Always he waited as long as he could, as if the chance of any moment might conjure into the landscape, brilliant with the vivid growths and tender grace of the spring, that for which he looked in vain. A wind would come up the gorge and flutter about him, as he stood poised on the upward slant of the rock, the loftiest point of the mountain. If it were a young and frisky zephyr, but lately loosed from the cave of Æolus, which surely must be situated near at hand—on the opposite spur perhaps, so windy was the ravine, so tumultuous the continual coming and going of the currents of the air,—he must needs risk his balance on the pinnacle of the crag to hold on to his hat. And sometimes the frolicsome breeze like other gay young sprites would not have done with playing tag, and when he thought himself safe and lowered his hand to shade his eyes, again the wind would twitch it by the brim and scurry away down the ravine, making all the trees ripple with murmurous laughter as it sped to the valley, while Hilary would gasp and plunge forward and once more clutch his hat, then again look out to descry perchance what he so ardently longed to see in the distance. Some pleasant vision he surely must have expected—something charming to the senses or promissory of weal or happiness it must have been; for his cheek flushed scarlet and his pulses beat fast at the very thought.
No one noticed his coming or going. All boys are a species of vagrant fowl, and with the daily migrations back and forth of a young mountaineer especially, no steady-minded, elder person would care to burden his observation. Another kind of fowl, an eagle, had built a nest in the bare branches at the summit of an isolated pine tree, of which only the lower boughs were foliaged, and this was higher even than the peak to which Hilary daily repaired for the earliest glimpse of his materialized hopes advancing down the gorge. The pair of birds only of all the denizens of the mountain took heed of his movements and displayed an anxiety and suspicion and a sort of fierce but fluttered indignation. It is impossible to say whether they were aware that their variety had grown rare in these parts, and that their capture, dead or alive, would be a matter of very considerable interest, and it is also futile to speculate as to whether they had any knowledge of the uses or range of the rifle which Hilary sometimes carried on his shoulder. Certain it is, however, the male bird muttered indignantly as he looked down at the young mountaineer, and was wont to agitatedly flop about the great clumsy nest of interwoven sticks where the female, the larger of the two, with a steady courage sat motionless, only her elongated neck and bright dilation of the eyes betokening her excitement and distress. The male bird was of a more reckless tendency, and often visibly strove with an intermittent intention of swooping down to attack the intruder, for Hilary was but a slender fellow of about sixteen years, although tall and fleet of foot. A good shot, too, he was, and he had steady nerves, despite the glitter of excitement in his eyes forever gazing down the gorge. Because of his absorption in this expectation he took no notice of the eagles, although to justify his long absences from home he often brought his rifle on the plea of hunting. How should he care to observe the birds when at any moment he might see the flutter of a guidon in the valley road, a mere path from this height, and hear the trumpet sing out sweet and clear in the silence of the wilderness! At any moment the wind might bring the sound of the tramp of cavalry, the clatter of the carbine and canteen, and the clanking of spur and saber as some wild band of guerrillas came raiding through the country.
For despite the solemn stillness that brooded in the similitude of the deepest peace upon the scene, war was still rife in the land. The theater of action was far from this sequestered region, but there had been times when the piny gorges were full of the more prickly growth of bayonets. The echoing crags were taught the thrilling eloquence of the bugle, and the mountains reverberated with the oratory of the cannon—for the artillery learned to climb the deer-paths. There was a fine panorama once in the twilight when a battery on the heights shelled the woods in the valley, and tiny white clouds with hearts of darting fire described swift aerial curves, the fuses burning brightly against the bland blue sky, ere that supreme moment of explosion when the bursting fragments hurtled wildly through the air.
Occasionally a cluster of white tents would spring up like mushrooms at the base of a mountain spur—gone as suddenly as they had come, leaving a bed of embers where the camp-fires had been, a vague wreath of smoke and little trace besides, for the felled trees cut for fuel made scant impression upon the densities of the wilderness, and the rocks were immutable.
And then for months a primeval silence and loneliness might enfold the mountains.
“Ef they kem agin, ef ever they kem agin, I’ll jine ’em—I’ll jine ’em,” cried Hilary out of a full heart as he stood and gazed.
And this was the reason he watched daily and sometimes deep into the night, lest coming under cover of the darkness they might depart before the dawn, leaving only the embers of their camp-fires to tell of their vanished presence.
The prospect stirred the boy’s heart. He longed to be in the midst of action, to take a man’s part in the great struggle, to live the life and do the faithful devoir of a soldier. He was young but he was strong, and he felt that here he was biding at home as if he were no more fit for the military duty he yearned to assume than was the miller’s daughter, Delia Noakes.
“I tole Dely yesterday ez I’d git her ter l’arn me ter spin ef ye kep’ me hyar much longer,” he said one day petulantly to his mother. “I’ll jes’ set an’ spin like a sure-enough gal ef ye won’t let me go an’ jine the army like a boy.”
“I ain’t never gin my word agin yer goin’,” the widow would temporize, alarmed by the possibility of his running away without permission if definitely forbidden to enlist, and therefore craftily holding out the prospect of her consent, which she knew he valued, for he had always been a dutiful son. “I hev never gin my word agin it—not sence ye hev got some growth—ye shot up as suddint ez Jonah’s gourd in a single night. But I don’t want ye ter jine no stray bands—ez mought be bushwhackers an’ sech. Jes’ wait till we git the word whar Cap’n Baker’s command be—fur I want ye ter be under some ez kem from our deestric’—I’d feel so much safer bout’n ye, an’ ye would be pleased, too, Cap’n Baker bein’ a powerful fighter an’ brave an’ respected by all. Ye mus’ wait, too, till I kin finish yer new shuts, an’ knittin’ them socks; I wouldn’t feel right fur ye to go destitute—a plumb beggar fur clothes.”