Part 18 (1/2)

”I do not yet know. There is no occasion, as I have all instructions from General Banks. I wish to make no unnecessary delay.”

”Have you the countersign?”

”Yes.”

”Will you cross by the ferry?”

”I hardly think so. Ashby may be watching that and the ford below. There is a place farther up the river that I may try.”

”That is, after you pa.s.s through Williamsport?”

”Yes, a mile or two beyond.”

The light increased. Gold clouds barred the east, the c.o.c.ks crew, and crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown cornfields. The road now ran at no great distance from the ca.n.a.l and the river. First came the ca.n.a.l, mirroring between trodden banks the red east, then the towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, and willow, then the Potomac veiled with mist. They were drawing near to Williamsport. The day's travel had begun. They met or overtook workers upon the road, sutlers' carts, ordnance wagons, a squad of artillerymen conducting a gun, a country doctor in an old buggy, two boys driving calves yoked together. The road made a curve to the north, like a sickle. On the inland side it ran beneath a bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a twelve-foot embankment dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where the corn stood in shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the north into the pike, they encountered a company of infantry.

Marchmont checked his horse. ”I'm not sure, but I think I know the officer. Be so good as to await me a moment, lieutenant.”

He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low voices. The infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, and discussed arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a number of tall men, lean and sinewy, with a sweep of line and unconstraint of gesture that smacked of hunters' ways and mountain exercise. The two troopers from Frederick City came up. The place of the cross-roads showed animated and blue. The sun pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road. ”Lieutenant McNeill,” said the aide with quietness, ”there seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the interruption--not a long continued one, I trust--to our pleasant relations.”

McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had come together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled with his eyes. ”If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can help the matter. To headquarters, of course--the sooner the better! I can have no possible objection.”

He touched his horse and advanced a little farther into the road. All the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for the moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. ”You know this officer, Miller?” called the captain of infantry.

Miller saluted. ”No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he crossed yesterday. We talked a little. 'You've got a Southern voice,' says I, and he says, 'Yes. I was born in the valley of the South Branch.'

'You'll find company here,' says I, 'for we've got some northwestern Virginians--'”

”By jingo!” cried the captain, ”that's true! There's a squad of them here.” He raised his voice. ”Men from northwest Virginia, advance!”

A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as hunters, eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of the nineteenth. ”Do any of you men know the South Branch of the Potomac?”

Three voices made themselves heard. ”Know it like a book.”--”Don't know it like a book--know it like I know my gun and dawg.”--”Don't know any good of it--they-uns air all rebels down that-a-way!”

”Especially,” said a fourth voice, ”the McNeills.”

The courier from Kelly glanced at him sharply. ”And what have you got, my man, against the McNeills?”

”I've got something,” stated the mountaineer doggedly. ”Something ever since afore the Mexican War. Root and branch, I've got something against them. When I heard, over there in Grant, that they was h.e.l.l-bent for the Confederacy, I just went, h.e.l.l-bent, for the other side. Root and branch, I know them, and root and branch they're d.a.m.ned rebels--”

”Do you know,” demanded the captain, ”this one? This is Lieutenant McNeill.”

The man looked, General Kelly's courier facing him squarely. There was a silence upon the road to Williamsport. The mountaineer spat. ”He may be a lieutenant, but he ain't a McNeill. Not from the South Branch valley, he ain't.”

”He says he is.”

”Do you think, my friend,” asked the man in question, and he looked amused, ”that you really know all the McNeills, or their party? The valley of the South Branch is long and wide, and the families are large.

One McNeill has simply escaped your observation.”

”There ain't,” said the man, with grimness, ”a d.a.m.ned one of them that has escaped my observation, and there ain't one of them that ain't a d.a.m.ned rebel. They're with Ashby now, and those of them that ain't with Ashby are with Jackson. And you may be Abraham Lincoln or General Banks, but you ain't a McNeill!”

The ranks opened and there emerged a stout German musician. ”Herr Captain! I was in Winchester before I ran away and joined der Union.