RODNEY'S SACRIFICE AND HIS MOTHER'S
One midsummer day Rodney Allison walked along the dusty road. He did
not carry his head erect as usual but seemed to be pondering over some
problem.
He was a "strapping," fine looking lad, almost a man grown, and in
experience already a man. He stopped before a little gate opening into
a pasture and gave three shrill whistles. Over the top of a ridge two
pointed ears appeared, poised for an instant, and then their owner
galloped into view.
"What a beauty you are, Nat," said the boy, as if talking to himself,
stretching out his hand to stroke the silky nose that was thrust over
the fence.
The two standing together formed a picture to afford delight so long
as the eye shall admire grace, breeding and power. The boy's figure
was erect, his wavy hair hanging gracefully to his broad shoulders.
His face, while not handsome, was clear cut, resolute and showed lines
of character not usually graven in the face of one as young. His dark
gray eyes always looked at one steadily. Now they were darker than
usual and had in them the shadow of trouble.
"Nat, how would you like to change masters?"
The colt nuzzled the boy's face and then his pockets, in one of which
he found the nubbin of corn he sought.
"You rascal, all you care about having is a good commissary. You won't
miss me, will you? Oh, no! I'd thought we'd go to the war together. We
would have something worth fighting for, a free country, where a man
wouldn't need to have dukes for uncles in order to be of some
consequence in the world. We would show 'em, you and I, that horses
and boys raised in this country are as good as the best; but that
can't be. You are too good a horse to drag the plow on this poor
little farm. You shall have one of the greatest men in this great land
for a master, while I will stay away from the war and both of us may
save our precious skins and perhaps be British subjects in the end."
Nat's purplish eyes seemed full of comprehension, as he mumbled the
lad's hand with his lips.
"Horses seem to know more of some things than they really do, and know
more of some other things than they seem to; how's that for horse
sense, Nathaniel Bacon Allison?"
Nat blinked, but shed no tears. Rodney blinked and his eyes were wet.
The boy opened the gate and the colt followed him to the stable, where
he was saddled and ridden to Monticello.
As Rodney left the manager of Mr. Jefferson's estate he said: "I only
ask that you say to Mr. Jefferson, I sell the colt with the
understanding that I may buy him back if I ever get the money."
"I'll do it, an' you won't need it in writin' so long as Mr. Jefferson
lives."
What a long, dusty, gloomy road was that over which the boy walked
back to his home!
"What has become of Nat?" his mother asked, a few days later. "I
haven't seen him lately."
"He was too valuable a horse for me to own and I sold him to Mr.
Jefferson. I can have the privilege of buying him back," and Rodney
turned away, afraid to trust himself to say more.
The crops that fall were successful and the neighbours told the boy he
would surely make a good farmer. He worked early and late and grew
strong; whereas his mother, watching him with sad eyes, became
weaker.
When Mrs. Allison was absorbed in thought the old coloured woman would
stand looking with anxious face at her mistress. One day she said,
"Missus, yo' jes' done git well. Dat's no mo'n doin' what's right by
Marse Rodney, ah reckon."
Mrs. Allison looked up into the kindly old face of the coloured woman,
and a wan smile was on her lips as she replied, "Mam, you are a woman
of good sense, and, God willing, I will get well." From that day she
began to improve.
Angus being away, Rodney had little diversion.
His chief pastime now was target practice with the rifle. The old
Indian had chosen wisely when he purchased the rifle, and the boy
became very proficient in marksmanship. One day when he had made a
fine shot he turned and found his mother and the two servants watching
him.
"I hadn't an idea you were such a fine shot, Rodney," said his
mother.
"Scolding Squaw hasn't an equal in the whole county of Albemarle,
mother."
"Lan' sakes, an' what heathen mought she be?" asked Mam.
"She was once the rifle of a noted chief of the Wyandottes, and when
she speaks a deadly silence follows," replied the boy, laughing.
"Marse Rodney will be wantin' ter jine de riflemen, I specs," remarked
Thello.
