Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The colonel had already drawn his sabre, the chief bugler sat his saddle, bugle lifted, waiting. A loud order, repeated from squadron to squadron, ran down the line; the restive horses wheeled, trampled forward, and halted.

  “Draw — sabres!”

  The air shrilled with the swish of steel.

  Far down the road horsemen were galloping in — the returning pickets.

  “Forward!”

  They were moving.

  “Steady — right dress!” taken up in turn by the company officers— “steady — right dress!”

  The bandmaster swung his sabre forward; the mounted band followed.

  Far away across the level fields something was stirring; the colonel saw it and turned in his saddle, scanning the column that moved forward on a walk.

  Half a mile, and, passing a hill, an infantry regiment rose in the shallow trenches to cheer them. Instantly the mounted band burst out into “The Girl I Left Behind Me”; an electric thrill passed along the column.

  “Steady! Steady! Right dress!” rang the calm orders as a wood, almost behind them, was suddenly fringed with white smoke and a long, rolling crackle broke out.

  “By fours — right-about — wheel!”

  The band swung out to the right; the squadrons passed on; and— “Steady! Trot! Steady — right dress — gallop!” came the orders.

  The wild music of “Garryowen” set the horses frantic — and the men, too. The band, still advancing at a walk, was dropping rapidly behind. A bullet hit kettle-drummer Pillsbury, and he fell with a grunt, doubling up across his nigh kettle-drum. A moment later Peters struck his cymbals wildly together and fell clean out of his saddle, crashing to the sod. Schwarz, his trombone pierced by a ball, swore aloud and dragged his frantic horse into line.

  “Right dress!” said the bandmaster blandly, mastering his own splendid mount as a bullet grazed its shoulder.

  They were in the smoke now, they heard the yelling charge ahead, the rifle fire raging, swelling to a terrific roar; and they marched forward, playing “Garryowen” — not very well, for Connor’s jaw was half gone, and Bradley’s horse was down; and the bandmaster, reeling in the saddle, parried blow on blow from a clubbed rifle, until a stunning crack alongside of the head laid him flat across his horse’s neck. And there he clung till he tumbled off, a limp, loose-limbed mass, lying in the trampled grass under the heavy pall of smoke.

  Long before sunset the echoing thunder in the hills had ceased; the edge of the great battle that had skirted Sandy River, with a volley or two and an obscure cavalry charge, was ended. Beyond the hills, far away on the horizon, the men of the North were tramping forward through the Confederacy. The immense exodus had begun again; the invasion was developing; and as the tremendous red spectre receded, the hem of its smoky robe brushed Sandy River and was gone, leaving a scorched regiment or two along the railroad, and a hospital at Oxley Court House overcrowded.

  In the sunset light the cavalry returned passing the white mansion on the hill. They brought in their dead and wounded on hay wagons; and the boy, pale as a spectre, looked on, while the creaking wagons passed by under the trees.

  But it was his sister whose eyes caught the glitter of a gilt and yellow sleeve lying across the hay; and she dropped her brother’s hand and ran out into the road.

  “Is he dead?” she asked the trooper who was driving.

  “No, miss. Will you take him in?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bring him.”

  The driver drew rein, wheeled his team, and drove into the great gateway. “Hospital’s plum full, ma’am,” he said. “Wait; I’ll carry him up. Head’s bust a leetle — that’s all. A day’s nussin’ will bring him into camp again.”

  The trooper staggered upstairs with his burden, leaving a trail of dark, wet spots along the stairs, even up to the girl’s bed, where he placed the wounded man.

  The bandmaster became conscious when they laid him on the bed, but the concussion troubled his eyes so that he was not certain that she was there until she bent close over him, looking down at him in silence.

  “I thought of you — when I was falling,” he explained vaguely— “only of you.”

  The color came into her face; but her eyes were steady. She set the flaring dip on the bureau and came back to the bed. “We thought of you, too,” she said.

  His restless hand, fumbling the quilt, closed on hers; his eyes were shut, but his lips moved, and she bent nearer to catch his words:

  “We noncombatants get into heaps of trouble — don’t we?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, smiling; “but the worst is over now.”

