FIGHTING THEIR WAY
Twice, during the night, Jack roused him by trying to push himself
farther under the blanket and Chad rose to rebuild the fire. The third
time he was awakened by the subtle prescience of dawn and his eyes
opened on a flaming radiance in the east. Again from habit he started
to spring hurriedly to his feet and, again sharply conscious, he lay
down again. There was no wood to cut, no fire to rekindle, no water to
carry from the spring, no cow to milk, no corn to hoe; there was
nothing to do--nothing. Morning after morning, with a day's hard toil
at a man's task before him, what would he not have given, when old Jim
called him, to have stretched his aching little legs down the folds of
the thick feather-bed and slipped back into the delicious rest of sleep
and dreams? Now he was his own master and, with a happy sense of
freedom, he brushed the dew from his face and, shifting the chunk under
his head, pulled his old cap down a little more on one side and closed
his eyes. But sleep would not come and Chad had his first wonder over
the perverse result of the full choice to do, or not to do. At once,
the first keen savor of freedom grew less sweet to his nostrils and,
straightway, he began to feel the first pressure of the chain of duties
that was to be forged for him out of his perfect liberty, link by link,
and he lay vaguely wondering.
Meanwhile, the lake of dull red behind the jagged lines of rose and
crimson that streaked the east began to glow and look angry. A sheen of
fiery vapor shot upward and spread swiftly over the miracle of mist
that had been wrought in the night. An ocean of it and, white and thick
as snowdust, it filled valley, chasm, and ravine with mystery and
silence up to the dark jutting points and dark waving lines of range
after range that looked like breakers, surged up by some strange new
law from an under-sea of foam; motionless, it swept down the valleys,
poured swift torrents through high gaps in the hills and one long
noiseless cataract over a lesser range--all silent, all motionless,
like a great white sea stilled in the fury of a storm. Morning after
morning, the boy had looked upon just such glory, calmly watching the
mist part, like the waters, for the land, and the day break, with one
phrase, "Let there be light," ever in his mind--for Chad knew his
Bible. And, most often, in soft splendor, trailing cloud-mist, and
yellow light leaping from crest to crest, and in the singing of birds
and the shining of leaves and dew--there was light.
But that morning there was a hush in the woods that Chad understood. On
a sudden, a light wind scurried through the trees and showered the
mistdrops down. The smoke from his fire shot through the low
undergrowth, without rising, and the starting mists seemed to clutch
with long, white fingers at the tree-tops, as though loath to leave the
safe, warm earth for the upper air. A little later, he felt some great
shadow behind him, and he turned his face to see black clouds
marshalling on either flank of the heavens and fitting their black
wings together, as though the retreating forces of the night were
gathering for a last sweep against the east. A sword flashed blindingly
from the dome high above them and, after it, came one shaking peal that
might have been the command to charge, for Chad saw the black hosts
start fiercely. Afar off, the wind was coming; the trees began to sway
above him, and the level sea of mist below began to swell, and the
wooded breakers seemed to pitch angrily.
Challenging tongues ran quivering up the east, and the lake of red
coals under them began to heave fiercely in answer. On either side the
lightning leaped upward and forward, striking straight and low,
sometimes, as though it were ripping up the horizon to let into the
conflict the host of dropping stars. Then the artillery of the thunder
crashed in earnest through the shaking heavens, and the mists below
pitched like smoke belched from gigantic unseen cannon. The coming sun
answered with upleaping swords of fire and, as the black thunder hosts
swept overhead, Chad saw, for one moment, the whole east in a writhing
storm of fire. A thick darkness rose from the first crash of battle
and, with the rush of wind and rain, the mighty conflict went on unseen.
Chad had seen other storms at sunrise, but something happened now and
he could never recall the others nor ever forget this. All it meant to
him, young as he was then, was unrolled slowly as the years came
on--more than the first great rebellion of the powers of darkness when,
in the beginning, the Master gave the first command that the seven
days' work of His hand should float through space, smitten with the
welcoming rays of a million suns; more than the beginning thus of
light--of life; more even than the first birth of a spirit in a living
thing: for, long afterward, he knew that it meant the dawn of a new
consciousness to him--the birth of a new spirit within him, and the
foreshadowed pain of its slow mastery over his passion-racked body and
heart. Never was there a crisis, bodily or spiritual, on the
battle-field or alone under the stars, that this storm did not come
back to him. And, always, through all doubt, and, indeed, in the end
when it came to him for the last time on his bed of death, the slow and
sullen dispersion of wind and rain on the mountain that morning far,
far back in his memory, and the quick coming of the Sun-king's
victorious light over the glad hills and trees held out to him the
promise of a final victory to the Sun-king's King over the darkness of
all death and the final coming to his own brave spirit of peace and
rest.
