The Night Riders
Page 1
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YOUR UNCLE SAM
OWNS A GREAT NAVY
A very important adjunct of Government.--You and everybodymust be interested in it.
A Submarine Boat. A new "wrinkle" in warfare.]
THE AMERICAN BATTLESHIP
AND LIFE IN THE NAVY
By THOS. BEYER, a Bluejacket
is the most authoritative as well as the most readable book published onthe subject. Also Humorous Man-o'-War Yarns. =40 full-page half-tones,including Rear-Admiral Evans' flagship "Connecticut," and a lithographedmap, in four colors, of the cruise around the world by the U. S. fleet,1907-1908.=
EXTRA SILK CLOTH, GOLD TITLE, $1.25
At all bookstores and book supply houses, or sent postpaid, on receiptof price, by
LAIRD & LEE, Publishers, 263-265 Wabash Avenue, CHICAGO
DRESSED IN HER HUSBAND'S CLOTHES, SHE LED THEM TO THETOBACCO BARN.]
"_A fence between makes love more keen_."
THENIGHT RIDERS
A Thrilling Story of Love,Hate and Adventure, graphically depicting theTobacco Uprising in Kentucky
BYHENRY C. WOOD
"_Who warms in his bosom the eggs of hatred hatchesa nest of snakes_."
Publisher's logo.]
CHICAGOLAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1908,BY WILLIAM H. LEE,in the office of the Librarian of Congress, atWashington, D. C.
DRAMATIC RIGHTS RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR.
_Preface_
_The author has cleverly interwoven a tale of absorbing heart interestwith a graphically depicted view of the present Tobacco Troubles inKentucky and the exciting times when the people formed into bands, knownas THE NIGHT RIDERS, to protest against what they considered the unjusttax of the Toll Gate System. These protests were of a strenuous nature,not unlike those of the tobacco-growing section today, and as thecharacters in the story are real, live beings, who did things, thereader's interest never flags._
_THE PUBLISHERS._
A troop of riders]
BRACING HIMSELF IN HIS STIRRUPS, MILT CRIED HURRIEDLY TOJUDSON: "LEAP UP BEHIND ME!"--_Page 130_.]
Title and author with the image of a rider.]
THE NIGHT RIDERSByHenry Cleveland Wood
CHAPTER I.
The early morning sunlight entered boldly through the small panes ofglass into the kitchen of the toll-house and fell in a checkered bandacross the breakfast table set against the sill of the one long, lowwindow.
The meal was a simple one, plainly served, but a touch of gold andpurple--royal colors of the season--was given it by a bunch of autumnflowers, golden-rod and wild aster, stuck in a glass jar set on thewindow sill.
A glance at the two seated at each end of the narrow table would haveenabled one to decide quickly to whom was due this desire forornamentation, for the mother was a sharp-featured, ratheruntidy-looking woman, on whom the burden of hard work and poverty hadlaid certain harsh lines not easily eradicated, while the daughter'syouth and comeliness had overcome them as a fine jewel may assert itsbeauty despite a cheap setting.
The sun's lambent rays, falling across the girl's shapely head andshoulders, touched to deeper richness the auburn hair, gathered in alarge, loose coil, that rested low upon her neck, and also accentuatedthe clear, delicately-tinted complexion like a semi-transparency that isgiven rare old china when the light illumines it.
The meal was eaten almost in silence, but toward the end of thebreakfast Mrs. Brown looked up suddenly, her cup of coffee raised partlyto her lips, and said, in her querulous treble:
"Sally, Foster Crain says aigs air fetchin' fo'hteen an' a half cents intown. Count what's stored away in the big gourd, when you git througheatin', an' take 'em in this mornin'."
"How am I to go?" asked her daughter, looking up from her plate. "Joe'slimping from that nail he picked up yesterday."
"Likely somebody'll be passin' the gate that'll give you a seat. TheSquire may be along soon." A certain inflection crept into the speaker'svoice.
"I'll walk," announced Sally, with sudden determination. "It's cool andpleasant, and I'd as soon walk as ride."
The mother looked across furtively to where her daughter sat.
"I don't see what makes you so set ag'in the Squire," she said,plaintively, a few moments later, as if she had divined her daughter'sunuttered thoughts.
"He's an old fool!" declared Sally, promptly.
"An' it strikes me that you're somethin' of a young one!" retorted hermother sharply.
The girl made no answer, save a perceptible shrug of her prettyshoulders, and soon afterward got up and began to clear away thebreakfast dishes. Mrs. Brown sighed deeply.
"Most girls would be powerful vain to have the Squire even notice 'em,"the mother continued, in a more persuasive tone, as a sort of balmoffering to the girl's wounded feelings. She placed her cup and saucerin her plate and put back a small piece of unused butter on the side ofthe butter dish, then slowly arose from the table.
"It's seldom a po' gyurl has such a good chance to better her condition,if she was only willin' to do so," she continued argumentatively, forthe subject was a favorite theme with her, and she had rung its changesfor the listener's benefit on more than one occasion. She gave herdaughter a sidelong glance--partly of inquiry, partly of reproach--andturned to her work.
