The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come | Page 9

madly. Even with underholds, Chad, being much the shorter of the two, had no advantage that he did not need, and, with a sharp thud, the two fierce little bodies struck the road side by side, spurting up a cloud of dust.
"Dawg--fall!" cried Rube, and Dolph rushed forward to pull the combatants apart.
"He don't fight fair," said Chad, panting, and rubbing his right eye which his enemy had tried to "gouge"; "but lemme at him--I can fight thataway, too." Tall Tom held them apart.
"You're too little, and he don't fight fair. I reckon you better go on home--you two--an' yo' mean dawg," he said to Daws; and the two Dillons--the one sullen and the other crying with rage--moved away with Whizzer slinking close to the ground after them. But at the top of the hill both turned with bantering yells, derisive wriggling of their fingers at their noses, and with other rude gestures. And, thereupon, Dolph and Rube wanted to go after them, but the tall brother stopped them with a word.
"That's about all they're fit fer," he said, contemptuously, and he turned to Chad.
"Whar you from, little man, an' whar you goin', an' what mought yo' name be?"
Chad told his name, and where he was from, and stopped.
"Whar you goin'?" said Tom again, without a word or look of comment.
Chad knew the disgrace and the suspicion that his answer was likely to generate, but he looked his questioner in the face fearlessly.
"I don't know whar I'm goin'."
The big fellow looked at him keenly, but kindly.
"You ain't lyin' an' I reckon you better come with us." He turned for the first time to his brothers and the two nodded.
"You an' yo' dawg, though Mammy don't like dawgs much; but you air a stranger an' you ain't afeerd, an' you can fight--you an' yo' dawg--an' I know Dad'll take ye both in."
So Chad and Jack followed the long strides of the three Turners over the hill and to the bend of the river, where were three long cane fishing-poles with their butts stuck in the mud--the brothers had been fishing, when the flying figure of the little girl told them of the coming of a stranger into those lonely wilds. Taking these up, they strode on--Chad after them and Jack trotting, in cheerful confidence, behind. It is probable that Jack noticed, as soon as Chad, the swirl of smoke rising from a broad ravine that spread into broad fields, skirted by the great sweep of the river, for he sniffed the air sharply, and trotted suddenly ahead. It was a cheering sight for Chad. Two negro slaves were coming from work in a corn-field close by, and Jack's hair rose when he saw them, and, with a growl, he slunk behind his master. Dazed, Chad looked at them.
"Whut've them fellers got on their faces?" he asked. Tom laughed.
"Hain't you nuver seed a nigger afore?" he asked.
Chad shook his head.
"Lots o' folks from yo' side o' the mountains nuver have seed a nigger," said Tom. "Sometimes hit skeers 'em."
"Hit don't skeer me," said Chad.
At the gate of the barn-yard, in which was a long stable with a deeply sloping roof, stood the old brindle cow, who turned to look at Jack, and, as Chad followed the three brothers through the yard gate, he saw a slim scarlet figure vanish swiftly from the porch into the house.
In a few minutes, Chad was inside the big log cabin and before a big log-fire, with Jack between his knees and turning his soft human eyes keenly from one to another of the group about his little master, telling how the mountain cholera had carried off the man and the woman who had been father and mother to him, and their children; at which the old mother nodded her head in growing sympathy, for there were two fresh mounds in her own graveyard on the point of a low hill not far away; how old Nathan Cherry, whom he hated, had wanted to bind him out, and how, rather than have Jack mistreated and himself be ill-used, he had run away along the mountain-top; how he had slept one night under a log with Jack to keep him warm; how he had eaten sassafras and birch back and had gotten drink from the green water-bulbs of the wild honeysuckle; and how, on the second day, being hungry, and without powder for his gun, he had started, when the sun sank, for the shadows of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan