Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

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

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Beyond rose the smoke of the old Turner cabin. On the porch sat the old Turner
mother, her bonnet in her hand, her eyes looking down the river. Dozing at her
feet was Jack--old Jack. She had never forgiven Chad, and she could not
forgive him now, though Chad saw her eyes soften when she looked at the
tattered butternut that Dan wore. But Jack--half-blind and aged--sprang
trembling to his feet when he heard Chad's voice and whimpered like a child.
Chad sank on the porch with one arm about the old dog's neck. Mother Turner
answered all questions shortly.

Melissa had gone to the "Settlemints." Why? The old woman would not answer.
She was coming back, but she was ill. She had never been well since she went
afoot, one cold night, to warn some YANKEE that Daws Dillon was after him.
Chad started. It was Melissa who had perhaps saved his life. Tad Dillon had
stepped into Daws's shoes, and the war was still going on in the hills. Tom
Turner had died in prison. The old mother was waiting for Dolph and Rube to
come back--she was looking for them every hour, day and night She did not know
what had become of the school-master--but Chad did, and he told her. The
school-master had died, storming breastworks at Gettysburg. The old woman said
not a word.

Dan was too weak to ride now. So Chad got Dave Hilton, Melissa's old
sweetheart, to take Dixie to Richmond--a little Kentucky town on the edge of
the Bluegrass--and leave her there and he bought the old Turner canoe. She
would have no use for it, Mother Turner said--he could have it for nothing;
but when Chad thrust a ten dollar Federal bill into her hands, she broke down
and threw her arms around him and cried.

So down the river went Chad and Dan--drifting with the tide--Chad in the
stern, Dan lying at full length, with his head on a blue army-coat and looking
up at the over-swung branches and the sky and the clouds above them--down,
through a mist of memories for Chad--down to the capital.

And Harry Dean, too, was on his way home--coming up from the far South--up
through the ravaged land of his own people, past homes and fields which his
own hands had helped to lay waste.

CHAPTER 29. MELISSA AND MARGARET

The early spring sunshine lay like a benediction over the Dean household, for
Margaret and her mother were home from exile. On the corner of the veranda sat
Mrs. Dean, where she always sat, knitting. Under the big weeping willow in the
garden was her husband's grave. When she was not seated near it, she was there
in the porch, and to it her eyes seemed always to stray when she lifted them
from her work.

The mail had just come and Margaret was reading a letter from Dan, and, as she
read, her cheeks flushed.

"He took me into his own tent, mother, and put his own clothes on me and
nursed me like a brother. And now he is going to take me to you and Margaret,
he says, and I shall be strong enough, I hope, to start in a week. I shall be
his friend for life."

Neither mother nor daughter spoke when the girl ceased reading. Only Margaret
rose soon and walked down the gravelled walk to the stile.

Beneath the hill, the creek sparkled. She could see the very pool where her
brothers and the queer little stranger from the mountains were fishing the day
he came into her life. She remembered the indignant heart-beat with which she
had heard him call her "little gal," and she smiled now, but she could recall
the very tone of his voice and the steady look in his clear eyes when he
offered her the perch he had caught. Even then his spirit appealed
unconsciously to her, when he sturdily refused to go up to the house because
her brother was "feelin' hard towards him." How strange and far away all that
seemed now! Up the creek and around the woods she strolled, deep in memories.
For a long while she sat on a stone wall in the sunshine--thinking and
dreaming, and it was growing late when she started back to the house. At the
stile, she turned for a moment to look at the old Buford home across the
fields. As she looked, she saw the pike-gate open and a woman's figure enter,
and she kept her eyes idly upon it as she walked on toward the house. The
woman came slowly and hesitatingly toward the yard. When she drew nearer,
Margaret could see that she wore homespun, home-made shoes, and a poke-bonnet.
On her hands were yarn half-mits, and, as she walked, she pushed her bonnet
from her eyes with one hand, first to one side, then to the other--looking at
the locusts planted along the avenue, the cedars in the yard, the sweep of
lawn overspread with springing bluegrass. At the yard gate she stopped,
leaning over it--her eyes fixed on the stately white house, with its mighty
pillars. Margaret was standing on the steps now, motionless and waiting, and,
knowing that she was seen, the woman opened the gate and walked up the
gravelled path--never taking her eyes from the figure on the porch. Straight
she walked to the foot of the steps, and there she stopped, and, pushing her
bonnet back, she said, simply:

"Are you Mar-ga-ret?" pronouncing the name slowly and with great distinctness.

