It was not Judah who had blown the warning blast, but it came from one
of his party sent by him to warn them of the approach of the enemy. The
messenger was pale as death, the veins standing out on his forehead,
and his left arm hanging useless at his side. The horse, panting and
covered with foam, stopped, and Maybee caught the rider in his arms.
“What is it, boy?” he asked.
“Rangers,” the poor fellow gasped out. “Three hundred around the old
farmhouse. Coming down on you. Judah says he can hold them off until
daybreak. I got out, but they shot me.”
Captain Brown seemed transformed; his eyes burned like coals. Maybee
put his hand on his shoulder.
“What’ll you do, Captain, start now or later?”
“Two hours after midnight. The boy knows his business,” was the laconic
reply as drawing long, deep breaths, John Brown made for the horses.
The evening was spent in preparations for the start. The camp
was abandoned, the women hastily fleeing to the refuge on the
mountainside. Three men were to be left to guard the cave, but every
woman carried a rifle in her hand and was prepared to use it. Winona
was in command of the home-guard.
The last words of counsel and instruction were spoken. It was nearly
daylight. Faint streaks of light were already visible in the eastern
horizon. They left the camp two hours after midnight and the last look
that Warren gave toward the mountain showed him the slight figure of
Winona with rifle in hand waving him a farewell salute.
To Maxwell the one hundred intrepid riders, with whom he was
associated, represented a hopeless cause. How could they hope to
conquer a force of three hundred desperadoes? But Warren knew not the
valor of his companions nor the terror which the Brown men inspired.
The attacking point was an hour’s fast riding from camp. The dawn
increased rapidly. Maybee fell back to Warren’s side with an air of
repressed excitement, and his eyes blazed. He touched the young man’s
arm as they rode and pointed to the left where they saw, in a cloud of
dust, another party of horsemen coming toward them.
“Who are they, friends or enemies?”
“Reinforcements. They are the boys Reynolds has collected to help us.
Nothing the matter with him or them, you bet. Reynolds ain’t been the
same since Steward was killed. His heart’s broke ’long with it an’
he’s wil’ fer revenge. Every one of the boys with him is a fighter,
too, from ’way back. I know ’em, Maxwell; an’ now, ------ me, if we
don’t give them hell-hounds the biggest thrashing they’ve had since the
campaign opened, you may call me a squaw. But who’s that riding beside
Reynolds?” he broke off abruptly. “Dog my cats, may I be teetotally
smashed ef it don’t look like Parson Steward!”
“No!” cried Warren in a fever of excitement at the words. “Impossible!”
“We’ll soon know,” replied Maybee.
On they sped over the space that separated the two parties. Then the
order came to halt, and Parson Steward rode into the midst of the
column while the men broke into wild cheering at sight of him. There
was not much time to spend in greeting, but the vice-like grip of
friendly hands spoke louder than words. Warren could not speak for
a moment as before his mind the picture of the last night spent in
Steward’s company passed vividly. The parson, too, was visibly affected.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” he said solemnly.
“Amen,” supplemented Maxwell, and then they rode cautiously forward,
the Captain keeping his men at the steady pace at which they had
started out. Now and then a stray shot from the farmhouse showed them
that Judah was holding his own. The firing increased as they neared the
house, coming mainly from the shelter of trees and bushes at the side.
Finally it became incessant, and the Captain beckoned to Maybee, after
he had halted the column, and they rode cautiously ahead. Soon they
returned, and coming to Warren drew him to the flank of the company.
“My boy, you are going under fire. Are you prepared for any happening?
Are you all right?”
“All right,” replied Warren.
“Well,” said Captain Brown with a sigh, “shake hands; fire low; look
well to the hinder side of your rifle. God bless you!” and he passed
forward to the head of the column. The parson went with him.
Maybee was beside himself with excitement over the parson’s rescue.
“Now you’ll see some fun,” said he: and then, all of a sudden the fire
of battle caught him and he flew into a sort of frenzy. He rode quickly
behind the men, saying in low, concentrated tones: “Give ’em ----
boys! Remember our friends they’ve butchered, and our women and little
children. Give ’em ----, I say!” Then growing calmer he turned to
Warren once more, saying: “Maxwell, I reckon you’ve got as big a score
to settle as anyone of us.” Then he, too, wrung Warren’s hand and rode
away to the head of the column.
