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 tha
t 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.
CHAPTER 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 warrior
s 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.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 419