CHAPTER NINETEEN
As the sky grew light in the east they came to the edge of a rolling pasture. They climbed a knob of land but couldn’t see a farmhouse or a barn or any other signs of life, so they walked in the pasture at the edge of a wood. They topped another rise and there was a tethered cow. It seemed she had been there all night. Her udder was bulging and her teats touched the tips of the winter grass. Red’s eyes sparkled. “The poor thing is suffering something terrible, carrying such a load of milk.”
Tim moved up to the cow, clucking and talking in a soothing voice. He took the tin cups and kneeled in the grass and milked. They drank and milked, and mixed milk with rokeeg and ate a ration of mush. Tim filled their canteen and then, in a spirit of fun, he milked straight into his mouth.
He got to his feet and patted the cow and she turned her head and gave him a gentle bovine stare. Tim said, “I wish we could take her along.”
“Might cramp our style when we cross the mountains.”
A shout broke the air and they saw a man about twohundred yards to the east, running with a shotgun in one hand and a milk pail in the other.
As they crashed into the cover of the nearby trees they heard a bang and Red was seized by a frenzy of high-spirited mirth. “The man’s ungrateful, that’s what he is.”
They walked for an hour or so and sat on a patch of grass to rest. The day had dawned clear and warmer. Tim reached for the map and spread it out against his knee. They had made good time the night before, heading straight north over level, lightly wooded country, following a road for a while and crossing a deep-cut river on a stout wooden bridge. The night had been just right for walking; just nippy enough to give them spirit. They must be close to the border now.
Tim marked an X where he thought they were and read the compass. They had kept the Broad River on their left to a point a few miles south of MacNeil’s farm. There the river had parted from the northwesterly direction of the track, flowing straight down from the north. They had crossed it on a high bridge. Now as they moved due north they would strike the river again just after they crossed into North Carolina. They made up their minds to follow the Broad until they reached the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
In the mountain country Kate’s map seemed less than complete, but on the far side of the mountains, in the upper left-hand corner of the map,KNOXVILLEwas neatly lettered. The railroads and roads that converged on the city were clearly shown.
As Tim put the map away he slapped at his pocket and remembered that Kane still had his diary and album of photographs.
Tim didn’t mention his loss to Red. He lay back on the grass and closed his eyes and tried to bring Kate’s face tomind. He started by remembering her photograph but that didn’t work. He thought of how she walked and danced and the way she turned her head. That brought her alive but try as he would he couldn’t make her face come clear.
Red chewed the end of a piece of grass. “A penny for your thoughts.”
“You don’t have a penny.”
“I’ll owe it to you.”
“I wouldn’t have you carry a burden of debt.” Tim opened his eyes, sat up on the grass and watched a little gray bird fluttering and chirping in the underbrush. “I was trying to remember Kate’s face but it wouldn’t come clear.”
“Nancy’s face doesn’t often come clear any more.” Red stood up. “We better find cover and sleep a while.”
“We’ve been lucky. I hope it will last.”
They walked until they found a grove of pines and laid out the poncho and blankets and slept until just after noon. Then they found a little stream and drank and doused their heads and moved on without eating. They were keeping the milk to mix with rokeeg at suppertime.
That evening the sky began to cloud. During the day they had circled some cabins but they hadn’t seen a road or a town. Now, as it began to grow dark, they came to a road that ran northwest and decided to follow it.
When they had traveled a mile or two they rounded a bend and a young colored man and his girl appeared before them in the middle of the road. The girl shrank back, and the man stood rooted to the ground, staring at the strangers.
“You have nothing to fear,” Tim said.
The young man said, “Please don’t tell you saw us here.”
Red laughed and moved closer. “If you won’t tell that you saw us here.”
The young man lowered his head and strained his eyes. “Lordy, you wearin’ uniforms.”
The girl trembled so hard she could barely speak. “What would Yankees be doin’ here?”
Tim said quietly, “We’re making our way north. We haven’t had an easy time.”
The man studied their tattered uniforms. “Well, I guess not,” he said. “Wish we could help you, but all the colored folks hereabouts mus’ be inside by sundown.”
Red said, “You can help us most by forgetting you saw us. Have we crossed into North Carolina yet?”
