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The Crossing

by Winston Churchill · English · Gutenberg #388 · 1,136,495 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Crossing

Author: Winston Churchill


        
Release date: October 19, 2004 [eBook #388]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/388

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, David Widger, and Robert Homa


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CROSSING ***



Produced by Charles Keller, David Widger, and Robert Homa





THE CROSSING

By Winston Churchill



CONTENTS

  BOOK I. THE BORDERLAND

    I.   THE BLUE WALL
   II.   WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
  III.   CHARLESTOWN
   IV.   TEMPLE BOW
    V.   CRAM’S HELL
   VI.   MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES
  VII.   IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE
 VIII.   THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE
   IX.   ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL
    X.   HARRODSTOWN
   XI.   FRAGMENTARY
  XII.   THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS
 XIII.   KASKASKIA
  XIV.   HOW THE KASKASKIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS
   XV.   DAYS OF TRIAL
  XVI.   DAVY GOES TO CAHOKIA
 XVII.   THE SACRIFICE
XVIII.   “AN’ YE HAD BEEN WHERE I HAD BEEN”
  XIX.   THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED
   XX.   THE CAMPAIGN ENDS


  BOOK II. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

    I.   IN THE CABIN
   II.   “THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN”
  III.   WE GO TO DANVILLE
   IV.   I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE
    V.   I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW
   VI.   THE WIDOW BROWN’S
  VII.   I MEET A HERO
 VIII.   TO ST. LOUIS
   IX.   “CHERCHEZ LA FEMME”
    X.   THE KEEL BOAT
   XI.   THE STRANGE CITY
  XII.   LES ISLES
 XIII.   MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED
  XIV.   RETRIBUTION


  BOOK III. LOUISIANA

    I.   THE RIGHTS OF MAN
   II.   THE HOUSE ABOVE THE FALLS
  III.   LOUISVILLE CELEBRATES
   IV.   OF A SUDDEN RESOLUTION
    V.   THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES
   VI.   MADAME LA VICOMTESSE
  VII.   THE DISPOSAL OF THE SIEUR DE ST. GRE
 VIII.   AT LAMARQUE’S
   IX.   MONSIEUR LE BARON
    X.   THE SCOURGE
   XI.   “IN THE MIDST OF LIFE”
  XII.   VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENINGS
 XIII.   A MYSTERY
  XIV.   “TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES”
   XV.   AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

         AFTERWORD




THE CROSSING




BOOK I. THE BORDERLAND




CHAPTER I. THE BLUE WALL

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in
the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters.
There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a
cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of
King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province
of North Carolina.

The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had
two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone
chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father
was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great
buckhorns held my father’s rifle when it was not in use. On other horns
hung jerked bear’s meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking
cups, and bags of seed, and my father’s best hunting shirt; also, in a
neglected corner, several articles of woman’s attire from pegs. These
once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine,
faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the
Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool
and huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he
would give me no answers.

My father was--how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only
surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that
he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early
childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his
hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with
wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He
was a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save
when he drank too many “horns,” as they were called in that country.
These lapses of my father’s were a perpetual source of wonder to
me,--and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing
traveller who hit his fancy chanced that way, or, what was almost as
rare, a neighbor. Many a winter night I have lain awake under the
skins, listening to a flow of language that held me spellbound, though I
understood scarce a word of it.

 “Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
 Few in the extreme, but all in a degree.”

The chance neighbor or traveller was no less struck with wonder. And
many the time have I heard the query, at the Cross-Roads and elsewhere,
“Whar Alec Trimble got his larnin’?”

The truth is, my father was an object of suspicion to the frontiersmen.
Even as a child I knew this, and resented it. He had brought me up in
solitude, and I was old for my age, learned in some things far beyond
my years, and ignorant of others I should have known. I loved the man
passionately. In the long winter evenings, when the howl of wolves and
“painters” rose as the wind lulled, he taught me to read from the Bible
and the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” I can see his long, slim fingers on the
page. They seemed but ill fitted for the life he led.

The love of rhythmic language was somehow born into me, and many’s the
time I have held watch in the cabin day and night while my father was
away on his hunts, spelling out the verses that have since become part
of my life.

As I grew older I went with him into the mountains, often on his back;
and spent the nights in open camp with my little moccasins drying at the
blaze. So I learned to skin a bear, and fleece off the fat for oil with
my hunting knife; and cure a deerskin and follow a trail. At seven I
even shot the long rifle, with a rest. I learned to endure cold and
hunger and fatigue and to walk in silence over the mountains, my father
never saying a word for days at a spell. And often, when he opened his
mouth, it would be to recite a verse of Pope’s in a way that moved me
strangely. For a poem is not a poem unless it be well spoken.

In the hot days of summer, over against the dark forest the bright green
of our little patch of Indian corn rippled in the wind. And towards
night I would often sit watching the deep blue of the mountain wall and
dream of the mysteries of the land that lay beyond. And by chance, one
evening as I sat thus, my father reading in the twilight, a man stood
before us. So silently had he come up the path leading from the brook
that we had not heard him. Presently my father looked up from his
book, but did not rise. As for me, I had been staring for some time in
astonishment, for he was a better-looking man than I had ever seen. He
wore a deerskin hunting shirt dyed black, but, in place of a coonskin
cap with the tail hanging down, a hat. His long rifle rested on the
ground, and he held a roan horse by the bridle.

“Howdy, neighbor?” said he.

I recall a fear that my father would not fancy him. In such cases he
would give a stranger food, and leave him to himself. My father’s whims
were past understanding. But he got up.

“Good evening,” said he.

The visitor looked a little surprised, as I had seen many do, at my
father’s accent.

“Neighbor,” said he, “kin you keep me over night?”

“Come in,” said my father.

We sat down to our supper of corn and beans and venison, of all of which
our guest ate sparingly. He, too, was a silent man, and scarcely a word
was spoken during the meal. Several times he looked at me with such a
kindly expression in his blue eyes, a trace of a smile around his broad
mouth, that I wished he might stay with us always. But once, when my
father said something about Indians, the eyes grew hard as flint. It was
then I remarked, with a boy’s wonder, that despite his dark hair he had
yellow eyebrows.

After supper the two men sat on the log step, while I set about the task
of skinning the deer my father had shot that day. Presently I felt a
heavy hand on my shoulder.

“What’s your name, lad?” he said.

I told him Davy.

“Davy, I’ll larn ye a trick worth a little time,” said he, whipping
out a knife. In a trice the red carcass hung between the forked stakes,
while I stood with my mouth open. He turned to me and laughed gently.

“Some day you’ll cross the mountains and skin twenty of an evening,” he
said. “Ye’ll make a woodsman sure. You’ve got the eye, and the hand.”

This little piece of praise from him made me hot all over.

“Game rare?” said he to my father.

“None sae good, now,” said my father.

“I reckon not. My cabin’s on Beaver Creek some forty mile above, and
game’s going there, too.”

“Settlements,” said my father. But presently, after a few whiffs of his
pipe, he added, “I hear fine things of this land across the mountains,
that the Indians call the Dark and Bluidy Ground.”

“And well named,” said the stranger.

“But a brave country,” said my father, “and all tramped down with game.
I hear that Daniel Boone and others have gone into it and come back with
marvellous tales. They tell me Boone was there alone three months. He’s
saething of a man. D’ye ken him?”

The ruddy face of the stranger grew ruddier still.

“My name’s Boone,” he said.

“What!” cried my father, “it wouldn’t be Daniel?”

“You’ve guessed it, I reckon.”

My father rose without a word, went into the cabin, and immediately
reappeared with a flask and a couple of gourds, one of which he handed
to our visitor.

“Tell me aboot it,” said he.

That was the fairy tale of my childhood. Far into the night I lay on the
dewy grass listening to Mr. Boone’s talk. It did not at first flow in a
steady stream, for he was not a garrulous man, but my father’s questions
presently fired his enthusiasm. I recall but little of it, being so
small a lad, but I crept closer and closer until I could touch this
superior being who had been beyond the Wall. Marco Polo was no greater
wonder to the Venetians than Boone to me.

He spoke of leaving wife and children, and setting out for the Unknown
with other woodsmen. He told how, crossing over our blue western wall
into a valley beyond, they found a “Warrior’s Path” through a gap across
another range, and so down into the fairest of promised lands. And as
he talked he lost himself in the tale of it, and the very quality of his
voice changed. He told of a land of wooded hill and pleasant vale, of
clear water running over limestone down to the great river beyond, the
Ohio--a land of glades, the fields of which were pied with flowers of
wondrous beauty, where roamed the buffalo in countless thousands, where
elk and deer abounded, and turkeys and feathered game, and bear in the
tall brakes of cane. And, simply, he told how, when the others had left
him, he stayed for three months roaming the hills alone with Nature
herself.

“But did you no’ meet the Indians?” asked my father.

“I seed one fishing on a log once,” said our visitor, laughing, “but he
fell into the water. I reckon he was drowned.”

My father nodded comprehendingly,--even admiringly.

“And again!” said he.

“Wal,” said Mr. Boone, “we fell in with a war party of Shawnees going
back to their lands north of the great river. The critters took away all
we had. It was hard,” he added reflectively; “I had staked my fortune
on the venter, and we’d got enough skins to make us rich. But, neighbor,
there is land enough for you and me, as black and rich as Canaan.”

“‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” said my father, lapsing into verse.
“‘The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me into green
pastures, and beside still waters.’”

For a time they were silent, each wrapped in his own thought, while the
crickets chirped and the frogs sang. From the distant forest came the
mournful hoot of an owl.

“And you are going back?” asked my father, presently.

“Aye, that I am. There are many families on the Yadkin below going, too.
And you, neighbor, you might come with us. Davy is the boy that would
thrive in that country.”

My father did not answer. It was late indeed when we lay down to rest,
and the night I spent between waking and dreaming of the wonderland
beyond the mountains, hoping against hope that my father would go. The
sun was just flooding the slopes when our guest arose to leave, and my
father bade him God-speed with a heartiness that was rare to him. But,
to my bitter regret, neither spoke of my father’s going. Being a man of
understanding, Mr. Boone knew it were little use to press. He patted me
on the head.

“You’re a wise lad, Davy,” said he. “I hope we shall meet again.”

He mounted his roan and rode away down the slope, waving his hand to
us. And it was with a heavy heart that I went to feed our white mare,
whinnying for food in the lean-to.




CHAPTER II. WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

And so our life went on the same, but yet not the same. For I had the
Land of Promise to dream of, and as I went about my tasks I conjured
up in my mind pictures of its beauty. You will forgive a backwoods
boy,--self-centred, for lack of wider interest, and with a little
imagination. Bear hunting with my father, and an occasional trip on
the white mare twelve miles to the Cross-Roads for salt and other
necessaries, were the only diversions to break the routine of my days.
But at the Cross-Roads, too, they were talking of Kaintuckee. For so the
Land was called, the Dark and Bloody Ground.

The next year came a war on the Frontier, waged by Lord Dunmore,
Governor of Virginia. Of this likewise I heard at the Cross-Roads,
though few from our part seemed to have gone to it. And I heard there,
for rumors spread over mountains, that men blazing in the new land were
in danger, and that my hero, Boone, was gone out to save them. But in
the autumn came tidings of a great battle far to the north, and of the
Indians suing for peace.

The next year came more tidings of a sort I did not understand. I
remember once bringing back from the Cross-Roads a crumpled newspaper,
which my father read again and again, and then folded up and put in his
pocket. He said nothing to me of these things. But the next time I went
to the Cross-Roads, the woman asked me:--

“Is your Pa for the Congress?”

“What’s that?” said I.

“I reckon he ain’t,” said the woman, tartly. I recall her dimly, a
slattern creature in a loose gown and bare feet, wife of the storekeeper
and wagoner, with a swarm of urchins about her. They were all very
natural to me thus. And I remember a battle with one of these urchins in
the briers, an affair which did not add to the love of their family for
ours. There was no money in that country, and the store took our pelts
in exchange for what we needed from civilization. Once a month would
I load these pelts on the white mare, and make the journey by the path
down the creek. At times I met other settlers there, some of them not
long from Ireland, with the brogue still in their mouths. And again,
I saw the wagoner with his great canvas-covered wagon standing at the
door, ready to start for the town sixty miles away. ‘Twas he brought the
news of this latest war.

One day I was surprised to see the wagoner riding up the path to our
cabin, crying out for my father, for he was a violent man. And a violent
scene followed. They remained for a long time within the house, and when
they came out the wagoner’s face was red with rage. My father, too, was
angry, but no more talkative than usual.

“Ye say ye’ll not help the Congress?” shouted the wagoner.

“I’ll not,” said my father.

“Ye’ll live to rue this day, Alec Trimble,” cried the man. “Ye may think
ye’re too fine for the likes of us, but there’s them in the settlement
that knows about ye.”

With that he flung himself on his horse, and rode away. But the next
time I went to the Cross-Roads the woman drove me away with curses, and
called me an aristocrat. Wearily I tramped back the dozen miles up the
creek, beside the mare, carrying my pelts with me; stumbling on the
stones, and scratched by the dry briers. For it was autumn, the woods
all red and yellow against the green of the pines. I sat down beside the
old beaver dam to gather courage to tell my father. But he only smiled
bitterly when he heard it. Nor would he tell me what the word aristocrat
meant.

That winter we spent without bacon, and our salt gave out at Christmas.
It was at this season, if I remember rightly, that we had another
visitor. He arrived about nightfall one gray day, his horse jaded and
cut, and he was dressed all in wool, with a great coat wrapped about
him, and high boots. This made me stare at him. When my father drew back
the bolt of the door he, too, stared and fell back a step.

“Come in,” said he.

“D’ye ken me, Alec?” said the man.

He was a tall, spare man like my father, a Scotchman, but his hair was
in a cue.

“Come in, Duncan,” said my father, quietly. “Davy, run out for wood.”

Loath as I was to go, I obeyed. As I came back dragging a log behind
me I heard them in argument, and in their talk there was much about the
Congress, and a woman named Flora Macdonald, and a British fleet sailing
southward.

“We’ll have two thousand Highlanders and more to meet the fleet. And
ye’ll sit at hame, in this hovel ye’ve made yeresel” (and he glanced
about disdainfully) “and no help the King?” He brought his fist down on
the pine boards.

“Ye did no help the King greatly at Culloden, Duncan,” said my father,
dryly.

Our visitor did not answer at once.

“The Yankee Rebels ‘ll no help the House of Stuart,” said he, presently.
“And Hanover’s coom to stay. Are ye, too, a Rebel, Alec Ritchie?”

I remember wondering why he said Ritchie.

“I’ll no take a hand in this fight,” answered my father.

And that was the end of it. The man left with scant ceremony, I guiding
him down the creek to the main trail. He did not open his mouth until I
parted with him.

“Puir Davy,” said he, and rode away in the night, for the moon shone
through the clouds.

I remember these things, I suppose, because I had nothing else to think
about. And the names stuck in my memory, intensified by later events,
until I began to write a diary.

And now I come to my travels. As the spring drew on I had had a feeling
that we could not live thus forever, with no market for our pelts. And
one day my father said to me abruptly:--

“Davy, we’ll be travelling.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Ye’ll ken soon enough,” said he. “We’ll go at crack o’ day.”

We went away in the wild dawn, leaving the cabin desolate. We loaded the
white mare with the pelts, and my father wore a woollen suit like that
of our Scotch visitor, which I had never seen before. He had clubbed his
hair. But, strangest of all, he carried in a small parcel the silk gown
that had been my mother’s. We had scant other baggage.

We crossed the Yadkin at a ford, and climbing the hills to the south of
it we went down over stony traces, down and down, through rain and sun;
stopping at rude cabins or taverns, until we came into the valley of
another river. This I know now was the Catawba. My memories of that ride
are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently the
country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned to
pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up to
the mare’s fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a
day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than
any I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I
listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had a
fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and
was the principal spokesman. He, too, was talking of war. The Cherokees
had risen on the western border. He was telling of the massacre of a
settlement, in no mild language.

“Sirs,” he cried, “the British have stirred the redskins to this. Will
you sit here while women and children are scalped, and those devils” (he
called them worse names) “Stuart and Cameron go unpunished?”

My father got up from the corner where he sat, and stood beside the man.

“I ken Alec Cameron,” said he.

The man looked at him with amazement.

“Ay?” said he, “I shouldn’t think you’d own it. Damn him,” he cried, “if
we catch him we’ll skin him alive.”

“I ken Cameron,” my father repeated, “and I’ll gang with you to skin him
alive.”

The man seized his hand and wrung it.

“But first I must be in Charlestown,” said my father.

The next morning we sold our pelts. And though the mare was tired,
we pushed southward, I behind the saddle. I had much to think about,
wondering what was to become of me while my father went to skin Cameron.
I had not the least doubt that he would do it. The world is a storybook
to a lad of nine, and the thought of Charlestown filled me with a
delight unspeakable. Perchance he would leave me in Charlestown.

At nightfall we came into a settlement called the Waxhaws. And there
being no tavern there, and the mare being very jaded and the roads
heavy, we cast about for a place to sleep. The sunlight slanting over
the pine forest glistened on the pools in the wet fields. And it so
chanced that splashing across these, swinging a milk-pail over his head,
shouting at the top of his voice, was a red-headed lad of my own age. My
father hailed him, and he came running towards us, still shouting, and
vaulted the rails. He stood before us, eying me with a most mischievous
look in his blue eyes, and dabbling in the red mud with his toes. I
remember I thought him a queer-looking boy. He was lanky, and he had a
very long face under his tousled hair.

My father asked him where he could spend the night.

“Wal,” said the boy, “I reckon Uncle Crawford might take you in. And
again he mightn’t.”

He ran ahead, still swinging the pail. And we, following, came at length
to a comfortable-looking farmhouse. As we stopped at the doorway a
stout, motherly woman filled it. She held her knitting in her hand.

“You Andy!” she cried, “have you fetched the milk?”

Andy tried to look repentant.

“I declare I’ll tan you,” said the lady. “Git out this instant. What
rascality have you been in?”

“I fetched home visitors, Ma,” said Andy.

“Visitors!” cried the lady. “What ‘ll your Uncle Crawford say?" And she
looked at us smiling, but with no great hostility.

“Pardon me, Madam,” said my father, “if we seem to intrude. But my mare
is tired, and we have nowhere to stay.”

Uncle Crawford did take us in. He was a man of substance in that
country,--a north of Ireland man by birth, if I remember right.

I went to bed with the red-headed boy, whose name was Andy Jackson. I
remember that his mother came into our little room under the eaves and
made Andy say his prayers, and me after him. But when she was gone
out, Andy stumped his toe getting into bed in the dark and swore with a
brilliancy and vehemence that astonished me.

It was some hours before we went to sleep, he plying me with questions
about my life, which seemed to interest him greatly, and I returning in
kind.

“My Pa’s dead,” said Andy. “He came from a part of Ireland where they
are all weavers. We’re kinder poor relations here. Aunt Crawford’s
sick, and Ma keeps house. But Uncle Crawford’s good, an’ lets me go to
Charlotte Town with him sometimes.”

I recall that he also boasted some about his big brothers, who were away
just then.

Andy was up betimes in the morning, to see us start. But we didn’t
start, because Mr. Crawford insisted that the white mare should have a
half day’s rest. Andy, being hustled off unwillingly to the “Old Field”
 school, made me go with him. He was a very headstrong boy.

I was very anxious to see a school. This one was only a log house in a
poor, piny place, with a rabble of boys and girls romping at the door.
But when they saw us they stopped. Andy jumped into the air, let out a
war-whoop, and flung himself into the midst, scattering them right and
left, and knocking one boy over and over. “I’m Billy Buck!” he cried.
“I’m a hull regiment o’ Rangers. Let th’ Cherokees mind me!”

“Way for Sandy Andy!” cried the boys. “Where’d you get the new boy,
Sandy?”

“His name’s Davy,” said Andy, “and his Pa’s goin’ to fight the
Cherokees. He kin lick tarnation out’n any o’ you.”

Meanwhile I held back, never having been thrown with so many of my own
kind.

“He’s shot painters and b’ars,” said Andy. “An’ skinned ‘em. Kin you
lick him, Smally? I reckon not.”

Now I had not come to the school for fighting. So I held back.
Fortunately for me, Smally held back also. But he tried skilful tactics.

“He kin throw you, Sandy.”

Andy faced me in an instant.

“Kin you?” said he.

There was nothing to do but try, and in a few seconds we were rolling on
the ground, to the huge delight of Smally and the others, Andy shouting
all the while and swearing. We rolled and rolled and rolled in the mud,
until we both lost our breath, and even Andy stopped swearing, for want
of it. After a while the boys were silent, and the thing became grim
earnest. At length, by some accident rather than my own strength, both
his shoulders touched the ground. I released him. But he was on his feet
in an instant and at me again like a wildcat.

“Andy won’t stay throwed,” shouted a boy. And before I knew it he had
my shoulders down in a puddle. Then I went for him, and affairs were
growing more serious than a wrestle, when Smally, fancying himself safe,
and no doubt having a grudge, shouted out:--

“Tell him he slobbers, Davy.”

Andy did slobber. But that was the end of me, and the beginning of
Smally. Andy left me instantly, not without an intimation that he
would come back, and proceeded to cover Smally with red clay and blood.
However, in the midst of this turmoil the schoolmaster arrived,
haled both into the schoolhouse, held court, and flogged Andrew with
considerable gusto. He pronounced these words afterwards, with great
solemnity:--

“Andrew Jackson, if I catch ye fightin’ once more, I’ll be afther givin’
ye lave to lave the school.”

I parted from Andy at noon with real regret. He was the first boy with
whom I had ever had any intimacy. And I admired him: chiefly, I fear,
for his fluent use of profanity and his fighting qualities. He was a
merry lad, with a wondrous quick temper but a good heart. And he seemed
sorry to say good-by. He filled my pockets with June apples--unripe, by
the way--and told me to remember him when I got till Charlestown.

