“Whoever in dey born days see de like ob dat? Christian folk actin’ de debbil lak dat! Hit er-gwine ter bring er jedgment! Yo’ ain’ huht, mistis?”
“No,” said Désirée. “I felt as though something were bearing down upon me out of ‘Paradise Lost.’”
“What dat blood on yo’ ahm?”
Désirée looked. “A bullet must have grazed it. I never felt it. It doesn’t hurt much now.”
They did not get to Resaca that night. Julius Cæsar was too tired, the road too heavy, and one of Wheeler’s outposts, stopping the wagon, insisted that it was not safe for it to go farther in the darkness. With the first fireflies they turned aside to a “cracker’s” cabin in a fold of the hills and asked for hospitality. A tall, lean, elderly woman and her tall, lean daughters gave them rude shelter and rude fare. In the morning the wagon and Julius Cæsar and Nebuchadnezzar and Désirée went on again toward Resaca.
To-day they overtook more limping soldiers than had been the case on yesterday. The wagon gave “lifts” to several and would have given more but that Julius Cæsar was so evidently a weary and worn foot soldier himself. They came upon a bank topped by a pine tree, and under it, his arm overhanging the road, was stretched a soldier overtaken by a fever. His face was flushed and burning hot, his eyes bright and wild. “Point Coupée Artillery!” he said; “Point Coupée Artillery!” over and over again. Désirée made Nebuchadnezzar draw rein. She got out of the wagon, climbed the bank, and knelt beside the man. “Point Coupée Artillery!” he said. “Water! Point Coupée Artillery. Water!” There was no spring anywhere near. She had had a bottle of water, but had given it all to two soldiers a mile back. Together she and Nebuchadnezzar got the artilleryman into the wagon, where he lay with his head against her knee. “Point Coupée!” she said. “Louisiana!” and her hand lay cool and soft upon the burning forehead. They carried him two miles, until they came to the house of a widow, who took the fevered man in and gave him water and a bed, and could be trusted, Désirée saw, to nurse him. Going on for a mile, they came up with a boy with a badly cut foot and a man with a bandaged head and his trouser leg rolled up to the thigh, bandaged, too, with a bloody cloth. Both were white-lipped with the heat and weariness, and Désirée and Nebuchadnezzar and Julius Cæsar took them on upon the road. Désirée said that she was tired of riding and walked beside the wagon, and when they came to a hill, Nebuchadnezzar, too, got down and walked. The two honest stragglers, though worse for the wear, were cheerful souls and inclined to talk. “Near Resaca? Yes, ma’am; right near now. It’s mighty good of you to give us a lift! Old Joe certainly can’t begin the battle till Robin and me get there!”
Robin put in his oar. “Man on horseback came riding along awhile ago and turned off toward the Connesauga, an’ he said that Loring met the Yanks yesterday as they were streaming out of Snake Creek Gap, and held them in check for three hours until Hardee and Hood came up and formed, and that then things stopped and were holding their breath on that line when he left—”
“Old Blizzard’s a good one! Never’ll forget him at Fort Pemberton! ‘Give them blizzards, men!’ says he. ‘Give them blizzards!’”
“My husband was at Fort Pemberton. Were you at Vicksburg?”
“Vicksburg! Should think I was at Vicksburg! Were you, ma’am?”