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The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

by Jr. John Fox · English · Gutenberg #2059 · 515,386 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

Author: Jr. John Fox


        
Release date: February 1, 2000 [eBook #2059]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2059

Credits: Produced by Mary Starr and Martin Robb.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME ***




Produced by Mary Starr and Martin Robb.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME


by

JOHN FOX, JR.




  To
  CURRIE DUKE
  DAUGHTER OF THE CHIEF
  AMONG
  MORGAN'S MEN

  KENTUCKY, APRIL, 1898





CONTENTS

   1. TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME
   2. FIGHTING THEIR WAY
   3. A "BLAB SCHOOL" ON KINGDOM COME
   4. THE COMING OF THE TIDE
   5. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS
   6. LOST AT THE CAPITAL
   7.  A FRIEND ON THE ROAD
   8. HOME WITH THE MAJOR
   9. MARGARET
  10. THE BLUEGRASS
  11. A TOURNAMENT
  12. BACK TO KINGDOM COME
  13. ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE
  14. THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS
  15. TO COLLEGE IN THE BLUEGRASS
  16. AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER
  17. CHADWICK BUFORD, GENTLEMAN
  18. THE SPIRIT OF '76 AND THE SHADOW OF '61
  19. THE BLUE OR THE GRAY
  20. OFF TO THE WAR
  21. MELISSA
  22. MORGAN'S MEN
  23. CHAD CAPTURES AN OLD FRIEND
  24. A RACE BETWEEN DIXIE AND DAWN
  25. AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA
  26. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST
  27. AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN'S MEN
  28. PALL-BEARERS OF THE LOST CAUSE
  29. MELISSA AND MARGARET
  30. PEACE
  31. THE WESTWARD WAY




THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME



CHAPTER 1

TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME

The days of that April had been days of mist and rain. Sometimes, for
hours, there would come a miracle of blue sky, white cloud, and yellow
light, but always between dark and dark the rain would fall and the
mist creep up the mountains and steam from the tops--only to roll
together from either range, drip back into the valleys, and lift,
straightway, as mist again. So that, all the while Nature was trying to
give lustier life to every living thing in the lowland Bluegrass, all
the while a gaunt skeleton was stalking down the Cumberland--tapping
with fleshless knuckles, now at some unlovely cottage of faded white
and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of
Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went
stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the
point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin
set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits,
within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh for the long flight into
the unknown.

It was the spirit of the plague that passed, taking with it the breath
of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were
dead--a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later,
the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as little Chad said, and
soon to her worn hands and feet came the well-earned rest. Nobody was
left then but Chad and Jack, and Jack was a dog with a belly to feed
and went for less than nothing with everybody but his little master and
the chance mountaineer who had sheep to guard. So, for the fourth time,
Chad, with Jack at his heels, trudged up to the point of a wooded spur
above the cabin, where, at the foot of a giant poplar and under a
wilderness of shaking June leaves, were three piles of rough boards,
loosely covering three hillocks of rain-beaten earth; and, near them,
an open grave. There was no service sung or spoken over the dead, for
the circuit-rider was then months away; so, unnoticed, Chad stood
behind the big poplar, watching the neighbors gently let down into the
shallow trench a home-made coffin, rudely hollowed from the half of a
bee-gum log, and, unnoticed, slipped away at the first muffled stroke
of the dirt--doubling his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the
gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny
space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to
sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed
and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with
blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the
valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang
quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped slowly
back to the moss again, while Jack, who had started down the spur,
circled back to see what the matter was, and stood with uplifted foot,
much puzzled.

There had been a consultation about Chad early that morning among the
neighbors, and old Nathan Cherry, who lived over on Stone Creek, in the
next cove but one, said that he would take charge of the boy. Nathan
did not wait for the burial, but went back home for his wagon, leaving
word that Chad was to stay all night with a neighbor and meet him at
the death-stricken cabin an hour by sun. The old man meant to have Chad
bound to him for seven years by law--the boy had been told that--and
Nathan hated dogs as much as Chad hated Nathan. So the lad did not lie
long. He did not mean to be bound out, nor to have Jack mistreated, and
he rose quickly and Jack sprang before him down the rocky path and
toward the hut that had been a home to both. Under the poplar, Jack
sniffed curiously at the new-made grave, and Chad called him away so
sharply that Jack's tail drooped and he crept toward his master, as
though to ask pardon for a fault of which he was not conscious. For one
moment, Chad stood looking. Again the stroke of the falling earth smote
his ears and his eyes filled; a curious pain caught him by the throat
and he passed on, whistling--down into the shadows below to the open
door of the cabin.

It was deathly still. The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of
brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of
hickory withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and
pans--had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and
beans and red pepper-pods--all ready for old Nathan when he should come
over for them, next morning, with his wagon. Not a living thing was to
be heard or seen that suggested human life, and Chad sat down in the
deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up the green walls that
bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where he should go,
if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who seemed to know that
some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a little way off, to
wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to make up his mind.

It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very
seriously about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come.
Digging back into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that
what had just happened now had happened to him once before, and that he
had simply wandered away. He could not recollect where he had started
from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived,
and why he had left them--usually because somebody, like old Nathan,
had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let
the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else
to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man
and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had
let the two guard cattle in the mountains and drive sheep and, if they
stayed out in the woods over night, struck neither a stroke of hand nor
tongue. The old mother had been his mother and, once more, Chad leaned
his head against the worn lintel and wept silently. So far, nobody had
seemed to care particularly who he was, or was not--nor had Chad. Most
people were very kind to him, looking upon him as one of the wandering
waifs that one finds throughout the Cumberland, upon whom the good
folks of the mountains do not visit the father's sin. He knew what he
was thought to be, and it mattered so little, since it made no
discrimination against him, that he had accepted it without question.
It did not matter now, except as it bore on the question as to where he
should start his feet. It was a long time for him to have stayed in one
place, and the roving memories, stirred within him now, took root,
doubtless, in the restless spirit that had led his unknown ancestor
into those mountain wilds after the Revolution.

All this while he had been sitting on the low threshold, with his
elbows in the hollows of his thighs and his left hand across his mouth.
Once more, he meant to be bound to no man's service and, at the final
thought of losing Jack, the liberty loving little tramp spat over his
hand with sharp decision and rose.

Just above him and across the buck antlers over the door, lay a long
flint-lock rifle; a bullet-pouch, a powder-horn, and a small
raccoon-skin haversack hung from one of the prongs: and on them the
boy's eyes rested longingly. Old Nathan, he knew, claimed that the dead
man had owed him money; and he further knew that old Nathan meant to
take all he could lay his hands on in payment: but he climbed
resolutely upon a chair and took the things down, arguing the question,
meanwhile:

"Uncle Jim said once he aimed to give this rifle gun to me. Mebbe he
was foolin', but I don't believe he owed ole Nathan so much, an',
anyways," he muttered grimly, "I reckon Uncle Jim ud kind o' like fer
me to git the better of that ole devil--jes a LEETLE, anyways."

The rifle, he knew, was always loaded, there was not much powder in the
horn and there were not more than a dozen bullets in the pouch, but
they would last him until he could get far away. No more would he take,
however, than what he thought he could get along with--one blanket from
the bed and, from the fireplace, a little bacon and a pone of
corn-bread.

"An' I KNOW Aunt Jane wouldn't 'a' keered about these leetle fixin's,
fer I have to have 'em, an' I know I've earned 'em anyways."

Then he closed the door softly on the spirits of the dead within, and
caught the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside.
With his Barlow knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw
bush near by, folded and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little
pack to his shoulder, when the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the
bushes, close at hand. Old Nance, lean and pied, was coming home; he
had forgotten her, it was getting late, and he was anxious to leave for
fear some neighbor might come; but there was no one to milk and, when
she drew near with a low moo, he saw that her udders were full and
dripping. It would hurt her to go unmilked, so Chad put his things down
and took up a cedar piggin from a shelf outside the cabin and did the
task thoroughly--putting the strippings in a cup and, so strong was the
habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and setting
them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his
rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile.
There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a
short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of
his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the
spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with
his axe on a sapling close by--talking frankly now to the God who made
him:

"I reckon You know it, but I'm a-goin' to run away now. I hain't got no
daddy an' no mammy, an' I hain't never had none as I knows--but Aunt
Jane hyeh--she's been jes' like a mother to me an' I'm a-doin' fer her
jes' whut I wish You'd have somebody do fer my mother, ef You know whar
she's a-layin'."

Eight round sticks he cut swiftly--four long and four short--and with
these he built a low pen, as is the custom of the mountaineers, close
about the fresh mound, and, borrowing a board or two from each of the
other mounds, covered the grave from the rain. Then he sunk the axe
into the trunk of the great poplar as high up as he could reach--so
that it could easily be seen--and brushing the sweat from his face, he
knelt down:

"God!" he said, simply, "I hain't nothin' but a boy, but I got to ack
like a man now. I'm a-goin' now. I don't believe You keer much and
seems like I bring ever'body bad luck: an' I'm a-goin' to live up hyeh
on the mountain jes' as long as I can. I don't want you to think I'm
a-complainin'--fer I ain't. Only hit does seem sort o' curious that
You'd let me be down hyah--with me a-keerint fer nobody now, an' nobody
a-keerin' fer me. But Thy ways is inscrutable--leastwise, that's whut
the circuit-rider says--an' I ain't got a word more to say--Amen."

Chad rose then and Jack, who had sat perfectly still, with his head
cocked to one side, and his ears straight forward in wonder over this
strange proceeding, sprang into the air, when Chad picked up his gun,
and, with a joyful bark, circled a clump of bushes and sped back,
leaping as high as the little fellow's head and trying to lick his
face--for Jack was a rover, too.

The sun was low when the two waifs turned their backs upon it, and the
blue shadows in valley and ravine were darkening fast. Down the spur
they went swiftly--across the river and up the slope of Pine Mountain.
As they climbed, Chad heard the last faint sound of a cow-bell far
below him and he stopped short, with a lump in his throat that hurt.
Soon darkness fell, and, on the very top, the boy made a fire with his
flint and steel, cooked a little bacon, warmed his corn-pone, munched
them and, wrapping his blanket around him and letting Jack curl into
the hollow of his legs and stomach, turned his face to the kindly stars
and went to sleep.



CHAPTER 2

FIGHTING THEIR WAY

Twice, during the night, Jack roused him by trying to push himself
farther under the blanket and Chad rose to rebuild the fire. The third
time he was awakened by the subtle prescience of dawn and his eyes
opened on a flaming radiance in the east. Again from habit he started
to spring hurriedly to his feet and, again sharply conscious, he lay
down again. There was no wood to cut, no fire to rekindle, no water to
carry from the spring, no cow to milk, no corn to hoe; there was
nothing to do--nothing. Morning after morning, with a day's hard toil
at a man's task before him, what would he not have given, when old Jim
called him, to have stretched his aching little legs down the folds of
the thick feather-bed and slipped back into the delicious rest of sleep
and dreams? Now he was his own master and, with a happy sense of
freedom, he brushed the dew from his face and, shifting the chunk under
his head, pulled his old cap down a little more on one side and closed
his eyes. But sleep would not come and Chad had his first wonder over
the perverse result of the full choice to do, or not to do. At once,
the first keen savor of freedom grew less sweet to his nostrils and,
straightway, he began to feel the first pressure of the chain of duties
that was to be forged for him out of his perfect liberty, link by link,
and he lay vaguely wondering.

Meanwhile, the lake of dull red behind the jagged lines of rose and
crimson that streaked the east began to glow and look angry. A sheen of
fiery vapor shot upward and spread swiftly over the miracle of mist
that had been wrought in the night. An ocean of it and, white and thick
as snowdust, it filled valley, chasm, and ravine with mystery and
silence up to the dark jutting points and dark waving lines of range
after range that looked like breakers, surged up by some strange new
law from an under-sea of foam; motionless, it swept down the valleys,
poured swift torrents through high gaps in the hills and one long
noiseless cataract over a lesser range--all silent, all motionless,
like a great white sea stilled in the fury of a storm. Morning after
morning, the boy had looked upon just such glory, calmly watching the
mist part, like the waters, for the land, and the day break, with one
phrase, "Let there be light," ever in his mind--for Chad knew his
Bible. And, most often, in soft splendor, trailing cloud-mist, and
yellow light leaping from crest to crest, and in the singing of birds
and the shining of leaves and dew--there was light.

But that morning there was a hush in the woods that Chad understood. On
a sudden, a light wind scurried through the trees and showered the
mistdrops down. The smoke from his fire shot through the low
undergrowth, without rising, and the starting mists seemed to clutch
with long, white fingers at the tree-tops, as though loath to leave the
safe, warm earth for the upper air. A little later, he felt some great
shadow behind him, and he turned his face to see black clouds
marshalling on either flank of the heavens and fitting their black
wings together, as though the retreating forces of the night were
gathering for a last sweep against the east. A sword flashed blindingly
from the dome high above them and, after it, came one shaking peal that
might have been the command to charge, for Chad saw the black hosts
start fiercely. Afar off, the wind was coming; the trees began to sway
above him, and the level sea of mist below began to swell, and the
wooded breakers seemed to pitch angrily.

Challenging tongues ran quivering up the east, and the lake of red
coals under them began to heave fiercely in answer. On either side the
lightning leaped upward and forward, striking straight and low,
sometimes, as though it were ripping up the horizon to let into the
conflict the host of dropping stars. Then the artillery of the thunder
crashed in earnest through the shaking heavens, and the mists below
pitched like smoke belched from gigantic unseen cannon. The coming sun
answered with upleaping swords of fire and, as the black thunder hosts
swept overhead, Chad saw, for one moment, the whole east in a writhing
storm of fire. A thick darkness rose from the first crash of battle
and, with the rush of wind and rain, the mighty conflict went on unseen.

Chad had seen other storms at sunrise, but something happened now and
he could never recall the others nor ever forget this. All it meant to
him, young as he was then, was unrolled slowly as the years came
on--more than the first great rebellion of the powers of darkness when,
in the beginning, the Master gave the first command that the seven
days' work of His hand should float through space, smitten with the
welcoming rays of a million suns; more than the beginning thus of
light--of life; more even than the first birth of a spirit in a living
thing: for, long afterward, he knew that it meant the dawn of a new
consciousness to him--the birth of a new spirit within him, and the
foreshadowed pain of its slow mastery over his passion-racked body and
heart. Never was there a crisis, bodily or spiritual, on the
battle-field or alone under the stars, that this storm did not come
back to him. And, always, through all doubt, and, indeed, in the end
when it came to him for the last time on his bed of death, the slow and
sullen dispersion of wind and rain on the mountain that morning far,
far back in his memory, and the quick coming of the Sun-king's
victorious light over the glad hills and trees held out to him the
promise of a final victory to the Sun-king's King over the darkness of
all death and the final coming to his own brave spirit of peace and
rest.

So Chad, with Jack drawn close to him, lay back, awe-stricken and with
his face wet from mysterious tears. The comfort of the childish
self-pity that came with every thought of himself, wandering, a lost
spirit along the mountain-tops, was gone like a dream and ready in his
heart was the strong new purpose to strike into the world for himself.
He even took it as a good omen, when he rose, to find his fire
quenched, the stopper of his powder-horn out, and the precious black
grains scattered hopelessly on the wet earth. There were barely more
than three charges left, and something had to be done at once. First,
he must get farther away from old Nathan: the neighbors might search
for him and find him and take him back.

So he started out, brisk and shivering, along the ridge path with Jack
bouncing before him. An hour later, he came upon a hollow tree, filled
with doty wood which he could tear out with his hands and he built a
fire and broiled a little more bacon.

Jack got only a bit this time and barked reproachfully for more; but
Chad shook his head and the dog started out, with both eyes open, to
look for his own food. The sun was high enough now to make the drenched
world flash like an emerald and its warmth felt good, as Chad tramped
the topmost edge of Pine Mountain, where the brush was not thick and
where, indeed, he often found a path running a short way and turning
into some ravine--the trail of cattle and sheep and the pathway between
one little valley settlement and another. He must have made ten miles
and more by noon--for he was a sturdy walker and as tireless almost as
Jack--and ten miles is a long way in the mountains, even now. So,
already, Chad was far enough away to have no fear of pursuit, even if
old Nathan wanted him back, which was doubtful. On the top of the next
point, Jack treed a squirrel and Chad took a rest and brought him down,
shot through the head and, then and there, skinned and cooked him and
divided with Jack squarely.

"Jack," he said, as he reloaded his gun, "we can't keep this up much
longer. I hain't got more'n two more loads o' powder here."

And, thereupon, Jack leaped suddenly in the air and, turning quite
around, lighted with his nose pointed, as it was before he sprang. Chad
cocked the old gun and stepped forward. A low hissing whir rose a few
feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a
fallen trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and
there, by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above
his coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The sudden hate in the boy's
face was curious--it was instinctive, primitive, deadly. He must shoot
off-hand now and he looked down the long barrel, shaded with tin, until
the sight caught on one of the beady, unblinking eyes and pulled the
trigger. Jack leaped with the sound, in spite of Chad's yell of
warning, which was useless, for the ball had gone true and the poison
was set loose in the black, crushed head.

"Jack," said Chad, "we just GOT to go down now."

So they went on swiftly through the heat of the early afternoon. It was
very silent up there. Now and then, a brilliant blue-jay would lilt
from a stunted oak with the flute-like love-notes of spring; or a
lonely little brown fellow would hop with a low chirp from one bush to
another as though he had been lost up there for years and had grown
quite hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the
mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of
flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the
wood-thrush--that shy lyrist of the hills--might rise to him from a
dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a
red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from
spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an
unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a
dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a
splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his
last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh
bear-track near a spring below the head of a ravine; and, later still,
he heard the far-away barking of a hound and a deer leaped lightly into
an open sunny spot and stood with uplifted hoof and pointed ears. This
was too much and the boy's gun followed his heart to his throat, but
the buck sprang lightly into the bush and vanished noiselessly.

The sun had dropped midway between the zenith and the blue bulks
rolling westward and, at the next gap, a broader path ran through it
and down the mountain. This, Chad knew, led to a settlement and, with a
last look of choking farewell to his own world, he turned down. At
once, the sense of possible human companionship was curiously potent:
at once, the boy's half-wild manner changed and, though alert and still
watchful, he whistled cheerily to Jack, threw his gun over his
shoulder, and walked erect and confident. His pace slackened.
Carelessly now his feet tramped beds of soft exquisite moss and lone
little settlements of forget-me-nots, and his long riflebarrel brushed
laurel blossoms down in a shower behind him. Once even, he picked up
one of the pretty bells and looked idly at it, turning it bottom
upward. The waxen cup might have blossomed from a tiny waxen star.
There was a little green star for a calyx; above this, a little white
star with its prongs outstretched--tiny arms to hold up the
pink-flecked chalice for the rain and dew. There came a time when he
thought of it as a star-blossom; but now his greedy tongue swept the
honey from it and he dropped it without another thought to the ground.
At the first spur down which the road turned, he could see smoke in the
valley. The laurel blooms and rhododendron bells hung in thicker
clusters and of a deeper pink. Here and there was a blossoming wild
cucumber and an umbrella-tree with huger flowers and leaves; and,
sometimes, a giant magnolia with a thick creamy flower that the boy
could not have spanned with both hands and big, thin oval leaves, a
man's stride from tip to stem. Soon, he was below the sunlight and in
the cool shadows where the water ran noisily and the air hummed with
the wings of bees.  On the last spur, he came upon a cow browsing on
sassafras-bushes right in the path and the last shadow of his
loneliness straightway left him. She was old, mild, and unfearing, and
she started down the road in front of him as though she thought he had
come to drive her home, or as though she knew he was homeless and was
leading him to shelter. A little farther on, the river flashed up a
welcome to him through the trees and at the edge of the water, her
mellow bell led him down stream and he followed. In the next hollow, he
stooped to drink from a branch that ran across the road and, when he
rose to start again, his bare feet stopped as though riven suddenly to
the ground; for, half way up the next low slope, was another figure as
motionless as his--with a bare head, bare feet, a startled face and
wide eyes--but motionless only until the eyes met his: then there was a
flash of bright hair and scarlet homespun, and the little feet, that
had trod down the centuries to meet his, left the earth as though they
had wings and Chad saw them, in swift flight, pass silently over the
hill. The next moment, Jack came too near the old brindle and, with a
sweep of her horns at him and a toss of tail and heels in the air, she,
too, swept over the slope and on, until the sound of her bell passed
out of hearing. Even to-day, in lonely parts of the Cumberland, the
sudden coming of a stranger may put women and children to
flight--something like this had happened before to Chad--but the sudden
desertion and the sudden silence drew him in a flash back to the lonely
cabin he had left and the lonely graves under the big poplar and, with
a quivering lip, he sat down. Jack, too, dropped to his haunches and
sat hopeless, but not for long. The chill of night was coming on and
Jack was getting hungry. So he rose presently and trotted ahead and
squatted again, looking back and waiting. But still Chad sat irresolute
and in a moment, Jack heard something that disturbed him, for he threw
his ears toward the top of the hill and, with a growl, trotted back to
Chad and sat close to him, looking up the slope. Chad rose then with
his thumb on the lock of his gun and over the hill came a tall figure
and a short one, about Chad's size and a dog, with white feet and white
face, that was bigger than Jack: and behind them, three more figures,
one of which was the tallest of the group. All stopped when they saw
Chad, who dropped the butt of his gun at once to the ground. At once
the strange dog, with a low snarl, started down toward the two little
strangers with his yellow ears pointed, the hair bristling along his
back, and his teeth in sight. Jack answered the challenge with an eager
whimper, but dropped his tail, at Chad's sharp command--for Chad did
not care to meet the world as an enemy, when he was looking for a
friend. The group stood dumb with astonishment for a moment and the
small boy's mouth was wide-open with surprise, but the strange dog came
on with his tail rigid, and lifting his feet high.

"Begone!" said Chad, sharply, but the dog would not begone; he still
came on as though bent on a fight.

"Call yo' dog off," Chad called aloud. "My dog'll kill him. You better
call him off," he called again, in some concern, but the tall boy in
front laughed scornfully.

"Let's see him," he said, and the small one laughed, too.

Chad's eyes flashed--no boy can stand an insult to his dog--and the
curves of his open lips snapped together in a straight red line. "All
right," he said, placidly, and, being tired, he dropped back on a stone
by the wayside to await results. The very tone of his voice struck all
shackles of restraint from Jack, who, with a springy trot, went forward
slowly, as though he were making up a definite plan of action; for Jack
had a fighting way of his own, which Chad knew.

"Sick him, Whizzer!" shouted the tall boy, and the group of five
hurried eagerly down the hill and halted in a half circle about Jack
and Chad; so that it looked an uneven conflict, indeed, for the two
waifs from over Pine Mountain.

The strange dog was game and wasted no time. With a bound he caught
Jack by the throat, tossed him several feet away, and sprang for him
again. Jack seemed helpless against such strength and fury, but Chad's
face was as placid as though it had been Jack who was playing the
winning game.

Jack himself seemed little disturbed; he took his punishment without an
outcry of rage or pain. You would have thought he had quietly come to
the conclusion that all he could hope to do was to stand the strain
until his opponent had worn himself out. But that was not Jack's game,
and Chad knew it. The tall boy was chuckling, and his brother of Chad's
age was bent almost double with delight.

"Kill my dawg, will he?" he cried, shrilly.

"Oh, Lawdy!" groaned the tall one.

Jack was much bitten and chewed by this time, and, while his pluck and
purpose seemed unchanged, Chad had risen to his feet and was beginning
to look anxious. The three silent spectators behind pressed forward
and, for the first time, one of these--the tallest of the group--spoke:

"Take yo' dawg off, Daws Dillon," he said, with quiet authority; but
Daws shook his head, and the little brother looked indignant.

"He said he'd kill him," said Daws, tauntingly.

"Yo' dawg's bigger and hit ain't fair," said the other again and,
seeing Chad's worried look, he pressed suddenly forward; but Chad had
begun to smile, and was sitting down on his stone again. Jack had
leaped this time, with his first growl during the fight, and Whizzer
gave a sharp cry of surprise and pain. Jack had caught him by the
throat, close behind the jaws, and the big dog shook and growled and
shook again. Sometimes Jack was lifted quite from the ground, but he
seemed clamped to his enemy to stay. Indeed he shut his eyes, finally,
and seemed to go quite to sleep. The big dog threshed madly and swung
and twisted, howling with increasing pain and terror and increasing
weakness, while Jack's face was as peaceful as though he were a puppy
once more and hanging to his mother's neck instead of her breast,
asleep. By and by, Whizzer ceased to shake and began to pant; and,
thereupon, Jack took his turn at shaking, gently at first, but with
maddening regularity and without at all loosening his hold. The big dog
was too weak to resist soon and, when Jack began to jerk savagely,
Whizzer began to gasp.

"You take YO' dawg off," called Daws, sharply.

Chad never moved.

"Will you say 'nough for him?" he asked, quietly; and the tall one of
the silent three laughed.

"Call him off, I tell ye," repeated Daws, savagely; but again Chad
never moved, and Daws started for a club. Chad's new friend came
forward.

"Hol'on, now, hol'on," he said, easily. "None o' that, I reckon."

Daws stopped with an oath. "Whut you got to do with this, Tom Turner?"

"You started this fight," said Tom.

"I don't keer ef I did--take him off," Daws answered, savagely.

"Will you say 'nough fer him?" said Chad again, and again Tall Tom
chuckled. The little brother clinched his fists and turned white with
fear for Whizzer and fury for Chad, while Daws looked at the tall
Turner, shook his head from side to side, like a balking steer, and
dropped his eyes.

"Y-e-s," he said, sullenly.

"Say it, then," said Chad, and this time Tall Tom roared aloud, and
even his two silent brothers laughed. Again Daws, with a furious oath,
started for the dogs with his club, but Chad's ally stepped between.

"You say 'nough, Daws Dillon," he said, and Daws looked into the quiet
half-smiling face and at the stalwart two grinning behind.

"Takin' up agin yo' neighbors fer a wood-colt, air ye?"

"I'm a-takin' up fer what's right and fair. How do you know he's a
wood-colt--an' suppose he is? You say 'nough now, or--"

Again Daws looked at the dogs. Jack had taken a fresh grip and was
shaking savagely and steadily. Whizzer's tongue was out--once his
throat rattled.

"Nough!" growled Daws, angrily, and the word was hardly jerked from his
lips before Chad was on his feet and prying Jack's jaws apart. "He
ain't much hurt," he said, looking at the bloody hold which Jack had
clamped on his enemy's throat, "but he'd a-killed him though, he al'ays
does. Thar ain't no chance fer NO dog, when Jack gits THAT hold."

Then he raised his eyes and looked into the quivering face of the owner
of the dog--the little fellow--who, with the bellow of a yearling bull,
sprang at him. Again Chad's lips took a straight red line and being on
one knee was an advantage, for, as he sprang up, he got both underholds
and there was a mighty tussle, the spectators yelling with frantic
delight.

"Trip him, Tad," shouted Daws, fiercely.

"Stick to him, little un," shouted Tom, and his brothers, stoical Dolph
and Rube, danced about madly. Even with underholds, Chad, being much
the shorter of the two, had no advantage that he did not need, and,
with a sharp thud, the two fierce little bodies struck the road side by
side, spurting up a cloud of dust.

"Dawg--fall!" cried Rube, and Dolph rushed forward to pull the
combatants apart.

"He don't fight fair," said Chad, panting, and rubbing his right eye
which his enemy had tried to "gouge"; "but lemme at him--I can fight
thataway, too." Tall Tom held them apart.

"You're too little, and he don't fight fair. I reckon you better go on
home--you two--an' yo' mean dawg," he said to Daws; and the two
Dillons--the one sullen and the other crying with rage--moved away with
Whizzer slinking close to the ground after them. But at the top of the
hill both turned with bantering yells, derisive wriggling of their
fingers at their noses, and with other rude gestures. And, thereupon,
Dolph and Rube wanted to go after them, but the tall brother stopped
them with a word.

"That's about all they're fit fer," he said, contemptuously, and he
turned to Chad.

"Whar you from, little man, an' whar you goin', an' what mought yo'
name be?"

Chad told his name, and where he was from, and stopped.

"Whar you goin'?" said Tom again, without a word or look of comment.

Chad knew the disgrace and the suspicion that his answer was likely to
generate, but he looked his questioner in the face fearlessly.

"I don't know whar I'm goin'."

The big fellow looked at him keenly, but kindly.

"You ain't lyin' an' I reckon you better come with us." He turned for
the first time to his brothers and the two nodded.

"You an' yo' dawg, though Mammy don't like dawgs much; but you air a
stranger an' you ain't afeerd, an' you can fight--you an' yo' dawg--an'
I know Dad'll take ye both in."

So Chad and Jack followed the long strides of the three Turners over
the hill and to the bend of the river, where were three long cane
fishing-poles with their butts stuck in the mud--the brothers had been
fishing, when the flying figure of the little girl told them of the
coming of a stranger into those lonely wilds. Taking these up, they
strode on--Chad after them and Jack trotting, in cheerful confidence,
behind. It is probable that Jack noticed, as soon as Chad, the swirl of
smoke rising from a broad ravine that spread into broad fields, skirted
by the great sweep of the river, for he sniffed the air sharply, and
trotted suddenly ahead. It was a cheering sight for Chad. Two negro
slaves were coming from work in a corn-field close by, and Jack's hair
rose when he saw them, and, with a growl, he slunk behind his master.
Dazed, Chad looked at them.

"Whut've them fellers got on their faces?" he asked. Tom laughed.

"Hain't you nuver seed a nigger afore?" he asked.

Chad shook his head.

"Lots o' folks from yo' side o' the mountains nuver have seed a
nigger," said Tom. "Sometimes hit skeers 'em."

"Hit don't skeer me," said Chad.

At the gate of the barn-yard, in which was a long stable with a deeply
sloping roof, stood the old brindle cow, who turned to look at Jack,
and, as Chad followed the three brothers through the yard gate, he saw
a slim scarlet figure vanish swiftly from the porch into the house.

In a few minutes, Chad was inside the big log cabin and before a big
log-fire, with Jack between his knees and turning his soft human eyes
keenly from one to another of the group about his little master,
telling how the mountain cholera had carried off the man and the woman
who had been father and mother to him, and their children; at which the
old mother nodded her head in growing sympathy, for there were two
fresh mounds in her own graveyard on the point of a low hill not far
away; how old Nathan Cherry, whom he hated, had wanted to bind him out,
and how, rather than have Jack mistreated and himself be ill-used, he
had run away along the mountain-top; how he had slept one night under a
log with Jack to keep him warm; how he had eaten sassafras and birch
back and had gotten drink from the green water-bulbs of the wild
honeysuckle; and how, on the second day, being hungry, and without
powder for his gun, he had started, when the sun sank, for the shadows
of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old
mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the
kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine
of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the
delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old
Joel, the father of the house, came in--a giant in size and a mighty
hunter--and he slapped his big thighs and roared until the rafters
seemed to shake when Tall Tom told him about the dog-fight and the
boy-fight with the family in the next cove: for already the clanship
was forming that was to add the last horror to the coming great war and
prolong that horror for nearly half a century after its close.

By and by, the scarlet figure of little Melissa came shyly out of the
dark shadows behind and drew shyly closer and closer, until she was
crouched in the chimney corner with her face shaded from the fire by
one hand and a tangle of yellow hair, listening and watching him with
her big, solemn eyes, quite fearlessly. Already the house was full of
children and dependents, but no word passed between old Joel and the
old mother, for no word was necessary. Two waifs who had so suffered
and who could so fight could have a home under that roof if they
pleased, forever. And Chad's sturdy little body lay deep in a
feather-bed, and the friendly shadows from a big fireplace flickered
hardly thrice over him before he was asleep. And Jack, for that night
at least, was allowed to curl up by the covered coals, or stretch out
his tired feet, if he pleased, to a warmth that in all the nights of
his life, perhaps, he had never known before.



CHAPTER 3.

A "BLAB SCHOOL" ON KINGDOM COME

Chad was awakened by the touch of a cold nose at his ear, the rasp of a
warm tongue across his face, and the tug of two paws at his cover. "Git
down, Jack!" he said, and Jack, with a whimper of satisfaction, went
back to the fire that was roaring up the chimney, and a deep voice
laughed and called:

"I reckon you better git UP, little man!"

Old Joel was seated at the fire with his huge legs crossed and a pipe
in his mouth. It was before busily astir. There was the sound of
tramping in the frosty air outside and the noise of getting breakfast
ready in the kitchen. As Chad sprang up, he saw Melissa's yellow hair
drop out of sight behind the foot of the bed in the next corner, and he
turned his face quickly, and, slipping behind the foot of his own bed
and into his coat and trousers, was soon at the fire himself, with old
Joel looking him over with shrewd kindliness.

"Yo' dawg's got a heap o' sense," said the old hunter, and Chad told
him how old Jack was, and how a cattle-buyer from the "settlements" of
the Bluegrass had given him to Chad when Jack was badly hurt and his
owner thought he was going to die. And how Chad had nursed him and how
the two had always been together ever since. Through the door of the
kitchen, Chad could see the old mother with her crane and pots and
cooking-pans; outside, he could hear the moo of the old brindle, the
bleat of her calf, the nicker of a horse, one lusty sheep-call, and the
hungry bellow of young cattle at the barn, where Tall Tom was feeding
the stock. Presently Rube stamped in with a back log and Dolph came
through with a milk-pail.

"I can milk," said Chad, eagerly, and Dolph laughed.

"All right, I'll give ye a chance," he said, and old Joel looked
pleased, for it was plain that the little stranger was not going to be
a drone in the household, and, taking his pipe from his mouth but
without turning his head, he called out:

"Git up thar, Melissy."

Getting no answer, he looked around to find Melissa standing at the
foot of the bed.

"Come here to the fire, little gal, nobody's agoin to eat ye."

Melissa came forward, twisting her hands in front of her, and stood,
rubbing one bare foot over the other on the hearth-stones. She turned
her face with a blush when Chad suddenly looked at her, and,
thereafter, the little man gazed steadily into the fire in order to
embarrass her no more.

With the breaking of light over the mountain, breakfast was over and
the work of the day began. Tom was off to help a neighbor "snake" logs
down the mountain and into Kingdom Come, where they would be "rafted"
and floated on down the river to the capital--if a summer tide should
come--to be turned into fine houses for the people of the Bluegrass.
Dolph and Rube disappeared at old Joel's order to "go meet them sheep."
Melissa helped her mother clear away the table and wash the dishes; and
Chad, out of the tail of his eye, saw her surreptitiously feeding
greedy Jack, while old Joel still sat by the fire, smoking silently.
Chad stepped outside. The air was chill, but the mists were rising and
a long band of rich, warm light lay over a sloping spur up the river,
and where this met the blue morning shadows, the dew was beginning to
drip and to sparkle. Chad could nor stand inaction long, and his eye
lighted up when he heard a great bleating at the foot of the spur and
the shouts of men and boys. Just then the old mother called from the
rear of the cabin.

"Joel, them sheep air comin'!"

The big form of the old hunter filled the doorway and Jack bounded out
between his legs, while little Melissa appeared with two books, ready
for school. Down the road came the flock of lean mountain-sheep, Dolph
and Rube driving them. Behind, slouched the Dillon tribe--Daws and
Whizzer and little Tad; Daws's father, old Tad, long, lean, stooping,
crafty: and two new ones cousins to Daws--Jake and Jerry, the giant
twins. "Joel Turner," said old Tad, sourly, "here's yo' sheep!"

Joel had bought the Dillons' sheep and meant to drive them to the
county-seat ten miles down the river. There had evidently been a
disagreement between the two when the trade was made, for Joel pulled
out a gray pouch of coonskin, took from it a roll of bills, and,
without counting them, held them out.

"Tad Dillon," he said, shortly, "here's yo' money!"

The Dillon father gave possession with a gesture and the Dillon
faction, including Whizzer and the giant twins, drew aside
together--the father morose; Daws watching Dolph and Rube with a look
of much meanness; little Tad behind him, watching Chad, his face
screwed up with hate; and Whizzer, pretending not to see Jack, but
darting a surreptitious glance at him now and then, for then and there
was starting a feud that was to run fiercely on, long after the war was
done.

"Git my hoss, Rube," said old Joel, and Rube turned to the stable,
while Dolph kept an eye on the sheep, which were lying on the road or
straggling down the river. As Rube opened the stable-door, a dirty
white object bounded out, and Rube, with a loud curse, tumbled over
backward into the mud, while a fierce old ram dashed with a triumphant
bleat for the open gate. Beelzebub, as the Turner mother had christened
the mischievous brute, had been placed in the wrong stall and Beelzebub
was making for freedom. He gave another triumphant baa as he swept
between Dolph's legs and through the gate, and, with an answering
chorus, the silly sheep sprang to their feet and followed. A sheep
hates water, but not more than he loves a leader, and Beelzebub feared
nothing. Straight for the water of the low ford the old conqueror made
and, in the wake of his masterful summons, the flock swept, like a
Mormon household, after him. Then was there a commotion indeed. Old
Joel shouted and swore; Dolph shouted and swore and Rube shouted and
swore. Old Dillon smiled grimly, Daws and little Tad shouted with
derisive laughter, and the big twins grinned. The mother came to the
door, broom in hand, and, with a frowning face, watched the sheep
splash through the water and into the woods across the river. Little
Melissa looked frightened. Whizzer, losing his head, had run down after
the sheep, barking and hastening their flight, until called back with a
mighty curse from old Joel, while Jack sat on his haunches looking at
Chad and waiting for orders.

"Goddlemighty!" said Joel, "how air we goin' to git them sheep back?"
Up and up rose the bleating and baaing, for Beelzebub, like the prince
of devils that he was, seemed bent on making all the mischief possible.

"How AIR we goin' to git 'em back?"

Chad nodded then, and Jack with an eager yelp made for the
river--Whizzer at his heels. Again old Joel yelled furiously, as did
Dolph and Rube, and Whizzer stopped and turned back with a drooping
tail, but Jack plunged in. He knew but one voice behind him and Chad's
was not in the chorus.

"Call yo' dawg back, boy," said Joel, sternly, and Chad opened his lips
with anything but a call for Jack to come back--it was instead a fine
high yell of encouragement and old Joel was speechless.

"That dawg'll kill them sheep," said Daws Dillon aloud.

Joel's face was red and his eyes rolled.

"Call that damned feist back, I tell ye," he shouted at last. "Hyeh,
Rube, git my gun, git my gun!"

Rube started for the house, but Chad laughed. Jack had reached the
other bank now, and was flashing like a ball of gray light through the
weeds and up into the woods; and Chad slipped down the bank and into
the river, hieing him on excitedly.

Joel was beside himself and he, too, lumbered down to the river,
followed by Dolph, while the Dillons roared from the road.

"Boy!" he roared. "Eh, boy, eh! what's his name, Dolph? Call him back,
Dolph, call the little devil back. If I don't wear him out with a
hickory; holler fer 'em, damn 'em! Heh-o-oo-ee!" The old hunter's
bellow rang through the woods like a dinner-horn. Dolph was shouting,
too, but Jack and Chad seemed to have gone stone-deaf; and Rube, who
had run down with the gun, started with an oath into the river himself,
but Joel halted him.

"Hol'on, hol'on!" he said, listening. "By the eternal, he's a-roundin'
'em up!" The sheep were evidently much scattered, to judge from the
bleating, but here, there, and everywhere, they could hear Jack's bark,
while Chad seemed to have stopped in the woods and, from one place, was
shouting orders to his dog. Plainly, Jack was no sheep-killer and by
and by Dolph and Rube left off shouting, and old Joel's face became
placid and all of them from swearing helplessly fell to waiting
quietly. Soon the bleating became less and less, and began to
concentrate on the mountain-side. Not far below, they could hear Chad:

"Coo-oo-sheep! Coo-oo-sh'p-cooshy-cooshy-coo-oo-sheep!"

The sheep were answering. They were coming down a ravine, and Chad's
voice rang out above:

"Somebody come across, an' stand on each side o' the holler."

Dolph and Rube waded across then, and soon the sheep came crowding down
the narrow ravine with Jack barking behind them and Chad shooing them
down. But for Dolph and Rube, Beelzebub would have led them up or down
the river, and it was hard work to get him into the water until Jack,
who seemed to know what the matter was, sharply nipped several sheep
near him. These sprang violently forward, the whole flock in front
pushed forward, too, and Beelzebub was thrust from the bank. Nothing
else being possible, the old ram settled himself with a snort into the
water and made for the other shore. Chad and Jack followed and, when
they reached the road, Beelzebub was again a prisoner; the sheep,
swollen like sponges, were straggling down the river, and Dillons and
Turners were standing around in silence. Jack shook himself and dropped
panting in the dust at his master's feet, without so much as an upward
glance or a lift of his head for a pat of praise. As old Joel raised
one foot heavily to his stirrup, he grunted, quietly:

"Well, I be damned." And when he was comfortably in his saddle he said
again, with unction:

"I DO be damned. I'll just take that dawg to help drive them sheep down
to town. Come on, boy."

