It had been arranged by the school-master that they should all meet at the railway station to go home, next day at noon, and, as the Turner boys had to help the Squire with the logs at the river, and the school-master had to attend to some business of his own, Chad roamed all morning around the town. So engrossed was he with the people and the sights and sounds of the little village that he came to himself with a start and trotted back to the boarding-house for fear that he might not be able to find the station alone. The old lady was standing in the sunshine at the gate.
Chad panted—"Where's—?"
"They're gone."
"Gone!" echoed Chad, with a sinking heart.
"Yes, they've been gone—" But Chad did not wait to listen; he whirled into the hall-way, caught up his rifle, and, forgetting his injured foot, fled at full speed down the street. He turned the corner, but could not see the station, and he ran on about another corner and still another, and, just when he was about to burst into tears, he saw the low roof that he was looking for, and hot, panting, and tired, he rushed to it, hardly able to speak.
"Has that enJINE gone?" he asked breathlessly. The man who was whirling trunks on their corners into the baggage-room did not answer. Chad's eyes flashed and he caught the man by the coat-tail.
"Has that enJINE gone?" he cried.
The man looked over his shoulder.
"Leggo my coat, you little devil. Yes, that enJINE'S gone," he added, mimicking. Then he saw the boy's unhappy face and he dropped the trunk and turned to him.
"What's the matter?" he asked, kindly.
Chad had turned away with a sob.
"They've lef' me—they've lef' me," he said, and then, controlling himself:
"Is thar another goin'?"
"Not till to-morrow mornin'."
Another sob came, and Chad turned away—he did not want anybody to see him cry. And this was no time for crying, for Chad's prayer back at the grave under the poplar flashed suddenly back to him.
"I got to ack like a man now." And, sobered at once, he walked on up the hill—thinking. He could not know that the school-master was back in the town, looking for him. If he waited until the next morning, the Turners would probably have gone on; whereas, if he started out now on foot, and walked all night, he might catch them before they left Lexington next morning. And if he missed the Squire and the Turner boys, he could certainly find the school-master there. And if not, he could go on to the mountains alone. Or he might stay in the "settlemints"—what had he come for? He might—he would—oh, he'd get along somehow, he said to himself, wagging his head—he always had and he always would. He could always go back to the mountains. If he only had Jack—if he only had Jack! Nothing would make any difference then, and he would never be lonely, if he only had Jack. But, cheered with his determination, he rubbed the tears from his eyes with his coat-sleeve and climbed the long hill. There was the Armory, which, years later, was to harbor Union troops in the great war, and beyond it was the little city of the dead that sits on top of the hill far above the shining river. At the great iron gates he stopped a moment, peering through. He saw a wilderness of white slabs and, not until he made his way across the thick green turf and spelled out the names carved on them, could he make out what they were for. How he wondered when he saw the innumerable green mounds, for he hardly knew there were as many people in the world living as he saw there must be in that place, dead. But he had no time to spare and he turned quickly back to the pike—saddened—for his heart went back, as his faithful heart was always doing, to the lonely graves under the big poplar back in the mountains.
When he reached the top of the slope, he saw a rolling country of low hills stretching out before him, greening with spring; with far stretches of thick grass and many woodlands under a long, low sky, and he wondered if this was the Bluegrass. But he "reckoned" not—not yet. And yet he looked in wonder at the green slopes, and the woods, and the flashing creek, and nowhere in front of him—wonder of all—could he see a mountain. It was as Caleb Hazel had told him, only Chad was not looking for any such mysterious joy as thrilled his sensitive soul. There had been a light sprinkle of snow—such a fall as may come even in early April—but the noon sun had let the wheat-fields and the pastures blossom through it, and had swept it from the gray moist pike until now there were patches of white only in gully and along north hill-sides under little groups of pines and in the woods, where the sunlight could not reach; and Chad trudged sturdily on in spite of his heavy rifle and his lame foot, keenly alive to the new sights and sounds and smells of the new world—on until the shadows lengthened and the air chilled again; on, until the sun began to sink close to the far-away haze of the horizon. Never had the horizon looked so far away. His foot began to hurt, and on the top of a hill he had to stop and sit down for a while in the road, the pain was so keen. The sun was setting now in a glory of gold, rose, pink, and crimson over him, the still clouds caught the divine light which swept swiftly through the heavens until the little pink clouds over the east, too, turned golden pink and the whole heavens were suffused with green and gold. In the west, cloud was piled on cloud like vast cathedrals that must have been built for worship on the way straight to the very throne of God. And Chad sat thrilled, as he had been at the sunrise on the mountains the morning after he ran away. There was no storm, but the same loneliness came to him now and he wondered what he should do. He could not get much farther that night—his foot hurt too badly. He looked up—the clouds had turned to ashes and the air was growing chill—and he got to his feet and started on. At the bottom of the hill and down a little creek he saw a light and he turned toward it. The house was small, and he could hear the crying of a child inside and could see a tall man cutting wood, so he stopped at the bars and shouted
"Hello!"
The man stopped his axe in mid-air and turned. A woman, with a baby in her arms, appeared in the light of the door with children crowding about her.
"Hello!" answered the man.
"I want to git to stay all night." The man hesitated.
"We don't keep people all night."
"Not keep people all night," thought Chad with wonder.
"Oh, I reckon you will," he said. Was there anybody in the world who wouldn't take in a stranger for the night? From the doorway the woman saw that it was a boy who was asking shelter and the trust in his voice appealed vaguely to her.
"Come in!" she called, in a patient, whining tone. "You can stay, I reckon."
But Chad changed his mind suddenly. If they were in doubt about wanting him—he was in no doubt as to what he would do.
