THE WESTWARD WAY
Mother Turner was sitting in the porch with old Jack at her feet when
Chad and Dixie came to the gate--her bonnet off, her eyes turned toward
the West. The stillness of death lay over the place, and over the
strong old face some preternatural sorrow. She did not rise when she
saw Chad, she did not speak when he spoke. She turned merely and looked
at him with a look of helpless suffering. She knew the question that
was on his lips, for she dumbly motioned toward the door and then put
her trembling hands on the railing of the porch and bent her face down
on them. With sickening fear, Chad stepped on the threshold--cap in
hand--and old Jack followed, whimpering. As his eyes grew accustomed to
the dark interior, he could see a sheeted form on a bed in the corner
and, on the pillow, a white face.
"Melissa!" he called, brokenly. A groan from the porch answered him,
and, as Chad dropped to his knees, the old woman sobbed aloud.
In low tones, as though in fear they might disturb the dead girl's
sleep, the two talked on the porch. Brokenly, the old woman told Chad
how the girl had sickened and suffered with never a word of complaint.
How, all through the war, she had fought his battles so fiercely that
no one dared attack him in her hearing. How, sick as she was, she had
gone, that night, to save his life. How she had nearly died from the
result of cold and exposure and was never the same afterward. How she
worked in the house and in the garden to keep their bodies and souls
together, after the old hunter was shot down and her boys were gone to
the war. How she had learned the story of Chad's mother from old Nathan
Cherry's daughter and how, when the old woman forbade her going to the
Bluegrass, she had slipped away and gone afoot to clear his name. And
then the old woman led Chad to where once had grown the rose-bush he
had brought Melissa from the Bluegrass, and pointed silently to a box
that seemed to have been pressed a few inches into the soft earth, and
when Chad lifted it, he saw under it the imprint of a human foot--his
own, made that morning when he held out a rose-leaf to her and she had
struck it from his hand and turned him, as an enemy, from her door.
Chad silently went inside and threw open the window to let the last
sunlight in: and he sat there, with his face as changeless as the still
face on the pillow, sat there until the sun went down and the darkness
came in and closed softly about her. She had died, the old woman said,
with his name on her lips.
. . . . .
Dolph and Rube had come back and they would take good care of the old
mother until the end of her days. But, Jack--what should be done with
Jack? The old dog could follow him no longer. He could live hardly more
than another year, and the old mother wanted him--to remind her, she
said, of Chad and of Melissa, who had loved him. He patted his faithful
old friend tenderly and, when he mounted Dixie, late the next
afternoon, Jack started to follow him.
"No, Jack," said Chad, and he rode on, with his eyes blurred. On the
top of the steep mountain he dismounted, to let his horse rest a
moment, and sat on a log, looking toward the sun. He could not go back
to Margaret and happiness--not now. It seemed hardly fair to the dead
girl down in the valley. He would send Margaret word, and she would
understand.
Once again he was starting his life over afresh, with his old capital,
a strong body and a stout heart. In his breast still burned the spirit
that had led his race to the land, had wrenched it from savage and from
king, had made it the high temple of Liberty for the worship of
freemen--the Kingdom Come for the oppressed of the earth--and, himself
the unconscious Shepherd of that Spirit, he was going to help carry its
ideals across a continent Westward to another sea and on--who knows--to
the gates of the rising sun. An eagle swept over his head, as he rose,
and the soft patter of feet sounded behind him. It was Jack trotting
after him. He stooped and took the old dog in his arms.
"Go back home, Jack!" he said.
Without a whimper, old Jack slowly wheeled, but he stopped and turned
again and sat on his haunches--looking back.
"Go home, Jack!" Again the old dog trotted down the path and once more
he turned.
"Home, Jack!" said Chad.
The eagle was a dim, black speck in the band of yellow that lay over
the rim of the sinking sun, and after its flight, horse and rider took
the westward way.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, by John Fox