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[Illustration: CAPTURE OF LUKE REDMAN]
OUR FELLOWS;
OR,
Skirmishes with the Swamp Dragoons
BY
HARRY CASTLEMON,
AUTHOR OF “GUNBOAT SERIES,” “ROCKY MOUNTAIN
SERIES,” “BOY TRAPPER SERIES.” ETC.
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.,
PHILADELPHIA,
CHICAGO, TORONTO.
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COPYRIGHT, 1872
BY,
J. W. DAUGHADAY & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1886,
BY
JAMES ELVERSON.
COPYRIGHT, 1887,
BY
PORTER & COATES.
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CONTENTS.
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CHAPTER PAGE
I. —WHO OUR FELLOWS ARE, 9
II. —AN UNINVITED GUEST, 17
III. —MARK’S ADVENTURE, 29
IV. —A FRIEND IN NEED, 44
V. —WE TALK THE MATTER OVER, 54
VI. —MARK MAKES A DISCOVERY, 74
VII. —OUR CHRISTMAS TURKEYS, 81
VIII. —A RIDE AFTER THE INDIANS, 106
IX. —CAUGHT AT LAST, 123
X. —I STAND PICKET, 146
XI. —THE TABLES TURNED, 168
XII. —TOM IS ASTONISHED, 180
XIII. —TOM TELLS HIS STORY, 204
XIV. —TOM’S PLAN, 217
XV. —DANGEROUS WORK, 231
XVI. —OUR STRATAGEM, 241
XVII. —TAKING THE BACK TRACK, 249
XVIII. —AN UNEXPECTED DELIVERANCE, 265
XIX. —“MARK TWO TIMES,” 278
XX. —CONCLUSION, 293
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OUR FELLOWS
OR,
Skirmishes with, the Swamp Dragoons.
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CHAPTER I.
WHO OUR FELLOWS ARE.
My name is Joseph Coleman, and at the time my story begins I was sixteen
years of age. Mark was my twin brother; and he looked and acted so much
like me, or else I looked and acted so much like him, that only our very
intimate friends could tell us apart. We always dressed alike, and that,
no doubt, had something to do with the remarkable resemblance we bore to
each other.
Many were the mistakes that were made in regard to our identity—some of
them laughable, others proving exactly the reverse, especially when I
was called upon to stand punishment for his misdeeds. On one occasion
Mark got into a difficulty with a half-breed. About a week afterward,
while I was riding along the road, I met this same half-breed with a big
switch in his hand, and all that saved me from a severe whipping was the
speed of my horse.
Then there was our old enemy, Tom Mason, who had been badly worsted in
an attempt to whip Mark, and ever since that time he had been robbing my
traps, shooting at my dog and killing my doves, thinking all the while
that he was revenging himself upon Mark, when he was in reality
punishing me.
At the time of which I write we lived in Warren County, ten miles below
Vicksburg, where our father owned an extensive plantation. He cultivated
one thousand acres of cotton and six hundred acres of corn. He owned one
hundred and fifty working mules and horses, twice as many young cattle,
which ran loose in the swamp, and about twenty-five hundred hogs. It
required from sixty to seventy-five cows to supply the plantation with
milk and butter, and almost as many dogs to protect the stock from the
wild beasts.
Just think of that! Think what music this pack must have made when in
pursuit of a bear or deer, and imagine, if you can, the delightful
concerts to which we listened on bright moonlight nights!
Perhaps you will wonder if we needed all these dogs. We should have been
sorry to part with them, for they were as necessary to our existence as
our horses, cows or mules.
Warren County at that time was almost a wilderness. Wolves, foxes and
minks were numerous, and our henroosts would have been cleared in a
single night, if the dogs had not been there to protect them. Wild-cats
were abundant, and panthers were so often met with, that traveling after
dark was seldom undertaken for pleasure. Bears, however, were the
principal pests. They were, to quote from the settlers, “as plenty as
blackberries,” and employed their leisure time during the night in
roaming about the plantations, picking up every luckless hog and calf
that happened to fall in their way.
