"I don"t care," she said, "if only you"ll bring us through."
The man made a ludicrous gesture of self-abas.e.m.e.nt.
"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 pa.s.sed 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 Confed.i.c.k 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 n.i.g.g.e.r quarters. I"ve got one o" the n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sed, 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed a carbine from the earth and cried, "Halt!"
The dark, rec.u.mbent 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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.