Project Gutenberg's The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, by John Fox

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Title: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

Author: John Fox

Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2059]
Release Date: February, 2000
Last Updated: July 13, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME


by

JOHN FOX, JR.




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

  KENTUCKY, APRIL, 1898





CONTENTS

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




THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME



CHAPTER 1

TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 2

FIGHTING THEIR WAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Lawdy!" groaned the tall one.

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

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

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

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

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

Chad never moved.

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

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

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

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

"You started this fight," said Tom.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The big fellow looked at him keenly, but kindly.

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

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

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

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

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

Chad shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 3.

A "BLAB SCHOOL" ON KINGDOM COME

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Git up thar, Melissy."

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

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

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

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

"Joel, them sheep air comin'!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joel's face was red and his eyes rolled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

rang the strings and old Joel's eyes danced.

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 4.

THE COMING OF THE TIDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hold on!" shouted the Squire.

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

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

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

But Chad shook his head and smiled.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 5.

OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's them?" he asked.

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

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

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

"I left him at home."

"Is he all right?"

"Yes--I reckon."

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

Chad smiled and shook his head.

"Not much."

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 6

LOST AT THE CAPITAL

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

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

"They're gone."

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

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

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

"Has that enJINE gone?" he cried.

The man looked over his shoulder.

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

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

Chad had turned away with a sob.

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

"Is thar another goin'?"

"Not till to-morrow mornin'."

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

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

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

"Hello!"

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

"Hello!" answered the man.

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

"We don't keep people all night."

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 7.

A FRIEND ON THE ROAD

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

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

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

"Howdye!" said Chad.

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

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

"I'm a-goin' thataway."

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

"Yes," he said, simply.

"Climb right in, my boy."

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

"Where are you from, little man?"

"I come from the mountains."

"The mountains?" said the Major.

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

"What are you doin' up here?"

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

"How did you happen to come away?"

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

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

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

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

"Foller'em," said Chad, sturdily.

"Does your father live down in the mountains?"

"No," said Chad, shortly.

The Major looked at the lad gravely.

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

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

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

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

"You haven't told me your name."

"You hain't axed me."

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

"Chad," he said.

"Chad what?"

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

"I don't know," said Chad.

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

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

"Chadwick."

"Chad," corrected the boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?" shouted the Major.

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

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

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

"Who were they, Tom?" he asked

The old driver turned:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All of them?" asked the Major.

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

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

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

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

"You hain't axed me."

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

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

"I don't know."

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

"Buford, Calvin Buford."

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

"What is it, Chad?"

"Nothin'--nothin'."

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

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

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

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

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

"It certainly is very odd!"



CHAPTER 8.

HOME WITH THE MAJOR

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

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

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

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

On one corner was a great hemp factory.

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

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

"Pioneering, Major?" asked John Morgan.

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

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

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

"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How much am I offered for this horse?"

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

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

"One hundred dollars," said a voice.

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

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

"How much am I offered?"

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

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

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

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

"Five dollars!"

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

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

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

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

"Chad."

The auctioneer put his hand to one ear.

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

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

"Ah, Mr. Chad."

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

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

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

"Bought her," said Chad.

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

"Five dollars."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, here we are, little man."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chad's eyes lighted up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, sir."

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

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

"Well, it is."

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

"Yes."

Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.

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

"Yes, sir."

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

"How strange! How strange!"

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

"Where's YO' mammy?"

It had stirred the Major.

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



CHAPTER 9.

MARGARET

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

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

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

"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Get that fish, I tell you!"

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

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

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

"Fishin'?" said Chad.

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

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

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

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

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

"Give him to me," said Dan.

"Lemme string him," said the black boy.

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

"Want to fish?"

Chad sprang down the bank quickly.

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

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

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

"Howdye!" said Chad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"S'pose you mind your own business!"

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

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

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

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

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

"What's your name?"

"Snowball!" henchman, obediently.

"Louder!"

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

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

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

"LOUDER!"

At last Chad spoke quietly.

"He can't holler no louder."

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

"Don't hit him!"

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

"Don't you DARE touch my brother!"

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

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

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

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

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

"And that boy meddled," said Dan.

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

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

"I thought you wus," said Chad.

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

"That boy meddled and I hit him."

Chad turned and answered the General's eyes steadily.

"I reckon I had no business meddlin'!"

"He tried to give sister a fish."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"An' come soon!" he shouted back.

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

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

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

The General frowned.

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

"Why, papa?"

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

"Why, papa?"

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

"Never mind, son," she said.



CHAPTER 10.

THE BLUEGRASS

God's Country!

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 11.

A TOURNAMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Think you can stick on?"

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

The General laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where did you learn to ride, boy?"

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

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

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

"How'd you like it, Chad?"

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

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

"Yes, sir," said Chad.

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

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

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

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

"Seven."

"What--missed only once?"

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

The Major roared aloud.

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Leggo!" said Chad.

"Leggo!" said Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, Margaret," said General Dan.

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



CHAPTER 12.

BACK TO KINGDOM COME

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

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

"I am rather surprised at Major Buford."

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

"Nobody knows anything about the boy."

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

"He seems like a nice boy."

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothin'--no, sir."

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

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

"No, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I believe he told you what he was."

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

The General rose suddenly--stiffly.

"He must never darken my door again."

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

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

The Major softened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Chad!"

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

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

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

"Jack's all right."

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

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

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

"Howdye, Melissa!"

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

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

He turned to Joel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have they got Jack?"

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER 13.

ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Half a mile up the river and to one side of the road, a space of some
thirty feet square had been cut into a patch of rhododendron and filled
with rude benches of slabs--in front of which was a rough platform on
which sat a home-made, cane-bottomed chair. Except for the opening from
the road, the space was walled with a circle of living green through
which the sun dappled the benches with quivering disks of yellow
light--and, high above, great poplars and oaks arched their mighty
heads. It was an open-air "meeting-house" where the circuit-rider
preached during his summer circuit and there the trial was to take
place.

Already a crowd was idling, whittling, gossiping in the road, when the
Turner cavalcade came in sight--and for ten miles up and down the river
people were coming in for the trial.

"Mornin', gentlemen," said old Joel, gravely.

"Mornin'," answered several, among whom was the Squire, who eyed Joel's
gun and the guns coming up the road.

"Squirrel-huntin'?" he asked and, as the old hunter did not answer, he
added, sharply:

"Air you afeerd, Joel Turner, that you ain't a-goin' to git justice
from ME?"

"I don't keer whar it comes from," said Joel, grimly--"but I'm a-goin'
to HAVE it."

It was plain that the old man not only was making no plea for sympathy,
but was alienating the little he had: and what he had was very little,
for who but a lover of dogs can give full sympathy to his kind? And,
then, Jack was believed to be guilty. It was curious to see how each
Dillon shrank unconsciously as the Turners gathered--all but Jerry, one
of the giant twins. He always stood his ground--fearing nor man, nor
dog--nor devil.

Ten minutes later, the Squire took his seat on the platform, while the
circuit-rider squatted down beside him. The crowd, men and women and
children, took the rough benches. To one side sat and stood the
Dillons, old Tad and little Tad, Daws, Nance, and others of the tribe.
Straight in front of the Squire gathered the Turners about Melissa and
Chad--and Jack as a centre--with Jack squatted on his hanches foremost
of all, facing the Squire with grave dignity and looking at none else
save, occasionally, the old hunter or his little master.

To the right stood the sheriff with his rifle, and on the outskirts
hung the school-master. Quickly the old Squire chose a jury--giving old
Joel the opportunity to object as he called each man's name. Old Joel
objected to none, for every man called, he knew, was more friendly to
him than to the Dillons: and old Tad Dillon raised no word of protest,
for he knew his case was clear. Then began the trial, and any soul that
was there would have shuddered could he have known how that trial was
to divide neighbor against neighbor, and mean death and bloodshed for
half a century after the trial itself was long forgotten.

The first witness, old Tad--long, lean, stooping, crafty--had seen the
sheep rushing wildly up the hill-side "'bout crack o' day," he said,
and had sent Daws up to see what the matter was. Daws had shouted back:

"That damned Turner dog has killed one o' our sheep. Thar he comes now.
Kill him!" And old Tad had rushed in-doors for his rifle and had taken
a shot at Jack as he leaped into the road and loped for home. Just then
a stern, thick little voice rose from behind Jack:

"Hit was a God's blessin' fer you that you didn't hit him."

The Squire glared down at the boy and old Joel said, kindly:

"Hush, Chad."

Old Dillon had then gone down to the Turners and asked them to kill the
dog, but old Joel had refused.

"Whar was Whizzer?" Chad asked, sharply.

"You can't axe that question," said the Squire. "Hit's
er-er-irrelevant."

Daws came next. When he reached the fence upon the hill-side he could
see the sheep lying still on the ground. As he was climbing over, the
Turner dog jumped the fence and Daws saw blood on his muzzle.

"How close was you to him?" asked the Squire.

"'Bout twenty feet," said Daws.

"Humph!" said old Joel.

"Whar was Whizzer?" Again the old Squire glared down at Chad.

"Don't you axe that question again, boy. Didn't I tell you hit was
irrelevant?"

"What's irrelevant?" the boy asked, bluntly.

The Squire hesitated. "Why--why, hit ain't got nothin' to do with the
case."

"Hit ain't?" shouted Chad.

"Joel," said the Squire, testily, "ef you don't keep that boy still,
I'll fine him fer contempt o' court."

Joel laughed, but he put his heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. Little
Tad Dillon and Nance and the Dillon mother had all seen Jack running
down the road. There was no doubt but that it was the Turner dog. And
with this clear case against poor Jack, the Dillons rested. And what
else could the Turners do but establish Jack's character and put in a
plea of mercy--a useless plea, old Joel knew--for a first offence? Jack
was the best dog old Joel had ever known, and the old man told
wonderful tales of the dog's intelligence and kindness and how one
night Jack had guarded a stray lamb that had broken its leg--until
daybreak--and he had been led to the dog and the sheep by Jack's
barking for help. The Turner boys confirmed this story, though it was
received with incredulity.

How could a dog that would guard one lone helpless lamb all night long
take the life of another?

There was no witness that had aught but kind words to say of the dog or
aught but wonder that he should have done this thing--even back to the
cattle-dealer who had given him to Chad. For at that time the dealer
said--so testified Chad, no objection being raised to hearsay
evidence--that Jack was the best dog he ever knew. That was all the
Turners or anybody could do or say, and the old Squire was about to
turn the case over to the jury when Chad rose:

"Squire," he said and his voice trembled, "Jack's my dog. I lived with
him night an' day for 'bout three years an' I want to axe some
questions."

He turned to Daws:

"I want to axe you ef thar was any blood around that sheep."

"Thar was a great big pool o' blood," said Daws, indignantly. Chad
looked at the Squire.

"Well, a sheep-killin' dog don't leave no great big pool o' blood,
Squire, with the FUST one he kills! He SUCKS it!" Several men nodded
their heads.

"Squire! The fust time I come over these mountains, the fust people I
seed was these Dillons--an' Whizzer. They sicked Whizzer on Jack hyeh
and Jack whooped him. Then Tad thar jumped me and I whooped him." (The
Turner boys were nodding confirmation.) "Sence that time they've hated
Jack an' they've hated me and they hate the Turners partly fer takin'
keer o' me.  Now you said somethin' I axed just now was irrelevant, but
I tell you, Squire, I know a sheep-killin' dawg, and jes' as I know
Jack AIN'T, I know the Dillon dawg naturely is, and I tell you, if the
Dillons' dawg killed that sheep and they could put it on Jack--they'd
do it. They'd do it--Squire, an' I tell you, you--ortern't--to
let--that sheriff--thar--shoot my--dog--until the Dillons answers what
I axed--" the boy's passionate cry rang against the green walls and out
the opening and across the river--

"WHAR'S WHIZZER?"

The boy startled the crowd and the old Squire himself, who turned
quickly to the Dillons.

"Well, whar is Whizzer?"

Nobody answered.

"He ain't been seen, Squire, sence the evenin' afore the night o' the
killin'!" Chad's statement seemed to be true. Not a voice contradicted.

"An' I want to know if Daws seed signs o' killin' on Jack's head when
he jumped the fence, why them same signs didn't show when he got home."

Poor Chad! Here old Tad Dillon raised his hand.

"Axe the Turners, Squire," he said, and as the school-master on the
outskirts shrank, as though he meant to leave the crowd, the old man's
quick eye caught the movement and he added:

"Axe the school-teacher!"

Every eye turned with the Squire's to the master, whose face was
strangely serious straightway.

"Did you see any signs on the dawg when he got home?" The gaunt man
hesitated, with one swift glance at the boy, who almost paled in answer.

"Why," said the school-master, and again he hesitated, but old Joel, in
a voice that was without hope, encouraged him:

"Go on!"

"What was they?"

"Jack had blood on his muzzle, and a little strand o' wool behind one
ear."

There was no hope against that testimony. Melissa broke away from her
mother and ran out to the road--weeping. Chad dropped with a sob to his
bench and put his arms around the dog: then he rose up and walked out
the opening while Jack leaped against his leash to follow. The
school-master put out his hand to stop him, but the boy struck it aside
without looking up and went on.  He could not stay to see Jack
condemned. He knew what the verdict would be, and in twenty minutes the
jury gave it, without leaving their seats.

"Guilty!"

The Sheriff came forward. He knew Jack and Jack knew him, and wagged
his tail and whimpered up at him when he took the leash.

"Well, by ----, this is a job I don't like, an' I'm damned ef I'm
agoin' to shoot this dawg afore he knows what I'm shootin' him fer. I'm
goin' to show him that sheep fust. Whar's that sheep, Daws?"

Daws led the way down the road, over the fence, across the meadow, and
up the hill-side where lay the slain sheep. Chad and Melissa saw them
coming--the whole crowd--before they themselves were seen. For a minute
the boy watched them. They were going to kill Jack where the Dillons
said he had killed the sheep, and the boy jumped to his feet and ran up
the hill a little way and disappeared in the bushes, that he might not
hear Jack's death-shot, while Melissa sat where she was, watching the
crowd come on. Daws was at the foot of the hill, and she saw him make a
gesture toward her, and then the Sheriff came on with Jack--over the
fence, past her, the Sheriff saying, kindly, "Howdy, Melissa. I shorely
am sorry ta have to kill Jack," and on to the dead sheep, which lay
fifty yards beyond. If the Sheriff expected to drop head and tail and
look mean he was greatly mistaken. Jack neither hung back nor sniffed
at the carcass. Instead he put one fore foot on it and with the other
bent in the air, looked without shame into the Sheriff's eyes--as much
as to say:

"Yes, this is a wicked and shameful thing, but what have I got to do
with it? Why are you bringing ME here?"

The Sheriff came back greatly puzzled and shaking his head. Passing
Melissa, he stopped to let the unhappy little girl give Jack a last
pat, and it was there that Jack suddenly caught scent of Chad's tracks.
With one mighty bound the dog snatched the rawhide string from the
careless Sheriff's hand, and in a moment, with his nose to the ground,
was speeding up toward the woods. With a startled yell and a frightful
oath the Sheriff threw his rifle to his shoulder, but the little girl
sprang up and caught the barrel with both hands, shaking it fiercely up
and down and hieing Jack on with shriek after shriek. A minute later
Jack had disappeared in the bushes, Melissa was running like the wind
down the hill toward home, while the whole crowd in the meadow was
rushing up toward the Sheriff, led by the Dillons, who were yelling and
swearing like madmen. Above them, the crestfallen Sheriff waited. The
Dillons crowded angrily about him, gesticulating and threatening, while
he told his story. But nothing could be done--nothing. They did not
know that Chad was up in the woods or they would have gone in search of
him--knowing that when they found him they would find Jack--but to look
for Jack now would be like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. There
was nothing to do, then, but to wait for Jack to come home, which he
would surely do--to get to Chad--and it was while old Joel was
promising that the dog should be surrendered to the Sheriff that little
Tad Dillon gave an excited shriek.

"Look up thar!"

And up there at the edge of the wood was Chad standing and, at his
feet, Jack sitting on his haunches, with his tongue out and looking as
though nothing had happened or could ever happen to Chad or to him.

"Come up hyeh," shouted Chad.

"You come down hyeh," shouted the Sheriff, angrily. So Chad came down,
with Jack trotting after him. Chad had cut off the rawhide string, but
the Sheriff caught Jack by the nape of the neck.

"You won't git away from me agin, I reckon."

"Well, I reckon you ain't goin' to shoot him," said Chad. "Leggo that
dawg."

"Don't be a fool, Jim," said old Joel. "The dawg ain't goin' to leave
the boy." The Sheriff let go.

"Come on up hyeh," said Chad. "I got somethin' to show ye."

The boy turned with such certainty that with out a word Squire,
Sheriff, Turners, Dillons, and spectators followed. As they approached
a deep ravine the boy pointed to the ground where were evidences of
some fierce struggle--the dirt thrown up, and several small stones
scattered about with faded stains of blood on them.

"Wait hyeh!" said the boy, and he slid down the ravine and appeared
again dragging something after him. Tall Tom ran down to help him and
the two threw before the astonished crowd the body of a black and white
dog.  "Now I reckon you know whar Whizzer is," panted Chad vindictively
to the Dillons.

"Well, what of it?" snapped Daws

"Oh, nothin'," said the boy with fine sarcasm. "Only WHIZZER killed
that sheep and Jack killed Whizzer." From every Dillon throat came a
scornful grunt.

"Oh, I reckon so," said Chad, easily. "Look dhar!" He lifted the dead
dog's head, and pointed at the strands of wool between his teeth. He
turned it over, showing the deadly grip in the throat and close to the
jaws, that had choked the life from Whizzer--Jack's own grip.

"Ef you will jes' rickollect, Jack had that same grip the time
afore--when I pulled him off o' Whizzer."

"By ----, that is so," said Tall Tom, and Dolph and Rube echoed him
amid a dozen voices, for not only old Joel, but many of his neighbors
knew Jack's method of fighting, which had made him a victor up and down
the length of Kingdom Come.

There was little doubt that the boy was right--that Jack had come on
Whizzer killing the sheep, and had caught him at the edge of the
ravine, where the two had fought, rolling down and settling the old
feud between them in the darkness at the bottom. And up there on the
hill-side, the jury that pronounced Jack guilty pronounced him
innocent, and, as the Turners started joyfully down the hill, the sun
that was to have sunk on Jack stiff in death sank on Jack frisking
before them--home.

And yet another wonder was in store for Chad. A strange horse with a
strange saddle was hitched to the Turner fence; beside it was an old
mare with a boy's saddle, and as Chad came through the gate a familiar
voice called him cheerily by name. On the porch sat Major Buford.



CHAPTER 14.

THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS

The quivering heat of August was giving way and the golden peace of
autumn was spreading through the land. The breath of mountain woods by
day was as cool as the breath of valleys at night. In the mountains,
boy and girl were leaving school for work in the fields, and from the
Cumberland foothills to the Ohio, boy and girl were leaving happy
holidays for school. Along a rough, rocky road and down a shining
river, now sunk to deep pools with trickling riffles between--for a
drouth was on the land--rode a tall, gaunt man on an old brown mare
that switched with her tail now and then at a long-legged, rough-haired
colt stumbling awkwardly behind. Where the road turned from the river
and up the mountain, the man did a peculiar thing, for there, in that
lonely wilderness, he stopped, dismounted, tied the reins to an
overhanging branch and, leaving mare and colt behind, strode up the
mountain, on and on, disappearing over the top.  Half an hour later, a
sturdy youth hove in sight, trudging along the same road with his cap
in his hand, a long rifle over one shoulder and a dog trotting at his
heels. Now and then the boy would look back and scold the dog and the
dog would drop his muzzle with shame, until the boy stooped to pat him
on the head, when he would leap frisking before him, until another
affectionate scolding was due. The old mare turned her head when she
heard them coming, and nickered. Without a moment's hesitation the lad
untied her, mounted and rode up the mountain. For two days the man and
the boy had been "riding and tying," as this way of travel for two men
and one horse is still known in the hills, and over the mountain, they
were to come together for the night. At the foot of the spur on the
other side, boy and dog came upon the tall man sprawled at full length
across a moss-covered bowlder. The dog dropped behind, but the man's
quick eye caught him:

"Where'd that dog come from, Chad?" Jack put his belly to the earth and
crawled slowly forward--penitent, but determined.

"He broke loose, I reckon. He come tearin' up behind me 'bout an hour
ago, like a house afire. Let him go." Caleb Hazel frowned.

"I told you, Chad, that we'd have no place to keep him."

"Well, we can send him home as easy from up thar as we can from
hyeh--let him go."

"All right!" Chad understood not a whit better than the dog; for Jack
leaped to his feet and jumped around the school-master, trying to lick
his hands, but the school-master was absorbed and would none of him.
There, the mountain-path turned into a wagon-road and the school-master
pointed with one finger.

"Do you know what that is, Chad?"

"No, sir." Chad said "sir" to the school-master now.

"Well, that's"--the school-master paused to give his words
effect--"that's the old Wilderness Road."

Ah, did he not know the old, old Wilderness Road! The boy gripped his
rifle unconsciously, as though there might yet be a savage lying in
ambush in some covert of rhododendron close by. And, as they trudged
ahead, side by side now, for it was growing late, the school-master
told him, as often before, the story of that road and the pioneers who
had trod it--the hunters, adventurers, emigrants, fine ladies and fine
gentlemen who had stained it with their blood; and how that road had
broadened into the mighty way for a great civilization from sea to sea.
The lad could see it all, as he listened, wishing that he had lived in
those stirring days, never dreaming in how little was he of different
mould from the stout-hearted pioneers who beat out the path with their
moccasined feet; how little less full of danger were his own days to
be; how little different had been his own life, and was his purpose
now--how little different after all was the bourn to which his own
restless feet were bearing him.

Chad had changed a good deal since that night after Jack's trial, when
the kind-hearted old Major had turned up at Joel's cabin to take him
back to the Bluegrass. He was taller, broader at shoulder, deeper of
chest; his mouth and eyes were prematurely grave from much brooding and
looked a little defiant, as though the boy expected hostility from the
world and was prepared to meet it, but there was no bitterness in them,
and luminous about the lad was the old atmosphere of brave, sunny cheer
and simple self-trust that won people to him.

The Major and old Joel had talked late that night after Jack's trial.
The Major had come down to find out who Chad was, if possible, and to
take him back home, no matter who he might be. The old hunter looked
long into the fire.

"Co'se I know hit 'ud be better fer Chad, but, Lawd, how we'd hate to
give him up. Still, I reckon I'll have to let him go, but I can stand
hit better, if you can git him to leave Jack hyeh." The Major smiled.
Did old Joel know where Nathan Cherry lived? The old hunter did. Nathan
was a "damned old skinflint who lived across the mountain on Stone
Creek--who stole other folks' farms and if he knew anything about Chad
the old hunter would squeeze it out of his throat; and if old Nathan,
learning where Chad now was, tried to pester him he would break every
bone in the skinflint's body." So the Major and old Joel rode over next
day to see Nathan, and Nathan with his shifting eyes told them Chad's
story in a high, cracked voice that, recalling Chad's imitation of it,
made the Major laugh. Chad was a foundling, Nathan said: his mother was
dead and his father had gone off to the Mexican War and never come
back: he had taken the mother in himself and Chad had been born in his
own house, when he lived farther up the river, and the boy had begun to
run away as soon as he was old enough to toddle. And with each sentence
Nathan would call for confirmation on a silent, dark-faced daughter who
sat inside: "Didn't he, Betsy?" or "Wasn't he, gal?" And the girl would
nod sullenly, but say nothing. It seemed a hopeless mission except
that, on the way back, the Major learned that there were one or two
Bufords living down the Cumberland, and like old Joel, shook his head
over Nathan's pharisaical philanthropy to a homeless boy and wondered
what the motive under it was--but he went back with the old hunter and
tried to get Chad to go home with him. The boy was rock-firm in his
refusal.

"I'm obleeged to you, Major, but I reckon I better stay in the
mountains." That was all Chad would say, and at last the Major gave up
and rode back over the mountain and down the Cumberland alone, still on
his quest. At a blacksmith's shop far down the river he found a man who
had "heerd tell of a Chad Buford who had been killed in the Mexican War
and whose daddy lived 'bout fifteen mile down the river." The Major
found that Buford dead, but an old woman told him his name was Chad,
that he had "fit in the War o' 1812 when he was nothin' but a chunk of
a boy, and that his daddy, whose name, too, was Chad, had been killed
by Injuns some'eres aroun' Cumberland Gap." By this time the Major was
as keen as a hound on the scent, and, in a cabin at the foot of the
sheer gray wall that crumbles into the Gap, he had the amazing luck to
find an octogenarian with an unclouded memory who could recollect a
queer-looking old man who had been killed by Indians--"a ole feller
with the curiosest hair I ever did see," added the patriarch.  His name
was Colonel Buford, and the old man knew where he was buried, for he
himself was old enough at the time to help bury him. Greatly excited,
the Major hired mountaineers to dig into the little hill that the old
man pointed out, on which there was, however, no sign of a grave, and,
at last, they uncovered the skeleton of an old gentleman in a wig and
peruke!  There was little doubt now that the boy, no matter what the
blot on his 'scutcheon, was of his own flesh and blood, and the Major
was tempted to go back at once for him, but it was a long way, and he
was ill and anxious to get back home. So he took the Wilderness Road
for the Bluegrass, and wrote old Joel the facts and asked him to send
Chad to him whenever he would come. But the boy would not go. There was
no definite reason in his mind. It was a stubborn instinct merely--the
instinct of pride, of stubborn independence--of shame that festered in
his soul like a hornet's sting. Even Melissa urged him. She never tired
of hearing Chad tell about the Bluegrass country, and when she knew
that the Major wanted him to go back, she followed him out in the yard
that night and found him on the fence whittling. A red star was sinking
behind the mountains. "Why won't you go back no more, Chad?" she said.

"'Cause I HAIN'T got no daddy er mammy." Then Melissa startled him.

"Well, I'd go--an' I hain't got no daddy er mammy." Chad stopped his
whittling.

"Whut'd you say, Lissy?" he asked, gravely.

Melissa was frightened--the boy looked so serious.

"Cross yo' heart an' body that you won't NUVER tell NO body." Chad
crossed.

"Well, mammy said I mustn't ever tell nobody--but I HAIN'T got no daddy
er mammy. I heerd her a-tellin' the school-teacher." And the little
girl shook her head over her frightful crime of disobedience.

"You HAIN'T?"

"I HAIN'T!"

Melissa, too, was a waif, and Chad looked at her with a wave of new
affection and pity.

"Now, why won't you go back just because you hain't got no daddy an'
mammy?"

Chad hesitated. There was no use making Melissa unhappy.

"Oh, I'd just ruther stay hyeh in the mountains," he said,
carelessly--lying suddenly like the little gentleman that he was--lying
as he knew, and as Melissa some day would come to know. Then Chad
looked at the little girl a long while, and in such a queer way that
Melissa turned her face shyly to the red star.

"I'm goin' to stay right hyeh. Ain't you glad, Lissy?"

The little girl turned her eyes shyly back again. "Yes, Chad," she said.

He would stay in the mountains and work hard; and when he grew up he
would marry Melissa and they would go away where nobody knew him or
her: or they would stay right there in the mountains where nobody
blamed him for what he was nor Melissa for what she was; and he would
study law like Caleb Hazel, and go to the Legislature--but Melissa! And
with the thought of Melissa in the mountains came always the thought of
dainty Margaret in the Bluegrass and the chasm that lay between the
two--between Margaret and him, for that matter; and when Mother Turner
called Melissa from him in the orchard next day, Chad lay on his back
under an apple-tree, for a long while, thinking; and then he whistled
for Jack and climbed the spur above the river where he could look down
on the shadowed water and out to the clouded heaps of rose and green
and crimson, where the sun was going down under one faint white star.
Melissa was the glow-worm that, when darkness came, would be a
watch-fire at his feet--Margaret, the star to which his eyes were
lifted night and day--and so runs the world. He lay long watching that
star. It hung almost over the world of which he had dreamed so long and
upon which he had turned his back forever. Forever? Perhaps, but he
went back home that night with a trouble in his soul that was not to
pass, and while he sat by the fire he awoke from the same dream to find
Melissa's big eyes fixed on him, and in them was a vague trouble that
was more than his own reflected back to him.

Still the boy went back sturdily to his old life, working in the
fields, busy about the house and stable, going to school, reading and
studying with the school-master at nights, and wandering in the woods
with Jack and his rifle. And he hungered for spring to come again when
he should go with the Turner boys to take another raft of logs down the
river to the capital. Spring came, and going out to the back pasture
one morning, Chad found a long-legged, ungainly creature stumbling
awkwardly about his old mare--a colt! That, too, he owed the Major, and
he would have burst with pride had he known that the colt's sire was a
famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go down the river
again. He did not let the Major know he was coming and, through a
nameless shyness, he could not bring himself to go to see his old
friend and kinsman, but in Lexington, while he and the school-master
were standing on Cheapside, the Major whirled around a corner on them
in his carriage, and, as on the turnpike a year before, old Tom, the
driver, called out:

"Look dar, Mars Cal!" And there stood Chad.

"Why, bless my soul! Chad--why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had
grown, and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major
insisted on taking him home, and the school-master, too, who went
reluctantly. Miss Lucy was there, looking whiter and more fragile than
ever, and she greeted Chad with a sweet kindliness that took the sting
from his unjust remembrance of her. And what that failure to understand
her must have been Chad better knew when he saw the embarrassed awe, in
her presence, of the school-master, for whom all in the mountains had
so much reverence. At the table was Thankyma'am waiting. Around the
quarters and the stable the pickaninnies and servants seemed to
remember the boy in a kindly genuine way that touched him, and even
Jerome Conners, the overseer, seemed glad to see him. The Major was
drawn at once to the grave school-master, and he had a long talk with
him that night. It was no use, Caleb Hazel said, trying to persuade the
boy to live with the Major--not yet. And the Major was more content
when he came to know in what good hands the boy was, and, down in his
heart, he loved the lad the more for his sturdy independence, and for
the pride that made him shrink from facing the world with the shame of
his birth; knowing that Chad thought of him perhaps more than of
himself. Such unwillingness to give others trouble seemed remarkable in
so young a lad. Not once did the Major mention the Deans to the boy,
and about them Chad asked no questions--not even when he saw their
carriage passing the Major's gate. When they came to leave the Major
said:

"Well, Chad, when that filly of yours is a year old, I'll buy 'em both
from you, if you'll sell 'em, and I reckon you can come up and go to
school then."

Chad shook his head. Sell that colt? He would as soon have thought of
selling Jack. But the temptation took root, just the same, then and
there, and grew steadily until, after another year in the mountains, it
grew too strong. For, in that year, Chad grew to look the fact of his
birth steadily in the face, and in his heart grew steadily a proud
resolution to make his way in the world despite it. It was curious how
Melissa came to know the struggle that was going on within him and how
Chad came to know that she knew--though no word passed between them:
more curious still, how it came with a shock to Chad one day to realize
how little was the tragedy of his life in comparison with the tragedy
in hers, and to learn that the little girl with swift vision had
already reached that truth and with sweet unselfishness had reconciled
herself. He was a boy--he could go out in the world and conquer it,
while her life was as rigid and straight before her as though it ran
between close walls of rock as steep and sheer as the cliff across the
river. One thing he never guessed--what it cost the little girl to
support him bravely in his purpose, and to stand with smiling face when
the first breath of one sombre autumn stole through the hills, and Chad
and the school-master left the Turner home for the Bluegrass, this time
to stay.

She stood in the doorway after they had waved good-by from the head of
the river--the smile gone and her face in a sudden dark eclipse. The
wise old mother went in-doors. Once the girl started through the yard
as though she would rush after them and stopped at the gate, clinching
it hard with both hands. As suddenly she became quiet.

