Flags in the Dust Read Free Page B

thunder of hooves. Stuart swerved from the road and they crashed headlong through undergrowth. The Federal horsemen came yelling behind them and Stuart led his party in a tight circle and halted it panting in a dense swampy copse and they heard the pursuit sweep past.
    They pushed on and regained the road and retraced their former course, silently and utterly alert. To the left the sound of the immediate pursuit crashed on, dying away. Then they cantered again. Presently the woods thickened and they were forced to slow to a trot, then to a walk. Although there was no more firing and the bugles too had ceased, into the silence, above the strong and rapid breathing of the horses and the sound of their own hearts in their ears, was a nameless something—a tenseness seeping from tree to tree like an invisible mist, filling the dewy morning woods with portent though birds flashed swooping from tree to tree, unaware or disregardful of it.
    A gleam of white through the trees ahead; Stuart raised his hand and they halted and sat their horses, watching him quietly and holding their breaths with listening. Then the General advanced again and broke through the undergrowth into another glade and they followed, and before them rose the knoll with the deserted breakfast-table and the rifled commissary tent. They trotted warily across the glade and halted at the table while the General scribbled hastily upon a scrap of paper. The glade dreamed quiet and empty of threat beneath the mounting golden day; laked within it lay a deep and abiding peace like golden wine; yet beneath this solitude and permeating it was that nameless and waiting portent, patient and brooding and sinister.
    “Your sword, Sir,” Stuart commanded, and the prisoner removed his weapon and Stuart took it and pinned his scribbled note to the table-top with it. The note read:
    “General Stuart’s compliments to General Pope, and he is sorry to have missed him again. He will call again tomorrow.”
    Stuart gathered up his reins. “Forward,” he said.
    They descended the knoll and crossed the empty glade and at an easy canter they took the road they had traversed that dawn—the road that led toward home. Stuart glanced back athis captive, at the gallant black with its double burden. “If you will direct us to the nearest cavalry picket I will provide you with a proper mount,” he offered again.
    “Will General Stuart, cavalry leader and General Lee’s eyes, jeopardise his safety and that of his men and his cause in order to provide for the temporary comfort of a minor prisoner of his sword? This is not bravery: it is the rashness of a heedless and headstrong boy. There are fifteen thousand men within a radius of two miles of this point; even General Stuart cannot conquer that many, though they are Yankees, single-handed.”
    “Not for the prisoner, Sir,” Stuart replied haughtily, “but for the officer suffering the fortune of war. No gentleman would do less.”
    “No gentleman has any business in this war,” the major retorted. “There is no place for him here. He is an anachronism, like anchovies. At least General Stuart did not capture our anchovies,” he added tauntingly. “Perhaps he will send Lee for them in person?”
    “Anchovies,” repeated Bayard Sartoris who galloped nearby, and he whirled his horse. Stuart shouted at him, but he lifted his reckless stubborn hand and flashed on; and as the General would have turned to follow a Yankee picket fired his piece from the roadside and dashed into the woods, shouting the alarm. Immediately other muskets exploded on all sides and from the forest to the right came the sound of a considerable body put suddenly into motion, and behind them in the direction of the invisible knoll, a volley crashed. A third officer spurred up and caught Stuart’s bridle.
    “Sir, Sir,” he exclaimed. “What would you do?”
    Stuart held his mount rearing, and another volley rang behind them, dribbling off into single