Part 13 (2/2)

”Maybe not,” I replied, being nothing if not disputatious, ”and she does strike me as one thrown upon her own intuitions for everything; but if she's the lady she is entirely by her own personal quality, Lieutenant, she's a wonder!”

”Ah, but she is a wonder. In a state of society more finished--”

”She would be incredible,” I said for him, and he accepted the clause by a gesture, and after a meditative pause went on with her history. The subject of our conversation had first met Oliver, it seemed, when by reason of some daring performance in the military field--near Milliken's Bend, in the previous autumn--he was the hero of the moment. Even so it was strange enough that he should capture her; one would as soon look to see Vicksburg fall; but the world was upside down, everything was happening as if in a tornado, and he cast his net of lies; lies of his own, and lies of two or three match-making friends who chose to believe, at no cost to themselves, that war, with one puff of its breath, had cleansed him of his vices and that marriage would complete the happy change. This was in Natchez, Ferry went on to say. Most fortunately for the bride one of the bridegroom's wedding gifts was a certain young slave girl; before the wedding was an hour past--before the orange-blossoms were out of the bride's hair--this slave maid had told her what he was, ”And you know what that is.”

We rode in silence while I tried to think what it must be to a woman of her warmth--of her impulsive energies--to be, week in, week out, month after month, besieged by that man's law-protected blandishments and stratagems. ”I wish you would use me in her service every time there is a chance,” I said.

”The chances are few,” he answered; ”even to General Austin she laughs and says we must let the story work itself out; that she is the fool in it, but there is a chance for the fool to win if not too much burdened with help.”

”How did you make her acquaintance?” I ventured to ask.

”You remember the last time the brigade was in this piece of country?” he rejoined.

I did; it had been only some five weeks earlier; Grant had driven us through Port Gibson, General Bowen had retired across the north fork of Bayou Pierre, and we had been cut off and forced to come down here.

”Yes; well, she came to us that night, round the enemy's right, with a letter from Major Harper's brother--he was then in New Orleans--and with information of her own that saved the brigade. I had just got my company. I took it off next morning on my first scout, whilst the brigade went to Raymond. She was my guide all that day; six times she was my guide before the end of May. Yet the most I have learned about her has come to me in the last few days.”

”She has a fearful game to play.”

”Oh!--yes, that is what she would call it; but me, I say--though not as Gholson would mean it, you know,--she has a soul to save. If it is a game, it is a very delicate one; let her play it as nearly alone as she can.” ”Yes,” said I, ”a man's hand in it would be only his foot in it;” and Ferry was pleased. He scanned me all over in the same bright way he had done it in the morning, and remarked ”This time I see they have given you a carbine.”

We went down into some low lands, crossed a creek or two, and in one of them gave our horses and ourselves a good scrubbing. On a dim path in thick woods we paused at a worm fence lying squarely across our way. It was staked and ridered and its zig-zags were crowded with brambles and wild-plum. A hundred yards to our left, still overhung by the woods, it turned south. Beyond it in our front lay a series of open fields, in which, except this one just at hand, the crops were standing high. The nearer half of this one, a breadth of maybe a hundred yards, though planted in corn, was now given up to gra.s.s, and live-stock, getting into it at some unseen point, had eaten and trampled everywhere. The farther half was thinly covered with a poor stand of cotton, and between the corn and the cotton a small, trench-like watercourse crossed our line of view at right angles and vanished in the woods at the field's eastern edge. The farther border of this run was densely masked by a growth of brake-cane entirely lacking on the side next us. Between the cotton and the next field beyond, a double line of rail fence indicated the Fayette and Union Church road. Suddenly Ferry looked through his field-gla.s.ses, and my glance followed the direction in which they were pointed. Dust again; one can get tired of dust! Some two miles off, a little southward of the setting sun, a golden haze of it floated across a low background of trees.

”'Tis the enemy, I think,” he said, ”but only scouts, I suppose.”

XXVI

A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE

I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. ”Didn't the Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?” I asked.

”For what would they do that?” inquired my leader, still using the gla.s.s, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the gla.s.s, and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the road. Now again he lifted the gla.s.s, and I saw over there two small, black, moving objects. They pa.s.sed behind some fence-row foliage, reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside fence--the dusty hats of two Federal hors.e.m.e.n. The wearers sat looking over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't afraid they would see us.

”That is what we want,” was his reply; ”only, they must not know we want it. Keep very still; don't move.” At that word they espied us and galloped back.

We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge of the public road. ”Soon know how many they are, now,” he said, smiling back at me.

”Are you going to count them?” It seemed so much easier to let them count us.

”Yes,” he replied. ”Wish we had our boys here,” he added, and did not need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked with canes to take them in the flank. ”We would count many times our own number before they should pa.s.s,” he added.

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