“Halt!” cried the old hero. “Who goes there?”
“It’s me, Mr. Pearson. Don’t shoot me, please.”
It was the voice of Hannah Thomson. Hearing that the whole neighborhood was rising against the benefactor of Shocky and of her family, she had slipped away from the eyes of her mistress, and run with breathless haste to give warning in the cabin on Rocky Branch. Seeing Ralph, she blushed, and went into the cabin.
“Well,” said Ralph, “the enemy is not coming yet. Let us hold a council of war.”
This thought came to Ralph like an inspiration. It pleased the old man’s whim, and he sat down on the doorstep.
“Now, I suppose,” said Ralph, “that General Winfield Scott always looked into things a little before he went into a fight. Didn’t he?”
“To be sure,” assented the old man.
“Well,” said Ralph. “What is the condition of the enemy? I suppose the whole neighborhood’s against us.”
“To be sure,” said the old man. The rest were silent, but all felt the statement to be about true.
“Next,” said Ralph, “I suppose General Winfield Scott would always inquire into the condition of his own troops. Now let us see. Captain Pearson has Bud, who is the right wing, badly crippled by having his arm broken in the first battle.” (Miss Hawkins looked pale.)
“To be sure,” said the old man.
“And I am the left wing, pretty good at giving advice, but very slender in a fight.”
“To be sure,” said the old man.
“And Shocky and Miss Martha and Hannah good aids, but nothing in a battle.”
“To be sure,” said the basket-maker, a little doubtfully.
“Now let’s look at the arms and accouterments, I think you call them. Well, this old musket has been loaded—”
“This ten year,” said the old lady.
“And the lock is so rusty that you could not cock it when you wanted to take aim at Hannah.”
The old man looked foolish, and muttered “To be sure.”
“And there isn’t another round of ammunition in the house.”
The old man was silent.
“Now let us look at the incumbrances. Here’s the old lady and Shocky. If you fight, the enemy will be pleased. It will give them a chance to kill you. And then the old lady will die and they will do with Shocky as they please.”
“To be sure,” said the old man reflectively.
“Now,” said Ralph, “General Winfield Scott, under such circumstances, would retreat in good order. Then, when he could muster his forces rightly, he would drive the enemy from his ground.”
“To be sure,” said the old man. “What ort I to do?”
“Have you any friends?”
“Well, yes; ther’s my brother over in Jackson Kyounty. I mout go there.”
“Well,” said Bud, “do you just go down to Spring-in-rock and stay there. Them folks won’t be here tell midnight. I’ll come fer you at nine with my roan colt, and I’ll set you down over on the big road on Buckeye Run. Then you can git on the mail-wagon that passes there about five o’clock in the mornin’, and go over to Jackson County and keep shady till we want you to face the enemy and to swear agin some folks. And then we’ll send fer you.”
“To be sure,” said the old man in a broken voice. “I reckon General Winfield Scott wouldn’t disapprove of such a maneuver as that thar.”
Miss Martha beamed on Bud to his evident delight, for he carried his painful arm part of the way home with her. Ralph noticed that Hannah looked at him with a look full of contending emotions. He read admiration, gratitude, and doubt in the expression of her face, as she turned toward home.
“Well, goodbye, ole woman,” said Pearson, as he took up his little handkerchief full of things and started for his hiding-place; “goodbye. I didn’t never think I’d desart you, and ef the old flintlock hadn’t a been rusty, I’d a stayed and died right here by the ole cabin. But I reckon ’ta’n’t best to be brash.”21 And Shocky looked after him, as he hobbled away over the stones, more than ever convinced that God had forgotten all about things on Flat Creek. He gravely expressed his opinion to the master the next day.
XVIII
Odds and Ends
The Spring-in-rock, or, as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion, called, the “rock-in-spring,” was a spring running out of a cave-like fissure in a high limestone cliff. Here the old man sheltered himself on that dreary Christmas evening, until Bud brought his roan colt to the top of the cliff above, and he and Ralph helped the old man up the cliff and into the saddle. Ralph went back to bed, but Bud, who was only too eager to put in his best licks, walked by the side of old John Pearson the six miles over to Buckeye Run, and at last, after eleven o’clock, he deposited him in a hollow sycamore by the road, there to wait the coming of the mail-wagon that would carry him into Jackson County.
“Goodbye,” said the basket-maker, as Bud mounted the colt to return. “Ef I’m wanted jest send me word, and I’ll make a forrard movement any time. I don’t like this ’ere thing of running off in the nighttime. But I reckon General Winfield Scott would a ordered a retreat ef he’d a been in my shoes. I’m lots obleeged to you. Akordin’ to my tell, we’re all of us selfish in everything; but I’ll be dog-on’d ef I don’t believe you and one or two more is exceptions.”
Whether it was that the fact that Pete Jones had got consid’able shuck up demoralized his followers, or whether it was that the old man’s flight was suspected, the mob did not turn out in very great force, and the tarring was postponed indefinitely, for by the time they came together it became known somehow that the man with a wooden leg had outrun them all. But the escape of one
