“She’s gone. Some bad men came and took her away. I didn’t think they were bad men at first because they wore those gray uniforms,” she pointed at Dal, “like he does. But they took mama away. They dragged her.”
“And they just left you here? Alone?”
“Mama didn’t tell them about me. I don’t think she did. She was afraid, and I think she knew they were coming, because when she came in she was all scared and everything. She said some bad men were taking women away and that if they came here I should keep very still and wait, that papa would come.”
“How’ve you been getting along?” Dal asked. “Have you been eating?”
“Oh, yes! There’s milk. There’s some left, anyway. And there’s cheese mama made, and bread she baked for papa.”
“How long have you been here alone?”
“See?” she pointed at a calendar. “I scratch off the days. It is four days.”
Dal looked around. “Snug cabin.” He glanced at the little girl. “Is it all right if we stay here tonight? We’re going home.”
“You can stay. I wish you would. At night sometimes it is scary. I think about wolves an’ Indians an’ ghosts an’ such.”
“What’s your name, honey?” Mac asked.
“I’m Susan. I am Susan Atherton.”
Dal glanced at Mac, then at her. “Jim Atherton?”
“Yes. Did you know him?”
Dal’s face was pale and he turned toward the fireplace. “I knew him in passing, sort of. I mean I never knew him well.”
Dal started for the door. “I’ll fetch some wood. Mac? You want to help me?”
Outside, Dal said, “Mac? We’ve got to take her with us. We’ll have to take her home. Jim Atherton’s dead. He was killed by a sharpshooter, last day of the War.”
“What about this business? Men in gray uniforms carrying off women? That doesn’t seem like any Southerners we know.”
“There’s all kinds.” Dal thought a moment. “Could be Colonel Ashford. He was headed this way, but I didn’t think he’d bother women-folks. Always seemed a gentleman.” He paused. “He wanted me to come with him and keep on fightin’. The War may be over for you an’ me but it ain’t over for Ashford. When Lee surrendered he was fit to be tied. Called him a traitor, a coward, whatever he could think of.”
“We’d better go back inside. She’ll be afraid we left her, too.”
“Damn it, Mac! What’s got into the man? Draggin’ women-folks away to God knows what?”
“Dal? There’s women-folks at our place, too. And it can’t be more’n thirty-five, forty miles from here.”
“I was thinkin’ of that. No use to start now. We’d kill our horses before we made it. Let ’em rest, eat, an’ we’ll ride out in the mornin’.”
Mac went back through the door and watched the girl, finally saying, “Susan? I think when we leave in the morning we’d better take you with us. Your papa may be some time in getting here, and we’ll leave a note for him. We’ve got some folks down south of here, and you can stay with them.”
She looked at them, round-eyed and serious. “Mama said I was to wait for papa.”
Mac squatted down beside her. “Susan, the War is over, but it may take some time for all the soldiers to come home. We don’t know where your papa was, and he might have to walk all the way from Pennsylvania or Virginia. You had better come and stay with us until he can come for you.”
In a cyclone cellar near the house they found several slabs of bacon hanging, a half barrel of potatoes, and one of carrots and onions Some of the potatoes had begun to sprout. The milk was kept in a cool place, a small pit slabbed with rock. The milk was beginning to turn, but there was butter-milk and a little cheese.
“Your mother must have been a worker,” Dal commented as Mac put food on the table.
“I helped. I can work, too.”
“How old are you, Susan?”
“I am eight years old. I helped mama with everything. I can milk a cow, and I can churn butter, and I helped dig the vegetables.”
She ate in silence for a few minutes and then asked, “Do you have little girls where you live?”
“Well, we have girls. We have sisters, and one of them wasn’t much older than you when we left, but that was four years ago.”
After they had eaten, Mac put a hand on her shoulder. “Susan, you go along to bed now, and don’t you worry about those things that go bump in the night. We’ll be here.”
When she was gone they sat at the table drinking coffee, occasionally feeding the fire. “What about Ashford?” Mac asked.
“Tough man, good soldier, and he always seemed a good man, but war changes people. He recruited a lot of bad ones to keep his strength up, and toward the end he was letting them act like bandits just to keep them with him. To be honest about it, some of the officers were beginning to avoid him, and when Lee surrendered Ashford took it almost as a personal insult. The last I heard he was headed for Mexico.”
It was bleak and cold when morning came and they saddled up, adding several slabs of bacon and some vegetables to their packs.
“We’ll take one horse with us an’ turn the others loose,” Mac said. “There’s plenty of grass, and there’s a creek down yonder. They’ll make out.”
Susan came to the kitchen, dressed for travel. She had made a small bundle of her clothes, and she stood waiting, her sun-bonnet in her hand. For a moment she stood silent in the door to her room, watching them.
“Better have something to eat,” Dal said. “It is a long ride.”
“All right. I’m not very hungry.” At the last, when Dal helped her into the saddle she said, “What if mama comes back?”
“We left a note,” Mac said, “and people hereabouts are kindly toward the homes of others. Sometimes travellers sleep in them, but they always leave them clean and with fuel ready for the fire.”
At the crest of a low hill Susan turned for one look back, but when they had ridden several miles and stopped atop another hill to give the horses a breather, she said, “You don’t think papa is coming back, do you?”
Dal tried to speak, swallowed a couple of times, and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid not, Susan. War is a hard time for all of us. There will be a lot who never get back.”
“Is papa gone, then?”
“Yes, honey, I’m afraid he is. I knew Jim Atherton. He was a good man. We soldiered together.”
“Mama woke up one night, crying. I think she knew. I think she felt he was gone. She did not say it, but she told me we might have to go away.”
Dal glanced at Mac and they rode on, keeping Susan between them as they rode single file.
The country was wide open and empty, with scattered clumps of trees on hillsides or along the ridges. Every stream was lined with trees. It was almost noon when Mac Traven pulled up sharply. “Dal? Look here …”
Dal rode up, and Mac indicated the trail he had just cut. It had been made by a large party of horsemen driving some cattle and with one wagon, heavily loaded.
“Dozen at least, maybe twenty or more. Shod horses, headin’ right down our way. It could be them, Mac. We’d better hurry.”
“Sundown at the earliest, and when we come up on the place we’d better ride careful.”
“Is it the men who took mama?”
“Could be, Susan. If we run into trouble you drop off that horse and lie flat, d’ you hear?”
Mac Traven scouted back along the trail, then returned. “We’ll find a camp somewhere ahead. No use wastin’ time studying the back trail.”
“That trail’s three, maybe four days old.”
“It is. But if we can find a camp we can get a better idea of how many there are and who they have with them.”
Dal glanced at the sky. “Looks like rain. That’ll slow ’em up.”
“But not much. They’ve been stealin’ women, and somebody will know and will start hunting them.”
Here and there they could pick out a distinctive horse-track, one that would help in the future. “Wonder they didn’t loot the house and find Susan, here.”
“Mama was away from the house, looking for our cow. They looked at the house, but they didn’t come near.”
“Didn’t want to chance it,” Dal suggested. “They had the woman, and there might be a man with a rifle at the house.”
They stopped only briefly at mid-day to rest the horses and let them graze. Dal paced impatiently, swearing under his breath. Mac lay on his back, his hat over his eyes. “Take it easy, Dal. Save your strength. We’ll need all we got when we come up to them.”