  “There is worse coming.”

  “What?”

  “We march — to-morrow. I shall never see you again.”

  After a silence she strove gently to release her hand; but his held it; and after a long while, as he seemed to be asleep, she sat down on the bed’s edge, moving very softly lest he awaken. All the tenderness of innocence was in her gaze, as she laid her other hand over his and left it there, even after he stirred and his unclosing eyes met hers.

  “Celia!” called the boy, from the darkened stairway, “there’s a medical officer here.”

  “Bring him,” she said. She rose, her lingering fingers still in his, looking down at him all the while; their hands parted, and she moved backward slowly, her young eyes always on his.

  The medical officer passed her, stepping quickly to the bedside, stopped short, hesitated, and bending, opened the clotted shirt, placing a steady hand over the heart.

  The next moment he straightened up, pulled the sheet over the bandmaster’s face, and turned on his heel, nodding curtly to the girl as he passed out.

  When he had gone, she walked slowly to the bed and drew the sheet from the bandmaster’s face.

  And as she stood there, dry-eyed, mute, from the dusky garden came the whispering cry of the widow bird, calling, calling to the dead that answer never more.

  PART TWO. WHAT SHE BECAME

  CHAPTER II. SPECIAL MESSENGER

  On the third day the pursuit had become so hot, so unerring, that she dared no longer follow the rutty cart road. Toward sundown she wheeled her big bony roan into a cow path which twisted through alders for a mile or two, emerging at length on a vast stretch of rolling country, where rounded hills glimmered golden in the rays of the declining sun. Tall underbrush flanked the slopes; little streams ran darkling through the thickets; the ground was moist, even on the ridges; and she could not hope to cover the deep imprint of her horse’s feet.

  She drew bridle, listening, her dark eyes fixed on the setting sun. There was no sound save the breathing of her horse, the far sweet trailing song of a spotted sparrow, the undertones of some hidden rill welling up through matted tangles of vine and fern and long wild grasses.

  Sitting her worn saddle, sensitive face partly turned, she listened, her eyes sweeping the bit of open ground behind her. Nothing moved there.

  Presently she slipped off one gauntlet, fumbled in her corsage, drew out a crumpled paper, and spread it flat. It was a map. With one finger she traced her road, bending in her saddle, eyebrows gathering in perplexity. Back and forth moved the finger, now hovering here and there in hesitation, now lifted to her lips in silent uncertainty. Twice she turned her head, intensely alert, but there was no sound save the cawing of crows winging across the deepening crimson in the west.

  At last she folded the map and thrust it into the bosom of her mud-splashed habit; then, looping up the skirt of her kirtle, she dismounted, leading her horse straight into the oak scrub and on through a dim mile of woodland, always descending, until the clear rushing music of a stream warned her, and she came out along the thicket’s edge into a grassy vale among the hills.

  A cabin stood there, blue smoke lazily rising from the chimney; a hen or two sat huddled on the shafts of an ancient buckboard standing by the door. In the clear, saffron-tinted evening light some ducks sailed and steered about the surface of a muddy
puddle by the barn, sousing their heads, wriggling their tails contentedly.

  As she walked toward the shanty, leading her horse, an old man appeared at the open doorway, milking stool under one gaunt arm, tin pail dangling from the other. Astonished, he regarded the girl steadily, answering her low, quick greeting with a nod of his unkempt gray head.

  “How far is the pike?” she asked.

  “It might be six mile,” he said, staring.

  “Is there a wood road?”

  He nodded.

  “Where does it lead?”

  “It leads just now,” he replied grimly, “into a hell’s mint o’ rebels. What’s your business in these parts, ma’am?”

  Her business was to trust no one, yet there had been occasions when she had been forced to such a risk. This was one. She looked around at the house, the dismantled buckboard tenanted by roosting chickens, the ducks in the puddle, the narrow strip of pasture fringing the darkening woods. She looked into his weather-ravaged visage, searching the small eyes that twinkled at her intently out of a mass of wrinkles.

  “Are you a Union man?” she asked.

