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He caught a glimpse of the gigantic form of Skelly, but he too was soon gone, and then when he felt the restraining hand of Shepard upon his arm he came out of his rage. "Look there!" cried Shepard. About a score of the guerrillas had been cut off from their comrades and were driven toward the valley, where they remained on its edge, crouched down, and firing.
They called themselves a scoutin' party of the Southern army." Dick started violently. "Why, I know this man Skelly," he said. "He lives in the mountains to the eastward of my home in Kentucky. He organized a band at the beginning of the war, but over there he said he was fightin' for the North." "He'll be fightin' for his own hand," said the sergeant sternly.
Harry, my boy, as you grow older you'll find that reason and logic seldom control men's lives." "Skelly was excited over the news from South Carolina," said Harry, continuing the story, which he, too, had read, as an Indian reads a trail, "and he began to drink. He met Travers and cursed the slave-holders.
Skelly was giving his final orders and Harry could hear him. "We'll leave the main road, pull down the fences an' ride across the fields," he said. "We'll first take the house of that rebel and traitor, Colonel Kenton. It'll be helpin' the cause if we burn it clean down to the ground. If anybody tries to stop you, shoot. Then we'll go on to the others."
"Say, Jim Skelly, this is Barney Hodge talkin'. You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat business, did you?" A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for anything else. Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all his strength to his oars. He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug started right for him. "Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman.
The settlements are right thick 'roun' here, an' we hev good times." Mrs. Jones nodded her emphatic assent. "Which way do you-all 'low to be goin' tomorrow?" asked Jones. "We think we'd better keep to the west," replied Colonel Talbot. "We've heard of a guerrilla band under two men, Slade and Skelly, who are making trouble to the southward."
Dick with Shepard and the sergeant rode off in the woods towards the open valley to see if the enemy were observing them. Dick's chief apprehensions were in regard to Slade and Skelly, but they found no trace of the guerrillas, nor of any other foes. The night was fairly bright, and from the edge of the wood they saw far over hills and fields, dotted with two opposing lines of camp fires.
The song the Salvation woman sang passed through his mind. "Gawd is mighty and grateful; No act of my brother's or mine Escapes His understandin', In the good old Christmas time." "As soon as we get near the Kentigern," he said, "we'll cut loose from the Quinn, and while she is warping alongside we'll make a dash, and you can hail 'em and get 'em to lower a ladder. You can beat Skelly that way.
Harry felt himself weakening, and he made another mighty effort to retain his hold, but the fingers still slipped, and, as Skelly struck him harder than ever in the chest, they flew loose entirely.
It was perhaps the instinct inherited from his great ancestor, who was said to have had a sixth sense. Whatever it may have been, he faced suddenly about, and saw Bill Skelly aiming at him a blow with the clubbed rifle, which would at once crush his skull and send his body into the deep stream.
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