Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

J >> John Fox, Jr. >> The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

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The three Confederates did not stay long at the Deans'. Jerry Dillon was on
the lookout, and even while the Deans were at dinner, Rufus ran in with the
familiar cry that Yankees were coming. It was a regiment from an adjoining
county, but Colonel Hunt finished his coffee, amid all the excitement, most
leisurely.

"You'll pardon us for eating and running, won't you, Mrs. Dean?" It was the
first time in her life that Mrs. Dean ever speeded a parting guest.

"Oh, do hurry, Colonel--please, please." Dan laughed.

"Good-by, Harry," he said. "We'll give you a week or two at home before we get
that exchange."

"Don't make it any longer than necessary, please," said Harry, gravely.

"We're coming back again, Mrs. Dean," said he Colonel, and then in a lower
tone to Margaret: "I'm coming often," he added, and Margaret blushed in a way
that would not have given very great joy to one Chadwick Buford.

Very leisurely the three rode out to the pike gate, where they halted and
surveyed the advancing column, which was still several hundred yards away, and
then with a last wave of their caps, started in a slow gallop for town. The
advance guard started suddenly in pursuit, and the Deans saw Dan turn in his
saddle and heard his defiant yell. Margaret ran down and fixed her flag in its
place on the fence--Harry watching her.

"Mother," he said, sadly, "you don't know what trouble you may be laying
up for yourself."

Fate could hardly lay up more than what she already had, but the mother
smiled.

"I can do nothing with Margaret," she said.

In town the Federal flags had been furled and the Stars and Bars thrown out to
the wind. Morgan was preparing to march when Dan and Colonel Hunt galloped up
to head-quarters.

"They're coming," said Hunt, quietly.

"Yes," said Morgan, "from every direction."

"Ah, John," called an old fellow, who, though a Unionist, believing in keeping
peace with both sides, "when we don't expect you--then is the time you come.
Going to stay long?"

"Not long," said Morgan, grimly. "In fact, I guess we'll be moving along now."

And he did--back to Dixie with his prisoners, tearing up railroads, burning
bridges and trestles, and pursued by enough Yankees to have eaten him and his
entire command if they ever could have caught him. As they passed into Dixie,
"Lightning" captured a telegraph office and had a last little fling at his
Yankee brethren.

"Head-quarters, Telegraph Dept. of Ky., Confederate States of America"--thus
he headed his General Order No. to the various Union authorities throughout
the State

"Hereafter," he clicked, grinning, "an operator will destroy telegraphic
instruments and all material in charge when informed that Morgan has crossed
the border. Such instances of carelessness as lately have been exhibited in
the Bluegrass will be severely dealt with.

"By order of

LIGHTNING,

"Gen. Supt. C. S. Tel. Dept."

Just about that time Chad Buford, in a Yankee hospital, was coming back from
the land of ether dreams. An hour later, the surgeon who had taken Dan's
bullet from his shoulder, handed him a piece of paper, black with faded blood
and scarcely legible.

"I found that in your jacket," he said. "Is it important?"

Chad smiled.

"No," he said. "Not now."

CHAPTER 25. AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA

Once more, and for the last time, Chadwick Buford jogged along the turnpike
from the Ohio to the heart of the Bluegrass. He had filled his empty
shoulder-straps with two bars. He had a bullet wound through one shoulder and
there was a beautiful sabre cut across his right cheek. He looked the soldier
every inch of him; he was, in truth, what he looked; and he was, moreover, a
man. Naturally, his face was stern and resolute, if only from habit of
authority, but he had known no passion during the war that might have seared
its kindness; no other feeling toward his foes than admiration for their
unquenchable courage and miserable regret that to such men he must be a foe.

Now, it was coming spring again--the spring of '64, and but one more year of
the war to come.

The capture of the Fourth Ohio by Morgan that autumn of '62 had given Chad his
long-looked-for chance. He turned Dixie's head toward the foothills to join
Wolford, for with Wolford was the work that he loved--that leader being more
like Morgan in his method and daring than any other Federal cavalryman in the
field behind him. In Kentucky, he left the State under martial sway once more,
and, thereafter, the troubles of rebel sympathizers multiplied steadily, for
never again was the State under rebel control. A heavy hand was laid on every
rebel roof. Major Buford was sent to prison again. General Dean was in
Virginia, fighting, and only the fact that there was no man in the Dean
household on whom vengeance could fall, saved Margaret and Mrs. Dean from
suffering, but even the time of women was to come.

