and
skirmishing that was done that hot August day in '60, either he did
not see, or if he saw it, the memory faded under the great terror that
gripped his soul when he saw his mother in danger. Ward in his
undershirt was standing by a tree near the stage road above the bank.
The firing in the creek bed had stopped. His back was toward the town,
and then, out of some place dim in the child's mind--from the troop
southwest of town perhaps--came a charge of galloping horsemen,
riding down on Ward. The others with him had found cover, and he,
seeing the enemy before him and behind him, pistol in hand, alone
charged into the advancing horsemen. It was all confused in the
child's mind, though the histories say that the Sycamore Ridge people
did not know Ward was in danger, and that when he fell they did not
understand who had fallen. But the boy--John Barclay--saw him fall,
and his mother knew who had fallen, and the wife of the Westport
martyr groaned in anguish as she saw Freedom's champion writhing in
the dust of the road like a dying snake, after the troop passed over
him. And even when he was a man, the boy could remember the woe in her
face, as she stooped to kiss her child, and then huddling down to
avoid the bullets, ran across the field to the wounded man, with dust
in his mouth, twitching in the highway. Bullets were spitting in the
dust about her as the boy saw his mother roll the bleeding man over,
pick him up, get him on her back with his feet trailing on the earth
beside her, and then rising to her full height, stagger under her limp
burden back to the house. When she came in the door, her face and
shoulders were covered with blood and her skirt ripped with a bullet.

That is all of the battle that John Barclay ever remembered. After
that it seemed to end, though the histories say that it lasted all the
long day, and that the fire of the invaders was so heavy that no one
from the Ridge dared venture to the Barclay home. The boy saw his
mother lay the unconscious man on the floor, while she opened the back
door, and without saying a word, stepped to the spring, which was
hidden from the road. She put her knee, her broad chest, and her
strong red hand to the rock and shoved until her back bowed and the
cords stood out on her neck; then slowly the rock moved till she could
see inside the cave, could put her leg in, could squirm her body in.
The morning light flooded in after her, and in the instant that she
stood