forward! Guide left!
March!” he cried delightedly.

“I ’lowed, Hilary, ez ye bed in an’ about bed enough o’ the army,” said
the guest, bluntly.

Hilary’s face changed. But for some such reminder he sometimes forgot
that missing right hand. He made no answer, his moody eyes fastened on
that aërial marshaling along the vast plain of the sunset. His right
arm was gone, and the stump dangled helplessly with its superfluity of
brown jeans sleeve bound about it.

“Now that air a true word!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, “only Hil’ry won’t hev
it so. _I_ ’lows ter him ez he los’ his arm through jinin’ the Confed’
army, an’ _he_ ’lows ’twar gittin’ in a fight with one o’ his own
comrades.”

Jonas Scruggs glanced keenly at her from under his bushy, grizzled
eyebrows, his lips solemnly puckered, and his stubbly pointed chin
resting on his knotty hands, which were clasped upon his stout stick.
He had the dispassionate, pondering aspect of an umpire, which seemed
to invite the cheerful submission of differences.

“Ye knows I war fur the Union, an’ so war his dad,” she continued. “My
old man had been ailin’ ennyhows, but this hyar talk o’ bustin’ up the
Union--why, it jes’ fairly harried him inter his grave. An’ I ’lowed
ez Hil’ry would be fur the Union, too, like everybody in the mountings
ez hed good sense. But when a critter-company o’ Confeds rid up the
mounting one day Hil’ry he talked with some of ’em, an’ he war stubborn
ever after. An’ so he jined the critter-company.”

She fell suddenly silent, and taking up her needles knitted a row or
two, her absorbed eyes, kindling with retrospection, fixed on the
far horizon, for Mrs. Knox was in a position to enjoy the melancholy
pleasures of a true prophet of evil, and although she had never
specifically forewarned Hilary of the precise nature of the disaster
that had ensued upon his enlistment, she had sought to defer and
prevent it, and at last had consented only because she felt she must.
She had her own secret satisfaction that the result was no worse;
it lacked much of the ghastly horrors that she had foreboded--death
itself, or the terrible uncertainty of hoping against hope, and
fearing the uttermost dread that must needs abide with those to whom
the “missing” are dear. Never now could the fact be worse, and thus
she could reconcile herself, and talk of it with a certain relish of
finality, as of a chapter of intense and painful interest but closed
forever.

The old man nodded his head with deliberative gravity until she
recommenced, when he relapsed into motionless attention.

“An’ Hil’ry fought in a heap o’ battles, and got shot a time or two,
an’ war laid up in the horspital, an’ kem out cured, an’ fought agin.
An’ one day he got inter a quar’l with one o’ his bes’ frien’s. They
war jes’ funnin’ afust, an’ Hil’ry hit him harder’n he liked, an’ he
got mad, an’ bein’ a horseback he kicked Hil’ry. An’ Hil’ry jumped on
him ez suddint ez a painter, ter pull him out’n his saddle an’ drub
him. Hil’ry never drawed no shootin’ irons nor nuthin’, an’ warn’t
expectin’ ter hurt him serious. But this hyar Jack Bixby he war full o’
liquor an’ fury; he started his horse a-gallopin’, an’ ez Hil’ry hung
on ter the saddle he drawed his bowie-knife an’ slashed Hil’ry’s arm ez
war holdin’ ter him agin an’ agin, till they war both soakin’ in blood,
an’ at last Hil’ry drapped. An’ the arm fevered, an’ the surgeon tuk it
off. An’ so Hil’ry hed his discharge gin him, sence the Confeds hed no
mo’ use fur him. An’ he walked home, two hunderd mile, he say.”

During this recital the young mountaineer gave no indication of its
effect upon him, and offered no word of correction to conform the
details to the facts. His mother had so often told his story with
the negligence of the domestic narrator, that little by little it
had become thus distorted, and he knew from experience that should
he interfere to alter a phase, another as far from reality would be
presently substituted, for Mrs. Knox cared little how the event had
been precipitated, or for aught except that his arm was gone, that he
was well, and that she had him at home again, from which he should
no more wander, for she had endeavored to utilize the misfortune to
reinforce her authority, and illustrate her favorite dogma of the
infallibility of her judgment.

Her words must have renewed bitter reminiscences, but his face was
impassive, and not a muscle stirred as he silently watched the ranks of
the migrating birds fade into the furthest distance.

“An’ now Hil’ry thinks it air cur’ous ez I ain’t sorrowin’ ’bout’n his
arm,” she continued. “Naw, sir! I’m glad he escaped alive an’ that he
can’t fight no mo’--not ef the war lasts twenty year, an’ it ’pears
like it air powerful persistin’.”

It still raged, but to the denizens of this sequestered district there
seemed little menace in its fury. They could hear but an occasional
rumor, like the distant rumbling of thunder, and discern, as it were, a
vague, transient glimmer as token of the fierce and scathing lightnings
far away desolating and destroying all the world beyond these limits of
peace.

Episodes of civilized warfare were little dreaded by the few
inhabitants of the mountains, the old men, the women and the children,
so dominated were they by the terrors of vagrant bands of stragglers
and marauders, classed under the generic name of bushwhackers,
repudiated by both armies, and given over to the plunder of
non-combatants of both factions in this region of divided allegiance.
At irregular intervals they infested this neighborhood, foraging where
they listed, and housing themselves in the old hotel.

Looking across the gorge from where the three sat in the cabin porch,
there was visible on the opposite heights a great white frame building,
many-windowed and with wide piazzas. There were sulphur springs hard
by, and before the war the place was famous as a health resort. Now
it was a melancholy spectacle--silent, tenantless, vacant--infinitely
lonely in the vast wilderness. Some of the doors, wrenched from their
hinges, had served the raiders for fuel. The glass had been wantonly
broken in many of the windows by the jocose thrusts of a saber. The
grassy square within surrounded by the buildings was overgrown with
weeds, and here lizards basked, and in their season wild things
nested. There was never a suggestion of the gayeties of the past--only
in the deserted old ball-room when a slant of sunshine would fall
athwart the dusty floor, a bluebottle might airily zigzag in the errant
gleam, or when the moon was bright on the long piazzas a cobweb, woven
dense, would flaunt out between the equidistant shadows of the columns
like the flutter of a white dress. The place had a weird aspect, and
was reputed haunted. The simple mountaineers did not venture within it,
and the ghosts had it much of the time to themselves.

The obscurities of twilight were presently enfolded about it. The
white walls rose, vaguely glimmering, against the pine forests in the
background, and above the shadowy abysses which it overlooked.

The old man was gazing meditatively at it as he said, reprehensively,
“’Pears like ter me, Hil’ry, ez ye oughter be thankful ye warn’t killed
utterly--ye oughter be thankful it air no wuss.”

“Hil’ry ain’t thankful fur haffen o’ nuthin’.” Mrs. Knox interposed.
“’Twar jes’ las’ night he looked like su’thin’ in a trap. He walked the
floor till nigh day--till I jes’ tuk heart o’ grace an’ told him ez his
dad bed laid them puncheons ter last, an’ not to be walked on till they
were wore thinner’n a clapboard in one night. An’ yit he air alive an’
hearty, an’ I hev got my son agin. An’ I sets ez much store by him with
one arm ez two.”

And indeed she looked cheerfully about the dusky landscape as she rose,
rolling the sock on her needles and thrusting them into the ball of
yarn. Old Jonas Scruggs hesitated when she told him alluringly that
she had a “mighty nice ash cake kivered on the h’a’th,” but he said
that his daughter-in-law, Jerusha, would be expecting him, and he could
in no wise bide to supper. And finally he started homeward a little
wistful, but serene in the consciousness of having obeyed the behests
of Jerusha, who in these hard times had grown sensitive about his habit
of taking meals with his friends. “As ef,” she argued, “I fed ye on
half rations at home.”

Hilary rose at last from the doorstep, and turning slowly to go within,
his absent glance swept the night-shadowed scene. He paused suddenly,
and his heart seemed beating in his throat.

A point of red light had sprung up in the vague glooms. A
will-o’-the-wisp?--some wavering “ghost’s candle” to light him to his
grave. With his accurate knowledge of the locality he sought to place
it. The distant gleam seemed to shine from a window of the old hotel,
and this bespoke the arrival of rude occupants. He heard a wild halloo,
a snatch of song perhaps--or was it fancy? And were the iterative
echoes in the gorge the fancy of the stern old crags?

For the first time since he returned, maimed and helpless, and a
non-combatant, were the lawless marauders quartered at the old hotel.

He stood for a while gazing at it with dilated eyes. Then he silently
stepped within the cabin and barred the door with his uncertain and
awkward left hand.

The cheerful interior of the house was all aglow. The fire had been
mended, and yellow flames were undulating about the logs with many a
gleaming line of grace. Blue and purple and scarlet flashes they showed
in fugitive iridescence. They illumined his face, and his mother noted
its pallor--the deep pallor which he had brought from the hospital.

“Ye hev got yer fancies ag’in,” she cried. Then with anxious curiosity,
“Whar be yer right hand now, Hil’ry?”

She alluded to that cruel hallucination of sensation in an amputated
arm.

“Whar it oughter be,” he groaned; “on the trigger o’ my carbine.”

His grief was not only that his arm was gone. It was to recognize the
fact that his heart no longer beat exultantly at the mere prospect of
conflict. And he was anguished with the poignant despair of a helpless
man who has once been foremost in the fight.

The next day he was moody and morose, and brooded silently over the
fire. The doors were closed, for winter had come at last. The hoar
frost whitened the great gaunt limbs of the trees, and lay in every
curled dead leaf on the ground, and followed the zigzag lines of the
fence, and embossed the fodder stack and the ash-hopper and the roofs
with fantastic incongruities in silver tracery.

The sun did not shine, the clouds dropped lower and lower still, a wind
sprung up, and presently the snow was flying.

The widow esteemed this as in the nature of a special providence, since
the dizzying whirl of white flakes veiled the little cabin and its
humble surroundings from the observation of the free-booting tenants of
the old hotel across the gorge. “It air powerful selfish, I know, ter
hope the bushwhackers will forage on somebody else’s poultry an’ sech,
but somehows my own chickens seem nigher kin ter me than other folkses’
be. I never see no sech ten-toed chickens ez mine nowhar.”

Reflecting further upon the peculiar merits of these chickens,
ten-toed, being Dorking, reinforced by the claims of consanguinity, she
presently evolved as a precautionary measure a scheme of concealing
them in the “roof-room” of the cabin. And from time to time, as the
silent day wore on, like the blast of a bugle the crow of a certain
irrepressible young rooster demonstrated how precarious was his
retirement in the loft.

“Hear the insurance o’ that thar fow_el_!” she would exclaim in
exasperation. “S’pose’n the bushwhackers war hyar now, axin fur
poultry, an’ I war a-tellin’ ’em, ez smilin’ an’ mealy-mouthed ez I
could, that we hain’t got no fow_els_! That thar reckless critter would
be in the fryin’-pan ’fore night. They’ll l’arn ye ter hold yer jaw,
I’ll be bound!”

But the bushwhackers did not come, and the next day the veil of the
falling snow still interposed, and the familiar mountains near at hand,
and the long reaches of the unexplored perspective were all obscured;
the drifts deepened, and the fence seemed dwarfed half covered as it
was, and the boles of the trees hard by were burlier, bereft of their
accustomed height. The storm ceased late one afternoon; over the white
earth was a somber gray sky, but all along the horizon above the snowy
summits of the western mountains a slender scarlet line betokened a
fair morrow.

Hilary, in the weariness of inaction, had taken note of the weather,
and with his hat drawn down over his brow he strolled out to the verge
of the precipice.

Overlooking the familiar landscape, he detected an unaccustomed smoke
visible a mile or more down the narrow valley. Although but a tiny,
hazy curl in the distance, it did not escape the keen eyes of the
mountaineer. He could not distinguish tents against the snow, but the
location suggested a camp.

The bushwhackers still lingered at the old hotel across the gorge. He
could already see in the gathering dusk the firelight glancing fitfully
against the window. He wondered if it were visible as far as the camp
in the valley.

He stood for a long time, gazing across the snowy steeps at the
desolate old building, with the heavy pine forests about it and the
crags below--their dark faces seamed with white lines wherever a drift
had lodged in a cleft or the interlacing tangles of icy vines might
cling. In the pallid dreariness of the landscape and the gray dimness
of the hovering night the lighted window blazed with the lambent
splendors of some great yellow topaz. His uncontrolled fancy was
trespassing upon the scene within. His heart was suddenly all a-throb
with keen pain. His idle, vague imaginings of the stalwart horsemen and
what they were now doing had revived within him that insatiate longing
for the martial life which he had loved, that ineffable grief for the
opportunity of brave deeds of value which he felt he had lost.

The drill had taught him the mastery of his muscles, but those
more potent forces, his impulses, had known no discipline. A
wild inconsequence now possessed him. He took no heed of reason,
of prudence. He was dominated by the desire to look in upon the
bushwhackers from without--they would never know--undiscovered,
unimagined, like some vague and vagrant specter that might wander
forlorn in the labyrinthine old house.

With an alert step he turned and strode away into the little cabin.
It was very cheerful around the hearth, and the first words he heard
reminded him of the season.

His younger brother, a robust lad of thirteen, was drawling
reminiscences of other and happier Christmas-tides.

“Sech poppin’ o’ guns ez we-uns used ter hev!” said the tow-headed boy,
listlessly swinging his heels against the rungs of the chair.

“The Lord knows thar’s enough poppin’ of guns now!” said his mother.
She stooped to insert a knife under the baking hoe-cake for the purpose
of turning it, which she did with a certain deft and agile flap,
difficult of acquirement and impossible to the uninitiated.

“I ’members,” she added, vivaciously, “we-uns used ter always hev a
hollow log charged with powder an’ tech it off fur the Chris’mus. It
sounded like thunder--like the cannon the folks hev got nowadays.”

“An’ hawg-killin’ times kem about the Chris’mus,” said the boy,
sustaining his part in the fugue.

“Folks _had_ hawgs ter kill in them days,” was his mother’s melancholy
rejoinder as she meditated on the contrast of the pinched penury of the
present with the peace and plenty of the past when there was no war nor
rumor of war.

“Ef ye git a hawg’s bladder an’ blow it up an’ tie the eend right tight
an’ stomp on it suddint it will crack ez loud!” said the noise-loving
boy. “Peas air good ter rattle in ’em, too,” he added, with a wistful
smile, dwelling on the clamors of his happy past.

“Waal, folks ez hed good sense seen more enjyement in eatin’ spare-ribs
an’ souse an’ sech like hawg-meat than in stomping on hawgs’ bladders.
I hev never favored hawg-killin’ times jes’ ter gin a noisy boy the
means ter keep Christian folks an’ church members a-jumpin’ out’n thar
skins with suddint skeer all the Chris’mus.”

This was said with the severity of a personality, but the boy’s face
distended as he listened.

Suddenly his eyes brightened with excitement. “Hil’ry,” he cried,
joyously, “be you-uns a-goin’ ter fire that thar pistol off fur the
Chris’mus?”

Mrs. Knox rose from her kneeling posture on the hearth and stared
blankly at Hilary.

He had come within the light of the fire. His eyes were blazing, his
pale cheeks flushed, his long, lank figure was tense with energy. The
weapon in his hand glittered as he held it at arm’s length.

“Bein’ ez it air ready loaded I reckon mebbe I ain’t so awk’ard yit but
I could make out ter fire it ef I war cornered,” he muttered, as if to
himself. “Leastwise, I’ll take it along fur company.”

“Air ye goin’ ter fire it ’kase this be Chris’mus eve?” she asked in
doubt.

He glanced absently at her and said not a word.

The next moment he had sprung out of the door and they heard his step
crunching through the frozen crust of snow as he strode away.

There were rifts in the clouds and the moon looked out. The white,
untrodden road lay, a glittering avenue, far along the solitudes of the
dense and leafless forests. Sometimes belts of vapor shimmered before
him, and as he went he saw above them the distant gables of the old
hotel rising starkly against the chill sky. In view presently in the
white moonlight were the long piazzas of the shattered old building,
the shadows of the many tall pillars distinct upon the floor. He heard
the sound of the sentry’s tread, and down the vista between the columns
and the shadowy colonnade he saw the soldierly figure pacing slowly to
and fro.

He had not reckoned on this precaution on the part of the bushwhackers.
But the rambling old building, in every nook and cranny, was familiar
to him. While the sentry’s back was turned, he silently crept along the
piazza to an open passageway which led to the grassy square within.

The rime on the dead weeds glistened in the moonbeams; the snow lay
trampled along the galleries on which opened the empty rooms; here and
there, as the doors swung on their hinges, he could see through the
desolate void within, the bleak landscape beyond. There were horses
stabled in some of them, and in the center of the square two or three
were munching their feed from the old music-stand, utilized as a
manger. One of them, a handsome bay, arched his glossy neck to gaze at
the intruder over the gauzy sheen of gathering vapor, his full dilated
eyes with the moonlight in them. Then with a snort he went back to his
corn.

Only one window was alight. There was a roaring fire within, and the
ruddy glow danced on the empty walls and on the hilarious, bearded
faces grouped about the hearth. The men, clad in butternut jeans,
smoked their pipes as they sat on logs or lounged at length on the
floor. A festive canteen was a prominent adjunct of the scene, and was
often replenished from a burly keg in the corner.

As Hilary approached the window he suddenly recognized a face which
he had cause to remember. He had not seen this face since Jack Bixby
looked furiously down from his saddle, hacking the while with his
bowie-knife at his comrade’s bleeding right arm. No enemy had done this
thing--Hilary’s own fast friend.

He divined readily enough that after this dastardly deed Bixby had
not dared to seek to rejoin Captain Bertley’s squadron, and thus had
found kindred spirits among this marauding band of bushwhackers. His
face was not flushed with liquor now--twice the canteen passed Jack
Bixby unheeded. His big black hat was thrust far back on his shock of
red hair; he held his great red beard meditatively in one hand, while
the other fluttered the pages of a letter. He slowly read aloud, in a
droning voice, now and then, from the ill-spelled scrawl. He looked up
sometimes laughing, and they all laughed in sympathy.

“‘Pete Blake he axed ’bout ye, an’ sent his respec’s, an’ Jerry Dunders
says tell ye ‘Howdy’ fur him, though ye be fightin’ on the wrong side,’”

“Jerry,” he explained in a conversational tone, “he jined the Loyal
Tennesseans over yander in White County.”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder westward, and one of the men said
that he had known Jerry since he was “knee-high ter a duck.”

In a strained, unnatural tone Jack Bixby laboriously read on.

“‘Little Ben prays at night fur you. He prayed some last night out’n
his own head. He said he prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from
all harm.’”

The man’s eyes were glistening. He laughed hurriedly, but he coughed,
too, and the comrade who knew Jerry at so minute a size seemed also
acquainted with little Ben, and said a “pearter young one” had never
stepped. “‘He prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm,’”
Jack Bixby solemnly repeated as he folded the letter. And silence fell
upon the group.

Hilary, strangely softened, was turning--he was quietly slipping away
from the window when he became suddenly aware that there were other
stealthy figures in the square, and he saw through the frosty panes the
scared face of the sentry bursting into the doorway with a tardy alarm.

There was a rush from the square. Pistol shots rang out sharp on the
chill air, and the one-armed man, conscious of his helpless plight,
entrapped in the mêlée, fled as best he might through the familiar
intricacies of the old hotel--up the stairs, through echoing halls and
rooms, and down a long corridor, till he paused panting and breathless
in the door of the old ball-room.

The rude, unplastered, whitewashed walls were illumined by the
moonlight, for all down one side of the long apartment the windows
overlooking the gorge were full of the white radiance, and in
glittering squares it lay upon the floor.

He remembered suddenly that there was no other means of egress. To be
found here was certain capture. As he turned to retrace his way he
heard swift steps approaching. Guided by the sound of his flight one of
the surprised party had followed him, lured by the hope of escape.

There was evidently a hot pursuit in the rear. Now and then the long
halls reverberated with pistol shots, and a bullet buried itself in
the door as Jack Bixby burst into the room. He stared aghast at his
old comrade for an instant. Then as he heard the rapid footfalls, the
jingle of spurs, the clamor of voices behind him, he ran to one of the
windows. He drew back dismayed by the sight of the depths of the gorge
below. He was caught as in a trap.