She went in-doors to her work and worked quietly and without a word.
Thus she did all day while her mind and her heart ached. When she went
after the cows before sunset she stopped at the barn where Beelzebub
had been tied. She lifted her eyes to the hay-loft where she and Chad
had hunted for hens' eggs and played hide-and-seek. She passed through
the orchard where they had worked and played so many happy hours, and
on to the back pasture where the Dillon sheep had been killed and she
had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack. And she saw and noted
everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she gave no sign that
night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered head give way.
Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad way with
women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness
Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful world where one had but to do
and dare to reach the stars. The men who had trod that road had made
that big world beyond, and their life Chad himself had lived so far.
Only, where they had lived he had been born--in a log cabin. Their
weapons--the axe and the rifle--had been his.  He had had the same
fight with Nature as they. He knew as well as they what life in the
woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude sports and pastimes, their
log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties, corn-huskings, feats of
strength, had been his. He had the same lynx eyes, cool courage,
swiftness of foot, readiness of resource that had been trained into
them. His heart was as stout and his life as simple and pure. He was
taking their path and, in the far West, beyond the Bluegrass world
where he was going, he could, if he pleased, take up the same life at
the precise point where they had left off. At sunset, Chad and the
school-master stood on the summit of the Cumberland foothills and
looked over the rolling land with little less of a thrill, doubtless,
than the first hunters felt when the land before them was as much a
wilderness as the wilds through which they had made their way. Below
them a farmhouse shrank half out of sight into a little hollow, and
toward it they went down.

The outside world had moved swiftly during the two years that they had
been buried in the hills as they learned at the farm-house that night.
Already the national storm was threatening, the air was electrically
charged with alarms, and already here and there the lightning had
flashed.  The underground railway was busy with black freight, and John
Brown, fanatic, was boldly lifting his shaggy head. Old Brutus Dean was
even publishing an abolitionist paper at Lexington, the aristocratic
heart of the State. He was making abolition speeches throughout the
Bluegrass with a dagger thrust in the table before him--shaking his
black mane and roaring defiance like a lion. The news thrilled Chad
unaccountably, as did the shadow of any danger, but it threw the
school-master into gloom. There was more. A dark little man by the name
of Douglas and a sinewy giant by the name of Lincoln were thrilling the
West. Phillips and Garrison were thundering in Massachusetts, and fiery
tongues in the South were flashing back scornful challenges and threats
that would imperil a nation. An invisible air-line shot suddenly
between the North and the South, destined to drop some day and lie a
dead-line on the earth, and on each side of it two hordes of brothers,
who thought themselves two hostile peoples, were shrinking away from
each other with the half-conscious purpose of making ready for a
charge. In no other State in the Union was the fratricidal character of
the coming war to be so marked as in Kentucky, in no other State was
the national drama to be so fully played to the bitter end.

That night even, Brutus Dean was going to speak near by, and Chad and
Caleb Hazel went to hear him. The fierce abolitionist first placed a
Bible before him.

"This is for those who believe in religion," he said; then a copy of
the Constitution: "this for those who believe in the laws and in
freedom of speech. And this," he thundered, driving a dagger into the
table and leaving it to quiver there, "is for the rest!" Then he went
on and no man dared to interrupt.

And only next day came the rush of wind that heralds the storm. Just
outside of Lexington Chad and the school-master left the mare and colt
at a farm-house and with Jack went into town on foot. It was Saturday
afternoon, the town was full of people, and an excited crowd was
pressing along Main Street toward Cheapside. The man and the boy
followed eagerly.  Cheapside was thronged--thickest around a frame
building that bore a newspaper sign on which was the name of Brutus
Dean. A man dashed from a hardware store with an axe, followed by
several others with heavy hammers in their hands. One swing of the axe,
the door was crashed open and the crowd went in like wolves. Shattered
windows, sashes and all, flew out into the street, followed by showers
of type, chair-legs, table-tops, and then, piece by piece, the battered
cogs, wheels, and forms of a printing-press. The crowd made little
noise. In fifteen minutes the house was a shell with gaping windows,
surrounded with a pile of chaotic rubbish, and the men who had done the
work quietly disappeared. Chad looked at the school-master for the
first time: neither of them had uttered a word. The school-master's
face was white with anger, his hands were clinched, and his eyes were
so fierce and burning that the boy was frightened.



CHAPTER 15.

TO COLLEGE IN THE BLUEGRASS

As the school-master had foretold, there was no room at college for
Jack. Several times Major Buford took the dog home with him, but Jack
would not stay. The next morning the dog would turn up at the door of
the dormitory where Chad and the school-master slept, and as a last
resort the boy had to send Jack home. So, one Sunday morning Chad led
Jack out of the town for several miles, and at the top of a high hill
pointed toward the mountains and sternly told him to go home. And Jack,
understanding that the boy was in earnest, trotted sadly away with a
placard around his neck:

I own this dog. His name is Jack. He is on his way to Kingdom Come.
Please feed him. Uncle Joel Turner will shoot any man who steels him.
CHAD.

It was no little consolation to Chad to think that the faithful
sheep-dog would in no small measure repay the Turners for all they had
done for him. But Jack was the closest link that bound him to the
mountains, and dropping out of sight behind the crest of the hill, Chad
crept to the top again and watched Jack until he trotted out of sight,
and the link was broken. Then Chad went slowly and sorrowfully back to
his room.

It was the smallest room in the dormitory that the school-master had
chosen for himself and Chad, and in it were one closet, one table, one
lamp, two chairs and one bed--no more. There were two windows in the
little room--one almost swept by the branches of a locust-tree and
overlooking the brown-gray sloping campus and the roofs and
church-steeples of the town--the other opening to the east on a sweep
of field and woodland over which the sun rose with a daily message from
the unseen mountains far beyond and toward which Chad had sent Jack
trotting home. It was a proud day for Chad when Caleb Hazel took him to
"matriculate"--leading him from one to another of the professors, who
awed the lad with their preternatural dignity, but it was a sad blow
when he was told that in everything but mathematics he must go to the
preparatory department until the second session of the term--the
"kitchen," as it was called by the students. He bore it bravely,
though, and the school-master took him down the shady streets to the
busy thoroughfare, where the official book-store was, and where Chad,
with pure ecstasy, caught his first new books under one arm and trudged
back, bending his head now and then to catch the delicious smell of the
fresh leaves and print. It was while he was standing with his treasures
under the big elm at the turnstile, looking across the campus at the
sundown that two boys came down the gravel path. He knew them both at
once as Dan and Harry Dean.  Both looked at him curiously, as he
thought, but he saw that neither knew him and no one spoke. The sound
of wheels came up the street behind him just then, and a carriage
halted at the turnstile to take them in.  Turning, Chad saw a slender
girl with dark hair and eyes and heard her call brightly to the boys.
He almost caught his breath at the sound of her voice, but he kept
sturdily on his way, and the girl's laugh rang in his ears as it rang
the first time he heard it, was ringing when he reached his room,
ringing when he went to bed that night, and lay sleepless, looking
through his window at the quiet stars.

For some time, indeed, no one recognized him, and Chad was glad. Once
he met Richard Hunt riding with Margaret, and the piercing dark eyes
that the boy remembered so well turned again to look at him. Chad
colored and bravely met them with his own, but there was no
recognition. And he saw John Morgan--Captain John Morgan--at the head
of the "Lexington Rifles,"  which he had just formed from the best
blood of the town, as though in long preparation for that coming
war--saw him and Richard Hunt, as lieutenant, drilling them in the
campus, and the sight thrilled him as nothing else, except Margaret,
had ever done. Many times he met the Dean brothers on the playground
and in the streets, but there was no sign that he was known until he
was called to the blackboard one day in geometry, the only course in
which he had not been sent to the "kitchen." Then Chad saw Harry turn
quickly when the professor called his name. Confused though he was for
a moment, he gave his demonstration in his quaint speech with perfect
clearness and without interruption from the professor, who gave the boy
a keen look as he said, quietly:

"Very good, sir!" And Harry could see his fingers tracing in his
class-book the figures that meant a perfect recitation.

"How are you, Chad?" he said in the hallway afterward.

"Howdye!" said Chad, shaking the proffered hand.

"I didn't know you--you've grown so tall. Didn't you know me?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you speak to me?"

"'Cause you didn't know ME."

Harry laughed. "Well, that isn't fair. See you again."

"All right," said Chad.

That very afternoon Chad met Dan in a football game--an old-fashioned
game, in which there were twenty or thirty howling lads on each side
and nobody touched the ball except with his foot--met him so violently
that, clasped in each other's arms, they tumbled to the ground.

"Leggo!" said Dan.

"S'pose you leggo!" said Chad.

As Dan started after the ball he turned to look at Chad and after the
game he went up to him.

"Why, aren't you the boy who was out at Major Buford's once?"

"Yes." Dan thrust out his hand and began to laugh. So did Chad, and
each knew that the other was thinking of the tournament.

"In college?"

"Math'matics," said Chad. "I'm in the kitchen fer the rest."

"Oh!" said Dan. "Where you living?" Chad pointed to the dormitory, and
again Dan said "Oh!" in a way that made Chad flush, but added, quickly:

"You better play on our side to-morrow."

Chad looked at his clothes--foot-ball seemed pretty hard on clothes--"I
don't know," he said--"mebbe."

It was plain that neither of the boys was holding anything against
Chad, but neither had asked the mountain lad to come to see him--an
omission that was almost unforgivable according to Chad's social
ethics. So Chad proudly went into his shell again, and while the three
boys met often, no intimacy developed. Often he saw them with Margaret,
on the street, in a carriage or walking with a laughing crowd of boys
and girls; on the porticos of old houses or in the yards; and, one
night, Chad saw, through the wide-open door of a certain old house on
the corner of Mill and Market Streets, a party going on; and Margaret,
all in white, dancing, and he stood in the shade of the trees opposite
with new pangs shooting through him and went back to his room in
desolate loneliness, but with a new grip on his resolution that his own
day should yet come.

Steadily the boy worked, forging his way slowly but surely toward the
head of his class in the "kitchen," and the school-master helped him
unwearyingly. And it was a great help--mental and spiritual--to be near
the stern Puritan, who loved the boy as a brother and was ever ready to
guide him with counsel and aid him with his studies. In time the Major
went to the president to ask him about Chad, and that august dignitary
spoke of the lad in a way that made the Major, on his way through the
campus, swish through the grass with his cane in great satisfaction. He
always spoke of the boy now as his adopted son and, whenever it was
possible, he came in to take Chad out home to spend Sunday with him;
but, being a wise man and loving Chad's independence, he let the boy
have his own way. He had bought the filly--and would hold her, he said,
until Chad could buy her back, and he would keep the old nag as a
broodmare and would divide profits with Chad--to all of which the boy
agreed. The question of the lad's birth was ignored between them, and
the Major rarely spoke to Chad of the Deans, who were living in town
during the winter, nor questioned him about Dan or Harry or Margaret.
But Chad had found out where the little girl went to church, and every
Sunday, despite Caleb Hazel's protest, he would slip into the Episcopal
church, with a queer feeling--little Calvinist of the hills that he
was--that it was not quite right for him even to enter that church; and
he would watch the little girl come in with her family and, after the
queer way of these "furriners," kneel first in prayer. And there, with
soul uplifted by the dim rich light and the peal of the organ, he would
sit watching her; rising when she rose, watching the light from the
windows on her shining hair and sweet-spirited face, watching her
reverent little head bend in obeisance to the name of the Master,
though he kept his own held straight, for no Popery like that was for
him. Always, however, he would slip out before the service was quite
over and never wait even to see her come out of church. He was too
proud for that and, anyhow, it made him lonely to see the people
greeting one another and chatting and going off home together when
there was not a soul to speak to him. It was just one such Sunday that
they came face to face for the first time. Chad had gone down the
street after leaving the church, had changed his mind and was going
back to his room. People were pouring from the church, as he went by,
but Chad did not even look across.  A clatter rose behind him and he
turned to see a horse and rockaway coming at a gallop up the street,
which was narrow. The negro driver, frightened though he was, had sense
enough to pull his running horse away from the line of vehicles in
front of the church so that the beast stumbled against the curb-stone,
crashed into a tree, and dropped struggling in the gutter below another
line of vehicles waiting on the other side of the street.  Like
lightning, Chad leaped and landed full length on the horse's head and
was tossed violently to and fro, but he held on until the animal lay
still.

"Unhitch the hoss," he called, sharply.

"Well, that was pretty quick work for a boy," said a voice across the
street that sounded familiar, and Chad looked across to see General
Dean and Margaret watching him. The boy blushed furiously when his eyes
met Margaret's and he thought he saw her start slightly, but he lowered
his eyes and hurried away.

It was only a few days later that, going up from town toward the
campus, he turned a corner and there was Margaret alone and moving
slowly ahead of him. Hearing his steps she turned her head to see who
it was, but Chad kept his eyes on the ground and passed her without
looking up. And thus he went on, although she was close behind him,
across the street and to the turnstile. As he was passing through, a
voice rose behind him:

"You aren't very polite, little boy." He turned quickly--Margaret had
not gone around the corner: she, too, was coming through the campus and
there she stood, grave and demure, though her eyes were dancing.

"My mamma says a NICE little boy always lets a little GIRL go FIRST."

"I didn't know you was comin' through."

"Was comin' through!" Margaret made a little face as though to
say--"Oh, dear."

"I said I didn't know you were coming through this way."

Margaret shook her head. "No," she said; "no, you didn't."

"Well, that's what I meant to say." Chad was having a hard time with
his English. He had snatched his cap from his head, had stepped back
outside the stile and was waiting to turn it for her. Margaret passed
through and waited where the paths forked.

"Are you going up to the college?" she asked.

"I was--but I ain't now--if you'll let me walk a piece with you." He
was scarlet with confusion--a tribute that Chad rarely paid his kind.
His way of talking was very funny, to be sure, but had she not heard
her father say that "the poor little chap had had no chance in life;"
and Harry, that some day he would be the best in his class?

"Aren't you--Chad?"

"Yes--ain't you Margaret--Miss Margaret?"

"Yes, I'm Margaret." She was pleased with the hesitant title and the
boy's halting reverence.

"An' I called you a little gal." Margaret's laugh tinkled in merry
remembrance. "An' you wouldn't take my fish."

"I can't bear to touch them."

"I know," said Chad, remembering Melissa.

They passed a boy who knew Chad, but not Margaret. The lad took off his
hat, but Chad did not lift his; then a boy and a girl and, when only
the two girls spoke, the other boy lifted his hat, though he did not
speak to Margaret. Still Chad's hat was untouched and when Margaret
looked up, Chad's face was red with confusion again. But it never took
the boy long to learn and, thereafter, during the walk his hat came off
unfailingly.  Everyone looked at the two with some surprise and Chad
noticed that the little girl's chin was being lifted higher and higher.
His intuition told him what the matter was, and when they reached the
stile across the campus and Chad saw a crowd of Margaret's friends
coming down the street, he halted as if to turn back, but the little
girl told him imperiously to come on. It was a strange escort for
haughty Margaret--the country-looking boy, in coarse homespun--but
Margaret spoke cheerily to her friends and went on, looking up at Chad
and talking to him as though he were the dearest friend she had on
earth.

At the edge of town she suggested that they walk across a pasture and
go back by another street, and not until they were passing through the
woodland did Chad come to himself.

"You know I didn't rickollect when you called me 'little boy.'"

"Indeed!"

"Not at fust, I mean," stammered Chad.

Margaret grew mock-haughty and Chad grew grave. He spoke very slowly
and steadily. "I reckon I rickollect ever'thing that happened out thar
a sight better'n you. I ain't forgot nothin'--anything."

The boy's sober and half-sullen tone made Margaret catch her breath
with a sudden vague alarm.

Unconsciously she quickened her pace, but, already, she was mistress of
an art to which she was born and she said, lightly:

"Now, that's MUCH better." A piece of pasteboard dropped from Chad's
jacket just then, and, taking the little girl's cue to swerve from the
point at issue, he picked it up and held it out for Margaret to read.
It was the first copy of the placard which he had tied around Jack's
neck when he sent him home, and it set Margaret to laughing and asking
questions. Before he knew it Chad was telling her about Jack and the
mountains; how he had run away; about the Turners and about Melissa and
coming down the river on a raft--all he had done and all he meant to
do.  And from looking at Chad now and then, Margaret finally kept her
eyes fixed on his--and thus they stood when they reached the gate,
while crows flew cawing over them and the air grew chill.

"And did Jack go home?"

Chad laughed.

"No, he didn't. He come back, and I had to hide fer two days. Then,
because he couldn't find me he did go, thinking I had gone back to the
mountains, too. He went to look fer me."

"Well, if he comes back again I'll ask my papa to get them to let you
keep Jack at college," said Margaret.

Chad shook his head.

"Then I'll keep him for you myself." The boy looked his gratitude, but
shook his head again.

"He won't stay."

Margaret asked for the placard again as they moved down the street.

"You've got it spelled wrong," she said, pointing to "steel." Chad
blushed. "I can't spell when I write," he said. "I can't even
talk--right."

"But you'll learn," she said.

"Will you help me?"

"Yes."

"Tell me when I say things wrong?"

"Yes."

"Where'm I goin' to see you?"

Margaret shook her head thoughtfully: then the reason for her speaking
first to Chad came out.

"Papa and I saw you on Sunday, and papa said you must be very strong as
well as brave, and that you knew something about horses. Harry told us
who you were when papa described you, and then I remembered. Papa told
Harry to bring you to see us. And you must come," she said, decisively.

They had reached the turnstile at the campus again.

"Have you had any more tournaments?" asked Margaret.

"No," said Chad, apprehensively.

"Do you remember the last thing I said to you?"

"I rickollect that better'n anything," said Chad.

"Well, I didn't hate you. I'm sorry I said that," she said gently. Chad
looked very serious.

"That's all right," he said. "I seed--I saw you on Sunday, too."

"Did you know me?"

"I reckon I did. And that wasn't the fust time." Margaret's eyes were
opening with surprise.

"I been goin' to church ever' Sunday fer nothin' else but just to see
you." Again his tone gave her vague alarm, but she asked:

"Why didn't you speak to me?"

They were nearing the turnstile across the campus now, and Chad did not
answer.

"Why didn't you speak to me?"

Chad stopped suddenly, and Margaret looked quickly at him, and saw that
his face was scarlet. The little girl started and her own face flamed.
There was one thing she had forgotten, and even now she could not
recall what it was--only that it was something terrible she must not
know--old Mammy's words when Dan was carried in senseless after the
tournament.  Frightened and helpless, she shrank toward the turnstile,
but Chad did not wait. With his cap in his hand, he turned abruptly,
without a sound, and strode away.



CHAPTER 16.

AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER

And yet, the next time Chad saw Margaret, she spoke to him shyly but
cordially, and when he did not come near her, she stopped him on the
street one day and reminded him of his promise to come and see them.
And Chad knew the truth at once--that she had never asked her father
about him, but had not wanted to know what she had been told she must
not know, and had properly taken it for granted that her father would
not ask Chad to his house, if there were a good reason why he should
not come. But Chad did not go even to the Christmas party that Margaret
gave in town, though the Major urged him. He spent Christmas with the
Major, and he did go to a country party, where the Major was delighted
with the boy's grace and agility dancing the quadrille, and where the
lad occasioned no little amusement with his improvisations in the way
of cutting pigeon's wings and shuffling, which he had learned in the
mountains. So the Major made him accept a loan and buy a suit for
social purposes after Christmas, and had him go to Madam Blake's
dancing school, and promise to go to the next party to which he was
asked. And that Chad did--to the big gray house on the corner, through
whose widespread doors his longing eyes had watched Margaret and her
friends flitting like butterflies months before.

It intoxicated the boy--the lights, music, flowers, the little girls in
white--and Margaret. For the first time he met her friends, Nellie
Hunt, sister to Richard; Elizabeth Morgan, cousin to John Morgan; and
Miss Jennie Overstreet, who, young as she was, wrote poems--but Chad
had eyes only for Margaret. It was while he was dancing a quadrille
with her, that he noticed a tall, pale youth with black hair, glaring
at him, and he recognized Georgie Forbes, a champion of Margaret, and
the old enemy who had caused his first trouble in his new home. Chad
laughed with fearless gladness, and Margaret tossed her head. It was
Georgie now who blackened and spread the blot on Chad's good name, and
it was Georgie to whom Chad--fast learning the ways of
gentlemen--promptly sent a pompous challenge, that the difficulty might
be settled "in any way the gentleman saw fit." Georgie insultingly
declined to fight with one who was not his equal, and Chad boxed his
jaws in the presence of a crowd, floored him with one blow, and
contemptuously twisted his nose. Thereafter open comment ceased. Chad
was making himself known. He was the swiftest runner on the football
field; he had the quickest brain in mathematics; he was elected to the
Periclean Society, and astonished his fellow-members with a fiery
denunciation of the men who banished Napoleon to St. Helena--so fiery
was it, indeed, that his opponents themselves began to wonder how that
crime had ever come to pass. He would fight at the drop of a hat, and
he always won; and by-and-by the boy began to take a fierce joy in
battling his way upward against a block that would have crushed a
weaker soul. It was only with Margaret that that soul was in awe. He
began to love her with a pure reverence that he could never know at
another age. Every Saturday night, when dusk fell, he was mounting the
steps of her house. Every Sunday morning he was waiting to take her
home from church. Every afternoon he looked for her, hoping to catch
sight of her on the streets, and it was only when Dan and Harry got
indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of Chad in
the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the
matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It
was right that they should be kind to the boy--for Major Buford's sake,
if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more
than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the
truth. Immediately, when Chad next saw her, her honest eyes sadly told
him that she knew the truth, and Chad gave up then. Thereafter he
disappeared from sports and from his kind every way, except in the
classroom and in the debating hall. Sullenly he stuck to his books.
From five o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, he was at
them steadily, in his room, or at recitation except for an hour's walk
with the school-master and the three half-hours that his meals kept him
away. He grew so pale and thin that the Major and Caleb Hazel were
greatly worried, but protest from both was useless. Before the end of
the term he had mounted into college in every study, and was holding
his own. At the end he knew his power--knew what he COULD do, and his
face was set, for his future, dauntless. When vacation came, he went at
once to the Major's farm, but not to be idle. In a week or two he was
taking some of the reins into his own hands as a valuable assistant to
the Major. He knew a good horse, could guess the weight of a steer with
surprising accuracy, and was a past master in knowledge of sheep. By
instinct he was canny at a trade--what mountaineer is not?--and he
astonished the Major with the shrewd deals he made. Authority seemed to
come naturally to him, and the Major swore that he could get more work
out of the "hands" than the overseer himself, who sullenly resented
Chad's interference, but dared not open his lips. Not once did he go to
the Deans', and neither Harry nor Dan came near him. There was little
intercourse between the Major and the General, as well; for, while the
Major could not, under the circumstances, blame the General,
inconsistently, he could not quite forgive him, and the line of polite
coolness between the neighbors was never overstepped. At the end of
July, Chad went to the mountains to see the Turners and Jack and
Melissa. He wore his roughest clothes, put on no airs, and, to all
eyes, save Melissa's, he was the same old Chad. But feminine subtlety
knows no social or geographical lines, and while Melissa knew what had
happened as well as Chad, she never let him see that she knew.
Apparently she was giving open encouragement to Dave Hilton, a tawny
youth from down the river, who was hanging, dog-like, about the house,
and foolish Chad began to let himself dream of Margaret with a light
heart. On the third day before he was to go back to the Bluegrass, a
boy came from over Black Mountain with a message from old Nathan
Cherry. Old Nathan had joined the church, had fallen ill, and, fearing
he was going to die, wanted to see Chad. Chad went over with curious
premonitions that were not in vain, and he came back with a strange
story that he told only to old Joel, under promise that he would never
make it known to Melissa. Then he started for the Bluegrass, going over
Pine Mountain and down through Cumberland Gap. He would come back every
year of his life, he told Melissa and the Turners, but Chad knew he was
bidding a last farewell to the life he had known in the mountains. At
Melissa's wish and old Joel's, he left Jack behind, though he sorely
wanted to take the dog with him. It was little enough for him to do in
return for their kindness, and he could see that Melissa's affection
for Jack was even greater than his own: and how incomparably lonelier
than his life was the life that she must lead! This time Melissa did
not rush to the yard gate when he was gone. She sank slowly where she
stood to the steps of the porch, and there she sat stone-still. Old
Joel passed her on the way to the barn. Several times the old mother
walked to the door behind her, and each time starting to speak, stopped
and turned back, but the girl neither saw nor heard them. Jack trotted
by, whimpering. He sat down in front of her, looking up at her unseeing
eyes, and it was only when he crept to her and put his head in her lap,
that she put her arms around him and bent her own head down; but no
tears came.



CHAPTER 17.

CHADWICK BUFORD, GENTLEMAN

And so, returned to the Bluegrass, the midsummer of that year, Chadwick
Buford gentleman. A youth of eighteen, with the self-possession of a
man, and a pair of level, clear eyes, that looked the world in the face
as proudly as ever but with no defiance and no secret sense of shame It
was a curious story that Chad brought back and told to the Major, on
the porch under the honeysuckle vines, but it seemed to surprise the
Major very little: how old Nathan had sent for him to come to his
death-bed and had told Chad that he was no foundling; that one of his
farms belonged to the boy; that he had lied to the Major about Chad's
mother, who was a lawful wife, in order to keep the land for himself;
how old Nathan had offered to give back the farm, or pay him the price
of it in livestock, and how, at old Joel's advice he had taken the
stock and turned the stock into money. How, after he had found his
mother's grave, his first act had been to take up the rough bee-gum
coffin that held her remains, and carry it down the river, and bury her
where she had the right to lie, side by side with her grandfather and
his--the old gentleman who slept in wig and peruke on the
hill-side--that her good name and memory should never again suffer
insult from any living tongue. It was then that Major took Chad by the
shoulders roughly, and, with tears in his eyes, swore that he would
have no more nonsense from the boy; that Chad was flesh of his flesh
and bone of his bone; that he would adopt him and make him live where
he belonged, and break his damned pride. And it was then that Chad told
him how gladly he would come, now that he could bring him an
untarnished name. And the two walked together down to the old family
graveyard, where the Major said that the two in the mountains should be
brought some day and where the two brothers who had parted nearly
fourscore years ago could, side by side, await Judgment Day.

When they went back into the house the Major went to the sideboard.

"Have a drink, Chad?"

Chad laughed: "Do you think it will stunt my growth?"

"Stand up here, and let's see," said the Major.

The two stood up, back to back, in front of a long mirror, and Chad's
shaggy hair rose at least an inch above the Major's thin locks of gray.
The Major turned and looked at him from head to foot with affectionate
pride.

"Six feet in your socks, to the inch, without that hair. I reckon it
won't stunt you--not now."

"All right," laughed Chad, "then I'll take that drink." And together
they drank.

Thus, Chadwick Buford, gentleman, after the lapse of three-quarters of
a century, came back to his own: and what that own, at that day and in
that land, was!

It was the rose of Virginia, springing, in full bloom, from new and
richer soil--a rose of a deeper scarlet and a stronger stem: and the
big village where the old University reared its noble front was the
very heart of that rose. There were the proudest families, the
stateliest homes, the broadest culture, the most gracious hospitality,
the gentlest courtesies, the finest chivalry, that the State has ever
known. There lived the political idols; there, under the low sky, rose
the memorial shaft to Clay. There had lived beaux and belles, memories
of whom hang still about the town, people it with phantom shapes, and
give an individual or a family here and there a subtle distinction
to-day. There the grasp of Calvinism was most lax. There were the
dance, the ready sideboard, the card table, the love of the horse and
the dog, and but little passion for the game-cock. There were as manly
virtues, as manly vices, as the world has ever known. And there, love
was as far from lust as heaven from hell.

It was on the threshold of this life that Chad stood. Kentucky had
given birth to the man who was to uphold the Union--birth to the man
who would seek to shatter it. Fate had given Chad the early life of
one, and like blood with the other; and, curiously enough, in his own
short life, he already epitomized the social development of the nation,
from its birth in a log cabin to its swift maturity behind the columns
of a Greek portico. Against the uncounted generations of gentlepeople
that ran behind him to sunny England, how little could the short sleep
of three in the hills count! It may take three generations to make a
gentleman, but one is enough, if the blood be there, the heart be
right, and the brain and hand come early under discipline.

It was to General Dean that the Major told Chad's story first. The two
old friends silently grasped hands, and the cloud between them passed
like mist.

"Bring him over to dinner on Saturday, Cal--you and Miss Lucy, won't
you? Some people are coming out from town." In making amends, there was
no half-way with General Dean.

"I will," said the Major, "gladly."

The cool of the coming autumn was already in the air that Saturday when
Miss Lucy and the Major and Chad, in the old carriage, with old Tom as
driver and the pickaninny behind, started for General Dean's. The Major
was beautiful to behold, in his flowered waistcoat, his ruffled shirt,
white trousers strapped beneath his highly polished, high-heeled boots,
high hat and frock coat, with only the lowest button fastened, in order
to give a glimpse of that wonderful waistcoat, just as that, too, was
unbuttoned at the top that the ruffles might peep out upon the world.
Chad's raiment, too, was a Solomon's--for him. He had protested, but in
vain; and he, too, wore white trousers with straps, high-heeled boots,
and a wine-colored waistcoat and slouch hat, and a brave, though very
conscious, figure he made, with his tall body, well-poised head, strong
shoulders and thick hair. It was a rare thing for Miss Lucy to do, but
the old gentlewoman could not resist the Major, and she, too, rode in
state with them, smiling indulgently at the Major's quips, and now,
kindly, on Chad. A drowsy peace lay over the magnificent woodlands,
unravaged then except for firewood; the seared pastures, just beginning
to show green again for the second spring; the flashing creek, the seas
of still hemp and yellow corn, and Chad saw a wistful shadow cross Miss
Lucy's pale face, and a darker one anxiously sweep over the Major's
jesting lips.

Guests were arriving, when they entered the yard gate, and guests were
coming behind them. General and Mrs. Dean were receiving them on the
porch, and Harry and Dan were helping the ladies out of their
carriages, while, leaning against one of the columns, in pure white,
was the graceful figure of Margaret. That there could ever have been
any feeling in any member of the family other than simple, gracious
kindliness toward him, Chad could neither see nor feel. At once every
trace of embarrassment in him was gone, and he could but wonder at the
swift justice done him in a way that was so simple and effective. Even
with Margaret there was no trace of consciousness. The past was wiped
clean of all save courtesy and kindness. There were the Hunts--Nellie,
and the Lieutenant of the Lexington Rifles, Richard Hunt, a
dauntless-looking dare-devil, with the ready tongue of a coffee-house
wit and the grace of a cavalier. There was Elizabeth Morgan, to whom
Harry's grave eyes were always wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet,
who was romantic and openly now wrote poems for the Observer, and who
looked at Chad with no attempt to conceal her admiration of his
appearance and her wonder as to who he was. And there were the
neighbors roundabout--the Talbotts, Quisenberrys, Clays, Prestons,
Morgans--surely no less than forty strong, and all for dinner. It was
no little trial for Chad in that crowd of fine ladies, judges,
soldiers, lawyers, statesmen--but he stood it well. While his
self-consciousness made him awkward, he had pronounced dignity of
bearing; his diffidence emphasized his modesty, and he had the good
sense to stand and keep still. Soon they were at table--and what a
table and what a dinner that was! The dining-room was the biggest and
sunniest room in the house; its walls covered with hunting prints,
pictures of game and stag heads. The table ran the length of it. The
snowy tablecloth hung almost to the floor. At the head sat Mrs. Dean,
with a great tureen of calf's head soup in front of her. Before the
General was the saddle of venison that was to follow, drenched in a
bottle of ancient Madeira, and flanked by flakes of red-currant jelly.
Before the Major rested broiled wild ducks, on which he could show his
carving skill--on game as well as men. A great turkey supplanted the
venison, and last to come, and before Richard Hunt, Lieutenant of the
Rifles, was a Kentucky ham. That ham! Mellow, aged, boiled in
champagne, baked brown, spiced deeply, rosy pink within, and of a
flavor and fragrance to shatter the fast of a Pope; and without, a
brown-edged white layer, so firm that the lieutenant's deft carving
knife, passing through, gave no hint to the eye that it was delicious
fat. There had been merry jest and laughter and banter and gallant
compliment before, but it was Richard Hunt's turn now, and story after
story he told, as the rose-flakes dropped under his knife in such thin
slices that their edges coiled. It was full half an hour before the
carver and story-teller were done. After that ham the tablecloth was
lifted, and the dessert spread on another lying beneath; then that,
too, was raised, and the nuts and wines were placed on a third--red
damask this time.

Then came the toasts: to the gracious hostess from Major Buford; to
Miss Lucy from General Dean; from valiant Richard Hunt to blushing
Margaret, and then the ladies were gone, and the talk was politics--the
election of Lincoln, slavery, disunion.

"If Lincoln is elected, no power but God's can avert war," said Richard
Hunt, gravely.

Dan's eyes flashed. "Will you take me?"

The lieutenant lifted his glass. "Gladly, my boy."

"Kentucky's convictions are with the Union; her kinship and sympathies
with the South," said a deep-voiced lawyer. "She must remain neutral."

