by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER I
COLLECTING A BILL BY FORCE OF ARMS
"Help! Help!"
This call for assistance came from a small house, poorly constructed bythose who had little skill in the art of carpentry. It stood near theSpring Road, in a field of about ten acres of land, under cultivation,though the rank weeds among the useful plants indicated that it had beensorely neglected.
Those familiar with the locality would have recognized it as the abodeof one of those small farmers found all over the country, who werestruggling to improve their worldly condition on a very insufficientcapital. The house was hardly finished, and the want of skill wasapparent in its erection from sill to ridgepole.
Swinburne Pickford was the proprietor of the dwelling and land. Heworked for farmers, planters, and mechanics, for any one who would givehim employment, in addition to his labor in the cultivation of his land;and with the sum he had been able to save from his wages, he had boughtthe land, and started the small farm on his own account. He had a wifeand two small children; and, as his time permitted, he had built thehouse with his own hands alone.
The section of the State of Kentucky in which this little place waslocated had been sorely disturbed by the conflicts and outrages of thetwo parties at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion, one strugglingto drag the State out of the Union, and the other to prevent itssecession. As in the other States of the South, the advocates ofdisunion were more violent and demonstrative than the loyal people, andafter the bombardment of Fort Sumter appeared to be in the ascendant forthis reason.
The entire South had been in a state of excitement from the inception ofthe presidential campaign which resulted in the election of AbrahamLincoln, and the industries of this region suffered in consequence; andit looked as though Pickford's house would never be entirely finished.With the exception of the chimney, placed outside of the building, afterthe fashion of the South, he had done all the work himself. Titus Lyon,the mason of the village of Barcreek, had done this portion of thelabor, and the bill for its erection was still unpaid.
Inside of the house two young men, the older about eighteen and theyounger sixteen, both armed with muskets, had dragged the proprietor ofthe house to the floor. One of them had his foot on the chest of thefallen farmer, and the other was pointing his gun at him. Pickford hadevidently endeavored to protect himself from the assault of his twoassailants, who had got the better of him, and had only given up thebattle when pinned to the floor by the foot of one of them.
"Will you pay the bill I have brought to you?" demanded Sandy Lyon, whowas the principal aggressor in the assault. "Dr. Falkirk paid you overfifty dollars to-day, and you have got the money to pay the bill, whichhas been standing two years."
Swin Pickford made no reply to this statement; but just at that momenthe heard the clippetty-clip of a galloping horse in the road in front ofthe house. With the foot of one of his assaulters on his chest, and theother with an old gun in his hand at his side, Pickford realized thatnothing could be done but submit. Shooting in that locality and at thattime was no uncommon occurrence; for there seemed to be no law in theland, and men generally settled their own grievances, or submitted tothem.
"Help! Help!" shouted the victim of the present outrage, with all thestrength of his lungs, which gave him voice enough to make him heard aquarter of a mile distant.
"Shut up your head!" savagely yelled Sandy Lyon, as he pressed his footdown with all his might by throwing all his weight upon the breast ofthe prostrate farmer.
The sound of the horse's feet in the road seemed to give the victim anew hope, and he tried to shout again. But Sandy flew at his throat likea wolf, and choked him into silence.
"Find a couple of ropes or cords, Orly, and we will tie his hands behindhim!" called Sandy to his brother.
"'Help! Help!' shouted the victim."]
The younger brother hastened to obey the order. Finding nothing of thedescription required, he rushed into the rear room of the house. Thepressure of the assailant's hands upon his throat, and the hope ofassistance from outside, stimulated the victim to further resistance,for the gun in the hands of Orly no longer threatened him. With adesperate struggle he threw Sandy over backwards, and sprang to hisfeet. His persecutor picked himself up, and was about to throw himselfupon him again. Pickford, who was nearly exhausted by the struggle andthe choking, rushed to the open door; and as he was about to pass out heencountered a young man in the uniform of a cavalryman, with a sabredangling at his side, and a carbine slung on his back.
At the moment when the cry for help came from the house, the young man,mounted on a spirited horse, was riding along the Spring Road. He was astout fellow, not more than eighteen years old, with a pleasant face,though a physiognomist would have observed upon it a look ofdetermination, indicating that he could not be trifled with on a seriousoccasion. Neither the house nor the man who occupied it would havetempted the soldier to enter it for any other reason than the call thathad just come from it.
The cavalryman reined in his steed, and halted him with his head to apost in front of the dwelling. Dismounting in haste, he threw the reinsover the hitching-hook and hurried to the front door, just in time toencounter Pickford as he was rushing out. The victim of the outrage wasgasping for breath, and presented a really pitiable aspect to the youngsoldier, to whom he was not a stranger, though they had met as enemiesand not as friends.
"What's the trouble?" asked Deck Lyon, the cavalryman, as he encounteredthe owner of the miniature plantation.
"I have been set upon, and nearly killed by your cousins, Sandy and OrlyLyon, and one of them has nearly choked me to death," gasped Pickford.
"By my cousins!" exclaimed Deck Lyon, astonished at the reply of thevictim.