"No, I reckon I'd better git on," he said sturdily, and he turned and limped back up the hill to the road—still wondering, and he remembered that, in the mountains, when people wanted to stay all night, they usually stopped before sundown. Travelling after dark was suspicious in the mountains, and perhaps it was in this land, too. So, with this thought, he had half a mind to go back and explain, but he pushed on. Half a mile farther, his foot was so bad that he stopped with a cry of pain in the road and, seeing a barn close by, he climbed the fence and into the loft and burrowed himself under the hay. From under the shed he could see the stars rising. It was very still and very lonely and he was hungry—hungrier and lonelier than he had ever been in his life, and a sob of helplessness rose to his lips—if he only had Jack—but he held it back.
"I got to ack like a man now." And, saying this over and over to himself, he went to sleep.
Rain fell that night—gentle rain and warm, for the south wind rose at midnight. At four o clock a shower made the shingles over Chad rattle sharply, but without wakening the lad, and then the rain ceased; and when Chad climbed stiffly from his loft—the world was drenched and still, and the dawn was warm, for spring had come that morning, and Chad trudged along the road—unchilled. Every now and then he had to stop to rest his foot. Now and then he would see people getting breakfast ready in the farm-houses that he passed, and, though his little belly was drawn with pain, he would not stop and ask for something to eat—for he did not want to risk another rebuff. The sun rose and the light leaped from every wet blade of grass and bursting leaf to meet it—leaped as though flashing back gladness that the spring was come. For a little while Chad forgot his hunger and forgot his foot—like the leaf and grass-blade his stout heart answered with gladness, too, and he trudged on.
Meanwhile, far behind him, an old carriage rolled out of a big yard and started toward him and toward Lexington. In the driver's seat was an old gray-haired, gray-bearded negro with knotty hands and a kindly face; while, on the oval shaped seat behind the lumbering old vehicle, sat a little darky with his bare legs dangling down. In the carriage sat a man who might have been a stout squire straight from merry England, except that there was a little tilt to the brim of his slouch hat that one never sees except on the head of a Southerner, and in his strong, but easy, good-natured mouth was a pipe of corn-cob with a long cane stem. The horses that drew him were a handsome pair of half thoroughbreds, and the old driver, with his eyes half closed, looked as though, even that early in the morning, he were dozing. An hour later, the pike ran through an old wooden-covered bridge, to one side of which a road led down to the water, and the old negro turned the carriage to the creek to let his horses drink. The carriage stood still in the middle of the stream and presently the old driver turned his head: "Mars Cal!" he called in a low voice. The Major raised his head. The old negro was pointing with his whip ahead and the Major saw something sitting on the stone fence, some twenty yards beyond, which stirred him sharply from his mood of contemplation.
"Shades of Dan'l Boone!" he said, softly. It was a miniature pioneer—the little still figure watching him solemnly and silently. Across the boy's lap lay a long rifle—the Major could see that it had a flintlock—and on his tangled hair was a coonskin cap—the scalp above his steady dark eyes and the tail hanging down the lad's neck. And on his feet were—moccasins! The carriage moved out of the stream and the old driver got down to hook the check-reins over the shining bit of metal that curved back over the little saddles to which the boy's eyes had swiftly strayed. Then they came back to the Major.
"Howdye!" said Chad.
"Good-mornin', little man," said the Major pleasantly, and Chad knew straightway that he had found a friend. But there was silence. Chad scanned the horses and the strange vehicle and the old driver and the little pickaninny who, hearing the boy's voice, had stood up on his seat and was grinning over one of the hind wheels, and then his eyes rested on the Major with a simple confidence and unconscious appeal that touched the Major at once.
"Are you goin' my way?" The Major's nature was too mellow and easy-going to pay any attention to final g's. Chad lifted his old gun and pointed up the road.
"I'm a-goin' thataway."
"Well, don't you want to ride?"
"Yes," he said, simply.
"Climb right in, my boy."
So Chad climbed in, and, holding the old rifle upright between his knees, he looked straight forward, in silence, while the Major studied him with a quiet smile.
"Where are you from, little man?"
"I come from the mountains."
"The mountains?" said the Major.
The Major had fished and hunted in the mountains, and somewhere in that unknown region he owned a kingdom of wild mountain-land, but he knew as little about the people as he knew about the Hottentots, and cared hardly more.
"What are you doin' up here?"
"I'm goin' home," said Chad.
"How did you happen to come away?"
"Oh, I been wantin' to see the settleMINTS."
"The settleMINTS," echoed the Major, and then he understood. He recalled having heard the mountaineers call the Bluegrass region the "settlemints" before.
"I come down on a raft with Dolph and Tom and Rube and the Squire and the school-teacher, an' I got lost in Frankfort. They've gone on, I reckon, an' I'm tryin' to ketch 'em."
"What will you do if you don't?"
"Foller'em," said Chad, sturdily.
"Does your father live down in the mountains?"
"No," said Chad, shortly.
The Major looked at the lad gravely.
"Don't little boys down in the mountains ever say sir to their elders?"
"No," said Chad. "No, sir," he added gravely and the Major broke into a pleased laugh—the boy was quick as lightning.
"I ain't got no daddy. An' no mammy—I ain't got—nothin'." It was said quite simply, as though his purpose merely was not to sail under false colors, and the Major's answer was quick and apologetic:
"Oh!" he said, and for a moment there was silence again. Chad watched the woods, the fields, and the cattle, the strange grain growing about him, and the birds and the trees. Not a thing escaped his keen eye, and, now and then, he would ask a question which the Major would answer with some surprise and wonder. His artless ways pleased the old fellow.
"You haven't told me your name."
"You hain't axed me."
"Well, I axe you now," laughed the Major, but Chad saw nothing to laugh at.
"Chad," he said.
"Chad what?"
