_ CHAPTER LIV. "WHO GOES THERE?"
The scene and incident now to be described are without date. As Mary recalled them, years afterward, they hung out against the memory a bold, clear picture, cast upon it as the magic lantern casts its tableaux upon the darkened canvas. She had lost the day of the month, the day of the week, all sense of location, and the points of the compass. The most that she knew was that she was somewhere near the meeting of the boundaries of three States. Either she was just within the southern bound of Tennessee, or the extreme north-eastern corner of Mississippi, or else the north-western corner of Alabama. She was aware, too, that she had crossed the Tennessee river; that the sun had risen on her left and had set on her right, and that by and by this beautiful day would fade and pass from this unknown land, and the fire-light and lamp-light draw around them the home-groups under the roof-trees, here where she was a homeless stranger, the same as in the home-lands where she had once loved and been beloved.
She was seated in a small, light buggy drawn by one good horse. Beside her the reins were held by a rather tall man, of middle age, gray, dark, round-shouldered, and dressed in the loose blue flannel so much worn by followers of the Federal camp. Under the stiff brim of his soft-crowned black hat a pair of clear eyes gave a continuous playful twinkle. Between this person and Mary protruded, at the edge of the buggy-seat, two small bootees that have already had mention, and from his elbow to hers, and back to his, continually swayed drowsily the little golden head to which the bootees bore a certain close relation. The dust of the highway was on the buggy and the blue flannel and the bootees. It showed with special boldness on a black sun-bonnet that covered Mary's head, and that somehow lost all its homeliness whenever it rose sufficiently in front to show the face within. But the highway itself was not there; it had been left behind some hours earlier. The buggy was moving at a quiet jog along a "neighborhood road," with unploughed fields on the right and a darkling woods pasture on the left. By the feathery softness and paleness of the sweet-smelling foliage you might have guessed it was not far from the middle of April, one way or another; and, by certain allusions to Pittsburg Landing as a place of conspicuous note, you might have known that Shiloh had been fought. There was that feeling of desolation in the land that remains after armies have passed over, let them tread never so lightly.
"D'you know what them rails is put that way fur?" asked the man. He pointed down with his buggy-whip just off the roadside, first on one hand and then on the other.
"No," said Mary, turning the sun-bonnet's limp front toward the questioner and then to the disjointed fence on her nearer side; "that's what I've been wondering for days. They've been ordinary worm fences, haven't they?"
"Jess so," responded the man, with his accustomed twinkle. "But I think I see you oncet or twicet lookin' at 'em and sort o' tryin' to make out how come they got into that shape." The long-reiterated W's of the rail-fence had been pulled apart into separate V's, and the two sides of each of these had been drawn narrowly together, so that what had been two parallel lines of fence, with the lane between, was now a long double row of wedge-shaped piles of rails, all pointing into the woods on the left.
"How did it happen?" asked Mary, with a smile of curiosity.
"Didn't happen at all, 'twas jess _done_ by live men, and in a powerful few minutes at that. Sort o' shows what we're approachin' unto, as it were, eh? Not but they's plenty behind us done the same way, all the way back into Kentuck', as you already done see; but this's been done sence the last rain, and it rained night afore last."
"Still I'm not sure what it means," said Mary; "has there been fighting here?"
"Go up head," said the man, with a facetious gesture. "See? The fight came through these here woods, here. 'Taint been much over twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin patchwork from the bad English of many sections, the outcome of a humorous and eclectic fondness for verbal deformities. But his lightness received a sudden check.
"Heigh-h-h!" he gravely and softly exclaimed, gathering the reins closer, as the horse swerved and dashed ahead. Two or three buzzards started up from the roadside, with their horrid flapping and whiff of quills, and circled low overhead. "Heigh-h-h!" he continued soothingly. "Ho-o-o-o! somebody lost a good nag there,--a six-pound shot right through his head and neck. Whoever made that shot killed two birds with one stone, sho!" He was half risen from his seat, looking back. As he turned again, and sat down, the drooping black sun-bonnet quite concealed the face within. He looked at it a moment. "If you think you don't like the risks we can still turn back."
