Lewis Rand. Mary Johnston
knees. As he did so, a man parted the bushes on the far side of the stream, glanced at the mossed and slippery stones rising from its bed, then with a light and steady foot crossed to the boy's side. He was a young man, wearing a fringed hunting-shirt and leggins and a coonskin cap, and carrying a long musket. Over his shoulder was slung a wild turkey, and at his heels came a hound. He smiled, showing very white teeth, and drew forward his bronze trophy.
"Supper," he said briefly.
The boy nodded. "I heard your gun. I've made a fire yonder beneath a black gum. Adam Gaudylock, I am well-nigh a man!"
"So you be, so you be," answered the other; "well-nigh a man."
The boy beat the air with a branch of sumach. "I want to be a man! But I don't want to be a tobacco-roller like my father, nor—"
"Nor a hunter like me," the other finished placidly. "Be the Governor of Virginia, then, or come with me and make yourself King of the Mississippi! I've watched you, boy! You're growing up ambitious, ambitious as What's-his-name—him that you read of?"
"Lucifer," answered the boy—"ambitious as Lucifer."
"Well, don't spill the water, my kingling," said the hunter good-naturedly. "Life's not so strange as is the way folk look at it. You and I, now—we're different! What I care for is just every common day as it comes naturally along, with woods in it, and Indians, and an elk or two at gaze, and a boat to get through the rapids, and a drop of kill-devil rum, and some shooting, and a petticoat somewhere, and a hand at cards—just every common day! But you build your house upon to-morrow. I care for the game, and you care for the prize. Don't go too fast and far—I've seen men pass the prize on the road and never know it! Don't you be that kind, Lewis."
"I won't," said the boy. "But of course one plays to win. After supper, will you tell me about New Orleans and the Mississippi, and the French and the Spaniards, and the moss that hangs from the trees, and the oranges that grow like apples? I had rather be king of that country than Governor of Virginia."
The sun set, and the chill dusk of autumn wrapped the yellow sedge, the dusty road, and the pines upon the horizon. The heavens were high and cold, and the night wind had a message from the north. But it was warm beneath the gum tree where the fire leaped and roared. In the light the nearer leaves of the surrounding trees showed in strong relief; beyond that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves across the ring of light, an owl hooted, or one of the sleeping dogs stirred and raised his head, then sank to dreams again. The tobacco-roller, weary from the long day's travel, wrapped himself in a blanket and slept in the lee of his thousand pounds of bright leaf, but the boy and the hunter sat late by the fire.
"We crossed that swamp," said Gaudylock, "with the canes rattling above our heads, and a panther screaming in a cypress tree, and we came to a village of the Chickasaws—"
"In the night-time?"
"In the night-time, and a mockingbird singing like mad from a china tree, and the woods all level before us like a floor—no brush at all, just fine grass, with flowers in it like pinks in a garden. So we smoked the peace pipe with the Chickasaws, and I hung a wampum belt with fine words, and we went on, the next day, walking over strawberries so thick that our moccasins were stained red. At noon we overtook a party of boatmen from the Ohio—tall men they were, with beards, and dark and dirty as Indians—and we kept company with them through the country of the Chickasaws and the Choctaws until we came to a high bluff, and saw the Mississippi before us, brown and full and marked with drifting trees, and up the river the white houses of Natchez. There we camped until we made out the flat-boat—General Wilkinson's boat, all laden with tobacco and flour and bacon, and just a few Kentucks with muskets—that the Spaniards at Natchez had been fools enough to let pass! We hailed that boat, and it came up beneath the cottonwoods, and I went aboard with the letters from Louisville, and on we went, down the river, past the great woods and the strange little towns, and the cotton-fields and the sugar-canes, and the moss hanging like banners from taller trees than this gum, to New Orleans. And there the Intendant would have laid hands on our cargo and sent every mother's son of us packing, but Miro, that was governor, stood our friend, being frightened indeed of what Kentucky might do if put to it! And there, on the levee, we sold that tobacco and flour and bacon; and the tobacco which we sold at home for shillings and pence, we sold at New Orleans for joes and doubloons. Ay, ay, and not one picayune of duty did we pay! Ay, and we opened the Mississippi!"
The speaker paused to take from his pouch several leaves of tobacco, and to roll them deftly into a long cigar. The boy rose to throw more wood upon the fire, then sat again at the trader's feet, and with his chin in his hand stared into the glowing hollows.
"The West!" said Gaudylock, between slow puffs of smoke. "Kentucky and the Ohio and the Mississippi, and then Louisiana and all that lies beyond, and Mexico and its gold! Ha! the Mississippi open from its source—and the Lord in Heaven knows where that may be—to the last levee! and not a Spaniard to stop a pirogua, and right to trade in every port, and no lingo but plain English, and Mexico like a ripe apple—just a touch of the bough, and there's the gold in hand! If I were a dreamer, I would dream of the West."
"Folk have always dreamed of the West," said the boy. "Sailors and kings, and men with their fortune to make. I've read about Cortez and Pizarro—it would be fine to be like that!"
"I thought you wanted to study law."
"I do; but I could be a great soldier, too."
Gaudylock laughed. "You would trap all the creatures in the wood! Well, live long enough, and you'll hear a drum beat. They're restless, restless, yonder on the rivers! But they'll need the lawyers, too. Just see what the lawyers did when we fought the British! Mr. Henry and Mr. Jefferson—"
The boy put forth a sudden hand, gathered to him a pine bough, and with it smote the red coals of the fire. "Oh!" he cried, "from morn till night my father keeps me in the fields. It's tobacco! tobacco! tobacco! And I want to go to school—I want to go to school!"
"That's a queer wanting," said the other thoughtfully. "I've wanted fire when I was cold, and venison when I was hungry, and liquor when I was in company, and money when I was gaming, and a woman when the moon was shining and I wished to talk—but I have never wanted to go to school. A schollard sees a wall every time he raises his head. I like the open."
"There are walls in the forest," answered the boy, "and I do not want to be a tobacco-roller! I want to study law!"
The hunter laughed. "Ho! A lawyer among the Rands! I reckon you take after your mother's folk!"
The boy looked at him wistfully. "I reckon I do," he assented. "But my name is Rand."
"There are worse folk than the Rands," said the woodsman. "I've never known one to let go, once he had man or beast by the throat! Silent and holdfast and deadly to anger—that's the Rands. If Gideon wants tobacco and you want learning, there'll be a tussle!"
"My father's a tyrant!" cried the boy passionately. "If he doesn't keep his hands off me, I'll—I'll kill him!"
Gaudylock took the cigarro from his lips. "You're too fond of that word," he exclaimed, with some sternness. "All the wolves that the Rands ever hunted have somehow got into their blood. Suppose you try a little unlearning? Great lawyers and great men and great conquerors and good hunters don't kill their fathers, Lewis—no, nor any other man, excepting always in fair fight."
"I know—I know!" said Lewis. "Of course he's my father. But I never could stand for any one to get in my way!"
"That's just what the rattlesnake says—and after a while nobody does get in his way. But he must be a lonely creature."
"Do you think," asked the boy oddly—"do you think I am really like that—like a rattlesnake?"
Adam gave his mellow laugh. "No, I don't. I think you are just a poor human. I was always powerfully fond of you, Lewis—and