Now it had always been enough in the mountains, when anybody asked his name, for him to answer simply—Chad. He hesitated now and his brow wrinkled as though he were thinking hard.
"I don't know," said Chad.
"What? Don't know your own name?" The boy looked up into the Major's face with eyes that were so frank and unashamed and at the same time so vaguely troubled that the Major was abashed.
"Of course not," he said kindly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world that a boy should not know his own name. Presently the Major said, reflectively:
"Chadwick."
"Chad," corrected the boy.
"Yes, I know"; and the Major went on thinking that Chadwick happened to be an ancestral name in his own family.
Chad's brow was still wrinkled—he was trying to think what old Nathan Cherry used to call him.
"I reckon I hain't thought o' my name since I left old Nathan," he said. Then he told briefly about the old man, and lifting his lame foot suddenly, he said: "Ouch!" The Major looked around and Chad explained:
"I hurt my foot comin' down the river an' hit got wuss walkin' so much." The Major noticed then that the boy's face was pale, and that there were dark hollows under his eyes, but it never occurred to him that the lad was hungry, for, in the Major's land, nobody ever went hungry for long. But Chad was suffering now and he leaned back in his seat and neither talked nor looked at the passing fields. By and by, he spied a crossroads store.
"I wonder if I can't git somethin' to eat in that store."
The Major laughed: "You ain't gettin' hungry so soon, are you? You must have eaten breakfast pretty early."
"I ain't had no breakfast—an' I didn't hev no supper last night."
"What?" shouted the Major.
Chad stated the fact with brave unconcern, but his lip quivered slightly—he was weak.
"Well, I reckon we'll get something to eat there whether they've got anything or not."
And then Chad explained, telling the story of his walk from Frankfort. The Major was amazed that anybody could have denied the boy food and lodging.
"Who were they, Tom?" he asked
The old driver turned:
"They was some po' white trash down on Cane Creek, I reckon, suh. Must'a' been." There was a slight contempt in the negro's words that made Chad think of hearing the Turners call the Dillons white trash—though they never said "po' white trash."
"Oh!" said the Major. So the carriage stopped, and when a man in a black slouch hat came out, the Major called:
"Jim, here's a boy who ain't had anything to eat for twenty-four hours. Get him a cup of coffee right away, and I reckon you've got some cold ham handy."
"Yes, indeed, Major," said Jim, and he yelled to a negro girl who was standing on the porch of his house behind the store.
Chad ate ravenously and the Major watched him with genuine pleasure. When the boy was through, he reached in his pocket and brought out his old five-dollar bill, and the Major laughed aloud and patted him on the head.
"You can't pay for anything while you are with me, Chad."
The whole earth wore a smile when they started out again. The swelling hills had stretched out into gentler slopes. The sun was warm, the clouds were still, and the air was almost drowsy. The Major's eyes closed and everything lapsed into silence. That was a wonderful ride for Chad. It was all true, just as the school-master had told him; the big, beautiful houses he saw now and then up avenues of blossoming locusts; the endless stone fences, the whitewashed barns, the woodlands and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised. Everything seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands—and never a mountain in sight. What a strange country it was.
"Maybe some of your friends are looking for you in Frankfort," said the Major.
"No, sir, I reckon not," said Chad—for the man at the station had told him that the men who had asked about him were gone.
"All of them?" asked the Major.
Of course, the man at the station could not tell whether all of them had gone, and perhaps the school-master had stayed behind—it was Caleb Hazel if anybody.
"Well, now, I wonder," said Chad—"the school-teacher might'a' stayed."
Again the two lapsed into silence—Chad thinking very hard. He might yet catch the school-master in Lexington, and he grew very cheerful at the thought.
"You ain't told me yo' name," he said, presently. The Major's lips smiled under the brim of his hat.
"You hain't axed me."
"Well, I axe you now." Chad, too, was smiling.
"Cal," said the Major. "Cal what?"
"I don't know."
"Oh, yes, you do, now—you foolin' me"—the boy lifted one finger at the Major.
"Buford, Calvin Buford."
"Buford—Buford—Buford," repeated the boy, each time with his forehead wrinkled as though he were trying to recall something.
"What is it, Chad?"
"Nothin'—nothin'."
And then he looked up with bewildered face at the Major and broke into the quavering voice of an old man.
"Chad Buford, you little devil, come hyeh this minute or I'll beat the life outen you!"
"What—what!" said the Major excitedly. The boy's face was as honest as the sky above him. "Well, that's funny—very funny."
"Well, that's it," said Chad, "that's what ole Nathan used to call me. I reckon I hain't naver thought o' my name agin tell you axed me." The Major looked at the lad keenly and then dropped back in his seat ruminating.
Away back in 1778 a linchpin had slipped in a wagon on the Wilderness Road and his grandfather's only brother, Chadwick Buford, had concluded to stop there for a while and hunt and come on later—thus ran an old letter that the Major had in his strong box at home—and that brother had never turned up again and the supposition was that he had been killed by Indians. Now it would be strange if he had wandered up in the mountains and settled there and if this boy were a descendant of his. It would be very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame, that he was a waif—a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that it was a peculiar coincidence—again saying, half to himself—
"It certainly is very odd!"
Ahead of them, it was Court Day in Lexington. From the town, as a centre, white turnpikes radiated in every direction like the strands of a spider's web. Along them, on the day before, cattle, sheep, and hogs had made their slow way. Since dawn, that morning, the fine dust had been rising under hoof and wheel on every one of them, for Court Day is yet the great day of every month throughout the Bluegrass. The crowd had gone ahead of the Major and Chad. Only now and then would a laggard buggy or carriage turn into the pike from a pasture-road or locust-bordered avenue. Only men were occupants, for the ladies rarely go to town on court days—and probably none would go on that day. Trouble was expected. An abolitionist, one Brutus Dean—not from the North, but a Kentuckian, a slave-holder and a gentleman—would probably start a paper in Lexington to exploit his views in the heart of the Bluegrass; and his quondam friends would shatter his press and tear his office to pieces. So the Major told Chad, and he pointed out some "hands" at work in a field.