I remembered him much longer than that, and usually with a shock of
surprise.


CHAPTER III. CHARLESTOWN

Down and down we went, crossing great rivers by ford and ferry, until
the hills flattened themselves and the country became a long stretch
of level, broken by the forests only; and I saw many things I had not
thought were on the earth. Once in a while I caught glimpses of great
red houses, with stately pillars, among the trees. They put me in mind
of the palaces in Bunyan, their windows all golden in the morning sun;
and as we jogged ahead, I pondered on the delights within them. I saw
gangs of negroes plodding to work along the road, an overseer riding
behind them with his gun on his back; and there were whole cotton fields
in these domains blazing in primrose flower,--a new plant here, so my
father said. He was willing to talk on such subjects. But on others, and
especially our errand to Charlestown, he would say nothing. And I knew
better than to press him.

One day, as we were crossing a dike between rice swamps spread with
delicate green, I saw the white tops of wagons flashing in the sun at
the far end of it. We caught up with them, the wagoners cracking their
whips and swearing at the straining horses. And lo! in front of the
wagons was an army,--at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men
clad in homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling
along the road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers
rode, and many of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,--some the
worse for wear. My father was pushing the white mare into the ditch to
ride by, when one hailed him.

“Hullo, my man,” said he, “are you a friend to Congress?”

“I’m off to Charlestown to leave the lad,” said my father, “and then to
fight the Cherokees.”

“Good,” said the other. And then, “Where are you from?”

“Upper Yadkin,” answered my father. “And you?”

The officer, who was a young man, looked surprised. But then he laughed
pleasantly.

“We’re North Carolina troops, going to join Lee in Charlestown,” said
he. “The British are sending a fleet and regiments against it.”

“Oh, aye,” said my father, and would have passed on. But he was made to
go before the Colonel, who plied him with many questions. Then he gave
us a paper and dismissed us.

We pursued our journey through the heat that shimmered up from the road,
pausing now and again in the shade of a wayside tree. At times I thought
I could bear the sun no longer. But towards four o’clock of that day
a great bank of yellow cloud rolled up, darkening the earth save for
a queer saffron light that stained everything, and made our very faces
yellow. And then a wind burst out of the east with a high mournful note,
as from a great flute afar, filling the air with leaves and branches of
trees. But it bore, too, a savor that was new to me,--a salt savor, deep
and fresh, that I drew down into my lungs. And I knew that we were near
the ocean. Then came the rain, in great billows, as though the ocean
itself were upon us.

The next day we crossed a ferry on the Ashley River, and rode down the
sand of Charlestown neck. And my most vivid remembrance is of the great
trunks towering half a hundred feet in the air, with a tassel of leaves
at the top, which my father said were palmettos. Something lay heavy
on his mind. For I had grown to know his moods by a sort of silent
understanding. And when the roofs and spires of the town shone over the
foliage in the afternoon sun, I felt him give a great sigh that was like
a sob.

And how shall I describe the splendor of that city? The sandy streets,
and the gardens of flower and shade, heavy with the plant odors; and the
great houses with their galleries and porticos set in the midst of the
gardens, that I remember staring at wistfully. But before long we
came to a barricade fixed across the street, and then to another. And
presently, in an open space near a large building, was a company of
soldiers at drill.

It did not strike me as strange then that my father asked his way of no
man, but went to a little ordinary in a humbler part of the town. After
a modest meal in a corner of the public room, we went out for a stroll.
Then, from the wharves, I saw the bay dotted with islands, their white
sand sparkling in the evening light, and fringed with strange trees,
and beyond, of a deepening blue, the ocean. And nearer,--greatest of
all delights to me,--riding on the swell was a fleet of ships. My father
gazed at them long and silently, his palm over his eyes.

“Men-o’-war from the old country, lad,” he said after a while. “They’re
a brave sight.”

“And why are they here?” I asked.

“They’ve come to fight,” said he, “and take the town again for the
King.”

It was twilight when we turned to go, and then I saw that many of the
warehouses along the wharves were heaps of ruins. My father said this
was that the town might be the better defended.

We bent our way towards one of the sandy streets where the great houses
were. And to my surprise we turned in at a gate, and up a path leading
to the high steps of one of these. Under the high portico the door was
open, but the house within was dark. My father paused, and the hand he
held to mine trembled. Then he stepped across the threshold, and raising
the big polished knocker that hung on the panel, let it drop. The sound
reverberated through the house, and then stillness. And then, from
within, a shuffling sound, and an old negro came to the door. For an
instant he stood staring through the dusk, and broke into a cry.

“Marse Alec!” he said.

“Is your master at home?” said my father.

Without another word he led us through a deep hall, and out into a
gallery above the trees of a back garden, where a gentleman sat smoking
a long pipe. The old negro stopped in front of him.

“Marse John,” said he, his voice shaking, “heah’s Marse Alec done come
back.”

The gentleman got to his feet with a start. His pipe fell to the floor,
and the ashes scattered on the boards and lay glowing there.

“Alec!” he cried, peering into my father’s face, “Alec! You’re not
dead.”

“John,” said my father, “can we talk here?”

“Good God!” said the gentleman, “you’re just the same. To think of
it--to think of it! Breed, a light in the drawing-room.”

There was no word spoken while the negro was gone, and the time seemed
very long. But at length he returned, a silver candlestick in each hand.

“Careful,” cried the gentleman, petulantly, “you’ll drop them.”

He led the way into the house, and through the hall to a massive door of
mahogany with a silver door-knob. The grandeur of the place awed me,
and well it might. Boylike, I was absorbed in this. Our little mountain
cabin would almost have gone into this one room. The candles threw their
flickering rays upward until they danced on the high ceiling. Marvel
of marvels, in the oval left clear by the heavy, rounded cornice was a
picture.

The negro set down the candles on the marble top of a table. But the air
of the room was heavy and close, and the gentleman went to a window and
flung it open. It came down instantly with a crash, so that the panes
rattled again.

“Curse these Rebels,” he shouted, “they’ve taken our window weights to
make bullets.”

Calling to the negro to pry open the window with a walking-stick, he
threw himself into a big, upholstered chair. ‘Twas then I remarked the
splendor of his clothes, which were silk. And he wore a waistcoat all
sewed with flowers. With a boy’s intuition, I began to dislike him
intensely.

“Damn the Rebels!” he began. “They’ve driven his Lordship away. I hope
his Majesty will hang every mother’s son of ‘em. All pleasure of life is
gone, and they’ve folly enough to think they can resist the fleet. And
the worst of it is,” cried he, “the worst of it is, I’m forced to smirk
to them, and give good gold to their government.” Seeing that my father
did not answer, he asked: “Have you joined the Highlanders? You were
always for fighting.”

“I’m to be at Cherokee Ford on the twentieth,” said my father. “We’re to
scalp the redskins and Cameron, though ‘tis not known.”

“Cameron!” shrieked the gentleman. “But that’s the other side, man!
Against his Majesty?”

“One side or t’other,” said my father, “‘tis all one against Alec
Cameron.”

The gentleman looked at my father with something like terror in his
eyes.

“You’ll never forgive Cameron,” he said.

“I’ll no forgive anybody who does me a wrong,” said my father.

“And where have you been all these years, Alec?” he asked presently.
“Since you went off with--”

“I’ve been in the mountains, leading a pure life,” said my father. “And
we’ll speak of nothing, if you please, that’s gone by.”

“And what will you have me do?” said the gentleman, helplessly.

“Little enough,” said my father. “Keep the lad till I come again. He’s
quiet. He’ll no trouble you greatly. Davy, this is Mr. Temple. You’re to
stay with him till I come again.”

“Come here, lad,” said the gentleman, and he peered into my face.
“You’ll not resemble your mother.”

“He’ll resemble no one,” said my father, shortly. “Good-by, Davy. Keep
this till I come again.” And he gave me the parcel made of my mother’s
gown. Then he lifted me in his strong arms and kissed me, and strode
out of the house. We listened in silence as he went down the steps, and
until his footsteps died away on the path. Then the gentleman rose and
pulled a cord hastily. The negro came in.

“Put the lad to bed, Breed,” said he.

“Whah, suh?”

“Oh, anywhere,” said the master. He turned to me. “I’ll be better able
to talk to you in the morning, David,” said he.

I followed the old servant up the great stairs, gulping down a sob that
would rise, and clutching my mother’s gown tight under my arm. Had my
father left me alone in our cabin for a fortnight, I should not have
minded. But here, in this strange house, amid such strange surroundings,
I was heartbroken. The old negro was very kind. He led me into a little
bedroom, and placing the candle on a polished dresser, he regarded me
with sympathy.

“So you’re Miss Lizbeth’s boy,” said he. “An’ she dade. An’ Marse Alec
rough an’ hard es though he been bo’n in de woods. Honey, ol’ Breed ‘ll
tek care ob you. I’ll git you one o’ dem night rails Marse Nick has, and
some ob his’n close in de mawnin’.”

These things I remember, and likewise sobbing myself to sleep in the
four-poster. Often since I have wished that I had questioned Breed
of many things on which I had no curiosity then, for he was my chief
companion in the weeks that followed. He awoke me bright and early the
next day.

“Heah’s some close o’ Marse Nick’s you kin wear, honey,” he said.

“Who is Master Nick?” I asked.

Breed slapped his thigh.

“Marse Nick Temple, Marsa’s son. He’s ‘bout you size, but he ain’ no mo’
laik you den a jack rabbit’s laik an’ owl. Dey ain’ none laik Marse Nick
fo’ gittin’ into trouble--and gittin’ out agin.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“He at Temple Bow, on de Ashley Ribber. Dat’s de Marsa’s barony.”

“His what?”

“De place whah he lib at, in de country.”

“And why isn’t the master there?”

I remember that Breed gave a wink, and led me out of the window onto a
gallery above the one where we had found the master the night before.
He pointed across the dense foliage of the garden to a strip of water
gleaming in the morning sun beyond.

“See dat boat?” said the negro. “Sometime de Marse he tek ar ride in dat
boat at night. Sometime gentlemen comes heah in a pow’ful hurry to git
away, out’n de harbor whah de English is at.”

By that time I was dressed, and marvellously uncomfortable in Master
Nick’s clothes. But as I was going out of the door, Breed hailed me.

“Marse Dave,”--it was the first time I had been called that,--“Marse
Dave, you ain’t gwineter tell?”

“Tell what?” I asked.

“Bout’n de boat, and Marsa agwine away nights.”

“No,” said I, indignantly.

“I knowed you wahn’t,” said Breed. “You don’ look as if you’d tell
anything.”

We found the master pacing the lower gallery. At first he barely glanced
at me, and nodded. After a while he stopped, and began to put to me many
questions about my life: when and how I had lived. And to some of my
answers he exclaimed, “Good God!” That was all. He was a handsome man,
with hands like a woman’s, well set off by the lace at his sleeves. He
had fine-cut features, and the white linen he wore was most becoming.

“David,” said he, at length, and I noted that he lowered his voice,
“David, you seem a discreet lad. Pay attention to what I tell you. And
mark! if you disobey me, you will be well whipped. You have this house
and garden to play in, but you are by no means to go out at the front of
the house. And whatever you may see or hear, you are to tell no one. Do
you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“For the rest,” said he, “Breed will give you food, and look out for
your welfare.”

And so he dismissed me. They were lonely days after that for a boy used
to activity, and only the damp garden paths and lawns to run on. The
creek at the back of the garden was stagnant and marshy when the water
fell, and overhung by leafy boughs. On each side of the garden was a
high brick wall. And though I was often tempted to climb it, I felt
that disobedience was disloyalty to my father. Then there was the great
house, dark and lonely in its magnificence, over which I roamed until I
knew every corner of it.

I was most interested of all in the pictures of men and women in quaint,
old-time costumes, and I used during the great heat of the day to sit in
the drawing-room and study these, and wonder who they were and when they
lived. Another amusement I had was to climb into the deep windows
and peer through the blinds across the front garden into the street.
Sometimes men stopped and talked loudly there, and again a rattle of
drums would send me running to see the soldiers. I recall that I had a
poor enough notion of what the fighting was all about. And no wonder.
But I remember chiefly my insatiable longing to escape from this prison,
as the great house soon became for me. And I yearned with a yearning I
cannot express for our cabin in the hills and the old life there.

I caught glimpses of the master on occasions only, and then I avoided
him; for I knew he had no wish to see me. Sometimes he would be seated
in the gallery, tapping his foot on the floor, and sometimes pacing the
garden walks with his hands opening and shutting. And one night I awoke
with a start, and lay for a while listening until I heard something like
a splash, and the scraping of the bottom-boards of a boat. Irresistibly
I jumped out of bed, and running to the gallery rail I saw two dark
figures moving among the leaves below. The next morning I came suddenly
on a strange gentleman in the gallery. He wore a flowered dressing-gown
like the one I had seen on the master, and he had a jolly, round face. I
stopped and stared.

“Who the devil are you?” said he, but not unkindly.

“My name is David Trimble,” said I, “and I come from the mountains.”

He laughed.

“Mr. David Trimble-from-the-mountains, who the devil am I?”

“I don’t know, sir,” and I started to go away, not wishing to disturb
him.

“Avast!” he cried. “Stand fast. See that you remember that.”

“I’m not here of my free will, sir, but because my father wishes it. And
I’ll betray nothing.”

Then he stared at me.

“How old did you say you were?” he demanded.

“I didn’t say,” said I.

“And you are of Scotch descent?” said he.

“I didn’t say so, sir.”

“You’re a rum one,” said he, laughing again, and he disappeared into the
house.

That day, when Breed brought me my dinner on my gallery, he did not
speak of a visitor. You may be sure I did not mention the circumstance.
But Breed always told me the outside news.

“Dey’s gittin’ ready fo’ a big fight, Marse Dave,” said he. “Mister
Moultrie in the fo’t in de bay, an’ Marse Gen’l Lee tryin’ for to boss
him. Dey’s Rebels. An’ Marse Admiral Parker an’ de King’s reg’ments
fixin’ fo’ to tek de fo’t, an’ den Charlesto’n. Dey say Mister Moultrie
ain’t got no mo’ chance dan a treed ‘possum.”

“Why, Breed?” I asked. I had heard my father talk of England’s power and
might, and Mister Moultrie seemed to me a very brave man in his little
fort.

“Why!” exclaimed the old negro. “You ain’t neber read no hist’ry books.
I knows some of de gentlemen wid Mister Moultrie. Dey ain’t no soldiers.
Some is fine gentlemen, to be suah, but it’s jist foolishness to fight
dat fleet an’ army. Marse Gen’l Lee hisself, he done sesso. I heerd
him.”

“And he’s on Mister Moultrie’s side?” I asked.

“Sholy,” said Breed. “He’s de Rebel gen’l.”

“Then he’s a knave and a coward!” I cried with a boy’s indignation.
“Where did you hear him say that?” I demanded, incredulous of some of
Breed’s talk.

“Right heah in dis house,” he answered, and quickly clapped his hand to
his mouth, and showed the whites of his eyes. “You ain’t agwineter tell
dat, Marse Dave?”

“Of course not,” said I. And then: “I wish I could see Mister Moultrie
in his fort, and the fleet.”

“Why, honey, so you kin,” said Breed.

The good-natured negro dropped his work and led the way upstairs, I
following expectant, to the attic. A rickety ladder rose to a kind of
tower (cupola, I suppose it would be called), whence the bay spread out
before me like a picture, the white islands edged with the whiter lacing
of the waves. There, indeed, was the fleet, but far away, like toy ships
on the water, and the bit of a fort perched on the sandy edge of an
island. I spent most of that day there, watching anxiously for some
movement. But none came.

That night I was again awakened. And running into the gallery, I heard
quick footsteps in the garden. Then there was a lantern’s flash, a
smothered oath, and all was dark again. But in the flash I had seen
distinctly three figures. One was Breed, and he held the lantern;
another was the master; and the third, a stout one muffled in a cloak,
I made no doubt was my jolly friend. I lay long awake, with a boy’s
curiosity, until presently the dawn broke, and I arose and dressed, and
began to wander about the house. No Breed was sweeping the gallery, nor
was there any sign of the master. The house was as still as a tomb, and
the echoes of my footsteps rolled through the halls and chambers. At
last, prompted by curiosity and fear, I sought the kitchen, where I had
often sat with Breed as he cooked the master’s dinner. This was at the
bottom and end of the house. The great fire there was cold, and the pots
and pans hung neatly on their hooks, untouched that day. I was running
through the wet garden, glad to be out in the light, when a sound
stopped me.

It was a dull roar from the direction of the bay. Almost instantly came
another, and another, and then several broke together. And I knew that
the battle had begun. Forgetting for the moment my loneliness, I ran
into the house and up the stairs two at a time, and up the ladder into
the cupola, where I flung open the casement and leaned out.

There was the battle indeed,--a sight so vivid to me after all
these years that I can call it again before me when I will. The toy
men-o’-war, with sails set, ranging in front of the fort. They looked
at my distance to be pressed against it. White puffs, like cotton balls,
would dart one after another from a ship’s side, melt into a cloud,
float over her spars, and hide her from my view. And then presently the
roar would reach me, and answering puffs along the line of the fort.
And I could see the mortar shells go up and up, leaving a scorched trail
behind, curve in a great circle, and fall upon the little garrison.
Mister Moultrie became a real person to me then, a vivid picture in my
boyish mind--a hero beyond all other heroes.

As the sun got up in the heavens and the wind fell, the cupola became
a bake-oven. But I scarcely felt the heat. My whole soul was out in the
bay, pent up with the men in the fort. How long could they hold out? Why
were they not all killed by the shot that fell like hail among them? Yet
puff after puff sprang from their guns, and the sound of it was like a
storm coming nearer in the heat. But at noon it seemed to me as though
some of the ships were sailing. It was true. Slowly they drew away from
the others, and presently I thought they had stopped again. Surely two
of them were stuck together, then three were fast on a shoal. Boats,
like black bugs in the water, came and went between them and the others.
After a long time the two that were together got apart and away. But the
third stayed there, immovable, helpless.

Throughout the afternoon the fight kept on, the little black boats
coming and going. I saw a mast totter and fall on one of the ships. I
saw the flag shot away from the fort, and reappear again. But now the
puffs came from her walls slowly and more slowly, so that my heart sank
with the setting sun. And presently it grew too dark to see aught save
the red flashes. Slowly, reluctantly, the noise died down until at last
a great silence reigned, broken only now and again by voices in the
streets below me. It was not until then that I realized that I had been
all day without food--that I was alone in the dark of a great house.

I had never known fear in the woods at night. But now I trembled as I
felt my way down the ladder, and groped and stumbled through the black
attic for the stairs. Every noise I made seemed louder an hundred fold
than the battle had been, and when I barked my shins, the pain was
sharper than a knife. Below, on the big stairway, the echo of my
footsteps sounded again from the empty rooms, so that I was taken with a
panic and fled downward, sliding and falling, until I reached the hall.
Frantically as I tried, I could not unfasten the bolts on the front
door. And so, running into the drawing-room, I pried open the window,
and sat me down in the embrasure to think, and to try to quiet the
thumpings of my heart.

By degrees I succeeded. The still air of the night and the heavy, damp
odors of the foliage helped me. And I tried to think what was right for
me to do. I had promised the master not to leave the place, and that
promise seemed in pledge to my father. Surely the master would come
back--or Breed. They would not leave me here alone without food much
longer. Although I was young, I was brought up to responsibility. And I
inherited a conscience that has since given me much trouble.

From these thoughts, trying enough for a starved lad, I fell to thinking
of my father on the frontier fighting the Cherokees. And so I dozed away
to dream of him. I remember that he was skinning Cameron,--I had often
pictured it,--and Cameron yelling, when I was awakened with a shock by a
great noise.

I listened with my heart in my throat. The noise seemed to come from the
hall,--a prodigious pounding. Presently it stopped, and a man’s voice
cried out:--

“Ho there, within!”

My first impulse was to answer. But fear kept me still.

“Batter down the door,” some one shouted.

There was a sound of shuffling in the portico, and the same voice:--

“Now then, all together, lads!”

Then came a straining and splitting of wood, and with a crash the door
gave way. A lantern’s rays shot through the hall.

“The house is as dark as a tomb,” said a voice.

“And as empty, I reckon,” said another. “John Temple and his spy have
got away.”

“We’ll have a search,” answered the first voice.

They stood for a moment in the drawing-room door, peering, and then they
entered. There were five of them. Two looked to be gentlemen, and three
were of rougher appearance. They carried lanterns.

“That window’s open,” said one of the gentlemen. “They must have been
here to-day. Hello, what’s this?” He started back in surprise.

I slid down from the window-seat, and stood facing them, not knowing
what else to do. They, too, seemed equally confounded.

“It must be Temple’s son,” said one, at last. “I had thought the family
at Temple Bow. What’s your name, my lad?”

“David Trimble, sir,” said I.

“And what are you doing here?” he asked more sternly.

“I was left in Mr. Temple’s care by my father.”

“Oho!” he cried. “And where is your father?”

“He’s gone to fight the Cherokees,” I answered soberly. “To skin a man
named Cameron.”

At that they were silent for an instant, and then the two broke into a
laugh.

“Egad, Lowndes,” said the gentleman, “here is a fine mystery. Do you
think the boy is lying?”

The other gentleman scratched his forehead.

“I’ll have you know I don’t lie, sir,” I said, ready to cry.

“No,” said the other gentleman. “A backwoodsman named Trimble went
to Rutledge with credentials from North Carolina, and has gone off to
Cherokee Ford to join McCall.”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the first gentleman. He came up and laid his
hand on my shoulder, and said:--

“Where is Mr. Temple?”

“That I don’t know, sir.”

“When did he go away?”

I did not answer at once.

“That I can’t tell you, sir.”

“Was there any one with him?”

“That I can’t tell you, sir.”

“The devil you can’t!” he cried, taking his hand away. “And why not?”

I shook my head, sorely beset.

“Come, Mathews,” cried the gentleman called Lowndes. “We’ll search
first, and attend to the lad after.”

