Chapter VII: Part TWO: What She Became (4)

Before she drew on the homespun gown she tucked her linen map into an inner skirt pocket, flat against her right thigh; then, fastening on the shabby skirt, she rolled up her riding habit, laid it with lantern, revolver, saddle, bridle, boots, and bags, in the hollow and covered all over with heaps of fragrant dead leaves and branches. It was the best she could do, and the time was short.

Her horse raised his wise, gentle head, and looked across the stream at her as she hastened past, then limped stiffly toward her.

"Oh, I can't stand it if you hobble after me!" she wailed under her breath. "Dearest--dearest--I will surely come back to you. Good-by--good-by!"

On the crest of the ridge she cast one swift, tearful glance behind. The horse, evidently feeling better, was rolling in the grass, all four hoofs waving at the sky. And she laughed through the tears, and drew from her pockets a morsel of dry bread which she had saved from the saddlebags. This she nibbled as she walked, taking her bearings from the sun and the sweep of the southern mountain slopes; and listening, always listening, for the jingle and clank of the Confederate flying battery that was surely following along somewhere on that parallel road which she had missed, hidden from her view only by a curtain of forest, the width of which she had no time to investigate. Nor did she know for certain that she had outstripped the Confederate column in the race for the pass--a desperate race, although the men of that flying column, which was hastening to turn the pass into a pitfall for the North, had not the faintest suspicion that the famous Special Messenger was racing with them to forestall them, or even that their secret was no longer a secret.

In hot haste from the south hills she had come to warn Benton's division of the ambuscade preparing for it, riding by highway and byway, her heart in her mouth, taking every perilous chance. And now, at the last moment, here in the West Virginian Mountains, almost within sight of the pass itself, disaster threatened--the human machine was giving out.

There were just two chances that Benton might yet be saved--that his leisurely advance had, by some miracle, already occupied the pass, or, if not, that she could get through and meet Benton in time to stop him.

She had been told that there was a cabin at the pass, and that the mountaineer who lived there was a Union man.

Thinking of these things as she crossed the ridge, she came suddenly into full view of the pass. It lay there just below her; there could be no mistake. A stony road wound along the stream, flanked by forest-clad heights; she recognized the timber bridge over the ravine, which had been described to her, the corduroy way across the swamp, the single, squat cabin crowning a half-cleared hillock. She realized at a glance the awful trap that this silent, deadly place could be turned into; for one rushing moment her widening eyes could almost see blue masses of men in disorder, crushed into that horrible defile; her ears seemed to ring with their death cries, the rippling roar of rifle fire. Then, with a sharp, indrawn breath, she hastened forward, taking the descent at a run. And at the same moment three gray-jacketed cavalrymen cantered into the road below, crossed the timber bridge at a gallop, and disappeared in the pass, carbines poised.

She had arrived a minute too late; the pass was closed!

Toiling breathlessly up the bushy hillock, crouching, bending, creeping across the stony open where scant grass grew in a meager garden, she reached the cabin. It was empty; a fire smoldered under a kettle in which potatoes were boiling; ash cakes crisped on the hearth, bacon sizzled in a frying pan set close to the embers.

But where was the tenant?

A shout from the road below brought her to the door; then she dropped flat on her stomach, crawled forward, and looked over the slope.

A red-haired old man, in his shirt sleeves, carrying a fishing pole, was running down the road, chased by two gray-jacketed troopers. He ran well, throwing away his pole and the string of slimy fish he had been carrying; but, half way across the stream, they rode him down and caught him, driving their horses straight into the shallow flood; and a few moments later a fresh squad of cavalry trotted up, forced the prisoner to mount a led horse, and, surrounding him, galloped rapidly away southward.

The Special Messenger lay perfectly still and flat, watching, listening, waiting, coolly alert for a shadow of a chance to slip out and through the pass; but there was to be no such chance now, for a dozen troopers came into view, running their lean horses at top speed, and wheeled straight into the pass. A full squadron followed, their solid galloping waking clattering echoes among the rocks. Then her delicate ears caught a distant, ominous sound--nearer, louder, ringing, thudding, jarring, pounding--the racket of field artillery arriving at full speed.

And into sight dashed a flying battery, guns and limbers bouncing and thumping, whips cracking, chains crashing, the six-horse teams on a dead run.

An officer drew bridle and threw his horse on its haunches; the first team rushed on to the pass with a clash and clank of wheels and chains, swung wide in a demi-tour, dropped a dully glistening gun, and then came trampling back. The second, third, and fourth teams, guns and caissons, swerved to the right of the hillock and came plunging up the bushy slope, horses straining and scrambling, trampling through the wretched garden to the level grass above.

One by one the gun teams swung in a half circle, each dropped its mud-spattered gun, the cannoneers sprang to unhook the trails, the frantic, half-maddened horses were lashed to the rear.

The Special Messenger rose quietly to her feet, and at the same instant a passing cannoneer turned and saw her in the doorway.

"Hey!" he exclaimed; "what you doin' thar?"

A very young major, spurring up the slope, caught sight of her, too.

"This won't do!" he began excitedly, pushing his sweating horse up to the door. "I'm sorry, but it won't do--" He hesitated, perplexed, eyeing this slim, dark-eyed girl, who stood as though dazed there in her ragged homespun and naked feet.

Colonel Carrick, passing at a canter, turned in his saddle, calling out:

"Major Kent! Keep that woman here! It's too late to send her back."

The boy-major saluted, then turned to the girl again:

"Who are you?" he asked, vexed.

She seemed unable to reply.

A cannoneer said respectfully:

"Reckon the li'l gal's jes' natch'ally skeered o' we-uns, Major, seein' how the caval'y ketched her paw down thar in the crick."

The Major said briefly:

"Your father is a Union man, but nobody is going to hurt him. I'd send you to the rear, too, but there's no time now. Please go in and shut that door. I'll see that nobody disturbs you."

As she was closing the door the young Major called after her:

"Where's the well?"

As she did not know she only stared at him as though terrified.

"All right," he said, more gently. "Don't be frightened. I'll come back and talk to you in a little while."

As she shut the door she saw the cannon at the pass limber up, wheel, and go bumping up the hill to rejoin its bespattered fellows on the knoll.

An artilleryman came along and dropped a bundle of picks and shovels which he was carrying to the gunners, who had begun the emplacements; the boyish Major dismounted, subduing his excitement with a dignified frown; and for a while he was very fussy and very busy, aiding the battery captain in placing the guns and verifying the depression.

The position of the masked battery was simply devilish; every gun, hidden completely in the oak-scrub, was now trained on the pass.

Opposite, across the stream, long files of gray infantry were moving to cover among the trees; behind, a battalion arrived to support the guns; below, the cavalry had begun to leave the pass; troopers, dismounted, were carefully removing from the road all traces of their arrival.

Leaning there by the window, the Special Messenger counted the returning fours as troop after troop retired southward and disappeared around the bend of the road.

For a while the picks and shovels of the gunners sounded noisily; concealed riflemen, across the creek, were also busy intrenching. But by noon all sound had ceased in the sunny ravine; there was nothing to be seen from below; not a human voice echoed; not a pick-stroke; only the sweet, rushing sound of the stream filled the silence; only the shadows of the branches moved.

Warned again by the sentinels to close the battered window and keep the door shut, she still watched the gunners, through the dirty window panes, where they now lay under the bushes beside their guns. There was no conversation among them; some of the artillerymen seemed to be asleep; some sprawled belly-deep in the ferns, chewing twigs or idly scraping holes in the soil; a few lay about, eating the remnants of the morning's scanty rations, chewing strips of bacon rind, and licking the last crumbs from the palms of their grimy hands.

Along the bush-hidden parapet of earth, heaps of ammunition lay--cannister and common shell. She recognized these, and, with a shudder, a long row of smaller projectiles on which soldiers were screwing copper caps--French hand grenades, brought in by blockade runners, and fashioned to explode on impact--so close was to be the coming slaughter of her own people in the road below.

Toward one o'clock the gunners were served noon rations. She watched them eating for a while, then, nerveless, turned back into the single room of the cabin and opened the rear door--so gently and noiselessly that the boyish staff-major who was seated on the sill did not glance around until she spoke, asking his permission to remain there.

"You mustn't open that door," he said, looking up, surprised by the sweetness of the voice which he heard now for the first time.

"How can anybody see me from the pass?" she asked innocently. "That is what you are afraid of, isn't it?"

He shot a perplexed and slightly suspicious glance at her, then the frowning importance faded from his beardless face; he bit a piece out of the soggy corncake he was holding and glanced up at her again, amiably conscious of her attractions; besides, her voice and manner had been a revelation. Evidently her father had had her educated at some valley school remote from these raw solitudes.

So he smiled at her, quite willing to be argued with and entertained; and at his suggestion she shyly seated herself on the sill outside in the sunlight.

"Have you lived here long?" he asked encouragingly.

"Not very," she said, eyes downcast, her clasped hands lying loosely over one knee. The soft, creamy-tinted fingers occupied his attention for a moment; the hand resembled the hand of "quality"; so did the ankle and delicate arch of her naked foot, half imprisoned in the coarse shoe under her skirt's edge.

He had often heard that some of these mountaineers had pretty children; here, evidently, was a most fascinating example.

"Is your mother living?" he asked pleasantly.

"No, sir."

He thought to himself that she must resemble her dead mother, because the man whom the cavalry had caught in the creek was a coarse-boned, red-headed ruffian, quite impossible to reconcile as the father of this dark-haired, dark-eyed, young forest creature, with her purely-molded limbs and figure and sensitive fashion of speaking. He turned to her curiously:

"So you have not always lived here on the mountain."

"No, not always."

"I suppose you spent a whole year away from home at boarding-school," he suggested with patronizing politeness.

"Yes, six years at Edgewood," she said in a low voice.

"What?" he exclaimed, repeating the name of the most fashionable Southern institute for young ladies. "Why, I had a sister there--Margaret Kent. Were _you_ there? And did you ever--er--see my sister?"

"I knew her," said the Special Messenger absently.

He was very silent for a while, thinking to himself.

"It must have been her mother; that measly old man we caught in the creek is 'poor white' all through." And, munching thoughtfully again on his soggy corncake, he pondered over the strange fate of this fascinating young girl, fashioned to slay the hearts of Southern chivalry--so young, so sweet, so soft of voice and manner, condemned to live life through alone in this shaggy solitude--fated, doubtless, to mate with some loose, lank, shambling, hawk-eyed rustic of the peaks--doomed to bear sickly children, and to fade and dry and wither in the full springtide of her youth and loveliness.

"It's too bad," he said fretfully, unconscious that he spoke aloud, unaware, too, that she had risen and was moving idly, with bent head, among the weeds of the truck garden--edging nearer, nearer, to a dark, round object about the size of a small apple, which had rolled into a furrow where the ground was all cut up by the wheel tracks of artillery and hoofs of heavy horses.

