It was not to my credit that I should have lost the trail, after Mr.
Jackson put me straight. But the night was dark, the country unknown to
me, and heavily wooded and mountainous. In addition to these things my
mind ran like fire. My thoughts sometimes flew back to the wondrous
summer evening when I trod the Nollichucky trace with Tom and Polly Ann,
when I first looked down upon the log palace of that prince of the
border, John Sevier. Well I remembered him, broad-shouldered, handsome,
gay, a courtier in buckskin. Small wonder he was idolized by the Watauga
settlers, that he had been their leader in the struggle of Franklin for
liberty. And small wonder that Nick Temple should be in his following.
Nick! My mind was in a torment concerning him. What of his mother?
Should I speak of having seen her? I went blindly through the woods for
hours after the night fell, my horse stumbling and weary, until at length
I came to a lonely clearing on the mountain side, and a fierce pack of
dogs dashed barking at my horse's heels. There was a dark cabin ahead,
indistinct in the starlight, and there I knocked until a gruff voice
answered me and a tousled man came to the door. Yes, I had missed the
trail. He shook his head when I asked for the Widow Brown's, and bade me
share his bed for the night. No, I would go on, I was used to the
backwoods. Thereupon he thawed a little, kicked the dogs, and pointed to
where the mountain dipped against the star-studded sky. There was a
trail there which led direct to the Widow Brown's, if I could follow it.
So I left him.
Once the fear had settled deeply of missing Nick at the Widow Brown's, I
put my mind on my journey, and thanks to my early training I was able to
keep the trail. It doubled around the spurs, forded stony brooks in
diagonals, and often in the darkness of the mountain forest I had to feel
for the blazes on the trees. There was no making time. I gained the
notch with the small hours of the morning, started on with the descent,
crisscrossing, following a stream here and a stream there, until at
length the song of the higher waters ceased and I knew that I was in the
valley. Suddenly there was no crown-cover over my head. I had gained
the road once more, and I followed it hopefully, avoiding the stumps and
the deep wagon ruts where the ground was spongy.
The morning light revealed a milky mist through which the trees showed
like phantoms. Then there came stains upon the mist of royal purple, of
scarlet, of yellow like a mandarin's robe, peeps of deep blue fading into
azure as the mist lifted. The fiery eye of the sun was cocked over the
crest, and beyond me I saw a house with its logs all golden brown in the
level rays, the withered cornstalks orange among the blackened stumps.
My horse stopped of his own will at the edge of the clearing. A cock
crew, a lean hound prostrate on the porch of the house rose to his
haunches, sniffed, growled, leaped down, and ran to the road and sniffed
again. I listened, startled, and made sure of the distant ring of many
hoofs. And yet I stayed there, irresolute. Could it be Tipton and his
men riding from Jonesboro to capture Sevier? The hoof-beats grew
louder, and then the hound in the road gave tongue to the short, sharp
bark that is the call to arms. Other dogs, hitherto unseen, took up the
cry, and turning in my saddle I saw a body of men riding hard at me
through the alley in the forest. At their head, on a heavy,
strong-legged horse, was one who might have stood for the figure of
turbulence, and I made no doubt that this was Colonel Tipton
himself,--Colonel Tipton, once secessionist, now champion of the Old
North State and arch-enemy of John Sevier. At sight of me he reined up
so violently that his horse went back on his haunches, and the men behind
were near overriding him.
"Look out, boys," he shouted, with a fierce oath, "they've got guards
out!" He flung back one hand to his holster for a pistol, while the
other reached for the powder flask at his belt. He primed the pan, and,
seeing me immovable, set his horse forward at an amble, his pistol at the
cock.
"Who in hell are you?" he cried.
"A traveller from Virginia," I answered.
"And what are you doing here?" he demanded, with another oath.
"I have just this moment come here," said I, as calmly as I might. "I
lost the trail in the darkness."
He glared at me, purpling, perplexed.
"Is Sevier there?" said he, pointing at the house.
"I don't know," said I.
Tipton turned to his men, who were listening.
"Surround the house," he cried, "and watch this fellow."
I rode on perforce towards the house with Tipton and three others, while
his men scattered over the corn-field and cursed the dogs. And then we
saw in the open door the figure of a woman shading her eyes with her
hand. We pulled up, five of us, before the porch in front of her.
"Good morning, Mrs. Brown," said Tipton, gruffly.
"Good morning, Colonel," answered the widow.
Tipton leaped from his horse, flung the bridle to a companion, and put
his foot on the edge of the porch to mount. Then a strange thing
happened. The lady turned deftly, seized a chair from within, and pulled
it across the threshold. She sat herself down firmly, an expression on
her face which hinted that the late lamented Mr. Brown had been a
dominated man. Colonel Tipton stopped, staggering from the very impetus
of his charge, and gazed at her blankly.
"I have come for Colonel Sevier," he blurted. And then, his anger
rising, "I will have no trifling, ma'am. He is in this house."
"La! you don't tell me," answered the widow, in a tone that was wholly
conversational.
"He is in this house," shouted the Colonel.
"I reckon you've guessed wrong, Colonel," said the widow.
There was an awkward pause until Tipton heard a titter behind him. Then
his wrath exploded.
"I have a warrant against the scoundrel for high treason," he cried,
"and, by God, I will search the house and serve it."
Still the widow sat tight. The Rock of Ages was neither more movable nor
calmer than she.
"Surely, Colonel, you would not invade the house of an unprotected
female."
The Colonel, evidently with a great effort, throttled his wrath for the
moment. His new tone was apologetic but firm.
"I regret to have to do so, ma'am," said he, "but both sexes are equal
before the law."
"The law!" repeated the widow, seemingly tickled at the word. She smiled
indulgently at the Colonel. "What a pity, Mr. Tipton, that the law
compels you to arrest such a good friend of yours as Colonel Sevier.
What self-sacrifice, Colonel Tipton! What nobility!"
There was a second titter behind him, whereat he swung round quickly, and
the crimson veins in his face looked as if they must burst. He saw me
with my hand over my mouth.
"You warned him, damn you!" he shouted, and turning again leaped to the
porch and tried to squeeze past the widow into the house.
"How dare you, sir?" she shrieked, giving him a vigorous push backwards.
The four of us, his three men and myself, laughed outright. Tipton's
rage leaped its bounds. He returned to the attack again and again, and
yet at the crucial moment his courage would fail him and he would let the
widow thrust him back. Suddenly I became aware that there were two new
spectators of this comedy. I started and looked again, and was near to
crying out at sight of one of them. The others did cry out, but Tipton
paid no heed.
Ten years had made his figure more portly, but I knew at once the man in
the well-fitting hunting shirt, with the long hair flowing to his
shoulders, with the keen, dark face and courtly bearing and humorous
eyes. Yes, humorous even now, for he stood, smiling at this comedy
played by his enemy, unmindful of his peril. The widow saw him before
Tipton did, so intent was he on the struggle.
"Enough!" she cried, "enough, John Tipton!" Tipton drew back
involuntarily, and a smile broadened on the widow's face. "Shame on you
for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you--Colonel Sevier."
Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into
such profanity as I have seldom heard.
"By the eternal God, John Sevier," he shouted, "I'll hang you to the
nearest tree!"
Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the
gentleman beside him.
"I have surrendered to Colonel Love," he said.
Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me,
and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might yet
be held in its pan. We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and
myself,--all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while
we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow,
the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with
something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple.
Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time Riddle's words of long
ago came to me, "God help the woman you love or the man you fight." How
shall I describe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,--yet it
was the frailness of the race-horse. The golden hair, sun-tanned, awry
across his forehead, the face the same thin and finely cut face of the
boy. The gray eyes held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more
dangerous than that. Colonel John Tipton looked, and as I live he
recoiled.
"If you touch him, I'll kill you," said Mr. Temple. Nor did he say it
angrily. I marked for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim
fingers. What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings
is mere conjecture, for Colonel Sevier himself stepped up on the porch,
laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone. What he
said we didn't hear. The astonishing thing was that neither of them for
the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them. I saw
Nick's expression change. He smiled,--the smile the landlord had
described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him.
After that Colonel Sevier stooped down and picked up the pistol from the
floor of the porch and handed it with a bow to Tipton, butt first.
Tipton took it, seemingly without knowing why, and at that instant a
negro boy came around the house, leading a horse. Sevier mounted it
without a protest from any one.
"I am ready to go with you, gentlemen," he said.
Colonel Tipton slipped his pistol back into his belt, stepped down from
the porch, and leaped into his saddle, and he and his men rode off into
the stump-lined alley in the forest that was called a road. Nick stood
beside the widow, staring after them until they had disappeared.
"My horse, boy!" he shouted to the gaping negro, who vanished on the
errand.
"What will you do, Mr. Temple?" asked the widow.
"Rescue him, ma'am," cried Nick, beginning to pace up and down. "I'll
ride to Turner's. Cozby and Evans are there, and before night we shall
have made Jonesboro too hot to hold Tipton and his cutthroats."
"La, Mr. Temple," said the widow, with unfeigned admiration, "I never saw
the like of you. But I know John Tipton, and he'll have Colonel Sevier
started for North Carolina before our boys can get to Jonesboro."
"Then we'll follow," says Nick, beginning to pace again. Suddenly, at a
cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like
a point of steel. His hand slipped to his waist.
"A spy," he said, and turned and smiled at the lady, who was watching him
with a kind of fascination; "but damnably cool," he continued, looking at
me. "I wonder if he thinks to outride me on that beast? Look you, sir,"
he cried, as Mrs. Brown's negro came back struggling with a deep-ribbed,
high-crested chestnut that was making half circles on his hind legs,
"I'll give you to the edge of the woods, and lay you a six-forty against
a pair of moccasins that you never get back to Tipton."
"God forbid that I ever do," I answered fervently.
"What," he exclaimed, "and you here with him on this sneak's errand!"
"I am here with him on no errand," said I. "He and his crew came on me a
quarter of an hour since at the edge of the clearing. Mr. Temple, I am
here to find you, and to save time I will ride with you."
"Egad, you'll have to ride like the devil then," said he, and he stooped
and snatched the widow's hand and kissed it with a daring gallantry that
I had thought to find in him. He raised his eyes to hers.
"Good-by, Mr. Temple," she said,--there was a tremor in her voice,--"and
may you save our Jack!"
He snatched the bridle from the boy, and with one leap he was on the
rearing, wheeling horse. "Come on," he cried to me, and, waving his hat
at the lady on the porch, he started off with a gallop up the trail in
the opposite direction from that which Tipton's men had taken.
All that I saw of Mr. Nicholas Temple on that ride to Turner's was his
back, and presently I lost sight of that. In truth, I never got to
Turner's at all, for I met him coming back at the wind's pace, a huge,
swarthy, determined man at his side and four others spurring after, the
spume dripping from the horses' mouths. They did not so much as look at
me as they passed, and there was nothing left for me to do but to turn my
tired beast and follow at any pace I could make towards Jonesboro.
It was late in the afternoon before I reached the town, the town set down
among the hills like a caldron boiling over with the wrath of Franklin.
The news of the capture of their beloved Sevier had flown through the
mountains like seeds on the autumn wind, and from north, south, east, and
west the faithful were coming in, cursing Tipton and Carolina as they
rode.
I tethered my tired beast at the first picket, and was no sooner on my
feet than I was caught in the hurrying stream of the crowd and fairly
pushed and beaten towards the court-house. Around it a thousand furious
men were packed. I heard cheering, hoarse and fierce cries, threats and
imprecations, and I knew that they were listening to oratory. I was
suddenly shot around the corner of a house, saw the orator himself, and
gasped.
It was Nicholas Temple. There was something awe-impelling in the tall,
slim, boyish figure that towered above the crowd, in the finely wrought,
passionate face, in the voice charged with such an anger as is given to
few men.
"What has North Carolina done for Franklin?" he cried. "Protected her?
No. Repudiated her? Yes. You gave her to the Confederacy for a war
debt, and the Confederacy flung her back. You shook yourselves free from
Carolina's tyranny, and traitors betrayed you again. And now they have
betrayed your leader. Will you avenge him, or will you sit down like
cowards while they hang him for treason?"
His voice was drowned, but he stood immovable with arms folded until
there was silence again.
"Will you rescue him?" he cried, and the roar rose again. "Will you
avenge him? By to-morrow we shall have two thousand here. Invade North
Carolina, humble her, bring her to her knees, and avenge John Sevier!"
Pandemonium reigned. Hats were flung in the air, rifles fired, shouts
and curses rose and blended into one terrifying note. Gradually, in the
midst of this mad uproar, the crowd became aware that another man was
standing upon the stump from which Nicholas Temple had leaped. "Cozby!"
some one yelled, "Cozby!" The cry was taken up. "Huzzay for Cozby!
He'll lead us into Caroliny." He was the huge, swarthy man I had seen
riding hard with Nick that morning. A sculptor might have chosen his
face and frame for a type of the iron-handed leader of pioneers. Will
was supreme in the great features,--inflexible, indomitable will. His
hunting shirt was open across his great chest, his black hair fell to his
shoulders, and he stood with a compelling hand raised for silence. And
when he spoke, slowly, resonantly, men fell back before his words.
"I admire Mr. Temple's courage, and above all his loyalty to our beloved
General," said Major Cozby. "But Mr. Temple is young, and the heated
counsels of youth must not prevail. My friends, in order to save Jack
Sevier we must be moderate."
His voice, strong as it was, was lost. "To hell with moderation!" they
shouted. "Down with North Carolina! We'll fight her!"
