Chapter V: Part TWO: What She Became (2)

He lifted his hat and went away knee-deep through the windy hill-grasses; white butterflies whirled around him as he strode, head on his breast; the swift hill swallows soared and skimmed along the edges of the smoke as though inviting him. From her rocky height she saw the priest enter the drifting clouds.

A man going to his consecrated duty. And she? Where lay her duty? And why was she not about it?

"Captain West!" she called in a clear, hard voice.

Seated on his perch above the abyss, the officer lowered his field glasses and turned his face. Then he rose and moved over to where she was sitting. She stood up at once.

"Will you walk as far as those trees with me?" she asked. There was a strained ring to her voice.

He wheeled, spoke briefly to a sergeant, then, with that subtle and pleasant deference which characterized him, he turned and fell into step beside her.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked softly.

"No.... God help us both."

He halted. At a nod from her, two troopers standing beside their quietly browsing horses, cocked carbines. The sharp, steel click of the locks was perfectly audible through the din of the cannon.

The signal officer looked at her; and her face was whiter than his.

"You are Warren Moray--I think," she said.

His eyes glimmered like a bayonet in sunlight; then the old half-gay, half-defiant smile flickered over his face.

"Special Messenger," he said, "you come as a dark envoy for me. Now I understand your beauty--Angel of Death."

"Are you Major Moray?" She could scarcely speak.

He smiled, glanced at the two troopers, and shrugged his shoulders. Then, like a flash his hand fell to his holster, and it was empty; and his pistol glimmered in her hand.

"For God's sake don't touch your sabre-hilt!" she said.... "Unclasp your belt! Let it fall!"

"Can't you give me a chance with those cavalrymen?"

"I can't. You know it."

"Yes; I know."

There was a silence; the loosened belt fell to the grass, the sabre clashing. He looked coolly at the troopers, at her, and then out across the smoke.

"_This_ way?" he said, as though to himself. "I never thought it." His voice was quiet and pleasant, with a slight touch of curiosity in it.

"How did you know?" he asked simply, turning to her again.

She stood leaning back against a tree, trying to keep her eyes fixed on him through the swimming weakness invading mind and body.

"I suppose this ends it all," he added absently; and touched the sabre lying in the grass with the tip of his spurred boot.

"Did you look for any other ending, Mr. Moray?"

"Yes--I did."

"How could you, coming into our ranks with a dead man's commission and forged papers? How long did you think it could last? Were you mad?"

He looked at her wistfully, smiled, and shook his head.

"Not mad, unless you are. Your risks are greater than were mine."

She straightened up, stepped toward him, very pale.

"Will you come?" she asked. "I am sorry."

"I am sorry--for us both," he said gently. "Yes, I will come. Send those troopers away."

"I cannot."

"Yes, you can. I give my word of honor."

She hesitated; a bright flush stained his face.

"I take your word," she murmured.

A moment later the troopers mounted and cantered off down the hill, veering wide to skirt the head of a column of infantry marching in; and when the Special Messenger started to return she found masses of men threatening to separate her from her prisoner--sunburnt, sweating, dirty-faced men, clutching their rifle-butts with red hands.

Their officers rode ahead, thrashing through the moist grass; a forest of bayonets swayed in the sun; flag after flag passed, slanting above the masses of blue.

She and her prisoner looked on; the flag of the 63d New York swept by; the flags of the 69th and 88th followed. A moment later the columns halted.

"Your Excelsiors," said Moray calmly.

"They're under fire already. Shall we move on?"

A soldier in the ranks, standing with ordered arms, fell straight backward, heavily; a corporal near them doubled up with a grunt.

The Special Messenger heard bullets smacking on rocks; heard their dull impact as they struck living bodies; saw them knock men flat. Meanwhile the flags drooped above the halted ranks, their folds stirred lazily, fell, and scarcely moved; the platoon fire rolled on unbroken somewhere out in the smoke yonder.

"God send me a bullet," said Moray.... "Why do you stay here?"

"To--give you--that chance."

"You run it, too."

"I hope so. I am very--tired."

"I am sorry," he said, reddening.

She said fiercely: "I wish it were over.... Life is cruel.... I suppose we must move on. Will you come, please?"

"Yes--my dark messenger," he said under his breath, and smiled.

A priest passed them in the smoke; her prisoner raised his hand to the visor of his cap.

"Father Corby, their chaplain," she murmured.

"Attention! Attention!" a far voice cried, and the warning ran from rank to rank, taken up in turn by officer after officer. Father Corby was climbing to the summit of a mound close by; an order rang out, bugles repeated it, and the blue ranks faced their chaplain.

Then the priest from his rocky pulpit raised his ringing voice in explanation. He told the three regiments of the Irish Brigade--now scarcely more than three battalions of two companies each--that every soldier there could receive the benefit of absolution by making a sincere act of contrition and resolving, on first opportunity, to confess.

He told them that they were going to be sent into battle; he urged them to do their duty; reminded them of the high and sacred nature of their trust as soldiers of the Republic, and ended by warning them that the Catholic Church refuses Christian burial to him who deserts his flag.

In the deep, battle-filled silence the priest raised up his hands; three regiments sank to their knees as a single man, and the Special Messenger and her prisoner knelt with them.

