Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
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"I knew where he was from right away," said Harry. "I've seen mountain-people
wearing caps like his up at Uncle Brutus's, when they come down to go to
Richmond."
The General frowned.
"Well, you won't see any more people like him up there again."
"Why, papa?"
"Because you aren't going to Uncle Brutus's any more."
"Why, papa?"
The mother put her hand on her husband's knee.
"Never mind, son," she said.
CHAPTER 10. THE BLUEGRASS
God's Country!
No humor in that phrase to the Bluegrass Kentuckian! There never was--there is
none now. To him, the land seems in all the New World, to have been the pet
shrine of the Great Mother herself. She fashioned it with loving hands. She
shut it in with a mighty barrier of mighty mountains to keep the mob out. She
gave it the loving clasp of a mighty river, and spread broad, level prairies
beyond that the mob might glide by, or be tempted to the other side, where the
earth was level and there was no need to climb; that she might send priests
from her shrine to reclaim Western wastes or let the weak or the unloving--if
such could be--have easy access to another land.
In the beginning, such was her clear purpose to the Kentuckian's eye, she
filled it with flowers and grass and trees, and fish and bird and wild beasts.
Just as she made Eden for Adam and Eve. The red men fought for the
Paradise--fought till it was drenched with blood, but no tribe, without mortal
challenge from another straightway, could ever call a rood its own. Boone
loved the land from the moment the eagle eye in his head swept its shaking
wilderness from a mountain-top, and every man who followed him loved the land
no less. And when the chosen came, they found the earth ready to receive
them--lifted above the baneful breath of river-bottom and marshland, drained
by rivers full of fish, filled with woods full of game, and
underlaid--all--with thick, blue, limestone strata that, like some divine
agent working in the dark, kept crumbling--ever crumbling--to enrich the soil
and give bone-building virtue to every drop of water and every blade of grass.
For those chosen people such, too, seemed her purpose--the Mother went to the
race upon whom she had smiled a benediction for a thousand years--the race
that obstacle but strengthens, that thrives best under an alien effort to
kill, that has ever conquered its conquerors, and that seems bent on the task
of carrying the best ideals any age has ever known back to the Old World from
which it sprang. The Great Mother knows! Knows that her children must suffer,
if they stray too far from her great teeming breasts. And how she has followed
close when this Saxon race--her youngest born--seemed likely to stray too
far--gathering its sons to her arms in virgin lands that they might suckle
again and keep the old blood fresh and strong. Who could know what danger
threatened it when she sent her blue-eyed men and women to people the
wilderness of the New World? To climb the Alleghenies, spread through the
wastes beyond, and plant their kind across a continent from sea to sea. Who
knows what dangers threaten now, when, his task done, she seems to be opening
the eastern gates of the earth with a gesture that seems to say--"Enter,
reclaim, and dwell therein!"
One little race of that race in the New World, and one only, has she kept
flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone--to that race only did she give no
outside aid. She shut it in with gray hill and shining river. She shut it off
from the mother state and the mother nation and left it to fight its own fight
with savage nature, savage beast, and savage man. And thus she gave the little
race strength of heart and body and brain, and taught it to stand together as
she taught each man of the race to stand alone, protect his women, mind his
own business, and meddle not at all; to think his own thoughts and die for
them if need be, though he divided his own house against itself; taught the
man to cleave to one woman, with the penalty of death if he strayed elsewhere;
to keep her-- and even himself--in dark ignorance of the sins against Herself
for which she has slain other nations, and in that happy ignorance keeps them
to-day, even while she is slaying elsewhere still.
And Nature holds the Kentuckians close even to-day--suckling at her breasts
and living after her simple laws. What further use she may have for them is
hid by the darkness of to-morrow, but before the Great War came she could look
upon her work and say with a smile that it was good. The land was a great
series of wooded parks such as one might have found in Merry England, except
that worm fence and stone wall took the place of hedge along the highways. It
was a land of peace and of a plenty that was close to easy luxury--for all.
Poor whites were few, the beggar was unknown, and throughout the region there
was no man, woman, or child, perhaps, who did not have enough to eat and to
wear and a roof to cover his head, whether it was his own roof or not. If
slavery had to be--then the fetters were forged light and hung loosely. And,
broadcast, through the people, was the upright sturdiness of the
Scotch-Irishman, without his narrowness and bigotry; the grace and chivalry of
the Cavalier without his Quixotic sentiment and his weakness; the jovial
good-nature of the English squire and the leavening spirit of a simple
yeomanry that bore itself with unconscious tenacity to traditions that seeped
from the very earth. And the wings of the eagle hovered over all.
