Her mother did not seem to hear, so absorbed was she
in her grievous flounderings and tears. “Ma!”
appealed the girl. “Ma!”
For a moment Mary stood silently debating, her lips
apart, her eyes fixed. Then she went to the kitchen
window and peeked.
The old officer and the others were staring up the
road. She went to another window in order to
get a proper view of the road, and saw that they were
gazing at a small body of horsemen approaching at a
trot and raising much dust. Presently she recognised
them as the squad that had passed the house earlier,
for the young man with the dim yellow chevron still
rode at their head. An unarmed horseman in grey
was receiving their close attention.
As they came very near to the house she darted to
the first window again. The grey-bearded officer
was smiling a fine broad smile of satisfaction.
“So you got him?” he called out. The
young sergeant sprang from his horse and his brown
hand moved in a salute. The girl could not hear
his reply. She saw the unarmed horseman in grey
stroking a very black moustache and looking about
him coolly and with an interested air. He appeared
so indifferent that she did not understand he was a
prisoner until she heard the grey-beard call out:
“Well, put him in the barn. He’ll
be safe there, I guess.” A party of troopers
moved with the prisoner toward the barn.
The girl made a sudden gesture of horror, remembering
the three men in the feed-box.
The busy troopers in blue scurried about the long
lines of stamping horses. Men crooked their backs
and perspired in order to rub with cloths or bunches
of grass these slim equine legs, upon whose splendid
machinery they depended so greatly. The lips of
the horses were still wet and frothy from the steel
bars which had wrenched at their mouths all day.
Over their backs and about their noses sped the talk
of the men.
“Moind where yer plug is steppin’, Finerty!
Keep ’im aff me!”
“An ould elephant! He shtrides like a school-house.”
“Bill’s little mar’—she
was plum beat when she come in with Crawford’s
crowd.”
“Crawford’s the hardest-ridin’ cavalryman
in the army. An’ he don’t use up
a horse, neither—much. They stay fresh
when the others are most a-droppin’.”
“Finerty, will yeh moind that cow a yours?”
Amid a bustle of gossip and banter, the horses retained
their air of solemn rumination, twisting their lower
jaws from side to side and sometimes rubbing noses
dreamfully.
Over in front of the barn three troopers sat talking
comfortably. Their carbines were leaned against
the wall. At their side and outlined in the black
of the open door stood a sentry, his weapon resting
in the hollow of his arm. Four horses, saddled
and accoutred, were conferring with their heads close
together. The four bridle-reins were flung over
a post.
