SMITH’S BATTERY.

SMITH’S BATTERY.

On the evening of the 15th the cavalry left by moonlight, riding along the railroad toward Slow-River-Junction. The bulk of the infantry followed two days later, leaving behind them “The Dead Rabbits,”—a New York regiment,—a squad of cavalry, and Smith’s four-gun battery, to garrison a hamlet inhabited principally by mosquitoes.

The hamlet of Slow-River contained a red brick church, some houses, a water-tank, and a race-track. The “Dead Rabbits” established their warren in the race-track sheds, the cavalry guarded the railway and water-tank, and Smith’s battery decorated the graveyard around the red brick church.

The inhabitants of Slow-River, barring the mosquitoes, had mostly disappeared toward Dixie before the arrival of Wilson’s division. When Wilson moved on toward the Junction, leaving behind him the “Dead Rabbits,”—and Smith’s Battery to take care of them—the non-combatant population of Slow-River numbered two,—not including an Ethiopian of no account.

Smith, of Smith’s Battery, had constituted himself an inquisition of one. The Reverend Laomi Smull, pastor of the brick church, took the oath of allegiance and smacked the Book with moist thick lips. Mrs. Ashley, the remaining inhabitant of Slow-River, widow of a Union officer killed in the early days of the war, took the oath earnestly, then told Smith who she was and received his apologies with sensitive reserve.

“I wished to take the oath,” she said: “I have not had my country brought so near for many months.”

The Reverend Laomi Smull, clasped his soft fingers together and surveyed the firmament while Mrs. Ashley brushed the tears from her blue eyes. When she thanked Smith for the privilege of publicly acknowledging her country, the Reverend Laomi nodded and closed his small eyes as though in ecstatic contemplation of a soul regenerated.

“Where’s the nigger?” inquired Smith when Mrs. Ashley had gone back to her cottage below the church.

“Do you refer to our unfortunate coloured brother?” suggested the reverend gentleman.

“Oh yes—of course,” said Smith, fidgeting with his sabre.

“Abiatha is angling from the bridge,” said Smull wagging his double chin till his collar creaked.

“What is he fishing for,” inquired Smith, who was an angler.

“Fish,” said the Reverend Laomi, and entered his church with more agility than his fat bulk appeared to warrant.

At the door he turned to cast one last sly glance at the firmament.

Smith, distrustful, and of the earth earthy, walked back to the graveyard, lifting his sabre to prevent the clanking of the scabbard on fallen grave-stones.

“Look out for that pastor,” he said to Steele: “if I know a copperhead from a copper kettle he’s one with double fangs.”

“You think he may play tricks?” asked Steele, toasting a rasher of bacon on the coals before his feet.

“Yes, I do. He’ll get no passes from me, I can tell you. I’m going up into the church tower. Is there a bell there?”

“A cracked one,” said Steele.

“I’ll take the clapper out,” observed Smith. He accepted a bit of bacon from Steele, laid it on a morsel of hard-tack, munched silently for a few minutes, then washed his breakfast down with a tin of coffee, returned Steele’s salute, and entered the church through the vestry. Climbing the belfry ladder on tiptoe, cap in hand, he could not prevent the ladder from creaking. So, when he stepped out on the loosely laid planks beside the bell, he found the Reverend Laomi Smull leaning on the belfry-ledge, preoccupied with the sky.

“Oh,” said the reverend gentleman with a start, “is it my young friend, Captain Smythe?”

“Smith,” said the officer dryly, and felt in the bell for the iron clapper.

“Where is the clapper?” he added turning on Smull.

The Reverend Laomi regarded him calmly.

“I do not know,” he said.

To search the person of the minister was Smith’s first impulse; Smull divined it and smiled sadly.

“He’s thrown it from the tower where he can find it,” thought Smith. Then he drew a jack-knife from his blouse, cut the two bell-ropes and let them drop to the tiled floor far below. The thwack of the ropes echoed through the silent church; Smith apologised for the military precaution and stepped to the tower parapet. There he could look out over the ravaged country toward the Junction where rumour reported an ominous concentration of Union troops. He could see the water-tower and the railroad and cavalry patroling the embankment in the morning sunshine. He could see the weather-stained sheds of the race-track where the “Dead Rabbits” prowled, a nuisance and sometimes a terror to everybody except the enemy. Behind him he heard the Reverend Laomi pattering about over the loose planks that formed the belfry flooring.

