THE MAJOR IN THE MOUNTAINS
The quivering heat of August was giving way and the golden peace of
autumn was spreading through the land. The breath of mountain woods by
day was as cool as the breath of valleys at night. In the mountains,
boy and girl were leaving school for work in the fields, and from the
Cumberland foothills to the Ohio, boy and girl were leaving happy
holidays for school. Along a rough, rocky road and down a shining
river, now sunk to deep pools with trickling riffles between--for a
drouth was on the land--rode a tall, gaunt man on an old brown mare
that switched with her tail now and then at a long-legged, rough-haired
colt stumbling awkwardly behind. Where the road turned from the river
and up the mountain, the man did a peculiar thing, for there, in that
lonely wilderness, he stopped, dismounted, tied the reins to an
overhanging branch and, leaving mare and colt behind, strode up the
mountain, on and on, disappearing over the top. Half an hour later, a
sturdy youth hove in sight, trudging along the same road with his cap
in his hand, a long rifle over one shoulder and a dog trotting at his
heels. Now and then the boy would look back and scold the dog and the
dog would drop his muzzle with shame, until the boy stooped to pat him
on the head, when he would leap frisking before him, until another
affectionate scolding was due. The old mare turned her head when she
heard them coming, and nickered. Without a moment's hesitation the lad
untied her, mounted and rode up the mountain. For two days the man and
the boy had been "riding and tying," as this way of travel for two men
and one horse is still known in the hills, and over the mountain, they
were to come together for the night. At the foot of the spur on the
other side, boy and dog came upon the tall man sprawled at full length
across a moss-covered bowlder. The dog dropped behind, but the man's
quick eye caught him:
"Where'd that dog come from, Chad?" Jack put his belly to the earth and
crawled slowly forward--penitent, but determined.
"He broke loose, I reckon. He come tearin' up behind me 'bout an hour
ago, like a house afire. Let him go." Caleb Hazel frowned.
"I told you, Chad, that we'd have no place to keep him."
"Well, we can send him home as easy from up thar as we can from
hyeh--let him go."
"All right!" Chad understood not a whit better than the dog; for Jack
leaped to his feet and jumped around the school-master, trying to lick
his hands, but the school-master was absorbed and would none of him.
There, the mountain-path turned into a wagon-road and the school-master
pointed with one finger.
"Do you know what that is, Chad?"
"No, sir." Chad said "sir" to the school-master now.
"Well, that's"--the school-master paused to give his words
effect--"that's the old Wilderness Road."
Ah, did he not know the old, old Wilderness Road! The boy gripped his
rifle unconsciously, as though there might yet be a savage lying in
ambush in some covert of rhododendron close by. And, as they trudged
ahead, side by side now, for it was growing late, the school-master
told him, as often before, the story of that road and the pioneers who
had trod it--the hunters, adventurers, emigrants, fine ladies and fine
gentlemen who had stained it with their blood; and how that road had
broadened into the mighty way for a great civilization from sea to sea.
The lad could see it all, as he listened, wishing that he had lived in
those stirring days, never dreaming in how little was he of different
mould from the stout-hearted pioneers who beat out the path with their
moccasined feet; how little less full of danger were his own days to
be; how little different had been his own life, and was his purpose
now--how little different after all was the bourn to which his own
restless feet were bearing him.
Chad had changed a good deal since that night after Jack's trial, when
the kind-hearted old Major had turned up at Joel's cabin to take him
back to the Bluegrass. He was taller, broader at shoulder, deeper of
chest; his mouth and eyes were prematurely grave from much brooding and
looked a little defiant, as though the boy expected hostility from the
world and was prepared to meet it, but there was no bitterness in them,
and luminous about the lad was the old atmosphere of brave, sunny cheer
and simple self-trust that won people to him.
The Major and old Joel had talked late that night after Jack's trial.
The Major had come down to find out who Chad was, if possible, and to
take him back home, no matter who he might be. The old hunter looked
long into the fire.
"Co'se I know hit 'ud be better fer Chad, but, Lawd, how we'd hate to
give him up. Still, I reckon I'll have to let him go, but I can stand
hit better, if you can git him to leave Jack hyeh." The Major smiled.
