The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come | Page 3

it made no discrimination against him, that he had accepted
it without question. It did not matter now, except as it bore on the
question as to where he should start his feet. It was a long time for him
to have stayed in one place, and the roving memories, stirred within
him now, took root, doubtless, in the restless spirit that had led his
unknown ancestor into those mountain wilds after the Revolution.
All this while he had been sitting on the low threshold, with his elbows
in the hollows of his thighs and his left hand across his mouth. Once
more, he meant to be bound to no man's service and, at the final
thought of losing Jack, the liberty loving little tramp spat over his hand
with sharp decision and rose.
Just above him and across the buck antlers over the door, lay a long
flint-lock rifle; a bullet-pouch, a powder-horn, and a small raccoon-skin
haversack hung from one of the prongs: and on them the boy's eyes
rested longingly. Old Nathan, he knew, claimed that the dead man had
owed him money; and he further knew that old Nathan meant to take
all he could lay his hands on in payment: but he climbed resolutely
upon a chair and took the things down, arguing the question,
meanwhile:
"Uncle Jim said once he aimed to give this rifle gun to me. Mebbe he
was foolin', but I don't believe he owed ole Nathan so much, an',
anyways," he muttered grimly, "I reckon Uncle Jim ud kind o' like fer
me to git the better of that ole devil--jes a LEETLE, anyways."
The rifle, he knew, was always loaded, there was not much powder in
the horn and there were not more than a dozen bullets in the pouch, but
they would last him until he could get far away. No more would he take,
however, than what he thought he could get along with--one blanket
from the bed and, from the fireplace, a little bacon and a pone of
corn-bread.
"An' I KNOW Aunt Jane wouldn't 'a' keered about these leetle fixin's,

fer I have to have 'em, an' I know I've earned 'em anyways."
Then he closed the door softly on the spirits of the dead within, and
caught the short, deer skin latch-string to the wooden pin outside. With
his Barlow knife, he swiftly stripped a bark string from a pawpaw bush
near by, folded and tied his blanket, and was swinging the little pack to
his shoulder, when the tinkle of a cow-bell came through the bushes,
close at hand. Old Nance, lean and pied, was coming home; he had
forgotten her, it was getting late, and he was anxious to leave for fear
some neighbor might come; but there was no one to milk and, when she
drew near with a low moo, he saw that her udders were full and
dripping. It would hurt her to go unmilked, so Chad put his things
down and took up a cedar piggin from a shelf outside the cabin and did
the task thoroughly--putting the strippings in a cup and, so strong was
the habit in him, hurrying with both to the rude spring-house and
setting them in cool running water. A moment more and he had his
pack and his rifle on one shoulder and was climbing the fence at the
wood-pile. There he stopped once more with a sudden thought, and
wrenching loose a short axe from the face of a hickory log, staggered
under the weight of his weapons up the mountain. The sun was yet an
hour high and, on the spur, he leaned his rifle against the big poplar and
set to work with his axe on a sapling close by--talking frankly now to
the God who made him:
"I reckon You know it, but I'm a-goin' to run away now. I hain't got no
daddy an' no mammy, an' I hain't never had none as I knows--but Aunt
Jane hyeh--she's been jes' like a mother to me an' I'm a-doin' fer her jes'
whut I wish You'd have somebody do fer my mother, ef You know
whar she's a-layin'."
Eight round sticks he cut swiftly--four long and four short--and with
these he built a low pen, as is the custom of the mountaineers, close
about the fresh mound, and, borrowing a board or two from each of the
other mounds, covered the grave from the rain. Then he sunk the axe
into the trunk of the great poplar as high up as he could reach--so that it
could easily be seen--and brushing the sweat from his face, he knelt
down:

"God!" he said, simply, "I hain't nothin' but a boy, but I got to ack like a
man now. I'm a-goin'