University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

This sudden and unlooked for escape of Munro,
from a fate held so inevitable as well by himself
as all around him, was not more a matter of satisfaction
than surprise with that experienced
personage. He did not deliberate long upon his
release, however, before recovering his feet, and
resuming his former belligerent attitude. The circumstance
to which he owed the unlooked-for and
most unwonted forbearance of his enemy was
quickly revealed. Following the now common
direction of all eyes, he discerned a body of
mounted and well-armed men, winding on their
way in the direction of the encampment, in whose
well known uniform he recognised a detachment
of the “Georgia Guard,” a troop kept, as they all

well knew, in the service of the state, for the purpose
not merely of breaking up the illegal and unadvised
settlements of the squatters upon the frontiers,
upon lands now known to be valuable, but
also of repressing and punishing their now frequent
outlawries. Such a course had become essential
to the repose and protection of the more quiet and
more honest adventurer; whose possessions they
not only entered upon and despoiled, but whose
lives, in numerous instances, had been made to pay
the penalty of their enterprise. Such a force
could alone meet the exigency, in a country where
the sheriff dared not often show himself; and, thus
accoutred, and with full authority, the guard, either
en masse, or in small divisions like the present,
was employed, at all times, in scouring, though
without any great success, the infested districts.
The body now approaching was readily distinguishable,
though yet at a considerable distance—
the road over which it came lying upon a long
ridge of bald and elevated rocks. Its number was
not large, comprising not more than forty persons;
but, as the squatters were most commonly distrustful
of one another, not living together or in much
harmony, and having but seldom, as in the present
instance, a community of interest or unity of
purpose, such a force was considered by the proper
authorities adequate to all the duties assigned it.
There was but little of the pomp or circumstance
of military array in their appearance or approach.
Though dressed uniformly, the gray and plain
stuffs which they wore were more in unison with
the habit of the hunter than the warrior; and, as
in that country, the rifle is familiar as a household
thing, the encounter with an individual of the troop
would perhaps call for no remark. The plaintive
note of a single bugle, at intervals reverberating
wildly among the hills over which the party wound
its way, more than any thing beside, indicated its
character; and even this accompaniment is so familiar
as an appendage with the southron—so
common, particularly to the negroes, who acquire
a singular and sweet mastery over it, while driving
their wagons through the woods, or poling their
boats down the streams, that one might fairly doubt,
with all these symbols, whether the advancing
array was in fact more military than civil in its
character. They rode on briskly in the direction
of our contending parties—the sound of the bugle
seeming not only to enliven, but to shape their
course, since the stout negro who gave it breath
rode considerably ahead of the troop.

Among the squatters there was but little time
for deliberation, yet never were their leaders more
seriously in doubt or more certainly in difficulty
than now, as to the course most proper for their
adoption in the common danger. They well
knew the assigned duties of the guard, and felt the
peril in its full. It was necessary for the common
safety—or we should say, rather, the common
spoil—that something should be done and determined
upon immediately. They were now actually
in arms, and could no longer, appearing individually
and at privileged occupations, claim to be
un-obnoxious to the laws; and it need occasion no
surprise in the reader, if, among a people of the
kind and class we have described, the measures
chosen in the present exigency were of a character
the most desperate and reckless. Dexter,
whose recent triumph gave him something in the
way of a title to speak first, thus delivered himself:—

“Well, Munro—you may thank the devil and
the Georgia Guard for getting you out of that

scrape. You owe both of them more now than
you ever calculated to owe them. Had they not
come in sight just at the lucky moment, my knife
would have made mighty small work with your
windpipe, I tell you—it did lie so tempting beneath
it.”

“Yes—I thought myself a gone chick under
that spur, George, and so I believe thought all
about us; and when you put off the finishing stroke
so suddenly, I took it for granted that you had
seen the devil, or some other matter equally frightful,”
was the reply of Munro, in a spirit and style
equally unique and philosophical with that which
preceded it.

“Why, it was something, though not the devil,
bad enough for us in all conscience, as you know
just as well as I. The Georgia Guard won't give
much time for a move.”

“Bad enough, indeed, Dexter—though I certainly
ought not to complain of their appearance,”
was the reply of Munro, whose recent escape
seemed to run more in his mind than any other
subject. He proceeded—

“But this isn't the first time I've had a chance
so narrow for my neck; and more than once it
has been said to me, that the man born for one fate
can't be killed by another; but when you had me
down and your knife over me, I began to despair
of my charm.”

“You should have double security for it now,
Wat, and so keep your prayers till you see the
cross timbers, and the twisted trouble. There's
something more like business in hand now, and
seeing that we shan't be able to fight one another,
as we intended, all that we can do now is to make
friends as fast as possible, and prepare to fight
somebody else.”