"Straddling the fence," said the Major, sarcastically.

"No; to avert the war, if possible, or to act the peacemaker when the
tragedy is over."

"Well, I can see Kentuckians keeping out of a fight," laughed the
General, and he looked around. Three out of five of the men present had
been in the Mexican war. The General had been wounded at Cerro Gordo,
and the Major had brought his dead home in leaden coffins.

"The fanatics of Boston, the hot-heads of South Carolina--they are
making the mischief."

"And New England began with slavery," said the lawyer again.

"And naturally, with that conscience that is a national calamity, was
the first to give it up," said Richard Hunt, "when the market price of
slaves fell to sixpence a pound in the open Boston markets." There was
an incredulous murmur.

"Oh, yes," said Hunt, easily, "I can show you advertisements in Boston
papers of slaves for sale at sixpence a pound."

Perhaps it never occurred to a soul present that the word "slave" was
never heard in that region except in some such way. With Southerners,
the negroes were "our servants" or "our people"--never slaves. Two lads
at that table were growing white--Chad and Harry--and Chad's lips
opened first.

"I don't think slavery has much to do with the question, really," he
said, "not even with Mr. Lincoln." The silent surprise that followed
the boy's embarrassed statement ended in a gasp of astonishment when
Harry leaned across the table and said, hotly:

"Slavery has EVERYTHING to do with the question."

The Major looked bewildered; the General frowned, and the keen-eyed
lawyer spoke again:

"The struggle was written in the Constitution. The framers evaded it.
Logic leads one way as well as another and no man can logically blame
another for the way he goes."

"No more politics now, gentlemen," said the General quickly. "We will
join the ladies. Harry," he added, with some sternness, "lead the way!"

As the three boys rose, Chad lifted his glass. His face was pale and
his lips trembled.

"May I propose a toast, General Dean?"

"Why, certainly," said the General, kindly.

"I want to drink to one man but for whom I might be in a log cabin now,
and might have died there for all I know--my friend and, thank God! my
kinsman--Major Buford."

It was irregular and hardly in good taste, but the boy had waited till
the ladies were gone, and it touched the Major that he should want to
make such a public acknowledgment that there should be no false colors
in the flag he meant henceforth to bear.

The startled guests drank blindly to the confused Major, though they
knew not why, but as the lads disappeared the lawyer asked:

"Who is that boy, Major?"

Outside, the same question had been asked among the ladies and the same
story told. The three girls remembered him vaguely, they said, and when
Chad reappeared, in the eyes of the poetess at least, the halo of
romance floated above his head.

She was waiting for Chad when he came out on the porch, and she shook
her curls and flashed her eyes in a way that almost alarmed him. Old
Mammy dropped him a curtsey, for she had had her orders, and, behind
her, Snowball, now a tall, fine-looking coal-black youth, grinned a
welcome. The three girls were walking under the trees, with their arms
mysteriously twined about one anther's waists, and the poetess walked
down toward them with the three lads, Richard Hunt following. Chad
could not know how it happened, but, a moment later, Dan was walking
away with Nellie Hunt one way; Harry with Elizabeth Morgan the other;
the Lieutenant had Margaret alone, and Miss Overstreet was leading him
away, raving meanwhile about the beauty of field and sky. As they went
toward the gate he could not help flashing one look toward the pair
under the fir tree. An amused smile was playing under the Lieutenant's
beautiful mustache, his eyes were dancing with mischief, and Margaret
was blushing with anything else than displeasure.

"Oho!" he said, as Chad and his companion passed on. "Sits the wind in
that corner? Bless me, if looks could kill, I'd have a happy death here
at your feet, Mistress Margaret. SEE the young man! It's the second
time he has almost slain me."

Chad could scarcely hear Miss Jennie's happy chatter, scarcely saw the
shaking curls, the eyes all but in a frenzy of rolling. His eyes were
in the back of his head, and his backward-listening ears heard only
Margaret's laugh behind him.

"Oh, I do love the autumn"--it was at the foot of those steps, thought
Chad, that he first saw Margaret springing to the back of her pony and
dashing off under the fir trees--"and it's coming. There's one scarlet
leaf already"--Chad could see the rock fence where he had sat that
spring day--"it's curious and mournful that you can see in any season a
sign of the next to come." And there was the creek where he found Dan
fishing, and there the road led to the ford where Margaret had spurned
his offer of a slimy fish--ugh!  "I do love the autumn. It makes me
feel like the young woman who told Emerson that she had such mammoth
thoughts she couldn't give them utterance--why, wake up, Mr. Buford,
wake up!" Chad came to with a start.

"Do you know you aren't very polite, Mr. Buford?" Mr. Buford! That did
sound funny.

"But I know what the matter is," she went on. "I saw you look"--she
nodded her head backward. "Can you keep a secret?" Chad nodded; he had
not yet opened his lips.

"Thae's going to be a match back there. He's only a few years older.
The French say that a woman should be half a man's age plus seven
years. That would make her only a few years too young, and she can
wait." Chad was scarlet under the girl's mischievous torture, but a cry
from the house saved him. Dan was calling them back.

"Mr. Hunt has to go back early to drill the Rifles. Can you keep
another secret?" Again Chad nodded gravely. "Well, he is going to drive
me back. I'll tell him what a dangerous rival he has." Chad was dumb;
there was much yet for him to learn before he could parry with a tongue
like hers.

"He's very good-looking," said Miss Jennie, when she joined the girls,
"but oh, so stupid."

Margaret turned quickly and unsuspiciously. "Stupid! Why, he's the
first man in his class."

"Oh," said Miss Jennie, with a demure smile, "perhaps I couldn't draw
him out," and Margaret flushed to have caught the deftly tossed bait so
readily.

A moment later the Lieutenant was gathering up the reins, with Miss
Jennie by his side. He gave a bow to Margaret, and Miss Jennie nodded
to Chad.

"Come see me when you come to town, Mr. Buford," she called, as though
to an old friend, and still Chad was dumb, though he lifted his hat
gravely.

At no time was Chad alone with Margaret, and he was not sorry--her
manner so puzzled him. The three lads and three girls walked together
through Mrs. Dean's garden with its grass walks and flower beds and
vegetable patches surrounded with rose bushes. At the lower edge they
could see the barn with sheep in the yard around it, and there were the
very stiles where Harry and Margaret had sat in state when Dan and Chad
were charging in the tournament. The thing might never have happened
for any sign from Harry or Dan or Margaret, and Chad began to wonder if
his past or his present were a dream.

How fine this courtesy was Chad could not realize. Neither could he
know that the favor Margaret had shown him when he was little more than
outcast he must now, as an equal, win for himself. Miss Jennie had
called him "Mr. Buford." He wondered what Margaret would call him when
he came to say good-by. She called him nothing. She only smiled at him.

"You must come to see us soon again," she said, graciously, and so said
all the Deans.

The Major was quiet going home, and Miss Lucy drowsed. All evening the
Major was quiet.

"If a fight does come," he said, when they were going to bed, "I reckon
I'm not too old to take a hand."

"And I reckon I'm not too young," said Chad.



CHAPTER 18.

THE SPIRIT OF '76 AND THE SHADOW OF '61

One night, in the following April, there was a great dance in
Lexington. Next day the news of Sumter came. Chad pleaded to be let off
from the dance, but the Major would not hear of it. It was a
fancy-dress ball, and the Major had a pet purpose of his own that he
wanted gratified and Chad had promised to aid him. That fancy was that
Chad should go in regimentals, as the stern, old soldier on the wall,
of whom the Major swore the boy was the "spit and image." The Major
himself helped Chad dress in wig, peruke, stock, breeches, boots,
spurs, cocked hat, sword and all. And then he led the boy down into the
parlor, where Miss Lucy was waiting for them, and stood him up on one
side of the portrait. To please the old fellow, Chad laughingly struck
the attitude of the pictured soldier, and the Major cried:

"What'd I tell you, Lucy!" Then he advanced and made a low bow.

"General Buford," he said, "General Washington's compliments, and will
General Buford plant the flag on that hill where the left wing of the
British is entrenched?"

"Hush, Cal," said Miss Lucy, laughing.

"General Buford's compliments to General Washington. General Buford
will plant that flag on ANY hill that ANY enemy holds against it."

The lad's face paled as the words, by some curious impulse, sprang to
his lips, but the unsuspecting Major saw no lurking significance in his
manner, nor in what he said, and then there was a rumble of carriage
wheels at the door.

The winter had sped swiftly. Chad had done his work in college only
fairly well, for Margaret had been a disturbing factor. The girl was an
impenetrable mystery to him, for the past between them was not only
wiped clean--it seemed quite gone. Once only had he dared to open his
lips about the old days, and the girl's flushed silence made a like
mistake forever impossible. He came and went at the Deans' as he
pleased. Always they were kind, courteous, hospitable--no more, no
less, unvaryingly. During the Christmas holidays he and Margaret had
had a foolish quarrel, and it was then that Chad took his little fling
at his little world--a fling that was foolish, but harmful, chiefly in
that it took his time and his mind and his energy from his work. He not
only neglected his studies, but he fell in with the wild young bucks of
the town, learned to play cards, took more wine than was good for him
sometimes, was on the verge of several duels, and night after night
raced home in his buggy against the coming dawn. Though Miss Lucy
looked worried, the indulgent old Major made no protest. Indeed he was
rather pleased. Chad was sowing his wild oats--it was in the blood, and
the mood would pass. It did pass, naturally enough, on the very day
that the breach between him and Margaret was partly healed; and the
heart of Caleb Hazel, whom Chad, for months, had not dared to face, was
made glad when the boy came back to him remorseful and repentant--the
old Chad once more.

They were late in getting to the dance. Every window in the old Hunt
home was brilliant with light. Chinese lanterns swung in the big yard.
The scent of early spring flowers smote the fresh night air. Music and
the murmur of nimble feet and happy laughter swept out the wide-open
doors past which white figures flitted swiftly. Scarcely anybody knew
Chad in his regimentals, and the Major, with the delight of a boy, led
him around, gravely presenting him as General Buford here and there.
Indeed, the lad made a noble figure with his superb height and bearing,
and he wore sword and spurs as though born to them. Margaret was
dancing with Richard Hunt when she saw his eyes searching for her
through the room, and she gave him a radiant smile that almost stunned
him. She had been haughty and distant when he went to her to plead
forgiveness: she had been too hard, and Margaret, too, was repentant.

"Why, who's that?" asked Richard Hunt. "Oh, yes," he added, getting his
answer from Margaret's face. "Bless me, but he's fine--the very spirit
of '76. I must have him in the Rifles."

"Will you make him a lieutenant?" asked Margaret.

"Why, yes, I will," said Mr. Hunt, decisively. "I'll resign myself in
his favor, if it pleases you."

"Oh, no, no--no one could fill your place."

"Well, he can, I fear--and here he comes to do it. I'll have to retreat
some time, and I suppose I'd as well begin now." And the gallant
gentleman bowed to Chad.

"Will you pardon me, Miss Margaret? My mother is calling me."

"You must have keen ears," said Margaret; "your mother is upstairs."

"Yes; but she wants me. Everybody wants me, but--" he bowed again with
an imperturbable smile and went his way.

Margaret looked demurely into Chad's eager eyes.

"And how is the spirit of '76?"

"The spirit of '76 is unchanged."

"Oh, yes, he is; I scarcely knew him."

"But he's unchanged; he never will change."

Margaret dropped her eyes and Chad looked around.

"I wish we could get out of here."

"We can," said Margaret, demurely.

"We will!" said Chad, and he made for a door, outside which lanterns
were swinging in the wind. Margaret caught up some flimsy garment and
wound it about her pretty round throat--they call it a "fascinator" in
the South.

Chad looked down at her.

"I wish you could see yourself; I wish I could tell you how you look."

"I have," said Margaret, "every time I passed a mirror. And other
people have told me. Mr. Hunt did. He didn't seem to have much trouble."

"I wish I had his tongue."

"If you had, and nothing else, you wouldn't have me"--Chad started as
the little witch paused a second, drawling--"leaving my friends and
this jolly dance to go out into a freezing yard and talk to an aged
Colonial who doesn't appreciate his modern blessings. The next thing
you'll be wanting, I suppose--will be--"

"You, Margaret; you--YOU!"

It had come at last and Margaret hardly knew the choked voice that
interrupted her. She had turned her back to him to sit down. She paused
a moment, standing. Her eyes closed; a slight tremor ran through her,
and she sank with her face in her hands. Chad stood silent, trembling.
Voices murmured about them, but like the music in the house, they
seemed strangely far away. The stirring of the wind made the sudden
damp on his forehead icy-cold. Margaret's hands slowly left her face,
which had changed as by a miracle. Every trace of coquetry was gone. It
was the face of a woman who knew her own heart, and had the sweet
frankness to speak it, that was lifted now to Chad.

"I'm so glad you are what you are, Chad; but had you been
otherwise--that would have made no difference to me. You believe that,
don't you, Chad? They might not have let me marry you, but I should
have cared, just the same. They may not now, but that, too, will make
no difference." She turned her eyes from his for an instant, as though
she were looking far backward. "Ever since that day," she said, slowly,
"when I heard you say, 'Tell the little gurl I didn't mean nothin'
callin' her a little gal'"--there was a low, delicious gurgle in the
throat as she tried to imitate his odd speech, and then her eyes
suddenly filled with tears, but she brushed them away, smiling
brightly. "Ever since then, Chad--" she stopped--a shadow fell across
the door of the little summer house.

"Here I am, Mr. Hunt," she said, lightly; "is this your dance?" She
rose and was gone. "Thank you, Mr. Buford," she called back, sweetly.

For a moment Chad stood where he was, quite dazed--so quickly, so
unexpectedly had the crisis come. The blood had rushed to his face and
flooded him with triumphant happiness. A terrible doubt chilled him as
quickly. Had he heard aright?--could he have misunderstood her? Had the
dream of years really come true? What was it she had said? He stumbled
around in the half darkness, wondering. Was this another phase of her
unceasing coquetry? How quickly her tone had changed when Richard
Hunt's shadow came. At that moment, he neither could nor would have
changed a hair had some genie dropped them both in the midst of the
crowded ball-room. He turned swiftly toward the dancers. He must see,
know--now!

The dance was a quadrille and the figure was "Grand right and left."
Margaret had met Richard Hunt opposite, half-way, when Chad reached the
door and was curtseying to him with a radiant smile. Again the boy's
doubts beat him fiercely; and then Margaret turned her head, as though
she knew he must be standing there. Her face grew so suddenly serious
and her eyes softened with such swift tenderness when they met his,
that a wave of guilty shame swept through him. And when she came around
to him and passed, she leaned from the circle toward him, merry and
mock-reproachful:

"You mustn't look at me like that," she whispered, and Hunt, close at
hand, saw, guessed and smiled. Chad turned quickly away again.

That happy dawn--going home! The Major drowsed and fell asleep. The
first coming light, the first cool breath that was stealing over the
awakening fields, the first spring leaves with their weight of dew,
were not more fresh and pure than the love that was in the boy's heart.
He held his right hand in his left, as though he were imprisoning there
the memory of the last little clasp that she had given it. He looked at
the Major, and he wondered how anybody on earth, at that hour, could be
asleep. He thought of the wasted days of the past few months; the
silly, foolish life he had led, and thanked God that, in the memory of
them, there was not one sting of shame. How he would work for her now!
Little guessing how proud she already was, he swore to himself how
proud she should be of him some day. He wondered where she was, and
what she was doing. She could not be asleep, and he must have cried
aloud could he have known--could he have heard her on her knees at her
bedside, whispering his name for the first time in her prayers; could
he have seen her, a little later, at her open window, looking across
the fields, as though her eyes must reach him through the morning dusk.

That happy dawn--for both, that happy dawn!

It was well that neither, at that hour, could see beyond the rim of his
own little world. In a far Southern city another ball, that night, had
been going on. Down there the air was charged with the prescience of
dark trouble, but, while the music moaned to many a heart like a god in
pain, there was no brooding--only a deeper flush to the cheek, a
brighter sparkle to the eye, a keener wit to the tongue; to the dance,
a merrier swing. And at that very hour of dawn, ladies, slippered, bare
of head, and in evening gowns, were fluttering like white moths along
the streets of old Charleston, and down to the Battery, where Fort
Sumter lay, gray and quiet in the morning mist--to await with jest and
laughter the hissing shriek of one shell that lighted the fires of a
four years' hell in a happy land of God-fearing peace and God-given
plenty, and the hissing shriek of another that Anderson, Kentuckian,
hurled back, in heroic defence of the flag struck for the first time by
other than an alien hand.



CHAPTER 19.

THE BLUE OR THE GRAY

In the far North, as in the far South, men had but to drift with the
tide. Among the Kentuckians, the forces that moulded her sons--Davis
and Lincoln--were at war in the State, as they were at war in the
nation. By ties of blood, sympathies, institutions, Kentucky was bound
fast to the South. Yet, ten years before, Kentuckians had demanded the
gradual emancipation of the slave. That far back, they had carved a
pledge on a block of Kentucky marble, which should be placed in the
Washington monument, that Kentucky would be the last to give up the
Union. For ten years, they had felt the shadow of the war creeping
toward them. In the dark hours of that dismal year, before the dawn of
final decision, the men, women, and children of Kentucky talked of
little else save war, and the skeleton of war took its place in the
closet of every home from the Ohio to the crest of the Cumberland. When
the dawn of that decision came, Kentucky spread before the world a
record of independent-mindedness, patriotism, as each side gave the
word, and sacrifice that has no parallel in history. She sent the
flower of her youth--forty thousand strong--into the Confederacy; she
lifted the lid of her treasury to Lincoln, and in answer to his every
call, sent him a soldier, practically without a bounty and without a
draft. And when the curtain fell on the last act of the great tragedy,
half of her manhood was behind it--helpless from disease, wounded, or
dead on the battle-field.

So, on a gentle April day, when the great news came, it came like a
sword that, with one stroke, slashed the State in twain, shearing
through the strongest bonds that link one man to another, whether of
blood, business, politics or religion, as though they were no more than
threads of wool. Nowhere in the Union was the National drama so played
to the bitter end in the confines of a single State. As the nation was
rent apart, so was the commonwealth; as the State, so was the county;
as the county, the neighborhood; as the neighborhood, the family; and
as the family, so brother and brother, father and son. In the nation
the kinship was racial only. Brother knew not the face of brother.
There was distance between them, antagonism, prejudice, a smouldering
dislike easily fanned to flaming hatred. In Kentucky the brothers had
been born in the same bed, slept in the same cradle, played under the
same roof, sat side by side in the same schoolroom, and stood now on
the threshold of manhood arm in arm, with mutual interests, mutual
love, mutual pride in family that made clan feeling peculiarly intense.
For antislavery fanaticism, or honest unionism, one needed not to go to
the far North; as, for imperious, hotheaded, non-interference or pure
State sovereignty, one needed not to go to the far South. They were all
there in the State, the county, the family--under the same roof. Along
the border alone did feeling approach uniformity--the border of
Kentucky hills. There unionism was free from prejudice as nowhere else
on the continent save elsewhere throughout the Southern mountains.
Those Southern Yankees knew nothing about the valley aristocrat,
nothing about his slaves, and cared as little for one as for the other.
Since '76 they had known but one flag, and one flag only, and to that
flag instinctively they rallied. But that the State should be swept
from border to border with horror, there was division even here: for,
in the Kentucky mountains, there was, here and there, a patriarch like
Joel Turner who owned slaves, and he and his sons fought for them as he
and his sons would have fought for their horses, or their cattle, or
their sheep.

It was the prescient horror of such a condition that had no little part
in the neutral stand that Kentucky strove to maintain. She knew what
war was--for every fireside was rich in memories that men and women had
of kindred who had fallen on numberless battle-fields--back even to St.
Clair's defeat and the Raisin massacre; and though she did not fear war
for its harvest of dangers and death, she did look with terror on a
conflict between neighbors, friends, and brothers. So she refused
troops to Lincoln; she refused them to Davis. Both pledged her immunity
from invasion, and, to enforce that pledge, she raised Home Guards as
she had already raised State Guards for internal protection and peace.
And there--as a State--she stood: but the tragedy went on in the
Kentucky home--a tragedy of peculiar intensity and pathos in one
Kentucky home--the Deans'.

Harry had grown up tall, pale, studious, brooding. He had always been
the pet of his Uncle Brutus--the old Lion of White Hall. Visiting the
Hall, he had drunk in the poison, or consecration, as was the point of
view, of abolitionism. At the first sign he was never allowed to go
again. But the poison had gone deep. Whenever he could he went to hear
old Brutus speak. Eagerly he heard stories of the fearless
abolitionist's hand-to-hand fights with men who sought to skewer his
fiery tongue. Deeply he brooded on every word that his retentive ear
had caught from the old man's lips, and on the wrongs he endured in
behalf of his cause and for freedom of speech.

One other hero did he place above him--the great commoner after whom he
had been christened, Henry Clay Dean. He knew how Clay's life had been
devoted to averting the coming war, and how his last days had been
darkly shadowed by the belief that, when he was gone, the war must
come. At times he could hear that clarion voice as it rang through the
Senate with the bold challenge to his own people that paramount was his
duty to the nation--subordinate his duty to his State. Who can tell
what the nation owed, in Kentucky, at least, to the passionate
allegiance that was broadcast through the State to Henry Clay? It was
not in the boy's blood to be driven an inch, and no one tried to drive
him. In his own home he was a spectre of gnawing anguish to his mother
and Margaret, of unspeakable bitterness and disappointment to his
father, and an impenetrable sphinx to Dan. For in Dan there was no
shaking doubt. He was the spirit, incarnate, of the young,
unquestioning, unthinking, generous, reckless, hotheaded, passionate
South.

And Chad? The news reached Major Buford's farm at noon, and Chad went
to the woods and came in at dusk, haggard and spent. Miserably now he
held his tongue and tortured his brain. Purposely, he never opened his
lips to Harry Dean. He tried to make known to the Major the struggle
going on within him, but the iron-willed old man brushed away all
argument with an impatient wave of his hand. With Margaret he talked
once, and straightway the question was dropped like a living coal. So,
Chad withdrew from his fellows. The social life of the town, gayer than
ever now, knew him no more. He kept up his college work, but when he
was not at his books, he walked the fields, and many a moonlit midnight
found him striding along a white turnpike, or sitting motionless on top
of a fence along the border of some woodland, his chin in both hands,
fighting his fight out in the cool stillness alone. He himself little
knew the unmeant significance there was in the old Continental uniform
he had worn to the dance. Even his old rifle, had he but known it, had
been carried with Daniel Morgan from Virginia to Washington's aid in
Cambridge. His earliest memories of war were rooted in thrilling
stories of King's Mountain. He had heard old men tell of pointing
deadly rifles at red-coats at New Orleans, and had absorbed their own
love of Old Hickory. The school-master himself, when a mere lad, had
been with Scott in Mexico. The spirit of the back-woodsman had been
caught in the hills, and was alive and unchanged at that very hour. The
boy was practically born in Revolutionary days, and that was why, like
all mountaineers, Chad had little love of State and only love of
country--was first, last and all the time, simply American. It was not
reason--it was instinct. The heroes the school-master had taught him to
love and some day to emulate, had fought under one flag, and, like
them, the mountaineers never dreamed there could be another. And so the
boy was an unconscious reincarnation of that old spirit, uninfluenced
by temporary apostasies in the outside world, untouched absolutely by
sectional prejudice or the appeal of the slave. The mountaineer had no
hatred of the valley aristocrat, because he knew nothing of him, and
envied no man what he was, what he had, or the life he led. So, as for
slavery, that question, singularly enough, never troubled his soul. To
him slaves were hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Lord had made
them so and the Bible said that it was right. That the school-master
had taught Chad. He had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the story made
him smile. The tragedies of it he had never known and he did not
believe. Slaves were sleek, well-fed, well-housed, loved and trusted,
rightly inferior and happy; and no aristocrat ever moved among them
with a more lordly, righteous air of authority than did this mountain
lad who had known them little more than half a dozen years. Unlike the
North, the boy had no prejudice, no antagonism, no jealousy, no
grievance to help him in his struggle. Unlike Harry, he had no slave
sympathy to stir him to the depths, no stubborn, rebellious pride to
prod him on. In the days when the school-master thundered at him some
speech of the Prince of Kentuckians, it was always the national thrill
in the fiery utterance that had shaken him even then. So that
unconsciously the boy was the embodiment of pure Americanism, and for
that reason he and the people among whom he was born stood among the
millions on either side, quite alone.

What was he fighting then--ah, what? If the bed-rock of his character
was not loyalty, it was nothing. In the mountains the Turners had taken
him from the Wilderness. In the Bluegrass the old Major had taken him
from the hills. His very life he owed to the simple, kindly
mountaineers, and what he valued more than his life he owed to the
simple gentleman who had picked him up from the roadside and, almost
without question, had taken him to his heart and to his home. The
Turners, he knew, would fight for their slaves as they would have
fought Dillon or Devil had either proposed to take from them a cow, a
hog, or a sheep. For that Chad could not blame them. And the Major was
going to fight, as he believed, for his liberty, his State, his
country, his property, his fireside. So in the eyes of both, Chad must
be the snake who had warmed his frozen body on their hearthstones and
bitten the kindly hands that had warmed him back to life. What would
Melissa say? Mentally he shrank from the fire of her eyes and the scorn
of her tongue when she should know. And Margaret--the thought of her
brought always a voiceless groan. To her, he had let his doubts be
known, and her white silence closed his own lips then and there. The
simple fact that he had doubts was an entering wedge of coldness
between them that Chad saw must force them apart for he knew that the
truth must come soon, and what would be the bitter cost of that truth.
She could never see him as she saw Harry. Harry was a beloved and
erring brother. Hatred of slavery had been cunningly planted in his
heart by her father's own brother, upon whose head the blame for
Harry's sin was set. The boy had been taunted until his own father's
scorn had stirred his proud independence into stubborn resistance and
intensified his resolution to do what he pleased and what he thought
was right. But Chad--she would never understand him. She would never
understand his love for the Government that had once abandoned her
people to savages and forced her State and his to seek aid from a
foreign land. In her eyes, too, he would be rending the hearts that had
been tenderest to him in all the world: and that was all. Of what fate
she would deal out to him he dared not think. If he lifted his hand
against the South, he must strike at the heart of all he loved best, to
which he owed most. If against the Union, at the heart of all that was
best in himself. In him the pure spirit that gave birth to the nation
was fighting for life. Ah, God! what should he do--what should he do?



CHAPTER 20.

OFF TO THE WAR

Throughout that summer Chad fought his fight, daily swaying this way
and that--fought it in secret until the phantom of neutrality faded and
gave place to the grim spectre of war--until with each hand Kentucky
drew a sword and made ready to plunge both into her own stout heart.
When Sumter fell, she shook her head resolutely to both North and
South. Crittenden, in the name of Union lovers and the dead Clay,
pleaded with the State to take no part in the fratricidal crime. From
the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of thirty-one counties came
piteously the same appeal. Neutrality, to be held inviolate, was the
answer to the cry from both the North and the South; but armed
neutrality, said Kentucky. The State had not the moral right to secede;
the Nation, no constitutional right to coerce: if both the North and
the South left their paths of duty and fought--let both keep their
battles from her soil. Straightway State Guards went into camp and Home
Guards were held in reserve, but there was not a fool in the
Commonwealth who did not know that, in sympathy, the State Guards were
already for the Confederacy and the Home Guards for the Union cause.
This was in May.

In June, Federals were enlisting across the Ohio; Confederates, just
over the border of Dixie which begins in Tennessee. Within a month
Stonewall Jackson sat on his horse, after Bull Run, watching the routed
Yankees, praying for fresh men that he might go on and take the
Capitol, and, from the Federal dream of a sixty-days' riot, the North
woke with a gasp. A week or two later, Camp Dick Robinson squatted down
on the edge of the Bluegrass, the first violation of the State's
neutrality, and beckoned with both hands for Yankee recruits. Soon an
order went round to disarm the State Guards, and on that very day the
State Guards made ready for Dixie. On that day the crisis came at the
Deans', and on that day Chad Buford made up his mind. When the Major
and Miss Lucy went to bed that night, he slipped out of the house and
walked through the yard and across the pike, following the little creek
half unconsciously toward the Deans', until he could see the light in
Margaret's window, and there he climbed the worm fence and sat leaning
his head against one of the forked stakes with his hat in his lap. He
would probably not see her again. He would send her word next morning
to ask that he might, and he feared what the result of that word would
be. Several times his longing eyes saw her shadow pass the curtain, and
when her light was out, he closed his eyes and sat motionless--how long
he hardly knew; but, when he sprang down, he was stiffened from the
midnight chill and his unchanged posture. He went back to his room
then, and wrote Margaret a letter and tore it up and went to bed. There
was little sleep for him that night, and when the glimmer of morning
brightened at his window, he rose listlessly, dipped his hot head in a
bowl of water and stole out to the barn. His little mare whinnied a
welcome as he opened the barn door. He patted her on the neck.

"Good-by, little girl," he said. He started to call her by name and
stopped. Margaret had named the beautiful creature "Dixie." The
servants were stirring.

"Good-mawnin', Mars Chad," said each, and with each he shook hands,
saying simply that he was going away that morning. Only old Tom asked
him a question.

"Foh Gawd, Mars Chad," said the old fellow, "old Mars Buford can't git
along widout you. You gwine to come back soon?"

"I don't know, Uncle Tom," said Chad, sadly.

"Whar you gwine, Mars Chad?"

"Into the army."

"De ahmy?" The old man smiled. "You gwine to fight de Yankees?"

"I'm going to fight WITH the Yankees."

The old driver looked as though he could not have heard aright.

"You foolin' this ole nigger, Mars Chad, ain't you?"

Chad shook his head, and the old man straightened himself a bit.

"I'se sorry to heah it, suh," he said, with dignity, and he turned to
his work.

Miss Lucy was not feeling well that morning and did not come down to
breakfast. The boy was so pale and haggard that the Major looked at him
anxiously.

"What's the matter with you, Chad? Are you--?"

"I didn't sleep very well last night, Major."

The Major chuckled. "I reckon you ain't gettin' enough sleep these
days. I reckon I wouldn't, either, if I were in your place."

Chad did not answer. After breakfast he sat with the Major on the porch
in the fresh, sunny air. The Major smoked his pipe, taking the stem out
of his mouth now and then to shout some order as a servant passed under
his eye.

"What's the news, Chad?"

"Mr. Crittenden is back."

"What did old Lincoln say?"

"That Camp Dick Robinson was formed for Kentuckians by Kentuckians, and
he did not believe that it was the wish of the State that it should be
removed."

"Well, by ----! after his promise. What did Davis say?"

"That if Kentucky opened the Northern door for invasion, she must not
close the Southern door to entrance for defence."

"And dead right he is," growled the Major with satisfaction.

"Governor Magoffin asked Ohio and Indiana to join in an effort for a
peace Congress," Chad added.

"Well?"

"Both governors refused."

"I tell you, boy, the hour has come."

The hour had come.

"I'm going away this morning, Major."

The Major did not even turn his head.

"I thought this was coming," he said quietly. Chad's face grew even
paler, and he steeled his heart for the revelation.

"I've already spoken to Lieutenant Hunt," the Major went on. "He
expects to be a captain, and he says that, maybe, he can make you a
lieutenant. You can take that boy Brutus as a body servant." He brought
his fist down on the railing of the porch. "God, but I'd give the rest
of my life to be ten years younger than I am now."

"Major, I'm GOING INTO THE UNION ARMY."

The Major's pipe almost dropped from between his lips. Catching the
arms of his chair with both hands, he turned heavily and with dazed
wonder, as though the boy had struck him with his fist from behind,
and, without a word, stared hard into Chad's tortured face. The keen
old eye had not long to look before it saw the truth, and then,
silently, the old man turned back. His hands trembled on the chair, and
he slowly thrust them into his pockets, breathing hard through his
nose. The boy expected an outbreak, but none came. A bee buzzed above
them. A yellow butterfly zigzagged by. Blackbirds chattered in the
firs. The screech of a peacock shrilled across the yard, and a
ploughman's singing wailed across the fields:

  Trouble, O Lawd!
  Nothin' but trouble in de lan' of Canaan.

The boy knew he had given his old friend a mortal hurt.

"Don't, Major," he pleaded. "You don't know how I have fought against
this. I tried to be on your side. I thought I was. I joined the Rifles.
I found first that I couldn't fight WITH the South, and--then--I--found
that I had to fight FOR the North. It almost kills me when I think of
all you have done."

