A clear space of full three hundred feet now separated the man in the wagon from the great throng, which with ten thousand hands seemed ready to tear him limb from limb.  Revolver shots rang out, women screamed, and trampled children cried for help.  Above it all was the roar of the mob.  The orator, in vain pantomime, implored order.

I saw Little Ramsey drop off the limb of a tree astride of a horse that was tied beneath, then lean over, and with one stroke of a knife sever the halter.

At the same time fifty other men seemed to have done the same thing, for flying horses shot out from different parts of the woods, all on the instant.  The man in the wagon was half a mile away now, still standing erect.  The gray horses were running low, with noses and tails outstretched.

The spread-out riders closed in a mass and followed at terrific speed.  The crowd behind seemed to grow silent.  We heard the patter-patter of barefoot horses ascending the long, low hill.  One rider on a sorrel horse fell behind.  He drew his horse to one side, and sitting over with one foot in the long stirrup, plied the sorrel across the flank with a big, white-felt hat.  The horse responded, and crept around to the front of the flying mass.

The wagon had disappeared over a gentle rise of ground, and then we lost the horsemen, too.  Still we watched, and two miles across the prairie we got a glimpse of running horses in a cloud of dust, and into another valley they settled, and then we lost them for good.

The speaking began again and went on amid applause and tears, with laughter set between.

I do not remember what was said, but after the speaking, as we made our way homeward, we met Little Ramsey and the young man who rode the sorrel horse.

They told us that they had caught the Copperhead after a ten-mile chase, and that he was badly hurt, for the wagon had upset and the fellow was beneath it.  Ramsey asked my father to go at once to see what could be done for him.

The man, however, was quite dead when my father reached him.  There was a purple mark around his neck:  and the opinion seemed to be that he had got tangled up in the harness or something.

* * * * *

The war-time months went dragging by, and the burden of gloom in the air seemed to lift; for when the Chicago “Tribune” was read each evening in the post-office it told of victories on land and sea.  Yet it was a joy not untinged with black; for in the church across from our house, funerals had been held for farmer boys who had died in prison-pens and been buried in Georgia trenches.

One youth there was, I remember, who had stopped to get a drink at our pump, and squirted a mouthful of water over me because I was handy.

One night the postmaster was reading aloud the names of the killed at Gettysburg, and he ran right on to the name of this boy.  The boy’s father sat there on a nail-keg, chewing a straw.  The postmaster tried to shuffle over the name and on to the next.