Читать книгу Marcy, the Refugee - Castlemon Harry - Страница 3

The streets of Nashville were almost deserted, for the cold wind, aided by the driving rain that was falling steadily, had forced all the idlers to seek comfort within doors. The post-office was full of them, and when the captain walked in with Allison at his heels they greeted him boisterously, and asked more questions in a minute than he could answer in ten. First and foremost they wanted to know why Beardsley had come home so unexpectedly, but that was a matter he did not care to say much about. All they could get from him was that he had some important business to attend to.

"But of course you are going back again," said one. "I would if I had such a chance to make money as you have got. But perhaps you are rich enough already."

"Well, no; I don't reckon I'll ran the blockade any more," replied the captain. "My schooner is safe and sound now and I want to keep her that way. The Yankees are getting tolerable thick outside, and I don't care to have them run me down some dark night and slap me into one of their prisons."

There were at least a dozen persons in the post-office, besides Tom Allison, who knew that Beardsley had other and better reasons for quitting the profitable business in which he had been engaged, and three of them were Shelby, Dillon, and the postmaster. These men knew by the captain's manner, as well as by the way he looked at them now and then, that he had something of importance on his mind, and they left the store one after another, expecting Beardsley to follow and join them as soon as he could do so without arousing suspicion. A fourth man was Aleck Webster, who leaned carelessly against one of the counters and listened to what the captain had to say, although he did not seem to pay much attention to it. If Aleck had been so disposed he could have told Beardsley who wrote the letter that broke up his blockade running and brought him home so suddenly, and so could several other Union men who were in the office on this particular morning. They went there every day to hear their doings discussed; and it gave them no little satisfaction to learn that they had aroused a feeling of uneasiness and insecurity among the citizens which grew more intense as the days went by and nothing was heard from Hanson. Although Tom Allison knew nothing about the letter that had been left on Beardsley's porch until the latter told him, there were many in the settlement who knew about it and were wondering who could have put it there. The captain's negroes were the first to find it out, and Mrs. Brown, the neighborhood gossip who read the letter for Beardsley's daughter, was the second; and among them all they had managed to spread the story considerably.

Tom Allison was like Captain Beardsley in one respect – he could not keep a secret any longer than it took him to find some congenial spirit who was willing to share it with him. He was eager to tell all he knew, and sometimes he told a good deal more; consequently, the first thing he did after Beardsley received his mail and left the office to find the three men who had gone out a while before, was to give his particular friend and crony Mark Goodwin, a swaggering, boastful young rebel like himself, a wink and a nod that brought him across to Tom's side of the store.

"What is it, old fellow?" whispered Mark. "Your face is full of news."

"And so is my head," replied Tom. "I am loaded clear to the muzzle, and anxious to shoot myself off at your head. I am going to ride down to exchange a few yarns with Mrs. Brown; will you go along?"

"What's the use?" exclaimed Mark, looking through the moist windows into the street. "You won't get anything but lies out of her. And just see how it rains!"

"It doesn't rain to hurt anything, and we can't talk here," said Tom. "I don't care whether Mrs. Brown tells me the truth or not, so long as she will aid me in spreading a few items of news that came to my ears this morning. Better go, for I promise that I will surprise you. You know I rode down with Beardsley."

"And I rather wondered at it. I can remember when you used to speak of him in a way that was anything but complimentary. Did he tell you what brought him home?" said Mark, in a whisper. "Come along then. I am ready to be surprised."

The two boys mounted their horses and rode away through the driving rain, and as they rode, Tom Allison electrified his friend by making a clean breast of everything Beardsley had told him, and which he had promised to keep to himself; and observing that Mark was interested and excited by the narrative, Tom added to it a few details of his own invention. He declared that Hanson had told Beardsley, in confidence, that Mrs. Gray owed a big pile of money to Northern men, and instead of turning it over to the government, as the law provided, she was keeping it for her own use.

"And how does it come that Hanson could learn so much of Mrs. Gray's private affairs?" demanded Mark. "He didn't live in the house, but in the quarter with the niggers."