Margaret started.

"Yes," she said.

The girl merely looked at her--long and hard. Once her lips moved:

"Mar-ga-ret," and still she looked. "Do you know whar Chad is?"

Margaret flushed.

"Who are you?"

"Melissy."

Melissa! The two girls looked deep into each other's eyes and, for one
flashing moment, each saw the other's heart--bared and beating--and Margaret
saw, too, a strange light ebb slowly from the other's face and a strange
shadow follow slowly after.

"You mean Major Buford?"

"I mean Chad. Is he dead?"

"No, he is bringing my brother home."

"Harry?"

"No--Dan."

"Dan--here?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"As soon as my brother gets well enough to travel. He is wounded."

Melissa turned her face then. Her mouth twitched and her clasped hands were
working in and out. Then she turned again.

"I come up here from the mountains, afoot jus' to tell ye--to tell YOU that
Chad ain't no"-- she stopped suddenly, seeing Margaret's quick flush--"CHAD'S
MOTHER WAS MARRIED. I jus' found it out last week. He ain't no--"--she started
fiercely again and stopped again. "But I come here fer HIM--not fer YOU. YOU
oughtn't to 'a' keered. Hit wouldn't 'a' been his fault. He never was the same
after he come back from here. Hit worried him most to death, an' I know hit
was you--YOU he was always thinkin' about. He didn't keer 'cept fer you."
Again that shadow came and deepened. "An' you oughtn't to 'a' keered what he
was--and that's why I hate you," she said, calmly--"fer worryin' him an' bein'
so high-heeled that you was willin' to let him mighty nigh bust his heart
about somethin' that wasn't his fault. I come fer him--you understand--fer
HIM. I hate YOU!"

She turned without another word, walked slowly back down the walk and through
the gate. Margaret stood dazed, helpless, almost frightened. She heard the
girl cough and saw now that she walked as if weak and ill. As she turned into
the road, Margaret ran down the steps and across the fields to the turnpike.
When she reached the road-fence the girl was coming around the bend her eyes
on the ground, and every now and then she would cough and put her hand to her
breast. She looked up quickly, hearing the noise ahead of her, and stopped as
Margaret climbed the low stone wall and sprang down.

"Melissa, Melissa! You mustn't hate me. You mustn't hate ME." Margaret's eyes
were streaming and her voice trembled with kindness. She walked up to the girl
and put one hand on her shoulder. "You are sick. I know you are, and you must
come back to the house."

Melissa gave way then, and breaking from the girl's clasp she leaned against
the stone wall and sobbed, while Margaret put her arms about her and waited
silently.

"Come now," she said, "let me help you over. There now. You must come back and
get something to eat and lie down." And Margaret led Melissa back across the
fields.

CHAPTER 30. PEACE

It was strange to Chad that he should be drifting toward a new life down the
river which once before had carried him to a new world. The future then was no
darker than now, but he could hardly connect himself with the little fellow in
coon-skin cap and moccasins who had floated down on a raft so many years ago,
when at every turn of the river his eager eyes looked for a new and thrilling
mystery.

They talked of the long fight, the two lads, for, in spite of the war-worn
look of them, both were still nothing but boys--and they talked with no
bitterness of camp life, night attacks, surprises, escapes, imprisonment,
incidents of march and battle. Both spoke little of their boyhood days or the
future. The pall of defeat overhung Dan. To him the world seemed to be nearing
an end, while to Chad the outlook was what he had known all his life--nothing
to begin with and everything to be done. Once only Dan voiced his own trouble:

"What are you going to do, Chad--now that this infernal war is over? Going
into the regular army?"

"No," said Chad, decisively. About his own future Dan volunteered nothing--he
only turned his head quickly to the passing woods, as though in fear that Chad
might ask some similar question, but Chad was silent. And thus they glided
between high cliffs and down into the lowlands until at last, through a little
gorge between two swelling river hills, Dan's eye caught sight of an orchard,
a leafy woodland, and a pasture of bluegrass. With a cry he raised himself on
one elbow.

"Home! I tell you, Chad, we're getting home!" He closed his eyes and drew the
sweet air in as though he were drinking it down like wine. His eyes were
sparkling when he opened them again and there was a new color in his face. On
they drifted until, toward noon, the black column of smoke that meant the
capital loomed against the horizon. There Mrs. Dean was waiting for them, and
Chad turned his face aside when the mother took her son in her arms. With a
sad smile she held out her hand to Chad.

