Dr. Sevier

She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the led horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a “navy-six.” He was dressed in dull homespun but he was the same who had been dressed in blue. He turned his horse and led the way down the lesser road.

“If we’d of gone three hundred yards further,” he whispered, falling back and smiling broadly, “we’d ’a’ run into the pickets. I went nigh enough to see the videttes settin’ on their hosses in the main road. This here aint no road; it just goes up to a nigger quarters. I’ve got one o’ the niggers to show us the way.”

“Where is he?” whispered Mary; but, before her companion could answer, a tattered form moved from behind a bush a little in advance and started ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently they turned into a clear, open forest and followed the long, rapid, swinging stride of the negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on the bank of a deep, narrow stream. The negro made a motion for them to keep well to the right when they should enter the water. The white man softly lifted Alice to his arms, directed and assisted Mary to kneel in her saddle, with her skirts gathered carefully under her, and so they went down into the cold stream, the negro first, with arms outstretched above the flood; then Mary, and then the white man, – or, let us say plainly the spy, – with the unawakened child on his breast. And so they rose out of it on the farther side without a shoe or garment wet save the rags of their dark guide.

Again they followed him, along a line of stake-and-rider fence, with the woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will’s-widow; and once Mary’s blood turned, for an instant, to ice, at the unearthly shriek of the hoot-owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow road, and the negro stopped.

“Dess keep dish yeh road fo’ ’bout half mile an’ you strak ’pon the broad, main road. Tek de right, an’ you go whah yo’ fancy tek you.”

“Good-by,” whispered Mary.

“Good-by, miss,” said the negro, in the same low voice; “good-by, boss; don’t you fo’git you promise tek me thoo to de Yankee’ when you come back. I ’feered you gwine fo’git it, boss.”

The spy said he would not, and they left him. The half-mile was soon passed, though it turned out to be a mile and a half, and at length Mary’s companion looked back, as they rode single file, with Mary in the rear, and said softly, “There’s the road,” pointing at its broad, pale line with his six-shooter.

As they entered it and turned to the right, Mary, with Alice again in her arms, moved somewhat ahead of her companion, her indifferent horsemanship having compelled him to drop back to avoid a prickly bush. His horse was just quickening his pace to regain the lost position when a man sprang up from the ground on the farther side of the highway, snatched a carbine from the earth and cried, “Halt!”

The dark, recumbent forms of six or eight others could be seen, enveloped in their blankets, lying about a few red coals. Mary turned a frightened look backward and met the eyes of her companion.

“Move a little faster,” said he, in a low, clear voice. As she promptly did so she heard him answer the challenge. His horse trotted softly after hers.

“Don’t stop us, my friend; we’re taking a sick child to the doctor.”

“Halt, you hound!” the cry rang out; and as Mary glanced back three or four men were just leaping into the road. But she saw, also, her companion, his face suffused with an earnestness that was almost an agony, rise in his stirrups, with the stoop of his shoulders all gone, and wildly cry: —

“Go!”

She smote the horse and flew. Alice awoke and screamed.

“Hush, my darling!” said the mother, laying on the withe; “mamma’s here. Hush, darling! – mamma’s here. Don’t be frightened, darling baby! O God, spare my child!” and away she sped.

The report of a carbine rang out and went rolling away in a thousand echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp succession, and there went close by Mary’s ear the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized, once, – twice, – thrice, – just at her back where the hoofs of her companion’s horse were clattering, – the tart rejoinders of his navy-six.

“Go!” he cried again. “Lay low! lay low! cover the child!” But his words were needless. With head bowed forward and form crouched over the crying, clinging child, with slackened rein and fluttering dress, and sun-bonnet and loosened hair blown back upon her shoulders, with lips compressed and silent prayers, Mary was riding for life and liberty and her husband’s bedside.

“O mamma! mamma!” wailed the terrified little one.

“Go on! Go on!” cried the voice behind; “they’re saddling – up! Go! go! We’re goin’ to make it. We’re goin’ to make it! Go-o-o!”

Half an hour later they were again riding abreast, at a moderate gallop. Alice’s cries had been quieted, but she still clung to her mother in a great tremor. Mary and her companion conversed earnestly in the subdued tone that had become their habit.

