He seemed to be thinking for a moment and then he said: “I seem to have heard the name. What do you want of him?”
“I wait to speak to him-I am his son.”
“Wait!” he whispered. “I think that I heard a man speak that name to-day. I will find out-he is near by.”
I waited for perhaps ten minutes when I heard some one approaching from the inside and presently a voice asked if I was still there.
“Yes,” I said. “Is that you, father?” for I thought that the tones were his.
“Julian, my son!” came to me almost as a sob. “What are you doing here?”
Briefly I told him and then of my plan. “Have the convicts the courage to attempt it?” I asked, in conclusion.
“I do not know,” he said, and I could not but note the tone of utter hopelessness in his voice. “They would wish to; but here our spirits and our bodies both are broken. I do not know how many would have the courage to attempt it. Wait and I will talk with some of them-all are loyal; but just weak from overwork, starvation and abuse.”
I waited for the better part of an hour before he returned. “Some will help,” he said, “from the first, and others if we are successful. Do you think it worth the risk-they will kill you if you fail-they will kill us all.”
“And what is death to that which you are suffering?” I asked.
“I know,” he said, “but the worm impaled upon the hook still struggles and hopes for life. Turn back, my son; we can do nothing against them.”
“I will not turn back,” I whispered. “I will not turn back.”
“I will help you; but I cannot speak for the others. They may and they may not.”
We had spoken only when the sentry had been at a distance, falling into silence each time he approached the point where we stood. In the intervals of silence I could hear the growing restlessness of the prisoners and I guessed that what I had said to the first man was being passed around from mouth to mouth within until already the whole adjacent shed was seething with something akin to excitement. I wondered if it would arouse their spirit sufficiently to carry them through the next ten minutes. If it did success was assured.
Father had told me all that I wanted to know-the location of the guard house and the barracks and the number of Kash Guard posted here-only fifty men to guard five thousand! How much more eloquently than words did this fact bespeak the humiliation of the American people and the utter contempt in which our scurvy masters hold us-fifty men to guard five thousand!
And then I started putting my plan into execution-a mad plan which had only its madness to recommend it. The sentry approached and came opposite where I stood and I leaped for the eaves as I had leaped for the eaves of the prison pen at Chicago, only this time I leaped from the outside where the eaves are closer to the ground and so the task was easier. I leaped and caught hold. Then I scrambled up behind the sentry and before his dull wits told him that there was some one behind him I was upon his back and the same fingers that threw a mad bull closed upon his windpipe. The struggle was brief-he died quickly and I lowered him to the roof. Then I took his uniform from him and donned it, with his ammunition belt, and I took his rifle and started out upon his post, walking with slow tread and with my chin upon my breast as he had walked.
At the end of my post I waited for the sentry I saw coming up and when he was close to me I turned back and he turned back away from me. Then I wheeled and struck him an awful blow upon the head with my rifle. He died more quickly than the other-instantly, I should say.
I took his rifle and ammunition from him and lowered them inside the pen to waiting hands. Then I went on to the next sentry, and the next, until I had slain five more and passed their rifles to the prisoners below. While I was doing this five prisoners who had volunteered to father climbed to the roof of the shed and stripped the dead men of their uniforms and donned them.
It was all done quietly and in the black night none might see what was going on a few feet away. I had to stop when I came near to the guard house. There I turned back and presently slid into the pen with my accomplices who had been going among the other prisoners with father arousing them to mutiny. Now were most of them ready to follow me, for so far my plan had proven successful. With equal quietness we overcame the men at the guard house and then moved on in a silent body toward the barracks.
So sudden and so unexpected was our attack that we met with little resistance. We were almost five thousand to forty now. We swarmed in upon them like wild beasts upon a foe and we shot them and bayonetted them until none remained alive. Not one escaped. And now we were flushed with success so that the most spiritless became a veritable lion for courage.
We who had taken the uniform of the Kash Guard discarded them for our own garb, as we had no mind to go abroad in the hated livery of our oppressors. That very night we saddled their horses with the fifty saddles that were there and fifty men rode the balance of the horses bareback. That made one hundred mounted men and the others were to follow on foot-to Chicago. “On to Chicago!” was our slogan.
We traveled cautiously, though I had difficulty in making them do so, so intoxicated were they with their first success. I wanted to save the horses and also I wanted to get as many men into Chicago as possible, so we let the weakest ride, while those of us who were strong walked, though I had a time of it getting Red Lightning to permit another on his sleek back.
Some fell out upon the way from exhaustion or from fear, for the nearer Chicago we approached the more their courage ebbed. The very thought of the feared Kalkars and their Kash Guard took the marrow from the bones of many. I do not know that one may blame them, for the spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it in the same generation.
We reached the ruined church a week from the day I left mother and Juana there and we reached it with less than two thousand men, so rapid had been the desertion in the last few miles before we entered the district.
Father and I could scarcely wait to see our loved ones and so we rode on ahead to greet them, and inside the church we found three dead goats and a dying woman-my mother with a knife protruding from her breast. She was still conscious when we entered and I saw a great light of happiness in her eyes as they fell upon father and upon me. I looked around for Juana and my heart stood still, fearing that I would not find her-and fearing that I would.
Mother could still speak, and as we leaned over her as father held her in his arms she breathed a faint story of what had befallen them. They had lived in peace until that very day when the Kash Guard had stumbled upon them-a large detachment under Or-tis himself. They had seized them to take them away; but mother had had a knife hidden in her clothing and had utilized it as we saw rather than suffer the fate she knew awaited them. That was all, except that Juana had had no knife and Or-tis had carried her off.
I saw mother die, then, in father’s arms and I helped him bury her after our men came and we had shown them what the beasts had done, though they knew well enough and had suffered themselves enough to know what was to be expected of the swine.
11
The Butcher
We went on then, father and I filled with grief and bitterness and hatred even greater than we had known before. We marched toward the market place of our district, and on the way we stopped at Jim’s and he joined us. Mollie wept when she heard what had befallen mother and Juana but presently she controlled herself and urged us on and Jim with us, though Jim needed no urging. She kissed him good-by with tears and pride mingled in her eyes, and all he said was: “Good-bye, girl. Keep your knife with you always.”
And so we rode away with Mollie’s “May the Saints be with you!” in our ears. Once again we stopped, at our abandoned goat pens, and there we dug up the rifle, belt and ammunition of the soldier father had slain years before. These we gave to Jim.