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YOUR UNCLE SAM

OWNS A GREAT NAVY

A very important adjunct of Government.--You and everybody
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[Illustration: A Submarine Boat. A new "wrinkle" in warfare.]

THE AMERICAN BATTLESHIP

AND LIFE IN THE NAVY

By THOS. BEYER, a Bluejacket

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At all bookstores and book supply houses, or sent postpaid, on receipt
of price, by

LAIRD & LEE, Publishers, 263-265 Wabash Avenue, CHICAGO




[Illustration: DRESSED IN HER HUSBAND'S CLOTHES, SHE LED THEM TO THE
TOBACCO BARN.]




"_A fence between makes love more keen_."

THE
NIGHT RIDERS

A Thrilling Story of Love,
Hate and Adventure, graphically depicting the
Tobacco Uprising in Kentucky

BY
HENRY C. WOOD

"_Who warms in his bosom the eggs of hatred hatches
a nest of snakes_."

[Illustration: Publisher's logo.]

CHICAGO
LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1908,
BY WILLIAM H. LEE,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D. C.

DRAMATIC RIGHTS RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR.




_Preface_


_The author has cleverly interwoven a tale of absorbing heart interest
with a graphically depicted view of the present Tobacco Troubles in
Kentucky and the exciting times when the people formed into bands, known
as THE NIGHT RIDERS, to protest against what they considered the unjust
tax of the Toll Gate System. These protests were of a strenuous nature,
not unlike those of the tobacco-growing section today, and as the
characters in the story are real, live beings, who did things, the
reader's interest never flags._

_THE PUBLISHERS._

[Illustration: A troop of riders]

[Illustration: BRACING HIMSELF IN HIS STIRRUPS, MILT CRIED HURRIEDLY TO
JUDSON: "LEAP UP BEHIND ME!"--_Page 130_.]




[Illustration: Title and author with the image of a rider.]

THE NIGHT RIDERS
By
Henry Cleveland Wood




CHAPTER I.


The early morning sunlight entered boldly through the small panes of
glass into the kitchen of the toll-house and fell in a checkered band
across the breakfast table set against the sill of the one long, low
window.

The meal was a simple one, plainly served, but a touch of gold and
purple--royal colors of the season--was given it by a bunch of autumn
flowers, golden-rod and wild aster, stuck in a glass jar set on the
window sill.

A glance at the two seated at each end of the narrow table would have
enabled one to decide quickly to whom was due this desire for
ornamentation, for the mother was a sharp-featured, rather
untidy-looking woman, on whom the burden of hard work and poverty had
laid certain harsh lines not easily eradicated, while the daughter's
youth and comeliness had overcome them as a fine jewel may assert its
beauty despite a cheap setting.

The sun's lambent rays, falling across the girl's shapely head and
shoulders, touched to deeper richness the auburn hair, gathered in a
large, loose coil, that rested low upon her neck, and also accentuated
the clear, delicately-tinted complexion like a semi-transparency that is
given rare old china when the light illumines it.

The meal was eaten almost in silence, but toward the end of the
breakfast Mrs. Brown looked up suddenly, her cup of coffee raised partly
to her lips, and said, in her querulous treble:

"Sally, Foster Crain says aigs air fetchin' fo'hteen an' a half cents in
town. Count what's stored away in the big gourd, when you git through
eatin', an' take 'em in this mornin'."

"How am I to go?" asked her daughter, looking up from her plate. "Joe's
limping from that nail he picked up yesterday."

"Likely somebody'll be passin' the gate that'll give you a seat. The
Squire may be along soon." A certain inflection crept into the speaker's
voice.

"I'll walk," announced Sally, with sudden determination. "It's cool and
pleasant, and I'd as soon walk as ride."

The mother looked across furtively to where her daughter sat.

"I don't see what makes you so set ag'in the Squire," she said,
plaintively, a few moments later, as if she had divined her daughter's
unuttered thoughts.

"He's an old fool!" declared Sally, promptly.

"An' it strikes me that you're somethin' of a young one!" retorted her
mother sharply.

The girl made no answer, save a perceptible shrug of her pretty
shoulders, and soon afterward got up and began to clear away the
breakfast dishes. Mrs. Brown sighed deeply.

"Most girls would be powerful vain to have the Squire even notice 'em,"
the mother continued, in a more persuasive tone, as a sort of balm
offering to the girl's wounded feelings. She placed her cup and saucer
in her plate and put back a small piece of unused butter on the side of
the butter dish, then slowly arose from the table.

"It's seldom a po' gyurl has such a good chance to better her condition,
if she was only willin' to do so," she continued argumentatively, for
the subject was a favorite theme with her, and she had rung its changes
for the listener's benefit on more than one occasion. She gave her
daughter a sidelong glance--partly of inquiry, partly of reproach--and
turned to her work.

