The second man made low reply: "He's right here." He motioned
reassuringly toward the hole.
When the third head appeared, a soft smile of glee came upon each face,
and the mute group exchanged expressive glances.
When they all stood together, free from this tragic barn, they breathed
a long sigh that was contemporaneous with another smile and another
exchange of glances.
One of the men tiptoed to a knot-hole and peered into the barn. The
sentry was at that moment speaking. "Yes, we know 'em all. There isn't
a house in this region that we don't know who is in it most of the
time. We collar 'em once in a while--like we did you. Now, that house
out yonder, we----"
The man suddenly left the knot-hole and returned to the others. Upon
his face, dimly discerned, there was an indication that he had made an
astonishing discovery. The others questioned him with their eyes, but
he simply waved an arm to express his inability to speak at that spot.
He led them back toward the hill, prowling carefully. At a safe
distance from the barn he halted, and as they grouped eagerly about
him, he exploded in an intense undertone: "Why, that--that's Cap'n
Sawyer they got in yonder."
"Cap'n Sawyer!" incredulously whispered the other men.
But the girl had something to ask. "How did you get out of that
feed-box?" He smiled. "Well, when you put us in there, we was just in a
minute when we allowed it wasn't a mighty safe place, and we allowed
we'd get out. And we did. We skedaddled 'round and 'round until it
'peared like we was going to get cotched, and then we flung ourselves
down in the cow-stalls where it's low-like--just dirt floor--and then
we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks
come. And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im
discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't
know that it was him. No, m'm."
These three men, so recently from a situation of peril, seemed suddenly
to have dropped all thought of it. They stood with sad faces looking at
the barn. They seemed to be making no plans at all to reach a place of
more complete safety. They were halted and stupefied by some unknown
calamity.
"How do you raikon they cotch him, Sim?" one whispered mournfully.
"I don't know," replied another in the same tone.
Another with a low snarl expressed in two words his opinion of the
methods of Fate: "Oh, hell!"
The three men started then as if simultaneously stung, and gazed at the
young girl who stood silently near them. The man who had sworn began to
make agitated apology: "Pardon, miss! 'Pon my soul, I clean forgot you
was by. 'Deed, and I wouldn't swear like that if I had knowed. 'Deed, I
wouldn't."
The girl did not seem to hear him. She was staring at the barn.
Suddenly she turned and whispered, "Who is he?"
"He's Cap'n Sawyer, m'm," they told her sorrowfully. "He's our own
cap'n. He's been in command of us yere since a long time. He's got
folks about yere. Raikon they cotch him while he was a-visiting."
She was still for a time, and then, awed, she said: "Will they--will
they hang him?"
"No, m'm. Oh no, m'm. Don't raikon no such thing. No, m'm."
The group became absorbed in a contemplation of the barn. For a time no
one moved nor spoke. At last the girl was aroused by slight sounds, and
turning, she perceived that the three men who had so recently escaped
from the barn were now advancing toward it.
V
The girl, waiting in the darkness, expected to hear the sudden crash
and uproar of a fight as soon as the three creeping men should reach
the barn. She reflected in an agony upon the swift disaster that would
befall any enterprise so desperate. She had an impulse to beg them to
come away. The grass rustled in silken movements as she sped toward the
barn.
When she arrived, however, she gazed about her bewildered. The men were
gone. She searched with her eyes, trying to detect some moving thing,
but she could see nothing.
Left alone again, she began to be afraid of the night. The great
stretches of darkness could hide crawling dangers. From sheer desire to
see a human, she was obliged to peep again at the knot-hole. The sentry
had apparently wearied of talking. Instead, he was reflecting. The
prisoner still sat on the feed-box, moodily staring at the floor. The
girl felt in one way that she was looking at a ghastly group in wax.
She started when the old horse put down an echoing hoof. She wished the
men would speak; their silence re-enforced the strange aspect. They
might have been two dead men.
The girl felt impelled to look at the corner of the interior where were
the cow-stalls. There was no light there save the appearance of
peculiar grey haze which marked the track of the dimming rays of the
lantern. All else was sombre shadow. At last she saw something move
there. It might have been as small as a rat, or it might have been a
part of something as large as a man. At any rate, it proclaimed that
something in that spot was alive. At one time she saw it plainly, and
at other times it vanished, because her fixture of gaze caused her
occasionally to greatly tangle and blur those peculiar shadows and
faint lights. At last, however, she perceived a human head. It was
monstrously dishevelled and wild. It moved slowly forward until its
glance could fall upon the prisoner and then upon the sentry. The
wandering rays caused the eyes to glitter like silver. The girl's heart
pounded so that she put her hand over it.
The sentry and the prisoner remained immovably waxen, and over in the
gloom the head thrust from the floor watched them with its silver eyes.
Finally, the prisoner slipped from the feed-box, and raising his arms,
yawned at great length. "Oh, well," he remarked, "you boys will get a
good licking if you fool around here much longer. That's some
satisfaction, anyhow, even if you did bag me. You'll get a good
walloping." He reflected for a moment, and decided: "I'm sort of
willing to be captured if you fellows only get a d----d good licking
for being so smart."
The sentry looked up and smiled a superior smile. "Licking, hey?
Nixey!" He winked exasperatingly at the prisoner. "You fellows are not
fast enough, my boy. Why didn't you lick us at ----? and at ----? and
at ----?" He named some of the great battles.
To this the captive officer blurted in angry astonishment: "Why, we
did!"
The sentry winked again in profound irony. "Yes, I know you did. Of
course. You whipped us, didn't you? Fine kind of whipping that was!