"You must come home with us," Mrs. Dean said, with quiet decision.

"Where is Margaret, mother?" Chad almost trembled when he heard the name.

"Margaret couldn't come. She is not very well and she is taking care of
Harry."

The very station had tragic memories to Chad. There was the long hill which he
had twice climbed--once on a lame foot and once on flying Dixie--past the
armory and the graveyard. He had seen enough dead since he peered through
those iron gates to fill a dozen graveyards the like in size. Going up in the
train, he could see the barn where he had slept in the hayloft the first time
he came to the Bluegrass, and the creek-bridge where Major Buford had taken
him into his carriage. Major Buford was dead. He had almost died in prison,
Mrs. Dean said, and Chad choked and could say nothing. Once, Dan began a
series of eager questions about the house and farm, and the servants and the
neighbors, but his mother's answers were hesitant and he stopped short. She,
too, asked but few questions, and the three were quiet while the train rolled
on with little more speed than Chad and Dixie had made on that long ago
night-ride to save Dan and Rebel Jerry. About that ride Chad had kept Harry's
lips and his own closed, for he wished no such appeal as that to go to
Margaret Dean. Margaret was not at the station in Lexington. She was not well
Rufus said; so Chad would not go with them that night, but would come out next
day.

"I owe my son's life to you, Captain Buford," said Mrs. Dean, with trembling
lip, "and you must make our house your home while you are here. I bring that
message to you from Harry and Margaret. I know and they know now all you have
done for us and all you have tried to do."

Chad could hardly speak his thanks. He would be in the Bluegrass only a few
days, he stammered, but he would go out to see them next day. That night he
went to the old inn where the Major had taken him to dinner. Next day he hired
a horse from the livery stable where he had bought the old brood mare, and
early in the afternoon he rode out the broad turnpike in a nervous tumult of
feeling that more than once made him halt in the road. He wore his uniform,
which was new, and made him uncomfortable--it looked too much like waving a
victorious flag in the face of a beaten enemy--but it was the only stitch of
clothes he had, and that he might not explain.

It was the first of May. Just eight years before, Chad with a burning heart
had watched Richard Hunt gayly dancing with Margaret, while the dead
chieftain, Morgan, gayly fiddled for the merry crowd. Now the sun shone as it
did then, the birds sang, the wind shook the happy leaves and trembled through
the budding heads of bluegrass to show that nature had known no war and that
her mood was never other than of hope and peace. But there were no fat cattle
browsing in the Dean pastures now, no flocks of Southdown sheep with frisking
lambs The worm fences had lost their riders and were broken down here and
there. The gate sagged on its hinges; the fences around yard and garden and
orchard had known no whitewash for years; the paint on the noble old house was
cracked and peeling, the roof of the barn was sunken in, and the cabins of the
quarters were closed, for the hand of war, though unclinched, still lay heavy
on the home of the Deans. Snowball came to take his horse. He was respectful,
but his white teeth did not flash the welcome Chad once had known. Another
horse stood at the hitching-post and on it was a cavalry saddle and a rebel
army blanket, and Chad did not have to guess whose it might be. From the
porch, Dan shouted and came down to meet him, and Harry hurried to the door,
followed by Mrs. Dean. Margaret was not to be seen, and Chad was glad--he
would have a little more time for self-control. She did not appear even when
they were seated in the porch until Dan shouted for her toward the garden; and
then looking toward the gate Chad saw her coming up the garden walk bare-
headed, dressed in white, with flowers in her hand; and walking by her side,
looking into her face and talking earnestly, was Richard Hunt. The sight of
him nerved Chad at once to steel. Margaret did not lift her face until she was
half-way to the porch, and then she stopped suddenly.

"Why, there's Major Buford," Chad heard her say, and she came on ahead,
walking rapidly. Chad felt the blood in his face again, and as he watched
Margaret nearing him--pale, sweet, frank, gracious, unconscious--it seemed
that he was living over again another scene in his life when he had come from
the mountains to live with old Major Buford; and, with a sudden prayer that
his past might now be wiped as clean as it was then, he turned from Margaret's
hand-clasp to look into the brave, searching eyes of Richard Hunt and feel his
sinewy fingers in a grip that in all frankness told Chad plainly that between
them, at least, one war was not quite over yet.

"I am glad to meet you, Major Buford, in these piping times of peace."

