THE BUSHWHACKERS
_&_
OTHER STORIES
THE
Bushwhackers
&
Other Stories
BY
CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK
AUTHOR OF “IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS,” “THE
STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON,” ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
HERBERT S. STONE & COMPANY
CHICAGO & NEW YORK
MDCCCXCIX
COPYRIGHT 1899 BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.
THIRD IMPRESSION
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BUSHWHACKERS 3
THE PANTHER OF JOLTON’S RIDGE 119
THE EXPLOIT OF CHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW 217
THE BUSHWHACKERS
CHAPTER I
One might have imagined that there was some enchantment in the spot
which drew hither daily the young mountaineer’s steps. No visible lure
it showed. No prosaic reasonable errand he seemed to have. But always
at some hour between the early springtide sunrise and the late vernal
sunset Hilary Knox climbed the craggy, almost inaccessible steeps to
this rocky promontory, that jutted out in a single sharp peak, not
only beetling far over the sea of foliage in the wooded valley below,
but rising high above the dense forests of the slope of the mountain,
from the summit of which it projected. Here he would stand, shading his
eyes with his hand, and gaze far and near over the great landscape.
At first he seemed breathless with eager expectation; then earnestly
searching lest there should be aught overlooked; at last dully,
wistfully dwelling on the scene in the full realization of the pangs of
disappointment for the absence of something he fain would see.
Always he waited as long as he could, as if the chance of any moment
might conjure into the landscape, brilliant with the vivid growths and
tender grace of the spring, that for which he looked in vain. A wind
would come up the gorge and flutter about him, as he stood poised on
the upward slant of the rock, the loftiest point of the mountain. If
it were a young and frisky zephyr, but lately loosed from the cave of
Æolus, which surely must be situated near at hand--on the opposite
spur perhaps, so windy was the ravine, so tumultuous the continual
coming and going of the currents of the air,--he must needs risk
his balance on the pinnacle of the crag to hold on to his hat. And
sometimes the frolicsome breeze like other gay young sprites would
not have done with playing tag, and when he thought himself safe and
lowered his hand to shade his eyes, again the wind would twitch it by
the brim and scurry away down the ravine, making all the trees ripple
with murmurous laughter as it sped to the valley, while Hilary would
gasp and plunge forward and once more clutch his hat, then again look
out to descry perchance what he so ardently longed to see in the
distance. Some pleasant vision he surely must have expected--something
charming to the senses or promissory of weal or happiness it must have
been; for his cheek flushed scarlet and his pulses beat fast at the
very thought.
No one noticed his coming or going. All boys are a species of vagrant
fowl, and with the daily migrations back and forth of a young
mountaineer especially, no steady-minded, elder person would care to
burden his observation. Another kind of fowl, an eagle, had built a
nest in the bare branches at the summit of an isolated pine tree, of
which only the lower boughs were foliaged, and this was higher even
than the peak to which Hilary daily repaired for the earliest glimpse
of his materialized hopes advancing down the gorge. The pair of birds
only of all the denizens of the mountain took heed of his movements and
displayed an anxiety and suspicion and a sort of fierce but fluttered
indignation. It is impossible to say whether they were aware that
their variety had grown rare in these parts, and that their capture,
dead or alive, would be a matter of very considerable interest, and it
is also futile to speculate as to whether they had any knowledge of
the uses or range of the rifle which Hilary sometimes carried on his
shoulder. Certain it is, however, the male bird muttered indignantly
as he looked down at the young mountaineer, and was wont to agitatedly
flop about the great clumsy nest of interwoven sticks where the
female, the larger of the two, with a steady courage sat motionless,
only her elongated neck and bright dilation of the eyes betokening
her excitement and distress. The male bird was of a more reckless
tendency, and often visibly strove with an intermittent intention of
swooping down to attack the intruder, for Hilary was but a slender
fellow of about sixteen years, although tall and fleet of foot. A
good shot, too, he was, and he had steady nerves, despite the glitter
of excitement in his eyes forever gazing down the gorge. Because of
his absorption in this expectation he took no notice of the eagles,
although to justify his long absences from home he often brought his
rifle on the plea of hunting. How should he care to observe the birds
when at any moment he might see the flutter of a guidon in the valley
road, a mere path from this height, and hear the trumpet sing out
sweet and clear in the silence of the wilderness! At any moment the
wind might bring the sound of the tramp of cavalry, the clatter of the
carbine and canteen, and the clanking of spur and saber as some wild
band of guerrillas came raiding through the country.