On the last day of '62, Murfreesboro was fought and the second great effort of
the Confederacy at the West was lost. Again Bragg withdrew. On New Year's Day,
'63, Lincoln freed the slaves--and no rebel was more indignant than was
Chadwick Buford. The Kentucky Unionists, in general, protested: the
Confederates had broken the Constitution, they said; the Unionists were
helping to maintain that contract and now the Federals had broken the
Constitution, and their own high ground was swept from beneath their feet.
They protested as bitterly as their foes, be it said, against the Federals
breaking up political conventions with bayonets and against the ruin of
innocent citizens for the crimes of guerillas, for whose acts nobody was
responsible, but all to no avail. The terrorism only grew the more.

When summer came, and while Grant was bisecting the Confederacy at Vicksburg,
by opening the Mississippi, and Lee was fighting Gettysburg, Chad, with
Wolford, chased Morgan when he gathered his clans for his last daring
venture--to cross the Ohio and strike the enemy on its own hearth-stones--and
thus give him a little taste of what the South had long known from border to
border. Pursued by Federals, Morgan got across the river, waving a farewell to
his pursuing enemies on the other bank, and struck out. Within three days, one
hundred thousand men were after him and his two thousand daredevils, cutting
down trees behind him (in case he should return!), flanking him, getting in
his front, but on he went, uncaught and spreading terror for a thousand miles,
while behind him for six hundred miles country people lined the dusty road,
singing "Rally 'round the Flag, Boys," and handing out fried chicken and
blackberry-pie to his pursuers. Men taken afterward with typhoid fever sang
that song through their delirium and tasted fried chicken no more as long as
they lived. Hemmed in as Morgan was, he would have gotten away, but for the
fact that a heavy fog made him miss the crossing of the river, and for the
further reason that the first rise in the river in that month for twenty years
made it impossible for his command to swim. He might have fought out, but his
ammunition was gone. Many did escape, and Morgan himself could have gotten
away. Chad, himself, saw the rebel chief swimming the river on a powerful
horse, followed by a negro servant on another--saw him turn deliberately in
the middle of the stream, when it was plain that his command could not escape,
and make for the Ohio shore to share the fortunes of his beloved officers who
were left behind. Chad heard him shout to the negro:

"Go back, you will be drowned." The negro turned his face and Chad laughed--it
was Snowball, grinning and shaking his head:

"No, Mars John, no suh!" he yelled. "It's all right fer YOU! YOU can git a
furlough, but dis nigger ain't gwine to be cotched in no free State. 'Sides,
Mars Dan, he gwine to get away, too." And Dan did get away, and Chad, to his
shame, saw Morgan and Colonel Hunt loaded on a boat to be sent down to prison
in a State penitentiary! It was a grateful surprise to Chad, two months later,
to learn from a Federal officer that Morgan with six others had dug out of
prison and escaped.

"I was going through that very town," said the officer, "and a fellow, shaved
and sheared like a convict, got aboard and sat down in the same seat with me.
As we passed the penitentiary, he turned with a yawn--and said, in a
matter-of-fact way:

"'That's where Morgan is kept, isn't it?" and then he drew out a flask. I
thought he had wonderfully good manners in spite of his looks, and, so help
me, if he didn't wave his hand, bow like a Bayard, and hand it over to me:

"'Let's drink to the hope that Morgan may always be as safe as he is now.' I
drank to his toast with a hearty Amen, and the fellow never cracked a smile.
It was Morgan himself."

Early in '64 the order had gone round for negroes to be enrolled as soldiers,
and again no rebel felt more outraged than Chadwick Buford. Wolford, his
commander, was dishonorably dismissed from the service for bitter protests and
harsh open criticism of the Government, and Chad, himself, felt like tearing
off with his own hands the straps which he had won with so much bravery and
worn with so much pride. But the instinct that led him into the Union service
kept his lips sealed when his respect for that service, in his own State, was
well-nigh gone--kept him in that State where he thought his duty lay. There
was need of him and thousands more like him. For, while active war was now
over in Kentucky, its brood of evils was still thickening. Every county in the
State was ravaged by a guerilla band--and the ranks of these marauders began
to be swelled by Confederates, particularly in the mountains and in the hills
that skirt them. Banks, trains, public vaults, stores, were robbed right and
left, and murder and revenge were of daily occurrence. Daws Dillon was an open
terror both in the mountains and in the Bluegrass. Hitherto the bands had been
Union and Confederate but now, more and more, men who had been rebels joined
them. And Chad Buford could understand. For, many a rebel soldier--"hopeless
now for his cause," as Richard Hunt was wont to say, "fighting from pride,
bereft of sympathy, aid, and encouragement that he once received, and
compelled to wring existence from his own countrymen; a cavalryman on some
out-post department, perhaps, without rations, fluttering with rags; shod, if
shod at all, with shoes that sucked in rain and cold; sleeping at night under
the blanket that kept his saddle by day from his sore-backed horse; paid, if
paid at all, with waste paper; hardened into recklessness by war--many a rebel
soldier thus became a guerrilla--consoling himself, perhaps, with the thought
that his desertion was not to the enemy."