“You think just as I should in this matter, and
that certainly is the wisest policy left us. It's a
common cause we have to take care of, for I happen
to know that Captain Fullam—and this I take
to be his troop—has orders from the governor to
see to us all, and clear the lands in no time. The
state, it appears, thinks the land quite too good for
such as we, and takes this mode of telling us so.
Now, as I care very little about the state—it has
never done me any good, and I have always been
able to take care of myself without it—I feel just
in the humour, if all parties are willing, to have a
tug in the matter before I draw stakes.”

“That's just my notion, Wat; and d—n 'em, if
the boys are only true to the hub, we can row this
guard up salt river in no time and less. Look you,
now—let's put the thing on a good footing, and
have no further disturbance. Put all the boys on
shares—equal shares—in the diggings, and we'll
club strength, and can easily manage these chaps.
There's no reason, indeed, why we shouldn't; for
if we don't fix them, we are done up, every man of
us. We have, as you see and have tried, a pretty
strong fence around us, and, if our men stand to
it, and I see not why they shouldn't, Fullam can't
touch us with his squad of fifty, ay, and a hundred
to the back of 'em.”

The plan was feasible enough in the eyes of men
to whom ulterior consequences were as nothing in
comparison with the excitement of the strife; and
even the most scrupulous among them were satisfied,
in a little time, and with few arguments, that
they had nothing to gain and every thing to lose by
retiring from the possessions in which they had
toiled so long. There was nothing popular in the
idea of a state expelling them from a soil of which
it made no use itself; and few among the persons

composing the array had ever given themselves
much if any trouble, in ascertaining the nice, and
with them entirely metaphysical distinction, between
the mine and thine of the matter. The
proposition, therefore, startled none, and prudence
having long since withdrawn from their counsels,
not a dissenting voice was heard to the suggestion
of a union between the two parties for the purposes
of common defence. The terms, recognising all of
both sides, as upon an equal footing in the profits
of the soil, were soon arranged and completed;
and in the space of a few moments, and before the
arrival of the new comers, the hostile forces were
arrayed under one banner, and side by side, stood
up for the new contest as if there had never been
any other than a community of interest and feeling
between them. A few words of encouragement
and cheer, given to their several commands by the
two joint leaders, Munro and Dexter, were scarcely
necessary, for what risk had their adherents to run
—what to fear—what to lose? The courage of
the desperado invariably increases in proportion to
his irresponsibility. In fortune, as utterly destitute
and desperate as in character, they had, in most
respects, already forfeited the shelter, as in numberless
instances they had not merely gone beyond
the sanction, but had violated and defied the express
interdict of the laws: and now, looking, as
such men are apt most usually to do, only to the
immediate issue, and to nothing beyond it, the banditti—for
such they now were—with due deliberation
and decision, and such a calm of disposition as
might well comport with a life of continued excitement,
proceeded again, most desperately, to set
them at defiance.

The military came on in handsome style. They
were all fine-looking men; natives generally of a

state, the great body of whose population are well-formed,
and distinguished by features of clear, open
intelligence. They were well-mounted, and each
man carried a short rifle, a sword, and pair of pistols.
They rode in single file, following their commander;
a gentleman—in person, of great manliness
of frame, possessed of much grace and ease
of action. They formed at command, readily, in
front of the post, which may be now said to have
assumed the guise of a regular military station;
and Fullam, the captain, advancing with much
seeming surprise in his countenance and manner,
addressed the squatters generally, without reference
to the two leaders, who, both, at that moment,
stood forth as representatives of their several
divisions.

“How is this, my good fellows? what is meant
by your present military attitude. Why are you,
on the Sabbath, mustering in this guise—surrounded
by barricades, arms in your hands, and
placing sentinels on duty. What does all this
mean?”

“We carry arms,” replied Dexter, without pause,
“because it suits us to do so; we fix barricades to
keep out intruders; our sentinels have a like object;
and if by attitude you mean our standing
here and standing there—why, I don't see in what
the thing concerns anybody but ourselves!”

“Indeed!” said the Georgian; “you bear it
bravely, sir. But it is not to you I speak. Am I
to understand you, good people, as assembled here
for the purpose of resisting the laws of the land?”

“We don't know, captain, what you mean exactly
by the laws of the land,” was the reply of
Munro; “but, I must say, we are here, as you see
us now, to defend our property, which the laws

have no right to take from us—none that I can
see.”

“So—and is that your way of thinking, sir; and
pray who are you that answer so freely for your
neighbours.”

“One, sir, whom my neighbours, it seems, have
appointed to answer for them.”

“I am then to understand, sir, that you have expressed
their determination on this subject, and that
your purpose is resistance to any process of the
state compelling you to leave these possessions?”

