They were still eating when the sun set and the sudden Southern darkness fell over woods and fields and river. A splinter of lightwood flared aromatically in an old tin candlestick; by its smoky, wavering radiance she heated some well water, cleaned the tin plates, scoured pan and kettle, and set them in their humble places again.
Then, cleansing her hands daintily, she dried them, and picked up her sewing.
For her, night was the danger time; she could not avoid, by flight across the river, the approach of any enemy from the south; and for an enemy to discover her sitting there in darkness, with lightwood in the house, was to invite suspicion. Yet her only hope, if surprised, was to play her part as keeper of Red Ferry.
So she sat mending, sensitive ears on the alert, breathing quietly in the refreshing coolness that at last had come after so many nights of dreadful heat.
The kitten, too, enjoyed it, patting with tentative velvet paw the skein of silk dangling near the floor.
But it was a very little kitten, and a very lonely one, and presently it asked, plaintively, to be taken up. So the Messenger lifted the mite of fluffy fur and installed it among the linen on the table, where it went to sleep purring.
Outside the open door the dew drummed loudly; moths came in clouds, hovering like snowflakes about the doorway; somewhere in the woods a tiger owl yelped.
About midnight, lying on her sack of husks, close to the borderland of sleep, far away in the darkness she heard a shot.
In one bound she was at the door, buttoning her waist, and listening. And still listening, she lighted a pine splinter, raised her cotton skirt, and adjusted the revolver, strapping the holster tighter above and below her right knee.
The pulsing seconds passed; far above the northern river bank a light sparkled through the haze, then swung aloft; and she drew paper and pencil from her pocket, and wrote down what the torch was saying:
“Shot fired at Muddy Ford. Look out along the river.”
And even as the red spark went out in the darkness a lonely birdcall floated across the river — the strange squealing plaint of the great cock-o’-the-pines. She answered, imitating it perfectly. Then a far voice called:
“Hallo-o-o! How’s fishin’?”
She picked up her pine candle, hurried out to the bank and crept cautiously down the crazy, wooden stairs. Setting her torch in the iron cage at the bow, she cast off the painter and, standing erect, swung the long pole. Out into obscurity shot the punt, deeper and deeper plunged the pole. She headed up river to allow for the current; the cool breeze blew her hair and bathed her bared throat and arms deliciously; crimson torchlight flickered crisscross on the smooth water ahead.
Every muscle in her body was in play now; the heavy pole slanted, rose and plunged; the water came clip! slap! clap! slap! against the square bows, dusting her with spray.
On, on, tossing and pitching as the boat hit the swift, deep, center current; then the pole struck shallower depths, and after a while her torch reddened foliage hanging over the northern river bank.
She drove her pole into the clay as the punt’s bow grated; a Federal cavalryman — a mere lad — muddy to the knees, brier-torn, and ghastly pale, waded out through the shallows, revolver in hand, clambered aboard, and struck the torch into the water.
“Take me over,” he gasped. “Hurry, for God’s sake! I tell you — —”
“Was it you who called?”
“Yes. Snuyder sent you, didn’t he? Don’t stand there talking — —”
With a nervous stroke she drove the punt far out into the darkness, then fell into a measured, swinging motion, standing nearer the stern than the bow. There was no sound now but the lapping of water and the man’s thick breathing; she strove to pierce the darkness between them, but she could see only a lumpish shadow in the bow where he crouched.
“I reckon you’re Roy Allen,” she began, but he cut her short:
“Damn it! What’s that to you?”
“Nothing. Only Snuyder’s gone.”
“When?”
“Some days ago, leaving me to ferry folk over.... He told me how to answer you when you called like a cock-o’-the-pines.”
“Did he?” The voice was subdued and sullen.
For a while he remained motionless, then, in the dull light of the fog-shrouded stars she saw him face her, and caught the faint sparkle of his weapon resting on his knees, covering her.
“It seems to me,” he said fiercely, “that you are asking a good many questions. Which side pays you?”
They were tossing now on the rapid little waves in the center of the river; she had all she could do to keep the punt steady and drive it toward the spot where, against the stars, the oaks lifted their clustered crests.
At the foot of the wooden stairs she tied her boat, and offered to relight the pine knot, but he would not have it and made her grope up the ascent before him.
Over the top of the bank she led him, under the trees, to her door, he close at her heels, revolver in hand. And there, on the sill, she faced him.
“What do you want here?” she asked; “supper?”
“Go into the house and strike a light,” he said, and followed her in. And, as she turned from the blazing splinter, he caught her by the arm, feeling roughly for a concealed weapon. Face aflame, she struggled out of his clutch; and he was as red as she as they confronted one another, breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m — h-half-crazed, I think.... If you’re what you look, God knows I meant you no insult.... But — but — their damned spies are everywhere. I’ve stood too much — I’ve been in hell for two weeks — —”
He wiped his mouth with a trembling, raw hand, but his sunken eyes still glared and the pallor once more blanched his sunken face.
“I’ll not touch you again,” he said hoarsely; “I’m not a beast — not that kind. But I’m starving. Is there anything — anything, I tell you? I — I am not — very — strong.”
