“Look, I tell you!” he repeated, almost fiercely.
She said wearily: “I have seen so many men — so many men.... I can’t remember you.”
“And I have seen many women, Messenger; but I have never forgotten you — or what you did — or what you did — —”
“I?”
“You.... And from that night I have lived only to find you again. And — oh, God! To find you here! My Messenger! My little Messenger!”
“Who are you?” she whispered, leaning forward on the table, dark eyes dilating with hope.
He sat heavily for a while, head bowed as though stunned to silence; then slowly the white misery returned to his face and he looked up.
“So — after all — you have forgotten. And my romance is dead.”
She did not answer, intent now on every word, every shade of his expression. And, as she looked, through the numbness of her desperation, hope stirred again, stealthily.
“Are you a friend?” Her voice scarcely sounded at all.
“Friends die for each other,” he said. “Do you expect that of me?”
The silence between them became terrible; and at last he broke it with a bitter laugh:
“You once turned a boy’s life to romance — riding through it — out of it — leaving scars on his brow and heart — and on his lips the touch of your own. And on his face your tears. Look at me once more!”
Her breath came quicker; far within her somewhere memory awoke, groping blindly for light.
“Three days we followed you,” he said. “On the Pennsylvania line we cornered you; but you changed garb and shape and speech, almost under our eyes — as a chameleon changes color, matching the leaf it hides on.... I halted at that squatter’s house — sure of you at last — and the pretty squatter’s daughter cooked for us while we hunted you in the hills — and when I returned she gave me her bed to sleep on — —”
Her hand caught at her throat and she half rose, staring at him.
“Her own bed to sleep on,” he repeated. “And I had been three days in the saddle; and I ate what she set before me, and slept on her bed — fell asleep — only a tired boy, not a soldier any longer.... And awoke to meet your startled eyes — to meet the blow from your revolver butt that made this scar — to fall back bewildered for a moment — half-stunned — Messenger! Do you know me now?”
“Yes,” she said.
They looked breathlessly at one another; suddenly a hot blush covered her neck and face; and his eyes flashed triumph.
“You have not forgotten!” he cried.
And there, on the very edge of death itself, the bright shame glowed and glowed in her cheeks, and her distressed eyes fell before his.
“You kissed me,” he said, looking at her.
“I — I thought I had — killed you—” she stammered.
“And you kissed me on the lips.... In that moment of peril you waited to do that. Your tears fell on my face. I felt them. And I tell you that, even had I been lying there dead instead of partly stunned, I would have known what you did to me after you struck me down.”
Her head sank lower; the color ran riot from throat to brow.
He spoke again, quietly, yet a strange undertone of exaltation thrilled his voice and transfigured the thin, war-worn features she had forgotten, so that, as she lifted her eyes to him again, the same boy looked back at her from the mist of the long dead years.
“Messenger,” he said, “I have never forgotten. And now it is too late to forget your tears on my face — the touch of your lips on mine. I would not if I could.... It was worth living for — dying for.... Once — I hoped — some day — after this — all this trouble ended — my romance might come — true — —”
The boy choked, then:
“I came here under orders to take a woman spy whose password was the key to a Latin phrase. But until you stood straight in your rags and smiled at me, I did not know it was you — I did not know I was to take the Special Messenger! Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
The boy colored painfully. Then a queer, pallid change came over his face; he rose, bent over her where she rested heavily on the table:
“Little Messenger,” he said, “I am in your debt for two blows and a kiss.”
She lifted a dazed face to meet his gaze; he trembled, leaned down, and kissed her on the mouth.
Then in one bound he was at the door, signaling his troopers with drawn sabre — as once, long ago, she had seen him signal them in the Northern woods.
And, through the window, she saw the scattered cavalry forming column at a gallop, obeying every sabre signal, trotting forward, wheeling fours right — and then — and then! the gray column swung into the western forest at a canter, and was gone!
The boy leaning in the doorway looked back at her over his shoulder and sheathed his sabre. There was not a vestige of color left in his face.
“Go!” he said hoarsely.
“What?” she faltered.
“Go — go, in God’s name! There’s a door there! Can’t you see it?”
* * * * *
She had been gone for a full hour when at last he turned again. A bit of faded ribbon from her hair lay on the table. It was tied in a true lover’s knot.
He walked over, looked at it, drew it through his buttonhole and went slowly back to the door again. For a long while he stood there, vague-eyed, silent. It was nearly sunset when once more he drew his sabre, examined it carefully, bent it over one knee, and snapped the blade in two.
Then, with a last look at the sky, and standing very erect, he closed the door, set his back firmly against it, drew his revolver, and looked curiously into the muzzle.
A moment later the racket of the shot echoed through the deserted house.
CHAPTER V. RED FERRY
When Private Allen of Kay’s Cavalry deserted with headquarters’ dispatch pouch, and headed straight for Dixie, there was a great deal of consternation and excitement on the north bank of the river, and a considerable amount of headlong riding. But on the tenth day he slipped through the cordon, got into the woods, and was making for the river when a patrol shot at him near Gopher Creek, but lost him in the impenetrable cypress swamp beyond.
However, the pursuit was pushed forward to the very edge of the enemy’s country; Kay’s troopers patrolled the north bank of the river and watched every road and ford; east and west Ripley’s and Haynes’s brigades formed impassable curtains.