The Major waved his hand imperiously. He was not the man to hear his
favors recounted, much less refer to them himself. He straightened and
got up from his chair. His manner had grown formal, stately, coldly
courteous.

"I cannot understand, but you are old enough, sir, to know your own
mind. You should have prepared me for this. You will excuse me a
moment." Chad rose and the Major walked toward the door, his step not
very steady, and his shoulders a bit shrunken--his back, somehow,
looked suddenly old.

"Brutus!" he called sharply to a black boy who was training rosebushes
in the yard. "Saddle Mr. Chad's horse." Then, without looking again at
Chad, he turned into his office, and Chad, standing where he was, with
a breaking heart, could hear, through the open window, the rustling of
papers and the scratching of a pen.

In a few minutes he heard the Major rise and he turned to meet him. The
old man held a roll of bills in one hand and a paper in the other.

"Here is the balance due you on our last trade," he said, quietly. "The
mare is yours--Dixie," he added, grimly. "The old mare is in foal. I
will keep her and send you your due when the time comes. We are quite
even," he went on in a level tone of business. "Indeed, what you have
done about the place more than exceeds any expense that you have ever
caused me. If anything, I am still in your debt."

"I can't take it!" said Chad, choking back a sob.

"You will have to take it," the Major broke in, curtly, "unless--" the
Major held back the bitter speech that was on his lips and Chad
understood. The old man did not want to feel under any obligations to
him.

"I would offer you Brutus, as was my intention, except that I know you
would not take him," again he added, grimly, "and Brutus would run away
from you."

"No, Major," said Chad, sadly, "I would not take Brutus," and he
stepped down one step of the porch backward.

"I tried to tell you, Major, but you wouldn't listen. I don't wonder,
for I couldn't explain to you what I couldn't understand myself. I--"
the boy choked and tears filled his eyes. He was afraid to hold out his
hand.

"Good-by, Major," he said, brokenly.

"Good-by, sir," answered the Major, with a stiff bow, but the old man's
lip shook and he turned abruptly within.

Chad did not trust himself to look back, but, as he rode through the
pasture to the pike gate, his ears heard, never to forget, the chatter
of the blackbirds, the noises around the barn, the cry of the peacock,
and the wailing of the ploughman:

  Trouble, O Lawd!
  Nothin' but trouble--

At the gate the little mare turned her head toward town and started
away in the easy swinging lope for which she was famous. From a
cornfield Jerome Conners, the overseer, watched horse and rider for a
while, and then his lips were lifted over his protruding teeth in one
of his ghastly, infrequent smiles. Chad Buford was out of his way at
last. At the Deans' gate, Snowball was just going in on Margaret's pony
and Chad pulled up.

"Where's Mr. Dan, Snowball?--and Mr. Harry?"

"Mars Dan he gwine to de wah--an' I'se gwine wid him."

"Is Mr. Harry going, too?" Snowball hesitated. He did not like to
gossip about family matters, but it was a friend of the family who was
questioning him.

"Yessuh! But Mammy say Mars Harry's teched in de haid. He gwine to
fight wid de po' white trash."

"Is Miss Margaret at home?"

"Yessuh."

Chad had his note to Margaret, unsealed. He little felt like seeing her
now, but he had just as well have it all over at once. He took it out
and looked it over once more--irresolute.

"I'm going away to join the Union army, Margaret. May I come to tell
you good-by? If not, God bless you always. CHAD."

"Take this to Miss Margaret, Snowball, and bring me an answer here as
soon as you can."

"Yessuh."

The black boy was not gone long. Chad saw him go up the steps, and in a
few moments he reappeared and galloped back.

"Ole Mistis say dey ain't no answer."

"Thank you, Snowball." Chad pitched him a coin and loped on toward
Lexington with his head bent, his hands folded on the pommel, and the
reins flapping loosely. Within one mile of Lexington he turned into a
cross-road and set his face toward the mountains.

An hour later, the General and Harry and Dan stood on the big portico.
Inside, the mother and Margaret were weeping in each other's arms. Two
negro boys were each leading a saddled horse from the stable, while
Snowball was blubbering at the corner of the house. At the last moment
Dan had decided to leave him behind. If Harry could have no servant,
Dan, too, would have none. Dan was crying without shame. Harry's face
was as white and stern as his father's. As the horses drew near the
General stretched out the sabre in his hand to Dan.

"This should belong to you, Harry."

"It is yours to give, father," said Harry, gently.

"It shall never be drawn against my roof and your mother."

The boy was silent.

"You are going far North?" asked the General, more gently. "You will
not fight on Kentucky soil?"

"You taught me that the first duty of a soldier is obedience. I must go
where I'm ordered."

"God grant that you two may never meet."

"Father!" It was a cry of horror from both the lads.

The horses were waiting at the stiles. The General took Dan in his arms
and the boy broke away and ran down the steps, weeping.

"Father," said Harry, with trembling lips, "I hope you won't be too
hard on me. Perhaps the day will come when you won't be so ashamed of
me. I hope you and mother will forgive me. I can't do otherwise than I
must. Will you shake hands with me, father?"

"Yes, my son. God be with you both."

And then, as he watched the boys ride side by side to the gate, he
added:

"I could kill my own brother with my own hand for this."

He saw them stop a moment at the gate; saw them clasp hands and turn
opposite ways--one with his face set for Tennessee, the other making
for the Ohio. Dan waved his cap in a last sad good-by. Harry rode over
the hill without turning his head. The General stood rigid, with his
hands clasped behind his back, staring across the gray fields between
them. Through the winds, came the low sound of sobbing.



CHAPTER 21.

MELISSA

Shortly after dusk, that night, two or three wagons moved quietly out
of Lexington, under a little guard with guns loaded and bayonets fixed.
Back at the old Armory--the home of the "Rifles"--a dozen youngsters
drilled vigorously with faces in a broad grin, as they swept under the
motto of the company--"Our laws the commands of our Captain." They were
following out those commands most literally. Never did Lieutenant Hunt
give his orders more sonorously--he could be heard for blocks away.
Never did young soldiers stamp out maneuvers more lustily--they made
more noise than a regiment. Not a man carried a gun, though ringing
orders to "Carry arms" and "Present arms" made the windows rattle. It
was John Morgan's first ruse. While that mock-drill was going on, and
listening Unionists outside were laughing to think how those Rifles
were going to be fooled next day, the guns of the company were moving
in those wagons toward Dixie--toward mocking-bird-haunted Bowling
Green, where the underfed, unclothed, unarmed body of Albert Sydney
Johnston's army lay, with one half-feathered wing stretching into the
Cumberland hills and the frayed edge of the other touching the Ohio.

Next morning, the Home Guards came gayly around to the Armory to seize
those guns, and the wily youngsters left temporarily behind (they, too,
fled for Dixie, that night) gibed them unmercifully; so that, then and
there, a little interchange of powder-and-ball civilities followed; and
thus, on the very first day, Daniel Dean smelled the one and heard the
other whistle right harmlessly and merrily. Straightway, more guards
were called out; cannon were planted to sweep the principal streets,
and from that hour the old town was under the rule of a Northern or
Southern sword for the four years' reign of the war.

Meanwhile, Chad Buford was giving a strange journey to Dixie. Whenever
he dismounted, she would turn her head toward the Bluegrass, as though
it surely were time they were starting for home. When they reached the
end of the turnpike, she lifted her feet daintily along the muddy road,
and leaped pools of water like a cat. Climbing the first foot-hills,
she turned her beautiful head to right and left, and with pointed ears
snorted now and then at the strange dark woods on either side and the
tumbling water-falls. The red of her wide nostrils was showing when she
reached the top of the first mountain, and from that high point of
vantage she turned her wondering eyes over the wide rolling stretch
that waved homeward, and whinnied with distinct uneasiness when Chad
started her down into the wilderness beyond. Distinctly that road was
no path for a lady to tread, but Dixie was to know it better in the
coming war.

Within ten miles of the Turners', Chad met the first man that he
knew--Hence Sturgill from Kingdom Come. He was driving a wagon.

"Howdye, Hence!" said Chad, reining in.

"Whoa!" said Hence, pulling in and staring at Chad's horse and at Chad
from hat to spur.

"Don't you know me, Hence?"

"Well, God--I--may--die, if it ain't Chad! How air ye, Chad? Goin' up
to ole Joel's?"

"Yes. How are things on Kingdom Come?"

Hence spat on the ground and raised one hand high over his head:

"God--I--may--die, if thar hain't hell to pay on Kingdom Come. You
better keep offo' Kingdom Come," and then he stopped with an expression
of quick alarm, looked around him into the bushes and dropped his voice
to a whisper:

"But I hain't sayin' a word--rickollect now--not a word!"

Chad laughed aloud. "What's the matter with you, Hence?"

Hence put one finger on one side of his nose--still speaking in a low
tone:

"Whut'd I say, Chad? D'I say one word?" He gathered up his reins. "You
rickollect Jake and Jerry Dillon?" Chad nodded. "You know Jerry was
al'ays a-runnin' over Jake 'cause Jake' didn't have good sense. Jake
was drapped when he was a baby. Well, Jerry struck Jake over the head
with a fence-rail 'bout two months ago, an when Jake come to, he had
just as good sense as anybody, and now he hates Jerry like pizen, an
Jerry's half afeard of him. An' they do say a how them two brothers air
a-goin'" Again Hence stopped abruptly and clucked to his team "But I
ain't a-sayin' a word, now, mind ye--not a word!"

Chad rode on, amused, and thinking that Hence had gone daft, but he was
to learn better. A reign of forty years' terror was starting in those
hills.

Not a soul was in sight when he reached the top of the hill from which
he could see the Turner home below--about the house or the orchard or
in the fields. No one answered his halloo at the Turner gate, though
Chad was sure that he saw a woman's figure flit past the door. It was a
full minute before Mother Turner cautiously thrust her head outside the
door and peered at him.

"Why, Aunt Betsey," called Chad, "don't you know me?"

At the sound of his voice Melissa sprang out the door with a welcoming
cry, and ran to him, Mother Turner following with a broad smile on her
kind old face. Chad felt the tears almost come--these were friends
indeed. How tall Melissa had grown, and how lovely she was, with her
tangled hair and flashing eyes and delicately modelled face. She went
with him to the stable to help him put up his horse, blushing when he
looked at her and talking very little, while the old mother, from the
fence, followed him with her dim eyes. At once Chad began to ply both
with questions--where was Uncle Joel and the boys and the
school-master? And, straightway, Chad felt a reticence in both--a
curious reticence even with him. On each side of the fireplace, on each
side of the door, and on each side of the window, he saw narrow blocks
fixed to the logs. One was turned horizontal, and through the hole
under it Chad saw daylight--portholes they were. At the door were taken
blocks as catches for a piece of upright wood nearby, which was plainly
used to bar the door. The cabin was a fortress. By degrees the story
came out. The neighborhood was in a turmoil of bloodshed and terror.
Tom and Dolph had gone off to the war--Rebels. Old Joel had been called
to the door one night, a few weeks since, and had been shot down
without warning. They had fought all night. Melissa herself had handled
a rifle at one of the portholes. Rube was out in the woods now, with
Jack guarding and taking care of his wounded father. A Home Guard had
been organized, and Daws Dillon was captain. They were driving out of
the mountains every man who owned a negro, for nearly every man who
owned a negro had taken, or was forced to take, the Rebel side. The
Dillons were all Yankees, except Jerry, who had gone off with Tom; and
the giant brothers, Rebel Jerry and Yankee Jake--as both were already
known--had sworn to kill each other on sight. Bushwhacking had already
begun. When Chad asked about the school-master, the old woman's face
grew stern, and Melissa's lip curled with scorn.

"Yankee!" The girl spat the word out with such vindictive bitterness
that Chad's face turned slowly scarlet, while the girl's keen eyes
pierced him like a knife, and narrowed as, with pale face and heaving
breast, she rose suddenly from her chair and faced him--amazed,
bewildered, burning with sudden hatred. "And you're another!" The
girl's voice was like a hiss.

"Why, 'Lissy!" cried the old mother, startled, horrified.

"Look at him!" said the girl. The old woman looked; her face grew hard
and frightened, and she rose feebly, moving toward the girl as though
for protection against him. Chad's very heart seemed suddenly to turn
to water. He had been dreading the moment to come when he must tell. He
knew it would be hard, but he was not looking for this.

"You better git away!" quavered the old woman, "afore Joel and Rube
come in."

"Hush!" said the girl, sharply, her hands clinched like claws, her
whole body stiff, like a tigress ready to attack, or awaiting attack.

"Mebbe he come hyeh to find out whar they air--don't tell him!"

"Lissy!" said Chad, brokenly.

"Then whut did you come fer?"

"To tell you good-by, I came to see all of you, Lissy."

The girl laughed scornfully, and Chad knew he was helpless. He could
not explain, and they could not understand--nobody had understood.

"Aunt Betsey," he said, "you took Jack and me in, and you took care of
me just as though I had been your own child. You know I'd give my life
for you or Uncle Joel, or any one of the boys"--his voice grew a little
stern--"and you know it, too, Lissy--"

"You're makin' things wuss," interrupted the girl, stridently, "an' now
you're goin' to do all you can to kill us. I reckon you can see that
door. Why don't you go over to the Dillons?" she panted. "They're
friends o' your'n. An' don't let Uncle Joel or Rube ketch you anywhar
round hyeh!"

"I'm not afraid to see Uncle Joel or Rube, Lissy."

"You must git away, Chad," quavered the old woman. "They mought hurt
ye!"

"I'm sorry not to see Jack. He's the only friend I have now."

"Why, Jack would snarl at ye," said the girl, bitterly. "He hates a
Yankee." She pointed again with her finger. "I reckon you can see that
door."

They followed him, Melissa going on the porch and the old woman
standing in the doorway. On one side of the walk Chad saw a rose-bush
that he had brought from the Bluegrass for Melissa. It was dying. He
took one step toward it, his foot sinking in the soft earth where the
girl had evidently been working around it, and broke off the one green
leaf that was left.

"Here, Lissy! You'll be sorry you were so hard on me. I'd never get
over it if I didn't think you would. Keep this, won't you, and let's be
friends, not enemies."

He held it out, and the girl angrily struck the rose-leaf from his hand
to her feet.

Chad rode away at a walk. Two hundred yards below, where the hill rose,
the road was hock-deep with sand, and Dixie's feet were as noiseless as
a cat's. A few yards beyond a ravine on the right, a stone rolled from
the bushes into the road. Instinctively Chad drew rein, and Dixie stood
motionless. A moment later, a crouching figure, with a long squirrel
rifle, slipped out of the bushes and started noiselessly across the
ravine. Chad's pistol flashed.

"Stop!"

The figure crouched more, and turned a terror-stricken face--Daws
Dillon's.

"Oh, it's you, is it--Well, drop that gun and come down here."

The Dillon boy rose, leaving his gun on the ground, and came down,
trembling.

"What're you doin' sneaking around in the brush?"

"Nothin'!" The Dillon had to make two efforts before he could speak at
all. "Nothin', jes' a-huntin'!"

"Huntin'!" repeated Chad. He lowered his pistol and looked at the sorry
figure silently.

"I know what you were huntin', you rattlesnake! I understand you are
captain of the Home Guard. I reckon you don't know that nobody has to
go into this war. That a man has the right to stay peaceably at home,
and nobody has the right to bother him. If you don't know it, I tell
you now. I believe you had something to do with shooting Uncle Joel."

The Dillon shook his head, and fumbled with his hands.

"If I knew it, I'd kill you where you stand, now. But I've got one word
to say to you, you hell-pup. I hate to think it, but you and I are on
the same side--that is, if you have any side. But in spite of that, if
I hear of any harm happening to Aunt Betsey, or Melissa, or Uncle Joel,
or Rube, while they are all peaceably at home, I'm goin' to hold you
and Tad responsible, whether you are or not, and I'll kill you"--he
raised one hand to make the Almighty a witness to his oath--"I'll kill
you, if I have to follow you both to hell for doin' it. Now, you take
keer of 'em! Turn 'round!"

The Dillon hesitated.

"Turn!" Chad cried, savagely, raising his pistol. "Go back to that gun,
an' if you turn your head I'll shoot you where you're sneakin' aroun'
to shoot Rube or Uncle Joel--in the back, you cowardly feist. Pick up
that gun! Now, let her off! See if you can hit that beech-tree in front
of you. Just imagine that it's me."

The rifle cracked and Chad laughed.

"Well, you ain't much of a shot. I reckon you must have chills and
fever. Now, come back here. Give me your powder-horn. You'll find it on
top of the hill on the right-hand side of the road. Now, you
trot--home!"

Then Dillon stared.

"Double-quick!" shouted Chad. "You ought to know what that means if you
are a soldier--a soldier!" he repeated, contemptuously.

The Dillon disappeared on a run.

Chad rode all that night. At dawn he reached the foot-hills, and by
noon he drew up at the road which turned to Camp Dick Robinson. He sat
there a long time thinking, and then pushed on toward Lexington. If he
could, he would keep from fighting on Kentucky soil.

Next morning he was going at an easy "running-walk" along the old
Maysville road toward the Ohio. Within three miles of Major Buford's,
he leaped the fence and stuck across the fields that he might go around
and avoid the risk of a painful chance meeting with his old friend or
any of the Deans.

What a land of peace and plenty it was--the woodlands, meadows, pasture
lands! Fat cattle raised their noses from the thick grass and looked
with mild inquiry at him. Sheep ran bleating toward him, as though he
were come to salt them. A rabbit leaped from a thorn-bush and whisked
his white flag into safety in a hemp-field. Squirrels barked in the big
oaks, and a covey of young quail fluttered up from a fence corner and
sailed bravely away. 'Possum signs were plentiful, and on the edge of
the creek he saw a coon solemnly searching under a rock with one paw
for crawfish Every now and then Dixie would turn her head impatiently
to the left, for she knew where home was. The Deans' house was just
over the hill he would have but the ride to the top to see it and,
perhaps, Margaret. There was no need. As he sat, looking up the hill,
Margaret herself rode slowly over it, and down, through the sunlight
slanting athwart the dreaming woods, straight toward him. Chad sat
still. Above him the road curved, and she could not see him until she
turned the little thicket just before him. Her pony was more startled
than was she. A little leap of color to her face alone showed her
surprise.

"Did you get my note?"

"I did. You got my mother's message?"

"I did." Chad paused. "That is why I am passing around you."

The girl said nothing.

"But I'm glad I came so near. I wanted to see you once more. I wish I
could make you understand. But nobody understands. I hardly understand
myself. But please try to believe that what I say is true. I'm just
back from the mountains, and listen, Margaret--" He halted a moment to
steady his voice. "The Turners down there took me in when I was a
ragged outcast. They clothed me, fed me, educated me. The Major took me
when I was little more; and he fed me, clothed me, educated me. The
Turners scorned me--Melissa told me to go herd with the Dillons. The
Major all but turned me from his door. Your father was bitter toward
me, thinking that I had helped turn Harry to the Union cause. But let
me tell you! If the Turners died, believing me a traitor; if Lissy died
with a curse on her lips for me; if the Major died without, as he
believed, ever having polluted his lips again with my name; if Harry
were brought back here dead, and your father died, believing that his
blood was on my hands; and if I lost you and your love, and you died,
believing the same thing--I must still go. Oh, Margaret, I can't
understand--I have ceased to reason. I only know I must go!"

The girl in the mountains had let her rage and scorn loose like a
storm, but the gentlewoman only grew more calm. Every vestige of color
left her, but her eyes never for a moment wavered from his face. Her
voice was quiet and even and passionless.

"Then, why don't you go?"

The lash of an overseer's whip across his face could not have made his
soul so bleed. Even then he did not lose himself.

"I am in your way," he said, quietly. And backing Dixie from the road,
and without bending his head or lowering his eyes, he waited, hat in
hand, for Margaret to pass.

All that day Chad rode, and, next morning, Dixie climbed the Union bank
of the Ohio and trotted into the recruiting camp of the Fourth Ohio
Cavalry. The first man Chad saw was Harry Dean--grave, sombre,
taciturn, though he smiled and thrust out his hand eagerly. Chad's eyes
dropped to the sergeant's stripes on Harry's sleeves, and again Harry
smiled.

"You'll have 'em yourself in a week. These fellows ride like a lot of
meal-bags over here. Here's my captain," he added, in a lower voice.

A pompous officer rode slowly up. He pulled in his horse when he saw
Chad.

"You want to join the army?"

"Yes," said Chad.

"All right. That's a fine horse you've got."

Chad said nothing.

"What's his name?"

"HER name is Dixie."

The captain stared. Some soldiers behind laughed in a smothered
fashion, sobering their' faces quickly when the captain turned upon
them, furious.

"Well, change her name!"

"I'll not change her name," said Chad, quietly.

"What!" shouted the officer. "How dare you--" Chad's eyes looked
ominous.

"Don't you give any orders to me--not yet. You haven't the right; and
when you have, you can save your breath by not giving that one. This
horse comes from Kentucky, and so do I; her name will stay Dixie as
long as I straddle her, and I propose to straddle her until one of us
dies, or,"--he smiled and nodded across the river--"somebody over there
gets her who won't object to her name as much as you do."

The astonished captain's lips opened, but a quiet voice behind
interrupted him:

"Never mind, Captain." Chad turned and saw a short, thick-set man with
a stubbly brown beard, whose eyes were twinkling, though his face was
grave. "A boy who wants to fight for the Union, and insists on calling
his horse Dixie, must be all right. Come with me, my lad."

As Chad followed, he heard the man saluted as Colonel Grant, but he
paid no heed. Few people at that time did pay heed to the name of
Ulysses Grant.



CHAPTER 22.

MORGAN'S MEN

Boots and saddles at daybreak!

Over the border, in Dixie, two videttes in gray trot briskly from out a
leafy woodland, side by side, and looking with keen eyes right and
left; one, erect, boyish, bronzed; the other, slouching, bearded,
huge--the boy, Daniel Dean; the man, Rebel Jerry Dillon, one of the
giant twins.

Fifty yards behind them emerges a single picket; after him come three
more videttes, the same distance apart. Fifty yards behind the last
rides "the advance"--a guard of twenty-five picked men. No commission
among "Morgan's Men" was more eagerly sought than a place on that guard
of hourly risk and honor. Behind it trot still three more videttes, at
intervals of one hundred yards, and just that interval behind the last
of these ride Morgan's Men, the flower of Kentucky's youth, in columns
of fours--Colonel Hunt's regiment in advance, the colors borne by
Renfrew the Silent in a brilliant Zouave jacket studded with buttons of
red coral. In the rear rumble two Parrot guns, affectionately
christened the "Bull Pups."

Skirting the next woodland ran a cross-road. Down one way gallops Dan,
and down the other lumbers Rebel Jerry, each two hundred yards. A cry
rings from vidette to vidette behind them and back to the guard. Two
horsemen spur from the "advance" and take the places of the last two
videttes, while the videttes in front take and keep the original
formation until the column passes that cross-road, when Dean and Dillon
gallop up to their old places in the extreme front again. Far in front,
and on both flanks, are scouting parties, miles away.

This was the way Morgan marched.

Yankees ahead! Not many, to be sure--no more numerous than two or three
to one; so back fall the videttes and forward charges that advance
guard like a thunderbolt, not troubling the column behind. Wild yells,
a clattering of hoofs, the crack of pistol-shots, a wild flight, a
merry chase, a few riderless horses gathered in from the fleeing
Yankees, and the incident is over.

Ten miles more, and many hostile bayonets gleam ahead. A serious fight,
this, perhaps--so back drops the advance, this time as a reserve; up
gallops the column into single rank and dismounts, while the flank
companies, deploying as skirmishers, cover the whole front, one man out
of each set of fours and the corporals holding the horses in the rear.
The "Bull Pups" bark and the Rebel yell rings as the line--the files
two yards apart--"a long flexible line curving forward at each
extremity"--slips forward at a half run. This time the Yankees charge.

From every point of that curving line pours a merciless fire, and the
charging men in blue recoil--all but one. (War is full of grim humor.)
On comes one lone Yankee, hatless, red-headed, pulling on his reins
with might and main, his horse beyond control, and not one of the enemy
shoot as he sweeps helplessly into their line. A huge rebel grabs his
bridle-rein.

"I don't know whether to kill you now," he says, with pretended
ferocity, "or wait till the fight is over."

"For God's sake, don't kill me at all!" shouts the Yankee. "I'm a
dissipated character, and not prepared to die."

Shots from the right flank and rear, and the line is thrown about like
a rope. But the main body of the Yankees is to the left.

"Left face! Double-quick!" is the ringing order, and, by magic, the
line concentrates in a solid phalanx and sweeps forward.

This was the way Morgan fought.

And thus, marching and fighting, he went his triumphant way into the
land of the enemy, without sabres, without artillery, without even the
"Bull Pups," sometimes--fighting infantry, cavalry, artillery with only
muzzle-loading rifles, pistols, and shotguns; scattering Home Guards
like turkeys; destroying railroads and bridges; taking towns and
burning Government stores, and encompassed, usually, with forces treble
his own.

This was what Morgan did on a raid, was what he had done, what he was
starting out now to do again.

Darkness threatens, and the column halts to bivouac for the night on
the very spot where, nearly a year before, Morgan's Men first joined
Johnston's army, which, like a great, lean, hungry hawk, guarded the
Southern border.

Daniel Dean was a war-worn veteran now. He could ride twenty hours out
of the twenty-four; he could sleep in his saddle or anywhere but on
picket duty, and there was no trick of the trade in camp, or on the
march, that was not at his finger's end.

Fire first! Nobody had a match, the leaves were wet and the twigs
soggy, but by some magic a tiny spark glows under some shadowy figure,
bites at the twigs, snaps at the branches, and wraps a log in flames.

Water next! A tin cup rattles in a bucket, and another shadowy figure
steals off into the darkness, with an instinct as unerring as the skill
of a water-witch with a willow wand. The Yankees chose open fields for
camps, but your rebel took to the woods. Each man and his chum picked a
tree for a home, hung up canteens and spread blankets at the foot of
it. Supper--Heavens, what luck--fresh beef! One man broils it on coals,
pinning pieces of fat to it to make gravy; another roasts it on a
forked stick, for Morgan carried no cooking utensils on a raid.

Here, one man made up bread in an oilcloth (and every Morgan's man had
one soon after they were issued to the Federals); another worked up
corn-meal into dough in the scooped-out half of a pumpkin; one baked
bread on a flat rock, another on a board, while a third had twisted his
dough around his ram-rod; if it were spring-time, a fourth might be
fitting his into a cornshuck to roast in ashes. All this Dan Dean could
do.

The roaring fire thickens the gloom of the woods where the lonely
pickets stand. Pipes are out now. An oracle outlines the general
campaign of the war as it will be and as it should have been. A
long-winded, innocent braggart tells of his personal prowess that day.
A little group is guying the new recruit. A wag shaves a bearded
comrade on one side of his face, pockets his razor and refuses to shave
the other side. A poet, with a bandaged eye, and hair like a windblown
hay-stack, recites "I am dying, Egypt--dying," and then a pure, clear,
tenor voice starts through the forest-aisles, and there is sudden
silence. Every man knows that voice, and loves the boy who owns
it--little Tom Morgan, Dan's brother-in-arms, the General's
seventeen-year-old brother--and there he stands leaning against a tree,
full in the light of the fire, a handsome, gallant figure--a song like
a seraph's pouring from his lips. One bearded soldier is gazing at him
with curious intentness, and when the song ceases, lies down with a
suddenly troubled face. He has seen the "death-look" in the boy's
eyes--that prophetic death-look in which he has unshaken faith. The
night deepens, figures roll up in blankets, quiet comes, and Dan lies
wide awake and deep in memories, and looking back on those early
helpless days of the war with a tolerant smile.

He was a war-worn veteran now, but how vividly he could recall that
first night in the camp of a big army, in the very woods where he now
lay--dusk settling over the Green River country, which Morgan's Men
grew to love so well; a mocking-bird singing a farewell song from the
top of a stunted oak to the dead summer and the dying day; Morgan
seated on a cracker-box in front of his tent, contemplatively chewing
one end of his mustache; Lieutenant Hunt swinging from his horse,
smiling grimly.

"It would make a horse laugh--a Yankee cavalry horse, anyhow--to see
this army."

Hunt had been over the camp that first afternoon on a personal tour of
investigation. They were not a thousand Springfield and Enfield rifles
at that time in Johnston's army. Half of the soldiers were armed with
shotguns and squirrel rifle and the greater part of the other half with
flintlock muskets. But nearly every man, thinking he was in for a
rough-and-tumble fight, had a bowie knife and a revolver swung to his
belt.

"Those Arkansas and Texas fellows have got knives that would make a
Malay's blood run cold."

"Well, they'll do to hew firewood and cut meat," laughed Morgan.

The troops were not only badly armed. On his tour, Hunt had seen men
making blankets of pieces of old carpet, lined on one side with a piece
of cotton cloth; men wearing ox-hide buskins, or complicated wrapping
of rags, for shoes; orderly sergeants making out reports on shingles;
surgeon using a twisted handkerchief instead of a tourniquet. There was
a total lack of medicine, and camp diseases were already breaking
out--measles, typhoid fever, pneumonia, bowel troubles--each fatal, it
seemed, in time of war.

"General Johnston has asked Richmond for a stand of thirty thousand
arms," Morgan had mused, and Hunt looked up inquiringly.

"Mr. Davis can only spare a thousand."

"That's lucky," said Hunt, grimly.

And then the military organization of that army, so characteristic of
the Southerner! An officer who wanted to be more than a colonel, and
couldn't be a brigadier, would have a "legion"--a hybrid unit between a
regiment and a brigade. Sometimes there was a regiment whose roll-call
was more than two thousand men, so popular was its colonel. Companies
would often refuse to designate themselves by letter, but by the
thrilling titles they had given themselves. How Morgan and Hunt had
laughed over "The Yellow Jackets," "The Dead Shots," "The Earthquakes,"
"The Chickasha Desperadoes," and "The Hell Roarers"! Regiments would
bear the names of their commanders--a singular instance of the
Southerner's passion for individuality, as a man, a company, a
regiment, or a brigade. And there was little or no discipline, as the
word is understood among the military elect, and with no army that the
world has ever seen, Richard Hunt always claimed, was there so little
need of it. For Southern soldiers, he argued, were, from the start,
obedient, zealous, and tolerably patient, from good sense and a strong
sense of duty. They were born fighters; a spirit of emulation induced
them to learn the drill; pride and patriotism kept them true and
patient to the last, but they could not be made, by punishment or the
fear of it, into machines. They read their chance of success, not in
opposing numbers, but in the character and reputation of their
commanders, who, in turn, believed, as a rule, that "the unthinking
automaton, formed by routine and punishment, could no more stand before
the high-strung young soldier with brains and good blood, and some
practice and knowledge of warfare, than a tree could resist a stroke of
lightning." So that with Southern soldiers discipline came to mean "the
pride which made soldiers learn their duties rather than incur
disgrace; the subordination that came from self-respect and respect for
the man whom they thought worthy to command them."

Boots and saddles again at daybreak! By noon the column reached Green
River, over the Kentucky line, where Morgan, even on his way down to
join Johnston, had begun the operations which were to make him famous.
No picket duty that infantry could do as well, for Morgan's cavalry! He
wanted it kept out on the front or the flanks of an army, and as close
as possible upon the enemy. Right away, there had been thrilling times
for Dan in the Green River country--setting out at dark, chasing
countrymen in Federal pay or sympathy, prowling all night around and
among pickets and outposts; entrapping the unwary; taking a position on
the line of retreat at daybreak, and turning leisurely back to camp
with prisoners and information. How memories thronged! At this very
turn of the road, Dan remembered, they had their first brush with the
enemy. No plan of battle had been adopted, other than to hide on both
sides of the road and send their horses to the rear.

"I think we ought to charge 'em," said Georgie Forbes, Chad's old
enemy. Dan saw that his lip trembled, and, a moment later, Georgie,
muttering something, disappeared.

The Yankees had come on, and, discovering them, halted. Morgan himself
stepped out in the road and shot the officer riding at the head of the
column. His men fell back without returning the fire, deployed and
opened up. Dan recognized the very tree behind which he had stood, and
again he could almost hear Richard Hunt chuckling from behind another
close by.

"We would be in bad shape," said Richard Hunt, as the bullets whistled
high overhead, "if we were in the tops of these trees instead of behind
them." There had been no maneuvering, no command given among the
Confederates. Each man fought his own fight. In ten minutes a
horse-holder ran up from the rear, breathless, and announced that the
Yankees were flanking. Every man withdrew, straightway, after his own
fashion, and in his own time. One man was wounded and several were shot
through the clothes.

