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Updated: June 29, 2025
The house also, and all about it, was silent. Evidently Skelly's men had settled down to a long siege, and Harry rejoiced in the amount of time they gave him. He rose to his feet, but, stooped to only half his height, he ran swiftly behind the row of grapevines to the far end of the garden, leaped over the fence and continued his rapid flight toward Pendleton, where the single light still burned.
But the town raised a home guard to defend itself against raiders of any kind, and Colonel Kenton and Harry promptly made ready for their journey to Frankfort, where the choice of the state must soon be made, and whither Raymond Bertrand, the South Carolinian, had gone already. Colonel Kenton feared no charge because of the fight with Skelly's men.
They might be members of that very band of Skelly's which had already made so much trouble for both sides, and he summoned all his faculties in order to meet them at any game that they might try to play. "I've been on land business in the mountains," he said, "and I'm anxious to get back to my home.
He had her stretched out phwin wid a flash an' a growl, she was at um, an' wid wan clap av th' jaws she ripped away face an' half th' scalp. "They found um wanderin' blind on th' lake ice an' carried um to Skelly's phwere he died in tin days' toime av hydrophoby, shnarlin' an' bitin' at folks till they had to chain um in th' shtoreroom."
Harry pressed closer to the pillar, kneeling low, as he had learned already that nine out of ten men fire too high in battle. He heard once more the rustling among the pines, and he knew that Skelly's men were advancing. Doubtless they believed that the defenders had fled within the house at the first volley.
"You are Colonel Kenton's son?" he said. "I am," replied Harry, meeting his fierce stare boldly, "the same whom you tried to murder on the way to Winton, the same who helped to hold our house against you and your gang of assassins." Skelly's dark face grew darker as the black blood leaped to his very eyes. But he choked down his passion. The mountaineer was not lacking in cunning.
I was at Skelly's when they brought old man Frontenelle in," added a big man, whose heavy beard was shot with gray, as he turned from the stove with a shudder. "They's some Injuns trappin' below; she might of got one of them," opined a short, stockily built man who, catching sight of the newcomers, addressed Fallon: "Hey, Irish, you was down on the tote-road; did you hear Diablesse?"
But she thought the present Union force would remain quite a while, as she did not look for the reappearance of the Southern army in Kentucky. But if the town were left without troops she would go back to her relatives in the Bluegrass, as Bill Skelly's band to the eastward in the mountains was raiding and plundering and had become a great menace.
They were a wild-looking crew, mounted on tough mountain ponies, all of them carrying loot, and all armed heavily. The sergeant threw up his rifle, and with a steady hand aimed straight at Skelly's heart. "Halt!" he cried sharply, "and tell me who you are!" The whole crew seemed to reel back except Skelly, who, though stopping his horse, remained in the center of the road.
He still retained his grasp upon Skelly's throat, where his fingers were sunk into the flesh, but it was only the grimmest kind of resolution that enabled him to hold on. Harry saw the fierce light in Skelly's eye turn to joy. The man foresaw his triumph, and he began to curse low, but fast and with savage unction.
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