"I wanted to write you," she went on, "but I was afraid. I learned it
all from Braxton Bragg."
"What did he have to do with it?"
"You know he has had a silly idea that he was going to marry me himself
some day, though you know how I have always despised him. Well, Jack,
you'll never know what he has done; because you don't know the
conditions on The Home Stretch. I, myself, didn't, till Braxton Bragg
showed me the papers the very month you left. You know how grandfather
has always kept that secret drawer in his safe locked? But you remember
how we children learned all about it?"
"I remember Braxton showed it to me," I said. "I never knew how he found
it out."
"Nor I, nor how he stole the parchment from it, the one that grandfather
kept from all eyes, even Aunt Lucretia's, for she knows nothing of it
yet. But he did, and he showed it to me, thinking--well, you'll guess
why. Jack, we're outcasts, you and I, we have nothing."
She hesitated a moment, then went on. "It seems that the first John
Rutherford, the Old Indian fighter, who was killed at New Orleans, left
a secret paper with his will, in which he begged the heir who inherited
from him, your great-grandfather, John Rutherford, second, who fought in
the Mexican war, you know, to bequeath the estate to that son of his who
should be a soldier, and that it should be passed on in that way
secretly to each generation. Now John Rutherford the second, had only
one son, your grandfather, and his son, Braxton's father, was killed in
the war.
"Oh, I see now," I said amazed, "and that was why he wanted me to go to
West Point."
"And why Braxton Bragg, who is a coward," she cried indignantly, "did go
to West Point, after he stole that parchment and read it. And as proof
of it, when grandfather was trying to persuade me to listen to Colonel
Goff, he told me he was going to leave The Home Stretch so that it would
go to Braxton Bragg after Aunt Lucretia's death."
In an instant I saw it all. I understood things that I had given no
serious thought to before.
"Yes, I am out," I agreed.
"Jack, Little Brother, I hope I haven't made you unhappy on your first
night at home."