A man fell dead in the Brown ranks. The Rangers now advanced in solid
column to meet them. Then came the order to charge, and with a wild
yell the pent-up excitement of the men broke forth and pell-mell they
hurled themselves upon the foe.
Then ensued a wild scene; a turmoil of shots, cries, groans and
shrieks--pandemonium on earth. Maxwell very soon found himself in
the thickest of it, off his horse and doing his part in a fierce
hand-to-hand encounter with one who had fired a pistol straight at him.
The bullet flew wide of the mark and in an instant he had flung the
snarling demon down and had hurled himself upon him. They struggled
fiercely back and forth tearing at each other with all their might.
Gideon Holmes’ long, lithe fingers were sunk deep in his throat in
an endeavor to force him to release his hold. With a mighty effort,
Maxwell brought the butt of his pistol down on his enemy’s face
in a smashing blow. At last he had caught the full spirit of the
fiercest; the blood mounted to his brain, and with ungovernable rage,
thinking only of the sufferings he had endured in the dreadful time of
imprisonment, he continued his rain of blows upon his prostrate foe
until the very limpness of the inert body beneath him stayed his hand.
Through the smoke he saw Captain Brown and Parson Steward and Ebenezer
Maybee fighting like mad, with blazing rifles, and deep curses from
Maybee mingling with the hoarse shouting of passages of Scripture by
the parson.
“Behold, the uncircumcised Philistine, how he defies the armies of the
living God.” And again--“Let no man’s heart fail because of him; thy
servant will go and fight with this Philistine;” “Fear not, neither be
thou dismayed.”
It was a terrible struggle between the two great forces--Right and
Wrong. Drunken with vile passions, the Rangers fought madly but in vain
against the almost supernatural prowess of their opponents; like the
old Spartans who braided their hair and advanced with songs and dancing
to meet the enemy, the anti-slavery men advanced singing hymns and
praising God.
The last stand was made. The desperadoes fled in all directions. Some
went toward the hills; among them was Thomson. He spurred his horse
across the plain, abandoning him at the edge of the rising ground. For
hours he skulked among the trees or crawled or crept over stones and
through bushes, gradually rising higher and higher above the plain.
Brown’s forces swarmed over the ground, slaying as they met the flying
foe. He saw Col. Titus pursued by Judah, speeding over the plain; he
saw them meet and the Colonel fall. A moment--a moment--a convulsive
uplifting of arms, and then Judah turned and slowly began climbing the
ascent.
Thomson, regardless of consequences, sprang clear of the underbrush
and darted up the mountainside. Once he thought he heard a rifle
crack--on--on he sped. He climbed upon a ledge and lay there, peeping
through a crevice made by the meeting of gigantic rocks, and gaining
his breath. He saw no one. Evidently Judah had missed him, and he began
to plan a descent from the opposite side. Searching the cliff for a
landing place, he saw the Possawatamie gurgling along sixty feet below
over pebbles, a torrent in winter but now only a silver thread that
trickled lightly along.
He saw a jutting ledge ten feet below which promised an easy footing to
the valley; once there he could soon evade pursuit. He bound his rifle
securely to him by his belt and crawled out on the shelving rock; then
swinging clear by the aid of a tough sapling, he cautiously dropped. He
paused to regain his breath, gazing speculatively about him the while.
Yes, it was as he had thought. On this side the cliffs broke into a
series of giant steps which led easily to the river. “Lucky once more,”
he chuckled, speaking his thoughts aloud. “That black demon has missed
again. Nex’ turn is mine, an’ I sha’n’t miss him.”
Thus musing he turned to begin the descent--and faced Judah where he
stood in the shadow of a great boulder, with a smile on his face,
watching the movements of his enemy the overseer. Thomson turned as if
to run down the mountainside.
“Stop where you are!” thundered the giant black.
The man obeyed, but his hand sought his rifle.
“Hands up!” again came the pealing voice. The order was given along the
barrel of a gleaming rifle. Thomson’s hands went up obediently.
“You are surprised to see me,” said Judah grimly. A period of silence
ensued. It was a dramatic scene, far from the scene of recent strife.
The morning sun had broke in dazzling splendor over the earth; the
birds were feeding their young families and flew from tree to tree in
neighborly fashion; the murmur of bees humming and of the stream far
below mingled harmoniously. All was peace. But within two human hearts
surged the wild passions of fierce animals at bay.
