Books: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
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John Fox, Jr. >> The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come
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"Well, whar is Whizzer?"
Nobody answered.
"He ain't been seen, Squire, sence the evenin' afore the night o' the
killin'!" Chad's statement seemed to be true. Not a voice contradicted.
"An' I want to know if Daws seed signs o' killin' on Jack's head when he
jumped the fence, why them same signs didn't show when he got home."
Poor Chad! Here old Tad Dillon raised his hand.
"Axe the Turners, Squire," he said, and as the school-master on the outskirts
shrank, as though he meant to leave the crowd, the old man's quick eye caught
the movement and he added:
"Axe the school-teacher!"
Every eye turned with the Squire's to the master, whose face was strangely
serious straightway.
"Did you see any signs on the dawg when he got home?" The gaunt man hesitated,
with one swift glance at the boy, who almost paled in answer.
"Why," said the school-master, and again he hesitated, but old Joel, in a
voice that was without hope, encouraged him:
"Go on!"
"What was they?"
"Jack had blood on his muzzle, and a little strand o' wool behind one ear."
There was no hope against that testimony. Melissa broke away from her mother
and ran out to the road--weeping. Chad dropped with a sob to his bench and
put his arms around the dog: then he rose up and walked out the opening while
Jack leaped against his leash to follow. The school-master put out his hand
to stop him, but the boy struck it aside without looking up and went on. He
could not stay to see Jack condemned. He knew what the verdict would be, and
in twenty minutes the jury gave it, without leaving their seats.
"Guilty!"
The Sheriff came forward. He knew Jack and Jack knew him, and wagged his tail
and whimpered up at him when he took the leash.
"Well, by --, this is a job I don't like, an' I'm damned ef I'm agoin' to
shoot this dawg afore he knows what I'm shootin' him fer. I'm goin' to show
him that sheep fust. Whar's that sheep, Daws?"
Daws led the way down the road, over the fence, across the meadow, and up the
hill-side where lay the slain sheep. Chad and Melissa saw them coming--the
whole crowd--before they themselves were seen. For a minute the boy watched
them. They were going to kill Jack where the Dillons said he had killed the
sheep, and the boy jumped to his feet and ran up the hill a little way and
disappeared in the bushes, that he might not hear Jack's death-shot, while
Melissa sat where she was, watching the crowd come on. Daws was at the foot
of the hill, and she saw him make a gesture toward her, and then the Sheriff
came on with Jack--over the fence, past her, the Sheriff saying, kindly,
"Howdy, Melissa. I shorely am sorry ta have to kill Jack," and on to the dead
sheep, which lay fifty yards beyond. If the Sheriff expected to drop head and
tail and look mean he was greatly mistaken. Jack neither hung back nor
sniffed at the carcass. Instead he put one fore foot on it and with the other
bent in the air, looked without shame into the Sheriff's eyes--as much as to
say:
"Yes, this is a wicked and shameful thing, but what have I got to do with it?
Why are you bringing ME here?"
The Sheriff came back greatly puzzled and shaking his head. Passing Melissa,
he stopped to let the unhappy little girl give Jack a last pat, and it was
there that Jack suddenly caught scent of Chad's tracks. With one mighty bound
the dog snatched the rawhide string from the careless Sheriff's hand, and in
a moment, with his nose to the ground, was speeding up toward the woods. With
a startled yell and a frightful oath the Sheriff threw his rifle to his
shoulder, but the little girl sprang up and caught the barrel with both
hands, shaking it fiercely up and down and hieing Jack on with shriek after
shriek. A minute later Jack had disappeared in the bushes, Melissa was
running like the wind down the hill toward home, while the whole crowd in the
meadow was rushing up toward the Sheriff, led by the Dillons, who were
yelling and swearing like madmen. Above them, the crestfallen Sheriff waited.
The Dillons crowded angrily about him, gesticulating and threatening, while
he told his story. But nothing could be done--nothing. They did not know that
Chad was up in the woods or they would have gone in search of him--knowing
that when they found him they would find Jack--but to look for Jack now would
be like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. There was nothing to do, then,
but to wait for Jack to come home, which he would surely do--to get to
Chad--and it was while old Joel was promising that the dog should be
surrendered to the Sheriff that little Tad Dillon gave an excited shriek.
"Look up thar!"
And up there at the edge of the wood was Chad standing and, at his feet, Jack
sitting on his haunches, with his tongue out and looking as though nothing
had happened or could ever happen to Chad or to him.
"Come up hyeh," shouted Chad.
"You come down hyeh," shouted the Sheriff, angrily. So Chad came down, with
Jack trotting after him. Chad had cut off the rawhide string, but the Sheriff
caught Jack by the nape of the neck.
"You won't git away from me agin, I reckon."
"Well, I reckon you ain't goin' to shoot him," said Chad. "Leggo that dawg."
"Don't be a fool, Jim," said old Joel. "The dawg ain't goin' to leave the
boy." The Sheriff let go.
"Come on up hyeh," said Chad. "I got somethin' to show ye."
The boy turned with such certainty that with out a word Squire, Sheriff,
Turners, Dillons, and spectators followed. As they approached a deep ravine
the boy pointed to the ground where were evidences of some fierce
struggle--the dirt thrown up, and several small stones scattered about with
faded stains of blood on them.
"Wait hyeh!" said the boy, and he slid down the ravine and appeared again
dragging something after him. Tall Tom ran down to help him and the two threw
before the astonished crowd the body of a black and white dog. "Now I reckon
you know whar Whizzer is," panted Chad vindictively to the Dillons.
"Well, what of it?" snapped Daws
"Oh, nothin'," said the boy with fine sarcasm. "Only WHIZZER killed that
sheep and Jack killed Whizzer." From every Dillon throat came a scornful
grunt.
"Oh, I reckon so," said Chad, easily. "Look dhar!" He lifted the dead dog's
head, and pointed at the strands of wool between his teeth. He turned it
over, showing the deadly grip in the throat and close to the jaws, that had
choked the life from Whizzer--Jack's own grip.
"Ef you will jes' rickollect, Jack had that same grip the time afore--when I
pulled him off o' Whizzer."
"By --, that is so," said Tall Tom, and Dolph and Rube echoed him amid a
dozen voices, for not only old Joel, but many of his neighbors knew Jack's
method of fighting, which had made him a victor up and down the length of
Kingdom Come.
There was little doubt that the boy was right--that Jack had come on Whizzer
killing the sheep, and had caught him at the edge of the ravine, where the
two had fought, rolling down and settling the old feud between them in the
darkness at the bottom. And up there on the hill-side, the jury that
pronounced Jack guilty pronounced him innocent, and, as the Turners started
joyfully down the hill, the sun that was to have sunk on Jack stiff in death
sank on Jack frisking before them--home.
And yet another wonder was in store for Chad. A strange horse with a strange
saddle was hitched to the Turner fence; beside it was an old mare with a
boy's saddle, and as Chad came through the gate a familiar voice called him
cheerily by name. On the porch sat Major Buford.
CHAPTER 14. THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS
The quivering heat of August was giving way and the golden peace of autumn
was spreading through the land. The breath of mountain woods by day was as
cool as the breath of valleys at night. In the mountains, boy and girl were
leaving school for work in the fields, and from the Cumberland foothills to
the Ohio, boy and girl were leaving happy holidays for school. Along a rough,
rocky road and down a shining river, now sunk to deep pools with trickling
riffles between--for a drouth was on the land--rode a tall, gaunt man on an
old brown mare that switched with her tail now and then at a long-legged,
rough-haired colt stumbling awkwardly behind. Where the road turned from the
river and up the mountain, the man did a peculiar thing, for there, in that
lonely wilderness, he stopped, dismounted, tied the reins to an overhanging
branch and, leaving mare and colt behind, strode up the mountain, on and on,
disappearing over the top. Half an hour later, a sturdy youth hove in sight,
trudging along the same road with his cap in his hand, a long rifle over one
shoulder and a dog trotting at his heels. Now and then the boy would look
back and scold the dog and the dog would drop his muzzle with shame, until
the boy stooped to pat him on the head, when he would leap frisking before
him, until another affectionate scolding was due. The old mare turned her
head when she heard them coming, and nickered. Without a moment's hesitation
the lad untied her, mounted and rode up the mountain. For two days the man
and the boy had been "riding and tying," as this way of travel for two men
and one horse is still known in the hills, and over the mountain, they were
to come together for the night. At the foot of the spur on the other side,
boy and dog came upon the tall man sprawled at full length across a
moss-covered bowlder. The dog dropped behind, but the man's quick eye caught
him:
"Where'd that dog come from, Chad?" Jack put his belly to the earth and
crawled slowly forward--penitent, but determined.
"He broke loose, I reckon. He come tearin' up behind me 'bout an hour ago,
like a house afire. Let him go." Caleb Hazel frowned.
