“Well, that’s a place that all the old folks about here knows of very well. It’s been used by a good many one time and another, but the first time I know of its being used was when old Colonel Atherton tried to conscript a lot of young men down there in Lee, to force ’em to join the Southern army in 1862. Some of these here men was for the Union and they didn’t take to the idea of fighting with the South. Anyway, I don’t think they was much interested either way. They just wanted to be left alone to work their little farms and be let mind their own business. But they didn’t believe in slavery. It wasn’t in ’em to do that. They was liberty loving people, and if anything, a little too independent in their ways for their own good, maybe.”
“Think so?” said Jim. He had his own ideas about independence.
“So twenty young men that was conscripted run up here and hid, and slipped down the mountain nights and got food; and they picked berries and stoned rabbits and I don’t know what all. But even so they didn’t have much and they was almost skin and bone when the searchin’ party found them.”
“And when they found ’em, what did they do?”
Pa seemed not to have heard and walked on even faster than he had been walking, which was quite unnecessary, for though Jim could run along like a squirrel, he was almost out of breath trying to keep up with his father. Now, however, he made a dash and caught at his father’s suspender.
“And what did they do with ’em dad?”
“They took ’em down to Lee, Jim, and stood ’em up in the public square—them twenty young chaps, some of ’em not more than eighteen—and their old neighbors faced up there in double file and shot ’em down.”
“What!” cried Jim.
“Had to, boy. Had to! Military law. The old colonel made ’em.”
“Oh!”