Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1896 — THE REDEEMING ACT. [ARTICLE]

THE REDEEMING ACT.

Dave was a coward and he had always borne the reputation of arrant cowardice ever since he had crawled over the side of his dugout cradle to wallow along with the underfoot world on the white sand before his parents’ cabin door. Though country born and bred, a passing thunderstorm struck him with terror, and the sight of the black waters of the “chick" caused a remarkable agitation of his knees. He was a coward, pure and simple. The bristling of a coon routed him unconditionally and a determined ’possum could rob the hen roost before his very face. Indeed, Dave was a coward, and his cousin, Sue Spivey, laughed uproariously when the poor fellow perpetrated his initial and only act of boasting. He had said to her one day very solemnly and no doubt sincerely: “Toe purtec yo’ honah an' happiness I ’ud th’ow away my wutbless life.” Ordinarily Dave’s speech was unpolished and provincial, but on this occasion it rose to the dignity of what lie felt the occasion demanded. Sue knew full well his timorous disposition, and would have thought it safe to count on his poltroonery in any event. But a day was sadly near which proved to her the full worth of the poor fellow’s grandiloquent Assertion. Long before the late unpleasantness, and until this day, Honeypath was only a siding where occasional trains took water and passed each other. Two or three log shanties without special pretensions to any architectural dissimilarity, marked the site of the town, distinguishing it from the vast area of impenetrable swamp that backed it and

the arid waste of sandy bottom through which the glistening polished rails of ! the grand trunk line writhed and sinn-! ated. Along that glowing metal highway troops of both armies passed and repassed, gazed at curiously by the few women and senile males left in the village, but exciting no other emotion than a blank curiosity that died out even before the white mist of the fine Band stirred by the soldiers’ feet had settled behind the retreating bands. Dave was a native of Houeypath and lived with an aged father in one of the shanties. Sue dwelt with her mother in another near by. Dave’s father was a hot-blooded Southerner, whose patri-

otism answered to the first call to arms, but Dave was timid, fearful of the am ell of powder and refrained from action, preferring to suffer the opprobrious epithets which were liberally bestowed upon him and the contempt of the county generally to facing he knew not what horror upon the battlefield. He was not a philosopher and could not plead in extenuation of his neutrality that the martial slaughter of his brother man was a crime and that the wholesale sacrifice of human life was immoral. Dave was simply a coward and accepted meekly the obliquy which the condition Imposed, not even the taunts and cutting sarcasm of pretty Sue Spivey being able to rouse the instincts of battle in his craven soul. Before the strife ended Sue’s mother was gathered to her final rest, being pot out of sight in the little sandy graveyard, with only the comment of the two remaining neighbors. And then Dave and Sue toiled early and late in order to wring from the starving acres an unvaried livelihood of yams, cornbread and bacon, more often the cornbread without the embellishment of potatoes and bacon, particularly during the weeks after a hungry foraging party had passed that way. One day Dave was working among the young potato vines in an open arid field behind the cabin, when Sue ran out to him in troubled haste. “Oh, Dave, I’m pow’ful skeered!” she panted. “Skeered o’ what?” he asked, without Intermission of the bent labor. “Some—some soldiers just wentdown the road, an’ they spoke to me —sassy like.” She hesitated, and Dave looked up to see her pretty face scarlet and her brows bent together in angry lines. “Well, what did they all say?” he demanded, in his accustomed slow drawl, after waitng in vain for her to proceed. “They ’lowed they all was a-comin’ back.” “Who was they, ennyhow?” he asked, uneasily, his face blanching in anticipation of 'the martial visit. “I dunno. They was five of ’em.” “Come on back to the house, Sue,” and, shoulderng bis hoe, he trudged stolidly on before. “Don’t you be skeered,” he continued, as they reached the yard. “I reckon they won’t do aettiinV’ Of the two it would have been manlfest to the most casual observer that he «ra« the wont “Bkeered” but he walked

| on till they reached the house and Sue ■ c led out: “louder they come now—all five.” Dave’s face blanched to a sallow whiteness, but he pulled her quickly i inside the door. i “What you gwlne to doV” Sue asked, nervously, keeping near her cousin, but ]he apparently did not hear. He had taken down a ride that had belonged to Sue’s brother, who had also offered up his life on the altar of the cause, lenvi ing his weapon to his sister as a means j of defence in just such emergencies as this. “What you gwine to do. Dave?” the ' girl persisted, coming closer and laying ' her hand on his arm. Dave shook sev- | oral cartridges into the cylinder of the ride, and waiting in silence, apparently not aware that Sue had touched him. Only a few more moments to wait and then the last act in the commonplace little tragedy. A loud pounding at the rickety cabin door, and a derisive imperative voice demanded: “Hi. in there, open up. or we’ll make splinters of yer ol’ door!” The threat was garnished by several strong expletives and accompanied with more vicious pounding. Then for answer went the spiteful snap of the ride followed by a surprised howl of pain, more voluble profanity and footsteps in rapid retreat.

