"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble,"
replied the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth," said
the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we ain't
after conscripts?"
"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds. Then
the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh while
Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would be
horn-swoggled!
"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
with."
Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of
us, came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or
it's borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
does."
"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my two
companions gazed at each other.
"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other, as
the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers. The
elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange sash showed
at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment was a shirt
of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and daintily corded
with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the two gilt bars of a
first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a combined
intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind. For
some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after him
westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather, and
soon our talk was fluent though broken, as we moved sometimes at a trot
and often faster. In stolen moments I scanned him with the jealousy of
my youth. Five feet, ten; humph! I was five, nine and a thirty-second.
In weight he looked to be just what I always had in mind in those
prayers without words with which I mounted every pair of commissary
scales I came to. The play of his form as our smooth-gaited horses sped
through the flecking shades was worth watching for its stanch and supple
grace. Alike below the saddle and above it he was as light as a leaf and
as firm as a lance. I had long yearned to own a pair of shoulders not
too square for beauty nor too sloping for strength, and lo, here they
were, not mine, but his. No matter; the slender mustache he sported he
was welcome to, I had shaved off nearly as good a one; wished now I
hadn't. As once or twice he lifted his képi to the warm breeze I took
new despair from the soft locks of darkest chestnut that lay on his head
in manly order, ready enough to curl but waiving the privilege.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo," thought I; "if those are not the same
hundred-dollar boots I saw yesterday morning, at least they are their
first cousins!"