THE SURRENDER OF CAPTAIN GRUNDY
Deck Lyon reloaded his rifle without a moment's delay; then resuming
his kneeling posture, he gazed at the window again. The ruffian had
fallen forwards from the bed, and his companions had picked him up. The
observer could see that he had not been killed. The other two laid him
on the bed, and it was evident that he had been severely wounded. They
examined him, but of course the result could not be known to the
lieutenant.
While one of them was tying a handkerchief around the head of the
wounded man, the other went to the window. A pane of glass had been
broken, and this must have assured him that the ball had come from
outside of the mansion. Then he proceeded to look about the
surroundings in search of the person who had fired the shot, confining
his gaze to the ground. If he had reasoned at all over the matter,
which perhaps his education did not enable him to do, he might have
realized that the bullet did not come from the ground.
The man had thrown the window wide open, and was making a very
scrutinizing examination of every part of the courtyard. He could see
plainly whatever was in front of the window; but this did not seem to
satisfy him. He thrust half his body out of the opening, looking both
sides of him, as though it had been possible to fire a rifle around a
corner. The fellow was certainly stupid enough to be shot, and Deck did
not wait any longer to do his work.
The ball struck him in the head as he was stretching his neck to the
utmost to enlarge the extent of his vision to a point from which the
fatal bullet could not possibly have come. If he could have imagined a
line from the round hole in the pane of glass to the point where his
comrade's head had been, it would have pointed directly to Deck's
locality when he discharged the rifle.
[Illustration: "THE BALL STRUCK HIM IN THE HEAD." _Page 388._]
The ruffian dropped from the window-sill to the ground with a heavy
thud, and did not move again. The ball had penetrated his brain, and he
was the victim of his unscientific observations. But the lieutenant did
not remove his gaze from the open window. It seemed very like slaughter
to shoot down the enemy in this manner, and a twinge of conscience
disturbed him. But he reasoned that he had given the ruffians a chance
to surrender, which they had refused to accept. Then they were pirates,
robbers, making war for gain against friend and foe alike.
The third man in the room did not remain there any longer. He could
hardly have known what became of the one at the window, unless he had
heard the crack of a rifle, and failed to see him again. Under these
circumstances it was not difficult for him to reason out the conclusion
that the chamber where he was must be a dangerous locality, and he
sought a safer place.
The lieutenant continued to watch the window, but no enemy appeared in
the room again. It had proved to be a chamber of death. He had hardly
lost sight of the foe before he heard the crack of a rifle in the
grove. The two Hickmans there were riflemen, and Deck did not believe
it would be possible for either of them to fire without killing or
wounding his man; but he heard but one shot, and probably four of the
land pirates were still living.
Deck waited some time for the sound of another shot, but in vain. He
did not believe another ruffian would enter the fatal room commanded by
his position, and he decided to seek a more promising place for his
operations. Since the shot he had heard, he was confident that none of
the enemy would show themselves at the windows. He descended to the
cellar of the stable, and then, by the way he had come, reached the
kitchen, and then the parlor, at the door of which the planter was
fortified.
"Anything new, Colonel Hickman?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed the sentinel over the staircase. "What have
you been doing outside? Something has happened."
"I think we have reduced the enemy by three, and perhaps more," replied
the young officer; and he proceeded to explain what he and his
companions had been doing.
"You think you have knocked down three or more of the robbers?"
"As many as that."
"Then that explains it!"
"Explains what?" asked Deck, as much puzzled by the exhilarated tones
of the planter as by his questions.
"One of them hailed me some time ago, and wanted to see the one in
command. I told him the commander was not in the house, but was
conducting the fight outside. He asked me to send for him, but I
refused to do so. I did not intend to interrupt your operation; for I
never take another's command away from him," replied the colonel,
indulging at the same time in a chuckle, to which he was somewhat given
when pleased.
"Do you know what he wanted?"
"I do; for he shouted down the stairs that he and the rest of them
desired to surrender."
"Then we will let them do so," added Deck, who was not disposed to
fight after the battle had been won.
"What shall you do with them after they have surrendered, Lieutenant?"
asked the planter, plainly much interested in the question.
"I shall do nothing at all with them; I am not the judge or the civil
power of Russell County. We have beaten the enemy, and I have nothing
further to do with the matter," answered Deck.
The colonel decided not to ask any more questions, though the
lieutenant suspected he intended to dispose of the prisoners as he
thought best.
"Up-stairs, there!" shouted the planter. "The commander is here now."
"Ask him to come up here, and we will arrange things," returned the
ruffian with unblushing effrontery.
"The commander will do nothing of the sort," replied the colonel
indignantly. "Do you really believe that he would trust himself with
such cutthroats as you are?"
