“Yes’m — jest friendly like. Him an’ me was fond o’ fishin’ — —”

  “I see. Sit down and don’t move. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  She went to the door, leisurely uncocking her revolver and pushing it through her belt.

  “Oh, Connor,” she called carelessly, “please mount my friend Mr. Snuyder on my horse, take him across the ford, and detain him as my guest at headquarters until I return. Wait a second; I’m going to keep my saddlebags with me.”

  And a few minutes later, as the troopers rode away in the mist with their prisoner, her gentle voice followed them:

  “Don’t be rough with him, Connor. Say to the colonel that there is no harm in him at all, but keep him in sight until I return; and don’t let him go fishing!”

  * * * * *

  She began housekeeping at sunrise by taking a daring bath in the stream, then, dressing, she made careful inventory of the contents of the house and a cautious survey of the immediate environment.

  The premises, so unexpectedly and unwillingly abandoned by its late obese tenant, harbored, besides herself, only one living creature — a fat kitten.

  The ferry house stood above the dangerous south bank of the river in a grove of oaks, surrounded for miles by open country.

  A flight of rickety, wooden stairs pitched downward from the edge of the grassy bank to a wharf at the water’s edge — the mere skeleton of a wharf now, outlined only by decaying stringpieces. But here the patched-up punt was moored; and above it, nailed to a dead tree, the sign with its huge lettering still remained:

  RED FERRY HOLLER TWICE

  sufficiently distinct to be deciphered from the opposite shore. Sooner or later the fugitive would have to come to the river. Probably the cavalry would catch him at one of the fords, or some rifleman might shoot him swimming. But, if he did not know the fords, and could not swim, there was only one ferry for him; east, west, and north he had long since been walled in. The chances were that some night a cock-o’-the-pines would squeal from the woods across the river, and then she knew what to do.

  During those broiling days of waiting she had leisure enough. Seated outside her shanty, in the shade of the trees, where she was able to keep watch both ways — south for her own safety’s sake, north for the doomed man — she occupied herself with mending stockings and underwear, raising her eyes at intervals to sweep the landscape.

  Nobody came into that heated desolation; neither voice nor gunshot echoed far or near. Day after day the foliage of the trees spread motionless under cloudless skies; day after day the oily river slipped between red mud banks in heated silence. In sky, on earth, nothing stirred except, at intervals, some buzzard turning, high in the blinding blue; below, all was deathly motionless, save when a clotted cake of red clay let go, sliding greasily into the current. At dawn the sun struck the half-stunned world insensible once more; no birds stirred even at sunset; all the little creatures of the field seemed dead; her kitten panted in its slumbers.

  Every night the river fog shrouded the land, wetting the parched leaves; dew drummed on the rotting porch like the steady patter of picket-firing; the widow bird’s distracted mourning filled the silence; the kitten crept to its food, ate indifferently, then, settling on the Messenger’s knees, stared, round-eyed, at the dark. But always at dawn the sun burned off the mist, rising in stupefying splendor; the oily river glided on; not a leaf moved, not a creature. And the kitten slept on the porch, heedless of inviting grass stems whisked for her and the ball of silk rolled past her in temptation.

  Half lying there, propped against a tree trunk in the heated shade, cotton bodice open, sleeves rolled to the shoulders, the Special Messenger mended her linen with languid fingers. Perspiration powdered her silky skin from brow to breast, from finger to elbow, shimmering like dew when she moved. Her dark hair fell, unbound; glossy tendrils of it curled on her shoulders, framing a face in which nothing as yet had extinguished the soft loveliness of youth.

  At times she talked to the kitten under her breath; sometimes hummed an old song. Memories kept her busy, too, at moments quenching the brightness of her eyes, at moments twitching the edges of her vivid lips till the dreamy smile transfigured her.

  But always quietly alert, her eyes scanned land and river, the bank opposite, the open fields behind her. Once, certain of a second’s safety, she relaxed with a sigh, stretching out full length on the grass; and, under the edge of her cotton skirt, the metal of a revolver glimmered for an instant, strapped in its holster below her right knee.