He got silence again by the magnetic strength he had in him.
"Very good," he said, "but get your General first. If we lead you across
the mountains now, his blood will be upon your heads. No man is a better
friend to Jack Sevier than I. Leave his rescue to me, and I will get him
for you." He paused, and they were stilled perforce. "I will get him
for you," he repeated slowly, "or North Carolina will pay for the burial
of James Cozby."
There was an instant when they might have swung either way.
"How will ye do it?" came in a thin, piping voice from somewhere near the
stump. It may have been this that turned their minds. Others took up
the question, "How will ye do it, Major Cozby?"
"I don't know," cried the Major, "I don't know. And if I did know, I
wouldn't tell you. But I will get Nollichucky Jack if I have to burn
Morganton and rake the General out of the cinders!"
Five hundred hands flew up, five hundred voices cried, "I'm with ye,
Major Cozby!" But the Major only shook his head and smiled. What he
said was lost in the roar. Fighting my way forward, I saw him get down
from the stump, put his hand kindly on Nick's shoulder, and lead him into
the court-house. They were followed by a score of others, and the door
was shut behind them.
It was then I bethought myself of the letter to Mr. Wright, and I sought
for some one who would listen to my questions as to his whereabouts. At
length the man himself was pointed out to me, haranguing an excited crowd
of partisans in front of his own gate. Some twenty minutes must have
passed before I could get any word with him. He was a vigorous little
man, with black eyes like buttons, he wore brown homespun and white
stockings, and his hair was clubbed. When he had yielded the ground to
another orator, I handed him the letter. He drew me aside, read it on
the spot, and became all hospitality at once. The town was full, and
though he had several friends staying in his house I should join them.
Was my horse fed? Dinner had been forgotten that day, but would I enter
and partake? In short, I found myself suddenly provided for, and I lost
no time in getting my weary mount into Mr. Wright's little stable. And
then I sat down, with several other gentlemen, at Mr. Wright's board,
where there was much guessing as to Major Cozby's plan.
"No other man west of the mountains could have calmed that crowd after
that young daredevil Temple had stirred them up," declared Mr. Wright.
I ventured to say that I had business with Mr. Temple.
"Faith, then, I will invite him here," said my host. "But I warn you,
Mr. Ritchie, that he is a trigger set on the hair. If he does not fancy
you, he may quarrel with you and shoot you. And he is in no temper to be
trifled with to-day."
"I am not an easy person to quarrel with," I answered.
"To look at you, I shouldn't say that you were," said he. "We are going
to the court-house, and I will see if I can get a word with the young
Hotspur and send him to you. Do you wait here."
I waited on the porch as the day waned. The tumult of the place had died
down, for men were gathering in the houses to discuss and conjecture.
And presently, sauntering along the street in a careless fashion, his
spurs trailing in the dust, came Nicholas Temple. He stopped before the
house and stared at me with a fine insolence, and I wondered whether I
myself had not been too hasty in reclaiming him. A greeting died on my
lips.
"Well, sir," he said, "so you are the gentleman who has been dogging me
all day."
"I dog no one, Mr. Temple," I replied bitterly.
"We'll not quibble about words," said he. "Would it be impertinent to
ask your business--and perhaps your name?"
"Did not Mr. Wright give you my name?" I exclaimed.
"He might have mentioned it, I did not hear. Is it of such importance?"
At that I lost my temper entirely.
"It may be, and it may not," I retorted. "I am David Ritchie."
He changed before my eyes as he stared at me, and then, ere I knew it, he
had me by both arms, crying out:--
"David Ritchie! My Davy--who ran away from me--and we were going to
Kentucky together. Oh, I have never forgiven you,"--the smile that there
was no resisting belied his words as he put his face close to mine--"I
never will forgive you. I might have known you--you've grown, but I vow
you're still an old man,--Davy, you renegade. And where the devil did
you run to?"
"Kentucky," I said, laughing.
"Oh, you traitor--and I trusted you. I loved you, Davy. Do you remember
how I clung to you in my sleep? And when I woke up, the world was black.
I followed your trail down the drive and to the cross-roads--"
"It was not ingratitude, Nick," I said; "you were all I had in the
world." And then I faltered, the sadness of that far-off time coming
over me in a flood, and the remembrance of his generous sorrow for me.
"And how the devil did you track me to the Widow Brown's?" he demanded,
releasing me.
"A Mr. Jackson had a shrewd notion you were there. And by the way, he
was in a fine temper because you had skipped a race with him."
"That sorrel-topped, lantern-headed Mr. Jackson?" said Nick. "He'll be
killed in one of his fine tempers. Damn a man who can't keep his temper.
