"Are you hiding from Aunt Martha, Ellen?" I asked teasingly.
"I slipped away while she was helping your mother set table," she answered, "and stole up here to read. I don't often get a chance; your Aunt Martha keeps me at work from sun up till dark, and then sends me to bed. She says it is a wicked waste of time to read anything but one's Bible – and the holy father in Baltimore told me that the way Protestants presumed to read the sacred book, and determine for themselves its sacred meaning is blasphemous."
"What book are you reading?" I asked.
"One of the Shakespeare books my father gave me. I have six more like it," and she held up to my view a small leather bound volume, a good deal the worse for wear. "I slipped it into my satchel when Aunt Martha sent me up stairs to get my things, the morning you came for us, but please don't tell her, Cousin Donald – she said she'd take the books away from me if she saw me reading them again, for they were not fit reading for me, and I had no time to waste on them."
"How did she know they were not fit reading for you?" I asked, curious to learn if Aunt Martha had stopped work long enough to examine a book.
"She made Uncle Thomas read some out of one of the volumes to her," answered Ellen, smiling in response to my thought. "And she said, at breakfast table next morning, that a great deal of it had neither sense nor meaning, and the part she could understand was about fighting and killing, or else foolish love stuff – all of it unfit for any young person to hear. She wanted to burn my books, as she did my crucifix, but I ran and hid them, and cried so, all day, that Uncle Thomas said 'Let the child's books alone, Martha; her father gave them to her; if they harm her it's no fault of yours.'"
"Is the reading as good as your telling of the stories, Ellen?"
"Oh, so much nicer. There are beautiful things I could never say; listen," and she read me a passage from "Romeo and Juliet." "Isn't that like music? The very words have a tune to them without thinking of the meaning even."
"Could you lend me the book to read while you are here, Ellen? or to-morrow, if you will, we'll come up here and you shall read aloud to me."
"But your mother and father might find out, and tell Aunt Martha."
"We need not conceal our reading from them; they will make no objection if I tell them the book is harmless – and I suppose it is, even for girls. I know it is a famous book and counted among the English classics. I've always meant to read it some day."
"And I'll lend you the other volumes, one by one, if you'll take me bear hunting the next time you find a track," added Ellen.
"That's a bargain, if my mother will let you go. How old are you, Ellen?"
"I shall be sixteen my next birthday."
"And when is that?"
"Next November."
"Then you are just fifteen."
"Fifteen and two months," she corrected.
"That is young for you to have read Shakespeare, and to be capable of appreciating him. Your father taught you so carefully, and read to you so much because he had no sons, I suppose."
"Perhaps; he used often to wish I were a boy. He used to say I was so strong, and tall, and had more sense than most women; and when he was taken sick, after mother's death, he said every few hours – 'Oh if you were only a boy, Ellen, I would not mind so much leaving you alone in the world; you could soon be independent then, and make your own way!'"
"'Tis a pity, Ellen; you'd make a good man, I'm sure. You are as strong now as a boy of your age is likely to be, and half a head taller than John who is but six months younger."
"I dared John to a wrestle, one day in the barn, and threw him," laughed Ellen, "but I promised not to tell, and you must not twit him about it."
"All right, I won't; but were I John I'd keep on challenging you till I had proved my superior strength; no girl should throw me! Does Aunt Martha know?"
"Of course not, Donald. Already she calls me a hoyden, and an untamed Irish girl – which I am, the last I mean, and proud of it. Did she hear of my wrestling with John, the bread and water she threatens me with would be my only diet for a week."
"You'll not have bread and water diet while you are here, at any rate. But there's my mother calling now; my mouth waters for her Christmas dinner, for there's no better served in the neighborhood to-day, I warrant you. Come on; let's go down," and I put the little book in my pocket, seized Ellen by the hand and pulled her after me, pell-mell down the stairway where we ran straight into Aunt Martha.
"Ellen O'Niel!" she stopped to say, fixing a stern eye upon her – "you are the greatest hoyden I have ever seen. I thank a merciful Providence you are not my daughter."
"Amen, and so do I," said Ellen, in my ear, and as Aunt Martha passed into the next room, she turned toward me, and pulled her face down into the most comical imitation of Aunt Martha's solemn countenance. I laughed heartily, though in truth I did not approve of Ellen's flippancy. Reverence for religion and respect for our elders were among the virtues earliest and most faithfully instilled into the breasts of Scotch Irish children.