Sally, with something like an impatient jerk, lifted from the stove the
steaming kettle and poured a part of the hot contents into the dish-pan
on the table, but she made no answer, though soon the clatter of tins
and dishes--perhaps they rattled a little louder than usual--mingled as
a sort of accompaniment to the reminiscent monologue that Mrs. Brown
carried on at intervals during her work.

"It's all owin' to the Squire's kindness an' interest in us that we're
fixed this comfortable, for, dear knows I'd never got the toll-gate in
the first place if it hadn't been for his influence, an' now, if you'd
only give him any encouragement at all, you might be a grand sight
better off. Such chances don't grow as thick as blackberries in summer,
I can tell you."

The dishes and tins rattled angrily, but Sally said not a word.

"About the only good showin' a poor gyurl has in this world is to marry
as well as she can, an' when she neglects to do this, she's got nobody
to blame but herself--not a soul."

Sally had the dishes all washed and laid in a row on the table to drain,
and now she caught them up, one by one, and began to polish away
vigorously, as if the effort afforded a certain relief to her feelings,
since she had chosen to take refuge in silence.

"S'posin' he _is_ old an' ugly," soliloquized Mrs. Brown, abruptly
breaking into speech again, and seemingly addressing her remarks to the
skillet she was then cleaning, and which she held up before her and
gazed into intently, as a lady of fashion might do a hand glass at her
toilet. "What o' that? Beauty's only skin deep, an' old age is likely to
come to us all sooner or later. It's all the better if he is along in
years," she added, with a sudden chuckle and a second furtive glance
over the top of the skillet toward the girl, to see if she was
listening. "Then he ain't so likely to live forever, an' a trim young
widow, with property of her own an' money in bank, can mighty soon find
a chance to marry ag'in, if she's a mind to."

A cloud of anger swept over the listener's face, which the mother failed
to see, as the skillet again intervened.

"There ain't nothin' like havin' a home of your own, an' knowin' you've
got a shelter for your old age--no, indeed, they ain't! The Squire's
mighty well fixed; he's got a real good farm, an' turnpike stock, an'
cash, an' a nice, comfortable house besides."

"Comfortable!" exclaimed Sally, with a toss of her head, and breaking
her resolve to keep silent. "It looks like a ha'nted barn stuck back
amongst them cedar trees down in the hollow. No wonder his first wife
went crazy an' hung herself up in the attic, poor thing! They say he
treated her shameful mean."

Sally had looked upon this house many times and with conflicting
thoughts as she passed it now and then. An air of neglect and loneliness
hung about the spot. The house, hopelessly ugly and angular, was set far
back from the road in the midst of a large yard given over to weeds and
untrimmed shrubbery, while a clump of gloomy-looking cedars defied even
the brightness of sun and sky.

"You can't put credit into everything you hear," admonished Mrs. Brown,
breaking ruthlessly into her daughter's musings. "Besides, a spry young
girl can pretty much have her own way when she marries a man so much
older than herself.

"There's Serena Lowe, that use' to be," she continued, reminiscently.
"She an' her fam'ly was about as poor as Job's turkey when we went to
school together, an' many's the time I've divided my dinner with her
because she didn't seem to have any too much of her own.

"But she had a downright pretty face--all white an' pink, like a
doll's--an' it helped her to ketch old Bartholomew Rice, an' now she
rides around in her own kerridge an' pair, mind you, an' no prouder
woman ever lived this minute. You'd think from the airs she gives
herself that she was born in the best front room on a Sunday.

"The Squire's as good as hinted to me that if he could marry the one he
wants, he wouldn't in the least mind goin' to the expense of paintin'
an' fixin' up the place till you wouldn't know it," insinuated Mrs.
Brown, dropping her voice to a more confidential tone.

"He'd have to paint an' fix hisself up, too, till you wouldn't know
_him_, either, before I'd even so much as look at him," tartly asserted
Sally.

"A tidy young wife could change his looks an' the looks of the house in
a mighty little while, if she only had a mind to do so," suggested Mrs.
Brown, in subtly persuasive tones. "It must be dreadful lonesome livin'
as he does, with nobody to look after things."

"He might have kept his nephew for company," insisted Sally, with a
sudden ring of resentment in her voice. "He drove him away."

"Which likely he wouldn't have done if Milt hadn't been so headstrong
an' wild. You know the Squire's goin' to have his own way about things."

"About _some_ things," corrected Sally.

"Mebbe about all, sooner or later," said Mrs. Brown, in hopeful
prediction. "He ain't a man to give up easy when he sets his mind in a
certain direction."

"Perhaps his nephew isn't, either," suggested her daughter, with a
little tinge of color deepening in each cheek.

