Part 4 (2/2)

The aunt and her nieces were standing in the carry-all, she majestic, they laughing and weeping in the one act. I waved them into their seats.

”Halt!” We halted. ”About face!” As the prisoner eyed me both of us listened. His equanimity was almost winsome, and I saw that friendliness was going to be his tactics.

”Guess I'm the first Yankee y' ever caught, ain't I?” His smile was superior, but congratulatory.

”You'll be the first prisoner I ever shot if you get any funnier!”

We listened again. ”They've gone the wrong way,” I said, still savage.

”No,” he replied, ”I came the wrong way.”

The ladies smiled; I glowered. ”Take those horses by their heads and turn them to me!”

An instant his superb eye resented, but then he pleasantly did my bidding. ”Suits me well; rather chance it with you than with those I've just left.”

”Easier to get away, you think?” I asked, with a worse frown than ever, as he stepped into the carry-all and took the lines.

”No, not so easy; but those fellows are Arkansans, and they're in a bad humor with me.”

I took the hint and grew less ferocious. ”While you,” I said, ”are Captain Jewett.”

”I am,” was his reply, and my heart leaped for joy. We hurried away. My captive was the most daring Union scout between Vicksburg and New Orleans; these very Harpers knew that. The thing unknown to us was that already his fate was entangled with Ned Ferry's and Charlotte Oliver's, as yet more it would be, with theirs and ours, in days close at hand.

XI

CAPTAIN JEWETT

Once more we were in the by-road which had brought us westward parallel with the highway. The prisoner drove. Aunt Martha sat beside him, slim, dark, black-eyed, stately, her silver-gray hair rolled high a la Pompadour. With a magnanimity rare in those bitter days she incited him to talk, first of New Orleans, where he had spent a month in camp on one of the public squares, and then of his far northern home, and of loved ones there, mother, wife and child. The nieces, too, gave a generous attention. Only I, riding beside the hind wheels, held solemnly aloof.

”Front!” I once snapped out with a ring that made the trees reply and the ladies catch their breath. ”If you steal one more look back here I'll put a ball into your leg.”

He smiled, chirped the horses up and resumed his chat. I heard him praise my horse and compare him not unfavorably with his own which he had lost that morning'. He and a few picked men had been surprised in a farmhouse at breakfast. They had made a leap and a dash, he said, but one horse and rider falling dead, his horse, unhurt, had tumbled over them, and here was his rider.

I prompted Camille to ask if he had ever encountered Ned Ferry, and he laughed.

”No,” he said, but Ned Ferry had lately restored to him, by proxy, some lost letters, with an invitation to come and see him.

I laughed insolently. The young ladies sparkled, and so did Miss Harper, as she asked him who had been the proxy.

He said the proxy was a young woman who had a knack of getting pa.s.ses through the lines, and the three girls exchanged looks as knowing as they were delighted.

”I tell her as a friend,” he said, ”she'll get one into Fortress Monroe yet!”

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