Chad started joyfully, but the old mother called from the door: "Who's
a-goin' to take this gal to school, I'd like to know?"

Old Joel pulled in his horse, straightened one leg, and looked all
around--first at the Dillons, who had started away, then at Dolph and
Rube, who were moving determinedly after the sheep (it was Court Day in
town and they could not miss Court Day), and then at Chad, who halted.

"Boy," he said, "don't you want to go to school--you ought to go to
school?"

"Yes," said Chad, obediently, though the trip to town--and Chad had
never been to a town--was a sore temptation.

"Go on, then, an' tell the teacher I sent ye. Here, Mammy--eh, what's
yo' name, boy? Oh, Mammy--Chad, here 'll take her. Take good keer o'
that gal, boy, an' learn yo' a-b-abs like a man now."

Melissa came shyly forward from the door and Joel whistled to Jack and
called him, but Jack though he liked nothing better than to drive sheep
lay still, looking at Chad.

"Go 'long, Jack," said Chad, and Jack sprang up and was off, though he
stopped again and looked back, and Chad had to tell him again to go on.
In a moment dog, men, and sheep were moving in a cloud of dust around a
bend in the road and little Melissa was at the gate.

"Take good keer of 'Lissy," said the mother from the porch, kindly; and
Chad, curiously touched all at once by the trust shown him, stalked
ahead like a little savage, while Melissa with her basket followed
silently behind. The boy never thought of taking the basket himself:
that is not the way of men with women in the hills and not once did he
look around or speak on the way up the river and past the blacksmith's
shop and the grist-mill just beyond the mouth of Kingdom Come; but when
they arrived at the log school-house it was his turn to be shy and he
hung back to let Melissa go in first. Within, there was no floor but
the bare earth, no window but the cracks between the logs, and no desks
but the flat sides of slabs, held up by wobbling pegs. On one side were
girls in linsey and homespun: some thin, undersized, underfed, and with
weak, dispirited eyes and yellow tousled hair; others, round-faced,
round-eyed, dark, and sturdy; most of them large-waisted and
round-shouldered--especially the older ones--from work in the fields;
but, now and then, one like Melissa, the daughter of a valley farmer,
erect, agile, spirited, intelligent. On the other side were the boys,
in physical characteristics the same and suggesting the same social
divisions: at the top the farmer--now and then a slave-holder and
perhaps of gentle blood--who had dropped by the way on the westward
march of civilization and had cleared some rich river bottom and a
neighboring summit of the mountains, where he sent his sheep and cattle
to graze; where a creek opened into this valley some free-settler,
whose grandfather had fought at King's Mountain--usually of
Scotch-Irish descent, often English, but sometimes German or sometimes
even Huguenot--would have his rude home of logs; under him, and in
wretched cabins at the head of the creek or on the washed spur of the
mountain above, or in some "deadenin"' still higher up and swept by
mists and low-trailing clouds, the poor white trash--worthless
descendants of the servile and sometimes criminal class who might have
traced their origin back to the slums of London; hand-to-mouth tenants
of the valley-aristocrat, hewers of wood for him in the lowlands and
upland guardians of his cattle and sheep. And finally, walking up and
down the earth floor--stern and smooth of face and of a preternatural
dignity hardly to be found elsewhere--the mountain school-master.

It was a "blab school," as the mountaineers characterize a school in
which the pupils study aloud, and the droning chorus as shrill as
locust cries ceased suddenly when Chad came in, and every eye was
turned on him with a sexless gaze of curiosity that made his face
redden and his heart throb. But he forgot them when the school-master
pierced him with eyes that seemed to shoot from under his heavy brows
like a strong light from deep darkness. Chad met them, nor did his chin
droop, and Caleb Hazel saw that the boy's face was frank and honest,
and that his eye was fearless and kind, and, without question, he
motioned to a seat--with one wave of his hand setting Chad on the
corner of a slab and the studious drone to vibrating again. When the
boy ventured to glance around, he saw Daws Dillon in one corner, making
a face at him, and little Tad scowling from behind a book: and on the
other side, among the girls, he saw another hostile face--next little
Melissa which had the pointed chin and the narrow eyes of the "Dillon
breed," as old Joel called the family, whose farm was at the mouth of
Kingdom Come and whose boundary touched his own. When the first morning
recess came, "little recess," as it was called--the master kept Chad in
and asked him his name; if he had ever been to school, and whether he
knew his A B C's; and he showed no surprise when Chad, without shame,
told him no. So the master got Melissa's spelling-book and pointed out
the first seven letters of the alphabet, and made Chad repeat them
three times--watching the boy's earnest, wrinkling brow closely and
with growing interest. When school "took up" again, Chad was told to
say them aloud in concert with the others--which he did, until he could
repeat them without looking at his book, and the master saw him thus
saying them while his eyes roved around the room, and he nodded to
himself with satisfaction--for he was accustomed to visible communion
with himself, in school and out. At noon--"big recess" Melissa gave
Chad some corn-bread and bacon, and the boys gathered around him, while
the girls looked at him curiously, merely because he was a stranger,
and some of them--especially the Dillon girl--whispered, and Chad
blushed and was uncomfortable, for once the Dillon girl laughed
unkindly. The boys had no games, but they jumped and threw "rocks" with
great accuracy at a little birch-tree, and Daws and Tad always spat on
their stones and pointed with the forefinger of the left hand first at
what they were going to throw at, while Chad sat to one side and took
no part, though he longed to show them what he could do. By and by they
fell to wrestling, and finally Tad bantered him for a trial. Chad
hesitated, and his late enemy misunderstood.

"I'll give ye both underholts agin," he said, loftily, "you're afeerd!"

This was too much, and Chad sprang to his feet and grappled, disdaining
the proffered advantage, and got hurled to the ground, his head
striking the earth violently, and making him so dizzy that the brave
smile with which he took his fall looked rather sickly and pathetic.

"Yes, an' Whizzer can whoop yo' dawg, too," said Tad, and Chad saw that
he was going to have trouble with those Dillons, for Daws winked at the
other boys, and the Dillon girl laughed again scornfully--at which Chad
saw Melissa's eyes flash and her hands clinch as, quite unconsciously,
she moved toward him to take his part; and all at once he was glad that
he had nobody else to champion him.

"You wouldn' dare tech him if one of my brothers was here," she said,
indignantly, "an' don t you dare tech him again, Tad Dillon. An' you--"
she said, witheringly, "you--" she repeated and stopped helpless for
the want of words but her eyes spoke with the fierce authority of the
Turner clan, and its dominant power for half a century, and Nancy
Dillon shrank, though she turned and made a spiteful face, when Melissa
walked toward the school-house alone.

That afternoon was the longest of Chad's life--it seemed as though it
would never come to an end; for Chad had never sat so still for so
long. His throat got dry repeating the dreary round of letters over and
over and his head ached and he fidgeted in his chair while the slow
hours passed and the sun went down behind the mountain and left the
school-house in rapidly cooling shadow. His heart leaped when the last
class was heard and the signal was given that meant freedom for the
little prisoners; but Melissa sat pouting in her seat--she had missed
her lesson and must be kept in for a while. So Chad, too, kept his seat
and the master heard him say his letters, without the book, and nodded
his head as though to say to himself that such quickness was exactly
what he had looked for. By the time Chad had learned down to the letter
O, Melissa was ready, for she was quick, too, and it was her anger that
made her miss--and the two started home, Chad stalking ahead once more.
To save him, he could not say a word of thanks, but how he wished that
a bear or a wild-cat would spring into the road! He would fight it with
teeth and naked hands to show her how he felt and to save her from harm.

The sunlight still lay warm and yellow far under the crest of Pine
Mountain, and they had not gone far when Caleb Hazel overtook them and
with long strides forged ahead. The school-master "boarded around" and
it was his week with the Turners, and Chad was glad, for he already
loved the tall, gaunt, awkward man who asked him question after
question so kindly--loved him as much as he revered and feared him--and
the boy's artless, sturdy answers in turn pleased Caleb Hazel. And when
Chad told who had given him Jack, the master began to talk about the
faraway, curious country of which the cattle-dealer had told Chad so
much: where the land was level and there were no mountains at all;
where on one farm might be more sheep, cattle, and slaves than Chad had
seen in all his life; where the people lived in big houses of stone and
brick--what brick was Chad could not imagine--and rode along hard,
white roads in shiny covered wagons, with two "niggers" on a high seat
in front and one little "nigger" behind to open gates, and were proud
and very high-heeled indeed; where there were towns that had more
people than a whole county in the mountains, with rock roads running
through them in every direction and narrow rock paths along these
roads--like rows of hearth-stones--for the people to walk on--the land
of the bluegrass--the "settlemints of old Kaintuck."

And there were churches everywhere as tall as trees and school-houses
a-plenty; and big schools, called colleges, to which the boys went when
they were through with the little schools. The master had gone to one
of these colleges for a year, and he was trying to make enough money to
go again. And Chad must go some day, too; there was no reason why he
shouldn't, since any boy could do anything he pleased if he only made
up his mind and worked hard and never gave up. The master was an
orphan, too, he said with a slow smile; he had been an orphan for a
long while, and indeed the lonely struggle of his own boyhood was what
was helping to draw him to Chad. This college, he said, was a huge
brown house as big as a cliff that the master pointed out, that, gray
and solemn, towered high above the river; and with a rock porch bigger
than a great bowlder that hung just under the cliff, with twenty long,
long stone steps to climb before one came to the big double front door.

"How do you git thar?" Chad asked so breathlessly that Melissa looked
quickly up with a sudden foreboding that she might lose her little
playfellow some day. The master had walked, and it took him a week. A
good horse could make the trip in four days, and the river-men floated
logs down the river to the capital in eight or ten days, according to
the "tide." "When did they go?" In the spring, when the 'tides' came.
"The Turners went down, didn't they, Melissa?" And Melissa said that
her brother Tom had made one trip, and that Dolph and Rube were "might'
nigh crazy" to go that coming spring; and, thereupon, a mighty
resolution filled Chad's heart to the brim and steadied his eyes, but
he did not open his lips then.

Dusk was settling when the Turner cabin came in sight. None of the
men-folks had come home yet, and the mother was worried; there was wood
to cut and the cows to milk, and Chad's friend, old Betsey the brindle,
had strayed off again; but she was glad to see Caleb Hazel, who,
without a word, went out to the wood-pile, took off his coat, and swung
the axe with mighty arms, while Chad carried in the wood and piled it
in the kitchen and then the two went after the old brindle together.

When they got back there was a great tumult at the cabin. Tom had
brought some friends from over the mountain, and had told the neighbors
as he came along that there was going to be a party at his house that
night.

So there was a great bustle about the barn where Rube was getting the
stock fed and the milking done; and around the kitchen, where Dolph was
cutting more wood and piling it up at the door. Inside, the mother was
hurrying up supper with Sintha, an older daughter, who had just come
home from a visit, and Melissa helping her, while old Joel sat by the
fire in the sleeping-room and smoked, with Jack lying on the hearth, or
anywhere he pleased, for Jack, with his gentle ways, was winning the
household one by one. He sprang up when he heard Chad's voice, and flew
at him, jumping up and pawing him affectionately and licking his face
while Chad hugged him and talked to him as though he were human and a
brother; never before had the two been separated for a day. So, while
the master helped Rube at the barn and Chad helped Dolph at the
wood-pile, Jack hung about his master--tired and hungry as he was and
much as he wanted to be by the fire or waiting in the kitchen for a sly
bit from Melissa, whom he knew at once as the best of his new friends.

After supper, Dolph got out his banjo and played "Shady Grove," and
"Blind Coon Dog," and "Sugar Hill," and "Gamblin' Man," while Chad's
eyes glistened and his feet shuffled under his chair. And when Dolph
put the rude thing down on the bed and went into the kitchen, Chad
edged toward it and, while old Joel was bragging about Jack to the
school-master, he took hold of it with trembling fingers and touched
the strings timidly. Then he looked around cautiously: nobody was
paying any attention to him and he took it up into his lap and began to
pick, ever so softly. Nobody saw him but Melissa, who slipped quietly
to the back of the room and drew near him. Softly and swiftly Chad's
fingers worked and Melissa could scarcely hear the sound of the banjo
under her father's loud voice, but she could make out that he was
playing a tune that still vibrates unceasingly from the Pennsylvania
border to the pine-covered hills of Georgia--"Sourwood Mountain."
Melissa held her breath while she listened--Dolph could not play like
that--and by and by she slipped quietly to her father and pulled his
sleeve and pointed to Chad. Old Joel stopped talking, but Chad never
noticed; his head was bent over the neck of the banjo, his body was
swaying rhythmically, his chubby fingers were going like lightning, and
his eyes were closed--the boy was fairly lost to the world. The tune
came out in the sudden silence, clean-cut and swinging:

  Heh-o-dee-um-dee-eedle-dahdee-dee!

rang the strings and old Joel's eyes danced.

"Sing it, boy!" he roared, "sing it!" And Chad sprang from the bed, on
fire with confusion and twisting his fingers helplessly. He looked
almost frightened when Dolph ran back into the room and cried:

"Who was that a-pickin' that banjer?"

It was not often that Dolph showed such excitement, but he had good
cause, and, when he saw Chad standing, shamefaced and bashful, in the
middle of the floor, and Melissa joyously pointing her finger at him,
he caught up the banjo from the bed and put it into the boy's hands.
"Here, you just play that tune agin!"

Chad shrank back, half distressed and half happy, and only a hail
outside from the first of the coming guests saved him from utter
confusion. Once started, they came swiftly, and in half an hour all
were there. Each got a hearty welcome from old Joel, who, with a wink
and a laugh and a nod to the old mother, gave a hearty squeeze to some
buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was
there a dance indeed--no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active
swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and
scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling
forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping
"cuttings of the pigeon's wing," and jolly jigs, two by two, and a
great "swinging of corners," and "caging the bird," and "fust lady to
the right CHEAT an' swing"; no flirting from behind fans and under
stairways and little nooks, but honest, open courtship--strong arms
about healthy waists, and a kiss taken now and then, with everybody to
see and nobody to care who saw. If a chair was lacking, a pair of
brawny knees made one chair serve for two, but never, if you please,
for two men. Rude, rough, semi-barbarous, if you will, but simple,
natural, honest, sane, earthy--and of the earth whence springs the oak
and in time, maybe, the flower of civilization.

At the first pause in the dance, old Joel called loudly for Chad. The
boy tried to slip out of the door, but Dolph seized him and pulled him
to a chair in the corner and put the banjo in his hands. Everybody
looked on with curiosity at first, and for a little while Chad
suffered; but when the dance turned attention from him, he forgot
himself again and made the old thing hum with all the rousing tunes
that had ever swept its string. When he stopped at last, to wipe the
perspiration from his face, he noticed for the first time the
school-master, who was yet divided between the church and the law,
standing at the door, silent, grave, disapproving. And he was not alone
in his condemnation; in many a cabin up and down the river, stern talk
was going on against the ungodly 'carryings on,' under the Turner roof,
and, far from accepting them as proofs of a better birth and broader
social ideas, these Calvinists of the hills set the merry-makers down
as the special prey of the devil, and the dance and the banjo as sly
plots of the same to draw their souls to hell.

Chad felt the master's look, and he did not begin playing again, but
put the banjo down by his chair and the dance came to an end. Once more
Chad saw the master look, this time at Sintha, who was leaning against
the wall with a sturdy youth in a fringed hunting-shirt bending over
her--his elbow against a log directly over her shoulder, Sintha saw the
look, too, and she answered with a little toss of her head, but when
Caleb Hazel turned to go out the door, Chad saw that the girl's eyes
followed him. A little later, Chad went out too, and found the master
at the corner of the fence and looking at a low red star whose rich,
peaceful light came through a gap in the hills. Chad shyly drew near
him, hoping in some way to get a kindly word, but the master was so
absorbed that he did not see or hear the boy and Chad, awed by the
stern, solemn face, withdrew and, without a word to anybody, climbed
into the loft and went to bed. He could hear every stroke on the floor
below, every call of the prompter, and the rude laughter and banter,
but he gave little heed to it all. For he lay thinking of Caleb Hazel
and listening again to the stories he and the cattle-dealer had told
him about the wonderful settlements. "God's Country," the dealer always
called it, and such it must be, if what he and the master said was
true. By and by the steady beat of feet under him, the swift notes of
the banjo, the calls of the prompter and the laughter fused, became
inarticulate, distant--ceased. And Chad, as he was wont to do,
journeyed on to "God's Country" in his dreams.



CHAPTER 4.

THE COMING OF THE TIDE

While the corn grew, school went on and, like the corn, Chad's
schooling put forth leaves and bore fruit rapidly. The boy's mind was
as clear as his eye and, like a mountain-pool, gave back every image
that passed before it. Not a word dropped from the master's lips that
he failed to hear and couldn't repeat, and, in a month, he had put
Dolph and Rube, who, big as they were, had little more than learned the
alphabet, to open shame; and he won immunity with his fists from gibe
and insult from every boy within his inches in school--including Tad
Dillon, who came in time to know that it was good to let the boy alone.
He worked like a little slave about the house, and, like Jack, won his
way into the hearts of old Joel and his wife, and even of Dolph and
Rube, in spite of their soreness over Chad's having spelled them both
down before the whole school. As for Tall Tom, he took as much pride as
the school-master in the boy, and in town, at the grist-mill, the
cross-roads, or blacksmith shop, never failed to tell the story of the
dog and the boy, whenever there was a soul to listen. And as for
Melissa, while she ruled him like a queen and Chad paid sturdy and
uncomplaining homage, she would have scratched out the eyes of one of
her own brothers had he dared to lay a finger on the boy. For Chad had
God's own gift--to win love from all but enemies and nothing but
respect and fear from them. Every morning, soon after daybreak, he
stalked ahead of the little girl to school, with Dolph and Rube
lounging along behind, and, an hour before sunset, stalked back in the
same way home again. When not at school, the two fished and played
together--inseparable.

Corn was ripe now, and school closed and Chad went with the men into
the fields and did his part, stripping the gray blades from the yellow
stalks, binding them into sheaves, stowing them away under the low roof
of the big barn, or stacking them tent-like in the fields--leaving each
ear perched like a big roosting bird on each lone stalk. And when the
autumn came, there were husking parties and dances and much merriment;
and, night after night, Chad saw Sintha and the school-master in front
of the fire--"settin' up"--close together with their arms about each
other's necks and whispering. And there were quilting parties and
housewarmings and house-raisings--one that was of great importance to
Caleb Hazel and to Chad. For, one morning, Sintha disappeared and came
back with the tall young hunter in the deerskin leggings--blushing
furiously--a bride. At once old Joel gave them some cleared land at the
head of a creek; the neighbors came in to build them a cabin, and among
them all, none worked harder than the school-master; and no one but
Chad guessed how sorely hit he was.

Meanwhile, the woods high and low were ringing with the mellow echoes
of axes, and the thundering crash of big trees along the mountain-side;
for already the hillsmen were felling trees while the sap was in the
roots, so that they could lie all winter, dry better and float better
in the spring, when the rafts were taken down the river to the little
capital in the Bluegrass. And Caleb Hazel said that he would go down on
a raft in the spring and perhaps Chad could go with him who knew? For
the school-master had now made up his mind finally--he would go out
into the world and make his way out there; and nobody but Chad noticed
that his decision came only after, and only a little while after, the
house-raising at the head of the creek.

