The Duke of Stockbridge: A Romance of Shays' Rebellion by Edward Bellamy (diy ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Edward Bellamy
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“Young woman, I owe you more than if you had saved me from death.” Lu smilingly nodded, evidently fully appreciating the point.
“Three o'clock, you said?” muttered Perez presently, half to himself, as the others still were silent.
“Tree 'clock, Jake say. Jake an all udder man meet to Cap'n Jones' tree 'clock to git um guns.”
“It's nine now, six hours. Time enough,” muttered Perez.
“Yes, there's time for you to get away,” said Prudence eagerly. “You can get to York State by three o'clock, if you hurry. Oh, don't wait a minute. If they should catch you!”
He smiled grimly.
“Yes, there's time for me to get away, but there's no time for them, my sirs.”
“Abe,” he added, abruptly changing his tone, “you've heard what they're going to do? What are you going to do?”
“I tink me go woke up fellers. Heap time, run clean 'way 'fore tree 'clock,” said the Indian. “Mlishy come tree 'clock, no find us. 'Fraid have to leave Abner. Abner heap drunk to-night. No can walk. Too big for carry. Heap sorry, but no can help it.”
“But you don't want to leave home, Abe. You don't want to leave Lu here for Jake to get.”
Abe shook his head gloomily.
“No use stay,” he said. “If I get whip, Lu no marry me.”
“Abe,” said Perez, stepping up to the disconsolate Indian and clapping him sharply on the shoulder, “you were in the army. You're not afraid of fighting. We'll stay and beat these fine gentlemen at their own game. By three o'clock we'll have every one of them under guard, and, by the Lord God of Israel, by noon to-morrow, every man of them shall get ten lashes on his bare back with all Stockbridge looking on. We'll see who's whipped.”
“Ha! you no run. You stay fight em. What heap more better as run. You, great brave, ha! ha!” cried Lu dancing in front of Perez and clapping her hands in noiseless ecstasy, while her splendid eyes rested on him with an admiration of which Abe might have been excusably jealous.
Her Mohegan blood was on fire at the prospect of a scrimmage, and her lover's response, if more laconic, was quite as satisfactory.
“Me no like to run. Me stay fight. Me do what you say.”
“Wait here till I get my sword and pistols. We've plenty of time, but none to lose,” and Perez went into the house, followed by Prudence. Mrs. Hamlin, with something hastily thrown over her nightdress, had come out of her bedroom.
“I heard voices. What is it, Perez?” she said.
“Abe has come to get me to go off on a coon hunt. He thinks he's treed several,” replied Perez, strapping on his accoutrements. He had no notion of leaving his mother a prey to sleepless anxiety during his absence.
“You're not telling me the truth, Perez. Look at Prudence.” The girl's face, pale as ashes and her eyes full of fear and excitement, had betrayed him, and so he had to tell her in a few words what he was going to do. The door stood open. On the threshold, as he was going out, he turned his head, and said in confident, ringing tones:
“You needn't be at all afraid. We shall certainly succeed.”
No wonder the breath of the night had inspired him with such confidence. It was the night of all nights in the year which a man would choose if he were to stake his life and all on the issue of some daring stake, assured that then, if ever, he could depend to the uttermost on every atom of nerve and muscle in his body. The bare mountain peaks overhanging the village were tipped with silver by the moon, and under its light the dense forests that clothed their sides, wore the sheen of thick and glossy fur. The air was tingling with that electric stimulus which characterizes autumn evenings in New England about the time of the first frosts. A faint, sweet smell of aromatic smoke from burning pine woods somewhere off in the mountains, could barely be detected. The intense vitality of the atmosphere communicated itself to the nerves, stringing them like steel chords, and setting them vibrating with lust for action, reckless, daring emprise.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH LEX TALIONIS
The plan which Perez had formed for forestalling his adversaries and visiting upon their own heads the fate they had prepared for him, was very simple. He proposed to go down into the village with Abe and Lu and with their assistance, to call up, without waking anybody else, some forty or fifty of the most determined fellows of the rebel party. With the aid of these, he intended as noiselessly as possible, to enter the houses of Woodbridge, Edwards, Deacon Nash, Captain Stoddard and others, and arrest them in their beds, simultaneously seizing the town stock of muskets and powder, and conveying it to a guarded place, so that when the conspirators' party assembled at three o'clock, they might find themselves at once without arms or officers, their leaders hostages in the hands of the enemy, and their design completely set at naught. Thanks to the excesses of the past week or two, there were many more than forty men in the village who, knowing that the restoration of law and order meant a sharp reckoning for them, would stop at nothing to prevent it, and Perez could thus command precisely the sort of followers he wanted for his present undertaking.
For generations after, in certain Stockbridge households, the story in grandmother's repertoire most eagerly called by the young folks on winter evenings, was about how the “Regulators” came for grandpa; how at dead of night the heavy tramp of men and the sound of rough voices in the rooms below, awoke the children sleeping overhead and froze their young blood with fear of Indians; how at last mustering courage, they crept downstairs, and peeking into the living-room saw it full of fierce men, with green boughs in their hats, the flaring candles gleaming upon their muskets and bayonets, and the drawn sword of their captain; while in the midst, half-dressed and in his nightcap, grandpa was being hustled about.
Leaving these details to the imagination, suffice it to say that Perez' plan, clearly-conceived and executed with prompt, relentless vigor, was perfectly successful, and so noiselessly carried out, that excepting those families whose heads were arrested by the soldiers, the village as a whole, had no suspicion that anything in particular was going on, until waking up the next morning, the people found squads of armed men on guard at the street corners, and sentinels pacing up and down before the Fennell house, that building left
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