Judah looked at his foe with the air of one about entering upon a
momentous task. Thomson stood with the narrow ledge for a foothold and
the clouds of heaven at his back, facing he knew not what. His head
throbbed and in his ears were the drum-beats of an army; his heart
was sick with terror for this human torturer, this man-mangler and
woman-beater was an arrant coward. When he could bear the silence no
longer he spoke:
“I suppose I am your prisoner?”
Judah smiled. It was a terrible smile, and carried in it all the
pent-up suffering of two years of bodily torture and a century of
lacerated manhood. Thomson feared him, and well he might. Again he
spoke. The sound of his own voice gave him courage; anything to break
the horrible silence and the chill of that icy smile.
“I am to be treated as a prisoner of war?”
This time Judah answered him.
“Would you have treated me as a prisoner of war if you had captured me?”
“No,” broke involuntarily from Thomson’s lips.
“Very well!”
“I demand to be taken before Captain Brown. Surely he is human; he
will not give me into the hands of a savage to be tortured!” exclaimed
the wretch in frantic desperation.
Again Judah smiled his calm, dispassionate smile as he examined his
rifle, and then slowly brought it to his shoulder.
“You who torture the slave without a thought of mercy, and who could
treat a young white man--one of your own race--as you did Mr. Maxwell,
fear to be tortured? Why, where is your boasted Southern bravery that
has promised so much?”
Bill’s teeth glittered in a grin of hate and fear.
“God! It’s murder to kill a man with his hands up!” he shrieked.
“It rests with you whether or not I shoot you,” replied Judah calmly.
“I am going to give you one chance for life. It is a slim one, but more
than you would give me.”
Bill eyed him with a venomous look of terror and distrust; but his
manner had changed to fawning smoothness.
“Judah,” he began, “look a-here, I own I done you dirt mean, I do.
I ask yer pardon--I couldn’t do more’n that ef you was a white man,
could I? Well, sir, I know you’re a brave nigger, an’ I know, too,
it’s nat’ral for you to lay it up agin me, fer I done yer dirt an’ no
mistake. But I had to; ef I’d showed you quarter, every nigger on the
plantation ’d been hard to handle. It was necessary discipline, boy;
nothin’ particular agin you.”
Bill’s beady black eyes never left the Negro’s face as he watched for a
sign of wavering in the calm smile.
“Look a-here, I can tell you a heap of things ’d be worth more’n my
life to the gal, an’ Titus couldn’t blame me for givin’ the scheme
away; what’s money to life? It’s worth a fortune to you to know what I
can tell you this minute; only let me out of this, Jude.”
But Judah knew his man. Not for one instant did Thomson deceive him. He
judged it a righteous duty to condemn him to death.
“You stole Winona’s liberty and mine. I know what your promises are
worth. Do you think I would listen to a proposition coming from you,
you infernal scoundrel? Get ready. I’ve sworn to kill you and I intend
to keep my oath. When I count three jump backwards or I put a bullet
into your miserable carcass. If you are alive when you strike the
river, you can swim ashore; it’s one chance in ten. Choose.”
Bill grew white; his eyes gleamed like those of a trapped rat, but he
seemed to realize that it was useless to plead for mercy at the hands
of the calm, smiling Negro before him.
“One!” counted Judah, moving toward Thomson a step as he counted.
There he paused, desiring that the wretch should suffer all, in
anticipation, that he had caused others to suffer.
“Two!” Thomson moved backward involuntarily, but still he did not lose
his footing. Again Judah paused.
“Three!”
With a wild curse, Thomson sprang off the ledge. A fearfully
quiet moment followed. Judah did not move. There came a crashing
of underbrush, a sound of rolling rocks and gravel, a plash of
water--silence.
A superb, masterful smile played over the ebon visage of the now
solitary figure upon the mountainside. In his face shone a glitter of
the untamable torrid ferocity of his tribe not pleasing to see. The
first act in his bold and sagacious plans was successful; once free, it
only remained for him to carry them out with the same inexorable energy.
The upraised hands and straining eyeballs, rigid and stonelike, the
gaping, bloodless lips, the muttered curse--all had passed from sight
like an unpleasant dream. Judah, intently listening to the ominous
thud, thud, thud, of that falling body, the swish of displaced
bushes, and the rattle of gravel and stones, was not moved from the
stoicism of his manner, save in the fearful smile that still played
over his features. Then, as he listened, there came a last awful cry,
a scream that startled all nature and awoke echo after echo along
the hillside--a scream like no sound in earth or heaven--unhuman and
appalling. He made a step forward to the brink and looked over and then
drew back.
