A boy in General Greene’s army sets out to capture a famous Tory
marauder and finds him to be his own brother. What does he do?
In the early days of March, 1781, Neil Davidson was thirteen years
old and had been five months in the patriot army. He had taken part
in several skirmishes and had lived in camps where food was scarce
and clothing scarcer, where a blanket for four men was a prize, and
companies were sometimes obliged to stay away from review because their
uniform had been worn through to that of mother nature. He had shared
the hard marches by which Greene and Morgan kept the prisoners taken
at Cowpens from recapture by Cornwallis, and during which Greene had
reported that the naked feet of his men marked their way with blood.
It was a strange experience for a boy, and Neil had become such a queer
combination of outspoken child and shrewd veteran as can be matched
in these days only by the gamins who fight their battles in the city
streets. Without losing his boyishness he had acquired a military
swagger which he knew enough to suppress when there was any advantage
to be gained by acting like a child, and underneath swagger and
boyishness there burned the revengeful, deep-seated hatred of Tories
which marked all but a few of the patriots of those days. In Neil
it was an unchildlike passion, giving him strength on long marches,
putting a keen barb to his wit, making him trusted in the army beyond
his years.
Before the real beginning of the Revolution his father had been hanged
by the Tory government for taking part in a popular outbreak, and his
mother had been crazed by grief. From the shadow of such an early
childhood Neil had emerged almost a man in purpose at thirteen and very
fierce at heart.
Yet, in spite of a bronzed face, he was still exceedingly coltish
and immature in appearance, with round, wide-open blue eyes, a shock
of long, sunburned hair, and legs that also were long and sunburned,
having seldom been covered by a substantial, untorn garment. There was
a great amount of speed available in the bare legs, and under the shock
of hair there was plenty of boyish logic and common sense.
Altogether, he was handy to have about, and he was sent on so many
errands from officer to officer that he was known around all the
cheerless campfires in Greene’s army. Even the general kept him in
mind, and at times permitted him to undertake important missions. He
had carried more than one of the appeals for reënforcements which
Greene kept sending to the governors of North and South Carolina and
Virginia, and to the military leaders of the three states. His way had
lain through a country swarming with enemies, and he had come safely
through encounters in which a man’s errand would have been investigated.
One night, during the anxious two weeks before the Battle of Guilford
Court House, Greene sent for him again. The army was moving stealthily
along muddy roads through the dusk of starlight, for the general
thought his force still too weak to risk an engagement and evaded
Cornwallis by shifting his camp every twenty-four hours, in the dark.
The footsore men plodded forward silently. Loss of sleep was wearing
them out. Greene himself had hardly slept for a week, and physical
exhaustion united with his judgment in declaring that the strain could
not last much longer. If sufficient reënforcements did not arrive
soon, he would have to fight without them, and disaster would result.
He sighed and settled himself wearily in the saddle. For a moment his
overburdening anxiety slipped from him, and he dozed as he rode. Then
he straightened himself with a start. A small lanky figure had bobbed
up beside his horse out of the obscurity of the night, and he caught
the motion of a salute.
“Ah, Neil,” he said, “I sent for you to see if you are ready to
undertake another dangerous errand. I fear my last message to Colonel
William Campbell has been intercepted. I want some one to go out, try
to meet him, and hurry him forward. If he has not heard of our recent
movements, he may be marching toward the Dan River.”
He hesitated a moment, as if he had more to say, but Neil did not wait
for it. “I’m your man, sir!” he declared.
The general smiled at the boy’s confidence. “That was my impression,
too,” he admitted. “Yet there is one strong argument against your
going. Gillespie, one of the scouts, has just come in. He’s been
hanging around Tarleton’s Legion and he’s heard you spoken of. It seems
that the enemy took notice of you in the affair at the mill the other
day, and that rascal who has your name, Davidson, the bushwhacker, is
with the Legion, and he swears to capture you; so if any of Tarleton’s
men come across a boy of your size and description, he will have hard
work to get away from them.”
“But even if they are on the lookout for a boy, they’re just as much
on the lookout for every grown man in your army,” Neil urged. “Anybody
that the Tories get hold of will have to give a good account of
himself.”
“So I reasoned,” the general said, “and at the same time I am unwilling
to have you undertake this without some safeguard. You are about the
height of an ordinary young woman, and when we reach Mrs. Bynum’s
plantation, where we shall make our next camp, I shall have her furnish
you with clothing and a side-saddle, and you will go disguised as a
girl. That is all for the present. Report to me at the Bynum house as
soon as you reach the plantation, and keep this to yourself in the
meantime.”
Neil saluted and dropped back. As soon as he was at a safe distance he
gave a long whistle of surprise. Then he began to laugh. The dismay
with which he first thought of concealing his military identity in
petticoats gave way to excitement. He began softly to hum the air and
words of a rude ballad which celebrated the victory of King’s Mountain,
five months before, and was passing from mouth to mouth through the
patriot army.
