Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

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

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"I want to see Chad, your captain," she said, timidly.

"All right," said the soldier, courteously. "He's just below there and I guess
he's up. We are getting ready to start now. Come along."

"Oh, no!" said Melissa, hurriedly. "I can't go down there." It had just struck
her that Chad must not see her; but the picket thought she naturally did not
wish to face a lot of soldiers in her bedraggled and torn dress, and he said
quickly:

"All right. Give me your message and I'll take it to him." He smiled. "You can
wait here and stand guard."

Melissa told him hurriedly how she had come over the mountain and what was
going on over there, and the picket with a low whistle started down toward his
camp without another word.

Chad could not doubt the accuracy of the information--the picket had names and
facts.

"A girl, you say?"

"Yes, sir"--the soldier hesitated--"and a very pretty one, too. She came over
the mountain alone and on foot through this darkness. She passed the pickets
on the other side--pretending to be a sheep. She had a bell in her hand." Chad
smiled--he knew that trick.

"Where is she?"

"She's standing guard for me."

The picket turned at a gesture from Chad and led the way. They found no
Melissa. She had heard Chad's voice and fled up the mountain. Before daybreak
she was descending the mountain on the other side, along the same way,
tinkling her sheep-bell and creeping past the pickets. It was raining again
now and her cold had grown worse. Several times she had to muffle her face
into her shawl to keep her cough from betraying her. As she passed the ford
below the Turner cabin, she heard the splash of many horses crossing the river
and she ran on, frightened and wondering. Before day broke she had slipped
into her bed without arousing Mother Turner, and she did not get up that day,
but lay ill abed.

The splashing of those many horses was made by Captain Daniel Dean and his
men, guided by Rebel Jerry. High on the mountain side they hid their horses in
a ravine and crept toward the Gap on foot--so that while Daws with his gang
waited for Chad, the rebels lay in the brush waiting for him. Dan was merry
over the prospect:

"We will just let them fight it out," he said, "and then we'll dash in and
gobble 'em both up. That was a fine scheme of yours, Jerry."

Rebel Jerry smiled: there was one thing he had not told his captain--who those
rebels were. Purposely he had kept that fact hidden. He had seen Dan purposely
refrain from killing Chad Buford once and he feared that Dan might think his
brother Harry was among the Yankees. All this Rebel Jerry failed to
understand, and he wanted nothing known now that might stay anybody's hand.
Dawn broke and nothing happened. Not a shot rang out and only the smoke of the
guerillas' fire showed in the peaceful mouth of the Gap. Dan wanted to attack
the guerillas, but Jerry persuaded him to wait until he could learn how the
land lay, and disappeared in the bushes. At noon he came back.

"The Yankees have found out Daws is thar in the Gap," he said, "an' they are
goin' to slip over before day ter-morrer and s'prise him. Hit don't make no
difference to us, which s'prises which--does it?"

So the rebels kept hid through the day in the bushes on the mountain side, and
when Chad slipped through the Gap next morning, before day, and took up the
guerilla pickets, Dan had moved into the same Gap from the other side, and was
lying in the bushes with his men, near the guerillas' fire, waiting for the
Yankees to make their attack. He had not long to wait. At the first white
streak of dawn overhead, a shout rang through the woods from the Yankees to
the startled guerillas.

"Surrender!" A fusillade followed. Again:

"Surrender!" and there was a short silence, broken by low curses from the
guerillas, and a stern Yankee voice giving short, quick orders. The guerillas
had given up. Rebel Jerry moved restlessly at Dan's side and Dan cautioned
him.

"Wait! Let them have time to disarm the prisoners," he whispered.

"Now," he added, a little while later--"creep quietly, boys."

Forward they went like snakes, creeping to the edge of the brush whence they
could see the sullen guerillas grouped on one side of the fire--their arms
stacked, while a tall figure in blue moved here and there, and gave orders in
a voice that all at once seemed strangely familiar to Dan.

"Now, boys," he said, half aloud, "give 'em a volley and charge."

At his word there was a rattling fusillade, and then the rebels leaped from
the bushes and dashed on the astonished Yankees and their prisoners. It was
pistol to pistol at first and then they closed to knife thrust and musket
butt, hand to hand--in a cloud of smoke. At the first fire from the rebels
Chad saw his prisoner, Daws Dillon, leap for the stacked arms and disappear. A
moment later, as he was emptying his pistol at his charging foes, he felt a
bullet clip a lock of hair from the back of his head and he turned to see Daws
on the farthest edge of the firelight levelling his pistol for another shot
before he ran. Like lightning he wheeled and when his finger pulled the
trigger, Daws sank limply, his grinning, malignant face sickening as he fell.

