GETTING EVEN IN THE DARK.
Sam Hardwicke had thrown himself down under a clump of bushes, as I
have said, a little apart from the rest of the boys. Before he went to
sleep, however, his brother Tom, a lad about twelve years of age, but
rather large for his years, came and lay down by his side, the two
falling at once into conversation.
"What made you fire up so quick with Jake Elliott, Sam?" asked the
younger boy.
"Because he is a bully who would give trouble if he dared. I didn't want
to have a fight with him and so I thought it best to take the first
opportunity of teaching him the first duty of a soldier,--obedience."
"But you might have reasoned with him, as you generally do with
people."
"No I couldn't," replied Sam.
"Why not?" Tom asked.
"Because he isn't reasonable. He's the sort of person who needs a
master to say 'do' and 'don't.' Reasoning is thrown away on some
people."
"But you had good reasons, didn't you, for stopping here instead of
going on further?" asked Tom.
"Certainly. There's the Mackey house five miles ahead, and if we'd
gone on we must have stopped near it to night?"
"Well, what of that?"
"Jake Elliott would have pilfered something there."
"How do you know?" asked Tom in some surprise at his brother's
positiveness.
"Because," Sam replied, "he tried to steal some eggs last night at
Bungay's. I stopped him, and that's why I choose to camp every night
out of harm's way, and keep all of you within strict limits. I don't
mean to have people say we're a set of thieves. Besides, Jake Elliott
has meant to give trouble from the first, and I have only waited for a
chance to put him down. He isn't satisfied yet, but he's afraid to do
anything but sneak. He'll try some trick to get even with me pretty
soon."
"Oh, Sam, you must look out then," cried Tom in alarm for his brother.
"Why don't you send him back home?"
"For two or three reasons. In the first place General Jackson needs
all the volunteers he can get."
"Well, what else?"
"That's enough, but there's another good reason. If I let him go away
it would be saying that I can't manage him, and that would be a sorry
confession for a soldier to make. I can manage him, and I will, too."
"But Sam, he'll do you some harm or other."
"Of course he will if he can, but that is a risk I have to take."
"Well, I'm going to sleep here by you, any how," said Tom.
"No you mustn't," replied the elder boy. "You must go over by the fire
where the other boys are, and sleep there."
"Why, Sam?"
"Well, in the first place, if I'm not a match in wits for Jake
Elliott, I've no business to continue captain, and I've no right to
shirk any trial of skill that he may choose to make. Besides you're my
brother, and it will make the other boys think I'm partial if you stay
here with me. Go back there and sleep by the fire. I'll take care of
myself."
"But Sam--" began Tom.
"_You've_ seen me take care of myself in tighter places than any that
he can put me in, haven't you?" asked Sam. "There's the root fortress
within ten feet of us. You haven't forgotten it have you?"
"No," said Tom, rising to go, "and I don't think I shall forget it
soon; but I don't like to let my 'Big Brother' sleep here alone with
Jake Elliott around."
"Never mind me, I tell you, but go to the boys and go to sleep. I'll
take care of myself."
With that the two boys separated, Tom walking away to the fire, and
Sam rolling himself up in his blanket for a quiet sleep. He had
already removed his boots, coat and hat, and thrown them together in a
pile, as he had done every night since the march began, partly
because he knew that it is always better to sleep with the limbs as
free as possible from pressure of any kind, and partly because he
suffered a little from an old wound in the foot, received about a year
before in the Indian assault upon Fort Sinquefield, and found it more
comfortable, after walking all day, to remove his boots.