“Stop that singing!” a gruff voice said in his ear. “Are you signalling
to Cornwallis?”
In the darkness it was impossible to see if the speaker were officer or
man from the ranks. Neil took the risk and answered like an equal: “Who
are you that are giving me orders? I left General Greene ahead there,
and just now I’m taking orders direct from him.”
“Oh!” the voice returned ironically, but without apparent offense,
“then I reckon you’re the great Neil Davidson. I’m merely Joe
Gillespie, scout.”
“I have heard of you,” Neil said good-naturedly. “The general was
speaking of you just now.”
“Do you know who was speaking of you lately?” Gillespie asked. He took
the boy by the arm and walked along with him through the dark. “That
namesake of yours, Sandy Davidson. He’s taken a notion to capture you,
and you want to be as wary as you know how. He’s the worst of the Tory
bushwhackers, and the most daredevil. If he’s decided to capture you
because your name’s the same as his, he’s likely to walk right into
Greene’s camp and do it. It’s nothing to him that there’s a reward out
for his life.”
“I reckon he’ll not find it as easy to catch me as he thinks,” Neil
said. A tremor of fierceness came into his voice. He threw back his
shoulders, and his companion could feel his arm grow tense. “But if
I live long enough I’ll capture him and see him hanged. He has my
brother’s name.”
“The name is common.”
“It shan’t be common among Tories!” the boy declared. “They killed my
brother. They shan’t have his name.”
“How did they kill him?” Gillespie’s voice was stirred. It was an old
story, the loss of life on either side in the bitter Civil War that
tore the Carolinas, but it was a story that never found dull ears.
“I don’t know,” Neil said. “I was a very little boy and the Indians had
carried me off. When I was exchanged and brought home my mother told me
that the Tories had killed Sandy. She didn’t say how--she never would
tell me how. She’d had so much trouble that she was--well, queer, and
she never would tell anything very much. I was so scared and lonesome
that I ran away to the Indians, and stayed with them again a long time.
Mother was just the same when I came back. She didn’t need me and I
couldn’t do anything for her, and that’s why I followed the army to
fight the Tories in Sandy’s place. And I don’t intend to let any Tory
live with his name.”
Gillespie had been seasoned in border warfare, yet he felt
uncomfortable at hearing a mere child use the fierce language of the
war. “Pshaw, now,” he said, “it’s an ugly business to plan to kill men
one at a time! When a whole army gets up before you and you shoot at
it, that’s a different matter. And you want to be careful; besides,
he’s a good deal more likely to get hold of you and do what he pleases
with you than you are with him.”
“I’ll be careful,” Neil agreed--“careful to capture him.”
There were so many things to occupy the general’s attention that it
was nearly daybreak before the messenger was despatched; but at last,
with his length and thinness encased in linsey-woolsey petticoats and a
sunbonnet on his head, the boy rode off through the cold morning chill.
Before Neil started the sunbonnet had been ripped open, and Greene had
slipped a letter to Colonel Campbell in between the lining and one of
the slats which stiffened its brim. Neil was as conscious of the letter
as he was of the rattling of the bonnet round his ears and of the
imprisoned feeling which it gave him to wear it. The general had told
him to treat the bonnet carelessly if he fell into trouble; to swing
it by the strings as a girl might, and to swing it into a fire if
possible; but for the first hour Neil was in no trouble except from the
bonnet and the petticoats and the necessity of sitting sidewise on his
horse.
He was riding through woodland; day began to sift slowly down among
the dark tree-trunks. The branches above him grew astir with wakening
birds; the cold air was sweet from unseen jasmine flowers.
The world seemed so quiet, and there was such a sense of peace abroad,
that Neil did one of the few imprudent things of his service. His
side-saddle continually troubled him; he felt insecurely perched on it,
and his back was twisted in an unfamiliar way. If he rode astride for
a while, during this secure, peaceful time, he reasoned that the rest
of the journey would be easier for him when in full daylight he was
obliged to play the girl decorously and be constantly on his guard.
One leg swung over. He pressed his knees into the horse’s sides, and
gave a suppressed whoop of joy. The horse sped forward, and just for
practice, he jerked off his sunbonnet and swung it round and round his
head by the strings; the blood danced in him; he leaned forward and
gave a hissing chirrup to the horse; his petticoats flapped in the
wind, and the trees fled hastily to the rear. Now was his chance for
making time. To feel himself firmly and naturally seated on the horse
was glorious. He swung the bonnet round his head again. One of the
strings slipped from his hand and the other tore from the bonnet. The
bonnet flew to the roadside, and before Neil could check his horse it
was rods behind.
