“Why do you want to go over?” asked Tom. “Be ye a Tory?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Why do you go over?” retorted Riley, for that was his name. “I reckon I'm no more of a Tory than you.”
“Whar did ye come from?” said Tom.
“Chiswell's mines, taking out lead for the army o' Congress. But there ain't excitement enough in it.”
“And you?” said Tom, turning to Cutcheon and eying his military coat.
“I got tired of their damned discipline,” the man answered surlily. He was a deserter.
“Look you,” said Tom, sternly, “if you come, what I say is law.”
Such was the sacrifice we were put to by our need of company. But in those days a man was a man, and scarce enough on the Wilderness Trail in that year of '77. So we started away from Carter's Valley on a bright Saturday morning, the grass glistening after a week's rain, the road sodden, and the smell of the summer earth heavy. Tom and Weldon walked ahead, driving the two horses, followed by Cutcheon, his head dropped between his shoulders. The big man, Riley, regaled Polly Ann.
“My pluck is,” said he, “my pluck is to give a redskin no chance. Shoot 'em down like hogs. It takes a good un to stalk me, Ma'am. Up on the Kanawha I've had hand-to-hand fights with 'em, and made 'em cry quits.”
“Law!” exclaimed Polly Ann, nudging me, “it was a lucky thing we run into you in the valley.”