The camp grew quiet only by degrees. Boys have so many things to talk
about that when they are together they are pretty certain to talk a
good while before going to sleep, and especially so when they are
lying in the open air, under the starlight, near a pile of blazing
logs. They all stretched themselves out on the ground, weary with
their day's march, and determined to go at once to sleep, but somehow
each one found something that he wanted to say and so it was more than
an hour before the camp was quite still. Then every one slept except
Jake Elliott. He lay quietly by a tree, and seemed to be sleeping
soundly enough, but in fact he was not even dozing. He was laying
plans. He had a grudge against Sam Hardwicke, as we know, and was
very busily thinking what he could do by way of revenge. He meant to
do it at night, whatever it might be, because he was afraid to attempt
any thing openly, which would bring on a conflict with Sam, of whom he
was very heartily afraid. He was ready to do any thing that would
annoy Sam, however mean it might be, for he was a coward seeking
revenge, and cowardice is so mean a thing itself, that it always keeps
the meanest kind of company in the breasts of boys or men who harbor
it. Boys are apt to make mistakes about cowardice, however, and men
too for that matter, confounding it with timidity and nervousness, and
imagining that the ability to face unknown danger boldly is courage.
There could be no greater mistake than this, and it is worth while to
correct it. The bravest man I ever knew was so timid that he shrunk
from a shower bath and jumped like a girl if any one clapped hands
suddenly behind him. Cowardice is a matter of character. Brave men are
they who face danger coolly when it is their duty to do so, not
because they do not fear danger but because they will not run away
from a duty. Cowards often go into danger boastfully and without
seeming to care a fig for it, merely because they are conscious of
their own fault and afraid that somebody will find it out. Cowards are
men or women or boys, who lack character, and a genuine coward is very
sure to show his lack of moral character in other ways than by
shunning danger. They lie, because they fear to tell the truth, which
is a thing that requires a good deal of moral courage sometimes. They
are apt to be revengeful, too, because they resent other people's
superiority to themselves, and are not strong enough in manliness to
be generous. They seek revenge for petty wrongs, real or imaginary, in
sly, sneaking, cowardly ways because--well because they are cowards.
Jake Elliott was a boy of this sort. He was always a bully, and people
who imagined that courage is best shown by fighting and blustering,
thought Jake a very brave fellow. If they could have known him
somewhat better, they would have discovered that all his fighting was
done merely to conceal the fact that he was afraid to fight. He
measured his adversaries pretty accurately, and in ordinary
circumstances he would have fought Sam, when that young man talked to
him as he did in the beginning of this story. There was that in Sam's
bearing, however, which made Jake afraid to resist the imperious will
that asserted itself more in the quiet tone than in the threatening
words. He was Sam's full equal physically, but he had quailed before
him, and he could scarcely determine why. It annoyed him sorely as he
remembered the loud cheering of the boys. He chafed under the
consciousness of defeat, and dreaded, the hints he was sure to receive
whenever he should bully any of his companions, that he had a score
still unsettled with Sam Hardwicke. He knew that he was a coward, and
that the other boys had found it out, and he almost groaned as he lay
there in the silence and darkness, meditating revenge.
A little after midnight he got up silently and crept along the river
bank to the clump of bushes where Sam lay soundly sleeping. His first
impulse was to jump upon the sleeper and fight him with an unfair
advantage, but he was not yet free from the restraining influence of
Sam's eye and voice so recently brought to bear upon him.
No, he dared not attack Sam even with so great an advantage. He must
injure him secretly as he had determined to do.
Creeping along upon all-fours, he felt about for Sam's boots, and
finding them at last, was just about to move away with them when Sam
turned over.
Jake sank down into the sand and listened, his heart beating and the
sweat standing in great drops on his forehead. Sam did not move again,
however, but seemed still to sleep. After waiting a long time Jake
crept away noiselessly, as he had come.
Slipping down over the low sand bank he stood by the river's edge with
the boots in his hand.
"Now," he muttered to himself, "I guess I'll be even with 'Captain
Sam.' By the time he marches a day or two barefoot with that game foot
o' his'n, I guess he'll begin to wish he hadn't been quite so sassy."
