"You bet," assented the sergeant, still laughing. "You oughter heard that gal sass me. There she was, all by herself in a little house, with a kid about two years old, an' when I come politely to tell her I'd take care the men didn't milk her cow or take her chickens, and told her she needn't be afraid of anything, she stood in her door, with that baby in her arms, and fairly poured hot shot into me. 'I'm a soldier's widow,' she says, her eyes blazing. 'Do you think I know what it is to be afraid of you? Oh, if this child only was a man to shoulder his dead father's musket!' Now, you know, Kaintuck, that kind o' talk from a poor young thing all dressed in black breaks a man all up. So I just kep' my cap in my hand, and I says, 'Madam, I respect a soldier's widow, no matter which side the soldier fought on, and whether you'll agree or not, I'll make it my business to see that you'll have some kind of protection.' We was in winter quarters then, about a mile from her house. You know, men is hard to manage sometimes, and if I hadn't spoke to some of the officers, the poor thing's little all in the way of chickens and such would have gone. But I told my cap'n about it, and that her husband was killed in the rebel army, and he settled it so that not a man dared to be seen near that hen roost and cow pasture. But I don't know what she'd 'a done for wood if I hadn't looked out for her. I'd drop an armful, and knock at the door, and she'd open it. Then I'd say, 'Will you please to tell me where to put this?' 'Anywhere you like,' she'd say, and go on with her knittin' an' sewin'. It kinder nettled me at first, but she looked so young and pitiful, I couldn't get mad with her. Then somehow that young one got almighty fond of me. Every time I'd pass by that little house—and I got to goin' by purty often—he'd come toddlin' out—he was a handsome youngster—and he'd howl like tarnation if I didn't take him up in my arms. At first his mother—her name's Mary—would look black at me; but one day the little feller took my cap out of my hand, and tried to put it on his own head. 'No, sir,' says I. 'The lady yonder'll think you're poisoned if you put a blue cap on your head.' At that she laughed. I never seen her laugh before."
Kaintuck had pressed his face close to the bars of the window to hear the sergeant's story by this time, and the sergeant had advanced a step or two so that they could talk in a low voice.
"Go on," said Kaintuck. "How did you git the better of her at last?"
"I don't know," answered the sergeant, pulling his cap down a little farther yet, and showing his white teeth in a smile. "First time I told her she was pretty—by George!"
The sergeant stopped short, completely overcome by the recollection.
"Kaintuck, she don't more'n come up to my shoulder, an' she weighs about a hundred pounds, but I thought she was going to whip me then and there. I've been scared nearly to death two or three times during this unpleasantness, but I swear, Kaintuck, if that little widder wasn't the first rebel that started me on the dead run, without makin' some sort of a show of fightin'. However, I felt so mean about showing the white feather that I just determined I wasn't going to be stampeded that way again. So I braced up, an' put on my best uniform, an' went to see her again. She says, 'I'm a rebel, and I'm bound to be one always.' 'That's all right,' says I, 'bein' you're nothin' but a woman, and a mighty little one at that, and ma'am,' says I, 'this thing's goin' to be decided without the slightest reference to which side you are on.' She laughed, and then, without any sort o' warning, she turned her pretty face to the wall and begun to cry. After a while I talked to her sensible like. I says, 'Here you are alone and unprotected. How are you going to bring up that boy? What'll you do when I go away?' She turned white, and held the child in her arms. I said, 'I'll not only do for you, but I'll do for the boy besides. I've got a little money saved up, and he'll have his share of it. He shan't never know what it is not to have a father if you'll marry me, Mary.' So after a while, between crying and kissing the baby, and looking mournfully at the fire, she agreed to marry me if I'd wait till the spring, and in May I'm going to get leave—my cap'n knows all about it—and there'll be one rebel less, I believe, before long, though she does swear she'll never be anything but a rebel."
"Sergeant," said Kaintuck, "how did she take the partin'? Since you've been so free, you won't mind my askin' the question."
The sergeant hesitated, but there was something so strangely sympathetic in poor Kaintuck's humid eyes, and in the ghost of a smile that haunted his patient face, that the sergeant could not but tell. "She behaved like a little soldier till the last. I didn't half like her being so brave. But when she knew she was seein' me for the last time—well—er—I couldn't exactly tell another feller. Anyhow, she had been makin' out all along she was thinkin' about the boy, but I swear I believe she forgot all about the blessed kid. She never told me in so many words, but I kinder suspect she didn't care so much about the dead feller as she thought. It leaked out in little things, that he was kind to her, and she wasn't out of her teens, and I don't believe she was really grown up until she heard he was dead in prison, and she had to look out for herself. Howsomever," said the sergeant, pulling himself together, and laughing again—he was a good-natured fellow—"I've told you a durned sight of spooney stuff."
"An' I won't mention it to the rats, neither," answered Kaintuck.