Produced by Mary Starr and Martin Robb. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME
by
JOHN FOX, JR.
To
CURRIE DUKE
DAUGHTER OF THE CHIEF
AMONG
MORGAN'S MEN
KENTUCKY, APRIL, 1898
CONTENTS
1. TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME
2. FIGHTING THEIR WAY
3. A "BLAB SCHOOL" ON KINGDOM COME
4. THE COMING OF THE TIDE
5. OUT OF THE WILDERNESS
6. LOST AT THE CAPITAL
7. A FRIEND ON THE ROAD
8. HOME WITH THE MAJOR
9. MARGARET
10. THE BLUEGRASS
11. A TOURNAMENT
12. BACK TO KINGDOM COME
13. ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE
14. THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS
15. TO COLLEGE IN THE BLUEGRASS
16. AGAIN THE BAR SINISTER
17. CHADWICK BUFORD, GENTLEMAN
18. THE SPIRIT OF '76 AND THE SHADOW OF '61
19. THE BLUE OR THE GRAY
20. OFF TO THE WAR
21. MELISSA
22. MORGAN'S MEN
23. CHAD CAPTURES AN OLD FRIEND
24. A RACE BETWEEN DIXIE AND DAWN
25. AFTER DAWS DILLON--GUERILLA
26. BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST
27. AT THE HOSPITAL OF MORGAN'S MEN
28. PALL-BEARERS OF THE LOST CAUSE
29. MELISSA AND MARGARET
30. PEACE
31. THE WESTWARD WAY
THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME
CHAPTER 1
TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME
The days of that April had been days of mist and rain. Sometimes, for
hours, there would come a miracle of blue sky, white cloud, and yellow
light, but always between dark and dark the rain would fall and the
mist creep up the mountains and steam from the tops--only to roll
together from either range, drip back into the valleys, and lift,
straightway, as mist again. So that, all the while Nature was trying to
give lustier life to every living thing in the lowland Bluegrass, all
the while a gaunt skeleton was stalking down the Cumberland--tapping
with fleshless knuckles, now at some unlovely cottage of faded white
and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of
Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went
stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the
point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin
set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits,
within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh for the long flight into
the unknown.
It was the spirit of the plague that passed, taking with it the breath
of the unlucky and the unfit: and in the hut on Lonesome three were
dead--a gaunt mountaineer, a gaunt daughter, and a gaunt son. Later,
the mother, too, "jes' kind o' got tired," as little Chad said, and
soon to her worn hands and feet came the well-earned rest. Nobody was
left then but Chad and Jack, and Jack was a dog with a belly to feed
and went for less than nothing with everybody but his little master and
the chance mountaineer who had sheep to guard. So, for the fourth time,
Chad, with Jack at his heels, trudged up to the point of a wooded spur
above the cabin, where, at the foot of a giant poplar and under a
wilderness of shaking June leaves, were three piles of rough boards,
loosely covering three hillocks of rain-beaten earth; and, near them,
an open grave. There was no service sung or spoken over the dead, for
the circuit-rider was then months away; so, unnoticed, Chad stood
behind the big poplar, watching the neighbors gently let down into the
shallow trench a home-made coffin, rudely hollowed from the half of a
bee-gum log, and, unnoticed, slipped away at the first muffled stroke
of the dirt--doubling his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the
gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny
space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to
sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed
and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with
blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the
valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he sprang
quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped slowly
back to the moss again, while Jack, who had started down the spur,
circled back to see what the matter was, and stood with uplifted foot,
much puzzled.
There had been a consultation about Chad early that morning among the
neighbors, and old Nathan Cherry, who lived over on Stone Creek, in the
next cove but one, said that he would take charge of the boy. Nathan
did not wait for the burial, but went back home for his wagon, leaving
word that Chad was to stay all night with a neighbor and meet him at
the death-stricken cabin an hour by sun. The old man meant to have Chad
bound to him for seven years by law--the boy had been told that--and
Nathan hated dogs as much as Chad hated Nathan. So the lad did not lie
long. He did not mean to be bound out, nor to have Jack mistreated, and
he rose quickly and Jack sprang before him down the rocky path and
toward the hut that had been a home to both. Under the poplar, Jack
sniffed curiously at the new-made grave, and Chad called him away so
sharply that Jack's tail drooped and he crept toward his master, as
though to ask pardon for a fault of which he was not conscious. For one
moment, Chad stood looking. Again the stroke of the falling earth smote
his ears and his eyes filled; a curious pain caught him by the throat
and he passed on, whistling--down into the shadows below to the open
door of the cabin.
It was deathly still. The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of
brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of
hickory withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and
pans--had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and
beans and red pepper-pods--all ready for old Nathan when he should come
over for them, next morning, with his wagon. Not a living thing was to
be heard or seen that suggested human life, and Chad sat down in the
deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up the green walls that
bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where he should go,
if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who seemed to know that
some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a little way off, to
wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to make up his mind.
It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very
seriously about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come.