  The evening of the fourth day was cooler; the kitten hoisted its tail for the first time in their acquaintance, and betrayed a feeble interest in the flight of a white dusk-moth that came hovering around the porch vines.

  “Pussy,” said the Messenger, “there’s bacon in that well pit; I am going to make a fire and fry some.”

  The kitten mewed faintly.

  “I thought you’d approve, dear. Cold food is bad in hot weather; and we’ll fry a little cornmeal, too. Shall we?”

  The kitten on its small, uncertain legs followed her into one of the only two rooms. The fat tenant of the hovel had left some lightwood and kindling, and pots and pans necessary for such an existence as he led on earth.

  The Messenger twisted up her hair and pinned it; then culinary rites began, the kitten breaking into a thin purring when an odor of bacon filled the air.

  “Poor little thing!” murmured the Messenger, going to the door for a brief cautionary survey. And, coming back, she lifted the fry pan and helped the kitten first.

  They were still eating when the sun set and the sudden Southern darkness fell over woods and fields and river. A splinter of lightwood flared aromatically in an old tin candlestick; by its smoky, wavering radiance she heated some well water, cleaned the tin plates, scoured pan and kettle, and set them in their humble places again.

  Then, cleansing her hands daintily, she dried them, and picked up her sewing.

  For her, night was the danger time; she could not avoid, by flight across the river, the approach of any enemy from the south; and for an enemy to discover her sitting there in darkness, with lightwood in the house, was to invite suspicion. Yet her only hope, if surprised, was to play her part as keeper of Red Ferry.

  So she sat mending, sensitive ears on the alert, breathing quietly in the refreshing coolness that at last had come after so many nights of dreadful heat.

  The kitten, too, enjoyed it, patting with tentative velvet paw the skein of silk dangling near the floor.

  But it was a very little kitten, and a very lonely one, and presently it asked, plaintively, to be taken up. So the Messenger lifted the mite of fluffy fur and installed it among the linen on the table, where it went to sleep purring.

  Outside the open door the dew drummed loudly; moths came in clouds, hovering like snowflakes about the doorway; somewhere in the woods a tiger owl yelped.

  About midnight, lying on her sack of husks, close to the borderland of sleep, far away in the darkness she heard a shot.

  In one bound she was at the door, buttoning her waist, and listening. And still listening, she lighted a pine splinter, raised her cotton skirt, and adjusted the revolver, strapping the holster tighter above and below her right knee.

  The pulsing seconds passed; far above the northern river bank a light sparkled through the haze, then swung aloft; and she drew paper and pencil from her pocket, and wrote down what the torch was saying:

  “Shot fired at Muddy Ford. Look out along the river.”

  And even as the red spark went out in the darkness a lonely birdcall floated across the river — the strange squealing plaint of the great cock-o’-the-pines. She answered, imitating it perfectly. Then a far voice called:

  “Hallo-o-o! How’s fishin’?”

  She picked up her pine candle, hurried out to the bank and crept cautiously down the crazy, wooden stairs. Setting her torch in the iron cage at the bow, she cast off the painter and, standing erect, swung the long pole. Out into obscurity shot the punt, deeper and deeper plunged the pole. She headed up river to allow for the current; the cool breeze blew her hair and bathed her bared throat and arms deliciously; crimson torchlight flickered crisscross on the smooth water ahead.

  Every muscle in her body was in play now; the heavy pole slanted, rose and plunged; the water came clip! slap! clap! slap! against the square bows, dusting her with spray.

  On, on, tossing and pitching as the boat hit the swift, deep, center current; then the pole struck shallower depths, and after a while her torch reddened foliage hanging over the northern river bank.

  She drove her pole into the clay as the punt’s bow grated; a Federal cavalryman — a mere lad — muddy to the knees, brier-torn, and ghastly pale, waded out through the shallows, revolver in hand, clambered aboard, and struck the torch into the water.

