XXIV.
_THE DEAD REBEL'S MUSKET._
Pomp came reloading his rifle, while Cudjo, knife in hand, flew at thecords that confined the schoolmaster.
In his gratitude to Heaven and his deliverers, Penn could have huggedthat grotesque, half-savage creature to his heart. But no time was to belost. Snatching the knife, he hastened to release the bewilderedclergyman.
"Pomp, my noble fellow!" The negro turned from looking after theretreating rebels, with a gleam of triumph on his proud and loftyfeatures: Penn wrung his hand. "You have twice saved my life--now let meask one more favor of you! Take Mr. Villars to your cave--do for himwhat you have done for me. He is a much better Christian, and far moredeserving of your kindness, than I ever was."
"And you?" said Pomp, quietly.
"I will take my chance with the others." And Penn in few words explainedthe occurrences of the night and morning.
Pomp shrugged his shoulders frowningly. The time was at hand when he andCudjo could no longer enjoy in freedom their wild mountain life; eventhey must soon be drawn into the great deadly struggle. This he foresaw,and his soul was darkened for a moment.
"Cudjo! Shall we take this old man to our den?"
"No, no! Don't ye take nobody dar! on'y Massa Hapgood."
"But he is blind!" said Penn.
"Others will come after who are not blind," said Pomp, his brow stillstern and thoughtful.
"My friends," interposed the old clergyman, mildly, "do nothing for methat will bring danger to yourselves, I entreat you!"
These unselfish words, spoken with serious and benignant aspect, touchedthe generous chords in Pomp's breast.
"Why should we blacks have anything to do with this quarrel?" he saidwith earnest feeling. "Your friends down there"--meaning Stackridge andhis party--"are all slaveholders or pro-slavery men. Why should we carewhich side destroys the other?"
"There is a God," answered Mr. Villars, with a beaming light in hisunterrified countenance, "who is not prejudiced against color; who lovesequally his black and his white children; and who, by means of this warthat seems so needless and so cruel, is working out the redemption, notof the misguided white masters only, but also of the slave. Whether youwill or not, this war concerns the black man, and he cannot long keepout of it. Then will you side with your avowed enemies, or with thosewho are already fighting in your cause without knowing it?"
These words probed the deep convictions of Pomp's breast. He had fromthe first believed that the war meant death to slavery; although of latethe persistent and almost universal cry of Union men for the "Union asit was,"--the Union with the injustice of slavery at its core,--hadsomewhat wearied his patience and weakened his faith.
"Here, Cudjo! help get this horse up--we can find a path for him."
Reluctantly Cudjo obeyed; and almost by main strength the two athleticblacks lifted and pulled the animal up the bank, and out of the chasm.
Penn assisted his old friend to remount, then took leave of him.
"I will be with you again soon!" he cried, hopefully, as the negroesurged the horse forward into the thickets.
Then the young Quaker, left alone, turned to look at the dead rebel. Fora moment horrible nausea and faintness made him lean against the treefor support. It was the first violent death of which he had ever been aneye-witness. He had known this man,--who was indeed the same Griffin,who had assisted the unwilling Pepperill to bring the tar-kettle to thewood-side on a certain memorable evening; ignorant, intemperate, tooproud to work in a region where slavery made industry a disgrace, andyet a fierce champion of the system which was his greatest curse. Nowthere he lay, in his dirt, and rags, and blood, his neck shot through;the same expression of ferocious hate with which he had rushed tobayonet the schoolmaster still distorting his visage;--an object ofhorror and loathing. Was it not assuming a terrible responsibility tosend this rampant sinner to his long account? Yet the choice was betweenhis life and Penn's; and had not Pomp done well? Still Penn could nothelp feeling remorse and commiseration for the wretch.
"Poor Griffin! I have no murderous hatred for such as you! But if youcome in the way of my country's safety, or of the welfare of my friends,you must take the penalty!"
He picked up the musket that had fallen at his feet where he stoodbound. Then, stifling his disgust, he felt in the dead man's pockets forammunition. Cartridges there were none; but in their place he found somebullets and a powder-flask. Then putting in practice the lessons he hadlearned of Pomp when they hunted together on the mountain, he loaded thegun, resolutely setting his teeth and drawing his breath hard when hethought of the different kind of game it might now be his duty to shoot.
While thus occupied he heard footsteps that gave him a sudden start. Heturned quickly, catching up the gun. To his immense relief he saw Pomp,approaching with a smile.
"I thought you were with Mr. Villars!"
