The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln Part 46

"Then my worst fears are confirmed!" he broke in excitedly. "Your sweetheart's on McClellan's staff--his men will never reach the field in time!"

He dropped into a chair, hurriedly wrote the pa.s.s and handed it to Betty.

"G.o.d bless you, child. See me when you get back and tell me all you learn of McClellan and his men to-day. The very worst is suspected----"

"You mean?"

"That this delay and deliberate trifling with the most urgent and positive orders is little short of treason. Unless his men reach Pope to-day and fight, the Capital may be threatened to-morrow."

"Surely!" Betty protested.

"It's just as I tell you, child, but I'll hope for the best. Be eyes and ears for me to-day and you may help me."

The agony of his face and the deep note of tragedy in his voice had taken the joy out of her heart. She threw the feeling off with an effort.

"What has it all to do with my love!" she cried with a toss of her pretty head as she sprang into the saddle for the gallop to Alexandria.

The cool, bracing air of this first day of September, 1862, was like wine. The dew was yet heavy on the tall gra.s.s by the roadside and a song was singing in her heart that made all other music dumb.

John had dismounted and was standing beside the road, the horse's bridle hanging on his arm in the very position he had stood and looked into her soul that day.

She leaped to the ground without waiting for his help and sprang into his arms.

"I like you better with that bronzed look--you're handsomer than ever,"

she sighed at last.

His answer was another kiss, to which he added:

"No amount of sunburn could make you any prettier, dear--you've been perfect from the first."

"Your General is here?" Betty asked.

"Yes."

"And you can give me the whole day?"

"Every hour--the General is my friend."

The moment was too sweet to allow any shadow to cloud it. The girl yielded to its spell without reserve. They mounted and rode side by side over the hills. And the man poured into her ears the unspoken things he had felt and longed to say in the lonely nights of camp and field. The girl confessed the pain and the longing of her waiting.

They mounted the crest of a hill and the breeze from the southwest brought the sullen boom of a cannon.

Instinctively they drew rein.

"The battle has begun again," John said casually.

"It stirs your blood, doesn't it?" she whispered.

A frown darkened his brow:

"Not to-day."

The girl looked with quick surprise.

"You don't mean it?"

"Certainly. Why get excited when you know the end before it begins."

"You know it?"

"Yes."

"Victory?"

He laughed cynically:

"Victory for a pompous braggart who could write that address to an army reflecting on the men who fought Lee and Jackson before Richmond with such desperate courage?"

"You are sure of defeat then?"

"Absolutely."

Betty looked at him with a flush of angry excitement:

"General McClellan is counting on Pope's defeat to-day?"

"Yes."

"Then it's true that he is not really trying to help him?"

"Why should he wish to sacrifice his brave men under the leaders.h.i.+p of a fool?"

"He is, in fact, defying the orders of the President, isn't he?"

"You might say that if you strain a point," John admitted.

Again the long roar of guns boomed on the Western horizon, louder, clearer. The dull echoes became continuous now, and the quickening breeze brought the faint din from the vast field of death whose blazing smoke covered lines stretched over seven miles.

"_Boom-boom-boom, boom!--boom! boom!_"

Again they drew rein and listened.

John's brow wrinkled and his right ear was thrown slightly forward.

"Those are our big guns," he said with a smile. "The Confederate artillery can't compare with ours--their infantry is a terror--stark, dead game fighters----"

"_Boom--Boom!----Boom! Boom! Boom!_"

"How do you know those are our guns?" Betty asked with a s.h.i.+ver.