“No, Massa. Old North State is one mile more.” The man looked down at his bare feet. “I thought to go north to fight for Massa Linkum, but I got no shoes.”
The girl turned to her man. “Don’t go away,” she pleaded softly.
Red’s face was serious. “You better not try it without any shoes.” He looked into the shadows. “Will we be safe if we travel this road?”
The young man turned and motioned with his arm. “Go lef’ when you come to the fork. Hide in the trees if you hear a soun’.”
As the white men started down the road the girl called after them, “God keep you safe.”
On the morning of the third day after they had crossed into North Carolina they slept at the bottom of a broad cleft in a massive rock. At the top of the rock the rift was narrow so that the crack formed a sheltered cave. The floor of the cave was dry and the men were tired. They slept much later than usual.
Tim was awakened by a violent cramp. They had eaten the last of their food two days before. He lay on his backand stared at the walls of rock. It was bitter cold. If they hoped to go on they would have to find food by nightfall.
Tim studied Red’s face, thin and sunken under his bristling beard. Red stirred in his sleep and moaned and settled down again. Tim bent his knees and sat up, stretched, and crawled to the mouth of the cave. The ground outside was in the grip of a heavy frost.
Tim faced a long, steep hill dotted with poplar and spruce. At the bottom of the hill, in a winding valley, a river glistened in the afternoon sun and the sound of running water came to his ears. Beyond the valley, above the delicate fringes of purple and gold, a mighty ridge stood proud against the sky.
Last night and in the early hours of this morning they had traveled fifteen miles or so without a halt, pushing onward to forget their hunger and bring themselves nearer to people who might help. Behind them was their first high ridge. They had crossed it in the blackness of a cloudy night, hardly aware of the dizzying heights until they reached the top. Then, looking back, they saw the shapes of the cliffs and rocks tumbling downward into the darkness, giving them sudden vertigo.
The country ahead was wild and rugged. If they had a rifle they could live on game, but as it was they could only hope for a chance to beg.
As Tim idly studied the valley below he thought he heard a voice. He listened closely. It must be his imagination. There was nothing now but the sound of water, the squawk of a crow on the wing. It came again, louder at first, then carried away on the wind.
In a minute or two Tim heard horses breaking the underbrush across the river. Through the trees he could see a column of cavalry wading in, pausing in the middle to water their horses.
With the sun in his eyes and from this distance it was hard to see their uniforms, but they were gray, not blue, that much was certain.
Tim slipped back into the cave and shook Red’s arm. Red pulled back and turned away. Tim shook his shoulder and Red sat up suddenly, wild-eyed, as if he’d been having a nightmarish dream.
Tim pressed his hand to his lips and motioned to Red to come with him to the mouth of the cave. Red shook his head and blinked, then crawled up and perched beside Tim. The cavalrymen had begun to ride up the hill, moving now at a pretty good clip, away from the cave. Red squinted dazedly into the sun. “Those are Federal uniforms!”
There was something wild in his voice. He gave a shout and jostled Tim as he burst free of the cleft in the rock and stood in full view. He was raising his hands to his mouth, to shout again, when Tim gave him a shove and knocked him to the ground. As Red rolled over, angry and surprised, Tim pinned him to the ground. “Those riders are Rebs.”
Red glared and tried to roll free, then suddenly relaxed. “Are you positive?”
“Positive. I was watching them before I woke you.”
Tim peered around the rock to see if the riders had heard Red’s shout but the last one was just disappearing behind a little rise, going the same way as before.
Red sat up with a haunted expression on his face. He spoke softly without turning around. “Did they hear me shout?”
“Apparently not.”
Red was breathing hard. He didn’t speak.
Tim sat down nearby, quiet for a minute or two before he spoke. “I shouldn’t have wakened you suddenly.”
Red’s eyes rested on the valley, watching for signs of other horsemen following the first.
Tim said, “It could have been I who did that.”
“But it wasn’t. You’re just as hungry, but not so hungry that you made yourself see ghosts.”
“I’d been awake. I had time to consider.”
“But think of a man like Kautz for instance. Can you imagine him doing what I did just now?”
“He might have made the same mistake.” Tim smiled. “Kautz would have convinced me I was wrong.”
