Duffey swallowed. He loosened his clutch on a spear of the white fence. “I’d best be driving old Salt out of this before he gets scared,” he said. “Who’d ever expected to see these soldiers, an hour ago? Good day, Dan.” And when he had climbed into the carryall and had lifted the reins in his scarred, pink hands, he cried: “According to Elijah, this is what they’re calling a vidette. They shoo them out along the roads to watch for enemies. It’s a French word—vidette.” Old Salt started warily down the Pike, forgetting the nagging flies, his ears stiff and pointed and cocked forward as the squad of cavalry came at him.

The carryall had passed before the soldiers emerged from the field, and Duffey was pleased that they did not challenge him. To him their advent was an annoying complication, but minor to the riddle of personal relationship.

Whenever he tried to clear his brain of the jogging, dusty shapes which his eyes were putting there, he could only realize that he had told the whole truth about Elmer Quagger, and had stated his questions to Dan as openly and simply as was possible. Here existed an inexplainable rift and barrier that did not come from the years of disassociation. It was no outgrowth of Minnesota prairies or the life which Dan had lived there. Strangely enough, Duffey kept thinking of a love affair. If his friend were experiencing one, there was no understanding how Quagger could in any way be aware of it, or be involved.

And certainly Bale was not implicated in petty schemings nurtured by the Copperheads, the Sons of Liberty, the Knights of the Golden Circle—call them what you would. Such was not his way, could not be admitted among his beliefs … The old doctor was as dully depressed by Quagger’s unhappy insinuations as by any relapse or lack of progress noted among his patients. The world gaped at him, stained and unappetizing. He disliked the war partly because of the obtrusive patriotism which it had fostered, and partly for reasons of vague but earnest humanity. The war had occupied him, nettled him, overcome him for more than two years, and thus he welcomed the home-coming of Daniel Bale with supreme enthusiasm … That enthusiasm had never been justified; he had seen little of Dan during these weeks; he found him complex and stupidly preoccupied, a man whose very sternness and adult rigidity made him unapproachable, and thus unsatisfying as a friend. He thought, you cannot see all that’s going to occur, when you sew a young mother’s torn body together again.

Chapter 6

6.

The Federal squad trotted quickly up the slope, and when Dan went to the front gate he could see them sitting their horses against the polished western sky, just as he had seen the Secessionists bulking there a few days earlier.