She looked calmly into the ravaged, but still boyish features; saw him swing, reeling a little, on his heels as he steadied himself with one hand against the table.
“Sit down,” she said in a low voice.
He sank into a chair, resting the hand which clutched the revolver on the table.
Without a word she went about the business of the moment, rekindled the ashes, filled the fry pan with mush and bacon. A little while afterwards she set the smoking food before him, and seated herself at the opposite side of the table.
The boy ate wolfishly with one hand; the other seemed to have grown fast to the butt of his heavy weapon. She could have bent and shot him under the table had she wished; she could have taken him with her bare hands.
But she only sat there, dark, sorrowful eyes on him, and in pity for his certain doom her under lip trembled at intervals so she could scarcely control it.
“Is there a horse to be had anywhere near here?” he asked, pausing to swallow what his sunken jaws had been working on.
“No; the soldiers have taken everything.”
“I will pay — anything if you’ll let me have something to ride.”
She shook her head.
He went on eating; a slight color had come back into his face.
“I’m sorry I was rough with you,” he said, not looking at her.
“Why were you?”
He raised his head wearily.
“I’ve been hunted so long that I guess it’s turned my brain. Except for what you’ve been good enough to give me, I’ve had nothing inside me for days, except green leaves and bark and muddy water.... I suppose I can’t see straight.... There’s a woman they call the Special Messenger; — I thought they might have started her after me.... That shot at the ford seemed to craze me.... So I risked the ferry — seeing your light across — and not knowing whether Snuyder was still here or whether they had set a guard to catch me.... It was Red Ferry or starve; I’m too weak to swim; I waited too long.”
And as the food and h
ot tea warmed him, his vitality returned in a maddened desire for speech after the weeks of terror and silence.
“I don’t know who you are,” he went on, “but I guess you’re not fixed for shooting at me, as every living thing seems to have done for the last fortnight. Maybe you’re in Yankee pay, maybe in Confederate; I can’t help it. I suppose you’ll tell I’ve been here after I’m gone.... But they’ll never get me now!” he bragged, like a truant schoolboy recounting his misdemeanor to an awed companion.
“Who are you?” she asked very gently.
He looked at her defiantly.
“I’m Roy Allen,” he said, “of Kay’s Cavalry.... If you’re fixing to tell the Union people you might as well tell them who fooled ‘em!”
“What have you done?”
She inquired so innocently that a hint of shame for his suspicion and brutality toward her reddened his hollow cheeks.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve taken to the woods, headed for Dixie, with a shirtful of headquarter papers. That’s what I’ve done.... And perhaps you don’t know what that means if they catch me. It means hanging.”
“Hanging!” she faltered.
“Yes — if they get me.” His voice quivered, but he added boastingly: “No fear of that! I’m too many for old Kay!”
“But — but why did you desert?”
“Why?” he repeated. Then his face turned red and he burst out violently: “I’ll tell you why. I lived in New York, but I thought the South was in the right. Then they drafted me; and I tried to tell them it was an outrage, but they gave me the choice between Fort Lafayette and Kay’s Cavalry.... And I took the Cavalry and waited.... I wouldn’t have gone as far as to fight against the flag — if they had let me alone.... I only had my private opinion that the South was more in the right than we — the North — was.... I’m old enough to have an opinion about niggers, and I’m no coward either.... They drove me to this; I didn’t want to kill people who were more in the right than we were.... But they made me enlist — and I couldn’t stand it.... And now, if I’ve got to fight, I’ll fight bullies and brutes who — —”
He ended with a gesture — an angry, foolish boast, shaking his weapon toward the north. Then, hot, panting, sullenly sensible of his fatigue, he laid the pistol on the table and glowered at the floor.
She could have taken him, unarmed, at any moment, now.
“Soldier,” she said gently, “listen to me.”
He looked up with heavy-lidded eyes.
“I am trying to help you to safety,” she said.
A hot flush of mortification mantled his face:
“Thank you.... I ought to have known; I — I am ashamed of what I said — what I did.”
“You were only a little frightened; I am not angry.”
“You understand, don’t you?”
“A — little.”
“You are Southern, then?” he said; and in spite of himself his heavy lids began to droop again.
“No; Northern,” she replied.
His eyes flew wide open at that, and he straightened up in his chair.
“Are you afraid of me, Soldier?”
“No,” he said, ashamed again. “But — you’re going to tell on me after I am gone.”
“No.”
“Why not?” he demanded suspiciously.
She leaned both elbows on the table, and resting her chin on both palms, smiled at him.
“Because,” she said, “you are going to tell on yourself, Roy.”
“What!” he blurted out in angry astonishment.
“You are going to tell on yourself.... You are going back to your regiment.... It will be your own idea, too; it has been your own idea all the while — your secret desire every moment since you deserted — —”
“Are you crazy!” he cried, aghast; “or do you think I am?”
“ — ever since you deserted,” she went on, dark eyes looking deep into his, “it has been your desire to go back.... Fear held you; rage hardened your heart; dread of death as your punishment; angry brooding on what you believed was a terrible injustice done you — all these drove you to panic.... Don’t scowl at me: don’t say what is on your lips to say. You are only a tired, frightened boy — scarcely eighteen, are you? And at eighteen no heart can really be a traitor.”
