Читать книгу The Long Rifle - Stewart Edward White - Страница 21

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They trudged to the end of the lane: found the horse against the gates: led him through.

“You must come in to see my grandmother,” urged Andy.

“I can’t; I’m too filthy,” objected Russell; then, seeing some urgency on the part of his new friend, he agreed. “All right. If she can stand it, I can.”

They left the horse tied to a rail. The farmhouse was of the prosperous order, square, unornamented, relieved from being a box by six white columns that upheld a veranda roof above the second story. Its paint was old; but the structure was in repair. About it were remnants of what must have been a cherished garden; but these remnants were well attended. The picket fence was upright and intact. Before the front door stood two great locust trees. Behind the back door was an apple orchard and the long armed sweep of a well. Russell’s vivid imagination, darting in the speculation it loved, brought him its findings: efficiency; tidy, careful efficiency; no thought of the ornamentation of life; only in the garden an awkward fumbling effort to preserve the memory, as it were, of a beauty whose full body had followed its vanished creator. He stopped appreciatively at a lilac bush, touching with sensitive finger its new buds.

“I like the soft feel,” he explained.

“It used to be a nice garden—when my mother was alive,” said Andy. “Most of the flowers are gone now. I work on it a little when I get time; but I can’t do much. Grandmother likes it.”

Russell raised his eyes and became aware of a little old lady in a rocking chair behind a front window. He swept his hat from his head in the approved flourish of the period. A moment later he stood before her, bowing again, and conscious of an amused scrutiny under which, in spite of himself, he felt his color rising. Though possessed of charmingly open qualities, and though nothing of a snob, Russell was nevertheless an aristocrat both by breeding and by the training of his day, which emphasized social differences even more strongly than is at present the case. That he should not find himself perfectly at ease in superiority before any old countrywoman was, in the harmless arrogance of his young conception, beyond his thought.

She was a little old lady, sitting in a Boston rocker. She wore a cap, very neat; and a voluminous black dress of heavy silk, and cobwebby half mitts of silk lace, and a pair of black satin soft shoes side by side on a hassock. Her only ornament was a cameo brooch at her throat. Her lap held knitting. On the floor at her side lay an ebony cane topped with ivory. The Boston rocker was uncushioned, and in it she sat uncompromisingly upright as one who sits in state; though not with rigidity but rather with the repose of energy. As Russell, raising his head from his bow of introduction, looked upon her thin, wax-like veined hands, and the sad lines of past care in her tiny face, he thought to himself that he had never seen anyone so old, and a certain choke of pathos gripped his throat. As he met the snap and twinkle of her eyes, he thought he had never met anyone so unquenchably and agelessly young; so that pity became an affront, and any thought of pathos an impertinence. And as Russell, though sensitive to impression, was as yet too young for analysis, he ended by standing before her at ill-ease, like an awkward schoolboy, conscious and ashamed of his muddied garments and his general dishevelment.

But his ill-ease soon melted. Neither by look nor manner, save for a momentary deep twinkle in her eyes, did the old lady seem aware of the strange disarray of the two. The twinkle was amused, but it vanished unseen. To his astonishment, when he paused to think of it, Russell shortly found himself seated at her elbow chatting eagerly and easily, as to an equal not only in convention but in years, laughing delightedly over her quick pithy comments, sometimes caustic in content, but welling from the relish of a deep quiet humor that mellowed them to a shared understanding that had no sting. Russell was of the vivacious and romantic disposition that expands under warmth. The old lady, tapping her Boston rocker into brisk motion, listened and questioned; and Russell glowed and chattered and had a wonderful youthful time telling about himself, secure in the comfort of some deep inner instinct that assured him that he would not later come-to, as was so often the case, to look upon himself in reaction as a talkative fool.

As he talked he looked about him at the furnishings of the old room, and his eye fell upon a weapon on pegs over the fireplace. He checked what he was saying.

“What a beautiful piece!” he cried. “May I look at it? I love guns. All kinds of guns. They are a sort of passion with me.”

“Bring it here, Andy,” commanded the grandmother.

Russell handled the weapon reverently.

“Do you mind?” he begged, and put it to his face in the attitude of aim.

“I see you are a marksman also,” observed the old lady. “You and Andy should match skill.”

“I should love to try it—the rifle, I mean. It is in beautiful condition. But it is very old, isn’t it?”

“I’ll back it against anything newer,” interposed Andy gruffly.

Russell turned the weapon over, examining its details. He looked up suddenly, a slight awe in his eyes.

“This inscription—” he stammered—“is it—was it really?”

“Colonel Boone’s rifle? Yes,” the old lady answered. “He gave it to my husband just before he left Kentucky for the West.”

“Did you know Daniel Boone, ma’am?”

“Certainly.” She paused; then went on in response to Russell’s unspoken pleading. “You see, as a girl I rode over the Wilderness Road into Kentucky to join Colonel Boone’s enterprise. I lived at Boonesborough until my husband died.”

“Were you at the great fight at Boonesborough?” enquired Russell breathlessly.

The old lady let her knitting fall in her lap. She leaned against the back of her chair and her eyes softened in reminiscence.

“Yes: though I saw little of it. We women were busy within, cooking, carrying water to the men, molding bullets, tending the wounded.”