“I shall station a signal officer here,” he said without turning.

“Sir,” stammered the minister.

“I am sorry,” said Smith impatiently: “we need the church more than you do.”

“I agree with you,” said Smull in a peculiarly soft voice.

“I am sorry to exclude you—” began Smith turning,—and those words had wellnigh been his last, for one leg slipped through an unexpected fissure between the planks, and he clutched a beam beside him and drew himself up, deadly pale.

He looked at Smull; the clergyman overwhelmed him with congratulations on his escape from pitching headlong to the tiled floor below. He spoke of the mercy of Providence, of the miracles of the Most High; he deplored the condition of the belfry floor; he reproached himself for not noticing the fissure.

“I did not notice it either—when I came up,” said Smith.

He followed Smull down the ladder and out of the church, returning the reverend gentleman’s salute gravely. Then he ordered Steele to use the church for barracks and march his men in without delay.

“Into the church?” repeated Steele.

“I guess Union soldiers won’t desecrate this church or any other church,” said Smith savagely, and turned on his heel.

On his way to the river he passed Mrs. Ashley’s cottage; she was hanging a home-made flag over the porch; the stars and stripes were not symmetrical, but they were stars and stripes.

She stood on the top of a ladder, hammering tacks and holding the red, white, and blue folds in her pretty mouth. Occasionally she hammered one pink-tipped finger instead of a tack; at such moments she repeated, “Oh dear!”

Smith, cap in hand, offered to hold the ladder; Mrs. Ashley thanked him and continued to hammer serenely, until she remembered her ankles and descended precipitately. Then Smith climbed the ladder, drew out all the tacks Mrs. Ashley had hammered in, rehung the “symbol of light and law,” draped and nailed it with military rigidity, and descended, covered with perspiration and mosquito bites.

Mrs. Ashley, cool and sweet in a white gown and black sash, thanked him and offered him a cup of tea under the magnolias. He accepted and sat down, sabre between his knees, to mop his face and evade mosquitoes until she returned with two cups of cold tea, creamless and sugarless.

“I have some limes—if you wish,—Captain Smith,” she ventured, holding out the golden-green fruit in her smooth palm.

He thanked her and squeezed a lime into his tea.

Overhead, among the magnolia blossoms, the summer harmony had already begun with the deep symphony of bees; butterflies hovered under the perfumed branches; a grasshopper clicked incessantly among the myrtle vines.

Mrs. Ashley rested her chin on her wrist and looked at nothing. A breeze began to stir the folds of the draped flag over the porch; the crimson stripes undulated, the stars rose and fell.

“We hear nothing in Slow-River,” said Mrs. Ashley: “has anything important happened, Captain Smith?” Her voice was almost inaudible.

“Nothing important. The last battle went against us.”

“Will there be a battle here?”

“No—I don’t know—I have no reason to suppose so,” he said with conscientious precision. “If by any possible chance the rebel cavalry should ride around our army we might be visited here, but,” he added, “the contingency is too remote for speculation.”

“Too remote for speculation?” repeated Mrs. Ashley under her breath.

Smith looked up at her—he had been watching a file of ants bearing off minute crumbs from the biscuit he was nibbling. Smith’s shoulder-straps were too recent to admit of trifling, and he had an instinct that Mrs. Ashley considered him young.

“Too remote for speculation,” he repeated, and touched the down on his upper lip with decision. The faintest flicker of amusement stirred Mrs. Ashley’s blue eyes.

They spoke of the war, of battles on land and sea, of sieges and blockades, of prisons and of death. Listening to her passionless voice he forgot his shoulder-straps for a while. She noticed it. She spoke now as a very young hostess to a distinguished guest, and he appreciated it. Little by little they dropped into the half frank, half guarded repertoire peculiar to conventional civilisation; he recognised her beauty; she conceded his gallantry; the bees buzzed among the magnolias; the warm breeze stirred the flag.

Sitting there with white fingers interlaced, and blue eyes demurely fixed on his, she wondered at the pains she took to wind him around the least of those white fingers of hers. Yet there was reason enough for her; her reason, in concrete form, skulked upstairs under a mound of bedclothes,—a sallow faced, furtive young man, reported killed at Bull Run,—a deserter from the Union army, a Rebel at heart, too cowardly to back his convictions,—the blight and sorrow and curse of her young life—her husband.

