Part 3 (1/2)
”Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk.”
The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. ”No trouble,” replied the sergeant, ”it wouldn't take half a minute.”
”No,” I rejoined, ”the first step would be the last.”
The men laughed again. ”You must a-been born with all your teeth,” said the private, as we quickened to a trot. ”What makes you think we ain't after conscripts?”
”Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all.”
The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be horn-swoggled!
”I'm willing,” I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman asked my name. ”Smith,” I said, with dignity, and they laughed again, their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
”Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up with.”
Through the s.h.i.+fting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of us, came two hors.e.m.e.n in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me. ”Whoever he is,” I said, ”that gray he's riding is his second best, or it's borrowed,” for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
”Borrowed!” echoed the sergeant. ”If he doesn't own that mare no man does.”
”Nor no woman?” I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two companions gazed at each other.
”By ganny!” exclaimed one, and--”You're a c.o.o.n,” murmured the other, as the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private. Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a s.h.i.+rt of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
A familiar friends.h.i.+p lighted every countenance but mine as this second pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions p.r.i.c.ked after him westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second. In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his kepi to the warm breeze I took new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
”c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo,” thought I; ”if those are not the same hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their first cousins!”
VII
A PLAGUE ON NAMES!
Once more I measured my man. Celerity, valor, endurance, they were his iridescent neck and tail feathers. On a certain piece of road where we went more slowly I mentioned abruptly my clerks.h.i.+p under Major Harper and watched for the effect, but there was none. Did he know the Major? Oh, yes, and we fell to piling item upon item in praise of the quartermaster's virtues and good looks. Presently, with shrewdest intent, I said the Major was fine enough to be the hero of a novel! Did not my companion think so?
Yes, he thought so; but I believed the glow in his tone was for novels. I extolled the romance of actual life! I denounced that dullness which fails to see the poetry of daily experience, and goes wandering after the mirages of fiction! And I was ready to fight him if he liked. But he agreed with me most cordially.
”And yet,” he began to add,--
”Yet what?” I snapped out, with horse eyes.
”Doesn't a good story revive the poetry of our actual lives?” He wiped the rim of his cap with a handkerchief of yellow silk enriched at one corner with needlework.
”Um-hm!” I thought; ”Charlotte Oliver, eh?” I responded tartly that I had that very morning met four ladies the poetry of whose actual, visible loveliness had abundantly ill.u.s.trated to me the needlessness and impertinence of fiction! By the way, did he not think feminine beauty was always in its ripest perfection at eighteen?
Well, he thought a girl might be prettiest at eighteen and handsomest much later. And again I said to myself, ”Charlotte Oliver!” But when I looked searchingly into his eyes their manly sweetness so abashed me that I dropped my glance and felt him looking at me. I remembered my fable and flinched. ”Isn't your name--” I cried, and choked, and when I would have said Ferry, another word slipped out instead. He did not hear it plainly: