The Crossing Part 55

"Step out, sir," said Mr. Jackson, starting for the door before I could reply. I followed perforce, not without misgivings, the crowd pus.h.i.+ng eagerly after. Before we reached the dusty street Jackson began pulling off his coat. In a trice the shouting onlookers had made a ring, and we stood facing each other, he in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.

"We'll fight fair," said he, his lips wetting.

"Very good," said I, "if you are still accustomed to this hasty manner.

You have not asked my name, my standing, nor my reasons for wanting Mr.

Temple."

I know not whether it was what I said that made him stare, or how I said it.

"Pistols, if you like," said he.

"No," said I; "I am in a hurry to find Mr. Temple. I fought you this way once, and it's quicker."

"You fought me this way once?" he repeated. The noise of the crowd was hushed, and they drew nearer to hear.

"Come, Mr. Jackson," said I, "you are a lawyer and a gentleman, and so am I. I do not care to be beaten to a pulp, but I am not afraid of you. And I am in a hurry. If you will step back into the tavern, I will explain to you my reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to get to Mr. Temple."

Mr. Jackson stared at me the more.

"By the eternal," said he, "you are a cool man. Give me my coat," he shouted to the bystanders, and they helped him on with it. "Now,"

said he, as they made to follow him, "keep back. I would talk to this gentleman. By the heavens," he cried, when he had gained the room, "I believe you are not afraid of me. I saw it in your eyes."

Then I laughed.

"Mr. Jackson," said I, "doubtless you do not remember a homeless boy named David whom you took to your uncle's house in the Waxhaws--"

"I do," he exclaimed, "as I live I do. Why, we slept together."

"And you stumped your toe getting into bed and swore," said I.

At that he laughed so heartily that the landlord came running across the room.

"And we fought together at the Old Fields School. Are you that boy?"

and he scanned me again. "By G.o.d, I believe you are." Suddenly his face clouded once more.

"But what about Temple?" said he.

"Ah," I answered, "I come to that quickly. Mr. Temple is my cousin.

After I left your uncle's house my father took me to Charlestown."

"Is he a Charlestown Temple?" demanded Mr. Jackson. "For I spent some time gambling and horse-racing with the gentry there, and I know many of them. I was a wild lad" (I repeat his exact words), "and I ran up a bill in Charlestown that would have filled a folio volume. Faith, all I had left me was the clothes on my back and a good horse. I made up my mind one night that if I could pay my debts and get out of Charlestown I would go into the back country and study law and sober down. There was a Mr. Braiden in the ordinary who staked me two hundred dollars at rattle-and-snap against my horse. Gad, sir, that was providence. I won. I left Charlestown with honor, I studied law at Salisbury in North Carolina, and I have come here to practise it."

"You seem to have the talent," said I, smiling at the remembrance of the Hump Gibson incident.

"That is my history in a nutsh.e.l.l," said Mr. Jackson.

"And now," he added, "since you are Mr. Temple's cousin and friend and an old acquaintance of mine to boot, I will tell you where I think he is."

"Where is that?" I asked eagerly.

"I'll stake a cowbell that Sevier will stop at the Widow Brown's," he replied. "I'll put you on the road. But mind you, you are to tell Mr.

Temple that he is to come back here and race me at Greasy Cove."

"I'll warrant him to come," said I.

Whereupon we left the inn together, more amicably than before. Mr.

Jackson had a thoroughbred horse near by that was a pleasure to see, and my admiration of his mount seemed to set me as firmly in Mr. Jackson's esteem again as that gentleman himself sat in the saddle. He was as good as his word, rode out with me some distance on the road, and reminded me at the last that Nick was to race him.

CHAPTER VI. THE WIDOW BROWN'S

It was not to my credit that I should have lost the trail, after Mr.