Hilary Knox could never account for the inspiration of that moment.

At right angles with the loftier main building a one-story wing jutted
out, and the space within its gable roof and above its ceiling, which
was on a level with the floor of the ball-room, was separated from that
apartment only by a rude screen of boards.

Hilary burst one of these rough boards loose at the lower end, and
held it back with the left hand spared him.

“Jump through, Jack!” he cried out to his old enemy. “Jump through the
plaster o’ the ceilin’ right hyar. The counter in the bar-room down
thar will break yer fall.”

Jack Bixby sprang through the dark aperture. There was a crash within
as the plaster fell.

The next moment a bullet whizzed through Hilary’s hat, and the
ball-room was astir with armed men; among them Hilary recognized other
mountaineers, old friends and neighbors who had joined the “Loyal
Tennesseans.”

“I never would hev thought ye would hev let Jack Bixby git past ye
arter the way he treated ye,” one of them remarked, when the search had
proved futile.

“Waal,” said Hilary, miserably, “I hain’t hed much grit nohows sence
the surgeon took off my arm.”

His interlocutor looked curiously at the hole in the young fellow’s
hat, pierced while he stood his ground that another man might escape.
Hilary had no nice sense of discrimination. His idea of courage was the
onslaught.

The others crowded about, and Hilary relished the suggestions of
military comradeship that clung about them, albeit they were of the
opposing faction, for they seemed so strangely cordial. Each must needs
shake his hand--his awkward left hand--and he was patted on the back,
and one big, bluff soul, who beamed on him with a broadly delighted
smile, gave him a severe hug, such as a fatherly bear might administer.

“Hil’ry ain’t got much grit, he says,” one of them remarked with a
guffaw. “He jes’ helped another feller escape whut he hed a grudge
agin, while he stood ez onconsarned ez a target, an’ I shot him through
the hat an’ the ball ploughed up his scalp in good fashion. Glad my aim
warn’t a leetle mended.”

Hilary’s hat was gone; one of the men persisted in an exchange, and
Hilary wore now a fresh new one instead of that so hastily snatched
from him as a souvenir.

He thought they were all sorry for him because of the loss of his arm;
yet this was strange, for many men had lost limb and life at the hands
of this troop, which was of an active and bloody reputation. He could
not dream they thought him a hero--these men accustomed to deeds of
daring! He had no faint conception of the things they were saying of
him to one another, of his gallantry and his high and noble courage in
risking his life that his personal enemy might escape, when there was
a chance for but one--his false friend, who had destroyed his right
arm--as they mounted their horses and rode away to their camp in the
valley with the prisoners they had taken.

Hilary stood listening wistfully to the jingling of their spurs and
the clanking of their sabers and the regular beat of the hoofs of the
galloping troop--sounds from out the familiar past, from thrilling
memories, how dear!

Then as he plodded along the lonely wintry way homeward he was dismayed
to reflect upon his own useless, maimed life--upon what he had suffered
and what he had done.

“What ailed me ter let him off?” he exclaimed in amaze. “What ailed me
ter help him git away--jes’ account o’ the word o’ a w’uthless brat.
Fur _me_ ter let _him_ off when I hed my chance ter pay my grudge so
slick!”

He paused on the jagged verge of a crag and looked absently over the
vast dim landscape, bounded by the snowy ranges about the horizon.
Here and there mists hovered above the valley, but the long slant of
the moonbeams pervaded the scene and lingered upon its loneliness with
luminous melancholy. The translucent amber sphere was sinking low in
the vaguely violet sky, and already the dark summits of the westward
pines showed a fibrous glimmer.

In the east a great star was quivering, most radiant, most pellucid.
He gazed at it with sudden wistfulness. Christmas dawn was near--and
this was the herald of redemption. So well it was for him that science
had never invaded these skies! His simple faith beheld the Star of
Bethlehem that the wise men saw when they fell down and worshiped. He
broke from his moody regrets--ah, surely, of all the year this was the
time when a child’s prayer should meet most gracious heed in heaven,
should most prevail on earth! His heart was stirred with a strange and
solemn thrill, and he blessed the impulse of forgiveness for the sake
of a little child.

A roseate haze had gathered about the star, deepening and glowing
till the sun was in the east, and the splendid Day, charged with the
sanctities of commemoration, with the fulfillment of prophecy, with the
promises of all futurity, came glittering over the mountains.

But the sun was a long way off, and its brilliancy made scant
impression on the intense cold. Thus it was he noticed, as he came in
sight of home, that, despite the icy atmosphere, the cabin door was
ajar. It moved uncertainly, yet no wind stirred.

“Thar’s somebody ahint the door ez hev seen me a-comin’ an’ air waitin’
ter ketch me ‘Chris’mus Gift,’” he argued, astutely.

To forestall this he took a devious path through the brush, sprang
suddenly upon the porch, thrust in his arm, and clutched the unwary
party ambushed behind the door.

“Chris’mus Gift!” he shouted, as he burst into the room.

But it was Delia waiting for him, blushing and embarrassed, and seeming
nearer tears than laughter. And his mother was chuckling in enjoyment
of the situation.

“Now, whyn’t ye let Dely ketch you-uns Chris’mus Gift like she counted
on doin’, stiddier ketchin’ her? She hain’t got nuthin’ ter gin yer fur
Chris’mus Gift but herself.”

Hilary knew her presence here and the enterprise of “catching him
Christmas Gift” was another overture at reconciliation, but when he
said, “Waal, I’ll thank ye kindly, Dely,” she still looked at him in
silence, with a timorous eye and a quivering lip.

“But, law!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, still laughing, “I needn’t set my
heart on dancin’ at the weddin’. Dely ain’t no ways ter be trusted. She
hev done like a Injun-giver afore now. Mebbe she’ll take herself away
from ye agin.”

Delia found her voice abruptly.

“No--I won’t, nuther!” she said, sturdily.

And thus it was settled.

They made what Christmas cheer they could, and he told them of a new
plan as they sat together round the fire. The women humored it as a
sick fancy. They never thought to see it proved. At the school held at
irregular intervals before the war he had picked up a little reading
and a smattering of writing. This Christmas day he began anew. He
manufactured ink of logwood that had been saved for dyeing, and the
goose lent him a quill. An old blank book, thrown aside when the hotel
proprietors had removed their valuables, served as paper.

As his mother had said it was not Hilary’s nature to be thankful for
the half of anything; he attacked the unpromising future with that
undismayed ardor that had distinguished him in those cavalry charges
in which he had loved to ride. With practice his left hand became
deft; before the war was over he was a fair scribe, and he often
pridefully remarked that he couldn’t be flanked on spelling. Removing
to one of the valley towns, seeking a sphere of wider usefulness, his
mental qualities and sterling character made themselves known and his
vocation gradually became assured. He was first elected register of the
county of his new home, and later clerk of the circuit court. Other
preferments came to him, and the world went well with him. It became
broader to his view and of more gracious aspect; his leisure permitted
reading and reading fostered thought. He learned that there are more
potent influences than force, and he recognized as the germ of these
benignities that impulse of peace and good will which he consecrated
for the sake of One who became as a Little Child.




THE PANTHER
OF
JOLTON’S RIDGE




CHAPTER I


A certain wild chasm, cut deep into the very heart of a spur of the
Great Smoky Mountains, is spanned by a network, which seen from above
is the heavy interlacing timbers of a railroad bridge thrown across
the narrow space from one great cliff to the other, but seen from the
depths of the gorge below it seems merely a fantastic gossamer web
fretting the blue sky.

It often trembles with other sounds than the reverberating mountain
thunder and beneath other weight than the heavy fall of the mountain
rain. Trains flash across it at all hours of the night and day; in
the darkness the broad glare of the headlight and the flying column
of pursuing sparks have all the scenic effect of some strange uncanny
meteor, with the added emphasis of a thunderous roar and a sulphurous
smell; in the sunshine there skims over it at intervals a cloud of
white vapor and a swift black shadow.

“Sence they hev done sot up that thar bridge I hain’t seen a bar nor a
deer in five mile down this hyar gorge. An’ the fish don’t rise nuther
like they uster do. That thar racket skeers ’em.”

And the young hunter, leaning upon his rifle, his hands idly clasped
over its muzzle, gazed with disapproving eyes after the flying
harbinger of civilization as it sped across the airy structure and
plunged into the deep forest that crowned the heights.

Civilization offered no recompense to the few inhabitants of the gorge
for the exodus of deer and bear and fish. It passed swiftly far above
them, seeming to traverse the very sky. They had no share in the world;
the freighted trains brought them nothing--not even a newspaper wafted
down upon the wind; the wires flashed no word to them. The picturesque
situation of the two or three little log-houses scattered at long
intervals down the ravine; the crystal clear flow of a narrow, deep
stream--merely a silver thread as seen from the bridge above; the grand
proportions of the towering cliffs, were calculated to cultivate the
grace of imagination in the brakemen, leaning from their respective
platforms; to suggest a variation in the Pullman conductor’s jaunty
formula, “’Twould hurt our feelings pretty badly to fall over there,
I fancy,” and to remind the out-looking passenger of the utter
loneliness of the vast wilds penetrated by the railroad. But they left
no speculations behind them. The terrible sense of the inconceivable
width of the world was spared the simple-minded denizens of the woods.
The clanging, crashing trains came like the mountain storms, no one
knew whence, and went no one knew whither. The universe lay between the
rocky walls of the ravine. Even this narrow stage had its drama.

In the depths of the chasm spanned by the bridge there stood in
the shadow of one of the great cliffs a forlorn little log hut, so
precariously perched on the ledgy slope that it might have seemed the
nest of some strange bird rather than a human habitation. The huge
natural column of the crag rose sheer and straight two hundred feet
above it, but the descent from the door, though sharp and steep, was
along a narrow path leading in zigzag windings amid great bowlders and
knolls of scraggy earth, pushing their way out from among the stones
that sought to bury them, and fragments of the cliff fallen long ago
and covered with soft moss. The path appeared barely passable for man,
but upon it could have been seen the imprint of a hoof, and beside
the hut was a little shanty, from the rude window of which protruded
a horse’s head, with so interested an expression of countenance
that he looked as if he were assisting at the conversation going on
out-of-doors this mild March afternoon.

“Ye could find deer, an’ bar, an’ sech, easy enough ef ye would go
arter ’em,” replied the young hunter’s mother, as she sat in the
doorway knitting a yarn sock. “That thar still-house up yander ter the
Ridge hev skeered off the deer an’ bar fur ye worse’n the railroad
hev. Ye kin git that fur an’ no furder. Ye hev done got triflin’ an’ no
’count, an’ nuthin’ else in this worl’ ails ye,--nur the deer an’ bar,
nuther,” she concluded, with true maternal candor.

“It war tole ter me,” said an elderly man, who was seated in a
rush-bottomed chair outside the door, and who, although a visitor, bore
a lance in this domestic controversy with much freedom and spirit, “ez
how ye hed done got religion up hyar ter the Baptis’ meetin’-house the
last revival ez we hed. An’ I s’posed it war the truth.”

“I war convicted,” replied the young fellow, ambiguously, still leaning
lazily on his rifle. He was a striking figure, remarkable for a massive
proportion and muscular development, and yet not lacking the lithe,
elastic curves characteristic of first youth. A dilapidated old hat
crowned a shock of yellow hair, a sunburned face, far-seeing gray eyes,
and an expression of impenetrable calm. His butternut suit was in
consonance with the prominent ribs of his horse, the poverty-stricken
aspect of the place, and the sterile soil of a forlorn turnip patch
which embellished the slope to the water’s edge.

“Convicted!” exclaimed his mother, scornfully. “An’ sech goin’s-on
sence! Mark never _hed_ no religion to start with.”

“What did ye see when ye war convicted?” demanded the inquisitive
guest, who spoke upon the subject of religion with the authority and
asperity of an expert.

“I never seen nuthin’ much.” Mark Yates admitted the fact reluctantly.

“Then ye never _hed_ no religion,” retorted Joel Ruggles. “I _knows_,
’kase I hev hed a power o’ visions. I hev viewed heaven an’ hung over
hell.” He solemnly paused to accent the effect of this stupendous
revelation.

There had lately come a new element into the simple life of the
gorge,--a force infinitely more subtle than that potency of steam which
was wont to flash across the railroad bridge; of further reaching
influences than the wide divergences of the civilization it spread in
its swift flight. Naught could resist this force of practical religion
applied to the workings of daily life. The new preacher that at
infrequent intervals visited this retired nook had wrought changes in
the methods of the former incumbent, who had long ago fallen into the
listless apathy of old age, and now was dead. His successor came like
a whirlwind, sweeping the chaff before him--a humble man, ignorant,
poor in this world’s goods, and of meager physical strength. It was in
vain that the irreverent sought to bring ridicule upon him, that he was
called a “skimpy saint” in reference to his low stature, “the widow’s
mite,” a sly jest at the hero-worship of certain elderly relicts in his
congregation, a “two-by-four text” to illustrate his slim proportions.
He was armed with the strength of righteousness, and it sufficed.

It was much resented at first that he carried his spiritual supervision
into the personal affairs of those of his charge, and required that
they should make these conform to their outward profession. And thus
old feuds must needs be patched up, old enemies forgiven, restitution
made, and the kingdom set in order as behooves the domain of a Prince
of Peace. The young people especially were greatly stirred, and Mark
Yates, who had never hitherto thought much of such subjects, had
experienced an awakening of moral resolve, and had even appeared one
day at the mourners’ bench.

Thus he had once gone up to be prayed for, “convicted of sin,” as the
phrase goes in those secluded regions. But the sermons were few, for
the intervals were long between the visitations of the little preacher,
and Mark’s conscience had not learned the art of holding forth with
persistence and pertinence, which spiritual eloquence (not always
welcome) is soon acquired by a receptive, sensitive temperament. Mark
was cheerful, light-hearted, imaginative, adaptable. The traits of the
wilder, ruder element of the district, the hardy courage, the physical
prowess, the adventurous escapades appealed to his sense of the
picturesque as no merit of the dull domestic boor, content with the
meager agricultural routine, tamed by the endless struggle with work
and unalterable poverty, could stir him. He had no interest in defying
the law and shared none of the profits, but the hair-breadth escapes
of certain illicit distillers hard by, their perpetual jeopardy, the
ingenuity of their wily devices to evade discovery by the revenue
officers and yet supply all the contiguous region, the cogency of their
arguments as to the injustice of the taxation that bore so heavily upon
the small manufacturer, their moral posture of resisting and outwitting
oppression--all furnished abundant interest to a mind alert, capable,
and otherwise unoccupied.

Not so blunt were his moral perceptions, however, that he did not
secretly wince when old Joel Ruggles, after meditating silently,
chewing his quid of tobacco, reverted from the detail of the supposed
spiritual wonders, which in his ignorance he fancied he had seen, to
the matter in hand:

“Hain’t you-uns hearn ’bout the sermon ez the preacher hev done
preached agin that thar still?--_he_ called it a den o’ ’niquity.”

“I hearn tell ’bout’n it yander ter the still,” replied Mark, calmly.
“They ’lowed thar ez they hed a mind ter pull him down out’n the pulpit
fur his outdaciousness, ’kase they war all thar ter the meetin’-house,
an’ _he_ seen ’em, an’ said what he said fur them ter hear.” He paused,
a trifle uncomfortable at the suggestion of violence. Then reassuring
himself by a moment’s reflection, he went on in an off-hand way, “I
reckon they ain’t a-goin’ ter do nuthin’ agin _him_, but he hed better
take keer how he jows at them still folks. They air a hard-mouthed
generation, like the Bible says, an’ they hev laid off ter stop that
thar talk o’ his’n.”

“Did ye hear ’em sayin’ what they war a-aimin’ ter do?” asked Ruggles,
keenly inquisitive.

“’Tain’t fer me ter tell what I hearn whilst visitin’ in other folkses’
houses,” responded the young fellow, tartly. “But I never hearn ’em
say nuthin’ ’ceptin’ they war a-goin’ ter try ter stop his talk,” he
added. “I tells ye that much ’kase ye’ll be a-thinkin’ I hearn worse
ef I don’t. That air all I hearn ’em say ’bout’n it. An’ I reckon they
don’t mean nuthin’, but air talkin’ big whilst mad ’bout’n it. They air
’bleeged ter know thar goin’s-on ain’t fitten fur church members.”

“An’ _ye_ a-jowin’ ’bout’n a hard-mouthed generation,” interposed his
mother, indignantly. “Ye’re one of ’em yerself. Thar hain’t been a bite
of wild meat in this hyar house fur a month an’ better. Mark hev’
mighty nigh tucken ter live at the still; an’ when he kin git hisself
up to the p’int o’ goin’ a-huntin’, ’pears like he can’t find nuthin’
ter shoot. I hev hearn a sayin’ ez thar is a use fur every livin’
thing, an’ it ’pears ter me ez Mark’s use air mos’ly ter waste powder
an’ lead.”

Mark received these sarcasms with an imperturbability which might in
some degree account for their virulence and, indeed, Mrs. Yates often
averred that, say what she might, she could not “move that thar boy no
more’n the mounting.”

He shifted his position a trifle, still leaning, however, upon the
rifle, with his clasped hands over the muzzle and his chin resting
on his hands. The quiet radiance of a smile was beginning to dawn in
his clear eyes as he looked at his interlocutors, and he spoke with a
confidential intonation:

“The las’ meetin’ but two ez they hev hed up yander ter the church
they summonsed them thar Brices ter ’count fur runnin’ of a still,
an’ a-gittin’ drunk, an’ sech, an’ the Brices never come, nor tuk no
notice nor nuthin’. An’ then the nex’ meetin’ they tuk an’ turned ’em
out’n the church. An’ when they hearn ’bout that at the still, them
Brices--the whole lay-out--war pipin’ hot ’bout’n it. Thar warn’t nare
member what voted fur a-keepin’ of ’em in; an’ that stuck in ’em,
too--all thar old frien’s a-goin’ agin ’em! I s’pose ’twar right ter
turn ’em out,” he added, after a reflective pause, “though thar is them
ez war a-votin’ agin them Brices ez hev drunk a powerful lot o’ whisky
an’ sech in thar lifetime.”

“Thar will be a sight less whisky drunk about hyar ef that small-sized
preacher-man kin keep up the holt he hev tuk on temperance sermons,”
said Mrs. Yates a trifle triumphantly. Then with a clouding brow: “I
could wish he war bigger. I ain’t faultin’ the ways o’ Providence in
nowise, but it do ’pear ter me ez one David and G’liath war enough fur
the tales o’ religion ’thout hevin’ our own skimpy leetle shepherd
and the big Philistines of the distillers at loggerheads--whenst
flat peebles from the brook would be a mighty pore dependence agin
a breech-loading rifle. G’liath’s gun war more’n apt ter hev been
jes’ a old muzzle-loader, fur them war the times afore the war fur
the Union; but these hyar moonshiners always hev the best an’ newest
shootin’-irons that Satan kin devise--not knowin’ when some o’ the
raiders o’ the revenue force will kem down on ’em--an’ that makes a
man keen ter be among the accepted few in the new quirks o’ firearms.
A mighty small man the preacher-man ’pears ter be! If it war the
will o’ Providence I could wish fur a few more pounds o’ Christian
pastor, considering the size an’ weight ez hev been lavished on them
distillers.”

“It air scandalous fur a church member ter be a gittin’ drunk an’
foolin’ round the still-house an’ sech,” said Joel Ruggles, “an’ ef ye
hed ever hed any religion, Mark, ye’d hev knowed that ’thout hevin’ ter
be told.”

“An’ it’s scandalous fur a church member to drink whisky at all,” said
Mrs. Yates, sharply, knitting off her needle, and beginning another
round. A woman’s ideas of reform are always radical.

Joel Ruggles did not eagerly concur in this view of the abstinence
question; he said nothing in reply.

“Thar hain’t sech a mighty call ter drink whisky yander ter the
still,” remarked young Yates, irrelevantly, feeling perhaps the need
of a plea of defense. “It ain’t the whisky ez draws me thar. The gang
air a-hangin’ round an’ a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’ an’ a-tellin’ tales
’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech. An’ thar’s the grist mill a haffen mile an’
better through the woods.”