CHAPTER V
"Two of the pigs are gone, and I see fresh bear's tracks behind the barn, Ellen. If you want to go after the beast with Thomas and me, put on your heaviest boots, get a rifle from the rack, and come on," and I spoke with a degree of animation which turned upon me the gaze of the entire family, assembled at the breakfast table. I was not then so sated a huntsman that the prospect of big game could fail to excite me.
"Why, Donald, you are not thinking of taking Ellen bear hunting with you?"
"And why not, mother? She wishes to go, she handles a rifle well enough, and there's no danger with three guns against one poor bear."
"Oh, Aunt Rachael, please let me go; I have never seen a bear, and it must be beautiful in the forest to-day."
"Might as well let her go, mother," put in my father; "the boys will take care of her, and it will be an experience she will like to tell when she is an old woman. Besides, it is well enough for her to learn courage and coolness in facing danger – the women in this valley may need such qualities in the future, as they have in the past."
"I can't see why you care to go," said little Jean, shuddering involuntarily, her brown eyes fixed in amazement upon Ellen's eager countenance.
"May I go, Aunt Rachael?" urged Ellen.
"Well, child, I suppose so, since your heart seems set upon it. Do be careful, Donald, and get back before sundown."
We followed the print of the bear's feet across the meadow behind the barn, and then around the curve of a low range of hills to the edge of the forest, walking Indian file, Ellen between us, and stepping, as I bade her, in my tracks. The air was so crisp and buoyant that we were half intoxicated by long, full breaths of it, and went skimming over the frozen surface as if, like fabled Mercury, we had wings to our heels. The meadows gleamed and scintillated, and the edge of the hill's undulating outline shone in opalescent lines, as if the prying rays of the sun, forcing their way through the thin snow clouds at the eastern horizon, were disclosing a ledge of hidden jewels. The world all about us was downy soft, radiantly pure, and familiar fields and hills took on a strange newness, in which perspective was confused and outlines blurred; white fields melted into white hills, hills merged into white sky, and one might, it seemed, walk out of this world into the next without noting the point of transition.
The forest was stranger still, and even more beautiful. There was but little snow on the ground, and the dry leaves under it rustled beneath one's feet with homely, cheerful sound, but overhead stretched a marvelous canopy of graceful feather laden branches, each giant of the forest being powdered as carefully as any court dame, and, like her, gaining a sort of distinction for its beauty by this emphasis to its height and grace.
"Am I walking too fast for you, Ellen?" I asked soon after we had started.
"No; but you step too far," she called back merrily. So I shortened my stride a little, and again insisted on carrying her rifle, getting this time her consent.
"The forest is like a place enchanted," said Ellen with rapt face, as we waited at the edge of the woods for Thomas to catch up. "How warm and snug one could sleep under that low boughed pine, yonder; I'd like to live in the forest were there no panthers, wolves, or bears."
"But the beasts have possession, and sometimes I almost wonder if we have a right to drive them with gun and knife out of their inherited haunts."
"As we do the Indians."
"I have more sympathy for wild beasts than for the red savages; the beasts are not treacherous, nor cruel for sport."
"Have you lost the bear's track, Don?" interrupted Thomas; "if not, what are you stopping for?"
"We are admiring the forest – but I have kept my eye on the track, all right. There it goes off to the left; we'll find him, I suspect, fast asleep in some hollow log."
My surmise was correct, for the track led us to a large fallen tree a mile within the forest. The bear, having gorged himself on the pigs, was curled within for a good nap.
"We'll have to smoke him out," said Thomas, beginning to look about for dried leaves and twigs. We piled them into the smaller end of the log, and then lit them with our tinder-boxes, after which we stood about the larger opening and waited watchfully.
"You shall have the first shot, Ellen," I said. "Stand a little to one side, and aim either at his throat, or behind one of his ears."
The bear could not stand long the stifling smoke of the pungent leaves, and with a muffled roar, interrupted by a wheezing cough, he backed awkwardly out of the tree, then turned to look about him for an avenue of escape. But his captors, with ready rifles, stood in close range around him, and behind him burned the log, its murky smoke and lapping blaze limning weirdly the beast's shaggy bulk, against the white forest.