"No," said the voice from out the sun-bonnet; "go on."
"If we don't turn back now we can't turn back at all."
"Go on," said Mary; "I can't turn back."
"You're a good soldier," said the man, playfully again. "You're a better one than me, I reckon; I kin turn back frequently, as it were. I've done it 'many a time and oft,' as the felleh says."
Mary looked up with feminine surprise. He made a pretence of silent laughter, that showed a hundred crows' feet in his twinkling eyes.
"Oh, don't you fret; I'm not goin' to run the wrong way with you in charge. Didn't you hear me promise Mr. Thornton? Well, you see, I've got a sort o' bad memory, that kind o' won't let me forgit when I make a promise;--bothers me that way a heap sometimes." He smirked in a self-deprecating way, and pulled his hat-brim down in front. Presently he spoke again, looking straight ahead over the horse's ears:--
"Now, that's the mischief about comin' with me--got to run both blockades at oncet. Now, if you'd been a good Secesh and could somehow or 'nother of got a pass through the Union lines you'd of been all gay. But bein' Union, the fu'ther you git along the wuss off you air, 'less-n I kin take you and carry you 'way 'long yonder to where you kin jess jump onto a south-bound Rebel railroad and light down amongst folks that'll never think o' you havin' run through the lines."
"But you can't do that," said Mary, not in the form of a request. "You know you agreed with Mr. Thornton that you would simply"--
"Put you down in a safe place," said the man, jocosely; "that's what it meant, and don't you get nervous"-- His face suddenly changed; he raised his whip and held it up for attention and silence, looking at Mary, and smiling while he listened. "Do you hear anything?"
"Yes," said Mary, in a hushed tone. There were some old fields on the right-hand now, and a wood on the left. Just within the wood a turtle-dove was cooing.
"I don't mean that," said the man, softly.
"No," said Mary, "you mean this, away over here." She pointed across the fields, almost straight away in front.
"'Taint so scandalous far 'awa-a-ay' as you talk like," murmured the man, jestingly; and just then a fresh breath of the evening breeze brought plainer and nearer the soft boom of a bass-drum.
"Are they coming this way?" asked Mary.
"No; they're sort o' dress-paradin' in camp, I reckon." He began to draw rein. "We turn off here, anyway," he said, and drove slowly, but point blank into the forest.
"I don't see any road," said Mary. It was so dark in the wood that even her child, muffled in a shawl and asleep in her arms, was a dim shape.
"Yes," was the reply; "we have to sort o' smell out the way here; but my smellers is good, at times, and pretty soon we'll strike a little sort o' somepnuther like a road, about a quarter from here."
Pretty soon they did so. It started suddenly from the edge of an old field in the forest, and ran gradually down, winding among the trees, into a densely wooded bottom, where even Mary's short form often had to bend low to avoid the boughs of beech-trees and festoons of grape-vine. Under one beech the buggy stood still a moment. The man drew and opened a large clasp-knife and cut one of the long, tough withes. He handed it to Mary, as they started on again.
"With compliments," he said, "and hoping you won't find no use for it."
"What is it for?"
"Why, you see, later on we'll be in the saddle; and if such a thing should jess accidentally happen to happen, which I hope it won't, to be sho', that I should happen to sort o' absent-mindedly yell out 'Go!' like as if a hornet had stabbed me, you jess come down with that switch, and make the critter under you run like a scared dog, as it were."
"Must I?"
"No, I don't say you _must_, but you'd better, I bet you. You needn't if you don't want to."
Presently the dim path led them into a clear, rippling creek, and seemed to Mary to end; but when the buggy wheels had crunched softly along down stream over some fifty or sixty yards of gravelly shallow, the road showed itself faintly again on the other bank, and the horse, with a plunge or two and a scramble, jerked them safely over the top, and moved forward in the direction of the rising moon. They skirted a small field full of ghostly dead trees, where corn was beginning to make a show, turned its angle, and saw the path under their feet plain to view, smooth and hard.