"And I am glad to meet you, General Hunt--only in times of peace," Chad said,
smiling.

The two measured each other swiftly, calmly. Chad had a mighty admiration for
Richard Hunt. Here was a man who knew no fight but to the finish, who would
die as gamely in a drawing-room as on a battle-field. To think of him--a
brigadier-general at twenty-seven, as undaunted, as unbeaten as when he heard
the first bullet of the war whistle, and, at that moment, as good an American
as Chadwick Buford or any Unionist who had given his life for his cause! Such
a foe thrilled Chad, and somehow he felt that Margaret was measuring them as
they were measuring each other. Against such a man what chance had he?

He would have been comforted could he have known Richard Hunt's thoughts, for
that gentleman had gone back to the picture of a ragged mountain boy in old
Major Buford's carriage, one court day long ago, and now he was looking that
same lad over from the visor of his cap down his superb length to the heels of
his riding-boots. His eyes rested long on Chad's face. The change was
incredible, but blood had told. The face was highly bred, clean, frank, nobly
handsome; it had strength and dignity, and the scar on his cheek told a story
that was as well known to foe as to friend.

"I have been wanting to thank you, not only for trying to keep us out of that
infernal prison after the Ohio raid, but for trying to get us out. Harry here
told me. That was generous."

"That was nothing," said Chad. "You forget, you could have killed me once
and--and you didn't." Margaret was listening eagerly.

"You didn't give me time," laughed General Hunt.

"Oh, yes, I did. I saw you lift your pistol and drop it again. I have never
ceased to wonder why you did that."

Richard Hunt laughed. "Perhaps I'm sorry sometimes that I did," he said, with
a certain dryness.

"Oh, no, you aren't, General," said Margaret.

Thus they chatted and laughed and joked together above the sombre tide of
feeling that showed in the face of each if it reached not his tongue, for,
when the war was over, the hatchet in Kentucky was buried at once and buried
deep. Son came back to father, brother to brother, neighbor to neighbor;
political disabilities were removed and the sundered threads, unravelled by
the war, were knitted together fast. That is why the postbellum terrors of
reconstruction were practically unknown in the State. The negroes scattered,
to be sure, not from disloyalty so much as from a feverish desire to learn
whether they really could come and go as they pleased. When they learned that
they were really free, most of them drifted back to the quarters where they
were born, and meanwhile the white man's hand that had wielded the sword went
just as bravely to the plough, and the work of rebuilding war-shattered ruins
began at once. Old Mammy appeared, by and by, shook hands with General Hunt
and made Chad a curtsey of rather distant dignity. She had gone into exile
with her "chile" and her "ole Mistis" and had come home with them to stay,
untempted by the doubtful sweets of freedom. "Old Tom, her husband, had
remained with Major Buford, was with him on his deathbed," said Margaret, "and
was on the place still, too old, he said, to take root elsewhere."

Toward the middle of the afternoon Dan rose and suggested that they take a
walk about the place. Margaret had gone in for a moment to attend to some
household duty, and as Richard Hunt was going away next day he would stay, he
said, with Mrs. Dean, who was tired and could not join them. The three walked
toward the dismantled barn where the tournament had taken place and out into
the woods. Looking back, Chad saw Margaret and General Hunt going slowly
toward the garden, and he knew that some crisis was at hand between the two.
He had hard work listening to Dan and Harry as they planned for the future,
and recalled to each other and to him the incidents of their boyhood. Harry
meant to study law, he said, and practise in Lexington; Dan would stay at home
and run the farm. Neither brother mentioned that the old place was heavily
mortgaged, but Chad guessed the fact and it made him heartsick to think of the
struggle that was before them and of the privations yet in store for Mrs. Dean
and Margaret.

"Why don't you, Chad?"

"Do what?"

"Stay here and study law," Harry smiled. "We'll go into partnership."

Chad shook his head. "No," he said, decisively. "I've already made up my mind.
I'm going West."

"I'm sorry," said Harry, and no more; he had learned long ago how useless it
was to combat any purpose of Chadwick Buford.

General Hunt and Margaret were still away when they got back to the house. In
fact, the sun was sinking when they came in from the woods, still walking
slowly, General Hunt talking earnestly and Margaret with her hands clasped
before her and her eyes on the path. The faces of both looked pale, even that
far away, but when they neared the porch, the General was joking and Margaret
was smiling, nor was anything perceptible to Chad when he said good-by, except
a certain tenderness in his tone and manner toward Margaret, and one fleeting
look of distress in her clear eyes. He was on his horse now, and was lifting
his cap.

