Ahead of them, it was Court Day in Lexington. From the town, as a centre, white turnpikes radiated in every direction like the strands of a spider's web. Along them, on the day before, cattle sheep, and hogs had made their slow way. Since dawn, that morning, the fine dust had been rising under hoof and wheel on every one of them, for Court Day is yet the great day of every month throughout the Bluegrass. The crowd had gone ahead of the Major and Chad. Only now and then would a laggard buggy or carriage turn into the pike from a pasture-road or locust-bordered avenue. Only men were occupants, for the ladies rarely go to town on court days--and probably none would go on that day. Trouble was expected. An abolitionist, one Brutus Dean--not from the North, but a Kentuckian, a slave-holder and a gentleman--would probably start a paper in Lexington to exploit his views in the heart of the Bluegrass; and his quondam friends would shatter his press and tear his office to pieces. So the Major told Chad, and he pointed out some "hands" at work in a field.
"An', mark my words, some day there's goin' to be the damnedest fight the world ever saw over these very niggers. An' the day ain't so far away."It was noon before they reached the big cemetery on the edge of Lexington.
Through a rift in the trees the Major pointed out the grave of Henry Clay, and told him about the big monument that was to be reared above his remains. The grave of Henry Clay! Chad knew all about him. He had heard Caleb Hazel read the great man's speeches aloud by the hour--had heard him intoning them to himself as he walked the woods to and fro from school. Would wonders never cease.
There seemed to be no end to the houses and streets and people in this big town, and Chad wondered why everybody turned to look at him and smiled, and, later in the day, he came near getting into a fight with another boy who seemed to be making fun of him to his companions. He wondered at that, too, until it suddenly struck him that he saw nobody else carrying a rifle and wearing a coonskin cap--perhaps it was his cap and his gun. The Major was amused and pleased, and he took a certain pride in the boy's calm indifference to the attention he was drawing to himself. And he enjoyed the little mystery which he and his queer little companion seemed to create as they drove through the streets.
On one corner was a great hemp factory.
Through the windows Chad could see negroes, dusty as millers, bustling about, singing as they worked. Before the door were two men--one on horseback. The Major drew up a moment.
"How are you, John? Howdye, Dick?" Both men answered heartily, and both looked at Chad--who looked intently at them--the graceful, powerful man on foot and the slender, wiry man with wonderful dark eyes on horseback.
"Pioneering, Major?" asked John Morgan.
"This is a namesake of mine from the mountains. He's come up to see the settlements."Richard Hunt turned on his horse. "How do you like 'em?""Never seed nothin' like 'em in my life," said Chad, gravely. Morgan laughed and Richard Hunt rode on with them down the street.
"Was that Captin Morgan?" asked Chad.
"Yes," said the Major. "Have you heard of him before?""Yes, sir. A feller on the road tol' me, if I was lookin' fer somethin' to do hyeh in Lexington to go to Captin Morgan."The Major laughed: "That's what everybody does."At once, the Major took the boy to an old inn and gave him a hearty meal; and while the Major attended to some business, Chad roamed the streets.
"Don't get into trouble, my boy," said the Major, an come back here an hour or two by sun.
Naturally, the lad drifted where the crowd was thickest--to Cheapside.
Cheapside--at once the market-place and the forum of the Bluegrass from pioneer days to the present hour--the platform that knew Clay, Crittenden, Marshall, Breckenridge, as it knows the lesser men of to-day, who resemble those giants of old as the woodlands of the Bluegrass to-day resemble the primeval forests from which they sprang.
Cheapside was thronged that morning with cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, farmers, aristocrats, negroes, poor whites. The air was a babel of cries from auctioneers--head, shoulders, and waistband above the crowd--and the cries of animals that were changing owners that day--one of which might now and then be a human being. The Major was busy, and Chad wandered where he pleased--keeping a sharp lookout everywhere for the school-master, but though he asked right and left he could find nobody, to his great wonder, who knew even the master's name. In the middle of the afternoon the country people began to leave town and Cheapside was cleared, but, as Chad walked past the old inn, he saw a crowd gathered within and about the wide doors of a livery-stable, and in a circle outside that lapped half the street. The auctioneer was in plain sight above the heads of the crowd, and the horses were led out one by one from the stable. It was evidently a sale of considerable moment, and there were horse-raisers, horse-trainers, jockeys, stable-boys, gentlemen--all eager spectators or bidders. Chad edged his way through the outer rim of the crowd and to the edge of the sidewalk, and, when a spectator stepped down from a dry-goods box from which he had been looking on, Chad stepped up and took his place. Straightway, he began to wish he could buy a horse and ride back to the mountains. What fun that would be, and how he would astonish the folks on Kingdom Come. He had his five dollars still in his pocket, and when the first horse was brought out, the auctioneer raised his hammer and shouted in loud tones:
"How much am I offered for this horse?"
There was no answer, and the silence lasted so long that before he knew it Chad called out in a voice that frightened him:
"Five dollars!" Nobody heard the bid, and nobody paid any attention to him.
"One hundred dollars," said a voice.
"One hundred and twenty-five," said another, and the horse was knocked down for two hundred dollars.
