Gideon did not feel any more honest pleasure in chastising the Midianites than did Bud in sending Pete Jones away purty consid’able shuck up like.

CHAPTER XVII.

A COUNCIL OF WAR.

Shocky, whose feet had flown as soon as he saw the final fall of Pete Jones, told the whole story to the wondering and admiring ears of Miss Hawkins, who unhappily could not remember anything at the East just like it; to the frightened ears of the rheumatic old lady who felt sure her ole man’s talk and stubbornness would be the ruin of him, and to the indignant ears of the old soldier who was hobbling up and down, sentinel-wise, in front of his cabin, standing guard over himself.

“No, I won’t leave,” he said to Ralph and Bud.  “You see I jest won’t.  What would Gin’ral Winfield Scott say ef he knew that one of them as fit at Lundy’s Lane backed out, retreated, run fer fear of a passel of thieves?  No, sir; me and the old flintlock will live and die together.  I’ll put a thunderin’ charge of buckshot into the first one of them scoundrels as comes up the holler.  It’ll be another Lundy’s Lane.  And you, Mr. Hartsook, may send Scott word that ole Pearson, as fit at Lundy’s Lane under him, died a-fightin’ thieves on Rocky Branch, in Hoopole Kyounty, State of Injeanny.”

And the old man hobbled faster and faster, taxing his wooden leg to the very utmost, as if his victory depended on the vehemence with which he walked his beat.

Mrs. Pearson sat wringing her hands and looking appealingly at Martha Hawkins, who stood in the door, in despair, looking appealingly at Bud.  Bud was stupefied by the old man’s stubbornness and his own pain, and in his turn appealed mutely to the master, in whose resources he had boundless confidence.  Ralph, seeing that all depended on him, was taxing his wits to think of some way to get round Pearson’s stubbornness.  Shocky hung to the old man’s coat and pulled away at him with many entreating words, but the venerable, bare-headed sentinel strode up and down furiously, with his flintlock on his shoulder and his basket-knife in his belt.

Just at this point somebody could be seen indistinctly through the bushes coming up the hollow.

“Halt!” cried the old hero.  “Who goes there?”

“It’s me, Mr. Pearson.  Don’t shoot me, please.”

It was the voice of Hannah Thomson.  Hearing that the whole neighborhood was rising against the benefactor of Shocky and of her family, she had slipped away from the eyes of her mistress, and run with breathless haste to give warning in the cabin on Rocky Branch.  Seeing Ralph, she blushed, and went into the cabin.

“Well,” said Ralph, “the enemy is not coming yet.  Let us hold a council of war.”

This thought came to Ralph like an inspiration.  It pleased the old man’s whim, and he sat down on the door-step.

“Now, I suppose,” said Ralph, “that General Winfield Scott always looked into things a little before he went into a fight.  Didn’t he?”