  His face hardened; a slow color crept into the skin above his sharp cheek bones. “What’s that to you?” he demanded.

  “Here in Pennsylvania we expect to find Union sentiments. Besides, you just now spoke of rebels — —”

  “Yes, an’ I’ll say it again,” he repeated doggedly; “the Pennsylvany line is crawlin’ with rebels, an’ they’ll butt into our cavalry before morning.”

  She laughed, stepping nearer, the muddy skirt of her habit lifted.

  “I must get to Reynolds’s corps to-night,” she said confidingly. “I came through the lines three days ago; their cavalry have followed me ever since. I can’t shake them off; they’ll be here by morning — as soon as there’s light enough to trace my horse.”

  She looked back at the blue woods thoughtfully, patting her horse’s sleek neck.

  He followed her glance, then his narrowing eyes focused on her as she turned her head toward him again.

  “What name?” he asked harshly, hand to his large ear.

  She smiled, raising her riding whip in quaint salute; and in a low voice she named herself demurely.

  There was a long silence.

  “Gosh!” he muttered, fascinated gaze never leaving her; “to think that you are that there gal! I heard tell you was young, an’ then I heard tell you was old an’ fat, ma’am. I guess there ain’t many has seen you to take notice. I guess you must be hard run to even tell me who ye be?”

  She said quietly: “I think they mean to get me this time. Is there a clear road anywhere? Even if I leave my horse and travel afoot?”

  “Is it a hangin’ matter?” he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  Presently he said: “The hull blame country’s crawlin’ with rebel cavalry. I was to Mink Creek, an’ they was passin’ on the pike, wagons an’ guns as fur as I could see. They levied on Swamp Holler at sunup; they was on every road along the State line. There ain’t no road nor cow path clear that way.”

  “And none the other way,” she said. “Can’t you help me?”

  He looked at her gravely, then his small eyes swept the limited landscape.

  “A hangin’ matter,” he mused, scratching his gray head reflectively. “An’ if they ketch you here, I guess I’ll go to Libby, too. Hey?”

  He passed his labor-worn hand over his eyes, pressing the lids, and stood so, minute after minute, buried in thought.

  “Waal,” he said, dropping his hand and blinking in the ruddy glow from the west, “I guess I ain’t done nothin’ fur the Union yet, but I’m a-goin’ to now, miss.”

  He looked around once more, his eyes resting on familiar scenery, then he set down milking stool and pail and shuffled out to where her horse stood.

  “Guess I’ll hev to hitch your hoss up to that there buckboard,” he drawled. “My old nag is dead two year since. You go in, miss, an’ dress in them clothes a-hangin’ onto that peg by the bed,” he added, with an effort. “Use ’em easy; they was hers.”

  She entered the single room of the cabin, where stove, table, chair, and bed were the only furniture. A single cheap print gown and a sunbonnet hung from a nail at the bed’s foot, and she reached up and unhooked the garment. It was ragged but clean, and the bonnet freshly ironed.

  Through the window she saw the old man unsaddling her horse and fitting him with rusty harness. She closed the cabin door, drew the curtain at the window, and began to unbutton her riding jacket. As her clothing fell from her, garment after garment, that desperate look came into her pale young face again, and she drew from her pocket a heavy army revolver and laid it on the chair beside her. There was scarce light enough left to see by in the room. She sat down, dragging off her spurred boots, stripping the fine silk stockings from her feet, then rose and drew on the faded print gown.

  Now she needed more light, so she opened the door wide and pushed aside the curtain. A fragment of cracked mirror was nailed to the door. She faced it, rapidly undoing the glossy masses of her hair; then lifting her gown, she buckled the army belt underneath, slipped the revolver into it, smoothed out the calico, and crossed the floor to the bed again, at the foot of which a pair of woman’s coarse, low shoes stood on the carpetless floor. Into these she slipped her naked feet.

  He was waiting for her when she came out into the yellow evening light, squatting there in his buckboard, reins sagging.

  “There’s kindlin’ to last a week,” he said, “the ax is in the barn, an’ ye’ll find a bin full o’ corn meal there an’ a side o’ bacon in the cellar. Them hens,” he added wistfully “is Dominickers. She was fond o’ them — an’ the Chiny ducks, too.”