"_Dominus noster Jesus Christus vos absolvat, et ego, auctoritate ipius, vos absolvo ab omvir vinculo_----"

The thunder of the guns drowned the priest's voice for a moment, then it sounded again, firm and clear:

"_Absolve vos a peccatis_----"

The roar of battle blotted out the words; then again they rang out:

"_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti!... Amen._"

The officers had remounted now, their horses plunging in the smoke; the flags were moving forward; rivers of bayonets flowed out into the maelstrom where the red lightning played incessantly. Then from their front crashed out the first volley of the Irish Brigade.

"Forward! Forward!" shouted their officers. Men were falling everywhere; a dying horse kicked a whole file into confusion. Suddenly a shell fell in their midst, another, another, tearing fiery right of way.

The Special Messenger, on her knees in the smoke, looked up and around as a priest bent above her.

"Child," he said, "what are you doing here?" And then his worn gaze fell on the dead man who lay in the grass staring skyward through his broken eyeglasses with pleasant, sightless eyes.

The Special Messenger, white to the lips, looked up: "We were on our knees together, Father Corby. You had said the amen, and the bullet struck him--here!... He had no chance for confession.... But you said----"

Her voice failed.

The priest looked at her; she took the dead man's right hand in hers.

"He was a brave man, Father.... And you said--you said--about those who fell fighting for--their _own_ land--absolution--Christian burial----"

She choked, set her teeth in her under lip and looked down at the dead. The priest knelt, too.

"Is--is all well with him?" she whispered.

"Surely, child----"

"But--his was the--_other_ flag."

There was a silence.

"Father?"

"I know--I know.... The banner of Christ is broader.... You say he was kneeling here beside you?"

"Here--so close that I touched him.... And then you said.... Christian burial--absolution----"

"He was a spy?"

"What am I, Father?"

"Absolved, child--like this poor boy, here at your feet.... What is that locket in your hand?"

"His picture.... I found it in his house when the cavalry were setting fire to it.... Oh, I am tired of it all--deathly, deathly sick!... Look at him lying here! Father, Father, is there no end to death?"

The priest rose wearily; through the back-drifting smoke the long battle line of the Excelsiors wavered like phantoms in the mist. Six flags flapped ghostlike above them, behind them men writhed in the trampled, bloody grass; before them the sheeted volleys rushed outward into darkness, where the dull battle lightning played.

A maimed, scorched, blackened thing in the grass near by was calling on Christ; the priest went to him, turning once on his way to look back where the Special Messenger knelt beside a dead man who lay smiling at nothing through his shattered eyeglasses.

IV

ROMANCE

The Volunteer Nurse sighed and spread out her slender, iodine-stained fingers on both knees, looking down at them reflectively.

"It is different now," she said; "sentiment dies under the scalpel. In the filth and squalor of reality neither the belief in romance nor the capacity for desiring it endure long.... Even pity becomes atrophied--or at least a reflex habit; sympathy, sorrow, remain as mechanical reactions, not spontaneous emotions.... You can understand that, dear?"

"Partly," said the Special Messenger, raising her dark eyes to her old schoolmate.

"In the beginning," said the Nurse, dreamily, "the men in their uniforms, the drums and horses and glitter, and the flags passing, and youth--_youth_--not that you and I are yet old in years; do you know what I mean?"

"I know," said the Special Messenger, smoothing out her riding gloves. "Do you remember the cadets at Oxley? You loved one of them."

"Yes; you know how it was in the cities; and even afterward in Washington--I mean the hospitals after Bull Run. Young bravery--the Zouaves--the multicolored guard regiments--and a romance in every death!" She laid one stained hand over the other, fingers still wide. "But here in this blackened horror they call the 'seat of war'--this festering bullpen, choked with dreary regiments, all alike, all in filthy blue--here individuals vanish, men vanish. The schoolgirl dream of man dies here forever. Only unwashed, naked duty remains; and its inspiration, man--bloody, dirty, vermin-covered, terrible--sometimes; and sometimes whimpering, terrified, flinching, base, bereft of all his sex's glamour, all his mystery, shorn of authority, devoid of pride, pitiable, screaming under the knife.--It is different now," said the pretty Volunteer Nurse.--"The war kills more than human life."

The Special Messenger drew her buckskin gloves carefully through her belt and buttoned the holster of her revolver.

"I have seen war, too," she said; "and the men who dealt death and the men who received it. Their mystery remains--the glamour of a man remains for me--because he is a man."

"I have heard them crying like children in the stretchers."

"So have I. That solves nothing."

But the Nurse went on:

"And in the wards they are sometimes something betwixt devils and children. All the weakness and failings they attribute to women come out in them--fear, timidity, inconsequence, greed, malice, gossip! And, as for courage--I tell you, women bear pain better."

"Yes, I have learned that.... It is not difficult to beguile them either; to lead them, to read them. That is part of my work. I do it. I know they _are_ afraid in battle--the intelligent ones. Yet they fight. I know they are really children--impulsive, passionate, selfish, often cruel--but, after all, they are here fighting this war--here encamped all around us throughout these hills and forests.... They have lost none of their glamour for me. Their mystery remains."

The Volunteer Nurse looked up with a tired smile:

"You always were emotional, dear."