"That was like a camp-meeting or an election row," laughed Morgan, when
they were in camp.

"Or an affair between Austrian and Italian outposts," said Hunt.

A chuckle rose behind them. A lame colonel was limping past.

"I got your courier," he said.

"I sent no courier," said Morgan.

"It was Forbes who wanted to charge 'em," said Dan.

Again the Colonel chuckled.

"The Yankees ran when you did," he said, and limped, chuckling, away.

But it was great fun, those moonlit nights, burning bridges and chasing
Home Guards who would flee fifteen or twenty miles sometimes to
"rally." Here was a little town through which Dan and Richard Hunt had
marched with nine prisoners in a column--taken by them alone--and a
captured United States flag, flying in front, scaring Confederate
sympathizers and straggling soldiers, as Hunt reported, horribly. Dan
chuckled at the memory, for the prisoners were quartered with different
messes, and, that night, several bottles of sparkling Catawba happened,
by some mystery, to be on hand. The prisoners were told that this was
regularly issued by their commissaries, and thereupon they plead, with
tears, to be received into the Confederate ranks.

This kind of service was valuable training for Morgan's later work.
Slight as it was, it soon brought him thirty old, condemned
artillery-horses--Dan smiled now at the memory of those ancient
chargers--which were turned over to Morgan to be nursed until they
would bear a mount, and, by and by, it gained him a colonelcy and three
companies, superbly mounted and equipped, which, as "Morgan's
Squadron," became known far and near. Then real service began.

In January, the right wing of Johnston's hungry hawk had been broken in
the Cumberland Mountains. Early in February, Johnston had withdrawn it
from Kentucky before Buell's hosts, with its beak always to the foe. By
the middle of the month, Grant had won the Western border States to the
Union, with the capture of Fort Donelson. In April, the sun of Shiloh
rose and set on the failure of the first Confederate aggressive
campaign at the West; and in that fight Dan saw his first real battle,
and Captain Hunt was wounded. In May, Buell had pushed the Confederate
lines south and east toward Chattanooga. To retain a hold on the
Mississippi valley, the Confederates must make another push for
Kentucky, and it was this great Southern need that soon put John
Morgan's name on the lips of every rebel and Yankee in the middle
South. In June, provost-marshals were appointed in every county in
Kentucky; the dogs of war began to be turned locals on the "secesh
sympathizers" throughout the State, and Jerome Conners, overseer, began
to render sly service to the Union cause.

For it was in June that Morgan paid his first memorable little visit to
the Bluegrass, and Daniel Dean wrote his brother Harry the short tale
of the raid.

"We left Dixie with nine hundred men," the letter ran, "and got back in
twenty-four days with twelve hundred. Travelled over one thousand
miles, captured seventeen towns, destroyed all Government supplies and
arms in them, scattered fifteen hundred Home Guards, and paroled twelve
hundred regular troops. Lost of the original nine hundred, in killed,
wounded, and missing, about ninety men. How's that? We kept twenty
thousand men busy guarding Government posts or chasing us, and we're
going back often. Oh Harry, I AM glad that you are with Grant."

But Harry was not with Grant--not now.  While Morgan was marching up
from Dixie to help Kirby Smith in the last great effort that the
Confederacy was about to make to win Kentucky--down from the yellow
river marched the Fourth Ohio Cavalry to go into camp at Lexington; and
with it marched Chadwick Buford and Harry Dean who, too, were veterans
now--who, too, were going home. Both lads wore a second lieutenant's
empty shoulder-straps, which both yet meant to fill with bars, but
Chad's promotion had not come as swiftly as Harry had predicted; the
Captain, whose displeasure he had incurred, prevented that. It had
come, in time, however, and with one leap he had landed, after Shiloh,
at Harry's side. In the beginning, young Dean had wanted to go to the
Army of the Potomac, as did Chad, but one quiet word from the taciturn
colonel with the stubbly reddish-brown beard and the perpetual black
cigar kept both where they were.

"Though," said Grant to Chad, as his eye ran over beautiful Dixie from
tip of nose to tip of tail, and came back to Chad, slightly twinkling,
"I've a great notion to put you in the infantry just to get hold of
that horse."

So it was no queer turn of fate that had soon sent both the lads to
help hold Zollicoffer at Cumberland Gap, that stopped them at Camp Dick
Robinson to join forces with Wolford's cavalry, and brought Chad face
to face with an old friend. Wolford's cavalry was gathered from the
mountains and the hills, and when some scouts came in that afternoon,
Chad, to his great joy, saw, mounted on a gaunt sorrel, none other than
his old school-master, Caleb Hazel, who, after shaking hands with both
Harry and Chad, pointed silently at a great, strange figure following
him on a splendid horse some fifty yards behind. The man wore a slouch
hat, tow linen breeches, home-made suspenders, a belt with two pistols,
and on his naked heels were two huge Texan spurs. Harry broke into a
laugh, and Chad's puzzled face cleared when the man grinned; it was
Yankee Jake Dillon, one of the giant twins. Chad looked at him
curiously; that blow on the head that his brother, Rebel Jerry, had
given him, had wrought a miracle. The lips no longer hung apart, but
were set firmly, and the eye was almost keen; the face was still rather
stupid, but not foolish--and it was still kind. Chad knew that,
somewhere in the Confederate lines, Rebel Jerry was looking for Jake,
as Yankee Jake, doubtless, was now looking for Jerry, and he began to
think that it might be well for Jerry if neither was ever found. Daws
Dillon, so he learned from Caleb Hazel and Jake, was already making his
name a watchword of terror along the border of Virginia and Tennessee,
and was prowling, like a wolf, now and then, along the edge of the
Bluegrass. Old Joel Turner had died of his wound, Rube had gone off to
the war and Mother Turner and Melissa were left at home, alone.

"Daws fit fust on one side and then on t'other," said Jake, and then he
smiled in a way that Chad understood; "an' sence you was down thar last
Daws don't seem to hanker much atter meddlin' with the Turners, though
the two women did have to run over into Virginny, once in a while.
Melissy," he added, "was a-goin' to marry Dave Hilton, so folks said;
and he reckoned they'd already hitched most likely, sence Chad thar--"

A flash from Chad's eyes stopped him, and Chad, seeing Harry's puzzled
face, turned away. He was glad that Melissa was going to marry--yes, he
was glad; and how he did pray that she might be happy!

Fighting Zollicoffer, only a few days later, Chad and Harry had their
baptism of fire, and strange battle orders they heard, that made them
smile even in the thick of the fight.

"Huddle up thar!" "Scatterout, now!" "Form a line of fight!" "Wait till
you see the shine of their eyes!"

"I see 'em!" shouted a private, and "bang" went his gun. That was the
way the fight opened. Chad saw Harry's eyes blazing like stars from his
pale face, which looked pained and half sick, and Chad understood--the
lads were fighting their own people, and there was no help for it. A
voice bellowed from the rear, and a man in a red cap loomed in the
smoke-mist ahead:

"Now, now! Git up and git, boys!"

That was the order for the charge, and the blue line went forward. Chad
never forgot that first battle-field when he saw it a few hours later
strewn with dead and wounded, the dead lying, as they dropped, in every
conceivable position, features stark, limbs rigid; one man with a
half-smoked cigar on his breast; the faces of so many beardless; some
frowning, some as if asleep and dreaming; and the wounded--some talking
pitifully, some in delirium, some courteous, patient, anxious to save
trouble, others morose, sullen, stolid, independent; never forgot it,
even the terrible night after Shiloh, when he searched heaps of wounded
and slain for Caleb Hazel, who lay all through the night wounded almost
to death.

Later, the Fourth Ohio followed Johnston, as he gave way before Buell,
and many times did they skirmish and fight with ubiquitous Morgan's
Men. Several times Harry and Dan sent each other messages to say that
each was still unhurt, and both were in constant horror of some day
coming face to face. Once, indeed, Harry, chasing a rebel and firing at
him, saw him lurch in his saddle, and Chad, coming up, found the lad on
the ground, crying over a canteen which the rebel had dropped. It was
marked with the initials D. D., the strap was cut by the bullet Harry
had fired, and not for a week of agonizing torture did Harry learn that
the canteen, though Dan's, had been carried that day by another man.

It was on these scouts and skirmishes that the four--Harry and Chad,
and Caleb Hazel and Yankee Jake Dillon, whose dog-like devotion to Chad
soon became a regimental joke--became known, not only among their own
men, but among their enemies, as the shrewdest and most daring scouts
in the Federal service. Every Morgan's man came to know the name of
Chad Buford; but it was not until Shiloh that Chad got his
shoulder-straps, leading a charge under the very eye of General Grant.
After Shiloh, the Fourth Ohio went back to its old quarters across the
river, and no sooner were Chad and Harry there than Kentucky was put
under the Department of the Ohio; and so it was also no queer turn of
fate that now they were on their way to new head-quarters in Lexington.

Straight along the turnpike that ran between the Dean and the Buford
farms, the Fourth Ohio went in a cloud of thick dust that rose and
settled like a gray choking mist on the seared fields. Side by side
rode Harry and Chad, and neither spoke when, on the left, the white
columns of the Dean house came into view, and, on the right, the red
brick of Chad's old home showed through the dusty leaves; not even when
both saw on the Dean porch the figures of two women who, standing
motionless, were looking at them. Harry's shoulders drooped, and he
stared stonily ahead, while Chad turned his head quickly. The front
door and shutters of the Buford house were closed, and there were few
signs of life about the place. Only at the gate was the slouching
figure of Jerome Conners, the overseer, who, waving his hat at the
column, recognized Chad, as he rode by, and spoke to him, Chad thought,
with a covert sneer. Farther ahead, and on the farthest boundary of the
Buford farm, was a Federal fort, now deserted, and the beautiful
woodland that had once stood in perfect beauty around it was sadly
ravaged and nearly gone, as was the Dean woodland across the road. It
was plain that some people were paying the Yankee piper for the
death-dance in which a mighty nation was shaking its feet.

On they went, past the old college, down Broadway, wheeling at Second
Street--Harry going on with the regiment to camp on the other edge of
the town; Chad reporting with his colonel at General Ward's
head-quarters, a columned brick house on one corner of the college
campus, and straight across from the Hunt home, where he had first
danced with Margaret Dean.

That night the two lay on the edge of the Ashland woods, looking up at
the stars, the ripened bluegrass--a yellow, moonlit sea--around them
and the woods dark and still behind them. Both smoked and were silent,
but each knew that to the other his thoughts were known; for both had
been on the same errand that day, and the miserable tale of the last
ten months both had learned.

Trouble had soon begun for the ones who were dear to them, when both
left for the war. At once General Anderson had promised immunity from
arrest to every peaceable citizen in the State, but at once the
shiftless, the prowling, the lawless, gathered to the Home Guards for
self-protection, to mask deviltry and to wreak vengeance for private
wrongs. At once mischief began. Along the Ohio, men with Southern
sympathies were clapped into prison. Citizens who had joined the
Confederates were pronounced guilty of treason, and Breckinridge was
expelled from the Senate as a traitor. Morgan's great raid in June,
'61, spread consternation through the land and, straightway, every
district and county were at the mercy of a petty local provost. No man
of Southern sympathies could stand for office. Courts in session were
broken up with the bayonet. Civil authority was overthrown. Destruction
of property, indemnity assessments on innocent men, arrests,
imprisonment, and murder became of daily occurrence. Ministers were
jailed and lately prisons had even been prepared for disloyal women.
Major Buford, forced to stay at home on account of his rheumatism and
the serious illness of Miss Lucy, had been sent to prison once and was
now under arrest again. General Dean, old as he was, had escaped and
had gone to Virginia to fight with Lee; and Margaret and Mrs. Dean,
with a few servants, were out on the farm alone.

But neither spoke of the worst that both feared was yet to come--and
"Taps" sounded soft and dear on the night air.



CHAPTER 23.

CHAD CAPTURES AN OLD FRIEND

Meanwhile Morgan was coming on--led by the two videttes in gray--Daniel
Dean and Rebel Jerry Dillon--coming on to meet Kirby Smith in Lexington
after that general had led the Bluegrass into the Confederate fold.
They were taking short cuts through the hills now, and Rebel Jerry was
guide, for he had joined Morgan for that purpose. Jerry had long been
notorious along the border. He never gave quarter on his expeditions
for personal vengeance, and it was said that not even he knew how many
men he had killed. Every Morgan's man had heard of him, and was anxious
to see him; and see him they did, though they never heard him open his
lips except in answer to a question. To Dan he seemed to take a strange
fancy right away, but he was as voiceless as the grave, except for an
occasional oath, when bush-whackers of Daws Dillon's ilk would pop at
the advance guard--sometimes from a rock directly overhead, for chase
was useless. It took a roundabout climb of one hundred yards to get to
the top of that rock, so there was nothing for videttes and guards to
do but pop back, which they did to no purpose. On the third day,
however, after a skirmish in which Dan had charged with a little more
dare-deviltry than usual, the big Dillon ripped out an oath of protest.
An hour later he spoke again:

"I got a brother on t'other side."

Dan started. "Why, so have I," he said. "What's your brother with?"

"Wolford's cavalry."

"That's curious. So was mine--for a while. He's with Grant now." The
boy turned his head away suddenly.

"I might meet him, if he were with Wolford now," he said, half to
himself, but Jerry heard him and smiled viciously.

"Well, that's what I'm goin' with you fellers fer--to meet mine."

"What!" said Dan, puzzled.

"We've been lookin' fer each other sence the war broke out. I reckon he
went on t'other side to keep me from killin' him."

Dan shrank away from the giant with horror; but next day the
mountaineer saved the boy's life in a fight in which Dan's
chum--gallant little Tom Morgan--lost his; and that night, as Dan lay
sleepless and crying in his blanket, Jerry Dillon came in from
guard-duty and lay down by him.

"I'm goin' to take keer o' you."

"I don't need you," said Dan, gruffly, and Rebel Jerry grunted, turned
over on his side and went to sleep. Night and day thereafter he was by
the boy's side.

A thrill ran through the entire command when the column struck the
first Bluegrass turnpike, and a cheer rang from front to rear. Near
Midway, a little Bluegrass town some fifteen miles from Lexington, a
halt was called, and another deafening cheer arose in the extreme rear
and came forward like a rushing wind, as a coal-black horse galloped
the length of the column--its rider, hat in hand, bowing with a proud
smile to the flattering storm--for the idolatry of the man and his men
was mutual--with the erect grace of an Indian, the air of a courtier,
and the bearing of a soldier in every line of the six feet and more of
his tireless frame. No man who ever saw John Morgan on horseback but
had the picture stamped forever on his brain, as no man who ever saw
that coal-black horse ever forgot Black Bess. Behind him came his
staff, and behind them came a wizened little man, whose nickname was
"Lightning"--telegraph operator for Morgan's Men. There was need of
Lightning now, so Morgan sent him on into town with Dan and Jerry
Dillon, while he and Richard Hunt followed leisurely.

The three troopers found the station operator seated on the
platform--pipe in mouth, and enjoying himself hugely. He looked lazily
at them.

"Call up Lexington," said Lightning, sharply.

"Go to hell!" said the operator, and then he nearly toppled from his
chair. Lightning, with a vicious gesture, had swung a pistol on him.

"Here--here!" he gasped, "what'd you mean?"

"Call up Lexington," repeated Lightning. The operator seated himself.

"What do you want in Lexington?" he growled.

"Ask the time of day?" The operator stared, but the instrument clicked.

"What's your name?" asked Lightning.

"Woolums."

"Well, Woolums, you're a 'plug.' I wanted to see how you handled the
key. Yes, Woolums, you're a plug."

Then Lightning seated himself, and Woolums' mouth flew open--Lightning
copied his style with such exactness. Again the instrument clicked and
Lightning listened, smiling:

"Will there be any danger coming to Midway?" asked a railroad conductor
in Lexington. Lightning answered, grinning:

"None. Come right on. No sign of rebels here." Again a click from
Lexington.

"General Ward orders General Finnell of Frankfort to move his forces.
General Ward will move toward Georgetown, to which Morgan with eighteen
hundred men is marching."

Lightning caught his breath--this was Morgan's force and his intention
exactly. He answered:

"Morgan with upward of two thousand men has taken the road to
Frankfort. This is reliable." Ten minutes later, Lightning chuckled.

"Ward orders Finnell to recall his regiment to Frankfort."

Half an hour later another idea struck Lightning. He clicked as though
telegraphing from Frankfort:

"Our pickets just driven in. Great excitement. Force of enemy must be
two thousand."

Then Lightning laughed. "I've fooled 'em," said Lightning.

There was turmoil in Lexington. The streets thundered with the tramp of
cavalry going to catch Morgan. Daylight came and nothing was
done--nothing known. The afternoon waned, and still Ward fretted at
head-quarters, while his impatient staff sat on the piazza talking,
speculating, wondering where the wily raider was. Leaning on the
campus-fence near by were Chadwick Buford and Harry Dean.

It had been a sad day for those two. The mutual tolerance that
prevailed among their friends in the beginning of the war had given way
to intense bitterness now. There was no thrill for them in the flags
fluttering a welcome to them from the windows of loyalists, for under
those flags old friends passed them in the street with no sign of
recognition, but a sullen, averted face, or a stare of open contempt.
Elizabeth Morgan had met them, and turned her head when Harry raised
his cap, though Chad saw tears spring to her eyes as she passed. Sad as
it was for him, Chad knew what the silent torture in Harry's heart must
be, for Harry could not bring himself, that day, even to visit his own
home. And now Morgan was coming, and they might soon be in a
death-fight, Harry with his own blood-brother and both with boyhood
friends.

"God grant that you two may never meet!"

That cry from General Dean was beating ceaselessly through Harry's
brain now, and he brought one hand down on the fence, hardly noticing
the drop of blood that oozed from the force of the blow.

"Oh, I wish I could get away from here!"

"I shall the first chance that comes," said Chad, and he lifted his
head sharply, staring down the street. A phaeton was coming slowly
toward them and in it were a negro servant and a girl in white. Harry
was leaning over the fence with his back toward the street, and Chad,
the blood rushing to his face, looked in silence, for the negro was
Snowball and the girl was Margaret. He saw her start and flush when she
saw him, her hands giving a little convulsive clutch at the reins; but
she came on, looking straight ahead. Chad's hand went unconsciously to
his cap, and when Harry rose, puzzled to see him bareheaded, the
phaeton stopped, and there was a half-broken cry:

"Harry!"

Cap still in hand, Chad strode away as the brother, with an answering
cry, sprang toward her.

 . . . . .

When he came back, an hour later, at dusk, Harry was seated on the
portico, and the long silence between them was broken at last.

"She--they oughtn't to come to town at a time like this," said Chad,
roughly.

"I told her that," said Harry, "but it was useless. She will come and
go just as she pleases."

Harry rose and leaned for a moment against one of the big pillars, and
then he turned impulsively, and put one hand lightly on the other's
shoulder.

"I'm sorry, old man," he said, gently.

A pair of heels clicked suddenly together on the grass before them, and
an orderly stood at salute.

"General Ward's compliments, and will Lieutenant Buford and Lieutenant
Dean report to him at once?"

The two exchanged a swift glance, and the faces of both grew grave with
sudden apprehension.

Inside, the General looked worried, and his manner was rather sharp.

"Do you know General Dean?" he asked, looking at Harry.

"He is my father."

The General wheeled in his chair.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Well--um--I suppose one of you will be enough.
You can go."

When the door closed behind Harry, he looked at Chad.

"There are two rebels at General Dean's house to-night," he said,
quietly. "One of them, I am told---why, he must be that boy's brother,"
and again the General mused; then he added, sharply:

"Take six good men out there right away and capture them. And watch out
for Daws Dillon and his band of cut-throats. I am told he is in this
region. I've sent a company after him. But you capture the two at
General Dean's."

"Yes, sir," said Chad, turning quickly, but the General had seen the
lad's face grow pale.

"It is very strange down here--they may be his best friends," he
thought, and, being a kindhearted man, he reached out his hand toward a
bell to summon Chad back, and drew it in again.

"I cannot help that; but that boy must have good stuff in him."

Harry was waiting for him outside. He knew that Dan would go home if it
was possible, and what Chad's mission must be.

"Don't hurt him, Chad."

"You don't have to ask that," answered Chad, sadly.

 . . . . .

So Chad's old enemy, Daws Dillon, was abroad. There was a big man with
the boy at the Deans', General Ward had said, but Chad little guessed
that it was another old acquaintance, Rebel Jerry Dillon, who, at that
hour, was having his supper brought out to the stable to him, saying
that he would sleep there, take care of the horses, and keep on the
look-out for Yankees. Jerome Conners's hand must be in this, Chad
thought, for he never for a moment doubted that the overseer had
brought the news to General Ward. He was playing a fine game of loyalty
to both sides, that overseer, and Chad grimly made up his mind that,
from one side or the other, his day would come. And this was the
fortune of war--to be trotting, at the head of six men, on such a
mission, along a road that, at every turn, on every little hill, and
almost in every fence-corner, was stored with happy memories for him;
to force entrance as an enemy under a roof that had showered courtesy
and kindness down on him like rain, that in all the world was most
sacred to him; to bring death to an old playmate, the brother of the
woman whom he loved, or capture, which might mean a worse death in a
loathsome prison. He thought of that dawn when he drove home after the
dance at the Hunts' with the old Major asleep at his side and his heart
almost bursting with high hope and happiness, and he ran his hand over
his eyes to brush the memory away. He must think only of his duty now,
and that duty was plain.

Across the fields they went in a noiseless walk, and leaving their
horses in the woods, under the care of one soldier, slipped into the
yard. Two men were posted at the rear of the house, one was stationed
at each end of the long porch to command the windows on either side,
and, with a sergeant at his elbow, Chad climbed the long steps
noiselessly and knocked at the front door. In a moment it was thrown
open by a woman, and the light fell full in Chad's face.

"You--you--YOU!" said a voice that shook with mingled terror and
contempt, and Margaret shrank back, step by step. Hearing her, Mrs.
Dean hurried into the hallway. Her face paled when she saw the Federal
uniform in her doorway, but her chin rose haughtily, and her voice was
steady and most courteous:

"What can we do for you?" she asked, and she, too, recognized Chad, and
her face grew stern as she waited for him to answer.

"Mrs. Dean," he said, half choking, "word has come to head-quarters
that two Confederate soldiers are spending the night here, and I have
been ordered to search the house for them. My men have surrounded it,
but if you will give me your word that they are not here, not a man
shall cross your threshold--not even myself."

Without a word Mrs. Dean stood aside.

"I am sorry," said Chad, motioning to the Sergeant to follow him. As he
passed the door of the drawing-room, he saw, under the lamp, a pipe
with ashes strewn about its bowl. Chad pointed to it.

"Spare me, Mrs. Dean." But the two women stood with clinched hands,
silent. Dan had flashed into the kitchen, and was about to leap from
the window when he saw the gleam of a rifle-barrel, not ten feet away.
He would be potted like a rat if he sprang out there, and he dashed
noiselessly up the back stairs, as Chad started up the front stairway
toward the garret, where he had passed many a happy hour playing with
Margaret and Harry and the boy whom he was after as an enemy, now. The
door was open at the first landing, and the creak of the stairs under
Dan's feet, heard plainly, stopped. The Sergeant, pistol in hand,
started to push past his superior.

"Keep back," said Chad, sternly, and as he drew his pistol, a terrified
whisper rose from below.

"Don't, don't!" And then Dan, with hands up, stepped into sight.

"I'll spare you," he said, quietly. "Not a word, mother. They've got
me. You can tell him there is no one else in the house, though."

Mrs. Dean's eyes filled with tears, and a sob broke from Margaret.

"There is no one else," she said, and Chad bowed. "In the house," she
added, proudly, scorning the subterfuge.

"Search the barn," said Chad, "quick!" The Sergeant ran down the steps.

"I reckon you are a little too late, my friend," said Dan. "Why, bless
me, it's my old friend Chad--and a lieutenant! I congratulate you," he
added, but he did not offer to shake hands.

Chad had thought of the barn too late. Snowball had seen the men
creeping through the yard, had warned Jerry Dillon, and Jerry had
slipped the horses into the woodland, and had crept back to learn what
was going on.

"I will wait for you out here," said Chad. "Take your time."

"Thank you," said Dan.

He came out in a moment and Mrs. Dean and Margaret followed him. At a
gesture from the Sergeant, a soldier stationed himself on each side of
Dan, and, as Chad turned, he took off his cap again. His face was very
pale and his voice almost broke:

"You will believe, Mrs. Dean," he said, "that this was something I HAD
to do."

Mrs. Dean bent her head slightly.

"Certainly, mother," said Dan. "Don't blame Lieutenant Chad. Morgan
will have Lexington in a few days and then I'll be free again. Maybe
I'll have Lieutenant Chad a prisoner--no telling!"

Chad smiled faintly, and then, with a flush, he spoke again--warning
Mrs. Dean, in the kindliest way, that, henceforth, her house would be
under suspicion, and telling her of the severe measures that had been
inaugurated against rebel sympathizers.

"Such sympathizers have to take oath of allegiance and give bonds to
keep it."

"If they don't?"

"Arrest and imprisonment."

"And if they give the oath and violate it?"

"The penalty is death, Mrs. Dean."

"And if they aid their friends?"

"They are to be dealt with according to military law."

"Anything else?"

"If loyal citizens are hurt or damaged by guerrillas, disloyal citizens
of the locality must make compensation."

"Is it true that a Confederate sympathizer will be shot down if on the
streets of Lexington?"

"There was such an order, Mrs. Dean."

"And if a loyal citizen is killed by one of these so-called guerillas,
for whose acts nobody is responsible, prisoners of war are to be shot
in retaliation?"

"Mother!" cried Margaret.

"No, Mrs. Dean--not prisoners of war--guerillas."

"And when will you begin war on women?"

"Never, I hope." His hesitancy brought a scorn into the searching eyes
of his pale questioner that Chad could not face, and without daring
even to look at Margaret he turned away.

Such retaliatory measures made startling news to Dan. He grew very
grave while he listened, but as he followed Chad he chatted and laughed
and joked with his captors. Morgan would have Lexington in three days.
He was really glad to get a chance to fill his belly with Yankee grub.
It hadn't been full more than two or three times in six months.

All the time he was watching for Jerry Dillon, who, he knew, would not
leave him if there was the least chance of getting him out of the
Yankee's clutches. He did not have to wait long. Two men had gone to
get the horses, and as Dan stepped through the yard-gate with his
captors, two figures rose out of the ground. One came with head bent
like a battering-ram. He heard Snowball's head strike a stomach on one
side of him, and with an astonished groan the man went down. He saw the
man on his other side drop from some crashing blow, and he saw Chad
trying to draw his pistol. His own fist shot out, catching Chad on the
point of the chin. At the same instant there was a shot and the
Sergeant dropped.

"Come on, boy!" said a hoarse voice, and then he was speeding away
after the gigantic figure of Jerry Dillon through the thick darkness,
while a harmless volley of shots sped after them. At the edge of the
woods they dropped. Jerry Dillon had his hand over his mouth to keep
from laughing aloud.

"The hosses ain't fer away," he said. "Oh, Lawd!"

"Did you kill him?"

"I reckon not," whispered Jerry. "I shot him on the wrong side. I'm
al'ays a-fergettin' which side a man's heart's on."

"What became of Snowball?"

"He run jes' as soon as he butted the feller on his right. He said he'd
git one, but I didn't know what he was doin' when I seed him start like
a sheep. Listen!"

There was a tumult at the house--moving lights, excited cries, and a
great hurrying. Black Rufus was the first to appear with a lantern, and
when he held it high as the fence, Chad saw Margaret in the light, her
hands clinched and her eyes burning.

"Have you killed him?" she asked, quietly but fiercely. "You nearly did
once before. Have you succeeded this time?" Then she saw the Sergeant
writhing on the ground, his right forearm hugging his breast, and her
hands relaxed and her face changed.

"Did Dan do that? Did Dan do that?"

"Dan was unarmed," said Chad, quietly.

"Mother," called the girl, as though she had not heard him, "send
someone to help. Bring him to the house," she added, turning. As no
movement was made, she turned again.

"Bring him up to the house," she said, imperiously, and when the
hesitating soldiers stooped to pick up the wounded man, she saw the
streak of blood running down Chad's chin and she stared open-eyed. She
made one step toward him, and then she shrank back out of the light.

"Oh!" she said. "Are you wounded, too? Oh!"

"No!" said Chad, grimly. "Dan didn't do that"--pointing to the
Sergeant--"he did this--with his fist. It's the second time Dan has
done this. Easy, men," he added, with low-voiced authority.

Mrs. Dean was holding the door open.

"No," said Chad, quickly. "That wicker lounge will do. He will be
cooler on the porch." Then he stooped, and loosening the Sergeant's
blouse and shirt examined the wound.

"It's only through the shoulder, Lieutenant," said the man, faintly.
But it was under the shoulder, and Chad turned.

"Jake," he said, sharply, "go back and bring a surgeon--and an officer
to relieve me. I think he can be moved in the morning, Mrs. Dean. With
your permission I will wait here until the Surgeon comes. Please don't
disturb yourself further"--Margaret had appeared at the door, with some
bandages that she and her mother had been making for Confederates and
behind her a servant followed with towels and a pail of water--"I am
sorry to trespass."

"Did the bullet pass through?" asked Mrs. Dean, simply.

"No, Mrs. Dean," said Chad.

Margaret turned indoors. Without another word, her mother knelt above
the wounded man, cut the shirt away, staunched the trickling blood, and
deftly bound the wound with lint and bandages, while Chad stood,
helplessly watching her.

"I am sorry," he said again, when she rose, "sorry--"

"It is nothing," said Mrs. Dean, quietly. "If you need anything, you
will let me know. I shall be waiting inside."

She turned and a few moments later Chad saw Margaret's white figure
swiftly climb the stairs--but the light still burned in the noiseless
room below.

 . . . . .

Meanwhile Dan and Jerry Dillon were far across the fields on their way
to rejoin Morgan. When they were ten miles away, Dan, who was leading,
turned.

"Jerry, that Lieutenant was an old friend of mine. General Morgan used
to say he was the best scout in the Union Army. He comes from your part
of the country, and his name is Chad Buford. Ever heard of him?"

"I've knowed him sence he was a chunk of a boy, but I don't rickollect
ever hearin' his last name afore. I naver knowed he had any."

"Well, I heard him call one of his men Jake--and he looked exactly like
you." The giant pulled in his horse.

"I'm goin' back."

"No, you aren't," said Dan; "not now--it's too late. That's why I
didn't tell you before." Then he added, angrily: "You are a savage and
you ought to be ashamed of yourself harboring such hatred against your
own blood-brother."

Dan was perhaps the only one of Morgan's Men who would have dared to
talk that way to the man, and Jerry Dillon took it only in sullen
silence.

A mile farther they struck a pike, and, as they swept along, a
brilliant light glared into the sky ahead of them, and they pulled in.
A house was in flames on the edge of a woodland, and by its light they
could see a body of men dash out of the woods and across the field on
horseback, and another body dash after them in pursuit--the pursuers
firing and the pursued sending back defiant yells. Daws Dillon was at
his work again, and the Yankees were after him.

 . . . . .

Long after midnight Chad reported the loss of his prisoner. He was much
chagrined--for failure was rare with him--and his jaw and teeth ached
from the blow Dan had given him, but in his heart he was glad that the
boy had got away When he went to his tent, Harry was awake and waiting
for him.

"It's I who have escaped," he said; "escaped again. Four times now we
have been in the same fight. Somehow fate seems to be pointing always
one way--always one way. Why, night after night, I dream that either he
or I--" Harry's voice trembled--he stopped short, and, leaning forward,
stared out the door of his tent. A group of figures had halted in front
of the Colonel's tent opposite, and a voice called, sharply:

"Two prisoners, sir. We captured 'em with Daws Dillon. They are
guerillas, sir."

"It's a lie, Colonel," said an easy voice, that brought both Chad and
Harry to their feet, and plain in the moonlight both saw Daniel Dean,
pale but cool, and near him, Rebel Jerry Dillon--both with their hands
bound behind them.



CHAPTER 24.

