The captain looked at him angrily a moment, and then, without making any further reply, turned and went down the steps and across the lawn to join some of the soldiers who were quartered on the plantation.
“I beg you to be careful, John,� said his mother anxiously, when they were alone again. “You know that man can do whatever he pleases here.�
“No,� replied John, “he cannot frighten me with his bluster and his red coat.�
“But you must not provoke him. Tarleton has given him full command in this district, and he has already committed outrages that no British regular officer would venture on.�
In fact, the war in that region was largely a conflict of partisans native to the soil, and Tory Americans often committed against Whig Americans high-handed acts from which officers accustomed to the procedure of military law would have shrunk.
“Very well,� said John, laughing to reassure his mother. “He hasn’t any great cause for liking me, that’s a fact. I’ve let the pigs out of the pens and scared away the chickens, and told the negroes where to hide some of the stuff in the barns. But this last work is the worst—this sending word, as I did, by Moses to Dick Eddy to look out for father when he passed. Heald will never forgive me for that. I’m not afraid, though,� he added, as he left his mother and followed the captain across the lawn.
Even in his excitement the beautiful summer day had an influence to soothe him. All about him lay the fertile lands of Ridgefield, his father’s plantation, one of the most beautiful in all the South. Behind him was the great house in which he had been born, flanked by the quarters of the negroes and the spacious barns. Off on the left was a grove, and below the hill was the slow stream. John would have felt the sweet influences of the hour more but for the presence of thirty men in scarlet, who now were the virtual masters of the place.
Only a week earlier Captain Heald had somehow gained information that Major Russell and his son had left Sumter’s army for a brief visit home, so the Tory band had at once swooped down and captured both. John had been left on parole, and his father had escaped; but Ridgefield was now occupied by “Tarleton’s men,� and all its beauty for John was gone.
He stopped and watched the guards doing “sentry go� in the road and out by the grove beyond the house, and the longer he watched them the more helpless and angry he felt. “Great liberty this!� he muttered. “Shut up here like a pig in a pen! Not that there are many pigs left here now,� he added, smiling grimly. “Oh, well, I hope father’ll do something, now that he’s got away.�
“John,� said his mother, when he returned to the house, “Captain Heald is going to leave.