From the day of their marriage, she had found him out and loathed him, yet, when he marched with a loyal regiment, she had bade him God-speed.

When the news came from Bull Run she had wept and forgiven him the past, because he had been good to her in death,—he had left her the widow of a Union soldier. His apparition in Slow-River almost killed her. The Reverend Laomi Smull sarcastically bade her rejoice and put off her widow’s weeds. She did neither.

Suddenly Wilson’s advance was signalled from the hills beyond the river; the population of Slow-River fled Dixie-ward,—all except young Ashley, who lay sleeping off a debauch in his own gutter. The Reverend Laomi preferred to remain for several reasons. Hours after the Union cavalry dashed into the village, Ashley awoke to consciousness. When he comprehended what had happened he crawled into bed and cursed his wife and his luck and the Union Army impartially.

With what loathing did she aid in concealing him! With what desperation did she evade questions and intrusive patrols and the quiet questions of officers, courteous young fellows in blue, who accepted her word of honour with a bow and went away, deceived by a loyal woman—the wife of a coward and traitor—for that traitor’s sake.

But she must play the frightful comedy to the end; she was doing it now, smiling back at Smith with eyes that caressed; with death in her heart.

When he rose to go she dropped him the quaintest and stateliest courtesy that can be dropped by a girl of twenty. His cap swept the tall grass-blades; Southern chivalry is infectious. So he passed on his way to the river.

Five minutes later the Reverend Laomi Smull appeared at the gate, smirked at the young wife, entered the cottage, and ascended the stairs with a parodoxical nimbleness that displayed two white cotton socks and inadequate attention to personal ensemble.

Smith pursued his way to the river through a weed-tangled path choked with rank marshy stalks, mint, elder, and wild lady-slipper. The little brown honey-bees hummed from bud to bud; dragon-flies, balanced in mid-air on quivering wings, selected plump mosquitoes from the cloud that wavered above Smith’s head, and darted so close to his ears that he dodged like a new recruit at a bullet. When he came to the narrow sluggish river, where a foot-bridge swayed in the amber eddies, he took his cigar from his mouth and his Bible from his pocket.

A dilapidated individual of African descent, legs dangling over the water, fishpole clasped in both black fists, glanced up at the young officer and said: “Mohnin’ suh!” Smith nodded, looked hard at the darkey, shrugged his shoulders, and restored the cigar to his lips and the Bible to his pocket.

“What are you fishing for, Uncle?” he asked.

“Fishin’ foh bass, suh,” replied the dilapidated one.

“Catch any?”

“I done cotch free bass an’ a tarrypin turkle, suh.”

“Want to sell them?”

“No, suh.”

“Going to eat them all yourself, Uncle?”

“I’s gotter right ter,” said the angler combatively.

Smith glanced down on the river sand where, anchored to a string, three plump bass floated out in the current.

“Are you going to eat the terrapin, too, Uncle?”

“Co’s I is,” sniffed the darkey; “I’s gotter right ter.”

“Let’s see it,” said Smith.

The angler climbed down to the strip of sand, picked up the terrapin, and held it out to Smith.

“How much?” asked Smith.

“Two dollahs, suh.”

Smith paid the money grimly, picked up the terrapin, and stood a moment watching the darkey climb back to his perch on the foot-bridge.

“You’ll leave your footprints on the sand of time,” said Smith; “you’ll be in Wall Street in a month—or in Sing-Sing.”

“Wha’s dat yoh’s a-sayin’ ’bout leabin’ shoe-prints on de san’s ob time, suh?” asked the sable one, much interested.

“Nothing. If you get any more terrapin, bring them to the artillery camp. What’s your name, Uncle?”

“Nuffin’, suh?”

“No name?”

“No suh, jess ’Biah, suh.”

“Oh—Alcibiades? No? Then Abiatha?”

“Yaas, suh.”

“Whose darkey are you?”

“Mis’ Ashley’s niggah, suh.”

“Oh! And the fish are for Mrs. Ashley?”

“Yaas, suh. Gwineter tote ’em back foh dinner, suh.”

“Then,” said Smith, “take back your terrapin too, you rascal! How dare you sell your mistress’s property!”

’Biah watched the terrapin fall on the sands again, then he ruefully fished out the two dollars from some rent in his ragged coat. For a moment he struggled to tell the truth,—that Mrs. Ashley, in the present state of her finances, would rather have twenty-five cents than a dozen terrapins. Perhaps he feared Mrs. Ashley’s wrath, perhaps a spark of Mrs. Ashley’s pride had lodged beneath his own shirtless bosom. He said nothing, but rose, holding his fishpole in one hand, and sidled along the foot-bridge toward Smith, money clutched in one outstretched fist.

Smith glanced at the four silver half-dollars.

“Keep them and buy a coat, ’Biah,” he said, relighting his cigar. At the same instant a big bass seized ’Biah’s hook and made off with it, and ’Biah, losing his balance, dropped the silver coins into the river. Then the tattered African lost his head, too; for a minute, bass, darkey, pole, and line became a blurr on the bridge, on the sands below, and finally in the water.

When ’Biah emerged, he had the bass by the gills; later he fished out pole and line, while Smith, wading through the shallows in his cavalry-boots, poked about for the lost coins with the butt of his sabre-scabbard.

Ten minutes later ’Biah had recovered three of the half-dollars. Smith had found something else,—a bundle of soaked clothes bearing United States army buttons and a second lieutenant’s shoulder-straps.

Instinctively he tossed the soaked packet into the alders and walked carelessly back to the foot-bridge where ’Biah, absorbed in disentangling his tackle, breathed hard and deep and muttered maledictions on “dat ole bull-bass what fink he know a heap moh’n ole ’Biah.”

“Done drap mah hook in de hole,” he puffed; “gwine ter gitter hook an’ tote mah fish, suh. Mohnin’, suh, mohnin’,”; and ’Biah scrambled to his feet and shuffled back along the weed-grown footpath that led to Mrs. Ashley’s cottage.

When the negro had disappeared, Smith leaped lightly to the sand below, parted the alders, found the bundle of clothes, and cut the cord with his sabre.

“New clothes,” he muttered: “not a patch, not a rag—hello—what’s this?”

He drew a soaked bit of paper from the breast-pocket of the jacket, and, standing in the alders, read the pencilled memorandum.

It was a receipt signed by the Reverend Laomi Smull for pew-rent received from Anderson Ashley. But what troubled Smith was the date, for, if Mrs. Ashley’s husband had been killed at Bull Run, how could he be renting pews from the Reverend Laomi in Slow-River? Smith examined the paper closely; it read:

“Received from Anderson Ashley, Esquire, $3.75, pew-rent for Mr. and Mrs. Anderson Ashley.”

The date, two months back, startled him. As he stood, holding the paper, staring vacantly at the motionless leaves on the alders, far away he heard the noon call from the artillery bugles, taken up by the cavalry trumpets at the water-tank, and passed on to the infantry around the race-track. He shoved the wet clothes under a fallen log, opened the Bible in his pocket, placed the folded receipt between the leaves, and, carrying the Bible in one hand, sword in the other, went back along the tangled footpath toward Mrs. Ashley’s cottage.

III.

When the Reverend Laomi Smull displayed unexpected agility on Mrs. Ashley’s staircase, Ashley himself, hearing the ascending footsteps, cowered under the bed quilts and turned cold to the marrow of every bone.

“It’s me,” said the reverend gentleman, entering the bed-room and waving his fat hands at the pile of quilts under which Ashley squirmed in fear: “it’s me, Ashley,” he repeated, disregarding the finer points of grammatical construction: “Moseby’s men is in the hills and I don’t know what to do.”

Ashley’s dissipated face emerged from the bed-covers. Fear stamped every feature with a grimace that amused Smull.

“What did you say about Moseby’s men?” stammered Ashley.

“They’re in the hills across the river,” repeated Smull: “I seen smoke on Painted Rock.”

“It’s a blockade still,” suggested Ashley.

“No it ain’t,” retorted Smull; “it’s green wood burnin’—don’t I know a still, hey? It’s Confederate cavalry, an’ they’ve ridden around the Yankee army, that’s what they’ve done.”

Ashley protruded his long pallid neck, looked around like an alarmed turkey in a weed patch, and finally stared at Smull.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

The fat cunning on Smull’s face was indescribable.

“Do?” repeated Smull.

“Yes, do! Didn’t Moseby tell you to ring the church bell on Sunday as many times as there was Yankee companies in Slow-River? Didn’t he tell you to hang out your washing according to code,—a shirt, ‘come,’ two shirts ‘run,’ a red undershirt, ‘run like the devil’—say, didn’t he and you fix up the code?”