There was scarcely a chance that she could pick it up unobserved; her ragged skirts covered it; she bent forward as though to tie her shoe, but a sentinel was watching her, so she straightened up carelessly and stood, hands on her hips, dragging one foot idly to and fro, until she had covered the small, round object with sand and gravel.

That object was a loaded French hand grenade, fitted with percussion primer; and it lay last at the end of a long row of similar grenades along the shaded side of the house.

The sentry in the bushes had been watching her; and now he came out along the edge of the laurel tangle, apparently to warn her away, but seeing a staff officer so near her he halted, satisfied that authority had been responsible for her movements. Besides, he had not noticed that a grenade was missing; neither had the major, who now rose and sauntered toward her, balancing his field glasses in one hand.

"There's ammunition under these bushes," he said pleasantly; "don't go any nearer, please. Those grenades _might_ explode if anyone stumbled over them. They're bad things to handle."

"Will there be a battle here?" she asked, recoiling from the deadly little bombs.

The Major said, stroking the down on his short upper lip:

"There will probably be a skirmish. I do not dare let you leave this spot till the first shot is fired. But as soon as you hear it you had better run as fast as you can"--he pointed with his field glasses--"to that little ridge over there, and lie down behind the rocks on the other side. Do you understand?"

"Yes--I think so."

"And you'll lie there very still until it is--over?"

"I understand. May I go immediately and hide there?"

"Not yet," he said gently.

"Why?"

"Because your father is a Union man.... And you are Union, too, are you not?"

"Yes," she said, smiling; "are you afraid of me?"

A slight flush stained his smooth, sunburnt skin; then he laughed.

"A little afraid," he admitted; "I find you dangerous, but not in the way you mean. I--I do not mean to offend you----"

But she smiled audaciously at him, looking prettier than ever; and his heart gave a surprised little jump at her unsuspected capabilities.

"Why are you afraid of me?" she asked, looking at him with her engaging little smile. In her eyes a bewitching brightness sparkled, partly veiled by the long lashes; and she laughed again, poised there in the sunshine, hands on her hips, delicately provoking his reply.

And, crossing the chasm which her coquetry had already bridged, he paid her the quick, reckless, boyish compliment she invited--a little flowery, perhaps, possibly a trifle stilted, but very Southern; and she shrugged like a spoiled court beauty, nose uptilted, and swept him with a glance from half-closed lids, almost insolent.

The sentry in the holly and laurel thicket stared hard at them both. And he saw his major break off a snowy Cherokee rose and, bending at his slim, sashed waist, present the blossom with the courtly air inbred through many generations; and he saw a ragged mountaineer girl accept it with all the dainty and fastidious mockery of a coquette of the golden age, and fasten it where her faded bodice edged the creamy skin of her breast.

What the young major said to her after that, bending nearer and nearer, the sentry could not hear, for the major's voice was very low, and the slow, smiling reply was lower still.

But the major straightened as though he had been shot through and through, and bowed and walked away among the weeds toward a group of officers under the trees, who were steadily watching the pass through their leveled field glasses.

Once the major turned around to look back: once she turned on the threshold. Her cheeks were pinker; her eyes sparkled.

The emotions of the Special Messenger were very genuine and rather easily excited.

But when she had closed the door, and leaned wearily against it, the color soon faded from her face and the sparkle died out in her dark eyes. Pale, alert, intelligent, she stood there minute after minute, searching the single room with anxious, purposeless eyes; then, driven into restless motion by the torturing tension of anxiety, she paced the loose boards like a tigress, up and down, head lowered, hands clasped against her mouth, worrying the fingers with the edge of her teeth.

Outside, through the dirty window glass, she could see sentries in the bushes, all looking steadily in the same direction; groups of officers under the trees still focused their glasses on the pass. By and by she saw some riflemen in butternut jeans climb into trees, rifles slung across their backs, and disappear far up in the foliage, still climbing.

Toward five o'clock, as she was eating the bacon and hoe cakes which she had found in the hut, two infantry officers opened the door, stared at her, then, without ceremony, drew a rough ladder from the corner, set it outside, and the older officer climbed to the roof.

She heard him call down to the lieutenant below:

"No use; I can't see any better up here.... They ought to set a signal man on that rock, yonder!"

Other officers came over; one or two spoke respectfully to her, but she did not answer. Finally they all cleared out; and she dragged a bench to the back door, which swung open a little way, and, alert against surprise, very cautiously drew from the inner pocket her linen contour map and studied it, glancing every second or two out through the crack in the door.

Nobody disturbed her; with hesitating forefinger she traced out what pretended to be a path dominating the northern entrance of the pass, counted the watercourses and gullies crossing the ascent, tried to fix the elevations in her mind.

As long as she dared she studied the soiled map, but, presently, a quick shadow fell across the threshold, and she thrust the map into the concealed pocket and sprang to open the door.

"Coming military events cast foreboding shadows," she said, somewhat breathless.

"Am I a foreboding and military event?" asked the youthful major, laughing. "What do I threaten, please?"

"Single combat," she said demurely, smiling at him under half-veiled lids. And the same little thrill passed through him again, and the quick color rose to his smooth, sunburnt face.

"I was ready to beat a retreat on sight," he said; "now I surrender."

"I make no prisoners," she replied in airy disdain.

"You give no quarter?"

"None.... Why did you come back?"

"You said I might."

"Did I? I had quite forgotten what I had said to you. When are you going to let me go?"

His face fell and he looked up at her, troubled.

"I'm afraid you don't understand," he said. "We dare not send you away under escort now, because horses' feet make a noise, and some prowling Yankee vidette may be at this very moment hanging about the pass----"

"Oh," she said, "you prefer to let me remain here and be shot?"

