The Littlest Rebel Part 14

The soldier laughed.

"My dear," he confided, with a dancing twinkle in hip eye, "to tell you the honest truth, your Uncle Fitz has done it already--_several_ times."

"Has he?" she cried, in rapturous delight. "Oh, _has_ he?"

"He has," the enemy repeated, with vigor and conviction. "But suppose we s.h.i.+ft our conversation to matters a shade more pleasant. Take you, for instance. You see--" He stopped abruptly, turning his head and listening with keen intentness. "What's that?" he asked.

"_I_ didn't hear anything," said Virgie, breathing very fast; but she too had heard it--a sound above them, a sc.r.a.ping sound, as of someone lying flat along the rafters and s.h.i.+fting his position and, while she spoke, a telltale bit of plaster fell, and broke as it struck the floor.

Morrison looked up, starting as he saw the outlines of the closely fitting scuttle, for the loft was so low and shallow that he had not suspected its presence from an outside view; but now he was certain of the fugitive's hiding-place. Virgie watched him, trembling, growing hot in the pit of her little stomach; yet, when he faced her, she looked him squarely in the eye, fighting one last battle for her daddy--as hopeless as the tottering cause of the Stars and Bars.

"You--you don't think he can fly, do you?"

"No, little Rebel," the soldier answered gently, sadly; "but there are other ways." He glanced at the table, measuring its height with the pitch of the ceiling, then turned to her again: "Is your father in that loft?" She made no answer, but began to back away. "Tell me the truth.

Look at me!" Still no answer, and he took a step toward her, speaking sternly: "Do you hear me? _Look_ at me!"

She tried; but her courage was oozing fast. She had done her best, but now it was more than the mite could stand; so she bit her lip to stop its quivering, and turned her head away. For a moment the man stood, silent, wondering if it was possible that the child had been coached in a string of lies to trade upon his tenderness of heart; then he spoke, in a voice of mingled pity and reproach:

"And so you told me a story. And all the rest--is a story, too. Oh, Virgie! Virgie!"

"I didn't!" she cried, the big tears breaking, out at last. "I didn't tell you stories'. Only jus' a _little_ one--for Daddy--an' Gen'ral Lee."

She was sobbing now, and the man looked down upon her in genuine compa.s.sion, his own eyes swimming at her childish grief, his soldier heart athrob and aching at the duty he must perform.

"I'm sorry, dear," he sighed, removing her doll and dragging the table across the floor to a point directly beneath the scuttle in the ceiling.

"What are you goin' to do?" she asked in terror, following as he moved.

"Oh, what are you goin' to do?"

He did not reply. He could not; but when he placed a chair upon the table and prepared to mount, then Virgie understood.

"You shan't! You shan't!" she cried out shrilly. "He's my daddy--and you shan't."

She pulled at the table, and when he would have put her aside, as gently as he could, she attacked him fiercely, in a childish storm of pa.s.sion, sobbing, striking at him with her puny fists. The soldier bowed his head and moved away.

"Oh, I can't! I can't!" he breathed, in conscience-stricken pain. "There _must_ be some other way; and still--"

He stood irresolute, gazing through the open door, watching his men as they hunted for a fellow man; listening to the sounds that floated across the stricken fields--the calls of his troopers; the locusts in the sun-parched woods chanting their shrill, harsh litany of drought; but more insistent still came the m.u.f.fled boom of the big black guns far down the muddy James. They called to him, these guns, in the hoa.r.s.e-tongued majesty of war, bidding him forget himself, his love, his pity--all else, but the grim command to a marching host--a host that must reach its goal, though it marched on a road of human hearts.

The soldier set his teeth and turned to the little rebel, deciding on his course of action; best for her, best for the man who lay in the loft above, though now it must seem a brutal cruelty to both.

"Well, Virgie," he said, "since you haven't told me what I want to know, I'll have to take you--and give you to the Yankees."

He stepped toward her swiftly and caught her by the wrist. She screamed in terror, fighting to break his hold, while the trap above them opened, and the head and shoulders of the Southerner appeared, his pistol held in his outstretched hand.

"Drop it, you hound!" he ordered fiercely. "Drop it!"

The Northerner released his captive, but stood unmoved as he looked into the pistol's muzzle and the blazing eyes of the cornered scout.

"I'm sorry," he said, in quiet dignity. "I'm very sorry; but I had to bring you out." He paused, then spoke again: "And you needn't bother about your gun. If you'd had any ammunition, our fire would have been returned, back yonder in the woods. The game's up, Cary. Come down!"

CHAPTER VI

The head and shoulders disappeared. A short pause followed, then the ladder came slowly down, and the Southerner descended, while Virgie crouched, a sobbing little heap, beside her doll. But when he reached the bottom rung, she rose to her feet and ran to meet him, weeping bitterly.

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I didn't do it right! I didn't do it right!"

She buried her head in his tattered coat, while he slipped an arm about her and tried to soothe a sorrow too great for such a tiny heart to bear.

"But you did do it right," he told her. "It was my fault. Mine! My leg got cramped, and I had to move." He stooped and kissed her. "It was _my_ fault, honey; but you?--you did it _splendidly_!" He patted her tear-stained cheek, then turned to his captor, with a grim, hard smile of resignation to his fate.

"Well, Colonel, you've had a long chase of it; but you've gotten my brush at last."

The Union soldier faced him, speaking earnestly:

"Captain Cary, you're a brave man--and one of the best scouts in the Confederate army. I regret this happening--more than I can say." The Southerner shrugged his shoulders. His Northern captor asked: "Are you carrying dispatches?"

"No."

"Any other papers?--of any kind?" No answer came, and he added sternly: "It is quite useless to refuse. Give them to me."

He held out his hand, but his captive only looked him in the eyes; and the answer, though spoken in an undertone, held a world of quiet meaning:

"You can take it--_afterwards_."

The Federal officer bit his lip; and yet he could not, would not, be denied. His request became demand, backed by authority and the right of might, till Virgie broke in, in a piping voice of indignation:

"You can't have it! It's mine! My pa.s.s to Richmon'--from Gen'ral Lee."

Morrison turned slowly from the little rebel to the man.

"Is this true?" he asked.

The Southerner flushed, and for reply produced the rumpled paper from his boot leg, and handed it over without a word. The Northerner read it carefully.

"_Pa.s.s Virginia Cary and escort through all Confederate lines and give safe-conduct wherever possible._

"R.E. LEE, _General_."

The reader crushed the paper in his fist, while his hand sank slowly to his side, then he raised his head and asked, in a voice which was strangely out of keeping with a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Union Cavalry:

"And who was to be her escort? You?"

The captive nodded, smiling his sad, grim smile; and the captor swallowed hard as he moved to the cabin door and stood listening to the muttered rumble of the river guns.