A FRIEND ON THE ROAD
Rain fell that night--gentle rain and warm, for the south wind rose at
midnight. At four o clock a shower made the shingles over Chad rattle
sharply, but without wakening the lad, and then the rain ceased; and
when Chad climbed stiffly from his loft--the world was drenched and
still, and the dawn was warm, for spring had come that morning, and
Chad trudged along the road--unchilled. Every now and then he had to
stop to rest his foot. Now and then he would see people getting
breakfast ready in the farm-houses that he passed, and, though his
little belly was drawn with pain, he would not stop and ask for
something to eat--for he did not want to risk another rebuff. The sun
rose and the light leaped from every wet blade of grass and bursting
leaf to meet it--leaped as though flashing back gladness that the
spring was come. For a little while Chad forgot his hunger and forgot
his foot--like the leaf and grass-blade his stout heart answered with
gladness, too, and he trudged on.
Meanwhile, far behind him, an old carriage rolled out of a big yard and
started toward him and toward Lexington. In the driver's seat was an
old gray-haired, gray-bearded negro with knotty hands and a kindly
face; while, on the oval shaped seat behind the lumbering old vehicle,
sat a little darky with his bare legs dangling down. In the carriage
sat a man who might have been a stout squire straight from merry
England, except that there was a little tilt to the brim of his slouch
hat that one never sees except on the head of a Southerner, and in his
strong, but easy, good-natured mouth was a pipe of corn-cob with a long
cane stem. The horses that drew him were a handsome pair of half
thoroughbreds, and the old driver, with his eyes half closed, looked as
though, even that early in the morning, he were dozing. An hour later,
the pike ran through an old wooden-covered bridge, to one side of which
a road led down to the water, and the old negro turned the carriage to
the creek to let his horses drink. The carriage stood still in the
middle of the stream and presently the old driver turned his head:
"Mars Cal!" he called in a low voice. The Major raised his head. The
old negro was pointing with his whip ahead and the Major saw something
sitting on the stone fence, some twenty yards beyond, which stirred him
sharply from his mood of contemplation.
"Shades of Dan'l Boone!" he said, softly. It was a miniature
pioneer--the little still figure watching him solemnly and silently.
Across the boy's lap lay a long rifle--the Major could see that it had
a flintlock--and on his tangled hair was a coonskin cap--the scalp
above his steady dark eyes and the tail hanging down the lad's neck.
And on his feet were--moccasins! The carriage moved out of the stream
and the old driver got down to hook the check-reins over the shining
bit of metal that curved back over the little saddles to which the
boy's eyes had swiftly strayed. Then they came back to the Major.
"Howdye!" said Chad.
"Good-mornin', little man," said the Major pleasantly, and Chad knew
straightway that he had found a friend. But there was silence. Chad
scanned the horses and the strange vehicle and the old driver and the
little pickaninny who, hearing the boy's voice, had stood up on his
seat and was grinning over one of the hind wheels, and then his eyes
rested on the Major with a simple confidence and unconscious appeal
that touched the Major at once.
"Are you goin' my way?" The Major's nature was too mellow and
easy-going to pay any attention to final g's. Chad lifted his old gun
and pointed up the road.
"I'm a-goin' thataway."
"Well, don't you want to ride?"
"Yes," he said, simply.
"Climb right in, my boy."
So Chad climbed in, and, holding the old rifle upright between his
knees, he looked straight forward, in silence, while the Major studied
him with a quiet smile.
"Where are you from, little man?"
"I come from the mountains."
"The mountains?" said the Major.
The Major had fished and hunted in the mountains, and somewhere in that
unknown region he owned a kingdom of wild mountain-land, but he knew as
little about the people as he knew about the Hottentots, and cared
hardly more.
"What are you doin' up here?"
"I'm goin' home," said Chad.
"How did you happen to come away?"
"Oh, I been wantin' to see the settleMINTS."
"The settleMINTS," echoed the Major, and then he understood. He
recalled having heard the mountaineers call the Bluegrass region the
"settlemints" before.
"I come down on a raft with Dolph and Tom and Rube and the Squire and
the school-teacher, an' I got lost in Frankfort. They've gone on, I
reckon, an' I'm tryin' to ketch 'em."
"What will you do if you don't?"
"Foller'em," said Chad, sturdily.
"Does your father live down in the mountains?"
"No," said Chad, shortly.
The Major looked at the lad gravely.
"Don't little boys down in the mountains ever say sir to their elders?"
"No," said Chad. "No, sir," he added gravely and the Major broke into a
pleased laugh--the boy was quick as lightning.
"I ain't got no daddy. An' no mammy--I ain't got--nothin'." It was said
quite simply, as though his purpose merely was not to sail under false
colors, and the Major's answer was quick and apologetic:
"Oh!" he said, and for a moment there was silence again. Chad watched
the woods, the fields, and the cattle, the strange grain growing about
him, and the birds and the trees. Not a thing escaped his keen eye,
and, now and then, he would ask a question which the Major would answer
with some surprise and wonder. His artless ways pleased the old fellow.
"You haven't told me your name."
"You hain't axed me."
"Well, I axe you now," laughed the Major, but Chad saw nothing to laugh
at.
"Chad," he said.
"Chad what?"
Now it had always been enough in the mountains, when anybody asked his
name, for him to answer simply--Chad. He hesitated now and his brow
wrinkled as though he were thinking hard.