I'll race him, of course. And where are you bound now, Davy?"
"For Louisville, in Kentucky, at the Falls of the Ohio. It is a growing
place, and a promising one for a young man in the legal profession to
begin life."
"When do you leave?" said he.
"To-morrow morning, Nick," said I. "You wanted once to go to Kentucky;
why not come with me?"
His face clouded.
"I do not budge from this town," said he, "I do not budge until I hear
that Jack Sevier is safe. Damn Cozby! If he had given me my way, we
should have been forty miles from here by this. I'll tell you. Cozby is
even now picking five men to go to Morganton and steal Sevier, and he
puts me off with a kind word. He'll not have me, he says."
"He thinks you too hot. It needs discretion and an old head," said I.
"Egad, then, I'll commend you to him," said Nick.
"Now," I said, "it's time for you to tell me something of yourself, and
how you chanced to come into this country."
"'Twas Darnley's fault," said Nick.
"Darnley!" I exclaimed; "he whom you got into the duel with--" I stopped
abruptly, with a sharp twinge of remembrance that was like a pain in my
side. 'Twas Nick took up the name.
"With Harry Riddle." He spoke quietly, that was the terrifying part of
it. "David, I've looked for that man in Italy and France, I've scoured
London for him, and, by God, I'll find him before he dies. And when I do
find him I swear to you that there will be no such thing as time wasted,
or mercy."
I shuddered. In all my life I had never known such a moment of
indecision. Should I tell him? My conscience would give me no definite
reply. The question had haunted me all the night, and I had lost my way
in consequence, nor had the morning's ride from the Widow Brown's
sufficed to bring me to a decision. Of what use to tell him? Would
Riddle's death mend matters? The woman loved him, that had been clear to
me; yet, by telling Nick what I knew I might induce him to desist from
his search, and if I did not tell, Nick might some day run across the
trail, follow it up, take Riddle's life, and lose his own. The moment,
made for confession as it was, passed.
"They have ruined my life," said Nick. "I curse him, and I curse her."
"Hold!" I cried; "she is your mother."
"And therefore I curse her the more," he said. "You know what she is,
you've tasted of her charity, and you are my father's nephew. If you
have been without experience, I will tell you what she is. A common--"
I reached out and put my hand across his mouth.
"Silence!" I cried; "you shall say no such thing. And have you not
manhood enough to make your own life for yourself?"
"Manhood!" he repeated, and laughed. It was a laugh that I did not like.
"They made a man of me, my parents. My father played false with the
Rebels and fled to England for his reward. A year after he went I was
left alone at Temple Bow to the tender mercies of the niggers. Mr. Mason
came back and snatched what was left of me. He was a good man; he saved
me an annuity out of the estate, he took me abroad after the war on a
grand tour, and died of a fever in Rome. I made my way back to
Charlestown, and there I learned to gamble, to hold liquor like a
gentleman, to run horses and fight like a gentleman. We were speaking of
Darnley," he said.
"Yes, of Darnley," I repeated.
"The devil of a man," said Nick; "do you remember him, with the cracked
voice and fat calves?"
At any other time I should have laughed at the recollection.
"Darnley turned Whig, became a Continental colonel, and got a grant out
here in the Cumberland country of three thousand acres. And now I own
it."
"You own it!" I exclaimed.
"Rattle-and-snap," said Nick; "I played him for the land at the ordinary
one night, and won it. It is out here near a place called Nashboro,
where this wild, long-faced Mr. Jackson says he is going soon. I crossed
the mountains to have a look at it, fell in with Nollichucky Jack, and
went off with him for a summer campaign. There's a man for you, Davy,"
he cried, "a man to follow through hell-fire. If they touch a hair of
his head we'll sack the State of North Carolina from Morganton to the
sea."
"But the land?" I asked.
"Oh, a fig for the land," answered Nick; "as soon as Nollichucky Jack is
safe I'll follow you into Kentucky." He slapped me on the knee. "Egad,
Davy, it seems like a fairy tale. We always said we were going to
Kentucky, didn't we? What is the name of the place you are to startle
with your learning and calm by your example?"
"Louisville," I answered, laughing, "by the Falls of the Ohio."
"I shall turn up there when Jack Sevier is safe and I have won some more
land from Mr. Jackson. We'll have a rare old time together, though I
have no doubt you can drink me under the table. Beware of these sober
men. Egad, Davy, you need only a woolsack to become a full-fledged
judge. And now tell me how fortune has buffeted you."
It was my second night without sleep, for we sat burning candles in Mr.
Wright's house until the dawn, making up the time which we had lost away
from each other.
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