Sally, with something like an impatient jerk, lifted from the stove thesteaming kettle and poured a part of the hot contents into the dish-panon the table, but she made no answer, though soon the clatter of tinsand dishes--perhaps they rattled a little louder than usual--mingled asa sort of accompaniment to the reminiscent monologue that Mrs. Browncarried on at intervals during her work.
"It's all owin' to the Squire's kindness an' interest in us that we'refixed this comfortable, for, dear knows I'd never got the toll-gate inthe first place if it hadn't been for his influence, an' now, if you'donly give him any encouragement at all, you might be a grand sightbetter off. Such chances don't grow as thick as blackberries in summer,I can tell you."
The dishes and tins rattled angrily, but Sally said not a word.
"About the only good showin' a poor gyurl has in this world is to marryas well as she can, an' when she neglects to do this, she's got nobodyto blame but herself--not a soul."
Sally had the dishes all washed and laid in a row on the table to drain,and now she caught them up, one by one, and began to polish awayvigorously, as if the effort afforded a certain relief to her feelings,since she had chosen to take refuge in silence.
"S'posin' he _is_ old an' ugly," soliloquized Mrs. Brown, abruptlybreaking into speech again, and seemingly addressing her remarks to theskillet she was then cleaning, and which she held up before her andgazed into intently, as a lady of fashion might do a hand glass at hertoilet. "What o' that? Beauty's only skin deep, an' old age is likely tocome to us all sooner or later. It's all the better if he is along inyears," she added, with a sudden chuckle and a second furtive glanceover the top of the skillet toward the girl, to see if she waslistening. "Then he ain't so likely to live forever, an' a trim youngwidow, with property of her own an' money in bank, can mighty soon finda chance to marry ag'in, if she's a mind to."
A cloud of anger swept over the listener's face, which the mother failedto see, as the skillet again intervened.
"There ain't nothin' like havin' a home of your own, an' knowin' you'vegot a shelter for your old age--no, indeed, they ain't! The Squire'smighty well fixed; he's got a real good farm, an' turnpike stock, an'cash, an' a nice, comfortable house besides."
"Comfortable!" exclaimed Sally, with a toss of her head, and breakingher resolve to keep silent. "It looks like a ha'nted barn stuck backamongst them cedar trees down in the hollow. No wonder his first wifewent crazy an' hung herself up in the attic, poor thing! They say hetreated her shameful mean."
Sally had looked upon this house many times and with conflictingthoughts as she passed it now and then. An air of neglect and lonelinesshung about the spot. The house, hopelessly ugly and angular, was set farback from the road in the midst of a large yard given over to weeds anduntrimmed shrubbery, while a clump of gloomy-looking cedars defied eventhe brightness of sun and sky.
"You can't put credit into everything you hear," admonished Mrs. Brown,breaking ruthlessly into her daughter's musings. "Besides, a spry younggirl can pretty much have her own way when she marries a man so mucholder than herself.
"There's Serena Lowe, that use' to be," she continued, reminiscently."She an' her fam'ly was about as poor as Job's turkey when we went toschool together, an' many's the time I've divided my dinner with herbecause she didn't seem to have any too much of her own.
"But she had a downright pretty face--all white an' pink, like adoll's--an' it helped her to ketch old Bartholomew Rice, an' now sherides around in her own kerridge an' pair, mind you, an' no prouderwoman ever lived this minute. You'd think from the airs she givesherself that she was born in the best front room on a Sunday.
"The Squire's as good as hinted to me that if he could marry the one hewants, he wouldn't in the least mind goin' to the expense of paintin'an' fixin' up the place till you wouldn't know it," insinuated Mrs.Brown, dropping her voice to a more confidential tone.
"He'd have to paint an' fix hisself up, too, till you wouldn't know_him_, either, before I'd even so much as look at him," tartly assertedSally.
"A tidy young wife could change his looks an' the looks of the house ina mighty little while, if she only had a mind to do so," suggested Mrs.Brown, in subtly persuasive tones. "It must be dreadful lonesome livin'as he does, with nobody to look after things."
"He might have kept his nephew for company," insisted Sally, with asudden ring of resentment in her voice. "He drove him away."
"Which likely he wouldn't have done if Milt hadn't been so headstrongan' wild. You know the Squire's goin' to have his own way about things."
"About _some_ things," corrected Sally.
"Mebbe about all, sooner or later," said Mrs. Brown, in hopefulprediction. "He ain't a man to give up easy when he sets his mind in acertain direction."
"Perhaps his nephew isn't, either," suggested her daughter, with alittle tinge of color deepening in each cheek.
"No, an' that's just the cause an' upshot of the whole trouble!" criedthe mother, in a sudden flash of vehemence, dropping the persuasivetones she had heretofore employed for resentful chiding. "His nephew'sat the bottom of it all, an' you seem ready an' willin' to throw away agood chance of a nice, comfortable home an' deprive me of a shelter inmy old age just for the sake of that no-account Milt Derr, who happensto have smooth ways an' a nimble tongue. It looks like he's fairlybewitched you."