Read Ebook: Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories by Fox John Jr Yohn F C Frederick Coffay Illustrator

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Ebook has 360 lines and 22272 words, and 8 pages

It was a pompous old buck who was bearing down on the old gray horse, and under the slouch hat with its flapping brim--one Mayhall Wells, by name. There were but few strands of gray in his thick blue-black hair, though his years were rounding half a century, and he sat the old nag with erect dignity and perfect ease. His bearded mouth showed vanity immeasurable, and suggested a strength of will that his eyes--the real seat of power--denied, for, while shrewd and keen, they were unsteady. In reality, he was a great coward, though strong as an ox, and whipping with ease every man who could force him into a fight. So that, in the whole man, a sensitive observer would have felt a peculiar pathos, as though nature had given him a desire to be, and no power to become, and had then sent him on his zigzag way, never to dream wherein his trouble lay.

"Mornin', Mayhall!"

All nodded and spoke except Hence Sturgill on the wagon-tongue, who stopped whittling, and merely looked at the big man with narrowing eyes.

Tallow Dick, a yellow slave, appeared at the corner of the store, and the old buck beckoned him to come and hitch his horse. Flitter Bill had reappeared on the stoop with a piece of white paper in his hand. The lank messenger sagged in the doorway behind him, ready to start for home.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, suh--sorry to hear it, suh," he said, with slow, measured speech. "My men are comin' in fast, and you can hardly realize er--er what it means to an old soldier er--er not to have--er--" And Mayhall's answering wink was portentous.

"My friend here is from over in Kaintucky, and the Harlan Home Gyard over there, he says, is a-making some threats."

Mayhall laughed.

"So I have heerd--so I have heerd." He turned to the messenger. "We shall be ready fer 'em, suh, ready fer 'em with a thousand men--one thousand men, suh, right hyeh in the Gap--right hyeh in the Gap. Let 'em come on--let 'em come on!" Mayhall began to rub his hands together as though the conflict were close at hand, and the mountaineer slapped one thigh heartily. "Good for you! Give 'em hell!" He was about to slap Mayhall on the shoulder and call him "pardner," when Flitter Bill coughed, and Mayhall lifted his chin.

"Captain Wells?" said Bill.

"Captain Wells," repeated Mayhall with a stiff salutation, and the messenger from over Black Mountain fell back with an apologetic laugh. A few minutes later both Mayhall and Flitter Bill saw him shaking his head, as he started homeward toward the Gap. Bill laughed silently, but Mayhall had grown grave. The fun was over and he beckoned Bill inside the store.

"Misto Richmond," he said, with hesitancy and an entire change of tone and manner, "I am afeerd I ain't goin' to be able to pay you that little amount I owe you, but if you can give me a little mo' time--"

"Captain Wells," interrupted Bill slowly, and again Mayhall stared hard at him, "as betwixt friends, as have been pussonal friends fer nigh onto twenty year, I hope you won't mention that little matter to me ag'in--until I mentions it to you."

"But, Misto Richmond, Hence Sturgill out thar says as how he heerd you say that if I didn't pay--"

Mayhall turned here.

"An' may I axe you," said Mayhall, ruffling a little, "may I axe you--why you--"

"Certainly," said Bill, and he handed over the paper that he held in his hand.

Mayhall took the paper and looked it up and down helplessly--Flitter Bill slyly watching him.

Mayhall handed it back. "If you please, Misto Richmond--I left my specs at home." Without a smile, Bill began. It was an order from the commandant at Cumberland Gap, sixty miles farther down Powell's Valley, authorizing Mayhall Wells to form a company to guard the Gap and to protect the property of Confederate citizens in the valley; and a commission of captaincy in the said company for the said Mayhall Wells. Mayhall's mouth widened to the full stretch of his lean jaws, and, when Bill was through reading, he silently reached for the paper and looked it up and down and over and over, muttering:

"Well--well--well!" And then he pointed silently to the name that was at the bottom of the paper.

Bill spelled out the name:

Then he rose, and a magical transformation began that can be likened--I speak with reverence--to the turning of water into wine. Captain Mayhall Wells raised his head, set his chin well in, and kept it there. He straightened his shoulders, and kept them straight. He paced the floor with a tread that was martial, and once he stopped before the door with his right hand thrust under his breast-pocket, and with wrinkling brow studied the hills. It was a new man--with the water in his blood changed to wine--who turned suddenly on Flitter Bill Richmond:

"I can collect a vehy large force in a vehy few days." Flitter Bill knew that--that he could get together every loafer between the county-seat of Wise and the county-seat of Lee--but he only said encouragingly:

"Good!"

