The Night-Born Read online

  WAR

  HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might havesat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not beenso catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching themovements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing everonward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returningalways to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched,so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom ofheavy guns from far to the west. This had been sounding monotonouslyin his ears for hours, and only its cessation could have aroused hisnotice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow wasbalanced a carbine.

  So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into flightfrom under his horse's nose, startled him to such an extent thatautomatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the carbinehalfway to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered himself, androde on. So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had to do, that thesweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled down his nose andspattered his saddle pommel. The band of his cavalryman's hat wasfresh-stained with sweat. The roan horse under him was likewise wet. Itwas high noon of a breathless day of heat. Even the birds and squirrelsdid not dare the sun, but sheltered in shady hiding places among thetrees.

  Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow pollen,for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to thebrush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out beforecrossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage. He workedalways to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from thenorth that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking.He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilizedman, and he was looking to live, not die.

  Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub thathe was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path swungaround to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north again alongthe oak-covered top of the ridge.

  The ridge ended in a steep descent-so steep that he zigzagged back andforth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among the deadleaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the horse abovethat threatened to fall down upon him. The sweat ran from him, and thepollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and nostrils, increasedhis thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the descent was noisy, andfrequently he stopped, panting in the dry heat and listening for anywarning from beneath.

  At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he couldnot make out its extent. Here the character of the woods changed, and hewas able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside oaks, tall straighttrees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the damp fat soil. Onlyhere and there were thickets, easily avoided, while he encounteredwinding, park-like glades where the cattle had pastured in the daysbefore war had run them off.

  His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley, and atthe end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on the edgeof a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his path layacross to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the stream.It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the thought ofventuring out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of them, a thousand,might lurk in that fringe by the stream.

  Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by hisown loneliness. The pulse of war that beat from the West suggested thecompanionship of battling thousands; here was naught but silence, andhimself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a myriad ambushes. Andyet his task was to find what he feared to find. He must on, and on,till somewhere, some time, he encountered another man, or other men,from the other side, scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as hemust make report, of having come in touch.

  Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and againpeeped forth. This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw asmall farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from thechimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen doorstood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black aperture thatit seemed almost that a farmer's wife must emerge at any moment.

  He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself, mindand body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing stirred. Hewent on past the house, and approached the wall of trees and bushes bythe river's bank. One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of the crashinto his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made him feel very fragileand defenseless, and he crouched lower in the saddle.

  Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundredyards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was,without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty.But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screenon the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, hiscarbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and slowly histenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no danger; but just ashe prepared to part the bushes and bend down to the water, a movementamong the opposite bushes caught his eye.

  It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of thebushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from him,the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered withseveral weeks' growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue andwide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the comers that showed despite thetired and anxious expression of the whole face.

  All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance wasno more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief time, thathe saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He glanced along thesights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead.It was impossible to miss at such point blank range.

  But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. Ahand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard bentdownward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the water. Thenarm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing bushes.A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked, he crept back to hishorse, rode slowly across the sun-washed clearing, and passed into theshelter of the woods beyond.

  II

  Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with manyoutbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the Woods, ona roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man with the quickblack eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the house. That a fighthad taken place here earlier in the season was evident. Clips and emptycartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay on the ground, which, whilewet, had been torn up by the hoofs of horses. Hard by the kitchen gardenwere graves, tagged and numbered. From the oak tree by the kitchen door,in tattered, weatherbeaten garments, hung the bodies of two men. Thefaces, shriveled and defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. Theroan horse snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed itand tied it farther away.

  Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on emptycartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from thewindows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of oneroom he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been laiddown.

  Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded theorchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled hispockets, eating while he picked. Then a thought came to him, and heglanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp. Hepulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This heproceeded to fill with apples.

  As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up itsears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of hoofs onsoft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered out. A dozenmounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the opposite side ofthe clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards or so away. Theyrode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others remained in thesaddle as an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed
tobe holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in thedetested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but they seemedunable to reach a decision. He put the carbine away in its boot,mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the shirt of apples on thepommel.

  He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into theroan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped forward.At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy of nineteen ortwenty for all of his uniform jump back to escape being run down. Atthe same moment the roan swerved and its rider caught a glimpse of thearoused men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, andhe could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the kitchendoor and the dried corpses swinging in the shade, compelling his foes torun around the front of the house. A rifle cracked, and a second, but hewas going fast, leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutchingthe shirt of apples, the other guiding the horse.

  The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan andleaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several scatteredshots. Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods, and the roanwas covering the distance with mighty strides. Every man was now firing.pumping their guns so rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots.A bullet went through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did knowwhen another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced andducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone betweenhis horse's legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing andhumming like some incredible insect.

  The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly, therewas no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that astonishingfusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes, they had emptiedtheir magazines. He could see several reloading. Others were runningback behind the house for their horses. As he looked, two alreadymounted, came back into view around the corner, riding hard. And at thesame moment, he saw the man with the unmistakable ginger beard kneeldown on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for the longshot.

  The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, andswerved in his flight in order to distract the other's aim. And stillthe shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods sprangnearer. They were only two hundred yards away and still the shot wasdelayed.

  And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead erehe hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And they,watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when it struckthe earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that rolled abouthim. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples, and clappedtheir hands in applause of the long shot by the man with the gingerbeard.