Part 28 (1/2)

IN THE COVE

General Sheridan permitted the Winchester men to rest a long time, or rather he ordered them to do so. No regiment had distinguished itself more at Cedar Creek or in the previous battles, and it was best for it to lie by a while, and recover its physical strength-strength of the spirit it had never lost. It also gave a needed chance to the sixteen slight wounds acc.u.mulated by d.i.c.k, Pennington and Warner to heal perfectly.

”Unless something further happens,” said Warner, regretfully, ”I won't have a single honorable scar to take back with me and show in Vermont.”

”I'll have one slight, though honorable, scar, but I won't be able to show it,” said Pennington, also with regret.

”I trust that it's in front, Frank,” said d.i.c.k.

”It is, all right. Don't worry about that. But what about you, d.i.c.k?”

”I had hopes of a place on my left arm just above the elbow. A bullet, traveling at the rate of a million miles a minute, broke the skin there and took a thin flake of flesh with it, but I'm so terribly healthy it's healed up without leaving a trace.”

”There's no hope for us,” said Warner, sighing. ”We can never point to the proof of our warlike deeds. You didn't find your cousin among the prisoners?”

”No, nor was he among their fallen whom we buried. Nor any of his friends either. I'm quite sure that he escaped. My intuition tells me so.”

”It's not your intuition at all,” said Warner reprovingly. ”It's a reasonable opinion, formed in your mind by antecedent conditions. You call it intuition, because you don't take the trouble to discover the circ.u.mstances that led to its production. It's only lazy minds that fall back upon second sight, mind-reading and such things.”

”Isn't he the big-word man?” said Pennington admiringly. ”I tell you what, George, General Early is still alive somewhere, and we're going to send you to talk him to death. They say he's a splendid swearer, one of the greatest that ever lived, but he won't be able to get out a single cuss, with you standing before him, and spouting the whole unabridged dictionary to him.”

”At least when I talk I say something,” replied Warner sternly. ”It seems strange to me, Frank Pennington, that your life on the plains, where conditions, for the present at least, are hard, has permitted you to have so much frivolity in your nature.”

”It's not frivolity, George. It's a gay and bright spirit, in the rays of which you may bask without price. It will do you good.”

”Do you know what's to be our next duty?”

”No, I don't, and I'm not going to bother about it. I'll leave that directly to Colonel Winchester, and indirectly to General Sheridan. When you rest, put your mind at rest. Concentration on whatever you are doing is the secret of continued success.”

They were lying on blankets near the foot of the mountain, and the time was late October. The days were growing cold and the nights colder, but a fine big fire was blazing before them, and they rejoiced in the warmth and brightness, shed from the flames and the heaps of glowing coals.

”I'll venture the prediction,” said Pennington, ”that our next march is not against an army, but against guerrillas. They say that up there in the Alleghanies Slade and Skelly are doing a lot of harm. They may have to be hunted out and the Winchester men have the best reputation in the army for that sort of work. We earned it by our work against these very fellows in Tennessee.”

”For which most of the credit is due to Sergeant Whitley,” said d.i.c.k. ”He's a grand trailer, and he can lead us with certainty, when other regiments can't find the way.”

d.i.c.k gazed westward beyond the dim blue line of the Alleghanies, and he knew that he would feel no surprise if Pennington's prediction should come true. The nest of difficult mountains was a good shelter for outlaws, and the Winchesters, with the sergeant picking up the trail, were the very men to hunt them.

He knew too that, unless the task was begun soon, it would prove a supreme test of endurance, and there would be dangers in plenty. Snow would be falling before long on the mountains, and they would become a frozen wilderness, almost as wild and savage as they were before the white man came.

But it seemed for a while that the intuition of both d.i.c.k and Pennington had failed. They spent many days in the valley trying to catch the evasive Mosby and his men, although they had little success. Mosby's rangers knowing the country thoroughly made many daring raids, although they could not become a serious menace.

When they returned through Winchester from the last of these expeditions the Winchester men were wrapped in heavy army cloaks, for the wind from the mountains could now cut through uniforms alone. d.i.c.k, glancing toward the Alleghanies, saw a ribbon of white above their blue line.

”Look, fellows! The first snow!” he said.

”I see,” said Warner. ”It snows on the just and the unjust, the unjust being Slade and Skelly, who are surely up there.”

”Just before we went out,” sad Pennington, ”the news of some fresh and special atrocity of theirs came in. I'm thinking the time is near when we'll be sent after them.”

”We'll need snow shoes,” said Warner, s.h.i.+vering as he looked. ”I can see that the snow is increasing. Which way is the wind blowing, d.i.c.k?”