And so they began going through the house, prying into every cupboard
and sweeping under every bed. They even climbed to the attic; and noting
the open casement in the cupola, Mr. Lowndes said:--

“Some one has been here to-day.”

“It was I, sir,” I said. “I have been here all day.”

“And what doing, pray?” he demanded.

“Watching the battle. And oh, sir,” I cried, “can you tell me whether
Mister Moultrie beat the British?”

“He did so,” cried Mr. Lowndes. “He did, and soundly.”

He stared at me. I must have looked my pleasure.

“Why, David,” says he, “you are a patriot, too.”

“I am a Rebel, sir,” I cried hotly.

Both gentlemen laughed again, and the men with them.

“The lad is a character,” said Mr. Lowndes.

We made our way down into the garden, which they searched last. At the
creek’s side the boat was gone, and there were footsteps in the mud.

“The bird has flown, Lowndes,” said Mr. Mathews.

“And good riddance for the Committee,” answered that gentleman,
heartily. “He got to the fleet in fine season to get a round shot in the
middle. David,” said he, solemnly, “remember it never pays to try to be
two things at once.”

“I’ll warrant he stayed below water,” said Mr. Mathews. “But what shall
we do with the lad?”

“I’ll take him to my house for the night,” said Mr. Lowndes, “and in the
morning we’ll talk to him. I reckon he should be sent to Temple Bow. He
is connected in some way with the Temples.”

“God help him if he goes there,” said Mr. Mathews, under his breath. But
I heard him.

They locked up the house, and left one of the men to guard it, while
I went with Mr. Lowndes to his residence. I remember that people were
gathered in the streets as we passed, making merry, and that they
greeted Mr. Lowndes with respect and good cheer. His house, too, was
set in a garden and quite as fine as Mr. Temple’s. It was ablaze with
candles, and I caught glimpses of fine gentlemen and ladies in the
rooms. But he hurried me through the hall, and into a little chamber at
the rear where a writing-desk was set. He turned and faced me.

“You must be tired, David,” he said.

I nodded.

“And hungry? Boys are always hungry.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You had no dinner?”

“No, sir,” I answered, off my guard.

“Mercy!” he said. “It is a long time since breakfast.”

“I had no breakfast, sir.”

“Good God!” he said, and pulled the velvet handle of a cord. A negro
came.

“Is the supper for the guests ready?”

“Yes, Marsa.”

“Then bring as much as you can carry here,” said the gentleman. “And ask
Mrs. Lowndes if I may speak with her.”

Mrs. Lowndes came first. And such a fine lady she was that she
frightened me, this being my first experience with ladies. But when Mr.
Lowndes told her my story, she ran to me impulsively and put her arms
about me.

“Poor lad!” she said. “What a shame!”

I think that the tears came then, but it was small wonder. There were
tears in her eyes, too.

Such a supper as I had I shall never forget. And she sat beside me for
long, neglecting her guests, and talking of my life. Suddenly she turned
to her husband, calling him by name.

“He is Alec Ritchie’s son,” she said, “and Alec has gone against
Cameron.”

Mr. Lowndes did not answer, but nodded.

“And must he go to Temple Bow?”

“My dear,” said Mr. Lowndes, “I fear it is our duty to send him there.”


CHAPTER IV. TEMPLE BOW

In the morning I started for Temple Bow on horseback behind one of Mr.
Lowndes’ negroes. Good Mrs. Lowndes had kissed me at parting, and
tucked into my pocket a parcel of sweetmeats. There had been a few grave
gentlemen to see me, and to their questions I had replied what I could.
But tell them of Mr. Temple I would not, save that he himself had told
me nothing. And Mr. Lowndes had presently put an end to their talk.

“The lad knows nothing, gentlemen,” he had said, which was true.

“David,” said he, when he bade me farewell, “I see that your father has
brought you up to fear God. Remember that all you see in this life is
not to be imitated.”

And so I went off behind his negro. He was a merry lad, and despite the
great heat of the journey and my misgivings about Temple Bow, he made me
laugh. I was sad at crossing the ferry over the Ashley, through thinking
of my father, but I reflected that it could not be long now ere I saw
him again. In the middle of the day we stopped at a tavern. And at
length, in the abundant shade of evening, we came to a pair of great
ornamental gates set between brick pillars capped with white balls, and
turned into a drive. And presently, winding through the trees, we were
in sight of a long, brick mansion trimmed with white, and a velvet
lawn before it all flecked with shadows. In front of the portico was a
saddled horse, craning his long neck at two panting hounds stretched on
the ground. A negro boy in blue clutched the bridle. On the horse-block
a gentleman in white reclined. He wore shiny boots, and he held his hat
in his hand, and he was gazing up at a lady who stood on the steps above
him.

The lady I remember as well--Lord forbid that I should forget her. And
her laugh as I heard it that evening is ringing now in my ears. And yet
it was not a laugh. Musical it was, yet there seemed no pleasure in it:
rather irony, and a great weariness of the amusements of this world:
and a note, too, from a vanity never ruffled. It stopped abruptly as the
negro pulled up his horse before her, and she stared at us haughtily.

“What’s this?” she said.

“Pardon, Mistis,” said the negro, “I’se got a letter from Marse
Lowndes.”

“Mr. Lowndes should instruct his niggers,” she said. “There is a
servants’ drive.” The man was turning his horse when she cried: “Hold!
Let’s have it.”

He dismounted and gave her the letter, and I jumped to the ground,
watching her as she broke the seal, taking her in, as a boy will, from
the flowing skirt and tight-laced stays of her salmon silk to her
high and powdered hair. She must have been about thirty. Her face was
beautiful, but had no particle of expression in it, and was dotted here
and there with little black patches of plaster. While she was reading,
a sober gentleman in black silk breeches and severe coat came out of the
house and stood beside her.

“Heigho, parson,” said the gentleman on the horse-block, without moving,
“are you to preach against loo or lansquenet to-morrow?”

“Would it make any difference to you, Mr. Riddle?”

Before he could answer there came a great clatter behind them, and a boy
of my own age appeared. With a leap he landed sprawling on the indolent
gentleman’s shoulders, nearly upsetting him.

“You young rascal!” exclaimed the gentleman, pitching him on the drive
almost at my feet; then he fell back again to a position where he could
look up at the lady.

“Harry Riddle,” cried the boy, “I’ll ride steeplechases and beat you
some day.”

“Hush, Nick,” cried the lady, petulantly, “I’ll have no nerves left me.”
 She turned to the letter again, holding it very near to her eyes,
and made a wry face of impatience. Then she held the sheet out to Mr.
Riddle.

“A pretty piece of news,” she said languidly. “Read it, Harry.”

The gentleman seized her hand instead. The lady glanced at the
clergyman, whose back was turned, and shook her head.

“How tiresome you are!” she said.

“What’s happened?” asked Mr. Riddle, letting go as the parson looked
around.

“Oh, they’ve had a battle,” said the lady, “and Moultrie and his Rebels
have beat off the King’s fleet.”

“The devil they have!” exclaimed Mr. Riddle, while the parson started
forwards. “Anything more?”

“Yes, a little.” She hesitated. “That husband of mine has fled
Charlestown. They think he went to the fleet.” And she shot a meaning
look at Mr. Riddle, who in turn flushed red. I was watching them.

“What!” cried the clergyman, “John Temple has run away?”

“Why not,” said Mr. Riddle. “One can’t live between wind and water long.
And Charlestown’s--uncomfortable in summer.”

At that the clergyman cast one look at them--such a look as I shall
never forget--and went into the house.

“Mamma,” said the boy, “where has father gone? Has he run away?”

“Yes. Don’t bother me, Nick.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried Nick, his high voice shaking. “I’d--I’d
disown him.”

At that Mr. Riddle burst into a hearty laugh.

“Come, Nick,” said he, “it isn’t so bad as that. Your father’s for his
Majesty, like the rest of us. He’s merely gone over to fight for him.”
 And he looked at the lady and laughed again. But I liked the boy.

As for the lady, she curled her lip. “Mr. Riddle, don’t be foolish,” she
said. “If we are to play, send your horse to the stables.” Suddenly her
eye lighted on me. “One more brat,” she sighed. “Nick, take him to the
nursery, or the stable. And both of you keep out of my sight.”

Nick strode up to me.

“Don’t mind her. She’s always saying, ‘Keep out of my sight.’” His voice
trembled. He took me by the sleeve and began pulling me around the house
and into a little summer bower that stood there; for he had a masterful
manner.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“David Trimble,” I said.

“Have you seen my father in town?”

The intense earnestness of the question surprised an answer out of me.

“Yes.”

“Where?” he demanded.

“In his house. My father left me with your father.”

“Tell me about it.”

I related as much as I dared, leaving out Mr. Temple’s double dealing;
which, in truth, I did not understand. But the boy was relentless.

“Why,” said he, “my father was a friend of Mr. Lowndes and Mr. Mathews.
I have seen them here drinking with him. And in town. And he ran away?”

“I do not know where he went,” said I, which was the truth.

He said nothing, but hid his face in his arms over the rail of the
bower. At length he looked up at me fiercely.

“If you ever tell this, I will kill you,” he cried. “Do you hear?”

That made me angry.

“Yes, I hear,” I said. “But I am not afraid of you.”

He was at me in an instant, knocking me to the floor, so that the breath
went out of me, and was pounding me vigorously ere I recovered from the
shock and astonishment of it and began to defend myself. He was taller
than I, and wiry, but not so rugged. Yet there was a look about him
that was far beyond his strength. A look that meant, never say die.
Curiously, even as I fought desperately I compared him with that other
lad I had known, Andy Jackson. And this one, though not so powerful,
frightened me the more in his relentlessness.

Perhaps we should have been fighting still had not some one pulled us
apart, and when my vision cleared I saw Nick, struggling and kicking,
held tightly in the hands of the clergyman. And it was all that
gentleman could do to hold him. I am sure it was quite five minutes
before he forced the lad, exhausted, on to the seat. And then there
was a defiance about his nostrils that showed he was undefeated. The
clergyman, still holding him with one hand, took out his handkerchief
with the other and wiped his brow.

I expected a scolding and a sermon. To my amazement the clergyman said
quietly:--

“Now what was the trouble, David?”

“I’ll not be the one to tell it, sir,” I said, and trembled at my
temerity.

The parson looked at me queerly.

“Then you are in the right of it,” he said. “It is as I thought; I’ll
not expect Nicholas to tell me.”

“I will tell you, sir,” said Nicholas. “He was in the house with my
father when--when he ran away. And I said that if he ever spoke of it to
any one, I would kill him.”

For a while the clergyman was silent, gazing with a strange tenderness
at the lad, whose face was averted.

“And you, David?” he said presently.

“I--I never mean to tell, sir. But I was not to be frightened.”

“Quite right, my lad,” said the clergyman, so kindly that it sent a
strange thrill through me. Nicholas looked up quickly.

“You won’t tell?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“You can let me go now, Mr. Mason,” said he. Mr. Mason did. And he came
over and sat beside me, but said nothing more.

After a while Mr. Mason cleared his throat.

“Nicholas,” said he, “when you grow older you will understand these
matters better. Your father went away to join the side he believes in,
the side we all believe in--the King’s side.”

“Did he ever pretend to like the other side?” asked Nick, quickly.

“When you grow older you will know his motives,” answered the clergyman,
gently. “Until then; you must trust him.”

“You never pretended,” cried Nick.

“Thank God I never was forced to do so,” said the clergyman, fervently.

It is wonderful that the conditions of our existence may wholly change
without a seeming strangeness. After many years only vivid snatches of
what I saw and heard and did at Temple Bow come back to me. I understood
but little the meaning of the seigniorial life there. My chief wonder
now is that its golden surface was not more troubled by the winds then
brewing. It was a new life to me, one that I had not dreamed of.

After that first falling out, Nick and I became inseparable. Far slower
than he in my likes and dislikes, he soon became a passion with me.
Even as a boy, he did everything with a grace unsurpassed; the dash and
daring of his pranks took one’s breath; his generosity to those he loved
was prodigal. Nor did he ever miss a chance to score those under his
displeasure. At times he was reckless beyond words to describe, and
again he would fall sober for a day. He could be cruel and tender in the
same hour; abandoned and freezing in his dignity. He had an old negro
mammy whose worship for him and his possessions was idolatry. I can hear
her now calling and calling, “Marse Nick, honey, yo’ supper’s done got
cole,” as she searched patiently among the magnolias. And suddenly there
would be a shout, and Mammy’s turban go flying from her woolly head, or
Mammy herself would be dragged down from behind and sat upon.

We had our supper, Nick and I, at twilight, in the children’s dining
room. A little white room, unevenly panelled, the silver candlesticks
and yellow flames fantastically reflected in the mirrors between the
deep windows, and the moths and June-bugs tilting at the lights. We sat
at a little mahogany table eating porridge and cream from round blue
bowls, with Mammy to wait on us. Sometimes there floated in upon us the
hum of revelry from the great drawing-room where Madame had her company.
Often the good Mr. Mason would come in to us (he cared little for the
parties), and talk to us of our day’s doings. Nick had his lessons from
the clergyman in the winter time.

Mr. Mason took occasion once to question me on what I knew. Some of
my answers, in especial those relating to my knowledge of the Bible,
surprised him. Others made him sad.

“David,” said he, “you are an earnest lad, with a head to learn, and you
will. When your father comes, I shall talk with him.” He paused--“I knew
him,” said he, “I knew him ere you were born. A just man, and upright,
but with a great sorrow. We must never be hasty in our judgments. But
you will never be hasty, David,” he added, smiling at me. “You are a
good companion for Nicholas.”

Nicholas and I slept in the same bedroom, at a corner of the long house,
and far removed from his mother. She would not be disturbed by the
noise he made in the mornings. I remember that he had cut in the solid
shutters of that room, folded into the embrasures, “Nicholas Temple, His
Mark,” and a long, flat sword. The first night in that room we slept but
little, near the whole of it being occupied with tales of my adventures
and of my life in the mountains. Over and over again I must tell him of
the “painters” and wildcats, of deer and bear and wolf. Nor was he ever
satisfied. And at length I came to speak of that land where I had often
lived in fancy--the land beyond the mountains of which Daniel Boone had
told. Of its forest and glade, its countless herds of elk and buffalo,
its salt-licks and Indians, until we fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

“I will go there,” he cried in the morning, as he hurried into his
clothes; “I will go to that land as sure as my name is Nick Temple. And
you shall go with me, David.”

“Perchance I shall go before you,” I answered, though I had small hopes
of persuading my father.

He would often make his exit by the window, climbing down into the
garden by the protruding bricks at the corner of the house; or sometimes
go shouting down the long halls and through the gallery to the great
stairway, a smothered oath from behind the closed bedroom doors
proclaiming that he had waked a guest. And many days we spent in the
wood, playing at hunting game--a poor enough amusement for me, and one
that Nick soon tired of. They were thick, wet woods, unlike our woods
of the mountains; and more than once we had excitement enough with the
snakes that lay there.

I believe that in a week’s time Nick was as conversant with my life as I
myself. For he made me tell of it again and again, and of Kentucky.
And always as he listened his eyes would glow and his breast heave with
excitement.

“Do you think your father will take you there, David, when he comes for
you?”

I hoped so, but was doubtful.

“I’ll run away with you,” he declared. “There is no one here who cares
for me save Mr. Mason and Mammy.”

And I believe he meant it. He saw but little of his mother, and nearly
always something unpleasant was coupled with his views. Sometimes we
ran across her in the garden paths walking with a gallant,--oftenest Mr.
Riddle. It was a beautiful garden, with hedge-bordered walks and flowers
wondrously massed in color, a high brick wall surrounding it. Frequently
Mrs. Temple and Mr. Riddle would play at cards there of an afternoon,
and when that musical, unbelieving laugh of hers came floating over the
wall, Nick would say:--

“Mamma is winning.”

Once we heard high words between the two, and running into the garden
found the cards scattered on the grass, and the couple gone.

Of all Nick’s escapades,--and he was continually in and out of them,--I
recall only a few of the more serious. As I have said, he was a wild
lad, sobered by none of the things which had gone to make my life, and
what he took into his head to do he generally did,--or, if balked, flew
into such a rage as to make one believe he could not live. Life was
always war with him, or some semblance of a struggle. Of his many wild
doings I recall well the time when--fired by my tales of hunting--he
went out to attack the young bull in the paddock with a bow and arrow.
It made small difference to the bull that the arrow was too blunt to
enter his hide. With a bellow that frightened the idle negroes at the
slave quarters, he started for Master Nick. I, who had been taught by
my father never to run any unnecessary risk, had taken the precaution to
provide as large a stone as I could comfortably throw, and took station
on the fence. As the furious animal came charging, with his head
lowered, I struck him by a good fortune between the eyes, and Nicholas
got over. We were standing on the far side, watching him pawing the
broken bow, when, in the crowd of frightened negroes, we discovered the
parson beside us.

“David,” said he, patting me with a shaking hand, “I perceive that you
have a cool head. Our young friend here has a hot one. Dr. Johnson may
not care for Scotch blood, and yet I think a wee bit of it is not to be
despised.”

I wondered whether Dr. Johnson was staying in the house, too.

How many slaves there were at Temple Bow I know not, but we used to see
them coming home at night in droves, the overseers riding beside them
with whips and guns. One day a huge Congo chief, not long from Africa,
nearly killed an overseer, and escaped to the swamp. As the day fell,
we heard the baying of the bloodhounds hot upon his trail. More ominous
still, a sound like a rising wind came from the direction of the
quarters. Into our little dining-room burst Mrs. Temple herself,
slamming the door behind her. Mr. Mason, who was sitting with us, rose
to calm her.

“The Rebels!” she cried. “The Rebels have taught them this, with their
accursed notions of liberty and equality. We shall all be murdered by
the blacks because of the Rebels. Oh, hell-fire is too good for them.
Have the house barred and a watch set to-night. What shall we do?”

“I pray you compose yourself, Madame,” said the clergyman. “We can send
for the militia.”

“The militia!” she shrieked; “the Rebel militia! They would murder us as
soon as the niggers.”

“They are respectable men,” answered Mr. Mason, “and were at Fanning
Hall to-day patrolling.”

“I would rather be killed by whites than blacks,” said the lady. “But
who is to go for the militia?”

“I will ride for them,” said Mr. Mason. It was a dark, lowering night,
and spitting rain.

“And leave me defenceless!” she cried. “You do not stir, sir.”

“It is a pity,” said Mr. Mason--he was goaded to it, I suppose--“‘tis a
pity Mr. Riddle did not come to-night.”

She shot at him a withering look, for even in her fear she would brook
no liberties. Nick spoke up:--

“I will go,” said he; “I can get through the woods to Fanning Hall--”

“And I will go with him,” I said.

“Let the brats go,” she said, and cut short Mr. Mason’s expostulations.
She drew Nick to her and kissed him. He wriggled away, and without more
ado we climbed out of the dining-room windows into the night. Running
across the lawn, we left the lights of the great house twinkling behind
us in the rain. We had to pass the long line of cabins at the quarters.
Three overseers with lanterns stood guard there; the cabins were dark,
the wretches within silent and cowed. Thence we felt with our feet
for the path across the fields, stumbled over a sty, and took our way
through the black woods. I was at home here, and Nick was not to be
frightened. At intervals the mournful bay of a bloodhound came to us
from a distance.

“Suppose we should meet the Congo chief,” said Nick, suddenly.

The idea had occurred to me.

“She needn’t have been so frightened,” said he, in scornful remembrance
of his mother’s actions.

We pressed on. Nick knew the path as only a boy can. Half an hour
passed. It grew brighter. The rain ceased, and a new moon shot out
between the leaves. I seized his arm.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

“A deer.”

But I, cradled in woodcraft, had heard plainly a man creeping through
the underbrush beside us. Fear of the Congo chief and pity for the
wretch tore at my heart. Suddenly there loomed in front of us, on the
path, a great, naked man. We stood with useless limbs, staring at him.

Then, from the trees over our heads, came a chittering and a chattering
such as I had never heard. The big man before us dropped to the
earth, his head bowed, muttering. As for me, my fright increased. The
chattering stopped, and Nick stepped forward and laid his hand on the
negro’s bare shoulder.

“We needn’t be afraid of him now, Davy,” he said. “I learned that trick
from a Portuguese overseer we had last year.”

“You did it!” I exclaimed, my astonishment overcoming my fear.

“It’s the way the monkeys chatter in the Canaries,” he said. “Manuel had
a tame one, and I heard it talk. Once before I tried it on the chief,
and he fell down. He thinks I’m a god.”

It must have been a weird scene to see the great negro following two
boys in the moonlight. Indeed, he came after us like a dog. At length we
were in sight of the lights of Fanning Hall. The militia was there. We
were challenged by the guard, and caused sufficient amazement when we
appeared in the hall before the master, who was a bachelor of fifty.

“‘Sblood, Nick Temple!” he cried, “what are you doing here with that big
Congo for a dog? The sight of him frightens me.”

The negro, indeed, was a sight to frighten one. The black mud of the
swamps was caked on him, and his flesh was torn by brambles.

“He ran away,” said Nick; “and I am taking him home.”

“You--you are taking him home!” sputtered Mr. Fanning.

“Do you want to see him act?” said Nick. And without waiting for a reply
he filled the hall with a dozen monkeys. Mr. Fanning leaped back into
a doorway, but the chief prostrated himself on the floor. “Now do you
believe I can take him home?” said Nick.

“‘Swounds!” said Mr. Fanning, when he had his breath. “You beat the
devil, Nicholas Temple. The next time you come to call I pray you leave
your travelling show at home.”

“Mamma sent me for the militia,” said Nick.

“She did!” said Mr. Fanning, looking grim. “An insurrection is a bad
thing, but there was no danger for two lads in the woods, I suppose.”

“There’s no danger anyway,” said Nick. “The niggers are all scared to
death.”

Mr. Fanning burst out into a loud laugh, stopped suddenly, sat down, and
took Nick on his knee. It was an incongruous scene. Mr. Fanning almost
cried.