Filling the boots with sand he swung them back and forth, meaning to
toss them as far out into the river as he could. Just as he was about
quitting his hold of them, a terrifying thought seized him. The
sand-filled boots would make a good deal of noise in striking the
water, and Sam on the bank above would be sure to hear. Jake was ready
enough to injure Sam, but he was not by any means ready to encounter
that particularly cool and determined youth, while engaged in the act
of doing him a surreptitious injury. He must go higher up the stream
before putting his purpose into execution.
The bank at this point was crowned with a great pile of drift wood,
the accumulation of many floods, which had been caught and held in its
place by two great trees from the roots of which the water had
gradually washed the sand away until the trees themselves stood up
upon great root legs, fifteen feet long. The trees and the drift pile
were the same in which Sam Hardwicke had hidden his little party a
year before, when the fortunes of Indian war had thrown him, with Tom
and his sister, and the black boy Joe, upon their own resources in the
Indian haunted forest. The story is told in a former volume of this
series.[1] Sam's resting place just now was within a few feet of
the great tree roots, but Sam was not sleeping there, as Jake Elliott
supposed. He had been wide enough awake, ever since Jake first
startled him out of sleep, and he had silently observed that worthy's
manoeuvres through the bushes. Jake crept along the edge of the
drift pile to its further end, intending to toss the boots into the
river as soon as he should be sufficiently far from Sam for safety. As
he went, however, his awakened caution grew upon him. He reflected
that Sam would suspect him when he should miss his boots the next
morning, and might see fit to call him to account for their absence.
He intended, in that case, stoutly to deny all knowledge of the
affair, but he could not tell in advance precisely how persistent
Sam's suspicion might be, and it seemed to him better to leave
himself a "hole to crawl through," as he phrased it, if the necessity
should come. He resolved, therefore, that instead of throwing the
boots away, he would hide them so securely that no one else could
possibly find them. "Then," thought he, "if the worst comes to the
worst I can find 'em, and still stick to it that I didn't take 'em
away." An opening in the pile of drift-wood just at hand, was
suggestive, and Jake crept into it passing under a great log that lay
lengthwise just over the entrance. The passage way through the drift
was a very narrow one but it did not come to an end at the end of the
great log as Jake had expected, and he felt his way further. The
passage turned and twisted about, but he went on, dark as it was.
After a while he found himself in a sort of chamber under one of the
great trees, and inside the line of its great twisted roots. He did
not know where he was, however, but Sam or Tom or Joe could have told
him all about the place.
[Footnote 1: The Big Brother, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. A
friend suggests that many northern readers may doubt the existence of
such trees as those which I have described briefly here, and more
fully in "The Big Brother." I think it right to explain, therefore,
that I have seen many such trees with roots exposed in the manner
described, in the west and south, and my favorite playing place as a
boy was under precisely such a tree. Of course no tree could stand the
sudden removal of ten or fifteen feet of earth from beneath it; but
the trees described have gradually undergone this process, and the
roots have struck constantly deeper, their exposed parts gradually
changing from roots, in the proper sense, to something like a
downward-branching tree trunk.]
[Illustration: GETTING EVEN IN THE DARK.]
Here his journey seemed to be effectually interrupted, and he thrust
the boots, as he supposed, into a hole, driving them with some little
force through a tangled net work of small roots. What he really did
do, however, was to drive them through a net work of small roots,
between two great ones, into the outer air, at the very spot from
which he had taken them. When he quitted his hold of them, leaving
them, as he supposed, buried in the centre of a great drift pile, they
lay in fact by Sam's coat and hat, right where they had lain when Sam
went to sleep.
Sam had silently observed him as he entered the drift pile, and
running quickly to the entrance he seized a stick of timber and drew
it toward him with all his force. Sam Hardwicke had an excellent habit
of remembering not only things that were certainly useful to know, but
things also which might be useful. When Jake entered the drift pile,
Sam remembered that during his own stay there a year before, he had
carefully examined the great log which formed the archway of the
entrance, and that it was kept in its place only by this single stick
of timber acting as a wedge. Pulling this out, therefore, he let the
farther end of the great tree trunk fall, and completely blocked the
passage way.