Jackson put me straight. But the night was dark, the country unknown to me, and heavily wooded and mountainous. In addition to these things my mind ran like fire. My thoughts sometimes flew back to the wondrous summer evening when I trod the Nollichucky trace with Tom and Polly Ann, when I first looked down upon the log palace of that prince of the border, John Sevier. Well I remembered him, broad-shouldered, handsome, gay, a courtier in buckskin. Small wonder he was idolized by the Watauga settlers, that he had been their leader in the struggle of Franklin for liberty. And small wonder that Nick Temple should be in his following.

Nick! My mind was in a torment concerning him. What of his mother?

Should I speak of having seen her? I went blindly through the woods for hours after the night fell, my horse stumbling and weary, until at length I came to a lonely clearing on the mountain side, and a fierce pack of dogs dashed barking at my horse's heels. There was a dark cabin ahead, indistinct in the starlight, and there I knocked until a gruff voice answered me and a tousled man came to the door. Yes, I had missed the trail. He shook his head when I asked for the Widow Brown's, and bade me share his bed for the night. No, I would go on, I was used to the backwoods. Thereupon he thawed a little, kicked the dogs, and pointed to where the mountain dipped against the star-studded sky. There was a trail there which led direct to the Widow Brown's, if I could follow it. So I left him.

Once the fear had settled deeply of missing Nick at the Widow Brown's, I put my mind on my journey, and thanks to my early training I was able to keep the trail. It doubled around the spurs, forded stony brooks in diagonals, and often in the darkness of the mountain forest I had to feel for the blazes on the trees. There was no making time. I gained the notch with the small hours of the morning, started on with the descent, crisscrossing, following a stream here and a stream there, until at length the song of the higher waters ceased and I knew that I was in the valley. Suddenly there was no crown-cover over my head. I had gained the road once more, and I followed it hopefully, avoiding the stumps and the deep wagon ruts where the ground was spongy.

The morning light revealed a milky mist through which the trees showed like phantoms. Then there came stains upon the mist of royal purple, of scarlet, of yellow like a mandarin's robe, peeps of deep blue fading into azure as the mist lifted. The fiery eye of the sun was c.o.c.ked over the crest, and beyond me I saw a house with its logs all golden brown in the level rays, the withered cornstalks orange among the blackened stumps. My horse stopped of his own will at the edge of the clearing. A c.o.c.k crew, a lean hound prostrate on the porch of the house rose to his haunches, sniffed, growled, leaped down, and ran to the road and sniffed again. I listened, startled, and made sure of the distant ring of many hoofs. And yet I stayed there, irresolute. Could it be Tipton and his men riding from Jonesboro to capture Sevier? The hoof-beats grew louder, and then the hound in the road gave tongue to the short, sharp bark that is the call to arms. Other dogs, hitherto unseen, took up the cry, and turning in my saddle I saw a body of men riding hard at me through the alley in the forest. At their head, on a heavy, strong-legged horse, was one who might have stood for the figure of turbulence, and I made no doubt that this was Colonel Tipton himself,--Colonel Tipton, once secessionist, now champion of the Old North State and arch-enemy of John Sevier. At sight of me he reined up so violently that his horse went back on his haunches, and the men behind were near overriding him.

"Look out, boys," he shouted, with a fierce oath, "they've got guards out!" He flung back one hand to his holster for a pistol, while the other reached for the powder flask at his belt. He primed the pan, and, seeing me immovable, set his horse forward at an amble, his pistol at the c.o.c.k.

"Who in h.e.l.l are you?" he cried.

"A traveller from Virginia," I answered.

"And what are you doing here?" he demanded, with another oath.

"I have just this moment come here," said I, as calmly as I might. "I lost the trail in the darkness."

He glared at me, purpling, perplexed.

"Is Sevier there?" said he, pointing at the house.

"I don't know," said I.

Tipton turned to his men, who were listening.

"Surround the house," he cried, "and watch this fellow."

I rode on perforce towards the house with Tipton and three others, while his men scattered over the corn-field and cursed the dogs. And then we saw in the open door the figure of a woman shading her eyes with her hand. We pulled up, five of us, before the porch in front of her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Brown," said Tipton, gruffly.

"Good morning, Colonel," answered the widow.