“Bless your soul,” he said, “but you are a lad. Would to God I had you
instead of--”

He paused abruptly.

“I must go home,” said Nick; “she will be worried.”

“She will be worried!” cried Mr. Fanning, in a burst of anger. Then he
said: “You shall have the militia. You shall have the militia.” He rang
a bell and sent his steward for the captain, a gawky country farmer, who
gave a gasp when he came upon the scene in the hall.

“And mind,” said Nick to the captain, “you are to keep your men away
from him, or he will kill one of them.”

The captain grinned at him curiously.

“I reckon I won’t have to tell them to keep away,” said he.

Mr. Fanning started us off for the walk with pockets filled with
sweetmeats, which we nibbled on the way back. We made a queer
procession, Nick and I striding ahead to show the path, followed by
the now servile chief, and after him the captain and his twenty men
in single file. It was midnight when we saw the lights of Temple Bow
through the trees. One of the tired overseers met us near the kitchen.
When he perceived the Congo his face lighted up with rage, and he
instinctively reached for his whip. But the chief stood before him,
immovable, with arms folded, and a look on his face that meant danger.

“He will kill you, Emory,” said Nick; “he will kill you if you touch
him.”

Emory dropped his hand, limply.

“He will go to work in the morning,” said Nick; “but mind you, not a
lash.”

“Very good, Master Nick,” said the man; “but who’s to get him in his
cabin?”

“I will,” said Nick. He beckoned to the Congo, who followed him over to
quarters and went in at his door without a protest.

The next morning Mrs. Temple looked out of her window and saw the
militiamen on the lawn.

“Pooh!” she said, “are those butternuts the soldiers that Nick went to
fetch?”


CHAPTER V. CRAM’S HELL

After that my admiration for Nick Temple increased greatly, whether
excited by his courage and presence of mind, or his ability to imitate
men and women and creatures, I know not. One of our amusements, I
recall, was to go to the Congo’s cabin to see him fall on his face,
until Mr. Mason put a stop to it. The clergyman let us know that we were
encouraging idolatry, and he himself took the chief in hand.

Another incident comes to me from those bygone days. The fear of negro
insurrections at the neighboring plantations being temporarily lulled,
the gentry began to pluck up courage for their usual amusements. There
were to be races at some place a distance away, and Nick was determined
to go. Had he not determined that I should go, all would have been well.
The evening before he came upon his mother in the garden. Strange to
say, she was in a gracious mood and alone.

“Come and kiss me, Nick,” she said. “Now, what do you want?”

“I want to go to the races,” he said.

“You have your pony. You can follow the coach.”

“David is to ride the pony,” said Nick, generously. “May I go in the
coach?”

“No,” she said, “there is no room for you.”

Nicholas flared up. “Harry Riddle is going in the coach. I don’t see why
you can’t take me sometimes. You like him better than me.”

The lady flushed very red.

“How dare you, Nick!” she cried angrily. “What has Mr. Mason been
putting into your head?”

“Nothing,” said Nick, quite as angrily. “Any one can see that you like
Harry. And I will ride in the coach.”

“You’ll not,” said his mother.

I had heard nothing of this. The next morning he led out his pony from
the stables for me to ride, and insisted. And, supposing he was to go
in the coach, I put foot in the stirrup. The little beast would scarce
stand still for me to mount.

“You’ll not need the whip with her,” said Nick, and led her around by
the side of the house, in view of the portico, and stood there at her
bridle. Presently, with a great noise and clatter of hoofs, the coach
rounded the drive, the powdered negro coachman pulling up the four
horses with much ceremony at the door. It was a wondrous great vehicle,
the bright colors of its body flashing in the morning light. I had
examined it more than once, and with awe, in the coach-house. It had
glass windows and a lion on a blue shield on the door, and within it was
all salmon silk, save the painted design on the ceiling. Great leather
straps held up this house on wheels, to take the jolts of the road. And
behind it was a platform. That morning two young negroes with flowing
blue coats stood on it. They leaped to the ground when the coach
stopped, and stood each side of the door, waiting for my lady to enter.

She came down the steps, laughing, with Mr. Riddle, who was in his
riding clothes, for he was to race that day. He handed her in, and got
in after her. The coachman cracked his whip, the coach creaked off
down the drive, I in the trees one side waiting for them to pass, and
wondering what Nick was to do. He had let go my bridle, folded his whip
in his hand, and with a shout of “Come on, Davy,” he ran for the coach,
which was going slowly, caught hold of the footman’s platform, and
pulled himself up.

What possessed the footman I know not. Perchance fear of his mistress
was greater than fear of his young master; but he took the lad by the
shoulders--gently, to be sure--and pushed him into the road, where he
fell and rolled over. I guessed what would happen. Picking himself up,
Nick was at the man like a hurricane, seizing him swiftly by the leg.
The negro fell upon the platform, clutching wildly, where he lay in a
sheer fright, shrieking for mercy, his cries rivalled by those of the
lady within. The coachman frantically pulled his horses to a stand, the
other footman jumped off, and Mr. Harry Riddle came flying out of the
coach door, to behold Nicholas beating the negro with his riding-whip.

“You young devil,” cried Mr. Riddle, angrily, striding forward, “what
are you doing?”

“Keep off, Harry,” said Nicholas. “I am teaching this nigger that he
is not to lay hands on his betters.” With that he gave the boy one more
cut, and turned from him contemptuously.

“What is it, Harry?” came in a shrill voice from within the coach.

“It’s Nick’s pranks,” said Mr. Riddle, grinning in spite of his anger;
“he’s ruined one of your footmen. You little scoundrel,” cried Mr.
Riddle, advancing again, “you’ve frightened your mother nearly to a
swoon.”

“Serves her right,” said Nick.

“What!” cried Mr. Riddle. “Come down from there instantly.”

Nick raised his whip. It was not that that stopped Mr. Riddle, but a
sign about the lad’s nostrils.

“Harry Riddle,” said the boy, “if it weren’t for you, I’d be riding in
this coach to-day with my mother. I don’t want to ride with her, but
I will go to the races. If you try to take me down, I’ll do my best to
kill you,” and he lifted the loaded end of the whip.

Mrs. Temple’s beautiful face had by this time been thrust out of the
door.

“For the love of heaven, Harry, let him come in with us. We’re late
enough as it is.”

Mr. Riddle turned on his heel. He tried to glare at Nick, but he broke
into a laugh instead.

“Come down, Satan,” says he. “God help the woman you love and the man
you fight.”

And so Nicholas jumped down, and into the coach. The footman picked
himself up, more scared than injured, and the vehicle took its lumbering
way for the race-course, I following.

I have seen many courses since, but none to equal that in the gorgeous
dress of those who watched. There had been many, many more in former
years, so I heard people say. This was the only sign that a war was
in progress,--the scanty number of gentry present,--for all save the
indifferent were gone to Charlestown or elsewhere. I recall it dimly,
as a blaze of color passing: merrymaking, jesting, feasting,--a rare
contrast, I thought, to the sight I had beheld in Charlestown Bay but
a while before. Yet so runs the world,--strife at one man’s home, and
peace and contentment at his neighbor’s; sorrow here, and rejoicing not
a league away.

Master Nicholas played one prank that evening that was near to costing
dear. My lady Temple made up a party for Temple Bow at the course, two
other coaches to come and some gentlemen riding. As Nick and I were
running through the paddock we came suddenly upon Mr. Harry Riddle and
a stout, swarthy gentleman standing together. The stout gentleman was
counting out big gold pieces in his hand and giving them to Mr. Riddle.

“Lucky dog!” said the stout gentleman; “you’ll ride back with her, and
you’ve won all I’ve got.” And he dug Mr. Riddle in the ribs.

“You’ll have it again when we play to-night, Darnley,” answered Mr.
Riddle, crossly. “And as for the seat in the coach, you are welcome to
it. That firebrand of a lad is on the front seat.”

“D--n the lad,” said the stout gentleman. “I’ll take it, and you can
ride my horse. He’ll--he’ll carry you, I reckon.” His voice had a way of
cracking into a mellow laugh.

At that Mr. Riddle went off in a towering bad humor, and afterwards I
heard him cursing the stout gentleman’s black groom as he mounted his
great horse. And then he cursed the horse as it reared and plunged,
while the stout gentleman stood at the coach door, cackling at his
discomfiture. The gentleman did ride home with Mrs. Temple, Nick going
into another coach. I afterwards discovered that the gentleman had
bribed him with a guinea. And Mr. Riddle more than once came near
running down my pony on his big charger, and he swore at me roundly,
too.

That night there was a gay supper party in the big dining room at Temple
Bow. Nick and I looked on from the gallery window. It was a pretty
sight. The long mahogany board reflecting the yellow flames of the
candles, and spread with bright silver and shining dishes loaded with
dainties, the gentlemen and ladies in brilliant dress, the hurrying
servants,--all were of a new and strange world to me. And presently,
after the ladies were gone, the gentlemen tossed off their wine and
roared over their jokes, and followed into the drawing-room. This I
noticed, that only Mr. Harry Riddle sat silent and morose, and that he
had drunk more than the others.

“Come, Davy,” said Nick to me, “let’s go and watch them again.”

“But how?” I asked, for the drawing-room windows were up some distance
from the ground, and there was no gallery on that side.

“I’ll show you,” said he, running into the garden. After searching
awhile in the dark, he found a ladder the gardener had left against a
tree; after much straining, we carried the ladder to the house and
set it up under one of the windows of the drawing-room. Then we both
clambered cautiously to the top and looked in.

The company were at cards, silent, save for a low remark now and again.
The little tables were ranged along by the windows, and it chanced that
Mr. Harry Riddle sat so close to us that we could touch him. On his
right sat Mr. Darnley, the stout gentleman, and in the other seats two
ladies. Between Mr. Riddle and Mr. Darnley was a pile of silver and gold
pieces. There was not room for two of us in comfort at the top of the
ladder, so I gave place to Nick, and sat on a lower rung. Presently I
saw him raise himself, reach in, and duck quickly.

“Feel that,” he whispered to me, chuckling and holding out his hand.

It was full of money.

“But that’s stealing, Nick,” I said, frightened.

“Of course I’ll give it back,” he whispered indignantly.

Instantly there came loud words and the scraping of chairs within the
room, and a woman’s scream. I heard Mr. Riddle’s voice say thickly, amid
the silence that followed:--

“Mr. Darnley, you’re a d--d thief, sir.”

“You shall answer for this, when you are sober, sir,” said Mr. Darnley.

Then there came more scraping of chairs, all the company talking
excitedly at once. Nick and I scrambled to the ground, and we did the
very worst thing we could possibly have done,--we took the ladder away.

There was little sleep for me that night. I had first of all besought
Nick to go up into the drawing-room and give the money back. But some
strange obstinacy in him resisted.

“‘Twill serve Harry well for what he did to-day,” said he.

My next thought was to find Mr. Mason, but he was gone up the river to
visit a sick parishioner. I had seen enough of the world to know that
gentlemen fought for less than what had occurred in the drawing-room
that evening. And though I had neither love nor admiration for Mr.
Riddle, and though the stout gentleman was no friend of mine, I cared
not to see either of them killed for a prank. But Nick would not listen
to me, and went to sleep in the midst of my urgings.

“Davy,” said he, pinching me, “do you know what you are?”

“No,” said I.

“You’re a granny,” he said. And that was the last word I could get out
of him. But I lay awake a long time, thinking. Breed had whiled away
for me one hot morning in Charlestown with an account of the gentry and
their doings, many of which he related in an awed whisper that I could
not understand. They were wild doings indeed to me. But strangest of all
seemed the duels, conducted with a decorum and ceremony as rigorous as
the law.

“Did you ever see a duel, Breed?” I had asked.

“Yessah,” said Breed, dramatically, rolling the whites of his eyes.

“Where?”

“Whah? Down on de riveh bank at Temple Bow in de ea’ly mo’nin’! Dey mos’
commonly fights at de dawn.”

Breed had also told me where he was in hiding at the time, and that was
what troubled me. Try as I would, I could not remember. It had sounded
like Clam Shell. That I recalled, and how Breed had looked out at the
sword-play through the cracks of the closed shutters, agonized between
fear of ghosts within and the drama without. At the first faint light
that came into our window I awakened Nick.

“Listen,” I said; “do you know a place called Clam Shell?”

He turned over, but I punched him persistently until he sat up.

“What the deuce ails you, Davy?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “Have you
nightmare?”

“Do you know a place called Clam Shell, down on the river bank, Nick?”

“Why,” he replied, “you must be thinking of Cram’s Hell.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a house that used to belong to Cram, who was an overseer. The
niggers hated him, and he was killed in bed by a big black nigger
chief from Africa. The niggers won’t go near the place. They say it’s
haunted.”

“Get up,” said I; “we’re going there now.”

Nick sprang out of bed and began to get into his clothes.

“Is it a game?” he asked.

“Yes.” He was always ready for a game.

We climbed out of the window, and made our way in the mist through the
long, wet grass, Nick leading. He took a path through a dark forest
swamp, over logs that spanned the stagnant waters, and at length,
just as the mist was growing pearly in the light, we came out at a
tumble-down house that stood in an open glade by the river’s bank.

“What’s to do now?” said Nick.

“We must get into the house,” I answered. But I confess I didn’t care
for the looks of it.

Nick stared at me.

“Very good, Davy,” he said; “I’ll follow where you go.”

It was a Saturday morning. Why I recall this I do not know. It has no
special significance.

I tried the door. With a groan and a shriek it gave way, disclosing the
blackness inside. We started back involuntarily. I looked at Nick, and
Nick at me. He was very pale, and so must I have been. But such was the
respect we each held for the other’s courage that neither dared flinch.
And so I walked in, although it seemed as if my shirt was made of needle
points and my hair stood on end. The crackings of the old floor were to
me like the shots in Charlestown Bay. Our hearts beating wildly, we made
our way into a farther room. It was like walking into the beyond.

“Is there a window here?” I asked Nick, my voice sounding like a shout.

“Yes, ahead of us.”

Groping for it, I suddenly received a shock that set me reeling. Human
nature could stand no more. We both turned tail and ran out of the house
as fast as we could, and stood in the wet grass, panting. Then shame
came.

“Let’s open the window first,” I suggested. So we walked around the
house and pried the solid shutter from its fastenings. Then, gathering
our courage, we went in again at the door. In the dim light let into
the farther room we saw a four-poster bed, old and cheap, with ragged
curtains. It was this that I had struck in my groping.

“The chief killed Cram there,” said Nick, in an awed voice, “in that
bed. What do you want to do here, Davy?”

“Wait,” I said, though I had as little mind to wait as ever in my life.
“Stand here by the window.”

We waited there. The mist rose. The sun peeped over the bank of dense
green forest and spread rainbow colors on the still waters of the river.
Now and again a fish broke, or a great bird swooped down and slit the
surface. A far-off snatch of melody came to our ears,--the slaves were
going to work. Nothing more. And little by little grave misgivings
gnawed at my soul of the wisdom of coming to this place. Doubtless there
were many other spots.

“Davy,” said Nick, at last, “I’m sorry I took that money. What are we
here for?”

“Hush!” I whispered; “do you hear anything?”

I did, and distinctly. For I had been brought up in the forest.

“I hear voices,” he said presently, “coming this way.”

They were very clear to me by then. Emerging from the forest path
were five gentlemen. The leader, more plainly dressed than the others,
carried a leather case. Behind him was the stout figure of Mr. Darnley,
his face solemn; and last of all came Mr. Harry Riddle, very pale, but
cutting the tops of the long grass with a switch. Nick seized my arm.

“They are going to fight,” said he.

“Yes,” I replied, “and we are here to stop them, now.”

“No, not now,” he said, holding me still. “We’ll have some more fun out
of this yet.”

“Fun?” I echoed.

“Yes,” he said excitedly. “Leave it to me. I shan’t let them fight.”

And that instant we changed generals, David giving place to Nicholas.

Mr. Riddle retired with one gentleman to a side of the little patch of
grass, and Mr. Darnley and a friend to another. The fifth gentleman took
a position halfway between the two, and, opening the leather case, laid
it down on the grass, where its contents glistened.

“That’s Dr. Ball,” whispered Nick. And his voice shook with excitement.

Mr. Riddle stripped off his coat and waistcoat and ruffles, and his
sword-belt, and Mr. Darnley did the same. Both gentlemen drew their
swords and advanced to the middle of the lawn, and stood opposite one
another, with flowing linen shirts open at the throat, and bared heads.
They were indeed a contrast. Mr. Riddle, tall and white, with closed
lips, glared at his opponent. Mr. Darnley cut a merrier figure,--rotund
and flushed, with fat calves and short arms, though his countenance was
sober enough. All at once the two were circling their swords in the air,
and then Nick had flung open the shutter and leaped through the window,
and was running and shouting towards the astonished gentlemen, all of
whom wheeled to face him. He jingled as he ran.

“What in the devil’s name now?” cried Mr. Riddle, angrily. “Here’s this
imp again.”

Nicholas stopped in front of him, and, thrusting his hand in his
breeches pocket, fished out a handful of gold and silver, which he held
out to the confounded Mr. Riddle.

“Harry,” said he, “here’s something of yours I found last night.”

“You found?” echoed Mr. Riddle, in a strange voice, amidst a dead
silence. “You found where?”

“On the table beside you.”

“And where the deuce were you?” Mr. Riddle demanded.

“In the window behind you,” said Nick, calmly.

This piece of information, to Mr. Riddle’s plain discomfiture, was
greeted with a roar of laughter, Mr. Darnley himself laughing loudest.
Nor were these gentlemen satisfied with that. They crowded around Mr.
Riddle and slapped him on the back, Mr. Darnley joining in with the
rest. And presently Mr. Riddle flung away his sword, and laughed, too,
giving his hand to Mr. Darnley.

At length Mr. Darnley turned to Nick, who had stood all this while
behind them, unmoved.

“My friend,” said he, seriously, “such is your regard for human life,
you will probably one day be a pirate or an outlaw. This time we’ve
had a laugh. The next time somebody will be weeping. I wish I were your
father.”

“I wish you were,” said Nick.

This took Mr. Darnley’s breath. He glanced at the other gentlemen, who
returned his look significantly. He laid his hand kindly on the lad’s
head.

“Nick,” said he, “I wish to God I were your father.”

After that they all went home, very merry, to breakfast, Nick and I
coming after them. Nick was silent until we reached the house.

“Davy,” said he, then, “how old are you?”

“Ten,” I answered. “How old did you believe me?”

“Eighty,” said he.

The next day, being Sunday, we all gathered in the little church to hear
Mr. Mason preach. Nick and I sat in the high box pew of the family with
Mrs. Temple, who paid not the least attention to the sermon. As for me,
the rhythm of it held me in fascination. Mr. Mason had written it out
and that afternoon read over this part of it to Nick. The quotation I
recall, having since read it many times, and the gist of it was in this
wise:--

“And he said unto him, ‘What thou wilt have thou wilt have, despite
the sin of it. Blessed are the stolid, and thrice cursed he who hath
imagination,--for that imagination shall devour him. And in thy life a
sin shall be presented unto thee with a great longing. God, who is in
heaven, gird thee for that struggle, my son, for it will surely come.
That it may be said of you, ‘Behold, I have refined thee, but not with
silver, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.’ Seven days
shalt thou wrestle with thy soul; seven nights shall evil haunt thee,
and how thou shalt come forth from that struggle no man may know.’”



CHAPTER VI. MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES

A week passed, and another Sunday came,--a Sunday so still and hot and
moist that steam seemed to rise from the heavy trees,--an idle day for
master and servant alike. A hush was in the air, and a presage of we
knew not what. It weighed upon my spirits, and even Nick’s, and we
wandered restlessly under the trees, seeking for distraction.

About two o’clock a black line came on the horizon, and slowly crept
higher until it broke into giant, fantastic shapes. Mutterings arose,
but the sun shone hot as ever.

“We’re to have a hurricane,” said Nick. “I wish we might have it and be
done with it.”

At five the sun went under. I remember that Madame was lolling listless
in the garden, daintily arrayed in fine linen, trying to talk to Mr.
Mason, when a sound startled us. It was the sound of swift hoof beats on
the soft drive.

Mrs. Temple got up, an unusual thing. Perchance she was expecting a
message from some of the gentlemen; or else she may well have been
tired of Mr. Mason. Nick and I were before her, and, running through the
house, arrived at the portico in time to see a negro ride up on a horse
covered with lather.

It was the same negro who had fetched me hither from Mr. Lowndes. And
when I saw him my heart stood still lest he had brought news of my
father.

“What’s to do, boy?” cried Nicholas to him.

The boy held in his hand a letter with a great red seal.

“Fo’ Mistis Temple,” he said, and, looking at me queerly, he took off
his cap as he jumped from the horse. Mistress Temple herself having
arrived, he handed her the letter. She took it, and broke the seal
carelessly.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s only from Mr. Lowndes. I wonder what he wishes
now.”

Every moment of her reading was for me an agony, and she read slowly.
The last words she spoke aloud:--

“‘If you do not wish the lad, send him to me, as Kate is very fond of
him.’ So Kate is very fond of him,” she repeated. And handing the letter
to Mr. Mason, she added, “Tell him, Parson.”

The words burned into my soul and seared it. And to this day I tremble
with anger as I think of them. The scene comes before me: the sky, the
darkened portico, and Nicholas running after his mother crying: “Oh,
mamma, how could you! How could you!”

Mr. Mason bent over me in compassion, and smoothed my hair.

“David,” said he, in a thick voice, “you are a brave boy, David. You
will need all your courage now, my son. May God keep your nature sweet!”

He led me gently into the arbor and told me how, under Captain Baskin,
the detachment had been ambushed by the Cherokees; and how my father,
with Ensign Calhoun and another, had been killed, fighting bravely.
The rest of the company had cut their way through and reached the
settlements after terrible hardships.

I was left an orphan.

