Lafe and the Bounty-Jumper.
"Why, they hang men caught robbing the dead on battle-fields, don't they—specially when they're bounty-jumpers to begin with?"
He had called this out as swiftly as he could, holding himself in readiness as he spoke, and now he pounced downward, and clutching the musket, lifted it for defence.
The man sprang forward with a quicker motion than the boy had counted upon, and before Lafe had got erect he felt the stifling grasp of big, hard fingers around his throat.
Things grew black before Lafe's eyes as the iron clutch about his throat tightened. He strove desperately to twist himself loose, using in a frantic way the wrestling tricks he knew; but the grip of the bounty-jumper was too powerful. Lafe's head seemed swelling in the effort to burst, and feeling in all his body below that fatal circlet became numb. There was room for but a single thought—this was what being choked to death meant!
Afterward it never seemed to the boy that he entirely lost consciousness. He could remember that there was a violent sidewise jerk at his neck, and then the sense of intolerable squeezing there ceased. But there was still an awful buzzing inside his head, and midnight blackness, shot with interlacing lines of crazy light, spread itself indefinitely about him.
Gradually he perceived that he was breathing again, and that he could feel his arms and legs once more to be parts of him. He knew that he was exceedingly tired and sleepy, and felt only that the one desirable thing was to lie still, just as he was. He mentally resolved that he would not stir nor open his eyes for anybody.
"How vas it mit you, Lafe?"
The words were undoubtedly in the air. He realized that, and lay very still, lazily confident that he would hear them again.
Things began to assort themselves in his brain. Foldeen and he had been on a big, overhanging rock, which had tumbled with them, and by some chance they hadn't both been killed, and now Foldeen was looking for him. But he would lie still and rest.
"Vake up! Lafe! Vake up!"
The boy heard these words, too. The heavy drowsiness upon him seemed to be lifting, and he felt some one fumbling at his breast, inside his shirt. On the instant he was awake and sitting up, wonderingly staring.
A tall figure had risen away from him as he opened his eyes. The sun had come out, and was falling warm and full upon the mass of young green which covered the hillside. This erect standing figure was for a moment or two very indistinct against the dazzling light. Then Lafe made out that this was Foldeen.
Almost in the same glance he saw that he was sitting among the heap of knapsacks and battle-field débris in the corner of the breastwork. Close beside him—so near that he felt he must have been lying upon him when he recovered consciousness—sprawled the burly figure of the bounty-jumper, face downward, and quite still.
Lafe was so contented with the spectacle on which his eyes rested that it did not occur to him to ask what had happened.
It was pleasanter to look at Foldeen's honest face, beaming satisfaction back into the boy's slow and inquiring regard. The German said nothing, but just smiled at Lafe.
As the boy's memory cleared itself, the fact that Foldeen had had no breakfast, and that he had left him in his covert on the hillside with very little compunction, rose above everything else.
Lafe pointed to the knapsacks, and attempted to speak. His throat and windpipe, the roots of his tongue and everything else involved in vocal sounds, seemed at the effort to shrivel up in pain. At first he thought he could not manage to utter a syllable. Then, at the cost of some suffering, he forced out the words, "Bread—there." They sounded quite strange in his ears.
Foldeen nodded his head, still with the jubilant grin on his round, kindly face. "Ya vole," he said, in a matter-of-fact way. "But first I fix me up dis fellow dight."
He sorted out of the pile of stolen property two officers' sashes of knitted crimson silk, and kneeling down beside the outstretched form of the bounty-jumper, proceeded calmly to bind his legs together at the ankles with one of them.
Then, with some roughness, he dragged the prostrate man's arms together till their wrists met on the small of his back, and there tied them securely.
"He ain't dead, then?" commented Lafe, his throat feeling easier.
"Vell, maybe he is," said Foldeen. "I hit him shtraight by the top of his head mit dot gun-barrel, und he vent down like if he vas a tousand bricks. But it makes nodding. Ven he is dead, den he is good tied up. Ven he is alife, den he is much better tied up. Now ve eat us our breakfast in kviet. Bread, you say? Show me dot bread."
Foldeen needed no showing, but was on the instant wolfing huge mouthfuls from the half-loaf which the nearest haversack furnished. Lafe leaned back and watched him, his mind filled with formless emotions of thanksgiving.
In such intervals as he could spare from the bread, Foldeen lightly told what had happened. From his perch up on the hillside he had seen everything, and though beyond earshot, had been able to follow pretty well what was going on.