A RACE BETWEEN DIXIE AND DAWN

But the sun sank next day from a sky that was aflame with rebel
victories. It rose on a day rosy with rebel hopes, and the prophetic
coolness of autumn was in the early morning air when Margaret in her
phaeton moved through the front pasture on her way to town--alone. She
was in high spirits and her head was lifted proudly. Dan's boast had
come true. Kirby Smith had risen swiftly from Tennessee, had struck the
Federal Army on the edge of the Bluegrass the day before and sent it
helter-skelter to the four winds. Only that morning she had seen a
regiment of the hated Yankees move along the turnpike in flight for the
Ohio. It was the Fourth Ohio Cavalry, and Harry and one whose name
never passed her lips were among those dusty cavalrymen; but she was
glad, and she ran down o the stile and, from the fence, waved the Stars
and Bars at them as they passed--which was very foolish, but which
brought her deep content. Now the rebels did hold Lexington. Morgan's
Men were coming that day and she was going into town to see Dan and
Colonel Hunt and General Morgan and be fearlessly happy and triumphant.
At the Major's gate, whom should she see coming out but the dear old
fellow himself, and, when he got off his horse and came to her, she
leaned forward and kissed him, because he looked so thin and pale from
confinement, and because she was so glad to see him. Morgan's Men were
really coming, that very day, the Major said, and he told her much
thrilling news. Jackson had obliterated Pope at the second battle of
Manassas. Eleven thousand prisoners had been taken at Harper's Ferry
and Lee had gone on into Maryland on the flank of Washington. Recruits
were coming into the Confederacy by the thousands. Bragg had fifty-five
thousand men and an impregnable stronghold in front of Buell, who had
but few men more--not enough to count a minute, the Major said.

"Lee has routed 'em out of Virginia," cried the old fellow, "and Buell
is doomed. I tell you, little girl, the fight is almost won."

Jerome Conners rode to the gate and called to the Major in a tone that
arrested the girl's attention. She hated that man and she had noted a
queer change in his bearing since the war began. She looked for a flash
of anger from the Major, but none came, and she began to wonder what
hold the overseer could have on his old master.

She drove on, puzzled, wondering, and disturbed; but her cheeks were
flushed--the South was going to win, the Yankees were gone, and she
must get to town in time to see the triumphant coming of Morgan's Men.
They were coming in when she reached the Yankee head-quarters, which,
she saw, had changed flags--thank God--coming proudly in, amid the
waving of the Stars and Bars and frenzied shouts of welcome. Where were
the Bluegrass Yankees now? The Stars and Stripes that had fluttered
from their windows had been drawn in and they were keeping very quiet,
indeed--Oh! it was joy! There was gallant Morgan himself swinging from
Black Bess to kiss his mother, who stood waiting for him at her gate,
and there was Colonel Hunt, gay, debonair, jesting, shaking hands right
and left, and crowding the streets, Morgan's Men--the proudest blood in
the land, every gallant trooper getting his welcome from the lips and
arms of mother, sister, sweetheart, or cousin of farthest degree. But
where was Dan? She had heard nothing of him since the night he had
escaped capture, and while she looked right and left for him to dash
toward her and swing from his horse, she heard her name called, and
turning she saw Richard Hunt at the wheel of her phaeton. He waved his
hand toward the happy reunions going on around them.

"The enforced brotherhood, Miss Margaret," he said, his eyes flashing,
"I belong to that, you know."

For once the subtle Colonel made a mistake. Perhaps the girl in her
trembling happiness and under the excitement of the moment might have
welcomed him, as she was waiting to welcome Dan, but she drew back now.

"Oh! no, Colonel--not on that ground."

Her eyes danced, she flushed curiously, as she held out her hand, and
the Colonel's brave heart quickened. Straightway he began to
wonder--but a quick shadow in Margaret's face checked him.

"But where's Dan? Where is Dan?" she repeated, impatiently.

Richard Hunt looked puzzled. He had just joined his command and
something must have gone wrong with Dan. So he lied swiftly.

"Dan is out on a scout. I don't think he has got back yet. I'll find
out."

Margaret watched him ride to where Morgan stood with his mother in the
midst of a joyous group of neighbors and friends, and, a moment later,
the two officers came toward her on foot.

"Don't worry, Miss Margaret," said Morgan, with a smile. "The Yankees
have got Dan and have taken him away as prisoner--but don't worry,
we'll get him exchanged in a week. I'll give three brigadier-generals
for him."

Tears came to the girl's eyes, but she smiled through them bravely.

"I must go back and tell mother," she said, brokenly. "I hoped--"

"Don't worry, little girl," said Morgan again. "I'll have him if I have
to capture the whole State of Ohio."

Again Margaret smiled, but her heart was heavy, and Richard Hunt was
unhappy. He hung around her phaeton all the while she was in town. He
went home with her, cheering her on the way and telling her of the
Confederate triumph that was at hand. He comforted Mrs. Dean over Dan's
capture, and he rode back to town slowly, with his hands on his
saddle-bow--wondering again. Perhaps Margaret had gotten over her
feeling for that mountain boy--that Yankee--and there Richard Hunt
checked his own thoughts, for that mountain boy, he had discovered, was
a brave and chivalrous enemy, and to such, his own high chivalry gave
salute always.

He was very thoughtful when he reached camp. He had an unusual desire
to be alone, and that night, he looked long at the stars, thinking of
the girl whom he had known since her babyhood--knowing that he would
never think of her except as a woman again.

So the Confederates waited now in the Union hour of darkness for Bragg
to strike his blow. He did strike it, but it was at the heart of the
South. He stunned the Confederacy by giving way before Buell. He
brought hope back with the bloody battle of Perryville. Again he faced
Buell at Harrodsburg, and then he wrought broadcast despair by falling
back without battle, dividing his forces and retreating into Tennessee.
The dream of a battle-line along the Ohio with a hundred thousand more
men behind it was gone and the last and best chance to win the war was
lost forever. Morgan, furious with disappointment, left Lexington.
Kentucky fell under Federal control once more; and Major Buford, dazed,
dismayed, unnerved, hopeless, brought the news out to the Deans.

"They'll get me again, I suppose, and I can't leave home on account of
Lucy."

"Please do, Major," said Mrs. Dean. "Send Miss Lucy over here and make
your escape. We will take care of her." The Major shook his head sadly
and rode away.

Next day Margaret sat on the stile and saw the Yankees coming back to
Lexington. On one side of her the Stars and Bars were fixed to the
fence from which they had floated since the day she had waved the flag
at them as they fled. She saw the advance guard come over the hill and
jog down the slope and then the regiment slowly following after. In the
rear she could see two men, riding unarmed. Suddenly three cavalrymen
spurred forward at a gallop and turned in at her gate. The soldier in
advance was an officer, and he pulled out a handkerchief, waved it
once, and, with a gesture to his companions, came on alone. She knew
the horse even before she recognized the rider, and her cheeks flushed,
her lips were set, and her nostrils began to dilate. The horseman
reined in and took off his cap.

"I come under a flag of truce," he said, gravely, "to ask this garrison
to haul down its colors--and--to save useless effusion of blood," he
added, still more gravely.

"Your war on women has begun, then?"

"I am obeying orders--no more, no less."

"I congratulate you on your luck or your good judgment always to be on
hand when disagreeable duties are to be done."

Chad flushed.

"Won't you take the flag down?"

"No, make your attack. You will have one of your usual victories--with
overwhelming numbers--and it will be safe and bloodless. There are only
two negroes defending this garrison. They will not fight, nor will we."

"Won't you take the flag down?"

"No!"

Chad lifted his cap and wheeled. The Colonel was watching at the gate.

"Well, sir" he asked, frowning.

"I shall need help, sir, to take that flag down," said Chad.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"A woman is defending it."

"What!" shouted the Colonel.

"That is my sister, Colonel," said Harry Dean. The Colonel smiled and
then grew grave.

"You should warn her not to provoke the authorities. The Government is
advising very strict measures now with rebel sympathizers." Then he
smiled again.

"Fours! Left wheel! Halt! Present--sabres!"

A line of sabres flashed in the sun, and Margaret, not understanding,
snatched the flag from the fence and waved it back in answer. The
Colonel laughed aloud. The column moved on, and each captain,
following, caught the humor of the situation and each company flashed
its sabres as it went by, while Margaret stood motionless.

In the rear rode those two unarmed prisoners. She could see now that
their uniforms were gray and she knew that they were prisoners, but she
little dreamed that they were her brother Dan and Rebel Jerry Dillon,
nor did Chad Buford or Harry Dean dream of the purpose for which, just
at that time, they were being brought back to Lexington. Perhaps one
man who saw them did know: for Jerome Conners, from the woods opposite,
watched the prisoners ride by with a malicious smile that nothing but
impending danger to an enemy could ever bring to his face; and with the
same smile he watched Margaret go slowly back to the house, while her
flag still fluttered from the stile.

The high tide of Confederate hopes was fast receding now. The army of
the Potomac, after Antietam, which overthrew the first Confederate
aggressive campaign at the East, was retreating into its Southern
stronghold, as was the army of the West after Bragg's abandonment of
Mumfordsville, and the rebel retirement had given the provost-marshals
in Kentucky full sway. Two hundred Southern sympathizers, under arrest,
had been sent into exile north of the Ohio, and large sums of money
were levied for guerilla outrages here and there--a heavy sum falling
on Major Buford for a vicious murder done in his neighborhood by Daws
Dillon and his band on the night of the capture of Daniel Dean and
Rebel Jerry. The Major paid the levy with the first mortgage he had
ever given in his life, and straightway Jerome Conners, who had been
dealing in mules and other Government supplies, took an attitude that
was little short of insolence toward his old master, whose farm was
passing into the overseer's clutches at last. Only two nights before,
another band of guerillas had burned a farm-house, killed a Unionist,
and fled to the hills before the incoming Yankees, and the Kentucky
Commandant had sworn vengeance after the old Mosaic way on victims
already within his power.

That night Chad and Harry were summoned before General Ward. They found
him seated with his chin in his hand, looking out the window at the
moonlit campus. Without moving, he held out a dirty piece of paper to
Chad.

"Read that," he said.

"YOU HAVE KETCHED TWO OF MY MEN AND I HEAR AS HOW YOU MEAN TO HANG 'EM.
IF YOU HANG THEM TWO MEN, I'M A-GOIN' TO HANG EVERY MAN OF YOURS I CAN
GIT MY HANDS ON.

"DAWS DILLON--Captain."


Chad gave a low laugh and Harry smiled, but the General kept grave.

"You know, of course, that your brother belongs to Morgan's command?"

"I do, sir," said Harry, wonderingly.

"Do you know that his companion--the man Dillon--Jerry Dillon--does?"

"I do not, sir."

"They were captured by a squad that was fighting Daws Dillon. This
Jerry Dillon has the same name and you found the two together at
General Dean's."

"But they had both just left General Morgan's command," said Harry,
indignantly.

"That may be true, but this Daws Dillon has sent a similar message to
the Commandant, and he has just been in here again and committed two
wanton outrages night before last. The Commandant is enraged and has
issued orders for stern retaliation."

"It's a trick of Daws Dillon," said Chad, hotly, "an infamous trick. He
hates his Cousin Jerry, he hates me, and he hates the Deans, because
they were friends of mine." General Ward looked troubled.

"The Commandant says he has been positively informed that both the men
joined Daws Dillon in the fight that night. He has issued orders that
not only every guerilla captured shall be hung, but that, whenever a
Union citizen has been killed by one of them, four of such marauders
are to be taken to the spot and shot in retaliation. It is the only
means left, he says."

There was a long silence. The faces of both the lads had turned white
as each saw the drift of the General's meaning, and Harry strode
forward to his desk.

"Do you mean to say, General Ward--"

The General wheeled in his chair and pointed silently to an order that
lay on the desk, and as Harry started to read it, his voice broke.
Daniel Dean and Rebel Jerry were to be shot next morning at sunrise.

 . . . . .

The General spoke very kindly to Harry.

"I have known this all day, but I did not wish to tell you until I had
done everything I could. I did not think it would be necessary to tell
you at all, for I thought there would be no trouble. I telegraphed the
Commandant, but"--he turned again to the window--"I have not been able
to get them a trial by court-martial, or even a stay in the execution.
You'd better go see your brother--he knows now--and you'd better send
word to your mother and sister."

Harry shook his head. His face was so drawn and ghastly as he stood
leaning heavily against the table that Chad moved unconsciously to his
side.

"Where is the Commandant?" he asked.

"In Frankfort," said the General. Chad's eyes kindled.

"Will you let me go see him to-night?"

"Certainly, and I will give you a message to him. Perhaps you can yet
save the boy, but there is no chance for the man Dillon." The General
took up a pen. Harry seemed to sway as he turned to go, and Chad put
one arm around him and went with him to the door.

"There have been some surprising desertions from the Confederate
ranks," said the General, as he wrote. "That's the trouble." he looked
at his watch as he handed the message over his shoulder to Chad. "You
have ten hours before sunrise and it is nearly sixty miles there and
back If you are not here with a stay of execution both will be shot. Do
you think that you can make it? Of course you need not bring the
message back yourself. You can get the Commandant to telegraph--" The
slam of a door interrupted him--Chad was gone.

Harry was holding Dixie's bridle when he reached the street and Chad
swung into the saddle.

"Don't tell them at home," he said. "I'll be back here on time, or I'll
be dead."

The two grasped hands. Harry nodded dumbly and Dixie's feet beat the
rhythm of her matchless gallop down the quiet street. The sensitive
little mare seemed to catch at once the spirit of her rider. Her
haunches quivered. She tossed her head and champed her bit, but not a
pound did she pull as she settled into an easy lope that told how well
she knew that the ride before her was long and hard. Out they went past
the old cemetery, past the shaft to Clay rising from it, silvered with
moonlight, out where the picket fires gleamed and converging on toward
the Capital, unchallenged for the moon showed the blue of Chad's
uniform and his face gave sign that no trivial business, that night,
was his. Over quiet fields and into the aisles of sleeping woods beat
that musical rhythm ceaselessly, awakening drowsy birds by the wayside,
making bridges thunder, beating on and on up hill and down until picket
fires shone on the hills that guard the Capital. Through them, with but
one challenge, Chad went, down the big hill, past the Armory, and into
the town--pulling panting Dixie up before a wondering sentinel who
guarded the Commandant's sleeping quarters.

"The Commandant is asleep."

"Wake him up," said Chad, sharply. A staff-officer appeared at the door
in answer to the sentinel's knock.

"What is your business?"

"A message from General Ward."

"The Commandant gave orders that he was not to be disturbed."

"He must be," said Chad. "It is a matter of life and death."

Above him a window was suddenly raised and the Commandant's own head
was thrust out.

"Stop that noise," he thundered. Chad told his mission and the
Commandant straightway was furious.

"How dare General Ward broach that matter again? My orders are given
and they will not be changed." As he started to pull the window down,
Chad cried:

"But, General--" and at the same time a voice called down the street:

"General!" Two men appeared under the gaslight--one was a sergeant and
the other a frightened negro.

"Here is a message, General."

The sash went down, a light appeared behind it, and soon the
Commandant, in trousers and slippers, was at the door. He read the note
with a frown.

"Where did you get this?"

"A sojer come to my house out on the edge o' town, suh, and said he'd
kill me to-morrow if I didn't hand dis note to you pussonally."

The Commandant turned to Chad. Somehow his manner seemed suddenly
changed.

"Do you know that these men belonged to Morgan's command?"

"I know that Daniel Dean did and that the man Dillon was with him when
captured."

Still frowning savagely, the Commandant turned inside to his desk and a
moment later the staff-officer brought out a telegram and gave it to
Chad.

"You can take this to the telegraph office yourself. It is a stay of
execution."

"Thank you."

Chad drew a long breath of relief and gladness and patted Dixie on the
neck as he rode slowly toward the low building where he had missed the
train on his first trip to the Capital. The telegraph operator dashed
to the door as Chad drew up in front of it. He looked pale and excited.

"Send this telegram at once," said Chad.

The operator looked at it.

"Not in that direction to-night," he said, with a strained laugh, "the
wires are cut."

Chad almost reeled in his saddle--then the paper was whisked from the
astonished operator's hand and horse and rider clattered up the hill.

 . . . . .

At head-quarters the Commandant was handing the negro's note to a
staff-officer. It read:

"YOU HANG THOSE TWO MEN AT SUNRISE TO-MORROW, AND I'LL HANG YOU AT
SUNDOWN."


It was signed "John Morgan," and the signature was Morgan's own.

"I gave the order only last night. How could Morgan have heard of it so
soon, and how could he have got this note to me? Could he have come
back?"

"Impossible," said the staff-officer. "He wouldn't dare come back now."

The Commandant shook his head doubtfully, and just then there was a
knock at the door and the operator, still pale and excited, spoke his
message:

"General, the wires are cut."

The two officers stared at each other in silence.

 . . . . .

Twenty-seven miles to go and less than three hours before sunrise.
There was a race yet for the life of Daniel Dean. The gallant little
mare could cover the stretch with nearly an hour to spare, and Chad,
thrilled in every nerve, but with calm confidence, raced against the
coming dawn.

"The wires are cut."

Who had cut them and where and when and why? No matter--Chad had the
paper in his pocket that would save two lives and he would be on time
even if Dixie broke her noble heart, but he could not get the words out
of his brain--even Dixie's hoofs beat them out ceaselessly:

"The wires are cut--the wires are cut!"

The mystery would have been clear, had Chad known the message that lay
on the Commandant's desk back at the Capital, for the boy knew Morgan,
and that Morgan's lips never opened for an idle threat. He would have
ridden just as hard, had he known, but a different purpose would have
been his.

An hour more and there was still no light in the East. An hour more and
one red streak had shot upward; then ahead of him gleamed a picket
fire--a fire that seemed farther from town than any post he had seen on
his way down to the Capital--but he galloped on. Within fifty yards a
cry came:

"Halt! Who comes there?"

"Friend," he shouted, reining in. A bullet whizzed past his head as he
pulled up outside the edge of the fire and Chad shouted indignantly:

"Don't shoot, you fool! I have a message for General Ward!"

"Oh! All right! Come on!" said the sentinel, but his hesitation and the
tone of his voice made the boy alert with suspicion. The other pickets
about the fire had risen and grasped their muskets. The wind flared the
flames just then and in the leaping light Chad saw that their uniforms
were gray.

The boy almost gasped. There was need for quick thought and quick
action now.

"Lower that blunderbuss," he called out, jestingly, and kicking loose
from one stirrup, he touched Dixie with the spur and pulled her up with
an impatient "Whoa," as though he were trying to replace his foot.

"You come on!" said the sentinel, but he dropped his musket to the
hollow of his arm, and, before he could throw it to his shoulder again,
fire flashed under Dixie's feet and the astonished rebel saw horse and
rider rise over the pike-fence. His bullet went overhead as Dixie
landed on the other side, and the pickets at the fire joined in a
fusillade at the dark shapes speeding across the bluegrass field. A
moment later Chad's mocking yell rang from the edge of the woods beyond
and the disgusted sentinel split the night with oaths.

"That beats the devil. We never touched him I swear, I believe that
hoss had wings."

Morgan! The flash of that name across his brain cleared the mystery for
Chad like magic. Nobody but Morgan and his daredevils could rise out of
the ground like that in the very midst of enemies when they were
supposed to be hundreds of mlles away in Tennessee. Morgan had cut
those wires. Morgan had every road around Lexington guarded, no doubt,
and was at that hour hemming in Chad's unsuspicious regiment, whose
camp was on the other side of town, and unless he could give warning,
Morgan would drop like a thunderbolt on it, asleep. He must circle the
town now to get around the rebel posts, and that meant several miles
more for Dixie.

He stopped and reached down to feel the little mare's flanks. Dixie
drew a long breath and dropped her muzzle to tear up a rich mouthful of
bluegrass.

"Oh, you beauty!" said the boy, "you wonder!" And on he went, through
woodland and field, over gully, log, and fence, bullets ringing after
him from nearly every road he crossed.

Morgan was near. In disguise, when Bragg retreated, he had got
permission to leave Kentucky in his own way. That meant wheeling and
making straight back to Lexington to surprise the Fourth Ohio Cavalry;
representing himself on the way, one night, as his old enemy Wolford,
and being guided a short cut through the edge of the Bluegrass by an
ardent admirer of the Yankee Colonel--the said admirer giving Morgan
the worst tirade possible, meanwhile, and nearly tumbling from his
horse when Morgan told him who he was and sarcastically advised him to
make sure next time to whom he paid his compliments.

So that while Chad, with the precious message under his jacket, and
Dixie were lightly thundering along the road, Morgan's Men were
gobbling up pickets around Lexington and making ready for an attack on
the sleeping camp at dawn.

The dawn was nearly breaking now, and Harry Dean was pacing to and fro
before the old CourtHouse where Dan and Rebel Jerry lay under
guard--pacing to and fro and waiting for his mother and sister to come
to say the last good-by to the boy--for Harry had given up hope and had
sent for them. At that very hour Richard Hunt was leading his regiment
around the Ashland woods where the enemy lay; another regiment was
taking its place between the camp and the town, and gray figures were
slipping noiselessly on the provost-guard that watched the rebel
prisoners who were waiting for death at sunrise. As the dawn broke, the
dash came, and Harry Dean was sick at heart as he sharply rallied the
startled guard to prevent the rescue of his own brother and straightway
delirious with joy when he saw the gray mass sweeping on him and knew
that he would fail. A few shots rang out; the far rattle of musketry
rose between the camp and town; the thunder of the "Bull Pups" saluted
the coming light, and Dan and Rebel Jerry had suddenly--instead of
death--life, liberty, arms, a horse each, and the sudden pursuit of
happiness in a wild dash toward the Yankee camp, while in a
dew-drenched meadow two miles away Chad Buford drew Dixie in to listen.
The fight was on.

If the rebels won, Dan Dean would be safe; if the Yankees--then there
would still be need of him and the paper over his heart. He was too
late to warn, but not, maybe, to fight--so he galloped on.

But the end came as he galloped. The amazed Fourth Ohio threw down its
arms at once, and Richard Hunt and his men, as they sat on their horses
outside the camp picking up stragglers, saw a lone scout coming at a
gallop across the still, gray fields. His horse was black and his
uniform was blue, but he came straight on, apparently not seeing the
rebels behind the ragged hedge along the road. When within thirty
yards, Richard Hunt rode through a roadside gate to meet him and
saluted.

"You are my prisoner," he said, courteously.

The Yankee never stopped, but wheeled, almost brushing the hedge as he
turned.

"Prisoner--hell!" he said, clearly, and like a bird was skimming away
while the men behind the hedge, paralyzed by his daring, fired not a
shot. Only Dan Dean started through the gate in pursuit.

"I want him," he said, savagely.

"Who's that?" asked Morgan, who had ridden up.

"That's a Yankee," laughed Colonel Hunt.

"Why didn't you shoot him?" The Colonel laughed again.

"I don't know," he said, looking around at his men, who, too, were
smiling.

"That's the fellow who gave us so much trouble in the Green River
Country," said a soldier. "It's Chad Buford."

"Well, I'm glad we didn't shoot him," said Colonel Hunt, thinking of
Margaret. That was not the way he liked to dispose of a rival.

"Dan will catch him," said an officer. "He wants him bad, and I don't
wonder." Just then Chad lifted Dixie over a fence.

"Not much," said Morgan. "I'd rather you'd shot him than that horse."

Dan was gaining now, and Chad, in the middle of the field beyond the
fence, turned his head and saw the lone rebel in pursuit. Deliberately
he pulled weary Dixie in, faced about, and waited. He drew his pistol,
raised it, saw that the rebel was Daniel Dean, and dropped it again to
his side. Verily the fortune of that war was strange. Dan's horse
refused the fence and the boy, in a rage, lifted his pistol and fired.
Again Chad raised his own pistol and again he lowered it just as Dan
fired again. This time Chad lurched in his saddle, but recovering
himself, turned and galloped slowly away, while Dan--his pistol hanging
at his side--stared after him, and the wondering rebels behind the
hedge stared hard at Dan.

 . . . . .

All was over. The Fourth Ohio Cavalry was in rebel hands, and a few
minutes later Dan rode with General Morgan and Colonel Hunt toward the
Yankee camp. There had been many blunders in the fight. Regiments had
fired into each other in the confusion and the "Bull Pups" had kept on
pounding the Yankee camp even while the rebels were taking possession
of it. On the way they met Renfrew, the Silent, in his brilliant Zouave
jacket.

"Colonel," he said, indignantly--and it was the first time many had
ever heard him open his lips--"some officer over there deliberately
fired twice at me, though I was holding my arms over my head."

"It was dark," said Colonel Hunt, soothingly. "He didn't know you."

"Ah, Colonel, he might not have known me--but he must have known this
jacket."

On the outskirts of one group of prisoners was a tall, slender young
lieutenant with a streak of blood across one cheek. Dan pulled in his
horse and the two met each other's eyes silently. Dan threw himself
from his horse.

"Are you hurt, Harry?"

"It's nothing--but you've got me, Dan."

"Why, Harry!" said Morgan. "Is that you? You are paroled, my boy," he
added, kindly. "Go home and stay until you are exchanged."

So, Harry, as a prisoner, did what he had not done before--he went home
immediately. And home with him went Dan and Colonel Hunt, while they
could, for the Yankees would soon be after them from the north, east,
south and west. Behind them trotted Rebel Jerry. On the edge of town
they saw a negro lashing a pair of horses along the turnpike toward
them. Two white faced women were seated in a carriage behind him, and
in a moment Dan was in the arms of his mother and sister and both women
were looking, through tears, their speechless gratitude to Richard Hunt.

The three Confederates did not stay long at the Deans'. Jerry Dillon
was on the lookout, and even while the Deans were at dinner, Rufus ran
in with the familiar cry that Yankees were coming. It was a regiment
from an adjoining county, but Colonel Hunt finished his coffee, amid
all the excitement, most leisurely.

"You'll pardon us for eating and running, won't you, Mrs. Dean?" It was
the first time in her life that Mrs. Dean ever speeded a parting guest.

"Oh, do hurry, Colonel--please, please." Dan laughed.

"Good-by, Harry," he said. "We'll give you a week or two at home before
we get that exchange."

"Don't make it any longer than necessary, please," said Harry, gravely.

"We're coming back again, Mrs. Dean," said he Colonel, and then in a
lower tone to Margaret: "I'm coming often," he added, and Margaret
blushed in a way that would not have given very great joy to one
Chadwick Buford.

Very leisurely the three rode out to the pike gate, where they halted
and surveyed the advancing column, which was still several hundred
yards away, and then with a last wave of their caps, started in a slow
gallop for town. The advance guard started suddenly in pursuit, and the
Deans saw Dan turn in his saddle and heard his defiant yell. Margaret
ran down and fixed her flag in its place on the fence--Harry watching
her.

"Mother," he said, sadly, "you don't know what trouble you may be
laying up for yourself."

Fate could hardly lay up more than what she already had, but the mother
smiled.

"I can do nothing with Margaret," she said.

In town the Federal flags had been furled and the Stars and Bars thrown
out to the wind. Morgan was preparing to march when Dan and Colonel
Hunt galloped up to head-quarters.

"They're coming," said Hunt, quietly.

"Yes," said Morgan, "from every direction."

"Ah, John," called an old fellow, who, though a Unionist, believing in
keeping peace with both sides, "when we don't expect you--then is the
time you come. Going to stay long?"

"Not long," said Morgan, grimly. "In fact, I guess we'll be moving
along now."

And he did--back to Dixie with his prisoners, tearing up railroads,
burning bridges and trestles, and pursued by enough Yankees to have
eaten him and his entire command if they ever could have caught him. As
they passed into Dixie, "Lightning" captured a telegraph office and had
a last little fling at his Yankee brethren.

"Head-quarters, Telegraph Dept. of Ky., Confederate States of
America"--thus he headed his General Order No.--to the various Union
authorities throughout the State.

"Hereafter," he clicked, grinning, "an operator will destroy
telegraphic instruments and all material in charge when informed that
Morgan has crossed the border. Such instances of carelessness as lately
have been exhibited in the Bluegrass will be severely dealt with.

"By order of
  LIGHTNING,
    "Gen. Supt. C. S. Tel. Dept."


Just about that time Chad Buford, in a Yankee hospital, was coming back
from the land of ether dreams. An hour later, the surgeon who had taken
Dan's bullet from his shoulder, handed him a piece of paper, black with
faded blood and scarcely legible.

"I found that in your jacket," he said. "Is it important?"

Chad smiled.

"No," he said. "Not now."



CHAPTER 25.

AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA

Once more, and for the last time, Chadwick Buford jogged along the
turnpike from the Ohio to the heart of the Bluegrass. He had filled his
empty shoulder-straps with two bars. He had a bullet wound through one
shoulder and there was a beautiful sabre cut across his right cheek. He
looked the soldier every inch of him; he was, in truth, what he looked;
and he was, moreover, a man. Naturally, his face was stern and
resolute, if only from habit of authority, but he had known no passion
during the war that might have seared its kindness; no other feeling
toward his foes than admiration for their unquenchable courage and
miserable regret that to such men he must be a foe.

Now, it was coming spring again--the spring of '64, and but one more
year of the war to come.

The capture of the Fourth Ohio by Morgan that autumn of '62 had given
Chad his long-looked-for chance. He turned Dixie's head toward the
foothills to join Wolford, for with Wolford was the work that he
loved--that leader being more like Morgan in his method and daring than
any other Federal cavalryman in the field behind him.  In Kentucky, he
left the State under martial sway once more, and, thereafter, the
troubles of rebel sympathizers multiplied steadily, for never again was
the State under rebel control. A heavy hand was laid on every rebel
roof. Major Buford was sent to prison again. General Dean was in
Virginia, fighting, and only the fact that there was no man in the Dean
household on whom vengeance could fall, saved Margaret and Mrs. Dean
from suffering, but even the time of women was to come.

On the last day of '62, Murfreesboro was fought and the second great
effort of the Confederacy at the West was lost. Again Bragg withdrew.
On New Year's Day, '63, Lincoln freed the slaves--and no rebel was more
indignant than was Chadwick Buford. The Kentucky Unionists, in general,
protested: the Confederates had broken the Constitution, they said; the
Unionists were helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals
had broken the Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from
beneath their feet. They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it
said, against the Federals breaking up political conventions with
bayonets and against the ruin of innocent citizens for the crimes of
guerillas, for whose acts nobody was responsible, but all to no avail.
The terrorism only grew the more.

When summer came, and while Grant was bisecting the Confederacy at
Vicksburg, by opening the Mississippi, and Lee was fighting Gettysburg,
Chad, with Wolford, chased Morgan when he gathered his clans for his
last daring venture--to cross the Ohio and strike the enemy on its own
hearth-stones--and thus give him a little taste of what the South had
long known from border to border. Pursued by Federals, Morgan got
across the river, waving a farewell to his pursuing enemies on the
other bank, and struck out. Within three days, one hundred thousand men
were after him and his two thousand daredevils, cutting down trees
behind him (in case he should return!), flanking him, getting in his
front, but on he went, uncaught and spreading terror for a thousand
miles, while behind him for six hundred miles country people lined the
dusty road, singing "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys," and handing out
fried chicken and blackberry-pie to his pursuers. Men taken afterward
with typhoid fever sang that song through their delirium and tasted
fried chicken no more as long as they lived. Hemmed in as Morgan was,
he would have gotten away, but for the fact that a heavy fog made him
miss the crossing of the river, and for the further reason that the
first rise in the river in that month for twenty years made it
impossible for his command to swim. He might have fought out, but his
ammunition was gone. Many did escape, and Morgan himself could have
gotten away. Chad, himself, saw the rebel chief swimming the river on a
powerful horse, followed by a negro servant on another--saw him turn
deliberately in the middle of the stream, when it was plain that his
command could not escape, and make for the Ohio shore to share the
fortunes of his beloved officers who were left behind. Chad heard him
shout to the negro:

"Go back, you will be drowned." The negro turned his face and Chad
laughed--it was Snowball, grinning and shaking his head:

"No, Mars John, no suh!" he yelled. "It's all right fer YOU! YOU can
git a furlough, but dis nigger ain't gwine to be cotched in no free
State. 'Sides, Mars Dan, he gwine to get away, too." And Dan did get
away, and Chad, to his shame, saw Morgan and Colonel Hunt loaded on a
boat to be sent down to prison in a State penitentiary! It was a
grateful surprise to Chad, two months later, to learn from a Federal
officer that Morgan with six others had dug out of prison and escaped.

"I was going through that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow,
shaved and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same
seat with me. As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn--and
said, in a matter-of-fact way:

"'That's where Morgan is kept, isn't it?" and then he drew out a flask.
I thought he had wonderfully good manners in spite of his looks, and,
so help me, if he didn't wave his hand, bow like a Bayard, and hand it
over to me:

"'Let's drink to the hope that Morgan may always be as safe as he is
now.' I drank to his toast with a hearty Amen, and the fellow never
cracked a smile. It was Morgan himself."