As he rode back for it, a man stepped out of the woods and picked it
from the bush where it had lodged. At sight of him Neil flung his stray
leg back where it belonged, and blushed to a depth of embarrassment
which would have done credit to any girl.
“If you please, sir,” he said, “I just lost that bonnet.”
The stranger held the bonnet behind him and laughed. He was a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with a face which made Neil sure that he was a
man to be reckoned with. The features were large, yet mobile, and his
pale, greenish eyes had a spark of mischief in them which looked as if
it might turn to fire. Neil felt sorely perturbed, and he had no need
to play a part in order to show timidity. Sandy Davidson came back
into his mind; but if this were Sandy, there would be small chance to
capture him in such a meeting, and the most Neil could hope was to get
away.
Whoever the stranger might be, his first object was to tease. “What’ll
you give me for it, Miss Tomboy?” he asked.
“I--I don’t have anything to give you,” Neil stammered.
“Then you’ll not get it,” the other said, slipping the bonnet inside
his blouse. “You don’t really want it you know. Anybody can see from
your brown face that you’re not used to wearing a bonnet.”
“But I do want it!” Neil declared. He was wild with anxiety and had no
idea what to do. If the man had not slipped it into his tunic, he might
have ridden closer, snatched it, and galloped off.
The man stood laughing at him. “I’ll swap it for a kiss,” he offered.
Neil drew back. “No, you’ll not!” he cried angrily. His indignation was
for himself rather than for the girl he pretended to be. As far as he
could remember, neither his mother nor the Indians nor the soldiers had
ever offered him a bargain of this kind. He had never been kissed since
his babyhood. His face set, his blue eyes turned fierce, and he lifted
the switch which he used as a riding whip.
The stranger fell back a pace and stared with a look which was first
startled and then keen. “You’re not a girl; you’re Neil Davidson!” he
said abruptly.
Neil’s hand dropped. He stared back at the stranger. Something far away
and dimly remembered, something which had made the boy tremble from
the first, was in the man’s features. There was no question now. This
was Sandy Davidson, and he had not only borrowed a name from Neil’s
brother, he had borrowed a face.
As they stood bewildered a faint sound reached them. Although distant,
there was no mistaking the murmurous trample of many feet.
The man took Neil’s horse by the bridle. “You don’t deny that you’re
Neil Davidson, and you’re my prisoner,” he said. “That’s Tarleton’s
Legion. I was waiting here till it came by.”
“Why do you think I’m Neil Davidson?”
“Can’t you guess?” For the first time the man’s voice had a troubled
sound. “It was when you got so mad. Your eyes blazed just as _hers_
always did, and then all at once I could see your baby face--changed a
lot, but looking right out at me. You always looked like mother.”
Neil’s hand closed on the horn of the side-saddle. The name “Sandy
Davidson” had not prepared him; the resemblance had seemed only an
added insult.
“You needn’t be afraid,” the other said, noticing how pale he had grown
under his tan. “Since I heard of you in Greene’s army I’ve vowed I’d
catch you, and now I have. Our family has done enough against the king.
But I’ll see that nobody hurts you.”
Neil straightened himself with a jerk. His timidity was gone and his
bewilderment was yielding to an understanding of what his mother had
meant when she said that the Tories had killed Sandy. “And since I’ve
heard of a Tory with my brother’s name, I’ve vowed to capture _him_!”
he cried. “I’ve vowed that no Tory named Sandy Davidson should live,
for mother said they’d killed you.”
The other gave an impatient laugh. “Why don’t you capture me, then?” he
asked. “Here I am. I told mother I was on the king’s side, and she said
I was dead to her. She was growing crazy and driving me crazy begging
me to revenge father’s death, when father was a rebel and deserved
what he got. She drove me out of the house when I said I was a king’s
man.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to put an end to accounting
for himself. “Of course you’ve got messages on you, or you’d not be
disguised. Hand them over and it will save you trouble. I’m your very
affectionate brother, though you would like to collect that reward
for me, but I can tell you Tarleton’s a very affectionate brother to
nobody!”
The sunbonnet with the letter in it was still in the front of Sandy’s
hunting-shirt. “You can search me,” Neil said. “You’ll find no letters.”
“Then what were you sent for?”
“To practise riding on a side-saddle. You noticed that I don’t take
very kindly to sitting this way.”
“You’re pretty cool for a prisoner,” Sandy said approvingly. “I’ll
search you fast enough, but I reckon we’ll be as good friends as when
you wore dresses all the time.”
“Don’t think it!” Neil cried out. “Don’t think I’ll ever----” He
checked himself, remembering that he was absolutely powerless in
the hands of a man whose name stood for that all was unmerciful. If
there was any kindly feeling left in such a man, Neil would need it.
The trample of feet grew louder, and the brothers waited in silence,
half-concealed by the clump of bushes on which the bonnet had caught.