“Thar’s bad company at the still, an’ it’s a wild beast ez hev got a
fang ez bites sharp an’ deep, an’ some day ye’ll feel it, ez sure ez
ye’re a born sinner,” said Mrs. Yates, looking up solemnly at him over
her spectacles. “I never see no sense in men a-drinkin’ of whisky,” she
continued, after a pause, during which she counted her stitches. “The
wild critters in the woods hev got more reason than ter eat an’ drink
what’ll pizen ’em--but, law! it always did ’pear to me ez they war
ahead in some ways of the men, what kin talk an’ hev got the hope of
salvation.”

This thrust was neither parried nor returned. Joel Ruggles, discreetly
silent, gazed with a preoccupied air at the swift stream flowing far
below, beginning to darken with the overhanging shadows of the western
crags. And Mark still leaned his chin meditatively on his hands, and
his hands on the muzzle of his rifle, in an attitude so careless that
an unaccustomed observer might have been afraid of seeing the piece
discharged and the picturesque head blown to atoms.

Through the futility of much remonstrance his mother had lost her
patience--no great loss, it might seem, for in her mildest days she
had never been meek. Poverty and age, and in addition her anxiety
concerning a son now grown to manhood, good and kind in disposition,
but whose very amiability rendered him so lax in his judgment of the
faults of others as to slacken the tension of his judgment of his own
faults, and whose stancher characteristics were manifested only in
an adamantine obstinacy to her persuasion--all were ill-calculated
to improve her temper and render her optimistic, and she had had no
training in the wider ways of life to cultivate tact and knowledge of
character and methods of influencing it. Doubtless the “skimpy saint”
in the enlightenment of his vocation would have approached the subject
of these remonstrances in a far different spirit, for Mark was plastic
to good suggestions, easily swayed, and had no real harm in him. He
understood, too, the merit and grace of consistency, of being all of
a piece with his true identity, with his real character, with the
sterling values he most appreciated. But the quality that rendered
him so susceptible to good influences--his adaptability--exposed him
equally to adverse temptation. He had spoken truly when he had said
that it was only the interest of the talk of the moonshiners and their
friends--stories of hunting fierce animals in the mountain fastnesses,
details of bloody feuds between neighboring families fought out through
many years with varying vicissitudes, and old-time traditions of the
vanished Indian, once the master of all the forests and rocks and
rivers of these ancient wilds--and not the drinking of whisky, that
allured him; far less the painful and often disgusting exhibitions of
drunkenness he occasionally witnessed at the still, in which those
sufficiently sober found a source of stupid mirth. Afterward it seemed
to him strange to reflect on his course. True he had had but a scanty
experience of life and the world, and the parson’s reading from the
Holy Scriptures was his only acquaintance with what might be termed
literature or learning in any form. But arguing merely from what he
knew he risked much. From the pages of the Bible he had learned what
the leprosy was, and what, he asked himself in later years, would he
have thought of the mental balance of a man who frequented the society
of a leper for the sake of transitory entertainment or mirth to be
derived from his talk? In the choice stories of “bar” and “Injuns,”
innocent in themselves, he must needs risk the moral contagion of this
leprosy of the soul.

Nevertheless he was intent now on escaping from his mother and Joel
Ruggles, since it was growing late and he knew the cronies would soon
be gathered around the big copper at the still-house, and he welcomed
the diversion of a change of the subject. It had fallen upon the
weather--the most propitious times of plowing and planting; an earnest
confirmation of the popular theory that to bring a crop potatoes and
other tubers must be planted in the dark of the moon, and leguminous
vegetables, peas, beans, etc., in the light of the moon. Warned by the
lengthening shadows, Joel Ruggles broke from the pacific discussion of
these agricultural themes, rose slowly from his chair, went within to
light his pipe at the fire, and with this companion wended his way down
the precipitous slope, then along the rocky banks of the stream to his
own little home, half a mile or so up its rushing current.

As he went he heard Mark’s clear voice lifted in song further down
the stream. He had hardly noted when the young fellow had withdrawn
from the conversation. It was a mounted shadow that he saw far away
among the leafy shadows of the oaks and the approaching dusk. Mark had
slipped off and saddled his half-broken horse, Cockleburr, and was
doubtless on his way to his boon companions at the distillery.

The old man stood still, leaning on his stick, as he silently listened
to the song, the sound carrying far on the placid medium of the water
and in the stillness of the evening.


     “O, call the dogs--Yo he!--Yo ho!
     Boone and Ranger, Wolf an’ Beau,
     Little Bob-tail an’ Big Dew-claw,
     Old Bloody-Mouth an’ Hanging Jaw.
     Ye hear the hawns?--Yo he!--Yo ho!
     They all are blowin’, so far they go,
     With might an’ main, for the trail is fresh,
     A big bear’s track in the aidge o’ the bresh!”


“Yo he! yo ho!” said the river faintly. “Yo he! yo ho!” said the rocks
more faintly; and fainter still from the vague darkness came an echo
so slight that it seemed as near akin to silence as to sound, barely
impinging upon the air. “Yo he! yo ho!” it murmured.

But old Joel Ruggles, standing and listening, silently shook his head
and said nothing.

“Yo he! yo ho!” sung Mark, further away, and the echoes of his boyish
voice still rang vibrant and clear.

Then there was no sound but the stir of the river and the clang of
the iron-shod hoofs of Cockleburr, striking the stones in the rocky
bridle-path. The flint gave out a flash of light, the yellow spark
glimmering for an instant, visible in the purple dusk with a transitory
flicker like a firefly.

And old Joel Ruggles once more shook his head.




CHAPTER II


Far away in a dim recess of the deep woods, on the summit of the ridge,
amidst crags and chasms and almost inaccessible steeps, the shadows
had gathered about a dismal little log hut of one room--like all the
other dismal little hovels of the mountain, save that in front of the
door the grass was worn away from a wide space by the frequent tread
of many feet; a preternaturally large wood-pile was visible under a
frail shelter in the rear of the house; from the chimney a dense smoke
rose in a heavy column; and the winds that rushed past it carried on
their breath an alcoholic aroma. But for these points of dissimilarity
and its peculiarly secluded situation, Mark Yates, dismounting from
his restive steed, might have been entering his mother’s dwelling. The
opening door shed no glare of firelight out into the deepening gloom
of the dusk. It was very warm within, however--almost too warm for
comfort; but the shutters of the glassless window were tightly barred,
and the usual chinks of log-house architecture were effectually closed
with clay. The darkness of the room was accented rather than dispelled
by a flickering tallow dip stuck in an empty bottle in default of a
candlestick, and there was an all-pervading and potent odor of spirits.
The salient feature of the scene was a stone furnace, from the closed
door of which there flashed now and then a slender thread of brilliant
light. A great copper still rose from it, and a protruding spiral tube
gracefully meandered away in the darkness through the cool waters of
the refrigerator to the receiver of its precious condensed vapors.

There were four jeans-clad mountaineers seated in the gloomy twilight
of this apartment; and the stories of “bar-huntin’ an’ sech” must have
been very jewels of discourse to prove so alluring, as they could
certainly derive no brilliancy from their unique but somber setting.

“Hy’re, Mark! Come in, come in,” was the hospitable insistence which
greeted young Yates.

“Hev a cheer,” said Aaron Brice, the eldest of the party, bringing out
from the darkness a chair and placing it in the feeble twinkle of the
tallow dip.

“Take a drink, Mark,” said another of the men, producing a broken-nosed
pitcher of ardent liquor. But notwithstanding this effusive
hospitality, which was very usual at the still-house, Mark Yates
had an uncomfortable impression that he had interrupted an important
conference, and that his visit was badly timed. The conversation that
ensued was labored, and hosts and guest were a trifle ill at ease.
Frequent pauses occurred, broken only by the sound of the furnace fire,
the boiling and bubbling within the still, the gurgle of the water
through its trough, that led it down from a spring on the hill behind
the house to the refrigerator, the constant dripping of the “doublings”
from the worm into the keg below. Now and then one of the brothers
hummed a catch which ran thus:--


     “O, Eve, she gathered the pippins,
     Adam did the pomace make;
     When the brandy told upon ’em,
     They accused the leetle snake!”


Another thoughtfully snuffed the tallow dip, which for a few moments
burned with a brighter, more cheerful light, then fell into a tearful
despondency and bade fair to weep itself away.

Outside the little house the black night had fallen, and the wind was
raging among the trees. All the stars seemed in motion, flying to
board a fleet of flaky white clouds that were crossing the sky under
full sail. The moon, a spherical shadow with a crescent of burnished
silver, was speeding toward the west; not a gleam fell from its disk
upon the swaying, leafless trees--it seemed only to make palpable the
impenetrable gloom that immersed the earth. The air had grown keen
and cold, and it rushed in at the door as it was opened with a wintry
blast. A man entered, with the slow, lounging motion peculiar to the
mountaineers, bearing in his hand a jug of jovial aspect. The four
Brices looked up from under their heavy brows with sharp scrutiny to
discern among the deep shadows cast by the tallow dip who the newcomer
might be. Their eyes returned to gaze with an affected preoccupation
upon the still, and in this significant hush the ignored visitor stood
surprised and abashed on the threshold. The cold inrushing mountain
wind, streaming like a jet of seawater through the open door, was
rapidly lowering the temperature of the room. This contemptuous silence
was too fraught with discomfort to be maintained.

“Ef ye air a-comin’ in,” said Aaron Brice, ungraciously, “come along
in. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ out go ’long. Anyway, jes’ ez ye choose, ef
ye’ll shet that thar door, ez I don’t see ez ye hev any call ter hold
open.”

Thus adjured the intruder closed the door, placed the jug on the floor,
and looked about with an embarrassed hesitation of manner. The flare
from the furnace, which Aaron Brice had opened to pile in fresh wood,
illumined the newcomer’s face and long, loose-jointed figure and showed
the semicircle of mountaineers seated in their rush-bottomed chairs
about the still. None of them spoke. Never before since the still-house
was built had a visitor stood upon the puncheon floor that one of the
hospitable Brices did not scuttle for a chair, that the dip was not
eagerly snuffed in the vain hope of irradiating the guest, that the
genial though mutilated pitcher filled with whisky was not ungrudgingly
presented. No chair was offered now, and the broken-nosed pitcher with
its ardent contents was motionless on the head of a barrel. It was a
strange change, and as the broad red glare fell on their stolid faces
and blankly inexpressive attitudes the guest looked from one to the
other with an increasing surprise and a rising dismay. The light was
full for a moment upon Mark Yates’s shock of yellow hair, gray eyes,
and muscular, well-knit figure, as he, too, sat mute among his hosts.
He was not to be mistaken, and once seen was not easily forgotten.
The next instant the furnace door clashed, and the room fell back
into its habitual gloom. One might note only the gurgle of the spring
water--telling of the wonders of the rock-barricaded earth below and
the reflected glories of the sky above--only the hilarious song of
the still, the continuous trickle from the worm, the all-pervading
spirituous odors, and the shadowy outlines of the massive figures of
the mountaineers.

The Brices evidently could not be relied upon to break the awkward
silence. The newcomer, mustering heart of grace, took up his testimony
in a languid nasal drawl, trying to speak and to appear as if he had
noticed nothing remarkable in his reception.

“I hev come, Aaron,” he said, “ter git another two gallons o’ that thar
whisky ez I hed from you-uns, an’ I hev brung the balance of the money
I owed ye on that, an’ enough ter pay for the jugful, too. Hyar is a
haffen dollar fur the old score, an’--”

“That thar eends it,” said Aaron, pocketing the tendered fifty cents.
“We air even, an’ ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar, Mose Carter.”

“Wha--what did ye say, Aaron? I hain’t got the rights ’zactly o’ what
ye said.” And Carter peered in great amaze through the gloom at his
host, who was carefully filling a pipe. As Aaron stooped to get a coal
from the furnace one of the others spoke.

“He said ez ye’ll git no more whisky from hyar. An’ it air a true
word.”

The flare from the furnace again momentarily illumined the room, and as
the door clashed it again fell back into the uncertain shadow.

“That is what I tole ye,” said Aaron, reseating himself and puffing his
pipe into a strong glow, “an’ ef ye hain’t a-onderstandin’ of it yit
I’ll say it agin--ye an’ the rest of yer tribe will git no more liquor
from hyar.”

“An’ what’s the reason I hain’t a-goin’ ter get no more liquor from
hyar?” demanded Moses Carter in virtuous indignation. “Hain’t I been ez
good pay ez any man down this hyar gorge an’ the whole mounting atop o’
that? Look-a hyar, Aaron Brice, ye ain’t a-goin’ ter try ter purtend ez
I don’t pay fur the liquor ez I gits hyar--an’ you-uns an’ me done been
a-tradin’ tergither peaceable-like fur nigh on ter ten solid year.”

“An’ then ye squar’ round an’ gits me an’ my brothers a-turned out’n
the church fur runnin’ of a still whar ye gits yer whisky from. Good
pay or bad pay, it’s all the same ter me.”

“I never gin my vote fur a-turnin’ of ye out ’kase of ye a-runnin’ of a
still.” Moses Carter trembled in his eager anxiety to discriminate the
grounds upon which he had cast his ballot. “It war fur a-gittin’ drunk
an’ astayin’ drunk, ez ye mos’ly air a-doin--an’ ye will ’low yerself,
Aaron, ez that thar air a true word. I don’t see no harm in a-runnin’
of a still an’ a-drinkin’ some, but not ter hurt. It air this hyar
gittin’ drunk constant ez riles me.”

“Mose Carter,” said the youngest of the Brice brothers, striking
suddenly into the conversation, “ye air a liar, an’ ye knows it!”
He was a wiry, active man of twenty-five years; he spoke in an
authoritative high key, and his voice seemed to split the air like
a knife. His mind was as wiry as his body, and it was generally
understood on Jolton’s Ridge that he was the power behind the throne
of which Aaron, the eldest, wielded the unmeaning scepter; he,
however, remained decorously in the background, for among the humble
mountaineers the lordly rights of primogeniture are held in rigorous
veneration, and it would have ill-beseemed a younger scion of the house
to openly take precedence of the elder. His Christian name was John,
but it had been forgotten or disregarded by all but his brothers in
the title conferred upon him by his comrades of the mountain wilds.
Panther Brice--or “Painter,” for thus the animal is called in the
vernacular of the region--was known to run the still, to shape the
policy of the family, to be a self-constituted treasurer and disburser
of the common fund, to own the very souls of his unresisting elder
brothers. He had elected, however, in the interests of decorum, that
these circumstances should be sedulously ignored. Aaron invariably
appeared as spokesman, and the mountaineers at large all fell under
the influence of a dominant mind and acquiesced in the solemn sham.
The Panther seldom took part even in casual discussions of any vexed
question, reserving his opinions to dictate as laws to his brothers in
private; and a sensation stirred the coterie when his voice, that had
a knack of finding and thrilling every sensitive nerve in his hearer’s
body, jarred the air.

“I hev seen ye, Mose Carter,” he continued, “in this hyar very
still-house ez drunk ez a fraish biled owl. Ye hev laid on this hyar
floor too drunk ter move hand or foot all night an’ haffen the nex’ day
at one spree. I hev seen ye’, an’ so hev plenty o’ other folks. An’
ef ye comes hyar a-jowin’ so sanctified ’bout’n folks a-gittin’ drunk,
I’ll turn ye out’n this hyar still-house fur tellin’ of lies.”

He paused as abruptly as he had spoken; but before Moses Carter could
collect his slow faculties he had resumed. “It ’pears powerful comical
ter me ter hear this hyar Baptis’ church a-settin’ of itself up so
stiff fur temp’rance, ’kase thar air an old sayin’--an’ I b’lieves
it--ez the Presbyterians holler--‘What is ter be will be!--even ef it
won’t be!’ an’ the Methodies holler, ‘Fire! fire! fire! Brimstun’ an’
blue blazes!’--but the Bapties holler, ‘Water! water! water! with a
_leetle_ drap o’ whisky in it!’ But ye an’ yer church’ll be dry enough
arter this; thar’ll be less liquor drunk ’mongst ye’n ever hev been
afore, ’kase ye air all too cussed stingy ter pay five cents extry a
quart like ye’ll hev ter do at Joe Gilligan’s store down yander ter
the Settlemint. Fur nare one o’ them sanctified church brethren’ll git
another drap o’ liquor hyar, whar it hev always been so powerful cheap
an’ handy.”

“The dryer ez ye kin make the church the better ye’ll please the
pa’son. He lays off a reg’lar temperance drought fur them ez kin foller
arter his words. I be a-tryin’ ter mend my ways,” Moses Carter droned
with a long, sanctimonious face, “but--” he hesitated, “the sperit is
willin’, but the flesh is weak--the flesh is weak!”

“I’ll be bound no sperits air weak ez ye hev ennything ter do with,
leastwise swaller,” said the Panther, with a quick snap.

“He is hyar in the mounting ter-night, the pa’son,” resumed Mose
Carter, with that effort, always ill-starred, to affect to perceive
naught amiss when a friend is sullenly belligerent; he preserved the
indifferent tone of one retailing casual gossip. “The pa’son hev laid
off ter spen’ the better part o’ the night in prayer and wrestlin’
speritchully in the church-house agin his sermon ter-morrer, it bein’
the blessed Sabbath. He ’lowed he would be more sole and alone thar
than at old man Allen’s house, whar he be puttin’ up fur the night,
’kase at old man Allen’s they hev seben gran’chil’ren an’ only one
room, barrin’ the roof-room. Thar be a heap o’ onregenerate human
natur’ in them seben Allen gran’chil’ren. Thar ain’t no use I reckon
in tryin’ ter awake old man Allen ter a sense of sin an’ the awful
oncertainty of life by talkin’ ter _him_ o’ the silence an’ solitude o’
the grave! Kee, kee!” he laughed. But he laughed alone.

“_Wrestlin’!_ The pa’son a-wrestlin’! I could throw him over my head!
It’s well fur him his wrestlin’s air only in prayer!” exclaimed
Painter, with scorn. “The still will holp on the cause o’ temp’rance
more’n that thar little long-tongued preacher an’ all his sermons.
Raisin’ the tar’ff on the drink will stop it. Ye’re all so dad-burned
stingy.”

“Jes’ ez ye choose,” said Moses Carter, taking up his empty jug.
“’Tain’t nuthin’ s’prisin’ ter me ter hear ye a-growlin’ an’ a-goin’
this hyar way, Painter--ye always war more like a wild beast nor a
man, anyhow. But it do ’stonish me some ez Aaron an’ the t’other boys
air a-goin’ ter let ye cut ’em out’n a-sellin’ of liquor ter the whole
kentry mighty nigh, ’kase the brethren don’t want a sodden drunkard,
like ye air, in the church a-communin’ with the saints.”

“Ye needn’t sorrow fur Aaron,” said Panther Brice, with a sneer
that showed his teeth much as a snarl might have done, “nor fur the
t’other boys nuther. We kin sell all the whisky ez we kin make ter Joe
Gilligan, an’ the folks yander ter--ter--no matter whar--” he broke
off with a sudden look of caution as if he had caught himself in an
imminent disclosure. “We kin sell it ’thout losin’ nare cent, fur we
hev always axed the same price by the gallon ez by the bar’l. So Aaron
ain’t a needin’ of yer sorrow.”

“Ye air the spitefullest little painter ez ever seen this hyar worl’,”
exclaimed Moses Carter, exasperated by the symmetry of his enemy’s
financial scheme. “Waal--waal, prayer may bring ye light. Prayer is a
powerful tool. The pa’son b’lieves in its power. He is right now up
yander in the church-house, fur I seen the light, an’ I hearn his
voice lifted in prayer ez I kem by.”

