“Let 'em alone,” she whispered angrily. “Hey? Wha' for?”
“You let 'em alone.”
“Well,” said he, grumbling and hesitating, “I don' know as there's anythin' in it for me. Hol' on now——”
She pulled him back and closed the window softly, and so we came away from the house of Tommy Todd.
It was cold, with a thin slip of moon shivering over the sea. We struck to the rear of the house, through a great pine wood, where the trunks had been scraped for turpentine, and looked like rows of tombstones filing to right and left; and at the end of a mile we fell upon a fair travelled highway, leading a little westward of the pole star.
For that night it was nothing but putting one foot before another, hour after hour, at first eagerly, and at the end only with the dull intent to keep it up till sunrise. At sunrise we passed over a black creek, through a bit of cypress swamp, and into a great pine wood on either side of the road. And here we left the road for a secret, sunny spot to sleep in, finding it well enough, for the wood was full of open spaces, and bottomed over with ridges and hollows of sand.
We were too leg-weary to talk, and only munched biscuits, blinking and drowsing. And, when I woke again, the sun was far around and one of my ears full of sand.
Now Calhoun and I fell to talking—or he talked and I grunted mostly, with the pains in me; and it came upon me that we were in no small boy's trouble, and that, if we ever got out, I might ask people to call me a man and very likely they would.
“Somebody's after us hard just now, I take it,” said Calhoun, “unless they're all gone steamboating. It would be a good thing to get north of the Potomac, Bennie Ben, and the longer we're in Virginia the hotter it will be. For see here, now! Suppose the whole Confederacy gets to frothing at the mouth, and cavorting round like a crazy elephant, and shouting, 'Who did up Cavarly? Ben Cree. Who messed his compass? Ben Cree. Where's Ben Cree? In Virginia.' And suppose the Confederacy comes stamping all over Virginia after you, neglecting the war shameful. What! Maybe they'd ask for me, too? Why, then we get out of this. That's our point.”
I was so stiff with the night's tramp, and lame, so tied about and shot through with queer pains, coming from exposure, that I walked but a few steps, and fell down, and could not rise for the knots in my leg-muscles.