When the rascal drew the pistol, Foldeen slipped out from his hiding-place, and began letting himself noiselessly down the hill. He had entered the breastwork just at the critical moment, and had dealt Lafe's assailant a crushing blow on the skull with a gun he picked up. That was all. It was very simple.
"And mighty lucky for me, too!" was the boy's heartfelt comment. "Foldeen, do you know what this fellow here's been doing?"
"I haf some brains on my head. I haf seen his business. He is a dief."
"He got these things together here," said Lafe, "and he told me there was a lot more over on the other side of the creek. He was going to make me help him bring them here. That was what he had the pistol out for. But what beats me is, what did he expect to do with them? A man can't get out of the lines with a load of traps like this, even if he could carry 'em."
For answer Foldeen rose, and turned the sprawling, inert form of his captive over on its back. The pallor of the thief's face, contrasted with the coarse, sandy hair and stubble of beard, made it seem more repellent than ever.
The German bent over to examine this countenance more carefully.
"By jiminy priest! I bet me anydings I know dot man!" he exclaimed, staring downward intently. "Vake up dere, you!" he called out, pushing the recumbent figure with his foot. "I know you, Red Pete! Dot's no use, your making out you vas asleep! Vake up, kvick now!" and he stirred him with his boot again.
"I bet he's dead," said Lafe.
No! The man half opened his eyes and moved his head restlessly. The color came back into his face, the muscles of which were drawn now into an angry scowl by pain. He fell back helpless after an instinctive effort to lift himself to a sitting posture. Then, shifting his head, he discovered the two friends, and fixed upon them a stolid, half-stupefied stare.
"How you like him, dot Red Pete, eh?" Foldeen burst forth, with exultation, never taking his jubilant glance from the face of the wretch on the ground. "Dots a beauty, ain'd it? Dot's a first-glass Ghristmas bresent, eh, to find in your shtocking! Or no, he is too big. Ve hang him on a dree, eh? A nize Ghristmas-dree, all by ourselves, eh? O Red Pete, you vas git the best place by dot dree, right in front, on the biggest branch!"
The man on the ground had been staring upward at the speaker in a puzzled fashion. He had slowly taken in the situation that he was disabled, bound hand and foot, and at the German's mercy. At last he seemed to recall who it was who was talking to him.
"I never done you no harm!" he growled.
"So-o!" ejaculated Foldeen, with loud sarcasm. "Dot vas no harm, eh, dot vas only some little fun, eh, to make me on fire und burn me up mit the rest in dot shteam-boat? Just some funny joke, eh? Veil, den, now I will haf me my funny liddle jokes mit you."
Speaking with such swift volubility that Lafe followed with difficulty the thread of his narrative, Foldeen unfolded a curious tale. Before the war he had drifted about in the South a good deal, playing in orchestras in New Orleans some of the time, and then for whole seasons travelling up and down the Mississippi in the bands of the old passenger steamers.
This man, Red Pete, was a well-known character on the river, too well known all the way from Cairo to the last levee. Sometimes he was in charge of a squad of slaves, sometimes travelling on his own account as a gambler, slave-buyer, or even for a trip as minor boat officer—but always an evil-minded scoundrel.
One night, when they were lying at the wharf under the bluff at Natchez, the cabins of the steamer had been robbed, and fire set to the boat in several places. Those on board barely escaped with their lives, and when they found that Red Pete was missing, every one knew well enough that he was the thief and would-be murderer.
Foldeen believed there had been some search for him, but those were rough times, and he was never tracked down. Then the war came, and Foldeen perforce went into the band of an Arkansas regiment—until the opportunity of making his escape to the Union lines occurred.
During that period of reluctant service with the band which played "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag," he had more than once heard of Red Pete as a sort of unattached guerrilla, who, like many other river ruffians, played for his own hand between the lines.
"Und now it looks like dot game of his vas pretty near blayed out, eh?" Foldeen concluded with a chuckle.
Lafe gazed down with loathing upon this burly and powerful desperado, lying in such utter helplessness. He told Foldeen in turn how he had seen this very man in the Fifth Corps "quod" only last winter, condemned to death.
"So-o!" exclaimed the German. "I remember dot. All five deserters und bounty-chumpers dug deir vay out, und gilled a sentinel, und skipped in the night. So-o! Ve don't have us dot private Ghristmas-dree, after all. Ve make Red Pete a bresent to Cheneral Boyce, instead."
"Yes, but where shall we find General Boyce?" Lafe put in.
Moved by a common impulse, the two turned their backs on their prisoner, and went outside the earthwork.
