The Long Roll
countryside. "Was a courier before them?" "Yes, sir--a man on a great
bay horse. Said he had important dispatches."
The moon-flooded road, hard beneath the hoofs of the horses, stretched
south and west, unmarked by any moving creature. Marchmont rode in
advance. His horse was strong and fresh; clear of the pickets, he put
him to the gallop. An hour went by. Nothing but the cold, still
moonshine, the sound of hoofs upon the metalled road, and now and then,
in some wayside house, the stealthy lifting of a sash, as man or woman
looked forth upon the riders. At a tollgate the aide drew rein, leaned
from his saddle, and struck against the door with a pistol butt. A man
opened a window. "Has a courier passed, going to Williamsport?"
"Yes, sir. A man on a great bay horse. Three quarters of an hour ago."
"Was he riding fast?"
"Yes. Riding fast."
Marchmont galloped on, his two troopers behind him. Their steeds were
good, but not so good as was his. He left them some way behind. The
night grew old. The moon, which had risen late, was high in the heavens.
The Englishman traversed a shadowy wood, then went by silvered fields. A
cabin door creaked; an old negro put out a cautious head. "Has a courier
passed, going to Williamsport?"
"Yaas, sah. Er big man on er big bay. 'Bout half er hour ergo, sah."
Marchmont galloped on. He looked back over his shoulder--his men were a
mile in the rear. "And when I come up with you, my friend, what then? On
the whole I don't think I'll ask you to turn with me. We'll go on to
Williamsport, and there we'll hold the court of inquiry."
He touched his horse with the spur. The miles of road ran past, the air,
eager and cold, pressed sharply; there came a feeling of the morning. He
was now upon a level stretch of road, before him, a mile away, a long,
bare hill. He crossed a bridge, hollowly sounding through the night, and
neared the hill. His vision was a trained one, exercised by war in many
lands. There was a dark object on the road before him; it grew in size,
but it grew very slowly; it, too, was moving. "You've a tired horse,
though, lieutenant!" said the aide. "Strain as you may, I'll catch you
up!" His own horse devoured the ground, steadily galloping by the frosty
fields, through the air of earliest dawn. Suddenly, before him, the
courier from Kelly halted. Mounted against a faint light in the
southwestern sky, he stood upon the hilltop and waited for the horseman
from Frederick. The latter took at a gallop the remainder of the level
road, but at the foot of the hill changed to a trot. Above him, the
waiting horseman grew life-size. He waited, very quietly, Marchmont
observed, sitting, turned in his saddle, against the sky of dawn.
"Damned if I know if you're truly blue or grey!" thought the aide. "Did
you stop to disarm suspicion, because you saw you'd be overtaken--"
Another minute and the two were in speaking distance; another, and they
were together on the hilltop. "Good-morning!" said McNeill. "What haste
to Williamsport?" He bent forward in the light that was just strong
enough to see by. "Why--It is yesterday's comrade! Good-morning, Captain
Marchmont!"
"We must have started," said Marchmont, "somewhere near the same hour. I
have a communication from General Banks for the commander at
Williamsport."
If the other raised his brows over the aide's acting courier twice in
twenty-four hours, the action did not appear in the yet uncertain light.
Apparently McNeill took the statement easily, upon its face value. "In
that case," he said with amicableness, "I shall have the pleasure of
your company a little longer. We must be about six miles out, I should
think."
"About that distance," agreed the other. "And as at this unearthly hour
I certainly cannot see the colonel, and as your horse is evidently
spent, why go the rest of the way at a gallop?"
"It was my idea," said McNeill, "to pass the river early. If I can gain
the big woods before the day is old, so much the better. Dandy is tired,
it is true, but he has a certain staying quality. However, we will go
more slowly now."
They put themselves in motion. "Two men are behind us," remarked the man
from Romney.
"Yes. There they come through the fields. Two troopers who are riding
with me--Regulars. They'll accommodate their pace to ours."
"Very good," said the other with serenity, and the two rode on,
Marchmont's men a little way behind. By now the stars had faded, the
moon looked wan, there was a faint rose in the east. Far in a vale to
the left a cock crew, and was answered from across a stream. To the
south, visible between and above the fringing trees, a ribbon of mist
proclaimed the river. The two men rode, not in silence, but still not
with yesterday's freedom of speech. There was, however, no quietude that
the chill ebb of the hour and the weariness of overwork might not
account for. They spoke of this and that briefly, but amicably. "Will
you report at headquarters?" asked Marchmont, "before attempting the
Virginia shore?"
"I do not yet know. There is no occasion, as I have all instructions
from General Banks. I wish to make no unnecessary delay."
"Have you the countersign?"
"Yes."
"Will you cross by the ferry?"
"I hardly think so. Ashby may be watching that and the ford below. There
is a place farther up the river that I may try."
