The Last Rebel

East or west, north or south? With all the experience of a man's years and the knowledge of many wise books of travel, I could not tell. I had taken no note of the sun when I left, and, neglected then, it would not serve me now as a guide. To me at that moment all points of the compass were the same.

The provoking sun which I could not use as a sign-post seemed bent upon showing how brilliant it really could be. The last shred of white and harmless cloud had been driven from the heavens, which were a deep unbroken blue, with the golden lining showing through like a faint, yellow haze. The glowing light clothed the earth, and intensified the red and yellow and brown tints of the leaves, painted by the master artist, autumn. In such a glorious flush the woods and the mountains were a dazzle and tangle of color. But through all the glow and blaze of the sun came the crisp and tonic coolness which marks the waning autumn and makes it best and most beautiful as it goes. It was good to be alone with forest and mountain. To breathe and to see were enough.

I cared nothing at the moment for the lost camp and my comrades of the hunt. Yet I was in no Arcady. Take down the map of Kentucky, and you will see in the east a vast region, roughened over with the dark scrawls meaning mountains, through which no railroad comes, and few roads of any kind either. Add to it other large and similar portions of the map contiguous in Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and you have enough country to make a brave kingdom,—a kingdom, too, over which no man yet has been able to make himself ruler, not even any governor of the four States, and they have had some fine and fit governors. In this kingdom of mountain and wilderness I was lost, and was not mourning it, for the time.

A light wind stirred the currents of air and began that faint, curious moaning through the drying leaves which I call the swan-song of autumn. The brilliant foliage quivered before the light touch of the breeze, and the reds and the yellows and the browns and the lingering bits of green shifted and changed like shaken pieces of colored silk.

But one must do more than merely breathe and see, or even listen to the wind playing on the autumn leaves. This kingdom might be mine by right of sole tenancy, but after a little I preferred—greatly preferred—to find some partner of my throne who would feed me and house me and show me my way back to camp. Not knowing any other mode by which to choose, I chose the direction which indicated the easiest foot-path, though that might lead me farthest astray. I put my rifle upon my shoulder and walked through the yellowing grass and the short red bushes, over hills and down gullies, which were a trial to muscles and the forgiving spirit. But I came to nothing which looked familiar, not a tree, not a bush, not a hill, not a rock.