The Raid of the Guerilla | Page 3

two or three rebs war out of thar tents in the clearin'--thar be a good sight o' new graves up thar!--an' them men war hollerin' an' wavin' me away, till they seen what I war doin'; jes' settin' down the kittle an' startin' off."
She gazed meditatively into the fire, of set purpose avoiding the eyes fixed upon her, and sought to justify her course.
"I knowed ez we-uns hed got used ter doin' 'thout coffee, an' don't feel the need of it now. We-uns air well an' stout, an' live in our good home an' beside our own h'a'th-stone; an' they air sick, an' pore, an' cast out, an' I reckon they ain't ever been remembered before in gifts. An' I 'lowed the coffee, bein' unexpected an' a sorter extry, mought put some fraish heart an' hope in 'em--leastwise show 'em ez God don't 'low 'em ter be plumb furgot."
She still gazed meditatively at the fire as if it held a scroll of her recollections, which she gradually interpreted anew. "I looked back wunst, an' one o' them rebs had sot down on a log an' war sobbin' ez ef his heart would bust. An' another of 'em war signin, at me agin an' agin, like he was drawin' a cross in the air--one pass down an' then one across--an' the other reb war jes' laffin' fur joy, and wunst in a while he yelled out: 'Blessin's on ye! Blessin's! Blessin's!' I dun'no' how fur I hearn that sayin'. The rocks round the creek war repeatin' it, whenst I crossed the f oot-bredge. I dun'no what the feller meant--mought hev been crazy."
A tricksy gust stirred at the door as if a mischievous hand twitched the latch-string, but it hung within. There was a pause. The listening children on the hearth sighed and shifted their posture; one of the hounds snored sonorously in the silence.
"Nuthin' crazy thar 'ceptin' you-uns!--one fool gal--that's all!" said her grandmother, with her knitting-needles and her spectacles glittering in the firelight. "That is a pest camp. Ye mought hev cotch the smallpox. I be lookm' fur ye ter break out with it any day. When the war is over an' the men come back to the Cove, none of 'em will so much as look at ye, with yer skin all pock-marked--fair an' fine as it is now, like a pan of fraish milk."
"But, granny, it won't be sp'ilt! The camp war too fur off--an' thar warn't a breath o' wind. I never went a-nigh 'em."
"I dun'no' how fur smallpox kin travel--an' it jes' mulls and mulls in ye afore it breaks out--don't it, S'briny?"
"Don't ax me," said Mrs. Brusie, with a worried air. "I ain't no yerb doctor, nor nurse tender, nuther. Ethelindy is beyond my understandin'."
She was beyond her own understanding, as she sat weeping slowly, silently. The aspect of those forlorn graves, that recorded the final ebbing of hope and life at the pest camp, had struck her recollection with a most poignant appeal. Strangers, wretches, dying alone, desolate outcasts, the terror of their kind, the epitome of repulsion--they were naught to her! Yet they represented humanity in its helplessness, its suffering, its isolated woe, and its great and final mystery; she felt vaguely grieved for their sake, and she gave the clay that covered them, still crude red clods with not yet a blade of grass, the fellowship of her tears.
A thrill of masculine logic stirred uneasily in the old man's disused brain. "Tell me one thing, Ethelindy," he said, lifting his bleared eyes as he clasped his tremulous hands more firmly on the head of his stick--"tell me this--which side air you-uns on, ennyhow, Ethelindy?"
"I'm fur the Union," said Ethelinda, still weeping, and now and then wiping her sapphire eyes with the back of her hand, hard and tanned, but small in proportion to her size. "I'm fur the Union--fust an' last an' all the time."
The old man wagged his head solemnly with a blight of forecast on his wrinkled, aged face. "That thar sayin' is goin' ter be mighty hard ter live up to whilst Jerome Ackert's critter company is a-raidin' of Tanglefoot Cove."
The presence of the "critter company" was indeed calculated to inspire a most obsequious awe. It was an expression of arbitrary power which one might ardently wish directed elsewhere. From the moment that the echoes of the Cove caught the first elusive strain of the trumpet, infinitely sweet and clear and compelling, yet somehow ethereal, unreal, as if blown down from the daylight moon, a filmy lunar semblance in the bland blue sky, the denizens of Tanglefoot began to tremulously confer together, and to skitter like frightened rabbits from house to house. Tanglefoot Cove is some four miles long, and its average breadth is little more than a mile.