"See that?" said the man, in a tone of playful triumph, as the animal started off at a brisk trot, lifted his head and neighed. "'My day's work's done,' sezee; 'I done hoed my row.'" A responsive neigh came out of the darkness ahead. "That's the trick!" said the man. "Thanks, as the felleh says." He looked to Mary for her appreciation of his humor.
"I suppose that means a good deal; does it?" asked she, with a smile.
"Jess so! It means, first of all, fresh hosses. And then it means a house what aint been burnt by jayhawkers yit, and a man and woman a-waitin' in it, and some bacon and cornpone, and maybe a little coffee; and milk, anyhow, till you can't rest, and buttermilk to fare-you-well. Now, have you ever learned the trick o' jess sort o' qui'lin'[2] up, cloze an' all, dry so, and puttin' half a night's rest into an hour's sleep? 'Caze why, in one hour we must be in the saddle. No mo' buggy, and powerful few roads. Comes as nigh coonin' it as I reckon you ever 'lowed you'd like to do, don't it?"
[2] Coiling.
He smiled, pretending to hold back much laughter, and Mary smiled too. At mention of a woman she had removed her bonnet and was smoothing her hair with her hand.
"I don't care," she said, "if only you'll bring us through."
The man made a ludicrous gesture of self-abasement.
"Not knowin', can't say, as the felleh says; but what I can tell you--I always start out to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and which one I'll do I seldom ever promise till it's done. But I have a sneakin' notion, as it were, that I'm the clean sand, and no discount, as Mr. Lincoln says, and I do my best. Angels can do no more, as the felleh says."
He drew rein. "Whoa!" Mary saw a small log cabin, and a fire-light shining under the bottom of the door.
"The woods seem to be on fire just over there in three or four places, are they not?" she asked, as she passed the sleeping Alice down to the man, who had got out of the buggy.
"Them's the camps," said another man, who had come out of the house and was letting the horse out of the shafts.
"If we was on the rise o' the hill yonder we could see the Confedick camps, couldn't we, Isaiah?" asked Mary's guide.
"Easy," said that prophet. "I heer 'em to-day two, three times, plain, cheerin' at somethin'."
* * *
About the middle of that night Mary Richling was sitting very still and upright on a large dark horse that stood champing his Mexican bit in the black shadow of a great oak. Alice rested before her, fast asleep against her bosom. Mary held by the bridle another horse, whose naked saddle-tree was empty. A few steps in front of her the light of the full moon shone almost straight down upon a narrow road that just there emerged from the shadow of woods on either side, and divided into a main right fork and a much smaller one that curved around to Mary's left. Off in the direction of the main fork the sky was all aglow with camp-fires. Only just here on the left there was a cool and grateful darkness.
She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the led horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a "navy-six." He was dressed in dull homespun but he was the same who had been dressed in blue. He turned his horse and led the way down the lesser road.
"If we'd of gone three hundred yards further," he whispered, falling back and smiling broadly, "we'd 'a' run into the pickets. I went nigh enough to see the videttes settin' on their hosses in the main road. This here aint no road; it just goes up to a nigger quarters. I've got one o' the niggers to show us the way."
"Where is he?" whispered Mary; but, before her companion could answer, a tattered form moved from behind a bush a little in advance and started ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently they turned into a clear, open forest and followed the long, rapid, swinging stride of the negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on the bank of a deep, narrow stream. The negro made a motion for them to keep well to the right when they should enter the water. The white man softly lifted Alice to his arms, directed and assisted Mary to kneel in her saddle, with her skirts gathered carefully under her, and so they went down into the cold stream, the negro first, with arms outstretched above the flood; then Mary, and then the white man,--or, let us say plainly the spy,--with the unawakened child on his breast. And so they rose out of it on the farther side without a shoe or garment wet save the rags of their dark guide.
