The Quickening. Lynde Francis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of Sunday-morning dishevelment, and armed only as a mob may arm itself at a moment's notice. Caleb, the veteran, looked the squad over with a slow smile gathering the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

      "You boys'll have to make up in f'erceness what-all you're lacking in soldier-looks," he observed mildly. Then he gave the word of command to Helgerson. "Take the gun and put out for the major's hawss-lot. I'll be along as soon as I can saddle the mare."

      Thomas Jefferson went with his father to the stable and helped silently with the saddling. Afterward he held the mare, gentling her in suppressed excitement while his father went into the house for his rifle.

      Martha Gordon met her husband at the door. She had seen the volunteer gun crew filing past on the pike.

      "What is it, Caleb?" she asked anxiously.

      He made no attempt to deceive her.

      "The railroaders are allowin' to take what the Major wouldn't sell 'em—the right of way through his land down the valley. Buddy brought the word."

      "Well?" she said, love and fear hardening her heart. "The railroad would be a good thing for us—for the furnace. You know you said it would."

      He shook his head slowly.

      "I reckon we mustn't look at it thataway, Martha. I'm going to stand by my neighbor, like I'd expect him to stand by me. Let me get my gun; the boys'll be there ahead o' me, and they won't know what to do."

      "Caleb! There will be bloodshed; and you remember what the Word says: 'whoso sheddeth man's blood. … ' And on the Lord's Day, too!"

      "I know. But ain't it somewhere in the same Good Book that it says there's a time for peace and a time to make war? And then that there passage about lovin' your neighbor. Don't hender me, little woman. There ain't goin' to be no blood shed—onless them bushwhackers are a mighty sight f'ercer for it than what I think they are."

      She let him go without further protest, not because he had convinced her, but because she had long since come to know this man, who, making her lightest wish his law in most things, could be as inflexible as the chilled iron of the pouring floor at the call of loyalty to his own standard of right and wrong. But when he passed down the path to the gate she knelt on the door-stone and covered her face with her hands.

      Gordon gathered the slack of the reins on the neck of the mare and put a leg over the saddle.

      "That'll do, Buddy," he said. "Run along in to your mammy, now."

      But Thomas Jefferson caught again at the bridle and held on, choking.

      "O pappy!—take me with you! I—I'll die if you don't take me with you!"

      Who can tell what Caleb Gordon saw in his son's eyes when he bent to loosen the grip of the small brown hand on the rein? Was it some sympathetic reincarnation of his own militant soul striving to break its bonds? Without a word he bent lower and swung the boy up to a seat behind him. "Hold on tight, Buddy," he cautioned. "I'll have to run the mare some to catch up with the boys."

      And the mother? She was still kneeling on the door-stone, but the burden of her prayer was not now for Caleb Gordon. "O Lord, have mercy on my boy! Thou knowest how, because of my disobedience, he has the fierce fighting blood and the stubborn unbelief of all the Gordons to contend with: save him alive and make him a man of peace and a man of faith, I beseech Thee, and let not the unbelief of the father or the unfaithfulness of the mother be visited on the son!"

      When the one-piece battery dashed at a clumsy gallop through the open gate of the Dabney pasture and swung with a sharp turn into the vista of felled trees, Thomas Jefferson beheld a thing to set his heritage of soldier blood dancing through his veins. Standing fair in the midst of the ax-and-shovel havoc and clearing a wide circle to right and left with the sweep of his old service cavalry saber, was the Major, coatless, hatless, cursing the invaders with mighty and corrosive soldier oaths, and crying them to come on, the unnumbered host of them against one man.

      Opposed to him the men of the construction force, generaled by the young engineer in brown duck and buttoned leggings, were deploying cautiously to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys. He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of you take him behind, and—"

      The break came on the uprush of the unanticipated reinforcements. With the battle readiness of a disciplined soldier, Caleb Gordon whipped from the saddle and ran to help the gun crew slue the makeshift field-piece into position.

      "Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "fall back on your front line and give the artillery a chanst at 'em. I reckon a dose o' broken pot-iron'll carry fu'ther than that saber o' yourn. Buddy, hunt me a punk match, quick, will ye?"

      

"Fall back, Major!" he shouted; "give the artillery a chanst"

      Thomas Jefferson ran to the nearest rotting log, but one of the negroes was before him with a blazing pitch-pine splint. There was a respectful recoil in the opposing ranks which presently became a somewhat panicky surge to the rear. The shovelers, more than half of whom were negroes, had not come out to be blown from a cannon's mouth by a grim-faced veteran who was so palpably at home with the tools of his trade.

      "That's right: keep right on goin'!" yelled the iron-master, waving his blazing slow-match dangerously near to the priming. "Keep it up, 'r by the Lord that made ye—"

      There was no need to specify the alternative. For now the panic had spread by its own contagion, and the invaders were fighting among themselves for place on the flat-cars. And while yet the rear guard was swarming upon the engine, hanging by toe-and hand-holds where it could, the train was backed rapidly out of range.

      Caleb Gordon kept his pine splint alight until the echoes of the engine's exhaust came faintly from the overhanging cliffs of the mountain.

      "They've gone back to town, and I reckon the fire's plum' out for to-day, Major," he drawled. "Buck and a few o' the boys 'll stay by the gun, against their rallyin' later on, and you might as well go home to your breakfast. Didn't bring your hawss, did ye? Take the mare, and welcome. Buddy and me'll walk."

      But the Major would not mount, and so the two men walked together as far as the manor-house gates, with Thomas Jefferson a pace in the rear, leading the mare.

      It was no matter of wonder to him that his father and the Major marched in solemn silence to the gate of parting. But the wonder came tumultuously when the Major wheeled abruptly at the moment of leave-taking and wrung his father's hand.

      "By God, suh, you are a right true-hearted gentleman, and my very good friend, Mistuh Gordon!" he said, with the manner of one who has been carefully weighing the words beforehand. "If you had been given youh just dues, suh, you'd have come home from F'ginia wearin' youh shouldeh-straps." And then, with a little throat-clearing pause to come between: "Damn it, suh; an own brotheh couldn't have done'mo'! I—I've been misjudgin' you, Caleb, all these yeahs, and now I'm proud to shake you by the hand and call you my friend. Yes, suh, I am that!"

      It was, in a manner not to be understood by the Northern alien, the accolade of knighthood, and Caleb Gordon's toil-rounded shoulders straightened visibly when he returned the hearty СКАЧАТЬ