The Shepherd of the North

by Richard Aumerle Maher

But Jeffrey Whiting could not say to himself that he had not foreseen all this from the outset. Those days of thinking in jail had given him an insight into realities that years of growth and observation of things outside might not have produced in him. He had been given time to see that 284 some things are insurmountable, that things may be wrong and unsound and utterly unjust and still persist and go on indefinitely. Youth does not readily admit this. Jeffrey Whiting had recognised it as a fact. And yet, knowing this, he had led these men, his friends, men who trusted him, upon this mad raid. They had come without the clear vision of the end which he now realised had been his from the start. They had thought that they could accomplish something, that they had some chance of winning a victory over the railroad. They had believed that the power of the State would intervene to settle the differences between them and their enemy. Jeffrey Whiting knew, must have known all along, that the moment a tie was torn up on the railroad the whole strength of the State would be put forth to capture these men and punish them. There would be no compromise. There would be no bargaining. If they surrendered and gave themselves up now they would be jailed for varying terms. If they did not, if they stayed here and fought, some of them would be killed and injured and in one way or another all would suffer in the end.

He had done them a cruel wrong. The truth of this struck him with startling clearness now. He had led them into this without letting them see the full extent of what they were doing, as he must have seen it.

There was but one thing to do. If they dispersed 285 now and scattered themselves through the hills few of them would ever be identified. And if he went down and surrendered alone the railroad would be almost satisfied with punishing him. It was the one just and right thing to do.

He went swiftly among the men where they stood among the trees, waiting with poised rifles for the word to fire upon the advancing soldiers, and told them what they must do. He had deceived them. He had not told them the whole truth as he himself knew it. They must leave at once, scattering up among the hills and keeping close mouths as to where they had been and what they had done. He would go down and give himself up, for if the railroad people once had him in custody they would not bother so very much about bringing the others to punishment.

His men looked at him in a sort of puzzled wonder. They did not understand, unless it might be that he had suddenly gone crazy. There was an enemy marching up the line toward them, bent upon killing or capturing them. They turned from him and without a spoken word, without a signal of any sort, loosed a rifle volley across the front of the oncoming troops. The battle was on!

The volley had been fired by men who were accustomed to shoot deer and foxes from distances greater than this. The first two ranks of the soldiers fell as if they had been cut down with 286 scythes. Not one of them was hit above the knees. The firing stopped suddenly as it had begun. The hill men had given a terse, emphatic warning. It was as though they had marked a dead line beyond which there must be no advance.

These soldiers had never before been shot at. The very restraint which the hill men had shown in not killing any of them in that volley proved to the soldiers even in their fright and surprise how deadly was the aim and the judgment of the invisible enemy somewhere in the woods there before them. To their credit, they did not drop their arms or run. They stood stunned and paralysed, as much by the suddenness with which the firing had ceased as by the surprise of its beginning.

Their officers ran forward, shouting the superfluous command for them to halt, and ordering them to carry the wounded men back to the cars. For a moment it seemed doubtful whether they would again advance or would put themselves into some kind of defence formation and hold the ground on which they stood.

Jeffrey Whiting, looking beyond them, saw two other trains come slowly creeping up the line. From the second train he saw men leaping down who did not take up any sort of military formation. These he knew were sheriffs’ posses, fighting men sworn in because they were known to be fighters. They were natural man hunters who delighted 287 in the chase of the human animal. He had often seen them in the hills on the hunt, and he knew that they were an enemy of a character far different from those harmless boys who could not hit a mark smaller than the side of a hill. These men would follow doggedly, persistently into the highest of the hills, saving themselves, but never letting the prey slip from their sight, dividing the hill men, separating them, cornering them until they should have tracked them down one by one and either captured or killed them all.

These men did not attempt to advance along the line of the road. They stepped quickly out into the undergrowth and began spreading a thin line of men to either side.