“These woods are full of Yankees,” he said. “It’s chock-full of them, it is. An’ it’s so dark, it is, they could just come out here an’ kill us all, they could, an’ we’d never know it.”
“Shut your mouth up, you fool!” said my husband, who knew that the woods were full of Yankees. “If we can’t see them they can’t see us, and how are they to know but we are Yankees unless you tell them, you blathering idiot?”
“The divil a bit Oi’ll be tellin’ ’em, the nasty blue thaves. Thrust Miles O’Flannigan for thet. But they could just come out o’ them woods, they could, an’ take us all prisoners an’ we’d never know it. An’ the driver’s the fust man they’d git, sure.”
At last Dan got out, mounted his horse, and rode in front of the ambulance.
“Now,” said he to Miles, “follow me, and if you open your d—— mouth again, I’ll blow your brains out.”
Lieutenant Wumble brought up the rear, riding behind the ambulance with a cocked pistol. And so we rode through the Egyptian darkness of the night, and the now more than Egyptian silence. Miles’s mouth was effectually closed. He followed Dan, whom he could not see, by the sound of his horse’s tread, and as he was careful to keep as close to him as possible we made better progress.
We had been in the darkness so long that none of us knew our whereabouts. Presently we heard the low, deep mutterings of thunder. It came nearer and grew louder rapidly. Suddenly the sky seemed rent! There came a sheet of white lightning and with it an awful crash which made my heart stand still. A tree a few feet from us had been struck. The lightning had shown us that we were only a few miles from the Court-house. I have never known such a storm as the one through which we traveled that night. One peal of thunder did not die away before another began. One instant we were in thick darkness—a darkness that could be felt—the next, ourselves, the woods, the road, were bathed in a fierce white light. Between the Yankees and the storm that night I think Miles would have become a gibbering idiot but for the equalizing influence of Dan’s pistol.
“No trouble for the Yankees to rickonize us—ugh!” the rest of the sentence would be lost in the darkness, but I knew that Miles was feeling the salutary muzzle of Dan’s pistol against some part of his face.
By the time we entered the village the storm had abated. We drove to the hotel. It was crowded, packed with soldiers; no room for us, nor food either, and nine o’clock at night!
“Two miles the other side of town there is a place of entertainment where you can be accommodated, I think,” the hotel proprietor told Dan.