I must not forget to say that our fellows had nothing to do with all
these plantation dogs. The most of them belonged to father, a few to the
overseer, and the rest to the servants.
Our pack numbered only five dogs. Mark was the happy possessor of Rock
and Dash, two splendid deer-hounds, which, for size, speed, endurance
and courage, were unequaled in all that country except by Sandy’s Sharp
and Music. These four hounds were animals worth having. They could run
all day, and when they once started on a trail, they never left it until
the game, whatever it was, had been killed, or they were called away.
I laid claim to Zip. He was what we boys called a “bench-legged
catch-dog”—that is, his fore legs stood wide apart and curved outward,
like those of a bulldog, and he was used for catching and holding game.
He was yellow all over except his head, which was as black as jet. His
nose and ears were as sharp as those of a wolf, and he was bobtailed.
Zip was unlike any other dog I ever saw. There were a good many queer
things about him, and he had at least one peculiarity that every body
noticed. He never wagged his tail sideways, as other dogs do, but up and
down, and he never wagged it at all except when following a warm trail.
There were five of us boys—Duke Hampton, his cousin, Herbert Dickson,
Sandy, Mark and myself. We were near neighbors—that is, we lived about a
mile and a half apart—and we were together almost all the time. We
always spoke of one another as “our fellows,” and we had finally come to
be known by that name all over the country. Sandy merits a short
description.
His name was Gabriel Lucien Todd—an odd name, perhaps, but it suited
him, for he was an odd boy. No one ever thought the race of giants
extinct after seeing him. When he was thirteen years old he was as tall
and heavy as his father, and much stronger. Indeed Sandy often boasted
that he could pull as many bales of cotton on a wagon as any yoke of
oxen in Warren County.
That, of course, was saying a great deal too much; but his strength was
really something wonderful. He could outlift any two of our fellows,
without puffing out his cheeks, but we could all take his measure on the
ground as fast as he could get up.
There were other noticeable things about Sandy, such as his utter
disregard for all the proprieties of language, his bright-red hair, and
his extreme good nature, which I seldom saw ruffled. The first was by no
means the result of ignorance, for Sandy, besides being a capital
scholar in other respects, was looked upon by our fellows as a walking
repository of grammatical knowledge.
He wrote splendid letters—and that is an accomplishment that every boy,
or man either, does not possess—and he would correctly analyze and parse
any sentence you could give him, no matter how complex; but when it came
to talking he was all afloat. He twisted his sentences into all sorts of
awkward shapes, and sometimes used words that had but little connection
with the idea he wished to communicate. It was not the result of
carelessness either, for he made some desperate attempts to “talk
proper,” as he expressed it, especially in the presence of strangers;
but the harder he tried the more he blundered.
After saying this much, it is scarcely necessary to add that Sandy was
as slow as an elephant in all his movements, and that he never got
surprised at any thing that happened.
Mark’s room and mine was regarded as the headquarters of our fellows. On
one side two windows looked out upon a wide porch, and on the other was
a fire-place, backed up by an immense brick chimney.
An unpainted board over the fireplace formed the mantel, on which were a
collection of books, a couple of lamps, an ornamental clock, and a few
articles of curiosity, such as alligators’ teeth, bears’ claws, stone
arrow-heads and hatchets.
Two pairs of deer’s antlers were fastened to the wall over the head of
the bed, and on them hung our guns, game-bags, shot-pouches,
riding-whips, gloves and hunting-horns. These last were of great use to
us. They were simply cows’ horns scraped thin and supplied with carved
mouth-pieces. They were used principally for calling the hounds during a
bear or deer-hunt (it may astonish you to learn that every dog knew the
sound of his master’s horn and would obey no other), and with them we
could talk to a friend on a calm day a mile distant.
I have lately learned that when boys in a city want a companion, they
will station themselves in front of his gate and whistle. We did not go
to all that trouble. If Mark and I had any thing exciting on hand, and
wanted our fellows to join in, one of us would go out on the porch and
blow three long blasts on his horn.
