Chapter 8. A Meeting At Night

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_ CHAPTER VIII. A MEETING AT NIGHT

Dick heard above the thundering hoofbeats only a single shout, and then, as he glanced backward, the house was lost in the moonlight. When he secured his own horse he had noticed that all the empty stalls were now filled, no doubt by the horses of the young Leffingwells and Kerins, but he was secure in his confidence that none could overtake the one he rode.

He felt of that inside pocket of his vest. The precious dispatch was there, tightly pinned into its hidden refuge, and as for himself, refreshed, warm, and strong after food, rest, and sleep, he felt equal to any emergency. He had everything with him. The stout saddle bags were lying across the saddle. He had thrust the holster of pistols into them, but he took it out now, and hung it in its own place, also across the saddle.

Although he was quite sure there would be no pursuit--the elder Leffingwells would certainly keep their sons from joining it--he sent his great horse straight ahead at a good pace for a long time, the road being fairly good. His excitement and rapid motion kept him from noticing at first the great bitterness of the cold.

When he had gone five or six miles he drew his horse down to a walk. Then, feeling the intensity of the cold as the mercury was far below zero, he dismounted, looped the reins over his arms, and walked a while. For further precaution he took his blanket-roll and wrapped the two blankets about his body, especially protecting his neck and ears.

He found that the walking, besides keeping him warmer, took all the stiffness out of his muscles, and he continued on foot several miles. He passed two brooks and a creek, all frozen over so solidly that the horse passed on them without breaking the ice. It was an extremely difficult task to make the animal try the ice, but after much delicate coaxing and urging he always succeeded.

He saw two more cabins at the roadside, but he did not think of asking hospitality at either. The night was now far advanced and he wished to put many more miles between him and the Leffingwell home before he sought rest again.

He mounted his horse once more, and increased his speed. Now the reaction came after so much exertion and excitement. He began to feel depressed. He was very young and he had no comrade. The loneliness of the winter night in a country full of dangers was appalling. It seemed to him, as his heart sank, that all things had conspired against him. But the moment of despair was brief. He summoned his courage anew and rode on bravely, although the sense of loneliness in its full power remained.

The moonlight was quite bright. The sky was a deep silky blue, in which myriads of cold stars shone and danced. By and by he skirted for a while the banks of a small river, which he knew flowed southward into the Cumberland, and which would not cross his path. The rays of the moonlight on its frozen surface looked like darts of cold steel.

He left the river presently and the road bent a little toward the north. Then the skies darkened somewhat but lightened again as the dawn began to come. The red but cold edge of the sun appeared above the mountains that he had left behind, and then the morning came, pale and cold.

Dick stopped at a little brook, broke the ice and drank, letting his horse drink after him. Then he ate heartily of the cold bread and meat in his knapsack. Pitying his horse he searched until he found a little grass not yet killed by winter in the lee of the hill, and waited until he cropped it all.

He mounted and resumed his journey through a country in which the hills were steadily becoming lower, with larger stretches of level land appearing between them. By night he should be beyond the last low swell of the mountains and into the hill region proper. As he calculated distances his heart gave a great thump. He was to locate Buell some distance north of Green River, and his journey would take him close to Pendleton.

The boy was torn by great and conflicting emotions. He would carry out with his life the task that Thomas had assigned to him, and yet he wished to stop near Pendleton, if only for an hour.

Yes an hour would do! And it could not interfere with his duty! But Pendleton was a Southern stronghold. Everybody there knew him, and they all knew, too, that he was in the service of the North. How could he pass by without being seen and what might happen then? The terrible conflict went on in his mind, and it was stilled only when he decided to leave it to time and chance.

He rode that day almost without interruption, securing an ample dinner, where no one chose to ask questions, accepting him at his own statement of himself and probably believing it. He heard that a small Southern force was to the southward, probably marching toward Bowling Green, where a great Confederate army under Albert Sidney Johnston was said to be concentrated. But the news gave him no alarm. His own road was still leading west slightly by north.

When night came he was in the pleasant and fertile hill country, dotted with double brick houses, and others of wood, all with wide porticos, supported by white pillars. It looked smiling and prosperous even in winter. The war had done no ravages here, and he saw men at work about the great barns.

He slept in the house of a big farmer, who liked the frank voice and eyes of the lad, and who cared nothing for any errand upon which he might be riding. He slept, too, without dreams, and without awakening until the morning, when he shared a solid breakfast with the family.

Dick obtained at the farmhouse a fresh supply of cold food for his saddle bags, to be held against an emergency, although it was likely now that he could obtain all he needed at houses as he passed. Receiving the good wishes of his hosts he rode on through the hills. The intense cold which kept troops from marching much really served him, as the detachments about the little towns stayed in their camps.

