I sprang for the door, but the fire-log sent me sprawling with my
shoulder on the threshold. As I went down I heard in the same breath the
wounded officer wailing "Go back! go in! there are only four of them!
don't leave one alive!" and Miss Harper all but screaming "Our men! our
men! God be praised, our men are coming, they are here! Fly spoilers,
for your lives, fly!"
And it was true. Their hoofs rumbled, their carbines banged, and their
charge struck three sides of the house at once. Rising only to my
elbows,--and how I did that much, stiffened with my wound, the doctors
will have to explain,--I laid my cheek to my rifle, and the light of two
windows fell upon my gunsights. Every blue-coat in the hall was between
me and its rear window, but one besides the officer was wounded, and
with these two three others were busy; only the one remaining man saw
me. Twice he levelled his revolver, and twice I had almost lined my
sights on him, but twice Miss Harper unaware came between us. A third
time he aimed, fired and missed. I am glad he fired first, for our two
shots almost made one report, and-he plunged forward exactly as I had
done over the fire-log, except that he reached the floor dead.
[Illustration: Ferry fired under his flash and sent him reeling into the
arms of his followers.]
Thereupon came more things at once than can be told: Miss Harper's
outcry of horror and pity; Charlotte's cry from the bedside--"Richard!
Richard!" a rush of feet and shouts of rage in the hall below; and my
leap to the head of the stairs, shouting to half a dozen gray-jackets
"Two men, no more! two men to guard prisoners, no more! go back, all but
you two! go back!"
A sabreless officer with a bandaged hand flew up the stair and into my
face. It was Helm. "The ladies! Smith, good God! Smith, where are
the girls?"
"In the smokehouse," cried Miss Harper from her knees beside the
prostrate Federal officer; "go bring them!--Richard, Charlotte is
calling you!"
I ran to Ferry's door; Charlotte was leaning busily over his bared
chest, while he, still holding a revolver in his right hand, caressed
her arm with his left. "Dick, his wound has opened again, but we must
get him away at once anyhow. Isn't my wagon still here?--oh, thank God!
there it comes now, I hear it in the back yard!"
A Confederate waiting on Miss Harper with basin and towels barely dodged
me as I sprang to the far end of the hall and shouted down into the yard
for Harry. The little mules, true enough, were just rattling round a
half turn at the lower hall's back door, having been in hiding behind
the stables. A score or so of cavalry were boisterously hurrying off
across the yard with a few captured horses and prisoners, and I had to
call the Lieutenant angrily a second time, to make him hear me amid
their din and a happy confusion which he was helping to keep up in a
fairer group. For here were all the missing feminine members of the
household, white and colored, and Harry was clamorous with joy,
compassion and applause, while Camille and Cécile, pink with weeping,
stepped out across the high doorsill of the smokehouse, leading Ned
Ferry's horse and mine.
However, there was not the urgency for instant flight that Charlotte had
thought there was; night fell; a whole regiment of our mounted infantry
came silently up from the rear of the plantation and bivouacked without
lights behind a quarter of a mile of worm-fence; our two wounded and
three unharmed prisoners, or Miss Harper's, I should say, for it was in
response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms,
were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every
room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came
from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their
benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until
everything else on earth had been discovered, and then--"Oh, Richard,
Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, Reach-hard!" from Cécile, and
"Mr. Smith!" from Camille, as they bathed and bound it. At length a
surgeon arrived, gave a cheering opinion of Ferry and of Charlotte, and
scolded Harry savagely for the really bad condition of his hand. Then
sounds grew few and faint, our lights went out, we lay down fully
dressed, and nearly all of us, for a while, slept.
But about two in the morning Harry awakened me, murmuring "Reach-hard!
Reach-hard! come! our sick-train's moving. Ssh! General Austin's asleep
in the next room!" I asked where Ferry was. "Already started," he
whispered, "--in the General's own ambulance, with Charlotte Oliver in
hers, on a mattress, like Ned, and the four Harpers in theirs." While we
stole downstairs he murmured on "Our brigade's come up and General
Austin will attack at daylight with this house as his headquarters."
As we mounted I asked whither we were bound. "Tangipahoa," he said;
"then by railroad to Brookhaven, and then out to Squire Wall's."
At the first streak of dawn our slow caravan caught the distant notes of
the battle opening behind us. "That's Fisher's battery!" joyously cried
the aide-de-camp as we paused and hearkened back. "Well, thank the Lord,
this time nobody's got to go back for her doll; she's got it with her; I
saw her, just now, combing its hair." We descended into a woody hollow,
the sounds of human strife died away, and field and forest offered us
only beauty, fragrance, peace, and the love-songs of birds.