This talk of coffee began to end a short time later with a ride along midnight roads and then through woods black as pitch, where horses went at a walk and riders rode with saber or musket at arm’s length before them lest they be swept from saddle by invisible boughs, and continued until the forest thinned with dawn-ghosts and the party of twenty was well inside the Federal lines.
Then the dawn accomplished itself yet more and all efforts toward concealment were discarded and they galloped again and crashed through astonished picket parties returning peacefully to camp, and fatigue parties setting forth with picks and axes and shovels in the golden sunrise, and swept yelling up the knoll where General Pope and his staff sat at breakfast al fresco.
Two men captured a fat staff-major. The others pursued the fleeing breakfasters for a short distance into the sanctuary of the woods, but most of them rushed on to the General’s private commissary tent and emerged presently from the cyclonic demolition of it, bearing plunder. Stuart and the three officers with him halted their dancing mounts at the table and one of them swept up a huge blackened coffee pot and tendered it to the General, and while the enemy shouted and fired muskets among the trees, they toasted one another in sugarless and creamless scalding coffee, as with a loving cup.
“General Pope, sir,” Stuart said, bowing to the captured officer. He drank and extended the pot.
“I’ll drink it, sir,” the major replied. “And thank God he is not here to respond in person.”
“I had remarked that he appeared to leave hurriedly,” Stuart said. “A prior engagement, perhaps?”
“Yes, sir. With General Halleck,” the major agreed drily. “I am sorry we have him for an opponent instead of Lee.”
“So am I, sir,” Stuart answered. “I like General Pope in a war.” Bugles were shrilling among the trees far and near, sending the alarm in flying echoes from brigade to brigade lying about the forest, and drums were beating wildly to arms and erratic bursts of musketry surged and trickled along the scattered outposts like the dry clatter of an opening fan, for the name Stuart speeding from picket to picket had peopled the blossoming peaceful woods with gray phantoms.
Stuart turned in his saddle and his men came up and sat their horses and watched him alertly, their spare eager faces like mirrors reflecting their leader’s constant consuming flame. Then from the flank there came something like a concerted volley, striking the coffee pot from Bayard Sartoris’ hand and clipping and snapping viciously among the dappled branches above their heads.
“Be pleased to mount, sir,” Stuart said to the captive major, and though his tone was exquisitely courteous, all levity was gone from it. “Captain Wylie, you have the heaviest mount: will you—?” The Captain freed his stirrup and hauled the prisoner up behind him. “Forward,” the General said and whirled, roweling his bay, and with the thunderous coordination of a single centaur they swept down the knoll and crashed into the forest at the point from which the volley had come, before it could be repeated.
Blue-clad shapes plunged scattering before and beneath them, and they rushed on among trees vicious with Minies like wasps. Stuart now carried his plumed hat in his hand, and his long tawny locks, tossing to the rhythm of his speed, appeared as gallant flames smoking with the wild and self-consuming splendor of his daring.
Behind them and on one flank muskets still banged and popped at their flashing phantoms, and from brigade to brigade lying spaced about the jocund forest bugles shrilled their importunate alarms. Stuart bore gradually to the left, bringing all the uproar into his rear. The country became more open and they swung into column at the gallop. The captured major bounced and jolted behind Captain Wylie, and the General reined back beside the gallant black thundering along beneath its double load.
“I am distressed to inconvenience you thus, sir,” he began with his exquisite courtesy. “If you will indicate the general location of your nearest horse picket, I shall be most happy to capture a mount for you.”
“Thank you, General,” the major replied. “But majors can be replaced much easier than horses. I shall not trouble you.”
“Just as you wish, sir,” Stuart agreed stiffly. He spurred on to the head of the column again. They now galloped along a faint trace that was once a road. It wound on between vernal palisades of undergrowth and they followed it at a rapid but controlled gait and debouched suddenly into a glade, and a squadron of Yankee cavalry reined back in amazement, then hurled forward again.