“No, I don’t think they followed us fur,” said the spy. “Seem like they’s jess some scouts, most likely a-comin’ in to report, feelin’ pooty safe and sort o’ takin’ it easy and careless; ‘dreamin’ the happy hours away,’ as the felleh says. I reckon they sort o’ believed my story, too, the little gal yelled so sort o’ skilful. We kin slack up some more now; we want to get our critters lookin’ cool and quiet ag’in as quick as we kin, befo’ we meet up with somebody.” They reined into a gentle trot. He drew his revolver, whose emptied chambers he had already refilled. “D’d you hear this little felleh sing, ‘Listen to the mockin’-bird’?”

“Yes,” said Mary; “but I hope it didn’t hit any of them.”

He made no reply.

“Don’t you?” she asked.

He grinned.

“D’you want a felleh to wish he was a bad shot?”

“Yes,” said Mary, smiling.

“Well, seein’ as you’re along, I do. For they wouldn’t give us up so easy if I’d a hit one. Oh, – mine was only sort o’ complimentary shots, – much as to say, ‘Same to you, gents,’ as the felleh says.”

Mary gave him a pleasant glance by way of courtesy, but was busy calming the child. The man let his weapon into its holster under his homespun coat and lapsed into silence. He looked long and steadily at the small feminine figure of his companion. His eyes passed slowly from the knee thrown over the saddle’s horn to the gentle forehead slightly bowed, as her face sank to meet the uplifted kisses of the trembling child, then over the crown and down the heavy, loosened tresses that hid the sun-bonnet hanging back from her throat by its strings and flowed on down to the saddle-bow. His admiring eyes, grave for once, had made the journey twice before he noticed that the child was trying to comfort the mother, and that the light of the sinking moon was glistening back from Mary’s falling tears.

“Better let me have the little one,” he said, “and you sort o’ fix up a little, befo’ we happen to meet up with somebody, as I said. It’s lucky we haven’t done it already.”

A little coaxing prevailed with Alice, and the transfer was made. Mary turned away her wet eyes, smiling for shame of them, and began to coil her hair, her companion’s eye following.

“Oh, you aint got no business to be ashamed of a few tears. I knowed you was a good soldier, befo’ ever we started; I see’ it in yo’ eye. Not as I want to be complimentin’ of you jess now. ‘I come not here to talk,’ as they used to say in school. D’d you ever hear that piece?”

“Yes,” said Mary.

“That’s taken from Romans, aint it?”

“No,” said Mary again, with a broad smile.

“I didn’t know,” said the man; “I aint no brag Bible scholar.” He put on a look of droll modesty. “I used to could say the ten commandments of the decalogue, oncet, and I still tries to keep ’em, in ginerally. There’s another burnt house. That’s the third one we done passed inside a mile. Raiders was along here about two weeks back. Hear that rooster crowin’? When we pass the plantation whar he is and rise the next hill, we’ll be in sight o’ the little town whar we stop for refreshments, as the railroad man says. You must begin to feel jess about everlastin’ly wore out, don’t you?”

“No,” said Mary; but he made a movement of the head to indicate that he had his belief to the contrary.

At an abrupt angle of the road Mary’s heart leaped into her throat to find herself and her companion suddenly face to face with two horsemen in gray, journeying leisurely toward them on particularly good horses. One wore a slouched hat, the other a Federal officer’s cap. They were the first Confederates she had ever seen eye to eye.

“Ride on a little piece and stop,” murmured the spy. The strangers lifted their hats respectfully as she passed them.

“Gents,” said the spy, “good-morning!” He threw a leg over the pommel of his saddle and the three men halted in a group. One of them copied the spy’s attitude. They returned the greeting in kind.

“What command do you belong to?” asked the lone stranger.

“Simmons’s battery,” said one. “Whoa!” – to his horse.

“Mississippi?” asked Mary’s guardian.

“Rackensack,” said the man in the blue cap.

“Arkansas,” said the other in the same breath. “What is your command?”

“Signal service,” replied the spy. “Reckon I look mighty like a citizen jess about now, don’t I?” He gave them his little laugh of self-depreciation and looked toward Mary, where she had halted and was letting her horse nip the new grass of the roadside.

“See any troops along the way you come?” asked the man in the hat.