"Probably some of the house servants posted him," answered Tom. "You know that prying darkies sometimes find out a heap of things."

"That's so," assented Mark. "Tom, you have told me great news – Mrs. Gray with a gold mine hidden somewhere in her house, and Marcy taking his brother Jack out to the Yankee fleet to give him a chance to enlist under the old flag! What are we coming to? What are you going to do about it? You must have some plan in your head, or you wouldn't be going to see Mrs. Brown. You had better be careful what you say in the presence of that old witch, or she may get you into trouble."

"That is the very thing I wanted to talk to you about," replied Tom. "What do you think we ought to do? I don't know whether I have the straight of the story or not, but I am sure Mrs. Brown has, for Beardsley probably told her all about it as soon as he got home last night. That man can't keep a thing to himself to save his life. I thought it might be a good idea to see what Mrs. Brown thinks about it, and to ask her if there is any truth in the report that a band of men has been got together to rob Mrs. Gray's house."

"I will tell you one thing confidentially," said Mark. "If that part of the story isn't true, a few wags of Mrs. Brown's tongue will make it true. There are dozens of men right here in this country, and you and I are acquainted with some of them, who would jump down on that house this very night if they were sure they could make anything by it."

"I know that, but I don't care; do you? I always did despise those Grays, and now that they have shown themselves to be traitors, I say let them suffer for it. You heard Marcy tell me to put a uniform on before I presumed to speak to him again, didn't you?"

"Yes; and I heard his brother Jack call you a stay-at-home blow-hard. I looked for you to tackle the pair of them the moment they insulted you; but you surprised me and all the rest of your friends by keeping perfectly still," observed Mark, who knew well enough that Tom lacked the courage to "tackle" the brothers, either of whom could have tossed him half-way across the post-office without very much trouble.

"I was biding my time," replied Allison, making his riding-whip whistle viciously through the air just above his horse's ears. "It has come now, and if Marcy Gray doesn't take that insulting word back as publicly as he gave it to me – "

"Oh, you needn't look for him to do that. Marcy isn't that sort of a fellow."

"He'll wish he was that sort before I am done with him," said Tom, with spiteful emphasis. "That's one reason why I am going to see Mrs. Brown. I want her to spread it around that Marcy took Jack out to the blockading fleet."

"She is just the one to do it," said Mark, with a laugh. "And the way to make her go about it as though she meant business is to tell her your story under a pledge of secrecy."

"And there is another matter that I want to speak to you about," continued Tom. "What scheme have Shelby and Dillon and the postmaster and your father and mine got in hand that they take so much pains to keep from us boys?"

"I wish I knew," answered Mark, whose face showed that his companion's words had made him angry. "They talk about something or other as often as they get together, and if I take a step in their direction they either send me about my business, or stop talking. And I tell you I don't like to be treated that way."

"That is just the way they treat me, and I don't like it either," said Tom. "More than that, I won't stand it."

"I don't see how you are going to help yourself."

"Perhaps you don't, but I think I do. Beardsley belongs to the ring, of course, and if he doesn't keep me posted in all their plans, I'll go to work to upset them."

"Why, Tom, are you crazy?" exclaimed Mark, who had never been more amazed.

"No; but I am mad clear through. I am not willing to go into the army unless I can have an office of some kind, but I am eager to fight traitors here at home; and if those men won't give me a chance to help them, I shall fight on my own hook."

"But how can you? And how will you go to work to upset their plans when you don't know what they are? You take a friend's advice and behave yourself. Why, Tom, I wouldn't willingly incur the enmity of the Union men about here for all the money there is in the State. They are too desperate a lot for me to fool with. Nobody knows for certain who they are, and that makes them all the more dangerous."