For that land it was the flowering time of the age and the people; and the bud
that was about to open into the perfect flower had its living symbol in the
little creature racing over the bluegrass fields on a black pony, with a black
velvet cap and a white nodding plume above her shaking curls, just as the
little stranger who had floated down into those Elysian fields--with better
blood in his veins than he knew--was a reincarnation perhaps of the spirit of
the old race that had lain dormant in the hills. The long way from log-cabin
to Greek portico had marked the progress of the generations before her, and,
on this same way, the boy had set his sturdy feet.
CHAPTER 11. A TOURNAMENT
On Sunday, the Major and Miss Lucy took Chad to church--a country church built
of red brick and overgrown with ivy--and the sermon was very short, Chad
thought, for, down in the mountains, the circuit-rider would preach for
hours--and the deacons passed around velvet pouches for the people to drop
money in, and they passed around bread, of which nearly everybody took a
pinch, and a silver goblet with wine, from which the same people took a
sip--all of which Chad did not understand. Usually the Deans went to Lexington
to church, for they were Episcopalians, but they were all at the country
church that day, and with them was Richard Hunt, who smiled at Chad and waved
his riding-whip. After church Dan came to him and shook hands. Harry nodded to
him gravely, the mother smiled kindly, and the General put his hand on the
boy's head. Margaret looked at him furtively, but passed him by. Perhaps she
was still "mad" at him, Chad thought, and he was much worried. Margaret was
not shy like Melissa, but her face was kind. The General asked them all over
to take dinner, but Miss Lucy declined--she had asked people to take dinner
with her. And Chad, with keen disappointment, saw them drive away.
It was a lonely day for him that Sunday. He got tired staying so long at the
table, and he did not understand what the guests were talking about. The
afternoon was long, and he wandered restlessly about the yard and the
quarters. Jerome Conners, the overseer, tried to be friendly with him for the
first time, but the boy did not like the overseer and turned away from him. He
walked down to the pike gate and sat on it, looking over toward the Deans'. He
wished that Dan would come over to see him or, better still, that he could go
over to see Dan and Harry and--Margaret. But Dan did not come and Chad could
not ask the Major to let him go--he was too shy about it--and Chad was glad
when bedtime came.
Two days more and spring was come in earnest. It was in the softness of the
air, the tenderness of cloud and sky, and the warmth of the sunlight. The
grass was greener and the trees quivered happily. Hens scratched and cocks
crowed more lustily. Insect life was busier. A stallion nickered in the barn,
and from the fields came the mooing of cattle. Field-hands going to work
chaffed the maids about the house and quarters. It stirred dreamy memories of
his youth in the Major, and it brought a sad light into Miss Lucy's faded
eyes. Would she ever see another spring? It brought tender memories to General
Dean, and over at Woodlawn, after he and Mrs. Dean had watched the children go
off with happy cries and laughter to school, it led them back into the house
hand in hand. And it set Chad's heart aglow as he walked through the dewy
grass and amid the singing of many birds toward the pike gate. He, too, was on
his way to school--in a brave new suit of clothes--and nobody smiled at him
now, except admiringly, for the Major had taken him to town the preceding day
and had got the boy clothes such as Dan and Harry wore. Chad was worried at
first--he did not like to accept so much from the Major.
"I'll pay you back," said Chad. "I'll leave you my hoss when I go 'way, if I
don't," and the Major laughingly said that was all right and he made Chad,
too, think that it was all right. And so spring took the shape of hope in
Chad's breast, that morning, and a little later it took the shape of Margaret,
for he soon saw the Dean children ahead of him in the road and he ran to catch
up with them.