Bad as the methods of such men were, they were hardly worse than the means
taken in retaliation. At first, Confederate sympathizers were arrested and
held as hostages for all persons captured and detained by guerillas. Later,
when a citizen was killed by one of these bands, four prisoners, supposed to
be chosen from this class of free-booters, were taken from prison and shot to
death on the spot where the deed was done. Now it was rare that one of these
brigands was ever taken alive, and thus regular soldier after soldier who was
a prisoner of war, and entitled to consideration as such, was taken from
prison and murdered by the Commandant without even a court-martial. It was
such a death that Dan Dean and Rebel Jerry had narrowly escaped. Union men
were imprisoned even for protesting against these outrages, so that between
guerilla and provost-marshal no citizen, whether Federal or Confederate, in
sympathy, felt safe in property, life, or liberty. The better Unionists were
alienated, but worse yet was to come. Hitherto, only the finest chivalry had
been shown women and children throughout the war. Women whose brothers and
husbands and sons were in the rebel army, or dead on the battle-field, were
banished now with their children to Canada under a negro guard, or sent to
prison. State authorities became openly arrayed against provost-marshals and
their followers. There was almost an open clash. The Governor, a Unionist,
threatened even to recall the Kentucky troops from the field to come back and
protect their homes. Even the Home Guards got disgusted with their masters,
and for a while it seemed as if the State, between guerilla and
provost-marshal, would go to pieces. For months the Confederates had
repudiated all connection with these free-booters and had joined with Federals
in hunting them down, but when the State government tried to raise troops to
crush them, the Commandant not only ordered his troops to resist the State,
but ordered the muster-out of all State troops then in service.

The Deans little knew then how much trouble Captain Chad Buford, whose daring
service against guerillas had given him great power with the Union
authorities, had saved them--how he had kept them from arrest and imprisonment
on the charge of none other than Jerome Conners, the overseer; how he had
ridden out to pay his personal respects to the complainant, and that brave
gentleman, seeing him from afar, had mounted his horse and fled,
terror-stricken. They never knew that just after this he had got a furlough
and gone to see Grant himself, who had sent him on to tell his story to Mr.
Lincoln

"Go back to Kentucky, then," said Grant, with his quiet smile, "and if General
Ward has nothing particular for you to do, I want him to send you to me," and
Chad had gone from him, dizzy with pride and hope.

"I'm going to do something," said Mr. Lincoln, "and I'm going to do it right
away."

And now, in the spring of '64, Chad carried in his breast despatches from the
President himself to General Ward at Lexington.

As he rode over the next hill, from which he would get his first glimpse of
his old home and the Deans', his heart beat fast and his eyes swept both sides
of the road. Both houses: even the Deans'--were shuttered and closed--both
tenantless. He saw not even a negro cabin that showed a sign of life.

On he went at a gallop toward Lexington. Not a single rebel flag had he seen
since he left the Ohio, nor was he at all surprised; the end could not be far
off, and there was no chance that the Federals would ever again lose the
State.

On the edge of the town he overtook a Federal officer. It was Harry Dean, pale
and thin from long imprisonment and sickness. Harry had been with Sherman, had
been captured again, and, in prison, had almost died with fever. He had come
home to get well only to find his sister and mother sent as exiles to Canada.
Major Buford was still in prison, Miss Lucy was dead, and Jerome Conners
seemed master of the house and farm. General Dean had been killed, had been
sent home, and was buried in the garden. It was only two days after the
burial, Harry said, that Margaret and her mother had to leave their home. Even
the bandages that Mrs. Dean had brought out to Chad's wounded sergeant, that
night he had captured and lost Dan, had been brought up as proof that she and
Margaret were aiding and abetting Confederates. Dan had gone to join Morgan
and Colonel Hunt over in southwestern Virginia, where Morgan had at last got a
new command only a few months before. Harry made no word of comment, but
Chad's heart got bitter as gall as he listened. And this had happened to the
Deans while he was gone to serve them. But the bloody Commandant of the State
would be removed from power--that much good had been done--as Chad learned
when he presented himself, with a black face, to his general.