So Chad, with Jack drawn close to him, lay back, awe-stricken and with
his face wet from mysterious tears. The comfort of the childish
self-pity that came with every thought of himself, wandering, a lost
spirit along the mountain-tops, was gone like a dream and ready in his
heart was the strong new purpose to strike into the world for himself.
He even took it as a good omen, when he rose, to find his fire
quenched, the stopper of his powder-horn out, and the precious black
grains scattered hopelessly on the wet earth. There were barely more
than three charges left, and something had to be done at once. First,
he must get farther away from old Nathan: the neighbors might search
for him and find him and take him back.
So he started out, brisk and shivering, along the ridge path with Jack
bouncing before him. An hour later, he came upon a hollow tree, filled
with doty wood which he could tear out with his hands and he built a
fire and broiled a little more bacon.
Jack got only a bit this time and barked reproachfully for more; but
Chad shook his head and the dog started out, with both eyes open, to
look for his own food. The sun was high enough now to make the drenched
world flash like an emerald and its warmth felt good, as Chad tramped
the topmost edge of Pine Mountain, where the brush was not thick and
where, indeed, he often found a path running a short way and turning
into some ravine--the trail of cattle and sheep and the pathway between
one little valley settlement and another. He must have made ten miles
and more by noon--for he was a sturdy walker and as tireless almost as
Jack--and ten miles is a long way in the mountains, even now. So,
already, Chad was far enough away to have no fear of pursuit, even if
old Nathan wanted him back, which was doubtful. On the top of the next
point, Jack treed a squirrel and Chad took a rest and brought him down,
shot through the head and, then and there, skinned and cooked him and
divided with Jack squarely.
"Jack," he said, as he reloaded his gun, "we can't keep this up much
longer. I hain't got more'n two more loads o' powder here."
And, thereupon, Jack leaped suddenly in the air and, turning quite
around, lighted with his nose pointed, as it was before he sprang. Chad
cocked the old gun and stepped forward. A low hissing whir rose a few
feet to one side of the path and, very carefully, the boy climbed a
fallen trunk and edged his way, very carefully, toward the sound: and
there, by a dead limb and with his ugly head reared three inches above
his coil of springs, was a rattlesnake. The sudden hate in the boy's
face was curious--it was instinctive, primitive, deadly. He must shoot
off-hand now and he looked down the long barrel, shaded with tin, until
the sight caught on one of the beady, unblinking eyes and pulled the
trigger. Jack leaped with the sound, in spite of Chad's yell of
warning, which was useless, for the ball had gone true and the poison
was set loose in the black, crushed head.
"Jack," said Chad, "we just GOT to go down now."
So they went on swiftly through the heat of the early afternoon. It was
very silent up there. Now and then, a brilliant blue-jay would lilt
from a stunted oak with the flute-like love-notes of spring; or a
lonely little brown fellow would hop with a low chirp from one bush to
another as though he had been lost up there for years and had grown
quite hopeless about seeing his kind again. When there was a gap in the
mountains, he could hear the querulous, senseless love-quarrel of
flickers going on below him; passing a deep ravine, the note of the
wood-thrush--that shy lyrist of the hills--might rise to him from a
dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a
red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from
spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an
unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a
dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a
splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his
last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh
bear-track near a spring below the head of a ravine; and, later still,
he heard the far-away barking of a hound and a deer leaped lightly into
an open sunny spot and stood with uplifted hoof and pointed ears. This
was too much and the boy's gun followed his heart to his throat, but
the buck sprang lightly into the bush and vanished noiselessly.
The sun had dropped midway between the zenith and the blue bulks
rolling westward and, at the next gap, a broader path ran through it
and down the mountain. This, Chad knew, led to a settlement and, with a
last look of choking farewell to his own world, he turned down. At
once, the sense of possible human companionship was curiously potent:
at once, the boy's half-wild manner changed and, though alert and still
watchful, he whistled cheerily to Jack, threw his gun over his
shoulder, and walked erect and confident. His pace slackened.
Carelessly now his feet tramped beds of soft exquisite moss and lone
little settlements of forget-me-nots, and his long riflebarrel brushed
laurel blossoms down in a shower behind him. Once even, he picked up
one of the pretty bells and looked idly at it, turning it bottom
upward. The waxen cup might have blossomed from a tiny waxen star.