"That is, after you pass through Williamsport?"
"Yes, a mile or two beyond."
The light increased. Gold clouds barred the east, the cocks crew, and
crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown cornfields. The road
now ran at no great distance from the canal and the river. First came
the canal, mirroring between trodden banks the red east, then the
towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, and willow, then the
Potomac veiled with mist. They were drawing near to Williamsport. The
day's travel had begun. They met or overtook workers upon the road,
sutlers' carts, ordnance wagons, a squad of artillerymen conducting a
gun, a country doctor in an old buggy, two boys driving calves yoked
together. The road made a curve to the north, like a sickle. On the
inland side it ran beneath a bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a
twelve-foot embankment dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where
the corn stood in shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the
north into the pike, they encountered a company of infantry.
Marchmont checked his horse. "I'm not sure, but I think I know the
officer. Be so good as to await me a moment, lieutenant."
He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low voices. The
infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, and discussed
arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a number of tall men, lean
and sinewy, with a sweep of line and unconstraint of gesture that
smacked of hunters' ways and mountain exercise. The two troopers from
Frederick City came up. The place of the cross-roads showed animated
and blue. The sun pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the
rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain
approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of
the road. "Lieutenant McNeill," said the aide with quietness, "there
seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless
everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be
slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and
to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the
interruption--not a long continued one, I trust--to our pleasant
relations."
McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had come
together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled with his
eyes. "If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can help the
matter. To headquarters, of course--the sooner the better! I can have no
possible objection."
He touched his horse and advanced a little farther into the road. All
the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for the
moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. "You know this officer,
Miller?" called the captain of infantry.
Miller saluted. "No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he crossed
yesterday. We talked a little. 'You've got a Southern voice,' says I,
and he says, 'Yes. I was born in the valley of the South Branch.'
'You'll find company here,' says I, 'for we've got some northwestern
Virginians--'"
"By jingo!" cried the captain, "that's true! There's a squad of them
here." He raised his voice. "Men from northwest Virginia, advance!"
A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as hunters,
eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of the
nineteenth. "Do any of you men know the South Branch of the Potomac?"
Three voices made themselves heard. "Know it like a book."--"Don't know
it like a book--know it like I know my gun and dawg."--"Don't know any
good of it--they-uns air all rebels down that-a-way!"
"Especially," said a fourth voice, "the McNeills."
The courier from Kelly glanced at him sharply. "And what have you got,
my man, against the McNeills?"
"I've got something," stated the mountaineer doggedly. "Something ever
since afore the Mexican War. Root and branch, I've got something against
them. When I heard, over there in Grant, that they was hell-bent for the
Confederacy, I just went, hell-bent, for the other side. Root and
branch, I know them, and root and branch they're damned rebels--"
"Do you know," demanded the captain, "this one? This is Lieutenant
McNeill."
The man looked, General Kelly's courier facing him squarely. There was a
silence upon the road to Williamsport. The mountaineer spat. "He may be
a lieutenant, but he ain't a McNeill. Not from the South Branch valley,
he ain't."
"He says he is."
"Do you think, my friend," asked the man in question, and he looked
amused, "that you really know all the McNeills, or their party? The
valley of the South Branch is long and wide, and the families are large.
One McNeill has simply escaped your observation."
"There ain't," said the man, with grimness, "a damned one of them that
has escaped my observation, and there ain't one of them that ain't a
damned rebel. They're with Ashby now, and those of them that ain't with
Ashby are with Jackson. And you may be Abraham Lincoln or General Banks,
but you ain't a McNeill!"
The ranks opened and there emerged a stout German musician. "Herr
Captain! I was in Winchester before I ran away and joined der Union.
Herr Captain, I haf seen this man. I haf seen him in der grey uniform,
with der gold sword and der sash. And, lieber Gott, dot horse is known!
Dot horse is der horse of Captain Richard Cleave. Dot horse is named
Dundee."
"'Dundee--'" exclaimed Marchmont. "That's the circumstance. You started
to say 'Dundee.'"
He gave an abrupt laugh. "On the whole, I like you even better than I
did--but it's a question now for a drumhead and a provost guard. I'm
sorry--"
The other's hand had been resting upon his horse's neck. Suddenly there
was a motion of his knee, a pressure of this hand, a curious sound,
half speech, half cry, addressed to the bay beneath him. Dundee backed,
gathered himself together, arose in air, cleared the rail fence,
overpassed the embankment and the rivulet beneath, touched the frosted
earth of the cornfield, and was away like an arrow toward the misty
white river. Out of the tumult upon the road rang a shot. Marchmont, the
smoking pistol still in hand, urged his horse to the leap, touched in
turn the field below, and at top speed followed the bay. He shouted to
the troopers behind him; their horses made some difficulty, but in
another moment they, too, were in pursuit. Rifles flashed from the road,