The four brothers glanced at one another with hot, wild eyes. They had
reason to suspect that they were themselves the subject of the parson’s
supplications, and they resented this as a liberty. They had prized
their standing in the church not because they were religious, in the
proper sense of the word, but from a realization of its social value.
In these primitive regions the sustaining of a reputation for special
piety is a sort of social distinction and a guarantee of a certain
position. The moonshiners neither knew nor cared what true religion
might be. To obey its precepts or to inconvenience themselves with
its restraints, was alike far from their intention. They had received
with boundless amazement the first intimation that the personal and
practical religion which the “skimpy saint” had brought into the
gorge might consistently interfere with the liquor trade, the illicit
distilling of whisky, and the unlimited imbibing thereof by themselves
and the sottish company that frequented the still-house. They had
laughed at his temperance sermons and ridiculing his warnings had
treated the whole onslaught as a trifle, a matter of polemical theory,
in the nature of things transitory, and had expected it to wear out as
similar spasms of righteousness often do--more’s the pity! Then they
would settle down to continue to furnish spirituous comfort to the
congregation, while the “skimpy saint” ministered to their spiritual
needs. The warlike little parson, however, had steadily advanced his
parallels, and from time to time had driven the distillers from one
subterfuge to another, till at last, although they were well off in
this world’s goods--rich men, according to the appraisement of the
gorge--they were literally turned out of the church, and had become
a public example, and they felt that they had experienced the most
unexpected and disastrous catastrophe possible in nature.

They were stunned that so small a man had done this thing, a man, so
poor, so weak, so dependent for his bread, his position, his every
worldly need, on the favor of the influential members of his scattered
congregations. It had placed them in their true position before their
compeers. It had reduced their bluster and boastfulness. It had made
them seem very small to themselves, and still smaller, they feared, in
the estimation of others.

Moses Carter--himself no shining light, indeed a very feebly glimmering
luminary in the congregation--looked from one to the other of their
aghast indignant faces with a ready relish of the situation, and said,
with a grin:

“I reckon, Painter, ef the truth war plain, ye’d ruther hev all the
gorge ter know ez the pa’son war a-spreadin’ the fac’s about this hyar
still afore a United States marshal than afore the throne o’ grace,
like he be a-doin’ of right now.”

The Panther rose with a quick, lithe motion, stretched out his hand to
the head of a barrel near by, and the thread of light from the closed
furnace door showed the glitter of steel. He came forward a few steps,
walking with a certain sinewy grace and brandishing a heavy knife,
his furious eyes gleaming with a strange green brilliance, all the
more distinct in the half-darkened room. Then he paused, as with a new
thought. “I won’t tech ye now,” he said, with a snarl, “but arter a
while I’ll jes’ make ye ’low ez that thar church o’ yourn air safer
with me in it nor it air with me out’n it. An’ then we’ll count it
even.” He ceased speaking suddenly; cooler now, and with an expression
of vexation upon his sharp features--perhaps he repented his hasty
threat and his self-betrayal. After a moment he went on, but with less
virulence of manner than before. “Ye kin take that thar empty jug o’
yourn an’ kerry it away empty. An’ ye kin take yer great hulking stack
o’ bones along with it, an’ thank yer stars ez none of ’em air bruken.
Ye air the fust man ever turned empty out’n this hyar still-house, an’
I pray God ez ye may be the las’, ’kase I don’t want no sech wuthless
cattle a-hangin’ round hyar.”

“I ain’t a-quarrelin’ with hevin’ ter go,” retorted Carter, with
asperity. “I never sot much store by comin’ hyar nohow, ’ceptin’ Aaron
an’ me, we war toler’ble frien’ly fur a good many year. This hyar
still-house always reminded me sorter o’ hell, anyhow--whar the worm
dieth not an’ the fire is not quenched.”

With this Parthian dart he left the room, closing the door after him,
and presently the dull thud of his horse’s hoofs was borne to the ears
of the party within, again seated in a semicircle about the furnace.




CHAPTER III


After a few moments of vexed cogitation Aaron broke the silence,
keeping, however, a politic curb on his speech. “’Pears ter me, John,
ez how mebbe ’twould hev done better ef ye hedn’t said that thar ez ye
spoke ’bout’n the church-house.”

“Hold yer jaw!” returned the Panther, fiercely. “Who larned ye ter
jedge o’ my words? An’ it don’t make no differ nohow. I done tole
him nuthin’ ’bout’n the church-house ez the whole Ridge won’t say
arterward, any way ez ye kin fix it.”

If Mark Yates had found himself suddenly in close proximity to a real
panther he could hardly have felt more uncomfortable than these
half-covert suggestions rendered him. He shrank from dwelling upon
what they seemed to portend, and he was anxious to hear no more. The
recollection of sundry maternal warnings concerning the evils, moral
and temporal, incident upon keeping bad company, came on him with
a crushing weight, and transformed the aspect of the fascinating
still-house into a close resemblance to another locality of worm and
fire, to which the baffled Carter had referred. He was desirous of
going, but feared that so early a departure just at this critical
juncture might be interpreted by his entertainers as a sign of distrust
and a disposition to stand aloof when they were deserted by their other
friends. And yet he knew, as well as if they had told him, that his
arrival had interrupted some important discussion of the plot they were
laying, and they only waited his exit to renew their debate.

While these antagonistic emotions swayed him, he sat with the others
in meditative silence, gazing blankly at the pleasing rotundity of
the dense shadow which he knew was the “copper,” and listening to the
frantic dance and roistering melody of its bubbling, boiling, surging
contents, to the monotonous trickling of the liquor falling from the
worm, to the gentle cooing of the rill of clear spring water. The
idea of pleasure suggested by the very sight of the place had given
way as more serious thoughts and fears crowded in, and his boyish
liking for these men who possessed that deadly fascination for youth
and inexperience,--the reputation of being wild,--was fast changing
to aversion. He still entertained a strong sympathy for those fierce
qualities which gave so vivid an interest to the stirring accounts
of struggles with wolves and wild cats, bears and panthers, and to
the histories of bitter feuds between human enemies, in the bloody
sequel of which, however, the brutality of the deed often vied with its
prowess; but this fashion of squaring off, metaphorically speaking,
at the preacher, and the strange insinuations of sacrilegious injury
to the church--the beloved church, so hardly won from the wilderness,
representing the rich gifts of the very poor, their time, their labor,
their love, their prayers--this struck every chord of conservatism in
his nature.

There had never before been a church building in this vicinity; “summer
preachin’” under the forest oaks had sufficed, with sometimes at long
intervals a funeral sermon at the house of a neighbor. But in response
to that strenuous cry, “Be up and doing,” and in acquiescence with
the sharp admonition that religion does not consist in singing sleepy
hymns in a comfortable chimney-corner, the whole countryside had
roused itself to the privilege of the work nearest its hand. Practical
Christianity first developed at the saw-mill. The great logs, seasoned
lumber from the forest, were offered as a sacrifice to the glory of
God, and as the word went around, Mark Yates, always alert, was among
the first of the groups that came and stood and watched the gleaming
steel striking into the fine white fibers of the wood--the beginnings
of the “church-house”--while the dark, clear water reflected the great
beams and roof of the mill, and the sibilant whizzing of the simple
machinery seemed, with the knowledge of the consecrated nature of its
work, an harmonious undertone to the hymning of the pines, and the
gladsome rushing of the winds, and the subdued ecstasies of all the
lapsing currents of the stream.

Mark had looked on drearily. His spirit, awakened by the clarion call
of duty, fretted and revolted at the restraints of his lack of means.
He could do naught. It was the privilege of others to prepare the
lumber. It seemed that even inanimate nature had its share in building
the church--the earth in its rich nurture that had given strength to
the great trees; the seasons that had filled the veins of each with the
rich wine of the sap, the bourgeoning impulse of its leafage and the
ripeness of its fine fruitions; the rainfall and sunshine that had fed
and fostered and cherished it--only he had naught to give but the idle
gaze of wistful eyes.

The miller, a taciturn man, was very well aware that he had sawed
the lumber. He said naught when the work was ended, but surveyed the
great fragrant piles of cedar and walnut and maple and cherry and oak,
the building woods of these richly endowed mountains, with a silence
so significant that it spoke louder than words. It said that his work
was finished, and who was there who would do as much or more? So loud,
so forceful, so eloquent was this challenge that the next day several
teamsters came and stood dismally each holding his chin-whiskers in his
hand and contemplated the field of practical Christianity.

“It’ll be a powerful job ter hev ter haul all that thar lumber, sure!”
said one reluctant wight, in disconsolate survey, his mouth slightly
ajar, his hand ruefully rubbing his cheek.

“It war a powerful job ter saw it,” said the miller.

The jaws of the teamster closed with a snap. He had nothing more to
say. He, too, was roused to the gospel of action. The miller should not
saw more than he would haul. Thus it was that the next day found him
with his strong mule team at sunrise, the first great lengths of the
boles on the wagon, making his way along the steep ascents of Jolton’s
Ridge.

And again Mark looked on drearily. He could do naught--he and
Cockleburr. Cockleburr was hardly broken to the saddle, wild and
restive, and it would have been the sacrifice of a day’s labor, even
if the offer of such unlikely aid would have been accepted, to hitch
the colt in for the hauling of this heavy lumber, such earnest, hearty
work as the big mules were straining every muscle to accomplish. He
was too poor, he felt, with a bitter sigh. He could do naught--naught.
True, he armed himself with an axe, and went ahead of the toiling
mules, now and then cutting down a sapling which grew in the midst of
the unfrequented bridle-path, and which was not quite slight enough to
bend beneath the wagon as did most of such obstructions, or widening
the way where the clustering underbrush threatened a stoppage of
the team. So much more, under the coercion of the little preacher’s
sermon, he had wanted to do, that he hardly cared for the “Holped me
powerful, Mark,” of the teamster’s thanks, when they had reached the
destination of the lumber--the secluded nook where the little mountain
graveyard nestled in the heart of the great range--the site chosen
by the neighbors for the erection of their beloved church. Beloved
before one of the bowlders that made the piers of its foundation was
selected from the rocky hillside, where the currents of forgotten,
long ebbed-away torrents had stranded them, where the detrition of the
rain and the sand had molded them, the powers of nature thus beginning
the building of the church-house to the glory of God in times so long
gone past that man has no record of its spaces. Beloved before one of
the great logs was lifted upon another to build the walls, within which
should be crystallized the worship of congregations, the prayers of the
righteous that should avail much. Beloved before one of the puncheons
was laid of the floor, consecrated with the hope that many a sinner
should tread them on the way to salvation. Beloved with the pride of a
worthy achievement and the satisfaction of a cherished duty honestly
discharged, before a blow was struck or a nail driven.

And here Mark, earnestly seeking his opportunity to share the work,
found a field of usefulness. No great skill, one may be sure, prevailed
in the methods of the humble handicraftsmen of the gorge--all untrained
to the mechanical arts, and each a jack-of-all-trades, as occasion in
his lowly needs or opportunity might offer. Mark had a sort of knack
of deftness, a quick and exact eye, both suppleness and strength, and
thus he was something more than a mere botch of an amateur workman. His
enthusiasm blossomed forth. He, too, might serve the great cause. He,
too, might give of the work of his hands.

At it he was, hammer and nails, from morning till night, and he
rejoiced when the others living at a distance and having their
firesides to provide for, left him here late alone building the temple
of God in the wilderness. He would ever and anon glance out through
the interstices of the unchinked log walls at the great sun going down
over the valley behind the purple mountains of the west, and lending
him an extra beam to drive another nail, after one might think it time
to be dark and still; and vouchsafing yet another ray, as though loath
to quit this work, lingering at the threshold of the day, although the
splendors of another hemisphere awaited its illumination, and many a
rich Southern scene that the sun is wont to love; and still sending a
gleam, high aslant, that one more nail might be driven; and at last the
red suffusion of certain farewell, wherein was enough light for the
young man to catch up his tools and set out swiftly and joyously down
the side of Jolton’s Ridge.

And always was he first at the tryst to greet the sun--standing in the
unfinished building, his hammer in his hand, his hat on the back of
his head, and looking through the gap of the range to watch the great
disk when it would rise over the Carolina Mountains, with its broad,
prophetic effulgence falling over the lowly mounds in the graveyard,
as if one might say, “Behold! the dispersal of night, the return of
light, the earnest of the Day to come.” Long before the other laborers
on the church reached the building Mark had listened to the echoes
keeping tally with the strokes of his hammer, had heard the earth
shake, the clangor and clash of the distant train on the rails, the
shriek of the whistle as the locomotive rushed upon the bridge above
that deep chasm, the sinister hollow roar of the wheels, and the deep,
thunderous reverberation of the rocks. Thus he noted the passage of
the early trains--the freight first, and after an hour’s interval the
passenger train; then a silence, as if primeval, would settle down upon
the world, broken only by the strokes of the hammer, until at last some
neighbor, with his own tools in hand, would come in.

None of them realized how much of the work Mark had done. Each
looked only at the result, knowing it to be the aggregated industry
and leisure of the neighbors, laboring as best they might and as
opportunity offered. This was no hindrance to Mark’s satisfaction. He
had wanted to help, not to make a parade of his help, or to have what
he had done appreciated. He thought the little preacher, the “skimpy
saint,” as his unfriends called him, had a definite idea of what he had
done. In the stress of this man’s lofty ideals he could compromise with
little that failed to reach them. He was forever stretching onward and
upward. But Mark noted a kindling in his intent eye one day, while “the
chinking” was being put in, the small diagonal slats between the logs
of the wall on which the clay of the “daubing” was to be plastered.
“Did you do all this side?” he had asked.

As Mark answered “Yes,” he felt his heart swell with responsive pride
to win even this infrequent look of approval, and he went on to claim
more. “Don’t tell nobody,” he said, glancing up from his kneeling
posture by the side of the wall. “But I done that corner, too, over
thar by the door. Old Joel Ruggles done it fust, but the old man’s
eyesight’s dim, an’ his hand onstiddy, an’ ’twar all crooked an’
onreg’lar, so _unbeknown_ ter _him_ I kem hyar early one day an’ did
it over,--though he don’t know it,--so ez ’twould be ekal--all of a
piece.”

The “skimpy saint” now hardly seemed to care to glance at the work. He
still stood with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, looking down at him
with eyes in which Mark perceived new meanings.

“You can sense, then, the worth of hevin’ all things of a piece with
the best. See ter it, Mark, that ye keep yer life all of a piece with
this good work--with the best that’s in ye.”

So Mark understood. But nowadays he hardly felt all of a piece with
the good work he had done on the church walls, against so many
discouragements, laboring early and late, seeking earnestly some means
that might be within his limited power. Oftentimes, after the church
was finished, he went and stood and gazed at it, realizing its stanch
validity, without shortcomings, without distortions--all substantial
and regular, with none of the discrepancies and inadequacies of his
moral structure.

While silently and meditatively recalling all these facts as he sat
this night of early spring among the widely unrelated surroundings
of the still, the shadowy group of moonshiners about him, Mark Yates
looked hard at Panther Brice’s sharp features, showing, in the thread
of white light from the closed door of the furnace, with startling
distinctness against the darkness, like some curiously carved cameo. He
never understood the rush of feeling that constrained him to speak, and
afterward, when he thought of it, his temerity surprised him.

“Painter,” he said, “I hev been a-comin’ hyar ter this hyar still-house
along of ye an’ the t’other boys right smart time, an’ I hev been
mighty well treated; an’ I ain’t one o’ the sort ez kin buy much
liquor, nuther. I hev hed a many a free drink hyar, an’ a sight o’
laughin’ an’ talkin’ along o’ ye an’ the t’other boys. An’ ’twarn’t
the whisky as brung me, nuther--’twar mos’ly ter hear them yarns o’
yourn ’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech, fur ye air the talkin’est one o’
the lot. But ef ye air a-goin’ ter take it out’n the preacher or the
church-house--I hain’t got the rights o’ what ye air a-layin’ off ter
do, an’ I don’t want ter know, nuther--jes’ ’kase ye an’ the t’other
boys war turned out’n the church, I hev hed my fill o’ associatin’ with
ye. I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev nuthin’ ter do with men-folks ez would
fight a pore critter of a preacher, what hev got ez much right ter jow
ez ef he war a woman. Sass is what they both war made fur, it ’pears
like ter me, an’ ’twar toler’ble spunky sure in him ter speak his mind
so plain, knowing what a fighter ye be an’ the t’others, too--no other
men hev got the name of sech tremenjious fighters! I allow he seen his
jewty plain in what he done, seem’ he tuk sech risks. An’ ef ye air
a-goin’ ter raise a ’sturbance ter the church-house, or whatever ye air
a-layin’ off ter do ter _it_, I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev no hand-shakin’
with sech folks. Payin’ ’em back ain’t a-goin’ ter patch up the matter
nohow--ye’re done turned out the church now, an’ that ain’t a-goin’ ter
put ye back. It ’pears mighty cur’ous ter me ez a man ez kin claw with
a bar same ez with a little purp, kin git so riled ez he’ll take up
with fightin’ of that thar pore little preacher what ain’t got a ounce
o’ muscle ter save his life. I wouldn’t mind his jowin’ at me no more’n
I mind my mother’s jowin’--an’ she air always at it.”

There was a silence for a few moments--only the sound of the trickling
liquor from the worm and the whir inside the still. That white face,
illumined by the thread of light, was so motionless that it might have
seemed petrified but for the intense green glare of the widely open
eyes. The lips suddenly parted in a snarl, showing two rows of sharp
white teeth, and the high shrill voice struck the air with a shiver.

“Ye’re the cussedest purp in this hyar gorge!” the Panther exclaimed.
“Ye sit thar an’ tell how well ye hev been treated hyar ter this hyar
still-house, an’ then let on ez how ye think ye’ re too good ter come
a-visitin’ hyar any more. Ye air like all the rest o’ these folks
round hyar--ye take all ye wants, an’ then the fust breath of a word
agin a body ye turns agin ’em too. Ye kin clar out’n this. Ye ain’t
wanted hyar. I ain’t a-goin’ ter let none o’ yer church brethren nor
thar fr’en’s nuther--fur ye ain’t even a perfessin’ member--come five
mile a-nigh hyar arter this. We air a-goin’ ter turn ’em out’n the
still-house, an’ that thar will hurt ’em worse’n turnin’ ’em out’n the
church. They go an’ turn _us_ out’n the church fur runnin’ of a still,
an’ before the Lord, we kin hardly drive ’em away from hyar along of
we-uns. I’m a-goin’ ter git the skin o’ one o’ these hyar brethren an’
nail it ter the door like a mink’s skin ter a hen house, an’ I’ll see
ef that can’t skeer ’em off. An’ ef ye don’t git out’n hyar mighty
quick now, Mark Yates, like ez not the fust skin nailed ter the door
will be that thar big, loose hide o’ yourn.”

“I ain’t the man ter stay when I’m axed ter go,” said young Yates,
rising, “an’ so I’ll light out right now. But what I war a-aimin’ ter
tell ye, Painter, war ez how I hev sot too much store by ye and the
t’other boys ter want ter see ye a-cuttin’ cur’ous shines ’bout the
church-house an’ that leetle mite of a preacher an’ sech.”

Once more that mental reservation touching “the strength of
righteousness” recurred to him. Was the little preacher altogether a
weakling? His courage was a stanch endowment. He had been warned of the
gathering antagonisms a hundred times, and by friend as well as foe.
But obstinately, resolutely, he kept on the path he had chosen to tread.

“An’ I’ll let ye know ez I kin be frien’ly with a man ez fights bars
an’ fightin’-men,” Mark resumed, “but I kin abide no man ez gits ter
huntin’ down little scraps of preachers what hain’t got no call ter
fight, nor no muscle nuther.”

“Ye’ll go away ’thout that thar hide o’ yourn ef ye don’t put out
mighty quick now,” said the Panther, his sinister green eyes ablaze
and his supple body trembling with eagerness to leap upon his foe.

“I ain’t afeard of ye, Painter,” said Mark, with his impenetrable calm,
“but this hyar still-house air yourn, an’ I s’pose ez ye hev got a
right ter say who air ter stay an’ who air ter go.”

He went out into the chill night; the moon had sunk; the fleet of
clouds rode at anchor above the eastern horizon, and save the throbbing
of the constellations the sky was still. But the strong, cold wind
continued to circle close about the surface of the earth; the pines
were swaying to and fro, and moaning as they swayed; the bare branches
of the other trees crashed fitfully together. As Yates mounted his
horse he heard Aaron say, in a fretful tone: “In the name of God,
John, what ails ye to-night? Ye tuk Mark an’ Mose up ez sharp! Ye air
ez powerful bouncin’ ez ef ye hed been drunk fur a week.”