About this time the boys dismounted in front of Mrs. Brown's humble abode – a small log-cabin which Beardsley had built for her in the edge of a briar patch on his own plantation. That was the only neighborly act that anybody ever knew the captain to be guilty of; but then it was not entirely unselfish on his part. Beardsley received important letters now and then. He was not good at reading all sorts of writing, and when he came upon a sentence that he could not master, it was little trouble for him to run over to Mrs. Brown's cabin and ask her to decipher it for him. And – it is a remarkable thing to tell, but it is the truth – the contents of those letters were safe with Mrs. Brown. She would tell any and every thing else that came to her knowledge, no matter how it might hurt somebody, but who Beardsley's correspondents were and what they wrote about, no one could learn from her.

Having sheltered their horses in some fashion behind the cabin, the boys opened the door without knocking, and went in. There were two persons in the single room the cabin contained – a little, dried-up woman who sat in a low rocking-chair in front of the fire with a dingy snuff-stick between her toothless gums, and one of Beardsley's negro girls who had come over to "slick up things."

"How do you find yourself this fine morning, mother?" said Tom familiarly. "We thought we would drop in to warm by your comfortable blaze, and see if you are in need of any little things we can get for you. By the way," he added, putting his hand into his pocket, "it's a long time since I gave anything toward buying a jar of snuff. Take that till I come again."

"I see the captain has returned; and quite unexpectedly, too, I am told," said Mark, pulling off his dripping overcoat and hanging it upon a wooden peg in the chimney-corner. "I wish he might find the man who wrote him that threatening letter and broke up his business. I am sure he would make it warm for him."

"Every one of them triflin' hounds had oughter have a hickory wore out on their bare backs," said the old woman, in tones which sounded so nearly like the snarl of some wild animal that Tom Allison shuddered, although he had often heard her speak that way before.

"Do you know who they are?"

"Of course she knows who they are," exclaimed Mark. "The question is, is she at liberty to tell."

"Mebbe I know, an' mebbe I don't," said the woman, with a contortion of her wrinkled face that was intended for a wink and a smile. "I aint one of them folks who tells all they know. I am a master-hand to keep things to myself when they are told to me for a secret."

"Everybody knows that, and it is the reason why everybody is so willing to trust you," said Tom; and seeing that he had not given the old woman quite enough to loosen her tongue, he turned to Mark and added: "I was sure we would forget it, we are so careless. We came away from your house without ever once thinking of that side of bacon we were going to bring to Mrs. Brown."

"I knew we had forgotten something," said Mark regretfully, "and sure's you live that's it. But it will keep till we come again, won't it, mother? Who did you say wrote that letter?"

"You're very good boys to be always thinkin' of a poor crippled body like me, who can't get about to hear a bit of news on account of the pesky rheumatiz that bothers me night an' day," whined the old woman. "Now when I was a bright, lively young gal – "

"Did I understand you to say that Jack Gray had something to do with the abduction of his mother's overseer?" interrupted Mark, who knew it would never do to let the old woman get started on the story of her girlhood. "You astonish me; you do for a fact!"

"I disremember that I have spoke Jack Gray's name at all sense you two have been here," said Mrs. Brown cautiously.

"But you did, though. Didn't she, Tom?"

"I thought so, certainly; and I told myself at the time, that I did not see how Jack could have had any hand in Hanson's taking off, for I have heard that he was not at home when the thing was done."

"No more he wasn't to hum. He was on his way to jine the Yankee navy, dog-gone him an' them," snapped the woman, whose tongue was fairly loosened now. "But he left them behine who works as well fur him when he aint to hum as when he is."

"We know that very well," said Tom, who was surprised to hear it, "but we don't know for certain who they are. Mark, don't you see that Mrs. Brown is looking for her pipe?"

Mark hadn't noticed it, but all the same he hunted around on the mantel until he found the well-blackened corn-cob, but he could not bring himself to light it. He filled the bowl with some natural leaf he saw in a box and handed it to the woman, who set it going with the aid of a live coal which she took from the hearth in her bony fingers.

"You two aint furgot the stranger who popped up in Nashville all on a sudden like, about the time that Jack Gray came hum from Newbern, have you?" continued the old woman, after she had assured herself by a few long, audible puffs that her pipe was well lighted. "Lemme see if I have disremembered his name. No; sounds to me like it was Aleck Webster."