"I could not help it," said the General, quickly. "He seems to have hated the
Deans." And again read the despatches slowly. "You have done good work. There
will be less trouble now." Then he paused. "I have had a letter from General
Grant. He wants you on his staff." Again he paused, and it took the three past
years of discipline to help Chad keep his self-control. "That is, if I have
nothing particular for you to do. He seems to know what you have done and to
suspect that there may be something more here for you to do. He's right. I
want you to destroy Daws Dillon and his band. There will be no peace until he
is out of the way. You know the mountains better than anybody. You are the man
for the work. You will take one company from Wolford's regiment--he has been
reinstated, you know--and go at once. When you have finished that--you can go
to General Grant." The General smiled. "You are rather young to be so near a
major--perhaps."

A major! The quick joy of the thought left him when he went down the stairs to
the portico and saw Harry Dean's thin, sad face, and thought of the new grave
in the Deans' garden and those two lonely women in exile. There was one small
grain of consolation. It was his old enemy, Daws Dillon, who had slain Joel
Turner; Daws who had almost ruined Major Buford and had sent him to
prison--Daws had played no small part in the sorrows of the Deans, and on the
heels of Daws Dillon he soon would be.

"I suppose I am to go with you," said Harry.

"Why, yes," said Chad, startled; "how did you know?"

"I didn't know. How far is Dillon's hiding-place from where Morgan is?"

"Across the mountains." Chad understood suddenly. "You won't have to go," he
said, quickly.

"I'll go where I am ordered," said Harry Dean.

CHAPTER 26. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST

It was the first warm day of spring and the sunshine was very soothing to
Melissa as she sat on the old porch early in the afternoon. Perhaps it was a
memory of childhood, perhaps she was thinking of the happy days she and Chad
had spent on the river bank long ago, and perhaps it was the sudden thought
that, with the little they had to eat in the house and that little the same
three times a day, week in and week out, Mother Turner, who had been ailing,
would like to have some fish; perhaps it was the primitive hunting instinct
that, on such a day, sets a country boy's fingers itching for a squirrel rifle
or a cane fishing-pole, but she sprang from her seat, leaving old Jack to doze
on the porch, and, in half an hour, was crouched down behind a boulder below
the river bend, dropping a wriggling worm into a dark, still pool. As she sat
there, contented and luckless, the sun grew so warm that she got drowsy and
dozed--how long she did not know--but she awoke with a start and with a
frightened sense that someone was near her, though she could hear no sound.
But she lay still--her heart beating high--and so sure that her instinct was
true that she was not even surprised when she heard a voice in the thicket
above--a low voice, but one she knew perfectly well:

"I tell you he's a-comin' up the river now. He's a-goin' to stay with ole Ham
Blake ter-night over the mountain an' he'll be a-comin' through Hurricane Gap
'bout daylight termorrer or next day, shore. He's got a lot o' men, but we can
layway 'em in the Gap an' git away all right." It was Tad Dillon
speaking--Daws Dillon, his brother, answered:

"I don't want to kill anybody but that damned Chad--Captain Chad BUFORD, he
calls hisself."

"Well, we can git him all right. I heerd that they was a-lookin' fer us an'
was goin' to ketch us if they could."

"I wish I knowed that was so," said Daws with an oath. "Nary a one of 'em
would git away alive if I just knowed it was so. But we'll git CAPTAIN Chad
Buford, shore as hell! You go tell the boys to guard the Gap ter-night. They
mought come through afore day." And then the noise of their footsteps fainted
out of hearing and Melissa rose and sped back to the house.