I shall not dwell here on the bitterness of those moments. We have all
known sorrows in our lives,--great sorrows. The clergyman was a wise
man, and did not strive to comfort me with words. But he sat there
under the leaves with his arm about me until a blinding bolt split the
blackness of the sky and the thunder rent our ears, and a Caribbean
storm broke over Temple Bow with all the fury of the tropics. Then he
led me through the drenching rain into the house, nor heeded the wet
himself on his Sunday coat.

A great anger stayed me in my sorrow. I would no longer tarry under Mrs.
Temple’s roof, though the world without were a sea or a desert. The
one resolution to escape rose stronger and stronger within me, and I
determined neither to eat nor sleep until I had got away. The thought
of leaving Nick was heavy indeed; and when he ran to me in the dark hall
and threw his arms around me, it needed all my strength to keep from
crying aloud.

“Davy,” he said passionately, “Davy, you mustn’t mind what she says.
She never means anything she says--she never cares for anything save her
pleasure. You and I will stay here until we are old enough to run away
to Kentucky. Davy! Answer me, Davy!”

I could not, try as I would. There were no words that would come with
honesty. But I pulled him down on the mahogany settle near the door
which led into the back gallery, and there we sat huddled together in
silence, while the storm raged furiously outside and the draughts banged
the great doors of the house. In the lightning flashes I saw Nick’s
face, and it haunted me afterwards through many years of wandering. On
it was written a sorrow for me greater than my own sorrow. For God had
given to this lad every human passion and compassion.

The storm rolled away with the night, and Mammy came through the hall
with a candle.

“Whah is you, Marse Nick? Whah is you, honey? You’ suppah’s ready.”

And so we went into our little dining room, but I would not eat. The
good old negress brushed her eyes with her apron as she pressed a
cake upon me she had made herself, for she had grown fond of me. And
presently we went away silently to bed.

It was a long, long time before Nick’s breathing told me that he was
asleep. He held me tightly clutched to him, and I know that he feared I
would leave him. The thought of going broke my heart, but I never once
wavered in my resolve, and I lay staring into the darkness, pondering
what to do. I thought of good Mr. Lowndes and his wife, and I decided
to go to Charlestown. Some of my boyish motives come back to me now:
I should be near Nick; and even at that age,--having lived a life of
self-reliance,--I thought of gaining an education and of rising to a
place of trust. Yes, I would go to Mr. Lowndes, and ask him to let me
work for him and so earn my education.

With a heavy spirit I crept out of bed, slowly disengaging Nick’s arm
lest he should wake. He turned over and sighed in his sleep. Carefully
I dressed myself, and after I was dressed I could not refrain from
slipping to the bedside to bend over him once again,--for he was the
only one in my life with whom I had found true companionship. Then I
climbed carefully out of the window, and so down the corner of the house
to the ground.

It was starlight, and a waning moon hung in the sky. I made my way
through the drive between the black shadows of the forest, and came at
length to the big gates at the entrance, locked for the night. A strange
thought of their futility struck me as I climbed the rail fence beside
them, and pushed on into the main road, the mud sucking under my shoes
as I went. As I try now to cast my memory back I can recall no fear,
only a vast sense of loneliness, and the very song of it seemed to be
sung in never ending refrain by the insects of the night. I had been
alone in the mountains before. I have crossed great strips of wilderness
since, but always there was love to go back to. Then I was leaving the
only being in the world that remained to me.

I must have walked two hours or more before I came to the mire of a
cross-road, and there I stood in a quandary of doubt as to which side
led to Charlestown.

As I lingered a light began to tremble in the heavens. A cock crew in
the distance. I sat down on a fallen log to rest. But presently, as the
light grew, I heard shouts which drew nearer and deeper and brought me
to my feet in an uncertainty of expectation. Next came the rattling of
chains, the scramble of hoofs in the mire, and here was a wagon with
a big canvas cover. Beside the straining horses was a great, burly man
with a red beard, cracking his long whip, and calling to the horses in a
strange tongue. He stopped still beside his panting animals when he saw
me, his high boots sunk in the mud.

“Gut morning, poy,” he said, wiping his red face with his sleeve; “what
you do here?”

“I am going to Charlestown,” I answered.

“Ach!” he cried, “dot is pad. Mein poy, he run avay. You are ein gut
poy, I know. I vill pay ein gut price to help me vit mein wagon--ja.”

“Where are you going?” I demanded, with a sudden wavering.

“Up country--pack country. You know der Proad River--yes?”

No, I did not. But a longing came upon me for the old backwoods life,
with its freedom and self-reliance, and a hatred for this steaming
country of heat and violent storms, and artificiality and pomp. And I
had a desire, even at that age, to make my own way in the world.

“What will you give me?” I asked.

At that he put his finger to his nose.

“Thruppence py the day.”

I shook my head. He looked at me queerly.

“How old you pe,--twelve, yes?”

Now I had no notion of telling him. So I said: “Is this the Charlestown
road?”

“Fourpence!” he cried, “dot is riches.”

“I will go for sixpence,” I answered.

“Mein Gott!” he cried, “sixpence. Dot is robbery.” But seeing me
obdurate, he added: “I vill give it, because ein poy I must have. Vat is
your name,--Tavid? You are ein sharp poy, Tavid.”

And so I went with him.

In writing a biography, the relative value of days and years should
hold. There are days which count in space for years, and years for days.
I spent the time on the whole happily with this Dutchman, whose name
was Hans Köppel. He talked merrily save when he spoke of the war against
England, and then contemptuously, for he was a bitter English partisan.
And in contrast to this he would dwell for hours on a king he called
Friedrich der Grosse, and a war he waged that was a war; and how this
mighty king had fought a mighty queen at Rossbach and Leuthen in his own
country,--battles that were battles.

“And you were there, Hans?” I asked him once.

“Ja,” he said, “but I did not stay.”

“You ran away?”

“Ja,” Hans would answer, laughing, “run avay. I love peace, Tavid. Dot
is vy I come here, and now,” bitterly, “and now ve haf var again once.”

I would say nothing; but I must have looked my disapproval, for he went
on to explain that in Saxe-Gotha, where he was born, men were made to
fight whether they would or no; and they were stolen from their wives at
night by soldiers of the great king, or lured away by fair promises.

Travelling with incredible slowness, in due time we came to a county
called Orangeburg, where all were Dutchmen like Hans, and very few spoke
English. And they all thought like Hans, and loved peace, and hated
the Congress. On Sundays, as we lay over at the taverns, these would
be filled with a rollicking crowd of fiddlers and dancers, quaintly
dressed, the women bringing their children and babies. At such times
Hans would be drunk, and I would have to feed the tired horses and mount
watch over the cargo. I had many adventures, but none worth the telling
here. And at length we came to Hans’s farm, in a prettily rolling
country on the Broad River. Hans’s wife spoke no English at all, nor
did the brood of children running about the house. I had small fancy
for staying in such a place, and so Hans paid me two crowns for my three
weeks’ service; I think, with real regret, for labor was scarce in those
parts, and though I was young, I knew how to work. And I could at least
have guided his plough in the furrow and cared for his cattle.

It was the first money I had earned in my life, and a prouder day than
many I have had since.

For the convenience of travellers passing that way, Hans kept a
tavern,--if it could have been dignified by such a name. It was in truth
merely a log house with shakedowns, and stood across the rude road from
his log farmhouse. And he gave me leave to sleep there and to work for
my board until I cared to leave. It so chanced that on the second day
after my arrival a pack-train came along, guided by a nettlesome old man
and a strong, black-haired lass of sixteen or thereabouts. The old man,
whose name was Ripley, wore a nut-brown hunting shirt trimmed with red
cotton; and he had no sooner slipped the packs from his horses than he
began to rail at Hans, who stood looking on.

“You damned Dutchmen be all Tories, and worse,” he cried; “you stay here
and till your farms while our boys are off in the hill towns fighting
Cherokees. I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly
Ann, water the nags.”

Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly
Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with
merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite
her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet.
She had blue eyes, the whitest, strongest of teeth, and the rosiest of
faces.

“Gran’pa hates a Dutchman wuss’n pizen,” she said to me. “So do I. We’ve
all been burned out and sculped up river--and they never give us so much
as a man or a measure of corn.”

I helped her feed the animals, and tether them, and loose their bells
for the night, and carry the packs under cover.

“All the boys is gone to join Rutherford and lam the Indians,” she
continued, “so Gran’pa and I had to go to the settlements. There wahn’t
any one else. What’s your name?” she demanded suddenly.

I told her.

She sat down on a log at the corner of the house, and pulled me down
beside her.

“And whar be you from?”

I told her. It was impossible to look into her face and not tell her.
She listened eagerly, now with compassion, and now showing her white
teeth in amusement. And when I had done, much to my discomfiture, she
seized me in her strong arms and kissed me.

“Poor Davy,” she cried, “you ain’t got a home. You shall come home with
us.”

Catching me by the hand, she ran like a deer across the road to where
her grandfather was still quarrelling violently with Hans, and pulled
him backward by the skirts of his hunting shirt. I looked for another
and mightier explosion from the old backwoodsman, but to my astonishment
he seemed to forget Hans’s existence, and turned and smiled on her
benevolently.

“Polly Ann,” said he, “what be you about now?”

“Gran’pa,” said she, “here’s Davy Trimble, who’s a good boy, and his pa
is just killed by the Cherokees along with Baskin, and he wants work and
a home, and he’s comin’ along with us.”

“All right, David,” answered Mr. Ripley, mildly, “ef Polly Ann says so,
you kin come. Whar was you raised?”

I told him on the upper Yadkin.

“You don’t tell me,” said he. “Did ye ever know Dan’l Boone?”

“I did, indeed, sir,” I answered, my face lighting up. “Can you tell me
where he is now?”

“He’s gone to Kaintuckee, them new settlements, fer good. And ef I
wasn’t eighty years old, I’d go thar, too.”

“I reckon I’ll go thar when I’m married,” said Polly Ann, and blushed
redder than ever. Drawing me to her, she said, “I’ll take you, too,
Davy.”

“When you marry that wuthless Tom McChesney,” said her grandfather,
testily.

“He’s not wuthless,” said Polly, hotly. “He’s the best man in
Rutherford’s army. He’ll git more sculps then any of ‘em,--you see.”

“Tavy is ein gut poy,” Hans put in, for he had recovered his composure.
“I wish much he stay mit me.”

As for me, Polly Ann never consulted me on the subject--nor had she need
to. I would have followed her to kingdom come, and at the thought of
reaching the mountains my heart leaped with joy. We all slept in the one
flea-infested, windowless room of the “tavern” that night; and before
dawn I was up and untethered the horses, and Polly Ann and I together
lifted the two bushels of alum salt on one of the beasts and the
ploughshare on the other. By daylight we had left Hans and his farm
forever.

I can see the lass now, as she strode along the trace by the flowing
river, through sunlight and shadow, straight and supple and strong.
Sometimes she sang like a bird, and the forest rang. Sometimes she would
make fun of her grandfather or of me; and again she would be silent for
an hour at a time, staring ahead, and then I knew she was thinking of
that Tom McChesney. She would wake from those reveries with a laugh, and
give me a push to send me rolling down a bank.

“What’s the matter, Davy? You look as solemn as a wood-owl. What a
little wiseacre you be!”

Once I retorted, “You were thinking of that Tom McChesney.”

“Ay, that she was, I’ll warrant,” snapped her grandfather.

Polly Ann replied, with a merry peal of laughter, “You are both jealous
of Tom--both of you. But, Davy, when you see him you’ll love him as much
as I do.”

“I’ll not,” I said sturdily.

“He’s a man to look upon--”

“He’s a rip-roarer,” old man Ripley put in. “Ye’re daft about him.”

“That I am,” said Polly, flushing and subsiding; “but he’ll not know
it.”

As we rose into the more rugged country we passed more than one charred
cabin that told its silent story of Indian massacre. Only on the
scattered hill farms women and boys and old men were working in the
fields, all save the scalawags having gone to join Rutherford. There
were plenty of these around the taverns to make eyes at Polly Ann and
open love to her, had she allowed them; but she treated them in return
to such scathing tirades that they were glad to desist--all but one. He
must have been an escaped redemptioner, for he wore jauntily a swanskin
three-cornered hat and stained breeches of a fine cloth. He was a bold,
vain fellow.

“My beauty,” says he, as we sat at supper, “silver and Wedgwood better
become you than pewter and a trencher.”

“And I reckon a rope would sit better on your neck than a ruff,”
 retorted Polly Ann, while the company shouted with laughter. But he was
not the kind to become discomfited.

“I’d give a guinea to see you in silk. But I vow your hair looks better
as it is.”

“Not so yours,” said she, like lightning; “‘twould look better to me
hanging on the belt of one of them red devils.”

In the morning, when he would have lifted the pack of alum salt, Polly
Ann gave him a push that sent him sprawling. But she did it in such good
nature withal that the fellow mistook her. He scrambled to his feet,
flung his arm about her waist, and kissed her. Whereupon I hit him with
a sapling, and he staggered and let her go.

“You imp of hell!” he cried, rubbing the bump. He made a vicious dash at
me that boded no good, but I slipped behind the hominy block; and Polly
Ann, who was like a panther on her feet, dashed at him and gave him a
buffet in the cheek that sent him reeling again.

After that we were more devoted friends than ever.

We travelled slowly, day by day, until I saw the mountains lift blue
against the western sky, and the sight of them was like home once more.
I loved them; and though I thought with sadness of my father, I was on
the whole happier with Polly Ann than I had been in the lonely cabin on
the Yadkin. Her spirits flagged a little as she drew near home, but old
Mr. Ripley’s rose.

“There’s Burr’s,” he would say, “and O’Hara’s and Williamson’s,”
marking the cabins set amongst the stump-dotted corn-fields. “And thar,”
sweeping his hand at a blackened heap of logs lying on the stones,
“thar’s whar Nell Tyler and her baby was sculped.”

“Poor Nell,” said Polly Ann, the tears coming into her eyes as she
turned away.

“And Jim Tyler was killed gittin’ to the fort. He can’t say I didn’t
warn him.”

“I reckon he’ll never say nuthin’, now,” said Polly Ann.

It was in truth a dismal sight,--the shapeless timbers, the corn,
planted with such care, choked with weeds, and the poor utensils of
the little family scattered and broken before the door-sill. These same
Indians had killed my father; and there surged up in my breast that
hatred of the painted race felt by every backwoods boy in my time.

Towards the end of the day the trace led into a beautiful green valley,
and in the middle of it was a stream shining in the afternoon sun.
Then Polly Ann fell entirely silent. And presently, as the shadows grew
purple, we came to a cabin set under some spreading trees on a knoll
where a woman sat spinning at the door, three children playing at her
feet. She stared at us so earnestly that I looked at Polly Ann, and saw
her redden and pale. The children were the first to come shouting at us,
and then the woman dropped her wool and ran down the slope straight into
Polly Ann’s arms. Mr. Ripley halted the horses with a grunt.

The two women drew off and looked into each other’s faces. Then Polly
Ann dropped her eyes.

“Have ye--?” she said, and stopped.

“No, Polly Ann, not one word sence Tom and his Pa went. What do folks
say in the settlements?”

Polly Ann turned up her nose.

“They don’t know nuthin’ in the settlements,” she replied.

“I wrote to Tom and told him you was gone,” said the older woman. “I
knowed he’d wanter hear.”

And she looked meaningly at Polly Ann, who said nothing. The children
had been pulling at the girl’s skirts, and suddenly she made a dash at
them. They scattered, screaming with delight, and she after them.

“Howdy, Mr. Ripley?” said the woman, smiling a little.

“Howdy, Mis’ McChesney?” said the old man, shortly.

So this was the mother of Tom, of whom I had heard so much. She was, in
truth, a motherly-looking person, her fleshy face creased with strong
character.

“Who hev ye brought with ye?” she asked, glancing at me.

“A lad Polly Ann took a shine to in the settlements,” said the old
man. “Polly Ann! Polly Ann!” he cried sharply, “we’ll hev to be gittin’
home.” And then, as though an afterthought (which it really was not), he
added, “How be ye for salt, Mis’ McChesney?”

“So-so,” said she.

“Wal, I reckon a little might come handy,” said he. And to the girl who
stood panting beside him, “Polly, give Mis’ McChesney some salt.”

Polly Ann did, and generously,--the salt they had carried with so much
labor threescore and ten miles from the settlements. Then we took our
departure, the girl turning for one last look at Tom’s mother, and at
the cabin where he had dwelt. We were all silent the rest of the way,
climbing the slender trail through the forest over the gap into the next
valley. For I was jealous of Tom. I am not ashamed to own it now.

In the smoky haze that rises just before night lets her curtain fall, we
descended the farther slope, and came to Mr. Ripley’s cabin.


CHAPTER VII. IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE

Polly Ann lived alone with her grandfather, her father and mother having
been killed by Indians some years before. There was that bond between
us, had we needed one. Her father had built the cabin, a large one with
a loft and a ladder climbing to it, and a sleeping room and a kitchen.
The cabin stood on a terrace that nature had levelled, looking across
a swift and shallow stream towards the mountains. There was the truck
patch, with its yellow squashes and melons, and cabbages and beans,
where Polly Ann and I worked through the hot mornings; and the corn
patch, with the great stumps of the primeval trees standing in it. All
around us the silent forest threw its encircling arms, spreading up the
slopes, higher and higher, to crown the crests with the little pines and
hemlocks and balsam fir.

There had been no meat save bacon since the McChesneys had left, for of
late game had become scarce, and old Mr. Ripley was too feeble to go on
the long hunts. So one day, when Polly Ann was gone across the ridge,
I took down the long rifle from the buckhorns over the hearth, and the
hunting knife and powder-horn and pouch beside it, and trudged up the
slope to a game trail I discovered. All day I waited, until the forest
light grew gray, when a buck came and stood over the water, raising
his head and stamping from time to time. I took aim in the notch of a
sapling, brought him down, cleaned and skinned and dragged him into the
water, and triumphantly hauled one of his hams down the trail. Polly Ann
gave a cry of joy when she saw me.

“Davy,” she exclaimed, “little Davy, I reckoned you was gone away from
us. Gran’pa, here is Davy back, and he has shot a deer.”

“You don’t say?” replied Mr. Ripley, surveying me and my booty with a
grim smile.

“How could you, Gran’pa?” said Polly Ann, reproachfully.

“Wal,” said Mr. Ripley, “the gun was gone, an’ Davy. I reckon he ain’t
sich a little rascal after all.”

Polly Ann and I went up the next day, and brought the rest of the buck
merrily homeward. After that I became the hunter of the family; but
oftener than not I returned tired and empty-handed, and ravenously
hungry. Indeed, our chief game was rattlesnakes, which we killed by the
dozens in the corn and truck patches.

As Polly Ann and I went about our daily chores, we would talk of Tom
McChesney. Often she would sit idle at the hand-mill, a light in her
eyes that I would have given kingdoms for. One ever memorable morning,
early in the crisp autumn, a grizzled man strode up the trail, and Polly
Ann dropped the ear of corn she was husking and stood still, her bosom
heaving. It was Mr. McChesney, Tom’s father--alone.

“No, Polly Ann,” he cried, “there ain’t nuthin’ happened. We’ve laid
out the hill towns. But the Virginny men wanted a guide, and Tom
volunteered, and so he ain’t come back with Rutherford’s boys.”

Polly Ann seized him by the shoulders, and looked him in the face.

“Be you tellin’ the truth, Warner McChesney?” she said in a hard voice.

“As God hears me,” said Warner McChesney, solemnly. “He sent ye this.”

He drew from the bosom of his hunting shirt a soiled piece of birch
bark, scrawled over with rude writing. Polly seized it, and flew into
the house.

The hickories turned a flaunting yellow, the oaks a copper-red, the
leaves crackled on the Catawba vines, and still Tom McChesney did not
come. The Cherokees were homeless and houseless and subdued,--their hill
towns burned, their corn destroyed, their squaws and children wanderers.
One by one the men of the Grape Vine settlement returned to save what
they might of their crops, and plough for the next year--Burrs, O’Haras,
Williamsons, and Winns. Yes, Tom had gone to guide the Virginia boys.
All had tales to tell of his prowess, and how he had saved Rutherford’s
men from ambush at the risk of his life. To all of which Polly Ann
listened with conscious pride, and replied with sallies.

“I reckon I don’t care if he never comes back,” she would cry. “If he
likes the Virginny boys more than me, there be others here I fancy more
than him.”

Whereupon the informant, if he were not bound in matrimony, would begin
to make eyes at Polly Ann. Or, if he were bolder, and went at the wooing
in the more demonstrative fashion of the backwoods--Polly Ann had a way
of hitting him behind the ear with most surprising effect.

One windy morning when the leaves were kiting over the valley we were
getting ready for pounding hominy, when a figure appeared on the trail.
Steadying the hood of her sunbonnet with her hand, the girl gazed long
and earnestly, and a lump came into my throat at the thought that the
comer might be Tom McChesney. Polly Ann sat down at the block again in
disgust.

“It’s only Chauncey Dike,” she said.

“Who’s Chauncey Dike?” I asked.

“He reckons he’s a buck,” was all that Polly Ann vouchsafed.

Chauncey drew near with a strut. He had very long black hair, a new
coonskin cap with a long tassel, and a new blue-fringed hunting shirt.
What first caught my eye was a couple of withered Indian scalps that
hung by their long locks from his girdle. Chauncey Dike was certainly
handsome.

“Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?” he cried, when a
dozen paces away.

“I wouldn’t be if you was the only one left ter choose,” Polly Ann
retorted.

Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter. But I
could see that he was not very much pleased.

“Wal,” said he, “I ‘low ye won’t see Tom very soon. He’s gone to
Kaintuckee.”

“Has he?” said Polly Ann, with brave indifference.

“He met a gal on the trail--a blazin’ fine gal,” said Chauncey Dike.
“She was goin’ to Kaintuckee. And Tom--he ‘lowed he’d go ‘long.”

Polly Ann laughed, and fingered the withered pieces of skin at
Chauncey’s girdle.