He said, reddening: "At the first volley you are to go with an escort across the ridge. I told you that, didn't I?"

But she remained scornful, mute and obstinate, pretty head bent, twisting the folds of her faded skirt.

"Do you think I would let you remain here if there were any danger?" he asked in a lower voice.

"How long am I to be kept here?" she asked pettishly.

"Until the Yankees come through--and I can't tell you when that will be, because I don't know myself."

"Are they in the pass?"

"We don't know. Everybody is beginning to be worried. We can't see very far into that ravine----"

"Then why don't you go where you _can_ see?" she said with a shrug.

"Where?" he asked, surprised.

"Didn't you know that there is a path above the pass?"

"A path!"

"Certainly. I can show you if you wish. You ought to be able to see to the north end of the pass--if I am not mistaken----"

"Wait a moment!" he said excitedly. "I want you to take me there--just a second, to speak to those officers--I'm coming back immediately----"

And he started on a run across the ravaged garden, holding his sabre close, midway, by the scabbard.

That was her chance. Picking up her faded sunbonnet, she stepped from the threshold, swinging it carelessly by one string. The sentries were looking after the major; she dropped her sunbonnet, stooped to recover it, and straightened up, the hidden hand grenade slipping from the crown of the bonnet into her bodice between her breasts.

A thousand eyes seemed watching her as, a trifle pale, she strolled on aimlessly, swinging the recovered sunbonnet; she listened, shivering, for the stern challenge to halt, the breathless shout of accusation, the pursuing trample of heavy boots. And at last, quaking in every limb, she ventured to lift her eyes. Nobody seemed to be looking her way; the artillery pickets were still watching the pass; the group of officers posted under the trees still focused their glasses in that direction; the young major was already returning across the garden toward her.

A sharp throb of hope set her pulses bounding--she had, safe in her bosom, the means of warning her own people now; all she needed was a safe-conduct from that knoll, and here it was coming, brought by this eager, boyish officer, hastening so blithely toward her, his long, dark shadow clinging like death to his spurred heels as he ran.

Would she guide him to some spot where it was possible to see the whole length of the pass?

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and turned, he at her side, into the woods.

If her map was not betraying her once more the path _must_ follow the edges of the pass, high up among those rocks and trees somewhere. There was only one way of finding it--to climb upward to the overhanging ledges.

Raising her eyes toward the leafy heights, it seemed to her incredible that any path could lead along that wall of rock, which leaned outward over the ravine.

But somehow she must mount there; somehow she must manage to remain there unmolested, ready, the moment a single Union vidette cantered into the pass, to hurl her explosive messenger into the depths below--a startling but unmistakable signal to the blue column advancing so unsuspiciously into that defile of hell.

As they climbed upward together through the holly-scrub she remembered that she must not slip, for the iron weight in her bosom would endure no rough caress from rock or earth.

How heavy it was--how hot and rough, chafing her body--this little iron sphere, with a dozen deaths sealed up inside!

Toiling upward, planting her roughly shod feet with fearful precision, she tried to imagine what it would be like if the tiny bomb in her bosom exploded--tried to picture her terrified soul tearing skyward out of bodily annihilation.

"It is curious," she thought with a slight shudder, "how afraid I always am--how deeply, deeply afraid of death. God knows why I go on."

The boy beside her found the ascent difficult; spur and sabre impeded him; once he lurched heavily against her, and his quick, stammered apology was cut short by the dreadful pallor of her face, for she was deadly afraid of the bomb.

"Did I hurt you?" he faltered, impulsively laying his hand on her arm.

She shivered and shook off his hand, forcing a gay smile. And they went on together, upward, always upward, her pretty, provocative eyes meeting his at intervals, her heart beating faster, death at her breast.

He was a few yards ahead when he called back to her in a low, warning voice that he had found a path, and she hastened up the rocks to where he stood.

Surely here was a trail winding along the very edge of the ledges, under masses of overhanging rock--some dizzy runway of prehistoric man, perhaps trodden, too, by wolf and panther, and later by the lank mountaineer hunter or smuggler creeping to some eerie unsuspected by any living creature save, perhaps, the silver-headed eagles soaring through the fathomless azure vault above.

Below, the pass lay; but they could see no farther into it at first. However, as they advanced cautiously, clinging to the outjutting cliff, which seemed maliciously striving to push them out into space, by degrees crag and trail turned westward and more of the pass came into view--a wide, smooth cleft in the mountain, curving away toward the north.

A few steps more and the trail ended abruptly in a wide, grassy space set with trees, sloping away gently to the west, chopped off sheer to the east, where it terminated in a mossy shelf overlooking the ravine.

Only a few rods away the dusk of the pass was cut by a glimmer of sunlight; it was the northern entrance.

Something else was glimmering there, too; dozens of dancing points of white fire--sunshine on buckle, button, bit and sabre. And the officer beside her uttered a low, fierce cry and jerked his field glasses free from the case.

"Their cavalry!" he breathed. "The Yankees are entering the pass, so help me God!" And he drew his revolver.

So help him God! Something dark and round flew across his line of vision, curving out into space, dropping, dropping into the depths below. A clattering report, a louder racket as the rocky echoes, crossing and recrossing, struck back at the clamoring cliffs.

_So help him God!_ Half stunned, he stumbled to his feet, his dazed eyes still blurred with a vision of horsemen, vaguely seen through vapors, stampeding northward; and, at the same instant, she sprang at him, striking the drawn revolver from his hand, tearing the sabre free and flinging it into the gulf. White-faced, desperate, she clung to him with the tenacity of a lynx, winding her lithe limbs around and under his, tripping him to his knees.