"Good-by, Major," he said. "I'm glad you got through the war alive. Perhaps
I'll tell you some day why I didn't shoot you that morning." And then he rode
away, a gallant, knightly figure, across the pasture. At the gate he waved his
cap and at a gallop was gone.

After supper, a heaven-born chance led Mrs. Dean to stroll out into the lovely
night. Margaret rose to go too, and Chad followed. The same chance, perhaps,
led old Mammy to come out on the porch and call Mrs. Dean back. Chad and
Margaret walked on toward the stiles where still hung Margaret's
weather-beaten Stars and Bars. The girl smiled and touched the flag.

"That was very nice of you to salute me that morning. I never felt so bitter
against Yankees after that day. I'll take it down now," and she detached it
and rolled it tenderly about the slender staff.

"That was not my doing," said Chad, "though if I had been Grant, and there
with the whole Union army, I would have had it salute you. I was under orders,
but I went back for help. May I carry it for you?"

"Yes," said Margaret, handing it to him. Chad had started toward the garden,
but Margaret turned him toward the stile and they walked now down through the
pasture toward the creek that ran like a wind-shaken ribbon of silver under
the moon.

"Won't you tell me something about Major Buford? I've been wanting to ask, but
I simply hadn't the heart. Can't we go over there tonight? I want to see the
old place, and I must leave to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" said Margaret. "Why--I--I was going to take you over there
to-morrow, for I--but, of course, you must go to-night if it is to be your
only chance."

And so, as they walked along, Margaret told Chad of the old Major's last days,
after he was released from prison, and came home to die. She went to see him
every day, and she was at his bedside when he breathed his last. He had
mortgaged his farm to help the Confederate cause and to pay indemnity for a
guerilla raid, and Jerome Conners held his notes for large amounts.

"The lawyer told me that he believed some of the notes were forged, but he
couldn't prove it. He says it is doubtful if more than the house and a few
acres will be left." A light broke in on Chad's brain.

"He told you?"

Margaret blushed. "He left all he had to me," she said, simply.

"I'm so glad," said Chad.

"Except a horse which belongs to you. The old mare is dead."

"Dear old Major!"

At the stone fence Margaret reached for the flag.

"We'll leave it here until we come back," she said, dropping it in a shadow.
Somehow the talk of Major Buford seemed to bring them nearer together--so near
that once Chad started to call her by her first name and stopped when it had
half passed his lips. Margaret smiled.

"The war is over," she said, and Chad spoke eagerly:

"And you'll call me?"

"Yes, Chad."

The very leaves over Chad's head danced suddenly, and yet the girl was so
simple and frank and kind that the springing hope in his breast was as quickly
chilled.

"Did he ever speak of me except about business matters?"

"Never at all at first," said Margaret, blushing again incomprehensively, "but
he forgave you before he died."

"Thank God for that!"

"And you will see what he did for you--the last thing of his life."

They were crossing the field now.

"I have seen Melissa," said Margaret, suddenly. Chad was so startled that he
stopped in the path.

"She came all the way from the mountains to ask if you were dead, and to tell
me about--about your mother. She had just learned it, she said, and she did
not know that you knew. And I never let her know that I knew, since I supposed
you had some reason for not wanting her to know."

"I did," said Chad, sadly, but he did not tell his reason. Melissa would never
have learned the one thing from him as Margaret would not learn the other now.

"She came on foot to ask about you and to defend you against--against me. And
she went back afoot. She disappeared one morning before we got up. She seemed
very ill, too, and unhappy. She was coughing all the time, and I wakened one
night and heard her sobbing, but she was so sullen and fierce that I was
almost afraid of her. Next morning she was gone. I would have taken her part
of the way home myself. Poor thing!" Chad was walking with his head bent.

"I'm going down to see her before I go West."

"You are going West--to live?"

"Yes."

They had reached the yard gate now which creaked on rusty hinges when Chad
pulled it open. The yard was running wild with plantains, the gravelled walk
was overgrown, the house was closed, shuttered, and dark, and the spirit of
desolation overhung the place, but the ruin looked gentle in the moonlight.
Chad's throat hurt and his eyes filled.

"I want to show you now the last thing he did," said Margaret. Her eyes
lighted with tenderness and she led him wondering down through the tangled
garden to the old family graveyard.

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