The Cavalier | Page 9

have taken me for its center as
smoothly as a sleeping top. Only after a good seven miles did my
meditations begin to reveal any bitter in the sweet; but it was in
recalling for the twentieth time the last sight of Camille, that I heard
myself say, I know not whether softly or loudly,
"Oh, hang the uniform!"
The morning was almost sultry. As I halted in the clear ripples of a
gravelly "branch" to let my horse drink, I heard no great way off the
Harpers' train shrieking at cattle on the track, and looking up I noticed
just behind me an unfrequented by-road carefully masked with brush,
according to a new habit of the "citizens". The next moment my horse
threw up his head to listen. Then I heard hoofs and voices, and
presently there came trotting through the oak bushes and around the
mask of brush two horsemen unusually well mounted, clad and armed.

Their very dark gray uniforms were so trim and so nearly blue that my
heart came into my throat; but then I noticed they carried neither
carbines nor sabres, but repeaters only, a brace to each. They splashed
lightly to either side of me, and the three horses drank together.
"Good-morning," we said. One of the men was a sergeant. He scanned
my animal, and then me, with a dawning smile. "That's a fightin'-cock
of a horse you've got, sonny."
"Yes, bub," I replied. The two men laughed so explosively that my
horse lifted his head austerely.
"Jim," said the younger, "I don't believe all the conscripts we've caught
these three days are worth the powder they've cost!"
"No," replied Sergeant Jim, "I doubt if the most of 'em are." I turned to
him and drew down my under eyelid. "Will you kindly tell me, sir, if
you see any unnatural discoloration in there?"
He smiled. "No, but I can put some there if you want it."
"Thank you, I couldn't let you take so much trouble--or risk."
The three of us pattered out of the stream abreast. "No trouble," replied
the sergeant, "it wouldn't take half a minute."
"No," I rejoined, "the first step would be the last."
The men laughed again. "You must a-been born with all your teeth,"
said the private, as we quickened to a trot. "What makes you think we
ain't after conscripts?"
"Oh, if you were you wouldn't say so. You'd let on to be looking for
good crossings on Pearl River, so that if Johnston should get chewed up
we needn't be caught here in a hole, Ferry's scouts and all."
The pair looked at each other behind my neck for full ten seconds.
Then the younger man leaned to his horse's mane in a silent laugh
while Sergeant Jim looked me over again and remarked that he would

be horn-swoggled!
"I'm willing," I responded, and we all laughed. The younger horseman
asked my name. "Smith," I said, with dignity, and they laughed again,
their laugh growing louder when I would not smile.
"Well, say; maybe you'll tell us who this is we're about to meet up
with."
Through the shifting colonnades of pine, a hundred yards in front of us,
came two horsemen in the same blue-gray of the pair beside me.
"Whoever he is," I said, "that gray he's riding is his second best, or it's
borrowed," for his mount, though good, was no match for him.
"Borrowed!" echoed the sergeant. "If he doesn't own that mare no man
does."
"Nor no woman?" I asked, and again across the back of my neck my
two companions gazed at each other.
"By ganny!" exclaimed one, and--"You're a coon," murmured the other,
as the new-comers drew near. The younger of these also was a private.
Behind his elbow was swung a Maynard rifle. Both carried revolvers.
The elder wore a long straight sword whose weather-dimmed orange
sash showed at the front of a loose cut-away jacket. Under this garment
was a shirt of strong black silk, made from some lady's gown and
daintily corded with yellow. On the jacket's upturned collar were the
two gilt bars of a first lieutenant, but the face above them shone with a
combined intelligence and purity that drew my whole attention.
A familiar friendship lighted every countenance but mine as this second
pair turned and rode with us, the lieutenant in front on Sergeant Jim
Longley's right, and the two privates with me between them behind.
For some minutes the sergeant, in under-tone, made report to his young
superior. Then in a small clearing he turned abruptly into a
neighborhood road, and at his word my two companions pricked after
him westward. I closed up beside the lieutenant; he praised the weather,
and soon our talk was fluent though broken, as