The keen voice of the Panther rang out shrilly, and Mark gave his
horse whip and heel to be beyond the sound of it. He wanted to hear no
more--not even the tones--least of all the words, and words spoken in
confidence in their own circle when they believed themselves unheard.
He feared there was some wicked conspiracy among them; he could not
imagine what it might be, but since he could do naught to hinder he
earnestly desired that he might not become accidentally cognizant of
it, and in so far accessory to it. He therefore sought to give them
some intimation of his lingering presence, for Cockleburr had been
frisky and restive, and difficult to mount; he accordingly began to
sing aloud:--


     “You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”


But what was this? Instead of his customary hearty whoop, the tones
rang out all forlornly, a wheeze and a quaver, and finally broke and
sunk into silence. But the voices in conversation within had suddenly
ceased. The musically disposed of the Brice brothers himself was
singing, as if quite casually:--


     “He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’
     An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”


Mark was aware that they had taken his warning, although with no
appreciation of his motive in giving it. He could imagine the
contemptuous anger against him with which they looked significantly at
one another as they sat in the dusky shadows around the still, and he
knew that his sudden outburst into song must seem to them bravado--an
intimation that he did not care for having been summarily ejected
from the still-house, when in reality, only the recollection of it
sent the color flaming to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. This
was not for the mere matter of pride, either; but for disappointment,
for fled illusions, for the realization that he had placed a false
valuation on these men. He had been flattered that they had cared for
his friendship, and reciprocally had valued him more than others;
they had relished and invited his companionship; they had treated him
almost as one of themselves. And although he saw much gambling and
drinking, sometimes resulting in brawls and furious fights, against
which his moral sense revolted, he felt sure that their dissipation was
transitory; they would all straighten out and settle down--when they
themselves were older. In truth, he could hardly have conceived that
this manifestation of to-night was the true identity of the friends to
whom he had attached himself--that their souls, their hearts, their
minds, were of a piece with the texture of their daily lives, as sooner
or later the event would show. In the disuse of good impulses and
honest qualities they grow lax and weak. They are the moral muscles of
the spiritual being, and, like the muscles of the physical body, they
must needs be exercised and trained to serve the best interests of the
soul.

“Yo-he! Yo-ho!” sang poor Mark, as he plunged into the forest, keeping
in the wood trail, called courteously a road, partly by the memory of
his horse, and partly by the keen sight of his gray eyes. He lapsed
presently into silence, for he had no heart for singing, and he
jogged on dispirited, gloomy, reflective, through the rugged ways of
the wilderness. It was fully two hours before he emerged into the more
open country about his mother’s house; as he reached the bank of the
stream he glanced up, toward the bridge--the faintest suggestion of two
parallel lines across the instarred sky. A great light flashed through
the heavens, followed by a comet-like sweep of fiery sparks.

“That thar air the ’leven o’clock train, I reckon,” said Mark, making
his cautious way among the bowlders and fragments of fallen rock to
the door of the house. The horse plucked up spirit to neigh gleefully
at the sight of his shanty and the thought of his supper. The sound
brought Mrs. Yates to the window of the cabin.

“Air that ye a-comin’, Mark?” she asked.

“It air me an’ Cockleburr,” replied her son, with an effort to be
cheerful too, and to cast away gloomy thoughts in the relief of being
once more at home.

“Air ye ez drunk ez or’nary?” demanded his mother.

This was a damper. “I ain’t drunk nohow in the worl’,” said Mark,
sullenly.

“Whyn’t ye stay ter the still, then, till ye war soaked?” she gibed at
him.

Mark dismounted in silence; there was no saddle to be unbuckled, and
Cockleburr walked at once into the little shed to munch upon a handful
of hay and to dream of corn.

His master, entering the house, was saluted by the inquiry, “War
Painter Brice ez drunk ez common?”

“No, he warn’t drunk nuther.”

“Hev the still gone dry?” asked Mrs. Yates, affecting an air of deep
interest.

“Not ez I knows on, it hain’t,” said Mark.

“Thar must be suthin’ mighty comical a-goin on ef ye nor Painter nare
one air drunk. Is Aaron drunk, then? Nor Pete? nor Joe? Waal, this air
powerful disapp’intin’.” And she took off her spectacles, wiped them on
her apron, and shook her head slowly to and fro in solemn mockery.

“Waal,” she continued, with a more natural appearance of interest,
“what war they all a-talkin’ ’bout ter-night?”

Mark sat down, and looked gloomily at the dying embers in the deep
chimney-place for a moment, then he replied, evasively, “Nuthin’ much.”

“That’s what ye always say! Ef I go from hyar ter the spring yander,
I kin come back with more to tell than yer kin gether up in a day an’
a night at the still. It ’pears like ter me men war mos’ly made jes’
ter eat an’ drink, an’ thar tongues war gin ’em for no use but jes’ ter
keep ’em from feelin’ lonesome like.”

Mark did not respond to this sarcasm. His mother presently knelt
down on the rough stones of the hearth, and began to rake the coals
together, covering them with ashes, preliminary to retiring for the
night. She glanced up into his face as she completed the work; then,
with a gleam of fun in her eyes, she said:

“Ye look like ye’re studyin’ powerful hard, Mark. Mebbe ye air
a-cornsiderin’ ’bout gittin’ married. It’s ’bout time ez ye war
a-gittin’ another woman hyar ter work fur ye, ’kase I’m toler’ble old,
an’ can’t live forever mo’, an’ some day ye’ll find yerself desolated.”

“I ain’t a-studyin’ no more ’bout a-gettin’ married nor ye air
yerself,” Mark retorted, petulantly.

“Ye ain’t a-studyin’ much ’bout it, then,” said his mother. “The Bible
looks like it air a-pityin’ of widders mightily, but it ’pears ter me
that the worst of thar troubles is over.”

Then ensued a long silence. “Thar’s one thing to be sartain,” said
Mark, suddenly. “I ain’t never a-goin ter that thar still no more.”

“I hev hearn ye say that afore,” remarked Mrs. Yates, dryly. “An’ thar
never come a day when yer father war alive ez he didn’t say that very
word--nor a day as that word warn’t bruken.”

These amenities were at length sunk in sleep, and the little log hut
hung upon its precarious perch on the slope beneath the huge cliff all
quiet and lonely. The great gorge seemed a channel hewn for the winds;
they filled it with surging waves of sound, and the vast stretches
of woods were in wild commotion. The Argus-eyed sky still held its
steadfast watch, but an impenetrable black mask clung to the earth.
At long intervals there arose from out the forest the cry of a wild
beast--the anguish of the prey or the savage joy of the captor--and
then for a time no sound save the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea
of winds. Suddenly, a shrill whistle awoke the echoes, the meteor-like
train sweeping across the sky wavered, faltered, and paused on the
verge of the crag. Then the darkness was instarred with faint, swinging
points of light, and there floated down upon the wind the sound of
eager, excited voices.

“Ef them thar cars war ter drap off’n that thar bluff,” said the
anxious Mrs. Yates, as she and her son, aroused by the unwonted noise,
came out of the hut, and gazed upward at the great white glare of the
headlight, “they’d ruin the turnip patch, worl’ without e-end.”

“Nothing whatever is the matter,” said the Pullman conductor, cheerily,
to his passengers, as he re-entered his coach. “Only a little church on
fire just beyond the curve of the road; the engineer couldn’t determine
at first whether it was a fire built on the track or on the hillside.”

The curtains of the berths were dropped, sundry inquiring windows
were closed, the travelers lay back on their hard pillows, the faint
swinging points of light moved upward as the men with the lanterns
sprang upon the platforms, the train moved slowly and majestically
across the bridge, and presently it was whizzing past the little
church, where the flames had licked up benches and pulpit and floor,
and were beginning to stream through door and window, and far above the
roof.

The miniature world went clanging along its way, careless of what it
left behind, and the turnip patch was saved.

The wonderful phenomenon of the stoppage of the train had aroused the
whole countryside, and when it had passed, the strange lurid glare high
on the slope of the mountain attracted attention. There was an instant
rush of the scattered settlers toward the doomed building. A narrow,
circuitous path led them up the steep ascent among gigantic rocks and
dense pine thickets; the roaring of the tumultuous wind drowned all
other sounds, and they soon ceased the endeavor to speak to one another
as they went, and canvass their suspicions and indignation. Turning
a sharp curve, the foremost of the party came abruptly upon a man
descending.

He had felt secure in the dead hour of night and the thick darkness,
and the distance had precluded him from being warned by the stoppage
of the train. He stood in motionless indecision for an instant, until
Moses Carter, who was a little in advance of the others, made an effort
to seize him, exclaiming, “This fire ez ye hev kindled, Painter Brice,
will burn ye in hell forever!” He spoke at a venture, not recognizing
the dark shadow, but there was no mistaking the supple spring with
which the man threw himself upon his enemy, nor the keen ferocity that
wielded the sharp knife. Hearing, however, in the ebb of the wind,
voices approaching from the hill below, and realizing the number of his
antagonists, the Panther tore himself loose, and running in the dark
with the unerring instinct and precision of the wild beast that he was,
he sped up the precipitous slope, and was lost in the gloomy night.

“Gin us the slip!” exclaimed Joel Ruggles, in grievous disappointment,
as he came up breathless. “A cussed painter if ever thar war one.”

“Mebbe he won’t go fur,” said Moses Carter. “He done cut my arm a-nigh
in two, but thar air suthin’ adrippin’ off ’n my knife what I feels
in my bones is that thar Painter’s blood. An’ I ain’t a-goin ter stop
till he air cotched, dead or alive. He mought hev gone down yander
ter the Widder Yates’s house, ez him an’ Mark air thicker’n thieves.
Come ter think on’t,” he continued, “Mark war a-settin’ with this hyar
very Painter Brice an’ the t’others yander ter the still-house nigh
’pon eight o’clock ter-night, an’ like ez not he holped Painter an’
the t’others ter fire the church.” For there was a strong impression
prevalent that wherever Panther Brice was, his satellite brothers were
not far off. Nothing, however, was seen of them on the way, and the
pursuers burst in upon the frightened widow and her son with little
ceremony. Her assertion that Mark had not left home since the eleven
o’clock train passed was disregarded, and they dragged the young fellow
out to the door, demanding to know where were the Brices.

“I hain’t seen none of ’em since I lef’ the still ’bout’n eight or nine
o’clock ter-night,” Mark protested.

“Ef the truth war knowed,” said Moses Carter, jeeringly, “ye never lef’
the still till they did. War it ye ez holped ’em ter fire the church?”

“I never knowed the church war burnin’ till ye kem hyar,” replied
young Yates. He was almost overpowered by a sickening realization of
the meaning of those covert insinuations which he had heard at the
still; and he remembered that the Panther’s assertion that the church
was safer with the Brices in it than out of it, was made while he sat
among the brothers in Moses Carter’s presence. He saw the justice of
the strong suspicion.

“You know, though, whar Painter Brice is now--don’t ye?” asked Carter.

A faint streak of dawn was athwart the eastern clouds, and as the young
fellow turned his bewildered eyes upward to it the blood stood still in
his veins. Upon one of the parallel lines of the bridge was the figure
of man, belittled by the distance, and indistinctly defined against
the mottling sky; but the far-seeing gray eyes detected in a certain
untrammeled ease, as it moved lightly from one of the ties to another,
the Panther’s free motion.

Mark Yates hesitated. He cherished an almost superstitious reverence
for the church which Panther Brice had desecrated and destroyed, and he
feared the consequences of refusing to give the information demanded of
him. A denial of the knowledge he did not for a moment contemplate. And
struggling in his mind against these considerations was a recollection
of the hospitality of the Brices, and of the ill-starred friendship
that had taken root and grown and flourished at the still.

This hesitation was observed; there were significant looks interchanged
among the men, and the question was repeated, “Whar’s Painter Brice?”

The decision of the problems that agitated the mind of Mark Yates
was not left to him. He saw the figure on the bridge suddenly turn,
then start eagerly forward. A heavy freight train, almost noiseless
in the wild whirl of the wind, had approached very near without being
perceived by Panther Brice. He could not retrace his way before it
would be upon him--to cross the bridge in advance of it was his only
hope. He was dizzy from the loss of blood and the great height, and the
wind was blowing between the cliffs in a strong, unobstructed current.
As he ran rapidly onward, the first faint gleam of the approaching
headlight touched the bridge--a furious warning shriek of the whistle
mingled with a wild human cry, and the Panther, missing his footing,
fell like a thunderbolt into the depths of the black waters below.

There was a revulsion of feeling, very characteristic of inconstant
humanity, in the little group on the slope below the crag. Before
Mark Yates’s frantic exclamation, “Thar goes Painter Brice, an’ he’ll
be drownded sure!” had fairly died upon the air, half a dozen men were
struggling in the dark, cold water of the swift stream in the vain
attempt to rescue their hunted foe. Long after they had given up the
forlorn hope of saving his life, the morning sun for hours watched them
patrolling the banks for the recovery of the body.

“Ef we could haul that pore critter out somehow ’nother,” said Moses
Carter, his arm still dripping from the sharp strokes of the Panther’s
knife, “an’ git the preacher ter bury him somewhar under the pines like
he war a Christian, I could rest more sati’fied in my mind.”

The mountain stream never gave him up.

This event had a radical influence upon the future of Mark Yates.
Never again did he belittle the possible impetus given the moral
nature by those more trifling wrongs that always result in an
increased momentum toward crime. He was the first to discover more
of what Painter Brice had really intended,--had attempted,--than was
immediately apparent to the countryside in general. A fragment of the
door lay unburned among the charred remains of the little church in the
wilderness--a fragment that carried the lock, the key. Mark’s sharp
eyes fixed upon a salient point as he stood among the group that had
congregated there in the sad light of the awakening day. The key was
on the outside of the door, and it had been turned! The Panther had
doubtless been actuated by revenge, and perhaps, had been influenced
by the fear that information of the illicit distilling would be given
by the parson to the revenue authorities, as a means of breaking up an
element so inimical to the true progress of religion on the ridge--its
denizens hitherto availing themselves of the convenience of the still
to assuage any pricks of conscience they may have had in the matter,
and also fearing the swift and terrible fate that inevitably overtook
the informer. At all events, it was evident, that having reason to
believe the minister was still within, Painter Brice had noiselessly
locked the door that his unsuspecting enemy might also perish in the
flames. For in the primitive fashioning of the building there was no
aperture for light and air except the door--no window, save a small,
glassless square above the pulpit which, in the good time coming, the
congregation had hoped to glaze, to receive therefrom more light on
salvation. It was so small, so high, that perhaps no other man could
have slipped through it, save indeed the slim little “skimpy saint,”
and it was thus that he had escaped.

No vengeance followed the Panther’s brothers. “They hed ter do jes’
what Painter tole ’em, ye see,” was the explanation of this leniency.
And Mark Yates was always afterward described as “a peart smart boy,
ef he hedn’t holped the Brices ter fire the church-house.” The still
continued to be run according to the old regulations, except there
was no whisky sold to the church brethren. “That bein’ the word ez
John left behind him,” said Aaron. The laws of few departed rulers are
observed with the rigor which the Brices accorded to the Panther’s
word. The locality came to be generally avoided, and no one cared to
linger there after dark, save the three Brices, who sat as of old, in
the black shadows about the still.

Whenever in the night-wrapped gorge a shrill cry is heard from the
woods, or the wind strikes a piercing key, or the train thunders over
the bridge with a wild shriek of whistles, and the rocks repeat it
with a human tone in the echo, the simple foresters are wont to turn
a trifle pale and to bar up the doors, declaring that the sound “air
Painter Brice a-callin’ fur his brothers.”




THE EXPLOIT
OF
CHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW


The victorious campaign which Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant conducted
in the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761, and which redounded so
greatly to the credit of the courage and endurance of the expeditionary
force, British regulars and South Carolina provincials, is like many
other human events in presenting to the casual observation only an
harmonious whole, while it is made up of a thousand little jagged bits
of varied incident inconsistent and irregular, and with no single
element in common but the attraction of cohesion to amalgamate the
mosaic.

Perhaps no two men in the command saw alike the peaks of the Great
Smoky Mountains hovering elusively on the horizon, now purple and
ominous among the storm clouds, for the rain fell persistently;
now distant, blue, transiently sun-flooded, and with the prismatic
splendors of the rainbow spanning in successive arches the abysses
from dome to dome, and growing ever fainter and fainter in duplication
far away. Perhaps no two men revived similar impressions as they
recognized various localities from the South Carolina coast to the
Indian town of Etchoee, near the Little Tennessee River, for many of
them had traversed hundreds of miles of these wild fastnesses the
previous year, when Colonel Montgomery, now returned to England, had
led an aggressive expedition against the Cherokees. Certain it is, the
accounts of their experiences are many and varied--only in all the
character of their terrible enemy, the powerful and warlike Cherokee,
stands out as incontrovertible as eternity, as immutable as Fate. Hence
there were no stragglers, no deserters. In a compact body, while the
rain fell, and the torrents swelled the streams till the fords became
almost impracticable, the little army, as with a single impulse,
pressed stanchly on through the mist-filled, sodden avenues of the
primeval woods. To be out of sight for an instant of that long, thin
column of soldiers risked far more than death--capture, torture, the
flame, the knife, all the extremity of anguish that the ingenuity of
savage malice could devise and human flesh endure. But although day
by day the thunder cracked among the branches of the dripping trees
and reverberated from the rocks of the craggy defiles, and keen swift
blades of lightning at short intervals thrust through the lowering
clouds, almost always near sunset long level lines of burnished golden
beams began to glance through the wild woodland ways; a mocking-bird
would burst into song from out the dense coverts of the laurel on the
slope of a mountain hard by; the sky would show blue overhead, and
glimmer red through the low-hanging boughs toward the west; and the
troops would pitch their tents under the restored peace of the elements
and the placid white stars.

A jolly camp it must have been. Stories of it have come down to this
day--of its songs, loud, hilarious, patriotic, doubtless rudely
musical; of its wild pranks, of that boyish and jocose kind denominated
by sober and unsympathetic elders, “horse-play”; of the intense delight
experienced by the savage allies, the Chickasaws, who participated in
the campaign, in witnessing the dances of the young Highlanders--how
“their sprightly manner in this exercise,” and athletic grace appealed
to the Indians; how the sound of the bag-pipes thrilled them; how they
admired that ancient martial garb, the kilt and plaid.

No admiration, however extravagant of Scotch customs, character, or
appearance, seemed excessive in the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel James
Grant, so readily did his haughty, patriotic pride acquiesce in it, and
the Indian’s evident appreciation of the national superiority of the
Scotch to all other races of men duly served to enhance his opinion of
the mental acumen of the Chickasaws. This homage, however, failed to
mollify or modify the estimate of the noble redman already formed by a
certain subaltern, Lieutenant Ronald MacDonnell.

“The Lord made him an Indian--and an Indian he will remain,” he would
remark sagely.

The policy of the British government to utilize in its armies
the martial strength of semi-savage dependencies, elsewhere so
conspicuously exploited, was never successful with these Indians save
as the tribes might fight in predatory bands in their own wild way,
although much effort was made looking toward regular enlistments.
And, in fact, the futility of all endeavors to reduce the savage to
a reasonable conformity to the militarism of the camp, to inculcate
the details of the drill, a sense of the authority of officers, the
obligations of out-posts, the heinousness of “running the guard,” the
necessity of submitting to the prescribed punishments and penalties
for disobedience of orders,--all rendered this ethnographic saw so
marvelously apt, that it seemed endowed with more wisdom than Ronald
MacDonnell was popularly supposed to possess. But such logic as he
could muster operated within contracted limits. If the Lord had not
fitted a man to be a soldier, why--there Ronald MacDonnell’s extremest
flights of speculation paused.