Over and over they rolled, struggling in the grass, twisting, straining, slipping down the westward slope.

"You--devil!" he panted, as her dark eyes flashed level with his. "I've got--you--anyhow----"

Her up-flung elbow, flexed like a steel wedge, caught him in the throat; they fell over the low ridge, writhing in each other's embrace, down the slope, over and over, faster, faster--crack!--his head struck a ledge, and he straightened out, quivering, then lay very, very still and heavy in her arms.

Fiercely excited, she tore strips from her skirt, twisted them, forced him over on his face, and tied his wrists fast.

Then, leaving him inert there on the moss, she ran back for his revolver, found it, opened it, made certain that the cylinder was full, and, flinging one last glance down the pass, hastened to her prisoner.

Her prisoner opened his eyes; the dark bruise on his forehead was growing redder and wetter.

"Stand up!" she said, cocking her weapon.

The boy, half stupefied, struggled to his knees, then managed to rise.

"Go forward along that path!"

For a full minute he stood erect, motionless, eyes fixed on her; then shame stained him to the temples; he turned, head bent, and walked forward, wrists tightly tied behind him.

And behind him, weapon swinging, followed the Special Messenger in her rags, pallid, disheveled, her dark eyes dim with pity.

VIII

EVER AFTER

--And they married, and had many children, and
lived happy ever after.--Old Tales

For two days the signal flags had been talking to each other; for two nights the fiery torches had been conversing about that beleaguered city in the South.

Division after division, corps after corps, were moving forward; miles of wagons, miles of cavalry in sinuous columns unending, blackened every valley road. Later, the heavy Parrots and big Dahlgrens of the siege train stirred in their parked lethargy, and, enormous muzzles tilted, began to roll out through the valley in heavy majesty, shaking the ground as they passed, guarded by masses of red artillerymen.

Day after day crossed cannon flapped on red and white guidons; day after day the teams of powerful horses, harnessed in twenties, trampled through the valley, headed south.

Off the sandy headland a Federal gunboat lay at anchor, steam up--a blackened, chunky, grimy thing of timber and iron plates, streaked with rust, smoke blowing horizontally from her funnels. And day after day she consulted hill and headland with her kaleidoscopic strings of flags; and headland and hill talked back with fluttering bunting by day and with torches of fire by night.

From her window in the emergency hospital the Special Messenger could see those flags as she sat pensively sewing. Sometimes she mended the remnants of her silken stockings and the last relics of the fine under linen left her; sometimes she scraped lint or sewed poultice bandages, or fashioned havelocks for regiments southward bound.

She had grown slimmer, paler, of late; her beautiful hair had been sheared close; her head, covered with thick, clustering curls, was like the shapely head of a boy. Limbs and throat were still smooth and round, but had become delicate almost to leanness.

The furlough she had applied for had not yet arrived; she seemed to remain as hopelessly entangled in the web of war as ever, watching, without emotion, the old spider. Death, busy all around her, tireless, sinister, absorbed in his own occult affairs.

The routine varied but little: at dawn surgeons' call chorused by the bugles; files of haggard, limping, clay-faced men, headed by sergeants, all converging toward the hospital; later, in every camp, drums awaking; distant strains of regimental bands at parade; and all day and all night the far rumble of railroad trains, the whistle of locomotives, and, if the wind veered, the faint, melancholy cadence of the bells swinging for a clear track and right of way.

Sometimes, sewing by the open window, she thought of her brother, now almost thirteen--thought, trembling, of his restless letters from his Northern school, demanding of her that he be permitted to take his part in war for the Union, begging to be enlisted at least as drummer in a nine-months' regiment which was recruiting within sight of the dormitory where he fretted over Cæsar and the happy warriors of the Tenth Legion.

Sometimes, mending the last shreds of her cambric finery, she thought of her girlhood, of the white porches at Sandy River; and always, always, the current of her waking dream swung imperceptibly back to that swift crisis in her life--a flash of love--love at the first glance--a word! and his regiment, sabres glittering, galloping pell-mell into the thundering inferno between the hills.... And sunset; and the wounded passing by wagon loads, piled in the blood-soaked hay; and the glimpse of his limp gold-and-yellow sleeve--and her own white bed, and her lover of a day lying there--dead----

At this point in the dream-tale her eyes usually became too dim to see the stitches, and there was nothing to do except to wait until the tired eyes were dry again.

The sentry on duty knocked, opened the door, and admitted a weather-stained aide-de-camp, warning her respectfully:

"Orders for you, ma'am."

The Special Messenger cleared her eyes, breathing unevenly, and unsealed the dispatch which the officer handed her.

When she read it she opened a door and called sharply to a hospital orderly, who came running:

"Fit me with a rebel cavalry uniform--you've got that pile of disinfected clothing in the basement. I also want one of our own cavalry uniforms to wear over it--anything that has been cleaned. Quick, Williams; I've only a few minutes to saddle! And bring me that bundle of commissions taken from the rebel horsemen that were brought in yesterday."

And to the mud-splashed aide-de-camp who stood waiting, looking out of the window at the gunboat which was now churning in toward the wharf, billows of inky smoke pouring from the discolored stacks:

"Please tell the general that I go aboard in half an hour. Tell him I'll do my best." In a lower voice: "Ask him not to forget my brother--if matters go wrong with me. He has given me his word.... And I think that is all, thank you."

