第48章 Little Darby(14)

Her one thought was of Darby; he would be arrested and shot.

When they questioned her, therefore, she told them of the roads leading to the big river around the fork and quite away from the district.

Whilst they were still talking, more riders came around the curve, and the next instant Vashti was in the midst of a column of cavalry, and she knew that they were the Federals.She had one moment of terror for herself as the restive horses trampled around her, and the calls and noises of a body of cavalry moving dinned in her ears;but the next moment, when the others gave way and a man whom she knew to be the commander pressed forward and began to question her, she forgot her own terror in fear for her cause.She had all her wits about her instantly;and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it.She made out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day.

She admitted that she had never been on that road but once.

And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the place where they went into bivouac until the moon should rise, she soon gave such an impression of her denseness and ignorance that, after a little more questioning, she was told that she might go home if she could find her way, and was sent by the commander out of the camp.

She was no sooner out of hearing of her captors than she began to run with all her speed.Her chief thought was of Darby.Deserter as he was, and dead to her, he was a man, and could advise her, help her.

She tore through the woods the nearest way, unheeding the branches which caught and tore her clothes; the stream, even where she struck it, was out of its banks; but she did not heed it -- she waded through, it reaching about to her waist, and struck out again at the top of her speed.

It must have been a little before midnight when she emerged from the pines in front of the Stanley cabin.The latch-string was out, and she knocked and pushed open the door almost simultaneously.

All she could make out to say was, "Darby." The old woman was on her feet, and the young man was sitting up in the bed, by the time she entered.

Darby was the first to speak.

"What do you want here?" he asked, sternly.

"Darby -- the Yankees -- all around," she gasped -- "out on the road yonder.""What!"

A minute later the young man, white as a ghost, was getting on his jacket while she told her story, beginning with what the woman she had met had told her of the two men she had seen.The presence of a soldier had given her confidence, and having delivered her message both women left everything else to him.His experience or his soldier's instinct told him what they were doing and also how to act.They were a raid which had gotten around the body of the army and were striking for the capital;and from their position, unless they could be delayed they might surprise it.

In the face of the emergency a sudden genius seemed to illuminate the young man's mind.By the time he was dressed he was ready with his plan -- Did Vashti know where any of the conscript guard stayed?

Yes, down the road at a certain place.Good; it was on the way.

Then he gave her his orders.She was to go to this place and rouse any one she might find there and tell them to send a messenger to the city with all speed to warn them, and were to be themselves if possible at a certain point on the road by which the raiders were travelling, where a little stream crossed it in a low place in a heavy piece of swampy woods.They would find a barricade there and a small force might possibly keep them back.Then she was to go on down and have the bridge, ten or twelve miles below on the road between the forks burned, and if necessary was to burn it herself; and it must be done by sunrise.

But they were on the other road, outside of the forks, the girl explained, to which Darby only said, he knew that, but they would come back and try the bridge road.

"And you burn the bridge if you have to do it with your own hand, you hear --and now go," he said.

"Yes -- I'll do it," said the girl obediently and turned to the door.

The next instant she turned back to him: he had his gun and was getting his axe.

"And, Darby ----?" she began falteringly, her heart in her eyes.

"Go," said the young soldier, pointing to the door, and she went just as he took up his old rifle and stepped over to where his mother sat white and dumb.As she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back up the path over the pine-bushes she saw him step out of the door with his gun in one hand and his axe in the other.

An hour later Darby, with the fever still hot on him, was cutting down trees in the darkness on the bank of a marshy little stream, and throwing them into the water on top of one another across the road, in a way to block it beyond a dozen axemen's work for several hours, and Vashti was trudging through the darkness miles away to give the warning.

Every now and then the axeman stopped cutting and listened, and then went on again.He had cut down a half-dozen trees and formed a barricade which it would take hours to clear away before cavalry could pass, when, stopping to listen, he heard a sound that caused him to put down his axe: the sound of horses splashing along through the mud.

His practised ear told him that there were only three or four of them, and he took up his gun and climbed up on the barricade and waited.

Presently the little squad of horsemen came in sight, a mere black group in the road.They saw the dark mass lying across the road and reined in; then after a colloquy came on down slowly.

Darby waited until they were within fifty yards of his barricade, and then fired at the nearest one.A horse wheeled, plunged, and then galloped away in the darkness, and several rounds from pistols were fired toward him, whilst something went on on the ground.