All looked at him with surprise--seeing his broad white collar with ruffles,
his turned-back, ruffled cuffs, and his boots with red tops; but they were too
polite to say anything. Still Chad felt Margaret taking them all in and he was
proud and confident. And, when her eyes were lifted to the handsome face that
rose from the collar and the thick yellow hair, he caught them with his own in
an unconscious look of fealty, that made the little girl blush and hurry on
and not look at him again until they were in school, when she turned her eyes,
as did all the other boys and girls, to scan the new "scholar." Chad's work in
the mountains came in well now. The teacher, a gray, sad-eyed, thin-faced man,
was surprised at the boy's capacity, for he could read as well as Dan, and in
mental arithmetic even Harry was no match for him; and when in the spelling
class he went from the bottom to the head in a single lesson, the teacher
looked as though he were going to give the boy a word of praise openly and
Margaret was regarding him with a new light in her proud eyes. That was a
happy day for Chad, but it passed after school when, as they went home
together, Margaret looked at him no more; else Chad would have gone by the
Deans' house when Dan and Harry asked him to go and look at their ponies and
the new sheep that their father had just bought; for Chad was puzzled and awed
and shy of the little girl. It was strange--he had never felt that way about
Melissa. But his shyness kept him away from her day after day until, one
morning, he saw her ahead of him going to school alone, and his heart thumped
as he quietly and swiftly overtook her without calling to her; but he stopped
running that she might not know that he had been running, and for the first
time she was shy with him. Harry and Dan were threatened with the measles, she
said, and would say no more. When they went through the fields toward the
school-house, Chad stalked ahead as he had done in the mountains with Melissa,
and, looking back, he saw that Margaret had stopped. He waited for her to come
up, and she looked at him for a moment as though displeased. Puzzled, Chad
gave back her look for a moment and turned without a word--still stalking
ahead. He looked back presently and Margaret had stopped and was pouting.
"You aren't polite, little boy. My mamma says a NICE little boy always lets a
little GIRL go first." But Chad still walked ahead. He looked back presently
and she had stopped again--whether angry or ready to cry, he could not make
out-- so he waited for her, and as she came slowly near he stepped gravely
from the path, and Margaret went on like a queen.
In town, a few days later, he saw a little fellow take off his hat when a lady
passed him, and it set Chad to thinking. He recalled asking the school-master
once what was meant when the latter read about a knight doffing his plume, and
the school-master had told him that men, in those days, took off their hats in
the presence of ladies just as they did in the Bluegrass now; but Chad had
forgotten. He understood it all then and he surprised Margaret, next morning,
by taking off his cap gravely when he spoke to her; and the little lady was
greatly pleased, for her own brothers did not do that, at least, not to her,
though she had heard her mother tell them that they must. All this must be
chivalry, Chad thought, and when Harry and Dan got well, he revived his old
ideas, but Harry laughed at him and Dan did, too, until Chad, remembering
Beelzebub, suggested that they should have a tournament with two rams that the
General had tied up in the stable. They would make spears and each would get
on a ram. Harry would let them out into the lot and they would have "a real
charge--sure enough." But Margaret received the plan with disdain, until Dan,
at Chad's suggestion, asked the General to read them the tournament scene in
"Ivanhoe," which excited the little lady a great deal; and when Chad said that
she must be the "Queen of Love and Beauty" she blushed prettily and thought,
after all, that it would be great fun. They would make lances of ash-wood and
helmets of tin buckets, and perhaps Margaret would make red sashes for them.
Indeed, she would, and the tournament would take place on the next Saturday.
But, on Saturday, one of the sheep was taken over to Major Buford's and the
other was turned loose in the Major's back pasture and the great day had to be
postponed.
It was on the night of the reading from "Ivanhoe" that Harry and Dan found out
how Chad could play the banjo. Passing old Mammy's cabin that night before
supper, the three boys had stopped to listen to old Tom play, and after a few
tunes, Chad could stand it no longer.
"I foller pickin' the banjer a leetle," he said shyly, and thereupon he had
taken the rude instrument and made the old negro's eyes stretch with
amazement, while Dan rolled in the grass with delight, and every negro who
heard ran toward the boy. After supper, Dan brought the banjo into the house
and made Chad play on the porch, to the delight of them all. And there, too,
the servants gathered, and even old Mammy was observed slyly shaking her
foot--so that Margaret clapped her hands and laughed the old woman into great
confusion. After that no Saturday came that Chad did not spend the night at
the Deans', or Harry and Dan did not stay at Major Buford's. And not a
Saturday passed that the three boys did not go coon-hunting with the darkies,
or fox-hunting with the Major and the General. Chad never forgot that first
starlit night when he was awakened by the near winding of a horn and heard the
Major jump from bed. He jumped too, and when the Major reached the barn, a
dark little figure was close at his heels.
