“’Nough!”

But Mayhall breathed hard and said quietly: 

“Captain Wells!”: 

Hence shouted, “Plain ole—­” But the captain’s huge fist was poised in the air over his face.

“Captain Wells,” he growled, and the captain rose and calmly put on his coat, while the crowd looked respectful, and Hence Sturgill staggered to one side, as though beaten in spirit, strength, and wits as well.  The captain beckoned Flitter Bill inside the store.  His manner had a distinct savor of patronage.

[Illustration:  Captain Wells descended with no little majesty and “biffed” him.]

“Misto Richmond,” he said, “I make you—­I appoint you, by the authority of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate States of Ameriky, as commissary-gineral of the Army of the Callahan.”

“As what?” Bill’s eyes blinked at the astounding dignity of his commission.

“Gineral Richmond, I shall not repeat them words.”  And he didn’t, but rose and made his way toward his old gray mare.  Tallow Dick held his bridle.

“Dick,” he said jocosely, “goin’ to run away ag’in?” The negro almost paled, and then, with a look at a blacksnake whip that hung on the barn door, grinned.

“No, suh—­no, suh—­’deed I ain’t, suh—­no mo’.”

Mounted, the captain dropped a three-cent silver piece in the startled negro’s hand.  Then he vouchsafed the wondering Flitter Bill and the gaping crowd a military salute and started for the yawning mouth of the Gap—­riding with shoulders squared and chin well in—­riding as should ride the commander of the Army of the Callahan.

Flitter Bill dropped his blinking eyes to the paper in his hand that bore the commission of Jefferson Davis and the Confederate States of America to Mayhall Wells of Callahan, and went back into his store.  He looked at it a long time and then he laughed, but without much mirth.

II

Grass had little chance to grow for three weeks thereafter under the cowhide boots of Captain Mayhall Wells.  When the twentieth morning came over the hills, the mist parted over the Stars and Bars floating from the top of a tall poplar up through the Gap and flaunting brave defiance to Black Tom, his Harlan Home Guard, and all other jay-hawking Unionists of the Kentucky hills.  It parted over the Army of the Callahan asleep on its arms in the mouth of the chasm, over Flitter Bill sitting, sullen and dejected, on the stoop of his store; and over Tallow Dick stealing corn bread from the kitchen to make ready for flight that night through the Gap, the mountains, and to the yellow river that was the Mecca of the runaway slave.

At the mouth of the Gap a ragged private stood before a ragged tent, raised a long dinner horn to his lips, and a mighty blast rang through the hills, reveille!  And out poured the Army of the Callahan from shack, rock-cave, and coverts of sticks and leaves, with squirrel rifles, Revolutionary muskets, shotguns, clasp-knives, and horse pistols for the duties of the day under Lieutenant Skaggs, tactician, and Lieutenant Boggs, quondam terror of Roaring Fork.