"Cudjo has gone with him. I am going with you."
"O Pomp!" cried Penn, with a joyful sense of reliance upon his powerfuland sagacious black friend. "But is Mr. Villars safe?"
"Cudjo is faithful," said Pomp. "He believes the old man is your friend,and a friend of the slave. Besides, I promised, if he would take him tothe cave, that my next shot, if I have a chance, should be at his oldacquaintance, Sile Ropes."
Pomp took the lead, guiding Penn through hollows and among thickets to aledge crowned with shrubs of savin, whose summit commanded a view of allthat mountain-side.
They crept among the bushes to the edge of the cliff. There they paused.Neither friend nor foe was in sight. No sound of fire-arms washeard,--only the birds were singing.
Penn never forgot that scene. How fresh, and beautiful, and still themorning was! The sunlight flushed the craggy and wooded slopes. Far off,dim with early mist, lay the lovely hills and valleys of East Tennessee.On the north the peaks of the mountain range soared away, purple, rosy,glorious, in soft suffusing light. In the south-west other peaksreceded, billowy and blue. And God's pure, deep sky was over all.
Touched by the divine beauty of the day, Penn lay thinking with shame ofthe scenes of human folly and violence with which it had beendesecrated, when the negro drew him softly by the sleeve.
"Look yonder! down in the edge of that little grove!"
Peering through an opening in the savins through which Pomp had thrusthis rifle, Penn saw, stealing cautiously out of the grove, a man.
"It is Stackridge! He is reconnoitring."
"It is a retreat," said Pomp. "See, there they all come!"
"Carl with the rest, showing them the way!" added Penn.
He was watching with intense interest the movements of his friends, andrejoicing that no foe was in sight, when suddenly Pomp uttered a warningwhisper.
"Where? what?" said Penn, eagerly looking in the direction in which thenegro pointed.
Down at their left was a long line of dark thickets which marked theedge of a ravine; out of which he now saw emerging, one by one, a fileof armed men. They climbed up a narrow and difficult pass, and halted onthe skirts of the thicket. Ten--twelve--fifteen, Penn counted. It wasthe other party that had been sent out simultaneously with that underLieutenant Ropes, to get in the rear of the fugitives. And they hadsucceeded. Only a bushy ridge concealed them from Stackridge's men, whowere coming up under the shelter of the same ridge on the other side.
Penn trembled with excitement as he saw the rebels cross swiftlyforward, skulking among the bushes, to the summit of the ridge. Thenegro's eyes blazed, but he was perfectly cool. On one knee, his leftfoot advanced,--holding his rifle with one hand, and parting the busheswith the other,--he smiled as he observed the situation.
"Here," said he to Penn, "rest your gun in this little crotch. Now canyou see to take aim?"
"Yes," said Penn, with his heart in his throat.
"Calm your nerves! Everything depends on our first shot. Wait till Igive the word. See! they have discovered Stackridge!"
"We might shout, and warn him," said P
enn, whose nature still shrankfrom using any more deadly means of saving his friends.
"And so discover ourselves! That never'll do. Have you sighted yourman?"
"Yes--the one lying on his belly behind that cedar."
"Very well! I'll take the fellow next him. The moment you have fired,keep perfectly still, only draw your gun back and load. Now--fire!"
Just then Stackridge and his men, in full view of their hidden friendson the ledge, were appearing to the fifteen ambushed rebels also.Suddenly the loud bang of a musket, followed instantly by the sharpcrack of a rifle, echoed down the mountain side. The rebel behind thecedar sprang to his feet, dropping his gun, and throwing up his hands,and rushed back down the ridge, screaming, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" while theman next him also attempted to rise, but fell again, Pomp havingdiscreetly aimed at an exposed leg.
"I'm glad we've only wounded them!" whispered Penn, very pale, his lipscompressed, his eyes gleaming.
"It has the effect!" said Pomp. "Your friends have discovered theambush, thanks to that coward's uproar; and now the rascals arepanic-struck! Fire again as they go into the ravine--powder alone willdo now--a little noise will send them tumbling!"
They accordingly fired blank discharges; at the same time Stackridge andhis friends, recovering from their momentary astonishment, charged afterthe retreating rebels, who had barely time to carry off their woundedand escape into the ravine, when their pursuers scaled the ridge.
"I'm off!" said Pomp, creeping back through the savins. "These men arenot my friends, though they are yours. I'll go and look after Cudjo."And bounding down into a hollow, he was quickly out of sight.