"An', mark my words, some day there's goin' to be the damnedest fight the world ever saw over these very niggers. An' the day ain't so far away."
It was noon before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington. Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches aloud by the hour—had heard him intoning them to himself as he walked the woods to and fro from school. Would wonders never cease.
There seemed to be no end to the houses and streets and people in this big town, and Chad wondered why everybody turned to look at him and smiled, and, later in the day, he came near getting into a fight with another boy who seemed to be making fun of him to his companions. He wondered at that, too, until it suddenly struck him that he saw nobody else carrying a rifle and wearing a coonskin cap—perhaps it was his cap and his gun. The Major was amused and pleased, and he took a certain pride in the boy's calm indifference to the attention he was drawing to himself. And he enjoyed the little mystery which he and his queer little companion seemed to create as they drove through the streets.
On one corner was a great hemp factory.
Through the windows Chad could see negroes, dusty as millers, bustling about, singing as they worked. Before the door were two men—one on horseback. The Major drew up a moment.
"How are you, John? Howdye, Dick?" Both men answered heartily, and both looked at Chad—who looked intently at them—the graceful, powerful man on foot and the slender, wiry man with wonderful dark eyes on horseback.
"Pioneering, Major?" asked John Morgan.
"This is a namesake of mine from the mountains. He's come up to see the settlements."
Richard Hunt turned on his horse. "How do you like 'em?"
"Never seed nothin' like 'em in my life," said Chad, gravely. Morgan laughed and Richard Hunt rode on with them down the street.
"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.
"Yes," said the Major. "Have you heard of him before?"
"Yes, sir. A feller on the road tol' me, if I was lookin' fer somethin' to do hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan."
The Major laughed: "That's what everybody does."
At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty meal; and while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the streets.
"Don't get into trouble, my boy," said the Major, "an' come back here an hour or two by sun."
Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest—to Cheapside. Cheapside—at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from pioneer days to the present hour—the platform that knew Clay, Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang.
Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, farmers, aristocrats, negroes, poor whites. The air was a babel of cries from auctioneers—head, shoulders, and waistband above the crowd—and the cries of animals that were changing owners that day—one of which might now and then be a human being. The Major was busy, and Chad wandered where he pleased—keeping a sharp lookout everywhere for the school-master, but though he asked right and left he could find nobody, to his great wonder, who knew even the master's name. In the middle of the afternoon the country people began to leave town and Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys, stable-boys, gentlemen—all eager spectators or bidders. Chad edged his way through the outer rim of the crowd and to the edge of the sidewalk, and, when a spectator stepped down from a dry-goods box from which he had been looking on, Chad stepped up and took his place. Straightway, he began to wish he could buy a horse and ride back to the mountains. What fun that would be, and how he would astonish the folks on Kingdom Come. He had his five dollars still in his pocket, and when the first horse was brought out, the auctioneer raised his hammer and shouted in loud tones:
"How much am I offered for this horse?"
There was no answer, and the silence lasted so long that before he knew it Chad called out in a voice that frightened him:
"Five dollars!" Nobody heard the bid, and nobody paid any attention to him.
"One hundred dollars," said a voice.
"One hundred and twenty-five," said another, and the horse was knocked down for two hundred dollars.
A black stallion with curving neck and red nostrils and two white feet walked proudly in.
"How much am I offered?"
"Five dollars," said Chad, promptly. A man who sat near heard the boy and turned to look at the little fellow, and was hardly able to believe his ears. And so it went on. Each time a horse was put up Chad shouted out:
"Five dollars," and the crowd around him began to smile and laugh and encourage him and wait for his bid. The auctioneer, too, saw him, and entered into the fun himself, addressing himself to Chad at every opening bid.
"Keep it up, little man," said a voice behind him. "You'll get one by and by." Chad looked around. Richard Hunt was smiling to him from his horse on the edge of the crowd.
The last horse was a brown mare—led in by a halter. She was old and a trifle lame, and Chad, still undispirited, called out this time louder than ever:
"Five dollars!"
He shouted out this time loudly enough to be heard by everybody, and a universal laugh rose; then came silence, and, in that silence, an imperious voice shouted back:
"Let him have her!" It was the owner of the horse who spoke—a tall man with a noble face and long iron-gray hair. The crowd caught his mood, and as nobody wanted the old mare very much, and the owner would be the sole loser, nobody bid against him, and Chad's heart thumped when the auctioneer raised his hammer and said:
"Five dollars, five dollars—what am I offered? Five dollars, five dollars, going at five dollars, five dollars—going at five dollars—going—going, last bid, gentlemen!" The hammer came down with a blow that made Chad's heart jump and brought a roar of laughter from the crowd.
"What is the name, please?" said the auctioneer, bending forward with great respect and dignity toward the diminutive purchaser.
"Chad."
The auctioneer put his hand to one ear.
"I beg your pardon—Dan'l Boone did you say?"
"No!" shouted Chad indignantly—he began to feel that fun was going on at his expense. "You heerd me—CHAD."
"Ah, Mr. Chad."
Not a soul knew the boy, but they liked his spirit, and several followed him when he went up and handed his five dollars and took the halter of his new treasure trembling so that he could scarcely stand. The owner of the horse placed his hand on the little fellow's head.
"Wait a minute," he said, and, turning to a negro boy: "Jim, go bring a bridle." The boy brought out a bridle, and the tall man slipped it on the old mare's head, and Chad led her away—the crowd watching him. Just outside he saw the Major, whose eyes opened wide:
"Where'd you get that old horse, Chad?"