The tall fellow in blue snapped his pistol at Dan, and as Dan, whose pistol,
too, was empty, sprang forward and closed with him, he heard a triumphant yell
behind him and Rebel Jerry's huge figure flashed past him. With the same
glance he saw among the Yankees another giant--who looked like another
Jerry--saw his face grow ghastly with fear when Jerry's yell rose, and then
grow taut with ferocity as he tugged at his sheath to meet the murderous knife
flashing toward him. The terrible Dillon twins were come together at last, and
Dan shuddered, but he saw no more, for he was busy with the lithe Yankee in
whose arms he was closed. As they struggled, Dan tried to get his knife and
the Yankee tugged for his second pistol each clasping the other's wrist. Not a
sound did they make nor could either see the other's face, for Dan had his
chin in his opponent's breast and was striving to bend him backward. He had
clutched the Yankee's right hand, as it went back for his pistol, just as the
Yankee had caught his right in front, feeling for his knife. The advantage
would have been all Dan's except that the Yankee suddenly loosed his wrist and
gripped him tight about the body in an underhold, so that Dan could not whirl
him round; but he could twist that wrist and twist it he did, with both hands
and all his strength. Once the Yankee gave a smothered groan of pain and Dan
heard him grit his teeth to keep it back. The smoke had lifted now, and, when
they fell, it was in the light of the fire. The Yankee had thrown him with a
knee-trick that Harry used to try on him when they were boys, but something
about the Yankee snapped, as they fell, and he groaned aloud. Clutching him by
the throat, Dan threw him oft--he could get at his knife now.

"Surrender!" he said, hoarsely.

His answer was a convulsive struggle and then the Yankee lay still.

"Surrender!" said Dan again, lifting his knife above the Yankee's breast, "or,
damn you, I'll--"

The Yankee had turned his face weakly toward the fire, and Dan, with a cry of
horror, threw his knife away and sprang to his feet. Straightway the Yankee's
closed eyes opened and he smiled faintly.

"Why, Dan, is that you?" he asked. "I thought it would come," he added,
quietly, and then Harry Dean lapsed into unconsciousness.

Thus, at its best, this fratricidal war was being fought out that daybreak in
one little hollow of the Kentucky mountains and thus, at its worst, it was
being fought out in another little hollow scarcely twenty yards away, where
the giant twins--Rebel Jerry and Yankee Jake--who did know they were brothers,
sought each other's lives in mutual misconception and mutual hate.

There were a dozen dead Federals and guerillas around the fire, and among them
was Daws Dillon with the pallor of death on his face and the hate that life
had written there still clinging to it like a shadow. As Dan bent tenderly
over his brother Harry, two soldiers brought in a huge body from the bushes,
and he turned to see Rebel Jerry Dillon. There were a half a dozen rents in
his uniform and a fearful slash under his chin--but he was breathing still.
Chad Buford had escaped and so had Yankee Jake.

CHAPTER 27. AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN'S MEN

In May, Grant simply said--Forward! The day he crossed the Rapidan, he said it
to Sherman down in Georgia. After the battle of the Wilderness he said it
again, and the last brutal resort of hammering down the northern buttress and
sea-wall of the rebellion--old Virginia--and Atlanta, the keystone of the
Confederate arch, was well under way. Throughout those bloody days Chad was
with Grant and Harry Dean was with Sherman on his terrible trisecting march to
the sea. For, after the fight between Rebels and Yankees and Daws Dillon's
guerilla band, over in Kentucky, Dan, coming back from another raid into the
Bluegrass, had found his brother gone. Harry had refused to accept a parole
and had escaped. Not a man, Dan was told, fired a shot at him, as he ran. One
soldier raised his musket, but Renfrew the Silent struck the muzzle upward.

In September, Atlanta fell and, in that same month, Dan saw his great leader,
John Morgan, dead in Tennessee. In December, the Confederacy toppled at the
west under Thomas's blows at Nashville. In the spring of '65, one hundred and
thirty-five thousand wretched, broken-down rebels, from Richmond to the Rio
Grande, confronted Grant's million men, and in April, Five Forks was the
beginning of the final end everywhere.