"I am still."

"You don't have to drain wounds and dry out sores and do the thousand unspeakable offices that we do."

"Why do you do them?"

"I have to."

"You didn't have to enlist. Why did you?"

"Why do the men enlist?" asked the Nurse. "That's why you and I did--whatever the motive may have been, God knows.... And it's killed part of me.... _You_ don't cleanse ulcers."

"No; I am not fitted. I tried; and lost none of the romance in me. Only it happens that I can do--what I am doing--better."

The Nurse looked at her a trifle awed.

"To think, dear, that you should turn out to be the celebrated Special Messenger. You were timid in school."

"I am now.... You don't know how afraid a woman can be. Suppose in school--suppose that for one moment we could have foreseen our destiny--here together, you and I, as we are now."

The Nurse looked into the stained hollow of her right hand.

"I had the lines read once," she said drearily, "but nobody ever said I'd be here, or that there'd be any war." And she continued to examine her palm with a hurt expression in her blue eyes.

The Special Messenger laughed, and her lovely, pale face lighted up with color.

"Don't you really think you are ever going to be capable of caring for a man again?"

"No, I don't. I know now how they're fashioned, how they think--how--how revolting they can be.... No, no! It's all gone--all the ideals, all the dreams.... Good Heavens, how romantic--how senseless we were in school!"

"I am still," said the Special Messenger thoughtfully. "I like men.... A man--the right one--could easily make me love him. And I am afraid there are more than one 'right one.' I have often been on the sentimental border.... But they died, or went away--or I did.... The trouble with me is, as you say, that I am emotional, and very, very tender-hearted.... It is sometimes difficult to be loyal--to care for duty--to care for the Union more than for a man. Not that there is any danger of my proving untrue----"

"No," murmured the Nurse, "loyalty is your inheritance."

"Yes, we--" she named her family under her breath--"are traditionally trustworthy. It is part of us--our race was always, will always be.... But--to see a man near death--and to care for him a little--even a rebel--and to know that one word might save him--only one little disloyal word!"

"No man would save _you_ at that expense," said the Nurse disdainfully. "I know men."

"Do you? I don't--in that way. There was once an officer--a noncombatant. I could have loved him.... Once there was a Confederate cavalryman. I struck him senseless with my revolver-butt--and I might have--cared for him. He was very young.... I never can forget him. It is hard, dear, the business I am engaged in.... But it has never spoiled my interest in men--or my capacity for loving one of them. I am afraid I am easily moved."

She rose and stood erect, to adjust her soft riding hat, her youthfully slender figure in charming relief against the window.

"Won't you let me brew a little tea for you?" asked the Nurse. "Don't leave me so soon."

"When do you go on duty?"

"In about ten minutes. It will be easier to-morrow, when we send our sick North. Will you come in to-morrow?"

The Special Messenger shook her head dreamily.

"I don't know--I don't know.... Good-by."

"Are _you_ going on duty?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Now."

The Nurse rose and put both arms around her.

"I am so afraid for you," she said; "and it has been so good to see you.... I don't know whether we'll ever meet again----"

Her voice was obliterated in the noisy outburst of bugles sounding the noon sick-call.

They went out together, where the Messenger's horse was tied under the trees. Beyond, through the pines, glimmered the tents of an emergency hospital. And now, in the open air not very far away, they could hear picket firing.

"Do be careful," said the blue-eyed Nurse. "They say you do such audacious things; and every day somebody says you have been taken, or hanged, or shot. Dear, you are so young and so pretty----"

"So are you. Don't catch fever or smallpox or die from a scratch from a poisoned knife.... Good-by once more."

They kissed each other. A hospital orderly, passing hurriedly, stopped to hold her stirrup; she mounted, thanked the orderly, waved a smiling adieu to her old schoolmate, and, swinging her powerful horse westward, trotted off through the woods, passing the camp sentinels with a nod and a low-spoken word.

Farther out in the woods she encountered the first line of pickets; showed her credentials, then urged her horse forward at a gallop.

"Not that way!" shouted an officer, starting to run after her; "the Johnnies are out there!"

She turned in her saddle and nodded reassuringly, then spurred on again, expecting to jump the Union advance-guard every moment.

There seemed to be no firing anywhere in the vicinity; nothing to be seen but dusky pine woods; and after she had advanced almost to the edge of a little clearing, and not encountering the outer line of Union pickets, she drew bridle and sat stock still in her saddle, searching in every direction with alert eyes.

Nothing moved; the heated scent of the Southern pines hung heavy in the forest; in the long, dry swale-grass of the clearing, yellow butterflies were flying lazily; on a dead branch above her a huge woodpecker, with pointed, silky cap, uttered a querulous cry from moment to moment.

She strained her dainty, close-set ears; no sound of man stirred in this wilderness--only the lonely bird-cry from above; only the ceaseless monotone of the pine crests stirred by some high breeze unfelt below.

A forest path, apparently leading west, attracted her attention; into this she steered her horse and continued, even after her compass had warned her that the path was now running directly south.

The tree-growth was younger here; thickets of laurel and holly grew in the undergrowth, and, attempting a short cut out, she became entangled. For a few minutes her horse, stung by the holly, thrashed and floundered about in the maze of tough stems; and when at last she got him free, she was on the edge of another clearing--a burned one, lying like a path of black velvet in the sun. A cabin stood at the farther edge.