Why, we----"
He suddenly ceased, smitten mute by a sound that broke the stillness of
the night. It was the sharp crack of a distant shot that made wild
echoes among the hills. It was instantly followed by the hoarse cry of
a human voice, a far-away yell of warning, singing of surprise, peril,
fear of death. A moment later there was a distant, fierce spattering of
shots. The sentry and the prisoner stood facing each other, their lips
apart, listening.
The orchard at that instant awoke to sudden tumult. There were the thud
and scramble and scamper of feet, the mellow, swift clash of arms,
men's voices in question, oath, command, hurried and unhurried,
resolute and frantic. A horse sped along the road at a raging gallop. A
loud voice shouted, "What is it, Ferguson?" Another voice yelled
something incoherent. There was a sharp, discordant chorus of command.
An uproarious volley suddenly rang from the orchard. The prisoner in
grey moved from his intent, listening attitude. Instantly the eyes of
the sentry blazed, and he said with a new and terrible sternness:
"Stand where you are!"
The prisoner trembled in his excitement. Expressions of delight and
triumph bubbled to his lips. "A surprise, by Gawd! Now--now, you'll
see!"
The sentry stolidly swung his carbine to his shoulder. He sighted
carefully along the barrel until it pointed at the prisoner's head,
about at his nose. "Well, I've got you, anyhow. Remember that! Don't
move!"
The prisoner could not keep his arms from nervously gesturing. "I
won't; but----"
"And shut your mouth!"
The three comrades of the sentry flung themselves into view.
"Pete--devil of a row!--can you----"
"I've got him," said the sentry calmly and without moving. It was as if
the barrel of the carbine rested on piers of stone. The three comrades
turned and plunged into the darkness.
In the orchard it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a
mad, floundering encounter, snarling, howling in a whirling chaos of
noise and motion. In the barn the prisoner and his guard faced each
other in silence.
As for the girl at the knot-hole, the sky had fallen at the beginning
of this clamour. She would not have been astonished to see the stars
swinging from their abodes, and the vegetation, the barn, all blow
away. It was the end of everything, the grand universal murder. When
two of the three miraculous soldiers who formed the original feed-box
corps emerged in detail from the hole under the beam, and slid away
into the darkness, she did no more than glance at them.
Suddenly she recollected the head with silver eyes. She started forward
and again applied her eyes to the knot-hole. Even with the din
resounding from the orchard, from up the road and down the road, from
the heavens and from the deep earth, the central fascination was this
mystic head. There, to her, was the dark god of the tragedy.
The prisoner in grey at this moment burst into a laugh that was no more
than a hysterical gurgle. "Well, you can't hold that gun out for ever!
Pretty soon you'll have to lower it."
The sentry's voice sounded slightly muffled, for his cheek was pressed
against the weapon. "I won't be tired for some time yet."
The girl saw the head slowly rise, the eyes fixed upon the sentry's
face. A tall, black figure slunk across the cow-stalls and vanished
back of old Santo's quarters. She knew what was to come to pass. She
knew this grim thing was upon a terrible mission, and that it would
reappear again at the head of the little passage between Santo's stall
and the wall, almost at the sentry's elbow; and yet when she saw a
faint indication as of a form crouching there, a scream from an utterly
new alarm almost escaped her.
The sentry's arms, after all, were not of granite. He moved restively.
At last he spoke in his even, unchanging tone: "Well, I guess you'll
have to climb into that feed-box. Step back and lift the lid."
"Why, you don't mean----"
"Step back!"
The girl felt a cry of warning arising to her lips as she gazed at this
sentry. She noted every detail of his facial expression. She saw,
moreover, his mass of brown hair bunching disgracefully about his ears,
his clear eyes lit now with a hard, cold light, his forehead puckered
in a mighty scowl, the ring upon the third finger of the left hand.
"Oh, they won't kill him! Surely they won't kill him!" The noise of the
fight in the orchard was the loud music, the thunder and lightning, the
rioting of the tempest which people love during the critical scene of a
tragedy.
When the prisoner moved back in reluctant obedience, he faced for an
instant the entrance of the little passage, and what he saw there must
have been written swiftly, graphically in his eyes. And the sentry read
it and knew then that he was upon the threshold of his death. In a
fraction of time, certain information went from the grim thing in the
passage to the prisoner, and from the prisoner to the sentry. But at
that instant the black formidable figure arose, towered, and made its
leap. A new shadow flashed across the floor when the blow was struck.
As for the girl at the knot-hole, when she returned to sense she found
herself standing with clenched hands and screaming with her might.
As if her reason had again departed from her, she ran around the barn,
in at the door, and flung herself sobbing beside the body of the
soldier in blue.
The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch as one party
was giving shouts of supreme exultation. The firing no longer sounded
in crashes; it was now expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words
of the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.
Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A grimy, panting, red-faced
mob of troopers in blue plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen
to attitudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in one great
chorus: "He's gone!"
The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor turned toward them
her lamenting eyes and cried: "He's not dead, is he? He can't be dead?"
They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who had been so particular
about the feed-box knelt by the side of the girl, and laid his head
against the chest of the prostrate soldier. "Why, no," he said, rising
and looking at the man. "He's all right. Some of you boys throw some
water on him."
"Are you sure?" demanded the girl feverishly.
"Of course! He'll be better after awhile."
"Oh!" said she softly, and then looked down at the sentry. She started
to arise, and the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly
at her arm.
"Don't you worry about him. He's all right."
She turned her face with its curving lips and shining eyes once more
toward the unconscious soldier upon the floor. The troopers made a lane
to the door, the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.
"Queer," said a young officer. "Girl very clearly worst kind of rebel,
and yet she falls to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her
enemies. Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring--you see
if she ain't. Queer."
The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. After reflection he
shrugged his shoulders again. He said: "War changes many things; but it
doesn't change everything, thank God!"