“The general has asked that you be sent owing to your experience in the mountains,” said Major Hertford, “and I have agreed gladly. I hope that you're as glad as I am.”
“We are, sir,” said the two boys together. The sergeant stood quietly by and smiled.
The detachment numbered a hundred men, all young, strong, and well mounted. They were commanded by a young captain, John Markham, in whom Dick recognized a distant relative. In those days nearly all Kentuckians were more or less akin. The kinship was sufficient for Markham to keep the two boys on either side of him with Sergeant Whitley just behind. Markham lived in Frankfort and he had marched with Thomas from the cantonments at Lebanon to their present camp.
“John,” said Dick, addressing him familiarly and in right of kinship, “you've been for months in our own county. You've surely heard something from Pendleton?”
He could not disguise the anxiety in his voice, and the young captain regarded him with sympathy.
“I had news from there about a month ago, Dick,” he replied. “Your mother was well then, as I have no doubt she is now. The place was not troubled by guerillas who are hanging on the fringe of the armies here in Eastern, or in Southern and Western Kentucky. The war for the present at least has passed around Pendleton. Colonel Kenton was at Bowling Green with Albert Sidney Johnston, and his son, Harry, your cousin, is still in the East.”
It was a rapid and condensed statement, but it was very satisfying to Dick who now rode on for a long time in silence. The road was as bad as a road could be. Snow and ice were mixed with the deep mud which pulled hard at the hoofs of their horses. The country was rough, sterile, and inhabited but thinly. They rode many miles without meeting a single human being. About the third hour they saw a man and a boy on a hillside several hundred yards away, but when Captain Markham and a chosen few galloped towards them they disappeared so deftly among the woods that not a trace of them could be found.
“People in this region are certainly bashful,” said Captain Markham with a vexed laugh. “We meant them no harm, but they wouldn't stay to see us.”
“But they don't know that,” said Dick with the familiarity of kinship, even though distant. “I fancy that the people hereabouts wish both Northerners and Southerners would go away.”
Two miles further on they came to a large, double cabin standing back a little distance from the road. Smoke was rising from the chimney, and Captain Markham felt sure that they could obtain information from its inmates. Dick, at his direction, beat on the door with the butt of a small riding whip. There was no response. He beat again rapidly and heavily, and no answer coming he pushed in the door.