The sky was overcast with shifting clouds again, and gave no hint as to the points of compass. The little valley, strewn with motionless, blue-clad figures, lay wrapped in such silence that they could hear the murmur of the rivulet beyond. On both sides the hills rose steeply, covered with thick, tangled verdure.
Behind and before them the valley lost itself a hundred yards away in dense thickets. A sharp wind had risen, under which the tree-tops moaned. Above the noises of the gathering gale, faint sounds of distant firing could be heard.
"We'd better stay where we are," the boy suggested. "There's been rough-and-tumble fighting all around here, and there's no way of figuring out where our people are. I guess they don't know themselves. If we go hunting round, we're as likely as not to walk into a hornets' nest. I tell you what we'll do. If we can find a piece of white cloth, we'll put it up on a pole out here, and we'll bury these men of ours. Nobody'll touch us, if they come along and find us doing that. Besides, it's the right thing to do."
They turned back into the breastwork, and Lafe, rummaging among the knapsacks, speedily found a roll of bandage-linen which would serve his purpose. He got out more bread as well, and found a scrap of fried bacon. The two ate standing; now that they had a plan, they were all eagerness to put it into operation.
Red Pete had closed his eyes again, and was lying perfectly still. The excitement of his capture having died away, they now scarcely gave him a glance.
"I wonder what time it's got to be," Lafe remarked, as they were finishing the last mouthful. "Oh, I forgot—he's got a gold watch in his pocket, and I think it's going."
Foldeen knelt, and feeling about for it, drew the watch from Red Pete's trousers pocket. "By jiminy priest! it's near four o'clock!" he exclaimed. Then rising, he looked more attentively at the watch, turning it over in his hand admiringly, and prying open the back of the case with his nail.
There seemed to be an inscription on the inside of the cover, and Foldeen held the watch sidewise to decipher this more readily, while Lafe peered over his shoulder to look.
"It's in writing," he said; "let me take it. I can make it out easier, perhaps."
The legend inside the gold case was delicately engraved in small running script. Lafe, reading with increasing surprise, discovered it to be this:—
Presented to
Lieut. Lyman Hornbeck,
January 22, 1864,
by his friends and admirers
Of St. Mark's Church,
Cleveland.
"Say, Foldeen," Lafe burst forth, "I bet that's a relation of mine. I've got an uncle——"
"So everybody has got some ungles," put in the musician.
"No, but look here," the boy insisted. "That says 'Lyman Hornbeck.' Well, my father's brother was Lyman Hornbeck. I've heard talk about my Uncle Lyme ever since I could remember. He left home years ago, before I was born. They always said he was out West, somewhere. I bet it's the same man. At any rate, I'm going to take a look around. You fix up the pole and the white flag outside here, and bring out the shovels. I'll be back again and help."
Lafe's eyes sparkled with a new excitement as he made his way across the pasture to the bank of the creek, noting as he strode along that all the lifeless forms on the grass wore the uniforms of privates.
He walked along the shelving edge of this bank from one end of the clearing to the other, to make sure that the winding bed of the stream below did not hold what he sought for. There was no sign, anywhere in the open, of an officer.
He remembered now that Red Pete had spoken of the other side of the creek, which lay so much lower than the bank on which he stood that it could not have been raked by the fire from the breastwork. It was swampy ground, covered heavily with high, bushing willows and rank growths of tall marsh grass. No path leading into it was discernible, perhaps because the wind blew the reeds and flags so stiffly sidewise.
With a running jump Lafe cleared the bed of the stream, and pushed his way into the morass. It was not so wet underfoot as he had expected, but the tangle of vines and undergrowth made his progress slow and troublesome. It was easy enough to see that no portion of the brigade had passed this way; there were no indications that wild nature here had ever been disturbed. The boy pressed on until, finding the swamp-jungle getting worse with every yard, and the shadows deepening about him, it was clearly useless to go farther.
Turning, he fancied he knew from which direction he had advanced into this maze. There was no use in merely retracing his steps. He settled his bearings as well as might be, and struck off to the left, to work his way diagonally out to the clearing.
When he had floundered on over what seemed twice the distance of his first direct line, and halted, hot, tired, and out of breath, he could detect no open space ahead. The wind was blowing hard from up above, and the noise of its impact upon the wilderness was in itself enough to confuse the senses. It was undoubtedly growing dark.
"Hello—Hornbeck!" Lafe shouted.