Again they followed him, along a line of stake-and-rider fence, with the woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow; and once Mary's blood turned, for an instant, to ice, at the unearthly shriek of the hoot-owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow road, and the negro stopped.
"Dess keep dish yeh road fo' 'bout half mile an' you strak 'pon the broad, main road. Tek de right, an' you go whah yo' fancy tek you."
"Good-by," whispered Mary.
"Good-by, miss," said the negro, in the same low voice; "good-by, boss; don't you fo'git you promise tek me thoo to de Yankee' when you come back. I 'feered you gwine fo'git it, boss."
The spy said he would not, and they left him. The half-mile was soon passed, though it turned out to be a mile and a half, and at length Mary's companion looked back, as they rode single file, with Mary in the rear, and said softly, "There's the road," pointing at its broad, pale line with his six-shooter.
As they entered it and turned to the right, Mary, with Alice again in her arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly bush. His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost position when a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side of the highway, snatched a carbine from the earth and cried, "Halt!"
The dark, recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen, enveloped in their blankets, lying about a few red coals. Mary turned a frightened look backward and met the eyes of her companion.
"Move a little faster," said he, in a low, clear voice. As she promptly did so she heard him answer the challenge. His horse trotted softly after hers.
"Don't stop us, my friend; we're taking a sick child to the doctor."
"Halt, you hound!" the cry rang out; and as Mary glanced back three or four men were just leaping into the road. But she saw, also, her companion, his face suffused with an earnestness that was almost an agony, rise in his stirrups, with the stoop of his shoulders all gone, and wildly cry:--
"Go!"
She smote the horse and flew. Alice awoke and screamed.
"Hush, my darling!" said the mother, laying on the withe; "mamma's here. Hush, darling!--mamma's here. Don't be frightened, darling baby! O God, spare my child!" and away she sped.
The report of a carbine rang out and went rolling away in a thousand echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp succession, and there went close by Mary's ear the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized, once,--twice,--thrice,--just at her back where the hoofs of her companion's horse were clattering,--the tart rejoinders of his navy-six.
"Go!" he cried again. "Lay low! lay low! cover the child!" But his words were needless. With head bowed forward and form crouched over the crying, clinging child, with slackened rein and fluttering dress, and sun-bonnet and loosened hair blown back upon her shoulders, with lips compressed and silent prayers, Mary was riding for life and liberty and her husband's bedside.
"O mamma! mamma!" wailed the terrified little one.
"Go on! Go on!" cried the voice behind; "they're saddling--up! Go! go! We're goin' to make it. We're goin' to _make_ it! Go-o-o!"
Half an hour later they were again riding abreast, at a moderate gallop. Alice's cries had been quieted, but she still clung to her mother in a great tremor. Mary and her companion conversed earnestly in the subdued tone that had become their habit.
"No, I don't think they followed us fur," said the spy. "Seem like they's jess some scouts, most likely a-comin' in to report, feelin' pooty safe and sort o' takin' it easy and careless; 'dreamin' the happy hours away,' as the felleh says. I reckon they sort o' believed my story, too, the little gal yelled so sort o' skilful. We kin slack up some more now; we want to get our critters lookin' cool and quiet ag'in as quick as we kin, befo' we meet up with somebody." They reined into a gentle trot. He drew his revolver, whose emptied chambers he had already refilled. "D'd you hear this little felleh sing, 'Listen to the mockin'-bird'?"
"Yes," said Mary; "but I hope it didn't hit any of them."
He made no reply.
"Don't you?" she asked.
He grinned.
"D'you want a felleh to wish he was a bad shot?"
"Yes," said Mary, smiling.
"Well, seein' as you're along, I do. For they wouldn't give us up so easy if I'd a hit one. Oh,--mine was only sort o' complimentary shots,--much as to say, 'Same to you, gents,' as the felleh says."