Digging back into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that
what had just happened now had happened to him once before, and that he
had simply wandered away. He could not recollect where he had started
from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had lived,
and why he had left them--usually because somebody, like old Nathan,
had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or would not let
the two stray off into the woods together, when there was nothing else
to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now, because the old man
and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy to Jack, and had
let the two guard cattle in the mountains and drive sheep and, if they
stayed out in the woods over night, struck neither a stroke of hand nor
tongue. The old mother had been his mother and, once more, Chad leaned
his head against the worn lintel and wept silently. So far, nobody had
seemed to care particularly who he was, or was not--nor had Chad. Most
people were very kind to him, looking upon him as one of the wandering
waifs that one finds throughout the Cumberland, upon whom the good
folks of the mountains do not visit the father's sin. He knew what he
was thought to be, and it mattered so little, since it made no
discrimination against him, that he had accepted it without question.
It did not matter now, except as it bore on the question as to where he
should start his feet. It was a long time for him to have stayed in one
place, and the roving memories, stirred within him now, took root,
doubtless, in the restless spirit that had led his unknown ancestor
into those mountain wilds after the Revolution.
All this while he had been sitting on the low threshold, with his
elbows in the hollows of his thighs and his left hand across his mouth.
Once more, he meant to be bound to no man's service and, at the final
thought of losing Jack, the liberty loving little tramp spat over his
hand with sharp decision and rose.
Just above him and across the buck antlers over the door, lay a long
flint-lock rifle; a bullet-pouch, a powder-horn, and a small
raccoon-skin haversack hung from one of the prongs: and on them the
boy's eyes rested longingly. Old Nathan, he knew, claimed that the dead
man had owed him money; and he further knew that old Nathan meant to
take all he could lay his hands on in payment: but he climbed
resolutely upon a chair and took the things down, arguing the question,
meanwhile:
"Uncle Jim said once he aimed to give this rifle gun to me. Mebbe he
was foolin', but I don't believe he owed ole Nathan so much, an',
anyways," he muttered grimly, "I reckon Uncle Jim ud kind o' like fer
me to git the better of that ole devil--jes a LEETLE, anyways."
The rifle, he knew, was always loaded, there was not much powder in the
horn and there were not more than a dozen bullets in the pouch, but
they would last him until he could get far away. No more would he take,
however, than what he thought he could get along with--one blanket from
the bed and, from the fireplace, a little bacon and a pone of
corn-bread.
"An' I KNOW Aunt Jane wouldn't 'a' keered about these leetle fixin's,
fer I have to have 'em, an' I know I've earned 'em anyways."
Then he closed the door softly on the spirits of the dead within, and
caught the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside.
With his Barlow knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw
bush near by, folded and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little
pack to his shoulder, when the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the
bushes, close at hand. Old Nance, lean and pied, was coming home; he
had forgotten her, it was getting late, and he was anxious to leave for
fear some neighbor might come; but there was no one to milk and, when
she drew near with a low moo, he saw that her udders were full and
dripping. It would hurt her to go unmilked, so Chad put his things down
and took up a cedar piggin from a shelf outside the cabin and did the
task thoroughly--putting the strippings in a cup and, so strong was the
habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and setting
them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his pack and his
rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the wood-pile.
There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and wrenching loose a
short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered under the weight of
his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an hour high and, on the
spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and set to work with
his axe on a sapling close by--talking frankly now to the God who made
him:
"I reckon You know it, but I'm a-goin' to run away now. I hain't got no
daddy an' no mammy, an' I hain't never had none as I knows--but Aunt
Jane hyeh--she's been jes' like a mother to me an' I'm a-doin' fer her
jes' whut I wish You'd have somebody do fer my mother, ef You know whar
she's a-layin'."
Eight round sticks he cut swiftly--four long and four short--and with
these he built a low pen, as is the custom of the mountaineers, close
about the fresh mound, and, borrowing a board or two from each of the
other mounds, covered the grave from the rain. Then he sunk the axe
into the trunk of the great poplar as high up as he could reach--so
that it could easily be seen--and brushing the sweat from his face, he
knelt down:
"God!" he said, simply, "I hain't nothin' but a boy, but I got to ack
like a man now. I'm a-goin' now. I don't believe You keer much and
seems like I bring ever'body bad luck: an' I'm a-goin' to live up hyeh
on the mountain jes' as long as I can. I don't want you to think I'm
a-complainin'--fer I ain't. Only hit does seem sort o' curious that
You'd let me be down hyah--with me a-keerint fer nobody now, an' nobody
a-keerin' fer me. But Thy ways is inscrutable--leastwise, that's whut
the circuit-rider says--an' I ain't got a word more to say--Amen."
Chad rose then and Jack, who had sat perfectly still, with his head
cocked to one side, and his ears straight forward in wonder over this
strange proceeding, sprang into the air, when Chad picked up his gun,
and, with a joyful bark, circled a clump of bushes and sped back,
leaping as high as the little fellow's head and trying to lick his
face--for Jack was a rover, too.
The sun was low when the two waifs turned their backs upon it, and the
blue shadows in valley and ravine were darkening fast. Down the spur
they went swiftly--across the river and up the slope of Pine Mountain.
As they climbed, Chad heard the last faint sound of a cow-bell far
below him and he stopped short, with a lump in his throat that hurt.
Soon darkness fell, and, on the very top, the boy made a fire with his
flint and steel, cooked a little bacon, warmed his corn-pone, munched
them and, wrapping his blanket around him and letting Jack curl into
the hollow of his legs and stomach, turned his face to the kindly stars
and went to sleep.