“Where does it lead?”
“It leads just now,” he replied grimly, “into a hell’s mint o’ rebels. What’s your business in these parts, ma’am?”
Her business was to trust no one, yet there had been occasions when she had been forced to such a risk. This was one. She looked around at the house, the dismantled buckboard tenanted by roosting chickens, the ducks in the puddle, the narrow strip of pasture fringing the darkening woods. She looked into his weather-ravaged visage, searching the small eyes that twinkled at her intently out of a mass of wrinkles.
“Are you a Union man?” she asked.
His face hardened; a slow color crept into the skin above his sharp cheek bones. “What’s that to you?” he demanded.
“Here in Pennsylvania we expect to find Union sentiments. Besides, you just now spoke of rebels——”
“Yes, an’ I’ll say it again,” he repeated doggedly; “the Pennsylvany line is crawlin’ with rebels, an’ they’ll butt into our cavalry before morning.”
She laughed, stepping nearer, the muddy skirt of her habit lifted.
“I must get to Reynolds’s corps to-night,” she said confidingly. “I came through the lines three days ago; their cavalry have followed me ever since. I can’t shake them off; they’ll be here by morning—as soon as there’s light enough to trace my horse.”
She looked back at the blue woods thoughtfully, patting her horse’s sleek neck.