“All right.  Give me your message and I’ll take it to him.”  He smiled.  “You can wait here and stand guard.”

Melissa told him hurriedly how she had come over the mountain and what was going on over there, and the picket with a low whistle started down toward his camp without another word.

Chad could not doubt the accuracy of the information—­the picket had names and facts.

“A girl, you say?”

“Yes, sir”—­the soldier hesitated—­“and a very pretty one, too.  She came over the mountain alone and on foot through this darkness.  She passed the pickets on the other side—­pretending to be a sheep.  She had a bell in her hand.”  Chad smiled—­he knew that trick.

“Where is she?”

“She’s standing guard for me.”

The picket turned at a gesture from Chad and led the way.  They found no Melissa.  She had heard Chad’s voice and fled up the mountain.  Before daybreak she was descending the mountain on the other side, along the same way, tinkling her sheep-bell and creeping past the pickets.  It was raining again now and her cold had grown worse.  Several times she had to muffle her face into her shawl to keep her cough from betraying her.  As she passed the ford below the Turner cabin, she heard the splash of many horses crossing the river and she ran on, frightened and wondering.  Before day broke she had slipped into her bed without arousing Mother Turner, and she did not get up that day, but lay ill abed.

The splashing of those many horses was made by Captain Daniel Dean and his men, guided by Rebel Jerry.  High on the mountain side they hid their horses in a ravine and crept toward the Gap on foot—­so that while Daws with his gang waited for Chad, the rebels lay in the brush waiting for him.  Dan was merry over the prospect: 

“We will just let them fight it out,” he said, “and then we’ll dash in and gobble ’em both up.  That was a fine scheme of yours, Jerry.”

Rebel Jerry smiled:  there was one thing he had not told his captain—­who those rebels were.  Purposely he had kept that fact hidden.  He had seen Dan purposely refrain from killing Chad Buford once and he feared that Dan might think his brother Harry was among the Yankees.  All this Rebel Jerry failed to understand, and he wanted nothing known now that might stay anybody’s hand.  Dawn broke and nothing happened.  Not a shot rang out and only the smoke of the guerillas’ fire showed in the peaceful mouth of the Gap.  Dan wanted to attack the guerillas, but Jerry persuaded him to wait until he could learn how the land lay, and disappeared in the bushes.  At noon he came back.

“The Yankees have found out Daws is thar in the Gap,” he said, “an’ they are goin’ to slip over before day ter-morrer and s’prise him.  Hit don’t make no difference to us, which s’prises which—­does it?”

So the rebels kept hid through the day in the bushes on the mountain side, and when Chad slipped through the Gap next morning, before day, and took up the guerilla pickets, Dan had moved into the same Gap from the other side, and was lying in the bushes with his men, near the guerillas’ fire, waiting for the Yankees to make their attack.  He had not long to wait.  At the first white streak of dawn overhead, a shout rang through the woods from the Yankees to the startled guerillas.