The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War's Eve, Joseph A. Altsheler [best book series to read txt] 📗

softness and freshness to this safe nook among the peaks and ridges. Harry did not wonder that Jarvis and Ike loved it.

"Aunt Suse give me a big turn when she took you fur the governor," said Jarvis to Harry, "but it ain't so wonderful after all. Often she sees the things of them early times a heap brighter an' clearer than she sees the things of today. As I told you, she knowed Boone an' Kenton an' Logan an' Henry Ware an' all them gran' hunters an' fighters. She was in Lexin'ton nigh on to eighty years ago, when she saw Dan'l Boone an' the rest that lived through our awful defeat at the Blue Licks come back. It was not long after that her fam'ly came back into the mountains. Her dad 'lowed that people would soon be too thick 'roun' him down in that fine country, but they'd never crowd nobody up here an' they ain't done it neither."

"Did you ever hear her tell of Henry Ware's great friend, Paul Cotter?" asked Harry.

"Shorely; lots of times. She knowed Paul Cotter well. He wuzn't as tall an' strong as Henry Ware, but he was great in his way, too. It was him that started the big university at Lexin'ton, an' that become the greatest scholar this state ever knowed. I've heard that he learned to speak eight languages. Do you reckon it was true, Harry? Do you reckon that any man that ever lived could talk eight different ways?"

"It was certainly true. The great Dr. Cotter—and 'Dr.' in his case didn't mean a physician, it meant an M. A. and a Ph. D. and all sorts of learned things—could not only speak eight languages, but he knew also so many other things that I've heard he could forget more in a day and not miss it than the ordinary man would learn in a lifetime."

Jarvis whistled.

"He wuz shorely a big scholar," he said, "but it agrees exactly with what old Aunt Suse says. Paul Cotter was always huntin' fur books, an' books wuz mighty sca'ce in the Kentucky woods then."

"Henry Ware and Paul Cotter always lived near each other," resumed Harry, "and in two cases their grandchildren intermarried. A boy of my own age named Dick Mason, who is the great-grandson of Paul Cotter, is also my first cousin."

"Now that's interestin' an' me bein' of an inquirin' min', I'd like to ask you where this Dick Mason is."

Harry waved his hand toward the north.

"Up there somewhere," he said.

"You mean that he's gone with the North, took one side while you've took the other?"

"Yes, that's it. We couldn't see alike, but we think as much as ever of each other. I met him in Frankfort, where he had come from the Northern camp in Garrard County, but I think he left for the East before I did. The Northern forces hold the railways leading out of Kentucky and he's probably in Washington now."

Jarvis lighted his pipe and puffed a while in silence. At length he drew the stem from his mouth, blew a ring of smoke upward and said in a tone of conviction:

"It does beat the Dutch how things come about!"

Harry looked questioningly at him.

"I mean your arrivin' here, bein' who you are, an' your meetin' old Aunt Suse, bein' who she is, an' that cousin of yours, Dick Mason, didn't you say was his name, bein' who he is, goin' off to the North."

They sat on the porch later than the custom of the mountaineers, and the beauty of the place deepened. The moon poured a vast flood of misty, silver light over the little valley, hemmed in by its high mountains, and Harry was so affected by the silence and peace that he had no feeling of anger toward anybody, not even toward Bill Skelly, who had tried to kill him.

CHAPTER XI IN VIRGINIA

Harry left the valley with the keenest feeling of regret, realizing at the parting how strong a friendship he had formed with this family. But he felt that he could not delay any longer. Affairs must be moving now in the great world in the east, and he wished to be at the heart of them. He had a strong, sure-footed horse, and he had supplies and an extra suit of clothes in his saddle bags. The rifle across his back would attract no attention, as all the men in the mountains carried rifles.

Jarvis had instructed Harry carefully about the road or path, and as the boy was already an experienced traveler with an excellent sense of direction, there was no danger of his getting lost in the wilderness.

Jarvis, Ike, and Mrs. Simmons gave him farewells which were full of feeling. Aunt Suse had come down the brick walk, tap-tapping with her cane, as Harry stood at the gate ready to mount his horse.

"Good-bye, Aunt Susan," he said. "I came a stranger, but this house has been made a home to me."

She peered up at him, and Harry saw that once more her old eyes were flaming with the light he had seen there when he arrived.

"Good-bye, governor," she said, holding out a wrinkled and trembling hand. "I am proud that our house has sheltered you, but it is not for the last time. You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door. I see you coming with these two eyes of mine."

"Hush, Aunt Suse," exclaimed Mrs. Simmons. "It is not Governor Ware, it is his great-grandson, and you mustn't send him away tellin' of terrible things that will happen to him."

"I'm not afraid," said Harry, "and I hope that I'll see Aunt Susan and all of you again."

He lifted her hand and kissed it in the old-fashioned manner.

She smiled and he heard her murmur:

"It is the great governor's way. He kissed my hand like that once before, when I went to Frankfort on the lumber raft."