"Can I go, too?" Chad asked, eagerly.
"Think you can stick on?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Get my bay horse. That old mare of yours is too slow."
The Major's big bay horse! Chad was dizzy with pride.
When they galloped out into the dark woods, there were the General and Harry
and Dan and half a dozen neighbors, sitting silently on their horses and
listening to the music of the hounds.
The General laughed.
"I thought you'd come," he said, and the Major laughed too, and cocked his
ear. "Old Rock's ahead," he said, for he knew, as did everyone there, the old
hound's tongue.
"He's been ahead for an hour," said the General with quiet satisfaction, "and
I think he'll stay there."
Just then a dark object swept past them, and the Major with a low cry hied on
his favorite hound.
"Not now, I reckon," he said, and the General laughed again.
Dan and Harry pressed their horses close to Chad, and all talked in low
voices.
"Ain't it fun?" whispered Dan. Chad answered with a shiver of pure joy.
"He's making for the creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched spurs to
his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush and whisking
around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and clattered across the
road and on! For a few moments the Major kept close to Chad, watching him
anxiously, but the boy stuck to the big bay like a jockey, and he left Dan and
Harry on their ponies far behind. All night they rode under the starlit sky,
and ten miles away they caught poor Reynard. Chad was in at the kill, with the
Major and the General, and the General gave Chad the brush with his own hand.
"Where did you learn to ride, boy?"
"I never learned," said Chad, simply, whereat the Major winked at his friends
and patted Chad on the shoulder.
"I've got to let my boys ride better horses, I suppose," said the General; "I
can't have a boy who does not know how to ride beating them this way."
Day was breaking when the Major and Chad rode into the stable-yard. The boy's
face was pale, his arms and legs ached, and he was so sleepy that he could
hardly keep his eyes open.
"How'd you like it, Chad?"
"I never knowed nothing like it in my life," said Chad.
"I'm going to teach you to shoot."
"Yes, sir," said Chad.
As they approached the house, a squirrel barked from the woods.
"Hear that, Chad?" said the Major. "We'll get him."
The following morning, Chad rose early and took his old rifle out into the
woods, and when the Major came out on the porch before breakfast the boy was
coming up the walk with six squirrels in his hand. The Major's eyes opened and
he looked at the squirrels when Chad dropped them on the porch. Every one of
them was shot through the head.
"Well, I'm damned! How many times did you shoot, Chad?"
"Seven."
"What--missed only once?"
"I took a knot fer a squirrel once," said Chad.
The Major roared aloud.
"Did I say I was going to teach you to shoot, Chad?"
"Yes, sir."
The Major chuckled and that day he told about those squirrels and that knot to
everybody he saw. With every day the Major grew fonder and prouder of the boy
and more convinced than ever that the lad was of his own blood.
"There's nothing that I like that that boy don't take to like a duck to
water." And when he saw the boy take off his hat to Margaret and observed his
manner with the little girl, he said to himself that if Chad wasn't a
gentleman born, he ought to have been, and the Major believed that he must be.
Everywhere, at school, at the Deans', with the darkies--with everybody but
Conners, the overseer, had became a favorite, but, as to Napoleon, so to Chad,
came Waterloo--with the long deferred tournament came Waterloo to Chad.
And it came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to
the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland--in the bottom of
a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to
fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes
dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the
dancers, were Richard Hunt and--Margaret. The poised bow fell, a merry tune
rang out, and Richard Hunt bowed low to his little partner, who, smiling and
blushing, dropped him the daintiest of graceful courtesies. Then the miracle
came to pass. Rage straightway shook Chad's soul--shook it as a terrier shakes
a rat--and the look on his face and in his eyes went back a thousand years.
And Richard Hunt, looking up, saw the strange spectacle, understood, and did
not even smile. On the contrary, he went at once after the dance to speak to
the boy and got for his answer fierce, white, staring silence and a clinched
fist, that was almost ready to strike. Something else that was strange
happened then to Chad. He felt a very firm and a very gentle hand on his
shoulder, his own eyes dropped before the piercing dark eyes and kindly smile
above him, and, a moment later, he was shyly making his way with Richard Hunt
toward Margaret.