Neil was busy with the possibilities of getting away. He looked at his
brother critically, trying to judge what might be expected of him. Hard
living, hard fighting, and cruelty had left strangely slight marks upon
Sandy. His face was almost noble, suggesting possibilities which he was
fast outliving.
The boy’s head began to whirl with remembrance of the days when he had
toddled at Sandy’s heels; the two had shunned the house where their
mother’s half-crazed talk of revenge left them no peace; they had
stayed in the fields together; sometimes the big boy had teased the
little one, but sometimes he had snatched Neil up and tossed and played
with him, making him blissfully certain that they were of one age and
stature--rough, loving mates.
Neil’s only bright memories of home were of Sandy. It was because they
were so bright that he had hated the Tory Sandy so much more than any
other Tory; and yet this man, this bushwhacker and marauder, had spoken
of the old days.
Once Neil leaned forward to ask him if he recalled some trifling
circumstance which stood out with special plainness in his own
recollection, but he could not form the words. Relive the past with a
Tory? He shook his head savagely and looked in the direction of the
approaching troops.
The soldiers were coming into view round a curve in the road--not
Tarleton’s Legion, but a body of plainly dressed militia such as might
be found in either army, such as might have reinforced Tarleton. For
the space of a breath Sandy and Neil watched them. Then an officer
galloped forward. The brightening daylight struck across his red hair
and large, high-boned face. It was Col. William Campbell leading his
riflemen to Greene.
Before Sandy could stir Neil caught him by the arm. In their partial
shelter they had not yet been seen. “If you run, I’ll call out your
name and you’ll be a dead man!” he whispered. “That’s Campbell’s
regiment, and you’re my prisoner! Give me back that bonnet. There’s a
message in it to Colonel Campbell from General Greene!” His words grew
swifter with triumph. “Oh, you laughed when I said I’d vowed to capture
you. You were sure it was Tarleton’s regiment----”
Sandy nodded. For once a surprise had dazed him and he stood quiescent,
realizing that if Neil gave the alarm those grim-faced men would scour
the woods and hunt him down. “Oh, I’m caught!” he acknowledged grimly.
“You’ll have the pleasure of seeing me shot or hanged.”
“I said I’d capture you,” Neil repeated. “I said no Tory should
live----” Something unexpected choked his words. The vision of deaths
he had seen in the army passed before him, and then of two boys romping
together in a field. It was only an instant, but the love and the hate
of his life struggled together. He began to tremble.
“The bonnet!” he begged. “If I have the bonnet I can hold their
notice.”
“You mean you’ll help me off?” Sandy’s voice broke huskily. “Little
Neil--I’ll remember this, I’ll----” But there was no time for words.
He pulled the bonnet from his tunic, turned and walked coolly into the
woods, just as the soldiers caught sight of Neil’s higher figure on the
horse.
Neil rode to meet the regiment, holding his bonnet in his hands. He
forgot his disguise and saluted like a soldier.
“Colonel Campbell, I’m not a girl. I’m Neil Davidson, and I’ve brought
you a message from General Greene,” he said. “It’s sewed inside the
bonnet.”
But the colonel had caught a motion between the trees. “Who’s that
moving off there?” he asked sharply.
“A man I was talking to,” Neil said. “I was riding fast and my bonnet
flew off. A stranger stepped out of the woods and picked it up for me.
He thought I was a girl, of course, and teased me at first. He wanted
me to kiss him before he’d give it back. I was nearly wild on account
of the message. Then we heard you coming. He stopped teasing and waited
with me until I told him you were my friends.”
“Humph! It’s pretty evident we weren’t his friends; but I reckon he’s
not worth following!” the colonel commented. He tore open the bonnet,
found the message in it, and troubled himself no more about the man in
the woods.
“Ah, Neil, you brought them in!” the general said, when Neil reported
to him. As it chanced, the regiment would have arrived just as safely
without the message, yet he let his grave, tired eyes rest approvingly
on the boy.
Neil had on his own tattered clothes again. His head was as shaggy
and bare as usual, and his brown legs nearly as bare, but there was
something unfamiliar in his face. “Yes, sir,” he answered impetuously.
“I brought them in, but I let the worst Tory in the country go free.”
Greene smiled half-incredulously. “Why was that?” he asked.
Neil was silent a moment, and the general saw tears rising in the blue
eyes that he had supposed were always shrewd or fierce.
“He was my brother!” Neil broke out at last, and because his heart was
so full that he had to tell some one, he told the big, considerate
general the whole story. “And you may do what you please with me,
general,” he ended. “I had to let him go free.”
The general took the boy’s small, shaking hand. “I don’t think you let
him go _free_, exactly, Neil,” he said. “That minute of mercy will make
him more or less your captive all his life.”