CHAPTER XXII

RODNEY'S SACRIFICE AND HIS MOTHER'S

One midsummer day Rodney Allison walked along the dusty road. He did not carry his head erect as usual but seemed to be pondering over some problem.

He was a "strapping," fine looking lad, almost a man grown, and in experience already a man. He stopped before a little gate opening into a pasture and gave three shrill whistles. Over the top of a ridge two pointed ears appeared, poised for an instant, and then their owner galloped into view.

"What a beauty you are, Nat," said the boy, as if talking to himself, stretching out his hand to stroke the silky nose that was thrust over the fence.

The two standing together formed a picture to afford delight so long as the eye shall admire grace, breeding and power. The boy's figure was erect, his wavy hair hanging gracefully to his broad shoulders.

His face, while not handsome, was clear cut, resolute and showed lines of character not usually graven in the face of one as young. His dark gray eyes always looked at one steadily. Now they were darker than usual and had in them the shadow of trouble.

"Nat, how would you like to change masters?"

The colt nuzzled the boy's face and then his pockets, in one of which he found the nubbin of corn he sought.

"You rascal, all you care about having is a good commissary. You won't miss me, will you? Oh, no! I'd thought we'd go to the war together. We would have something worth fighting for, a free country, where a man wouldn't need to have dukes for uncles in order to be of some consequence in the world. We would show 'em, you and I, that horses and boys raised in this country are as good as the best; but that can't be. You are too good a horse to drag the plow on this poor little farm. You shall have one of the greatest men in this great land for a master, while I will stay away from the war and both of us may save our precious skins and perhaps be British subjects in the end."

Nat's purplish eyes seemed full of comprehension, as he mumbled the lad's hand with his lips.

"Horses seem to know more of some things than they really do, and know more of some other things than they seem to; how's that for horse sense, Nathaniel Bacon Allison?"

Nat blinked, but shed no tears. Rodney blinked and his eyes were wet.

The boy opened the gate and the colt followed him to the stable, where he was saddled and ridden to Monticello.

As Rodney left the manager of Mr. Jefferson's estate he said: "I only ask that you say to Mr. Jefferson, I sell the colt with the understanding that I may buy him back if I ever get the money."

"I'll do it, an' you won't need it in writin' so long as Mr. Jefferson lives."

What a long, dusty, gloomy road was that over which the boy walked back to his home!

"What has become of Nat?" his mother asked, a few days later. "I haven't seen him lately."

"He was too valuable a horse for me to own and I sold him to Mr.

Jefferson. I can have the privilege of buying him back," and Rodney turned away, afraid to trust himself to say more.

The crops that fall were successful and the neighbours told the boy he would surely make a good farmer. He worked early and late and grew strong; whereas his mother, watching him with sad eyes, became weaker.

When Mrs. Allison was absorbed in thought the old coloured woman would stand looking with anxious face at her mistress. One day she said, "Missus, yo' jes' done git well. Dat's no mo'n doin' what's right by Ma.r.s.e Rodney, ah reckon."

Mrs. Allison looked up into the kindly old face of the coloured woman, and a wan smile was on her lips as she replied, "Mam, you are a woman of good sense, and, G.o.d willing, I will get well." From that day she began to improve.

Angus being away, Rodney had little diversion.

His chief pastime now was target practice with the rifle. The old Indian had chosen wisely when he purchased the rifle, and the boy became very proficient in marksmanship. One day when he had made a fine shot he turned and found his mother and the two servants watching him.

"I hadn't an idea you were such a fine shot, Rodney," said his mother.

"Scolding Squaw hasn't an equal in the whole county of Albemarle, mother."

"Lan' sakes, an' what heathen mought she be?" asked Mam.

"She was once the rifle of a noted chief of the Wyandottes, and when she speaks a deadly silence follows," replied the boy, laughing.

"Ma.r.s.e Rodney will be wantin' ter jine de riflemen, I specs," remarked Th.e.l.lo.

Mam, noting her mistress' face, hastened to say, "Reckon de riflemen done froze up in Canada las' winter. Dey won't be rantin' down in ol'

Virginny fer one right smart spell."

That year, 1776, there were no steel rails laid nor copper wires strung to carry the news, yet it was surprising how quickly tidings of victory and defeat spread over the country.

Charlottesville was a very small town out near the shadows of the Blue Ridge mountains, yet its people, not many weeks after the events occurred, had heard how Donald McDonald had led the Scotch Tories of North Carolina against the rifles of the Whigs and how the rifles proved more powerful than the Scottish broadswords; then had come the joyful news that Commodore Parker and his forty ships had sailed away from Charleston, South Carolina, which they had come to capture as though the doing of it were the pastime of a summer's holiday. Between them and the town they had found a little island and on it a small fort built of soft palmetto logs bedded in sand and defended by a few daring men under the gallant Moultrie. These brave fellows could shoot cannon as straight as could the North Carolina Whigs their rifles.

Later, even among the hamlets along the frontier, the cheers rang out when it was learned that Congress had finally approved the Declaration of Independence, and aid was now expected from France!

