Cudjo's Cave Part 28

"Why should we blacks have anything to do with this quarrel?" he said with earnest feeling. "Your friends down there"--meaning Stackridge and his party--"are all slaveholders or pro-slavery men. Why should we care which side destroys the other?"

"There is a G.o.d," answered Mr. Villars, with a beaming light in his unterrified countenance, "who is not prejudiced against color; who loves equally his black and his white children; and who, by means of this war that seems so needless and so cruel, is working out the redemption, not of the misguided white masters only, but also of the slave. Whether you will or not, this war concerns the black man, and he cannot long keep out of it. Then will you side with your avowed enemies, or with those who are already fighting in your cause without knowing it?"

These words probed the deep convictions of Pomp's breast. He had from the first believed that the war meant death to slavery; although of late the persistent and almost universal cry of Union men for the "Union as it was,"--the Union with the injustice of slavery at its core,--had somewhat wearied his patience and weakened his faith.

"Here, Cudjo! help get this horse up--we can find a path for him."

Reluctantly Cudjo obeyed; and almost by main strength the two athletic blacks lifted and pulled the animal up the bank, and out of the chasm.

Penn a.s.sisted his old friend to remount, then took leave of him.

"I will be with you again soon!" he cried, hopefully, as the negroes urged the horse forward into the thickets.

Then the young Quaker, left alone, turned to look at the dead rebel. For a moment horrible nausea and faintness made him lean against the tree for support. It was the first violent death of which he had ever been an eye-witness. He had known this man,--who was indeed the same Griffin, who had a.s.sisted the unwilling Pepperill to bring the tar-kettle to the wood-side on a certain memorable evening; ignorant, intemperate, too proud to work in a region where slavery made industry a disgrace, and yet a fierce champion of the system which was his greatest curse. Now there he lay, in his dirt, and rags, and blood, his neck shot through; the same expression of ferocious hate with which he had rushed to bayonet the schoolmaster still distorting his visage;--an object of horror and loathing. Was it not a.s.suming a terrible responsibility to send this rampant sinner to his long account? Yet the choice was between his life and Penn's; and had not Pomp done well? Still Penn could not help feeling remorse and commiseration for the wretch.

"Poor Griffin! I have no murderous hatred for such as you! But if you come in the way of my country's safety, or of the welfare of my friends, you must take the penalty!"

He picked up the musket that had fallen at his feet where he stood bound. Then, stifling his disgust, he felt in the dead man's pockets for ammunition. Cartridges there were none; but in their place he found some bullets and a powder-flask. Then putting in practice the lessons he had learned of Pomp when they hunted together on the mountain, he loaded the gun, resolutely setting his teeth and drawing his breath hard when he thought of the different kind of game it might now be his duty to shoot.

While thus occupied he heard footsteps that gave him a sudden start. He turned quickly, catching up the gun. To his immense relief he saw Pomp, approaching with a smile.

"I thought you were with Mr. Villars!"

"Cudjo has gone with him. I am going with you."

"O Pomp!" cried Penn, with a joyful sense of reliance upon his powerful and sagacious black friend. "But is Mr. Villars safe?"

"Cudjo is faithful," said Pomp. "He believes the old man is your friend, and a friend of the slave. Besides, I promised, if he would take him to the cave, that my next shot, if I have a chance, should be at his old acquaintance, Sile Ropes."

Pomp took the lead, guiding Penn through hollows and among thickets to a ledge crowned with shrubs of savin, whose summit commanded a view of all that mountain-side.

They crept among the bushes to the edge of the cliff. There they paused.

Neither friend nor foe was in sight. No sound of fire-arms was heard,--only the birds were singing.

Penn never forgot that scene. How fresh, and beautiful, and still the morning was! The sunlight flushed the craggy and wooded slopes. Far off, dim with early mist, lay the lovely hills and valleys of East Tennessee.

