And he explained this to the Special Messenger at their first conference.
“It ought to be guarded,” insisted the Messenger tranquilly. “There are three good fords and a ferry open to him.”
“I hold the fords on this side,” argued Kay; “the ferryboat lies in the eel-grass on the south shore.”
“Stuart’s riders might cross if they heard of this trouble, sir!”
“And if they see Union troops on the south bank they’ll cross, sure pop. It won’t do, Messenger. If that fellow attempts the fords we’ll catch him, sure; if he swims we may get him in the water. The Lord knows I want him badly, but I dare not invite trouble by placing videttes across the stream.... There’s a ferryman over there I’m worried about, too. He’d probably come across if Allen hailed him from the woods.... And Allen was thick with him. They used to fish together. Nobody knows what they hatched out between them. It worries me, I can tell you—that ferry.”
The Messenger walked to the tent door and looked thoughtfully at the woods around her. The colonel rose from his camp stool and followed her, muttering:
“I might as well try to catch a weasel in a wall, or a red horse in the mud; and how to go about it I don’t know.” With set jaws and an angry spot glowing in his gaunt cheeks, he stared wickedly around him and then at the Messenger. “You do miracles, they say. Can’t you do one now?”
“I don’t know, sir. Who is this deserter?”
“Roy Allen—a sullen, unwilling dog—always malingering. He’s spent half the time in the guardhouse, half in the hospital, since he arrived with the recruits. Somebody got an idea that he’d been hit by the sun, but it’s all bosh. He’s a bad one—that’s all. Can you help me out?”
The Messenger nodded.