“No; on’y a squad o’ fellehs back yonder who was all unsaddled and fast asleep, and jumped up worse scared’n a drove o’ wile hogs. We both sort o’ got a little mad and jess swapped a few shots, you know, kind o’ tit for tat, as it were. Enemy’s loss unknown.” He stooped more than ever in the shoulders, and laughed. The men were amused. “If you see ’em, I’d like you to mention me” – He paused to exchange smiles again. “And tell ’em the next time they see a man hurryin’ along with a lady and sick child to see the doctor, they better hold their fire till they sho he’s on’y a citizen.” He let his foot down into the stirrup again and they all smiled broadly. “Good-morning!” The two parties went their ways.

“Jess as leave not of met up with them two buttermilk rangers,” said the spy, once more at Mary’s side; “but seein’ as thah we was the oniest thing was to put on all the brass I had.”

From the top of the next hill the travellers descended into a village lying fast asleep, with the morning star blazing over it, the cocks calling to each other from their roosts, and here and there a light twinkling from a kitchen window, or a lazy axe-stroke smiting the logs at a wood-pile. In the middle of the village one lone old man, half-dressed, was lazily opening the little wooden “store” that monopolized its commerce. The travellers responded to his silent bow, rode on through the place, passed over and down another hill, met an aged negro, who passed on the roadside, lifting his forlorn hat and bowing low; and, as soon as they could be sure they had gone beyond his sight and hearing, turned abruptly into a dark wood on the left. Twice again they turned to the left, going very warily through the deep shadows of the forest, and so returned half around the village, seeing no one. Then they stopped and dismounted at a stable-door, on the outskirts of the place. The spy opened it with a key from his own pocket, went in and came out again with a great armful of hay, which he spread for the horses’ feet to muffle their tread, led them into the stable, removed the hay again, and closed and locked the door.

“Make yourself small,” he whispered, “and walk fast.” They passed by a garden path up to the back porch and door of a small unpainted cottage. He knocked, three soft, measured taps.

“Day’s breakin’,” he whispered again, as he stood with Alice asleep in his arms, while somebody was heard stirring within.

“Sam?” said a low, wary voice just within the unopened door.

“Sister,” softly responded the spy, and the door swung inward, and revealed a tall woman, with an austere but good face, that could just be made out by the dim light of a tallow candle shining from the next room. The travellers entered and the door was shut.

“Well,” said the spy, standing and smiling foolishly, and bending playfully in the shoulders, “well, Mrs. Richlin’,” – he gave his hand a limp wave abroad and smirked, – “‘In Dixie’s land you take yo’ stand.’ This is it. You’re in it! – Mrs. Richlin’, my sister; sister, Mrs. Richlin’.”

“Pleased to know ye,” said the woman, without the faintest ray of emotion. “Take a seat and sit down.” She produced a chair bottomed with raw-hide.

“Thank you,” was all Mary could think of to reply as she accepted the seat, and “Thank you” again when the woman brought a glass of water. The spy laid Alice on a bed in sight of Mary in another chamber. He came back on tiptoe.

“Now, the next thing is to git you furder south. Wust of it is that, seein’ as you got sich a weakness fur tellin’ the truth, we’ll jess have to sort o’ slide you along fum one Union man to another; sort o’ hole fass what I give ye, as you used to say yourself, I reckon. But you’ve got one strong holt.” His eye went to his sister’s, and he started away without a word, and was presently heard making a fire, while the woman went about spreading a small table with cold meats and corn-bread, milk and butter. Her brother came back once more.

“Yes,” he said to Mary, “you’ve got one mighty good card, and that’s it in yonder on the bed. ‘Humph!’ folks’ll say; ‘didn’t come fur with that there baby, sho!’”

“I wouldn’t go far without her,” said Mary, brightly.

“I say,” responded the hostess, with her back turned, and said no more.

“Sister,” said the spy, “we’ll want the buggy.”

“All right,” responded the sister.

“I’ll go feed the hosses,” said he, and went out. In a few minutes he returned. “Joe must give ’em a good rubbin’ when he comes, sister,” he said.

“All right,” replied the woman, and then turning to Mary, “Come.”

“What, ma’m?”

“Eat.” She touched the back of a chair. “Sam, bring the baby.” She stood and waited on the table.

Mary was still eating, when suddenly she rose up, saying: —

“Why, where is Mr. – , your brother?”

“He’s gone to take a sleep outside,” said his sister. “It’s too resky for him to sleep in a house.”

She faintly smiled, for the first time, at the end of this long speech.

“But,” said Mary, “oh, I haven’t uttered a word of thanks. What will he think of me?”

