Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come

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

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"Hello!"

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

"Hello!" answered the man.

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

"We don't keep people all night."

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 7. A FRIEND ON THE ROAD

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

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

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

"Howdye!" said Chad.

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

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

"I'm a-goin' thataway."

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

"Yes," he said, simply.

"Climb right in, my boy."

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

"Where are you from, little man?"

"I come from the mountains."

"The mountains?" said the Major.

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

"What are you doin' up here?"

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

"How did you happen to come away?"

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

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

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

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

"Foller'em," said Chad, sturdily.

"Does your father live down in the mountains?"

"No," said Chad, shortly.

The Major looked at the lad gravely.

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

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

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

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

"You haven't told me your
name."

"You hain't axed me."

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

"Chad," he said.

"Chad what?"

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

"I don't know," said Chad.

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

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

"Chadwick."

"Chad," corrected the boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What?" shouted the Major.

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

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

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

"Who were they, Tom?" he asked

The old driver turned:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All of them?" asked the Major.

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

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

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

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

"You hain't axed me."

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

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

"I don't know."

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

"Buford, Calvin Buford."

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

"What is it, Chad?"

"Nothin'--nothin'."

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

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

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

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

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

"It certainly is very odd!"

CHAPTER 8. HOME WITH THE MAJOR

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

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

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

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

On one corner was a great hemp factory.

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

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

"Pioneering, Major?" asked John Morgan.

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

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

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

"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How much am I offered for this horse?"

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

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

"One hundred dollars," said a voice.

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

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

"How much am I offered?"

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

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

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

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

"Five dollars!"

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

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

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

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

"Chad."

The auctioneer put his hand to one ear.

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

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

"Ah, Mr. Chad."

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

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

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

"Bought her," said Chad.

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

"Five dollars."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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