Mam, noting her mistress' face, hastened to say, "Reckon de riflemen
done froze up in Canada las' winter. Dey won't be rantin' down in ol'
Virginny fer one right smart spell."
That year, 1776, there were no steel rails laid nor copper wires
strung to carry the news, yet it was surprising how quickly tidings of
victory and defeat spread over the country.
Charlottesville was a very small town out near the shadows of the Blue
Ridge mountains, yet its people, not many weeks after the events
occurred, had heard how Donald McDonald had led the Scotch Tories of
North Carolina against the rifles of the Whigs and how the rifles
proved more powerful than the Scottish broadswords; then had come the
joyful news that Commodore Parker and his forty ships had sailed away
from Charleston, South Carolina, which they had come to capture as
though the doing of it were the pastime of a summer's holiday. Between
them and the town they had found a little island and on it a small
fort built of soft palmetto logs bedded in sand and defended by a few
daring men under the gallant Moultrie. These brave fellows could shoot
cannon as straight as could the North Carolina Whigs their rifles.
Later, even among the hamlets along the frontier, the cheers rang out
when it was learned that Congress had finally approved the Declaration
of Independence, and aid was now expected from France!
Not all the news was encouraging. Washington had known that, unless
granted men and supplies, he could not hold New York against the
British. Congress had insisted that he make the attempt, but gave him
no assistance. He had failed, and barely kept the greater part of the
American army out of British clutches. The king had succeeded in
hiring Hessians, some twenty thousand of them, to fight England's
battles in America, with the promise of all the loot they could
secure. France was very slow in granting aid, uncertain as yet how
much resistance America might be able to make. The attempt to capture
Quebec had failed, and the Americans were chased out of Canada.
Washington had been unable to keep an effective army together as
Congress would provide only for short terms of enlistment, and little
money or supplies for the troops. Men who had shouted for freedom were
now despondent, and some of them were going over to the enemy, which
occupied New York and most of New Jersey and had concluded the war was
about ended.
In September Morgan came back from Quebec, but under parole. He had
been offered great inducements to fight with England, but scorned them
as an insult to his manhood. If he could be released from parole he
would do loyal service for his country. Arnold had fought desperately
around Lake Champlain with the remnants of the troops driven from
Canada, but the odds against him were too great. Washington, alone,
was the nucleus around which the hopes of America centred, but he
could accomplish little except to hold positions between the British
and Philadelphia.
Winter came on and the situation grew worse. Congress became
frightened and made ludicrous haste to vote all sorts of assistance to
Washington, after it was too late for him to use it for striking an
effective blow.
It was evident that Rodney brooded over the long series of failures,
but he still stoutly insisted, "It's not Washington's fault, I know."
When, just after New Year's, 1777, report came that Washington, with
his ragged troops, had crossed the Delaware amid the floating ice, and
marched almost barefooted to Trenton in a howling snowstorm, and there
had defeated the Hessians, Rodney fairly shouted in his joy, "I knew
he'd do it, I knew he'd do it!"
About a month later, Angus came home. He was a sorry looking Angus,
what with a severe wound, and his ragged regimentals, and his feet
bound up in rags. But he was a very important Angus, withal, for had
he not crossed the Delaware with Washington; had he not left bloody
footprints on the snowy road to Trenton; had he not charged down King
Street, swept by the northeast gale and British lead, and driven the
brutal Hessians as chaff is swept before the wind? He was, to the
village folk, the returned conqueror, and much they made of him, the
Allisons with the others. He no longer envied Rodney mounted on Nat
riding over the country with all the importance of a special
messenger, and it is to be hoped that Rodney did not envy him, now
that conditions seemed reversed. To young Allison's credit be it said
that, if in his heart lay a smouldering spark of envy, it did not show
itself.