She sank into her chair again with an elbow on the table, and looked up at the tall standing figure on the other side, with a little laugh of mortification.

“You kin thank God,” replied the figure. “He aint gone.” Another ghost of a smile was seen for a moment on the grave face. “Sam aint thinkin’ about that. You hurry and finish and lay down and sleep, and when you wake up he’ll be back here ready, to take you along furder. That’s a healthy little one. She wants some more buttermilk. Give it to her. If she don’t drink it the pigs’ll git it, as the ole woman says… Now you better lay down on the bed in yonder and go to sleep. Jess sort o’ loosen yo’ cloze; don’t take off noth’n’ but dress and shoes. You needn’t be afeard to sleep sound; I’m goin’ to keep a lookout.”

CHAPTER LV.

DIXIE

In her sleep Mary dreamed over again the late rencontre. Again she heard the challenging outcry, and again was lashing her horse to his utmost speed; but this time her enemy seemed too fleet for her. He overtook – he laid his hand upon her. A scream was just at her lips, when she awoke with a wild start, to find the tall woman standing over her, and bidding her in a whisper rise with all stealth and dress with all speed.

“Where’s Alice?” asked Mary. “Where’s my little girl?”

“She’s there. Never mind her yit, till you’re dressed. Here; not them cloze; these here homespun things. Make haste, but don’t get excited.”

“How long have I slept?” asked Mary, hurriedly obeying.

“You couldn’t ’a’ more’n got to sleep. Sam oughtn’t to have shot back at ’em. They’re after ’im, hot; four of ’em jess now passed through on the road, right here past my front gate.”

“What kept them back so long?” asked Mary, tremblingly attempting to button her dress in the back.

“Let me do that,” said the woman. “They couldn’t come very fast; had to kind o’ beat the bushes every hundred yards or so. If they’d of been more of ’em they’d a-come faster, ’cause they’d a-left one or two behind at each turn-out, and come along with the rest. There; now that there hat, there, on the table.” As Mary took the hat the speaker stepped to a window and peeped into the early day. A suppressed exclamation escaped her. “O you poor boy!” she murmured. Mary sprang toward her, but the stronger woman hurried her away from the spot.

“Come; take up the little one ’thout wakin’ her. Three more of ’em’s a-passin’. The little young feller in the middle reelin’ and swayin’ in his saddle, and t’others givin’ him water from his canteen.”

“Wounded?” asked Mary, with a terrified look, bringing the sleeping child.

“Yes, the last wound he’ll ever git, I reckon. Jess take the baby, so. Sam’s already took her cloze. He’s waitin’ out in the woods here behind the house. He’s got the critters down in the hollow. Now, here! This here bundle’s a ridin’-skirt. It’s not mournin’, but you mustn’t mind. It’s mighty green and cottony-lookin’, but – anyhow, you jess put it on when you git into the woods. Now it’s good sun-up outside. The way you must do – you jess keep on the lef’ side o’ me, close, so as when I jess santer out e-easy todes the back gate you’ll be hid from all the other houses. Then when we git to the back gate I’ll kind o’ stand like I was lookin’ into the pig-pen, and you jess slide away on a line with me into the woods, and there’ll be Sam. No, no; take your hat off and sort o’ hide it. Now; you ready?”

Mary threw her arms around the woman’s neck and kissed her passionately.

“Oh, don’t stop for that!” said the woman, smiling with an awkward diffidence. “Come!”

“What is the day of the month?” asked Mary of the spy.

They had been riding briskly along a mere cattle-path in the woods for half an hour, and had just struck into an old, unused road that promised to lead them presently into and through some fields of cotton. Alice, slumbering heavily, had been, little by little, dressed, and was now in the man’s arms. As Mary spoke they slackened pace to a quiet trot, and crossed a broad highway nearly at right angles.

“That would ’a’ been our road with the buggy,” said the man, “if we could of took things easy.” They were riding almost straight away from the sun. His dress had been changed again, and in a suit of new, dark brown homespun wool, over a pink calico shirt and white cuffs and collar, he presented the best possible picture of spruce gentility that the times would justify. “‘What day of the month,’ did you ask? I’ll never tell you, but I know it’s Friday.”

“Then it’s the eighteenth,” said Mary.

They met an old negro driving three yoke of oxen attached to a single empty cart.