There was a little green star for a calyx; above this, a little white
star with its prongs outstretched--tiny arms to hold up the
pink-flecked chalice for the rain and dew. There came a time when he
thought of it as a star-blossom; but now his greedy tongue swept the
honey from it and he dropped it without another thought to the ground.
At the first spur down which the road turned, he could see smoke in the
valley. The laurel blooms and rhododendron bells hung in thicker
clusters and of a deeper pink. Here and there was a blossoming wild
cucumber and an umbrella-tree with huger flowers and leaves; and,
sometimes, a giant magnolia with a thick creamy flower that the boy
could not have spanned with both hands and big, thin oval leaves, a
man's stride from tip to stem. Soon, he was below the sunlight and in
the cool shadows where the water ran noisily and the air hummed with
the wings of bees. On the last spur, he came upon a cow browsing on
sassafras-bushes right in the path and the last shadow of his
loneliness straightway left him. She was old, mild, and unfearing, and
she started down the road in front of him as though she thought he had
come to drive her home, or as though she knew he was homeless and was
leading him to shelter. A little farther on, the river flashed up a
welcome to him through the trees and at the edge of the water, her
mellow bell led him down stream and he followed. In the next hollow, he
stooped to drink from a branch that ran across the road and, when he
rose to start again, his bare feet stopped as though riven suddenly to
the ground; for, half way up the next low slope, was another figure as
motionless as his--with a bare head, bare feet, a startled face and
wide eyes--but motionless only until the eyes met his: then there was a
flash of bright hair and scarlet homespun, and the little feet, that
had trod down the centuries to meet his, left the earth as though they
had wings and Chad saw them, in swift flight, pass silently over the
hill. The next moment, Jack came too near the old brindle and, with a
sweep of her horns at him and a toss of tail and heels in the air, she,
too, swept over the slope and on, until the sound of her bell passed
out of hearing. Even to-day, in lonely parts of the Cumberland, the
sudden coming of a stranger may put women and children to
flight--something like this had happened before to Chad--but the sudden
desertion and the sudden silence drew him in a flash back to the lonely
cabin he had left and the lonely graves under the big poplar and, with
a quivering lip, he sat down. Jack, too, dropped to his haunches and
sat hopeless, but not for long. The chill of night was coming on and
Jack was getting hungry. So he rose presently and trotted ahead and
squatted again, looking back and waiting. But still Chad sat irresolute
and in a moment, Jack heard something that disturbed him, for he threw
his ears toward the top of the hill and, with a growl, trotted back to
Chad and sat close to him, looking up the slope. Chad rose then with
his thumb on the lock of his gun and over the hill came a tall figure
and a short one, about Chad's size and a dog, with white feet and white
face, that was bigger than Jack: and behind them, three more figures,
one of which was the tallest of the group. All stopped when they saw
Chad, who dropped the butt of his gun at once to the ground. At once
the strange dog, with a low snarl, started down toward the two little
strangers with his yellow ears pointed, the hair bristling along his
back, and his teeth in sight. Jack answered the challenge with an eager
whimper, but dropped his tail, at Chad's sharp command--for Chad did
not care to meet the world as an enemy, when he was looking for a
friend. The group stood dumb with astonishment for a moment and the
small boy's mouth was wide-open with surprise, but the strange dog came
on with his tail rigid, and lifting his feet high.
"Begone!" said Chad, sharply, but the dog would not begone; he still
came on as though bent on a fight.
"Call yo' dog off," Chad called aloud. "My dog'll kill him. You better
call him off," he called again, in some concern, but the tall boy in
front laughed scornfully.
"Let's see him," he said, and the small one laughed, too.
Chad's eyes flashed--no boy can stand an insult to his dog--and the
curves of his open lips snapped together in a straight red line. "All
right," he said, placidly, and, being tired, he dropped back on a stone
by the wayside to await results. The very tone of his voice struck all
shackles of restraint from Jack, who, with a springy trot, went forward
slowly, as though he were making up a definite plan of action; for Jack
had a fighting way of his own, which Chad knew.
"Sick him, Whizzer!" shouted the tall boy, and the group of five
hurried eagerly down the hill and halted in a half circle about Jack
and Chad; so that it looked an uneven conflict, indeed, for the two
waifs from over Pine Mountain.
The strange dog was game and wasted no time. With a bound he caught
Jack by the throat, tossed him several feet away, and sprang for him
again. Jack seemed helpless against such strength and fury, but Chad's
face was as placid as though it had been Jack who was playing the
winning game.
Jack himself seemed little disturbed; he took his punishment without an
outcry of rage or pain. You would have thought he had quietly come to
the conclusion that all he could hope to do was to stand the strain
until his opponent had worn himself out. But that was not Jack's game,
and Chad knew it. The tall boy was chuckling, and his brother of Chad's
age was bent almost double with delight.