"I don't know," said Chad.
"What? Don't know your own name?" The boy looked up into the Major's
face with eyes that were so frank and unashamed and at the same time so
vaguely troubled that the Major was abashed.
"Of course not," he said kindly, as though it were the most natural
thing in the world that a boy should not know his own name. Presently
the Major said, reflectively:
"Chadwick."
"Chad," corrected the boy.
"Yes, I know"; and the Major went on thinking that Chadwick happened to
be an ancestral name in his own family.
Chad's brow was still wrinkled--he was trying to think what old Nathan
Cherry used to call him.
"I reckon I hain't thought o' my name since I left old Nathan," he
said. Then he told briefly about the old man, and lifting his lame foot
suddenly, he said: "Ouch!" The Major looked around and Chad explained:
"I hurt my foot comin' down the river an' hit got wuss walkin' so
much." The Major noticed then that the boy's face was pale, and that
there were dark hollows under his eyes, but it never occurred to him
that the lad was hungry, for, in the Major's land, nobody ever went
hungry for long. But Chad was suffering now and he leaned back in his
seat and neither talked nor looked at the passing fields. By and by, he
spied a crossroads store.
"I wonder if I can't git somethin' to eat in that store."
The Major laughed: "You ain't gettin' hungry so soon, are you? You must
have eaten breakfast pretty early."
"I ain't had no breakfast--an' I didn't hev no supper last night."
"What?" shouted the Major.
Chad stated the fact with brave unconcern, but his lip quivered
slightly--he was weak.
"Well, I reckon we'll get something to eat there whether they've got
anything or not."
And then Chad explained, telling the story of his walk from Frankfort.
The Major was amazed that anybody could have denied the boy food and
lodging.
"Who were they, Tom?" he asked
The old driver turned:
"They was some po' white trash down on Cane Creek, I reckon, suh.
Must'a' been." There was a slight contempt in the negro's words that
made Chad think of hearing the Turners call the Dillons white
trash--though they never said "po' white trash."
"Oh!" said the Major. So the carriage stopped, and when a man in a
black slouch hat came out, the Major called:
"Jim, here's a boy who ain't had anything to eat for twenty-four hours.
Get him a cup of coffee right away, and I reckon you've got some cold
ham handy."
"Yes, indeed, Major," said Jim, and he yelled to a negro girl who was
standing on the porch of his house behind the store.
Chad ate ravenously and the Major watched him with genuine pleasure.
When the boy was through, he reached in his pocket and brought out his
old five-dollar bill, and the Major laughed aloud and patted him on the
head.
"You can't pay for anything while you are with me, Chad."
The whole earth wore a smile when they started out again. The swelling
hills had stretched out into gentler slopes. The sun was warm, the
clouds were still, and the air was almost drowsy. The Major's eyes
closed and everything lapsed into silence. That was a wonderful ride
for Chad. It was all true, just as the school-master had told him; the
big, beautiful houses he saw now and then up avenues of blossoming
locusts; the endless stone fences, the whitewashed barns, the woodlands
and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing
everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black
bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it
balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised. Everything
seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass
stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in
rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands--and never a
mountain in sight. What a strange country it was.
"Maybe some of your friends are looking for you in Frankfort," said the
Major.
"No, sir, I reckon not," said Chad--for the man at the station had told
him that the men who had asked about him were gone.
"All of them?" asked the Major.
Of course, the man at the station could not tell whether all of them
had gone, and perhaps the school-master had stayed behind--it was Caleb
Hazel if anybody.
"Well, now, I wonder," said Chad--"the school-teacher might'a' stayed."
Again the two lapsed into silence--Chad thinking very hard. He might
yet catch the school-master in Lexington, and he grew very cheerful at
the thought.
"You ain't told me yo' name," he said, presently. The Major's lips
smiled under the brim of his hat.
"You hain't axed me."
"Well, I axe you now." Chad, too, was smiling.
"Cal," said the Major. "Cal what?"
"I don't know."
"Oh, yes, you do, now--you foolin' me"--the boy lifted one finger at
the Major.
"Buford, Calvin Buford."
"Buford--Buford--Buford," repeated the boy, each time with his forehead
wrinkled as though he were trying to recall something.
"What is it, Chad?"
"Nothin'--nothin'."
And then he looked up with bewildered face at the Major and broke into
the quavering voice of an old man.
"Chad Buford, you little devil, come hyeh this minute or I'll beat the
life outen you!"
"What--what!" said the Major excitedly. The boy's face was as honest as
the sky above him. "Well, that's funny--very funny."
"Well, that's it," said Chad, "that's what ole Nathan used to call me.
I reckon I hain't naver thought o' my name agin tell you axed me." The
Major looked at the lad keenly and then dropped back in his seat
ruminating.
Away back in 1778 a linchpin had slipped in a wagon on the Wilderness
Road and his grandfather's only brother, Chadwick Buford, had concluded
to stop there for a while and hunt and come on later--thus ran an old
letter that the Major had in his strong box at home--and that brother
had never turned up again and the supposition was that he had been
killed by Indians. Now it would be strange if he had wandered up in the
mountains and settled there and if this boy were a descendant of his.
It would be very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at
the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The
boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame,
that he was a waif--a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And
so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that
it was a peculiar coincidence--again saying, half to himself--
"It certainly is very odd!"