  “I’ll be kind to them,” she said.

  He rested his lean jaw in one huge hand, musing, dim-eyed, silent. Far away a cow bell tinkled, and he turned his head, peering out across the tangled pasture lot.

  “We called our caow Jinny,” he said. “She’s saucy and likes to plague folks. But I don’t never chase her; no, ma’am. You jest set there by them pasture bars, kinder foxin’ that you ain’t thinkin’ o’ nothin’, and Jinny she’ll come along purty soon.”

  The girl nodded.

  “Waal,” he muttered, rousing up, “I guess it’s time to go.” He looked at her, his eyes resting upon the clothing of his dead wife.

  “You see,” he said, “I’ve give all I’ve got to the Union. Now, ma’am, what shall I tell our boys if I git through?”

  In a low, clear voice she gave him the message to Reynolds, repeating it slowly until he nodded his comprehension.

  “If they turn you back,” she said, “and if they follow you here, remember I’m your daughter.”

  He nodded again. “My Cynthy.”

  “Cynthia?”

  “Yaas, ‘m. Cynthy was her name, you see; James is mine, endin’ in Gray. I’ll come back when I can. I guess there’s vittles to spare an’ garden sass — —”

  He passed his great cracked knuckles over his face again, digging hastily into the corners of his eyes, then leaned forward and shook the rusty reins.

  “Git up!” he said thoughtfully, and the ancient buckboard creaked away into the thickening twilight.

  She watched him from the door, lingering there, listening to the creak of the wheels long after he had disappeared. She was deadly tired — too tired to eat, too tired to think — yet there was more to be done before she closed her eyes. The blanket on the bed she spread upon the floor, laid in it her saddle and bridle, boots, papers, map, and clothing, and made a bundle; then slinging it on her slender back, she carried it up the ladder to the loft under the roof.

  Ten minutes later she lay on the bed below, the back of one hand across her closed eyes, breathing deeply as a sleeping child — the most notorious spy in all America, the famous “Special Messenger,” carrying locked under her smooth young breast a secret the consequence of which no man could dare to dream o
f.

  * * * * *

  Dawn silvering the east aroused her. Cockcrow, ducks quacking, the lowing of the cow, the swelling melody of wild birds — these were the sounds that filled her waking ears.

  Motionless there on the bed in the dim room, delicate bare arms outstretched, hair tumbled over brow and shoulder, she lay, lost in fearless retrospection — absolutely fearless, for courage was hers without effort; peril exhilarated like wine, without reaction; every nerve and contour of her body was instinct with daring, and only the languor of her dark eyes misled the judgment of those she had to deal with.

  Presently she sat up in bed, yawned lightly, tapping her red lips with the tips of her fingers; then, drawing her revolver from beneath the pillow, she examined the cylinder, replaced the weapon, and sprang out of bed, stretching her arms, a faint smile hovering on her face.

  The water in the stream was cold, but not too cold for her, nor were the coarse towels too rough, sending the blood racing through her from head to foot.

  Her toilet made, she lighted the fire in the cracked stove, set a pot of water boiling, and went out to the doorstep, calling the feathered flock around her, stirring their meal in a great pan the while her eyes roamed about the open spaces of meadow and pasture for a sign of those who surely must trace her here.

  Her breakfast was soon over — an ash cake, a new egg from the barn, a bowl of last night’s creamy milk. She ate slowly, seated by the window, raising her head at intervals to watch the forest’s edge.

  Nobody came; the first pink sunbeams fell level over the pasture; dew sparkled on grass and foliage; birds flitted across her line of vision; the stream sang steadily, flashing in the morning radiance.

  One by one the ducks stretched, flapped their snowy wings, wiggled their fat tails, and waddled solemnly down to the water; hens wandered pensively here and there, pecking at morsels that attracted them; the tinkle of the cow bell sounded pleasantly from a near willow thicket.

  She washed her dishes, set the scant furniture in place, made up the bed with the clean sheet spread the night before, and swept the floor.