The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come | Page 2

rudely hollowed from the half of a
bee-gum log, and, unnoticed, slipped away at the first muffled stroke of
the dirt--doubling his fists into his eyes and stumbling against the
gnarled bodies of laurel and rhododendron until, out in a clear sunny
space, he dropped on a thick, velvet mat of moss and sobbed himself to
sleep. When he awoke, Jack was licking his face and he sat up, dazed
and yawning. The sun was dropping fast, the ravines were filling with
blue shadows, luminous and misty, and a far drowsy tinkling from the
valley told him that cows were starting homeward. From habit, he
sprang quickly to his feet, but, sharply conscious on a sudden, dropped
slowly back to the moss again, while Jack, who had started down the
spur, circled back to see what the matter was, and stood with uplifted
foot, much puzzled.
There had been a consultation about Chad early that morning among
the neighbors, and old Nathan Cherry, who lived over on Stone Creek,
in the next cove but one, said that he would take charge of the boy.
Nathan did not wait for the burial, but went back home for his wagon,
leaving word that Chad was to stay all night with a neighbor and meet
him at the death-stricken cabin an hour by sun. The old man meant to
have Chad bound to him for seven years by law--the boy had been told
that--and Nathan hated dogs as much as Chad hated Nathan. So the lad
did not lie long. He did not mean to be bound out, nor to have Jack
mistreated, and he rose quickly and Jack sprang before him down the
rocky path and toward the hut that had been a home to both. Under the
poplar, Jack sniffed curiously at the new-made grave, and Chad called
him away so sharply that Jack's tail drooped and he crept toward his

master, as though to ask pardon for a fault of which he was not
conscious. For one moment, Chad stood looking. Again the stroke of
the falling earth smote his ears and his eyes filled; a curious pain
caught him by the throat and he passed on, whistling--down into the
shadows below to the open door of the cabin.
It was deathly still. The homespun bedclothes and hand-made quilts of
brilliant colors had been thrown in a heap on one of the two beds of
hickory withes; the kitchen utensils--a crane and a few pots and
pans--had been piled on the hearth, along with strings of herbs and
beans and red pepper-pods--all ready for old Nathan when he should
come over for them, next morning, with his wagon. Not a living thing
was to be heard or seen that suggested human life, and Chad sat down
in the deepening loneliness, watching the shadows rise up the green
walls that bound him in, and wondering what he should do, and where
he should go, if he was not to go to old Nathan; while Jack, who
seemed to know that some crisis was come, settled on his haunches a
little way off, to wait, with perfect faith and patience, for the boy to
make up his mind.
It was the first time, perhaps, that Chad had ever thought very seriously
about himself, or wondered who he was, or whence he had come.
Digging back into his memory as far as he could, it seemed to him that
what had just happened now had happened to him once before, and that
he had simply wandered away. He could not recollect where he had
started from first, but he could recall many of the places where he had
lived, and why he had left them--usually because somebody, like old
Nathan, had wanted to have him bound out, or had misused Jack, or
would not let the two stray off into the woods together, when there was
nothing else to be done. He had stayed longest where he was now,
because the old man and his son and his girl had all taken a great fancy
to Jack, and had let the two guard cattle in the mountains and drive
sheep and, if they stayed out in the woods over night, struck neither a
stroke of hand nor tongue. The old mother had been his mother and,
once more, Chad leaned his head against the worn lintel and wept
silently. So far, nobody had seemed to care particularly who he was, or
was not--nor had Chad. Most people were very kind to him, looking

upon him as one of the wandering waifs that one finds throughout the
Cumberland, upon whom the good folks of the mountains do not visit
the father's sin. He knew what he was thought to be, and it mattered so
little, since