_THE DEAD REBEL'S MUSKET._
Pomp came reloading his rifle, while Cudjo, knife in hand, flew at the
cords that confined the schoolmaster.
In his gratitude to Heaven and his deliverers, Penn could have hugged
that grotesque, half-savage creature to his heart. But no time was to be
lost. Snatching the knife, he hastened to release the bewildered
clergyman.
"Pomp, my noble fellow!" The negro turned from looking after the
retreating rebels, with a gleam of triumph on his proud and lofty
features: Penn wrung his hand. "You have twice saved my life--now let me
ask one more favor of you! Take Mr. Villars to your cave--do for him
what you have done for me. He is a much better Christian, and far more
deserving of your kindness, than I ever was."
"And you?" said Pomp, quietly.
"I will take my chance with the others." And Penn in few words explained
the occurrences of the night and morning.
Pomp shrugged his shoulders frowningly. The time was at hand when he and
Cudjo could no longer enjoy in freedom their wild mountain life; even
they must soon be drawn into the great deadly struggle. This he foresaw,
and his soul was darkened for a moment.
"Cudjo! Shall we take this old man to our den?"
"No, no! Don't ye take nobody dar! on'y Massa Hapgood."
"But he is blind!" said Penn.
"Others will come after who are not blind," said Pomp, his brow still
stern and thoughtful.
"My friends," interposed the old clergyman, mildly, "do nothing for me
that will bring danger to yourselves, I entreat you!"
These unselfish words, spoken with serious and benignant aspect, touched
the generous chords in Pomp's breast.
"Why should we blacks have anything to do with this quarrel?" he said
with earnest feeling. "Your friends down there"--meaning Stackridge and
his party--"are all slaveholders or pro-slavery men. Why should we care
which side destroys the other?"
"There is a God," answered Mr. Villars, with a beaming light in his
unterrified countenance, "who is not prejudiced against color; who loves
equally his black and his white children; and who, by means of this war
that seems so needless and so cruel, is working out the redemption, not
of the misguided white masters only, but also of the slave. Whether you
will or not, this war concerns the black man, and he cannot long keep
out of it. Then will you side with your avowed enemies, or with those
who are already fighting in your cause without knowing it?"
These words probed the deep convictions of Pomp's breast. He had from
the first believed that the war meant death to slavery; although of late
the persistent and almost universal cry of Union men for the "Union as
it was,"--the Union with the injustice of slavery at its core,--had
somewhat wearied his patience and weakened his faith.
"Here, Cudjo! help get this horse up--we can find a path for him."
Reluctantly Cudjo obeyed; and almost by main strength the two athletic
blacks lifted and pulled the animal up the bank, and out of the chasm.
Penn assisted his old friend to remount, then took leave of him.
"I will be with you again soon!" he cried, hopefully, as the negroes
urged the horse forward into the thickets.
Then the young Quaker, left alone, turned to look at the dead rebel. For
a moment horrible nausea and faintness made him lean against the tree
for support. It was the first violent death of which he had ever been an
eye-witness. He had known this man,--who was indeed the same Griffin,
who had assisted the unwilling Pepperill to bring the tar-kettle to the
wood-side on a certain memorable evening; ignorant, intemperate, too
proud to work in a region where slavery made industry a disgrace, and
yet a fierce champion of the system which was his greatest curse. Now
there he lay, in his dirt, and rags, and blood, his neck shot through;
the same expression of ferocious hate with which he had rushed to
bayonet the schoolmaster still distorting his visage;--an object of
horror and loathing. Was it not assuming a terrible responsibility to
send this rampant sinner to his long account? Yet the choice was between
his life and Penn's; and had not Pomp done well? Still Penn could not
help feeling remorse and commiseration for the wretch.
"Poor Griffin! I have no murderous hatred for such as you! But if you
come in the way of my country's safety, or of the welfare of my friends,
you must take the penalty!"
He picked up the musket that had fallen at his feet where he stood
bound. Then, stifling his disgust, he felt in the dead man's pockets for
ammunition. Cartridges there were none; but in their place he found some
bullets and a powder-flask. Then putting in practice the lessons he had
learned of Pomp when they hunted together on the mountain, he loaded the
gun, resolutely setting his teeth and drawing his breath hard when he
thought of the different kind of game it might now be his duty to shoot.
While thus occupied he heard footsteps that gave him a sudden start. He
turned quickly, catching up the gun. To his immense relief he saw Pomp,
approaching with a smile.
"I thought you were with Mr. Villars!"