  “Take me over,” he gasped. “Hurry, for God’s sake! I tell you — —”

  “Was it you who called?”

  “Yes. Snuyder sent you, didn’t he? Don’t stand there talking — —”

  With a nervous stroke she drove the punt far out into the darkness, then fell into a measured, swinging motion, standing nearer the stern than the bow. There was no sound now but the lapping of water and the man’s thick breathing; she strove to pierce the darkness between them, but she could see only a lumpish shadow in the bow where he crouched.

  “I reckon you’re Roy Allen,” she began, but he cut her short:

  “Damn it! What’s that to you?”

  “Nothing. Only Snuyder’s gone.”

  “When?”

  “Some days ago, leaving me to ferry folk over.... He told me how to answer you when you called like a cock-o’-the-pines.”

  “Did he?” The voice was subdued and sullen.

  For a while he remained motionless, then, in the dull light of the fog-shrouded stars she saw him face her, and caught the faint sparkle of his weapon resting on his knees, covering her.

  “It seems to me,” he said fiercely, “that you are asking a good many questions. Which side pays you?”

  They were tossing now on the rapid little waves in the center of the river; she had all she could do to keep the punt steady and drive it toward the spot where, against the stars, the oaks lifted their clustered crests.

  At the foot of the wooden stairs she tied her boat, and offered to relight the pine knot, but he would not have it and made her grope up the ascent before him.

  Over the top of the bank she led him, under the trees, to her door, he close at her heels, revolver in hand. And there, on the sill, she faced him.

  “What do you want here?” she asked; “supper?”

  “Go into the house and strike a light,” he said, and followed her in. And, as she turned from the blazing splinter, he caught her by the arm, feeling roughly for a concealed weapon. Face aflame, she struggled out of his clutch; and he was as red as she as they confronted one another, breathing heavily.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I’m — h-half-crazed, I think.... If you’re what you look, God knows I meant you no insult.... But — but — their damned spies are everywhere. I’ve stood too much — I’ve been in hell for two weeks — —”

  He wiped his mouth with a trembling, raw hand, but his sunken eyes still glared and the pallor once more blanched his sunken face.

  “I’ll not touch you again,” he said hoarsely; “I’m not a beast — not that kind. But I’m starving. Is there anything — anything, I tell you? I — I am not — very — strong.”

  She looked calmly into the ravaged, but still boyish features; saw him swing, reeling a little, on his heels as he steadied himself with one hand against the table.

  “Sit down,” she said in a low voice.

  He sank into a chair, resting the hand which clutched the revolver on the table.

  Without a word she went about the business of the moment, rekindled the ashes, filled the fry pan with mush and bacon. A little while afterwards she set the smoking food before him, and seated herself at the opposite side of the table.

  The boy ate wolfishly with one hand; the other seemed to have grown fast to the butt of his heavy weapon. She could have bent and shot him under the table had she wished; she could have taken him with her bare hands.

  But she only sat there, dark, sorrowful eyes on him, and in pity for his certain doom her under lip trembled at intervals so she could scarcely control it.

  “Is there a horse to be had anywhere near here?” he asked, pausing to swallow what his sunken jaws had been working on.

  “No; the soldiers have taken everything.”

  “I will pay — anything if you’ll let me have something to ride.”

  She shook her head.

  He went on eating; a slight color had come back into his face.

  “I’m sorry I was rough with you,” he said, not looking at her.

  “Why were you?”

  He raised his head wearily.

  “I’ve been hunted so long that I guess it’s turned my brain. Except for what you’ve been good enough to give me, I’ve had nothing inside me for days, except green leaves and bark and muddy water.... I suppose I can’t see straight.... There’s a woman they call the Special Messenger; — I thought they might have started her after me.... That shot at the ford seemed to craze me.... So I risked the ferry — seeing your light across — and not knowing whether Snuyder was still here or whether they had set a guard to catch me.... It was Red Ferry or starve; I’m too weak to swim; I waited too long.”