In the scheme of his narrow-minded Cosmos the human creature was
represented by two simple species: unimportant, unindividualized man
in general, and that race of exalted beings known as soldiers. He was
a good drill, and with the instinct of a born disciplinarian in his
survey, he would often watch the Chickasaws with this question in his
mind,--sometimes when they were on the march, and their endurance,
their activity, the admirable proportions of their bodies, their free
and vigorous gait were in evidence; sometimes in the swift efficiency
of their scouting parties when their strategy and courage and wily
caution were most marked; sometimes in the relaxations of the camp when
their keen responsive interest in the quirks and quips of the soldier
at play attested their mental receptivity and plastic impressibility.
Their gayety seemed a docile, mundane, civilized sort of mirth when
they would stand around in the ring with the other soldiers to watch
the agile Highlanders in the inspiring martial posturing of the sword
dance, with their fluttering kilts and glittering blades, their free
gestures,their long, sinewy, bounding steps, as of creatures of no
weight, while the bag-pipes skirled, and the great campfire flared, and
the light and shadows fluctuated in the dense primeval woods, half
revealing, half concealing the lines of tents, of picketed horses,
of stacks of arms, of other flaring camp-fires--even the pastoral
suggestion in the distance of the horned heads of the beef-herd.
But whatever the place or scene, Ronald MacDonnell’s conclusion was
essentially the same. “The Lord made him an Indian,” he would say, with
an air of absolute finality.

He was a man of few words,--of few ideas; these were strictly military
and of an appreciated value. He was considered a promising young
officer, and was often detailed to important and hazardous duty. And
if he had naught to say at mess, and seldom could perceive a joke
unless of a phenomenal pertinence and brilliancy, broadly aflare so to
speak under his nose, he was yet a boon companion, and could hold his
own like a Scotchman when many a brighter man was under the table.
He had a certain stanch, unquestioning sense of duty and loyalty, and
manifested an unchangeable partisanship in his friendship, of a silent
and undemonstrative order, that caused his somewhat exaggerated view
of his own dignity to be respected, for it was intuitively felt that
his personal antagonism would be of the same tenacious, unreasoning,
requiting quality, and should not be needlessly roused. He was still
very young, although he had seen much service. He was tall and
stalwart; he had the large, raw-boned look which is usually considered
characteristic of the Scotch build, and was of great muscular strength,
but carrying not one ounce of superfluous flesh. Light-colored hair,
almost flaxen, indeed, with a strong tendency to curl in the shorter
locks that lay in tendrils on his forehead, clear, contemplative blue
eyes, a fixed look of strength, of reserves of unfailing firmness about
the well-cut lips, a good brick-red flush acquired from many and many
a day of marching in the wind, and the rain, and the sun--this is the
impression one may take from his portrait. He could be as noisy and
boisterously gay as the other young officers, but somehow his hilarity
was of a physical sort, as of the sheer joy of living, and moving, and
being so strong. One might wonder what impressions he received in the
long term of his service in Canada and the Colonies--these strange
new lands so alien to all his earlier experience. One might doubt if
he saw how fair of face was this most lovely of regions, the Cherokee
country; if the primeval forests, the splendid tangles of blooming
rhododendron, the crystal-clear, rock-bound rivers were asserted in
his consciousness otherwise than as the technical “obstacle” for troops
on the march. As to the imposing muster of limitless ranks of mountains
surrounding the little army on every side, they did not remind him of
the hills of Scotland, as the sheer sense of great heights and wild
ravines and flashing cataracts suggested reminiscences to the others.
“There is no gorse,” he remarked of these august ranges, with their
rich growths of gigantic forest trees, as if from the beginning of the
earliest eras of dry land,--and the mess called him “Gorse” until the
incident was forgotten.

For the last three days the command, consisting of some twenty-six
hundred men, had been advancing by forced marches, despite the
deterrent weather. Setting out on the 7th of June from Fort Prince
George, where the army had rested for ten days after the march of
three hundred miles from Charlestown, Colonel Grant encountered a
season of phenomenal rain-fall. Moreover, the lay of the land,--long
stretches of broken, rocky country, gashed by steep ravines and
intersected by foaming, swollen torrents, deep and dangerous to ford,
encompassed on every hand by rugged heights and narrow, intricate,
winding valleys, affording always but a restricted passage,--offered
peculiar advantages for attack. Colonel Grant, aware that these craggy
defiles could be held against him even by an inferior force, that a
smart demonstration on the flank would so separate the thin line of
his troops that one division would hardly be available to come to the
support of the other, that an engagement here and now would result
in great loss of life, if not an actual and decisive repulse, was
urging the march forward at the utmost speed possible to reach more
practicable ground for an encounter, regardless how the pace might
harass the men. But they were responding gallantly to the demands on
their strength, and this was what he had hardly dared to hope. For
during the previous winter, when General Amherst ordered the British
regulars south by sea, many of them immediately upon their arrival
in Charlestown, succumbed to an illness occasioned by drinking the
brackish water of certain wells of the city. Coming in response to the
urgent appeals of the province to the commander-in-chief of the army
to defend the frontier against the turbulent Cherokees who ravaged
the borders, the British force were looked upon as public deliverers,
and the people of the city took the ill soldiers from the camps into
their own private dwellings, nursing them until they were quite
restored. No troops could have better endured the extreme hardships
which they successfully encountered in their march northward. So
swift an advance seemed almost impossible. The speed of the movement
apparently had not been anticipated, even by that wily and watchful
enemy, the Cherokees. It has been said that at this critical juncture
the Indians had failed to receive the supply of ammunition from the
French which they had anticipated, although a quantity, inadequate for
the emergency, however, reached them a few days later. At all events
Colonel Grant was nearly free of the district where disaster so menaced
him before he received a single shot. He had profited much by his
several campaigns in this country since he led that rash, impetuous,
and bloody demonstration against Fort Duquesne, in which he himself
was captured with nineteen of his officers, and his command was almost
cut to pieces. Now his scouts patrolled the woods in every direction.
His vanguard of Indian allies under command of a British officer was
supported by a body of fifty rangers and one hundred and fifty light
infantry. Every precaution against surprise was taken.

Late one afternoon, however, the main body wavered with a sudden shock.
The news came along the line. The Cherokees were upon them--upon the
flank? No; in force fiercely assaulting the rear-guard. It was as Grant
had feared impossible in these narrow defiles to avail himself of his
strength, to face about, to form, to give battle. The advance was
ordered to continue steadily onward,--difficult indeed, with the sound
of the musketry and shouting from the rear, now louder, now fainter,
as the surges of attack ebbed and flowed.

A strong party was detached to reinforce the rear-guard. But again
and again the Cherokees made a spirited dash, seeking to cut off the
beef herd, fighting almost in the open, with as definite and logical a
military plan of destroying the army by capturing its supplies in that
wild country, hundreds of miles from adequate succor, as if devised by
men trained in all the theories of war.

“The Lord made him--” muttered Ronald MacDonnell, in uncertainty,
recognizing the coherence of this military maneuver, and said no more.
Whether or not his theory was reduced to that simple incontrovertible
proposition, thus modified by the soldier-like demonstration on the
supply train, his cogitations were cut short by more familiar ideas,
when in command of thirty-two picked men, he was ordered to make a
detour through the defiles of a narrow adjacent ravine, and, issuing
suddenly thence, seek to fall upon the flank of the enemy and surprise,
rout, and pursue him. This was the kind of thing, that with all his
limitations, Ronald MacDonnell most definitely understood. This set
a-quiver, with keenest sensitiveness, every fiber of his phlegmatic
nature, called out every working capacity of his slow, substantial
brains, made his quiet pulses bound. He looked the men over strictly as
they dressed their ranks, and then he stepped swiftly forward toward
them, for it was the habit to speak a few words of encouragement to the
troops about to enter on any extra-hazardous duty, so daunting seemed
the very sight of the Cherokees and the sound of their blood-curdling
whoops.

“Hech, callants!” he cried, in his simple joy; and so full of valiant
elation was the exclamation that its spirit flared up amongst the wild
“petticoat-men,” who cheered as lustily as if they had profited by the
best of logic and the most finely flavored eloquence. Ronald MacDonnell
felt that he had acquitted himself well in the usual way, and was under
the impression that he had made a speech to the troops.

Now climbing the crags of the verges of the ravine, now deep in its
trough, following the banks of its flashing torrent, they made their
way--at a brisk double-quick when the ground would admit of such
progress--and when they must, painfully dragging one another through
the dense jungles of the dripping laurel, always holding well together,
remembering the ever-frightful menace of the Cherokee to the laggard.
The rain fell no longer; the sunlight slanted on the summit of the
rocks above their heads; the wind was blowing fresh and free, and the
mists scurried before it; now and again on the steep slopes as the
vapors shifted, the horned heads of cattle showed with a familiar
reminiscent effect as of mountain kyloes at home. But these were great
stall-fed steers, running furiously at large, bellowing, frightened
by the tumults of the conflict, plunging along the narrow defiles,
almost dashing headlong into the little party of Highlanders who were
now quickening their pace, for the crack of dropping shots and once
and again a volley, the whoopings of the savages and shouts of the
soldiers, betokened that the scene of carnage was near.

Only a few of the cattle were astray for, as MacDonnell and his men
emerged into a little level glade, they could see in the distance
that the herd was held well together by the cattle-guard, while the
reinforcements sought to check the Cherokees, who, although continually
sending forth their terribly accurate masked fire from behind trees
and rocks, now and again with a mounted body struck out boldly for the
supply train, assaulting with tremendous impetuosity the rear-guard.
So still and clear was the evening air that, despite the clamors of
battle, MacDonnell could hear the commands, could see in the distance
the lines rallying on the reserve forming into solid masses, as the
mounted savages hurled down upon them; could even discern where rallies
by platoon had been earlier made judging from the position of the
bodies of the dead soldiers, lying in a half-suggested circle.

The next moment, with a ringing shout and a smartly delivered volley
of musketry the Highlanders flung themselves from out the mouth of the
ravine. The Cherokee horsemen were going down like so many ten-pins.
The first detachment of reinforcements set up a wild shout of joy to
perceive the support, then flung themselves on their knees to load
while a second volley from the Highlanders passed over their heads.
The rear-guard had formed anew, faced about, and were advancing in the
opposite direction. The Cherokee horsemen, almost surrounded, gave
way; the fire of the others in ambush wavered, slackened, became only
a dropping shot here and there, then sunk to silence. And the woods
were filled with a wild rout, with the irregular musketry of the troops
frenzied with sudden success, out of line, out of hearing, out of
reason as they pursued the unmounted savages, dislodged at last from
their masked position; with the bugles blowing, the bag-pipes playing;
with the unheard, disregarded orders shouted by the officers; with that
thrilling cry of the Highlanders “Claymore! Claymore!” the sun flashing
on their drawn broadswords as they gained on the flying Indians,
themselves as fleet;--a confused, disordered panorama of shadows and
sunlight, of men in red coats and men in blue, and men in tartan, and
savage Chickasaws and Cherokees in their wild barbaric array.

It had been desired that the repulse should be fierce and decisive, the
pursuit bloody and relentless. The supply train represented the life
of the army, and it was essential to deter the Cherokees from readily
renewing the attack on so vital a point. But these ends compassed,
every effort of the officers was concentrated on the necessity of
recalling the scattered parties. Night was coming on; it was a strange
and an alien country; the skulking Cherokees were doubtless in force
somewhere in the dense coverts of the woods, and the vicarious terrors
of the capture that menaced the valorous and venturesome soldiers began
to press heavily upon the officers. Again and again the bugles summoned
the stragglers, the rich golden notes drifting through the wilderness,
rousing a thousand insistent echoes from many a dumb rock thus endowed
with a voice. Certain of the more solicitous officers sent out, with
much caution, small details, gathering together the stragglers as they
went.

How Ronald MacDonnell became separated from one of these parties was
never very clear afterward to his own mind. His attention was attracted
first by the sight of a canny Scotch face or two, which he knew, lying
very low and very still; he suffered a pang which he could never evade.
These were the men who had followed him to the finish, and he took out
his note-book and holding it against a tree, made a memorandum of the
locality for the burial parties, and then, with great particularity,
of the names, “For the auld folks at hame,” and he quoted, mournfully
a line of the old Gaelic lament much sung by the Scotch emigrants
“_Ha til mi tulidh_” (we return no more), which was sadly true of
the Highland soldiery in the British ranks,--an instance is given of
a regiment of twelve hundred men who served in America of whom only
seventy-six ever saw their native hills again. Then, briskly putting up
the book he went on a bit, glancing sharply about for the living of his
command, even now thrusting their reckless heads into the den of the
Cherokee lion. “Ill-fau’rd chields, and serve them right,” he said,
struggling with the dismay in his heart for their sake.

Perhaps he did not realize how far those active strides were carrying
him from the command. In fact the march continued that night until
the sinking of the moon, the army pressing resolutely on through the
broken region of the mountain defiles. MacDonnell noted no Cherokee
in sight, that is to say, not a living one. Several of the dead lay
on the ground, their still faces already bearing that wan, listening,
attentive look of death; they were heedless indeed of the hands that
had rifled them of their possessions, for there were a few of the
Chickasaw allies intent on plunder.

Presently as he went down a sunset glade, MacDonnell saw advancing
a notable figure, a Chickasaw chief, tall, lithe, active, muscular,
with a gait of athletic grace. He was wearing the warrior’s “crown,”
a towering head-dress in the form of a circlet of white swan’s
feathers of graduated height, standing fifteen inches high in front,
and at the bottom woven into a band of swan’s down--all so deftly
constructed that the method of the manufacture of the whole could not
be discerned, it is said, without taking it into the hand. To the
fringed borders of a sort of sleeveless hunting shirt of otter-skin
and his buckskin leggings bits of shells were attached and glittered,
and this betokened his wealth, for these beads represented the money
of the Indians, with the unique advantage that when not in active
circulation, one’s currency could be worn as an ornament. It has been
generally known under the generic name “wampum,” although several of
the Southern tribes called it “roanoke” or “pe-ack.” It was made in
tiny, tubular beads, of about an inch in length, of the conch and
mussel-shells, requiring the illimitable leisure of the Indian to
polish the cylinder to the desired glister, and drill through it the
hollow no larger than a knitting-needle might fill. His chest and arms
were painted symbolically in red and blue arabesques, and his face, of
a proud, alert cast was smeared with vermilion and white. All his flesh
glistened and shone with the polishing of some unguent. MacDonnell
had heard a deal of preaching in his time of the Scotch Presbyterian
persuasion, and in the dearth of expression Biblical phrases sometimes
came to him. “Oil to give him a cheerful countenance,” he quoted, still
gazing at the grim face and figure. So intently he gazed, indeed, that
the Indian hesitated, doubting if the Highland officer recognized
him as a friend. Breaking off a branch of a green locust hard by and
holding it aloft at one side, after the manner of a peaceful embassy,
he continued his stately advance until within a yard of the silent
Scotchman, also advancing. Then they both paused.

“_Ish la chu; Angona?_” said the Indian, in a sonorous voice. (Are you
come, a friend?)

With the true Briton’s aversion to palaver, intensified by his own
incapacity for its practice, Ronald MacDonnell discovered little
affinity for barbaric ceremonial. Nevertheless he was constrained
by the punctilious sense that a gentleman must reply to a courteous
greeting in the manner expected of him. His experience with the
Chickasaws had acquainted him with the appropriate response.

“_Arabre--O, Angona_,” (I am come, a friend) he returned, a trifle
sheepishly, and without the _ore rotunda_ effect of the elocution of
the Indian.

The young chief looked hard at him, evidently desirous of engaging him
in conversation, unaware that it was a game at which the Scotchman was
incapacitated for playing.

“Big battle,” he observed, after a doubtful interval.

“A bonny ploy,” assented the officer, who had seen much bigger ones.

Then they both paused and gazed at each other.

“Cherokee--heap fight! Big damn--O!” remarked Choolah, the Fox,
applausively.

The use of this most vocative vowel as an intensitive suffix is
one of the peculiar methods of emphasis in the animated Chickasaw
language--for instance the word _Yanas-O_ means the biggest kind of
buffalo (_yanasa_ signifying buffalo in all the dialects). Choolah
conversing in the cold and phlegmatic English evidently felt the need
of these intensitives, and although a certain strong condemnatory
monosyllable has been usually found sufficiently satisfying to the
feelings of English speaking men seeking an expletive, the poor
Aboriginal, wishing to be more wicked than he was, discovered its
capacity for expansion with the prefix “Big” and devised an added
emphasis with the explosive final “O.”

“The Cherokee warriors? Pretty men!” said MacDonnell laconically,
according the enemy’s valor the meed of a soldier’s praise. “Very
pretty men.”

Choolah had never piqued himself on his command of the English
language, but he thought now his fluency was at least equal to that
of this Scotchman, who really seemed to speak no tongue at all. As to
the French--of that speech, _ookproo-se_ (forever despised) Choolah
would not learn a syllable, so deadly a hatred did the Chickasaw tribe
bear the whole Gallic nation, dating back indeed through many wars and
feuds, to the massacre by Choctaws of certain of the tribe in 1704,
while under the protection of Boisbriant with a French safeguard, the
deed suspected to have been committed if not at the instigation, at
least by the permission of the French commander who, however, himself
wounded in the affray, was beyond doubt, helpless in the matter.

“Heap tired?” ventured Choolah, at last, pining for conversation, his
searching eyes on the young Highlander’s face.

Ronald MacDonnell laughed a proud negation. He held out one of his
long, heavily muscled arms, with the fist clenched, that the Indian
might feel, through his sleeve, the swelling cords that betokened his
strength.

But it was Choolah’s trait to cherish vanity in physical endowment, not
to foster it in others. He only said, “Good! Swim river.”

“Why swim the river?” demanded the Lieutenant.

Then Choolah detailed that through a scout he had thrown out he had
learned that Colonel Grant’s force, still pushing on, had succeeded
in crossing the Tennessee river, the herd of cattle and the pack
animals giving incredible trouble in the fords, deeply swollen by the
unprecedented rains. It suddenly occurred to MacDonnell that, in view
of the passage of the troops beyond this barrier, much caution would be
requisite in endeavoring to rejoin the main body, lest they fall into
the clutch of the Cherokees on the hither side, who doubtless would
seek the capture of parties of stragglers by carefully patrolling the
banks. He suggested this to Choolah. The Indian listened for only a
moment with a look of deep conviction; then suddenly calling to five
Chickasaws who were still engaged in parceling out the booty they had
brought away from the dead bodies, he beckoned to MacDonnell, and they
set out on a line parallel with the river, in Indian file, in a long,
steady trot, the Scotchman among them, half willing, half dismayed,
repudiating with the distaste of a prosaic, unimaginative mind every
evidence of barbarism; every unaccustomed thing seemed grotesque and
uncouth, and lacking all in lacking the cachet of civilization. Each
man, as he ran lightly along that marshy turf, almost without noting,
as if by instinct placed his feet upon the steps of the man in advance;
thus, although seven persons passed over the ground, the largest man
coming last, the footprints would show as if but one had gone that way.
Ronald MacDonnell, quick at all military or athletic exercises, readily
achieved conformity, although the barbarous procedure compromised his
sensitive dignity, and he growled between his teeth something about a
commissioned officer and a “demented goose-step,” as if he found the
practice of the one by the other a painful derogation. The moon came
into the sky while still they sped along in this silent, crafty way,
the wind in their faces, the pervasive scents of the damp, flowery June
night filling every breath they drew with the impalpable essences of
sylvan fragrance.

Even with the dangers that lurked at their heels, the Indians would
never leap over a log, for this was unlucky, but made long detours
around fallen trees, till Ronald MacDonnell could have belabored them
with hearty good-will, and but for the fear of capture by the savage
Cherokees, could not have restrained himself from crying aloud for rage
for the waste of precious time. He had even less patience with their
slow and respectful avoidance of stepping on a snake sinuously skirting
their way, since, according to their belief, this would provoke the
destruction of their own kindred by the serpent’s brothers; Choolah’s
warning to the other Chickasaws in the half-suppressed hiss--“_Seente!
Seente!_” (snake!) sounded far and sibilant in the quiet twilight. The
Cherokee tribe also were wont to avoid with great heed any injury to
snakes, and spoke of them always in terms of crafty compliment as “the
bright old inhabitants.”