Three forest bridle paths ran west, east, and south from this blackened clearing. She unbuttoned her waist, drew out a map, and, flattening it on her pommel, bent above it in eager silence. And, as she sat studying her map, she became aware of a tremor in the solid earth under her horse's feet. It grew to a dull jarring vibration--nearer--nearer--nearer--and she hastily backed her horse into the depths of the laurel, sprang to the ground, and placed both gauntleted hands over her horse's nostrils.

A moment later the Confederate cavalry swept through the clearing at a trot--a jaunty, gray column, riding two abreast, then falling into single file as they entered the bridle path at a canter.

She watched them as they flashed by among the pines, sitting their horses beautifully, the wind lifting the broad brims of their soft hats, the sun a bar of gold across each sunburned face.

There were only a hundred of them--probably some of Ashby's old riders, for they seemed strangely familiar--but it was not long before they had passed on their gay course, and the last tremor in the forest soil--the last distant rattle of sabre and carbine--died away in the forest silence.

What were they doing here? She did not know. There seemed no logical reason for the presence of Stuart's troopers.

For a while, awaiting their possible collision with the Union outposts, she listened, expecting the far rattle of rifles. No sound came. They must have sheered off east. So, very calmly she addressed herself to the task in hand.

This must be the burned clearing; her map and the cabin corroborated her belief. Then it was here that she was to meet this unknown man in Confederate uniform and Union pay--a spy like herself--and give him certain information and receive certain information in return.

Her instructions had been unusually rigid; she was to take every precaution; use native disguise whether or not it might appear necessary, carry no papers, and let any man she might encounter make the advances until she was absolutely certain of him. For there was an ugly rumor afloat that the man she expected had been caught and hanged, and that a Confederate might attempt to impersonate him. So she looked very carefully at her map, then out of the thicket at the burned clearing. There was the wretched cabin named as rendezvous, the little garden patch with standing corn and beans, and here and there a yellowing squash.

_Why had the passing rebel cavalry left all that good food undisturbed?_

Fear, which within her was always latent, always too ready to influence her by masquerading as caution, stirred now. For almost an hour she stood, balancing her field glasses across her saddle, eyes focused on the open cabin door. Nothing stirred there.

At last, with a slight shiver, she opened her saddle bags and drew out the dress she meant to wear--a dingy, earth-colored thing of gingham.

Deep in the thicket she undressed, folded her fine linen and silken stockings, laid them away in the saddle bags together with waist and skirt, field glasses, gauntlets, and whip, and the map and papers, which latter, while affording no information to the enemy, would certainly serve to convict her.

Dressed now in the scanty, colorless clothing of a "poor white" of the pine woods, limbs and body tanned with walnut, her slender feet rubbed in dust and then thrust stockingless into shapeless shoes, she let down the dark, lustrous mass of her hair, braided it, tied it with faded ribbon, rubbed her hands in wood mold and crushed green leaves over them till they seemed all stained and marred with toil. Then she gathered an armful of splinter wood.

Now ready, she tethered her horse, leaving him bitted and saddled; spread out his sack of feed, turned and looked once more at the cabin, then walked noiselessly to the clearing's edge, carrying her aromatic splinters.

Underfoot, as she crossed it, the charred grass crumbled to powder; three wild doves flickered up into flight, making a soft clatter and displaying the four white feathers. A quail called from the bean patch.

The heat was intense in the sun; perspiration streaked her features; her tender feet burned; the cabin seemed a long way off, a wavering blot through the dancing heat devils playing above the fire-scorched open.

Head bent, she moved on in the shiftless, hopeless fashion of the sort of humanity she was representing, furtively taking her bearings and making such sidelong observations as she dared. To know the shortest way back to her horse might mean life to her. She understood that. Also she fully realized that she might at that very instant be under hostile observation. In her easily excited imagination, all around her the forest seemed to conceal a hundred malevolent eyes. She shivered slightly, wiped the perspiration from her brow with one small bare fist, and plodded on, clutching her lightwood to her rounded breast.

And now at last she was nearing the open cabin door; and she must not hesitate, must show no suspicion. So she went in, dragging her clumsily-shod feet.

A very young man in the uniform of a Confederate cavalry officer was seated inside before the empty fireplace of baked clay. He had a bad scar on his temple. She looked at him, simulating dull surprise; he rose and greeted her gracefully.

"Howdy," she murmured in response, still staring.

"Is this your house?" he asked.

"Suh?" blankly.

"Is this your house?"

"I reckon," she nodded. "How come you-all in my house?"

He replied with another question:

"What were you doing in the woods?"

"Lightwood," she answered briefly, stacking the fragrant splinters on the table.

"Do you live here all alone?"

"Reckon I'm alone when I live heah," sullenly.

"What is your name?" He had a trick of coloring easily.

"What may be _yoh_ name, suh?" she retorted with a little flash of Southern spirit, never entirely quenched even in such as she seemed to be.

Genuine surprise brought the red back into his face and made it, worn as it was, seem almost handsome. The curious idea came to her that she had seen him before somewhere. At the same moment speech seemed to tremble on his lips; he hesitated, looked at her with a new and sudden keenness, and stood looking.