For despite the solemn stillness that brooded in the similitude of the
deepest peace upon the scene, war was still rife in the land. The
theater of action was far from this sequestered region, but there had
been times when the piny gorges were full of the more prickly growth
of bayonets. The echoing crags were taught the thrilling eloquence
of the bugle, and the mountains reverberated with the oratory of the
cannon--for the artillery learned to climb the deer-paths. There was
a fine panorama once in the twilight when a battery on the heights
shelled the woods in the valley, and tiny white clouds with hearts of
darting fire described swift aerial curves, the fuses burning brightly
against the bland blue sky, ere that supreme moment of explosion when
the bursting fragments hurtled wildly through the air.
Occasionally a cluster of white tents would spring up like mushrooms
at the base of a mountain spur--gone as suddenly as they had come,
leaving a bed of embers where the camp-fires had been, a vague wreath
of smoke and little trace besides, for the felled trees cut for fuel
made scant impression upon the densities of the wilderness, and the
rocks were immutable.
And then for months a primeval silence and loneliness might enfold the
mountains.
“Ef they kem agin, ef ever they kem agin, I’ll jine ’em--I’ll jine
’em,” cried Hilary out of a full heart as he stood and gazed.
And this was the reason he watched daily and sometimes deep into the
night, lest coming under cover of the darkness they might depart before
the dawn, leaving only the embers of their camp-fires to tell of their
vanished presence.
The prospect stirred the boy’s heart. He longed to be in the midst
of action, to take a man’s part in the great struggle, to live the
life and do the faithful devoir of a soldier. He was young but he was
strong, and he felt that here he was biding at home as if he were
no more fit for the military duty he yearned to assume than was the
miller’s daughter, Delia Noakes.
“I tole Dely yesterday ez I’d git her ter l’arn me ter spin ef ye kep’
me hyar much longer,” he said one day petulantly to his mother. “I’ll
jes’ set an’ spin like a sure-enough gal ef ye won’t let me go an’ jine
the army like a boy.”
“I ain’t never gin my word agin yer goin’,” the widow would temporize,
alarmed by the possibility of his running away without permission if
definitely forbidden to enlist, and therefore craftily holding out the
prospect of her consent, which she knew he valued, for he had always
been a dutiful son. “I hev never gin my word agin it--not sence ye
hev got some growth--ye shot up as suddint ez Jonah’s gourd in a
single night. But I don’t want ye ter jine no stray bands--ez mought
be bushwhackers an’ sech. Jes’ wait till we git the word whar Cap’n
Baker’s command be--fur I want ye ter be under some ez kem from our
deestric’--I’d feel so much safer bout’n ye, an’ ye would be pleased,
too, Cap’n Baker bein’ a powerful fighter an’ brave an’ respected by
all. Ye mus’ wait, too, till I kin finish yer new shuts, an’ knittin’
them socks; I wouldn’t feel right fur ye to go destitute--a plumb
beggar fur clothes.”
Hilary had never heard of Penelope’s web, and the crafty device
of raveling out at night the work achieved in the day, but to his
impatience it seemed that his departure was indefinitely postponed for
his simple outfit progressed no whit day by day, although his mother’s
show of industry was great.
The earth also seemed to have swallowed Captain Baker and his command;
although Hilary rode again and again to the postoffice at a little
mountain hamlet some ten miles distant, and talked to all informed and
discerning persons whom the hope of learning the latest details of
the events of the war had drawn thither, and could hear news of any
description to suit the taste of the narrator--all the most reliable
items of the “grape-vine telegraph,” as mere rumor used to be called in
those days--not one word came of Captain Baker.
His mother sometimes could control his outbursts of impatience on these
occasions by ridicule.
“’Member the time, Hil’ry,” she would say, glancing at him with
waggish mock gravity in her eyes as they gleamed over her spectacles,
“when ye offered ter enlist with Cap’n Baker’s infantry year afore
las’, when the war fust broke out--ye warn’t no higher than that
biscuit block then--he tole ye that ye warn’t up ter age or size or
weight or height, an’ ye tole him that thar war a plenty of ye ter pull
a trigger, an’ he bust out laughin’ an’ lowed ez he warn’t allowed ter
enlist men under fourteen. He said he thunk it war a folly in the rule,
fur he had seen some mighty old men under fourteen--though none so aged
ez you-uns. My, how he did laugh.”
“I wish ye would quit tellin’ that old tale,” said her son, sulkily,
his face reddening with the mingled recollection of his own absurdity
and the seriousness with which in his simplicity he had listened to the
officer’s ridicule.
“An’ ye war so special small-sized and spindlin’ then,” exclaimed his
mother, pausing in her knitting to take off her spectacles to wipe away
the tears of laughter that had gathered at the recollection.
“I ain’t small-sized an’ spindling now,” said Hilary, drawing himself
up to his full height and bridling with offended dignity in the
consciousness of his inches and his muscles. “I know ez Cap’n Baker or
enny other officer would ’list me now, for though I ain’t quite sixteen
I be powerful well growed fur my age.”
As he realized this anew his flush deepened as he stood and looked
down at the fire, while his mother covertly watched his expression. He
felt it a burning shame that he should still linger here laggard when
all his instinct was to help and sustain the cause of his countrymen.
His loyalty was to the sense of home. His impulse was to repel the
invader, although the majority of the mountaineers of East Tennessee
were for the Union, and many fought for the old flag against their
neighbors and often against their close kindred, so stanch was their
loyalty in those times that tried men’s souls.
One day, as Hilary, straining his eyes, stood on his perch on the crag,
he beheld fluttering far, far away--was it a wreath of mist floating
along the level, sinuous curves of the distant valley road--a wreath of
mist astir on some gentle current of the atmosphere? He had a sudden
sense of color. Did the vapor catch a prismatic glister from the sun’s
rays? And now faint, far, like the ethereal tones of an elfin horn,
a mellow vibration sounded on the air. Hardly louder it was than the
booming of a bee in the heart of a flower, scarcely more definite
than the melody one hears in a dream, which one can remember, yet
cannot recognize or sing again; nevertheless his heart bounded at the
vague and vagrant strain, and he knew the fluttering prismatic bits of
color to be the guidons of a squadron of cavalry. His heart kept pace
with the hoofbeats of the horses. The lessening distance magnified
them to his vision till he could discern now a bright glint of steely
light as the sun struck on the burnished arms of the riders, and
could distinguish the tints of the steeds--gray, blood-bay, black and
roan-red; he could soon hear, too, the jingle of the spurs, the clank
of sabers and carbines, and now and again the voices of the men, bluff,
merry, hearty, as they rode at their ease. He would not lose sight of
them till they had paused to pitch their camp at the foot of a great
spur of the mountain opposite. There was a famous spring of clear,
cold water there, he remembered.
The great spread of mountain ranges had grown purple in the sunset,
with the green cup-like coves between filled to the brim with the
red vintage of the afternoon light, still limpid, translucent, with
no suggestion of the dregs of shadow or sediment of darkness in this
radiant nectar. Nor was there token of coming night in the sky--all
amber and pearl--the fairest hour of the day. No premonition of
approaching sorrow or defeat, of death or rue, was in the gay bivouac
at the foot of the mountain. The very horses picketed along the bank
of the stream whickered aloud in obvious content with their journey’s
end, their supper, their drink, and their bed; the sound of song and
jollity, the halloo, the loud, cheery talk of the troopers, rose as
lightly on the air as the long streamers of undulating blazes from
the camp-fires and the curling tendrils of the ascending smoke. More
distant groups betokened the precaution of videttes at an outpost. A
sentinel near the road, for the camp guard was posted betimes, was the
only silent and grave man in the gay company, it seemed to Hilary,
as he watched the gallant, soldierly figure with his martial tread
marching to and fro in this solitary place, as if for all the world to
see. For Hilary had made his way down the mountain and was now on the
outskirts of the camp, the goal of all his military aspirations.