The shadows grew darker, more definite; the moon, of a whiter glister
now, thoughtful, passive, very melancholy, illumined the long vistas
of the woods, and although verging toward the west, limited the area
of darkness that had become their protection. More than once Choolah
had glanced up doubtfully at its clear effulgence, for the sky was
unclouded and the constellations were only a vague bespanglement of
the blue deeps; coming at length to a dense covert among the blooming
laurel, he crept in among the boughs, that overhung a shallow grotto
by the river bank. MacDonnell followed his example, and the group soon
were in the cleft of the rocks under the dense shade, the Scotchman
alone among the Indians, with such dubious sentiments as a good hound
might entertain were he thrust, muzzled, among his natural enemies, the
bears.

But the Chickasaws, as ever, were earnestly, ardently friendly to the
British. There was no surly reservation in Choolah’s mind as he reached
forth his hand and laid it upon the muscular arm of the Scotchman.

“Good arm,” he said, reverting to the young Highlander’s boast.
“But--big damn--O!--good leg! Heap run!” he declared, with a
smothered laugh, like any other young man’s, much resembling indeed
the affectionate ridicule that was wont to go around the mess-table
at Ronald’s unimaginative solemnities. But even MacDonnell could
appreciate the jest at a brave man’s activities, and he laughed in
pleasant accord with the others.

A scout that they had thrown out came presently creeping back under
the boughs with the unwelcome intelligence that there was a party of
Cherokees a little higher up on the river, a small band of about a
dozen men, seeming intent on holding the ford. These were stationary,
apparently, but lower down, patrolling the banks, were groups here and
there beating the woods for stragglers, he fancied. As yet, however,
he thought they had no prisoners. Still, their suspicions of hidden
soldiers were unallayed, and they were keeping very quiet.

The scout was named Oop-pa, the Owl. Although himself a warrior
of note he was of a far lower grade of Chickasaw than Choolah, in
personal quality as well as in actual rank. Instead of manifesting the
stanch courage with which the Indian Fox hearkened to this untoward
intelligence, the alert gathering of all his forces of mind and body
for defense and for victory, or to make his defeat and capture an
exceedingly costly and bloody triumph, Oop-pa set himself, still in the
guise of imparting news, to sullenly plaining. The Highland officer
listened heedfully for in these repeated campaigns in the valley of
the Tennessee River he had become somewhat familiar with the dialect
of the Chickasaw allies and in a degree they comprehended the sound of
the English, and thus the conversation of the little party was chiefly
held each speaking in his own tongue. The English were all across the
river, Oop-pa declared. The red-coats, and the green-coats, and the
tartan-men, and the provincial regiment--he did not believe a man of
the command was left--but them.

“Well, thank God for that much grace!” exclaimed Ronald MacDonnell,
strictly limiting his gratitude; he would render to Providence due
recognition for his own rescue when it should be accomplished. His
thankfulness, however, for the extent of the blessing vouchsafed was
very genuine. His military conscience had been sharply pricked lest he
might have lost some of his own men in the confusion of the pursuit and
the subsequent separation from the little band.

Oop-pa looked at him surlily. For his own part, the Indian said, he was
tired. Let the English and French fight one another. They had left him
to be captured by the Cherokees. He needed no words. White man hated
red man. Big Colonel Grant would be glad. Proud Colonel Grant--much
prouder than an Indian,--would not care if the terrible Cherokees
tortured and burned his faithful Chickasaws. Let it be one of his own
honey plaidsmen, though, and you would see a difference! For haughty
Colonel Grant couldn’t abide for such little accidents to befall any of
his pampered tartan-men, whom he loved as if they were his children.

With the word the world changed suddenly to Ronald MacDonnell. For
this--this fearful fate menaced him. His was not a pictorial mind, but
he had a sudden vision of a quiet house on a wild Scottish coast at
nightfall within view of the surging Atlantic, with all the decorous
habitudes about it of a kindly old home, with a window aglow, through
which he could see, as if he stood just outside, a familiar room where
there were old books and candlelight, and the flare of fire, and the
collie on the rug, and the soft young pink cheeks of sisters, and a
gray head with a pipe, intent upon the columns of a newspaper and the
last intelligence from far America,--and oh! in the ingle-nook, a
face sweeter for many a wrinkle, and eyes dearer for the loss of blue
beauty, and soft hands grown nerveless, whose touch nevertheless he
could feel across the ocean on his hard, weather-beaten young cheek.
It had been a long time since this manly spirit had cried back to his
mother, but it was only for a moment. If his fate came as he feared,
he hoped they might never know how it had befallen. And the picture
dissolved.

He did not fail to listen to the scornful reproaches with which Choolah
upbraided Oop-pa. He had been left because he had lingered to rob the
slain Cherokees. Look at the load there of hunting-shirts and blankets,
and yes, even a plaid or two from a dead Highlander, that he had borne
with him on his back from the field of battle; it was his avarice that
had belated him.

And what then, Oop-pa retorted, had belated Choolah and the Highland
officer? They had brought away nothing but their own hides, which they
were at liberty to offer to the Cherokees, as early as they might.

The freedom of Oop-pa’s tongue was resented as evidently by Choolah
as by Ronald, but the _Etissu_ occupied a semi-sacerdotal position
toward the chief, a war-captain, the decrees of whose religion would
not suffer him to touch a morsel of food or a drop of drink while
on the war-path unless administered by the _Etissu_. The utmost
abstemiousness was preserved among the Chickasaws throughout, and it
continued a marvel to the British troops how men could march or fight
so ill-nourished, practicing all the fasting austerities of religious
observances. There were many similar customs implying consecration to
war as holy duty, but they were gradually becoming modified by the
introduction of foreign influences, for formerly the Indians would
not have suffered among them on the march the unsanctified presence
of a stranger like Ronald MacDonnell. He said naught in reply to the
_Etissu_. His mind was grimly preoccupied. He was busied with the
realization of how strong he was, how very strong. These lithe Indians,
with all their supple elasticity, their activity, had no such staying
power as he, no such muscular vitality. He was thinking what resources
of anguish his stalwart physique offered for the hideous sport of the
torture; how his stanch flesh would resist. How long, how long dying he
would be!

The terrors of capture by the Cherokees had been by Grant’s orders
described again and again to the troops to keep the rank and file
constant to duty, close in camp, vigilant on outpost, and alert to
respond to the call to arms. Never, as Ronald righteously repeated
this grim detail, had he imagined he would ever be in case to remember
it with a personal application. He now protested inwardly that he
could die like a soldier. Even from the extremity of physical anguish
he had never shrunk. But the hideous prospect of the malice of human
fiends wreaked for hours and hours upon every quivering nerve, upon
every sensitive fiber, with the wonderful ingenuity for which the
Cherokees were famous, made him secretly wince as he crouched there
among the friendly Chickasaws, beneath the boughs of the rhododendron
splendidly a-bloom in the moonlight, while the rich, pearly glamours
of the broken disk sunk down and down the sky, and the dew glimmered
on the full-fleshed leaves, and through them a silver glitter from
the Tennessee River hard by struck his eye, and a break in the woods,
where the channel curved, showed the contour of a dome of the Great
Smoky Mountains limiting the instarred heavens. As he looked out from
the covert of the laurel--his flaxen hair visible here and there in
rings on his sunburned forehead, from which his blue bonnet was pushed
back; his strongly marked high features, hardly so immobile as was
their wont; his belt, his plaid, his claymore, all the details of that
ancient martial garb, readjusted with military precision since the
fight; his long, rawboned figure, lean and muscular, but nevertheless
with a suggestion of the roundness of youth, half reclining, supported
on one arm--the Indian gazed at him with questioning intentness.

Suddenly Choolah spoke.

“_Angona_,” (friend) he said, with a poignant note of distrust, “you
have a thought in your mind.”

It was seldom indeed, that Ronald MacDonnell could have been thus
accused. He changed color a trifle, although he said, hastily, “Oh, no,
my good man, not at all--not at all!”

“_Angona! Angona!_” cried Choolah, in reproach.

Perhaps a definite recognition of this thought in his mind came to
MacDonnell with the fear that the Chickasaw, who so easily discerned
it, would presently read it. “The fearsome Fox that he is,” thought
Ronald with an almost superstitious thrill at his heart.

Naturally he could not know how open was that frank face of his,
and that the keen discernment of the savage, though perceiving the
presence of the withheld thought, was yet inadequate to translate
its meaning. This thought was one which he would in no wise share
with Choolah. MacDonnell’s most coherent mental process was always
of a military trend; without a definite effort of discrimination, or
even voluntarily reverting to the events of the day, it had suddenly
occurred to him that the Cherokee with the essential improvidence of
the Indian nature, could not have developed that plan of attack on the
provision train, so determined and definitely designed, so difficult
to repulse, so repeated, renewed again and again with a desperation of
the extremest sacrifice to the end. And small wonder! Its success would
have involved the practical destruction of Grant’s whole army. Hundreds
of miles distant from any sufficient base of supplies, the provision
train was the life of the expedition. The beef-herds to be subsequently
driven out from the province to Fort Prince George for the use of
the army were to be timed with a view to the gradual consumption of
the provisions already furnished, and to communicate by messenger to
Charlestown, now distant nearly four hundred miles, the disaster of the
capture of stores would obviously involve a delay fatal to the troops.

The Indians, however, were a hand-to-mouth nation. Subsisting on the
chances of game in their long hunts and marches, enduring in its
default incredible rigors of hunger as a matter of course, sustaining
life and even strength when in hard luck by roots and fruits and
nuts, they could not have realized the value of the provision train
to civilized troops who must needs have beef and bacon, flour and
tobacco, soap and medicine--or they cannot fight. There was but one
explanation--French officers were among the Cherokees and directed
these demonstrations. Their presence had been earlier suspected, and
this, Ronald thought, was indisputable proof. The strange selection
of the ground where in the previous year the Cherokees had massed in
force and given battle to Colonel Montgomery’s troops had occasioned
much surprise, and later the same phenomenon occurred in their
engagements with Colonel Grant. It seemed to amount to an exhibition
of an intuitive military genius. No great captain of Europe, it was
said, could have acted with finer discernment of the opportunities and
the dangers, could with greater acumen have avoided and nullified the
risks. But Colonel Grant, who was always loath to accord credit to
aught but military science, believed the ground was chosen by men who
had studied the tactics of the great captains of Europe, and although
he had learned to beware of the wily devices of the savage, and to meet
his masked fire with skulking scouts and native allies, fighting in
their own way, he preserved all the precise tactical methods in which
he had been educated, and kept a sharp edge on his expectation for the
warlike feints and strategy of the equally trained French officer.

If he could only meet one now, Ronald MacDonnell was thinking. In case
it should prove impossible to cross the river and rejoin his command,
if he could only surrender to Johnny Crapaud!

To be sure the creature spoke French and ate frogs! More heinous
still he was always a Romanist, and diatribes on the wicked sorceries
and idolatries of papistry had been hurled through MacDonnell’s
consciousness from the Presbyterian pulpit since his earliest
recollection. But a soldier, a French officer--surely he would be
acquainted with higher methods than the barbarities of the savage; he
would be instructed in the humanities, subject to those amenities which
in all civilized countries protect a prisoner of war. Surely he would
not stand by and see a fellow-soldier--a white man, a Christian, like
himself--put to the torture and the stake. And if his authority could
not avail for protection--“I’d beg a bullet of him; in charity he could
not deny me that!” If the opportunity were but vouchsafed, MacDonnell
resolved to appeal to the Frenchman by every sanction that can control
a gentleman, by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by the bond of their
common religion. He hesitated a moment, realizing a certain hiatus
here, a gulf--and then he reconciled all things with a triumphant
stroke of potent logic. “They may call it idolatry or Mariolatry, if
they want to,--but I never heard anybody deny that the Lord _did_ have
a mother. And it’s a mighty good thing to have!”

This was the thought in his mind--the chance, the hope of surrendering
to a French officer.

The stir of the Indians recalled him. The moon was lower in the sky,
sinking further and further toward that great purple dome of the
many summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. All the glistening lines
of light upon the landscape--the glossy foliage, the shining river,
the shimmering mists--seemed drawn along as if some fine-spun seine,
some glittering enmeshment were being hauled into the boat-shaped
moon, still rocking and riding the waves off the headlands that the
serrated mountains thrust forth like a coast-line on the seas of the
sky. Now and again the voices of creatures of prey--wolves, panthers,
wildcats--came shrilly snarling through the summer night from the deep
interior of the woods, where they wrangled over the gain that the
battle had wrought for them in the slain of horses and men,--of the
Cherokee force doubtless; MacDonnell had scarcely a fear that these
were of Grant’s command, for that officer’s care for such protection of
his dead as was possible was always immediate and peculiarly marked,
and it was his habit to have the bodies sunk with great weights into
the rivers to prevent the scalping of them by the Cherokees. Ronald
wearied of the melancholy hours, the long, long night, although light
would have but added dangers of discovery. It was the lagging time he
would hasten, would fain stride into the future and security, so did
the suspense wear on his nerves. It told heavily even on the Indian,
and Ronald felt a certain sympathy when Choolah’s half-suppressed voice
greeted the scout, creeping into the grotto once more, with the wistful
inquiry, “_Onna He-tak?_” (Is it day?)

But the news that the _Etissu_ brought was not indeed concerned with
the hour. In his opinion, they would all soon have little enough to do
with time. His intelligence was in truth alarming. While the Cherokees
patrolling the river had gradually withdrawn to the interior of the
forest and disappeared, those at the ford above were suspiciously
astir. They had received evidently some intimation of the presence here
of the lurking Chickasaws, and were on the watch. To seek to flee would
precipitate an instant attack; to escape hence would be merely to fall
into the hands of the marauders in the forest beyond; to plunge into
the Tennessee River would furnish a floating target for the unerring
marksmen. Yet the crisis was immediate.

Choolah suddenly raised the hand of authority.

Ronald MacDonnell had seen much service, and had traveled far out of
the beaten paths of life. He was born a gentleman of good means and
of long descent--for if the MacDonnells were to be believed, Adam
was hardly a patch upon the antiquity of the great Clan-Colla. He
had already made an excellent record in his profession. It seemed to
him the veriest reversal of all the probabilities that he should now
be called upon to take his orders from Choolah the Fox, the savage
Chickasaw. Yet he felt no immediate vocation for the command, had it
been within his reach. With all his military talent and training he
could devise no other resource than to withstand the attack of the
larger party with half their number; to swim the river, and drown there
with a musket-ball in his brain; to flee into the woods to certain
capture. He watched, therefore, with intensest curiosity the movements
of the men under Choolah’s direction. The moon was now very low, the
light golden, dully burnished, far-striking, with a long shadow. First
one, then another of the Chickasaws showed themselves openly upon
the bank of the river in a clear space high above the current of the
water. Choolah beckoned to the Scotchman, and MacDonnell alertly sprang
to his feet and joined the wily tactician without a question, aware
that he was assisting to baffle the terrible enemy. His bonnet, his
fluttering plaid, his swinging claymore, his great muscular height and
long stride, all defined in the moonlight against the soft sky and the
mountains beyond, were enough to acquaint the watching Cherokees with
the welcome fact that here was not only an enemy but a white man of the
Highland battalion, the friends of the Chickasaw. The artful Chickasaws
swiftly and confusedly came and went from the densities of the laurel.
Impossible it would have been for the Cherokees to judge definitely of
their numbers, so quickly did they appear and disappear and succeed one
another. Thus cleverly the attack was postponed.

Ronald MacDonnell gave full credit to the strategy of Choolah. For
it would now seem--it needs must--that their little party no longer
feared the enemies in the quiet woods! They must have presumed the
Cherokees all gone! The Chickasaws were building a fire since the moon
was sinking. Probably they felt they could not lie down to sleep
without its protection and wolves very near in the woods. Listen to
that shrill, blood-curdling cry! They were surely disposing themselves
to rest! Already as the blaze began to leap up and show in the water
of the river below like a great red jewel, with the deep crystalline
lusters of a many-faceted ruby, figures might be seen by the flare of
the mounting flames, recumbent on the ground, wrapped in blankets; here
and there was tartan, an end of the plaid thrown over the face as the
Highlanders always slept; here and there a hunting-shirt and leggings
were plainly visible--all lying like the spokes of a wheel around the
central point of the fire.

“It is only the Muscogees who sleep in line,” Choolah explained to
MacDonnell, who had criticised the disposition.

The crafty Cherokees, stealthily approaching ever nearer and nearer,
had not seen in the first feeble glimmers of the flames the figures of
the seven men crawling gingerly back to the grotto in the covert of
the laurel, leaving around the fire merely billets of wood arrayed in
the blankets and stolen gear which the Owl had brought off from the
battle-field.

“But I am always in the wrong,” plained Oop-pa, sarcastically. “What
would you and the big tartan-man have to dress those warriors in if I
had not stayed for my goods?”

MacDonnell had urged his scruples. This was hardly according to the
rules of war. “But if the Cherokees fire on sleeping men,” he argued--

“_Angona_,” the wily Chickasaw assured him, suavely, “they are
disarmed. We can rush out and overpower them before they can load.”

“They ought to be able to fire three times to the minute,” thought
MacDonnell, who was a good drill.

But the Cherokees were not held to the rigorous manual of arms, and did
not attain to that degree of dexterity considered excellent efficiency
in that day although a breech-loading musket invented by Colonel
Patrick Ferguson, who met his death at King’s Mountain, was capable of
being fired seven times a minute, and was used not many years after
these events, with destructive effect, by his own command at the battle
of the Brandywine, in 1777.

MacDonnell, lying prone on the ground in the laurel, his face barely
lifted, saw the last segment of the moon slip down behind the great
mountain, the following mists glister in the after-glow and fade, a
soft, dull shadow drop upon the landscape then sink to darkness, and
in the blaze of the fire a quivering feather-crested head protrude
above the river-bank. There were other crafty approaches--here, there,
the woods seemed alive! Suddenly an alien flare of light, a series of
funnel-shaped evanescent darts, the simultaneous crack of a volley, and
a dozen swift figures dashed to the scalping of their victims by the
fire--to lay hold on the logs in the likeness of sleeping men, to break
a knife in the hard fibers of one that seemed to stir, to cry aloud,
inarticulate, wild, frenzied in rage, in amaze, in grief, to find
themselves at the mercy of the Chickasaws darting out from the laurel!

There was a tumultuous rush, then a frantic, futile attempt to reload;
two or three of the prisoners wielding knives with undue effect were
shot down, and Choolah, triumphant, majestic in victory, stately,
erect, his crown of tall white swan’s feathers, his glittering fringes
of roanoke, the red and blue of his glossy war-paint, all revealed by
the flaring fire, waved his hand to his “_Angona_” to call upon him to
admire his prowess in battle.

The next moment his attention was caught by a sudden swift alarm in the
face of one of the Cherokees, a faraway glance that the wily Choolah
followed with his quick eye. Something had happened at the camp the
Cherokees had abandoned--was there still movement there?

It was some one who had been away, returning, startled to see the
bivouac fire sunken to an ember,--for the Cherokees had let it die out
to further the advantages of the attack,--then evidently reassured to
note the flare a little further down the stream, as if the camp had
been shifted for some reason.

Choolah drew his primed and loaded pistol. No Cherokee, however,
would have dared to venture a warning sign. And Ronald MacDonnell,
with what feelings he could hardly analyze, could never describe, saw
leaping along the jagged bank of the river toward them a white man,
young, active, wearing a gayly-fringed hunting-shirt and leggings of
buckskin, but a military hat and the gorget of a French officer. He was
among them before he saw his mistake--his fatal mistake! The delighted
shrieks of the Chickasaws overpowered every sense, filling the woods
with their fierce shrill joy and seeming to strike against the very
sky, “_French! hottuk ook-proo-se!_” (The accursed people!)

All thought of caution, all fears of wandering Cherokees were lost
in the supreme ecstasy of their triumph--the capture of one of the
detested French, that the tribe had hated with an inconceivable and
savage rancor for generations.

“_Shukapa! Shukapa!_” (Swine-eater!) they exclaimed in disgust and
derision, for the aversion of the Indians to pork was equaled only by
that of the Jews, and this was an extreme expression of contempt.