"I expected to meet somebody here," he said at length.

She did not seem to comprehend.

"I expected to meet a woman here."

"Who? Me?" incredulously.

He looked her over carefully; looked at her dusty bare ankles, at her walnut-smeared face and throat. She seemed so small, so round-shouldered--so different from what he had expected. They had said that the woman he must find was pretty.

"Was yuh-all fixin' to meet up with _me_?" she repeated with a bold laugh.

"I--don't know," he said. "By the Eternal, I don't know, ma'am. But I'm going to find out in right smart time. Did you ever hear anybody speak Latin?"

"Suh?" blankly; and the audacity faded.

"Latin," he repeated, a trifle discomfited. "For instance, '_sic itur_.' Do you know what '_sic itur_' means?"

"Sick--what, suh?"

"'_Sic itur!_' Oh, Lord, she _is_ what she looks like!" he exclaimed in frank despair. He walked to the door, wheeled suddenly, came back and confronted her.

"Either, ma'am, you are the most consummate actress in this war drama, or you don't know what I'm saying, and you think me crazy.... And now I'll ask you once for all: _Is this the road_?"

The Special Messenger looked him full in the eyes; then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, laughing, adorable.

"_Sic itur--ad Astra_," she said demurely, and offered him her hand. "Continue," she added.

He neither stirred nor spoke; a deep flush mounted to the roots of his short, curly hair. She smiled encouragement, thinking him young and embarrassed, and a trifle chagrined.

"Continue the Latin formula," she nodded, laughing; "what follows, if you please----"

"Good God!" he broke out hoarsely.

And suddenly she knew there was nothing to follow except death--his or hers--realized she made an awful mistake--divined in one dreadful instant the unsuspected counter-mine beneath her very feet--cried out as she struck him full in the face with clenched fist, sprang back, whipping the revolver from her ragged bodice, dark eyes ablaze.

"Now," she panted, "hands high--and turn your back! Quickly!"

He stood still, very pale, one sunburned hand covering the cheek which she had struck. There was blood on it. He heard her breathless voice, warning him to obey, but he only took his hand from his face, looked at the blood on palm and finger, then turned his hopeless eyes on her.

"Too late," he said heavily. "But--I'd rather be you than I.... Look out of that window, Messenger!"

"Put up your hands!"

"No."

"Will you hold up your hands!"

"No, Messenger.... And I--didn't--know it was _you_ when I came here. It's--it's a dirty business--for an officer." He sank down on the wooden chair, resting his head between both hands. A single drop of blood fell brightly from his cut cheek.

The Special Messenger stole a swift, sidelong glance toward the window, hesitated, and, always watching him, slid along the wall toward the door, menacing him at every step with leveled revolver. Then, at the door, she cast one rapid glance at the open field behind her and around. A thrill of horror stiffened her. The entire circle of the burned clearing was ringed with the gray pickets of rebel cavalry.

The distant men sat motionless on their horses, carbine on thigh. Here and there a distant horse tossed his beautiful head, or perhaps some hat-brim fluttered. There was no other movement, not one sound.

Crouching to pass the windows beneath the sills she crept, heedless of her prisoner, to the rear door. That avenue to the near clustering woods was closed, too; she saw the glitter of carbines above the laurel.

"Special Messenger?" She turned toward him, pale as a ghost. "I reckon we've got you."

"Yes," she said.

There was another chair by the table--the only other one. She seated herself, shaking all over, laid her revolver on the table, stared at the weapon, pushed it from her with a nervous shudder, and, ashy of lip and cheek, looked at the man she had struck.

"Will they--hang me?"

"I reckon, ma'am. They hung the other one--the man you took me for."

"Will there be a--trial?"

"Drumhead.... They've been after you a long, long while."

"Then--what are you waiting for?"

He was silent.

She found it hard to control the nervous tremor of her limbs and lips. The dryness in her throat made speech difficult.

"Then--if there is no chance----"

He bent forward swiftly and snatched her revolver from the table as her small hand fell heavily upon the spot where the weapon had rested.

"Would you do _that_?" he said in a low voice.

The desperate young eyes answered him. And, after a throbbing silence: "Won't you let me?" she asked. "It is indecent to h-hang a--woman--before--men----"

He did not answer.

"Please--please--" she whispered, "give it back to me--if you are a--soldier.... You can go to the door and call them.... Nobody will know.... You can turn your back.... It will only take a second!"

A big blue-bottle fly came blundering into the room and filled the silence with its noise. Years ago the big blue flies sometimes came into the quiet schoolroom; and how everybody giggled when the taller Miss Poucher, bristling from her prunella shoes to her stiff side-curls, charged indignantly upon the buzzing intruder.

Dry--eyed, dry--lipped, the Messenger straightened up, quivering, and drew a quick, sharp breath; then her head fell forward, and, resting inert upon the table, she buried her face in her arms. The most dangerous spy in the Union service--the secret agent who had worked more evil to the Confederacy than any single Union army corps--the coolest, most resourceful, most trusted messenger on either side as long as the struggle lasted--caught at last.

The man, young, Southern, and a gentleman's son, sat staring at her. He had driven his finger-nails deep into his palms, bitten his underlip till it was raw.