Not all the news was encouraging. Washington had known that, unless granted men and supplies, he could not hold New York against the British. Congress had insisted that he make the attempt, but gave him no a.s.sistance. He had failed, and barely kept the greater part of the American army out of British clutches. The king had succeeded in hiring Hessians, some twenty thousand of them, to fight England's battles in America, with the promise of all the loot they could secure. France was very slow in granting aid, uncertain as yet how much resistance America might be able to make. The attempt to capture Quebec had failed, and the Americans were chased out of Canada.

Washington had been unable to keep an effective army together as Congress would provide only for short terms of enlistment, and little money or supplies for the troops. Men who had shouted for freedom were now despondent, and some of them were going over to the enemy, which occupied New York and most of New Jersey and had concluded the war was about ended.

In September Morgan came back from Quebec, but under parole. He had been offered great inducements to fight with England, but scorned them as an insult to his manhood. If he could be released from parole he would do loyal service for his country. Arnold had fought desperately around Lake Champlain with the remnants of the troops driven from Canada, but the odds against him were too great. Washington, alone, was the nucleus around which the hopes of America centred, but he could accomplish little except to hold positions between the British and Philadelphia.

Winter came on and the situation grew worse. Congress became frightened and made ludicrous haste to vote all sorts of a.s.sistance to Washington, after it was too late for him to use it for striking an effective blow.

It was evident that Rodney brooded over the long series of failures, but he still stoutly insisted, "It's not Washington's fault, I know."

When, just after New Year's, 1777, report came that Washington, with his ragged troops, had crossed the Delaware amid the floating ice, and marched almost barefooted to Trenton in a howling snowstorm, and there had defeated the Hessians, Rodney fairly shouted in his joy, "I knew he'd do it, I knew he'd do it!"

About a month later, Angus came home. He was a sorry looking Angus, what with a severe wound, and his ragged regimentals, and his feet bound up in rags. But he was a very important Angus, withal, for had he not crossed the Delaware with Washington; had he not left b.l.o.o.d.y footprints on the snowy road to Trenton; had he not charged down King Street, swept by the northeast gale and British lead, and driven the brutal Hessians as chaff is swept before the wind? He was, to the village folk, the returned conqueror, and much they made of him, the Allisons with the others. He no longer envied Rodney mounted on Nat riding over the country with all the importance of a special messenger, and it is to be hoped that Rodney did not envy him, now that conditions seemed reversed. To young Allison's credit be it said that, if in his heart lay a smouldering spark of envy, it did not show itself.

When Angus was able to go about, he frequently visited the Allison home, and revelled in narrations of his experiences. He, like the common people generally, regarded Washington as an idol. He delighted in descriptions of the appearance of his beloved general at the crossing of the Delaware; again at the battle of Princeton, when Washington had ridden out directly between the lines of the British and the wavering Americans he sought to encourage, sitting like a statue on his big horse, while the bullets of friends and foes flew about him, and then riding away unscathed, as though by a miracle.

The lad's enthusiasm made it all seem very real, even when he told how, one winter morning, the general walked about among his men while wearing a strip of red flannel tied about his throat because of a cold, and picked up with one hand a piece of heavy baggage, that would have burdened both arms of an ordinary man, and lightly tossed it on top of a baggage wagon.

"He had but twenty-four hundred men to capture Trenton, an' all the other generals who were to help him failed. I was right close to him when the messenger rode up to tell him Cadwalader couldn't git across the river, an' I heard him say 'I am determined to cross the river and attack Trenton in the morning.' I tell ye thar was no fellers who heard him but would hev follered him on their knees, bein' they couldn't hev used their feet."

"The British thought the war ended before they lost Trenton, I hear,"

said Mrs. Allison, her eyes shining, for one of her ancestors had ridden with Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginian rebel, when there was British tyranny in the Old Dominion.

"No doubt of it; why, all of us in the army reckoned how the war couldn't last much longer. We hadn't rations nor clothes; the men were goin' home when their time was up an' wouldn't enlist again. We heard that Cornwallis was goin' home to tell the king how he'd licked us, an' old Howe was gamblin' an' guzzlin' in New York, spendin' his prize money like water. Oh, they thought they had us licked for sure!

Long's Washington lives they can't lick us nohow, though they've got over thirty thousand men an' plenty o' money, an' we with neither. But the soldiers are 'lowin' as how France will help us. Benjamin Franklin is over there an' they say he has a way o' gittin' what he goes after."

"I believe it was Doctor Franklin's 'Poor Richard' who said, 'G.o.d helps those who help themselves.' We've got to rely on ourselves,"

Mrs. Allison said, as if speaking to herself, but all the while looking at Rodney.

He did not notice this, for he sat gazing into the fire, saying little, though no word of Angus escaped him. Finally, looking up and addressing his mother, he said, "Wasn't it Mr. Mason who said he did not wish to survive the liberties of his country?"

"I think so," she replied, adding, "but we say things in time of excitement which are pretty hard to live up to," and turned away.