“'Tain't nothin, sir. I didn't swim. It was my horse. I guess he'd take me across the Mississippi itself. I wouldn't have anything to do but stick on his back. Look up, sir, an' you can see the mountains close by.”
Harry and Dalton looked up through the rift in the trees, and saw almost over them the lofty outline of the Blue Ridge, the eastern rampart of the valley, heavy with forest from base to top.
“We must be near the Gap,” said Dalton.
“We are,” said Billy. “We've been coming fast. It's nigh on to fifteen miles from here to home.”
“And must be a full thirty to Harper's Ferry,” said Dalton.
“Does this path lead to some point overlooking the Gap,” asked Harry, “where we can see the enemy if he's there, and he can't see us?”
“Yes, sir. We can ride on a slope not more than two miles from here and look right down into the Gap.”
“And if troops are there we'll be sure to see their fires,” said Dalton. “Lead on, Billy.”
Billy led with boldness and certainty. It was the greatest night of his life, and he meant to fulfill to the utmost what he deemed to be his duty. The narrow path still wound among mighty trees, the branches of which met now and then over their heads, shutting out the moonlight entirely. It led at this point toward the north and they were rapidly ascending a shoulder of the mountain, leaving the Gap on their right.
Harry, riding on such an errand, felt to the full the weird quality of mountains and forest, over which darkness and silence brooded. The foliage was very heavy, and it rustled now and then as the stray winds wandered along the slopes of the Blue Ridge. But for that and the hoofbeats of their own horses, there was no sound save once, when they heard a scuttling on the bark of a tree. They saw nothing, but Billy pronounced it a wildcat, alarmed by their passage.