"Messenger!"

She made no response.

"Are you afraid?"

Her head, prone in her arms, motioned dull negation. It was a lie and he knew it. He looked at the slender column of the neck--stained to a delicate amber--at the nape; and he thought of the rope and the knot under the left ear.

"Messenger," he said once more. "I did not know it was _you_ I was to meet. Look at me, in God's name!"

She opened her eyes on him, then raised her head.

"Do you know me now?" he asked.

"No."

"Look!"

He touched the scar on his forehead; but there was no recognition in her eyes.

"Look, I tell you!" he repeated, almost fiercely.

She said wearily: "I have seen so many men--so many men.... I can't remember you."

"And I have seen many women, Messenger; but I have never forgotten you--or what you did--or what you did----"

"I?"

"You.... And from that night I have lived only to find you again. And--oh, God! To find you here! My Messenger! My little Messenger!"

"Who are you?" she whispered, leaning forward on the table, dark eyes dilating with hope.

He sat heavily for a while, head bowed as though stunned to silence; then slowly the white misery returned to his face and he looked up.

"So--after all--_you_ have forgotten. And my romance is dead."

She did not answer, intent now on every word, every shade of his expression. And, as she looked, through the numbness of her desperation, hope stirred again, stealthily.

"Are you a friend?" Her voice scarcely sounded at all.

"Friends die for each other," he said. "Do you expect that of me?"

The silence between them became terrible; and at last he broke it with a bitter laugh:

"You once turned a boy's life to romance--riding through it--out of it--leaving scars on his brow and heart--and on his lips the touch of your own. And on his face your tears. Look at me once more!"

Her breath came quicker; far within her somewhere memory awoke, groping blindly for light.

"Three days we followed you," he said. "On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes--as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter's house--sure of you at last--and the pretty squatter's daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills--and when I returned she gave me her bed to sleep on----"

Her hand caught at her throat and she half rose, staring at him.

"Her own bed to sleep on," he repeated. "And I had been three days in the saddle; and I ate what she set before me, and slept on her bed--fell asleep--only a tired boy, not a soldier any longer.... And awoke to meet your startled eyes--to meet the blow from your revolver butt that made this scar--to fall back bewildered for a moment--half-stunned--Messenger! Do you know me now?"

"Yes," she said.

They looked breathlessly at one another; suddenly a hot blush covered her neck and face; and his eyes flashed triumph.

"You have _not_ forgotten!" he cried.

And there, on the very edge of death itself, the bright shame glowed and glowed in her cheeks, and her distressed eyes fell before his.

"You kissed me," he said, looking at her.

"I--I thought I had--killed you--" she stammered.

"And you kissed me on the lips.... In that moment of peril you waited to do that. Your tears fell on my face. I felt them. And I tell you that, even had I been lying there dead instead of partly stunned, I would have known what you did to me after you struck me down."

Her head sank lower; the color ran riot from throat to brow.

He spoke again, quietly, yet a strange undertone of exaltation thrilled his voice and transfigured the thin, war-worn features she had forgotten, so that, as she lifted her eyes to him again, the same boy looked back at her from the mist of the long dead years.

"Messenger," he said, "I have never forgotten. And now it is too late to forget your tears on my face--the touch of your lips on mine. I would not if I could.... It was worth living for--dying for.... Once--I hoped--some day--after this--all this trouble ended--my romance might come--true----"

The boy choked, then:

"I came here under orders to take a woman spy whose password was the key to a Latin phrase. But until you stood straight in your rags and smiled at me, I did not know it was you--I did not know I was to take the Special Messenger! Do you believe me?"

"Yes."

The boy colored painfully. Then a queer, pallid change came over his face; he rose, bent over her where she rested heavily on the table:

"Little Messenger," he said, "I am in your debt for two blows and a kiss."

She lifted a dazed face to meet his gaze; he trembled, leaned down, and kissed her on the mouth.

Then in one bound he was at the door, signaling his troopers with drawn sabre--as once, long ago, she had seen him signal them in the Northern woods.

And, through the window, she saw the scattered cavalry forming column at a gallop, obeying every sabre signal, trotting forward, wheeling fours right--and then--and then! the gray column swung into the western forest at a canter, and was gone!

The boy leaning in the doorway looked back at her over his shoulder and sheathed his sabre. There was not a vestige of color left in his face.

"Go!" he said hoarsely.

"What?" she faltered.

"Go--go, in God's name! There's a door there! Can't you see it?"

* * * * *

She had been gone for a full hour when at last he turned again. A bit of faded ribbon from her hair lay on the table. It was tied in a true lover's knot.

He walked over, looked at it, drew it through his buttonhole and went slowly back to the door again. For a long while he stood there, vague-eyed, silent. It was nearly sunset when once more he drew his sabre, examined it carefully, bent it over one knee, and snapped the blade in two.

Then, with a last look at the sky, and standing very erect, he closed the door, set his back firmly against it, drew his revolver, and looked curiously into the muzzle.

A moment later the racket of the shot echoed through the deserted house.

V

RED FERRY

When Private Allen of Kay's Cavalry deserted with headquarters' dispatch pouch, and headed straight for Dixie, there was a great deal of consternation and excitement on the north bank of the river, and a considerable amount of headlong riding. But on the tenth day he slipped through the cordon, got into the woods, and was making for the river when a patrol shot at him near Gopher Creek, but lost him in the impenetrable cypress swamp beyond.