Mary gave him a pleasant glance by way of courtesy, but was busy calming the child. The man let his weapon into its holster under his homespun coat and lapsed into silence. He looked long and steadily at the small feminine figure of his companion. His eyes passed slowly from the knee thrown over the saddle's horn to the gentle forehead slightly bowed, as her face sank to meet the uplifted kisses of the trembling child, then over the crown and down the heavy, loosened tresses that hid the sun-bonnet hanging back from her throat by its strings and flowed on down to the saddle-bow. His admiring eyes, grave for once, had made the journey twice before he noticed that the child was trying to comfort the mother, and that the light of the sinking moon was glistening back from Mary's falling tears.
"Better let me have the little one," he said, "and you sort o' fix up a little, befo' we happen to meet up with somebody, as I said. It's lucky we haven't done it already."
A little coaxing prevailed with Alice, and the transfer was made. Mary turned away her wet eyes, smiling for shame of them, and began to coil her hair, her companion's eye following.
"Oh, you aint got no business to be ashamed of a few tears. I knowed you was a good soldier, befo' ever we started; I see' it in yo' eye. Not as I want to be complimentin' of you jess now. 'I come not here to talk,' as they used to say in school. D'd you ever hear that piece?"
"Yes," said Mary.
"That's taken from Romans, aint it?"
"No," said Mary again, with a broad smile.
"I didn't know," said the man; "I aint no brag Bible scholar." He put on a look of droll modesty. "I used to could say the ten commandments of the decalogue, oncet, and I still tries to keep 'em, in ginerally. There's another burnt house. That's the third one we done passed inside a mile. Raiders was along here about two weeks back. Hear that rooster crowin'? When we pass the plantation whar he is and rise the next hill, we'll be in sight o' the little town whar we stop for refresh_ments_, as the railroad man says. You must begin to feel jess about everlastin'ly wore out, don't you?"
"No," said Mary; but he made a movement of the head to indicate that he had his belief to the contrary.
At an abrupt angle of the road Mary's heart leaped into her throat to find herself and her companion suddenly face to face with two horsemen in gray, journeying leisurely toward them on particularly good horses. One wore a slouched hat, the other a Federal officer's cap. They were the first Confederates she had ever seen eye to eye.
"Ride on a little piece and stop," murmured the spy. The strangers lifted their hats respectfully as she passed them.
"Gents," said the spy, "good-morning!" He threw a leg over the pommel of his saddle and the three men halted in a group. One of them copied the spy's attitude. They returned the greeting in kind.
"What command do you belong to?" asked the lone stranger.
"Simmons's battery," said one. "Whoa!"--to his horse.
"Mississippi?" asked Mary's guardian.
"Rackensack," said the man in the blue cap.
"Arkansas," said the other in the same breath. "What is your command?"
"Signal service," replied the spy. "Reckon I look mighty like a citizen jess about now, don't I?" He gave them his little laugh of self-depreciation and looked toward Mary, where she had halted and was letting her horse nip the new grass of the roadside.
"See any troops along the way you come?" asked the man in the hat.
"No; on'y a squad o' fellehs back yonder who was all unsaddled and fast asleep, and jumped up worse scared'n a drove o' wile hogs. We both sort o' got a little mad and jess swapped a few shots, you know, kind o' tit for tat, as it were. Enemy's loss unknown." He stooped more than ever in the shoulders, and laughed. The men were amused. "If you see 'em, I'd like you to mention me"-- He paused to exchange smiles again. "And tell 'em the next time they see a man hurryin' along with a lady and sick child to see the doctor, they better hold their fire till they sho he's on'y a citizen." He let his foot down into the stirrup again and they all smiled broadly. "Good-morning!" The two parties went their ways.
"Jess as leave not of met up with them two buttermilk rangers," said the spy, once more at Mary's side; "but seein' as thah we was the oniest thing was to put on all the brass I had."
