"Not while Whitley, here, is with us," replied d.i.c.k. "He learned while out on the plains, not only to have eyes in the back of his head, but to have "em in the sides of it as well. In addition he can hear the fall of a leaf a mile away."
The sergeant shook his head and uttered an emphatic no in protest, but in his heart he was pleased. He was a sergeant who liked being a sergeant, and he was proud of all his wilderness and prairie lore.
d.i.c.k gave the word and the little troop galloped away to the right, zealous in its task and beating up every wood and thicket for the hidden riflemen who were so dangerous. At intervals they saw the cavalry force riding steadily on, and again they were hidden from it by forest or bush. More than an hour pa.s.sed and they saw no foe. d.i.c.k concluded that the sharpshooters had been scared off by the flanking force, and that they would have no further trouble with them. His spirits rose accordingly and there was much otherwise to make them rise.
It was like Heaven to be on horseback in the pleasant country after being cramped up so much in narrow trenches, and there was the thrill of coming action. They were going to join Sheridan and where he rode idle moments would be few.
"Ping!" a bullet whistled alarmingly near his head and then cut leaves from a sapling beyond him. The young lieutenant halted the troop instantly, and Sergeant Whitley pointed to a house just visible among some trees.
"That"s where it came from, and, since it hasn"t been followed by a second, it"s likely that only one man is there, and he is lying low, waiting a chance for another bullet," he said.
"Then we"ll rout him out," said d.i.c.k.
He divided his little troop, in order that it could approach the house from all sides, and then he and the sergeant and six others advanced directly in front. He knew that if the marksman were still hidden inside he would not fire now, but would seek rather to hide, since he could easily observe from a window that the building was surrounded.
It was a small house, but it was well built and evidently had been occupied by people of substance. It was painted white, except the shutters which were green, and a brick walk led to a portico, with fine and lofty columns. There was n.o.body outside, but as the shutters were open it was probable that someone was inside.
d.i.c.k disliked to force an entrance at such a place, but he had been sent out to protect the flank and he could not let a rifleman lie hidden there, merely to resume his deadly business as soon as they pa.s.sed on. They pushed the gate open and rode upon the lawn, an act of vandalism that he regretted, but could not help. They reached the door without any apparent notice being taken of them, and as the detachments were approaching from the other sides, d.i.c.k dismounted and knocked loudly. Receiving no answer, he bade all the others dismount.
"Curley, you hold the horses," he said, "and Dixon, you tell the men in the other detachments to seize anybody trying to escape. Sergeant, you and I and the others will enter the house. Break in the lock with the b.u.t.t of your rifle, sergeant! No, I see it"s not locked!"
He turned the bolt, and, the door swinging in, they pa.s.sed into an empty hall. Here they paused and listened, which was a wise thing for a man to do when he entered the house of an enemy. d.i.c.k"s sense of hearing was not much inferior to that of the sergeant, and while at first they heard nothing, they detected presently a faint click, click. He could not imagine what made the odd sound, and, listening as hard as he could, he could detect no other with it.
He pushed open a door that led into the hall and he and his men entered a large room with windows on the side, opening upon a rose garden. It was a pleasant room with a high ceiling, and old-fashioned, dignified furniture. A blaze of sunlight poured in from the windows, and, where a sash was raised, came the faint, thrilling perfume of roses, a perfume to which d.i.c.k was peculiarly susceptible. Yet, for years afterward, the odor of roses brought back to him that house and that room.
He thought at first that the room, although the faint clicking noise continued, contained no human being. But presently he saw sitting at a table by the open window a woman whose gray dress and gray hair blended so nearly with the gray colors of the chamber that even a soldier could have been excused for not seeing her at once. Her head and body were perfectly still, but her hands were moving rapidly. She was knitting, and it was the click of her needles that they had heard.
She did not look up as d.i.c.k entered, and, taking off his cap, he stood, somewhat abashed. He knew at once by her dress and face, and the dignity, disclosed even by the manner in which she sat, that she was a great lady, one of those great ladies of old Virginia who were great ladies in fact. She was rather small, Martha Washington might have looked much like her, and she knitted steadily on, without showing by the least sign that she was aware of the presence of Union soldiers.
A long and embarra.s.sed silence followed. d.i.c.k judged that she was about sixty-five years of age, though she seemed strong and he felt that she was watching them alertly from covert eyes. There was no indication that anyone else was in the building, but it did not seem likely that a great lady of Virginia would be left alone in her house, with a Union force marching by.
He approached, bowed and said:
"Madame!"
She raised her head and looked at him slowly from head to foot, and then back again. They were fierce old eyes, and d.i.c.k felt as if they burned him, but he held his ground knowing that he must. Then she turned back to her knitting, and the needles clicked steadily as before.
"Madame!" repeated d.i.c.k, still embarra.s.sed.
She lifted the fierce old eyes.
"I should think," she said, "that the business of General Grant"s soldiers was to fight those of General Lee rather than to annoy lone women."
d.i.c.k flushed, but angry blood leaped in his veins.
"Pardon me, madame," he said, "but we have not come here to annoy a woman. We were fired upon from this house. The man who did it has had no opportunity to escape, and I"m sure that he"s still concealed within these walls."
"Seek and ye shall-not find," she half quoted.
"I must search the house."
"Proceed."
"First question her," the sergeant whispered in the young lieutenant"s ear.
d.i.c.k nodded.
"Pardon me, madame," he said, "but I must obtain information from you.
This is war, you know."
"I have had many rude reminders that it is so."
"Where is your husband?"
She pointed upward.
"Forgive me," said d.i.c.k impulsively. "I did not intend to recall a grief."
"Don"t worry. You and your comrades will never intrude upon him there."
"Perhaps you have sons here in this house?"
"I have three, but they are not here."
"Where are they?"
"One fell with Jackson at Chancellorsville. It was a glorious death, but he is not dead to me. I shall always see him, as he was when he went away, a tall, strong man with brown hair and blue eyes. Another fell in Pickett"s charge at Gettysburg. They told me that his body lay across one of the Union guns on Cemetery Hill. That, too, was a glorious death, and like his brother he shall live for me as long as I live. The third is alive and with Lee."
She had stopped knitting, but now she resumed it, and, during another embarra.s.sed pause, the click, click of the needles was the only sound heard in the room.
"I regret it, madame," resumed d.i.c.k, "but we must search the house thoroughly."
"Proceed," she said again in that tone of finality.
"Take the men and look carefully through every room," said d.i.c.k to the sergeant. "I will remain here."
Whitley and the troopers withdrew quietly. When the last of them had disappeared he walked to one of the windows and looked out. He saw his mounted men beyond the rose garden on guard, and he knew that they were as vigilant on the other sides of the house. The sharpshooter could not escape, and he was firmly resolved not to go without him. Yet his conscience hurt him. It was hard, too, to wait there, while the woman said not a word, but knitted on as placidly as if he did not exist.
"Madame," he said at last, "I pray that you do not regard this as an intrusion. The uses of war are hard. We must search. No one can regret it more than I do, in particular since I am really a Southerner myself, a Kentuckian."
"A traitor then as well as an enemy."
d.i.c.k flushed deeply, and again there was angry blood in his veins, but he restrained his temper.
"You must at least allow to a man the liberty of choice," he said.
"Provided he has the intelligence and honesty to choose right."
d.i.c.k flushed again and bit his lip. And yet he felt that a woman who had lost two sons before Northern bullets might well be unforgiving. There was nothing more for him to say, and while he turned back to the window the knitting needles resumed their click, click.