The wind seized the shrill cry and scattered it into fragmentary echoes. It was worse than useless to call out. He must push doggedly on. Lafe turned a little to the right, and crushed his way forward through the brush and bracken, with a step to which dawning fears of being lost lent added vigor.
He was traversing slightly higher ground now. The willows and marsh grass had given place to a more orderly second growth of firs, with dry moss underfoot, and open spaces overhead. In one of these breathing-places of the thicket, he came suddenly upon the blue-clad figure of a man sitting propped up against a stump, his head hanging on his breast.
He was young and fair-haired, and Lafe's glance took in the glint of gilt straps on his shoulders as he hurried toward him. Almost in the same instant the boy, kneeling at his side, saw that this was the young Ohio officer he had spoken with at sunrise, and that he was alive.
As he sought to waken the wounded man, and make out how badly he had been hurt, it grew suddenly, strangely dark. Looking upward, Lafe saw above the treetops nearest him, piling skyward on the wind, a great writhing wall of black smoke.
It mounted in huge, waving coils as he looked, and came nearer, bending forward in a sinister arch across the heavens. His startled ears dimly heard a sullen, roaring sound, newly engrafted upon the whistling of the wind.
The woods were on fire!
Lafe had seen forest fires near Juno Mills, and there was nothing in his recollection of them to suggest great danger in this one. He was more interested for the moment in the young Ohio officer propped against the stump. This lieutenant was barefooted. A thief had evidently taken also his sash, sword, and belt.
He was probably one of Red Pete's victims. The others could not be far away, among them Lafe's problematical kinsman with the presentation watch.
But finding a possible uncle was just now of less importance than finding a safe way out of the thicket. The smoke grew visibly thicker, and Lafe could detect, off to the left, the distinct crackling noise of flames. He dropped on one knee again, and patted the officer's shoulder with decision.
The young man moved his head restlessly, then opened his eyes and stared dully at Lafe.
"Which way is the creek?" the drummer-boy shouted.
The lieutenant, as if dazed, looked half wonderingly into the boy's face. Then he blinked, shook himself, and made a move to sit upright. He sank back with his mouth drawn awry by the severity of his pain, and forced the semblance of a laugh upon these pale lips.
"I thought at first I was home, and you were my brother," he said.
"How bad are you hurt? Can you walk?" Lafe demanded. "We've got to get out of this. The woods are on fire, and the wind is blowing it dead this way. Where are you hit?"
"Minie ball here—between the shoulder and the lung, I hope," replied the other, indicating his left side. "It's stiffened and I can't lift myself. Help me on my feet, and I guess I can walk away."
Lafe put an arm under him and gave him his hand. The lieutenant, with a groan, set his teeth and scrambled up on his feet. He looked about him for an instant, and then hastily seated himself on the stump.
"I'm dizzy for the minute," he murmured. "I must have lost so much blood. It's afternoon, isn't it?"
"Past five. You'd better brace up now, and try to come on. Which way is it?"
The officer looked vaguely around. "I hardly know," he confessed. "I can just remember dragging myself off into the swamp. I thought I should find some water, and I guess my strength gave out about here. Somebody came along and pulled off my boots and stockings, and went through my pockets, but I was too near dead to resist, and I kept my eyes shut."
"Well, you want to keep 'em open now. This must be the way out, according to the wind. That's it; get your arm over my shoulder, and we'll make a break."
They walked thus for a dozen steps or so, the officer leaning a little on Lafe's right shoulder. Then the wounded man stopped.
"I'd rather you went ahead," he called into the boy's ear. "The branches knock against my game side, this way. I'll keep behind you;" and so they went on again, Lafe pushing the saplings and boughs aside for the other.
The smoke had become almost blinding now, as it sifted through the motionless air of the thicket. The noises had risen now into a pandemonium of uproar—on the left the furious bellowing of the tempest and the flames, to the right a series of outbursts that shook the earth like mine explosions. It sometimes seemed to Lafe as if he distinguished the cheers and vague cries of men, off on the other side—and then back would come the chaotic din.
Awed and deafened, the two pushed doggedly on, Lafe stealing glances over his shoulder, to see if the officer was following. He came, holding to the branches with his right hand for support, and striving to pick soft places for his bare feet among the stones and prickly ground vines.
It had suddenly grown very hot. The heat began to sting Lafe's forehead and eyes. They were advancing into the temperature of a veritable furnace. The crackling noises to the left had swollen all at once to an angry tumult close at hand.