"Don't know him," said Tom, in a disappointed tone.

"I don't know him either," chimed in Mark, "but I have seen him. You know old man Webster, Tom, who lives about six miles down the main road. Well, Aleck is his son."

"Now I do think, in my soul," exclaimed Allison, "things have come to a pretty pass when Crackers like those Websters can throw a settlement like this into a panic, and order prominent and wealthy planters like Captain Beardsley to quit business and come home on penalty of being burned out in case of disobedience."

"You're mighty right," said Mrs. Brown, who was pleased to hear the captain called a prominent and wealthy planter. "Sich trash aint no call to live on this broad 'arth. They're wuss than the niggers, an' a heap lower down."

"But have you any evidence against the Websters?" inquired Mark.

"I've got a plenty. In the fust place they don't say nothing; an' folks as don't say nothing these times ain't fitten to live. Now is the day when every man oughter come out an' show their colors," said the woman, quoting from Beardsley.

"That means Marcy Gray," said Tom. "I wish I could see a gang of armed men take him out of the house and carry him off."

"He mustn't be teched," said the woman very decidedly.

"Who mustn't – Marcy?" exclaimed Tom and Mark in a breath. "Who said so?

What's the reason he mustn't be touched? He's a traitor."

"I don't know whether he is or not; but he mustn't be pestered.

Leastwise by folks living around here in the settlement."

Tom looked at Mark, and Mark looked about for a chair and sat down. Then they both looked at the old woman. This was something mysterious, and they wanted to have it explained.

"I aint got no more to say on that there p'int," said Mrs. Brown, her tone and manner showing that the question did not admit of argument. "He'll be teched fast enough when the time comes, Marcy Gray will, an' don't you furget to remember what I'm tellin' you. But them as goes for Marcy will be folks that can't be pestered by the men who toted Hanson off to the swamp."

"Ah! Now I see daylight," said Tom, with something that sounded like a sigh of relief. "I thought you meant that Marcy was to be left alone altogether for the reason that he was believed to be a good Confederate. And when these friends of ours, whoever they may be, go for him, I suppose they'll not neglect to look for the money that Mrs. Gray is known to have in her house?"

"I aint heared that anybody knows for sartin that the money is there," said Mrs. Brown. "Leastwise, they don't know it yit. There won't be nothing much done till that there is settled fur a fact."

"Then Marcy will never be molested," declared Tom, throwing a chip spitefully into the fire. "He can go out to the blockading fleet as often as he pleases and ship a dozen brothers in the Yankee navy if he wants to, and nothing will be done to him. If Jack Gray left men behind to work for him while he is at sea, Marcy must know who they are and where to find them, and he can set them on to Mark's father or mine whenever he feels like it. I'll touch him the first good chance I get, and don't you forget to remember that. He is a traitor, and I wouldn't let him alone if all the Captain Beardsleys in the country should say so. And how is any one to find out for certain that his mother has money concealed in her house? She isn't going to publish it to the world, is she?"

The longer Allison talked the more his anger rose, and when he got through he was stalking about the narrow limits of the cabin, shaking his fists over his head in the most frantic manner. The old woman waited patiently for him to sit down again, and then she took her pipe from her mouth long enough to say:

"Kelsey is out of a job jest now."

"That's no news. He's always that way. He won't work when he gets the chance. He would rather beg his living or steal it."

"I know that he's mighty shiftless an' triflin', but he's a tol'able overseer, Kelsey is, when he onct makes up his mine to do something," said the woman. "Now that Hanson has went off the Grays aint got nobody to boss the hands."

"The idea!" cried Tom, who began to "see daylight" once more. "Does Captain Beardsley labor under the delusion that Marcy Gray will hire that man Kelsey, who is next door to a fool, and allow him – "

"Yes, Kelsey is tol'able triflin', an' that there is a fact," interrupted the woman. "But he aint nobody's fule. He's as sly an ole fox as you can meet in a day's travel."

