The Long Roll Part 18

"I do not yet know. There is no occasion, as I have all instructions from General Banks. I wish to make no unnecessary delay."

"Have you the countersign?"

"Yes."

"Will you cross by the ferry?"

"I hardly think so. Ashby may be watching that and the ford below. There is a place farther up the river that I may try."

"That is, after you pa.s.s through Williamsport?"

"Yes, a mile or two beyond."

The light increased. Gold clouds barred the east, the c.o.c.ks crew, and crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown cornfields. The road now ran at no great distance from the ca.n.a.l and the river. First came the ca.n.a.l, mirroring between trodden banks the red east, then the towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, and willow, then the Potomac veiled with mist. They were drawing near to Williamsport. The day's travel had begun. They met or overtook workers upon the road, sutlers' carts, ordnance wagons, a squad of artillerymen conducting a gun, a country doctor in an old buggy, two boys driving calves yoked together. The road made a curve to the north, like a sickle. On the inland side it ran beneath a bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a twelve-foot embankment dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where the corn stood in shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the north into the pike, they encountered a company of infantry.

Marchmont checked his horse. "I'm not sure, but I think I know the officer. Be so good as to await me a moment, lieutenant."

He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low voices. The infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, and discussed arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a number of tall men, lean and sinewy, with a sweep of line and unconstraint of gesture that smacked of hunters' ways and mountain exercise. The two troopers from Frederick City came up. The place of the cross-roads showed animated and blue. The sun pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road. "Lieutenant McNeill," said the aide with quietness, "there seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the interruption--not a long continued one, I trust--to our pleasant relations."

McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had come together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled with his eyes. "If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can help the matter. To headquarters, of course--the sooner the better! I can have no possible objection."

He touched his horse and advanced a little farther into the road. All the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for the moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. "You know this officer, Miller?" called the captain of infantry.

Miller saluted. "No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he crossed yesterday. We talked a little. 'You've got a Southern voice,' says I, and he says, 'Yes. I was born in the valley of the South Branch.'

'You'll find company here,' says I, 'for we've got some northwestern Virginians--'"

"By jingo!" cried the captain, "that's true! There's a squad of them here." He raised his voice. "Men from northwest Virginia, advance!"

A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as hunters, eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of the nineteenth. "Do any of you men know the South Branch of the Potomac?"

Three voices made themselves heard. "Know it like a book."--"Don't know it like a book--know it like I know my gun and dawg."--"Don't know any good of it--they-uns air all rebels down that-a-way!"

"Especially," said a fourth voice, "the McNeills."

The courier from Kelly glanced at him sharply. "And what have you got, my man, against the McNeills?"

"I've got something," stated the mountaineer doggedly. "Something ever since afore the Mexican War. Root and branch, I've got something against them. When I heard, over there in Grant, that they was h.e.l.l-bent for the Confederacy, I just went, h.e.l.l-bent, for the other side. Root and branch, I know them, and root and branch they're d.a.m.ned rebels--"

"Do you know," demanded the captain, "this one? This is Lieutenant McNeill."

The man looked, General Kelly's courier facing him squarely. There was a silence upon the road to Williamsport. The mountaineer spat. "He may be a lieutenant, but he ain't a McNeill. Not from the South Branch valley, he ain't."

"He says he is."

"Do you think, my friend," asked the man in question, and he looked amused, "that you really know all the McNeills, or their party? The valley of the South Branch is long and wide, and the families are large.

One McNeill has simply escaped your observation."

"There ain't," said the man, with grimness, "a d.a.m.ned one of them that has escaped my observation, and there ain't one of them that ain't a d.a.m.ned rebel. They're with Ashby now, and those of them that ain't with Ashby are with Jackson. And you may be Abraham Lincoln or General Banks, but you ain't a McNeill!"

The ranks opened and there emerged a stout German musician. "Herr Captain! I was in Winchester before I ran away and joined der Union.

Herr Captain, I haf seen this man. I haf seen him in der grey uniform, with der gold sword and der sash. And, lieber Gott, dot horse is known!

Dot horse is der horse of Captain Richard Cleave. Dot horse is named Dundee."

"'Dundee--'" exclaimed Marchmont. "That's the circ.u.mstance. You started to say 'Dundee.'"

He gave an abrupt laugh. "On the whole, I like you even better than I did--but it's a question now for a drumhead and a provost guard. I'm sorry--"

The other's hand had been resting upon his horse's neck. Suddenly there was a motion of his knee, a pressure of this hand, a curious sound, half speech, half cry, addressed to the bay beneath him. Dundee backed, gathered himself together, arose in air, cleared the rail fence, overpa.s.sed the embankment and the rivulet beneath, touched the frosted earth of the cornfield, and was away like an arrow toward the misty white river. Out of the tumult upon the road rang a shot. Marchmont, the smoking pistol still in hand, urged his horse to the leap, touched in turn the field below, and at top speed followed the bay. He shouted to the troopers behind him; their horses made some difficulty, but in another moment they, too, were in pursuit. Rifles flashed from the road, but the bay had reached a copse that gave a moment's shelter. Horse and rider emerged unhurt from the friendly walls of cedar and locust.