On the north the peaks of the mountain range soared away, purple, rosy, glorious, in soft suffusing light. In the south-west other peaks receded, billowy and blue. And G.o.d's pure, deep sky was over all.

Touched by the divine beauty of the day, Penn lay thinking with shame of the scenes of human folly and violence with which it had been desecrated, when the negro drew him softly by the sleeve.

"Look yonder! down in the edge of that little grove!"

Peering through an opening in the savins through which Pomp had thrust his rifle, Penn saw, stealing cautiously out of the grove, a man.

"It is Stackridge! He is reconnoitring."

"It is a retreat," said Pomp. "See, there they all come!"

"Carl with the rest, showing them the way!" added Penn.

He was watching with intense interest the movements of his friends, and rejoicing that no foe was in sight, when suddenly Pomp uttered a warning whisper.

"Where? what?" said Penn, eagerly looking in the direction in which the negro pointed.

Down at their left was a long line of dark thickets which marked the edge of a ravine; out of which he now saw emerging, one by one, a file of armed men. They climbed up a narrow and difficult pa.s.s, and halted on the skirts of the thicket. Ten--twelve--fifteen, Penn counted. It was the other party that had been sent out simultaneously with that under Lieutenant Ropes, to get in the rear of the fugitives. And they had succeeded. Only a bushy ridge concealed them from Stackridge's men, who were coming up under the shelter of the same ridge on the other side.

Penn trembled with excitement as he saw the rebels cross swiftly forward, skulking among the bushes, to the summit of the ridge. The negro's eyes blazed, but he was perfectly cool. On one knee, his left foot advanced,--holding his rifle with one hand, and parting the bushes with the other,--he smiled as he observed the situation.

"Here," said he to Penn, "rest your gun in this little crotch. Now can you see to take aim?"

"Yes," said Penn, with his heart in his throat.

"Calm your nerves! Everything depends on our first shot. Wait till I give the word. See! they have discovered Stackridge!"

"We might shout, and warn him," said Penn, whose nature still shrank from using any more deadly means of saving his friends.

"And so discover ourselves! That never'll do. Have you sighted your man?"

"Yes--the one lying on his belly behind that cedar."

"Very well! I'll take the fellow next him. The moment you have fired, keep perfectly still, only draw your gun back and load. Now--fire!"

Just then Stackridge and his men, in full view of their hidden friends on the ledge, were appearing to the fifteen ambushed rebels also.

Suddenly the loud bang of a musket, followed instantly by the sharp crack of a rifle, echoed down the mountain side. The rebel behind the cedar sprang to his feet, dropping his gun, and throwing up his hands, and rushed back down the ridge, screaming, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" while the man next him also attempted to rise, but fell again, Pomp having discreetly aimed at an exposed leg.

"I'm glad we've only wounded them!" whispered Penn, very pale, his lips compressed, his eyes gleaming.

"It has the effect!" said Pomp. "Your friends have discovered the ambush, thanks to that coward's uproar; and now the rascals are panic-struck! Fire again as they go into the ravine--powder alone will do now--a little noise will send them tumbling!"

They accordingly fired blank discharges; at the same time Stackridge and his friends, recovering from their momentary astonishment, charged after the retreating rebels, who had barely time to carry off their wounded and escape into the ravine, when their pursuers scaled the ridge.

"I'm off!" said Pomp, creeping back through the savins. "These men are not my friends, though they are yours. I'll go and look after Cudjo."

And bounding down into a hollow, he was quickly out of sight.

XXV.

_BLACK AND WHITE._

Penn attached his handkerchief to the end of the musket, and standing upon the ledge, waved it over the bushes. Carl, recognizing him, was the first to scramble up the height. The whole party followed, each st.u.r.dy patriot wringing the schoolmaster's hand with hearty congratulations when they learned what use he had made of the rebel musket.

"But the whole credit of the manoeuvre belongs not to me, but to the negro Pomp!" And he related the story of his own rescue and theirs.

The patriots looked grave.

"Where is the fellow?" asked Stackridge.