Looking up with smarting eyes through the pungent smoke, the boy beheld scattered flashes of flame dotting the murky shadows of the forest beyond, and even as he looked these tongues of fire ran forward under the wind with darting swiftness. An imperative outcry behind Lafe called a halt. He turned as his companion reeled, clutched wildly at an ash sapling, and fell against it, his head hanging helplessly forward on his breast.
"It's no use," he gasped, as the boy strode back. "I'm choking, and I'm played out. I can't go another step."
He falteringly lifted one of his torn and bleeding feet, and put it down again. His arm slipped from around the sapling, and he would have fallen if Lafe had not caught him.
"Why don't you be a man!" the boy screamed shrilly through the tumult.
A sort of angry desperation seized upon Lafe. He would drag this Ohio tenderfoot out of the fire in spite of himself. With rough energy he fitted his shoulder under the officer's armpit, and drew his right arm forward in the determined clutch of both his hands.
"Come on now, the best way you can. Never mind your feet or your shoulder either!" he yelled, and then, stiffening his back under the burden, he staggered forward.
He could never afterward recall anything definitely of how he did it, or how long it took. But through the shrivelling heat, through the murderous swoop of fire and smoke, somehow he came. All at once there was the play of cooler air upon his face. Instead of the choking smoke and darkness he was wrapped about by a clean wind. It had grown suddenly daylight again.
Bent almost double under his burden, he strove in vain to fill his lungs with this fresh air. It was dimly in his mind to straighten himself, and breathe in all he could hold. But the load on his back seemed to be pressing him further down, and whirling him round as well.
Then he was lying face downward, on dry, soft earth with the sharp edges of stiff marsh grass in his hair. Something heavy lay across him. He rolled himself free from the encumbrance, and stretched himself out luxuriously on his back. The wind soughed pleasantly through the reeds about his head.
He went to sleep, dreaming placidly as he dropped off that ordered swarms of men were passing through the tall grass close beside him, firing volleys and cheering as they fired.
Four red points of light, at regular distances apart, and shining faintly against a broad canopy of blackness, was what Lafe, still lying on his back, beheld when he woke. He looked at them lazily for what seemed a long time, and did not care in the least what they signified. Then, quite without any effort, he knew that they were lanterns hung on a rope.
There were sinuous lines of motion in the darkness above the lanterns, and these revealed themselves to him as the sides of canvas-strips stirring in the wind. This, too, did not seem important, and he indolently closed his eyes again.
A sharp cry, ringing abruptly out close at hand, awoke him more thoroughly. He even lifted his head a little, and saw many more lights—lanterns, kerosene lamps, and tallow-dips stuck in bottles. They stretched out irregularly in all directions, illumining little patches of space, which seemed all the smaller by comparison with the vast blocks of deep shadows surrounding them.
The radiance of many of these lights centred upon a broad table, about which several men were standing in their shirtsleeves, and with aprons like butchers. There seemed to be another man lying on this table, and one of his legs was bared to the thigh. Some of these shadowy figures moved, and another cry arose. Lafe shut his eyes, and turned away from the spectacle.
There was now a rustle of straw under him, and he noted that his head was resting on a canvas pillow filled with straw. A strong smell, as of arnica, attracted his attention. Now he understood that he was in a hospital tent.
He wondered where he himself had been hurt. Except for a general, dull aching of the muscles, he was conscious of no special pain. He tried opening and closing his fingers, and moving his toes.
Each member seemed in working order. He passed his hands along his sides, and still found nothing amiss. But his head certainly did ache.
Vague recollection of the events of the day began to stir in his memory, but not at all in their right order. It seemed as if it was Foldeen Schell whom he had carried out of the burning woods, and nearer still in point of time seemed to be Red Pete's stifling grip upon his neck. Then, somehow, his thoughts drifted to the watch and its inscription.
He drowsily tried to think what this Lyman Hornbeck must be like—a gray-bearded old man and a church-member, and yet only a lieutenant. So his vagrant fancy drifted about on the border-land of sleep.
Suddenly there were voices close about him. Half opening his eyes, Lafe blinked at three or four torches which some soldiers were holding up at the foot of his bed. A half-dozen officers were there as well, and the foremost one was General Boyce.
The light hurt Lafe's eyes, and he closed them. The general's cheery voice remained in his ears, though, and conveyed so true a notion of the man that Lafe seemed to continue to behold him, the red torchlight heightening the glow of health on his round cheeks and shining in his brave, kindly eyes.
"Oh, you'll be up and about in a day or two," the general was saying, in a hearty, encouraging way. "Won't he, surgeon-major?"
