For twenty miles Dad rode in safety.
That did not mean he covered twenty straight-away miles of his journey. On the contrary, he lessened the distance between himself and Hooker’s headquarters by less than twelve miles.
Avoiding main roads as far as possible; reconnoitering and then making détours when danger seemed to threaten or when fresh hoof-marks denoted the recent passing of cavalrymen; going out of his way to take advantage of hillock-and-forest shelter—he had almost doubled the distance that would have been needful had he followed the direct route.
Thus far he had met with no mishap. Once he had plunged into a thicket, halted abruptly there, and dismounted as a troop of gray-coated patrols jingled past on the road barely twenty yards distant. Cautiously reaching downward, he had snatched a handful of sweet fern, and with it had rubbed his horse’s nostrils; lest the beast catching the scent of the patrols’ horses, should whinny.
Again he had turned quickly into a high-banked and twisting lane at sight of a dust-cloud far ahead and thus avoided a battalion of Jackson’s cavalry.
A third time he had spurred his horse into a gully of red clay on sound of hoof-beats, just before a band of guerrillas, or bushwhackers, had cantered by.
His senses super-tense, calling on himself for every scouting trick that old-time experience could devise, Dad wound his tortuous way safely through a score of pitfalls that would have entrapped a lesser man.
The farther he rode the more fully he realized the truth of his general’s forecast that the chances against his winning through to Hooker were ten to one.
In fact, the prospect of any one’s making the whole trip in safety was negligible.
The whole countryside was alive with Confederates. Dad could see traces of their passage everywhere. More than once he was tempted to dismount and trust to the greater safety, if lesser speed, of a foot journey.