We were always sure of an answer, and in a few minutes here would come
Sandy Todd from one direction, and Duke and Herbert from the other. We
had written out a regular code of signals, and each of us kept a copy at
hand for reference, so that there could be no mistake.
We could tell our friends that we wanted them to go hunting, fishing or
blackberrying with us; we could ask them to come over and pay us a
visit; and we could tell them when to expect us. We had signals of
distress, too, and we were all bound to give heed to them when we heard
them.
I ought to say that this idea did not originate with us; we learned it
from the settlers, who also had a code of signals which had been in use
as long as I could remember.
If a planter some evening took it into his head that he would like to go
bear-hunting on the following day he would go out with his horn and blow
five long blasts and three short ones; and, like us when we called our
fellows, he was certain of a reply.
The neighbor who heard him first would respond, then another and another
would follow, until all the men in the settlement for two or three miles
around, had agreed to go bear-hunting, and that, too, without having
seen one another.
Perhaps, now that you have heard so much about our fellows, you would
like to have them personally presented. Step into headquarters, and I
will introduce you. After that, if you think you would enjoy a four-mile
gallop before supper, we will find you a good horse to ride. We are
going down the bayou to visit an Indian camp: and if you have never seen
one, now is your chance.
The boy who sits in that big arm-chair, thrumming on his guitar and
tickling the dog’s ears with the toe of his boot, is my brother Mark. If
you don’t find him in some mischief every time you meet him, you mustn’t
think it is his fault.
Do you see that broad-shouldered, long-legged, awkward-looking fellow
sitting on the floor at the opposite side of the fire-place, with a
hammer in his hand and a pan of hickory nuts by his side? That is Sandy
Todd, the strongest boy and the best shot in our party.
That curly-headed, blue-eyed fellow, who smiles so good-naturedly every
time he speaks, and who sits at the table devouring the hickory-nuts as
fast as Sandy cracks them, is Herbert Dickson. He is blessed with a good
deal of flesh, is Herbert, and sometimes answers to the name of “Chub”;
at others, “Ducklegs.”
I have known plenty of boys at school to be badly deceived in that same
Herbert Dickson. As clumsy as he looks, he can run faster and jump
higher and further than any other fellow of his age in the settlement.
There is nothing in the world that Herbert more enjoys than the
astonishment and chagrin of some lithe young fellow who may have
challenged him, “just for the fun of the thing,” to run a race; for I
don’t remember that I ever saw him beaten.
On the table at Herbert’s elbow is a chessboard with men scattered over
it. I am sitting at one end of it, and the tall, dark, dignified-looking
youth, in blue jeans roundabout and heavy horseman’s boots, who is
sitting opposite me, is Duke Hampton, than whom a better fellow never
lived. He is an acknowledged leader. He settles all our disputes, when
we have any—which, by the way, does not often happen—and is the
projector and manager of most of our plans for amusement. He is handsome
and polite, and, of course, a great favorite with the girls. He is a boy
of high moral principle, strictly truthful, and honorable even in the
smallest matters, and these qualities render him a favorite with the
men. He is the most daring and graceful rider among our fellows, and,
next to Mark, the best wrestler. He is a good chess-player, too; but by
some unaccountable fortune I have driven him into a tight corner.
I do not suppose there is any necessity that I should again introduce
myself. If it will help to place me in your good books, however, I will
tell you that I own the swiftest horse and the best dog in the
settlement. Black Bess has never been beaten in a fair race, and Zip has
yet to find his equal as a fighter and bear dog. I am not so modest but
that I can tell you, also, that I am the champion hunter among our
fellows. I killed a bear alone and unaided, and his skin now hangs on
that nail at the foot of the bed; but my companions, one and all, are
determined to equal me in this respect, and consequently I do not expect
to hold the honors much longer. But here comes our little negro, Bob, to
announce that the horses are waiting, and we must off for the camp if we
intend to be back in time for supper.