The captive was handled rudely enough in the process of disarming him,
which the Owl and Choolah accomplished, while his Cherokees stood at
the muzzles of the firelocks of the others. There was blood on his
face and hands as he turned a glance on the Scotchman. He uttered a
few eager words in French, unintelligible to MacDonnell save the civil
preface, “_Pardon, Monsieur, mais puis-je vous demander--_”

The rest of the sentence was lost in the fierce derisive shrieks of
the Chickasaws recognizing the inflections of the detested language,
“_Seente soolish! Seente soolish!_” (snake’s tongue!) they vociferated.

But had the conclusion of the request been audible it would have been
incomprehensible to Ronald MacDonnell.

The impassive Highlander silently shook his head, and a certain fixity
of despair settled on the face of the French officer. It was a young
face--he seemed not more than twenty-five, MacDonnell thought. It was
narrow, delicately molded, with very bright eyes, that had a sort of
youthful daring in them--adventurous looking eyes. They were gray, with
long black lashes and strongly defined eyebrows. His complexion was of
a clear healthy pallor, his hair dark but a trifle rough, and braided
in the usual queue. So often did Ronald MacDonnell have to describe
this man, both on paper and off, that every detail of his appearance
grew very familiar to him. The stranger’s lips were red and full, and
the upper one was short and curving; he did not laugh or smile, of
course, but he showed narrow white teeth, for now and again he gasped
as if for breath, and more than once that sensitive upper lip quivered.
Not that Ronald MacDonnell ever gave the portraiture in this simple
wise, for his descriptions were long and involved, minute and yet
vague, and proved the despair of all interested in fixing the identity
of the man; but gleaning from his accounts this is the way the stranger
must have appeared to the young Scotchman. His figure was tall and
lightly built, promising more activity than muscular force, and while
one hand was held on the buckle of his belt, the left went continually
to the hilt of a sword, _which he did not wear_, but the habit was
betrayed by this gesture. There was nothing about him to intimate his
rank, beyond the gorget, and on this point Ronald MacDonnell could
never give any satisfaction.

The Indian is seldom immoderate in laughter, but Choolah could not
restrain his wicked mirth to discover that the two officers could
not speak to each other. And yet the pale-faces were so often amazed
that the Cherokees and the Chickasaws and the Creeks had not the same
language, as if a variety of tongues were thrown away on the poor
Indian, who might well be expected to put up with one speech! For only
the Chickasaw and Choctaw dialects were inter-comprehensible, both
tribes being descended, it is said, from the ancient Chickemicaws,
and in fact much of the variation in their speech was but a matter
of intonation. The tears of mirth stood in Choolah’s eyes. He held
his hand to his side--he could scarcely calm himself, even when he
discerned a special utility in this lack of a medium of communication,
for the enterprising scout came back once more to say that there were
some Chickasaws lower down on the river, where the ford was better.
Choolah received this assurance with most uncommon demonstrations
of pleasure, evidently desiring their assistance in guarding the
prisoners to Grant’s camp, being ambitious of securing the commander’s
commendation and intending to afford ocular proof of his exploit by
exhibiting the number of his captives. But MacDonnell detected a high
note of elation in Choolah’s voice which no mere pride could evoke,
and he recognized a danger signal. He instantly bethought himself
of the fate at the hands of the Chickasaws, more than a score of
years before, of the gallant D’Artaguette, the younger, and his brave
lieutenant Vincennes, burned at the stake by slow fires, after their
unhappy defeat at the fortified town, _Ash-wick-boo-ma_ (Red Grass),
the noble Jesuit, Sénat, sharing their death, although he might have
escaped, remaining to comfort their last moments with his ghostly
counsels.

MacDonnell listened as warily to the talk as he might, and although
Choolah said no more than was eminently natural in planning to turn
over his prisoners to these Chickasaws by reason of their superior
numbers, MacDonnell’s alert sense detected the same vibration when he
expressed his decision to leave the _Etissu_ and the Highland officer
to guard the Frenchman till his return.

“Then we will together cross the Tennessee river here,” he said.

MacDonnell yawned widely as he nodded his head, his hand over his
stretched mouth and shielding his face. He would not trust its
expression to the discerning Choolah, for he had again that infrequent
guest, “a thought in his mind.”

In truth, Choolah had no intention to take the Frenchman to Grant’s
camp. The praise he would receive as a reward was a petty consideration
indeed as compared with the delights of torturing and burning so rare,
so choice a victim as a French officer. To be sure his excuse must be
good and devised betimes, for Colonel Grant was squeamish and queer,
objecting to the scalping and burning of prisoners, and seemed indeed
at times of a weak stomach in regard to such details. And that came
about naturally enough. He did not fast, as behooves a war-captain.
He ate too much on the war-path. He had two cooks! He had also a man
to dress his hair, and another to groom his horse. Naturally his heart
had softened, and he was averse to the stern pleasures of recompensing
an enemy with the anguish of the stake. This Choolah intended to
enjoy, summoning the Chickasaws at the ford below to the scene of his
triumph. Besides it requires a number of able-bodied assistants to
properly roast in wet weather a vigorous and protesting captive. The
Scotchman should suspect naught until his return. True, he might not
object, for were not the French as ever the inveterate enemies of the
English? But if he should it could avail naught against the will of a
round dozen or more of Chickasaws. Besides, was not the prisoner of the
detested nation of the French--_Nana-Ubat_? (Nothings and brothers to
nothing.) Nevertheless, it was well they could not speak to each other
and possibly canvass fears and offer persuasions. He could spare only
one man, the scout, to aid in the watch, but he felt quite assured.
Ronald MacDonnell was always notoriously vigilant and exacting, and
was held in great fear by guards and outposts and sentinels, for often
his rounds were attended by casualties in the way of reprimand, and
arrests, and guard-tent sojourns and discipline. Choolah felt quite
safe as he set off at a brisk pace with his squad of four Chickasaws,
driving the disarmed Cherokees, silent and sullen, before him.

They were hardly out of sight when MacDonnell, kicking the enveloping
blanket out of the way, sat down on one of the logs by the fire and
spread his big bony hands out to the blaze. It was growing chill;
the June night was wearing on toward the dawn; it was that hour of
reduced vitality when hope seems of least value, and the blood runs
low, and conscience grows keen, and the future and the past bear
heavily alike on the present. The prisoner was shivering slightly.
He glanced expectantly at the Scotchman’s impassive countenance. No
man knew better than Ronald MacDonnell the churlishness of a lack of
consideration of the comfort of others in small matters. No man could
offer little attentions more genially. They comported essentially with
his evident breeding, and his rank in the army; once more the prisoner
looked expectantly at him, and then, wounded, like a Frenchman, as
for a host’s lack of consideration, he sat down on a log uninvited,
casting but one absent glance, from which curiosity seemed expunged,
at the effigies which explained how the Cherokees came to their fate.
It mattered little now, his emotional, sensitive face said. Naught
mattered! Naught! Naught!

In the sudden nervous shock his vitality was at its lowest ebb. He
could not spread his hands to the blaze, for his arms had been pinioned
cruelly tight. He shivered again, for the fire was low. MacDonnell
noticed it, but he did not stir; perhaps he thought Johnny Crapaud
would soon find the fire hot enough. The scout himself mended it, as
he sat tailorwise on the ground between the other two men. Now and
again the _Etissu_ gazed at MacDonnell’s impassive, rather lowering
countenance, with a certain awe; if he had expected the officer to show
the squeamishness which Colonel Grant developed in such matters, or any
pity, he was mistaken; then he looked with curiosity at the Frenchman.
The prisoner’s lips were vaguely moving, and Ronald MacDonnell
caught a suggestion of the sound--half-whispered words, not French,
or he would not have understood; Latin!--paters and aves! As he had
expected--frogs, papistry, French, and fool!

“What’s that?” the Highland officer said, so suddenly that the scout
started in affright.

“Nothing,” said the Indian; “the wind, perhaps.”

“Sticks cracking in the laurel--a bear, perhaps,” suggested MacDonnell,
taking up a loaded musket and laying it across his knee. Then “Only a
bear,” he repeated reassuringly.

“Choolah ought to leave more men here,” said the _Etissu_.

“It’s nothing!” declared MacDonnell, rising and looking warily about.
“Perhaps Choolah on his way back.”

The scout was true to his vagrant tendencies, or perhaps because of
those tendencies he felt himself safer in the dense, impenetrable
jungle, crawling along flat like a lizard or a snake, than seated
perched up here on a bluff by a flaring camp-fire with only two other
men, a mark for “Brown Bess”--the Cherokees were all armed with British
muskets, although they were in revolt, and perhaps it was one reason
why they were in revolt--for many a yard up and down the Tennessee
River. “I go see,” he suggested.

“No, no,” said MacDonnell, “only a bear.”

“I come back soon,” declared the _Etissu_, half crouching and gazing
about, “soon, soon. _Alooska, Ko-e-u-que-ho._” (I do not lie, I do not
indeed.)

MacDonnell lifted his head and gazed about with a frowning mien of
reluctance “_Maia cha!_” (Go along) he said at last. Then called out,
“Come back _soon_,” as his attention returned to the priming and
loading of a pistol which he had in progress. “Soon! remember!”

The scout was off like a rabbit. For a moment or two MacDonnell did not
lift his eyes, while they heard him crashing through the thicket. Then
as he looked up he met the dull despair in the face of the bound and
helpless Frenchman. It mattered little to him who came, who went. He
gasped suddenly in amazement. The Highland officer was gazing at him
with a genial, boyish smile, reassuring, almost tender.

“Run, now, run for your life!” he said, leaning forward, and with a
pass or two of a knife he severed the prisoner’s bonds.

In the revulsion of feeling the man seemed scarcely able to rise to
his feet. There were tears in his eyes; his face quivered as he looked
at his deliverer.

“Danger--big fire--burn,” said the astute MacDonnell, as if the English
words thus detached were more comprehensible to the French limitations.
Perhaps his gestures aided their effect, and as he held out his hand
in his whole-souled, genial way, the Frenchman grasped it in a hard
grip of fervent gratitude and started off swiftly. The next moment the
young officer turned back, caught the British soldier in his arms, and
to MacDonnell’s everlasting consternation kissed him in the foreign
fashion, first on one cheek and then on the other.

Ronald MacDonnell’s mess often preyed upon the disclosures which his
open, ingenuous nature afforded them. But his simplicity stopped far
short of revealing to them this Gallic demonstration of gratitude--so
exquisitely ludicrous it seemed to his unemotional methods and mind.
They were debarred the pleasure of racking him on this circumstance.
They never knew it. He disclosed it only years afterward, and then by
accident, to a member of his own family.

The whole affair seemed to the mess serious enough. For the Chickasaws,
baffled and furious, had threatened his life on their return,
reinforced by a dozen excited, elated, expectant tribesmen, laden with
light wood and a chain, to find their prisoner gone. But after the
first wild outburst of rage and despair Choolah, although evidently
strongly tempted to force the Highlander to the fate from which he had
rescued the French officer, resolved to preserve the integrity of his
nation’s pledge of amity with the British, and restrained his men from
offering injury. This was rendered the more acceptable to him, as with
his alert craft he perceived a keen retribution for Ronald MacDonnell
in the displeasure of his commanding officer, for the Chickasaws well
understood the discipline of the army, which they chose to disregard.
To better enlist the prejudice of Colonel Grant, Choolah was preparing
himself to distort the facts. He upbraided Ronald MacDonnell with
causelessly liberating a prisoner, a Frenchman and an officer, taken
by the wily exploit of another. As to the dry wood, he said, the
Chickasaws had merely brought some drift, long stranded in a cave by
the waterside, to replenish the fire, kindled with how great difficulty
in the soaking condition of the forests the Lieutenant well knew.

“Hout!--just now when we are about to cross the river?” cried Ronald,
unmasking the subterfuge. “And for what then that stout chain?”

The chain, Choolah protested, was but part of the equipment of one of
the pack animals that had broken away and had been plundered by the
Cherokees. Did the Lieutenant Plaidman think he wanted to chain the
prisoner to the stake to burn? He had had no dream of such a thing!
It was not the custom of the Chickasaws to waste so much time on a
prisoner. It was sufficient to cut him up in quarters; that usually
killed him dead,--quite dead enough! But if the Lieutenant had had a
chain, since he knew so well the use of one, doubtless he himself would
have joyed to burn the prisoner, provided it had been his own exploit
that had taken him,--for did not the Carolinians of the provincial
regiment say that when the Tartan men were at home they were as wild
and as uncivilized as the wildest Cherokee savage!

“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” (It is a lie. It is a lie, undoubtedly),
cried the phlegmatic MacDonnell, excited to a frenzy. He spoke in the
Chickasaw language, that the insult might be understood as offered with
full intention.

But Choolah did not thus receive it. In the simplicity of savage
life lies are admittedly the natural incidents of conversation. He
addressed himself anew to argument. At home the Tartan men lived
in mountains,--just like the Cherokees,--and no wonder they were
undismayed by the war whoops--they had heard the like before! Savages
themselves! They had a language, too, that the Carolinians could
not speak; he himself had heard it among the Highlanders of Grant’s
camp--doubtless it was the Cherokee tongue, for they were mere
Cherokees!

“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” No denial could be more definite than the
tone and the words embodied.

The wily Choolah, maliciously delighted with his power to pierce the
heart of the proud Scotchman thus, turned the knife anew. Did not the
provincials declare that the Highlanders at home were always beaten in
war, as they would be here but for the help of the Carolinians?

“_Holauba! Holauba! Feenah!_” protested Ronald resolutely, thinking of
Preston Pans and Falkirk.

For the usual emulous bickering between regulars and provincials,
which seems concomitant with every war, had appeared in full force in
this expedition, the provincials afterward claiming that but for them
and their Indian allies no remnant of the British force would have
returned alive; and the regulars declaring that the Carolinians knew
nothing, and could learn nothing of discipline and method in warfare,
laying great stress on the fact that this was the second campaign to
which the British soldiers had been summoned for the protection of
the province, which could not without them defend itself against the
Cherokees, and assuming the entire credit of the subjugation of that
warlike tribe that had for nearly a century past desolated at intervals
the Carolina borders.

Although it had been Choolah’s hope that, by means of provoking against
the Lieutenant the displeasure of his superior officer, he might
revenge himself upon MacDonnell, for snatching from the Chickasaws the
peculiar racial delight of torturing the French prisoner, the Indians
had no anticipation of the gravity of the crisis when they came to
the camp with the details of the occurrence, which, to Colonel Grant’s
annoyance, tallied with MacDonnell’s own report of himself.

For there was a question in Colonel Grant’s mind whether the prisoner
were not the redoubtable Louis Latinac, who had been so incredibly
efficient in the French interest in this region, and who had done more
to excite the enmity of the Cherokees against their quondam allies, the
British, and harass his Majesty’s troops than a regiment of other men
could accomplish. When Grant tended to this opinion, a court-martial
seemed impending over the head of the young officer.

“What was your reason for this extraordinary course?” Colonel Grant
asked.

And Ronald MacDonnell answered that he had granted to his prisoner
exactly what he had intended to demand of his captor had the situation
been reversed--to adjure him by their fellow feeling as soldiers, by
the customs of civilized warfare, by the bond of a common religion, to
save him from torture by savages.

“Can a gentleman give less than he would ask?” he demanded.

And when Colonel Grant would urge that he should have trusted to his
authority to protect the prisoner, Ronald would meet the argument with
the counter-argument that the Indians respected no authority, and in
cases of fire it would not do to take chances.

“Why did you not at least exact a parole?”

“Lord, sir, we couldn’t talk at all!” said Ronald, conclusively. “In
common humanity, I was obliged to release him or shoot him, and I
could not shoot an unarmed prisoner to save my life--not if I were to
be shot for it myself.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Grant’s heart was well known to be soft in spots. He
has put it upon record in the previous campaign against the Cherokees
that he could not help pitying them a little in the destruction of
their homes,--it is said, however, that after this later expedition
his name was incorporated in the Cherokee language as a synonym of
devastation and a cry of warning. He was overcome by the considerations
urged upon him by the Lieutenant until once more the possibility loomed
upon the horizon that it was Louis Latinac who had escaped him, when
he would feel that nothing but Ronald MacDonnell’s best heart’s blood
could atone for the release. To set this much vexed question at rest
the young officer was repeatedly required to describe the personal
appearance of the stranger, and thus it was that poor Ronald’s verbal
limitations were brought so conspicuously forward. “A fine man,”
he would say one day, and in giving the details of that sensitive
emotional countenance which had so engaged his interest that momentous
night--its force, its suggestiveness, its bright, alert young eyes,
would intimate that he had indeed held the motive power of the Cherokee
war in his hand, and had heedlessly loosed it as a child might release
a butterfly. The next day “a braw callant” was about the sum of his
conclusions, and Colonel Grant would be certain that the incident
represented no greater matter than the escape of a brisk subaltern,
like Ronald himself. In the course of Colonel Grant’s anxious
vacillations of opinion, the young Highlander was given to understand
that he would be instantly placed under arrest, but for the fact that
every officer of experience was urgently needed. And indeed Colonel
Grant presently had his hands quite full, fighting a furious battle
only the ensuing day with the entire Cherokee nation.

The Indians attacked his outposts at eight o’clock in the morning,
and with their full strength engaged the main body, fighting in their
individual, skulking, masked manner, but with fierce persistency
for three hours; then the heat of the conflict began to gradually
wane, although they did not finally draw off till two o’clock in the
afternoon. It was the last struggle of the Cherokee war. Helpless or
desperate, the Indians watched without so much as a shot from ambush
the desolation of their country. For thirty days Colonel Grant’s
forces remained among the fastnesses of the Great Smoky Mountains,
devastating those beautiful valleys, burning “the astonishing magazines
of corn,” and the towns, which Grant states, were so “agreeably
situated, the houses neatly built.” Often the troops were constrained
to march under the beetling heights of those stupendous ranges, whence
one might imagine a sharp musketry fire would have destroyed the dense
columns, almost to the last man. Perhaps the inability of the French to
furnish the Cherokees with the requisite ammunition for this campaign
may explain the abandonment of a region so calculated for effective
defense.

Aside from the losses in slain and wounded in the engagement, the
expeditionary force suffered much, for the hardships of the campaign
were extreme. Having extended the frontier westward by seventy
miles, and withdrawing slowly, in view of the gradual exhaustion of
his supplies, Colonel Grant found the feet of his infantry so mangled
by the long and continuous marches in the rugged country west of the
Great Smoky Mountains that he was forced to go into permanent camp on
returning to Fort Prince George, to permit the rest and recovery of the
soldiers, who in fact could march no further, as well as to await some
action on the part of the Cherokee rulers looking to the conclusion of
a peace.

A delegation of chiefs presently sought audience of him here and agreed
to all the stipulations of the treaty formulated in behalf of the
province except one, viz., that four Cherokees should be delivered up
to be put to death in the presence of Colonel Grant’s army, or that
four green scalps should be brought to him within the space of twelve
nights. With this article the chiefs declared they had neither the will
nor the power to comply,--and very queerly indeed, it reads at this
late day!

Colonel Grant, perhaps willing to elude the enforcement of so
unpleasant a requisition, conceived that it lay within his duty to
forward the delegation, under escort, to Charlestown to seek to induce
Governor Bull to mitigate its rigor.

It was in this connection that he alluded again to the release of the
prisoner, captured in the exploit of Choolah, the Chickasaw, although
in conversation with his officers he seemed to Ronald MacDonnell to be
speaking only of the impracticable stipulation of the treaty, and his
certainty that compliance would not be required of the Cherokees by the
Governor--and in fact the terms finally signed at Charlestown, on the
10th of December of that year, were thus moderated, leaving the compact
practically the same as in the previous treaty of 1759.

“I could agree to no such stipulation if the case were mine,” Colonel
Grant declared, “that four of my soldiers, as a mere matter of
intimidation, should be surrendered to be executed in the presence
of the enemy! Certainly, as a gentleman and a soldier, a man cannot
require of an enemy more than he himself would be justified in yielding
if the circumstances were reversed, or grant to an enemy less favor
than he himself could rightfully ask at his hands.”

Ronald MacDonnell had forgotten his own expression of this sentiment.
It appealed freshly to him, and he thought it decidedly fine. He did
not recognize a flag of truce except as a veritable visible white rag,
and from time to time he experienced much surprise that Colonel Grant
did not order him under arrest as a preliminary to a court martial.


PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS COMPANY AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS,
CHICAGO, ILL.



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