"Got a furlough?" he repeated to gain time for thought. "I--I----" He had never thought of it before; the words in her letter flashed into his mind, and he felt his face flush. He would not tell her a lie. "No, I ain't got no furlough," he said, and paused whilst he tried to get his words together to explain. But she did not give him time.
"What you doin' with them clo'se on?" she asked again.
"I--I----" he began, stammering as her suspicion dawned on him.
"You're a deserter!" she said, coldly, leaning forward, her hands clenched, her face white, her eyes contracted.
"A what!" he asked aghast, his brain not wholly taking in her words.
"You're a deserter!" she said again--"and--a coward!"
All the blood in him seemed to surge to his head and leave his heart like ice. He seized her arm with a grip like steel.
"Vashti Mills," he said, with his face white, "don't you say that to me--if yer were a man I'd kill yer right here where yer stan'!" He tossed her hand from him, and turned on his heel.
The next instant she was standing alone, and when she reached the point in the path where she could see the crossing, Darby was already on the other side of the swamp, striding knee-deep through the water as if he were on dry land. She could not have made him hear if she had wished it; for on a sudden a great rushing wind swept through the pines, bending them down like grass and blowing the water in the bottom into white waves, and the thunder which had been rumbling in the distance suddenly broke with a great peal just overhead.
In a few minutes the rain came; but the girl did not mind it. She stood looking across the bottom until it came in sheets, wetting her to the skin and shutting out everything a few yards away.
The thunder-storm passed, but all that night the rain came down, and all the next day, and when it held up a little in the evening the bottom was a sea.
The rain had not prevented Darby from going out--he was used to it; and he spent most of the day away from home. When he returned he brought his mother a few provisions, as much meal perhaps as a child might carry, and spent the rest of the evening sitting before the fire, silent and motionless, a flame burning back deep in his eyes and a cloud fixed on his brow. He was in his uniform, which he had put on again the night before as soon as he got home, and the steam rose from it as he sat. The other clothes were in a bundle on the floor where he had tossed them the evening before. He never moved except when his mother now and then spoke, and then sat down again as before. Presently he rose and said he must be going; but as he rose to his feet, a pain shot through him like a knife; everything turned black before him and he staggered and fell full length on the floor.
He was still on the floor next morning, for his mother had not been able to get him to the bed, or to leave to get any help; but she had made him a pallet, and he was as comfortable as a man might be with a raging fever. Feeble as she was, the sudden demand on her had awakened the old woman's faculties and she was stronger than might have seemed possible.
One thing puzzled her: in his incoherent mutterings, Darby constantly referred to a furlough and a deserter. She knew that he had a furlough, of course; but it puzzled her to hear him constantly repeating the words. So the day passed and then, Darby's delirium still continuing, she made out to get to a neighbor's to ask help. The neighbor had to go to Mrs. Douwill's as the only place where there was a chance of getting any medicine, and it happened that on the way back she fell in with a couple of soldiers, on horseback, who asked her a few questions. They were members of a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day, and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days any more than at Mrs. Stanley's. Vashti was in a state of mind which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy. She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening, for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name. She kept his presence to herself, thinking that--thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat. Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself; and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx. For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill through the rain which still kept up--something was going on over there, but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day, she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something; she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so; for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side, and it was over her head in the current. She set off, therefore, up the stream on her own side, thinking to learn something up that way. She met the woman who had taken the medicine to Darby that evening, and she told her all she knew, mentioning among other things the men of the conscript guard she had seen. Vashti's heart gave a sudden bound up into her throat.
As she was so near she went on up to the Cross-roads; but just as she stepped out into the road before she reached there, she came on a small squad of horsemen riding slowly along. She stood aside to let them pass; but they drew in and began to question her as to the roads about them.
They were in long cloaks and overcoats, and she thought they were the conscript guard, especially as there was a negro with them who seemed to know the roads and to be showing them the way. Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot. When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district. Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the Federals. She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears; but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day. She admitted that she had never been on that road but once. And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp. She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run with all her speed. Her chief thought was of Darby.
Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her. She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it--she waded through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.
It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the pines in front of the Stanley cabin. The latch-string was out, and she knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously. All she could make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet, and the young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.
Darby was the first to speak.
"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.
"Darby--the Yankees--all around," she gasped--"out on the road yonder."
"What!"
A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met had told her of the two men she had seen. The presence of a soldier had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women left everything else to him. His experience or his soldier's instinct told him what they were doing and also how to act. They were a raid which had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital; and from their position, unless they could be delayed they might surprise it. In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed to illuminate the young man's mind. By the time he was dressed he was ready with his plan--Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard stayed?
Yes, down the road at a certain place. Good; it was on the way. Then he gave her his orders. She was to go to this place and rouse any one she might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city with all speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible at a certain point on the road by which the raiders were travelling, where a little stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece of swampy woods. They would find a barricade there and a small force might possibly keep them back. Then she was to go on down and have the bridge, ten or twelve miles below on the road between the forks burned, and if necessary was to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise. But they were on the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained, to which Darby only said, he knew that, but they would come back and try the bridge road.
"And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you hear--and now go," he said.
"Yes--I'll do it," said the girl obediently and turned to the door. The next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun and was getting his axe.
"And, Darby----?" she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.
"Go," said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went just as he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat white and dumb. As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back up the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door with his gun in one hand and his axe in the other.
An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him, was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream, and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road, in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours, and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.
Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened, and then went on again. He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed a barricade which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass, when, stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him to put down his axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud. His practised ear told him that there were only three or four of them, and he took up his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited. Presently the little squad of horsemen came in sight, a mere black group in the road. They saw the dark mass lying across the road and reined in; then after a colloquy came on down slowly. Darby waited until they were within fifty yards of his barricade, and then fired at the nearest one. A horse wheeled, plunged, and then galloped away in the darkness, and several rounds from pistols were fired toward him, whilst something went on on the ground. Before he could finish reloading, however, the men had turned around and were out of sight. In a minute Darby climbed over the barricade and strode up the road after them. He paused where the man he had shot had fallen. The place in the mud was plain; but his comrades had taken him up and carried him off. Darby hurried along after them.
Day was just breaking, and the body of cavalry were preparing to leave their bivouac when a man emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the camp from that where Little Darby had been felling trees, and walked up to the picket. He was halted and brought up where the fire-light could shine on him, and was roughly questioned--a tall young countryman, very pale and thin, with an old ragged slouched hat pulled over his eyes, and an old patched uniform on his gaunt frame. He did not seem at all disturbed by the pistols displayed around him, but seated himself at the fire and looked about in a dull kind of way.
"What do you want?" they asked him, seeing how cool he was.
"Don't you want a guide?" he asked, drawlingly.
"Who are you?" inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.
"Some calls me a d'serter," he said, slowly.
The men all looked at him curiously.
"Well, what do you want?"
"I thought maybe as you wanted a guide," he said, quietly.
"We don't want you. We've got all the guide we want," answered the corporal, roughly, "and we don't want any spies around here either, you understand?"
"Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an' it's sort o'
hard to git erlong through down yonder way if you don't know the way toller'ble well?"
"Yes, he knows the way too--every foot of it--and a good deal more than you'll see of it if you don't look out."
"Oh! That road down that way is sort o' stopped up," said the man, as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him. "They's soldiers on it too a little fur'er down, and they's done got word you're a-comin' that a-way."
"What's that?" they asked, sharply.
"Leastways it's stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about as nigh as that," went on the speaker, in the same level voice.
"Where do you live?" they asked him.
"I lives back in the pines here a piece."
"How long have you lived here?"
"About twenty-three years, I b'leeves; 'ats what my mother says."
"You know all the country about here?"
"Ought to."