COLLECTING A BILL BY FORCE OF ARMS

"Help! Help!"

This call for assistance came from a small house, poorly constructed by those who had little skill in the art of carpentry. It stood near the Spring Road, in a field of about ten acres of land, under cultivation, though the rank weeds among the useful plants indicated that it had been sorely neglected.

Those familiar with the locality would have recognized it as the abode of one of those small farmers found all over the country, who were struggling to improve their worldly condition on a very insufficient capital. The house was hardly finished, and the want of skill was apparent in its erection from sill to ridgepole.

Swinburne Pickford was the proprietor of the dwelling and land. He worked for farmers, planters, and mechanics, for any one who would give him employment, in addition to his labor in the cultivation of his land; and with the sum he had been able to save from his wages, he had bought the land, and started the small farm on his own account. He had a wife and two small children; and, as his time permitted, he had built the house with his own hands alone.

The section of the State of Kentucky in which this little place was located had been sorely disturbed by the conflicts and outrages of the two parties at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion, one struggling to drag the State out of the Union, and the other to prevent its secession. As in the other States of the South, the advocates of disunion were more violent and demonstrative than the loyal people, and after the bombardment of Fort Sumter appeared to be in the ascendant for this reason.

The entire South had been in a state of excitement from the inception of the presidential campaign which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the industries of this region suffered in consequence; and it looked as though Pickford's house would never be entirely finished. With the exception of the chimney, placed outside of the building, after the fashion of the South, he had done all the work himself. Titus Lyon, the mason of the village of Barcreek, had done this portion of the labor, and the bill for its erection was still unpaid.

Inside of the house two young men, the older about eighteen and the younger sixteen, both armed with muskets, had dragged the proprietor of the house to the floor. One of them had his foot on the chest of the fallen farmer, and the other was pointing his gun at him. Pickford had evidently endeavored to protect himself from the assault of his two assailants, who had got the better of him, and had only given up the battle when pinned to the floor by the foot of one of them.

"Will you pay the bill I have brought to you?" demanded Sandy Lyon, who was the principal aggressor in the assault. "Dr. Falkirk paid you over fifty dollars to-day, and you have got the money to pay the bill, which has been standing two years."

Swin Pickford made no reply to this statement; but just at that moment he heard the clippetty-clip of a galloping horse in the road in front of the house. With the foot of one of his assaulters on his chest, and the other with an old gun in his hand at his side, Pickford realized that nothing could be done but submit. Shooting in that locality and at that time was no uncommon occurrence; for there seemed to be no law in the land, and men generally settled their own grievances, or submitted to them.

"Help! Help!" shouted the victim of the present outrage, with all the strength of his lungs, which gave him voice enough to make him heard a quarter of a mile distant.

"Shut up your head!" savagely yelled Sandy Lyon, as he pressed his foot down with all his might by throwing all his weight upon the breast of the prostrate farmer.

The sound of the horse's feet in the road seemed to give the victim a new hope, and he tried to shout again. But Sandy flew at his throat like a wolf, and choked him into silence.

"Find a couple of ropes or cords, Orly, and we will tie his hands behind him!" called Sandy to his brother.

The younger brother hastened to obey the order. Finding nothing of the description required, he rushed into the rear room of the house. The pressure of the assailant's hands upon his throat, and the hope of assistance from outside, stimulated the victim to further resistance, for the gun in the hands of Orly no longer threatened him. With a desperate struggle he threw Sandy over backwards, and sprang to his feet. His persecutor picked himself up, and was about to throw himself upon him again. Pickford, who was nearly exhausted by the struggle and the choking, rushed to the open door; and as he was about to pass out he encountered a young man in the uniform of a cavalryman, with a sabre dangling at his side, and a carbine slung on his back.

At the moment when the cry for help came from the house, the young man, mounted on a spirited horse, was riding along the Spring Road. He was a stout fellow, not more than eighteen years old, with a pleasant face, though a physiognomist would have observed upon it a look of determination, indicating that he could not be trifled with on a serious occasion. Neither the house nor the man who occupied it would have tempted the soldier to enter it for any other reason than the call that had just come from it.

The cavalryman reined in his steed, and halted him with his head to a post in front of the dwelling. Dismounting in haste, he threw the reins over the hitching-hook and hurried to the front door, just in time to encounter Pickford as he was rushing out. The victim of the outrage was gasping for breath, and presented a really pitiable aspect to the young soldier, to whom he was not a stranger, though they had met as enemies and not as friends.

"What's the trouble?" asked Deck Lyon, the cavalryman, as he encountered the owner of the miniature plantation.

"I have been set upon, and nearly killed by your cousins, Sandy and Orly Lyon, and one of them has nearly choked me to death," gasped Pickford.

"By my cousins!" exclaimed Deck Lyon, astonished at the reply of the victim.

"Yes; both on 'em," groaned Swin, as he was generally called.