Did old Joel know where Nathan Cherry lived? The old hunter did. Nathan
was a "damned old skinflint who lived across the mountain on Stone
Creek--who stole other folks' farms and if he knew anything about Chad
the old hunter would squeeze it out of his throat; and if old Nathan,
learning where Chad now was, tried to pester him he would break every
bone in the skinflint's body." So the Major and old Joel rode over next
day to see Nathan, and Nathan with his shifting eyes told them Chad's
story in a high, cracked voice that, recalling Chad's imitation of it,
made the Major laugh. Chad was a foundling, Nathan said: his mother was
dead and his father had gone off to the Mexican War and never come
back: he had taken the mother in himself and Chad had been born in his
own house, when he lived farther up the river, and the boy had begun to
run away as soon as he was old enough to toddle. And with each sentence
Nathan would call for confirmation on a silent, dark-faced daughter who
sat inside: "Didn't he, Betsy?" or "Wasn't he, gal?" And the girl would
nod sullenly, but say nothing. It seemed a hopeless mission except
that, on the way back, the Major learned that there were one or two
Bufords living down the Cumberland, and like old Joel, shook his head
over Nathan's pharisaical philanthropy to a homeless boy and wondered
what the motive under it was--but he went back with the old hunter and
tried to get Chad to go home with him. The boy was rock-firm in his
refusal.
"I'm obleeged to you, Major, but I reckon I better stay in the
mountains." That was all Chad would say, and at last the Major gave up
and rode back over the mountain and down the Cumberland alone, still on
his quest. At a blacksmith's shop far down the river he found a man who
had "heerd tell of a Chad Buford who had been killed in the Mexican War
and whose daddy lived 'bout fifteen mile down the river." The Major
found that Buford dead, but an old woman told him his name was Chad,
that he had "fit in the War o' 1812 when he was nothin' but a chunk of
a boy, and that his daddy, whose name, too, was Chad, had been killed
by Injuns some'eres aroun' Cumberland Gap." By this time the Major was
as keen as a hound on the scent, and, in a cabin at the foot of the
sheer gray wall that crumbles into the Gap, he had the amazing luck to
find an octogenarian with an unclouded memory who could recollect a
queer-looking old man who had been killed by Indians--"a ole feller
with the curiosest hair I ever did see," added the patriarch. His name
was Colonel Buford, and the old man knew where he was buried, for he
himself was old enough at the time to help bury him. Greatly excited,
the Major hired mountaineers to dig into the little hill that the old
man pointed out, on which there was, however, no sign of a grave, and,
at last, they uncovered the skeleton of an old gentleman in a wig and
peruke! There was little doubt now that the boy, no matter what the
blot on his 'scutcheon, was of his own flesh and blood, and the Major
was tempted to go back at once for him, but it was a long way, and he
was ill and anxious to get back home. So he took the Wilderness Road
for the Bluegrass, and wrote old Joel the facts and asked him to send
Chad to him whenever he would come. But the boy would not go. There was
no definite reason in his mind. It was a stubborn instinct merely--the
instinct of pride, of stubborn independence--of shame that festered in
his soul like a hornet's sting. Even Melissa urged him. She never tired
of hearing Chad tell about the Bluegrass country, and when she knew
that the Major wanted him to go back, she followed him out in the yard
that night and found him on the fence whittling. A red star was sinking
behind the mountains. "Why won't you go back no more, Chad?" she said.
"'Cause I HAIN'T got no daddy er mammy." Then Melissa startled him.
"Well, I'd go--an' I hain't got no daddy er mammy." Chad stopped his
whittling.
"Whut'd you say, Lissy?" he asked, gravely.
Melissa was frightened--the boy looked so serious.
"Cross yo' heart an' body that you won't NUVER tell NO body." Chad
crossed.
"Well, mammy said I mustn't ever tell nobody--but I HAIN'T got no daddy
er mammy. I heerd her a-tellin' the school-teacher." And the little
girl shook her head over her frightful crime of disobedience.
"You HAIN'T?"
"I HAIN'T!"
Melissa, too, was a waif, and Chad looked at her with a wave of new
affection and pity.
"Now, why won't you go back just because you hain't got no daddy an'
mammy?"
Chad hesitated. There was no use making Melissa unhappy.
"Oh, I'd just ruther stay hyeh in the mountains," he said,
carelessly--lying suddenly like the little gentleman that he was--lying
as he knew, and as Melissa some day would come to know. Then Chad
looked at the little girl a long while, and in such a queer way that
Melissa turned her face shyly to the red star.
"I'm goin' to stay right hyeh. Ain't you glad, Lissy?"
The little girl turned her eyes shyly back again. "Yes, Chad," she said.