Bill nodded.

Mayhall coughed slightly. "There is one thing in the way, I opine. Whar--I axe you--air we to git somethin' to eat fer my command?" Bill had anticipated this.

"I'll take keer o' that."

Captain Wells rubbed his hands.

"Of co'se, of co'se--you are a soldier and a patriot--you can afford to feed 'em as a slight return fer the pertection I shall give you and yourn."

"Certainly," agreed Bill dryly, and with a prophetic stir of uneasiness.

"I take it, Hence Sturgill, that you air laughin' at me?"

"Plain ole Mayhall Wells," said Hence, and Captain Wells descended with no little majesty and "biffed" him.

The delighted crowd rose to its feet and gathered around. Tallow Dick came running from the barn. It was biff--biff, and biff again, but not nip and tuck for long. Captain Mayhall closed in. Hence Sturgill struck the earth like a Homeric pine, and the captain's mighty arm played above him and fell, resounding. In three minutes Hence, to the amazement of the crowd, roared:

"'Nough!"

But Mayhall breathed hard and said quietly:

Hence shouted, "Plain ole--" But the captain's huge fist was poised in the air over his face.

"Captain Wells," he growled, and the captain rose and calmly put on his coat, while the crowd looked respectful, and Hence Sturgill staggered to one side, as though beaten in spirit, strength, and wits as well. The captain beckoned Flitter Bill inside the store. His manner had a distinct savor of patronage.

"Misto Richmond," he said, "I make you--I appoint you, by the authority of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate States of Ameriky, as commissary-gineral of the Army of the Callahan."

"Gineral Richmond, I shall not repeat them words." And he didn't, but rose and made his way toward his old gray mare. Tallow Dick held his bridle.

"Dick," he said jocosely, "goin' to run away ag'in?" The negro almost paled, and then, with a look at a blacksnake whip that hung on the barn door, grinned.

"No, suh--no, suh--'deed I ain't, suh--no mo'."

Mounted, the captain dropped a three-cent silver piece in the startled negro's hand. Then he vouchsafed the wondering Flitter Bill and the gaping crowd a military salute and started for the yawning mouth of the Gap--riding with shoulders squared and chin well in--riding as should ride the commander of the Army of the Callahan.

Flitter Bill dropped his blinking eyes to the paper in his hand that bore the commission of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate States of America to Mayhall Wells of Callahan, and went back into his store. He looked at it a long time and then he laughed, but without much mirth.

Grass had little chance to grow for three weeks thereafter under the cowhide boots of Captain Mayhall Wells. When the twentieth morning came over the hills, the mist parted over the Stars and Bars floating from the top of a tall poplar up through the Gap and flaunting brave defiance to Black Tom, his Harlan Home Guard, and all other jay-hawking Unionists of the Kentucky hills. It parted over the Army of the Callahan asleep on its arms in the mouth of the chasm, over Flitter Bill sitting, sullen and dejected, on the stoop of his store; and over Tallow Dick stealing corn bread from the kitchen to make ready for flight that night through the Gap, the mountains, and to the yellow river that was the Mecca of the runaway slave.

At the mouth of the Gap a ragged private stood before a ragged tent, raised a long dinner horn to his lips, and a mighty blast rang through the hills, reveille! And out poured the Army of the Callahan from shack, rock-cave, and coverts of sticks and leaves, with squirrel rifles, Revolutionary muskets, shotguns, clasp-knives, and horse pistols for the duties of the day under Lieutenant Skaggs, tactician, and Lieutenant Boggs, quondam terror of Roaring Fork.

That blast rang down the valley into Flitter Bill's ears and startled him into action. It brought Tallow Dick's head out of the barn door and made him grin.

"Dick!" Flitter Bill's call was sharp and angry.

"Yes, suh!"

Half an hour later the negro stood before the ragged tent of the commander of the Army of the Callahan.

"Marse Bill say he ain't gwine to sen' you no mo' rations--no mo'."

Tallow Dick repeated his message and the captain scowled--mutiny!

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