When winter came, school opened again, and on Saturdays and Sundays and
cold snowy nights, Chad and the school-master--for he too lived at the
Turners' now--sat before the fire in the kitchen, and the school-master
read to him from "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman," which he had brought
from the Bluegrass, and from the Bible which had been his own since he
was a child. And the boy drank in the tales until he was drunk with
them and learned the conscious scorn of a lie, the conscious love of
truth and pride in courage, and the conscious reverence for women that
make the essence of chivalry as distinguished from the unthinking code
of brave, simple people. He adopted the master's dignified phraseology
as best he could; he watched him, as the master stood before the fire
with his hands under his coat-tails, his chin raised, and his eyes
dreamily upward, and Tall Tom caught the boy in just this attitude one
day and made fun of him before all the others. He tried some
high-sounding phrases on Melissa, and Melissa told him he must be
crazy. Once, even, he tried to kiss her hand gallantly and she slapped
his face. Undaunted, he made a lance of white ash, threaded some loose
yarn into Melissa's colors, as he told himself, sneaked into the barn,
where Beelzebub was tied, got on the sheep's back and, as the old ram
sprang forward, couched his lance at the trough and shattered it with a
thrill that left him trembling for half an hour. It was too good to
give up that secret joust and he made another lance and essayed another
tournament, but this time Beelzebub butted the door open and sprang
with a loud ba-a-a into the yard and charged for the gate--in full view
of old Joel, the three brothers, and the school-master, who were
standing in the road. Instinctively, Chad swung on in spite of the roar
of laughter and astonishment that greeted him and, as Tom banged the
gate, the ram swerved and Chad shot off sidewise as from a catapult and
dropped, a most unheroic little knight, in the mire. That ended Chad's
chivalry in the hills, for in the roars of laughter that greeted him,
Chad recognized Caleb Hazel's as the loudest. If HE laughed, chivalry
could never thrive there, and Chad gave it up; but the seeds were sown.

The winter passed, and what a time Chad and Jack had, snaking logs out
of the mountains with two, four, six--yes, even eight yoke of oxen,
when the log was the heart of a monarch oak or poplar--snaking them to
the chute; watching them roll and whirl and leap like jack-straws from
end to end down the steep incline and, with one last shoot in the air,
roll, shaking, quivering, into a mighty heap on the bank of Kingdom
Come. And then the "rafting" of those logs--dragging them into the pool
of the creek, lashing them together with saplings driven to the logs
with wooden pins in auger-holes--wading about, meanwhile, waist deep in
the cold water: and the final lashing of the raft to a near-by tree
with a grape-vine cable--to await the coming of a "tide."

Would that tide never come? It seemed not. The spring ploughing was
over, the corn planted; there had been rain after rain, but gentle
rains only. There had been prayers for rain:

"O Lord," said the circuit-rider, "we do not presume to dictate to
Thee, but we need rain, an' need it mighty bad. We do not presume to
dictate, but, if it pleases Thee, send us, not a gentle sizzle-sizzle,
but a sod-soaker, O Lord, a gullywasher. Give us a tide, O Lord!"
Sunrise and sunset, old Joel turned his eye to the east and the west
and shook his head. Tall Tom did the same, and Dolph and Rube studied
the heavens for a sign. The school-master grew visibly impatient and
Chad was in a fever of restless expectancy. The old mother had made him
a suit of clothes--mountain-clothes--for the trip. Old Joel gave him a
five-dollar bill for his winter's work. Even Jack seemed to know that
something unusual was on hand and hung closer about the house, for fear
he might be left behind.

Softly at last, one night, came the patter of little feet on the roof
and passed--came again and paused; and then there was a rush and a
steady roar that wakened Chad and thrilled him as he lay listening. It
did not last long, but the river was muddy enough and high enough for
the Turner brothers to float the raft slowly out from the mouth of
Kingdom Come and down in front of the house, where it was anchored to a
huge sycamore in plain sight. At noon the clouds gathered and old Joel
gave up his trip to town.

"Hit'll begin in about an hour, boys," he said, and in an hour it did
begin. There was to be no doubt about this flood. At dusk, the river
had risen two feet and the raft was pulling at its cable like an
awakening sea-monster. Meanwhile, the mother had cooked a great pone of
corn-bread, three feet in diameter, and had ground coffee and got sides
of bacon ready. All night it poured and the dawn came clear, only to
darken into gray again. But the river--the river! The roar of it filled
the woods. The frothing hem of it swished through the tops of the trees
and through the underbrush, high on the mountain-side. Arched slightly
in the middle, for the river was still rising, it leaped and surged,
tossing tawny mane and fleck and foam as it thundered along--a mad,
molten mass of yellow struck into gold by the light of the sun. And
there the raft, no longer the awkward monster it was the day before,
floated like a lily-pad, straining at the cable as lightly as a
greyhound leaping against its leash.

The neighbors were gathered to watch the departure--old Jerry Budd,
blacksmith and "yarb doctor," and his folks; the Cultons and
Middletons, and even the Dillons--little Tad and Whizzer--and all. And
a bright picture of Arcadia the simple folk made, the men in homespun
and the women with their brilliant shawls, as they stood on the bank
laughing, calling to one another, and jesting like children. All were
aboard now and there was no kissing nor shaking hands in the farewell.
The good old mother stood on the bank, with Melissa holding to her
apron and looking at Chad gravely.

"Take good keer o' yo'self, Chad," she said kindly, and then she looked
down at the little girl. "He's a-comin' back, honey--Chad's a-comin'
back." And Chad nodded brightly, but Melissa drew her apron across her
mouth, dropped her eyes to the old rifle in the boy's lap, and did not
smile.

All were aboard now--Dolph and Rube, old Squire Middleton, and the
school-master, all except Tall Tom, who stood by the tree to unwind the
cable.

"Hold on!" shouted the Squire.

A raft shot suddenly around the bend above them and swept past with the
Dillon brothers Jake and Jerry, nephews of old Tad Dillon, at bow and
stern--passed with a sullen wave from Jerry and a good-natured smile
from stupid Jake.

"All right," Tom shouted, and he unwound the great brown pliant vine
from the sycamore and leaped aboard. Just then there was a mad howl
behind the house and a gray streak of light flashed over the bank and
Jack, with a wisp of rope around his neck, sprang through the air from
a rock ten feet high and landed lightly on the last log as the raft
shot forward. Chad gulped once and his heart leaped with joy, for he
had agreed to leave Jack with old Joel, and old Joel had tied the dog
in the barn.

"Hi!" shouted the old hunter. "Throw that dawg off, Chad--throw him
off."

But Chad shook his head and smiled.

"He won't go back," he shouted, and, indeed, there was Jack squatted on
his haunches close by his little master and looking gravely back as
though he were looking a last good-by.


"Hi there!" shouted old Joel again. "How am I goin to git along without
that dawg? Throw him off, Boy--throw him off, I tell ye!" Chad seized
the dog by the shoulders, but Jack braced himself and, like a child,
looked up in his master's face. Chad let go and shook his head.

A frantic yell from Tall Tom at the bow oar drew every eye to him. The
current was stronger than anyone guessed and the raft was being swept
by an eddy straight for the point of the opposite shore where there was
a sharp turn in the river.

"Watch out thar," shouted old Joel, "you're goin to 'bow'!" Dolph and
Rube were slashing the stern oar forward and back through the swift
water, but straight the huge craft made for that deadly point. Every
man had hold of an oar and was tussling in silence for life. Every man
on shore was yelling directions and warning, while the women shrank
back with frightened faces. Chad scarcely knew what the matter was, but
he gripped his rifle and squeezed Jack closer to him. He heard Tom roar
a last warning as the craft struck, quivered a moment, and the stern
swept around. The craft had "bowed."

"Watch out--jump, boys, jump! Watch when she humps! Watch yo' legs!"
These were the cries from the shore, and still Chad did not understand.
He saw Tom leap from the bow, and, as the stern swung to the other
shore, Dolph, too, leaped. Then the stern struck. The raft humped in
the middle like a bucking horse--the logs ground savagely together.
Chad heard a cry of pain from Jack and saw the dog fly up in the air
and drop in the water. He and his gun had gone up, too, but he came
back on the raft with one leg in between two logs and he drew it up in
time to keep the limb from being smashed to a pulp as the logs crashed
together again, but not quickly enough to save the foot from a painful
squeeze. Then he saw Tom and Dolph leap back again, the raft whirled on
and steadied in its course, and behind him he saw Jack swimming feebly
for the shore--fighting the waves for his life, for the dog was hurt.
Twice he turned his eyes despairingly toward Chad, and the boy would
have leaped in the water to save him if Tom had not caught him by the
arm.

"Tell him to git to shore," he said quickly, and Chad motioned, when
Jack looked again, and the dog obediently made for land. Old Joel was
calling tenderly:

"Come on, Jack; come on, ole feller!"

Chad watched with a thumping heart. Once Jack went under, but gave no
sound. Again he disappeared, and when he came up he gave a cry for
help, but when he heard Chad's answering cry he fought on stroke by
stroke until Chad saw old Joel reach out from the bushes and pull him
in. And Chad could see that one of his hind legs hung limp. Then the
raft swung around the curve out of sight.

Behind, the whole crowd rushed down to the water's edge. Jack tried to
get away from old Joel and scramble after Chad on his broken leg, but
old Joel held him, soothing him, and carried him back to the house,
where the old "yarb doctor" put splints on the leg and bound it up
tightly, just as though it had been the leg of a child. Melissa was
crying and the old man put his hand on her head.

"He'll be all right, honey. That leg'll be as good as the other one in
two or three weeks. It's all right, little gal."

Melissa stopped weeping with a sudden gulp. But when Jack was lying in
the kitchen by the fire alone, she slipped in and put her arm around
the dog's head, and, when Jack began to lick her face, she bent her own
head down and sobbed.



CHAPTER 5.

OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

On the way to God's Country at last! Already Chad had schooled himself
for the parting with Jack, and but for this he must--little man that he
was--have burst into tears. As it was, the lump in his throat stayed
there a long while, but it passed in the excitement of that mad race
down the river. The old Squire had never known such a tide.

"Boys," he said, gleefully, "we're goin' to make a REcord on this
trip--you jus' see if we don't. That is, if we ever git thar alive."

All the time the old man stood in the middle of the raft yelling
orders. Ahead was the Dillon raft, and the twin brothers--the giants,
one mild, the other sour-faced--were gesticulating angrily at each
other from bow and stern. As usual, they were quarrelling. On the
Turner raft, Dolph was at the bow, the school-master at the stern,
while Rube--who was cook--and Chad, in spite of a stinging pain in one
foot, built an oven of stones, where coffee could be boiled and bacon
broiled, and started a fire, for the air was chill on the river,
especially when they were running between the hills and no sun could
strike them.

When the fire blazed up, Chad sat by it watching Tall Tom and the
school-master at the stern oar and Rube at the bow. When the turn was
sharp, how they lashed the huge white blades through the yellow
water--with the handle across their broad chests, catching with their
toes in the little notches that had been chipped along the logs and
tossing the oars down and up with a mighty swing that made the blades
quiver and bend like the tops of pliant saplings! Then, on a run, they
would rush back to start the stroke again, while the old Squire yelled:

"Hit her up thar now--easy--easy! NOW! Hit her up! Hit her up--NOW!"

Now they passed between upright, wooded, gray mountain-sides, threaded
with faint lines of the coming green; now between gray walls of rock
streaked white with water-falls, and now past narrow little valleys
which were just beginning to sprout with corn. At the mouth of the
creeks they saw other rafts making ready and, now and then, a raft
would shoot out in the river from some creek ahead or behind them. In
an hour, they struck a smooth run of several hundred yards where the
men at the oars could sit still and rest, while the raft shot lightly
forward in the middle of the stream; and down the river they could see
the big Dillons making the next sharp turn and, even that far away,
they could hear Jerry yelling and swearing at his patient brother.

"Some o' these days," said the old Squire, "that fool Jake's a-goin' to
pick up somethin' an' knock that mean Jerry's head off. I wonder he
hain't done it afore. Hit's funny how brothers can hate when they do
git to hatin'."

That night, they tied up at Jackson--to be famous long after the war as
the seat of a bitter mountain-feud. At noon the next day, they struck
"the Nahrrers" (Narrows), where the river ran like a torrent between
high steep walls of rock, and where the men stood to the oars
watchfully and the old squire stood upright, watching every movement of
the raft; for "bowing" there would have meant destruction to the raft
and the death of them all. That night they were in Beattyville, whence
they floated next day, along lower hills and, now and then, past a
broad valley. Once Chad looked at the school-master--he wondered if
they were approaching the Bluegrass--but Caleb Hazel smiled and shook
his head. And had Chad waited another half hour, he would not have
asked the question, even with his eyes, for they swept between high
cliffs again--higher than he had yet seen.

That night they ran from dark to dawn, for the river was broader and a
brilliant moon was high; and, all night, Chad could hear the swish of
the oars, as they floated in mysterious silence past the trees and the
hills and the moonlit cliffs, and he lay on his back, looking up at the
moon and the stars, and thinking about the land to which he was going
and of Jack back in the land he had left; and of little Melissa. She
had behaved very strangely during the last few days before the boy had
left. She had not been sharp with him, even in play. She had been very
quiet--indeed, she scarcely spoke a word to him, but she did little
things for him that she had never done before, and she was unusually
kind to Jack. Once, Chad found her crying behind the barn, and then she
was very sharp with him, and told him to go away and cried more than
ever. Her little face looked very white, as she stood on the bank, and,
somehow, Chad saw it all that night in the river and among the trees
and up among the stars, but he little knew what it all meant to him or
to her. He thought of the Turners back at home, and he could see them
sitting around the big fire--Joel with his pipe, the old mother
spinning flax, Jack asleep on the hearth, and Melissa's big solemn eyes
shining from the dark corner where she lay wide-awake in bed and, when
he went to sleep, her eyes followed him in his dreams.

When he awoke, the day was just glimmering over the hills, and the
chill air made him shiver, as he built up the fire and began to get
breakfast ready. At noon, that day, though the cliffs were still high,
the raft swung out into a broader current, where the water ran smoothly
and, once, the hills parted and, looking past a log-cabin on the bank
of the river, Chad saw a stone house--relic of pioneer days--and,
farther out, through a gap in the hills, a huge house with great
pillars around it and, on the hill-side, many sheep and fat cattle and
a great barn. There dwelt one of the lords of the Bluegrass land, and
again Chad looked to the school-master and, this time, the
school-master smiled and nodded as though to say:

"We're getting close now, Chad." So Chad rose to his feet thrilled, and
watched the scene until the hills shut it off again. One more night and
one more dawn, and, before the sun rose, the hills had grown smaller
and smaller and the glimpses between them more frequent and, at last,
far down the river, Chad saw a column of smoke and all the men on the
raft took off their hats and shouted. The end of the trip was near, for
that black column meant the capital!

Chad trembled on his feet and his heart rose into his throat, while
Caleb Hazel seemed hardly less moved. His hat was off and he stood
motionless, with his face uplifted, and his grave eyes fastened on that
dark column as though it rose from the pillar of fire that was leading
him to some promised land.

As they rounded the next curve, some monster swept out of the low hills
on the right, with a shriek that startled the boy almost into terror
and, with a mighty puffing and rumbling, shot out of sight again. The
school-master shouted to Chad, and the Turner brothers grinned at him
delightedly:

"Steam-cars!" they cried, and Chad nodded back gravely, trying to hold
in his wonder.

Sweeping around the next curve, another monster hove in sight with the
same puffing and a long "h-o-o-ot!" A monster on the river and moving
up stream steadily, with no oar and no man in sight, and the Turners
and the school-master shouted again. Chad's eyes grew big with wonder
and he ran forward to see the rickety little steamboat approach and,
with wide eyes, devoured it, as it wheezed and labored up-stream past
them--watched the thundering stern-wheel threshing the water into a
wake of foam far behind it and flashing its blades, water-dripping in
the sun--watched it till it puffed and wheezed and labored on out of
sight. Great Heavens! to think that he--Chad--was seeing all that!

About the next bend, more but thinner columns of smoke were visible.
Soon the very hills over the capital could be seen, with little green
wheat-fields dotting them and, as the raft drew a little closer, Chad
could see houses on the hills--more strange houses of wood and stone,
and porches, and queer towers on them from which glistened shining
points.

"What's them?" he asked.

"Lightnin'-rods," said Tom, and Chad understood, for the school-master
had told him about them back in the mountains. Was there anything that
Caleb Hazel had not told him? The haze over the town was now visible,
and soon they swept past tall chimneys puffing out smoke, great
warehouses covered on the outside with weather-brown tin, and, straight
ahead--Heavens, what a bridge!--arching clear over the river and
covered like a house, from which people were looking down on them as
they swept under. There were the houses, in two rows on the streets,
jammed up against each other and without any yards. And people! Where
had so many people come from? Close to the river and beyond the bridge
was another great mansion, with tall pillars, about it was a green
yard, as smooth as a floor, and negroes and children were standing on
the outskirting stone wall and looking down at them as they floated by.
And another great house still, and a big garden with little paths
running through it and more patches of that strange green grass. Was
that bluegrass? It was, but it didn't look blue and it didn't look like
any other grass Chad had ever seen. Below this bridge was another
bridge, but not so high, and, while Chad looked, another black monster
on wheels went crashing over it.

Tom and the school-master were working the raft slowly to the shore
now, and, a little farther down, Chad could see more rafts tied
up--rafts, rafts, nothing but rafts on the river, everywhere! Up the
bank a mighty buzzing was going on, amid a cloud of dust, and little
cars with logs on them were shooting about amid the gleamings of many
saws, and, now and then, a log would leap from the river and start up
toward that dust-cloud with two glistening iron teeth sunk in one end
and a long iron chain stretching up along a groove built of boards--and
Heaven only knew what was pulling it up. On the bank was a stout,
jolly-looking man, whose red, kind face looked familiar to Chad, as he
ran down shouting a welcome to the Squire. Then the raft slipped along
another raft, Tom sprang aboard it with the grape-vine cable, and the
school-master leaped aboard with another cable from the stern.

"Why, boy," cried the stout man. "Where's yo' dog?" Then Chad
recognized him, for he was none other than the cattle-dealer who had
given him Jack.

"I left him at home."

"Is he all right?"

"Yes--I reckon."

"Then I'd like to have him back again."

Chad smiled and shook his head.

"Not much."

"Well, he's the best sheep-dog on earth."

The raft slowed up, creaking--slower--straining and creaking, and
stopped. The trip was over, and the Squire had made his "record," for
the red-faced man whistled incredulously when the old man told him what
day he had left Kingdom Come.

An hour later the big Dillon twins hove in sight, just as the Turner
party was climbing the sawdust hill into the town, where Dolph and Rube
were for taking the middle of the street like other mountaineers, who
were marching thus ahead of them, single file, but Tom and the
school-master laughed at them and drew them over to the sidewalk.
Bricks and stones laid down for people to walk on--how wonderful. And
all the houses were of brick or were weather-boarded--all built
together wall against wall. And the stores with the big glass windows
all filled with wonderful things! Then a pair of swinging green
shutters through which, while Chad and the school-master waited
outside, Tom insisted on taking Dolph and Rube and giving them their
first drink of Bluegrass whiskey--red liquor, as the hill-men call it.
A little farther on, they all stopped still on a corner of the street,
while the school-master pointed out to Chad and Dolph and Rube the
Capitol--a mighty structure of massive stone, with majestic stone
columns, where people went to the Legislature. How they looked with
wondering eyes at the great flag floating lazily over it, and at the
wonderful fountain tossing water in the air, and with the water three
white balls which leaped and danced in the jet of shining spray and
never flew away from it. How did they stay there? The school-master
laughed--Chad had asked him a question at last that he couldn't answer.
And the tall spiked iron fence that ran all the way around the yard,
which was full of trees--how wonderful that was, too! As they stood
looking, law-makers and visitors poured out through the doors--a brave
array--some of them in tight trousers, high hats, and blue coats with
brass buttons, and, as they passed, Caleb Hazel reverently whispered
the names of those he knew--distinguished lawyers, statesmen, and
Mexican veterans: witty Tom Marshall; Roger Hanson, bulky, brilliant;
stately Preston, eagle-eyed Buckner, and Breckenridge, the magnificent,
forensic in bearing. Chad was thrilled.

A little farther on, they turned to the left, and the school-master
pointed out the Governor's mansion, and there, close by, was a high
gray wall--a wall as high as a house, with a wooden box taller than a
man on each corner, and, inside, another big gray building in which,
visible above the walls, were grated windows--the penitentiary! Every
mountaineer has heard that word, and another--the Legislator.

Chad shivered as he looked, for he could recall that sometimes down in
the mountains a man would disappear for years and turn up again at
home, whitened by confinement; and, during his absence, when anyone
asked about him, the answer was penitentiary. He wondered what those
boxes on the walls were for, and he was about to ask, when a guard
stepped from one of them with a musket and started to patrol the wall,
and he had no need to ask. Tom wanted to go up on the hill and look at
the Armory and the graveyard, but the school-master said they did not
have time, and, on the moment, the air was startled with whistles far
and near--six o'clock! At once Caleb Hazel led the way to supper in the
boarding-house, where a kind-faced old lady spoke to Chad in a motherly
way, and where the boy saw his first hot biscuit and was almost afraid
to eat anything at the table for fear he might do something wrong. For
the first time in his life, too, he slept on a mattress without any
feather-bed, and Chad lay wondering, but unsatisfied still. Not yet had
he been out of sight of the hills, but the master had told him that
they would see the Bluegrass next day, when they were to start back to
the mountains by train as far as Lexington. And Chad went to sleep,
dreaming his old dream.



