SAFE-CONDUCT OF TWO KINDS

AS Early was slowly making his way back into the valley of Virginia—fighting wherever there was a force to be fought—there came a messenger to Owen Kilgariff one night a little before midnight. He bore a slip of paper on which these words were written:—

Come to me quickly. I am mortally wounded, and it is very necessary for me to see you before I die—not for my sake, for you’d rejoice to see me in hell, but for the sake of others and for your own sake—though for yourself you don’t often care much. I’m in a farm-house hospital three miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Martinsburg road. My messenger will guide you. The Federals have possession, of course, but the bearer of this note has a safe-conduct for you. Of course, this might be a trick, but it is not. On the word of a gambler (and you know what that means) I am playing fair this time. You are a brave enough man to risk this thing anyhow. Come!

This note bore no signature, but Owen Kilgariff knew the hand that had written it. That handwriting had sent him to jail once upon a time. He had not forgotten. He was not given to forgetting.

He summoned the messenger who had brought him the note.

“You have a safe-conduct for me, I believe?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain,” and he produced the document.

“How did you manage to pass our picket lines? Did you come under a flag of truce?”

“No. That would have taken time, and there is no time to be wasted. Major Campbell is terribly wounded. I live in these parts. I ain’t a soldier, you know. So I slipped through the lines.”

For a moment Kilgariff regarded the fellow with indignant contempt. Then the indignation passed, and the contempt was intensified in his expression. Presently he said:—

“You low-lived, contemptible hound, I can’t make up my mind even to be angry with you. You and your kind are the pest in this war. You haven’t character enough to take sides. You serve either side at will, and betray both with jaunty indifference. Now listen to me. Within twenty-four hours I shall see Major Campbell, who sent me this note. But I shall not go to him under the safe-conduct you have brought.”

With that, Kilgariff tore the paper to bits and scattered its fragments to the night wind.

“I shall order you sent to the guard-house and manacled, until General Early shall have decided what to do with you. He doesn’t like your sort.”

The man fell at once into panic and pleaded for his life.

“Oh, what will become of me?” he piteously moaned.

“I really don’t know,” answered Kilgariff, quite as if the question had related to the disposition to be made of some inanimate object. “General Early may have you shot at sunrise, or he may decide to hang you instead. I don’t at all know, and after all it makes no real difference. The one death is about as painless as the other, and as for the matter of disgrace, of course you are hopelessly incapable of considering that. Perhaps—oh, well, I don’t know. General Early may conclude to turn you loose as a creature too contemptible to be seriously dealt with.”

“God grant that he may!” said the man, with fervour, as the guards took him away.

A minute later Kilgariff mounted his horse, Wyanoke—a special gift from Dorothy—and rode hurriedly to General Early’s headquarters; it was after midnight, but with this army sleeplessly “on service” very little attention was given to hours, either of the day or of the night. So, after a moment’s parley with a sentinel, Kilgariff was conducted to General Early’s presence, under a tree.

It was not Kilgariff’s habit to grow excited. He had passed through too much for that, he thought. But on this occasion his perturbation of spirit was so great that he had difficulty in enunciating his words.

“General,” he said, “I want a little cavalry force, if you please. I want to capture one of the enemy’s hospitals and hold it long enough for me to have a talk with the most infamous scoundrel who ever lived.”

“Calm yourself, Captain,” said Early. “Have a little apple brandy as a tonic. Your nerves are shaken.”

Kilgariff declined the stimulant, but at Early’s earnest solicitation he sat down upon a stump, and presently so far commanded his own spirit as to go on with what he had to say.

“One of those contemptible border wretches got himself smuggled through our lines to-night. I don’t know how. He brought me a note from the most infamous scoundrel I ever knew, together with a safe-conduct under which I could sneak into the enemy’s lines and talk with the fellow, who is mortally wounded. I tore up the safe-conduct and sent the emissary to the guard-house with the comfortable assurance that his case would be submitted to you, and that you would pretty certainly order him shot or hanged according to the gravity with which you might regard his offence. I hope you’ll let him go. He is so poor-spirited a cur that he will suffer a thousand deaths to-night in dreading one for to-morrow. However, that isn’t what I want to speak with you about. I want a cavalry force of a company or two. I want to raid that hospital before morning and talk with that rascal in the interest of others whose fate he may hold in his hands.”

“Do you plan to kill him?”

“Of course not. He is wounded unto death. And besides—well, General, he isn’t of our class.”

“I quite understand—not a man you could ‘call out.’”

“Distinctly not—although he has a major’s commission.”

“Oh—if you want a colonel’s or a brigadier-general’s, you shall have it,” broke in Early, full of the enthusiasm of fight.

“No, General,” answered Kilgariff, with an amused smile; “I have always found it possible to fight anybody I pleased without raising the question of rank. You know, a private, if he is a man of good family, may slap a major-general’s jaws in our army, in full certainty that his escapade will bring a challenge rather than a citation before a court-martial. No. I want to talk with this man before he dies. He sent me a safe-conduct, as I have already said. That was a gracious permission from the Federal authorities for me to see him. I have a very pronounced prejudice against the acceptance of gracious permissions from the Federal authorities. So I have come to ask for a squadron of cavalry, to which I will add a couple of guns, in order that I may capture that post, enter its hospital, and have my talk with its inmate without anybody’s permission but yours, General.”

The humour of the situation appealed strongly to Early, as it did also to Major Irby of the Virginia Cavalry, who was sitting near by. That officer was a man of few words, but he carried an unusually alert sabre, and his sense of humour was uncommonly keen.

“If you don’t mind, General,” he said, in his quiet fashion, “I should like to ‘sit in’ the captain’s game.”

“Do it!” said Early. “Take three companies and two of Kilgariff’s guns, and let him show the fellow that he carries his own safe-conduct at his back.”

Things were done promptly and quickly in those stirring times, and five minutes after Early had spoken his words of permission, Major Irby moved at the head of three companies of cavalry and two of Kilgariff’s guns—the two so recently captured from the enemy, and selected now by way of emphasising the jest.

A dash, a scurry, and every picket post south of Harper’s Ferry was swept out of sight.