III.
The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long lines of stampinghorses. Men crooked their backs and perspired in order to rub withcloths or bunches of grass these slim equine legs, upon whose splendidmachinery they depended so greatly. The lips of the horses were stillwet and frothy from the steel bars which had wrenched at their mouthsall day. Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk of themen.
"Moind where yer plug is steppin', Finerty! Keep 'im aff me!"
"An ould elephant! He shtrides like a schoolhouse."
"Bill's little mar--she was plum beat when she come in with Crawford'scrowd."
"Crawford's the hardest-ridin' cavalryman in the army. An he don't useup a horse, neither--much. They stay fresh when the others are mosta-droppin'."
"Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?"
Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air ofsolemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side andsometimes rubbing noses dreamfully.
Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking comfortably. Theircarbines were leaned against the wall. At their side and outlined in theblack of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting in the hollowof his arm. Four horses, saddled and accoutred, were conferring withtheir heads close together. The four bridle reins were flung over apost.
Upon the calm green of the land, typical in every way of peace, the huesof war brought thither by the troops shone strangely. Mary, gazingcuriously, did not feel that she was contemplating a familiar scene. Itwas no longer the home acres. The new blue, steel, and faded yellowthoroughly dominated the old green and brown. She could hear the voicesof the men, and it seemed from their tone that they had camped there foryears. Everything with them was usual. They had taken possession of thelandscape in such a way that even the old marks appeared strange andformidable to the girl.
Mary had intended to go and tell the commander in blue that her motherdid not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when sheheard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that itmattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection byher or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct theprisoner in gray into the barn, and for a long time she watched thethree chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind indesolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the feed box.
It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty tobe a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding school inPennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties,invariably did hair breadth things. True, they were usually bent uponrescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in graynor any of the three in the feed box was lover of hers, but then a realheroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroinewould take measures to rescue the four men. If she did not at least makethe attempt, she would be false to those carefully constructed idealswhich were the accumulation of years of dreaming.
But the situation puzzled her. There was the barn with only one door,and with four armed troopers in front of this door, one of them with hisback to the rest of the world, engaged, no doubt, in a steadfastcontemplation of the calm man and, incidentally, of the feed box. Sheknew, too, that even if she should open the kitchen door, three headsand perhaps four would turn casually in her direction. Their ears werereal ears.
Heroines, she knew, conducted these matters with infinite precision anddespatch. They severed the hero's bonds, cried a dramatic sentence, andstood between him and his enemies until he had run far enough away. Shesaw well, however, that even should she achieve all things up to thepoint where she might take glorious stand between the escaping and thepursuers, those grim troopers in blue would not pause. They would runaround her, make a circuit. One by one she saw the gorgeous contrivancesand expedients of fiction fall before the plain, homely difficulties ofthis situation. They were of no service. Sadly, ruefully, she thought ofthe calm man and of the contents of the feed box.
The sum of her invention was that she could sally forth to the commanderof the blue cavalry, and confessing to him that there were three of herfriends and his enemies secreted in the feed box, pray him to let themdepart unmolested. But she was beginning to believe the old graybeard tobe a bear. It was hardly probable that he would give this plan hissupport. It was more probable that he and some of his men would at oncedescend upon the feed box and confiscate her three friends. Thedifficulty with her idea was that she could not learn its value withouttrying it, and then in case of failure it would be too late for remediesand other plans. She reflected that war made men very unreasonable.
All that she could do was to stand at the window and mournfully regardthe barn. She admitted this to herself with a sense of deep humiliation.She was not, then, made of that fine stuff, that mental satin, whichenabled some other beings to be of such mighty service to thedistressed. She was defeated by a barn with one door, by four men witheight eyes and eight ears--trivialities that would not impede the realheroine.
The vivid white light of broad day began slowly to fade. Tones of graycame upon the fields, and the shadows were of lead. In this more sombreatmosphere the fires built by the troops down in the far end of theorchard grew more brilliant, becoming spots of crimson colour in thedark grove.
The girl heard a fretting voice from her mother's room. "Mary!" Shehastily obeyed the call. She perceived that she had quite forgotten hermother's existence in this time of excitement.
The elder woman still lay upon the bed. Her face was flushed andperspiration stood amid new wrinkles upon her forehead. Weaving wildglances from side to side, she began to whimper. "Oh, I'm just sick--I'mjust sick! Have those men gone yet? Have they gone?"
The girl smoothed a pillow carefully for her mother's head. "No, ma.They're here yet. But they haven't hurt anything--it doesn't seem. WillI get you something to eat?"
Her mother gestured her away with the impatience of the ill."No--no--just don't bother me. My head is splitting, and you know verywell that nothing can be done for me when I get one of these spells.It's trouble--that's what makes them. When are those men going? Lookhere, don't you go 'way. You stick close to the house now."