At midnight, Captain Daniel Dean, bearer of dispatches to the great
Confederate General in Virginia, rode out of abandoned Richmond with the
cavalry of young Fitzhugh Lee. They had threaded their way amid troops,
trains, and artillery across the bridge. The city was on fire. By its light,
the stream of humanity was pouring out of town--Davis and his cabinet,
citizens, soldiers, down to the mechanics in the armories and workshops. The
chief concern with all was the same, a little to eat for a few days; for, with
the morning, the enemy would come and Confederate money would be as mist. Afar
off the little fleet of Confederate gunboats blazed and the thundering
explosions of their magazines split the clear air. Freight depots with
supplies were burning. Plunderers were spreading the fires and slipping like
ghouls through red light and black shadows. At daybreak the last retreating
gun rumbled past and, at sunrise, Dan looked back from the hills on the
smoking and deserted city and Grant's blue lines sweeping into it.

Once only he saw his great chief--the next morning before day, when he rode
through the chill mist and darkness to find the head-quarters of the
commanding General--two little fires of rubbish and two ambulances--with Lee
lying on a blanket under the open sky. He rose, as Dan drew near, and the
firelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful face. He looked so sad and so
noble that the boy's heart was wrenched, and as Dan turned away, he said,
brokenly:

"General, I am General Dean's son, and I want to thank you--" He could get no
farther. Lee laid one hand on his shoulder.

"Be as good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode back the
pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of Virginia--through ranks of
tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the broken debris of wagons and
abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and skeleton men.

All hope was gone, but Fitz Lee led his cavalry through the Yankee lines and
escaped. In that flight Daniel Dean got his only wound in the war--a bullet
through the shoulder. When the surrender came, Fitz Lee gave up, too, and led
back his command to get Grant's generous terms. But all his men did not go
with him, and among the cavalrymen who went on toward southwestern Virginia
was Dan--making his way back to Richard Hunt--for now that gallant Morgan was
dead, Hunt was general of the old command.

Behind, at Appomattox, Chad was with Grant. He saw the surrender--saw Lee look
toward his army, when he came down the steps after he had given up, saw him
strike his hands together three times and ride Traveller away through the
profound and silent respect of his enemies and the tearful worship of his own
men. And Chad got permission straightway to go back to Ohio, and he mustered
out with his old regiment, and he, too, started back through Virginia.

Meanwhile, Dan was drawing near the mountains. He was worn out when he reached
Abingdon. The wound in his shoulder was festering and he was in a high fever.
At the camp of Morgan's Men he found only a hospital left--for General Hunt
had gone southward--and a hospital was what he most needed now. As he lay,
unconscious with fever, next day, a giant figure, lying near, turned his head
and stared at the boy. It was Rebel Jerry Dillon, helpless from a sabre cut
and frightfully scarred by the fearful wounds his brother, Yankee Jake, had
given him. And thus, Chadwick Buford, making for the Ohio, saw the two strange
messmates, a few days later, when he rode into the deserted rebel camp.

All was over. Red Mars had passed beyond the horizon and the white Star of
Peace already shone faintly on the ravaged South. The shattered remnants of
Morgan's cavalry, pall-bearers of the Lost Cause--had gone South--bare-footed
and in rags--to guard Jefferson Davis to safety, and Chad's heart was wrung
when he stepped into the little hospital they had left behind--a space cleared
into a thicket of rhododendron. There was not a tent--there was little
medicine--little food. The drizzling rain dropped on the group of ragged sick
men from the branches above them. Nearly all were youthful, and the youngest
was a mere boy, who lay delirious with his head on the root of a tree. As Chad
stood looking, the boy opened his eyes and his mouth twitched with pain.

"Hello, you damned Yankee." Again his mouth twitched and again the old
dare-devil light that Chad knew so well kindled in his hazy eyes.

"I said," he repeated, distinctly, "Hello, you damned Yank. DAMNED Yank I
said." Chad beckoned to two men.

"Go bring a stretcher."

The men shook their heads with a grim smile--they had no stretcher.

The boy talked dreamily.

"Say, Yank, didn't we give you hell in--oh, well, in lots o' places. But
you've got me." The two soldiers were lifting him in their arms. "Goin' to
take me to prison? Goin' to take me out to shoot me, Yank? You ARE a damned
Yank." A hoarse growl rose behind them and the giant lifted himself on one
elbow, swaying his head from side to side.

"Let that boy alone!" Dan nodded back at him confidently.