"Yes; both on 'em," groaned Swin, as he was generally called.
"I supposed you had gone to the county town with the Home Guards," addedDeck.
"No; I never 'listed, 'cause I have a family to take care on."
"Come in, and let me see what the trouble is," continued Deck, as hepushed Swin in ahead of him.
Sandy had been in the act of throwing himself upon his victim again,when he discovered his cousin in the person of the cavalryman. The sightof him caused the angry young man to fall back; and Deck entered theroom just as Orly appeared at the rear door with a piece of bed-cord inhis hand.
"Good-morning, Sandy," said Deck, as pleasantly as though nothing hadcalled for his interference. "There seems to be some trouble here."
"Trouble enough," replied Sandy in a sulky tone.
"Swin Pickford calls for help as though you intended to murder him,"continued Deck, as he looked from one to the other of the belligerents,and took in Orly with the cord at the same time. "You are all on thesame side of the national fight, and you ought to be friends."
"We are not on the same side, for Pickford is a traitor," answeredSandy.
"I'm no traitor!" protested Swin. "But I should like to ask what you andOrly are, if I'm one. I was willing to join the Home Guards for homeservice; but when they started to go inter the Confederate army, I tookoff my name, for I didn't j'in for no sech work. But Sandy and Orly wentoff with the company, and then deserted and come home. What's the senseof them callin' me a traitor when I'm not one, and they be."
"If they deserted, they did a sensible thing," said Deck with a smile,as he glanced at his two cousins. "But I am not here to settle any suchquarrel as this; for I don't care how much you ruffians fight amongyourselves."
"The trouble here has nothing to do with politics or the Home Guards,"replied Sandy.
"Nothing at all, Deck," added Orly.
"What is it all about, then?" inquired Deck. "I came in because a crywas heard from the house which made me think a murder was going onhere."
"That's jest what was goin' on here!" exclaimed Pickford.
"Nothing of the sort," protested Sandy. "Not a word has been said hereabout the army or the Home Guards."
"But your father has marched his compa
ny farther south, to join GeneralBuckner's army."
"That had nothing to do with our business here. Swin Pickford owesfather twenty-seven dollars for building the chimney of this house, andhe has owed it for about two years, and it is time the bill was paid."
"That's all so, Deck Lyon; I don't deny none on't," added Pickford, whohad recovered his breath and his temper by this time. "But I hain't hadthe money to pay the bill. I'm an honest man, and I allus pay my debtswhen I ken. Times have been hard with me for the last two years. Folkshas been all over inter politics, and I couldn't hardly git money enoughto pay for the bread and butter of my wife and children; for therewasn't next to no work at all."
"That's a poor excuse in your case, Swin," added Sandy.
"I went to Cap'n Titus more'n a year ago, and talked to him about thatdebt," continued Pickford, without heeding the remark of Sandy. "He gotheaps of money out of his brother's property, and I didn't s'pose heneeded the money. I offered him five dollars, and told him I'd try topay him five every month. But he didn't want me to do it that way, andtold me I could pay it all to once, when I had the money. Then he wantedme to help him git up the company, and I did; I hoofed it all over thecounty for him, sometimes when I might have worked."
"But he has got money now!" Sandy broke in. "Dr. Falkirk paid him fiftydollars this morning at the grocery; for I saw him do it, and heard himsay how much it was."
"I don't deny that, nuther," said the unfortunate debtor. "But I haven'tgot three dollars left of that money now. I paid Grunge the grocernineteen dollars on't; for he knows I'm an honest man, and trusted me.Then I paid a man that's poorer'n I am for some work he done on myplace, seven dollars and a half, and I had to pay my taxes or lose myfarm."
"I saw Dr. Falkirk pay him that money, and Orly and I tramped all theway over here; for we have no horses at home now. He's got the money,and won't pay the bill. Mother wants the money very much," added Sandy.
"She hasn't got a dollar in the house," Orly put in, perhaps tellingmore than his brother wished to have revealed.
"Then you came over here to collect the bill at the muzzle of your gun,"suggested Deck, who had seen the younger brother pick up his weapon,which had fallen on the floor.
"We meant to make him pay," said Sandy. "I believe he has the money, andI meant to search the house till I found it."
"You would have s'arched till the last gun fires, and you wouldn't foundit then," protested the victim, as he took an old wallet from hispocket, which was found to contain about three dollars in silver."That's all I've got in this world, and none in the next."
"I don't believe he has got any more money, Sandy," said Deck to hiscousin, as he stepped up to him, and spoke to him in a low tone.
"I'm willin' to give him two dollars outen the little I got, though heabused me wus'n any man ever did in this world, and sha'n't in thenext," interposed Pickford.
"I will take what I can get," replied Sandy, as he took the bill fromhis pocket.
The debtor paid him two dollars in silver; and if his mother, as Orlyaffirmed, had not a single dollar in the house, this small sum would begladly received by her. Deck led the way out of the house, and his twocousins followed, just as Mrs. Pickford and her two small children cameinto the room. The sight of them was enough to assure the visitors ofthe poverty of the husband and father.