The day was quite clear, with the mercury still well below zero, but his heavy clothing kept him warm and comfortable. His great horse showed no signs of weariness. Apparently his sinews were made of steel.

Noon came, but Dick did not seek any farmhouse for what was called dinner in that region. Instead he ate from his saddle bags as he rode on. He did not wish to waste time, and, moreover, he had taken his resolution. He would go near Pendleton. It was on his most direct route, but he would pass in the night.

As the cold twilight descended he came into familiar regions. Like all other young Kentuckians he was a great horseman, and with Harry Kenton and other lads of his age he had ridden nearly everywhere in a circuit of thirty miles around Pendleton.

It was with many a throb of the heart that he now recognized familiar scenes. He knew the fields, the forests and the houses. But he was glad that the night had come. Others would know him, and he did not wish to be seen when he rode on such an errand. He had been saving his horse in the afternoon, but now he pushed him forward at a much faster gait. The great horse responded willingly and Dick felt the powerful body working beneath him, smooth and tireless like a perfect machine.

He passed nobody on the road. People hugged their fires on such a cold night, and he rode hour after hour without interruption. It was nearly midnight when he stopped on a high hill, free of forest, and looked down upon Pendleton. The wonderful clearness of the winter night helped him. All the stars known to man were out, and helped to illuminate the world with a clear but cold radiance.

Although a long distance away Dick could see Pendleton clearly. There was no foliage on the trees now, and nearly every house was visible. The great pulse in his throat throbbed hard as he looked. He saw the steeples of the churches, the white pillars of the court house, and off to one side the academy in which he and Harry Kenton had gone to school together. He saw further away Colonel Kenton's own house on another hill. It, too, had porticos, supported by white pillars which gleamed in the moonlight.

Then his eyes traveled again around the half circle before him. The place for which he was looking could not be seen. But he knew that it would be so. It was a low house, and the evergreens about it, the pines and cedars would hide it at any time. But he knew the exact spot, and he wanted his eyes to linger there a little before he rode straight for it.

Now the great pulse in his throat leaped, and something like a sob came from him. But it was not a sob of unhappiness. He clucked to his horse and turned from the main road into a narrower one that led by the low house among the evergreens. Yet he was a boy of powerful will, and despite his eagerness, he restrained his horse and advanced very slowly. Sometimes he turned the animal upon the dead turf by the side of the road in order that his footsteps might make no sound.

He drew slowly nearer, and when he saw the roof and eaves of the low house among the evergreens the great pulse in his throat leaped so hard that it was almost unbearable. He reached the edge of the lawn that came down to the road, and hidden by the clipped cone of a pine he saw a faint light shining.

He dismounted, opened the gate softly, and led his horse upon the lawn, hitching him between two pines that grew close together, concealing him perfectly.

"Be quiet, old fellow," he whispered, stroking the great intelligent head. "Nobody will find you here and I'll come back for you."

The horse rubbed his nose against his arm but made no other movement. Then Dick walked softly toward the house, pulses beating hard and paused just at the edge of a portico, where he stood in the shadow of a pillar. He saw the light clearly now. It shone from a window of the low second story. It came from her window and her room. Doubtless she was thinking at that very moment of him. His throat ached and tears came into his eyes. The light, clear and red, shone steadily from the window and made a band across the lawn.

He picked a handful of sand from the walk that led to the front door and threw it against the window. He knew that she was brave and would respond, but waiting only a moment or two he threw a second handful fully and fairly against the glass.

The lower half of the window was thrown open and a head appeared, where the moonlight fell clearly upon it. It was the head of a beautiful woman, framed in thick, silken yellow hair, the eyes deep blue, and the skin of the wonderful fairness so often found in that state. The face was that of a woman about thirty-seven or eight years of age, and without a wrinkle or flaw.

"Mother!" called Dick in a low voice as he stepped from the shadow of the pillar.

There was a cry and the face disappeared like a flash from the window. But he had only a few moments to wait. Her swift feet brought her from the room, down the stairway, and along the hall to the door, which she threw open. The next instant Mrs. Mason had her son in her arms.

"Oh, Dick, Dicky, boy, how did you come!" she exclaimed. "You were here under my window, and I did not even know that you were alive!"

Her tears of joy fell upon his face and he was moved profoundly. Dick loved his beautiful young mother devoutly, and her widowhood had bound them all the more closely together.

"I've come a long distance, and I've come in many ways, mother," he replied, "by train, by horseback, and I have even walked."

"You have come here on foot?"

"No, mother. I rode directly over your own smooth lawn on one of the biggest horses you ever saw, and he's tied now between two of the pine trees. Come, we must go in the house. It's too cold for you out here. Do you know that the mercury is about ten degrees below zero."

