Dick laughed through sheer exuberance of spirits.
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn't,” he said. “Perhaps the forest is filled with rebel sharpshooters.”
“If you ride toward Jackson you're likely to strike Confederate bands.”
“I didn't say where I'm going, but you may be certain I'll keep a watch for those bands wherever I may be.”
The little man was uncommonly strong nevertheless, as he carried on his shoulder a heavy log which he threw down by one of the fires, but Dick, absorbed in his journey, forgot the desire of the soldier to be riding through the forest too.
He soon left the camp behind. He looked back at it only once, and beheld the luminous glow of the campfires. Then the forest shut it out and he rode on through a region almost abandoned by its people owing to the converging armies. He did not yet look at his map, because he knew that he would soon come into the main road to Jackson. It would be sufficient to determine his course then.
Dick was not familiar with the farther South, which was a very different region from his own Kentucky. His home was a region of firm land, hills and clear streams, but here the ground lay low, the soil was soft and the waters dark and sluggish. But his instincts as a woodsman were fortified by much youthful training, and he felt that he could find the way.
It gave him now great joy to leave the army and ride away through the deep woods. He was tired of battle and the sight of wounds and death. The noises of the camp were painful to his ear, and in the forest he found peace.
He was absolutely alone in his world, and glad of it. The woods were in all the depth and richness of a Southern spring. Vast masses of green foliage billowed away to right and left. Great festoons of moss hung from the oaks, and trailing vines wrapped many of the trees almost to their tops. Wild flowers, pink, yellow and blue, unknown by name to Dick, bloomed in the open spaces.
The air of early morning was crisp with the breath of life. He had come upon a low ridge of hard ground, away from the vast current and low, sodden shores of the Mississippi. Here was a clean atmosphere, and the forest, the forest everywhere. A mockingbird, perched on a bough almost over his head, began to pour forth his liquid song, and from another far away came the same song like an echo. Dick looked up but he could not see the bird among the branches. Nevertheless he waved his hand toward the place from which the melody came and gave a little trill in reply. Then he said aloud: