The Red Acorn

Night had fallen in the meantime, but the full moon had risen immediately, making it almost as light as day.

After half an hour’s fast walking, the two Unionists had cut across the long horseshoe around which the Rebels were traveling, and had come down much ahead of them on the other side of the mountain, and just where the road led up the steep ascent of another mountain.

There was a loneliness about the spot that was terrible. Over it hung the “thought and deadly feel of solitude.” The only break for miles in the primeval forest was that made for the narrow road. House or cabin there was none in all the gloomy reaches of rocks and gnarled trees. It was too inhospitable a region to tempt even the wildest squatter.

The flood of moonlight made the desolation more oppresive than ever, by making palpable and suggestive the inky abysses under the trees and in the thickets.

Fortner looked up the road to his right and listened intently.

A waterfall mumbled somewhere in the neighborhood. The pines and hemlocks near the summit sighed drearily. A gray fox, which had probably just supped off a pheasant, sat on a log and barked out his gluttonous satisfaction. A wildcat, as yet superless, screamed its envy from a cliff a half a mile away.

“I can’t heah anything of Aunt Debby an’ the others,” said Fortner, at length; “so I reckon they’re clean over the mounting, an’ bout safe by this time. Them beasts are purty good travelers, I imagine, an’ they hain’t let no grass grow in under the’r hufs.”

“But the Rebels are coming, hand over hand,” said Harry, who had been watching to the left and listening. “I hear them quite plainly. Yes, there they are,” he continued, as two or three galloped around a turn in the road, followed at a little interval by others.

The metallic clang of the rapid hoof-beats on the rocks rang through the somber aisles of the forest. Noisy fox and antiphonal wildcat stopped to listen to this invasion of sound.

“Quick! let’s get in cover,” said Fortner.

“Ye make fur thet rock up thar,” said Fortner to Harry, pointing to a spot several hundred yards above them, “and stay thar tell I come. Keep close in the shadder, so’s they won’t see ye.”

“It seems to me that I ought to stay with you,’ said Harry, indecisively.

“No; go. Ye can’t do no good heah. One’s better nor two. I’ll be up thar soon. Go, quick.”

There was no time for debate, and Harry did as bidden.

Fortner stepped into the inky shadow of a large rock, against which he leaned. The great broad face of the rock, gray from its covering of minute ash-colored lichens, was toward the pursuers, and shone white as marble in the flood of moonlight. The darkness seemed banked up around him, but within his arm’s length it was as light as day. The long rifle barrel reached from the darkness into the light, past the corner of the rock against which it rested. The bright rays made the little “bead” near the muzzle gleam like a diamond, and lighted up the slit as fine as a hair in the hind-sight. Three little clicks, as if of twigs breaking under a rabbit’s foot, told that the triggers had been set and the hammer raised.

The horsemen, much scattered by the pursuit, clattered onward. In ones and twos, with wide intervals between, they reached along a half-mile of the road. Two—the best mounted—rode together at the head. Two hundred yards below the great white rock, which shone as innocent and kindly as a fleecy Summer cloud, a broad rivulet wound its way toward the neighboring creek. The blown horses scented the grateful water, and checked down to drink of it. The right-hand rider loosened his bridle that his steed might gratify himself. The other tightened his rein and struck with his spurs. His horse “gathered,” and leaped across the stream. As the armed hoofs struck sparks from the smooth stones on the opposite side, the rider of the drinking horse saw burst out of the white rock above them a gray cloud, with a central tongue of flame, and his comrade fell to the ground.

His immediate reply with both barrels of his shotgun showed that he did not mistake this for any natural phenomenon. The sound of the shots brought the rest up at a gallop, and a rapid fire was opened on the end of the rock.

But the instant Fortner fired he sprang back behind the rock, and then ran under its cover a little distance up the mountain side to a dense laurel thicket, in which he laid down behind a log and reloaded his rifle. He listened. The firing had ceased, and a half-dozen dismounted men were carefully approaching the spot whence he had sent the fatal shot. He heard the Captain order a man to ride back and bring up the wagon, that the body of the dead man might be put in it. As the wagon was heard rumbling up, the dismounted men reported to the Captain that the bushwhacker had made good his escape and was no longer behind the rock.

“Well, he hasn’t gone very far,” said the Captain with a savage oath. “He can’t have got any distance away, and I’ll have him, dead or alive, before I leave this spot. The whole gang of Lincolnite hellhounds are treed right up there, and not one of them shall get away alive.” He put a bone whistle to his lips, and sounded a shrill signal. A horseman trotted up from the rear in response to the call, leading a hound with a leash. “Take the dog up to that rock, there, Bill,” said the Captain, “and set him on that devil’s trail. Five more of you dismount, and deploy there on the other side of the road. All of you move forward cautiously, watching the dog, and make sure you ‘save’ teh whelp when he is run out.”

The men left their saddles and moved forward with manifest reluctance. They had the highly emotional nature usual in the poor white of the South, and this was deeply depressed by the weird loneliness that brooded over everything, and the bloodshed they had witnessed. Their thirst for vengeance was being tempered rapidly by a growing superstitious fear. There was something supernatural in these mysterious killings. Each man, therefore, only moved forward as he felt the Captain’s eye on him, or his comrades advanced.

The dog, after some false starts, got the scent, and started to follow Fortner’s footsteps.

“He’s done tuck the trail, Cap’n,” called back one of the men.

“All right,” answered the officer, “don’t take your eyes off of him for a second till he trees the game.”

But the logs and rocks and the impenetrable darkness in the shadows made it impossible to follow the movements of the hound every moment. Only Fortner was able to do this. He could see the great greenish-yellow eyes burn in the pitchy-depths and steadily draw nearer him. They entered the laurel thicket, and the beast growled as he felt the nearness of his prey.

“Wolf must be gitten close ter him,” said one of the men.

Fortner laid his rifle across the log, and drew from his belt a long keen knife. He stirred slightly in doing this, and in turning to confront the dog. The hound sprang forward with a growl that was abruptly ended, for Fortner’s left hand shot out like an arrow, and caught the loose folds of skin on the brute’s neck, and the next instant his right, armed with the knife, descended and laid the animal’s shoulder and neck open with a deep cut. But the darkness made Fortner mistake his distance. He neither caught the dog securely, nor sent the knife to his heart, as he intended, and the hound tearing away, ran out into the moonlight, bleeding and yelping. Before he reached his human allies Fortner had silently sped back a hundred yards, to a more secure shelter, so that the volley which was poured into he thicket only endangered the lives of the chipmunks denizened there. The mounted men rode forward and joined those on foot, in raking the copse with charges of buckshot.

Away above Fortner and Harry rose yells and the clatter of galloping horses. Before they could imagine what this meant a little cavalcade swept by at a mad gallop, yelling at the tops of their voices, and charging directly at the Rebels below. In front were Aunt Debby, Bolton and Edwards, riding abreast, and behind them three men in homespun.

The Rebels seemed totally unnerved by this startling apparition. The dismounted ones flung themselves on their horses and all fled away at a gallop, without attempting to make a stand and without taking thought of their wagon. As they scurried along the opposite mountain-side Fortner and Harry fired at them, but without being able to tell whether their shots took effect.

The pursuit was carried but a little distance. The wagon was secured and taken up the mountain. A little after midnight the summit was passed, and Fortner led the way into an opening to the right, which eventually brought up at a little level spot in front of a large cave. The horses where unhitched and unsaddled, a fire built, cedar boughs gathered to make a bed on the rocky floor of the cave, and they threw themselves down upon this to sleep the sleep of utter weariness.

In the meantime Harry had learned that the new comers were cousins of Fortner’s, who, being out on a private scouting expedition, had been encountered by Aunt Debby and the others, near the summit of the mountain, and had started back with them to the assistance of Fortner. The sound of firing had so excited them that the suggestion of a charge by Kent Edwards was eagerly acceded to.

“It must be near three o’clock,” said Kent, looking up at the stars, as he came back stealthily from laying the saddle blanket, which was the only covering he and Abe had, upon the sleeping form of Aunt Debby, “and my downy couch still waits for me. My life-long habits of staid respectability have been greatly shaken recently.”

Abe groaned derisively.

An inspection, the next morning of the wagon’s load, showed it to be mainly made up of hams, shoulders and sides, plundered from the smokehouses visited. With these were a number of guns, including several fine rifles, and all the ammunition that could be found along the route.

A breakfast was made of slices of ham broiled on the ends of sticks, and then a consultation was held as to the plans for the day’s operations.

The result of this was a decision that Aunt Debby and one of the newcomers should go back and inform the neighborhood of what had taken place, gather a party to remove the dead from the creek and bury them, to keep the water from being poisoned, and recover what property might be found with the first wagon. Kent Edwards, Abe Bolton, and two of the new comers would scout down toward London, to ascertain the truth of the rumor that Zollicoffer had evacuated the place, and retired to Laurel Bridge, nine miles south of it. Fortner and Harry Glen would take the wagon to Wildcat Gap, report what had been done, and explain to their commander the absence of the enlisted men.

“Shade of King Solomon,” said Kent to Abe, after their party had ridden for two or three hours through the mountains toward London. “I wonder if there is any other kind of worldly knowledge that I know as little about as I did of scouting when we started out? My eyes have been opened to my own ignorance. I used to have the conceit that we two could play a fair hand at any game of war they could get up for our entertainment. But these Kentuckians give me points every hundred yards that I never so much as dreamed of. Theirs is the wisdom of serpents when compared with our dove-like innocence.”

“I like dove-like innocence,” interrupted Abe.

“But did you ever see anybody that could go through the country as these fellows can? It’s just marvelous. They know every short cut to every point, and they know just where to go every time to see way ahead without being seen themselves. It would puzzle the sharpest Rebel bushwhacker to get the drop on them.”

“I don’t know as I want to learn their way of doing,” said Abe crustily. “It looks like sneaking, on a big scale, that’s all. And I’m ashamed of this laying round behind a log or a rock to pop a man over. It ain’t my style at all. I believe in open and above-board fighting, give and take, and may the best man win.”

“So do I, though I suppose all’s fair in war. But when we scout we give them the same chance to knock us over that they give us when they scout. I’ll admit it looks very much like murder to shoot men down that way, for it does not help either side along a particle. But these Kentuckians have a great many private injuries to avenge, and they can’t do it any other way.”

All the people of the region were intensely Union, so it was not difficult to get exact information of the movements of the Rebels, and as the scouts drew near London they became assured that not only all of Zollicoffer’s infantry, but his small parties of cavalry had retreated beyond the town. Our scouts therefore, putting Edwards and Bolton to the front, that their blue uniforms might tell the character of the party, spurred into a gallop, and dashed into London, to be received with boundless enthusiasm.

“Somebody ought to ride back to Wildcat immediately,” said Kent, after they had enjoyed their reception a little while, “and report this to the General.”

All assented to this position.

“It is really the duty of myself and comrade here to do it,” said Kent, shifting uneasily in his chair, to find a comfortable place to sit upon; “but as we have been for two days riding the hardest-backed horses over roads that were simply awful, and as previous to that time we had not taken any equestrian exercise for several years, there are some fundamental reasons—that is, reasons lying at the very base of things, (he shifted again)—why we should not be called upon to do another mile of horseback riding until Time has had an opportunity to exercise his soothing and healing influence, so to speak. Abe, I believe I have stated the case with my usual happy combination of grace and delicacy?”

“You have, as usual, flushed a tail-race of big words.”

“In short,” Kent went on (“Ah, thank you. That is delicious. The best I ever drank. Your mountain stills make the finest apple jack in the world. There must be something in the water—that you don’t put in. It’s as smooth as new-made butter. Well, here’s to the anner of Beauty and Glory.) In short, as I was saying when you hospitably interrupted me, we are willing to do anything for the cause, but unless there is some other way of riding, the most painful effort I could make for our beloved country would be to mount that horse again, and ride another hundred yards. To be messenger of this good news would be bliss; what prevents it is a blister.”

The crowd laughed boisterously.

“Mister,” said one of the Kentuckians who accompanied them, with that peculiar drawling inflection of the word that it were hopeless to attempt to represent in print, “ef ye want ter send some one in yer places me an’ Si heah will be powerful glad ter go. Jes’ git a note ter the Jineral at Wildcat ready while we saddle fresh beasts, an’ we’ll hev hit in his hands afore midnight.”

The proposition was immediately accepted, and in a little while the Kentuckians were speeding their way back to Gen. Schoepf, with a letter giving the news, and signed: “Kent Edwards, Chief of Scouts.”

That evening a party of young men who had followed the Rebel retreat some distance, brought in a wagon which had been concealed in an out-of-the-way place, and left there. It was loaded mainly with things taken from the houses, and was evidently the private collection of some freebooting subordinate, who did not intend that the Southern Confederacy should be enriched by the property. Hence, probably, the hesitation about taking it along with the main train. It was handed over to Kent as the representative of the United States, who was alone authorized to take charge of it. Assisted by Abe he started to make an inventory of the contents. A portly jug of apple jack was kept at hand, that there might not be any suffering from undue thirst during the course of the operation, which, as Kent providently remarked, was liable to make a man as dry as an Arizona plain.

The danger of such aridity seemed to grow more imminent continually, judged by the frequency of their application to the jug. It soon became more urgent than the completion of the inventory. Frequent visits of loyal Kentuckians with other jugs and bottles, to drink to the renewed supremacy of the Banner of Beauty and Glory, did not diminish Kent’s and Abe’s apprehensions of ultimate thirst. Their clay seemed like some other kinds, which have their absorptive powers strengthened by the more they take up. They belonged to a not-unusual class of men whom it takes about as long to get thoroughly drunk as it does to heat up an iron-furnace, but the condition that they achieve then makes the intoxication of other and ordinary men seem a very mild and tame exhilaration.

By noon the next day this process was nearing its completion. A messenger galloped into town with the information that the Union forces were coming, and would arrive in the course of an hour or two.

“Shash so?” said Kent, straightening himself up with a crushing dignity that always formed a sure gauge of the extent to which inebriation had progressed. “Shash so? Troops ‘she United States ‘bout to enter shis lovely metropolis wish all pomp and shircumshtance ‘reassherted ‘thority. ‘Shtonishin’ event; wonderful ‘casion. Never happened ‘fore; probably never’ll happen again. Ought to be ‘propriately celebrated, Abe!”