“Did Tom give you them sculps?” she asked innocently.

Chauncey drew up stiffly.

“Who? Tom McChesney? I reckon he ain’t got none to give. This here’s
from a big brave at Noewee, whar the Virginny boys was surprised.” And
he held up the one with the longest tuft. “He’d liked to tomahawked me
out’n the briers, but I throwed him fust.”

“Shucks,” said Polly Ann, pounding the corn, “I reckon you found him
dead.”

But that night, as we sat before the fading red of the backlog, the old
man dozing in his chair, Polly Ann put her hand on mine.

“Davy,” she said softly, “do you reckon he’s gone to Kaintuckee?”

How could I tell?

The days passed. The wind grew colder, and one subdued dawn we awoke to
find that the pines had fantastic white arms, and the stream ran black
between white banks. All that day, and for many days after, the snow
added silently to the thickness of its blanket, and winter was upon us.
It was a long winter and a rare one. Polly Ann sat by the little window
of the cabin, spinning the flax into linsey-woolsey. And she made a
hunting shirt for her grandfather, and another little one for me which
she fitted with careful fingers. But as she spun, her wheel made the
only music--for Polly Ann sang no more. Once I came on her as she was
thrusting the tattered piece of birch bark into her gown, but she never
spoke to me more of Tom McChesney. When, from time to time, the snow
melted on the hillsides, I sometimes surprised a deer there and shot him
with the heavy rifle. And so the months wore on till spring.

The buds reddened and popped, and the briers grew pink and white.
Through the lengthening days we toiled in the truck patch, but always
as I bent to my work Polly Ann’s face saddened me--it had once been so
bright, and it should have been so at this season. Old Mr. Ripley grew
querulous and savage and hard to please. In the evening, when my work
was done, I often lay on the banks of the stream staring at the high
ridge (its ragged edges the setting sun burned a molten gold), and the
thought grew on me that I might make my way over the mountains into that
land beyond, and find Tom for Polly Ann. I even climbed the watershed to
the east as far as the O’Hara farm, to sound that big Irishman about the
trail. For he had once gone to Kentucky, to come back with his scalp
and little besides. O’Hara, with his brogue, gave me such a terrifying
notion of the horrors of the Wilderness Trail that I threw up all
thought of following it alone, and so I resolved to wait until I heard
of some settlers going over it. But none went from the Grape Vine
settlement that spring.

War was a-waging in Kentucky. The great Indian nations were making a
frantic effort to drive from their hunting grounds the little bands of
settlers there, and these were in sore straits.

So I waited, and gave Polly Ann no hint of my intention.

Sometimes she herself would slip away across the notch to see Mrs.
McChesney and the children. She never took me with her on these
journeys, but nearly always when she came back at nightfall her eyes
would be red, and I knew the two women had been weeping together. There
came a certain hot Sunday in July when she went on this errand, and
Grandpa Ripley having gone to spend the day at old man Winn’s, I was
left alone. I remember I sat on the squared log of the door-step,
wondering whether, if I were to make my way to Salisbury, I could fall
in with a party going across the mountains into Kentucky. And wondering,
likewise, what Polly Ann would do without me. I was cleaning the long
rifle,--a labor I loved,--when suddenly I looked up, startled to see a
man standing in front of me. How he got there I know not. I stared at
him. He was a young man, very spare and very burned, with bright red
hair and blue eyes that had a kind of laughter in them, and yet were
sober. His buckskin hunting shirt was old and stained and frayed by the
briers, and his leggins and moccasins were wet from fording the stream.
He leaned his chin on the muzzle of his gun.

“Folks live here, sonny?” said he.

I nodded.

“Whar be they?”

“Out,” said I.

“Comin’ back?” he asked.

“To-night,” said I, and began to rub the lock.

“Be they good folks?” said he.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Wal,” said he, making a move to pass me, “I reckon I’ll slip in and
take what I’ve a mind to, and move on.”

Now I liked the man’s looks very much, but I did not know what he would
do. So I got in his way and clutched the gun. It was loaded, but not
primed, and I emptied a little powder from the flask in the pan. At that
he grinned.

“You’re a good boy, sonny,” he said. “Do you reckon you could hit me if
you shot?”

“Yes,” I said. But I knew I could scarcely hold the gun out straight
without a rest.

“And do you reckon I could hit you fust?” he asked.

At that I laughed, and he laughed.

“What’s your name?”

I told him.

“Who do you love best in all the world?” said he.

It was a queer question. But I told him Polly Ann Ripley.

“Oh!” said he, after a pause. “And what’s she like?”

“She’s beautiful,” I said; “she’s been very kind to me. She took me home
with her from the settlements when I had no place to go. She’s good.”

“And a sharp tongue, I reckon,” said he.

“When people need it,” I answered.

“Oh!” said he. And presently, “She’s very merry, I’ll warrant.”

“She used to be, but that’s gone by,” I said.

“Gone by!” said he, his voice falling, “is she sick?”

“No,” said I, “she’s not sick, she’s sad.”

“Sad?” said he. It was then I noticed that he had a cut across his
temple, red and barely healed. “Do you reckon your Polly Ann would give
me a little mite to eat?”

This time I jumped up, ran into the house, and got down some corn-pone
and a leg of turkey. For that was the rule of the border. He took them
in great bites, but slowly, and he picked the bones clean.

“I had breakfast yesterday morning,” said he, “about forty mile from
here.”

“And nothing since?” said I, in astonishment.

“Fresh air and water and exercise,” said he, and sat down on the grass.
He was silent for a long while, and so was I. For a notion had struck
me, though I hardly dared to give it voice.

“Are you going away?” I asked at last.

He laughed.

“Why?” said he.

“If you were going to Kaintuckee--” I began, and faltered. For he stared
at me very hard.

“Kaintuckee!” he said. “There’s a country! But it’s full of blood and
Injun varmints now. Would you leave Polly Ann and go to Kaintuckee?”

“Are you going?” I said.

“I reckon I am,” he said, “as soon as I kin.”

“Will you take me?” I asked, breathless. “I--I won’t be in your way, and
I can walk--and--shoot game.”

At that he bent back his head and laughed, which made me redden with
anger. Then he turned and looked at me more soberly.

“You’re a queer little piece,” said he. “Why do you want to go thar?”

“I want to find Tom McChesney for Polly Ann,” I said.

He turned away his face.

“A good-for-nothing scamp,” said he.

“I have long thought so,” I said.

He laughed again. It was a laugh that made me want to join him, had I
not been irritated.

“And he’s a scamp, you say. And why?”

“Else he would be coming back to Polly Ann.”

“Mayhap he couldn’t,” said the stranger.

“Chauncey Dike said he went off with another girl, into Kaintuckee.”

“And what did Polly Ann say to that?” the stranger demanded.

“She asked Chauncey if Tom McChesney gave him the scalps he had on his
belt.”

At that he laughed in good earnest, and slapped his breech-clouts
repeatedly. All at once he stopped, and stared up the ridge.

“Is that Polly Ann?” said he.

I looked, and far up the trail was a speck.

“I reckon it is,” I answered, and wondered at his eyesight. “She travels
over to see Tom McChesney’s Ma once in a while.”

He looked at me queerly.

“I reckon I’ll go here and sit down, Davy,” said he, “so’s not to be in
the way.” And he walked around the corner of the house.

Polly Ann sauntered down the trail slowly, as was her wont after such
an occasion. And the man behind the house twice whispered with extreme
caution, “How near is she?” before she came up the path.

“Have you been lonesome, Davy?” she said.

“No,” said I, “I’ve had a visitor.”

“It’s not Chauncey Dike again?” she said. “He doesn’t dare show his face
here.”

“No, it wasn’t Chauncey. This man would like to have seen you, Polly
Ann. He--” here I braced myself,--“he knew Tom McChesney. He called him
a good-for-nothing scamp.”

“He did--did he!” said Polly Ann, very low. “I reckon it was good for
him I wasn’t here.”

I grinned.

“What are you laughing at, you little monkey,” said Polly Ann, crossly.
“‘Pon my soul, sometimes I reckon you are a witch.”

“Polly Ann,” I said, “did I ever do anything but good to you?”

She made a dive at me, and before I could escape caught me in her strong
young arms and hugged me.

“You’re the best friend I have, little Davy,” she cried.

“I reckon that’s so,” said the stranger, who had risen and was standing
at the corner.

Polly Ann looked at him like a frightened doe. And as she stared,
uncertain whether to stay or fly, the color surged into her cheeks and
mounted to her fair forehead.

“Tom!” she faltered.

“I’ve come back, Polly Ann,” said he. But his voice was not so clear as
a while ago.

Then Polly Ann surprised me.

“What made you come back?” said she, as though she didn’t care a
minkskin. Whereat Mr. McChesney shifted his feet.

“I reckon it was to fetch you, Polly Ann.”

“I like that!” cried she. “He’s come to fetch me, Davy.” That was the
first time in months her laugh had sounded natural. “I heerd you fetched
one gal acrost the mountains, and now you want to fetch another.”

“Polly Ann,” says he, “there was a time when you knew a truthful man
from a liar.”

“That time’s past,” retorted she; “I reckon all men are liars. What are
ye tom-foolin’ about here for, Tom McChesney, when yere Ma’s breakin’
her heart? I wonder ye come back at all.”

“Polly Ann,” says he, very serious, “I ain’t a boaster. But when I think
what I come through to git here, I wonder that I come back at all. The
folks shut up at Harrod’s said it was sure death ter cross the mountains
now. I’ve walked two hundred miles, and fed seven times, and my sculp’s
as near hangin’ on a Red Stick’s belt as I ever want it to be.”

“Tom McChesney,” said Polly Ann, with her hands on her hips and her
sunbonnet tilted, “that’s the longest speech you ever made in your
life.”

I declare I lost my temper with Polly Ann then, nor did I blame Tom
McChesney for turning on his heel and walking away. But he had gone
no distance at all before Polly Ann, with three springs, was at his
shoulder.

“Tom!” she said very gently.

He hesitated, stopped, thumped the stock of his gun on the ground, and
wheeled. He looked at her doubtingly, and her eyes fell to the ground.

“Tom McChesney,” said she, “you’re a born fool with wimmen.”

“Thank God for that,” said he, his eyes devouring her.

“Ay,” said she. And then, “You want me to go to Kaintuckee with you?”

“That’s what I come for,” he stammered, his assurance all run away
again.

“I’ll go,” she answered, so gently that her words were all but blown
away by the summer wind. He laid his rifle against a stump at the
edge of the corn-field, but she bounded clear of him. Then she stood,
panting, her eyes sparkling.

“I’ll go,” she said, raising her finger, “I’ll go for one thing.”

“What’s that?” he demanded.

“That you’ll take Davy along with us.”

This time Tom had her, struggling like a wild thing in his arms, and
kissing her black hair madly. As for me, I might have been in the next
settlement for all they cared. And then Polly Ann, as red as a holly
berry, broke away from him and ran to me, caught me up, and hid her face
in my shoulder. Tom McChesney stood looking at us, grinning, and that
day I ceased to hate him.

“There’s no devil ef I don’t take him, Polly Ann,” said he. “Why, he was
a-goin’ to Kaintuckee ter find me for you.”

“What?” said she, raising her head.

“That’s what he told me afore he knew who I was. He wanted to know ef
I’d fetch him thar.”

“Little Davy!” cried Polly Ann.

The last I saw of them that day they were going off up the trace towards
his mother’s, Polly Ann keeping ahead of him and just out of his reach.
And I was very, very happy. For Tom McChesney had come back at last, and
Polly Ann was herself once more.

As long as I live I shall never forget Polly Ann’s wedding.

She was all for delay, and such a bunch of coquetry as I have never
seen. She raised one objection after another; but Tom was a firm man,
and his late experiences in the wilderness had made him impatient of
trifling. He had promised the Kentucky settlers, fighting for their
lives in their blockhouses, that he would come back again. And a
resolute man who was a good shot was sorely missed in the country in
those days.

It was not the thousand dangers and hardships of the journey across
the Wilderness Trail that frightened Polly Ann. Not she. Nor would she
listen to Tom when he implored her to let him return alone, to come back
for her when the redskins had got over the first furies of their hatred.
As for me, the thought of going with them into that promised land was
like wine. Wondering what the place was like, I could not sleep of
nights.

“Ain’t you afeerd to go, Davy?” said Tom to me.

“You promised Polly Ann to take me,” said I, indignantly.

“Davy,” said he, “you ain’t over handsome. ‘Twouldn’t improve yere looks
to be bald. They hev a way of takin’ yere ha’r. Better stay behind with
Gran’pa Ripley till I kin fetch ye both.”

“Tom,” said Polly Ann, “you kin just go back alone if you don’t take
Davy.”

So one of the Winn boys agreed to come over to stay with old Mr. Ripley
until quieter times.

The preparations for the wedding went on apace that week. I had not
thought that the Grape Vine settlement held so many people. And they
came from other settlements, too, for news spread quickly in that
country, despite the distances. Tom McChesney was plainly a favorite
with the men who had marched with Rutherford. All the week they
came, loaded with offerings, turkeys and venison and pork and bear
meat--greatest delicacy of all--until the cool spring was filled for the
feast. From thirty miles down the Broad, a gaunt Baptist preacher on a
fat white pony arrived the night before. He had been sent for to tie the
knot.

Polly Ann’s wedding-day dawned bright and fair, and long before the sun
glistened on the corn tassels we were up and clearing out the big room.
The fiddlers came first--a merry lot. And then the guests from afar
began to arrive. Some of them had travelled half the night. The
bridegroom’s friends were assembling at the McChesney place. At last,
when the sun was over the stream, rose such Indian war-whoops and shots
from the ridge trail as made me think the redskins were upon us. The
shouts and hurrahs grew louder and louder, the quickening thud of
horses’ hoofs was heard in the woods, and there burst into sight of the
assembly by the truck patch two wild figures on crazed horses charging
down the path towards the house. We scattered to right and left. On they
came, leaping logs and brush and ditches, until one of them pulled up,
yelling madly, at the very door, the foam-flecked sides of his horse
moving with quick heaves.

It was Chauncey Dike, and he had won the race for the bottle of “Black
Betty,”--Chauncey Dike, his long, black hair shining with bear’s oil.
Amid the cheers of the bride’s friends he leaped from his saddle,
mounted a stump and, flapping his arms, crowed in victory. Before he had
done the vanguard of the groom’s friends were upon us, pell-mell, all in
the finest of backwoods regalia,--new hunting shirts, trimmed with bits
of color, and all armed to the teeth--scalping knife, tomahawk, and all.
Nor had Chauncey Dike forgotten the scalp of the brave who leaped at him
out of the briers at Neowee.

Polly Ann was radiant in a white linen gown, woven and sewed by her own
hands. It was not such a gown as Mrs. Temple, Nick’s mother, would have
worn, and yet she was to me an hundred times more beautiful than
that lady in all her silks. Peeping out from under it were the little
blue-beaded moccasins which Tom himself had brought across the mountains
in the bosom of his hunting shirt. Polly Ann was radiant, and yet at
times so rapturously shy that when the preacher announced himself ready
to tie the knot she ran into the house and hid in the cupboard--for
Polly Ann was a child of nature. Thence, coloring like a wild rose,
she was dragged by a boisterous bevy of girls in linsey-woolsey to
the spreading maple of the forest that stood on the high bank over the
stream. The assembly fell solemn, and not a sound was heard save the
breathing of Nature in the heyday of her time. And though I was happy,
the sobs rose in my throat. There stood Polly Ann, as white now as the
bleached linen she wore, and Tom McChesney, tall and spare and broad, as
strong a figure of a man as ever I laid eyes on. God had truly made that
couple for wedlock in His leafy temple.

The deep-toned words of the preacher in prayer broke the stillness.
They were made man and wife. And then began a day of merriment, of
unrestraint, such as the backwoods alone knows. The feast was spread
out in the long grass under the trees--sides of venison, bear meat,
corn-pone fresh baked by Mrs. McChesney and Polly Ann herself, and all
the vegetables in the patch. There was no stint, either, of maple beer
and rum and “Black Betty,” and toasts to the bride and groom amidst
gusts of laughter “that they might populate Kaintuckee.” And Polly Ann
would have it that I should sit by her side under the maple.

The fiddlers played, and there were foot races and shooting matches. Ay,
and wrestling matches in the severe manner of the backwoods between the
young bucks, more than one of which might have ended seriously were it
not for the high humor of the crowd. Tom McChesney himself was in most
of them, a hot favorite. By a trick he had learned in the Indian country
he threw Chauncey Dike (no mean adversary) so hard that the backwoods
dandy lay for a moment in sleep. Contrary to the custom of many, Tom was
not in the habit of crowing on such occasions, nor did he even smile as
he helped Chauncey to his feet. But Polly Ann knew, and I knew, that he
was thinking of what Chauncey had said to her.

So the long summer afternoon wore away into twilight, and the sun fell
behind the blue ridges we were to cross. Pine knots were lighted in the
big room, the fiddlers set to again, and then came jigs and three and
four handed reels that made the puncheons rattle,--chicken-flutter
and cut-the-buckle,--and Polly Ann was the leader now, the young men
flinging the girls from fireplace to window in the reels, and back
again; and when, panting and perspiring, the lass was too tired to stand
longer, she dropped into the hospitable lap of the nearest buck who was
perched on the bench along the wall awaiting his chance. For so it went
in the backwoods in those days, and long after, and no harm in it that
ever I could see.

Well, suddenly, as if by concert, the music stopped, and a shout of
laughter rang under the beams as Polly Ann flew out of the door with the
girls after her, as swift of foot as she. They dragged her, a struggling
captive, to the bride-chamber which made the other end of the house, and
when they emerged, blushing and giggling and subdued, the fun began with
Tom McChesney. He gave the young men a pretty fight indeed, and long
before they had him conquered the elder guests had made their escape
through door and window.

All night the reels and jigs went on, and the feasting and drinking too.
In the fine rain that came at dawn to hide the crests, the company rode
wearily homeward through the notches.


CHAPTER VIII. THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE


 Some to endure, and many to quail,
 Some to conquer, and many to fail,
 Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

As long as I live I shall never forget the morning we started on our
journey across the Blue Wall. Before the sun chased away the filmy veil
of mist from the brooks in the valley, the McChesneys, father, mother,
and children, were gathered to see us depart. And as they helped us to
tighten the packsaddles Tom himself had made from chosen tree-forks,
they did not cease lamenting that we were going to certain death. Our
scrawny horses splashed across the stream, and we turned to see a gaunt
and lonely figure standing apart against the sun, stern and sorrowful.
We waved our hands, and set our faces towards Kaintuckee.

Tom walked ahead, rifle on shoulder, then Polly Ann; and lastly I drove
the two shaggy ponies, the instruments of husbandry we had been able
to gather awry on their packs,--a scythe, a spade, and a hoe. I
triumphantly carried the axe.

It was not long before we were in the wilderness, shut in by mountain
crags, and presently Polly Ann forgot her sorrows in the perils of the
trace. Choked by briers and grapevines, blocked by sliding stones and
earth, it rose and rose through the heat and burden of the day until
it lost itself in the open heights. As the sun was wearing down to the
western ridges the mischievous sorrel mare turned her pack on a sapling,
and one of the precious bags burst. In an instant we were on our knees
gathering the golden meal in our hands. Polly Ann baked journeycakes on
a hot stone from what we saved under the shiny ivy leaves, and scarce
had I spancelled the horses ere Tom returned with a fat turkey he had
shot.

“Was there ever sech a wedding journey!” said Polly Ann, as we sat about
the fire, for the mountain air was chill. “And Tom and Davy as grave as
parsons. Ye’d guess one of you was Rutherford himself, and the other Mr.
Boone.”

No wonder he was grave. I little realized then the task he had set
himself, to pilot a woman and a lad into a country haunted by frenzied
savages, when single men feared to go this season. But now he smiled,
and patted Polly Ann’s brown hand.

“It’s one of yer own choosing, lass,” said he.

“Of my own choosing!” cried she. “Come, Davy, we’ll go back to Grandpa.”

Tom grinned.

“I reckon the redskins won’t bother us till we git by the Nollichucky
and Watauga settlements,” he said.

“The redskins!” said Polly Ann, indignant; “I reckon if one of ‘em did
git me he’d kiss me once in a while.”

Whereupon Tom, looking more sheepish still, tried to kiss her, and
failed ignominiously, for she vanished into the dark woods.

“If a redskin got you here,” said Tom, when she had slipped back, “he’d
fetch you to Nick-a-jack Cave.”

“What’s that?” she demanded.

“Where all the red and white and yellow scalawags over the mountains
is gathered,” he answered. And he told of a deep gorge between towering
mountains where a great river cried angrily, of a black cave out of
which a black stream ran, where a man could paddle a dugout for miles
into the rock. The river was the Tennessee, and the place the resort
of the Chickamauga bandits, pirates of the mountains, outcasts of all
nations. And Dragging Canoe was their chief.

It was on the whole a merry journey, the first part of it, if a rough
one. Often Polly Ann would draw me to her and whisper: “We’ll hold out,
Davy. He’ll never know.” When the truth was that the big fellow was
going at half his pace on our account. He told us there was no fear of
redskins here, yet, when the scream of a painter or the hoot of an owl
stirred me from my exhausted slumber, I caught sight of him with his
back to a tree, staring into the forest, his rifle at his side. The day
was dawning.

“Turn about’s fair,” I expostulated.

“Ye’ll need yere sleep, Davy,” said he, “or ye’ll never grow any
bigger.”

“I thought Kaintuckee was to the west,” I said, “and you’re making
north.” For I had observed him day after day. We had left the trails.
Sometimes he climbed tree, and again he sent me to the upper branches,
whence I surveyed a sea of tree-tops waving in the wind, and looked
onward to where a green velvet hollow lay nestling on the western side
of a saddle-backed ridge.

“North!” said Tom to Polly Ann, laughing. “The little devil will beat
me at woodcraft soon. Ay, north, Davy. I’m hunting for the Nollichucky
Trace that leads to the Watauga settlement.”