"Cudjo has gone with him. I am going with you."
"O Pomp!" cried Penn, with a joyful sense of reliance upon his powerful
and sagacious black friend. "But is Mr. Villars safe?"
"Cudjo is faithful," said Pomp. "He believes the old man is your friend,
and a friend of the slave. Besides, I promised, if he would take him to
the cave, that my next shot, if I have a chance, should be at his old
acquaintance, Sile Ropes."
Pomp took the lead, guiding Penn through hollows and among thickets to a
ledge crowned with shrubs of savin, whose summit commanded a view of all
that mountain-side.
They crept among the bushes to the edge of the cliff. There they paused.
Neither friend nor foe was in sight. No sound of fire-arms was
heard,--only the birds were singing.
Penn never forgot that scene. How fresh, and beautiful, and still the
morning was! The sunlight flushed the craggy and wooded slopes. Far off,
dim with early mist, lay the lovely hills and valleys of East Tennessee.
On the north the peaks of the mountain range soared away, purple, rosy,
glorious, in soft suffusing light. In the south-west other peaks
receded, billowy and blue. And God's pure, deep sky was over all.
Touched by the divine beauty of the day, Penn lay thinking with shame of
the scenes of human folly and violence with which it had been
desecrated, when the negro drew him softly by the sleeve.
"Look yonder! down in the edge of that little grove!"
Peering through an opening in the savins through which Pomp had thrust
his rifle, Penn saw, stealing cautiously out of the grove, a man.
"It is Stackridge! He is reconnoitring."
"It is a retreat," said Pomp. "See, there they all come!"
"Carl with the rest, showing them the way!" added Penn.
He was watching with intense interest the movements of his friends, and
rejoicing that no foe was in sight, when suddenly Pomp uttered a warning
whisper.
"Where? what?" said Penn, eagerly looking in the direction in which the
negro pointed.
Down at their left was a long line of dark thickets which marked the
edge of a ravine; out of which he now saw emerging, one by one, a file
of armed men. They climbed up a narrow and difficult pass, and halted on
the skirts of the thicket. Ten--twelve--fifteen, Penn counted. It was
the other party that had been sent out simultaneously with that under
Lieutenant Ropes, to get in the rear of the fugitives. And they had
succeeded. Only a bushy ridge concealed them from Stackridge's men, who
were coming up under the shelter of the same ridge on the other side.
Penn trembled with excitement as he saw the rebels cross swiftly
forward, skulking among the bushes, to the summit of the ridge. The
negro's eyes blazed, but he was perfectly cool. On one knee, his left
foot advanced,--holding his rifle with one hand, and parting the bushes
with the other,--he smiled as he observed the situation.
"Here," said he to Penn, "rest your gun in this little crotch. Now can
you see to take aim?"
"Yes," said Penn, with his heart in his throat.
"Calm your nerves! Everything depends on our first shot. Wait till I
give the word. See! they have discovered Stackridge!"
"We might shout, and warn him," said Penn, whose nature still shrank
from using any more deadly means of saving his friends.
"And so discover ourselves! That never'll do. Have you sighted your
man?"
"Yes--the one lying on his belly behind that cedar."
"Very well! I'll take the fellow next him. The moment you have fired,
keep perfectly still, only draw your gun back and load. Now--fire!"
Just then Stackridge and his men, in full view of their hidden friends
on the ledge, were appearing to the fifteen ambushed rebels also.
Suddenly the loud bang of a musket, followed instantly by the sharp
crack of a rifle, echoed down the mountain side. The rebel behind the
cedar sprang to his feet, dropping his gun, and throwing up his hands,
and rushed back down the ridge, screaming, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" while the
man next him also attempted to rise, but fell again, Pomp having
discreetly aimed at an exposed leg.
"I'm glad we've only wounded them!" whispered Penn, very pale, his lips
compressed, his eyes gleaming.
"It has the effect!" said Pomp. "Your friends have discovered the
ambush, thanks to that coward's uproar; and now the rascals are
panic-struck! Fire again as they go into the ravine--powder alone will
do now--a little noise will send them tumbling!"
They accordingly fired blank discharges; at the same time Stackridge and
his friends, recovering from their momentary astonishment, charged after
the retreating rebels, who had barely time to carry off their wounded
and escape into the ravine, when their pursuers scaled the ridge.
"I'm off!" said Pomp, creeping back through the savins. "These men are
not my friends, though they are yours. I'll go and look after Cudjo."
And bounding down into a hollow, he was quickly out of sight.