The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRed BeltsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Red BeltsAuthor: Hugh PendexterIllustrator: Ralph P. ColemanRelease date: February 9, 2015 [eBook #48219]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Denis Pronovost, Shaun Pinder, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED BELTS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Red BeltsAuthor: Hugh PendexterIllustrator: Ralph P. ColemanRelease date: February 9, 2015 [eBook #48219]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by Denis Pronovost, Shaun Pinder, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Title: Red Belts
Author: Hugh PendexterIllustrator: Ralph P. Coleman
Author: Hugh Pendexter
Illustrator: Ralph P. Coleman
Release date: February 9, 2015 [eBook #48219]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by Denis Pronovost, Shaun Pinder, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED BELTS ***
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Red Belts, by Hugh Pendexter, Illustrated by Ralph Pallen Coleman
RED BELTS
Color illustration“On the ground lay Elsie Tonpit, hurled there by a bandit,a huge brute of a man, bending over her.”
“On the ground lay Elsie Tonpit, hurled there by a bandit,a huge brute of a man, bending over her.”
“On the ground lay Elsie Tonpit, hurled there by a bandit,a huge brute of a man, bending over her.”
RED BELTS BY HUGH PENDEXTER FRONTISPIECE BY RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1920
Title page
Copyright, 1920, byDoubleday, Page & CompanyAll rights reserved, including that oftranslation into foreign languages,including the ScandinavianCopyright, 1919, by The Ridgway Company
Copyright, 1920, byDoubleday, Page & CompanyAll rights reserved, including that oftranslation into foreign languages,including the ScandinavianCopyright, 1919, by The Ridgway Company
Copyright, 1920, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
Copyright, 1919, by The Ridgway Company
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
In 1784 North Carolina’s share of the national debt was a ninth, or about five millions of dollars—a prodigious sum for a commonwealth just emerging from a colonial chrysalis to raise. Yet North Carolina was more fortunate than some of her sister débutantes into Statehood, in that she possessed some twenty-nine million acres of virgin country beyond the Alleghanies. This noble realm, from which the State of Tennessee was to be fashioned, had been won by confiscation and the rifles of the over-mountain settlers and had cost North Carolina neither blood nor money.
The republic was too young to have developed coalescence. A man might be a New Yorker, a New Englander, a Virginian and so on, but as yet seldom an American. The majority of the Northern representatives to the national Congress believed the Union was full grown, geographically; that it covered too much territory already. To all such narrow visions the Alleghanies appealed as being the natural western boundary. These conservatives insisted the future of the country was to be found on the seaboard.
Charles III of Spain heartily approved of this policy of restriction and set in motion his mighty machinery to prevent further expansion of the United States. He knew the stimuli for restoring his kingdom to a world plane could be found only in his American possessions.
As a result of those sturdy adventurers, crossing the mountains to plunge into the unknown, carried with them scant encouragement from their home States or the central Government. In truth, the national Congress was quite powerlessto protect its citizens. And this, perhaps, because the new States had not yet fully evolved above the plan of Colonial kinship. It was to be many years before the rights of States gave way to the rights of the nation. The States were often at odds with one another and would stand shoulder to shoulder only in face of a general and overwhelming peril.
Spain, powerful, rapacious and cunning, stalked its prey beyond the mountains. She dreamed of a new world empire, with the capital at New Orleans, and her ambitions formed a sombre back-curtain before which Creek and Cherokee warriors—some twenty thousand fighting men—manœuvred to stop the white settlers straggling over the Alleghanies. These logical enemies of the newcomers were augmented by white renegades, a general miscellany of outlaws, who took toll in blood and treasure with a ferocity that had nothing to learn from the red men.
So the over-mountain men had at their backs the indifference of the seaboard.
Confronting them were ambuscades and torture. But there was one factor which all the onslaughts of insidious intrigue and bloody violence could not eliminate from the equation—the spirit of the people. The soul of the freeman could not be bought with foreign gold or consumed at the stake. Men died back on the seaboard, and their deaths had only a biological significance, but men were dying over the mountains whose deaths will exert an influence for human betterment so long as these United States of America shall exist.
The fires of suffering, kindled on the western slopes of the Alleghanies to sweep after the sun, contained the alchemy of the spiritual and were to burn out the dross. From their clean ashes a national spirit was to spring up, the harbinger of a mighty people following a flag of many stars, another incontestable proof that materiality can never satisfy the soul of man.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
RED BELTS
RED BELTS
RED BELTS