"Oh, I don"t know; I don"t know!" exclaimed Mary, with sudden distraction; "it seems to me I _must_ be to blame, or I"d have been through long ago. I ought to have _run through_ the lines. I ought to have "run the blockade.""
"My child," said the lawyer, "you"re mad."
"You"ll see," replied Mary, almost in soliloquy.
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 compa.s.s. 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 ba.s.s-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, m.u.f.fled 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 b.u.t.termilk 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 c.o.o.nin" 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.