"Shoot, Ellen!" I called, for she stood as if spellbound, her eyes fixed upon the crouching, growling animal. She pulled her trigger then, but with nerveless fingers, and her ball whizzed just above the bear's head, cutting off one-half of his right ear. With a roar of pain the furious animal was upon her, the weight of his huge body throwing her down, and half burying her in the snow. For an instant my brain rocked with horror; I dared not shoot, for I could not distinguish Ellen's form from the bear's in the cloud of flying snow which surrounded them, and every instant I feared to hear a cry of agony, and the crunching of Ellen's skull between the creature's iron jaws.
"I must risk it," I swiftly concluded; and with quick intake of my breath, I raised my rifle to my shoulder, stepped back a pace, and took the aim of my life. Providence guided the ball, which severed the beast's spinal column just at the base of his brain. In another instant I was dragging his shuddering bulk from Ellen's body, lest he crush her in the death struggle.
Ellen was as pallid as the snow she lay upon, and as motionless. Her long lashes made a light shadow on the waxen cheeks, and the dark ringlets dropping over the brow were like charcoal by contrast with its marble. When I lifted her head upon my arm, I saw a ragged wound upon her neck, just behind her right ear, and from it ran trickling a crimson rill, down the soft throat to the still bosom. Her clothes were torn from her right shoulder, and there the flesh showed marks of the animal's teeth in the midst of an ugly bruise.
Thomas had dropped white and limp upon a log, and, great boy as he was, began to cry.
"She's dead, Don, she's dead! Oh, why did we let her come – what shall we do?"
"Hush," I said angrily; "she's not dead, only stunned, I hope," and I gathered handfuls of snow, which I rubbed gently upon her forehead and cheek, and then forced between her lips a few drops of gin from my pocket flask. Seeing that she swallowed the gin mechanically, I poured a good spoonful upon her tongue, and chafed her hands vigorously till she opened her eyes and recognized the faces bending over her.
"Where's the bear, Donald?" she asked, as quietly as if she had just wakened from a vivid dream.
"Dead," I answered cheerfully; "you shall have the skin for a rug."
"But I didn't kill him," in disappointed tones. "I got frightened and aimed badly – I'd never do for a man, after all."
"You'd make a better man than Thomas; he began to cry as soon as he saw you were hurt, and you haven't yet complained of the scratches the bear gave you."
"They sting some," she said with a grimace, putting her hand to her wound, and sliding it down to her shoulder. "Why, Donald, my clothes are torn," and a faint flush tinged her cheeks, while she tried to sit up and to pull her shredded garment together.
"The bear bit you there; it is well mother made you put on this buckskin jacket over your pelisse. Does the place hurt you much?" and I knelt beside her to examine her shoulder more carefully.
"It aches, while the hurt on my neck smarts," and she flushed again, and shrank from the touch of my fingers on her bare flesh.
And I, too, was suddenly embarrassed, while a new thrill went through me. "The shoulder bone is not crushed," I said, after a careful examination which gave Ellen some pain, "nor is the wound very deep; doubtless, though, it will hurt a good deal, besides making your shoulder stiff and helpless for a while. We must bandage the wound somehow, till we can get home, and we must find a way to exclude the cold air from it."
Thomas, who had sat by, flushed and silent since I had chidden him for blubbering, picked up the torn jacket I had stripped from Ellen's shoulders, and disappeared behind the tree. Presently he came back with his own flannel shirt and a bunch of linen strips across his arm, himself reclad in the torn jacket, which had been pinned together, after some sort, with small thorns.
"I beg your pardon, Thomas," I said, grasping his hand as I took the bandages from it.
"'Twas the sight of her so white and still," replied Thomas, looking yet mortified and hurt.
"Thank you, dear Thomas," said Ellen, smiling upon him; "your tears were only symptoms of a tender heart. I'm glad you were sorry for me; Donald did not care enough to cry."
Now that was very unkind of Ellen, for I had been sick with fright and apprehension for her, and would have rather been torn in pieces by the beast, myself, than to have carried home in my arms that still, white form. But I made no response to Ellen's accusation; I only set my lips, and plastered and bandaged her wounds as best I could.