Somewhere in this vast corral lay hidden a desperate, starving man; and it was only a question of time before the hunted creature broke cover for the water.
That a trooper had deserted with arms and equipment was generally known; but that, in his nocturnal flight, he had also taken vitally important papers was known at first only to Kay and later to the Special Messenger, who was sent to him post-haste from corps headquarters when the fugitive headed for the river.
Now, the south bank of the stream being in the enemy’s territory, Kay had not ventured to station patrols above the clay banks opposite, lest rumor of invasion bring Stuart’s riders to complicate a man chase and the man escape in the confusion.
And he explained this to the Special Messenger at their first conference.
“It ought to be guarded,” insisted the Messenger tranquilly. “There are three good fords and a ferry open to him.”
“I hold the fords on this side,” argued Kay; “the ferryboat lies in the eel-grass on the south shore.”
“Stuart’s riders might cross if they heard of this trouble, sir!”
“And if they see Union troops on the south bank they’ll cross, sure pop. It won’t do, Messenger. If that fellow attempts the fords we’ll catch him, sure; if he swims we may get him in the water. The Lord knows I want him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing vedettes across the stream.... There’s a ferryman over there I’m worried about, too. He’d probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And Allen was thick with him. They used to fi
sh together. Nobody knows what they hatched out between them. It worries me, I can tell you — that ferry.”
The Messenger walked to the tent door and looked thoughtfully at the woods around her. The colonel rose from his camp stool and followed her, muttering:
“I might as well try to catch a weasel in a wall, or a red horse in the mud; and how to go about it I don’t know.” With set jaws and an angry spot glowing in his gaunt cheeks, he stared wickedly around him and then at the Messenger. “You do miracles, they say. Can’t you do one now?”
“I don’t know, sir. Who is this deserter?”
“Roy Allen — a sullen, unwilling dog — always malingering. He’s spent half the time in the guardhouse, half in the hospital, since he arrived with the recruits. Somebody got an idea that he’d been hit by the sun, but it’s all bosh. He’s a bad one — that’s all. Can you help me out?”
The Messenger nodded.
“You say he’s fond of fishing?”
“Crazy about it. He was often detailed to keep us in food when rations ran low. Then the catfish made us sick, so I stopped his fishing. Then he took French leave.”
“I want two troopers this evening, Colonel. May I have them?” she asked thoughtfully. “I’m going to keep house at Red Ferry for a while.”
“All right, ma’am. Look out for him; he’s a bad one.”
But the Messenger shook her head, smiling.
At ten o’clock that night the Special Messenger, mounted astride and followed by two cavalrymen with carbines, rode down through the river mist to Bushy Ford.
Daintily her handsome horse set foot in the water, hesitated, bent his long, velvety neck, sniffed, and finally drank; then, satisfied, stepped quietly forward, hock-deep, in the swirling, yellow flood.
“Foller them stakes, Miss,” cautioned the older trooper; “I sot ’em m’self, I did.”
“Thank you. Keep close to me, Connor. I’ve crossed here before it was staked.”
“Sho!” exclaimed Connor under his breath; “she do beat ’em all!”
Twice, having no light but the foggy stars, they missed the stakes and her horse had to swim, but they managed to flounder safely back to the ford each time; and after a little while her mount rose, straining through the red mud of the shore, struggled, scrambled madly, and drew out, dripping.
Up a slippery, crooked ascent they rode, out into a field of uncut corn above, then, spurring, swung at a canter eastward along the river.
There was a dim light in the ferry house; a lubberly, fat man ran to the open door as they drew bridle before it. When the fat man saw the blue troopers he backed hastily away from the sill and the Messenger dismounted and followed him into the house, heavy revolver swinging in her gloved hand.
“What’n hell y’goin’ to do to me?” he began to whimper; “I ain’t done nothin’”; but an excess of fright strangled him, and he continued to back away from her until he landed flat against the opposite wall. She followed and halted before him, cocking her weapon, with a terrible frown. She said solemnly:
“I want you to answer me one or two questions, and if you lie to me it will be the last time. Do you understand?”
He nodded and moistened his thick lips, gulping.
“Then you are the ferryman, Snuyder, are you not?”
He nodded, utterly incapable of speech. She went on, gloomily:
“You used to fish sometimes with a Yankee recruit named Allen — Roy Allen?”
“Ye-s’m,” he sniveled. “There’s my fish-pole an’ his’n layin’ onto the roof — —”
“How did he hail you when he wanted you to come across to take him fishing?”
“He jest come down to the shore an’ hollered twicet — —”
She bent closer, scanning his dilated eyes; speech died on his lips.
“How did he call to you at night?”
“He ain’t never called me at night — so help me — —”
“No; but in case he ever wished to fish at night?”
The man began to stammer and protest, but she covered him suddenly, and her dark eyes struck fire.
“What signal?” she asked with a menacing ring in her voice. “Quick!”
“Cock-o’-the-pines!... It didn’t mean nothin’,” gasped the man; ... “It was jest private — between fishin’ friends — —”
“Go on!”
“Yes’m.... If I heard a cock-o’-the-pines squeal I was to squeal back, an’ then he was to holler — jest friendly— ‘Hallo-oo! How’s fishin’?’ That’s all, ma’am — —”
“And you were to cross?”
“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.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 414