“You have stated their resolution precisely,”
was the reply. “They had notice that unauthorized
persons, hearing of our prosperity, were
making preparations to take them from us by force;
and we prepared for resistance. When we know
the proper authorities, we shall answer fairly—but
not till then.”

“Truly, a very manful determination; and, as
you have so expressed yourself, permit me to exhibit
my authority, which I doubt not you will
readily recognise. This instrument requires you,
at once, to remove from these lands,—entirely to
forego their use and possession, and within forty-eight
hours to yield them up to the authority which
now claims them at your hands.” Here the officer
proceeded to read all those portions of his commission
to which he had referred, with a considerable
show of patience.

“All that's very well in your hands, and from
your mouth, good sir; but how know we that the
document you bear is not forged and false—and
that you, with your people there, have not got up
this fetch to trick us out of those possessions which
you have not the heart to fight for. We're up to
trap, you see.” With this insolent speech, Dexter
continued to show his natural impatience for parley,

and that brutal thirst which invariably prompted
him to provoke and seek for extremities. The eye
of the Georgian flashed out indignant fires, and his
fingers instinctively grasped the pistol at his holster,
while the strongly aroused expression of his features
indicated the rising wrath within. With a
strong and successful effort, however, though inwardly
chafed at the necessity of his forbearance,
he contrived, for a while longer, to suppress any
more decided evidence of the rising emotion, while
he replied as follows:—

“Your language, sirrah, whatever you may be,
is ruffianly and insolent—yet, as I represent the
country rather than myself in this business, and as
I would perform my duties mildly and without
harshness, I pass it by. I am not bound to satisfy
you, or any of your company, of the truth of the
commission under which I act. It is quite enough
if I myself am satisfied. Still, however, for the
same reason which keeps me from punishing your
insolence, and to keep you from any treasonable
opposition to the laws, you too shall be satisfied.
Look here, for yourselves, good people—you all
know the great seal of the state!”

He now held up on high the document from
which he had read, and which contained his authority;
the broad seal of the state dangling from
the parchment, distinctly in the sight of the whole
gang. Dexter approached somewhat nearer, as if
to obtain a more perfect view; and, while the Georgian,
without suspicion, seeing his advance, and
supposing that to be its object, held it more towards
him, the ruffian, with an active and sudden bound,
tore it from his hands, and leaping, followed by all
his group, over his defences, was in a moment close
under cover, and out of all danger. Rising from
his concealment, however, in the presence of the

officer, he tore the instrument into atoms, and dashing
them towards their proprietor, exclaimed—

“Now, captain, what's the worth of your authority?
Be off now in a hurry, or I shall fire upon
you in short order.”

We may not describe the furious anger of the
Georgian. Irritated beyond the control of a proper
caution, he precipitately, and without that due degree
of deliberation which must have taught him
the madness and inefficacy of any assault by his
present force upon an enemy so admirably disposed
of and protected, he gave the command to his men
to fire; and after the ineffectual discharge, which
had no other result than to call forth a shout of derision
from the besieged, he proceeded to charge the
barrier, himself fearlessly leading the way. The
first effort to break through and overcome the barricades
was sufficient to teach him the folly of the
design; and the discharge from the defences bringing
down two of his men, warned him, with sufficient
emphasis, of the necessity of duly retrieving his
error. He saw the odds, and retreated with order
and in good conduct, until he sheltered the whole
troop under a long hill, within rifle-shot of the
enemy, from whence, suddenly filing a detachment
obliquely to the left, he made his arrangements for
the passage of a narrow gorge, having something
of the character of a road, and though excessively
broken and uneven, having been frequently used as
such. It wound its way to the summit of a large
hill, which stood parallel with the defences, and
fully commanded them; and the descent of the
gorge, on the opposite side, afforded him as good an
opportunity, in a charge, of riding them down, as the
summit for picking them off singly with his riflemen.
He found the necessity of great circumspection,
however, in the brief sample of controversy already