"That's all right, Jerry. This Yank's a friend of mine." His brow wrinkled.
"At any rate he looks like somebody I know. He's goin' to give me something to
eat and get me well--like hell," he added to himself--passing off into
unconsciousness again. Chad had the lad carried to his own tent, had him
stripped, bathed, and bandaged and stood looking down at him. It was hard to
believe that the broken, aged youth was the red-cheeked, vigorous lad whom he
had known as Daniel Dean. He was ragged, starved, all but bare-footed,
wounded, sick, and yet he was as undaunted, as defiant, as when he charged
with Morgan's dare-devils at the beginning of the war. Then Chad went back to
the hospital--for a blanket and some medicine.

"They are friends," he said to the Confederate surgeon, pointing at a huge
gaunt figure.

"I reckon that big fellow has saved that boy's life a dozen times. Yes,
they're mess-mates."

And Chad stood looking down at Jerry Dillon, one of the giant twins--whose
name was a terror throughout the mountains of the middle south. Then he turned
and the surgeon followed.

There was a rustle of branches on one side when they were gone, and at the
sound the wounded man lifted his head. The branches parted and the oxlike face
of Yankee Jake peered through. For a full minute, the two brothers stared at
each other.

"I reckon you got me, Jake," said Jerry.

"I been lookin' fer ye a long while," said Jake, simply, and he smiled
strangely as he moved slowly forward and looked down at his enemy--his heavy
head wagging from side to side. Jerry was fumbling at his belt. The big knife
flashed, but Jake's hand was as quick as its gleam, and he had the wrist that
held it. His great fingers crushed together, the blade dropped on the ground,
and again the big twins looked at each other. Slowly, Yankee Jake picked up
the knife. The other moved not a muscle and in his fierce eyes was no plea for
mercy. The point of the blade moved slowly down--down over the rebel's heart,
and was thrust into its sheath again. Then Jake let go the wrist.

"Don't tech it agin," he said, and he strode away. The big fellow lay
blinking. He did not open his lips when, in a moment, Yankee Jake slouched in
with a canteen of water. When Chad came back, one giant was drawing on the
other a pair of socks. The other was still silent and had his face turned the
other way. Looking up, Jake met Chad's surprised gaze with a grin.

A day later, Dan came to his senses. A tent was above him, a heavy blanket was
beneath him and there were clothes on his body that felt strangely fresh and
clean. He looked up to see Chad's face between the flaps of the tent.

"D'you do this?"

"That's all right," said Chad. "This war is over." And he went away to let Dan
think it out. When he came again, Dan held out his hand silently.

CHAPTER 28. PALL-BEARERS OF THE LOST CAUSE

The rain was falling with a steady roar when General Hunt broke camp a few
days before. The mountain-tops were black with thunderclouds, and along the
muddy road went Morgan's Men--most of them on mules which had been taken from
abandoned wagons when news of the surrender came--without saddles and with
blind bridles or rope halters--the rest slopping along through the yellow mud
on foot--literally--for few of them had shoes; they were on their way to
protect Davis and join Johnston, now that Lee was no more. There was no
murmuring, no faltering, and it touched Richard Hunt to observe that they were
now more prompt to obedience, when it was optional with them whether they
should go or stay, than they had ever been in the proudest days of the
Confederacy.

Threatened from Tennessee and cut off from Richmond, Hunt had made up his mind
to march eastward to join Lee, when the news of the surrender came. Had the
sun at that moment dropped suddenly to the horizon from the heaven above them,
those Confederates would have been hardly more startled or plunged into deeper
despair. Crowds of infantry threw down their arms and, with the rest, all
sense of discipline was lost. Of the cavalry, however, not more than ten men
declined to march south, and out they moved through the drenching rain in a
silence that was broken only with a single cheer when ninety men from another
Kentucky brigade joined them, who, too, felt that as long as the Confederate
Government survived, there was work for them to do. So on they went to keep up
the struggle, if the word was given, skirmishing, fighting and slipping past
the enemies that were hemming them in, on with Davis, his cabinet, and General
Breckinridge to join Taylor and Forrest in Alabama. Across the border of South
Carolina, an irate old lady upbraided Hunt for allowing his soldiers to take
forage from her barn.

"You are a gang of thieving Kentuckians," she said, hotly; "you are afraid to
go home, while our boys are surrendering decently."

"Madam!"--Renfrew the Silent spoke--spoke from the depths of his once
brilliant jacket--"you South Carolinians had a good deal to say about getting
up this war, but we Kentuckians have contracted to close it out."