"Well, inside a week," answered another voice. "The wound in itself wasn't much. It's the loss of blood that's worst."
"Lieutenant," the general went on, "if I don't call you captain when you get back from your furlough, it won't be my fault. You've been mentioned in the despatches. Your company's tussle with the breastwork under the hill was as plucky a thing as has been done to-day. Well, good luck to you!"
There was a rattle of spurs and swords, as if the group were moving, and then Lafe was conscious that the young Ohio officer spoke, as if from the very next bed.
"O general," he called out, "I'll save my own thanks for some other time! But I want you to take notice of this boy here. He's one who ought to be mentioned in despatches. I'd have been roasted alive if it hadn't been for him. He came into the woods and found me, and routed me up, and made me walk, and when I gave out he actually carried me right through the blaze. Talk about charging the breast-work! What he did was worth fifty of it."
Lafe felt through his closed eyelids that the torches were being held so as to cover him with their light. Oddly enough, he seemed without desire to look.
"I won't forget," said the general. "How badly off is he?"
"He was brought in with the lieutenant here," returned the surgeon-major. "I didn't see him myself. You were here, nurse?"
A woman's voice took up the thread: "Poor little fellow, he doesn't seem to have been shot, but his head was laid open to the bone somehow. Doctor Alvord thought it must have been a horse's hoof."
"We were both on the ground in the way when the big charge down the run was made," explained the lieutenant. "He must have got trampled on. I think he's a drummer in the brigade band. I noticed him when we went into line this morning."
"I wonder if it can be our Juno Mills boy," broke in the general. Lafe felt that the great man was bending over close to him. "Some Dutchman in the band was telling a tremendous yarn about a youngster who went down alone into the breast-work after it was deserted, and had a fight, single-handed, with a baggage-thief, and played the deuce generally. Does anybody know whether he's the same one?"
Lafe could never understand afterward what ailed him to behave so, but at this he kept his breathing down to its gentlest possible form. The general and his attendants moved off down the aisles, halting with the torches at other bedsides to give cheer. Their going gave Lafe leisure for the thought which interested him most.
The news that his head had been laid open to the bone had fascinated him. He put up a hand now and felt of his skull. It was covered all over with interlaced strips of stiff plaster encased in a soft linen bandage drawn tight.
"Are you feeling all right?"
It was the voice of the lieutenant. Lafe, proud of his plasters, opened his eyes and made out the young officer, propped up with a couple of straw pillows on the bed next his.
"My head aches a little, that's all," said Lafe. "Say, we had a squeak for it, didn't we?"
"I shan't forget it—nor you," responded the other.
"Cleveland's in Ohio, ain't it?" the boy asked, all at once pursuing a subject which had kept dodging in and out of his mind. "Perhaps you know an old man in one of the Ohio regiments—he must be getting along toward sixty—he's a lieutenant, and his name's Lyman Hornbeck. I was looking for him this afternoon when—when I lighted on you."
The young officer, quite heedless of his bandages, sat bolt upright and stared at Lafe as if too much amazed for words.
"I don't know what you're driving at," he said at last. "My name is Lyman Hornbeck, and I'm a Cleveland man and a lieutenant—but I'm a long way off from sixty. You can't mean my father? He's been dead two years. His name was Lyman. Why, hold on! General Boyce said something about Juno Mills—my father came from near there—you don't mean to say you're a Hornbeck?"
An irresistible impulse moved Lafe to crawl out of his bed and totter across to the other's pallet. He sat down on the edge of it, and leaned his head back on the officer's two pillows.
"Say, I'm Steve Hornbeck's son," he said, "and your father was my Uncle Lyme. Do you know, I kind of felt like takin' a shine to you when you spoke to me early this morning."
"I'm Steve Hornbeck's Son!"
The officer had put his arm affectionately round the boy's neck. "Why, don't you remember," he cried, with pleased interest, "how I said I had a brother like you at home?"
And so the two lay close together in a delighted gossip until the surgeon came, and laughingly but peremptorily drove them apart. They told him something of the strange story, and an attendant went out and found Foldeen, and brought him in, and he added many striking variations to the legend which now, by midnight, had become the talk of the brigade.
General Boyce came back to the hospital tent purposely to see the boy from his own Dearborn County whom men were talking about. He nodded his head approvingly as he stood by the bedside and listened to Foldeen's excited narrative of the lad's fight with Red Pete.
"I remember hearing of that fellow before," he said. "We'll hang him in the morning, if we have to go without breakfast to do it."
