With a deal of wriggling Dad got his right arm out of his jacket and managed to wind the jacket itself roughly around his left arm, that a trail of bloodspots on the road’s dust might not mark his path to his pursuers.
Around another bend swept the galloping roan. And now both forest and snake-fence stopped abruptly, to continue a furlong farther on. The intervening space was filled by a soft, green lawn dotted with trees, and cut off from the road by a four-foot stone wall.
Far back on the lawn and bowered by oaks stood a rambling house of colonial style.
On its pillared front porch sat the littlest and daintiest woman imaginable. She was in black and wore a little, frilled, white apron. Her grayish hair formed a mass of soft curls around her forehead. On her lap was a basket of knitting.
All these details Dad’s eyes saw without fairly grasping them as he galloped into view. And his heart sank.
He had heard of Southern women’s splendid loyalty to “the cause.” This woman would assuredly tell his pursuers that she had seen a man in Yankee uniform ride past. She would add that he was very palpably wounded.
Thus would die his last hope that they might give extra time by pausing to beat up the woods for him.
Dad was turning away from his fleeting glance to scan the road ahead for a lane or other opening, when suddenly he shifted his gaze in astonishment back toward the white-columned portico.
The little woman had sprung to her feet with the agility of a child and was waving her knitting to him in frantic summons.
He had traversed fully half the length of the cleared lawn’s space as he saw the signal. Acting on lightning instinct, he reined in his mount, wheeled him to one side, and put him at the wall.