Part 44 (2/2)

Sumner turned to the Deputy indignantly.

”Then what are you here for?”

He made no answer. And Stuart laughed in derision.

During this tense moment the keen blue eyes of the Lieutenant of cavalry studied John Brown with the interest of a soldier in the man who knows not fear.

At first glance he was a sorry figure. He was lean and gaunt and looked taller than he was for that reason. His face was deeply sun tanned and seamed. He looked a rough, hard-working old farmer. The decided stoop of his shoulders gave the exaggerated impression of age. His face was shaved. He wore a coa.r.s.e cotton s.h.i.+rt, a clean one that had just been stolen from Bernard's store. It was partly covered by a vest. His hat was an old slouched felt, well worn. In general appearance he was dilapidated, dusty, and soiled.

The young officer was too keen a judge of character to be deceived by clothes on a Western frontier. The dusty clothes and worn hat he scarcely saw. It was the terrible mouth that caught and held his imagination. It was the mouth of a relentless foe. It was the mouth of a man who might speak the words of surrender when cornered. But he could no more surrender than he could jump out of his skin.

Stuart was willing to risk his life on a wager that if he consented to lay down his arms, he had more concealed and that he would sleep on them that night in the brush.

The low forehead and square, projecting chin caught and held his fancy.

It was the jaw and chin of the fighting animal. No man who studied that jaw would care to meet it in the dark.

But the thing that had put the Deputy out of commission as warrant officer of the Government was the old man's strange, restless eyes.

Stuart caught their steel glitter with a sense of the uncanny. He had never seen a human eye that threw at an enemy a look quite so disconcerting. He had laughed at the Deputy's fear to move with fifty dragoons to back him. There was some excuse for it. Back of those piercing points of steel-blue light were one hundred and fifty armed followers. What would happen if he should turn to these men and tell them to fight the cavalry of the United States? It was an open question.

The old man walked toward his men with wiry, springing step.

The prisoners were released.

Stuart shook hands with Pate, who was a Virginian and a former student of the University.

Brown's men laid down their arms and dispersed.

True to Stuart's surmise he did not move far from his entrenched camp.

He antic.i.p.ated a fake surrender to the troops. He had concealed weapons for the faithful but half a mile away. With Weiner he built a new camp fire before Stuart's cavalry had moved two miles.

CHAPTER XXIII

The man with the slouched hat and coa.r.s.e cotton s.h.i.+rt lost no time in grieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was the largest force he had ever a.s.sembled. His experience in the three days in which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. The frontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown's personality by direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.

The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered proved themselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country without Brown's knowledge.

They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was one consolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid of these troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of the spoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown any inclination to bring in the enemies' goods for common use.

He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of wider scope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But G.o.d would reveal it clearly.

He spent a week at his new camp in the woods wandering alone, dreaming, praying, weighing this new scheme from every point of view.

His mind came back again and again to the puzzle of the failure to raise a National Blood Feud.

For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyed the command of his G.o.d. He could not have been mistaken in the voice which spoke from Heaven:

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