Smull’s small eyes rested on the door, then on Ashley.

“The Yankee Battery Captain came to look at the bell. I threw the clapper out into the bushes,” he said.

After a moment he added: “He came near falling through the plank floor. Frightened me to death—most.”

Ashley’s eyes met his; Smull raised a fat white hand to conceal the expression of his mouth.

“That’s all very well,” said Ashley petulantly, “but I reckon you’d better go. If I’m caught I’m toted out to a shootin’ match—and I’ll be the target too.”

This observation appeared to start a new train of thought in Smull’s mind. And, as he cogitated, his expression changed from sly malice to complacence, and then to that sanctimonious smirk with which, in the garden below, he had greeted Mrs. Ashley.

“Ashley,” he said gravely, “I can’t give no signals to Moseby, nohow. I regret,” he continued piously, “I regret and see the error that the South has made in this here unchristian war.”

Ashley started and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Smull, who immediately raised his own to the ceiling and addressed it unctuously: “This here unchristian war to disrupt the sacred union of the States is a offence against God and man, my young friend, and I now am brought to see, by God’s grace, the sin of secession an’ slavery, an’ Jefferson Davis an’ his wicked ways. Surely the wicked shall perish and be cut down like the grass; in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up, in the evenin’ it is cut down an’ withereth, my young fren’.”

Ashley had grown paler and paler; his fingers clutched at the bedclothes, and he watched Smull’s increasing exaltation with a horror that pinched every feature in his face.

“No!” bawled Smull: “no! no! I have took the oath of allegiance to these here United States! Blessed is the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy!”

“Shut up!” gasped Ashley, “do you want to have the Yankee provost here?”

Smull raised his hands and wept on; “Behold I am utterly enlightened! Blessed are the meek for they”—

“Stop!” shrieked Ashley, starting up in bed.

Smull glanced sharply at him, then sat down with a sigh.

“Are you going to give me up to the provost-marshal because you took the oath?” quavered Ashley, beside himself with fright and fury.

“No,” said Smull wagging his double chin and meeting Ashley’s glance squarely; “no, I will not bring the centurions for fear they utterly destroy thee with the sword.”

Ashley, sweating with terror, looked at the reverend gentleman and wondered whether he could kill him without undue disturbance. That fat neck could not be strangled with Ashley’s slender fingers; the revolver under the pillow was surer—and surer still to bring the Yankee soldiers pell-mell into the house. He had been jealous of Smull when that gentleman made his weekly call on Mrs. Ashley. He, besotted as he was, noticed the expression of Smull’s small eyes when Mrs. Ashley entered the room, her innocent heart filled with plans for charities suggested by the minister. Would the Reverend Laomi like to see Mrs. Ashley a real widow? Would he even aid fate toward the accomplishment of her widowhood?

“What the hell made you holler like that!” stammered Ashley fiercely. “Damn you,” he added, “if the Yankees had come into this room, you would have left it feet first an’ fit for a hole in the ground?”

The Reverend Laomi Smull looked sadly at the young man. There were tears on his fat cheeks.

“Yes, I tote a gun,” sneered Ashley, tapping the pillow under his head. “Don’t be a fool. Hang out your shirt and let Moseby come and clean out these Yankees, for God’s sake, before they shoot me and hang you on my evidence.”

“Moseby’s men can’t face cannon,” observed Smull with sudden alacrity.

“Then lock the cannoniers in the church when Moseby signals. You can do it; you’ve got the keys, haven’t you?”

Smull nodded.

“They’ll come at night, of course; you can go and whine hymns in the church by special permit, and lock the door when the first carbine goes off.”

“And the bell on Sunday?” inquired Smull: “the clapper’s gone, the ropes are cut, and the Yankee Battery Captain wouldn’t let me ring it nohow.”

“Never mind the bell. If Moseby sees the shirt he’ll attack by night, unless he’s in force. If the whole Confederate cavalry has ridden around Wilson, then he’ll come by day and send the Yankees packing, battery or no battery. All you’ve got to do is to hang out that shirt. Now go away, d’you hear?”

Smull rose and walked softly to the door.

“And,” added Ashley, “if you play tricks on me you’ll hang on my evidence.”

Smull opened the door.

“And you’ll not get my wife anyway, damn you!” finished Ashley triumphantly from the bed.

