However, they could see many hors.e.m.e.n streaming down the road. The hors.e.m.e.n were in blue. "Oh, hide--hide--hide!" cried the girl, with a sob in her voice.
"Wait a minute," whispered a gray soldier excitedly. "Maybe they"re going along by. No, by thunder, they hain"t! They"re halting. Scoot, boys!"
They made a noiseless dash into the dark end of the barn. The girl, standing by the door, heard them break forth an instant later in clamorous whispers. "Where"ll we hide? Where"ll we hide? There hain"t a place to hide!" The girl turned and glanced wildly about the barn. It seemed true. The stock of hay had grown low under Santo"s endless munching, and from occasional levyings by pa.s.sing troopers in gray. The poles of the mow were barely covered, save in one corner where there was a little bunch.
The girl espied the great feed box. She ran to it and lifted the lid.
"Here! here!" she called. "Get in here."
They had been tearing noiselessly around the rear part of the barn. At her low call they came and plunged at the box. They did not all get in at the same moment without a good deal of a tangle. The wounded men gasped and muttered, but they at last were flopped down on the layer of feed which covered the bottom. Swiftly and softly the girl lowered the lid and then turned like a flash toward the door.
No one appeared there, so she went close to survey the situation. The troopers had dismounted and stood in silence by their horses. A gray-bearded man, whose red cheeks and nose shone vividly above the whiskers, was strolling about with two or three others. They wore double-breasted coats, and faded yellow sashes were wound under their black leather sword belts. The gray-bearded soldier was apparently giving orders, pointing here and there.
Mary tiptoed to the feed box. "They"ve all got off their horses," she said to it. A finger projected from a knothole near the top and said to her very plainly, "Come closer." She obeyed, and then a m.u.f.fled voice could be heard: "Scoot for the house, lady, and if we don"t see you again, why, much obliged for what you done."
"Good-bye," she said to the feed box.
She made two attempts to walk dauntlessly from the barn, but each time she faltered and failed just before she reached the point where she could have been seen by the blue-coated troopers. At last, however, she made a sort of a rush forward and went out into the bright sunshine.
The group of men in double-breasted coats wheeled in her direction at the instant. The gray-bearded officer forgot to lower his arm which had been stretched forth in giving an order.
She felt that her feet were touching the ground in a most unnatural manner. Her bearing, she believed, was suddenly grown awkward and ungainly. Upon her face she thought that this sentence was plainly written: "There are three men hidden in the feed box."
The gray-bearded soldier came toward her. She stopped; she seemed about to run away. But the soldier doffed his little blue cap and looked amiable. "You live here, I presume?" he said.
"Yes," she answered.
"Well, we are obliged to camp here for the night, and as we"ve got two wounded men with us I don"t suppose you"d mind if we put them in the barn."
"In--in the barn?"
He became aware that she was agitated. He smiled a.s.suringly. "You needn"t be frightened. We won"t hurt anything around here. You"ll all be safe enough."
The girl balanced on one foot and swung the other to and fro in the gra.s.s. She was looking down at it. "But--but I don"t think ma would like it if--if you took the barn."
The old officer laughed. "Wouldn"t she?" said he. "That"s so. Maybe she wouldn"t." He reflected for a time and then decided cheerfully: "Well, we will have to go ask her, anyhow. Where is she? In the house?"
"Yes," replied the girl, "she"s in the house. She--she"ll be scared to death when she sees you!"
"Well, you go and ask her then," said the soldier, always wearing a benign smile. "You go ask her and then come and tell me."
When the girl pushed open the door and entered the kitchen, she found it empty. "Ma!" she called softly. There was no answer. The kettle still was humming its low song. The knife and the curl of potato skin lay on the floor.
She went to her mother"s room and entered timidly. The new, lonely aspect of the house shook her nerves. Upon the bed was a confusion of coverings. "Ma!" called the girl, quaking in fear that her mother was not there to reply. But there was a sudden turmoil of the quilts, and her mother"s head was thrust forth. "Mary!" she cried, in what seemed to be a supreme astonishment, "I thought--I thought----"
"Oh, ma," blurted the girl, "there"s over a thousand Yankees in the yard, and I"ve hidden three of our men in the feed box!"
The elder woman, however, upon the appearance of her daughter had begun to thrash hysterically about on the bed and wail.
