“By George! I tell you we are in for it,” said Leon, pulling the blankets up over him, “and I don’t know how we are going to come out. There are rebels all around us, and if they are as bad down here as they are up in Tennessee there won’t one of us come through alive. But I am armed, and I’ll see that some of them get as good as they send.”
It was daylight when Leon awoke, and after washing his hands and face in a basin outside the door he stood in front of the fireplace, before which the woman was engaged in cooking the breakfast, and looked up at the man’s rifle, which hung on some wooden pegs over the mantel. It was an ordinary muzzle-loading thing, and didn’t look as though it had been the death of anybody.
“That rifle has been too much for half a dozen men,” said the woman.
“Why, how did that happen?” asked Leon.
“It happened when they came to burn us out,” answered the woman. “They came one night and tried to call Josiah to the door, but he would not go. He took his rifle down, but he wouldn’t shoot until they did, and as he is a good shot, he hit every time. The next day we had to move, for they came with a larger body of men.”
“There is one thing that makes me think you are in a bad place,” said Leon. “You are right here close to the river which separates the two counties, and if anybody makes a raid over here they will strike you, sure. I think if that convention is held you had better come down to our place. We have room enough there to stow you away.”
“Oh, thank you. Perhaps you had better speak to Josiah about it.”
Josiah was out attending to his horses and cow, and Leon went out to him. He looked at him with more respect than he did the night before, for, in addition to burning the bridges, he had “got the better” of half a dozen men. He bade Leon a hearty good-morning, but the boy noticed that all the while he kept talking to him he kept his eyes fastened on the woods. Probably it was from the force of habit. He agreed with Leon that they were in a bad place to meet raids, and promised that after the convention came off he would see what he could do. He didn’t want to trespass on anybody until he had to.
Breakfast over, Leon brought his horse to the door, put on his saddle and bridle and bid good-bye to the family from Tennessee, and rode off. He was two days more on his route, and on the third day he turned his horse toward home. He reached it without any mishap, and his mother was glad to see him, judging by the hug she gave him. His father had arrived the night before, but the stories he had to tell didn’t compare with Leon’s. Of course his mother was shocked when she learned that Josiah (Leon did not know what else to call him) had shot so many men before he left Tennessee, but she readily agreed to shelter his wife and children.
“I never thought to ask him his name,” said Leon, “but I will ask him down to the convention. He was dead in favor of it, and said he would be there. I tell you that man has passed through a heap. He couldn’t talk to me without running his eyes over the woods to see if there was anybody coming.”