Dave went to the window and through a knot hole in the shutter re- ! viewed the situation of the enemy, through the aperture the ride again i spoke with decisive, leaden emphasis, ! and when the smoke cleared away the | man inside beheld one of the besiegers | lying prone across the freshly hoed ‘ potato rows, while another limped painfully in the rear of the retreating trio. In the short silence that followed the last shot the arid topography of Honeypath seemed to dash l>efore Dave's vis- ! ion. each peculiarity standing out strong and clear. The fine, white sand covered everywhere with fat-leaved prickly pear and cactus that bloomed perpetually in big butter colored flowers; the bright, blazing sky, the heat 1 that rose and hung heavily over j man and beast, the many insects that I sat' out in the furnace-like sun. rattling : shrilly with very joy. Then the dense I shade of the murky shadowed swamp ; and the big scaly black scorpions and | dainty multi-colored lizards that played an eternal game of hide and seek among the rotting rails of the old snake fence.

The trio had disappeared into the swamp and Dave calmly refilled his rifle, waiting as though lost in thought Presently from the rear of the cabin came the harsh command; “You cowardly bushwhacker In there, come out an’ fight like a man! If ye don’t, we’ll burn ye an’ yer shanty an’ the gal with ye.” There was no opening in the rear of the cabin, the logs were thick and the chinkg were well stopped with clay, so that Dave could not return a leaden answer to this brutal challenge. He fingered the rifle nervously and looked at Sue. “Oh, Dave, don't open the door,” she pleaded, meeting the earnest look bent on her face from beneath the brim of | Dave's frouzy slouch hat; “I ain't 1 afeered to burn.” His lips blanched, his knees were wobbly with fear, but he had not for gotten the one boast of his poor, pinched life, uttered so long ago. “Toe purtec’ yo’ honah on’ happiness, 1 ’ud ! throw away my wutbless life.” He : uttered the words again monotonously, 1 fingering the rifle that was held limply , in his shaking hands. I - Poor Sue, there was no answering laughter in her soul now for those grotesquely sententious words which broke in husky monotone on her hear- | ing like a last prayer. In that moment Dave, who had always been a coward, who had all his life long borne meekly the scorn and opprobrium attached to the character, he whom heretofore nothing could arouse to a sense of his degradation, calmly arose to the very pinnacle of heroism.

“I’m coming out,”he called and shooting back the l>olt he stood on the cabin step before'them. “Fall back and give him a show; he’s coming out, boys!” Sue clung to him, pleading, “Dave, don’t; there’s four to one. Don’t go!” but he pushed her gently backward into the room. “Bolt the door behind me!” he said and passed out. Sue stood motionless in the center of the room waiting for it to begin. Dave pulled the trigger of his gun and turned the corner and instantly four weapons barked with one voice. Sue heard something heavy fall against the side of the 'Cabin; then instantly the sharp, clear utterance of a rifle answered the carbines again and still again. ~Nt)ne carbine only answered; then all was still; only the fretful warbling of a wren in the nearby Cherokee rose hedge breaking the tense silence of the drowsy afternoon hush. ■ Anxiety conquering terror, Sue drew back the bolt, throwing the door wide open. A broad stream of yellow light and a rush of heat met her, passing over a figure on its knees that always trembled at the sight of deep water. Dave gasped his last breath. Bleeding and shattered, he crept to her feet, after the manner of a faithful dog, to die. In the grave gray eyes that were raised to here there w r as the light of the exaltation of a passing spirit, triumphant over the shadow of death which already darkened them. His lips moved in the cbntortion of a smile that broke into an articulate murmur. “I done said that toe purtec’ yo’ honah and happiness I would th’ow away my wuthless life—an’ I done hit.” And Dave, with the crimson glory of his “wuthless life’s” blood streaming from many wounds, passed to the judgment reserved for him from the beginning of all things. The wren shivered out her fragmentary song to heaven, the perfume of the Cherokee rose filled the air of the fading day, and the setting sun, streaming though the cabin door, touched the still figure of Dave, wrapping him in molten splendor as though with the face of a dying god. Poor Dave, though a coward all his life long, he had earned the reward of heroism at the very end. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.’’—Detroit Journal. Greater New York consists of fortyfive islands, just as many as there are new stars in our flag.