The A.-D.-C. said, standing straight, hollow-backed, spurred heels together:

"Orders are verbally modified, madam."

"What?"

"If you do not care to go--it is not an order--merely a matter of volunteering.... The general makes no question of your courage if you choose to decline."

She said, looking at the officer a little wearily:

"Thank the general. It will give me much pleasure to fulfill his request. Ask him to bear my brother in mind; that is all."

The A.-D.-C. bowed to her, cap in hand, then went out, making considerable racket with sabre and boots.

Half an hour later a long, deep, warning blast from the gunboat's whistle set the echoes flying through the hills.

Aboard, leading her horse, the Special Messenger, booted and spurred, in a hybrid uniform of a subaltern of regulars, handed the bridle to a sailor and turned to salute the quarterdeck.

* * * * *

The United States gunboat, _Kiowa_, dropped anchor at the railroad wharf two days later, and ran out a blackened gangplank. Over it the Special Messenger, wrapped in her rubber cloak, led her horse to shore, mounted, and galloped toward the hill where the flag of corps headquarters was flapping in the wet wind.

The rain ended as she rode inland; ahead of her a double rainbow glowed and slowly faded to a rosy nimbus.

Corps headquarters was heavily impressive and paternally polite, referring her to headquarters of the unattached cavalry division.

She remounted, setting her horse at an easy canter for the intervening two miles, riding through acres of tents and vistas of loaded wagon trains; and at last an exceedingly ornamental staff officer directed her to her destination, and a few moments later she dismounted and handed her bridle to an orderly, whose curiously fashioned forage cap seemed strangely familiar.

As the Special Messenger entered his tent and saluted, the colonel of the Fourth Missouri Cavalry rose from a camp chair, standing over six feet in his boots. He was magnificently built; his closely clipped hair was dark and curly, his skin smoothly bronzed and flushed at the cheek bones; his allure that of a very splendid and grave and youthful god, save for the gayly impudent uptwist of his short mustache and the stilled humor in his steady eyes.

His uniform was entirely different from the regulation--he wore a blue forage cap with short, heavy visor of unpolished leather shadowing the bridge of his nose; his dark blue jacket was shell-cut; over it he wore a slashed dolman trimmed at throat, wrists and edges with fur; his breeches were buff; his boots finished at the top with a yellow cord forming a heart-shaped knot in front; at his heels trailed the most dainty and rakish of sabres, light, graceful, curved almost like a scimiter.

All this is what the Special Messenger saw as she entered, instantly recognizing a regimental uniform which she had never seen but once before in her brief life. And straight through her heart struck a pain swift as a dagger thrust, and her hand in its buckskin gauntlet fell limply from the peak of her visor, and the color died in her cheeks.

What the colonel of the Fourth Missouri saw before him was a lad, slim, rather pale, dark-eyed, swathed to the chin in the folds of a wet poncho; and he said, examining her musingly and stroking the ends of his curt mustache upward:

"I understood from General Sheridan that the Special Messenger was to report to me. Where is she?"

The lightning pain of the shock when she recognized the uniform interfered with breath and speech; confused, she raised her gloved hand and laid it unconsciously over her heart; and the colonel of the Fourth Missouri waited.

"I am the Special Messenger," she said faintly.

For a moment he scarcely understood that this slender young fellow, with dark hair as closely clipped and as curly as his own, could be a woman. Stern surprise hardened his narrowing gaze; he stood silent, handsome head high, looking down at her; then slowly the latent humor flickered along the edges of lip and lid, curbed instantly as he bowed, faultless, handsome--only the persistently upturned mustache impairing the perfectly detached and impersonal decorum with a warning of the _beau sabreur_ behind it all.

"Will you be seated, madam?"

"Thank you."

She sat down; the wet poncho was hot and she shifted it, throwing one end across her shoulder. In her uniform she appeared willowy and slim, built like a boy, and with nothing of that graceful awkwardness which almost inevitably betrays such masqueraders. For her limbs were straight at the knees and faultlessly coupled, and there seemed to be the adolescent's smooth lack of development in the scarcely accented hips--only a straightly flowing harmony of proportion--a lad's grace muscularly undeveloped.

Two leather straps crossed her breast, one weighted with field glasses, the other with a pouch. From the latter she drew her credentials and would have risen to present them, but the colonel of the Fourth Missouri detained her with a gesture, himself rose, and took the papers from her hand.

While he sat reading, she, hands clasped in her lap, gazed at his well-remembered uniform, busy with her memories once more, and the sweetness of them--and the pain.

They were three years old, these memories, now glimmering alive again amid the whitening ashes of the past; only three years--and centuries seemed to dim the landmarks and bar the backward path that she was following to her girlhood!

She thought of the white-pillared house as it stood at the beginning of the war; the severing of old ties, the averted faces of old friends and neighbors; the mortal apprehension, endless suspense; the insurgent flags fluttering from porch and portico along the still, tree-shaded street; her own heart-breaking isolation in the community when Sumter fell--she an orphan, alone there with her brother and bedridden grandfather.

And she remembered the agony that followed the news from Bull Run, the stupor that fell upon her; the awful heat of that battle summer; her evening prayers, kneeling there beside her brother; the red moons that rose, enormous, menacing, behind the trees; and the widow bird calling, calling to the dead that never answer more.