He would stay in the mountains and work hard; and when he grew up he
would marry Melissa and they would go away where nobody knew him or
her: or they would stay right there in the mountains where nobody
blamed him for what he was nor Melissa for what she was; and he would
study law like Caleb Hazel, and go to the Legislature--but Melissa! And
with the thought of Melissa in the mountains came always the thought of
dainty Margaret in the Bluegrass and the chasm that lay between the
two--between Margaret and him, for that matter; and when Mother Turner
called Melissa from him in the orchard next day, Chad lay on his back
under an apple-tree, for a long while, thinking; and then he whistled
for Jack and climbed the spur above the river where he could look down
on the shadowed water and out to the clouded heaps of rose and green
and crimson, where the sun was going down under one faint white star.
Melissa was the glow-worm that, when darkness came, would be a
watch-fire at his feet--Margaret, the star to which his eyes were
lifted night and day--and so runs the world. He lay long watching that
star. It hung almost over the world of which he had dreamed so long and
upon which he had turned his back forever. Forever? Perhaps, but he
went back home that night with a trouble in his soul that was not to
pass, and while he sat by the fire he awoke from the same dream to find
Melissa's big eyes fixed on him, and in them was a vague trouble that
was more than his own reflected back to him.
Still the boy went back sturdily to his old life, working in the
fields, busy about the house and stable, going to school, reading and
studying with the school-master at nights, and wandering in the woods
with Jack and his rifle. And he hungered for spring to come again when
he should go with the Turner boys to take another raft of logs down the
river to the capital. Spring came, and going out to the back pasture
one morning, Chad found a long-legged, ungainly creature stumbling
awkwardly about his old mare--a colt! That, too, he owed the Major, and
he would have burst with pride had he known that the colt's sire was a
famous stallion in the Bluegrass. That spring he did go down the river
again. He did not let the Major know he was coming and, through a
nameless shyness, he could not bring himself to go to see his old
friend and kinsman, but in Lexington, while he and the school-master
were standing on Cheapside, the Major whirled around a corner on them
in his carriage, and, as on the turnpike a year before, old Tom, the
driver, called out:
"Look dar, Mars Cal!" And there stood Chad.
"Why, bless my soul! Chad--why, boy! How you have grown!" For Chad had
grown, and his face was curiously aged and thoughtful. The Major
insisted on taking him home, and the school-master, too, who went
reluctantly. Miss Lucy was there, looking whiter and more fragile than
ever, and she greeted Chad with a sweet kindliness that took the sting
from his unjust remembrance of her. And what that failure to understand
her must have been Chad better knew when he saw the embarrassed awe, in
her presence, of the school-master, for whom all in the mountains had
so much reverence. At the table was Thankyma'am waiting. Around the
quarters and the stable the pickaninnies and servants seemed to
remember the boy in a kindly genuine way that touched him, and even
Jerome Conners, the overseer, seemed glad to see him. The Major was
drawn at once to the grave school-master, and he had a long talk with
him that night. It was no use, Caleb Hazel said, trying to persuade the
boy to live with the Major--not yet. And the Major was more content
when he came to know in what good hands the boy was, and, down in his
heart, he loved the lad the more for his sturdy independence, and for
the pride that made him shrink from facing the world with the shame of
his birth; knowing that Chad thought of him perhaps more than of
himself. Such unwillingness to give others trouble seemed remarkable in
so young a lad. Not once did the Major mention the Deans to the boy,
and about them Chad asked no questions--not even when he saw their
carriage passing the Major's gate. When they came to leave the Major
said:
"Well, Chad, when that filly of yours is a year old, I'll buy 'em both
from you, if you'll sell 'em, and I reckon you can come up and go to
school then."
Chad shook his head. Sell that colt? He would as soon have thought of
selling Jack. But the temptation took root, just the same, then and
there, and grew steadily until, after another year in the mountains, it
grew too strong. For, in that year, Chad grew to look the fact of his
birth steadily in the face, and in his heart grew steadily a proud
resolution to make his way in the world despite it. It was curious how
Melissa came to know the struggle that was going on within him and how
Chad came to know that she knew--though no word passed between them:
more curious still, how it came with a shock to Chad one day to realize
how little was the tragedy of his life in comparison with the tragedy
in hers, and to learn that the little girl with swift vision had
already reached that truth and with sweet unselfishness had reconciled
herself. He was a boy--he could go out in the world and conquer it,
while her life was as rigid and straight before her as though it ran
between close walls of rock as steep and sheer as the cliff across the
river. One thing he never guessed--what it cost the little girl to
support him bravely in his purpose, and to stand with smiling face when
the first breath of one sombre autumn stole through the hills, and Chad
and the school-master left the Turner home for the Bluegrass, this time
to stay.
