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Updated: June 1, 2025
Are you staying long in Frankfort, Dick?" "Only today. I'm going back tomorrow to Camp Dick Robinson." "Well, don't you make friends with that fellow Skelly, even if he is on the same side you are." "I won't, Harry, have no fear of that." The two went together to the hotel, and found Colonel Kenton at breakfast.
"We'll drink to Barney's bad health," said Darragh, raising his glass. "I saw him half an hour gone. He looked like a dead man. Cap'n Jim Skelly o' the John Quinn piloted Gypsum Prince inter her dock last night. No one ever handled her afore but Cap'n Barney. An' the Kentigern from Liverpool is due to-night. Skelly's layin' fur her too; an' he'll git her.
But the reports of Slade and Skelly were so numerous and so sinister that they made a complete change of plan. The colonels, St. Clair and Langdon, would not try to go direct to South Carolina, but the whole party would cling together, ride to Kentucky, and then those who lived farther south could return home chiefly by rail.
A warning instinct caused him to urge his own horse forward, just as four riders came into view. He saw that the men in the saddles, who were forty or fifty yards away, were mountaineers, like Skelly. They wore fur caps; heavy blanket shawls were drooped about their shoulders and every one carried a rifle. As soon as they saw the boy they shouted to him to halt. Harry's alert senses took alarm.
Skelly, six feet two inches tall and two hundred pounds of muscle and sinew, struck the boy fiercely on the side of the head, but the terrible grasp was still at his throat. He was the larger and the stronger, but the sudden leap upon him gave his younger and smaller antagonist an advantage. He had a pistol in his belt, but with that throttling grip upon his throat he forgot it.
"I suppose we'll come face to face again, and this time at the very last," said Dick. "I hope they'll be reasonable about it, and won't insist on fighting until they're all killed. Have you heard anything of those two robbers and murderers, Slade and Skelly?" "Not a thing. But I didn't expect it. They'd never leave the mountains. Instead they'll go farther into 'em."
But they were saved from firing the first shot as some one in the gully they never knew or asked his name stumbled at last. Slade and Skelly instantly sprang for the trees and Slade blew sharply upon his whistle. Twenty shots were fired in the direction of the gully, but they whistled harmlessly over the heads of its occupants.
Here in the West we repose our faith in Lee, as surely as do you in the East, you who see his face and hear his voice every day. I have had two or three letters from Pendleton. That part of the State is for the present outside the area of conflict, though I hear that the guerilla bands to the east in the mountains still vex and annoy, and that Skelly is growing bolder.
"I've heard it in the Green Mountains," said Warner, "but not under such conditions as we have here. I'm glad I have so much company. I think it would give me the creeps to be in the cove alone, with that storm howling over my head." "Not to mention Slade and Skelly hunting through the snowdrifts for you," said Pennington.
Although the escape of both Slade and Skelly was a great disappointment the victory nevertheless was complete. The two leaders could not rally the brigand force again, because it had ceased to exist. Nearly half, caught between the jaws of the Union vise, had fallen, and most of the others were taken.
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