However, the pursuit was pushed forward to the very edge of the enemy's country; Kay's troopers patrolled the north bank of the river and watched every road and ford; east and west Ripley's and Haynes's brigades formed impassable curtains.

Somewhere in this vast corral lay hidden a desperate, starving man; and it was only a question of time before the hunted creature broke cover for the water.

That a trooper had deserted with arms and equipment was generally known; but that, in his nocturnal flight, he had also taken vitally important papers was known at first only to Kay and later to the Special Messenger, who was sent to him post-haste from corps headquarters when the fugitive headed for the river.

Now, the south bank of the stream being in the enemy's territory, Kay had not ventured to station patrols above the clay banks opposite, lest rumor of invasion bring Stuart's riders to complicate a man chase and the man escape in the confusion.

And he explained this to the Special Messenger at their first conference.

"It ought to be guarded," insisted the Messenger tranquilly. "There are three good fords and a ferry open to him."

"I hold the fords on this side," argued Kay; "the ferryboat lies in the eel-grass on the south shore."

"Stuart's riders might cross if they heard of this trouble, sir!"

"And if they see Union troops on the south bank they'll cross, sure pop. It won't do, Messenger. If that fellow attempts the fords we'll catch him, sure; if he swims we may get him in the water. The Lord knows I want him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing vedettes across the stream.... There's a ferryman over there I'm worried about, too. He'd probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And Allen was thick with him. They used to fish together. Nobody knows what they hatched out between them. It worries me, I can tell you--that ferry."

The Messenger walked to the tent door and looked thoughtfully at the woods around her. The colonel rose from his camp stool and followed her, muttering:

"I might as well try to catch a weasel in a wall, or a red horse in the mud; and how to go about it I don't know." With set jaws and an angry spot glowing in his gaunt cheeks, he stared wickedly around him and then at the Messenger. "_You_ do miracles, they say. Can't you do one now?"

"I don't know, sir. Who is this deserter?"

"Roy Allen--a sullen, unwilling dog--always malingering. He's spent half the time in the guardhouse, half in the hospital, since he arrived with the recruits. Somebody got an idea that he'd been hit by the sun, but it's all bosh. He's a bad one--that's all. Can you help me out?"

The Messenger nodded.

"You say he's fond of fishing?"

"Crazy about it. He was often detailed to keep us in food when rations ran low. Then the catfish made us sick, so I stopped his fishing. Then he took French leave."

"I want two troopers this evening, Colonel. May I have them?" she asked thoughtfully. "I'm going to keep house at Red Ferry for a while."

"All right, ma'am. Look out for him; he's a bad one."

But the Messenger shook her head, smiling.

At ten o'clock that night the Special Messenger, mounted astride and followed by two cavalrymen with carbines, rode down through the river mist to Bushy Ford.

Daintily her handsome horse set foot in the water, hesitated, bent his long, velvety neck, sniffed, and finally drank; then, satisfied, stepped quietly forward, hock-deep, in the swirling, yellow flood.

"Foller them stakes, Miss," cautioned the older trooper; "I sot 'em m'self, I did."

"Thank you. Keep close to me, Connor. I've crossed here before it was staked."

"Sho!" exclaimed Connor under his breath; "she do beat 'em all!"

Twice, having no light but the foggy stars, they missed the stakes and her horse had to swim, but they managed to flounder safely back to the ford each time; and after a little while her mount rose, straining through the red mud of the shore, struggled, scrambled madly, and drew out, dripping.

Up a slippery, crooked ascent they rode, out into a field of uncut corn above, then, spurring, swung at a canter eastward along the river.

There was a dim light in the ferry house; a lubberly, fat man ran to the open door as they drew bridle before it. When the fat man saw the blue troopers he backed hastily away from the sill and the Messenger dismounted and followed him into the house, heavy revolver swinging in her gloved hand.

"What'n hell y'goin' to do to me?" he began to whimper; "I ain't done nothin'"; but an excess of fright strangled him, and he continued to back away from her until he landed flat against the opposite wall. She followed and halted before him, cocking her weapon, with a terrible frown. She said solemnly:

"I want you to answer me one or two questions, and if you lie to me it will be the last time. Do you understand?"

He nodded and moistened his thick lips, gulping.

"Then you are the ferryman, Snuyder, are you not?"

He nodded, utterly incapable of speech. She went on, gloomily:

"You used to fish sometimes with a Yankee recruit named Allen--Roy Allen?"

"Ye-s'm," he sniveled. "There's my fish-pole an' his'n layin' onto the roof----"

"How did he hail you when he wanted you to come across to take him fishing?"

"He jest come down to the shore an' hollered twicet----"

She bent closer, scanning his dilated eyes; speech died on his lips.

"How did he call to you at _night_?"

"He ain't never called me at night--so help me----"

"No; _but in case he ever wished to fish at night?_"

The man began to stammer and protest, but she covered him suddenly, and her dark eyes struck fire.

"What signal?" she asked with a menacing ring in her voice. "Quick!"