"Bought her," said Chad.
"What? What'd you give for her?"
"Five dollars."
The Major looked pained, for he thought the boy was lying, but Richard Hunt called him aside and told the story of the purchase; and then how the Major did laugh—laughed until the tears rolled down his face.
And then and there he got out of his carriage and went into a saddler's shop and bought a brand new saddle with a red blanket, and put it on the old mare and hoisted the boy to his seat. Chad was to have no little honor in his day, but he never knew a prouder moment than when he clutched the reins in his left hand and squeezed his short legs against the fat sides of that old brown mare.
He rode down the street and back again, and then the Major told him he had better put the black boy on the mare, to ride her home ahead of him, and Chad reluctantly got off and saw the little darky on his new saddle and his new horse.
"Take good keer o' that hoss, boy," he said, with a warning shake of his head, and again the Major roared.
First, the Major said, he would go by the old University and leave word with the faculty for the school-master when he should come there to matriculate; and so, at a turnstile that led into a mighty green yard in the middle of which stood a huge gray mass of stone, the carriage stopped, and the Major got out and walked through the campus and up the great flight of stone steps and disappeared. The mighty columns, the stone steps—where had Chad heard of them? And then the truth flashed. This was the college of which the school-master had told him down in the mountains, and, looking, Chad wanted to get closer.
"I wonder if it'll make any difference if I go up thar?" he said to the old driver.
"No," the old man hesitated—"no, suh, co'se not." And Chad climbed out and the old negro followed him with his eyes. He did not wholly approve of his master's picking up an unknown boy on the road. It was all right to let him ride, but to be taking him home—old Tom shook his head.
"Jess wait till Miss Lucy sees that piece o' white trash," he said, shaking his head. Chad was walking slowly with his eyes raised. It must be the college where the school-master had gone to school—for the building was as big as the cliff that he had pointed out down in the mountains, and the porch was as big as the black rock that he pointed out at the same time—the college where Caleb Hazel said Chad, too, must go some day. The Major was coming out when the boy reached the foot of the steps, and with him was a tall, gray man with spectacles and a white tie and very white nails, and the Major said:
"There he is now, Professor." And the Professor looked at Chad curiously, and smiled and smiled again kindly when he saw the boy's grave, unsmiling eyes fastened on him.
Then, out of the town and through the late radiant afternoon they went until the sun sank and the carriage stopped before a gate. While the pickaninny was opening it, another carriage went swiftly behind them, and the Major called out cleanly to the occupants—a quiet, sombre, dignified-looking man and two handsome boys and a little girl. "They're my neighbors, Chad," said the Major.
Not a sound did the wheels make on the thick turf as they drove toward the old-fashioned brick house (it had no pillars), with its windows shining through the firs and cedars that filled the yard. The Major put his hand on the boy's shoulder:
"Well, here we are, little man."
At the yard gate there was a great barking of dogs, and a great shout of welcome from the negroes who came forward to take the horses. To each of them the Major gave a little package, which each darky took with shining teeth and a laugh of delight—all looking with wonder at the curious little stranger with his rifle and coonskin cap, until a scowl from the Major checked the smile that started on each black face. Then the Major led Chad up a flight of steps and into a big hall and on into a big drawing-room, where there was a huge fireplace and a great fire that gave Chad a pang of homesickness at once. Chad was not accustomed to taking off his hat when he entered a house in the mountains, but he saw the Major take off his, and he dropped his own cap quickly. The Major sank into a chair.
"Here we are, little man," he said, kindly.
Chad sat down and looked at the books, and the portraits and prints, and the big mirrors and the carpets on the floor, none of which he had ever seen before, and he wondered at it all and what it all might mean. A few minutes later, a tall lady in black, with a curl down each side of her pale face, came in. Like old Tom, the driver, the Major, too, had been wondering what his sister, Miss Lucy, would think of his bringing so strange a waif home, and now, with sudden humor, he saw himself fortified.
"Sister," he said, solemnly, "here's a little kinsman of yours. He's a great-great-grandson of your great-great-uncle—Chadwick Buford. That's his name. What kin does that make us?"
"Hush, brother," said Miss Lucy, for she saw the boy reddening with embarrassment and she went across and shook hands with him, taking in with a glance his coarse strange clothes and his soiled hands and face and his tangled hair, but pleased at once with his shyness and his dark eyes. She was really never surprised at any caprice of her brother, and she did not show much interest when the Major went on to tell where he had found the lad—for she would have thought it quite possible that he might have taken the boy out of a circus. As for Chad, he was in awe of her at once—which the Major noticed with an inward chuckle, for the boy had shown no awe of him. Chad could hardly eat for shyness at supper and because everything was so strange and beautiful, and he scarcely opened his lips when they sat around the great fire, until Miss Lucy was gone to bed. Then he told the Major all about himself and old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he hoped to come back to the Bluegrass, and go to that big college himself, and he amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the titles of two of Scott's novels, "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," and told how the school-master had read them to him. And the Major, who had a passion for Sir Walter, tested Chad's knowledge, and he could mention hardly a character or a scene in the two books that did not draw an excited response from the boy.
"Wouldn't you like to stay here in the Bluegrass now and go to school?"
Chad's eyes lighted up.
"I reckon I would; but how am I goin' to school, now, I'd like to know? I ain't got no money to buy books, and the school-teacher said you have to pay to go to school, up here."
"Well, we'll see about that," said the Major, and Chad wondered what he meant. Presently the Major got up and went to the sideboard and poured out a drink of whiskey and, raising it to his lips, stopped:
"Will you join me?" he asked, humorously, though it was hard for the Major to omit that formula even with a boy.
