Читать книгу The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis & Clark - Eva Emery Dye - Страница 24

"The boy cannot escape me!"

Lafayette was all that lay between Cornwallis and the subjugation of Virginia. The lithe little Frenchman, only twenty-three years old, danced ever on and on before him, fatiguing the redcoats far into the heats of June.

The Virginia Legislature adjourned to Charlottesville. In vain Cornwallis chased the boy and sent Tarleton on his raid over the mountains, "to capture the Governor."

Like a flash he came, the handsome, daring, dashing Colonel Tarleton, whose name has been execrated for a hundred years.

Virginia was swept as by a tornado. Never a noise in the night, never a wind could whistle by, but "Tarleton's troop is coming!"

"Tarleton's troop!" Little John Randolph, a boy of eight, his mother then lying in childbed, was gathered up and hurried away ninety miles up the Appomattox.

"Tarleton's troop!" Beside the dead body of her husband sat the mother of four-year-old Henry Clay, with her seven small children shuddering around her. Standing on a rock in the South Anna River, the great preacher had addressed his congregation in impassioned oratory for the last time, and now on a bier he lay lifeless, while the gay trooper raided the lands of his children.

Even Tarleton was moved by the widow's pallor as he tossed a handful of coins on her table. She arose and swept them into the fireplace,—"Never will I touch the invaders' gold."

"Tarleton's troop!" Back at Waxhaw, South Carolina, a lad by the name of Andrew Jackson bore through life the scars of wounds inflicted by Tarleton's men. At that very hour, alone on foot his mother was returning from deeds of mercy to the patriots caged in prison pens by Tarleton. But the streams were cold, the forests dark; losing her way, overworn and weary, sank and died the mother of Andrew Jackson.

"Tarleton's troop!" Jack Jouett at the Cuckoo Tavern at Louisa saw white uniforms faced with green, and fluttering plumes, and shining helmets riding by.

The fiery Huguenot blood rose in him. Before daylight Jack's hard-ridden steed reined up at Monticello.

"Tarleton's troop, three hours behind me! Fly!"

There was panic and scramble,—some of the legislators were at Monticello. There was hasty adjournment and flight to Staunton, across the Blue Ridge.

Assisting his wife, the slender, graceful Mrs. Jefferson, into a carriage, the Governor sent her and the children under the care of Jupiter, the coachman, to a neighbouring farmhouse, while he gathered up his State papers.

"What next, massa?" Martin, the faithful body-servant, watching his master's glance and anticipating every want, followed from room to room.

"The plate, Martin," with a wave of the hand Jefferson strode out from his beloved Monticello.

With Cæsar's help Martin pulled up the planks of the portico, and the last piece of silver went under the floor as a gleaming helmet hove in sight. Dropping the plank, imprisoning poor Cæsar, Martin faced the intruder.

"Where is your master? Name the spot or I'll fire!"

"Fire away, then," answered the slave. The trooper desisted.

Tarleton and his men took food and drink, but destroyed nothing. The fame of Jefferson's kindness to Burgoyne's captured army had reached even Tarleton, for in that mansion books and music had been free to the imprisoned British officers.

"An' now who be ye, an' whar are ye from?"

An old woman peered from the door of a hut in a gorge of the hills, late in the afternoon.

"We are members of the Virginia Legislature fleeing from Tarleton's raid."

"Ride on, then, ye cowardly knaves! Here my husband and sons have just gone to Charlottesville to fight for ye, an' ye a runnin' awa' wi' all yer might. Clar out; ye get naething here."

"But, my good woman, it would never do to let the British capture the Legislature."

"If Patterick Hennery had been in Albemarle, the British dragoons would naever ha' passed the Rivanna."

"But, my good woman, here is Patrick Henry."

"Patterick Hennery? Patterick Hennery? Well, well, if Patterick Hennery is here it must be all right. Coom in, coom in to the best I have."

But Daniel Boone and three or four others were captured, and carried away to Cornwallis to be released soon after on parole.

"Tarleton's troop!" cried little Meriwether Lewis, seven years old.

Sweeping down the Rivanna came the desperado to the home of Colonel Nicholas Lewis, away in the Continental army.

"What a paradise!" exclaimed Tarleton, raising his hands.

"Why, then, do you interrupt it?" inquired Mrs. Lewis, alone at home with her small children and slaves.

The trooper slept that night in his horseman's cloak on the kitchen floor. At daylight Mrs. Lewis was awakened by a clatter in her henyard. Ducks, chickens, turkeys, the troopers were wringing their necks. One decrepit old drake only escaped by skurrying under the barn.

Bowing low till his plume swept the horse's mane, Tarleton galloped away.

The wrath of Aunt Molly! "Here, Pompey, you just catch that drake. Ride as fast as you can, and present it to Colonel Tarleton with my compliments."

On flying steed, drake squawking and flouncing on his back, the darkey flew after the troopers.

"Well, Pompey, did you overtake Colonel Tarleton?" was Aunt Molly's wrathful inquiry.

"Yes'm."

"What did he say?"

"He put de drake in his wallet, and say he much obleeged!"

Little Meriwether, sitting on the gate-post, laughed at his aunt's discomfiture.

The roll of a drum broke the stillness of Sabbath in the Blue Ridge.

"Tarleton's troop!" By the bed of her sick husband sat a Spartan mother at Staunton. Her sons were in the army at the north, but three young lads, thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen were there.

Placing their father's old firelock in their hands, "Go forth, my children," she said, "repel the foot of the invader or see my face no more."

But Tarleton did not force the mountain pass,—the boys went on down to join Lafayette.

From farm and forest, children and grandsires hurried to Lafayette. The proud earl retired to the sea and stopped to rest at the little peninsula of Yorktown, waiting for reinforcements.

Down suddenly from the north came Washington with his tattered Continentals and Rochambeau's gay Frenchmen, and the French fleet sailed into the Chesapeake. Cornwallis was bottled up at Yorktown.

The boy, Lafayette, had simply put the stopper in the bottle and waited.

Seventy cannon rolled in on Yorktown. George Rogers Clark, all the West, was appealing to Washington, but the great chief unmoved kept his eye on Lord Cornwallis.

On the 19th of October, 1781, the aristocratic marquis, who had commenced his career as aide-de-camp to a king, surrendered to the rebels of America.

"'Wallis has surrendered! surrendered! surrendered!"

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark flung up their caps with other boys and shouted with the best of them, "'Wallis has surrendered!"

After the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington and Lafayette and the officers of the French and American armies went to Fredericksburg to pay their respects to Mary, the mother of Washington. The entire surrounding country was watching in gala attire, and among them the old cavalier, John Clark of Caroline.

On his white horse Washington passed the mulberry trees. Quick as a flash little William turned,—"Why, father, he does look like my brother George! Is that why people call our George the 'Washington of the West'?"

A provisional treaty was signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, a few days after the return of George Rogers Clark from that last Chillicothe raid. Slowly, by pack-horse and flatboat, the news reached Kentucky.

The last of the British army sailed away. Washington made his immortal farewell, and went back to his farm, arriving on Christmas Eve. Bonfires and rockets, speeches, thanksgiving and turkey, ended the year 1782.

But with his return from the last scene at Yorktown, the father of Meriwether Lewis lay down and died, a martyr of the Revolution.