Without faltering Stuart whirled his party and plunged back into the forest. Pistol balls were thinly about their heads, and the flat tossing reports were trivial as snapping twigs above the converging thunder of hooves. Stuart swerved from the road and they crashed headlong through undergrowth. The Federal horse came yelling behind them and Stuart led his party in a tight circle and halted it panting in a dense swampy copse, and they heard the pursuit sweep past.
They pushed on and regained the road and retraced their former course, silently and utterly alert. To the left the sound of the immediate pursuit crashed on, dying away. Then they cantered again. Presently the woods thickened and forced them to a trot, then a walk. Although there was no more firing and the bugles too had ceased, into the silence, above the strong and rapid breathing of the horses and the sound of their own hearts in their ears, was a nameless something—a tenseness seeping from tree to tree like an invisible mist, filling the dewy morning woods with portent although birds flashed swooping from tree to tree, unaware or disregardful of it.
A gleam of white through the trees ahead; Stuart raised his hand and they halted and sat their horses, watching him quietly and holding their breath with listening. Then he advanced again and broke through the undergrowth into another glade. They followed, and before them stood the knoll with the deserted breakfast table and the rifled commissary tent. They trotted warily across and halted at the table while the General scribbled hastily upon a scrap of paper. The glade lay quiet and empty of threat beneath the mounting golden day; laked in it lay a deep and abiding peace like golden wine, yet beneath this solitude and permeating it, was that nameless and waiting portent, patient and brooding and sinister.
“Your sword, sir,” Stuart commanded. The prisoner removed his weapon and Stuart took it and pinned his scribbled note to the table top. The note read: “General Stuart’s compliments to General Pope, and he is sorry to have missed him again. He will call again tomorrow.”
Stuart gathered up his reins. “Forward,” he said. They descended the knoll and crossed the empty glade and at an easy canter they took the road they had traversed that dawn; the road that led home. Stuart glanced back at his captive, at the gallant black with its double burden. “If you will direct us to your nearest cavalry picket, I will provide you with a proper mount,” he offered again.
“Will General Stuart, cavalry leader and General Lee’s eye, jeopardize his safety and that of his men and his cause in order to provide for the temporary comfort of a minor prisoner to his sword?” the major said. “This is not bravery: it is the rashness of a heedless and headstrong boy. There are fifteen thousand men within a radius of two miles of this point; even General Stuart cannot conquer that many, though they are Yankees, single-handed.”
“Not for the prisoner, sir,” Stuart replied haughtily, “but for the officer suffering the fortune of war. No gentleman would do less.”
“No gentleman has any business in this war,” the major retorted. “There is no place for him here. He is an anachronism, like anchovies. At least General Stuart did not capture our anchovies,” he added tauntingly. “Perhaps he will send Lee for them in person.”
“Anchovies,” repeated Bayard Sartoris, who galloped nearby, and he whirled his horse. Stuart shouted at him, but Sartoris lifted his reckless stubborn hand and flashed on; and as the General would have turned to follow a Yankee picket fired his piece from the roadside and dashed into the woods, shouting the alarm. Immediately other muskets exploded on all sides, and from the forest to the right came the sound of a considerable body put suddenly into motion, and behind them in the direction of the invisible knoll, a volley crashed. A third officer spurred up and caught Stuart’s bridle.
“Sir, sir!” he exclaimed. “What would you do?”
Stuart held his mount rearing, and another volley rang behind them, dribbling off into single scattered reports, crashed again, and the noise to the right swelled nearer. “Let go, Alan,” Stuart said. “He is my friend.”
But the other clung to the bridle. “It is too late,” he cried. “Sartoris can only be killed; you would be captured.”
“Forward, sir, I beg,” the captive major added. “What is one man to a renewed belief in mankind?”
“Think of Lee, for God’s sake, General!” the aide implored. “Forward!” he shouted to the troop, spurring his own mount and dragging the General’s onward as a body of Federal horse broke from the woods behind them.
“And so,” Aunt Jenny finished, “Mister Stuart went on and Bayard rode back after those anchovies, with all Pope’s army shooting at him.