"Forward, sharpshooters!" cried the infantry captain. A lieutenant and half a dozen men made all haste across the fence, down the low bluff, and over the field. As they ran one fired, then another, but the fleeing horse kept on, the rider close to the neck, in their sight, beyond the water, the Virginia sh.o.r.e. The bay moved as though he knew not fatigue, but only a friend's dire need. The stock told; many a race had been won by his forefathers. What his rider's hand and voice conveyed cannot be precisely known, but that which was effected was an access of love, courage, and understanding of the end desired. He moved with every power drawn to the point in hand. Marchmont, only a few lengths behind, fired again. The ball went through Cleave's sleeve, grazing his arm and Dundee's shoulder. The two shot on, Marchmont behind, then the two mounted men, then the sharpshooters, running afoot. From the road the remainder of the company watched with immemorial, white-heat interest the immemorial incident. "He's wounded--the bay's wounded, too! They'll get him at the ca.n.a.l!--Thar's a bridge around the bend, but he don't know it!--Climb atop the fence; ye can see better--"

The ca.n.a.l, deep between willowy banks, a moat to be overpa.s.sed without drawbridge, lay ahead of the foremost horse and rider. A moment and the two burst through the screen of willows, another, and from the high, bare bank they had leaped into the narrow, deep, and sluggish stream.

"That horse's wounded--he's sinking! No, by G.o.d, he ain't! Whar's the captain from Frederick! Thar he is--thar he is!" Marchmont vanished into the belt of willows. The two troopers had swerved; they knew of the bridge beyond the turn. Dundee swam the ca.n.a.l. The bank before him, up to the towpath, was of loose earth and stone, steep and difficult. He climbed it like a cat-o'-mountain. As he reached the towpath Marchmont appeared before the willows. His horse, a powerful sorrel, took the water unhesitatingly, but the opposite bank made trouble. It was but a short delay; while the soldiers on the road held their breath he was up and away, across the wide field between ca.n.a.l and river. The troopers, too, had thundered across the bridge. The sharpshooters were behind them, blue moving points between the shocked corn. The field was wide, rough, and furrowed, bordered on its southern side by a line of sycamores, leafless and tall, a lacework of white branches against the now brilliant sky. Beyond the sycamores lay the wide river, beyond the river lay Virginia. Dundee, red of eye and nostril, foam streaked and quivering, raced on, his rider talking to him as to a lover. But the bay was sore tired, and the sorrel gained. Marchmont sent his voice before him. "Surrender! You'll never reach the other side!"

"I'll try mighty hard," answered Cleave between his teeth. He caressed his horse, he made their two hearts one, he talked to him, he crooned an air the stallion knew,--

Then fling ope your gates, and let me go free, For it's up with the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!

Superbly the bay answered. But the sorrel, too, was a thoroughbred, fresh when he left Frederick. Stride by stride he gained. Cleave crashed into the belt of sycamores. Before him was the Potomac, cold, wide, mist-veiled. He heard Marchmont break into the wood and turned. The aide's arm was raised, and a shaft of red sunlight struck the barrel of his pistol. Before his finger could move Cleave fired.

The sorrel, pierced through the shoulder, swerved violently, reared, and plunged, all but unseating his rider. Marchmont's ball pa.s.sed harmlessly between the branches of trees. The bay and his master sprang from the low bank into the flood. So veiled was it by the heavy mist that, six strokes from sh.o.r.e, all outlines grew indistinct.

The two troopers reached the sh.o.r.e. "Where is he, sir?--Out there?" They emptied their pistols--it was firing into a cloud. The sharpshooters arrived. Skilful and grim, they raised their rifles, scanned the expanse of woolly white before them, and fired at what, now here, now there, they conceived might be a moving object. The mist lay close to the river, like a pall. They fired and fired again. Other infantrymen, arriving, talked excitedly. "Thar!--No, thar! That's him, downs-tream!

Fire!--Darn it! 'T was a piece of drift." Across the river, tall against the south, wreathed and linked by lianas of grape, showed, far withdrawn and shadowy, the trees of the Virginia sh.o.r.e. The rifles continued to blaze, but the mist held, and there came no answering scream of horse or cry of man. Marchmont spoke at last, curtly. "That's enough! He's either hit and drowned, or he has reached home. I wish we were on the same side."

One of the troopers uttered an exclamation. "Hear that, sir! He's across! d.a.m.ned if he isn't halloaing to tell us so!"

Faintly, from the southern sh.o.r.e, came a voice. It was raised in a line of song,--

"As Joseph was a-walking, He heard the angels sing"--

CHAPTER XII

"THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP"

Richard Cleave and his horse, two tired wights, turned a corner in the wood and came with suddenness upon a vedette, posted beneath a beech tree. The vedette brought his short rifle to bear upon the apparition.

"Halt! Halt, you in blue! Halt, I say, or I'll blow your head off."

Down an aisle of the woods, deep in russet leaves, appeared a grey figure. "h.e.l.lo, Company F! It's all right! It's all right! It's Captain Cleave, 65th Virginia. Special service." Musket in hand, Allan came at a run through the slanting suns.h.i.+ne of the forest. "It's all right, Cuninghame--Colonel Ashby will understand."

"Here," said the vedette, "is Colonel Ashby now."

From another direction, out of the filmy and amethyst haze that closed each forest vista, came a milk-white horse, stepping high over the fallen leaves. The rider, not tall, black-bearded, with a pale, handsome face, sat like a study for some great sculptor's equestrian masterpiece.

In a land where all rode well, his was superb horsemans.h.i.+p. The cape of his grey coat was lined with scarlet, his soft wide hat had a black plume; he wore long boots and white gauntlets. The three beneath the beech saluted. He spoke in a pensive and musical voice. "A prisoner, Cuninghame? Where did you get him?--Ah, it's Richard Cleave!"