Rather whimsically smiling, the black-bearded captain held up both his hands, crying “Halt!” to his troop, who obeyed the command in somewhat amused wonder.
“You needn’t to smile so nice as all that,” snapped the old lady. “I’ve half a mind to shoot you. And you tell that man of yours to let Jimmie go. You got the captain, but you ain’t goin’ to get Jimmie, too!”
And then she felt around her shoulders the iron arm of one of the Confederate troopers, whose horse had been concealed by the cottage, but who had slipped round in back of her.
Desperately she tried to turn the muzzle of the gun on him, but his strong hand slipped down on her arm, caught the revolver and wrenched it from her.
She faced the captain again, her shoulders up, ready.
“Tell your murderers to finish me, too,” she said.
The captain of cavalry, for all his big bulk, slipped from his horse as easily as a youngster dismounting before his sweetheart.
“Ma’am,” he said, “we’re soldiers, but Ah reckon we ain’t quite murderers. Mah mother’s a powerful lot like you, ma’am, and Ah reckon Ah love her most’s well most sons do. Sanders, let that boy go. And Ah hope your husband ain’t killed, ma’am. And, ma’am, Ah reckon you’re a praying woman—will you think of my mother to-night when you say your prayers? Last Ah heard, there was a right smart o’ Yanks burnin’ an’ raidin’ near her house, an’—
“Mount! Ride! Trot!”
Standing in the lane, watching the bunch of Confederate cavalry go swirling along the turnpike, bound on a raid right for the Federal lines, the old lady suddenly bent back her shoulders and saluted.