Foldeen shook his head. "He is no good for hanging, dot Red Pete," he explained. "When the fire is gone out by dot breastwork where he vas, maybe you find some chargoals from him—und maybe two, dree buttons—dot's all."
The beautiful city by the lake wore its most velvety, green robes of June when Lieutenant Hornbeck, who had been home invalided for some weeks, was able at last to accept the reception which the good people of St. Mark's Church wished to hold in his honor.
It seemed as if all Cleveland sought for admission to this festival of welcome to the brave young officer. Yet when he came in, leaning on his wife's arm, and with the flush of honest pride mantling upon the pallor of his face, it turned out that the real hero of the evening was the wiry, brown-faced boy he brought with him.
Lafe's story had been told in many other places. They knew it by heart here in his new home, where henceforth he was to live with his cousin. He blushed many times that evening at the things admiring people said to his face about him, and he still says if folks will insist on discussing it, that the only interesting thing of the whole day was his taking a shine to his cousin before he knew who he was.
HOW DICKON CAME BY HIS NAME.
A Tale of Christmas in the Olden Time.
Though more crests are blazoned nowadays than there are minutes in which the heralds may count them, yet old families still live, with roots deep down in rural England's soil, and nourish in quiet legends which, when they come to notice, are the fairest flowers in the garden of English folk-lore.
Such a tale the Tambows of Shropshire can tell. Once, it is dimly understood, the narrative was written out, and even printed from types in Caxton's own press. If this be true, the book has long been lost. But the story is worth keeping.
Dickon looked at this time to be well on in his teens. He was so tall and stout a lad that grown men spoke to him, now and again, as to one of themselves. Just what his age might be, however, it lay beyond mortal power to discover. His mother was long since dead. His native hamlet had been wiped by fire and sword from the face of the earth.
His father could remember nothing more of Dickon's birth than that it was either just before the Battle of Bloreheath in Stafford, or soon after the fierce fight at Mortimer's Cross in Hereford. The one would make him sixteen years old, the other scarcely more than fourteen. Whether it was sixteen or fourteen no living soul in England cared.
There was as yet no other name for him than Dickon—that is to say, any securely fastened name. He had been called Smithson, and even Smith, by word of mouth among strangers. But the rough men close at hand commonly hailed him with oaths, which pointed to no surname whatever. Indeed, surnames were matters strictly for his betters—for gentlefolk, or at the least for thrifty yeomen with a dozen cows or fourscore sheep on a walk.
There could never have been a thought, therefore, in Dickon's head as to what name was likest to stick to him, since of all unlabelled hinds in Salop surely he was the lowliest.
Thought, in truth, is an over-fine word for aught that went forward in Dickon's brain. He knew only some few things more clearly than did the horses and dogs about him.
He did know, first of all, that his grim master, who lived up in the castle just above, was named Sir Watty Curdle, and that the castle itself was Egswith. That he was Sir Watty's man was by far the most important thing there was for him to know; and that it might be kept always fresh before his eyes and patent to all others, this lord's device of two running hares, back to back, one turned upside down, was sewed upon the breast of Dickon's leather jerkin.
Dickon had more reasons for holding his master to be a foul ruffian and robber than the dumb brutes in stable and kennel could have possessed, though doubtless they, too, were of the same opinion. He knew, furthermore, that the king was a tall and fine young man, because he had seen him after Tewksbury. He knew that the Lady Curdle came from Cheshire, which was reputed to lie northward.
He knew that all men-at-arms who wore three stags' heads on their jackets were his natural enemies; and that it was thought better to be a soldier than the son of a smith. Sometimes he thought that it must be better to be dead than either.
Dickon's belongings were all on his back. He owned a thick shirt of rough woollen, which had been his share of the spoil of a Yorkist archer, slain the year before in a fray on Craven highroad. Formerly the lad had been harassed by dreams that the dead man, all shivering and frosted over, had come back for his shirt, but these dreams were past long since, and he wore the shirt now like a second skin, so wholly did it seem a part of him.
Over this shirt was drawn his leather tunic, which was becoming too tight. Under this were fastened with cowhide thongs the points of his old leathern hose, also strained now almost to bursting. His shoes were rude and worn contrivances of leather, bound on over ankle and instep with cords. His neck and tangled shock of yellow hair were hidden under a caped hood of coarse brown cloth.
In these garments he toiled miserably by day; in them he slept in his cold corner of the smithy floor by night. By night and day the solitary aspiration of his mind was for the time when he might escape his fathers curses and beatings, and bear a spear among the men-at-arms.