Under urging she told more: nine days of bitter siege, the garrison so small that it must stand to arms day and night, the men gaunt and haggard from the strain; showers of burning arrows, fire, no water to spare, the roof swept by a hail of bullets.

“The British had supplied them with ammunition,” said she. “The men said they picked up a hundred and twenty-five pounds of flattened bullets after the siege, and that takes no count of those imbedded in the logs.”

The fort seemed doomed. Then a young man sprang to the roof and worked fully exposed to extinguish the fire.

“The Lord sustained us,” observed the old lady piously. “For in all that hail of bullets he was not touched.”

Shortly after this it became necessary for the women to take their places at the port holes to relieve the men for a brief rest. The limit of human endurance had been reached.

“So I fired with the rest. I cannot believe I did much damage; but I made a noise,” she chuckled. “But it gave me opportunity to see Colonel Boone perform a noteworthy feat. One of the savages had a very good rifle, and he had climbed a high tree in which he was completely protected and from which he could overlook the compound within the fort. He hit one or two of our people before we suspected where he was; but especially he was killing our cattle, which were huddled in the center. When his position had been located Colonel Boone himself ascended into the tower. After a little the man in the tree, preparing for another shot, showed just the top of his head. Colonel Boone fired instantly and killed him. It was a very long distance away.”

“Was he—did he use this rifle?”

“Yes, that was his favorite rifle always, though he had several.”

Russel gazed down at the weapon with awe.

“What is this other name—Farrell?” he enquired.

“He made the piece, I believe: though I am not certain. The Colonel was always particularly fond of it. He had some association with it, though I do not know what it was. That is why Mr. Burnett always took such pride in the fact that it was a gift to him, for at that time he did not know Colonel Boone so well as later.”

“How did it happen?” urged Russell.

“Mr. Burnett was of the greatest assistance—so Colonel Boone always maintained—at the time Jemima Boone and three other girls were carried off by the savages,” said the old lady, a trifle primly, as one reluctant to boast. But Russell, aflame with excitement, would have no reticence. He learned how the four girls had been seized suddenly and spirited away; how their absence was not discovered for some hours; how the settlement was aroused to pursuit. Most of the men, under Mr. Calloway, cut across country on horseback in the probable direction of flight. Boone with eight picked men took the difficult job of following directly, on foot. For thirty miles they puzzled out a trail blinded by every device of savage ingenuity; furthermore, they managed to do so rapidly enough to move faster than the Indians had done in their flight. At last the marauders, considering they had got clear away, abandoned attempts at concealment and took the direct course.

“Colonel Boone had himself been captive of the savages,” explained Mrs. Burnett, “so he knew their devices.”

He struck boldly across country and cut the trail again in ten miles. Shortly after they caught sight of the Indians making camp.

“Mr. Burnett has often told me that now came the moments of greatest danger for the girls,” said the old lady, “for it was certain that the first act of the savages, on being surprised, would be to murder them. Colonel Boone picked out four men. One of them was Mr. Burnett. He was always very proud of this; for he was very young. They crept up. They knew that the least false move, a snapped bit of wood, even the rustle of a leaf would be the signal for the crash of tomahawks on the four girls’ skulls.”

At last Boone gave a signal. The four men fired and rushed forward instantly. The remainder of the party bounded down the hill, yelling as loudly as they could. The savages nearest the girls, who were huddled together “tattered, torn and despairing” at the foot of the tree, were killed at first fire. The others were for a brief but sufficient instant paralyzed by surprise. All but one. He leaped across the fire, his tomahawk upraised over the head of Jemima Boone. But before it could descend its wielder collapsed, a knife in his throat.

“Mr. Burnett was always very skillful at throwing a knife,” stated the old lady. “But Colonel Boone considered he had saved Jemima’s life; as, indeed, he had; and a little later, when Mr. Burnett and I were married, the Colonel gave Mr. Burnett this rifle.”

“I think this is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard!” cried Russell.

“Ours was the second wedding to take place in Kentucky. The first was of Sam Henderson and Betty Calloway; and within the year Frances Calloway married John Holden; and Jemima Boone married Flanders Calloway. Sam, John, and Flanders were the other three men, besides Colonel Boone and Mr. Burnett, in the rescue party; and Betty and Frances were the other two girls captured along with Jemima.”

She stopped with an air of finality.

“You didn’t tell Russell who the fourth girl was, Grandmother,” said Andy with a mischievous grin.

A faint color crept into the old lady’s cheeks.

“You know perfectly who it was, you rapscallion!” she replied sharply.

Russell stared up at her breathlessly in dawning comprehension.

“Not another word out of you!” the grandmother checked his eager questions. “It is too fine a day to sit within, listening to an old woman’s chatter. I am tired. Take him away, Andy. Get along, both of you. Try your skill at the rifle. Show him how your grandfather taught you the knife should be thrown. Off with you, now!”

She would have no more of them; fairly bundled them out of the room with the dynamics of her energy, though physically she did not stir from her chair. Only at the door she stopped them with a word.

“I like your young man, Andrew,” she observed. “Tell him to come see me again. I have often heard Colonel Boone say that there is nought like a good honest fight to begin friendship.” She smiled faintly at their confusion; and deliberately closed her eyes. They hesitated a moment, and stole out.