Early in '64 the order had gone round for negroes to be enrolled as
soldiers, and again no rebel felt more outraged than Chadwick Buford.
Wolford, his commander, was dishonorably dismissed from the service for
bitter protests and harsh open criticism of the Government, and Chad,
himself, felt like tearing off with his own hands the straps which he
had won with so much bravery and worn with so much pride. But the
instinct that led him into the Union service kept his lips sealed when
his respect for that service, in his own State, was well-nigh
gone--kept him in that State where he thought his duty lay. There was
need of him and thousands more like him. For, while active war was now
over in Kentucky, its brood of evils was still thickening. Every county
in the State was ravaged by a guerilla band--and the ranks of these
marauders began to be swelled by Confederates, particularly in the
mountains and in the hills that skirt them. Banks, trains, public
vaults, stores, were robbed right and left, and murder and revenge were
of daily occurrence. Daws Dillon was an open terror both in the
mountains and in the Bluegrass. Hitherto the bands had been Union and
Confederate but now, more and more, men who had been rebels joined
them. And Chad Buford could understand. For, many a rebel
soldier--"hopeless now for his cause," as Richard Hunt was wont to say,
"fighting from pride, bereft of sympathy, aid, and encouragement that
he once received, and compelled to wring existence from his own
countrymen; a cavalryman on some out-post department, perhaps, without
rations, fluttering with rags; shod, if shod at all, with shoes that
sucked in rain and cold; sleeping at night under the blanket that kept
his saddle by day from his sore-backed horse; paid, if paid at all,
with waste paper; hardened into recklessness by war--many a rebel
soldier thus became a guerrilla--consoling himself, perhaps, with the
thought that his desertion was not to the enemy."

Bad as the methods of such men were, they were hardly worse than the
means taken in retaliation. At first, Confederate sympathizers were
arrested and held as hostages for all persons captured and detained by
guerillas. Later, when a citizen was killed by one of these bands, four
prisoners, supposed to be chosen from this class of free-booters, were
taken from prison and shot to death on the spot where the deed was
done. Now it was rare that one of these brigands was ever taken alive,
and thus regular soldier after soldier who was a prisoner of war, and
entitled to consideration as such, was taken from prison and murdered
by the Commandant without even a court-martial. It was such a death
that Dan Dean and Rebel Jerry had narrowly escaped. Union men were
imprisoned even for protesting against these outrages, so that between
guerilla and provost-marshal no citizen, whether Federal or
Confederate, in sympathy, felt safe in property, life, or liberty. The
better Unionists were alienated, but worse yet was to come. Hitherto,
only the finest chivalry had been shown women and children throughout
the war. Women whose brothers and husbands and sons were in the rebel
army, or dead on the battle-field, were banished now with their
children to Canada under a negro guard, or sent to prison. State
authorities became openly arrayed against provost-marshals and their
followers. There was almost an open clash. The Governor, a Unionist,
threatened even to recall the Kentucky troops from the field to come
back and protect their homes. Even the Home Guards got disgusted with
their masters, and for a while it seemed as if the State, between
guerilla and provost-marshal, would go to pieces. For months the
Confederates had repudiated all connection with these free-booters and
had joined with Federals in hunting them down, but when the State
government tried to raise troops to crush them, the Commandant not only
ordered his troops to resist the State, but ordered the muster-out of
all State troops then in service.

The Deans little knew then how much trouble Captain Chad Buford, whose
daring service against guerillas had given him great power with the
Union authorities, had saved them--how he had kept them from arrest and
imprisonment on the charge of none other than Jerome Conners, the
overseer; how he had ridden out to pay his personal respects to the
complainant, and that brave gentleman, seeing him from afar, had
mounted his horse and fled, terror-stricken. They never knew that just
after this he had got a furlough and gone to see Grant himself, who had
sent him on to tell his story to Mr. Lincoln.

"Go back to Kentucky, then," said Grant, with his quiet smile, "and if
General Ward has nothing particular for you to do, I want him to send
you to me," and Chad had gone from him, dizzy with pride and hope.

"I'm going to do something," said Mr. Lincoln, "and I'm going to do it
right away."

And now, in the spring of '64, Chad carried in his breast despatches
from the President himself to General Ward at Lexington.

As he rode over the next hill, from which he would get his first
glimpse of his old home and the Deans', his heart beat fast and his
eyes swept both sides of the road. Both houses: even the Deans'--were
shuttered and closed--both tenantless. He saw not even a negro cabin
that showed a sign of life.

On he went at a gallop toward Lexington. Not a single rebel flag had he
seen since he left the Ohio, nor was he at all surprised; the end could
not be far off, and there was no chance that the Federals would ever
again lose the State.

On the edge of the town he overtook a Federal officer. It was Harry
Dean, pale and thin from long imprisonment and sickness. Harry had been
with Sherman, had been captured again, and, in prison, had almost died
with fever. He had come home to get well only to find his sister and
mother sent as exiles to Canada. Major Buford was still in prison, Miss
Lucy was dead, and Jerome Conners seemed master of the house and farm.
General Dean had been killed, had been sent home, and was buried in the
garden. It was only two days after the burial, Harry said, that
Margaret and her mother had to leave their home. Even the bandages that
Mrs. Dean had brought out to Chad's wounded sergeant, that night he had
captured and lost Dan, had been brought up as proof that she and
Margaret were aiding and abetting Confederates. Dan had gone to join
Morgan and Colonel Hunt over in southwestern Virginia, where Morgan had
at last got a new command only a few months before. Harry made no word
of comment, but Chad's heart got bitter as gall as he listened. And
this had happened to the Deans while he was gone to serve them. But the
bloody Commandant of the State would be removed from power--that much
good had been done--as Chad learned when he presented himself, with a
black face, to his general.

"I could not help it," said the General, quickly. "He seems to have
hated the Deans." And again read the despatches slowly. "You have done
good work. There will be less trouble now." Then he paused. "I have had
a letter from General Grant. He wants you on his staff." Again he
paused, and it took the three past years of discipline to help Chad
keep his self-control. "That is, if I have nothing particular for you
to do. He seems to know what you have done and to suspect that there
may be something more here for you to do. He's right. I want you to
destroy Daws Dillon and his band. There will be no peace until he is
out of the way. You know the mountains better than anybody. You are the
man for the work. You will take one company from Wolford's regiment--he
has been reinstated, you know--and go at once. When you have finished
that--you can go to General Grant." The General smiled. "You are rather
young to be so near a major--perhaps."

A major! The quick joy of the thought left him when he went down the
stairs to the portico and saw Harry Dean's thin, sad face, and thought
of the new grave in the Deans' garden and those two lonely women in
exile. There was one small grain of consolation. It was his old enemy,
Daws Dillon, who had slain Joel Turner; Daws who had almost ruined
Major Buford and had sent him to prison--Daws had played no small part
in the sorrows of the Deans, and on the heels of Daws Dillon he soon
would be.

"I suppose I am to go with you," said Harry.

"Why, yes," said Chad, startled; "how did you know?"

"I didn't know. How far is Dillon's hiding-place from where Morgan is?"

"Across the mountains." Chad understood suddenly. "You won't have to
go," he said, quickly.

"I'll go where I am ordered," said Harry Dean.



CHAPTER 26.

BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST

It was the first warm day of spring and the sunshine was very soothing
to Melissa as she sat on the old porch early in the afternoon. Perhaps
it was a memory of childhood, perhaps she was thinking of the happy
days she and Chad had spent on the river bank long ago, and perhaps it
was the sudden thought that, with the little they had to eat in the
house and that little the same three times a day, week in and week out,
Mother Turner, who had been ailing, would like to have some fish;
perhaps it was the primitive hunting instinct that, on such a day, sets
a country boy's fingers itching for a squirrel rifle or a cane
fishing-pole, but she sprang from her seat, leaving old Jack to doze on
the porch, and, in half an hour, was crouched down behind a boulder
below the river bend, dropping a wriggling worm into a dark, still
pool. As she sat there, contented and luckless, the sun grew so warm
that she got drowsy and dozed--how long she did not know--but she awoke
with a start and with a frightened sense that someone was near her,
though she could hear no sound. But she lay still--her heart beating
high--and so sure that her instinct was true that she was not even
surprised when she heard a voice in the thicket above--a low voice, but
one she knew perfectly well:

"I tell you he's a-comin' up the river now. He's a-goin' to stay with
ole Ham Blake ter-night over the mountain an' he'll be a-comin' through
Hurricane Gap 'bout daylight termorrer or next day, shore. He's got a
lot o' men, but we can layway 'em in the Gap an' git away all right."
It was Tad Dillon speaking--Daws Dillon, his brother, answered:

"I don't want to kill anybody but that damned Chad--Captain Chad
BUFORD, he calls hisself."

"Well, we can git him all right. I heerd that they was a-lookin' fer us
an' was goin' to ketch us if they could."

"I wish I knowed that was so," said Daws with an oath. "Nary a one of
'em would git away alive if I just knowed it was so. But we'll git
CAPTAIN Chad Buford, shore as hell! You go tell the boys to guard the
Gap ter-night. They mought come through afore day." And then the noise
of their footsteps fainted out of hearing and Melissa rose and sped
back to the house.

From behind a clump of bushes above where she had sat, rose the
gigantic figure of Rebel Jerry Dillon. He looked after the flying girl
with a grim smile and then dropped his great bulk down on the bed of
moss where he had been listening to the plan of his enemies and
kinsmen. Jerry had made many expeditions over from Virginia lately and
each time he had gone back with a new notch on the murderous knife that
he carried in his belt. He had but two personal enemies alive now--Daws
Dillon, who had tried to have him shot, and his own brother, Yankee
Jake. This was the second time he had been over for Daws, and after his
first trip he had persuaded Dan to ask permission from General Morgan
to take a company into Kentucky and destroy Daws and his band, and
Morgan had given him leave, for Federals and Confederates were chasing
down these guerillas now--sometimes even joining forces to further
their common purpose. Jerry had been slipping through the woods after
Daws, meaning to crawl close enough to kill him and, perhaps, Tad
Dillon too, if necessary, but after hearing their plan he had let them
go, for a bigger chance might be at hand. If Chad Buford was in the
mountains looking for Daws, Yankee Jake was with him. If he killed Daws
now, Chad and his men would hear of his death and would go back, most
likely--and that was the thought that checked his finger on the trigger
of his pistol. Another thought now lifted him to his feet with
surprising quickness and sent him on a run down the river where his
horse was hitched in the bushes. He would go over the mountain for Dan.
He could lead Dan and his men to Hurricane Gap by daylight. Chad Buford
could fight it out with Daws and his gang, and he and Dan would fight
it out with the men who won--no matter whether Yankees or guerillas.
And a grim smile stayed on Rebel Jerry's face as he climbed.

On the porch of the Turner cabin sat Melissa with her hands clinched
and old Jack's head in her lap. There was no use worrying Mother
Turner--she feared even to tell her--but what should she do? She might
boldly cross the mountain now, for she was known to be a rebel, but the
Dillons knowing, too, how close Chad had once been to the Turners might
suspect and stop her. No, if she went at all, she must go after
nightfall--but how would she get away from Mother Turner, and how could
she make her way, undetected through Hurricane Gap? The cliffs were so
steep and close together in one place that she could hardly pass more
than forty feet from the road on either side and she could not pass
that close to pickets and not be heard. Her brain ached with planning
and she was so absorbed as night came on that several times old Mother
Turner querulously asked what was ailing her and why she did not pay
more heed to her work, and the girl answered her patiently and went on
with her planning. Before dark, she knew what she would do, and after
the old mother was asleep, she rose softly and slipped out the door
without awakening even old Jack, and went to the barn, where she got
the sheep-bell that old Beelzebub used to wear and with the clapper
caught in one hand, to keep the bell from tinkling, she went swiftly
down the road toward Hurricane Gap. Several times she had to dart into
the bushes while men on horseback rode by her, and once she came near
being caught by three men on foot--all hurrying at Daws Dillon's order
to the Gap through which she must go. When the road turned from the
river, she went slowly along the edge of it, so that if discovered, she
could leap with one spring into the bushes. It was raining--a cold
drizzle that began to chill her and set her to coughing so that she was
half afraid that she might disclose herself. At the mouth of the Gap
she saw a fire on one side of the road and could hear talking, but she
had no difficulty passing it, on the other side. But on, where the Gap
narrowed--there was the trouble. It must have been an hour before
midnight when she tremblingly neared the narrow defile. The rain had
ceased, and as she crept around a boulder she could see, by the light
of the moon between two black clouds, two sentinels beyond. The crisis
was at hand now. She slipped to one side of the road, climbed the cliff
as high as she could and crept about it. She was past one picket now,
and in her eagerness one foot slipped and she half fell. She almost
held her breath and lay still.

"I hear somethin' up thar in the bresh," shouted the second picket.
"Halt!"

Melissa tinkled the sheep-bell and pushed a bush to and fro as though a
sheep or a cow might be rubbing itself, and the picket she had passed
laughed aloud.

"Goin' to shoot ole Sally Perkins's cow, air you?" he said, jeeringly.
"Yes, I heerd her," he added, lying; for, being up all the night
before, he had drowsed at his post. A moment later, Melissa moved on,
making considerable noise and tinkling her bell constantly. She was
near the top now and when she peered out through the bushes, no one was
in sight and she leaped into the road and fled down the mountain. At
the foot of the spur another ringing cry smote the darkness in front of
her:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Don't shoot!" she cried, weakly. "It's only me."

"Advance, 'Me,'" said the picket, astonished to hear a woman's voice.
And then into the light of his fire stepped a shepherdess with a
sheep-bell in her hand, with a beautiful, pale, distressed face, a wet,
clinging dress, and masses of yellow hair surging out of the shawl over
her head. The ill startled picket dropped the butt of his musket to the
ground and stared.

"I want to see Chad, your captain," she said, timidly.

"All right," said the soldier, courteously. "He's just below there and
I guess he's up. We are getting ready to start now. Come along."

"Oh, no!" said Melissa, hurriedly. "I can't go down there." It had just
struck her that Chad must not see her; but the picket thought she
naturally did not wish to face a lot of soldiers in her bedraggled and
torn dress, and he said quickly:

"All right. Give me your message and I'll take it to him." He smiled.
"You can wait here and stand guard."

Melissa told him hurriedly how she had come over the mountain and what
was going on over there, and the picket with a low whistle started down
toward his camp without another word.

Chad could not doubt the accuracy of the information--the picket had
names and facts.

"A girl, you say?"

"Yes, sir"--the soldier hesitated--"and a very pretty one, too. She
came over the mountain alone and on foot through this darkness. She
passed the pickets on the other side--pretending to be a sheep. She had
a bell in her hand." Chad smiled--he knew that trick.

"Where is she?"

"She's standing guard for me."

The picket turned at a gesture from Chad and led the way. They found no
Melissa. She had heard Chad's voice and fled up the mountain. Before
daybreak she was descending the mountain on the other side, along the
same way, tinkling her sheep-bell and creeping past the pickets. It was
raining again now and her cold had grown worse. Several times she had
to muffle her face into her shawl to keep her cough from betraying her.
As she passed the ford below the Turner cabin, she heard the splash of
many horses crossing the river and she ran on, frightened and
wondering. Before day broke she had slipped into her bed without
arousing Mother Turner, and she did not get up that day, but lay ill
abed.

The splashing of those many horses was made by Captain Daniel Dean and
his men, guided by Rebel Jerry. High on the mountain side they hid
their horses in a ravine and crept toward the Gap on foot--so that
while Daws with his gang waited for Chad, the rebels lay in the brush
waiting for him. Dan was merry over the prospect:

"We will just let them fight it out," he said, "and then we'll dash in
and gobble 'em both up. That was a fine scheme of yours, Jerry."

Rebel Jerry smiled: there was one thing he had not told his
captain--who those rebels were. Purposely he had kept that fact hidden.
He had seen Dan purposely refrain from killing Chad Buford once and he
feared that Dan might think his brother Harry was among the Yankees.
All this Rebel Jerry failed to understand, and he wanted nothing known
now that might stay anybody's hand. Dawn broke and nothing happened.
Not a shot rang out and only the smoke of the guerillas' fire showed in
the peaceful mouth of the Gap. Dan wanted to attack the guerillas, but
Jerry persuaded him to wait until he could learn how the land lay, and
disappeared in the bushes. At noon he came back.

"The Yankees have found out Daws is thar in the Gap," he said, "an'
they are goin' to slip over before day ter-morrer and s'prise him. Hit
don't make no difference to us, which s'prises which--does it?"

So the rebels kept hid through the day in the bushes on the mountain
side, and when Chad slipped through the Gap next morning, before day,
and took up the guerilla pickets, Dan had moved into the same Gap from
the other side, and was lying in the bushes with his men, near the
guerillas' fire, waiting for the Yankees to make their attack. He had
not long to wait. At the first white streak of dawn overhead, a shout
rang through the woods from the Yankees to the startled guerillas.

"Surrender!" A fusillade followed. Again:

"Surrender!" and there was a short silence, broken by low curses from
the guerillas, and a stern Yankee voice giving short, quick orders. The
guerillas had given up. Rebel Jerry moved restlessly at Dan's side and
Dan cautioned him.

"Wait! Let them have time to disarm the prisoners," he whispered.

"Now," he added, a little while later--"creep quietly, boys."

Forward they went like snakes, creeping to the edge of the brush whence
they could see the sullen guerillas grouped on one side of the
fire--their arms stacked, while a tall figure in blue moved here and
there, and gave orders in a voice that all at once seemed strangely
familiar to Dan.

"Now, boys," he said, half aloud, "give 'em a volley and charge."

At his word there was a rattling fusillade, and then the rebels leaped
from the bushes and dashed on the astonished Yankees and their
prisoners. It was pistol to pistol at first and then they closed to
knife thrust and musket butt, hand to hand--in a cloud of smoke. At the
first fire from the rebels Chad saw his prisoner, Daws Dillon, leap for
the stacked arms and disappear. A moment later, as he was emptying his
pistol at his charging foes, he felt a bullet clip a lock of hair from
the back of his head and he turned to see Daws on the farthest edge of
the firelight levelling his pistol for another shot before he ran. Like
lightning he wheeled and when his finger pulled the trigger, Daws sank
limply, his grinning, malignant face sickening as he fell.

The tall fellow in blue snapped his pistol at Dan, and as Dan, whose
pistol, too, was empty, sprang forward and closed with him, he heard a
triumphant yell behind him and Rebel Jerry's huge figure flashed past
him. With the same glance he saw among the Yankees another giant--who
looked like another Jerry--saw his face grow ghastly with fear when
Jerry's yell rose, and then grow taut with ferocity as he tugged at his
sheath to meet the murderous knife flashing toward him. The terrible
Dillon twins were come together at last, and Dan shuddered, but he saw
no more, for he was busy with the lithe Yankee in whose arms he was
closed. As they struggled, Dan tried to get his knife and the Yankee
tugged for his second pistol each clasping the other's wrist. Not a
sound did they make nor could either see the other's face, for Dan had
his chin in his opponent's breast and was striving to bend him
backward. He had clutched the Yankee's right hand, as it went back for
his pistol, just as the Yankee had caught his right in front, feeling
for his knife. The advantage would have been all Dan's except that the
Yankee suddenly loosed his wrist and gripped him tight about the body
in an underhold, so that Dan could not whirl him round; but he could
twist that wrist and twist it he did, with both hands and all his
strength. Once the Yankee gave a smothered groan of pain and Dan heard
him grit his teeth to keep it back. The smoke had lifted now, and, when
they fell, it was in the light of the fire. The Yankee had thrown him
with a knee-trick that Harry used to try on him when they were boys,
but something about the Yankee snapped, as they fell, and he groaned
aloud. Clutching him by the throat, Dan threw him oft--he could get at
his knife now.

"Surrender!" he said, hoarsely.

His answer was a convulsive struggle and then the Yankee lay still.

"Surrender!" said Dan again, lifting his knife above the Yankee's
breast, "or, damn you, I'll--"

The Yankee had turned his face weakly toward the fire, and Dan, with a
cry of horror, threw his knife away and sprang to his feet. Straightway
the Yankee's closed eyes opened and he smiled faintly.

"Why, Dan, is that you?" he asked. "I thought it would come," he added,
quietly, and then Harry Dean lapsed into unconsciousness.

Thus, at its best, this fratricidal war was being fought out that
daybreak in one little hollow of the Kentucky mountains and thus, at
its worst, it was being fought out in another little hollow scarcely
twenty yards away, where the giant twins--Rebel Jerry and Yankee
Jake--who did know they were brothers, sought each other's lives in
mutual misconception and mutual hate.

There were a dozen dead Federals and guerillas around the fire, and
among them was Daws Dillon with the pallor of death on his face and the
hate that life had written there still clinging to it like a shadow. As
Dan bent tenderly over his brother Harry, two soldiers brought in a
huge body from the bushes, and he turned to see Rebel Jerry Dillon.
There were a half a dozen rents in his uniform and a fearful slash
under his chin--but he was breathing still. Chad Buford had escaped and
so had Yankee Jake.



CHAPTER 27.

AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN'S MEN

In May, Grant simply said--Forward! The day he crossed the Rapidan, he
said it to Sherman down in Georgia. After the battle of the Wilderness
he said it again, and the last brutal resort of hammering down the
northern buttress and sea-wall of the rebellion--old Virginia--and
Atlanta, the keystone of the Confederate arch, was well under way.
Throughout those bloody days Chad was with Grant and Harry Dean was
with Sherman on his terrible trisecting march to the sea. For, after
the fight between Rebels and Yankees and Daws Dillon's guerilla band,
over in Kentucky, Dan, coming back from another raid into the
Bluegrass, had found his brother gone. Harry had refused to accept a
parole and had escaped. Not a man, Dan was told, fired a shot at him,
as he ran. One soldier raised his musket, but Renfrew the Silent struck
the muzzle upward.

In September, Atlanta fell and, in that same month, Dan saw his great
leader, John Morgan, dead in Tennessee. In December, the Confederacy
toppled at the west under Thomas's blows at Nashville. In the spring of
'65, one hundred and thirty-five thousand wretched, broken-down rebels,
from Richmond to the Rio Grande, confronted Grant's million men, and in
April, Five Forks was the beginning of the final end everywhere.

At midnight, Captain Daniel Dean, bearer of dispatches to the great
Confederate General in Virginia, rode out of abandoned Richmond with
the cavalry of young Fitzhugh Lee. They had threaded their way amid
troops, trains, and artillery across the bridge. The city was on fire.
By its light, the stream of humanity was pouring out of town--Davis and
his cabinet, citizens, soldiers, down to the mechanics in the armories
and workshops. The chief concern with all was the same, a little to eat
for a few days; for, with the morning, the enemy would come and
Confederate money would be as mist. Afar off the little fleet of
Confederate gunboats blazed and the thundering explosions of their
magazines split the clear air. Freight depots with supplies were
burning. Plunderers were spreading the fires and slipping like ghouls
through red light and black shadows. At daybreak the last retreating
gun rumbled past and, at sunrise, Dan looked back from the hills on the
smoking and deserted city and Grant's blue lines sweeping into it.

Once only he saw his great chief--the next morning before day, when he
rode through the chill mist and darkness to find the head-quarters of
the commanding General--two little fires of rubbish and two
ambulances--with Lee lying on a blanket under the open sky. He rose, as
Dan drew near, and the firelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful
face. He looked so sad and so noble that the boy's heart was wrenched,
and as Dan turned away, he said, brokenly:

"General, I am General Dean's son, and I want to thank you--" He could
get no farther. Lee laid one hand on his shoulder.

"Be as good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode
back the pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of
Virginia--through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the
broken debris of wagons and abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and
skeleton men.

All hope was gone, but Fitz Lee led his cavalry through the Yankee
lines and escaped. In that flight Daniel Dean got his only wound in the
war--a bullet through the shoulder. When the surrender came, Fitz Lee
gave up, too, and led back his command to get Grant's generous terms.
But all his men did not go with him, and among the cavalrymen who went
on toward southwestern Virginia was Dan--making his way back to Richard
Hunt--for now that gallant Morgan was dead, Hunt was general of the old
command.

Behind, at Appomattox, Chad was with Grant. He saw the surrender--saw
Lee look toward his army, when he came down the steps after he had
given up, saw him strike his hands together three times and ride
Traveller away through the profound and silent respect of his enemies
and the tearful worship of his own men. And Chad got permission
straightway to go back to Ohio, and he mustered out with his old
regiment, and he, too, started back through Virginia.

Meanwhile, Dan was drawing near the mountains. He was worn out when he
reached Abingdon. The wound in his shoulder was festering and he was in
a high fever. At the camp of Morgan's Men he found only a hospital
left--for General Hunt had gone southward--and a hospital was what he
most needed now. As he lay, unconscious with fever, next day, a giant
figure, lying near, turned his head and stared at the boy. It was Rebel
Jerry Dillon, helpless from a sabre cut and frightfully scarred by the
fearful wounds his brother, Yankee Jake, had given him. And thus,
Chadwick Buford, making for the Ohio, saw the two strange messmates, a
few days later, when he rode into the deserted rebel camp.

All was over. Red Mars had passed beyond the horizon and the white Star
of Peace already shone faintly on the ravaged South. The shattered
remnants of Morgan's cavalry, pall-bearers of the Lost Cause--had gone
South--bare-footed and in rags--to guard Jefferson Davis to safety, and
Chad's heart was wrung when he stepped into the little hospital they
had left behind--a space cleared into a thicket of rhododendron. There
was not a tent--there was little medicine--little food. The drizzling
rain dropped on the group of ragged sick men from the branches above
them. Nearly all were youthful, and the youngest was a mere boy, who
lay delirious with his head on the root of a tree. As Chad stood
looking, the boy opened his eyes and his mouth twitched with pain.

"Hello, you damned Yankee." Again his mouth twitched and again the old
dare-devil light that Chad knew so well kindled in his hazy eyes.

"I said," he repeated, distinctly, "Hello, you damned Yank. DAMNED Yank
I said." Chad beckoned to two men.

"Go bring a stretcher."

The men shook their heads with a grim smile--they had no stretcher.

The boy talked dreamily.

"Say, Yank, didn't we give you hell in--oh, well, in lots o' places.
But you've got me." The two soldiers were lifting him in their arms.
"Goin' to take me to prison? Goin' to take me out to shoot me, Yank?
You ARE a damned Yank." A hoarse growl rose behind them and the giant
lifted himself on one elbow, swaying his head from side to side.

"Let that boy alone!" Dan nodded back at him confidently.

"That's all right, Jerry. This Yank's a friend of mine." His brow
wrinkled. "At any rate he looks like somebody I know. He's goin' to
give me something to eat and get me well--like hell," he added to
himself--passing off into unconsciousness again. Chad had the lad
carried to his own tent, had him stripped, bathed, and bandaged and
stood looking down at him. It was hard to believe that the broken, aged
youth was the red-cheeked, vigorous lad whom he had known as Daniel
Dean. He was ragged, starved, all but bare-footed, wounded, sick, and
yet he was as undaunted, as defiant, as when he charged with Morgan's
dare-devils at the beginning of the war. Then Chad went back to the
hospital--for a blanket and some medicine.

"They are friends," he said to the Confederate surgeon, pointing at a
huge gaunt figure.

"I reckon that big fellow has saved that boy's life a dozen times. Yes,
they're mess-mates."

And Chad stood looking down at Jerry Dillon, one of the giant
twins--whose name was a terror throughout the mountains of the middle
south. Then he turned and the surgeon followed.

There was a rustle of branches on one side when they were gone, and at
the sound the wounded man lifted his head. The branches parted and the
oxlike face of Yankee Jake peered through. For a full minute, the two
brothers stared at each other.

"I reckon you got me, Jake," said Jerry.

"I been lookin' fer ye a long while," said Jake, simply, and he smiled
strangely as he moved slowly forward and looked down at his enemy--his
heavy head wagging from side to side. Jerry was fumbling at his belt.
The big knife flashed, but Jake's hand was as quick as its gleam, and
he had the wrist that held it. His great fingers crushed together, the
blade dropped on the ground, and again the big twins looked at each
other. Slowly, Yankee Jake picked up the knife. The other moved not a
muscle and in his fierce eyes was no plea for mercy. The point of the
blade moved slowly down--down over the rebel's heart, and was thrust
into its sheath again. Then Jake let go the wrist.

"Don't tech it agin," he said, and he strode away. The big fellow lay
blinking. He did not open his lips when, in a moment, Yankee Jake
slouched in with a canteen of water. When Chad came back, one giant was
drawing on the other a pair of socks. The other was still silent and
had his face turned the other way. Looking up, Jake met Chad's
surprised gaze with a grin.

A day later, Dan came to his senses. A tent was above him, a heavy
blanket was beneath him and there were clothes on his body that felt
strangely fresh and clean. He looked up to see Chad's face between the
flaps of the tent.

"D'you do this?"

"That's all right," said Chad. "This war is over." And he went away to
let Dan think it out. When he came again, Dan held out his hand
silently.



CHAPTER 28.

PALL-BEARERS OF THE LOST CAUSE

The rain was falling with a steady roar when General Hunt broke camp a
few days before. The mountain-tops were black with thunderclouds, and
along the muddy road went Morgan's Men--most of them on mules which had
been taken from abandoned wagons when news of the surrender
came--without saddles and with blind bridles or rope halters--the rest
slopping along through the yellow mud on foot--literally--for few of
them had shoes; they were on their way to protect Davis and join
Johnston, now that Lee was no more. There was no murmuring, no
faltering, and it touched Richard Hunt to observe that they were now
more prompt to obedience, when it was optional with them whether they
should go or stay, than they had ever been in the proudest days of the
Confederacy.

Threatened from Tennessee and cut off from Richmond, Hunt had made up
his mind to march eastward to join Lee, when the news of the surrender
came. Had the sun at that moment dropped suddenly to the horizon from
the heaven above them, those Confederates would have been hardly more
startled or plunged into deeper despair. Crowds of infantry threw down
their arms and, with the rest, all sense of discipline was lost. Of the
cavalry, however, not more than ten men declined to march south, and
out they moved through the drenching rain in a silence that was broken
only with a single cheer when ninety men from another Kentucky brigade
joined them, who, too, felt that as long as the Confederate Government
survived, there was work for them to do. So on they went to keep up the
struggle, if the word was given, skirmishing, fighting and slipping
past the enemies that were hemming them in, on with Davis, his cabinet,
and General Breckinridge to join Taylor and Forrest in Alabama. Across
the border of South Carolina, an irate old lady upbraided Hunt for
allowing his soldiers to take forage from her barn.

"You are a gang of thieving Kentuckians," she said, hotly; "you are
afraid to go home, while our boys are surrendering decently."

"Madam!"--Renfrew the Silent spoke--spoke from the depths of his once
brilliant jacket--"you South Carolinians had a good deal to say about
getting up this war, but we Kentuckians have contracted to close it
out."

Then came the last Confederate council of war. In turn, each officer
spoke of his men and of himself and each to the same effect; the cause
was lost and there was no use in prolonging the war.

"We will give our lives to secure your safety, but we cannot urge our
men to struggle against a fate that is inevitable, and perhaps thus
forfeit all hope of a restoration to their homes and friends."

Davis was affable, dignified, calm, undaunted.

"I will hear of no plan that is concerned only with my safety. A few
brave men can prolong the war until this panic has passed, and they
will be a nucleus for thousands more."

The answer was silence, as the gaunt, beaten man looked from face to
face. He rose with an effort.

"I see all hope is gone," he said, bitterly, and though his calm
remained, his bearing was less erect, his face was deathly pale and his
step so infirm that he leaned upon General Breckinridge as he neared
the door--in the bitterest moment, perhaps, of his life.

So, the old Morgan's Men, so long separated, were united at the end. In
a broken voice General Hunt forbade the men who had followed him on
foot three hundred miles from Virginia to go farther, but to disperse
to their homes; and they wept like children.

In front of him was a big force of Federal cavalry; retreat the way he
had come was impossible, and to the left, if he escaped, was the sea;
but dauntless Hunt refused to surrender except at the order of a
superior, or unless told that all was done that could be done to assure
the escape of his President. That order came from Breckinridge.

"Surrender," was the message. "Go back to your homes, I will not have
one of these young men encounter one more hazard for my sake."