"I'll stay right here," said the girl. She sat in the gloom and listenedto her mother's incessant moaning. When she attempted to move, hermother cried out at her. When she desired to ask if she might try toalleviate the pain, she was interrupted shortly. Somehow her sitting inpassive silence within hearing of this illness seemed to contribute toher mother's relief. She assumed a posture of submission. Sometimes hermother projected questions concerning the local condition, and althoughshe laboured to be graphic and at the same time soothing, unalarming,her form of reply was always displeasing to the sick woman, and broughtforth ejaculations of angry impatience.
Eventually the woman slept in the manner of one worn from terriblelabour. The girl went slowly and softly to the kitchen. When she lookedfrom the window, she saw the four soldiers still at the barn door. Inthe west, the sky was yellow. Some tree trunks intersecting it appearedblack as streaks of ink. Soldiers hovered in blue clouds about thebright splendour of the fires in the orchard. There were glimmers ofsteel.
The girl sat in the new gloom of the kitchen and watched. The soldierslit a lantern and hung it in the barn. Its rays made the form of thesentry seem gigantic. Horses whinnied from the orchard. There was a lowhum of human voices. Sometimes small detachments of troopers rode pastthe front of the house. The girl heard the abrupt calls of sentries. Shefetched some food and ate it from her hand, standing by the window. Shewas so afraid that something would occur that she barely left her postfor an instant.
A picture of the interior of the barn hung vividly in her mind. Sherecalled the knot-holes in the boards at the rear, but she admitted thatthe prisoners could not escape through them. She remembered someinadequacies of the roof, but these also counted for nothing. Whenconfronting the problem, she felt her ambitions, her ideals tumblinghea
dlong like cottages of straw.
Once she felt that she had decided to reconnoitre at any rate. It wasnight; the lantern at the barn and the camp fires made everythingwithout their circle into masses of heavy mystic blackness. She took twosteps toward the door. But there she paused. Innumerable possibilitiesof danger had assailed her mind. She returned to the window and stoodwavering. At last, she went swiftly to the door, opened it, and slidnoiselessly into the darkness.
For a moment she regarded the shadows. Down in the orchard the campfires of the troops appeared precisely like a great painting, all inreds upon a black cloth. The voices of the troopers still hummed. Thegirl started slowly off in the opposite direction. Her eyes were fixedin a stare; she studied the darkness in front for a moment, before sheventured upon a forward step. Unconsciously, her throat was arranged fora sudden shrill scream. High in the tree branches she could hear thevoice of the wind, a melody of the night, low and sad, the plaint of anendless, incommunicable sorrow. Her own distress, the plight of the menin gray--these near matters as well as all she had known or imagined ofgrief--everything was expressed in this soft mourning of the wind in thetrees. At first she felt like weeping. This sound told her of humanimpotency and doom. Then later the trees and the wind breathed strengthto her, sang of sacrifice, of dauntless effort, of hard carven facesthat did not blanch when Duty came at midnight or at noon.
She turned often to scan the shadowy figures that moved from time totime in the light at the barn door. Once she trod upon a stick, and itflopped, crackling in the intolerable manner of all sticks. At thisnoise, however, the guards at the barn made no sign. Finally, she waswhere she could see the knot-holes in the rear of the structure gleaminglike pieces of metal from the effect of the light within. Scarcelybreathing in her excitement she glided close and applied an eye to aknothole. She had barely achieved one glance at the interior before shesprang back shuddering.
For the unconscious and cheerful sentry at the door was swearing away inflaming sentences, heaping one gorgeous oath upon another, making aconflagration of his description of his troop horse.
"Why," he was declaring to the calm prisoner in gray, "you ain't got ahorse in your hull ---- army that can run forty rod with that therelittle mar'!"
As in the outer darkness Mary cautiously returned to the knothole, thethree guards in front suddenly called in low tones: "S-s-s-h!"
"Quit, Pete; here comes the lieutenant." The sentry had apparently beenabout to resume his declamation, but at these warnings he suddenly posedin a soldierly manner.
A tall and lean officer with a smooth face entered the barn. The sentrysaluted primly. The officer flashed a comprehensive glance about him."Everything all right?"
"All right, sir."
This officer had eyes like the points of stilettos. The lines from hisnose to the corners of his mouth were deep and gave him a slightlydisagreeable aspect, but somewhere in his face there was a quality ofsingular thoughtfulness, as of the absorbed student dealing ingeneralities, which was utterly in opposition to the rapacious keennessof the eyes which saw everything.
Suddenly he lifted a long finger and pointed. "What's that?"
"That? That's a feed box, I suppose."
"What's in it?"
"I don't know. I----"
"You ought to know," said the officer sharply. He walked over to thefeed box and flung up the lid. With a sweeping gesture, he reached downand scooped a handful of feed. "You ought to know what's in everythingwhen you have prisoners in your care," he added, scowling.
During the time of this incident, the girl had nearly swooned. Her handssearched weakly over the boards for something to which to cling. Withthe pallor of the dying she had watched the downward sweep of theofficer's arm, which after all had only brought forth a handful of feed.The result was a stupefaction of her mind. She was astonished out of hersenses at this spectacle of three large men metamorphosed into a handfulof feed.