The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War's Eve by Joseph A. Altsheler (ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

were clothed in the same robe of green that lay over the valleys, and through the center of the circle flowed the deep Kentucky, serene and blue.

While Harry's thoughts at that moment were on war, he really had no feeling against anybody. It was all general and impersonal. There is something pure and noble about a boy who comes out of a good home, something lofty to which the man later looks back with pride, not because the boy was wise or powerful, but because his heart was good.

The twilight slowly darkened over green fields and blue river. But the noble stone, with its sculptured lines, by the side of which Harry sat, seemed to grow whiter, despite the veil of dusk that was drooping softly over it. The houses in the town below began to sink out of sight and lights appeared in their place.

Night came and found the boy still at his place. He could see only the tint of the blue river now, and the far hills were lost in the darkness. The chill of evening was coming on, and rising, he shook himself a little. Then he followed a path down the steep hill and along the edge of the river. But he paused, standing by the side of a great oak that grew at the Water's margin, and looked up the Kentucky.

Harry could see from the point where he stood no sign of human life. He heard only the murmur of deep waters as they flowed slowly and peacefully by. The spirit of his great ancestor, the famous Henry Ware, who had been the sword of the border, was strong upon him. The Kentucky was to him the most romantic of all rivers, clustered thick with the facts and legends of the great days, when the first of the pioneers came and built homes along its banks. It flowed out of mountains still mysterious, and, for a few moments, Harry's thoughts floated from the strife of the present to a time far back when the slightest noise in the canebrake might mean to the hunter the coming of his quarry.

A faint musical sound, not more than the sigh of a stray breeze, came from a point far up the stream. He listened and the sound pleased him. The lone, weird note was in full accord with the night and his mood, and presently he knew it. It was some mountaineer on a raft singing a plaintive song of his own distant hills. Huge rafts launched on the headwaters of the stream in the mountains in the eastern part of the state came in great numbers down the river, but oftenest at this time of the year. Some stopped at Frankfort, and others went into the Ohio for the cities down that stream.

Harry waited, while the song grew a little in volume, and, penned now between high banks, gave back soft echoes. But the raft came very slowly, only as fast as the current of the river. He thought he would see a light as the men usually cooked and slept in a rude little hut built in the center of the raft. But all was yet in darkness.

The singer, however rude and unlettered a mountaineer he may have been, had a voice and ear, and Harry still listened with the keenest pleasure to the melodious note that came floating down the river. The spell was upon him. His imagination became so vivid that it was not a mountaineer singing. He had gone back into another century. It was one of the great borderers, perhaps Boone himself, who was paddling his canoe upon the stream, the name of which was danger. And Kenton, and Logan and Harrod and the others were abroad in the woods.

He was engrossed so deeply that he did not hear a heavy step behind him, nor did he see a huge bewhiskered figure in the path, holding a clubbed rifle. Yet he turned. It was perhaps the instinct inherited from his great ancestor, who was said to have had a sixth sense. Whatever it may have been, he faced suddenly about, and saw Bill Skelly aiming at him a blow with the clubbed rifle, which would at once crush his skull and send his body into the deep stream.

The same inherited instinct made him leap within the swing of the rifle and clutch at the mountaineer's throat. The heavy butt swished through the air, and the very force of the blow jerked the weapon from Skelly's hands. The next instant he was struggling for his life. Harry was a powerful youth, much stronger than many men, and, at that instant, the spirit and strength of his great ancestor were pouring into his veins. The treacherous attempt upon his life filled him with rage. He was, in very truth, the forest runner of the earlier century, and he strove with all his great might to slay his enemy.

Skelly, six feet two inches tall and two hundred pounds of muscle and sinew, struck the boy fiercely on the side of the head, but the terrible grasp was still at his throat. He was the larger and the stronger, but the sudden leap upon him gave his younger and smaller antagonist an advantage. He had a pistol in his belt, but with that throttling grip upon his throat he forgot it. The hunter had suddenly become the hunted. Filled with rage and venom he had expected an easy triumph, and, instead, he was now fighting for his life.

Skelly struck again and again at the boy, but Harry, with instinctive wisdom, pressed his head close to the man's chin, and Skelly's blows at such short range lacked force behind them. All the while Harry's youthful but powerful arms were pouring strength into the hands that grasped the man's throat. The mountaineer choked and gasped, and, changing his aim from the head, struck Harry again and again in the chest. Then he remembered to draw his pistol, but Harry, raising his knee, struck him violently on the wrist. The pistol dropped to the ground, and Skelly, in the fierce struggle, was unable to regain it.

Neither had uttered a cry. There was not a single shout for help. Skelly would not want to call attention, and Harry recalled afterward that in the tremendous tension of the moment the thought of it never occurred to him. He continued to press savagely upon Skelly's throat, while the mountaineer rained blows upon his chest, blows that would have killed him had Skelly been able to get full purchase for his arms. He heard the heavy gasping breath of the man, and he saw the dark, hideous face close to his own. It was so hairy that it was like the face of some huge anthropoid, with the lips wrinkled back from strong and cruel white teeth.