He had come so near that a sudden voice rang out on the evening air,
and he paused as the sentry challenged his approach. The rocky river
bank vibrated with the echo of the soldier’s imperative tones.
Hilary remembered that moment always. It meant so much to him. Every
detail of the scene was painted on his memory years and years afterward
as if but yesterday it was aglow--the evening air that was so still,
so filled with mellow, illuminated color, so imbued with peace and
fragrance and soft content, such as one could imagine may pervade the
realms of Paradise, was yet the vehicle for the limning of this warlike
picture. The great purple mountains loomed high around; through the
green valley now crept a dun-tinted shadow more like a deepening of the
rich verdant color of the foliage than a visible transition toward the
glooms of the night; the stream was steel-gray and full of the white
flickers of foam; further up the water reflected a flare of camp-fires,
broadly aglow, with great sprangles of fluctuating flame and smoke
setting the blue dusk a-quiver with alternations of light and shade;
there were the dim rows of horses, some still sturdily champing their
provender, others dully drowsing, and one nearer at hand, a noble
charger, standing with uplifted neck and thin, expanded nostrils and
full lustrous eyes, gazing over the winding way, the vacant road by
which they had come. Beyond were the figures of the soldiers; a few,
who had already finished their supper, were rolled in their blankets
with their feet to the fire in a circle like the spokes of a wheel
to the hub. There, pillowed on their saddles, would they sleep all
night under the pulsating white stars, for these swift raids were
unencumbered with baggage, and the pitching of a tent meant a longer
stay than the bivouac of a single night. Others were still at their
supper, broiling rashers of bacon on the coals, or toasting a bird or
chicken, split and poised on a pointed cedar stick before the flames.
Socially disposed groups were laughing and talking beside the flaring
brands, the firelight gleaming in their eyes, half shaded by the wide,
drooping brims of their broad hats, and flashing on their white teeth
as they rehearsed the incidents of the day or made merry with old
scores. Now and then a stave of song would rise sonorously into the
air as a big bass voice trolled out a popular melody--it was the first
time Hilary had ever heard the sentimental, melancholy measures of
“The Sun’s Low Down the Sky, Lorena.” Sometimes, by way of symphony, a
tentative staccato variation of the theme would issue from the strings
of a violin, borrowed from a neighboring dwelling, which a young
trooper, seated leaning against the bole of a great tree, was playing
with a deft, assured touch.
Hilary often saw such scenes afterward, but not even the reality
was ever so vivid as the recollection of this fire-lit perspective
glimmering behind the figure of the guard.
The two gazed at each other in the brief space of a second--the boy
eager and expectant, the soldier’s eyes dark, steady, challenging,
under the broad, drooping brim of his soft hat. He was young, but he
had a short-pointed dark beard, and a mustache, and although thin and
lightly built, he was sinewy and alert, and in his long, spurred boots
and gray uniform he looked sufficiently formidable with his carbine in
his hand.
“Who comes there?” he sternly demanded.
“A friend,” quavered Hilary, and he could have utterly repudiated
himself that his voice should show this tremor of excitement since
it might seem to be that of fear in the estimation of this man, who
defied dangers and knew no faltering, and had fought to the last moment
on the losing side on many a stricken field, and was content to believe
that duty and courage were as valid a guerdon in themselves as fickle
victory, which perches as a bird might on the standard of chance.
“Advance, friend, and give the countersign,” said the sentry.
It seemed to Hilary at the moment that it was some strange aberration
of all the probabilities that he should not know this mystic word,
this potent phrase, which should grant admission to the life of the
camp that already seemed to him his native sphere. He advanced a step
nearer, and while the sentinel bent his brow more intently upon him
and looked firmly and negatively expectant, he gave in lieu of the
watchword a full detail of his errand,--that he wished to be a soldier
and fight for his country, and especially enlist with this squadron,
albeit he did not know a single man of the command, nor even the
leader’s rank or name.