A while he leaned upon his gun in meditation. He was a morbid soul
preying upon its recollection, without the gift of varied experience;
it was not strange that vengeance seemed to him earth’s only blessing.
To him his recent act was one of simple justice. Hate, impotent hate,
had consumed his young heart for two years. An eye for an eye was a
doctrine that commended itself more and more to him as he viewed the
Negro’s condition in life, and beheld the horrors of the system under
which he lived.
Judged by the ordinary eye Judah’s nature was horrible, but it was the
natural outcome or growth of the ‘system’ as practiced upon the black
race. He felt neither remorse nor commiseration for the deed just
committed. To him it was his only chance of redress for the personal
wrongs inflicted upon Winona and himself by the strong, aggressive race
holding them in unlawful bondage. Time and place were forgotten as he
stood there like a statue. He was back in the past. His thoughts ran
backwards in an unbroken train until the scene before him changed to
the island and the day when the careless happiness of his free youth
was broken by the advent of the strangers, Colonel Titus and Bill
Thomson. Then had followed the murder of White Eagle.
Yes, once he had a friend, but he was dead--dead by a man’s hand. And
he--but a moment since went over the cliff. It was well!
As through a mist, queries and propositions and possibilities took
shape, there on the cliffside, that had never before presented
themselves to him. As he stood in the blazing sunlight, his brain
throbbed intolerably and every pulsation was a shooting pain. Why had
he been so dull of comprehension? What if a thought just born in his
mind should prove true? O, to be free once more!
There was a rustle of leaves, and out from the shadow of the trees
filed a number of the anti-slavery men headed by Captain Brown and
Parson Steward.
“Well, Judah,” said Captain Brown, “we’ve been watching your little
drama. You promised to kill him and you’ve done it.”
“Boys,” returned Judah, “and all of you, I leave it to you if I’m not
right in ridding the world of such a beast as Thomson.”
The men set up a cheer that echoed and re-echoed among the hills. The
women in the cave heard with joyful hearts.
“I’d kill a snake wherever I f’und him,” said one; “wudn’t you, Parson?”
“Sure,” replied the parson. “This is a holy war, and its only just
begun.”
“This is a great day. Praise God from whom all blessings flow; we’ve
put to flight the armies of the Philistines,” said Captain Brown.
“It is justice! I am satisfied,” said Judah, scanning each solemn face
before him with his keen eyes.
Parson Steward wore the same calm, unruffled front touched with faint
humor that had characterized him when first introduced to our readers.
He was a trifle paler, but that was all that reminded one of the fact
that only by a miracle, as it were, he had escaped death at the hands
of cruel men. Judah grasped his hand in both of his.
“No wonder we have won, Parson; I heard them cry: ‘Look at the Parson!’
and then they fled in every direction.”
“They reckoned he was dead, an’ ’lowed he was a ghost. By gum, how they
broke! It was easy work to pick them off,” broke in one of the men.
“Perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me where you come from, Parson;
you’ve been dead to us for weeks past.”
“Yes; we all want to learn how the Parson got here,” said Captain Brown.
“Oh, I been pretty near you right along,” replied the Parson, not a
whit hurried or excited by the interest of his audience. “That night on
the road with young Maxwell was a terrible one. They caught me off my
guard for the first time in my life. I was filled with shot and left
for dead. Next morning Reynolds got wind of the proceedings and went
out to find my remains and give me a decent burial. I was breathing
when he got me. That settled it. He toted me on his back to his house
and hid me in his loft, and there I lay eight long weeks and every one
thinking me dead. Boys, it was a close shave, and when I thought of
my wife and children it was tough, turrible tough on the old man, but
I left them in the hands of that God who has never failed me yet, and
here I am right side up with care, and the old woman and kids safe and
hearty here in your camp.” He ended solemnly, and the men doffed their
ragged hats in humble homage.
“Amen!” said Captain Brown. “All’s well that ends well,” and they
continued their tramp up the mountainside to the cave.
Impelled by a morbid fascination, Judah climbed down the mountain path
seeking the bed of the stream below where lay the body of his foe.