"Good-bye, Harry," repeated Jarvis. "If you're bound to fight I reckon that's jest what you're bound to do, an' it ain't no good for me to say anythin'. Be shore you follow the trail jest as I laid it out to you an' in two days you'll strike the Wilderness Road. After that it's easy."

When Harry rode away something rose in his throat and choked him for a moment. He knew that he would never again find more kindly people than these simple mountaineers. Then in vivid phrases he heard once more the old woman's prophecy: "You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door." For a moment it shadowed the sunlight. Then he laughed at himself. No one could see into the future.

He was now across the valley and his path led along the base of the mountain. He looked back and saw the four standing on the porch, Jarvis, Ike, Mrs. Simmons, and old Aunt Suse. He waved his hand to them and all four waved back. A singular thrill ran through him. Could it be possible that he would come again, and in the manner that the old woman had predicted?

The path, in another minute, curved around the mountain, and the valley was shut from view. Nor, as he rode on, did he catch another glimpse of it. One might roam the mountains for months and never see the home of Samuel Jarvis.

The two days passed without event. The weather remained fair, and no one interfered with him. He slept the first night at a log cabin that Jarvis had named, having reached it in due time, and the second day he reached, also in due time, the old Wilderness Road.

Thence the boy advanced by easy stages into Virginia until he reached a railroad, where he sold his horse and took a train for Richmond, having come in a few days out of the cool, peaceful atmosphere of the mountains into another, which was surcharged everywhere with the fiery breath of war.

Harry realized as he approached the capital the deep intensity of feeling in everybody. The Virginians were less volatile than the South Carolinians, and they had long refused to go out, but now that they were out they were pouring into the Southern army, and they were animated by an extraordinary zeal. He began to hear new or unfamiliar names, Early, and Ewell, and Jackson, and Lee, and Johnston, and Hill, and Stuart, and Ashby, names that he would never forget, but names that as yet meant little to him.

He had letters from his father and he expected to find his friends of Charleston in Richmond or at the front. General Beauregard, whom he knew, would be in command of the army threatening Washington, and he would not go into a camp of strangers.

It was now early in June, and the country was at its best. On both sides of the railway spread the fair Virginia fields, and the earth, save where the ploughed lands stretched, was in its deepest tints of green. Harry, thrusting his head from the window, looked eagerly ahead at the city rising on its hills. Then a shade smaller than Charleston, it, too, was a famous place in the South, and it was full of great associations. Harry, like all the educated boys of the South, honored and admired its public men. They were mighty names to him. He was about to tread streets that had been trod by the famous Jefferson, by Madison, Monroe, Randolph of Roanoke, and many others. The shades of the great Virginians rose in a host before him.

He arrived about noon, and, as he carried no baggage except his saddle bags and weapons, he was quickly within the city, his papers being in perfect order. He ate dinner, as the noonday meal was then called, and decided to seek General Beauregard at once, having learned from an officer on the train that he was in the city. It was said that he was at the residence of President Davis, called the White House, after that other and more famous one at Washington, in which the lank, awkward man, Abraham Lincoln, now lived.

But Harry paused frequently on the way, as there was nothing to hurry him, and there was much to be seen. If Charleston had been crowded, Richmond was more so. Like all capitals on the verge of a great war, but as yet untouched by its destructive breath, it throbbed with life. The streets swarmed with people, young officers and soldiers in their uniforms, civilians of all kinds, and many pretty girls in white or light dresses, often with flowers in their hair or on their breasts. Light-heartedness and gaiety seemed predominant.

Harry stopped a while to look at the ancient and noble state house, now the home also of the Confederate Congress, standing in Capitol Square, and the spire of the Bell Tower, on Shockoe Hill. He saw important looking men coming in or going out of the square, but he did not linger long, intending to see the sights another time.

He was informed at the "White House" that General Beauregard was there, and sending in his card he was admitted promptly. Beauregard was sitting with President Davis and Secretary Benjamin in a room furnished plainly, and the general in his quick, nervous manner rose and greeted him warmly.

"You did good service with us at Charleston," he said, "and we welcome you here. We have already heard from your father, who was a comrade in war of both President Davis and myself."

"He wrote us that you were coming across the mountains from Frankfort," said Mr. Davis.

Harry thought that the President already looked worn and anxious.

"Yes, sir," replied the boy, "I came chiefly by the river and the Wilderness Road."

"Your father writes that they worked hard at Frankfort, but that they failed to take Kentucky out," continued the head of the Confederacy.

"The Southern leaders did their best, but they could not move the state."

"And you wish, then, to serve at the front?" continued the President.

"If I may," returned Harry. "In South Carolina I was with Colonel Leonidas Talbot. I have had a letter from him here, and, if it is your pleasure and that of General Beauregard, I shall be glad to join his command."

General Beauregard laughed a little.

"You do well," he said. "I have known Colonel Talbot a long time, and, although he