"Ma," the girl exclaimed, "and now they want to use the barn--and our men in the feed box! What shall I do, ma? What shall I do?"
Her mother did not seem to hear, so absorbed was she in her grievous flounderings and tears. "Ma!" appealed the girl. "Ma!"
For a moment Mary stood silently debating, her lips apart, her eyes fixed. Then she went to the kitchen window and peeked.
The old officer and the others were staring up the road. She went to another window in order to get a proper view of the road, and saw that they were gazing at a small body of hors.e.m.e.n approaching at a trot and raising much dust. Presently she recognised them as the squad that had pa.s.sed the house earlier, for the young man with the dim yellow chevron still rode at their head. An unarmed horseman in gray was receiving their close attention.
As they came very near to the house she darted to the first window again. The gray-bearded officer was smiling a fine broad smile of satisfaction. "So you got him?" he called out. The young sergeant sprang from his horse and his brown hand moved in a salute. The girl could not hear his reply. She saw the unarmed horseman in gray stroking a very black mustache and looking about him coolly and with an interested air.
He appeared so indifferent that she did not understand he was a prisoner until she heard the graybeard call out: "Well, put him in the barn.
He"ll be safe there, I guess." A party of troopers moved with the prisoner toward the barn.
The girl made a sudden gesture of horror, remembering the three men in the feed box.
III.
The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long lines of stamping horses. Men crooked their backs and perspired in order to rub with cloths or bunches of gra.s.s these slim equine legs, upon whose splendid machinery they depended so greatly. The lips of the horses were still wet and frothy from the steel bars which had wrenched at their mouths all day. Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk of the men.
"Moind where yer plug is steppin", Finerty! Keep "im aff me!"
"An ould elephant! He shtrides like a schoolhouse."
"Bill"s little mar--she was plum beat when she come in with Crawford"s crowd."
"Crawford"s the hardest-ridin" cavalryman in the army. An he don"t use up a horse, neither--much. They stay fresh when the others are most a-droppin"."
"Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?"
Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air of solemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side and sometimes rubbing noses dreamfully.
Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking comfortably. Their carbines were leaned against the wall. At their side and outlined in the black of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting in the hollow of his arm. Four horses, saddled and accoutred, were conferring with their heads close together. The four bridle reins were flung over a post.
Upon the calm green of the land, typical in every way of peace, the hues of war brought thither by the troops shone strangely. Mary, gazing curiously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. It was no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellow thoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voices of the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there for years. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of the landscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange and formidable to the girl.
Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her mother did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the prisoner in gray into the barn, and for a long time she watched the three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed box.
It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding school in Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties, invariably did hair breadth things. True, they were usually bent upon rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in gray nor any of the three in the feed box was lover of hers, but then a real heroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroine would take measures to rescue the four men. If she did not at least make the attempt, she would be false to those carefully constructed ideals which were the acc.u.mulation of years of dreaming.
But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door, and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with his back to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfast contemplation of the calm man and, incidentally, of the feed box. She knew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three heads and perhaps four would turn casually in her direction. Their ears were real ears.
Heroines, she knew, conducted these matters with infinite precision and despatch. They severed the hero"s bonds, cried a dramatic sentence, and stood between him and his enemies until he had run far enough away. She saw well, however, that even should she achieve all things up to the point where she might take glorious stand between the escaping and the pursuers, those grim troopers in blue would not pause. They would run around her, make a circuit. One by one she saw the gorgeous contrivances and expedients of fiction fall before the plain, homely difficulties of this situation. They were of no service. Sadly, ruefully, she thought of the calm man and of the contents of the feed box.
The sum of her invention was that she could sally forth to the commander of the blue cavalry, and confessing to him that there were three of her friends and his enemies secreted in the feed box, pray him to let them depart unmolested. But she was beginning to believe the old graybeard to be a bear. It was hardly probable that he would give this plan his support. It was more probable that he and some of his men would at once descend upon the feed box and confiscate her three friends. The difficulty with her idea was that she could not learn its value without trying it, and then in case of failure it would be too late for remedies and other plans. She reflected that war made men very unreasonable.
All that she could do was to stand at the window and mournfully regard the barn. She admitted this to herself with a sense of deep humiliation.
She was not, then, made of that fine stuff, that mental satin, which enabled some other beings to be of such mighty service to the distressed. She was defeated by a barn with one door, by four men with eight eyes and eight ears--trivialities that would not impede the real heroine.