Then came the last Confederate council of war. In turn, each officer spoke of
his men and of himself and each to the same effect; the cause was lost and
there was no use in prolonging the war.

"We will give our lives to secure your safety, but we cannot urge our men to
struggle against a fate that is inevitable, and perhaps thus forfeit all hope
of a restoration to their homes and friends."

Davis was affable, dignified, calm, undaunted.

"I will hear of no plan that is concerned only with my safety. A few brave men
can prolong the war until this panic has passed, and they will be a nucleus
for thousands more."

The answer was silence, as the gaunt, beaten man looked from face to face. He
rose with an effort.

"I see all hope is gone," he said, bitterly, and though his calm remained, his
bearing was less erect, his face was deathly pale and his step so infirm that
he leaned upon General Breckinridge as he neared the door--in the bitterest
moment, perhaps, of his life.

So, the old Morgan's Men, so long separated, were united at the end. In a
broken voice General Hunt forbade the men who had followed him on foot three
hundred miles from Virginia to go farther, but to disperse to their homes; and
they wept like children.

In front of him was a big force of Federal cavalry; retreat the way he had
come was impossible, and to the left, if he escaped, was the sea; but
dauntless Hunt refused to surrender except at the order of a superior, or
unless told that all was done that could be done to assure the escape of his
President. That order came from Breckinridge.

"Surrender," was the message. "Go back to your homes, I will not have one of
these young men encounter one more hazard for my sake."

That night Richard Hunt fought out his fight with himself, pacing to and fro
under the stars. He had struggled faithfully for what he believed, still
believed, and would, perhaps, always believe, was right. He had fought for the
broadest ideal of liberty as he understood it, for citizen, State and nation.
The appeal had gone to the sword and the verdict was against him. He would
accept it. He would go home, take the oath of allegiance, resume the law, and,
as an American citizen, do his duty. He had no sense of humiliation, he had no
apology to make and would never have--he had done his duty. He felt no
bitterness, and had no fault to find with his foes, who were brave and had
done their duty as they had seen it; for he granted them the right to see a
different duty from what he had decided was his. And that was all.

Renfrew the Silent was waiting at the smouldering fire. He neither looked up
nor made any comment when General Hunt spoke his determination. His own face
grew more sullen and he reached his hand into his breast and pulled from his
faded jacket the tattered colors that he once had borne.

"These will never be lowered as long as I live," he said, "nor afterwards if I
can prevent it." And lowered they never were. On a little island in the
Pacific Ocean, this strange soldier, after leaving his property and his
kindred forever, lived out his life among the natives with this bloodstained
remnant of the Stars and Bars over his hut, and when he died, the flag was
hung over his grave, and above that grave to-day the tattered emblem still
sways in southern air.

. . . . . .

A week earlier, two Rebels and two Yankees started across the mountain
together--Chad and Dan and the giant Dillon twins--Chad and Yankee Jake afoot.
Up Lonesome they went toward the shaggy flank of Black Mountain where the
Great Reaper had mowed down Chad's first friends. The logs of the cabin were
still standing, though the roof was caved in and the yard was a tangle of
undergrowth. A dull pain settled in Chad's breast, while he looked, and as
they were climbing the spur, he choked when he caught sight of the graves
under the big poplar.

There was the little pen that he had built over his foster-mother's
grave--still undisturbed. He said nothing and, as they went down the spur,
across the river and up Pine Mountain, he kept his gnawing memories to
himself. Only ten years before, and he seemed an old, old man now. He
recognized the very spot where he had slept the first night after he ran away
and awakened to that fearful never-forgotten storm at sunrise, which lived in
his memory now as a mighty portent of the storms of human passion that had
swept around him on many a battlefield. There was the very tree where he had
killed the squirrel and the rattlesnake. It was bursting spring now, but the
buds of laurel and rhododendron were unbroken. Down Kingdom Come they went.
Here was where he had met the old cow, and here was the little hill where Jack
had fought Whizzer and he had fought Tad Dillon and where he had first seen
Melissa. Again the scarlet of her tattered gown flashed before his eyes. At
the bend of the river they parted from the giant twins. Faithful Jake's face
was foolish when Chad took him by the hand and spoke to him, as man to man,
and Rebel Jerry turned his face quickly when Dan told him that he would never
forget him, and made him promise to come to see him, if Jerry ever took
another raft down to the capital. Looking back from the hill, Chad saw them
slowly moving along a path toward the woods--not looking at each other and
speaking not at all.

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