"I don't keer if I do," said Chad, gravely. The Major was astounded and amused, and thought that the boy was not in earnest, but he handed him the bottle and Chad poured out a drink that staggered his host, and drank it down without winking. At the fire, the Major pulled out his chewing tobacco. This, too, he offered and Chad accepted, equalling the Major in the accuracy with which he reached the fireplace thereafter with the juice, carrying off his accomplishment, too, with perfect and unconscious gravity. The Major was nigh to splitting with silent laughter for a few minutes, and then he grew grave.
"Does everybody drink and chew down in the mountains?"
"Yes, sir," said Chad. "Everybody makes his own licker where I come from."
"Don't you know it's very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"
"No, sir."
"Did nobody ever tell you it was very bad for little boys to drink and chew?"
"No, sir"—not once had Chad forgotten that.
"Well, it is."
Chad thought for a minute. "Will it keep me from gittin' to be a BIG man?"
"Yes."
Chad quietly threw his quid into the fire.
"Well, I be damned," said the Major under his breath. "Are you goin' to quit?"
"Yes, sir."
Meanwhile, the old driver, whose wife lived on the next farm, was telling the servants over there about the queer little stranger whom his master had picked up on the road that day, and after Chad was gone to bed, the Major got out some old letters from a chest and read them over again. Chadwick Buford was his great-grandfather's twin brother, and not a word had been heard of him since the two had parted that morning on the old Wilderness Road, away back in the earliest pioneer days. So, the Major thought and thought suppose—suppose? And at last he got up and with an uplifted candle, looked a long while at the portrait of his grandfather that hung on the southern wall. Then, with a sudden humor, he carried the light to the room where the boy was in sound sleep, with his head on one sturdy arm, his hair loose on the pillow, and his lips slightly parted and showing his white, even teeth; he looked at the boy a long time and fancied he could see some resemblance to the portrait in the set of the mouth and the nose and the brow, and he went back smiling at his fancies and thinking—for the Major was sensitive to the claim of any drop of the blood in his own veins—no matter how diluted. He was a handsome little chap.
"How strange! How strange!"
And he smiled when he thought of the boy's last question.
"Where's YO' mammy?"
It had stirred the Major.
"I am like you, Chad," he had said. "I've got no mammy—no nothin', except Miss Lucy, and she don't live here. I'm afraid she won't be on this earth long. Nobody lives here but me, Chad."
The Major was in town and Miss Lucy had gone to spend the day with a neighbor; so Chad was left alone.
"Look aroun', Chad, and see how you like things," said the Major. "Go anywhere you please."
And Chad looked around. He went to the barn to see his old mare and the Major's horses, and to the kennels, where the fox-hounds reared against the palings and sniffed at him curiously; he strolled about the quarters, where the little pickaninnies were playing, and out to the fields, where the servants were at work under the overseer, Jerome Conners, a tall, thin man with shrewd eyes, a sour, sullen face, and protruding upper teeth. One of the few smiles that ever came to that face came now when the overseer saw the little mountaineer. By and by Chad got one of the "hands" to let him take hold of the plough and go once around the field, and the boy handled the plough like a veteran, so that the others watched him, and the negro grinned, when he came back, and said
"You sutinly can plough fer a fac'!"
He was lonesome by noon and had a lonely dinner, during which he could scarcely realize that it was really he—Chad—Chad sitting up at the table alone and being respectfully waited on by a kinky-headed little negro girl—called Thanky-ma'am because she was born on Thanksgiving day—and he wondered what the Turners would think if they could see him now—and the school-master. Where was the school-master? He began to be sorry that he hadn't gone to town to try to find him. Perhaps the Major would see him—but how would the Major know the school-master? He was sorry he hadn't gone. After dinner he started out-doors again. Earth and sky were radiant with light. Great white tumbling clouds were piled high all around the horizon—and what a long length of sky it was in every direction down in the mountains, he had to look straight up, sometimes, to see the sky at all. Blackbirds chattered in the cedars as he went to the yard gate. The field outside was full of singing meadow-larks, and crows were cawing in the woods beyond. There had been a light shower, and on the dead top of a tall tree he saw a buzzard stretching his wings out to the sun. Past the edge of the woods, ran a little stream with banks that were green to the very water's edge, and Chad followed it on through the woods, over a worn rail-fence, along a sprouting wheat-field, out into a pasture in which sheep and cattle were grazing, and on, past a little hill, where, on the next low slope, sat a great white house with big white pillars, and Chad climbed on top of the stone fence—and sat, looking. On the portico stood a tall man in a slouch hat and a lady in black. At the foot of the steps a boy—a head taller than Chad perhaps—was rigging up a fishing-pole. A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the trees; and Chad sat looking after her—thrilled, mysteriously thrilled—mysteriously saddened, straightway. Would he ever see her again?
The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole. Several times voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the grass.
"Snowball!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that fish!"
On the moment Chad was alert again—somebody was fishing down there—and he sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a woolly head and a jet-black face peeped over the bank.
The pickaninny's eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange figure in coonskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face almost blanched with terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of fright, rolled back out of sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of his own age was holding another pole, and, hearing the little darky slide down, he said, sharply:
"Get that fish, I tell you!"
"Look dar, Mars' Dan, look dar!"
The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his little body-servant, but with no fear.
"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.
"Fishin'?" said Chad.
"Yes," said Dan, shortly—he had shown enough curiosity and he turned his eyes to his cork. "Get that fish, Snowball," he said again.
"I'll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked it and came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in the other.
"Whar's yo' string?" he asked, handing the pole to the still trembling little darky.
"I'll take it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the mud. The fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to him, dropped on the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the three boys, with the same cry, scrambled for it—Snowball falling down on it and clutching it in both his black little paws.