When Angus was able to go about, he frequently visited the Allison
home, and revelled in narrations of his experiences. He, like the
common people generally, regarded Washington as an idol. He delighted
in descriptions of the appearance of his beloved general at the
crossing of the Delaware; again at the battle of Princeton, when
Washington had ridden out directly between the lines of the British
and the wavering Americans he sought to encourage, sitting like a
statue on his big horse, while the bullets of friends and foes flew
about him, and then riding away unscathed, as though by a miracle.
The lad's enthusiasm made it all seem very real, even when he told
how, one winter morning, the general walked about among his men while
wearing a strip of red flannel tied about his throat because of a
cold, and picked up with one hand a piece of heavy baggage, that would
have burdened both arms of an ordinary man, and lightly tossed it on
top of a baggage wagon.
"He had but twenty-four hundred men to capture Trenton, an' all the
other generals who were to help him failed. I was right close to him
when the messenger rode up to tell him Cadwalader couldn't git across
the river, an' I heard him say 'I am determined to cross the river and
attack Trenton in the morning.' I tell ye thar was no fellers who
heard him but would hev follered him on their knees, bein' they
couldn't hev used their feet."
"The British thought the war ended before they lost Trenton, I hear,"
said Mrs. Allison, her eyes shining, for one of her ancestors had
ridden with Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginian rebel, when there was
British tyranny in the Old Dominion.
"No doubt of it; why, all of us in the army reckoned how the war
couldn't last much longer. We hadn't rations nor clothes; the men were
goin' home when their time was up an' wouldn't enlist again. We heard
that Cornwallis was goin' home to tell the king how he'd licked us,
an' old Howe was gamblin' an' guzzlin' in New York, spendin' his prize
money like water. Oh, they thought they had us licked for sure!
Long's Washington lives they can't lick us nohow, though they've got
over thirty thousand men an' plenty o' money, an' we with neither. But
the soldiers are 'lowin' as how France will help us. Benjamin Franklin
is over there an' they say he has a way o' gittin' what he goes
after."
"I believe it was Doctor Franklin's 'Poor Richard' who said, 'God
helps those who help themselves.' We've got to rely on ourselves,"
Mrs. Allison said, as if speaking to herself, but all the while
looking at Rodney.
He did not notice this, for he sat gazing into the fire, saying
little, though no word of Angus escaped him. Finally, looking up and
addressing his mother, he said, "Wasn't it Mr. Mason who said he did
not wish to survive the liberties of his country?"
"I think so," she replied, adding, "but we say things in time of
excitement which are pretty hard to live up to," and turned away.
Rodney had secured quite profitable employment that winter. His
mother's health had improved, and the lad could hear the clatter of
her loom through the open window one warm morning in early March when
a passing horseman brought the news that "Dan Morgan was having hard
work to raise a body of riflemen." He had been appointed a colonel the
previous fall, and, as soon as he was released from his parole, began
to enlist men to go to the assistance of Washington at Morristown.
The man talked loudly, and the noise of the loom ceased while Mrs.
Allison listened. After supper that evening she said, "I hear that
Colonel Morgan, of whom you have told me so much, is enlisting men."
"Yes, mother, and there is no finer man for a leader than he, unless
it is Washington."
"I've thought, since Angus came home, that you were wishing you might
enter the service."
Rodney looked up quickly. "Why, if I could get away I'd like to go,
but I--my duty is at home."
"I am well, now," she said, "and affairs are in such condition I think
we can care for them."
"But--er--no, I ought not to."
"My boy, you have my permission, indeed I'm not sure but it is your
duty to give your service, your young life perhaps, to the cause of
liberty."
Rodney sprang up, his face aflame with eagerness. "Do you mean it,
mother?"
"Some one must fight our battles if we are to win. Your father is not
here to go to the front, as he would have done had he lived, and--and
I feel sure he would like to have the house of Allison represented in
a cause he had so much at heart, and I'm afraid I should make a poor
soldier, Rodney."
"Mother, you are braver than any soldier who ever went to war!"
And so it happened that the following Monday, dressed in the homespun
of his mother's loom and carrying the rifle he had taken from the
lodge of the Wyandotte chieftain, Rodney Allison left for Winchester
to join Morgan's command.