"What a man you have grown! Why, you must be two inches taller than you were, when you went away, and how sunburned and weather-beaten you are, too! Oh, Dicky, this terrible, terrible war! Not a word from you in months has got through to me!"

"Nor a word from you to me, mother, but I have not suffered so much so far. I was at Bull Run, where we lost, and I was at Mill Spring, where we won, but I was unhurt."

"Perhaps you have come back to stay," she said hopefully.

"No, mother, not to stay. I took a chance in coming by here to see you, but I couldn't go on without a few minutes. Inside now, mother, your hands are growing cold."

They went in at the door, and closed it behind them. But there was another faithful soul on guard that night. In the dusky hail loomed a gigantic black figure in a blue checked dress, blue turban on head.

"Marse Dick?" she said.

"Juliana!" he exclaimed. "How did you know that I was here?"

"Ain't I done heard Miss Em'ly cry out, me always sleepin' so light, an' I hears her run down the hail. An' then I dresses an' comes an' sees you two through the crack o' the do', an' then I waits till you come in."

Dick gave her a most affectionate greeting, knowing that she was as true as steel. She rejoiced in her flowery name, as many other colored women rejoiced in theirs, but her heart inhabited exactly the right spot in her huge anatomy. She drew mother and son into the sitting-room, where low coals still burned on the hearth. Then she went up to Mrs. Mason's bedroom and put out the light, after which she came back to the sitting-room, and, standing by a window in silence, watched over the two over whom she had watched so long.

"Why is it that you can stay such a little while?" asked Mrs. Mason.

"Mother," replied Dick in a low tone, "General Thomas, who won the battle at Mill Spring, has trusted me. I bear a dispatch of great importance. It is to go to General Buell, and it has to do with the gathering of the Union troops in the western and southern parts of our state, and in Tennessee. I must get through with it, and in war, mother, time counts almost as much as battles. I can stop only a few minutes even for you."

"I suppose it is so. But oh, Dicky, won't this terrible war be over soon?"

"I don't think so, mother. It's scarcely begun yet."

Mrs. Mason said nothing, but stared into the coals. The great negress, Juliana, standing at the window, did not move.

"I suppose you are right, Dick," she said at last with a sigh, "but it is awful that our people should be arrayed so against one another. There is your cousin, Harry Kenton, a good boy, too, on the other side."

"Yes, mother, I caught a glimpse of him at Bull Run. We came almost face to face in the smoke. But it was only for an instant. Then the smoke rushed in between. I don't think anything serious has happened to him."

Mrs. Mason shuddered.

"I should mourn him next to you," she said, "and my brother-in-law, Colonel Kenton, has been very good. He left orders with his people to watch over us here. Pendleton is strongly Southern as you know, but nobody would do us any harm, unless it was the rough people from the hills."

Colonel Kenton's wife had been Mrs. Mason's elder sister, and Dick, as he also sat staring into the coals, wondered why people who were united so closely should yet be divided so much.

"Mother," he said, "when I came through the mountains with my friends we stopped at a house in which lived an old, old woman. She must have been nearly a hundred. She knew your ancestor and mine, the famous and learned Paul Cotter, from whom you and I are descended, and she also knew his friend and comrade, the mighty scout and hunter, Henry Ware, who became the great governor of Kentucky."

"How strange!"

"But the strangest is yet to be told. Harry Kenton, when he went east to join Beauregard before Bull Run, stopped at the same house, and when she first saw him she only looked into the far past. She thought it was Henry Ware himself, and she saluted him as the governor. What do you think of that, mother?"

"It's a startling coincidence."

"But may it not be an omen? I'm not superstitious, mother, but when things come together in such a queer fashion it's bound to make you think. When Harry's paths and mine cross in such a manner maybe it means that we shall all come together again, and be united as we were."

"Maybe."

"At any rate," said Dick with a little laugh, "we'll hope that it does."

While the boy was not noticing his mother had made a sign to Juliana, who had crept out of the room. Now she returned, bearing food upon a tray, and Dick, although he was not hungry, ate to please his mother.

"You will stay until morning?" she said.

"No, mother. I can't afford to be seen here. I must leave in the dark."

"Then until it is nearly morning."

"Nor that either, mother. My time is about up already. I could never betray the trust that General Thomas has put in me. My dispatches not only tell of the gathering of our own troops, but they contain invaluable information concerning the Confederate concentration which General Thomas learned from his scouts and spies. Mother, I think a great battle is coming here in the west."

She shuddered, but she did not seek again to delay him in his duty.