"Marcy Gray will not have him on the place, I tell you," said Tom. "And even if he should be dunce enough to hire him, how could Kelsey find out whether or not there was any money in the house? If the captain has anything against Kelsey, and wants him to disappear some dark night as Hanson did, he is taking the right course to bring it about. That's what will happen to Kelsey if he goes to work on that plantation, and I want you both to remember my words."

"And let me tell you another thing," added Mark. "No one man is going to find the hiding-place of that money if there is any about the house. When the building is down and the foundations are torn up, then it will be found, and not before."

"That there is a fact," observed the woman.

"Where do you think it is concealed, any way?" inquired Tom. "I had an idea that it might be buried in the garden."

"I am willing to bet my horse against your jack-knife that it isn't," replied Mark. "It is so close to the house that the family can keep an eye on all the approaches to it, and it is where fire can't touch it."

"Then it must be buried in the cellar," exclaimed Tom. "I declare! I believe you have hit the exact spot. I should like to be left alone in that place for about an hour with a shovel to work with. I would be rich when I came out."

"You jest keep away from that there suller," said the old woman sternly.

"Don't go nigh the house, nary one of you."

The two boys elevated their eye-brows and looked at each other, and it was as much as half a min ate before Mark Goodwin continued:

"You would be fooled if you looked anywhere but in the walls for it. So a shovel would be of no use to you. I have been in that cellar when Marcy and I were on better terms than we are now, and I know that the floor is laid in cement. It would be a job, I tell you, for a woman to dig it up and put it down again, and she couldn't do it so that the spot would not show itself to the first person who might happen to go in there."

"A woman!" exclaimed Allison.

"Yes, for a woman did the work," answered Mark, who could not have spoken with more confidence if he had been in Mrs. Gray's company on the night the thirty thousand dollars were concealed. "You know Marcy was not at home when his mother made those trips about the country."

"What of that? Didn't she take some of her old servants into her confidence?"

"No, sir. When people are trying to carry water on both shoulders as Mrs. Gray is, they don't let one hand know what the other does."

"And I believe," said Allison, getting upon his feet again and walking about the cabin, "that if somebody should go for Mrs. Gray's coachman in the right way, he would find out all about it. But I say, Mark, it's time for us to be riding along. What shall we bring you when we come again, mother? Snuff and smoking tobacco are always acceptable, I suppose?"

"And don't forget to say that you haven't seen either one of us for more than a week," chimed in Mark. "Doings of some sort are liable to happen in the settlement at any hour of the day or night, and we don't want our names mixed up with them. We shall attend strictly to our own business, and hope that those ruffians who carried Hanson away will do the same."

"I am mighty glad to hear you say that, and I don't want you to disremember what I have tole you," answered the old woman, with some earnestness. "You aint to go a-pesterin' of Marcy Gray an' his maw, kase there is folks about here who won't by no means take it kind of you if you do."

The boys promised that they would bear her warning in mind, but Tom Allison told himself that he thought he should do as he pleased about heeding it. He was not obliged to consult anybody's wishes, in dealing with such a traitor as Marcy Gray had shown himself to be. He turned his back to the fire while Mark was putting on his overcoat, and just then a gentle snore reminded him that there was one person in the cabin whom he had forgotten. It was the negro girl who, having cleared away the late breakfast dishes and put the little furniture there was in the room to rights, had drawn a chair to the table and fallen fast asleep with her head resting on her folded arms. Tom took one look at her, and then he and Mark went out. Neither of them said a word, until they had mounted their horses and ridden into the road, and then Mark inquired:

"What do you know now more than you did when you came here? All I have learned is that Beardsley is afraid of Marcy Gray, and don't want anything to happen to him, if he can help it, for fear that the blame would be laid at his door. I tell you, Tom Allison, as long as those men who carried Hanson away are at large, we have got to look out what we say and do. It's an awful state of affairs, but that is the way it looks to me."

That was the way it looked to Tom also; and as he could not say anything encouraging, he held his peace, and rode on with his eyes fastened upon the horn of his saddle.