Part 12 (1/2)

”She must have pumped others before she pumped you, eh?” There was confession in his good humor. ”But tell me; did she not see also this other trap, for this man and his father, and try to save them out of it?--oh, if you don't want--never mind.” He laid a leg over the front of his saddle and sat thinking. So I see him to-day: his chestnut locks, his goodly limbs and shoulders, the graceful boots, cut-away jacket, faded sash, straight sword, and that look of care on his features which intensified the charm of their spiritual cleanness; behind him his band of picked heroes, and for background the June sky. Whenever I smell dewy corn-fields smitten with the sun that picture comes back to me.

”No,” he said again, ”you need not tell me.” By a placid light in his face I saw he understood. He drew his watch, put it back, thought on, and smiled at my uniform. ”It has not the blue of the others,” he said, ”but indeed they are not all alike, and it will match the most of them--after a rain or two--and some dust. You have been trading horses?”

I explained. While doing so I saw one of the guard reaching the prisoner's bridle to the other. Hah! Oliver had slapped the bridle free. In went his spurs! By a great buffet on the horse's neck he wheeled him, and with the rein dangling under the bits went over the fence like a deer. ”Bang! bang! bang!”

It was idle; a magic seems to s.h.i.+eld a captive's leap for life. Away across the corn he went to the edge of a tangled wood, over the fence there again, and into the brush. ”Halt! bang!” and ”Halt! bang!” it was, at every bound, but now the pursuers came back empty-handed, some contemptuously silent, some laughing. Ferry glanced again at the time, and I was having within me a quarrel with him for his indifference at the prisoner's escape, when with cold severity he asked--

”Why did you not fire?”

I flushed with indignation, and my eye retorted to his that I had only followed his example. His answer was a smile. ”You, also, have been guessing, eh?” he said, and when I glowed with grat.i.tude he added,

”Never mind, we must have a long talk. At present there is a verbal message for me; what is it?”

”Verbal message? No, Lieutenant, she didn't--oh!--from the General! Yes! the General says--'Rodney.'”

He turned and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, ”Left into line wheel--march!” chanted our second in command. ”Backwards--march!” and then ”Right dress!” and the line, that had been a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning sun in their faces. Then Ferry called ”Fours from the right, to march to the left--march!” and he and Quinn pa.s.sed up the middle of the road along the front of the line, with yours truly close at their heels, while behind us the command broke into column again by fours from the right and set the pink dust afloat as they followed back northward over their own tracks with Sergeant Jim beside the first four as squadron right guide. I had got where I was by some mistake which I did not know how to correct,--I was no drill-master's pride,--and there was much suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt at my expense along the front as we rode down it. At every few steps until the whole line was a column Ned Ferry dropped some word of cheer, and each time there would come back an equally quiet and hearty reply. Near the middle he said ”Brisk work ahead of us to-day, boys,” and I heard the reiteration of his words run among the ranks. I also heard one man bid another warm some milk for the baby. Trotting by a grove where the company had pa.s.sed the night, we presently took the walk to break by twos, and as we resumed the trot and turned westward into a by-road, Lieutenant Quinn dropped back to the column and sent me forward to the side of Ned Ferry. I went with cold s.h.i.+vers.

XXIII

FERRY TALKS OF CHARLOTTE

”You have no carbine,” said my commander. ”And you have but one revolver; here is another.”

I knew it at a glance. ”It's Oliver's,” I said.

”We'll call it yours now,” he replied. ”Kendall picked it up, but he has no need of it.”

I remarked irrelevantly that I had not noticed when Sergeant Jim and Kendall rejoined us, but Ferry stuck to the subject of the captured weapon. ”Take it,” he insisted; ”if you are not fully armed you will find yourself holding horses every time we dismount to fight. And now, Smith, I shall not report to the General this matter of the Olivers; you shall tell him the whole of it, yourself; you are my scout, but you are his courier.”

”Lieutenant, I--I wish I knew the whole of it.”

”Tell him all you know.”

”Even things she doesn't want told?”

”Ah!”--he gave a Creole shrug--”that you must decide, on the honor of a good soldier. She has taken you into her confidence?”

”Only into her service,” I said, but he raised his brows. ”That is more; certainly you are honored. What is it you would rather not tell the General and yet you must; do I know that already?”

”Yes, for one thing, I've got to tell him that old Lucius Oliver can't be hung too high or too soon. For months he has been--”

Ferry showed pain. ”I know; save that for the General. And what else?”

”Why, the other one--the son. Lieutenant, is she that monster's wife?”

Ferry stroked his horse's neck and said very softly, ”She is his wife.” I had to wait long for him to say more, but at length, with the same measured mildness, he spoke on. This amazing Charlotte, bereft of father, brother and mother, ward of a light-headed married sister, and in these distracted times lacking any friend with the courage, wisdom and kind activity to probe the pretensions of her suitor, had been literally snared into marriage by this human spider, this Oliver, a man of just the measure to simulate with cunning and patient labor the character, bearing and antecedents of a true and exceptional gentleman for the sake of devouring a glorious woman.

”But, eh!” I exclaimed, ”how could ever such as she mistake him for--”