The Last Rebel

by Joseph A. Altsheler

"The colonel has one idea fixed in his head," he said, "and I do not think anything can drive it out."

I raised my voice and shouted for Crothers, and in a few moments his answering cry came. His meeting with the doctor was, as that of two veterans should be, joyful, but repressed.

We went back to the hut, where we found the army still asleep. But we awoke two of the men, directing them to watch until daylight, while we three lay down upon the floor and went to sleep.

Grace's pleasure when she saw the doctor in the morning sound and well was great, though she said but little. I knew the relief it was to her. But we began at once to organize the search for the last rebel. The hut was to remain a base of operations for the present, and, despite her protests, we insisted that Grace remain there at least that day. I had some hope that the colonel, pressed by cold and hunger, might return to the hut; but the doctor shattered this hope by saying that he might find shelter and food elsewhere in the mountains.

"He was fond of hunting," said the doctor, "and it is more than likely that in such a wilderness he provided one or more little camps besides this for future use."

We divided into two parties. Crothers led one, and the doctor the other. I went with the doctor. I waved my handkerchief as a sign of good cheer to Grace, who stood in the doorway, and we were soon in the mazes of the higher mountains. A good sun came out, and in an hour the weather had turned warm enough to permit snow, but not warm enough to melt the ice and sleet. The clouds soon gathered, obscuring the sun, and for an hour we had a gentle snow which covered the ground a quarter of an inch deep, but did not trouble us, as the morning was without wind. It made our footing much less uncertain, and the doctor drew further encouragement from it, as we might find the colonel's footsteps if he should move about after the snow-fall.

The doctor hoped no more than what proved to be the truth, for as the noon hour approached, one of the men called attention to footsteps in the snow. We believed they could be no other than the colonel's, and we followed the trail, which led along the hill-side over rocks and through scrub. It was difficult to follow, and we might well have credited it to a younger man, had not the doctor assured us that the colonel was a most agile mountaineer.

The trail left the hill-side shortly and entered a fairly level bit of country, which by a stretch of courtesy one might have called a small plateau. Many scrub bushes grew upon it, but we could follow the footsteps, whether they led through the thickets or the open. The doctor confessed that the region was new to him, but from the direct manner in which the trail led on he did not believe it was strange to Colonel Hetherill.

The plateau by and by dipped down into a valley, which in its turn gave way to a lot of knife-edged hills, thick-set with sharp and pointed stones, but after this we had the plateau again, and the trail was there still before us, though it seemed to lead straight toward a white peak, too steep for ascent.

The peak was fringed with woods at the base. As we approached these woods with our heads down, our eyes fixed upon the trail of footsteps in the snow, we were hailed in a loud voice and ordered to stop. We saw a little shack built against the trunk of one of the big trees. It was thatched over with bark; under the pent the muzzle of a rifle was poked out at us in the most alarming way.