She stood in the doorway after they had waved good-by from the head of
the river--the smile gone and her face in a sudden dark eclipse. The
wise old mother went in-doors. Once the girl started through the yard
as though she would rush after them and stopped at the gate, clinching
it hard with both hands. As suddenly she became quiet.
She went in-doors to her work and worked quietly and without a word.
Thus she did all day while her mind and her heart ached. When she went
after the cows before sunset she stopped at the barn where Beelzebub
had been tied. She lifted her eyes to the hay-loft where she and Chad
had hunted for hens' eggs and played hide-and-seek. She passed through
the orchard where they had worked and played so many happy hours, and
on to the back pasture where the Dillon sheep had been killed and she
had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack. And she saw and noted
everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she gave no sign that
night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered head give way.
Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad way with
women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness
Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful world where one had but to do
and dare to reach the stars. The men who had trod that road had made
that big world beyond, and their life Chad himself had lived so far.
Only, where they had lived he had been born--in a log cabin. Their
weapons--the axe and the rifle--had been his. He had had the same
fight with Nature as they. He knew as well as they what life in the
woods in "a half-faced camp" was. Their rude sports and pastimes, their
log-rollings, house-raisings, quilting parties, corn-huskings, feats of
strength, had been his. He had the same lynx eyes, cool courage,
swiftness of foot, readiness of resource that had been trained into
them. His heart was as stout and his life as simple and pure. He was
taking their path and, in the far West, beyond the Bluegrass world
where he was going, he could, if he pleased, take up the same life at
the precise point where they had left off. At sunset, Chad and the
school-master stood on the summit of the Cumberland foothills and
looked over the rolling land with little less of a thrill, doubtless,
than the first hunters felt when the land before them was as much a
wilderness as the wilds through which they had made their way. Below
them a farmhouse shrank half out of sight into a little hollow, and
toward it they went down.
The outside world had moved swiftly during the two years that they had
been buried in the hills as they learned at the farm-house that night.
Already the national storm was threatening, the air was electrically
charged with alarms, and already here and there the lightning had
flashed. The underground railway was busy with black freight, and John
Brown, fanatic, was boldly lifting his shaggy head. Old Brutus Dean was
even publishing an abolitionist paper at Lexington, the aristocratic
heart of the State. He was making abolition speeches throughout the
Bluegrass with a dagger thrust in the table before him--shaking his
black mane and roaring defiance like a lion. The news thrilled Chad
unaccountably, as did the shadow of any danger, but it threw the
school-master into gloom. There was more. A dark little man by the name
of Douglas and a sinewy giant by the name of Lincoln were thrilling the
West. Phillips and Garrison were thundering in Massachusetts, and fiery
tongues in the South were flashing back scornful challenges and threats
that would imperil a nation. An invisible air-line shot suddenly
between the North and the South, destined to drop some day and lie a
dead-line on the earth, and on each side of it two hordes of brothers,
who thought themselves two hostile peoples, were shrinking away from
each other with the half-conscious purpose of making ready for a
charge. In no other State in the Union was the fratricidal character of
the coming war to be so marked as in Kentucky, in no other State was
the national drama to be so fully played to the bitter end.
That night even, Brutus Dean was going to speak near by, and Chad and
Caleb Hazel went to hear him. The fierce abolitionist first placed a
Bible before him.
"This is for those who believe in religion," he said; then a copy of
the Constitution: "this for those who believe in the laws and in
freedom of speech. And this," he thundered, driving a dagger into the
table and leaving it to quiver there, "is for the rest!" Then he went
on and no man dared to interrupt.
And only next day came the rush of wind that heralds the storm. Just
outside of Lexington Chad and the school-master left the mare and colt
at a farm-house and with Jack went into town on foot. It was Saturday
afternoon, the town was full of people, and an excited crowd was
pressing along Main Street toward Cheapside. The man and the boy
followed eagerly. Cheapside was thronged--thickest around a frame
building that bore a newspaper sign on which was the name of Brutus
Dean. A man dashed from a hardware store with an axe, followed by
several others with heavy hammers in their hands. One swing of the axe,
the door was crashed open and the crowd went in like wolves. Shattered
windows, sashes and all, flew out into the street, followed by showers
of type, chair-legs, table-tops, and then, piece by piece, the battered
cogs, wheels, and forms of a printing-press. The crowd made little
noise. In fifteen minutes the house was a shell with gaping windows,
surrounded with a pile of chaotic rubbish, and the men who had done the
work quietly disappeared. Chad looked at the school-master for the
first time: neither of them had uttered a word. The school-master's
face was white with anger, his hands were clinched, and his eyes were
so fierce and burning that the boy was frightened.