“Traitor!” he repeated, losing all his angry color.
“It is a bad word, isn’t it, Roy? Lying hidden and starving in the forest through the black nights you had to fight that word away from you — drive it out of your half-crazed senses — often — didn’t you? Don’t you think I know, my boy, what a dreadful future you faced, lying there through the stifling nights while they hunted you to hang you?
“I know, also, that what you did you did in a moment of insane rage. I know that the moment it was done you would, in your secret soul, have given the world to have undone it.”
“No!” he cried. “I was right!”
She rose, walked to the door, and seated herself on the sill, looking up at the stars.
For an hour she sat there, silent. Behind her, leaning heavily on the table, he crouched, hot eyes wide, pulse heavy in throat and body. And at last, without turning, she called to him — three times, very gently, speaking his name; and at the third call he rose and came stumbling toward her.
“Sit here.”
He sank down beside her on the sill.
“Are you very tired?”
“Yes.”
She placed one arm around him, drawing his hot head down on her shoulder.
“How foolish you have been,” she whispered. “But, of course, your mother must not know it.... There is no reason to tell her — ever.... Because you went quite mad for a little while — and nobody is blamed for mental sickness.... How bright the stars are.... What a heavenly coolness after that dreadful work.... How feverish you are! I think that your regiment believes you roamed away while suffering from sunstroke.... Their Colonel is a good friend of mine. Tell him you’re sorry.”
His head lay heavily on her shoulder; she laid a fresh hand over his eyes.
“If the South is right, if we of the North are right, God knows better than you or I, Roy.... And if you are so bewildered that you have no deep conviction either way I think you may trust Him who set you among Kay’s Cavalry.... God never betrayed a human soul in honest doubt.”
“It — it was the flag! — that was the hardest to get over—” he began, and choked, smothering the dry sob against her breast.
“I know, dear.... The old flag means so much — it means all that our fathers have been, all that we ought to be for the world’s sake. Anger, private resentment, bitterness under tyranny — these are little things; for, after all, the flag still stands for what we ought to be — you and I and those who misuse us, wittingly or otherwise.... Where are the papers you took?”
He pressed his feverish face closer to her shoulder and fumbled at the buttons of his jacket.
“Here?” she asked softly, aiding him with deft fingers; and in a moment she had secured them.
For a while she held him there, cradling him; and his dry, burning face seemed to scorch her shoulder.
Dawn was in the sky when she unclosed her eyes — a cool, gray dawn, hinting of rain.
She looked down at the boy. His head lay across her lap; he slept, motionless as the dead.
The sun rose, a pale spot on the gray horizon.
“Come,” she said gently. And again, “Come; I want you to take me across the ferry.”
He rose and stood swaying on his feet, rubbing both eyes with briar-torn fists.
“You will take me, won’t you, Roy?”
“Where?”
“Back to your regiment.”
“Yes — I’ll take you.”
For a few moments she was busy gathering up her spools and linen.
“You carry my saddlebags,” she said, “and I’ll take the kitten. Isn’t it cunning, Roy? Do look at the poor little thing! We can’
t leave it here.”
Following, laden with her saddlebags, he stammered:
“Do — d-do you think they’ll shoot me?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “Be careful of the ferry steps; they are dreadfully shaky.”
She began the descent, clasping the kitten in both arms; the boy followed. Seated in the punt, they stowed away the saddlebags and the kitten, then he picked up the pole, looked at her, hesitated. She waited.
“I guess the old man will have me shot.... But — I am going back,” he said, as though to himself.
She watched him; he looked up.
“You’re right, ma’am. I must have been crazy. Everybody reads about traitors — in school.... Nobody ever forgets their names.... I don’t want my name in school books.”
“Like Benedict Arnold’s,” she said; and he quivered from head to foot.
“Oh, cricky!” he burst out, horrified; “how close I came to it! Have you got those papers safe?”
“Yes, Roy.”
“Then I’ll go. I don’t care what they do to me.”
As he rose with the pole, far away in the woods across the river a cavalry band began to play. Faint and clear the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner rose from among the trees and floated over the water; the boy stood spellbound, mouth open; then, as the far music died away, he sank back into the boat, deathly pale.
“I — I ought to be hung!” he whispered.
The Messenger picked up the fallen pole, set it, and drove the punt out into the river. Behind her, huddled in the stern, the prodigal wept, uncomforted, head buried in his shaking arms; and the kitten, being afraid, left the shelter of the thwarts and crept up on his knees, sitting there and looking out at the unstable world of water in round-eyed apprehension.
As the punt grated on the northern shore the Messenger drove her pole into the mud, upright, and leaned on it.
“Roy,” she said, looking back over her shoulder.
The boy rubbed his wet eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and got up.
“Are you afraid?”
“Not now.”
“That is well.... You’ll be punished.... Not severely.... For you came back of your own accord — repentant.... Tell me, were you really afraid that the Special Messenger might catch you?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 415