Page 107 - Arkansas Confederate Women

92 Confederate Women of Arkansas

follow Price at their first opportunity, and the mother and
sister well knew that access to their apartments meant the

loss of clothing for the rebels.

"Make a light or we'll make one for you," blurted out a
gruff voice from the front piazza.

"Ring the bell, mother," whispered the daughter, "as if
the boys are in hearing, while I engage the attention of those

in front of the house."

The fearless mother rang the bell until the very night air
seemed full of warning to the startled intruders.

"Shut up your infernal ringing there; I'll not be thwarted
by an old woman," said the leader of this ruffian band and,
seizing the frail little mother, he threw her full length in the
yard below, where she lay as if lifeless.

BRUTAL ACT REPAID IN KIND.

The daughter, who had adroitly been "killing time," by
pretending to take from the candle molds a candle with which

to furnish a light, heard her mother shriek, saw the atrocious
act, saw her mother apparently dead from his cruelty, then un-
hesitatingly confronted the would-be assassin with a desperation
born of despair.

"You scoundrel ! See, you have killed my mother !" and

scarcely were the words spoken when she rushed forward to
the edge of the piazza, where the outlaw was standing, and dealt
him a blow across the eyes with the unemptied candle molds
that sent him staggering backward. Wildly clutching at the
railing he went down to the ground, to be carried away by his
comrades from the scene of action, a "wiser if not a better
man."

Mrs. Bailey suffered much from her fall, but her life was

spared to see her four sons, "bronzed and battle scarred,"
return home when war and its strife were over.

And in offering this simple tribute to womanly courage

we feel assured that duty had no more ardent votaries or the
"lost cause" more devoted champions than these two brave
women.