Our homeward journey was very unlike the cheerful tramp of the morning, for Ellen tottered as she walked, and I had need to support her with my arm, while Thomas carried the guns and powder-horns. The snow no longer gleamed and sparkled, for the afternoon light was hazy and dull, and the sky a cold, smeary gray. Forest, field and hill were but the component parts of a commonplace winter landscape, and bear hunting something else than a glorious adventure through an enchanted forest.
And I was not the same, nor Ellen. She was become all at once a woman, shy, reserved, conscious of my touch, leaning on my arm no more than necessity required. And I, though half vexed at the change in her, and grieved that I had lost so congenial a comrade – for I knew intuitively that our intercourse would never again be so unrestrained – nevertheless found her more interesting, more alluring because of this very change which put a distance between us, and which had in it a touch of mystery: – as the forest had been that morning the fairer, for that unnameable magic with which nature veils herself in her stiller haunts.
CHAPTER VI
The conversation around our Yule fire, to which I had listened with such eager absorption, had caused my budding convictions to bloom in an hour into fully expanded principles. I had caught the fever of patriotism running like an epidemic through the land. Were not we of Scotch Irish race and Presbyterian faith pledged already to the cause since the first blood shed for American liberty was the blood of the Scotch Irish Presbyterians, spilled at the battle of Alamance, when the stern North Carolina "Regulators" had risen, like Cromwell's "Ironsides," against the tyranny of their royal governor? The "Boston Tea Party," therefore, found quickest sympathy among the Scotch Irish of the Southern and Middle States, and the earliest and grimmest of the resolutions sent up to the several assemblies, urging that Massachusetts be sustained, and kingly tyranny determinedly resisted, came from the towns and counties settled by these people. "Freedom or death" was the consuming sentiment in the hearts of many Scotch Irish Americans for months before the typical orator of that race thrilled a continent by speaking those immortal words, "Give me liberty, or give me death."
The first call issued by Congress for troops named seven rifle companies to be recruited in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Again I put aside my books, only this time I gave them to a fellow student who sorely needed them, and went home to tell my father that I meant to enlist. I recall as vividly as 'twere yesterday that calm spring afternoon when I took the short cut across flower spangled meadows, and bosky, sweet scented woods to the humble home which had given me a youth so rich in love and happiness, but which I was so soon to leave for privations, dangers, and temptations such as had not yet entered into my imagination.
It was the year of my majority, and I was already mature in physical development. Even in our neighborhood of "brawny Scotchmen" I was called tall, measuring six feet three inches in my moccasins, and though somewhat spare, was broad of shoulder, long of limb, muscular, agile, and deep winded; moreover, I could ride and shoot with the best man in the valley. More proud was I, at this time, of my strength, and the keen sight of my gray eyes, than of my brown, curling hair, and the general comeliness of my appearance, in which my mother took such pride. A few months later I was to have my hour of vanity, and to eat the fruit of it.
Few men, I imagine, can separate their lives sharply into boyhood and manhood, but mine I can. That last Christmas holiday of my schooldays marked the line of division, and I took the first step across it the day I saved Ellen from the bear's fangs, and the second the hour I formed the resolution to shoulder my rifle for American liberty. My father, it is true, had chosen to treat me as a man, since the Indian raid, but from the hour I made up my mind to enlist I put aside childish things, and bore myself with a consciousness of manhood's power.
A stranger sat on our porch who, hearing me announce impetuously to my father, as he came to the top of the porch steps to meet me, that "I meant to enlist in one of the rifle companies," sprang up from his chair, seized my hand, shook it heartily, and said with a genial smile, and cordial tone that made my spirit go out to him at a leap,
"You're a lad after my own heart, sir! Are there many more like you in this valley? How old is your son, Justice McElroy?"
"Not long past twenty, sir. Donald, this is Captain Morgan, the renowned Indian fighter of whom you have so often heard. He is in the neighborhood to enlist men for his rifle company, so you have not far to go to fulfill your purpose."
I looked now, you may be sure, with fresh interest at the powerful but graceful figure before me. He was nearly as tall as I, but broader and heavier; his tanned, handsome face was marred by a scar on the right cheek, and I noted even in this first hasty scrutiny an indication of stubborn will in the set of his lips, and a dare devil gleam in his fine eyes that would make one hesitate to pick a quarrel with him.