Her dead? Why _hers_? A chance regiment passing--cavalry wearing the uniform and number of the Fourth Missouri. Ah! she could see them again, sun-scorched, dusty, fours crowding on fours, trampling past. She could see a young girl in white, fastening the long-hidden flag to its halyards as the evening light faded on the treetops!... And then--and then--_he_ came--into her life, into her house, into her heart, alas!--tall, lean, calm-eyed, yellow-haired, wrapped in the folds of his long, blue mantle!... And she saw him again--a few moments before his regiment charged into that growling thunder beyond the hills somewhere.

And a third time, and the last, she saw him, deathly still, lying on her own bed, and a medical officer pulling the sheet up over his bony face.

* * * * *

The colonel of the Fourth Missouri was looking curiously at her; she started, cleared the dimness from her eyes, and steadied the trembling underlip.

After a moment's silence the colonel said: "You undertake this duty willingly?"

She nodded, quietly touching her eyes with her handkerchief.

"There is scarcely a chance for you," he observed with affected carelessness.

She lifted her shoulders in weary disdain of that persistent shadow called danger, which had long since become too familiar to count very heavily.

"I am not afraid--if that is what you mean. Do you think you can get me through?"

The colonel said coolly: "I expect to do my part. Have you a rebel uniform?"

She nodded.

"Where is it?"

"On me--under this."

The colonel looked at her; a slight shudder passed over him.

"These orders suggest that I start before sunset," he said. "Meanwhile this tent is yours. My orderly will serve you. The regiment will move out about sunset with some six hundred sabres and Gray's Rhode Island flying battery."

He walked to the tent door; she followed.

"Is that your horse?" he asked.

"Yes, Colonel."

"Fit for the work?" turning to look at her.

"Yes, sir."

"And _you_?"

She smiled; through the open tent a misty bar of sunshine fell across her face, turning the smooth skin golden. Outside a dismounted trooper on guard presented his carbine as the tall, young colonel strode out. An orderly joined him; they stood a moment consulting in whispers, then the orderly ran for his saddled horse, mounted, and rode off through the lanes of the cavalry camp.

From the tent door the Special Messenger looked out into the camp. Under the base of a grassy hill hundreds of horses were being watered at a brook now discolored by the recent rains; beyond, on a second knoll, the guns of a flying battery stood parked. She could see the red trimmings on the gunners' jackets as they were lounging about in the grass.

The view from the tent door was extensive; a division, at least, lay encamped within range of the eye; two roads across the hills were full of wagons moving south and east; along another road, stretching far into the valley, masses of cavalry were riding--apparently an entire brigade--but too far away for her to hear the trample of the horses.

From where she stood, however, she could make out the course of a fourth road by the noise of an endless, moving column of horses. At times, above the hillside, she could see their heads, and the enormous canvas-covered muzzles of siege guns; and the racket of hoofs, the powerful crunching and grinding of wheels, the cries of teamsters united in a dull, steady uproar that never ceased.

From their camp, troopers of the Fourth Missouri were idly watching the artillery passing--hundreds of sunburned cavalrymen seated along the hillside, feet dangling, exchanging gibes and jests with the drivers of the siege train below. But from where she stood she could see nothing except horses' heads tossing, blue caps of mounted men, a crimson guidon flapping, or the sun glittering on the slender, curved blade of some officer's sabre as he signaled.

North, east, west, south--the whole land seemed to be covered with moving men and beasts and wagons; flags fluttered on every eminence; tents covered plowed fields, pastures, meadows; smoke hung over all, crowning the green woods with haze, veiling hollows, rolling along the railway in endless, yellow billows.

The rain had washed the sky clean, but again this vast, advancing host was soiling heaven and blighting earth as it passed over the land toward that beleaguered city in the South.

War! Everywhere the monotony of this awful panorama, covering her country day after day, month after month, year after year--war, always and everywhere and in every stage--hordes of horses, hordes of men, endless columns of deadly engines! Everywhere, always, death, or the preparation for death--every road and footpath crammed with it, every field trampled by it, every woodland shattered by it, every stream running thick with its pollution. The sour smell of marching men, the stale taint of unclean fires, the stench of beasts--the acrid, indescribable odor that hangs on the sweating flanks of armies seemed to infect sky and earth.

A trooper, munching an apple and carrying a truss of hay, passed, cap cocked rakishly, sabre banging at his heels; and she called to him and he came up, easily respectful under the grin of bodily well being.

"How long have you served in this regiment?" she asked.

He swallowed the bite of apple which crowded out his freckled cheeks: "Three years, sir."

She drew involuntarily nearer the tent door.

"Then--you were at Sandy River--three years ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you remember the battle there?"

The soldier looked doubtful. "We was there--I know that; yes, an' we had a fight----"

"Yes--near a big white house."

The soldier nodded. "I guess so; I don't seem to place no big white house----"

She asked calmly: "Your regiment had a mounted band once?"

He brightened.

"Yes, sir-ee! They played us in at Sandy River--and they got into it, too, and was cut all to pieces!"

She motioned assent wearily; then, with an effort: "You don't know, perhaps, where he--where their bandmaster was buried?"

"Sir?"

"The bandmaster of the Fourth Missouri? You remember him--that tall, thin young officer who led them with his sabre--who sat his horse like a colonel of regulars--and wore a cap of fur like--like a hussar of some militia State guard----"

"Well, you must mean Captain Stanley, who was at that time bandmaster of our regiment. He went in that day at Sandy River when our mounted band was cut to pieces. Orders was to play us in, an' he done it."

There was a silence.

"Where is he--buried?" she asked calmly.

"Buried? Why, _he_ ain't dead, is he?"

"He died at Sandy River--that day," she said gently. "Don't you remember?"

"No, sir; our bandmaster wasn't killed at Sandy River."

She looked at him amazed, almost frightened.