That night Richard Hunt fought out his fight with himself, pacing to
and fro under the stars. He had struggled faithfully for what he
believed, still believed, and would, perhaps, always believe, was
right. He had fought for the broadest ideal of liberty as he understood
it, for citizen, State and nation. The appeal had gone to the sword and
the verdict was against him. He would accept it. He would go home, take
the oath of allegiance, resume the law, and, as an American citizen, do
his duty. He had no sense of humiliation, he had no apology to make and
would never have--he had done his duty. He felt no bitterness, and had
no fault to find with his foes, who were brave and had done their duty
as they had seen it; for he granted them the right to see a different
duty from what he had decided was his. And that was all.

Renfrew the Silent was waiting at the smouldering fire. He neither
looked up nor made any comment when General Hunt spoke his
determination. His own face grew more sullen and he reached his hand
into his breast and pulled from his faded jacket the tattered colors
that he once had borne.

"These will never be lowered as long as I live," he said, "nor
afterwards if I can prevent it." And lowered they never were. On a
little island in the Pacific Ocean, this strange soldier, after leaving
his property and his kindred forever, lived out his life among the
natives with this bloodstained remnant of the Stars and Bars over his
hut, and when he died, the flag was hung over his grave, and above that
grave to-day the tattered emblem still sways in southern air.

 . . . . .

A week earlier, two Rebels and two Yankees started across the mountain
together--Chad and Dan and the giant Dillon twins--Chad and Yankee Jake
afoot. Up Lonesome they went toward the shaggy flank of Black Mountain
where the Great Reaper had mowed down Chad's first friends. The logs of
the cabin were still standing, though the roof was caved in and the
yard was a tangle of undergrowth. A dull pain settled in Chad's breast,
while he looked, and as they were climbing the spur, he choked when he
caught sight of the graves under the big poplar.

There was the little pen that he had built over his foster-mother's
grave--still undisturbed. He said nothing and, as they went down the
spur, across the river and up Pine Mountain, he kept his gnawing
memories to himself. Only ten years before, and he seemed an old, old
man now. He recognized the very spot where he had slept the first night
after he ran away and awakened to that fearful never-forgotten storm at
sunrise, which lived in his memory now as a mighty portent of the
storms of human passion that had swept around him on many a
battlefield. There was the very tree where he had killed the squirrel
and the rattlesnake. It was bursting spring now, but the buds of laurel
and rhododendron were unbroken. Down Kingdom Come they went. Here was
where he had met the old cow, and here was the little hill where Jack
had fought Whizzer and he had fought Tad Dillon and where he had first
seen Melissa. Again the scarlet of her tattered gown flashed before his
eyes. At the bend of the river they parted from the giant twins.
Faithful Jake's face was foolish when Chad took him by the hand and
spoke to him, as man to man, and Rebel Jerry turned his face quickly
when Dan told him that he would never forget him, and made him promise
to come to see him, if Jerry ever took another raft down to the
capital. Looking back from the hill, Chad saw them slowly moving along
a path toward the woods--not looking at each other and speaking not at
all.

Beyond rose the smoke of the old Turner cabin. On the porch sat the old
Turner mother, her bonnet in her hand, her eyes looking down the river.
Dozing at her feet was Jack--old Jack. She had never forgiven Chad, and
she could not forgive him now, though Chad saw her eyes soften when she
looked at the tattered butternut that Dan wore. But Jack--half-blind
and aged--sprang trembling to his feet when he heard Chad's voice and
whimpered like a child. Chad sank on the porch with one arm about the
old dog's neck. Mother Turner answered all questions shortly.

Melissa had gone to the "Settlemints." Why? The old woman would not
answer. She was coming back, but she was ill. She had never been well
since she went afoot, one cold night, to warn some YANKEE that Daws
Dillon was after him. Chad started. It was Melissa who had perhaps
saved his life. Tad Dillon had stepped into Daws's shoes, and the war
was still going on in the hills. Tom Turner had died in prison. The old
mother was waiting for Dolph and Rube to come back--she was looking for
them every hour, day and night She did not know what had become of the
school-master--but Chad did, and he told her. The school-master had
died, storming breastworks at Gettysburg. The old woman said not a word.

Dan was too weak to ride now. So Chad got Dave Hilton, Melissa's old
sweetheart, to take Dixie to Richmond--a little Kentucky town on the
edge of the Bluegrass--and leave her there and he bought the old Turner
canoe. She would have no use for it, Mother Turner said--he could have
it for nothing; but when Chad thrust a ten dollar Federal bill into her
hands, she broke down and threw her arms around him and cried.

So down the river went Chad and Dan--drifting with the tide--Chad in
the stern, Dan lying at full length, with his head on a blue army-coat
and looking up at the over-swung branches and the sky and the clouds
above them--down, through a mist of memories for Chad--down to the
capital.

And Harry Dean, too, was on his way home--coming up from the far
South--up through the ravaged land of his own people, past homes and
fields which his own hands had helped to lay waste.



CHAPTER 29.

MELISSA AND MARGARET

The early spring sunshine lay like a benediction over the Dean
household, for Margaret and her mother were home from exile. On the
corner of the veranda sat Mrs. Dean, where she always sat, knitting.
Under the big weeping willow in the garden was her husband's grave.
When she was not seated near it, she was there in the porch, and to it
her eyes seemed always to stray when she lifted them from her work.

The mail had just come and Margaret was reading a letter from Dan, and,
as she read, her cheeks flushed.

"He took me into his own tent, mother, and put his own clothes on me
and nursed me like a brother. And now he is going to take me to you and
Margaret, he says, and I shall be strong enough, I hope, to start in a
week. I shall be his friend for life."

Neither mother nor daughter spoke when the girl ceased reading. Only
Margaret rose soon and walked down the gravelled walk to the stile.

Beneath the hill, the creek sparkled. She could see the very pool where
her brothers and the queer little stranger from the mountains were
fishing the day he came into her life. She remembered the indignant
heart-beat with which she had heard him call her "little gal," and she
smiled now, but she could recall the very tone of his voice and the
steady look in his clear eyes when he offered her the perch he had
caught. Even then his spirit appealed unconsciously to her, when he
sturdily refused to go up to the house because her brother was "feelin'
hard towards him." How strange and far away all that seemed now! Up the
creek and around the woods she strolled, deep in memories. For a long
while she sat on a stone wall in the sunshine--thinking and dreaming,
and it was growing late when she started back to the house. At the
stile, she turned for a moment to look at the old Buford home across
the fields. As she looked, she saw the pike-gate open and a woman's
figure enter, and she kept her eyes idly upon it as she walked on
toward the house. The woman came slowly and hesitatingly toward the
yard. When she drew nearer, Margaret could see that she wore homespun,
home-made shoes, and a poke-bonnet. On her hands were yarn half-mits,
and, as she walked, she pushed her bonnet from her eyes with one hand,
first to one side, then to the other--looking at the locusts planted
along the avenue, the cedars in the yard, the sweep of lawn overspread
with springing bluegrass. At the yard gate she stopped, leaning over
it--her eyes fixed on the stately white house, with its mighty pillars.
Margaret was standing on the steps now, motionless and waiting, and,
knowing that she was seen, the woman opened the gate and walked up the
gravelled path--never taking her eyes from the figure on the porch.
Straight she walked to the foot of the steps, and there she stopped,
and, pushing her bonnet back, she said, simply:

"Are you Mar-ga-ret?" pronouncing the name slowly and with great
distinctness.

Margaret started.

"Yes," she said.

The girl merely looked at her--long and hard. Once her lips moved:

"Mar-ga-ret," and still she looked. "Do you know whar Chad is?"

Margaret flushed.

"Who are you?"

"Melissy."

Melissa! The two girls looked deep into each other's eyes and, for one
flashing moment, each saw the other's heart--bared and beating--and
Margaret saw, too, a strange light ebb slowly from the other's face and
a strange shadow follow slowly after.

"You mean Major Buford?"

"I mean Chad. Is he dead?"

"No, he is bringing my brother home."

"Harry?"

"No--Dan."

"Dan--here?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"As soon as my brother gets well enough to travel. He is wounded."

Melissa turned her face then. Her mouth twitched and her clasped hands
were working in and out. Then she turned again.

"I come up here from the mountains, afoot jus' to tell ye--to tell YOU
that Chad ain't no"--she stopped suddenly, seeing Margaret's quick
flush--"CHAD'S MOTHER WAS MARRIED. I jus' found it out last week. He
ain't no--"--she started fiercely again and stopped again. "But I come
here fer HIM--not fer YOU. YOU oughtn't to 'a' keered. Hit wouldn't 'a'
been his fault. He never was the same after he come back from here. Hit
worried him most to death, an' I know hit was you--YOU he was always
thinkin' about. He didn't keer 'cept fer you." Again that shadow came
and deepened. "An' you oughtn't to 'a' keered what he was--and that's
why I hate you," she said, calmly--"fer worryin' him an' bein' so
high-heeled that you was willin' to let him mighty nigh bust his heart
about somethin' that wasn't his fault. I come fer him--you
understand--fer HIM. I hate YOU!"

She turned without another word, walked slowly back down the walk and
through the gate. Margaret stood dazed, helpless, almost frightened.
She heard the girl cough and saw now that she walked as if weak and
ill. As she turned into the road, Margaret ran down the steps and
across the fields to the turnpike. When she reached the road-fence the
girl was coming around the bend her eyes on the ground, and every now
and then she would cough and put her hand to her breast. She looked up
quickly, hearing the noise ahead of her, and stopped as Margaret
climbed the low stone wall and sprang down.

"Melissa, Melissa! You mustn't hate me. You mustn't hate ME."
Margaret's eyes were streaming and her voice trembled with kindness.
She walked up to the girl and put one hand on her shoulder. "You are
sick. I know you are, and you must come back to the house."

Melissa gave way then, and breaking from the girl's clasp she leaned
against the stone wall and sobbed, while Margaret put her arms about
her and waited silently.

"Come now," she said, "let me help you over. There now. You must come
back and get something to eat and lie down." And Margaret led Melissa
back across the fields.



CHAPTER 30.

PEACE

It was strange to Chad that he should be drifting toward a new life
down the river which once before had carried him to a new world. The
future then was no darker than now, but he could hardly connect himself
with the little fellow in coon-skin cap and moccasins who had floated
down on a raft so many years ago, when at every turn of the river his
eager eyes looked for a new and thrilling mystery.

They talked of the long fight, the two lads, for, in spite of the
war-worn look of them, both were still nothing but boys--and they
talked with no bitterness of camp life, night attacks, surprises,
escapes, imprisonment, incidents of march and battle. Both spoke little
of their boyhood days or the future. The pall of defeat overhung Dan.
To him the world seemed to be nearing an end, while to Chad the outlook
was what he had known all his life--nothing to begin with and
everything to be done. Once only Dan voiced his own trouble:

"What are you going to do, Chad--now that this infernal war is over?
Going into the regular army?"

"No," said Chad, decisively. About his own future Dan volunteered
nothing--he only turned his head quickly to the passing woods, as
though in fear that Chad might ask some similar question, but Chad was
silent. And thus they glided between high cliffs and down into the
lowlands until at last, through a little gorge between two swelling
river hills, Dan's eye caught sight of an orchard, a leafy woodland,
and a pasture of bluegrass. With a cry he raised himself on one elbow.

"Home! I tell you, Chad, we're getting home!" He closed his eyes and
drew the sweet air in as though he were drinking it down like wine. His
eyes were sparkling when he opened them again and there was a new color
in his face. On they drifted until, toward noon, the black column of
smoke that meant the capital loomed against the horizon. There Mrs.
Dean was waiting for them, and Chad turned his face aside when the
mother took her son in her arms. With a sad smile she held out her hand
to Chad.

"You must come home with us," Mrs. Dean said, with quiet decision.

"Where is Margaret, mother?" Chad almost trembled when he heard the
name.

"Margaret couldn't come. She is not very well and she is taking care of
Harry."

The very station had tragic memories to Chad. There was the long hill
which he had twice climbed--once on a lame foot and once on flying
Dixie--past the armory and the graveyard. He had seen enough dead since
he peered through those iron gates to fill a dozen graveyards the like
in size. Going up in the train, he could see the barn where he had
slept in the hayloft the first time he came to the Bluegrass, and the
creek-bridge where Major Buford had taken him into his carriage. Major
Buford was dead. He had almost died in prison, Mrs. Dean said, and Chad
choked and could say nothing. Once, Dan began a series of eager
questions about the house and farm, and the servants and the neighbors,
but his mother's answers were hesitant and he stopped short. She, too,
asked but few questions, and the three were quiet while the train
rolled on with little more speed than Chad and Dixie had made on that
long ago night-ride to save Dan and Rebel Jerry. About that ride Chad
had kept Harry's lips and his own closed, for he wished no such appeal
as that to go to Margaret Dean. Margaret was not at the station in
Lexington. She was not well Rufus said; so Chad would not go with them
that night, but would come out next day.

"I owe my son's life to you, Captain Buford," said Mrs. Dean, with
trembling lip, "and you must make our house your home while you are
here. I bring that message to you from Harry and Margaret. I know and
they know now all you have done for us and all you have tried to do."

Chad could hardly speak his thanks. He would be in the Bluegrass only a
few days, he stammered, but he would go out to see them next day. That
night he went to the old inn where the Major had taken him to dinner.
Next day he hired a horse from the livery stable where he had bought
the old brood mare, and early in the afternoon he rode out the broad
turnpike in a nervous tumult of feeling that more than once made him
halt in the road. He wore his uniform, which was new, and made him
uncomfortable--it looked too much like waving a victorious flag in the
face of a beaten enemy--but it was the only stitch of clothes he had,
and that he might not explain.

It was the first of May. Just eight years before, Chad with a burning
heart had watched Richard Hunt gayly dancing with Margaret, while the
dead chieftain, Morgan, gayly fiddled for the merry crowd. Now the sun
shone as it did then, the birds sang, the wind shook the happy leaves
and trembled through the budding heads of bluegrass to show that nature
had known no war and that her mood was never other than of hope and
peace. But there were no fat cattle browsing in the Dean pastures now,
no flocks of Southdown sheep with frisking lambs The worm fences had
lost their riders and were broken down here and there. The gate sagged
on its hinges; the fences around yard and garden and orchard had known
no whitewash for years; the paint on the noble old house was cracked
and peeling, the roof of the barn was sunken in, and the cabins of the
quarters were closed, for the hand of war, though unclinched, still lay
heavy on the home of the Deans. Snowball came to take his horse. He was
respectful, but his white teeth did not flash the welcome Chad once had
known. Another horse stood at the hitching-post and on it was a cavalry
saddle and a rebel army blanket, and Chad did not have to guess whose
it might be. From the porch, Dan shouted and came down to meet him, and
Harry hurried to the door, followed by Mrs. Dean. Margaret was not to
be seen, and Chad was glad--he would have a little more time for
self-control. She did not appear even when they were seated in the
porch until Dan shouted for her toward the garden; and then looking
toward the gate Chad saw her coming up the garden walk bare-headed,
dressed in white, with flowers in her hand; and walking by her side,
looking into her face and talking earnestly, was Richard Hunt. The
sight of him nerved Chad at once to steel. Margaret did not lift her
face until she was half-way to the porch, and then she stopped suddenly.

"Why, there's Major Buford," Chad heard her say, and she came on ahead,
walking rapidly. Chad felt the blood in his face again, and as he
watched Margaret nearing him--pale, sweet, frank, gracious,
unconscious--it seemed that he was living over again another scene in
his life when he had come from the mountains to live with old Major
Buford; and, with a sudden prayer that his past might now be wiped as
clean as it was then, he turned from Margaret's hand-clasp to look into
the brave, searching eyes of Richard Hunt and feel his sinewy fingers
in a grip that in all frankness told Chad plainly that between them, at
least, one war was not quite over yet.

"I am glad to meet you, Major Buford, in these piping times of peace."

"And I am glad to meet you, General Hunt--only in times of peace," Chad
said, smiling.

The two measured each other swiftly, calmly. Chad had a mighty
admiration for Richard Hunt. Here was a man who knew no fight but to
the finish, who would die as gamely in a drawing-room as on a
battle-field. To think of him--a brigadier-general at twenty-seven, as
undaunted, as unbeaten as when he heard the first bullet of the war
whistle, and, at that moment, as good an American as Chadwick Buford or
any Unionist who had given his life for his cause! Such a foe thrilled
Chad, and somehow he felt that Margaret was measuring them as they were
measuring each other. Against such a man what chance had he?

He would have been comforted could he have known Richard Hunt's
thoughts, for that gentleman had gone back to the picture of a ragged
mountain boy in old Major Buford's carriage, one court day long ago,
and now he was looking that same lad over from the visor of his cap
down his superb length to the heels of his riding-boots. His eyes
rested long on Chad's face. The change was incredible, but blood had
told. The face was highly bred, clean, frank, nobly handsome; it had
strength and dignity, and the scar on his cheek told a story that was
as well known to foe as to friend.

"I have been wanting to thank you, not only for trying to keep us out
of that infernal prison after the Ohio raid, but for trying to get us
out. Harry here told me. That was generous."

"That was nothing," said Chad. "You forget, you could have killed me
once and--and you didn't." Margaret was listening eagerly.

"You didn't give me time," laughed General Hunt.

"Oh, yes, I did. I saw you lift your pistol and drop it again. I have
never ceased to wonder why you did that."

Richard Hunt laughed. "Perhaps I'm sorry sometimes that I did," he
said, with a certain dryness.

"Oh, no, you aren't, General," said Margaret.

Thus they chatted and laughed and joked together above the sombre tide
of feeling that showed in the face of each if it reached not his
tongue, for, when the war was over, the hatchet in Kentucky was buried
at once and buried deep. Son came back to father, brother to brother,
neighbor to neighbor; political disabilities were removed and the
sundered threads, unravelled by the war, were knitted together fast.
That is why the postbellum terrors of reconstruction were practically
unknown in the State. The negroes scattered, to be sure, not from
disloyalty so much as from a feverish desire to learn whether they
really could come and go as they pleased. When they learned that they
were really free, most of them drifted back to the quarters where they
were born, and meanwhile the white man's hand that had wielded the
sword went just as bravely to the plough, and the work of rebuilding
war-shattered ruins began at once. Old Mammy appeared, by and by, shook
hands with General Hunt and made Chad a curtsey of rather distant
dignity. She had gone into exile with her "chile" and her "ole Mistis"
and had come home with them to stay, untempted by the doubtful sweets
of freedom.  "Old Tom, her husband, had remained with Major Buford, was
with him on his deathbed," said Margaret, "and was on the place still,
too old, he said, to take root elsewhere."

Toward the middle of the afternoon Dan rose and suggested that they
take a walk about the place. Margaret had gone in for a moment to
attend to some household duty, and as Richard Hunt was going away next
day he would stay, he said, with Mrs. Dean, who was tired and could not
join them. The three walked toward the dismantled barn where the
tournament had taken place and out into the woods. Looking back, Chad
saw Margaret and General Hunt going slowly toward the garden, and he
knew that some crisis was at hand between the two. He had hard work
listening to Dan and Harry as they planned for the future, and recalled
to each other and to him the incidents of their boyhood. Harry meant to
study law, he said, and practise in Lexington; Dan would stay at home
and run the farm. Neither brother mentioned that the old place was
heavily mortgaged, but Chad guessed the fact and it made him heartsick
to think of the struggle that was before them and of the privations yet
in store for Mrs. Dean and Margaret.

"Why don't you, Chad?"

"Do what?"

"Stay here and study law," Harry smiled. "We'll go into partnership."

Chad shook his head. "No," he said, decisively. "I've already made up
my mind. I'm going West."

"I'm sorry," said Harry, and no more; he had learned long ago how
useless it was to combat any purpose of Chadwick Buford.

General Hunt and Margaret were still away when they got back to the
house. In fact, the sun was sinking when they came in from the woods,
still walking slowly, General Hunt talking earnestly and Margaret with
her hands clasped before her and her eyes on the path. The faces of
both looked pale, even that far away, but when they neared the porch,
the General was joking and Margaret was smiling, nor was anything
perceptible to Chad when he said good-by, except a certain tenderness
in his tone and manner toward Margaret, and one fleeting look of
distress in her clear eyes. He was on his horse now, and was lifting
his cap.

"Good-by, Major," he said. "I'm glad you got through the war alive.
Perhaps I'll tell you some day why I didn't shoot you that morning."
And then he rode away, a gallant, knightly figure, across the pasture.
At the gate he waved his cap and at a gallop was gone.

After supper, a heaven-born chance led Mrs. Dean to stroll out into the
lovely night. Margaret rose to go too, and Chad followed. The same
chance, perhaps, led old Mammy to come out on the porch and call Mrs.
Dean back. Chad and Margaret walked on toward the stiles where still
hung Margaret's weather-beaten Stars and Bars. The girl smiled and
touched the flag.

"That was very nice of you to salute me that morning. I never felt so
bitter against Yankees after that day. I'll take it down now," and she
detached it and rolled it tenderly about the slender staff.

"That was not my doing," said Chad, "though if I had been Grant, and
there with the whole Union army, I would have had it salute you. I was
under orders, but I went back for help. May I carry it for you?"

"Yes," said Margaret, handing it to him. Chad had started toward the
garden, but Margaret turned him toward the stile and they walked now
down through the pasture toward the creek that ran like a wind-shaken
ribbon of silver under the moon.

"Won't you tell me something about Major Buford? I've been wanting to
ask, but I simply hadn't the heart. Can't we go over there tonight? I
want to see the old place, and I must leave to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" said Margaret. "Why--I--I was going to take you over there
to-morrow, for I--but, of course, you must go to-night if it is to be
your only chance."

And so, as they walked along, Margaret told Chad of the old Major's
last days, after he was released from prison, and came home to die. She
went to see him every day, and she was at his bedside when he breathed
his last. He had mortgaged his farm to help the Confederate cause and
to pay indemnity for a guerilla raid, and Jerome Conners held his notes
for large amounts.

"The lawyer told me that he believed some of the notes were forged, but
he couldn't prove it. He says it is doubtful if more than the house and
a few acres will be left." A light broke in on Chad's brain.

"He told you?"

Margaret blushed. "He left all he had to me," she said, simply.

"I'm so glad," said Chad.

"Except a horse which belongs to you. The old mare is dead."

"Dear old Major!"

At the stone fence Margaret reached for the flag.

"We'll leave it here until we come back," she said, dropping it in a
shadow. Somehow the talk of Major Buford seemed to bring them nearer
together--so near that once Chad started to call her by her first name
and stopped when it had half passed his lips. Margaret smiled.

"The war is over," she said, and Chad spoke eagerly:

"And you'll call me?"

"Yes, Chad."

The very leaves over Chad's head danced suddenly, and yet the girl was
so simple and frank and kind that the springing hope in his breast was
as quickly chilled.

"Did he ever speak of me except about business matters?"

"Never at all at first," said Margaret, blushing again
incomprehensively, "but he forgave you before he died."

"Thank God for that!"

"And you will see what he did for you--the last thing of his life."

They were crossing the field now.

"I have seen Melissa," said Margaret, suddenly. Chad was so startled
that he stopped in the path.

"She came all the way from the mountains to ask if you were dead, and
to tell me about--about your mother. She had just learned it, she said,
and she did not know that you knew. And I never let her know that I
knew, since I supposed you had some reason for not wanting her to know."

"I did," said Chad, sadly, but he did not tell his reason. Melissa
would never have learned the one thing from him as Margaret would not
learn the other now.

"She came on foot to ask about you and to defend you against--against
me. And she went back afoot. She disappeared one morning before we got
up. She seemed very ill, too, and unhappy. She was coughing all the
time, and I wakened one night and heard her sobbing, but she was so
sullen and fierce that I was almost afraid of her. Next morning she was
gone. I would have taken her part of the way home myself. Poor thing!"
Chad was walking with his head bent.

"I'm going down to see her before I go West."

"You are going West--to live?"

"Yes."

They had reached the yard gate now which creaked on rusty hinges when
Chad pulled it open. The yard was running wild with plantains, the
gravelled walk was overgrown, the house was closed, shuttered, and
dark, and the spirit of desolation overhung the place, but the ruin
looked gentle in the moonlight. Chad's throat hurt and his eyes filled.

"I want to show you now the last thing he did," said Margaret. Her eyes
lighted with tenderness and she led him wondering down through the
tangled garden to the old family graveyard.

"Climb over and look, Chad," she said, leaning over the wall.

There was the grave of the Major's father which he knew so well; next
that, to the left, was a new mound under which rested the Major
himself. To the right was a stone marked "Chadwick Buford, born in
Virginia, 1750, died in Kentucky"--and then another stone marked simply:

Mary Buford.

"He had both brought from the mountains," said Margaret, softly, "and
the last time he was out of the house was when he leaned here to watch
them buried there. He said there would always be a place next your
mother for you. 'Tell the boy that,' he said." Chad put his arms around
the tombstone and then sank on one knee by his mother's grave. It was
strewn with withered violets.

"You--YOU did that, Margaret?"

Margaret nodded through her tears.

 . . . . .


The wonder of it! They stood very still, looking for a long time into
each other's eyes. Could the veil of the hereafter have been lifted for
them at that moment and they have seen themselves walking that same
garden path, hand in hand, their faces seamed with age to other eyes,
but changed in not a line to them, the vision would not have added a
jot to their perfect faith. They would have nodded to each other and
smiled--"Yes, we know, we know!" The night, the rushing earth, the
star-swept spaces of the infinite held no greater wonder than was
theirs--they held no wonder at all. The moon shone, that night, for
them; the wind whispered, leaves danced, flowers nodded, and crickets
chirped from the grass for them; the farthest star kept eternal lids
apart just for them and beyond, the Maker himself looked down, that
night, just to bless them.

Back they went through the old garden, hand in hand. No caress had ever
passed between these two. That any man could ever dare even to dream of
touching her sacred lips had been beyond the boy's imaginings--such was
the reverence in his love for her--and his very soul shook when, at the
gate, Margaret's eyes dropped from his to the sabre cut on his cheek
and she suddenly lifted her face.

"I know how you got that, Chad," she said, and with her lips she gently
touched the scar. Almost timidly the boy drew her to him. Again her
lips were lifted in sweet surrender, and every wound that he had known
in his life was healed.

 . . . . .

"I'll show you your horse, Chad."

They did not waken old Tom, but went around to the stable and Chad led
out a handsome colt, his satiny coat shining in the moonlight like
silver. He lifted his proud head, when he saw Margaret, and whinnied.

"He knows his mistress, Margaret--and he's yours."

"Oh, no, Chad."

"Yes," said Chad, "I've still got Dixie."

"Do you still call her Dixie?"

"All through the war."

Homeward they went through the dewy fields.

"I wish I could have seen the Major before he died. If he could only
have known how I suffered at causing him so much sorrow. And if you
could have known."

"He did know and so did I--later. All that is over now."

They had reached the stone wall and Chad picked up the flag again.

"This is the only time I have ever carried this flag, unless I--unless
it had been captured."

"You had captured it, Chad."

"There?" Chad pointed to the stile and Margaret nodded.

"There--here everywhere."

Seated on the porch, Mrs. Dean and Harry and Dan saw them coming across
the field and Mrs. Dean sighed.

"Father would not say a word against it, mother," said the elder boy,
"if he were here."

"No," said Dan, "not a word."

"Listen, mother," said Harry, and he told the two about Chad's ride for
Dan from Frankfort to Lexington. "He asked me not to tell. He did not
wish Margaret to know. And listen again, mother. In a skirmish one day
we were fighting hand to hand. I saw one man with his pistol levelled
at me and another with his sabre lifted on Chad. He saw them both. My
pistol was empty, and do you know what he did? He shot the man who was
about to shoot me instead of his own assailant. That is how he got that
scar. I did tell Margaret that."

"Yes, you must go down in the mountain first," Margaret was saying,
"and see if there is anything you can do for the people who were so
good to you--and to see Melissa. I am worried about her."

"And then I must come back to you?"

"Yes, you must come back to see me once more if you can. And then some
day you will come again and buy back the Major's farm"--she stopped,
blushing. "I think that was his wish Chad, that you and I--but I would
never let him say it."

"And if that should take too long?"

"I will come to you, Chad," said Margaret.

Old Mammy came out on the porch as they were climbing the stile.

"Ole Miss," she said, indignantly, "my Tom say that he can't get nary a
triflin' nigger to come out hyeh to wuk, an' ef that cawnfiel' ain't
ploughed mighty soon, it's gwine to bu'n up."

"How many horses are there on the place, Mammy?" asked Dan.

"Hosses!" sniffed the old woman. "They ain't NARY a hoss--nothin' but
two ole broken-down mules."

"Well, I'll take one and start a plough myself," said Harry.

"And I'll take the other," said Dan.

Mammy groaned.

 . . . . .

And still the wonder of that night to Chad and Margaret!

"It was General Hunt who taught me to understand--and forgive. Do you
know what he said? That every man, on both sides, was right--who did
his duty."

"God bless him," said Chad.



CHAPTER 31.

THE WESTWARD WAY

Mother Turner was sitting in the porch with old Jack at her feet when
Chad and Dixie came to the gate--her bonnet off, her eyes turned toward
the West. The stillness of death lay over the place, and over the
strong old face some preternatural sorrow. She did not rise when she
saw Chad, she did not speak when he spoke. She turned merely and looked
at him with a look of helpless suffering. She knew the question that
was on his lips, for she dumbly motioned toward the door and then put
her trembling hands on the railing of the porch and bent her face down
on them. With sickening fear, Chad stepped on the threshold--cap in
hand--and old Jack followed, whimpering. As his eyes grew accustomed to
the dark interior, he could see a sheeted form on a bed in the corner
and, on the pillow, a white face.

"Melissa!" he called, brokenly. A groan from the porch answered him,
and, as Chad dropped to his knees, the old woman sobbed aloud.

In low tones, as though in fear they might disturb the dead girl's
sleep, the two talked on the porch. Brokenly, the old woman told Chad
how the girl had sickened and suffered with never a word of complaint.
How, all through the war, she had fought his battles so fiercely that
no one dared attack him in her hearing. How, sick as she was, she had
gone, that night, to save his life. How she had nearly died from the
result of cold and exposure and was never the same afterward. How she
worked in the house and in the garden to keep their bodies and souls
together, after the old hunter was shot down and her boys were gone to
the war. How she had learned the story of Chad's mother from old Nathan
Cherry's daughter and how, when the old woman forbade her going to the
Bluegrass, she had slipped away and gone afoot to clear his name. And
then the old woman led Chad to where once had grown the rose-bush he
had brought Melissa from the Bluegrass, and pointed silently to a box
that seemed to have been pressed a few inches into the soft earth, and
when Chad lifted it, he saw under it the imprint of a human foot--his
own, made that morning when he held out a rose-leaf to her and she had
struck it from his hand and turned him, as an enemy, from her door.

Chad silently went inside and threw open the window to let the last
sunlight in: and he sat there, with his face as changeless as the still
face on the pillow, sat there until the sun went down and the darkness
came in and closed softly about her. She had died, the old woman said,
with his name on her lips.

 . . . . .

Dolph and Rube had come back and they would take good care of the old
mother until the end of her days. But, Jack--what should be done with
Jack? The old dog could follow him no longer. He could live hardly more
than another year, and the old mother wanted him--to remind her, she
said, of Chad and of Melissa, who had loved him. He patted his faithful
old friend tenderly and, when he mounted Dixie, late the next
afternoon, Jack started to follow him.

"No, Jack," said Chad, and he rode on, with his eyes blurred. On the
top of the steep mountain he dismounted, to let his horse rest a
moment, and sat on a log, looking toward the sun. He could not go back
to Margaret and happiness--not now. It seemed hardly fair to the dead
girl down in the valley. He would send Margaret word, and she would
understand.

Once again he was starting his life over afresh, with his old capital,
a strong body and a stout heart. In his breast still burned the spirit
that had led his race to the land, had wrenched it from savage and from
king, had made it the high temple of Liberty for the worship of
freemen--the Kingdom Come for the oppressed of the earth--and, himself
the unconscious Shepherd of that Spirit, he was going to help carry its
ideals across a continent Westward to another sea and on--who knows--to
the gates of the rising sun. An eagle swept over his head, as he rose,
and the soft patter of feet sounded behind him. It was Jack trotting
after him. He stooped and took the old dog in his arms.

"Go back home, Jack!" he said.

Without a whimper, old Jack slowly wheeled, but he stopped and turned
again and sat on his haunches--looking back.

"Go home, Jack!" Again the old dog trotted down the path and once more
he turned.

"Home, Jack!" said Chad.

The eagle was a dim, black speck in the band of yellow that lay over
the rim of the sinking sun, and after its flight, horse and rider took
the westward way.









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