Smull turned and looked at him, then went out, quietly closing the door behind him.

At the foot of the stairs he met Mrs. Ashley, and he smirked and opened his thick moist lips to speak, but the young wife’s face startled him and he closed his mouth with a snap of surprise.

“You intend to betray my husband,” she said breathlessly.

“You have been listening at your husband’s door,” he retorted savagely.

She clenched her small hands: “What of it! With cowards and traitors and hypocrites as guests, honest people need be forewarned! Shame on you! Shame on your cloth! Shame on your oath of allegiance! You’ll sell my husband to steal his wife! You’ll break your oath to bring the rebel cavalry down on us!”

She brushed the tears from her eyes with both trembling hands.

“God knows,” she said, “I thought I was right to hide my husband, and I think so now. Yet, if he or you betray these soldiers I shall denounce you both to the first picket!”

“Madame,” began Smull in thick persuasive tones, “you wrong me—”

“Leave this house!” she said, trembling.

The Reverend Laomi bowed low, raised his eyes to the sky, sighed, and stepped out into the garden. There, before he could rearrange his expressive features, Smith met him face to face and returned the clergyman’s disconcerted salute gravely.

“One moment, my dear young friend,” stammered Smull.

Smith wheeled squarely in his tracks and stood rigid. Smull hesitated, passed a fat tongue over his lips, and weighed the chances. The next moment he made up his mind, glanced at the door, saw Mrs. Ashley entering the house, then leaned swiftly toward Smith and whispered.

Smith drew himself up sharply; the Reverend Laomi Smull turned and left the garden, head bowed on his breast as though in anguish of spirit. A few minutes later he brought a wash basket out of his house and pinned a single shirt to the line with a wooden clothespin. Then he ran to the woods, as fast as he could, and squatted under a rock where a tangle of brambles fell like a curtain to screen him from the eyes of the impious, indiscreet, and importunate.

IV.

Smith, holding his sabre very stiffly, raised the bronze knocker on Mrs. Ashley’s door and rapped three times. Then he loosened the chin-strap of his forage-cap; drew off both gauntlets, folded them, and placed them in his belt.

As he waited for admittance he saw the flag over the porch, motionless in the still air; he heard the wild bees’ harmony overhead, he heard the rustle of a summer gown behind the door. But the door did not open. He waited. A burr stuck to the crimson stripe on his riding breeches; he flicked it off with his middle finger. Presently he knocked again, once; the door opened, and Mrs. Ashley came out, smiling faintly.

“I hope you want another cup of tea,” she said with the slightest gesture toward the table under the magnolias where the two chairs still stood as they had left them in the morning.

He attended her, cap in hand, to the table; when she was seated, he stood beside her.

“Is it tea, Captain Smith?” she asked, looking up at him.

He grew suddenly red, but did not reply.

“What is it then?” she repeated, smiling: “not the mere honour of my poor presence I am sure. But, as a gallant officer, you must contradict me, Captain Smith.”

Fear whitened her lips that the smile had not left; she faced him with the coquetry of desperation; and the pathos of it turned him sick at heart.

“I brought the Bible to you,” he said; “it is the one you swore on—the oath of allegiance. You kissed it.”

She inclined her throbbing head and took it.

“Open it,” he said.

She obeyed. The wet bit of folded paper caught her eyes and she held it out to Smith, saying: “This is yours.”

“No!” he said, “it is yours.”

She glanced swiftly up at him, caught her breath; and sat motionless, the paper clutched nervously in her fingers.

“Read it,” he said in a scarcely audible voice.

She opened it; one glance was enough. Then she dropped it on the grass at her feet. Presently he stooped and recovered it.

“Yes,” she said, obeying his eyes’ command, “my husband is not dead. What of it?”

“Where is he?”

She was silent.

“A deserter.”

“Yes.”

“A traitor.”

“Yes.”

Smith walked to the gate, looked down the road toward the church where the artillery pickets paraded, naked sabres drawn. Then he came back.

“You are under arrest,” he said, looking at the ground.

She turned a bloodless face to his, and raised one slender hand to her forehead.

“Do you doubt my loyalty?” she stammered.

He turned his back sharply.

“My loyalty?” she repeated as though dazed.

He was silent.

“But—but you administered the oath—you saw me kiss the Book,” she persisted with childlike insistence.

