Seeing that she was not followed, Miss Fisher reined in after several wild plunges from Madcap, who felt that he had not had his run half out, and snorted with much surprise in his full bright eyes as, turning in the road, he saw the two mounted officers far behind, stationary and waiting. The victor should never be unduly elated, but Madcap expressed his glee of triumph chiefly in his heels, curvetting and prancing, presently kicking up so uncontrollably, the excitement of the contest, the joy of racing, still surging in his veins and tense in his muscles, that the officers might well have feared some disaster to the girl. They at once put their steeds in motion to go to her assistance, but Madcap, with outstretched head, viewing their start, suddenly made a bounding volte-face in the road, and with the bit between his teeth set out at a pace that discounted his former efforts and carried him out of sight in a few minutes.
Miss Fisher, with all the courage of the red-headed Fisher family, albeit she had become pale and breathless, settled herself firmly in the saddle, held the reins in close, now and then essaying a sharp jerk, first with the right then quickly with the left hand—and it was as much as she could do to keep the saddle at these moments—to displace the grasp of his teeth on the bit. For a time these manœuvres failed, but at last the road became rougher, brambles appeared in its midst, the intention of repair had evidently ceased, and running at full tilt was no longer any great fun. The horse voluntarily slowed his pace, and the sudden jerk right and left snatched the bit from his teeth. He might still have pranced and curvetted, for the spirit of speed was not satiated, but his foot slipped on the uneven gullied ground, he stumbled, and being a town horse and seeing nowhere any promise of a good road, he resigned himself to the guidance of his rider, thinking perhaps she knew more of the country than he.
While she breathed him for a time, she looked about her along the curves of the road, seeing nothing of her companions, and realizing that she was quite alone. This gave her a sentiment of uneasiness for a moment; then she reflected that her friends were doubtless riding forward to overtake her. She drew up the reins, intending to turn, and, retracing her way, to meet them.
The place was all unfamiliar. So swift had been her transit that she had not had a moment's contemplation of the surroundings. She stood at the summit of a gentle slope and could look off toward stretches of forest, here and there interspersed with considerable acreage of cleared ground, evidently formerly farm land, now abandoned in the stress of war and the presence of contending armies. The correctness of this conclusion was confirmed by the sight of two gaunt chimneys at no great distance, between which lay a mass of charred timbers,—once the dwelling, now burned to the ground. The scene was an epitome of desolation, despite the sunshine, which indeed here was but a lonely splendor; despite the brilliance of the trumpet vine, tangled in remnants of the fence, in many a bush, and swaying in long lengths, its scarlet bugles flaring, from the boughs of overshadowing trees; despite the appeal of the elder blossoms of creamy, lacelike delicacy, catching her eye in the thickets, which were so lush, so green, so favored by the rich earth and the prodigal season. She was sensible of a clutch of dread on that merry spirit of hers before she heard a sound—a significant sound that stilled the pulsations of her heart and sent her blood cold. It was the unmistakable sinister sibilance of a shell. She saw the tiny white puff rise up above the forest, skim through the air, drop among the thickets, and then she heard the detonation of an explosion. Before she could draw her breath there came a sudden volley of musketry at a distance,—she knew that for the demonstration of regular soldiers, firing at the word,—then ensued another, and again only a patter of dropping shots. She wondered that her companions did not overtake her—she must find them—she must rejoin them,—when suddenly an object started up from the side of the road, the sight of which palsied her every muscle. A man it was who had lain in the bushes on the hillside, a man so covered with blood that he had lost every semblance of humanity. The blood still came in a steady stream from his mouth, impelled in jets, as if it were under the impulse of a pump, and he held his hand to his stomach, whence too there came blood, dripping down from his fingers. In sickened, aghast dismay she watched his approach, and as he passed she found her voice and called to him to stop,—might she not help him stanch his wounds? His staring eyes gazed vacantly forward with no recognition of the meaning of her words, and he walked deliriously on, every step sending the blood forward, draining the vital currents to exhaustion. Now she dared not turn, she could not pass that hideous apparition. She shuddered and trembled and rode irresolutely forward, just to be moving—hardly with a realized intention. Suddenly the road curved, and the scene of the conflict was before her.
The woods were dense on three sides of a wide stretch of fields that were springing green with new verdure; a portion had even been ploughed and bedded up for cotton; here and there lay strange objects in curious attitudes, which she did not at once recognize as slain men. Among them were scattered carbines, horses already dead, and more than one in scrambling agonies of dying. In the farthest vista field-guns were evidently getting in battery, ready to sweep from the earth a little force of dismounted cavalrymen who had come to close quarters with infantry and who were fighting on foot with carbines. The minié balls now and then sang sharply in the air, and in the excitement she did not realize the danger. Suddenly a puff of smoke rose from the battery, the shell winging its way high above the infantry line and at last falling among the dismounted cavalrymen, who, perceiving the situation to be hopeless, wavered, sought to rally, and at last broke and ran to the horse-holders hidden in the thickets. Thither the shells pursued them, bursting all along the plain, and as Mildred Fisher gazed she saw three men on the field, powerless to reach the shelter. One was wounded,—an officer, evidently,—and the other two were seeking to support him to his horse hard by. At this moment a fragment of shell killed the animal before their eyes.
"Ride out! Ride out!" cried Millie Fisher to a horse-holder that she observed close by in the woods. He was mounted himself, and he held the bridles of three horses. He looked half bewildered, pale, disabled. A shell burst prematurely, out of range and wide of aim, high in the air above their heads.
"I can't," he said; "I'm hit!"
"Give me the line, then!" she cried.
He was past reasoning, beyond surprise, stunned by the clamors and succumbing to wounds.
The next moment, the three great horses in a leash, Madcap led his wildest chase across that stricken plain, now shying aside as some wounded man lifted a ghastly face almost beneath his hoofs, or pitifully sought to crawl away like a maimed and dying beast. The thunder of the frenzied gallop shook the ground; the group of men, for whom the rescue was designed, turned a startled and amazed gaze as the horses came on abreast, snorting and neighing and with tossing manes and wild eyes, rushing like the steeds of Automedon.