  And as the food and hot tea warmed him, his vitality returned in a maddened desire for speech after the weeks of terror and silence.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he went on, “but I guess you’re not fixed for shooting at me, as every living thing seems to have done for the last fortnight. Maybe you’re in Yankee pay, maybe in Confederate; I can’t help it. I suppose you’ll tell I’ve been here after I’m gone.... But they’ll never get me now!” he bragged, like a truant schoolboy recounting his misdemeanor to an awed companion.

  “Who are you?” she asked very gently.

  He looked at her defiantly.

  “I’m Roy Allen,” he said, “of Kay’s Cavalry.... If you’re fixing to tell the Union people you might as well tell them who fooled ‘em!”

  “What have you done?”

  She inquired so innocently that a hint of shame for his suspicion and brutality toward her reddened his hollow cheeks.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve taken to the woods, headed for Dixie, with a shirtful of headquarter papers. That’s what I’ve done.... And perhaps you don’t know what that means if they catch me. It means hanging.”

  “Hanging!” she faltered.

  “Yes — if they get me.” His voice quivered, but he added boastingly: “No fear of that! I’m too many for old Kay!”

  “But — but why did you desert?”

  “Why?” he repeated. Then his face turned red and he burst out violently: “I’ll tell you why. I lived in New York, but I thought the South was in the right. Then they drafted me; and I tried to tell them it was an outrage, but they gave me the choice between Fort Lafayette and Kay’s Cavalry.... And I took the Cavalry and waited.... I wouldn’t have gone as far as to fight against the flag — if they had let me alone.... I only had my private opinion that the South was more in the right than we — the North — was.... I’m old enough to have an opinion about niggers, and I’m no coward either.... They drove me to this; I didn’t want to kill people who were more in the right than we were.... But they made me enlist — and I couldn’t stand it.... And now, if I’ve got to fight, I’ll fight bullies and brutes who — —”

  He ended with a gesture — an angry, foolish boast, shaking his weapon toward the north. Then, hot, panting, sullenly sensible of his fatigue, he laid the pistol on the table and glowered at the floor.

  She could have taken him, unarmed, at any moment, now.

  “Soldier,” she said gently, “listen to me.”

  He looked up with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “I am trying to help you to safety,” she said.

  A hot flush of mortification mantled his face:

  “Thank you.... I ought to have known; I — I am ashamed of what I said — what I did.”

  “You were only a little frightened; I am not angry.”

  “You understand, don’t you?”

  “A — little.”

  “You are Southern, then?” he said; and in spite of himself his heavy lids began to droop again.

  “No; Northern,” she replied.

  His eyes flew wide open at that, and he straightened up in his chair.

  “Are you afraid of me, Soldier?”

  “No,” he said, ashamed again. “But — you’re going to tell on me after I am gone.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he demanded suspiciously.

  She leaned both elbows on the table, and resting her chin on both palms, smiled at him.

  “Because,” she said, “you are going to tell on yourself, Roy.”

  “What!” he blurted out in angry astonishment.

  “You are going to tell on yourself.... You are going back to your regiment.... It will be your own idea, too; it has been your own idea all the while — your secret desire every moment since you deserted — —”

  “Are you crazy!” he cried, aghast; “or do you think I am?”

  “ — ever since you deserted,” she went on, dark eyes looking deep into his, “it has been your desire to go back.... Fear held you; rage hardened your heart; dread of death as your punishment; angry brooding on what you believed was a terrible injustice done you — all these drove you to panic.... Don’t scowl at me: don’t say what is on your lips to say. You are only a tired, frightened boy — scarcely eighteen, are you? And at eighteen no heart can really be a traitor.”

  “Traitor!” he repeated, losing all his angry color.

  “It is a bad word, isn’t it, Roy? Lying hidden and starving in the forest through the black nights you had to fight that word away from you — drive it out of your half-crazed senses — often — didn’t you? Don’t you think I know, my boy, what a dreadful future you faced, lying there through the stifling nights while they hunted you to hang you?

 

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