It was wonderful to me how he chose his way through the mountains. Once
in a while we caught sight of a yellow blaze in a tree, made by himself
scarce a month gone, when he came southward alone to fetch Polly Ann.
Again, the tired roan shied back from the bleached bones of a traveller,
picked clean by wolves. At sundown, when we loosed our exhausted horses
to graze on the wet grass by the streams, Tom would go off to look for a
deer or turkey, and often not come back to us until long after darkness
had fallen.

“Davy’ll take care of you, Polly Ann,” he would say as he left us.

And she would smile at him bravely and say, “I reckon I kin look out for
Davy awhile yet.”

But when he was gone, and the crooning stillness set in, broken only by
the many sounds of the night, we would sit huddled together by the fire.
It was dread for him she felt, not for herself. And in both our minds
rose red images of hideous foes skulking behind his brave form as he
trod the forest floor. Polly Ann was not the woman to whimper.

And yet I have but dim recollections of this journey. It was no hardship
to a lad brought up in woodcraft. Fear of the Indians, like a dog
shivering with the cold, was a deadened pain on the border.

Strangely enough it was I who chanced upon the Nollichucky Trace, which
follows the meanderings of that river northward through the great Smoky
Mountains. It was made long ago by the Southern Indians as they threaded
their way to the Hunting Lands of Kaintuckee, and shared now by Indian
traders. The path was redolent with odors, and bright with mountain
shrubs and flowers,--the pink laurel bush, the shining rhododendron, and
the grape and plum and wild crab. The clear notes of the mountain birds
were in our ears by day, and the music of the water falling over the
ledges, mingled with that of the leaves rustling in the wind, lulled us
to sleep at night. High above us, as we descended, the gap, from naked
crag to timber-covered ridge, was spanned by the eagle’s flight. And
virgin valleys, where future generations were to be born, spread out and
narrowed again,--valleys with a deep carpet of cane and grass, where the
deer and elk and bear fed unmolested.

It was perchance the next evening that my eyes fell upon a sight which
is one of the wonders of my boyish memories. The trail slipped to the
edge of a precipice, and at our feet the valley widened. Planted
amidst giant trees, on a shining green lawn that ran down to the racing
Nollichucky was the strangest house it has ever been my lot to see--of
no shape, of huge size, and built of logs, one wing hitched to another
by “dog alleys” (as we called them); and from its wide stone chimneys
the pearly smoke rose upward in the still air through the poplar
branches. Beyond it a setting sun gilded the corn-fields, and horses and
cattle dotted the pastures. We stood for a while staring at this oasis
in the wilderness, and to my boyish fancy it was a fitting introduction
to a delectable land.

“Glory be to heaven!” exclaimed Polly Ann.

“It’s Nollichucky Jack’s house,” said Tom.

“And who may he be?” said she.

“Who may he be!” cried Tom; “Captain John Sevier, king of the border,
and I reckon the best man to sweep out redskins in the Watauga
settlements.”

“Do you know him?” said she.

“I was chose as one of his scouts when we fired the Cherokee hill towns
last summer,” said Tom, with pride. “Thar was blood and thunder for ye!
We went down the Great War-path which lies below us, and when we was
through there wasn’t a corn-shuck or a wigwam or a war post left. We
didn’t harm the squaws nor the children, but there warn’t no prisoners
took. When Nollichucky Jack strikes I reckon it’s more like a
thunderbolt nor anything else.”

“Do you think he’s at home, Tom?” I asked, fearful that I should not see
this celebrated person.

“We’ll soon l’arn,” said he, as we descended. “I heerd he was agoin’ to
punish them Chickamauga robbers by Nick-a-jack.”

Just then we heard a prodigious barking, and a dozen hounds came
charging down the path at our horses’ legs, the roan shying into
the truck patch. A man’s voice, deep, clear, compelling, was heard
calling:--

“Vi! Flora! Ripper!”

I saw him coming from the porch of the house, a tall slim figure in a
hunting shirt--that fitted to perfection--and cavalry boots. His face,
his carriage, his quick movement and stride filled my notion of a hero,
and my instinct told me he was a gentleman born.

“Why, bless my soul, it’s Tom McChesney!” he cried, ten paces away,
while Tom grinned with pleasure at the recognition. “But what have you
here?”

“A wife,” said Tom, standing on one foot.

Captain Sevier fixed his dark blue eyes on Polly Ann with approbation,
and he bowed to her very gracefully.

“Where are you going, Ma’am, may I ask?” he said.

“To Kaintuckee,” said Polly Ann.

“To Kaintuckee!” cried Captain Sevier, turning to Tom. “Egad, then,
you’ve no right to a wife,--and to such a wife,” and he glanced again at
Polly Ann. “Why, McChesney, you never struck me as a rash man. Have you
lost your senses, to take a woman into Kentucky this year?”

“So the forts be still in trouble?” said Tom.

“Trouble?” cried Mr. Sevier, with a quick fling of his whip at an unruly
hound, “Harrodstown, Boonesboro, Logan’s Fort at St. Asaph’s,--they
don’t dare stick their noses outside the stockades. The Indians have
swarmed into Kentucky like red ants, I tell you. Ten days ago, when I
was in the Holston settlements, Major Ben Logan came in. His fort had
been shut up since May, they were out of powder and lead, and somebody
had to come. How did he come? As the wolf lopes, nay, as the crow flies
over crag and ford, Cumberland, Clinch, and all, forty miles a day for
five days, and never saw a trace--for the war parties were watching the
Wilderness Road.” And he swung again towards Polly Ann. “You’ll not go
to Kaintuckee, ma’am; you’ll stay here with us until the redskins are
beaten off there. He may go if he likes.”

“I reckon we didn’t come this far to give out, Captain Sevier,” said
she.

“You don’t look to be the kind to give out, Mrs. McChesney,” said he.
“And yet it may not be a matter of giving out,” he added more soberly.
This mixture of heartiness and gravity seemed to sit well on him.
“Surely you have been enterprising, Tom. Where in the name of the
Continental Congress did you get the lad?”

“I married him along with Polly Ann,” said Tom. “That was the bargain,
and I reckon he was worth it.”

“I’d take a dozen to get her,” declared Mr. Sevier, while Polly Ann
blushed. “Well, well, supper’s waiting us, and cider and applejack, for
we don’t get a wedding party every day. Some gentlemen are here whose
word may have more weight and whose attractions may be greater than
mine.”

He whistled to a negro lad, who took our horses, and led us through the
court-yard and the house to the lawn at the far side of it. A rude table
was set there under a great tree, and around it three gentlemen were
talking. My memory of all of them is more vivid than it might be were
their names not household words in the Western country. Captain Sevier
startled them.

“My friends,” said he, “if you have despatches for Kaintuckee, I pray
you get them ready over night.”

They looked up at him, one sternly, the other two gravely.

“What the devil do you mean, Sevier?” said the stern one.

“That my friend, Tom McChesney, is going there with his wife, unless we
can stop him,” said Sevier.

“Stop him!” thundered the stern gentleman, kicking back his chair and
straightening up to what seemed to me a colossal height. I stared at
him, boylike. He had long, iron-gray hair and a creased, fleshy face
and sunken eyes. He looked as if he might stop anybody as he turned upon
Tom. “Who the devil is this Tom McChesney?” he demanded.

Sevier laughed.

“The best scout I ever laid eyes on,” said he. “A deadly man with
a Deckard, an unerring man at choosing a wife” (and he bowed to the
reddening Polly Ann), “and a fool to run the risk of losing her.”

“Tut, tut,” said the iron gentleman, who was the famous Captain Evan
Shelby of King’s Meadows, “he’ll leave her here in our settlements while
he helps us fight Dragging Canoe and his Chickamauga pirates.”

“If he leaves me,” said Polly Ann, her eyes flashing, “that’s an end to
the bargain. He’ll never find me more.”

Captain Sevier laughed again.

“There’s spirit for you,” he cried, slapping his whip against his boot.

At this another gentleman stood up, a younger counterpart of the
first, only he towered higher and his shoulders were broader. He had a
big-featured face, and pleasant eyes--that twinkled now--sunken in, with
fleshy creases at the corners.

“Tom McChesney,” said he, “don’t mind my father. If any man besides
Logan can get inside the forts, you can. Do you remember me?”

“I reckon I do, Mr. Isaac Shelby,” said Tom, putting a big hand into Mr.
Shelby’s bigger one. “I reckon I won’t soon forget how you stepped
out of ranks and tuk command when the boys was runnin’, and turned the
tide.”

He looked like the man to step out of ranks and take command.

“Pish!” said Mr. Isaac Shelby, blushing like a girl; “where would I have
been if you and Moore and Findley and the rest hadn’t stood ‘em off till
we turned round?”

By this time the third gentleman had drawn my attention. Not by anything
he said, for he remained silent, sitting with his dark brown head bent
forward, quietly gazing at the scene from under his brows. The
instant he spoke they turned towards him. He was perhaps forty, and
broad-shouldered, not so tall as Mr. Sevier.

“Why do you go to Kaintuckee, McChesney?” he asked.

“I give my word to Mr. Harrod and Mr. Clark to come back, Mr.
Robertson,” said Tom.

“And the wife? If you take her, you run a great risk of losing her.”

“And if he leaves me,” said Polly Ann, flinging her head, “he will lose
me sure.”

The others laughed, but Mr. Robertson merely smiled.

“Faith,” cried Captain Sevier, “if those I met coming back
helter-skelter over the Wilderness Trace had been of that stripe, they’d
have more men in the forts now.”

With that the Captain called for supper to be served where we sat. He
was a widower, with lads somewhere near my own age, and I recall being
shown about the place by them. And later, when the fireflies glowed and
the Nollichucky sang in the darkness, we listened to the talk of the
war of the year gone by. I needed not to be told that before me were the
renowned leaders of the Watauga settlements. My hero worship cried it
aloud within me. These captains dwelt on the border-land of mystery,
conquered the wilderness, and drove before them its savage tribes by
their might. When they spoke of the Cherokees and told how that same
Stuart--the companion of Cameron--was urging them to war against our
people, a fierce anger blazed within me. For the Cherokees had killed my
father.

I remember the men,--scarcely what they said: Evan Shelby’s words, like
heavy blows on an anvil; Isaac Shelby’s, none the less forceful;
James Robertson compelling his listeners by some strange power. He was
perchance the strongest man there, though none of us guessed, after
ruling that region, that he was to repeat untold hardships to found and
rear another settlement farther west. But best I loved to hear Captain
Sevier, whose talk lacked not force, but had a daring, a humor, a
lightness of touch, that seemed more in keeping with that world I had
left behind me in Charlestown. Him I loved, and at length I solved the
puzzle. To me he was Nick Temple grown to manhood.

I slept in the room with Captain Sevier’s boys, and one window of it was
of paper smeared with bear’s grease, through which the sunlight came all
bleared and yellow in the morning. I had a boy’s interest in affairs,
and I remember being told that the gentlemen were met here to discuss
the treaty between themselves and the great Oconostota, chief of the
Cherokees, and also to consider the policy of punishing once for all
Dragging Canoe and his bandits at Chickamauga.

As we sat at breakfast under the trees, these gentlemen generously
dropped their own business to counsel Tom, and I observed with pride
that he had gained their regard during the last year’s war. Shelby’s
threats and Robertson’s warnings and Sevier’s exhortations having no
effect upon his determination to proceed to Kentucky, they began to
advise him how to go, and he sat silent while they talked. And finally,
when they asked him, he spoke of making through Carter’s Valley for
Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Trail.

“Egad,” cried Captain Sevier, “I have so many times found the boldest
plan the safest that I have become a coward that way. What do you say to
it, Mr. Robertson?”

Mr. Robertson leaned his square shoulders over the table.

“He may fall in with a party going over,” he answered, without looking
up.

Polly Ann looked at Tom as if to say that the whole Continental Army
could not give her as much protection.

We left that hospitable place about nine o’clock, Mr. Robertson having
written a letter to Colonel Daniel Boone,--shut up in the fort at
Boonesboro,--should we be so fortunate as to reach Kaintuckee: and
another to a young gentleman by the name of George Rogers Clark,
apparently a leader there. Captain Sevier bowed over Polly Ann’s hand
as if she were a great lady, and wished her a happy honeymoon, and me he
patted on the head and called a brave lad. And soon we had passed beyond
the corn-field into the Wilderness again.

Our way was down the Nollichucky, past the great bend of it below
Lick Creek, and so to the Great War-path, the trail by which countless
parties of red marauders had travelled north and south. It led, indeed,
northeast between the mountain ranges. Although we kept a watch by day
and night, we saw no sign of Dragging Canoe or his men, and at length
we forded the Holston and came to the scattered settlement in Carter’s
Valley.

I have since racked my brain to remember at whose cabin we stopped
there. He was a rough backwoodsman with a wife and a horde of children.
But I recall that a great rain came out of the mountains and down the
valley. We were counting over the powder gourds in our packs, when there
burst in at the door as wild a man as has ever been my lot to see. His
brown beard was grown like a bramble patch, his eye had a violet light,
and his hunting shirt was in tatters. He was thin to gauntness, ate
ravenously of the food that was set before him, and throwing off his
soaked moccasins, he spread his scalded feet to the blaze, and the
steaming odor of drying leather filled the room.

“Whar be ye from?” asked Tom.

For answer the man bared his arm, then his shoulder, and two angry
scars, long and red, revealed themselves, and around his wrists were
deep gouges where he had been bound.

“They killed Sue,” he cried, “sculped her afore my very eyes. And they
chopped my boy outen the hickory withes and carried him to the Creek
Nation. At a place where there was a standin’ stone I broke loose from
three of ‘em and come here over the mountains, and I ain’t had nothin’,
stranger, but berries and chainey brier-root for ten days. God damn
‘em!” he cried, standing up and tottering with the pain in his feet, “if
I can get a Deckard--”

“Will you go back?” said Tom.

“Go back!” he shouted, “I’ll go back and fight ‘em while I have blood in
my body.”

He fell into a bunk, but his sorrow haunted him even in his troubled
sleep, and his moans awed us as we listened. The next day he told us his
story with more calmness. It was horrible indeed, and might well have
frightened a less courageous woman than Polly Ann. Imploring her not to
go, he became wild again, and brought tears to her eyes when he spoke of
his own wife. “They tomahawked her, ma’am, because she could not walk,
and the baby beside her, and I standing by with my arms tied.”

As long as I live I shall never forget that scene, and how Tom pleaded
with Polly Ann to stay behind, but she would not listen to him.

“You’re going, Tom?” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, turning away, “I gave ‘em my word.”

“And your word to me?” said Polly Ann.

He did not answer.

We fixed on a Saturday to start, to give the horses time to rest, and in
the hope that we might hear of some relief party going over the Gap. On
Thursday Tom made a trip to the store in the valley, and came back with
a Deckard rifle he had bought for the stranger, whose name was Weldon.
There was no news from Kaintuckee, but the Carter’s Valley settlers
seemed to think that matters were better there. It was that same night,
I believe, that two men arrived from Fort Chiswell. One, whose name was
Cutcheon, was a little man with a short forehead and a bad eye, and he
wore a weather-beaten blue coat of military cut. The second was a big,
light-colored, fleshy man, and a loud talker. He wore a hunting shirt
and leggings. They were both the worse for rum they had had on the road,
the big man talking very loud and boastfully.

“Afeard to go to Kaintuckee!” said he. “I’ve met a parcel o’ cowards
on the road, turned back. There ain’t nothin’ to be afeard of, eh,
stranger?” he added, to Tom, who paid no manner of attention to him. The
small man scarce opened his mouth, but sat with his head bowed forward
on his breast when he was not drinking. We passed a dismal, crowded
night in the room with such companions. When they heard that we were to
go over the mountains, nothing would satisfy the big man but to go with
us.

“Come, stranger,” said he to Tom, “two good rifles such as we is ain’t
to be throwed away.”

“Why do you want to go over?” asked Tom. “Be ye a Tory?” he demanded
suspiciously.

“Why do you go over?” retorted Riley, for that was his name. “I reckon
I’m no more of a Tory than you.”

“Whar did ye come from?” said Tom.

“Chiswell’s mines, taking out lead for the army o’ Congress. But there
ain’t excitement enough in it.”

“And you?” said Tom, turning to Cutcheon and eying his military coat.

“I got tired of their damned discipline,” the man answered surlily. He
was a deserter.

“Look you,” said Tom, sternly, “if you come, what I say is law.”

Such was the sacrifice we were put to by our need of company. But in
those days a man was a man, and scarce enough on the Wilderness Trail
in that year of ‘77. So we started away from Carter’s Valley on a bright
Saturday morning, the grass glistening after a week’s rain, the road
sodden, and the smell of the summer earth heavy. Tom and Weldon walked
ahead, driving the two horses, followed by Cutcheon, his head dropped
between his shoulders. The big man, Riley, regaled Polly Ann.

“My pluck is,” said he, “my pluck is to give a redskin no chance. Shoot
‘em down like hogs. It takes a good un to stalk me, Ma’am. Up on the
Kanawha I’ve had hand-to-hand fights with ‘em, and made ‘em cry quits.”

“Law!” exclaimed Polly Ann, nudging me, “it was a lucky thing we run
into you in the valley.”

But presently we left the road and took a mountain trail,--as stiff a
climb as we had yet had. Polly Ann went up it like a bird, talking all
the while to Riley, who blew like a bellows. For once he was silent.

We spent two, perchance three, days climbing and descending and fording.
At night Tom would suffer none to watch save Weldon and himself, not
trusting Riley or Cutcheon. And the rascals were well content to sleep.
At length we came to a cabin on a creek, the corn between the stumps
around it choked with weeds, and no sign of smoke in the chimney. Behind
it slanted up, in giant steps, a forest-clad hill of a thousand feet,
and in front of it the stream was dammed and lined with cane.

“Who keeps house?” cried Tom, at the threshold.

He pushed back the door, fashioned in one great slab from a forest tree.
His welcome was an angry whir, and a huge yellow rattler lay coiled
within, his head reared to strike. Polly Ann leaned back.

“Mercy,” she cried, “that’s a bad sign.”

But Tom killed the snake, and we made ready to use the cabin that night
and the next day. For the horses were to be rested and meat was to
be got, as we could not use our guns so freely on the far side of
Cumberland Gap. In the morning, before he and Weldon left, Tom took me
around the end of the cabin.

“Davy,” said he, “I don’t trust these rascals. Kin you shoot a pistol?”

I reckoned I could.

He had taken one out of the pack he had got from Captain Sevier and
pushed it between the logs where the clay had fallen out. “If they try
anything,” said he, “shoot ‘em. And don’t be afeard of killing ‘em.” He
patted me on the back, and went off up the slope with Weldon. Polly Ann
and I stood watching them until they were out of sight.

About eleven o’clock Riley and Cutcheon moved off to the edge of a
cane-brake near the water, and sat there for a while, talking in low
tones. The horses were belled and spancelled near by, feeding on the
cane and wild grass, and Polly Ann was cooking journey-cakes on a stone.

“What makes you so sober, Davy?” she said.

I didn’t answer.

“Davy,” she cried, “be happy while you’re young. ‘Tis a fine day, and
Kaintuckee’s over yonder.” She picked up her skirts and sang:--

 “First upon the heeltap,
 Then upon the toe.”

The men by the cane-brake turned and came towards us.

“Ye’re happy to-day, Mis’ McChesney,” said Riley.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” said Polly Ann; “we’re all a-goin’ to Kaintuckee.”

“We’re a-goin’ back to Cyarter’s Valley,” said Riley, in his blustering
way. “This here ain’t as excitin’ as I thought. I reckon there ain’t no
redskins nohow.”

“What!” cried Polly Ann, in loud scorn, “ye’re a-goin’ to desert?
There’ll be redskins enough by and by, I’ll warrant ye.”

“How’d you like to come along of us,” says Riley; “that ain’t any place
for wimmen, over yonder.”

“Along of you!” cried Polly Ann, with flashing eyes. “Do you hear that,
Davy?”

I did. Meanwhile the man Cutcheon was slowly walking towards her. It
took scarce a second for me to make up my mind. I slipped around the
corner of the house, seized the pistol, primed it with a trembling hand,
and came back to behold Polly Ann, with flaming cheeks, facing them.
They did not so much as glance at me. Riley held a little back of the
two, being the coward. But Cutcheon stood ready, like a wolf.

I did not wait for him to spring, but, taking the best aim I could with
my two hands, fired. With a curse that echoed in the crags, he threw up
his arms and fell forward, writhing, on the turf.

“Run for the cabin, Polly Ann,” I shouted, “and bar the door.”

There was no need. For an instant Riley wavered, and then fled to the
cane.

Polly Ann and I went to the man on the ground, and turned him over. His
eyes slid upwards. There was a bloody froth on his lips.

“Davy!” cried she, awestricken, “Davy, ye’ve killed him!”

I grew dizzy and sick at the thought, but she caught me and held me to
her. Presently we sat down on the door log, gazing at the corpse. Then I
began to reflect, and took out my powder gourd and loaded the pistol.

“What are ye a-doing?” she said.

“In case the other one comes back,” said I.

“Pooh,” said Polly Ann, “he’ll not come back.” Which was true. I have
never laid eyes on Riley to this day.

“I reckon we’d better fetch it out of the sun,” said she, after a while.
And so we dragged it under an oak, covered the face, and left it.

He was the first man I ever killed, and the business by no means came
natural to me. And that day the journey-cakes which Polly Ann had made
were untasted by us both. The afternoon dragged interminably. Try as we
would, we could not get out of our minds the Thing that lay under the
oak.

It was near sundown when Tom and Weldon appeared on the mountain side
carrying a buck between them. Tom glanced from one to the other of us
keenly. He was very quick to divine.

“Whar be they?” said he.

“Show him, Davy,” said Polly Ann.

I took him over to the oak, and Polly Ann told him the story. He gave
me one look, I remember, and there was more of gratitude in it than in a
thousand words. Then he seized a piece of cold cake from the stone.

