Seth paused, swallowed, then went on:
“Boys, Jim’s been kilt. Yesterd’y we weren’t holdin’ nothin’ agin’ Keeser and his Germins. They hadn’t hurt none o’ we’uns. What devilment they’d done, they’d done outsider these hills whar we ain’t got no concarn. But now hit’s different. Hit’s jest another case o’ them Allens, boys. Hit means we got to draw blood fer blood. Had Jim been one o’ ye or yer sons, I’d say the same thing. A Brannon’s life has been took: ye and me and all our folks has got to take lives to pay fer hissen. That’s the way we do hit up here in these mountings. That’s the way we got to do hit with Keeser and his Germins.”
Lawyer Todd, standing on the edge of the company, frowned and bit his lip. He had been listening to the speech. Inwardly he had rejoiced. But now he felt a pang of disappointment. Seth, he feared, was about to overshoot the mark in his newly aroused enthusiasm. He was reckoning on personal vengeance against “Keeser and his Germins,” something that could not be but which would be hard for him to realize.
Todd, trying to attract as little notice as possible, edged through the crowd until he stood at the old chief’s elbow. As he paused in his delivery, the lawyer caught his attention.
“Seth,” he began in an undertone, “Seth, it doesn’t pay to be too hasty about this thing you’re doing. You know, those people at Washington don’t believe in fighting exactly the way we do down here. They go about it different. It’s the young men who are sent to war. The government takes only those who are in their prime, and it’s the government that picks out the guns they’ll shoot and the clothes they’ll wear and tells ’em how to act and what to do. Don’t misunderstand me, Seth. It’s all right for you to want to go to Europe and whip ‘Keeser and his Germins,’ but Seth, you just naturally can’t go.”
The old man looked at the lawyer in surprise.
“Can’t go?” he repeated aloud. “Ye mean to say I’m too old to go?” There was wrath in the tone. Those near by moved closer, listening. “Why, lawyer, I’m as young in feelin’s as any boy here. I can tromp as fer, shoot as straight and stand as much as any sodjer the gover’nent’s got.”
“Perhaps so,” replied Todd; “that all may be very true. But it’s only the young fellows they want. Lead your men down to Jackson, let the recruiting officers there pick those who are fit: then you and the rest come back here to your farms, raise more crops, pray for them that’s gone, and be good citizens. That’s your part in the war, old friend.”
“I’ll be damned if hit is!” Seth threw up his grizzled head in anger. “I can fight as well as the best of ’em. I reckon I’m an Amerikin too. Hit’s my country and my war and my Jim what’s been kilt. Won’t they let a pa fight them as murdered his son? Won’t they let him shoot them as shot him? By Gawd! o’ course they will, lawyer, and nothin’ in all creation can make me stay home!”
Todd stepped back. He saw the futility of further argument. He even doubted the wisdom of his speaking as much as he had.