CHAPTER 6

LOST AT THE CAPITAL

It had been arranged by the school-master that they should all meet at
the railway station to go home, next day at noon, and, as the Turner
boys had to help the Squire with the logs at the river, and the
school-master had to attend to some business of his own, Chad roamed
all morning around the town. So engrossed was he with the people and
the sights and sounds of the little village that he came to himself
with a start and trotted back to the boarding-house for fear that he
might not be able to find the station alone. The old lady was standing
in the sunshine at the gate.

Chad panted--"Where's--?"

"They're gone."

"Gone!" echoed Chad, with a sinking heart.

"Yes, they've been gone--" But Chad did not wait to listen; he whirled
into the hall-way, caught up his rifle, and, forgetting his injured
foot, fled at full speed down the street. He turned the corner, but
could not see the station, and he ran on about another corner and still
another, and, just when he was about to burst into tears, he saw the
low roof that he was looking for, and hot, panting, and tired, he
rushed to it, hardly able to speak.

"Has that enJINE gone?" he asked breathlessly. The man who was whirling
trunks on their corners into the baggage-room did not answer. Chad's
eyes flashed and he caught the man by the coat-tail.

"Has that enJINE gone?" he cried.

The man looked over his shoulder.

"Leggo my coat, you little devil. Yes, that enJINE'S gone," he added,
mimicking. Then he saw the boy's unhappy face and he dropped the trunk
and turned to him.

"What's the matter?" he asked, kindly.

Chad had turned away with a sob.

"They've lef' me--they've lef' me," he said, and then, controlling
himself:

"Is thar another goin'?"

"Not till to-morrow mornin'."

Another sob came, and Chad turned away--he did not want anybody to see
him cry. And this was no time for crying, for Chad's prayer back at the
grave under the poplar flashed suddenly back to him.

"I got to ack like a man now." And, sobered at once, he walked on up
the hill--thinking. He could not know that the school-master was back
in the town, looking for him. If he waited until the next morning, the
Turners would probably have gone on; whereas, if he started out now on
foot, and walked all night, he might catch them before they left
Lexington next morning. And if he missed the Squire and the Turner
boys, he could certainly find the school-master there. And if not, he
could go on to the mountains alone. Or he might stay in the
"settlemints"--what had he come for? He might--he would--oh, he'd get
along somehow, he said to himself, wagging his head--he always had and
he always would. He could always go back to the mountains. If he only
had Jack--if he only had Jack! Nothing would make any difference then,
and he would never be lonely, if he only had Jack. But, cheered with
his determination, he rubbed the tears from his eyes with his
coat-sleeve and climbed the long hill. There was the Armory, which,
years later, was to harbor Union troops in the great war, and beyond it
was the little city of the dead that sits on top of the hill far above
the shining river. At the great iron gates he stopped a moment, peering
through. He saw a wilderness of white slabs and, not until he made his
way across the thick green turf and spelled out the names carved on
them, could he make out what they were for. How he wondered when he saw
the innumerable green mounds, for he hardly knew there were as many
people in the world living as he saw there must be in that place, dead.
But he had no time to spare and he turned quickly back to the
pike--saddened--for his heart went back, as his faithful heart was
always doing, to the lonely graves under the big poplar back in the
mountains.

When he reached the top of the slope, he saw a rolling country of low
hills stretching out before him, greening with spring; with far
stretches of thick grass and many woodlands under a long, low sky, and
he wondered if this was the Bluegrass. But he "reckoned" not--not yet.
And yet he looked in wonder at the green slopes, and the woods, and the
flashing creek, and nowhere in front of him--wonder of all--could he
see a mountain. It was as Caleb Hazel had told him, only Chad was not
looking for any such mysterious joy as thrilled his sensitive soul.
There had been a light sprinkle of snow--such a fall as may come even
in early April--but the noon sun had let the wheat-fields and the
pastures blossom through it, and had swept it from the gray moist pike
until now there were patches of white only in gully and along north
hill-sides under little groups of pines and in the woods, where the
sunlight could not reach; and Chad trudged sturdily on in spite of his
heavy rifle and his lame foot, keenly alive to the new sights and
sounds and smells of the new world--on until the shadows lengthened and
the air chilled again; on, until the sun began to sink close to the
far-away haze of the horizon. Never had the horizon looked so far away.
His foot began to hurt, and on the top of a hill he had to stop and sit
down for a while in the road, the pain was so keen. The sun was setting
now in a glory of gold, rose, pink, and crimson over him, the still
clouds caught the divine light which swept swiftly through the heavens
until the little pink clouds over the east, too, turned golden pink and
the whole heavens were suffused with green and gold. In the west, cloud
was piled on cloud like vast cathedrals that must have been built for
worship on the way straight to the very throne of God. And Chad sat
thrilled, as he had been at the sunrise on the mountains the morning
after he ran away. There was no storm, but the same loneliness came to
him now and he wondered what he should do. He could not get much
farther that night--his foot hurt too badly. He looked up--the clouds
had turned to ashes and the air was growing chill--and he got to his
feet and started on. At the bottom of the hill and down a little creek
he saw a light and he turned toward it. The house was small, and he
could hear the crying of a child inside and could see a tall man
cutting wood, so he stopped at the bars and shouted

"Hello!"

The man stopped his axe in mid-air and turned. A woman, with a baby in
her arms, appeared in the light of the door with children crowding
about her.

"Hello!" answered the man.

"I want to git to stay all night." The man hesitated.

"We don't keep people all night."

"Not keep people all night," thought Chad with wonder.

"Oh, I reckon you will," he said. Was there anybody in the world who
wouldn't take in a stranger for the night? From the doorway the woman
saw that it was a boy who was asking shelter and the trust in his voice
appealed vaguely to her.

"Come in!" she called, in a patient, whining tone. "You can stay, I
reckon."

But Chad changed his mind suddenly. If they were in doubt about wanting
him--he was in no doubt as to what he would do.

"No, I reckon I'd better git on," he said sturdily, and he turned and
limped back up the hill to the road--still wondering, and he remembered
that, in the mountains, when people wanted to stay all night, they
usually stopped before sundown. Travelling after dark was suspicious in
the mountains, and perhaps it was in this land, too. So, with this
thought, he had half a mind to go back and explain, but he pushed on.
Half a mile farther, his foot was so bad that he stopped with a cry of
pain in the road and, seeing a barn close by, he climbed the fence and
into the loft and burrowed himself under the hay. From under the shed
he could see the stars rising. It was very still and very lonely and he
was hungry--hungrier and lonelier than he had ever been in his life,
and a sob of helplessness rose to his lips--if he only had Jack--but he
held it back.

"I got to ack like a man now." And, saying this over and over to
himself, he went to sleep.



CHAPTER 7.

A FRIEND ON THE ROAD

Rain fell that night--gentle rain and warm, for the south wind rose at
midnight. At four o clock a shower made the shingles over Chad rattle
sharply, but without wakening the lad, and then the rain ceased; and
when Chad climbed stiffly from his loft--the world was drenched and
still, and the dawn was warm, for spring had come that morning, and
Chad trudged along the road--unchilled. Every now and then he had to
stop to rest his foot. Now and then he would see people getting
breakfast ready in the farm-houses that he passed, and, though his
little belly was drawn with pain, he would not stop and ask for
something to eat--for he did not want to risk another rebuff. The sun
rose and the light leaped from every wet blade of grass and bursting
leaf to meet it--leaped as though flashing back gladness that the
spring was come. For a little while Chad forgot his hunger and forgot
his foot--like the leaf and grass-blade his stout heart answered with
gladness, too, and he trudged on.

Meanwhile, far behind him, an old carriage rolled out of a big yard and
started toward him and toward Lexington. In the driver's seat was an
old gray-haired, gray-bearded negro with knotty hands and a kindly
face; while, on the oval shaped seat behind the lumbering old vehicle,
sat a little darky with his bare legs dangling down. In the carriage
sat a man who might have been a stout squire straight from merry
England, except that there was a little tilt to the brim of his slouch
hat that one never sees except on the head of a Southerner, and in his
strong, but easy, good-natured mouth was a pipe of corn-cob with a long
cane stem. The horses that drew him were a handsome pair of half
thoroughbreds, and the old driver, with his eyes half closed, looked as
though, even that early in the morning, he were dozing. An hour later,
the pike ran through an old wooden-covered bridge, to one side of which
a road led down to the water, and the old negro turned the carriage to
the creek to let his horses drink. The carriage stood still in the
middle of the stream and presently the old driver turned his head:
"Mars Cal!" he called in a low voice. The Major raised his head. The
old negro was pointing with his whip ahead and the Major saw something
sitting on the stone fence, some twenty yards beyond, which stirred him
sharply from his mood of contemplation.

"Shades of Dan'l Boone!" he said, softly. It was a miniature
pioneer--the little still figure watching him solemnly and silently.
Across the boy's lap lay a long rifle--the Major could see that it had
a flintlock--and on his tangled hair was a coonskin cap--the scalp
above his steady dark eyes and the tail hanging down the lad's neck.
And on his feet were--moccasins! The carriage moved out of the stream
and the old driver got down to hook the check-reins over the shining
bit of metal that curved back over the little saddles to which the
boy's eyes had swiftly strayed. Then they came back to the Major.

"Howdye!" said Chad.

"Good-mornin', little man," said the Major pleasantly, and Chad knew
straightway that he had found a friend. But there was silence. Chad
scanned the horses and the strange vehicle and the old driver and the
little pickaninny who, hearing the boy's voice, had stood up on his
seat and was grinning over one of the hind wheels, and then his eyes
rested on the Major with a simple confidence and unconscious appeal
that touched the Major at once.

"Are you goin' my way?" The Major's nature was too mellow and
easy-going to pay any attention to final g's. Chad lifted his old gun
and pointed up the road.

"I'm a-goin' thataway."

"Well, don't you want to ride?"

"Yes," he said, simply.

"Climb right in, my boy."

So Chad climbed in, and, holding the old rifle upright between his
knees, he looked straight forward, in silence, while the Major studied
him with a quiet smile.

"Where are you from, little man?"

"I come from the mountains."

"The mountains?" said the Major.

The Major had fished and hunted in the mountains, and somewhere in that
unknown region he owned a kingdom of wild mountain-land, but he knew as
little about the people as he knew about the Hottentots, and cared
hardly more.

"What are you doin' up here?"

"I'm goin' home," said Chad.

"How did you happen to come away?"

"Oh, I been wantin' to see the settleMINTS."

"The settleMINTS," echoed the Major, and then he understood. He
recalled having heard the mountaineers call the Bluegrass region the
"settlemints" before.

"I come down on a raft with Dolph and Tom and Rube and the Squire and
the school-teacher, an' I got lost in Frankfort. They've gone on, I
reckon, an' I'm tryin' to ketch 'em."

"What will you do if you don't?"

"Foller'em," said Chad, sturdily.

"Does your father live down in the mountains?"

"No," said Chad, shortly.

The Major looked at the lad gravely.

"Don't little boys down in the mountains ever say sir to their elders?"

"No," said Chad. "No, sir," he added gravely and the Major broke into a
pleased laugh--the boy was quick as lightning.

"I ain't got no daddy. An' no mammy--I ain't got--nothin'." It was said
quite simply, as though his purpose merely was not to sail under false
colors, and the Major's answer was quick and apologetic:

"Oh!" he said, and for a moment there was silence again. Chad watched
the woods, the fields, and the cattle, the strange grain growing about
him, and the birds and the trees. Not a thing escaped his keen eye,
and, now and then, he would ask a question which the Major would answer
with some surprise and wonder. His artless ways pleased the old fellow.

"You haven't told me your name."

"You hain't axed me."

"Well, I axe you now," laughed the Major, but Chad saw nothing to laugh
at.

"Chad," he said.

"Chad what?"

Now it had always been enough in the mountains, when anybody asked his
name, for him to answer simply--Chad. He hesitated now and his brow
wrinkled as though he were thinking hard.

"I don't know," said Chad.

"What? Don't know your own name?" The boy looked up into the Major's
face with eyes that were so frank and unashamed and at the same time so
vaguely troubled that the Major was abashed.

"Of course not," he said kindly, as though it were the most natural
thing in the world that a boy should not know his own name. Presently
the Major said, reflectively:

"Chadwick."

"Chad," corrected the boy.

"Yes, I know"; and the Major went on thinking that Chadwick happened to
be an ancestral name in his own family.

Chad's brow was still wrinkled--he was trying to think what old Nathan
Cherry used to call him.

"I reckon I hain't thought o' my name since I left old Nathan," he
said. Then he told briefly about the old man, and lifting his lame foot
suddenly, he said: "Ouch!" The Major looked around and Chad explained:

"I hurt my foot comin' down the river an' hit got wuss walkin' so
much." The Major noticed then that the boy's face was pale, and that
there were dark hollows under his eyes, but it never occurred to him
that the lad was hungry, for, in the Major's land, nobody ever went
hungry for long. But Chad was suffering now and he leaned back in his
seat and neither talked nor looked at the passing fields. By and by, he
spied a crossroads store.

"I wonder if I can't git somethin' to eat in that store."

The Major laughed: "You ain't gettin' hungry so soon, are you? You must
have eaten breakfast pretty early."

"I ain't had no breakfast--an' I didn't hev no supper last night."

"What?" shouted the Major.

Chad stated the fact with brave unconcern, but his lip quivered
slightly--he was weak.

"Well, I reckon we'll get something to eat there whether they've got
anything or not."

And then Chad explained, telling the story of his walk from Frankfort.
The Major was amazed that anybody could have denied the boy food and
lodging.

"Who were they, Tom?" he asked

The old driver turned:

"They was some po' white trash down on Cane Creek, I reckon, suh.
Must'a' been." There was a slight contempt in the negro's words that
made Chad think of hearing the Turners call the Dillons white
trash--though they never said "po' white trash."

"Oh!" said the Major. So the carriage stopped, and when a man in a
black slouch hat came out, the Major called:

"Jim, here's a boy who ain't had anything to eat for twenty-four hours.
Get him a cup of coffee right away, and I reckon you've got some cold
ham handy."

"Yes, indeed, Major," said Jim, and he yelled to a negro girl who was
standing on the porch of his house behind the store.

Chad ate ravenously and the Major watched him with genuine pleasure.
When the boy was through, he reached in his pocket and brought out his
old five-dollar bill, and the Major laughed aloud and patted him on the
head.

"You can't pay for anything while you are with me, Chad."

The whole earth wore a smile when they started out again. The swelling
hills had stretched out into gentler slopes. The sun was warm, the
clouds were still, and the air was almost drowsy. The Major's eyes
closed and everything lapsed into silence. That was a wonderful ride
for Chad. It was all true, just as the school-master had told him; the
big, beautiful houses he saw now and then up avenues of blossoming
locusts; the endless stone fences, the whitewashed barns, the woodlands
and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing
everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black
bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it
balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised. Everything
seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass
stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in
rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands--and never a
mountain in sight. What a strange country it was.

"Maybe some of your friends are looking for you in Frankfort," said the
Major.

"No, sir, I reckon not," said Chad--for the man at the station had told
him that the men who had asked about him were gone.

"All of them?" asked the Major.

Of course, the man at the station could not tell whether all of them
had gone, and perhaps the school-master had stayed behind--it was Caleb
Hazel if anybody.

"Well, now, I wonder," said Chad--"the school-teacher might'a' stayed."

Again the two lapsed into silence--Chad thinking very hard. He might
yet catch the school-master in Lexington, and he grew very cheerful at
the thought.

"You ain't told me yo' name," he said, presently. The Major's lips
smiled under the brim of his hat.

"You hain't axed me."

"Well, I axe you now." Chad, too, was smiling.

"Cal," said the Major. "Cal what?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, yes, you do, now--you foolin' me"--the boy lifted one finger at
the Major.

"Buford, Calvin Buford."

"Buford--Buford--Buford," repeated the boy, each time with his forehead
wrinkled as though he were trying to recall something.

"What is it, Chad?"

"Nothin'--nothin'."

And then he looked up with bewildered face at the Major and broke into
the quavering voice of an old man.

"Chad Buford, you little devil, come hyeh this minute or I'll beat the
life outen you!"

"What--what!" said the Major excitedly. The boy's face was as honest as
the sky above him. "Well, that's funny--very funny."

"Well, that's it," said Chad, "that's what ole Nathan used to call me.
I reckon I hain't naver thought o' my name agin tell you axed me." The
Major looked at the lad keenly and then dropped back in his seat
ruminating.

Away back in 1778 a linchpin had slipped in a wagon on the Wilderness
Road and his grandfather's only brother, Chadwick Buford, had concluded
to stop there for a while and hunt and come on later--thus ran an old
letter that the Major had in his strong box at home--and that brother
had never turned up again and the supposition was that he had been
killed by Indians. Now it would be strange if he had wandered up in the
mountains and settled there and if this boy were a descendant of his.
It would be very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at
the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The
boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame,
that he was a waif--a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And
so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that
it was a peculiar coincidence--again saying, half to himself--

"It certainly is very odd!"



CHAPTER 8.

HOME WITH THE MAJOR

Ahead of them, it was Court Day in Lexington. From the town, as a
centre, white turnpikes radiated in every direction like the strands of
a spider's web. Along them, on the day before, cattle, sheep, and hogs
had made their slow way. Since dawn, that morning, the fine dust had
been rising under hoof and wheel on every one of them, for Court Day is
yet the great day of every month throughout the Bluegrass. The crowd
had gone ahead of the Major and Chad. Only now and then would a laggard
buggy or carriage turn into the pike from a pasture-road or
locust-bordered avenue. Only men were occupants, for the ladies rarely
go to town on court days--and probably none would go on that day.
Trouble was expected. An abolitionist, one Brutus Dean--not from the
North, but a Kentuckian, a slave-holder and a gentleman--would probably
start a paper in Lexington to exploit his views in the heart of the
Bluegrass; and his quondam friends would shatter his press and tear his
office to pieces. So the Major told Chad, and he pointed out some
"hands" at work in a field.

"An', mark my words, some day there's goin' to be the damnedest fight
the world ever saw over these very niggers. An' the day ain't so far
away."

It was noon before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of
Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave
of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be
reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about
him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches aloud by
the hour--had heard him intoning them to himself as he walked the woods
to and fro from school. Would wonders never cease.

There seemed to be no end to the houses and streets and people in this
big town, and Chad wondered why everybody turned to look at him and
smiled, and, later in the day, he came near getting into a fight with
another boy who seemed to be making fun of him to his companions. He
wondered at that, too, until it suddenly struck him that he saw nobody
else carrying a rifle and wearing a coonskin cap--perhaps it was his
cap and his gun. The Major was amused and pleased, and he took a
certain pride in the boy's calm indifference to the attention he was
drawing to himself. And he enjoyed the little mystery which he and his
queer little companion seemed to create as they drove through the
streets.

On one corner was a great hemp factory.

Through the windows Chad could see negroes, dusty as millers, bustling
about, singing as they worked. Before the door were two men--one on
horseback. The Major drew up a moment.

"How are you, John? Howdye, Dick?" Both men answered heartily, and both
looked at Chad--who looked intently at them--the graceful, powerful man
on foot and the slender, wiry man with wonderful dark eyes on horseback.

"Pioneering, Major?" asked John Morgan.

"This is a namesake of mine from the mountains. He's come up to see the
settlements."

Richard Hunt turned on his horse. "How do you like 'em?"

"Never seed nothin' like 'em in my life," said Chad, gravely. Morgan
laughed and Richard Hunt rode on with them down the street.

"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.

"Yes," said the Major. "Have you heard of him before?"

"Yes, sir. A feller on the road tol' me, if I was lookin' fer somethin'
to do hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan."

The Major laughed: "That's what everybody does."

At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty
meal; and while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the
streets.

"Don't get into trouble, my boy," said the Major, "an' come back here
an hour or two by sun."

Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest--to Cheapside.
Cheapside--at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from
pioneer days to the present hour--the platform that knew Clay,
Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of
to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the
Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang.

Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses,
farmers, aristocrats, negroes, poor whites. The air was a babel of
cries from auctioneers--head, shoulders, and waistband above the
crowd--and the cries of animals that were changing owners that day--one
of which might now and then be a human being. The Major was busy, and
Chad wandered where he pleased--keeping a sharp lookout everywhere for
the school-master, but though he asked right and left he could find
nobody, to his great wonder, who knew even the master's name. In the
middle of the afternoon the country people began to leave town and
Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a
crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and
in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in
plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out
one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable
moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys,
stable-boys, gentlemen--all eager spectators or bidders. Chad edged his
way through the outer rim of the crowd and to the edge of the sidewalk,
and, when a spectator stepped down from a dry-goods box from which he
had been looking on, Chad stepped up and took his place. Straightway,
he began to wish he could buy a horse and ride back to the mountains.
What fun that would be, and how he would astonish the folks on Kingdom
Come. He had his five dollars still in his pocket, and when the first
horse was brought out, the auctioneer raised his hammer and shouted in
loud tones:

"How much am I offered for this horse?"

There was no answer, and the silence lasted so long that before he knew
it Chad called out in a voice that frightened him:

"Five dollars!" Nobody heard the bid, and nobody paid any attention to
him.

"One hundred dollars," said a voice.

"One hundred and twenty-five," said another, and the horse was knocked
down for two hundred dollars.

A black stallion with curving neck and red nostrils and two white feet
walked proudly in.

"How much am I offered?"

"Five dollars," said Chad, promptly. A man who sat near heard the boy
and turned to look at the little fellow, and was hardly able to believe
his ears. And so it went on. Each time a horse was put up Chad shouted
out:

"Five dollars," and the crowd around him began to smile and laugh and
encourage him and wait for his bid. The auctioneer, too, saw him, and
entered into the fun himself, addressing himself to Chad at every
opening bid.

"Keep it up, little man," said a voice behind him. "You'll get one by
and by." Chad looked around. Richard Hunt was smiling to him from his
horse on the edge of the crowd.

The last horse was a brown mare--led in by a halter. She was old and a
trifle lame, and Chad, still undispirited, called out this time louder
than ever:

"Five dollars!"

He shouted out this time loudly enough to be heard by everybody, and a
universal laugh rose; then came silence, and, in that silence, an
imperious voice shouted back:

"Let him have her!" It was the owner of the horse who spoke--a tall man
with a noble face and long iron-gray hair. The crowd caught his mood,
and as nobody wanted the old mare very much, and the owner would be the
sole loser, nobody bid against him, and Chad's heart thumped when the
auctioneer raised his hammer and said:

"Five dollars, five dollars--what am I offered? Five dollars, five
dollars, going at five dollars, five dollars--going at five
dollars--going--going, last bid, gentlemen!" The hammer came down with
a blow that made Chad's heart jump and brought a roar of laughter from
the crowd.

"What is the name, please?" said the auctioneer, bending forward with
great respect and dignity toward the diminutive purchaser.

"Chad."

The auctioneer put his hand to one ear.

"I beg your pardon--Dan'l Boone did you say?"

"No!" shouted Chad indignantly--he began to feel that fun was going on
at his expense. "You heerd me--CHAD."

"Ah, Mr. Chad."

Not a soul knew the boy, but they liked his spirit, and several
followed him when he went up and handed his five dollars and took the
halter of his new treasure trembling so that he could scarcely stand.
The owner of the horse placed his hand on the little fellow's head.

"Wait a minute," he said, and, turning to a negro boy: "Jim, go bring a
bridle." The boy brought out a bridle, and the tall man slipped it on
the old mare's head, and Chad led her away--the crowd watching him.
Just outside he saw the Major, whose eyes opened wide:

"Where'd you get that old horse, Chad?"

"Bought her," said Chad.

"What? What'd you give for her?"

"Five dollars."

The Major looked pained, for he thought the boy was lying, but Richard
Hunt called him aside and told the story of the purchase; and then how
the Major did laugh--laughed until the tears rolled down his face.

And then and there he got out of his carriage and went into a saddler's
shop and bought a brand new saddle with a red blanket, and put it on
the old mare and hoisted the boy to his seat. Chad was to have no
little honor in his day, but he never knew a prouder moment than when
he clutched the reins in his left hand and squeezed his short legs
against the fat sides of that old brown mare.

He rode down the street and back again, and then the Major told him he
had better put the black boy on the mare, to ride her home ahead of
him, and Chad reluctantly got off and saw the little darky on his new
saddle and his new horse.

"Take good keer o' that hoss, boy," he said, with a warning shake of
his head, and again the Major roared.

First, the Major said, he would go by the old University and leave word
with the faculty for the school-master when he should come there to
matriculate; and so, at a turnstile that led into a mighty green yard
in the middle of which stood a huge gray mass of stone, the carriage
stopped, and the Major got out and walked through the campus and up the
great flight of stone steps and disappeared. The mighty columns, the
stone steps--where had Chad heard of them? And then the truth flashed.
This was the college of which the school-master had told him down in
the mountains, and, looking, Chad wanted to get closer.

"I wonder if it'll make any difference if I go up thar?" he said to the
old driver.

"No," the old man hesitated--"no, suh, co'se not." And Chad climbed out
and the old negro followed him with his eyes. He did not wholly approve
of his master's picking up an unknown boy on the road. It was all right
to let him ride, but to be taking him home--old Tom shook his head.

"Jess wait till Miss Lucy sees that piece o' white trash," he said,
shaking his head. Chad was walking slowly with his eyes raised. It must
be the college where the school-master had gone to school--for the
building was as big as the cliff that he had pointed out down in the
mountains, and the porch was as big as the black rock that he pointed
out at the same time--the college where Caleb Hazel said Chad, too,
must go some day. The Major was coming out when the boy reached the
foot of the steps, and with him was a tall, gray man with spectacles
and a white tie and very white nails, and the Major said:

"There he is now, Professor." And the Professor looked at Chad
curiously, and smiled and smiled again kindly when he saw the boy's
grave, unsmiling eyes fastened on him.

Then, out of the town and through the late radiant afternoon they went
until the sun sank and the carriage stopped before a gate. While the
pickaninny was opening it, another carriage went swiftly behind them,
and the Major called out cleanly to the occupants--a quiet, sombre,
dignified-looking man and two handsome boys and a little girl. "They're
my neighbors, Chad," said the Major.

Not a sound did the wheels make on the thick turf as they drove toward
the old-fashioned brick house (it had no pillars), with its windows
shining through the firs and cedars that filled the yard. The Major put
his hand on the boy's shoulder:

"Well, here we are, little man."

At the yard gate there was a great barking of dogs, and a great shout
of welcome from the negroes who came forward to take the horses. To
each of them the Major gave a little package, which each darky took
with shining teeth and a laugh of delight--all looking with wonder at
the curious little stranger with his rifle and coonskin cap, until a
scowl from the Major checked the smile that started on each black face.
Then the Major led Chad up a flight of steps and into a big hall and on
into a big drawing-room, where there was a huge fireplace and a great
fire that gave Chad a pang of homesickness at once. Chad was not
accustomed to taking off his hat when he entered a house in the
mountains, but he saw the Major take off his, and he dropped his own
cap quickly. The Major sank into a chair.

"Here we are, little man," he said, kindly.

Chad sat down and looked at the books, and the portraits and prints,
and the big mirrors and the carpets on the floor, none of which he had
ever seen before, and he wondered at it all and what it all might mean.
A few minutes later, a tall lady in black, with a curl down each side
of her pale face, came in. Like old Tom, the driver, the Major, too,
had been wondering what his sister, Miss Lucy, would think of his
bringing so strange a waif home, and now, with sudden humor, he saw
himself fortified.

"Sister," he said, solemnly, "here's a little kinsman of yours. He's a
great-great-grandson of your great-great-uncle--Chadwick Buford. That's
his name. What kin does that make us?"

"Hush, brother," said Miss Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with
embarrassment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in
with a glance his coarse strange clothes and his soiled hands and face
and his tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark
eyes. She was really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and
she did not show much interest when the Major went on to tell where he
had found the lad--for she would have thought it quite possible that he
might have taken the boy out of a circus. As for Chad, he was in awe of
her at once--which the Major noticed with an inward chuckle, for the
boy had shown no awe of him. Chad could hardly eat for shyness at
supper and because everything was so strange and beautiful, and he
scarcely opened his lips when they sat around the great fire, until
Miss Lucy was gone to bed. Then he told the Major all about himself and
old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he hoped to
come back to the Bluegrass, and go to that big college himself, and he
amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the titles
of two of Scott's novels, "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," and told how
the school-master had read them to him. And the Major, who had a
passion for Sir Walter, tested Chad's knowledge, and he could mention
hardly a character or a scene in the two books that did not draw an
excited response from the boy.

"Wouldn't you like to stay here in the Bluegrass now and go to school?"

Chad's eyes lighted up.

"I reckon I would; but how am I goin' to school, now, I'd like to know?
I ain't got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have
to pay to go to school, up here."

"Well, we'll see about that," said the Major, and Chad wondered what he
meant. Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured
out a drink of whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped:

"Will you join me?" he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the
Major to omit that formula even with a boy.

"I don't keer if I do," said Chad, gravely. The Major was astounded and
amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him
the bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and
drank it down without winking. At the fire, the Major pulled out his
chewing tobacco. This, too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the
Major in the accuracy with which he reached the fireplace thereafter
with the juice, carrying off his accomplishment, too, with perfect and
unconscious gravity. The Major was nigh to splitting with silent
laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.

"Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?"

"Yes, sir," said Chad. "Everybody makes his own licker where I come
from."

"Don't you know it's very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"

"No, sir."

"Did nobody ever tell you it was very bad for little boys to drink and
chew?"

"No, sir"--not once had Chad forgotten that.

"Well, it is."

Chad thought for a minute. "Will it keep me from gittin' to be a BIG
man?"

"Yes."

Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.

"Well, I be damned," said the Major under his breath. "Are you goin' to
quit?"

"Yes, sir."

Meanwhile, the old driver, whose wife lived on the next farm, was
telling the servants over there about the queer little stranger whom
his master had picked up on the road that day, and after Chad was gone
to bed, the Major got out some old letters from a chest and read them
over again. Chadwick Buford was his great-grandfather's twin brother,
and not a word had been heard of him since the two had parted that
morning on the old Wilderness Road, away back in the earliest pioneer
days. So, the Major thought and thought suppose--suppose? And at last
he got up and with an uplifted candle, looked a long while at the
portrait of his grandfather that hung on the southern wall. Then, with
a sudden humor, he carried the light to the room where the boy was in
sound sleep, with his head on one sturdy arm, his hair loose on the
pillow, and his lips slightly parted and showing his white, even teeth;
he looked at the boy a long time and fancied he could see some
resemblance to the portrait in the set of the mouth and the nose and
the brow, and he went back smiling at his fancies and thinking--for the
Major was sensitive to the claim of any drop of the blood in his own
veins--no matter how diluted. He was a handsome little chap.

"How strange! How strange!"

And he smiled when he thought of the boy's last question.

"Where's YO' mammy?"

It had stirred the Major.

"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I've got no mammy--no nothin',
except Miss Lucy, and she don't live here. I'm afraid she won't be on
this earth long. Nobody lives here but me, Chad."



CHAPTER 9.

MARGARET

The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a
neighbor; so Chad was left alone.

"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go
anywhere you please."

And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the
Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against
the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the
quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the
fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome
Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and
protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that
face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by
Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go
once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran,
so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came
back, and said

"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"

He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could
scarcely realize that it was really he--Chad--Chad sitting up at the
table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little
negro girl--called Thanky-ma'am because she was born on Thanksgiving
day--and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him
now--and the school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be
sorry that he hadn't gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major
would see him--but how would the Major know the school-master? He was
sorry he hadn't gone. After dinner he started out-doors again. Earth
and sky were radiant with light. Great white tumbling clouds were piled
high all around the horizon--and what a long length of sky it was in
every direction down in the mountains, he had to look straight up,
sometimes, to see the sky at all. Blackbirds chattered in the cedars as
he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing
meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been
a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard
stretching his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a
little stream with banks that were green to the very water's edge, and
Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a
sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle
were grazing, and on, past a little hill, where, on the next low slope,
sat a great white house with big white pillars, and Chad climbed on top
of the stone fence--and sat, looking. On the portico stood a tall man
in a slouch hat and a lady in black. At the foot of the steps a boy--a
head taller than Chad perhaps--was rigging up a fishing-pole. A negro
boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day,
Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next moment, a
little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then
ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at
his feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop,
the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls
shake in the sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and
then, with a white plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off
and disappeared among the trees; and Chad sat looking after
her--thrilled, mysteriously thrilled--mysteriously saddened,
straightway. Would he ever see her again?

The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro
disappeared, and the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his
pole. Several times voices sounded under the high creek bank below him,
but, quick as his ears were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was
a cry that startled him, and something flashed in the sun over the edge
of the bank and flopped in the grass.

"Snowball!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that
fish!"

On the moment Chad was alert again--somebody was fishing down
there--and he sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a
woolly head and a jet-black face peeped over the bank.

The pickaninny's eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange
figure in coonskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face
almost blanched with terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of
fright, rolled back out of sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of
his own age was holding another pole, and, hearing the little darky
slide down, he said, sharply:

"Get that fish, I tell you!"

"Look dar, Mars' Dan, look dar!"

The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his
little body-servant, but with no fear.

"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.

"Fishin'?" said Chad.

"Yes," said Dan, shortly--he had shown enough curiosity and he turned
his eyes to his cork. "Get that fish, Snowball," he said again.

"I'll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked
it and came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in
the other.

"Whar's yo' string?" he asked, handing the pole to the still trembling
little darky.

"I'll take it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the
mud. The fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to
him, dropped on the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the
three boys, with the same cry, scrambled for it--Snowball falling down
on it and clutching it in both his black little paws.

"Dar now!" he shrieked. "I got him!"

"Give him to me," said Dan.

"Lemme string him," said the black boy.

"Give him to me, I tell you!" And, stringing the fish, Dan took the
other pole and turned his eyes to his corks, while the pickaninny
squatted behind him and Chad climbed up and sat on the bank letting his
legs dangle over. When Dan caught a fish he would fling it with a whoop
high over the bank. After the third fish, the lad was mollified and got
over his ill-temper. He turned to Chad.

"Want to fish?"

Chad sprang down the bank quickly.

"Yes," he said, and he took the other pole out of the bank, put on a
fresh wriggling worm, and moved a little farther down the creek where
there was an eddy.

"Ketchin' any?" said a voice above the bank, and Chad looked up to see
still another lad, taller by a head than either he or Dan--evidently
the boy whom he had seen rigging a pole up at the big house on the hill.

"Oh, 'bout 'leven," said Dan, carelessly.

"Howdye!" said Chad.

"Howdye!" said the other boy, and he, too, stared curiously, but Chad
had got used to people staring at him.

"I'm goin' over the big rock," added the new arrival, and he went down
the creek and climbed around a steep little cliff, and out on a huge
rock that hung over the creek, where he dropped his hook. He had no
cork, and Chad knew that he was trying to catch catfish. Presently he
jerked, and a yellow mudcat rose to the surface, fighting desperately
for his life, and Dan and Snowball yelled crazily. Then Dan pulled out
a perch.

"I got another one," he shouted. And Chad fished silently. They were
making "a mighty big fuss," he thought, "over mighty little fish." If
he just had a minnow an' had 'em down in the mountains, "I Gonnies,
he'd show'em what fishin' was!" But he began to have good luck as it
was. Perch after perch he pulled out quietly, and he kept Snowball busy
stringing them until he had five on the string. The boy on the rock was
watching him and so was the boy near him--furtively--while Snowball's
admiration was won completely, and he grinned and gurgled his delight,
until Dan lost his temper again and spoke to him sharply. Dan did not
like to be beaten at anything. Pretty soon there was a light thunder of
hoofs on the turf above the bank. A black pony shot around the bank and
was pulled in at the edge of the ford, and Chad was looking into the
dancing black eyes of a little girl with a black velvet cap on her dark
curls and a white plume waving from it.

"Howdye!" said Chad, and his heart leaped curiously, but the little
girl did not answer. She, too, stared at him as all the others had done
and started to ride into the creek, but Dan stopped her sharply:

"Now, Margaret, don't you ride into that water. You'll skeer the fish."

"No, you won't," said Chad, promptly. "Fish don't keer nothin' about a
hoss." But the little girl stood still, and her brother's face flushed.
He resented the stranger's interference and his assumption of a better
knowledge of fish.

"Mind your own business," trembled on his tongue, and the fact that he
held the words back only served to increase his ill-humor and make a
worse outbreak possible. But, if Chad did not understand, Snowball did,
and his black face grew suddenly grave as he sprang more alertly than
ever at any word from his little master. Meanwhile, all unconscious,
Chad fished on, catching perch after perch, but he could not keep his
eyes on his cork while the little girl was so near, and more than once
he was warned by a suppressed cry from the pickaninny when to pull.
Once, when he was putting on a worm, he saw the little girl watching
the process with great disgust, and he remembered that Melissa would
never bait her own hook. All girls were alike, he "reckoned" to
himself, and when he caught a fish that was unusually big, he walked
over to her.

"I'll give this un to you," he said, but she shrank from it.

"Go 'way!" she said, and she turned her pony. Dan was red in the face
by this time. How did this piece of poor white trash dare to offer a
fish to his sister. And this time the words came out like the crack of
a whip:

"S'pose you mind your own business!"

Chad started as though he had been struck and looked around quickly. He
said nothing, but he stuck the butt of his pole in the mud at once and
climbed up on the bank again and sat there, with his legs hanging over;
and his own face was not pleasant to see. The little girl was riding at
a walk up the road. Chad kept perfect silence, for he realized that he
had not been minding his own business; still he did not like to be told
so and in such a way. Both corks were shaking at the same time now.

"You got a bite," said Dan, but Chad did not move.

"You got a bite, I tell you," he said, in almost the tone he had used
to Snowball, but Chad, when the small aristocrat looked sharply around,
dropped his elbows to his knees and his chin into his hand--taking no
notice. Once he spat dexterously into the creek. Dan's own cork was
going under:

"Snowball!" he cried--"jerk!" A fish flew over Chad's head. Snowball
had run for the other pole at command and jerked, too, but the fish was
gone and with it the bait.

"You lost that fish!" said the boy, hotly, but Chad sat silent--still.
If he would only say something! Dan began to think that the stranger
was a coward. So presently, to show what a great little man he was, he
began to tease Snowball, who was up on the bank unhooking the fish, of
which Chad had taken no notice.

"What's your name?"

"Snowball!" henchman, obediently.

"Louder!"

"S-n-o-w-b-a-l-l!"

"Louder!" The little black fellow opened his mouth wide.

"S-N-O-W-B-A-L-L!" he shrieked.

"LOUDER!"

At last Chad spoke quietly.

"He can't holler no louder."

"What do you know about it? Louder!", and Dan started menacingly after
the little darky but Chad stepped between.

"Don't hit him!"

Now Dan had never struck Snowball in his life, and he would as soon
have struck his own brother--but he must not be told that he couldn't.
His face flamed and little Hotspur that he was, he drew his fist back
and hit Chad full in the chest. Chad leaped back to avoid the blow,
tumbling Snowball down the bank; the two clinched, and, while they
tussled, Chad heard the other brother clambering over the rocks, the
beat of hoofs coming toward him on the turf, and the little girl's cry:

"Don't you DARE touch my brother!"

Both went down side by side with their head just hanging over the bank,
where both could see Snowball's black wool coming to the surface in the
deep hole, and both heard his terrified shriek as he went under again.
Chad was first to his feet.

"Git a rail!" he shouted and plunged in, but Dan sprang in after him.
In three strokes, for the current was rather strong, Chad had the kinky
wool in his hand, and, in a few strokes more, the two boys had Snowball
gasping on the bank. Harry, the taller brother, ran forward to help
them carry him up the bank, and they laid him, choking and bawling, on
the grass. Whip in one hand and with the skirt of her long black
riding-habit in the other, the little girl stood above, looking
on--white and frightened. The hullabaloo had reached the house and
General Dean was walking swiftly down the hill, with Snowball's mammy,
topped by a red bandanna handkerchief, rushing after him and the
kitchen servants following.

"What does this mean?" he said, sternly, and Chad was in a strange awe
at once--he was so tall, and he stood so straight, and his eye was so
piercing. Few people could lie into that eye. The little girl spoke
first--usually she does speak first, as well as last.

"Dan and--and--that boy were fighting and they pushed Snowball into the
creek."

"Dan was teasin' Snowball," said Harry the just.

"And that boy meddled," said Dan.

