When the third head appeared, a soft smile of glee came upon each face, and the mute group exchanged expressive glances.
When they all stood together, free from this tragic barn, they breathed a long sigh that was contemporaneous with another smile and another exchange of glances.
One of the men tiptoed to a knothole and peered into the barn. The sentry was at that moment speaking. "Yes, we know "em all. There isn"t a house in this region that we don"t know who is in it most of the time.
We collar "em once in a while--like we did you. Now, that house out yonder, we----"
The man suddenly left the knothole and returned to the others. Upon his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but he simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot. He led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe distance from the barn he halted and as they grouped eagerly about him, he exploded in an intense undertone: "Why, that--that"s Cap"n Sawyer they got in yonder."
"Cap"n Sawyer!" incredulously whispered the other men.
But the girl had something to ask. "How did you get out of that feed box?" He smiled. "Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a minute when we allowed it wasn"t a mighty safe place, and we allowed we"d get out. And we did. We skedaddled "round and "round until it "peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves down in the cow stalls where it"s low-like--just dirt floor--and then we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come.
And we didn"t know Cap"n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard "im discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn"t know that it was him. No, m"m."
These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown calamity.
"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.
"I don"t know," replied another, in the same tone.
Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the methods of Fate: "Oh, h.e.l.l!"
The three men started then as if simultaneously stung and gazed at the young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! "Pon my soul I clean forgot you was by. "Deed, and I wouldn"t swear like that if I had knowed. "Deed, I wouldn"t."
The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn. Suddenly she turned and whispered, "Who is he?"
"He"s Cap"n Sawyer, m"m," they told her sorrowfully. "He"s our own cap"n. He"s been in command of us yere since a long time. He"s got folks about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting."
She was still for a time and then, awed, she said, "Will they--will they hang him?"
"No, m"m. Oh, no, m"m. Don"t raikon no such thing. No, m"m."
The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped from the barn were now advancing toward it.
V.
The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash and uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach the barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to come away. The gra.s.s rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the barn.
When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing, but she could see nothing.
Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knothole. The sentry had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The prisoner still sat on the feed box, moodily staring at the floor. The girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax. She started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the men would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They might have been two dead men.
The girl felt impelled to look at the corner of the interior where were the cow stalls. There was no light there save the appearance of peculiar gray haze which marked the track of the dimming rays of the lantern. All else was sombre shadow. At last she saw something move there. It might have been as small as a rat, or it might have been a part of something as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that something in that spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly and at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon the sentry. The wandering rays caused the eyes to glitter like silver. The girl"s heart pounded so that she put her hand over it.
The sentry and the prisoner remained immovably waxen, and over in the gloom the head thrust from the floor watched them with its silver eyes.
Finally, the prisoner slipped from the feed box, and, raising his arms, yawned at great length. "Oh, well," he remarked, "you boys will get a good licking if you fool around here much longer. That"s some satisfaction, anyhow, even if you did bag me. You"ll get a good walloping." He reflected for a moment, and decided: "I"m sort of willing to be captured if you fellows only get a d----d good licking for being so smart."
The sentry looked up and smiled a superior smile. "Licking, hey? Nixey!"
He winked exasperatingly at the prisoner. "You fellows are not fast enough, my boy. Why didn"t you lick us at ----? and at ----? and at ----?" He named some of the great battles.
To this the captive officer blurted in angry astonishment, "Why, we did!"
The sentry winked again in profound irony. "Yes--I know you did. Of course. You whipped us, didn"t you? Fine kind of whipping that was! Why, we----"
He suddenly ceased, smitten mute by a sound that broke the stillness of the night. It was the sharp crack of a distant shot that made wild echoes among the hills. It was instantly followed by the hoa.r.s.e cry of a human voice, a far-away yell of warning, singing of surprise, peril, fear of death. A moment later there was a distant, fierce spattering of shots. The sentry and the prisoner stood facing each other, their lips apart, listening.
The orchard at that instant awoke to sudden tumult. There were the thud and scramble and scamper of feet, the mellow, swift clash of arms, men"s voices in question, oath, command, hurried and unhurried, resolute and frantic. A horse sped along the road at a raging gallop. A loud voice shouted, "What is it, Ferguson?" Another voice yelled something incoherent. There was a sharp, discordant chorus of command. An uproarious volley suddenly rang from the orchard. The prisoner in gray moved from his intent, listening att.i.tude. Instantly the eyes of the sentry blazed, and he said with a new and terrible sternness, "Stand where you are!"
The prisoner trembled in his excitement. Expressions of delight and triumph bubbled to his lips. "A surprise, by Gawd! Now--now, you"ll see!"
The sentry stolidly swung his carbine to his shoulder. He sighted carefully along the barrel until it pointed at the prisoner"s head, about at his nose. "Well, I"ve got you, anyhow. Remember that! Don"t move!"
The prisoner could not keep his arms from nervously gesturing. "I won"t; but----"
"And shut your mouth!"
The three comrades of the sentry flung themselves into view.
"Pete--devil of a row!--can you----"
"I"ve got him," said the sentry calmly and without moving. It was as if the barrel of the carbine rested on piers of stone. The three comrades turned and plunged into the darkness.
In the orchard it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a mad, floundering encounter, snarling, howling in a whirling chaos of noise and motion. In the barn the prisoner and his guard faced each other in silence.
As for the girl at the knothole, the sky had fallen at the beginning of this clamour. She would not have been astonished to see the stars swinging from their abodes, and the vegetation, the barn, all blow away.
It was the end of everything, the grand universal murder. When two of the three miraculous soldiers who formed the original feed-box corps emerged in detail from the hole under the beam and slid away into the darkness, she did no more than glance at them.
Suddenly she recollected the head with silver eyes. She started forward and again applied her eyes to the knothole. Even with the din resounding from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from the heavens and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this mystic head.
There, to her, was the dark G.o.d of the tragedy.
The prisoner in gray at this moment burst into a laugh that was no more than a hysterical gurgle. "Well, you can"t hold that gun out forever!
Pretty soon you"ll have to lower it."
The sentry"s voice sounded slightly m.u.f.fled, for his cheek was pressed against the weapon. "I won"t be tired for some time yet."
The girl saw the head slowly rise, the eyes fixed upon the sentry"s face. A tall, black figure slunk across the cow stalls and vanished back of old Santo"s quarters. She knew what was to come to pa.s.s. She knew this grim thing was upon a terrible mission, and that it would reappear again at the head of the little pa.s.sage between Santo"s stall and the wall, almost at the sentry"s elbow; and yet when she saw a faint indication as of a form crouching there, a scream from an utterly new alarm almost escaped her.
The sentry"s arms, after all, were not of granite. He moved restively.
At last he spoke in his even, unchanging tone: "Well, I guess you"ll have to climb into that feed box. Step back and lift the lid."
"Why, you don"t mean----"
"Step back!"
The girl felt a cry of warning arising to her lips as she gazed at this sentry. She noted every detail of his facial expression. She saw, moreover, his ma.s.s of brown hair bunching disgracefully about his ears, his clear eyes lit now with a hard, cold light, his forehead puckered in a mighty scowl, the ring upon the third finger of the left hand. "Oh, they won"t kill him! Surely they won"t kill him!" The noise of the fight in the orchard was the loud music, the thunder and lightning, the rioting of the tempest which people love during the critical scene of a tragedy.