"I have found my captain," I thought, my pulse throbbing joyously, just as he spoke again, with that ring of cheerful courage in his voice which I was to learn to know so well, and so often to be inspired by.
"That we shall win admits no doubt if I can enlist a company of muscular young giants like you. Can you shoot, lad?"
"Aye, that he can," laughed my father, well pleased, I could see, by Captain Morgan's manner toward me. "Cut off a squirrel's head at a distance of three hundred yards. And there are other marksmen in our valley that can fully equal him, though few as tall as my son Donald," and he laid a caressing hand upon my shoulder.
"You shall be one of my sergeants, lad," continued Captain Morgan, seizing my hand again, "and to-morrow you must ride with me to enlist as many like you as this neighborhood affords."
"Unfortunately, Captain Morgan," said my father, "some of those who would like nothing better than the opportunity to strike a blow for our rights, dare not leave their families and homes here unprotected, subject as we are to the raids of the savages from across the mountain. Enough able-bodied men must be left in the valley to turn back Indian forays, though, since our victory over them at Point Pleasant, our danger is not near so great. Still a score or more recruits may be had in this neighborhood, I doubt not."
"May I ask, Captain Morgan, whither we are to march after our quota has been recruited?" I questioned.
"Straight to Boston, where we will have a chance to drill."
"And to fight also, I hope."
"Amen, lad, say I to that! and may there be other of your brave spirit. I like not this dallying, this parleying with the stubborn king, who but deludes us with promises while he gains time to equip and to land his troops upon our shores. And I am beginning to think that this talk of our Congress that we take up arms as loyal subjects of England, to force from the crown redress of our grievances, goes not far enough. Only a democracy where all are free and equal, and where the stakes are worth the risks and privations to be endured, is suited to the genius of this vast and virgin continent. Under no other form of government may she be rightly developed."
"Nor are you alone, sir, in that opinion," replied my father. "None other is held in this valley, as the memorial sent up to the assembly by the county committee of Augusta in February last can testify. Were the Scotch Irish settlers of this country consulted, Captain Morgan, our declaration of independence would be speedily proclaimed; Patrick Henry's burning words but voice the sentiment of his race."
"The timid and the half-hearted may not yet be safely set in opposition, perhaps," answered Captain Morgan, "and Congress is beset with many difficulties. But 'tis for the independence of the American States I have drawn my sword" – and as he spoke he sprang suddenly to his feet, straightened his imposing figure and keyed his voice to a clarion pitch – "nor will I sheathe it again, save death or bodily infirmities intervene, till the glorious cause of America's liberty has been won – till we are a free, self-governing people!"
"I take that oath with you, sir," said I, springing also to my feet.
Then my father, looking up at us from his arm chair, unwiped tears upon his cheeks, said, in deep, reverent tone: "God grant us victory, and make this goodly land the home of freedom – a refuge for the oppressed of all nations!"
We found no trouble in enlisting men enough in our valley to complete the company Captain Morgan was to command, and in three weeks I was ready to march the Augusta boys to Frederick County, where we were to join our captain and the rest of the men. The twenty-two boys from our end of the valley bivouacked all night in our yard, that we might get an early start the next morning; and that evening the neighbors came from far and near to give us farewell, and a blessing. Uncle Thomas and his family came with the rest, Aunt Martha helping to cook the hot supper which my mother insisted on serving the lads under the trees, that their home-filled haversacks might be saved for the march.
Thomas wandered about among the men, lying in groups upon the grass in the shade of the oaks and elms, with a look of distress upon his face that surprised me. At last he called me to one side, and said with trembling lips,
"Don, I'd give the next ten years of my life to go with you."
"You are too young, Thomas. Why, you are not nineteen yet."
"There are four boys in the squad no older than I, and I am strong, and a fair shot."
"Then enlist; it's not too late yet, and the more the merrier."
"But my mother made me give her a solemn promise that I would not. She wishes me to be a minister, and once I thought I was called, but now I believe I was mistaken. I couldn't be so wild to go to the war if I had received a call from heaven to the ministry; but mother says it will kill her if I turn soldier, after she has solemnly consecrated me to the Lord. Oh, Donald, what must I do?"
"I cannot advise you to disobey your mother, Thomas," I answered, "but I am sorry for you."