"Who struck first?" asked the General, looking from one boy to the
other. Dan dropped his eyes sullenly and Chad did not answer.

"I wasn't goin' to hit Snowball," said Dan.

"I thought you wus," said Chad.

"Who struck first?" repeated the General, looking at Dan now.

"That boy meddled and I hit him."

Chad turned and answered the General's eyes steadily.

"I reckon I had no business meddlin'!"

"He tried to give sister a fish."

That was unwise in Dan--Margaret's chin lifted.

"Oh," she said, "that was it, too, was it? Well--"

"I didn't see no harm givin' the little gal a fish," said Chad. "Little
gal," indeed! Chad lost the ground he might have gained. Margaret's
eyes looked all at once like her father's.

"I'm a little GIRL, thank you."

Chad turned to her father now, looking him in the face straight and
steadily.

"I reckon I had no business meddlin', but I didn't think hit was fa'r
fer him to hit the nigger; the nigger was littler, an' I didn't think
hit 'as right."

"I didn't mean to hit him--I was only playin'!"

"But I THOUGHT you was goin' to hit him," said Chad. He looked at the
General again. "But I had no business meddlin'." And he picked up his
old coonskin cap from the grass to start away.

"Hold on, little man," said the General.

"Dan, haven't I told you not to tease Snowball?" Dan dropped his eyes
again.

"Yes, sir."

"You struck first, and this boy says he oughtn't to have meddled, but I
think he did just right. Have you anything to say to him?"

Dan worked the toe of his left boot into the turf for a moment "No,
sir."

"Well, go up to your room and think about it awhile and see if you
don't owe somebody an apology. Hurry up now an' change your clothes.

"You'd better come up to the house and get some dry clothes for
yourself, my boy," he added to Chad. "You'll catch cold."

"Much obleeged," said Chad. "But I don't ketch cold."

He put on his old coonskin cap, and then the General recognized him.

"Why, aren't you the little boy who bought a horse from me in town the
other day?" And then Chad recognized him as the tall man who had cried
"Let him have her."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I know all about you," said the General, kindly. "You are
staying with Major Buford. He's a great friend and neighbor of mine.
Now you must come up and get some clothes, Harry!"--But Chad, though he
hesitated, for he knew now that the gentleman had practically given him
the mare, interrupted, sturdily,

"No, sir, I can't go--not while he's a-feelin' hard at me."

"Very well," said the General, gravely. Chad started off on a trot and
stopped suddenly, "I wish you'd please tell that little GURL"--Chad
pronounced the word with some difficulty--"that I didn't mean nothin'
callin' her a little gal. Ever'body calls gurls gals whar I come from."

"All right," laughed the General. Chad trotted all the way home and
there Miss Lucy made him take off his wet clothes at once, though the
boy had to go to bed while they were drying, for he had no other
clothes, and while he lay in bed the Major came up and listened to
Chad's story of the afternoon, which Chad told him word for word just
as it had all happened.

"You did just right, Chad," said the Major, and he went down the
stairs, chuckling:

"Wouldn't go in and get dry clothes because Dan wouldn't apologize.
Dear me! I reckon they'll have it out when they see each other again.
I'd like to be on hand, and I'd bet my bottom dollar on Chad." But they
did not have it out. Half an hour after supper somebody shouted
"Hello!" at the gate, and the Major went out and came back smiling.

"Somebody wants to see you, Chad," he said. And Chad went out and found
Dan there on the black pony with Snowball behind him.

"I've come over to say that I had no business hittin' you down at the
creek, and--" Chad interrupted him:

"That's all right," he said, and Dan stopped and thrust out his hand.
The two boys shook hands gravely.

"An' my papa says you are a man an' he wants you to come over and see
us and I want you--and Harry and Margaret. We all want you."

"All right," said Chad. Dan turned his black pony and galloped off.

"An' come soon!" he shouted back.

Out in the quarters Mammy Ailsie, old Tom's wife, was having her own
say that night.

"Ole Marse Cal Buford pickin' a piece of white trash out de gutter an'
not sayin' whar he come from an' nuttin' 'bout him. An' old Mars Henry
takin' him jus' like he was quality. My Tom say dae boy don' know who
is his mammy ner his daddy. I ain' gwine to let my little mistis play
wid no sech trash, I tell you--'deed I ain't!" And this talk would
reach the drawing-room by and by, where the General was telling the
family, at just about the same hour, the story of the horse sale and
Chad's purchase of the old brood mare.

"I knew where he was from right away," said Harry. "I've seen
mountain-people wearing caps like his up at Uncle Brutus's, when they
come down to go to Richmond."

The General frowned.

"Well, you won't see any more people like him up there again."

"Why, papa?"

"Because you aren't going to Uncle Brutus's any more."

"Why, papa?"

The mother put her hand on her husband's knee.

"Never mind, son," she said.



CHAPTER 10.

THE BLUEGRASS

God's Country!

No humor in that phrase to the Bluegrass Kentuckian! There never
was--there is none now. To him, the land seems in all the New World, to
have been the pet shrine of the Great Mother herself. She fashioned it
with loving hands. She shut it in with a mighty barrier of mighty
mountains to keep the mob out. She gave it the loving clasp of a mighty
river, and spread broad, level prairies beyond that the mob might glide
by, or be tempted to the other side, where the earth was level and
there was no need to climb; that she might send priests from her shrine
to reclaim Western wastes or let the weak or the unloving--if such
could be--have easy access to another land.

In the beginning, such was her clear purpose to the Kentuckian's eye,
she filled it with flowers and grass and trees, and fish and bird and
wild beasts. Just as she made Eden for Adam and Eve. The red men fought
for the Paradise--fought till it was drenched with blood, but no tribe,
without mortal challenge from another straightway, could ever call a
rood its own. Boone loved the land from the moment the eagle eye in his
head swept its shaking wilderness from a mountain-top, and every man
who followed him loved the land no less. And when the chosen came, they
found the earth ready to receive them--lifted above the baneful breath
of river-bottom and marshland, drained by rivers full of fish, filled
with woods full of game, and underlaid--all--with thick, blue,
limestone strata that, like some divine agent working in the dark, kept
crumbling--ever crumbling--to enrich the soil and give bone-building
virtue to every drop of water and every blade of grass. For those
chosen people such, too, seemed her purpose--the Mother went to the
race upon whom she had smiled a benediction for a thousand years--the
race that obstacle but strengthens, that thrives best under an alien
effort to kill, that has ever conquered its conquerors, and that seems
bent on the task of carrying the best ideals any age has ever known
back to the Old World from which it sprang. The Great Mother knows!
Knows that her children must suffer, if they stray too far from her
great teeming breasts. And how she has followed close when this Saxon
race--her youngest born--seemed likely to stray too far--gathering its
sons to her arms in virgin lands that they might suckle again and keep
the old blood fresh and strong. Who could know what danger threatened
it when she sent her blue-eyed men and women to people the wilderness
of the New World? To climb the Alleghenies, spread through the wastes
beyond, and plant their kind across a continent from sea to sea. Who
knows what dangers threaten now, when, his task done, she seems to be
opening the eastern gates of the earth with a gesture that seems to
say--"Enter, reclaim, and dwell therein!"

One little race of that race in the New World, and one only, has she
kept flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone--to that race only did she
give no outside aid. She shut it in with gray hill and shining river.
She shut it off from the mother state and the mother nation and left it
to fight its own fight with savage nature, savage beast, and savage
man. And thus she gave the little race strength of heart and body and
brain, and taught it to stand together as she taught each man of the
race to stand alone, protect his women, mind his own business, and
meddle not at all; to think his own thoughts and die for them if need
be, though he divided his own house against itself; taught the man to
cleave to one woman, with the penalty of death if he strayed elsewhere;
to keep her--and even himself--in dark ignorance of the sins against
Herself for which she has slain other nations, and in that happy
ignorance keeps them to-day, even while she is slaying elsewhere still.

And Nature holds the Kentuckians close even to-day--suckling at her
breasts and living after her simple laws. What further use she may have
for them is hid by the darkness of to-morrow, but before the Great War
came she could look upon her work and say with a smile that it was
good. The land was a great series of wooded parks such as one might
have found in Merry England, except that worm fence and stone wall took
the place of hedge along the highways. It was a land of peace and of a
plenty that was close to easy luxury--for all. Poor whites were few,
the beggar was unknown, and throughout the region there was no man,
woman, or child, perhaps, who did not have enough to eat and to wear
and a roof to cover his head, whether it was his own roof or not. If
slavery had to be--then the fetters were forged light and hung loosely.
And, broadcast, through the people, was the upright sturdiness of the
Scotch-Irishman, without his narrowness and bigotry; the grace and
chivalry of the Cavalier without his Quixotic sentiment and his
weakness; the jovial good-nature of the English squire and the
leavening spirit of a simple yeomanry that bore itself with unconscious
tenacity to traditions that seeped from the very earth. And the wings
of the eagle hovered over all.

For that land it was the flowering time of the age and the people; and
the bud that was about to open into the perfect flower had its living
symbol in the little creature racing over the bluegrass fields on a
black pony, with a black velvet cap and a white nodding plume above her
shaking curls, just as the little stranger who had floated down into
those Elysian fields--with better blood in his veins than he knew--was
a reincarnation perhaps of the spirit of the old race that had lain
dormant in the hills. The long way from log-cabin to Greek portico had
marked the progress of the generations before her, and, on this same
way, the boy had set his sturdy feet.



CHAPTER 11.

A TOURNAMENT

On Sunday, the Major and Miss Lucy took Chad to church--a country
church built of red brick and overgrown with ivy--and the sermon was
very short, Chad thought, for, down in the mountains, the circuit-rider
would preach for hours--and the deacons passed around velvet pouches
for the people to drop money in, and they passed around bread, of which
nearly everybody took a pinch, and a silver goblet with wine, from
which the same people took a sip--all of which Chad did not understand.
Usually the Deans went to Lexington to church, for they were
Episcopalians, but they were all at the country church that day, and
with them was Richard Hunt, who smiled at Chad and waved his
riding-whip. After church Dan came to him and shook hands. Harry nodded
to him gravely, the mother smiled kindly, and the General put his hand
on the boy's head. Margaret looked at him furtively, but passed him by.
Perhaps she was still "mad" at him, Chad thought, and he was much
worried. Margaret was not shy like Melissa, but her face was kind. The
General asked them all over to take dinner, but Miss Lucy declined--she
had asked people to take dinner with her. And Chad, with keen
disappointment, saw them drive away.

It was a lonely day for him that Sunday. He got tired staying so long
at the table, and he did not understand what the guests were talking
about. The afternoon was long, and he wandered restlessly about the
yard and the quarters. Jerome Conners, the overseer, tried to be
friendly with him for the first time, but the boy did not like the
overseer and turned away from him. He walked down to the pike gate and
sat on it, looking over toward the Deans'. He wished that Dan would
come over to see him or, better still, that he could go over to see Dan
and Harry and--Margaret. But Dan did not come and Chad could not ask
the Major to let him go--he was too shy about it--and Chad was glad
when bedtime came.

Two days more and spring was come in earnest. It was in the softness of
the air, the tenderness of cloud and sky, and the warmth of the
sunlight. The grass was greener and the trees quivered happily. Hens
scratched and cocks crowed more lustily. Insect life was busier. A
stallion nickered in the barn, and from the fields came the mooing of
cattle. Field-hands going to work chaffed the maids about the house and
quarters. It stirred dreamy memories of his youth in the Major, and it
brought a sad light into Miss Lucy's faded eyes. Would she ever see
another spring? It brought tender memories to General Dean, and over at
Woodlawn, after he and Mrs. Dean had watched the children go off with
happy cries and laughter to school, it led them back into the house
hand in hand. And it set Chad's heart aglow as he walked through the
dewy grass and amid the singing of many birds toward the pike gate. He,
too, was on his way to school--in a brave new suit of clothes--and
nobody smiled at him now, except admiringly, for the Major had taken
him to town the preceding day and had got the boy clothes such as Dan
and Harry wore. Chad was worried at first--he did not like to accept so
much from the Major.

"I'll pay you back," said Chad. "I'll leave you my hoss when I go 'way,
if I don't," and the Major laughingly said that was all right and he
made Chad, too, think that it was all right. And so spring took the
shape of hope in Chad's breast, that morning, and a little later it
took the shape of Margaret, for he soon saw the Dean children ahead of
him in the road and he ran to catch up with them.

All looked at him with surprise--seeing his broad white collar with
ruffles, his turned-back, ruffled cuffs, and his boots with red tops;
but they were too polite to say anything. Still Chad felt Margaret
taking them all in and he was proud and confident. And, when her eyes
were lifted to the handsome face that rose from the collar and the
thick yellow hair, he caught them with his own in an unconscious look
of fealty, that made the little girl blush and hurry on and not look at
him again until they were in school, when she turned her eyes, as did
all the other boys and girls, to scan the new "scholar." Chad's work in
the mountains came in well now. The teacher, a gray, sad-eyed,
thin-faced man, was surprised at the boy's capacity, for he could read
as well as Dan, and in mental arithmetic even Harry was no match for
him; and when in the spelling class he went from the bottom to the head
in a single lesson, the teacher looked as though he were going to give
the boy a word of praise openly and Margaret was regarding him with a
new light in her proud eyes. That was a happy day for Chad, but it
passed after school when, as they went home together, Margaret looked
at him no more; else Chad would have gone by the Deans' house when Dan
and Harry asked him to go and look at their ponies and the new sheep
that their father had just bought; for Chad was puzzled and awed and
shy of the little girl.  It was strange--he had never felt that way
about Melissa. But his shyness kept him away from her day after day
until, one morning, he saw her ahead of him going to school alone, and
his heart thumped as he quietly and swiftly overtook her without
calling to her; but he stopped running that she might not know that he
had been running, and for the first time she was shy with him. Harry
and Dan were threatened with the measles, she said, and would say no
more. When they went through the fields toward the school-house, Chad
stalked ahead as he had done in the mountains with Melissa, and,
looking back, he saw that Margaret had stopped. He waited for her to
come up, and she looked at him for a moment as though displeased.
Puzzled, Chad gave back her look for a moment and turned without a
word--still stalking ahead. He looked back presently and Margaret had
stopped and was pouting.

"You aren't polite, little boy. My mamma says a NICE little boy always
lets a little GIRL go first." But Chad still walked ahead. He looked
back presently and she had stopped again--whether angry or ready to
cry, he could not make out--so he waited for her, and as she came
slowly near he stepped gravely from the path, and Margaret went on like
a queen.

In town, a few days later, he saw a little fellow take off his hat when
a lady passed him, and it set Chad to thinking. He recalled asking the
school-master once what was meant when the latter read about a knight
doffing his plume, and the school-master had told him that men, in
those days, took off their hats in the presence of ladies just as they
did in the Bluegrass now; but Chad had forgotten. He understood it all
then and he surprised Margaret, next morning, by taking off his cap
gravely when he spoke to her; and the little lady was greatly pleased,
for her own brothers did not do that, at least, not to her, though she
had heard her mother tell them that they must. All this must be
chivalry, Chad thought, and when Harry and Dan got well, he revived his
old ideas, but Harry laughed at him and Dan did, too, until Chad,
remembering Beelzebub, suggested that they should have a tournament
with two rams that the General had tied up in the stable. They would
make spears and each would get on a ram. Harry would let them out into
the lot and they would have "a real charge--sure enough." But Margaret
received the plan with disdain, until Dan, at Chad's suggestion, asked
the General to read them the tournament scene in "Ivanhoe," which
excited the little lady a great deal; and when Chad said that she must
be the "Queen of Love and Beauty" she blushed prettily and thought,
after all, that it would be great fun. They would make lances of
ash-wood and helmets of tin buckets, and perhaps Margaret would make
red sashes for them. Indeed, she would, and the tournament would take
place on the next Saturday. But, on Saturday, one of the sheep was
taken over to Major Buford's and the other was turned loose in the
Major's back pasture and the great day had to be postponed.

It was on the night of the reading from "Ivanhoe" that Harry and Dan
found out how Chad could play the banjo. Passing old Mammy's cabin that
night before supper, the three boys had stopped to listen to old Tom
play, and after a few tunes, Chad could stand it no longer.

"I foller pickin' the banjer a leetle," he said shyly, and thereupon he
had taken the rude instrument and made the old negro's eyes stretch
with amazement, while Dan rolled in the grass with delight, and every
negro who heard ran toward the boy. After supper, Dan brought the banjo
into the house and made Chad play on the porch, to the delight of them
all. And there, too, the servants gathered, and even old Mammy was
observed slyly shaking her foot--so that Margaret clapped her hands and
laughed the old woman into great confusion. After that no Saturday came
that Chad did not spend the night at the Deans', or Harry and Dan did
not stay at Major Buford's. And not a Saturday passed that the three
boys did not go coon-hunting with the darkies, or fox-hunting with the
Major and the General. Chad never forgot that first starlit night when
he was awakened by the near winding of a horn and heard the Major jump
from bed. He jumped too, and when the Major reached the barn, a dark
little figure was close at his heels.

"Can I go, too?" Chad asked, eagerly.

"Think you can stick on?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. Get my bay horse. That old mare of yours is too slow."

The Major's big bay horse! Chad was dizzy with pride.

When they galloped out into the dark woods, there were the General and
Harry and Dan and half a dozen neighbors, sitting silently on their
horses and listening to the music of the hounds.

The General laughed.

"I thought you'd come," he said, and the Major laughed too, and cocked
his ear. "Old Rock's ahead," he said, for he knew, as did everyone
there, the old hound's tongue.

"He's been ahead for an hour," said the General with quiet
satisfaction, "and I think he'll stay there."

Just then a dark object swept past them, and the Major with a low cry
hied on his favorite hound.

"Not now, I reckon," he said, and the General laughed again.

Dan and Harry pressed their horses close to Chad, and all talked in low
voices.

"Ain't it fun?" whispered Dan. Chad answered with a shiver of pure joy.

"He's making for the creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched
spurs to his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush
and whisking around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and
clattered across the road and on! For a few moments the Major kept
close to Chad, watching him anxiously, but the boy stuck to the big bay
like a jockey, and he left Dan and Harry on their ponies far behind.
All night they rode under the starlit sky, and ten miles away they
caught poor Reynard. Chad was in at the kill, with the Major and the
General, and the General gave Chad the brush with his own hand.

"Where did you learn to ride, boy?"

"I never learned," said Chad, simply, whereat the Major winked at his
friends and patted Chad on the shoulder.

"I've got to let my boys ride better horses, I suppose," said the
General; "I can't have a boy who does not know how to ride beating them
this way."

Day was breaking when the Major and Chad rode into the stable-yard. The
boy's face was pale, his arms and legs ached, and he was so sleepy that
he could hardly keep his eyes open.

"How'd you like it, Chad?"

"I never knowed nothing like it in my life," said Chad.

"I'm going to teach you to shoot."

"Yes, sir," said Chad.

As they approached the house, a squirrel barked from the woods.

"Hear that, Chad?" said the Major. "We'll get him."

The following morning, Chad rose early and took his old rifle out into
the woods, and when the Major came out on the porch before breakfast
the boy was coming up the walk with six squirrels in his hand. The
Major's eyes opened and he looked at the squirrels when Chad dropped
them on the porch. Every one of them was shot through the head.

"Well, I'm damned! How many times did you shoot, Chad?"

"Seven."

"What--missed only once?"

"I took a knot fer a squirrel once," said Chad.

The Major roared aloud.

"Did I say I was going to teach you to shoot, Chad?"

"Yes, sir."

The Major chuckled and that day he told about those squirrels and that
knot to everybody he saw. With every day the Major grew fonder and
prouder of the boy and more convinced than ever that the lad was of his
own blood.

"There's nothing that I like that that boy don't take to like a duck to
water." And when he saw the boy take off his hat to Margaret and
observed his manner with the little girl, he said to himself that if
Chad wasn't a gentleman born, he ought to have been, and the Major
believed that he must be.

Everywhere, at school, at the Deans', with the darkies--with everybody
but Conners, the overseer, had became a favorite, but, as to Napoleon,
so to Chad, came Waterloo--with the long deferred tournament came
Waterloo to Chad.

And it came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken
Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland--in
the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an
amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John
Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome
face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt
and--Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune rang out, and Richard
Hunt bowed low to his little partner, who, smiling and blushing,
dropped him the daintiest of graceful courtesies. Then the miracle came
to pass. Rage straightway shook Chad's soul--shook it as a terrier
shakes a rat--and the look on his face and in his eyes went back a
thousand years. And Richard Hunt, looking up, saw the strange
spectacle, understood, and did not even smile. On the contrary, he went
at once after the dance to speak to the boy and got for his answer
fierce, white, staring silence and a clinched fist, that was almost
ready to strike. Something else that was strange happened then to Chad.
He felt a very firm and a very gentle hand on his shoulder, his own
eyes dropped before the piercing dark eyes and kindly smile above him,
and, a moment later, he was shyly making his way with Richard Hunt
toward Margaret.

It was on Thursday of the following week that Dan told him the two rams
were once more tied in his father's stable. On Saturday, then, they
would have the tournament. To get Mammy's help, Margaret had to tell
the plan to her, and Mammy stormed against the little girl taking part
in any such undignified proceedings, but imperious Margaret forced her
to keep silent and help make sashes and a tent for each of the two
knights. Chad would be the "Knight of the Cumberland" and Dan the
"Knight of the Bluegrass." Snowball was to be Dan's squire and black
Rufus, Harry's body-servant, would be squire to Chad. Harry was King
John, the other pickaninnies would be varlets and vassals, and outraged
Uncle Tom, so Dan told him, would, "by the beard of Abraham," have to
be a "Dog of an Unbeliever." Margaret was undecided whether she would
play Rebecca, or the "Queen of Love and Beauty," until Chad told her
she ought to be both, so both she decided to be. So all was done--the
spears fashioned of ash, the helmets battered from tin buckets, colors
knotted for the spears, and shields made of sheepskins. On the stiles
sat Harry and Margaret in royal state under a canopy of calico, with
indignant Mammy behind them. At each end of the stable-lot was a tent
of cotton, and before one stood Snowball and before the other black
Rufus, each with his master's spear and shield. Near Harry stood Sam,
the trumpeter, with a fox-horn to sound the charge, and four black
vassals stood at the stable-door to lead the chargers forth.

Near the stiles were the neighbors' children, and around the barn was
gathered every darky on the place, while behind the hedge and peeping
through it were the Major and the General, the one chuckling, the other
smiling indulgently.

The stable-doors opened, the four vassals disappeared and came forth,
each pair leading a ram, one covered with red calico, the other with
blue cotton, and each with a bandanna handkerchief around his neck.
Each knight stepped forth from his tent, as his charger was
dragged--ba-a-ing and butting--toward it, and, grasping his spear and
shield and setting his helmet on more firmly, got astride gravely--each
squire and vassal solemn, for the King had given command that no varlet
must show unseemly mirth. Behind the hedge, the Major was holding his
hands to his side, and the General was getting grave. It had just
occurred to him that those rams would make for each other like
tornadoes, and he said so.

"Of course they will," chuckled the Major. "Don't you suppose they know
that? That's what they're doing it for. Bless my soul!"

The King waved his hand just then and his black trumpeter tooted the
charge.

"Leggo!" said Chad.

"Leggo!" said Dan.

And Snowball and Rufus let go, and each ram ran a few paces and stopped
with his head close to the ground, while each knight brandished his
spear and dug with his spurred heels. One charger gave a ba-a! The
other heard, raised his head, saw his enemy, and ba-a-ed an answering
challenge. Then they started for each other with a rush that brought a
sudden fearsome silence, quickly followed by a babel of excited cries,
in which Mammy's was loudest and most indignant. Dan, nearly unseated,
had dropped his lance to catch hold of his charger's wool, and Chad had
gallantly lowered the point of his, because his antagonist was unarmed.
But the temper of rams and not of knights was in that fight now and
they came together with a shock that banged the two knights into each
other and hurled both violently to the ground. General Dean and the
Major ran anxiously from the hedge. Several negro men rushed for the
rams, who were charging and butting like demons. Harry tumbled from the
canopy in a most unkingly fashion. Margaret cried and Mammy wrung her
hands. Chad rose dizzily, but Dan lay still. Chad's elbow had struck
him in the temple and knocked him unconscious.

The servants were thrown into an uproar when Dan was carried back into
the house. Harry was white and almost in tears.

"I did it, father, I did it," he said, at the foot of the steps.

"No," said Chad, sturdily, "I done it myself."

Margaret heard and ran from the hallway and down the steps, brushing
away her tears with both hands.

"Yes, you did--you DID," she cried. "I hate you."

"Why, Margaret," said General Dan.

Chad startled and stung, turned without a word and, unnoticed by the
rest, made his way slowly across the fields.



CHAPTER 12.

BACK TO KINGDOM COME

It was the tournament that, at last, loosed Mammy's tongue. She was
savage in her denunciation of Chad to Mrs. Dean--so savage and in such
plain language that her mistress checked her sharply, but not before
Margaret had heard, though the little girl, with an awed face, slipped
quietly out of the room into the yard, while Harry stood in the
doorway, troubled and silent.

"Don't let me hear you speak that way again Mammy," said Mrs. Dean, so
sternly that the old woman swept out of the room in high dudgeon And
yet she told her husband of Mammy's charge;

"I am rather surprised at Major Buford."

"Perhaps he doesn't know," said the General. "Perhaps it isn't true."

"Nobody knows anything about the boy."

"Well, I cannot have my children associating with a waif."

"He seems like a nice boy."

"He uses extraordinary language. I cannot have him teaching my children
mischief. Why I believe Margaret is really fond of him. I know Harry
and Dan are." The General looked thoughtful.

"I will speak to Major Buford about him," he said, and he did--no
little to that gentleman's confusion--though he defended Chad
staunchly--and the two friends parted with some heat.

Thereafter, the world changed for Chad, for is there any older and
truer story than that Evil has wings, while Good goes a plodding way?
Chad felt the change, in the negroes, in the sneering overseer, and
could not understand. The rumor reached Miss Lucy's ears and she and
the Major had a spirited discussion that rather staggered Chad's
kind-hearted companion. It reached the school, and a black-haired
youngster, named Georgie Forbes, who had long been one of Margaret's
abject slaves, and who hated Chad, brought out the terrible charge in
the presence of a dozen school-children at noon-recess one day. It had
been no insult in the mountains, but Chad, dazed though he was, knew it
was meant for an insult, and his hard fist shot out promptly, landing
in his enemy's chin and bringing him bawling to the earth. Others gave
out the cry then, and the boy fought right and left like a demon. Dan
stood sullenly near, taking no part, and Harry, while he stopped the
unequal fight, turned away from Chad coldly, calling Margaret, who had
run up toward them, away at the same time, and Chad's three friends
turned from him then and there, while the boy, forgetting all else,
stood watching them with dumb wonder and pain. The school-bell clanged,
but Chad stood still--with his heart well nigh breaking. In a few
minutes the last pupil had disappeared through the school-room door,
and Chad stood under a great elm--alone. But only a moment, for he
turned quickly away, the tears starting to his eyes, walked rapidly
through the woods, climbed the worm fence beyond, and dropped, sobbing,
in the thick bluegrass.

An hour later he was walking swiftly through the fields toward the old
brick house that had sheltered him. He was very quiet at supper that
night, and after Miss Lucy had gone to bed and he and the Major were
seated before the fire, he was so quiet that the Major looked at him
anxiously.

"What's the matter Chad? Are you sick?"

"Nothin'--no, sir."

But the Major was uneasy, and when he rose to go to bed, he went over
and put his hand on the boy's head.

"Chad," he said, "if you hear of people saying mean things about you,
you mustn't pay any attention to them."

"No, sir."

"You're a good boy, and I want you to live here with me. Good-night,
Chad," he added, affectionately. Chad nearly broke down, but he
steadied himself.

"Good-by, Major," he said, brokenly. "I'm obleeged to you."

"Good-by?" repeated the Major. "Why?"

"Good-night, I mean," stammered Chad.

The Major stood inside his own door, listening to the boy's slow steps
up the second flight. "I'm gettin' to love that boy," he said,
wonderingly--"An' I'm damned if people who talk about him don't have me
to reckon with"--and the Major shook his head from side to side.
Several times he thought he could hear the boy moving around in the
room above him, and while he was wondering why the lad did not go to
bed, he fell asleep.

Chad was moving around. First, by the light of a candle, he laboriously
dug out a short letter to the Major--scalding it with tears. Then he
took off his clothes and got his old mountain-suit out of the
closet--moccasins and all--and put them on. Very carefully he folded
the pretty clothes he had taken off--just as Miss Lucy had taught
him--and laid them on the bed. Then he picked up his old rifle in one
hand and his old coonskin cap in the other, blew out the candle,
slipped noiselessly down the stairs in his moccasined feet, out the
unbolted door and into the starlit night. From the pike fence he turned
once to look back to the dark, silent house amid the dark trees. Then
he sprang down and started through the fields--his face set toward the
mountains.

It so happened that mischance led General Dean to go over to see Major
Buford about Chad next morning. The Major listened patiently--or tried
ineffectively to listen--and when the General was through, he burst out
with a vehemence that shocked and amazed his old friend.

"Damn those niggers!" he cried, in a tone that seemed to include the
General in his condemnation, "that boy is the best boy I ever knew. I
believe he is my own blood, he looks a little like that picture
there"--pointing to the old portrait--"and if he is what I believe he
is, by ----, sir, he gets this farm and all I have. Do you understand
that?"

"I believe he told you what he was."

"He did--but I don't believe he knows, and, anyhow, whatever he is, he
shall have a home under this roof as long as he lives."

The General rose suddenly--stiffly.

"He must never darken my door again."

"Very well." The Major made a gesture which plainly said, "In that
event, you are darkening mine too long," and the General rose, slowly
descended the steps of the portico, and turned:

"Do you really mean, that you are going to let a little brat that you
picked up in the road only yesterday stand between you and me?"

The Major softened.

"Look here," he said, whisking a sheet of paper from his coat-pocket.
While the General read Chad's scrawl, the Major watched his face.

"He's gone, by ----. A hint was enough for him. If he isn't the son of
a gentleman, then I'm not, nor you."

"Cal," said the General, holding out his hand, "we'll talk this over
again."

The bees buzzed around the honeysuckles that clambered over the porch.
A crow flew overhead. The sound of a crying child came around the
corner of the house from the quarters, and the General's footsteps died
on the gravel-walk, but the Major heard them not. Mechanically he
watched the General mount his black horse and canter toward the pike
gate. The overseer called to him from the stable, but the Major dropped
his eyes to the scrawl in his hand, and when Miss Lucy came out he
silently handed it to her.

"I reckon you know what folks is a-sayin' about me. I tol' you myself.
But I didn't know hit wus any harm, and anyways hit ain't my fault, I
reckon, an' I don't see how folks can blame me. But I don' want nobody
who don' want me. An' I'm leavin' 'cause I don't want to bother you. I
never bring nothing but trouble nohow an' I'm goin' back to the
mountains. Tell Miss Lucy good-by. She was mighty good to me, but I
know she didn't like me. I left the hoss for you. If you don't have no
use fer the saddle, I wish you'd give hit to Harry, 'cause he tuk up
fer me at school when I was fightin', though he wouldn't speak to me no
more. I'm mighty sorry to leave you. I'm obleeged to you cause you wus
so good to me an' I'm goin' to see you agin some day, if I can.
Good-by."

"Left that damned old mare to pay for his clothes and his board and his
schooling," muttered the Major. "By the gods"--he rose suddenly and
strode away--"I beg your pardon, Lucy."

A tear was running down each of Miss Lucy's faded cheeks.

Dawn that morning found Chad springing from a bed in a haystack--ten
miles from Lexington. By dusk that day, he was on the edge of the
Bluegrass and that night he stayed at a farm-house, going in boldly,
for he had learned now that the wayfarer was as welcome in a Bluegrass
farm-house as in a log-cabin in the mountains. Higher and higher grew
the green swelling slopes, until, climbing one about noon next day, he
saw the blue foothills of the Cumberland through the clear air--and he
stopped and looked long, breathing hard from pure ecstasy. The
plain-dweller never knows the fierce home hunger that the mountain-born
have for hills.

Besides, beyond those blue summits were the Turners and the
school-master and Jack, waiting for him, and he forgot hunger and
weariness as he trod on eagerly toward them. That night, he stayed in a
mountain-cabin, and while the contrast of the dark room, the crowding
children, the slovenly dress, and the coarse food was strangely
disagreeable, along with the strange new shock came the thrill that all
this meant hills and home. It was about three o'clock of the fourth day
that, tramping up the Kentucky River, he came upon a long, even stretch
of smooth water, from the upper end of which two black boulders were
thrust out of the stream, and with a keener thrill he realized that he
was nearing home. He recalled seeing those rocks as the raft swept down
the river, and the old Squire had said that they were named after
oxen--"Billy and Buck." Opposite the rocks he met a mountaineer.

"How fer is it to Uncle Joel Turner's?"

"A leetle the rise o' six miles, I reckon."

The boy was faint with weariness, and those six miles seemed a dozen.
Idea of distance is vague among the mountaineers, and two hours of
weary travel followed, yet nothing that he recognized was in sight.
Once a bend of the river looked familiar, but when he neared it, the
road turned steeply from the river and over a high bluff, and the boy
started up with a groan. He meant to reach the summit before he stopped
to rest, but in sheer pain, he dropped a dozen paces from the top and
lay with his tongue, like a dog's, between his lips.

The top was warm, but a chill was rising from the fast-darkening
shadows below him. The rim of the sun was about to brush the green tip
of a mountain across the river, and the boy rose in a minute, dragged
himself on to the point where, rounding a big rock, he dropped again
with a thumping heart and a reeling brain. There it was--old Joel's
cabin in the pretty valley below--old Joel's cabin--home! Smoke was
rising from the chimney, and that far away it seemed that Chad could
smell frying bacon. There was the old barn and he could make out one of
the boys feeding stock and another chopping wood--was that the
school-master? There was the huge form of old Joel at the fence talking
with a neighbor. He was gesticulating as though angry, and the old
mother came to the door as the neighbor moved away with a shuffling
gait that the boy knew belonged to the Dillon breed. Where was Jack?
Jack! Chad sprang to his feet and went down the hill on a run. He
climbed the orchard fence, breaking the top rail in his eagerness, and
as he neared the house, he gave a shrill yell. A scarlet figure flashed
like a flame out of the door, with an answering cry, and the Turners
followed:

"Why, boy," roared old Joel. "Mammy, hit's Chad!"

Dolph dropped an armful of feed. The man with the axe left it stuck in
a log, and each man shouted:

"Chad!"

The mountaineers are an undemonstrative race, but Mother Turner took
the boy in her arms and the rest crowded around, slapping him on the
back and all asking questions at once. Dolph and Rube and Tom. Yes, and
there was the school-master--every face was almost tender with love for
the boy. But where was Jack?

"Where's--where's Jack?" said Chad.

Old Joel changed face--looking angry; the rest were grave. Only the old
mother spoke:

"Jack's all right."

"Oh," said Chad, but he looked anxious.

Melissa inside heard. He had not asked for HER, and with the sudden
choking of a nameless fear she sprang out the door to be caught by the
school-master, who had gone around the corner to look for her.

"Lemme go," she said, fiercely, breaking his hold and darting away, but
stopping, when she saw Chad in the doorway, looking at her with a shy
smile.

"Howdye, Melissa!"

The girl stared at him mildly and made no answer, and a wave of shame
and confusion swept over the boy as his thoughts flashed back to a
little girl in a black cap and on a black pony, and he stood reddening
and helpless. There was a halloo at the gate. It was old Squire
Middleton and the circuit-rider, and old Joel went toward them with a
darkening face.

"Why, hello, Chad," the Squire said. "You back again?"

He turned to Joel.

"Look hyeh, Joel. Thar hain't no use o' your buckin' agin yo' neighbors
and harborin' a sheep-killin' dog." Chad started and looked from one
face to another--slowly but surely making out the truth.

"You never seed the dawg afore last spring. You don't know that he
hain't a sheep-killer."

"It's a lie--a lie," Chad cried, hotly, but the school-master stopped
him.

"Hush, Chad," he said, and he took the boy inside and told him Jack was
in trouble. A Dillon sheep had been found dead on a hill-side. Daws
Dillon had come upon Jack leaping out of the pasture, and Jack had come
home with his muzzle bloody. Even with this overwhelming evidence, old
Joel stanchly refused to believe the dog was guilty and ordered old man
Dillon off the place. A neighbor had come over, then another, and an
other, until old Joel got livid with rage.

"That dawg mought eat a dead sheep but he never would kill a live one,
and if you kill him, by ----, you've got to kill me fust."

Now there is no more unneighborly or unchristian act for a farmer than
to harbor a sheep-killing dog. So the old Squire and the circuit-rider
had come over to show Joel the grievous error of his selfish, obstinate
course, and, so far, old Joel had refused to be shown. All of his sons
sturdily upheld him and little Melissa fiercely--the old mother and the
school-master alone remaining quiet and taking no part in the
dissension.

"Have they got Jack?"

"No, Chad," said the school-master. "He's safe--tied up in the stable."
Chad started out, and no one followed but Melissa. A joyous bark that
was almost human came from the stable as Chad approached, for the dog
must have known the sound of his master's footsteps, and when Chad drew
open the door, Jack sprang the length of his tether to meet him and was
jerked to his back. Again and again he sprang, barking, as though
beside himself, while Chad stood at the door, looking sorrowfully at
him.

"Down, Jack!" he said sternly, and Jack dropped obediently, looking
straight at his master with honest eyes and whimpering like a child.

"Jack," said Chad, "did you kill that sheep?" This was all strange
conduct for his little master, and Jack looked wondering and dazed, but
his eyes never wavered or blinked. Chad could not long stand those
honest eyes.

"No," he said, fiercely--"no, little doggie, no--no!" And Chad dropped
on his knees and took Jack in his arms and hugged him to his breast.



CHAPTER 13.

ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE

By degrees the whole story was told Chad that night. Now and then the
Turners would ask him about his stay in the Bluegrass, but the boy
would answer as briefly as possible and come back to Jack. Before going
to bed, Chad said he would bring Jack into the house:

"Somebody might pizen him," he explained, and when he came back, he
startled the circle about the fire:

"Whar's Whizzer?" he asked, sharply. "Who's seen Whizzer?"

Then it developed that no one had seen the Dillon dog--since the day
before the sheep was found dead near a ravine at the foot of the
mountain in a back pasture. Late that afternoon Melissa had found
Whizzer in that very pasture when she was driving old Betsy, the
brindle, home at milking-time. Since then, no one of the Turners had
seen the Dillon dog.  That, however, did not prove that Whizzer was not
at home. And yet,

"I'd like to know whar Whizzer is now!" said Chad, and, after, at old
Joel's command, he had tied Jack to a bedpost--an outrage that puzzled
the dog sorely--the boy threshed his bed for an hour--trying to think
out a defence for Jack and wondering if Whizzer might not have been
concerned in the death of the sheep.

It is hardly possible that what happened, next day, could happen
anywhere except among simple people of the hills. Briefly, the old
Squire and the circuit-rider had brought old Joel to the point of
saying, the night before, that he would give Jack up to be killed, if
he could be proven guilty. But the old hunter cried with an oath:

"You've got to prove him guilty." And thereupon the Squire said he
would give Jack every chance that he would give a man--HE WOULD TRY
HIM; each side could bring in witnesses; old Joel could have a lawyer
if he wished, and Jack's case would go before a jury. If pronounced
innocent, Jack should go free: if guilty--then the dog should be handed
over to the sheriff, to be shot at sundown. Joel agreed.

It was a strange procession that left the gate of the Turner cabin next
morning. Old Joel led the way, mounted, with "ole Sal," his rifle,
across his saddle-bow. Behind him came Mother Turner and Melissa on
foot and Chad with his rifle over his left shoulder, and leading Jack
by a string with his right hand. Behind them slouched Tall Tom with his
rifle and Dolph and Rube, each with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol
swinging from his right hip. Last strode the school-master. The cabin
was left deserted--the hospitable door held closed by a deer-skin latch
caught to a wooden pin outside.

It was a strange humiliation to Jack thus to be led along the highway,
like a criminal going to the gallows. There was no power on earth that
could have moved him from Chad's side, other than the boy's own
command--but old Joel had sworn that he would keep the dog tied and the
old hunter always kept his word. He had sworn, too, that Jack should
have a fair trial. Therefore, the guns--and the school-master walked
with his hands behind him and his eyes on the ground: he feared trouble.

Half a mile up the river and to one side of the road, a space of some
thirty feet square had been cut into a patch of rhododendron and filled
with rude benches of slabs--in front of which was a rough platform on
which sat a home-made, cane-bottomed chair. Except for the opening from
the road, the space was walled with a circle of living green thr

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