“Which trace did he take?” he demanded of me.

But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder.

“Tom, Tom!” she cried, “you beant goin’ to leave us again. Tom, he’ll
die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee.”

The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature
had reared between us and the delectable country. It stood like a lion
at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from
Powell’s Valley below. How many thousands have looked at it with sinking
hearts! How many weaklings has its frown turned back! There seemed to
be engraved upon it the dark history of the dark and bloody land beyond.
Nothing in this life worth having is won for the asking; and the best is
fought for, and bled for, and died for. Written, too, upon that towering
wall of white rock, in the handwriting of God Himself, is the history of
the indomitable Race to which we belong.

For fifty miles we travelled under it, towards the Gap, our eyes drawn
to it by a resistless fascination. The sun went over it early in the
day, as though glad to leave the place, and after that a dark scowl
would settle there. At night we felt its presence, like a curse. Even
Polly Ann was silent. And she had need to be now. When it was necessary,
we talked in low tones, and the bell-clappers on the horses were not
loosed at night. It was here, but four years gone, that Daniel Boone’s
family was attacked, and his son killed by the Indians.

We passed, from time to time, deserted cabins and camps, and some places
that might once have been called settlements: Elk Garden, where the
pioneers of the last four years had been wont to lay in a simple supply
of seed corn and Irish potatoes; and the spot where Henderson and his
company had camped on the way to establish Boonesboro two years before.
And at last we struck the trace that mounted upward to the Gateway
itself.



CHAPTER IX. ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL

And now we had our hands upon the latch, and God alone knew what was
behind the gate. Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it.
Death, perchance. But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence
did not frighten. As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange
aptness a quaint saying of my father’s that Kaintuckee was the Garden
of Eden, and that men were being justly punished with blood for their
presumption.

As if to crown that judgment, the day was dark and lowering, with
showers of rain from time to time. And when we spoke,--Polly Ann and
I,--it was in whispers. The trace was very narrow, with Daniel Boone’s
blazes, two years old, upon the trees; but the way was not over steep.
Cumberland Mountain was as silent and deserted as when the first man had
known it.

Alas, for the vanity of human presage! We gained the top, and entered
unmolested. No Eden suddenly dazzled our eye, no splendor burst upon it.
Nothing told us, as we halted in our weariness, that we had reached the
Promised Land. The mists weighed heavily on the evergreens of the slopes
and hid the ridges, and we passed that night in cold discomfort. It was
the first of many without a fire.

The next day brought us to the Cumberland, tawny and swollen from the
rains, and here we had to stop to fell trees to make a raft on which to
ferry over our packs. We bound the logs together with grapevines, and as
we worked my imagination painted for me many a red face peering from
the bushes on the farther shore. And when we got into the river and were
caught and spun by the hurrying stream, I hearkened for a shot from
the farther bank. While Polly Ann and I were scrambling to get the raft
landed, Tom and Weldon swam over with the horses. And so we lay the
second night dolefully in the rain. But not so much as a whimper escaped
from Polly Ann. I have often told her since that the sorest trial she
had was the guard she kept on her tongue,--a hardship indeed for one of
Irish inheritance. Many a pull had she lightened for us by a flash of
humor.

The next morning the sun relented, and the wine of his dawn was wine
indeed to our flagging hopes. Going down to wash at the river’s brink,
I heard a movement in the cane, and stood frozen and staring until a
great, bearded head, black as tar, was thrust out between the stalks and
looked at me with blinking red eyes. The next step revealed the hump
of the beast, and the next his tasselled tail lashing his dirty brown
quarters. I did not tarry longer, but ran to tell Tom. He made bold to
risk a shot and light a fire, and thus we had buffalo meat for some days
after.

We were still in the mountains. The trail led down the river for a bit
through the worst of canebrakes, and every now and again we stopped
while Tom and Weldon scouted. Once the roan mare made a dash through the
brake, and, though Polly Ann burst through one way to head her off and
I another, we reached the bank of Richland Creek in time to see her nose
and the top of her pack above the brown water. There was nothing for it
but to swim after her, which I did, and caught her quietly feeding in
the cane on the other side. By great good fortune the other horse bore
the powder.

“Drat you, Nancy,” said Polly Ann to the mare, as she handed me my
clothes, “I’d sooner carry the pack myself than be bothered with you.”

“Hush,” said I, “the redskins will get us.”

Polly Ann regarded me scornfully as I stood bedraggled before her.

“Redskins!” she cried. “Nonsense! I reckon it’s all talk about
redskins.”

But we had scarce caught up ere we saw Tom standing rigid with his hand
raised. Before him, on a mound bared of cane, were the charred remains
of a fire. The sight of them transformed Weldon. His eyes glared again,
even as when we had first seen him, curses escaped under his breath, and
he would have darted into the cane had not Tom seized him sternly by the
shoulder. As for me, my heart hammered against my ribs, and I grew
sick with listening. It was at that instant that my admiration for
Tom McChesney burst bounds, and that I got some real inkling of what
woodcraft might be. Stepping silently between the tree trunks, his eyes
bent on the leafy loam, he found a footprint here and another there, and
suddenly he went into the cane with a sign to us to remain. It seemed an
age before he returned. Then he began to rake the ashes, and, suddenly
bending down, seized something in them,--the broken bowl of an Indian
pipe.

“Shawnees!” he said; “I reckoned so.” It was at length the beseeching in
Polly Ann’s eyes that he answered.

“A war party--tracks three days old. They took poplar.”

To take poplar was our backwoods expression for embarking in a canoe,
the dugouts being fashioned from the great poplar trees.

I did not reflect then, as I have since and often, how great was the
knowledge and resource Tom practised that day. Our feeling for him
(Polly Ann’s and mine) fell little short of worship. In company ill
at ease, in the forest he became silent and masterful--an unerring
woodsman, capable of meeting the Indian on his own footing. And,
strangest thought of all, he and many I could name who went into
Kentucky, had escaped, by a kind of strange fate, being born in the
north of Ireland. This was so of Andrew Jackson himself.

The rest of the day he led us in silence down the trace, his eye alert
to penetrate every corner of the forest, his hand near the trigger
of his long Deckard. I followed in boylike imitation, searching
every thicket for alien form and color, and yearning for stature and
responsibility. As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time
with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure,--ragged and fringed. And we knew
that the soul within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and
of his child in captivity. Again, when the trance left him, he was an
addition to our little party not to be despised.

At dark Polly Ann and I carried the packs across a creek on a fallen
tree, she taking one end and I the other. We camped there, where the
loam was trampled and torn by countless herds of bison, and had only
parched corn and the remains of a buffalo steak for supper, as the meal
was mouldy from its wetting, and running low. When Weldon had gone a
little distance up the creek to scout, Tom relented from the sternness
which his vigilance imposed and came and sat down on a log beside Polly
Ann and me.

“‘Tis a hard journey, little girl,” he said, patting her; “I reckon I
done wrong to fetch you.”

I can see him now, as the twilight settled down over the wilderness,
his honest face red and freckled, but aglow with the tenderness it had
hidden during the day, one big hand enfolding hers, and the other on my
shoulder.

“Hark, Davy!” said Polly Ann, “he’s fair tired of us already. Davy, take
me back.”

“Hush, Polly Ann,” he answered, delighted at her raillery. “But I’ve a
word to say to you. If we come on to the redskins, you and Davy make for
the cane as hard as you kin kilter. Keep out of sight.”

“As hard as we kin kilter!” exclaimed Polly Ann, indignantly. “I reckon
not, Tom McChesney. Davy taught me to shoot long ago, afore you made up
your mind to come back from Kaintuckee.”

Tom chuckled. “So Davy taught you to shoot,” he said, and checked
himself. “He ain’t such a bad one with a pistol,”--and he patted
me,--“but I allow ye’d better hunt kiver just the same. And if they
ketch ye, Polly Ann, just you go along and pretend to be happy, and
tear off a snatch of your dress now and then, if you get a chance. It
wouldn’t take me but a little time to run into Harrodstown or Boone’s
Station from here, and fetch a party to follow ye.”

Two days went by,--two days of strain in sunlight, and of watching and
fitful sleep in darkness. But the Wilderness Trail was deserted. Here
and there a lean-to--silent remnant of the year gone by--spoke of the
little bands of emigrants which had once made their way so cheerfully to
the new country. Again it was a child’s doll, the rags of it beaten
by the weather to a rusty hue. Every hour that we progressed seemed to
justify the sagacity and boldness of Tom’s plan, nor did it appear to
have entered a painted skull that a white man would have the hardihood
to try the trail this year. There were neither signs nor sounds save
Nature’s own, the hoot of the wood-owl, the distant bark of a mountain
wolf, the whir of a partridge as she left her brood. At length we could
stand no more the repression that silence and watching put upon us, and
when a rotten bank gave way and flung Polly Ann and the sorrel mare into
a creek, even Weldon smiled as we pulled her, bedraggled and laughing,
from the muddy water. This was after we had ferried the Rockcastle
River.

Our trace rose and fell over height and valley, until we knew that we
were come to a wonderland at last. We stood one evening on a spur as the
setting sun flooded the natural park below us with a crystal light and,
striking a tall sycamore, turned its green to gold. We were now on the
hills whence the water ran down to nourish the fat land, and I could
scarce believe that the garden spot on which our eyes feasted could be
the scene of the blood and suffering of which we had heard. Here at last
was the fairyland of my childhood, the country beyond the Blue Wall.

We went down the river that led into it, with awe, as though we were
trespassers against God Himself,--as though He had made it too beautiful
and too fruitful for the toilers of this earth. And you who read this
an hundred years hence may not believe the marvels of it to the pioneer,
and in particular to one born and bred in the scanty, hard soil of the
mountains. Nature had made it for her park,--ay, and scented it with her
own perfumes. Giant trees, which had watched generations come and go,
some of which mayhap had been saplings when the Norman came to England,
grew in groves,--the gnarled and twisted oak, and that godsend to the
settlers, the sugar-maple; the coffee tree with its drooping buds; the
mulberry, the cherry, and the plum; the sassafras and the pawpaw;
the poplar and the sycamore, slender maidens of the forest, garbed
in daintier colors,--ay, and that resplendent brunette with the white
flowers, the magnolia; and all underneath, in the green shade, enamelled
banks which the birds themselves sought to rival.

At length, one afternoon, we came to the grove of wild apple trees so
lovingly spoken of by emigrants as the Crab Orchard, and where formerly
they had delighted to linger. The plain near by was flecked with the
brown backs of feeding buffalo, but we dared not stop, and pressed on to
find a camp in the forest. As we walked in the filtered sunlight we had
a great fright, Polly Ann and I. Shrill, discordant cries suddenly burst
from the branches above us, and a flock of strange, green birds flecked
with red flew over our heads. Even Tom, intent upon the trail, turned
and laughed at Polly Ann as she stood clutching me.

“Shucks,” said he, “they’re only paroquets.”

We made our camp in a little dell where there was short green grass by
the brookside and steep banks overgrown with brambles on either hand.
Tom knew the place, and declared that we were within thirty miles of the
station. A giant oak had blown down across the water, and, cutting out
a few branches of this, we spread our blankets under it on the turf.
Tethering our faithful beasts, and cutting a quantity of pea-vine for
their night’s food, we lay down to sleep, Tom taking the first watch.

I had the second, for Tom trusted me now, and glorying in that trust I
was alert and vigilant. A shy moon peeped at me between the trees, and
was fantastically reflected in the water. The creek rippled over the
limestone, and an elk screamed in the forest far beyond. When at length
I had called Weldon to take the third watch, I lay down with a sense of
peace, soothed by the sweet odors of the night.

I awoke suddenly. I had been dreaming of Nick Temple and Temple Bow, and
my father coming back to me there with a great gash in his shoulder like
Weldon’s. I lay for a moment dazed by the transition, staring through
the gray light. Then I sat up, the soft stamping and snorting of
the horses in my ears. The sorrel mare had her nose high, her tail
twitching, but there was no other sound in the leafy wilderness. With
a bound of returning sense I looked for Weldon. He had fallen asleep on
the bank above, his body dropped across the trunk of the oak. I leaped
on the trunk and made my way along it, stepping over him, until I
reached and hid myself in the great roots of the tree on the bank above.
The cold shiver of the dawn was in my body as I waited and listened.
Should I wake Tom? The vast forest was silent, and yet in its shadowy
depths my imagination drew moving forms. I hesitated.

The light grew: the boles of the trees came out, one by one, through the
purple. The tangled mass down the creek took on a shade of green, and
a faint breath came from the southward. The sorrel mare sniffed it, and
stamped. Then silence again,--a long silence. Could it be that the cane
moved in the thicket? Or had my eyes deceived me? I stared so hard that
it seemed to rustle all over. Perhaps some deer were feeding there,
for it was no unusual thing, when we rose in the morning, to hear the
whistle of a startled doe near our camping ground. I was thoroughly
frightened now,--and yet I had the speculative Scotch mind. The thicket
was some one hundred and fifty yards above, and on the flooded lands
at a bend. If there were Indians in it, they could not see the sleeping
forms of our party under me because of a bend in the stream. They might
have seen me, though I had kept very still in the twisted roots of the
oak, and now I was cramped. If Indians were there, they could determine
our position well enough by the occasional stamping and snorting of the
horses. And this made my fear more probable, for I had heard that horses
and cattle often warned pioneers of the presence of redskins.

Another thing: if they were a small party, they would probably seek to
surprise us by coming out of the cane into the creek bed above the
bend, and stalk down the creek. If a large band, they would surround and
overpower us. I drew the conclusion that it must be a small party--if a
party at all. And I would have given a shot in the arm to be able to see
over the banks of the creek. Finally I decided to awake Tom.

It was no easy matter to get down to where he was without being seen
by eyes in the cane. I clung to the under branches of the oak, finally
reached the shelving bank, and slid down slowly. I touched him on the
shoulder. He awoke with a start, and by instinct seized the rifle lying
beside him.

“What is it, Davy?” he whispered.

I told what had happened and my surmise. He glanced then at the restless
horses and nodded, pointing up at the sleeping figure of Weldon, in full
sight on the log. The Indians must have seen him.

Tom picked up the spare rifle.

“Davy,” said he, “you stay here beside Polly Ann, behind the oak. You
kin shoot with a rest; but don’t shoot,” said he, earnestly, “for God’s
sake don’t shoot unless you’re sure to kill.”

I nodded. For a moment he looked at the face of Polly Ann, sleeping
peacefully, and the fierce light faded from his eyes. He brushed her on
the cheek and she awoke and smiled at him, trustfully, lovingly. He put
his finger to his lips.

“Stay with Davy,” he said. Turning to me, he added: “When you wake
Weldon, wake him easy. So.” He put his hand in mine, and gradually
tightened it. “Wake him that way, and he won’t jump.”

Polly Ann asked no questions. She looked at Tom, and her soul was in
her face. She seized the pistol from the blanket. Then we watched him
creeping down the creek on his belly, close to the bank. Next we moved
behind the fallen tree, and I put my hand in Weldon’s. He woke with a
sigh, started, but we drew him down behind the log. Presently he climbed
cautiously up the bank and took station in the muddy roots of the tree.
Then we waited, watching Tom with a prayer in our hearts. Those who have
not felt it know not the fearfulness of waiting for an Indian attack.

At last Tom reached the bend in the bank, beside some red-bud bushes,
and there he stayed. A level shaft of light shot through the forest. The
birds, twittering, awoke. A great hawk soared high in the blue over our
heads. An hour passed. I had sighted the rifle among the yellow leaves
of the fallen oak an hundred times. But Polly Ann looked not once to
the right or left. Her eyes and her prayers followed the form of her
husband.

Then, like the cracking of a great drover’s whip, a shot rang out in the
stillness, and my hands tightened over the rifle-stock. A piece of bark
struck me in the face, and a dead leaf fluttered to the ground. Almost
instantly there was another shot, and a blue wisp of smoke rose from the
red-bud bushes, where Tom was. The horses whinnied, there was a rustle
in the cane, and silence. Weldon bent over.

“My God!” he whispered hoarsely, “he hit one. Tom hit one.”

I felt Polly Ann’s hand on my face.

“Davy dear,” she said, “are ye hurt?”

“No,” said I, dazed, and wondering why Weldon had not been shot long ago
as he slumbered. I was burning to climb the bank and ask him whether he
had seen the Indian fall.

Again there was silence,--a silence even more awful than before. The
sun crept higher, the magic of his rays turning the creek from black to
crystal, and the birds began to sing again. And still there was no sign
of the treacherous enemy that lurked about us. Could Tom get back? I
glanced at Polly Ann. The same question was written in her yearning
eyes, staring at the spot where the gray of his hunting shirt showed
through the bushes at the bend. Suddenly her hand tightened on mine. The
hunting shirt was gone!

After that, in the intervals when my terror left me, I tried to
speculate upon the plan of the savages. Their own numbers could not
be great, and yet they must have known from our trace how few we
were. Scanning the ground, I noted that the forest was fairly clean of
undergrowth on both sides of us. Below, the stream ran straight, but
there were growths of cane and briers. Looking up, I saw Weldon faced
about. It was the obvious move.

But where had Tom gone?

Next my eye was caught by a little run fringed with bushes that curved
around the cane near the bend. I traced its course, unconsciously, bit
by bit, until it reached the edge of a bank not fifty feet away.

All at once my breath left me. Through the tangle of bramble stems at
the mouth of the run, above naked brown shoulders there glared at me,
hideously streaked with red, a face. Had my fancy lied? I stared again
until my eyes were blurred, now tortured by doubt, now so completely
convinced that my fingers almost released the trigger,--for I had thrown
the sights into line over the tree. I know not to this day whether I
shot from determination or nervousness. My shoulder bruised by the kick,
the smoke like a veil before my face, it was some moments ere I knew
that the air was full of whistling bullets; and then the gun was torn
from my hands, and I saw Polly Ann ramming in a new charge.

“The pistol, Davy,” she cried.

One torture was over, another on. Crack after crack sounded from the
forest--from here and there and everywhere, it seemed--and with a song
that like a hurtling insect ran the scale of notes, the bullets buried
themselves in the trunk of our oak with a chug. Once in a while I heard
Weldon’s answering shot, but I remembered my promise to Tom not to waste
powder unless I were sure. The agony was the breathing space we had
while they crept nearer. Then we thought of Tom, and I dared not glance
at Polly Ann for fear that the sight of her face would unnerve me.

Then a longing to kill seized me, a longing so strange and fierce that
I could scarce be still. I know now that it comes in battle to all men,
and with intensity to the hunted, and it explained to me more clearly
what followed. I fairly prayed for the sight of a painted form, and time
after time my fancy tricked me into the notion that I had one. And even
as I searched the brambles at the top of the run a puff of smoke rose
out of them, a bullet burying itself in the roots near Weldon, who fired
in return. I say that I have some notion of what possessed the man, for
he was crazed with passion at fighting the race which had so cruelly
wronged him. Horror-struck, I saw him swing down from the bank, splash
through the water with raised tomahawk, and gain the top of the run.
In less time than it takes me to write these words he had dragged a
hideous, naked warrior out of the brambles, and with an avalanche of
crumbling earth they slid into the waters of the creek. Polly Ann and I
stared transfixed at the fearful fight that followed, nor can I give any
adequate description of it. Weldon had struck through the brambles, but
the savage had taken the blow on his gun-barrel and broken the handle of
the tomahawk, and it was man to man as they rolled in the shallow water,
locked in a death embrace. Neither might reach for his knife, neither
was able to hold the other down, Weldon’s curses surcharged with hatred,
the Indian straining silently save for a gasp or a guttural note,
the white a bearded madman, the savage a devil with a glistening,
paint-streaked body, his features now agonized as his muscles strained
and cracked, now lighted with a diabolical joy. But the pent-up rage of
months gave the white man strength.

Polly Ann and I were powerless for fear of shooting Weldon, and gazed
absorbed at the fiendish scene with eyes not to be withdrawn. The
tree-trunk shook. A long, bronze arm reached out from above, and a
painted face glowered at us from the very roots where Weldon had lain.
That moment I took to be my last, and in it I seemed to taste all
eternity. I heard but faintly a noise beyond. It was the shock of the
heavy Indian falling on Polly Ann and me as we cowered under the trunk,
and even then there was an instant that we stood gazing at him as at a
worm writhing in the clay. It was she who fired the pistol and made
the great hole in his head, and so he twitched and died. After that a
confusion of shots, war-whoops, a vision of two naked forms flying from
tree to tree towards the cane, and then--God be praised--Tom’s voice
shouting:--

“Polly Ann! Polly Ann!”

Before she had reached the top of the bank Tom had her in his arms,
and a dozen tall gray figures leaped the six feet into the stream and
stopped. My own eyes turned with theirs to see the body of poor Weldon
lying face downward in the water. But beyond it a tragedy awaited me.
Defiant, immovable, save for the heaving of his naked chest, the savage
who had killed him stood erect with folded arms facing us. The smoke
cleared away from a gleaming rifle-barrel, and the brave staggered and
fell and died as silent as he stood, his feathers making ripples in the
stream. It was cold-blooded, if you like, but war in those days was to
the death, and knew no mercy. The tall backwoodsman who had shot him
waded across the stream, and in the twinkling of an eye seized the
scalp-lock and ran it round with his knife, holding up the bleeding
trophy with a shout. Staggering to my feet, I stretched myself, but I
had been cramped so long that I tottered and would have fallen had not
Tom’s hand steadied me.

“Davy!” he cried. “Thank God, little Davy! the varmints didn’t get ye.”

“And you, Tom?” I answered, looking up at him, bewildered with
happiness.

“They was nearer than I suspicioned when I went off,” he said, and
looked at me curiously. “Drat the little deevil,” he said
affectionately, and his voice trembled, “he took care of Polly Ann, I’ll
warrant.”

He carried me to the top of the bank, where we were surrounded by the
whole band of backwoodsmen.

“That he did!” cried Polly Ann, “and fetched a redskin yonder as clean
as you could have

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