“Not likely he would have made such a devilish big mistake.”
“Kautz was a professional soldier. When you and I were fighting men we made ourselves think as soldiers think, but Kautz thought that way every minute of his life.”
“You mean we aren’t soldiers any more.”
“We’re the hunted, not the hunters, now. It changes a man. It frightens me sometimes when I lie awake in the gray light of dawn.”
Red smiled at last. “I wonder where Kautz is now.”
“God knows. Maybe back with the Seventh again.”
“I hope he is.”
Red squinted into the lowering sun. “Let’s push on until we drop.”
“We should take a chance, if we see a cabin,” Tim said. “Another day without food will finish us.”
“We better not knock on any cabin doors after dark. Someone’s liable to shoot first and ask questions later.”
The cavalry detachment had made them wary. They kept a careful watch as they approached the crossing and waded in. They followed the trail the horsemen had used until it branched east. There was plenty of water and they drank as often as they found a spring or a mountain stream.
As the shadows of night crept up the ridge the men were so tired they could barely move. They were thinking of resting when Red noticed a pinpoint of light in the gloom several hundred yards beyond them in the direction of the ridge. “Our fate lies there,” he said. “Before we’re tempted to knock on the door we better bed down for the night.”
They woke before dawn. There wasn’t a sign of the light in the trees, so they waited until the sky turned pink in the east. As they gathered up their things and made themselves ready it seemed to Tim that he felt even worse than he had last night. The cold sliced into his bones and the landscape swam before his eyes. He noted that Red must feel the same. He swayed as he struggled with his haversack. Tim felt the beat of his heart as they started walking through the trees.
They hadn’t traveled three hundred yards when they found themselves at the edge of a clearing. There were stumps all around. The trees had been cut, maybe two or three years before, and some of the land had been farmed. In the middle of the clearing was a cabin. A curl of wood smoke twisted away from the chimney, carried off on the morning breeze. Behind the house was an outhouse and a shed, both rudely built.
The soldiers moved up slowly with their hands held away from their sides. When they were halfway up the slope a woman came around a corner of the cabin. At first Tim thought she was unarmed. Then he saw a pistol in her hand. Her voice came strong. “Straighten up and come along.” When they were closer she said, in the purest mountain accent, “I saw men play at bein’ tired before.” Then she cocked her head and strained forward. “No, by gum, yer not play-actin’ at all.”
The men stood on the frozen ground, swaying slightly,waiting for the woman to make the next move. She was of medium height and probably no more than twenty. She wore a Mother Hubbard of rough homespun cloth drawn tight across her breasts, cinched in at the waist with a man’s wide leather belt. Her raven hair hung loose to her shoulders and her skin was tanned. She looked at them hard with piercing black eyes.
Tim looked down at the gun in her hand. It was a Colt revolver, cocked, well oiled and in good condition. The hand that held it was muscular but a woman’s hand nevertheless. Neither man lowered his eyes before her gaze.
At last she spoke again in her husky twang, more quietly than before. “You are the saddest, mos’ miserable pair of hounds I ever saw. Surely those cain’t be soldiers’ uniforms.”
Neither man spoke.
She looked at Red. “You got a tongue, Redbeard?”
Red smiled faintly. “Too tired to use it, ma’am.”
“Well at least you got one.” She turned to Tim. “You Slim, you got a tongue? Tell me what yer doin’ here.”
“Making our way across the mountains, ma’am.”
“Now don’t you s’pose that’s plain? What I mean, are you Yankees or Rebels? That’s what I have to know.”
Neither man answered.
“Now you don’t know which one I am or why I should give a hang at all.” She tossed her head. “Tell you what I’ll do. Without my help you’ll never cross the Smokies alive. If you answer wrong, I’ll send you on yer way.” She squinted and smiled a humorless smile. “I’d like the truth.”
Red stood straight and looked right into the woman’s eyes. “We’re Yankee soldiers, ma’am.”
The woman’s expression barely changed. “I thought asmuch, though I never did see a Yankee uniform. Old Buck helped other Yankees cross the mountains back last summer.”
The woman’s face was still hard but she said, “Lordy, you boys are shiverin’ somethin’ awful. Come along inside.”