It seemed to Harry in very truth that he was fighting a great wild beast. His own breath came in short gasps, and at every expansion of the lungs a fierce pain shot through his whole body. A bloody foam rose to his lips. The savage pounding upon his chest was telling. He still retained his grasp upon Skelly's throat, where his fingers were sunk into the flesh, but it was only the grimmest kind of resolution that enabled him to hold on.

Harry saw the fierce light in Skelly's eye turn to joy. The man foresaw his triumph, and he began to curse low, but fast and with savage unction. Harry felt himself weakening, and he made another mighty effort to retain his hold, but the fingers still slipped, and, as Skelly struck him harder than ever in the chest, they flew loose entirely.

He knew that if Skelly had room for the full play of his arm that he would be knocked senseless at the next blow, and to ward it off he seized the man by his huge chest, tripping at the same time with all his might. The two fell, rolled over in their struggling, and then Harry felt himself dropping from a height. The next moment the deep waters of the Kentucky closed over the two, still locked fast in a deadly combat, and the waves circled away in diminishing height from the spot where they had sunk.

CHAPTER IX THE RIVER JOURNEY

"Best pour a little of this down his throat. It'll cut an' burn, but if there's a spark o' life left in him it'll set it to blazin'."

Harry became conscious of the "cutting" and "burning," and, struggling weakly, he sat up.

"That's better," continued the deep, masculine voice. "You've been layin' on your face, lettin' the Kentucky River run out of your mouth, while we was poundin' you on the back to increase the speed o' the current. It's all out o' you now, an' you're goin' to keep your young life."

The man who spoke was standing almost over Harry, holding a flask in one hand and a lantern in the other. He was obviously a mountaineer, tall, with powerful chest and shoulders, and a short red beard. Near him stood a stalwart boy about Harry's own age. They were in the middle of a raft which had been pulled to the south side of the Kentucky and then tied to the shore.

Harry started to speak, but the words stopped at his lips. His weakness was still great.

"Wa'al," said the man, whimsically. "What was it? Sooicide? Or did you fall in the river, bein' awkward? Or was you tryin' to swim the stream, believin' it was fun to do it? What do you think, Ike?"

"It wasn't no sooicide," replied the youth whom he had called Ike. "Boys don't kill theirse'ves. An' it wasn't no awkwardness, 'cause he don't look like the awkward kind. An' I guess he wasn't tryin' to swim the Kentucky, else he would have took off his clothes."

"Which cuts out all three o' my guesses, leavin' me nothin' to go on. Now, I ain't in the habit of pickin' floatin' an' unconscious boys out o' the middle o' the river, an' that leaves me in unpleasant doubt, me bein' of an inquirin' turn o' mind."

"It was murder," said Harry, at last finding strength to speak.

"Murder!" exclaimed the man and boy together.

"Yes, murder, that is, an attempt at it. A man set upon me to kill me, and in the struggle we fell in the river, which, with your help, saved my life. Look here!"

He tore open his coat and shirt, revealing his chest, which looked like pounded beef.

"Somebody has shorely been gettin' in good hard licks on you," said the man sympathetically, "an' I reckon you're tellin' nothin' but the truth, these bein' such times as this country never heard of before. My name's Sam Jarvis, an' I came with this raft from the mountains. This lunkhead here is my nephew, Ike Simmons. We was driftin' along into Frankfort as peaceful as you please, an' a singin' with joy 'cause our work was about over. I hears a splash an' says I to Ike, 'What's that?' Says he to me, 'I dunno.' Says I to Ike ag'in, 'Was it a big fish?' Says he to me ag'in, 'I dunno.' He's gittin' a repytation for bein' real smart 'cause he's always sayin, 'I dunno,' an' he's never wrong. Then I sees somethin' with hair on top of it floatin' on the water. Says I, 'Is that a man's head?' Says he, 'I dunno.' But he reaches away out from the raft, grabs you with one hand by them brown locks o' yours, an' hauls you in. I guess you owe your life all right enough to this lunkhead, Ike, my nephew, the son o' my sister Jane."

Ike grinned sympathetically.

"Ain't it time to offer him some dry clothes, Uncle Sam?" he asked.

"Past time, I reckon," replied Jarvis, "but I forgot it askin' questions, me havin' such an inquirin' turn o' mind."

Harry rose, with the help of a strong and friendly hand that Jarvis lent him. His chest felt dreadfully sore. Every breath pained him, and all the strength seemed to have gone from his body.

"I don't know what became o' the other feller," said Jarvis. "Guess he must have swum out all by hisself."

"He undoubtedly did so," replied Harry. "He wasn't hurt, and I fancy that he's some distance