The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come [42]
"All right. Get my bay horse. That old mare of yours is too slow."
The Major's big bay horse! Chad was dizzy with pride.
When they galloped out into the dark woods, there were the General and Harry and Dan and half a dozen neighbors, sitting silently on their horses and listening to the music of the hounds.
The General laughed.
"I thought you'd come," he said, and the Major laughed too, and cocked his ear. "Old Rock's ahead," he said, for he knew, as did everyone there, the old hound's tongue.
"He's been ahead for an hour," said the General with quiet satisfaction, "and I think he'll stay there."
Just then a dark object swept past them, and the Major with a low cry hied on his favorite hound.
"Not now, I reckon," he said, and the General laughed again.
Dan and Harry pressed their horses close to Chad, and all talked in low voices.
"Ain't it fun?" whispered Dan. Chad answered with a shiver of pure joy.
"He's making for the creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched spurs to his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush and whisking around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and clattered across the road and on! For a few moments the Major kept close to Chad, watching him anxiously, but the boy stuck to the big bay like a jockey, and he left Dan and Harry on their ponies far behind. All night they rode under the starlit sky, and ten miles away they caught poor Reynard. Chad was in at the kill, with the Major and the General, and the General gave Chad the brush with his own hand.
"Where did you learn to ride, boy?"
"I never learned," said Chad, simply, whereat the Major winked at his friends and patted Chad on the shoulder.
"I've got to let my boys ride better horses, I suppose," said the General; "I can't have a boy who does not know how to ride beating them this way."
Day was breaking when the Major and Chad rode into the stable-yard. The boy's face was pale, his arms and legs ached, and he was so sleepy that he could hardly keep his eyes open.
"How'd you like it, Chad?"
"I never knowed nothing like it in my life," said Chad.
"I'm going to teach you to shoot."
"Yes, sir," said Chad.
As they approached the house, a squirrel barked from the woods.
"Hear that, Chad?" said the Major. "We'll get him."
The following morning, Chad rose early and took his old rifle out into the woods' and when the Major came out on the porch before breakfast the boy was coming up the walk with six squirrels in his hand. The Major's eyes opened and he looked at the squirrels when Chad dropped them on the porch. Every one of them was shot through the head.
"Well, I'm damned! How many times did you shoot, Chad?"
"Seven."
"What--missed only once?"
"I took a knot fer a squirrel once," said Chad.
The Major roared aloud.
"Did I say I was going to teach you to shoot, Chad?"
"Yes, sir."
The Major chuckled and that day he told about those squirrels and that knot to everybody he saw. With every day the Major grew fonder and prouder of the boy and more convinced than ever that the lad was of his own blood.
"There's nothing that I like that that boy don't take to like a duck to water." And when he saw the boy take off his hat to Margaret and observed his manner with the little girl, he said to himself that if Chad wasn't a gentleman born, he ought to have been, and the Major believed that he must be.
Everywhere, at school, at the Deans', with the darkies--with everybody but Conners, the overseer had became a favorite, but, as to Napoleon, so to Chad, came Waterloo--with the long deferred tournament came Waterloo to Chad.
And it came after a certain miracle on May-day. The Major had taken Chad to the festival where the dance was on sawdust in the woodland--in the bottom of a little hollow, around which the seats ran as in an amphitheatre. Ready to fiddle for them stood none other than John Morgan himself, his gray eyes dancing and an arch smile on his handsome face; and, taking a place among the dancers, were Richard Hunt and--Margaret.