A Certain Rich Man | Page 5

William Allen White
in those days,--and before he
had put on his first collar, Watts McHurdie had taught the boy to play
the accordion. The great heavy bellows was half as large as he was, but
the little chap would sit in McHurdie's harness shop of a summer
afternoon and swing the instrument up and down as the melody swelled
or died, and sway his body with the time and the tune, as Watts
McHurdie, who owned the accordion, swayed and gyrated when he
played. Mrs. Barclay, hearing her son, smiled and shook her head and
knew him for a Thatcher; "No Barclay," she said, "ever could carry a
tune." So the mother brought out from the bottom of the trunk her
yellow-covered book, "Winner's Instructor on the Guitar," and taught
the child what she could of notes. Thus music found its way out of the
boy's soul.

One day in the summer of 1860, as he and his fellows were filing down
the crooked dusty path that led from the swimming hole through the
dry woods to the main road, they came upon a group of horsemen
scanning the dry ford of the Sycamore. That was the first time that John
Barclay met the famous Captain Lee. He was a great hulk of a man who,
John thought, looked like a pirate. The boys led the men and their
horses up the dry limestone bed of the stream to the swimming hole--a
deep pool in the creek. The coming of the soldiers made a stir in the
town. For they were not "regulars"; they were known as the Red Legs,
but called themselves "The Army of the Border." Under Captain J.
Lord Lee--whose life afterwards touched Barclay's sometimes--"The
Army of the Border," being about forty in number, came to Sycamore
Ridge that night, and greatly to the scandal of the decent village, there
appeared with the men two women in short skirts and red leggins, who
were introduced at Schnitzler's saloon as Happy Hally and Lady Lee.
"The Army of the Border," under J. Lord and Lady Lee,--as they were
known,--proceeded to get bawling drunk, whereupon they introduced to
the town the song which for the moment was the national hymn of
Kansas:--
"Am I a soldier of the boss, A follower of Jim Lane? Then should I fear
to steal a hoss, Or blush to ride the same."
As the night deepened and Henry Schnitzler's supply of liquor seemed
exhaustless, the Army of the Border went from song to war and
wandered about banging doors and demanding to know if any
white-livered Missourian in the town was man enough to come out and
fight. At half-past one the Army of the Border had either gone back to
camp, or propped itself up against the sides of the buildings in peaceful
sleep, when the screech of the brakes on the wheels of the stage was
heard half a mile away as it lumbered down the steep bank of the
Sycamore, and then the town woke up. As the stage rolled down Main
Street, the male portion of Sycamore Ridge lined up before the Thayer
House to see who would get out and to learn the news from the
gathering storm in the world outside. As the crowd stood there, and
while the driver was climbing from his box, little John Barclay,
white-faced, clad in his night drawers, came flying into the crowd from

behind a building.
"Mother--" he gasped, "mother--says--come--mother says some one
come quick--there's a man there--trying to break in!" And finding that
he had made himself understood, the boy darted back across the
common toward home. The little white figure kept ahead of the men,
and when they arrived, they found Mrs. Barclay standing in the door of
her house, with a lantern in one hand and a carbine in the crook of her
arm. In the dark, somewhere over toward the highway, but in the
direction of the river, the sound of a man running over the ploughed
ground might be heard as he stumbled and grunted and panted in fear.
She shook her head reassuringly as the men from the town came into
the radius of the light from her lantern, and as they stepped on the hard
clean-swept earth of her doorway, she said, smiling:
"He won't come back. I'm sorry I bothered you. Only--I was frightened
a little at first--when I sent Johnnie out of the back door." She paused a
moment, and answered some one's question about the man, and went
on, "He was just drunk. He meant no harm. It was Lige Bemis--"
"Oh, yes," said Watts McHurdie, "you know--the old gang that used to
be here before the town started. He's with the Red Legs now."
"Well," continued Mrs. Barclay, "he said he wanted to
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