“And your husband?” he asked, turning abruptly.

“What of him!” she cried, revolted; “I am myself!—I have a brain and a body and a soul of my own! Do you think I would damn my soul with a kiss on that Book! Do you think if I were a Rebel I would deny it to save my body?”

“You have denied it,” he said. He took the Bible from her hand and opened it at a marked page:

“By their acts ye shall know them,” he read steadily, then closed the Book and laid it on the table. Their eyes met; the anguish in his bore a message to her that pleaded for forgiveness for what he was about to do.

“Not that!—” she stammered, half rising from the chair.

He turned, drew out a handkerchief, and signalled the artillery picket, flag-fashion. Then, before he could prevent it, she was on her knees to him, there on the grass, her white face lifted, speechless with horror.

“For God’s sake don’t do that,” he said, trying to raise her, but she clung to him and pushed him toward the gate murmuring, “Go! Go!”

Furious at the agony he was causing her, tortured by the agony it cost him, he held her firmly and told her to be silent.

“Your husband is hidden in that house,” he said: “he is attempting to add to his treason by communicating with the Rebel cavalry. He tried to force your own pastor, at the point of a pistol, to hang a red shirt on his clothes-line, which means ‘attack!’ The pastor is a good man; he had taken the oath; such villainy horrified him. To save his life in the room above he consented to hang out a signal, but the signal he hung out is a white shirt which means ‘retreat.’ There it is!”

He pointed angrily at the white shirt hanging on the minister’s clothes-line down the road.

“Now,” he said, “let me do my duty.”

He took her by the wrists, and looked straight into her eyes, adding:

“I’d rather be lying dead at your feet than doing what I’ve got to do.”

“But,” she cried, struggling to free herself, “but the signal! Can’t you understand? The man lied! He lied! He lied! The white rag means ‘attack!’”

Stupefied, he dropped her wrists and stepped back.

“Run to your battery!” she wailed, “run! run! Can’t you understand! They’re coming! They’ll kill you!”

Scarcely had she spoken when a rifle shot rang out from the race-track, another, another, then a scattered volley.

An artillery guard approached the garden, halted, turned, then scattered pell-mell toward the church. The next moment Smith was running for his battery and shouting to Steele, who, mounted, cantered among the grave-stones, and hurried the panic-stricken cannoniers to their stations.

A frightful tumult arose from the race-track, where the “Dead Rabbits,” taken utterly unprepared by a cloud of Confederate cavalry, ran like rabbits very much alive. Through them galloped the Confederate riders, heavy sabres dripping to the hilt. The Union cavalry at the water-tank was overwhelmed; the gray-jacketed troopers, shouting their “Hi! yi! yi! yi!” wheeled into the village, shaking a thousand glittering sabres; but here they met a blast of cannister from the churchyard that sent them reeling and tumbling back to the race-track, now swarming with the entire Confederate division.

Smith’s battery, limbered up, filed out of the churchyard, while Smith, looking annihilation in the face, saw the last of the “Dead Rabbits” legging it for the woods. He turned with a groan to Steele, and Steele said, “Ride for it, if we’re to save the guns! The whole rebel cavalry is here!”

Bullets began to sing into the bewildered column; the cannoniers struggled with the horses and swore. Suddenly a shell fell squarely on the church tower and burst.

“They’ve got artillery; we’re goners!” shouted a teamster.

Smith drew his sabre and raised it high above his head: “Battery forward!” he cried: “by the left flank! Gallop!”

“God help us,” gasped Steele.

Team after team dashed into position, dropped their guns, and wheeled into station behind. Smith dismounted and, standing by gun No. 1, began to make calculations, pad and pencil in hand. Presently he gave his orders; a shrapnel shell was rammed home, the screw twisted to the elevation, then:

“Fire!”

A lance of flame pierced the white cloud, the shell soared away toward the race-track and burst beyond it.

Before gun No. 2 could be fired, a roar broke from the wooded heights close to the left, and a flight of shells struck Smith’s battery amidships. For a moment it was horrible; teams were butchered, guns dismounted, cannoniers torn to shreds.

“Steele, bring that limber up!” shouted Smith; “they shan’t have every gun!”

Steele seized the bridle; the terrified animals lashed out right and left, threatening to kick the traces to bits. A cannonier tried to hook up the gun but fell dead under the limber. A caisson blew up, hurling a dozen men into the air and stunning as many more. With blackened face and jacket, Steele reeled toward the gun again but fell on his face in the long grass.