This chance came to him suddenly, on a December day, when the air over the Marches was so thick and gray and cold that men desired to fight, if only to keep their blood from chilling within them. Out of this chance proceeded strange things, the legend of which has lived these hundreds of years in Salop.
Sir Watty Curdle did what he dared toward being a law to himself. In the fastness of the Welsh mountains, just back of his domain, there were always whisperings of new Lancastrian plots and bold adventures. These drifted to Egswith Castle, on its steep, ugly crag, and made an atmosphere of treason there which hung over the Marches like a fog.
That Sir Watty had a rushlight's choice between King Edward and Queen Margaret no one ever believed. If it had suited his ends he would as easily have been the king's man. But since the hated Stanleys were cheek by jowl with the king, there could be nothing for Sir Watty but the other side.
Besides, he had grievances. That is to say, other gentlemen in the countryside had houses and fair daughters and plate and fat cattle. These things rankled in Sir Watty's mind.
Sir Watty rose on this December morning with his head clear from a month's carouse, with his muscles itching for sharp work, and with the eager sniff of rapine in his nostrils.
Word that sport was afoot ran presently about through the galleries and yards and clustering outer hovels within the high-perched walls of Egswith. Rough, brawny men forthwith dragged out haubergeons and sallets, and leathern jackets stuffed with wool, and smiled grimly over them and put them on.
Two troopers in sleeveless coats of plate mail, and heavy greaves and boots, came clanking down the jagged hill-path. They routed with loud halloos the threescore people who dwelt in the foul and toppling huts huddled at the foot of the crag, under the shadow of gray Egswith.
"Ho! Ho-o!" they bawled. "Out with you—out! out! Your lord rides to-day!"
A bustling crowd arose on the instant. Strong men swarmed in the open. Some were sent into the fields with horns to summon yokels who were grubbing among the roots. Others haled forth armor and saddle-gear, and bows and spears, and shouted joyous quips from group to group.
Dull-browed women, with backs bent like beasts of burden, brought food and hoods and such tackle at command, in sulky silence. Half-clad children hung about the doorways, gazing wonderingly. From the castle gates some horses were being led out; and about the high walls rang the shrill blare of trumpet-calls.
The two troopers, after setting all in motion outside, clanked their way into the smithy, and the black one, Morgan, he with a brutish face, seamed and gashed with red scars,—where only one eye remained to glare in rude arrogance,—kicked the door open, and cried out as he did so:
"Are you dead here, then? What are your ears for, fools? And no fire!"
Dickon crossed the floor of the smithy, and stood before the intruders.
"The old man will light fires no more," he said, with dogged indifference, pointing a sidelong thumb to the bundle of straw at the tail of the forge, beneath the bellows.
There, flat on his back, lay the smith, with wide-open, staring eyes, and a face of greenish-brazen hue; his huge grizzled beard spread stiffly outward like the bristling collar of some unclean giant vulture.
"He was ever a surly swine," Morgan growled. "Even as we need him most, he fails us thus!"
Dickon offered no opinion upon this. "It fell on him in the night," he said.
Morgan leant over as far as his iron casings permitted, to note what share of breath remained in the smith's body. Then he rose, and looked the lad from top to toe with his sullen single eye.
"Get you into his foot-gear, then, and follow on," he snarled curtly.
Then for the first time the other man-at-arms spoke. He was a huge, reddish warrior, with the shoulders of an ox, and a face which flamed forth from out the casings of his head-piece like a setting winter sun.
"Were it not better to leave him?" this Rawly asked. "If he chance to get his head broken, how will Sir Watty make shift for a smith?"
Morgan sneered this down. "The lout hath not the wit for the tenth part of a smith," he said. "Between this and Bromfield there are a dozen of the craft to be had at the bare mention of a halter."
Thus it was that a soldier's life opened before Dickon.
He made haste to don his father's sleeveless chain coat and sallet. Then, choosing a crossbow and sheaf of quarrels for himself, he gathered such other weapons as the smithy held, and carried them out into the open. Now the troop was forming, and the start close at hand.
The lad had seen many of these rallies for a raid; but this one, wherein he was to have part, had a new glory in his eyes. He rubbed shoulders with the men who were making ready against the ride. With the boldness of an equal he bore a hand to help them fit the armor to their backs. There was none to make him afraid. When a knavish hobler offered to force his cross-bow from him in exchange for a rusty pole-axe, Dickon smote him on the head with a full man's might and heart, and kept his weapon.