“Maybe he will,” said Tom hopefully. “Maybe he’ll send the Second Corps!”
“The Second Corps!” Steve grew pale. “He can’t send the Second Corps—it was all cut to pieces at Spottsylvania Court-House—Johnson’s division was, anyhow! The Second Corps ain’t—ain’t the fightin’ corps oncet it was. He’d better send the First or the Third.... Ouch! Do you mind ef I just loosen my shoe for a bit, Mrs. Cole? My foot’s awful bad this mornin’.”
“You’d better telegraph him about the corps,” said Sairy, “right away. Otherwise he might think ’twas good enough for us—Valley men an’ all, an’ some of them even livin’ on Thunder Run. I could ha’ guessed without bein’ told that your foot was bad this mornin’.”
Steve blinked. “I don’t want you to think, Mrs. Cole, that Steve Dagg wouldn’t be glad to see the division ’n’ the brigade ’n’ the Sixty-fifth—what’s left of them. I’d be glad enough to cry. It’s funny how fond soldiers get of each other—marchin’ ’n’ sufferin’ ’n’ fightin’ together ’n’ helpin’ each other out of Devil’s Holes ’n’ Bloody Angles ’n’ Lanes ’n’ such. No, ’m, ’tisn’t that. I’d be jest as glad to see the boys as I could be. I was jest a-thinkin’ of the good of us all, ’n’ them Marse Robert could spare ’n’ them he couldn’t.” He rose, holding by the sapling that made the porch pillar. “I reckon I’ll be creepin’ along. Old Mimy at the sawmill’s makin’ me a yarb liniment.”
He went. Tom took for the twentieth time the newspaper from beneath the toll-box. Christianna sat absently regarding the great, sun-washed panorama commanded by Thunder Run Mountain. The yellow cat came back to the path.
Sairy sighed. “It was always a puzzle to me what the next world does with some of the critturs it gets!”
“It don’t seem noways anxious to get Steve,” said Tom, and began to read again about Spottsylvania.
An hour later Christianna in her blue sunbonnet went up the mountain road toward the Maydew cabin. Rhododendron was in bloom; pine and hickory and walnut and birch made a massive shadow through whose rifts the sun cast bright sequins. Thunder Run, near at hand now, was uttering watery violences. The road, narrow and bad for wheels, was pleasant under the foot of a light walker, untrammelled, elastic, moving with delicate vigour. Christianna loosened her sunbonnet, and the summer wind breathed upon her forehead and ruffled her hair. She was dreaming of city streets and houses, of Richmond, and the going to and fro of the people there. Old Grey Rock rose before her to the right of the road. As she came abreast it, Steve Dagg rose from behind one of its ferny ledges.
He grinned at her violent start. “Laid an avalanche for you, didn’t I? You ain’t really frightened? Did you think it was a bear?”
“No! I thought it was a snake an’ a cat-o-mount an’ a—a monkey!” said Christianna, with spirit. “Friendly an’ polite people don’t do things like that!”