"Kill my dawg, will he?" he cried, shrilly.
"Oh, Lawdy!" groaned the tall one.
Jack was much bitten and chewed by this time, and, while his pluck and
purpose seemed unchanged, Chad had risen to his feet and was beginning
to look anxious. The three silent spectators behind pressed forward
and, for the first time, one of these--the tallest of the group--spoke:
"Take yo' dawg off, Daws Dillon," he said, with quiet authority; but
Daws shook his head, and the little brother looked indignant.
"He said he'd kill him," said Daws, tauntingly.
"Yo' dawg's bigger and hit ain't fair," said the other again and,
seeing Chad's worried look, he pressed suddenly forward; but Chad had
begun to smile, and was sitting down on his stone again. Jack had
leaped this time, with his first growl during the fight, and Whizzer
gave a sharp cry of surprise and pain. Jack had caught him by the
throat, close behind the jaws, and the big dog shook and growled and
shook again. Sometimes Jack was lifted quite from the ground, but he
seemed clamped to his enemy to stay. Indeed he shut his eyes, finally,
and seemed to go quite to sleep. The big dog threshed madly and swung
and twisted, howling with increasing pain and terror and increasing
weakness, while Jack's face was as peaceful as though he were a puppy
once more and hanging to his mother's neck instead of her breast,
asleep. By and by, Whizzer ceased to shake and began to pant; and,
thereupon, Jack took his turn at shaking, gently at first, but with
maddening regularity and without at all loosening his hold. The big dog
was too weak to resist soon and, when Jack began to jerk savagely,
Whizzer began to gasp.
"You take YO' dawg off," called Daws, sharply.
Chad never moved.
"Will you say 'nough for him?" he asked, quietly; and the tall one of
the silent three laughed.
"Call him off, I tell ye," repeated Daws, savagely; but again Chad
never moved, and Daws started for a club. Chad's new friend came
forward.
"Hol'on, now, hol'on," he said, easily. "None o' that, I reckon."
Daws stopped with an oath. "Whut you got to do with this, Tom Turner?"
"You started this fight," said Tom.
"I don't keer ef I did--take him off," Daws answered, savagely.
"Will you say 'nough fer him?" said Chad again, and again Tall Tom
chuckled. The little brother clinched his fists and turned white with
fear for Whizzer and fury for Chad, while Daws looked at the tall
Turner, shook his head from side to side, like a balking steer, and
dropped his eyes.
"Y-e-s," he said, sullenly.
"Say it, then," said Chad, and this time Tall Tom roared aloud, and
even his two silent brothers laughed. Again Daws, with a furious oath,
started for the dogs with his club, but Chad's ally stepped between.
"You say 'nough, Daws Dillon," he said, and Daws looked into the quiet
half-smiling face and at the stalwart two grinning behind.
"Takin' up agin yo' neighbors fer a wood-colt, air ye?"
"I'm a-takin' up fer what's right and fair. How do you know he's a
wood-colt--an' suppose he is? You say 'nough now, or--"
Again Daws looked at the dogs. Jack had taken a fresh grip and was
shaking savagely and steadily. Whizzer's tongue was out--once his
throat rattled.
"Nough!" growled Daws, angrily, and the word was hardly jerked from his
lips before Chad was on his feet and prying Jack's jaws apart. "He
ain't much hurt," he said, looking at the bloody hold which Jack had
clamped on his enemy's throat, "but he'd a-killed him though, he al'ays
does. Thar ain't no chance fer NO dog, when Jack gits THAT hold."
Then he raised his eyes and looked into the quivering face of the owner
of the dog--the little fellow--who, with the bellow of a yearling bull,
sprang at him. Again Chad's lips took a straight red line and being on
one knee was an advantage, for, as he sprang up, he got both underholds
and there was a mighty tussle, the spectators yelling with frantic
delight.
"Trip him, Tad," shouted Daws, fiercely.
"Stick to him, little un," shouted Tom, and his brothers, stoical Dolph
and Rube, danced about madly. Even with underholds, Chad, being much
the shorter of the two, had no advantage that he did not need, and,
with a sharp thud, the two fierce little bodies struck the road side by
side, spurting up a cloud of dust.
"Dawg--fall!" cried Rube, and Dolph rushed forward to pull the
combatants apart.
"He don't fight fair," said Chad, panting, and rubbing his right eye
which his enemy had tried to "gouge"; "but lemme at him--I can fight
thataway, too." Tall Tom held them apart.