From behind a clump of bushes above where she had sat, rose the gigantic
figure of Rebel Jerry Dillon. He looked after the flying girl with a grim
smile and then dropped his great bulk down on the bed of moss where he had
been listening to the plan of his enemies and kinsmen. Jerry had made many
expeditions over from Virginia lately and each time he had gone back with a
new notch on the murderous knife that he carried in his belt. He had but two
personal enemies alive now--Daws Dillon, who had tried to have him shot, and
his own brother, Yankee Jake. This was the second time he had been over for
Daws, and after his first trip he had persuaded Dan to ask permission from
General Morgan to take a company into Kentucky and destroy Daws and his band,
and Morgan had given him leave, for Federals and Confederates were chasing
down these guerillas now--sometimes even joining forces to further their
common purpose. Jerry had been slipping through the woods after Daws, meaning
to crawl close enough to kill him and, perhaps, Tad Dillon too, if necessary,
but after hearing their plan he had let them go, for a bigger chance might be
at hand. If Chad Buford was in the mountains looking for Daws, Yankee Jake was
with him. If he killed Daws now, Chad and his men would hear of his death and
would go back, most likely--and that was the thought that checked his finger
on the trigger of his pistol. Another thought now lifted him to his feet with
surprising quickness and sent him on a run down the river where his horse was
hitched in the bushes. He would go over the mountain for Dan. He could lead
Dan and his men to Hurricane Gap by daylight. Chad Buford could fight it out
with Daws and his gang, and he and Dan would fight it out with the men who
won--no matter whether Yankees or guerillas. And a grim smile stayed on Rebel
Jerry's face as he climbed.

On the porch of the Turner cabin sat Melissa with her hands clinched and old
Jack's head in her lap. There was no use worrying Mother Turner--she feared
even to tell her--but what should she do? She might boldly cross the mountain
now, for she was known to be a rebel, but the Dillons knowing, too, how close
Chad had once been to the Turners might suspect and stop her. No, if she went
at all, she must go after nightfall--but how would she get away from Mother
Turner, and how could she make her way, undetected through Hurricane Gap? The
cliffs were so steep and close together in one place that she could hardly
pass more than forty feet from the road on either side and she could not pass
that close to pickets and not be heard. Her brain ached with planning and she
was so absorbed as night came on that several times old Mother Turner
querulously asked what was ailing her and why she did not pay more heed to her
work, and the girl answered her patiently and went on with her planning.
Before dark, she knew what she would do, and after the old mother was asleep,
she rose softly and slipped out the door without awakening even old Jack, and
went to the barn, where she got the sheep-bell that old Beelzebub used to wear
and with the clapper caught in one hand, to keep the bell from tinkling, she
went swiftly down the road toward Hurricane Gap. Several times she had to dart
into the bushes while men on horseback rode by her, and once she came near
being caught by three men on foot--all hurrying at Daws Dillon's order to the
Gap through which she must go. When the road turned from the river, she went
slowly along the edge of it, so that if discovered, she could leap with one
spring into the bushes. It was raining--a cold drizzle that began to chill her
and set her to coughing so that she was half afraid that she might disclose
herself. At the mouth of the Gap she saw a fire on one side of the road and
could hear talking, but she had no difficulty passing it, on the other side.
But on, where the Gap narrowed--there was the trouble. It must have been an
hour before midnight when she tremblingly neared the narrow defile. The rain
had ceased, and as she crept around a boulder she could see, by the light of
the moon between two black clouds, two sentinels beyond. The crisis was at
hand now. She slipped to one side of the road, climbed the cliff as high as
she could and crept about it. She was past one picket now, and in her
eagerness one foot slipped and she half fell. She almost held her breath and
lay still.

"I hear somethin' up thar in the bresh," shouted the second picket. "Halt!"

Melissa tinkled the sheep-bell and pushed a bush to and fro as though a sheep
or a cow might be rubbing itself, and the picket she had passed laughed aloud.

"Goin' to shoot ole Sally Perkins's cow, air you?" he said, jeeringly. "Yes, I
heerd her," he added, lying; for, being up all the night before, he had
drowsed at his post. A moment later, Melissa moved on, making considerable
noise and tinkling her bell constantly. She was near the top now and when she
peered out through the bushes, no one was in sight and she leaped into the
road and fled down the mountain. At the foot of the spur another ringing cry
smote the darkness in front of her:

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Don't shoot!" she cried, weakly. "It's only me."

"Advance, 'Me,'" said the picket, astonished to hear a woman's voice. And then
into the light of his fire stepped a shepherdess with a sheep-bell in her
hand, with a beautiful, pale, distressed face, a wet, clinging dress, and
masses of yellow hair surging out of the shawl over her head. The ill startled
picket dropped the butt of his musket to the ground and stared.

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