"I supposed you had gone to the county town with the Home Guards," added Deck.

"No; I never 'listed, 'cause I have a family to take care on."

"Come in, and let me see what the trouble is," continued Deck, as he pushed Swin in ahead of him.

Sandy had been in the act of throwing himself upon his victim again, when he discovered his cousin in the person of the cavalryman. The sight of him caused the angry young man to fall back; and Deck entered the room just as Orly appeared at the rear door with a piece of bed-cord in his hand.

"Good-morning, Sandy," said Deck, as pleasantly as though nothing had called for his interference. "There seems to be some trouble here."

"Trouble enough," replied Sandy in a sulky tone.

"Swin Pickford calls for help as though you intended to murder him," continued Deck, as he looked from one to the other of the belligerents, and took in Orly with the cord at the same time. "You are all on the same side of the national fight, and you ought to be friends."

"We are not on the same side, for Pickford is a traitor," answered Sandy.

"I'm no traitor!" protested Swin. "But I should like to ask what you and Orly are, if I'm one. I was willing to join the Home Guards for home service; but when they started to go inter the Confederate army, I took off my name, for I didn't j'in for no sech work. But Sandy and Orly went off with the company, and then deserted and come home. What's the sense of them callin' me a traitor when I'm not one, and they be."

"If they deserted, they did a sensible thing," said Deck with a smile, as he glanced at his two cousins. "But I am not here to settle any such quarrel as this; for I don't care how much you ruffians fight among yourselves."

"The trouble here has nothing to do with politics or the Home Guards," replied Sandy.

"Nothing at all, Deck," added Orly.

"What is it all about, then?" inquired Deck. "I came in because a cry was heard from the house which made me think a murder was going on here."

"That's jest what was goin' on here!" exclaimed Pickford.

"Nothing of the sort," protested Sandy. "Not a word has been said here about the army or the Home Guards."

"But your father has marched his company farther south, to join General Buckner's army."

"That had nothing to do with our business here. Swin Pickford owes father twenty-seven dollars for building the chimney of this house, and he has owed it for about two years, and it is time the bill was paid."

"That's all so, Deck Lyon; I don't deny none on't," added Pickford, who had recovered his breath and his temper by this time. "But I hain't had the money to pay the bill. I'm an honest man, and I allus pay my debts when I ken. Times have been hard with me for the last two years. Folks has been all over inter politics, and I couldn't hardly git money enough to pay for the bread and butter of my wife and children; for there wasn't next to no work at all."

"That's a poor excuse in your case, Swin," added Sandy.

"I went to Cap'n Titus more'n a year ago, and talked to him about that debt," continued Pickford, without heeding the remark of Sandy. "He got heaps of money out of his brother's property, and I didn't s'pose he needed the money. I offered him five dollars, and told him I'd try to pay him five every month. But he didn't want me to do it that way, and told me I could pay it all to once, when I had the money. Then he wanted me to help him git up the company, and I did; I hoofed it all over the county for him, sometimes when I might have worked."

"But he has got money now!" Sandy broke in. "Dr. Falkirk paid him fifty dollars this morning at the grocery; for I saw him do it, and heard him say how much it was."

"I don't deny that, nuther," said the unfortunate debtor. "But I haven't got three dollars left of that money now. I paid Grunge the grocer nineteen dollars on't; for he knows I'm an honest man, and trusted me. Then I paid a man that's poorer'n I am for some work he done on my place, seven dollars and a half, and I had to pay my taxes or lose my farm."

"I saw Dr. Falkirk pay him that money, and Orly and I tramped all the way over here; for we have no horses at home now. He's got the money, and won't pay the bill. Mother wants the money very much," added Sandy.

"She hasn't got a dollar in the house," Orly put in, perhaps telling more than his brother wished to have revealed.

"Then you came over here to collect the bill at the muzzle of your gun," suggested Deck, who had seen the younger brother pick up his weapon, which had fallen on the floor.

"We meant to make him pay," said Sandy. "I believe he has the money, and I meant to search the house till I found it."

"You would have s'arched till the last gun fires, and you wouldn't found it then," protested the victim, as he took an old wallet from his pocket, which was found to contain about three dollars in silver. "That's all I've got in this world, and none in the next."

"I don't believe he has got any more money, Sandy," said Deck to his cousin, as he stepped up to him, and spoke to him in a low tone.

"I'm willin' to give him two dollars outen the little I got, though he abused me wus'n any man ever did in this world, and sha'n't in the next," interposed Pickford.

"I will take what I can get," replied Sandy, as he took the bill from his pocket.

The debtor paid him two dollars in silver; and if his mother, as Orly affirmed, had not a single dollar in the house, this small sum would be gladly received by her. Deck led the way out of the house, and his two cousins followed, just as Mrs. Pickford and her two small children came into the room. The sight of them was enough to assure the visitors of the poverty of the husband and father.