"Ellen says my life is my own, to live as I please, and that not even my mother has a right to dictate to me whether I shall be preacher or soldier," sighed Thomas.
Now I half agreed with Ellen, but the doctrine seemed an irreverent one to a youth of Scotch Irish raising, so I only repeated, "I think you had best obey your mother, Tom," which afforded him small consolation. He answered me with a suppressed groan, and presently went back to the soldiers.
Hot and tired from the day's labors, I decided, after supper, to cool myself by a last drink of my mother's delicious buttermilk. The footpath to the spring wound its careless way down a grassy slope starred with dandelions, and dusted with milky ways of daisies and pale bluets. Apple, pear, and peach trees grew in the angles of the worm fence which separated the garden from the meadow, and they were so full of bloom that they looked like masses of pink and white clouds drifted down to earth. There was a crab apple tree among them, and its elusive fragrance came and went upon the zephyrs which swayed the dandelions and rustled the blossoms upon the trees. The world about my feet was as fair and full of mystic charm as the moon-glorified, star-spangled heaven. The talk, the work, the plans which had filled the last weeks of my life, seemed out of tune with God's purposes, as revealed in nature – out of keeping with His beneficent plans for all His handiwork.
Pondering this strange anomaly, of the tendency of God's creatures to make war continually upon each other, in the midst of a world so fair, so beneficent, and so peaceful – the solemn mystery of death always treading close upon the heels of life – of the desolation always threatening beauty, I passed the springhouse before I knew it, and found myself at the foot of the hill, where the spring breaks forth to fall into a natural basin overhung by a broad, jutting rock. As I raised my eyes to this rock, a vision greeted me which startled me into an instant's consciousness of superstitious terror. Did I see a ghost at last – after all my jeering unbelief? Was that slim shape, wrapped in a white robe standing so motionless on the white rock, the spirit of some Indian maiden, seeking again the haunts where in life she had met her lover?
Of course not; it was only Ellen, for now I saw a hand lifted, to push back the wind blowsed curls from her forehead. Softly I climbed the hill behind her, and stood at her side, but so rapt was she in her own thoughts, she did not hear me till I spoke.
"What are you looking at, Ellen?" I asked.
Had I not thrown my arm quickly about her, she would have sprung from the rock in her startled surprise, yet she did not scream, but regained her poise in an instant, disengaged herself from my arm, and answered me calmly —
"At the moon, Cousin Donald."
"'Tis only a round, bright ball, Ellen; why gaze at it so long and fixedly?"
"'Tis more than a silver ball when one looks at it so. It grows bigger and deeper, and within there are mountains and caverns, and seas and plains; mayhap there are people there who suffer and think as we do. Would you not like to have great wings, Cousin Donald, and fly and fly through the soft blue air, till you reached the moon?"
"Such fancies have never come into my mind, Ellen. You must have clear eyes, and a vivid imagination," and I smiled down upon her, not a little amused by her fanciful conceits.
"If I did not I should die;" then, turning hotly upon me, "How would you like to walk back and forth, back and forth along a bare floor, with bare garret walls about you, whirring a great, ugly wheel, and twisting coarse, ill-smelling wool all day long, day after day? One dare not think, for then one gets careless and breaks or knots the thread, and yet to keep one's mind upon so dreary, and so monotonous a task is maddening. Do you wonder I run away, and talk with the flower-fairies, or the stars, whenever I get the chance?"
"No, Ellen, I don't. I have often thought that women's tasks must be very wearisome, the endless spinning, weaving, and knitting. I wonder they have patience for such work."
"I wish I might go to the war with you, Cousin Donald."
"You could never stand the hardships."
"But I think I could. I'd love to sleep out of doors, under the winking stars, and the friendly moon; I'd love to walk through trackless forests, across wide, unknown plains, and to come now and then upon some town or settlement where every one would feast and praise the patriots."
"But what of the cold, hunger and fatigue? of wounds and capture and the sights and sounds after a battle? It tries even the souls of brave, strong men to bear such things."
"The soul of a woman might endure as much, and I think I should mind even those things less than eternal spinning, Cousin Donald."
I laughed now. "You are not yet a woman, Ellen, and you are not doomed, I trust, to eternal spinning. When I come back from the war we'll go hunting every day, even though we will have to run off from Aunt Martha."