"I am proud," she said, "that you have won the confidence of your general, and that you ride upon such an important errand. I should have been glad if you had stayed at home, Dick, but since you have chosen to be a soldier, I am rejoiced that you have risen in the esteem of your officers. Write to me as often as you can. Maybe none of your letters will reach me, but at least start them. I shall start mine, too."

"Of course, mother," said Dick, "and now it's time for me to ride hard."

"Why, you have been here only a half hour!"

"Nearer an hour, mother, and on this journey of mine time means a lot. I must say good-bye now to you and Juliana."

The two women followed him down the lawn to the point where his horse was hitched between the two big pines. Mrs. Mason patted the horse's great head and murmured to him to carry her son well.

"Did you ever see a finer horse, mother?" said Dick proudly. "He's the very pick of the army."

He threw his arms around her neck, kissed her more than once, sprang into the saddle and rode away in the darkness.

The two women, the black and the white, sisters in grief, and yet happy that he had come, went slowly back into the house to wait, while the boy, a man's soul in him, strode on to war.

Dick was far from Pendleton when the dawn broke, and now he had full need of caution. His horse was bearing him fast into debatable ground, where every man suspected his neighbor, and it remained for force alone to tell to which side the region belonged. But the extreme delicacy of the tension came to Dick's aid. People hesitated to ask questions, lest questions equally difficult be asked of them in return. It was a great time to mind one's own business.

He rode on, fortune with him for the present, and his course was still west slightly by north. He slept under roofs, and he learned that in the country into which he had now come the Union sympathizers were more numerous than the Confederate. The majority of the Kentuckians, whatever their personal feelings, were not willing to shatter the republic.

He heard definitely that here in the west the North was gathering armies greater than any that he had supposed. Besides the troops from the three states just across the Ohio River the hardy lumbermen and pioneers were pouring down from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Hunters in deerskin suits and buffalo moccasins had already come from the far Nebraska Territory.

The power of the west and the northwest was converging upon his state, which gave eighty thousand of its men to the Northern cause, while half as many more went away to the Southern armies, particularly to the one under the brilliant and daring Albert Sidney Johnston, which hung a sinister menace before the Northern front. One hundred and twenty thousand troops sent to the two armies by a state that contained but little more than a million people! It was said at the time that as Kentucky went, so would go the fortunes of the Union and in the end it was so.

But these facts and reckonings were not much in Dick's mind just then. He was thinking of Buell's camp and of the message that he bore. Again and again he felt of that little inside pocket of his vest to see that it was there, although he knew that by no chance could he have lost it.

When he was within fifteen miles of Buell's camp a heavy snow began to fall. But he did not mind it. The powerful horse that had borne him so well carried him safely on to his destination, and before the sundown of that day the young messenger was standing before General Don Carlos Buell, one of the most puzzling characters whom he was to meet in the whole course of the war. He had found Thomas a silent man, but he found Buell even more so. He received Dick in an ordinary tent, thanked him as he saluted and handed him the dispatch, and then read General Thomas' message.

Dick saw before him a shortish, thickset man, grim of feature, who did not ask him a word until he had finished the dispatch.

"You know what this contains?" he said, when he came to the end.

"Yes, General Thomas made me memorize it, that I might destroy it if I were too hard pressed."

"He tells us that Johnston is preparing for some great blow and he gives the numbers and present location of the hostile forces. Valuable information for us, if it is used. You have done well, Mr. Mason. To what force were you attached?"

"A small division of Pennsylvania troops under Major Hertford. They were to be sent by General Thomas to General Grant at Cairo, Illinois."

"And you would like to join them."

"If you please, sir."

"In view of your services your wish is granted. It is likely that General Grant will need all the men whom he can get. A detachment leaves here early in the morning for Elizabethtown, where it takes the train for Louisville, proceeding thence by water to Cairo. You shall go with these men. They are commanded by Colonel Winchester. You may go now, Mr. Mason."

He turned back to his papers and Dick, thinking his manner somewhat curt, left his tent. But he was pleased to hear that the detail was commanded by Colonel Winchester. Arthur Winchester was a man of forty-one or two who lived about thirty miles north of Pendleton. He was a great landowner, of high character and pleasant manners. Dick had met him frequently in his childhood, and the Colonel received him with much warmth.

"I'm glad to know, Dick," he said familiarly, "that you're going with us. I'm fond of Pendleton, and I like to have one of the Pendleton boys in my command. If all that we hear of this man Grant is true, we'll see action, action hot and continuous."

They rode to Elizabethtown, where Dick was compelled to leave his great horse for Buell's men, and went by train to Louisville, going thence by steamer down the Ohio River to Cairo, at its junction with the Mississippi, where they stood at last in the presence of that general whose name was beginning to be known in the west. _

Read next: Chapter 9. Taking A Fort

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