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One of the cars furthest from the engine had no freight proper, only a number of trunks; and these were nearly hidden by the widely crinolined flounces of an elegant elderly lady who sat on the middle one. And now she, too, was hidden, and the wide doorway in the side of the car more than filled, by the fashionable gowns of three girls. On the ground below there stood a lieutenant in a homemade gray uniform, and at his back half a dozen big, slouching, barefoot boys squirted tobacco juice and gazed at the ladies. The officer scanned me, spoke to the ladies, scanned me again, and threw up an arm. "Ho--o! Come here! Hullo! Come here--if you please."

"I am his clerk." In the car a flash of joy and then great decorum.

Westward likewise we soon were bickering. The morning sun shone high; the thin, hot dust blew out over the blackened ground of some forest "burn" or through the worm fence of some field where a gang of slave men and women might be ploughing or hoeing between the green rows of young cotton or corn. The level stretches were many, the slopes gradual, and to those sweet city-bird ladies everything was new and delightful; a log cabin!--with clay chimney on the outside!--a well and its well-sweep!--another cabin with its gourd-vines! They knew that blessed alchemy which turns all things into the poetry of the moment. Sweet they would have been anywhere to any eye or mind; but I was a homeless trooper lad, and sweeter to the soldier boy than water on the battlefield are short hours with ladies who love him for his banner and his rags.

I bent low, ran a few steps, cocking my revolver as I went. Then I rose, peeped, bent again, ran, rose, peeped, waited a few seconds behind the catalpa, and without rising peeped once more. Here he came! He was an officer. His uniform was torn and one whole side of him showed he had at some earlier hour ridden through a hedge and fallen from his horse. On he came! nearer--nearer--oh, what a giant! Quickly, warily, he crouched under the fence where it hung low across the gully, and half through it in that huddled posture he found my revolver between his astonished eyes. I did not yell at him, for I did not want the men he had escaped from to come and take him from me; yet when I said, "Halt, or you die!" the four ladies heard me much too plainly. For, frankly, I said more and worse. I felt my slenderness, my beardless youth, my rags, and his daring, and to offset them all in a bunch, I--I cursed him. I let go only one big damn and I've never spoken one since, though I've done many a worse thing, of course. I protest it was my modesty prompted it then.

"Don't interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You're not to reach there to-night--"

She backed half a step, and quite needlessly I let it go. Then she bade me not forget I had promised her the words of a certain song. "Want them? Indeed, yes! Did you not say it was an unpublished song written by a messmate of yours?--oh, Mr. Smith! I see why you stammer! You said 'a member of your mess'! oh!--oh!--oh!--you wrote it, yourself! And you wrote it to-day! That explains--" She drew an awesome breath, rose to her toes and knit her knuckles under her throat.

Silence was silver this time, speed was golden. But every step met its obstacle; there were low boughs, festoons of long-moss, bushes, briers, brake-cane, mossy logs, snaky pools, and things half fallen and held dead. If at any point on the bridle-path, near the stream, some cowpath, footpath, any trail whatever, led across to the road, my liers-in-wait were certainly guarding it and would rush to the road by that way as soon as they found I was flanking them. And so I strove on at the best speed I could make, and burst into the road with a crackle and crash that might have been heard a hundred yards away. One glance up the embowered alley, one glance down it, and I whirled to the right, drove in the spur, and flew for the bridge. A wild minute so--a turn in the road--no one in sight! Two minutes--another turn--no one yet! Three--three--another turn--no one in front, no one behind--

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