"Cock-o'-the-pines!... It didn't mean nothin'," gasped the man; ... "It was jest private--between fishin' friends----"

"Go on!"

"Yes'm.... If I heard a cock-o'-the-pines squeal I was to squeal back, an' then he was to holler--jest friendly--'Hallo-oo! How's fishin'?' That's all, ma'am----"

"And you were to cross?"

"Yes'm--jest friendly like. Him an' me was fond o' fishin'----"

"I see. Sit down and don't move. Nobody is going to hurt you."

She went to the door, leisurely uncocking her revolver and pushing it through her belt.

"Oh, Connor," she called carelessly, "please mount my friend Mr. Snuyder on my horse, take him across the ford, and detain him as my guest at headquarters until I return. Wait a second; I'm going to keep my saddlebags with me."

And a few minutes later, as the troopers rode away in the mist with their prisoner, her gentle voice followed them:

"Don't be rough with him, Connor. Say to the colonel that there is no harm in him at all, but keep him in sight until I return; and _don't_ let him go fishing!"

* * * * *

She began housekeeping at sunrise by taking a daring bath in the stream, then, dressing, she made careful inventory of the contents of the house and a cautious survey of the immediate environment.

The premises, so unexpectedly and unwillingly abandoned by its late obese tenant, harbored, besides herself, only one living creature--a fat kitten.

The ferry house stood above the dangerous south bank of the river in a grove of oaks, surrounded for miles by open country.

A flight of rickety, wooden stairs pitched downward from the edge of the grassy bank to a wharf at the water's edge--the mere skeleton of a wharf now, outlined only by decaying stringpieces. But here the patched-up punt was moored; and above it, nailed to a dead tree, the sign with its huge lettering still remained:

RED FERRY
HOLLER TWICE

sufficiently distinct to be deciphered from the opposite shore. Sooner or later the fugitive would have to come to the river. Probably the cavalry would catch him at one of the fords, or some rifleman might shoot him swimming. But, if he did not know the fords, and could not swim, there was only one ferry for him; east, west, and north he had long since been walled in. The chances were that some night a cock-o'-the-pines would squeal from the woods across the river, and then she knew what to do.

During those broiling days of waiting she had leisure enough. Seated outside her shanty, in the shade of the trees, where she was able to keep watch both ways--south for her own safety's sake, north for the doomed man--she occupied herself with mending stockings and underwear, raising her eyes at intervals to sweep the landscape.

Nobody came into that heated desolation; neither voice nor gunshot echoed far or near. Day after day the foliage of the trees spread motionless under cloudless skies; day after day the oily river slipped between red mud banks in heated silence. In sky, on earth, nothing stirred except, at intervals, some buzzard turning, high in the blinding blue; below, all was deathly motionless, save when a clotted cake of red clay let go, sliding greasily into the current. At dawn the sun struck the half-stunned world insensible once more; no birds stirred even at sunset; all the little creatures of the field seemed dead; her kitten panted in its slumbers.

Every night the river fog shrouded the land, wetting the parched leaves; dew drummed on the rotting porch like the steady patter of picket-firing; the widow bird's distracted mourning filled the silence; the kitten crept to its food, ate indifferently, then, settling on the Messenger's knees, stared, round-eyed, at the dark. But always at dawn the sun burned off the mist, rising in stupefying splendor; the oily river glided on; not a leaf moved, not a creature. And the kitten slept on the porch, heedless of inviting grass stems whisked for her and the ball of silk rolled past her in temptation.

Half lying there, propped against a tree trunk in the heated shade, cotton bodice open, sleeves rolled to the shoulders, the Special Messenger mended her linen with languid fingers. Perspiration powdered her silky skin from brow to breast, from finger to elbow, shimmering like dew when she moved. Her dark hair fell, unbound; glossy tendrils of it curled on her shoulders, framing a face in which nothing as yet had extinguished the soft loveliness of youth.

At times she talked to the kitten under her breath; sometimes hummed an old song. Memories kept her busy, too, at moments quenching the brightness of her eyes, at moments twitching the edges of her vivid lips till the dreamy smile transfigured her.

But always quietly alert, her eyes scanned land and river, the bank opposite, the open fields behind her. Once, certain of a second's safety, she relaxed with a sigh, stretching out full length on the grass; and, under the edge of her cotton skirt, the metal of a revolver glimmered for an instant, strapped in its holster below her right knee.

The evening of the fourth day was cooler; the kitten hoisted its tail for the first time in their acquaintance, and betrayed a feeble interest in the flight of a white dusk-moth that came hovering around the porch vines.

"Pussy," said the Messenger, "there's bacon in that well pit; I am going to make a fire and fry some."

The kitten mewed faintly.

"I thought you'd approve, dear. Cold food is bad in hot weather; and we'll fry a little cornmeal, too. Shall we?"

The kitten on its small, uncertain legs followed her into one of the only two rooms. The fat tenant of the hovel had left some lightwood and kindling, and pots and pans necessary for such an existence as he led on earth.

The Messenger twisted up her hair and pinned it; then culinary rites began, the kitten breaking into a thin purring when an odor of bacon filled the air.

"Poor little thing!" murmured the Messenger, going to the door for a brief cautionary survey. And, coming back, she lifted the fry pan and helped the kitten first.

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----"