That he had led them straight, but when they had got to the bridge
it had been set on fire and was burning at that moment; that a half-dozen men,
of whom he, the narrator, was one, rode in, taking the guide along with them,
to see if they could not put the fire out, or, failing that, find the ford;
and when they were about half-way across the little flat they saw the person
on the bridge in the very act of burning it, and waving his hand in triumph;
and the man who was riding abreast of him in front fired his carbine at him.
As he did so the deserter wheeled on him, and said, "God d--n you --
don't you know that's a woman," and springing on him like a tiger
tore him from his horse; and, before they took in what he was doing,
had, before their very eyes, flung both of them into a place
where the current was running, and they had disappeared.
They had seen the deserter's head once in the stream lower down,
and had fired at him, and he thought had hit him, as he went down immediately
and they did not see him again.
This is all that was known of Little Darby, except that
a year or more afterward, and nearly a year after Mrs. Stanley's death,
a package with an old needle-case in it and a stained little Testament
with a bullet hole through it, was left at the Cross-roads,
with a message that a man who had died at the house of the person who left it
as he was trying to make his way back to his command, asked to have that sent
to Vashti Mills.
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