"You're too little, and he don't fight fair. I reckon you better go on
home--you two--an' yo' mean dawg," he said to Daws; and the two
Dillons--the one sullen and the other crying with rage--moved away with
Whizzer slinking close to the ground after them. But at the top of the
hill both turned with bantering yells, derisive wriggling of their
fingers at their noses, and with other rude gestures. And, thereupon,
Dolph and Rube wanted to go after them, but the tall brother stopped
them with a word.
"That's about all they're fit fer," he said, contemptuously, and he
turned to Chad.
"Whar you from, little man, an' whar you goin', an' what mought yo'
name be?"
Chad told his name, and where he was from, and stopped.
"Whar you goin'?" said Tom again, without a word or look of comment.
Chad knew the disgrace and the suspicion that his answer was likely to
generate, but he looked his questioner in the face fearlessly.
"I don't know whar I'm goin'."
The big fellow looked at him keenly, but kindly.
"You ain't lyin' an' I reckon you better come with us." He turned for
the first time to his brothers and the two nodded.
"You an' yo' dawg, though Mammy don't like dawgs much; but you air a
stranger an' you ain't afeerd, an' you can fight--you an' yo' dawg--an'
I know Dad'll take ye both in."
So Chad and Jack followed the long strides of the three Turners over
the hill and to the bend of the river, where were three long cane
fishing-poles with their butts stuck in the mud--the brothers had been
fishing, when the flying figure of the little girl told them of the
coming of a stranger into those lonely wilds. Taking these up, they
strode on--Chad after them and Jack trotting, in cheerful confidence,
behind. It is probable that Jack noticed, as soon as Chad, the swirl of
smoke rising from a broad ravine that spread into broad fields, skirted
by the great sweep of the river, for he sniffed the air sharply, and
trotted suddenly ahead. It was a cheering sight for Chad. Two negro
slaves were coming from work in a corn-field close by, and Jack's hair
rose when he saw them, and, with a growl, he slunk behind his master.
Dazed, Chad looked at them.
"Whut've them fellers got on their faces?" he asked. Tom laughed.
"Hain't you nuver seed a nigger afore?" he asked.
Chad shook his head.
"Lots o' folks from yo' side o' the mountains nuver have seed a
nigger," said Tom. "Sometimes hit skeers 'em."
"Hit don't skeer me," said Chad.
At the gate of the barn-yard, in which was a long stable with a deeply
sloping roof, stood the old brindle cow, who turned to look at Jack,
and, as Chad followed the three brothers through the yard gate, he saw
a slim scarlet figure vanish swiftly from the porch into the house.
In a few minutes, Chad was inside the big log cabin and before a big
log-fire, with Jack between his knees and turning his soft human eyes
keenly from one to another of the group about his little master,
telling how the mountain cholera had carried off the man and the woman
who had been father and mother to him, and their children; at which the
old mother nodded her head in growing sympathy, for there were two
fresh mounds in her own graveyard on the point of a low hill not far
away; how old Nathan Cherry, whom he hated, had wanted to bind him out,
and how, rather than have Jack mistreated and himself be ill-used, he
had run away along the mountain-top; how he had slept one night under a
log with Jack to keep him warm; how he had eaten sassafras and birch
back and had gotten drink from the green water-bulbs of the wild
honeysuckle; and how, on the second day, being hungry, and without
powder for his gun, he had started, when the sun sank, for the shadows
of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old
mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the
kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine
of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the
delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old
Joel, the father of the house, came in--a giant in size and a mighty
hunter--and he slapped his big thighs and roared until the rafters
seemed to shake when Tall Tom told him about the dog-fight and the
boy-fight with the family in the next cove: for already the clanship
was forming that was to add the last horror to the coming great war and
prolong that horror for nearly half a century after its close.
By and by, the scarlet figure of little Melissa came shyly out of the
dark shadows behind and drew shyly closer and closer, until she was
crouched in the chimney corner with her face shaded from the fire by
one hand and a tangle of yellow hair, listening and watching him with
her big, solemn eyes, quite fearlessly. Already the house was full of
children and dependents, but no word passed between old Joel and the
old mother, for no word was necessary. Two waifs who had so suffered
and who could so fight could have a home under that roof if they
pleased, forever. And Chad's sturdy little body lay deep in a
feather-bed, and the friendly shadows from a big fireplace flickered
hardly thrice over him before he was asleep. And Jack, for that night
at least, was allowed to curl up by the covered coals, or stretch out
his tired feet, if he pleased, to a warmth that in all the nights of
his life, perhaps, he had never known before.