"No, an' that's just the cause an' upshot of the whole trouble!" cried
the mother, in a sudden flash of vehemence, dropping the persuasive
tones she had heretofore employed for resentful chiding. "His nephew's
at the bottom of it all, an' you seem ready an' willin' to throw away a
good chance of a nice, comfortable home an' deprive me of a shelter in
my old age just for the sake of that no-account Milt Derr, who happens
to have smooth ways an' a nimble tongue. It looks like he's fairly
bewitched you."




CHAPTER II.


A little later in the morning Sally tied on her sunbonnet, whose pale
blue lining made a charming framing for her fresh complexion and pretty
face, concealing it just sufficiently to make one keenly inquisitive to
take a second longer glance beneath the ruffled rim.

With the basket of eggs swung coquettishly on her plump arm, and a stray
wisp or two of wavy hair escaping from its confines down her shapely,
curving neck and throat, in protest at imprisonment, the girl set out
walking toward the town, a mile away.

Mrs. Brown had ingeniously delayed her daughter's going by finding
several little duties for her to perform, hoping the while that before
the girl should be ready to start the Squire would make his appearance
and leave her no alternative but to accept a ride with him.

The morning grew apace, however, and finally Sally set out alone, quite
grateful for the Squire's tardiness, and partly amused, partly vexed,
by her mother's thinly-veiled excuses for delay.

As the girl walked along the road with the springing, elastic step of
youth and perfect health, and the freedom of the far-stretching fields
as a heritage, the fresh morning air caressing her cheeks brought forth
a bloom as soft and delicate as the rose of a summer dawn, while her
spirits, which had become somewhat dampened under her mother's recent
bickerings, gradually grew soothed and calmed under the tranquil charm
of the new-born day.

Now and then a bird, startled at her approach, flew from hedge to hedge
across the road, piping loudly in affected alarm as it went, while in a
softer strain came the gentle lowing of cattle from a pasture near at
hand, and in the tall grass and dusty weeds along the way the autumnal
chorus of insects had begun, conducted by the shrill-toned cricket.

At the top of the first hill that arose between the gate and town Sally
paused a moment--not that she was tired, or even spent of breath--and
looked back. The picture that she saw was one of serene beauty, with
wide stretches of fallow fields, bathed in the golden tranquility of a
perfect October day, and dumb with the spell of restfulness and mystic
brooding that this season brings.

In the far distance a long, ragged line of hills melted into the soft
blue sky-line, and over these shadowy sentinels, standing a-row, the
purplish haze of autumn hung like a diaphanous curtain stretching
between the lowlands and the hill country.

From her elevated vantage ground the girl could see the toll-house very
distinctly, though she herself was partly hidden by a small clump of
young locusts under which she had paused. As she looked toward her home
the Squire's old buggy came in sight around a curve of the road and
stopped at the gate. Her mother came out and presently pointed in the
direction of town, while the Squire gave his horse a cut of the whip and
started up the road at a much brisker pace, it seemed to Sally, than
before the gate was reached.

"Mother's told him that he might overtake me," she muttered, grimly
smiling at the thought. "I'll see that he don't," she added,
resolutely.

She stood for a few moments debating the situation, then looked toward
the town. The distance was but half traveled, and the Squire must
certainly overtake her before her destination was reached. There was a
smaller hill beyond, and toward this she now set out briskly, fully
determined to cover as much of the way as possible, so that, if finally
overtaken, the ride would prove but a short one at best.

When she reached the brow of the second hill the Squire was lost to
sight behind the first one, and just then a plan of escape happily
suggested itself as she reached a low stone wall running for some
distance along one side of the road. She lightly climbed the
moss-covered stones and crouched down behind them in a clump of
golden-rod, waiting in covert until the Squire should pass.

Soon she heard an approaching vehicle, which she knew to be the Squire's
from the familiar joggle of loose bolts, and close upon its coming
another sound fell on her alert ear, as if a horseman were riding from
the direction of the town. The person on horseback and Squire Bixler met
and came to a halt in the middle of the road, almost in front of that
portion of the stone wall behind which the girl had taken refuge.

After the exchange of a brief greeting, the Squire said, abruptly:

"Well, what progress have you made? Any?"

"Well, Squire, I think he's goin' to jine," answered the horseman, in
the peculiar drawling tones suggestive of the hill country, whose
boundary lay purple and hazy along the distant horizon.

"You _think_ he is?" cried the Squire impatiently, with a ripping oath.
"What do you _know_ about it?"

"That when I see him again he is to tell me if he's made up his mind to
come to the next meetin' place. If he does, of course, he'll jine the
band."

"And what does the band propose doing?" asked the Squire.

"To git free roads."

"How?"

"Not by waitin' on the