The Last Rebel

by Joseph A. Altsheler

I shouted to him to stop, and I knew he must have heard me, but for some time he paid no attention. At last he turned around and faced me.

"Why do you go away, colonel?" I asked. "I am no enemy of yours. I am your friend. We have come to rescue you from the wilderness. Your daughter is back there in the hut."

"You are an infernal Yankee spy," he said, "and you are worse than that; you have turned my people against me."

"Colonel," I said, protesting, "don't delude yourself that way any longer. The war is over."

"It is not," he said. "All my men may surrender, but I at least will hold out. Don't I know that they have given up? I saw them in the hut with you and you were not a prisoner. Keep off, I tell you; do not come near me."

I was advancing toward him, not with any intent to harm him, instead the precise reverse, and he, seeing that I would not stop, whipped a pistol out of his belt and fired at me. I suppose his hand was chilled by the cold, for the bullet flew wide of me, chipping splinters from the icy side of a hill. But I stopped, out of regard for my life, expecting another pistol, and he turned and continued his course into the higher mountains. I shouted to him to stop, and I shouted to my comrades in the hut, but the one would not and the others could not hear. He never looked back, and at last disappeared in a thicket, every bush of which in the moonlight looked as if it were cast in silver.

I walked back toward the hut, feeling some chagrin over my failure to keep one of the men for whom we had been looking, after I had found him. I can say with truth that I was not angered at the colonel's bullet, as I thought I understood him. The light of the fire was still shining through the little window, or rather hole in the wall, and threw a long red bar of light across the whitened earth. It was a friendly beacon to any man in a normal state of mind.

All the people in the hut were still sound asleep, the snore of some of the veterans placidly riding the night wind. I took Crothers gently by the shoulders, and succeeded in waking him without waking any of the others. Then I led him out of the hut and told him my story. He agreed with me that it was best not to say anything to Grace of the incident. But he was in a quandary about the wisest course for us to pursue in the morning, as the possible paths now led in several directions.

This quandary was ended for the time by the sound of a rifle-shot. We were so far from expecting anything of the kind that it startled us both very much. My fear, and I believe that of Crothers was the same, was lest the colonel and the doctor had met. We knew that the colonel had taken a rifle with him when he left Fort Defiance, and probably he had put it in some convenient place near by when he came down to spy us out in the hut.

"Take this pistol," said Crothers, shoving one into my hand, "but, remember, Colonel Hetherill must not be harmed."