It was on Thursday of the following week that Dan told him the two rams were
once more tied in his father's stable. On Saturday, then, they would have the
tournament. To get Mammy's help, Margaret had to tell the plan to her, and
Mammy stormed against the little girl taking part in any such undignified
proceedings, but imperious Margaret forced her to keep silent and help make
sashes and a tent for each of the two knights. Chad would be the "Knight of
the Cumberland" and Dan the "Knight of the Bluegrass." Snowball was to be
Dan's squire and black Rufus, Harry's body-servant, would be squire to Chad.
Harry was King John, the other pickaninnies would be varlets and vassals, and
outraged Uncle Tom, so Dan told him, would, "by the beard of Abraham," have to
be a "Dog of an Unbeliever." Margaret was undecided whether she would play
Rebecca, or the "Queen of Love and Beauty," until Chad told her she ought to
be both, so both she decided to be. So all was done--the spears fashioned of
ash, the helmets battered from tin buckets, colors knotted for the spears, and
shields made of sheepskins. On the stiles sat Harry and Margaret in royal
state under a canopy of calico, with indignant Mammy behind them. At each end
of the stable-lot was a tent of cotton, and before one stood Snowball and
before the other black Rufus, each with his master's spear and shield. Near
Harry stood Sam, the trumpeter, with a fox-horn to sound the charge, and four
black vassals stood at the stable-door to lead the chargers forth.
Near the stiles were the neighbors' children, and around the barn was gathered
every darky on the place, while behind the hedge and peeping through it were
the Major and the General, the one chuckling, the other smiling indulgently.
The stable-doors opened, the four vassals disappeared and came forth, each
pair leading a ram, one covered with red calico, the other with blue cotton,
and each with a bandanna handkerchief around his neck. Each knight stepped
forth from his tent, as his charger was dragged--ba-a-ing and butting--toward
it, and, grasping his spear and shield and setting his helmet on more firmly,
got astride gravely--each squire and vassal solemn, for the King had given
command that no varlet must show unseemly mirth. Behind the hedge, the Major
was holding his hands to his side, and the General was getting grave. It had
just occurred to him that those rams would make for each other like tornadoes,
and he said so.
"Of course they will," chuckled the Major. "Don't you suppose they know that?
That's what they're doing it for. Bless my soul!"
The King waved his hand just then and his black trumpeter tooted the charge.
"Leggo!" said Chad.
"Leggo!" said Dan.
And Snowball and Rufus let go, and each ram ran a few paces and stopped with
his head close to the ground, while each knight brandished his spear and dug
with his spurred heels. One charger gave a ba-a! The other heard, raised his
head, saw his enemy, and ba-a-ed an answering challenge. Then they started for
each other with a rush that brought a sudden fearsome silence, quickly
followed by a babel of excited cries, in which Mammy's was loudest and most
indignant. Dan, nearly unseated, had dropped his lance to catch hold of his
charger's wool, and Chad had gallantly lowered the point of his, because his
antagonist was unarmed. But the temper of rams and not of knights was in that
fight now and they came together with a shock that banged the two knights into
each other and hurled both violently to the ground. General Dean and the Major
ran anxiously from the hedge. Several negro men rushed for the rams, who were
charging and butting like demons. Harry tumbled from the canopy in a most
unkingly fashion. Margaret cried and Mammy wrung her hands. Chad rose dizzily,
but Dan lay still. Chad's elbow had struck him in the temple and knocked him
unconscious.
The servants were thrown into an uproar when Dan was carried back into the
house. Harry was white and almost in tears.
"I did it, father, I did it," he said, at the foot of the steps.
"No," said Chad, sturdily, "I done it myself."
Margaret heard and ran from the hallway and down the steps, brushing away her
tears with both hands.
"Yes, you did--you DID," she cried. "I hate you."
"Why, Margaret," said General Dan.
Chad startled and stung, turned without a word and, unnoticed by the rest,
made his way slowly across the fields.
CHAPTER 12. BACK TO KINGDOM COME
It was the tournament that, at last, loosed Mammy's tongue. She was savage in
her denunciation of Chad to Mrs. Dean--so savage and in such plain language
that her mistress checked her sharply, but not before Margaret had heard,
though the little girl, with an awed face, slipped quietly out of the room
into the yard, while Harry stood in the doorway, troubled and silent.
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