"What do you mean? He is dead. I--saw him die."

"It must have been some other bandmaster--not Captain Stanley."

"I saw the bandmaster of your regiment, the Fourth Missouri Cavalry, brought into that big white house and laid on my--on a bed----" She stared at the boy, caught him by the sleeve: "He is dead, isn't he? Do you know what you are telling me? Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, sir. Captain Stanley was our bandmaster--he wasn't captain then, of course. He played us in at Sandy River--by God! I oughter know, because I got some cut up m'self."

"You--you tell me that he wasn't killed?" she repeated, steadying herself against the canvas flap.

"No, sir. I heard tell he was badly hurt--seems like I kinder remember--oh, yes!" The man's face lighted up. "Yes, sir; Captain Stanley, he had a close shave! It sorter comes back to me now, how the burial detail fetched him back saying they wasn't going to bury no man that twitched when they shut his coffin. Yes, sir--but it's three years and a man forgets, and I've seen--things--lots of such things in three years with Baring's dragoons. Yes, sir."

She closed her eyes; a dizziness swept over her and she swayed where she stood.

"Is he here?"

"Who? Captain Stanley? Yes, sir. Why, he's captain of the Black Horse troop--F, third squadron.... They're down that lane near the trees. Shall I take you there?"

She shook her head, holding tightly to the canvas flap; and the trooper, saluting easily, resumed his truss of hay, hitched his belt, cocked his forage cap, and went off whistling.

All that sunny afternoon she lay on the colonel's camp bed, hands tightly clenched on her breast, eyes closed sometimes, sometimes wide open, gazing at the sun spots crawling on the tent wall.

To her ears came bugle calls from distant hills; drums of marching columns. Sounds of the stirring of thousands made tremulous the dim silence of the tent.

Dreams long dead arose and possessed her--the confused dreams of a woman, still young, awakened from the passionless lethargy of the past.

Vaguely she felt around her the presence of an earth new born, of a new heaven created. She realized her own awakening; she strove to comprehend _his_ resurrection, and it frightened her; she could not understand that what was dead through all these years was now alive, that the ideal she had clung to, evoking it until it had become part of her, was real--an actual and splendid living power. In this vivid resurgence she seemed to lose her precise recollections of him now that he was alive.

While she had believed him dead, everything concerning his memory had been painfully real--his personal appearance, the way he moved, turned, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand as it tightened in hers when he lay there at sunset, while she and Death watched the color fading from his face.

But now--now that he was living--here in this same world with her again--strive as she would she could neither fix either his features nor the sound of his voice upon her memory. Only the stupefying wonder of it possessed her, dulling her senses so that even the happiness of it seemed unreal.

* * * * *

How would they meet?--they two, who had never met but thrice? How would they seem, each to the other, when first their eyes encountered?

In all their lives they had exchanged so little speech! Yet from the first--from the first moment, when she had raised her gaze to him as he entered in his long, blue cloak, her silence had held a deeper meaning than her speech. And on that blessed night instinct broke the silence; yet, with every formal word exchanged, consciousness of the occult bond between them grew.

But it was not until she thought him dead that she understood that it had been love--love unheralded, unexpected, incredible--love at the first confronting, the first encountering glance. And to the memory of that mystery she had been faithful from the night on which she believed he died.

How had it been with him throughout these years? _How had it been with him?_

The silvery trumpets of the cavalry were still sounding as she mounted her horse before the colonel's tent and rode out into the splendour of the setting sun.

On every side cavalrymen were setting toe to stirrup; troop after troop, forming by fours, trotted out to the crest of the hill where the Western light lay red across the furrowed grass.

A blaze of brilliant color filled the road where an incoming Zouave regiment had halted, unslinging knapsacks, preparing to encamp, and the setting sun played over them in waves of fire, striking fiercely across their crimson fezzes and trousers.

Through their gorgeous lines the cavalry rode, colonel and staff leading; and with them rode the Special Messenger, knee to knee with the chief trumpeter, who made his horse dance when he passed the gorgeous Zouave color guard, to show off the gridiron of yellow slashings across his corded and tasseled breast.

And now another infantry regiment blocked the way--a heavy, blue column tramping in with its field music playing and both flags flying in the sunset radiance--the Stars and Stripes, with the number of the regiment printed in gold across crimson; and the State flag--white, an Indian and an uplifted sword on the snowy field: Massachusetts infantry.

On they came, fifes skirling, drums crashing; the colonel of the Fourth Missouri gave them right of way, saluting their colors; the Special Messenger backed her horse and turned down along the column.

Under the shadow of her visor her dark eyes widened with excitement as she skirted the halted cavalry, searching the intervals where the troop captains sat their horses, naked sabres curving up over their shoulder straps.

"Not this one! Not _this_ one," her little heart beat hurriedly; and then, without warning, panic came, and she spurred up to the major of the first squadron.

"Where is Captain Stanley?" Her voice almost broke.

"With his troop, I suppose--'F,'" replied that officer calmly; and her heart leaped and the color flooded her face as she saluted, wheeled, and rode on in heavenly certainty.

A New York regiment, fresh from the North, was passing now, its magnificent band playing "Twinkling Stars"; and the horses of the cavalry began to dance and paw and toss their heads.

One splendid black animal reared suddenly and shook its mane out; and at the same moment she saw _him_--knew him--drew bridle, her heart in her mouth, her body all a-tremble.

He was mastering the black horse that had reared, sitting his saddle easily, almost carelessly, his long, yellow-striped legs loosely graceful, his straight, slim figure perfect in poise and balance.