From the top of the next hill the travellers descended into a village lying fast asleep, with the morning star blazing over it, the cocks calling to each other from their roosts, and here and there a light twinkling from a kitchen window, or a lazy axe-stroke smiting the logs at a wood-pile. In the middle of the village one lone old man, half-dressed, was lazily opening the little wooden "store" that monopolized its commerce. The travellers responded to his silent bow, rode on through the place, passed over and down another hill, met an aged negro, who passed on the roadside, lifting his forlorn hat and bowing low; and, as soon as they could be sure they had gone beyond his sight and hearing, turned abruptly into a dark wood on the left. Twice again they turned to the left, going very warily through the deep shadows of the forest, and so returned half around the village, seeing no one. Then they stopped and dismounted at a stable-door, on the outskirts of the place. The spy opened it with a key from his own pocket, went in and came out again with a great armful of hay, which he spread for the horses' feet to muffle their tread, led them into the stable, removed the hay again, and closed and locked the door.
"Make yourself small," he whispered, "and walk fast." They passed by a garden path up to the back porch and door of a small unpainted cottage. He knocked, three soft, measured taps.
"Day's breakin'," he whispered again, as he stood with Alice asleep in his arms, while somebody was heard stirring within.
"Sam?" said a low, wary voice just within the unopened door.
"Sister," softly responded the spy, and the door swung inward, and revealed a tall woman, with an austere but good face, that could just be made out by the dim light of a tallow candle shining from the next room. The travellers entered and the door was shut.
"Well," said the spy, standing and smiling foolishly, and bending playfully in the shoulders, "well, Mrs. Richlin',"--he gave his hand a limp wave abroad and smirked,--"'In Dixie's land you take yo' stand.' This is it. You're in it!--Mrs. Richlin', my sister; sister, Mrs. Richlin'."
"Pleased to know ye," said the woman, without the faintest ray of emotion. "Take a seat and sit down." She produced a chair bottomed with raw-hide.
"Thank you," was all Mary could think of to reply as she accepted the seat, and "Thank you" again when the woman brought a glass of water. The spy laid Alice on a bed in sight of Mary in another chamber. He came back on tiptoe.
"Now, the next thing is to git you furder south. Wust of it is that, seein' as you got sich a weakness fur tellin' the truth, we'll jess have to sort o' slide you along fum one Union man to another; sort o' hole fass what I give ye, as you used to say yourself, I reckon. But you've got one strong holt." His eye went to his sister's, and he started away without a word, and was presently heard making a fire, while the woman went about spreading a small table with cold meats and corn-bread, milk and butter. Her brother came back once more.
"Yes," he said to Mary, "you've got one mighty good card, and that's it in yonder on the bed. 'Humph!' folks'll say; 'didn't come fur with that there baby, sho!'"
"I wouldn't go far without her," said Mary, brightly.
"_I_ say," responded the hostess, with her back turned, and said no more.
"Sister," said the spy, "we'll want the buggy."
"All right," responded the sister.
"I'll go feed the hosses," said he, and went out. In a few minutes he returned. "Joe must give 'em a good rubbin' when he comes, sister," he said.
"All right," replied the woman, and then turning to Mary, "Come."
"What, ma'm?"
"Eat." She touched the back of a chair. "Sam, bring the baby." She stood and waited on the table.
Mary was still eating, when suddenly she rose up, saying:--
"Why, where is Mr. ----, your brother?"
"He's gone to take a sleep outside," said his sister. "It's too resky for him to sleep in a house."
She faintly smiled, for the first time, at the end of this long speech.
"But," said Mary, "oh, I haven't uttered a word of thanks. What will he think of me?"
She sank into her chair again with an elbow on the table, and looked up at the tall standing figure on the other side, with a little laugh of mortification.
"You kin thank God," replied the figure. "_He_ aint gone." Another ghost of a smile was seen for a moment on the grave face. "Sam aint thinkin' about that. You hurry and finish and lay down and sleep, and when you wake up he'll be back here ready, to take you along furder. That's a healthy little one. She wants some more buttermilk. Give it to her. If she don't drink it the pigs'll git it, as the ole woman says.... Now you better lay down on the bed in yonder and go to sleep. Jess sort o' loosen yo' cloze; don't take off noth'n' but dress and shoes. You needn't be afeard to sleep sound; I'm goin' to keep a lookout." _