given him; and with a movement in front, therefore,
of a number of his force, sufficient, by employing
the attention of the squatters in that quarter, to
cover and disguise his present endeavour, he marshalled
fifteen of his force apart from the rest, leading
them himself, as the most difficult enterprise,
boldly up the narrow pass. The skirmishing was
still suffered, therefore, to continue on the ground
where it had begun, whenever a momentary exposure
of the person of besieged or besieger afforded
any chance for a successful shot. Nor was
this game very hazardous to either party. The
beleaguered force, as we have seen, were well-protected—the
assailants, having generally dismounted,
their horses being placed out of reach of danger,
had, in the manner of their opponents, taken the
cover of the rising ground, or the fallen tree, and
in this way, awaiting the progress of events,
were shielded from unnecessary exposure. It was
only when a position became awkward or irksome
that the shoulder or the leg of the unquiet man
thrust itself too pertinaciously above its shelter, and
got barked or battered by a bullet; and as all parties
knew too well the skill of their adversaries, it
was not often that a shoulder or leg became so indiscreetly
prominent. As it was, however, the
squatters, from a choice of ground, and a perfect
knowledge of it, together with the additional guards
and defences which they had been enabled to place
upon it, had evidently the advantage. Still, no
event calculated to impress either party with any
decisive notion of the result, had yet taken place;
and beyond the injury doen to the assailants in their
first ill-advised assault, they had suffered no serious
harm. They were confident in themselves and
their leader—despised the squatters heartily; and,
indeed, did not suffer themselves for a moment to
think of the possibility of their defeat. Thus the
play proceeded in front of the defences, while Fullam
silently and industriously plied his way up the
narrow gorge, covered entirely from sight of the
enemy by the elevated ridges of rock, which rising
up boldly on either side of the pass, had indeed
been the cause of its formation. But his enemy
was on the alert, and the cunning of Munro, whom
his companions, with an Indian taste and emphasis,
had happily entitled the “Black Snake”—had
already prepared for the reception of the gallant
Georgian. With a quick eye he had observed the
diminished numbers of the force in front, and
readily concluded, from the sluggishness of the
affair in that quarter, that a finesse was in course
of preparation. Conscious, too, from a knowledge
of the post, that there was but a single mode of
enfilading his defences, he had made his provisions
for the guardianship of the all-important point.
Nothing was more easy than the defence of this
pass, the ascent being considerable, rising into a
narrow peak, and as suddenly and in like manner
descending on the point opposite that on which
Fullam was toiling up his way. In addition to this,
the gulley was winding and brokenly circuitous—
now making a broad sweep of the circle—then terminating
in a zigzag and cross direction, which,
until the road was actually gained, seemed to have
no outlet; and at no time was the advancing force
enabled to survey the pass for any distance ahead.
Every thing in the approach of the Georgian was
conducted with the profoundest silence—not the
slightest whisper indicated to the assailants the
presence or prospect of any interruption; and from
the field of strife below, nothing but an occasional
shot or shout gave token of the business in which
at that moment all parties were engaged. This
quiet was not destined to continue long. The forlorn
hope had now reached midway of the summit—but
not, as their leader had fondly anticipated, without
observation from the foe—when the sound of a human
voice directly above him warned him of the
error; and looking up, he beheld, perched upon a
fragment of the cliff, which hung directly over
the gorge, the figure of a single man. For the first
time led to anticipate resistance in this quarter, he
bade his men prepare for the event as well as they
might; and calling out imperatively to the individual,
who still maintained his place on the projection
of the rock as if in defiance, he bade him
throw down his arms and submit!

“Throw down my arms! and for what?” was
the reply. “I'd like to know by what right you
require us to throw down our arms. It may do in
England, or any other barbarous country where
the people don't know their rights yet, to make
them throw down their arms; but I reckon there's
no law for it in these parts, that you can show us,
captain.”

“Pick that insolent fellow off, one of you,” was
the order, and in an instant a dozen rifles were
lifted, but the man was gone. A hat appearing
above the cliff, was bored with several bullets;
and the speaker, who laughed heartily at the success
of his trick, now resumed his position on the
cliff, with the luckless hat perched upon the staff on
which it had given them the provocation to fire.
He laughed and shouted heartily at the contrivance,
and hurled the victim of their wasted powder
down among them. Much chagrined, and burning
with indignation, Fullam briefly cried out to his
men to advance quickly. The person who had
hitherto addressed him was our old acquaintance

Forrester, to whom, in the division of the duties,
this post had been assigned. He now spoke again.

“You'd better not, captain, now, I advise you.
It will be dangerous if you come farther. Don't
trouble us now, and be off, as soon as you can, out
of harms way. Your bones will be all the better
for it; and I declare I don't like to hurt such a fine-looking
chap, if I can possibly avoid it. Now take
a friend's advice;—'twill be all the better for you,
I assure you.”

The speaker evidently meant well, so far as it
was possible for one to mean well who was commissioned
to do, and was, in fact, doing ill. The
Georgian, however, only the more indignant at the
impertinence of the address, took the following
notice of it, uttered in the same breath with an
imperative command to his own men to hasten their
advance.

“Disperse yourselves, scoundrels, and throw
down your arms. On the instant disperse. Lift
a hand, or pull a trigger upon us, and every man
shall dangle upon the branches of the first tree.”

As he spoke, leading the way, he drove his
rowels repeatedly and with earnest force into the
sides of his animal; and, followed by his troop,
bounded fearlessly up the bank.