That gentleman made a strong effort to control joints which seemed unmanageable, and succeeded in assuming a tolerable erectness, while he blinked at his companion with stolid gravity.

“Abe, shis ish great ‘casion. Greatest in she annalsh of she country. We’re only represhentatives Government in she town. Burden whole shing fallsh on us. Understand? We musht do everyshing. Understand? Country ‘spects every man to do his duty. Undershtand?”

Abe sank down on a bench, leaned his head against the wall, and looked at his companion with one eye closed wearily.

“Yesshir,” Kent resumed, summoning up a new supply of oratorical energy, and an official gravity beneath which his legs trembled. “Name shis town’s London. Shame name’s big town ‘cross ocean. Lots history c’nected wish name. Shtacks an’ cords of it. Old times when King went out t’meet him, wish shtyle pile on bigger’n a haystack. Fact. Clothes finer’n a peacock. Tendered him keys, freed’m city. All shat short shing. Ver’ impreshive shpectacle. Everybody felt better’n for improvin’ sight. Undershtand? We’ll be Lord Mayor and train for shis London. We can rig out right here. Our trouseau’s here in shis hair trunk.”

“Shall we get anyshing t’ drink?” inquired Abe making a temporary collection of his wits with a violent effort.

“Abe!” the freezing severity of Kent’s tone and manner would have been hopelessly fatal to early vegetables. “Abe you’ve many good qualities—more of ‘em shan any man I know, but a degrading passion fur shtrong drink is ruinin’ you. I’m your besht fren, an’ shay it wish tearsh in m’ eyes. Lemme beg o’ you t’ reform ere it ish too late. Beware of it, my fren, beware of it. It shtingeth like a serpent, an’ biteth like a multiplier—I mean an adder. You haven’t got my shuperb self-control, an’ so yer only shafety lies in total abstinence. Cheese it, my fren, cheese it on she sheductive but fatal lush.”

“Are we goin’ out t’ meet she boysh?” inquired Abe.

“Shertainly we are. Yesshir. An’ we’re goin’ out ash I proposed. Yer a shplendid feller, Abe,” continued Kent, with lofty patronage. “A shplendid feller, an’ do great credit t’ yer ‘portunities. But y’ haven’t had my ‘dvantages of mingling constantly in p’lite s’ciety, y’know. Rough diamond, I know, ‘nall that short o’ shing, but lack polish an’ easy grace. So I’ll be th’ Lord Mayor, an’ y’ll be th’ train. Undershtand?”

He lurched forward, and came near falling over the chair, but recovering he stiffened up and gazed on that useful article of furniture with a sternness that implied his belief that it was a rascally blackleg trying to insinuate itself into the circle of refinement and chaste elegance of which he was the particular ornament.

“Come,” he resumed, “le’s bedizen ourselves; le’s assume th’ shplendor ‘propriate t’ th’ ‘casion.”

When the troops marched in in the afternoon, the encountered at the head of the crowd that met them at the crossing of the creek just ouside of town, a man who seemed filled with deep emotion, and clothed with strange fancies. He wore a tall silk hat of antique patter, carefully brushed, which he protected from the rays of the sun with a huge blue cotton umbrella. A blue broadcloth coat, with gilt buttons, sat jauntily over a black satin vest, and nankeen trousers. A pair of gold spectacles reposed in magisterial dignity about half way down his nose, and a large silver-headed cane in the left hand balanced the umbrella in the right. By the side of the man with rare vestments stood another figure of even more limpness of general bearing, whose garb consisted of a soldier’s uniform pantaloons and woolen shirt—none too clean—set off by a black dress-coat, and white linen vest.

As the head of the column came up he in the blue broadcloth pulled off his hat and spectacles, and addressed himself to speech:

“Allow me, shir, to welcome you with hoshpitable hands to a bloody—no, let me tender you, shir, the liberties of our city, and reshoice shat she old banner which has braved she battle, hash–”

The column had stopped, and the Captain commanding the advance was listening patiently to what he supposed was the address of an enthusiastic, but eccentric old Kentuckian, when one of the sharp-eyed ones in the company shouted out:

“I declare, it’s Kent Edwards and Abe Bolton.”

The yell of laughter and applause at the ludicrous masquerade shook the hills. The Colonel rode up to see what occasioned it. He recognized his two men, and his face darkened with anger.

“You infernal rascals,” he shouted, “you have been off plundering houses, have you, in place of being with your company. I’ll stop this sort of thing mighty sudden. This regiment shall not degrade itself by plundering and robbing, if I have to shoot every man in it. Captain, arrest those men, and keep thim in close confinement until I can have them tried and properly punished.”