THE BUSHWHACKERS
&
OTHER STORIES

THE

Bushwhackers

CHAPTER I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who comes there?” he sternly demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty bitter pill, eh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But it’s got my name on it. It’s a-parolin’ of me,” said Hilary, “an’ I ain’t no non-combatant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stood dumfounded for a moment.

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

And with a bitter laugh he turned on his heel.

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

CHAPTER III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He glanced absently at her and said not a word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delia found her voice abruptly.

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

And thus it was settled.

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

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

THE PANTHER
OF
JOLTON’S RIDGE

CHAPTER I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

	PAGE
The Bushwhackers	[3]
The Panther of Jolton’s Ridge	[119]
The Exploit of Choolah, the Chickasaw	[217]

The bushwhackers & other stories

THE BUSHWHACKERS
&
OTHER STORIES

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