"I told you, Chad, that we'd have no place to keep him."
"Well, we can send him home as easy from up thar as we can from hyeh--let him
go."
"All right!" Chad understood not a whit better than the dog; for Jack leaped
to his feet and jumped around the school-master, trying to lick his hands,
but the school-master was absorbed and would none of him. There, the
mountain-path turned into a wagon-road and the school-master pointed with one
finger.
"Do you know what that is, Chad?"
"No, sir." Chad said "sir" to the school-master now.
"Well, that's"--the school-master paused to give his words effect--"that's
the old Wilderness Road."
Ah, did he not know the old, old Wilderness Road! The boy gripped his rifle
unconsciously, as though there might yet be a savage lying in ambush in some
covert of rhododendron close by. And, as they trudged ahead, side by side
now, for it was growing late, the school-master told him, as often before,
the story of that road and the pioneers who had trod it--the hunters,
adventurers, emigrants, fine ladies and fine gentlemen who had stained it
with their blood; and how that road had broadened into the mighty way for a
great civilization from sea to sea. The lad could see it all, as he listened,
wishing that he had lived in those stirring days, never dreaming in how
little was he of different mould from the stout-hearted pioneers who beat out
the path with their moccasined feet; how little less full of danger were his
own days to be; how little different had been his own life, and was his our
pose now--how little different after all was the bourn to which his own
restless feet were bearing him.
Chad had changed a good deal since that night after Jack's trial, when the
kind-hearted old Major had turned up at Joel's cabin to take him back to the
Bluegrass. He was taller, broader at shoulder, deeper of chest; his mouth and
eyes were prematurely grave from much brooding and looked a little defiant,
as though the boy expected hostility from the world and was prepared to meet
it, but there was no bitterness in them, and luminous about the lad was the
old atmosphere of brave, sunny cheer and simple self-trust that won people to
him.
The Major and old Joel had talked late that night after Jack's trial. The
Major had come down to find out who Chad was, if possible, and to take him
back home, no matter who he might be. The old hunter looked long into the
fire.
"Co'se I know hit 'ud be better fer Chad, but, Lawd, how we'd hate to give
him up. Still, I reckon I'll have to let him go, but I can stand hit better,
if you can git him to leave Jack hyeh." The Major smiled. Did old Joel know
where Nathan Cherry lived? The old hunter did. Nathan was a "damned old
skinflint who lived across the mountain on Stone Creek--who stole other
folks' farms and if he knew anything about Chad the old hunter would squeeze
it out of his throat; and if old Nathan, learning where Chad now was, tried
to pester him he would break every bone in the skinflint's body." So the
Major and old Joel rode over next day to see Nathan, and Nathan with his
shifting eyes told them Chad's story in a high, cracked voice that, recalling
Chad's imitation of it, made the Major laugh. Chad was a foundling, Nathan
said: his mother was dead and his father had gone off to the Mexican War and
never come back: he had taken the mother in himself and Chad had been born in
his own house, when he lived farther up the river, and the boy had begun to
run away as soon as he was old enough to toddle. And with each sentence
Nathan would call for confirmation on a silent, dark-faced daughter who sat
inside: "Didn't he, Betsy?" or "Wasn't he, gal?" And the girl would nod
sullenly, but say nothing. It seemed a hopeless mission except that, on the
way back, the Major learned that there were one or two Bufords living down
the Cumberland, and like old Joel, shook his head over Nathan's pharisaical
philanthropy to a homeless boy and wondered what the motive under it was--but
he went back with the old hunter and tried to get Chad to go home with him.
The boy was rock-firm in his refusal.
"I'm obleeged to you, Major, but I reckon I better stay in the mountains."