“Bring off that gun!” shouted Smith, standing straight up in his stirrups. Crack! went the wheel, and the gun sank to its axle. Then Smith sprang from his horse and helped the gunners take the spare wheel from the caisson, roll it up over the grass, and mount it on the broken pieces. Smith hammered it on the axle, then drove home the linchpin, brushed the sweat from his half-blinded eyes, and looked around.

What he saw was the wreck of three guns and caissons, the blackened fragments of gunners and horses, and a mess of trampled grass; and beyond, between his single gun and the race-track, a long gray line, glittering with naked steel, sweeping straight upon him.

Of his battery there remained three men with him; the others were lying dead around Steele or stunned and mangled somewhere in the rank grass.

Scarcely conscious of what he did, he helped his three gunners hook the gun to the limber, then mounted and followed the gun back into the village through a constantly increasing rain of bullets. One of his men fell to the earth.

“I guess the whole Rebel army’s here,” he said, as though speaking to himself: “I guess I’d better get this gun to the Junction damn quick.”

In front of Mrs. Ashley’s cottage, as the cannon passed, Ashley, in his shirt-sleeves, fired from the window point-blank at a cannonier and shot him out of his saddle. The dead man’s clutch on the team’s bridle brought the gun to a halt, and the remaining gunner sprang from his saddle with an oath and dashed into the house, sabre unsheathed.

“Come back!” shouted Smith, reining in; “man! man! we’ve got to save the gun! Come back!” He climbed from his own saddle into the saddle of the nigh battery horse and seized the heavy rawhide. A bullet broke his wrist as he lifted it.

There was a struggle going on in the room from which Ashley had fired, but Smith did not see it; his head swam and he looked at his gun with sick eyes. For a second all round grew black, then he found himself rising from his horse’s neck, and, in the road beside him, he saw Mrs. Ashley and ’Biah, holding the bridles he had dropped.

“They’ve hit me, I can’t guide the team,” he said vacantly. “I’ve got to save the gun, you know.”

His eyes fell on the dead body of her husband, lying where it had been flung from the window among the flowers below.

“He’s dead,” said Mrs. Ashley; “I can’t stay. Don’t leave me! I can sit a horse if you will let me. I’ll go with you. Don’t refuse me!”

She sprang into the limber seat and clutched the railing with both hands; ’Biah followed with a howl of terror. There was a whip there; she swung the heavy rawhide and, seizing a horse by the mane, drew herself forward to the saddle, calling; “here they come! Gallop! gallop!”

With a plunge the six horses leaped forward, and tore down the road, Smith swaying in his saddle with a broken arm, the young girl, enveloped in a torrent of dust, riding the nigh horse of the wheel-team, limber and gun swaying and crashing on behind, ’Biah bouncing, jouncing, and howling intermittently.

“Guide!” called Smith faintly: “I can’t.”

She seized the bridles and lashed the horses. ’Biah shrieked.

“There are soldiers ahead!” she cried to him,—“Rebel infantry! They’re going to fire!”

“Drive over them!” he gasped.

With a rumble, a roar, and a tearing crash, the train broke into the shouting mass of men, the scurrying wheels crunched on something, there came a flash of rifles, and Smith staggered. Before his eyes all was a blurr; he still heard the hoofs clink, the chains clash, the wheels thump and pound. Gun and limber struck an opposing body and leaped into the air; Smith’s glazing eyes opened; he clung to his mount and attempted to turn.

He tried to say: “Is the wheel broken?”

She could not reply, nor did she dare turn her head to that heap in the road already far behind. Terror sealed her lips—had sealed her lips when, through the dust ahead, she saw Smull, almost under the head team’s hoofs, start to run, then go down to death beneath her very eyes.

Six wild horses, a runaway limber and gun, two half-dead creatures hanging to the saddles, and a frantic darkey on the limber,—that was all of Smith’s battery that tore into the Junction to the horror of Wilson and the scandal of the rank and file.

It all happened years ago; too long ago to fix the year or the date. Perhaps the incident is recorded in the archives of the Nation. Perhaps not. At all events when they had picked some stray bullets out of Smith and set his wrist in splints, he went North on furlough.

I think Mrs. Ashley went with him; and ’Biah being of no account, toted their luggage and breathed hard.