Part 15 (1/2)

”Why shouldn't you be the man?” demanded Gaudylock. ”Just as well you as Claiborne--Wilkinson's naught, I don't count him--or any one still East, like--like--Aaron Burr.”

”Aaron Burr?”

”Well, I just instance him. He's ambitious enough, and there doesn't seem much room for him back here. If Adam Gaudylock was ambitious and was anything but just an uneducated hunter with a taste for danger--I tell you, Lewis, I can see the blazed trees, I can see them with my eyes shut, stretching clean from anywhere--stretching from this room, say--beyond the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi, and beyond Mexico to where the sun strikes the water! It's a trail for fine treading and a strong man, but it leads--it leads--”

”It might lead,” said Rand, ”to the Tarpeian Rock.”

”Where's that?”

”It's where they put to death a sort of folk called traitors--Benedict Arnolds and such.”

”Pshaw!” exclaimed Adam. ”Traitors! Benedict Arnold _was_ a traitor.

This is not like that. America's large enough for a mort of countries.

All the states are countries--federated countries. Say some man is big enough to _make_ a country west of the Mississippi--Well, one day we may federate too. Eh, Lewis, 'twould be a powerful country--great as Rome, I reckon! And we'd smoke the calumet with old Virginia--and she'd rule East and we'd rule West. D'you think it's a dream?--Well, men make dreams come true.”

”Yes: Corsicans,” answered Rand. ”Aaron Burr is not a Corsican.” He looked at his left hand, lying upon the arm of his chair, raised it, shut and opened it, gazing curiously at its vein and sinew. ”You are talking midsummer madness,” he said at last. ”Let's leave the blazed trees for a while--though we'll talk of them again some time. Have you been along the Three-Notched Road?”

”Yes,” replied Adam, turning easily. ”Your tobacco's prime, the wheat, too, and the fencing is all mended and white-washed. It's not the tumble-down place it was in Gideon's time--you've done wonders with it.

The morning-glories were blooming over the porch, and your white cat was.h.i.+ng itself in the sun.”

”It's but a poor home,” said Rand, and he said it wistfully. He wished for a splendid house, a home so splendid that any woman must love it.

”It's not so fine as Fontenoy,” quoth Adam, ”nor Monticello, nor Mr.

Blennerha.s.sett's island in the Ohio, but a man might be happy in a poorer spot. Home's home, as I can testify who haven't any. I've known a Cherokee to die of homesickness for a skin stretched between two saplings. How long before you are back upon the Three-Notched Road?”

Rand moved restlessly. ”The doctor says I may go downstairs to-day. I shall leave Fontenoy almost immediately. They cannot want me here.”

”Have you seen Mr. Ludwell Cary?”

”He and his brother left Fontenoy some time ago. But he rides over nearly every day. Usually I see him.”

”He is making a fine place of Greenwood. And he has taken a law office in Charlottesville--the brick house by the Swan.

”Yes. He told me he would not be idle.”

Adam rose, and took up the gun which it was his whim to carry. ”I'll go talk ginseng and maple sugar to Colonel Churchill for a bit, and then I'll go back to the Eagle. As soon as you are on the Three-Notched Road again I'll come to see you there.”

”Adam,” said Rand, ”in the woods, when chance makes an Indian your host, an Indian of a hostile tribe, an Indian whom you know the next week may see upon the war-path against you--and there is in his lodge a thing, no matter what, that you desire with all your mind and all your heart and all your soul, and he will not barter with you, and the thing is not entirely his own nor highly valued by him, while it is more than life to you, and moreover you believe it to be sought by one who is your foe--would you, Adam, having eaten that Indian's bread, go back into the forest, and leave behind, untouched, unspoken of, that precious thing your soul longed for? The trail you take may never lead again to that lodge. Would you leave it?”

”Yes,” answered Adam. ”But my trail _should_ lead that way again. It is a hostile tribe. I would come back, not in peace paint, but in war paint. I would fairly warn the Indian, and then I would take the bauble.”

”Here is Mammy Chloe,” said the other. ”What have you there, mammy--a dish of red pottage?”

”No, sah,” said Mammy. ”Hit's a baked apple an' whipped cream an'

nutmeg. Ole Miss she say Gineral Lafayette sho' did favour baked apples wunst when he wuz laid up wid a cold at her father's house in Williamsburgh. An' de little posy, Miss Deb she done gather hit outer her square in de gyarden. De Cun'l he say de fambly gwine expect de honour of yo' company dis evenin' in de drawin'-room.”

Adam said good-bye and went away. An hour later, going down the Fontenoy road, he came upon a small brown figure, seated, hands over knees, among the blackberry bushes.

”Why, you partridge!” he exclaimed. ”You little brown prairie-hen, what are you doing so far from home? Blackberries aren't ripe.”