"Dar now!" he shrieked. "I got him!"
"Give him to me," said Dan.
"Lemme string him," said the black boy.
"Give him to me, I tell you!" And, stringing the fish, Dan took the other pole and turned his eyes to his corks, while the pickaninny squatted behind him and Chad climbed up and sat on the bank letting his legs dangle over. When Dan caught a fish he would fling it with a whoop high over the bank. After the third fish, the lad was mollified and got over his ill-temper. He turned to Chad.
"Want to fish?"
Chad sprang down the bank quickly.
"Yes," he said, and he took the other pole out of the bank, put on a fresh wriggling worm, and moved a little farther down the creek where there was an eddy.
"Ketchin' any?" said a voice above the bank, and Chad looked up to see still another lad, taller by a head than either he or Dan—evidently the boy whom he had seen rigging a pole up at the big house on the hill.
"Oh, 'bout 'leven," said Dan, carelessly.
"Howdye!" said Chad.
"Howdye!" said the other boy, and he, too, stared curiously, but Chad had got used to people staring at him.
"I'm goin' over the big rock," added the new arrival, and he went down the creek and climbed around a steep little cliff, and out on a huge rock that hung over the creek, where he dropped his hook. He had no cork, and Chad knew that he was trying to catch catfish. Presently he jerked, and a yellow mudcat rose to the surface, fighting desperately for his life, and Dan and Snowball yelled crazily. Then Dan pulled out a perch.
"I got another one," he shouted. And Chad fished silently. They were making "a mighty big fuss," he thought, "over mighty little fish." If he just had a minnow an' had 'em down in the mountains, "I Gonnies, he'd show'em what fishin' was!" But he began to have good luck as it was. Perch after perch he pulled out quietly, and he kept Snowball busy stringing them until he had five on the string. The boy on the rock was watching him and so was the boy near him—furtively—while Snowball's admiration was won completely, and he grinned and gurgled his delight, until Dan lost his temper again and spoke to him sharply. Dan did not like to be beaten at anything. Pretty soon there was a light thunder of hoofs on the turf above the bank. A black pony shot around the bank and was pulled in at the edge of the ford, and Chad was looking into the dancing black eyes of a little girl with a black velvet cap on her dark curls and a white plume waving from it.
"Howdye!" said Chad, and his heart leaped curiously, but the little girl did not answer. She, too, stared at him as all the others had done and started to ride into the creek, but Dan stopped her sharply:
"Now, Margaret, don't you ride into that water. You'll skeer the fish."
"No, you won't," said Chad, promptly. "Fish don't keer nothin' about a hoss." But the little girl stood still, and her brother's face flushed. He resented the stranger's interference and his assumption of a better knowledge of fish.
"Mind your own business," trembled on his tongue, and the fact that he held the words back only served to increase his ill-humor and make a worse outbreak possible. But, if Chad did not understand, Snowball did, and his black face grew suddenly grave as he sprang more alertly than ever at any word from his little master. Meanwhile, all unconscious, Chad fished on, catching perch after perch, but he could not keep his eyes on his cork while the little girl was so near, and more than once he was warned by a suppressed cry from the pickaninny when to pull. Once, when he was putting on a worm, he saw the little girl watching the process with great disgust, and he remembered that Melissa would never bait her own hook. All girls were alike, he "reckoned" to himself, and when he caught a fish that was unusually big, he walked over to her.
"I'll give this un to you," he said, but she shrank from it.
"Go 'way!" she said, and she turned her pony. Dan was red in the face by this time. How did this piece of poor white trash dare to offer a fish to his sister. And this time the words came out like the crack of a whip:
"S'pose you mind your own business!"
Chad started as though he had been struck and looked around quickly. He said nothing, but he stuck the butt of his pole in the mud at once and climbed up on the bank again and sat there, with his legs hanging over; and his own face was not pleasant to see. The little girl was riding at a walk up the road. Chad kept perfect silence, for he realized that he had not been minding his own business; still he did not like to be told so and in such a way. Both corks were shaking at the same time now.
"You got a bite," said Dan, but Chad did not move.
"You got a bite, I tell you," he said, in almost the tone he had used to Snowball, but Chad, when the small aristocrat looked sharply around, dropped his elbows to his knees and his chin into his hand—taking no notice. Once he spat dexterously into the creek. Dan's own cork was going under:
"Snowball!" he cried—"jerk!" A fish flew over Chad's head. Snowball had run for the other pole at command and jerked, too, but the fish was gone and with it the bait.
"You lost that fish!" said the boy, hotly, but Chad sat silent—still. If he would only say something! Dan began to think that the stranger was a coward. So presently, to show what a great little man he was, he began to tease Snowball, who was up on the bank unhooking the fish, of which Chad had taken no notice.
"What's your name?"
"Snowball!" henchman, obediently.
"Louder!"
"S-n-o-w-b-a-l-l!"
"Louder!" The little black fellow opened his mouth wide.
"S-N-O-W-B-A-L-L!" he shrieked.
"LOUDER!"
At last Chad spoke quietly.
"He can't holler no louder."
"What do you know about it? Louder!", and Dan started menacingly after the little darky but Chad stepped between.
"Don't hit him!"
Now Dan had never struck Snowball in his life, and he would as soon have struck his own brother—but he must not be told that he couldn't. His face flamed and little Hotspur that he was, he drew his fist back and hit Chad full in the chest. Chad leaped back to avoid the blow, tumbling Snowball down the bank; the two clinched, and, while they tussled, Chad heard the other brother clambering over the rocks, the beat of hoofs coming toward him on the turf, and the little girl's cry:
"Don't you DARE touch my brother!"
Both went down side by side with their head just hanging over the bank, where both could see Snowball's black wool coming to the surface in the deep hole, and both heard his terrified shriek as he went under again. Chad was first to his feet.
