The Frontiersmen | Page 9

meant to say,"--but these qualifications were lost in the stress of Emsden's voice, once more rising stridently.
"Not a horn nor a hoof to be seen till after I had fired. I didn't know there were any cow-pens about--didn't use to be till after you had crossed the Keowee. But if there had been, is a man to see a wolf pull down a yearling, say, and not fire a rifle because Madam Cow will take the high-strikes or Cap'n Bull will go on the rampage? Must I wait till I can make a leg,"--he paused to execute an exaggerated obeisance, graceful enough despite its mockery,--"'Under your favor, Cap'n Bull,' and 'With your ladyship's permission,' before I kill the ravening brute, big enough to pull down a yearling? Don't talk to me! Don't talk to me!" He held out the palms of his hands toward them in interdiction, and made as if to go--yet went not!
For a reactionary sentiment toward him had set in, and there were those fair-minded enough, although with their little all at stake, to admit that he had acted with reasonable prudence, and that it was only an unlucky chance which had sent the panic through the herds with such disastrous effect.
"The herders should not stop the pack-train, if I had my will," declared one of the settlers with a belligerent note.
"No, no," proclaimed another; "not if it takes all the men at Blue Lick Station to escort it!"
"Those blistered redcoats at Fort Prince George are a deal too handy to be called on by such make-bates as the herders on the Keowee River."
"Fudge! The commandant would never let a bayonet stir."
"Gad! I'd send an ambassador for an ambassador. Tit for tat," declared Emsden. "I'd ask 'em what's gone with all our horses,--last seen in those desolated cow-pens,--that the voice of mourning is now lifted about!"
There was a chuckle of sheer joy, so abrupt and unexpected that it rose with a clatter and a cackle of delight, and culminated in a yell of pleasurable derision.
Now everybody knew that the horses bought in that wild country would, unless restrained, return every spring to "their old grass," as it was called,--to the places where they had formerly lived. When this annual hegira took place in large numbers, some permanent losses were sure to ensue. The settlers at Blue Lick had experienced this disaster, and had accepted it as partly the result of their own lack of precaution during the homing fancy of the horses. But since the herders manifested so little of the suavity that graces commercial intercourse, and as some of the horses had been seen in their cow-pens, it was a happy thought to feather the arrow with this taunt.
"And who do you suppose will promise to carry such a message to those desperate, misguided men, riding hither an' thither, searching this wild and woeful wilderness for hundreds o' head o' cattle lost like needles in a hayrick, and eat by wolves an' painters by this time?" demanded "X" derisively.
"I promise, I promise!--and with hearty good will, too!" declared Emsden. "And I'll tell 'em that we are coming down soon armed to the teeth to guard our pack-train, and fight our way through any resistance to its passage through the country on the open trading-path. And I'll acquaint the commandant of Fort Prince George of the threats of the herders against the Blue Lick Stationers, and warn him how he attempts to interfere with the liberties of the king's loyal subjects in their peaceful vocations."
Thus Emsden gayly volunteered for the mission.
The next morning old Richard Mivane, thinking of it, shook his head over the fire,--and not only once, but shook it again, which was a great deal of trouble for him to take. Having thus exerted his altruistic interest to the utmost, Richard Mivane relapsed into his normal placidity. He leaned back in his arm-chair, the only one at the station, fingering his gold-lined silver snuffbox, with its chain and ladle, his eyes dwelling calmly on the fire, and his thoughts busy with far away and long ago.
He was old enough now to enter into the past as a sort of heritage, a promised land which memory had glozed with a glamour that can never shine upon the uncertain aspects of the future. The burning sense of regret, the anguish of nostalgia, the relinquishment of an accustomed sphere, its prospects and ideals, the revolt against the uncouth and rude conditions of the new status, the gradual reluctant naturalization to a new world,--these were forgotten save as the picturesque elements of sorrow and despair that balanced the joys, the interest, the devil-may-care joviality, the adventure, the strange wild companionship,--all that made the tale worth rehearsing in the flare and the flicker of the fireside glow.
The rains had come.