That was all Chad would say, and at last the Major gave up and rode back over
the mountain and down the Cumberland alone, still on his quest. At a
blacksmith's shop far down the river he found a man who had "heerd tell of a
Chad Buford who had been killed in the Mexican War and whose daddy lived
'bout fifteen mile down the river." The Major found that Buford dead, but an
old woman told him his name was Chad, that he had "fit in the War o' 1812
when he was nothin' but a chunk of a boy, and that his daddy, whose name,
too, was Chad, had been killed by Injuns some'eres aroun' Cumberland Gap." By
this time the Major was as keen as a hound on the scent, and, in a cabin at
the foot of the sheer gray wall that crumbles into the Gap, he had the
amazing luck to find an octogenarian with an unclouded memory who could
recollect a queer-looking old man who had been killed by Indians --"a ole
feller with the curiosest hair I ever did see," added the patriarch. His name
was Colonel Buford, and the old man knew where he was buried, for he himself
was old enough at the time to help bury him. Greatly excited, the Major hired
mountaineers to dig into the little hill that the old man pointed out, on
which there was, however, no sign of a grave, and, at last, they uncovered
the skeleton of an old gentleman in a wig and peruke! There was little doubt
now that the boy, no matter what the blot on his 'scutcheon, was of his own
flesh and blood, and the Major was tempted to go back at once for him, but it
was a long way, and he was ill and anxious to get back home. So he took the
Wilderness Road for the Bluegrass, and wrote old Joel the facts and asked him
to send Chad to him whenever he would come. But the boy would not go. There
was no definite reason in his mind. It was a stubborn instinct merely--the
instinct of pride, of stubborn independence--of shame that festered in his
soul like a hornet's sting. Even Melissa urged him. She never tired of
hearing Chad tell about the Bluegrass country, and when she knew that the
Major wanted him to go back, she followed him out in the yard that night and
found him on the fence whittling. A red star was sinking behind the
mountains. "Why won't you go back no more, Chad?" she said.
"'Cause I HAIN'T got no daddy er mammy." Then Melissa startled him.
"Well, I'd go--an' I hain't got no daddy er mammy." Chad stopped his
whittling.
"Whut'd you say, Lissy?" he asked, gravely.
Melissa was frightened--the boy looked so serious.
"Cross yo' heart an' body that you won't NUVER tell NO body." Chad crossed.
"Well, mammy said I mustn't ever tell nobody--but I HAIN'T got no daddy er
mammy. I heerd her a-tellin' the school-teacher." And the little girl shook
her head over her frightful crime of disobedience.
"You HAIN'T?"
"I HAIN'T!"
Melissa, too, was a waif, and Chad looked at her with a wave of new affection
and pity.
"Now, why won't you go back just because you hain't got no daddy an' mammy?"
Chad hesitated. There was no use making Melissa unhappy.
"Oh, I'd just ruther stay hyeh in the mountains," he said, carelessly--lying
suddenly like the little gentleman that he was--lying as he knew, and as
Melissa some day would come to know. Then Chad looked at the little girl a
long while, and in such a queer way that Melissa turned her face shyly to the
red star.
"I'm goin' to stay right hyeh. Ain't you glad, Lissy?"
The little girl turned her eyes shyly back again. "Yes, Chad," she said.
He would stay in the mountains and work hard; and when he grew up he would
marry Melissa and they would go away where nobody knew him or her: or they
would stay right there in the mountains where nobody blamed him for what he
was nor Melissa for what she was; and he would study law like Caleb Hazel,
and go to the Legislature--but Melissa! And with the thought of Melissa in
the mountains came always the thought of dainty Margaret in the Bluegrass and
the chasm that lay between the two--between Margaret and him, for that
matter; and when Mother Turner called Melissa from him in the orchard next
day, Chad lay on his back under an apple-tree, for a long while, thinking;
and then he whistled for Jack and climbed the spur above the river where he
could look down on the shadowed water and out to the clouded heaps of rose
and green and crimson, where the sun was going down under one faint white
star. Melissa was the glow-worm that, when darkness came, would be a
watch-fire at his feet--Margaret, the star to which his eyes were lifted
night and day--and so runs the world. He lay long watching that star. It hung
almost over the world of which he had dreamed so long and upon which he had
turned his back forever. Forever? Perhaps, but he went back home that night
with a trouble in his soul that was not to pass, and while he sat by the fire
he awoke from the same dream to find Melissa's big eyes fixed on him, and in
them was a vague trouble that was more than his own reflected back to him.
Still the boy went back sturdily to his old life, working in the fields, busy
about the house and stable, going to school, reading and studying with the
school-master at nights, and wandering in the woods with Jack and his rifle.
And he hungered for spring to come again when he should go with the Turner
boys to take another raft of logs down the river to the capital. Spring came,
and going out to the back pasture one morning, Chad found a long-legged,
ungainly creature stumbling awkwardly about his old mare--a colt! That, too,
he owed the Major, and he would have burst with pride had he known that the
colt's sire was a famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go
down the river again. He did not let the Major know he was coming and,
through a nameless shyness, he could not bring himself to go to see his old
friend and kinsman, but in Lexington, while he and the school-master were
standing on Cheapside, the Major whirled around a corner on them in his
carriage, and, as on the turnpike a year before, old Tom, the driver, called
out:
"Look dar, Mars Cal!" And there stood Chad.
"Why, bless my soul! Chad--why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had grown,
and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major insisted on taking
him home, and the school-master, too, who went reluctantly. Miss Lucy was
there, looking whiter and more fragile than ever, and she greeted Chad with a
sweet kindliness that took the sting from his unjust remembrance of her. And
what that failure to understand her must have been Chad better knew when he
saw the embarrassed awe, in her presence, of the school-master, for whom all
in the mountains had so much reverence. At the table was Thankyma'am waiting.
Around the quarters and the stable the pickaninnies and servants seemed to
remember the boy in a kindly genuine way that touched him, and even Jerome
Conners, the overseer, seemed glad to see him. The Major was drawn at once to
the grave school-master, and he had a long talk with him that night. It was
no use, Caleb Hazel said, trying to persuade the boy to live with the
Major--not yet. And the Major was more content when he came to know in what
good hands the boy was, and, down in his heart, he loved the lad the more for
his sturdy independence, and for the pride that made him shrink from facing
the world with the shame of his birth; knowing that Chad thought of him
perhaps more than of himself. Such unwillingness to give others trouble
seemed remarkable in so young a lad. Not once did the Major mention the Deans
to the boy, and about them Chad asked no questions--not even when he saw
their carriage passing the Major's gate. When they came to leave the Major
said:
"Well, Chad, when that filly of yours is a year old, I'll buy 'em both from
you, if you'll sell 'em, and I reckon you can come up and go to school then."
Chad shook his head. Sell that colt? He would as soon have thought of selling
Jack. But the temptation took root, just the same, then and there, and grew
steadily until, after another year in the mountains, it grew too strong. For,
in that year, Chad grew to look the fact of his birth steadily in the face,
and in his heart grew steadily a proud resolution to make his way in the
world despite it. It was curious how Melissa came to know the struggle that
was going on within him and how Chad came to know that she knew-- though no
word passed between them: more curious still, how it came with a shock to
Chad one day to realize how little was the tragedy of his life in comparison
with the tragedy in hers, and to learn that the little girl with swift vision
had already reached that truth and with sweet unselfishness had reconciled
herself. He was a boy--he could go out in the world and conquer it, while her
life was as rigid and straight before her as though it ran between close
walls of rock as steep and sheer as the cliff across the river. One thing he
never guessed--what it cost the little girl to support him bravely in his
purpose, and to stand with smiling face when the first breath of one sombre
autumn stole through the hills, and Chad and the school-master left the
Turner home for the Bluegrass, this time to stay.
She stood in the doorway after they had waved good-by from the head of the
river--the smile gone and her face in a sudden dark eclipse. The wise old
mother went in-doors. Once the girl started through the yard as though she
would rush after them and stopped at the gate, clinching it hard with both
hands. As suddenly she became quiet.
She went in-doors to her work and worked quietly and without a word. Thus she
did all day while her mind and her heart ached. When she went after the cows
before sunset she stopped at the barn where Beelzebub had been tied. She
lifted her eyes to the hay-loft where she and Chad had hunted for hens' eggs
and played hide-and-seek. She passed through the orchard where they had
worked and played so many happy hours, and on to the back pasture where the
Dillon sheep had been killed and she had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack.
And she saw and noted everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she
gave no sign that night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered
head give way. Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad
way with women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness
Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful world where one had but to do and
dare to reach the stars. The men who had trod that road had made that big
world beyond, and their life Chad himself had lived so far. Only, where they
had lived he had been born--in a log cabin. Their weapons--the axe and the
rifle-- had been his. He had had the same fight with Nature as they. He knew
as well as they what life in the woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude
sports and pastimes, their log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties,
corn-huskings, feats of strength, had been his. He had the same lynx eyes,
cool courage, swiftness of foot, readiness of resource that had been trained
into them. His heart was as stout and his life as simple and pure. He was
taking their path and, in the far West, beyond the Bluegrass world where he
was going, he could, if he pleased, take up the same life at the precise point
where they had left off. At sunset, Chad and the school-master stood on the
summit of the Cumberland foothills and looked over the rolling land with
little less of a thrill, doubtless, than the first hunters felt when the land
before them was as much a wilderness as the wilds through which they had made
their way. Below them a farmhouse shrank half out of sight into a little
hollow, and toward it they went down.
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