"We will agree not to hurt him, though he has used us very unfairly,"
said the spokesman. "He has tried to murder all of us!"
"You deserve to be hung; and it would be too merciful to shoot you!"
roared the colonel, his wrath getting the better of him.
"Do Union men hang their prisoners?" demanded the ruffian bitterly.
"Prisoners!" exclaimed the planter contemptuously. "You are such
prisoners as they shut up in the penitentiary, or hang in the public
square."
"Can I see the commander?" asked the spokesman, quite gently by this
time.
"I will see him if he comes down into the parlor," said Deck. "I shall
make prisoners of them; but I wish to stipulate that neither Sergeant
Fronklyn nor myself shall have anything to do with punishing them,
either by hanging or shooting after they have surrendered."
"The commander will see you down-stairs; but I will shoot any other
that attempts to put his foot on the first stair," shouted Colonel
Hickman.
"I will come down," replied the spokesman; and he came to the head of
the staircase with a gun in his hand.
"Halt!" cried the planter. "Leave all your arms up-stairs! Have you any
pistols about you?"
He passed his musket to one of the others, and did the same with a
couple of pistols when the colonel mentioned them. Having complied with
the order, he came down the stairs. He was directed to the parlor in
which the lieutenant was waiting for him.
"Are you the commander here?" he inquired.
"I am. May I ask what you are?" demanded Deck, without rising from the
armchair in which he was seated.
"I am called Captain Grundy."
"Not Mrs. Grundy?"
"Captain Grundy," replied the ruffian, with something of dignity in his
looks and manner.
"Have you a captain's commission?"
"Not yet."
"In what service are you?"
"In the service of the Confederate States of America."
"In what regiment?"
"In no regiment; in a company organized by my government."
"A company of Partisan Rangers?"
"But in the service of my country."
"Are you a Kentuckian?"
"I am."
"And your service is to roam over your native State, killing, robbing,
plundering your fellow-citizens; a highwayman, a thief, and a
murderer," continued the lieutenant very severely. "This is the second
time you have visited this mansion for plunder; but you don't come out
of it so well as you expected," said Deck with a sneer, evident in his
tones as well as his looks.
"Where is the rest of your company, Captain Grundy?"
"On duty in another county."
"But you expect the balance of your command here some time to-day?"
"There will soon be a time when the treatment we have received here
will be returned with compound interest," said Grundy with a savage and
revengeful look on his ill-favored countenance.
"You wished to see me; what is your business?" demanded the lieutenant.
"I am ready to surrender. You and your gang have murdered nearly all my
men here in cold blood. I can do nothing more, and I must yield,"
replied Grundy.
"Are you a lawyer, Captain?"
"I am not; I am a horse-dealer."
"I should think you might be!" sneered Deck. "Do you think it is right
to ride over the State, robbing your fellow-citizens, threatening to
hang a planter to a tree for refusing to give up his money?"
"In the service of my country, yes! Kentucky belongs to the
Confederacy; and those who fight to keep the State in the exploded
Union are traitors, and should be treated as enemies of the State and
the Confederacy."
"Suppose I should visit your house, demand your money, and hang you if
you did not give it up? Would that be all right?"
"That is another matter," growled Grundy.
"Precisely; the same boot don't fit both feet," returned Deck.
"I am your prisoner; but you need not thorn me with your Union logic."
At this moment the lieutenant heard the voice of Davis Hickman in the
hall, talking to his father. He called him into the parlor, and
requested him to bring a quantity of cord or straps to him; and he went
for them.
"What do you want of cords and straps?" asked Grundy.
"To bind my prisoner."
"Do you mean to hang me?"
"I do not; I leave that job to the regular hangman. He will perform it
in due time, I have no doubt," replied Deck, as Davis brought in the
cords.
"I don't mean to be tied up like a wildcat," said the captain doggedly.
"Then you do not surrender; and if you wish to do so, you may go
up-stairs again."
"I surrender; but I will not be bound like a nigger!" exclaimed Captain
Grundy, as he sprang away from the lieutenant, and ran into the back
room.
"What's the matter now, Phil?" demanded the colonel, as the mulatto of
this name rushed into the hall, panting more from excitement than
physical exertion, for his horse was at the door.
Both Deck and Davis pursued the captain; but they were taken off their
guard, and neither of them succeeded in getting hold of the ruffian. He
fled to a window which some one had left open, leaped out, and ran
towards the front of the mansion. Davis fired his rifle at him; but
being "on the wing," he failed to bring him down. Deck, believing that
the fight was finished, had left his rifle in the parlor.
"The Lord save us, Mars'r Cun'l!" shouted Phil, as he broke into the
hall. "The ruffians, more'n twenty of 'em, is coming up the road on
hossback, at full gallop!"
It looked like another fight against great odds.