Hilary could not altogether account for a sudden change in the
sentinel’s face and manner. He had been very sure that he was about to
be denied all admission according to the strict orders to permit no
stranger within the lines of the encampment. The soldier stared at the
boy a moment longer, then called lustily aloud for the corporal of the
guard. For these were the days of the close conscription, when it was
popularly said that the army robbed both the cradle and the grave for
its recruits, so young and so old were the men accounted liable for
military duty. The sentinel could but discern at a glance that Hilary
was younger even than the limit for these later conscriptions, and
that only as a voluntary sacrifice to patriotism were his services
attainable. The corporal of the guard came forthwith--tall, heavy,
broad-visaged, downright in manner, and of a blunt style of speech.
But on his face, too, the expression of formidable negation gave way
at once to a brisk alacrity of welcome, and he immediately conducted
Hilary to another officer, who brought him to a little knoll where
the captain commanding the squadron was seated by a brisk fire, half
reclining on his saddle thrown on the ground. He was beguiling his
leisure, and perhaps reinforcing a certain down-hearted tendency to
nostalgia, by reading the latest letters he had from home--letters a
matter of six months old now, and already read into tatters, but so
illuminated between the lines with familiar pictures and treasured
household memories that they were still replete with an interest that
would last longer than the paper. Two or three other officers were
playing cards by the light of the fire, and one, elderly and grave, was
reading a book through spectacles of sedate aspect.
The measure of Hilary’s satisfaction was full to the brim. Captain
Baker, as he informed his mother when a little later he burst into the
home-circle wild with delight in his adventure and his news, couldn’t
hold a candle to Captain Bertley. And rejoiced was he to be going at
last and going with this officer. Hilary declared again and again that
he wouldn’t be willing to fight in any other command. He was going at
last, and going with the only captain in all the world for him--the
first and foremost of men! And yet only this morning he had not known
that this paragon existed.
He was so a-quiver with excitement and joy and expectation and pride
that his mother, pale and tremulous as she made up his little bundle
of long-delayed clothes, was a trifle surprised to hear him protest
that he could not leave without bidding farewell to the Noakes family,
who lived at the Notch in the mountain, and especially his old crony,
Delia; yet Captain Bertley’s trumpets would sound “boots and saddles”
at the earliest glint of dawn. Delia was near his own age, and he had
always magnanimously pitied her for not being a boy. Formerly she had
meekly acquiesced in her inferiority, mental and physical, especially
in the matter of running, although she made pretty fair speed, and in
throwing stones, which she never could be taught to do with accurate
aim. But of late years she had not seemed to “sense” this inferiority,
so to speak, and once in reference to the war she had declared
that she was glad to be a girl, and thus debarred from fighting,
“fur killing folks, no matter fur whut or how, always seemed to be
sinful!” When argued with on this basis she fell back on the broad
and uncontrovertible proposition that “anyhow bloodshed war powerful
onpleasant.”
To see these friends once again Hilary had no time to waste. As he
made his way along the sandy road with the stars palpitating whitely
in the sky above the heavy forest, which rose so high on either hand
as to seem almost to touch them, this deep, narrow passage looked when
the perspective held a straight line to rising ground, ending in the
sidereal coruscations, like the veritable way to the stars, sought by
every ambitious wight since the days of the Cæsars. Hilary had never
heard an allusion to that royal road, but as he walked along with
a buoyant, steady step, his hat in his hand that the breeze might
cool his hot brow and blow backward his long masses of fair hair, he
followed indeed an upward path in the sentiments that quickened his
pulses, for he was resolved upon duty and thinking high thoughts that
should materialize in fine deeds. He was to do and dare! He would
be useful and faithful and brave--brave! He had a reverence for the
quality of courage--not for the sake of its emulous display, but for
the spirit of all nobly valiant deeds. He had rejoiced in the very
expression of the captain’s eyes--so true and tried! He, too, would
meet the coming years fairly. The raw recruit could see his way to the
stars at the end of that mountain vista.
