Part 9 (1/2)

Near General Forrest's headquarters I dismounted and walked by the side of my horse. Then when Whistling Jim came up, and I would have helped her from the saddle, ”Don't touch me!” she exclaimed. She jumped from the saddle to the ground and stood before me, and for the first time I was ashamed and afraid. ”This way,” I said. Then to the guard at the door, ”Private Shannon, of Captain Forrest's company, to see the General.”

”He's right in there,” said the guard with good-natured informality. I rapped at the inner door, and heard the well-known voice of General Forrest bidding me to enter.

I saluted, and he made some motion with his hand, but his eye wandered over me and rested on my companion. Then, after a moment, they returned to me. ”What's the matter, Shannon?”

”I have brought to you here one who came to my rescue last night when I had been captured by a scouting party. We had gone to see the young fellow who, you will remember, was wounded in our last affair at the river--you saw him in the cabin. He was carried away the next day by his friends, but grew so ill that he could be taken no farther than the house on the turnpike two miles from town.”

”You didn't let 'em git you just dry so, did you?” he asked. And then I gave him the details of the affair from beginning to end. ”I thought Herndon was mighty keen to go,” he remarked with a laugh. ”You say this young fellow fixed it so you could git away? And then you went back and captured him? That don't look fair, does it?” He regarded me with serious countenance.

”It is a lady, General, and I did not want her to fall in rough hands.”

He uttered an exclamation of impatience and surprise, and made an indignant gesture. ”Now, look here, Shannon, that is a matter that I won't tolerate. I've a great mind to----” He paused, hearing the voice of his wife, who was visiting him. ”Go back in there and tell Mrs.

Forrest to come in here a minute, and do you stay out till I call you.

I'm going to look into this business, and if it ain't perfectly square all the way through you'll pay for it.”

I hunted for Mrs. Forrest, hat in hand, and soon found her. I must have had a queer expression on my face, for she observed it. ”You must be frightened,” she said.

”I am, madam, for another as well as myself,” and then I told her, as we walked along very slowly, just how the matter lay. She regarded me very seriously for a moment, and then smiled. She was a handsome lady, and this smile of hers, full of promise as it was, made her face the most beautiful I have ever seen before or since. It is a large saying, but it is true.

I remember that I remained in the corridor cooling my heels a weary time, but finally Mrs. Forrest came out. ”You may go in now,” she said.

”It is all right; I'm glad I was called; I think I have made the General understand everything as I do. There are some things that men do not understand as well as women, and it is just as well that they do not. I am sure you will be very kind to that little woman in there.”

I tried to thank her, but there is a grat.i.tude that cannot be expressed in words, and I could but stand before her mumbling with my head bent.

”I know what you would say,” she remarked, graciously. ”The General and I have perfect confidence in you.”

I went into the room where General Forrest and Jane Ryder were.

”Shannon, what are you and Herndon up to? What do you mean by going on in this way?” He spoke with some severity, but there was a humorous twinkle in his blue-gray eyes. ”More than that, you took occasion to prejudice the jury. What did you say to Mrs. Forrest?”

”I simply asked her to be kind to the lady in here.”

”Well, she was all of that,” said the General, ”and she threatened me with her displeasure if I wasn't kind to you, and as she's the only human being that I'm really afeared of, I reckon I'll have to let you off this time. Oh, you needn't look so smiling; you are to be punished, and that heavily. You are to be responsible for this young woman. You are to take charge of her and restore her to her own people--mind you, to her own people. You are responsible to me, and I reckon you know what that means; if you don't you can just ask somebody that knows me.”

I knew what it meant well enough, and I knew what his words meant. ”The lady is as safe with me, General, as if she were in her mother's arms.”

”Now, that's the way to talk, and I believe you,” said General Forrest.

All this time Jane Ryder had said not a word. She sat very quietly, but there was not a sign of gloom or dejection in her face. But uneasiness looked from her eyes. She spoke presently, while General Forrest was looking through a large morocco memorandum-book that was a little the worse for wear. ”If you please,” she said, ”I should like to go back to my friends to-night, if they are not all killed. They can do you no harm even if they are alive. They are only a couple of women.”

”Well, they are not killed,” replied General Forrest without looking up. ”Wimmen make war on me and do a lot of damage, but I don't make war on them. I'm letting you off on a technicality, Miss Ryder. You are not a spy; you have never been inside my lines until to-night; and yet you were in a fair way to find out a good many things that the other side would like to know.”

”I never found out as much as I'd like to know,” she replied; ”and since he came bothering me I haven't found out anything.”

Apparently General Forrest ignored the remark. He turned to me with a slip of paper in his hand. ”You'll have to change your name, Shannon.

This pa.s.sport is made out to someone else. Read it.”

He handed it to me, and I read aloud: ”The bearer of this, Captain Francis Leroy, is authorized to pa.s.s in and out the Federal lines, night or day, without let or hindrance.” It was signed by a great man at Was.h.i.+ngton and counter-signed by one almost as great.