ONE:Late in the evening of the day on which I had conducted the Harpers to Squire Wall's I had received a despatch ordering me to board the next morning's train at Brookhaven with my horse. On it I should find a number of cases of those shoes I had seen at Hazlehurst. At Tangipahoa I was to transfer them to one or two army-wagons which would by that time have reached there, and bring them across to Clinton, where a guard would meet and join me to conduct the wagons to camp. And thus I had done, bearing with me a sad vision of dear dark Miss Harper fluttering her handkerchief above her three nieces' heads, one of whom refrained until the opportunity had all but gone, to wave good-bye to the visibly wretched author of "Maiden passing fair, turn away thine eyes." My lucky Cricket had gone three nights and two whole days with no harness but his halter, and to-night, beside the Yankee's horse, that still bore Ned Ferry, he was as good as new. My leader and I talked of Charlotte. In the middle of this day's forenoon Gholson had come into camp reporting at the General's tent the long ride she had made on Monday; as good a fifty miles as Ferry's own. We called it, now, Ferry and I, a most clever achievement for a woman. "Many women," he said, "know how to ride, but she knows how to march."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.
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