But it seemed a poor preparation for all this when he awoke the inmates
of the Noakes cabin, for it was past midnight, with the news that
he had “jined the cavalry” and was to march at peep of dawn with
Bertley’s squadron. It is true that the elders crowded around him half
dressed only, so hastily had they been roused, and expressed surprise,
congratulations, and regrets in one inconsistent breath, and old Mrs.
Dite, Delia’s grandmother, bestowed on him a woolen comforter which
she had knitted for him, and for which, improvidently, it being now
near summer, he cared less than for the turmoil of excitement and
interest they had manifested in his preferment, for he felt every inch
a man and a soldier, and they respectfully seemed to defer to his new
pretensions. Delia, however, the most unaccountable of girls--and
girls are always unaccountable--put her arm over her eyes as she stood
beside the mantelpiece, beneath which the embers had been stirred into
a blaze for light, and turned her face to the wall and burst into
tears. She wept with so much vehemence that her long plait of black
hair hanging down her back swayed from side to side of her shoulders
as she shook her head to and fro in the extremity of her woe. When
the elders remonstrated with her, and declared this was no occasion
for sorrow, she only lifted her tear-stained face for a moment to say
in justification that she believed that bullets were too small to be
dodged with any success when they were flying round promiscuously. And
in the midst of the volley of laughter which this evoked from the old
people, Hilary’s voice rang out indignantly, “An’ I ain’t no hand ter
dodge bullets, nuther.”
“That’s jes’ what I am a-crying about,” replied Delia, to the
mischievous delight of the elders.
Thus the farewell to his old friends was not very exhilarating to
Hilary. Delia did not even at the last unveil her face or change her
attitude against the wall. To shake hands he was obliged to pull her
hand from her eyes by way of over her head, and in this maneuver he was
moved to notice how much taller he had lately grown. Her hand was very
limp and cold and wet with her tears--so wet that he had to wipe these
tears from his own hand on the brim of his hat on his homeward way.
And when, as in sudden enchantment, darkness became light and night
developed into dawn, when color renewed the landscape, and the dull sky
grew red as if flushed with sudden triumph, and the black mountains
turned royally purple in the distance and tenderly green nearer at
hand, and the waters of the river leaped and flashed like a live thing,
as with an actual joy in existence, and the great fiery sun, full of
vital yellow flame, flared up over the eastern horizon, the squadron,
with jingling spurs and clanking sabers, with carbines and canteens
rattling, with the trumpet now and again sending forth those elated,
joyous martial strains, so sweet and yet so proud, rode forth into a
new day, and Hilary Knox, among the troopers and gallantly mounted,
rode forth into a new life.
The bivouac fires glowed for a while, then fell to smoldering and died,
leaving but a gray ash to tell of their presence here. Day by day the
eagles in the great bare pine tree on the high rock at the summit of
the mountain looked for Hilary to visit his point of observation and
stir their hearts with fear and wrath. Time and again the male bird
might have been seen to circle about at the usual hour for the boy’s
coming; first with apprehension lest his absence was too good to
be true, then, with the courage of immunity undisciplined by fear,
screaming and flouncing as if to challenge this apparition of quondam
terror. Now and then the pair seemed to argue and collogue together
upon the mystery of his non-appearance, and to chuffily compare notes,
and seek to classify their impressions of this singular specimen of the
animal kingdom. Perhaps, tabulated, their conclusions might stand thus:
Genus, boy; habits, noisy; diet, omnivorous; element, mischief; uses,
undiscovered and undiscoverable.
Long, long after the eagles had forgotten the intruder, after their
brood, the two ill-feathered nestlings, had taken strongly to wing,
after their nest, a mass of loose, but well collocated sticks and
grass, had given way to the beat of the rain and the blasts of the
wind, did Hilary’s mother wearily gaze from the heights where the
mountain cabin was perched down upon the curves of the valley road
along which she had seen him riding away with that glittering train,
and sigh and let her knitting fall from her nerveless hands, and wonder
what would the manner of his home-coming be, or whether the future held
at all a home-coming for him.
And her many sighs kept her heart sick and turned her hair very white.