Part 46 (2/2)

The sensitive mind of the young Westerner responded to its soul appeal.

He stood for half an hour enraptured with its grandeur. Two great rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, rus.h.i.+ng through rock-hewn gorges to the sea, unite here to hurl their tons of foaming waters against the last granite wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Beyond the gorge, through which the roaring tide has cut its path, lies the City of Was.h.i.+ngton on the banks of the Potomac, but sixty miles away--a day's journey on a swift horse; an hour and a half by rail.

Cook at first had sharply criticized Brown's selection of such a place for the scene of the Great Deed. As he stood surveying in wonder the sublimity of its scenery he muttered softly:

”The old man's a wizard!”

The rugged hills and the rush of mighty waters called the soul to great deeds. There was something electric in the air. The town, the rivers, the mountains summoned the spirit to adventure. The tall chimneys of the United States a.r.s.enal and Rifle Works called to war. The lines of hills were made for the emplacement of guns. The roaring waters challenged the skill of generals.

The scout felt his heart beat in quick response. The more he studied the hills that led to High k.n.o.b, a peak two thousand four hundred feet in height, the more canny seemed the choice of Brown. From the top of this peak stretches the county of Fauquier, the beginning of the Black Belt of the South. Fauquier County contained more than ten thousand Slaves and seven hundred freed negroes. There were but nine thousand eight hundred whites. From this county to the sea lay a series of adjoining counties in which the blacks outnumbered the whites. These counties contained more than two hundred and sixty thousand negroes.

The Black Belt of Virginia touched the Black Belts of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia--an unbroken stretch of overwhelming black majority. In some counties they outnumbered the whites, five to one.

This mountain gorge, hewn out of the rocks by the waters of the rivers, was the gateway into the heart of the Slave System of the South. And it could be made the highroad of escape to the North if once the way were opened.

Another fact had influenced the mind of Brown. The majority of the workmen of Harper's Ferry were mechanics from the North. They would not be enthusiastic defenders of Slavery. They were not slave owners. In a fight to a finish they would be indifferent. Their indifference would make the conquest of the few white masters in town a simple matter.

Cook felt again the spell of Brown's imperious will. He had thought the old man's chief reason for selecting Harper's Ferry as the scene was his quixotic desire to be dramatic. He knew the history of the village.

It had been named for Robert Harper, an Englishman. Lord Fairfax, the friend of George Was.h.i.+ngton, had given the millwright a grant of it in 1748. Was.h.i.+ngton, himself, had made the first survey of the place and selected the Ferry, in 1794, as the site of a National Armory.

Colonel Lewis Was.h.i.+ngton, the great-grandson of Was.h.i.+ngton's brother, lived on the lordly plantation of Bellair, four miles in the country.

Brown had learned that the sword which Frederick the Great had given to Was.h.i.+ngton, and the pistols which Lafayette had given him hung on the walls of the Colonel's library.

He had instructed Cook to become acquainted with Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton, and locate these treasures. He had determined to lead his negro army of insurrection with these pistols and sword buckled around his waist.

Cook was an adventurer but he had no trace of eccentricity in his character. He thought this idea a dangerous absurdity. And he believed at first that it was the one thing that had led his Chief to select this spot. He changed his mind in the first thirty minutes, as he stood studying the mountain peak that stood sentinel at the gateway of the Black Belt.

With a new sense of the importance of his mission he sought a boarding house. He was directed by the watchman at the railroad station, a good-looking freedman, an employee of the Mayor of the town, to the widow Kennedy's. Her house was situated on a quiet street just outside the enclosure of the United States a.r.s.enal.

Cook was a man of pleasing address, twenty-eight years old, blue-eyed, blond, handsome, affable, genial in manner and a good mixer. Within twenty-four hours he had made friends with the widow and every boarder in the house.

They introduced him to their friends and in a week he had won the good opinion of the leading citizens of the place. A few days later the widow's pretty daughter arrived from boarding school and the young adventurer faced the first problem of his mission.

She was a slender, dark-eyed, sensitive creature of eighteen. Shy, romantic, and all eyes for the great adventure of every Southern girl's life--the coming of the Prince Charming who would some day ride up to her door, doff his plumed hat, kiss her hand and kneel at her feet?

Cook read the eagerness in her brown eyes the first hour of their meeting. And what was more serious he felt the first throb of emotion that had ever distressed him in the presence of a woman.

He had never made love. He had tried all other adventures. He had never met the type that appealed to his impulsive mind. He was angry with himself for the almost resistless impulse that came, to flirt with this girl.

It could only be a flirtation at best and, it could only end in bitterness and hatred and tragedy in the end. He had done dark deeds on the Western plains. But they were man deeds. No delicate woman had been involved in their tangled ethics.

There was something serious in his nature that said no to a flirtation of any kind with a lovely girl. He had always intended to take women seriously. He did take them seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill a man if he were cornered. But a woman--that was different. He tried to avoid the eyes of Virginia. He couldn't. In spite of all, seated opposite at the table, he found himself looking into their brown liquid depths. They were big, soulful eyes, full of tenderness and faith and wonder and joy. And they kept saying to him:

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