"Git a rail!" he shouted and plunged in, but Dan sprang in after him. In three strokes, for the current was rather strong, Chad had the kinky wool in his hand, and, in a few strokes more, the two boys had Snowball gasping on the bank. Harry, the taller brother, ran forward to help them carry him up the bank, and they laid him, choking and bawling, on the grass. Whip in one hand and with the skirt of her long black riding-habit in the other, the little girl stood above, looking on—white and frightened. The hullabaloo had reached the house and General Dean was walking swiftly down the hill, with Snowball's mammy, topped by a red bandanna handkerchief, rushing after him and the kitchen servants following.
"What does this mean?" he said, sternly, and Chad was in a strange awe at once—he was so tall, and he stood so straight, and his eye was so piercing. Few people could lie into that eye. The little girl spoke first—usually she does speak first, as well as last.
"Dan and—and—that boy were fighting and they pushed Snowball into the creek."
"Dan was teasin' Snowball," said Harry the just.
"And that boy meddled," said Dan.
"Who struck first?" asked the General, looking from one boy to the other. Dan dropped his eyes sullenly and Chad did not answer.
"I wasn't goin' to hit Snowball," said Dan.
"I thought you wus," said Chad.
"Who struck first?" repeated the General, looking at Dan now.
"That boy meddled and I hit him."
Chad turned and answered the General's eyes steadily.
"I reckon I had no business meddlin'!"
"He tried to give sister a fish."
That was unwise in Dan—Margaret's chin lifted.
"Oh," she said, "that was it, too, was it? Well—"
"I didn't see no harm givin' the little gal a fish," said Chad. "Little gal," indeed! Chad lost the ground he might have gained. Margaret's eyes looked all at once like her father's.
"I'm a little GIRL, thank you."
Chad turned to her father now, looking him in the face straight and steadily.
"I reckon I had no business meddlin', but I didn't think hit was fa'r fer him to hit the nigger; the nigger was littler, an' I didn't think hit 'as right."
"I didn't mean to hit him—I was only playin'!"
"But I THOUGHT you was goin' to hit him," said Chad. He looked at the General again. "But I had no business meddlin'." And he picked up his old coonskin cap from the grass to start away.
"Hold on, little man," said the General.
"Dan, haven't I told you not to tease Snowball?" Dan dropped his eyes again.
"Yes, sir."
"You struck first, and this boy says he oughtn't to have meddled, but I think he did just right. Have you anything to say to him?"
Dan worked the toe of his left boot into the turf for a moment "No, sir."
"Well, go up to your room and think about it awhile and see if you don't owe somebody an apology. Hurry up now an' change your clothes.
"You'd better come up to the house and get some dry clothes for yourself, my boy," he added to Chad. "You'll catch cold."
"Much obleeged," said Chad. "But I don't ketch cold."
He put on his old coonskin cap, and then the General recognized him.
"Why, aren't you the little boy who bought a horse from me in town the other day?" And then Chad recognized him as the tall man who had cried "Let him have her."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I know all about you," said the General, kindly. "You are staying with Major Buford. He's a great friend and neighbor of mine. Now you must come up and get some clothes, Harry!"—But Chad, though he hesitated, for he knew now that the gentleman had practically given him the mare, interrupted, sturdily,
"No, sir, I can't go—not while he's a-feelin' hard at me."
"Very well," said the General, gravely. Chad started off on a trot and stopped suddenly, "I wish you'd please tell that little GURL"—Chad pronounced the word with some difficulty—"that I didn't mean nothin' callin' her a little gal. Ever'body calls gurls gals whar I come from."
"All right," laughed the General. Chad trotted all the way home and there Miss Lucy made him take off his wet clothes at once, though the boy had to go to bed while they were drying, for he had no other clothes, and while he lay in bed the Major came up and listened to Chad's story of the afternoon, which Chad told him word for word just as it had all happened.
"You did just right, Chad," said the Major, and he went down the stairs, chuckling:
"Wouldn't go in and get dry clothes because Dan wouldn't apologize. Dear me! I reckon they'll have it out when they see each other again. I'd like to be on hand, and I'd bet my bottom dollar on Chad." But they did not have it out. Half an hour after supper somebody shouted "Hello!" at the gate, and the Major went out and came back smiling.
"Somebody wants to see you, Chad," he said. And Chad went out and found Dan there on the black pony with Snowball behind him.
"I've come over to say that I had no business hittin' you down at the creek, and—" Chad interrupted him:
"That's all right," he said, and Dan stopped and thrust out his hand. The two boys shook hands gravely.
"An' my papa says you are a man an' he wants you to come over and see us and I want you—and Harry and Margaret. We all want you."
"All right," said Chad. Dan turned his black pony and galloped off.
"An' come soon!" he shouted back.
Out in the quarters Mammy Ailsie, old Tom's wife, was having her own say that night.
"Ole Marse Cal Buford pickin' a piece of white trash out de gutter an' not sayin' whar he come from an' nuttin' 'bout him. An' old Mars Henry takin' him jus' like he was quality. My Tom say dae boy don' know who is his mammy ner his daddy. I ain' gwine to let my little mistis play wid no sech trash, I tell you—'deed I ain't!" And this talk would reach the drawing-room by and by, where the General was telling the family, at just about the same hour, the story of the horse sale and Chad's purchase of the old brood mare.
"I knew where he was from right away," said Harry. "I've seen mountain-people wearing caps like his up at Uncle Brutus's, when they come down to go to Richmond."
The General frowned.
"Well, you won't see any more people like him up there again."
"Why, papa?"
"Because you aren't going to Uncle Brutus's any more."
"Why, papa?"
The mother put her hand on her husband's knee.
"Never mind, son," she said.