“Uncle,” said the spy, “I don’t reckon the boss will mind our sort o’ ridin’ straight thoo his grove, will he?”

“Not ’tall, boss; on’y dess be so kyine an’ shet de gates behine you, sah.”

They passed those gates and many another, shutting them faithfully, and journeying on through miles of fragrant lane and fields of young cotton and corn, and stretches of wood where the squirrel scampered before them and reaches of fallow grounds still wet with dew, and patches of sedge, and old fields grown up with thickets of young trees; now pushing their horses to a rapid gallop, where they were confident of escaping notice, and now ambling leisurely, where the eyes of men afield, or of women at home, followed them with rustic scrutiny; or some straggling Confederate soldier on foot or in the saddle met them in the way.

“How far must we go before we can stop?” asked Mary.

“Jess as far’s the critters’ll take us without showin’ distress.”

“South is out that way, isn’t it?” she asked again, pointing off to the left.

“Look here,” said the spy, with a look that was humorous, but not only humorous.

“What?”

“Two or three times last night, and now ag’in, you gimme a sort o’ sneakin’ notion you don’t trust me,” said he.

“Oh!” exclaimed she, “I do! Only I’m so anxious to be going south.”

“Jess so,” said the man. “Well, we’re goin’ sort o’ due west right now. You see we dassent take this railroad anywheres about here,” – they were even then crossing the track of the Mobile and Ohio Railway – “because that’s jess where they sho to be on the lookout fur us. And I can’t take you straight south on the dirt roads, because I don’t know the country down that way. But this way I know it like your hand knows the way to your mouth, as the felleh says. Learned it most all sence the war broke out, too. And so the whole thing is we got to jess keep straight across the country here till we strike the Mississippi Central.”

“What time will that be?”

“Time! You don’t mean time o’ day, do you?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Mary, smiling.

“Why, we’ll be lucky to make it in two whole days. Won’t we, Alice!” The child had waked, and was staring into her mother’s face. Mary caressed her. The spy looked at them silently. The mother looked up, as if to speak, but was silent.

“Hello!” said the man, softly; for a tear shone through her smile. Whereat she laughed.

“I ought to be ashamed to be so unreasonable,” she said.

“Well, now, I’d like to contradict you for once,” responds the spy; “but the fact is, how kin I, when Noo Orleens is jest about south-west frum here, anyhow?”

“Yes,” said Mary, pleasantly, “it’s between south and south-west.”

The spy made a gesture of mock amazement.

“Well, you air partickly what you say. I never hear o’ but one party that was more partickly than you. I reckon you never hear’ tell o’ him, did you?”

“Who was he?” asked Mary.

“Well, I never got his name, nor his habitation, as the felleh says; but he was so conscientious that when a highwayman attackted him onct, he wouldn’t holla murder nor he wouldn’t holla thief, ’cause he wasn’t certain whether the highwayman wanted to kill him or rob him. He was something like George Washington, who couldn’t tell a lie. Did you ever hear that story about George Washington?”

“About his chopping the cherry-tree with his hatchet?” asked Mary.

“Oh, I see you done heard the story!” said the spy, and left it untold; but whether he was making game of his auditor or not she did not know, and never found out. But on they went, by many a home; through miles of growing crops, and now through miles of lofty pine forests, and by log-cabins and unpainted cottages, from within whose open doors came often the loud feline growl of the spinning-wheel. So on and on, Mary spending the first night in a lone forest cabin of pine poles, whose master, a Confederate deserter, fed his ague-shaken wife and cotton-headed children oftener with the spoils of his rifle than with the products of the field. The spy and the deserter lay down together, and together rose again with the dawn, in a deep thicket, a few hundred yards away.

The travellers had almost reached the end of this toilsome horseback journey, when rains set in, and, for forty-eight hours more, swollen floods and broken bridges held them back, though within hearing of the locomotive’s whistle.

But at length, one morning, Mary stepped aboard the train that had not long before started south from the town of Holly Springs, Mississippi, assisted with decorous alacrity by the conductor, and followed by the station-agent with Alice in his arms, and by the telegraph-operator with a home-made satchel or two of luggage and luncheon. It was disgusting, – to two thin, tough-necked women, who climbed aboard, unassisted, at the other end of the same coach.

“You kin just bet she’s a widder, and them fellers knows it,” said one to the other, taking a seat and spitting expertly through the window.