Christmas Eve on Lonesome | Page 3

left foot brushed, shaking
the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath.
Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with the underlying streak
of yellow that was leading him whither, God only knew--once only
Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the
moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once
more the chaplain's voice came back to him.
"Mine!" saith the Lord.
Just how, Buck could not see with himself in the snow and him back
there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made
him bare his head.
"Yourn," said Buck grimly.
But nobody on Lonesome--not even Buck--knew that it was Christmas
Eve.

THE ARMY OF THE CALLAHAN
I
The dreaded message had come. The lank messenger, who had brought
it from over Black Mountain, dropped into a chair by the stove and
sank his teeth into a great hunk of yellow cheese. "Flitter Bill"
Richmond waddled from behind his counter, and out on the little
platform in front of his cross-roads store. Out there was a group of
earth-stained countrymen, lounging against the rickety fence or
swinging on it, their heels clear of the ground, all whittling, chewing,
and talking the matter over. All looked up at Bill, and he looked down
at them, running his eye keenly from one to another until he came to
one powerful young fellow loosely bent over a wagon-tongue. Even on
him, Bill's eyes stayed but a moment, and then were lifted higher in
anxious thought.

The message had come at last, and the man who brought it had heard it
fall from Black Tom's own lips. The "wild Jay-Hawkers of Kaintuck"
were coming over into Virginia to get Flitter Bill's store, for they were
mountain Unionists and Bill was a valley rebel and lawful prey. It was
past belief. So long had he prospered, and so well, that Bill had come to
feel that he sat safe in the hollow of God's hand. But he now must have
protection--and at once--from the hand of man.
Roaring Fork sang lustily through the rhododendrons. To the north
yawned "the Gap" through the Cumberland Mountains. "Callahan's
Nose," a huge gray rock, showed plain in the clear air, high above the
young foliage, and under it, and on up the rocky chasm, flashed Flitter
Bill's keen mind, reaching out for help.
Now, from Virginia to Alabama the Southern mountaineer was a
Yankee, because the national spirit of 1776, getting fresh impetus in
1812 and new life from the Mexican War, had never died out in the
hills. Most likely it would never have died out, anyway; for, the world
over, any seed of character, individual or national, that is once dropped
between lofty summits brings forth its kind, with deathless tenacity,
year after year. Only, in the Kentucky mountains, there were more
slaveholders than elsewhere in the mountains in the South. These,
naturally, fought for their slaves, and the division thus made the war
personal and terrible between the slaveholders who dared to stay at
home, and the Union, "Home Guards" who organized to drive them
away. In Bill's little Virginia valley, of course, most of the sturdy
farmers had shouldered Confederate muskets and gone to the war.
Those who had stayed at home were, like Bill, Confederate in
sympathy, but they lived in safety down the valley, while Bill traded
and fattened just opposite the Gap, through which a wild road ran over
into the wild Kentucky hills. Therein Bill's danger lay; for, just at this
time, the Harlan Home Guard under Black Tom, having cleared those
hills, were making ready, like the Pict and Scot of olden days, to
descend on the Virginia valley and smite the lowland rebels at the
mouth of the Gap. Of the "stay-at-homes," and the deserters roundabout,
there were many, very many, who would "stand in" with any man who
would keep their bellies full, but they were well-nigh worthless even

with a leader, and, without a leader, of no good at all. Flitter Bill must
find a leader for them, and anywhere than in his own fat self, for a
leader of men Bill was not born to be, nor could he see a leader among
the men before him. And so, standing there one early morning in the
spring of 1865, with uplifted gaze, it was no surprise to him--the
coincidence, indeed, became at once one of the articles of perfect faith
in his own star--that he should see afar off, a black slouch hat and a
jogging gray horse rise above a little knoll that was in line with the
mouth of the Gap. At once he crossed his hands over his chubby
stomach with a pious sigh,